Aurelia Butler

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    ‘We Beat the Dream Team’ Puts a Twist on the Sports Movie Formula

    This film tells the story of the college players who defeated the 1992 U.S. men’s basketball team, filled with N.B.A. All-Stars, during a scrimmage before the Olympics.Whether documentary or fiction, the sports movie template is so well-worn — we were underdogs, then we won, and it was amazing — that it’s rare to execute a new twist on the formula. And in some ways, “We Beat the Dream Team” (streaming on Max), directed by Michael Tolajian, follows that recipe. Its title suggests the ultimate underdog story: In June 1992, a group of elite college basketball players was recruited to scrimmage the United States men’s basketball team before the Barcelona Olympics. But on the first day, kind of by accident, the underdogs beat the so-called Dream Team.It was the first year that pro basketball players were permitted to compete at the Olympics, and so that team consisted of a murderer’s row of N.B.A. players: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Clyde Drexler and, of course, Michael Jordan. One solitary college player, Christian Laettner, joined them.“We Beat the Dream Team” focuses on the story told by the other guys. They’re the college students who — as several of them point out repeatedly during the film — would have been the Olympic team, if the eligibility rules hadn’t changed. Instead, as then-college player Grant Hill says, “We were the crash test dummies.” Arriving at the training facility feeling both salty and star-struck, they were ready to hit the court and aware they were specifically there to lose.To tell the story, Tolajian assembled those players, many of whom (including Hill, Chris Webber, Allan Houston and Penny Hardaway) had their own starry N.B.A. careers since that summer over 30 years ago. They are visibly full of fire as they recall the moment. Interviews with the players and coaches are mixed with archival footage from the games to give you the sense of the proceedings, focusing on the day that the younger guys beat their heroes on the court — and what happened next.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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    Like Us, Theo James Is Freaked Out by the Toy in ‘The Monkey’

    In the warped new horror-comedy “The Monkey” (in theaters), Theo James plays Hal and Bill, estranged twin brothers who are besieged by a possessed music-making monkey toy they got under gruesome circumstances when they were boys. Once that little monkey starts a tinny rat-tat-tat on his drum, nobody’s safe.Based on a Stephen King short story, the gory film is the latest project from the writer-director Osgood Perkins, whose macabre filmography includes last year’s “Longlegs.”Earlier this month during a video interview, James said that the toy, which looks like a maniac and is known among collectors as a Jolly Chimp, was one of his frequent scene partners. Distancing himself from the chimp’s unnerving stare was a tough order.“It was creepy enough to the point where, with some of my daughter’s toys in her room, I’m like, is that thing looking at me?” James said, with an uneasy smile that suggested he wasn’t entirely joking.Theo James in “The Monkey.”NeonIf his literally-a-model looks are familiar, it may be because he has appeared across acting disciplines: the “Divergent” films; the second season of “The White Lotus” on HBO; the London stage. Down the road are roles in “The Hole,” a film from the director Kim Jee-Woon — “Misery” meets “Parasite” is how James described it — and the second season of “The Gentlemen,” Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series.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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    Amazon Gains Creative Control Over the James Bond Franchise

    The British family that has for decades held complete control over everything involving the globe-trotting superspy is relinquishing it to Amazon.The British family that has steered the James Bond franchise for more than 60 years, zealously protecting the superspy from the indignities of Hollywood strip mining, has agreed to relinquish control to Amazon.The deal, which was announced Thursday morning, comes after a behind-the-scenes standoff between Barbara Broccoli, who inherited control of Bond from her father, and Amazon, which gained a significant ownership stake in the franchise in 2021 as part of its $8.5 billion purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Ms. Broccoli and her brother, Michael G. Wilson, another Bond producer, had chafed at some of the ways in which Amazon hoped to capitalize on the property, The Wall Street Journal reported in December.In a statement released by Amazon, the siblings and the tech giant said they had agreed to form a new joint venture to house Bond; the parties will remain co-owners. But Amazon MGM Studios “will gain creative control” after the transaction closes later this year. Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson previously had ironclad creative control, deciding when to make a new Bond film, who should play the title role and whether remakes and television spinoffs got made.They also had final say over every line of dialogue, every casting decision, every stunt sequence, every marketing tie-in, and every TV ad, poster and billboard.Daniel Craig in “No Time to Die.” The movie marked the end of a five-film series with him in the lead role. No decisions have been made about a successor.Nicola Dove/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures, via Associated PressMike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, thanked the siblings for their “unyielding dedication” to the franchise and said the company looked forward “to ushering in the next phase of the legendary 007 for audiences around the world.”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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    Review: Vikingur Olafsson and Yuja Wang, Side by Side

