Queen of the Ring

“The Army doesn’t own PTSD,” combat veteran Merit Charles (Sonequa Martin-Green) tells her civilian date (Utkarsh Ambudkar). “We just do it best.” In My Dead Friend Zoe, Merit’s trauma takes the form of, naturally, her late squad mate (Natalie Morales), whose specter still haunts our heroine as she struggles to adjust back to everyday life. Expanding on his 2022 short Merit x Zoe, director and co-writer Kyle Hausmann-Stokes constructs his feature debut from his own military experience and takes great pains to bring the truth of lived experiences to the big screen. The members of Merit’s support group who share their stories are all played by actual servicemembers (including Airman 1st Class Morgan Freeman as the group’s leader), but the film doesn’t act as a love letter to the armed forces. Rather, Zoe emphasizes the need for community and a space to share trauma—not just to unburden oneself, but to give others the courage to follow suit. Hausmann-Stokes also demonstrates an adeptness behind the camera, using the language of cinema to bring Merit’s anxieties to life and highlight the natural beauty of our fair state. Martin-Green similarly proves herself as a leading lady, building a lived-in rapport with Morales and holding her own against acting giants like Freeman and Ed Harris, who plays Merit’s sundowning grandfather with a similar stubborn edge. My Dead Friend Zoe runs a little long in its final act, but it ultimately succeeds as an exploration of shell shock and mental health, a crowd-pleasing dramedy and a show of appreciation and brotherhood to servicemembers of all stripes. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Laurelhurst, AMC and Regal locations.

With its allegorical underpinnings dealing with capitalism, the costs of labor, and class inequality, Mickey 17, the 2022 sci-fi book from Edward Ashton, is the perfect fodder for Korean director Bong Joon-ho. The filmmaker has touched on similar themes in works like Parasite and Okja. Yet, with his latest, something got mangled in the transition from page to screen. Many of the story beats remain the same. Mickey (Robert Pattinson) escapes from Earth, joining a ship looking to colonize a new planet by signing up to be a drone worker/guinea pig known as an “expendable.” Scientists send the dim-witted young man onto this new world to face the potential threats and airborne diseases. And once he dies, they print out a new Mickey, uploading his memories along the way. Hijinks ensue and eventually two Mickeys vying for control of every increasingly fraught situation. What Bong adds to the story, a monomaniacal televangelist type leader (Mark Ruffalo, in sleazeball mode) and his wife (a deliciously conniving Toni Collette) to the appearance of a colony of fuzzy weevil-like creatures, only weighs everything down. The dark comedy loses all its punch and bite, and the seemingly tender romantic relationship between Mickey and Nasha (Naomi Ackie) is clouded and dulled. R. ROBERT HAM. Academy Theater, Bagdad Theater, Hollywood Theatre, Joy Cinema, Living Room Theaters, OMSI, Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more formally ambitious and deeply felt film this year than Nickel Boys. The latest from filmmaker RaMell Ross, who previously made the unforgettable 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, it’s a stunning adaptation of the also outstanding Colson Whitehead novel of the same name that speaks its own distinct cinematic language. In a way few others have, it is shot almost entirely from the first-person point-of-view. This not only gives the film a profoundly beautiful sense of being seen through the eyes of its two young characters, Ethan Herisse’s Elwood and Brandon Wilson’s Turner, as they navigate the perils of a segregated reform school in 1962’s America, but the small disruptions to this create a breathtakingly dreamlike quality. In the hands of cinematographer Jomo Fray, who shot last year’s even more astounding All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, it gently challenges just as it compassionately pulls you in close. Never once feeling like a gimmick as its formal approach is precisely the way it finds moments of grace in the corners of our grim world, it’s aspirationally transcendent cinema any who call themselves lovers of film would be remiss to not experience. PG-13. CHASE HUTCHINSON.

In the true story of muscles, management, marriage and manipulation, the sports drama Queen of the Ring spotlights Mildred Burke, the first American million-dollar female athlete. Burke (Emily Bett Rickards) trades the wedding ring for the wrestling ring in a time when female wrestlers were not only socially frowned upon, but illegal in many states. The visuals of American life throughout the 1930s–’50s are glitzy and glamorous, and the blood-spitting grit of lady wrestlers inside and outside of the ring are contrastingly brutal. Avildsen’s attempt to capture the heart of a championship is a battle not lost. Rickards comes out charming, swinging for the stars. “I can’t sing; I can’t dance, but I can tell a story and kick some ass,” she proclaims. Rickards’ portrayal conveys enough spark to hold the audience in the single mom’s corner. The film’s endeavor to cover Burke’s whole career may be where it loses points. Trying to show more than 20 years in just over two hours cramps the athlete’s legacy. Hair and makeup successfully spans two decades, but the audience’s bandwidth may struggle to follow suit. Is this the next Rocky? No, but as women' s sports today gain traction and rally popular excitement, the movie is a relevant and entertaining history lesson. The biopic hits, but lacks a total knockout. PG-13. NICOLE ECKRICH. Oak Grove 8 Cinema, Regal locations.