In-Theater Releases of the Week 
I Want Your Sex
(Magnolia Pictures)
Gregg Araki has been making weirdly off-kilter sex comedies-cum-dramas for more than three decades, and his latest shows that, for better or worse, he’s still at it, combining trenchant social commentary and crude sexual antics, all wrapped in sentimentality. Olivia Wilde is intoxicating as Erika, a performance artist and dominatrix who makes her latest assistant, young and naïve Elliott (a well-cast Cooper Hoffman), her sexual slave. But that’s the only the tip of this provocatively ridiculous satire of sexual consent, modern art, social media and whatever else Araki and cowriter Karley Sciortino toss in—including possible murder. In the end, it’s both too much and not enough, its bullseyes weighed down shallow silliness. But Wilde gives an eye-opening performance that helps negotiate the bumpy parts.
(Several Futures)
This modest but affecting documentary/fiction hybrid was made by Venezuelan Lorena Alvarado, who cast her grandmother Adela, her father Ignacio and her sister Ena as versions of themselves to tell a poignant family-history story that is both introspective and universally accessible. The 67-minute feature shows the beauty in the everyday alongside the attempt to hang onto one’s cultural history, with neighborhoods of Caracas shown lovingly by Alvarado and her cinematographer José Ostos. (Alvarado also shot parts of her film, and she’s responsible for the subtle editing as well.)
Brunello—The Gracious Visionary 
(Blue Fox Entertainment)
While watching this hagiography of Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli by director Giuseppe Tornatore—best known for his Oscar-winning foreign film Cinema Paradiso—I kept thinking that there’s material for a decent documentary, but since Brunello is the producer as well as the “star,” there’s no way Tornatore had free rein to show the warts and all of Brunello’s life and career. There are beautifully cinematic moments, notably when Tornatore visualizes the world of the young Brunello through the older’s memory, but this basically sanitized look at a genial billionaire celebrity relies too heavily on reenactments and fawning interviews with family and celebrity cheerleaders like Oprah.
Mortal Kombat II
(Warner Bros)
Based on the hugely popular video-game series comes a sequel to the 2021 reboot that, despite its overlength (it’s nearly exhausting two hours), has some excitement in its well-paced martial-arts battle sequences, which help keep the dreary melodramatics among its characters to a minimum. Director Simon McQuoid (who also directed the reboot) and writer Jeremy Slater balance the inherent self-seriousness with a cleverness that makes it watchable and entertaining. The film looks fantastic in 4K; extras include several making-of featurettes.
Streaming Release of the Week 
Due West
(Cineverse)
This earnest to a fault melodrama stars an appropriately stern-looking Adrianne Palicki as a bartender who desperately tries to have an abortion in one of the most repressive places on earth for women: rural West Texas. She asks for monetary help from her brother and gets a visit from the bothersome Pastor Mike, played by a game Henry Thomas, but the deck is stacked against her and even the very air carries around an aura of stifling masculinity. Director Evan Miller and cowriter Hardy Janson shrewdly underplay their heroine’s dilemma in a place where politics is never brought up, it’s Palicki’s memorably no-nonsense portrayal that makes this more than mere propaganda.
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