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The art collective KIRAC was embroiled in court battles over a film about the author’s sex life. Is the dispute a performance? A marketing stunt? Or a genuine cultural feud?On Saturday night, an eclectic art crowd was gathering outside an industrial garage in Amsterdam East, where Michel Houellebecq, the celebrated French author, was set to speak.Houellebecq had on May 24 released “A Few Months of My Life,” a new book describing a tumultuous period from October 2022 to March 2023 when he collaborated with a Dutch art collective called KIRAC. Together, they worked on a film, shooting scenes that show the married 67-year-old author making out with young women.Although Houellebecq had consented to making the film, he later changed his mind and tried to back out. Beginning in February, he brought court cases in France and the Netherlands to stop the movie from being shown. Last month, an Amsterdam judge upheld Houellebecq’s complaint and granted him the right to see a final cut of any re-edited film four weeks before release, giving him a chance to file another action if he doesn’t like what he sees.In “A Few Months of My Life,” a 94-page autobiographical work, Houellebecq digs deep into his hatred for KIRAC. He names the group’s leader, Stefan Ruitenbeek, only once, describing him as a “pseudo-artist” and “a cockroach with a human face.” Female KIRAC members are referred to as “the sow” and “the turkey.”According to the organizer of Saturday’s event, Tarik Sadouma, Houellebecq had not come to Amsterdam to promote his new book, but to talk about his work generally. As a condition of his participation, Houellebecq asked Sadouma to bar Ruitenbeek and his cohorts from the event.Yet just as the audience took its seats inside, Ruitenbeek burst through the door, dressed as a giant brown cockroach, with bobbing antennae and a furry cape. He was trailed by KIRAC members, one wearing a false pig snout, another filming the whole thing.“I’m here!” cried Ruitenbeek, taking the stage, to a mixture of jeering and cheers. “I’m the cockroach!”A woman taking tickets tried to wrangle the camera from the cameraman and Sadouma shouted for the intruders to leave. Eventually, Ruitenbeek — pleading, “No violence!” — left with his entourage.Michel Houellebecq released a 94-page autobiographical book, “A Few Months of My Life,” about his experiences with KIRAC.Philippe Matsas/FlammarionThis was the latest episode in an ongoing, surrealistic conflict between KIRAC, a fringe art group that posts its films on YouTube, and Houellebecq, one of the world’s most famous authors.Was it a performance? A marketing stunt? Or part of a genuine cultural feud? Who could really tell?KIRAC, an acronym for Keeping It Real Art Critics, is often described as an art collective, but its creative center is Ruitenbeek and Kate Sinha, a writer who is also Ruitenbeek’s life partner. They make films that at first appear to be documentaries, or possibly mockumentaries, typically set in the art world. In them, the boundaries between reality and fiction are often blurred, narratives sometimes conflict and onscreen characters can appear to be playing a game with the truth.It is also often difficult to discern KIRAC’s political views. In one of its films, the Dutch architect and curator Rem Koolhaas is criticized as “macho” and “patriarchal.” In another, KIRAC seems to decry diversity efforts, arguing that the artist Zanele Muholi was given a retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, “only because she is from South Africa, Black and lesbian.” (Muholi now uses they/them pronouns and identifies as nonbinary.)Seen as provocateurs or pranksters, and sometimes art world trolls, KIRAC’s members often deliver critical monologues directly to the camera, usually in the form of articulate academic analysis from Sinha, or mocking insults from Ruitenbeek.“In the broadest sense, we’re just trying to make great films, intellectual entertainment,” Sinha said. “I think we are primarily artists, interested in the object we make, which is always the film.”Sinha in “Time’s Up, Old Man,” a KIRAC film in which she criticizes the Dutch curator and architect Rem Koolhaas.KIRACIn a joint interview, Ruitenbeek and Sinha said they developed the concept for the Houellebecq film with the author and shot 600 hours of footage of him, with his contractual consent. Houellebecq only objected when they put together a two-minute trailer for the work in progress, according to Ruitenbeek and Sinha.In that clip, Ruitenbeek explains that a “honey trip,” or sex holiday, that Houellebecq had planned in Morocco had been canceled because the author feared being kidnapped by Muslim extremists. (Houellebecq has a long history of making critical statements about Islam, and some readers have found Islamophobic sentiments in his books.)“His wife had spent an entire month arranging prostitutes from Paris, and now everything was falling apart,” Ruitenbeek says in the trailer, in voice-over. He then suggests that there are plenty of young Dutch women in Amsterdam who would have “sex with a famous writer out of curiosity,” and invites the author to visit.In a French court, Houellebecq argued that the trailer violated his privacy and damaged his image. He asked the court to make KIRAC pull the trailer from all online platforms, remove any mention of his wife arranging prostitutes and pay her damages. The court rejected Houellebecq’s case.Later, in the Dutch court, Houellebecq argued that KIRAC had violated contract law, and misled him so that he ended up “in a different film than the one originally intended,” according to his Dutch lawyer, Jacqueline Schaap. An appeal judge in that case found for Houellebecq.The film is still unfinished and continues to evolve, Ruitenbeek said. After Houellebecq left the project, KIRAC filmed in and around the court proceedings, as well as shooting other moments, such as Saturday night’s cockroach show.Ruitenbeek said he was now rethinking the material, and a final cut may not come for months.