Movies

The sirens of sexual revolution sing with surprising gentleness in “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” the New Group’s musical adaptation of Paul Mazursky’s 1969 movie. The prime asset of this friendly but toothless show, which opened on Tuesday night at the Pershing Square Signature Center, is Duncan Sheik’s pastel score, a hazy evocation of roads not taken by two square, 30-something couples floundering through a bewildering new world of erotic freedom.As our show’s title characters strip down at a consciousness-raising institute in Big Sur, boogie in a nightclub where they’re the oldest people in the room and ponder the temptations of spouse swapping, you’ll hear none of the swirling orgasmic chords and pumping rhythms that regularly churned the airwaves of the late 1960s. There’s no equivalent here to “Come on baby, light my fire.”Sheik, who trafficked in a more defiant sensuality in his Tony-winning score for “Spring Awakening,” takes a slyer, quieter approach here. The first number heard — which is described by a radio disc jockey as “the latest tune that all the hip youngsters are grooving to” — is called “The Wind in Your Hair,” and it’s a polyphonic caress of a song that you could imagine having a future as elevator music.This isn’t the language of the Stones or the Doors, but of Burt Bacharach (a composer used in the movie) and Michel Legrand. It’s invitational easy listening underlaid with apprehension. And it perfectly reflects the anxieties of four comfortably married, middle-class people who are starting to wonder if they’re missing out on the big, freewheeling party of the Age of Aquarius.Sheik’s questioning, blurry music — which is expertly overseen by a figure identified as the Band Leader (the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega) — matches not only the tentativeness of the leading quartet but also the overall tone of this production, which is directed by Scott Elliott and features a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman. That is both a relief and, finally, a problem.When I had heard that the New Group was adapting the cinematic satire that made Mazursky’s reputation, I worried that it might become a vehicle for Elliott’s known fondness for ’60s kitsch and confrontational sexuality. After all, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” is often (incorrectly) remembered today as a smirky period piece, with that notorious ad that showed its four stars — Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon — sharing a bed and presumably naked beneath the sheets.Aside from a brief flash of bared bum in the final scene, there is no full nudity here, and the show looks at its characters not with a leer but a rueful smile of compassion. This is in keeping with the tone of the movie, which — like much of Mazursky’s subsequent work (“An Unmarried Woman,” “Blume in Love”) — pondered the restless longings that derail well-ordered lives.But what makes the film feel fresh today is the loose, improvisational style of its performances, which are allowed to take their time in revealing character. Sherman’s script retains many of the set pieces and much of the dialogue from the movie, but out of context, they often feel flat.It was the idiosyncratic performances that gave the movie a charm that sidestepped caricature. (As rendered by Cannon and Gould, who both received Oscar nominations, even a “not-tonight-dear-I-have-a-headache” sequence soared.)In this version, Bob, a documentary filmmaker, and his wife, Carol (the Culp and Wood roles), are played by Joél Pérez and Jennifer Damiano. Their goofier, less glamorous best friends, Ted and Alice (the Gould and Cannon parts), are embodied here by Michael Zegen (the cheating husband on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) and Ana Nogueira.Spiffy in their ’60s glad rags (Jeff Mahshie did the tasty costumes), they’re perfectly agreeable company, especially when they’re interacting with the audience. (More on that later.) But if the couples switched characters in mid-play, it wouldn’t make much difference.They all sing pleasantly, recite their lines clearly and move with graceful awkwardness when the show requires it. (Kelly Devine did the musical staging.) Yet I could tell you very little about the characters’ specific personalities. And without that sense of ineffable individuality, the satire — of the Sixties-style search for enlightenment and eternal youth — feels formulaic.This sense is compounded by the interchangeability of their songs. These numbers — featuring generally clunky lyrics by Sheik and Amanda Green — all draw from the same well of wistfulness. Alice, the most disapproving of the quartet, is set apart by staccato limerick-flavored solos, but they’re unbearably forced. (Of Ted she sings, “Whenever he tries to be erotic/It’s hard to describe, but could you prescribe a narcotic?”)As our polymorphic host, the brandy-voiced Vega — a Grammy winner whose pop hits include “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner” — is a delightful, smoothly sardonic presence. Whether embodying a spiritual masseur at an Esalen-style retreat, a bartender, or even a hunky tennis