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    Winter Movies 2022: Here’s What’s Coming Soon to Streaming and Theaters

    The season’s gifts include long-awaited sequels to “Black Panther” and “Knives Out” and intriguing originals like “Women Talking” and “The Fabelmans.”This is a select list of films opening by the end of the year. Release dates are subject to change and reflect the latest information as of deadline.FALLING FOR CHRISTMAS A skiing accident results in amnesia (and, presumably, the possibility of a fresh start) for a vain hotel heiress (Lindsay Lohan). (Nov. 10 on Netflix)BAR FIGHT! Following a breakup, a couple (Melissa Fumero and Luka Jones) have to decide which one will be allowed to drink in their favorite bar. With Rachel Bloom. (Nov. 11 in theaters and on demand)BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER After Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020, Marvel Studios opted not to recast his role, King T’Challa, in this sequel to “Black Panther.” The character is dead in the new film, which concerns how Wakanda moves forward without him. It also stars Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o. Ryan Coogler returns as director. (Nov. 11 in theaters)A COUPLE In a career that includes more than 40 documentaries, Frederick Wiseman has seldom made features that could qualify as dramatized. But in “A Couple,” the actress Nathalie Boutefeu, who shares screenplay credit with the director, plays Sophia Tolstoy, wife of Leo Tolstoy. The film draws on Sophia’s writings to explore a famous marriage. (Nov. 11 in theaters)THE FABELMANS Through the character of Sammy Fabelman, Steven Spielberg revisits his childhood, his relationship with his mother and father, and the origins of his love of filmmaking in an openly personal feature that was ecstatically received at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Gabriel LaBelle plays the budding director in his teenage years; Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play his complicated parents. Tony Kushner wrote the screenplay with Spielberg. (Nov. 11 in theaters)From left, Keeley Karsten, Sophia Kopera, Michelle Williams and Gabriel LaBelle are stand-ins for Steven Spielberg’s family in “The Fabelmans.”Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentIN HER HANDS The documentarians Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen assemble a portrait of Zarifa Ghafari, the mayor of the Afghan city of Maidan Shahr at the time of filming — and, not incidentally, in her 20s and a woman in a country without many women in power. The documentary follows her through American forces’ withdrawal from the country last year. (Nov. 11 in theaters, Nov. 16 on Netflix)IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!? Making his documentary-feature directing debut, the former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell looks at the revolution in — and legacy of — Black-centered American filmmaking in the late 1960s and ’70s. The interviewees include Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg. (Nov. 11 on Netflix)MY FATHER’S DRAGON Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s book — about a boy who ventures off to rescue a baby dragon — becomes an animated film directed by Nora Twomey, of the Oscar-nominated “The Breadwinner.” (Nov. 11 on Netflix)NOTHING LASTS FOREVER The documentarian Jason Kohn (“Manda Bala”) presents an exposé of how synthetic diamonds have infiltrated the market for gems, and how the concept of authenticity may be losing whatever meaning it had. (Nov. 11 in theaters)RETROGRADE Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land”) directed this documentary on the end of the war in Afghanistan. Events are seen from the vantage points of American and Afghan soldiers and through the eyes of civilians. (Nov. 11 in theaters)SAM & KATE The real-life father and son Dustin Hoffman and Jake Hoffman and the real-life mother and daughter Sissy Spacek and Schuyler Fisk play father and son and mother and daughter onscreen. The son and the daughter — the titular Sam and Kate — fall for each other. So do the parents. (Nov. 11 in theaters)SPIRITED Sure, “A Christmas Carol” might seem like a timeless story. But what if it wasn’t? What if Charles Dickens made a mistake by focusing on Scrooge, instead of the ghosts who visit him? The “Greatest Showman” songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul rectify that error in this new musical comedy. Will Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present and Ryan Reynolds the movie’s Scrooge surrogate, Clint Briggs. Sean Anders directed. (Nov. 11 in theaters, Nov. 18 on Apple TV+)Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell give Dickens a twist in “Spirited.”AppleMEMORIES OF MY FATHER Fernando Trueba directed this adaptation of a book by the Colombian novelist Héctor Abad Faciolince, about the author’s father (played by Javier Cámara), a doctor engaged in political activism in the 1970s. (Nov. 16 in theaters)Javier Cámara in “Memories of My Father.”via Cohen Media Group POKER FACE Russell Crowe directs himself as a tech titan who seeks revenge on some old friends he invites to the card table. Liam Hemsworth, RZA and Elsa Pataky also star. (Nov. 16 in theaters, Nov. 22 on demand)THE WONDER When an 11-year-old girl in the Irish Midlands seems to live for months without eating food, a British nurse (Florence Pugh) investigates. Sebastián Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”) directed this adaptation, set in the 19th century, of a novel by the “Room” author Emma Donoghue. (Nov. 16 on Netflix)BANTÚ MAMA A Frenchwoman becomes a surrogate parent to children in the Dominican Republic after escaping arrest. Ivan Herrera directed. (Nov. 17 in theaters and on Netflix)A CHRISTMAS STORY CHRISTMAS Nearly four decades after “A Christmas Story,” Peter Billingsley reprises his role as Ralphie. The boy who wanted an air rifle for the holiday is now a father himself in this sequel. (Nov. 17 on HBO Max)CHRISTMAS WITH YOU Aimee Garcia plays a pop singer who ends up stranded in a snowstorm at the house of a fan and her single father (Freddie Prinze Jr.). (Nov. 17 on Netflix)BAD AXE That’s Bad Axe, Mich., where the documentarian David Siev’s parents, one a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, own a restaurant and must grapple with the economic realities of the pandemic and the protests that convulse the city in the wake of the George Floyd killing. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)A scene from “Bad Axe,” centered on the title Michigan city amid the pandemic and racial justice protests.IFC FilmsBONES AND ALL If you enjoyed the picturesque alfresco dining in Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” you might want to excuse yourself from his gory latest film, based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis. Taylor Russell plays a teenage cannibal abandoned by her father (André Holland); Timothée Chalamet is a fellow brooding people-eater who catches her scent. On the road, they navigate a cruel world that spits out people who eat people. With Mark Rylance and a barely recognizable Michael Stuhlbarg. (Nov. 18 in theaters)DISENCHANTED After Giselle (Amy Adams) finds a storybook life in New York in “Enchanted,” many years later the bloom is off the rose. So she and her husband (Patrick Dempsey) move to the suburbs. With Maya Rudolph. Adam Shankman directed. (Nov. 18 on Disney+)In “Disenchanted,” Amy Adams returns as Giselle, the animated heroine trying to navigate live action.DisneyEO The Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski riffs, with a bit of a hallucinatory spin, on Robert Bresson’s French classic “Au Hasard Balthazar” with the tale of an itinerant donkey who along its journeys becomes a passive witness to human cruelty. When Skolimowski shared the jury prize at Cannes, he thanked all six donkeys who played the role. (Nov. 18 in theaters)FLAMING EARS This underground sci-feature feature, receiving a belated release three decades after its completion, takes place in the year 2700 in a city entirely populated by lesbians. There are three directors: Ursula Pürrer, A. Hans Scheirl and Dietmar Schipek. (Nov. 18 in theaters)THE INSPECTION For his first dramatic feature, Elegance Bratton, who has worked as a documentarian and street photographer, wrote and directed this autobiographically inspired film about a gay Black man’s time in basic training in the Marines, and the homophobia in an environment where enlistees expect to be terrorized. Jeremy Pope plays Bratton’s alter ego, with Raúl Castillo as a sympathetic superior, Bokeem Woodbine as a sergeant and Gabrielle Union as the protagonist’s mother. (Nov. 18 in theaters)LOVE, CHARLIE Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse and Grant Achatz are among the chefs who discuss the influential Chicago restaurateur Charlie Trotter in this documentary. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)Alex Bakri and Juna Suleiman in “Let it Be Morning.”Cohen Media GroupTHE MENU Mark Mylod, a regular director on “Succession,” is at the helm of this class satire, in which a supercilious gourmand (Nicholas Hoult) and his date (Anya Taylor-Joy) travel to an island for an evening of rarefied cuisine. But the chef (Ralph Fiennes) has a gruesome concept in store. (Nov. 18 in theaters)200 METERS A Palestinian construction worker trying to visit his son at an Israeli hospital is refused exit from the West Bank. He resorts to great lengths to go 200 meters. Ameen Nayfeh wrote and directed. (Nov. 18 in theaters, Dec. 6 on demand)THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING Nuptials become the occasion for an airing of intrafamilial loathing and reconciliation in a comedy that stars Kristen Bell and Ben Platt as siblings and Allison Janney as the matriarch. (Nov. 18 on Amazon)SCROOGE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL This animated musical version of Dickens’s book features the voices of Luke Evans, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. The music and lyrics are by Leslie Bricusse (“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”), who died last year. (Nov. 18 in theaters, Dec. 2 on Netflix)SHE SAID The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book on how they reported their landmark article about sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein gets a film adaptation. Zoe Kazan plays Kantor and Carey Mulligan plays Twohey as they try to convince women to talk on the record. Maria Schrader directed. (Nov. 18 in theaters)SLUMBERLAND The “Red Sparrow” filmmaker Francis Lawrence directs Jason Momoa as an outlaw in a fairy tale of sorts in which he assists a girl navigating a dream world. (Nov. 18 on Netflix)SR. Robert Downey Jr. pays tribute to his father, the underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. (“Putney Swope”), in a candid and personal documentary. Chris Smith directed. (Nov. 18 in theaters, Dec. 2 on Netflix)TAURUS Tim Sutton directs Colson Baker, the rapper better known as Machine Gun Kelly, as a musical artist seeking inspiration and facing problems. Megan Fox also stars. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)THERE THERE Working under pandemic restrictions, Andrew Bujalski (“Support the Girls”) makes a film that consists entirely of conversations; it’s best not to say any more. Lili Taylor and Lennie James play a couple whose post-one-night-stand discourse kicks off the movie; Molly Gordon and Jason Schwartzman appear elsewhere. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED Laura Poitras (an Oscar winner for “Citizenfour”) directed this look at the career of the photographer Nan Goldin, with an emphasis on Goldin’s recent work as an activist to hold the Sackler family, longtime owners of Purdue Pharma, to account for the opioid epidemic. The documentary won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September. (Nov. 23 in theaters)Nan Goldin with a roommate in a scene from “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”Nan GoldinDEVOTION Jonathan Majors stars as Ensign Jesse L. Brown, the first Black aviator in the United States Navy, and Glen Powell — barely out of the skies since “Top Gun: Maverick” — plays Lt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., his partner on a dangerous mission during the Korean War. J.D. Dillard directed. (Nov. 23 in theaters)GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY The detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) receives an invitation to the private island of an eccentric billionaire (Edward Norton), who wants the guests to solve his own murder. And that’s just the start of the writer-director Rian Johnson’s vertiginously clever sequel to “Knives Out” (2019). Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista also star. (Nov. 23 in theaters, Dec. 23 on Netflix)It’s another star-studded “Knives Out” mystery, this time with, from left, Edward Norton, Madelyn Cline, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe and Daniel Craig.Netflix, via Associated PressLADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER This time, Emma Corrin embodies D.H. Lawrence’s unfulfilled British noblewoman. Jack O’Connell plays the gamekeeper she takes up with. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre directed. (Nov. 23 in theaters, Dec. 2 on Netflix)NANNY Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature, the winner of this year’s United States dramatic competition at Sundance, concerns a Senegalese immigrant (Anna Diop) who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family. During the festival, Manohla Dargis wrote that the film kept her “rapt from the start with its visuals and mysteries, its emotional depths and the tight control” maintained by Jusu. (Nov. 23 in theaters, Dec. 16 on Amazon)Anna Diop plays a Senegalese immigrant struggling to adjust to working for a wealthy white American family in “Nanny.”Blumhouse ProductionsSTRANGE WORLD Disney pays tribute to 1950s science fiction movies with an animated feature about the Clade family, a clan of explorers investigating an uncharted region. