Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Those Who Remained’ Review: Managing Unimaginable Grief

    Set in Hungary after World War II, this film concerns a doctor and a teenager seeking to fill the void left by the relatives they lost.Opening in 1948 and closing with Stalin’s death in 1953, “Those Who Remained” unfolds in a Hungary pushing past the end of World War II toward a Communist future. But the trauma of the war and sorrow over the dead lingers for its two main characters, who become part of each other’s lives, more or less as replacements.Aldo (Karoly Hajduk) is a gynecologist. His tattooed arm offers a clue to where he has been. At one point someone overhears him praying in Hebrew, despite his claim that he is no longer religious. As the film begins, he meets a new patient: Klara (Abigel Szoke), who is almost 16 but whose great-aunt, Olgi (Mari Nagy), is concerned that the girl’s puberty is not progressing. When Klara reveals that her mother hasn’t “come home yet,” Aldo deduces that the problem isn’t physical (although Klara’s reluctance to eat surely doesn’t help).Both Klara and Olgi, who found her grandniece in an orphanage while looking for other relatives, know that Olgi isn’t cut out to be a parent, or to help Klara with classes she says she is deliberately trying to fail, even though she’s bright enough to read multiple languages. Also, Aldo reminds Klara of her father. Eventually, the three arrange for Klara to sometimes stay with Aldo. He in effect becomes her foster father, but never in official terms, which raises one teacher’s suspicion.Part of the idea of the film, directed by Barnabas Toth and based on a novel by Zsuzsa F. Varkonyi, is that only survivors could understand the solace that Klara and Aldo find in their tentative parent-daughter bond. “Those Who Remained” leaves much unsaid about their pasts, sometimes at the risk of seeming coy (the word “Jewish” is never spoken). But Hajduk and Szoke are strong performers.Those Who RemainedNot rated. In Hungarian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Winter Boy’ Review: Lost and Found

    In this French drama about a teenager grappling with grief, a winning cast rises above a heavy-handed script.In “Winter Boy,” a new drama by the French director Christophe Honoré, a father’s sudden death leaves his teenage son adrift in time. Adolescence pulls Lucas (Paul Kircher), a 17-year-old high schooler in a provincial French village, toward the future; grief holds him in the grip of the past. Lucas fumbles through a coming-of-age both rushed and stunted: He tries, like a grown-up, to stoically support his mother (Juliette Binoche) through her bereavement, but when he follows his older brother (Vincent Lacoste) to Paris for a week, he stumbles into juvenile misadventures.Lucas is gay, and one of the strengths of Honoré’s film is how unassumingly the character’s queerness is depicted. Lucas is open about his orientation from the start and supported by his family; his desires and sexual escapades — one of which involves his brother’s roommate, Lilio (Erwan Kepoa Falé), who moonlights as a prostitute — are tortured by confusion and loss but not by shame. It’s a gentle touch in a movie that otherwise can be quite heavy-handed: a cloying piano score underlines every emotion with a saccharine flourish, and, throughout the film, Lucas appears as a talking head, narrating his feelings to the camera.Much like its young protagonist, the movie feels clumsy when trying too hard to provoke: one such sequence alternates rather arbitrarily between Lucas’s conversation with a priest and an anonymous hookup he has in Paris. But “Winter Boy” shines when it allows its actors to quietly play out family dynamics, with Lacoste, Binoche and especially Kircher wearing the many shades of grief with effortless, endearing naturalism.Winter BoyNot Rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Watch on Mubi. More

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    ‘Nuclear Now’ Review: Oliver Stone Makes the Case for Power Plants

