‘Little Men’ (2016)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
The director Ira Sachs, whose new film “Peter Hujar’s Day” is getting raves on the festival circuit, is particularly adept at telling stories situated at the intersection of personal relationships and real estate concerns. It’s a peculiar specialty, but it describes both his lovely 2014 film “Love Is Strange” and this follow-up, which concerns two Brooklyn middle schoolers who find their close friendship threatened by a painfully protracted conflict between their parents over an increase in rent. (One boy’s parents just inherited the building where the other’s mother runs a dress shop.) Jennifer Ehle, Greg Kinnear and Paulina García are all excellent as the adults, trying their best to be agreeable and set good examples while managing their tensions and resentments, but the film belongs to Michael Barbieri and Theo Taplitz as the boys, who seem to grow up, in front of our very eyes, over the picture’s 85 minutes.
‘Call Jane’ (2022)
The directorial debut of the screenwriter Phyllis Nagy (“Carol”) was a victim of peculiar timing. Between its production and premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and its theatrical opening ten months later, its true story — of the Jane Collective, which coordinated abortions for Chicago women before the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 — was rendered newly resonant by the Dobbs v. Jackson decision reversing that ruling. Suddenly, a period piece was no longer such distant history. But “Call Jane” isn’t mere soap boxing; it is a detailed and meticulous recreation of makeshift health care and community empowerment, brought to vivid life by Elizabeth Banks as a new volunteer and Sigourney Weaver as the wise sage who shows her the ropes (and questions her assumptions).
‘Personal Shopper’ (2017)
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