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      ‘The Sweet East’ Review: All-American Girl

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      Starring Talia Ryder and Simon Rex, this shape-shifting satire about modern American subcultures is a curious, and occasionally delightful, object if you can handle its flippant treatment of taboos.“The Sweet East,” a shape-shifting satire about modern American subcultures, is a curious — occasionally delightful — object. Its doe-eyed leading lady, Lillian (Talia Ryder), is like the reincarnation of her ostensible namesake, the silent film star Lillian Gish. Both are blank canvasses filled out by different kinds of American dreams. Not the gooey, aspirational sort, but the delusional kind that makes you question humanity’s worth even though you can’t look away.Echoing Gish’s most well-known role, as the victimized naïf in D.W. Griffith’s infamous Ku Klux Klan epic “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), this Lillian consorts with white supremacists, too — if only for a spell before she moves on to the next part.Treating taboos with the flippancy of an eye-rolling teenager, “The Sweet East” tracks the high schooler Lillian’s journeys around the northeastern seaboard. The film is directed by the veteran cinematographer Sean Price Williams (“Good Time”), who shot the film as well and employs grainy B-movie aesthetics.Mileage is sure to vary on the film’s picaresque antics. Lillian falls in with what Williams and the screenwriter Nick Pinkerton see as the most mockable crews: brain-fried anarchists in Washington, D.C.; a sexually repressed Muslim brotherhood in rural Vermont; navel-gazing filmmakers (Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy O. Harris) in the Big Apple. This latter group casts Lillian as the star in their upcoming period movie about the construction of the Erie Canal, which features a meta heartthrob-du-jour played by Jacob Elordi.Pinkerton’s cheeky script flattens when it’s up against the crust-punk radicals and the jihadists; and at its strongest when skewering a neo-Nazi intellectual (Simon Rex) angling to make Lillian his child bride. This weirdly eloquent figure is played marvelously by Rex, who hits the right balance between sincerity and absurdity that other parts of the film sometimes bungle. Maybe it’s low hanging fruit that the white supremacist character is the best comic fodder, but the film’s trolling is stranger and more esoterically inclined than its selection of political punching bags would seem to warrant.The Sweet EastNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bad Press’ Review: Defending Journalism in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation

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      The battle to claw back press freedoms is the nerve-racking subject of this civic-minded documentary.In “Bad Press,” you witness the moment when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation loses true freedom of the press. It happens with shocking speed: the Muscogee National Council, in a listless 7-6 vote in 2018, repeals the tribe’s Free Press Act. The battle to claw back this right is the nerve-racking subject of this civic-minded documentary directed by Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, a Muscogee journalist, and Joe Peeler.The film’s scrappy hero is Angel Ellis, a reporter for Mvskoke Media who has faced intimidation tactics while covering cases of embezzlement and sexual harassment. When the repeal puts her employer under tribal government oversight and its radio show shuts down, she makes the risky decision to speak out and rally for a constitutional amendment to enshrine freedom of the press. Such protections, the film explains, are rare among North American tribes.Beyond her bravery and sharp analysis, Ellis makes for good copy, refusing to publish “polished turds” instead of bona fide journalism. The filmmakers also sketch in a gallery of genteel Muscogee politicians who telegraph varying support for the press as they jockey for votes in elections for chief. Ellis and others show that internal criticism can be a sensitive subject for tribes after centuries of challenges to sovereignty.Landsberry-Baker and Peeler could linger more on details about the people involved instead of the horse-race suspense of vote counts. But who can blame them when freedom is in the balance, and as local media outlets dwindle nationally, the Muscogee voters’ defense of press freedoms sets a stirring example.Bad PressNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Family Switch’ Review: Out of Body Experiences for Everyone

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      Even Pickles the dog gets to trade places in this movie directed by McG, but there are no revelations or bursts of originality here.In a holiday-themed twist on “Freaky Friday,” Jennifer Garner and Ed Helms star as out-of-touch parents who suddenly find themselves occupying the bodies of their teenage children (Emma Myers and Brady Noon), and vice versa, in the Christmas comedy “Family Switch.”Jess and Bill Walker bring the whole over-scheduled family — their daughter, CC, is in the running for the U.S. national soccer team, and Wyatt, their older son, is a science prodigy who’s interviewing for Yale — to the Griffith Observatory to witness a rare planetary alignment.A chance encounter with a fortune teller (Rita Moreno, hamming it up) during the celestial event combines with a cosmic energy conversion so powerful that it zaps the Walkers into a triple body swap: Jess with CC, Bill with Wyatt, and their toddler, Miles, with Pickles, the French bulldog. They break the observatory telescope in the process, and fixing it, which will take a week, is the only way to reverse the spell.On top of CC’s soccer tryouts and Wyatt’s college interview, Jess is prepping for a major presentation on the job at an architecture firm, and Bill is set to perform with his cover band (Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wilson and Brian Bell cameo as his bandmates) at the school holiday concert. Predictable antics ensue as the Walkers try and fail to excel in each other’s roles, and they soon realize that the telescope isn’t all that needs fixing.Loosely based on the picture book “Bedtime for Mommy” by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, “Family Switch” carries a surprisingly raunchy streak given its source material. But seeing that it’s directed by McG (“Charlie’s Angels,” “The Babysitter”), the gross-out humor shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The real nail in the coffin is the film’s messaging about the power of family, which is about as tacked-on and stilted as they come — hardly a shock in light of the rest of the Netflix holiday movie lineup.Family SwitchRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Mistress America,’ ‘Tramps’ and More Streaming Gems

