What to watch at the movies this week: He-Man has fallen on hard times

(M) 141 minutes

In the new Masters of the Universe movie, the hero traditionally known as He-Man (Nicholas Galitzine) has fallen on hard times.

Exiled to Earth from his home planet of Eternia, he’s now an unremarkable dude named Adam who works in human resources and is scolded for slacking by his female boss (Sasheer Zamata, squeezing more comedy out of her single scene than the material deserves). As a crowning humiliation, the sign on his desk prominently displays his preferred pronouns, “he/him”.

That last detail especially might give us pause. Is this the first Hollywood blockbuster openly aimed at the manosphere – that is, at those who yearn for white heterosexual guys to take back their power at the expense of everyone else?

(MA), 101 minutes

Almost any story is an “odd couple” story, when you think it over. In other words, the quickest route to drama is to bring two characters together who have something in common but also crucial differences.

So perhaps it’s less of a coincidence than it first appears that within the last month, two films starring Michaela Coel have shown up in Australian cinemas that fit the description. Still, the similarities between David Lowery’s Mother Mary and Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers are striking. Both are virtual two-handers, frankly theatrical, with long dialogue sequences devoted to digging up a long-buried past.

On top of that, both are focused on the process of making art, and are set primarily in shadowy spaces where creation takes place. In Mother Mary, the main location is the studio of a fashion designer played by Coel, who receives an unexpected visitor from the pop star (Anne Hathaway) who was once her closest collaborator.

(MA15+) 155 minutes

You have to pick your way through the much-admired German film, Sound of Falling, winner of last year’s Cannes Jury Prize.

Visual clues are a guide and it helps to keep an eye out for connections to the main theme, which has a bleakness at odds with the dreamy lyricism of the landscape in which the story plays out. We’re on a farm deep in the countryside north of Berlin and although the narrative spans 100 years, it’s always summer.

There are four periods and the script zigzags between them, ignoring the possibility that we may be straining to keep up. We’re following the lives of four women – Alma, Erika, Angelika and Lenka – as each moves from girlhood to adulthood and the events that will decide the rest of their lives. Our only constant companion is death and its ability to haunt each generation with the ghosts of those who have gone before.