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      Investigation of Georgia Movie Set Crash Finds No Violations

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      Eight people were injured, three of them seriously, in a crash on the set of “The Pickup” in April. A federal investigation found no health or safety violations.An investigation into a crash that injured several crew members on the set of the movie “The Pickup” this year found no safety violations, federal officials said.A spokeswoman for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said in a statement this week that the agency’s “thorough” investigation of the production company, Armored Film LLC, “did not result in violations of workplace safety and health regulations.”The investigation into the crash, which occurred at a small airport outside Atlanta on April 20, was closed last week, she said.A spokeswoman for Amazon MGM Studios declined to comment.Eight crew members were taken to hospitals after the crash, including two who were treated for life-threatening injuries after they were ejected from a vehicle, the authorities said at the time. A third person was treated for serious injuries.People with direct knowledge of the episode said at the time that none of the actors in the film, including Pete Davidson, Eddie Murphy and Keke Palmer, were involved in the crash.Amazon MGM Studios has not disclosed the plot of the film, which Deadline has described as a heist comedy. No release date has been announced.Video of the crash obtained by The New York Times shows a red armored truck, a GMC C6, pulling up alongside a BMW X5 S.U.V. before swerving into it.The vehicles then veer off the road and onto the grass, where the armored truck flips on top of the BMW. Both land upright, with the back door of the armored truck swinging open, causing one person to tumble out of it and spreading debris onto the field.Several crew members were injured when two vehicles collided during filming.The police said that the BMW had one occupant, the driver, while the armored truck was carrying seven people: a driver, a front-seat passenger and five crew members who were secured in the back with belt restraints attached to the walls.While the collision was planned, the armored truck’s brush guard became entangled in the smaller vehicle’s wheel well, the authorities said.In the days after the crash, there was no consensus on whether emergency workers or an ambulance had been on the set during filming, although an ambulance was called to the scene. It is fairly standard practice to have an ambulance on set for dangerous stunts, experts said.Sean Miller, a spokesman for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said in a statement on Thursday that the organization appreciated the work by OSHA’s Atlanta office.“IATSE members are the best in the industry and work hard to ensure their safety and the safety of those around them,” he said. “This incident is a reminder that all workers deserve to earn a living in a safe environment.” More

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      Review: ‘Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’

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      At 75, Springsteen is doggedly committed to live performance. This documentary chronicles how he keeps up on tour, and why.While it was Lou Reed who coined the adage that one’s life could be saved by rock ’n’ roll, Bruce Springsteen embodies it. It may be paradoxical, to assert that the performer transcends the genre for which he relentlessly waves the flag, but at this point in time, Springsteen is the world’s greatest living entertainer, full stop. “Road Diary,” a new documentary directed by Thom Zimny, offers dynamic proof for this argument.The movie’s full title is “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” and many of the current members of that group have been with Springsteen since they were barely out of their teens. The most colorful and funny member, Steven Van Zandt, who also works as an actor (“The Sopranos”), is a prominent talking head because he’s a born raconteur.More than the funny stories, the movie is about Springsteen’s artistic mission.He sings about the things that make life worth living: friendship, love, community and the sense of a higher calling.Seeing Frank Sinatra at the beginning of his Diamond Jubilee World Tour, when he was 75 and in good health, one could see that he seemed bored by the whole thing. Springsteen turned 75 last month, and never seems bored for even a moment. He’s a man on a mission.The tour chronicled here is ongoing; Springsteen plays in Montreal next week. The punchline of this engaging movie is one that Springsteen lifts from his early influence: Van Morrison. Addressing the camera on his way to another stage, he cheerfully yells, “It’s too late to stop now.”Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street BandNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Hulu and Disney+. More

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      ‘My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock’ Review: Director’s Commentary

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      A richly detailed essay film imagines Hitchcock commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips.Alfred Hitchcock’s voice remains indelible, like a droll bloodhound trying to hypnotize you over tea. Mark Cousins’s richly detailed essay film “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” imagines the director commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips, with an insider’s knowledge of filmmaking.Lest that premise induce suspicions of artificial intelligence: The impressionist Alistair McGowan reproduces Hitchcock’s plummy drawl. But the insights belong to Cousins, a world-class close reader known for his mellifluous journeys through film history and cinephilia. Over sinuously edited, high-quality clips, his Hitchcock addresses playful and piercing observations to the audience in virtuosic variations on themes: escape, desire, loneliness and so on, from both famous and lesser-known films.Hitchcock’s work here suggests a series of dreamlike passageways through seemingly ordinary worlds where desire and danger open new doors. A typical riff mingles the cinematic and personal: Hitchcock’s “escape” from his British stomping ground to America; the escapist painterly countrysides that recur in his films; and the narrative traps his characters must cheat, like when Paul Newman flees a theater by shouting “fire” in “Torn Curtain.”The resulting director’s commentary from beyond the grave should send any viewer supermarket-sweeping Hitchcock titles onto the queue. Yet whereas scenes like Ingrid Bergman murmuring “you love me” to Cary Grant in “Notorious” are still jaw-dropping, the voice-over conceit can become stifling, and arguably limits our critical point of view.But as Alma Hitchcock reportedly encouraged her creative partner and husband: “Be interested.” Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.My Name Is Alfred HitchcockNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Magpie’ Review: An Unhappily Married Woman

