Aurelia Butler

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    Review: ‘Cadejo Blanco’ Goes Inside the World of Guatemalan Gangs

    In this film a young woman searching for her missing sister infiltrates a gang, but the focus is diffuse and the promised thriller never materializes.The description of “Cadejo Blanco,” directed by Justin Lerner, reads like a thriller: After her sister disappears, a young Guatemalan woman infiltrates a gang to try to find her. But there are few thrills in the film, which moves slowly and with too much ease through the world of Guatemalan gangs. It’s beautifully shot and gives an authentic view of street life there, but the characters’ journeys are not sufficiently developed, and the resolutions feel unearned.The film kicks off in Guatemala City with Sarita (Karen Martínez) being dragged out for a night of clubbing with her free-spirited sister, Bea (Pamela Martínez), who had the ulterior motive of meeting up with her boyfriend Andrés (Rudy Rodríguez). Sarita leaves the bar early, and the next morning, discovers that Bea never came home. Sarita suspects Andrés, who is a gang member, so she travels to the coastal town of Puerto Barrios to befriend him and find Bea.But Sarita’s mission to find her sister seems quickly forgotten, as the film’s focus shifts to the day-to-day interactions of the gang members. Perhaps this is intentional. The director cast predominantly nonprofessional actors in the film, among them real-life gang members from Puerto Barrios. Many of the cast members had a hand in reworking the script to better reflect their lives and daily vernacular. But this authenticity was not enough to make up for the shoddy storytelling. Had the film leaned more intentionally into the interior lives of its characters rather than positioning itself as a thriller, it may have been a more satisfying watch.Cadejo BlancoNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Blackening’ Review: Race Against a Killer

    With more jokes than jump scares, this comedic horror film is as tartly amusing as it is provocative.There are two games at play in “The Blackening,” a comedic horror film with more jokes than jump scares. The first is the titular race-baiting board game with the grotesque Jim Crow-style figurine that Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and her boyfriend, Shawn (Jay Pharoah), discover as they explore the cabin they have rented for a reunion of college friends.The rest of their crew will arrive soon for a celebratory Juneteenth weekend of recreational drugs, card playing and — once they learn where Shawn and Morgan have disappeared to — trying to survive the night, initially by answering trivia questions such as: Which Aunt Viv was better on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”?The other game is the tartly amusing one the director, Tim Story, and the writers, Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins (on whose viral sketch comedy skit the film is based), invite viewers to play. It tests our familiarity with horror tropes while messing with the variegated verities of Black identity. The film’s marketing come-on, “We Can’t All Die First,” winks at the notion that when there is a Black person in a predominantly white horror film, he or she is sure to be the first lamb (Black sheep?) to the ensuing slaughter. What, then, if all the characters are Black?Looking like a charred version of the Creature From the Black Lagoon and wielding the whitest weapon on earth — a crossbow — the movie’s masked killer has an answer for that. Beaming in from an antique TV monitor, he offers the friends a lose-lose, if philosophically fertile and futile, proposition: Sacrifice the Blackest among you and the rest go free.The ensemble embodies the affection as well as the prickliness of friends who may not have seen each other in a while, but know each other well and may still harbor a resentment or two. Lisa (Antoinette Robertson) has not been honest about her ex, Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls), with her gay best friend, Dewayne (Perkins, the co-writer), and he’s hot about it. In a film that features card playing — it could have been bid whist but it’s spades — Nnamdi throws down the race card most often, making King (Melvin Gregg), who’s married to a white woman, and Allison (Grace Byers), whose father is white, bristle ever so slightly.And then there’s Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), a mildly passive-aggressive nerd whom no one quite recalls inviting. Shanika (X Mayo) runs into him at a convenience store while evading the clerk, who seems to be following her and looks like he didn’t quite make the cut for “Deliverance.”The quandary of what “Blackest” means puts this movie squarely in the company of others that have used genre tropes to make sense of race in America. (Yes, “Get Out” gets a nod.) It is a deft gesture to have the question turned on its head as the characters leverage what they think of as their whitest credentials.“The Blackening” comes with a horror movie’s requisite skittish and stalking camerawork, its creaks and breath-holding hushes, its gore and payback. But it is the friends’ flee, fight, freeze — or throw under the bus — banter that makes the film provocative fun.The BlackeningRated R for pervasive language, genre violence and drug use. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Happer’s Comet’ Review: Live by Night

