Things to do in Los Angeles this Friday

All of Stanley Kubrick’s films – be it ‘The Killing’ or ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ – demand to be seen on a big screen. They’re about people trapped in huge, indifferent machines gone wrong, from a heist plot to a spaceship, and only the huge indifference of the cinema does them justice. In ‘The Shining’, the machine is a haunted house: the Overlook Hotel, created by Stephen King and turned by Kubrick into an awry environment in which mental stability, supernatural malignance and the sense of space and time shimmer and warp to terrible effect. The story sees Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) drag his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) up a mountain to be the hotel’s winter caretaker. Things go badly. This is the original 1980 US version, 24 minutes longer than the one familiar to UK audiences. On the upside, it fleshes out the family’s city life and includes an intriguing TV-watching motif; on the downside, there are some daft scare shots and it didn’t ever exactly feel short at two hours. Still, a masterpiece.

With his white-knuckle sci-fi thriller Gravity, Mexican auteur Alfonso Cuarón extracted an intimate character study from the vastness of outer space. Now he goes in reverse: In his deeply personal b&w marvel Roma, Cuarón—a director of erotic road-trips (Y Tu Mamá También), dystopian thrillers (Children of Men) and The Prisoner of Azkaban, the finest entry in the Harry Potter series—unhurriedly observes the smallest parts first, before expanding to gradually reveal the social and political canvas of 1970s Mexico City, where he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood called Roma. A sober and autobiographical elegy about his childhood and the women who raised him (one hardworking live-in maid in particular), Roma coalesces out of episodic recollections, digitally filmed with a crisp, grain-free appearance for unsentimental visual conviction. The domestic helper at the heart of the story is the gentle-natured Cleo (exceptionally talented newcomer Yalitza Aparicio), who works for the affectionate but occasionally livid Sofia (Marina de Tavira, terrific and understated) and the rest of her family. Through transfixing long takes that capture the monotony of Cleo’s chores, Cuarón dotingly honors Cleo’s unsung rituals (just as Chantal Akerman did in her 1975 feminist classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels): cleaning, looking after Sofia’s lively four children whom she loves like her own, interacting with her best friend and co-worker Adela (Nancy García García), going

After such imposing films as Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave—the titles are punishing enough—you’d be forgiven for thinking British director Steve McQueen has a mean streak, if not toward his audiences, then his actors. Now comes Widows, which also has its fair share of suffering, mainly on the haunted face of Viola Davis. But McQueen has discovered something new. Should we call it fun? Let’s not get carried away. Still, Widows, a supercharged, Chicago-set caper of consummate skill, zooms along in a way that feels peppier than usual, McQueen brewing the action and ominous municipal intrigue like he was trying to outdo The Fugitive. He comes frighteningly close. Three women dominate the story, giving it a survivor’s poise that Ocean’s 8, a high-collared pretender, could only dream of. They’re the recent widows of a deceased gang of high-stakes criminals, men who barely get any screen time. In their absence, Veronica (Davis) floats around her white-walled penthouse like a ghost, Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) gets her thrift store sold from under her, and Alice, an abused blonde trophy wife (Elizabeth Debicki, who goes from fragile to fierce and runs away with the movie), is urged by her own mother to become an escort. As if economic freefall and grief weren’t enough, their husbands’ unfinished business shows up on their doorsteps, in the form of thugs demanding payment. To watch the women coalesce into a hard-nosed crew of heisters is the year’s most purely pleasurable piece

If you’ve ever been stuck hundreds of miles from the love of your life, wondering if it’s really worth all the heartache and phone-checking, Pawel Pawlikowski has made the movie for you. With this monochrome love story spanning two decades and four countries in post-WWII Europe, the Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away. Beginning in 1949, twentysomething singer Zula (Joanna Kulig) and middle-aged pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) meet in the least auspicious of settings—an austere Polish musical academy that could easily double as a prison. Wiktor is tasked with assembling a troupe of folk musicians to extol the greatness of the motherland, but he’s had his fill of songs about agricultural reform and the global proletariat. Zula’s defiant spirit catches his eye, they fall for each other and he promises her a new life on the other side of the Iron Curtain. But when he defects to Paris, she surprises him by staying behind, setting in motion a 20-year love affair that plays out like a swinging ’60s version of Doctor Zhivago. Chemistry is not in short supply between the two. There’s an age gap—that hoary old bugbear—but Pawlikowski semi-subverts it by making Wiktor the more lovelorn of the couple. They meet and part on Parisian boulevards, in smoky jazz clubs and at concerts in Yugo

