Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Mia Goth on ‘MaXXXine’ and the End of the ‘X’ Horror Trilogy

      by

      Don’t call her a scream queen.Mia Goth may have amassed a filmography dominated by horror films like “A Cure for Wellness,” “Suspiria” and “Infinity Pool,” but she prefers not to limit herself.“I don’t want to be boxed in,” the 30-year-old actress from London said in a video interview. “I want to do everything.” Still, her work involves a fair bit of screaming, and she is quite good at it.The “X” trilogy is no exception. Directed by Ti West, the films follow the lives and crimes of Pearl and Maxine, both played by Goth. As we meet them in the first movie, “X,” Pearl (Goth under a pound of prosthetics) is a sexually deprived older woman with murderous tendencies, and Maxine is a young porn actress who dreams of making it big. They meet when Maxine arrives at a farm for an adult film production being shot there, but their hosts, Pearl and her husband, clash with the crew and things get bloody quickly. The second entry, titled after the main character, serves as Pearl’s origin story, and brought Goth greater recognition for her bold, meme-able performance. The third, “MaXXXine” (in theaters), picks up with its title character in Hollywood when she finally catches a break. All are anchored by Goth’s work, which remains deeply sincere even as it grows delightfully unhinged.Mia Goth says her “confidence as a performer is probably what evolved more than anything” from “X” to “MaXXXine.”Amy Harrity for The New York TimesDistributed by A24, each movie riffs on different styles and eras, with “X,” playing off ’70s exploitation cinema, “Pearl” paying homage to early Technicolor melodramas and “MaXXXine” taking on the ’80s B-movie slasher.In a wide-ranging interview, Goth spoke about working on the trilogy and filming shortly after the birth of her daughter, now about 2, with Shia LaBeouf.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

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Mother, Couch’ Review: The Family That Stays Together

      by

      A stubborn matriarch played by Ellen Burstyn lodges in a furniture store and wages emotional warfare with her adult children.In a furniture store devoid of customers, an elderly matriarch, referred to only as “Mother” and played by Ellen Burstyn, has settled on a couch. That is, she’s really settled on a couch. She’s sitting on it and refusing to budge. She promises that if anyone tries to move or carry her off the couch, she will struggle to the extent that, “I will fall and hit my head so hard it will burst.”No one in “Mother, Couch” is inordinately pragmatic, or else this movie, written and directed by Niclas Larsson, adapted from a novel by Jerker Virdborg, would be much shorter. Granted, Burstyn’s character, first seen in black wraparound sunglasses and sporting a helmet-like flip hairdo, is a formidable figure. And stranding her multi-accented adult children (it’s explained, weakly) in the store with her over a few days is one way to effect yet another cinematic contemplation on Why Families Are Dysfunctional.Mother’s children are Ewan McGregor’s David, buttoned-down and flying apart; Rhys Ifans’s Gruffudd, medium shambolic by default; and Lara Flynn Boyle’s Linda, snarling and swearing a blue streak.Apple, meet tree: Mother is stubborn, and frankly mean, albeit more formal in her language. “I never wanted any children, David,” she practically snarls after having given this son a nasty cut on the palm that won’t heal. Hey! Symbolism! Or, one should say, another bit of symbolism.While the film’s premise may suggest black comedy (and the sometimes fake-jaunty, fake-portentous score by Christopher Bear underscores that idea), Burstyn’s character, which the actor plays with her customary expertise, is so utterly disagreeable that viewing the picture is a mostly anxious experience with not much of a reward at the end, which shifts to magic realist mode for lack of anywhere better to go.Mother CouchNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Imaginary’ Review: Off to Another World

      by

      This poignant animated film casts the world of imaginary friends as an arena to reckon with emotional turmoil and loss of innocence.Imagination is the abstract space that can most potently symbolize childlike joy and wonder — at least, according to the opening scene of “The Imaginary,” with its sweeping fantastical vistas sprouting from the inside of a child’s mind. In truth, our imaginations and the friends we make along the way are, within this poignant and inventive animated film directed by Yoshiyuki Momose, arenas where we reckon with emotional turmoil and the loss of innocence.The third work out of Studio Ponoc, an offshoot of the revered Studio Ghibli, the movie follows Rudger (voiced by Kokoro Terada), the imaginary (i.e. imaginary friend) of Amanda (Rio Suzuki), a young girl who recently lost her father. Their days of play are interrupted when Mr. Bunting (Issey Ogata), a mustachioed villain accompanied by a wordless spectral imaginary, tries to consume Rudger and separates him from Amanda. After he is sent to a kind of imaginary heaven, Rudger must team up with other imaginaries to find and save her.It’s a visually splendid film with a restless inventiveness — too restless, at times. The movie falters periodically under the weight of its own dream logic, which can be hard to follow or flimsily constructed as the story gains momentum. But it’s mostly easy to move past those flaws in a work of such rich magical realism and heart.While the film is pushing for the kind of grand emotional and mythic proportions of a Ghibli work, it may not exactly stack up for some viewers with such great expectations. But, held up against more recent imagination-centric stories (with apologies to John Krasinski), Yoshiyuki’s film has the creative verve to sweep you away nonetheless.The ImaginaryRated PG for scary images, peril, thematic elements and some violence. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Kill’ Review: The Title Says It All. Over and Over Again.

