Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Taste of Things’ and a Lovingly Prepared Meal

      by

      How a movie announces itself to you is everything, and “The Taste of Things” begins in a kitchen.Well, a kitchen garden. It’s dawn, and someone is crouching near the rows, cutting heads of lettuce, pulling up a few carrots, unearthing a white knobby thing and bringing it all indoors. The light is coolly blue-tinged. The day is just getting started.I think it’s fair to group the garden with the kitchen. A garden doesn’t spring up overnight. Seeds are planted in the spring, sometimes before, and the gardener can’t control the results. If all of the elements cooperate — sun, shade, water, soil nutrients, shifts in climate and weather — then you get a head of lettuce, some carrots, some herbs, a perfectly pink radish. The same combination of skill and luck gets a cow to produce milk, a chicken to grow fat and tender, a cheese to ripen properly. Expertise, patience, attention and care, renewed every season.Those same ingredients govern the kitchen itself, and that’s where this opening scene continues, ushering us into the world we’re about to inhabit, tummies growling. “The Taste of Things,” written and directed by Tran Anh Hung (based on a 1924 French novel but set in 1889), is one of those instant gastronomical classics designed to be savored over and over, like “Babette’s Feast,” “Big Night” or “Tampopo.” As in all great food movies — and shows, too, like “The Bear” — the food is both the point and not the point at all. A great feast says something about the world and everything in it. In the case of “The Taste of Things,” a meal is about time, and longing, and seasons.All of which is evident in this first extended scene, which runs about a half-hour. The day has barely begun, and a fish is gutted, its innards dropped into a pan to fry. The kitchen is warm and convivial. Two people weave around one another as if in a pas de deux: a man and a woman whose ease instantly indicates a long, trusting relationship. Meanwhile, eggs cook. Vegetables are chopped. A younger woman helps, following their gentle orders. She’s brought a girl with her, maybe 11 years old.Stéphanie Branchu/IFC FIlmsLater we will find out that the man is Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel), a famous gourmet, and that the woman, Eugenie (Juliette Binoche), is both his cook and his dearest and most intimate companion. Their kitchen help is Violette (Galatéa Bellugi), who lives nearby; the girl she’s brought, Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), is her niece. But for now we know very little about any of them, and the movie intends to keep it that way for a while. The focus here is not their station in this household, or even where, exactly, they are — somewhere in France, presumably. The focus is on the food and the act of cooking. A meal that’s not just nourishing, but transcendent.They all sit down to eat omelets, fortification before the grand task. “I advise you to eat it with a spoon,” Dodin tells Pauline, who is new to this kitchen. “It makes all the difference.”From that sentence we learn a lot. First, for that suggestion to work, this must be a perfect omelet: soft, tender, buttery, not an overstuffed American lump but a soft roll of egg, with no filling at all. Using a spoon preserves the texture of the finished egg, instead of harshly severing its strands. But from this exhortation we also discover that Dodin is a man who cares for the small things that make “all the difference,” as he puts it. Why simply eat some eggs for breakfast when you can savor them?Onward they press — there’s a meal to prepare, elaborate and intricate. (Heaven help the audience member who skipped lunch, gnawing on stale popcorn.) Loins of veal, roasted vegetables, stews and sauces, crackling and boiling and frying and searing. Pastry so light and flaky you can very nearly taste it. Pans go in and out of the oven; mixtures are strained and pressed from one pot into another; fat melts and browns, onions grow soft and caramelized, lettuce is blanched and squeezed and cooked in butter. Consommé, vol-au-vent, veal loin with braised lettuce, turbot, a baked Alaska: Everything is being perfectly prepared and timed for its starring role in the dining room.This all will be served, eventually, to a group of men, Dodin’s friends and associates. They will trade aphorisms and discuss wines and eventually go to the kitchen to ask Eugenie why she never joins them in the dining room. (“I converse with you in the dining room through what we eat,” she explains, smiling.) Later we will find that Dodin’s greatest passion in life is not actually food, but the woman who cooks with him, and that their romance is the sort that unfolds over time and seasons very like the lettuce growing in the garden. We will even learn, alongside him, that the beauty of love is much like the beauty of a pristinely cooked meal: It is precious because it will, like all things, eventually be only a memory.But for now we are focused on the balancing act of the kitchen, the way ingredients come together like magic. In the hubbub, Dodin finds a lull in which to conduct a lesson. Pauline’s been watching the activity with wide, fascinated eyes. He hands her a spoonful of some liquid, a sauce, and asks her to name what’s in it.She closes her eyes and concentrates. She has no training, but her senses are keen. She starts to name elements, from bacon and red peppers to specific herbs and cognac. As she lists them, we see what’s in her mind’s eye: the elements being seared and sifted and combined, stirred together and cooked to the perfect texture.Dodin’s eyes, meanwhile, are filled with excitement at her rare talent. Across the room, Eugenie is listening, the same joy reflected in her face. What Pauline can do is what luck cannot: She can sense the elements, and also understand the balance between them, how they come together to make something quite perfect. What’s more, she feels great emotion in the task, her pleasure as palpable as theirs. Later, when she tells Eugenie that she almost wept when she tasted another dish, she cannot explain why; it just affected her in a way she can feel in her soul.I understand. It’s the same emotion I feel when I watch a movie like this one, where elements of joy and sorrow, humor and intensity, beauty and light and shadow combine in a perfectly balanced experience. It takes patience and skill, but also nerve and luck for a work of art to achieve elegance and piquancy in equal measure. You might try to reduce it to a recipe for success, but you can’t scientifically force a movie to work, any more than you can batter a meal into perfection like a blunt object. This attention, and patience, and care: It is what makes all the difference. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Good Grief’ Review: Somehow, Life Goes On in Daniel Levy’s Film

