Across 41 years and 70-some films, Juliette Binoche — the gold standard for cinematic expressivity, and for performances both imposing and delicately shaded — has figured out a few things.

One: “Do your own work. Because you cannot rely on directors.”

Two: Her favorite screen actor is the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, and they once spent four hours over dinner discussing “oh, everything. Life.”

Three: She does not like to be told to hold back, even — perhaps especially — by filmmakers she admires. Binoche’s latest film, the visually droolworthy period picture “The Taste of Things,” was written and directed by the Vietnamese French writer-director Trân Anh Hùng, whose works include “The Scent of Green Papaya,” a similarly delectable number.

“A couple of times,” Binoche recalls, “he came to me after a take and said, ‘Juliette, can you be more … neutral this time?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean, neutral?’” She speaks these words with just a hint of judgment, in a tone of what can only be described as withering neutrality.

In “The Taste of Things,” which was chosen as the French entry for the category of international feature film at the upcoming Academy Awards, Binoche, 59, plays the cook Eugénie, the longtime culinary and sometime romantic partner of a renowned chef. They have retired to the country together. The story, based on the 1920 novel translated into English as “The Passionate Epicure,” begins in 1885, with Eugénie in subtly declining health, and the chef Dodin mounting a new stealth campaign of marriage proposal. Dodin is played by Benoît Magimel.

The film marked the first time Binoche and Magimel worked together since “Children of the Century” in 1999. Their off-screen partnership of the time, which lasted several years, produced a daughter, Hana. “I think it’s so sad when people separating don’t see each other anymore,” Binoche says, over a large, grazing sort of lunch at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills (filet mignon, polenta, grilled broccolini, et al.) “They don’t express what they’re feeling. It’s terrible. It’s burying yourself before you die.”

The following is edited for clarity and length.

Q: You filmed “The Taste of Things” in the spring of 2022. Does it feel like a long time ago?

A: “You know, not really. With a film that was quite intense to make, time works differently. The experience is still printed in you. Still very vivid, what we went through, because you had to be so present in every moment. So it stays in you. It’s not just passing through; it’s digging in.

I’d seen most of Trân’s earlier films, including “Eternity,” and I thought in “Eternity” he retreated from emotion a little bit. With “The Taste of Things” I wanted to give him as much emotion as I felt was needed. A couple of times after a take he came to me and said, “Juliette, can you be more neutral?” And I said “what do you mean, neutral? I am a human being, I have to feel, I have to live! I cannot block myself to please you intellectually.” So. I think I was smart at that moment. (smiles) I asked Trân afterward why he asked me in that scene to be neutral. He said he was afraid there would be too much emotion. But after I said “no, I can’t do that,” we shot another take and he gave me a little pat and said, “You know what? That’s fine” (laughs).

Q: I rarely get a single emotion in any of your work on screen, whoever you’re playing.

A: I think that’s preferable, yes? It’s important to understand the root of everything, and somehow link it to the surface of what you’re doing and who you’re playing. That’s why comedies are so difficult. I hate comedies, usually, because so often it’s about overstatement, and it doesn’t work for me.

As human beings, we carry everything with us, all the time, and it’s all being revealed while you’re shooting. That is the magic of it. You cannot push or will it into being a certain way. It needs to come out before the camera in a way you didn’t expect.

Q: Can you remember the first time you saw a film as a child where a performer just basically changed your life forever?

A: Yes. I was six or seven, and I saw Charlie Chaplin’s short films. And then I happened to visit Charlie Chaplin in Switzerland with my sister, for real, when I was nine. My father was a friend of one of his daughters, Victoria.

Q: So if the first person you saw on screen was Buster Keaton instead, I wonder if years later you would’ve told your “Taste of Things” director, yes, fine, neutral is fine?

A: Who knows? (Laughs). We all have to be transparent as actors. To let things come out. That’s not neutral. It’s a sort of an abnegation. You give into something and let something happen so it comes out of you naturally.

Q: The kitchen in “The Taste of Things,” with the wood fire and the beautiful copper pots, it’s like a dream kitchen, designed to make 21st century audiences want to go to late 19th century provincial France immediately.

A: I know! I bought a farm a year and a half ago, two kilometers from my grandmother’s house, in Saint-Martin-de-Seignanx (near the Spanish border). I had some difficult memories there, my parents separating, sometimes a little rough. But it will be good for all of us, cousins and everyone, to gather there. It’s good to have a place for family. And my goal, when the farmhouse is finished, is a sort of “Taste of Things” kitchen.

Q: The first scene, or scenes, of meal preparation we see in the film — it lasts nearly 40 minutes, and it’s a swirl of activity, none of it ostentatious, from the picking of the vegetables at sunrise to the emptying-out of a fish for an omelet. By the way, what kind of fish did you stick your hands into in that scene?

A: Turbot. Also turbot in English, I think. Wait, I’ll tell you. (Checks French to English translation on phone). Flounder? You don’t say “turbot” in English?

Q: I’m afraid I’m not the one to ask! But “flounder” I know, which doesn’t sound nearly as good. What are you actually frying up in the pan in that scene?

A: The testicles! That was the first day, my first scene, we filmed. We had three fishes we could use if we needed to. I was nervous! I had never done that. But it was fine, we did it in the first take. The testicles were for the omelet. (Pause) I didn’t try it.

Q: Can we talk a bit about you working with Benoît in the film?

A: Yes, certainly. We had seen each other once in a while (years after they split up), because we have a daughter together. But we never had a real conversation about the past, things that happened. And then suddenly we were spending time, working together. I was very moved by this. And I think he was as well.

I think distance creates the need for expressing feelings. And so I used Trân’s words (in the “Taste of Things” screenplay) to express my feelings for Benoît. The medium became a sort of gift, a bridge toward him, and I was able to tell him everything: I love you no matter what happened, I care for you, life goes on, we have a wonderful child, I loved you then, and now I love you in a different way. And that’s the way it is.

For our daughter, it was like opening a door. She doesn’t remember us being together, so this was a sort of healing moment, seeing her parents expressing things between them.

Q: How would you characterize Benoît’s approach to acting in relation to your own?

A: He loves the freedom the earpiece gives him. Giving him the lines. He loves it. For the shorter scenes, he didn’t need it. For the monologues, he used it. I adapted to his needs and it didn’t bother me. We both like going on an adventure to see what happens in a retake. I feel like it’s a privilege to do another take of a scene. You have to be an open instrument. Not thinking too much. Just jumping into the unknown.

Q: Did it take time to find that freedom, when you were younger?

A: I had my mother as a theater teacher, who taught me. After that I went to my area drama conservatory, and then to a private school. And there, my teacher, she sort of shook me awake. She stopped me from wanting to act like I was trying to be a great actress every time I opened my mouth. When I was 18 I was trying to prove it, and she would say “Stop!” because it was too “acted.” So then I started feeling something else. Being, not acting. But when I started in films, right afterward, I saw right away that (Jean-Luc) Godard (who cast Binoche in the controversial 1985 film “Hail Mary”) didn’t give a (fig) about me. Or care about trying to help me. He was just trying to figure out what to do with the camera.

And I thought: OK, I’m learning something here. Never rely on directors!

“The Taste of Things” opens in Chicago Feb. 9.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“You can’t be walking around at night, on a white street, and not expect trouble.” Author Isabel Wilkerson’s mother has likely said something like this before, in one of any number of tragic contexts. In this case, George Zimmerman has recently killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin for walking, in a hoodie, at night, while Black. And Wilkerson wonders: Is it really on the young man’s shoulders to avoid arousing suspicion, then deadly overreaction, among his fellow American citizens?

Martin’s name is one of many heard in the vital, supple new film “Origin,” and screenwriter-director Ava DuVernay has found a way to turn an adaptation-defying bestseller — Isabel Wilkerson’s magnificent “Caste” — into what feels like the only possible film version.

