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      With ‘Good Grief,’ Daniel Levy Goes From Laughs to Tears

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      A talk with the co-creator of “Schitt’s Creek” on making the transition to drama with his feature directorial debut.“Good Grief” might have made an alternate name for “Schitt’s Creek,” the multi-Emmy-winning comedy Daniel Levy created and starred in with his father, Eugene. But unlike that series, which mined comedy from the dynamics of a family in financial crisis, Levy’s latest project, a drama, explores how loss affects a close-knit friend group in their late 30s.The film, streaming on Netflix, is the younger Levy’s directorial debut (he also wrote the film, starred in it and was a producer). Set in London, it follows Levy’s character as he travels to Paris with his best friends (Ruth Negga and Himesh Patel) after the recent deaths of his mother and husband (Luke Evans). “Good Grief” is the first release in a deal he signed with Netflix.On a video call last month, Levy, 40, traced the film’s inception to the death of his grandmother during the pandemic, a period that overwhelmed him with its “collective grief.”“I hadn’t experienced a lot of loss in my life,” he said. “My grandfather had passed away around 10 years prior, but, experiencing grief as an adult, I found myself very confused about what I was feeling. My biggest fear was that somehow I wasn’t doing it properly. That confusion forced me to start writing down my feelings, and I realized that there was an interesting story in the exploration of trying to figure out what grief means.”​​Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Levy in “Good Grief,” which he wrote and directed.NetflixHow did you think to add another layer of grief to this character who’s already lost his mother?Part of that is just trying to find a compelling throughline for the sake of telling an entertaining story. I knew, coming out of “Schitt’s Creek,” that I wanted to tell a story about friendship. As a person who’s been single for quite some time, your friends are the great loves of your life, so I knew going into this that I wanted the friendships to be front and center. Was it different to write about friends rather than family?I had to pull from a different source. A lot of these relationships are based on my own. I look back on my 30s as one of the great decades in my relationship to my friends. I think the older we get, the more complicated our friendships are. So often in movies, friends are on the sidelines, cheering on the central characters as they are on a journey for love. To invert that expectation and make the great love story about friendship was important for me, because that’s the life I’m living right now.Why did you decide to set the story abroad, in London?I like the idea of someone who lives in a place they call home, but is not where they’re from. I knew that I wanted the character to be a fish out of water, and build a world around him which felt potentially isolating. When you live in a place that is not your home, the relationships you form are so important. I needed there to be a long history for him, and loved this idea that he came for school and chose to stay; it felt like the rich back story of a character who I think is quite an avoidant.I lived there for a chunk of time, in my early 20s. I was getting over a weird breakup and got to “Eat, Pray, Love” my way through England. The experience was very character-building, and when you have those really formative moments somewhere, you will always have that desire to go back. It’s also a beautiful place to set a movie. “I think the older we get, the more complicated our friendships are,” Levy said, discussing part of the inspiration for his movie.Ben Sklar for The New York TimesWhy did you decide to make a drama?I wanted to write something for myself and wanted to do something that was slightly more emotional, as a challenge. I think my desire as an actor led me, as a writer, down a path of exploring something more dramatic. We did 80 episodes of a comedy and, as an actor, you want to try something new. I don’t love that actors get pigeonholed when they have success in one particular area. I would kill for these kinds of parts coming to me more often, and, to be honest, I had to write it for myself, you know? I wanted the work and I wanted the challenge.When did you cast yourself as director?As soon as I wrote the script. I had such a specific vision for it by the time I wrote the last page that I knew that I had to direct it because I knew that if anyone else came in to direct, I would be buzzing around them like a really annoying mosquito. So it was a practical thing, and I’d also directed several episodes of my TV show and felt like I was ready. I don’t want to say easy, because it wasn’t easy, but it felt comfortable. More

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      How to Watch the Golden Globes 2024: Date, Time, Streaming

