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      ‘All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt’ Review: Mississippi Memories

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      Raven Jackson’s film offers a rich portrait of growing up in rural Mississippi and heralds a fresh, poetic talent.The opening of Raven Jackson’s debut feature, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” announces the arrival of a filmmaker grounded in the lyrical beauty of her characters and the loamy grace of the place they so deeply inhabit. In this case, rural Mississippi.Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson), our protagonist, strokes a fish’s opalescent scales. Frogs call and cicadae whir. Mack’s father (Chris Chalk) guides her fishing as her sister, Josie (Jayah Henry), watches doubtful. This scene offers the first close-up of hands. There will be many more: hands grasping river silt, long fingers against the weave of a blanket swaddling a newborn, hands clasped in youthful want.While several performers portray Mack at different stages of her life, Charleen McClure depicts her as an observant teenager and as a pensive woman. The film sidesteps being a coming-of-age tale, instead looping from Mack’s past to her present, again and again, because that’s how memory unfolds.So, the film isn’t chiefly about what happens, however understatedly: the death of a young mother (the mesmerizing Sheila Atim), the tentativeness of first love, the relinquishment of a child. It is about the where of these events and how they really feel.The movie is steeped in the sensual (like a Toni Morrison novel or a Mary Oliver poem). Exquisite use of close-ups, fluid editing and a deeply observant sound design renders Mack’s story tactile but also poetic, making plain that the salt here is the stuff of tears, the stuff of sorrows and of joys.All Dirt Roads Taste of SaltRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘I’m Still Alive’: Sean Young Takes the Stage in ‘Ode to the Wasp Woman’

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      “I walk into a show and everybody’s kind of a little afraid. Then I hear, ‘Oh, but you’re so nice,’” the actress said of her Hollywood baggage.Manhattan has dressing rooms dingier than the one in the basement of the Actors Temple Theater. But not many. Sean Young, curled into a folding chair atop peeling linoleum tiles with a smudged mirror behind her, claimed not to mind.“I don’t have the disease of snobbery,” she said on a late October morning. “I have an incredibly high tolerance for dirty dressing rooms, you know what I mean? I like slumming it.”Young was in rehearsal blacks — leggings, a muscle tee, sneakers — her hair half up. She was two weeks out from the first preview of “Ode to the Wasp Woman,” which is scheduled to open Nov. 9 and run through Jan. 31. Written and directed by Rider McDowell, the play details the lurid, untimely deaths of four Hollywood has-beens and barely-weres. Young, in her New York stage debut, plays Susan Cabot, a B-movie actress whose titles include “The Wasp Woman.” Cabot was beaten to death in 1986 by her 22-year-old son.Young has had her own tragedies. “But here’s the good part of the story,” she cheerfully said. “I didn’t end up damaged.”A movie star in the 1980s (“Dune,” “Blade Runner,” “No Way Out”), Young saw her career derailed by the mid-1990s. She refused to play certain Hollywood games. In past interviews, she has claimed that after rejecting the advances of colleagues, including the actor and director Warren Beatty, she was dropped from projects. (A representative for Beatty denied this.) She played other games too enthusiastically, as when she showed up on the Warner Bros. set dressed as Catwoman, angling for a role, or tried to crash an Oscars party.James Woods, who starred with Young in the 1988 film “The Boost,” filed a $2 million civil suit accusing her of stalking behavior. Though that suit was eventually settled out of court, with Woods required to pay all of Young’s legal fees, Hollywood had already branded her as volatile, difficult, even crazy. Which explains a slide toward TV movies and guest spots. She also appeared on “Celebrity Rehab” for alcohol abuse.McDowell, the “Ode to the Wasp Woman” playwright and director, knew about what he referred to in a recent phone interview as Young’s “past antics,” but he had wanted a well-known actress of Cabot’s age. Young fit that bill. He had found rehearsing with her pleasant.“She’s very lighthearted,” he said. “There’s no Hollywood behavior.”In that grim dressing room, her voice was throatier, her features no longer those of an ingénue. But at 63, Young still has the fidgety electricity and easy glamour that made her indelible in those early screen roles. On a break from rehearsal, she discussed her current role and her early career. (She refers to films, series and plays indiscriminately as “shows.”) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Young and her castmates during rehearsals at the Actors Temple Theater in Manhattan. She plays a B-movie actress whose son beat her to death.Ye Fan for The New York TimesWhat was the first decade of your career like?I look at the first 10 years of my career as somewhat tragic, actually, because my mother — who has passed away, so I can say whatever I want — inserted herself into my career. What she really wanted was to collect 10 percent and not have to work too hard. By 28, I basically divorced her. I said, “I’m not doing this anymore. I’m sorry.” Those first years were messed up, in terms of career strategy. If I’d had a better manager, I would have had more of a running start. I don’t feel like the rest of my career was as great.What happened? It began so well and then it fell off a cliff.Part of that cliff was when James Woods accused me of stalking him. Then I moved to Sedona. And I said you can all go [expletive] yourselves. So I created part of that cliff.That generated a rumor, for a while, that you were crazy.Oh, that still floats! I walk into a show and everybody’s kind of a little afraid. Then I hear, “Oh, but you’re so nice.” Believe me, that was a pain in my ass. I did not like having to prove myself over and over and over again. This is what I’ve taught my sons: Mommy was right, but it didn’t do me any good. Being right is not actually your best play. Your self-preservation is actually more important than being right. Do you remember when I got fired by Warren Beatty?From “Dick Tracy”? Yes.I worked a week on that show. At the end of one day, he’s dropping me off at the Sheraton. He walks around the car. Mr. Gentleman opens the door. I’m getting out and he grabs my ears, trying to pull me into a kiss. I go, “What the [expletive] are you doing?” I mean, I yell at him. And he goes, “Well, I was just testing you.” I lean into him and I say, “Well, OK, are you clear now? That I’m not here to [expletive] you? I’m just here to do this part. Do you need to test me anymore?” Several days after that, I get fired. They put out in the papers “artistic differences.” Like I was the problem. That really was the definitive cliff. My joke now is I should have just said, “I’d love to [expletive]. I’m just busy right now.”Was there a culture of abuse in 1980s Hollywood?I don’t think there’s ever been a time in Hollywood where there wasn’t abuse. But a feature of the ’80s is that we were really overpaid. There was also a cocaine habit that pervaded, and that could lead to some very dramatic circumstances.Have things improved?I’m not so sure. I don’t think there’s any less egotism or narcissism. It’s funny. You see leading men or sometimes leading women, they turn. They lose their humility. They lose their sense of humor. They lose their gratitude. Those were things I was very lucky to hang on to.I’ve read that you’re a Trump supporter. He’s someone who has been accused of abuse. How do you square that?Until you’ve actually been red-pilled, until you’ve actually gotten some proof or done enough research or really taken a look at what modern life is, then you’re still eating the propaganda. I believe that the reason Trump has gotten the treatment he’s gotten is because he’s a direct threat to permanent Washington, D.C. I don’t care what kind of a person he is. What I care about is that he put a border on the southern part of our country. That’s the priority I feel.Young said her character in the play has “some damage to deal with. But it is also an opportunity to purge whatever’s there of your own.” Ye Fan for The New York TimesSo it matters less to you who he is than what he might be able to achieve?We have no way to really verify it. If you’re going on the assumption that [abuse] actually happened, you also have to ask yourself why this woman’s [expletive] was right there to be grabbed.But so many women have come forward.That’s why it’s done that way. Because that makes it much more believable. Even going on the assumption that maybe it is true, and I feel very bad that that could be the case, it’s still Trump coming in and being a very humongous threat to a part of the Washington, D.C., culture that actually, in my view, needs to be completely wiped out. That’s the priority I feel.What drew you to this play?I know this sounds silly, but actors just like to work. I can do anything. So when something comes my way now it’s like, thank you very much.Had you heard of Susan Cabot before this?I had heard of “The Wasp Woman,” although I never had seen it. For this, I watched it all the way through. It’s pretty cheesy, but I wanted to make sure I knew who she was. She had a great face.Do you think Susan Cabot is a tragic figure?Well, her son murdered her. That’s tragic. That’s at the top of the list. But her dad left her before her first birthday, and her mother was placed in an insane asylum. Show business might have been the thing that offered her any self-confidence. That was the one thing that had meaning for her. Maybe her career was the one moment where she might have felt like, I’m somebody. There’s a line in the script: “I came from nothing. From less than nothing where people laughed at my dreams.” So she’s pretty messed up.She didn’t have the career she wanted.There’s more than just her in this business who can say that. The way in for me, with every part, is I say: What am I going to learn by doing this? And is there anything about the role that I wouldn’t want to deal with? There was a feeling with Susan that there was going to be some damage to deal with. But it is also an opportunity to purge whatever’s there of your own. And when you purge something, it doesn’t haunt you anymore. You cry yourself out, and you really don’t need to cry anymore. You’ve gone to that place of discomfort and it didn’t kill you. I’m still alive. More

