‘Significant Other’
Stream it on Paramount+; rent or buy on most major platforms.
Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s film starts with a mysterious red flare streaking down from the sky, so right away we suspect who (or what) will trigger the plot. And it might not be friendly, because the odds of a backpacking trip going right in a sci-fi movie are fairly low. Indeed, things quickly go awry after Harry (Jake Lacy, from Season 1 of “The White Lotus”) and his girlfriend, Ruth (Maika Monroe, “It Follows”), take off on an isolated Oregon trail. She is wracked by anxiety so crippling that she has been taking medication and seeing a therapist, but gamely tries to not spoil a trip Jake has carefully planned. And then, of course, it all goes to pot, with a couple of nifty red herrings and plot twists spicing up the script. “Significant Other” (the title cleverly plays off a couple of different meanings) is a tight, effective hybrid of science fiction and horror, with the scares generated less by shock tactics than by a growing dread. That anguish is generated in the viewer in part by good filmmaking — the movie is briskly paced, well acted and moodily atmospheric (only the C.G.I. looks a little cheap). And partly it derives from “Significant Other” dealing with common preoccupations: Do we ever fully know who we lie next to?
‘Infinity Pool’
Following “Possessor” (2020), Brandon Cronenberg continues his investigation of the nature of identity — it’s a big subject in this week’s column — layered with a savage satirical element: Turns out, rich people can and will exploit their ability to buy their way out of anything. Alexander Skarsgard plays James, a blocked writer who enjoys a high-flying life thanks to his rich wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman). One fateful night, while the couple is on vacation in the imaginary country of Li Tolqa, James accidentally kills a local man. He escapes the death penalty by agreeing to have a double of himself created, then watch that duplicate be executed. This jolts him from his anomie and he falls in with a group of wealthy, hedonistic vacationers (including Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert as a particularly perverse couple) who mine the legal loophole to indulge in depraved kicks. “Infinity Pool” portrays a decadent amorality that does not even feel all that far-fetched — entitled impunity runs rampant in real life, and the movie’s cloning technology might be around the corner at this point. This nightmare may be couched in the sun-kissed tones of swank travel brochures, but that makes it even more chilling.
As Mounia Akl’s lovely, low-key debut feature begins, a title informs us that we are in “Lebanon, in the near future.” Beirut has become nearly entirely dysfunctional, consumed by a garbage crisis that has spun out of control. This does not affect the Bakri family, which is headed by the headstrong Walid (Saleh Bakri) and lives in self-sufficient isolation in a countryside compound. Then one day, workmen turn up and inform the Bakris that a landfill is coming next door. Walid’s family is not quite as upset about it as he is. His wife, Souraya (Nadine Labaki, the director of such films as “Capernaum” and “Caramel”), used to be a singer of some renown and misses parts of her old life; the new crisis could be a way out for her. Their two young daughters are fascinated by the change in their routine. As blue trash bags start popping up in the heretofore pristine landscape, it’s hard not to be heartbroken by this vision of a planet slowly descending into self-destruction. At its heart, though, “Costa Brava, Lebanon” is a delicately wrought portrait of a family desperately trying to keep it together in the face of a world gone mad.
‘Unidentified Objects’
Peter (Matthew Jeffers) is in dire need of money, so when his neighbor Winona (Sarah Hay) offers him $1,700 in cash to be driven to Canada, he is desperate enough to agree, albeit very grumpily. He has a reason to go along besides the money, while Winona has a mission of an entirely different kind: She informs Peter she was abducted by aliens from Andromeda when she was 15, and after a long absence they have just instructed her to meet at a specific time and place in Canada. Road movies are a favored subgenre in the low-budget indie realm, but Juan Felipe Zuleta’s feature easily stands out from the pack. The director has a sure hand with image composition and editing (which sounds like a basic filmmaking requirement but actually is far from a given), and his movie is anchored by Jeffers and Hay’s superb performances. Like many movies about a journey, “Unidentified Objects” is structured around a succession of encounters, some quirky and others heartbreaking, until the fateful moment when Peter and Winona reach their destination. The payoff actually works.
Artificial intelligence has long been an obsession of speculative fiction, but there is a big change now: Reality is catching up. In this Canadian movie directed by April Mullen, seventh-generation “simulants” have become physically undistinguishable from humans. (In a nice touch, they are numbered like some fancy Apple product.) The big question is whether they have also become intellectually and emotionally closer to us. Look, it’s our old friend “ambiguous identity” again!
The main characters include a couple (Jordana Brewster and Robbie Amell) in which the husband was replaced by an exact android copy after an accident; an agent from Artificial Intelligence Compliance Enforcement (Sam Worthington) tracking down “sims” that have been illegally rebooted; and a techie (Simu Liu) with a mysterious agenda.
Whenever it tries to go for action, “Simulant” comes up short, and the pounding score by Blitz//Berlin does not help — nobody will mistake this for “Blade Runner.” The film is on much firmer ground as a relationship drama, in the vein of the British series “Humans,” where the artificial creations are called “synths.” The dominant theme is the increasing fudging of the line between human and man-made: Can sims have a soul? Can they love? In this hall of mirrors, you are never sure who is the original and who is the reflection, and what, if anything, separates the two.
