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    ‘Smurfs’ Trailer Shows Rihanna as Smurfette and Promises New Music

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    The first preview of the animated feature shows the singer in her “blue era” and assures fans that new songs from her will be featured on the soundtrack.Music superstar, beauty mogul, fashion designer and … Smurfette? Rihanna’s next big role may not be what you were expecting.On Thursday, Paramount released a trailer for “Smurfs,” giving us a first look at the singer as the elflike, blonde-haired, blue-skinned creature. In an animation style that blends smooth 3-D rendering with elements that evoke the classic hand-drawn cartoons, Smurfette leads her cohort into the real, live-action world on a quest to Paris to find Papa Smurf after he mysteriously disappears.The trailer begins with Rihanna, in human form, addressing the audience.“I can’t wait for you all to see it this summer,” she says, with sunglasses largely covering her Smurf-blue eye shadow. She had teased the trailer in an Instagram post on Wednesday, which was a short video captioned “in my blue era.”The animated movie also features an ensemble cast including Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Sedaris, Nick Kroll and Dan Levy, and is directed by Chris Miller, who previously helmed “Shrek the Third” and “Puss in Boots.” It will be a musical-comedy reboot of ‘The Smurfs’ film franchise, which last had an installment with “Smurfs: The Lost Village” in 2017.In addition to playing Smurfette, Rihanna is a producer on the movie. But, in what will most likely be the biggest news for her fans, who have been clamoring for more music since her album “Anti” was released in 2016, the trailer ends with a message advising people to “presave” the movie’s soundtrack, which will feature new music from Rihanna.It also says the movie will include the song “Higher Love,” recorded by Desi Trill and featuring DJ Khaled, Cardi B, Natania and Subhi.“Smurfs” is set to release on July 18. More

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      ‘Parthenope’ Review: Goddess Worship

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      Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, this decadent drama about a beautiful young woman is a one-sided meditation on art, desire and spirituality.“Beauty is like war — it opens doors,” says the middle-aged American writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman) to Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta), a statuesque brunette from Naples whom he meets at a resort. It’s southern Italy, 1973, and Cheever (Oldman in a small but memorably melancholic part) strikes up a friendship with her early on in the film.“Parthenope,” a characteristically decadent drama by the director Paolo Sorrentino, is about all the doors opened by Parthenope’s beauty. At first — when she’s seen primarily in a bikini, lounging by crystalline ocean waters — this means capturing the hearts of male suitors, like her namesake siren from Greek mythology.Cheever, who in real life spent years traveling around Italy, is one of the few men in the film who is immune to her charms — maybe it’s the booze, or his repressed yearning for men. Or maybe it’s because a woman like her should be admired from a distance as one does a religious icon or marble statue.If this way of idealizing women sounds painfully retrograde, know that Sorrentino isn’t interested in realism — or political correctness, for that matter. His work (including the Oscar winner “The Great Beauty” and the HBO series “The Young Pope”) is less about people than it is about big ideas: art, desire, religion, and, yes, beauty; the way they shape our lives with an almost mystical power.Now add to this an enduring fixation with Sorrentino’s native Italy, its past and present, and its contradictions. The country is home to some of the world’s great triumphs — think ancient Rome and the Sistine Chapel — but the director also depicts it as a hotbed of spiritual rot personified by its corrupt leaders. At one point in the film, Parthenope enjoys a dalliance with a monstrous bishop (Peppe Lanzetta), representing a union of the sacred and the profane.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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      ‘Heart Eyes’ Review: Love Is in the Air, Along With a Machete

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      Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding meet cute, then meet killer in this rom-com masquerading as a horror movie.Holiday rom-com lovers who are also slasher film completists: That’s the coterie that might go for Josh Ruben’s “Heart Eyes,” a romantic comedy feebly masquerading as a horror movie.The hallmarks of a Hallmark Channel meet-cute are baked into the setup: Ally (Olivia Holt), a young marketer for a jewelry company, at first resists the charms of a handsome freelancer, Jay (Mason Gooding), when they’re paired on a project.But as romance blossoms between the two, horror kicks in as they become the target of the Heart Eyes killer, a hulking maniac who travels the country slaughtering lovers, disguised behind a mask with heart-shaped eye holes that glow red.Ruben tries to keep the action moving. But he’s hampered by a disheveled and directionless script — credited to Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy — that repeatedly strands its characters in idle dialogue scenes, including a tedious episode at the world’s emptiest police station. Holt and Gooding have the chemistry of strangers whose speed date is speed tanking.It’s hard to discern who the film is for when it feels as if it’s been passed around genre writing classes in search of an identity. It’s Valentine’s Day-themed, but the rom-com crowd probably won’t last long with a monster who gruesomely plunges machetes into bodies. Horror fans have seen the film’s many slasher conventions employed before with far more novelty and purpose. The comedy is Nebraska: broad and flat.A horror rom-com can be delightful — “Lisa Frankenstein” nailed it — but this film would put even Cupid in a bad mood.Heart EyesRated R for prodigious violence, gore and literal heartbreak. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bring Them Down’ Review: Sinister Revenge in Rural Ireland