      by

      What begins as a romantic rescue becomes a blood bath when bandits on a train attack and rob passengers and our Romeo cracks multiple heads in return.We are almost halfway through the Indian action extravaganza “Kill” before the title card slams onscreen, by which point its simple imperative — and the film’s entire raison d’être — has been obeyed so many times it’s essentially redundant. Much like the movie’s English subtitles: The dialogue might be in Hindi, but the language of blood and bones is universal.Speaking it fluently is Amrit (Lakshya), a hunky military commando who has followed his childhood sweetie, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), onto an express train to New Delhi in the hope of rescuing her from an arranged marriage. The lovebirds’ quivering reunion, however, is rudely interrupted by a horde of bandits armed with knives and hammers. What they lack in sophistication, they more than make up for in enthusiasm as they set about robbing the terrified passengers. Can Amrit and his military buddy (Abhishek Chauhan) stop them? Will the lead villain (a seductively menacing Raghav Juyal) upstage our baby-faced hero? How many objects can be inserted into a human head?To answer these questions, the writer and director, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, leaps into fifth gear and rarely downshifts. As Amrit arguably does more damage than the zombies in “Train to Busan” (2016), the cinematographer Rafey Mahmood, working with the action specialists Parvez Shaikh and Se-yeong Oh, meticulously captures near-continuous martial-arts sequences of balletic brutality. Exhausted as the actors appear, spare a thought for the film’s Foley artists, whose repertoire of squishy, crunchy and splattery sound effects must have been sorely taxed.Manipulative to the max (one upsetting murder is almost pornographically protracted), “Kill” is dizzyingly impressive and punishingly vicious. In the press notes, the director tells us that he once slept through a similar attack by armed train robbers. No one is sleeping through this one.KillRated R for 52 varieties of knife wound, one weaponized bathroom fixture and several ugly sweater vests. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      This Service Cat Has a Big Job: The Apocalypse

      by

      The director of “A Quiet Place: Day One” was confident a cat could take on the end of the world. But could the feline actors win over Lupita Nyong’o?How did a cat named Schnitzel win the starring role of Frodo in “A Quiet Place: Day One”? He impressed the director Michael Sarnoski with his nonchalant confidence, rugged looks and intelligent face.“He had a lot going on behind his eyes,” Sarnoski said in an interview last week, when the film made its theatrical debut. “A lot of the other cats were really adorable but almost too cutesy, like they would be in a cat food commercial. And Schnitzel had a little bit of an edge, like you could kind of believe he was a bit of a world-weary street cat.”Frodo has a lot to be weary about in this cinematic universe. The film, a prequel to the 2018 horror movie “A Quiet Place” and its 2021 sequel, chronicles aliens invading Earth and attacking everything that makes a sound.Lupita Nyong’o plays Sam, a cancer patient caught in the apocalypse with her service cat while visiting New York. Though most people want to escape Manhattan, Sam knows she is dying regardless and just wants to go to Harlem, where she grew up, and grab a slice of pizza. She meets a British law student named Eric (Joseph Quinn), who agrees to join her, and the cat becomes a comfort to them both. (Sam is a poet, hence Frodo’s literary name.) And spoiler warning: Audiences will be happy to know Frodo makes it out alive.Sarnoski, who also wrote the screenplay, grew up with cats and knew he wanted Sam to have an animal companion. But the creature would need to be able to navigate an urban apocalypse in silence. A dog would bark at a threat, and something like a bunny, say, wouldn’t fit in the grit of Manhattan. But it’s common to see cats around the city, wandering the streets or guarding delis. Frodo even meets a bodega cat, played by a ginger-and-white shorthair named Stanlee, a runner-up for the lead role.“A lot of people are like, ‘Why doesn’t the cat make more noise?’ But cats are very smart, predatory creatures,” Sarnoski said, adding that he believed a cat would recognize the danger and figure out how to survive. “I figured a cat would have a shot.”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

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘MaXXXine’ Review: Fame Monster

