Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Tribeca Festival Unveils 2023 Lineup With Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and More

      by

      Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and Randall Park, among others, are making their directorial debuts at the annual New York event, set for June.Films directed by performers like Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and Randall Park will be a focus of the 2023 Tribeca Festival, organizers said Tuesday as they announced the event lineup. Also on the schedule will be the premiere of a Marvel documentary about the iconic comic book writer Stan Lee.This year’s festival, which will run in Lower Manhattan from June 7 to 18, will include 109 feature films from 127 filmmakers across 36 countries. Among those filmmakers will be 43 first-timers.“The Tribeca Festival is a celebratory event that honors artists and uplifts attendees, and this year is no exception,” the festival’s co-founder, Jane Rosenthal, said in a statement, adding that the event will offer “storytelling as a powerful tool of democracy, activism and social awareness.”Peretti, an actor perhaps best known for her work on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” will bring to Tribeca the world premiere of “First Time Female Director,” a comedy she also wrote about a woman filmmaker struggling to fill the shoes of her male predecessor.Shannon went behind the camera for “Eric LaRue,” a world-premiere drama in which parents grappling with the fallout of their son’s shocking crime seek solace in rival religious congregations.And Park, whose acting career took off after he landed a starring role in the television sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” will take “Shortcomings” to Tribeca after it screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.Also in the lineup will be the world premieres of “Maggie Moore(s)” by John Slattery; “Fresh Kills” by Jennifer Esposito; and the North American premiere of “The Listener” by Steve Buscemi.The Marvel documentary “Stan Lee,” from the director David Gelb, will be among the 53 nonfiction features at the festival.The festival is known for its live events and several are scheduled for the 2023 edition. Sara Bareilles will perform after the world premiere of “Waitress, the Musical — Live on Broadway!,” which features her music and lyrics. Gloria Gaynor will perform following the world premiere of the documentary “Gloria Gaynor: “I Will Survive.” And a conversation with Dan Rather and the director Frank Marshall will take place after the world premiere of the film “Rather.” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Book Review: ‘My Cousin Maria Schneider,’ by Vanessa Schneider

