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      ‘The Three Musketeers’ and the Joy of Old-School Blockbusters

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      With its practical effects and broad-minded approach to story, the French franchise revives the pleasures of earlier movie spectacles, but with a Gallic twist.“The Three Musketeers” is to France what Mickey Mouse is to America — a cultural force with a lock on the country’s imagination. The 19th-century cloak-and-dagger tale, written by Alexandre Dumas, has lived countless lives onstage and onscreen, with stars including Charlie Sheen, Charlton Heston, Milla Jovovich and even Barbie resurrecting the classic tale of the Kings guard. It’s as iconically French as the Eiffel Tower, yet, until recently, it had been more than 60 years since the last French movie adaptation.Enter “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan” and “Milady,” a gritty two-film franchise by the director Martin Bourboulon that seeks to reclaim this legacy in a major way.“Milady,” the second installment, was released in European theaters earlier this month; “D’Artagnan” played in Europe last spring and is currently available in the United States on demand.Boasting a cast of French national treasures (like Louis Garrel and Romain Duris) and stars with global appeal (like Vincent Cassel, Eva Green and Vicky Krieps), these twin French-language productions were conceived as offensives against the tyranny of Hollywood movies that continue to dominate the French box office. At the end of 2022, not a single French-language production made it onto the list of the year’s top 10 highest-grossing films, signaling a crisis for a country whose cinematic heritage is a point of national pride.“In France, we have the talent, stories, and technicians to make blockbusters that can compete against American offerings,” Bourboulon said. “Big movies shouldn’t be made only by American studios, so we were inspired to take them on.”Shot back-to-back, the two films were completed on a budget of $78 million, financed by partners in France, Germany, Spain and Belgium. That number might seem low compared to that of this year’s Hollywood heavy-hitters, like “Barbie” ($145 million) or “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($250 million). Yet, together, “D’Artagnan” and “Milady” represent one of the most expensive French productions of all time. This big investment is part of a larger program from the French distributor Pathé to support tent-pole filmmaking defined by local character and resources.The two films in the franchise were completed on a budget of $78 million.Julien PanieIn early 2023, the studio released “Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom,” a comparably expensive comedy featuring homegrown I.P. and a star-studded cast (including Cassell and Marion Cotillard). That film faltered at the box-office — and fared even worse with French critics. “The Three Musketeers,” however, has managed to draw respectable crowds in France and keep the reviewers sated, in part because it resembles the kind of action-adventure spectacle we don’t get much of nowadays.Consider the first three “Indiana Jones” movies or “The Mummy,” starring Brendan Fraser. These are old-fashioned extravaganzas, filled with hands-on stunt work and grounded in a real sense of place relative to the artificial CGI backdrops of today’s superhero movies. Intermingling palace intrigue and dry humor with bracing swordplay and horseback races against the clock, “The Three Musketeers” is moodier than these American swashbucklers, but it provides the same kind of guilty pleasure that seems to have been phased out by multiversal travel.Green, who plays the chameleonic femme fatale Milady, was delighted by the films’ practical effects and on-location shoots. The actress is no stranger to big-budget filmmaking, having starred in English-language blockbusters like “Casino Royale.” “With the green screen, it’s like theater. You have to make it up,” she said in an interview. “Here, there was no green screen. The castles, the Normandy landscapes, the extras — we were all there in the present, living the action from the inside.”There are no screen-saver visuals in “The Three Musketeers,” but it also stands apart from its counterparts in the United States for its palpable human intrigue and heavy dose of eroticism. Illicit affairs, heated love triangles and murderous tensions between past lovers propel the plot — and one of the three musketeers is casually revealed to be bisexual after a night of drink and debauchery. Heroic values like honor take on a much heavier significance when musketeers are tormented by the demons of genuinely dark histories. The eldest, played by Cassel, is framed by his enemies: After a murdered damsel is found naked in his bed, he tearfully owns up to his past abuses against women in court.Eric Ruf, left and Civil, center in a still from “The Three Musketeers: Milady.”Pathé Films/M6 FilmsIt’s passionate, borderline racy stuff for characters that tend to get the family-friendly treatment — and these movies are better for it. The narratives of both films are roughly structured around d’Artagnan’s musketeer ascendance, the sinister machinations of Cardinal Richelieu, and, in the second film, the mysteries behind Milady’s malice — but they’re also distinguished by a meandering quality that allows the characters to make love, joke around and get drunk. It’s vintage reupholstered with a sexier silhouette.Some of Pathé’s future tent-pole projects, however, sound more questionable. A lavish rendition of Dumas’s other hit novel “The Count of Monte Cristo” is in the works; as is a two-part biopic about Charles de Gaulle, the French president. Though “The Three Musketeers” was announced as a two-part film, a cliffhanger at the end of “Milady” teases a to-be-continued. Whether or not a third movie is on the table, the series’ characters will live on in two TV spinoffs currently in development: one, centered on Milady; the other, on the first Black musketeer, Hannibal (Ralph Amoussou), who appears briefly in the second film. If these expansions aren’t exactly at a Marvel Cinematic Universe-level of sprawl, the idea of a French Historical Universe provokes an uneasy déjà vu.As superhero fatigue begins to sink into Hollywood, “The Three Musketeers,” with its immersive settings and combat scenes, and its broad-minded approach to story, reminds us that there’s something to be won by going back to the basics. Personality and (close to) real-world thrills can do a lot of the heavy lifting. More

