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      ‘Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares’ Review: The Man Behind Freddy Krueger

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      In a new documentary, Robert Englund wants you to know he’s more than the face of Freddy Krueger.Like a 10-page diner menu, an excessive determination is at play in “Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story,” a vexing documentary about Robert Englund, who even horror haters will recognize as the guy who played Freddy Krueger in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films.What the directors Gary Smart and Christopher Griffiths made is a documentary in spirit. But it’s really more of an annotated oral history of Englund’s entire, extensive IMDb page — almost film by film, in chronological order, for more than two hours. It’s exhausting.And it’s a shame, because Englund comes across as a dedicated professional and a total ham (and horndog) deserving of a meaty documentary. Watching Englund be such a goof in his early movies is a treat, like when he wrestles a fake alligator in Tobe Hooper’s “Eaten Alive” from 1976.Englund’s career skyrocketed when Wes Craven cast him as Freddy in 1984. As the horror director Eli Roth points out in the documentary, unlike actors who played Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, Englund was called on to act by moving and speaking menacingly. Englund did so splendidly, one reason Freddy’s popularity endures.Hardcore “Nightmare on Elm Street” fans — and really, that’s the audience here — might think this movie’s a dream. But like a recent documentary about the Chucky franchise, the material would be more palatable re-edited as Blu-ray extras.Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund StoryNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 14 minutes. Streaming on Screambox and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      Can HBO’s ‘The Idol’ Revive 1980s Erotic Thriller Sleaze?

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      Over-the-top locations and characters bathed in red light recall an all but dead genre that was once a staple of late-night cable: the erotic thriller.A slick executive drives a cherry red convertible.A nightclub owner carries a coke spoon and wears his hair in a rat tail.A troubled pop star masturbates while choking herself.Those images might have come from an erotic thriller made by Brian De Palma, Paul Verhoeven or Adrian Lyne, directors who were prominent in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to movies like “Body Double” (Mr. De Palma), “Basic Instinct” (Mr. Verhoeven) and “9 ½ Weeks” (Mr. Lyne).But those scenes were actually part of “The Idol,” the HBO series that made its debut on Sunday with the apparent intention of reviving an all but dead genre.Filled with close-up shots of luxury goods and body parts, “The Idol” also recalled the works of lesser filmmakers whose R-rated creations populated the late-night lineups of HBO and its rivals long before the advent of prestige television.It was a style that died out over the years — the death blow might have been Mr. Verhoeven’s infamous “Showgirls,” an expensive 1995 flop — and seemed highly unlikely to make a return to the cultural stage amid the #MeToo movement.As Karina Longworth, the creator of the film-history podcast “You Must Remember This,” recently observed, today’s films are so devoid of steamy sex scenes that they “would pass the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the Production Code of the 1930s.”Gina Gershon, left, and Elizabeth Berkley, who is in the cast of “The Idol,” in the much-maligned 1995 film “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsSharon Stone in “Basic Instinct,” a film referred to in “The Idol.”Rialto PicturesThe old aesthetic was on full display in the first moments of “The Idol,” a series created by Sam Levinson, Abel Tesfaye (known as the Weeknd) and Reza Fahim, three men who came of age when flipping through cable channels late at night was a frequent pastime for adolescent boys.The first episode begins with the pop star Jocelyn, played by Lily-Rose Depp, baring her breasts during a photo shoot as a team of handlers, crew members and an ineffectual intimacy coordinator look on.Later, Ms. Depp’s character smokes in a sauna, rides in the back of a Rolls-Royce convertible and rubs up against a man she has just met (a club owner portrayed by Mr. Tesfaye) on a dance floor bathed in smoky red light. There will be no flannel PJs for Joss; a pair of wake-up scenes make it clear to viewers that she sleeps in a thong.It isn’t only the show’s gratuitous nudity that harks back to Mr. Lyne and company, but the overall look and mood, which recall a louche glamour from the time of boxy Armani suits and cocaine nights. A main setting is a $70 million mansion in Bel Air that looks like something out of Mr. De Palma’s “Scarface” but