Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Plan C’ Review: Abortion by Mail

      by

      In this documentary by Tracy Droz Tragos, each of the film’s subjects considers how far past the line of legal comfort they can afford to cross.The director Tracy Droz Tragos anchors her abortion documentary “Plan C” on a grass-roots organization by the same name. At the center of the organization is Francine Coeytaux, a public health activist in the United States, previously known for her campaign to get contraceptive pills sold over the counter at pharmacies.Under the leadership of Coeytaux and Elisa Wells, the group, which was founded in 2015, focuses on providing information to patients about medical suppliers and providers who can prescribe at-home abortion pills — medication which can safely end a pregnancy up to 12 weeks.The footage of Plan C’s activities covers four years, beginning in 2019 and extending after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Some scenes of abortion providers at work are shot vérité style, while in others Coeytaux and her associates speak directly to the camera about their efforts to assist people seeking abortions.Plan C’s methods are mobile, often including telehealth or prescriptions delivered by mail, and the group’s actions come with both legal and physical risks.There are over a dozen doctors, abortion rights advocates and patients interviewed in this film, and most don’t reveal their full names for safety reasons, fearing violence from anti-abortion activists or prosecution in states such as Texas, where residents can receive rewards for reporting abortion providers. Some don’t reveal their faces, and Tragos blurs their images or conceals identifying features.At times, all of the secrecy and legal caution can make it hard to understand the complex logistics of getting a legal abortion in the United States. But the risks involved are bracingly apparent, and the documentary benefits from its attempts to capture Plan C’s high-stakes operation in progress.As people navigate this new reality, each of the film’s subjects considers how far past the line of legal comfort they can afford to cross.Plan CNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Mission’ Review: Blinded by the Light

      by

      A documentary tries to bring context to the actions of John Allen Chau, an American missionary who was killed in 2018.The simplest way to look at the actions of John Allen Chau, an American who was killed in 2018 trying to introduce Christianity to the inhabitants of a remote island in the Indian Ocean, is that they were reckless and arrogant.Nothing in “The Mission,” a documentary from Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, proves inconsistent with that assessment. But the movie strives to add context to what one interviewee calls Chau’s “horse-blinder focus,” which apparently let him think that he could convert the people who lived on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea. The islanders had long resisted outside contact.The film paints Chau, who died at 26, as a young man who had absorbed colonial fantasies. He didn’t act alone; at crucial points, he received help from others who shared his beliefs. Some of Chau’s friends and associates still speak of him with admiration.In voice-over, actors read excerpts from Chau’s writing and from a letter that his father, Patrick Chau, a psychiatrist, shared with the filmmakers. That the North Sentinelese’s perspective is absent is not lost on the directors. (“We’re telling a story about us, not about them,” cautions Adam Goodheart, a historian who has written about North Sentinel Island, near the end.) The most barbed aspect of the movie, a National Geographic release, is its acknowledgment of the role that National Geographic itself has played in exoticizing groups like the North Sentinelese.Some of this background comes off like making excuses for Chau’s fanaticism. More helpful is Dan Everett, a linguist who spent years trying to convert the Pirahã people of Brazil and ultimately changed his perspective. Chillingly, Everett notes that Chau’s supporters were simultaneously saddened and elated by the death. “He will become famous in the church,” Everett says. That could be bad news for the North Sentinelese.The MissionRated PG-13 for exoticized nudity. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 50 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Divinity’ Review: Missed Conception

