⭐⭐out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ridley Scott has been down apocalyptic-ish roads before, notably with game changing sci-fi classics “Alien” (1979) and “Blade Runner” (1982). In “The Dog Stars,” adapted from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, we trek through uneven end-of-times terrain. A virus has wiped out most of humanity, leaving Hig (Jacob Elordi), a skilled mechanic and bush pilot aviator who lost his wife during the pandemic, holed up at an abandoned Colorado airfield with his dog Jasper (a handsome and regal German Shepherd) and Bangley (Josh Brolin), a heavily armed ex-Marine. Bangley’s survivalist instincts are considerably sharper than Hig’s — the dude retrieves his casings to repoint the bullets so he can use them again. There are marauders roaming about, and somehow the grid is still limping along. Hig picks up a faint radio transmission, and the possibility of other survivors lures him out of his relatively secure perimeter and into the unknown.

It’s an intriguing setup, and Scott can still give scorched-earth spectacle scale and tactile heft (the man is something of a world building master), but “Dog Stars” never settles into a satisfying rhythm. It also has a lot of nagging questions that hang around like pugnacious mosquitos. The plot lurches and splits between Hig (the main focus), Bangley, who remains behind, and the so-called Reapers, bloodthirsty looters who look fresh out of a 1990s mosh pit. They seemingly have created their own language and alphabet — the why, another gnat buzz. The best and most bizarre is Allison Janney as the matriarch of a small, insular community with specialized culinary leanings (don’t look in the meat locker) and a retro bent — the interior of the hive is practically a verbatim recreation of J. F. Sebastian’s flat of replicant misprints in “Blade Runner.”

Share

One problem with the film is that as Hig, Elordi, while blessed with the physical dimensions of a post-apocalyptic hero, never quite convinces us he’s the hardened, macho survivor the film needs. Brolin, by contrast, wears Bangley’s wary, shoot-first pragmatism as comfortably as an old field jacket. The rapport between the two works but doesn’t feel as genuine as the narrative insists.

Hig’s journey leads him to Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her father, Pops (Guy Pearce), opening the possibility of connection — and romance — in a world reduced to isolation and suspicion. Here, and at a Mennonite compound near the overgrown airstrip, is where “Dog Stars” finds its humanity. But Qualley, a live wire in “Honey Don’t!“ and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” is strangely muted here, lacking the sass and unpredictability that make her such a compelling screen presence.

Then there are those marauding Reapers, rendered as primal throwbacks seemingly beamed in from the era of black-and-white Westerns, replete with the genre’s cringeworthy “savage horde” imagery. It’s an unfortunate retrograde touch and a stark and lazy offset in a film ostensibly interested in what remains of our humanity after civilization disappears.

Scott keeps “The Dog Stars” muscular enough visually, but muscles aren’t the issue. Like its leading man, the film looks the part without ever fully inhabiting it.

some of this content ran previously in the Cambridge Day

Who knew you could smoke a hookah pipe at a pizza joint? Now you can at Beauty’s Pizza in Inman Square, where Jafra Cafe & Lounge has opened as a Middle Eastern patio extension of Beauty’s. The eatery has long been billed as an “Italian Kitchen” (‘za, subs and pastas) that also serves shawarma and gyros after it moved to Inman from Broadway following a 2014 kitchen fire.

The launch of Jafra was the mission of Palestinian-born owner Ibrahim Abuhasan, who took over Beauty’s in January. Under his stewardship, much of the food now meets halal requirements and so the restaurant no longer serves beer and wine. He has revamped how the shawarma and gyros are made in accordance with Levantine traditions. The falafel, too, are now handmade in-house — and there are hookahs.

Boston Globe food critic Devra First recently flagged the alarming trend of independent local restaurants shuttering because of the cost and effort required to keep them going — see Chickadee in the Seaport, and closer to home, Dear Annie. To stay afloat, it seems local eateries need to innovate.

Share

That’s what Abuhasan has done at Beauty’s. The vibe of the cozy outdoor space, blessed with ample trellising, should there be rain, is festive yet intimate. There is a solid selection of finger food that makes for fine noshing with a hookah and conversation and plus larger plates that cover the Levantine basics — shawarma, shish kebabs, and beef and lamb kufta. The griddle-pressed chicken shawarma wrap (a combo that comes with fries) I had was juicy and well-seasoned, and the pita, pleasantly pliable, but those smaller meze plates really shone. The thick, creamy housemade hummus came with a generous floater of olive oil, a tang of lemon zest, and a tart sprinkle of sumac — hearty with a bit of a kick.

Other good choices are the stuffed grape leaves (vegetarian) and the flatbreads — manakeesh, with a za’atar blend (a mixture of dried thyme or related herbs, sumac, toasted sesame seeds, and salt), or a Middle Eastern cheese blend. For meat lovers, there’s lahm ajeen topped with shredded seasoned beef. There’s also lentil soup and fried cheese sambosak, but the menu winner — and I will confess that I didn’t try the hand-rolled falafel — was the Palestinian musakhan rolls: lightly fried, cigar-shaped fingerlings of saj bread, filled with sumac-spiced pulled chicken and onions with a very pleasing tzatziki with strong cucumber accents to dip into.

For drinks, there’s a basic slate of coffee and teas headlined by an iced lavender latte and, in keeping with the eatery’s lean, a Moroccan tea. For your smoking pleasure, flavors run the fruity gamut from apple to watermelon to mango, mint, and more. If you want sweets, Jafra has traditional classics, baklava and a Dubai chocolate cake, but there’s also a mango cake and namora (a semolina coconut cake topped with a Levantine syrup) that pack an “I want it now” wow.

Jafra debuted this past June, and come winter, it won’t move inside (Beauty has limited seating), so heat lamps will prevail. For now, with its starry lights and big-screen TVs showcasing Middle Eastern destinations, the patio’s a rare, alfresco urban oasis, even if you are just feet from the Shell gas station next door. Those musakhan rolls are well worth the trip, and the golden coconut namora demands its own special sojourn.

Jafra Café & Lounge
187 Hampshire Street, Inman Square

$$ (out of $$$$)

some of this content ran previously in the Cambridge Day

“Hope”

⭐⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

For those who relish Korean creature-feature flicks laced with social commentary — think “The Host” (2006) or the gonzo zombie blast “Train to Busan” (2016) — “Hope” may scratch your itch. But be advised, you’ll be nearly an hour in before the first beastie rears its ugly head (I’m being colloquial, not judging beauty), and the film runs nearly three hours. Set in a small seaside town where residents work the earth and harvest fruits de mer, the chief of police, Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), is called out to investigate a mutilated bull — a scene that feels lifted from the opener of “Busan.” (Incidentally, Director Yeon Sang-ho’s ten-year followup, “Colony,” also opens in theaters this week, but not in Camberville.) Puzzled by the grim disemboweling — a tiger is suspected — Bum-seok makes his way back to his department’s humble headquarters, but the streets of the cloistered village are strangely desolate, several buildings have been laid to waste, and blood is smeared on walls like a bad stab at an alfresco Rothko. The ominous scene is punctuated by the echo of gunfire, coupled with loud sonorous growls — and every now and then, a car sails through the air and crashes through a rooftop. It’s a riveting build-up, orchestrated with adroit skill by director Na Hong-jin and his filmmaking crew: The choreography is critically tight, the set work impeccable, and Bum-seok’s hyperbolic reactions add a splash of comedy to the taut suspense. Then, just as all hell breaks loose, one of Bum-seok’s deputies, Sung-ae (Hoyeon, “Squid Game”), zips in on cue to demonstrate her boss-level grenade-launching and F1 driving skills.

Loath to give away further details, I’ll just say Grendel would be smiling. The second half of the film doesn’t quite marry up to the blistering start; action sequences go on too long, likely an indulgence of cheap CGI. The narrative, too — which, like “The Host,” hinges on human folly — gets weak in the knees late, and the premise, never deepened enough, begins to sag. As “Hope” wraps, it feels like you’ve just seen Part 1 of a two-parter — and clearly something that could have been made tighter and sharper with better editing and narrative restraint. Na hadn’t made a film in a decade since “The Wailing” in 2016, and if that was the full incubation period of “Hope,” perhaps it cooked too long. If you’re curious about the title, Hope Harbor is the fictional inlet where the action takes place. The film also boasts international stars Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander as the voices of the shape-shifting humanoids dislocated and in conflict.

Share

“Coyote vs. Acme”

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 4.

Back in 1949, Wile E. Coyote made his screen debut in the cartoon short “Fast and Furry-ous,” cinematic eons before Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, and John Cena lent their beefy forms to the muscle-car maverick franchise of a similar name. Interestingly enough, in this toon and live-action romp (cartoon characters and humans coexist in the same world, à la “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”), Cena shares the screen with Wile E. (voiced by Eric Bauza) as Buddy Crane, Acme Corporation’s chief corporate counsel. As we know from the Warner Brothers’ canon of Looney Tunes archives, Wile E. has been after the Road Runner for decades but never can quite lay a paw on the desert flash since the products he purchases from Acme — rocket-powered roller skates, a magnetic glove, the classic anvil, and so on — all backfire and leave the coyote mangled or flattened. But toons can pop right back, right? Maybe yes, maybe no — that’s part of a dark twist behind Project Sisyphus, an Acme undertaking that I’ll say no more about.

The plot launches when Wile E., finally fed up with the endless cycle of frustration, hires a two-bit Albuquerque attorney, Kevin Avery (a generic Will Forte), to sue Acme for shilling faulty products. Forte’s firm — Avery, Jones & Maltese — is named in honor of Looney Tunes legends Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. The action ultimately moves from the desert to the courtroom, where Acme acts like a corporate big à la Amazon or Walmart — but back when Avery, Jones and Maltese were cooking up Wile E. and Looney Tunes, the concept of a corporate giant was just beginning to loom. The story is based on a 1990 New Yorker satire by Ian Frazier and adapted by Samy Burch — screenwriter of “Late Fame” (which just played at the Brattle) and “May December” (2023) — with creative input from James Gunn (“The Suicide Squad,” “Guardians of the Galaxy”) and directed by David Green. The courtroom drama gets a tad long in the tooth, but there are some surprising reveals — notably from the Road Runner, who communicates only in beep-beeps, and many Looney toon cameos, including Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, and Foghorn Leghorn. “Coyote vs. Acme” was completed back in 2022-23 but has taken a long road to the screen amid the reorganization and sale of Warner Bros. It’s no “Roger Rabbit,” but it’s a palatable alternate-reality mash-up.

some of this content ran previously in the Cambridge Day

⭐⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Director Kent Jones (“Diane“ (2018)) works with a killer cast in this reset of a novella by Arthur Schnitzler, with 1890s Vienna transposed to modern day New York City (the script’s by Samy Burch, “May December” and the upcoming “Coyote vs Acme”). The esteemed Willem Dafoe stars as Ed Saxberger, a New York City postal worker who back-in-the-1980s-day penned an obscure work of revered poems. He’s rediscovered by a gaggle of youthful writers and artists who brand themselves the Enthusiasm Society. There’s a beatnik vibe to the group, led by a scarf-wearing dilettante who goes by the moniker of just Meyers (Edmund Donovan, who gives his pompous character a modicum of depth and vulnerability). They embrace Ed as something of a Bukowski-esque literary lion and through fawning flattery entreat him into their circle. The newfound notoriety rekindles Ed’s creative passions. As he starts to see the world through the progressive lens of his admirers, he calls out fellow old White guys for the intolerance he had become numb to over the years. The rising arc becomes Ed’s mounting affections for the much younger Gloria (Greta Lee, the soulful heart of “Past Lives”), the group’s aspiring actress, chanteuse and something of a Blanche DuBois in the making.