is in fact Mr. Tesfaye’s real-life home.A number of young viewers have said they find sex scenes embarrassing, but Mr. Levinson, who created the HBO drama “Euphoria,” and his fellow producers have made no secret of their desire to pay homage to the heyday of Cinemax (when it had the nickname Skinemax).A wink to viewers comes when Joss, in the darkness of her private screening room, watches “Basic Instinct.” And then there is the pulsating score, which seems to conjure Tangerine Dream, the German electronic group who scored the sex scene on a train in “Risky Business.” In another nod to the show’s influences, the cast includes Elizabeth Berkley, the star of “Showgirls.”While it may seem like an outlier, “The Idol” has seemingly tapped into a cultural moment that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago: Ms. Longworth recently devoted a season of her film-history podcast to the “Erotic ’80s”; no less a tastemaker than the Criterion Channel has recently presented a series on erotic thrillers from the same time period; and last month in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque held a screening of “Basic Instinct.”“The Idol” also has a close competitor in the world of streaming: “Fatal Attraction,” a 1987 hit for Mr. Lyne, has been rebooted as a series on Paramount+.Mr. Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp in a scene from the first episode of “The Idol.”Eddy Chen/HBOStephanie Zacharek, the film critic for Time, suggested that the return of such fare may have arisen from the yearslong glut of comic book movies, along with the lack of a certain kind of R-rated film that was once all the rage for adult viewers.“In the ’80s, that’s almost all there was in the multiplex,” Ms. Zacharek said. “Grown-ups went to see those movies. Now we don’t even have that many movies for grown-ups, period.”Ms. Zacharek slammed “The Idol” in her review and in a phone interview — “It feels like it was made by someone who has never had sex,” she said — but she said she was a fan of “Body Double” (and even “Showgirls”) and laments the disappearance of that kind of thing.“I always enjoyed those films, even when I thought they were sexist or ridiculous,” Ms. Zacharek said. “They do have a certain element of glamour to them.”It is a distinct possibility that the idea of reviving this particular genre may appeal more to Mr. Levinson and his colleagues than audiences and critics.After a two-decade absence from big-budget productions, Mr. Lyne attempted a comeback last year with “Deep Water,” an erotic thriller starring Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck. Mr. Levinson was one of the film’s writers.“Deep Water,” which streamed on Hulu upon its release, was never shown in theaters. It drew a 36 percent approval score from critics and a 24 percent audience score on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.“The Idol” has fared both better and worse: A mere 24 percent of critics have given it a thumbs-up, and 63 percent of audience members have weighed in favorably. More

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      The Film Story of the Stereotype-Busting International Male Catalog

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      The catalog was more than a place to peruse the latest fashions. It reshaped society’s definitions of masculinity.One of the most famous “Seinfeld” episodes involves Jerry wearing a flamboyant “puffy shirt” — which was pretty much a copy of the “ultimate poet’s shirt” sold by International Male. The piece of apparel might be a pop culture footnote now, but for a while the mail-order catalog that inspired it meant quite a lot, as evidenced by Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed’s documentary.In the early 1970s, Gene Burkard, a gay former airman turned entrepreneur, slightly retooled a medical garment called a suspensory into a “jock sock.” Its mail-order success eventually led to Burkard’s launching International Male, whose catalog peddled unabashedly outlandish men’s clothing modeled by unabashedly sexy hunks.Narrated by Matt Bomer, the doc breezily chronicles International Male’s rise and fall from the 1970s to the mid-00s. As the fashion commentator Simon Doonan argues in the film, International Male documented — and reinvented — gay and straight men’s shared fetishization of masculinity. Casting aside the cloaking devices known as dark suits and white shirts, the catalog displayed butch specimens lounging in hot pants, crop tops and thongs, with color schemes running a retina-searing gamut from coral and lime to prints like purple zebra stripes. Anticipating Instagram, the company turned clothing into lifestyle, while also providing a coded fantasy outlet for gay men around the country.Admittedly, the film is more dutiful than artful, ticking one box after another, a tendency that is especially obvious when it ventures to the dark side of paradise (the ravages of AIDS on employees and customers, the lack of diversity among the catalog models). Then it’s right back to knights in white satin and the realization that men’s gauze harem pants were once an instrument of liberation.All Man: The International Male StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      Book Review: ‘Pageboy: A Memoir,’ by Elliot Page

