If the world isn’t actually broken, it sure seems that way, and discerning citizens have several options for processing their subsequent rage and despair. Therapy is good. Nihilism helps for a while. Simple denial is always popular.
Musician, filmmaker, and activist Boots Riley has a better way: Go see his new movie. A rowdy, anti-capitalist crime comedy, I Love Boosters uses surreal satire and live-in-the-moment anarchy to tell the story of a group of Bay Area women sick and tired of being broke and powerless.
The setup, loosely: Keke Palmer leads a crew of professional shoplifters—boosters—who steal upmarket fashions for downtown resale.
It’s a kind of guerrilla wealth redistribution, the way they see it. But things get tricky when they plan their biggest heist against a ruthless fashion mogul, played by Demi Moore. Also in the cast: Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, and Will Poulter.
I Love Boosters was a big hit at last year’s South by Southwest festival, where audiences responded to the film’s go-for-broke spirit and heightened comedy style. The film swerves through various genres—sci-fi, body horror, sex comedy, farce—with a maximalist visual strategy.
Riley’s vision isn’t about social change via retail theft. That’s just the bit. It’s about making mad art like I Love Boosters and fighting back against the cruelties of capitalism with compassion, collective action, and a healthy sense of humor. Power to the people.
If you’re looking for a scary movie this month, you have plenty of options, as usual. Horror movies are cheap and profitable these days. But your best bet for May is clear: Backrooms is a sci-fi/horror/mystery hybrid about a therapist (Renate Reinsve) who tracks her disturbed patient (Chiwetel Ejiofor) into an unbelievably creepy parallel universe of dim rooms, liminal spaces, and impossible geometry. The film is based on a series of YouTube short films, which is in turn based on the online urban-legend variant known as creepypasta.
Director Kane Parsons’ film has a modern origin story, but it’s steeped in the older tradition of weird fiction, which generates tension by suggesting that the universe is so much scarier than we can possibly imagine. Check the trailers online, and you’ll see there’s a funny connection to retail spaces in this movie, too. We’re entering consumerism’s nightmare phase, evidently.
For a gentler time at the movies this month, consider The Sheep Detectives, a family-friendly riff on the cozy mystery with a compelling twist: The murder victim is a shepherd in a small Irish village, and the investigating agency is his bereaved flock of sheep.
The film is based on the crazy-popular 2005 mystery novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by the German crime writer Leonie Swann. While the original book was written in German, it was eventually translated into more than 30 languages. The story is a little slice of genius. It’s among my favorite mystery novels ever, filled with gentle humor and clever variations of murder mystery tropes.
In the spirit of consumer advocacy, I must report that the film’s preview trailers are a little worrisome. The CGI sheep are more distracting than adorable. But the cast is pretty great: Hugh Jackman and Molly Gordon (Theater Camp!), with voice work from Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Regina Hall, Patrick Stewart, and New Zealand’s funniest man, Rhys Darby. Let us be hopeful about this adaptation. Or just go read the book.
Quick Picks
Speaking of books, readers of Richard Powers’ Pulitzer-winning novel The Overstory might want to seek out the recent import Silent Friend. The film follows the fate of a single gingko tree—and the people it shelters and comforts—over three interconnected stories in 1908, 1972, and 2020. You can boost your foreign-film quota with this one, too. It’s technically a German-French-Hungarian-Chinese production.
Playwright Aleshea Harris adapts her own award-winning stage play for the thriller Is God Is, about two twin sisters (Kara Young and Mallori Johnson) on a patricidal revenge quest. Also in the cast: Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox, and Janelle Monáe.
The documentary Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition charts the rise and fall and rise again of the legendary British metal band. Dads, send your kids down the multiplex corridor for the concert film Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour. The very funny standup comic Nate Bargatze gets his first leading role with The Breadwinner, a stay-at-home-dad comedy that looks like a quickie cash-in. However, older readers will recall that this exact same thing happened with Michael Keaton in 1983. It was called Mr. Mom, it was his first movie, and it was good.
The Balkan coming-of-age drama DJ Ahmet, winner of the audience award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, profiles a teen from a small conservative village who dreams of becoming a DJ. Reviews from the festival circuit say it’s a genuine heartwarmer.
Jon Favreau directs Disney’s latest Star Wars franchise installment, The Mandalorian and Grogu, billed as a continuation of the popular streaming series. I think we’re all required to see these movies now. There have been a lot of changes in the law.
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