Aurelia Butler

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    How Yura Borisov of ‘Anora’ Went From the Kremlin to the Oscars

    Yura Borisov, who is nominated for an Academy Award on Sunday, is pulling off a rare feat: pleasing audiences at home in Russia as well as in the West.On the face of it, the Russian actor Yura Borisov was an unlikely actor to land an Oscar nomination in 2025.Just a few years ago he played a guileless soldier in a Kremlin-sponsored movie that celebrated a Soviet tank model. Later, he starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the man who invented the Russian automatic rifle.But after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he stopped playing in militaristic movies. Last year, Western audiences fell in love with him as a tight-lipped but sentimental mafia errand boy in “Anora,” a Brooklyn-based indie dramedy about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch.At the Academy Awards on Sunday, Borisov is up for best supporting actor for the role.The war in Ukraine cut many Russian artists off from the West, but Borisov has been among the few who managed to transcend the dividing lines. He has continued a career in Russia, without endorsing or condemning the war, while in the West, he has evaded being seen as a representative of state-sponsored Russian culture.“Borisov hasn’t picked a side,” said Anton Dolin, a leading Russian film critic. “Maybe he is just very smart, or maybe he thinks he is not smart enough,” Dolin said by phone from Riga, Latvia, where he now lives in exile.“It doesn’t matter,” Dolin added. “His behavior and strategy have been impeccable.”Borisov at the BAFTA Film Awards in London this month. Over the past weeks, he has been on the road campaigning for awards for “Anora” and attending ceremonies.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Becoming Katharine Graham’ Review: A Newspaper Leader, in Her Voice

    The sibling filmmakers George and Teddy Kunhardt use a straightforward approach in this documentary about the Washington Post publisher, letting a pioneer shine.To tell the story of Katharine Graham, who led The Washington Post during a pivotal period for the paper and the nation, the sibling filmmakers George and Teddy Kunhardt use a standard approach, interweaving archival material with talking-head interviews. The result is a conventional documentary, and by all means an admiring one. But her story is so compelling — wrenching, inspiring, precedent-setting — that the straightforward account, with its fluidly constructed chronology and Graham’s voice front and center, hits the mark.Graham took the helm of the Post in 1963, after the suicide of her husband, Phil Graham, the dynamic publisher who had been tapped for the role by her father. At the time, Katharine Graham was stepping out of the shadows and confronting the cultural taboo against female bosses. Still, it took her a year to summon the courage to ask a question at an editorial meeting.Soon she’d be presiding over the newspaper’s transition from a local publication to one of national impact as it went head-to-head with the Nixon administration — first when it joined The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers, and then when it led the pack in reporting on the Watergate scandal. Excerpts from Richard Nixon’s secret White House tapes — the gift to historians that keeps on giving — reveal, in conversations spewing misogynistic venom, how intent the president was on destroying Graham and her company.The directors also highlight The Washington Post’s 1975 labor dispute with its printing press operators, hewing closely to the management perspective; a more robust and balanced look would have deepened the documentary, or at least injected a welcome bit of friction into its celebratory mood.This is a strong portrait despite such lapses, in large part because it’s fueled by Graham’s voice, via the audiobook of her autobiography and an ample selection of interviews. (She died in 2001, at 84.) With her distinctive upper-crust inflection and striking candor, she quietly explores her unlikely reinvention from self-doubting wife and daughter to groundbreaking businesswoman. Through her eyes, “Becoming Katharine Graham” illuminates a charged moment in American history.Becoming Katharine GrahamNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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    ‘A Sloth Story’ Review: Slow Cooking

    A family of sloths take their food truck to the big city in this animated movie directed by Ricard Cussó and Tania Vincent.The prospect of an animated movie about sloths introduces an invigorating challenge. What’s the best way to spin a comedic children’s story about the slowest-moving mammals on Earth? Sid, the central sloth in the “Ice Age” franchise, is slow of wit but swift in body, while “Zootopia” installed its sloth, Flash, as an unhurried employee of the Department of Mammal Vehicles.“A Sloth Story,” an Australian animated feature directed by Ricard Cussó and Tania Vincent, takes slothful speed and applies it not to gags, but to a sentimental story set in the culinary world. The Romero-Flores family have been in the restaurant business for generations, and are known for their slow cooking. But once the foursome survives a natural disaster that destroys their hometown, they’re forced to take their recipes on the road in a clanking food truck.The movie belongs to “The Tales from Sanctuary City,” an Australian franchise, and like its predecessors, “A Sloth Story” suffers from a plasticky visual design. The characters seem stiff, like action figures, and their food items, meant to look appetizing, are often rendered as colored medallions.The plot is a standard clash between art and commerce, embodied by a restless preteen sloth named Laura (voiced by Teo Vergara) and Dotti (Leslie Jones), a fast-food tycoon cheetah. It does make several gestures at real-world issues, most notably in the opening climate catastrophe and in a scene parodying cultural appropriation in the culinary industry. But “A Sloth Story” mainly sticks to the basics — solidarity, identity, growing pains — in a tale generic enough to match its title.A Sloth StoryRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Gene Hackman’s Career Is a Tribute to the Pugnacious Nature of Surprise

