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      Ian McKellen Has Clapped Back at Critics. Now He’s Playing One.

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      In the new film “The Critic,” he plays the titular acid-tongued reviewer in 1930s Britain, who is terrified of being outed as gay.In Anand Tucker’s new film “The Critic,” Ian McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, a closeted reviewer in 1930s Britain who covers theater with equal measures of wit and acid. “Despite her crimes against the theater, she was sensationally gorgeous when drunk,” Jimmy writes of a young actress portrayed by Gemma Arterton.Naturally, McKellen luxuriates in such lines. When the screenwriter Patrick Marber (“Notes on a Scandal,” “Closer”) sent the actor the script, he said, “‘This is the best part I’ve ever written for anybody,’” McKellen recalled. “Well, I didn’t want to appear to be rude by not doing it.”At 85, the actor is not slowing down, and continues to test himself by playing unlikely roles (just four years ago he was a rather mature Hamlet in London) and collaborating with directors like Robert Icke. Only a recent accident temporarily set the actor off course: In June he fell off the stage during a fight scene in “Player Kings,” Icke’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” diptych, in which McKellen played John Falstaff.“The Critic,” which comes to theaters Friday, was shot over five weeks. “The budget was very small for what we were trying to achieve, Ian was 83, it was really hard,” Tucker, the film’s director, said. “But he was just on it — and he’s in almost everything.”McKellen with Gemma Arterton, who plays Nina Land, a young actress who is often panned in Jimmy Erskine’s reviews.Sean Gleason/Greenwich EntertainmentThis could also describe McKellen’s decades-spanning career: He has been in almost every kind of production — fantasy blockbusters like the “Lord of the Rings” films, onstage in plays by Shakespeare and Beckett and in drag as the dame in the beloved British holiday tradition known as pantomime.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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      Can a Film Say Something New About the U.S.-Mexico Border Crisis?

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      “Borderland: The Line Within” takes a surprisingly multidisciplinary approach fueled by both personal history and government data.Some of the devastating information presented in the new film “Borderland: The Line Within” (in theaters) is familiar from recent documentaries. Filmmakers concerned with the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border understand how the camera can draw attention to what news reports and punditry miss: the human cost of government policies and law enforcement practices. Putting faces on abstract numbers activates empathy in a way no speech ever really can.“Borderland: The Line Within” examines this terrain a little differently. The director Pamela Yates does focus on individuals — two in particular. The first is Kaxh Mura’l, a Mayan man whom Yates knew from a previous documentary set in Guatemala. As the film opens, Mura’l is receiving death threats for his environmental activism there. If he can make it to the United States, he will qualify for legal asylum. But as the film shows, he struggles to be permitted due to obstructive border enforcement practices. His is a Kafka-esque tale with urgent and crucial stakes.The other subject is Gabriela Castañeda, an undocumented immigrant and mother whose status as a Dreamer under the DACA program was suddenly revoked. Castañeda is certain that the move is related to her activism on behalf of the Border Network for Human Rights. If she were detained, it would mean leaving her children alone.Seeing Mura’l and Castañeda’s stories unfold is powerful and often infuriating. But what really bolsters the film’s argument are the other figures in the documentary. In one sequence, hidden cameras capture immigration enforcement agents destroying gallons of water left in the desert by humanitarian groups like No More Deaths. Videos can’t show us everything, but the image of smiling agents kicking jugs and pouring out water certainly adds new dimensions.Yet what I found most fascinating in “Borderland” was, oddly enough, the more scientific part. Three participants in the film — Manan Ahmed, Alex Gil and Roopika Risam — are digital humanists at Columbia University, meaning they use data to inform their scholarly work in the humanities. All three have personal histories that intersect with U.S. immigration. Together, they use government data to spot patterns in public spending that tell a story about where, and how, taxpayer money is spent at the border. Their models also trace the flow of money toward politicians on all sides of the issue and directly connect to how immigration policy is made.Woven into the personal narratives, the data visualizations — and the scholars’ explanation of why they matter — make the message land even harder. If video footage provides a damning perspective, this data offers an expansive one, allowing “Borderland” to explore the crisis as both individual and systemic. The issue is bigger than any one person. “Borderland” comes at it from more than one direction, and is more effective for it. More

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      Pedro Almodóvar, Master of Mystifying Films, Wrote a Book He Can’t Classify

