This week’s roundup includes reviews of new films in theaters and streaming, including an Italian character study, “Amanda,” and a blackly comic look at a dysfunctional family with the great Richard E. Grant, “The Lesson”; there are also, on Blu-ray, a couple of by-the-numbers sequels: “Book Club—The Next Chapter” and “Scream VI.”
In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week
Amanda (Oscilloscope)
Benedetta Porcaroli’s tremendously affecting performance as an aimless 25-year-old unable to come to grips with adulthood after moving back to her family in Naples—her friends are nonexistent, her romantic relationships are a mess and she has no direction in life—brightens writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s otherwise superficial narrative that rarely gets deeper into the psychological weeds. But Porcaroli is unafraid to be grating, irritating, obnoxious, hurtful and immature yet remains sympathetic as she burrows into the eponymous heroine’s psyche.
The Lesson (Bleecker Street)
Nobody can play as deliciously smarmy as Richard E. Grant, who dominates this slick black comedy as J.M. Sinclair, a superstar author who condescends to his teenage son Bertie’s new tutor Liam, an aspiring writer himself. As we see Sinclair’s literary thievery through Liam’s own jaundiced eyes, director Alice Troughton takes Alex MacKeith’s clever but overloaded script at face value, which takes some of the acid out of the nastiness. In addition, Isobel Waller-Bridge’s jaunty classical score is too on the nose to be truly ironic. Still, Grant is always formidable and Julie Delpy gives depth to Hélène, Sinclair’s wife, while Stephen McMillan as Bertie and Daryl McCormack as Liam nicely sell the film’s final, obvious dramatic irony.
The Man from Rome (Screen Media)
Based on The Seville Communion by Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Reverte, this effective but unoriginal thriller sends an Irish priest from the Vatican to Spain to investigate mysterious deaths at a local parish—it turns out there’s blackmail and corruption as well as murder. Although director Sergio Dow paces the mystery well, and Richard Armitage gives a persuasively stoic performance as the collared Columbo—who has an improbable fling with Macarena, the gorgeous estranged wife (Amaia Salamanca) of a billionaire developer with designs on her beloved church—but at two hours it drags on too long, even though it intriguingly depicts an all-priest Vatican IT team.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Book Club—The Next Chapter (Universal/Focus Features)
Wherein our group of vivacious seniors decide, during the pandemic, to travel to Italy for a frolicsome vacation that culminates in a wedding that seemingly no one really wants, as this silly sequel gets by exclusively on the charm of leading ladies Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen. Director Bill Holderman, who cowrote the script with Erin Simms, showcases the obvious tourist traps of Rome, Venice and Tuscany but the foolish attempts at cheap laughs too often make these smart, independent women the butt of jokes for no apparent reason. The film looks good on Blu; extras include several making-of featurettes.
Scream VI (Paramount/Spyglass Entertainment)
I’ve never been a fan of the Scream franchise, even the first one that was simply a hokey, jokey slasher movie, but the latest iteration—set in an obviously fake Manhattan that has none of the city’s teeming, screaming atmosphere, even in the big subway set piece—might be the least interesting yet. Most damagingly it does very little with Melissa Barberra and Jenna Ortega, a pair of winning actresses in the leads, instead lazily doing the tired slasher movie bit and again bringing back dullards from previous iterations. The film looks sharp and detailed on Blu-ray; extras include a filmmaker’s commentary and several featurettes about the film’s making and franchise’s legacy.