      by

      In his feature directorial debut, Daniel Levy applies a light but wise hand to a man navigating life after loss.Romantic comedies are powered by farcical set pieces like missed connections, mistaken identities and mix-ups that lead to happy-ending fantasies. (They’re all modeled on Shakespeare, in the end.) Those sorts of moments do abound in “Good Grief,” which features pretty urbanites in pretty places learning lessons about friendship, life and love, just like a rom-com would. But to the immense credit of the movie’s writer, director and star Daniel Levy (of “Schitt’s Creek”), this is a very different kind of movie — and a much better one.That’s not to say “Good Grief” isn’t funny, because often it is. But it’s as if the familiar madcap beats have been wrapped around a drama, and the result is somehow light-handed yet deft and authentic in its treatment of grief’s long tail. The man at its center, Marc (Levy), is an artist living in London whose husband, Oliver (Luke Evans), dies in a car accident, leaving behind a lot of loose ends, some of them hidden from his loved ones. Marc tries to navigate the first year of life as a stunned widower with the help of his friends Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel). They’re all creative people — Sophie designs costumes for movies, Thomas works at a gallery — and all in their late 30s, with a long history behind them. Each also harbors long-simmering hurts of their own, and when the three spend a weekend in Paris together, things come to a head.This is the sort of film you want to live inside, with beautiful furnishings, glowing light and an affluent coziness that verges on Nancy Meyers territory. Oliver was the author of a Potter-esque young adult book series that spawned a successful film franchise, so he leaves Marc comfortably well-off, with a gorgeous house into which Thomas simply moves to keep his friend company. Without having to grapple with how Marc will pay his bills — a familiar complication of sudden loss for many people — “Good Grief” is freed to focus on more existential and emotional dimensions. When you’ve entwined your life with someone else’s, what happens when they’re gone? When love evaporates without warning, how can you keep living?The answers are complex, because everyone experiences and processes various stages of grief differently. Feelings zig and zag. We try things to drown out the pain, feeling better one day and horrid the next. Nothing moves predictably. Nobody can tell you how to fix it, because it can’t be fixed, only lived through.Levy’s script navigates all of this complexity nimbly, never over-explaining what Marc is going through. Instead “Good Grief” does that rare, beautiful thing: It trusts the audience to pay attention. It’s restrained in revealing the details of Marc and Oliver’s marriage — joys, sorrows, compromises, conflicts — as well as the back story of the group’s friendship. There are no real twists, and every time it seemed the movie was about to take the easy way out, it didn’t. Thank goodness.How well “Good Grief” works for you may depend on your tolerance for watching long conversations among friends about pain, regrets and loss. Mostly I think it’s effective; a few times, it sags, losing its rhythm briefly in abstractions. But it always returns, generating emotion without diving into a treacly pit of cloying mush. The credit lies with the actors: Negga’s vivacity, Patel’s aching sincerity and Levy’s uncanny talent for great line readings make these people feel instantly recognizable, their chemistry legible as complicated love.Late in the film, Marc admits that when his mother died, he “opted out” of the pain by distracting himself, and now he’s doing the same again. Other characters opt out of their pain by drowning it or denying it or simply refusing to acknowledge it. Yet the pain that accompanies loss sticks around like a hollow spot in your chest, changing shape but never disappearing. In most rom-coms, conflicts tend to resolve easily, all a product of misunderstanding. In “Good Grief,” resolution is not the point. The idea is to keep on loving, to find new life.Good GriefRated R for tragedy, and for 30-somethings behaving like hot messes. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      The Grim Heartbeat Propelling ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

      by

      Early in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” an Osage woman named Mollie gives her gravely unsuitable white suitor, Ernest, a Stetson. It’s a large off-white hat with a bound-edge brim and a wide ribbon around the band. It’s a gift but it feels more like a benediction, and anyone who’s ever watched an old western film (or “Star Wars”) will recognize the symbolism of her largess. Mollie is telling Ernest that she sees him as a good guy, even if the movie has already violently upended the familiar dualism of the white hat vs. black.That dichotomy shapes “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a deeply American story of greed, betrayal and murder told through the anguished relationship between Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio). It’s around 1919 and Ernest is wearing his World War I uniform when he dismounts a train in Fairfax, an Oklahoma boomtown where luxury cars rumble down dirt roads. He’s come to live with his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), a smooth-talking rancher who, in one breath, asks him if he has seen bloodshed and, in the next, describes the Osage as the finest and “and most beautiful people on God’s earth.”The movie is based on David Grann’s appalling, all-too-true crime book from 2017, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.” In adapting it to the screen, Scorsese and Eric Roth have dramatically narrowed the role of the F.B.I. to focus on the multiple murders — scores, perhaps hundreds — of Osage members that took place largely in the 1920s on the tribe’s oil-rich reservation in northern Oklahoma. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, oil made the tribe among the wealthiest people in the world. It also made them the target of numerous white predators. As a 1920 article in Harper’s ominously put it: “The Osage Indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it.”The following year, Congress passed a law that required the Osage to prove they could handle their reserves “responsibly.” If they couldn’t, they were declared incompetent and appointed a guardian; it was a status, as Grann explains, that was usually given to full-blooded Osage like Mollie. It’s instructive then that the first time you see Mollie in “Killers,” she is in an office being asked to state her name by an unseen man. “I’m Mollie Kyle, incompetent,” she says, her face a serene blank. The man is her guardian, yet another smooth talker, though one with a picture of a Ku Klux Klan rider on his wall. When Mollie leaves his office, Scorsese cuts to a shot of her feet on a doormat imprinted with “KIGY,” an abbreviation for “Klansman, I greet you.”Mollie gives Ernest the Stetson soon afterward in a sequence that both lays out many of the story’s themes and beautifully illustrates dialectical filmmaking in four or so revelatory minutes. It opens at the 22-minute mark with Mollie walking away from the camera while coyly looking over her shoulder at Ernest, who’s watching her from a car. By that point, he has started working as a chauffeur ferrying around locals. She’s one of his regulars, and he thinks she’s sweet on him, which pleases Hale. If “we mix these families together,” he tells Ernest, Mollie’s money “will come to us.” As he often does, Ernest looks utterly baffled by his uncle.As Mollie walks toward her house, a pulsing bass line revs up. The soundtrack includes original music by Scorsese’s friend and frequent collaborator Robbie Robertson (who died in August), as well as old songs like the jumpy blues number that’s playing when Ernest and Mollie first meet in town. The notes that begin pulsing now create an entirely different mood and feeling simply because they sound like a heartbeat, if one that sometimes skips. And for good reason: The song is “Heartbeat Theme/Ni-U-Kon-Ska,” the meaning of which becomes clear when, after a few more cuts, the camera settles on Ernest’s face. “I am an Osage brave,” he says in halting voice-over, his words creating an odd counter-rhythm to the thumping.Apple TV+Ernest’s voice-over continues as the movie cuts to a brief bird’s-eye view of him pulling away from Mollie’s house followed by a close-up of his hand holding an opened illustrated book. Scorsese — working with his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker — holds on the shot long enough for you to scan both pages, the chapter heading (“Osage Culture & History”) and the simple illustrations, including of a woman near a tepee, some men dancing around a fire and others on horseback. As Ernest speaks, he turns the page, revealing other images — a buffalo hunt, a map of Indian Territory — and it becomes clear that he’s reading, either aloud or in his head, from this book. Ni-U-Kon-Ska, he says, means “children of the middle waters.”Titled “Lilly’s Wild Tales Among the Indians,” the book belongs to Hale, who had earlier instructed Ernest to school himself on the Osage. It resembles the kind of old-fashioned children’s primers from the 19th and early 20th centuries that were still floating around the New York City school system midcentury, so it’s easy to imagine that a book like this drifted into Scorsese’s life at one point. (The main illustration in the movie is based on one such volume from 1901.) The book is as crudely simplistic as you would expect, yet when Ernest reads the words, “‘Move,’ said the Great White Father, from Missouri, from Arkansas, from Kansas,” he is also speaking to the grimly true history that informs Scorsese’s movie.Ernest reads a caption on an illustration, his finger tracing the words, “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” Just as he finishes the sentence, you hear the metallic jangling of a door opening, and the camera hurriedly pans up to find Ernest’s brother, Byron (Scott Shepherd) — in another light-colored hat — bursting into the room. “All right,” Byron says. “Let’s go.” The men rush to join a third, Blackie Thompson (Tommy Schultz), who’s waiting in an idling car. Ernest’s voice-over continues as they drive off, and a wailing harmonica joins the heartbeat, Ernest’s voice briefly dropping out when the men — now all wearing hoods over their heads — excitedly rob a wealthy Osage couple at gunpoint.The men convene at a billiard parlor (Scorsese is working fast!) where Ernest, as will be his habit for the remainder of the movie, makes a catastrophically wrong bet. “I love money! I love money!” he exclaims just before losing his night’s take. It’s first light when the men leave the parlor, and as they walk out Ernest’s voice-over resumes: “Dawn was always a sacred time for prayers.” The movie then cuts to a long shot of Mollie praying at a riverbank, an image that’s followed by a rapid volley of shots — of the sun, moon and fire — that ends on a vast green field dotted with the purple and white flowers that give the movie its title. It’s as if, Ernest says, Wah’kon-tah, the Osage word for God, had sprinkled the Earth with sugar candy.Although Ernest’s voice-over pauses during the robbery, it only fully ends when he and Mollie are at an outdoor christening, a nod at the life and the children they will soon make together. The strange heartbeat, though, continues as Ernest drives Mollie to her house, bringing the sequence full circle. This time, though, he walks Mollie to her front door, where she stops to give him the Stetson before they enter the house, where her mother is. Before they do, he puts on the hat. It’s preposterously large. It’s also a near-match for the pale 10-gallon hat that the John B. Stetson Company custom made for the silent-film star Tom Mix, a Hollywood hero who helped popularize the country’s romantic myth of itself that Scorsese furiously dismantles in this brilliant movie shot by shot, scene by scene, heartbeat by heartbeat. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in January: ‘Echo,’ ‘True Detective’ and More

      by

      We’ve rounded up of the titles most worth checking out in the coming month, including an adaptation of “The Expatriates” and the return of “True Detective.”Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of January’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Expats’Starts streaming: Jan. 26Based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s best-selling novel “The Expatriates,” this low-key melodrama is set in Hong Kong, where three very different Americans find their lives intertwining. Nicole Kidman plays Margaret, a socialite and mother whose seemingly idyllic world has been recently marred by tragedy. Sarayu Blue is Hilary, Margaret’s once-close friend, who has drifted away as her own domestic situation has soured. And Ji-young Yoo is Mercy, a younger working woman who takes jobs that put her in the orbit of the rich. The indie filmmaker Lulu Wang (best-known for “The Farewell”) serves as a writer, director and creative supervisor for the miniseries, which is about women enduring crises big and small while trying to make homes for themselves in a foreign land.Also arriving:Jan. 5“Foe”“James May: Our Man in India”Jan. 12“Role Play”“Uninterrupted’s Top Class: The Life and Times of the Sierra Canyon Trailblazers”Jan. 19“Dance Life” Season 1“Hazbin Hotel” Season 1Jan. 23“Kevin James: Irregardless”New to AMC+Clive Owen brings the classic Dashiell Hammett character Sam Spade to the South of France in “Monsieur Spade.”Jean-Claude Lother/AMC‘Monsieur Spade’Starts