Capsule reviews for March 11

Barney Thomson

Veteran actor Robert Carlyle makes his directorial debut with this crowd-pleasing but uneven Scottish dark comedy in which he plays the title role, a blue-collar Glasgow barber whose mid-life crisis prompts a series of violent outbursts that soon have him branded as a serial killer. He turns to his outrageous mother (Emma Thompson) as an accomplice while a police inspector (Ray Winstone) chases the truth. The premise might resemble Sweeney Todd, but veers in a different direction with mixed results. Thompson steals her scenes and provides many of the comic highlights, while the screenplay gradually becomes detached from reality and loses its emotional grip. (Not rated, 96 minutes).

City of Gold

Although there might be a few too many items on its menu, this mouth-watering documentary uses the food culture of Los Angeles to celebrate the city’s diversity. Specifically, it follows Jonathan Gold, a Pulitzer winner and longtime food critic for various publications who has spent his career championing food trucks and family-owned joints often in neighborhoods where the more upscale dining crowd wouldn’t ordinarily venture. The result might border on hagiography, but Gold makes a charismatic conduit for a glimpse into some hidden gems for locals and visitors alike. Yet more importantly, the film makes a case that good food is the perfect method of bridging cultural gaps. (Rated R, 96 minutes).

Creative Control

There is indeed some creativity within this stylish black-and-white drama that uses technology as a method of enabling romance, except that for moviegoers, it’s easier to love the concept rather than the execution. Rookie director Benjamin Dickinson stars as a New York ad executive whose firm is marketing a new tech toy that allows users to experience augmented-reality sexual fantasies. Soon he becomes obsessed with using it to get virtually closer to an alluring co-worker. The idea resembles Her with a few twists, some more compelling than others. As technology causes humans to drift further apart emotionally, however, that’s a problem the film itself can’t reconcile. (Rated R, 96 minutes).

Hello My Name is Doris

While it’s nice to see Sally Field return to prominent big-screen roles, it’s a shame that she plays such a bumbling buffoon to win laughs in this excessively broad comedy. She plays a lonely and reclusive corporate clerk — still grieving the death of her mother — who falls for a younger co-worker (Max Greenfield) whose gestures of friendship are misinterpreted, leading to a fiasco on social media. Field does her best to navigate an uneven script that fails to balance exaggerated gags about an old woman straining to be hip and cool but who’s hopelessly out of touch, with a more poignant tale of redemption. (Rated R, 95 minutes).

Remember

Some sensitive issues are mostly handled with tenderness and wry humor in this character-driven thriller from Canadian director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) about Zev (Christopher Plummer), an elderly man with dementia whose wife recently died. After receiving a letter from Max (Martin Landau), his neighbor in their nursing home, Zev begins a cross-country odyssey to track down a former Auschwitz guard who allegedly murdered both of their families. Plummer’s heartfelt portrayal helps bring emotional grounding to an otherwise far-fetched revenge story. There’s some poignancy in the film’s study of aging and grief, along with some clever twists if you don’t take things too seriously. (Rated R, 95 minutes).