“We started off this project in an open-minded attitude toward each other; we took each other as artists,” Sinha said of the collaboration with Houellebecq. “It feels like he backpedaled and put on a different coat.”Houellebecq last week agreed to an interview for this article, but pulled out after learning that he would not be shown his quotes before publication. (At the event in Amsterdam, he again declined to comment, claiming that he did not speak English, although he speaks it in the KIRAC film.)Ruitenbeek’s over-the-top voice-overs and willingness to play a goofball suggest that KIRAC is going for humor. But, often, the subjects of its films don’t find them funny.“They point fingers at others, but carve out a safe space for themselves’,” said the artist Renzo Martens, who was the focus of an unflattering movie. “From this safe space they are brave enough to cut into other people’s flesh.”Three Dutch institutions that KIRAC has lambasted — the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Abbe Museum and the Kunstmuseum, in The Hague — declined to comment for this article.Salima El Musalima in KIRAC’s film “Honeypot.” More than 1,000 people signed a petition calling the film “a glorification of sexual violence.”KIRACThijs Lijster, a senior lecturer on the philosophy of art and culture at the University of Groningen, said that there is “something threatening in their ways of going about their work. They have a style of filming, and approaching and talking to people, which is, in a way, rather hostile.”It is not just KIRAC’s targeting of artists and institutions that has been controversial. Over time, its films have evolved to enter the realm of social commentary, drawing ire from across the political spectrum.Some viewers saw the group’s 19-minute film “Who’s Afraid of Harvey Weinstein?,” in which Sinha speaks about sexual power dynamics between the American film producer and his rape victims, as dismissive of the #MeToo movement.A leading art school in Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, canceled a KIRAC screening after dozens of complaints from students, former students and teachers about statements in the group’s films that they found sexist and racist. The Weinstein movie was championed on a right-wing populist Dutch blog, Geen Stijl. Suddenly, KIRAC became a magnet for conservative followers.Although Ruitenbeek and Sinha said their personal politics are progressive, KIRAC didn’t disavow the attention, and instead produced a film called “Honeypot.” For that, the group convinced a conservative Dutch philosopher and activist, Sid Lukkassen, to have sex on camera with a left-wing student. The idea was to see if the intimate act would somehow bridge a political gap.More backlash ensued. When an Amsterdam arts center called De Balie screened “Honeypot,” a feminist collective submitted a petition with more than 1,000 signatures that called the film “a glorification of sexual violence.” The petition’s signers also included the right-wing Dutch politician Paul Cliteur and some of his followers.Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with Houellebecq was no stunt. They maintained that they don’t want to be in court with the author, whom they both described as “a genius.”Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times“It was interesting that these two sides teamed up against the film for opposite reasons,” said Yoeri Albrecht, De Balie’s director, who did not cancel the event. “I’ve never seen that happen in the more than a decade that I’ve been organizing events here.”The ambiguity around the group’s motivations only feeds the interest in KIRAC’s work. Many who have been following the Houellebecq affair are unsure whether it’s real or a postmodern KIRAC fiction.“Everyone is wondering, are they playing a game together?” said Simon Delobel, a curator who teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Ghent, Belgium, where he was introduced to the group’s work by his students. KIRAC and Houellebecq were surely “well aware that it can be interpreted as a stunt,” he added.Yet Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with the author was no stunt. They don’t want to be in court with Houellebecq, whom they both described as “a genius.” They just want to be in conversation with him, Sinha said.Ruitenbeek added that when he showed up at Houellebecq’s talk on Saturday, he thought there was a small chance that everyone would laugh and give each other hugs. He was “very happy the day he went to get the cockroach suit,” Sinha said. “After all these intimidating court cases,” she added, “we were back on our own territory again: making art.”Léontine Gallois More

A professor decorated a sidewalk in Georgetown with 10-foot sculptures of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. The well-heeled locals were not pleased.The thing about putting a pair of 10-foot statues of metal-hewn Transformers outside your townhouse in the most picturesque district of the nation’s capital is that the neighbors are going to have opinions.And on Prospect Street in Georgetown, they were not pleased.The statues — Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, two of the good guys from the long-running “Transformers” movie franchise — appeared in January 2021 outside the white-brick home of Newton Howard, a cognitive scientist and machine-learning expert with ties to the intelligence community.He had ordered them from a factory in Taiwan to the tune of more than $25,000 each. Where large brick planters had once blended in with the local aesthetic, there was now something akin to outsider art by way of an anonymous welder and Hollywood’s reinterpretation of 1980s toys.Plenty of people love the statues, which resemble invaders from the future, in a neighborhood that does its best to hang on to its cobblestone past. Students at nearby Georgetown University can’t get enough. Neither can tourists: The Transformers statues have their own entry on Google Maps as a place of interest, with 4.9 stars. “The best part of visiting Georgetown,” one reviewer declared.