Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Hot Milk’ Review: Mommy Issues

    Emma Mackey and Fiona Shaw star in this drama about a young woman in a codependent relationship with her disabled mother.Under a forgiving light, “Hot Milk” plays like a surrealist comedy about a 25-year-old British woman who is too depressed to finish her thesis. Sofia (Emma Mackey) lives with her mother, Rose (Fiona Shaw), in southern Spain. Groups of girls practice flamenco near the rocky beach where Sofia broods in solitude, and the neighbor’s dog, which is chained up to the roof, never stops barking.And one day Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), a bisexual manic-pixie-horse-girl from Germany, enters Sofia’s life and quickly breaks down her defenses with an annoyingly whimsical flirtation style. How are we supposed to react when, for instance, the two women enjoy a moody moonlit tryst and Ingrid breathily declares that she once killed someone?Baffling choices like these make “Hot Milk,” the directorial debut of the playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, hard to take seriously. The film, adapted from the novel by Deborah Levy of the same name, is a tonal scramble, which makes the story’s intended throughline — Sofia’s toxic, codependent relationship with Rose — feel unexpected once it finally takes control of the narrative.The mother and daughter are in Spain indefinitely to meet with the renowned Doctor Gómez (Vincent Perez). Mysteriously, Rose is unable to walk, but as her treatment with the doctor continues, her disability seems to be linked to stranger psychological issues — and, perhaps, a desire to control Sofia.Shaw, at the very least, is a hypnotizing and treacherous presence, her seemingly guileless prattle masking deep trauma and cruelty. Mackey, despite flashes of ferocity, feels miscast. Beautiful and angsty, her Sofia doesn’t carry the story’s psychological layers about manipulation and masochism. The film eventually finds its footing, but the journey there might convince you not to care.Hot MilkRated R for sex, nudity, and psychological trauma. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘F1 The Movie’ Review: Brad Pitt Goes Zoom

    In tanned, tousled form, the actor stars in a Formula One story about fast cars, last chances and pretty people by the director of “Top Gun: Maverick.”Set in the world of Formula One racing, the easy, oh-so breezy “F1 The Movie” wants you to believe that it’s about winning and losing, talent and teamwork and all the tough love and hard work that go into Grand Prix glory. That’s the pitch, though there’s both more and less at play. An enjoyably arranged collection of all the visual attractions and narrative clichés that money can buy, “F1” is very simply about the satisfactions of genre cinema and the pleasures of watching appealing characters navigate fast, exotic cars that whine like juiced-up mosquitoes. It’s also about the pleasures of that ultrasmooth performance machine, Brad Pitt.At once calculated and almost touchingly sincere, the story is as formulaic as its title subject. Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a driver who could’ve been, should’ve been, a world-class contender. Recruited for service by an old pal, Ruben (a silky Javier Bardem), Sonny gets one last proverbial chance to prove himself while facing the customary hurdles, including his past, a wary crew, a corporate tool and a hungry young rival. There are crackups, breakdowns, near-misses and some well-lit darkish nights (well, minutes) of the soul. Three women have decent speaking roles; all share at least one meaningful moment with Sonny.The whole sleek package is as hackneyed as it sounds, but when the cars and cameras zoom around the track, it scarcely matters. A great deal depends on your love of or maybe just tolerance for straightforward, ostentatious, professionally crafted spectacles that don’t ask much of you but time and money. In return, you get nearly three hours of fizzy drama, some superficial peeks into a rarefied world and a studiously casual, tousled and tanned Pitt in classic Hollywood Zen master mode. Much like the movie itself, which is an enjoyable metaphor for the filmgoing experience, Pitt’s star performance is nothing if not self-reflexive.To that end, the director Joseph Kosinski showcases Pitt like an old-studio attraction, bathing him in pretty light, putting him in signifying outfits — think of a coyly grinning, blue-jeaned Robert Redford circa the 1970s — and at times stripping off some of that clothing. Kosinski buffed Tom Cruise to a similar high gloss in “Top Gun: Maverick.” As in that movie, “F1” deploys its star for a classic setup between an individual and a community, one in which a loner-outsider rides in to deliver wisdom and near-mystical gifts. (The producers include Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time Formula One world champ, and Jerry Bruckheimer, who, with films like “Top Gun,” helped define modern American blockbuster cinema.)Written by Ehren Kruger, the veneer-thin story opens with Sonny at Daytona, where he awakes in his van next to the speedway, fires up Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and runs winning circles around the competition. Not long after, his former track rival, Bardem’s Ruben, offers Sonny a chance to drive for a (fictional) losing Formula One team. Sonny takes it, sliding into an aerodynamic open-wheel ride amid some back story, character development, pro forma antagonism with a hotshot teammate, Joshua (Damson Idris), and a romance with the team’s technical director, Kate (Kerry Condon), all elements that the filmmakers use like brick mortar to help build what is effectively a series of races into a cohesive whole.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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    Wet Leg Became Indie Superheroes Overnight. Now They’re Acting Like It.

