Aurelia Butler

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    Hollywood, Both Frantic and Calm, Braces for Writers’ Strike

    Studios have moved up deadlines for TV writers, and late-night shows are preparing to go dark. But for other segments of the industry, it’s business as usual.Writers scrambling to finish scripts. Rival late-night-show hosts and producers convening group calls to discuss contingency plans. Union officials and screenwriters gathering in conference rooms to design picket signs with slogans like “The Future of Writing Is at Stake!”With a Hollywood strike looming, there has been a frantic sprint throughout the entertainment world before 11,500 TV and movie writers potentially walk out as soon as next week.The possibility of a television and movie writers’ strike — will they, won’t they, how could they? — has been the top conversation topic in the industry for weeks. And in recent days, there has been a notable shift: People have stopped asking one another whether a strike would take place and started to talk about duration. How long was the last one? (100 days in 2007-8.) How long was the longest one? (153 days in 1988.)“It’s the first topic that comes up in every meeting, every phone call, and everyone claims to have their own inside source about how long a strike will go on and whether the directors and actors will also go out, which would truly be a disaster,” said Laura Lewis, the founder of Rebelle Media, a production and financing company behind shows like “Tell Me Lies” on Hulu and independent movies like “Mr. Malcolm’s List.”Unions representing screenwriters have been negotiating with Hollywood’s biggest studios for a new contract to replace the one that expires on Monday. The contracts for directors and actors expire on June 30.“I support the writers,” Ms. Lewis said. “It’s challenging, though. Just as we are starting to recover from the pandemic, we could be going into a strike.”In recent weeks, television writers have been racing to meet deadlines that studios moved up. Worried about the possibility of having no income for months, some TV writers have been trying to push through new projects — to get “commenced,” Hollywood slang for a signed writing contract, which typically brings an upfront payment.One prominent talent agent, who like some others in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said there was a “mad rush” to complete deals before next week. Some writers began removing their personal possessions from studio offices in anticipation of a walkout.Likewise, studio executives began calling producers last week to tell them to act as if a strike were certain, and to make sure all last-minute tweaks were incorporated into scripts, so production on some series could continue even in the absence of writers on set. Executives have delayed production for other series until the fall in cases where they determined scripts were not entirely ready.The president of one production company said this week that she was “freaking out” over a TV project in danger of falling apart because the star was available only for a limited period and the script was not ready.The writers room for the hit ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary” is supposed to convene on Monday — the day the contract expires.“I’m making plans to go back to work when we’re supposed to go back to work,” said Brittani Nichols, a producer and writer on the show. “And if that doesn’t happen, I’ll be at work on the picket line.”The last Hollywood writers’ strike began in 2007 and lasted 100 days.Axel Koester for The New York TimesIf there is a strike, which could begin as early as Tuesday, late-night shows, including ones hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, are likely to go dark. Late-night hosts and their top producers have convened conference calls to discuss a coordinated response in the event of a strike, much as they did during the pandemic.During the 2007 walkout, late-night shows went dark for two months before they began gradually returning in early 2008, even with writers still on picket lines. Jimmy Kimmel paid his staff out of his own pocket during the strike, and later explained that he had to return to the air because his savings were nearly wiped out.Mr. Kimmel and other hosts, like Conan O’Brien, gamely tried to put together shows without their writers or their standard monologues. Jay Leno, on the other hand, wrote his own “Tonight Show” monologues, infuriating the writers’ unions in the process.Though there’s plenty of uncertainty in TV circles, there are also segments of Hollywood where it has been business as usual.Executives at streaming services seemed to exhibit what one senior William Morris Endeavor agent called a “frightening, freakish sense of calm,” perhaps because they were betting that any strike would be short. Most streaming services have been under pressure to cut costs — even deep-pocketed Amazon Studios laid off 100 people on Thursday — and a strike is one quick way to do that: Spending would plummet as production slowed.“It could lead to notably better-than-expected streaming profitability,” Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm, wrote to investors this month.At several movie studios, there is little sense of alarm, partly because a strike would have almost no impact on the release schedule until next spring. (The movie business works nearly a year in advance.) One movie agent said everyone in her orbit was preparing for the Cannes Film Festival, which begins on May 16 and will include premieres for films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the latest from Martin Scorsese. Many movie executives were also preoccupied with CinemaCon this week, a convention for theater operators in Las Vegas.“The writers’ process is like 18 months to two years away from movies’ hitting our cinemas, generally, so you wouldn’t see an impact for quite a while,” said John Fithian, the departing chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners. “There is a whole lot of writing already in the can — or the computer — for projects the studios are putting into production.”At the Walt Disney Company, the largest supplier of union-covered TV dramas and comedies (890 episodes for the 2021-22 season), more immediate worries have been the focus. Disney began to hand out thousands of pink slips on Monday as part of an unrelated plan to eliminate 7,000 jobs worldwide by the end of June. The company made news again on Wednesday when it sued Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.During previous union walkouts, television networks ordered more reality programming, which does not fall under the writers’ unions jurisdiction. The long-running “Cops” was ordered during the 1988 strike, while the 2007-8 strike helped supercharge shows like “The Celebrity Apprentice” and “The Biggest Loser.”Paul Neinstein, co-chief executive of the Project X production company, which made the most recent “Scream” movie and Netflix’s “The Night Agent,” said there had been a huge increase in reality TV pitches over the last month, even though his production company was not known for making unscripted television.“All of a sudden everybody’s got a reality show,” he said. “And that to me feels very strike-related.” More