    The writer-director Tyler Taormina shot this highly experimental feature, which mostly takes place after dark, during the most restrictive phase of the pandemic.Except in its final shot, “Happer’s Comet” takes place entirely at night. But if it weren’t for occasional glimpses of clocks, discerning the precise time would be tricky. There are plenty of people out and about, performing quiet, personal, often inexplicable tasks in an unidentified pocket of suburbia. (The film was largely shot in Smithtown, Long Island.)One person records the sounds of crickets and trains on a cellphone. Another does push-ups in a closed auto body shop. Still another tries to reach a human being on an automated phone system, but all of the agents are currently busy. The only dialogue in this movie comes from external sources, like the phone system or televisions. The characters never speak, and they are never named. It may say something about the film’s foreboding mood — it’s been described as Lynchian, and the opening shot appears to nod to “Blue Velvet” — that one of the figures who looks sleepiest is driving (and drifting over the yellow line).Motion becomes a motif: As “Happer’s Comet” progresses, it becomes difficult to keep track of how many of its subjects have donned roller blades or skates. They glide through the area almost ritualistically (or somnambulistically).The writer-director, Tyler Taormina (“Ham on Rye”), shot this highly experimental feature during the most restrictive phase of the pandemic, apparently with a crew of two.Taormina has taken the problem of having to look at the same thing every day and turned it into an aesthetic — staring at, and listening to, ordinary sights to the point where they become eerie and unfamiliar. (The sound design on a cornfield makeout session gets in way closer than movies normally do.) Sometimes wearying, sometimes pointlessly cryptic, “Happer’s Comet” nevertheless has a distinct way of viewing the world.Happer’s CometNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 2 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Maggie Moore(s)’ Review: Body Trouble

    Tina Fey and Jon Hamm fail to invigorate this listless murder mystery about two victims who shared the same name.“Some of this actually happened,” we are advised at the beginning of John Slattery’s second feature, “Maggie Moore(s).” At least it’s a variation on the groaningly familiar “based on a true story,” even if both claims are equally meaningless.Degree of truth aside, this comedy-thriller succeeds as neither. Top-heavy with big names (Tina Fey, Jon Hamm) and set in a nondescript small town populated primarily by sad sacks and losers, the movie struggles to get out of second gear. A terrified woman flees a hulking hit man, her body later discovered by a police chief named Sanders (a hammy Hamm) and his pragmatic deputy (Nick Mohammed). Days earlier, another woman had been found, burned to a crisp in her car. Two murdered women, two sketchy spouses, one shared name: Maggie Moore.Suspicions aroused, Sanders begins a desultory investigation. Distracted by the recent death of his wife — whose loss he medicates by reading his sappy scribblings aloud to a rapt writing group — Sanders seems drained and becalmed. Any plot momentum, then, is due solely to Micah Stock and Christopher Denham’s heroic efforts as the weaselly husbands of the murdered Maggies, though their comedic vigor is undercut by the sheer bleakness of Paul Bernbaum’s script. Desperately unhappy people are rarely a laugh a minute.Or, for that matter, convincing lovers. So when Sanders sidles into a relationship with Rita (Fey), a chatty casino employee, their scenes are never believable as anything other than Hamm and Fey doing a particularly boring bit.“I’m trying to be a little more spontaneous these days,” Sanders confesses to Rita at one point. “I hear the ladies really like that.”With dialogue this dreadful, even Jon Hamm would struggle to score.Maggie Moore(s)Rated R for inappropriate language, unsavory behavior and unconvincing sex. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Flash’ Review: Electric Company

