Aurelia Butler

It would take an eight- or 10-hour mini-series to deal with all the issues this documentary raises about the legal travails of Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel.“Honorable Men: The Rise and Fall of Ehud Olmert” is a rare instance of a two-hour documentary that should have been an eight- or 10-hour mini-series, because it would take that long to clarify all the issues it raises, then present persuasive evidence. It concerns the legal travails of Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister of Israel. Olmert was under investigation for corruption when he announced his resignation in 2008. He ultimately went to prison in 2016 for bribery and obstruction of justice, but he has consistently denied doing anything criminal.The documentary, directed by Roni Aboulafia, takes a broadly pro-Olmert position. Olmert is painted as the victim of an array of vaguely conspiratorial forces: political opponents relentless in their search for dirt because they feared his positions on settlements and the peace process; witnesses overly eager to please; a particular toxic case of apparent sibling rivalry; and a legal system that had a way of proceeding under its own momentum.And that’s to say nothing of various individuals who worked with Olmert and whose actions are called into question. But was he wronged in all respects? “Honorable Men” never quite says so. Direct access to Olmert — mostly heard speaking over the phone, although he is eventually shown being interviewed in person after his release — hasn’t led to a coherent thesis.The film was first screened in 2020, meaning that recent developments — including Olmert’s November loss in a libel case to Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister again as of December — aren’t included.Honorable MenNot rated. In Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

This contribution to slow cinema observes the quiet routines of a captain and her crew as they sail a small boat across the Mediterranean.Anyone who (like me) savors the aquatic sequences in “Avatar: The Way of Water” but tires of its action and visual effects might find an intriguing art-house substitute in “Human Flowers of Flesh.” The serene feature, directed by the German filmmaker Helena Wittmann and largely shot on 16-millimeter film, is about as far as one can get from a blockbuster, but it shares with “Avatar” a love of seafaring, a reverence for briny blue hues and an inclination to surrender to the quiet grandeur of nature.The film unfolds as a series of cinematic seascapes captured onboard a boat sailing from Marseille toward Algeria. The captain, Ida (Angeliki Papoulia), and her crew are seldom shown speaking. Instead, they laze about on the sun-baked planks, read books and poetry, play board games or contemplate the horizon as waves rock the ship. Traversing sea and shore, the characters seem most comfortable near and on the water, and Wittmann follows their lead, rarely letting the Mediterranean leave ear- or eyeshot.There is little story beyond the snatches of conversation we receive, but “Human Flowers of Flesh” brims with visual and aural detail from the rocky coasts and gurgling reefs. Because of the scarcity of dialogue, the film’s few lines acquire outsize importance and can sometimes feel overwrought, as when a crew member reads aloud about wanderers who find comfort in the world’s smallness. Better to let the ocean water do the talking — it could babble for hours.Human Flowers of FleshNot rated. In English, French, Portuguese, Tamazight and Serbo-Croatian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

This French drama about a woman whose father wants a medically assisted death is both bracingly unsentimental and a touch inert.The latest film from the prolific French director François Ozon, “Everything Went Fine” is a drama about assisted suicide that wears tragedy lightly. Understated almost to a fault, the film pitches its tone somewhere among the looming sorrow, gentle comedy and bureaucratic tedium that death, especially when planned, can entail. If the result is bracingly unsentimental, it’s also a touch inert — a little too poised to compel emotionally.Adapted from a 2013 memoir by the French writer Emmanuèle Bernheim, “Everything Went Fine” traces the resentments and fears that unfurl around Emmanuèle (Sophie Marceau) when her 80-something father, André (André Dussollier), asks her to help him end his life after he’s partially paralyzed by a stroke. She finds herself caught amid competing responsibilities: to a father who was often cruel to her, as we see in flashbacks; to her mother (Charlotte Rampling), sick herself and seemingly indifferent to her estranged husband’s plight; to a man from André’s past whose fraught relationship with the patriarch emerges in a late revelation; and, above all, to herself.The caprices of the characters pose repeated threats to Emmanuèle and André’s heist-like plan of getting him to Switzerland, where medically assisted death is legal. Dussollier is formidable, vacillating between desperation and entitlement, but there’s a repressed quality to the movie — and to Marceau’s performance — that mutes the emotions, sanding down conflicts to pat exchanges. Where “Everything Went Fine” opens up into thornier (and richer) territory is in the practical intricacies of euthanasia. When Emmanuèle tells André that the entire process will cost him 10,000 euros, he asks, glibly, “I wonder how poor people do it?”“They wait to die,” she coolly replies.Everything Went FineNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters. More

