Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘White Balls on Walls’ Review: Time With the Gatekeepers

      by

      The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam becomes a somewhat flimsy case study for fine-art diversity and inclusion conversations in this documentary.From its tub-like exterior to its gallery walls and vast conference room, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is awash in white. But the Dutch documentary “White Balls on Walls” concerns a different whiteness (and maleness) endemic in one of the Netherland’s cultural institutions. The movie’s cheeky title comes from a protest that the arts-activist collective the Guerrilla Girls (or an offshoot) staged outside the museum in 1995.The filmmaker Sarah Vos began following the museum’s director, Rein Wolfs, and his staff in 2019 as they set out to address diversity and inclusion. The museum’s slogan, “Meet the icons of modern art,” had been met with scrutiny of the who-decides-what-is-iconic variety. Vos tracks those efforts through the height of the pandemic and the social justice demands wrought by the killing of George Floyd. There will be some awkward social distancing and a doubling down on Wolfs’s sense that the museum must include a richer array of artists, welcome a more diverse demographic and, while it’s at it, hire more people of color.With access to behind-the-scenes processes, the documentary can be instructive about the work of changing legacy institutions, but also wincingly cautionary as Wolfs, his administrators and curators get tangled up in numbers and nomenclature. (“‘Gender balance,’ that sounds nicely diverse,” a woman says in an early meeting.) Their internal conversations — about colonialism, gender and Dutch identity — become more nuanced when people of color arrive. Charl Landvreugd, the museum’s head of research and curatorial practice, and the curators Vincent van Velsen and Yvette Mutumba, offer that nuance and give context to the museum’s quandaries. But even they don’t always pierce the hermetically sealed feel of the documentary.White Balls on WallsNot rated. In English and Dutch, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Wrath of Becky’ Review: Teenage Riot

      by

      The traumatized teen is back to finalize even more fascists in this comically bloody sequel.Continuing the vigilante adventures of its teen-drifter namesake (Lulu Wilson), “The Wrath of Becky” (a sequel to “Becky” in 2020) finds her once again doing battle with far-right knuckle-draggers.It has been two years since neo-Nazis killed her father, and Becky and her canine companion, Diego, have burned through several foster families before washing up in the home of the kindly Elena (Denise Burse). Now 16, Becky works as a diner waitress, plays Scrabble with Elena and fantasizes about slicing the throat of a sexist customer. All she needs is an inciting incident, and here, on cue, come the Noble Men, a clump of white supremacists and would-be insurrectionists, who violently attack Elena and make off with Diego. If “John Wick” taught us anything, it’s never, ever harm the dog.Directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, “The Wrath of Becky” follows the rote rhythms of the revenge thriller as Becky, done up in red boiler suit and blue nails, follows the men to a cozy farmhouse and eavesdrops on their racist plans. The subsequent slaughters are inventive, the pacing lively and the cat-and-mouse structure entertaining; but the rodents themselves are — aside from their suave leader, played by Seann William Scott — such misogynistic morons that Becky’s predominance is never in doubt.Considering the current swarming of groups like this, “The Wrath of Becky” should at least have given us chills. But the movie’s almost jokey treatment of its slobbering incels, combined with Becky’s comic posturings, hemorrhage the tension. Wilson, however, is consistently terrific, and deserves more thoughtful material. If there is to be a third film, the ending of this one suggests she might get it.The Wrath of BeckyRated R for disgusting dialogue and dripping brain matter. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Kandahar’ Review: Marooned in a Dull Movie