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      In the “brutally honest” memoir “Pageboy,” the actor recounts the fears and obstacles to gender transition, and the hard-won happiness that’s followed.PAGEBOY: A Memoir, by Elliot PageThere’s a scene in the third season of Netflix’s hugely popular “The Umbrella Academy” where Elliot Page’s character, sporting a new, short haircut, walks up to the other members of the titular superhero team to suggest a plan.There’s a derisive response from one of them: “Who elected you, Vanya?”Page glances around, slightly tentative. “It’s, uh, Viktor.”“Who’s Viktor?”The subtitles describe “dramatic music playing” as members of the group eye one another. Page hesitates for a second. “I am. It’s who I’ve always been.” Another beat. “Uh, is that an issue for anyone?”There’s little hesitation: “Nah, I’m good with it.” “Yeah, me too.” “Cool.”And thus plays out what might be the most mundane — and yet quietly empowering — depiction of gender transition in popular culture I’ve ever seen. Were Page’s real-life journey to transition only as simple, straightforward or well received.Instead, as he details in a brutally honest memoir, “Pageboy,” his life story was marked by fear, self-doubt, U-turns, guilt and shame, before he ultimately seized control of his own narrative.A child actor from Canada who burst onto the scene at the age of 20 with a breakout performance in the title role of “Juno” in 2007, Page went on to take roles in films that ranged from indie (“Whip It,” “Freeheld”) to blockbusters (“Inception,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past”).But fame didn’t free him to explore his identity; instead it trapped him into a role studios wanted him to play, offscreen as well as on, as an attractive young starlet.Much of the memoir — told in non-sequential flashbacks and flash-forwards — centers on Page’s path to understand who he really was, against a backdrop of bullying, eating disorders, stalking, sexual harassment and assault. Page grew up in Nova Scotia, the child of divorced parents — a less than loving father and a mother hoping against hope for a more conventional child than the gender outlaw she seemed to be raising.“Can I be a boy?” Page asked his mother at the age of 6. He found escape in solitary play and a rich fantasy life that ultimately blossomed into a career as an actor.The nonlinear structure makes following a clear narrative difficult, but that’s less important than seeing, through his eyes, how Page slowly pieces together a clear sense of himself. In that, it follows a tradition of trans memoirs, from Jennifer Finney Boylan’s “She’s Not There” to Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” to Thomas Page McBee’s “Man Alive,” among others, that explore how we explore our identities.From furtive, closeted relationships — he relates how he held hands under a blanket with his then-partner as they were bused from location to location while working on a film together — to coming out as gay in 2014 (“more a necessity than a decision,” he writes), Page flirted with, but backed away several times from, the notion that he might be trans.“My shoulders opened, my heart was bare, I could be in the world in ways that felt impossible before,” he writes of coming out as gay. “But deep down an emptiness lurked. That undertone. Its whisper still ripe and in my ear.”It’s in that tortured, contradictory internal monologue — familiar to other trans people as we contemplate what seems to be an extraordinary, unimaginable truth — that “Pageboy” is most powerful. Page doesn’t really delve into questions of masculinity, or what it means to be a man, but he brings to life the visceral sense of gender dysphoria, or at least one type of dysphoria: the sense that your body is betraying you. It’s an utterly alien sensation for those who haven’t experienced it:Imagine the most uncomfortable, mortifying thing you could wear. You squirm in your skin. It’s tight, you want to peel it from your body, tear it off, but you can’t. Day in and day out. And if people are to learn what is underneath, who you are without all that pain, the shame would come flooding out, too much to hold. The voice was right, you deserve the humiliation. You are an abomination. You are too emotional. You are not real.Moments of joy pierce “Pageboy” as well: his first real queer kiss; scenes of passionate sex; the blossoming of his relationship with his mother after he came out; the reflection of his flat chest in the mirror.Page disclosed his transition in December 2020, a few weeks before I did the same. I suspect he, like me, had