Movie Reviews: ‘The Kitchen’ works best when it gets up close and personal with its characters

A vivid portrait of an urban dystopia, “The Kitchen,” now streaming on Netflix, is sci-fi that sets up a troubling vision of the future, while finding room to emphasize the humanity at the core of the story.

Set in the near future, the story takes place in a dystopian, “Blade Runner-esque” London. The divide between the 1% and everybody else has widened, with the effects of rising home prices, an AI workforce and a dismantled Welfare State turning the city into a playground for the rich, with no regard for people living in poverty.

The last remaining block of social housing, The Kitchen, is a dilapidated set of North London towers and home to hundreds of Black and brown residents. Scheduled to be demolished by the authoritarian government, its inhabitants live in constant fear of their power and water being shut off, or worse, being evicted in a violent police raid.

Izi (Kane Robinson), a funeral home worker whose company, Life After Life, composts the bodies of those who cannot afford a traditional burial, lives in The Kitchen, but has no plans of waiting around to be forced out of his home. Tired of lining up at the communal shower, and uncertainty of life at the crumbling estate, he has an eye on getting out. Saving his cash, he hopes to move into Buena Vida, a glitzy new development far away from The Kitchen.

His life is changed when he meets Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), a youngster left to his own devices in the wake of his mother’s death. Izi knew the mother, and may, or may not, be the boy’s father. After a rough start, the two bond as Izi offers him a place to stay and steers him away from bad influences that live with the housing project.

As the two become close, Izi asks Benji to move in with him at Buena Vida, but doing so means he will have to reapply for a double occupancy apartment. That means waiting, and spending even more time wrapped in the uncertain embrace of The Kitchen.

“The Kitchen,” written by Daniel Kaluuya (the actor best known for “Get Out,” “Black Panther” and “Judas & The Black Messiah”) and Joe Murtagh, and directed by Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares, is set in 2040, but feels vital and timely. In an increasingly besieged world, the gap between rich and poor, the breakdown of community and the pressure marginalized communities feel under the thumb of an authoritarian state, as presented in the film, doesn’t feel like sci-fi. It feels more like a humanistic portrait of a community under fire.

It’s not all doom and gloom. The co-directors inject moments of joy with scenes set in a roller disco and a pirate radio voice named Lord Kitchener, played by former Arsenal-and-England footballer Ian Wright, who maintains morale in The Kitchen with music and spiritual advice.

Ultimately, for all its elaborate world building, “The Kitchen” is a personal story. Like most speculative fiction, the background sets the scene, but the meat of the story is anything but speculative. In this case, it is a father and son story that details the pressure and responsibility Izi feels to do the right thing for himself and Benji.

Robinson is effective in portraying Izi’s worldview. The character is aspirational but tethered to his reality, made more complicated by his relationship with Benji. It’s the storyline that grounds the film, and provides the most interesting moments.

“The Kitchen” brims with ideas, but they are sometimes muted by an episodic presentation. Kaluuya and company juggle a great many storylines, but the film works best when it gets up close and personal with Izi and Benji.

“Going In,” a gritty new crime drama now available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video, Apple/iTunes and cable video on demand, is a stylistic homage to the buddy movies of the 1980s that rides the line between parody and tribute.

Set in Toronto, in a time before sky scrapers dominated the downtown, writer and director Evan Rissi plays philosophy professor Leslie Boothe, a dullish, straight-edge type, more interested in Jean Paul Sartre than booze, drugs or partying.

“You come to realize that coming into being is the same as turning into nothing,” he lectures to his students, “that being and nothing unite as becoming.”

“Yeah,” says a smart aleck student, “becoming… bored.”

His wild child history, however, is revealed when Reuben Goldstein (Ira Goldman), a face from the past, appears. Once best friends, the two haven’t seen one another in five years, ever since Boothe got sober and started going to bed before 10 p.m.

“I need to talk to you,” says Goldstein. “Meet me tonight at the bar. You know the one.”

Boothe made a promise years ago to help Goldstein whenever he needed it, and now Goldstein has come to collect. Seems his kid brother Saul has been working for a drug lord named Feng (Victor D.S. Man) selling a nasty new drug called Pearl.

