openingnight

new movies this week

THE TEACHER’S LOUNGE

HHH 1/2

PG-13, 98 minutes. Starts Friday at United Westerly.

What happens in the teachers’ lounge, anyway? When we were kids, that closed door seemed so tantalizingly forbidding, though it probably only hid some coffee-sipping, light chitchat and paper-grading. Well, not in the brilliantly taut and absorbing “The Teachers’ Lounge, “in which that room — and gradually, the whole school around it — hosts an expanding web of uneasy power dynamics, mutual suspicion and misinformation, and that’s just for starters. This film also explores cancel culture, institutional racism, privacy rights and even censorship and press freedom. That’s a lot for one middle school. But writer-director Ílker Çatak pulls it off, aided by excellent performances all around and two truly superb ones: Leonie Benesch as an idealistic new teacher and a heartbreaking Leo Stettnisch as her troubled student. (The film, Germany’s submission to the Academy Awards, has justifiably made the short list for best international feature.) “The Teachers’ Lounge” dives immediately into the controversy that will tear this modern, bustling school apart. Carla Nowak (Benesch) is called to an uncomfortable meeting between school officials and two student representatives of her sixth-grade class. The students are being grilled as to which fellow classmates may have been responsible for a series of thefts — essentially, they’re being asked to denounce friends without evidence. Carla is angry at the tactic, but lacks the confidence to speak out. She’s even more appalled by what happens next: The principal and her colleagues come to her classroom, ask the girls to leave and force the boys to surrender their wallets for inspection (why only boys?) Of course, the adults note unconvincingly, the process is entirely voluntary — but if the students have nothing to hide, there’s nothing to fear. One boy seems to have a lot of money, but his Turkish immigrant parents, summoned to the school, explain indignantly (in a typically bristling, beautifully modulated scene) that they’d given him money to buy a video game as a gift. They argue that he’s being racially profiled. Already, back in the teachers’ lounge, Carla is clashing with her more aggressive colleagues. And then, in her misguided zeal to identify the real thief and exonerate her kids, she steps right into an ethical morass. — Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press

WICKED LITTLE LETTERS

HHH 1/2

R, 102 minutes. Starts tonight at Madison. Starts Friday at United Westerly.

The “Wicked Little Letters” start arriving even before the dark comedy has begun. The movie is about the escalating battle between prim Englishwoman Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), who is given to remarking that suffering is a gift because it strengthens her, and new neighbor Rose (Jessie Buckley). Edith pretends to like Rose, in the same way she pretends to like suffering, but there are plenty of reasons to feud with her neighbor: She is Irish. She is a single mother who lives with a Black man. She is loud (some of that involves the man). She swears like a sailor would if he dropped an anchor on his foot. She drinks. And she isn’t especially tidy. Inspired by events that happened in an English village in the 1920s, “Wicked Little Letters” is an “Odd Couple” situation and the two leads are spectacular. The stakes get high quickly — someone (possibly Edith) reports Rose to child protection authorities, which leads to her being jailed. Meanwhile, the acts described in the profane letters Rose receives, and seems to relish reading aloud, get increasingly vile and physically impossible. A big part of the appeal of “Wicked” is its leads, who also shared billing (and Oscar nominations) in “The Lost Daughter” but did not share the screen, since they played the same woman at different stages of life. Both actors are adept at cluing us in that there’s more to their characters than what’s on the surface, which makes their many scenes together especially good. Buckley’s ferocity often hides her characters’ vulnerability, which Rose eventually reveals. And Colman’s half-concealed smiles let us know Edith, who still lives with her domineering parents, gets a bang out of the nasty language.

— Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

SOMEONE LIKE YOU

PG, 118 minutes. Playing now at Mystic, Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon.

After the tragic loss of his best friend, a grieving young architect launches a search for her secret twin sister. A review wasn’t available.

MONKEY MAN

R, 113 minutes. Starts tonight at Mystic, Waterford, Lisbon. Starts Friday at Westbrook.

A young man (Dev Patel) ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he’s beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, he discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. A review wasn’t available.

THE FIRST OMEN

R, 120 minutes. Starts tonight at Waterford, Lisbon. Starts Friday at Westbrook.

A woman starts to question her own faith when she uncovers a conspiracy to bring about the birth of evil incarnate in Rome. A review wasn’t available.

EPIC TAILS

PG, 94 minutes. Starts Friday at Lisbon.

Life is peaceful in Iolcos, the beautiful and prosperous port city in ancient Greece. When an enraged Poseidon threatens to destroy it, a mouse and a cat will help ageing hero Jason and the Argonauts in their quest save it. A review wasn’t available.