      by

      In a troubling new memoir, Vanessa Schneider contends that the sexually explicit 1972 film exploited, and irrevocably hurt, her cousin.MY COUSIN MARIA SCHNEIDER: A Memoir, by Vanessa Schneider. Translated by Molly Ringwald.For many actresses, the path of the ingénue can be treacherous. Celebrated for her beauty and youth, the ingénue is defined almost exclusively by her sexuality. An outsize amount of attention is paid to her looks and her body, little interest to her mind. As she grows older, opportunities diminish. Forced to act younger than her age and compete with newer faces, she eventually discovers that her career has hit a dead end. Among the long list of cautionary tales: Jean Seberg, the darling of French New Wave cinema, who died by suicide at the age of 40; Debra Winger, who shocked Hollywood by retiring at the height of her fame at 40; and, of course, the French actress Maria Schneider.Schneider was only 20 years old when she catapulted to fame after starring opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris.” In its most notorious scene, Brando, who plays a grief-stricken man named Paul, rapes Schneider, who plays a young woman named Jeanne, improvising with butter as a lubricant. Bertolucci and Brando conspired to film the scene, which Schneider claimed wasn’t in the original script, without her consent. Bertolucci later explained his reason for that decision as wanting Schneider “to respond like a girl, not an actress.” Because of its violence and frank treatment of sex, the film was a sensation, confirming Bertolucci’s status as a provocative filmmaker and cementing the comeback of Brando, who for some time had been seen as a Hollywood has-been.For Schneider, it was her “cross to bear,” writes the French journalist and novelist Vanessa Schneider in “My Cousin Maria Schneider,” a slender memoir composed in second person, directly addressed to the actress and elegantly translated from the French by Molly Ringwald. The book, first published in 2018 in France, is both a beautiful eulogy (Schneider died of breast cancer in 2011) and a much-needed corrective — an opportunity to finally set the record straight for an actress long mischaracterized and unfairly judged.The “Last Tango” scene would define Schneider for the rest of her life, explains Vanessa Schneider. Subjected to unrelenting negative publicity and attention surrounding it (a dairy manufacturer once used Schneider’s image on its packaging; a flight attendant served her a pat of butter without prompting), Schneider acted out. She spoke too candidly to the press about her personal life; she dismissed famous directors and actors; she walked off film sets.That Schneider was also addicted to heroin didn’t help, and Vanessa Schneider wonders if the drugs and partying were ways to avoid the spotlight so instantly thrust on the young actress.Growing up, Maria Schneider was unwanted. Her father, the French actor Daniel Gélin, was not involved in her childhood, and her mother, Marie-Christine Schneider, sent Schneider to live with a nursemaid when she was 8. Her mother’s “sex life was never a secret,” writes Vanessa Schneider. “A story often told … is of the time your mother was in bed with a man and called out for you to fetch her diaphragm.” She also reveals that Schneider’s mother “elected not to take the trip from Nice to Paris” for her daughter’s funeral, “saying she was too tired.”Vanessa Schneider’s parents took in Maria as a teenager. From an early age, Vanessa worshiped her older cousin, saving every clipping of her from magazines and newspapers in a red plastic binder. As a result, this memoir is written with a rare sense of intimacy and devotion. It warmly captures the highlights of Maria Schneider’s life: her enduring friendships with Brigitte Bardot and Nan Goldin, her pride in starring in films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Passenger” and her later advocacy for women in film.It is also, at moments, unsparing, describing Schneider’s struggles with addiction, financial woes and other embarrassing family drama. At one point Vanessa Schneider questions whether her cousin would like such an unvarnished portrayal of her life, and deletes what she’s written. “I often worry that you won’t approve of the story I’m telling, Maria,” she explains. “You won’t like that I’m speaking of the drugs, of your mother and father and brothers.” Yet in this post-#MeToo era, Vanessa Schneider’s evenhanded portrayal of this daring actress of the 1970s is a refreshing one. For once, a young woman is not placed on an impossibly high pedestal, where she is unfairly worshiped for her beauty and then cruelly defiled for our entertainment. Instead, Maria Schneider is presented with both her faults and her charms. In that way, this is a generous account of a rare and complicated cinematic star.Thessaly La Force is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New York Times Styles section. Previously, she was the features director at T: The New York Times Magazine.MY COUSIN MARIA SCHNEIDER: A Memoir | By Vanessa Schneider | Translated by Molly Ringwald | 160 pp. | Scribner | $26 More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Saturday Night Live’: Ana de Armas and the First Warm Day of the Year