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      ‘Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’ Review: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey

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      The experimental documentary is punctuated by Giovanni’s poetry, read both by her and the actress Taraji P. Henson. But the film offers only what the poet is willing to give.Nikki Giovanni wants to die in zero gravity.“We don’t have any poets in space,” she says in a speech featured in “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” a documentary about the elusive artist, directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson.Giovanni would like to travel to the space station to record what she sees, adding that, when it’s time for her to go, she can simply be released into the ether. This desire — part jest, part genuine — drives the biographical project, in which the directors try to capture Giovanni’s legacy and her Afrofuturist vision for Black women.“Going to Mars” combines archival footage of Giovanni and moments in Black history, images of space and present-day interviews and speeches to paint an expansive picture of the poet’s evolution from young firebrand to elder. Giovanni posits that viewers should turn to Black women to learn about surviving in space because of our ability to survive all the hardships thrown at us on Earth. Throughout, the scenes are punctuated by her poetry, read by both Giovanni herself and the actress Taraji P. Henson.The documentary offers only what the poet is willing to give. And Giovanni is a challenging subject: She has firm boundaries, and there are questions she refuses to answer. “You want me to go to someplace that I’m not going to go, because it will make me unhappy,” she says in response to a question about her childhood. “I refuse to be unhappy about something I can do nothing about.”Yet other times Giovanni’s work speaks for itself. She won’t discuss how she felt after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, for instance, but what follows is a powerful rendering of her poem “Reflections on April 4, 1968,” in which she expresses anger over the injustice. Here, and in general, viewers must fill in their own blanks.Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni ProjectNot rated. Running time: 1 hours 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wingwomen’ Review: A Crew of Femme Fatales

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      A feisty Adèle Exarchopoulos does the heavy lifting in this otherwise uninspired action-comedy set in France.“Wingwomen” is the rare French action movie directed by a woman, Mélanie Laurent, the breakout star of “Inglourious Basterds” turned filmmaker in her native France. Laurent’s seventh feature, a girl-power spectacle, purports to be a naughtier version of “Charlie’s Angels” — its leading three ladies party, smoke and have vigorous libidos — so it’s too bad these spicier elements are muted by the film’s flat tone and derivative style.Laurent also stars as the film’s veteran thief, Carole, a steely, chiseled blonde. Her bestie, and No. 2, is Alex (Adèle Exarchopoulos), an expert sniper and an unabashed flirt whom the older Carole recruited years ago for a diamond heist. Now a seasoned crime team, Carole is the brains, Alex the muscle. The duo eventually gains a third leg with Sam (Manon Bresch), a racecar driver.Among the three gals, Alex does the heavy lifting on all fronts: She performs most of the kills, and she’s also — thanks to a feisty, potty-mouthed Exarchopoulos — the source of the film’s grit, sensuality and humor. In one scene, she bluntly fast-tracks a flirtation into a romp in the sack, which evolves into a moonlit fight scene with a peeping-Tom hit man. Alex gets bruised and bloodied, but so does the meathead baddie. It’s one of the few moments when the film’s feminist beatdowns feel genuinely triumphant: Alex shifts seamlessly from coy playgirl to seasoned killer, and she’s deliciously blasé about her body count, in both senses of the word.Yet “Wingwomen” isn’t just about Alex, which is a problem because Exarchopoulos is the only player whose charisma shines through the plot’s mechanical proceedings. Carole discovers she’s pregnant and wants out of the crime life, triggering the conflict: Godmother, a Sapphic mob boss played by Isabelle Adjani, says she will grant Carole her exit only if the ladies head to Corsica to steal a painting.Competent, unremarkable action scenes — a low-stakes motorcycle chase off the island coastline, a brief shootout in a woodland fortress — come together with ironic comic beats and snippy back-and-forths among the women. (The comedian Philippe Katerine occasionally steps in, too, as the Bosley-like intermediary Abner.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      What Is the Scariest Song of All Time? Poem? YouTube Video?