Without sacrificing or exploiting any of Wilkerson’s personal story, “Origin” honors what the author and journalist did in taking on a hugely ambitious research project in the service of her second book. Subtitled “The Origins of Our Discontents,” “Caste” came out in 2020. It wasn’t easy to write, but it reads like a streak — a provocative and elegantly intertwined examination of America’s racial history and structural biases, and their undeniable links to both India’s caste system and Nazi Germany’s murder of 6 million Jews.

The result, on screen, is not like any other how-I-wrote-this biopic, partly because it’s much more than that. DuVernay dramatizes the historical figures in Wilkerson’s “Caste,” through her travels abroad and her family joys and sorrows at home, in constantly surprising ways.

It begins where too many American stories begin: with one more dead Black body on a residential street. The 2012 killing of Martin serves as the sobering prologue to “Origin.” The news story strikes Wilkerson (played with supple authority and great, compressed force by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as worth writing about, though she resists the entreaties of a friend and former New York Times editor (played by Blair Underwood).

Soon enough, grief sends Wilkerson, the former Chicago bureau chief of the New York Times, into a heartbreaking new realm of purpose. Wilkerson’s second husband (Jon Bernthal, excellent) dies suddenly, a 15-year-old brain tumor diagnosis cruelly catching up with him. Wilkerson soon suffers another family loss and must pick up pieces everywhere she turns.

Those include the pieces, the notions, for researching an ever-larger idea for a book: one dealing, somehow, with America’s own racial caste structure and its connections to Nazi Germany’s caste society, as well as India’s. With the death of her mother (played with wonderful grace by Emily Yancy) in due course, Wilkerson focuses on work, as best she can, while seeking solace in friends, friends/interview subjects and colleagues around the world, some more supportive of her central thesis than others.

“Origin” struggles a bit to accommodate both DuVernay’s dramatized research, in the form of flashbacks, focused on 1930s Germany, and the Dalit caste of India — the lowest rung, the ones tasked with cleaning latrine waste with their bare hands. But like the book, the film about the making of the book pulls off a near-miracle in shaping a steadily multiplying amount of information and ideas that are not simply information and ideas. Reason: The people come alive in “Origin” and Ellis-Taylor holds the key.

I’d see it again for any number of scenes, notably Audra McDonald as a friend of Wilkerson’s, relaying the riveting story of why her father named her Miss Hale. DuVernay, whose previous work includes first-rate documentaries (“The 13th”), docudramas (“When They See Us”) and biographical portraits of a person and a movement (“Selma”), creates a singular visual leitmotif, in which we see Wilkerson, in a black void, leaves falling all around, communing with her late husband, or with a research subject who dies before she has a chance to hear his own story of racial caste prejudice involving a whites-only swimming pool and a Little League team that didn’t bother with caste and racial designations.

To say “Origin” is destined for countless classroom screenings risks making it sound medicinal or earnestly educational. It is, I suppose, educational; it’s also vibrant and adroit and searching as human drama. It’s one woman’s story. And like the book that inspired it, DuVernay’s adaptation makes us see what Wilkerson saw, all around the world we make for ourselves. And then remake. Or else.

———

‘ORIGIN’

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material involving racism, violence, some disturbing images, language and smoking)

Running time: 2:21

How to watch: In theaters

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

We’ll be getting so many cinematic works through the close of December that we can’t touch on all of them. And, in picking 24 to highlight for 2024, we have stuck with those that had official release dates, even though dates are always subject to change.

That means few of the films that follow are streaming offerings, as those tend to get firm places on calendars closer to their releases. Similarly, we don’t know all that much about several of the films that will hit late in 2024 and be part of the Academy Awards discussion a year from now.

What we do have, though, is a collection of flicks that, for one reason or another, are worth a mention.

1. “Dune: Part Two” | March 1 | Theaters: It’s still a little hard to believe “Dune” — filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of part of Frank Herbert’s influential 1965 science-fiction novel — was a giant sandworm-sized hit at the box office. That allowed for this sequel to the movie also now known as “Dune: Part One,” which will bring back star Timothée Chalamet — as exiled messiah figure Paul Atreides — and supporting players including Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. Newcomers include Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Florence Pugh (“Black Widow”) and Christopher Walken. The highly anticipated film was to have landed in November, but the studio behind it, Warner Bros. Pictures, delayed it so its stars could do press for it in a post-actors’ strike world.

2. Untitled “Deadpool” movie | July 26 | Theaters: Commonly referred to as “Deadpool 3,” this will be, well, the third entry in the series and the follow-up to 2018’s “Deadpool 2.” We don’t know too much about the film yet, as an official synopsis has yet to be announced, but franchise star Ryan Reynolds will return as Wade Wilson and his equally foul-mouthed titular antihero, while Hugh Jackman will, for the umpteenth time, portray mutant hero Wolverine. That’s especially fun considering a very different Deadpool, albeit one played by Reynolds, faced off against Jackman’s Wolverine in 2009’s forgettable “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” It also is said that the movie will — unsurprisingly given the shift in studio ownership over the last several years — bring Deadpool into Disney-owned Marvel Studios’ Marvel Cinematic Universe. Boy, wait til the MCU gets a load of him.

3. “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” | March 29 | Theaters: The ghost-fighting heroes introduced in 2021’s largely enjoyable action-comedy “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” — characters played by actors including Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon — join forces with those portrayed by franchise vets such as Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Annie Potts in this adventure that sees a supernatural freeze threat hit New York City in the summer. While “Afterlife” director Jason Reitman returns as a co-writer, he’s handed over the helm to his co-writer, Gil Kenan (“Monster House”). The movie is said to be dedicated to Ivan Reitman, the father of Jason and the director of 1984’s “Ghostbusters” and 1989’s “Ghostbusters II,” who died in early 2022 at age 75.

4. “Joker: Folie a Deux” | Oct. 4 | Theaters: OK, we had hoped the version of DC Comics Clown Prince of Darkness portrayed so memorably by Joaquin Phoenix In 2019’s Todd Phillips-directed “Joker” — an effectively dark character study and origin story — somehow could end up being the Caped Crusader’s adversary in the new movie series begun with filmmaker Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” in 2022. Instead, Phillips and Phoenix are back with this … musical thriller? No doubt much of that music will come courtesy of pop star and actress Lady Gaga (“A Star Is Born”), who joins the wild fray as the Joker’s traditional love interest, Harley Quinn. (Fear not, Zazie Beetz fans — she returns as Sophie Dumond.) We’re eagerly awaiting the first trailer for this film, which falls under the DC Elseworlds label, meaning it is not part of the new DC Universe.

5. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” | March 29 | Theaters: If you’ve just finished watching the almost surprisingly strong debut season of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” on Apple TV+, you may be invested in Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures’ MonsterVerse like never before. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait long for your next big serving. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is the seventh big-screen MonsterVerse affair and the sequel to 2021’s guilty-pleasure effort “Godzilla vs. Kong” from director Adam Wingard. Wingard returns for “x,” which clearly will reunite the heroic Titans, who this time will team up against a new monster threat. The cast boasts returnees Brian Tyree Henry and Rebecca Hall along with newcomer Dan Stevens. And as we don’t see any of the “Monarch” cast listed as appearing, we hope the “x” folks are keeping that under wraps — and/or that we get a second season of the show.

6. “Mufasa: The Lion King” | Dec. 20 | Theaters: “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk” director Barry Jenkins is at the helm of this live-action, digital imagery-heavy prequel to 2019’s similarly made “The Lion King,” a remake of the 1994 animated favorite. Writer Jeff Nathanson returns, as do voice actors Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner and John Kani, as Pumbaa, Timon and Rafiki, respectively, while the titular younger Mufasa is voiced by Aaron Pierre and his duplicitous brother, Scar, by Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the musical drama.

7. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” | May 24 | Theaters: Speaking of prequels, the consistently terrific Anya Taylor-Joy portrays the titular character memorably introduced by Charlize Theron in filmmaker George Miller’s 2015 hit, “Mad Max: Fury Road.” It’s not always to make sense of the goings on in the newer incarnation of Miller’s post-apocalyptic world, but the man certainly has a gift for spectacle, with this latest film looking to bring the same visual insanity and bone-crushing sound work of its predecessor. In the new film, the younger Furiosa will take on Chris Hemsworth’s Warlord Dementus. (Seriously, these names.)

8. “Nosferatu” | Dec. 25 | Theaters: When the talented Robert Eggers (“The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” “The Northman”) makes a film, we sit up and take notice. He’s finally making his long-planned remake of the 1922 German film, with Bill Skarsgård starring as the movie’s namesake vampire, aka Count Oriok. His co-stars include  Lily-Rose Depp and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Also in the cast is Nicholas Hoult (SO great in “The Great”), who last year starred in last year’s not-all-it-could-have-been action-comedy “Renfield,” which also owes its existence to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” novel.

9. “Beetlejuice 2” | Sept. 6 | Theaters: It’s showtime! (You know, again.) Director Tim Burton is back for the sequel to the beloved 1988 supernatural horror comedy, as are stars Michael Keaton, as the titular colorful demon, and Winona Ryder as the older Lydia Deetz. Portraying Lydia’s daughter, Astrid, and seemingly serving a similar purpose to her mom’s in the original movie is Jenna Ortega — one of the most sensible casting choices in the history of sensible casting choices given her work in the likewise funny-but-spooky “Wednesday” and newer “Scream” movies. Catherine O’Hara also returns as Lydia’s stepmother, Delia, while Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci join the dark-magic fray.

10. “Gladiator 2” | Nov. 22 | Theaters: Lucius, the boy played by Spencer Treat Clark in director Ridley Scott’s 2000 Academy Award-winning action epic, “Gladiator,” is now grown, played by Paul Mescal (“Aftersun,” “All of Us Strangers”) in the sequel. Scott is returning to take the reins of what undoubtedly will be another action-filled spectacle, and Connie Nielsen returns as Lucius’ estranged mother, Lucilla. More importantly, Denzel Washington portrays a key character. Will we not be entertained? We expect that we will be.

11. “Wicked: Part One” | Nov. 27 | Theaters: “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu helms the highly anticipated adaptation of the acclaimed musical by Stephen Schwartz (music and lyrics) and Winnie Holzman (book), which is set in the land of Oz and based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.” Schwartz and Holzman are the film’s writers, which is wonderful, as is the casting of Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba Thropp, the future Wicked Witch of the West, and Ariana Grande as the woman who will become Glinda the Good, Glinda Upland. But while we allow that a full-fledged screen adaptation of the show likely would be around two and a half hours, splitting the show into two movies — with “Part Two” due almost exactly a year later — feels a little cash-grabby if not, well, downright wicked. Considering the show’s best song, “Defying Gravity,” brings the first act to a close, we at least should be treated to that in this first installment.

12. “Mickey 17” | March 29 | Theaters: Highly anticipated because it is the first film from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho since his 2019 Academy Award winner, “Parasite,” this science-fiction drama is based on Edward Ashton’s novel “Mickey7,” about Mickey Barnes, one in a long line of clones, on an interplanetary expedition. Robert Pattinson (“The Batman”) stars..

13. “Inside Out 2” | June 14 | Theaters: Riley’s a teenager in the sequel to the beloved and Academy Award-winning (and, sorry, but overrated) 2015 film from Walt Disney Pictures affiliate Pixar Animation Studios. That means new personified emotions for Riley, most notably Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke. Returning for more inner-Riley fun are Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Anger (Lewis Black). Kelsey Mann makes his feature debut, but he’s working with writer Meg LeFauve, who also penned the original.

14. “The Fall Guy” | May 3 | Theaters: Ryan Gosling goes from his outstanding turn as Ken in last year’s beloved “Barbie” to playing … Lee Majors? Well, not really, but Gosling’s character in “The Fall Movie,” Colt Seavers, shares the name of Majors’ character from the 1980s TV series from which it appears to have been very loosely adapted. Yes, Gosling’s Colt is a Hollywood stuntman, and, based on the fun first trailer, he seems to have a will-they-won’t-they dynamic with Emily Blunt’s Jody Moreno, who’s directing her first movie and, more importantly, is his ex. When the star for whom Gosling doubles disappears, adventure awaits. And we’ll expect plenty of action, as Director David Leitch (“John Wick,” “Atomic Blonde”) knows a thing or two about that. Most importantly, like “Barbie,” this affair appears to be taking itself only so seriously.

15. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” | May 10 | Theaters: Director Wes Ball (“The Maze Runner” trilogy) gets his stinkin’ paws (they probably smell just fine) on the “Planet of the Apes” reboot series with this installment set about three centuries after the events of 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes.” The legacy of ape leader Caesar is intact via ape civilizations while humans have reverted to something less sophisticated. Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who’s desperate to find lost human technologies, now rules the apes — seemingly ruthlessly — while young chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) goes off on a quest with a young, feral human woman, Mae (Freya Allan).

16. “Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1” | June 28 | Theaters: In this Western he’s also directing, Kevin Costner will continue to do the cowboy thing — something that may have pleased fans of his work on the hit series “Yellowstone” more had scheduling conflicts with the project not been at least a significant reason he has left “Yellowstone” before its conclusion. “Horizon” — which will cover 15 years of American expansion before and after the Civil War — is something Costner has been trying to bring to the screen for decades. Those who do enjoy it won’t have to wait long for the sequel, set for theaters less than two months later, on Aug. 16.

17. “A Quiet Place: Day One” | June 27 | Theaters: Details are (cough) hush-hush on this spinoff of the two “A Quiet Place” films, in which vicious aliens, which make up for a lack of sight with incredible hearing, roam Earth. The writer-director of those movies, John Krasinski, is around as a co-writer and producer, with directing duties being handled by his co-writer, Michael Sarnoski (“Pig”). We do know that Djimon Hounsou returns as the character he played in 2021’s “A Quiet Place Part II” and that the cast includes Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn — who memorably portrayed Eddie Munson in the fourth season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”

18. “IF” | May 17 | Theaters: Speaking of Krasinski, he is the writer and director of this family-friendly fantasy comedy blending live action and computer animation. IF stands for imaginary friend, and in the story, a young girl, Bea (Cailey Fleming), gains the ability to see people’s normally invisible pals. The cast is led by Ryan Reynolds, as Bea’s neighbor, with Krasinski also playing a significant role. “IF” also boasts a bunch of heavy hitters providing voice work, including Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Matt Damon, John Stewart, May Rudolph, Sam Rockwell and Emily Blunt, Krasinski’s wife.

19. “Spaceman” | March 1 | Netflix: This science-fiction drama doesn’t look like the typical Adam Sandler vehicle for Netflix, with the typically comedic actor portraying an astronaut on a solo mission at the edge of the solar system. Sandler has big-name costars in Carey Mulligan, as his character’s pregnant wife, and Paul Dano as the voice of an alien spider he encounters.

20. “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” | Dec. 15 | Theaters: We mostly liked it, but last year’s debut season of the visually arresting “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” didn’t exactly hit with the force of a fire-breathing dragon. Nonetheless, we’re going back to author J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth with this animated film, which, like “Rings of Power,” takes place well before the story told in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy of novels and their movie adaptations. Voice work is performed by, among others, Brian Cox, as the King of Rohan, and Miranda Otto, narrating the story as Eowyn, the character she portrayed in the 2002 middle installment of director Peter Jackson’s life-action trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”

21. “Karate Kid” | Dec. 13 | Theaters: Thanks to the success of the Netflix “Karate Kid”-related series “Cobra Kai” — we greatly enjoyed the first season but then became frustrated with the storytelling and waxed off — plenty of folks surely are looking forward to this movie, which shares the title of the 1984 original and its 2010 remake. It’s unclear whether it will tie in to “Cobra Kai” — various business interests could get in the way of that — but it will feature Ralph Macchio, who reprised the role of Daniel LaRusso from the original movies for the show. We know the movie also boasts Jackie Chan, a cast member of the remake. Jonathan Entwistle, director of another Netflix series, “The End of the F***ing World,” is set to direct.