      by

      The “Blonde” star was the host and Karol G was the musical guest on an episode that was light on topical moments.Well, you can’t open “Saturday Night Live” every time with a sketch about the indictment of former President Donald Trump. Following a week with few significant news developments in that case, and rather than pivoting to, say, President Biden’s trip to Ireland, “S.N.L.” took a break from topical satire to instead seek comedy in the weather.This installment of “S.N.L.,” hosted by Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) and featuring the musical guest Karol G, kicked off with a would-be red-carpet segment called “The First Warm Day of the Year Arrivals Show.” As a co-host played by Heidi Gardner explained, high temperatures hit New York several weeks ahead of schedule. “And while that may be terrifying on a climate level,” she said, “the warm weather can only mean one thing: all the freaks, crazies and weirdos are headed to Central Park.”Enter a progression of cast members playing single-serving characters, including Mikey Day as Older Man Doing an Aggressive Power Walk, Michael Longfellow and James Austin Johnson as Two Perverts Who Came to the Park to Pleasure Themselves, and Devon Walker and Punkie Johnson as a pair of Park Employees Who Do Not Care About Their Jobs. Asked how she would handle people who aren’t obeying the rules, Johnson bestowed the park with an unofficial motto: “You do you,” she said.Opening Monologue of the WeekDe Armas, who was born and raised in Cuba, became the latest “S.N.L.” host to perform a portion of her monologue in Spanish. After stepping onto the stage of Studio 8H, she told the audience, in Spanish, that she’d had an incredible year and was happy to be on the show, adding: “Just kidding. I speak English.” (She also explained that she’d learned English “the way everyone who comes to this country does, by watching ‘Friends.’”)De Armas follows other recent “S.N.L.” hosts whose monologues included brief bilingual portions, including Anya Taylor-Joy (who concluded her opening remarks and welcomed her musical guest, Lil Nas X, in Spanish) and Pedro Pascal (who offered love to his family members in Chile and asked them to stop giving out his phone number). Later on Weekend Update, Sarah Sherman referenced de Armas’s remarks, playing a meditation guru who joked that the anchor Colin Jost would end up in his dressing room after the show, “still fuming about the bilingual monologue.”De Armas’s linguistic skills were also put to use in a sketch where she, Marcello Hernández and Karol G ran rings around a mediocre high-school Spanish teacher, played by Day. (If you’re unclear why Karol G wore a T-shirt opposing Photoshop, it was probably a reference to the singer’s dispute with GQ magazine, whose Mexican edition published a cover photo of her that she said had been heavily edited and did not represent her.)Fake Movie Trailer of the WeekIf a brightly colored “Barbie” movie, co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig and stocked with an all-star cast, can become one of the summer’s hottest box-office prospects and an endless source of internet memes, well, why not a film that brings the world of American Girl dolls to life? This segment quickly makes clear why: it would be depressing as hell. While cheerful pop music plays in the background, we meet eerily chipper dolls like Samantha (Chloe Fineman), an orphan whose parents died in a boating accident, and Addy (Ego Nwodim), a runaway slave. Don’t get too attached to Kirsten (Gardner), who says she wants to end cholera and then coughs blood into a handkerchief.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Jost and Michael Che riffed on the leak of American intelligence documents by a 21-year-old National Guard airman.Jost began:The person who allegedly leaked classified Pentagon documents on social media has been identified as Jack Teixeira, who is a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, I assume in a school play. Teixeira shared the document in a private social media group that members say started as a place where young men could play war-themed video games, bond over their love of guns and post racist memes. And now it’s ruined. It was revealed that just before his arrest, Teixeira contacted the members of his group and said, “Guys, it’s been good — I love you all.” And of course, his friends all replied, “Gay.”Che continued:The online group Teixeira started was named Thug Shaker Central. Thug Shaker Central is also what Colin calls Atlanta. President Biden is trying to downplay the recent leak of classified U.S. documents that were posted on social media. Because when you’re over 80, a couple of leaks is nothing to be embarrassed about.Weekend Update Desk Segment of the WeekMolly Kearney, the first openly nonbinary cast member on “S.N.L.,” used a desk appearance on Weekend Update to comment on a recent wave of anti-transgender bills — as well as the harness that uncomfortably delivered Kearney to the stage, providing a useful metaphor throughout this commentary. “I tried to call down but no one could hear me,” Kearney said. “At one point I heard a crew guy say, ‘Is she going to die up there?’ And then another guy was like, ‘You mean, are they going to die up there?’ And then they walked away and didn’t help — which feels a lot like how trans people are being treated right now.” More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      A Director and a Rock Band Are Redrawing the Contours of Anime