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      Times writers revealed their picks. Listen at your own risk.For Halloween, we asked writers and editors around The New York Times for the pieces of art or culture that they turn to when they need a good scare. The result is a collection of audio stories that will send a chill down your spine, make your hair stand on end and keep you entertained.The Spookiest Video on YouTubeMadison Malone Kircher, an internet culture reporter on the Styles desk, says “Ghost Car” is the most frightening online video she has ever seen. Warning: This one has a jump scare.The Spookiest Video on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Photo by Bob Olsen/Toronto Star, via Getty ImagesThe Scariest OperaThe final scene of “Salome,” Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera, might contain the scariest song ever written, according to our classical music critic, Zachary Woolfe. He found it “totally terrifying” when he first heard it as a child, and its intensity still overwhelms him years later.The Scariest Opera◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Image: Getty ImagesThe Scariest Thing I Know About the UniverseOur cosmic affairs correspondent, Dennis Overbye, knows a lot of alarming things about the universe. But the one that haunts him most? At any moment, without warning, the whole thing could simply disappear.The Scariest Thing I Know About the Universe◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe Scariest Song I KnowJon Pareles, chief popular music critic, describes why “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails, off the 1994 album of the same name, is “perfectly designed to make your skin crawl: structurally, sonically and psychologically.”The Scariest Song I Know◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Photo by 20th Century FoxThe Scariest Episode of TVMargaret Lyons, a television critic, dives into an episode of “The X-Files” so horrifying that executives felt compelled to pull it from syndication.The Scariest Episode of TV◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library, via Getty Images.The Scariest Poem I KnowCésar Vallejo’s “Piedra Negra Sobre Una Piedra Blanca,” or “Black Stone on a White Stone,” isn’t what you might think of as a traditional Halloween poem. There are no ghouls or goblins in it. But for Juliana Barbassa, deputy Books editor, reading this poem brings up a question that’s much more haunting: “When we consider our single life, our one opportunity to live well,” she asks, “are we doing that?”The Scariest Poem I Know◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; American Genre Film Archive + Bleeding SkullThe Scariest Horror Movie You (Probably) Haven’t SeenYou may know Freddy and Jason and Chucky, but Erik Piepenburg, who writes a horror column, would like to introduce you to “The McPherson Tape.” When you watch this 1989 movie, he says, “You’re watching the birth of a genre.”The Scariest Horror Movie You (Probably) Haven’t Seen More

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      Stream These 10 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in November

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      We rounded up the best titles leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers next month. That includes Oscar winners, family favorites and bawdy comedies.Family favorites, Oscar-winning (and nominated) acting, bawdy comedies and insightful documentaries are among the highlights of the titles leaving Netflix in the United States in November. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian’ (Nov. 6)Stream it here.When Jerry Seinfeld stepped away from his sitcom and retired his venerable stand-up act in 1998, he took a dramatic step back to square one. In this documentary from 2002, the director Christian Charles tracks that journey, following Seinfeld back into the world of stand-up clubs (and their often unforgiving audiences) as he develops an hour of new material from scratch. Seinfeld’s reboot is intercut with the story of Orny Adams, a young stand-up trying to follow the Seinfeld playbook. The counterpoint structure isn’t entirely successful — Adams isn’t nearly as compelling or charismatic as Seinfeld, so his scenes drag a bit — and some of the material hasn’t aged well (particularly Seinfeld’s initially moving climactic encounter with … Bill Cosby). But it’s a fascinating chronicle of the comedy industry, and Seinfeld’s shop talk with fellow comedians (including Robert Klein, Jay Leno, Colin Quinn, Chris Rock and Garry Shandling) is nearly as compelling as his material.‘Loving’ (Nov. 15)Stream it here.The writer and director Jeff Nichols rose through the ranks of indie cinema with deeply felt, richly textured portraits of contemporary life in the heartland, including “Shotgun Stories,” “Mud” and “Take Shelter.” For this, in 2016, his first period piece and first true story, he dramatizes the struggles of Richard and Mildred Loving, the plaintiffs in the 1967 Supreme Court case that, in effect, legalized interracial marriage. It was a monumentally important historical precedent, but Nichols doesn’t paint with the broad strokes of staid historical drama; he keeps his storytelling intimate, focusing on the offhand intimacy and unwavering love of the couple in question, played with grace and sensitivity by Joel Edgerton and an Oscar-nominated Ruth Negga.