Lee, who you can also catch in the subpar sci-fi thriller, “The Last House“ over on Netflix, strikes the screen as a luminous wonder, but at times feels miscast and out of place. She does strike a genuine (if more platonic than romantic) chord with her veteran costar. Ultimately, the film feels drawn out, as Dafoe’s Ed never brings congruence to a hodgepodge of ideas and icons, despite the actor’s affable effort.

“The Brink of War”

⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

There’s solid acting but thin bones in this Cold War dramatization of the 1986 Reykjavík Summit talks between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The movie’s premise is the two men came tantalizingly close to a sweeping agreement that would have eliminated both country’s nuclear arsenals. Written and directed by Michael Russell Gunn, the film’s essentially a stalemate debate dressed up as a geopolitical thriller. Jeff Daniels (“The Squid and the Whale,” “Dumb and Dumber”) is Reagan and Jared Harris (“Mad Men,” “Chernobyl”) Gorbachev, staring at each other across a table, trying to win by touting the virtues of capitalism or communism, respectively. It could almost be a single set, two-man stage play, although having it on-location in Iceland makes for gorgeous framing, and we get cameos from the first ladies (Hope Davis as Nancy Reagan left back home, and Branka Katić as Raisa Gorbachev on site and obsessed with Icelandic horses).

As Gorbachev, Harris looks and feels the part, stubborn and full of resolve. Daniels is less convincing as Reagan — he seems younger and snappier than my newsreel footage recall dials up (though Daniels is 71, just four years younger than Reagan was in 1986). He gets Reagan’s classic “Well…” verbal tic down with aplomb but never goes full-on Gipper. His Ronnie feels somewhat elevated, too, maybe because of the Angel Studios values-driven haloing of its subjects (“Young Washington,” “David“). The “way of life” speech is clunky, even ham-fisted (for contrast, Daniels fired a flame thrower blast about American greatness as Will McAvoy in Aaron Sorkin’s “Newsroom”).

There is plenty of deep, emotive acting and well-forged chemistry between its leads — and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons is steadfast in support as Secretary of State George Shultz. Devil-may-care comic relief comes from Katić’s punchy Raisa, who brings chaotic kitsch to every scene she’s in; Gunn is wise not to overuse her. Points to the production, too, for using the Höfði House — the actual humble site of the summit— for their set. But “Brink of War” is not as interesting or as historically informative as the previous Angel offerings. It’s a long 117 minutes and strains to manufacture suspense from its small sliver of history. There’s just not enough heft or hook to turn a footnote into a feature.

some of this content ran previously in the Cambridge Day

Vinal Bakery and General Store draws summer crowds for Burger Nights.

Tuesday’s at Vinal Bakery and General Store have become an event on par with the block-wrapping lines at BerryLine and the weekend curb waits at Bagelsaurus. I ventured over last week for a burger — the Miso Maple, cheddar cheese, thick-cut bacon, bread and butter pickles, and of course, miso maple butter — and there had to be over 40 people milling along Somerville Ave. All the bench seats in the Ken Kelly Park across the street were filled and the General Store had a wrap-around line waiting for soft-serve.

Vinal proprietor Sarah Murphy is used to lines. She worked at Bagelsaurus and launched her signature English muffin concept in the Porter Square bagel shop as a pop-up, then opened Vinal Bakery and Cafe in 2019 and the General Store next door in 2022, naming them after the avenue in Somerville where she lived and hatched her muffins.

Share

The interiors have a retro 1950s soda shoppe vibe. The menus update daily. The Bakery, which shutters at 1 p.m., sells mostly breakfast sando fare (the Ham Jamboree is exceptional as is the house-made turkey sausage). The Store offers healthy-leaning (turkey and tuna) subs and sandwiches, bodega snacks (Haribo gummies at the fore), beer and wine and soft-serve ice cream and closes most days at 4 p.m., except on Tuesdays for Burger Night and Thursdays and Fridays for Ice Cream Socials.

You can’t enter the Bakery on Burger Night. You order online and pick it up at a sliding window. It can get backed up and when it does, it shuts down the online ordering until it catches up again. In fact, when I arrived the system was off, but they told me it would be back up in five minutes, so I sauntered over to the General Store for a glass of wine (Avinyó Blanc Petillant, so refreshing). I had to wait in line there, too. Eventually I got my wine and was able to place my burger order. Only the wait was 50 minutes, so plan ahead, because the wait is well worth it. The signature English muffins are fluffy but dense (they make mini pizzas on them on the Bakery menu), the burger, nicely medium, lean and not greasy at all, with well-cooked bacon that was crisp yet pliable, and the miso maple, a shot of heaven. Size-wise, it’s just right, a one-hander that sates without overfilling.

The five-burger slate includes a classic Wimpy (American cheese and ketchup) and the Woo, Baby! (griddled onions, American cheese and a black pepper/Worcestershire “woo” sauce).

A note on that pocket park across the way: it’s named for the local restaurateur behind The Independent, Foundry on Elm, P.J. O’Ryan’s and others. Kelly passed away in 2015 after a protracted battle with throat cancer. The park is a fitting memorial: an impressive urban oasis beautifying what was an abandoned lot, and the perfect family gathering spot to enjoy cold swirls and sprinkle topped cones al fresco.

Burger Night runs through August and also for you summer convenience, Vinal sells Beach Boxes — a General Store sando or sub with a side of tri-color pasta, chips and a summertime gummy mix packed up for excursions to the sea.

parts of this article ran previously in the Cambridge Day

It’s family survival week in a pair of punchy sci-fi thrillers, where death lurks just beyond the mailbox. “The Last House,” on Netflix, finds a Pacific Northwest family sealed inside their house due to mysterious forces at play. Over at the “End of Oak Street,” a big-screen undertaking with Spielberg-ian overtones, dinosaurs move into a tranquil suburb — call it Jurassic Estates. Both movies trap their main characters in a survival hell house, but one of them consigns viewers to audience purgatory and one does not.

“The Last House” undercuts its gifted cast through lazy execution. It seems meant to be a commentary on COVID-19, though Louis Leterrier’s lame mashup is vague about what exactly afflicts this suburban Seattle neighborhood. Rising stars Greta Lee (“Past Lives”) and Wagner Moura (Oscar-nominated in “The Secret Agent”) play a couple with an eight-year-old daughter (Riley Chung) and 12-year-old son (Noah Alexander Sosnowski) who all wake up one morning and can’t exit their house — the doors won’t open and if you smash a window, the glass magically reforms. Worse, there’s no Wi-Fi.

Share

Jason (Moura), Ann (Lee) and the kids communicate with the neighbors across the way via whiteboards and Morse code. Food runs short but inexplicably Jason and Ann use their chimney to trap foxes, ferrets and bunnies. They also build an impromptu greenhouse in the living room. Life inside seems to be quite the familial bonding experience. Then we take a sudden multi-year leap forward. The family has outlived many of its neighbors, the kids are older (now played by Emma Ho and Gabriel Barbosa) and survival for the family has become a constant grind.

They don’t talk much about why and the director doesn’t give us much in the way of clues, either. When the reason finally becomes clear, it’s an implausible groaner. Lee and Moura couldn’t have had the last 30 pages of the script before they signed on, or they would have skipped it.

Life is just as grim for the Platt family, whom we meet in “The End of Oak Street.” Their suburb is near a city in a warmer clime and the time is the early 1980s (Joan Jett and no cellphones). The mother, Denise (a game Ann Hathaway) secretly writes a novel in the basement while dad Greg (Ewan McGregor) pretends to go to work each day, but he’s been laid off and delivers pizzas to make ends meet. Their dog Starbuck is a menace to the neighborhood yards, digging holes and leaving smelly deposits, until the guy next door (Mel Jacobs) tells Denise he’ll shoot the dog if it does not desist. Denise promptly informs him that if he so much as points a gun at their pooch, she’ll burn his house down.

One morning, the neighbor storms the Platts’ front stoop, points to a six-foot high pile of feces and blames the dog. When the implausibility of the pooch is noted, he blames the Platt’s kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). It’s a funny bit, and somehow no one notices the thicket of ancient ferns and palms at the end of the street, or the feathered velociraptors snacking on feline pets.

When those first smaller dinos show up, you half expect some young ingenue to intone, “They’re here,” but there’s no slow build, as the Platt’s neighbors quickly become dino hors d’œuvres. The Platts try to flee in their car but one end of Oak Street has become a prehistoric pond and the other a precipitous Mesozoic mesa, pterodactyls included. They scurry back to the house, board up the windows and figure out their next move.

This movie also suffers from a poppycock rationale, but director David Robert Mitchell, who helmed the equally alluring “It Follows” (2014) and “Under the Silver Lake” (2019), orchestrates everything so well it binds you to your seat. “Oak Street” is by far the best dino actioner since Spielberg gave up the camera in the “Jurassic” franchise.

The other big reason “Oak Street” succeeds is Hathaway, who is in her fourth release of the year, after “The Odyssey”, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” (now streaming) and “Mother Mary,” with a fifth, “Verity,” on the way. In “Oak Street” her protective mom is more muted than Linda Hamilton in the “Terminator” films or Sigourney Weaver throughout the “Alien” franchise, but Hathway still anchors this movie. Stella and Convery give notable individual performances and McGregor is fine, but “Oak Street” runs on mom.

The one place “Last House” outdoes “Oak Street” is in the way it uses the flooded basement (another mutual feature of the two movies). But overall, “Oak Street’s” all-in performances, tight editing, top-shelf special effects and plot twists make for a much more desirable neighborhood.

