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      Emily Blunt Doesn’t Care if Her ‘Oppenheimer’ Character Is Likable

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      As the brilliant but flawed Kitty Oppenheimer, the actress plays a woman who had “extraordinary qualities, as well as ones that really let her down as a person.”In “Oppenheimer,” the writer and director Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster biopic — three words that generally don’t go together — the character of Kitty Oppenheimer is effaced twice over.Kitty, played by Emily Blunt, is the woman behind the man: Though a scientist herself, she is the sidelined wife of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the American physicist who led the development of an atomic weapon during World War II at Los Alamos, N.M. “Oppenheimer” is emphatically his movie, so much so that a lot of the script was written in the first person (“I OPEN my eyes- JUMP out of bed- SCRAMBLE to dress”).And second, though Kitty was Robert’s wife (they had two children together), she was not his first love nor, the film suggests, his strongest. The psychiatrist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) was initially involved with Robert for three years, and the two continued to see each other, even after the Oppenheimers were married. Midway through the film, Kitty finds her husband manic over her death.“How heartbreaking it must have been for her,” Blunt said, “to see him in that kind of state about another woman.”It is all to say that Blunt, the London-born actress known for films such as “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Mary Poppins Returns” and “A Quiet Place,” might have disappeared into the three-hour epic, which was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus.” But Blunt’s is among the most memorable performances in a film packed with movie stars and acclaimed character actors. The winner of a Screen Actors Guild Award for “A Quiet Place” in 2019, Blunt is now a likely candidate for her first Academy Award nomination.In a video interview last month, she talked about sympathetically portraying an unfortunate but not exactly likable character. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Blunt in a scene from “Oppenheimer” with Cillian Murphy, who plays her husband, the famed physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer. Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesChristopher Nolan asked actors to learn about their real-life characters. What about Kitty Oppenheimer informed your performance?We all read “American Prometheus.” On the flight out to Albuquerque, I could see other people trying to cram it. The wives in Los Alamos described her as being one of the most evil people they’ve ever met. Men were intrigued by her but a bit intimidated. Kitty didn’t do small talk. She only did big talk.Robert and Kitty Oppenheimer temporarily offloaded their baby son to their friends, the Chevaliers, because they were so overwhelmed. Was that scene difficult to perform?I have 9- and 7-year-old girls, and I adore being a mom. I’ve always really loved kids. So it’s quite hard to be so cold-shouldered with these little ones on set. Kitty’s clearly got trauma there — trauma that wasn’t named at the time. She has descended into drinking too much. I tried to empathize with the woman who was in possession of a phenomenal brain herself, who is having to contort herself into the good housewife-y. It must have been agony for someone like her, who was so wild, so brilliant, should never have been a mother, and clearly had huge depression after the kid was born.How do you balance empathy with being true to the character, potentially at the expense of likability?For me, it’s never important if someone is likable. I just have to understand them. I could play that quiet desperation of the character, the restlessness and that unashamed flair that she had, which was so fiery and exciting. And yet she was this very stabilizing force for him. She was his most vigorous protector. I think she had rather extraordinary qualities, as well as ones that really let her down as a person. She is abrasive and flawed, but I really sympathized with that idea of someone deteriorating at the ironing board, when she should have been made for intellectual endeavors that would have thrilled her.Were there any other scenes that unlocked Kitty for you?Do you remember the scene under the rock with Cillian? He’s gibbering with incoherence about his lover.When I read the scene, I was like, “Wow, that’s so interesting, it’s almost like he can’t see that he’s speaking to his wife.” And I slapped him — Chris was like, “Slap him.” It’s not in the movie, but I hit that famous cheekbone way too many times. Maybe what I played more is her attempt to save face. Like: “Pull yourself together, people here depend on you.” It’s more like, “I depend on you.”How did the unconventional, first-person nature of the screenplay influence how you approached the role?It was made clear to all of us that this is a single perspective. Oppenheimer’s character is going to reach through the screen and pull you inside of his head, and you’ve got these rather more wild, colorful characters around him. We were there to emotionally elicit different sides of this character.I interviewed Nolan shortly before “Oppenheimer” was released about the IMAX 70-millimeter format.It must have been like Dork Central for him. The passion about film is infectious.What was it like shooting with the IMAX cameras?It would be brought in like a massive fridge. And it’s loud: It sounds like Chewbacca coming in. There’s something freeing, because you know that it’s going to capture every little flicker and nuance on anyone’s face. But it is loud, and at first you’re like, “How am I going to function?” It’s the understated nature of Chris’s sets, the focus and lack of chaos, that it was never this declamatory moment when the IMAX would come in.How would you contrast Nolan’s “calm” sets with others you’ve been on?On some sets you’re flying by the seat of your pants. It can work both ways: With a comedy or something that’s more free-spirited, sometimes it’s great for it to be a bit more chaotic. But with Chris, it’s his preparation, so that when you show up, you don’t feel rushed as an actor. I’m sure the crew was horizontal every night by 7 p.m. More

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      With Tom Wilkinson, Would You Get a Time Bomb or a Warm Hug?

