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      Nathan Silver’s Movie, “Between the Temples,” Shows at Tribeca

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      Nathan Silver’s ninth feature film, “Between the Temples,” continues his work as someone who is unafraid of emotional and narrative complexity.Early on in Nathan Silver’s “Between the Temples,” Ben Gottlieb, a 40-ish widower played by Jason Schwartzman, walks into a bar in his tallit and skullcap with the intention of getting plastered.Ben, a synagogue cantor in upstate New York who has lost the ability to praise the Lord through song since his wife died a year earlier, gets sloshed on mudslides, punched in the face and attracts the notice of another patron, Carla Kessler, a feisty septuagenarian played by Carol Kane. It is, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Before long, Ben is giving Carla adult bat mitzvah lessons.“Between the Temples,” showing at the Tribeca Festival, which runs Wednesday through June 16, is Silver’s ninth feature film. It first screened in January at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by its international premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The film has already won praise for Silver’s direction and its performances. When the movie is released in U.S. theaters on Aug. 23, it may finally bring Silver and his kinetic, fiercely intelligent films wider recognition.Silver’s career is one of the most singular in contemporary independent American filmmaking. Over the past 15 years, Silver, 41, has emerged as a chronicler of the uncomfortably intimate and as an auteur who is unafraid of emotional and narrative complexity. He directed his first feature film at 25. From 2012 to 2018, he worked at a frantic pace that recalled the relentless productivity of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who made over 40 films before his death at 37. Not surprisingly, the German filmmaker is one of Silver’s cinematic idols.The raw spontaneous energy and naturalism of Silver’s films result from close collaboration with his artistic team, including his writers and actors.Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane in a still image from “Between the Temples.”Sony Pictures ClassicsWe 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 Tribeca Festival, Beyond the Spotlight

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      From the ticket booth and the red carpet to a restaurant and a theater, here are stories from people not in the spotlight.When it comes to who gets the most attention during the Tribeca Festival, the actors, the directors and the celebrities who walk the red carpet are foremost.But behind the scenes, there are many people who aren’t under the spotlight, yet are integral to the event nonetheless. Without them, the festival, which runs Wednesday through June 16, would not happen.These players include the attendees and the employees — more than 600 of them, according to the festival’s chief executive, Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded the festival with Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff. This staff works across 18 departments, ranging from security and box office to production and operations.Rosenthal calls them the festival’s invisible figures. “As a guest and supporter, you, of course, want to have a great time, but the team who brings it to life ensures that you have it,” she said. “They keep guests happy and the schedule running.”Here are four snapshots of people who are hidden from the spotlight’s glare, but key to the festival.Angela Robinson, a customer service manager of the call center for the festival’s ticket sales. She has gotten to know repeat visitors and said, when they return, “we pick up exactly where we left off.”Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesWe 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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      L.G.B.T.Q. Movies and Documentaries That Celebrate Pride

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      From “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” to “Gay USA,” seven movies that will fill your screen with joy, history and rainbows.Pride Month is here, which means queer people and their allies will be taking to the streets for parades and protests and parades that look a lot like protests. There are dance parties, cultural events and unexpected gay histories to have fun with too.But while boozy drag brunches and silent discos under the stars are fun and all, Pride can also happen onscreen and from the comfort of your couch. Tearful romances, family-friendly comedies, revelatory documentaries: Pride Month is a ripe time for discovering how the movies mirror queer lives as they were and still can be.In these seven films, Pride comes out in all its messy, sexy, lovely glory.‘The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson’ (2017)Stream it on Netflix.Murder or suicide? That’s the heartbreaking question that fuels David France’s documentary about Marsha P. Johnson, the trailblazing transgender activist, performer and high-profile elder of the Stonewall uprising who was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992. Yet embedded among the investigative elements of the film is a treasure trove of archival footage of Johnson, described in a 2018 obituary in The New York Times as “a fixture of street life in Greenwich Village.” To watch Johnson resiliently parade down Christopher Street during Pride, her beaming smile accentuated by her signature glossy lip, is to see a revolution in heels.‘Gay USA’ (1977)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.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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      Darryl Hickman, Prolific Child Actor of the 1940s, Dies at 92

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      He was in “The Grapes of Wrath” and other films. As an adult, he was seen often on TV. He later oversaw daytime programming at CBS and taught acting.Darryl Hickman, who worked with top directors as a child actor in the 1940s, shifted to television roles in the ’50s, and succeeded Robert Morse as the star of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” in the early ’60s, died on May 22 at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 92.His wife, Lynda (Farmer) Hickman, confirmed the death.Mr. Hickman viewed himself as a character actor, never a star, during his childhood in Hollywood.“I was happy doing what I did,” he said on a panel discussion moderated by Robert Osborne on TCM in 2006 with three former child actors, Dickie Moore, Jane Withers and Margaret O’Brien, all of whom he acknowledged had been stars, unlike himself. “I knew I wasn’t in their category.”In 1940, when he was 8, he beat out dozens of other actors for the part of Winfield Joad, a brother of Tom Joad (played by Henry Fonda), in “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Ford’s adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel about an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family of tenant farmers who join a fraught journey to California.Mr. Hickman recalled being on a darkened set watching Mr. Fonda shoot his farewell scene with Jane Darwell, who played Ma Joad, in which he tells her, “Wherever you can look — wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.”“I knew I was watching great acting,” Mr. Hickman said in an online interview. “It was so simple and so real and so honest and so truthful and not acted at all.”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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      How the ‘Furiosa’ War Rig Was Built