      by

      An immortality drug causes social disruption in this ludicrously dystopian sci-fi experiment.In an old-as-time dichotomy, the women in Eddie Alcazar’s “Divinity” fall into roughly two categories: pliable prostitutes or those who have been deemed “pure.” The first group wears slinky, sparkly onesies; the second sports unadorned, flesh-toned bodysuits that render them as uniform as the spermatozoa in Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (but Were Afraid to Ask)” (1972). For a movie concerned primarily with reproduction, the connection seems apt.A misbegotten blend of the futuristic and the antiquated, “Divinity” is an unintentionally comical sci-fi diatribe obsessed with beautiful bodies, bickering brothers and biblical symbolism. The title refers to a drug that promises to bestow immortality, with the unfortunate wrinkle that users — apparently most of humanity — are rendered sterile. Men are transformed into obscenely pumped poseurs, pleasured by gorgeous women with zero body fat and extremely limited fashion choices. In the background, members of the creepy purity posse — women who have never taken the drug — plot to put their unsullied uteruses to work repopulating the planet.Shot mainly in stark black and white using specially made film stock, this oppressive, inarticulate dystopia unfolds mostly in a remote desert compound belonging to Jaxxon Pierce (Stephen Dorff). Continuing the work of his dead father (Scott Bakula, seen in gritty video diaries), who invented the drug, Jaxxon tinkers with the formula, unaware that two alien brothers (Moises Arias and Jason Genao) have descended from the stars to teach him a lesson by getting him high on his own supply.This all plays as completely bonkers, albeit presented with punishing solemnity. A style experiment assembled mainly using storyboards in place of a script, the movie combines live action and stop-motion animation, old-school prosthetics and retro accessories. The occasionally arresting visuals, though, are repeatedly undercut by dumb dialogue and often atrocious acting, the whole experienced through a wall of throbbing, squawking sound. This is not the movie to see if you are nursing a hangover.Exploring some of the same ground he covered in his previous feature, “Perfect” (2019), Alcazar has made what feels like a very grouchy film, one that rails against our craving for youth and beauty and chides those who choose pleasure over procreation. There is something undeniably sad, though, in both its naïveté and its reliance on repurposed tropes, like the winking television ads that recall Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” (1997). And I have to ask: If everyone here is supposedly focused exclusively on pleasure, why can’t we feel some? Instead, “Divinity” is deeply depressing, the announcement “Steven Soderbergh Presents” above the title (he’s the executive producer) perhaps not the antidote to the funk that its maker might have hoped.A more daring movie might have explored the notion that limited reproduction could offer some benefit to our struggling planet. But “Divinity” (at least for those who are inclined to hang around long enough to learn the drug’s ingredients) appears to favor a more retrograde anti-science message. You won’t have to squint too hard, though, to spot the irony in a narrative that cheerleads for fertility, yet is itself too barren to entertain.DivinityNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Jamie Foxx in a Lively Courtroom Drama

      by

      Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones deliver bravura performances in this Maggie Betts film about a funeral-home proprietor in financial trouble.In the opening scenes of this fact-based courtroom drama, which is front-loaded with a sentimentality it ultimately doesn’t need, “The Burial” might elicit some skepticism from viewers. That is, it may be a bit of a stretch to root for a Mississippi funeral-home proprietor with eight locations who’s unable to square some poor business decisions.That funeral-home squire is Jeremiah O’Keefe, played by Tommy Lee Jones, and we meet him at his 75th birthday party in 1995. He had tried to sell a few of his facilities to the slick C.E.O. of a death-care mega-corporation, but when the corporation withholds paperwork, O’Keefe could potentially be squeezed into bankruptcy.This situation gets a lot more interesting. A young Black lawyer working with O’Keefe enlists another Black lawyer, the very rich and flashy Willie Gary, played by Jamie Foxx, to work on the case. The logic is that the O’Keefe’s lawsuit will play to a mostly Black jury. The American way of death, apparently, did not gain more integrity as it became corporatized, and the exploitations of Big Funeral, it turns out, have an ugly racist angle.Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, “The Burial” develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance. The supporting cast is also first rate, with Jurnee Smollett percolating with intelligence as Gary’s female counterpart for the defense, and Bill Camp as the villain, doing an underhanded, clever variant on Jack Nicholson’s performance in “A Few Good Men.”The BurialRated R for language. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Review: Tumbling From the Alps to the Courtroom