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      Pedro Almodóvar is widely considered Spain’s greatest living filmmaker, but he sees himself as a writer first — a “fabulist,” in his telling. His extravagant plots took twists that were hard to predict or even pin down. The tale of two men who form a bond looking over two comatose women in “Talk to Her.” The story of a plastic surgeon who operates on a captive man, changing him to a woman against his will in “The Skin I Live In.”Of his more than 20 feature films, Almodóvar wrote or co-wrote nearly all of them. He had probably spent more days at a writing desk than on a set.As it turned out, he had been writing many other things, too — short stories, diary entries, a few unclassifiable essays — nearly the entire time he was making films. The tales sat in several mysterious blue folders, collected by his assistant Lola García over the course of the director’s many moves to different apartments in Madrid. In 2022, at the urging of the Spanish literary editor Jaume Bonfill, Almodóvar had a look at what had been saved over the years.“It was like seeing a dimension of Pedro that I didn’t know,” said Bonfill, adding that the manuscripts they sorted through contained writings the director had composed as a teenager as well as items Almodóvar had seemingly written decades later. The collection, “The Last Dream,” will be published in English on Sept. 24 by HarperVia.“The Last Dream” is due out Sept. 24 in the United States.HarperVia, via Associated PressJust what this collection is exactly is as much of a mystery as the folders were. Was this a memoir? (One piece was a journal entry written a couple of years back.) Was it fiction — or sketches of ideas that could be fiction — unfinished stories the director never turned into a film? (There is a tale about Count Dracula joining a monastery in Spain.) Much like with his films, Almodóvar feels little need to clarify his output into any defined genre.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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      ‘Gladiator II’ Delivers Friends, Romans and Sharks

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      How the Colosseum, filled with water and stocked with predators, becomes the scene of epic naval combat in Ridley Scott’s sequel.When “Gladiator” was released in 2000, fans and critics applauded its visual effects and production design, from the towering Colosseum to the detailed costumes and prowling tigers.More than two decades later, the architects of that film reassembled for a daunting task: building a sequel that captured what people loved about the first film’s visuals, while also finding fresh ways to surprise viewers.“Gladiator II” (in theaters Nov. 22) includes familiar elements — tightly choreographed sword fighting and lofty speeches about the Roman Empire — but it adds combat scenes in the Colosseum that include a rhino in one sequence and sharks in another.“It’s epic, beyond epic,” said Arthur Max, the production designer who, along with the director Ridley Scott and the producer Douglas Wick, is part of the brain trust behind the two films. “Everything we did on the first one was amplified to a much greater size and scale.”Much of the movie’s production design draws on meticulous research, with Max traveling to the Museum of the Roman Ships of Fiumicino, to conservation laboratories in Pompeii and to museums in Athens, among other locations. They also examined models of warships at the British Museum in London and studied illustrations from military history books.But the film also takes some creative license, since many of the images and scenes sprang from Scott’s imagination. Eschewing a computer for pen and paper, Scott would often envision scenes and then draw them out for his team to re-create onscreen.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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      ‘Uglies’ Review: Beauty Is a Beast

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      Joey King plays a teenager in a dystopian world where cosmetic surgery seems to be the cure for inequality.“Uglies,” based on the young adult book series by Scott Westerfeld, presents a cheekily vapid solution to world peace: At age 16, everyone is surgically enhanced to be pretty, thus eradicating inequality and conflict.Here, pretty has a template — imagine the uncanny valley of Instagram face with shiny eyes and full cheeks. Pre-operation, the teenager Tally Youngblood (Joey King) initially can’t wait to be made over. As she chirps, “Becoming moldy and crinkly? That goes against everything we’ve been taught!”The original book in the series was first optioned in 2006, at the dawn of the dystopian young adult craze, but the genre has mildewed in the years since — and the book’s early fans are now old enough to bemoan their own wrinkles.Still, one might counter that in the years in between, cosmetic transformations became an openly acknowledged right of passage for a class of celebutante influencers — a reality that may have occurred to the screenwriters Jacob Forman, Vanessa Taylor and Whit Anderson and the director Joseph McGinty Nichol, known as McG. (One could easily imagine Kris Jenner as an adviser to Laverne Cox’s imperious Dr. Cable, the leader of the lovelies.) To help woo the current generation of 11-year-olds, McG has concocted a fantastical, glossily repellent digital landscape that glows with neon and constant fireworks, causing the film to feel at once too sincere and too artificial.King plays Tally with more conviction than the movie deserves, alongside Keith Powers and Chase Stokes as her crushes and Brianne Tju as a punkish hoverboarder who yearns to join an anti-surgery agrarian conclave whose members reach self-actualization by reading Thoreau’s “Walden.” Though viewers can’t help but notice that the rebels are also naturally telegenic.UgliesRated PG-13 for some violence and action, and brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Killer’s Game’ Review: Catch Him if You Can