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      ‘Parasite’ Actor Lee Sun-kyun Found Dead at 48

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      Mr. Lee, a familiar face on Korean television and movie screens, rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film.Lee Sun-kyun, the award-winning South Korean actor who rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” was found dead in Seoul on Wednesday. He was 48.Mr. Lee had recently been under police investigation on suspicion of illegal drug use, and he denied the accusations. The police said they were investigating the death as a suicide.The police found Mr. Lee’s body in a parked vehicle in central Seoul just before 11 a.m., said Jeon Yu-deung, the chief detective at Seongbuk police station, which is investigating his death. After Mr. Lee’s manager reported him missing earlier in the day, the police found his body using the location signal from his phone. Mr. Jeon said that Mr. Lee had also left what appeared to be a suicide note.Mr. Lee is survived by his wife, two sons and siblings, Mr. Jeon added. His talent agency, Hodu&U Entertainment, said in a statement that a funeral would be held privately and attended by his family and colleagues.Mr. Lee, who was born in Seoul in 1975, studied acting at the Korea National University of Arts and made his first professional appearance in a 1999 music video. He became a familiar face on Korean television when he starred in the dramas “Coffee Prince” and “Behind the White Tower” in 2007. He also played lead roles in the 2010 romantic comedy series “Pasta,” the 2012 thriller “Helpless” and the 2018 psychological drama “My Mister.”Mr. Lee received worldwide recognition for his performance in “Parasite,” a 2019 thriller in which he played the head of a wealthy family in whose house much of the movie takes place. That film won four awards at the Academy Awards in 2020, including for best picture, becoming the first non-English movie to win the award. He and his castmates won a Screen Actors Guild award for their roles.In 2022, Mr. Lee was nominated for best actor at the international Emmy awards for his role in the sci-fi thriller “Dr. Brain.”Police officers investigating a vehicle in which the body of Mr. Lee was found in central Seoul on Wednesday.Yonhap, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Lee had been repeatedly questioned by the police in Incheon, a city west of Seoul, since October on suspicion of taking illicit drugs. He denied the accusations in several public statements and said he was the target of a blackmail effort.“I ask that the police make a good judgment about whose side’s statements are credible between me and the blackmailers,” he told reporters this week following a 19-hour interrogation.South Korea’s entertainment industry has recently been shaken by drug abuse scandals amid a nationwide antidrug campaign. The police in March raided the home of Yoo Ah-in, famous for his role in the 2021 Netflix series “Hellbound,” after he tested positive for propofol, marijuana, ketamine and cocaine. South Korea has a strict approach toward drugs. Convicted offenders face six months to 14 years in prison. Citizens can be prosecuted for using illicit drugs even if they do so abroad.The authorities have recently ramped up enforcement, warning that the problem is growing. Drug arrests have surged since President Yoon Suk Yeol declared a “war on drugs.” More than 17,000 people were arrested on drug charges nationwide this year, an increase from about 10,400 in 2019, according to the National Police Agency.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States. More

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      The Great 2023 Streaming Movies You May Have Missed

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      This collection of gems include character-driven dramas, dark comedies, smart documentaries, and romantic comedies both sunny and disturbing.As 2023 comes to a close, our monthly showcase of hidden gems on your streaming subscription services showcases a handful of worthwhile releases from this year that may have escaped your notice: character-driven dramas, dark comedies, smart documentaries, and romantic comedies both sunny and disturbing.‘A Thousand and One’Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.The writer and director A.V. Rockwell begins this wrenching character drama in New York City circa 1994, and nicely recaptures the look and feel of Gotham indies of that era. But that’s not just window dressing, While ostensibly telling the story of a young woman trying to go straight after a stint at Rikers Island and raise her son, Rockwell folds in relevant reminders of the city’s history in the intervening years and adroitly incorporates them into her characters and their ongoing struggle, reminding us that “quality of life” policing and the dirty business of gentrification are never purely policy issues. Yet it’s more than just a polemic; Teyana Taylor is shattering as the mother in question, Josiah Cross is charismatic and sympathetic as her teenage son, and the revelations of the closing scenes are wrenching and powerful.‘Rye Lane’Stream it on Hulu.A sensation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the debut feature from the director Raine Allen-Miller is a zippily paced and endlessly satisfying compressed-timeframe romantic comedy (think “Before Sunrise” and its follow-ups) with a delightfully of-the-moment voice and feel. Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) meet-cute in an art gallery bathroom; he’s crying in a stall over a fresh breakup, and she’s nursing a broken heart as well (albeit more quietly), and they wind up spending a few whirlwind hours baring their souls and helping each other settle their romantic scores. It’s a venerable setup, rendered with vibrancy and inventiveness by Allen-Miller, and the screenplay by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia is full of witty, quotable dialogue. But the whole thing would fall apart without the bulletproof chemistry of Jonsson and Oparah; you want them to end up together so much, and that’s half the work of a great rom-com.‘Rotting in the Sun’Stream it on Mubi.Another Sundance breakout, this pitch-black comedy finds the director Sebastián Silva also starring as himself — or rather, a depressed and suicidal version of himself. After nearly drowning at a gay nude beach, Sebastián meets a charismatic but insufferable American influencer, Jordan Firstman (playing himself, and admirably game about it), who tries to engage him in a collaboration. What follows is both psychologically bruising and uncomfortably funny, while posing thought-provoking questions about guilt, privilege and the omnipresence of social media. Most impressively, it reminds us that L.G.B.T.Q. stories don’t have to be about positive representation; Silva allows his queer characters the complexity to be as annoying, difficult and exploitative as his story requires.‘El Conde’Stream it on Netflix.Pablo Larraín, the director behind “Jackie” and “Spencer,” cooks up his most unconventional riff on the biopic yet with this stylized hybrid of dark comedy, social commentary and gore-heavy horror. The premise is delicious, positing that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) was, in fact, a literal vampire who faked his own death and went into hiding in the country. The razor-sharp script, by Larraín and the Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón, ruminates on the parasitic nature of capitalism, wit and intelligence, and the cleverness of the narration (which not only tells the story but wryly comments on it) is topped only by the reveal of who is voicing it. Ed Lachman’s black-and-white cinematography stuns, and Larraín injects the proceedings with genre thrills and bleak laughs.‘Sanctuary’Stream it on Hulu.Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott both make brief but impactful appearances in “Poor Things,” one of the awards favorites of the season; viewers who enjoy that cockeyed meditation on sexual mores will find themselves equally fascinated by the duo’s provocative spring two-hander. Abbott stars as Hal, the wealthy scion of a luxury hotelier who is about to take over as the company’s chief executive; Qualley is Rebecca, who first appears to be interviewing him for the job, but is gradually revealed to be his longtime dominatrix, acting out a scene of his own creation. Their tricky psychosexual exchanges, a complex series of shifting power plays and deeply embedded desires, make for situations both highly dramatic and unabashedly erotic — the kind of movie for grown-ups it feels like they never make anymore, until they do.‘Sharksploitation’Stream it on Shudder.The title, for those not in the know, refers to a subgenre of exploitation movies prompted by the earthshaking success of “Jaws”— increasingly silly and derivative stories of shark attacks, grizzled sailors, frustrated scientists, corrupt politicians and swimsuit-clad human sacrifices. Stephen Scarlata’s giddily entertaining documentary tracks the evolution of these pictures, from the direct rip-offs of the ’70s and ’80s to their utterly insane contemporary counterparts, the cheapo disaster hybrids of the “Sharknado” ilk. But it also drills deeper, running down the history of sharks in fiction in general, as well as the (often negative) effects these works have had on the public perception of these much-maligned animals.‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica’Stream it on Mubi.The latest effort from the accomplished documentary filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor combines a distinct nonfiction film style — the fly-on-the-wall institutional portrait, most frequently identified with Frederick Wiseman, focusing on a French hospital — and a more experimental approach, utilizing specialized cameras to explore the interiors of the human body during medical procedures. The latter footage, while not for the squeamish, is fascinating, taking a detached and almost fantastical view of our organs and orifices that’s akin to the landscapes of phantasmagorical science fiction. But the straightforward documentary sections are equally transfixing, forgoing talking head interviews for overheard conversations and operating room chitchat (“This guy’s weirdly put together!”), and capturing moments of staggeringly raw emotion and vulnerability. More

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      From ‘Poor Things’ to ‘Barbie,’ a Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies

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      In 2023, male characters pouted elaborately after something they saw as their birthright was put in check.I’ve seen the greatest men of my generation regress into petulant babies — at least in the movies. Over and over in this year’s films, male characters throw elaborate temper tantrums, whining, huffing and raging like toddlers in their terrible twos.At Sundance in January, I joined the audience in cackling at “Fair Play,” in which a bratty finance guy devolves into a childish display of irascibility. Come summer, I saw the trend expand with the boffo success of “Barbie,” in which Ryan Gosling’s Ken makes an entire career out of pouting on the beach. And the fall saw a preschool’s worth of new baby men in “Poor Things,” “Dream Scenario” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” and one great baby man of history in “Napoleon.”The meltdowns themselves varied — one barked like a dog, another blasted music, a few made faces, most yelled, many cried — but the trigger was the same: a perceived loss of power to a woman.In “Poor Things,” that male torment is played for farce. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) has only recently discovered orgasms when she meets Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a local rake who piques her interest. Their bond is simple: he is besotted; she relishes his sexual prowess. But trouble arrives when the pair voyages abroad and Bella, eager to indulge in new cuisines, sights and lovers, tires of Duncan’s micromanaging. She tries to send the stage five clinger packing, but he keeps popping up, alternating between profanity-laden outbursts and beseeching appeals to reciprocate his devotion.“I am not understanding this complicated feeling,” Bella remarks dispassionately at one point, as Duncan snivels over her sleeping with another man. The line lands as a joke; Duncan’s weepy reaction is entirely uncomplicated. But Bella’s confusion also hits on something real. Duncan doesn’t own Bella, as much as he would like to, and he sees himself as the victim of that reality.The comedy in “Fair Play,” directed by Chloe Domont, is cast in a darker tone, and centers not on concerns about sex, but career. Here, our petulant man is Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), a hedge fund analyst who, early in the movie, loses out on a promotion to his fiancée, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor). This means that Luke reports to Emily, while she wins coveted face time with the boss.To Luke, a silver-spoon-fed nepotism hire, nothing could be more intolerable. “I think I’m handling everything pretty well, given the circumstances,” he snarls at Emily before shrieking about how she “stole” his job.Luke makes his thinking clear: He wanted the promotion, so it belonged to him. This delusion of entitlement is echoed, to an extent, in Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” a tremendous work of drama that follows a novelist, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), after the sudden death of her husband, Samuel (Samuel Thesis). Samuel was also a fiction writer, albeit a more stagnant one, and openly resented Sandra’s success.In one crucial flashback, Samuel instigates a domestic scuffle with his wife. As the quarrel escalates, Samuel calls her selfish, chastises her for not learning his native language and accuses her of stealing his book premise. Finally, he prods, “I’ve given you too much — too much time, too many concessions. I want this time back and you owe it to me.”The gender dynamics of “Anatomy” are thornier than those in “Fair Play,” but the two films play well side by side. Triet and Domont share an interest in how power seesaws in contemporary straight relationships. By positioning their couples within the same professions and then pushing them to the brink, the filmmakers are conducting a kind of test. In this more equitable era, how do men and women balance being a good partner with self-realizing? At what point does envy trump affection? Is there any going back after it does?These are familiar questions with murky answers. The past decade has seen a cavalcade of bloated, juvenile men throw hissy fits after something they saw as their birthright — authority, prestige, admiration — was put in check. These spectacles can be sinister, pathetic and comical all at once, a semi-contradiction that movies, designed to pull in both directions, are ideally suited to dissect.No film this year synthesized these ideas more plainly than one about a plastic doll. Near the end of “Barbie,” once the Kens unlink arms and Gosling’s Ken stomps into the Dreamhouse, Barbie (Margot Robbie) hurries to comfort him. He sobs. She says she likes him as a friend. And then the pair agree to dismantle Barbieland’s system of male supremacy and instate a more just society.Wiping away tears, Ken confesses, “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest anyway.” It’s funny to think it could be so easy. It’s excruciating to know it’s really not so hard. More

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      It Was a Year of Superhero Fatigue on the Big Screen

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      Audiences are showing fatigue when it comes to Marvel’s box office behemoths of recent years. Based on what they were served in 2023, it’s hard to blame them.At the center of 2023’s “The Marvels” is Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel, who, if you’ll recall from the 2019 film “Captain Marvel,” destroyed the all-powerful A.I. leading the Kree empire. Joining Carol Danvers is Monica Rambeau, a.k.a. Photon a.k.a. Pulsar a.k.a. Spectrum, who was first introduced in “Captain Marvel,” then later featured in the Disney+ series “WandaVision,” where she was granted superpowers after an encounter with reality-altering witches. And joining these two Marvels is the teenage New Jersey native Kamala Khan, a.k.a. the titular character of the Disney+ series “Ms. Marvel.”That’s a lot to take in, which is why the first few minutes of “The Marvels” is just a series of flashbacks designed to catch the audience up before the action even begins. Even for dedicated fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the amount of prerequisite knowledge required to watch any M.C.U. movie or show nowadays is tantamount to a college course.And it seems like audiences are tiring of the constant homework assignments. A year of diminishing box office returns is more proof that the casual superhero moviegoer is becoming more and more of a rarity given how much is being asked of them, which is full, multiplatform investment.These franchises are spelling their own downfalls, as the price of entry into the fandoms has become frustratingly high for the dedicated disciples of these worlds, and