      by

      For hits like “Your Name” and now “Suzume,” Makoto Shinkai has worked with Radwimps on the narrative as well as the score. The results have won awards.Since the 2016 release of the global megahit “Your Name,” the stirring music in the animated epics of the Japanese director Makoto Shinkai has become inextricable from their transporting images.Shinkai’s recent high-stakes melodramas about star-crossed teenage lovers and impending supernatural catastrophes move to the up-tempo songs and luminous instrumental tracks of the Japanese rock band Radwimps. On multiple occasions, the band’s compositions have also persuaded the filmmaker to make significant changes to his narratives.In U.S. theaters Friday, “Suzume,” a fantastical saga inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, represents the third collaboration between the acclaimed storyteller and the musicians.The international popularity of Shinkai’s films has in turn broadened Radwimps’ audience to include fans beyond Japan’s borders. The band will kick off its first North American tour this weekend in San Jose, Calif.“Radwimps and I are two wheels of the same bicycle,” Shinkai, 50, said via an interpreter at a hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. “We need each other, and we are pushing one another forward.”Before enlisting Radwimps, Shinkai had worked with the composer Tenmon, a colleague from his time in video games, on the scores for his short films and early features.But on the more ambitious “Your Name,” a body-swap tale about a boy and a girl connected through time and space, Shinkai sought to differentiate himself from the influential anime production company Studio Ghibli, and from its co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki, in particular. Over the years, as Shinkai’s profile grew, the director said, journalists continually described him as “the next Miyazaki coming out of Japan.” Despite his unabashed admiration for the master animator, Shinkai disliked the constant comparisons.“For ‘Your Name,’ I wanted to do something Miyazaki would never do in one of his films, which was use rock music,” he said.When Shinkai, who had been a Radwimps fan for years, first approached the band in 2014, the artists had been playing together for over a decade but had yet to create music for movies. The lead singer and songwriter, Yojiro Noda, 37, saw this as a chance to reinvigorate the band and push its artistic boundaries while he learned new skills like orchestration.Upon reading the screenplay, Noda quickly turned around the songs “ZenZenZense” (“Past Past Life”), which became the propulsive soundtrack for the opening sequence, and the power ballad “Sparkle.”On “Suzume,” Shinkai, center, worked with Radwimps’ Yojiro Noda, right, as well as the composer Kazuma Jinnouchi.Suzume Film Partners“When I get the script, it’s like a ritual for me to write a few songs just right away without filter and without overthinking it,” Noda, speaking during a recent video interview from Tokyo, explained through a translator.From ages 6 to 10, Noda lived in the United States, and while his English vocabulary during that time was limited, two words stuck with him: “rad,” to describe something exciting, and “wimp,” with its negative connotation. Putting them together created an oxymoron that he thought fit his band, which he started with middle-school friends in the early 2000s.Radwimps has gone through multiple configurations over the years, with some members departing or going on hiatus. Its current lineup is Noda, who also plays guitar and piano; the bassist Yusuke Takeda; and the guitarist Akira Kuwahara.Once Noda decides on the melody and lyrical theme based on Shinkai’s text, he shares it with his bandmates, who enrich the sound with their instruments, synthesizers and percussion.The beautifully hyperbolic lyrics, however, are all Noda’s. “He’s one of the very few poets left in Japan right now who can write the way he does,” Shinkai said.The composer, who’s also written and performed English-language versions of some of the songs created for Shinkai’s animated romances, explained: “All of the music for ‘Your Name’ came from that longing to see each other that was so genuine and pure between the two characters, Mitsuha and Taki.”The “Your Name” soundtrack album debuted at No. 1 on the Japanese national album chart and stayed there for another week. That distinction came on top of the monumental box-office success that eventually turned the film into the third-highest-grossing Japanese production in the country’s history, animated or otherwise.“Radwimps’ music was essential to the success of ‘Your Name,’” Shinkai said. “It really propelled that film into a worldwide social phenomenon.”For Shinkai, Noda’s interpretation of his stories “feels like his way of giving me feedback on my screenplay, but it just happens to come in the form of music.” These exchanges, he believes, have become essential for him to see the full potential of what the film can be.Through his music, Noda essentially provided feedback on the “Suzume” screenplay, Shinkai said.CrunchyrollOn their second outing together, “Weathering With You” (2020), in which a young man must choose between love and saving Tokyo from torrential rain, Shinkai decided to expand a pivotal sequence where the protagonists fall from the sky after he listened to the choir voices featured in “Grand Escape,” one of the early songs Radwimps produced for the movie.Something similar occurred with “Suzume.” Noda delivered “Tamaki,” a song about the aunt and guardian of the 17-year-old title character. Inspired by the tune, Shinkai realized Tamaki’s relevance and added more interactions between her and Suzume. Such changes can be made because the band comes on board long before the visual development starts.For the theme song, “Suzume no Tojimari” (also the name of the film in Japan, where it’s already a hit), Noda listened to Shinkai’s suggestion that the music should capture the scent of the earth itself and the sound of the wind.They also agreed that since a girl is at the center of this whimsical coming-of-age saga, the track needed a female singer. After scouring multiple social media platforms for the right voice, they came across a TikToker named Toaka. She had no professional experience, but videos of her singing at home impressed them.Radwimps has now received three Japan Academy Awards — the country’s Oscar equivalents — for best music, one for each of their collaborations with Shinkai. (For “Suzume,” they shared the prize with composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, who created some of the score’s instrumental moments.)With no plans for the partnership to end, Noda thanks destiny, a concept crucial to the director’s metaphysical adventures, for bringing them together.“Shinkai often tells me there’s no limit to creativity,” Noda said. “He’s an inspiration, and writing songs for his anime is always going to be something special for me.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      After She Traded One Patagonia for Another, Tragedy Couldn’t Keep Her Away

