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      ‘Code 8: Part II’ Review: Helping a Child in Danger

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      In this Netflix sequel, the acting cousins Robbie and Stephen Amell again play gruff men of action — physical and psychic — navigating an urban dystopia.If you didn’t see the 2019 movie “Code 8,” but for some reason decide to take a chance on the sequel, fear not: “Code 8: Part II” begins with a vivid account of a not-too-distant-future where 4 percent of people “possess superhuman abilities” and an authoritarian police force leans hard on robots both two- and four-legged.Having more or less caught you up, the movie, directed by Jeff Chan and streaming on Netflix, once again presents Connor (Robbie Amell), the first movie’s protagonist, now leaving prison and rebuffing his former partner in crime, Garrett (Stephen Amell). (They are real-life cousins, in case you were wondering.)Both are stuck in Lincoln City, a setting as bleak as any other sci-fi hellhole, wherein every day is a day without sunshine.The new story proper begins with Tarak (Sammy Azero), a young criminal who’s trying to help his teenage sister, Pav (Sirena Gulamgaus), find a better life. He steals a bag of money from a couple of corrupt cops and is pursued by a robot police dog in a chase scene that’s brisk, legible and passably tense. He doesn’t get away, and Pav goes on the run. Guess which adult helps her out?Along with a bunch of other contemporary sci-fi tropes (“designer drugs” also feature in this dystopia) we’ve got a child in danger — a child with, naturally, emerging powers of her own. Pav’s talent initially manifests itself by making the TV go wonky when there’s something on it she doesn’t like.In the end, even genre fans with relaxed standards might try to similarly rebel against this insipid offering.Code 8: Part IINot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Dan Lin Is Named Netflix’s Top Movie Executive

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      The producer behind the streaming company’s new live-actor remake of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” will replace Scott Stuber.Netflix said on Wednesday that the producer Dan Lin would replace Scott Stuber as the streaming company’s top film executive.Mr. Stuber was the head of Netflix Film for seven years before announcing last month that he would be leaving. During his tenure, he brought a bevy of Oscar-winning filmmakers to Netflix and helped the company push the rest of the entertainment industry into the streaming era.Mr. Lin, 50, who was once the senior vice president of production at Warner Bros., is the founder of Rideback Productions, which was behind Netflix’s recent live-action remake of “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” He was also a producer of the Oscar-nominated film “The Two Popes” for the streaming service, and has produced the “It” and “Lego” movie franchises. He will report to Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer.“While I’ve been approached many times during my past 15 years at Rideback, I could truly never imagine leaving until Bela reached out with this incredible opportunity,” Mr. Lin said in a statement.The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Mr. Lin is part of the new guard of producers who have built companies that tap into the times, notably inclusion. He is known in Hollywood as a strong executive with great relationships. And his ability to toggle between all-audience blockbusters like “Aladdin” and prestige pictures like “The Two Popes” suggests he has the skills to oversee Netflix’s varied film slate. He’s currently producing the live-action version of “Lilo & Stitch” for Walt Disney.Most recently, Mr. Lin’s name had been bandied for the job running DC Studios for Warner Bros. (That role was eventually split between the filmmaker James Gunn and the producer Peter Safran.)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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      Sex and Silence: What This Awards Season Tells Us About Hollywood

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      Whether it’s the return of steamy scenes or the lack of political speeches, the road to the Oscars holds a lot of clues about the state of the industry.We’re heading into the final stretch of this awards season, but you needn’t wait until the Oscars on March 10 to begin drawing conclusions about what’s transpired.To me, awards season has always offered a useful opportunity to take the film industry’s temperature. What can be gleaned about Hollywood’s current state from the movies and moments that have factored into this year’s race? Here are a few of the telling trends I’ve noticed so far.Prestige cinema has become less chaste.Paul Mescal, left, and Andrew Scott in “All of Us Strangers.”Searchlight PicturesOne of the first films I watched last year was “Passages,” a bisexual love-triangle drama that features one of the most bracing sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. That encounter between two men (played by Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski) is revealing not simply because the actors strip down to so little, but because over the course of this surprisingly lengthy and explicit scene, we come to know so much more about the characters from the power dynamics they negotiate while making love.Though I assumed “Passages” would be an anomaly, 2023 proved to be a sexually forthright movie year, producing a crop of awards contenders more interested in the joys of sex than any recent season I can remember. Emma Stone spent much of “Poor Things” on an uninhibited journey of desire, convening with a series of men in a way that surely tested the boundaries of the movie’s R rating. In “All of Us Strangers,” the sexual chemistry between Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal was so potent that I felt myself blushing. Even the director Christopher Nolan broke with convention, filming the first sex scenes of his career for “Oppenheimer.”If there had been a chill in the air while Hollywood learned how to navigate the new inclusion of intimacy coordinators on set, that’s gone now: Movie stars and prestige filmmakers are once again game for the sort of sex scenes that had lately been consigned to premium television. When I spoke with the “Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos in November, he sounded hopeful that attitudes had changed.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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      With ‘Imaginary’ and ‘Lisa Frankenstein,’ Defending PG-13 Horror