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      A pair of charming Gotham-based character comedies are among the highlights of this month’s under-the-radar streaming recommendations.‘Mistress America’ (2015)Stream it on Max.“Barbie” is the current commercial and critical triumph of the screenwriting (and real-life) partners Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, and “Frances Ha” is their origin story. But comparatively little ink is spilled these days on their middle feature (which Baumbach directed), a delightfully funny comedy that turns the tropes of the college coming-of-age movie and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl on their heads. Lola Kirke stars as Tracy, a college freshman new to New York City who gets a whirlwind introduction to the city via her soon-to-be-stepsister Brooke (Gerwig). Gerwig and Baumbach’s wise screenplay delicately dramatizes how Brooke first seems like Tracy’s platonic ideal of the young urban woman, then slowly reveals herself as messy in a multitude of ways. Gerwig’s multilayered performance is one of her best, while Baumbach orchestrates the picture’s shifts from character drama to door-slamming farce with bouncy ease.‘Tramps’ (2017)Stream it on Netflix.Adam Leon is a New York filmmaker of the old school; like his contemporaries, the Safdie brothers, he’s working in the Cassavetes mold, telling ground-level stories about hustlers and grinders who can take whatever the city throws at them (though not without some complaint). He followed up his acclaimed feature debut “Gimme the Loot” with this scrappy, playful story of two strangers (Callum Turner and Grace Van Patten) on a seemingly simple criminal errand who screw it up and have to make it right. Turner and Van Patten’s chemistry is off the charts, the supporting cast is entertaining (particularly the comedian Mike Birbiglia as a perpetually harried middleman), and Leon’s direction is economical and enchanting.‘X’ (2022)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.The gifted genre director Ti West writes and directs this giddy, gory cross between “Boogie Nights” and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” in which a group of DIY filmmakers and exotic dancers trek out to the backwoods of the Lone Star state to make a low-budget porn movie. Little do they know, the older couple in the nearby farmhouse are a bit more spry — and murderous — than they might imagine. West’s script and direction are marvelously film-literate, filling the frame and soundtrack with sly in-jokes and references, and his cast is delightfully game; the “Wednesday” star Jenna Ortega is a sublime scream queen, Brittany Snow revels in the opportunity to send up her typical persona and Mia Goth is pitch-perfect as both the final girl and (under heavy makeup) another key player. It’s not for all tastes, but if you’d like a little sex and violence on your holiday viewing menu, both are in plentiful supply here.‘All My Puny Sorrows’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.Alison Pill is one of those actors who should, by all rights, be a major star — she’s charismatic and credible in every role, and can execute comedy and drama with equal aplomb — but rarely gets a role that properly showcases her considerable skills. She gets one in Michael McGowan’s adaptation of a Miriam Toews novel, as Yoli, a writer whose sister Elf (Sarah Gadon) is a famous concert pianist. Elf has also recently attempted to end her own life, not for the first time and, per her assurances, not for the last; she wants her sister’s help traveling to Switzerland for an assisted suicide. It’s not the cheeriest topic for a motion picture, and the cinematography and Canadian settings are properly dour. But Pill and Gadon are excellent, vividly conveying a familial bond of warmth, empathy and exasperation in equal doses.‘The Zero Theorem’ (2014)Stream it on Peacock.Terry Gilliam’s later work hasn’t met with the same critical or commercial adoration as earlier efforts like “The Fisher King” and “12 Monkeys.” But his customary visual inventiveness and narrative ingenuity are on full display in this futuristic tale of a computer operator (Christoph Waltz) enlisted to mathematically prove the nothingness of existence. The cast is loaded with familiar faces (including Matt Damon, Lucas Hedges, Tilda Swinton and David Thewlis) but Gilliam is, as ever, the real star here, loading his frames with outdated technology and dystopian signifiers, crafting a world that’s both familiar and foreign, fascinating and terrifying.‘Love to Love You, Donna Summer’ (2023)Stream it on Max.Roger Ross Williams opens his bio-documentary of the “Queen of Disco” with the original vocal tracks of the title song, which are aggressively and unapologetically sexual, and reminds us of what a revelation her sound was at that particular moment (in the music industry, and in our culture in general). “Love to Love You” spends a fair amount of its running time in that kind of micro-exploration of her biggest hits, and how she built them. But Williams is more interested in her enigmatic inner life (Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summers’s daughters and the film’s co-director, can only describe her as “complicated”). Drawing on home video footage, archival interviews and audio recordings, Williams and Sudano attempt to not only encapsulate Summers’s life but understand it — a much more difficult task.‘Wham!’ (2023)Stream it on Netflix.The documentary filmmaker Chris Smith (“American Movie”) adopts a similar approach to his portrait of the English ’80s hit machine, mostly eschewing contemporary talking head interviews in favor of an archive-heavy approach, primarily to give equal voice and weight to the memories of George Michael. The music is fizzy and the videos retain their period kitsch, but Smith stays firmly centered on the friendship between Michael and his bandmate Andrew Ridgeley — specifically, what becoming international superstars did to that friendship. “Wham!” moves at lightning speed while telling their story with impressive depth, particularly Michael’s difficulties balancing his sexuality with the image he had to present in that wildly homophobic era. It’s an irresistible doc, cheery and charming and warmly affectionate toward its subjects. More