‘Disappearance at Clifton Hill’ (Nov. 29)Stream it here.A Canadian thriller with touches of buried trauma, conspiracy theory and true-crime podcasting, this 2020 moody effort from the director and co-writer Albert Shin concerns a young woman (Tuppence Middleton) haunted by a long-ago, half-understood encounter during a fishing trip that comes rushing back to her when she’s entrusted with handling a familial real estate transaction. Middleton is a sympathetic protagonist, and Hannah Gross is excellent as her sister, but the real M.V.P. here is the director David Cronenberg, who pops up in a small but memorable supporting turn as a podcaster with his own thoughts on what she saw, and what it meant.‘About Last Night’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.The chain of ownership here gets a tad convoluted, so stick with me: This romantic comedy from 2014 loosely remakes the yuppie-rom-com from 1986 starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, which was itself a loose adaptation of the 1974 play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” by David Mamet. Tropes about the battle of the sexes are so established, it seems, that a decades-old play can still yield both laughs and moments of truth. But as with the 1986 film, the most entertaining material is provided less by the central couple (here played by the perfectly acceptable Joy Bryant and Michael Ealy) than by their broadly comic B.F.F.s, memorably brought to life by Regina Hall and Kevin Hart.‘Arrival’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.Before he took on the massive challenge of bringing “Dune” to the big screen, the director Denis Villeneuve took his first crack at science fiction with this thoughtful 2016 exploration of the possibilities of extraterrestrial contact. While most filmmakers seize on the threat of life from beyond, focusing on alien invasions and property damage, Villeneuve’s film (adapted from Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life”) probes deeper, as a linguist (Amy Adams) works tirelessly to establish communication with the alien life-forms before narrow-minded military types jump to the wrong conclusions. Her struggle is a vivid and dramatic one, and the concluding passages are both narratively ingenious and deeply moving.‘Fences’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.Denzel Washington crafts one of his finest performances in this 2016 adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by August Wilson — and matches the force of his acting with his graceful and nuanced work as the picture’s director. He stars as Troy Maxson, once a rising star in the Negro leagues, now a husband and father who spends his days in a stew of regret, dissatisfaction and deception. His complicated relationships with his best friend (Stephen McKinley Henderson), his wife (Viola Davis) and his son (Jovan Adepo) form the story’s dramatic spine, as the tales Troy has long told others, and himself, about who he is come to a head. It’s a penetrating and powerful drama, and Davis’s subtle work landed her an Oscar for best supporting actress.‘Hook’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.The setup was so juicy — Steven Spielberg directing Robin Williams as Peter Pan, with Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook and Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell — that it had to be either a masterpiece or a grave disappointment. It felt like the latter when “Hook” landed in theaters in 1991; critics dismissed it as a mess, and the box office, while respectable, was disappointing. But children of that era (who were, let’s face it, the target audience) fell for it hard, wearing out their VHS tapes and forming lifelong attachments to Spielberg and Williams. Bring it up to Millennials sometime, and watch them start chanting for Rufio.‘Stuart Little’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.If you’d like a more straightforward family film, it’s hard to top this charming 1999 adaptation of E.B. White’s children’s book (co-written, improbably enough, by the suspense master M. Night Shyamalan). The ostensible stars are Jonathan Lipnicki (“Jerry Maguire”) and, as his parents, Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie — but the comic juice is supplied by the talented voice cast: David Alan Grier, Nathan Lane, Chazz Palminteri and Steve Zahn as streetwise cats; Bruno Kirby and Jennifer Tilly as paternal mice; and Michael J. Fox as the unfailingly upbeat titular mouse.‘Superbad’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.Seth Rogen expanded his comedy profile from valuable onscreen player to behind-the-scenes mover-and-shaker in 2007 when he parlayed his memorable appearances in the Judd Apatow comedies “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” into this uproarious production of a screenplay he penned with his longtime pal Evan Goldberg. The pair had written it years earlier while teenagers themselves (it’s no coincidence that the protagonists are named “Seth” and “Evan”), and the writing feels smuggled out from the front lines of teenage life, as their onscreen avatars (played with warmth and wit by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) grapple with hormonal awkwardness, unrequited love and the logistics of access to alcohol while trying to dutifully impress their respective crushes (played with charm and verve by Martha MacIsaac and, in her feature film debut, Emma Stone).‘Up in the Air’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.Few things are as compelling onscreen as watching a movie star subvert his or her image, and that’s what George Clooney does, quite adroitly, in his Oscar-nominated performance in this crisp comedy-drama from the co-writer and director Jason Reitman. Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, whose job is to fire people; he flies into town like an assassin-for-hire, dropping in to struggling companies to help their employees with their “career transitions.” Free of genuine attachments and a moral compass, Ryan finds his slick existence threatened by a new colleague (Anna Kendrick, terrific) who thinks their job can be done more efficiently online. Much of the picture’s subject matter is watermarked to its 2009 release date — it’s a product of the 2008 economic crisis — but its themes of professional dissatisfaction and emotional aimlessness have proven timeless. More

