Aurelia Butler

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    7 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

    Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about even if you’re not planning to see them.Critic’s PickA hot-button movie people are arguing over.Kirsten Dunst plays a war photographer in Alex Garland’s “Civil War.” A24, via Associated Press‘Civil War’Alex Garland’s “Civil War” is set in a near-future when the United States is at war with itself and something called the Western Front, made up of Texas and California, is fighting the federal government.From our review:It’s mourning again in America, and it’s mesmerizingly, horribly gripping. Filled with bullets, consuming fires and terrific actors like Kirsten Dunst running for cover, the movie is a what-if nightmare stoked by memories of Jan. 6. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? If that sounds harrowing, you’re right.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickThe rare reboot that gets it right.Donielle Hansley Jr. and Simone Joy Jones in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”2024 Fence 2021 Films LLC‘Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’After the babysitter hired to watch them for the summer keels over, a 17-year-old slacker named Tanya (Simone Joy Jones) is forced to support her even lazier younger siblings.From our review:Don’t tell helicopter parents, but the gleefully transgressive flicks that entertained a generation of latchkey wildlings are coming back in style. Wade Allain-Marcus’s rollicking update of the 1991 cult favorite keeps the plot … and amps up the immoral humor. It’s a snappy, gutsy comedy about how kids are spoiled and ignorant, and yet the adult workplace is only passingly more mature.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickA deceptive horror film where the good guys aren’t so good.Ramesha Nawal in “In Flames.”Game Theory Films‘In Flames’In Pakistan, 20-something Mariam, her widowed mother, Fariha, and her younger brother are struggling when Uncle Nasir suddenly becomes very interested in the relatives he had been neglecting.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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    A ‘Missionary for Opera’ Steps Down in Chicago

    Anthony Freud is leaving Lyric Opera of Chicago on good terms, though the company faces challenges in a strained environment for the performing arts.In 1975, Anthony Freud went to a performance that changed his life.Still in his teens, he waited in line for hours to see a concert version of Benjamin Britten’s opera “Peter Grimes” at the BBC Proms in London. For the Proms, seats are removed from the Royal Albert Hall to create a vast standing room, and Freud found himself pressed against the stage, just a few feet from the tenor Jon Vickers, who sang a crushingly intense Grimes.“This is what I want to spend my life doing,” he realized, recalling the show with relish in a recent interview. “I want to be a missionary for opera.”Last Sunday, Freud, now 66, was once again as close as he could be to the opera stage. At a matinee of Verdi’s “Aida,” the final full performance of his 13-year tenure as the general director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, Freud was front row, left aisle.Freud in the dressing room of William Clay Thompson, right, before the season finale of “Aida.”Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesHe usually sat there — in the theater’s traditional seat for the general director — only on opening nights. But “it seemed right to be in that seat today,” he said during intermission, as he made his way upstairs to greet donors.After 30 years leading opera companies — Welsh National Opera and Houston Grand Opera before coming to Chicago — Freud is retiring as one of the field’s most experienced hands. Gentle and genial, with a deep knowledge of operas and voices, he has tried to balance his venturesome spirit with the sensibilities of audiences — to challenge without alienating the people he needed for support.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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    Before He Was Infamous, O.J. Simpson’s Acting Helped Make Him Famous

    Simpson began acting while still a football star, appearing in titles as varied as “Roots,” “The Towering Inferno” and the “Naked Gun” films.Before O.J. Simpson became synonymous with the sensational murder trial that riveted the nation in the mid-1990s, he was a football star turned Hollywood fixture who played roles as varied as an astronaut, a comic detective and a fake priest.His acting career began while he was still a star running back. As Simpson, who died on Wednesday, told it, he was waiting out the best deal he could get in the N.F.L. when producers reached out to him asking if he could act. “Sure, I can try to act,” he replied.He scored bit parts in a medical series and a western, but the allure of an onscreen career didn’t grab him until his first major film, “The Klansman” (1974), in which he appeared alongside Richard Burton and Lee Marvin, playing a man seeking to avenge his friend’s death at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.Simpson told Johnny Carson in an interview in 1979 on “The Tonight Show” that during the production, the actors were casually chatting about food when Elizabeth Taylor said the best chili she’d had was at a restaurant called Chasen’s in West Hollywood.Simpson with Richard Burton in “The Klansman.”Moviestore Collection Ltd, via Alamy“Somebody made a call, and in an hour and a half they had a private jet bring a pot of chili from Chasen’s to Oroville, Calif.,” Simpson said in the interview. “Two hours later we’re eating chili and I’m saying, ‘I like this life.’”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’s Music Returns to TikTok Despite Ongoing Dispute With UMG