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      An assassin (Dave Bautista) meets his match (Sofia Boutella), but a diagnosis sets off an absurd chain of events in this rom-com action movie.“The Killer’s Game” begins with an atypical boy-meets-girl scenario. The high-end assassin Joe Flood, played by the bullet-headed Dave Bautista, spies his future love, the modern dancer Maize (Sofia Boutella), as he interrupts one of her performances in an ornate hall in Budapest. The interruption is a violent one: He shoots one of the spectators, and while Joe has the discretion to use a silencer, his prey’s bodyguards get a little loud. In the ensuing melee, Joe winds up in possession of Maize’s cellphone.On returning it, Maize offers Joe a dinner for his troubles. Here we learn that Joe, while brazen and prolific in the art of homicide, is a little awkward with the ladies. As he and Maize become a match, there’s trouble in paradise.Joe is plagued by headaches, and on learning that he has an incurable condition, he asks his own people — the colorful, loosely affiliated union of assassins — to take him out. (He receives his assignments, and his money, from his wise old handler, who is played by Ben Kingsley.)J.J. Perry (“Day Shift”), a stunt performer and coordinator who’s worked on the “John Wick” franchise, directs this rom-com action movie, whose conceits borrow from the “Wick” franchise rather heavily.While those conceits work well enough in movies starring Keanu Reeves, here they fall flat. The action choreography is better than passable, although Perry adds grindhouse-movie levels of gore and dismemberment in a dubious effort to up the thrill quotient.The Killer’s GameRated R for lots and lots and lots of violence. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Bob Weatherwax, Trainer of Lassie and Other Celebrity Dogs, Dies at 83

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      Like his father, who taught him the interdisciplinary roles needed for the job, he bred and coached the collies who played the heroic star of television and movies.Bob Weatherwax, a Hollywood dog trainer who carried on his father’s legacy of breeding and coaching collies to play Lassie, the resourceful and heroic canine who crossed flooded rivers, faced down bears and leaped into the hearts of countless children, died on Aug. 15 in Scranton, Pa. He was 83.His family said his death, at a Department of Veterans Affairs facility, was caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Mr. Weatherwax took over as Lassie’s primary trainer in 1985 after the death of his father, Rudd Weatherwax, whose collie Pal starred alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall in the hit 1943 film “Lassie Come Home,” as well as several other movies and the “Lassie” television show, seen on CBS and in syndication from 1954 to 1973.As his father’s apprentice, Mr. Weatherwax learned the interdisciplinary roles — talent agent, pooch geneticist and acting coach — that were necessary for managing the Lassie brand.Treating Lassie, a rough collie, as a genuine Hollywood star was a high priority. That standard was originally set by Louis B. Mayer, a founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that released “Lassie Come Home.” After the film’s premiere, Mr. Mayer called his friend Howard Hughes, who owned Trans World Airlines, to request that Lassie be permitted to fly with passengers, not in the cargo section. Lassie flew in first class.Mr. Weatherwax embraced his talent-manager role. He also embraced the perks of traveling with a celebrity.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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      ‘Winner’ Review: Not Like Other Girls

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      This dramedy starring Emilia Jones depicts the life and times of Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistle-blower.“Winner,” an oddly perky dramedy by the director Susanna Fogel (who wrote “Booksmart”), is loosely based on the life of Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor and Air Force linguist who was arrested in 2017 for leaking a top-secret report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. (She was released from prison in 2021.)But the eerie docudrama “Reality,” from last year, starring Sydney Sweeney as the titular polyglot, captured the tragedy of Winner’s case far more effectively than “Winner,” a sweeping biopic that presents her as something like an American Girl doll for the “I’m not like other girls” set.Extending from her adolescence through the aftermath of her arrest, “Winner” portrays the young woman as an endearing anomaly, with an anti-authoritarian streak shaped by her leftist father (Zach Galifianakis). Winner (Emilia Jones) is a pink-gun-toting animal lover and relentless freethinker who openly questions mainstream explanations for 9/11.The paradox of the real Reality Winner is that, despite her idiosyncratic views and her ability to speak the Pashto language, she was pretty normal. The film underscores this dynamic — she goes shopping with her mother (Connie Britton), moves in with her boyfriend (Danny Ramirez), powers through her 9 to 5 and eats dinner on the couch while watching CNN.This quirky girl-power comedy gives way to something darker as Winner becomes aware of U.S. government secrets, with the director drawing a connection between Winner’s political idealism and the public’s seemingly willful indifference toward corruption and human rights abuses. In this sense, the character plays to the archetype of the “social justice warrior” with some conservative touches. That’s the big problem with this strange film, which tries to humanize its protagonist but winds up making her feel plastic.WinnerRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More