streaming: Jan. 14The writer-director-producer Scott Frank follows up his hit drama “The Queen’s Gambit” with this offbeat mystery series, created and written with Tom Fontana, the creator of “Oz.” Clive Owen plays Dashiell Hammett’s famed detective Sam Spade, who in the show’s first episode moves to a sleepy village in the South of France in the early 1960s and settles into semiretirement. But Spade’s neighborly interest in the locals’ lives eventually gets him back into the snooping business — especially after a horrific crime at a nearby convent outrages the community. Frank and Fontana are aiming for a soft-boiled Euro-noir vibe with “Monsieur Spade,” staging this story of murder and regret against a backdrop of vineyards and villas.Also arriving:Jan. 4“Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale”Jan. 8“Cheat”Jan. 12“Destroy All Neighbors”Jan. 15“Alex Rider” Seasons 1 & 2Jan. 22“The Guff” Seasons 1 & 2Jan. 26“Suitable Flesh”Jan. 29“Crossroads” Season 2“No Offense” Seasons 1-3New to Apple TV+‘Criminal Record’ Season 1Starts streaming: Jan. 10The British writer-producer Paul Rutman (creator of the historical drama “Indian Summers” and a writer for the cop show “Vera”) continues his fascination with brutal crime and social divisions in his new series “Criminal Record,” a modern murder mystery in which the perception of the evidence differs depending on who is doing the examining. Cush Jumbo plays Detective Sergeant June Lenker, who while following up on a phoned-in tip becomes convinced that one of her superiors — Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi) — intentionally nabbed the wrong man in an old case. Lenker’s drive to see justice done sets her against the London police force’s old guard, who suggest that as a Black woman with less experience, she may be looking for bias where none exists.‘Masters of the Air’Starts streaming: Jan. 26A companion piece to the popular, award-winning World War II dramas “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” this miniseries covers the men of the 100th Bomb Group, who suffered heavy casualties while running crucial missions deep into Nazi territory. Austin Butler stars as a handsome officer who heads overseas with visions of glory and soon finds that the realities of combat are more challenging and devastating than he could have imagined. As with the earlier series, this new one (produced again by Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg) is an ensemble piece, showing how camaraderie helps fighting men endure. “Masters of Air” also features an all-star team of directors drawn from the acclaimed indie film and prestige TV ranks, including Cary Joji Fukunaga, Dee Rees, Tim Van Patten and the duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.New to Disney+Alaqua Cox in the new Marvel series “Echo,” a spinoff of the series “Hawkeye.”Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios, via Disney+‘Echo’Starts streaming: Jan. 9The television arm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going through changes, moving away from having every movie and TV series connect closely to a larger transmedia narrative. Although “Echo” is a spinoff from the Avengers-adjacent miniseries “Hawkeye” — with Alaqua Cox reprising her role as a deaf Native American with the power to mimic other people’s fighting styles — and although it will feature the Marvel villain Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), the show is meant to stand alone, appealing even to viewers who have never even heard of the likes of Daredevil or She-Hulk. “Echo” will be available on both Hulu and Disney+. It is the first TV-MA Marvel series, reflecting its more mature story, about a woman who has to reckon with her past in Oklahoma in order to get some killers off her trail.‘Bluey’ Season 3, Part 3Starts streaming: Jan. 12It’s a major event whenever Disney+ imports any new “Bluey” episodes from Australia, where the series airs months before it hits the United States. This latest batch of 10 includes episodes in which the imaginative puppy Bluey and her sweet kid sister, Bingo, build an elaborate furniture fort, take a trip to the beach, pretend to be office workers, play a game with a store’s security monitors and more. Will America’s parents and children be patient enough to parcel out these seven-minute doses of joy over multiple days, or will they burn through them all in one night?Also arriving:Jan. 17“Siempre Fui Yo” Season 2Jan. 24“A Real Bug’s Life”Jan. 31“Choir”New to Hulu‘Death and Other Details’Starts streaming: Jan. 16The “Knives Out”/“Only Murders in the Building” trend toward colorful whodunits continues with this stylish mystery series, set mostly on a high-end cruise ship in the Mediterranean. Violett Beane plays Imogene Scott, a young woman with a tragic past, who ends up becoming the prime suspect in a tricky locked-room murder case. Mandy Patinkin plays Rufus Coteworth, a celebrity detective who 20 years earlier disappointed the adolescent Imogene with his inability to bring her mother’s killer to justice. Reluctantly, she puts her remarkable memory together with Rufus’s keen eye for detail, working with him to find out which of the wealthy, fabulously well-dressed people on a luxury liner may have harpoon-gunned a man to death.Also arriving:Jan. 3“Ishura”Jan. 4“Daughters of the Cult”Jan. 7“The Incredible Pol Farm”Jan. 9“Beyond Utopia”“Safe Home” Season 1Jan. 12“Miranda’s Victim”“Self Reliance”Jan. 17“A Shop for Killers”Jan. 18“Invisible Beauty”Jan. 22“Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People” Season 1Jan. 24“Tell Me That You Love Me” Season 1Jan. 28“R.M.N.”New to Max‘True Detective’ Season 4Starts streaming: Jan. 14The latest edition of the HBO crime anthology “True Detective: (now subtitled “Night Country”) has a new show runner in Issa López, who continues the series’s tradition of attracting big-time movie stars to do television. Jodie Foster plays Liz Danvers, an Alaskan police detective whose contentious relationship with her colleague Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) complicates their investigation into two strange, possibly intertwined cases: the murder of an Indigenous social activist and the disappearance of eight scientists from an Arctic Research Station. The stellar cast includes John Hawkes as Danvers’s slack underling, Christopher Eccleston as their fussy boss and Fiona Shaw as a local with a strange spiritual connection to this dark, desolate, wintry landscape.Also arriving:Jan. 8“Going to Mars: The Nicki Giovanni Project”Jan. 18“On the Roam”“Sort Of” Season 3Jan. 22“Rick and Morty” Season 7New to Paramount+ With Showtime‘Sexy Beast’Starts streaming: Jan. 25The arty 2000 gangster movie “Sexy Beast” became a favorite among both cinephiles and crime story aficionados for its darkly comic story of aging British crooks. This prequel TV series is set in the ’90s and catches