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      In his performances in “Michael Clayton” and other films, he brought an element of danger and uncertainty that kept us on edge.It takes 27 minutes for Tom Wilkinson to actually show up in “Michael Clayton,” but his specter haunts every second.The movie opens with his voice on a recording, pleading in familiar terms with “Michael” — we find out later he’s a fixer at the law firm where Wilkinson’s character is a partner. “I’m begging you, Michael, I’m begging you, try to make believe this is not just madness, because this is not just madness,” the voice pleads, pitch modulating and then oscillating through steadiness to vexation. He launches into a story about leaving a building to find himself coated in “amniotic, embryonic fluid,” then coming to a “stunning moment of clarity” about his work as a litigator who’s poured years of his life into, well, we don’t know yet, but it must be bad.Tony Gilroy’s screenplay gives Wilkinson a lot to work with, but it’s his performance that grabs you by the throat, all the more gripping because we don’t really know what’s going on. Who is this man? Is he aware of what he’s saying, or have his marbles gone skittering across the room and into every corner? Is anything he says true, and if it is, does he know it? Those questions hover over the movie, the tension stretching drum-tight before Wilkinson even appears. George Clooney is the star of “Michael Clayton,” but its beating heart lies with Wilkinson, this imploding man on the phone.Wilkinson (no relation, though publicists used to ask me), who died on Saturday at 75, is one of those actors everyone knows even if they can’t quite place him. He is the guy from “The Full Monty,” from “Batman Begins,” from “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” He did everything from “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” to “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and channeled historical figures including Joseph P. Kennedy (in “The Kennedys”), Lyndon B. Johnson (in “Selma”), and Benjamin Franklin (in “John Adams”). He played a lot of priests and a lot of soldiers and a lot of men from history, but he never quite managed to be pigeonholed as anyone in particular.Wilkinson worked a lot, with multiple film, TV and stage credits most years since the early 1980s, in part because he usually didn’t play the lead. Instead he was the man you brought in to fill a role with gravitas and a spark of peril, someone who would never simply say lines but make everything suddenly significant. What’s so fascinating about Wilkinson’s career, the kinds of characters he chose to portray, is their capacity for vulnerability and unpredictability. When he walked onscreen, you were not quite sure whether this guy was going to be trustworthy or explosive.The instruments Wilkinson had to work with — his look, his stature, his voice — weren’t particularly remarkable on their own. His face, which began to verge on the cherubic as he aged, was that of an ordinary Englishman, someone you’d bump into in a pub. His voice wasn’t particularly rumbly or low-pitched, and while he stood much taller than many men he acted with, you’d never stare as he walked down the street. Wilkinson looked, in essence, like someone’s granddad, a man who would slip you a cough drop midmeeting and wink.Yet his roles I remember most involved an element of danger so thoroughly fused into that exterior that I spent the whole movie wondering whether this guy was a warm hug or a time bomb. In Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Wilkinson has a minor role as the doctor overseeing the memory-erasing procedure that Jim Carrey’s lovelorn Joel desperately seeks. Kirsten Dunst plays Mary, the much-younger assistant who falls in love with the doctor. When he tries to explain that the two of them have a history already, there’s equal parts patheticness and pathos in his performance. Is he predator, prey, or helplessly uncertain how his own work really affects people? He’s not sure, and neither are we.Or there’s the bereaved father in Todd Field’s “In the Bedroom,” a quiet, upstanding Maine father who is being eaten alive by his need to avenge the death of his son at the hands of his son’s girlfriend’s ex-husband. The final half-hour features Wilkinson at his most volatile, a deadpan expression on his face and a pistol in his hand. What’s in his heart is wholly inscrutable not just to the man at the other end of the gun, but to the audience, too. He could go off at any minute — or not at all.The greatest encapsulation of this ability, however, still lies in “Michael Clayton,” with the role of the attorney Arthur Edens (for which he was Oscar-nominated) perfectly tuned for Wilkinson’s abilities. When his monologue ends, we’re pretty sure the man on the phone needs immediate psychiatric help. But he’s gone, suddenly, and when he pops up again, that assumption gets murky. Maybe this guy really has had a blinding moment of insight, a sudden attack of moral clarity. Or maybe not? Edens, it emerges, has bipolar disorder and is typically medicated, and Wilkinson plays this as a man whose mind keeps slipping sideways inside his skull.The effect on the audience is absolutely electric. In one scene, Edens knocks on a window to say hello to Clayton, a sweet smile on his face — surely this guy just needs a nap. In another, just after he seemed moderately lucid, he’s curled in bed, all but rocking back and forth as he talks to a child on the phone about the kid’s favorite fantasy book, seeming desperate to understand. Other people don’t know what to do with him either; a plaintiff seems to harbor both affection for and fear of him, and we get it. He seems equally likely to fly off the handle or offer a cup of tea. “You are a manic depressive,” Clayton says to him, by way of dismissing what seems like an attack of conscience not befitting a legendary litigator. “I am Shiva, the god of death,” Wilkinson replies, no histrionics, just a flat statement of fact. It makes your toes curl.The most chilling scene in “Michael Clayton” comes straight out of the blue, a perfect showcase for Wilkinson’s ability to ride the edge. Clayton is driving the streets of Manhattan to find Edens, who’s gone missing. He spots him walking down an alleyway with a comically giant bag of baguettes, and Edens, delighted to see him, offers him one. His face is childlike and open, vulnerable and generous. We’re almost afraid this man will get mugged for his bread.Then Clooney starts talking about committing Edens to an institution, and suddenly a glint appears in Wilkinson’s eye. “Michael,” he says, in a voice that sounds very different from the one on the recording, “I have great affection for you, and you lead a very rich and interesting life.” This does not seem like a compliment. “But you’re a bag man, not an attorney,” he continues, in a tone of perfect lucidity. Suddenly we’re seeing Edens, the courtroom killer, exactly the lawyer you’d choose to defend a giant corporation in a multibillion-dollar class-action suit. He is about to rip out Clayton’s guts.Calmly, Edens goes on to explain why Clayton’s approach to getting Edens into an institution — the better to control the situation — is completely wrongheaded, given the laws about these things in New York. Everything he’s done is a mistake, and Clayton knows it because Edens knows it.“Well, good luck and God bless,” he concludes. “But I’ll tell you this: the last place you want to see me is in court.” And we, at least for that moment, believe him. More