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      Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan are beleaguered sheep farmers at war in this gory drama.The lush, green, gorgeous scenery of rural Ireland is on generous display in “Bring Them Down,” a drama written and directed by Christopher Andrews. Nevertheless, if you choose to subject yourself to this meticulously crafted but intermittently punishing film, you might emerge with a determination to never visit the place ever. You may also find yourself with a permanent disinclination to ever consume a leg of lamb.The people of this film are sheep farmers and they are not a happy lot. The focus is on two intertwined families. There’s Christopher Abbott’s Michael, a brooder, his black beard an insufficient mask for the ever-grim cast of his face. He lives with his incapacitated father, Ray, and when they’re alone together they speak Irish, an indication of their old-school values.Those are shared by their neighbor Gary (Paul Ready), who’s married to Michael’s ex-girlfriend Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone). The movie opens with a car accident, shortly after Michael’s mother informs him that she’s leaving his father. This crash kills the mother and leaves Caroline with a scar over one side of her face.That’s a lot of water under the bridge. In the present day, Gary and Caroline are the parents of Barry Keoghan’s Jack, a surly but ultimately heartbreakingly sensitive fellow. The shepherding rivalry between the two families grows increasingly vindictive and disturbingly gory as the picture moves along.This portrait of already wounded people who can’t stop inflicting pain on themselves and each other has a great deal of integrity. But if you’re seeking ennobling sentiment, you’ll do well to look elsewhere.Bring Them DownRated R for grisly animal treatment, language, themes. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Kinda Pregnant’ Review: The Belly of the Beast

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      Amy Schumer plays a jealous best friend who fakes her own pregnancy in this Netflix comedy filled with dopey men and miserable women.If the aftermath of the pandemic saw a number of horror movies about the miseries of maternity, another subgenre is making a comeback: the pregnancy comedy. Like “Babes” before it, Tyler Spindel’s “Kinda Pregnant” (on Netflix) takes childbearing, rearing and regretting and spins them into a romp.Starring a feral Amy Schumer, this clunker of a movie opens with a first act that appears filched from “Legally Blonde”: a marriage proposal that isn’t. The romantic letdown — which finds our heroine, Lainy (Schumer), shrieking in Spanx in public — coincides with the pregnancy of her bestie, Kate (Jillian Bell). What’s left for a gal to do other than don a silicone belly in envy?The potential of this bizarre prenatal cosplay for blows — and burns, and a stab wound — to Lainy’s fake stomach does not go overlooked, although the traditional cycle of the seasons seems to have been. Despite tracing Kate’s gestation from autumn to spring, the movie’s weather and attire are all over the place.Most egregiously, the world of “Kinda Pregnant” is filled with dopey men and despairing women whose torments, parental or otherwise, make for a land mine of comedy duds. Will Forte, playing a deus ex man-child, does manage to pull off a few funny lines and some real chemistry with Schumer. But this is a movie less interested in relationships than in the sundry items, from a balloon to a rotisserie chicken, that Lainy can stuff under her shirt to fake a baby bump.Kinda PregnantRated R for foul language and rotisserie chicken gags. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Armand’ Review: When a School Is a Trap

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      Renate Reinsve stars in a drama about an insular community that is intermittently interesting.Technically, “Armand” is not a folk horror movie. Technically, it’s not a horror movie at all. But the director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel wants us to wonder what we’re in for from the very start. First we see, in claustrophobically panicky close-up shots, a woman blazing down the road in her car. She’s speaking urgently on the phone to someone named Armand, asking if he is OK. Something is clearly wrong.Then we’re at a school, and the camera glides along the hallways slowly, as if it is a ghost observing the surroundings that we — and she — are about to enter. Ominous music plays. Something bad is lurking.What the bad thing is takes a while to unfold, and no, it’s not a monster. (Not exactly.) Instead, “Armand” is about the way harm, perpetuated across generations, causes communities to turn insular. Outsiders threaten established order, and must be dealt with accordingly. It’s this theme that makes the film feel like folk horror.But for most of its running time, “Armand,” which Tondel also wrote, feels more like a realist drama, the kind in which a school stands in for the whole of society, much like the 2023 film “The Teacher’s Lounge.” Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve), the woman in the car, is the single mother of 6-year-old Armand, who has done a disturbing thing to a classmate. That classmate’s parents, Sarah and Anders (Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Endre Hellestveit), are headed to the school as well for a meeting about the situation. The headmaster (Oystein Roger) and the school counselor (Vera Veljovic) have decided to put a junior teacher named Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen) in charge of the meeting. She may be in over her head.There’s a lot of sitting and talking in classrooms, and a lot of taking breaks so people can go to the bathroom or tend to a nosebleed. The meeting progresses in fits and starts, which is as annoying to the characters as it is to the audience: Just when things get started, the attendees stop, get up, go somewhere. We move in and out of the classroom with them, back and forth through the halls, the place eventually starting to appear like a maze in which every hallway simply leads to some place we feel like we’ve already been.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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      ‘The Fishing Place’ Review: A Village Under Suspicion