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      Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos on ‘Poor Things’

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      It’s one thing to cry while performing. Emma Stone can do that. What she doesn’t want to do, and what she found herself doing anyway, is to cry in the middle of an interview.“I’m such an actor, what is wrong with me?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.It was mid-November in Los Angeles and we were out to lunch with Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director with whom Stone has made the cockeyed comedies “The Favourite” and now “Poor Things,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September and is tipped to be a major Oscar contender when it’s released Dec. 8. Based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, “Poor Things” casts Stone as Bella Baxter, who may have the cinematic year’s most outrageous origin story: Trapped in an unhappy marriage, she throws herself off a bridge and is resurrected by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) who swaps her brain for that of her unborn baby.Stone gets plenty of comic mileage out of playing this full-grown woman with the mind of a child, but Bella’s eventual arc is breathtaking: As she gains sentience, embarks on a sexual and political awakening, and strives toward independence, Bella must navigate the hapless suitors (played by the likes of Mark Ruffalo and Ramy Youssef) who are drawn to her maverick spirit but also seek to possess her. This is a character who has meant more to Stone than most — “I just love her so much,” she told me — though she tried to laugh off how talking about “Poor Things” sometimes moved her to tears.“I’m tired, that’s all it is,” Stone said.In addition to “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” Lanthimos, 50, and Stone, 35, have collaborated on the short film “Bleat” as well as “And,” a comic anthology due next year. “I obviously have full-blown, very intense trust in him,” she said, “and as an actor, it’s the best feeling ever, because it’s so rare that you feel like whatever you do, you’re protected by your director.”Scenes from a collaboration: Stone in Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” left, “The Favourite” and “Bleat.”Searchlight Pictures; Lanthimos facilitates that trust with a long rehearsal process that has more in common with improv comedy than you might expect: The actors recite their lines while doing log rolls, walking backward or closing their eyes. “We never rehearse as in, ‘OK, how are you going to do the scene and let’s just act it out,’” Lanthimos said. “It’s more about creating this atmosphere of camaraderie and having fun, getting to know each other so we can be comfortable with ridiculing ourselves.”Some actors forge long-term relationships with auteurs that require sacrificing what has made them into movie stars: To ascend to a more prestigious plane, comedians furrow their brows, beauties cake themselves in dirt and teen idols talk of torturing themselves in the name of their craft. But with Lanthimos, Stone has not had to give up the comic timing and innate empathy that are her greatest gifts as an actor. She instead puts those talents to use in new and daring ways under her director’s unique eye.Still, this fruitful partnership makes for an unusual duo in person: Where Lanthimos is impassive and a man of few words, his leading lady is wide-eyed, warm and eager to connect. Or, as Stone put it, “I’m a girl from Arizona and he’s a guy from Athens. I don’t know how this worked, because our personalities could not be more different, but it’s amazing.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.When did the two of you first meet?EMMA STONE It was June of 2015, in a cafe. I was in rehearsals for “La La Land,” and I met him to talk about “The Favourite.” I thought he was going to be really scary and twisted, and he isn’t. It was a very comfortable and easy conversation and we got along right away.You thought he might be a more intimidating presence?STONE Having seen the films that he had made up until that point, yeah.YORGOS LANTHIMOS What a cliché.STONE I was 26! I was but a child. But from then on, we kept in touch and got to know each other a little bit. By the time we were making “The Favourite,” we had a rapport and the beginning of our friendship, and then by the end of shooting it, we started talking about “Poor Things.”Stone says of her “Poor Things” role: “My God, she’s the greatest character I’ll probably ever get to play.”Thea Traff for The New York TimesYorgos, what was going on in your life when you first read “Poor Things”?LANTHIMOS I had just moved to London and started meeting people about English-language projects. It was after “Dogtooth” [2010] was nominated for an Oscar, and people started taking interest.STONE [teasing] Nominated for an Oscar. Everybody was like, “Whoa, this guy’s so great!”LANTHIMOS But when I started showing “Poor Things” to people, it was rejected many times for development.What reason did they give?LANTHIMOS “It’s too weird, too strange.” Back then, there was a notion of, “Oh, we’ll get a European or non-American filmmaker to do something conventional, they’ll just bring their own twist to it.”STONE That still happens.LANTHIMOS So that was quite a disappointment because I was very naïve in meeting people and them saying, “Oh my God, ‘Dogtooth’ is amazing, we want to do things with you.” And then I would produce “The Lobster” [2016] and they would go, “Oh, no, no, we’re not talking about something like this. Don’t you want to do something more normal?”Emma, how did Yorgos pitch this project to you?STONE He gave me sort of the brass-tacks overview of Bella, what she goes through and what the men in her life experience as a response to how she’s evolving. And I was just like, “Sign me up.” My God, she’s the greatest character I’ll probably ever get to play.What is it about this character that’s so beguiling?LANTHIMOS She’s unlike anyone.STONE She’s drinking up the world around her in such a unique and beautiful way that I just dream I could. I find her so inspiring, and living in that every day throughout that whole process was just the greatest gift — it’s the most joy I’ve ever gotten to have as a character. Every person that exists has so