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      ‘The Remarkable Life of Ibelin’ Review: More Real Than Reality

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      An unconventional documentary tells the story of a Norwegian gamer — and of how we live life on the internet.Almost from the start, the internet scrambled our sense of reality. You could never really know if whoever you were talking to was the person they said they were. Now it’s hard to know if they’re even a person.This is destabilizing and frightening, and also the premise for a good movie. But there has to be more to the story than just the scary parts. No, we don’t exist physically on the internet, but our virtual selves do things that have real-world consequences, and our emotions and minds, in some phenomenological way, extend into cyberspace, too. For better or worse, the internet is a place in which we live and love and rage and mourn. We bring our humanity with us, the bad parts but also the good ones.Movies haven’t always captured this aspect of 21st-century life well, in part because rendering the internet visually is weird and tricky. I loved Joe Hunting’s 2022 documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality,” filmed entirely inside a V.R. platform, for how it captured love and generosity in virtual space. And now we have Benjamin Ree’s “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which is a rare and beautiful thing: a moving documentary that excavates the question of the “real” in a profoundly humanistic and unconventional way.“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” is about Mats Steen, a Norwegian man who died in 2014 at the age of 25. Mats lived out his final years nearly immobilized, the result of being born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare inherited disease which presently has no cure. Mats’s family knew him as smart and loving, but grieved while watching him grow more withdrawn as his symptoms progressed. He would spend most of his waking hours on his computer, playing games. “Our deepest regret was that he would never experience friends, love, or make a difference in other people’s lives,” his father, Robert, tells Ree.Mats’s family were loving, attentive and supportive of him to the very end. But they were wrong about the friends and making a difference part. Oh, were they wrong.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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

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      ‘Memoir of a Snail’ Review: Escaping the Spiral

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      An animated tragicomedy for adults tells the story of a woman breaking out of her shell.First things first: “Memoir of a Snail” is not, in fact, the memoir of a snail. It is the memoir of an Australian woman named Grace Pudel (pronounced “Puddle”), who loves snails very much. Grace is voiced by Sarah Snook and rendered in slightly lumpy clay by Adam Elliot, who wrote, directed and produced this stop-motion animation film. It is a weirdly affecting tragicomedy, full of Dickensian turns and eccentric figures. (It is also, lest you be confused by the whimsy, definitely not for children.)We meet Grace, who wears a knit cap sporting two little eyeballs on the ends of stalks, by the bedside of a wiry-headed woman who’s moaning and groaning toward death. The woman is named Pinky (Jacki Weaver), and within moments, she has actually given up the ghost. Soon after, Grace brings Pinky’s ashes outside to the garden, after which she sits on a bench and sets a jar full of snails free. One of them, Sylvia, has always been Grace’s favorite.But snails move slowly, and so Grace has the time to tell Sylvia her life story as the skeptical snail inches away at the appropriately named pace. This life story, too, is full of death: Grace’s mother, a malacologist and lover of snails, dies giving birth to Grace and her twin brother, Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Their father, a French juggler, becomes an alcoholic, and eventually he dies too. Grace and Gilbert are split up and sent to equally bizarre foster families — her to a negligent but nice-enough couple in Canberra who spend their weekends at key parties, and him to a cruel family of cultlike religious apple farmers in Western Australia.Tremendous numbers of bad things happen to Grace as she moves into puberty, then adulthood. She shrinks slowly into herself over her lifetime, which includes becoming a hoarder, marrying a horrible man and, blessedly, meeting Pinky, a strange older woman who becomes her friend and mentor. With every blow, Grace recedes into her home a little more, which she fills with small snails on every shelf, because they make her feel safe. But in recounting the stories of woe to Sylvia the snail, Grace always seems upbeat.Elliot’s style of animation feels a bit like what Tim Burton would have gone for in his own animated films, if his style were far more deranged and grimy and possessed by the spirit of Edward Gorey. It’s also, at times, sexual and violent and somewhat explicit (and, at one point, vaguely weird about weight). His animated figures are people with desires and terrors, some quite twisted. They are haunted. They can be gross.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

    • 138 Shares139 Views

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      ‘Black Box Diaries’ Review: A Public Face for #MeToo in Japan

