Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Ben Whishaw, as Paddington Once More, Is Here to Make You Feel Better

      by

      With “Paddington in Peru,” the British actor voices the beloved bear for the third time. His calming charm remains the franchise’s calling card.Paddington was not part of my childhood. I was a Muppet kid, and Fozzie was my comfort bear of choice.Instead, Paddington came to me as an adult. In 2015, an exceedingly polite, marmalade-slurping fellow in a floppy felt hat and blue duffel coat arrived in theaters and offered an uplifting story about tolerance and pluck. Three years later, the euphorically reviewed “Paddington 2” delivered a reassuring — calming — message about the ugly chaos of modern life: Keep believing in goodness. It’s still out there.So when I recently had the opportunity to talk to Paddington himself, I couldn’t help but turn the interview into a therapy session.It wasn’t actually Paddington, of course. I was on a video call with the British actor Ben Whishaw. He voices Paddington in the PG-rated franchise, the third installment in which, “Paddington in Peru,” arrives in theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday. Our chat was supposed to be about an imaginary world where optimistic bears carry umbrellas and tuck sandwiches under their hats. On the day we spoke, however, my mind was consumed by the real world — the Los Angeles fires, the turmoil of a changing presidential administration, my mother needing heart surgery.Paddington! Say it’s all going to be OK!“I understand,” Whishaw said gently, sounding identical to Paddington in every syllable. “You feel like nothing is stable anymore.”Nicole Kidman with the title character in the first “Paddington” movie.Weinstein CompanyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      A Great James Earl Jones Role That Can Finally Be Seen

      by

      A restored version of Charles Burnett’s 1999 movie “The Annihilation of Fish” opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after being virtually unshown for 25 years.When James Earl Jones died in September at 93, he left behind a great performance that, for 25 years, has gone virtually unseen. The movie, “The Annihilation of Fish,” directed by Charles Burnett, had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 but never received a proper release. Now it’s getting a second chance, in a restoration that opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.“I hope people see it in a fresh light, and look at the talent,” Burnett, 80, said by phone from his home in Los Angeles.A great deal has changed since 1999: Burnett’s masterpiece “Killer of Sheep,” completed in 1977 and accorded a belated opening in 2007, is more widely available than it had been in those intervening years, and an honorary Oscar for Burnett in 2017 put a spotlight on a body of work that has long been championed by critics. The loose movement from which Burnett emerged — the group of film students at the University of California, Los Angeles, who became known as the L.A. Rebellion — has been the subject of academic attention in recent years. And while Jones’s death occurred after the restoration of “The Annihilation of Fish” was completed, the prospect of seeing the actor in one of his finest roles offers yet another reason to check out this surreal and disarming film.Jones plays Obediah Johnson, an immigrant from Jamaica who begins the movie having spent 10 years under institutional care. Obediah, who goes by the name Fish, is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon — an invisible presence that he repeatedly tries to wrestle into submission, baffling those around him.Released from his supervised living situation, Fish makes his way from New York to Los Angeles; he figures that the City of Angels will give him an advantage over a demon. Upon arrival, he moves into a boardinghouse run by an eccentric landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder). Soon they are joined by the woman who becomes the home’s only other resident, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), who is running from an invisible companion of her own: the ghost of Puccini, her lover, with whom she has called it quits. (They can’t marry because California law requires a corporeal presence.)Jones plays Obediah Johnson, who goes by the name Fish. He is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon.Kino LorberWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      If You’re a ‘Bridget Jones’ Fan, You Might Like ‘Crossing Delancey’

      by

      This 1988 rom-com, starring Amy Irving, joins the Criterion Collection this month. But it has been warming hearts for decades.When Warner Brothers released the romantic comedy “Crossing Delancey” in the fall of 1988, it was a modest success, but nothing special. Its reviews were respectful, if not spectacular (“The film’s style is deliberately broad, but the actors give it humor and delicacy,” noted the Times’ Janet Maslin). Its $16 million box office gross (not adjusted for inflation) made it profitable, but no blockbuster. It received a Golden Globe nomination for its star, Amy Irving, but no further major awards recognition. It was the kind of late-1980s mid-budget studio movie that tends to fade away to Tubi streaming and bargain DVDs.But the afterlife of “Crossing Delancey” has proved far more robust. This month, it joins the Criterion Collection, in a handsomely mounted, supplement-packed 4K UHD and Blu-ray edition. It’s also streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of a “New York Love Stories” collection, alongside such established classics as “Annie Hall,” “The Goodbye Girl” and “Moonstruck.” And its most vocal fans are not the boomers and elder Gen-Xers who were going to the movies when it was released; it’s beloved by Millennials and Zoomers who may not have even been alive when it hit theaters.So what makes this gentle would-be romance between a bookstore clerk and a pickle vendor so timeless, so endlessly appealing?From a clinical standpoint, at least to serious cinephiles, it’s a film of historical significance. Its director, Joan Micklin Silver, has been the subject of some critical reappraisal and celebration in recent years as one of the astonishingly few female directors working in the studio system in this era, when even future rom-com titans like Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers were turning their scripts over to male directors. (Silver died in 2020.) Most of her films hold up beautifully, and several are also streaming on the Criterion Channel this month, in an adjacent “Directed by Joan Micklin Silver” collection.“Delancey” also holds the appeal of many New York-set films of the 1970s and 1980s: as a snapshot of a city in flux, an accidental documentary of a Gotham that no longer exists. (Full disclosure: I wrote a book about New York City movies, so I have a vested interest in this topic.) Vintage NYC movies bring back memories for residents of things they miss, and show younger viewers and recent transplants what they never had. In the case of “Delancey,” whose focal character Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving) works in a tony uptown bookstore, we peek inside the era’s vibrant literary culture, from bookstore events that look like gallery openings to employees that read from the pages of Interview magazine to confirm what’s hip. But we also spend time with the weirdos and eccentrics of the city; in one memorable sequence, an old woman regales the clientele of a Gray’s Papaya with her a cappella rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening,” and a customer who’s blasting his boombox at the counter quickly shuts it off (the ultimate sign of respect).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      What to Know About ‘Captain America: Brave New World’