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      Tom Wilkinson, Actor in ‘The Full Monty,’ Dies at 75

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      A versatile actor who also starred in “Shakespeare in Love” and “Batman Begins,” he won acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage.Tom Wilkinson, the actor who could turn a manic lawyer, a steel-foreman-turned-stripper and parts small and large into mesmerizing turns, winning Oscar nominations and plaudits for his performances in movies like “Michael Clayton” and “The Full Monty,” died on Saturday, according to a family statement. He was 75.The statement, from his agent sent on behalf of his family, said he died suddenly at home. It did not provide other details.Mr. Wilkinson’s range seemed to know no bounds.He earned Academy Award nominations for his work in “In the Bedroom” and “Michael Clayton” and delighted audiences in comedies like “The Full Monty” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”He appeared in blockbusters like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Batman Begins,” and took on horror in “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” history as Benjamin Franklin in “John Adams,” and memory in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”He often did not have the name recognition or sheer star power of the actors he played opposite — George Clooney, Sissy Spacek and Ben Affleck among them. But he drew audiences’ eyes and critics’ acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage.“I see myself as a utility player, the one who can do everything,” he told The New York Times in 2002. “I’ve always felt that actors should have a degree of anonymity about them.”To many Britons, though, “The Full Monty,” remains his most beloved performance, as one of the gruff, unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, who scheme to make some money and repair their self-regard by starting a striptease act for the town.In “The Full Monty,” Mr. Wilkinson was among the characters who schemed to earn money by starting a striptease act.Maximum Film / Alamy Stock PhotoMr. Wilkinson played Gerald Cooper, an aging ex-foreman who joins the cadre in part to escape the ornamental gnomes his wife erected on the lawn.But his range extended far beyond comedy, and he was nominated for the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in “In the Bedroom,” directed by Todd Field.Opposite Ms. Spacek, Mr. Wilkinson played one half of a Maine couple struggling in the aftermath of their son’s murder. Mr. Field said he was drawn to Mr. Wilkinson because of his everyman quality.“You don’t typically think that Robert Redford is going to live next door,” Mr. Field told The Times. “But you believe that Tom Wilkinson could live next door. That’s the difference.”A few years later, Mr. Wilkinson was winning acclaim again as a high-powered lawyer who has a breakdown in Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.” He was nominated for another Academy Award for his performance in that film.By then, Mr. Wilkinson had been acting for three decades, in theater, television and film.He was born in Yorkshire, England, and his parents moved to Canada when he was 4, seeking better work than farming. Their stay lasted only six years, during which time his father worked as an aluminum smelter. The family returned to Britain, where Mr. Wilkinson’s parents ran a Cornwall pub until his father died, drawing Mr. Wilkinson and his mother back to Yorkshire.Information on his survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Wilkinson said his life took a sharp turn at 16, at the King James’s Grammar School at Knaresborough, where the headmistresses “simply decided she would make something of me.”This, he said, “meant being invited round to her house, being taught how to eat, which knives and forks to reach for first.”“We would go to the theater together,” he said. “Having wandered aimlessly through school, suddenly someone took an interest in me.”But he was not drawn to acting until he reached the University of Canterbury in 1967, he said. After college, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where he discovered that it was possible for “working-class kids from the provinces” to open art galleries, run rock bands, become designers, be actors.“All the things that weren’t cool became cool,” he said. “I saw the young, provincial bohemian and thought, that role can be mine. I’ll be in the arts. You can have a life in the arts. Why not?” More

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      Stream These 9 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in January

