Aurelia Butler

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    ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ Review: A Mourning Journey

    This visually elegant indie follows a soft-spoken Swiss widow visiting Japan.A visually elegant drama by the writer-director Bradley Rust Gray, “I’ll Be Your Mirror” spins a gossamer-fine story about grief — about the struggle to live fully again when the tragedies of the past still exist in your bones.Chloe (Carla Juri) is a soft-spoken Swiss widow visiting Japan for work, though we first learn about her husband’s passing indirectly. She can’t speak Japanese, which gives her an excuse to keep her feelings private and remain trapped in her own head. In the beginning of the film, against a breezy pastoral backdrop, a Japanese friend, Toshi (Takashi Ueno), discusses Chloe’s misfortune in front of her with his grandmother. Chloe smiles, unaware.The moment encapsulates the film’s delicate dynamics, shifting between Chloe’s unspoken hurt (there are occasional flashbacks to her husband that bleed into the main narrative) and the concerned friends orbiting around her, both wary of upsetting her but also, because of the language barrier, naturally at a remove.The static camerawork by the cinematographer Eric Lin gives Chloe’s stilted but openly vulnerable encounters a fluttering poignancy; particularly lovely is a ferry-ride conversation with an older man, Yatsuro (Issey Ogata).The meandering nature of the film creates a special kind of intimacy with Chloe, one that relies almost entirely on Juri’s subtly heartbreaking performance. Chloe’s mourning isn’t always legible, and we often see her engaging in banal activities like shopping, eating and playing with Toshi’s young daughter, Futaba (Futaba Okazaki); her awkward banter with friends is endearing though it also grows rather dull, and the constant obliqueness draws some power and believability away from the developing romance with Toshi. There’s an implication that repressed emotions are simmering beneath the mundane, but that doesn’t always come across.I’ll Be Your MirrorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters. More

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    1999 Was a Great Year for Movies. It Was the Best Year to Write About Them.

    At the box office 25 years ago, hits like “Runaway Bride,” “The Sixth Sense” and “Bowfinger” hint at the abundance that overwhelmed a young critic.One thing to love about time is how liberating it can be. I, for instance, am at liberty to look at the Top 10 movies for the weekend of Aug. 20, 1999 — when “The Sixth Sense,” in its third week out, began its monopoly of the chart — and declare “The Thomas Crown Affair” the best of the lot.What could be going on here? Am I actually saying that a Pierce Brosnan-Rene Russo remake of the old Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway love heist, from 1968, was always superior to M. Night Shyamalan’s where’d-that-come-from supernatural smash? Or have 25 years ripened one and grayed the other? Hadn’t “The Blair Witch Project” opened in July yet was still very much a thing? (It had, yet it was, down at No. 5.) Only one of the 10 movies was a sequel. In the mix were Julia Roberts, at her commercial peak, in “Runaway Bride” (No. 4, after opening in July) and Steve Martin and a gonzo Eddie Murphy, holding at second, in “Bowfinger.” More

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    ‘Querelle’: Fassbinder’s Defiant Swan Song

    Anthology Film Archives is screening Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1982 film, based on Jean Genet’s novel, about a young sailor’s criminal and erotic escapades.Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, “Querelle,” released posthumously in 1982, was the most lavish and artificial of the 40-odd movies the prolific filmmaker directed over the course of a 13-year career.A film that recapitulates even as it embalms many of Fassbinder’s concerns, “Querelle” screens in a new digital version for a week starting Friday at Anthology Film Archives.At once lurid and static, a funerary frieze of power plays, treachery and weaponized sex, “Querelle” is faithful to Jean Genet’s sensuous prose-poem novel in tracking the criminal and erotic escapades of the title character, a charismatic young sailor (Brad Davis).Universally desired, Querelle is a killer, a masochist, a smuggler, a stool pigeon, and a participant in a convoluted daisy chain. His brother Robert (Hanno Pöschl) is sleeping with Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau), the madam of a waterfront bordello; Querelle, who allows himself to be sexually used by Lysiane’s husband, Nono (the Fassbinder regular Günther Kaufmann), has sex with her as well. He also seduces (or at least vamps) and frames a good-hearted Polish sailor (Pöschl again) and, throughout the movie, is cruised by his ship’s repressed lieutenant (Franco Nero).This tawdry rondo is frequently accompanied by a celestial chorus and bathed in a golden light, with Davis individually glorified. (Beautiful and inert, he might be a stand-in for Rock Hudson, who was not only closeted but the favorite actor of Fassbinder’s favorite director, Douglas Sirk.) Moreau, virtually the only woman in the film, comments on the turgid delirium by twice singing a ditty taken from Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol” in which the phrase “each man kills the thing he loves” is followed by a jaunty “dadada-dadada.”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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    ‘Close Your Eyes’ Review: The Case of the Unfinished Film