      by

      Gerard Butler plays an undercover C.I.A. agent hunted by various foes in an underwhelming action film devoid of any suspense or, well, action.Everybody wants to find the undercover C.I.A. agent Tom Harris (Gerard Butler), who is marooned while on a mission in Afghanistan: the Taliban, an Iranian hound, ISIS, a Pakistani secret operative. The only people who won’t be on his tail are those looking for a good action film — the stupefyingly sluggish “Kandahar” isn’t it.For his third collaboration with the director Ric Roman Waugh after “Greenland” (by far the best of the three, from 2021) and “Angel Has Fallen” (2019), Butler has picked a rather ineffective vehicle, just like when Tom and his translator, Mo, steal a car that promptly gets a flat as they rush to catch a flight out of Kandahar.Not only is the pace tepid at best, but Tom is a bore, with at least three characters more intriguing than he is. Chief among them is Mo, portrayed by the excellent Navid Negahban (“Homeland,” “Aladdin”). An Afghan exile, he has returned home to try to locate his sister-in-law — a more compelling quest than Butler’s, whose prime motivation is … what exactly? Not being late to his daughter’s graduation in London? The nominal star is constantly overshadowed by his co-stars, who also include Ali Fazal as the dashing, motorcycle-riding Pakistani agent and Bahador Foladi as Iran’s answer to Inspector Javert.More aggravating is the way “Kandahar” keeps bringing up girls and women — on a large scale, the Taliban oppresses them; on a more intimate one, Tom is an absentee husband and father — without actually giving any of them decent screen time. The lip service only makes that absence more noticeable.KandaharRated R for language and ridiculous roughness. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘About My Father’ Review: Robert De Niro in Dad Mode Again

      by

      The comedian Sebastian Maniscalco enlists his “Irishman” colleague in this labored comedy, where gags fall flat.The stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco first worked with Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 crime drama “The Irishman.” Maniscalco played the erratic real-life gangster Joey Gallo; De Niro’s character, Frank Sheeran, kills him in the movie. Scorsese has a near-uncanny knack for effectively using professional funnymen in serious roles — Jerry Lewis in “The King of Comedy” and Don Rickles in “Casino” to cite but two — and Maniscalco acquitted himself well in his small part.The point we are obliged to get to is this: Maniscalco has now enlisted De Niro to act in “About My Father,” a romantic comedy largely derived from the comedian’s own life. How largely? Well, Maniscalco plays a character named Sebastian Maniscalco. He’s engaged to his ideal woman, Ellie (Leslie Bibb, who’s charming here), and has finally been invited to her very rich family’s Fourth of July weekend. In short order, Sebastian’s father, Salvo, is invited too. Salvo is an Italian immigrant from Sicily who runs a beauty salon, has a fierce work ethic, is dead cheap and severely opinionated, and has several other traits that make for engaging stand-up comedy and cinematic character work.De Niro is reliable in his comedic mode. Here, with his hand gestures and the frequent monosyllabic exclamations of exasperation, the actor’s Salvo sometimes resembles a kinder, gentler version of his Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull.” The supporting players David Rasche and Kim Cattrall as the future in-laws provide good comic foils for De Niro.Alas, in less than an hour and a half of running time (the director Laura Terruso does orchestrate the proceedings with a palpable sense of dispatch), the movie demonstrates how quickly “amiable and inconsequential” can shift to “hackneyed and labored.” A sickly poultry improvisation gag involving a peacock falls flat, and the speed bump to the happy ending is right out of the Hallmark Movie Scriptwriter’s Handbook.About My FatherIn theaters. Rated PG-13 for language, partial nudity, improvised-poultry humor. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Being Mary Tyler Moore’ Review: A Tip of the Hat to the Tossed Hat

      by

      This charming documentary aims to peek under the smile of a groundbreaking television star.No one was harder on Mary Tyler Moore than Mary Tyler Moore. “I was brought up to be a perfect person, or to look like a perfect person,” she admitted in her first memoir, “After All” (1995). Her sitcoms convinced audiences she was the best girl in the world — and the pressure to measure up to her characters kept her grinning.“Being Mary Tyler Moore,” a charming documentary directed by James Adolphus, aims to peek under the smile. We catch a glimpse of her sorrows and frustrations, of disappointments and deaths (and, yes, of that stinker where she played a nun who swoons for Elvis). But the film itself is so smitten by Moore that it skips over the worst of her self-inflected wounds. Like, for instance, Moore’s discussion in her book of when she’d get drunk and play Russian roulette with her car before eventually embracing sobriety, and, with it, the relief of confessing her flaws.Fair enough. There’s plenty to talk about simply touring Moore’s career, although plaudits from Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Reese Witherspoon are merely quick hits of celebrity glitz. The film is structured by archival footage of two television interviews with Moore. The first, from 1966, is sexist and condescending. The second, conducted 15 years later, is empathetic and probing. Between them, Moore had reshaped how women were treated on the small screen.She’d be quicker to call herself a realist than a feminist. Yet, we’re struck by how little of her TV persona was real. America’s favorite singleton hadn’t been single since high school — and its favorite plucky careerist had, in truth, lost jobs for being pregnant or requesting a raise. The irony is that Moore’s perfect image advanced the culture even as it hobbled her own joy.Being Mary Tyler MooreNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Influencer’ Review: Reading Between the Likes