      by

      Mia Goth returns to Ti West’s horrorverse as an actress fleeing a mysterious stalker and a traumatic past.A psychosexual thriller imagined in blood red and cocaine white, “MaXXXine,” the third installment in Ti West’s nostalgia-soaked slasher saga, is part grungy homage to 1980s Hollywood and part sleazy feminist manifesto. Darker, moodier and altogether nastier than its predecessors — “X” (2022) and, later that same year, “Pearl” — this hyperconfident feature is also funny, occasionally wistful and deeply empathetic toward its damaged, driven heroine.That would be Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), the sole survivor of the dirty-movie cast massacred in “X.” Now a successful porn star, Maxine, eager to break into mainstream movies, has relocated to a Hollywood of spectacular seediness. It is 1985 and, as in real life, a killer known as the Night Stalker is terrorizing the city, the so-called Moral Majority is hyperventilating on the sidelines and rock musicians are fighting accusations of satanic intent. In one pungent shot of Maxine’s boot grinding her cigarette stub into the silent film sex symbol Theda Bara’s star on the Walk of Fame, West underscores the transience of the celebrity status that Maxine so desperately seeks.“I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” she declares, repeating the mantra taught by her father, a preacher seen in speckled, black-and-white flashback. Securing a role on a low-grade horror sequel brings her under the wing of its industry-toughened director (a perfect Elizabeth Debicki). Yet Maxine is constantly distracted: Her friends are dying, and two homicide detectives (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) want to question her; a Louisiana gumshoe (Kevin Bacon, a skeevy vision in crumpled suits and gold-capped incisors) keeps randomly accosting her; and a mysterious, black-gloved stalker haunts the film’s shadows. No wonder Maxine is plagued by panicked recollections of her traumatic past.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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      French Director Benoît Jacquot Is Charged With Rape

      by

      Mr. Jacquot, 77, was accused of assaulting two actresses and barred from working with minors. He has denied any wrongdoing.The French movie director Benoît Jacquot was charged on Wednesday with the rape of two actresses, Julia Roy and Isild Le Besco, several years ago, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.Mr. Jacquot, 77, is one of two directors facing a wave of #MeToo accusations that have roiled France’s movie industry since the actress Judith Godrèche came forward to say he had raped her during an abusive relationship that started when she was 14 and he was 39.In the wake of Ms. Godrèche’s accusations, Ms. Roy, 34, and Ms. Le Besco, 41, publicly accused Mr. Jacquot of keeping them in similarly abusive relationships and of sexually abusing them when they were much younger actresses who starred in his films.Ms. Le Besco has accused Mr. Jacquot of raping her between the ages of 16 and 25. Ms. Roy, who acted in some of Mr. Jacquot’s films between 2016 and 2021, had accused him of sexual and physical abuse.Mr. Jacquot and the other director who has been accused, Jacques Doillon, 80, were taken into police custody on Monday for questioning.Both men have denied any wrongdoing.Mr. Doillon was released on Tuesday on medical grounds and without being charged, the Paris prosecutor’s office said, although it added that it was still examining how to proceed in his case. Ms. Godrèche has accused Mr. Doillon of sexually assaulting her twice.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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Space Cadet’ Review: Emma Roberts Shoots for the Stars

      by

      In a lightweight comedy, the actress plays a bartender who dreams of becoming an astronaut. One problem: She has no qualifications for the job.Some of Hollywood’s most durable genre conventions have to do with outsiders and underdogs, often two categories rolled into one, who show up the self-important elites. The cowboy who rolls into town and brings justice in a not-quite-law-abiding way. The lovable con artist who makes a fool of the uppity society folks. The washed-up cop or spy called in for one last covert mission. The stereotypical sorority girl who turns out to be a secret legal genius.That last one is, of course, the “Legally Blonde” heroine Elle Woods, a fashion major who decides on a whim to go to Harvard Law School and discovers her unconventional qualifications give her insight that her more buttoned up classmates lack. Rex Simpson, the protagonist of “Space Cadet,” bears more than a passing resemblance to Elle, and not just because the actress Emma Roberts could play, at a squint, Reese Witherspoon’s niece. (Her actual aunt, Julia Roberts, played another scrappy underdog in “Erin Brockovich.”)Roberts’s most famous work might be in Ryan Murphy’s shows “American Horror Story” and “Scream Queens,” in which her knack for playing a certain kind of queen bee — gorgeous, cruel, one crisis away from combustion — makes her a magnetic presence. She’s great at a caricature, elevating those characters to satire without diluting their sugary poison. That flair for exaggeration would seem to make Rex Simpson the right role for her.“Space Cadet,” a comedy written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, is cast closely along the lines of “Legally Blonde,” with some beats lifted so clearly from that movie I started to wonder if they weren’t meant as jabs. Rex is a neon-wearing bartender in Florida who wrestles alligators and loves to party on the beach, but there’s more than meets the eye: She was a bit of a science genius in high school, and dreamed of being an astronaut. When her mother died, she turned down a full ride to Georgia Tech. By the time she attends her 10-year high school reunion with her best friend, Nadine (Poppy Liu), she’s down in the dumps over her failure to, uh, launch.A chance encounter with a former classmate who now runs a private spaceflight company sparks something in Rex. It’s time to chase her dreams. So she pops open the NASA website and decides to apply to be an astronaut. One problem, of course, is that she has absolutely no qualifications for the job. But is that a real barrier to Rex, the woman who invented patent-worthy tanning mirrors?The movie continues in this direction, sending her to NASA in a crop top to become an Astronaut Candidate (or AsCan, a moniker that provides more than a few jokes). Here is where the “Legally Blonde” comparisons come in. There is, for instance, a scene in a classroom where Rex doesn’t know the answer to a stern professor’s question, then one later where she does, demonstrating her growth. There’s a whole sequence in which people look askance at Rex upon her arrival at NASA, thanks to her peppy, kooky outfit that signals unseriousness.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