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      Daisy Ridley plays a time bomb with a simmering fuse in this slow yet gripping adultery thriller.Sometimes, all it takes is pancakes. When you’re Anette (Daisy Ridley), a frustrated, stay-at-home mother of two, even a simple breakfast food can snap your last nerve. Anette’s instability, though, has been building for some time, as Sam Yates’s “Magpie” gradually reveals by way of brief encounters and deceptively casual conversations. There’s nothing offhand, though, about her mounting fury.A lean, mean revenge thriller that knows exactly what it’s about, “Magpie” has little originality but an invigorating clarity of purpose. Struggling to deal with the isolation of her countryside mansion outside London, Anette feels unsupported by her selfish, controlling husband, Ben (Shazad Latif), a celebrated writer who treats her like the help. Ben’s affections stray even further when the couple’s young daughter (Hiba Ahmed) lands a supporting role in a historical drama whose alluring Italian star (Matilda Lutz) proves too tempting to resist.A movie about female rage and the imprisoning loneliness of motherhood (Anette’s desperate attempt to reconnect with her former boss is derailed by the screaming infant that Ben has declined to babysit), “Magpie” is flimsy and unsubtle, yet oddly gripping. Scattering small signs of marital trauma — Anette’s newly shorn hair, the way she grimly trashes an uneaten, perfectly cooked dinner — the script (by Ridley’s husband, Tom Bateman) urges us to scrutinize Anette’s eerily menacing composure. Is she dangerous, or just dotty?We have our answer soon enough. But, until then, the film’s enigmatic mood and chilly visuals perfectly complement Anette’s tightened jawline and frozen smile. The pacing is slow to the point of sluggish, yet Ridley’s performance is so magnetic — and Latif’s so convincingly despicable — that the ending might just make you stand up and cheer.MagpieRated R for adultery in the offing and a fiddle in the shower. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘La Cocina’ Review: The Melting Pot Boils Over

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      This drama by Alonso Ruizpalacios takes a bitter look at the American dream from the perspective of the workers at a fast-paced diner.“Somebody tell us a dream,” says Pedro (Raúl Briones), a charismatic line cook at a Times Square diner. He’s on a smoke break with co-workers — “the United Nations,” quips one of them, referring to their diverse origins. Nonzo, a Brooklyn-born dessert chef (Motell Foster) responds to Pedro, who is from Mexico, waxing philosophical about an immigrant who spends his sad, long days after passing through Ellis Island working at a pizza joint.“La Cocina,” a kitchen drama shot in velvety black-and-white, is the first English-language movie by the Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios. But the kitchen staff’s Spanish takes up nearly as much of the dialogue, fueling the film’s cultural and political tensions.Ruizpalacios adapted the script from Arnold Wesker’s play “The Kitchen,” which was set in London. He keeps the central romance between Pedro and Julia (a waitress played by Rooney Mara), and also explores the realities of undocumented immigrants and worker exploitation in New York City.The film starts from the point of view of the new cook, Estella (Anna Díaz), and then skips around the ensemble’s various dramas: a white American cook (Spenser Granese) is fed up with the Spanish speakers in his midst, an abusive manager (Eduardo Olmos) is tasked with finding a thief and Julia is at odds with Pedro over an abortion. In one scene, the soda machine breaks, flooding the kitchen during a lunchtime rush; the workers look like sailors on a sinking boat.Hellish moments like this help explain why everyone’s a bit cruel and calloused at work. Imagine such pressure — and, for many undocumented workers, the knowledge that you won’t be hired anywhere better. But Ruizpalacios diminishes these hard truths with flashy bids at profundity. The film’s epic finale feels stagy — while these real-life frustrations are anything but.La CocinaRated R for sex and physical violence. Running time: 2 hours 19 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Your Monster’ Review: Beast Intentions

