Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Barbenheimer’ and a Film Critic’s Perspective, in Review

    Manohla Dargis, the chief film critic for The New York Times, shares her thoughts on the movie event of the year and an industry still reeling from the pandemic.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Manohla Dargis’s notebooks are full of illegible words and phrases.The chief film critic for The New York Times, Ms. Dargis takes note of memorable scenes while watching films she intends to review. In the darkness of a movie theater, her notes are rarely coherent, she admits, and distractions are inevitable.“Every so often when I’m watching a film, my pen drifts onto my shirt and I ruin it,” she said. “This is one of the great tragedies of being a movie critic.”This week, Ms. Dargis reviewed two much-talked-about movies new to theaters, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — nicknamed the “Barbenheimer” movie event of the year on the internet.This highly anticipated film pairing comes at a fractious time for the American film industry, as 160,000 actors represented by SAG-AFTRA went on strike last week. They joined the thousands of television and film screenwriters already on the picket line over issues including pay and the use of artificial intelligence in creative capacities. The strikes have brought Hollywood productions largely to a standstill.In an interview, Ms. Dargis shared her thoughts on the industry’s recovery from the pandemic and what the strikes may bode for the imminent future of film. This interview has been edited.How does one begin to cover two of the most highly anticipated movies of the year?I’ve been at The New York Times for about 20 years, so I’ve experienced similar moments when two huge movies open on top of each other. Around Christmas time, movie studios release their big, so-called prestige movies, for example.I try to avoid reading about the movies before I write about them, but I do background research. I just want to have my own experience with a movie and know that a review is made up of my thoughts.How do you decide which films to write about?I try to find a balance that works for readers and what they expect from a film critic. I also have to be interested in the film. I reviewed an array of movies the other week, like the new “Mission Impossible,” a big studio movie, and “Earth Mama,” a smaller independent film.That week in some ways represents my ideal mix, where I’m really covering the field. I think if you only cover the spectacle blockbusters, you’re really missing out on the splendor of cinema.Can you take me through your review process?I try to see movies about a week in advance of their release date. I go to screenings; some are called all media screenings, where there are several hundred people in a big room at a commercial movie theater or at a movie studio. There are also smaller private screening rooms scattered across Los Angeles, where I live. I like seeing movies with other people. There’s something very special about the kind of energy that you have from being with others, particularly when you’re watching a comedy or horror movie and there’s a crowd dynamic.I always bring a notepad and a pen and write in the dark. Writing helps me remember things later because I try to absorb as much as possible while watching a film.You wrote in January about your optimism about women in film amid a range of movies centered on female characters. Are there other trends you are seeing in film right now?I mentioned that I reviewed a film called “Earth Mama” by a woman named Savanah Leaf; it’s her first feature film. It’s exciting to me that she’s one of a number of Black women filmmakers. We’re nowhere near where it needs to be, but there is a diversity of women who are making movies.Has there ever been moment like this in the movie industry?One of the funny things about the American movie industry is that it has lurched from crisis to crisis over time. Part of my optimism and hope is hanging onto the idea that the industry has managed to survive its transition to movies with sound, for example. Then TV came along and everyone thought it was the end. And then the internet happened.The American movie industry is built on crises. Right now, the streaming bubble has passed. We don’t know what happens next. That’s my greatest concern.Which film did you screen first, “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer?’I saw “Barbie” first; I saw them a few days apart, so I could be in the right head space. “Barbie” is enjoyable, but it didn’t linger with me. It wasn’t something where I came back home and said to my husband, “I just need to talk about ‘Barbie’ and its deep impression on me,” because it didn’t have one. I enjoyed it and then I had to figure out how to write about it.After a heavy film like “Oppenheimer,” do you need a film palate cleanser? How do you come down?Right after a movie, I often don’t want to talk to anyone about it. Except maybe my husband. When you leave a movie that really affects you, you’re still in the bubble of the movie for a while. That can be a joyous experience sometimes. I remember seeing a “Fast and Furious” movie and really enjoying it. But I also remember driving home a little too fast that night.A film like “Oppenheimer” — a smart, thoughtful movie talking about profound issues of great philosophical meaning — is pretty damn special. Even though I was shocked by the movie, I was happy to say that the film made me think about life. I am grateful for that experience. More

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    Review: Dancing With Dictators in David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’

