Reviewed: ‘Train Dreams,’ ‘Left-Handed Girl,’ ‘Wicked: For Good,’ ‘Shelby Oaks’ and ‘Rental Family’ in theaters and streaming

‘Train Dreams’ (2025)

Films crafted around hermits are often peppered with idyllic framings of their lush surroundings and driven by strong, intense performances by the lead, who must, for the most part, connote much of their character’s inner turmoil via facial expressions and the glance of the eye. That was the case with Ben Foster in Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace” (2018) as well as Daniel Day-Lewis in his recent comeback, “Anemone.” This film, gorgeously shot by Adolpho Veloso, has the trippy, hypnotic aura of a Terrence Malick fever dream, and we get Joel Edgerton in his richest and most robust performance to date. His Robert Grainier, we’re told, never spoke into a phone during a life that ends serenely in 1968. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson and adapted by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar – the Oscar-nominated tandem behind “Sing Sing” – “Train Dreams” is pretty much the telling of Grainier’s life in full; orphaned young, unknowing what befell his parents, and, as a quiet young man when we catch up with him, working as a logger and railway hand in the remote reaches of Idaho. His life as a loner and drifter pretty much has him moving from one lumber camp to the next until he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) at a church in Fry. It’s love at first pleasantry, and with Gladys game for the woods, the two wed, build a bungalow atop the crest of a dell and have a daughter. It’s an enchanting “Little House on the Prairie” existence until a wildfire sweeps through the valley while Grainier happens to be off on one of his logging missions. When he returns, Gladys and his daughter are nowhere to be found. For a good part of the film, Grainier, propelled by guilt and grief, searches nearby towns looking for them or any news of their fate. Ultimately he returns to the woods, where he registers a small degree of comfort taking in an abandoned litter of dogs and rebuilding the cabin on the same perch. The power of guilt and grief creeps in and begins to bend reality, and Grainier struggles to make sense of his existence and the world in large. The acting is top tier, reserved and quietly affecting. Others adding heart and humanity in small, meaty parts are William H. Macy as Arn Peeples, a grumpy coot who likes to use explosives to fell his trees, and Kerry Condon as the first woman to work at a U.S. National Forestry outpost. (Tom Meek)

At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge and on Netflix.

‘Left-Handed Girl’ (2025)

An impressive first solo feature for Shih-Ching Tsou, a longtime Sean Baker (“Anora”) collaborator with bit parts in and production credits on his “Tangerine” (2015), “The Florida Project” (2017) and “Red Rocket” (2021). Baker returns the favor here as an executive producer, co-writer and editor. The girl of the title is I-Jing (Nina Ye), the 9-year-old, younger daughter of Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), a struggling single mother who runs a noodle café in Taipei’s bustling night market strip. The “affliction” of the title is seen as the devil’s work by I-Jing’s grandfather, who continually points out her abnormality and forces her to eat and draw with her right hand. I-Jing’s older sister, I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma), lanky, lean and surly beyond all belief, works in a nearby market where her deliveries of betel nut packages to the sleazy men curbside requires a degree of sashay and flirtation. Her boss encourages skimpier outfits, and the two pass the late-night lull with quick, indiscreet carnal encounters – often with the door open and the noise of the street flowing in. Side plots have Shu-Fen’s mother involved in an illegal passport pipeline to America and the noodle shop landlord ever lurking and ready to evict. What begins as cheery and bright shifts and darkens in sly, unpredictable ways. The three leads convey a palpably deep and sometimes contentious sense of sisterhood, and Ye and Ma are exceptional in their roles. Like several of Baker’s early works, “Left-Handed Girl” was shot on iPhones, and the streaky neon reds and pinks as captured by Ko-Chin Chen and Tzu-Hao Kao give the film an alluring, Day-Glo shimmer. It’s a vibrant, street-level tour of Taipei nightlife told through a distinctly female gaze. (Tom Meek)

At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge and on Netflix.

‘Wicked: For Good’ (2025)

The conclusion to last year’s “Wicked” picks up shortly after the events of that first chapter. Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba Thropp – the so-called “Wicked Witch of the West” – has gone into hiding, painted as an enemy of the state by the mysterious Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and the duplicitous Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum) for her opposition to their oppressive treatment of Oz’s talking animals. Elphaba’s onetime bestie Glinda (Ariana Grande) stays behind as the Wizard’s semireluctant mouthpiece, dazzling the public from her floating bubble while quietly tempering the regime’s hunt for her green-skinned friend. Complicating matters is Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Melissa Bode), whose increasingly hardhearted tenure as governor of Munchkinland has earned her the nickname “The Wicked Witch of the East.” Looking to force Elphaba’s hand, Morrible summons a cyclone, aiming a certain, familiar farmhouse in Nessa’s direction. You probably know the “official” story from here, but as we learn from taking Elphaba’s perspective, the “truth” is far more complicated.

