“The Rivals of Amzaiah King” is four or five movies in one, but what could have been jarringly uneven is mostly held together, thanks to the exceptionally gifted writer/director Andrew Patterson, whose acclaimed “Vast of Night” introduced us to a first-time, low-budget filmmaker who already had a deep understanding of cinematic storytelling. This one is part family drama, part crime story, part comedy (that school scene!), part heist story, part revenge, part coming of age, part tragedy, part comedy, so, kind of like life, plus the heartbeat throughout is one of the best soundtracks of the year.

The title character, ideal casting for Matthew McConaughey, who gives one of his career-best performances as a beekeeper and musician in a rural Oklahoma community. We first see him with his friends, performing in the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant. The group includes his lawyer, Rippy (Rob Morgan), and Stephen (Benjamin Hardesty, real-life member of The Last Bison band and composer of many of the film’s songs). Amziah fits comfortably in his life, patient and gentle, as a beekeeper must be, with the gift of deep appreciation for each moment, especially if it involves bees or music. He has a wry sense of humor, sharp observations, and engages in non-stop picaresque commentary that does not hide an essential stillness and absence of judgment that the people around him find reassuring. In this community, anyone can play music or sing and no one minds much if someone has done time in prison. Amziah routinely hires ex-cons who cannot get a job anywhere else.

The local police interrupt the parking lot concert to ask for Amziah’s help in identifying the owner of some stolen vats of honey that have been recovered. He tells them the only possible way is if there is an identifying mark in the bottom of one of the barrels. And the only way to find if there is one is to empty it out, a complicated process because “there’s nothing heavier than honey” and the only way to empty it is to heat it and turn it over to let the honey slide out. They all go to his processing facility and Amziah calls a former employee named Remmick (Jake Horwitz, who also appeared in “Vast of Night”) to come help. Remmick brings along a friend named Komar (Tony Revolori), who knows nothing about processing honey but brags about knowing someone who has a Granada guitar.

It all seems idyllically cozy and we may think we’re in a sort of updated, profane version of Mayberry, until a shocking and very bloody industrial accident sends one of the group to the hospital, the first of several unexpected turns of plot and tone.

Amziah stops at a diner and discovers that his waitress, is Kateri (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass), a young women he and his late wife fostered for two years when she was young. He can see that she is guarded, but he quietly invites her to hear his group perform later in the week and he is delighted when she shows up. Soon she has moved back in with him and is working with him at the hives. He even coaxes her into singing a little bit.

So, now it’s shifted into a family drama about reunion and resilience. Briefly. Another twist is coming and the second half gets into the crime story, with a theft of bees and honey, an amateur detective tracking it down and uncovering some other crimes, a hacker named Oat (Cole Sprouse), a sad death, a police chase, some racial issues (Kateri is native American), a heist, murder, Kurt Russell, and more. Patterson somehow manages to hold it together in part thanks to goregous, roots-infused music throughout (produced by T. Bone Burnett), golden-infused cinematography from M.I. Littin-Menz (also from “The Vast of Night”), and editing from Patrick J. Smith that lends an impressionistic, folkloric tone, adding coherence to the otherwise-jarring shifts.

LookingGlass is a real find, with a luminousness and steadiness that lends eloquence to her expressive face. There are stand-out scenes, one almost slapstick when Amziah is called to rescue an elementary school from a swarm of bees, all of the music scenes, especially the impromptu jam session in Amziah’s small dining room, and an elaborate heist scene with a pause for some heartfelt confidences. A few of the twists are too jarring, and twice-explained analogy of the bee society is a rare instance of Patterson explaining too much, contrary to his usual respect for the audience in leaving just a bit more unsaid than we get in the average film and letting us fill in the rest from our own imagination and experience.

This movie is itself an experience, immersive, moving, shocking, scary, and the kind of characters you will miss when they are gone.

A ridicuously silly premise manages to stay out of the way and let the glossy rom-com take over. Extremely attractive people with great chemistry, some genuinely funny situations and a touch of wit in the dialogue, a bunch of top actors in small parts, and some surprisingly sharp satire around the edges (watch for the posters and ads) make this more fun that you might expect. It helps that the movie itself does not take the premise too seriously.

