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MOVIES
The Babadook
The title refers to a monster, top-hatted and
sharp-clawed, who appears when his name is
chanted three times, and who, like the worst
kind of house guest, shows no desire to leave.
The house in question is a small Australian
dwelling, where the colors are so muted that
the whole film appears, at times, to be willing
itself into a state of black-and-white. Before
the creature arrives, the sole inhabitants are the
widowed Amelia (Essie Davis) and her young
son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a demanding
soul who fashions homemade weapons and de-
prives Amelia of sleep. Only by a whisker can
Jennifer Kent’s absorbing movie, from 2014, be
considered a horror film. There is no lack of
shocks, especially in the frantic final act, but
they spring from some of our most common
and insoluble complaints—insomnia, loneliness,
the burdens of child care, and the intolerable
WHAT TO STREAM
weight of grief. As a bonus, we get a fine burst
of stop-motion animation; the Babadook first
appears in the pages of a book, like all the best
frighteners, and never looks back.—Anthony
Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 12/1/14.) (Streaming
on Tubi, Kanopy, and other services.)
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
Good cheer and exuberant humor enliven
this clever live-action musical adaptation of
Bernard Waber’s classic children’s-book se-
ries. The screenplay, by Will Davies, details
how, owing to the tribulations of Hector P.
Valenti (Javier Bardem), a self-billed “star of
stage and screen,” a crocodile landed in the
attic of an Upper East Side town house that’s
now home to a family of out-of-towners, the
Primms—a math teacher (Scoot McNairy), a
cookbook author (Constance Wu), and a mid-
dle schooler named Joshua (Winslow Fegley).
Lyle (a C.G.I. creation) doesn’t speak—he
sings with a voice of gold (provided by Shawn
Mendes), yet stagefright impedes his singing
career, with which Hector seeks to promote
and exploit him. Instead, the reptile becomes
a beloved member of the family, helping the
fretful Joshua make friends at school and get
used to city life (the movie may inadvertently
start a dumpster-diving trend) but also provok-
ing the ire of the Primms’ downstairs neighbor,
the litigious Mr. Grumps (Brett Gelman).
The directors, Josh Gordon and Will Speck,
deliver witty whimsy in the musical numbers
(featuring songs by Benj Pasek and Justin
Paul) and delight in the tale’s warmhearted
rowdiness.—Richard Brody (In theatrical release.)
Stars at Noon
Claire Denis’s new film is an oddly plain ad-
aptation of a novel by Denis Johnson; the
action is set in present-day Nicaragua, with
nineteen-eighties politics grafted onto it.
Margaret Qualley plays Trish, an out-of-
work freelance journalist whose reports have
landed her in trouble with the authorities.
For her protection, she has transactional sex
with an elderly government official (Stephan
Proaño) and a young revolutionary officer
(Nick Romano). Trapped in the country amid
mounting threats of violence, she meets a
mysterious young Englishman named Daniel
(Joe Alwyn); as their relationship intensifies,
it remains unclear who’s using whom. But
when Daniel is pursued by a Costa Rican po-
liceman (Danny Ramirez), Trish helps Daniel
evade him, and their dangerous adventure
turns intensely romantic. Denis revels in the
emotional clichés of tropical climates and
settings, and her callow protagonists, with
their hardboiled mannerisms, are blank slates
for international power plays. The film’s most
engaging elements are the chilling machina-
tions of secret agents, which are kept mainly
offscreen until they impinge on the couple’s
affair. Benny Safdie steals the film, as one
of those agents.—R.B. (In theatrical release.)

Triangle of Sadness
This sourly playful yet mechanical satire, writ-
ten and directed by Ruben Östlund, takes on
the easy targets of the oblivious rich and their
glamorous entourages, starting with two mod-
els, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi
Dean), a couple whose fights over money re-
flect their profession’s casual precarity. Yaya’s
It’s big news when a new movie theatre opens in New York. Firehouse sideline as an influencer scores them a cabin
on a yacht cruise for the fabulously wealthy,
Cinema, dedicated to showing documentaries, opened on Sept. 23, in a whose frivolous cruelty proves contagious. The
decommissioned firehouse on Lafayette Street that has long been home captain (Woody Harrelson), an alcoholic who’s
to Downtown Community Television Center, which was founded by also addicted to Marxism, leaves the vessel
vulnerable to a series of calamities, involving
the husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno, weather and pirates and a literal shitstorm,
in 1972, to foster independent production. This month, the streaming that ends in shipwreck. The survivors land
service OVID.tv presents a series of the pair’s documentaries alongside on a deserted island and face a state of nature
where money is useless. The fine cast—in-
“Bullets in the Hood: A Bed-Stuy Story,” a 2005 short by Terrence Fisher cluding Dolly de Leon, as a long-suffering
and Daniel Howard, who were students in a DCTV workshop. Fisher, staffer; Vicki Berlin, as the yacht’s crew chief;
who was nineteen at the time, set out to investigate the prevalence of and Zlatko Burić, as a Russian oligarch—give
vigorous yet clattery performances that reflect
gun violence among young Black men like himself in the neighborhood the hectic, blatant script, and Östlund’s pre-
where he lived; then a white police officer killed Fisher’s friend Tim- cise but stiff direction leaves little room for
othy Stansbury, Jr., who was unarmed, and the film shifts its attention inventiveness. It’s indicative of the movie’s
crass facility that its longest-running joke

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to the family’s, the community’s, and the government’s responses. (A involves a stroke victim (Iris Berben) and her
COURTESY DCTV

grand jury failed to indict the officer.) The film steadfastly documents aphasia.—R.B. (In theatrical release.)
the local activism that crystallized after the killing, including peaceful
protests and candlelight vigils, acts of resistance and commemoration For more reviews, visit
akin to the film itself.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town

10 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 17, 2022