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Gabrielle Union provide some of the Clades’ voices. (Nov. 23 in theaters)THE SWIMMERS Sally El Hosaini directed the opening-night film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a dramatization of the story of Yusra and Sarah Mardini, two sisters from Syria who used their skills as swimmers to help lead a boat filled with fellow refugees to safety during their flight from the country. Yusra competed on the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Olympics. (Nov. 23 on Netflix)THE CHRISTMAS CLAPBACK Robin Givens directed this story of three sisters facing a challenge from an influencer in a holiday church cook-off. Nadine Ellis, Porscha Coleman and Candace Maxwell star. (Nov. 24 on BET+)THE NOEL DIARY The diary in question belongs to the dead mother of a successful author (Justin Hartley). But it might also help a stranger (Barrett Doss) he meets. Charles Shyer directed. (Nov. 24 on Netflix)GHISLAINE MAXWELL: FILTHY RICH Picking up from the Netflix documentary series “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” this documentary turns to Maxwell, his convicted co-conspirator, who was found guilty last year of sex trafficking minors. (Nov. 25 on Netflix)GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO The “Nightmare Alley” filmmaker, who shares directing credit (if not the title) with the animation director Mark Gustafson, mounts a stop-motion version of the story of the puppet who became a boy. Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton are in the vocal cast. (Nov. 25 in theaters, Dec. 9 on Netflix)LEONOR WILL NEVER DIE A.O. Scott called this reality-blurring Filipino feature — centered on a retired screenwriter (Sheila Francisco) of action movies — “wonderfully unclassifiable” when it played at the Sundance Film Festival. Martika Ramirez Escobar directed. (Nov. 25 in theaters)Rocky Salumbides in “Leonor Will Never Die,” about a retired Filipino screenwriter who specialized in action movies.Carlos Mauricio/Music Box FilmsTHE SON If the playwright Florian Zeller’s first feature, “The Father,” which won Anthony Hopkins an Oscar, dealt with dementia, the ailment driving the drama in his latest film is depression — specifically, that of a teenager (Zen McGrath), whose condition vexes his father (Hugh Jackman), his father’s partner (Vanessa Kirby) and his mother (Laura Dern). (Nov. 25 in theaters)WHITE NOISE When Noah Baumbach’s screen version of Don DeLillo’s 1985 postmodern novel opened the New York Film Festival in September, A.O. Scott called it a “faithful and energetic adaptation.” Adam Driver plays a pathbreaking professor in the field of “Hitler studies”; Greta Gerwig is his wife, who may be experiencing strange memory lapses. Together with children from other marriages and one from their own, they confront environmental disaster and their fear of mortality against a colorful backdrop of ’80s logos. (Nov. 25 in theaters, Dec. 30 on Netflix)From left, the “White Noise” clan includes Sam Nivola, Adam Driver, May Nivola, Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, and the youngest, played by Dean and Henry Moore.Wilson Webb/NetflixA HOLLYWOOD CHRISTMAS A director (Jessika Van) realizes her life has turned into a Christmas movie and that she will be forced to run a gantlet of clichés. (Dec. 1 on HBO Max)ROLLING INTO CHRISTMAS The holiday brings together two people who 15 years earlier had a thing for each other and for roller skating. Rhyon Nicole Brown and Donny Carrington star. (Dec. 1 on BET+)CHRISTMAS WITH THE CAMPBELLS Vince Vaughn is among the screenwriters of this comedy, in which a recently dumped girlfriend is pressed into spending the holiday with her ex’s family anyway. Brittany Snow and Justin Long star. (Dec. 2 in theaters and on AMC+)DARBY AND THE DEAD A teenager (Riele Downs) who can communicate with the dead is pressured by a recently departed mean girl (Auli’i Cravalho of “Moana”) to make sure that the dead girl’s 17th-birthday party proceeds, despite her lack of a pulse. (Dec. 2 on Hulu)DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: RODRICK RULES Already adapted into a live-action feature in 2011, the second book in Jeff Kinney’s “Wimpy Kid” franchise gets an animated version. (Dec. 2 on Disney+)EMANCIPATION Will Smith, in a movie filmed before his Oscar win (and that other incident), plays an enslaved man who escapes and has to avoid capture on treacherous Louisiana terrain en route to freedom. Historic photographs of a man known as Whipped Peter, who made it to Baton Rouge and joined the Union Army, inspired the film. (Dec. 2 in theaters, Dec. 9 on Apple TV+)THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER In a loose spinoff of her films “The Souvenir” and “The Souvenir Part II,” Joanna Hogg casts Tilda Swinton in dual roles: as Hogg’s alter ego, the filmmaker Julie (played in the “Souvenir” movies by Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne), and as Julie’s mother (whom Swinton played in the earlier films). Julie struggles to write a screenplay about her mother while they spend time at a vaguely haunted hotel. (Dec. 2 in theaters)FOUR SAMOSAS The comedian Venk Potula plays a jilted boyfriend who tries to purloin his ex’s dowry to foil her wedding. (Dec. 2 in theaters and on demand)FRAMING AGNES Using the story of Agnes, a transgender woman who took part in studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s, as a jumping-off point, this combination of documentary and dramatization examines how trans history is written. (Dec. 2 in theaters)HUNT The “Squid Game” actor Lee Jung-jae directed this thriller and stars in it as the head of a government agency who, along with the head of another agency (Jung Woo-sung), has to ferret out a mole. (Dec. 2 in theaters and on demand)LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER The documentarians Sam Pollard (“MLK/FBI”) and Geeta Gandbhir revisit the work done by activists in Lowndes County, Ala., in the 1960s to ensure that the county’s majority-Black population wasn’t denied the right to vote. (Dec. 2 in theaters)2ND CHANCE Turning to documentaries, Ramin Bahrani — nominated for an adapted screenplay Oscar for “The White Tiger” — examines the legacy of Richard Davis, who devised the contemporary version of the bulletproof vest. (Dec. 2 in theaters)SPOILER ALERT Michael Showalter, who mined thematically similar territory in “The Big Sick,” directed this adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s memoir of a longtime relationship altered by a terminal illness. Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge and Sally Field star. (Dec. 2 in theaters)TANTURA This documentary from Alon Schwartz has been the subject of controversy in Israel. Taking the graduate thesis of an Israeli named Teddy Katz as a jumping-off point, it amasses evidence of a massacre by Israeli soldiers at what was then the Palestinian village of Tantura in 1948. (Dec. 2 in theaters)VIOLENT NIGHT David Harbour stars as Santa Claus, who is fortunately making his rounds when mercenaries attempt a home invasion. (Dec. 2 in theaters)David Harbour is a Santa with skills and John Leguizamo is among his adversaries in “Violent Night.”Universal PicturesWOMEN TALKING While most of the men of a religious colony are briefly away, the women, including many who have been sexually assaulted by the men, debate whether to leave or stay and try to fight. Sarah Polley directed and wrote the screenplay for this starkly shot, ultra-widescreen adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel. The formidable cast includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand and Ben Whishaw. (Dec. 2 in theaters)In “Women Talking,” the debaters include, from left, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod and Jessie Buckley. Michael Gibson/Orion ReleasingBROADWAY RISING This documentary from Amy Rice follows the efforts it took to reopen Broadway theaters in September 2021 after they went dark for a year and a half because of the pandemic. (Dec. 5 in theaters)LOUDMOUTH The life and activism of the Rev. Al Sharpton are explored in a documentary that examines his decades of influence in New York and beyond. (Dec. 9 in theaters)ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL The stage musical version of Dahl’s novel gets the screen treatment (with the same director, Matthew Warchus). Alisha Weir plays the title character and Lashana Lynch the warmhearted Miss Honey. Emma Thompson — whose fat suit has already prompted chatter over questions of representation — plays the gorgonlike Miss Trunchbull. (Dec. 9 in theaters, Dec. 25 on Netflix)Emma Thompson takes over as Miss Trunchbull in the film adaptation of the “Matilda” Broadway musical.Dan Smith/NetflixSOMETHING FROM TIFFANY’S “And I said, ‘What about ‘Something From Tiffany’s’?” Zoey Deutch stars in a comedy about an errant engagement ring. Daryl Wein directed. (Dec. 9 on Amazon)THE VOLCANO: RESCUE FROM WHAKAARI Rory Kennedy, the documentarian who earlier this year made a case (or, rather, a movie) against Boeing, memorializes a deadly volcanic eruption that occurred in New Zealand in 2019. (Dec. 9 in theaters, Dec. 16 on Netflix)THE WHALE Brendan Fraser stars in this comeback role as a grieving, shut-in English teacher whose immense weight and refusal to seek medical treatment ensure that he won’t have long to live. But he tries to mend things with his daughter (Sadie Sink) when she unexpectedly turns up. Hong Chau also stars. Darren Aronofsky directed; Samuel D. Hunter wrote the script, based on his play. (Dec. 9 in theaters)THE ALMOND AND THE SEAHORSE The directors Tom Stern and Celyn Jones’s drama follows two couples — one played by Trine Dyrholm and Charlotte Gainsbourg, the other by Jones and Rebel Wilson. One member of each pair has a traumatic brain injury that affects the memory. (Dec. 16 in theaters and on demand)THE APOLOGY Anna Gunn of “Breaking Bad” plays an alcoholic stranded by a winter storm with a former brother-in-law (Linus Roache). (Dec. 16 in theaters, on AMC+ and on Shudder)AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER James Cameron, who tends to do pretty well when he makes sequels (“Aliens,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”), returns to Pandora. (Dec. 16 in theaters)I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY Naomi Ackie stars as Whitney Houston in this biopic of the soaring-voiced pop star. Stanley Tucci plays the architect of her career Clive Davis, who is one of the movie’s producers. Kasi Lemmons directed, from a screenplay by Mr. Biopic, Anthony McCarten (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Darkest Hour,” “The Theory of Everything”). (Dec. 21 in theaters)Whitney Houston gets the biopic treatment in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” starring Naomi Ackie.Sony PicturesPUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH Antonio Banderas once again lends his voice to the footwear’d feline — not the fairy-tale character, exactly, but a part of the extended “Shrek” cinematic universe. Olivia Colman and Salma Hayek purr alongside him. (Dec. 21 in theaters)BABYLON The writer-director Damien Chazelle returns to Hollywood to imagine various dramas that might have unfolded during the transition to sound. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva are among the stars vamping through it. (Dec. 23 in theaters)CORSAGE Technically, in 1878, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) could not have heard “As Tears Go By” with a harp as instrumentation — or, for that matter, been photographed as a movie subject on flexible film. (This was still the era of plates.) But these sorts of anachronisms crop up periodically throughout the director Marie Kreutzer’s interpretation of Elisabeth’s life. (Dec. 23 in theaters)LET IT BE MORNING A Palestinian man returns to the village of his upbringing for a wedding, and he is trapped there, with the rest of the residents, when Israeli forces blockade the area. Eran Kolirin directed this adaptation of a novel by Sayed Kashua. (Dec. 23 in theaters)LIVING The director Oliver Hermanus and the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, serving here as the screenwriter, remake Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” in an idiom not wildly removed from that of Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day.” Bill Nighy plays a postwar civil servant in London whose great ambition, after receiving a terminal diagnosis, is to build a playground. Aimee Lou Wood and Tom Burke co-star. (Dec. 23 in theaters)NO BEARS In July, the filmmaker Jafar Panahi was detained by Iranian authorities and ordered to serve a six-year prison sentence after he sought information about the arrest of another filmmaker, Mohammad Rasoulof. Panahi had already been forbidden to leave the country, and in “No Bears,” he plays on that idea, starring as a version of himself: a filmmaker who has traveled to a tight-knit town near the Turkish border so that he can remotely direct a feature being shot in Turkey. (Dec. 23 in theaters)THE PALE BLUE EYE Adapted from the novel by Louis Bayard and set against the backdrop of Edgar Allan Poe’s formative years at West Point, “The Pale Blue Eye” finds the future “Raven” poet in the middle of a mystery. Harry Melling plays Poe, Christian Bale is a detective, and Gillian Anderson and Lucy Boynton co-star. Scott Cooper (“Black Mass”) directed. (Dec. 23 in theaters)A MAN CALLED OTTO Tom Hanks plays a curmudgeon who thaws a bit when he meets a new neighbor. Mariana Treviño also stars. Marc Forster directed this adaptation of the novel “A Man Called Ove.” (Dec. 25 in theaters)BROKER The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the Palme d’Or for “Shoplifters” (2018), went to South Korea to make his latest feature. It follows two traffickers who steal infants from safe-haven drop spots and sell them to couples struggling with the official adoption process. But one mother comes back. Song Kang Ho won best actor at Cannes for his portrayal of a trafficker. (Dec. 26 in theaters)ALICE, DARLING Anna Kendrick plays a woman who, during a getaway with friends, realizes to what extent her boyfriend has psychologically abused and restricted her. Mary Nighy directed. (Dec. 30 in theaters)TURN EVERY PAGE Don’t ask Robert A. Caro when he’s going to finish the fifth volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography. Everyone wants to know, including his longtime editor, Robert Gottlieb. The men’s work together from “The Power Broker” on is the subject of this documentary, directed by Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie. (Dec. 30 in theaters)Compiled with the assistance of Shivani Gonzalez.The literary lions Robert A. Caro, left, and Robert Gottlieb share the screen in “Turn Every Page.”Sony More

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    Douglas McGrath, Playwright, Filmmaker and Actor, Dies at 64