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    ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ Review: A New Girl in Neverland

    The filmmaker David Lowery updates the classic tale with his own pixie dust, saving what’s good and scuttling the rest.“Peter Pan & Wendy” is a case study in one of the agonies of growing up: the realization that some of the entertainment that tickled us as youngsters — as in the many troubling scenes in Walt Disney’s 1953 animated adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan novel, including the ditty “What Made the Red Man Red?” — have aged as gracefully as its lead character.The filmmaker David Lowery has opted to update it with his own pixie dust: save what’s good, scuttle the rest, and add plenty of spit and polish for a 21st-century shine.Seventy years ago, when Peter Pan whisked Wendy and her siblings to Neverland so she could mother his Lost Boys, he treated her like dirt and she swooned over his heroics. Now, Wendy (a compelling Ever Anderson) decks Peter Pan (Alexander Molony) and seizes the helm of her own story. “I don’t even know if I want to be a mother!” she protests.Lowery is a wise choice for a salvage attempt. He’s gifted at exploring the haunted corners of familiar tales (“Pete’s Dragon,” “The Green Knight”) and has revealed a morbid reverence for the passage of time — perfect for a story whose villain, Captain Hook (a scene-stealing Jude Law, hiding beneath artificial under-eye bags), is literally stalked by the ticktock of a clock.Having stripped out the questionable or merely dubious themes, he and his co-writer, Toby Halbrooks, are left with many minutes to fill. In addition to including a traumatic back story for Captain Hook, they add two lovely reveries on aging: a montage in which Wendy savors her youth and another where she’s tantalized by the prospect of growing up.The girl-powering of the plot means scrapping the catty mermaids, the glimmer of a love triangle with Tiger Lily (here played by Cree actress Alyssa Wapanatahk) and pretty much everything interesting that Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi) once got to do, including her multiple attempts to murder Wendy. The fairy is now merely given a camera trick — Tinkervision — a blurred, jittery point of view that has its best moment when she flies through blood spatter.Lowery clearly adores the look of the cartoon. He and the cinematographer Bojan Bazelli pay it tribute with their use of moody skies, striking shadows, unexpected camera angles and a darkly beautiful color palette that shimmers like jewels in a cave. Still, these well-meaning choices struggle to cohere into a satisfying picture. Peter Pan comes across as a pest, and when Wendy belts the movie’s thesis — “This magic belongs to no boy!” — it hits the ear like a distracting clang.By the time the woolly pirates burst into their second rousing sea shanty (kudos to the song composer Curtis Glenn Heath), our minds begin to liken the Jolly Roger to the philosophical paradox of Theseus’s ship: How many planks can you swap out while still claiming it’s the real deal?Peter Pan & WendyRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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    ‘Four Quartets’ Review: Virtuosi in Verse