not at all worth it for casual viewers or prospective new fans. This year has been a prime of example of what happens when a pop-culture movement takes hold of an industry and then overreaches. We’re witnessing Ragnarok.The barrage of offerings and the uniform, assembly-line quality of the plot structures make it easy to forget that the M.C.U. used to excel at providing entryways for those too intimidated or simply not enticed by the grand Avengers throughline. In the series’ Phase One, “Captain America: The First Avenger” jumped to the past for a World War II period piece and “Thor” offered a mystical world of Norse gods. “Guardians of the Galaxy” ventured out even further, to a universe larger than what was happening in Avengers central, with its own funky soundtrack, and “Ant-Man” fittingly zoomed in to a more playful, humbler superhero story. These films not only allowed prospective fans more opportunities to step into the mythology but also added texture to the franchise, diversifying the tones and genres of the films so every new one didn’t feel redundant or strangled into a larger plot.Opening weekends became cultural watershed moments, with the box office numbers to back them up. A-list stars, thrilling action sequences — summers were defined by the superhero blockbuster, with audiences glued to their seats through the M.C.U.’s signature mid- and post-credits scenes, as the films insisted on holding fans at attention until the very last word. The 2010s were defined by the likes of “Black Panther,” “Guardians” and the “Avengers” movies, which for the most part were warmly received by critics and enthusiastically devoured by fans.But Marvel’s narrative fatigue has been building for a while now; in fact, I wrote about this creeping danger as “Avengers: Endgame” and its three-hour runtime landed in theaters. But it isn’t just the storytelling structure that’s been hurting; it’s that middle “c” in the acronym, the cinematic element, that has also declined.“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” was the highest grossing superhero movie of the year. Marvel Studios/DisneyConsider the latest batch of superhero offerings: Of this year’s films, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” made the most money, but was dour, off-putting and didn’t offer the closure that the trilogy had seemed to move toward; this sequel was ultimately meant to serve as a changing of the guard, introducing a new lineup of Guardians. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” was widely panned, and for good reason; it got tangled up in its psychedelic pseudoscience with no payoff but a mishmash of poorly executed visual effects. On the DC Comics side, the most impressive feat “The Flash” managed was casting a problematic lead actor as not one but two versions of the same character in a tedious time-travel plot that had already been pulled off more successfully in the TV series of the same name.And though “The Marvels” was set up to be the big superhero blockbuster of the fall, it was a rote example of the form — unimaginative, unremarkable and purely targeted to audiences already in the know. It has performed miserably since its November release, with Disney president Bob Iger (who oversees Marvel Studios) taking the rare step of publicly admitting the movie’s shortcomings. It’s the worst-performing M.C.U. film so far, and a perfect representation of the exhaustion on both the creative side and audience side.Back when these superheroes were still on print pages and not big and little screens, Stan Lee, the godfather of American comics and the creator of many of these characters, used to include what he called “Bullpen Bulletins” in his issues. These informal letters to readers, including announcements, promotions and context for and commentary on his work, were indicative of Lee’s relationship to the fandom. He fostered a community around his heroes, built from the ground up: He maintained a dialogue with fans, treating them as not mindless consumers but highbrow connoisseurs of the art form.Whatever “Bullpen Bulletin” factor may have ever existed with today’s superhero consumers seems to be fading fast. As franchises — particularly the M.C.U., fueled by Disney’s multibillion-dollar appetite — continue to grow and threaten ever more, ever greater crossovers, it’s becoming more difficult to understand what their endgame is (pun intended) when it comes to their fans. Who wants to watch 30 films and 10 TV series to engage with a franchise that continues to spread itself too thin at the expense of quality filmmaking?Nostalgia alert: Michael Keaton dons the Batman suit once again, with Ezra Miller in “The Flash.”Warner Bros. PicturesThat will be left only to the completionists, who have invested this much time and effort and will see these stories through to the end, and to the fans held hostage by their own nostalgia. There’s a reason the latest go-to cinematic gimmick is callbacks to decades-old incarnations of heroes: the trifecta of Spider-Men in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the alternate Batmen from “The Flash.”These cameos don’t serve the ambivalent 10-year-old who never saw Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies or Michael Keaton’s Batman. Neither do the several minutes of catch-up flashbacks explaining all the story lines leading into a new movie.The franchises continue to risk fatiguing their current fans and alienating potential ones. More stand-alone films, more inventiveness, more diversions from the grand plots and cookie-cutter setups would give these stories and their fans room to explore, but instead we’re stuck in a cycle of ever-expanding multiverses, narratives and timelines that even the best S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would find impossible to keep straight.The ultimate irony? These commercial superhero machines know exactly how their approaches can be self-sabotage … because they keep offering stories in which their heroes fall into