Aurelia Butler

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    4 Documentaries That Explore How Families Cope With Dementia

    In “Little Empty Boxes” and other films, the heartbreak of memory loss is intertwined with deeper cultural implications.When his creative, funny, independent mother, Kathy, began to exhibit signs of dementia, the writer Max Lugavere moved cross-country and picked up a camera to start documenting his journey to figure out how to help her. The result is “Little Empty Boxes,” a new documentary that’s strongest when it chronicles their relationship. Kathy’s memories of Max’s upbringing and his desire to be close to her bring them both a strange comfort. (She passed away in 2019.) The rest of the film — notably interviews with researchers studying links between nutrition, exercise and brain health — is uneven. Its visual language ranges from traditional, brightly lit talking heads to an observational approach, which can provoke whiplash for the viewer.But “Little Empty Boxes,” directed by Lugavere and Chris Newhard, made me think about other powerful documentaries that chronicle walking through memory loss with a loved one. The experience can be tremendously painful, with family and friends feeling helpless; watching a film about it can in turn be both gut-wrenching and cathartic.One of the best recent movies about memory loss — nominated for an Oscar last year — is “The Eternal Memory” about the Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora and his wife, the actress Paulina Urrutia. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the film (streaming on Paramount+) weaves Góngora’s slow decline into a broader meditation on cultural memory, and on what we lose as communities when we’re denied the ability to retain those memories — through book bans and state propaganda that whitewashes historical truth. But the broader metaphor doesn’t obscure Góngora and Urrutia’s love story, which is heartwrenchingly beautiful.Even more harrowing is “Tell Me Who I Am” (Netflix) directed by Ed Perkins. Like “Little Empty Boxes,” this 2019 film is more effective when exploring its subjects’ relationship than when it turns journalistic. Alex Lewis was in a motorcycle accident at 18, and when he woke up, he’d lost his memory. His twin brother, Marcus, helped him reconstruct his life, but as the film goes on, Alex — and the audience — realize that Marcus was holding back information about their past, and that revealing it is fraught. The brothers’ trust and love holds the film together.The most unmissable and life-affirming film of this sort, though, is “Dick Johnson Is Dead” (Netflix) from 2020. Dick Johnson is the father of the director Kirsten Johnson; years after losing his wife (Kirsten’s mother) to Alzheimer’s, he begins to exhibit signs of dementia. Facing an uncertain future, Dick and Kirsten work together to humorously and movingly stage different ways he might die, while exploring their relationship and the meaning of love, history and remembrance. It’s a vital, hilarious, gorgeous and truly innovative film, and I can’t think of a better exploration of the bond between a filmmaker and a parent in the face of impending loss. More

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    ‘Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’ Review: Of Stars and Wars

    A delirious, pulpy mishmash of knockoffs, Zack Snyder’s film isn’t good, but it sure is something.A Zack Snyder picture is like everything and nothing else in the galaxy. “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver,” the second half of the director’s hammering saga about a bucolic village at the fringes of the universe forced to fight off its imperial overlords, pulls from as many influences as there are stars in the sky. “Star Wars,” of course (yes, there are light sabers), and also “Mad Max,” Caravaggio, John Ford, European art-house cinema, World War II propaganda flicks, steampunk Victoriana, cottagecore girlies on Instagram and Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.” Not only does the score boast two types of choirs (haunted child and Gregorian), but a single frame might include a robot dressed like the Green Knight (and voiced by Anthony Hopkins) next to a Conan the Barbarian clone next to some guy in overalls who looks like he just flew in from Bonnaroo. A delirious, pulpy mishmash of knockoffs, “The Scargiver” isn’t good, but it sure is something.The first “Rebel Moon,” released on Netflix in December, made audiences endure a gantlet of narrative groundwork that’s fairly inessential and recapped here. In it, a farm boy named Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) and a secretive assassin named Kora (Sofia Boutella) assemble an interstellar team of protectors (played by Djimon Hounsou, Staz Nair, Elise Duffy, Doona Bae and others). Now, the story picks up five days before the squad must defeat a vicious army led by an admiral (Ed Skrein) with a bad haircut and worse attitude.The script by Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten trips over its aspirations whenever any character talks. There’s not a single authentic conversation, just exposition dumps and soliloquies (the best of which Hounsou delivers). Finally, after an hour of speeches, we’re treated to an hour of rousing warfare. Primal, pitiless, agonizing carnage is where Snyder excels. He’ll kill anyone, even nice people, even grandmothers-turned-guerrilla warriors who just want to get back to folk dancing. And he makes it hurt.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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    Dickey Betts, Fiery Guitarist With Allman Brothers Band, Dies at 80