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      Rob Tregenza’s latest film, set in a German-occupied Norwegian village, follows a housekeeper dispatched to spy on a priest.“The Fishing Place” is a visually arresting exploration of resistance, including that of its writer-director, Rob Tregenza. Set in a German-occupied Norwegian village in World War II, it tracks several characters circling one another in a world that’s striking for its natural beauty and its humming menace. Outwardly, everything and everyone here looks so ordinary, including the prosperous resident who, early on at a get-together at his home, salutes his guest of honor. “Our friendship goes way back,” he says, “we have been on the same team.” He then raises his glass, inviting the room to do the same, and toasts his guest, a Nazi officer.Beautifully shot in film by Tregenza and divided into two discrete sections, the movie opens on a fjord in the southern Norwegian county of Telemark. It’s winter. Snow has heavily blanketed the ground and dusted the surrounding forest and jagged peaks, lending the village a picture-postcard quality. Although Tregenza doesn’t offer much by way of historical background, it seems worth noting that Telemark is the birthplace of Vidkun Quisling, the head of the Norwegian government under occupation whose name became a synonym for traitor. It’s also the setting for Anthony Mann’s 1965 war film “The Heroes of Telemark,” in which Kirk Douglas plays a Norwegian physicist turned heroic resistance fighter.The mild intrigue in “The Fishing Place” is almost incidental to the overall movie and centers on Anna (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), a middle-age woman who arrives in the village with a single suitcase and no explanation. Sometime later, she is approached by the Nazi officer, Hansen (Frode Winther), a Norwegian with whom she has a murky history. “May I have this dance,” he says with a threatening undertone just before reminding her that she once turned him down. He seems to be holding a grudge; he also holds the power. So, when he orders Anna to begin working as a housekeeper for a newly arrived priest, Honderich (the quietly charismatic Andreas Lust), and reporting on his activities, she gets to work.Much of what transpires involves Anna, Hansen and Honderich, a German Lutheran. As life goes on, the priest tends to the oddly unwelcoming community — several residents warn him about the town — as Anna and the officer keep watch. Along the way, Tregenza seems to directly nod at the Mann movie, including in a scene set inside the priest’s church. More generally, Tregenza’s film offers up a counterpoint to the fantasies (and national myths) that turn history into screen entertainment, people into glamorous heroes. Tregenza is adept at deploying the conventions of mainstream fiction — guns are fired here, blows struck and brows furrowed — but he’s more interested in dismantling norms than in just recycling them.In that respect, the most intriguing figure in “The Fishing Place” is, in a manner of speaking, Tregenza, who throughout the film continuously draws attention to his camerawork, as he plays with the palette and different registers of realism, mixing in naturalistic scenes with more stylized ones that border on the hieroglyphic. His touch is evident right from the beginning with an eerie image of what looks like a ghost fishing boat adrift on the water amid tendrils of sea fog. Soon, Anna has arrived and with the camera parked behind her, glides toward the town. She looks like she’s floating on air, as if she too were a specter.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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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in February

