Aurelia Butler

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    In ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics,’ Director Petra Costa Examines Brazil’s Rightward Shift

    The director Petra Costa examines a rightward shift in her country by zeroing in on the rise of a televangelist.Here is one thing that makes Petra Costa’s new documentary, “Apocalypse in the Tropics” (in theaters and streaming Monday on Netflix), so powerful: It is very precisely not about American politics. Yet the temptation for a segment of viewers to see it as being about that will, I suspect, be insurmountable. But Costa is here to tell a bigger story.She begins with the extraordinary shift in her homeland of Brazil toward evangelical Christianity — over the past 40 years, the percentage of Brazilians identifying as evangelical has grown to 30 percent from 5 percent, by some estimates. That’s an immense, almost unprecedented change.What’s more, it’s had radical effects on that nation’s politics, leading directly to the election of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Costa wasn’t raised to be particularly religious, so she approaches the subject as something of an anthropologist who knows Brazil well. (Her parents are left-wing Brazilian activists who opposed the military dictatorship that ruled from 1964 to 1985, and her fiery 2019 film, “The Edge of Democracy,” explored both her and her country’s political past.) Instead of focusing solely on Bolsonaro and his electoral battle with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the current president, Costa hones in on something else: the way the Pentecostal televangelist and celebrity Silas Malafaia has operated at the core of politics.She suggests that Malafaia, with the money and influence he wields, was extremely consequential in the rise and popularity of Bolsonaro. In other words, she argues that his media savvy, tied to capitalism and a certain strain of apocalypticism, accounts for the rightward lurch in Brazil’s politics.What she’s pointing out is how these three things — the lure of money, the lure of celebrity and the lure of power — constitute an unholy trinity, especially when held and venerated by a figure like Malafaia, who can dole them out. That has always been true. Humans love to be rich, popular and important, and a lot of the time those things can be woven into people’s religious beliefs, making those convictions even stronger.But it may be that elements of the present, like social media, internet misinformation and extinction-level threats to human life make that combination more potent than ever. That’s what “Apocalypse in the Tropics” draws out so well: This pattern in Brazil is infinitely repeatable. If you recognize it, well, it’s not because your country’s leaders are unique. It’s because while history may not repeat itself, it certainly rhymes. More

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    ‘Madea’s Destination Wedding’ Review: Hellur, Bahamas

    Tyler Perry returns as a series of characters, and this time, the real struggle for the family is boarding a plane.Tyler Perry reached a milestone this year: Two decades of “Madea” movies. The bigger-than-life female character Perry created for the stage has been entertaining audiences and confounding critics since the first “Madea” movie, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” hit theaters in 2005.As the title suggests, that picture leaned a little heavier into melodrama than broad comedy, despite the fact that Perry, as he would continue to do over the next two decades, played Madea as a kind of burlesque who wore outlandish dresses and substantial padding, and painted the character in broad strokes.In “Madea’s Destination Wedding,” the 13th “Madea” movie, she continues to take no prisoners when affronted. It begins with our heroine confronted by some would-be stickup kids at a service station; she douses their car with gasoline and lights it on fire as they speed away.The narrative gets more domesticated after this. Madea’s niece Tiffany (Diamond White), the daughter of her nephew Brian, is having a destination wedding in the Bahamas. Perry also plays Brian, in conventional guy clothing. Perry also plays Brian’s father, the white-haired, feckless Joe. In one scene, the three characters banter on the front stoop of a house. The sequence demonstrates Perry’s adroitness as a multicharacter performer; the dialogue is delivered with admirable timing and intonation. And his staging, shooting and editing show that he’s become an equally deft filmmaker.That said, the movie’s comedic family members yield a group workshop style of comedy that sometimes bogs down the narrative. The movie arguably has the longest plane-boarding scene in the history of cinema, followed by the longest hotel check-in scene. But if Madea speaks your movie love language, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.Madea’s Destination WeddingRated PG-13 for language and themes. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, Hitmaker Who Seemed to Vanish, Is Dead at 83