      by

      Did a writer kill her husband? In this cerebral murder trial drama by the director Justine Triet, the audience never has its footing and questions go unanswered.“Anatomy of a Fall,” a cerebral trial drama by the director Justine Triet, opens with a mysterious death in the French Alps. The deceased is an aspiring writer named Samuel (Samuel Theis). The suspect is his more successful wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), a novelist who is a lot like her surroundings: stoic, remote and a tad frosty.Did Sandra kill her husband? As the film flows from investigation to tribunal to verdict, it’s only interested in the question — not the answer. Triet and her fellow screenwriter (and real-life partner) Arthur Harari invite a jury to dissect the flaws of a rather average woman. Sandra drinks, but she’s not a drunk. She’s aloof, but not cruel. She needs sex, but she’s hardly the aggressor the prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) describes.Her most confounding trait is, if you believe her testimony, an ability to nap while Samuel spends his last living hour replaying a cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” at a volume so earsplitting the steel drums could have triggered an avalanche. The closest anyone comes to a motive is when Sandra’s inquisitors suggest that she was annoyed by the song’s misogynist lyrics. Her lawyer (Saadia Bentaïeb) counters: “It was an instrumental version.”All people are unknowable, the film insists, even to themselves. If any of us were forced to defend our incongruities and fibs — the fights we avoid, the compromises that make us quietly seethe — we’d all be convicted of irreconcilable contradictions. (Still a lesser crime than murder.) Sandra just has to confess her inner frictions to a courtroom where her rationalizations hang in the air as goofily as circus balloons.The film doesn’t need to spend two and a half hours intoning that life is an anthology of competing narratives, that every marriage is made of two storytellers. But at least it finds a few ways to drum on the idea, most resonantly through Sandra and Samuel’s books, which draw their inspiration from a blend of biography and fiction (as did the lead in Triet’s last film, “Sibyl,” another author disastrously mining reality). That blur, notes a student (Camille Rutherford) who interviews Sandra for her thesis in the first scene, “makes us want to figure out which is which.” Sandra smiles at the challenge. Later, however, her freedom will hinge on how a jury parses her truth from others’ interpretations.As experts take the stand to insist that their version of events is correct, the cinematographer, Simon Beaufils, switches from a composed style to one that zips and zooms, like an on-the-fly documentarian. Watching a witness parry questions from both the prosecution and defense, the image holds on him while the camera sprints back and forth to keep pace with the arguments lobbing from each side. The whiplash is dizzying.The most important judge in the room is the couple’s preteen son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Partly blind because of an accident that figures into the case, Daniel is uncomfortable becoming a character in the lawyers’ competing narratives. His poor vision is a metaphor for the struggle to see the truth. A more poetic allusion is how the boy teaches himself piano — not by reading sheet music, but by discovering through trial and error which notes sound right. As a bonus, we hear the passage of time in his improvement.Triet’s filmmaking style is deliberate, an unusual approach for a story about ambiguity. She wants the viewer to decide Sandra’s guilt — she even has a minor character say so outright — and so she withholds both the answer and the pleasure of feeling like we can figure out. Even Hüller, the kind of earthy and sincere actor who builds her characters out from the spine, has admitted that she isn’t sure if Sandra did it.In a sense, Triet has mapped a path to nowhere. You can respect her choice intellectually and still walk away grumbling in frustration — or appreciating the humor of this year’s Cannes jury definitively awarding her film the Palme d’Or. I’ve gone back to study some scenes and believe Triet knows what happened on the mountain. But she’s also added feints and discrepancies that go unacknowledged, vexations that exist solely for the audience. These are secrets Triet shares only with us and the dead man. And I suspect she’s taking them to the grave.Anatomy of a FallRated R for language and violent images. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘In My Mother’s Skin’ Review: A Grim Fairy Tale