    Ralph Fiennes delivers an animated performance of the T.S. Eliot works, but the film doesn’t quite succeed in bringing the stage into the cinema.The English poet T.S. Eliot composed the poems that make up the work eventually published as “Four Quartets” over the course of six years, and at the end of his literary career. The four elegiac, epic poems total more than 1,000 lines, and are devoted to time and divinity. To perform them in a single staged performance is an exercise of memory and sheer will. In 2021, Ralph Fiennes accomplished the feat, acting out Eliot’s “Four Quartets” in a lauded solo production that toured in the United Kingdom, including a run at London’s Pinter Theater. His sister Sophie Fiennes filmed an adaptation of the production after the actor’s live performances ended.Her filmed version uses the original theatrical stage, with towering walls and minimal set decorations. Her camera occasionally sneaks glimpses of existence outside the theater — shots that conjure the views of Eliot’s England, a world of moss-covered stone and fields of grass-fed cows. But there is no visible audience, no sign of a human presence beyond Ralph Fiennes himself.As an actor, Fiennes contorts, stomps and dances — he delivers an animation of Eliot’s language, a forceful performance that treats the accumulation of verse into poetry like the strenuous, mathematical raising of walls in a cathedral. He speaks slowly, granting viewers time to grasp Eliot’s words. Yet for all of the actor’s efforts, the film around him does not match his mellifluousness.The camera remains at a distance, and the editing is prosaic, refusing opportunities to add a cinematic interpretation to complement Fiennes’s central performance. The static images recall the views from live theater, where the eyes of the audience are limited by the proscenium and the angle of a particular seat to the stage. Fiennes brings the fire, yet the air around him remains unmoved, even by his embers.Four QuartetsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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    The Maestro Wore Blue: Bringing Pizazz to the Pit at the Met

    Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, dressed in a blazing sapphire jacket and trim black pants, stood before a mirror backstage on a recent afternoon and smiled.“Oh my God, it’s so good,” he said, waving his baton. “I love it so much.”There were three days until the opening of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” and Nézet-Séguin, surrounded by a small team of tailors, designers and assistants, was offering feedback on his attire, which had been designed by the Met’s costume shop.His outfit was modeled on one worn onstage by a band leader in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production. Could the golden braid that dangled from his right shoulder be fastened, so it did not create a distraction in the pit? Was the jacket comfortable enough to accommodate the sweeping gestures that the music demanded? And should there be more red, or maybe gold?The Met’s costume shop has designed outfits for Nézet-Séguin for eight productions, including this jacket for “Bohème.”“The more unusual elements,” he said, “the more fun for the audience.”Since the Met returned from the long pandemic shutdown, in the fall of 2021, Nézet-Séguin has been on a mission to challenge sartorial conventions, wearing eye-catching outfits designed by the Met’s costume shop in eight productions. There is limited space to make a statement; the designers focus on his back, since that is what most audience members will see.“We want to get some attention but not be too distracting,” said Robert Bulla, the Met’s assistant head costumer. “Nothing too obnoxious, but something that occasionally catches the light.”A conductor’s look book: clockwise from top left, “Champion,” “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” “The Hours” and “Lohengrin.”Nézet-Séguin sports a black-and-white hooded jacket modeled on a vintage Everlast boxing robe for Terence Blanchard’s “Champion,” an opera about the boxer Emile Griffith that had its Met premiere this month. (At the start of the second act, he enters the pit wearing the hood and boxing gloves, but removing both to conduct.)For “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which opened the season in 2021, Nézet-Séguin wanted to wear something special. The opera’s costume designer, Paul Tazewell, suggested this fireworks pattern.Rose Callahan/Metropolitan OperaHe wore a stained-glass pattern on his jacket for a 2021 revival of Puccini’s “Tosca,” which opens in the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome. And he switched from green to red to white shirts in Wagner’s “Lohengrin” this season, mimicking the look of the choristers, whose robes changed colors throughout the show.Nézet-Séguin said his outfits helped strengthen the bond between the pit and the stage.“You don’t want to ignore the orchestra,” he said. “If the conductor is there and seen, I think that helps the connection. It’s much more integrated.”At work in the costume shop. The jacket being constructed echoes one worn by a band leader onstage in the production.The costumes are also part of his efforts to make opera, which has long had a reputation for conservatism, more exciting and accessible.“We have to be more modern and approachable,” he said. “We want to welcome everybody.”While earlier music directors at the Met, all men, favored white tie and tails, Nézet-Séguin, who has held the post since 2018, has long had a more eclectic style, both in his clothes and appearance. He has bleached-blond hair and wears a diamond earring and several gold rings. He is fond of performing in clothes by designers like the Canadian Marie Saint Pierre and can be seen onstage in red-soled Christian Louboutin shoes.“The more unusual elements,” Nézet-Séguin said, “the more fun for the audience.”As the Met prepared to reopen its doors to the public after the pandemic shutdown in 2021, Nézet-Séguin felt it was time for a change.The Met was preparing to open the season with Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the first work by a Black composer in the company’s history. Nézet-Séguin wanted to wear something to reflect the importance of the moment. The costume designer for “Fire,” Paul Tazewell, suggested a fireworks pattern, with flashes of red, indigo, teal and orange.“To be plain dressed — it just felt wrong to me,” Nézet-Séguin said.Beyond white tie and tails. “We want to get some attention but not be too distracting,” Robert Bulla, an assistant head costumer at the Met, said.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesThe designs often riff on an opera’s central themes. For Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” based on the 1998 novel and the 2002 film it inspired, he wore a floral pattern, a nod to the work’s many references to flowers.Comfort is a priority — the designers want to ensure that he feels unhindered, and they use lightweight and stretchable fabric for flexibility and to absorb sweat. The costume shop often produces several of each jacket so he can change into a fresh one between acts.Some operas are more challenging than others. The team struggled to come up with an idea for “Bohème” before recalling that the production includes a scene in which a band leader guides a procession of soldiers across the stage.Nézet-Séguin, who painted his nails fuchsia for “Champion,” sometimes adds his own touches.“It’s good to be breaking this mold of what everyone thinks classical music and opera is,” Bulla said. “Some people say it’s taken a long time to start this evolution process. But at least it’s evolving.”Nézet-Séguin sometimes adds his own touches. He painted his nails fuchsia for “Champion,” to match the purple robe worn onstage by Ryan Speedo Green, who plays Griffith. And he said he was eager for a day when the Met orchestra musicians would be allowed to dress with more variety. (The dress code demands tuxedos or long, flowing black clothes for evening performances.)“It’s baby steps,” he said. “When I make statements like this, mentalities can evolve. We have to think more creatively and ergonomically. This is only the beginning.” More

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    ‘The End of Sex’ Review: When Domesticity Kills the Mood

    This comedy follows the misadventures of a bored 40-something married couple who are attempting to spice up their sex life.Lust and laughter run thin in “The End of Sex,” a weirdly traditional comedy in which a bored married couple attempt to revitalize their sex life.Directed by Sean Garrity, the film looks at a common dilemma — how to keep things spicy in the bedroom when years of cozy domesticity have killed the mood?It’s hard to switch gears and throw yourself into passionate lovemaking, Garrity posits, when you’re in pajamas cleaning up your children’s scattered toys. True, but in “The End of Sex,” parenthood appears to turn adults into babbling adolescents who blush and freeze up in the face of sexual opportunity. This dynamic is supposed to be cringe-funny, but over the course of an hour and a half, this staid farce proves otherwise.Emma (Emily Hampshire) and Josh (Jonas Chernick), two painfully square 40-somethings, are granted a weeklong reprieve from their child-rearing duties when their daughters head to sleepaway camp. Emma, in particular, is desperate to rekindle the flame; she is in love with her husband, but sleeping with Marlon (Gray Powell), an old art-school buddy not known for his subtlety, proves increasingly tempting.“My Awkward Sexual Adventure,” the title of an earlier film by Garrity, describes the events of this one, too: Emma and Josh attempt to have a threesome with Emma’s colleague Wendy (Melanie Scrofano), join a swinger’s club where geriatric men stroll around in bondage gear and animal masks, and take party drugs to fuel their libidos. All fail, of course, because Emma and Josh are astoundingly immature, a quality accentuated by the film’s bubbly, motor-mouthed comedy style.Lily Gao, who plays Kelly, Josh’s younger, more sexually experienced co-worker — as well as his confidante — deals with sexual hangups of her own that prove more captivating than that of her married counterparts. This speaks to what makes the central conflict feel so vapid and vanilla, as if the challenges of monogamy had only to do with the unavoidable friction between love and good sex.The End of SexRated R for clothed sex scenes and party drugs. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Restless’ Review: The Painful Cycles of Mental Illness