22. “Road House” | March 21 | Prime Video: If this release date holds, it shouldn’t be long before we see a trailer for this remake of the 1989 movie that starred the late Patrick Swayze — as the “cooler” keeping things relatively peaceful at a rowdy bar. While Jake Gyllenhaal would seem to have the physical stature to star in the remake, as a former UFC fighter hired by a joint in the Florida Keys, we’d not take this not too seriously were it not directed by typically excellent Doug Limon (“The Bourne Identity,” “Edge of Tomorrow”). Let’s stop in for a drink and see how things go.

23. “Back to Black” | May 10 | Theaters: Marisa Abela (“Industry”) portrays the late singer Amy Winehouse in this biopic directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson (“Fifty Shades of Grey”).

24. “Bob Marley: One Love” | Feb. 14 | Theaters: We’ll stick with a theme to close, shining a little light on this soon-to-hit biopic about the late great reggae legend. The talented Kingsley Ben-Adir portrays Marley, with Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard”) at the helm.

“Origin” tops our list of must-see releases, along with an intense standoff in space and a family drama set next door to a Nazi death camp.

Here’s our roundup.

“Origin”: Ava DuVernay accomplishes the impossible, adapting Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist/author Isabel Wilkerson’s uncinematic book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent.” It’s a hefty tome that postulates the root of oppression is tied not to skin color nor creed but to a global caste system that anoints a select group to be superior over all. From this hefty thesis DuVernay delivers an intellectually stimulating, emotionally gratifying film swirling with ideas. It’s a screenwriting and directorial triumph for the visionary filmmaker of “Selma.” Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor turns in an impassioned performance as Wilkerson, an accomplished writer who reluctantly embarks on a research mission as she’s reeling from a one-two punch of family tragedies. DuVernay’s screenplay crackles with brainy, kinetic energy and generates complex, substantial conversations that put lightning into Wilkerson’s theory. She also devotes equal time to making Wilkerson, beautifully played by Ellis-Taylor, a multi-dimensional person struggling with the heft of history and a sudden burden of grief.

Through historical flashbacks and research trips that jet Wilkerson to Germany and India, along with enlightening talks with loved ones, Wilkerson pieces together a convincing argument that opens the window to looking at race and oppression of others into a thought-provoking new way. DuVernay’s film will make your heart ache in the process, as will Jon Bernthal’s tender performance as Wilkerson’s husband. This is exciting, challenging filmmaking that works on every emotional and intellectual level. What a shame “Origin” hasn’t gained traction in this year’s Oscar conversation. It more than deserves to be right alongside other contenders bucking for that best picture prize. Details: 4 stars out of 4; opens Jan. 19 in Bay Area theaters.

“The Zone of Interest”: Jonathan Glazer’s latest ambitious feature — the best film of 2023 – defies categorization and convention. It gives us a front-row seat to the comings-and-goings and daily routines of a high-ranking German couple and their spawn. The difference here is that the year is 1943, and the patriarch of the family is Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), commandant of the notorious Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, which borders the family’s sprawling estate. Glazer loosely adapts Martin Amis’ 2014 novel and has created a silent scream on the mundanity of evil, and how tasks performed within our own zones of interest — perhaps advancing one’s career or gaining power and influence — can make being responsible for the massacre of a million people seem like just another stepping stone in one’s career. Friedel and Sandra Hüller, as his aggressively ambitious wife, wear their masks of evil chillingly well. “The Zone of Interest” is a unique cinematic experience (the sounds issuing from Auschwitz are almost a supporting performance, and will haunt you forever) that all but demands it be viewed in one sustained gulp in a theater, not at home. I’ve seen it twice and will see it again, not only being astonished by the craftsmanship displayed in every scene but for its timeless warning that sadly will never grow outdated. It’s brilliant. Details: 4 stars; in theaters now.

“I.S.S.”: If you come to Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s thoughtful “what if” space movie anticipating a pure adrenaline ride that’s bereft of ideas, get an E-ticket to a different destination. That’s because the director of “Blackfish” and “Megan Leavey,” along with screenwriter Nick Shafir, venture beyond standard sci-fi tropes to convey a dire warning about our paranoia of “the other.” Don’t get me wrong. This “trapped door” space odyssey is no slouch in the suspense department as six International Space Station cosmonauts – three Americans, three Russians – face orders from their governments to take over I.S.S. by any means necessary after war breaks out on Earth. The sharp-edged premise makes its bloody point well while the cast headed by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina make us care about what happens in space and on the ground. Details: 3 stars; opens Jan. 19 in area theaters.

“The Beekeeper”: There’s something cathartic and downright therapeutic about seeing Jason Statham as a retired operative kick the living daylights out of hackers preying on an older generation. Screenwriter/director David Ayer relishes in going wildly over the top in preposterous ways, amping up the violence to ridiculous extremes and never allowing the audience to come up for air. It’s a classic B-movie (get it?) steeped in tortured bee metaphors that’ll make you chuckle and action set pieces that’ll have you cheering. Everyone in the cast cranks up the hamminess to delirious levels, from Josh Hutcherson as an annoying coke-snorting rich brat who’s the ringleader of the online hoodwinking scams and Oscar winner Jeremy Irons as a total tool who runs security for said brat. Much of it is illogical, preposterous over-the-top ridiculous, which is what makes it such a guilty pleasure and one of Statham’s and Ayer’s best films. We can only hope there’s a whole colony of “Beekeeper” movies in the future. Details: 3 stars; in theaters now.

Find of the week

“Driving Madeline”: Sometimes that weathered adage about looks being deceiving does prove out. In its opening moments, one might assume this drama centered on 92-year-old Madeleine’s (Line Renaud) taxi ride with driver Charles (Dany Boon) through Paris will be a ham-fisted tearjerker. But this much more ambitious than a pull-on-the-heartstrings road trip. Christian Carion’s seventh feature steers clear of hackneyed tropes, alternating between jarring flashbacks of Madeleine’s hard domestic younger years and those intimate conversations between this unlikely duo who form a bond as the day shifts into night. “Madeleine” is a showcase for its two leads; both are exceptional. So is the film, which gently reminds us to feel compassion for others since we never quite know where another person has been or where they might be going. Details: 3 stars; opens Jan. 19 at select theaters.

“Hazbin Hotel”: Amazon Prime’s raucous, raunchy new series is certain to be one of the hottest animated comedies of the season. It takes place in a hotel in hell (you read that right) run by a do-gooding princess tinkering with a plan to help guests earn their wings in order to augment the overpopulation problems plaguing damnation. It’s a hilarious premise, and originated as a 2019 YouTube pilot from creator Vivienne Medrano that garnered more than 92 million views. Each outlandish episode is filled with wicked wit and even busts out with a bit of song and dance.  A revolving team of guest voices descend to these fiery pits of what will likely turn into a cult sensation. Details: 3 stars; drops Jan. 19 on Amazon Prime.