    His one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by John Lithgow, had opened just weeks ago.Douglas McGrath, a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor who was nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award, and whose one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” opened just weeks ago, died on Thursday at his office in Manhattan. He was 64.His death was announced by the show’s producers, Daryl Roth, Tom Werner and John Lithgow. Their representative said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Lithgow also directed the show, a childhood recollection of Mr. McGrath’s about a middle-school teacher in Texas who gave him an inappropriate amount of attention.“He was a dream to direct,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “None of us had ever worked with someone who was so happy, proud and grateful to be performing his own writing.”Mr. McGrath in his one-man play “Everything’s Fine,” which opened Off Broadway last month to good reviews.Jeremy DanielMr. McGrath had a wide-ranging if under-the-radar career in television, film and theater. In the 1980-81 season, just out of Princeton and still in his early 20s, he was a writer for “Saturday Night Live.” Over the next decade he wrote humor pieces for The New Republic, The New York Times and other publications.By the 1990s he was making inroads in Hollywood. He wrote the screenplay for the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy “Born Yesterday,” and the next year he and Woody Allen collaborated on the script for Mr. Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The two shared an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.In 1996 he adapted the Jane Austen novel “Emma” for the big screen and also directed the film, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2000 he and Peter Askin shared directing and screenwriting duties on the comedy “Company Man,” in which he also starred, as a schoolteacher who stumbles into a career as a C.I.A. officer.That movie drew some unflattering reviews. But his next, “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), an adaptation of the Dickens story that he both wrote and directed, was well received. In The Times, A.O. Scott said that Mr. McGrath’s adaptation was rendered “with a scholar’s ear and a showman’s flair.”“The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs,” Mr. Scott wrote, “a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.”Mr. McGrath, center, on the set of his film “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), with the cast members Barry Humphries, left, and Alan Cumming.United Artists, via AlamyIn addition to his screenwriting and directing credits (which also included “Infamous,” a 2006 film starring Toby Jones as Truman Capote), Mr. McGrath occasionally took small acting roles in other people’s projects, including several of Mr. Allen’s films. In 2016 he directed “Becoming Mike Nichols,” an HBO documentary about the film director, on which he was also an executive producer. He shared an Emmy nomination with the other producers for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special.Throughout, he continued to work in the theater. In 1996 he wrote and starred in “Political Animal,” a one-man comedy that played at the McGinn/Cazale Theater in Manhattan, in which he played a right-wing presidential candidate.“Beyond the stand-up parody,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The Times, “the larger point of ‘Political Animal’ is that it takes a hollow, desperate man to run for president these days.”In 2012 his play “Checkers” — the title refers to a famous 1952 speech by Richard M. Nixon — was seen at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, with Anthony LaPaglia as Nixon and Kathryn Erbe as his wife, Pat.Then came Broadway: Mr. McGrath wrote the book for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in January 2014 and ran for more than five years. His book was nominated for a Tony Award.Last month Mr. Lithgow told The Daily News of New York that Mr. McGrath had sent him “Everything’s Fine” unsolicited, and that he had no intention of directing a play until he read the piece.“It was so play-able,” he said, “I could simply imagine an audience being completely captivated by it.”The show opened in mid-October to good reviews.“It is impossible to overstate Doug’s pure likability,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “In his solo show, he told a long story about his 14th year, and it worked so well because he had retained so much of his sense of boyish discovery.”Ms. Roth, another of the show’s producers, said that Mr. McGrath had been thoroughly enjoying the way audiences were reacting as he unspooled the tale.“The wonderful response from the audience was cathartic, meaningful and joyful to him,” she said by email. “He often told me he was in his ‘happy place’ onstage telling his story.”Mr. McGrath on the set of “Infamous,” his 2006 film about Truman Capote.Van Redin/Warner Independent, via Kobal, via ShutterstockDouglas Geoffrey McGrath was born on Feb. 2, 1958, in Midland, Texas. His father, Raynsford, was an independent oil producer, and his mother, Beatrice (Burchenal) McGrath, worked at Harper’s Bazaar before her marriage.“People often ask me what growing up in West Texas was like,” Mr. McGrath said in “Everything’s Fine.” “I think this sums it up: It’s very hot, it’s very dusty, and it’s very, very windy. It’s like growing up inside a blow dryer full of dirt.”He graduated from Princeton in 1980.“Planning my future,” he wrote in a 2001 essay in The Times, “I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do, but a very blurry one of how to do it. I knew I wanted to write and perform in my own films in the manner of my idol, Woody Allen. But when I went, that once, to the Career Counseling Center and faced the bulletin board, none of the cards said, ‘Needed: writer-actor-director for major feature, no experience required, must be willing to earn high salary.’”Yet when a friend told him “S.N.L.” was hiring writers, he sent in some sketches and landed an $850-a-week job.“It seemed too good to be true,” he wrote. “It was. My year, 1980, was viewed then and still as the worst year in the show’s history, which is no small achievement when you think of some of the other years.”In a 2016 interview, Mr. McGrath said his disappointment with the way his screenplay for “Born Yesterday” was handled changed the direction of his career.“I remember thinking, well, if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this, meaning watching someone else muck up what I did, there’s only one way around that,” he said. “I have to become a director.”Mr. McGrath, who lived in Manhattan, married Jane Reed Martin in 1995. She survives him, as do a son, Henry; a sister, Mary McGrath Abrams; and a brother, Alexander. More

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    How Daniel Radcliffe Gets ‘Weird’ in ‘The Al Yankovic Story’

