“I Love Boosters”
Rapper-turned-director Boots Riley burst onto the movie scene in 2018 with “Sorry to Bother You,” a dystopian comedy about a call-center drone who uncovers a Silicon Valley plot to create a race of “equisapiens” — horse-human hybrids to displace the labor force. The wildly inventive “I Love Boosters” makes that film look positively mundane. Inspired by a 2006 song of the same name by Riley’s hip-hop group The Coup, the film stars Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylour Paige as a trio of “boosters,” thieves who lift clothes from high-end boutiques and resell them for discount prices. They describe their philosophy as “Triple-F: Fashion Forward Philanthropy.” (“I know how to spell ‘philanthropy,'” Paige clarifies. “Branding, though.”) Their chief nemesis is Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a fashion CEO and visionary who’s a cross between Miranda Priestly, Steve Jobs and Nosferatu. When Smith cracks down on the boosters, our heroines plot to get even, first by stealing the entire inventory from all of Smith’s stores, then by making a fool of her at her own spring fashion show.
Other significant plot elements include quantum physics, a workers’ revolt in China, an all-purpose sci-fi device worthy of Douglas Adams and a sad-eyed lothario (“Sorry” star LaKeith Stanfield) who may or may not be a thousand-year-old soul-sucking demon. The film is as stuffed and as outrageous as its characters’ closets, each frame filled with more sight gags than a MAD Magazine splash page. “Boosters” is the most dizzying and intoxicating comedy of the year, drawing on everything from Jean-Luc Godard and William Klein to Looney Tunes and Jerry Lewis (in a post-film Q&A at IFFBoston, Riley cited Lewis’s “Cinderfella” (1960) as a major influence). The sensory overload at times borders on the exhausting. As for the jokes, if one gag doesn’t work there’s another five around the corner.
What makes “Boosters” so special isn’t just its ideas, but the craft with which they’ve been assembled. Where a less ambitious filmmaker might rely on weightless CGI to simulate whimsy, everything here is handmade, from the jaw-dropping costumes by “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (2022) designer Shirley Kurata to the occasional creature rendered in latex or stop-motion. Even the climactic car chase is realized via miniature cars and sets worthy of a classic Godzilla film. Boots Riley is one of the most unique filmmakers working today, and “Boosters” might be his best yet. — Oscar Goff
Playing at the Somerville Theatre, Kendall Square Cinema, and AMC Assembly Row 12
“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu”
It speaks to the strange state of cinema in 2026 that the first “Star Wars” film in six years is a glorified TV episode. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” picks up after the events of the Disney+ series of (almost) the same name, but don’t worry if you bailed after season two — it’s blessedly light on lore. Pedro Pascal returns as armored Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin, as does Grogu, the adorable puppet more popularly known as “Baby Yoda.”
Mando has taken up as a freelancer tracking down ex-Imperial officers and other fugitives. His latest assignment is to find and rescue Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allan White), the strangely buff son of wormlike crime lord Jabba. Rotta has been forced into life as a gladiator on a seedy, urban planet (also present: a four-armed informant voiced by Martin Scorsese!). Upon arrival, however, Mando realizes that the story is more complicated than the Hutt’s relations had let on, and soon the bounty hunter becomes the hunted.
The classic “Star Wars” films were a cut above the typical blockbuster, closer to mythology than popcorn fare. The appeal of “The Mandalorian” series, meanwhile, lay in its relatively low stakes, feeling like a cross between a TV Western and a game of mismatched action figures. “Grogu” lies in between in construct but isn’t up to either in narrative terms. The widescreen theatrics sacrifice the low-key charms which made the show a streaming delight. A season’s worth of set pieces are crammed into a two-plus hour frame. At the same time, the whole thing feels chintzier than we’ve come to expect from a theatrical “Star Wars” feature, with wobbly effects that might look better on a tablet than an IMAX screen. One almost suspects it was made as a streaming special, then shunted to cinemas to fill an empty release slot.
Taken on its own terms, “Grogu” is a serviceable space opera. Pascal is a perfectly stoic lead, though we only see his face for one scene (why the constantly masked Mandalorian sports a perfectly groomed mustache remains a mystery of the Force). The creature designs, particularly a pair of mechanical guards rendered in stop motion, are inventive, and Grogu is as adorable as always. Yet the film can’t escape that sense of disposability — it feels more a product than cinema. A new “Star Wars” film used to be an event. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. — Oscar Goff
Playing at Kendall Square Cinema, Apple Cinemas Cambridge, and AMC Assembly Row 12
A stronger
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