Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Cabrini’ Review: Embarking on a Pious Mission

      by

      From the team behind “Sound of Freedom,” this biopic of an Italian nun in 19th-century New York City is stuffed with sanctimonious speeches.“Cabrini,” a cluttered biopic of an Italian nun on a mission in 19th-century Manhattan, is directed by Alejandro Monteverde and produced by Angel Studios. You may recognize the names as the team behind “Sound of Freedom,” the 2023 conservative hit thriller.Yet this new, pious tale, assembled around the ecumenical theme of perseverance, almost makes one nostalgic for the frisson of provocation. The gauzy goodness of this film is axiomatic, and its litany of sanctimonious speeches (“the world is too small for what I intend to do”) generally repels inquiry, let alone controversy.The story begins as Francesca Cabrini (Cristiana Dell’Anna) and Catholic nuns from her order immigrate to New York to run an orphanage in Five Points, the Lower Manhattan neighborhood plagued by violence and adversity. She goes on to challenge various clergymen and politicians in her quest to save the youth and aid the downtrodden, namely, Italians. I should mention that the saintly striver is all the while giving support to a former prostitute, hoping to open a hospital and enduring a lung condition with a terminal prognosis.It’s inspiring stuff, rendered stodgy and repetitive. The screenplay contains numerous scenes of Cabrini striding through opulent rooms as she goes head-to-head with bureaucratic white men; several sequences could have been scrapped in favor of more time spent with the rabble of orphans under her care. Among the multitude, only one suffering boy, bravely volunteering as a representative case, is accorded a name and a back story.CabriniRated PG-13 for some sinful material. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      What the ‘Rust’ Jury Heard About How Live Rounds Got on a Film Set

      by

      The prosecution pointed to a photo of the film’s armorer, arguing she had brought the live rounds. Her lawyers tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary ammunition supplier.Ever since a real, live bullet discharged from the gun that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing with on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021, killing the cinematographer and wounding the director, one question has vexed everyone involved: How did live ammunition end up on a film set, where — all agree — it absolutely should never have been?The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was found guilty on Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter in the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and faces up to 18 months in prison. The jury found that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 26, had behaved negligently by failing to check that all of the rounds she loaded into Mr. Baldwin’s revolver were dummies, which are inert rounds that look real but cannot be fired.The question of where the live ammunition came from in the first place has hung over the case from the start. The original investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not reach a conclusion on where the live rounds had come from.During the trial, prosecutors sought to convince jurors that it was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed who was responsible for bringing the rounds onto the set. The defense asserted that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who did not testify, was not at fault, and tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary weapons and ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney, who took the stand and denied responsibility.Here is what emerged during the trial about the live ammunition, and where it may have come from.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed during the trial.Pool photo by Eddie MooreProsecutors zeroed in on a box of rounds from the set.When investigators arrived at the chaotic scene shortly after the shooting, on Oct. 21, 2021, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed a lieutenant from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office a cart where she kept guns and ammunition and drew his attention to a box of ammunition where she said that she had retrieved the rounds she put in Mr. Baldwin’s revolver.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

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer for ‘Oppenheimer’ Shares Her Favorite Looks

      by

      The costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, who is nominated for her first Oscar for “Oppenheimer,” is responsible for outfitting some of the most iconic films of the ’80s and ’90s.Everett CollectionEverett CollectionUnlike many designers, much of the work of the costume designer Ellen Mirojnick is contemporary. Her filmography is evidence of the impact she has had on the look and feel of some of the most iconic films of the 1980s and ’90s: Paul Verhoeven’s “Basic Instinct” (1992) and “Showgirls” (1995), Adrian Lyne’s “Fatal Attraction” (1987) and “Unfaithful” (2002), and Andrew Davis’s “A Perfect Murder” (1998). These films helped define the distinctly elegant yet dangerous aesthetic of the erotic thrillers that once dominated the box office.After more than 40 years in the industry, Ms. Mirojnick has received her first Oscar nomination for her austere, sharply tailored looks in “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic about the physicist who led the effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. While she has decades of expertise creating an eclectic variety of costumes, ranging in mood from the understated to over-the-top, her work does not span the many costume dramas that are typically favored during awards season. Instead, her most recognized characters often feel fashionable in a way that is more modern and real.In a recent video call, Ms. Mirojnick reflected on eight of her favorite looks from her career.Everett Collection‘Fatal Attraction’ (1987)“Fatal Attraction” marked the first of many collaborations between Ms. Mirojnick and the actor Michael Douglas. “What was fascinating about that particular moment in time was that Adrian Lyne, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer were all kind of at the same level,” she recalled. “It was a great way to begin a working relationship, because everybody had equal stakes in front of them.”The designer and Mr. Douglas originally had differing ideas of how his character should dress. Her interpretation was “much more classic, fashionable and monochromatic,” she said. After rounds of fittings and discussions about “honing his wardrobe to a place that felt very New York and very cool and attractive in a way that was different from how we saw a lawyer in New York in prior films,” she said, “we finally got in a groove that was simpatico, and we were able to create a character that had all of those aspects and felt very real.”Everett CollectionWe 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

