CHAOS: The Manson Murders **1/2
Generally speaking, Errol Morris’s documentaries have been at their best when he’s able to turn his Interrotron camera on interesting (and sometimes awful) people and just let them talk—which is why it seems so odd that Morris chooses to sideline the person who inspired this movie for so long. The title comes from a 2019 book by writer Tom O’Neill, inspired by his research into the infamous 1969 Southern California murders by members of the “Manson family,” and his subsequent theory that Manson was somehow connected to U.S. government research into mind control, perhaps as a way to discredit the anti-war movement. That’s a pretty wild allegation, and Morris gives O’Neill some time to kinda put the pieces together despite the writer’s own acknowledgement that he hasn’t buttoned the theory up tightly, despite lots of circumstantial evidence connecting Manson to mind-control expert Louis “Jolly” West and the infamous “MK Ultra” CIA experiments with psychedelic drugs. The problem is that way too much of the running time is devoted simply to re-hashing all the details about the killings themselves—including commentary from prosecutor Stephen Kay and—in a way that barely distinguishes this from a hundred other rubbernecking true-crime docs, let alone all the other documentaries about this particular case. After decades of making documentaries that were almost always fascinating to watch, Morris is now making some that just make me want to read the book. Available March 7 via Netflix. (NR)

Mickey 17 ***
Bong Joon-ho certainly does like taking big swings when it comes to addressing progressive themes—and the degree to which you think this one works probably depends on whether you groove to that vibe, and don’t care how many different ideas he’s working through at once. This adaptation of an Edward Ashton novel set in 2054 casts Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, who attempts to escape a loan shark by signing up as an “expendable” for an interstellar colonization mission, which means being willing to experience multiple deaths and subsequent regenerations via a new cloning-style technology. One of the movie’s best gags is the way the newly “printed” Mickeys emerge like paper from a fax machine, part of a bigger notion about life being treated as cheap in the service of expansionist ambitions. That puts it squarely in the same “scenes from the class struggle” arena as Bong’s Oscar-winning Parasite and (perhaps even more so) Snowpiercer, particularly with Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette in the kind of exaggerated villain role Tilda Swinton served up, while Pattinson does impressively goofy work differentiating between two iterations of Mickey with very different personalities. There’s a lot of other stuff going on as well, including critiques of colonialism and an almost afterthought notion of guilt making you feel that you don’t entirely deserve to live. It’s just rare to find a filmmaker like Bong who knows how to make righteousness feel like so much fun. Available March 7 in theaters. (R)

Night of the Zoopocalypse **1/2
I’m not convinced that this Canadian animated feature is particularly good as a comedy for kids, but it’s actually not too shabby as a gentle introduction to horror movie tropes for young viewers.
It kicks off with an alien asteroid landing after-hours in the middle of a regional zoo, beginning a zombie infection that leaves only a few of the animals—including a wolf named Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis), a mountain lion named Dan (David Harbour) and pygmy hippo Poot (Christina Nova)—trying to survive unchanged. Thematically, it’s pretty simple “we’re all better off working together than against one another” stuff, and the writing doesn’t do much at building characters beyond the charming naïveté of young Poot. The animation as directed by Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro offers some creative craziness, however, particularly in the ability of the mutated critters to turn into the weirdest possible variation on whatever they are, with detachable heads and prehensile tongues. Meanwhile, thanks to a cinephile lemur named Xavier (Pierre Simpson), we also get a kid-friendly variation on meta-genre films like Scream, where we learn the value of a “convenient plot device” and other tricks of the terror trade in a package offering just mild peril. It’s far from the best movie you can show your kids, but it’s also far from the worst—and they might learn something in the bargain. Available March 7 in theaters. (PG)

Queen of the Ring **1/2
Co-writer/director Ash Avildsen definitely learned a few things about making a sports movie from his dad, the legendary John G. Avildsen (Rocky, The Karate Kid), but this one lacks a bit of the spark that makes for a true crowd-pleaser. Avildsen takes on the true story of Mildred “Millie Muscles” Burke (Emily Bett Rickards), a Depression-era Midwestern single mother who becomes obsessed with the notion of becoming a pro wrestler, and finds a mentor in veteran wrestler (and her eventual husband) Billy Wolfe (Josh Lucas). The narrative tracks the arc of Burke’s nearly 20-year career, and along the way drops plenty of Easter eggs for wrestling fans, from original wrestling star “Gorgeous George” to insider lingo and fun sequences capturing the rehearsed nature of the rivalries. And Avildsen also understands how to stage a big final competition, including stealing a bit of “sweep the leg” from Dad. What’s missing here, though, is any kind of genuine emotional through-line like the relationships between Rocky and Adrian or between Daniel and Mr. Miyagi, depending on the messy marriage-of-professional-convenience between Mildred and Billy, or the utterly chemistry-free theoretical connection between Mildred and Billy’s son (Tyler Posey). It’s a solid history lesson about a little-known pioneer, but with too many subplot threads and not enough rousing action, there’s a big gap between Avildsens in terms of getting audiences to stand up and cheer. Available March 7 in theaters. (PG-13)

Rule Breakers **1/2
The “underdog competition movie” is about as tried-and-true as any in cinema history, but it’s a little weird when you create one where the stakes may be life-and-death, but underplay it as just a feel-good story. The central fact-based events take place circa 2017, as Afghan computer-science entrepreneur Roya Mahboob (Nikohl Boosheri) and her brother Ali (Noorin Gulamgaus) recruit teenage girls to form a robotics team to travel to international competitions. The screenwriting team—including director Bill Guttentag and Roya’s sister/business partner, Elaha Mahboob—effectively set the context of a society where girls are usually segregated from advanced education in science, and the societal pressures faced by the young competitors. Yet while the narrative occasionally drops in a direct threat to Roya and/or her team, it’s weirdly focused on the primary obstacles being administrative and logistical, leading to tedious stretches involving whether a package will be released from customs, or whether the team will be granted travel visas. And that’s leaving aside how much time is spent on the event organizers giving speeches. Guttentag drops in a few lively moments conveying how opportunity allows Roya to see the world as alive with possibility, but there’s ultimately too much abstraction to the female-empowerment ideas here, resulting in a low-key drama that turns into an afterthought how much these women actually risked. Available March 7 in theaters. (PG)

The Rule of Jenny Pen ***1/2
On the most superficial level, the villain of director James Ashcroft’s psychological thriller is Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), a resident in a New Zealand assisted-living facility who terrorizes his fellow patients with the assistance of his hollow-eyed puppet. But there’s something much more complex going on in the way Ashcroft—adapting a short story by Owen Marshall with writing partner Eli Kent—addresses both the indignities of infirmity and the choices that can haunt us as we reach the point in life where we can’t make it alone. The narrative revolves around the arrival of Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush), a stern judge recovering from a stroke, and Rush initially plays him—including his behavior towards his roommate (George Henare)—with the aggressive certainty of someone who has always existed in a position of dominance. Ashcroft, however, does a magnificent job of evoking visually the way Stefan starts to see his independence vanishing. Lithgow is indeed wonderful sinking his scraggly teeth into Dave as a predator who has found the perfect hunting ground, and the story certainly recognizes the way cruel bullies operate in the world. Yet as deeply unsettling as Ashcroft makes the film on a moment-to-moment basis, he also captures the sheer loneliness of being an asshole, and how much less terrifying helplessness can be when you’re the kind of person whom others want to help. Available March 7 in theaters. (R)