much that built them up to what they are in adulthood, and it was interesting to discover that if you strip all that away, all that’s left is joy and curiosity.We meet Bella when she’s not far into her brain swap: Formerly an adult woman named Victoria Blessington, she’s now like a full-grown baby, impulsive and childlike. What was it like to embody that phase?STONE Tough. That was the hardest stage for me, just because that’s where she’s at her most primitive. Acting is inherently embarrassing — this, as a job, is just silly and you can feel really stupid. Thankfully, with Yorgos, it’s much more freeing and I feel confident because we can quickly get to, “I guess this one’s not working, let’s go somewhere else.” Also, I can cry to him if I’m freaking out about something, which I have many times.We’d been working on this for so many years, and to actually commit it to film is always terrifying. I find the first two weeks of filming anything really difficult because you’re still finding your footing and the tone of what it actually is in practice, not just the idea of it. So the first week was really challenging to just give myself over to it and trust the process of it, and I think you felt the same way.LANTHIMOS Yeah.STONE We were talking about it every day, and I was like, “What am I doing?” You were like, “I don’t know.” We were both figuring out who she was.A scene from “Poor Things.” Stone and Lanthimos have been discussing the film since shooting “The Favourite” (2018).Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight PicturesHow does your trust in one another extend to how you filmed Bella’s sexual awakening?STONE It simplifies everything. Whenever there was a scene like that, it was only four people in the room, other than whatever actor might be in there. There was Yorgos and our [director of photography] Robbie Ryan, who looks at me like I am a lamp — he’s seen me naked so many times, it’s so beyond nothing — and then Hayley [Williams, the first assistant director], and Olga [Abramson], our focus puller. That was the room.LANTHIMOS Sometimes not even sound. We would rig mics when we could and we wouldn’t even have a boom operator there. So it’s just very intimate.STONE And also, an amazing intimacy coordinator [Elle McAlpine]. Stupidly, at the beginning, I was like, “It’s fine [without one], I’ve known you for so many years.” And then once it came to actually doing all those scenes, having her there was so wonderful — she really made the energy so calm and professional. But it was weird ultimately to see the movie because doing those scenes was such an intimate experience and then I was like, “Right, that’s in the movie!”But I mean, that’s Bella. She has no shame about her body and her sexuality and who she is, and I am so proud of that aspect of the film.Does it embolden you to stay in that space?STONE Just to stay naked all the time? Yeah. I’m going to be a nudist now, I’m emboldened!I meant Bella’s head space. Do you feel emboldened when you spend so much time in a character free from shame?STONE I wish I could say yes. It has stuck with me in some capacities, and if I could live as Bella, I would love to. It’s really hard when you have your own history to deal with, which seemingly everybody has except for her. But I find her so inspirational in general that I’m always trying to think if I could be a little bit more like her.Yorgos, you acted in the Greek film “Attenberg” earlier in your career, which required you to take part in some sex scenes. Did that give you a unique perspective on directing them?LANTHIMOS For me, that aspect was never an issue. Sex in movies, or nudity — I just never understood the prudishness around it. It always drives me mad how liberal people are about violence and how they allow minors to experience it in any way, and then we’re so prudish about sexuality. To me, what was difficult about being an actor was that there was a lot of waiting around, and that’s why, when I make films, I try to have the least amount of business possible: No lights, no gear, no nothing. Nobody goes anywhere, nobody leaves. There’s no time to smoke a cigarette, because we just keep on going.STONE That’s why you have to switch to vaping.Lanthimos has appeared as an actor in film with sex scenes. “Sex in movies, or nudity — I just never understood the prudishness around it,” he said.Thea Traff for The New York TimesEmma, do you want something different out of your projects now than you did in your 20s?STONE I hope that when it comes to projects or characters that it’ll always be a surprise and slightly scary. But also, how scary can it be? It’s acting, I’m not saving any lives. It’s such a lucky thing to be able to do, so to sit here as an actor and be like, “This was so hard,” is crazy.LANTHIMOS I think about that as well. “Oh, I’m making films, what’s so incredibly difficult about that?” But I do have a horrible time. The stress.STONE He’s really miserable while we’re filming.LANTHIMOS Yeah, it’s insane. It’s immense.And it hasn’t gone away over time?STONE It’s gotten worse.LANTHIMOS You try to rationalize it: “Why are you so upset? This is a movie.” Of course, when you compare it with other things that are happening in the world, it’s ridiculous. But for you, in that moment, it’s everything.STONE Also, a lot of times you’re on location. You’re away from your quote-unquote real life, you’re working so many hours a day, and it’s so consuming.So how did it feel to near the end of an all-consuming project like “Poor Things”?STONE I was a mess. Oh my God, I was devastated. I couldn’t even get through the scenes we were shooting on the last day because I was crying so much.You didn’t want to let go?STONE I wanted to be done because we were exhausted, but I really didn’t want to be done. It was such an important experience to me that it makes me sad now thinking about it.LANTHIMOS The last day was in the studio, and we did her jumping off the bridge.STONE I’m getting teary. I’m sorry, this is so stupid. Bizarre. That last day, I did the jump that Victoria does off the bridge when she’s pregnant, and I was so emotional. You can imagine, if I’m sitting here years later like this!I said to Hayley, our A.D., “Oh my God, this is so sad. I’m shooting a suicide, and it’s the end of the movie after this whole joyful experience.” And she said, “No, this is the birth of Bella.” I was like, “It is the birth of Bella! Because Victoria being gone is the birth of Bella.” It’s so nice to end on that.[Wiping her eyes.] Yeah. Anyway, it was cool. No big deal. Fun movie, we had a good time, it was just a paycheck. More

