MOVIE REVIEW

‘SNIPER: THE WHITE RAVEN’

Rated R. In Ukrainian with subtitles. On VOD.

Grade A-

An alternately rousing and mournful call to arms, Ukraine’s “Sniper: The White Raven” is an amazingly relevant film at a time when Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine and waged war for four devastating months. The film begins in 2014 with the battle between Ukrainians and Russians and pro-Russian separatists in Donbas. It is in many ways a Ukrainian “American Sniper.”

Actor, musician and photographer Pavlo Aldoshyn is marvelously charismatic in the role of real-life Ukrainian sniper Mykolo Voronin, who co-wrote the screenplay. After the murder of his pregnant wife Nastya (Maryna Koshinka) at the hands of barbaric invading soldiers, Mykolo, a physics teacher and eco-settler in Donetsk, enlists in “sniper school,” where he undergoes rigorous training in scenes that will be familiar to fans of such films as “Full Metal Jacket.”

“Sniper: The Raven” is the more real and more resonant “Top Gun” movie. Before her death, Mykolo’s artist wife Nastya had given her husband, who takes the nickname Raven in her honor, a small, cross-shaped wooden angel she carved, swearing it would protect his life. Armed with the angel, which was saved from the fire set by the soldiers, and an old, banged-up sniper rifle, Mykolo earns his nickname in battle and is taken under wing by his paternal superior officer Cap (Andry Mostrenko).

“Sniper: The White Raven” resounds with the beats of war stories of this kind. But because it is set in Ukraine and based on a true story, it has more resonance and urgency than the current hit sequel to the aforementioned “Top Gun.” In opening scenes, Mykolo teaches a class the physics of speed and distance, two subjects that are going to be important to a sniper. One of his students is a pro-Russian separatist and a bully.

The oath the Ukrainian soldiers take as they are given their rank, “I serve the Ukrainian people,” has more ringing significance to us now, knowing what we know about the brave and righteous fight the outgunned Ukrainians have put up in the face of the Russian invasion. Aldoshyn’s Mykolo plays guitar and sings about “awakening” and “building strength.”

Four years after the beginning of the conflict, Mykolo hears someone on TV talk about how “Russia respects borders.” Mykolo drives himself back to the front to confront a Russian sniper capable of killing from a distance of 1.5 kilometers with a .50 caliber-sized gun. Talk about physics. Mykolo leads a raid on the sniper’s lair in a factory where cyanide is produced and stored, risking a disaster.

“Sniper: The White Raven” will appeal to combat film buffs and supporters of Ukraine alike. First-time feature film director and co-writer Marian Bushan, whose previous effort was a TV sports documentary, handles both the cast and the action well, painting evocative images in smoke and mist.

The film’s hero, Mykolo Voronin, returned to service after the Feb. 2022 invasion by Russia, something referred to in the film’s stirringly patriotic closing scene. He is presumed to be still fighting as the film about his life and exploits is released in the United States. He serves the Ukrainian people.

(“Sniper: The White Raven” contains war violence, bloody images, nudity and profanity.)

MOVIE REVIEW

‘APPLES’

Not Rated. In Greek with subtitles. At Landmark Kendall Square.

Grade B

From Christos Nikou, the assistant director of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth,” comes “Apples,” a modern fable about a plague of amnesia cases in an analog, perhaps alternate universe Athens. Our tall, bearded and no longer youthful protagonist (Aris Servetalis) bangs his head against a wall as we see still life photos in opening scenes. We hear Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair.” Remember me, indeed. He dresses in monochrome colors, buys flowers and takes a bus, but he forgets to get off and cannot recall his name at the end of the line. This is the beginning of an adventure for the man dubbed 14842.

We remember seeing him in his flat and petting a neighbor’s dog as he leaves the building. But all he knows is that no one has searched for him, yet, and he finds an apple the hospital has given him with his dinner “delicious.” Amnesia cases have increased. No one has recovered. Dressed in hospital blues, the man faces tests and injections. He is “unclaimed” and must learn how to live again.