    For his latest, the Spanish director Victor Erice, known for the classic “The Spirit of the Beehive,” weaves a meta tale of a director looking for an absent actor.A mystery wends through “Close Your Eyes,” a drama in which the past, present and cinema converge. It’s the latest from the Spanish director Victor Erice, who’s best known for the art-cinema paragon “The Spirit of the Beehive” (1973), a dream of a movie about a girl who is deeply troubled by the original “Frankenstein” film. Set around 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, “Beehive” elliptically focuses on a traumatized child and country that, when Erice made this classic, was in the waning years of Franco’s fascist dictatorship.“Close Your Eyes” is the fourth feature-length movie from Erice, who, it’s worth noting, was born in 1940; it’s also his first since “Dream of Light” (1992). The story in “Close Your Eyes” turns on Miguel (Manolo Solo), a melancholic filmmaker who hasn’t directed a movie in several decades and now scratches out a marginal living as a translator. Miguel’s last film, “The Farewell Gaze,” came to an aborted, ignoble finish when his lead actor, Julio (José Coronado), enigmatically disappeared. Without his star, Miguel was unable to finish the movie, which brought his film career to an end and, effectively, caused him to vanish as well.The repressed have a way of returning, as it were. And so it is in “Close Your Eyes,” which follows Miguel as he confronts his old life, his unfinished film and his absent actor, all of whom come back to some kind of attenuated life courtesy of a TV program, “Unsolved Cases.” Miguel agrees to participate in the show, which will revisit his movie’s puzzling history. He sits down for an interview and lets the program present some of the few sequences that he managed to salvage; soon enough, he also tries to find out what happened to Julio, an inquiry that begins practically enough, though it gradually accrues destabilizing existential weight.Written by Erice and Michel Gaztambide, “Close Your Eyes” quickly takes the shape of an investigation, one riddled with doubles, cinematic and otherwise. Much like Julio’s character in the unfinished film — a long, chatty section from it opens the movie — Miguel assumes the role of a detective who’s charged with finding a missing person and even begins wearing the trench coat that Julio wore in the film. These two former compatriots once shared an artistic calling and other interests, including an ex-lover. As the main story unfolds, Miguel’s exploration of the past reveals as much about the investigator as the investigated, and the men progressively seem like doppelgängers. Each has been lost; each will be also be found.Erice extends this doubling motif to the intimate one-on-one conversations that anchor “Close My Eyes,” and which incrementally, and at times almost begrudgingly, propel Miguel’s story forward. Erice tends to shoot the conversations in the earlier part of the movie as face-to-face encounters, with Miguel — an earnest, worried-looking soul — seated directly opposite another equally serious character. Later in the movie, after Miguel meets a stranger called Gardel (also played by Coronado), who helps solve the case of the missing actor, Erice often frames the two men side-by-side, as if twinning them. This visual shift underscores their connections without commensurately deepening either character or the overall movie.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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    ‘Blink Twice’ Review: Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum’s Horror Mystery

    The director Zoë Kravitz creates an uneasy atmosphere in her abduction horror flick, starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum.For a film like “Blink Twice” to land its horror-stained commentary on sexual assault and cancel culture as well as class and race, it would need a director capable of pushing beyond basic social politics. In her debut feature, Zoë Kravitz is not that director.Rather her film, for which she also wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, exists more as a concept than a complete idea. The same could be said of the film’s protagonist, Frida (Naomi Ackie). She pines for the lifestyle of the disgraced tech mogul Slater King, played by Channing Tatum, Kravitz’s partner.Frida and her roommate, Jess (Alia Shawkat), work as servers at a gala — which allows the two women to switch into eye-catching dresses to mingle with the rich. When Frida snaps her heel, it’s Slater who helps her up, leading to a night of reverie culminating in an invite to his private island, where he has retreated after issuing a public apology for actions the film leaves relatively unknown.For the tech mogul’s entourage, Kravitz has assembled an impressive cast: Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment and Levon Hawke. These men are meant to elicit dread, with an appetizing drink in hand. But only Slater King’s therapist, Rich (Kyle MacLachlan), knows how to play pleasantness as threatening.Kravitz crafts an uneasy atmosphere. Days and nights blend into one for an endless summer filled with perfume and parties, producing a double-edged pace that has snap even while it lulls viewers into malaise. The cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra uses shadows to carve Ackie’s face, foretelling the angst she’ll feel when friends begin to disappear, gaps in her memory occur and an exoticized Indigenous woman calls her by another name.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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    Taylor Swift Says She Felt ‘Fear’ and ‘Guilt’ After Canceled Vienna Shows

