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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

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      ‘Jim Henson Idea Man’ on Disney+ Offers Lessons for Young Artists

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      This Ron Howard documentary doesn’t ignore the Muppet mastermind’s faults, but the tribute has a lot to teach creators everywhere.I don’t need to tell you that Jim Henson’s work is ubiquitous and beloved, foundational to childhood across several generations of “Sesame Street” watchers and stretching far beyond. It’s so important to us that when one of his creations, Elmo, “asked” an innocuous question about people’s mental state on social media this winter, the responses seemed … well, it was a lot.Clearly, his puppets and Muppets and stories and sense of humor do not lose their power with time. But to everyone other than Muppet obsessives, Henson the artist is still a bit shadowy. Good news: Now we have “Jim Henson Idea Man” (on Disney+), a tribute to the artist and a treasure trove of archival footage and interviews about his work and life. Though it borders on hagiography, it’s not blind to Henson’s faults, and it boasts a flair for the unexpected. The film, directed by Ron Howard, starts with Henson and two of his Muppet friends, Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog — Henson’s alter ego — being interviewed on TV by none other than Orson Welles. In his sonorous baritone, Welles calls Henson “Rasputin, as an Eagle Scout.” The movie sets out to show what he meant.A few years ago, Marilyn Agrelo’s documentary “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street” (for rent on major platforms) — also very much worth watching — filled in some of the story, with digressions to illustrate the zany, hilariously violent sense of absurdist humor that Henson brought to his early commercial work. “Jim Henson Idea Man” spends longer in the same territory, while focusing on Henson’s life (he died in 1990 at 53), his creative collaborations (including those with his wife, Jane, and with Frank Oz) and his insatiable need to keep pushing his boundaries.There’s so much to love here: old, gut-splitting commercials; behind-the-scenes footage and stories from “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show”; and explorations of “The Dark Crystal,” “Labyrinth” and “The Muppet Movie.” But what struck me especially was that Howard has made a movie that every young artist should watch (and older ones, too), whether they’re making puppets, paintings, music, movies or anything that requires creative labor.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 Stop-Motion Yetis Emerged From Film Hibernation

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      “The Primevals,” a movie in the lineage of “Jason and the Argonauts,” was filmed 30 years ago. It has finally been released.Movies like “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers” arrived in theaters later than expected because of last year’s actors’ strike, and Hollywood experienced significant production setbacks during the coronavirus pandemic.But “The Primevals,” about a group of researchers who discover gigantic yetis and other prehistoric creatures, made those movie delays look minuscule when it was released in theaters in March.It was filmed in 1994.The live-action movie, which was delayed because of funding woes and then the death of its director, David Allen, incorporates a stop-motion animation technique in which puppets are painstakingly photographed and brought to life through a series of frames, as with a children’s flipbook. The retro look conjures up an earlier era of filmmaking, before computer-generated imagery took over visual effects.“It’s like an archaeological find,” said Juliet Mills, who plays one of the movie’s researchers. “It’s like entering a time machine watching this film.”Mills and the other actors had doubted that the movie would ever reach theaters. Even before Allen died, the film’s development had been plagued by outsize expectations and financial challenges.David Allen, left, and Chris Endicott working behind the scenes on “The Primevals.” Allen conceived the movie in the 1970s and began directing it in the 1990s.Full Moon FeaturesWe 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