been prepared for a future where trans lives would be broadly accepted, or at least tolerated, albeit with sporadic incidents of hate. Both of us inhabit left-leaning spaces (media, movies) where the appearance of support is de rigueur.How could we have expected instead the tidal wave of anti-trans animus that is surging across the right, with hundreds of bills proposed — and some passed — in state legislatures that would in some cases bar adults from accessing trans care; undermine private insurance; allow medical personnel to discriminate against transgender patients; and restrict performances by drag performers and trans people, including possibly Page.Trans men and women are attacked in very different ways. Trans women are demonized as sexual predators; trans men, when people think of them at all, are portrayed as misguided and misled girls and women, confused and unable to understand their own identity. “When I came out in 2014, the vast majority of people believed me, they did not ask for proof,” Page writes. “But the hate and backlash I received were nothing compared to now.”It was an unwelcome regression to a time studios controlled his public persona: “I am sick of the creepy focus on my body and compulsion to infantilize (which I have always experienced, but nothing like this). And it isn’t just people online, or on the street, or strangers at a party, but good acquaintances and friends.”Still, Page has no shortage of fans as well, vociferous defenders of possibly the most famous trans man in the world, and one whose onscreen portrayal of a superhero offers an alternative conception of masculinity rooted in inner strength and sensitivity rather than brawn and muscles.His character’s arc from Vanya to Viktor offers hope, too, of a world where transition is matter-of-fact, accepted — and incidental. “Truly happy for you, Viktor,” another “Umbrella Academy” member concludes.Page and the showrunner Steven Blackman were at pains to ensure his character’s journey reflected the nuances of real trans lives, not least that being trans was a character trait, not the defining one. They brought in McBee to weave an authentic narrative into what was then an already tightly packed and carefully scripted season.In the memoir, Page reflects on his complex relationship with store windows, and his image in them — a reminder, pre-transition, of a body and identity he saw but did not want to inhabit. McBee crafted that memory into another telling “Umbrella Academy” scene, where Page’s Viktor pauses in front of a storefront and is asked what he sees.“Me.” A smile and a shrug. “Just me.”Truly happy for you, Elliot.Gina Chua is the executive editor at Semafor.PAGEBOY: A Memoir | By Elliot Page | 271 pp. | Flatiron Books | $29.99 More

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      Actors Authorize Potential Strike With Hollywood Writers Still Picketing

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      The NewsThe union that represents more than 160,000 film and television actors voted on Monday night to authorize a strike, two days before it is to begin negotiations on a new labor deal with the Hollywood studios. The result from members of the SAG-AFTRA union, with 98 percent authorizing a strike, was expected, and it came during the sixth week of a strike by Hollywood writers and just a day after the Directors Guild of America tentatively agreed to a new contract.“Together we lock elbows, and in unity we build a new contract that honors our contributions in this remarkable industry, reflects the new digital and streaming business model and brings ALL our concerns for protections and benefits into the now!” Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, said in a statement.About 65,000 members cast ballots, or 48 percent of eligible voters. The actors’ current agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, expires on June 30.Members of SAG-AFTRA supported the striking Writers Guild of America at a rally last month outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The actors have the same worries as the writers.Many of the actors’ concerns echo what the Writers Guild of America is fighting for: higher wages; increased residual payments for their work, specifically for content on streaming services; and protections against using actors’ likenesses without permission as part of the enhanced abilities of artificial intelligence. According to the writers, the studios offered little more than “annual meetings to discuss” artificial intelligence, and they refused to bargain over limits on the technology.The Directors Guild, in contrast, said on Sunday that it had reached a “groundbreaking agreement confirming that A.I. is not a person and that generative A.I. cannot replace the duties performed by members.” Details about what that meant were not revealed.Background: It has been a long time since the last actors’ strike.The last time the actors went on strike was in 2000, in a dispute over commercial pay. The strike lasted close to six months.What’s Next: Negotiations begin on Wednesday.With negotiations expected to begin on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA is bullish about what this strike authorization means. “We’re obviously coming in from a position of strength, but we’re not looking to strike,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator. “We’re here to make a deal.” He added: “But we’re also not going to accept anything less than what our members deserve. If a strike is necessary to achieve that, we’re prepared.