According to the opening text, three years ago, Congress passed a law criminalizing sex between unmarried people except for just 12 hours on one day a year, non-procreative sex only. It’s known as the Mandate. How is this monitored and enforced? Red biomarkers on the wrists of unmarried people turn green only for the one permissible 12 hour period. No reason to think about this too hard except that people get to choose the symbol, like a tattoo, a tattle-tale biomarker that reports their activities to the authorities. Why this annual exception? Political compromise. In present day, it is just hours before the markers turn green and almost all of the young singles are extremely excited and focused, dressing to impress and, for those not in relationships, trying to find someone as quickly as possible. Condoms are sold out all across the city, a scarce few left are going for very high surge prices. Lubricant is being handed out on the street.

And so we meet the couple we will be rooting for and through many obstacles and wrong turns they will make on the way there. Owen (Callum Turner, holding his own as a romantic lead) owns a small pizza parlor and is looking forward to having sex for the third time with his live-in girlfriend (Maya Hawke). But she tells him she is planning to have sex with their neighbor instead. Allie (Monica Barbaro) is still hurting from the guy who had sex with her and then ghosted her the year before. She agrees to go to a bar with her friend, but the friend immediately abandons her to go off and have sex with someone she met in the line for the bathroom.

Allie and Owen keep running into each other as they keep trying to have sex with people that never happens for a variety of reasons, ranging from slapsticky to more slapsticky. You’ll have time to watch for some details on ads and signs that are funnier than anything in the story. But the travails of the two give them time to get to know one another and time for us to want to see them together. Barbaro (Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown”) shows an engaging warmth and a gift for comic timing. And some of the people they meet along the way are so game that they keep things going. The excellent supporting cast in even the smallest parts includes Mike Birbiglia, “SNL’s” Ben Marshall, Molly Ringwald(!) as Owen’s mother and LeVar Burton(!!) as her boyfriend, plus Ziwe, Este Haim (who provided the very fine music), Julia Fox, and King Princess.

Hey, it’s difficult these days to find a way to keep romantic couple we want to be together apart for the length of a movie, and this is no more artificial than, say, having one of them be a vampire. The movie has one wise choice — it doesn’t waste much time on the premise. And it has one advantage — some recent political developments may make that premise less outlandish than we thought. A lot of stuff we thought was impossible now seems more like…improbable. That considered, with some funny moments and an unexpectedly sweet conclusion, it’s very watchable.

Parents should know that this is a movie about sex and it is filled with sexual references and situations and brief nudity. Characters use strong and crude language and drink alcohol, there are references to drugs and comic mayhem that includes injuries and some visits to the ER.

Family discussion: What kinds of laws have governments made to put restrictions on sex? What rules should there be? Did Owen and Allie make the right choice as the exception hours were coming to an end?

If you like this, try: “The Broken Hearts Gallery”

We’ve been warned even more than ususal not to allow any spoilers in our reviews, so this is the best I can do while leaving the best surprises in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” for you to discover.

I can remind you that in the last episode, “No Way Home” Peter’s beloved Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) was killed by the Green Goblin and to protect the rest of the people he loved he caused them to lose all memories of him.

We’re brought up to date with a terrific montage of Spidey capturing one villain after another, including Scorpion (Michael Mando). Headlines congratulate him for just about eliminating crime from the city.

Now, Spider-Man (Tom Holland) is an adult and dealing with being utterly alone by spending every waking moment fighting crime and pretending he is not being crushed by loneliness. He brings flowers to Aunt May’s grave. He misses his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon) and the love of his life, MJ (Zendaya) and watches their Instagram posts about their time at MIT. His only real human contact is with an appreciative Detective Jean DeWolff (Liza Colón-Zayas).

The strain takes a toll. “Sometimes Spider-Man does the right thing even if it breaks Peter Parker’s heart.” Being full-time Spider-Man without any time for Peter may be a factor in some changes that are occuring in his spider-powers. We will see other characters struggle with the duality of their super-ness and their humanness, a theme of the film.

And then a new villian seems impossible to find, much less stop. Someone is able to “jump” into the minds of just about anyone, and breaks the Scorpion out of prison. The government Damage Control department led by Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman of “Severance”), which adapts bad-guy technoloy for good-guy purposes, asks him to track the mystery villain down. With some guidance by three familiar characters from the MCU, he gets a little closer.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton handles the drama and the action well, especially a great fight with The Hand, evil, red-cloaked ninja assassins.