these men and women in their heyday, when they ruled London’s underworld but also as they began heading in the directions that would later pull them apart. James McArdle plays Gal Dove, a sharp-witted hustler whose attraction to the adult film actress Deedee Harrison (Sarah Greene) gets him to start thinking about a life away from his overly intense partner Don Logan (Emun Elliott) and their boss Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer).Also arriving:Jan. 11“SkyMed” Season 2Jan. 16“June”Jan. 19“The Woman in the Wall”New to PeacockThe title bear of the prequel series “Ted,” as voiced by Seth MacFarlane.Peacock‘Ted’ Season 1Starts streaming: Jan. 11This prequel to the writer-director Seth MacFarlane’s hit movies “Ted” and “Ted 2” jumps back to 1993, following the early misadventures of the Boston-area teenager John Bennett (Max Burkholder) and his walking, talking, swearing teddy bear (voiced by MacFarlane). As Ted joins his best buddy, Johnny, in high school, the series riffs on the old John Hughes teen misfit movies and weird family TV shows like “Alf,” in which one kid’s journey through the usual coming-of-age rituals is complicated by his unconventional domestic situation. As with the “Ted” films, MacFarlane gets laughs from the matter-of-fact way that full-sized humans interact with a small, adorable, unapologetically vulgar stuffed animal.Also arriving:Jan. 12“The Traitors” Season 2Jan. 25“In the Know” Season 1 More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      For Best Picture, Here are 13 Most Likely Contenders

      by

      It’s a very competitive year for the top Oscar. With precursor awards like the Golden Globes coming soon, here’s what may make the cut.The good news is that it’s been a great year for movies.The bad news is that, now, the battle for best picture will be bloodier than ever.With such a wide field of acclaimed contenders, plenty of worthy films will be dealt a bad hand when the Oscar nominations are announced on Jan. 23. Even today’s self-imposed assignment to narrow the list to the 10 likeliest nominees proved a harrowing task; instead, I have hedged with an unlucky 13.Ahead of the Golden Globes on Sunday, and the bellwether industry nominations next week from the producers’ and actors’ guilds, here are the current contenders with the most viable shot at a best-picture nomination, ranked in descending order according to their certainty.‘Oppenheimer’Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic has the feeling of an old-fashioned sweeper: It’s a highbrow film and a populist hit — exactly the sort of movie Oscar voters and general audiences should be able to agree upon. Still, this race isn’t sewn up. Recent best-picture winners tend to tug more at the heart than at the head, and there are a slew of contenders that can make a more effective case for that organ. And though Nolan has been nominated five times before, he has never been able to convince voters to actually hand him the Oscar: Even when he directed “Dunkirk” (2017), the sort of technically stupendous World War II movie that should have been a slam-dunk for the academy, voters flocked to the warm and cuddly Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”) over the crisp, professorial Nolan.‘The Holdovers’Could Alexander Payne’s Christmas movie be this year’s “CODA,” a scrappy little heartwarmer that defeats the imposing auteurist film it’s up against? Set in the 1970s and shot like a film from that era (even the precredits studio logos are appealingly vintage), this boarding-school dramedy couldn’t be more of a bull’s-eye for older academy members, who’ll be eager to give “The Holdovers” their they-don’t-make-’em-like-this-anymore vote. Paul Giamatti, the film’s lead, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, have could-win heat in the actor and supporting actress categories, and movies that triumph in the acting and screenplay races have a nearly unbeatable portfolio for best picture. If Payne manages a best-director nomination, it’s a good sign that this underdog could slip past all the big-budget spectacles and go the distance.‘Barbie’Greta Gerwig’s plastic-fantastic comedy was indisputably the movie of 2023: This billion-dollar blockbuster went over like a rock concert in theaters, and its creative swerves had Hollywood types marveling at what Gerwig was able to get away with. Though Oscar voters have gotten a bad rap for ignoring mega-budget hits, they’re typically willing to make an exception for movies with a distinctive point of view and a high level of craftsmanship, which the deliciously decorated “Barbie” has in spades. A fun movie that’s full of heart and a standout in this group of contenders, “Barbie” is limited only by the not insignificant number of voters who’ll be thinking, “Can I really give Hollywood’s most prestigious award to a toy?”‘Killers of the Flower Moon’“Killers of the Flower Moon” could get a boost if Lily Gladstone is nominated for best actress.AppleTV+Martin Scorsese’s well-regarded movie would have a better shot at the top Oscar if “Oppenheimer” had been a contender in a different year: Between these two weighty, three-hour historical dramas, voters may deem Nolan’s more significant, simply because it made nearly a billion dollars worldwide. Still, the 81-year-old Scorsese has won only one Oscar and time is ticking for the academy to give him another. If his lead, Lily Gladstone, comes out on top of a fiercely competitive best-actress race, that could help burnish the film’s chances of picking up another significant prize.‘Poor Things’The Venice Film Festival kicks off awards season in earnest every August, and Emma Stone movies that play there often get a sensational launchpad: Just look at Oscar favorites like “La La Land” and “Birdman” and “The Favourite,” the last of which kicked off Stone’s very fruitful partnership with the director Yorgos Lanthimos. Their most recent film, “Poor Things,” won the Golden Lion at Venice this year and quickly established itself as a major contender, able to compete for up to three acting nominations (for Stone and her supporting actors Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe) and a huge haul of below-the-line nods for its stunning costumes, cinematography, production design and visual effects. There’s no doubt it’ll be a best-picture player, but is there a narrative to push the film and Stone over the top in a very crowded year?‘Past Lives’Celine Song’s directorial debut was a breakout indie hit this summer, but this intimate romantic drama was in danger of receding once bigger and noisier rivals arrived in the fall. Fortunately, “Past Lives” begins this awards season in strong shape, earning the best-film trophy at the Gotham Awards, five nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, and a key nomination for best drama at the Golden Globes. Like “The Holdovers,” it’s a smaller-scale film that some voters simply adore, and that passion will count for a lot in this field.