    The director Eric Appel narrates a scene from the film.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.You know that moment in biopics when artists find inspiration for the songs that will go on to become giant hits? You might see just a little bit of it in a movie like “Respect,” or in a scene from “Ray” that may lead one to hit the road.The makers of the new (mostly faux) biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” play off those moments with this scene, featuring Daniel Radcliffe as a college-age Al Yankovic who just wants to fulfill his dream of making up lyrics to a song that already exists.He finds inspiration in a package of bologna, as the song “My Sharona” by the Knack plays on the radio. (In this film, like in Weird Al’s song, bologna is pronounced in the way that rhymes with Sharona).Narrating the scene, the director Eric Appel (who co-wrote the screenplay with Yankovic), discussed how he wanted to capture the comedy of the moment.“All of our actors, we had this conversation with them,” Appel said: “Don’t try to go for jokes. The straighter you play it, the funnier it’s going to be.”Appel incorporated big-swing movie moments like slow zooms and a sweeping score to create this a-ha moment where Weird Al comes up with his first parody hit, “My Bologna.”“Where the comedy comes from in a moment like this,” Appel said, “is pushing it past what you’re expecting to see and going into this really bizarre, unexpected heightened emotional version.”Read the “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    Don Cheadle, Lindsay Lohan and Other Stars Share Their Favorite Holiday Movies

    Don Cheadle, Hong Chau, Leslie Odom Jr., Zoey Deutch and Lindsay Lohan explain what films they turn to at this time of year.How do actors entertain themselves when they gather with family and friends for the holidays? They watch movies, just like the rest of us. Here, a few of the stars from this season’s releases talk about the films that have become longstanding seasonal traditions, and the others they hope will one day.Hong ChauThis season the actress can be seen in “The Whale” and “The Menu.”Her favorite: “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940), Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic comedy with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as seemingly antagonistic clerks in a Budapest store.Why: It’s just got everything. It is set during Christmastime, even though it’s not a typical holiday movie. It’s a workplace comedy. It’s a romantic comedy. And even the supporting characters are all memorable, and the comedy is just timeless. I really love Pepi [William Tracy as a comically cocksure delivery boy], oddly. I like that he wins in the end, and he’s taking over for the Jimmy Stewart character, basically. If they ever do a sequel, he should be the main character. And the music is romantic and sweet, even that little song in the bit about the cigar box. I like being transported whenever I watch a movie. And getting to be in that shop full of wonderful little items, and having all of the signage in Hungarian, does that. I wish I could be in there and just get to examine and touch everything.My daughter is 23 months and I think it will be a good one for her. She actually watches a lot of older movies, like “Singin’ in the Rain” and the “That’s Entertainment” compilation. So she has seen a lot of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds.Don CheadleTerry Jones, left, Graham Chapman and Michael Palin in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” a favorite of the Cheadles.Sony PicturesThis season the actor can be seen in “White Noise.”His family’s favorites: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), the medieval send-up directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War satire starring Peter Sellers.Why: I don’t really have a “put us in the spirit of Christmas” movie. I mean, the low-hanging fruit is “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is a great movie, and if it’s on, I’m going to watch it. But the ones that we would somehow always end up watching when my kids were home on Christmas break — they’re adults now and out of the house — are “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “Dr. Strangelove.” Neither are holiday movies, but they always seem to find their way onto our TV.Every character that Peter Sellers played in “Dr. Strangelove” was hilarious. The president, the captain, the Nazi doctor — they are all insane. And for “Monty Python,” it’s the whole cast. My kids know all the lines forwards and backwards, and we sometimes text each other out of the blue. “What makes you think she’s a witch?” “Well, she turned me into a newt!” “A newt?” “I got better.” They’re both just great movies, very funny in very different ways. And they’re dark, which fits my family’s brand of humor.Zoey DeutchTaylor Momsen and Jim Carrey in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” Zoey Deutch’s holiday go-to.Ron Batzdorff/Universal PicturesThis season the actress can be seen in “Something From Tiffany’s.”Her favorite: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000), Ron Howard’s live-action remake of the animated Dr. Seuss classic, starring Jim Carrey as the holiday killjoy.Why: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” came out when I was 7. I remember watching it for the first time and not knowing who I was more jealous of, Jim Carrey or Taylor Momsen. I wanted to be both the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who at the same time. They were filled with humor and heart and everything in between. I loved everything about the world that was created and how it was executed. The story, the costumes, the music, the camera movements, the direction, the set design, the acting. I find myself going back to it every year and marveling at how original and fun and moving it is.Lindsay LohanThomas Sangster as a boy in love and Liam Neeson as his stepfather in “Love Actually,” a film Lindsay Lohan often returns to.Peter Mountain/Universal StudiosThis season the actress can be seen in “Falling for Christmas.”Her favorites: “Love Actually” (2003), Richard Curtis’s relationship comedy; “Miracle on 34th Street,” the 1994 remake (from director Les Mayfield) about a department-store Santa; and “Elf” (2003), the Jon Favreau-directed comedy with Will Ferrell as Santa’s helper.Why: I love the movie “Love Actually.” It’s just really heartwarming. That scene when Hugh Grant dances [through 10 Downing Street] is hysterical. And Liam Neeson’s story line with his son, where he runs through the airport as his crush is leaving on a plane, always gets me crying.And then “Miracle on 34th Street.” When I was really young, I remember I watched it at my Grandma Sullivan’s house with her and I was sitting on the floor. I remember this actually very well. It just made me want to be in Christmas in New York City and the whole meeting Santa thing.Especially during the holidays, I always like to reminisce, and whenever I’m with family, we go to “Elf” at some point. That’s why it was special to do “Falling for Christmas.” My sister got to play a little role and she did a song. I was lucky to have my husband come to the set, and it’s the first time he’d seen me acting. It was very sentimental. I’ve never done a Christmas movie, so this is a special feeling because it’s something that I’ll be able to show our kids.Leslie Odom Jr.Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone,” which Leslie Odom Jr. has watched since he was a child.20th Century FoxThis season the actor can be seen in “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”His favorite: “Home Alone” (1990), the Chris Columbus comedy with Macaulay Culkin as Kevin, left behind by his family.Why: I was 9 or 10 when I first saw it — the same age as Kevin — and he was the perfect avatar for every boy who wanted to be as clever as he was when he took down the bad guys. And who maybe wanted to escape from their parents for even a day. The movie has all the traditional trappings of the season: snow and fire, wreaths hung on the door, pizza night, late-night packing for early flights the next morning. It’s a record of all we love about the holidays. All that stresses us out about the holidays. It’s portrayed with honesty and real charm and so ends up being a classic story that stands the test of time. And the score, by John Williams, is so signature. It has just as much to do with the overall effect of that film as the great performances and the great set pieces and gags.My kids are 5 and 1½, and they’re a little too young to understand it. But one day, I hope we’ll watch it together. And I’ll tell you: When they spend the night with their grandparents, my wife and I have our own fun home alone. It’s good for the parents, too.Now I’m working on my own Christmas movie: “The Exorcist.” More