    He traded licks with Duane Allman and proved to be a worthy sparring partner. He also wrote, and sang, the band’s biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man.”Dickey Betts, a honky-tonk hell raiser who, as a guitarist for the Allman Brothers Band, traded fiery licks with Duane Allman in the band’s early-1970s heyday, and who went on to write some of the band’s most indelible songs, including its biggest hit, “Ramblin’ Man,” died on Thursday at his home in Osprey, Fla. He was 80.His death was announced on social media by his family. His manager David Spero said in a statement to Rolling Stone magazine that the cause was cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Despite not being an actual Allman brother — the band, founded in 1969, was led by Duane Allman, who achieved guitar-god status before he died in a motorcycle accident at 24, and Gregg Allman, the lead vocalist, who got an added flash of the limelight in 1975 when he married Cher — Mr. Betts was a guiding force in the group for decades and central to the sound that, along with the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd, came to define Southern rock.Although pigeonholed by some fans in the band’s early days as its “other” guitarist, Mr. Betts, whose solos seemed at times to scorch the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul, proved a worthy sparring partner to Duane Allman, serving more as a co-lead guitarist than as a sidekick.Mr. Betts in 1977. His solos at times seemed to scorch the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWith his chiseled features, Wild West mustache and gunfighter demeanor, Mr. Betts certainly looked the part of the star. And he played like one. Nowhere was that more apparent than on the band’s landmark 1971 live double album, “At Fillmore East,” which was filled with expansive jams and showcased the intricate interplay between Mr. Betts and Mr. Allman. It sold more than a million copies.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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    Philharmonic Opens Inquiry After Misconduct Allegations Are Revived

    The New York Philharmonic commissioned an outside investigation into its culture after a magazine article explored how it handled an accusation of sexual assault in 2010.The New York Philharmonic, which has been facing an uproar since a recent magazine article detailed allegations of misconduct against two players it tried and failed to fire in 2018, said on Thursday that it was commissioning an outside investigation into its culture.Gary Ginstling, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, said in a letter to musicians, staff members and board members that the organization had hired an outside lawyer, Katya Jestin, a managing partner of the law firm Jenner & Block, to “launch an independent investigation into the culture of the New York Philharmonic in recent years.”“I am empowering Katya to look at everything and to leave no stone unturned, including any new allegations as they are reported,” Mr. Ginstling wrote. The decision came after a report last week in New York magazine detailed accusations of misconduct made in 2010 against the players, the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, and the principal oboist, Liang Wang.In the article Cara Kizer, a former Philharmonic horn player, came forward for the first time to publicly discuss an encounter that she said occurred while she was on tour with the Philharmonic in Vail, Colo., in 2010. She told the Vail Police Department at the time that she had been sexually assaulted after spending the evening with the two players and was given a drink she came to believe was drugged, according to police records.No charges were filed against the men and both have denied wrongdoing.In 2018 the Philharmonic, under new leadership, commissioned an investigation and moved to dismiss Mr. Muckey and Mr. Wang. But the players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, challenged their dismissals, and an independent arbitrator forced the orchestra to reinstate them in 2020.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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    Jorie Graham’s Poetry of the Earth and Humanity, Set to Music

    The composer Matthew Aucoin, Graham’s former student, and the director Peter Sellars have adapted her poems into the operatic “Music for New Bodies.”Peter Sellars wanted to know more.He was in San Francisco a few years ago, attending a performance of “The No One’s Rose,” a fascinatingly idiosyncratic work of music theater that featured some of his favorite artists, from the American Modern Opera Company, and a score by the young composer Matthew Aucoin.One section of the piece stood out: “Deep Water Trawling,” a setting of a poem by Jorie Graham that felt both human and not, both natural and spiritual. Most important, it seemed to have brought out something new, and special, in Aucoin’s writing.After the show Sellars, who at 66 has long been a reigning opera director, asked Aucoin, “What was that?”They decided to take the inspiration of Graham’s poetry further, starting without any specific commission. Now, having taken shape as the evening-length “Music for New Bodies,” their project is premiering in concert on Saturday in Houston, presented by Dacamera and the music school at Rice University, where it will be performed.The director Peter Sellers, center. “This is not just standard operating procedure,” he said. “The piece has this depth and this inner tranquillity, and warmth and intensity.”Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn five movements sprawling across 70 minutes, “New Bodies” sets poems by Graham about the earth and humanity that are told in shifting voices and registers, channeling natural forces and at times evoking the mind under anesthesia. Although its expansiveness and form recall Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” it is neither a song cycle nor a symphony. It is perhaps closest to opera, though mostly, it is what it is.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 Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ Review: War, Undemanding