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement that “we are approaching these negotiations with the goal of achieving a new agreement that is beneficial to SAG-AFTRA members and the industry overall.” More

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      Review: In ‘Days of Wine and Roses,’ Two Souls Lost in an Ocean of Booze

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      In Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s jazzy new musical, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are a glamorous couple succumbing to alcoholism.If not for the unbridled drinking, it might easily have been a screwball comedy. Just look at them: Kirsten, blondly beautiful with a tolerant smile and a quick riposte; Joe, curly-haired cute but too arrogant to grasp that he’ll have to up his game to win this woman.Within moments of their meeting in 1950 in New York City, he bursts suavely into song — some presumptuous romantic blather about the two of them together under “a chapel of stars.” Whereupon she teases him right back down to earth.“Wow,” she says. “Who are you wooing? It can’t be me; you don’t know me.”This is the addiction-canon classic “Days of Wine and Roses,” though, so some of us already know them. In JP Miller’s luridly frank 1958 teleplay, starring Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson, and in Miller’s somewhat defanged 1962 film adaptation, starring Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, Kirsten and Joe are the attractive pair who make a harrowing, hand-in-hand descent into self-destruction by way of alcohol.In Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s jazzy, aching musical based on the teleplay and the film, Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James are an awfully glamorous Kirsten and Joe — O’Hara, in exquisite voice, singing 14 of the show’s 18 numbers, seven of them solos. Directed in its world premiere by Michael Greif for Atlantic Theater Company, this “Days of Wine and Roses” fills the old Gothic Revival parish house that is the Linda Gross Theater with glorious sound.“Two people stranded at sea,” Kirsten and Joe sing sparely, hauntingly, in the brief and perfect prologue. “Two people stranded are we.”So they are. But when they first meet, at a party on a yacht in the East River, Kirsten is a nondrinker primly uninterested in alcohol, while Joe is determined that she indulge, because then she can be his drinking buddy. That she acquiesces and then falls so far makes him her corruptor, or so her taciturn father (a wonderfully gruff Byron Jennings) will always believe.“Get rid of him, Kirs,” he tells her when it is already too late. And anyway it’s the oceans of booze in their relationship that really need to go.Lucas and Guettel, who mined the same midcentury period to great success in their 2005 Broadway musical, “The Light in the Piazza,” in which O’Hara also starred, have each spoken publicly of past personal struggles with substance abuse. Excising the heavy-handedness of previous versions of “Days of Wine and Roses,” and softening the details of Joe’s degradation, they go deeper into the heart-rending familial fallout of addiction.Lucas (book) and Guettel (music and lyrics) occasionally presume the audience’s familiarity with the plot, or steer so far clear of melodrama that they veer into emotional aridity. But they also capture unmistakably the bliss that Kirsten and Joe feel inside their bubble of a threesome: just the two of them and alcohol, throwing a private party that goes on and on.The high that makes sobriety so unthinkable: James and O’Hara as a couple whose lives disintegrate.