    A new Broadway musical tells the disturbing story of Imelda Marcos by putting her, and the audience, in a disco.It’s the applause — including my own — I find troubling.Not that there isn’t plenty to praise in “Here Lies Love,” the immersive disco-bio-musical about Imelda Marcos that opened on Thursday at the Broadway Theater. The infernally catchy songs by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, performed by a tireless and inspired all-Filipino cast, will have you clapping whether you want to or not. Their chunky beats, abetted by insistent dance motivators, may even prompt you to bop at your seat — if you have one.Because the real star of this show is the astonishing architectural transformation of the theater itself, by the set designer David Korins. Opened in 1924 as a movie palace, more lately the home of “King Kong” and “West Side Story,” the Broadway has now been substantially gutted, its nearly 1,800 seats reduced to about 800, with standing room for another 300 in the former orchestra section and a 42-inch disco ball dead center.The folks upstairs, if not the mostly younger standees below, will surely recognize the visual reference to Studio 54, the celebrity nightclub where Marcos, the first lady of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, danced away the last decade of her reign while impoverishing her people. That she would probably adore the over-emphatic atmosphere of “Here Lies Love” — with its lurid lighting by Justin Townsend, skittering projections by Peter Nigrini and earsplitting sound by M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer — is, however, equivocal praise.For here we are, at the place where irony and meta-messaging form a theatrical-historical knot that can’t be picked apart. Which is why, as you clap, you should probably wonder what for.Is it for Imelda (Arielle Jacobs), the beauty queen who rose from “hand-me-downs and scraps” to become the fashion-plate wife of the Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos? Is it for the ruthless Ferdinand himself (Jose Llana)? (His landslide election in 1965 elicited some Pavlovian cheers the night I saw the show.) Or is it for Ninoy Aquino (Conrad Ricamora), the opposition leader who was Imelda’s former beau? (Having spurned her in their youth, he was later assassinated by forces thought to be close to Ferdinand’s regime.) All get equivalent star treatment here.Seating at the Broadway Theater was reduced from 1,800 to about 800, with standing room for another 300, to create a Studio 54-like atmosphere, complete with a 42-inch disco ball in the center of the house.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe confusion of sympathies is just where Byrne and the director Alex Timbers want us. Avoiding the near-hagiography of “Evita” and yet unwilling to bank a commercial production on a totally hateful character, they aim for a middle ground that doesn’t exist, yet mostly hit it anyway. Their Imelda is a victim of poverty and mistreatment, dim despite her cunning and innocent by reason of inanity. When Filipinos fully turn against her during the People Power revolution of 1986, she is more mystified than crushed. “Why don’t you love me?” she sings.We know the answer: The string of her outrages, even apart from her husband’s, seems literally endless. She did not retire from public office until 2019, and her son, Bongbong, is now president.But “Here Lies Love” — the title taken from an epitaph she proposed for herself — tempers the atrocities with the pleasure of its songs. Jacobs, a Broadway Jasmine in “Aladdin,” gets the catchiest ones, and delivers them well, if without the emotional nuance Ruthie Ann Miles brought to the role a decade earlier when the show had a developmental run at the Public Theater.To be fair, the material steers as far from emotion as possible, no matter how many times the word “love” is used. Byrne’s characteristic idiom — which feeds disco, folk and pop through an art rock filter — is too cool for that, and his lyrics, perhaps because they are based on public utterances of the real-life figures, reject psychology almost entirely. They are often thus too banal to serve the usual purpose of songs in musicals; instead of developing character internally they suggest it externally with a torrent of catchphrases. “It takes a woman to do a man’s job,” Imelda sings blankly upon assuming power from the sickly Ferdinand.Without a vivid inner life to inflect such clichés, it’s hard to wring anything from them except a cringe. The beamish Ricamora and the scowling Llana, returning from the earlier production, get around the problem with their charisma, and Lea Salonga, in the cameo role of Aquino’s mother, turns “Just Ask the Flowers,” sung at Ninoy’s funeral, into a powerful if perplexing anthem through sheer vocal bravura.Conrad Ricamora, center, as Ninoy Aquino, performing on an array of moving platforms that transport the action to various parts of the theater while sweeping the audience into new configurations.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStill, a musical not centered on feelings is a strange thing. Where another show might attempt to squeeze the relationship between Imelda and Ninoy for drama, it is merely a lump of undigested fact here. And Imelda’s infamous collection of state-financed shoes goes unmentioned, which is like mounting “Evita” without the Dior dress.To compensate, or double down, Timbers emphasizes pure pageantry in his staging. The actors often perform on an array of moving platforms that transport the action to various parts of the theater while incidentally sweeping the standees into new configurations. (Guides in pink jumpsuits with airport-style light wands keep them from getting mowed down.) You are left to draw your own conclusions about how crowds, whether in Manila or Manhattan, respond to being pushed around for too long and for apparently arbitrary reasons. There’s a reason affiliations and uprisings are often called movements.No surprise then that the most expressive element in “Here Lies Love” (along with Clint Ramos’s costumes, which also move beautifully) is the choreography by Annie-B Parson. Based on small hand gestures and large traffic patterns, it suggests a fuller spectrum of human engagement than the otherwise narrowly focused and sometimes mechanical production achieves.Is it wrong to seek that engagement more fully? (Or as Imelda sings: “Is it a sin to love too much?”) For most of its 90 intermission-less minutes, “Here Lies Love” finesses the question, preferring to be treated as anything — an art object, a dance party — besides what it is. In that way, it recalls Byrne’s Broadway concert “American Utopia,” on which Timbers and Parson also collaborated. But that show, which had no story, needed only to be sleek and enjoyable to score its points.“Here Lies Love” bets that glamour can make up for narrative — or, rather, that in a show about the dangers of political demagogy, glamour itself is the narrative. It’s a case of form follows function into the fire. We are drawn to cultural and political excitement in much the same, often dangerous way.Perhaps the irony of making a musical about that is more viscerally appreciable down on the dance floor. It was for me at the Public, where almost everyone had to stand and be part of the story, not observers of it. (There were only 42 seats.) And perhaps, 10 years later, with our own politics looking a lot more like the Marcoses’, no one can afford to keep a distance.In any case, on Broadway, it’s not until the gorgeous last song, “God Draws Straight,” that the material matches the movement in a way that reaches the balcony. Led by Moses Villarama, and based on comments by eyewitnesses to the peaceful 1986 revolution, it acknowledges the moral superiority of its real heroes — the Philippine people — in the only way a musical can: by giving it beautiful voice. Finally, it’s OK to applaud.Here Lies LoveAt the Broadway Theater, Manhattan; herelieslovebroadway.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    AMC Theater Chain to Stop Charging for Better Seats