“The Last House”

⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“End of Oak Street”

⭐⭐⭐out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Blue Heron”

⭐⭐⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In case you missed the best film of the year (so far) — it didn’t play a Cambridge or Somerville theater — you can now catch the devastating picture digitally. In Sophy Romvari’s semi-autobiographical film, a Hungarian family relocates to Vancouver Island, Canada in the 1990s. She fuses family diary, conjured memory and the desire to understand the past within the lens of the present in a haunting, provocative way. It’s also groundbreaking in its narrative structure, bending reality and time to delve deeper into the emotional turmoil and familial pathos that cloud the borders of each frame.

The first part of the film is told from the point of view of the young daughter — the wide-eyed Sasha, played by Eylul Guven, who is the lone girl among three brothers. The oldest, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes) from the mother’s prior marriage, is often mean to her — interfering with her rock castles at the beach, making a shield of cereal boxes at the breakfast table so he doesn’t have to look at his siblings. Those ripples become more troublesome later when he comes home in handcuffs, takes perilous roof walks, and utters veiled threats to burn down the house. Not normal and not safe, which leaves mom and dad (Iringó Réti and Ádám Tompa) at a loss about what to do. Throughout it all, there’s an edgy “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2011) vibe, despite its home-movie-style naturalism. How the family attempts to resolve the crisis has future consequences, and that’s where we — and the film — jump ahead to the adult Sasha (Amy Zimmer), reflective and steely, making a documentary about a social work case from the 1990s: as you might expect, it’s Jeremy’s.

The camerawork and camera placements — outside a window, aloofly watching the action from afar, or inside an adjacent room, overhearing conflict and life-altering information through a wall — are subtle and extraordinary. The cast gives robust, yet nuanced, performances. Réti and Tompa are restrained but stressed as the unnamed parents. Zimmer’s fill-in for Romvari burns soulfully in her quest for answers and closure, and Beddoes is at once viperish and intimidating, yet sympathetically vulnerable. The whole composition is a remarkable accomplishment, especially given such humble resources. The cathartic reflection and reframing of events from varying points in time is poetically akin to Cantabrigian Ross McElwee’s latest, “Remake,” likewise propelled by loss and tragedy — which, like “Blue Heron,” has yet to get a feature run this side of the Charles.

Share

“One Night Only”

⭐⭐out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In this lite, ephemeral rom-com, folks in the good ol’ U.S. of A., even those liberally minded, appreciate the “fascists” in charge, at least for one night. The perplexing premise of this near-future fantasy loosely has to do with the powers-that-be allowing all single people to fornicate to their hearts’ delight for one night, and one night only. All other days of the year, only married people can do it. Why we’re back to puritanical times is never fully explained, but it’s all controlled by Big Pharma through implanted biological chips linked to the local police station that sets off alarms if you’re rounding third, or (even on the night allowed), not using a condom. (There’s surge pricing on condoms that night, so if you ever wind up in this alter reality, best to stock up).

The set-up bears the dystopian vibe of “1984” (1984), but it’s more akin to “Idiocracy” (2006) if told through a Nicholas Sparks lens. Natch, “One Night Only” is all about two lost souls seeking love. Our guides through the horny mayhem are Owen (Callum Turner, “The Boys in the Boat,” “Green Room”), who values the intimacy in the moments after coitus, while Allie (Monica Barbaro, who was so good as Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown”) relishes the titillation of the build-up. The two keep crossing paths with “destined to be” ever hanging in the air, but often veer off with others for snog prospects that predictably implode in marginally humorous ways. Sympathy runs high for Owen, as his live-in fiancée (Maya Hawke, Ethan and Uma’s daughter) proclaims she’s going to use her hook-up chip to sleep with someone else (the hunky guy next door). This she tells Owen over omakase, then walks out on the meal — a crime times two!

The funnier, more endearing aspects of “One Night Only” come from the main characters’ backstories. Owen owns and runs a well-loved neighborhood pizzeria (if you are really a soulmate, you know how your SO likes their pie), while Allie sings ad jingles for small pharma — the repurposing of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” for Vagisil is brilliant. Turner and Barbaro are likable enough, but the punch-through by director Will Gluck (“Peter Rabbit”) and writer Travis Braun never gets steamy or sassy enough, nor does it address the draconian forces doling out the BlueChew ops or its consequences for shameless self-pleasure during the other 364 nights.

Offering global selections from some of the country’s most prominent celebrity chefs, Wonder has made its way to Kendall Square

After the MIT-incubated concept Spyce set up shop in Harvard Square in 2021, I wrote about how an AI bot made my lunch. That automated food-assembly-line processor was then sold to Sweetgreen, and last year, the tech was acquired by the Wonder Group, a culinary empire that has been morphing and growing since its inception in 2018.

The Wonder dining experience is strange and unique. Although Wonder has opened in Belmont, Burlington, and Watertown, Kendall Square is the company’s first foray into the city. (Wonder is well-ensconced in New York City, and has approximately 130 Wonder storefronts across the Northeast.) The concept behind Wonder: a single point of entry to order a variety of gourmet dishes from renowned chefs and eateries around the country with the same quality at every location. It also allows you to get —in one order— chicken nuggets for the kids, BBQ ribs with a side of succotash and a kale and avocado poke bowl with seared ahi for the adults. The menu lists 20-plus vendors, including Bobby Flay Steak, Di Fara Pizza, Tejas Barbecue and Streetbird chicken, with culinary categories including breakfast, BBQ, Korean, salads, chicken, and more.

You order Wonder digitally, and it’s a tad overwhelming — the online portal (app or website) also allows you to order from dozens of other local eateries (Dumpling Daughter and Brookline Lunch, for example). Those meals aren’t part of your Wonder order. Wonder has a GrubHub integration, and you’re ordering for either pickup or GrubHub delivery. (The holding company that includes Wonder also owns Blue Apron and GrubHub.)

The Kendall Wonder storefront is a lean, clean waiting room with about a dozen seats. But this is a grab-and-go place, since hardly anyone — just me — ate there. If you haven’t ordered ahead, Wonder has kiosks on site — just as busy, festive, and confusing as the web portal. I had done my research and knew I wanted the Tejas Texas turkey sandwich and a carrot soufflé. The two gentlemen ahead of me took one look at the menu and became instantly confounded, as if caught in a Pokémon video with too many flashing lights. They ordered, with help, but still seemed perplexed.

Share

At Wonder, all these recipes are the same, and the source components are shipped from HQ — central distribution centers not unlike McDonald’s or Dunkin’ — but gourmet. The Spyce bot makes your meal in the partially open back kitchen. But rest assured that in final prep and food wrapping, humans are involved.

So how was it? Eating alone in that small space, a bustling hive, was a little odd. Given the locale, I would say Wonder Kendall is a concept designed for taking a meal back to your office or picking it up on the way home — although the serene MIT Open Space is a perfect place to eat during these fine-weathered days. This was some of the best packaged and bagged to-go food I have received since Daily Provisions opened in Harvard Square. The hot turkey sando came twice-wrapped: foil to keep it warm and plastic to keep the juices and BBQ sauce from escaping, while the soufflé was well-housed in a small recyclable box.

The meal was impressive: the thin- sliced, brined turkey breast was moist and flavorful with smokey accents, and the bacon, lean, thick and pleasantly pliable (not crisp). With the caramelized onions, tangy barbecue sauce and white cheddar packed in thick, toasted sourdough, it was a sweet and smoky symphony. It’s addictive and the soufflé, sublime — is it a dessert, a side dish, or a meal? It doesn’t matter. You should employ any excuse to have this sweet and savory gem — though it’s often sold out.

And yes, I am curious how a Bobby Flay steak filet would come out — tacos, too — but given the quality of my order, I’m not too worried. Come for the novelty, return for the quality.

this review ran previously in the Cambridge Day

“I Want Your Sex”

⭐⭐⭐out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

It’s been 12 years since Gregg Araki made his last film, “White Bird in a Blizzard,” a competently done mystery and something of a restrained effort compared to his gloriously gonzo, queer-leaning, desperado films of the 1990s (“Totally F***ed Up,” “The Doom Generation” and “The Living End”). The good news with “I Want You Sex” is that master of irreverent cinema is back and in boundary-pushing form. Instead of getting fucked up, people here are getting fucked—both literally and figuratively. We begin shades of “Sunset Boulevard” as a young art assistant (Cooper Hoffman, “Licorice Pizza”) in boxers and with a noticeably bloodied face stumbles out the sliding glass doors of a poolside bungalow to find his artist boss (Olivia Wilde) buck-naked and floating face down. From there we rewind back to the gallery where Hoffman’s naïve and far-too-trusting Elliot is part of a merry band of art boys who line-up, mouths masticating gobs of red gum with intense rapidity and then attach their chewed wads to an inchoate mural of parted labia majora—vagina gum art, who knew? The LA based gallery is the muse hive of Erika Tracy (Wilde) a Koons kitschy pop artist of note—and also a high priestess of sexual deviancy, ever dressed in stylish S&M office wear with a blasé come-hither look ever etched on her face. She’s Cruella de Vil with a fetish laundry list. In short she makes a sex slave out of Elliot who at home is in sexless relationship with his bookish girlfriend (Charli xcx). Anal probing (seemingly a cinematic trend these days as evidenced by this, “Little Brother” and “The Invite” also starring Wilde), spanking and threesomes ensue. Through it all Elliot looks like a lamb going to slaughter, but it’s hard to feel sorry for him. In regard to that opening scene, the current action is driven by detectives (Johnny Knoxville and Margret Cho) trying to untangle what has taken place. If there’s any letdown to “Sex” it’s that Araki and co-writer, Karley Sciortino, bumble the climax—the dark raucous sex comedy goes too quietly into the night. The film however is a showcase for Wilde, who glides into the part with relish and vim without going over-the-top. It’s a piquant antithetical spin from that other movie playing in theaters (“The Invite”) that she directed and plays a frustrated, not-had-sex-in-a-year San Franciscan housewife.