Spider-Man and Tom Holland have come a long way. Peter Parker was just 14 when we first saw Holland play a small role in “Captain America: Civil War” and 15 as lead in “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” He was gone a few years in the Snap, but came back as a 16-year-old. Both he and Zendaya have gracefully grown with their older but wiser characters and their performances are thoughtful and as grounded in a way that balances the heightened tone of any story that involves a person swinging on spider-webs can be. It is sweet to see chemistry of the real-life newlyweds and impressive to compare their performances (and one other actor’s) to what they did a couple of weeks ago in “The Odyssey.” Clearly, they not only treat both with seriousness and commitment, but they also give each genre and its fans the respect it deserves.

Now, who’s ready for “Avengers: Doomsday!”

Parents should know that this is a comic book movie with extensive peril and action. Characters are badly injured and dealing with two very sad, off-camera deaths. There is also some strong language.

Family discussion: Did you catch the Gandolf reference? How do you know what is a big potato and what is a small potato? Do you agree with Spider-Man’s decision about who to help? Which character’s powers would you most like to have, and how would you balance your superhero (or supervillain) life with your human life?

If you like this, try: ALL of the Spider-Man movies, so you can compare the Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland versions.

One of the foundational stories of the Western canon has a grand, sweeping, meticulously diligent new version in writer/director Christopher Nolan’s epic film, bristling with Oscar-winning talent and impressive seriousness of purpose. It is, with a few significant exceptions, true to Homer’s story dating back to 700-800 BC. But there are also vestigial reflections of Nolan’s previous film, “Oppenheimer,” both stories of men who must grapple with the consquences of their destructive, even ruthless, acts during wartime.

Matt Damon plays one of history’s most complex heroes, Odysseus, whose name and story still define journeys of adventure thousands of years later. The Odyssey follows Odysseus on his long voyage home after the victory of the Greeks, led by Agamemnon, with Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus, in the Trojan War. Paris, a Trojan prince, had been asked to decide which of three goddesses was the most beautiful. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, bribed him by saying that if he picked her, she would give him the most beautiful human woman in the world. That woman was Helen (Lupita Nyong’o). She was the wife of the Greek king, Menelaus of Sparta (Jon Bernthal). But she is known throughout history as Helen of Troy, because she was kidnapped (or ran away with) Paris, leading to the war that made her known as “the face that launched a thousand ships.”

That war lasted ten years. It was Odysseus, known for his trickery, who came up with the idea of getting the soliders inside the Trojan’s impenetrable city by hiding in a gigantic statue of a horse, with a soldier named Sinon (Elliot Page) left behind to lie that the Greeks had retreated, leaving the horse as a tribute to the goddess Athena (Zendaya). When the Trojans drag it into the city, the Greek soldiers come out to win a decisive battle and end the war. This story is told in Virgil’s Anead, and in Nolan’s film we see parts of it more than once in flashbacks, part of elliptical, non-linear story-telling that may be confusing to those not familiar with Homer’s tale. (To refresh your memory or just get a quick recap, try this.)

But really, all you need to know is that Odysseus is on his way home, leading his men in (to start with) three boats, hoping to make it back before Agamemnon reaches his home just to be competitive. (Agamemnon will get home first but then be murdered by his wife, Helen’s sister (also Nyong’o).

It will take Odysseus a decade, with many stops along the way as the crew tries to replenish their provisions. The most well-known of their adventures are all brought to screen in unprecedented splendor by Nolan, and his “Oppenheimer” team, editor Jennifer Lame, production designer Ruth De Jong, and Oscar-winning cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, filming in Greece, Italy, Iceland, Morocco, and Scotland. This is the first-ever feature movie filmed entirely with IMAX cameras (in tribute, you can even get an IMAX camera popcorn bucket) and shown in 70 mm. The visuals are never less than spectacular. Odysseus and his men are traveling by boat and the sky and “the wine-dark sea” Homer described is filmed with a power and grandeur of a true epic. We get a visceral feeling of just how alone these men are, not just before GPS but before maps and navigation, entrusting to the gods to guide them home but knowing that the gods may be even more devious tricksters than Odysseus himself.