    The director’s new documentary considers our complicated relationship to nuclear energy and argues that it is our best hope against climate change.Given Oliver Stone’s track record of diving into political controversies with his work (“Platoon,” “JFK,” “Snowden”), it is perhaps surprising how staid his approach is to his new documentary, “Nuclear Now.” All the more surprising is that the film’s measured tone is what lends it its visceral power. With his straightforward proposal — that nuclear energy has been the solution to climate change all along — Stone looks past politics, providing an antidote to the climate doomerism that many viewers have probably felt over the last several years.The film, a vital rejoinder to the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” considers both the past and future of nuclear power and, by laying out the simple facts of the ever-worsening state of climate change, makes a compelling case for it as the energy source that can most reasonably and realistically help us face the crisis.Stone, who wrote the film with Joshua Goldstein and narrates it, knows the perceptions he’s up against. The documentary’s first half wrestles with the enduring fears that nuclear boosters have struggled to debunk — the result of a few snowballing factors, the film argues, including the association of nuclear power with nuclear warfare and the exceptional disasters that occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.The latter sections, concerning the innovations and obstacles to future applications of nuclear power, veer somewhat into the weeds. But the film’s aversion to formal or rhetorical bombast as it discusses scientists’ hopes for a better future is its own balm. We’re staring down catastrophe, Stone explains matter-of-factly, but our greatest tool is already in our grasp.Nuclear NowNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Sisu’ Review: Sweat Wicking

    A seemingly invincible former commando goes on a rampage in this blandly gratuitous World War II action movie.With “Sisu,” the John Wickification of action movies continues. This brisk, bloody World War II shoot-‘em-up follows the graphic rampage of a taciturn countryside gold prospector and former commando (Jorma Tommila) who, according to local legend, lost his family in a massacre and so “became a ruthless, vengeful soldier,” a “one-man death squad” with more than 300 confirmed kills to his name. Brutal and efficient, our grizzled hero has the blithe, stolid invulnerability of a video game character, dismembering limbs, snapping necks and patching up his own wounds without breaking a sweat.“Sisu,” written and directed by the Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander, is the kind of thriller that’s usually described as “lean.” The setup is austere: During the final stretch of the war, a retreating Nazi platoon happens upon our solitary hero in the barren fields of Finland and steals his gold. They try to kill him. He gets away. The rest of the movie is about him trying to get the gold back. Nazi soldiers are shot, stabbed, crushed, impaled, decapitated, run over and blown up, images that the movie displays with grindhouse glee. You wince to imagine the film’s budget for pyrotechnics and blood effects.To a certain type of viewer, 90 minutes of Nazi-killing violence may be inherently attractive. And “Sisu” feels designed with an audience’s fervent enthusiasm in mind: It seems to pause for applause after its most gratuitous kills. But 90 minutes of over-the-top mayhem means very little if the mayhem hasn’t been conceived with much wit or imagination, and what prevents “Sisu” from hitting the kinetic stride of a great exploitation flick is a style that feels pedestrian and oddly reserved.For all its gung-ho violence, the film never feels fraught or nasty enough: It never risks true offense or tastelessness, never takes a gamble on anything that could be interpreted the wrong way or that might sidestep expectations. Somehow it makes killing Nazis feel pretty tame. Take for instance the hero’s dog. It’s a cute hound. Improbably, it manages to avoid harm. It’s not that the movie would be better if the dog died — but it is characteristic of the film to spare the audience the potential discomfort of seeing the consequences of all this violence fall onto anything other than nameless Nazis.There’s something vaguely feeble about this cautious approach to what is ostensibly an unapologetic gore fest. By the time a liberated band of young female prisoners takes up arms against Nazi captors and blasts them to smithereens — the enemy’s fate never for a moment having been cast in doubt, the prisoners’ victory preordained — you will probably feel exhausted. This moment, like so much of the film, is expressly designed to make you hoot and holler. You’re more likely to groan and cringe.SisuRated R for gruesome carnage, over-the-top mutilation, dismemberment and some strong language. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Clock’ Review: That Biological Ticking Is Now a Time Bomb