“People are at my door every day,” Dr. Howard, 53, said at his home on a recent afternoon. “It doesn’t bother me. I find it to be beautiful that actually people are appreciating things.”But some of his neighbors are less enthusiastic, and the critics of his notion of a Georgetown-appropriate sidewalk display have been trying to get rid of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime for more than two years.Dr. Howard, a bald man with an unplaceable accent, wears dark round eyeglasses that come equipped with a camera and a microprocessor that allows him to translate languages on the spot, he said.He paid $3.75 million for the townhouse and moved in during the pandemic. In 2021, he snapped up the one next door for $4.8 million. The homes lie close to his job at Georgetown University School of Medicine, where he is a research professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular and cellular biology. (He added to his real estate holdings in 2022, when he bought a $3.6 million home in Potomac, Md. It has 14 bathrooms and a bocce court.)Dr. Howard greeting tourists who stopped by to see his Transformers sculptures.Zak Arctander for The New York TimesPutting up the Transformers wasn’t the only thing Dr. Howard did to irritate his Georgetown neighbors, who learned shortly after his arrival that he wasn’t some sort of shabby, retiring professor. He had flashy taste and he liked to show it off, parking a number of expensive cars on Prospect Street: a yellow McClaren 720S (new ones start at $310,000), a 2005 Porsche Carrera GT (which goes for $1.4 million and up), a Porsche 918 (fewer than 1000 were made, and they go for well over $1 million). Not to mention an MRAP tank and a small airplane from his collection that he once parked in front of his home. The car show came to a stop only after he received complaints.A rich guy with loud cars is one thing, a known story. The Transformers were something else altogether. They quickly became a flashpoint in Georgetown, and on the internet, after the local news site DCist reported on the efforts of Dr. Howard’s neighbors to get the statues removed.Sally Quinn, the author and longtime Georgetown resident, said she was firmly in the anti-Transformers camp. “I think they’re really ugly,” she said. “Some people may like them. You know, everybody’s taste in art is different. But that’s not the point.”The point, she continued, was historical preservation: “People come to Georgetown because it’s Georgetown. It’s a beautiful, quaint village.”But the author Kitty Kelley, who said she has lived in the neighborhood for “two husbands,” or since 1977, sent Dr. Howard a handwritten card in support of his sidewalk flair.“All you have to do is take a walk through Georgetown, and you’re going to see gnomes and wrought-iron benches,” said Ms. Kelley, who is known for her dishy biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (“Jackie Oh!”), Oprah and Nancy Reagan. “You’ll see cement lions of all sizes. So why should this man be deprived of using the space right outside his front door?”“Maybe it isn’t Picasso,” she continued. “It isn’t a sculpture by Degas, but I think he’s entitled.”Ms. Kelley noted that her own outdoor decorations have included topiary monkeys, a seven-foot bird feeder and “an angel who’s shooting something across the yard.”So: Was Dr. Howard a champion of free expression who found himself on a crusade against exclusionary zoning and “snooty neighbors,” as Slate cast him? Or was he an attention-seeking scofflaw with questionable taste?Or maybe this was simply a case of an eccentric and mysteriously rich guy being eccentric and mysteriously rich.Optimus Prime, a Transformers statue in front of Dr. Howard’s home, with flowers in its hand.Zak Arctander for The New York TimesNeighbors Weigh InGeorgetown is not the most futuristic place. Some of the streets still have cobblestone and the remains of streetcar tracks. The neighborhood is filled with pastel rowhouses from the 18th and 19th centuries and with newer homes meant to recall the older structures.The area also has its share of stately brick mansions that make you wonder who lives there, or used to. Often, it’s someone well-off, but occasionally it’s a someone someone. Power players in media, politics and entertainment — like Madeleine Albright, Ben Bradlee, Katherine Graham, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Elizabeth Taylor — have called Georgetown home. But it wasn’t always Washington’s glamour spot.“Georgetown was kind of a dump in the early 20th century,” said George Derek Musgrove, the co-author of the 2017 study “Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital.”The old houses had largely fallen into disrepair, and the neighborhood was home to working-class Irish and African Americans. Then, with the explosion of government hiring during the New Deal, Ivy League graduates moved in. They fixed up their homes in an array of styles until the national craze for historical preservation took hold. In 1950, “Old Georgetown” was designated a federal historic district, with all the restrictions on home modification that entailed.