    In the latest DC Comics blowout, Ezra Miller suits up as the speedy superhero alongside special guests like Batman (hello, Michael Keaton).The Flash, the latest DC Comics superhero to get his very own big show, isn’t the outfit’s usual brooding heavyweight. He’s neither an old-style god nor new (a.k.a. a billionaire), but an electrified nerd who joined the super-ranks by accident, not by birthright or by design. Out of uniform, he is a normie, a goof and kind of endearing. He’s really, really fast on his feet, you bet. But what makes him pop onscreen is that when things go bigger and grimmer here, as they invariably do in blowouts of this type, he retains a playful weightlessness.That’s a relief, particularly given how the movie tries to clobber you into submission. Big action-adventures invariably give the viewer a workout, smacking you around with their shocks and awesomeness, though it sometimes feels as if contemporary superhero movies have taken this kind of pummeling to new extremes. That may be true, though movies have long employed spectacle — pyrotechnics, lavish set pieces — to bait, hook and bludgeon the audience so it keeps begging for more. If the bludgeoning feels more inescapable these days, it’s partly because the major studios now bank so heavily on superhero movies.“The Flash” is one of the more watchable ones. It’s smartly cast, ambitious and relatively brisk at two and a half hours. The story tracks Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) and his superhero persona, the Flash, as he whooshes, wrapped in tendrils of lightning; traverses space-time continuums; and tries to exonerate his father (Ron Livingston), who’s in prison for killing Barry’s mom (Maribel Verdú). As is usually the case with superhero movies, the story is nonsensical and convoluted — it’s no wonder a character uses a tangle of cooked spaghetti to try to explain a major plot point — but not calamitously so. The overall vibe is upbeat.Some of that liveliness comes from Miller, a tense and almost feverishly charismatic presence. (Their well-publicized offscreen troubles hang like a cloud over this movie.) Some of the Flash’s appeal, of course, is also baked into the original comic-book character, “the fastest man on Earth,” who first hit in 1940 (via creators Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert) and was revamped (by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino) in 1956. Five years later in Issue No. 123, these versions of the Flash (there are others) discover that they exist on two seemingly separate Earths, an idea this movie, well, runs with by introducing parallel DC Comics realms.It’s a conceit that pays off the second a shambolic Michael Keaton makes his entrance as a graybeard puttering about a near-derelict Wayne Manor. Having hung up his Bat-suit in his reality (while DC has repeatedly rebooted the franchise in ours), Bruce appears to have entered the Howard Hughes chapter of his cosseted life when Barry drops by. Long story short, the two rapidly join forces, dust off the Batcave tech, furrow their brows and suit up, as other members of the DC stock company join the party, including Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons), General Zod (Michael Shannon) and Supergirl (Sasha Calle).The entrance of these company players are timed like special-guest appearances — ladies and gentlemen, Zod the Zaniac! — and they’re obviously meant to delight true believers. To a degree, they also feel like they’ve been brought in to shore up the Flash during his first stand-alone outing. Cramming the screen with established names to hedge their expensive bets is an old-fashioned studio gambit, whether in a 1920s musical revue or 1970s disaster flick. Whatever the rationale here, the results are amusing, and it’s especially nice to see Keaton, who first played Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 film. He seems to be having a good time, and when he looks in the mirror approvingly, it’s easy to share in his self-admiration.Working from a script by Christina Hodson, the director Andy Muschietti keeps these pieces greased and quickly moving, though he almost blows it as soon as the movie begins. It opens with an unfunny protracted bit in which Barry, who’s late for work, orders a sandwich from a pokey server. (That the first villain in the story is a service worker is a choice.) While the guy readies the order, Barry turns into the Flash to help his world’s Batman (an uncredited Ben Affleck) dispatch some villains. It goes as expected — bam, splat — but then a hospital wing collapses, and newborn babies go flying, hurtling toward the street.It’s a creepy setup that Muschietti milks for laughs that become queasier and ickier the longer and the more gleefully flamboyant the scene plays out. It’s absurd, outrageous, digitally fabricated and needless to say the Flash will save the day. The problem is that Muschietti, who has a talent for fraying your nerves with images of child endangerment (as he showed in the “It” horror flicks), is so obviously pleased with these airborne babies that he keeps showing off (turning a microwave into a bassinet), which drains the sequence both of its outlandish comedy and of any tension that might make the Flash’s heroism resonate.The movie more or less recovers, settling into its lively groove, even if the Flash remains a curiously uncertain presence. Surrounding him with bigger superheroes may have made branding sense, but the net effect is that the movie never persuasively establishes the Flash as a confident stand-alone entity. That may make the question of Miller playing him in the future moot. Who knows? Last year, Miller apologized for their behavior and said they were seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues.” I liked “The Flash” well enough while watching it. But thinking and writing about it and everything that has gone down has been dispiriting — real life has a way of insinuating itself into even better-wrought fantasies.The FlashRated PG-13 for superhero violence. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Roger Payne, Biologist Who Heard Whales Singing, Dies at 88