      by

      The documentary “Wild Life” tells the story of Kristine Tompkins, a former chief executive who retired at 43 and moved to South America for love and conservation.SANTA PAULA, Calif. — Kristine McDivitt Tompkins’s idea of sibling bonding is a monthlong trip to Antarctica on an icebreaker ship, including an icy dunk into the frigid waters of the Ross Sea, kayaking, hikes on icebergs and a lot of time analyzing maps.“It’s heaven down there,” said Ms. Tompkins, the former chief executive of the outdoor-apparel company Patagonia. Sipping tea in her Southern California ranch home last week as her English Labrador, Finneaus, and her brother’s Lab, Beto, strolled in and out of her living room, she recalled an expedition she took with her brother a few months earlier.“Some people were really ready to get out,” she said. “I could have turned and gone back the other way.”After her Antarctic sojourn, she headed to Chile and Argentina, working on conservation projects she and her husband had begun some three decades earlier. Ms. Tompkins, 72, has doubled down on those efforts in recent years, including meeting with Chile’s president recently to discuss donating land for a new national park.Ms. Tompkins is the subject of “Wild Life,” a new documentary from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar-winning duo behind “Free Solo.” The film tells the story of Ms. Tompkins and her husband, Doug Tompkins, a founder of the North Face and the apparel company Esprit, as well as the ambitious — and controversial — conservation projects they started after leaving their corporate careers behind.In an interview, Ms. Tompkins said she was as committed as ever to her conservation efforts, helping her find purpose seven years after a deadly kayaking accident upended her life.In a way, her life as an environmentalist began when Ms. Tompkins was a teenager in Southern California, where she befriended Yvon Chouinard; her family’s beach house neighbored his. She started working in shipping at his climbing-equipment company, and, after college, she became one of the first six employees at a company he founded in 1973, Patagonia.She had her fingerprints on many parts of the business, helping pick the typeface in the original logo, producing catalogs and heading imagery. Eventually, she rose to lead the company for years in the 1980s and 1990s.Despite loving the work, she started to feel that something was missing.“I was really kind of choking and sensing a kind of desperate need to figure out something else that would be as interesting and engaging as Patagonia,” she said, adding, “Sometimes your body hangs there, but your heart is gone, your mind.”She ran into Mr. Tompkins, whom she had previously met. He had recently cashed out of his half of Esprit, reportedly for about $150 million, lamenting his role in the consumption-driven economy and wanting to focus on conservation.For Ms. Tompkins, the encounter not only opened a door to a relationship but also shed light on her own search for a new mission.“It was love immediately, but it was also, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” she recalled. “It was the light bulb. It was the flash.”As they grew closer, she took a plunge. At 43, she retired from Patagonia, joining Mr. Tompkins only days later on the farm he had moved to in southern Chile.“I wanted an extreme life, and I mean really extreme, and I didn’t know that that’s what I was looking for and couldn’t find on my own,” she said. “But I think that’s what I recognized in him.”Newlyweds Who Generated SuspicionThe couple were married in 1994, he at age 51, she at 44. The first years in their adopted home proved isolating and difficult as Ms. Tompkins found that she needed to improve Spanish and that the rainy and cold conditions of Patagonia took some getting used to.They focused on buying up parcels of land — hundreds of thousands of acres at a time — from which they removed livestock, fencing and invasive species in an effort to restore the land.Kristine and Doug Tompkins at their home in Chile. The couple’s conservation efforts in the Patagonia region were initially regarded with sharp suspicion.Diane Cook and Len Jenshel/Getty ImagesTheir efforts were met with fierce local opposition and suspicion. Complaints ranged from criticisms that they were stunting development and disrupting the livelihoods of local farmers to more conspiratorial theories (Mr. Tompkins was accused of plotting to send the region’s water to China or replace local cows with American bison). The couple, Mr. Tompkins especially, attracted a robust group of adversaries that included, at various times, Argentine and Chilean government figures, an energy company, the Catholic Church and the salmon industry.