    Taking the stage in a muscled power pose is a declaration of frontwoman confidence. And Rhian Teasdale is gleaming with it.When her band Wet Leg played at Market Hotel in Brooklyn this spring, she strode up in a dingy undershirt and some glorified tighty-whities, and flexed her biceps at the crowd — a stance somewhere between bodybuilder and Wonder Woman.Launching into the come-at-me lyrics of “Catch These Fists,” the pulsing lead single from the band’s upcoming album — “I don’t want your love, I just wanna fight” the chorus snarls — Teasdale, the rhythm guitarist, dropped her custom-made, bubble gum pink instrument, and flashed her guns again. Beside her, Hester Chambers, the college friend she started the band with, was playing lead guitar with her back to the audience (her version of a power move). When they got into “Chaise Longue,” the underground hit that put them on the map, they were both dancing and grinning.Since Wet Leg emerged three years ago, its trajectory into indie-rock stardom has been a series of almost absurd feats. Pals from the Isle of Wight, England — a far reach from a musical hot spot — the group saw its self-titled debut LP explode, a chart-topper in the United Kingdom that also earned two Grammys. “Chaise Longue,” perhaps history’s catchiest track about a grandfather’s upholstered chair, had vocal fans in Elton John, Lorde and Dave Grohl; seemingly overnight, Wet Leg ascended from dingy clubs to stadiums, opening for Foo Fighters and Harry Styles.This is a heady place to activate a sophomore album, “Moisturizer,” out July 11. Especially because, unlike the debut, which was mostly written by Teasdale and Chambers, the latest effort is the work of a five-piece — including Henry Holmes, the drummer; Ellis Durand, the bassist; and the multi-instrumentalist Joshua Mobaraki, who is also Chambers’s boyfriend.And though Chambers, the lead guitarist, is still a full-fledged member of the group, she has stepped back from the sort of promotion she did for the first album, when the two women were featured as soft-spoken musical partners in matching cottagecore dresses. They were billed as a duo, and now, “we’re definitely a band,” Teasdale said decisively.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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    P. Adams Sitney, Leading Scholar of Avant-Garde Film, Dies at 80

    He championed works of cinema that were destined never to have a commercial breakthrough — which, to him, was the whole point.P. Adams Sitney, who pioneered the study of avant-garde film, helping to focus attention on a rarefied corner of American filmmaking, died on June 8 at his home in Matunuck, R.I. He was 80.His daughter Sky Sitney said the cause was cancer.In books and magazine articles, and at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, which he helped found, and Princeton University, where he taught film history and other subjects in the humanities for over 35 years, Mr. Sitney championed a type of film that is largely unknown to the cinema-going public, but which forms a distinctive part of the American artistic canon.His passion was mostly short films that had nothing to do with narrative or characters and everything to do with light, images, objects and dreams. His book “Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde,” which has gone through three editions since first being published in 1974, is still regarded as the leading study of the genre.Mr. Sitney’s “Visionary Film,” originally published in 1974, is still regarded as the leading study of the genre.Oxford University PressHe championed the work of avant-garde pioneers like Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas and Peter Kubelka, several of whom helped him found Anthology Film Archives, the East Village bastion of avant-garde cinema, in 1970. He saw their films as pure experiments toward achieving one of cinema’s true vocations: the mirror of the dream state.“Fragmentation brought the imagery to the brink of stasis, so that after some hours hovering around that threshold, the image of a couple walking into a Japanese garden had the breathtaking effect of the reinvention of cinematic movement,” he wrote of an episode in Mr. Markopoulos’s 80-hour, 22-part 1991 epic, “Eniaios.”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 Edge, U2’s Guitarist, Becomes Irish Citizen After 62 Years There

    The musician born David Evans was one of more than 7,500 people who became citizens in a series of ceremonies in southwest Ireland this week.The Edge, the U2 guitarist known for his omnipresent black beanie and his chiming, echoey sound, became an Irish citizen this week. It only took him 62 years.“I’m a little tardy on the paperwork,” the English-born musician, whose real name is David Evans, told reporters at the ceremony on Monday. “I’ve been living in Ireland now since I was 1 year old, but the time is right and I couldn’t be more proud of my country for all that it represents and all that it’s doing.”A representative for U2 did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.More than 7,500 people were granted citizenship in a series of ceremonies Monday and Tuesday in Killarney in County Kerry, nearly 200 miles southwest of Dublin, according to the Irish government. Applicants from over 140 countries made a declaration of fidelity and loyalty to the state. Since 2011, more than 200,000 people have received Irish citizenship.Evans, 63, was born in Essex to Welsh parents and moved to Ireland as a young child.The band formed in 1976 when Larry Mullen Jr. tacked a “musicians wanted” ad to a bulletin board in Dublin, according to the band’s website. The group — Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton (bass) and Mullen (drums), then all teenagers — practiced in Mullen’s kitchen.U2 became perhaps the most recognizable and successful rock group from Ireland and is considered by many fans there to be something of a national treasure. At the citizenship ceremony, Evans said that Ireland was showing “real leadership” on the world stage and that his becoming a citizen couldn’t have come at a better moment. “I have always felt Irish,” he told reporters, saying he was happy “to be in even deeper connection with my homeland.”Evans said the application process took a couple of years but was ultimately straightforward.“Honestly there were many moments in the past when I could have done it, with just the form to be filled out, but I’m happy it’s now,” he said. “It feels more significant, it feels more meaningful.” More