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      Stream These 16 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in December

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      We rounded up the best titles leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers. That includes Oscar winners, comedies, horror and four ‘Jaws’ films.The end of the year means plenty of expiring licenses on Netflix, so December’s list of movies exiting the service is bulkier than usual — and more prestigious, including two Oscar winners for best picture, two massively popular franchises and recent favorites of horror, comedy and family entertainment. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Us’ (Dec. 30)Stream it here.Jordan Peele followed up the massive critical and commercial success of “Get Out,” his Oscar-winning feature debut from 2017, with this similarly potent brew of horror, social commentary and bleak comedy. Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke star as upper-class parents whose family vacation is disrupted by the appearance of silent but terrifying visitors in the night. Are they home invaders? Common criminals? Supernatural doppelgängers? Or something even more sinister? As with “Get Out” before it and “Nope” after, Peele has as much fun building dread and atmosphere as he does delivering shock thrills, slyly threading in pop-culture shout-outs and obscure historical references to keep audiences equally puzzled and frightened.‘American Beauty’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.The Oscar winner for best picture of 1999 has fallen rather out of favor these days, thanks to some of its more controversial themes and the divisive presence of its leading man, Kevin Spacey (who took home his second trophy for best actor). But there’s still a great deal to admire in this story of rebellious teens, midlife crisis and suburban ennui: Annette Bening’s thrillingly unhinged work as an impatient mother and driven real estate agent, Conrad L. Hall’s luminous cinematography (another Oscar winner), and a supporting cast that boasts the likes of Wes Bentley, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Allison Janney and Mena Suvari.‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ / ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’ (Dec. 31)Stream them here and here.The writer and director Adam McKay’s recent shift from broad comedies (frequently starring his “Saturday Night Live” collaborator Will Ferrell) to serious-minded social commentaries (including “The Big Short,” “Vice” and “Don’t Look Up”) took some moviegoers by surprise. But there are big ideas floating through even his goofiest farces, including his 2004 feature directorial debut “Anchorman” and its 2013 follow-up. The original “Anchorman” seems a broad goof on ’70s culture, focusing on the egomaniacal idiot Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) who fears his spot fronting the news on a San Diego station is endangered by the arrival of a new co-anchor (Christina Applegate); look closer, and it’s pointed satire of male insecurity and toxic masculinity in the workplace. “Anchorman 2” could have been more of the same, with Burgundy and his team going national in the then-burgeoning cable news scene; instead, McKay incisively sends up the unsavory practices of ratings-chasing in media. Both are far smarter than they needed to be — and uproariously funny to boot.‘Gladiator’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.Winner of Academy Awards for best picture and best actor (Russell Crowe), Ridley Scott’s action extravaganza from 2000 brought back the sword-and-sandal epic, one of the standbys of late ’50s and early ’60s cinema (particularly out of Italy), but with a modern sensibility and a comparatively gargantuan budget. Crowe stars as Maximus, a Roman general betrayed and enslaved by the evil Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who returns to prominence as an unstoppable gladiator to exact his revenge. This is Crowe at his best, combining brute physicality and intense internalized emotion, and Phoenix is an appropriately vile villain; it’s a short walk from his work as a petty tyrant here to his current, entertaining reunion with Scott as a tantrum-throwing “Napoleon.”‘Jaws’ 1-4 (Dec. 31)Stream them here, here, here and here.It seems like a gross oversimplification to note that “Jaws” changed movies forever in 1975, but that’s less analysis than common wisdom: It created the template for making and marketing the summer blockbuster, and it sent the career of the director Steven Spielberg (only helming his second theatrical feature) into the stratosphere. It’s so easy to view “Jaws” through its historical and economic lens that it’s easy to forget what a genuinely, indisputably great movie it is — scary, funny, elegantly crafted, beautifully acted and populated with rich and memorable characters. As for its sequels … well, “Jaws 2” is pretty good, a welcome return for Roy Scheider’s no-nonsense Chief Brody, featuring some effective scares and well-executed set pieces. (The less said about “Jaws 3” and “Jaws: The Revenge,” the better.)‘Kung Fu Panda’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.In retrospect, it’s sort of shocking that it took so long to build a family franchise around Jack Black, since he’s so wildly animated and kid-friendly even in live-action movies; creating a cartoon for a living cartoon seems a relatively simple proposition. The inaugural entry of the series (2008), spawning two sequels and a Netflix series, introduces Black as Po, the titular karate-chopping, slapstick-prone giant panda, who must learn the ways of kung fu to fulfill his destiny as the Dragon Warrior. The supporting voice cast is impressive — Jackie Chan, David Cross, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Angelina Jolie, Randall Duk Kim, Lucy Liu, Ian McShane and Seth Rogen all turn up, and all seem to be having a ball — the animation is delightful and Black is as hysterically funny and warmly likable as ever.