“Crime 101”
Bart Layton’s neo-noir crime drama has a killer cast draped in a B-movie sheen. The aloof antihero is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), who executes precise jewelry heists. Mike knows every detail of the courier or shop he’s knocking over and every job is done within a mile of LA’s 101 freeway, hence the name, shared with Don Winslow’s novella from which the movie is adapted.
Layton seamlessly weaves divergent threads that might otherwise have meandered. We meet Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a detective who vexes his department head by pursuing justice and truth instead of closing cases, and Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), an insurance investigator who also is up against it with her corporate hierarchy. Berry could have given her character the pop, sizzle and verve of Vicki Anderson (Fay Dunaway) in the brilliant 1968 version of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Berry instead plays Sharon as a woman who was once all that but has been worn down by sexism, misogyny and promises broken.
Still, she’s good at her job. So is Mike. Astute at assessing risk, he turns down the next job from his handler (Nick Nolte), who pitches it to Orman (Barry Keoghan), a punkish up-and-comer whose methods are far different from Mike’s. The things bad bosses do to good employees will have you wishing Mike, Lou and Sharon had an HR department to lodge a complaint with.
The taut script gives the ensemble rich material, shaping characters more deeply than seems possible in their brief time on screen. Hemsworth is especially good as Mike, switching from socially awkward to debonair as the job demands it. His troubled past bubbles up as he starts to date a young publicist (Monica Barbaro, who steals a few scenes). Layton and crew tie things up neatly, but the ending is where the movie is least compelling. The gems in “Crime 101” are stashed along the road. —Tom Meek
At Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond, Kendall Square Cinema and AMC Assembly Row 12
“Pillion”
Alexander Skarsgård is physically imposing and sculpted from Adonis clay, but what makes him eye-catching are the boundary-pushing roles he chooses. A portrait of primal rage as Amleth, the original Hamlet, as seen in Robert Egger’s “The Northman” (2022). In “Pillion” bloodlust is replaced by leather-clad lust. Skarsgård’s Ray is a member of an English biker club that’s into B&D and S&M games. A “pillion” is a motorcycle’s rear seat, and in BDSM subculture this is where the “subs” sit, at the pleasure of their “doms” — real Tom of Finland guys. To be clear, Ray does not sit on the pillion.
That seat belongs to Colin (Harry Melling). The two meet at a countryside pub on Christmas night where Colin and his dad are part of a barbershop quartet serenading the locals, including Ray and his leather-clad posse. An invite to a dark alley leads to the unzipping of presents. Ray and Colin continue to meet, with caveats: cook me dinner and watch me eat it, sleep on the floor and don a dog collar.
Skarsgård is bold and unbridled, but this is Melling’s film. Colin’s wide-eyed gaze at once conveys wonderment, curiosity and conflict. He lives at home with his parents (mom has cancer) and while they accept Colin for who he is, they have concerns about Ray. There are camping and fishing sojourns where subs are regularly hogtied and vulnerable as the doms build bonfires and nip on whiskey. The sex is graphic but not necessarily erotic.
The film is drawn from Adam Mar-Jones’s novel “Box Hill: “A Story of Low Self-Esteem,” and what interests writer/director Harry Lighton is above the belt, inside the head and heart.
Both Ray and Colin display a complex vulnerability, and have a nuanced chemistry that gives the film an uneasy tenderness. Leather and lash may not be your cup of tea, but the exposed, yearning heart is universal. —Tom Meek
At Kendall Square Cinema and Somerville Theatre
“The Love that Remains”
In the opening shot of “The Love That Remains,” the roof is torn off of a house, then dangles in place, suspended by a crane. It’s an apt metaphor for the wry new dramedy from Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason (“Godland”), in which Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir), a fine artist, and Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason), a fisherman, separate but maintain peace for the sake of their three children. The couple share meals together and go on excursions with the kids, but each day Magnús returns to the cramped quarters of his trawler. As the months wear on, they adapt to their new situation with varying degrees of success.
Scandinavian filmmakers seem to have a knack for stories of couples in strife, from Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” (1973) to von Trier’s “Antichrist” (2009). Pálmason’s film is much gentler than either. The bitterness between Anna and Magnús is palpable, but with none of the histrionics typical of divorce pictures. Instead, the director lingers on the quiet moments shared by the couple and among the kids at play. There is a disarmingly playful sense of humor at work, which manifests in both uncomfortably intimate moments (as when teenage daughter Ída interrogates Magnús about the family rooster he drunkenly euthanized) and flamboyant flights of fancy (a dream sequence in which said rooster returns in monstrous form to wreak vengeance).
There are long, wordless sequences in which Pálmason focuses on the world around his central family: the process through which Anna creates her industrial artwork, the mechanics of Magnús’s fishing nets, time lapses in which changes of season are reflected in the condition of the family scarecrow. These scenes, combined with the jazzy piano score by Harry Hunt, lull us into a false sense of security, making it all the more jarring when the film takes a turn for the emotionally harrowing — or, just as frequently, the overtly surreal. When we last see Magnús, he is both mentally and literally adrift, yet oddly at peace. Walking out of the theater, you may feel the same way. —Oscar Goff
At the Brattle Theatre
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.
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.
A stronger
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