    The contentious initiative will be abandoned next month, though the company will roll out a new one involving lounge-style seating in the front rows.AMC is abandoning plans to charge more for movie seats depending on their location. But higher prices for center-middle seats at theaters where AMC has been testing the concept will remain in effect this weekend, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are expected to draw significant crowds.AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater chain, said on Thursday that it would “pivot away” from a contentious initiative called Sightline, in which seats at evening screenings had three tiers of pricing, ending the long-held cinema custom of charging the same amount for any seat in a theater. (Discounts of $1 to $2 were offered for the neck-craning front row, increases of $1 to $2 for the center-middle and the status quo for the rest.)The concept was rolled out in March at theaters in New York, Illinois and Kansas to howls of protest from some moviegoers. AMC always labeled it as a test.The experiment will end sometime in August, an AMC spokesman said. But the company plans to start a new trial involving front-row seats, which often go unsold. Later this year, AMC said it would pull out traditional front-row seats and replace them with “large, comfortable, lounge-style seating areas that will allow guests to lay all the way back.”AMC and other theater chains, after steadily raising prices at their concession stands, have started to focus more intently on seats for revenue growth. Increasingly, for instance, multiplexes have been pushing customers toward premium-priced tickets for screenings that feature extra-extra-large screens or enhanced sound systems.Adding to the pressure, attendance has still not recovered from the early pandemic, when many theaters were closed for months. So far this year, ticket sales are running roughly 20 percent behind the same period in 2019.AMC said Sightline did not pan out as it had hoped. In particular, the company saw “little or no incremental lift in front-row attendance, even with a price reduction applied to those seats.” About three out of every four customers who previously sat in center-middle seats paid the surcharge to continue doing so, AMC said. Some of those people moved to other seats. A small percentage stopped buying tickets at AMC.Notably, competitors did not follow AMC in re-pricing seats, making the company less competitive in the test markets.AMC’s plans to stop the initiative were reported earlier by Bloomberg News. More

