Aurelia Butler

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    Watch Ben Affleck Line Dance in ‘The Accountant 2’

    The director Gavin O’ Connor narrates a sequence from the film featuring the actor and Jon Bernthal.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Ben Affleck kicks up his sneakers on the dance floor in this spirited sequence from “The Accountant 2.”Affleck’s character, Christian Wolff, an autistic C.P.A., has gone with his brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal), to a country western bar. Using calculations, Christian quickly figures out the pattern of a line dance and joins in.Discussing the scene in an interview, the film’s director, Gavin O’ Connor, explained that the scene was meant to accomplish several things as the film moves deeper into the second act. He added, “Bill Dubuque, our writer, and I wanted to abandon the plot and just make a hard left turn and go spend time with the brothers in a social environment so we can deepen their relationship while also allowing Christian the opportunity to connect with a woman in a way he’s never done before.”This leads to a moment in which Braxton expects his brother might make a fool of himself, but things turn out differently.“It dramatizes his mathematical brain, because you watch him start to look at the footwork and it all starts to compute very quickly,” O’Connor said in the interview.He also said Affleck attended several rehearsals to get the moves right: “We had a choreographer named Jennifer Hamilton who was wonderful, and before we got to the rehearsal stage, she was presenting me with a bunch of different ideas, because there are a lot of variations on line dancing, and then we narrowed it down.”They worked out the choreography with the dancers before bringing Affleck in. “Then Ben just did his thing,” O’Connor said. “Christian didn’t have to be great. He just had to do it. So it was never important that he lit the place on fire.”Read the “Accountant 2” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    Doubling Up: How ‘Sinners’ and Other Movies Multiply One Actor

    This year at the movies, you’d be forgiven for thinking you are seeing double — because you are. Since March there have been three films featuring stars acting opposite themselves. “Mickey 17” has two versions (at least) of Robert Pattinson as an expendable working grunt on an alien planet in a futuristic world. Robert De Niro played two different mobsters in “The Alto Knights.” And Michael B. Jordan just made his doubles debut as swaggering twins in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” a vampire movie set in 1930s Mississippi.Having the same actor appear two — or sometimes three or four or more — times onscreen is one of cinema’s most enduring tricks. And while the effect has long been a powerful bit of movie magic, the technology has evolved over the years. Here are some of the landmarks.‘The Playhouse’ (1921)An In-Camera Method to Buster Keaton’s MadnessThe use of doubling goes all the way back to the silent era in this Buster Keaton short in which the protagonist, played by the prodigious physical comedian, dreams himself as every single person in a show — from the band to the audience members. (He also appears in blackface as a minstrel, an upsetting byproduct of the era.) How did Keaton accomplish this? Through masking and double exposure. He and his cameraman Elgin Lessley would cover part of the lens, perform a beat, and then rewind, uncovering the previously masked portion to add another version of himself to the shot. The effect is a wondrous confluence of Keatons all acting at once.‘The Parent Trap’ (1961)Split-Screen High JinksWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Drop Dead City’: When New York Was on the Financial Brink

    This surprisingly entertaining film examines the 1975 fiscal crisis that nearly led the city to bankruptcy. The movie’s conclusions remain relevant today.There’s a bit of a puzzle at the center of “Drop Dead City” (in theaters), the new documentary about that time New York City barely escaped bankruptcy. Michael Rohatyn, who directed the film with Peter Yost, is the son of Felix Rohatyn, the banker and diplomat who led the Municipal Assistance Corporation. That’s the entity, established at the height of the crisis in 1975, that negotiated the solution with the city, the banks and the unions that ultimately pulled New York back from the brink of financial ruin. But while the elder Rohatyn is praised by many participants in the film, his connection to one of its directors isn’t mentioned at all.I admit I raised an eyebrow when I realized the link, and it’s true that at times “Drop Dead City” seems like a tribute to Felix Rohatyn’s acumen and ability. That might color the film’s credibility a bit. But on the whole, the movie probably benefits more from the younger Rohatyn’s involvement, not least because an incredible array of people who worked for the city and state at the time appear as participants, whether they are former aides and comptrollers or mayors, union leaders and members of Congress.That chorus of voices tells the story, helped by a lot of archival video that vividly illustrates how heated the protests and garbage-laden the sidewalks became while the municipal government tried to figure out the resolution. It’s an evenhanded and surprisingly entertaining account of how things got so bad, who was to blame, the way it was fixed (to some degree) and what New York inevitably lost in the process.The story, as a lot of New Yorkers know, is complicated, and “Drop Dead City” sets out to tell it as simply as possible, from the city’s progressive roots to its years of chaotic bookkeeping and sometimes profligate spending to its contentious relationship with both the state government in Albany and the federal government. The participants in the film don’t all agree with one another, which makes for a richer tale. No story about money is straightforward, but this version is about as fun and vivid as it could be without skimping on the details.Viewed through a wider lens, it’s also a parable, and it should be watched through that lens. When you think about it, it’s a bit of a miracle that the American system — involving many interlocking governments and interests, led by colorful personalities that often clash — ever works at all. But while the sheer size of the nation sometimes tempts us to think of faraway people as “them,” with problems that are only “theirs,” our fates are tied together. As people note repeatedly in “Drop Dead City,” it was in everyone’s interest to keep New York afloat, because what happened in the city had broad repercussions for the whole country. The crisis may have unfolded 50 years ago, but our interdependence is as important to remember now as it was then. More

