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    Amie Donald Has the Moves as the Killer Robot in ‘M3gan 2.0’

    The sunny 15-year-old dancer-turned-actress is about as far as you can get from the role she’s best known for: a deadly A.I. doll.Onscreen, Amie Donald is best known for her role as the killer robot M3gan in the sci-fi horror franchise.But, in real life, Donald, 15, spends a majority of her days in the idyllic, sun-soaked setting of lushly forested New Zealand, where kiwi roam and she’s apt to take a bush walk outside her parents’ home in Papakura, a suburb in South Auckland.“I really enjoy all the nature here,” she said on a video call from the house on a recent morning. Her long red hair fell in beachy waves as sunlight danced on her white sweater. Framed photos of her and her parents and older brother filled the walls behind her.Donald is about the furthest you could get from the cutthroat killer robot returning in the new sequel, “M3gan 2.0.” For one thing, she smiles far too much. Other people, she said, would describe her as “very caring.” She wasn’t a fan of horror films until landing “M3gan” — though she’s since started watching them with her father, and now counts “It” and “The Purge” among her favorites. “I love them so much,” she said.M3gan, the robot that becomes frighteningly protective of a young girl named Cady, was Donald’s first role in a film, following her TV debut as Maya Monkey, an acrobatic girl with simian features, in Netflix’s postapocalyptic series “Sweet Tooth.”Amie Donald embodies the killer doll in the original and “M3gan 2.0,” although a synthetic mask covers her face.Geoffrey Short/Universal PicturesWe 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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    Prioritizing Diversity, Film Academy Will Widen Membership

    The group invited more than 500 actors, directors and others to join. Left off the list was Karla Sofía Gascón, the first Oscar-nominated openly trans actor.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Thursday that it would increase the Oscar voting pool to 10,143 people, a nearly 40 percent rise from a decade ago, when #OscarsSoWhite protests first put intense pressure on the group to diversify.The problem: Despite greatly expanding the membership of women and people of color, the overall makeup of the academy remains overwhelmingly male and white — a reflection of the film industry itself.If all of the 534 artists, technologists and other film workers invited to become members this year accept, the academy ranks will be 65 percent male and 78 percent white, according to data disclosed by the organization. In 2015, when the academy gave all 20 acting nominations to white actors for the first of two consecutive years, inspiring the #OscarsSoWhite movement, the group was 75 percent male and 92 percent white.By the academy’s count, 41 percent of this year’s invitees are women and 45 percent are people of color. About 55 percent are from overseas, which would lift the academy’s overall international contingent to 21 percent.Before the academy began to diversify its membership by race, gender and nationality, it limited annual invitations to as few as 115, contending that small classes kept the professional caliber of members high. In 2018, the academy invited 928 people. Last year, the number was 487.Invitees this year include past Oscar winners and nominees like Mikey Madison, Ariana Grande, Fernanda Torres, Monica Barbaro and Kieran Culkin. The list also has stars like Danielle Deadwyler, Aubrey Plaza, Naomi Ackie, Gillian Anderson and Jason Momoa.Left off the list was Karla Sofía Gascón, the first openly trans actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was among the best actress nominees at the most recent ceremony for her performance in “Emilia Pérez.” But she became a lightning rod after a journalist resurfaced a series of derogatory, years-old posts on X. In them, she denigrated an array of people, from Muslims to George Floyd, and even the Oscars ceremony itself. Gascón apologized but was largely shunned by the Hollywood establishment in the lead-up to the Oscars.The academy typically invites every nominee to become a member. (Others must be sponsored by two members for consideration.) But an invitation is not guaranteed; the rules state that academy committees must review candidates and make recommendations to the organization’s board, which has final say on invites.“Membership selection is based on professional qualifications, with an ongoing commitment to representation, inclusion and equity remaining a priority,” the academy said in a news release listing the invitees.The academy declined to comment on Gascón’s exclusion. More

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    ‘Sorry, Baby’ Review: Life and Nothing but, Beautifully

