‘Splitsville’ (2025)
It was meant to be a pleasant couples’ retreat. Married couple Carey and Ashley (co-writer Kyle Marvin and Adria Arjona of “Andor”) are en route to the beach house of their friends Paul and Julie (director Michael Angelo Covino and “Materialists” star Dakota Johnson) for a relaxing weekend of sailing and pottery making. Things take a turn when a near-death experience on the highway prompts Ashley to ask abruptly for a divorce (well, maybe not “abruptly,” as she produces a letter she’s been workshopping for at least a month from under the car seat). Distraught, Carey exits the vehicle and proceeds on foot, wandering through forest and marsh before collapsing at his friends’ house. Paul and Julie offer comfort, but also the secret to their own marriage: They’ve agreed to an open relationship, pursuing sexual kicks outside the home while providing for each other emotionally. Still reeling from grief, Carey promptly takes the opportunity to hook up with Julie … and things go downhill from there.
“Splitsville” has the makings of a closed-quarters slamming-doors farce, but its aims go beyond a simple four-person sex comedy. Covino and Marvin allow their characters to spiral out for months, exploring nearly every possible permutation of their premise and leading to some hysterical set pieces. Carey’s initial admission of guilt to Paul gives way to an extended slap fight for the ages, in which both prove themselves to be surprisingly able combatants (while still possessing the physical limitations of men in their 40s). Later, Carey negotiates a truce with Ashley by suggesting they open up their own marriage, only to passive-aggressively befriend each of her boy-toys, turning their apartment into a sort of halfway home for wayward himbos (they even start a movie club, enjoying some old-fashioned male bonding over “Lorenzo’s Oil” on DVD). Needless to say, each of our leads makes some truly terrible decisions, and those without a taste for cringe comedy may find themselves squirming in their seats. Crucially, though, Covino and Marvin truly care about their characters, and we find ourselves rooting for them to somehow find happiness and sort out their increasingly dysfunctional personal lives. Underneath all the manipulation, gratuitous male nudity and uncomfortable sing-alongs to The Fray there’s a genuine streak of optimism. We may all pray we never end up in “Splitsville,” but it’s a very funny place to visit.
At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge.
‘55’ (2024)
The young star of this new Indian action thriller played by Rizwan Shaikh doesn’t have a name – or if he does, he doesn’t know it. He’s part of a gang of teenage pickpockets running the streets and train stations of Mumbai, each assigned a number by their soft-spoken yet cruel master (Bollywood star Emraan Hashmi). Our hero, as you guessed, is 55, the de facto leader of the pickpocket youths, who’s developed a conscience recently. He pockets the ID cards of his victims and later peers through their windows, both out of guilt over lives ruined and envy of lives he’ll never have. When one of his marks commits suicide, 55 takes it upon himself to provide for the daughter Uma by moving into the apartment next door and donating a portion of his ill-gotten gains to pay off her dowry. It works well until, inevitably, 55’s life on the streets catches up with him.
The setup for “55” is straight out of Dickens. And like Dickens, the pathos is occasionally heavy-handed. Shaikh is an immensely talented young actor; we feel 55’s anguish through Shaikh’s emotive face. His relationship with Uma (newcomer Dhanshree Patil) is genuine and sweet, and the film’s most lovely passages find the young sorta-couple bonding under neon and moonlight. The film also sails on the suspensefully choreographed and thrilling robbery sequences, as our posse of pickpockets careen through packed marketplaces and subway cars. “55” was released originally in 2020, but is only now arriving stateside thanks to producer Ridley Scott. It’s a reminder that some of the best action cinema is being made far from Hollywood (see “RRR”), and of the gems to be found among the regular Indian programming at Cambridge’s Apple Cinemas.
At Apple Cinemas Cambridge, 168 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge Highlands near Alewife and Fresh Pond.
‘Caught Stealing’ (2025)
Harvard grad Darren Aronofsky has had a mercurial career behind the lens, to say the least. He slid into view in 1998 with the lo-fi mathematical sci-fi thriller “Pi” and knocked it out of the park with “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Wrestler” (2008) and “Black Swan” (2010), but since then, his labors have been curious wanderings and strange changeups – take “Noah” (2014), the J-Law passion project “Mother!” (2017) or “The Whale” (2022) starring a puffed-up Brendan Fraser. “Caught Stealing” continues that streak, with an exemplary cast in great gritty NYC dustups that are also over the top and make little sense. We’ve got the handsome hunk Hank (Austin Butler, “Elvis”), a could-have-been major league baseball phenom who had a bad car crash that messed up his knee and his life; his compassionate, take-no-shit girlfriend (Zoe Kravitz); and Russ (Matt Smith, “Doctor Who”) a full-on punk with a bad attitude and a cat that bites (folks at The Brattle, note this for future feline film fests). It’s 1990-something in the film – I’ll say 98, because that’s when “Pi” came out and aspects of Jewish lore and tradition also find their way in here – and punk rock is still the rage; cellphones are flips without pix. Russ needs to go home to England to look after his ailing father. He leaves the cat with Hank, and the next thing you know the Russian mafia is giving Hank a beatdown, thinking he knows the whereabouts of Russ’ key and whatever it grants access to: cash, drugs, it doesn’t much matter. Two Hasidic Jewish assassins (Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber) are on Hank’s tail too, and there’s the cop on the case (Regina King) who’s a bit of a wild card. The script, by Charlie Hudson from his novel, has some goofy gangster trappings, but no character to bite into. Even more unrecognizable than D’Onofrio and Schreiber as the goons after the goy is Griffin Dunne of “After Hours” (1985) as the hippie biker owner of a bar that Hank works at. (Tom Meek)
At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge; at Apple Cinemas Cambridge, 168 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge Highlands near Alewife and Fresh Pond; and AMC Assembly Row 12, 395 Artisan Way, Assembly Square, Somerville.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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.
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