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Oscars 2024 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture, Actor and Actress?

      by

      “Oppenheimer” is the best picture favorite, but the best actress race is full of suspense. Our expert predicts which films and artists will get trophies on Sunday.Best PictureOscar voters love biopics like “Oppenheimer.”Universal Pictures“American Fiction”“Anatomy of a Fall”“Barbie”“The Holdovers”“Killers of the Flower Moon”“Maestro”✓“Oppenheimer”“Past Lives”“Poor Things”“The Zone of Interest”Let’s be real: The best picture race is locked up for “Oppenheimer.” Christopher Nolan gave Oscar voters an IMAX-sized helping of their favorite genre — the great-man-of-history biopic — and after the movie made nearly a billion dollars worldwide, its path to the top Oscar was clear.Still, why not add some stakes to the situation? See whether you can sabotage the people in your Oscar pool by convincing them that a dark-horse candidate can topple Nolan’s mighty contender.Suggest, for example, that “The Holdovers” may mirror the little-film-that-could trajectory of “CODA” (though you’d better leave out that “The Holdovers” didn’t win the top prize at the Producers Guild Awards, as “CODA” so tellingly did). Note that the expansive international contingent of the academy could swing things toward “Anatomy of a Fall” (though if that were the case, we would have seen signs of it at last month’s BAFTA ceremony). Or mention that the path to best picture tends to go through the screenplay categories, and since “Oppenheimer” is in danger of losing a writing trophy to “American Fiction” or “Barbie,” maybe those movies are the real threats.Say anything you want! Have fun causing a little chaos. Just be sure to mark down “Oppenheimer” on your own ballot, because it’s winning.Best DirectorCillian Murphy, left, getting notes from his “Oppenheimer” director, Christopher Nolan.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesJonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”✓Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”Though the 53-year-old Nolan has come to be regarded as the premier blockbuster director of his generation, one feat he still hasn’t managed is winning an Academy Award. That will finally change this weekend, completing a journey that started 15 years ago when the Oscars expanded the amount of best picture nominees after his film “The Dark Knight” was snubbed in the two top categories. Now, Nolan will win both.Best ActorMurphy has won major precursor awards for his performance. Universal PicturesBradley Cooper, “Maestro”Colman Domingo, “Rustin”Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”✓Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”Giamatti has a “he’s due” veteran narrative, and Cooper gave the sort of transformative performance that voters often flip for. But it’s the “Oppenheimer” star Murphy who is best positioned to take this Oscar for holding down the huge ensemble of the best picture front-runner. Contenders who have won the SAG and BAFTA awards, as Murphy has, don’t tend to falter at the finish line.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Review: Kristen Stewart, Crazy (and Scary) in Love