‘American Fiction’There may be no more auspicious festival prize than the People’s Choice Award voted on by attendees of the Toronto International Film Festival: Every movie that won there over the past decade went on to score a best picture nomination, and three of them — “12 Years a Slave,” “Green Book” and “Nomadland” — actually took the top Oscar. This bodes awfully well for the writer-director Cord Jefferson’s contemporary comedy “American Fiction,” which hit big out of Toronto, netted crucial nominations at the Golden Globes and Indie Spirits, and ought to land its leading man, Jeffrey Wright, the first Oscar nomination of his long career. (I should note Jefferson is a friend.)‘Maestro’Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in “Maestro,” which he also directed.Jason McDonald/NetflixBradley Cooper’s first directorial effort, “A Star Is Born,” deserved better from the Oscars. It won only the original-song trophy when so much else about it, including Cooper’s ace lead performance, was also worth recognizing. Then again, Cooper had only himself to blame for that result: He was so determined to land the directing nomination, which ultimately eluded him, that he didn’t give his acting the push it merited. I wonder if something similar may happen this year: Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein drama, “Maestro,” is an even bigger directorial swing, and though he delivers exactly the sort of makeup-aided, transformative real-person performance that Oscar voters go gaga for, the fate of “Maestro” currently seems tied up in whether the directors’ branch will finally admit Cooper to the club.‘Anatomy of a Fall’The hip studio Neon has a knack for guiding Palme d’Or winners from the Cannes stage into Oscar’s inner circle, and the French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall” could very well follow in the footsteps of Neon’s “Parasite” and “Triangle of Sadness.” It helps that the lead, Sandra Hüller, has enough heat to make it into the best-actress race, though the film was dinged by France’s decision to submit instead “The Taste of Things” as its contender for the international film Oscar: As fans of “RRR” found last year, it’s hard for world cinema to penetrate the best-picture lineup without a corresponding nod in the international-feature category.‘May December’Can Todd Haynes finally score a best-picture nominee? Though the director’s drama “Carol” got awfully close, “May December” is the most viable contender he has ever made, a favorite with critics’ groups and a mainstream conversation-starter since its debut on Netflix. If Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton all pick up acting nominations and the writer Samy Burch snags an original-screenplay nod, a place in the best-picture race ought to follow, but Haynes and his oeuvre have proved too smart for the room before. Let’s hope the academy’s tastes have caught up.‘The Zone of Interest’Jonathan Glazer’s audacious Holocaust drama is one of the most acclaimed movies of the year, the probable winner of the international-feature Oscar, and could even score Glazer an auteurist slot in the best-director category. Still, its chances for best picture are harder to predict. Every other contender on this list is likely to earn at least one acting nomination and any such recognition for “Zone” would come as a big surprise. It would also be the most challenging art-house film to make the best-picture lineup in ages: When older, more traditional voters cue the movie on their academy app and are met with a black screen and several minutes of unsettling score, will they stay seated through this unusual overture or close the app to call tech support?‘The Color Purple’Fantasia Barrino-Taylor in “The Color Purple,” which missed out on a Golden Globe nomination for best musical or comedy.Warner Bros PicturesThis musical take on the classic Alice Walker novel is banking on some late-breaking momentum, aided by a strong box office return on Christmas Day, to push it into the best-picture lineup. Still, it’s missed out on a few key nominations, failing to make the American Film Institute’s populist-leaning 10-best list or even snag a Golden Globe nomination for best comedy or musical, which should have been a given. Earning an ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild on Jan. 10 is all but necessary to move “The Color Purple” up on this list.‘Society of the Snow’Last season, when the academy announced semifinalist shortlists in a wide variety of below-the-line categories, Netflix’s war film “All Quiet on the Western Front” had the sort of surprisingly strong showing that presaged a stellar nine Oscar nominations and four wins. That’s the reason I’m keeping an eye on the streamer’s Spanish-language plane-crash drama, “Society of the Snow,” which made the international-feature shortlist and also popped up as a semifinalist for visual effects, score, makeup and hairstyling (even edging out “Barbie” in the latter category). If all of these branches are already taking notice, don’t be surprised if “Society of the Snow” vaults past a better-known contender by the morning of the Oscar nominations. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Color Purple’ Tips Its Hat to Classic Black Musicals

      by

      The new movie has so many references to Hollywood gems like “Stormy Weather” and early jazz shorts, it can be viewed as a Black film syllabus.Even when Hollywood saw little use for Black performers other than as mammies and butlers, the musical genre, a storytelling mode composed of magical realist fantasy and hoofing artistry, provided space for Cab Calloway, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge to manifest their glamorous glow. Through rapturous songs, sung in resplendent gowns and tailored tuxedos, the promise of Black liberation was heard.The genre’s possibility for emancipation is showcased in the latest film version of “The Color Purple,” whose origin derives from a story of perseverance and sisterhood that first found acclaim in 1983, when its author, Alice Walker, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Within two years of Walker’s success, Steven Spielberg directed an acclaimed big-screen adaptation of her novel. By 2005, a staged musical of “The Color Purple” appeared on Broadway. Now, the Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule is shouldering the book’s legacy, directing a cinematic adaptation of the Broadway musical.The director Blitz Bazawule narrates a sequence from the musical, featuring a performance by Taraji P. Henson.Ser Baffo/Warner Bros PicturesBazawule’s “Color Purple” aims to grant Celie (Fantasia Barrino-Taylor) the kind of interiority that makes visible her resiliency against abject trauma. Raped during childhood by the man she thought to be her father, then separated from her children — the results of his assault — Celie is forced into marriage with the abusive Mister (Colman Domingo). Her sister, Nettie (Halle Bailey), bids goodbye, departing to Africa. Mister’s son Harpo (Corey Hawkins) and his wife, Sofia (Danielle Brooks), become Celie’s only friends. But a chance at real love arrives when the sultry singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), Mister’s old flame, returns to town. Shug and Celie’s developing physical attraction, along with Nettie’s letters, allow Celie to create grand worlds in her head.Celie’s boundless imagination mirrors the continued influence of what Bazawule called “the universal Black cadence,” how an ordinary shuffle or a game of patty cake can become a song. That practice imbues “The Color Purple” with an inventiveness to empower Celie’s story, positioning the arts as an important language for resistance and a necessary tool for Black people to be more than vessels for trauma.