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNot for these reveling lovers the swelling strings of Henry Mancini, who scored the film; in the cocktail-mixing song “Evanesce,” Guettel gives them bright, fast music, frenetic and danceable — and when they do a bit of soft-shoe in salt spilled on the floor, there’s a playful heedlessness to their sandpaper percussion. (Choreography is by Sergio Trujillo and Karla Puno Garcia.) This is the high that makes sobriety so unthinkable for Kirsten and Joe, even as their lives disintegrate.Which they do, alarmingly, despite their love for each other and for their hyper-capable daughter, Lila (Ella Dane Morgan), who learns very young to look after herself, and to lie to cover for her parents. It’s Joe who finds the strength, eventually, to choose their child over alcohol, and Kirsten who feels abandoned by her husband, as she clings to what was their private world.Affecting as O’Hara is, Kirsten is less fully drawn than Joe, whose back story makes him a recently returned veteran of the Korean War. (The combat flashback Joe suffers during one drunken binge feels gratuitous.)Kirsten gets no such context, and consequently seems oddly contemporary, which makes the show, for all its ’50s design flourishes, feel unrooted in time. (Sets are by Lizzie Clachan, costumes by Dede Ayite.) Kirsten is aware of the sexism that pervades her era — she makes snappy reference to the minuscule number of female senators — but the show doesn’t entirely seem to be. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)There is no sense of the opprobrium that would greet a female alcoholic in the 1950s, let alone one who leaves her child, or the severe judgment that would be passed on a married woman who sleeps with strange men when she’s on a bender. Or how any of that would contribute to Kirsten’s own self-loathing.Still, this “Days of Wine and Roses” has wells of compassion for her thrall to alcohol.“Don’t give up on me,” Kirsten writes to her daughter. She might even mean it when she adds: “I’ll be home soon.”Days of Wine and RosesThrough July 16 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      ‘Apes Together Strong’ Review: Rooting for the Small Investors

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      The 2021 “short squeeze” of GameStop was a rare victory for the little guy. This documentary explains why the house — Wall Street wealth, that is — almost always wins.If we accept the proposition that having money is sexy, we should also be able to admit that the most aggressive ways of making lots of money — the banking schemes and strategies that compound the wealth of the already rich — are not. Are they unfair to the working class? Certainly. Possibly criminal? Sure. But sexy, no. Among the more nefarious activities known to capitalism, big investing is particularly dry.In “The Big Short,” a 2015 fictionalized account of the mid-aughts mortgage-market collapse, the director Adam McKay attempted to skirt this dynamic by having attractive performers including Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez explain the details of market manipulation. In the new documentary “Apes Together Strong,” the filmmakers (and twin brothers) Finley Mulligan and Quinn Mulligan, working with a microbudget and no access to movie stars, detail how to short-sell a stock with a rough-hewed sketch involving a bag of sugar that is borrowed, sold and re-bought at a profit — or not.The title of the movie is the motto of the talking simians in the latter-day “Planet of the Apes” film franchise; it was adopted by the retail investors who led the GameStop “short squeeze” of 2021. At that time, small investors succeeded in significantly raising the price of stock in GameStop, a store chain targeted by hedge funds for market assassination.In a fast-paced style derived from Michael Moore or Morgen Spurlock, the Mulligans interview retail-investor comrades and banking pros sympathetic to the small investors’ cause. The villains, both past and present — the Reagan White House with its push to deregulate banking; big finance honchos; hedge fund vultures — are seen in archival footage, mostly.The lessons here are old, and at one point, the filmmakers use the phrase “the house always wins.” But there’s hope, because there’s always hope in such tales. While Dennis M. Kelleher, the chief executive of the nonprofit investor’s advocacy group Better Markets, says, “Wall Street wins largely because they are unopposed,” the movie closes on a rallying cry.Apes Together StrongNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Available to rent or buy on Amazon. More

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      The Man Reimagining Disney Classics for Today’s World

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      Sean Bailey is in charge of live-action remakes of films like “The Little Mermaid.” It’s a job that puts him in the middle of a partisan divide.For more than a decade, Sean Bailey has run Disney’s animated film “reimagining” factory with quiet efficiency and superhero-sized results. His live-action “Aladdin” collected $1.1 billion at the box office, while a photorealistic “The Lion King” took in $1.7 billion. A live-action “Beauty and the Beast” delivered $1.3 billion.Disney likes the cash. The company also views Mr. Bailey’s remake operation as crucial to remaining relevant. Disney’s animated classics are treasured by fans, but most showcase ideas from another era, especially when it comes to gender roles: Be pretty, girls, and things might work out.The reimaginings, as Mr. Bailey refers to his remakes, find ways to make Disney stories less retrograde. His heroines are empowered, and his casting emphasizes diversity. A live-action “Snow White,” set for release next year, stars the Latina actress Rachel Zegler as the princess known as “the fairest of them all.” Yara Shahidi played Tinker Bell in the recent “Peter Pan and Wendy,” making her the first Black woman to portray the character onscreen.