“By the time you get to 1960, and John Kennedy leaves his Georgetown mansion on N Street for the White House, you just couldn’t afford to get in if you wanted to,” Mr. Musgrove said.A lot of the residents support efforts to keep things more or less the same. Catherine Emmerson, whose family lives close to Dr. Howard, helped start the Prospect Street Citizens’ Association a few years ago to stop a condo conversion that would have blocked local residents’ views of the Potomac River. When the Transformers arrived, the group had a new target.It’s not that the association was against celebrating film history. In fact, its members argued that the condo conversion would have threatened something that ought to be a landmark (and now is): a set of steep steps on Prospect Street, built in 1895, that appeared in “The Exorcist.” (Think: tumbling priest.)But that was “The Exorcist.” A film. (Maybe?) An old movie, at least. The “Transformers” franchise, which has grossed more than $5 billion across six films, was more like … I.P. (Michael Bay, the “Transformers” producer, declined to comment on Dr. Howard’s decorating choices or the neighbors’ reaction.)And the Citizens’ Association had clear recourse. Before putting up the statues, Dr. Howard did not apply for any kind of permit, despite Georgetown’s historic status and the fact that the sidewalk is public space.There is a process, a local official emphasized when he appeared in front of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission via video in March 2021, three months after Bumblebee and Optimus Prime had become part of the neighborhood. And he had bypassed it entirely.The commission went on to inform him that, before gaining approval, he would have to apply to something else: the Old Georgetown Board, a federal body of three architects that ruled on any changes to the exteriors of properties.Ms. Emmerson and another neighbor, the author and former television journalist Luke Russert, also weighed in. Ms. Emmerson argued that the statues represented a safety hazard and drew crowds of disruptive gawkers. (Dr. Howard later had his Transformers bolted in place.)An Optimus Prime statue watches over the neighborhood from Dr. Howard’s rooftop.Zak Arctander for The New York TimesMr. Russert was more blunt. “What’s to stop someone from putting up a statue of Joseph Stalin and saying, well, this is provocative, it’s art, it speaks to me?” he argued. “They are a nuisance, they are an eyesore, and they detract from the spirit of the neighborhood.”As tensions continued, Dr. Howard said he started hearing two terms that he had never heard before — NIMBY and YIMBY. (“Not in my backyard” vs. “Yes in my backyard.”) The pro-development crowd wanted to claim him as a hero. He declined to ally himself, exactly. Instead, Dr. Howard argued, his statues were all about “the American idea,” because they welcomed visitors to a cloistered part of the city.“You don’t want to just come up with ways to shut down your neighborhood so nobody comes into it,” he said.His critics disputed the notion that he was motivated by an idea of civic good. “His repeated disregard for the law and procedure tells a story of someone who is not operating in good faith for the collective community,” Ms. Emmerson wrote in an email to The New York Times.‘The Real Tony Stark’There was no horde outside Dr. Howard’s townhouse on a recent Sunday afternoon. A young man paused to snap a photo of his 2-year-old son standing with the statues. The toddler’s blue and yellow shoes matched Optimus Prime’s color scheme.From the rooftop, a six-foot Optimus Prime statue peeked down at the street. It had once stood at the front door, but after the initial controversy Dr. Howard commissioned a taller version for the sidewalk. Then he moved the original, perched as if part of some SWAT team on the lookout for any Decepticons.The interior of Dr. Howard’s home, which he said he decorated himself, resembled a lair. The glassy back of the townhouse overlooks the Potomac, where the buzz of jets headed into and out of Reagan National Airport adds to the techno-paradise vibe. Motorcycles were parked in the living areas as objets, and five more Transformer statues stood guard. There was also a giant model of Iron Man, a Marvel superhero dear to Dr. Howard.“A lot of people used to call me the real Tony Stark,” he said, referring to Iron Man’s alter ego.The interior of Dr. Howard’s Georgetown home includes motorcycles and more Transformers sculptures.Zak Arctander for The New York TimesThe memorabilia on display included his concealed carry permit, as well as framed photographs of him with Bill Clinton and Tim Tebow, the former N.F.L. quarterback who became known for kneeling in prayer on the field. Dr. Howard, who said he is a follower of Messianic Judaism, a religion sometimes referred to colloquially as Jews for Jesus, said that he and Mr. Tebow belong to the same fellowship group. (Mr. Tebow couldn’t be reached for comment.)His home was fastidious, except for a half-built child’s toy in the living room. Dr. Howard has four children, ranging in age from 5 to 26, he said. (The older children are from a previous marriage.) He and his wife, Rebecca, are also fostering five Afghan refugees, he added.Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, became friends with Dr. Howard through a shared interest in Afghanistan.“I call him Tony Stark,” he said. “I would have called him that without the statue.” (Senator Mullin made a splash in 2021 for personally trying to escort Americans out of Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban, against the explicit wishes of the State and Defense Departments. Dr. Howard was “very involved” in similar efforts, Senator Mullin said.)The professor — who is, duh, a fan of the “Transformers” movies — said the sculptures had a deeper meaning for him. Not only did they represent machines and humans coexisting in harmony, he said, but the word “transform” had a great deal of personal significance.“I like changing things when you’re in a status quo and they’re wrong,” he said. “When one looks at themselves and feels self-pity and falls into dwellings of darkness, you should transform.”Dr. Howard has gone through several transformations himself. He was born in the Sinai Peninsula when Israel controlled it. His family — Egyptian Jews who ended up living in France, he said — moved to the United States when he was 11.He said he joined the Army at 18, then worked as a linguist in Michigan “across various agencies,” specializing in Arabic, Farsi and Dari. He changed his name around that time because, he said, “it was offered by an agency.” He declined to provide more detail.