    Songs by the pop singer reappeared on TikTok despite the platform’s ongoing licensing dispute with Universal Music Group, which releases Swift’s music.When Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company, went to war with TikTok earlier this year over licensing terms, songs by hundreds of its artists were removed from the platform, and have remained absent.But on Thursday, music by one very special Universal artist returned: Taylor Swift.A number of songs by Swift — whose new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” comes out next week — have reappeared in TikTok’s official music library, where they are available for the service’s millions of users to place in the background of their own videos. Those videos have become one of the music industry’s most important promotional vehicles, with the potential to mint new hits or breathe new life into old tunes — even as many artists and labels complain about low royalties from the service.The available songs from Swift appear to be from the period since she signed with Universal in 2018, including hits like “Lover,” “Anti-Hero,” “Cruel Summer” and “Cardigan.” Also available are her “Taylor’s version” rerecordings of older hits like “Style,” “Love Story” and “Shake It Off,” which were originally released by her first label, Big Machine. After Big Machine was sold in 2019 without her participation, Swift announced plans to rerecord her first six studio albums, and has already released four of those. Each went straight to No. 1.It was not immediately clear how Swift’s songs made it back to TikTok while Universal’s ban remains in place. When the company announced its plans to remove music earlier this year, it said its licensing contract with TikTok expired Jan. 31. By the early hours of Feb. 1, Universal’s music began to disappear from TikTok, and millions of videos that used the label’s music went silent.While Swift is part of Universal’s roster of artists, she owns the rights to her own recordings, as well as her songwriting rights, which are administered by the Universal Music Publishing Group, a division of the company.Representatives of Swift, Universal and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Universal, whose hundreds of artists include stars like Ariana Grande, Drake, Lady Gaga and U2, said it was withdrawing permissions for its music after it was unable to reach a new licensing deal with TikTok. The company accused TikTok of being unwilling to pay “fair value for the music,” despite its importance to the platform. Universal also voiced concerns that TikTok was “allowing the platform to be flooded with A.I.-generated recordings,” diluting the royalty pool for real, human artists.In response, TikTok accused Universal of putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”The dispute has been one of the most dramatic clashes in years between the music industry and a tech platform, and it has drawn a mixed public response. While many music industry groups have supported Universal, artists have expressed worry about the loss of such a valuable promotional platform. More

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    Academy Museum to Highlight Hollywood’s Jewish History After All

    The museum was criticized earlier for failing to acknowledge the contributions of the Jewish pioneers who helped establish the American film studio system.Having initially drawn criticism for failing to acknowledge the formative role that Jewish immigrants like Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer played in creating Hollywood and the film industry, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Thursday announced the details of a new permanent exhibition that will spotlight their contributions.The show, called “Hollywoodland,” is scheduled to open May 19, the museum said in its news release, and will spotlight “the impact of the predominately Jewish filmmakers whose establishment of the American film studio system transformed Los Angeles into a global epicenter of cinema.”When the museum opened in 2021, it made a point of highlighting the contributions of women, artists of color and people from other backgrounds, but there was barely a mention of the Jewish immigrants who were central to founding the Hollywood studio system — titans like Harry and Jack Warner, Adolph Zukor, Goldwyn and Mayer.The omission, coming at a time of growing concerns about antisemitism, drew complaints from Jewish leaders and concern from the museum’s supporters, many of whom saw it as example of Hollywood’s strained relationship with its Jewish history. Striving to assimilate, Hollywood’s founders feared being identified as Jews.The museum’s permanent exhibition about Jewish contributions is called “Hollywoodland.” via Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesVarious publications called out the affront, like The Forward, which ran a piece headlined “Jews built Hollywood. So why is their history erased from the Academy’s new museum?”The museum said then that it had always intended to open a temporary exhibit devoted to the subject, but in response to the backlash it decided to make a permanent gallery, and it consulted rabbis and Jewish scholars on what should be included.“We learned,” Bill Kramer, the chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who was then the museum’s director, said in an interview. “We took a lot of the information from the conversations that we’ve had and grew from that.“The show will be organized in three distinct parts: “Studio Origins,” which explores the founding of Hollywood’s original eight major film studios and their studio heads; “Los Angeles: From Film Frontier to Industry Town, 1902-1929,” which traces how the city evolved alongside the movie industry; and “From the Shtetl to the Studio: The Jewish Story of Hollywood,” a short-form documentary — narrated by Ben Mankiewicz, the TCM host and author — that looks at the Jewish immigrants and first-generation Jewish Americans who built the Hollywood studio system.The exhibition was organized by Dara Jaffe, an associate curator, with help from Gary Dauphin, a former associate curator of digital presentations, and Josue L. Lopez, a research assistant. Neal Gabler, the author and film critic who wrote “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” served as an adviser.“They were the ones who established this system,” Jaffe said of the pioneering Jewish filmmakers. “They were drawn to this industry because they were restricted from so many others.” More

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    ‘Dawn of the Dead’ at 45: A Zombie Love Affair That Never Died