      by

      Kenneth Dagatan’s new folk horror film acts as a cautionary tale about putting one’s fate into the hands of the enemy.Kenneth Dagatan’s “In My Mother’s Skin” is a cursed fairy tale in the same vein as Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 masterpiece, “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Set in the Philippines during World War II, Dagatan’s film follows Tala (Felicity Kyle Napuli), the young daughter of a wealthy Filipino family who is stranded in a mansion with her mother, brother and housekeeper (Angeli Bayani) while her father goes off to fight in the conflict. When her mother (Beauty Gonzalez) comes down with a mysterious ailment, Tala puts blind trust in a captivating forest fairy (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) who promises to cure her. What could possibly go wrong?Dagatan weaves impressive, bloodcurdling set pieces from a modest budget. Besides the fairy herself, decked out in a gilded costume that Björk might wear onstage, there’s a visual feast of banquets, jungle ruins and hidden treasures that Tala discovers in her explorations. All of this lies in stark contrast to the gory violence that ensues as the fairies gradually lay waste to the family, using Tala’s mother as a host for their flesh-eating tendencies. It’s refreshing to see a horror movie this artful that doesn’t shy away from B-movie spectacle.In keeping with its historical themes, “In My Mother’s Skin” acts as a cautionary tale about putting one’s fate into the hands of the enemy, and the results are predictably grim. Like this year’s sleeper horror hit “Skinamarink,” this film’s unwavering depiction of children suffering will no doubt come across as excessive to some, but it’s what makes “In My Mother’s Skin” so beguiling and terrifying. True to classic folklore, this is a story that delivers fantasy and queasiness in equal measure.In My Mother’s SkinNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      One Question for Taylor Swift’s Eras Concert Film: How Big Will It Be?

      by

      The pop star’s concert film, arriving in theaters on Friday, is expected to break box office records. “The fever and scale is unprecedented,” one analyst said.The world’s biggest pop star, Taylor Swift, is about to become the world’s biggest movie star, at least for a weekend. The only question is whether turnout for her concert film will be enormous or truly colossal.Box office analysts keep raising opening-weekend estimates for “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which will arrive in cinemas on Friday evening amid a lightning storm of free publicity. (As you may have heard, Ms. Swift has lately been spending considerable time with Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end.) The nearly three-hour film was initially expected to sell about $75 million in tickets this weekend in the United States and Canada, with analysts reaching that estimate by studying presales and moviegoer surveys. As of Tuesday, the domestic number was looking more like $125 million.Could it reach $150 million? “Yes, it could,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. “The fever and scale is unprecedented.”“The Eras Tour,” which cost Ms. Swift roughly $15 million to make, is expected to collect an additional $60 million overseas — at a minimum — over the weekend.“We are wonder-struck,” said Wanda Gierhart Fearing, chief marketing and content officer for the Cinemark theater chain, which has a large presence in the southern United States and Latin America. In addition to standard screenings, Cinemark and other multiplex operators have been offering private viewing parties. (That’s $800 for 40 people. Dancing encouraged, but not on seats.)The domestic box office record for a concert film debut is held by “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” which Paramount Pictures released in 2011. It collected $41 million over its first three days in North American theaters, adjusted for inflation, and ultimately $101 million in the United States and Canada and $138 million worldwide.“Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” released by Sony Pictures in 2009, holds the record for total ticket sales. It generated $105 million over its entire North American run, and $380 million worldwide, adjusted for inflation.Box office analysts aren’t quite sure what to expect from “The Eras Tour,” in part because it comes only nine weeks after Ms. Swift concluded the six-month, 53-show initial leg of her sold-out North American tour. The trade publication Pollstar estimated that she had sold about $14 million in tickets each night.The initial leg of Ms. Swift’s tour wrapped up a few weeks ago after six months and 53 shows.Grace Smith/The Denver Post, via Getty ImagesHas the thirst for Ms. Swift among casual fans been satisfied for the time being? To what degree did the cultural frenzy surrounding her Eras concerts pique the curiosity of a broader audience — people who would never pay hundreds of dollars to see her perform in a stadium but might shell out for movie tickets? (Most seats for the film cost $19.89, a nod to the name of Ms. Swift’s fifth album and her birth year.)Complicating predictions, Ms. Swift broke Hollywood norms in getting her film to theaters.Under the customary model, studios book movies into theaters and spend anywhere from $20 million to $100 million on marketing to turn out an audience. Theaters play movies and sell concessions. In return, studios collect as much as 70 percent of opening-weekend tickets sales, with theaters keeping the balance.Since she produced and financed “The Eras Tour” herself, Ms. Swift cut out the middle company (a studio) and made a distribution deal directly with AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater operator. One reason involved marketing: Ms. Swift, with 369 million social media followers at her beck and call, barely needs to spend anything to advertise the film.Ms. Swift will keep about 57 percent of ticket revenue, with theater chains pocketing the rest, as first reported by a Puck newsletter. AMC will also receive a modest distribution fee.Box office forecasting, however, is based on moviegoer surveys that are designed to track the effectiveness of studio marketing campaigns — older women are not being persuaded by your ads, for example, but teenage boys are in the bag. “The Eras Tour” has had some paid advertising, including a commercial during a Chiefs prime-time game this month. But most movies arrive amid an advertising bombardment.“One of the questions involves staying power,” said Bruce Nash, founder of the Numbers, a box office tracking and analytics site. “Is ‘The Eras Tour’ going to do most of its business on opening weekend and then fall off a cliff? Or will people come back six times over the course of weeks? We have no idea.”Ms. Swift’s distribution choice made Hollywood gnash its teeth. Studio executives had to explain to their bosses why they missed a prime moneymaking opportunity and a chance to form a relationship with Ms. Swift, who has feature film directing ambitions. (She has also tinkered with acting, including in “Cats.”) Universal Pictures, fearing competition from “The Eras Tour,” scrambled to move “The Exorcist: Believer” to an earlier date; ticket sales were soft.Studios have also had to contend with an existential question: Does distribution for “The Eras Tour” mark the start of a paradigm shift? Are more movies going to bypass studios? Already, Beyoncé has followed Ms. Swift in making a deal with AMC to distribute her concert documentary, “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” which will arrive in theaters on Dec. 1.Anything is possible. Mr. Nash noted that Fathom Events, an independent distributor that specializes in short-run screenings and simulcast opera performances, has found increasing success in taking faith-based projects (“The Chosen”) directly to theaters. Trafalgar Releasing found a studio-skipping hit in February with a concert film focused on BTS, the South Korean boy band.But most studio executives and entertainment industry analysts dismiss “The Eras Tour” as a one-off. When it comes to mobilizing a fan base, Ms. Swift, they say, is in a class by herself. Even Beyoncé has not shown the same selling power. First-day presales for “The Eras Tour” totaled an estimated $37 million, while “Renaissance” generated about $7 million.At the moment, theater chains aren’t thinking much beyond the weekend. The last two months have been quiet for theaters, with hits like “The Nun II” (Warner Bros.) offset by a string of duds, including “Dumb Money,” “Blue Beetle,” “The Creator” and “Expend4bles.”Two major movies originally expected this fall, “Kraven the Hunter” and “Dune: Part Two,” were pushed into next year because of the actors’ strike. (Until the strike is resolved, SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ union in known, has barred its members from engaging in any publicity efforts for films and TV shows that have already been completed.)Theater companies, of course, make most of their money at the concession counter, and AMC, for one, is counting on Ms. Swift’s fans to come hungry. Among other items, the chain plans to sell popcorn in collectible tubs for $20.Marketing line: “Swifties always snack in style.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘No Accident’ Review: Putting White Supremacists on Trial