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      A lot of big movies by big-name directors are leaving soon for U.S. subscribers. Watch them while you can.In January, several big movies from an impressive coterie of marquee directors — including Sofia Coppola, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Spike Lee, Jordan Peele and Robert Rodriguez — leave Netflix in the United States, along with a zippy comedy, an entertaining animated sequel and what may be the most famous runner-up in Oscars history. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘BlacKkKlansman’ (Jan. 5)Stream it here.Better late than never: Spike Lee won his first competitive Oscar for co-writing the screenplay to this deft combination of social satire and police procedural, which he also directed. It details the true story of how the Colorado police detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan — despite the fact that Stallworth is Black. Lee plays Stallworth’s ruse, achieved with a clever combination of phone calls and undercover work by his white, Jewish partner (Adam Driver), for laughs. But the danger of the operation is ever-present, building considerable tension to a conclusion that ingeniously and gut-wrenchingly ties the past to the present.‘Get Out’ (Jan. 5)Stream it here.When Jordan Peele’s crossover to feature filmmaking was announced in the mid-2010s, most audiences — familiar only with his work as half of the sketch comedy team Key & Peele — presumed he would continue to work in that wild comic style. No one could have predicted that he would turn the entire horror genre upside down, but that’s exactly what he did with this nail-biting combination of social commentary and scary movie. What begins as a “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” riff — a wealthy young white woman (Allison Williams) bringing her Black boyfriend (Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet her parents — turns into something far more sinister and unpredictable; Peele’s insights as a screenwriter are pointed and even profound, and his directorial instincts are striking from Frame 1.‘Spy Kids’ (Jan. 12)Stream it here.Just as it’s hard to remember that Peele wasn’t always associated with horror, recall that there was once a time when the idea of Robert Rodriguez — known then for his hyperkinetic action movies — making a family film was shocking. But he changed all of that with this 2001 smash, in which two average kids (the charismatic duo of Daryl Sabara and Alexa Vega) discover that their seemingly boring parents (Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino, both delightfully game) are in fact globe-trotting super spies; a mission has gone awry, and the kids have to save them. Rodriguez’s imaginative scenario plugs right in to childhood play, and his handmade style is a smooth fit for kid-friendly cinema. (The second and third chapters in the franchise leave Netflix the same day.)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?  More

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      5 Action Movies to Stream Now

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      This month’s picks include tales of Southern crime, a slick Japanese remake, a hunt for hidden treasure and more.‘Fast Charlie’Rent or buy on most major platforms.I never knew I needed to hear Pierce Brosnan with a Southern accent until Phillip Noyce’s “Fast Charlie.” The former Bond plays the titular “problem solver,” as he calls himself, cooler than a summer breeze. A turf war between his boss, Stan (James Caan in one of his final film roles) and a New Orleans gangster named Beggar (Gbenga Akinnagbe) results in the apparent murder of Stan and his entire crew, pushing Charlie to seek vengeance before Beggar finds him, too. Charlie’s predicament also envelops his lover, Marcie (Morena Baccarin), a sharp-talking taxidermist.Charlie is rendered in the mold of John Wick, if Wick remained in the biz until his actual retirement age. Brosman moves quietly and efficiently while leaning on smartly delivered one-liners. “What do you want?” Beggar asks. “You, not breathing,” Charlie retorts. Some old dogs do well without new tricks.