film roundup

Beau Is Afraid (Dir. Ari Aster). Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, Nathan Lane. Pity poor Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), anxiety-ridden city dweller with a guilt complex exacerbated by a long-domineering mother (no spoiling who plays this initially heard but not seen character in her final form—it’s too delicious). An apparent tragedy sends Beau on an alternately ridiculous and horrific odyssey that feels like a Greek myth as penned by Portnoy’s Complaint-era Philip Roth, the literally bloody humiliations compounding with escalating surrealness. This is a quantum leap for writer-director Ari Aster after the indulgently artsy scaremongering of Hereditary and Midsommar — no less extravagant, perhaps, but much more confidently attuned to its central character’s entrancingly repellent psychology. Phoenix meets every challenge the filmmaker sets up and then some, in the process unearthing and exploring the ways in which the fears of our formative years can dog us into middle age and beyond, all the way up to our ignominious last breath. [R] HHHH

John Wick: Chapter 4 (Dir. Chad Stahelski). Starring: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Ian McShane. John Wick (Reeves), immaculately besuited hitman out for vengeful justice, is back for his latest go-round with the quirky denizens of the assassin underworld. Newcomer Bill Skarsgård channels both Draco Malfoy and Pepé Le Pew as the primary antagonist, the fey and entitled leader of the secret society The High Table, which oversees contract killers worldwide and whose arcane rules may allow for our antihero to regain his honor, such as it is. Wick series standbys Laurence Fishburne, the late Lance Reddick, and Ian McShane lend able support, treating the globe-hopping silliness of the premise as if it

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