      by

      In this neo-noir, the ever reliable, always watchable actress plays a small-town loner who’s struck by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious drifter.Watching Kristen Stewart is always an adventure. A performer who makes good movies better and dreary movies tolerable, she has a restlessness that has made her one of the more interesting attractions in American film. She has a gift for making a character’s inner life transparently readable, and while she can be subtle and withholding, it is her fascinatingly unquiet presence that draws you in, an itchy intensity that can keep her (and you) on edge. Pauline Kael wrote that Jane Fonda’s “motor runs a little fast” — so does Stewart’s.In her latest vehicle, “Love Lies Bleeding,” a neo-noir in a violent and winkingly nasty key, Stewart plays Lou, short for Louise, a small-town loner somewhere in New Mexico, yearning to escape a classic dead end. If this were a 1940s noir, Lou would be fixing jalopies in a dingy garage while waiting for a dame to stroll in to change his fate. That’s more or less what happens here, except that it’s the ’80s, and Lou is a woman who works in a gym where she’s wasting away, unclogging toilets and slipping steroids to bulked-up juicers. Then, a beautiful stranger walks into the gym and changes her life, as sirens sometimes do in movies.The stranger, Jackie (a good, physically imposing Katy O. Brian), immediately catches Lou’s eye. It’s destiny, Old Hollywood style, and it lights the movie up and sets it on its incendiary way. What happens is hot, yummy stuff, but romances like these need something to get in their way, whether it’s a bag of loot, a jealous ex or just a contrivance. This movie obliges with violence, lots of guns, spooky flashbacks and a classic villain, played by a fantastic Ed Harris with a sneer and an epically terrible wig. There’s a lot of extravagantly and comically bad hair in “Love Lies Bleeding,” along with equally rotten teeth and souls.It’s a good guess that the director Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”) has read James M. Cain or seen some of the films made from his hard-boiled books; she may have thumbed through a few Jim Thompson novels, too. (Glass wrote the script with Weronika Tofilska.) “Love Lies Bleeding” isn’t on par with Cain or Thompson, and overselling a comparison would be silly. Even so, when Jackie first walks into the gym, the world-altering effect she has on Lou recalls the moment when the drifter in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” meets his kismet: “Then I saw her,” he says, “her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her.”Lou and Jackie’s don’t connect until after the gym closes and the darkness is wrapping them in its embrace. Outside, they meet and greet, sizing each other up with hungry eyes and faint smiles. First, though, they need to deal with some narrative interruptus. One of the gym rats hits on Jackie after the gym closes, but when he grabs at her, she punches him, hard. He hits her right back in an exchange that, among other things, announces the movie’s bad-ass attitude as well as Jackie’s fearlessness, her recklessness and rage. It also effectively serves as violent foreplay to Lou and Jackie’s progressively unhinged and dangerous romance.They fall into bed quickly, and the story soon heats up, too. A bodybuilder en route to a contest in Vegas, Jackie has drifted into town, as mysterious types tend to do, where she soon lands a job to earn some cash. She crashes with Lou, who — after a steamy night and a cozy morning-after breakfast — is understandably eager for Jackie to stick around. Yet Lou also remains super-jumpy and wary, like someone permanently looking over her shoulder, and Stewart gives the character a tremulous energy that vibrates in her every look, gesture and head bob. At times, you can almost see the anxiety spreading under her skin like an electric current.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Buddy Duress, Who Came Off the Streets to Find Stardom, Dies at 38

      by

      He was a homeless heroin dealer when the Safdie brothers put him in their movies, and the critics raved. But the recklessness that gave his acting authenticity thwarted his career.Buddy Duress, a small-time heroin dealer living on the streets of the Upper West Side who became a sensation in the New York film scene as an actor and muse for the movies “Heaven Knows What” and “Good Time,” which launched the careers of the filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, died in November at his home in Astoria, Queens. He was 38.The death, which was disclosed only in late February, was from cardiac arrest caused by a “drug cocktail” including heroin, his brother, Christopher Stathis, said.Mr. Stathis said their mother, Jo-Anne Stathis, was seriously ill in November, so he withheld news of the death, hoping to inform her himself at an appropriate time. By early December, he said, he had told her and several other people, but nobody in Mr. Duress’s circle made an announcement. Mr. Duress had been out of the public eye and in jail frequently in recent years.At the height of his career, in the mid-2010s, directors made trips to Rikers Island to visit and audition Mr. Duress. He acted alongside Michael Cera and Robert Pattinson, and critics said he stole scenes. At the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, he strolled down the red carpet of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the main theater, to a standing ovation, then shoved his face in front of a French TV camera shouting, “What’s up, Queens?”He was ungovernable and thrill-seeking, traits that, on the set, gave his performances authenticity but that also led him to squander opportunities. Each time, though, he said he would finally change: He was ready to dedicate himself to acting.Mr. Duress around the time of the filming of “Heaven Knows What.” The movie, portraying life on the streets of New York, sparked his friendship with the filmmaker Josh Safdie.Eléonore HendricksWe 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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘High & Low — John Galliano’ Review: Designing a Comeback

