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      ‘Piece by Piece’ Review: Pharrell Williams’s Life, in Legos

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      The producer and musician gets the biographical documentary treatment — with an unexpected twist.Credit where it’s due: In a sea of formulaic biographical documentaries about musicians, “Piece by Piece,” about the life of the hitmaker and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams, stands out boldly. Not because it doesn’t follow the usual narrative formula. It absolutely does: humble beginnings, rocket toward stardom, crash and then, inevitably, resurrection. That’s all so standard to the genre that it’s practically calcified.No, “Piece by Piece” pops because everyone — including Williams and the film’s director, Morgan Neville — is played by animated Legos.This choice, which was Williams’s idea, comes off less gimmicky than it sounds. Legos have proven to be remarkably versatile utility players in the past decade. They’ve performed as Ninjas and Batman and themselves ever since “The Lego Movie” (2014) opened and became both a staggering commercial hit and an instant classic. The movie was clever and inventive, but the choice of toy worked, too: Legos are recognizable, beloved and, most important, endlessly open to reinterpretation. There’s no reason not to mingle your Lego Hogwarts set with your Lego Star Wars set in the shadow of your Lego Eiffel Tower alongside your little cousin’s Duplo trucks, and that’s the fun of them — the potential for chaos and imagination.For “Piece by Piece,” the Legos are taking on a new challenge: playing real people. Animated feature-length documentaries have become more common in recent years — “Waltz With Bashir” (2008) and “Flee” (2021) are two significant examples — but here the animation is aggressively nonrealistic, on purpose. The subjects, which include Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and Daft Punk, show up rendered as cylinder-headed, block-bodied minifigures, Lego parlance for the people-shaped pieces. Minifigure Williams and Minifigure Neville sit across from each other, chatting about the movie and Williams’s life. The voices are real — Neville interviewed the plethora of collaborators and artists that Williams has worked for and with — but we only ever see their Lego versions, with some distinguishing facial hair or outfit.The playfulness fits Williams’s aesthetic, which ranges from producing beats and albums for that dizzying array of artists to recording his own megahit “Happy” to collaborating on lines of streetwear, fragrances, eyeglasses, sneakers and skin care. He’s clearly bursting with ideas all the time, and that’s the narrative of the film: This is a man who never stops dreaming of ways to remix the world. It’s his playground, his sandbox. Legos fit right in.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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      ‘Bad Genius’ Review: Cheating the System

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      This remake of a hit Thai film about college admissions, starring Callina Liang, adds an element of racial politics to its heist story.At dinner at the home of one of her wealthy white classmates, Lynn (Callina Liang), a high-achieving Asian American high school student, finds out why she’s really there. Her classmate’s parents want her to help their son get into Columbia University, in whatever way is necessary. It’s quite the loaded setup in “Bad Genius,” a film that arrives a year after affirmative action in college admissions ended via a lawsuit in which, some argued, Asian Americans were used to advance a white conservative agenda.That thorny element of racial politics is the bold new ingredient in a remake of a hit Thai movie from 2017. This version, directed by J.C. Lee, is otherwise faithful to the original, following Lynn, a scholarship student at a prestigious high school who resorts to running a cheating ring to pay for college. For her big score, she enlists the help of Bank (Jabari Banks), a scholarship student whose parents are Nigerian immigrants.In practice, “Bad Genius” doesn’t actually have the political bite to back its bark. For all of its declarations meant to be scathing indictments of a rigged system, it is glaringly resistant to ever saying the word “white.” Nor does its young cast have the dramatic poise to elevate the script. Benedict Wong, as Lynn’s father, is an underused bright spot.Despite the film’s aims at spiky commentary, the class rebellion mostly serves as the thin wrapping to, at best, a middling heist movie that loses some of the punchy tension of the original’s getaway sequences. At its worst, it’s no more than a teenage soap opera.Bad GeniusNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong Say ‘The Apprentice’ Is a ‘Human Tragedy’