pro, she remains poised between embracing warmth and distancing coolness, a discreetly entertaining font of omniscience.While I could have done without the show’s arch reflections on a time when smoking was still fashionable (in one scene, the characters identify themselves by their cigarette brands), Elliott’s staging is engagingly resourceful. The band is fully visible at the back of Derek McLane’s simple and mutable set, and microphones are always at the ready for when someone feels an insight coming on.And when a scene requires more people than the cast can summon by itself — say, an encounter group — the performers enlist front-row audience members to fill in. This is normally the sort of interaction that makes me wince.But Damiano, Pérez, Nogueira and Zegen are at their most relaxed and likable when they’re guiding reluctant theatergoers through the fourth wall. Mazursky’s movie ended with a lovely all-embracing coda, in which the leading characters drifted hopefully and curiously through a crowd of strangers.It was a testimony to the question marks of potential — the fear, the hunger, the resentment, the kindness — within every person, and I couldn’t imagine it being captured onstage. But if this musical seldom succeeds in creating incisive individual character portraits, it’s pretty good at summoning the endless, poignant possibilities that lurk within a crowd.Bob & Carol & Ted & AliceTickets Through March 22 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan; 917-935-4242, thenewgroup.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

If something’s not right with the Oscars, what about them is most wrong? The joylessly algebraic nomination process? All those old white voters? That we seriously call September to February awards season, like it’s weather or the flu? Whatever it is, we’re looking at nine best-picture nominees and 19 actors that have got a lot of people rolling their eyes — people like me. And I’m not an eye-roller about these things. I love the Academy Awards.For reasons too dumb to get into, I’ve bought four different copies of “Inside Oscar,” Damien Bona and Mason Wiley’s drinkably juicy, year-by-year history of the awards and the show. For a chunk of my childhood, I listened to the broadcast on a contraband Walkman because, you know, bedtimes and stuff. In college, my best friend and I used to make lists of the likely nominees until the internet put that part of the friendship out of business. And every year, I still have a surprise-nominee dream. (Alfre Woodard, in my unconscious, you were up for “Passion Fish,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Clemency”!)Why the hell am I like this? I’m not in the Academy. Lots of what I love never gets near a nomination. And the winners and losers don’t make my life better or worse. But I do think the Oscars are a diagnosis of the health of the movies. They tell everybody what the people who make our movies like — or what they want us to think they like; what they want one another to think they like. They can be miserably transparent (how many movies about show business have won best picture?); and risibly self-congratulatory (bloated epics, vanity projects, “Crash”). But it’s always useful to know where a moviegoer stands with these people. And the five to 10 films nominated for best picture operate as a class that doubles as an X-ray — of the Academy and the movie business.This year the X-ray feels like it was removed from a time capsule. And a little Oscar radiology reveals that eight of the nine movies (minus “Parasite”) are about white people — and, excusing “Little Women,” and Scarlett Johansson in “Marriage Story” notwithstanding, about white men. “Little Women” is the lone nominee that a woman directed.O.K., but what’s to roll my eyes at? Welcome to the Nth Annual Academy Awards! I hear that. This might be a reductive way of looking at the Oscars. Math is just organizing the preferences and passions of about 9,000 people. Why’s race such a factor now? Well, for one thing, when it comes to the Oscars, there is some accounting for taste. And this year, the problem isn’t with the particular remaining movies — “1917,” “Ford v Ferrari,” “The Irishman,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Joker” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” — or the white people in them. Not since my wish list and Walkman days, have I despised so few nominees in this category. Most of them I love. As for the one failure, I’ve never worked harder to get with the program. But after four tries, I gave up. ‘The Joker,” quite often literally, has no clothes.Assembled, these distinct movies become a representative entity, and a person like me notices a theme that could poke out an eye. And whiteness is part of that story. It’s always been, of course. But this year feels different. A homogeneity has set in. The nominated movies start to look like picture day at certain magnet schools. “Jojo Rabbit” is a Hitler Youth comedy! Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time …” is a dream about the accidentally heroic pre-emption of racist Charles Manson’s murder plot. And “Little Women” quietly dramatizes the freedom white women experience after the men have left to fight a war; a war to end the enslavement of black people. Sounds a little too ironic, and yet the movie means us to understand the irony. Those white ladies are better off than any black people. They’re just not equal to the women’s enlisted brothers, fathers and beaus. The border between their time and ours has a gusty permeability.Some of what’s so strong about “The Irishman” and “Once Upon a Time …” comes from how remembered they both feel — rue-soaked in the first movie; heavy with “what if” in the other. At the movies (in the West), the convenient thing about the past is that you can solve the matter of race by pretending it doesn’t exist. Most of these movies, in addition to their thematic rearview, are based in actual history. (“1917” sends two British World War I soldiers on a critical, thrillingly stressful postal mission.) You can’t put nonwhite people in places they weren’t — and when a movie does, you get something mildly anarchic like a biracial Jewish New Zealander having a ball playing Hitler.Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time …” has a great line; as they wait for their car, Brad Pitt tells a weepy Leonardo DiCaprio, “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” Their white American maleness is too mythic and valuable to go around blubbering all over valets. “Joker” is about a comedian, but it doesn’t have Tarantino’s sense of humor about its whiteness. Whiteness here is a tragic, symbolic condition. Overlooked, unseen, under-medicated, Joker, and eventually his disciples, discover that being a guy with a carnival-ready white face helps get him the attention he wants. And even though this is the only movie of the bunch (the only non-Korean, Hitler-free movie) to feature even remotely meaningful parts for nonwhite actors (a bunch of Latinos beat up Joker in the opening minutes; his social worker and neighbor are black women), guess what: He kills a lot of them!Couldn’t these nine movies just be evidence of taste? Good taste? They certainly could. They are. And yet, after the hash tags and threatened boycotts, after “Hidden Figures,” “Get Out” and “Black Panther” and “BlacKkKlansman”; after “Moonlight” winning over “La La Land”; after no woman being a two-time directing nominee; after the touted diversification campaigns and calls for “inclusion riders” (calls in acceptance speeches!); and in the same year that a popular Latina surprisingly missed the cut and the only black acting nominee is playing a plantation escapee (albeit one of history’s most famous escapees, but still) — the assembly of these movies feels like a body’s allergic reaction to its own efforts at rehabilitation.Only two of the nine movies are set in what we’d called the present moment; and one of those (“Parasite”) comes to us from Seoul. Which means, the other seven — six of which are set in the United States — take place in the past. The last time something like that happened was in 2009, back when there were still only five nominees and the movie most present was set in Mumbai — “Slumdog Millionaire.” Before that it was the premillennial time warp of 1999: two movies taking place in Elizabethan England and three set during World War II. Out with the new, in with the ancient!So what’s happening now isn’t exactly novel. Plus, movies set in the present almost never win. The 2017 fiasco that left “La La Land” confused for “Moonlight” is a rare example of front-runners set close to now. I, at least, am amazed that the only two of the nine movies pointing a way forward, embracing modernity (shrewdly in “Little Women”), are by a white American woman and a South Korean man. And that the movie expected to win the Oscar takes place 103 years ago.Maybe this is just bad luck. I mean, what could the Academy have done to prevent itself from duplicating schisms beyond the movie theater? National schisms. (Nationalist schisms.) According to all the forecasting, these were the nine most predicted nominees. There’s no shafted movie by or about nonwhite people, despite certain passions for “The Farewell” and “Hustlers” or even mine for “Waves.” The last thing I’d want is for the Academy to vet and damage-control the nominees, the way the muckety-mucks who operate the Grammys are rumored to do. Guys, too many whites! We got to get “Queen & Slim” in here. Let the Academy Awards do what they’ve always done: Tell on the film industry.We’re in the middle of so many shifts. The aim to diversify the movies looks like it’s taking hold just as there are fewer middlebrow studio movies and streaming is becoming king. Some of the shifts involve the remakes, reboots and reimaginings that keep falling from the intellectual property tree — the eternal reliance upon action and superhero movies. Women and nonwhite folks? Put ’em in there! Put ’em in parts that white folks used to have and call it reparations! Comedies and blockbusters with Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista and Issa Rae and Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart and Eugenio Derbez and Jason Momoa.Really, some of that reupholstery is just more integration. The vicissitudes of progress — all that change, all