“People were used to the idea of foreign corporations coming into Chile and buying land to exploit it,” said Nadine Lehner, who served as executive director of one of the Tompkinses’ organizations. “But the idea of coming in to conserve it was quite a new idea, and as such, I think, generated a lot of suspicion.”As they navigated their new marriage, they continued to pursue projects in Chile and Argentina and established an organization, Tompkins Conservation. Ms. Tompkins tapped into her managerial instincts, keeping projects moving while Mr. Tompkins set out an overall vision and occasionally grew fixated on the design of specific structures in the parks.The relationship “worked in that he’s a tough guy, but he respects it when you stand up to him — and she’s tough,” Mr. Chouinard said. “And she stood up to him and he respected that, and it worked.”‘I Wouldn’t Let Him Go’On Dec. 8, 2015, Mr. Tompkins was on a kayaking trip on General Carrera Lake, which straddles Chile and Argentina, with a group of friends, including Mr. Chouinard. Ms. Tompkins, who was several hours away by car, had discreetly given a member of the group a satellite phone, a device that Mr. Tompkins and Mr. Chouinard hated. After a while, emergency calls started to come in. Mr. Tompkins’s kayak had capsized in windy conditions, and he had spent about an hour in the frigid water before being taken out.When she found out, she crawled underneath the parked small plane he would often fly to explore the parks. “I wouldn’t come out,” Ms. Tompkins said, adding, “I didn’t want any part of it.”Mr. Tompkins died before she reached the hospital.“I just crawled up in his bed, and I wouldn’t let him go,” she said through tears, adding, “He was lucky to have lived that long, considering how he lived his life.”In her grief, Ms. Tompkins felt lost and unsure of how to proceed, but she ultimately decided to double down on her conservation efforts.“Let’s go for broke,” she recalled thinking.Carolina Morgado, the executive director of Rewilding Chile, which grew out of Tompkins Conservation, described her in that moment as a woman who “transformed her grief in power.”In 2018, Tompkins Conservation finalized a deal with the Chilean government in which the organization donated over a million acres of conservation land, with the government adding roughly nine million acres to create five new national parks and expand three. In total, the organization has created or expanded 15 national parks, protecting over 14 million acres in Argentina and Chile — an initiative that continues. The organization and its offshoots have also taken up so-called rewilding efforts, reintroducing jaguars, red-and-green macaws, giant anteaters and other species.For the husband-and-wife directors of “Wild Life,” which opened in theaters on Friday and will come to Disney+ on May 26, Ms. Tompkins proved to be a compelling subject. (Mr. Chin and Ms. Vasarhelyi’s previous documentaries covered the Thailand cave rescue and a climber’s attempt to ascend Yosemite’s El Capitan without a rope.)“Climbing El Cap is really amazing, but what’s more badass than saving the planet?” Mr. Chin said.For Ms. Vasarhelyi, Ms. Tompkins’s story is one of reinvention after profound loss.“We made this film for our kids,” Ms. Vasarhelyi said, adding, “While climate change may seem so big, while losing the love of your life may seem so big, step by step, effort by effort, you can address these things, we can do something.”But Ms. Tompkins calls herself cynical, saying she worries deeply about climate change. “On a good day, it’s grief,” she said. “On a bad day, it’s despair.” But she’s not throwing in the towel, she said: “I’m going the other direction.”Like many people, Ms. Tompkins occasionally despairs about the state of the planet. But rather than throwing in the towel, she throws herself into conservation projects: “I’m going the other direction.”Adam Amengual for The New York TimesMs. Tompkins is still involved with Patagonia, serving on its board and living near its headquarters. She even has thoughts on the evolution of Patagonia apparel into the de facto outfit for a certain variety of tech and finance worker. (Sometimes, the uglier a product, “the more heavily it would be sold into the business community,” she recalled.)Ms. Tompkins said that with her recent trip to Antarctica, as in her relationship with Mr. Tompkins and her conservation work, “what I still look for is this icy clarity and confrontation of extreme circumstances and harshness and difficulty. I think it makes me feel like I’m breathing.”Alain Delaquérière More