    A woman who does not want children is pressured into changing her mind, with horrific results, in Alexis Jacknow’s fitfully scary horror movie.Ella (Dianna Agron) has a successful career as an interior designer, with spare time for afternoon sex with her handsome, loving husband (Jay Ali) and volunteer work. The only cloud over this perfect picture is that Ella does not want children, and feels bad about not feeling bad about it.Motherhood has long been a major subject of horror movies, which have feasted on such themes as intimate invasion — the call came from inside the womb! — and perception-distorting imbalances. The writer-director Alexis Jacknow incorporates these and more, messily so, in her Hulu feature “Clock.”Unmoored by conflicting impulses and desires, Ella finally gives in, largely to appease her widowed father (Saul Rubinek), a Holocaust survivor who begs her to keep their family line alive. She enrolls in an experimental program that feels as if Goop had been dreamed up by David Cronenberg and is run by the alarmingly soothing Dr. Simmons (Melora Hardin). The treatment to make her more receptive to having children involves talk therapy, drugs and a mysterious intrauterine implant.Agron, fresh from a strong turn in the indie “Acidman,” anchors “Clock” with a restrained, histrionics-free performance somewhat at odds with the film’s perfunctory jump scares. “Clock” is a psychological thriller, or perhaps even a satire, in horror clothing, tantalizing us with thought-provoking ideas, only to abandon them: nature versus nurture, the influence of the wellness-industrial complex over minds and bodies, the oppressive expectations placed on women — including by themselves. Most dramatically potent is the relationship between Ella and her father, fraught with guilt. Alas, time runs out on that one, too.ClockNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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    ‘Broadway’ Review: Life on the Margins

    Christos Massalas’s compelling debut feature follows a winsome troupe of castaways in modern Greece.The true performer knows that their craft demands seduction, for the lure of the stage is the thrill of escape. “Broadway,” the kinetic debut feature from Christos Massalas, captures the grim duality, in all its freedom and peril, of life at the margins. Set in Athens and visibly haunted by the specter of Greece’s economic crisis, the film follows a charismatic ensemble of misfits who make their living — at least nominally — as street performers. More precisely, they rely on the distraction of their rapt audience so that they may pick their pockets clean.In ponderous voice-over, prone to the occasional cliché, Nelly (Elsa Lekakou) recounts her foray into their world: she is discovered in a strip club by the mercurial Markos (Stathis Apostolou), a seasoned thief, who whisks her off to the Broadway, an abandoned theater complex replete with an open-air rooftop cinema. She immediately assimilates into this clan, all of them either outsiders or defectors: the charming couple Rudolph (Rafael Papad) and Mohammad (Salim Talbi); Locksmith (Christos Politis), a shadowy old man and functional patriarch; and finally, the mysterious Jonas (Foivos Papadopoulos), hidden away with a bruised and bandaged face.Feverishly pursued by a formidable gangster known only as the Maraboo, Jonas transforms into Barbara, a veritable bombshell with billowing bronze locks, pirouetting alongside Nelly in glittering jumpsuits for a spellbound crowd. When Markos is sent to prison, Barbara and Nelly establish a sweet romance, imperiled by the cloud of Markos’s inevitable return.Amid some uneven characterizations, the cast enlivens “Broadway” with their compelling performances, sealed by a stirring finale and a characteristically soaring score from Gabriel Yared.BroadwayNot rated. In Greek, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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    April Stevens Dies at 93; Her ‘Deep Purple’ Became a Surprise Hit