“I think music gives Celie the kind of agency we’ve never seen her have before,” Bazawule said during an interview at the Mandarin Oriental in New York.The director Blitz Bazawule, top, with Henson, left, and Burrino.Eli Ade/Warner Bros.Early Black musicals like “Porgy and Bess” and “Swing!” are examined in Arthur Knight’s book “Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film.” His analysis is drawn from W.E.B. DuBois’s belief that music is an essential element of Black identity. The control of that gift, therefore, is crucial, and the musical — as a locus for song, fashion and romance — becomes a strategy against the oppression faced by Black people across America.By visualizing Celie’s inner thoughts and her yearning for independence, Bazawule not only retools the genre’s language of resistance. He also provides audiences with an integral Black film syllabus.Elisabeth Withers-Mendes, center left, as Shug Avery and LaChanze as Celie in the 2005 Broadway musical version of “The Color Purple.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Our work is only understood most clearly when it’s part of a continuum that is built. It’s a language,” Bazawule said. “But you have to know the language to understand what we’re doing.”Bazawule’s influences on the film are varied, including more contemporary musicals like “Idlewild” and “Dreamgirls,” the drama “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and studio-era musicals like “Hallelujah” and “Cabin in the Sky.” The 1932 musical short “Pie, Pie Blackbird” is another reference.The larger-than-life sets used in Aubrey Scotto’s jazz short, “A Rhapsody in Black and Blue” (also 1932) come to mind during a moment of romantic whimsy shared by Celie and Shug. When Celie sings “Dear God — Shug,” she imagines her and Shug on a giant, spinning gramophone. Rather than wholly relying on computer-generated effects, the production designer Paul D. Austerberry sought to marry fantasy with reality by constructing an actual 22-foot diameter record and an enormous needle arm.Nina Mae McKinney in the short film “Pie, Pie, Blackbird.”Warner Bros.The tension rises during the film’s lustful juke joint scene. For this sequence, not only does Shug arrive in grand style — on a barge floating across a swamp — but the costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck also fashioned Shug’s red dress to mirror the allure of Dorothy Dandridge in “Carmen Jones.”“I wanted Shug to look sexy,” Jamison-Tanchuck said.In a nod to the diverse rhythms in the Black diaspora, the choreographer Fatima Robinson orchestrated the scene’s varied dancers, bedecked in dazzling suits and luscious dresses, to use Daggering, a sizzling Jamaican dance.“I wanted to create moves where we touch each other and we hold each other,” said Robinson. “It’s something I feel, as Black people, we don’t see enough.”Celie’s imaginative bid for freedom peaks when she and Shug abscond to the Capitol Theater in Macon, Ga., where they watch “The Flying Ace” (1926). As they view the film, Celie’s mind conceives of a lavish Art Deco ballroom recalling the 1943 musical “Stormy Weather,” which starred Horne. There’s an orchestra dressed in white tail tuxedos (a reference to Calloway), but instead of the high-flying Nicholas Brothers splitting down the steps, Celie and Shug descend toward each other. While the scene takes place in Celie’s mind, its fantastical setting doesn’t render her feelings or Shug’s reciprocation any less real. The power of the musical genre is in its ability to make any person, no matter her background, the captain of her world.For Bazawule, who remembers selling CDs on the street to afford tickets to art house theaters in New York, Celie’s cinematic escape from oppression has deep personal resonance.“I figured if Shug could bring Celie into that world, it would open her mind,” he said. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Ferrari’ and ‘The Killer’: 1 Cinematographer, 2 Very Different Looks

      by

      Erik Messerschmidt worked with the directors Michael Mann and David Fincher to create cohesive worlds that feel nothing alike.Michael Mann’s new drama “Ferrari,” about several important weeks in the life of the racecar driver and manufacturer Enzo Ferrari, is many things: biographical drama, thriller, period costume film, and also a story about business rivalries, domestic disputes and personal grief. Adam Driver plays the automotive magnate as a man divided between his obsessive pursuit of professional glory and his straining responsibilities as a husband and father. Accordingly Mann approaches these two worlds with different, even diametrically opposed styles. There are intense, breakneck racing sequences and dark, elegiac domestic scenes, and little in between.“There’s really two distinct aesthetic sensibilities in the film,” Erik Messerschmidt, the film’s director of photography, said in a recent interview. “Michael wanted the interpersonal drama parts of the film to be more classically made than the racing.”Messerschmidt said that for the heavier moments Mann “wanted to reference Italian Renaissance paintings,” with their pronounced shadows and dense compositions; the racing scenes, by contrast, made use of cutting-edge technology and contemporary techniques.Messerschmidt also served as the cinematographer on “The Killer,” David Fincher’s recent thriller about a hit man dealing with the fallout of a job gone wrong, now streaming on Netflix. Looking at the two films side by side reveals the marked contrasts in the directors’ approach.