“We want to reflect the world as it exists,” Mr. Bailey said.But that worldview — and business strategy — has increasingly put Disney and Mr. Bailey, a low-profile and self-effacing executive, in the middle of a very loud, very unpolite cultural fight. For every person who applauds Disney, there seems to be a counterpart who complains about being force-fed “wokeness.”Many companies are finding themselves in this vise — Target, Anheuser-Busch, Nike — but Disney, which has a powerful impact on children as they are forming life beliefs, has been uniquely challenged. In this hyperpartisan moment, both sides of the political divide have been pounding on Disney to stand with them, with movies that come from Mr. Bailey’s corner of the Magic Kingdom as prime examples.Consider his remake of “The Little Mermaid,” which arrived in theaters two weeks ago and cost an estimated $375 million to make and market. The new version scuttles problematic lyrics from the 1989 original. (“It’s she who holds her tongue who gets a man.”) In the biggest change, Halle Bailey, who is Black, plays Ariel, the mermaid. Disney has long depicted the character as white, including at its theme parks.The casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” was met with racist commentary online.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesSupport for Ms. Bailey, notably from people of color and film critics, has been offset by a torrent of racist commentary on social media and movie fan sites. Others have blasted “The Little Mermaid” for failing to acknowledge the horrors of slavery in the Caribbean. A few L.G.B.T.Q. people have criticized Disney for hiring a straight male makeup artist for the villainous Ursula, whose look in the animated film was inspired by a drag queen.Disney has long regarded these kinds of social media storms as tempests in teapots: trending today, replaced by a new complaint tomorrow. In 2017, for instance, a theater in Alabama refused to play the live-action “Beauty and the Beast” because it contained a three-second glimpse of two men dancing in each other’s arms. It became a global news story. Ultimately, the fracas seemed to have no impact on ticket sales.The upshot? Disney hoped “The Little Mermaid” would generate as much as $1 billion worldwide, with the furor evaporating once the film arrived in theaters. Feedback scores from test screenings were strong, as were early reviews. “Alan Menken just told me that he thinks this one is better than the animated film,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said at the film’s premiere last month, referring to the Oscar-winning composer.Instead, “The Little Mermaid” will top out closer to $600 million, box office analysts said on Sunday, largely because the film faltered overseas, where it was “review bombed,” with online trolls flooding movie sites with racist one-star reviews. The film has done well in North America, outperforming “Aladdin” and receiving an A grade from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls, although attendance by white moviegoers has been soft in some parts of the United States, according to analysts. Support from Black and Latino audiences have made up the slack.Mr. Bailey declined to comment on the racist responses to the film. “While the international opening was softer than we would have liked, the film is playing exceptionally well which we believe sets us up for a very long run,” he said on Saturday.Mr. Bailey, 53, has survived box office shoals that were far worse, including misfires like “The Lone Ranger.” The less said about his live-action “Mulan,” the better. But Disney has always supported him. “I’ve taken some big swings and had some big misses,” Mr. Bailey said. “I’m grateful that the leadership of the company understands that is part of any creative business.”Mr. Bailey has been president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production for 13 years — an eternity in Hollywood, where film chiefs are often jettisoned every few years. Over that time, Disney has been roiled by executive firings, multiple restructuring efforts and shifting strategies for film distribution. The steady-handed Mr. Bailey, who is popular with stars and their agents, has helped provide stability.