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      In ‘Bring Her Back,’ Sally Hawkins Takes Horror to Heart

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      In a rare interview, the actress discusses tackling a difficult, sensitive and often dastardly role in the latest offering from Danny and Michael Philippou.The actress Sally Hawkins has a to-die-for pedigree. She’s been nominated twice for Academy Awards, once as a creature’s lady love in Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” and again for Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” in which she played a depressed working-class woman opposite Cate Blanchett. Her British stage credits include plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov and García Lorca, and on Broadway, Shaw.“Bring Her Back,” Hawkins’s latest film (in theaters) is also a plum project. It’s from the prestige art-house distributor A24, and it’s the second feature by Danny and Michael Philippou, the twin Australian YouTubers-turned-directors who became Hollywood famous after their possession drama “Talk to Me” became one of A24’s biggest hits in 2023.But “Bring Her Back” is also a malign and at times shockingly gruesome horror movie; critics have noted its “restlessly mounting anguish” and have called it the “feel-bad movie of the year.” It remains to be seen if genre-averse fans who know Hawkins from her acclaimed work, including appearances in two “Paddington” films, will turn out for a movie that has a scene between a young boy and a giant kitchen knife that even gorehounds may have a hard time stomaching.To hear Hawkins explain it, she said yes to the film precisely because of its weight — or rather, lack of it.“There’s no fat on it. It’s muscular,” she said last month during a phone call from London. “The writing just hits hard, and you know it comes from a place of real understanding.”Hawkins with Jonah Wren Phillips in “Bring Her Back.”Ingvar Kenne/A24We 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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      ‘Happiness’: Living in a State of Irony

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      Todd Solondz’s 1998 movie, revived for a run at the IFC Center in a new 4K restoration, has scarcely lost its capacity to discomfit.Playfully named “Happiness,” Todd Solondz’s painful, deadpan burlesque of bourgeois mores encompasses murder, mutilation, rape, pedophilia, suicide, obscene phone calls and free-floating masochism, among syndromes yet to be named. “Happiness” scared off its initial distributor but struck a chord at Cannes. Released unrated, it was hailed as the dark comedy du jour, a runner-up in three categories (film, screenplay and actor) in the 1998 New York Film Critics Circle’s annual awards.The movie may not be as shocking as it was 27 years ago but, revived for a run at the IFC Center in a new 4K restoration, it has scarcely lost its capacity to discomfit.A family drama centered on three adult sisters, “Happiness” mocks mid-period Woody Allen as it transposes Chekhov to suburban New Jersey. The eldest, Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), is a smug housewife with two kids and a psychoanalyst husband named Bill (Dylan Baker), who is depressed and harboring a desire for small boys. Bill’s patient (Philip Seymour Hoffman) drones through his sessions and makes obscene phone calls to the middle sister, Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle).Thoroughly unpleasant Helen is a narcissistic writer, author of a best-selling novel titled “A Pornographic Childhood.” By contrast, the youngest, most sympathetic sibling, Joy (Jane Adams), is a hapless failure — a would-be singer-songwriter introduced in the film’s opening sequence, making a bad date worse.Their parents, Mona (Louise Lasser) and Lenny (Ben Gazzara), are unhappy in Florida, where the local real estate agent is played by a glitzy Marla Maples, then married to the real estate developer Donald Trump. Her character tells Mona that getting a divorce was the best decision of her life. (Solondz is a master caster.)Everyone is alone. They are largely oblivious to each other’s misery, yet the strongest, funniest scenes are one-on-ones. Often shot in close-up, these suggest acting exercises or skit comedy gone off the rails. The bit in which Bill explains what used to be called “the facts of life” to his 11-year-old son is as excruciating as it is absurd.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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      Misery Loves Company? Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair Hits a Nerve.

