Film Ahead is a weekly column highlighting special events and repertory programming for the discerning Camberville filmgoer. It also includes capsule reviews of films that are not feature reviewed. 

Local focus

This week at The Brattle Theatre it’s all about the work of revered filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu, who will be in town for a retrospective of his works including his latest, “Monster,” about two socially disenfranchised schoolboys looking to find a foothold in life without pain and pressure. The celebration bringing the director to Boston from Japan is the culmination of a collaboration between The Brattle, Independent Film Festival Boston and the Chlotrudis Film Society, celebrating its 30th year of adoration for small-budget independent and international films.

Kore-eda’s films are tight, intimate character studies that move from the quotidian to just outside the bounds of society and even surreality, like many of the films of South Korea’s Bong Joon Ho. On the warmup to “Monster” are “After Life” (1998), the film that put Kore-eda on the map as a filmmaker to watch with its piquant premise of having to choose just one memory to carry with you throughout eternity, and “Still Walking” (2008), in which emotive undertones shade a family gathering. Keeping with the family theme is “Shoplifters” (2018), about a clan who lives modestly and exists off the activity of the film’s title – not so far off from the struggling family in Bong’s award-winning “Parasite” (2019).

On the slightly darker side is “Broker” (2022) in which a young mother discovers a scheme to sell unwanted children to affluent families, and “Air Doll” (2009), based on the manga series about a life-size blow-up doll (Bae Doona) who develops feelings and a conscience and falls in love with a video store clerk – the film would make the perfect double bill with “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007).

It’s an incredible lineup that captures the filmmaker well despite missing what I consider to be essential Kore-eda: the based-on-a-true-story “Nobody Knows” (2004), about children living without adult supervision. (You can stream it on AMC or IFC.) The films play between Friday and Sunday. See The Brattle website for the films Kore-eda will present with a Q&A. The Chlotrudis award ceremony that honors Kore-eda on Sunday is a ticketed event that is open to the public.

Some say the box office success of “Jaws” (1975) and “Star Wars” (1977) marked the beginning of the end for the New Hollywood movement in American cinema, with studios pushing for bigger budgets and built-in, ready-made target audiences. In short, creativity was muffled for bean counting. That gives a modicum of irony to the week’s New Hollywood Retro Replay on Tuesday at the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema being that Steven Spielberg-directed film about a massive shark munching on vacationers along the shores of a fictionalized Long Island isle (it was shot on Martha’s Vineyard). In narrative and composition, the film remains a timeless cinematic jewel due mostly to the rich play between Robert Shaw’s Ahab-esque shark hunter, Roy Scheider’s sheriff who can’t swim and Richard Dreyfuss’ idealist marine biologist, all coming at the crisis from different angles. It’s their chemistry – not the giant animatronic shark known as Bruce – that remains the heart and soul of the film, as evidenced by, and culminated in, the recounting of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis by Shaw’s Quint. It’s a chilling monologue that owns the screen even decades later. The inclusion of the film makes for an apt if bittersweet bookend to the movement’s celebration. But “Jaws” in March?

The Somerville Theatre kicks off two long programs: “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” and “Smooth Cinema: Films with the Yacht Rock Sound.” The former is sculpted around hardboiled crime dramas and pairs classic noirs (despite being named after Steve Martin’s funny 1982 genre homage). The double bills start Monday with “This Gun for Hire” (1942), starring Veronica Lake, Robert Preston and Alan Ladd in Frank Tuttle’s frame-up and revenge thriller; and more Ladd and Lake in “Glass Key” (1942), the adaptation of the similarly titled Dashiell Hammett novel about a crooked pol and an angling gangster. As for that yacht rock, just expect all your films will have a 1970s-to-1980s soft-rock vibe. First up is Martin and Michael Caine in the swindler-got-swindled comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988) on Thursday.

In theaters and streaming

‘Ricky Stanicky’ (2023)

Brotherly filmmaker splits have not yielded tandem-topping results. I’ll cite Joel Coen’s last effort, “Drive-Away Dolls,” an inert, forced comedy still playing in theaters, and this shameless throwback from Peter Farrelly of “Dumb and Dumber” (1994) Farrelly brothers fame. That said, brother Pete did win the Best Picture Oscar for “Green Book,” his 2018 true-life depiction of a Black musician (Mahershala Ali) and his white chauffeur (Viggo Mortensen) trekking through the Civil Rights-era South. Let’s call it lightning in a bottle and move on to this wannabe. It’s not unreasonable to wonder if “Dumb and Dumber” or “There’s Something About Mary” (1998) could be made today. In spirit, perhaps, but not as was. “Stanicky” revolves around a trio of childhood friends (“High School Musical” star Zac Efron, Andrew Santino and Jermaine Fowler) who as kids deflect responsibility for a Halloween house fire by blaming it on the fictional person of the film’s title. As adults living in the same Rhode Island city (Providence, ostensibly, though the film was shot in Australia) they keep the notion of Stanicky alive so they can leave their wives and significant others to have male-bonding getaways. On one such trek to Atlantic City they encounter an alcoholic stage performer named Rod (John Cena) who does jerk-off renditions of hits by Peter Frampton, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol and Boy George in equally sophomoric costumes. The 14-year-old boy inside you will chuckle uncomfortably, but that’s not the film’s biggest sin. Cena’s broken-but-not-bowed Ron gets hired by the trio to play Stanicky at a circumcision (don’t ask). Where the film goes off key is the indulgent over-entitlement of wealthy bankers Dean (Efron) and JT (an edgy Santino) versus the sad jokes that befall their semi-employed third, Wes (Fowler) who is Black and gay – there’s one scene in which catching tossed nuts at a party is a thing, and when a way-off-the mark “nuts in the mouth” joke arrives it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. That said, Cena, so good and self-deprecating in the TV series “Peacemaker,” does more of that goofy, nice guy/bad guy work here. He’s the epicenter of the film and a guilty pleasure to watch even if the schtick goes on too long. The affable Willam Macy is a decent add as the head of a financial management firm, but the film plays out in two halves and the second one is simply begging, boring and often in bad taste. On Amazon Prime Video.

“Escape” (2023)

Two young women vacationing on a resort island (hello “Infinity Pool”) are kidnapped by a criminal organization that sex trafficks women to overseas clientele. One of the pair happens to be a prominent British socialite (Sarah Alexander Marks), and once locked up in a cell with about a dozen other lithe, young blondes, the lot comes together to hatch a scheme to break free. That includes enticing their captors with the lure of sexual favors, an impromptu repurposing of beer and wine bottles and other techniques of retaliation that made Lorena Bobbitt a household name a few decades back. In various waves the women do get free, and the baddies led by Sean Cronin – who’s been a henchman or heavy in many a film, big and small – take after them as a long, bloody game of cat and mouse plays out among the craggy desert grottos on the Canary Islands. Directed by lo-fi genre filmmaker Howard J. Ford (“The Ledge,” “Never Let Go”), the flick plays like “Revenge” (2017) or “The Bad Batch” (2016) on a reduced budget – limited locales, less acting chops (though the imprisoned actresses do quite well) and a wooden script, putting it on par with the Andy Sidaris movies of the ’80s such as “Picasso Trigger.” If the film has a sheen of exploitation (it is about trafficking, right?), Ford makes sure he sets us straight; not only are the women taken against their will and imprisoned, but many are haunted by domestic traumas that they leverage for strength. The awkward flashbacks are a tad overused, but much in this rote, straight-ahead actioner is overwrought and rises seldomly above the two-dimensional. For rent or purchase on various streaming services.

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Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.