“There’s a lot of things during that phase of my career that should be kept secret,” he said.Dr. Howard — whose doctorates include concentrations in mathematics and neuroscience, and who holds an appointment at the University of Oxford alongside the one at Georgetown — is a curious mix of limelight-seeking and discreet. After college, he said, he worked in military intelligence. He later did work for InQTel, which is functionally the C.I.A.’s venture capital fund.What precisely he did to get rich is unclear. He said his wealth resulted from selling various businesses, some of which he could not talk about. The walls of his townhouse are filled with commemorative plaques of his patents, many of which have defense industry applications, including “Wireless Network for Routing a Signal Without Using a Tower” and “System and Method for Automated Detection of Situational Awareness.”A tabletop Transformer in Dr. Howard’s townhouse beside a couple upright books.Zak Arctander for The New York TimesHe said he suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2000 while delivering medical supplies, though he declined to offer more detail. After his recovery, he decided to focus on applying the principles of machine learning to the human brain, and turned to neuroscience. “I figured instead of sitting and getting my brain worked on, I would work on it myself by studying it,” he said.His ventures include Aiberry, a start-up that tries to use A.I. analysis to improve on mental health screening. He said he hoped to help solve the problem of degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s with a cloud-connected device implanted in the brain, using A.I. to optimize the levels of deep brain stimulation.In other words, he would like to help human beings preserve their humanity by becoming a little more machine.The RulingThe Old Georgetown Board seems to rule with an iron fist — just try putting up a neon sign in the neighborhood — but its power is advisory. The city of Washington, D.C., has the real authority to enforce decisions, but the influence of neighbors complaining in unison cannot be discounted.Topher Mathews, a commissioner for Georgetown’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said that the Transformers mess wouldn’t even make his top five neighborhood dramas of the past 10 years. Easily outstripping it, for instance, was the agita caused over the opening on O Street of Call Your Mother Deli, which attracts long lines.And locals love to bring up the Tree Incident of 2018, which involved a new homeowner’s decision to prune and cut down magnolia trees on his property, which happened to be the former home of Ms. Onassis. In response, a neighbor created a Halloween display with a mock tombstone reading, “Beloved magnolia 1840-2018 destroyed R.I.P.,” and a grim reaper that announced “Tree Killer Lives There.”Dr. Howard has argued that his statues constitute meaningful public art. The “Transformers” movies follow a classic good-versus-evil struggle in which the Autobots (the good guys) work to save humanity from the Decepticons (the bad guys). Reviewing the first installment of the franchise in 2007, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that it was “part car commercial, part military recruitment ad, a bumper-to-bumper pileup of big cars, big guns and, as befits its recently weaned target demographic, big breasts.” The Old Georgetown Board took up the matter of Dr. Howard’s statues in spring 2021, and the city gave him a six-month permit to keep them up. But well after the six months was up, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime were still in place.Dr. Newton Howard shows off a device that he says will use A.I. to optimize and adjust the levels of deep brain stimulation.Zak Arctander for The New York TimesBy the time the board met again, in April 2023, Dr. Howard claimed that he had spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting to keep his statues up, an amount that included legal and architect advisory fees and city fines.This time, the board ordered him to take the statues down. Instead of complying, Dr. Howard appealed to the D.C. Public Space Committee. He also rebuffed offers from the Advisory Neighborhood Commission to help him find another place in the neighborhood to display his statues.Dr. Howard seems to enjoy the attention that has come with the ongoing case. He has talked extensively with the press about his crusade. He was flattered that Paramount, the studio behind the Transformers movie, had invited him to the Washington premiere of the next installment, “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” which comes out June 9.As DCist and The Washington Post chronicled the twists and turns of the neighborhood drama, sentiment online seemed to swing his way. A student at Georgetown University started a Change.org petition, signed by more than 900 people, to keep the statues up. “This is so dumb,” Hayden Gise, an Advisory Neighborhood Commission vice chair who lives in a neighborhood close to Georgetown, wrote on Twitter. “Let him live oh my god. Everyone loves property rights until some guy does something cool.”On May 25, the statues’ fate went before the Public Space Committee. Dr. Howard had hired Paul Strauss, D.C.’s shadow senator, to represent him. Or, as Mr. Strauss put it, he was acting as counsel for Optimus Prime, while a colleague represented Bumblebee.