This will involve living alone in a flat, accepting visits from hospital staff from the “Disturbed Memory Department” and following increasingly complicated instructions involving socializing efforts. His medical caretakers visit him regularly. He speaks with a produce dealer about different apples. He takes bites of the peeled apples he eats from the same hand holding the paring knife. He takes selfie-like Polaroid photos of himself, following the order he receives in the mail. He keeps a scrapbook. Our man spends a lot of time staring into the distance.

“Apples,” which was shot in a square aspect ratio, adding to the boxy, truncated sense, boils life down to its Kafkaesque essence, which suggests that our sense of identity is an apparition and perhaps even meaningless, that we are merely nameless entities going through motions without meaning.

In a park, the man encounters the neighbor’s dog again and calls it by name. Is he beginning to remember his life? Following orders to “get close to a woman’s body,” the man goes to a strip club, gets a brief lap dance and takes a photo of the dancer. He meets another woman (Sofia Georgovasili), notably, at a movie theater showing “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” She can’t look at the screen. Afterwards, they chat and walk together. We want them to bond, if only to give us something more to look at, feel and think about. “Apples” can be bleak.

Not much happens in “Apples,” which was produced by Cate Blanchett, who obviously sees more in it than I do. The film is often like listening to a single note held for a very long time. In a sweet scene near the end, the protagonist feeds soup to an old man facing death in a hospital bed.

For reasons unexplained, the amnesia victims are not given new names, which is awkward and seems not very well thought out. The amnesiac world recalls our real-life pandemic and resonates in that way. But this gentle, metaphorical tale lacks solidity and threatens to lift off and float away.

(“Apples” contains profanity and scenes at a strip club.)

Free arts offerings abound in Boston. There are free museum days, Berklee hosts free concerts at 20 venues this summer (college.berklee.edu/events/summer), Shakespeare on the Common (“Much Ado About Nothing,” July 20 – Aug. 7).

Then there’s the Boston Pops Firework Spectacular.

The Boston Pops’ signature July 4 concert is so embedded into the fabric of the city that it almost hides in plain sight. But it’s Boston’s biggest free arts offering.

This Independence Day, the Boston Pops and nearly half a million fans will celebrate the orchestra’s return to the stage of the Hatch Shell at the Charles River Esplanade for the first time since 2019.

“This concert has always been expected to take place on the banks of the Charles,” Pops conductor Keith Lockhart told the Herald. “It’s our gift to the people of Boston. It is and always has been a free concert. It also puts the whole city on a national stage as the seat of the Revolution and our democracy.”

“When we do this concert we are more part of a sociological phenomenon than a musical phenomenon,” Lockhart added. “And maybe it’s something I took for granted, so it will be pretty exciting to return.”

As usual, Lockhart balances the program between superstar guests and homegrown talent, patriotic requisites and progressive compositions. This year that means a Stephen Sondheim tribute and a performance of the Ukrainian National Anthem, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Chaka Khan.

Yes, Chaka Khan!

“I grew up listening to Chaka Khan, the soundtrack to my senior prom,” Lockhart said. “It’s very cool.”

Lockhart’s tastes run from disco to Duke Ellington to Antonín Dvořák. That’s part of the reason he’s so good at his job. But as a self-proclaimed “theater geek” in his teens, one of his deepest passions is the work of the late Stephen Sondheim. Lockhart wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass to celebrate Sondheim in front of his biggest audience of the year.

“He was probably the greatest American creative genius alive in my lifetime,” he said of the Broadway maverick.

Tony and Grammy winner Heather Headley will help the Pops with a couple of Sondheim selections. Elsewhere, “The Voice” series premiere winner Javier Colon, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Middlesex County Volunteers Fifes & Drums and the Honor Guard of the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Regiment will join the Pops for new works and classics.