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    Review: As New York’s Opera Scene Empties, Another Rises Upstate

    R.B. Schlather’s vibrant staging of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” playing in the Hudson Valley, is a bright spot in a bleak landscape for Baroque work.New York City Opera had recently shuttered when the director R.B. Schlather started to present Handel operas in a white-box gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan about 10 years ago. Those spare, surreal stagings of “Alcina” and “Orlando” felt like an elegy for City Opera’s innovative productions, and for its devotion to Handel — most famously, a landmark 1960s “Giulio Cesare” starring Beverly Sills.Now, as Schlather’s vibrant vision for “Giulio Cesare” plays at Hudson Hall in Hudson, N.Y., the landscape for opera — especially Baroque opera — is even bleaker in New York City, two hours south by train.The Metropolitan Opera, whose 4,000-seat theater isn’t a natural fit for early music, does less than it used to, and it’s become more or less the only game in town. City Opera was revived in name, but as a wan shadow of its former self. The Brooklyn Academy of Music used to be a destination for revelatory Baroque stagings by the likes of Les Arts Florissants; no more. Lincoln Center, ditto. Carnegie Hall presents Harry Bicket’s English Concert in a single Handel performance a year — on May 4 it’s, yes, “Cesare” — but unstaged, in concert.Upstate, Schlather has been unfurling a series of Handel productions with the terrific period-instrument ensemble Ruckus; “Cesare,” running through May 2, comes on the heels of “Rodelinda” at Hudson Hall in 2023. It is a precious bastion of an ever rarer breed.His directorial style in dealing with this composer’s works has gotten clearer with experience. “Alcina” and “Orlando” were always quirky, often thrilling and sometimes bewildering. But this substantially yet intelligently trimmed “Cesare” — with intermission, it’s just under three hours — is a stylishly straightforward account of a story of vengeance and lust set amid Julius Caesar’s campaign to conquer both Egypt and Cleopatra. Hudson Hall has a proscenium, but Schlather’s set pushes the action downstage in front of it with two angled walls painted iridescent black. Under Masha Tsimring’s stark, shadow-throwing lighting, those walls twinkle like a starry sky.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Andrea Nevins, Who Made Touching Films on Quirky Topics, Dies at 63

    Her documentaries, one of which received an Oscar nomination, explored subjects like punk-rock dads and Barbie dolls.Andrea Nevins, a documentary filmmaker who brought sensitivity and depth to seemingly lighthearted stories about underdogs and unlikely heroes, including punk-rock dads and Barbie dolls, died on April 12 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 63.Her daughter, Clara, said the cause was breast cancer.Ms. Nevins received an Academy Award nomination in 1998 for her first independent project as a producer, the short film “Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies,” about a cabaret group made up of retirees in the Southern California desert city.The film bears all the hallmarks of her later work: offbeat characters in unconventional circumstances who, through their struggles, say something meaningful about life and how to live it.Her first full-length project, “The Other F Word” (2011), was based on the 2007 memoir “Punk Rock Dad: No Rules, Just Real Life,” by Jim Lindberg, the lead singer of the band Pennywise.In some ways the opposite of the performers in Palm Springs, Mr. Lindberg was known for his aggressive stage presence and profane lyrics, even as he navigated the everyday challenges of raising three daughters.In a clip from the documentary “The Other F Word,” Fat Mike, the lead singer of NOFX, tends to his second job, parenting his daughter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Havoc’ Review: Tom Hardy Is Primed for a Fight