    In her tender, funny feature directing debut, Eva Victor tells the story of a woman, the trauma that changed her and the life she kept on living.In its intimacy and naked truth-telling, “Sorry, Baby” is the kind of independent movie that can seem like a gift. It’s an outwardly unassuming story of a woman, Agnes, grappling with the aftermath of an assault that has rearranged both her head and her world without destroying either. The movie has moments that can make you wince, but it’s often wryly and tartly funny because life is absurd and complicated, and people are, too. Something horrible happened to Agnes, and that horrible thing remains in her, body and soul. It changed how she lives, has sex and sleeps. Yet every morning it’s still Agnes who gets up; she’s still here.“Sorry, Baby” is the striking feature directorial debut of Eva Victor, who also wrote and stars as Agnes. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued, Agnes is a tenured English lit professor when the movie opens, teaching in a university in a New England town. She seems relatively happy or at least settled, though also unsettled. With her cat, she lives in a pleasantly ordinary, two-story house with white clapboards that could use a paint job. It’s cozy inside, with comfortable chairs and stacks of books. Sometimes, when the wind blows, the house’s bones creak, prompting Agnes to see what’s outside. And then she locks the door.Arranged nonchronologically in titled sections, “Sorry, Baby” opens in the present with Agnes eagerly expecting a visit from her close friend Lydie (an excellent Naomi Ackie). The two used to live together in the house when they were grad students at the same school where Agnes now teaches. Nothing particularly eventful occurs during Lydie’s visit, although everything that these two women say and do — their unforced ease, how they readily laugh together and exchange loving, knowing looks — adds detail and texture to the emerging story, as does the unexplained sight of them both tucked into Agnes’s bed when they’re sleeping.It’s easy to like Agnes and Lydie, and want to fall into their little circle and, by extension, the movie. The performances are natural and nuanced; the characters attractive, with bright smiles, sharp minds and a tender, easy way of sharing space and quiet, a feeling of comfort that comes from a deep, shared history. Victor slips exposition into the realistic dialogue, but for the most part she doesn’t overexplain. Instead, she uses everyday chatter, glances, pauses and intonations to flesh out the characters and their relationships. When at one point Lydie asks — her face now still and serious, her voice briefly coloring with discreet emotion — if Agnes ever leaves the house, this seemingly simple question takes on great weight.The heaviness of Lydie’s question, what’s behind it and why she’s posed it, emerges gradually. Not long after Lydie returns home — don’t leave, Agnes says, jokingly but not — the movie shifts back several years to when they were both in grad school. Rearranging time, deploying flashbacks and flash-forwards, can be a lazy filmmaking tic, but it’s integral here. The assault separated Agnes’s life into distinct periods: a before and an after. Real life may not be a series of tidy chapters that’s framed by a once upon a time and a happily every after, but shaping time into stories that we share, revisit, revise and keep reworking is how we make sense of life. And, as Victor gently insists throughout, this is a story about a life, not its trauma.American independent film is rife with tragedies and characters suffering nobly or messily, with cascades of tears and snot and sometimes splashes of blood. Such stories can be obviously moving and at times a relief, especially when compared with mainstream cinema’s stubborn, Hollywood-style insistence on happy, heroic and triumphant endings. Shoulders will invariably be squared, eyes thoroughly dried. Characters will move on so that the audience can make it to the exit in one reassuring piece (and come back for more entertainment). Our movies are filled with extraordinary violence that grievously victimizes characters. Yet nobody, filmmakers very much included, likes a victim. It carries a taint, like loser.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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    ‘Dune’ Director Denis Villeneuve to Take On Next James Bond Film

    Amazon MGM Studios announced earlier this year that it had gained creative control over the Bond franchise after a family had held those duties for more than 60 years.Four months after Amazon MGM Studios announced that it had gained control over the James Bond franchise, the movie studio said on Wednesday that Denis Villeneuve, the director behind the current “Dune” series, will direct the next Bond film.“Some of my earliest moviegoing memories are connected to 007,” Villeneuve said in a statement. “I grew up watching James Bond films with my father, ever since ‘Dr. No’ with Sean Connery.”Villeneuve, who also directed the action thriller “Blade Runner 2049,” admitted that the fictional superspy who has spawned 25 movies and earned billions of dollars at the box office was “sacred territory.”“I intend to honor the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come,” he said. “This is a massive responsibility, but also incredibly exciting for me and a huge honor.”The next Bond film, for which no lead actor has been announced, will be executive produced by Tanya Lapointe. Amy Pascal and David Heyman will serve as producers.The announcement may not be a total surprise. Villeneuve said in an interview with The Playlist in 2017 that he had conversations about directing a Bond film but the timing was an issue.Villeneuve, who is from Quebec, has emerged as one of Hollywood’s leading directors, particularly with the critical and commercial success of the “Dune” series. “Dune: Part One,” released in 2021, earned six Academy Awards and Villeneuve was nominated for best adapted screenplay. Last year’s “Dune: Part Two,” which returned stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, won two Oscars and more than $700 million in worldwide box-office sales. The third installment in the series, also directed by Villeneuve, is set to be released in December 2026.Amazon’s director announcement marks an incremental, but crucial step to getting Bond back onscreen. “No Time to Die,” the last Bond film, was released in 2021. It marked the end of a five-film series with Daniel Craig in the lead role.In February, it was announced that the family that had cautiously steered the Bond franchise for more than 60 years had agreed to relinquish control to Amazon. And this spring, the studio announced that a new video game featuring Bond, 007 First Light, would be released next year.The deal came after a standoff between Barbara Broccoli, who inherited control of Bond from her father, and Amazon, which gained a significant ownership stake in the franchise in 2021 as part of its $8.5 billion purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Before the deal, Broccoli and her brother, Michael G. Wilson, another Bond producer, had held a tight grip over creative control, including when new films would be made and other important casting decisions. More

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    ‘Afternoons of Solitude’ Review: Man Versus Bull

    Albert Serra’s mesmerizing documentary about a bullfighter faithfully depicts a violent tradition and the specter of death that suffuses it.Albert Serra’s first documentary feature, “Afternoons of Solitude,” shows the Peruvian-born torero Andrés Roca Rey as he battles bulls in the ring and psychs himself up offstage. The film’s faithful depiction of the bloody Spanish tradition could serve as an argument against the much-protested practice, but Serra’s vision is mesmeric not polemic. He records spangled ceremonies marinated in the fear of death, producing an X-ray of the male ego and its costly upkeep.Serra doesn’t frontload the spectacle: He likes to observe Roca Rey at rest, driven in a crowded car and facing a fixed camera. The fresh-faced bullfighter obsesses over his matches and masculinity, and his cuadrilla (team of assistants) big him up like a boxer before a fight. Serra’s mastery of mood in the film builds on an iconoclastic career spanning from the Don Quixote deconstruction “Honor of Knights” to the atomic tropicalia of “Pacifiction.”In the ring, Roca Rey and the bull are often tensely composed in medium shots and close-ups. The face-offs are hypnotic, like those between a mongoose and python; Roca Rey grimaces as he risks being gored in his angling and attacks. But notions of courage are complicated by the preparatory rituals of the “picadors,” who stab the bulls until they are weakened by muscle injury and blood loss.If this review sounds conflicted, that reflects the power of a nonfiction film that might also escape its director’s loftier intentions. This flop-sweat portrait suggests that a toreador is never as brave as the bull and maybe knows it.Afternoons of SolitudeNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More