Share

“Dead Souls”

⭐⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

For his self-proclaimed final film, cult warrior Alex Cox has laid his sights on Donald Trump, ICE, and AI. Not a bad hit list, but a little weird when you consider it’s a spaghetti western based on the 1842 book by Nikolai Gogol — where a shady bureaucrat who travels through provincial Russia trying to buy the names of dead serfs from landowners. Then again, Cox earned his edgy auteur mettle with mid-’80s jabs “Repo Man” and “Sid & Nancy.” Looking a bit like Tim Blake Nelson in “Old Henry” (2021), a weathered Cox stars as Mr. Strindler, a preacher who claims to work for the American Census Survey when he drifts into a small Arizona border town circa 1890. The town is a pit of snakes ready to swallow the stoic Strindler alive, but in a gunfight with the local quick-draw “Kid,” Strindler gets lucky and takes out the sheriff, too. Strindler, like Gogol’s ghostly drifter, is collecting the names of Mexican workers who have died. Turns out there’s money to be made if the list is handed to the right magistrate riding through the territory. Unfortunately for Strindler, the one he gets could care less about Mexicans. As Strindler, Cox is a piquant olio of Harry Dean Stanton’s stiff repo man and Peter Sellers’ restrained Chance the Gardner. Given the film’s satirical mission, the anti-Trump, anti-xenophobic prongs land deep. The AI/data center rift is shoehorned in, strange and devilishly weird. It works. That said, Cox’s “Dead Souls” occasionally flags under the weight of its hard-pushed aspirations and over-indulgence. It’s akin to Cox’s follow-up to “Sid & Nancy,” “Walker” (1987), staring Ed Harris as the renowned colonialist destabilizer — it’s also a western, but also chock-full of passion, packed with political punches, and a bit of a letdown compared to those indelible ‘80s films. Cox clearly has seen “The Wild Bunch” (1969) on repeat: Some of the final scenes feature nearly identical recreations of the waiting vultures at the end of Sam Peckinpah’s glorious ode to the closing days of the West.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day”

⭐⭐⭐out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tom Holland slides into his fourth Spider-Man chapter with ease, but even better, this “New Day” is notably more mature and nuanced than Holland’s “Home” trilogy (“Homecoming,” “Far From Home” and “No Way Home”). The film more smartly weaves in bigger Marvel Cinematic Universe elements that should likely have a payoff in “Avengers: Doomsday.” Familiar faces from the Avengers and X-Men series show up here, as does Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, who finally makes it to the big screen. (He’s been in several small-screen Marvel projects on Disney.) Thankfully, there’s no multiverse nonsense this time, though former love interest MJ (Zendaya) and bestie Ned (Jacob Batalon), both off at MIT, have had all their memories of Spider-Man and Peter Parker washed from their minds. The driving force in this “New Day” is a mysterious entity that can possess masses of people and wants to break into a fortified Manhattan institution known as The U.S. Department of Damage Control. What they do at the DoDC — in theory — is repurpose supervillain tech and power for beneficial uses (the DoDC lab facilities look like a set straight out of “The Boys”). All are susceptible to the mass mind meld (even support heroes) except Spidey — his arachnid DNA has been (for better and worse) morphing, making him more physiologically an eight-legged critter. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (“Short Term 12”), the pacing is lithe and nimble, and the action sequences are several cuts above a typical bang-bash CGI fest — there’s intent and consequence. Building on that emotionally is Spidey’s pathos: He’s revered (he cleaned up New York quicker than former mayor Rudy Giuliani) and he’s all alone, yearning to reconnect with MJ and Ned. “New Day” sheds the flimsy fandom that so imbued the “Home” series; it’s darker, leaner and more inward-leaning. It also marks a busy year for Holland and Zendaya, both onscreen in “The Odyssey,” and in “Doomsday,” still to come.

some of the content here also ran in the Cambridge Day

The Cambridge-based filmmaker on his new documentary “Remake,” which looks at his son’s death, and the 40th anniversary release of “Sherman’s March.”

Ross McElwee, the affable, soft-spoken southern gentleman who bares all in his autobiographical documentaries, has often chronicled personal pain. In his groundbreaking work, “Sherman’s March” (1986), we see a budding young filmmaker’s lost loves and unrealized yearnings. In his latest, “Remake,” he wrestles with the tragic death of his son in 2016.

The two complementary films begin an extended run at the Coolidge Corner Theatre this week to commemorate the newly remastered 4K, 40th anniversary rerelease of “Sherman’s March,” as well as the release of “Remake.” To kick off the run Thursday night, McElwee will be in conversation with fellow Cantabrigian filmmaker and Harvard professor, Robb Moss, following a screening of “Sherman’s March.”

McElwee’s films are intoxicating in their quiet, observant demeanor — revelations that wash over you sans any didactic ice-bucket deluge. Their subtle, lingering resonance is not far off from the hypnotic vexations that became the signature of fellow Cambridge filmmaker Frederick Wiseman throughout his impressive body of work. Their styles and approaches, however, are vastly different: the recently deceased Wiseman gave you fly-on-the-wall direct cinema, whereas McElwee’s more immediately accessible chronicles provide you with in-the-moment perspectives that, in their intimacy, feel genuinely honest and self-deprecating — especially given the filmmaker’s willingness to expose his vulnerabilities.

Nearly all of McElwee’s 10 feature-length films are deeply self-referential and play off previous works. He made “Sherman’s March” about a decade before he first married, and “Remake” about nine years after the death of his son, Adrian, who succumbed to fentanyl addiction at 27. In both films, McElwee set out with one agenda and ended up with a film about something else. “Sherman’s March” began as a chronicle of the titular Union general’s military campaign through the South; then the camera flipped onto McElwee and turned to his romantic life and future hopes. In “Remake,” he started turning “Sherman’s March” into a fictional feature but the death of his son changed the focus of his lens. “I allow the footage to guide me to the structure of what the film should be,” McElwee said in a conversation with Cambridge Day.

“Remake” pulls footage from a number of McElwee’s previous films; his son and family are subjects of “Time Indefinite” (1993), “In Paraguay” (2008) and “Photographic Memory” (2011). We see the young Adrian looking adoringly at his father, interested in his dad’s profession and as the subject of McElwee’s camera and probing questions. “Remake” shows footage Adrian shot on his own as an aspiring filmmaker (posing as a film festival hotshot when on the circuit tour with McElwee) and talking candidly with his dad about addiction.

Grief is palpable throughout the film, and you can see McElwee processing it frame by frame. “I was devastated when my son died,” he said matter-of-factly during our interview. “You never truly come to terms with it. You never fully accept it. But somehow you learn to keep moving forward.”

In the film, McElwee asks a lot of deep questions — mostly of himself — and often speaks directly to Adrian. “I didn’t really see how I could continue to be a filmmaker,” he intones in his smooth Southern accent early in the film. Later he offers, “Making [‘Remake’] was a way of keeping Adrian alive.”

“Remake” was a long-running project. McElwee agreed in 2008 to give a producer the rights to “Sherman’s March” — signing over the rights was shot by Adrian. In 2016, Adrian died. Along that path, McElwee touches on his divorce from Adrian’s mother, Marilyn Levine, and marriage to Hyun Kyung Kim at Cambridge City Hall.

“You show your first wedding, and talk about how that feels like a fiction now,” McElwee says in dulcet voice-over in the film, reflecting on how time changes the context of images. “I think any of us who look back on even photographs — still photographs on the wall — that changes over time,” he said in our conversation. “Especially if someone in the photograph ends up dying, passing on, the photograph totally changes.”

A quirky caveat of “Remake” is that Kim, a vibrant persona, wouldn’t let her face be filmed. We see a lot of her feet and hands.

McElwee was born in Charlotte, N.C., but has long been part of the Boston/Cambridge filmmaking scene. He attended Brown University with designs to be a journalist and/or writer, and met Moss as a fellow graduate student studying filmmaking at MIT. The two would become teaching colleagues in Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies and share similar approaches to documentary filmmaking — the autobiographical lens and regular revisiting of the past and past films.

As for what’s next for McElwee, he said he’s focused now on supporting the release of “Remake,” which he described as a movie about “movies and mortality.” His question on that theme: “Is this what I really want to do exclusively? Give people a reason to walk out of the theater feeling very depressed?”

“Remake” does take on melancholy tones at times, but it’s driven by McElwee’s affable introspection, while being insightful and emotionally cathartic, and ends with a cheeky note of whimsy.

“Remake” and the reissue of “Sherman’s March” open Friday in Brookline, with possible future Cambridge screenings.

The Bench

By nine o’clock the video had been viewed more than nine thousand times.

It wasn’t much to look at. Forty-three seconds of shaky cell phone footage posted to Nextdoor. A ribbon fluttering in the breeze. A city councilor applauding. A bronze plaque catching the afternoon sun. Somewhere off-camera, a child let out a sing-song whine about ice cream.

The title read simply: “That new bench on the Common.”

The first dozen comments were predictable.

“Beautiful addition.”

“Nice to see people giving back.”

“Great, but needs shade trees.”

Then, at 8:17 p.m., CantSitStill, an anonymous account that no one seemed to recognize, joined the conversation. “Too bad his father won’t sit on it,” was all they said, and nothing more.

By morning, the post had turned into an online trial.

Victor Haskell refreshed the thread every thirty seconds. He half-expected the dedication to earn a polite newspaper brief and perhaps get a well-framed photograph for the annual report of the Haskell Foundation. Instead, strangers were debating his childhood, his marriage, his taxes, his politics and, most bafflingly, his father.

“Isn’t his dad dead?”

“No, just saw him at Whole Foods.”

“T heard they’re estranged.”

“My cousin worked for Victor. He can be difficult. Believe the comment.”

“Believe what?”

“Believe what you see is

not reality. Wealth comes easily to those who have not earned

it.” CantSitStill responded and then went silent in the wake of the tidal wave of follow-up questions.

Victor had paid nearly forty thousand dollars for the bench —fine, marbled New Hampshire granite, reclaimed ash and a custom bronze plaque honoring his father:

IN HONOR OF MY FATHER, RICHARD HASKELL, WHO TAUGHT ME THE VALUE OF GIVING BACK.

He had agonized over the wording. Now no one was discussing the bench, they were talking about him and his motives.

Over lunch, he called the Public Parks Department. “Can the comments be turned off on Nextdoor?”

The woman paused. ”...Sir, we don’t run Nextdoor.”

By afternoon, someone had posted a screenshot of the thread on Reddit. The screenshot then migrated to a local Facebook group concerned about community and public spaces.

That evening, one prominent poster asked if such public philanthropy was genuine generosity or self-branding.

Victor typed three different replies before deleting them all. His wife, Ellen, looked over her reading glasses as he backspaced, typed, and backspaced again.

“You know,” she said, “normal people don’t spend their anniversary reading comments from strangers.”

“They’re lying.”

“They don’t know you.”

“They’re acting like they do.”

“They always act like they do. Ignore it. Get off social media, it’s going to make you crazy. And by the way, we have a reservation at Giulia at 6.”

He wanted to tell her she didn’t understand. That this was about his dad. Instead, he refreshed the page and dug in deeper.

A week later, he returned to the Common wearing a Red Sox cap and wide-framed sunglasses. The bench was occupied, but not with the tourists admiring the plaque or families eating lunch as he had imagined. No, a tan elderly man, wisened by the sun, wearing paint-splashed work boots, sat alone, shredding the remains of a bagel for the flock of gathering pigeons.

Victor hung back and observed from a comfortable distance. The pigeons made short work of the crumbs and pecked at the man’s boots, demanding more.