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      Movies that are major downers, it turns out, are a big film festival draw. “Sometimes the world is such that you just need to wallow a little bit.”The festival Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair started three years ago as a primal scream from a little Los Angeles nonprofit organization.What has happened since says a lot about the mood in at least one corner of American culture.The American Cinematheque, a nonprofit that brings classic art films to Los Angeles theaters, was struggling to sell tickets in 2022. Older cinephiles were still spooked by the Covid pandemic; younger ones were glued to Netflix.At the same time, some Cinematheque staff members were depressed about the direction the world seemed to be heading. It was the year Russia invaded Ukraine, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a gunman killed 19 children at a Texas elementary school and Big Tech rolled out artificial intelligence bots.Out of that somber stew came a programming idea called Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair. Over seven days, the Cinematheque screened 30 feel-bad movies. It called the selections “the greatest films from around the world that explore the darkest sides of humanity.” For the inaugural festival, one centerpiece film was Béla Tarr’s “Satantango” (1994), a seven-hour-and-19-minute contemplation of decay and misery.Gabriel Byrne in Joel Coen’s 1990 film “Miller’s Crossing.”20th Century Fox, via The American Cinematheque“‘Everyone was saying, ‘You should do comedies,’” Grant Moninger, the Cinematheque’s artistic director, said. “But we thought, ‘What if you did the exact opposite?’ We’re not in this to dangle keys at a baby.” (Now might be a good moment to mention that Moninger grew up with a mother, he said, who “only rented movies on VHS in two genres: the Holocaust and slavery.”)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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      Ready for ‘Ballerina’? Take a Pirouette Through ‘John Wick’ Lore.

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      With the release of “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” a guide to the expanded Wick cinematic universe.Early in the 2019 film “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum,” our hero enters what may be the world’s most peculiar dance studio. Part ballet academy, part dojo, the expansive space is also the Manhattan headquarters of the Ruska Roma, a Russian crime syndicate that first took in Wick when he was just a boy and taught him to kill. Onstage, a lithe danseuse is ordered by her instructor to perform pirouette after exhausting pirouette till she drops.In “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” (in theaters June 6), this small glimpse of the school is expanded tenfold. That spinning dancer, Eve, played by Ana De Armas, is now the star of the show. Over the course of the film, we get a closer look at the canvas of tattoos on her back and learn how she came to get them. We find out about the school’s traditions and initiations, as well as the Russian myths and legends that shape its mission.Since this is a Wick film, we also get to watch Eve take out fearsome fighters with pots and pans, swords and knives, grenades and ice skates and flame throwers and car doors. There’s a lot to see. But with all that inventive mayhem going on, do viewers really need to know that, say, Eve’s spirit animal is the kikimora, a haglike creature from Slavic mythology?For lovers of the franchise, the answer is a resounding yes, please. In online chats, fans debate such minutiae as exactly who is in the Ruska Roma (is Winston, the owner of the New York Continental Hotel, secretly a member?), while scholars debate the franchise’s folklore and economic systems in books like “The Worlds of John Wick: The Year’s Work at the Continental Hotel.”De Armas plays eve, who was trained to be an assassin from a young age.Larry D. Horricks/Lionsgate“When we made the first Wick movie, we thought we were just making these background rules,” said Basil Iwanyk, one of the producers of “Ballerina.” “We had no idea the lore would become one of the above-the-title stars of the movies.”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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      Did That Clint Eastwood Interview Happen? Yes, Kind Of.

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      Eastwood, 95, accused a small Austrian publication of running a “phony” Q. and A. with him. It turns out the quotes were aggregated from previous interviews.Clint Eastwood had a lot to say in the interview with Kurier, a small Austrian publication.Or did he?The truth seems to be somewhere in the middle after Eastwood, the 95-year-old actor and director, accused the paper of running a “phony” question-and-answer featuring a conversation he did not have.The interview, first published on May 30, included Eastwood’s thoughts on the state of Hollywood, his age and his drive to continue working.On Monday, Eastwood disputed the interview all together.And on Tuesday, the publication responded by saying that while the quotes were real, they were not from a continuous Q. and A. interview, but rather aggregated from a series of interviews conducted in front of a group of reporters. It said that the reporter should have made that clear.The conclusion to the confusing saga came after a few choice quotes ricocheted around the internet.Eastwood said in the interview that “there’s no reason why a man can’t improve with age.”When asked about the women in his life, he said he was not concerned with age differences.“Although I’ve always been older than my wives at some point, I feel just as young as they do, at least mentally,” he said. “And physically, I’m still doing well, so hopefully no one will have to worry about me in that regard for a long time to come.”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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      At the Tribeca Festival, Standouts Come From Near and Far