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      An aspiring Broadway musical star (Melissa Barrera) taps into her inner anger with some help from the creature who lives in her closet.Caroline Lindy’s debut feature, “Your Monster,” claims to present a “true-ish story.” Presumably, the “true” aspect refers not to the monster, but to the cascading cruelty of the plot’s inciting breakup: While Laura (Melissa Barrera), an aspiring Broadway star, is recovering from cancer surgery, her boyfriend, Jacob (Edmund Donovan), a theater director, abandons her, then freezes her out of the lead in his new show, which she helped develop.Rather than exploding in a rage, Laura cries her eyes out in a montage that finds her repeatedly ordering boxes of tissue from Amazon. But there are strange thumps in the house, and she soon learns why: A monster (Tommy Dewey) who has lived in her closet since her childhood is still there and is, for a monster, pretty affable, eager to kick back with takeout and watch “Night of the Living Dead” on TV. With his brutish ways, he can also conveniently teach Laura the catharsis of smashing dinnerware.Monster — the only name he’s ever given — turns out to have an artsy side: He has a knack for Shakespeare and a thing for Fred Astaire movies. And he stands by warily when Laura takes a consolation role in her still-smarmy ex’s ensemble.Inner anger, watchful protector, possible love interest? Lindy’s monster won’t win points for metaphorical coherence. But “Your Monster,” while falling short of the Critic’s Pick status that Jacob vociferously covets for his show, has its charms, namely the backstage intrigue, onstage songs by the Lazours (of the current Off Broadway musical “We Live in Cairo”), and a disarming lead in Barrera.Your MonsterRated R for sex and violence. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ Review: A Long and Winding Tongue

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      Playing both Eddie Brock and the alien parasite who possesses him, Tom Hardy gives another roiling one-man-band of a performance in this third installment of the franchise.With the 2018 film “Venom,” Tom Hardy locked himself into a three-picture deal, giving his time, talents and torso to this saga about a man named Eddie Brock possessed by a fanged, body-snatching alien parasite named Venom who pops in and out of his skin like a hyper-violent prairie dog. The overly plotted “Venom: The Last Dance,” written and directed by Kelly Marcel, concludes the trilogy by hammering home all that Eddie has sacrificed to merge with this impulsive, smack-talking goo blob. In the first movie, Eddie was an ambitious San Francisco investigative journalist with a fiancée played by Michelle Williams; here, he’s a filthy drifter on a Mexican bender who’s lost his career, his woman and his reputation. Forced to go on the lam to flee a murder accusation, Eddie makes a running joke out of the fact that he can’t even hang on to a pair of shoes.In glimpses, this is a drama about a drunk who finds himself unbearably lonely despite being conjoined with a garrulous monster. Hardy voices both reedy Eddie and gravelly Venom and his roiling one-man-band of a performance continues to be the only reason to keep up with the films. Highlights here include the herky-jerky chaos Eddie/Venom causes as he mixes a Michelada while grooving to “Tequila,” and the moment when he’s suctioned to the fuselage of an airplane like a Garfield plushie and sighs, “It is so unpleasantly cold.” Eddie and Venom even detour to Las Vegas, the capital city of self-destruction, and dub themselves Thelma and Louise.But these mild pleasures are overwhelmed by a barrage of underdeveloped supporting characters — Chiwetel Ejiofor as a general, Juno Temple and Clark Backo as Area 51 scientists, a hippy family headed by Rhys Ifans — plus a nifty spidery nasty who gobbles its victims like a scuttling wood chipper and, when sliced up, stitches its long limbs back together. There’s also a barely introduced major villain named Knull (Andy Serkis, the director of 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”) who seems to exist only so that the studio can bridge this finale to some other future comic book flick.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 Remarkable Life of Ibelin’ Review: More Real Than Reality

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      An unconventional documentary tells the story of a Norwegian gamer — and of how we live life on the internet.Almost from the start, the internet scrambled our sense of reality. You could never really know if whoever you were talking to was the person they said they were. Now it’s hard to know if they’re even a person.This is destabilizing and frightening, and also the premise for a good movie. But there has to be more to the story than just the scary parts. No, we don’t exist physically on the internet, but our virtual selves do things that have real-world consequences, and our emotions and minds, in some phenomenological way, extend into cyberspace, too. For better or worse, the internet is a place in which we live and love and rage and mourn. We bring our humanity with us, the bad parts but also the good ones.Movies haven’t always captured this aspect of 21st-century life well, in part because rendering the internet visually is weird and tricky. I loved Joe Hunting’s 2022 documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality,” filmed entirely inside a V.R. platform, for how it captured love and generosity in virtual space. And now we have Benjamin Ree’s “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which is a rare and beautiful thing: a moving documentary that excavates the question of the “real” in a profoundly humanistic and unconventional way.“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” is about Mats Steen, a Norwegian man who died in 2014 at the age of 25. Mats lived out his final years nearly immobilized, the result of being born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare inherited disease which presently has no cure. Mats’s family knew him as smart and loving, but grieved while watching him grow more withdrawn as his symptoms progressed. He would spend most of his waking hours on his computer, playing games. “Our deepest regret was that he would never experience friends, love, or make a difference in other people’s lives,” his father, Robert, tells Ree.Mats’s family were loving, attentive and supportive of him to the very end. But they were wrong about the friends and making a difference part. Oh, were they wrong.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