    His “The Happy Organ” reached No. 1 in 1959, but his pop stardom was short-lived, and his death in 2022, with an anonymous burial, remains a source of mystery.It’s not that Dave “Baby” Cortez was forgotten. A keyboardist, singer and songwriter, he emerged from the thriving Detroit doo-wop scene of the 1950s to score two Top 10 hits, one of which, “The Happy Organ,” an aural Tilt-a-Whirl of an instrumental, soared to No. 1 in March 1959 and sold more than a million copies.But he rarely granted interviews, particularly after largely abandoning the business, with a trace of bitterness, in the early 1970s. The few available online biographies provide almost no details of his life beyond his recording history and chart success.Taryn Sheffield, his daughter, said in an interview that she had not heard from him since 2009. “He’s been a recluse for many, many years,” she said.At times, he appeared to serve as a church organist in Cincinnati, said Miriam Linna, a founder of Norton Records, an independent New York label that in 2011 persuaded Mr. Cortez to record his first album since 1972. At other times, he appeared to be living in the Bronx, doing who knows what.It was only in recent weeks that Ms. Linna learned that he had been dead for three years.According to city records, Mr. Cortez — whose real name was David Cortez Clowney — died on May 31, 2022, at his home on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx. He was 83. His body lies in Plot 434 on Hart Island, the potter’s field off the coast of the Bronx, where some one million bodies are buried in unmarked graves.It was an ignominious end for an artist whose career was curious enough to begin with.Mr. Cortez was born on Aug. 13, 1938, in Detroit, one of two sons of David and Lillian Mae Clowney. His father played piano and encouraged David to follow suit.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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    Does Lorde Still Want to Be a Star?

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeLorde’s fourth album, “Virgin,” recently debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart, a reflection of the fan enthusiasm she’s held tight to for the decade-plus since she shook up pop’s insider-outsider balance with her breakthrough single, “Royals.”But on this album — and really, each album since her debut — she’s implicitly pondered whether being famous is all it’s cracked up to be, in terms of what the musical and personal expectations are. “Virgin” is maybe the most musically scattered of her albums, but in moments, she accesses an emotional directness that manages to turn this sometimes confused music into something direct and appealing.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how “Virgin” figures into the Lorde lore; whether making hits is a worthwhile endeavor; and whether knowing the circumstances of an album’s creation can enhance someone’s listening experience of it.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterHazel Cills, an editor at NPR MusicConnect 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. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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    ‘Wild Diamond’ Review: The Reel World

    In this French coming-of-age drama, a young woman auditions for a reality show to escape life at home.In “Wild Diamond,” the dream of reality TV stardom is one young woman’s salvation — a way out of her bleak life in southern France.But should a 19-year-old have to commodify her sexuality in the name of self-worth? Does it become more understandable — or more unsettling — when we learn she’s driven by emotional neglect?Even if we didn’t witness the fame-obsessed Liane (Malou Khebizi) shielding her younger sister from their mother’s sex sounds in the next room, or see the threat of eviction, we’d still sense trouble at home just by her frantic determination to make it onto “Miracle Island.”Liane auditions for the hit reality show, which might be her best shot at breaking free from the confines of her troubled family. But when she tattoos her abdomen — wincing in pain, then calmly flaunting the fresh ink for her thousands of TikTok followers — you want to show her another path. Moments like these crystallize, to heartbreaking effect, the movie’s uneasy compassion for influencer culture.Originally a short film by the writer-director Agathe Riedinger, this feature debut unfolds in waves of tension and release. Khebizi brings palpable desperation to the role of Liane, despite the limited script, while the cinematographer Noé Bach intimately frames Liane like we’re intruding on her space. Her glittering ambitions stand out all the more against this unadorned naturalist look.Eventually, we find out whether Liane got the role. But the film’s most haunting question remains: Which reality is safer — the one she’s learned to survive, or the one that tempts her with its illusion of hope?Wild DiamondNot rated. In French, Italian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Sovereign’ Review: The Fringe and the Forgotten