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    ‘Bawaal’ Review: Getting Some Perspective

    In this Bollywood production, a narcissistic history teacher reconnects with his wife on a trip through Europe.“Bawaal” is a sensationally absurd Bollywood production that tells a simple moral story about what it means to be a Real Man. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari (“Dangal”), this globe-trotting romance is, like many Bollywood movies, willfully over the top. But this one’s not very fun.Ajay (Varun Dhawan), a grade-school history teacher, is only interested in one thing: looking good. Impeccably groomed and chiseled, he doesn’t seem to care that his students aren’t learning, nor that his wife, Nisha (Janhvi Kapoor), is desperately unhappy.Ajay keeps Nisha out of sight and at home with his parents — she has epilepsy, and he fears tarnishing his image should she have a seizure in public. When Ajay is suspended from work for slapping a student, he cooks up a scheme to prove his pedagogical worth. He heads to Europe, where he delivers video lectures from various historical sites to his students back home in small-town India.Nisha tags along, despite Ajay’s protests, and proves herself, too. In Europe, she’s much more capable — and, of course, more beautiful — than Ajay had cared to realize, while he, in sleepy comic-relief segments, suffers through travel’s minor hardships: lost luggage, pickpockets and a dastardly exchange rate.Ajay becomes more compassionate with each leg of the trip. Monochrome fantasy sequences plunge him and Nisha into battle on the shores of Normandy; in another, they’re victims inside an Auschwitz gas chamber. It’s an egregious metaphor for the dire state of their relationship, and one of the film’s many unearned pivots to high drama.Dhawan (too convincing a narcissist to pull off a change of heart) and Kapoor (devoid of charisma) don’t have chemistry, and you’re never truly rooting for Ajay so much as you’re hoping Nisha makes a run for it. The film’s macho, save-the-marriage traditionalism will seem icky to some viewers — especially because, absent genuine laughs or stakes, there’s little else to take in.BawaalNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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    ‘Fear the Night’ Review: Party Raid

    Neil LaBute’s new thriller, starring Maggie Q, feels stapled together from a pile of threadbare tropes.One rarely roots for the bad guys in a home-invasion shocker, but, as the majority of the victims in Neil LaBute’s “Fear the Night” are either insufferably stupid or gratingly snippy, their survival is perhaps not the priority it ought to be.In any event, most of them will be slaughtered before we can tell them apart in a movie that appears not so much written by LaBute as stapled together from a pile of threadbare thriller tropes. The plot could fit on a pistol barrel (or, in this case, an arrowhead): Eight women descend on a remote farmhouse for a bachelorette party, only to find their stripper-and-sex-toy revelries interrupted by leering louts who favor artisanal over mechanical weaponry. Bloody chaos ensues as the ladies bemoan their inability to sprint in high heels and struggle to memorize a three-count knock signal that differentiates friend from foe.“What is happening to us?” one distraught partygoer inquires, echoing my bewilderment. Like her cohort, she will turn hopefully — and, in the case of Mia (Gia Crovatin), longingly — to the one guest that no one else seems to like: Tess (a valiant Maggie Q), a super-serious military veteran and recovering addict. Tess has suffered. Tess has seen things. Tess will use her very particular skills to rally these nitwits or die trying.Pausing mid-murders to allow for a touching reconciliation and a romantic confession (not the time, Mia!), the back-of-napkin script stumbles forward. As for LaBute, a once incisive chronicler of male cruelty and ineptitude, his continued dabblings in genre are lamentable. Perhaps the kindest thing to do is pretend this dud never happened; it certainly worked for the Farrelly brothers’ “Dumb and Dumber To.”Fear the NightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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    ‘The Deepest Breath’ Review: A Perilous Drop Into the Ocean