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      A documentary about a New York restaurant and a Korean film about dine-and-dashers are among the standouts in this year’s festival.“You have to be used to change in New York,” Matthew Broderick remarks in “Raoul’s, a New York Story,” a documentary highlight of this year’s Tribeca Festival. The film centers on the celebrated French bistro, which opened in Soho in 1975 amid a cultural renaissance and became a fixture for local artists. Since then, survival of the richest has all but erased la vie bohème from the neighborhood in favor of a catwalk of retail storefronts — though Raoul’s is still standing, its arty interior nearly unmodified.To Broderick, that’s just life in the city. “Everything we hold incredibly dear,” he says in an interview in the film, “took over for something that somebody else held dear.”His remarks could very well be a slogan for the Tribeca Festival. Its obsession with novelty has, in recent years, made it an almost manically multifarious affair. Alongside movies, this year’s edition — which runs Wednesday through June 15 — will host video games, audio storytelling and an immersive program stamped with a catalog of acronyms: A.R., V.R., A.I. While festivals like Cannes are steeped in tradition, Tribeca is eager to be seen as a celebration of transformation, a festival of the future.The zeal with which Tribeca pushes forward can feel exciting, but like an overactive online shopper, it also generates clutter. It’s hard to find the gems. Sampling this year’s lineup, I found that the most memorable world premieres sorted into two subsets: the near and the far. International standouts come from Korea, India and Chile — a long way from the Triangle Below Canal Street. Then there are the local discoveries, capturing a New York spirit that aligns with the festival’s setting.Straddling both categories is “Raoul’s,” which tells the story of the Soho canteen by tracing its origins to Alsace, France, and then chronicling the Raoul men’s travels in Bali, Indonesia. The documentary was shot over a decade by Greg Olliver alongside Karim Raoul, who took over the restaurant’s day-to-day operations after his father, the founder Serge Raoul, suffered a stroke. As such, the film is as much a portrait of a local institution as it is a tale of a father and a son, exploring notions of legacy, heritage and what it means to sideline personal dreams for family obligations.A scene from Yang Jong-hyun’s film “People and Meat.”via Tribeca FestivalWe 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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      Tribeca Festival: Lin-Manuel Miranda Has Advice for Aspiring Filmmakers

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      An artist development program at the Tribeca Festival aims to support underrepresented groups in filmmaking.The Tribeca Festival is undoubtedly a star-studded event with famous figures, including actors, directors, musicians and artists gracing red carpets and showcasing their works.But supporting aspiring and emerging filmmakers through its artist development programs is also very much part of the festival’s DNA, according to its chief executive, Jane Rosenthal, who founded the event with Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff.“So much of the festival is about discovery, and the development programs are part of that,” she said. “We are always looking for new voices and stories and new ways of telling stories, and there are not enough programs supporting aspiring artists.”Since 2015, the artist development programs have included eight initiatives that give producers, directors, writers and other creative people in the moviemaking industry full funding for their projects.Rosenthal said that they have awarded close to $2 million annually, supported more than 1,000 filmmakers and seen celebrities such as Kerry Washington, Queen Latifah and John Leguizamo get involved as mentors and judges. “Everybody needs an advocate, and celebrities, no matter where they are in their careers, help lift these filmmakers up through their support,” Rosenthal said.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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      For Pride, Stream These Queer Horror Movies

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      Standouts include a lesbian-coded vampire thriller and a Mexican folk-horror drama.In horror movies, to be queer is to be different, “which cinema has continually rewritten as a form of danger,” Peter Marra writes in his new book, “Queer Slashers.”Dangerous, queer, different: Sounds like my kind of horror movie. Here are some of my favorites.‘Dracula’s Daughter’ (1936)Rent or buy it on major platforms.“She Gives You That WEIRD FEELING!”: That’s how one poster advertised Lambert Hillyer’s lesbian-coded vampire thriller, a follow-up to “Dracula,” a hit for Universal Pictures in 1931. Hillyer’s movie centers on Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), a Dracula progeny who kidnaps a young woman in Transylvania. Holden’s performance is predatory but feminine, menacing but soft-eyed — a powerful example of how lesbian subtext in early Hollywood paved the way for future Sapphic vampires.‘The Seventh Victim’ (1943)Rent or buy it on major platforms.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