The man ignored their plea, stood, stretched, and walked away as the birds fluttered up around him.

Staring at the empty bench from his vantage point, Victor realized that it looked like any other bench along the pathway. His just had a fresher coat of paint and the plaque that reflected the sun with purposeful intensity.

From the opposite direction a young woman in conversation with an older woman walking a golden retriever approached the bench.

Victor straightened his jacket.

The young woman’s hair was piled high in a feathery updo, and the conversation seemed unusually formal. At times, the younger woman gestured toward the bench as if discussing it. She also appeared to be recording the exchange on her smartphone, though Victor couldn’t be certain. He hated those things. They robbed people of the moment. Besides, he couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying. As unobtrusively as he could, he drifted closer, but just as he neared the pair, the young woman slipped her phone into her pocket, shook the older woman’s hand, gave the dog a perfunctory pat on the head, and the two parted ways.

Staring at his computer screen that evening, he saw that the thread had surpassed nine hundred comments.

People who Victor had never heard of said they had worked for his dad. One even said they were a former classmate.

There were others, too, that claimed to know people who knew. Everyone possessed a fragment of something, but no one had the whole story.

Late the following afternoon, Victor drove out to Belmont.

His father was fast asleep ina chair beside the window when the nurse led him into the room.

The old man opened his eyes. For a moment Victor thought there was recognition.

Instead, his father smiled politely. “Have we met?”

Victor nodded. “I built something for you,” he said.

His father looked out the window. “The birds are here early.”

Victor wanted to tell him they had been there a while and were getting ready to roost, but just smiled. He stayed another hour, but never mentioned the bench.

Driving home in the dying light as the shifting shadows and glints played with his sensibilities, he remembered being ten years old, riding beside his father in an old pickup. They had passed a weathered wooden bench outside a country church.

His father slowed the truck. “See that?”

Victor nodded.

“Been there forever. That’s where your mom used to put your booties on before going inside. You used to make such a racket. Wailing and red-faced as a beet. And then, after she tied the last lace, you’d become so quiet and still. Like a little angel. A good bench serves.”

He hadn’t thought about those words in forty years.

The following Saturday he returned to the Common just after sunrise.

The bronze plaque was gone. The outline remained along with four empty bolt holes that caught the early morning light at obtuse angles.

At first, Victor thought someone from the Parks Department removed it for a polishing, but it was just installed. That made no sense.

A young couple sat down with a loaded coffee cup carrier between them. A passing cyclist dismounted and used the other end of the bench to tie his shoe.

Victor watched life unfold. A woman in scrubs ate a pink- glazed donut and scrolled away on her cell phone while a father read to his daughter seated in a shaded stroller. The memory of his father was nowhere in the scene, but people were appreciating his gift.

Victor felt a pang of hunger and wanted one of the warm yeasty bagels he had come to enjoy at the newly opened bagel shop in Harvard Square. As he approached the arched gateway to the Common across from the golden horseshoe path commemorating Paul Revere’s historic ride, he saw the young woman with the updo. She was speaking quietly into her phone.

“...yeah, I think we have enough,” she said. “No, I’m not naming the account. That’s not the story.”

She listened and then sighed.

“T know. But it’s just a bench.”

She hung up and turned to face Victor, who was staring at her with fixated intensity. “Hello, can I help you?” she said calmly.

“Uhbhhh...” Victor fumbled. “Are you talking about the new bench in the park?”

“Yes, why? I’m a reporter. My name is Grace Chen, I work for WBUR,” she extended a hand, “and you are?”

“Victor, Victor Haskell.”

Grace’s face lit up. “I called your office a few times,” Grace said, “I’ve been trying to talk to you, but the woman I spoke with said you were off for the week and wouldn’t be checking your email. She also said you don’t have a cell phone.”

Victor smiled. “I lived without one, so far so good, why go changing? What can I do to help you?”

“We are trying to determine why there is such a viral tidal wave about the bench you donated to the park. At first it was mysterious and then we reached out to the poster— CantSitStill.”

“Who is it?” Victor interrupted.

Grace smiled demurely. “Tm sorry, I can’t disclose that,” she said. “But I can say it is a misunderstanding by someone from your father’s past who wasn’t aware of his current condition.”

Victor stood there, dumbstruck.

“Here,” she said, “here is my card.”

Victor took the card sheepishly and watched Grace walk off towards the subway station.

Two days later, Victor returned to the Common. Two young girls in pink taffeta dresses bounced Ken and Barbie dolls along the bench as their mothers hovered nearby, engaged in an ever- morphing, rapid-fire conversation.

“Did you see the piece on the stalker who harassed the guy who donated this bench?”

“Something about the stalker’s dad having worked for the donor’s dad and there was some bad blood over a real estate deal or something like that?”

“Yeah, and the reporter discovered that the whole deal was sabotaged by another party, and that the stalker had no idea that the father was in a memory care facility.”

“People are so silly,” the taller of the two said, shielding her from the sun that glinted off the sign Victor had so lovingly created.

this story also ran in the Whateverly Newsletter

“The Dink”

⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

What if a top tennis player faltered in their career and had to slum it on the pickleball circuit? That’s kind of the loose “Happy Gilmore”—esque concept behind this not quite pickled-enough comedy that stars Jake Johnson (“New Girl,” “Drinking Buddies”) as said fictional tennis star Dustin Boyd. Boyd is a one-time rival of real-life great Andy Roddick, but an injury means he now toils as a club pro. When he dips his toe into the pickleball waters he gets crushed by a pair of 70-year-old grannies — Dustin, known as “The Hammer” in his tennis heyday, doesn’t understand finesse or the parameters of the smaller court. Then there’s the heralded, anemic drop-shot of the title (which the film uses as a running gag until it is past tired).

As the might-have-been superstar trying to pivot, Johnson doesn’t quite have the bravado needed for the part. The ace serve here — the script’s written by “Kevin Can F*** Himself” scribe Sean Clements—comes in Dustin falling for an older woman (a pitch perfect Mary Steenburgen) who’s not so sure she’s attracted to her younger suitor. The May-December pairing does score points when the two sit down for a movie night “date” and watch “The Graduate” and Dustin, busts on the other Dustin for having a big nose (Johnson has a pretty protuberant proboscis himself).

Directed by Josh Greenbaum (“Strays”) and co-produced by Ben Stiller, who has a small part too, the flick built around a feeble flick shot does best when the Greek chorus of feisty Floridian nanas are taunting Dustin and Roddick — who plays himself ­— in a match where the winner claims the deed to the tennis club owned by Dustin’s dad (Ed Harris, poorly used here). Heckling, it turns out, is the crosscourt humor that saves this cinematic dink from busted string ruin and John McEnroe’s woefully wooden intonations.

“Motor City”

⭐⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Style over substance can be intoxicating — “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Sin City” — but does it satisfy? That’s the question served up here in this energetic actioner directed by Potsy Ponciroli (“Old Henry”) from a screenplay by Chad St. John (“Peppermint”) that’s set in 1970s Detroit during the reign of the muscle car.

To call “Motor City” a musical wouldn’t be wrong, but no one sings. In fact, it’s more a silent movie, with actors emoting wordlessly to power ballads from the era — “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers, Bowie’s “Putting Out Fire” and “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues among the many infectious, astutely curated throwbacks. It’s like the coolest music video from before there were music videos.

Also masterfully done are the sets and action sequences. What’s not so apex is the generic revenge arc of a love triangle — a gangster, his moll and the interloper she falls for. The gangster frames our hero, John Miller, performed by Alan Ritchson (“War Machine” and “Reacher”), a likeable actor perpetually playing characters who are little more than awkward slabs of beefcake. Sans dialogue, the lack of nuance becomes inescapable. What does work — besides retro cool vibe — is Boston-born actor Ben Foster as the smarmy gangster with the whole Detroit PD in his pocket and Shailene Woodley (“Divergent”) as the love interest. Lionel Boyce and Amar Chadha-Patel are also quite good as Miller’s loyal backups, but beside the novel approach, there’s not too much to get you revved up.

these reviews ran previously in the Cambridge Day

⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Christopher Nolan’s $250 million retelling of Homer’s classic sword-and-sandal epic is here. And it is also epic, with a nearly three-hour running time. The film delivers, if unevenly, but when the bow is strung and taut, “The Odyssey” flies with fury and purpose. Even though we know how the millennia-old story ends, there are plenty of surprises and moments of wonder.

The central conflict in “The Odyssey” is not battle. It’s a post-war saga centered on Odysseus’s 20-year trek home after the conclusion of the 10-year Trojan War — you know, the one over Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. Troy (in modern-day Turkey) was a strategic foothold and a gateway between the Aegean and Black seas — you could think of it as the Strait of Hormuz circa 1200 B.C.

Share

In their shared narrative, Homer and Nolan aren’t so concerned with the blood shed over land and prized hostages. “The Odyssey” is about the turmoil within its antihero as he struggles to fulfill his obligations to the gods, while trying to stay the agent of his own destiny. Odysseus bears the burden of his choices — the fate of his men, the downstream horrors of his military tactics and so on — while meanwhile, his wife Penelope, some 400 miles away in Ithaca, fends off lecherous suitors as the fate of their son, Telemachus, hangs in the balance.

That’s a lot to deal with without GPS to guide you, but there are the gods, and they see all. Odysseus, played with phlegmatic cool by a sculpted Matt Damon, is the keen strategist who engineered the Trojan Horse that led to the sacking of Troy and ended the war. He’s also an assured reasoner who believes he can outthink the gods, or find loose strings in oracle-bound prophecies that leave room for different results. Hubris, a central theme in many Greek myths, seals many fates here.

The plot is launched when Odysseus shoots out the eye of Cyclops and boasts about it. (Cyclops had gruesomely snacked on several of Odysseus’s detachment.) But it’s not a good idea to brag and tag when the bully you put down is the son of Poseidon, and you want to cross his watery realm to get home. And so the ire of the god of the sea catalyzes Odysseus’s long and circuitous trip. We learn from an undead Agamemnon and from Sinon, the soldier Odysseus sacrifices during the Trojan Horse ruse, that only Odysseus will live to see his native land. This is when Odysseus decides to bend fate to save his men and his soul, avoiding a whirlpool prophesied to take everyone but him, and opting for a strait where it is said six of his crew will be snatched from his boat’s deck by certain death.

“The Odyssey” is strongest when Odysseus is back on the shores of Ithaca and dressed as a beggar, gaining favor with his blind, loyal swineherder Eumaeus (an unrecognizable John Leguizamo) and plotting with his son (Spider-Man portrayer Tom Holland). They assess the mounting situation with his wife (a doe-eyed Anne Hathaway, who’s having a busy year with “Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Mother Mary”) and the loutish court of suitor bro-dom led by the manipulatively imperious Antinous (Robert Pattinson owning his character’s smarminess). It’s within the palace walls that the film registers the most intrigue and suspenseful tension.