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’ Review: A Head-Spinning Genre Mash-Up

      by

      The buddy-priest action-comedy-horror hybrid we didn’t know we wanted has finally landed.It’s hard to pick the most surreal part of Julius Avery’s new horror film. It could be that the main character is based on the very real Rev. Gabriele Amorth, who used to be the Vatican’s chief exorcist (in a head-spinning twist, William Friedkin, the director of “The Exorcist,” once made a documentary about him). Or maybe it’s that Father Amorth is portrayed as an espresso-drinking, scooter-riding maverick by Russell Crowe in one of his most engaging performances in years. He is dispatched by the Pope (the cult Italian actor Franco Nero) to an isolated Spanish abbey where a young boy, Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), has started producing ungodly growls, changing colors and shapes, and making inappropriate moves on his mother (Alex Essoe, a Mike Flanagan horror regular).Amorth has his work cut out for him, but luckily he is paired with the inexperienced but game Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), which adds a dollop of buddy-priest action comedy to an already genre-full plate. The two men have excellent, er, chemistry with the ancestral evil figure who has taken over Henry and is magnificently voiced by Ralph Ineson. Avery (“Samaritan”) drives the film at a pace as caffeinated as Amorth himself, and manages to incorporate legitimate scares into a plot halfway between Indiana Jones and a Dan Brown potboiler, with camp touches worthy of Ken Russell.“The Pope’s Exorcist” ends with a shameless suggestion that there is room for a sequel or even an entire series. It is not an unwelcome prospect.The Pope’s ExorcistRated R for demon-induced expletives and glimpses of naked ladies. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die’ Review: Flesh Wounds

      by

      Soldiers face off over the fate of England in this overbearingly glib costume drama.Far too often, “The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die,” an incomprehensible period epic based on the five-season television series “The Last Kingdom,” mistakes the mere presence of blood for a compelling narrative.Set during the 10th century, before England was a united kingdom, the movie, directed by Ed Bazalgette, takes place as the recent death of King Edward and the ascent of his son Aethelstan (Harry Gilby) threaten a fragile peace among the country’s Pagan and Christian nation states. The loyal Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon), a man of deep honor, wants to avoid a conflict that he thinks will continue for generations.What occurs is a series of events rather than a story. If you haven’t watched the TV show, itself adapted from novels by the author Bernard Cornwell, then keeping up with the web of allegiances, characters and story lines will prove difficult. In this film alone, Uhtred’s sword is stolen, his land and title are stripped away, and a conniving Danish king, Anlaf (Pekka Strang), seeks to exploit him. Ingilmundr, the lover and Svengali of Aethelstan, also wants to turn the impressionable ruler against Uhtred.The theme of Christian guilt in the face of homophobia bears no dramatic fruit. The film’s culminating battle isn’t much heartier: The compositions lack clarity, the score of undulating voices is comically clichéd and the visual effects are a dingy, nauseating mess. There are no stakes in a film that not only takes seven royal lives — it snatches several brain cells with them.The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must DieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Passion’ Review: Friends Fall Apart

      by

      Belatedly making its U.S. debut, a 2008 film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) offers new insights into his abiding themes and sensibilities.The director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s latest film to premiere in U.S. theaters, “Passion,” is also one of his oldest — a confident if uneven new piece of 15-year-old context for one of cinema’s most acclaimed contemporary auteurs, whose “Drive My Car” last year earned the Oscar for best international feature.Never before released in the United States, “Passion” (2008) is Hamaguchi’s second feature, his student thesis from his time in Tokyo film school. (His first was a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s art-house landmark “Solaris”; no one can accuse Hamaguchi of lacking ambition.) Like certain influential early career films that preceded it — Barry Levinson’s “Diner,” Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Big Chill” — “Passion” has a low-fi, hangout feel, flush with the youthful indie energy and forgivable pretensions of an artist who believes that filmmaking matters. Hamaguchi is still a student but already finding his voice.The plot is likewise loose, literary: A group of young academics and professionals reunite to discover their lives are growing apart. When Kaho (Aoba Kawai, heartbreaking) and Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto) announce their engagement, the group’s many internal love affairs, past and present — a love hexagon, give or take a side — begin to roil their little group’s surface cohesion.In “Passion” we see marks of the artistic sensibilities and preoccupations that characterize Hamaguchi’s later films like “Car” and “Asako I & II” (2018): the intimate close-ups; the philosophical musings; the unbiased compositions; the themes of betrayal, compromise and need. We also see shared flaws: the indulgent run-time, the occasional overwriting and lapses in tone. I’ll take those minor flaws in exchange for what, in hindsight, signaled the emergence of a serious artist.PassionNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More