    Tom Hardy is a crooked cop looking to make amends in Gareth Evans’s action-packed film.Brimming with action archetypes — the grizzled hero, the upstart deputy, renegade police, a crooked politician and young lovers on the run — the writer-director Gareth Evans’s gritty crime movie “Havoc” makes it hard to find anyone in it who feels like a real person.The clichés commence with Walker (Tom Hardy), a sadder, more deflated John McClane type estranged from his wife and daughter at Christmastime. In the film’s opening, Walker, speaking with a low grumble similar to the one Hardy uses for playing Venom, laments his unscrupulous life. “You live in this world, you make choices,” he says. “And for a while it works. Until you make a choice that renders you worthless.”A cop-turned-fixer for the mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), Walker is called into service when Beaumont’s troubled son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), and his girlfriend, Mia (Quelin Sepulveda), are implicated in a high-speed chase that put a cop in the hospital. They’re also tied to the murder of a high-ranking Yakuza gangster. Beaumont needs Walker to retrieve Charlie before vindictive cops like Vincent (Timothy Olyphant) or the vengeful mother (Yeo Yann Yann) of the slain hoodlum find him. In return, Beaumont will release Walker from any further debts.Following the one-last-job path, “Havoc” offers few surprises, taking nearly an hour to map its huge web of characters. In the meantime, Walker leans on paid informants and his upstart partner, Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), to provide him with witnesses, such as Mia’s resourceful uncle (a scene-stealing Luis Guzmán). The gritty rendering of this crime-riddled city, aesthetically recalling “Sin City,” but in color, provides some additional background stimulation. Still, “Havoc” is mostly shifting around characters to bide time until its gory set pieces.Because what “Havoc” lacks in characters and story, it delivers in two audacious waves of indiscriminate killing that are so bruising and relentless they make the “John Wick” movies look like “Sesame Street.” In the first blood-soaked brawl, Walker finds Mia and Charlie at a club. Unfortunately, so do Vincent and the Japanese gangsters. The four parties collide. With his background as an action choreographer, Evans, who directed the “Raid” films, can artfully craft long elaborate action while maintaining coherency. Walker swings a metal pipe, Mia (Sepulveda’s physicality is impressive) wields a cleaver and others blanket the neon-lit party space with bursts of gunfire.The film’s final skirmish, this time with Walker, Charlie and Mia holed up in a woodland cabin, is equally exhilarating. There are goons crashing through windows and coming up through the floorboards, harpoons and hooks used as weapons. Whip pans instill some moments with a crazed franticness, while slow motion in other instances gives the vicious violence an intoxicating glow. Though the characters in “Havoc” are forgettable, the carnage is gripping.HavocNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Masahiro Shinoda, Leading Light of Japan’s New Wave Cinema, Dies at 94

    His films tapped into the fantasies of disgruntled youth by embracing brazen sexuality and countercultural politics. But unlike his peers, he did not shun tradition.Masahiro Shinoda, a leading director of the postwar Japanese New Wave whose films, notably “Pale Flower” and “Double Suicide,” fused pictorial beauty and fetishistic violence, died on March 25. He was 94.His production company, Hyogensha, said in a statement that the cause was pneumonia. It did not say where he died.In the 1960s and ’70s, Japanese New Wave cinema, like its French predecessor, tapped into the fantasies of disgruntled youth by embracing brazen sexuality and countercultural politics, with a tinge of nihilism. But unlike his peers, Mr. Shinoda refused to shun tradition. Instead, he used feudal-era theatrical forms like Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki to recount how cycles of violence have persisted since imperial Japan. His films were wrought with poetic imagery — hooded puppeteers, striking femmes fatales (including his wife, the actress Shima Iwashita) — but for all their sensuality, they espoused the idea that nothing really matters.“Culture is nothing but the expression of violence,” Mr. Shinoda said in an interview with Joan Mellen for her book “Voices From the Japanese Cinema” (1975), adding that “human tenderness is unthinkable without violence.”From left, Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga and Takashi Fujiki in “Pale Flower” (1964), Mr. Shinoda’s best-known film.ShochikuWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More