‘Mission: Impossible’ 1- 4 (Dec. 31)Stream them here, here, here and here.In its current iteration, the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is a well-oiled machine, with the recurring writer and director Christopher McQuarrie (who has been with the series since its fifth entry, “Rogue Nation”) orchestrating a cast of repeating characters and running story arcs. But this wasn’t initially the case at all; the first four films in the series were each helmed by a different, distinctive filmmaker, comporting each picture to their own style, with the general story and the star Tom Cruise among the few common elements. The approach was unsurprisingly hit and miss; the John Woo-directed “M: I-2” crosses the line from cool to goofy with more frequency than was presumably intended, and J.J. Abrams’s third picture suffers from a generic style that betrays the director’s television background. But Brian De Palma’s inaugural installment, from 1996, is wildly entertaining, and filled with the kind of Hitchcockian set pieces on which that auteur made his name, while the Brad Bird-helmed fourth film is filled with breathtaking action sequences, memorable supporting players and the beginning of a house style that McQuarrie would refine and perfect.‘Role Models’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.The raw edge yet soft heart of this wildly funny bad-boy comedy from 2008, and the presence of the frequent leading man Paul Rudd, might lead you to assume it’s the work of Judd Apatow. But the roots of “Role Models” go back farther than that — the director is David Wain, one of the minds behind the comedy troupe The State — and several of its members (including Kerri Kenney-Silver, Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino) turn up in supporting roles. Rudd and Seann William Scott star as a pair of irresponsible energy drink salesmen who are ordered to perform community service, and wind up in a Big Brother-type program, mentoring a foul-mouthed kid (the uproarious Bobb’e J. Thompson) and a cosplaying nerd (the “Superbad” favorite Christopher Mintz-Plasse).‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.Martin Scorsese kicked off his loose trilogy of outsized critiques of the American capitalist system (continuing with “The Irishman” and “Killers of the Flower Moon”) in 2013 with this savagely funny and narratively ruthless adaptation of the memoir by Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a corrupt penny-stock broker who parlayed his limitless greed and limited ethics into (briefly, at least) an unimaginable fortune. As with his earlier “Goodfellas,” Scorsese makes Belfort’s indulgences of sex, drugs and good times into virtuoso scenes of visceral and vicarious thrills; he similarly makes his protagonist’s fall from grace into an ugly indictment of both the individual and the system that made him possible.ALSO LEAVING: “8 Mile,” “Catch Me if You Can,” “Field of Dreams,” “Lost in Translation,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Scarface” (all Dec. 31). More

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      Martin Scorsese’s Unwise Guys

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      From Travis Bickle to the protagonist of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the director has excelled at depicting a certain kind of male antihero.If “Men Without Women” seems painfully apt as a title for Ernest Hemingway’s fiction, the equivalent for Martin Scorsese’s work might be “Men Failing Women.” From “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” for more than 50 years, his movies have been a dismal and heartbreaking primer on what not to do when you love someone. His male protagonists continue to fail their significant others even when given multiple chances to reverse that pattern: a paradigm even more fraught if the protagonist is a white dimwit and his wife a long-suffering Osage. In his welcome to the audience before “Killers” begins, Scorsese confides that his film is deeply personal, and it is, not just because he has always had a keen sense of social injustice but also because of its obsession with the jaw-dropping gap between the man his protagonist wants to be and the man he is. Which helps explain an aspect of the movie that has most puzzled some reviewers: If it is about what happened to the Osage, then why are we spending so much time with a white schnook?Maybe because the self-deluded sinner who wants to repent but refuses to change has been Scorsese’s most persistent and agonized subject. At their most dysfunctional, those figures are so terrifying that they’ve become cultural totems of toxic masculinity — Travis Bickle! Jake La Motta! — as their rage at their inadequacies lacerates everything, including, of course, the women closest to them.Even at their best, Scorsese’s protagonists never want to face certain hard facts, and in their pursuit of a good time, they’re masters of what “Animal House” memorialized as a “really futile and stupid gesture.” It figures that they’re often hoods or hustlers, either with a pool cue or hedge fund. And happily for us, Scorsese has never been able to resist the energy they bring to a movie. “Goodfellas” is peerless at viscerally rendering the appeal of the gangster’s freewheeling heartlessness, and when “Killers” comes closest to that energy — when the two male leads frantically argue over the pea-brained implementation of a murder they’ve arranged — the result is the movie’s most high-spirited comic moment. What we’re confronting in these movies is self-absorption without understanding: the self as an incomprehensible spectacle. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart seems flummoxed by his actions every step of the way, given how much he is sure he loves Lily Gladstone’s Mollie. He tells his uncle that he loves money and women, and Mollie’s a dream combination of both, given her oil wealth. At first his courting goes nowhere, but eventually she is won over — DiCaprio is DiCaprio, after all, even if he does spend the movie in a permanent frown, and she’s also drawn to his honesty when he wryly confesses his own laziness and greed — and the question for the audience becomes why she isn’t acting on his transparent duplicity. One reason might involve the sheer scale of his treachery — he’s betraying her as a part of a conspiracy to murder her entire family, including her, as well as any number of others — but another might be how much when in love we work to deny what we know in the name of faith or hope. After her sister is murdered, Mollie’s voice-over reveals that she keeps her fears at bay by closing her heart and keeping what’s good there. She knows not to trust corrupt doctors with her insulin, but she can’t bring herself to acknowledge Ernest’s role in what is happening. She confides to her priest that she’s afraid to eat in her own house, but when he asks who might want to harm