“Their use of the camera, in particular, is very different,” Messerschmidt said. “Michael is often looking for those spontaneous moments, and I think he’s a little more shoot-from-the-hip than David is. Whereas David is a very precise, methodical filmmaker — he’s one of a kind that way.”Here, Messerschmidt explains how the look of “Ferrari” was achieved on and off the track and how it compared with his work on “The Killer.”Vintage SpeedThe look of the opening montage was based on archival images of auto racing from when Ferrari was young.Neon“Ferrari” opens with a brisk montage of grainy black-and-white newsreel footage that shows Enzo in his youth racing for Alfa Romeo. Mann, who had been trying to make “Ferrari” since the early 2000s, spent a lot of time poring over archival footage of motor racing from this era, and he and the crew watched it often to help faithfully capture the look. While shooting an early racing sequence, Mann had the idea to open with Enzo himself on the track, to remind the audience that he used to be a racer.The scene is “a combination of actual archival footage and visual-effects compositions of Adam driving a period-correct racecar from the ’20s,” Messerschmidt explained. Driver had to actually get on the track: it’s not a sound stage or a green screen but footage of him that’s been rotoscoped, which accounts for why this shot looks so realistic.Paris was depicted with cool shadows and warm highlights in “The Killer.”NetflixBy contrast, Messerschmidt and Fincher spent a lot of time adjusting images for “The Killer” in postproduction to hone the look of key locations in Paris, the Dominican Republic and Chicago, which they wanted to differentiate aesthetically. “All of those places have a unique look, in terms of architecture, design and how the light falls,” the cinematographer said. Paris, for instance, was depicted with “this kind of split-tone color palette of cool shadows and warm highlights.”While each location had its own visual identity, Messerschmidt said he was conscious of “still keeping them within one cohesive world.”“I didn’t want it to feel like a ransom note of color palettes,” he joked.Racing AlongTo get close to the racers, the “Ferrari” camera team followed at actual speed.NeonThe second half of “Ferrari” focuses on his efforts to win the 1957 Mille Miglia, a wildly competitive race that covers almost 1,000 miles on public roads. To capture its blistering intensity, Mann got extremely close to the vehicles, as in this shot of two cars speeding neck and neck on a winding mountain overpass. The camera team, Messerschmidt said, was following just behind in a Porsche Cayenne. “We were driving these cars at the actual speeds,” Messerschmidt said. “Michael was not interested in faking it or undercranking the camera.”As in this shot, many of the driving scenes have a rawness that emphasizes just how fast and dangerous the racing is. The style, Messerschmidt said, “has a very vérité feel to it,” which adds to the sensation of raw power. “These cars are visceral, they are loud, and the engines shake, and the suspension is stiff. That was something we wanted to show from very beginning.”Night DriveThe headlights were the only source of light for this scene.NeonPart of the Mille Miglia race takes place on an open stretch of road in the dead of night. The only sources of light are the cars’ headlights, which illuminate the rain-slick road and reflect off one another. Shooting this sequence without conventional movie lighting, Messerschmidt said, was a matter of necessity, because there was no obvious place to put up lights. “I had a lot of anxiety about that scene,” he said. “I didn’t really know what I was going to do.”Eventually, he said, he “decided to roll the dice and just do it with the headlights.”Nighttime lighting was also a factor for Messerschmidt in “The Killer.”Netflix“The Killer” makes striking use of nighttime as well, in part because the movie is about a man who “lives and lurks in the shadows,” Messerschmidt said. “We wanted to work in this murky world. It felt like an appropriate thing to lean into that in the film.”Up Close and PersonalThe cinematographer used a “skater scope” to get extremely close to Driver.NeonWhen “Ferrari” is not on the track, the camera has a tendency to probe the characters closely, sometimes getting right up in their faces. In this sequence on the factory grounds, the lens gets so near Enzo that his features become almost a blur. “When Michael really wants to get the audience into a character and bring you close, he will put you literally close to the actor,” Messerschmidt said.To achieve this “very odd point of view,” Messerschmidt employed a “skater scope,” which extends the lens about 10 inches from the body of the camera. That extension “means we can get very close to the actor without the Steadicam itself hitting the actor’s knees,” he explained.Fincher also wants to use the camera to understand his characters in “The Killer,” but “the camera has no personality in the way that Michael’s camera does,” Messerschmidt explained. “Ferrari” has “a very subjective camera,” while Fincher “is working with a conversation between subjectivity and objectivity.” The camera “reinforces” the unnamed executioner played by Michael Fassbender.The camera is far less subjective in “The Killer,” with meticulously composed shots.NetflixThis is clear in the many precise frames and symmetrical compositions — an aesthetic that mirrors the hit man’s meticulousness. “When the killer is in control and confident, the camera is extremely confident, in terms of how we operate it and how the shots cut together,” Messerschmidt said. “When the killer loses control and starts to fall apart, the camera falls apart as well.”Memories at SunsetThe flashbacks called to mind a Terrence Malick film.NeonA centerpiece of “Ferrari” takes place at an opera, where Enzo has an intense emotional reaction. Mourning the loss of his son, he thinks back to their time together, as the film cuts to brief, gauzy flashbacks, including this one, in which the two are playing in a field. The camera is very low to the ground, and the sun is just setting over the horizon; the delicate style is reminiscent of the work of Terrence Malick.“I think I get now maybe how Malick works,” Messerschmidt said. For this flashback, he and Mann started “working with the actors and the camera, improvising a bit,” he said, adding that they just happened to catch this interaction. “It was very spur of the moment. It wasn’t previsualized.”Small and AgileA camera the size of a Rubik’s Cube was affixed to the car.NeonAt times during the racing sequences in “Ferrari,” the camera is fixed to the body of the car itself, stuck alongside as the vehicle zooms at extraordinary speeds. In this shot, we see the bold Ferrari logo against a whooshing blur of grass and road. Because they were sticking a camera onto a car that was pushing its technical limits, “we had to be very conscious of weight distribution and aerodynamics,” Messerschmidt said. Their choice for these shots was a Red Komodo camera, “which is about the size of a Rubik’s Cube.” As Messerschmidt noted, “This would have been a very challenging film to make with a large, cumbersome motion picture camera.” More