'The Return of Ulysses' (★★★✩✩), 'Blue Sun Palace', 'Niki' and other new releases this week

These are the new releases hitting the big screen this Friday, August 22:

Ratings

★★★★★ masterpiece ★★★★ very good ★★★ good ★★ average

The Return of Ulysses ★★★✩✩Directed by: Uberto PasoliniCast by: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie PlummerProduction: USA, 2024 (116 minutes) Drama The hero's task

By Salvador Llopart

Ulysses is tired. Uberto Pasolini's The Return of Ulysses forgets about witches, monsters, and enchantments to focus on an aspect of The Odyssey that sometimes goes unnoticed: the melancholic nature of the hero, broken inside. After twenty years of heartache and disappointment, as well as joy with the nymph Calypso, the Trojan warrior, in the hands of Ralph Fiennes's interpretive wisdom, becomes an exhausted soldier. We would now say he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Empty of gods and portents, focusing on the finale of the Homeric songs, this Pasolini version, with nothing to do with Pier Paolo, is nonetheless very Pasolini-esque in its treatment of the myth. It remains to be seen how Christopher Nolan's version of The Odyssey (coming in 2026) will approach the character. In contrast to the expected epic spectacularity of the imminent version, The Return of Ulysses opts for lyrical intimacy. With Ulysses (Finnes) dragged by the tide to the shores of Ithaca, his son, Telemachus, is pursued by the pretenders to the throne, and his wife, Penelope (Juliette Binoche), weaves and unweaves his destiny in the form of a shroud that never ends.

A poetic Ulysses? Certainly, although Pasolini doesn't quite take the gamble to its ultimate conclusion, leaving, in its indefiniteness, a taste of waiting: the wait for the outraged hero to brandish the famous bow in his hands. He also misses the reunion of Binoche and Finnes, pending since The English Patient (1998), as the pair barely share the screen.

What has passed through the souls of Ulysses and Penelope during these twenty years of separation? If I'm not mistaken, in Book V of the Odyssey, Calypso and the Homeric hero have a conversation in which the latter renounces his divine love—eternity—for a human destiny. It is the hero's decision, his task. The intimate commitment to the imperfect, humble, and ephemeral Penelope. That is precisely what Pasolini's Odyssey is about, and it is also its greatest achievement. A success that vanishes the moment the director allows himself to be drawn in by the siren song of an action that never arrives. Penelope deserves, and so do we, to know more about it.

Blue Sun Palace ★★★★✩Director: Constance Tsang Starring: Wu Ke-Xi, Lee Kang-sheng Production: USA, 2024 (117 minutes) Drama A massage on the temple

By Philipp Engel

As in all arts, technique has marked the evolution of cinema. Thus, the digital age, which made it possible to extend shots and therefore slow down the action, closer to the rhythm of reality, consolidated the so-called "slow cinema"—like slow food, slow café, or slow whatever. Although, contradicting the above, Blue Sun Palace , which featured the production of Catalan Marta Cruañas ( Creatura ), was shot on 35mm celluloid, with beautiful dark-toned Kodak colors, it is clear that Constance Tsang's debut, with its contemplative nature and its long, drawn-out sequence shots, is part of this slow movement, especially when one of its two anti-heroes is none other than the iconic Lee Kang-sheng, Tsai Ming-liang's muse in founding classics such as Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003).

Filmed in Queens, New York, as if it were Taipei, not only because it focuses on the oriental community, going through all the tropes that include food, drink and karaoke, but also because of the way it is shot, reminiscent of the delicacy of a Hou Hsiao-hsien (with those vaporous curtains and those millimetric shots of baroque forms), Blue Sun Palace becomes, from minute 34 – when the credits finally appear (as often happens in slow cinema) – an unusual and desolate film of mourning, which brings together an introverted Chinese masseuse and a Taiwanese migrant, who has fled his family and creditors, never to return, and that is despite the fact that the interference of the American context in the plot is as scarce as it is violent and hostile: the sign “no sexual services” hanging on the door of the massage parlor that gives the film its title did not bode well. Strongly recommended for lovers of unhurried cinema, to which it brings a refreshing feminine perspective, it is also advised against for nostalgic grumps stuck in the 90s.

Niki ★★★✩✩Directed by: Céline SalletteCast by: Charlotte Le Bon, John Robinson, Damien BonnardProduction: France-Belgium, 2024 (98 minutes) Biographical Portrait of an artist

By Jordi Batlle Caminal

This film explores the life of Niki de Saint-Phalle, a painter, sculptor, and writer, as well as an occasional filmmaker, focusing on the 1950s and her hectic life in Paris, Nice, various rural French towns, and a stay in Mallorca, specifically in Deià. Niki (the charismatic, photogenic, and intense Charlotte Le Bon) is an explosive character, simultaneously fragile and volatile, with constant psychological disturbances stemming from a childhood trauma. Céline Sallette demonstrates a certain stylistic flair in her fluid work, refractory to realism (the chromatic treatment of the images is notable) and with occasional poetic effects. The drawback is that we see Niki painting a lot, but we don't see what she's painting, apparently due to legal rights issues.

No Coverage ★✩✩✩✩Directed by: Mar OlidCast by: Alexandra Jiménez, Ernesto Sevilla, Luna FulgencioProduction: Spain, 2025 (94 minutes) Comedy Medieval Adventures

By J. Batlle

Time-travel movies tend to be enjoyable, although there are exceptions, such as the French film The Visitors Were Not Born Yesterday or, more recently, the Spanish film Without Coverage , which is a family comedy, a label often used to try to salvage unsalvageable by-products. In this convoluted film, a prototypical family (father, mother, son, and two daughters) travels back to the Middle Ages as a result of the youngest daughter's wish that cell phones and computers disappear from her life, a wish that an old witch grants. The problem with Without Coverage is that it is so childish and elementary (in its situations, gags, dialogue, and cartoonish characters, the most outlandish being the inquisitor Pepe Viyuela) that, by comparison, Valentina, Locomotoro, and Captain Tan seem like university professors specializing in Kierkegaard.

Shadow Force ★✩✩✩✩Directed by: Joe CarnahanStarring: Kerry Washington, Omar Sy, Mark StrongProduction: USA, 2025 (104 minutes) Action Worse and forced

By S. Llopart

Family, alas, comes first. Even for stiff killers like the protagonists of Shadow Force , the usually likeable Omar Sy and Kerry Washington, supposedly so charismatic. They're so good at what they do—killing—that their own partners hunt them down even when they say they're giving it all up. A multimillion-dollar reward incentivizes the hunt. Where Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) and the recent Confidential triumphed—that is, in elevating violent family life to the category of metaphor—these two fail miserably, dragged into a dithyrambic adventure that ends as a 360-degree turn from the cliché of the couple to arrive at the same thing. But worse and forced.

The Collector ★★✩✩✩Directed by: Manuel SanabriaCast by: Canco Rodríguez, Paco Tous, Assumpta SernaProduction: Spain, 2025 (96 minutes) Horror Too many cooks

By S. Llopart

Horror demands a bit of coherence, and in The Collector, coherence is conspicuous by its absence. In a picturesque, green, and bright town, a disturbing woman gives away objects to strangers. Little do the visitors imagine the power these objects have to unleash disturbing and dramatic paranormal events. What begins as a witchcraft plot turns into a cursed object, with eccentric characters involved, and then, in another unexpected somersault, the best part of the film, a labyrinth of guilt and atonement. Too many cooks for such a small pot, I'd say. It makes me dizzy despite Manuel Sanabria's steady direction and competent, at times extraordinary, performers.