    Her unusual version of the standard, which she recorded with her brother, Nino Tempo, reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1963 and won a Grammy.April Stevens, whose rushed recording of “Deep Purple” with her brother, Nino Tempo, became a chart-topping single in 1963 and won a Grammy Award, died on April 17 at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 93.The death was confirmed by her stepson Gary Perman.The Stevens-Tempo version of “Deep Purple” — a jazz standard that had been a hit for Bing Crosby — featured the siblings harmonizing over a mellow arrangement accented with a harmonica. Ms. Stevens had the idea to record the song, originally written for piano by Peter DeRose, with lyrics added by Mitchell Parish; Mr. Tempo came up with the arrangement; and Glen Campbell played on the record as a session musician.In one section, Ms. Stevens recited the lyrics and Mr. Tempo sang them back in falsetto. They went, in part:“When a deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls/ and the stars begin to twinkle in the night/ In the mist of a memory you wander back to me/ breathing my name with a sigh.”The siblings had stumbled on the spoken-word idea after Mr. Tempo had failed to memorize the lyrics in time for a rehearsal, so Ms. Stevens fed them to him during that session. A friend loved the effect, Mr. Tempo said in a phone interview, and “we knew we had backed into something magical.”They recorded “Deep Purple” in just 14 minutes, at the tail end of a session with Ahmet Ertegun, the Atlantic Records co-founder who had signed them to his Atco Records imprint. Mr. Tempo, who was not a harmonica player, picked up the instrument and tried a few licks.But the final result felt sloppy, Mr. Tempo said, and after executives at the label listened to the song, Mr. Ertegun told him that his partners “think it’s the worst record you’ve ever made.”In response, the siblings said that if Mr. Ertegun did not release “Deep Purple,” they would want to be released from their contract — they hoped to sign with the music producer Phil Spector. Mr. Ertegun relented. The song came out in September 1963 and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of Nov. 16.The song did not stay on top for long: About a week later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and most of the country’s attention was drawn far from the Top 40.But “Deep Purple” went on to sell more than a million copies, and the siblings won a Grammy for best rock ’n’ roll recording of the year.The duo of April Stevens and Nino Tempo released several more records that made the charts, but they never again reached No. 1; their brand of jazz-inflected pop music soon gave way to the rock ’n’ roll of the British invasion, with the Beatles first topping the Billboard charts in 1964.Carol Vincenette LoTempio was born in Niagara Falls, N.Y., on April 29, 1929, to Samuel and Anna (Donia) LoTempio, both descended from Italian immigrants from Sicily. Her mother was a homemaker, her father a grocer.Her brother, born Anthony Bart LoTempio, was musically gifted and sang onstage with Benny Goodman before he was 10 years old. The family moved to Los Angeles to develop his music career, where Carol attended Belmont High School.Before they became a brother-and-sister act, the siblings each established solo musical careers — he as a jazz saxophonist who played with artists like Bobby Darin, and she as a singer who recorded popular versions of songs like Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again.”Ms. LoTempio took the name April Stevens before releasing several records during the 1950s, including “Teach Me Tiger,” a sultry number with lyrics like “Take my lips, they belong to you.” Though some listeners found the song offensive, it reached a modest No. 86 on the Billboard chart in 1959. (In 1983, NASA used the song to awaken astronauts on a shuttle mission and invited Ms. Stevens to watch the landing.)The siblings appeared on “American Bandstand” and shared a stage with the Righteous Brothers and the Beach Boys among other gigs in the United States, Europe and Australia.Their other charting singles included versions of the standards “Whispering” (No. 11) and “Stardust” (No. 32), both in 1964. Both made use of their spoken-and-sung lyrics device.Ms. Stevens married William Perman in 1985; he survives her. In addition to her brother and stepson Gary, she is survived by another stepson, Robert Perman; two stepdaughters, Laura LeMoine and Lisa Price; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.With bookings drying up, the siblings stopped performing together as the 1970s gave way to the ’80s. Mr. Tempo later recorded and performed as a jazz saxophonist, but Ms. Stevens never returned to singing.They had left an imprint, though. Not long before the Stevens-Tempo act dissolved, another brother and sister duo, Donny and Marie Osmond, recorded their own duet of “Deep Purple.” Complete with harmonica riffs and the same spoken and sung lyrics, it reached No. 14 on the Billboard chart in 1976. More

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    Karl Berger, 88, Who Opened Minds of Generations of Musicians, Is Dead

