'The Night Clerk': Film Review

Is it too soon to say that Misbehaviour is the Elizabeth Warren of recent feminist-themed, history-inspired British comedies? That is to say, it’s quite lovable, funny and smart, maybe the best option in a disappointing field (see Made in Dagenhamor Suffragette for comparison). It’s sensitive to the intersectional complexities of identity politics and protest, accessibly pragmatic and generally solid enough to deserve the top prize in the strictly metaphorical sense needed for this analogy.

An utterly bizarre, frequently grotesque, occasionally obscene singularity, Polish artist Mariusz Wilczynski’s abrasive animation “Kill It and Leave This Town” exists so far outside the realm of the expected, the acceptable and the neatly comprehensible that it acts as a striking reminder of just how narrow that realm can be.

A rather pedestrian presentation of a potentially fascinating story, Vanessa Lapa’s “Speer Goes to Hollywood” expands on a little-known footnote to the Hydra-headed history of the post-war fates of top Nazi lieutenants.

With his perverse (and some might say perverted) look at the early life of Canada’s longest-serving Prime Minister W. L.

Two older working-class men, both secretly gay, meet by chance and a hidden relationship develops in “Suk Suk,” the poignant third feature from writer-director Ray Yeung. Inspired by a sociology professor’s oral history of older gay men in Hong Kong, the drama incorporates documentary-like elements about end-of-life issues for gay elders.

Leslie Odom Jr. and Freida Pinto make sympathetic, easy-on-the-eyes lovers in “Only,” an absorbing post-catastrophe drama, in theaters and on demand March 6. Consider “Only” a variation on the “What would you do in this horrid situation?” subgenre. Only it’s more a “What would we do?” which can be an exponentially more challenging proposition. (Hard enough to agree on where to get takeout.)

Upcoming James Bond movie No Time to Die could get a surprise release next week in a bid to combat concern over the coronavirus.

In the moody French policier Night Shift (Police), three officers are tasked with escorting an illegal immigrant to Charles de Gaulle airport, where he will be forced onto a plane and sent back to his homeland. According to statistics, this is something that happens all too frequently in France, where nearly 24,000 people were deported last year alone.

Time moves slowly, as ever, for Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang’s, as seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, and hours become “Days,” a gentle return to form in which Tsai’s longtime star, Lee Kang-sheng, is shown suffering from some unknown physical ailment, finding short-lived solace in the hands of a stranger (28-year-old Laotian immigrant Anong Houngheuangsy) in Bangkok.

A basketball-loving queer teen living in the projects in a nondescript town in northern Argentina ambles through life and her own movie inOne in a Thousand (Las mil y una). This second feature from Clarisa Navas (Today, Match at 3) should be a welcome addition to the roster of LGBTQ festivals looking for films about and directed by women.

High art and low art is at war with itself in The Night Clerk, a thriller with aims to be something more. At times, this independent film offers up an intriguing look at an unusual protagonist.

There’s much talk these days of microaggressions: words and gestures of disrespect toward others, particularly those of other social groups, that betray prejudice even when everyday or unintentional.

There’s a monster terrorizing screenwriter/co-director Jeremy Gardner’s protagonist in “After Midnight,” and he doesn’t know why, what it is or where it came from. After 83 minutes, we still don’t know, either, but at least it has become clear this is one of those films that “defies categorization” by identifying with a marketable genre it’s nonetheless not really interested in.

Faint but discernible echoes of Hitchcock and Antonioni abound throughout “You Go to My Head,” a coolly affected yet ineffably captivating drama that builds interest and sustains tension by teasingly frustrating audience expectations at almost every turn. At first, it appears that director Dimitri de Clercq, along with co-scripters Pierre Bourdy and Rosemary Ricchio, have concocted the blueprint for a psychological thriller.

Dimitri de Clercq's feature is titled You Go to My Head, but it would be more accurate to say that it goes to your eyes. From its desert landscapes to its principal setting of an architecturally distinguished house to its extremely photogenic lead actress, every frame of the psychological thriller proves visually stunning to behold.

Several Sundance titles this year have inevitably addressed issues key to the #MeToo movement, many in sophisticatedly provocative ways — notably “Promising Young Woman.” Then there’s “Run Sweetheart Run,” which starts out as a crude Date From Hell thriller, then veers into garish supernatural horror. This latest from writer-director Shana Feste (“Country Strong,” the “Endless Love” remake) is a slick, flashy and trashy genre hash too knuckleheaded to be much fun even as a guilty pleasure.

Landlocked by South Africa on all sides, the kingdom of Lesotho is a place of high skies, wide landscapes and narrow prospects for its two million inhabitants: a set of dimensions somehow captured in every exquisitely constructed, square-cut frame of “This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection.” A haunted, unsentimental paean to land and its physical containment of community and ancestry — all endangered by nominally progressive infrastructure — this arresting third feature from Lesotho-born

Director-writer Malou Reymann is perfectly aware that “normal” and “family” are mutually exclusive words — she was 11 when her father transitioned to being a woman, and it’s the memory of what she felt at the time that informs her sensitive and accessible debut, “A Perfectly Normal Family.” Told from the point of view of the younger of two sisters (though not strictly in a POV manner), the film refreshingly de-sensationalizes her father’s process from Thomas to Agnete, wiping away thoughts of