![]() Cristi’s playing-both-sides predicament is complicated by his relationship with Gilda (Catrinel Marlon), an alluring beauty whose femme fatale status is underlined by her famous noir name, and Porumboiu fractures his narrative so that chronology, like the various dialects employed by his characters, comes across as intricately coded. This subterfuge is demanded by Cristi’s gangster bosses, with whom he’s both in league with and tasked with nabbing by his law enforcement chief Magda (Rodica Lazar). Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu once again melds his interests in language and genre filmmaking with The Whistlers, a neo-noir about a police officer named Cristi (Vlad Ivanov) who travels to the Canary Island of La Gomera to learn an ancient whistling language that doesn’t sound anything like a human form of communication. That Garbus doesn’t let Mari off the hook for her own mistakes, while nonetheless casting a reproachful gaze at the individual and systemic failings that allow such crimes to occur – and go unsolved – only strengthens her cinematic case for compassion and togetherness as the bulwark against tragedy. ![]() Ryan’s powerhouse performance as the fiercely determined Mari is the nucleus of this dispiritingly bleak tale, in which there are few concrete answers to be found, but plenty of blame to pass around. At every turn, what Mari discovers is a lack of urgency about, if not outright indifference to, her daughter’s disappearance, even after other bodies are found in the very same area. Using Robert Kolker’s book as her source, director Liz Garbus recounts Mari Gilbert’s (Amy Ryan) efforts to find her oldest daughter Shannan, a prostitute, after she vanished following a house call in a gated Long Island community. ![]() The true story of a mother’s search for her missing child, Netflix’s Lost Girls is a clear-eyed and moving expose about the many ways in which troubled young women are let down by parents, police and society at large. Nonetheless, the alternately combative and chummy English pair remain in fine, funny form, and their swan song proves to be their most substantive collaboration since their maiden outing. Anxiety about mortality turns out to be more pronounced than ever, particularly via Coogan’s Ingmar Bergman-esque dream sequence, which is related to dismay over his father’s failing health. In keeping with its predecessors, the duo’s latest colors its humor with a strain of wistful regret rooted in their thorny feelings about transitioning into middle age. For this fourth and ostensibly final installment, the bickering couple (Coogan arrogant and condescending Brydon cheery and patient) enjoy fine meals and show off their imitative vocal skills, here highlighted by Coogan doing a pitch-perfect Ray Winstone as King Henry VIII. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon follow the path first traversed by Odysseus in The Trip To Greece, once again engaging in the witty banter and dueling celebrity impressions that have become the hallmark of this Michael Winterbottom-stewarded comedy series. A nighttime race through Manhattan in an old-school sports car is the material’s comedic high point, and contributes to the warmth and affection that Coppola showers upon her metropolitan setting, here envisioned as a dreamy wonderland full of intrigue, adventure and alternately enervating and enlivening domesticity. Seemingly riffing on Coppola’s own famous dad Francis, Murray is a charming force of nature as an incorrigible lothario at once devoted to his mother-of-two kid and wholly, hilariously consumed with himself, and his performance does much to enliven this breezy saga about Laura’s mid-life crisis. ![]() Though the results aren’t as dynamic as their prior collaboration, Coppola’s fizzy romantic drama nonetheless finds its headliner in outstanding form as Felix, the suave ladies-man father to Laura (Rashida Jones), with whom he embarks on an investigation into the possible two-timing proclivities of her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans). With On the Rocks, Sofia Coppola reunites with her Lost in Translation star Bill Murray for another odyssey involving a young woman and an older man. ![]()
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