“He’s a nice, decent, respectful, fair guy who does his job quietly, without fanfare,” said Kevin Huvane, a Creative Artists Agency co-chairman. “But that doesn’t mean that he is passive. Quite the opposite. He gets his hands dirty. If a deal isn’t working, he gets in there and he finds a way to make it happen.”Angelina Jolie’s two “Maleficent” films took in a combined $1.3 billion at the box office.Disney EnterprisesIn 2014, for instance, Mr. Bailey flew to Budapest from Los Angeles at a moment’s notice to have dinner with Angelina Jolie. She had agreed to star in “Maleficent” but seemed to be getting cold feet after reading a revised script. Whatever he told her worked; “Maleficent” and a sequel took in a combined $1.3 billion.“Sean is what we don’t see often these days, and certainly not in film,” Ms. Jolie said by email. “He’s consistent, stable and decent. When we have challenges, as all films do, he is even and fair. It may not be exciting for a story, but it is what we need more of.”Disney’s live-action films did not often showcase women before Mr. Bailey arrived, and diversity was almost nonexistent. Mr. Bailey has almost exclusively focused on female-led stories. He has also championed young actresses of color — Storm Reid, Nico Parker, Naomi Scott — and female directors, including Ava DuVernay (“A Wrinkle in Time”), Julia Hart (“Stargirl”) and Mira Nair (“Queen of Katwe”).“I think what he is doing is vastly important,” said Geena Davis, an actress and gender equity activist. “It’s not just about inspiring little girls. It’s about normalizing for men and boys, making it perfectly normal to see a girl doing interesting and important things and taking up space.”“Haunted Mansion,” based on the Disneyland ride, will arrive in theaters on July 28.Walt Disney StudiosThe next film from Mr. Bailey’s division, “Haunted Mansion,” arrives in theaters on July 28 and stars LaKeith Stanfield (an Oscar nominee for “Judas and the Black Messiah”), Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson and Tiffany Haddish. “Haunted Mansion” was directed by Justin Simien, the creator of “Dear White People,” and inspired by a Disney theme park ride.“I felt that we had an opportunity to try and create a really cool, Disney-appropriate PG-13 movie that does have some real scares but also charms and delights,” Mr. Bailey said.Mr. Bailey, who watched “The Little Mermaid” 18 times as it worked its way through Disney’s pipeline, has more than 50 movies in various stages of development and production, including live-action versions of “Moana,” “Hercules” and “Lilo and Stitch.” Yes, “Hocus Pocus 3” is happening. (His division makes two or three big-budget films annually for release in theaters and three modestly budgeted movies for Disney+.)“Mufasa: The Lion King,” a photorealistic prequel directed by Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning “Moonlight” screenwriter, is scheduled for release in 2024. Mr. Bailey said “The Lion King” could expand into “a big, epic saga” like the “Star Wars” franchise. “There’s a lot of room to run if we can find the stories,” he said.Restarting the five-film “Pirates of the Caribbean” series is another priority, although nothing official has been announced. “We think we have a really good, exciting story that honors the films that have come before but also has something new to say,” Mr. Bailey said. Will the franchise’s problematic star, Johnny Depp, return as Captain Jack Sparrow? “Noncommittal at this point,” Mr. Bailey said, seemingly inching the door open.One of the knocks on Mr. Bailey is that he has not created a new franchise; almost none of his bets on original movies have paid off. The sled-dog drama “Togo,” made for Disney+ in 2019, was a critical hit that failed to break out. “Tomorrowland,” an ambitious fantasy from 2015, crashed and burned. At some point, studios cannot endlessly recycle old stuff. A Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox ends up as a blank page.“It’s really hard to crack through and get an original, hugely commercial win,” Mr. Bailey said. “We’re going to keep trying.” He pointed to a project based on “The Graveyard Book,” about a boy raised by the supernatural occupants of a cemetery.One criticism of Mr. Bailey is that he has not created an original franchise. “We’re going to keep trying,” he said.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesEvery studio has been struggling to come up with original hits. But the added glare that seems to come with any Disney effort adds a degree of difficulty.Like Mr. Iger, Mr. Bailey does not hide his political leanings. He is close to Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, a friendship that started in 2000, when Mr. Bailey held a fund-raiser for him in Hollywood. (Mr. Bailey has a lot of famous friends. He goes way back with Ben Affleck, helped Dwayne Johnson start a tequila brand and serves on the board of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.)But Mr. Bailey is in the business of making movies for everyone. That challenge is part of what keeps his job interesting, he said.“How do you deal with audiences that are changing outside our country, inside our country?” Mr. Bailey said. “How do you tell stories — stories that matter to everyone — in a world that is increasingly polarized?” More