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      In a new documentary, Shiori Ito recounts her yearslong crusade for justice in Japan after accusing a powerful journalist of rape.Not everyone gets to be the heroine of her own story, much less a champion for others. On May 29, 2017, a 28-year-old Japanese journalist, Shiori Ito, did just that when she announced at a news conference that she had been raped in a Tokyo hotel two years earlier by a powerfully connected journalist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi. (He has denied the allegation.) Ito had decided to speak her truth despite intense pressure to remain silent. “People need to know about the horrors of rape,” she told a room of reporters, “and how deeply it affects one’s life.”Undaunted, Ito talks openly throughout “Black Box Diaries,” her moving if sometimes frustrating documentary about how she became a public face of the #MeToo movement in Japan, all while she grappled with police obstructionism, misogynist laws, sexist vitriol and fears about her safety. Going public was gutsy, and unusual. “One of the first things many Japanese women do while still shivering and bleeding at home is to read online about the experience of others — and deciding it’s just not worth pursuing,” David McNeill, an editor at Asia Pacific Journal, wrote in an interview he did with Ito after her first news conference.At the time, to protect her privacy, Ito wasn’t using her surname; not everyone in her family wanted her to speak out. Yet she soon went fully public, and her name became headline news. It remained so as she continued to seek justice in a fight that — as one year turned into another — grew into a cause, eventually becoming part of a national reckoning on sexual violence and harassment. With friends and lawyers, and buoyed by allies and sympathetic strangers, Ito fought to transform Japan’s laws and ideas relating to sexual violence. (In 2023, Japan criminalized nonconsenual sexual acts; in 2019, the United Nations had issued a statement saying the “absence of consent” should be the global definition of rape.)The documentary, based on her 2017 memoir, “Black Box,” is a chronicle of Ito’s ordeal and her fight. As the title suggests — a prosecutor, Ito has explained, called her case a “black box” because it happened behind closed doors — there’s a confessional aspect to her project. The documentary, for one, opens with some first-person statements styled as handwriting, the words running over an image of flowing water. “Please be mindful of the triggers in this film,” it reads, as cherry blossoms drift across the screen. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath if you need to.” As water and petals flow, so do her words: “That has helped me many times.”What follows is effectively a tense and tangled crime story, one in which Ito is at once the victim, lead investigator, dogged prosecutor and crusading reporter. In 2015, following the assault and after she filed a criminal complaint with the police department, Ito realized that she had to become her own advocate. She began chronicling the investigation in secret audio recordings, detailed written records and videos. After prosecutors dropped the case, despite DNA evidence and testimony from a taxi driver who dropped her at the hotel — she decided to take her personal investigation to the world.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

    • 113 Shares109 Views

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      Lawsuit Accusing Roman Polanski of 1973 Rape Is Settled

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      The suit accused Mr. Polanski of giving a minor alcohol before sexually assaulting her. A lawyer for the director said on Wednesday that the case was settled over the summer but gave no details.The film director Roman Polanski will no longer face a civil trial next year over accusations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl more than five decades ago, after reaching an out-of-court settlement with his accuser that led to the dismissal of the lawsuit, lawyers for both sides said on Wednesday.The lawsuit against Mr. Polanski, 91, was filed in the Superior Court in Los Angeles County in June 2023 and had been scheduled to go to trial in August 2025. The terms of the settlement were not immediately disclosed.In the lawsuit, the accuser, identified only as Jane Doe, says she met Mr. Polanski at a party in 1973, when she was a minor. Months later, she met him a second time at his home in Benedict Canyon, where he gave her two shots of tequila, the lawsuit says. Later they went to dinner in Los Angeles, where she was given more alcohol and eventually became sick, before going back to his house, the lawsuit says.“Plaintiff remembers waking up in defendant’s bed with him lying in the bed next to her,” the lawsuit reads. “He told her that he wanted to have sex with her.” The plaintiff, though groggy, told him, “No” and, “Please don’t do this,” the lawsuit says. He ignored her, removed her clothes, and “proceeded to rape her causing her tremendous physical and emotional pain and suffering,” according to the suit.Mr. Polanski denied the allegations when the suit was filed.Mr. Polanski’s lawyer, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, said in a statement that the case was settled over the summer and that the lawsuit had been formally dismissed. He declined to disclose details of the settlement.Gloria Allred, the lawyer for the woman, confirmed the settlement in a brief statement, saying that the terms had been “agreed to by the parties to their mutual satisfaction.”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

    • 88 Shares129 Views

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      ‘Family Pack’ Review: Trapped in a Game

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      The beauty of a game of Werewolf lies in the treachery. In this film adaptation, the director focuses on mild comedy and tedious action instead.François Uzan’s comic fantasy “Family Pack” is based on the French board game The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow, a sly contest of social deduction in which players are secretly assigned to one of two groups, the evil Werewolves and the benign Townsfolk, and must decide among themselves who’s the enemy.If the premise sounds familiar, that’s because it was modeled on Mafia, a popular Russian party game, which you might also know as Werewolf, a variation created by Andrew Plotkin — itself the inspiration for the video game Among Us, the horror film “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and the reality TV show “The Traitors.” It’s a great game, but considering the breadth of the original influence, “Family Pack” can’t help but feel stale.“Family Pack” approaches the material in the Jumanji way: An ordinary family finds itself transported into the world of a game. Trapped in a medieval village, the “Family Pack” players have to contend with both time-travel problems (not having the right clothes, culture clashes about feminism) and the nightly attacks by werewolves (rendered with cheap visual effects).The beauty of a game of Werewolf lies in the treachery: Friends lie, betray, blindside and backstab one another, and it’s glorious. “Family Pack” expresses little interest in these mechanics. Uzan focuses instead on mild comedy and tedious action. The actors, including Franck Dubosc and Jean Reno, spend a lot of time bantering, until an overactive plot gives them superpowers. The game itself is so good. I’m not sure the movie understands why.Family PackNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Dana Carvey’s Biden Stands Out in a Season of Political Impressions on ‘S.N.L.’