    A look back at George A. Romero’s film, one of the most influential horror movies of all time, as it gets a theatrical revival.“I like the zombies,” George A. Romero said in 1977, in one of the many conversations with various publications collected in the book “George A. Romero: Interviews.” “You have to be sympathetic with the creatures because they ain’t doin’ nothin’. They’re like sharks: They can’t help behaving the way they do.” Romero had good reason to like the zombies — they gave him a career, and a legacy. He memorably dramatized the exploits of the undead in the 1968 chiller “Night of the Living Dead,” the first of six films in his “dead” cycle (which continued through his final film, “Survival of the Dead” in 2010). The second of those films, “Dawn of the Dead,” was released in the United States 45 years ago this month, an anniversary marked by revival screenings at theaters and drive-ins around the country (including the New York outposts of the Alamo Drafthouse and both locations of the Nitehawk Cinema). It remains one of the most influential (and profitable) horror films of all time, prompting a slew of imitators here and abroad, as well as a hit 2004 remake that led to another zombie boom (still underway, via “The Walking Dead” and its endless spinoffs).As identifiable as he would become with genre movies, Romero — a Pittsburgh-based filmmaker who funded his projects by producing industrial films and commercials — went through what he called “a paranoid phase of not wanting to be a horror moviemaker” after the success of his first zombie feature. But, “gradually, as I became comfortable with what ‘Night of the Living Dead’ was, and with what my reputation was, I finally got the idea” for a “Living Dead” sequel.The fuse for the production was lit by the Italian horror filmmaker Dario Argento (“Suspiria”). “He was a fan of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and knew that I was contemplating doing Part II,” Romero explained in 1982. “We showed him the script and he offered half the budget up front in exchange for the non-English language world.” It would be Romero’s largest budget to date; he secured the rest from private investors stateside.What really sparked Romero’s imagination, however, was the location. He was friends with Mark Mason, one of the owners of the Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh — then one of the largest shopping centers in the country. It would make for a perfect expansion of the isolated farmhouse location in the first film, a place where his heroes could hunker down with supplies to wait out, or fight off, the zombie apocalypse; Romero worked out a deal to shoot overnight, starting when the mall closed at 11 p.m. and stopping when cleaning crews (and cardiac patients on therapeutic mall walks) arrived at 7 a.m.A scene from “Dawn of the Dead.”New Amsterdam Entertainment“I wrote a treatment and it was very heavy, ponderous, possessing roughly the same attitude as ‘Night of the Living Dead’,” he said. “But then I realized that the place itself, the mall, was too funny to serve for a nightmare experience.” And thus, “Dawn of the Dead” became a consumerist satire, with zombies shuffling mindlessly through the mall and up the down escalators as bland Muzak blares through the shopping center’s loudspeakers. (They came there, one of the survivors surmises, because of the “memory … of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”)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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    Cannes Festival Unveils 2024 Lineup, Including a Francis Ford Coppola Film

    Organizers on Thursday announced a lineup that also features new films from Yorgos Lanthimos, David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader.Movies directed by Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg and Yorgos Lanthimos will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced in a news conference on Thursday.New films by Jacques Audiard, Paul Schrader and Andrea Arnold will also appear in competition at this year’s event, the festival’s 77th edition, which opens May 14 and runs through May 25.The most eagerly anticipated film on the lineup is likely to be Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — the director’s first movie in over 10 years.During Thursday’s news conference, Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, revealed little about that movie’s plot, but Coppola, the director of “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now,” has been talking about his desire to make it for decades. In 2001, Coppola told the The New York Times that “Megalopolis” was “about the future” and “a guy who wants to build a utopian society in the middle of Manhattan.”Coppola, 85, has already won the Palme d’Or twice: in 1974 for “The Conversation,” and, in 1979, for “Apocalypse Now” (a prize that was shared with Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum”).The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos will present “Kinds of Kindness,” starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, who also worked together on Lanthimos’s most recent release, “Poor Things.” David Cronenberg, the Canadian horror movie director, will premiere “The Shrouds,” about a widower who builds a machine to connect with the dead.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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    ‘Food, Inc. 2’ Review: Pollan and Schlosser Return

    Directed by Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo, the sequel about food production in the U.S. is, in some ways, a more hopeful film.How many gory details about groceries can any moviegoer digest? The 2009 documentary “Food, Inc.” drew on the muckraking of Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) and Eric Schlosser (“Fast Food Nation”) to reveal major problems with industrialized food production. The system, it argued, may keep supermarkets well-stocked, but most people have scant insight into how that food is made — and what it does to our health.“Food, Inc. 2,” directed by Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo, doesn’t merely regurgitate those ideas, although it begins by describing how the last few years have shown the risks of letting a small number of mega-suppliers dominate the market. The baby formula shortage? Cramped meatpacking plants that became Covid-19 hot spots? An industry less prone to gigantism might have avoided those horrors.In some ways, the sequel is a more hopeful film. Pollan, who, along with Schlosser, is among the producers, notes the proliferation of farmers’ markets and grass-fed beef since the last movie’s release. (The credits list separate articles that the authors wrote in 2020 as inspiration.) “Food, Inc. 2” is also wonkier than the original: Its proposed solutions don’t simply boil down to finding better sources, but also enforcing antitrust policy, supporting fair-labor practices and finding new ways to return to time-tested farming methods.Pollan visits sites where meat alternatives are manufactured and explains how those products present their own trade-offs. Elsewhere, experts testify to how foods can confuse our brains’ reward systems and how U.S. companies, faced with a food supply that provides more calories than anyone needs, have an incentive to make consumers eat more. You might devour less after watching “Food, Inc. 2,” and what you eat will probably be healthier.Food, Inc. 2Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More