The 355 (In theaters Jan. 7)
The 355 hopes to take the spy genre where the Spice Girls took pop music. Five intelligence agency beauties (from different nations), show they can beat men in hand-to-hand combat while weaing a cocktail dress, false eyelashes and four-inch heels. Jessica Chastain appears as a red-headed American CIA agent instructed to retrieve a mysterious weapon. She recruits an M16 computer genius (Lupita Nyong’o), a Columbian spy-psychologist (Penelope Cruz) and a blonde German BND agent (Diane Kruger). Via upscale parties, they infiltrate the global tech circuit and soon realize they’re being tracked by Chinese spy Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing). Rated PG-13, the film is long on empowered females wielding guns. Budgeted at $75 million and directed by Simon Kinberg, apparently your meant to take your teenage daughter to see it (wink wink). (Lisa Miller)
Expresso Bongo (Cohen Film Collection/Kino Lorber Blu-ray)
Five years before A Hard Day’s Night, Expresso Bongo (1959) took a snapshot of British rock and roll. It’s a sympathetic comedy from an older director, Val Guest (The Quatermass Xperiment), concerning a Soho hustler who sees his future in singer-bongo player Cliff Richard.
The set-up is similar to Hollywood flicks such as Don’t Knock the Rock but reflects the particularity of its location. The opening montage captures the bright lights and vibrancy of London just a few years past rationing and wartime rubble. The kids are jitterbugging to a new beat. England’s biggest rock star in that moment, Cliff Richard, competently imitates Elvis and his band, The Shadows, capably channel the electric twang of rockabilly. Expresso Bongo is a frankly sardonic, still amusing look at the business of music in a Britain unaware that it was about to launch the British Invasion.
The Blu-ray includes the complete Expresso Bongo with all scenes restored from the original release. (David Luhrssen)
El Hombre Búfalo (IndiePix DVD)
Mexico is a ravaged place in David Torres’ El Hombre Búfalo (2020) where people disappear or reappear dead. Lots of interesting ideas bob to the surface amidst the arty tics in a film that crosses faux documentary with magical realism and neo-realism as the digital cameras roam the streets. Connections gradually congeal between the homeless man, the self-professed thug and the investigative journalist (onto a dangerous story) and his friends as past and present tenses are scrambled. (David Luhrssen)
June Again (Limited theatrical release and streaming on Apple TV, Jan. 7)
Noni Hazlehurst portrays stroke victim June in this Aussie dramedy. The stroke ushered in five years of severe dementia. One day, June awakens, her mental faculties fully restored. She escapes the nursing home to discover her house is occupied by strangers. Enter June’s adult children: daughter Ginny (Claudia Karvan and son Devon (Stephen Curry), their lives eroded during June’s absence, along with the family business gone to pot. Writer-director JJ Winlove learned that stroke-induced dementia victims can recover, but that their recovery can also be temporary. Cognizant of these facts, June attempts to right things with all due haste. The family drama is refreshingly nonjudgmental, giving way to moments of levity if not clarity. After all, where family is concerned, we struggle to penetrate the fog. (Lisa Miller)