“People have misunderstood the issue,” Mr. Strauss said. “You talk about compatibility with a historic district? Technically, these guys are millennia old. I mean, they’re prehistoric.”Mr. Strauss and Dr. Howard also persuaded Peter Cullen and Dan Gilvezan, actors who voiced Optimus Prime and Bumblebee on the 1980s cartoon series based on the toys, to attest at the hearing about the history and significance of the nearly 40-year franchise.The entreaties didn’t work. The D.C. Public Space Committee denied Dr. Howard a permit, meaning that he would have to take the statues down himself, or the city would. It wasn’t a question of art; it was a question of following the rules.Dr. Howard didn’t seem inclined to stand down. Before the meeting, he suggested that he would appeal a ruling against him on First Amendment grounds. His lawyer clarified that they saw the issue as one of equal protection: Plenty of people fill their sidewalk planters in Georgetown and never get dinged for it. Why is his client required to seek a permit for what is in his planter?After the meeting, Dr. Howard said he thought he would apply for a new permit. But he seemed deflated.“I’m sad,” he said in a text to a reporter, adding,“What do you think I should do?”The victory that Dr. Howard said he was seeking was a moral one.“I know what these Transformers mean to me,” he said. “What does it mean to them?”As of June 1, the statues were still standing.Kitty Bennett contributed research. More

The French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch’s feel-good dance film follows a professional ballerina returning to the stage after an ankle injury.The amiable dance film “Rise” begins with a wordless sequence backstage at a Parisian ballet performance. The 26-year-old soloist, Elise (Marion Barbeau), is readying for her grand entrance when she spots her boyfriend furtively smooching a fellow company member. Distraught and preoccupied, Elise jams her ankle during a jeté, causing an injury that could require surgery.The remainder of “Rise,” directed by Cédric Klapisch, traces Elise’s lengthy but rather untroubled road to recovery, both of body and of confidence. Much of this coming-of-age work occurs at a picturesque artists’ retreat in a seaside villa where Elise, limping but breezy, accepts a job preparing meals. And what luck that her cooking gig should coincide with the residency of an esteemed contemporary dance troupe — one that includes a break dancing hunk, Mehdi (Mehdi Baki), who Elise had admired back home.This is a sweet, uncomplicated story relayed with enough entrancing dance breaks to fill an American halftime show. In her acting debut, Barbeau, a professional ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet, is mesmerizing in motion, and her training is obvious; she points her toes even while jogging. Some of the movie’s themes feel labored, such as a drawn-out discourse comparing the rigidity of ballet to the freedom of modern choreography. It drives home a point we already intuit: the dialogue is incidental when the dancing is this expressive.RiseNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

In this film directed by Abel Ferrara, Shia LaBeouf gives viewers a contemporary version of the saint — that is, one who curses a blue streak.We are now in the month of June, so the idea of Shia LaBeouf in the title role of a fictionalized biography of the revered and controversial Italian cleric Padre Pio directed by Abel Ferrara has a low probability of being some kind of April Fool’s joke. This is a real movie. And alas, an occasionally rank one.Now Ferrara hasn’t even attempted a conventional biopic of the man born Francesco Forgione at the end of the 19th century, and who, according to some accounts, started displaying stigmata after an illness-plagued childhood. And that’s to his credit. Rather, he’s attempted a sometimes Brechtian consideration of the nodes of political history and spirituality.The movie is set in the Italy between two world wars, during which time Pio was a priest in San Giovanni Rotondo, where he spent his entire life. (And where a 1920 Fascist-initiated massacre of civilians took place; the movie ends with a depiction of it.) Ferrara’s narrative toggles between Padre Pio’s cloistered, spiritually tormented existence and the Socialist and Fascist factions competing to transform Italy at the time.LaBeouf essays a rather, let’s say, contemporary Pio. And completely sinks the picture. Early in the movie Pio is asked by an interrogator about the “countless” women “you had your narcissistic way with.” Who’s under scrutiny here, the character, or LaBeouf himself, who’s recently faced allegations of sexual abuse from more than one woman? Later, a male character played by Asia Argento confesses feeling lust for his own daughter, and LaBeouf’s Pio, utterly callow in spite of his prodigious beard, tells him to shut-the-you-know-what-up. He detaches the movie from the Brechtian and lands it firmly in the territory of “improv scene workshop gone horribly wrong.”Padre PioRated R for themes, violence, Shia LaBeouf’s language. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

Death and desire are bunk mates in this coming-of-age drama set around a lake cabin in Quebec.Directed by Charlotte Le Bon, the coming-of-age drama “Falcon Lake” is a story of summer love steeped in the eeriness of a wilderness slasher. A ghost supposedly haunts the secluded Quebec lake where a 13-year-old, Bastien (Joseph Engel), is vacationing with his family, at a cabin owned by their friends. Chloé (Sara Montpetit), the moody 16-year-old daughter of their hosts, gets a thrill out of playing dead: In one scene, she has Bastien take her picture as she poses on a dirt road like a corpse.Still scrawny and awkward yet overflowing with hormones, Bastien finds Chloé more terrifying — and fascinating — than any bogey. Like “The Virgin Suicides,” the film unfolds from the teen boy’s besotted perspective. But relative to the hapless narrator of Sofia Coppola’s young-adult classic, Bastien grows close to his mysterious object of desire, a Wednesday Addams type without the misanthropic streak. Chloé plays the experienced cool girl with ease, taking Bastien on wine-fueled hiking adventures and to a house party with her obnoxious guy pals. She also casually undresses in front of Bastien as if he’s her kid brother, but Montpetit gives these actions a knowingly flirtatious glint. Chloé is teasing her repressed companion, bringing him out of his shell as she steps out of her own — Chloé gives Bastien a taste of adulthood’s pleasures while Bastien allows her the freedom to be a kid again.