As always, Lockhart has crafted a night that caters to multiple tastes.

“This is a concert that has to be omni directional,” he said. “Everyone watches it so that’s a huge age range, background range. In that older Pops tradition, this is a variety show that promises that the next thing up will be something completely different.”

Completely different but back home at the same venue the Pops have played for decades.

The Boston Pops concert will be broadcast live nationally on Bloomberg TV and radio, and locally in Boston on WHDH-TV (Ch. 7), from 8 to 11 p.m. Details at bso.org/pops.

MOVIE REVIEW

‘THE FORGIVEN’

Rated R. At Landmark Kendall Square.

Grade B-

A would-be scathing, Evelyn Waugh-ish look at a group of British and American elites using rural Morocco as their exotic setting for a licentious weekend, ”The Forgiven” is a foreigners-misbehaving mixed bag. Driving in the High Atlas Mountains, English doctor David Henninger (Ralph Fiennes) and his American wife Jo Henninger (Academy Award-winner Jessica Chastain) strike and kill a Moroccan adolescent with their rental car. They take the body with them to the gated castle of their hosts Richard Galloway (Matt Smith) and Dally Margolis (Caleb Landry Jones), an obnoxious gay couple with scant regard for the feelings or beliefs of their Muslim staff. In fact, Dally deliberately gives the head of the staff Hamid (Mourad Zaoui) a look at the bare bottom of a young man with whom he has slept.

Food and drink flow non-stop at the party. We are invited to compare the wanton, wasteful behavior of the invasive Westerners with ancient Rome and recall Rome’s eventual fall. The Muslim staff refer to their employees in Arabic using a gay slur and clearly hate them, but will take their money.

David is a “functioning alcoholic” with a practice in Chelsea and literal blood on his hands. The police are summoned. The body is stored in the garage. Jo is the author or children’s books, but has suffered from writer’s block. Someone whispers, “Infidels killed the boy.” One of the party goers, a young woman named Cody (Abbey Lee, “Mad Max: Fury Road”), wakes up the morning after the first day of festivities on top of a sand dune outside the castle grounds.

An angry Berber tribal leader (Ismael Kanater) appears and claims the dead boy is his only son Driss (Omar Ghazaoui). Hamid unleashes the first of what you know will be more Arabic proverbs. The tribal leader and his armed companions insist that David attend the funeral many miles away. For reasons I don’t understand, David agrees to go with the strange men in their vintage Defender on a journey into the moonscape-like mountains from which I do not expect him to return. Like much of “The Forgiven,” this plot twist did not add up.

Directed by London-born John Michael McDonagh (“Calvary”), the brother of playwright and director Martin McDonagh (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), and based on a book by Lawrence Osborne, “The Forgiven” is somewhat reminiscent of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1959 Southern Gothic hybrid “Suddenly, Last Summer,” based on the play by Tennessee Williams (If you haven’t seen this scandalous-for-its-time effort, check it out).

Hamid is clearly sympathetic to the tribesmen, and you wonder if he is going to lead an insurrection. Fiennes, whose most memorable line is a drunken, “Of course, I speak (expletive) French,” in reference to the colonial language still spoken in Morocco. Can someone explain to me the meaning of “Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous”?

In David’s absence, Jo ponders an affair with a handsome, young, jaded American named Tom (Christopher Abbott). In the mountains, workers mine slate-like pieces of stone embedded with fossils that will be used as a coffee table by some Norwegian billionaire. Someone observes that a single bathroom renovation in the West would feed an entire Moroccan village for a year. Meanwhile, fancy grub is being thrown out by the barrel-full back at the party. Cue the proverb, Hamid.

Chastain does not have much to do except act decadent. Fiennes is, as usual, terrific. But “The Forgiven,” which ends exactly as you expected, is nothing if not obvious.

(“The Forgiven” contains sexually suggestive scenes, profanity, drug use and brief violence.)