that changing back — can create an optics headache over at the Academy. It could leave you with whiplash, with the impression that the membership is just over it. I can look at these otherwise innocent movies, gathered together, and surmise progress fatigue: We already did that. If Joaquin Phoenix wins the best actor Oscar for “Joker,” he’s likely to remind his fellow industry professionals, as he did last Sunday at the BAFTAs, that their tiredness is not an option, that it’s an embarrassment.That fatigue starts to mirror life everywhere else, as it used to be and sometimes as it remains. Separate, unequal: You’ve put enough nonwhite people in pop hits that you have to think alternatively. So when the so-called awards season heats up, you can’t find anything serious, nonwhite and good. So come nomination morn, the Oscars suddenly look like evidence of white flight, this reliable suburb of “quality” and “taste” and eligibility. My favorite complaint from longstanding Academy members about more women and nonwhite people joining the gang is that some of them are in violation of a credits criterion. They’re underqualified for membership but only because the industry has thrived on systemic disqualification.I know, I know. It’s not as though you can’t find nonwhite people at the movies. “Bad Boys for Life” has been at the top of the box office for three weeks. And that might be part of the problem because the closest “Bad Boys” will ever get to the Oscars is three billboards outside the Dolby Theatre. More

LOS ANGELES — Ballots for the coming Academy Awards are still being tabulated. But it already seems clear: This will not be Netflix’s year.The streaming giant will arrive at Sunday’s Oscar ceremony leading the field, with 24 nominations. That’s up from 15 last year and eight the year before, a trajectory that highlights the success that Netflix has had in building a prestige film operation with a minimal presence in actual movie theaters. But the company could end the evening with only two wins, according to Gold Derby, which compiles the predictions of 28 awards handicappers, despite dumping truckloads of cash into awards-oriented marketing campaigns. Competitors estimate that Netflix has spent at least $70 million, a startling sum even by Hollywood’s profligate standards. Netflix declined to comment.“The Irishman,” Martin Scorsese’s gangster character study, nominated for 10 Oscars and relentlessly hyped by Netflix as “one of the best films of the decade,” is expected by awards forecasters to be shut out completely. Prognosticators like Mark Harris of Vanity Fair and Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter base their opinions on how films have performed at predictive awards ceremonies leading up to the Oscars.At the same time, Oscar voters are poised to shower statuettes on films from old-line studios that received traditional runs in theaters, including the late-arriving World War I drama “1917” (Universal), which is the front-runner to win best picture.It raises unpleasant questions for Netflix. Spending freely on awards campaigning is one of the ways it has been able to woo marquee filmmakers like Mr. Scorsese. But with some analysts starting to question the return — Netflix already had a poor outcome at the recent Golden Globe Awards — will the streaming giant change its ways?While there are those who would argue that competing films like “1917” and “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (Sony) are simply better, the film establishment has been wary of Netflix. Could the lack of statuettes be a backlash to a tech giant that is upending entertainment-industry business practices and threatening Hollywood power hierarchies?Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, said losses at awards shows leading to the Oscars in no way represented an uprising against the company.“A pushback? Nobody can say that with a straight face,” he said last week at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences annual nominee luncheon. “We got 24 nominations, the most of any studio. Our films have been honored across the board.”The academy’s old guard has resisted a dogged push by Netflix to join the best picture club, arguing that, since the streaming service does not release its films in a traditional theatrical manner, its offerings should be better considered by Emmy voters. (Helen Mirren, onstage at the most recent National Association of Theater Owners convention, used an expletive to refer to the company.) Some longtime academy members say that Netflix’s campaigning has turned them off, in part because it reminds them of the days when Harvey Weinstein solicited Oscar votes with no-stone-unturned vigor.