Over 50 movies will be screened at the event, including Johnny Depp’s first major film since a defamation trial and Martin Scorsese’s latest epic.Movies by Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and Ken Loach will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced during a news conference on Thursday.Also in the running for the festival’s top prize will be films by the returning winners Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Nanni Moretti.But Martin Scorsese will not compete at the festival, which opens May 16 and runs through May 27. Instead, his eagerly anticipated movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is about the murder of Osage Indians in 1920s Oklahoma, will appear out of competition. Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, said during Thursday’s news conference that the festival wanted “Killers of the Flower Moon” to play in competition, but Scorsese had turned him down.The Wes Anderson picture in competition is “Asteroid City,” about a space cadet convention that is interrupted by aliens; Todd Haynes will show “May December” a love story about a young man and his older employer, starring Julianne Moore.Ken Loach, whose movies focused on working-class life in Britain have twice won the Palme d’Or, will present “The Old Oak,” about Syrian refugees arriving in an economically depressed English mining town.A jury led by the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund will choose the winner. Ostlund won last year’s Palme d’Or for “Triangle of Sadness,” a satire of the international superrich; he also took the 2017 award for “The Square,” a sendup of the art world.Of the 19 titles in competition, five are directed by women, including the Cannes veterans Jessica Hausner and Alice Rohrwacher, and Ramata-Toulaye Sy, a French-Senegalese newcomer.Many of the highest profile titles at this year’s event will be shown out of competition. The festival will open with “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama about a poor woman who becomes a lover of King Louis XV of France. It stars Johnny Depp in his first major role since he won a defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.Other high-profile movies scheduled to premiere at Cannes’s 76th edition include “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” directed by James Mangold — the final movie in the Harrison Ford adventure series about a globe-trotting archaeology professor — and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life,” the Spanish director’s second movie in English. Starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, that movie is a short western about a reunion between two hit men.Wim Wenders, the German director who won the 1984 Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas,” has two films in the official selection. In the main competition, he will show “Perfect Days,” which Frémaux said was about a janitor in Japan who drives between jobs listening to rock music. Out of competition, Wenders will show a 3-D documentary about Anselm Kiefer, one of Germany’s most revered artists.Frémaux said that over 2,000 movies were submitted for the festival, although only 52 made Thursday’s selection. Of those, one other notable title is Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City,” about Amsterdam under the Nazis. Frémaux said that McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows,” had made a “very radical” film that was several hours long. But, Frémaux added, watching it, “you won’t fall asleep.” More

The author J.K. Rowling is expected to executive produce the show, which will appear on Max, the streaming service from Warner Bros. Discovery.Harry Potter fans, some of whom have been casting spells for years in hopes of a television series about the boy wizard, can finally put their wands down and rejoice.Max, the new streaming service from Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Wednesday that it had ordered a “Harry Potter” television series based on the novels by the British author J.K. Rowling.“We are delighted to give audiences the opportunity to discover Hogwarts in a whole new way,” Casey Bloys, the chairman and chief executive of HBO and Max content, said in a statement.“Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon and it is clear there is such an enduring love and thirst for the Wizarding World,” he said. A news release announcing the series said it would be a “faithful adaptation” of the best-selling book series, which spans seven books published between 1997 and 2007. Eight hit films based on the books were released between 2001 and 2011.The upcoming show, which is described as a decade-long series, “will feature a new cast to lead a new generation of fandom, full of the fantastic detail, much-loved characters and dramatic locations that Harry Potter fans have loved for over 25 years,” according to the release. It will be available on Max in the United States and around the world. No time frame for the show’s release was given.Ms. Rowling, who has drawn waves of criticism in recent years over her remarks on gender identity issues, will be an executive producer for the series.“Max’s commitment to preserving the integrity of my books is important to me, and I’m looking forward to being part of this new adaptation which will allow for a degree of depth and detail only afforded by a long form television series,” she said in a statement.Ms. Rowling, who has drawn criticism in recent years over her remarks on gender identity issues, will executive produce the series.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPotterheads, a term used to describe super fans of “Harry Potter,” have been grappling with the author’s comments on transgender issues for years. In 2020, she published an essay in which she said a movement of transgender activists was “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.”While Ms. Rowling has denied being anti-transgender, her remarks have pitted fans against each other, with some vowing to stop supporting the Potter franchise.Despite the continued debate over Ms. Rowling, products related to Harry Potter continue to sell. Earlier this year, The Hogwarts Legacy video game sold more than 12 million copies in two weeks.The television show is the latest moneymaking arm of the Potter universe, which also include feature films, a stage play, live entertainment at theme parks, studio tours and retail stores.Max, the latest entry into the crowded streaming market, will debut next month, and will cost roughly $16 a month for a commercial-free version and less for an advertising-supported tier.Last April, WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. merged, adding a new media giant to the entertainment industry. David Zaslav, the president and chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, sold shareholders on the deal in part by arguing that the combined company could have a successful app.But over the last year, the company has seen some obstacles, including shelving at least two projects and laying off part of its work force. More