    His underwater microphones recorded “Songs of the Humpback Whale,” inspiring a movement that led to national and international bans on commercial whaling.Roger S. Payne, a biologist whose discovery that whales serenade one another prompted him to record their cacophonous repertoire of baying, booming, shrieking, squealing, mooing and caterwauling, resulting in both a hit album and a rallying cry to ban commercial whaling, died on Saturday at his home in South Woodstock, Vt. He was 88.The cause was metastatic squamous cell carcinoma, his wife, Lisa Harrow, said.Dr. Payne combined his captivating scientific research with the emotive power of music to spur one of the world’s most successful mammal conservation campaigns. He amplified whales’ voices to help win a congressional crackdown on commercial whaling in the 1970s and a global moratorium in the ’80s. And he established Ocean Alliance, a research and advocacy organization, as well as programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society and elsewhere that continue his groundbreaking work.“He was instrumental in protecting and saving those large animals throughout the world,” Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ocean Giants program, said in an interview.Prof. Diana Reiss, director of the Animal Behavior and Conservation Program at Hunter College of the City University of New York, said in an email that Dr. Payne’s album “Songs of the Humpback Whale” “had a profound effect in raising global awareness and empathy for whales” and “became a national anthem for the environmental movement.”In a Time magazine essay published just days before he died, Dr. Payne warned that human survival would be jeopardized unless efforts were made “to try to save all species of life, knowing that if we fail to save enough of the essential ones, we will have no future.”In pursuing those efforts, he wrote, society must heed other voices — including nonhumans, like whales — and listen to “what they love, fear, desire, avoid, hate, are intrigued by and treasure” in confronting threats like climate change and increasing acidity in the ocean.“Fifty years ago, people fell in love with the songs of humpback whales, and joined together to ignite a global conservation movement,” Dr. Payne wrote. “It’s time for us to once again listen to the whales — and, this time, to do it with every bit of empathy and ingenuity we can muster so that we might possibly understand them.”A humpback whale and her calf in a scene from the 1978 documentary “Humpbacks: The Gentle Giants,” one of the first films made about whales. It featured Dr. Payne, his wife, Katy Payne, and Sylia Earle.In 1971, Dr. Payne founded Ocean Alliance, now based in Gloucester, Mass., to study and protect whales and their environment. He was an assistant professor of biology at Rockefeller University and a research zoologist at what is now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Center for Field Biology and Conservation, both in New York; he was also scientific director of the society’s Whale Fund until 1983. He was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow in 1984.Dr. Payne was the author of several books, including “Among Whales” (1995), and produced or hosted six documentaries, including the IMAX movie “Whales: An Unforgettable Journey” (1996). More recently, he signed on as the principal adviser to Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), founded in 2020 with the goal of translating the communication of sperm whales.In the early 1960s, Dr. Payne was a moth expert who had never seen a whale. His curiosity was piqued when a porpoise washed up on a Massachusetts beach and he heard whale sounds recorded by William Schevill of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass.A friend suggested that he would have a better chance of seeing and hearing live whales in Bermuda. It was there that he met a Navy engineer who, while monitoring Soviet submarine traffic off the East Coast with underwater microphones, had detected another source of undersea sounds that formed thematic patterns and appeared to last as long as 30 minutes.The sounds emanated from whales, whose sequence of sounds Dr. Payne defined as songs, sung both solo and in ensemble. The songs could sometimes be audible for thousands of miles across an ocean.“What I heard blew my mind,” he told The New Yorker last year.Dr. Payne and a fellow researcher, Scott McVay, confirmed in 1967 that humpback whales sing in what Dr. Payne described as a chorus of “exuberant, uninterrupted rivers of sound.”He analyzed the audio with a sound spectrograph, and with collaborators including his wife and fellow researcher, Katherine (Boynton) Payne, known as Katy, as well as Mr. McVay and an engineer, Frank Watlington. They notated the rhythmic melody in what resembled an electronic-music score. Dr. Payne then wrote, in Science magazine in 1971, that humpback whales “produce a series of beautiful and varied sounds for a period of seven to 30 minutes and then repeat the same series with considerable precision.”How, why and even if the whales were actually communicating remained a mystery. Whales have no larynxes or vocal cords, so they appear to make the sounds by pushing air from their lungs through their nasal cavities. Male humpbacks seem to make the sounds especially during breeding season.Notwithstanding whatever advocacy and research Dr. Payne and his colleagues did, it was the whale songs that caught the public imagination and fired the global movement.The music critic Donal Henahan wrote in The New York Times in 1970 that the whales produced “strange and moving lyricism,” which the Times described in a separate article as akin to a haunting oboe-cornet duet trailing off to an eerie wailing bagpipe.“Songs of the Humpback Whale” landed on the Billboard 200 album chart and stayed there for several weeks in 1970, initially selling more than a hundred thousand copies. The track list included “Solo Whale,” “Slowed‐Down Solo Whale,” “Tower Whales,” “Distant Whales” and “Three Whale Trip.”“If, after hearing this (preferably in a dark room), you don’t feel you have been put in touch with your mammalian past,” Mr. Henahan wrote, “you had best give up listening to vocal music.”Some of the whales’ melodies were incorporated by Judy Collins on one track of her album “Whales and Nightingales.” Pete Seeger was inspired by the melodies to write “Song of the World’s Last Whale.” And the New York Philharmonic performed “And God Created Great Whales,” composed by Alan Hovhaness and incorporating recorded whale songs — sounds that, Mr. Henahan wrote, “carried overtones of ecological doom and a wordless communication from our primordial past.”In 1977, when NASA launched Voyagers 1 and 2 to probe the far reaches of the solar system, the songs of the humpback whales were carried into space on records that could be played by any alien with a stylus.Dr. Payne in the Gulf of Mexico in 2014, studying the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on whales.Ocean AllianceRoger Searle Payne was born on Jan. 29, 1935, in Manhattan to Elizabeth (Searle) Payne, a music teacher, and Edward Benedict Payne, an electrical engineer. He graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1956 and earned a doctorate in animal behavior from Cornell University in 1961.He married Katherine Boynton in 1960; their marriage ended in divorce in 1985. He and Ms. Harrow, an actress and environmentalist, married in 1991. In addition to her, he is survived by four children from his first marriage, John, Holly, Laura and Sam Payne; a stepson, Timothy Neill-Harrow; and 11 grandchildren.“Roger‘s career, his life, was marked by his deep commitment to the lives of whales and other marine life, and then to the interdependence of all species,” Prof. Stuart Firestein, a former chairman of the biology department at Columbia University, said by email. “Roger’s way was not coercion but creating in others the awe and wonder he felt for the beauty of life on this planet.”In his Time essay, Dr. Payne looked both backward and to the future. “As my time runs out,” he wrote, “I am possessed with the hope that humans worldwide are smart enough and adaptable enough to put the saving of other species where it belongs: at the top of the list of our most important jobs. I believe that science can help us survive our folly.” More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): A.I. Pop Stars and Luke Combs’s ‘Fast Car’