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    Mick Ralphs, of Mott the Hoople and Bad Company, Dies at 81

    A guitarist and songwriter, he ditched glam rock at its peak and scored with meatier stadium-rock anthems like “Can’t Get Enough” and “Feel Like Making Love.”Mick Ralphs, a British guitarist and songwriter who glittered at the peak of glam rock with Mott the Hoople before joining forces with the vocalist Paul Rodgers to form Bad Company, the hard-rock quartet that rode high in the feathered-hair 1970s with anthems like “Can’t Get Enough” and “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy,” has died. He was 81.His death was announced on Monday in a statement on the official Bad Company site, which noted that he had suffered a stroke days after his final performance with the group in October 2016 and had remained bedridden until his death. The statement did not say where or when he had died, or give a specific cause.Bad Company, scheduled to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November, combined muscular stadium rock with infectious hooks to become one of the most commercially successful groups of its era.Bad Company in 1973, from left: Boz Burrell, Paul Rodgers, Mr. Ralphs and Simon Kirke.Gems/Redferns, via Getty ImagesFormed in 1973, the group originally consisted of Mr. Ralphs (late of Mott the Hoople, known for the 1972 hit “All the Young Dudes”); Mr. Rodgers and the drummer Simon Kirke, both previously of Free, whose arena-shaking “All Right Now” was a No. 4 hit in 1970; and the bassist Boz Burrell, a veteran of King Crimson.Bad Company became an FM radio force. It sold more than a million copies of its first three albums, starting with its 1974 debut, called simply “Bad Company,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and featured “Can’t Get Enough,” a bluesy thumper written by Mr. Ralphs that soared to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.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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    Marcia Resnick, Whose Camera Captured New York’s ‘Bad Boys’, Dies at 74

    Marcia Resnick, a fine arts photographer who in the late 1970s pivoted from conceptual work to capture her febrile milieu, New York City’s downtown demimonde, in a series of intimate portraits, mostly of men, including the last studio photos taken of John Belushi, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 74.The cause of death, at a hospice facility, was lung cancer, her sister, Janice Hahn, said.New York City was lurching out of its fiscal crisis as Ms. Resnick began careening through Manhattan’s after-hours spots, notably Max’s Kansas City, CBGB and the Mudd Club. She was living the life, to be sure, but also scouting for subjects.Despite her madcap persona and punk-Lolita uniform — pleated schoolgirl skirts, thigh-high stockings and combat boots, beribboned pigtails and kohl-smudged eyes — she was deadly serious about her craft and her mission. Ms. Resnick was a skilled, CalArts-trained photographer determined to capture the scene that was swirling around her.Ms. Resnick’s 1979 photograph of Chris Stein and Debbie Harry, sprawled on a bed in their Manhattan apartment.Marcia Resnick/Getty ImagesShe photographed Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of the band Blondie sprawled on their bed in their 58th Street penthouse, looking like children at a sleepover.She found the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn and Steve Rubell, the Studio 54 impresario, slumped on a sofa at the Mudd Club after sharing a quaalude; in her photo, Mr. Cohn radiates malevolence, while Mr. Rubell, his head resting on the other man’s shoulder, looks joyful and beatific.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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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Thanks the Judge at His Federal Trial as His Defense Rests

    After 28 days of testimony in the federal sex-trafficking and racketeering trial, both sides rested. The music mogul did not take the stand.Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers rested their cases at Sean Combs’s sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial on Tuesday, and the music mogul announced that he would not be testifying in his own defense.After six weeks of letting his lawyers speak for him, Mr. Combs stood up at the defense table and addressed the court, out of the presence of jurors.Asked by the judge, Arun Subramanian, how he was doing, Mr. Combs said, “I’m doing great, how are you, your honor?” and quickly added, “I wanted to tell you, thank you, you’re doing an excellent job.”Mr. Combs, wearing a brown sweater and a white collared shirt, told the judge he had discussed the issue “thoroughly” with his lawyers, and then confirmed that he had decided not to testify.“That is solely my decision,” Mr. Combs said, leaning in to speak into the microphone with his hands resting on the defense table. He clarified that the decision was made “with my lawyers.”Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Combs coerced two women into participating in drug-fueled sex marathons with male escorts that he directed, masturbated during and sometimes filmed. Over 28 days of testimony at Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, government attorneys sought to establish a pattern of criminal activity by Mr. Combs and an inner circle of employees, walking the jury through allegations of kidnapping, arson, drug violations and forced labor.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