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    ‘The Estate’ Review: No Good Will

    Toni Collette and Anna Faris play sisters trying to weasel their way into their wealthy aunt’s will in this black comedy.In the black, downright venal comedy “The Estate,” Toni Collette and Anna Faris play sisters on the brink of financial ruin. They run a cafe together and have just heard that the bank denied their loan application when they receive what passes for good news in this mordant farce: Their rich Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner) is dying.Savanna (Faris) is the more unscrupulous sister, and she convinces Macey (Collette) that they should try to cozy up to their ornery aunt in the hopes of being written into her will. But when the pair arrive at Hilda’s home, they find their equally shameless cousins, Beatrice (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Richard (David Duchovny), engaged in similar plans. The family commences a race to the bottom of their dying aunt’s cold heart. But Macey and Savanna are ill-suited to beat Beatrice and Richard when it comes to bedside manners. And so they escalate their efforts at ingratiation, plotting disastrous reunions first with Hilda’s estranged sister, and then with her former flame.The movie’s director, Dean Craig, is best known for writing the comedy “Death at a Funeral.” As a filmmaker, his images are perfunctory. “The Estate” features a desaturated color palette, and the production design looks shabby, even inside Hilda’s multimillion-dollar mansion. But Craig’s writing retains enough caustic wit for his excellent cast to work with. Collette plays the straight woman to her ruthless relatives, and the contrast between her moral dismay and Faris’s mercenary willpower drives some of the film’s best laughs.This is a comedy that takes a vicious, over-the-top look at family greed, and fortunately, the cast members are game to play their characters’ attempts at flattery in the most unflattering manner possible.The EstateRated R for language, sexual references and brief nudity. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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    In ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton Play the Game

    In a decadent new Starz drama, the two actors play young versions of literature’s most poisoned and poisonous power couple.It could never work between them, Alice Englert insisted on a recent afternoon, lounging in a corner banquette at Ladurée, a French spot in Lower Manhattan. In a relationship this toxic, she said, they would have no choice but to ruin each other, slowly or all at once.Nicholas Denton, sitting beside her, draped an arm around her shoulders. “That’s the game of it,” he said, grinning.The game is power. The field is pre-revolutionary France. And the contestants are the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, arguably literature’s most poisoned and poisonous power couple. Or not quite. Not yet. In “Dangerous Liaisons,” a decadent drama that debuts on Starz on Sunday, Englert and Denton play much younger versions of the characters introduced by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos in the epistolary 1782 novel.In the book, these characters are aristocrats, with decades of conniving and debauchery underneath their wigs and powder, who conspire to corrupt a chaste woman. In the show, they are barely out of puberty, seducers in their youth. Even before its premiere, the series has already been renewed.The couple — lovers who treat each other with anything but love — have fascinated readers and audiences for two centuries and counting, popping up in plays, operas, ballets, radio plays and movies, including the 1988 Stephen Frears film, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. All of which makes reinventing them a very tall order. The height of the wigs alone!But Englert and Denton were willing to try. “We’re both quite rough and tumble,” Denton said. “We’re willing to get on the floor in this garb and try and really knock this out and go to hell for it.”A television version of “Dangerous Liaisons” has been in development for nearly a decade, under the partial auspices of Colin Callender, a distinguished producer. Christopher Hampton, who wrote the screenplay for Frears’s film and the stage adaptation that is often revived on Broadway, was attached at one point. Then he wasn’t. When the writer Harriet Warner came on, she went looking for a fresh way into the material and she found it in one of the novel’s letters, which seemed to imply that the Marquise hadn’t been born into nobility, that she had clawed her way into it. She shared that insight with Callender.“The interesting thing was, how did these characters become who they were?” Callender explained in a recent interview.Warner began to devise some answers. Earlier younger riffs on “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” like “Cruel Intentions” (1999) and a recent French film adaptation, moved the story into modern high schools. But Warner decided to keep to the period of the novel, more or less, while aging the Marquise down into Camille, a sex worker, and Valmont into Pascal, a mapmaker exiled from the aristocracy. First they go to bed. And then they go to war.The series found a fresh way into the story through one of the letters in the epistolary novel, which seemed to imply that the Marquise hadn’t been born into nobility.Dusan Martincek/StarzWith that decision made and scripts written, casting could begin. The producers saw about 200 actors for each role. Denton (“The Glitch”), 30, an Australian actor, went through at least a half-dozen auditions and tests, beginning early in 2020. At times, in quarantine, his sister had to read the steamier scenes with him. “Disgusting,” he said. “Bless her soul.”Englert (“Top of the Lake,” “Ratched”), 28, also from Australia and the daughter of the filmmaker Jane Campion, put herself on tape later, toward the end of 2020. With the pandemic in full swing, the two of them couldn’t meet for a chemistry read. (Though Denton had met with other actresses, a plexiglass barrier between them.) So they had their joint audition in separate hotel rooms on Zoom, trying to steam up their relative screens.