Things to do in Los Angeles today

British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s third feature after ‘Ratcatcher’ (1999) and ‘Morvern Callar’ (2002) might be an adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s best-selling book ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’, but there’s nothing remotely literary about Ramsay’s long-awaited comeback in any traditional sense of the word. Ramsay ditches the novel’s structure of an American wife, Eva (Tilda Swinton), writing letters to her absent husband in the wake of their son committing a high-school massacre but keeps the book’s frenetic darting back and forth in time as we come to understand more of the woman, marriage and family that bore a killer.Here, words firmly take a back seat in favour of the haunting power of image and sound as Ramsay turns Shriver’s novel into mesmerising and provocative cinema. Much of ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ is intense, first-person storytelling as Ramsay draws us into the head and world of Eva. Yet there’s also a cutting portrait of a family at the heart of the film that makes domestic life feel like civil war as Ramsay runs with Shriver’s bold ideas about the alienation of parenthood and its potentially devastating effect on love and marriage. Only in its latter stages does the film settle down – a little – into longer scenes and the need finally to resolve the question of what actually happened to Kevin, played by a very creepy Ezra Miller, inheriting the same know-it-all, scary demeanour of a younger actor, Jasper Newell, earlier in the movie.The film is at its best i

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

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

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