“Obviously, there is one company that is spending more than the others, but that’s not going to affect how I will vote — nor do I think it will affect other members,” said Hawk Koch, a producer and former president of the academy, who recently wrote a memoir about his long career in Hollywood. “There is an awful lot of wasteful money being spent that could be used for making movies rather than trying to win an award.”Netflix made its Oscar ambitions clear in 2018 when it hired one of Hollywood’s top awards campaign strategists: Lisa Taback, who cut her teeth at Miramax with Mr. Weinstein in the 1990s and whose résumé includes best-picture winners like “The King’s Speech” and “Spotlight.” She orchestrated a costly Oscar push for Netflix’s black-and-white “Roma” for last year’s Academy Awards. That film received 10 nominations, including one for best picture (Netflix’s first), and won three: director (Alfonso Cuarón), cinematography (Mr. Cuarón) and foreign film. It was a very solid outcome, one that seemed to signal the academy’s warming to Netflix.This time, Netflix seemed to be holding an even stronger hand. It had a living legend in Mr. Scorsese. His ambitious “Irishman,” which cost at least $160 million to make, brought Joe Pesci out of retirement and paired him with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Netflix also had “Marriage Story,” Noah Baumbach’s unnerving portrait of divorce; “Dolemite Is My Name,” a flamboyant comeback vehicle for Eddie Murphy; and “The Two Popes,” a well-reviewed drama about Vatican politics starring Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins.“Marriage Story,” with six Oscar nominations, is expected to win for Laura Dern’s supporting performance as a formidable divorce lawyer. “Dolemite” did not receive any Oscar nominations. “The Two Popes” received three nods, but is not expected to win any on Sunday.Another win for Netflix is expected to come from “American Factory,” a documentary backed by Michelle and Barack Obama that looks at a clash between a Chinese entrepreneur and blue-collar Ohioans.“That’s a lot of campaigning for not a lot of hardware,” said Sue Fleishman, the head of September Media, a corporate communications consultancy, and a former communications chief at Warner Bros. and Amblin Partners.In truth, no film wins the top Oscar without spending. All nine of this year’s best-picture nominees have been draped in for-your-consideration campaigns for months. Sony has certainly not been stingy with its “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” get-out-the-vote effort, which included a 28-minute special about its themes (“a love letter to making movies”) that ran on two Los Angeles television stations. Neon, the scrappy indie with the potential best-picture disrupter “Parasite,” has been spending money like a major, hopeful that the love for the genre-defying South Korean film will help it make Oscar history.But Netflix has taken campaigning to a new level. Most studios put their firepower behind a couple of contenders. Netflix pitched eight films to awards voters this year, including two that received nominations for best animated film: “Klaus,” a hand-drawn holiday story that triumphed at the BAFTAs, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, and “I Lost My Body,” about an amputated hand. About 60 people work in Ms. Taback’s department, which also includes talent relations.“Think of all of our awards work as a really smart way to make us the best home for talent in the world,” Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, said during a quarterly earnings call last month. “The business benefit is that we will win deals that we wouldn’t have otherwise.” Netflix may be spending a lot on awards campaigns. But the sum is a rounding error when you consider the company is poised to spend $17.3 billion on content this year.Like all studios, Netflix flies stars to ceremonies that are seen as campaign stops, advertises in trade publications and sends swag to reporters (a pair of red slippers to support “The Two Popes,” for instance). But Netflix has also gone a great deal further, promoting films in ways that have raised eyebrows.Rather than rely on trade news outlets, Netflix has opted to create its own, including a thick, expensive-looking magazine called Queue, filled with glossy photos and essays from high-profile contributors like Roxane Gay, and two separate podcasts from the former entertainment journalists Kris Tapley and Krista Smith (now consultants for Netflix).The company rented out the famed Belasco Theater on Broadway to screen “The Irishman” and reopened the defunct Manhattan single-screen theater the Paris with a long-term rental deal. The company is still conducting talks to buy the historic Egyptian theater in Hollywood.In December, The Washington Post revealed that Netflix had courted members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, which puts on the Critics’ Choice Awards, with free trips to Los Angeles and New York for private access to filmmakers and stars. Members of the association who accepted stayed in luxury hotels like the Four Seasons. The group awarded Netflix films and television shows with nine trophies, including best acting ensemble for “The Irishman.” In a statement this week, Netflix responded to the Post article, saying, in part: “Promotional tactics like junkets, screenings and festivals are standard industry practice and not just for awards.”