‘Turn Me On’
Rent or buy it on most major platforms.
In Michael Tyburski’s gentle but Orwellian film, people greet one another by asking, “Are you content?” The usual answer is, “Quite content.” Neither part of the exchange involves any emotion, only polite detachment. That’s how the powers-that-be like it: All citizens must take a daily “vitamin” that effectively regulates people’s feelings so that everybody lives in bland apathy. When Joy (Bel Powley) takes a break from the white-and-blue pills while undergoing cancer treatment, her entire life changes. What are those weird feelings happening up in her head? And what about those stirring in a lower part of her body? She convinces her partner, William (Nick Robinson), to chuck the vitamin. Their libidos now unleashed, the couple fumblingly discover the magic of sex along with heretofore unknown sensations like jealousy. The script by Angela Bourassa (whose “If You Were the Last,” from 2023, was an underrated rom-com in space) has some blind spots: Are there really not any books or movies in this world that feature sex or even romance, even allusively? But “Turn Me On” works as a droll, beautifully acted fable on the perils of conformity.
‘Future Date’
Writing this column means watching a lot of movies about things going horribly wrong: Earth is on the brink of destruction, artificial intelligence is going to supplant humanity, each multiverse is worse than the next, space is a menace. Yet some of the most depressing views of the future — or an alternative present — can be found in sci-fi’s lightest subgenre, the romantic comedy. Under their sunny, often funny exteriors lurks a world where technology has endangered interpersonal relationships to the point of near impossibility. It’s fine that water has disappeared because you can’t find anybody for a coffee date anyway. Set “many years from now,” Stanley Wong’s “Future Date” envisions an Earth so wrecked by climate catastrophe that people can’t leave their tiny apartments (coronavirus metaphor alert). Angelenos Ry (Wong) and Ria (Shuang Hu) win a contest that lets them spend three days “in an actual house,” and if they turn out to be compatible, they get to stay. Wong doesn’t dwell on the horror of the outside world, preferring to turn his bright-colored lens onto the small quarters his characters are confined to. They know the present is grim and the future grimmer, but they just can’t stop themselves from trying to find love.
The latest feature from Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon,” “Lilo & Stitch”) has been compared to releases from the famed Studio Ghibli, home of the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki. Let’s not get carried away: “The Wild Robot” is wonderful, but perhaps not quite on a Ghibli level. Still, it’s a sterling pick that will enchant children and make their parents a little teary — after all, the story is about raising a kid and creating a new family. The movie tweaks the Robinson Crusoe premise by making the marooned figure a robot who washes up on an island filled with all kinds of animals. Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) was programmed to be an assistant and ends up raising an orphaned gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor) with the help of new friends, including a fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal). The movie has charming humor as well as a striking animation style that feels simultaneously old-fashioned and modern. What’s most interesting is the willingness to touch on dark subjects like death and the power of the technology that surrounds us. Roz was created by a vaguely ominous corporation called Universal Dynamics and can override her programming. In a different movie this ability could lead to a “Terminator”-type cataclysm led by sentient androids, but here it results in communication, growth and even a kind of empathy. This may be a utopian outcome, but I’ll take it.
‘The Universal Theory’
Mostly set in a snowy Swiss Alpine hotel in 1962, Timm Kröger’s feature is so beautifully crafted that the artistic direction alone is enough to sustain a viewer’s attention. The movie is shot in an evocative black-and-white that actually has a period feel (a color preamble set on a 1974 TV talk show is equally pitch-perfect), and the opulent score by Diego Ramos Rodriguez and David Schweighart evokes the vintage sounds of David Raksin or Max Steiner. The main protagonist, Johannes (Jan Bülow), is a graduate student in physics, which does not help him whatsoever when he is confronted with mysterious goings-on at said resort, some involving strange underground caves and tunnels. He is also fascinated by the hotel’s enigmatic, sultry lounge pianist, Karin (Olivia Ross), who somehow knows something about Johannes’s past that he’s never revealed to anyone. The presence of a ghostlike woman who seems to be in a separate space-time continuum reminded me of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Chris Marker’s “La Jetée,” though “The Universal Theory” does have these films’ narrative mastery. Still, Kröger has established himself as a director with a fantastic eye and ambitious ideas, and that alone makes him worth following.
The French director Just Philippot’s debut feature, “The Swarm” (available on Netflix), was a disturbing mix of eco and body horror about farm-bred, bloodthirsty locusts. Philippot has toned down the gruesomeness for his follow-up, “Acid,” but his vision is just as bleak. In the near future, destructive rains start appearing in Europe, leaving a trail of devastation and ruin in their wake. The lethal drops can even eat through metal, so don’t assume you’re safe for long in a car — it’s basically like having the xenomorph from “Alien” bleed all over the continent. In an anxiety-making context where the distant sound of thunder is enough to kick off panic, Michal (Guillaume Canet) and his teenage daughter, Selma (Patience Munchenbach), are on the run, trying to reach relative safety in a different region. Unlike Tom Cruise’s superdad in “War of the Worlds,” Michal is a grumpy antihero, but we can’t help but root for him and Selma to repair their relationship as they look for shelter. The mood is as dark as those rolling clouds, though. The refugees may wish for the rain to go away, but we know there is no escape: It will come again another day.