“The Woman in the Wall”: The nondescript title suggests creator Joe Murtagh’s six-part BBC One series (releasing on Showtime and Paramount+) will be another routine domestic thriller, a hazy mystery along the lines of “The Woman in the Window.” While there are conventional elements tossed in here and there and a few comedic moments, this one’s shooting for bigger fish, focused on Lorna (Ruth Wilson), an outcast in a small Irish village that time forgot as she confronts more trauma in the wake of the abusive time spent when she was younger at a fictional convent that’s part of the Magdalene Laundries. A well-known priest’s murder sets off an investigation headed by a Belfast detective (Daryl McCormack of “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) who also has childhood ties to the church and the dead man. Shortly thereafter, the prone-to sleepwalking Lorna wakes up after a night of drinking and bad behavior and finds a body of a woman in her house. Although “The Woman in the Wall” relies too often on coincidences, it’s a compulsively watchable series with a volcanic performance by Wilson and another appealing one from McCormack. Details: 3 stars; available on streaming and On Demand Jan. 19 for Paramount+ subscribers with Showtime and then releasing Jan. 21 on Paramount+ with Showtime.

“Death and Other Details”: This Hulu mystery series set on a ritzy cruise liner containing obnoxious rich folk will float the boat of any Agatha Christie fan, especially those wishing there was some sex, kinky and otherwise, going on below decks. Showrunners Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams don’t go overboard in that department as the so-called “world’s greatest detective” Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin) joins sleuthing forces with someone who absolutely detests him, a hanger-on to a wealthy family on board, Imogene Scott (Violett Beane). The estranged duo crossed paths when Rufus was investigating the murder of Imogene’s mother and failed to nab the killer. That crime surfaces again as all sorts of sordid shenanigans — blackmail, dirty business takeovers and so on — go down once Rufus’ loyal assistant winds up dead with a harpoon in his chest. More get slain and there are many seaworthy suspects in this engaging if overextended mystery (eight episodes would have been fine), which benefits from fine deductive interplay between Patinkin and Beane — who should become a star. Hulu only made eight of the 10 episodes available to watch, and the series picks up steam as it proceeds. Details: 2½ stars; two episodes available now with one episode dropping each Tuesday through March 5.

“The Settlers”: At the turn of the 20th century on Tierra del Fuego, three men — a Texas braggart (Benjamin Westfall), an out-of-his-league Scottish officer (Mark Stanley) and a wary mixed-race tracker (Camilo Arancibia) — embark on a journey at the behest of a corrupt landowner to pinpoint the best route for transporting cattle. That synopsis sounds like this is nothing more than a John Ford/Sergio Leone homage, but Chile’s Oscar submission for best international film corrals bigger ideas, with director/co-screenwriter Felipe Galvez Haberle’s debut exposing colonization’s inherent nastiness. Details: 3½ stars; opens Jan. 19 at the Roxie in San Francisco.

“The Teachers’ Lounge”: A bad situation only worsens hour by ticking hour for principled teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) in director Ilker Çatak’s beyond-intense feature, Germany’s short-listed Oscar entry for best international feature. A seemingly minor theft observed by Carla in the teachers’ lounge snowballs into an ethical avalanche, uprooting educators, parents and students. Çatak puts Benesch through the acting wringer in one of the year’s most propulsive, nerve-rattling dramas you’ll see this year. Not for one second does this film lag. Details: 3½ stars; now in select theaters.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.

In select theaters this week, the film sees the wonderful, Academy Award-winning actor as an at times gleeful and borderline-mischievous version of the famed Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis as he maneuvers around his London home, debating the existence of God, the human condition and more with an invited guest: C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode), a don at the University of Oxford and the future author of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“Freud’s Last Session” is written and directed by Matthew Brown, who adapted it from Mark St. Germain’s stage drama. It imagines this last-minute friendship of sorts — on-screen text at the film’s conclusion states that while Freud reportedly met with a young, unnamed Oxford don shortly before his death, “we will never know if it was C.S. Lewis” — allowing the doctor one final stimulating intellectual debate and, yes, a pseudo therapy session.

The movie is at its best when it’s simply Hopkins and Goode, the latter a skilled actor in his own right, who here seems largely content to give the former all the room he needs to paint this colorful portrait of Freud. It is somewhat less successful when it ventures away from them, spending time with Freud’s devoted daughter, Anna (Liv Lisa Fries, “Babylon Berlin”), a fellow psychoanalysis who is looking for a way to have a life with the woman she loves, Dorothy Buringham (Jodi Balfour, “For All Mankind”), an idea her seemingly very open-minded father has rejected.

Freud demands much from Anna, who must leave her work on this day when her father insists he can wait no longer for more medicine to combat his inoperable and ever-worsening jaw cancer.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of world conflict, as England’s prime minister, Arthur Neville Chamberlain, has vowed that the nation will declare war on Nazi Germany if it does not withdraw its forces from Poland.

Freud is no stranger to the Nazi threat, having fled his beloved Vienna with Anna, while Lewis wears the psychological scars of having served in battle during World War I.

Freud seemingly has invited Lewis to complain about the author’s first novel after becoming a Christian, 1933’s “The Pilgrim’s Regress,” but that proves to be little more than an excuse for what will become a rigorous, if still largely friendly, tête-à-tête.

“I never read your book,” Freud says.

After Freud gives Lewis a hard time for his lack of punctuality on this day — as the latter points out, this isn’t exactly the easiest time to travel, with sirens warning of possible bomb strikes and children being packed on trains for safety in the countryside — the verbal jousting truly begins.

Yet while they have key differences, most notably when it comes to faith — the man of science regularly refers to Jesus as “the good carpenter of Nazareth” and finds the idea that God exists to be “ludicrous” — they have other things in common, such as complicated childhood relationships with their respective fathers.

Again, this is mostly a showcase for Hopkins, the man once synonymous with his portrayal of colorful serial killer Hannibal Lecter who in recent years has reminded us just how compelling an actor he is with performances in films including “The Two Popes” (2019) and “The Father,” which, respectively, earned him an Academy Award nomination and a win. Here, he laughs and offers one-syllable sounds — largely Hopkins-ian “ah”s — after Freud gets certain responses from Lewis and breathes uncomfortably as Freud deals with his excruciating pain.

Meanwhile, Goode — a prolific actor who perhaps has never been better than when portraying Hollywood producer Robert Evans in the 2022 Paramount+ limited series “The Offer” — offers a lesson in restraint, only occasionally going big when Lewis is compelled to push back at Freud but mainly playing a man largely content to listen and take a few punches from this giant figure.

While watching “Freud’s Last Session,” you can’t help but think about “The Two Popes,” built around a fictional 2012 encounter between Pope Benedict XVI (Hopkins) and Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), the future Pope Francis. However, “Freud’s Last Stand” fails to enthrall the way that film did, in large part because Brown (“The Man Who Knew Infinity”) — who co-wrote the screenplay with St. Germain — too frequently takes us away from where the real action is with cuts to Anna as well as lengthy flashback sequences. (We should note that those flashbacks, some of which occur in forests and others during combat, are beautifully filmed.)

While far from perfect, the film is well worth a viewing because when Hopkins is in the frame, it is class that is in session.

‘Freud’s Last Session’

Where: Select theaters.

When: Jan. 19.

Rated: PG-13 for thematic material, some bloody/violent images, sexual material and smoking.

Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.5.

Best known as the star of films such as the Jordan Peele-directed critical faves “Get Out” (2017) and “Nope” (2022), Kaluuya co-directed the commentary-filled science-fiction drama with Kibwe Tavares and co-wrote it with Rob Hayes and Joe Murtagh.

“The Kitchen” — a British film debuting in the United States this week on Netflix — is set in a near-future London in which public housing has been abolished and police force residents to abandon their homes. Against that compelling backdrop, Kaluuya and Co. tell the story of a man who comes to care for a boy after the latter loses his mother.

Unfortunately, that story — while very human and relatable — is a little bland, so we quibble a bit with the choice of ingredients. We wonder if the film may have been better served by allowing us to know other residents of The Kitchen. In this predominantly Black, working-class community, those living there are considered trespassers by the authorities and monitored regularly by police drones.

It is there we meet Izi (Kane Robinson), who leaves behind a fortified door and hears the morning announcements from The Kitchen’s man with a microphone, Lord Kitchener (Ian Wright). The latter informs the residents that while water is out in the community’s west wing (“they’ve finally done it”), it is available in the east wing (“but only go if you need”). When Izi finishes a shower in said wing, he exits into a long line of others banging on the door while waiting to use it.