      by

      This thriller, about a mysterious woman’s obsession with online influencers, treats social media as a breeding ground for fear and obsessionFor better or worse, it’s a bit of a wonder that mainstream horror hasn’t more heavily used the online world as a springboard for stories of obsession and fear. The parts are so clearly apparent — invisible tormentors and stalking catfishers, the tension of a notification chime — especially after watching “Influencer,” a thriller about a mysterious woman who targets online influencers as they post throughout vacation getaways.After Madison (Emily Tennant), an Instagram influencer traveling in Thailand, is left waiting for her boyfriend, Ryan (Rory J. Saper), at a resort, a woman named CW (Cassandra Naud) befriends her and shows her around town. Eventually, things turn awry for Madison as she falls into CW’s creepy online game, and Ryan, arriving in Thailand soon after, becomes wrapped up in the web.There is something in here poking at the unsightly truths about parasocial relationships in the digital age, but the director Kurtis David Harder (who wrote the screenplay alongside Tesh Guttikonda) avoids contorting the film into an overt social thriller, instead prioritizing frights and twists. That’s mostly a wise decision, but the film is left feeling a tad thin — in its explorations of both its larger ideas and its characters and their motivations (most of all, the story leaves too much blank space in CW’s origins).Even so, Harder has made good and entertaining use of a premise that could have become a simple gimmick, and Naud and Saper prove strong leads as their characters try to read each other between the likes.InfluencerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Attachment Diaries’ Review: Love, Sick

      by

      A gynecologist and her patient form a horrifyingly twisted connection in this batty, bloody Argentine melodrama.A trashy treat coated in a high-art gloss, “The Attachment Diaries” gleefully kneads melodrama, noir, horror and sexual perversion into a pathological romance between two deeply damaged women.The setting is 1970s Argentina, where a rain-soaked, apparently destitute Carla (Jimena Anganuzzi) arrives at the home of Irina (Lola Berthet), a severe gynecologist. Carla, claiming to have been gang-raped, is seeking an illegal abortion (her second, as it turns out), but her pregnancy is too far along. Instead, Irina offers to shelter Carla until the birth, then sell the child to a wealthy couple. Irina, it seems, has more than one lucrative side hustle; she also has a Ph.D. in chemistry, which will serve the women well when their pathologies hit the fan and the bodies hit the floor.Defined by a near-tactile tension between the profligacies of the script (by the director, Valentín Javier Diment) and the coolly reserved elegance of Claudio Beiza’s cinematography, “The Attachment Diaries” takes its excesses so seriously that it’s impossible not to laugh. As the women’s twisted histories and sick behaviors are slowly revealed — Carla, for instance, performs dark experiments in decoupage, while Irina excels at dismemberment — Diment flirts with farce. The film’s taproot, however, slurps insistently from a deep reservoir of misandry and rape trauma, commonalities that wrap the women in a cocoon of shared pain.At once lugubrious and nutty, depressing and daring, “The Attachment Diaries” unfolds, for the first hour or so, in the softest black and white. Then, just past the midpoint, the screen floods with a rich, golden light, timed to coincide with Irina’s first experience of sexual release. Psychotic killer and star-crossed lover have just become one and the same.The Attachment DiariesNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      How Geena Davis Continues to Tackle Gender Bias in Hollywood