“Netflix is not violating any rules. They just have lots of resources,” said Joe Pichirallo, a producer and a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “They do it to gain credibility and legitimacy and to let skittish auteur directors know that if you make a movie for Netflix, they will go all out to get you an Oscar, just like the studios.”Even without winning big on Sunday, the company has already won. Netflix’s many nominations mean that an average 30 million people in the United States will watch a celebration of a lot of movies that they have not seen in theaters. Netflix will have succeeded in creating an emotional and intellectual shift — high-caliber original films associated with television sets and computer screens.The streaming giant’s bruising night at the Globes certainly didn’t cast a pall over its after-party. Many of the night’s biggest stars made the soiree their first — and perhaps only — stop on the evening’s celebration circuit.Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio huddled alongside the “Irishman” cast in a cordoned-off corner of a tented structure in Beverly Hills as waiters offered fried-chicken sandwiches, mini corn dogs and specialty Casamigos cocktails. Scarlett Johansson, Ms. Dern and Jennifer Aniston all showed up to pay their respects to the town’s deepest pockets, and that was before Tiffany Haddish grabbed the D.J.’s mic and started rapping.“We ready,” Ms. Haddish shouted into the microphone, while holding a glass of white wine in her other hand. “Netflix putting food on people’s tables.” More

I was in middle school when Taylor Swift began whispering fairy tales in my ear.“Fearless,” her second album, dropped when I was 11 — filled with stories of unrequited crushes and Shakespearean romance and knights in shining armor. On “Speak Now,” when I was 13, there were sweeping kisses in the rain, dragons to fight, kingdoms to save.Swift peddled escapism, and I was an eager customer. Why deal with the mundane reality of adolescence when, with the click of an iPod Nano, I could be in a world where the girl gets the guy? It was catnip to an adolescent.It’s that girl I was then, the one still sold on summer love under the Georgia stars, who wanted to see “Miss Americana,” which premiered on Friday. Lana Wilson’s Netflix documentary follows Swift through the past couple of years, from the “Reputation” era — Swift’s pop dark horse of a sixth album — to the creation of “Lover,” her latest (and much fluffier) work, released in August 2019.I never used to care much about what she was like offstage. I was wrapped up in her lyrics, more concerned about the stories than who was telling them.But over the years, doubts about Swift — her authenticity, her motivations — had crept in. The songs and the singer are one and the same, something I didn’t give much thought to until I was older — and I wasn’t sure if I could still appreciate one without fully understanding the other.I wanted to look behind the curtain, to get some clarity on whether a public figure I’d grown up supporting was as questionable and “calculated” as the tabloids had made her out to be. I just wasn’t sure if I’d like what I saw.My concerns were the ones you’ve undoubtedly heard elsewhere: How genuine was Swift’s newfound interest in political commentary? Or her sudden foray into vocal L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy via a colorful, over-the-top music video? What kept her from speaking up before?Were the whirlwind fantasies I’d bought into — in the lyrics, and in the story of a hopeless small-town romantic who’d worked her way up the Billboard charts — all a facade? (Listen, when you’ve dated a Jonas Brother and a Kennedy, as Swift has, you’ve leveled up from hopeless romantic territory. I don’t make the rules.)Part of this shift, of course, is just that I grew up. The fairy tales gave way to more tangible fears: navigating high school, getting into college, finding a job. Somewhere along the way, daydreaming about boys throwing rocks at my window didn’t seem like such a sustainable priority anymore.I also outgrew the blind loyalty that many of Swift’s fans adopted early. Ten years ago, I didn’t care that much about Taylor Swift’s so-called deafening silence, as the meme had it, on every issue under the sun. But as I grew closer to voting age, I started thinking more critically: What are the implications of someone having a massive platform and not making use of it?I started watching “Miss Americana” certain of what I would see: some songwriting behind the scenes, Swift clapping back over negative media coverage, a few shots of Meredith and Olivia and Benjamin, Swift’s cats. (The film definitely delivered on the feline front. But no mention, thankfully, of “Cats.”)All of those boxes were checked, including a particularly cringe-worthy scene of Swift enthusiastically writing “Me!,” the first single from “Lover” and objectively — as in, my completely subjective opinion, but one that everyone should share — the album’s worst track.But for every moment I knew was coming, there was another that took me by surprise. The one thing I didn’t expect was how genuine the film would feel, the sympathy it would dredge up for me. It rekindled a connection to Swift as a person, beyond my nostalgia for her early albums, that I haven’t felt in a long time.I say this fully aware that I was watching a one-sided argument: The documentary solely