Odysseus tries to follow the “laws of Zeus,” particularly with regard to hospitable treatment of strangers, and killing even animals with honor, plucking his bow string to give them a chance to escape. When lives are at stake, though, he will do what is expedient. On their first stop, he leads his men onto an island where a cave is set up as a home, with a cozy fire. According to his beliefs about what the laws of Zeus require and assuming that the inhabitant of the cave will believe the same, he orders his men to stoke the fire to welcome their host. But the inhabitant is not a man. He is a gigantic cyclops, and in a genuinely terrifying moment, as soon as he enters the cave, he grabs one of the men and bites his head off. It is hard to understand why Nolan chose to omit one of the key elements of the story, Odysseus refusing to give the cyclops his name, instead saying he was called “Noman.” This is a very significant part of the story that is parallel to his not using his own name when he returns home, both relating to his sense of himself and his identity.

After a few more deaths, Odysseus is able to lead his men to an escape. But he violates his obligation to give the murdered men a decent burial. The conflict between his obligations under the law of Zeus and the choices to save as many lives as possible are a theme.

This conflict is presented in the immediate consequences of killing the cyclops. Odysseus learns that the monster was the son of the god Poseiden, who will now express his grief and anger by keeping them from reaching home. As in Homer’s original story, it explores the theme of human agency and the interference of the gods. We often see Odysseus near the goddess Athena.

Other adventures include two enchantresses. Calypso ( Charlize Theron) feeds Odysseus lotus flowers that make him forget the PTSD of his agonizing choices but also the fact that he has a family. Circe (Samatha Morton) turns his famished men into pigs (an extraordinary scene of transformation and body horror), and we see how clever Odysseus is in figuring out what she has done and forcing her to reverse the spell and help him get home. He travels to Hades where he meets the ghost of Sinon. He straps himself to the mast of his ship while his men have their ears blocked with wax to pass through the jagged rocks where the sirens sing men to their deaths.

Meanwhile, his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) are back in Ithaca, with dozens of suitors eating their food, drinking their wine, and trying to get Penelope to marry one of them so he can take over the kingdom. The most odious of the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), a maniuplative schemer who got Sinon to take his place in the war. Telemachus leaves Ithaca to see if he can find any news of his father from Menelaus.

It will take all of Odysseus’ craftiness and strength to defeat the suitors and reunite with his wife and son. Damon’s performance shows us all of the complexity that makes Odysseus an eternally enthralling hero. Pattinson continues to impress as he subverts his considerable looks and charisma to create a despicable, cowardly character. John Leguizamo is superb as the loyal Eumaeus. Even the three-hour run time cannot find enough time for Theron, Zendaya, and Morton, but each of those encounters could be an entire movie.

Nolan’s screenplay veers into colloquialisms that take us out of the movie now and then. But he has an unsurpassed gift for the language of cinema. The scenes of exploration, combat, and in Penelope’s castle in Ithaca are striking and narratively clear. Penelope fends off the suitors by telling them she cannot move forward until she finishes weaving a burial shroud for her late father-in-law. She weaves during the day and then unravels it at night. She appears modestly behind a screen as the suitors crowd the dining hall.

Nolan’s style is chilly and cerebral, with the female characters thinly sketched and too often just creating problems for or taking power away from men. That may be one reason that draws him to a story where a military hero has encounters with literal enchantresses who impede his progress. His exploration here of the conflicts even successful warriors feel about what they have done and what they have seen is moving. He made very significant changes to Homer’s concluding scenes (admittedly, contested by some scholars as added by others later). But the ending he chose has the same problems as the disputed version and it undermines the weight of what he has presented so compellingly throughout the story.

Parents should know that this film is extremely violence with many characters injured and killed, many with throats slit, monsters, ghosts, and graphic and disturbing images. Odysseus is drugged and characters drink wine. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: Why is this one of the most enduring stories in history? What does Odysseus regret the most? What decisions did he make that you think were wrong?

If you like this, try: the book (Fagles or Wilson translation) and a modern re-imagining from the Coen brothers, “O Brother Where Art Thou.”

A French Officer in the American Revolution is the thrilling story of a dashing and courageous French soldier who joined the Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington to fight in the American Revolutionary War. It is based on meticulous research and the journals of François-Louis de Ménonville, written by his direct descendant as if it was told by the soldier himself, with extensive footnotes for those interested in learning more. It describes not only his adventures in battle and comments on military strategy but his thoughts on George Washington, Lafayette, and other major figures.

The ebook is FREE the holiday weekend in honor of the 250th birthday of the US.