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      It’s natural to feel nervous before presenting your movie at a major film festival. But in late August, when the director Ali Abbasi boarded a flight to the Telluride Film Festival, he wasn’t even sure if his new movie “The Apprentice” — a fictionalized look at the Machiavellian bond between the young Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) and the lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) — would be permitted to play there at all.“It was really crazy what happened, and I spared Jeremy and Sebastian some of it, but it is a demoralizing feeling,” Abbasi admitted during a recent video call with his two stars. The former president had been threatening legal action against “The Apprentice” since its May debut at the Cannes Film Festival, which chilled distributor interest in the movie for months and made it a controversial prospect for any subsequent festival willing to show it.“If a movie comes out and people think it’s bad or it’s flawed, you can deal with that,” Abbasi said. “But when it goes into a safe box indefinitely, that was heavy.”In the end, Trump failed to follow through on his threats, Telluride played the movie without incident and “The Apprentice” ultimately found a distributor in Briarcliff Entertainment, which will release the film on Friday. Still, Strong was perturbed by how many major studios were unwilling to take on the film and potentially incur the presidential candidate’s wrath.“You think that things could be banned in North Korea or Russia or certain places, but you don’t think that will ever happen here,” Strong said. “It’s a real dark harbinger that it even nearly happened.”Written by Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” begins with Trump in his 20s as he toils under his real-estate magnate father and aspires to become a momentous figure in his own right. Still, Trump’s ambition exceeds his ability until he meets the savvy Cohn, who takes the young man under his wing and imparts ruthless rules for success that will eventually launch Trump onto the highest stage imaginable.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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      ‘Daytime Revolution’ Review: Coffee and Counterculture

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      John Lennon and Yoko Ono invade middle-American living rooms in this cute but shallow documentary.For one largely forgotten week in 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono transformed the most popular show on daytime television into a forum for ideas that its unsuspecting audience rarely encountered. Joining as the co-hosts of “The Mike Douglas Show,” they repurposed entertainment as a Trojan horse for activist agendas (antiwar, pro-civil rights), briefly bridging the yawning chasm between mainstream America and a counterculture that the Nixon Administration was actively engaged in repressing.That chasm is the real story of “Daytime Revolution,” one that Erik Nelson’s charmingly relaxed, almost cozy chronicle of that week strains to elucidate. Given the flammable reputations of some of the show’s guests, like Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale, the most shocking takeaway from the movie is how tame it feels. The mood is overwhelmingly congenial and playful, with Ono’s dippier contributions drawing titters from the audience and occasional bafflement from her perpetually gum-chewing husband.Everyone, in fact — even a subdued, impossibly handsome Ralph Nader — seems on their best behavior, if slightly on edge, as though expecting an F.B.I. raid at any second. (They probably knew that Lennon was already on Nixon’s naughty list.) Musical segments featuring a vivacious Chuck Berry and the magnificent Broadway performer Vivian Reed keep things grooving and lighten the earnestness, as do engaging present-day interviews with Reed and other surviving guests.But for “Daytime Revolution” to live up to its name and become more than a curious cultural artifact would require a richer historical context, an explanation of why these people mattered and why their views were so feared by the White House.“I did not want to make a film about the thing — I wanted the film to be the thing,” Nelson states in the press notes. As a result, the movie’s quiet star is Douglas himself. Whether gently asking a tense Rubin about his upbringing, or helping Ono with her “box of smiles,” Douglas’s kindness and intellectual curiosity are more compelling than any political argument.Daytime RevolutionNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      For ‘Disclaimer,’ Alfonso Cuarón Updates His Terms and Conditions

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      Cate Blanchett stars in the acclaimed director’s new TV series, a thriller about a woman whose life is upended by a mysterious novel.About a decade ago, the writer-director Alfonso Cuarón was sent an advance copy of Renée Knight’s book “Disclaimer,” a thriller about a woman whose life is upended when she receives a novel by an unknown author that seems to lay bare her secrets. That novel begins with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”As Cuarón (“Children of Men,” “Y Tu Mamá También”) read, he could picture each scene in his head. This book, he thought, should be a film. There was just one problem.“I didn’t see how the film that I wanted to do could fit into an hour and 45 minutes,” he said.So Cuarón immersed himself in other projects, like “Roma” (2018), which won him a second Oscar for directing. But a few years later, he began to think about “Disclaimer” again, in the context of more expansive films like Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” or Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” works that clocked in at four or five hours.The market for marathon films is small. But Cuarón knew of an alternative: television. And he was mindful that other auteurs, like David Lynch with “Twin Peaks” and Lars Von Trier with “The Kingdom,” had explored that medium before him.Which is how, after a three-decade film career and five Oscars, Cuarón came to make “Disclaimer,” a seven-episode limited series starring Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kevin Kline. The first two episodes premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, with the rest rolling out weekly afterward.In “Disclaimer,” Blanchett plays an acclaimed journalist and documentarian, and Sacha Baron Cohen plays her husband.Apple TV+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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      Waiting Hours for 3 Minutes in the Criterion Closet (Well, Van)

