Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Snack Shack,’ ‘Red Rocket’ and More Streaming Gems

      by

      A handful of the year’s best comedy-dramas are among your out-of-the-box recommendations from this month’s streaming services.‘Snack Shack’ (2024)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Adam Rehmeier’s coming-of-age story is set in the summer of 1991, and initially seems not only about that era, but of it, replicating the look and sound of ’90s teen sex comedies. (You can’t get more ’90s than a montage set to EMF’s “Unbelievable.”) But that’s a bit of a head fake; this is a movie with more on its mind. A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle, currently seen as Lorne Michaels in “Saturday Night”) are a pair of enterprising young entrepreneurs who see a moneymaking opportunity in the concession stand at the local public pool. As often happens in these tales, a girl threatens to come between them, but that’s where we diverge from the formula; as written by Rehmeier and played by Mika Abdalla, the “cool girl” Brooke has the complexity and agency of a contemporary heroine, allowing Rehmeier to navigate a third-act flip into serious waters with grace and dexterity.‘I Used to Be Funny’ (2024)Stream it on Netflix.LaBelle’s “Saturday Night” co-star Rachel Sennott fronts this narratively and tonally tricky examination of a young woman in a free-fall. Sam (Sennott) is an occasional stand-up comic whose last day job, nannying a young firecracker named Brooke (Olga Petsa), ended badly. The writer and director Ally Pankiw takes her time (perhaps a bit too much) revealing exactly what happened there, but it took a toll on Sam, who has become a withdrawn recluse, barely able to crack the jokes that used to come so freely. Pankiw’s script perceptively captures how funny people use deflection and gallows humor to minimize the pains of their past, and Sennott, quickly becoming one of our most captivating young actors (thanks to electrifying turns in “Shiva Baby,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” and “Bottoms”), is terrific.‘The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.Joanna Arnow plays a dour 30-something New Yorker who meets men for various sexual encounters.Magnolia PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Pilot Killed in New Mexico Air Show Crash Instructed ‘Top Gun’ Actors

      by

      Charles Thomas “Chuck” Coleman was a flight instructor who prepared actors for the 2022 action movie “Top Gun: Maverick,” which starred Tom Cruise and Miles Teller.An accomplished test pilot who was a flight instructor for the cast of the 2022 movie “Top Gun: Maverick” died in a crash of a small plane during an air show in New Mexico on Sunday, the authorities said.The pilot, Charles Thomas “Chuck” Coleman, 61, was the only person onboard the single-engine Extra Flugzeugbau 300/L plane when it crashed during a performance at the Las Cruces Air and Space Expo around 2:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to Las Cruces city officials and the Federal Aviation Administration.The show, a display of aerobatic performances, helicopters, airplanes and spacecraft, was held at Las Cruces International Airport and ended after the crash. The airport was also temporarily closed on Sunday, according to the city.“Unfortunately, we had a tragic ending to our Air and Space Expo this weekend,” Mayor Eric Enriquez of Las Cruces said in a statement posted to social media on Monday. Las Cruces is a city of about 111,000 residents in southern New Mexico.“We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the loved ones and fans of Chuck Coleman,” he added.The cause of the crash is being investigated by New Mexico State Police, the F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board, the city said.Las Cruces officials said that Mr. Coleman, who was based in California, was “a well known and respected engineer, aerobatic and test pilot” with more than 10,000 hours of flight time. He had also performed at hundreds of air shows and had provided more than 3,000 rides in aerobatic aircraft, according to his official website.Mr. Coleman was an aerobatic flight instructor for the actors in the 2022 action movie “Top Gun: Maverick,” which starred Tom Cruise as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who trains a group of eager young combat pilots for a dangerous mission. The movie also starred Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Val Kilmer.“He flew 140 flights in order to prepare the actors to fly in Navy F-18 Hornets,” Mr. Coleman’s website stated. On his Instagram page, Mr. Coleman posted a photo of Mr. Teller in a flight suit and said that the actor had flown with him for 12 training flights or about 14 hours to prepare for the Navy jets.The movie was the sequel to the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun,” which followed a group of young pilots at the Navy’s elite fighter weapons school, also known as Top Gun.Mr. Coleman also worked on the film productions of “The Round and Round” (2002) and “First in Flight” (2012), and appeared in the 2009 documentary “Air Racer: Chasing the Dream,” according to IMDb.com.Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Watch Dancers Haunt Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’

      by

      Parker Finn, the film’s writer and director, narrates a scene in which a pop star is chased through her apartment by evil dancers.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A pop star finds herself surrounded by a menacing version of her dancers in this scene from “Smile 2.”Naomi Scott plays Skye Riley, a pop star who has struggled with the personal demons of addiction. But as soon as she gets her life back on track, she becomes possessed by a different kind of demon, one that has her seeing hallucinations and spiraling once again out of control.In this scene, Skye is in her apartment at night when she begins to see several dancers staring at her, wearing the sinister grin of the film’s title.Narrating the scene, the film’s director, Parker Finn, said, “These dancers that I got to work with, and my choreographer, Celia Rowlson-Hall, it was this incredible collaboration to create something that felt both like a menacing attack, but also at the same time, dance.”Read the “Smile 2” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘Smile 2’ and ‘Trap,’ Pop Stardom Looks Pretty Terrifying