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      Not everyone needs a scary movie that goes to the darkest extremes. Here’s why milder horror films can still pack a punch.It’s nothing new to say that the scariest beasts are those left to the imagination: In the darkened corners of a room, on the ocean floor, in the vacuum of space — terror tends to lurk in the periphery, where it taunts us with what we don’t (or worse, can’t) know. There’s one unfairly maligned horror-movie feature that, when used wisely, can aid with such artful restraint: the humble PG-13 rating.Since many horror nerds predicate their identity on being able to enjoy content that is too depraved for the general public, they tend to look down on the PG-13 scary movie, viewing it as watered-down or wimpy. These fans can tend to turn genre viewing into a sort of contest in which the one who can stomach (or even delight in) the most deviant content wins: You can’t call yourself a real horror fan unless you’ve seen “Salò”/“Cannibal Holocaust”/all three sequences of “The Human Centipede.”Yes, it may be that one of the most powerful things the genre can do is subvert social norms, and it’s difficult to push boundaries when you’re pitching to a broader or younger audience. But it’s not impossible. Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell,” for instance, about a cursed loan officer, contains Raimi’s over-the-top camp sensibility, yet reels in some of his signature gore. It opts for softer gross-outs like bugs and vomit instead of heavy blood and guts, but it doesn’t sacrifice impact. I once saw a screening of it at MoMA that played like a metal show, with the film’s sound blasting from the speakers and squeals of delight jumping from the audience with each increasingly demented sequence.A scene with Pyper Braun from “Imaginary,” a new Blumhouse PG-13 film.Parrish Lewis/LionsgateThe genre is a great tool for more than just provocation, though. The latest PG-13 horror from Blumhouse, “Imaginary” (in theaters March 8), experiments with just how little you can show while still provoking fear with the first teaser for the film, which prompts audience members to close their eyes and imagine visuals to accompany audio cues. The full film plays with the perception of things that are seen but not heard, or heard but not seen — a figure just at the corner of a frame, a child responding to the directions of a sinister imaginary friend that only she can see.Gore Verbinski’s “The Ring” (2002), about a haunted videotape, is regarded as one of the best PG-13 horror films, and its most explicit image comes in the first 20 minutes. The rest of the movie relies on atmosphere to create tension, and does so stunningly; the soft static hum of an analog television, a fly plucked gently by its wings to bring it from inside a screen to outside of it. Even the film’s signature ghost is defined by what’s hidden: her long, dark hair pulled forward to shield her face.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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      ‘As We Speak’: Rap Music on Trial’ Review: Weaponizing Lyrics in Court

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      Lyrics that contain references to violence have been used as legal evidence, a practice this documentary by J.M. Harper condemns as unfair and prejudicial.Imagine music that you wrote being held against you in a criminal proceeding. In the documentary “As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial,” the Bronx-born rapper Kemba travels around the country and to Britain, interviewing artists and legal experts about how that has been more than a theoretical possibility for rappers.Mac Phipps, for instance, was convicted of manslaughter and spent more than two decades in prison, even though another man had confessed to the crime. (He was released in 2021.) In an interview with Kemba, he describes how references to violence in his lyrics were used at his trial, despite what he suggests was inadequate context. (One line cited concerned his father, a Vietnam veteran.)Elsewhere in this documentary, directed by J.M. Harper, the academic Adam Dunbar explains a set of studies he conducted. Participants were asked to judge lyrics from the same song: Some were told they were rap lyrics, others were told they were country and still others were told they were heavy metal. The group that believed the words were rap lyrics labeled the songwriter as having a greater criminal propensity. When the artist manager Chace Infinite argues that rap is taken more literally than other music, the movie cuts to clips of Johnny Cash and Freddie Mercury. Would a jury have accorded legal weight to Cash’s claim, in song, to have “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”?Kemba situates the association of rap with crime in a historical context of censorship of Black music. In another thread, “As We Speak” imagines Kemba himself on trial, with his writing being used against him in a criminal court. The staged material is a bit heavy-handed, but “As We Speak” makes a powerful case for the necessity of being free to make art, and for public awareness that art rarely qualifies as legal evidence.As We Speak: Rap Music on TrialNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      Criticism of Israel at Berlin Film Festival Stirs Antisemitism Debate