her, she remains silent. When she is discovered at death’s door by F.B.I. agents, even in her extremity she asks, “Where’s my husband?” And if Mollie is the angel on Ernest’s shoulder, his uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro) is the devil: playing on Ernest’s humiliation by reminding him that she’s making things harder on him and informing him that she had another husband she has kept secret (as if Hale is aware that a reliable trigger of abusiveness in a Scorsese movie is the murderousness of male jealousy) and finally appearing at Mollie’s bedside so much like the Angel of Death that in her delirium, she asks if he’s real.But this passion play is Ernest’s. Because he insists that he loves Mollie, he therefore would never want to hurt her, and therefore can’t be doing so. As Rob Corddry of “The Daily Show” put it on the subject of Abu Ghraib: “Just because torturing prisoners is something we did, doesn’t mean it’s something we would do.” Which is where the movie’s race politics becomes so brutal as well: Mollie is, after all, not white, and as such even easier to disregard. As his uncle’s plotting gets ever more destructive, Ernest begins to grope his way toward opting out — he hesitates, at least, about contacting the thug tasked with blowing up his sister-in-law’s house with her in it — and the subsequent long shot of the devastation he confronts afterward works nicely as a figure for his inner life. By administering the insulin he has poisoned, he can simultaneously enact his love and eradicate the problem she poses to his sense of himself as not an awful man. In the same way, he caves to his uncle’s demand that he sign the insurance policy on his own life; he knows what it implies but resolves to act as though he doesn’t. Like so many of Scorsese’s sinners, he wants to do penance, and so drinks the drug he has been adding to Mollie’s insulin, while the fires of hell apparently burn outside (fields set afire, also the work of Uncle Hale).Jesse Plemons’s F.B.I. agent Tom White, the main figure of rectitude, finally says to Ernest, “You’re a good man, Ernest, and you love your wife and children.” He continues, “I don’t think this is how your life was meant to turn out,” and reminds him that his uncle has done nothing except make him do bad things and take advantage of him because of his disposition, that last noun reminding us of both his flaws and his agency. After he finally testifies, in Mollie’s presence, to most of what he has done, in the movie’s most excruciating scene, the couple are given time in a room, and DiCaprio and Gladstone are spectacularly good at what direness can pass between a married couple even if they love each other. She waits for him to come clean, and he won’t. She asks if he has told her the whole truth. He answers he has. She has to keep pressing — What did he give her, in her insulin? What was in the shots? — and though he is demolished by her pain and his guilt, he won’t confess. Her face hardens, and she leaves. Scorsese’s movies have persistently left their protagonists in this semi-disingenuous state of sitting clueless amid the rubble. From Jimmy Doyle to Ace Rothstein to Howard Hughes, however much they intermittently adore their women, they find themselves gaping at the pain they’ve caused as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Their regard, when they feel it, is intense, but in the male-dominated world of striving they inhabit, that regard evaporates periodically, and they’re baffled if not enraged to be called on that. They’re indemnified by their knowledge of who they meant to be, and that ideal self becomes the version they stridently defend. Just because torturing prisoners is something we did … The last time we see Ernest, he’s still pitching between self-pity and self-awareness. He is in that same maddening state in which “Raging Bull” left Jake La Motta, who at one point manages to figure it out: “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey. Maybe it’s comin’ back to me.” Source photographs for illustration above: Apple TV+; Getty Images.Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including most recently “Phase Six” and “The Book of Aron,” which won the PEN/New England Award for fiction and the Clark Fiction Prize. He teaches at Williams College. More

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      The Artist Who Photoshops Paddington Into Everything

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      For nearly 1,000 straight days, Jason Chou has inserted Paddington, the anthropomorphized bear, into absurd situations. He has no plans to stop.Paddington is the busiest bear in Hollywood.While fans wait another year for the third installment of his film franchise, Paddington has found time for roles opposite Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks and Robert De Niro. He celebrated a goal with Ted Lasso, slipped on a spacesuit for “Interstellar” and appeared onstage with David Byrne. He devoured spicy wings on “Hot Ones,” cracked open a children’s book with LeVar Burton on “Reading Rainbow” and recently joined Thanksgiving feasts with characters from “Peanuts,” “The Sopranos” and “The Simpsons.”It is a daunting schedule made possible by the hard work and creativity of Jason Chou, a self-described Paddington enthusiast, who has spent nearly three years harnessing the magic of Photoshop to teleport the marmalade-loving, escapade-seeking, hard-staring bear into scenes from popular films and television shows.“At this point, I feel like some people anticipate it every day,” said Mr. Chou, 27, a student at Gnomon, a visual effects school in Los Angeles, “and it’s hard to let them down.”Mr. Chou, who has created a Paddington-related post every day since March 2021, is nearing a milestone: his 1,000th post, which, barring a Paddington-esque misadventure, will go live on Sunday. (The posts often appear after midnight on the East Coast.) Mr. Chou’s work lives on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he has more than 340,000 followers under his handle, @jaythechou, and where he has pledged to “Photoshop Paddington into a movie, game, or TV show until I forget.”Thanks to the work of Mr. Chou, Paddington has appeared in “Scream,” “28 Days Later,” “Halloween” and “Home Alone.”Jason ChouThe milestone is, if nothing else, one of the internet’s more unusual feats of endurance. (He has yet to forget.) In a telephone interview, Mr. Chou described his creative process.