Weekend Film Reviews

The hero of "Moffie" is a closeted gay conscript in the South Africa of 1981. In addition to the killing arts, he and his fellow draftees are trained in racism and homophobia.

Versus films are a genre unto themselves. Now we have "Godzilla vs. Kong," an addition to the genre that isn't proud so much as inevitable. Or unavoidable.

"The Courier," a Cold War spy thriller starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is earnest to a fault. Meaning it's unaccountably dull, even though Cumberbatch gives another of his strong performances, this time in the role of Greville Wynne, a British civilian recruited by MI6 and the CIA to travel to the Soviet Union and make covert contact with a Soviet intelligence officer who wants to help the West avoid a nuclear war.

Working from the Nico Walker novel about the horrors of war and opioid addiction, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo have made a screen version that elevates, for better or the gritty source material into the epic journey of a troubled soul.

In "The Truffle Hunters," a new documentary by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, Italian men in their 60s, 70s and 80s do as they've done for decades--search the forests of the Alba region for precious white truffles. Their lives are happy and their health is fine, but their work is increasingly endangered.