Izi is yearning for a better life, one away from The Kitchen. He is saving what he can while working as a salesman at a funeral home to pay for a nicer apartment elsewhere in the city, checking notifications on his mirror about his status on a waiting list for a single-occupancy unit.

At the funeral home, the remains of a deceased person are used to grow one tree, the destiny of which depends on the package purchased by the person’s loved ones. It’s Izi’s job to up-sell them, of course.

One day at work, he takes a particular interest in a funeral, attended in person by the 12-year-old Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) and by others virtually. They meet, with Izi admitting he knew Benji’s mother but being rather tight-lipped on the details.

Soon, Benji is helping him make a sale, but Izi seems willing to allow the youth to get only so close to him. However, after Benji falls in with a gang from The Kitchen that specializes in robberies, tries to take a more active role in his life. However, helping Benji and reaching his goals for a better life may not be accomplishable together.

On what at least would appear to be a modest budget, the makers of “The Kitchen” succeed in visually realizing this dystopian London, where residents of The Kitchen bang on pots and pans from their windows to alert others when the police are coming and where folks in better living conditions can select from a gallery of artificial cityscapes images on digital windows instead of gazing out into the urban decay. Kudos to production designer Nathan Parker for some nice work.

In The Kitchen, folks largely stick together, with the help of the steady presence of Lord Kitchener.

“They can’t stop we,” he implores more than once, adding at one tough moment: “They can only stop we if we see we as I.”

(This may be a good time to mention that, due to the thick accents used by characters in the film, we early on turned on the English subtitles. Highly recommend.)

That Izi so badly wants to leave could have been explored more deeply if, again, the writers had fleshed out more supporting characters. The movie is mainly Izi and Benji, although Izi does get some pushback about his not-so-fond feelings about The Kitchen from his co-worker and fellow resident Jase (Demmy Ladipo).

Fortunately, the two primary actors — especially Robinson, a British rapper who previously started in the British drama “Top Boy,” who successfully uses a less-is-more approach here — are interesting enough to help keep us invested.

While “The Kitchen” simmers for too long more than once, it is effective when it boils. That certainly goes for its final, tension-filled stretch.

Shortcomings and all, there’s enough good here to leave you eager to see what’s ahead for Kaluuya as a filmmaker.

‘The Kitchen’

Where: Netflix.

When: Jan. 19.

Rated: R for language.

Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.5.

A singular affront, in ways more conventionally wrenching movie treatments of the Holocaust such as “Schindler’s List” never were, “The Zone of Interest” withholds as much as it reveals, reorienting the audience’s perspective on the 20th century’s defining atrocity.

It is not for everyone, needless to say. Nothing is. But writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s 105-minute treatment of the 2014 Martin Amis novel of the same title is really not for everyone. The filmmaker, whose previous feature was “Under the Skin” a decade ago, has managed one of the most radical page-to-screen adaptations in recent memory. He has done so by tossing out Amis’ fictional “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”-style epistolary of sexual seduction, which I found compelling, pulpy — and morally offensive. Despite its awards and international praise, the movie may strike some as offensive, too, though for utterly different reasons.

This is an achievement destined for serious debate, in other words.

Factualizing Amis’s fabricated characters, which teetered on the edge of caricature, Glazer’s film uses real names of real people and his own imagining of their daily lives, just over the wall from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

In the commandant’s house and garden, SS officer Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller of “Anatomy of a Fall”) and their five children go about their business. Scenes are placed before us, dispassionately, often without any camera movement but they’re never visually predictable. A birthday party. A boisterous gathering around the tiny swimming pool. A gentle walk among Hedwig’s prized flowers, with Hedwig cradling her newborn infant.

Others come and go: Jewish prisoners working as housecleaners, gardeners, laborers, eyes cast downward. In one scene, Hedwig gossips with friends, or — alone in her bedroom — tries on a stylish mink stole, stolen from a prisoners. At another point, from the perspective of the family’s yard, we hear, faintly, and then see in long shot a freight train carrying the latest load of prisoners to the camp.

In one striking passage, Hedwig’s mother comes for an extended visit. She admires what her daughter has done with the place, making it so welcoming and well-appointed. (At another point, the Höss children read through a guest book, where one visitor thanks the family for their “National Socialist hospitality.”) Then, a disruption. Hedwig’s mother has had a sleepless night. She leaves suddenly, unannounced. We, the audience, realize what the family does not want to believe — that the sounds from across the wall, inhuman wails, industrial moans, have proven too much for her. Everyone in this family, and this serenely hideous corner of the Final Solution, knows exactly what is going on every minute.

“The Zone of Interest” takes enormous chances without enormous dramatic machinery. Its startling contrast of mundane, strategically dispassionate tones and imagery is upended by a sound and musical-score design that cries out from a sort of mass subconscious of suffering. Mica Levi, one of the best composers working in film today, did the music, deployed in brief, arresting bursts; sound designer Johnnie Burn, working from 600 pages of Auschwitz research documents, created the brilliant aural landscape.

The actors are denied most of the customary dramatic assists of cinema performance; the acting feels like behavior, not acting, and you can count the close-ups on two hands. With calm detachment, director Glazer and cinematographer Lukasz Zal favor middle- and long-shot compositions, giving the viewer literal distance while enforcing our experiencing of taking it all in. Even so, we get precisely what we need from Friedel and Hüller; with exactly the right brio, Hedwig proudly tells her mother that “Rudi calls me the Queen of Auschwitz.”

Zal used up to 10 cameras, often hidden from the actors, positioned around the house and grounds, so that the performers could improvise lines and physical behavior with ease. Glazer probably did himself no favors by describing this approach as “Big Brother in the Nazi house.” The aesthetic result of all these design and directorial decisions, though, is anything but glib (though some dialogue, such as a riverside talk between Rudolf and Hedwig, underlines the characters’ vicious delusions too neatly). We watch these human beings do what they do, as if all is for the best in this worst of all possible worlds. And if a family swim, photographed from a distance, happens to be interrupted by bones floating downstream from the camp, in this world — our world — these things happen.

In his autobiography, written after the Nuremberg trials while he awaited his 1947 execution in the camp he managed, Höss rationalized that he was merely “a cog in the wheel of the great extermination machine created by the Third Reich.” An American military psychologist at the time wrote that the Auschwitz commandant was “intellectually normal, but with the schizoid apathy, insensitivity and lack of empathy that could hardly be more extreme in a frank psychotic.”

In Glazer’s film, the barbarity is everywhere, every second, behind a devastating guise of normalcy. It needs no demonizing flourishes. This may be the first film dealing in any way with the Holocaust that dares to strip away the movies’ reliance on dramatizing subhuman or inhuman evil in ways audiences are used to receiving — and, dangerously, dismissing as ancient history, long ago and far away. At the climax we see the career-climbing Höss, having been called to his next post, away from the home he has grown to love, peering into a dark hallway. He sees a strange vision, a foreshadowing he cannot fathom. It is beyond words.

I won’t soon forget it. Or much of anything about “The Zone of Interest.”

———

‘THE ZONE OF INTEREST’

4 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, some suggestive material and smoking)

Running time: 1:45

How to watch: Now in theaters

———

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Best known as the star of films such as the Jordan Peele-directed critical faves “Get Out” (2017) and “Nope” (2022), Kaluuya co-directed the commentary-filled science-fiction drama with Kibwe Tavares and co-wrote it with Rob Hayes and Joe Murtagh.

“The Kitchen” — a British film debuting in the United States this week on Netflix — is set in a near-future London in which public housing has been abolished and police force residents to abandon their homes. Against that compelling backdrop, Kaluuya and Co. tell the story of a man who comes to care for a boy after the latter loses his mother.