Throughout the movie, there are flashbacks to the Trojan War that are epic in composition, brutal and stunning, though sometimes confusing and garbled. The ordeal of getting packed into the giant wooden horse and awaiting the pivotal siege is told from inside the uncomfortably cramped and waterlogged confines. Details of urinating and defecating are documented to the point of TMI — but these details make Nolan’s “Odyssey” more real and affecting than other retellings of the myth.

For the production, Nolan and frequent cameraman Hoyte van Hoytema (“Oppenheimer,” “Dunkirk”) shot the film entirely on IMAX cameras — the first film to do so, an impressive feat considering a rigged IMAX camera can weigh more than 200 pounds and makes a terrible clatter that often interferes with set sound and dialogue. I unfortunately did not see “The Odyssey” on an IMAX screen, and there are scenes, such as Cyclops’s lair and the sack of Troy, that I can only imagine are exponentially more stunning in Nolan’s intended format.

Nolan was inspired by Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation, which brings a greater female gaze to the patriarchal-leaning lore. And there are women at the forefront, at least more than any man not named Odysseus. Holed up in Ithaca, a resourceful Penelope uses both her charms and intellect to stave off the thuggish suitors — though the fear of male violence is noticeably etched on her brow. A compassionate Athena (Zendaya) lends counsel to the wandering Odysseus. The fiery vengeance of Clytemnestra (Lupita Nyong’o, who also plays her sister Helen) closes any argument about female passivity in this telling.

The cast is impressive, with diverse and intriguing choices. Take Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, seen almost entirely from the back of his head or in shrouded shadows; Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother, Helen’s husband, and military collaborator of Odysseus; or Elliot Page as the ill-fated Sinon. Charlize Theron plays Calypso, Odysseus’s stranded island lover for seven drug-induced years. Zendaya and Pattinson, who paired together earlier this year for the locally shot, dark rom-com, “The Drama,” get respectively lost in the flatness and bombast of their parts.

Samantha Morton is the film’s secret sauce as Circe, the witch whose neat culinary skills and incantations turn much of Odysseus’s crew into pigs: a rendering of who they are deep down inside, or that’s how she frames it with a bit of #MeToo ire. The big surprise is Leguizamo, as the swineherd, who delivers a deep, slow simmer of a performance, imbuing passion, grit, and vulnerability into the part that’s further informed by the character’s blindness. It’s a career-capping turn that should be remembered come awards season. The film ultimately hangs on Damon’s shoulders as a war-weary warrior haunted by the ghosts of his men and driven to atone and honor their souls.

Nolan’s quest to bring home the elusive essence of Homer’s sea-swept verses, propelled by human flaw and relentless perseverance, is a passion project whose earnestness you can feel frame by frame. The film doesn’t emerge from the gate on steady legs, but when it finds them, it can really run.

In the Trojan epic cycle, Homer’s “Odyssey” and “The Iliad” (Agamemnon’s saga) are just two of 10 narratives — by a half-dozen writers — that start with Paris’s abduction of Helen and end with the death of Odysseus. Since studios love franchises, maybe this is the beginning of the Homeric Universe?

the review above ran previously in the Cambridge Day

“Office Romance”

There’s plenty of turbulence — and even some flatulence — but few romantic sparks in this Jennifer Lopez showcase about a tough female CEO who gets involved with her corporate attorney. The rub is that the airline company, AirCruz, has a no-office-romance policy. It’s a fireable offense, so you’d think J.Lo’s hard-charging Jackie Cruz (she’s also a pilot) would have no problem tweaking the policy. But then where would the comedy go?

The answer doesn’t really matter since the romance between Jackie and her new, hot-shot attorney Daniel Blanchflower (Brett Goldstein), a relocated Englishman, is the least interesting thing in the movie. Goldstein’s buttoned-up Brit is best when in scenes with actors other than J.Lo, especially his sister (Jodie Whittaker, funny but underused), who’s in prison for beheading someone with a machete, or Sydney (Betty Gilpin, so good in “The Hunt”), the quirky and very pregnant number-two at AirCruz, who seemingly has a thing for Jackie and views Daniel as the enemy. Their frequent stare-downs are one of the better gags in “Office Romance,” as is Bradley Whitford (“Get Out”) as the boisterous lead counsel sidelined by a breakfast burrito. Wasted in smaller roles are Edward James Olmos as Jackie’s father, who started the airline, and Mary Wiseman as an office assistant with bad irritable bowel syndrome.

Goldstein and fellow “Ted Lasso” writer Joe Kelly (Goldstein also acts in the soccer series) throw everything and the kitchen sink into the script — the British use of the C-word, World Cup star Jude Bellingham, and sex play while dressed as a Buckingham Palace guard. Think “Notting Hill” by way of “American Pie.” It doesn’t fly, but there are a few chuckles along the taxiway of failed funnies.

⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Evil Dead Burn”

The reboot of the hyperactive horror-comedy series that Sam Raimi willed to life in the 1980s has lost much of the kitschy humor that was the series’ signature with the 2023 reboot, “Evil Dead Rise.” “Evil Dead Burn,” directed by Sébastien Vanicek (the 2023 French horror flick “Infested”), begins lakeside with a couple of amateur fishermen pulling up an animated and angry corpse. Later, a fiery car crash turns Will, a spoiled club owner (George Pullar), into another undead incarnation. We’re not sad to see him go because Will is cruel and volatile, especially with the women in his life. A heated and slightly physical argument with his French wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub, “Climax”) triggers the crash, but when the family gathers at Will’s parents’ house in the woods after the funeral, strange things happen even before the evil dead start appearing.

For one, Will’s posh and cosmopolitan club is oddly close to the lake in the middle of nowhere. The house itself is strangely both grand and squalid, as if Thurston and Lovey Howell moved into the Sawyers’ house from the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie. The mourners include Will’s little brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan), a writer unable to complete a book; his betrothed (Luciane Buchanan); mom (Tandi Wright); uber-mercurial pa (Erroll Shand); and batty nana (Maude Davey).

Davey and Shand nearly walk away with the film, but it hangs on Yacoub’s Alice. It seems the family blames her for much of their misery. Not much of it makes sense, and it gets bloody and violent fast. By the time the final reckoning comes, you’ll likely be exhausted from all the crash-bang beatdowns and the apex gore level — the frequent impalings and skull-bashing are not for the squeamish. The cool cult hit that Raimi fired up faded after “Army of Darkness” (1992). In these new reheats, there’s no swashbuckling yuckster (Bruce Campbell) to hang your hat on, just plenty of gruesome, soulless creeps — and yes, the shotgun and the chainsaw make an appearance. What’s next, “Evil Dead Melt”?

⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass”

David Wain, the guy who reinvented the teen sex comedy with 2001’s “Wet Hot American Summer” starring Paul Rudd, dives back into the irreverent and the horny with this adult sex comedy that’s not so sexy. The movie borrows heavily from “The Wizard of Oz,” creating a weird vibe. Imagine Dorothy on a quest to get a shagging from the Wizard. The premise has the titular Gail (Zoey Deutch), a hairdresser from Kansas (where else?) who’s to be married in two weeks, cruising the hills of Hollywood with the hope of a meet-cute hook-up with “Mad Men” star John Hamm. The reason: Gail has caught her fiancé, Tom (Michael Cassidy) exercising his “celebrity sex pass” — a free pass to sleep with a celebrity crush — boinking a very flexible Jennifer Aniston in town for a book reading.

Gail was already on her way to LA for a hairstyling contest — Tom’s hookup with Rachel from “Friends” just adds agency. And while there’s no yellow brick road, Gail has a merry band of misfits along for the adventure: Vincent, a passive-aggressive paparazzo played by Ken Marino, a frequent collaborator of Wain’s and a co-writer on the script; failed screenwriter Caleb (Ben Wang); and Kansas hairstyling bestie Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley). Also on hand is John Slattery as himself, who refers to himself as “the Slat Man.” Obstacles in Gail’s path to get even don’t include flying monkeys, but a series of hitmen and, at turns, “Gail Daughtry” gets quite violent and bloody — sometimes funny (a bullet that ricochets off a metal plate in a victim’s head and kills the shooter) but mostly not (a gory beatdown that leaves Gail looking like Carrie at the prom).

“Gail Daughtry” must be a bummer for Deutch, who was so full of pizazz and promise as Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater’s 2025 love letter to the French New Wave, “Nouvelle Vague.” Here her Dorothy never feels fully formed, nor is she that interesting. It’s not entirely her fault. Wain and Marino never hook onto anything that’s truly wild at heart — there’s no place to call home

⭐1/2 out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Questions of happiness and fulfillment take center stage in “The Invite,” a barbed comedy about a couple at a bitter crossroads in their marriage. Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen) are further challenged by their upstairs neighbors who, over the course of a single dinner, amplify every marital tension with passive-aggressive relish. Wilde, the actress who served notice as a filmmaker with the puckishly insightful “Booksmart” (2019), then faltered with the 2022 “Don’t Worry Darling,” gets back to her funny-not-funny roots with this adaptation of the 2020 Spanish film “The People Upstairs.”

The tart script by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones feels like it was written for the nuanced personalities of this cast. Seth Rogen centers the ensemble with his large and loud everyman, Joe, a failed musician who teaches music at a middling conservatory. Angela is a soul adrift. What defines them most as a couple — and holds them together — is their preteen daughter and their collective unease with their station in life. Bougie problems, to be sure, but palpable and real. They also haven’t had sex in nearly a year, and that’s why the dinner invite to the newish couple upstairs is such a loaded gambit. Joe wants to confront them about the raucous sex that keeps them up at night, while Angela admires the woman’s ability to have vigorous and vocal orgasms.

Share

Our expectation of the couple is set by the hosts as they busily arrange mounds of cheese and charcuterie. Joe has failed in his assignment to pick up the wine, protesting that he didn’t know they were having company. The upstairs couple arrives, relaxed and cool. Smooth and boyish Hawk (Edward Norton), a retired firefighter, seems far too comfortable in his own skin. His partner, Piña (Penélope Cruz), is a sultry firebrand whose leading questions would sound impertinent coming from anyone else.

It doesn’t take long for Hawk and Piña to hone in on the simmering tension between Joe and Angela, and the pair probes and widens the rift. The four consume mood-altering quantities of tequila and marijuana to assuage these uncomfortable moments, and about halfway through, there’s a reveal that, like the disclosure in “The Drama,” goes beyond the critics’ spoiler code limit. We won’t do you a dirty, but it puts Joe and Angela in a no-turning-back position. Much of the conversation from there out examines the benefits of various sex toys and positions.