    Vikingur Olafsson and Yuja Wang appeared at Carnegie Hall with a unified approach to works by Schubert, John Adams, Rachmaninoff and more.When two pianists appear together in concert, the usual setup is for the curves of their instruments to hug in a yin-yang formation. The musicians face off across the expanse, some nine feet apart.But when Vikingur Olafsson and Yuja Wang brought their starry duo tour to Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening, just inches separated them. They sat side by side, their pianos splayed out in opposite directions like the wings of a butterfly, with the players in the middle.Olafsson and Wang didn’t look at each other much during the performance, and Wang, who was closer to the audience throughout, did feel like the dominant presence and sound in this duet. But their physical closeness registered in a consistently unified approach to their richly enjoyable program.There was balanced transparency in even the most fiery moments of Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor. Olafsson and Wang’s rubato — their expressive flexibility with tempo — felt both spontaneously poetic and precisely shared in the passage when serenity takes over in the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances,” with the yearning melody that’s given to the alto saxophone in the work’s fully orchestrated version.Their styles were distinguishable, even if subtly. In sumptuously vibrating chords in the first movement of Schubert’s Fantasy, Olafsson’s touch was a little wetter and more muted, Wang’s percussive and as coolly etched as a polygraph. Cool, yes, but she could also be lyrical, as in the delicate beginning of Luciano Berio’s “Wasserklavier,” which opened the concert.Short, gentle, spare pieces by Berio, John Cage (the early “Experiences No. 1”) and Arvo Part (“Hymn to a Great City”) gave the program a meditative spine. Those were interspersed with three substantial anchors: the “Symphonic Dances,” which Rachmaninoff set for two pianos as he was writing the orchestral version; the Schubert Fantasy; and John Adams’s “Hallelujah Junction.”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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    ‘The Unbreakable Boy’ Review: Surmounting Hardships With Joy

    This family drama by Jon Gunn, based on a true story, is told from the perspective of a young boy with autism.The title character in “The Unbreakable Boy” is a whirlwind, a handful, a lot. Austin, an eighth grader with autism, is often in overdrive, whether he’s counting toys or rattling off the courtroom monologue from “A Few Good Men.” He also has a genetic brittle-bone disorder that frequently lands him in the emergency room. Crucially, though, these challenges never diminish his spirit. Played with exuberance by Jacob Laval, Austin is a disrupter and catalyst, a lesson in joyful mettle to everyone around him — especially his parents (Zachary Levi and Meghann Fahy).Jon Gunn, the writer-director and a practiced hand in the inspirational genre (“Ordinary Angels”), adapted the memoir by Scott LeRette, Austin’s father, but flipped the perspective to the boy’s. There are well-deployed bursts of kid’s-eye-view animation and humorous asides, but mainly the story, set in Oklahoma, dispenses its lessons in gratitude, self-forgiveness and sobriety with straightforward sincerity. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it lands with a thud.This is also the story of a marriage. As narrated by Austin and revealed in flashbacks, his parents’ courtship traveled an ultra-brief road from meet-cute to pregnancy, and Scott and Teresa didn’t so much fall in love as do the right thing. Raising Austin spurs them to grow up, although Scott, with his increasing dependence on alcohol, is clearly the laggard. Some might find it comforting that Scott has an imaginary friend (Drew Powell), a cross between a drinking buddy and a voice of conscience. Others will find it merely distracting.Fahy, as the more grounded parent, lends understated warmth to this pleasant but plodding family drama. Amid the gentle nods to churchgoing, 12-step programs and the Japanese art of kintsugi (the mending of broken items using precious metals that accentuate the cracks), “The Unbreakable Boy” could have benefited from a stronger infusion of Austin’s vitality.The Unbreakable BoyRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Compensation’ Review: Still Rebellious