    Joachim Lafosse’s film is an intimate but flawed portrayal of the effect a man’s bipolar disorder has on his family.Joachim Lafosse’s latest film, “The Restless,” makes a valiant effort to depict the toll that bipolar disorder can take on people and their loved ones. We’re introduced to Damien (Damien Bonnard), a painter, in the middle of a manic episode on vacation with his family; while gently teaching his young son, Amine (Gabriel Merz Chammah), how to steer a motorboat, Damien suddenly leaps into the water for a swim, telling Amine to take over driving. From there, it’s one incident after another as Damien behaves erratically at best and dangerously at worst, testing the patience of his wife, Leïla (Leïla Bekhti), as she struggles to find a suitable treatment for his illness.Bonnard and Bekhti both ground their performances in a knowing realism. Together with Lafosse’s intimate direction and the film’s lack of a score, this helps “The Restless” avoid any mawkishness that might have come from its premise. The problem, unfortunately, lies in the same circular patterns of behavior that the film aims to shed light on. We hardly get a glimpse of Damien outside of his mania, making it difficult to characterize the person underneath the disorder. While those familiar with the condition may relate to the repetitive destructiveness of his actions, it ultimately makes for a paper-thin narrative, one that has to fill out its two-hour running time with predictable shouting matches and dramatic beats. Lafosse’s empathy as a director is admirable, but “The Restless” falls short of putting a compelling story to film.The RestlessNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Watch on Film Movement Plus. More

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    Les Arts Florissants Returns to New York, Endangered