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      Studios Said to See Progress in Talks With Striking Actors

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      The entertainment companies are growing optimistic that the work stoppage may end soon, though some issues remain unresolved, people briefed on the matter said.Following several productive days at the negotiating table, Hollywood studios are growing optimistic that they are getting closer to a deal to end the 108-day actors’ strike, according to three people briefed on the matter.These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the labor situation, cautioned on Sunday that some issues remain unresolved with the actors, including protections around the use of artificial intelligence technology to create digital replicas of their likenesses without payment or approval. But other knots had started to become untangled, the people said.SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ union is known, had been asking for an 11 percent raise for minimum pay in the first year of a contract, for instance. Studios had insisted that they could offer no more than 5 percent, the same as had recently been given (and agreed to) by unions for writers and directors. Early last week, however, studios lifted their offer to 7 percent. By Friday, SAG-AFTRA had eased its demand to 9 percent.SAG-AFTRA did not respond to requests for comment. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the major entertainment companies, declined to comment.In an email to SAG-AFTRA members on Friday night, the union’s negotiating committee said, “We completed a full and productive day.” On Saturday, the union sent a routine reminder about pickets planned the coming week, including one scheduled for Wednesday at Walt Disney Studios. The sides continued to negotiate on Sunday.Last week, studio executives made it known — in conversations with filmmakers, agents, reporters and actors themselves — that a deal must be done (or nearly so) by the end of this week, or else sets were likely to remain dark for another two months.Put another way, unless talks speed up, January could be the soonest that casts (and crews) see paychecks.Brinkmanship? Of course. It’s a standard part of any strike. The companies, however, said they were simply pointing to the calendar. It will take time to reassemble creative teams, a process complicated by the coming holidays. Preproduction (before anyone gathers on a set) for new shows can take up to 12 weeks, with movies taking roughly 16 weeks. Bake in the time for contract ratification by the SAG-AFTRA members.More than 4,000 mostly workaday actors responded on Thursday with an open letter to their union, saying, “We have not come all this way to cave now.” They added, “We cannot and will not accept a contract that fails to address the vital and existential problems that we all need fixed.”At the same time, some stars have pressured union leaders to approach negotiations with greater urgency. Out-of-work crew members have also grown increasingly frustrated with the Hollywood shutdown. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents 170,000 crew members in North America, has estimated that its West Coast members alone have lost more than $1.4 billion in wages.For their part, companies are under pressure to salvage their spring television schedules and movie lineups. On Friday, Disney delayed a live-action version of “Snow White,” which had been scheduled for March 26, because it would be impossible to finish in time. Earlier in the week, Paramount pushed back Tom Cruise’s next “Mission: Impossible” movie, along with “A Quiet Place: Day One,” starring Lupita Nyong’o.The entertainment business has been at a standstill for months because of strikes by writers, who walked out in May, and actors, who joined them in July. The writers’ strike was resolved last month, prompting hopes of a speedy resolution between studios and the actors’ union. Instead, the process has been slow.Talks between the sides restarted on Tuesday after breaking down earlier in the month over a union proposal for a per-subscriber fee from streaming services, which Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos publicly dismissed as a “levy” and “a bridge too far.” SAG-AFTRA accused studio executives of “bully tactics.”It is unclear how the streaming issue might be resolved. But there is real hope in Hollywood that people may soon be back to work.“At this time, we have no concrete information from any studio,” Michael Akins, an International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees official in Georgia, wrote to members on Friday. “But the writing is clearly on the wall that the industry shutdown is in its final days.”John Koblin More

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      A Critic With Monsters on His Mind