Not since Martin Scorsese followed up the mob mayhem of Casino with two hours of Buddhist asceticism in Kundun has a director made such a pronounced movie-to-movie gear shift as Jon S. Baird does with his gentle follow-up to his 2013 Irvine Welsh adaptation, Filth. Cocaine squalor gives way to Stan & Ollie, a wistful, heartfelt celebration of the friendship between comedy giants Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly), which contains plenty of cozy movie-biz nostalgia and some mishaps with hats. It’s a love song played in a minor key, and it leaves an unexpectedly lingering impression. It’s also suitable for grandmas, if you need an option. Scripted by Philomena’s Jeff Pope (working closely from a book by Laurel and Hardy historian A.J. Marriot), the story charts the duo’s final years as they embark on a grueling tour of British theaters while trying to get a new Robin Hood picture off the ground. It’s 1953, and the world has long since moved on from their brand of slapstick to new talents like Abbot and Costello. The crowds are thin and their prospects look thinner. Imagine This Is Spinal Tap with extra pratfalls. The two leads are terrific: Reilly defies a slightly iffy fat suit to give us an avuncular but creaky Hardy, bemused by his friend’s work ethic and obsessed with the finer things in life. Coogan, in particular, is a revelation as Laurel, dialing down the trademark head-scratching mannerisms and unpeeling layers of disappointment and melanchol

We’re watching an extremely luxe pocket of 18th-century life in The Favourite, which means the bewigged fops are scheming, the ducks are running (these people don’t lack for strange competitive sports) and the offscreen organist is going for baroque. Even Stanley Kubrick knew to lay off his fish-eye lens once in a while. But Greek-born director Yorgos Lanthimos can’t say no: He warps his period chamber piece—loosely based on the highly competitive court of the unstable Queen Anne—into a Lewis Carroll comic nightmare, piling cattiness upon cattiness. And what’s not to love about that? The constant visual and verbal bitchery feels like a pent-up release of something churning just under the surface. If this is your first Lanthimos movie, welcome. Know that you’re a little late to the party: Two of his prior films—the psychosexual Dogtooth, about a family that has never allowed its grown-up kids to leave the house, and the equally vicious The Lobster—went darker and deeper than The Favourite, the first that Lanthimos hasn’t personally written. But like its predecessors, the new one has an empathy that sneaks in amid all the bad behavior. What makes The Favourite work are its women, who rule, both literally within the movie and outwardly, commanding our enjoyment. Unlike the similarly set Barry Lyndon or Dangerous Liaisons, which both had strong female characters toppled by the whims of strutting cocks, Lanthimos’s latest makes the men extraneous, building a potent hothouse atmo

Burnishing old-school, kite-flying, Cockney-cavorting nostalgia to a high gloss, Disney’s improbable sequel—coming a full 54 years after the original fantasy—is a risk that pays off, magically. Mary Poppins Returns is a defiantly backward-glancing musical, not only in its gaslit 1930s London (the days of the “Great Slump,” as we learn), but also via its orchestral sweep, supplied by ace composer-lyricists Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who nail the retro mood. And still, even though this is a treat for audiences of a certain age, flashes of modernity sneak through in Emily Blunt’s side-eye wink of a starring turn, purring through her impeccable pronunciation. “One never discusses a woman’s age,” she snaps at the mystified now-grown-up family she all but re-adopts as her new personal project when, a generation later, her nannying is needed. Mary’s umbrella-assisted descent from the heavens is a stand-up-and-cheer moment (as is a fleet-footed cameo by 92-year-old Dick Van Dyke), but there’s a deeper satisfaction in the songcraft that gives a thirtysomething Michael Banks (Ben Whishaw) the quiet, McCartney–esque “A Conversation,” pitched amid his grief and loneliness. He's a widower. That is to say, there are kids in this update (a trio of relentlessly upbeat adorables) but they’re incidental to the real kids: lost adults who can’t get a handle on life’s realities. Like the 1964 landmark, the new movie vibrates with economic anxiety—this time, the threat comes from house repo