“It was so funny,” Englert said.Apparently it was more than just funny. “It was better than you could have imagined,” Warner said during a recent phone call. “You just knew they were going to elevate each other and escalate the drama and yet keep all this wonderful raw energy of the fact that they are still kind of unsullied by the industry.”Denton and Englert met in person a few months later, in the spring of 2021, on set in Prague. Englert had just emerged from hair and makeup with a temporary wig balanced precariously on her head. (“I was dreaming that I looked like a flat-chested version of Dolly Parton,” she said.) Wary of Covid-19 protocols, they patted each other on their respective shoulders. A few days later, they were rolling around the rehearsal room floor together. A few days after that, they were filming one of Pascal and Camille’s incendiary fights.“I actually cried at the end of that day,” Englert said, as they started in on fresh coffees to combat jet lag, “just from knowing that we were going to go on such an odyssey.” The constricting costumes — “they just hurt sometimes,” Englert said — may have moved her to tears, too.They were dressed more comfortably that afternoon, if still in the louche spirit of the series. Englert’s pink silk dress was rumpled; Denton’s shirt was unbuttoned well below the sternum. They had an ease with each other — an air of comfort and kindness rather than sexual tension. If six months in and out of love and war and some very silly white foundation can’t make you friends, probably nothing can.Denton, snuggled up to Englert in the banquette, praised the ferocity with which she attacked their scenes. “You have an effortlessness, but also an intensity,” he said. “Which is a very beautiful contrast.”Englert said that she had trusted Denton almost immediately. There was a moment, at the beginning of the shoot, when she had tried to present herself to him in the best possible light, when she tried to hold onto some vanity.“Then that absolutely died,” she said. “And it was so beautiful to let it rot with you so quickly.”“You have an effortlessness, but also an intensity,” Denton said to Englert. “Which is a very beautiful contrast.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesWith vanity flown, they could gleefully recounted receiving vitamin B shots — “in our bums!” Denton said — to make it through the shoot. They did, however, demur from telling what both referred to ominously as “the fart story.”The sex scenes could have made for more mortifying stories. But the actors worked closely with the show’s intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, to make them feel safe and liberating. “It was actually a really good bonding thing,” Denton said. And with sex out of the way — lots of it, especially in the first episode — they could navigate the riskier contours of Camille and Pascal’s relationship.“What’s always appealed to me about ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ is that the fantasy of the love is shattered,” Englert said. She was speaking to the novel. Though it’s true of the show, too. “It’s in pieces from the beginning,” she continued.Denton saw it just the same. “It’s so refreshing to watch something that doesn’t get glossed over,” he said, “that doesn’t become a glossy Disney version of what love is. Because I don’t think that’s what love is. Love is elusive, dangerous, corrupt.”The goal of the series was to keep the period details as accurate as possible while ensuring that the emotional atmosphere felt urgent and contemporary. Otherwise it might read as just another polite costume drama, however luxe the costumes. You had to see the real people underneath the corsetry.For Denton and Englert, that meant bringing their own hearts to the roles. It also meant a lot of pretending, because they harbor a shared belief that perhaps they aren’t quite as sexy or as lethal as their characters.“We’re betas pretending to be alphas,” Denton said.Englert agreed. “We’re exceedingly embarrassed all the time,” she said. “But it’s how we go. We enjoy it.”Englert had eaten all the passion fruit macarons, but Denton smiled at his friend anyway. “Alice always says, ‘We’re just Aussies in cossies,’” he said. More

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    ‘Causeway’ Review: Companions on a Hard Road to Recovery

    Superb acting from Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry brings credibility to an underdeveloped story of trauma and friendship.The early scenes in Lila Neugebauer’s “Causeway” find Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) in the first phase of a long healing process. An Army engineer who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan, Lynsey — with the help of a patient health aide (Jayne Houdyshell) — must relearn the basic functions of daily life, and teach her body to work again.Lawrence, somber and subdued, gradually coaxes her character into view. Lynsey emerges from a state of anxious blankness, recovering language, memory, physical coordination and the contours of her personality. Returning home to New Orleans, she moves in with her mother (Linda Emond), who is too preoccupied with other matters to pay much attention to her daughter.Not that Lynsey needs babysitting. She pressures her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) to clear her for redeployment. Lynsey is tough, solitary and self-sufficient, attributes Lawrence has shown before — notably in the “Hunger Games” movies and in her breakthrough film, “Winter’s Bone” — but rarely in such a low-key, non-heroic mode.The satisfactions of “Causeway,” Neugebauer’s debut feature (the script is by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh), come from watching Lawrence and her co-star, Brian Tyree Henry, trading quiet, insightful bits of acting. Henry plays James, who owns the repair shop where Lynsey brings her balky old pickup truck. Recognizing each other as fellow loners — and also, perhaps unconsciously, as fellow sufferers — James and Lynsey start hanging out together.Lynsey takes a job cleaning swimming pools, and she and James spend off-hours drinking beer, smoking weed and floating around at the homes of clients who are conveniently out of town. Hanging out this way is a pleasant respite from the stresses and struggles of existence — for James and Lynsey, and for the audience too. But having brought them together, the movie isn’t quite sure what to do with them.James has lost part of a leg in a car crash that killed someone he loved. Lynsey is also haunted by the loss of a family member. The symmetry of their physical and psychological wounds is perhaps too neatly arranged. The bond that develops between them — and the ways that it is, inevitably, tested — is rooted in shared trauma, which is to say in a screenwriting conceit.“Causeway” is both thin and heavy-handed, its plot overly diagramed and its characters inadequately fleshed out. The burden of making it credible falls disproportionately on Henry and Lawrence, superb actors who do what they can to bring the script’s static and fuzzy ideas about pain, alienation and the need for connection to something that almost resembles life.CausewayRated R. Cursing and cannabis. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to watch on Apple TV+. More