    The three stops in Austria on the pop star’s Eras Tour were canceled after the authorities discovered a terrorist plot targeting the concerts.Taylor Swift said Wednesday that she was devastated by the cancellation of her Eras Tour concerts in Vienna, adding that the terrorist plot that had targeted her shows there had filled her “with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming.”In an Instagram post celebrating the end of the European leg of her tour, Ms. Swift offered her first public comments about the three derailed shows, which were called off after officials in Austria said they had arrested two men accused of plotting a terrorist attack. One of the men, they said, had recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State online and had focused on the Eras Tour as a potential target.Nearly 200,000 people had been expected to attend the Vienna concerts, which were to start on Aug. 8.In her social media post published on Wednesday, Ms. Swift said she was grateful to the authorities, “because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives.”“I decided that all of my energy had to go toward helping to protect the nearly half a million people I had coming to see the shows in London,” she said of the next stop on her tour. “My team and I worked hand in hand with stadium staff and British authorities every day in pursuit of that goal, and I want to thank them for everything they did for us.”“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she continued. “In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.”Thousands of fans who had been eager to spend a few hours with Ms. Swift in Vienna — including many who traveled great distances to see her — shed tears over the canceled concerts. Many others who had planned to see her the following week in London endured anxious days, worrying both about their personal safety and about whether the highlight of their summer would also be called off.But Ms. Swift’s shows went on as planned, a fact that she celebrated in her Instagram post.“All five crowds at Wembley Stadium were bursting with passion, joy, and exuberance,” she said. “The energy in that stadium was like the most giant bear hug from 92,000 people each night, and it brought me back to a place of carefree calm up there.” More

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    ‘Megalopolis’ Trailer Pulled for Featuring Fake Movie Critic Quotes

    To promote Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, the spot used supposed lines from The Times, The New Yorker and others to suggest critics were wrong about him.A new trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” featuring fake negative quotes from film critics has been pulled by the movie’s distributor, Lionsgate, a spokesman for the company said Wednesday.The trailer, which was posted in the morning, featured quotes from well-known film critics of the past including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, Vincent Canby of The New York Times and Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times panning previous Coppola films like “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”However, as the critic Bilge Ebiri first reported in Vulture, the quotes are not real. The trailer has now been pulled from YouTube, after amassing more than 1.3 million views in the single day it was online.“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,’” a spokesman for the company said in a statement. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”“Megalopolis,” which was self-financed by Coppola and is due in theaters Sept. 27, was initially unable to find a buyer until Lionsgate stepped in. The epic fantasy premiered to a decidedly mixed reception at the Cannes Film Festival. On Rotten Tomatoes, it stands at just 53 percent fresh among critics. The trailer seemed to be an effort to show that reviews don’t always get it right when it comes to Coppola’s work.The spot quoted Kael as saying “The Godfather” was “diminished by its artsiness,” when in reality she wrote about it glowingly. While Canby, who served as senior film critic at The New York Times from 1969 to 1993, wasn’t a fan of “Apocalypse Now,” calling it an “intellectual muddle,” he didn’t use the phrase “hollow at the core” as the trailer indicates.The trailer also featured fake quotes from Andrew Sarris in The Village Voice, Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly, and Rex Reed in The New York Observer and The New York Daily News, according to the Vulture report.John Simon of National Review is also included in the spot, and a writer for the magazine posted on X that the staff was checking the archive but believed it to be false.It is unclear how the faked quotes were created. Some on social media, speculating that artificial intelligence tools were used, started feeding prompts to ChatGPT looking for similar results.Lionsgate would not comment on whether ChatGPT or other tools powered by artificial intelligence were used for the trailer.The pulled trailer was not the first controversy surrounding the film. A report in The Guardian in May quoted anonymous sources accusing Coppola of trying to kiss female extras on the set of a nightclub scene. An executive co-producer, Darren Demetre, has said he was unaware of any harassment complaints made during the production, and Coppola later told The Times, “I’m not touchy-feely,” Coppola said. “I’m too shy.” More