Movie Nation

De Niro and Huston are local lawmen on the front lines of the Oxy crisis.

John Malkovich and Willa Fitzgerald also star in this one, due out Dec. 2.

A two hour and thirty-eight minute deep dive into the life and downfall of an exacting, mercurial lesbian classical music conductor might be the motion picture definition of “a hard sell.”

But you miss “Tár” at your own peril.

Consider what Cate Blanchett does in creating and presenting the title character, Lydia Tár, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic whose classical music career has dashed through permanent positions and guest-conducting gigs at most of her profession’s greatest ensembles, including America’s “Big Five” — The Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and Boston Symphony.

Blanchett’s Lydia is brittle, brilliant and considered in every public moment. It is a self-aware performance of a performance. We see her get her “game face” on in the rare less guarded moment. But to everyone from her long-suffering assistant (Noémie Merlant) to her symphony board, her mentor (Julian Glover, ancient and in fine form), her musicians to her wife (Nina Hoss), she is “Tár,” a woman of accomplishment and self-confidence, all-controlling and all-knowing. If she wants to be considered more than “a gender spectacle” in the ancient and austere boy’s club that is orchestral conducting and music directing, she has to be.

It’s all put on peacocking display in the opening scene of writer-director Todd Field’s (“Little Children,” “In the Bedroom”) study of a powerful character put under duress. It’s one of those New Yorker-sponsored “An Evening With” chats, and Lydia hops from English to phrases in German, French and Italian with fluent ease, swooning over her “inspiration,” “Lenny” (legendary New York Philharmonic conductor and TV educator Leonard Bernstein) and dissecting the works of their shared orchestral passion, Gustav Mahler.

She’s about to finish recording a complete cycle of Mahler symphonies with “The Five,” as his fifth symphony is insider-labeled here. She has a memoir, “Tár on Tár,” coming out. She teaches conducting at Julliard when she isn’t at home in Berlin, with her wife — who is first chair violin with the Berlin Philharmonic — and their little girl, Petra.

And the person who makes all this work is her musician and aspiring conductor assistant, Francesca (Merlant), who might be the source of the faintly-snippy candid photo-and-video texts we see from time to time. The impatient, imperious Lydia may have a few friends — Mark Strong plays a conductor and colleague who helps with her foundation. But Francesca is who lets Tár be Tár.

Lydia is ready to dump her older, fussier associate conductor (Allan Corduner). She continues to bend, shape and hire this pinnacle of orchestral music to her will. But German law gives her players a lot more power in their relationship than is common elsewhere. And there’s something bubbling below the surface, something unpleasant whose nature we can easily discern and whose direction any movie-lover can guess. Lydia Tár is about to “go through some things” as we say these days.

“Tár” doesn’t set out to be a movie for everyone. But if you’re into classical music and know even just a little about this world, it is a film to be savored and treasured. The banter — touchy negotiations with “DG” (classical music label Deutsche Grammaphon records) over whether they’ll record this Mahler symphony “direct to (vinyl) disc,” discussions of “musical grammar” and “atonal tension” and snippy remarks about this famous name or that one (a dig at conducting rival “MTT,” Michael Tilson Thomas, another Follower of Lenny), discussions of “signal to noise ratio” — sparkles and immerses.

We hear snippets of an appearance on Alec Baldwin’s podcast, lots of NPR and hear and see Tár in action with her Julliard students and endless scenes of her working and rehearsing her orchestra. Blanchett is so animated, exacting and convincing I dare say she could fake her way to any podium on Earth after this.

Lydia composes and makes notations on scores while at the piano, her keener-than-keen ears relishing silence but absent-mindedly matching the tones of a doorbell on the keys.

The milieu is complete, three-dimensional and so spot-on we’re ensconced in it with her.

The viewer notes that violinist-wife Sharon is highly strung and medicated, that little daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic) calls her parents by their first names. And then we see Lydia take her to school and have a word with another seven year-old girl who is bullying her daughter.

In perfect German, she tells the child “I am Petra’s father.” And then she gives the mean girl the most cold-blooded threat you can imagine.

If we haven’t guessed before now, before her dismemberment of a Julliard student too “woke” for her tastes, we figure it out here. Lydia Tár destroys people.

“Tár” is, as mentioned, quite long for a story as compact as this one. Field almost drowns us in details — Lydia’s visit to her tailor, Lydia looking over hundreds of other classical music album covers before deciding how to pose for hers.