“Falcon Lake” is a handsome, intriguing feature directing debut from Le Bon; a naturalistic teen romance spiked with mystique, thanks to its subtly menacing deep-woods setting and quivering 16 millimeter cinematography by Kristof Brandl. Death and desire swirl around the film’s charged atmosphere, though Le Bon has trouble meaningfully bringing out these elements in the narrative itself, hastily throwing in ambiguities in the last act to create a weightier sense of drama. The effect falls flat.Falcon LakeNot rated. In French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

A New York-based filmmaker wades into the deep waters of his Gullah Geechee heritage and South Carolina roots.In the elegiac documentary “After Sherman,” cameras glide along waterways, soar above marshes, contemplate churches and travel down Southern roads lined by trees, the moss hanging like braids. Under the director Jon-Sesrie Goff’s gaze, these places are sacred, even as they remain haunted by a nation’s grievous racial history.“I’m Gullah, born in exile,” says Goff, who is based in New York, describing his place among the Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina.The film focuses on Goff’s father, the Rev. Dr. Norvel Goff Sr., a descendant of formerly enslaved people who purchased land in South Carolina after emancipation. Reverend Goff, who owns property in the Lowcountry, was also the interim pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, after a self-identified white supremacist killed nine Black parishioners gathered for Bible study one evening in June 2015.While shucking oysters, son and father discuss what it means to forgive. There is nuance in Goff Sr.’s understanding of why some victims’ families extended forgiveness to the killer. There is also reasonable ire from a Charleston resident and tour guide, Alphonso Brown, who shares that although he’s a Christian, he won’t do the same.Goff Sr. is central to “After Sherman,” but the director also choreographs a poignant tango between his personal journey with his formidable father and the lives of a people and a region. Braiding interviews, animation (by Kelly Gallagher) and home movies, and using intertitles made nearly incantatory by being whispered, the film is expressionistic but never at a cost to its subjects and archival material.A quietly plaintive score by the composer Tamar-kali provides rooted resonance to this investigative and intimate work of belonging. A work that speaks to, as the director says, “a history of knowing who we are and whose we are.”After ShermanNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

An Israeli’s guilt over an act of police brutality he indirectly caused is the crux of this drama from Idan Haguel.Ben (Shlomi Bertonov) lives with his boyfriend, Raz (Ariel Wolf), in a gentrifying neighborhood of Tel Aviv. They got a great deal — the apartment would have cost twice as much in a more central area of the city. And Ben has already done his part to spruce up the block by planting a thin tree across the street.So it bugs him when he sees two Eritrean immigrants chatting by the sapling, with one leaning against it in a way that could snap it. He talks with them, and the issue seems resolved. But when Ben spots the man leaning again, he calls the authorities. He lies and says the city planted the tree. A little while later, out of his window, he sees one of the young men savagely beaten by police.The guilt Ben feels over the violence he caused — it may even have been a killing; he initially doesn’t have confirmation of the victim’s fate — is the driving force of “Concerned Citizen,” an Israeli feature from the writer-director Idan Haguel. Did Ben overreact? Is he a secret racist? He mentions the incident to various people, but always fudges the specifics to disavow his involvement. He tries to sell the apartment without Raz’s knowledge.Haguel builds this brief but densely structured film in an interestingly modular, rhythmic way, thanks to a percussive score by Zoe Polanski and occasional, abrupt cuts to black following key scenes. But the movie’s ending is far too easy: It gives Ben a second chance to prove his true values, as if the consequences of his previous failure could be waved away.Concerned CitizenNot rated. In Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

An eclectic mix of titles are leaving the service for U.S. subscribers by the end of the month. Catch them before they’re gone.In the month to come, Netflix in the United States will bid farewell to an eclectic mixture of genre movies, sketch comedy, reality TV and romantic comedies, as well as a beloved family feature and a documentary exploration of a peculiar corner of the entertainment industry. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Bathtubs Over Broadway’ (June 8)One of the most delightful documentaries of recent years, this 2018 charmer chronicles how the “Late Show With David Letterman” writer Steve Young stumbled onto the long-forgotten world of “industrial musical theater”: original musical productions, created specifically for corporate events and solely to inspire sales, that nevertheless provided steady paychecks and opportunities for performers, composers and designers for decades. What begins as an ironic fringe interest, discovered while sifting through vinyl oddities, becomes something of an obsession for Young, and the film evolves into a quiet love letter to ephemeral art.Stream it here.