Calling the new A Star Is Born a “valentine” from its star, Lady Gaga, to her fans sounds a bit coy and delicate, so let’s call it what it really is: a hot French kiss (with full-on tongue), filled with passion, tears and a staggering amount of chutzpah. Generously emotional and all the more fun for it, the movie functions as something akin to a Marvel-esque origin story, with Gaga’s own mythology—vamping it up at drag cabarets, etc.—subbing in for her character’s background. It's more than smart to have cast her; it's essential to the movie even working. But to watch her character, Ally, become a star—especially onstage during the film’s live moments, which feel frightening, massive and deafening—is an incredible piece of evolution. Gaga is really acting here: shy, somehow smaller, trembling with excitement. Incrementally, she blooms in the spotlight, proudly waving around that Streisand schnozz, the big voice completing the transformation. She’s extraordinary, and you root for her to go supernova per the scenario’s time-honored trajectory. Director-co-star Bradley Cooper has something else in mind, though. Just as his own performance—as Jackson Maine, this film’s rocker on the downslide—ends up being one of those grumbly beard chews (if you remember the 1976 version, you might describe it as "Kristoffersonian"), his steering of the drama is understated: modest and unshowy. He’s trying to make a “real” version of this glitziest of stories (whatever that means), and you lov

Call this actors’ duet sentimental and simplistic at your own peril. Green Book may well move you, possibly to tears, at the thought of real social change and kindness (at a time when we need it badly). Something of a reverse Driving Miss Daisy, it charts a road trip into racism shared by two well-worn stereotypes, characters that, almost surprisingly, come from real life—a true tale that happened in 1962. “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (a pizza-chomping Viggo Mortensen) is a brutal NYC club bouncer prone to howyadoins. On the hunt for work, he gets an unlikely gig at the invitation of Don Shirley (cryptic Mahershala Ali, superb), a finicky black jazz pianist who requires a tough driver to escort him on a tour of the Deep South. Tony’s no bleeding heart, but for the right price, he’s willing to swallow his pride. The mouth, however, can’t be closed: Tony cuts loose with deliriously rude arias about Little Richard, fried chicken and the proper way to write a love letter, and both actors shade their roles with unexpected nuance and a generosity of spirit. They widen the already spacious Cadillac into a stage for some of the most relaxed banter of the year. If you recall the movies that Green Book’s director Peter Farrelly made with his brother Bobby (There’s Something About Mary, the Dumb and Dumber saga), you won’t be surprised by the crassness or the unexpected heart, both Farrelly trademarks. The new film creates a beautiful friction eased by conversation—somewhat calculated, yes, b

Thinkers debate with passion in Mimi Leder’s intellectual On the Basis of Sex, a knowingly old-fashioned (but far from dated) biopic of the inimitable Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Written by the 85-year-old Ginsburg’s nephew Daniel Stiepleman with affection for his aunt’s lifelong work on behalf of women’s rights—as well as her decidedly ennobled marriage founded on pure equality—On the Basis of Sex (like the stirring documentary RBG) is both a welcome cinematic dissent from today’s disastrous politics and a reminder that words, paired with meaningful action, can change the world. A winning, inspirational crowd-pleaser à la Hidden Figures, Leder’s film follows the early accomplishments of the young Ginsburg (an assured Felicity Jones, convincingly slipping into the trailblazer’s shoes), beginning in 1956. That’s the year in which the bouncy, opinionated Ruth marches into male-dominated Harvard Law School—at a dinner party, the handful of female students are asked to justify their academic seats, ones that could have gone to “Harvard Men.” It’s also where her devoted, ever-supportive husband Marty (Armie Hammer, lovably pragmatic) studies. Through Marty’s unforeseen health crisis and Ruth’s unfairly deterred professional aspirations (excuse after sexist excuse, law firms refuse to hire her), the film patiently advances toward the ’70s, focusing on the couple’s family life and Ruth’s career as a professor, leading sizzling feminist discourse among razor-sharp mi