‘The Dirty South’Rent or buy on most major platforms.Another Southern revenge story, this time in Northern Louisiana, occurs in the writer-director Matthew Yerby’s grim and gritty “The Dirty South.” Weighed down by an alcoholic father and an absent, ne’er-do-well mother, Sue Parker (Willa Holland) is on the verge of losing her family bar to the town’s wealthy patriarch, Jeb Roy (Dermot Mulroney), if she doesn’t come up with $30,000 in three days. Lucky for her, Dion (Shane West), a petty pickpocket from an equally broken family, just rolled through town. Sue teams up with Dion to rob Jeb, striking a blow to Jeb’s fief.At its heart, “The Dirty South” is a heist flick. The resourceful Dion teaches the determined Sue the tricks of his trade and quickly falls in love with her. The climatic heist, a brawling affair between Sue and Jeb, is soundtracked by “Carol of the Bells,” ripping the bow from Yerby’s rough and tumble holiday treat.‘Hard Days’Stream it on Netflix.Having previously written about “A Family” and the “The Village,” I’m persistently on the lookout for the Japanese director Michihito Fujii’s next film. His special interest in random bystanders who become stuck in larger, nefarious webs re-emerges in his slick, unhinged remake of the Korean action film “A Hard Day.” Fujii’s “Hard Days” opens on Detective Kudo (Junichi Okada) accidentally hitting a pedestrian with his car. This victim turns out to be at the heart of a battle between a corrupt internal affairs investigator, Yazaki (Go Ayano), who’s tasked with retrieving a key to a vault, and the elderly gangster (Akira Emoto) who is intent on stealing its contents.The messy situation immerses Kudo into a pure comedy, turning scenes requiring subterfuge — a traffic stop or his mother’s funeral — into hilarious near catastrophes. Okada builds his performance from broad physical gags toward a showdown against a crazed Yazaki among the tombstones of a Buddhist temple, not unlike the ending to the classic western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Their battle of the wills even leaves an opening for a sequel.‘The Legend and Hag of Shaolin’Stream it on Hi-Yah!The Chinese director Zhang Dicai’s “The Legend and Hag of Shaolin,” with its faceless white-clad cult following its holy goddess on a trail to a MacGuffin treasure map, certainly qualifies as offbeat. Zhang leans into the comedic potential of this otherworldly premise through the two martial arts warriors — Hong (Gu Shangwei) and Shiyu (Zhao Wenzhuo) — who take the map into hiding. In a country village, the pair run an acupuncture clinic that, despite their best efforts to lay low, becomes a hit with the town’s women.Though corrupt martial arts masters, a romance and a major twist arise, the lighter-than-air fighting is the film’s primary vehicle. Clean frames and fluid choreography imbue Hong’s leaps and slides with balletic grace. The Foley artists, the key engine to any good action film, propel these staged confrontations, making Hong’s trusty spear sound like a whistling crystal searching for blood.‘Robbing Mussolini’Stream it on Netflix.Pietro (Pietro Castellitto) is a small-time gun runner, who, with his sharpshooting partner Marcello (Tommaso Ragno), works to earn a living during the waning days of World War II. Though Pietro deals with the resistance, he isn’t a revolutionary. He’s on the side of earning the kind of money he hopes will impress his girlfriend, Yvonne (Matilda De Angelis), who happens to be the mistress of Achille Borsalino (Filippo Timi), a brutal Fascist commander. After hearing about the Italian leadership’s plan to flee the country with a bounty of gold, Pietro forms a team to steal the treasure first.The Italian director Renato De Maria’s “Robbing Mussolini” is an inspired blending of “Inglourious Basterds” and “Sunset Boulevard,” relying on lush period detail, ornate Art Deco sets and resplendent gowns emblazoned with intoxicating splashes of red. The heist itself, in a nearly impregnable square surrounded by high walls, barbed wire and snipers, is equally imaginative: Long tracking shots capture the bevy of explosions and well-choreographed firefights, with biting precision and arresting flair, on an audacious scale. More