the same trap. The antagonist of “The Marvels” opens rifts that tear through space and time, introducing other realities that can collide and destroy everything. In “The Flash,” Barry Allen (the hero’s alter ego) has to explain to an alternate version of himself that they can’t keep manipulating the time stream. “These worlds,” Barry says, looking at the C.G.I. representations of space and time around him, “they’re colliding and collapsing.” “We did this,” he continues. “We’re destroying the fabric of everything.”Superhero movies changed the industry. No matter what you think about them as art, the upswing of these comic book stories from the margins to the drivers of popular culture was swift and remarkable. But now these Clark Kents and Bruce Waynes and Rocket Raccoons and various Marvels risk orchestrating the end of this Age of Heroes.But like in every superhero movie, there’s hope yet: Stories that end. Characters who die. Universes where the stakes are real and cameos and meta-commentaries aren’t just crutches to bait audiences. Stories that don’t cling to a crumbling concept but perhaps start fresh in another corner of the universe.Superhero movies used to be super. The heroes are still as strong as before. They just need the movies to match. More

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      Angelina Jolie and the Ghosts of New York Past

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      Her new store, Atelier Jolie, occupies an unassuming building on Great Jones Street with an illustrious history.When Angelina Jolie opened her first fashion boutique in a squat, two-story building at 57 Great Jones Street in Lower Manhattan this month, she joined a long line of notable New Yorkers, including gangsters and artists, who lived or worked at that unassuming address.Atelier Jolie, which has an appointment-only fitting room on the second floor, sells clothes made from vintage and deadstock materials and offers Turkish coffee and Syrian mini pies in its chic cafe. “I hope to see you there, and to be one of the many creating with you within our new creative collective,” Ms. Jolie wrote in a founding statement. “Bear with me. I hope to grow this with you.”Atelier Jolie’s branding is tied to the artistic heritage of 57 Great Jones Street. Andy Warhol bought the building in the 1970s. Everyone from Keith Haring to Madonna dropped by. Jean-Michel Basquiat lived and painted in the upstairs studio loft, producing some of his most significant works, before he died there of a heroin overdose at 27 in 1988.Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, artists with ties to 57 Great Jones Street, at a 1984 benefit in Manhattan.Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesIf you dust off more of the structure’s past, you find the bones of New York. The brick building once housed mobsters and bare-knuckle boxers.It was built in the 1860s, architect unknown, and its first known use was as a stable, according to Village Preservation, an advocacy group. Great Jones Street, a two-block lane in NoHo named after the lawyer and politician Samuel Jones, was a home for the city’s affluent merchant class that counted the mayor and diarist Philip Hone among its early residents. During the Civil War, the 69th Regiment gathered on the street to march toward a steamer on the Hudson. Crowds looked on as the young men headed off to battle.As Manhattan grew and wealthy residents moved uptown, the neighborhood began its slump into a skid row. At the east end of Great Jones Street lay the Bowery, a once-reputable boulevard that had become a notorious thoroughfare lined with brothels, beer gardens, flophouses and pawn shops.An 1897 map of Great Jones Street, which was named after Samuel Jones, a New York lawyer and politician.Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, New York Public LibraryThe Bowery of old.The building became a saloon and dance hall, the Brighton, which The New York Times called a “notorious dive.” The place was nearly blown to smithereens in 1901 after some men making a beer delivery disturbed a gas jet in the cellar. When the establishment’s owner, Charles Deveniude, went to investigate, he lit a candle. The explosion was heard “several blocks away,” The Times reported, and Mr. Deveniude suffered burns to his face, hands and shoulders.The Brighton was sold a few years later to Paul Kelly, whom The Times described in a 1912 article as “perhaps the most successful and the most influential gangster in New York history.” In a nod to his Italian heritage, Mr. Kelly, a onetime pugilist born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, renamed the saloon Little Naples.Mr. Kelly ran the Five Points Gang, one of the most feared street gangs of its day, and Little Naples served as his association’s headquarters and as a gathering place for the city’s political elite. He was an enforcer for the corrupt Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall, and his henchmen helped provide paid voters, known as “floaters,” to cast ballots for Tammany candidates. The gang’s members included future underworld leaders like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone.A 1905 article in The Times recounted a “desperate fight” at Little Naples in which a man was killed and several others were wounded. “Scores of shots were fired, but as far as is known to the police, only one man went to his death,” the paper reported, adding: “His body was found in the saloon nearly half an hour after the smoke of the battle had cleared away. There was a bullet wound in his left breast.” The man was discovered with his legs protruding from a swinging bathroom door. His dog, a spaniel, was whimpering beside him.The Times further reported that one of Mr. Kelly’s lieutenants, John Ratta, was wounded in another shootout at the saloon that same week. He refused to cooperate with the police, saying only that he “slipped and fell so hard on a bullet on the floor that it entered his flesh.” The Times noted: “Ratta