For the most, “Wicked: For Good” shares its predecessor’s strengths (the striking chemistry between its two leads) and weaknesses (sludgy CGI that, for all its millions of dollars, looks far chintzier than the 1939 original’s painted backdrops). Added to the latter column is the padding necessary to transform a musical’s second act (which runs about 40 minutes on stage) into a two-hour-plus Hollywood blockbuster. Where the first film was buoyed by the momentum of Elphaba’s transformation into witchiness, the second remains largely one-note, its characters stuck in a turgid state of conflict and angst, vamping for time until the inevitable denouement. Pivotal moments feel harried and rushed to get to the next brooding aria. Those tunes, in fairness, are the main event; Erivo and Grande are major talents who sing the hell out of Stephen Schwartz’s songs, and Grande in particular is given more room to add depth to her sparkly screwball of a character. Fans of the musical (who have likely already bought their tickets) will surely find more to love here; the unconverted, however, may find themselves clicking their heels in a desperate attempt to go home. (Oscar Goff)

At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge; 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.

‘Shelby Oaks’ (2024)

As this paranormal thriller has it, in 2007, a YouTube paranormal investigator (Sarah Dunn) vanished without a trace. Riley Brennan was last seen with her camera crew in Shelby Oaks, Ohio, a ghost town that somehow contains both a creepy, abandoned amusement park and a creepy, abandoned prison. The only clue left behind is a grainy, inconclusive mini-DV tape of her disappearance (and a glimpse of a sinister figure through a window). Some years later, after participating in a documentary about the incident, Riley’s sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) obtains, through decidedly unpleasant means, a second tape, containing enough additional clues to send her off to Shelby Oaks to launch an investigation of her own. While Mia does indeed find answers to her sister’s disappearance, it should go without saying that she ends up getting more than she bargained for.

“Shelby Oaks” is a grab bag of horror movie styles. It begins as a faux-documentary, mixing found footage with staged interviews and commentators, before proceeding as a more conventional narrative. While Riley’s footage is appropriately eerie, the interviews are clunky and unnecessary, front-loading the film with exposition that could have been more artfully integrated into the narrative (if your found footage film requires more setup than the opening card of “The Blair Witch Project,” you need to rework your footage). Things smooth out once this pretense is dropped, but the tone is still muddled, mixing the emotional, minor-key horror of Mike Flanagan (an executive producer here) with silly spook-show shocks such as slavering hellhounds and towering demons with pointy horns. This latter mode is a lot more fun, with some classic dumb-horror-movie moments (why would you go in that house?) and a delightful turn from Robin Bartlett (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) as a batty old crone. Director Chris Stuckmann is a YouTube movie critic turned first-time filmmaker, and one can sense him trying to make every horror movie he’s ever loved all at once. The resulting film certainly has its moments, but it’s paper-thin and frustratingly unfocused. “Shelby Oaks” is a little like a bag of candy corn: a bit of seasonal fun, but ultimately far from satisfying. (Oscar Goff)

On Amazon Prime Video.

‘Rental Family’ (2025)

It’s not easy being an American actor in Japan, as Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Fraser) has learned. Seven years into his Tokyo citizenship, he finds himself cast primarily as mascots and “token white guys” (his best-known role is a superhero in a ubiquitous toothpaste commercial). One morning, his agent phones him with an unusual gig: He must simply don a black suit and attend a stranger’s funeral – a stranger who, it turns out, is still alive. Philip has been drafted into a “rental family” agency, which employs actors to step in and fill essential roles in their clients’ lives, from the mundane (playing video games with a lonely shut-in) to the profound (posing as a young woman’s groom so she can tactfully leave her parents’ home). For the most, Philip’s game – it’s just improv after all – but he soon finds himself emotionally invested in the case of a young girl who is made to believe he’s her long-lost father. Falling further into his “roles,” Philip comes to question whether he’s doing more harm than good.

There are pleasures in “Rental Family”; Fraser is an always-appealing presence, and the location footage of Philip bumbling his way through Tokyo is lovely. But the film as a whole is suffocatingly saccharine, wringing every drop of pathos with a nonstop, maddeningly twinkly score. The premise is inherently funny, but mononymous director Hikari (“37 Seconds”) never allows the humor to breathe without a gratuitous tug at the heartstrings – as if the viewer can’t be trusted to feel for the characters without being cued constantly. Fraser’s comeback is one of the more touching Hollywood redemption stories in recent years, but following his Oscar win for “The Whale” in 2022 he runs the risk of being typecast as dewy-eyed sad sacks in tragicomic weepies. One almost wishes he’d take a mindless superhero role and return to goofy charisma that made him a late-’90s matinee idol. For those with a high tolerance for soppy sentiment, “Rental Family” may be a welcome dose of three-hanky melodrama; all others might want to hire an actor to watch it in their stead. (Oscar Goff)

At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge; 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.

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