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      What Your Favorite Streaming Services Will Cost You in 2024

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      Amazon will start showing ads to some Prime Video subscribers who pay less. They’re not alone.If you were planning on watching the final season of “Jack Ryan” or eight seasons of “House” without commercials on Amazon Prime next year, get ready to dig a little deeper into your pockets.In September, Amazon announced it would soon add advertisements to Prime Video, its streaming service, and this week announced when that change would go into effect: Jan 29. Customers wanting to avoid the ads would have to pay an extra $2.99 a month.Less than a decade ago, the streaming era took off on the promise of letting users cut the cord from expensive cable bills and enjoy a blissful ad-free viewing experience. But as we enter 2024, Amazon isn’t the only service bringing back ads or driving prices higher.Studios and streaming companies that make all this entertainment say they are struggling, and that it’s getting increasingly hard to attract new customers. The result is higher prices, or plans that are cheaper but include ads.There are also other measures. This fall, Netflix announced a price hike and said it would start clamping down on users who share their passwords with people outside of their households for free.To help you make a choice for the new year, here’s what some of the main streaming services will cost and what they will offer. (All prices are in U.S. dollars and apply to U.S. accounts.)Amazon Prime VideoAmazon executives have said that including the video service helped keep people subscribed to its Prime memberships, which include free shipping.In 2022, the company completed its purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — and, crucially, its extensive catalog of movies and television shows, including titles like James Bond, which is available on Prime Video.The current price for an Amazon Prime membership is $14.99 a month (or $139 per year). Prime Video by itself is $8.99 a month. For ad-free viewing, Amazon will add $2.99 per month to your bill starting Jan. 29. And careful: If you opt into a free trial, Amazon will automatically start charging you after it ends.John Turturro in “Severance” on Apple TV+.Wilson Webb/Apple TV+, via Associated PressApple TV+In 2019, Apple announced that it would start creating its own television shows and movies at an extremely star-studded event in California. The streaming service offers Apple originals — “Severance” and “Ted Lasso” — and a subscription can be shared with up to five people. There are no ads.A monthly subscription for the streaming service costs $9.99. Apple also offers three free months when you buy one of their devices.Disney+For $7.99 a month, subscribers get content with ads. For $13.99 a month (or $139.99 a year) you can stream Disney+ without ads and download content for when you’re offline.Its offerings include Pixar and Disney movies as well as “Star Wars” and Marvel movies and TV shows, 34 seasons of “The Simpsons” and about 7,500 episodes of old Disney-branded shows.MaxWarner Bros. Discovery unveiled this combined streaming service in April, rebranding the former HBO Max. An ad-free experience will cost you $15.99 a month. An “Ultimate ad-free” version for $19.99 allows users to add more devices to the account as well as up to 100 downloads. For a $9.99 add-on per month, you can also watch live sports.Max offers the “Harry Potter” movies, classic HBO shows such as “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” as well as newer releases, such as “Barbie.” The streamer has also ordered a “Harry Potter” TV series.HuluFor $17.99 a month you can watch Hulu’s vast catalog — titles include “New Girl,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Fargo” — without ads. If you’re willing to sit through commercials, it’s $7.99 a month.Hulu also offers the option of adding live television to your plan, as well as content from other streaming services such as Disney+ and ESPN+, although the latter does come with ads. Those options range from $75.99 to $89.99 a month.If you want to watch Lauren Graham, left, and Alexis Bledel in “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” that’ll be at least $6.99 a month on Netflix.Saeed Adyani/NetflixNetflixRaise your hand if you remember getting DVDs from Netflix in the mail in the early 2000s. In 2010, Netflix started selling its streaming service for $8 a month and offering one DVD at a time for an additional $2.Netflix now offers a $6.99 per month subscription, which is ad-supported, which the company says “allows you to enjoy movies and TV shows at a lower price.” A standard plan (without ads) is $15.49 a month. For access to more devices, the cost goes up to $22.99 a month. Adding additional people that aren’t included in your subscription will cost you an additional $7.99 per person per month. Netflix mailed its last DVD in September.Among its offerings: “Gilmore Girls,” “La La Land,” and international series such as “Squid Game.”Paramount+In 2021, CBS rebranded its streaming platform, which it heralded as “a big day, a new day, a new beginning.” That announcement came with promises of a “Frasier” reboot and a revival of the animated series “Rugrats.”A lot of other Paramount content can be found elsewhere. The company sold the rights to the “South Park” library to HBO Max, and series like “Jack Ryan,” produced by Paramount, have gone to Amazon.Paramount+ Essential will cost you $5.99 a month (or $59.99 a year) and includes “limited commercial interruptions.” The service also offers a bundle together with SHOWTIME in a plan that costs $11.99 a month (or $119.99 a year).PeacockThe premium subscription for NBC Universal’s streaming service will cost you $5.99 a month and includes original content, films, live sporting events and more. A Premium Plus subscription is priced at $11.99 a month and offers — mostly — no ads as well as the ability to download content.Some of the programs you can watch include “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Downton Abbey,” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as well as Bravo content like the “Real Housewives” franchise. More