    William Christie’s early-music ensemble, once a staple at Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, finds a new home in Carnegie Hall.The pair of concerts that William Christie and his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, offered at Carnegie Hall this week made me a little sad.Not the concerts themselves: They were excellent, occasionally exquisite. What depressed me was the question of whether there’s a future in New York for this pathbreaking early-music group, founded in France four decades ago by Christie, an American.Its longtime bases when on tour in the city, Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, have jolted away from the kind of music programming that was until recently a core part of their identities — and the kind that Les Arts Florissants embodies. But this ensemble gives the lie to the suggestion, made by certain administrators, that presenting music of the past necessarily means sleepy renditions of the standards.Sure, Christie and Les Arts Florissants don’t do contemporary pieces. Their repertoire, with its founding specialty in the French Baroque of Lully, Rameau and Charpentier, doesn’t check fashionable boxes of diversity, equity and inclusion.But that doesn’t mean they are reactionary, dull, irrelevant or unworthy of being presented alongside the best of the present day. For decades, they have been fulfilling the task of any truly important cultural institution: opening up new worlds of beauty and excitement, both emotional and intellectual. Not merely rehashing what’s known, but introducing modern audiences to works and composers overlooked for centuries.Les Arts Florissants opera productions, in particular, have been deep and poignant — and very vibrant — excavations. But the organizations with the spaces and resources to put them on in America’s cultural capital no longer seem to think that’s a meaningful endeavor. That’s a loss for New York.So gratitude is due to Carnegie, one of the city’s few remaining major presenters of early music, for offering the ensemble a place to land — at least for the moment and in spare numbers. On Tuesday, Christie and the young violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte appeared upstairs, at Weill Recital Hall. And on Wednesday, Christie led slightly (but not much) beefier forces downstairs, at Zankel Hall.Christie and Langlois de Swarte gave a version of the violin-harpsichord program they recorded a few years ago, featuring sonatas from the early 18th century that demonstrate the influence that passionate, tumblingly virtuosic Italian music had on the austere, even severe dances of 17th-century France.The revelation of that album — and the best part of Tuesday’s recital — was the work of Jean Baptiste Senaillé, a favorite of the aristocracy in his day but now an obscurity. He was particularly adept at inflaming restrained French elegance with Italian intensity, as in the inexorably winding violin line of a G minor sonata’s prelude, exploding in arpeggios that lead to a fiery yet stylish gavotte.Langlois de Swarte, his tone clear but with an appealing hint of wiry bite, played with vivacity and wit. And the Adagio harpsichord introduction to a sonata in C minor showed off Christie’s magic touch, his phrasing noble yet gentle.Both this and Wednesday’s program were canny: short enough to do without an intermission, yet focused enough to feel immersive. So many programs these days valorize variety, but to spend a bit over an hour in a single sound world can be a profound experience.Better to be left wanting more. But I ever so slighted rued that, since it consisted mostly of selections of movements, Tuesday’s recital included only one full Senaillé sonata. (The recording boasted four, alongside two by his slightly younger contemporary, Jean-Marie Leclair.)On Wednesday, Christie led from the organ an ensemble of, at its most robust, nine male singers and seven players in a set of sacred works by Charpentier, whose opera “Les Arts Florissants” gave the group its name.This was, a little belatedly, music for the Lenten period, beginning with Charpentier’s beautiful, sober yet luscious set of 10 “Meditations for Lent” — a kind of proto-Passion that charts the story of the Stations of the Cross. Soloists sing some of the lines of biblical dialogue, with the narration given a hypnotic setting for groups of voices.In these meditations and three “lessons,” traditionally sung as part of evening services during Holy Week, the instrumentalists were superbly restrained. And, if none of the individual voices were particularly impressive, the choir achieved remarkable, moving effects of hovering gauziness and almost whispered sweetness; the sound was sometimes mellow, sometimes thrillingly emphatic. Precision of attack let even this modest-size group take on fearsome grandeur when singing of the ripping of the temple’s curtain as Jesus was crucified.The almost excruciating impact of tightly shifting harmonies matched the accounts of pain and torture in the texts. The hall lights were dimmed almost to darkness; the mood, unbroken by applause until the end, was rapt.It, like Tuesday’s recital, was a performance to be celebrated. But it was hard not to feel like these bite-size concerts were whetting the appetite for a full meal that may never come this way again. More

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    ‘Freaks vs. the Reich’ Review: Band of Others

    This big-hearted, blithely odd adventure pits a troupe of superpowered circus folk against a psychic Nazi pianist.Gabriele Mainetti’s “Freaks vs. the Reich” is a kind of historical superhero movie, but it has to be the only one with a psychic twelve-fingered Nazi pianist and circus performers with nifty powers. Its splashy, curiously filter-free adventures unfold in Italy and Germany during World War II, to sometimes awkward effect.In this period fantasy, a Jewish magician named Israel (Giorgio Tirabassi) leads a multitalented troupe: a furry strongman, Fulvio (Claudio Santamaria); a man who commands hordes of bugs, Cencio (Pietro Castellitto); the magnetic Mario (Giancarlo Martini); and the electrically charged Matilde (Aurora Giovinazzo).When Israel goes missing, Matilde ends up with the Italian resistance, while her friends seek Israel in Berlin. There, they run into the previously mentioned Nazi piano player, Franz (Franz Rogowski), who has visions of Germany’s defeat and beyond. A star attraction at the circus, Franz plays songs from the future (“Sweet Child of Mine,” “Creep”), but he’s most intent on finding a “fantastic four” to save the Nazi regime.The story’s basic tension becomes apparent from the opening sequence: A sweet performance by Israel’s troupe, which gives the movie a chance to showcase some enchanting special effects, segues into a Nazi bombardment. From there on out, the film’s conventional, Hollywood-friendly quest aims to please with a childlike sense of mission, but it’s jarring as it leans on the grim stakes and sights of World War II. (Case in point: There’s a battle to liberate a train carrying human cargo.)That leaning may not trouble all viewers. For its part, the movie is definitely not self-conscious about its violent bits, its Nazi regalia or a particularly joyful sex scene. As for Mainetti, the director, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him apply his zeal to another universe at some point.Freaks vs. the ReichNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 21 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More