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The recent wave of generative A.I. music, including songs “by” Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, Drake and the Weeknd, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Michael Jackson and othersLuke Combs’s cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which is now No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, topping the original’s 1988 peak of No. 6Viewer questions about band reunions and pop star protestsNew songs from Doe Boy and Nia ArchivesSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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    American Ballet Theater Chief Resigns Suddenly

    Janet Rollé, who had helped lead the company through the turmoil of the pandemic, stepped down a week before its summer season begins.Janet Rollé, the chief executive and executive director of American Ballet Theater, resigned a week before the start of the company’s summer season after 17 months on the job, the company announced Wednesday.Rollé, who helped lead the company through the turmoil of the pandemic, did not offer an explanation for her departure, saying only that she would turn her focus to service on corporate and nonprofit boards.“It has been a privilege to lead such a storied company during such a crucial period of time, and I am grateful for this experience,” Rollé, a former leader of Beyoncé’s business empire, said in a statement. “I would like to extend my sincerest best wishes to A.B.T. as they embark on this new chapter.”Susan Jaffe, Ballet Theater’s artistic director, will serve as interim executive director until a successor to Rollé is found, the company said. “I am humbled by the board’s confidence in me and excited to lead A.B.T. during this transition,” Jaffe, a former Ballet Theater ballerina who took office in December, said in a statement.The announcement jarred the dance world, coming just before Ballet Theater begins its season at the Metropolitan Opera House on June 22 with an expensive New York premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s “Like Water for Chocolate.” Ballet Theater’s leaders are set to host a gala that night to celebrate the start of the season, a high-profile event that draws donors, cultural executives, celebrities and artists.Rollé’s hiring was announced with much fanfare: She had made a name in the entertainment industry, having served as the general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s media and management company. Rollé, who is Black, was the first person of color to lead the company.Ballet Theater’s executives expressed gratitude to Rollé but offered no details about the circumstances surrounding her resignation. Rollé will advise the search for a successor, the company said.“Janet joined A.B.T. at a critical time, and we are appreciative of her leadership and contributions,” Andrew F. Barth, chairman of Ballet Theater’s board, said in a statement. “We thank her for her continued counsel during this transition period and wish her the very best.”Ballet Theater said that Rollé, Jaffe and Barth were not available for interviews. Rollé did not immediately respond to calls and messages seeking further comment.When Rollé started, in January 2022, she faced several immediate challenges, including helping Ballet Theater recover from the pandemic, which resulted in the cancellation of two seasons and cost the company millions of dollars in anticipated ticket revenue and touring fees.In a rare interview with Sports Illustrated last year, she said that she hoped to find new audiences for Ballet Theater.“What I think about is how to make that definition of being America’s national ballet company real and true for all Americans,” she said in the interview.The company endured some artistic struggles under her tenure. In December, the renowned choreographer Alexei Ratmansky said he was leaving after 13 years as artist in residence, a significant blow to the company. Soon after, New York City Ballet announced he would join that company as artist in residence beginning in August. More