At times I wondered if Field was leaning into “U-Haul Lesbian” stereotyping a tad too hard — chilly parenting, bitchy callousness, “re-invention,” infidelity, that Diane Keaton-meets-Ellen wardrobe.

But Field and Blanchett have given us an unforgettable character presented in almost molecular detail, and a glorious, guts-and-Gustav behind-the-scenes plunge into a rarefied world few of us have so much as dabbled in or seriously wondered about, even if we know our Tchaikovsky from our Mahler, pianissimo from forte.

Rating: R for some language and brief nudity

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Julian Glover, Sophie Kauer and Mark Strong.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Todd Field. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 2:38

The effects are decent, the acting desultory in “Prey for the Devil,” a School for Exorcists thriller that promises more than it delivers.

Consider the setting of Robert Zappia’s script, based on a story by Todd R. Jones and Earl Richey Jones. It’s the St. Michael the Archangel School for Exorcists in Boston.

I don’t know about you, but the minute I saw that, I thought “HOGWARTS for Exorcists? GENIUS!”

Alas, that may have been the idea, as this picture — like EVERY horror movie — is treated as a potential franchise. But the colorless students inside this “school,” the formulaic way exorcist stories are populated (there’s always a young victim, always a body count trying to “exorcise” her) play out and the generic CCTV, one-way-mirror “training” rooms, the panic buttons in every patient’s room tech in a hospital decorated by scores and scores of candles turn this tale into an exercise in tedium.

Jacqueline Byers of Showtime’s “Roadies” stars as Sister Ann, a nun/nurse at St. Michael’s, and a survivor of trauma herself. We see her childhood in the film’s opening scenes, chased, tormented and abused with a hair comb by her psychotic mother.

Sister Ann knew better. Mom wasn’t schizophrenic or “just” schizophrenic. That “voice inside her head” had to be…the DEVIL.

That had everything to do with Sister Ann’s choice of vocation, she lets the in house shrink (Virginia Madsen) at St. Michael’s know. But she’s not just here to be a nurse. She ducks into the all-male-priest classes of Father Quinn (Colin Salmon) to hear how the Mother Church is “losing a war that has been raging for centuries.”

Sister Ann would love to become female Exorcist Ann, although all the academics there know the Catholic Church had one 800 years ago — St. Catherine of Siena. And as Sister Ann comforts a child in their care (Posy Taylor), we see her point. Nobody else can talk to Natalie inside whatever is making her skitter up the walls like a victim of “The Ring.”

But as Sister Ann tries to put herself into the game, sneaking off with Father Dante (Christian Navarro) to try and treat his pregnant, possessed sister (best effects in the movie), diving into Natalie’s case, she runs up against the patriarchy in the form of the cadaverous Monsignor (the late Ben Cross) in charge.

Byers is a fresh-faced and freckled Canadian blonde who is perfectly credible as a nun with a purpose. But she doesn’t give us much to grab hold of in this character. With rare exceptions, she and most everybody in “Prey” underreacts to the impossible, terrifying and imperiling things they see. If you’re not that scared, why should we be?

Go back to “The Exorcist.” Even the grizzled veteran of the rite, played by the great Max von Sydow, flinches at what he’s witnessing. His younger apprentice (Jason Miller) may not want to let us see his fear, but he can’t hide it.

If the idea here is that everybody in this school has seen it all, do something with that. Failing that, you’ve got to let us see people, save for the most hardened, freaked-out by what’s going on. Just yanking characters and hurling them against walls or out of the frame down a dark and deadly corridor in the “catacombs” below the hospital (of course) isn’t enough.

Nor is hewing so close to “Exorcist” formula that we know the story beats before they drop.

Rating: PG-13 for violent and disturbing content, terror, thematic elements and brief language.

Cast: Jacqueline Byers, Posy Taylor, Colin Salmon, Christan Navarro, Ben Cross and Virginia Madsen.

Credits: Directed by Daniel Stamm, scripted by Robert Zappia. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:33

Mike Colter and Yoson An co star in this January thriller about a jetliner that crashes in the civil war torn Philippines and passengers are taken hostage.

Looks very Gerry and opens in January. Damn, that’s a lame title.

(My review of “Plane” is here.)

I think I cackled four times watching this trailer to a tale of a would-be rapper/ditched by his girlfriend, rounding up a crew for a heist, to impress that girlfriend and solve a few other problems.