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      Members of the creative team explain what it took to turn the War Rig into “a beautiful chrome stage.”Chrome and polished steel have some great qualities. They look sleek, sexy and powerful. Onscreen, they really pop.But talk to the team that built the War Rig — the menacingly dazzling, steel-and-chrome 12-wheeler that carries a crucial action scene in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” — and you’ll learn that these materials can at times be something else: a royal pain in the tailpipe.“Metal gets hot in the Australian sun,” said Guy Norris, the movie’s action designer.That became a challenge for the stunt performers, who, to execute the director George Miller’s vision, threw their bodies every which way around the tractor-trailer as it sped down a stretch of road near Hay, a rural town in southeastern Australia.“They’d get blown up or shot and they’d fall,” Norris said. “And we had restraining cables on them, so they wouldn’t hit the ground, but they’d do a full fall, hit the side of the tanker and dangle.” Even worse: “they were all bare-chested.”Shirtless skin. Sizzling metal. And surfaces so shiny, the crew’s reflection could often be seen in shots of the truck. This is how the team behind “Furiosa” created the War Rig, and how they worked with its idiosyncrasies.Anya Taylor-Joy in action on the War Rig.Jasin Boland/Warner Bros.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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      Watch an Ambush at the Bullet Farm in ‘Furiosa’

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      The director George Miller narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Anya Taylor-Joy and Tom Burke.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.The following contains spoilers for “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.”A great action sequence may involve pyrotechnics, breakneck vehicle maneuvers and other dazzling stunts, but according to the director George Miller, it may prove hollow without a connection to, and between, the characters.He put a relationship front and center in this sequence from his latest tale in the Mad Max saga, the prequel “Furiosa.” Anya Taylor-Joy stars as the title character and Tom Burke is a driver named Praetorian Jack, with whom Furiosa builds a bond.In the scene, the pair approach the Bullet Farm to pick up munitions for a battle being waged between Immortan Joe and Dementus. But soon after they arrive and their War Rig passes through a portcullis, they are ambushed and they realize that Dementus has taken over the Bullet Farm.Taylor-Joy performs her own car stunt requiring her to spin the vehicle 180 degrees. And the sequence plays out in tense ways as both she and Praetorian Jack defend themselves. But narrating the scene, Miller defines the central purpose: “What follows is that through their actions, not their words and their promises to each other but through their actions, that they are prepared to give of themselves entirely to the other.”He continues, “In a way, it’s kind of a love story in the middle of an action scene.”Read the “Furiosa” review.Read an interview with Anya Taylor-Joy.Take a behind-the-scenes look at the War Rig from “Furiosa.”Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      10 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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      Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.Critic’s PickA wordless cartoon to love.The happy dog-robot pair in the animated film “Robot Dreams.”Arcadia Motion Pictures, Lokiz Films, Noodles Production, Les Films du Worso‘Robot Dreams’A dog and his robot friend explore 1980s New York in this wordless cartoon written and directed by Pablo Berger and adapted from the graphic novel of the same name.From our review:It’s marvelous how the film is able to sketch so much soul from such simple lines. The characters are drawn bluntly, just as they are in the book. Yet Berger, directing his first animated feature (but not his first silent film), already boasts the creativity of a master. He frames images from inside a grimy microwave, or looking up from the bottom of a candy bowl as it’s being filled with jelly beans. One dizzying shot comes from the point of view of a snowman who’s popped off his own head and hurled it like a bowling ball.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickThe sulking dead.Renate Reinsve in “Handling the Undead.”Pal Ulvik Rokseth/Sundance Institute, via Neon‘Handling the Undead’After the dead are spontaneously reanimated, three families wrestle with the personal ramifications.From our review:Director Thea Hvistendahl wisely takes her time getting to any real action. Instead, with a slow-moving camera and plenty of filtered sunlight, she conjures a dreamlike state, the sense of hanging between planes of existence that tends to accompany those who grieve. There are times when the film veers too near the maudlin for comfort, but it always finds its way back to something spare and meaningful. What would you do, the story gently asks, if your fondest and most impossible wish was granted, and you realized it wasn’t at all what you’d hoped it would be?In theaters. Read the full review.Swimming with the clichés.Daisy Ridley as the real-life competitive swimmer Trudy Ederle in “Young Woman and the Sea.”Vladisav Lepoev/Disney‘Young Woman and the Sea’This Disney drama is inspired by the true story of Trudy Ederle (played by Daisy Ridley), who in 1926 battled sexism and became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.From our review:This is one of those movies that proves, when they’ve got a mind to, they can still make them like they used to. Which is to say, its production values are top-notch, the cast uniformly competent or better (Ridley is particularly winning), and the filmmaking language — the director here is Joachim Ronning, whose last at-bat with Disney was the 2019 critical misfire “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” — is meticulously calculated to deliver a rousing climax and an appropriately heartwarming coda. It’s also rather rich in cliché.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickJessica Lange, stealing the show.Jessica Lange in “The Great Lillian Hall,” with Jesse Williams, standing behind her, reflected in the mirror.HBOWe 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