The film’s roots as a stage play are evident, and still, Wilde keeps the camera moving with purposefulness. For such a contained set, “The Invite” has an energy and seamlessness that feel innate and natural, but the main reason that the frisky, First-World, mid-life crisis has any teeth is its cast and the material’s edgy irreverence. Rogen and Wilde carry the onus of the film but also embody the deeper, more vulnerable characters. Cruz approaches perfection as Piña, leveraging her therapist trappings to wheedle and pry — without malice, but still eviscerating — while Norton’s Hawk is a hang-back strategist, assessing the situation before wading into the fray.

The film begins with a quote from Oscar Wilde: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” It portends much for both couples, but most pointedly for Joe and Angela. Wilde assumed her own last name as a homage to the playwright — who, if alive today, might take a modicum of glee in his namesake’s messy marriage drama and its ribald debauchery.

a version of this review ran previously in the Cambridge Day

Happy 250th, ‘Merica, from Angel Studios, which brings us this founding father and first president origin story. We might not all be in the flag-waving mood, what with MMA on the South Lawn, war with Iran and ICE raids (though maybe that gets your patriotic fervor going), but this tells a chapter of Washington’s life you might not know, his early rise from Virginia surveyor to major of a militia detachment under British command.

The time is the 1750s, a quarter-century before Washington will take command of the rebel army on the Cambridge Common. The young patriot-to-be, played by William Franklyn-Miller with bland stiffness (perhaps requisite to the role), is tasked with a reconnaissance mission in the Ohio River Valley, where the French are busily erecting forts and laying land claims. Washington and his unprepared troops get their tricorn hats handed to them.

Share

The French, aided by Indigenous warriors, had already adopted guerrilla tactics — shooting from the wooded hills at the red coats lined up in the meadow below waiting to engage in “proper battle.” Washington serves as an advisor to General Braddock (Andy Serkis), the British commander brought in to clean up the brink-of-war mess. Washington warns him of the new way of warfare in the New World, but Braddock’s hubris and dismissiveness ultimately spark the French and Indian War of 1754-1763, and the cocksure tactician’s own demise.

The movie is neither as jingoistic nor Christian-leaning as the family values studio’s earlier projects, “Sound of Freedom” (2023), “Cabrini” (2024) and this year’s “David.” There’s no triumphant payoff to “Young Washington.” It more illustrates the budding resolve of the man who would later cross the Delaware and become page one in United States lore. It’s interesting and informative history, but not great filmmaking — the dialogue’s stilted, the acting at times is hyperbolic and the directional timing is off.

The best line comes from Half-King Tanacharison (Ryan Begay), leader of a small band of Seneca warriors who embed with Washington for that ill-fated recon mission but refuse to re-up, telling Washington, “When you are finished killing each other we will reclaim our land.” In the mix in small parts are veteran actors Ben Kingsley (Virginia’s lieutenant governor), Mary-Louise Parker (George’s mom) and Kelsey Grammer (Lord Fairfax). As the end credits roll, Grammer, out of costume, pleads with viewers to make “Young Washington” the number one movie in America by scanning a QR code to “pay it forward” — buy a ticket so some other American can saunter in for free and learn some history adjacent to the ongoing semiquincentennial celebration. A big ask, given the new Spielberg movie, Minions and “Toy Story 5.”

the review above ran previously in the Cambridge Day

An impressive A-list cast and some astonishing visuals get wasted in this fatuous fantasy from one of the more interesting minds behind the camera these days — Julian Schnabel, the painter turned filmmaker who delivered such arty provocations as “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007) and “Basquiat” (1996). The film, based on the 2002 book of the same name by Nick Tosches, is a maniacal mashup of historical icons and modern noir. As a writer. Tosches hovered in the realm of gonzo journalism (best known for his vivid Jerry Lee Lewis biography, “Hellfire”) and made himself the centerpiece of “In the Hand of Dante,” as a writer tasked by the mob to unearth, ascertain and validate the original 14th century copy of Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”

Share

The reliable Oscar Isaac plays both Nick and Dante in the two timelines. The former is recruited by a heavy named Joe Black (an underused John Malkovich) and partnered with an oafish hitman (Gerard Butler with a bad dye job) for the paper chase that naturally leads them to Italy (from Jersey to Rome with love). Along the way Butler’s beefy takes out nearly everyone they come into contact with including an elderly woman who does little more than serve them tea, a priest and even a sleeping dog.

Much of the film is stunningly shot in stark black and white by Roman Vasyanov (“Fury”), though there are switches to color when Dante is scouring the Italian coastline seeking enlightenment and inspiration. The film’s driven by a lot of pretentious dialogue about the value and vision of the central document and boasts a body count that requires at least two sets of hands. Most alluring, however, is the casting of Martin Scorsese — hardly recognizable behind a Papa Smurf beard as a religious oracle named Isaiah — and Al Pacino as Nick’s uncle Carmine. The bigger spectacle is Butler pulling double duty as the pope himself and Jason Momoa as yet another hitman in a pristine white suit, who’s saddled with some of the most preposterous and inanely philosophical lines in the film. Gal Gadot adds an angelic presence but is lost in the underwritten role of Nick’s secretary cum love interest. She also takes another one for the team as Dante’s spurned wife, Gemma. At two-and-a-half hours, “In the Hand of Dante” should have been leaner and more tightly honed. It probably could have leaned in more on Tosches’ gonzo sensibilities, as well. For the normally visionary Schnabel, this is his “Megalopolis” (2024).

Streaming on Netflix

“Little Brother”

I like John Cena, I really do. His turns as Peacemaker in “ The Suicide Squad ”
(2021) and accompanying TV series convinced me of his comic timing, but since
then, the big strapping lad from the North Shore seems to have gone overboard
on the laugh-fare diet, jumping in on such forgettable pink-filler as “ Ricky
Stanicky ” (2023) and “ Jackpot ” (2024). Both were unnecessary, as is this lowbrow ditty from Matt Spicer, who showed promise with “ Ingrid Goes West ” (2017) but serves up a chump-and-dump here.

The concept has Cena as a New York City realtor, Rudd Landry, vying to be top dog on a real estate reality TV show. He’s got serious sibling rivalry issues with big brother Josh (Christopher Meloni) who’s more successful (a hedge fund hero) and more comfortable in his skin. Then there’s little bro Marcus (comedian Eric André) — clearly not Rudd’s biological brother, but a pairing from the do-good Big Brother-Little Brother program (I’m a proud alum) when Rudd was a young man and wanted to amass some Good Samaritan brownie points.

Rudd and Marcus have been absent in each others’ lives for some time. Rudd’s married (Michelle Monahan) with two boys, while Marcus is in a mental health facility. Fate and a few encouraging emails bring Marcus to Rudd’s front door where a raucous ménage à trois becomes the inflection point. For the most, the oft nude Marcus is nonchalantly crass, demurely unapologetic and somehow likable — or so that’s how the TV runners (Ego Nwodim and Caleb Hearon, perfect as the silver-lining tandem of ratings, ratings, ratings!) want to package him. And while André’s Marcus does much outrageousness — using a public golf course sprinkler as a bidet — there’s a calm, amicable demeanor to him even while he’s explaining things too risque for a community publication. On the other side of the house, Cena is dutiful
enough as the frustrated curmudgeon who needs to look inward in order to move
forward. The film’s shortcomings aren’t in the performances but the punchless
material that’s fixated on anything in and around the butt cheeks.

Streaming on Netflix

some of the material above ran previously in the Cambridge Day

The setting is wondrous, including a local artist’s glass sculpture. And the food was just wow!

The bar at the new Urban Hearth location in Inman Square features a constellation of suspended glass leaves hand blown by local artisan Andrew Iannazzi.

Urban Hearth, Erin Miller’s intimate 24-seat bistro in North Cambridge, closed at the end of May in preparation for its move to Inman Square. Its stylish new space has more than double the seating capacity but has not lost the sense of having your own personal chef.

You enter through the glass garage doors that were a symbol of the previous occupants, the Turing Tavern and (for 17 years) the fine-dive stalwart Bukowski’s. But now the bar area has been sculpted into a posh marble bar top and an adjacent six-seat tasting table (Urban Hearth in North Cambridge had no bar, just a four-seat tasting counter). Above the bar floats a constellation of suspended glass leaves hand blown by local artisan Andrew Iannazzi, a wondrous effect. The street side space by those glass doors has been transformed into a lounge area with a Tangiers coffee house vibe to it. The rest of the dining area is open, yet dark and warm — the intimate atmosphere made the trip to Inman.

Share

The menu remains focused on the seasonal bounties of the Atlantic Ocean and our local farms. I breathed a sigh of relief to see the signature laminated buttermilk biscuit is still on the slate. It may be even more heavenly. The housemade smoked maple miso butter is as always the draw, but I swear the biscuit is now fluffier, more airy and layered — a near hybrid of a biscuit and a puff pastry. It’s an addictive starter — get your own, don’t share — and a must-eat for any true Urban Hearth experience, be it your first or 41st time.

Of the menu’s shareable offerings, I was tantalized by the squash blossom crepes with whipped white bean puree, tempura fried garlic scapes (the necks that sprout from the allium bulb) and savory summer squash and bacon brûlée with peach salsa. But I’m all about the crustacean in these summer months and opted for the Maine lobster with elderflower vinaigrette and brown butter. The delicately poached medallions of tender lobster meat accented with the subtle essence of that tangy vinaigrette and bold richness of the butter make it a dish that is just “wow.” The best way to enjoy it is to savor it — but that requires patience and I found it difficult to hold back on this delectable meal.

Larger dishes include pastas — a cavatelli and a rigatoni — and a BBQ duck breast — lean and rare with a cherry reduction. I’m a duck person — the rich, flavorful meat hardly ever disappoints — and it killed me to pass on it, but again, ’tis the season of the sea and the pescatarian offerings at Urban Hearth — a dry aged striped sea bass and grilled mackerel with green crab curry — pulled hard on my selection sensibilities. The mackerel intrigued me in part because the invasive green crab has been embraced by local chefs (others include those at Pagu and Moëca) as a sustainable-leaning menu ingredient. But I picked the dry aged sea bass.

The bass came thick, moist and flaky, served just above room temperature with a beautifully crisped skin and plated in a broth of hearty tarragon lime butter with smoked trout roe. Dry aging — done more commonly with steak — is the process of letting the meat, or fish, hang (or sit) exposed in a controlled environment to dry out, allowing enzymes and fat to naturally break down and add flavor to the meat. The bass I had was different in texture than a sautéed or grilled steak, but I’m not sure I would have noticed the difference without being told. The filet was impressively consistent in texture and the crispy skin with its rich rendered layer of fat atop the tender white meat offered a subtle accent, as did the combo of tarragon butter and trout roe at the bottom of the bowl. As you flake the arrangement apart, the individual elements — skin, butter, roe and fish — commingle and the forking of the olio brings new meaning and flavors that are something else than your initial bites, which are more singular and pure.