    Nick Offerman stars as an anti-government widower whose extremist philosophy inches closer and closer to violent conflict.Much of the American moment — of distrust, violence and the inevitable collision between the fringe and the forgotten — courses throughout “Sovereign,” the crime thriller from the writer and director Christian Swegal. In other words, one can immediately recognize Jerry Kane (a remarkable Nick Offerman), even if they are not familiar with the true events his story is based on.A proponent of the sovereign citizen movement, Jerry is intensely anti-government and sees himself as exempt from its laws, a philosophy that hinges closer toward violent conflict as he has run-ins with the police and ignores the bank’s foreclosure notices on his house. A widower and father, Jerry brings his teenage son, Joe (Jacob Tremblay), along to his seminars in which he teaches his ideas. Close to his father but itching for a normal childhood, Joe soon begins to chafe against Jerry’s beliefs.Dual father-and-son stories — one between Jerry and Joe, the other between the local police chief (Dennis Quaid) and his son on the force — form the film’s emotional thrust, sometimes for worse. “Sovereign” is most intriguing for its subtle, if incomplete observations of the more complicated realities of both sides of the law that inform and ripple from Jerry’s paranoid world.Meeting in basement conference rooms, the attendees at Jerry’s seminars are not acolytes of an extremist philosophy, but just ordinary people crushed by bills and the latest family emergency. Disenchanted by a system that seems to have forgotten them, they’re desperate for any answer — even if they don’t know the dark places it might lead them.SovereignRated R for violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight’ Review: Through a Child’s Eyes

    This drama about a white family in Zimbabwe is told almost entirely from the girl’s point of view.The family drama elegantly realized in “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is relayed entirely through the perspective of Bobo (Lexi Venter), a white child who witnesses her mother spinning out against a backdrop of the bloody transition from Rhodesia to an independent Zimbabwe.Written and directed by Embeth Davidtz and adapted from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, the film takes place during the 1980 election, when Robert Mugabe became prime minister.Tensions are high on the modest farm Bobo’s family, who comes from Australia, maintains alongside a small staff of Black laborers. An outdoorsy child, Bobo understands the world by observing the adults around her, particularly her mercurial mother, Nicola (Davidtz), whose feelings of entitlement over the land degenerate into racist mania. Amid the friction, Bobo’s chief ally is Sarah (Zikhona Bali), a Black maid who indulges Bobo’s longing for companionship despite concerns that her affinity with a white child could make her a target for Black militants fighting for independence.Davidtz, who grew up in South Africa during apartheid, uses jump cuts and an ever-moving camera to build a mood of youthful wonder, and the movie’s best sequences foreground Bobo’s childhood innocence. Because she lacks a conception of colonialism, Davidtz sometimes struggles to negotiate the film’s fidelity to her point of view with a more complete picture of the war. It doesn’t help that a past tragedy meant to round out Nicola’s character comes off as oversimplified. But as the spunky pixie holding the story’s reins, Bobo commands our attention.Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs TonightRated R for violence, assault and grown-up matters. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Brick’ Review: No Way Out?

    In the overly constructed thriller from Germany, tenants are trapped in apartment building by a mysterious bulwark.“Brick” is built almost entirely of hints and twists. Even so, it feels spoiler-free to share that Liv, an architect who is trapped in an apartment building in Hamburg, Germany, concludes that the material composing the barricades is neither carbon fiber nor liquid granite.Liv (Ruby O. Fee) attempts to escape the apartment building with her video game-designing spouse, Tim (Matthias Schweighöfer). Tim is haunted by flashbacks of a family tragedy, one that provides the movie its iffy metaphorical mortar and moral. Hint: Like the building, Tim’s emotions are also entombed.The pair may be at an impasse, but skills-wise, they are well-suited for the task at hand. The couple are joined by Marvin (an amusing Frederick Lau) and Ana (Salber Lee Williams), who are drug-imbibing lovebirds, as well as the cagey veteran Oswalt (Axel Werner) and his bright granddaughter, Lea (Sira-Anna Faal). They also meet an outlier set on not escaping: Yuri (Murathan Muslu).But what, exactly, is the mysterious bulwark that transforms from a mosaic of smooth black bricks to undulating metal and back again? Does it have anything to do with the inky plume billowing near the harbor? Or is it, as Marvin frets, some sort of diabolical game ginned up by their short-term “super-host”? Or maybe it’s a high-tech fortress keeping them safe from a Deep State catastrophe, as Yuri fervidly claims. The writer and director Philip Koch teases these ideas up to the final image.Make sure to watch this thriller in its original German. Dubbed into English, it goes from mildly diverting to landing like a ton of, well ….BrickNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More