    Guy Ritchie’s latest is the platonic ideal of an airplane movie, which is not exactly a good thing.I travel by air every couple of months, and always think about a single, burning question: What makes for a great airplane movie? Not movies about being on planes. Movies to be watched on planes, making bearable the three or nine hours spent in a tin can, squashed on all sides, munching tiny pretzels and trying not to order yet another gin and tonic.“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” the latest offering from the director Guy Ritchie, is a perfect airplane movie. That is not a compliment, but it’s not exactly a dis. Some movies shouldn’t be watched on planes — slow artful dramas, or movies that demand concentration and good sound (please do not watch “The Zone of Interest” on your next flight). But you’ve got to watch something, and for that, we have movies like this one.Ritchie didn’t always make airplane movies. His early work, frenetic and ribald and hilarious movies like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch,” begged to be watched in a room full of roaring audience members, or at least at home over pizza and beers with your friends. In more recent films like “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” he’s veered darker and more serious, the sort of thing that might make a flight even more tense.But watching “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” which applies a frivolous touch to a serious matter (that is, defeating Nazis), I realized it embodied my three most important principles for airplane movies.Principle I: Make It Familiar“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a fictionalized account of a real thing that was only recently discovered. During World War II, in an effort to cripple German U-boats in the North Atlantic and also open the way for the Americans to join the war, Winston Churchill maybe-sorta-unofficially authorized a rogue band of daredevils to execute a delicate operation: Cut off resources to the Germans by sinking their supply ships. Unfortunately the refueling operations, accomplished via a few Italian boats, were parked on a Spanish-controlled island called Fernando Po, located just off the coast of West Africa — in neutral territory. An official British campaign would cause the rest of unaligned Europe to join up with the Nazis. So it had to be done in secret.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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    Why Electro’s Exacting Duo Justice Wanted to Break Its Own Rules

    For “Hyperdrama,” Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay’s first album in eight years, the duo added genre experiments and guests to its arsenal of bangers.The sun was setting on the opening night of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend and the mood backstage in Justice’s artist compound was simmering anxiety, masked by glasses of wine and discrete vaping.In a few hours, the Paris-based electronic music duo would debut an all-new stage show and give fans an early taste of “Hyperdrama,” its new studio album, out April 26. The setting was meaningful: Justice played its first real show at Coachella in 2007 just before releasing “Cross,” the album that propelled it to the forefront of the electro scene, and this appearance would be its first big concert since 2018.In the eight years since Justice’s “Woman” LP arrived, dance music subgenres have risen and fallen in favor, yet the pair has remained indifferent, focused strictly on its own trajectory. “Hyperdrama,” a 13-track album with guest appearances by Miguel, Thundercat and Tame Impala, riffs on its longtime aesthetic — melodic hooks, funky bass lines, the occasional blown-out fuzzy beat — and stretches out in fresh ways.Though Justice’s Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay were joined by friends and former collaborators, many of whom had flown in from France, the two remained on the fringes of the backstage gathering, periodically conferring with their longtime lighting designer, Vincent Lérisson, or Pedro Winter, the manager who discovered them in the early 2000s. The new show is a complex production built largely around Lérisson’s massive, swirling display, which took over 18 months to create and involves 11 tons of lights and kinetic motors on trusses. Justice prides itself on its precision, and knew there were hundreds of things that could go wrong.The pair finally took the stage just before 10:30 p.m. and faced each other in Celine suits and sunglasses, unleashing intertwining grooves from across its discography. Songs from “Hyperdrama,” like the four-on-the-floor thump of “Neverender” and the relentless “Generator,” fit seamlessly with “D.A.N.C.E.,” the buoyant single that earned its first Grammy nominations, and the scuzzy strut of “Phantom.”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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    ‘Stress Positions’ Review: It’s Giving Pandemonium

    The writer-director Theda Hammel’s biting, delirious quarantine comedy skewers white gay men in a world where fact, fiction and authentic experiences collide.For “Stress Positions,” the writer-director Theda Hammel shows her hand when a character says, in a world-weary voice-over, that the madness we’re about to witness “happened so long ago.”The movie is set in summer 2020.Karla (portrayed by Hammel) is a sardonic transgender massage therapist in New York, and the first of the film’s two narrators. Her opinion of white gay male privilege, especially that of her best friend Terry, who went from intern to husband of his boss, can be stinging.“Stress Positions” finds Terry (John Early) in lockdown in the brownstone of his soon-to-be ex-husband, Leo (John Roberts). Upstairs, Coco (Rebecca F. Wright), a tenant, puffs cigarettes and vaguely hews to Terry’s Covid safety protocols. Terry’s nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a Moroccan fashion model, is ensconced at the garden level. The 19-year-old Bahlul is the son of Terry’s estranged sister who converted to Islam. He has a broken leg, soft brown eyes and a small notebook. Is it a memoir? A novel? As he writes, he ruminates on his mother in a voice-over. We find out that Karla’s girlfriend, Vanessa (Amy Zimmer), wrote a minor-hit novel with material filched from Karla’s life. Here, fact, fiction and authentic experience are all themes to be mined.Beyond skewering white gay male culture, the movie is also a dig at the pieties of the recently politicized. Terry, Karla and Vanessa don’t know where Morocco is, or Yemen or Kabul, for that matter. And Ronald, a food delivery guy (Faheem Ali), plays a telling role in exposing the hierarchy of lives that matter.If some of the points seem muddy, the filmmaking is expressive and deliberate. With shimmer, shadow and verve, “Stress Positions” — which recently closed the New Directors/New Films festival — captures the often hallucinatory pandemonium wrought by that “long-ago” moment.Stress PositionsNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More