      by

      “Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.Geena Davis and her family were returning from dinner in their small Massachusetts town when her great-uncle Jack, 99, began drifting into the oncoming lane of traffic. Ms. Davis was about 8, flanked by her parents in the back seat. Politeness suffused the car, the family, maybe the era, and nobody remarked on what was happening, even when another car appeared in the distance, speeding toward them.Finally, moments before impact, Ms. Davis’s grandmother issued a gentle suggestion from the passenger seat: “A little to the right, Jack.” They missed by inches.Ms. Davis, 67, relayed this story in her 2022 memoir, “Dying of Politeness,” an encapsulation of the genially stultifying values that she had absorbed as a child — and that a great many other girls absorb, too: Defer. Go along to get along. Everything’s fine.Of course the two-time Academy Award-winning actress ditched that pliability long ago. From “Thelma & Louise” and “A League of Their Own” to this year’s coming-of-age drama, “Fairyland,” back-seat docility just wasn’t an option. Indeed, self-possession was her thing. (Or one of her things. Few profiles have failed to mention her Mensa membership, her fluency in Swedish or her Olympic-caliber archery prowess.) But cultivating her own audaciousness was only Phase 1.Next year will mark two decades since the creation of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. When her daughter was a toddler, Ms. Davis couldn’t help noticing that male characters vastly outnumbered female characters in children’s TV and movies.“I knew everything is completely imbalanced in the world,” she said recently. But this was the realm of make-believe; why shouldn’t it be 50/50?It wasn’t just the numbers. How the women were represented, their aspirations, the way young girls were sexualized: Across children’s programming, Ms. Davis saw a bewilderingly warped vision of reality being beamed into impressionable minds. Long before “diversity, equity and inclusion” would enter the lexicon, she began mentioning this gender schism whenever she had an industry meeting.“Everyone said, ‘No, no, no — it used to be like that, but it’s been fixed,’” she said. “I started to wonder, What if I got the data to prove that I’m right about this?”Amid Hollywood’s trumpeted causes, Ms. Davis made it her mission to quietly harvest data. Exactly how bad is that schism? In what other ways does it play out? Beyond gender, who else is being marginalized? In lieu of speechifying and ribbons, and with sponsors ranging from Google to Hulu, Ms. Davis’s team of researchers began producing receipts.Ms. Davis wasn’t the first to highlight disparities in popular entertainment. But by leveraging her reputation and resources — and by blasting technology at the problem — she made a hazy truth concrete and offered offenders a discreet path toward redemption. (While the institute first focused on gender data, its analyses now extend to race/ethnicity, L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+, disability, age 50-plus and body type. Random awful finding: Overweight characters are more than twice as likely to be violent.)Geena Davis accepting the Governors Award for her institute during the Primetime Emmy Awards last year. At her left are the screenwriter Shonda Rhimes and the actor Sarah Paulson.Kevin Mazur/WireImage, via Getty ImagesEven when braced for it, the institute’s findings are staggering: In the 101 top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2005, just 28 percent of speaking characters were female. Even in crowd scenes — even in animated crowd scenes — male characters vastly outnumber female ones. In the 56 top grossing films of 2018, women portrayed in positions of leadership were four times more likely than men to be shown naked. (The bodies of 15 percent of them were filmed in slow motion.) Where a century ago women had been fully central to the budding film industry, they were now a quantifiable, if sexy, afterthought.“When she started to collect the data, it was kind of incredible,” said Hillary Hallett, a professor of American studies at Columbia University and the author of “Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood.” “This wasn’t a vague feeling anymore. You couldn’t claim this was just some feminist rant. It was like, ‘Look at these numbers.’”Ms. Davis is by turns reserved and goofy offscreen — a thoughtful responder, an unbridled guffawer. (At one point she enunciated the word “acting” so theatrically that she feared it would be hard to spell in this article.) On a recent afternoon in Los Angeles, she took a break from illustrating the children’s book she had written, “The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page.”“I grew up very self-conscious about being the tallest kid — not just the tallest girl — in my class,” she said. “I had this childhood-long wish to take up less space in the world.”In time she began to look beyond her height — six feet — to the insidious messages reinforcing such insecurity.