will live to carry a revolver, and he says he will settle the difficulty in his own way.”The June 9, 1912, edition of The New York Times included a detailed report on the murderous goings-on at Little Naples, a night spot that once occupied the Atelier Jolie building.The New York TimesIn later decades, the building housed metalwork and kitchen equipment supply businesses. Don DeLillo wrote Great Jones Street into the annals of American literature in 1973, when he named his third novel after the street. The book’s narrator-protagonist, a disillusioned rock star, Bucky Wunderlick, slums it in an apartment there: “I went to the room in Great Jones Street, a small crooked room, cold as a penny, looking out on warehouses, trucks and rubble.”Mr. Warhol purchased 57 Great Jones Street in 1970 under the corporation name Factory Films Inc., according to a report by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 1983, as he became a mentor to Mr. Basquiat, who was then a fast-rising art world star, Mr. Warhol rented the upstairs loft to him. In the next few years Mr. Basquiat produced works including “King Zulu” and “Riding With Death.”“Jean-Michel called,” Mr. Warhol wrote in his diary on Sept. 5, 1983. “He’s afraid he’s just going to be a flash in the pan. And I told him not to worry, that he wouldn’t be. But then I got scared because he’s rented our building on Great Jones and what if he is a flash in the pan and doesn’t have the money to pay his rent?”After Mr. Basquiat’s death, the building’s exterior became a mecca for street artists to leave tributes to him, and the site has been marked with renditions of his crown motif and “SAMO” graffiti tag ever since.The Warhol estate sold the building in the early 1990s. After that, as the gentrification of the neighborhood accelerated, and nightlife hot spots like B Bar and the Bowery Hotel thrived, a referral-only Japanese restaurant with no listed phone number, Bohemian, occupied the address. It was concealed, speakeasy-style, behind a butcher shop.In 2022, the building was put on the rental market by Meridian Capital Group for $60,000 a month. Its landlord, according to property records, is the noted real estate appraiser Robert Von Ancken, whose services have been used by New York real estate families including the Trumps, the Helmsleys and the Zeckendorfs. Reached by phone, Mr. Von Ancken clarified that he had bought the building with his business partner, Leslie Garfield, who died last year, and that he now owns the property with Mr. Garfield’s family.“When we first occupied the space, we didn’t really know much about the artist who’d been living there, because he wasn’t as well known then,” Mr. Von Ancken recalled. “There were all these drawings on the walls. We rented it as it was. A tenant painted all over it. That was all lost.”He added: “The building has been getting graffitied over for years. I’ve tried repainting the front, but I eventually gave up. It’s clearly still very important for young artists, even today, to put their mark on that facade.”About a year ago, Ms. Jolie and her teenage daughter Zahara started scouting for a downtown retail space, and their wanderings brought them to 57 Great Jones. They felt an immediate communion with the building, Ms. Jolie said in an interview with Vogue, so she quickly rented it. As the store approached its opening date, one of her sons, Pax, helped spray-paint the Atelier Jolie logo onto a canvas draping the doorway.Angelina Jolie, the latest tenant of 57 Great Jones Street, outside the building in August.Mega/GC Images, via Getty ImagesOne recent night, a security guard manned Atelier Jolie’s entranceway while two young employees explained the shop’s mission of promoting sustainable fashion to a visitor. Upstairs, in the same space that the Five Points Gang used as a meeting place, another employee worked on a laptop in the fitting room.Outside, a couple stopped to read the plaque that memorialized Mr. Basquiat’s residence at the address and noted its early use as a stable. Then they reminded each other that they were running late for a hard-to-get dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant. More

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      ‘Down in the Delta’ at 25: When Maya Angelou Considered Reverse Migration

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      The memoirist’s sentimental film speaks to Black Americans returning to the South.Consumed by fears of inner-city violence and the traumatic effects of the crack epidemic, “Down in the Delta” didn’t lead to a career in filmmaking for the writer Maya Angelou. Instead, 25 years later, the inspiring yet uniquely flawed film remains her lone directorial feature.Though a Black fantasy unbound by a specific place and time, it’s a film whose conversations with the socioeconomic realities of the 1990s, the proliferation of hood movies, and the strategy for Black resistance, now, would appear dated. But the script’s idyllic return to the South has newfound resonance for the contemporary reverse-migration taking place in many northern Black neighborhoods affected by the consequences of decades of redlining, deindustrialization and divestment.