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      ‘The Last Rodeo’ Review: One for the Money, Two for the Show

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      A family tragedy forces an aging bull rider back into the saddle in this blandly wholesome drama.With jaw set and cowboy hat solidly secured, Neal McDonough strides through “The Last Rodeo” as Joe Wainwright, a former champion bull rider who’s believably broken in body and spirit. Ever since the death of his wife ten years earlier, Joe has retired to his Texas ranch to lick his wounds and nurse his regrets.And he has a lot of both, including the broken neck he sustained while riding drunk, an injury that derailed the life of his daughter (Sarah Jones) as well as his own. So when his young grandson develops a brain tumor, Joe needs a way to pay for the boy’s treatment and make amends for his own indifferent parenting. And, wouldn’t you know it, there’s a bull-riding tournament this very weekend in Tulsa, Okla., with a million dollars in prize money. Can Joe hoist his aching knees and weary butt back in the competitive saddle? Oh you just know he can.Directed by Jon Avnet (who wrote the script with McDonough and Derek Presley), “The Last Rodeo” — the latest Christian-themed film from Angel Studios — proceeds with easeful predictability. The story’s conventional beats (the get-back-in-shape montage, the bad news delivered at a critical moment) cohere into a wholesome journey of long-delayed healing. The inclusion of the wonderful Mykelti Williamson, as Joe’s longtime friend and rodeo partner, injects a buddy-movie vibe that anchors the action in riding bouts that are smoothly thrilling without being punishing.Keeping religious prodding to a minimum — a crucifix here, a mass prayer there — the movie concludes with McDonough’s earnest plea to scan a QR code to purchase tickets for other viewers. The studio used the same gambit with its “King of Kings” a couple of months ago and hey, if it gets more people into actual theaters, I’ll be the last to complain.The Last RodeoRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Review: ‘Pee-wee as Himself’ Finds the Man Behind the Man-Child

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      This fascinating though incomplete documentary tells Paul Reubens’s story despite the subject’s doubts about the project.The title of “Pee-wee as Himself,” the two-part documentary that airs Friday on HBO, is a bit of a ruse, or maybe a riddle.Pee-wee Herman, the manic, bow-tied man-child, was the greatest creation of Paul Reubens, who died in 2023. But Reubens was someone else, a self whose nature was obscured, sometimes by the overshadowing fame of his alter ego, sometimes by his own choice.The question that hangs over this fascinating and tantalizing film is how much Reubens the director, Matt Wolf, will get out of Reubens. Before his death, Reubens cooperated on the documentary — but not without reservations, which he airs from the first moment he appears onscreen.“I could have directed this documentary,” he says, but adds that he was told he would not have the appropriate perspective. In his interviews with Wolf, he still seems not entirely convinced. He wants to tell his story; he is not so sure he wants his story to be told for him. He wants to show us his nature, but it is not simply going to explode out of him as if somebody said the secret word on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”What unfolds, over more than three hours, is in part a public story: How Reubens channeled his genius into an anarchic creation that bridged the worlds of alternative art and children’s TV, then had his life derailed by trumped-up scandals that haunted him to the end.It is also partly a spellbinding private story about artistry, ambition, identity and control. What does it mean to become famous as someone else? (The documentary’s title refers to the acting credit in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” as a result of which Reubens remained largely unknown even as his persona became a worldwide star.) And what were the implications of being obscured by his creation, especially for a gay man in a still very homophobic Hollywood?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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeff Goldblum Says Jeff Goldblum Is ‘Not a Performance’

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      Listen to and Follow PopcastApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeAt 72, Jeff Goldblum has not lost a step. He may, in fact, be picking up the pace.An unmistakable screen presence since the mid-1970s, when he stole scenes in “Death Wish,” “Nashville” and “Annie Hall,” Goldblum has recently hammed it up as the Wizard of Oz, in last year’s “Wicked” (and this year’s sequel), and Zeus himself, in Netflix’s “Kaos.”Beyond film and television — where he’s also popped up in recent years on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the millennial-skewering “Search Party” — Goldblum has become a fixture in the worlds of fashion (attending two consecutive Met Galas), music (having recently released “Still Blooming,” his fourth jazz album) and the internet variety show circuit (gamely eating hot wings and shopping for sneakers).To each role, fiction and non-, Goldblum brings a contagious enthusiasm and plenty of Jeff Goldblum, working his amiably offbeat public persona, born from defining roles in “The Big Chill,” “Jurassic Park” and “Independence Day,” into everything he does. To watch him move through the world is to witness that immutable movie-star magic incarnate as he kisses hands, asks questions and makes the days of strangers with solicitous eye contact and effusive approachability, seemingly without ever flagging. (Goldblum is also the father of two children under 10, who are being raised by Goldblum and his wife, Emilie, a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast, in Florence, Italy.)Jeff Goldblum at The New York Times’s office in Manhattan. “It’s not a performance, and I don’t feel like it’s inauthentic,” he said of his public persona. “I feel like my interest in people is real.”It can all seem exhausting — and that’s before learning that Goldblum found the time to personally sign thousands of copies of his new album, which features appearances by his “Wicked” co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Yet in a recent interview on Popcast, the actor and musician insisted that the perpetual Goldblum experience — influenced by his study of the Meisner technique — is not an act, but his lifeblood.“It’s not a performance, and I don’t feel like it’s inauthentic,” he said. “I feel like my interest in people is real and I’m thrilled to be here, when I have an opportunity to let that run free and express itself. That feels wholesome to me, and nourishing.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The New Boy’ Review: Finding a Light in the Darkness