“Hollywood creates our cultural narrative — its biases trickle down to the rest of the world,” she said in “This Changes Everything,” the 2018 documentary she produced about gender inequity in the film industry. The documentary takes its name from the incessant refrain she kept hearing after the success of “Thelma & Louise,” and later “A League of Their Own.” Finally the power and profitability of female-centric movies had been proven — this changes everything! And then, year after year, nothing.Geena Davis, right, with the director Penny Marshall on the set of “A League of Their Own” in 1992.Columbia Pictures, via Everett CollectionIt was here that Ms. Davis planted her stake in the ground — a contention around why certain injustices persist, and how best to combat them. Where movements like #MeToo and Times Up target deliberate acts of monstrosity, hers would be the squishier universe of unconscious bias. Did you unthinkingly cast that doctor as a male? Hire that straight white director because he shares your background? Thought you were diversifying your film, only to reinforce old stereotypes? (Fiery Latina, anyone?)It’s a dogged optimism that powers Ms. Davis’s activism — a faith that Hollywood can reform voluntarily. When she goes to a meeting now, she’s armed with her team’s latest research, and with conviction that improvement will follow.“Our theory of change relies on the content creators to do good,” said Madeline Di Donno, the president and the chief executive of the institute. “As Geena says, we never shame and blame. You have to pick your lane, and ours has always been, ‘We collaborate with you and want you to do better.’”If a car full of polite Davises can awaken to oncoming danger, perhaps filmmakers can come to see the harm they’re perpetuating.“Everyone isn’t out there necessarily trying to screw women or screw Black people,” said Franklin Leonard, a film and television producer and founder of the Black List, a popular platform for screenplays that have not been produced. “But the choices they make definitely have that consequence, regardless of what they believe about their intent.”He added: “It’s not something people are necessarily aware of. And there’s no paper trail — it can only be revealed in aggregate. Which gets to the value of Geena’s work.”“Hollywood creates our cultural narrative — its biases trickle down to the rest of the world,” Ms. Davis said in “This Changes Everything,” the 2018 documentary she produced about gender inequity in the film industry.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesUnique to the institute’s efforts is its partnership with the University of Southern California’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory, which uses software and machine learning to analyze scripts and other media. One tool born of that collaboration, Spellcheck for Bias, employs AI to scan scripts for stereotypes and other problematic choices. (Janine Jones-Clark, the executive vice president for inclusion for NBCUniversal’s global talent development and inclusion team, recalled a scene in a television show in which a person of color seemed to be acting in a threatening manner toward another character. Once flagged by the software, the scene was reshot.)Still, progress has been mixed. In 2019 and 2020, the institute reported that gender parity for female lead characters had been achieved in the 100 highest-grossing family films and in the top Nielsen-rated children’s television shows. Nearly 70 percent of industry executives familiar with the institute’s research made changes to at least two projects.But women represented just 18 percent of directors working on the top 250 films of 2022, up only 1 percent from 2021, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film; the percentage of major Asian and Asian American female characters fell from 10 percent in 2021 to under 7 percent in 2022. A 2021 McKinsey report showed that 92 percent of film executives were white — less diverse than Donald Trump’s cabinet at the time, as Mr. Leonard of the Black List noted.“I think the industry is more resistant to change than anybody realizes,” he added. “So I’m incredibly appreciative of anyone — and especially someone with Geena’s background — doing the non-glamorous stuff of trying to change it, being in the trenches with Excel spreadsheets.”Ms. Davis has not quit her day job. (Coming soon: a role in “Pussy Island,” a thriller from Zoe Kravitz in her directorial debut.) But acting shares a billing with her books, the diversity-focused Bentonville Film Festival she started in Arkansas in 2015 — even the roller coasters she rides for equity. (Yes, Thelma is now Disney’s gender consultant for its theme parks and resorts.)“We’re definitely heading in the right direction,” she said. “Bill Gates called himself an impatient optimist, and that feels pretty good for what I am.” More