“Down in the Delta” opens on the South Side of Chicago, where the sound of blaring sirens and hovering helicopters pierce apartment windows, such as the one belonging to Rosa Lynn Sinclair (Mary Alice), the steady mother of Loretta (a perceptive Alfre Woodard), an unemployed single mother who feeds her autistic daughter, Tracy (Kulani Hassen), soda in lieu of milk and, through her drug use, persistently disappoints her only son, the artistically inclined Thomas (Mpho Koaho). To save her family, a vexed Rosa Lynn pawns “Nathan,” a silver-plated candelabra dating to the antebellum period, for bus tickets, sending Loretta and her children to Mississippi to live under the care of their Uncle Earl (Al Freeman Jr.). The sojourn isn’t a cakewalk for Loretta. Not only is she there to sober up, but she must also earn enough money working at Earl’s chicken joint to buy Nathan back, or else permanently lose the heirloom.Considering Angelou’s autobiographies — particularly, “Gather Together in My Name” — you can see why Myron Goble’s script about the power of family appealed to her. Cinematically, kin as a restorative force for Black folks was covered in George Tillman Jr.’s “Soul Food” (1997). And since “Down in the Delta,” “Kingdom Come,” “The Secret Life of Bees” and Tyler Perry’s Madea character have walked similar paths.From the moment Loretta arrives in the Delta, Angelou broadly juxtaposes the opportunities lost and gained between North and South. In the South there’s no crime, poverty, squabbles or gossip. Unlike the young Black men of Chicago, flatly depicted as predators, the people of this genteel town emit rural warmth: The cinematographer William Wages’s honeyed lens captures inviting dirt country roads and lush beds of grass; the composer Stanley Clarke’s tender score further beckons repose.In this town, crack houses, a staple of urban angst cinematically depicted in “New Jack City” and “Jungle Fever,” are replaced with manicured family plots and quaint Queen Anne-style homes. This community longs for the past, whether it’s Earl yearning for Nathan or Earl’s wife, Annie (Esther Rolle), who has Alzheimer’s and pines for her mother. The area’s lone worry is the impending closing of the chicken plant, a threat quietly swept away almost as quickly as it appears.Maya Angelou in the director’s seat on the set of “Down in the Delta.” A quarter of a century later, it remains an inspiring film that is not without its flaws.Ben Mark Holzberg/Miramax Films The importance of the South as a site for restorative justice resides in Nathan, whose frame, in a film prizing trees as markers of time and lineage, carries obvious symbolism. The candle holder’s back story, the bounty for the selling of an enslaved Sinclair, ultimately repossessed by another descendant for recompense, bears in mind the fracturing of Black families during bondage. Earl believes the return of Nathan to Mississippi might revitalize the town, reuniting the family while metaphorically mending the rift between North and South. It’s a wish that inspires the film’s desire for a reverse Great Migration.As early as the 1970s, Black people were already returning South. Though millions of African Americans arrived North to escape Jim Crow violence, in their new communities they discovered some of the same prejudices. The era’s hope and optimism felt by those first migrators, recorded in the painter Jacob Lawrence’s indelible “Migration” series, has been replaced. For instance, in Llewellyn M. Smith and Sam Pollard’s documentary “South to Black Power,” Charles M. Blow, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times, hopes by reclaiming the South, political weight can be consolidated on a state level by Black people.In Angelou’s hands, however, reverse migration isn’t a subversive strategy. Rather it’s an uncomplicated balm. Loretta’s return to loving arms in Mississippi ends her drug habit, gives Tracy her first words, and helps this single mother, who just learned how to add and subtract, envision a future totally unencumbered by institutional racism.Because in “Down in the Delta,” the road to racial uplift is a youth movement cleanly paved by economic self-reliance. When the town’s chicken plant closes, the entrepreneurial Will hopes to acquire it for his dad’s chicken restaurant, a Black-owned small business, to revitalize the area. When Loretta learns how Will helps Black businesses, she dreams of running the factory herself.Financial independence becomes a method for memorializing a storybook past for future generations while imagining newfound prosperity; a dream that has reverberated since 40 acres and a mule were first promised, and then became a nightmare when Tulsa, Okla., burned in 1921. Angelou’s “Down in the Delta” is a retelling of a broken contract that still speaks to migrators today. 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      ‘Rose’ Review: My Sister’s Keeper

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      Niels Arden Oplev’s drama about two sisters, one of whom is a woman with schizophrenia, on a bus tour of France brims with genuine feeling.In the honest and heartfelt Danish drama “Rose,” two sisters take a bus tour to France. The elder, Inger (Sofie Grabol), lives with schizophrenia, and resides in a psychiatric clinic where she receives care from staff and coddling from her mother. The younger, Ellen (Lene Maria Christensen), sees the vacation as an chance to bond with her sister, whom she believes could benefit from more independence.The writer-director, Niels Arden Oplev, based the film in part on his own experiences, and the movie keenly illustrates how stigma surrounding mental illness hurts neurodivergent people and their families. Oplev locates a source of this strain in Andreas (Soren Malling), a fellow bus tourist bent on treating Inger as a liability and a nuisance. Outside-world triggers for Inger are multifarious — she refuses to bathe and often carps about walking — but none prove as potent as Andreas’s scorn, which sets hurdles throughout the trip.“Rose” is partly a road movie, and there is a fascinating dissonance in staging small moments of friction on grand stages like Versailles and Normandy. That the film takes place in the weeks after Princess Diana’s death adds an extra layer of tension; the theme of accidents and the morbid curiosity that attends them hovers like a specter.But the ultimate power of “Rose” lies with Grabol, who inhabits Inger with grace. Using facial expressions and body language, she brings to life the character’s mood swings, her divided impulses toward anxiety and adventure. Alongside Oplev’s commitment to genuine feeling and complexity — you won’t find easy solutions here — Grabol’s performance shines.RoseNot rated. In Danish, French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More