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      This month’s new arrivals include an insightful docudrama about a fraudulent wellness blogger and a rare TV role for Robert De Niro.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of February’s most promising new titles for U.S. subscribers. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Apple Cider Vinegar’Starts streaming: Feb. 6The Australian mini-series “Apple Cider Vinegar” is a fictionalized version of a true story about Belle Gibson, a wellness influencer who became the center of a scandal when she admitted to lying about overcoming cancer through strict dieting. Kaitlyn Dever plays Belle, who becomes addicted to the positive attention she receives — not to mention the money — when she begins sharing her made-up story on social media. Alycia Debnam-Carey plays Milla, another alternative health advocate who becomes first an inspiration to Belle and then a rival for likes and clicks — although her testimonials, too, are not strictly on the level. Aisha Dee rounds out the main cast as Chanelle, a friend of Milla’s who works with Belle and gets caught in the middle of the escalating quackery.‘La Dolce Villa’Starts streaming: Feb. 13This romantic comedy offers two main attractions. One is Scott Foley, a veteran TV actor with a disarming screen presence. He plays Eric, a busy business consultant and widower who puts his career on hold to help his daughter, Olivia (Maia Reficco), extract value from a suspiciously cheap piece of rural Italian real estate. The movie’s other big star is its sun-dappled location, where these two Americans discover some unexpected passions: Eric for cooking and the local dignitary Francesca (Violante Placido); and Olivia for interior design and the charming local restaurateur Giovanni (Giuseppe Futia). Directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls,” “Freaky Friday”), “La Dolce Villa” emphasizes the sensual seductions of the European countryside.‘Court of Gold’Starts streaming: Feb. 18When the U.S. Olympic Team first started sending N.B.A. players to compete internationally in 1992, the idea was to grow the sport of basketball so that one day, the United States would not, by default, have the most dominant players. This past summer’s Paris Olympics saw that plan fully coming to fruition, as the United States was tested night after night by the new N.B.A. superstars from Canada, Serbia, France and elsewhere. The documentary series “Court of Gold” offers behind the scenes access with the Americans as they prepare for a real challenge. The director Jake Rogal also spends time with the other top competitors, who no longer fear the United States the way teams did 30 years ago. Across six episodes, the series tells the story of a dramatic Olympics tournament, with twists and comebacks and a lot of pride on the line.‘Zero Day’Starts streaming: Feb. 20Robert De Niro takes his first regular role in an American TV series in this political thriller, playing George Mullen, a former U.S. president who gets pulled back into public service during a national emergency. When a global cyberattack results in widespread destruction and fatalities, the aged but still popular Mullen is asked to head a commission to uncover who was responsible, with vast and possibly unconstitutional powers at his command. The stacked cast also includes Lizzy Caplan as Mullen’s politically ambitious daughter, Joan Allen as his worried wife and Angela Bassett as the current president, who has reluctantly called for her predecessor’s help. Jesse Plemons, Matthew Modine, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, Gaby Hoffmann, Connie Britton and Clark Gregg play various friends and foes who — even when they appear to be on Mullen’s side — have their own mysterious agendas.‘Running Point’Starts streaming: Feb. 27Based loosely on the life of the Los Angeles Lakers president Jeanie Buss, this fast-paced sports sitcom has Kate Hudson playing Isla Gordon, a basketball-savvy executive in the offices of the Los Angeles Waves. When a family scandal leaves Isla in charge of the team her father and brothers ran for decades, she has to overcome industry sexism, fan skepticism and various boardroom struggles to put the floundering franchise in position for a playoff run. “Running Point” is run by the “Mindy Project” writer-producer team of Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen, with Buss as an executive producer. They pepper underdog story beats throughout a close-up look at an often overlooked woman, trying to prove she can handle pro basketball’s big personalities.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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      ‘Emilia Pérez’ and the New Era of Online Oscar Scandals

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      As Karla Sofía Gascón’s resurfaced social media posts upend the campaign for the year’s most-nominated film, what happens now?Last August, when I first met and interviewed the “Emilia Pérez” star Karla Sofía Gascón, she told me that she was not the type of person to back down from a conflict.“I’m a great warrior,” Gascón said then. “I love to fight. If it was up to me, I would go to all the talk shows and fight with everybody all the time.”She shared this to illustrate how fraught her life had become in the years leading up to “Emilia Pérez,” when Gascón, previously known to Mexican audiences for her work in telenovelas, came out publicly as a trans woman. But that hint at her combative nature could also have been considered something of a sneak preview, now that the newly Oscar-nominated actress has become embroiled in a scandal — and embarked on a defiant media blitz — that has imperiled both her career and the formerly front-running awards campaign of “Emilia Pérez.”As recently as last week, the 52-year-old actress and the Spanish-language musical she stars in were riding high. With a field-leading 13 Oscar nominations, “Emilia Pérez” represented Netflix’s strongest shot at finally nabbing its first best-picture trophy, while Gascón had already made history as the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Oscar.Gascón is the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Oscar.Pathé FilmsThen, last Wednesday, the journalist Sarah Hagi unearthed years-old posts Gascón had written on X that denigrated Muslims (saying Islam was “becoming a hotbed of infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured”), called George Floyd a “drug-addicted con artist,” and criticized the diverse winners of the 2021 Oscar telecast (“I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8-M”). In a statement issued by Netflix the next day, Gascón apologized for the posts. But instead of allowing the dust to settle, the star took matters into her own hands.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