‘The Mole’: Seasons 3-4 (June 13)One of Netflix most unexpected (but enjoyable) resurrection projects has been the reboot of the reality competition series “The Mole.” The streamer premiered its latest season, hosted by MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, last fall — 14 years after the show’s fifth and presumably final season aired on ABC. And for nostalgia’s sake, it also licensed the third and fourth of the original seasons. Those were the “Celebrity Mole” years, so viewers can enjoy the host Ahmad Rashad (the original host was Anderson Cooper) guiding viewers in the hunt for the saboteur among a group of decidedly mid-2000s celebs, including Stephen Baldwin, Angie Everhart, Kathy Griffin, Dennis Rodman and Frederique van der Wal.Stream it here.‘The Mist’ (June 21)The writer and director Frank Darabont’s third adaptation of Stephen King’s work was a far cry from his earlier, emotionally hefty, Oscar-courting films “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”; if those were not what we think of as a “Stephen King movie,” this 2007 take on King’s 1980 novella certainly was. Set primarily in the supermarket of a small Maine town enveloped in a mysterious murky fog, the story features supernatural forces, killer creatures and protagonists cracking under pressure. It also features stellar performances from a stacked ensemble (including Andre Braugher, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Thomas Jane and Toby Jones) and one of the bleakest endings to ever sneak its way into a mainstream movie.Stream it here.‘Chappelle’s Show’: Seasons 1-2 (June 30)Say what you will about his current preoccupations (and there is much to say), but there’s no denying the impact, power and sheer comic virtuosity of Dave Chappelle’s Comedy Central sketch series, which scorched cable airwaves for these two brief seasons, from 2003 to 2004. (Chappelle notoriously walked off the show during production of its third season, with only enough material for three episodes in the can.) But in that brief time, a handful of memorable characters and sketches — including Chappelle’s impersonations of Rick James and Lil’ Jon and sketches about a blind Black white supremacist and a celebrity “racial draft” — became immediate comic sensations and pop culture reference points.Stream it here.‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ (June 30)There may have been better early-2000s romantic comedies, but this 2003 hit from Donald Petrie may be the most early-2000s romantic comedy. All of the conventions are present and accounted for: an impossibly gorgeous, opposites-attract central couple (Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey); a plotline centering on a secret wager; Kathryn Hahn stealing scenes as our heroine’s BFF. But what it lacks in originality it makes up for in verve, with Hudson and McConaughey creating considerable sparks and Petrie directing with the proper, light-as-air touch.Stream it here.‘Jerry Maguire’ (June 30)In retrospect, it was really kind of genius — artistically and commercially — of the writer and director Cameron Crowe to combine the most stereotypically “dude flick” (the sports movie) with the most stereotypically “chick flick” (the romantic comedy). Yet by doing so, he proved how simplistic and suffocating such labels could be. In telling the story of a high-powered sports agent (Tom Cruise) whose nervous romance with a single mom (Renée Zellweger) makes him a better agent and a better man, Crowe drafted an unlikely Venn diagram, in which the common concerns of family, integrity and loyalty are of equal weight and audiences can’t help but root for both the underdog team and the unlikely couple.Stream it here.‘Puss in Boots’ (June 30)The “Shrek” movies made untold truckloads of money, but strangely, their most lasting cultural footprint seems to have come in the form of a side character who didn’t even appear until “Shrek 2.” Yet the suave, swashbuckling, Puss in Boots, voiced by Antonio Banderas, became not only one of the most popular characters in the series but also the star of his own delightful adventures. This 2011 treat offered the expected thrills and giggles for the little kids as well as some Easter eggs for their parents, including Banderas’s reunion with his “Desperado” co-star Salma Hayek and energetic voice performances by the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Sedaris and Billy Bob Thornton.Stream it here.‘The Taking of Pelham 123’ (June 30)The original 1974 film adaptation of the crime novel “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” was so steeped in the specific circumstances of Fun City-era New York City that it was probably impossible for a remake to reanimate its specific, grimy thrills. But Tony Scott’s 2009 version offers up its own pleasures. Scott’s frequent leading man Denzel Washington brings tormented complexity to the grizzled hero, whose shift at M.T.A. dispatch is disrupted by a madman (John Travolta) whose crew takes over a subway car and holds its passengers hostage. And James Gandolfini is wonderful (and miles from Tony Soprano) as the city’s mayor.Stream it here.‘World War Z’ (June 30)Max Brooks’s 2006 novel about a zombie apocalypse was both a no-brainer for film adaptation (again, it details a zombie apocalypse) and a challenge, as so much of its power came from its epistolary-style, “oral history” structure. Those challenges made for something of a troubled production, and the stories of expensive reshoots and 11th-hour rewrites were so plentiful that it’s somewhat surprising the picture is as coherent as it is — well-crafted, tense and thrilling, alternating effective character beats with chilling set pieces.Stream it here.Also leaving: “Philomena” (June 19), “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” (June 29). More