    Astonishing underwater footage elevates this documentary about two people drawn to the extreme sport of free diving.While watching “The Deepest Breath,” a documentary that palpably conjures the mystery and menace of the deep sea, I found it difficult not to think of the Titan submersible disaster last month. But this film, on Netflix, invites viewers to submerge alongside thrill-seekers unconfined by a vessel: Its subject is the extreme sport of free diving, in which competitors plunge into the depths for minutes at a time without scuba gear.The story centers on the Italian champion Alessia Zecchini and the Irish diver Stephen Keenan, who met at a 2017 competition in the Bahamas, began training together and engaged in a brief romance. Using astonishing underwater footage and videos from their travels, the film profiles the two adventurers before looking at a cataclysmic tragedy that rocked the free diving community.As the film’s director, Laura McGann, relays these stories, she deliberately withholds certain material to keep audiences in suspense about whether a death occurred. Extreme risks attend free diving; during their training, Zecchini and Keenan grew accustomed to experiencing blackouts. The film opens with alarming footage of one such incident, using the life-threatening scenario for narrative tension.This approach might have passed muster had the film matched its apprehensive mood with an equally compelling, clearer window into Zecchini and Keenan’s psychology. But despite hearing from their fathers and friends, we learn precious little about the personal lives of these impressive individuals. When it comes to what drove them, how they associated with others or how they dealt with danger, “The Deepest Breath” offers only surface-level observations.The Deepest BreathRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    ‘How to Dance in Ohio,’ a Musical, Plans a Fall Broadway Opening

    A teenage ritual takes on deeper significance as a setting where autistic young people can blossom — and exercise their social skills along the way.“How to Dance in Ohio,” a poignant new musical about a group of young autistic adults gearing up for a spring dance, will open on Broadway late this year, with a cast of seven autistic performers playing the central roles.The musical is based on a 2015 documentary from the filmmaker Alexandra Shiva that followed participants in a social skills therapy program for people on the autism spectrum; the musical is also set at a therapy program, and it tells the story of young adults preparing for a dance that they hope could help them confront some of the challenges they face in navigating social interactions.The musical had a previous run last year at Syracuse Stage in central New York; the production schedule was cut short when Covid cases arose among the cast and crew. The review of the show in The Post-Standard, a Syracuse newspaper, was headlined “The musical you’ll talk about for the rest of your life” and called it “exhilarating, groundbreaking, celebratory.”Casting is not yet complete, but will include several actors making their Broadway debuts: Desmond Edwards, Amelia Fei, Madison Kopec, Liam Pearce, Imani Russell, Conor Tague and Ashley Wool. Among the others on the bill so far are Haven Burton and Darlesia Cearcy.“How to Dance in Ohio” features a book and lyrics by Rebekah Greer Melocik and music by Jacob Yandura; it is directed by Sammi Cannold and choreographed by Mayte Natalio. The famed director and producer Hal Prince was initially attached to the project; he died in 2019.The musical is being produced by a company called P3 Productions, which is led by Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez and Fiona Howe Rudin, along with Level Forward, the production company co-founded by Abigail Disney. It is being capitalized for up to $15.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The show is to begin previews Nov. 15 and to open Dec. 10 at the Belasco Theater. More

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    ‘While We Watched’ Review: India on the Brink

    This documentary about the veteran broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar is less an inspiring tale than a wake-up call for India.In the opening moments of Vinay Shukla’s documentary “While We Watched,” its subject, the veteran Indian news anchor Ravish Kumar, stands in a partly demolished building and wonders, “When you find yourself all alone, whom do you listen to?”For one of the few high-profile journalists in India who has dared to speak truth to power — undeterred by falling ratings, death threats and a government increasingly hostile to a free press — this is nothing less than an existential crisis. What, indeed, does a journalist committed to being the voice of the people do when it seems he might be talking just to himself?“While We Watched” follows Kumar at his job at NDTV, an influential cable TV station, from 2018 to 2021 (a year before it was acquired in a hostile takeover by a billionaire). The documentary is less an inspiring tale than a sobering wake-up call. The camera stays close to Kumar’s face, which wears a crumpled look of resignation as he and his underfunded team strive to reaffirm democratic ideals amid a storm of rabble-rousing rhetoric from competing media outlets that demonize dissent and stoke Islamophobia. The movie unfolds like an episode of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom,” with brisk edits immersing us in the high-stakes, fast-paced and low-reward realm of independent news.Kumar is the voice of reason to many Indians; to see him so vulnerable is unsettling, though it makes his persistence all the more impressive. Shukla is a little too enamored of his subject, so that political and bureaucratic details fade into a somewhat monotonous, stylized tale of man against world. Yet Kumar’s humility and eloquence ensure that the film never slips into hagiography — instead, it lingers as a lament and a battle cry.While We WatchedNot rated. In English and Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More