    Finally getting a theatrical run, Zeinabu irene Davis’s 1999 film about two Black couples in Chicago in two different eras earns its landmark status.As a word, “Compensation” evokes labor. In the director Zeinabu irene Davis’s beautifully woven drama of the same name, work does get its close-ups. But it is the loves, labors and vulnerabilities two couples in two different eras experience that make this black-and-white film from 1999 such an elegant and presciently inventive work.Michelle A. Banks, a pioneering deaf theater actor, portrays both Malindy, a dressmaker in 1910, and Malaika, an aspiring graphic designer in the 1990s. John Earl Jelks (“Exhibiting Forgiveness”) plays Arthur, a migrant up from Mississippi, and Nico, a children’s librarian in contemporary Chicago.Each couple meets sweet on the shore of Lake Michigan. (Scenes were shot at Indiana Dunes National Park.) With a fishing rod strapped to his back, a mandolin in his hand and a straw hat atop his head, Arthur looks like a folk troubadour as he heads toward Malindy and her young friend Tildy (Nirvana Cobb) napping nearby. He asks Malindy if she wants some of the fish he’s caught. After trying to make herself understood by signing, Malindy writes on a chalkboard that she can’t hear. Arthur looks at the sign and tells her sheepishly he can’t read. It’s an impossibly poignant moment in a film about the intersections of the deaf and the hearing worlds, the Black middle and working classes, but also the educated and the soon-to-be-educated.For Nico and Malaika’s encounter, the film leans on a bit of rom-com charm. (“Compensation” was written by Marc Arthur Chéry, the director’s frequent collaborator and spouse.) Looking serious, Malaika moves through tai chi forms, Nico jogs by, smiles, stops, jogs back, beaming. She is not impressed as playful thought-bubble intertitles make plain.Davis uses the form of early silent movies to evocative and economic effect. How do you shoot a period picture on a tight budget? Imbue rich archival stills with the sounds of life — babies gurgling, horses clomping, train whistles sounding. Add a beguiling musical score while you’re at it. Scenes of the early 1900s are buoyed by the composer-pianist Reginald R. Robinson’s ragtime notes; the late ’90s by Atiba Y. Jali’s percussive, African-centered grooves. (The movie is open captioned.)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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    Souleymane Cissé, Celebrated Malian Filmmaker, Dies at 84

    He won multiple awards during his 50-year career, including the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and spent his life championing African cinema.Souleymane Cissé, an award-winning writer and director who became the first Black African filmmaker to win the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, died on Wednesday in Bamako, Mali. He was 84.His death was confirmed by François Margolin, a French film producer and a close friend of Mr. Cissé’s.Mr. Cissé had just appeared at a news conference on Wednesday morning to present two prizes ahead of the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, known as Fespaco, where he had been set to head the jury.After the news conference — where he was “talking and joking” — Mr. Cissé went to take a nap and didn’t wake up, Mr. Margolin said.Mr. Cissé was catapulted to worldwide fame with the release in 1987 of “Yeelen” (“Light” in his native Bambara). The film won the jury prize at Cannes and was nominated as the best foreign film in the 1989 Spirit Awards. The director Martin Scorsese called the film “one of the great revelatory experiences of my moviegoing life.”Mr. Cissé had been energetic until the end of his life, Mr. Margolin said, working and traveling around the world.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