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      The backlash to some winners’ speeches at the festival shows how polarized and fraught Germany’s culture scene has become.When Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra walked onstage at the Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday night, they had come to talk about more than movies.Abraham and Adra, an Israeli and Palestinian filmmaking team, had just won the festival’s award for best documentary for “No Other Land,” a movie about Palestinian resistance to Israeli campaigns in the occupied territories. It was “very hard,” Adra said, to celebrate the award “when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza.”He called upon German lawmakers to “stop sending weapons to Israel,” before Abraham called for a cease-fire and an end to Israel’s occupation.The audience, which included the culture minister of Germany, Claudia Roth, applauded loudly, and there were whistles and cheers in the hall.In the days since, Abraham and Adra’s speeches have become the latest flashpoint in a long-running debate in Germany around whether public statements by filmmakers, musicians and other artists should be described as antisemitic if they don’t line up with Germany’s official stance on Israel.Scores of German journalists and politicians have denounced the speeches. On Sunday, Kai Wegner, the mayor of Berlin, said in posts on X that the filmmakers’ statements were filled with “intolerable relativization,” because they left out any mention of Hamas.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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      ‘Saltburn’ Mansion Has Film’s Fans Flocking to the English Countryside

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      A popular video on TikTok takes viewers to the site of Drayton House, where much of the movie was filmed.Drayton House, a privately owned mansion with more than a hundred rooms, has stood in Northamptonshire, England, for close to 700 years.For most of those seven centuries, the manor was a silent countryside presence, known mostly to locals or experts with a penchant for viewing beautiful homes owned by England’s upper classes.But that peace and quiet has changed since the release of “Saltburn” in November. Though the film largely didn’t impress critics, it has generated a flood of memes, jokes and commentary on the internet.And a pilgrimage to this once-quiet estate was made even easier after Rhian Williams, who lives nearby, posted detailed directions to the house in a TikTok video on New Year’s Day. Her clip ended up attracting more than 5.5 million views. She has since followed up with more videos, including another visit to the house as well as a visit to the local pub.“I haven’t got very many followers on TikTok,” Ms. Williams said in a phone interview. “I didn’t predict it,” she said.Drayton House, a Grade I building that is protected because of its historical nature, has been privately held for hundreds of years.Amazon StudiosWe 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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      ‘Mary Poppins’ Gets New Age Rating in Britain for Racist Language

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      The musical about a nanny with magical powers had been classified for all audiences since 1964, but the British Board of Film Classification has issued new guidance.The rating for “Mary Poppins,” the beloved children’s musical about a nanny with magical powers that was released 60 years ago, has been raised to PG in Britain because of the use of “discriminatory language,” the British Board of Film Classification said.The rating change follows a wave of recontextualizing and reclassifying of films from bygone eras for modern audiences amid shifting cultural norms and mores.“Mary Poppins” includes two uses of an offensive racial slur to describe an Indigenous group in South Africa. It is first heard when Admiral Boom asks Michael, a child, if he is going on an adventure to defeat said group. Admiral Boom repeats the slur during a chimney sweeps dance sequence when he shouts that he is being attacked. The dancing figures he spots in the distance are not Black Africans, but white dancers with blackened faces from soot.The film was originally rated “U,” for Universal, upon its release in 1964, and again in 2013 for a theatrical release, the B.B.F.C. said in a statement. When it was resubmitted in February for another theatrical release, it was reclassified as PG.PG is the second-least severe of six ratings in Britain. The strictest is 18, which prohibits anyone under that age from renting, buying or seeing the film in movie theaters.“We understand from our racism and discrimination research, and recent classification guidelines research, that a key concern for people, parents in particular, is the potential to expose children to discriminatory language” or behavior which they may find distressing or repeat without realizing the potential offense, a spokeswoman for the board said in a statement.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