By Elisabeth Vincentelli
‘The Missing’
To communicate, Eric (Carlo Aquino) needs to write: texts on his phone or messages on a dry-erase board he always carries with him. How could he talk? After all, there is a blur where his mouth should be — an effect that is poetically rendered in Carl Joseph Papa’s animated film, which used the rotoscoping technique to trace drawings over its live cast. Not that anybody appears to notice anything amiss with Eric’s face, including his mother, Rosalinda (Dolly De Leon, a Golden Globe nominee for “Triangle of Sadness”), and his sweet co-worker Carlo (Gio Gahol), who may be flirting. In flashbacks told in childlike scrawls, we see Eric being taken by aliens, who turn out to be more inquisitive than hostile. He escapes, but they haunt his memories and likely are the key to his silence.
There is a long tradition in science fiction of aliens and assorted creatures as metaphorical expressions — among the boldest examples is the monster from the Id in “Forbidden Planet,” from 1956. “The Missing,” which was the Philippines’ submission for the 2023 Academy Awards, operates in that same realm. This beautiful film is heart-wrenching at times, but it also builds up to a message of hope and love. (Stream it on Netflix.)
‘The Present’
A character who does not speak is central to Christian Ditter’s well-crafted family film as well. Taylor (Easton Rocket Sweda) is a neurodivergent kid who spends most of his time tinkering in his workshop. When he discovers that an old grandfather clock can turn back time by up to 12 hours, he decides to rewind the same day (or sometimes just a few minutes, to get redos) over and over to try to save his parents’ faltering marriage. “The Present” introduces two riffs on the classic “Parent Trap” narrative of children plotting to keep their parents together: time travel and rotating points of view. The movie presents the fateful hours leading up to the dinner where mom and dad (Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear) will announce they’re separating from the adults’ perspective as well as the three kids’, who include Taylor’s older siblings, Emma (Shay Rudolph) and Max (Mason Shea Joyce). In addition to being saccharine-free — which is rare enough in this type of film — “The Present” offers a sympathetic, funny portrayal of a boy who is different, and accepted and loved by his family. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘Die Alone’
Carrie-Anne Moss lands her best role in a long while in this postapocalyptic film, so fans of this underused actress should check it out just for her. But there is a lot more to “Die Alone,” which builds up to a fantastic plot twist and a wrenching conclusion that feels earned.
Moss plays the grizzled Mae, who has managed to survive a virus that turned people into ravenous plantlike zombies (they look a bit like the DC Comics creature Swamp Thing). They are called “the reclaimed,” according to a theory that the apocalypse was created by nature fighting back after centuries of abuse by humankind.
The film’s central character is an amnesiac named Ethan (Douglas Smith), who only remembers that he must meet up with his girlfriend, Emma (Kimberly Sue-Murray), from whom he was separated when the world went to pot. He patches together what happened from flashes of memory that slowly cohere into an unsettling reality.
Mae welcomes Ethan to her isolated farm, where one of her remaining pleasures in that grim world is listening to the 1968 hit “Crimson and Clover” on vinyl. Writer-director Lowell Dean puts the song to actual narrative use and it casts a spooky light on the ending. I’m still reeling. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms; free on Hoopla.)
‘Darla in Space’
Many films revolve around someone who must come up with a lot of cash fast. Odds are good that only one involves using a “sentient orgasm-granting yeast mass” to raise the money. When Darla (Alex E. Harris) finds herself owing $349,000.22 in back taxes, she’s at a loss, and her flailing business of bespoke cat caskets is not going to help. While filling in for her mother (Constance Shulman) as a cleaner for the mysterious Arnot Pickens (Thomas Jay Ryan), Darla discovers a plastic tub filled with a kind of rubbery disc that she identifies as the culture of yeast and bacteria used to make kombucha. Except this one doesn’t make kombucha but is an alien creature that can give powerful orgasms. And it talks, too (voiced by JS Oliver), informing Darla that it wants to go to space. She agrees to help in exchange for basically pimping the creature’s extraordinary power to pay her tax bill.
Eric Laplante and Susie Moon’s deadpan debut feature mines its surreal premise for all it’s worth — and keeps adding extra wrinkles, including revelations about Pickens’ nature and the agenda of Mother, as the pleasure-dispensing entity is nicknamed. If you embrace its idiosyncratic vibe, this is indie comedy at its finest. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms; free on Hoopla.)
‘Alien Country’
Whenever someone says “nothing ever happens in this town,” you can be sure hell is about to break loose. And so it goes in “Alien Country,” a goofy movie that seems to have been engineered for those of us who end up tuning in every time the Kevin Bacon-vs.-giant worms B masterpiece “Tremors” (1990) appears on some godforsaken channel. Here the fateful words are uttered by aspiring singer Everly (Renny Grames, who wrote the film with director Boston McConnaughey), bored in her desert town — the spectacular locations are in Utah. Her doofus boyfriend, Jimmy (K.C. Clyde), is a mechanic who moonlights as a demolition-derby driver. When the couple stumble onto a mysterious portal, they go through it with seemingly little consequence. Except that they didn’t notice the dangerous critters that sneaked out.
They do, however, notice Ben (Charan Prabhakar), a nice alien that was able to take a human appearance and has come to help them.
The film actually does not show the hostile visitors from another world all that much. They are more talked about than seen, which is OK because “Alien Country” is at its best when it wanders into digressions (there is a priceless exchange about spelling the name of a local named Bo, played by Austin Archer) or casually drops funny details (like vacuuming spores). That stuff is harder to pull off than special effects. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms.)
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