It’s a pretty impressive journey for Miller and the Hearth, which began humbly as a catering service before its dine-in, toe-in-the-water experimentation that quietly caught fire with its personal, local approach. As with all dining establishments Urban Hearth had to endure the devastation of COVID, but once on the other side, Miller and her eatery became one of just eight establishments on this side of the Charles to be cited in last year’s Northeast Michelin guide. Now with the move to the larger space in Inman, we see the next stage of an expanding vision.

The new Urban Hearth is grander but still intimate. The staff are excellent — you’d be hard pressed to have a more interactive, informative and friendly dining experience, except perhaps if you joined Miller at the tasting table for an eight to 12-course meal ($190), where she makes off-the-menu tapas-sized items while you watch.

I generally pass on dessert, but on my Inman Square visit, there was a smoked vanilla ice cream that for me — a rabid fan of malted vanilla and Häagen-Dazs vanilla bean — was a must extend (my stomach) and a worthy foray for its creamy richness. The smoked aspect was more accent than feature, and the dish came with a crown of dipping wafers that were more waffle-like than cookie solid.

Miller will maintain the Mass. Ave. location as a catering outpost but hopes to transform it into something new — a more casual dine-in spot, or even a casual pop up. Special eats like their fried chicken and tiki bar excursions? I am culinarily curious.

Urban Hearth
1281 Cambridge St., Inman Square

$$$$

some of the content above ran previously in the Cambridge Day

“Leviticus”

Nothing like a homophobic township with the power of God behind it to execute a modern version of the “Crucible,” complete with supernatural manifestations.
Adrian Chiarella’s directorial debut depicts two teens who are tormented for who
they are by the usual posse of bullies, as well as a supernatural manifestation.

We meet the boyishly naive Naim (Joe Bird) and edgier Ryan (Stacy Clausen) as
two kids exploring an abandoned mill. They get to horsing around, trading
punches and falling to the ground in a violent bear hug that quickly relaxes into a
loose hug and ultimately a kiss. There it is, they’re rebel lovers going against the
grain in the deeply religious rural Australian town where they live.

Share

Naim later witnesses Ryan intimately grappling with another classmate, Hunter
(Jeremy Blewitt). Jealous, Ryan tells the town’s pastor (Ewen Lesley), who
happens to be Hunter’s dad. What ensues is an exorcism performed by a “deliverance preacher” (Nicholas Hope) brought in to force the gay out of the lads
(Naim’s mom, Mia Wasikowska of “Alice in Wonderland,” forces him to endure
the ritual because he’s too close to Ryan).

It seems hokey at first, but the brief fire and brimstone rite unleashes a personal
demon that torments each boy in isolation, by taking the form of the person each
boy desires most (Naim for Ryan, and vice versa). Lust is its lure, bloodlust its
mission. It’s a frightening change that no one else can see, and it leads to terrible
ends first for a young woman and then for Hunter. Yet somehow, their bullying
classmates manage to be worse.

The film’s title refers to the Bible’s third book, which contains Old Testament laws defining sin, purity and sexual conduct that some use to condemn homosexuality.

The small-town dwellers are shepherded into an angry horde by Hope’s outsider.
The performances by Bird and Clausen are pivotal, and the rest of the ensemble
are also strong. But the characters of Naim and especially Ryan feel
underdeveloped. The supernatural element also is wispy. The message,
however, is not. Chiarella creates effective eerie and edgy moments. He’s
another budding horror auteur like Kane Parsons (“Obsession”) and Curry Baker
(“Backrooms”), who know how to craft mood and scene beyond their years, but
have room to grow to conjure spirit and soul.

“Masters of the Universe”

’80s vibes are in the air — and in your ear — in this overly long return of He-Man, a Mattel action figure set turned franchise. The 1987 take on “Masters” starred Dolph Lundgren and was cheesy, brash and dull with lo-fi effects (unlike “Flash Gordon” (1980), which brazenly reveled in its kitsch). The current version is directed by Travis Knight (“Kubo and the Two Strings” (2016), “Bumblebee” (2018)). It shows some ingenuity early on but by the end redounds with subpar crash-bang mindlessness. At a nearly two-and-a-half hour running time, the film could have used some paring in the editing room, or a bit more spice in the script department (five writers are credited).

Because as He-Man/Adam, Nicholas Galitzine (“Red, White & Royal Blue”) strikes a nice balance of hunky and goof — think Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord or Chris Hemsworth as Thor in the Marvel Universe. After the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto, who seems minted for these parts) overthrows the kingdom of Eternia, the young Prince Adam is sent to Earth via a time/space portal. In tow is the Sword of Power (you gotta love these witty, high-brow labels). Naturally, Skeletor needs the sword to rule the — well, you know, universe. Adam loses the sword and gets a job as a corporate wonk, which he spends on the internet searching for the hefty, double-edge sword. Cheekily, his pronouns are He-Him, and he’s also on the HR watch list (Sasheer Zamata hits it out of the park as Adam’s passive-aggressive higher up) for using company resources for his “weird,” role-play obsession. He’s a little too candid about his origins (Superman knew better); when he tells a date about Eternia and the sword they head to the bathroom and never come back.

The banal life on Earth is the kitschy, fun part of “Masters of the Universe.” When Adam does find the sword and he’s back on Eternia trying the save the decimated planet from Skeletor, who Leto projects as a Snidely Whiplash with a tang of Jeremy Irons, interest wanes despite Knight’s efforts to crank it up. In the mix is the ever-regal Idris Elba as Duncan, a former Sergeant-at-Arms turned booze hound, and Camila Mendes as his daughter — and able avenger. Lots to like but it all goes on too long. Nice touches are a cameo by the still-jacked Lundgren and the reuse of Queen’s “Princes of the Universe” from the original “Highlander” film (1986).

some of the content above ran previously in the Cambridge Day

The steak frites at Lulu Green.

Funky alternative restaurants like Grasshopper in Allston and Veggie Galaxy in Central Square were serving plant-based meats long before Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat found their way onto supermarket shelves. But for those looking to jump into this niche market, entry isn’t easy. The owners of True Bistro, the vegetarian restaurant in Teele Square, closed their well-regarded eatery after the pandemic, citing the struggle to stay profitable despite strong demand. The last time I was at Saus, a vegetarian eatery in Bow Market, and tried to order their hearty Somerville Dip (meatless short rib au jus), I was told it was temporarily out of stock because the plant-based meat substitute supplier, Tender Food, was having supply and business issues. More recently, Clover made news when it shuttered, and then promptly re-opened, under new ownership. The market for plant-based meat has grown in recent years, propelled by people who see the products as a healthier option or a way to lessen the environmental toll of meat production.

Share

So folks in Kendall Square should rejoice in the recent opening of Lulu Green, which moved into the storefront that was formerly PlantPub — a similar concept that specialized in meatless fried chicken and vegetarian pizzas. The new vegetarian eatery leans toward Mexican (tacos, burritos) and Korean (sweet chili sauces) dishes, with strong Lebanese and Middle Eastern accents. It’s a clean, open space with an ample, shaded outdoor patio offering a picturesque view of Henri A. Termeer Square, home to the Kendall Square Farmers Market and Skate @ Canal District Kendall.

The menu is diverse with standard and not-so-standard salads and bowls (quinoa, sweet potato and broccoli, Mediterranean and Vietnamese noodles with crispy chicken), lemony lentil soup, and a mezze trio. Lulu Green serves acai bowls and meatless burgers every which way — including a double smash burger. But my eyes and appetite locked onto the “Chef Signatures” menu, namely the Korean barbecue-glazed mushroom short rib burrito. If that sounds like a mouthful, it is, and a delightfully delicious one. The marinated shrooms were surprisingly meaty, and the sweet-and-spicy barbecue sauce played well with the rice. Kimchi and pickled onions added some pucker.

The eatery’s flagship staple is the maple hot wings, seitan wings glazed with maple hot. The maple hot barbecue sauce is thick and tangy — but not really hot. The plate came with lightly pickled carrot and celery sticks and a side of Lulu ranch for dipping. I stumbled upon a happy surprise on the appetizer lineup: Korean beef lettuce wraps. The gochujang-glazed seitan was pleasingly chewy, with a carpaccio-like texture, and the glaze, like the Korean short rib, was perfectly tangy and more sweet than spicy. This plate also came with mild kimchi, shredded carrots, and chopped peanuts. The wraps reminded me of the loc lak wraps (Cambodian-style, beef stir fry) that Elephant Walk served in its Porter Square days.

The other popular item that seemed to fly across the counter was the tacos al pastor — seitan, grilled pineapple, sumac onions, and avocado with cilantro crema. Three come in an order, arranged upright on a metal taco rack for eating with minimal mess. I didn’t try them because — incited by the Day’s 2024 article about Mooji’s plant-based rib-eye — I have been wildly curious about the taste of plant-based steak — and lo and behold, the “Chef Signatures” section boasted steak frites. The “meat,” sourced from Chunk Foods, a supplier that’s been in the plant-based meat biz since 2020, arrived looking too well-formed and symmetrical, reminding me of the Swanson Salisbury steaks I had as a child. But once I cut into the slab, crowned with a glorious, green mound of zhoug, a Middle Eastern spicy cilantro sauce, the crosscut looked genuinely like meat. Not that it really mattered, because what’s ultimately important is how it tastes and feels in your mouth — and to that end, the moo-less meat was clean, lean and satisfyingly juicy, without any grain or grizzle. The zhoug was a perfect addition too, a bite of spice and peppery greenness — think of it as a subtle pesto with a zing. The accompanying truffle fries that filled out the plate were plump and fluffy, but it was the perfectly formed triangle of meatless meat that made the meal.

Lulu has a weekend brunch menu that features a taco, a seitan asada with scrambled plant eggs, guacamole, and hot sauce. There’s also an omelette du jour, a “meatball” shakshuka, and gluten-free pancakes. Lulu’s is looking to add beer and wine soon, and they already have an impressive slate of smoothies — the mango sunrise is an addictive, fruity slurp — and artisanal spritzers.

Open midmorning to early evening, Lulu’s is an excellent fast-fine addition to the Kendall Square culinary landscape, and one that fills a dietary niche not well-covered in the area. It’s a tasty, socially conscious alternative that delivers for both traditional vegetarians (who never needed meatless meat, because they were already meatless) and carnivores seeking to move on from meat without losing something juicy and meaty to bite into.

this article ran previously in the Cambridge Day