    He could be both paternal and terrifying, and had the ability to almost goad you into liking men who would otherwise be despicable.When you first see Gene Hackman in “The French Connection,” he’s wearing a Santa suit, conversing with a bunch of kids. It’s a jolly image that runs counter to what we’ll soon come to know about Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, the porkpie-hat-wearing detective that became one of Hackman’s most notable roles. The Santa disguise starts to peel off as he leaves the children behind to sprint after and brutalize a perp. Kindly Santa, this man is not.But that was the extraordinary power of Hackman, who was found dead Wednesday at his home in Santa Fe., N.M., at the age of 95. Throughout his long career — that was somehow too short, thanks to a conscious retirement — he mixed warmth with menace. He could be paternal as well as terrifying, sometimes all within the same film.Hackman often played men doggedly pursuing impossible goals despite looming threats and their superiors telling them to back off, but there was a doggedness about him, too. He had a pugnacious ability to almost goad you into liking guys who would otherwise be despicable, be they criminals, cops or just absentee fathers. Despite their often unsavory behavior, Hackman made it fun to spend time with these people, even if you might not want to encounter them in real life.Hackman never quite made sense as a movie star. When he was cast alongside Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), the movie that would net him his first Oscar nomination, that became obvious. While Beatty as one of the eponymous robbers was smooth with a luscious mane of black hair, Hackman’s Buck Barrow, Clyde’s brother, was jittery and balding — but no less an entrancing and terrifying presence, with a livewire energy that felt genuinely unmoored.“Bonnie and Clyde” cast members, from left: Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard.Bettman, via GettyHackman routinely inspired the use of the term “Everyman” in articles, but that seemed like an incomplete way of capturing his appeal. In 1989, The New York Times Magazine qualified that description by calling him “Hollywood’s Uncommon Everyman.” Twelve years later, The Times described him as “Hollywood’s Every Angry Man.” He was an Everyman with an asterisk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Superboys of Malegaon’ Review: Making a Local Hit

    Inspired by true events, this Hindi-language film is a love letter to scrappy moviemaking, and to friendship.In the Hindi-language film “Superboys of Malegaon,” a wedding videographer named Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) dreams of making movies that will transform his brother’s video parlor in the western Indian city of Malegaon into a movie theater, packed like the one across the street. For this fool’s errand, he enlists his closest friends.A love letter to independent filmmaking, “Superboys,” directed by Reema Kagti and written by Kagti and Varun Grover, has its requisite share of goofball pleasures and familiar insights about scrappy moviemaking in the shadow of a behemoth industry. But this tale — inspired by the 2008 documentary “Supermen of Malegaon” — succeeds most as a touching tribute to friendship.Although Malegaon is more than 200 miles by train from Mumbai, that distance doesn’t curtail the reach of the antipiracy police. Nasir learns this when he starts making films splicing Bollywood action sequences with scenes of Buster Keaton antics. Chastised but not cowed, Nasir and his friends — Shafique (Shashank Arora), Aleem (Pallav Singh), Akram (Anuj Duhan), Irfan (Saqib Ayub) and Farogh (Vineet Singh) — begin shooting their own film, which becomes a local hit. With success, tensions arise between the friends.Throughout “Superboys,” the fans crowding the movie theater are men. The sole woman on Nisar’s all-male set is Trupti (Manjiri Pupala), the female lead. But Katgi and Grover tease a marriage story subplot (featuring Muskkaan Jaferi as Shabeena) that expands the story to include women.Still, it’s the hangdog Shafique, a textile worker, who proves to be the heart of “Superboys.” When he coughs up blood, it heralds an authentic shift in tone. He becomes both a Superman and the movie’s kryptonite to cynicism.Superboys of MalegaonRated PG-13 for smoking and some language. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Accidental Getaway Driver’ Review: Hostage to the Past

