Digital Week – March 27

In the Australian Outback, Travis, a burned-out cop, arrives to look into the still unsolved case of a young Aboriginal girl’s murder two decades earlier—his presence dredges up old wounds and bad feelings for many of the locals. In writer-director Ivan Sen’s impressive feature, the investigation is secondary to the character interactions: his moody B&W cinematography, in tantalizing shades of grey, mirrors the depths that Travis (a superb Simon Baker) goes to in his futile hope to find some closure.

Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker’s fascinating documentary sheds light on the life and times of the pioneering performer Carol Doda, who danced in San Francisco in the early ‘60s, helping to pave the way for more permissive rules and more daring artistic expression alongside other legends like comic Lenny Bruce. With valuable archival interviews and footage interspersed with current talking heads who place Doda’s actions and the reactions to her in historical and social contexts, McKenzie and Parker have made an informative, enlightening look at a world that’s not as distant as it seems in our own era of closemindedness.

Austrian director Jessica Hausner has always been provocative, and her latest film is no different: in an exclusive private school, Miss Novak arrives to teach students about responsible eating, which seems innocuous enough at first but it soon dominates their every breath to the point where their closest relationships are damaged and their very lives are endangered. It’s too studied and obvious to be effective, since Hausner and cowriter Géraldine Bajard stack the deck from the start and provide no insight, just shock value (one of the students eats her own vomit). The sleepy performances contribute to the flatness, with even good actors like Sidse Babett Knudsen and Mia Wasikowska reduced to poses. Hausner’s clean, unfussy filmmaking works against her this time.

When 27-year-old Emma decides to moonlight as a prostitute in a high-class Parisian brothel in order to research a novel about sex workers that she’s planning to write, she finds herself in over her head as she must deal with being isolated from her family as well as her newly formed relationships with fellow workers and the complications of getting too intimate with the customers. Director Anissa Bonnefont treads a thin line between exploration and exploitation, sometimes blurring it so she seems unsure what point she’s making. But Ana Girardot’s Emma is a resilient and persuasive center of an occasionally confused film.

In French writer-director Rodolphe Tissot’s erotically charged character study, 15-year-old Solange—whose parents have just separated—discovers her own sexuality and how it affects the males in her life (including her heavy-metal loving former babysitter). Solange is a precocious young heroine whose creator sometimes muddies the dramatic and psychological waters, but the sensational, openly raw performance by Louisiane Gouverneur makes the teenager worthy of our attention throughout.

French director Francois Ozon, who turns out films quickly like a Gallic Woody Allen, returns with a tongue-in-cheek drama about Madeleine, a struggling actress who uses her trial for killing an elderly letcher (she’s acquitted, thanks to Pauline, her close friend, roommate and struggling lawyer) as a springboard to fame and fortune on the stage and screen. Ozon’s direction wavers between excessively campy and wittily on-target, and the large cast has a blast: Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Madeleine, Rebecca Marder as Pauline, Isabelle Huppert as a possible rival killer, Fabrice Luchini as an investigator and Andre Dussolier as Madeleine’s fiancée’s rich and unhappy father. The artificial settings look deliriously colorful on Blu; extras include a making-of featurette, interviews with Ozon, Marder and Tereszkiewicz, deleted scenes, and a blooper reel.

Writer-director Sean Durkin’s solidly entertaining biopic of wrestler Kevin Von Erich and his cursed family—including all four of his brothers, three of whom also wrestled and all of whom died way too young—is also quite touching, even if it pushes sentimental buttons like the cringy finale of a reunion among his brothers. But it’s well-paced, with excitingly done wrestling sequences and truthful intimate moments as well as a top-notch cast led by Zak Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Lily James and Maura Tierney. There’s a quite good hi-def transfer; extras are a making-of featurette and a cast/crew Q&A.

The hit Netflix series—which is returning for a second season—follows the dark daughter of the Addams family in her exploits trying to solve murders at the school her mother Morticia also attended. If the show’s eight episodes are too jokey-scary in the way of Tim Burton’s own films from “Beetlejuice” to “Alice in Wonderland,” it’s because Burton had a big hand here, executive producing and even directing four of the episodes. Of course, it’s demented fun, with a distinctive cartoonish visual look; best of all is Jenna Ortega’s bullseye portrayal of Wednesday, charmingly winning and wittily spiteful. It all looks eye-popping in hi-def.