    A vibraphonist, pianist, educator and musical thinker, he co-founded the Creative Music Studio to bring all kinds of musicians together to foster cross-pollination and improvisation.Karl Berger, a musician, composer, educator and author who taught improvisation and his concept of an attentive, collaborative “music mind” to generations of musicians and artists at his Creative Music Studio near Woodstock, N.Y., died on April 9 in Albany, N.Y. He was 88.Billy Martin, the studio’s executive director, said the death, at Albany Medical Center, was caused by complications following gastrointestinal surgery.Mr. Berger was a pianist and vibraphonist who performed and recorded with leading jazz musicians including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, John McLaughlin, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoah Sanders, Dave Brubeck and Lee Konitz, among many others.Mr. Coleman, Mr. Berger and his wife, the singer Ingrid Sertso, founded the Creative Music Foundation in the early 1970s, to focus on improvisation and musical cross-pollination. The foundation ran the Creative Music Studio, in various locations in and near Woodstock, where Mr. Berger and other artists performed and taught. There, internationally known musicians from jazz and other traditions worked with musicians at all levels of skill, from amateur to virtuoso.Through the years, Mr. Berger played with small and large ensembles, recorded extensively, led university music departments, wrote arrangements for rock and pop albums, taught schoolchildren and adults, and developed his own techniques to unlock and encourage individual and collaborative musical thinking. His compositions often made connections with non-Western styles, and his musical practices drew on Eastern spirituality and meditation.“It’s not what you play, it’s how you play,” he often said.Mr. Martin said Mr. Berger’s musical approach was “not about genre.”“It’s about listening and making sound together,” he said, “starting from that fundamental place and building from there.”The jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, a frequent collaborator with Mr. Berger, with students at the Creative Music Studio in 1978.In his book, “The Music Mind Experience,” written with Rick Maurer, Mr. Berger insisted that “everyone is born with an abundance of musical talent,” and that all music shares fundamental common elements: rhythm, sound, space and dynamics. He sought to teach both players and listeners to escape routine and to concentrate their attention “fully in the moment.”Mr. Berger was born on March 30, 1935, in Heidelberg, Germany. He began studying classical piano at 10, but at 14 he heard a jazz jam session that made him decide to play his own music. In 1953, he joined a group that included Ms. Sertso, whom he would soon marry. She survives him along with their daughter, Savia.In the 1950s, as the house pianist at the Heidelberg club Cave 54, Mr. Berger learned modern jazz in late-night jams with American musicians from military bands stationed nearby. He earned a Ph.D. in musicology and philosophy in Germany in 1963 and held philosophy professorships at two universities in Germany. But by the mid-1960s he had turned to music.He moved to Paris and joined a group led by the trumpeter Don Cherry, who had been learning world-music melodies from shortwave radio broadcasts. In 1966, Mr. Cherry invited Mr. Berger to New York City to play on “Symphony for Improvisers,” a landmark free-jazz album.Mr. Berger made his debut album as a leader, “From Now On,” in 1967, and recorded with Mr. Cherry and others in the late 1960s. He went on to make more than two dozen albums as a leader and many others as a sideman. His lean, linear, freely melodic vibraphone playing repeatedly made him the top vibraphonist in the Down Beat magazine musicians’ poll.In 1971, Mr. Berger started the Creative Music Foundation with Ms. Sertso, Mr. Coleman and an advisory board that included John Cage, Gil Evans, Buckminster Fuller and Willem de Kooning. He moved to Woodstock in 1972 and inaugurated the Creative Music Studio, which settled into a nearby mountain lodge with residences and performance spaces.Leading musicians including Mr. Braxton, Mr. DeJohnette, Cecil Taylor and Dave Holland joined students in improvising groups. More than 550 performances were recorded and later digitized for an archive that was purchased by the Columbia University Library in 2012.During the 1980s, grant funding dwindled, and the studio curtailed its programs in 1984. But Mr. Berger remained active as a performer, touring Europe, Asia and Africa with Ms. Sertso.In the 1990s, he was also in demand as a string-section arranger. After working on Jeff Buckley’s 1994 album “Grace,” he wrote arrangements for albums by Natalie Merchant, Angelique Kidjo and others.Mr. Berger in 2008. The Creative Music Studio lost funding and curtailed its programs in the 1980s, but he continued to teach, perform and compose.Phil Mansfield for The New York TimesMr. Berger was a professor of composition and dean of music education at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany, and chairman of the department of music at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth during the early 2000s — although he objected to the department’s emphasis on classroom study rather than performance.He and Ms. Sertso opened Sertso Recording Studio in Woodstock in 2004. In 2010, with the help of musicians who had studied at Creative Music Studio decades earlier, they revived the organization. Mr. Berger led concerts in New York City and elsewhere by an Improvisers Orchestra, and in 2013 the studio restarted intensive semiannual workshops in the Catskills with musicians including Vijay Iyer, Henry Threadgill, Steven Bernstein and Joe Lovano.Mr. Berger relinquished the leadership of Creative Music Studio in 2017. But he continued to record and perform. His most recent release, in 2022, was a trio album, “Heart Is a Melody,” with Kirk Knuffke on cornet and Matt Wilson on drums. The album reached back to Mr. Berger’s free-jazz inspirations, with an Indian-inspired Don Cherry piece, “Ganesh,” and a tune called “Ornette.”“We all are infinitely more talented than we’ll ever realize in one lifetime,” Mr. Berger wrote in “The Music Mind Experience.” He continued, “Once we get in touch with our own voice, our own ways, we simply have to stay with it.” More