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      ‘Priscilla,’ Olivia Rodrigo and the Year of Girlhood and Longing

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      When she was just 14, Priscilla Beaulieu, an Air Force brat stationed with her family in Germany, met one of the planet’s biggest pop stars. The pair formed a connection, and when it was time to temporarily part ways, he left her with a keepsake.That gift, an Army issue jacket from Elvis Presley, is an important symbol in the movie “Priscilla,” hanging from her bedroom wall like a poster ripped from a magazine. The film’s director, Sofia Coppola, seems to be making a point about the gaping age gap between teenager and heartthrob (24 and a year-plus into military service), but also about the universality of a girl’s crush — relatable, all-consuming.In class soon after, in a scene that reminded me of Britney Spears anxiously counting down the seconds until the bell in the “ … Baby One More Time” video, a daydreaming Priscilla fidgets at her desk. You can almost see the cartoon hearts floating above her head as Coppola offers this unsettling portrait of an adolescent drawn into an age-inappropriate relationship. But her knowing depiction of girlhood longing stayed with me, too. Because whether you were a teenage girl in 1959 or in 2023, that specific ache — in love, or what you think is love — will probably feel familiar.I noticed that pang — the kind that comes from badly wanting something seemingly just out of reach — surfacing in our entertainments this year: full-throated and kicking down doors on “Guts,” Olivia Rodrigo’s hilarious, if wrenching, relationship album; simmering to a boil in “Swarm,” the series about an obsessed fan with a gnawing hunger; and yearning for validation in “Don’t Think, Dear,” a dancer’s devastating memoir of a ballet career that stalled at the barre. Girls giving voice to their pain even when they couldn’t fully make sense of it. Girls spilling their guts.The Cruel Tutelage of Alice Robb“Ballet had given me a way to be girl,” a “specific template,” Alice Robb writes in “Don’t Think, Dear.”To middle school, she wears her hair scraped into a bun, a leotard instead of a bra. She trains at the New York City Ballet’s prestigious school. At 12, though, struggling to keep up, she’s expelled after three years of study. The rejection is unshakable, and the sting goes on for decades. Desperate for a do-over that never comes, she enrolls in less prominent dance academies, where she’s heartbroken to encounter girls with flat feet and messy buns. She stalks old classmates on social media, and for 15 years, keeps up a dutiful stretching routine that she hopes will maintain the outlines of a ballet body, one that telegraphs her as “special.”“The dream of being a ballerina begins with the dream of being beautiful,” Robb writes. Anyone who has ever pulled on a tutu, this pink puff of fabric imbued with something indescribably feminine, is probably nodding at this assessment of ballet’s initial pull. American girlhood is practically wrapped in blush tones, with ballet as a kind of shared rite. It’s there at every stage: in the aspirant of the popular “Angelina Ballerina” children’s books and in the nostalgic young enthusiasts who’ve recently given the art form’s aesthetics a name, balletcore, playing dress-up with the uniform. But for those like Robb who see ballet not as a phase, but a pursuit, letting go is hard. To fail at ballet is to fail at being a girl.That’s not true, of course. But wounds sustained in girlhood, when you’re not yet emotionally equipped to mend them, tend to linger. With each page, I rooted for Robb, now a journalist in her 30s, to find the position that would let her plant her feet back on the ground.Alice Robb at Steps in Manhattan.Laurel Golio for The New York TimesAnd I thought of an Olivia Rodrigo lyric: “I bought all the clothes that they told me to buy/I chased some dumb ideal my whole [expletive] life.” That’s how Rodrigo, the 20-year-old pop supernova, deals with the anguish of rejection on her sophomore album, “Guts”: She thrashes.Rodrigo realizes that, in its first throes, “Love Is Embarrassing.” (It is.) On that throbbing track, she admits the hold “some weird second-string loser” has on her. On another, “Get Him Back,” she jokingly lays out a conflicted revenge plot as the bridge drops to a whisper: “I wanna kiss his face, with an uppercut,” she confesses. “I wanna meet his mom — just to tell her her son sucks.” She’s cataloging her humiliations, but she’s laughing at them, too.She refuses to wallow for long, and I’m convinced this is partly what gives the album its buoyancy. (It’s an approach that, in hindsight, would have given me more relief than the semester I spent writing love-stricken poetry on tiny notecards at my university’s performing arts library after a brutal breakup.)Headfirst Into HeartbreakGirlhood, strictly marked in years, comes to a close in the waning years of adolescence. But for some, I think this period calls for a less tidy metric, one that makes room for a soft transition into late girlhood, or adolescence — with all of its intensifying feeling — and then post-girlhood, with its own round of heartbreaks. Lauryn Hill was 23 in 1998 when she released a relationship album for the ages. “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” multiplatinum and Grammy-winning, tracked her recovery from a series of rumored breaks: with her hip-hop trio, the Fugees, and one of her bandmates, Wyclef Jean, with whom she was said to have shared a stormy romance. For a generation of us, it was as if she’d found our own love letters and read each one out loud.This fall, reunited with her bandmates, the girl from South Orange, N.J., returned to the stage to breathe new life into that indelible collection. On opening night of a short-lived tour, I watched from the Prudential Center in nearby Newark as Hill wailed the exasperated plea from “Ex-Factor”: “No matter how I think we grow, you always seem to let me know it ain’t working.” It had been 25 years since Hill’s “Miseducation”; a quarter-century for perspective, love and motherhood to right-size once outsize feelings. She sang the words she’d written all those years ago, but this time her voice was tinged with unmistakable joy.Lauryn Hill on the 25th anniversary of “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” tour.Mathew Tsang/Getty ImagesThere is longing in the fictional world of “Swarm,” but little joy. Dre (Dominique Fishback), a socially awkward 20-something, spends her days posting online tributes dedicated to her favorite artist, a Beyoncé stand-in named Ni’Jah.“I think the second she sees me, she’d know how we’re connected,” Dre tells her roommate.Dre is a “Killer Bee,” one of a hive of obsessive fans, and she will live up to the name: She soon sets off on a violent cross-country spree, picking off Ni’Jah’s unsuspecting online critics. After each kill, famished, Dre devours anything she can get her hands on — a leftover apple pie, a sandwich. It becomes clear that she’s not hungry at all; what she’s starved for — longing for — is connection. In that sense, she’s not so different from the scores of women and girls who packed concert stadiums this past summer, adorned in sparkling silver or baring arms stacked with friendship bracelets.A Girl Walks Into Her KitchenWhile I contemplated girlhood and longing this year, I was also cheered by how girls have prioritized their own delight. My favorite entry in that category was Girl Dinner, a TikTok trend that transformed a simple meal, meant to be enjoyed solo, into a satisfying feast — “a bag of popcorn, a glass of wine, some bread, some cheese and a hunk of chocolate,” as Jessica Roy put it in The New York Times this summer.The idea was to put convenience first, ostensibly leaving more time and space for the pleasures that elaborate meal prep and cleanup might not. The concept of Girl Dinner, which also embraces the internet appetite for giving ordinary things a fresh polish by renaming them, felt like an antidote to longing. A reminder that sometimes being full, all on your own, can be just as fulfilling. More

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      Tom Smothers and the John Lennon Connection