focuses on how Swift sees herself, which primarily seems to be as a victim. But even with my guard up, there’s an unavoidable honesty about “Miss Americana” that broke through my skepticism.Behind the curtain were raw admissions that left me mourning for the easy, girl-next-door life Swift used to sing about but can never return to. There were conversations about trying to keep an eating disorder at bay, about sexual assault and searching for justice from a place of privilege, about a man breaking into her apartment and sleeping in her bed.My questions about her abrupt shift into politics and advocacy were answered, too, with Swift’s heartfelt pleas to her team that she be on the “right side of history” by publicly backing two Tennessee Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Before, Swift had avoided topics that could alienate members of her fan base — a lingering fear, she points out in the film, from the backlash the Dixie Chicks faced after criticizing President George W. Bush.I’ve long tried to reconcile my sentimentality for my childhood soundtrack with my reluctance to embrace the woman who created it. With this film, with these scenes, I’m starting to fill in some of those blanks that were causing my internal disconnect.I’ve seen Swift perform live once, in 2011 on the Atlanta stop of her “Speak Now” tour. There was a moment during “Love Story,” one of her earliest hits, when a soaring balcony lifted her high above the arena. For a few minutes, she was floating on a different plane than the rest of us mere mortals. She was untouchable.“Miss Americana” makes one thing clear: Swift certainly isn’t untouchable. And now, for a rare moment, she’s understandable. For a faraway fan starting to come back into the fold, that’s worth much more. More

A documentary about the women who have accused Russell Simmons of sexual misconduct has found itself a new home after its original backers, Oprah Winfrey and Apple’s streaming service, dropped the film last month amid a pressure campaign by the hip-hop mogul.The film, “On the Record,” will appear on HBO Max, the new streaming service from Warner Media set to launch in May, the company said in a news release on Monday.The announcement comes just over a week after the film debuted to glowing early reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January, and close to a month after Ms. Winfrey removed herself as executive producer of the film and took her distribution partner, Apple TV Plus, with her.“On the Record” tells the story of the music executive Drew Dixon and her decision, in the early weeks of the #MeToo movement, to publicly accuse Mr. Simmons of raping her. (Her account of the 1995 encounter was first reported in The New York Times in 2017.)Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, two documentarians whose previous work has focused on sexual assault in the military (“The Invisible War”) and on college campuses (“The Hunting Ground”), tracked Ms. Dixon’s journey along with those of other women who accused Mr. Simmons of sexual misconduct, including Sil Lai Abrams, Sheri Hines, Jenny Lumet and Alexia Norton Jones. The film also addresses the various cultural forces that have prevented black women from reporting sex crimes. Mr. Simmons, who has not been charged with a crime, has maintained that he did not sexually assault anyone.“The fierce determination of Drew Dixon and all of the women who bravely chose to share their stories in ‘On The Record’ moved us profoundly,” Sarah Aubrey, the head of original content at HBO Max, said in a statement. “I’ve been impressed with Amy and Kirby’s work over the years covering this complex subject matter, and look forward to this film finding the widest possible audience.”“On the Record” will receive at least a one-week theatrical release to qualify it for Oscar consideration, but the date of its opening in theaters or on HBO Max has not yet been determined.Accepted into Sundance at the beginning of December, “On the Record” was one of the most anticipated documentaries at the festival. But its future became muddied when Winfrey announced her exit from the project at the beginning of the year, citing “creative differences” with the filmmakers. She later revealed, in an interview with The New York Times, that she had been pressured by Mr. Simmons to withdraw.Ms. Winfrey said that Mr. Simmons had no role in her exit. “I told him directly in a phone call that I will not be pressured either into, or out of, backing this film,” she said. “I am only going to do what I believe to be the right thing.”Rather, she said that she believed the film had not adequately addressed inconsistencies in Ms. Dixon’s account, although Ms. Winfrey said she still believed Ms. Dixon. She also said the documentary had not done enough to tackle the misogyny within the broader hip-hop culture at the time Ms. Dixon was active in the industry.The filmmakers said they had addressed all of Ms. Winfrey’s concerns.“Kirby and I are so proud to be teaming with HBO Max to give this film the outstanding platform it deserves and can’t wait for the public to see and hear the voices of these courageous women,” Ms. Ziering said in a statement. More