“Four Samosas” has that “ABCD” vibe, “American Born Confused Deshi” young folks stealing from their unscrupulous elders in what looks like SoCal.

Dec. 2

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The writer director of “Belle Epoch” looks adapts a novel about a father’s principled efforts to help the less fortunate and impart his values in this drama.

“Memories of My Father” opens Nov. 16 in New York and Nov. 18 in other parts of the country.

He’s billed by his real name, Colson Baker, and he co stars with Maddie Haason, Ruby Rose and Scott McNairy among others in this Nov.18 release.

Looks overfamiliar, but intense and realistic.

At my favorite Regal Cinemas waiting for this Lionsgate picture in a pile. No previews for critics in Florida, so let’s see what we’re in for, shall we?

It’s really saying something when a Frenchman has been to Japan for “an electronic” penis implant, which you can “steer,” switch to “vibrate” and even has a penis-scope function “so you can see…inside,” and it’s not even the daftest thing in your movie.

French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, known for his dark and sometimes crazed comedies — “Rubber” was about a runaway tire with a murderous mind of its own — takes a turn toward twee with “Incredible but True,” a goof on aging, the obsessive pursuit of youth and everything the realtor doesn’t tell you.

It only manages a couple of big laughs, but its droll, judgy tone and some fun performances put it over.

Alain Chabat (“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”) and Léa Drucker of Epix TV’s “War of the Worlds” play Alain and Marie, a 50ish couple finally buying their first house. It’s a bit worn, a two story ’60s modernist pile that could use a little TLC.

But the real selling point, “the jewel of the visit,” enthuses the real estate agent (Stéphane Pezerat) is in the basement. Alain’s “We’re not basement people” doesn’t put the agent off or stop his breathless building up to this “change your life” feature in that cellar. It looks like a manhole, and serves as a conduit — to take the person who climbs down it “12 hours ahead in time.”

Fair enough. Or not. Time may be “flexible,” as Alain allows. But neither of them believes this pitch, not as first. Still, something the guy says convinces them, and the purchase is made.

Right away we see the rift coming. Marie is really into “trying this out” (in French with English subtitles). Alain, an insurance broker and a tad dull, couldn’t care less.

But the possibilities of even limited time travel, and a side benefit of that which was part of the sales pitch, make them and us wonder what the future holds.

An impromptu dinner party with his boss, Gerard (Benoît Magimel) and his younger girlfriend Jeanne (Anaïs Demoustier) makes us wonder if they’ll keep this secret. After all, “Gege” shares his “big news.” He’s the one who’s been to Japan because electronic penises are “not even legal in the EU, yet.”

What Dupieux serves up is three 50ish folks coping with aging on a sliding scale — freaking out to seeking a youthful do-over to the classic French c’est la vie take on growing older.

Gege is an intercontinental cliche — dyed hair, a middle-aged mustache, insecure about his younger lover, driving a Jag and a tad obsessed with guns. His fears and coping mechanisms are thus French, British and a little American.

Marie is treating this new piece of real estate’s “duct” as a fountain of youth and another chance at a dream or two.

And Alain is the sensible guy caught in the middle or these two and their “crises.”

“Incredible but True,” or “Incroyable mais vrai” in French, plays around with time. It’s a brisk film that folds big chunks of the narrative into montages set to the intentionally cloying synthesized baroque (Bach, etc.) music of Jan Santo.

And Dupieux makes us keenly aware of the time-suckers we all deal with in daily life. So many characters annoy, build this or that up and fail to get to the point that an alternate title might have been “Tourner autour du pot,” French for “beating around the bush.”

It’s all ever-so-slight, light on the messaging and “twee” in its comic ambitions, with the odd sight gag here and there.

What, you think he’s not going to find fun in the fact that there’s an electronic penis on the loose here?

Rating: unrated, sexual sight gags, profanity

Cast: Alain Chabat, Léa Drucker, Benoît Magimel, Anaïs Demoustier and Stéphane Pezerat

Credits: Scripted and directed by Quentin Dupieux. An Arrow release.

Running time: 1:14

I was utterly charmed by this Bronx Immigrant’s Tale when it first came out, a movie of vignettes, slices of life, people struggling and making sometimes good, sometimes desperate decisions.

You might be, too, If you run across it streaming or in the collection of your local library, which is where this copy is destined.

Remember, donate your DVDs to libraries, because they can always use the content.

MovieNation, scattering fine cinema across the American Southeast, one movie/one library at a time.