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      The scariest part of Erik Piepenburg’s job as a reporter who covers horror movies? Films that fail to frighten him.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Some 10-year-olds might shield their eyes while watching a horror movie. But at that age, Erik Piepenburg was glued to the screen.Growing up in Cleveland, Mr. Piepenburg developed a love of all things horror. Every Friday night at around 11:30, he and his grandmother would turn on the television, flip to channel 43 and hope to find one of their favorite black-and-white films playing — horror classics like “Dracula,” “The Wolf Man” or “Frankenstein.”A former Theater editor for The New York Times, Mr. Piepenburg now uses his monstrous knowledge of the horror genre to write about it in a column for the Movies section. Every week, he recommends five recent horror movies — of the supernatural, psychological or otherwise terrifying kind — that are worth streaming.He’s not partial to any one subgenre, but he does have one hang-up: “If I see one more movie about people going to a cabin in the woods or moving to a haunted house, I’m going to throw my hands up,” he said in a recent conversation.Here, Mr. Piepenburg shares his thoughts on some of the year’s greatest scares, the current golden age of horror and the unforeseen twists and turns of writing about monsters. This interview has been edited and condensed.Where did you get the idea for your column?My editor, Mekado Murphy, had wanted to start a horror column during the coronavirus pandemic, when so many people were forced to stay home and stream films. I offer readers films I think are worth watching in a sea of horror movies — some of which are awful and others that are terrific. I try to watch — or, at least, get through — two to five horror movies a week to make my deadline. I’m not complaining; I think it’s great that we are having this golden age of horror movies, but I would love for someone to tell me what comedy movies I should watch.What contributed to this golden age?There have been several golden ages of horror. There were the psychological thrillers and exploitation films of the ’60s and the slasher movies of the ’80s. I think what’s happening right now is that we are living in such uncertain times in terms of politics, environmental issues, civil rights issues. Anytime there’s global uncertainty, horror movies respond. They hold up a mirror to society and say, “Look at the monsters we’ve become.”So it should come as no surprise that at a time when the world seems topsy-turvy, horror filmmakers would decide the time is right for them to explore why.On the 50th anniversary of “The Exorcist,” you and other Times critics wrote essays that re-explored the film. What story did you want to tell?Mekado told me that he wanted to do this interactive package for the movie. We had a conversation about ways to cover the film and I jokingly said that I always saw “The Exorcist” as a queer movie, and it stuck. I was glad to have the chance to explore the possession in the film through a queer lens. It’s fun to think about the ways in which “The Exorcist” — and most horror movies — aren’t just about the monsters, but the people who create them and what the monsters represent.In an article from this year, you also described “M3gan” as a gay movie. Do you think gay audiences have a special affinity for horror?Well, I think all horror movies are about one of two things: trauma or gayness. That’s just my queer-theory lens that people can accept or reject. But in horror movies, there’s often this notion of otherness — of the monster existing outside of societal norms. I think queer audiences can align themselves with villains who feel like outsiders, like no one understands their feelings.I also think queer audiences appreciate the outrageous, camp quality of horror. “M3gan” is a perfect example. The villain is a demon that you kind of want to be friends with. I know people in my life who can be monsters, but I love them anyway.What trends are you seeing in the horror genre right now?There’s certainly a lot of Covid-inspired films — movies about being locked up inside and fears about contagions. I would say another trend is the slow-burn horror movie, one that takes time to unfold instead of hitting you over the head with monsters, explosions, ghosts and conventional horror scares. The slow burn delivers tiny moments of unease so that by the film’s end, your entire body has become so tense that it’s hard to shake. Those are some of my favorites.What’s a recent horror movie you wish everyone would watch?There’s a film called “The Hole in the Fence,” which I wrote about in my column. It’s about a group of young boys at a religious camp who undergo a sort of “Lord of the Flies” experience. It’s terrifying and has almost no gore, but it really got under my skin. There was another movie that I saw in January called “LandLocked.” Again, there’s no gore. There’s no monsters. But it is a quietly effective horror film. It made me cry. It’s a treat when I can watch a horror movie that moves me so much that even as my heart is racing, I tear up.Is there a horror-related topic you want to explore next in an article?There have been a couple of experimental horror films that toy with form, structure, sound and visuals, like “The Outwaters” and “Skinamarink.” Sometimes the screen will go black or the audio will be distorted. Experimental horror challenges viewers not only to understand horror through monsters, but through the physical experience of watching the film. I think we’re going to start seeing more of those in the future. More