Ambulance is berserk, while Camila Cabello grows with Familia and A Black Lady Sketch Show soars

Aline

There are unauthorized biopics, and then there’s Aline, “Fiction loosely based on Celine Dion’s life.” Valérie Leerier writes, directs and stars in a retelling of the life of the French-Canadian songbird that is both psychedelic surreal and surprisingly, tenderly normal: a star is born, sings, flies!

He also happens to be played between 5 and 50 by a 58-year-old actor, making the film a sort of confusing journey from Aline to Wonderland, Pen15 in mid-thirties and Martin Short as demonic. Student of the fourth grade. to Clifford. When she’s just a little Quebecoise, the youngest of 14 siblings, lighting her toddler torch at a family wedding? If she is hired by a much older record executive (Sylvain Marcel) at the age of 12, will she finally get married? When will it take over the world with a big number and win the 1998 Oscars? Mays oui, toujours, is 58 years old. (Although Face Tune technology and various camera tricks are introduced to aid the illusion of size, if not mysterious youth.) Even the film itself feels like performance art, reminiscent of both the soft-focus Lifetime iconography. that night. the horrors of last year’s Adam Driver-Marion Cottillard doll musical Annette. French singer Victoria Sio provides a loud and commanding voice, but Lemercier’s heart continues. Look at it sincerely or out of curiosity; at least you know you won’t forget. Grade: B – Leah Greenblatt

Ambulance

Ambulance comes from the mind of Michael Bay, and the first thing you need to know is how much Bay is: way Bay, Peak Bay, Bay über everything. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Danny Sharp, a maniacal jovial bandit; Yahya Abdul Mateen II (Candyman, The Matrix Resurrections) is his adopted brother, ex-Marine and baby. Though half estranged, Will desperately wants his wife to have an operation they can’t afford, and Danny conveniently has a job for the afternoon: a $32 million drop in downtown Los Angeles. When something goes wrong, the pair are forced to flee in an ambulance with a seriously injured officer (Jackson White) and an EMT (I Care a Lot’s Eiza González) on board – and the entire air, ground and LAPD fleet in the air. the pursuit .

Bay films most of the scenes as if he had just been struck by various types of lightning, the camera flashing and going seasick on highways and fireballs and the blazing California sun. And an all-Baroque Gyllenhaal seems almost transfixed, throwing pranks like beads at Mardi Gras and driving Nic Cage crazy. Everything takes too long and eventually ends (the 2005 Danish original on which the script is based comes in in almost an hour). The violence is cartoonishly casual and the rest is pure Hollywood grain. The crux of the matter, however, is absurd: it’s just two brothers who escaped, and we came to escape. Grade: B – Leah Greenblatt

The Black Woman’s Sketch Show

This is what it looks like when the series is at its peak. Now in its third season, A Black Lady Sketch Show continues to be a marvel of comedic craftsmanship: every joke, every wig, every performance is a work of playful precision.

Created by Robin Thede, ABLSS combines absurd but recognizable skits (women collect Purge-style to dispose of half-used hair products; students realize their 5th grade teacher has a cat) with an interstitial soap containing Thede and her. No spoilers, but know that this season their apocalypse-themed ordeal unfolds in an unexpected way that makes perfect sense in our age of conspiracy.

Fan-favorite characters return (Dr. Hadassah Olayinka Ali-Youngman, pre-doctoral is a new book, all of you!) and guest stars galore. The sketches relate to the black experience (a woman with ash-colored legs exchanged ointment with the devil); the sketches are universally recognizable (the pair of House Hunters season 237 pretend to have no remorse from the buyers: “You can’t burn down a kitchen you don’t have!”). Above all, the sketches are consistent, ridiculously funny. R- – Kristen Baldwin

La Familia by Camila Cabello

The pandemic was clearly a moment of introspection for Camila Cabello, who spills her life on her third solo album as if it were her diary: discussing mental health in the new single “Psychofreak,” a disturbing and hypnotic collaboration with Willow ( alias Smith). ); and dealing with divorces both professionally (Fifth Harmony) and personally (Shawn Mendes?).

Although she has always shown her Cuban-Mexican heritage, in Familia that flower is associated with simplicity and nostalgia. Comfort is perhaps the ideal word to describe a far less embellished album than mainstream pop. (“Bom Bom” in her salsa-influenced duet with Ed Sheeran is closest to the ear, as is Cabello’s hit hit “Havanah” … na-na-na.)

As she deviates from her Latin roots with synth-heavy “Quiet”, haim-esque and R&B-nuanced “Boys Don’t Cry” (both album highlights), she expects more from the songwriter. one year longer than the former X Factor finalist. Ten years into his career – and despite the many uncertainties he faces at the Familia – the 25-year-old looks more confident than ever. B – Patrick Gomez

Inland Empire remastered

David Lynch defined the warped outcrops of reality in Twin Peaks’ bizarre cinematic story: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. His next (and final) stroke made those legendary fanatics look procedural. Filmed in two countries for three years, star Laura Dern plays who knows how many people. 2006’s Inland Empire turns all of Lynch’s movie fixes (sex, Hollywood, mid-century pop, Harry Dean Stanton) into a psycho movie nightmare. at three o’clock. Dern is an actress who slowly becomes the character she plays. Meanwhile, there’s Stranger Things in Poland and a sitcom about human-sized rabbits and … much more. Shot by Lynch himself with a low-resolution digital camera, Inland Empire stunned fans of his lavish previous work. Time has revealed that this project is a prescient work of video art and one of the first major representations of the derailment of identity in the digital age. And those rabbits! Return to theaters in a Lynch-supervised remaster. R – Darren Francich.

Lords of metal

If music is the food of love, metal is a complete meal of teenage angst in Lords, a light but wickedly charming maturity from Game of Thrones co-creator D.B.  Jaedan Martell – you might remember him as a budding incel from Knives Out or somewhere in IT’s bloodstream – is Kevin, an introverted guy whose best friend Hunter (newcomer Adrian Greensmith) lives and breathes the dark arts. from bands like Slayer and Judas Priest. (Never mind the general improbability of Generation Z youths to build a shelter for Rob Halford.)

Hunter, whose gruff plastic surgeon father (Fleabag’s Brett Gelman) reluctantly pursues his dream, is determined to win the battle for the high school band, even if all odds favor shiny-haired boy Ed Sheeran. Out of fairness, Kevin learns to play drums, but obviously a girl’s charm (Isis Hainsworth) colors his world. There are many cameos from the metal gods – Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello produced the score – and Joe Manganiello comes across as a doctor with a Sepultura-steeped past. But the story is of a young cast, and Lords’ shaky comedy softly captures the fear, occasional humiliation and undiluted hope of youth. Grade: B + – Leah Greenblatt