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      Hollywood usually looks to the annual awards as a party, but this year they also have an unlikely mission: A bid for relevance.The bar for a successful Golden Globes is usually low: Did at least one winner crack an acceptance-speech joke they’d probably regret the next day? Was there unpredictable political pontificating? Was the champagne still flowing into the wee hours?But then a Los Angeles Times investigation in 2021 revealed that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the eccentric, cloistered nonprofit of about 85 journalists that voted on the Golden Globes for some seven decades, had exactly zero Black members. The event has spent the last two years undergoing a reboot: The H.F.P.A. was dissolved. Private ownership took over, and new leadership was hired.This year, the Globes are back on TV, in their normal Sunday-night slot. (NBC didn’t broadcast the event in 2022, and last year’s pared-back Globes were booted to a Tuesday night because of football.) Now they’re on CBS, and a diversified voting body of more than 300 entertainment journalists has chosen the winners and added two new categories. (Oh, and they also found a new way to nominate Taylor Swift.)Will it be enough to win back audiences? (The 2023 Globes had about 6.3 million viewers, down 10 percent from the last televised Globes ceremony in 2021; by comparison, the Oscars draw about 19 million viewers.) Will the A-listers show up? Will the ceremony be a nod to the boozy, freewheeling affairs of old or play it more strait-laced like last year’s sober — some said, “boring” — ceremony?We’ll find out Sunday night. Here’s how to watch.What time does the show start, and where can I watch?The ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. CBS is the official television broadcaster.Online, you can watch the show live on the CBS app, which is free to download, though you’ll need to sign in using the credentials from your cable provider. The show will also stream on Paramount+, though only subscribers who have the Showtime add-on will be able to watch live. For those who do not, the ceremony can be streamed beginning Monday on Paramount+. There are also a number of live TV streaming services that offer access to CBS, including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV and FuboTV, which all require subscriptions, though many are offering free trials.Is there a red carpet?Variety will stream red carpet arrivals beginning at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, 3:30 p.m. Pacific on its website and social media platforms as part of the official Globes preshow, which will be hosted by the Variety journalists Marc Malkin and Angelique Jackson and the “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent Rachel Smith. You can also watch on ETonline.com or the Golden Globes website.Who is hosting?The comedian and actor Jo Koy, who has released multiple Netflix specials and starred in the comedy movie “Easter Sunday” in 2022, will take the reins for the first time.Who is presenting?The lineup of actors, comedians and musicians who will hand out awards includes Amanda Seyfried, America Ferrera, Angela Bassett, Daniel Kaluuya, Florence Pugh, Gabriel Macht, George Lopez, Issa Rae, Julia Garner, Justin Hartley, Michelle Yeoh, Oprah Winfrey and Will Ferrell.Who votes on the awards?With the H.F.P.A. dissolved, an expanded group of more than 300 entertainment journalists from around the world is now responsible for selecting the nominees and winners. And the Globes have promised it’s a much more diverse group that now includes Black voters.What’s new this year?The Globes introduced two new categories, one for stand-up comedy on television and the other for blockbuster films — defined as those taking in at least $100 million at the domestic box office and $150 million worldwide (hello, “Barbie”-”Oppenheimer”-“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” showdown).With the exception of the blockbuster category, which has eight slots, the categories now have six nominees each, up from five. In other words, more stars to populate the televised ceremony and the red carpet spectacle.Who is nominated?“Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s live-action take on the popular doll, leads the pack with eight nominations, including three in the original song category. (Yes, “I’m Just Ken” made the cut.) Close on its heels is “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour blockbuster biopic about the theoretical physicist who led the effort that produced the first nuclear weapons. It’s up for best drama, director and actor, among other awards.On the TV side, it looks to be a big night for “Succession,” which ended last spring and earned a record nine nominations. The audience favorites “The Bear” and “Only Murders in the Building” picked up five apiece.What should you watch for?“Oppenheimer” will be looking to bolster its case at the Oscars with wins here in the best drama and director categories. But don’t count out “Killers of the Flower Moon,” whose female lead, Lily Gladstone, could become the first Indigenous performer to win best actress in a drama.Among the TV nominees, Meryl Streep, who is up for best supporting actress in a comedy for her role as the actress Loretta Durkin in Season 3 of “Only Murders in the Building,” could break her own record for the most Golden Globe acting wins with a victory (this would be her ninth statuette). Ali Wong, who played a successful businesswoman drawn into a road-rage-fueled feud in the Netflix comedy “Beef,” could become the first actress of Asian descent to win best actress in the limited series category.And, if “Succession” wins best drama, it will tie the record for most wins in the category (currently held by “Mad Men” and “The X-Files,” which each have three).Will Taylor Swift be there?The singer picked up her fifth Golden Globe nomination, for her concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” thanks to the new blockbuster film category, but no word yet on her plans for the evening. Will the winners in the TV categories offer any hints about the Emmys next week?What a strange year: The dual actors’ and writers’ strikes that largely brought Hollywood to a standstill also bumped the Emmys from their normal September spot, even though voting took place in June. They’re now set to air after Jan. 15, even though the winners for the 2022-23 season were locked in months ago. Which is to say: Nope! More

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      Taraji P. Henson on Almost Walking Away from ‘Color Purple’