Unfortunately, that story — while very human and relatable — is a little bland, so we quibble a bit with the choice of ingredients. We wonder if the film may have been better served by allowing us to know other residents of The Kitchen. In this predominantly Black, working-class community, those living there are considered trespassers by the authorities and monitored regularly by police drones.

It is there we meet Izi (Kane Robinson), who leaves behind a fortified door and hears the morning announcements from The Kitchen’s man with a microphone, Lord Kitchener (Ian Wright). The latter informs the residents that while water is out in the community’s west wing (“they’ve finally done it”), it is available in the east wing (“but only go if you need”). When Izi finishes a shower in said wing, he exits into a long line of others banging on the door while waiting to use it.

Izi is yearning for a better life, one away from The Kitchen. He is saving what he can while working as a salesman at a funeral home to pay for a nicer apartment elsewhere in the city, checking notifications on his mirror about his status on a waiting list for a single-occupancy unit.

At the funeral home, the remains of a deceased person are used to grow one tree, the destiny of which depends on the package purchased by the person’s loved ones. It’s Izi’s job to up-sell them, of course.

One day at work, he takes a particular interest in a funeral, attended in person by the 12-year-old Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) and by others virtually. They meet, with Izi admitting he knew Benji’s mother but being rather tight-lipped on the details.

Soon, Benji is helping him make a sale, but Izi seems willing to allow the youth to get only so close to him. However, after Benji falls in with a gang from The Kitchen that specializes in robberies, tries to take a more active role in his life. However, helping Benji and reaching his goals for a better life may not be accomplishable together.

On what at least would appear to be a modest budget, the makers of “The Kitchen” succeed in visually realizing this dystopian London, where residents of The Kitchen bang on pots and pans from their windows to alert others when the police are coming and where folks in better living conditions can select from a gallery of artificial cityscapes images on digital windows instead of gazing out into the urban decay. Kudos to production designer Nathan Parker for some nice work.

In The Kitchen, folks largely stick together, with the help of the steady presence of Lord Kitchener.

“They can’t stop we,” he implores more than once, adding at one tough moment: “They can only stop we if we see we as I.”

(This may be a good time to mention that, due to the thick accents used by characters in the film, we early on turned on the English subtitles. Highly recommend.)

That Izi so badly wants to leave could have been explored more deeply if, again, the writers had fleshed out more supporting characters. The movie is mainly Izi and Benji, although Izi does get some pushback about his not-so-fond feelings about The Kitchen from his co-worker and fellow resident Jase (Demmy Ladipo).

Fortunately, the two primary actors — especially Robinson, a British rapper who previously started in the British drama “Top Boy,” who successfully uses a less-is-more approach here — are interesting enough to help keep us invested.

While “The Kitchen” simmers for too long more than once, it is effective when it boils. That certainly goes for its final, tension-filled stretch.

Shortcomings and all, there’s enough good here to leave you eager to see what’s ahead for Kaluuya as a filmmaker.

‘The Kitchen’

Where: Netflix.

When: Jan. 19.

Rated: R for language.

Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.5.

The British musician and filmmaker Jeymes Samuel wanted to make a biblical epic like “Ben-Hur,” with a side order of biblical-adjacent “Spartacus,” but his way. The result is the satiric/earnest/rollicking/mellow amalgam called “The Book of Clarence,” starring LaKeith Stanfield as a dope-dealing striver in 33 A.D. Jerusalem.

The trailer looks like an action comedy, and it isn’t that, really, thought it contains both action (chariot street racing, gladiator bone-crunching) and comedy. Does it work? I’d say no, and sort of, and in the end, almost. The extreme tonal change-ups careen from full-on crucifixion violence to sight gags such as the light bulb appearing over Clarence’s head when he’s struck by his latest inspiration.

Broke and threatened with death by the local loan shark, Clarence hustles through his meager life as “a seller of ungodly herbs” with his friend Elijah (RJ Cyler). He takes care of his mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who has been more or less forsaken by Clarence’s identical twin brother Thomas (also played by Stanfield, though without much differentiation).

Thomas has grand things on his agenda: He’s one of Jesus’ 12 apostles, on a date with biblical destiny. Clarence puts his bid in to join the circle, and ultimately lands on the idea of becoming a copycat Chosen One himself, performing fake miracles and gathering acolytes for prestige and profit.

It’s a ripe satiric premise, but “The Book of Clarence” wants more. Filming in Matera, Italy, where Mel Gibson shot (and stabbed, and whipped) “The Passion of the Christ,” Samuel feeds his throwaway verbal jokes and anachronisms into a narrative played, disarmingly, for a spiritual story of one underestimated nobody’s path toward becoming a somebody.

Anna Diop, so good in the supernatural thriller “Nanny,” plays Lavinia, the local gangster’s sister; the tentative but palpable connection she has with Clarence is the movie’s grounding element. Once Clarence’s popularity draws the interest of Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy), the movie’s tangle of intentions gets knotted up in some frustrating ways. Is the movie best served by the full-on Gibson-esque gore in the culminating scenes? Does it work to follow nail-pounding and anguished screams with wisecracks from those dying on the cross?

The cast includes Omar Sy as the noble, unkillable gladiator slave Barabbas, freed by Clarence in his first conspicuous act of valor; David Oyelowo as a testy, waterboarding John the Baptist; and the reliably splendid Alfre Woodard as the Mother Mary, who in one comic highlight discusses the whole virgin birth business with a puzzled Clarence. Teyana Taylor, coming off her excellent work in “One Thousand and One,” doesn’t get nearly enough to do as a fierce Mary Magdalene.

As for Stanfield, he’s a watchful, uniquely charismatic actor in nearly any context, though this context proves especially challenging. His determinedly low-key line readings have a way of flattening out the movie’s energy. On the other hand, would a more classically trained “Bible epic technique” performer have made “The Book of Clarence” more persuasive, or just more harrumphy? Who’s to say? I’m all over the place on a movie that’s all over the place.

Samuel’s first feature, the 2021 Western “The Harder They Fall,” was all over the place, too, more successfully. That one, like this one, had the benefit of Samuel’s terrific soundtrack. Samuel — whose musical stage name is the Bullitts — consistently bails out his latest movie with a dozen or two songs in a supple half-dozen complementary styles, here featuring a song featuring Jay-Z, elsewhere leaning into Old Hollywood orchestral sweep or solo harp. The more this filmmaker can learn about matching his musical taste and invention with cinematic tonal range and control worthy of those sounds, the harder we’ll fall for whatever he does next.

———

‘THE BOOK OF CLARENCE’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong violence, drug use, strong language, some suggestive material and smoking)

Running time: 2:16

How to watch: In theaters Friday

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“True Detective: Night Country”: The fourth installment in the praised but uneven neo-noir HBO series plunges watchers deep into the murky seasonal darkness of frostbitten Ennis, Alaska, a hardscrabble spot where iron-willed detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) don the bulkiest of parkas while they probe the bizarre disappearance of eight male scientists working at a remote research center. The investigation leads the tenacious women, each of whom is combating their own demons, down one of the most macabre paths that this venerable series has ever trekked as it dredges up a savage unsolved murder of an activist. The groundwork paves a return to form for “True Detective” in a season that’s as bold and original as the first one with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.

Showrunner/co-writer/director and executive producer Issa López (“Tigers Are Not Afraid”) deserves the credit for putting the series back on track. She evocatively and authentically re-creates what life is like for the hardened inhabitants of this rugged fictional town where mysticism holds just as much weight, sometimes more, as deductive reasoning. True to her horror roots,  López coats “Detective” with a supernatural veneer, which is applied with a measured hand throughout all six of its handwringing, eerie episodes. (There’s a brief, clever tip of the hat to John Carpenter’s “The Thing” in Episode 1; watch for it.)

