‘Miss Juneteenth’ (2020)
Of all the films that would have been sleeper hits, had they not been released in 2020 when a theatrical push was off the table, it’s hard to top this, the debut feature from the writer and director Channing Godfrey Peoples. Nicole Beharie stars as Turquoise Jones, a Texas single mother whose 15-year-old daughter (Alexis Chikaeze) is about to compete in the local Miss Juneteenth pageant Turquoise won, once upon a time. Peoples’s screenplay sensitively explores poignant questions of opportunities lost and gained, and the mother/daughter dynamics are convincing and compelling. But the real takeaway here is Beharie, whose marvelous, lived-in performance is both inspiring and shattering.
‘Teen Spirit’ (2017)
The actor Max Minghella (whose father Anthony directed the likes of “Truly, Madly, Deeply” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) makes an impressive feature directing debut with this story of a girl from the sticks (Elle Fanning) whose golden voice catches the attention of a fallen opera star (Zlatko Buric), who mentors her onto a national singing championship. The story beats are dusty but the approach is fresh, as Minghella focuses on the small details of character and setting that make his telling unique. Fanning does her own singing, and does so convincingly (ditto on her British accent), while investing her 17-year-old character with an appropriately tormented inner life.
The director Ry Russo-Young co-wrote this indie drama with Lena Dunham (who was just launching “Girls” on HBO), and it is an ace fusion of their sensibilities, and their mutual interest in the mind games attractive young men and women can play. Olivia Thirlby is Martine, a New York visual artist visiting Los Angeles — the title is a reference to the comparative absence of pedestrians — to finish an experimental film with the help of a sound engineer, Peter (John Krasinski), whose therapist wife Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt) puts Martine up in their pool house. And that’s when the trouble begins, as Russo-Young and Dunham’s smart script dramatizes how proximity, boredom and hormones can wreak havoc on a seemingly blissful existence.
‘Dredd’ (2012)
Thirlby’s other 2012 release could not have been a more startling contrast, a rough-and-tumble adaptation of the ultraviolent British comic book series (previously attempted, to universal pans, by Sylvester Stallone in the mid-1990s). Karl Urban is a square-jawed cop in a futuristic dystopia where police are allowed to not only enforce the law, but carry out its consequences. Thirlby is his partner and Lena Headey is their target, an underworld queen-pin who traps them in a sketchy apartment complex and offers up a healthy reward for their heads. The director Pete Travis executes the nearly nonstop action with bruising intensity, while the better-than-expected script (by the gifted “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation” screenwriter Alex Garland) fills the occasional silences with fastballs of social commentary.
Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel occasionally feels like it’s lapping itself — Ballard’s 1975 notions of futuristic class warfare and societal breakdown feel almost quaint compared to what we face today. But Wheatley’s film is wildly entertaining anyway, a boisterous, nose-tweaking portrait of well-bred people turning into feral animals at the slightest provocation. Tom Hiddleston is appropriately cynical in the leading role; Luke Evans, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller and Elisabeth Moss turn in memorable supporting work.
‘Gloria Bell’ (2019)
With her new film “May December” (and her performance in it) earning rave reviews ahead of its upcoming Netflix debut, here’s another recent Julianne Moore film worth celebrating. She stars as the title character, a middle-aged woman who is still figuring out how to get the most out of her life, and herself, after divorce. An aid to that could come in the form of Arnold (John Turturro), who offers up love — or, at the very least, comfort — but “Gloria Bell” is not about finding yourself through someone else’s eyes. The Chilean writer-director Sebastián Lelio first told this story in his native tongue, in his 2013 movie “Gloria,” but this is no retread; his American take is lighter and funnier, and a resplendent showcase for the charms of Ms. Moore.
‘Bad Axe’ (2022)
When the pandemic hit the U.S. in spring of 2020, the filmmaker David Siev was among the many Americans who went home, huddling up with his family in Bad Axe, Mich., to help keep their venerable local restaurant afloat. He brought along his video camera, and captured an indelible real-time snapshot of a country quickly banding together, and then splintering apart with even greater speed and velocity. The resultant documentary works on two levels simultaneously: as a social document of a country in free-fall (with particular focus on how much of the MAGA-infused community turned on the Asian American Sievs), and as an intimate portrait of the family’s own complicated relationships, and how they were tested by forces beyond their control.
‘Back to the Drive-In’ (2023)
Restaurants, as you may recall, weren’t the only venues to take a big hit during lockdown, and with movie theaters out of commission, drive-in theaters became a safe alternative, and saw a big uptick in their long-struggling attendance. So the documentary filmmaker April Wright, who previously made the 2013 film “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In Movie,” went back to the drive-in to see how these (often family-owned) establishments had done during the unexpected boost, and how they were adjusting to life going “back to normal.” Once the topical matters are addressed, it becomes a fascinating character study, as these entrepreneurs — ranging from grizzled veterans to gee-whiz newbies — react quite differently to the regular difficulties of their throwback business.