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      The answer has to do with going beyond a likeness, something Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong understand for their movie about Donald Trump and Roy Cohn.Everyone expected Maya Rudolph to appear as Vice President Kamala Harris in the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live.” It was less obvious who would play Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz. But when Jim Gaffigan walked onstage, face split in an open-mouthed grin like some kind of genial jack-o’-lantern, it was clear no one else should have bothered. Gaffigan’s entire comic persona is based in Walzian Big Dad Energy, even if he portrays himself as more likely to sit in his underwear eating Hot Pockets than climbing on the roof to clean out the gutters. There’s a harmony there, a vibe match.There were other interesting matchups — Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff, James Austin Johnson and Bowen Yang as Donald J. Trump and JD Vance — but those weren’t the performers who stole that night’s show. The shocker, somehow, was an impersonation of President Biden, a performance so spot-on that for a split second I thought Lorne Michaels had just called the president and asked him to appear.This Biden was Dana Carvey, the former cast member whose work on “S.N.L.” includes perhaps the show’s greatest presidential impression, a strange and brilliant take on George H.W. Bush. Carvey’s Biden squints and chuckles, says “folks” a lot and is given to insisting that he’s “being serious right now,” even when what he’s just said — “I’ve passed more bills than any president in history, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do” — would never be mistaken for a joke. This Biden felt less like an attempt to replicate the president and more like a guess at what he’s feeling these days.Judging from social media discourse — and from this parade of imitations in the season premiere, each cued up for maximum applause and surprise — political impressions have never been more interesting even to those who don’t care about “S.N.L.” There’s no obvious reason for this intrigue, other than the novelty of watching one kind of celebrity play a different kind of celebrity, the same interest that powers a lot of awards-season movies in which great stars try to win awards by playing other famous people. See “The Apprentice,” in which Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan portray Roy Cohn and Trump.In fact, the earliest stars of “S.N.L.” are now the subject of their own impersonations, in Jason Reitman’s new “Saturday Night.” Some are more successful than others. But what’s obvious from the better performances (Cory Michael Smith’s version of Chevy Chase, Dylan O’Brien’s Dan Aykroyd) is what’s also clear from Carvey’s impression of Biden: playing real people can’t just consist of perfectly imitating their exterior. And the goal can’t just be to make the audience marvel at a remarkable likeness.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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      ‘Snack Shack,’ ‘Red Rocket’ and More Streaming Gems

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      A handful of the year’s best comedy-dramas are among your out-of-the-box recommendations from this month’s streaming services.‘Snack Shack’ (2024)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Adam Rehmeier’s coming-of-age story is set in the summer of 1991, and initially seems not only about that era, but of it, replicating the look and sound of ’90s teen sex comedies. (You can’t get more ’90s than a montage set to EMF’s “Unbelievable.”) But that’s a bit of a head fake; this is a movie with more on its mind. A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle, currently seen as Lorne Michaels in “Saturday Night”) are a pair of enterprising young entrepreneurs who see a moneymaking opportunity in the concession stand at the local public pool. As often happens in these tales, a girl threatens to come between them, but that’s where we diverge from the formula; as written by Rehmeier and played by Mika Abdalla, the “cool girl” Brooke has the complexity and agency of a contemporary heroine, allowing Rehmeier to navigate a third-act flip into serious waters with grace and dexterity.‘I Used to Be Funny’ (2024)Stream it on Netflix.LaBelle’s “Saturday Night” co-star Rachel Sennott fronts this narratively and tonally tricky examination of a young woman in a free-fall. Sam (Sennott) is an occasional stand-up comic whose last day job, nannying a young firecracker named Brooke (Olga Petsa), ended badly. The writer and director Ally Pankiw takes her time (perhaps a bit too much) revealing exactly what happened there, but it took a toll on Sam, who has become a withdrawn recluse, barely able to crack the jokes that used to come so freely. Pankiw’s script perceptively captures how funny people use deflection and gallows humor to minimize the pains of their past, and Sennott, quickly becoming one of our most captivating young actors (thanks to electrifying turns in “Shiva Baby,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” and “Bottoms”), is terrific.‘The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.Joanna Arnow plays a dour 30-something New Yorker who meets men for various sexual encounters.Magnolia PicturesWe 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