How to Blow Up a Pipeline ***1/2
The title of this movie inspired by Andreas Malm’s nonfiction book certainly isn’t false advertising; director Daniel Goldhaber spends plenty of time on the logistics and mechanics of an act of radical sabotage. But there’s also more depth to this study of eight people—including Native American bomb expert Michael (Forrest Goodluck), best friends Xochitl (Ariela Barer) and Theo (Sasha Lane), and conservative father and husband Dwayne (Jake Weary)—who come together for an operation to blow up a West Texas oil pipeline in desperation over the climate crisis. Goldhaber and his screenwriting team (also including cast member Barer and Jordan Sjol) wring a lot of terrific tension out of the operation itself, from working with explosives to wrangling heavy drums of materials to evading detection, heightened by Gavin Brivik’s jittery score. Things get even more complicated by flashbacks to the stories of the individual participants, capturing the circumstances that radicalized them as well as the possible differences that could challenge their ability to work as a team. The filmmakers certainly assume their audience is generally on the side of the idea that drastic action is required, even if the suspense elements work on their own merits. It’s more compelling, though, if you follow along with the notion that it’s not just about how to blow up a pipeline, but why to blow up a pipeline. Available April 14 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (R)

Mafia Mamma ***
We’ve had nearly 30 years to recognize Toni Collette as an absolute treasure of the cinema, and it feels like we haven’t done a remotely adequate job of appreciating how she can elevate even formulaic material. Here she plays Kristin, a Southern California pharmaceutical company executive dealing with a recently-empty nest and a cheating husband when she gets word from Italy that her grandfather has died, leaving her in charge of the family business—which happens to be organized crime. Fish-out-of-water shenanigans ensue, initially built around Kristin’s earnest American eagerness to have an “Eat, Pray, F—k” romantic adventure colliding with old-world traditions, as emphasized by the family consigliere (Monica Bellucci). And a little of that stuff could have gone a very long way, especially when it includes cringe-making choices like turning an attempted sexual assault into broad comedy. That it ultimately works at all, and in fact works reasonably well, is almost entirely thanks to Collette, who nails all of the beats involved in Kristin’s transition from meek people-pleaser to badass. Throw in a few light-hearted Godfather references by director Catherine Hardwicke—yes, death is accompanied here by a cascade of spilled oranges—and you’ve got a high-concept comedy with a little bit of an extra bump thanks to building it around someone who deserves to have more movies built around her. Available April 14 in theaters. (R)

Rare Objects **1/2
See feature review. Available April 14 in theaters. (NR)

Suzume **1/2
Sometimes it’s best just to acknowledge that there are creative forms where you’re just not on the right wavelength—and outside of the primary Studio Ghibli output, that’s me with most anime, including the work of popular writer/director Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering With You). Shinkai’s latest tells the story of Suzume (Nanoka Hara), an orphaned teenager being raised by her aunt Tamaki (Eri Fukatsu), who encounters a handsome young man named Souta (Hokuto Matsumura) on her way to school one day. She discovers that Souta bears a heavy burden of keeping control of a powerful supernatural force that threatens Japan with devastating earthquakes, sending her with Souta on a quest across the country. There’s certainly a striking visual energy to Suzume, from the design of the destructive “worm” to the odd supporting characters like an animated three-legged chair and a trickster cat. It’s simply clear that Shinkai wants to connect his fantastical elements to emotional components—involving Suzume’s feelings of being abandoned by her mother, and her first love with Souta—and those ideas never quite land, especially as the action keeps moving from place to place and adding more supporting characters to keep track of. Shinkai gets cheeky in one instance by dropping a reference to Ghibli’s Whisper of the Heart, and unfortunately it’s mostly a reminder that this isn’t at the same level. Available April 14 in theaters. (NR)

Sweetwater **
The story of those athletes who broke the color barrier in the NBA—the Jackie Robinson equivalents of their sport—absolutely warrants telling. And it would be great if it felt like such a story was actually about them, rather than the white people who helped them out. Theoretically, the focus here is on Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton (Everett Osborne), a gifted star for the Harlem Globetrotters circa 1949 who catches the eye of New York Knicks coach Joe Lapchick (Jeremy Piven). But even more complicated than getting Knicks owner Ned Irish (Cary Elwes) to agree is getting the entire league to agree to bring Black players in. Writer/director Martin Guigui fills his cast with recognizable faces—Kevin Pollak as Trotters impresario Abe Saperstein, Richard Dreyfuss as NBA commissioner Mo Podoloff, Eric Roberts as a racist gas-station proprietor—and mounts a production full of golden images and sweeping orchestrations to provide a sense of consequence. But aside from a pair of two-minute flashbacks to Clifton’s youth, there’s virtually no attempt here to foreground the struggles of his journey, as Guigui spends plenty of time on the earnest efforts of Lapchick and Irish, and the threats they face for championing NBA integration. As a result, Clifton feels like a supporting character in his own narrative, one where Saperstein releasing him from his Trotters contract by saying “I am the Jewish Abe Lincoln” feels like a case where the filmmaker agrees. Available April 14 in theaters. (PG-13)

Tori and Lokita **1/2
For decades, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have made movies about human connections and the struggles of the disenfranchised, without ever reducing his characters entirely to their status as victims or villains. And that makes it all the more disappointing that their latest effort proves to be about an Issue, rather than the people involved. The titular pair of African immigrants in Belgium—16-year-old Lokita (Joely Mbundu) and 11-year-old Tori (Pablo Schils)—are posing as brother and sister after having met on a ship, hoping to have Lokita piggyback on Tori’s status as a refugee to get her residency papers. Without those papers, they’re forced to work off-the-books—including running drugs for a local dealer (Alban Ukaj)—while still having to pay off the smuggler who brought them to the country. The Dardennes draw a fairly clean line connecting those who would exploit them, employing their matter-of-fact style to show how bureaucratic hoops cause real harm. The problem is that the filmmakers don’t put in enough of the initial work to establish the emotional connection between Lokita and Tori that we’re just expected to take for granted, with the blank characters expected to engender sympathy just because they’re suffering. By the time we get to one of the characters reading a speech that literally amounts to a thesis statement, it feels like the Dardennes are fresh out of the subtle humanism that has made the rest of their work so indelible. Available April 14 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)