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      He was close with John Lennon, and had a sophisticated understanding of wine, politics and literature. He only played the bumpkin onstage.I read the news today, oh boy.John Lennon’s lyric popped into my head Tuesday as soon as I read the texts from my friend Marcy Carriker Smothers. The first was a photo of a guitar next to a fire and Christmas poinsettia. The second included the news. “Beautiful and peaceful passing today at 1:40P. We had a lovely Christmas.”Tom Smothers had been in hospice for months so word of his passing induced a sigh not a gasp. I thought of the “Day in the Life” lyric not because of the circumstances of his death — Tom was 86 and died of lung cancer — but because Lennon and Tom were close. At the 1969 Montreal recording of “Give Peace a Chance,” only two acoustic guitars strum along. One is held by Lennon; the other by Tom.Tom came to the antiwar movement with sad bona fides. His father was a West Pointer who said goodbye to his namesake son in 1940, before heading to the Pacific to defend liberty. He never returned.Nothing funny about that origin story. Still, through music, Tom and his younger brother, Dick, found their way to comedy and created an act that instantly impressed Jack Paar, the “Tonight” show host, who remarked in 1961, “I don’t know what you guys have but no one’s going to steal it.”Six years later, the brothers debuted “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” their seminal variety show that used comedy to satirize issues like the Vietnam War, racial politics and drugs.Despite the heavy topics, Tom came across as lighthearted and simple. During an audience question-and-answer session, a woman once asked, “Are you both married?”“No, ma’am. We’re just brothers,” Tom said.Smothers was close with John Lennon and played guitar on “Give Peace a Chance” in 1969 in Montreal. In real life, Tom thought and felt deeply. He cared about social justice and the creative process. He labored over details. The biggest contradiction was Tom’s onstage persona. A classic Smothers Brothers sketch would begin with the two singing a song until Tom interrupted or screwed up the words so badly that Dick pulled the plug. This would lead to wry observations or an argument that built to a punchline. The brothers would then return to the song, providing the sketch with a natural and satisfying finish. At heart, this was character comedy with Dick playing the bass and the straight man and Tom playing the guitar and the fool.In an early episode, the brothers came out singing the Maurice Chevalier hit “Louise” while sporting boater hats. They paused to discuss the French and romance, and Tom instantly claimed familiarity. “You really know about those French wines and women?” Dick challenged Tom.“Oh I know all about that stuff.”The audience laughed, doubting his claim.Dick was not about to let Tom off the hook. “French wine — what do you know about it?” he pressed.“It gets you drunk,” Tom replied, nailing the punchline with exquisite timing.In real life, Tom knew everything about wine. For decades, he owned and operated a vineyard in Sonoma that produced award-winning merlot and cabernet sauvignon. At first, he lived in a barn on the property, then later designed a main house with a huge stone fireplace and views in every direction so that you could follow the sun throughout the day. If the hot tub could talk, it would tell spicy stories about parties in the 1960s and ’70s and probably be the only one that could remember what happened.By the time I visited Smothers-Remick Ridge Ranch, the hot tub was a place for kids to splash around. I’d first met Tom in 1988, when I was hired as a writer for the variety show’s second life. While working on the reboot, I roomed with the associate producer, Marcy Carriker, who married Tom in 1990. Their two children — Bo and Riley Rose — would play with my own two kids. Marcy co-hosted a food and wine radio show with Guy Fieri, so dinner was always delicious. After the meal, Tom would sit by the fire, reading a thick novel.Smothers played the guitar and the fool; his brother played the bass and the straight man.Mark Junge/Getty ImagesIt was a picture of domesticity that didn’t last. Soaking in wine country meant a lot of drinking, and the more Tom drank, the less fun he became. Knowing how brilliant and generous he could be, I found it painful to watch his behavior shift. If this seems harsh, I mention it because the truth mattered to Tom. Marcy and I would go on long walks to discuss the situation. We came up with a phrase that summed things up: “It’s tomplicated.”Tom and Marcy separated 15 years ago but never divorced. And when Tom grew ill, she was there for him along with their children. “They have been rocks,” Marcy texted me hours after he died. She told me that over the last few months, Tom had never had a stranger care for him. She, Bo, Riley Rose and Marty Tryon, Tom’s former road manager, watched over him.And so Tom spent a lovely Christmas Eve and Day surrounded by his family. He slipped away the next afternoon. As always, exquisite timing.I hope Tom will be remembered. He was last on TV three decades ago, so except for comedy nerds, no one under 40 would have reason to recognize him. If you’re curious, there’s a smart 2002 documentary, “Smothered,” about the brothers’ getting fired from CBS, and an excellent book by David Bianculli, “Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” Both the film and book reiterate what history has made clear: Tom was absolutely right about war being stupid and civil rights being worth fighting for. In his own way, he, too, defended liberty.Or try sliding down a YouTube rabbit hole where you’ll stumble over early routines from Steve Martin, whom Tom hired as a writer before encouraging him to perform. I never met an entertainer who was more respectful of other people’s talents than Tom. He adored so many fellow artists, including Harry Belafonte, Harry Nilsson, Martin Mull, and (Mama) Cass Elliot, who lights up one of my favorite sketches from the 1968-69 season.The concept is simply Elliot singing her hit “Dream a Little Dream” to Tom as he tries to fall asleep in a big brass bed. Tom doesn’t say a word but gets plenty of laughs. The bit is sweet, original, musical and funny. When you strip away the tomplications, Tom was all those things. More