This month’s picks include a French comedic swashbuckling adventure, Indian spy games and more.
‘All-Time High’
Youssef (Nassim Lyes) is a habitual liar, a down-on-his-luck gambler and a hustler of fake luxury handbags. He is working these cons to impress his wealthy girlfriend — she thinks he has a regular office job. When Youssef reveals the truth, including his bald head underneath his wig, she leaves him. Soon Youssef has a new girlfriend, Stephanie (Zoé Marchal), a card shark with a crypto fortune. But his gambling catches up to him, and a few goons are sent to track him down.
The French writer-director Julien Hollande’s “All-Time High” is a comedic swashbuckling adventure: Youssef and Stephanie are the kind of couple whose vapid arguments always end in raunchy sex. The pair fight their way through an underground card game, captured by a sweeping camera, and are involved in a thrilling motorcycle chase that sees them ineptly firing shots at their pursuers. It’s a reminder that sometimes the incompetent action heroes are the most entertaining.
‘Deadland’
The director Lance Larson’s “Deadland,” a border narrative that fittingly crosses the boundaries between slow burn, thriller, horror and action, isn’t totally a bust-em-up, shoot-em-up affair. It works on a subtler psychological level when Angel Waters (Roberto Urbina), a border patrol agent, brings to base a nameless, near-dead migrant (Luis Chávez) he found floating in the water. When Waters’s colleague, Cruz (Julieth Restrepo) tries to help the victim, a trigger-happy officer named Ray Hitchcock (McCaul Lombardi) shoots and kills him.
“Deadland” is an angsty film, capturing the police officers’ disintegrating alliances through well-calibrated jump scares, loaded standoffs and unhinged nightmare sequences. Though these officers bury the dead man’s body, they can’t cover up their crime. He continues to haunt them, leading to an arresting finale that sears the wounds felt by a ghost who never found the easier life he desired.
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