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      Before things started to click for Taraji P. Henson, she sought career counseling from the man upstairs.“I had a talk with God a long time ago when things didn’t pop,” she said. Invoking the women she had watched as a child, like Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, and Diahann Carroll, she told him, “I want longevity and work that matters.”This, Henson has had: At 53, she is an Oscar-nominated actress with a long career that includes films like “Hidden Figures,” “Hustle & Flow” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” She also spent six seasons playing the music-industry matriarch Cookie on the Fox series “Empire,” a juicy role that netted her a Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award.But she is candid about the frustrations she still faces in an industry that undervalues Black actresses. “The fact that I made it through is a blessing because a lot has happened,” she said, noting that she had to step away from work last year when things got to be too much. A monthlong trip to Bali helped to recenter her, as did attending to her successful beauty brand, TPH.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Safdie Brothers Are Done Making Movies Together

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      Josh and Benny Safdie are officially splitting up.The Safdie brothers, the filmmaking duo behind “Uncut Gems” (2019) and “Good Time” (2017), are splitting up.Benny Safdie confirmed the “amicable” breakup with his brother, Josh, in an interview with Variety, calling it “a natural progression of what we each want to explore.”“I will direct on my own, and I will explore things that I want to explore. I want that freedom right now in my life,” Benny Safdie told the publication in a wide-ranging interview.A new film that was to be a follow-up to “Uncut Gems,” which would have seen the brothers reunite with Adam Sandler, has been put on pause, according to Variety.The publication reported that while the two were set to co-direct the film, Benny Safdie said “he did not co-write the script and hasn’t been a meaningful part of the creative process, despite reports to the contrary.”In its review of “Uncut Gems,” The Times called the brothers “two of the more playfully inventive filmmakers working in American cinema,” noting that the pair “clearly like working your nerves.” More

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      ‘Night Swim’ Review: Hold Your Breath, Forever

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      The backyard pool is a symbol of love and of terror in this uneven but scary horror film.Hollywood horror often attempts to work out collective anxiety about the suburbs, that place full of pleasant-looking houses creaking with ghosts and terrors. Suburban life is, admittedly, fundamentally strange, with neighborhoods full of atomized worlds and natural features turned into individual, highly-controlled assets. A forest becomes manicured bushes. A lake becomes a pool.Pools are ubiquitous across the American suburbs (just peek out the window when you fly), and the affluence, comfort and fun they represent can turn a middling kid into the most popular one at school, at least during the hot months. They are also ubiquitous in horror, from “Gremlins” to that greatest instance of suburban anxiety, “Poltergeist.” For the Waller family of “Night Swim,” the pool means freedom, friends and a new lease on life. But pools can also be deadly (accidental drowning is the No. 1 killer of young children), so the pleasure comes with an edge, a fact the Waller family are about to learn.Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a former major-league baseball player, a real slugger, whose multiple sclerosis has taken him out of the game. His wife, Eve (Kerry Condon), is eager to finally settle down, proving a lasting home for their two children: breezy teenage Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren), who struggles more than his sister to fit in with other kids. They find an old house outside the Twin Cities, fall in love, and buy it, then commence cleaning out the gloppy, unused pool in the backyard. It becomes an oasis. And for a while, the pool seems to be helping Ray get better.But this is a horror film, so the Wallers cannot have nice things and, unfortunately, neither can we. “Night Swim” is the feature debut of Bryce McGuire, produced by the horror mavens James Wan and Jason Blum and based on McGuire’s 2014 short film. (A tidbit too odd to ignore: that short was filmed in the musician Michelle Branch’s backyard pool.) The first half of the movie is remarkably effective, especially if you’ve ever had a pool, and especially if you’ve swam in it at night, though lots of “Night Swim” happens during the day. Jumps abound, and a scene with Izzy and her crush is especially terrifying.But it goes downhill at some point. The inciting concept is so strong — the pool, to rephrase the meme, that makes you dead — that all additions after a certain point start to feel like overkill. The strongest horror concepts are spare and uncluttered: something is chasing you, something is thumping under the bed. They tap into an anguish that is fundamental and gut-level, a level way lower than your head.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Memory’ Review: A Contrived Drama With Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard

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      In this contrived movie, Peter Sarsgaard stars as a man with dementia, and Jessica Chastain plays a caretaker with buried family secrets.In “Memory,” a woman haunted by her past meets a man who’s scarcely holding onto his. That’s the setup in the writer-director Michel Franco’s contrived drama with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, whose work in this artsified slab of exploitation cinema is strong enough that you wish their characters would run off to an entirely different movie.Chastain plays Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic with a day job caring for disabled adults. She and her sweet teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), have a spacious, sunlit apartment in an industrial-looking building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There’s a tire store next door and multiple locks on their apartment door. Each time Sylvia returns home, she fastens the locks and arms the alarm with great deliberation, a ritual that Franco repeatedly presents. It’s a habit that like Sylvia’s wariness and physical reserve — she doesn’t readily make eye contact and tends to cross her arms in front of her chest — underscores her guardedness.One night, Sylvia and her sister, Olivia (the always welcome Merritt Wever), attend a high-school reunion. There, a visibly uncomfortable Sylvia withdraws into herself, but when a man — Sarsgaard as Saul — approaches her, she splits for reasons that become torturously clear only later. He follows her onto the subway and all the way to her building’s front door, where he stays even when it begins pouring. The next morning, Sylvia finds him shivering and near-incoherent, sitting in a spare tire on the ground. It turns out that Saul has early-onset dementia and lives in his handsome brownstone, watched over by his no-nonsense brother, Isaac (Josh Charles), whose daughter, Sara (Elsie Fisher), comes and goes.Soon, Sylvia begins taking care of Saul part-time, a job that turns intimate and then unsurprisingly romantic. The relationship doesn’t cohere dramatically, alas, despite the demonstrative tenderness and commitment that the actors bring to it, and the story’s multiple gaps in logic don’t help. It doesn’t make sense that Isaac, who comes off as a fairly self-important professional, doesn’t have any hired help when Sylvia arrives, especially given the family’s obvious economic resources. (I also seem to have missed the scene when he runs a background check on her.) Like Olivia’s husband and kids, a collection of bland types, Isaac mainly serves as a convenient bourgeois prop that Franco can swing at before blowing it up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Mayhem!’ Review: Just When You Think You’re Out

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      A former convict struggles to go straight in this ultraviolent revenge thriller.No one in the mood for subtlety or nuance is likely to be beckoned by “Mayhem!,” a slugfest that cleaves to its title with punishing fidelity. A mood board of mashing, slashing, snapping and splintering, this feature, directed by Xavier Gens, is revenge-movie cliché ground down to the studs.Our rampaging antihero is Samir (Nassim Lyes), a French-Algerian parolee determined to uncouple from his troubled past. His former associates, however, have other ideas; and when Samir is forced to put the kibosh on one of them, his only remaining option is to flee. Five years later, we find him happily settled in East Thailand with a wife (Loryn Nounay), an adorable stepdaughter (Chananticha Tang-Kwa) and a baggage-handling job. This paradise soon implodes when a yen for beachfront property leads Samir to a local gangster (Olivier Gourmet) whose eyebrows outnumber his scruples.Hobbled by a stoic lead character who is all muscle and no mouth (Samir is about as voluble as the original Terminator), “Mayhem!” is emotionally stagnant. Yet Gens and his action designer, Jude Poyer, have clearly benefited from working on the dazzlingly destructive AMC series “Gangs of London,” and they stage the film’s battles with brutal grace. The stunt work is often extraordinary — notably in an elevator melee that unfolds like a deadly game of Twister — and Lyes, a former French kickboxing champion, has moves most action stars can only approximate.These are some consolation for a plot that smothers its immigrant heart beneath a blanket of blood and sweat. Though when the system blocks you from doing the right thing, sometimes your only recourse is to slice open a stomach or two. In slow motion, of course.Mayhem!Rated R for seamy nightlife and shattering violence. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got’ Review: A Lens on a Jazz Luminary

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      Brigitte Berman’s dazzling 1985 look at the self-taught virtuoso clarinetist and bandleader is showing after a restoration.The documentarian Brigitte Berman has made two spectacular pictures about American jazz pioneers. The first, “Bix: ‘Ain’t None of Them Play Like Him Yet’” (1981), chronicled the life of the brilliant and tragically short-lived cornetist and composer Bix Beiderbecke. It screened in a restoration at Film Forum a couple of years back. Now, her follow-up to that movie, “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (1985), is similarly restored and booked at Film Forum.Shaw, the clarinetist and bandleader, was a devotee of Beiderbecke, and is interviewed in Berman’s Beiderbecke film. When Shaw walked away from music for a first time, early in what would be a lengthy but nevertheless self-truncated jazz career, he tried to write a novel about Bix. He couldn’t complete it, he says here, because the story had “depth and connotation that I wasn’t philosophically or mentally prepared to cope with.”Shaw was not only a self-taught virtuoso but also often the smartest guy in any room he was in. When he came back to the bandstand, his recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” was a smash hit of the swing era. An unselfconscious civil rights pioneer, he hired the Black singer Billie Holiday to sing with him at a time when that just wasn’t done.Charming as well as erudite, he married eight times, to Lana Turner and Ava Gardner among others. The marriages didn’t last because of his cantankerousness. The fame he avidly sought in his early years — “like any other American kid, I wanted more of everything,” he notes — eventually struck him as inane and repellent. An all-star roster of interviewees, including the luminaries Mel Tormé and Buddy Rich, contributes to an unfailingly entertaining saga. The movie on its first release did so well — it won an Oscar — that it prompted the ever-unsatisfied Shaw to sue for a bigger share of the picture’s profits.Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve GotNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More