A film adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel has potential for drama, but it stumbles on stock melodrama.A woman stands on a dock, staring out at the sea through a set of binoculars, hoping for the impossible and refusing to accept the inevitable. “Emma, it’s your third day out here,” her sister tells her desperately. “I’m going to stay out here, as long as it takes,” Emma responds.It’s hard not to see these early moments of overwritten, stock melodrama in “One True Loves,” the ham-fisted film adaptation of the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel, as something like scenes in a comedy sketch. Emma (Phillipa Soo) has lost her husband (Luke Bracey) — he was her high school sweetheart — in a helicopter crash, a fact she reluctantly accepts. Slowly, she moves on with her life, eventually reconnecting with an old best friend (Simu Liu) and becoming engaged.But when her husband returns, back from the dead after surviving on an island for four years, the film homes in on her struggle to choose her one true love. Because of its poor pacing, and awkward sequencing and editing, however, the movie clumsily sets up this romance-pulp plot in its first half. Basic storytelling components are also ignored, as if entire scenes are missing, so that “One True Loves,” directed by Andy Fickman, stumbles even as a piece of Hallmark sappiness.There is potential for some meaty drama — in its best moments the film reads like a “Cast Away” spinoff, stretching out the rainy scene climax when Tom Hanks returns to his wife and is met with the cold, cleareyed truth that life has moved on without him. These late glimmers, though, are mostly drowned out. The Marvel superstar Liu and Soo, who is Broadway royalty, may seem suddenly exposed for a lack of innate star power here, but in a film like this, they’ve really just been left stranded on their own island.One True LovesRated PG-13 for some suggestive material and language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

An enigmatic adaptation of a short story collection by Haruki Murakami, this animated film is set shortly after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.The composer and painter Pierre Földes makes his feature film directorial debut with “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” an animated adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story collection of the same name. Following Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning film “Drive My Car” — also based on an amalgamation of Murakami works — Földes’s effort skews more faithfully to the author’s inscrutable style, combining surrealist narratives with a pensive tone that can be hard to pin down. Adding to the opaqueness is an animation style similar to rotoscoping, where the characters’ movements are based on those of live actors; while beautiful and striking at times, the uncanny depiction of the film’s human subjects may alienate some viewers.“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” takes place shortly after the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami and is centered on the salesmen Komaru (voiced by Ryan Bommarito in the English-language dub) and Katagiri (Marcelo Arroyo), each of whom finds himself in a crisis. Komaru is mourning his separation from his wife, Kyoko (Shoshana Wilder), who spent hours watching televised news coverage of the disaster before walking out on him. We learn through flashbacks that the two got together under peculiar circumstances. Katagari, meanwhile, has an absurd meeting with an anthropomorphic frog named Frog (voiced by Földes), who tasks him with saving the city from a second impending earthquake caused by a giant earthworm.Despite its original, unusual premise, “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” can’t shake the sense that it is multiple short stories stitched together, and the elusive nature of Murakami’s dialogue and characterizations does it no favors. It works well as a visual companion for fans of the author’s work, and as a flawed enigma for everyone else.Blind Willow, Sleeping WomanNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More