“I basically just try to fit him into a scene,” he said.Few people have Mr. Chou’s persistence, but Geoffrey Palmer, another internet artist, is one of them. Inspired by Mr. Chou’s work, Mr. Palmer has, for the past couple of years, spent a few minutes each weekday morning photoshopping Paddington into various tableaus from Magic: The Gathering, the fantasy card game.Yes, Mr. Chou has spawned a Paddington Photoshop coaching tree.“Anyone who loves Paddington is probably a good person,” Mr. Chou said.Mr. Palmer, 38, who makes television commercials for a mattress company, described Paddington as “a purely good thing that exists,” which helps explain why any of this works.As a beloved character from children’s books, animated television shows and now a film franchise — “Paddington in Peru,” the third film of the series, will be released in the United States in January 2025 — Paddington is known for his innate curiosity, which often lands him in sticky situations.Paddington hasn’t been seen on the big screen since 2017, but Mr. Chou, a visual effects student in Los Angeles, has kept the beloved character on the move.Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times“He sort of steps through all these different scenes in wonderment,” said Mr. Palmer, who lives in Prior Lake, Minn. “So it feels natural that Paddington would suddenly be in ‘The Godfather’ or in the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. I think it’s the whimsy of it that people appreciate and connect with so much.”Mr. Chou has always sought to stay true to Paddington’s principles.“Even in some of the action scenes, I kind of find myself saying: ‘Oh, Paddington! Don’t do this!’” he said. “I’m scared that one of these days I’m going to accidentally turn Paddington into a bad guy or something.”Mr. Chou’s winding path to Paddington traces back to a childhood love of the original “Star Wars” trilogy. His mother fed his obsession by presenting him with a boxed set of the movies, which included a DVD devoted to special effects.“I watched that all day,” Mr. Chou said.Soon enough, Mr. Chou was making his own animations with clay, and he continued to pursue his artistic interests in high school and at the University of California, Irvine, where he studied film and video production. It was while Mr. Chou was a student there that the seeds of his Paddington opus were sown.Inspired by Mr. Chou, Geoffrey Palmer began inserting Paddington into images from the Magic: The Gathering universe. His version of Progenitus came after a request from Mr. Chou.Geoffrey PalmerHe recalled being stuck on a freeway in Southern California one winter afternoon in 2018. He was feeling anxious about school and about finding a job, and the traffic — well, the traffic was brutal.“I thought: You know what? I’ll just go watch a movie,” he said.Mr. Chou pulled off the freeway and found a cinema, which happened to be showing “Paddington 2.” The woman at the concessions stand told him that he would love it. Mr. Chou had no idea that Paddington’s escapades would affect him so profoundly.The consistency of Paddington’s character resonated with him. Throughout the film, Paddington remains his bighearted, accident-prone self even as those around him change — and change for the better, often because of their interactions with him. Consider the unlikely friendships he makes in a prison full of hardened criminals. (Spoiler: Paddington goes to prison.)“But he just keeps doing his thing,” Mr. Chou said. “And no matter how many obstacles you throw at him, the power of being polite and being kind gets him through everything. I just felt so happy at the end.”A few years later, with free time during the pandemic, Mr. Chou was a regular visitor to Reddit. Social media challenges were in vogue, and Mr. Chou acknowledged that he “needed something to do.” So he photoshopped a giant Paddington into a scene from “Godzilla vs. Kong” and posted it to a film-related subreddit, pledging to do something similar every day.“Paddington 2” was critically acclaimed and grossed more than $200 million worldwide. The third installment of the film franchise, “Paddington in Peru,” will be released in the United States in January 2025.Getty Images“It was sort of light and fun content, to cheer people up,” Mr. Chou said. “And it kept growing.”The subreddit quickly turned into a forum for “film nerds to just kind of geek out about a photoshopped bear in their favorite movies,” said Jarick Simbol, one of Mr. Chou’s avid followers.Mr. Simbol, 28, used the platform Letterboxd to catalog the films and television shows that Mr. Chou used in his ever-expanding Paddington portfolio, which gained an even broader audience once Mr. Chou made the move to Twitter about six months into the experiment.Mr. Simbol tracked Mr. Chou’s posts for 665 straight days, before life got in the way.“I got a new job, ended up having to work long hours and just couldn’t keep up,” said Mr. Simbol, who lives in Long Beach, Calif., where he works in the video game and e-sports industry. “I mean, I was just writing things down. He’s actually doing the work. I think it’s genuinely impressive.”Since the start, Mr. Chou has prioritized consistency.“I do one a day,” said Mr. Chou, who hopes to work in the film industry. “And it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t get a lot of views, because that might affect the way I do things.”Mr. Chou has had to get creative to come up with new images every day for nearly three years. His dedication has attracted a large following on social media.Elizabeth Lippman for The New York TimesAnd while he dabbled in Patreon, the monetization service for artists, he quickly abandoned that effort. He didn’t get into the Paddington Photoshop business for the money — or for fame, though he did sound bummed that Paddington doesn’t follow him on X.“There must be a reason,” Mr. Chou said.Neither Paddington nor his representatives at StudioCanal, the French production house that oversees the “Paddington” franchise, responded to requests for comment.At this august stage of the series, Mr. Chou is facing challenges. Atop the list: He initially wanted to avoid using the same television show or film more than once, but that pool becomes shallower by the day.“I kind of boxed myself in,” Mr. Chou said.So he has made exceptions, while expanding his oeuvre to include video games and the occasional album cover. For example, there was a recent homage to Taylor Swift: “1989 (Paddington’s Version).”“In terms of an end goal, I don’t think there is one,” Mr. Chou said. “I would just feel bad if I stopped.” More