      by

      This documentary tracks what happened after the British designer was caught on camera voicing racist and antisemitic hate speech.By the time the documentary “High & Low: John Galliano” enters its second hour, you have learned a little about its titular subject’s life. You’ve seen him at work and at play, and you’ve also watched his 2011 drunken antisemitic rant — “I love Hitler” — which was captured on video. You’ve learned about his childhood in England, his time studying fashion in school, his habit of indulging to excess. Mostly, you have witnessed the unfolding of one of the most exalted careers in high fashion, a decades-long spectacle filled with sensational designs, leggy beauties and air kisses, all set to the drone of millions upon millions of dollars in annual sales.An hour into this fabulousness, I scribbled: “don’t see how this explains his hateful comments.” When the second and final hour ended, I had learned that Galliano’s father could be violent toward his son and that the designer’s career had been stressful; though, of course, many people with bad parents and hard jobs don’t spew hate, even in the grip of serious addiction. In truth, I didn’t need an explanation. I just wanted something — even a glimmer — that shed light on why on three occasions in 2010 and 2011, he had voiced virulent prejudice. I also wondered what he said when he wasn’t on camera, a question this movie never broaches.The director Kevin Macdonald asks Galliano questions in “High & Low,” but the answers are largely self-serving and unsatisfying in a movie that, for the most part, plays like yet another installment in a highly publicized redemption narrative. In the main, it is a familiar portrait, one that Macdonald has assembled using archival and original material, including far too many clips from Abel Gance’s 1927 epic “Napoléon,” a Galliano fixation. He started his label in the mid-1980s, was named the designer at Givenchy the next decade and moved to Dior in 1996, a trajectory from punk upstart to acclaimed visionary and international brand that paralleled the steep rise in the global stakes of the luxury fashion industry.As interviewees chatter and declaim, Macdonald regularly cuts to runway imagery, which is certainly more enjoyable than enduring Galliano’s prejudices. The clothes invariably pop. The shapes, lines, colors and textures are as wildly divergent as are the designer’s sometimes eyebrow-raising ideas and influences, like his “Empress Josephine Meets Lolita” collection in 1992 and the Dior show in 2000 inspired by Paris’s unhoused people. There’s a surfeit of beauty, though the visual quality of the archival material is suboptimal until the shift to digital. Disappointingly, there are few specifics about the money and especially the labor — Galliano’s or that of the technicians who help realize his vision — needed to make these clothes.Galliano’s fall happened swiftly. On Feb. 25, 2011, Dior suspended him after an incident at a Paris cafe initially described as a drunken tussle. “There was never the slightest comment of a racist or antisemitic connotation,” his lawyer, Stéphane Zerbib, told The New York Times at that point. Then the video surfaced in which Galliano railed at patrons, claiming to love Hitler and saying, “people like you would be dead today” and “your mothers, your forefathers” would be “gassed.” On March 1, Dior fired him. That September, a French tribunal convicted him in connection with two incidents, including another cafe rant in which he employed hate speech aimed at Asian and Jewish people. He was given a suspended fine.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

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Expecting Protests at the Oscars, Police Plan to Beef Up Security

      by

      The Los Angeles police said it would increase its presence at the Academy Awards, given the potential for protests related to the Israel-Hamas war.The Los Angeles police said it would increase its presence at the Academy Awards on Sunday night to make sure that potential protests related to the Israel-Hamas war do not disrupt the Oscars ceremony.Cmdr. Randy Goddard of the Los Angeles Police Department said it had gathered intelligence, based partially on social media posts, suggesting that at least one group “would like to stop the Academy Awards.”“It’s going to be our goal to ensure that the Academy Awards is successful, that guests can arrive safely and get into the venue,” said Commander Goddard, the police official leading the department’s management of the Oscars. “But, also, we are going to try very hard to make contact with the groups as they show up, and lay out the expectation that we as the police are here to support your First Amendment constitutional rights.”Some groups may try to block traffic or use other disruptive measures that demonstrators have leveraged at other events around the country, he said. Others may focus their efforts closer to the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, where the Oscars take place.Commander Goddard said the department would “build out more resources” to “help facilitate” any march or demonstration, but emphasized that it would not allow protesters to break the law or prevent guests from arriving safely to the Oscars. “We’re hopefully going to find that middle ground,” he said.A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Los Angeles said it maintained a presence at special events, including the Academy Awards, to share intelligence and to support its partners at the Los Angeles police.At this year’s Grammys, a few dozen pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside Crypto.com Arena, briefly blocking traffic by the drop-off area. A pro-Palestine protester with a loudspeaker stood outside the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica last month.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is hosting its 96th Oscars on Sunday, has dealt with disruptions over the years. Security has long been tight at the Oscars, which draws some of the world’s biggest stars to a live telecast viewed by millions of people.Commander Goddard said the Dolby Theater itself, which is secured by the Academy, is protected by railings, fencing, checkpoints and almost 2,000 private security guards. “My objective is to get the guests safely inside that venue,” he said. More