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      A mobile version of movie fans’ favorite stockroom drew hundreds of New York Film Festival visitors eager to experience what celebrities do in popular videos.The hottest event at this year’s New York Film Festival isn’t a film at all. It’s a van.Parked next to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the mobile version of the Criterion Closet — a tiny space stocked with the prestigious DVDs and Blu-rays of films in the Criterion Collection — attracted a line that wrapped around the block.It was a chance for festivalgoers to enact their own version of the Closet Picks videos, in which celebrities like Bill Hader, Ayo Edebiri and Willem Dafoe visit a product-filled closet in the company’s Manhattan office. They pick out their favorite titles and evangelize about their choices while not so coincidentally on tour promoting their latest projects. (Dafoe’s haul included Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” and the actor’s own “The Last Temptation of Christ”; Edebiri left with Wes Anderson’s “Bottle Rocket,” among other titles, and Hader’s selections included the western “My Darling Clementine.”)Criterion said some 900 people visited the van.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesFor the company’s 40th anniversary, it adapted the experience to the inside of a delivery van and opened it up to the public, starting with the first two weekends of the New York Film Festival (which concludes Oct. 13). The next stop, scheduled for Oct. 26 and 27, will be in Brooklyn Bridge Park in collaboration with St. Ann’s Warehouse.Visitors to the van are invited to film their own Closet Picks videos and pull titles from the shelf to gush about for the camera. Unlike the celebrities, they do have to pay for their picks, but with a 40 percent discount.“It was something no one ever thought we could do,” said Rainna Stapelfeldt, 26, a Bed-Stuy resident who took home “Sid and Nancy,” “Midnight Cowboy” and “Memories of Murder” after a 10-hour wait in line.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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      Oppenheimer’s Communist Past Draws New Attention

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      J. Robert Oppenheimer teemed with contradictions. He was shy and bold, naïve and brilliant, a loyal husband who cheated, a gentle man whose bomb could kill millions.That he loved quantum physics may be no accident. The field holds that some basic phenomena of the material world have opposing features that cannot be observed simultaneously, such as wave and particle behavior. Oppenheimer had a deep affection for these irreconcilable pairs. He called them “the nature of the surprise, of the miracle, of something that you could not figure out.”In a universe of contradictions, the physicist himself grew famous as an American hero and infamous as a red sympathizer. The question of his true loyalties rang alarms 80 years ago as the Federal Bureau of Investigation probed Oppenheimer’s Communist past — and is now — surprisingly — gaining new attention.This fall, months after Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” won seven Oscars, the Journal of Cold War Studies, a quarterly publication of Harvard University, is revisiting the Oppenheimer case.Four historians argue that the physicist was not just a Communist ally but a full-blown member of a secret Berkeley unit who ultimately perjured himself in a federal hearing that had dug into his past. As evidence, they cite a substantial body of letters, memoirs and espionage files, some postdating the movie’s source material.“Historians have to go where the evidence takes them,” said Gregg Herken, who leads the reassessment and is emeritus professor of history at the University of California.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 Menendez Brothers’ Review: Reframing a Case

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      To the extent this documentary about Lyle and Erik Menendez has appeal, it is of the tabloid variety.“The Menendez Brothers” doesn’t so much relitigate the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez as reframe it. In 1996, the brothers were convicted of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in Beverly Hills in 1989. That was their second trial. The first had ended in 1994 with two deadlocked juries, each assigned to deliberate over one sibling.This documentary, directed by Alejandro Hartmann and released on Netflix less than a month after the streamer put out Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s dramatization of these events, opens with the hook of “exclusive interviews” with the brothers, who “have not told their story together in nearly 30 years.” But its main contentions break down along two lines.One is that, following the #MeToo movement, the public might be more receptive to the brothers’ claim of “imperfect self-defense”: They had argued that their father had a history of sexual and psychological abuse that led them to an honest but mistaken belief that their parents would kill them.The other is that the context of the trials mattered. The first trial was televised in what the film portrays as a warm-up for the news media circus that would surround the O.J. Simpson case. The second trial began after Simpson had been acquitted of murder; the movie suggests that public criticism of that verdict interfered with the Menendezes’ getting a fair shake.No Netflix documentary could offer sufficient information to assess those claims, and this one, which glosses over even mild complexities like the separate juries in the first trial, feels incomplete. (Last week George Gascón, the Los Angeles County district attorney, announced that he was reviewing the case.) To the extent the film has appeal, it is of the tabloid variety. Betty Oldfield, an alternate juror in the first trial, recalls corresponding with the imprisoned Erik Menendez and receiving an oil painting that he had done. Pamela Bozanich, a deputy district attorney who prosecuted the first trial, says she “couldn’t find anyone to say anything nice about Jose Menendez except for his secretary.”The Menendez BrothersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More