      by

      At a time when the business of being Taylor Swift or Beyoncé is booming, these films examine toxic fandom and what can seem like mass hysteria.This article contains spoilers.Last year around this time, audiences were heading to movie theaters to experience the joy of being in the presence of a pop star.“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” had just been released, prompting Swifties and the Swift-curious to descend on multiplexes, friendship bracelets adorning their wrists. Weeks later, the Beyhive would don silver cowboy hats for the release of “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé.” Attending one of these concert films meant having a great time and reveling in the glory of the women onstage who seemed to be doing the same.Now being a pop star at the movies looks a lot more terrifying.Horror centered on pop stars is all the rage these days. In M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap,” released in August, the concert by the fictional Lady Raven (Saleka) is an elaborate setup to nab a serial killer (Josh Hartnett). This weekend, “Smile 2,” directed by Parker Finn, follows Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a troubled Grammy winner with a history of addiction who comes to be possessed by a demon that drives her mad with violent hallucinations. To her fans and her team, it looks like she’s on another, possibly drug-induced spiral, but really a monster is goading her into killing herself.Both these movies are a product of a time when the business of being a pop star is bigger than ever. Events like the Eras and Renaissance tours became zeitgeist-defining moments as well as fodder that filmmakers could mine for inspiration. Shyamalan was even direct about it in an Empire interview. His premise for “Trap”? “What if ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ happened at a Taylor Swift concert?”Saleka as a pop star whose concert is a setup to nab a serial killer in “Trap.” Warner Bros. PicturesBut both “Trap” and “Smile 2” prove that beyond the fun of the setup, the life of a pop star is actually thematically ripe for horror. It’s a high-pressure job in which you never know whether you’re meeting a fan or a predator.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

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Hollywood Can Be Hell for a Writer, as Two New Books Remind Us

      by

      Dorothy Parker worked on the script for “A Star Is Born,” but the tragic ending was all hers, while Bruce Eric Kaplan manages to find the mordant laughs in today’s industry foibles.This week the former magazine queen Tina Brown started a Substack called Fresh Hell, after an expression oft-attributed to Dorothy Parker. Of course I subscribed immediately, considering Brown’s book “The Vanity Fair Diaries” one of her crowning achievements. Chattiness is her idiom. But also because of the Parkerly promise.This archetype of archness, whose death in 1967 at 73 was front-page news, persists into the 21st century partly because of her pith, eerily well suited to the slicing and dicing of contemporary online culture. Long before X she was dishing out quotes of 280 characters or fewer: “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” and other tablespoons of hot honey diluted into shampoo commercials and beyond.Less known is her work for the movie industry, Gail Crowther’s focus in DOROTHY PARKER IN HOLLYWOOD (Gallery Books, 291 pp., $29.99). Parker’s copious if frequently forgotten credits include Oscar nominations a decade apart for the original “A Star Is Born” (1937) and “Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman” (1947), both with alcoholic protagonists.She was writing what she knew. Booze pickled her career and second and third marriages, both to the actor and screenwriter Alan Campbell, who died swathed in a dry-cleaning bag and surrounded by Seconal capsules. In a late, sad photograph enlisted as caution by at least one recovery organization, alcohol almost seems to be dissolving her, as water did the Wicked Witch of the West.Parker wasn’t wicked but she could be very, very cruel, Crowther reminds readers (there have been several previous, fuller biographies, from which she draws, along with archival material). To the 11-years-younger Campbell, whom she called “pansy,” “fairy” and worse; to acquaintances she’d butter up in person, then roast at scorching temperature the minute they left the room; and to a literary community that kept coming back for more abuse. Esquire kept the older Parker on retainer as a book reviewer for years, though her copy rarely materialized. (Click forthwith on Wyatt Cooper’s unpaywalled homage to her there, “Whatever You Think Dorothy Parker Was Like, She Wasn’t.”) She agreed to judge a University of Michigan poetry competition, but “upon receiving the shortlisted poems,” Crowther writes, “she replied that none were worthy of any award or indeed of any consideration whatsoever.”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

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Toni Vaz, Stuntwoman and Founder of N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, Dies at 101

      by

      She created a program to honor Black artistic success in the 1960s. But she spent decades trying to get its organizers to recognize her role.Toni Vaz, who cut a path as one of the first Black stuntwomen in Hollywood, with appearances in more than 50 movies, and then created the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards to recognize the often unsung work of Black writers and performers, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 101.Cheryl Abbott, her great-niece, said her death, at a retirement home for actors in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, was caused by congestive heart failure.The notion of a Black stunt performer did not really exist when Ms. Vaz began her career in the 1950s — she and others were officially cast as extras, received no training, and often did not know what dangers they might face on a set until the cameras began to roll.During the filming of “Porgy and Bess” (1959), Ms. Vaz was instructed to lean out a window to catch a glimpse of two of the film’s stars, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier. Unbeknown to her, a carpenter had purposely weakened the railing; it broke as soon as she leaned on it, sending her falling several feet onto a mattress.Shaken, she was handed a shot of brandy to recover.Throughout her career, Ms. Vaz played a critical part in support of Black actresses like Eartha Kitt, Cicely Tyson and Juanita Moore as they began to break out of the racially stereotyped roles that had long been their only options in Hollywood.But she and other Black stunt performers were typically paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Standing in for Ms. Moore in a scene for “The Singing Nun” (1966), she and a white stuntwoman were directed to crash a jeep; Ms. Vaz got $40, she told the interviewer Amie Jo Greer in 2010, while the white performer got $350.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