News reports say the highly addictive drug has turned the city upside down, and is “even more dangerous than originally anticipated.” It gives uses a fifteen-minute out-of-body experience or “O.B.E for short” that turns them into a zombie-like state with white, glassy eyes.

Saul has disappeared and Goldstein needs help to find him. The police can’t do anything, Feng is too powerful, and the security around him is airtight. The only way they can get access is through an underground tournament the criminal hosts every six months. “It’s a mysterious competition,” says Goldstein. “No one knows what the challenge is till they begin. You have to prepare for anything. If you come with me, we have a better chance.”

A man of his word, Boothe reluctantly agrees to help, and dives into the seedy underbelly of 1980s Toronto.

“Going In” is a low-budget, yet loving throwback to 1980s film stereotypes. The soundtrack drips with a synth score, there are underground nightclubs, mismatched buddies à la “Lethal Weapon” and “Silver Streak,” a work-out montage, a subway shootout, clothes borrowed from Sonny Crockett’s closet, a villain who cackles “You came here for your brother? No! You came here to die!” and even motorcycle ninjas.

Rissi pays tribute, but it’s not really tongue-in-cheek. The references are there, should you be keeping track, but they’re accompanied by a pretty good story, one with stakes and forward momentum.

The situation is extreme—particularly when we get to the high-stakes competition—but that’s part of the appeal. The party trick Rissi manages here is riding the line between satire and straight-faced storytelling. It works, even if the action scenes are scarce and hindered by the film’s shoestring $80,000 budget. Nonetheless, “Going In” has a DIY charm, that feels born out of a genuine love of the films that inspired it.

The suspenseful “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers,” is a dark twist on the “Green Acres” idea of leaving the city behind for a quiet life in the country.

Clayne Crawford plays Joseph Chambers, an insurance salesman tired of the hustle and bustle of big business and big city life. Relocating, with his two kids, to his wife Tess’s (Jordana Brewster) hometown of Pell City in rural Alabama, he embraces country life. The chores. The fresh air. Good bye city life.

When he gets it in his head to go hunting, solo, in the nearby woods, Tess tries to talk him out of it. They have enough money for groceries, she argues, and anyway, he doesn’t know how to shoot and doesn’t own a gun. But old Joe has already trimmed his beard, leaving behind a patch under his nose he dubs his “hunter’s moustache.”

He wants to fit in, prove his manliness, but more importantly, wants to be able to provide for his family if and when the world falls apart. “If things get worse,” he says, “we may need to know how to do this stuff.”

With ideas of doomsday clouding his mind, he borrows a gun and a truck, slips into his hunting gear, including an orange puffer vest, and heads out. Hours later, when he finally spots a deer, he reacts quickly and fires. His bullet finds its target, but it’s not a deer, it’s another hunter.

The story burns slowly, setting up Joseph as a decent but naïve suburbanite desperate to prove his macho bona fides. He brims with bravado—quoting old Westerns like “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and imagining crowds cheering for him on his quest for a 10-point buck—but those affectations are a cover for a deep core of insecurity. The quest here isn’t really for a buck, it’s actually a search for masculinity.

Joseph feels he has much to prove to himself and his family, so “The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” isn’t really the story of the fatal shot, but of his reaction to it. Questions of responsibility vs. consequences flood his mind as the open expanse of the forest envelopes him.

Danish sound designer Peter Albrechtsen embellishes these scenes with unsettling sounds that sonically give life to Joseph’s inner feelings.

Crawford occupies the vast bulk of the movie, and holds focus. His take on Joseph is equal parts ridiculous—he playfully sings “I’m the moustache man!”—and repentant. It’s a raw-edged performance, aided in its grittiness by screenwriter and director Robert Machoian’s refusal to offer easy answers.

“The Integrity of Joseph Chambers” isn’t an easy film to digest. It is very slow and a bit repetitive. It asks more questions than it answers and will likely frustrate those wanting a pat ending, but it raises interesting questions about the real meaning of masculinity.