    In Sing J. Lee’s big-hearted debut feature about Vietnamese American lives, three escaped prisoners take a cabdriver as their accomplice.The premise might sound like a riff on “Collateral,” but “The Accidental Getaway Driver” is no ticking clock thriller. Sing J. Lee’s quiet, big-hearted debut feature is steeped in the sorrow and yearning of its Vietnamese American characters as they work through the lingering trauma of displacement while living in Southern California.One late night an elderly cabdriver named Long (Hiep Tran Nghia) reluctantly does a final pickup, which puts him at the mercy of three rangy men who keep switching their destination. They all end up at a motel, where the terrified driver learns from the TV news that his fares are fugitives from prison — a moment that sounds too convenient, but comes straight from the 2017 GQ feature that inspired Lee’s film.Tay (Dustin Nguyen), a member of the group, keeps chatting with Long and confiding personal details, which only scares Long more: Will he know too much? But as the nights of laying low go on, the two men bond over their experiences with family separation and a buried sense of self. Tay harbors shame over his crimes, while Long, a divorced veteran, feels shunted aside by his estranged family.Tay’s companions — Aden (Dali Benssalah), their shifty leader, and a young-gun named Eddie (Phi Vu) — threaten to push the film into aggressive action. But despite comic touches, the story stays in the shadows of heart-to-heart talks and ruminations, with contemplative cinematography that sets faces like gems in the darkness and conjures heady visions of Long in Vietnam. Tay and Long might meet under duress, but their commiseration helps free them from their individual pain.The Accidental Getaway DriverRated R for language. In English and Vietnamese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Riff Raff’ Review: These Jokes Don’t Kill

    The dark mayhem spun up by this crime comedy might seem a little familiar.Watching this progressively tedious comedic thriller, one’s mind is apt to wander, and to recall the better films and television series of the past from which it lifts.The story device of the former stone-cold killer (portrayed here by Ed Harris) who trades in the assassin’s lot for that of the family man, which is this picture’s main thread, was done in a superior fashion in “A History of Violence” (2005). The doe-eyed and beautiful European woman who somehow manages to be at least slightly annoying, here incarnated by Emanuela Postacchini, brings to mind Maria de Medeiros in “Pulp Fiction” (1994). And this film’s good-hearted, moderately nerdy and slightly inept teen character, DJ (Miles J. Harvey), seems spun off from Steve Urkel of the TV show “Family Matters.” On top of it all is a pronounced Tarantino influence.Directed by Dito Montiel from a script by John Pollono, “Riff Raff” sees a very motley group of criminals converging on the Maine sanctuary of the retired assassin who Harris plays, Vincent. (Harris also had a prominent role in “A History of Violence,” which amplifies the déjà vu vibes.) Despite the abundance of flashbacks and the complicated histories of the characters, the movie is largely a series of mini-standoffs both emotional and physical.As Vincent’s first wife, Ruth, Jennifer Coolidge is an inexhaustible fount of vulgarity. She ultimately winds up as one of the main perpetrators of tedium. Bill Murray and Pete Davidson play hit men whose persistent slaying of ordinary citizens isn’t nearly as hilarious as Montiel seems to think it is. For all that, Harris and Murray are such reliably engaging screen presences that they provide a few glimmers of entertainment, provided you’re able to set aside the movie’s practically all-encompassing repulsiveness.Riff RaffRated R for violence, language, themes and yes, riff raff. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Cold Wallet’ Review: It’s Payback Time

    After losing big in a crypto swindle, three people in Massachusetts plot to get their money back.The “Steven Soderbergh presents” credit at the start of “Cold Wallet” raises expectations higher than can be sustained. The movie, directed by Cutter Hodierne, is a no-frills crime film that pits a group of wronged investors who trawl Reddit and YouTube for tips against an amoral crypto mogul who has stolen their savings. The matchup leaves the movie with a deficit of rooting interest.Billy (Raúl Castillo), a divorced dad, has bet big on a currency called Tulip Coin and plans to buy a house. But the exchange goes bust after the supposed demise of its chief executive, and investors like Billy are crushed. Then a hacker, Eva (Melonie Diaz), alerts Billy that the executive, Charles Hegel (Josh Brener), in fact faked his death. And he just happens to be hiding out in a mansion in the Berkshires, which is where both of them reside. It’s as if western Massachusetts were the only spot on the planet with internet.Billy, Eva and Billy’s friend Dom (Tony Cavalero), a pacifist with handy grappling skills, hatch a half-baked plan to break into the mansion and steal back the money from Charles. Naturally, it’s not so easy, and when Charles spends the night as their hostage, he tries to play them against one another. The storytelling economy (small cast, one main location) is welcome, but none of the four characters is the sharpest tool in the shed, and whatever insights Hodierne intends on the cutthroat world of crypto remain elusive.Cold WalletRated R for violence and bad investments. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More