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      Cate Blanchett stars as a nun who encounters an Indigenous Australian boy with special powers in this film about forced assimilation.In the moody magical-realist drama, “The New Boy,” an Indigenous boy (Aswan Reid) is captured in the outback and forced to live in a Christian orphanage in rural Australia. It’s the early 1940s, and the Australian government is continuing to implement brutal policies geared toward the forced assimilation of Aboriginal people. Missionary groups are taking Aboriginal children from their families to convert them to Christianity. The fate of what came to be known as the Stolen Generations befalls our nameless newcomer in the film’s opening scene, which Thornton visualizes as a stylized, slow-motion face-off on cracked desert grounds.The boy doesn’t speak English, and for most of this uncanny film, he remains silent, baffling the other children in his orphanage with an innocent disregard for the rules. He walks around shirtless, sleeps under his bed, and eats with his hands — behaviors that the abbess, Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett) treats with patience and understanding.The formidable Blanchett in a rare role in her native Australia, is neither severe nor overly innocent here: Eileen curses and takes sips of wine, bringing unexpected levity to a film that is ultimately about spiritual warfare.Filled with overt, and often poignant, symbolism and touches of fantasy, the director Warwick Thornton (who is also the film’s cinematographer, and an excellent one at that), draws parallels between Eileen’s passionate Christian beliefs and the new boy’s supernatural capacities. In one luminous scene, his touch seems to heal a fellow orphan who has been bitten by a poisonous snake — he’s a miracle worker, though his exterior prevents the other children and orphanage workers from recognizing the obvious.Thornton, who briefly attended a Christian boarding school when he was a child, brings a textured perspective to this story of cultural violence and white guilt. He opts for a dreamy, lugubrious atmosphere and oblique imagery that might alienate some hoping for a more straightforward narrative — and mesmerize others captivated by its slow-burn vision.The New BoyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life’ Review: It’s Not Me, It’s Jane

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      A modern heroine learns about love, and a whole lot more, at a writing residency.Besides Shakespeare, no author may haunt the screen more than Jane Austen. Her novels, full of heroines who find love and usually a life lesson or two, practically spawned the romantic comedy. So no wonder filmmakers have tackled copious direct adaptations of Austen’s novels — many of which are modern classics of cinema, like Ang Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility” and the six-part TV version of “Pride and Prejudice,” with its indelible scene of Mr. Darcy emerging from a pond in a wet shirt, ensuring generations of crushes on Colin Firth.Yet Austen’s novels are timeless, and thus lend themselves to modernized spins, like “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Metropolitan,” “Clueless,” “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” and dozens more. And there are the meta-Austen tales, stories about loving Austen’s stories: “Austenland,” for instance, and “The Jane Austen Book Club.” The well of, and thirst for, Austenalia is seemingly bottomless.“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is not quite like any of those — more of a cousin from out of town, a little different, a little more intriguing. Written and directed by Laura Piani, it’s a rom-com laced lightly with “Pride and Prejudice” overtones, and it’s also a love letter to writing and reading, and to Austen, too. But there’s plenty going on here that is, if not entirely original, at least not straight from Austen.Our heroine is the 30-something bookworm Agathe (a charming Camille Rutherford), who is French and lives in Paris, where she works at the storied English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company, having learned English from her father during her childhood. (Early scenes are shot in the real bookshop, which is a fun nugget for fans of the store.) The setup has the ring of familiarity: Her best friend Felix (Pablo Pauly, suitably impish) also works at the store, and the two are chummy and inseparable. You can feel a romance coming on, but the movie isn’t going to make it quite so easy for us or for them.Agathe also dreams of being a writer, but something psychological is holding her back, and she’s at a bit of a standstill. The movie takes its time unpeeling those layers.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Lazer, Executive Who Joined the World of Muppets, Dies at 89