López is enabled in her efforts by two strong female protagonists (a first in this male-dominated series) played well by her two stars, and a stellar supporting cast. And what a pleasure it is to watch Foster in action again, a gifted actor who expresses a cluster of moods with a blinkable glance and the smallest of gestures. She crawls into the raw psyche of Liz, a real survivor who’s harshly judged by townsfolk for her sexual appetites. Reis is her equal in every way. The former boxer struck like a viper in her debut in 2021’s “Catch the Fair One” (rent it) and again taps into a roiling turmoil for another visceral, rage-stuffed performance. Other standouts include durable John Hawkes as Hank, a shifty detective that Liz works with; and Finn Bennett as Hank’s do-gooding son who is Liz’s badgered but tireless deputy.

Their acting fireworks mirror the combustible nature of “True Detective’s” satisfyingly twist-filled narrative that goes beyond an average murder mystery and its resolution. As with all the “True Detective” series, this is an atmospheric mood piece that pries open what lies festering underneath the darkest of human nature and possibility. Details: 4 stars out of 4; first episode drops Jan. 14 on HBO and will be available on Max with an episode dropping Sunday until Feb. 18.

“Echo”: With its first American Indian-focused action series on Disney+, Marvel Universe regains the storytelling grip that’s been absent from many of its big-screen projects. This mature-themed (there’s violence and profanity) five-parter centers on the badass Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma first introduced on “Hawkeye” opposite Jeremy Renner, who makes a welcome guest appearance along with Daredevil (Charlie Cox). Maya, who is deaf and has a prosthetic leg, is fueled by vengeance since she lost her mother as a child in a horrific car accident that she feels responsible for, making her an anti-hero with a backstory and legacy (she has visions linked to events from American Indians past) Her move from Oklahoma to New York finds her crossing paths with one of the best Earthbound Marvel villains — Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio, playing it, wisely, to the rafters).  After a bloody showdown in New York, Maya hops on her motorcycle and returns to her childhood home of Tamaha, where she reconnects with her skating rink-owner uncle Henry “Black Crow” Lopez (Chaske Spencer, in a standout performance), her estranged grandma (Tantoo Cardinal), her hilarious cousin Biscuits (Cody Lightning), a lovable shop owner (Graham Greene, running away with the series in his mostly comedic scenes), and eventually her cousin Bonnie (Devery Jacobs). “Dark Winds’” Zahn McClarnon appears briefly in the critical role of Maya’s dad. Disney+ made only three episodes available for review, and they speed by and feature some great action sequences along with some good and some mediocre special effects. What distinguishes this is how it opens a window into American Indian culture and heritage while telling a brisk, exciting mystery that steers Disney+ to a new horizon of not only more complicated and edgier storytelling but one told from an often overlooked perspective. Details: 3 stars; all five episodes now available on Disney+.

Find of the week

“The Zone of Interest”: Jonathan Glazer’s latest ambitious feature – the best film of 2024 – defies categorization and convention. It gives us a front-row seat to the comings-and-goings and daily routines of a high-ranking German couple and their spawn. The difference here is that the time is 1943, and the father of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), commandant of the Jewish-killing machine, Auschwitz, borders the family’s sprawling estate. Glazer loosely adapts Martin Amis’s 2014 novel and has created a silent scream on how the ordinariness of evil where rote tasks performed within our own zones of interest – perhaps advancing in one’s career or just getting ahead and gaining power – can make being responsible for the massacre of a million people seem like just another assignment, even stepping stone in one’s career.  Friedel and Sandra Hüller, as his aggressively ambitious wife, wear their masks of evil chillingly well. “The Zone of Interest” is a unique cinematic experience (the sounds issuing from Auschwitz are almost a supporting performance, and will haunt you forever) that all but demands it be seen in one sustained gulp in a theater, not at home. I’ve seen it twice and will see it again, not only being astonished by the craftsmanship displayed in every scene but for its timeless warning that resonates now and, sadly, forever. It’s brilliant. Details: 4 stars; in theaters Jan. 12.

“Criminal Record”: A battle of wits between two detectives ensues after a desperate, anonymous emergency phone call pins the blame of a grisly murder on someone other than the convicted Black man behind bars. That’s the premise of Apple TV+’s polished and perfectly tuned eight-part vehicle that’s far more ambitious than what it sounds like. Series creator Paul Rutman (“Vera”) balances the mystery/thriller aspects with a character-driven story that bristles with point-blank observations about racism and sexism which then turns into a tug of war between two detectives — the up-and-coming biracial Detective Sergeant June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) and veteran Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi). She kicks it new school, he kicks it old, and it does get personal. It also gets political and uncovers dirty deeds and issues that aren’t always clear cut. “Criminal Record” builds on the tension and offers more than a meticulous procedural as it exposes a legacy of layered coverups while exploring the emotional frailties of these two unlike but smart characters. Both Jumbo and Capaldi give extraordinary performances in a series that digs deep into the complicated home lives of both. “Criminal Record” deserves to become a hit and here’s hoping for a second season. Details: 3½; first two episodes drop Jan. 10 with a new episode following every week through Feb. 21.

“Monsieur Spade”: Everyone needs a change of scenery now and then. Dashiell Hammett’s iconic San Francisco-based detective Sam Spade gets that and a bunch of nun corpses in this intricate six-part brain-twister from AMC. In the opening episode, Spade, portrayed with a vintage wink and deadpan wit by Clive Owen, visits and winds up living in the pastoral French town of Bozouls, where he retires, gets married and then becomes a widower. Flash forward to 1963 and Spade finds a serpentine new case that involves blackmail, a smarty-pants teen, multiple murders, the Algerian War and duplicitous people with plenty of secrets. Created by Scott Frank and Tom Fontana, “Monsieur Spade” gives anyone mourning the loss of HBO’s “Perry Mason” series a reason to rejoice. The crisp one-liners are delivered with vigor and go down with the snap of a shot of whiskey. Executive produced by Barry Levinson and Owen, “Monsieur Spade” is rich in period details and is really the equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle, one with numerous pieces that might seem all but impossible to connect before Spade sweeps in and fits them into place with just the right amount of aplomb and snark. Get ready to give those brain cells a workout and witness Alfre Woodard steal the show in its final episode. Details: 3½ stars; first episode drops Jan. 14 on AMC, AMC+ and Acorn TV, with a new episode dropping every Sunday until Feb. 18.

“The Brothers Sun”: At eight episodes, this violent Netflix martial arts comedy starring Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh could have learned a lesson from co-star Justin Chien’s abs: get rid of the fat!. At times, Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk’s series goes slack and switches tones too abruptly while firing off jokes that go splat. That doesn’t kill the joy of “Brothers Sun” — in which various triads from Taipei jockey for power in Los Angeles — but it does weigh things down at times. Yeoh’s and Chien’s confident presence props up “Sun” whenever it veers off course. Both juggle the incredible martial arts sequence (the best one keyed off the 1985 cult classic “Gymkata” in Episode 7) and the comedic/dramatic shifts with skill. Yeoh plays Mama Sun, who is estranged from the father of her older son Charles (Chien) — a handsome killer — and her younger son Bruce (Sam Song Li) — a confrontation-adverse improv wannabe. After an attempt on dad’s life lands him in the hospital, Charles journeys to L.A. to protect his family. “The Brothers Sun” does ramble on, but when Yeoh and Chien bust out those fancy moves and gather around the family table with Song Li, its pure action/drama magic. Details: 2½ stars; now on Netflix.

“Solo Leveling”: Netflix isn’t the only streamer hitting it out of the anime park. Crunchyroll is a big beacon for fans, and the gory “Solo Leveling” proves why, an ace meld of mythological elements and outlandish action sequences. It’s a mashup of “Stargate” and a superhero series as “hunters” stalk and take down evil entities itching to get out of their alternate dimension. It’s adapted from a Korean web novel, and after watching two episodes (one drops weekly on the streamer), I’m certainly hooked. Details: 3 stars, available on Crunchyroll.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.