      by

      A documentary chronicles the lawsuit filed against the leaders of the violent 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.Kristi Jacobson’s legal documentary “No Accident” opens with footage of the “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va.: White supremacists march with tiki torches and shout slurs such as “Jews will not replace us.” The grotesque gathering remains unsettling and infuriating to watch, but plunging us into the proceedings has a way of stating the ugly facts upfront.Some participants in the two-day rally faced criminal charges, but Jacobson documents the steps in a civil case filed that October in an attempt to hold rally leaders responsible for conspiring to commit violence. Tracking the litigation led by the attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn, Jacobson’s civil rights procedural delves into both the legal work and the emotional strain involved in a case like this one.Kaplan and Dunn’s team draws on damning excerpts from Discord, the social media site used by rally planners, and evasive, insulting depositions by conspirators such as Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell, who represented themselves in court. Jacobson shows the toll on some of the lawsuit’s nine plaintiffs, who recall the rally and the peaceful counterprotests on Aug. 12, when James Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others by driving his car into a crowd of protesters.The movie, which feels constrained by the trial’s pandemic-related restrictions, maintains a civilized tone throughout. But it’s hard to keep calm at the spectacle of white nationalists preaching hatred and violence one moment, then attempting to squirm out of responsibility and court the jury’s sympathy. Jacobson’s account does the necessary work of restating the facts and showing that people can be held accountable for fomenting this kind of terror and harm.No AccidentNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More