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      At IBM, he hired a young Jim Henson to make humorous corporate films using his puppet creations. Mr. Henson later hired Mr. Lazer to help run his company.David Lazer, who as an IBM executive in the mid-1960s hired Jim Henson’s Muppets to star in a series of short films that injected laughs into sales meetings — and who a decade later joined Mr. Henson’s company as a producer — died on April 10 at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 89.His death, which had not been widely reported, was confirmed by Doyle Newberry, a manager of Mr. Lazer’s estate. He did not cite a cause.“What David brought to the company was class,” Brian Henson, Mr. Henson’s son and the chairman of the Jim Henson Company, said in an interview. “Even my dad would say you couldn’t call Muppets Inc. classy. Up until then, it was a bunch of beatniks making weird stuff.”In 1965, Mr. Lazer was making commercials and sales training films for IBM’s office products division and had learned the importance of keeping in-house audiences at the company interested during meetings. Intrigued by a reel of commercials and short films made by Mr. Henson, Mr. Lazer wanted to bring his “sense of humor and crazy nuttiness” to IBM, he told Brian Jay Jones for his book “Jim Henson: The Biography” (2013).The star of Mr. Henson’s early films for IBM was Rowlf the Dog, who typed letters to his mother on a series of IBM manual and electric typewriters in which he described his new career as a salesman for the company. He promoted real products; he also plugged an electric guitar from IBM’s “Hippie Products Division” that, improbably, dispensed coffee.In another short, an early version of Cookie Monster devoured a talking coffee machine.“The idea is that if you can give people a good laugh, they’ll listen better,” Mr. Lazer told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1985.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Do You Follow One of the Craziest Cannes Movies Ever?

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      Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or for “Titane,” returns with the body-horror tale “Alpha.” The critical reception has not been kind.Many filmmakers dream of earning a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, but success here comes with a steep downside: It sets sky-high expectations for your follow-up and the European critics can be merciless if that next film falls short.After “The Artist” premiered at Cannes in 2011 and went on to win the best picture Oscar, the director Michel Hazanavicius returned three years later to the festival with “The Search,” which was so roundly booed that it never found a major U.S. distributor. The director Olivier Assayas followed his French hit “Clouds of Sils Maria” (2014) with “Personal Shopper” (2016), a film I actually preferred but French critics hissed at during the end credits.And after Nicolas Winding Refn won the best director award at Cannes for the Ryan Gosling film “Drive” (2011), his next two movies were booed here. I’ll never forget that when Refn’s “The Neon Demon” concluded with a dedication to the director’s wife, Liv, a critic stood up next to me and shouted expletives at poor Liv in a thick French accent.The latest filmmaker to face this gilded dilemma is Julia Ducournau, the French director who won the Palme d’Or four years ago for “Titane.” Rarely has that top prize gone to a movie so gory and wild: It followed a lesbian serial killer who has sex with a car, and that was just the first act! Ducournau’s Palme win felt bracingly new, not least because it was only the young director’s second movie. Where would she go from there?In the years since, rumors swirled that Ducournau felt significant pressure to deliver a worthy follow-up. On Monday, she finally unveiled that film, “Alpha,” and Cannes critics pounced. Topping a movie as audacious as “Titane” was always going to be difficult, but the brutal reception suggests that some critics here were eager to cut Ducournau down to size.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Lilo & Stitch’: How a Fuzzy Blue Alien Became a Disney Cash Cow

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      Step aside, Moana, Elsa and Simba. In recent years, Stitch has quietly become one of Disney’s most popular — and most merchandised — characters.Eight-year-old Elle Bauerlein of Wake Forest, N.C., is obsessed with Stitch. “Honestly, I think about him all the time. Like, 10 hours every day.”Her American Girl doll, currently clad in a Stitch onesie complete with alien-eared hood, is technically named Stacy, but Elle prefers to call her “S” in tribute to Stitch. If she had to pick a favorite Disney princess it would be Moana, but only because Moana spends time on beachy activities similar to Stitch. Her pillowcase is Stitch. Her backpack is Stitch. Her Crocs are Stitch.The third grader was born more than a decade after the 2002 Disney animated film “Lilo & Stitch” was released in theaters, and yet, for the past two years, the rambunctious title character has been a fixture in her life.She’s not alone.In an act of belated cultural permeation, Stitch — the destructive but adorable alien experiment who crash-landed in Hawaii and befriended a young girl named Lilo — has become a crucial character in the Walt Disney Company’s modern empire, mainly in the form of a dizzying array of licensed merchandise.At PetSmart, you can find a Stitch squeaker toy for your dog. The discount chain Five Below has Stitch neck pillows, portable power banks and slime. Stitch clothing and accessories line the shelves at Primark. Yoplait offers berry- and cherry-flavored Stitch yogurt. Even Graceland has a tie-in collection of Stitch pompadoured plushies dressed in various Elvis Presley ensembles. If you’re overwhelmed, don’t worry: There’s also a cottage industry of TikTokers who devote their entire accounts to showcasing the latest Stitch-centric items to their legions of followers.While Disney does not release official sales data, the company’s annual financial reports for 2023 and 2024 included “Lilo & Stitch” on a short list of nine examples of its “major” licensed properties, putting it on par with classic titans like Winnie the Pooh and Mickey and Friends, and conglomerates like Star Wars and the collective Disney princesses.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More