      by

      Need a refresher before seeing “Captain America: Brave New World” in theaters? We explain what has been going on with the superhero.The Marvel Cinematic Universe was vastly different when the last Captain America movie premiered nine years ago. In “Captain America: Civil War,” the supervillain Thanos had not yet snuffed out half of humanity, Tony Stark was still alive and the vibranium shield of Captain America still belonged to Steve Rogers.Now, in “Captain America: Brave New World” (in theaters), the shield and its hefty responsibilities have passed to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the winged Avenger who must decipher the origins of an attack on the President. The film’s plot draws on classic Marvel movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Avengers: Endgame,” but it also features characters from more recent offerings, such as the Marvel series on Disney+, “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.”Here’s what you need to know before watching.How did Sam Wilson become Captain America?Mackie in uniform.Eli Adé/Marvel StudiosFor much of the history of the M.C.U., Captain America was synonymous with Steve Rogers, the frail but big-hearted young man who transformed into one of Marvel’s most recognizable heroes when he received a super serum and an indestructible shield.In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” Rogers befriends Wilson, an Air Force veteran grieving the loss of his wingman. Equipped with the Falcon flight suit, Wilson joins forces with Rogers to combat terrorists and other threats. He quickly becomes one of Captain America’s closest allies, siding with Rogers when the Avengers split into feuding factions in “Captain America: Civil War.” Wilson was one of the many people who disappeared in the five-year “Blip” caused by Thanos’s snap, but he reappeared in “Avengers: Endgame.”In “Endgame,” Rogers goes back in time to return the Infinity Stones but instead of returning to the present day, he decides to stay in the past and live a full life with his lover Peggy Carter. Wilson ultimately finds Rogers sitting on a bench, his face wrinkled and his body aged. Rogers hands him the shield and anoints him as the new Captain America. “I’ll do my best,” Wilson says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Strike’: When Collective Action Leads to Prison Reform

      by

      The film focuses on a series of hunger strikes organized by those incarcerated at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, in protest of conditions in highest-security prisons.The word “solidarity” — basically, agreement between and support for members of a group — is not hard to define. But it can be hard to wrap your mind around, in a world more oriented toward personal development and individual success than the common good. People who are willing to sacrifice their own freedoms or bodily security for someone else are celebrated in our culture, but also viewed with a bit of suspicion. What game are you really playing? What do you actually stand to gain?“The Strike” (on the PBS app and PBS YouTube channel), directed by JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey, is on its surface a documentary about the practice of solitary confinement in America. It centers on a series of hunger strikes organized by incarcerated men at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, beginning in 2011, in protest of conditions in highest-security prisons. This included protracted periods of isolation for individuals suspected of being in gangs, during which, inmates said, they were given inadequate food, denied meaningful contact with the outside world and held for periods that could last for decades. (Under the “Mandela Rules,” the U.N.’s standard for solitary confinement is 15 days; more time is regarded as a form of torture.)The inmates also objected to a policy requiring them to “debrief” — that is, to provide information about gangs to the authorities — in order to be released from solitary. Some of the formerly incarcerated in the film say they were identified as gang members simply because of the materials they read, or because of their race, without proof. And once you were in solitary, it was almost impossible to get out.“The Strike” focuses on a number of former inmates who spent prolonged periods in solitary and participated in the 2011 hunger strikes. Two years later, with little to no change occurring, inmates called for another strike — and at the start, nearly 29,000 inmates refused food, across two-thirds of the 33 California prisons and four private out-of-state prisons holding California inmates. The 2013 strike lasted for two months, and by the end 100 prisoners were still refusing food.Among the remarkable stories told in “The Strike” is how incarcerated people in isolation could organize a strike in the first place, as well as the men’s’ stories of life inside, and later outside, the walls of Pelican Bay. One technique involved emptying the water from the toilets in their cells, then shouting through the commode, where they could be heard by other inmates.But it’s hard to ignore the other story here, one that illustrates both the meaning and power of solidarity. For the strike organizers, this was an obvious necessity almost from the start, in 2011. They were men, the documentary participants explain, who had been taught to hate one another all their lives — rivals from different neighborhoods, different ethnic groups, people with warring loyalties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Annihilation of Fish’ Review: A Gem That’s Worth the Wait

      by

      The director Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular film from 1999, starring James Earl Jones, is finally receiving a theatrical release.Obediah Johnson — the lost-and-found soul played by a magnificent James Earl Jones in “The Annihilation of Fish” — has a barrel chest and a voice that sounds like it emerged, warmed and polished, from unfathomable depths. It’s an instrument that many know from “Star Wars” and “The Lion King,” in which Jones voiced two of the most totemic fathers in movies. Yet the eloquence of his basso profundo was also instrumental in lesser-known works like “Annihilation,” Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular view from the margins that is receiving a theatrical release 26 years after its first public screening at a film festival.It seems shocking that it’s taken this long for the film to hit theaters given Burnett’s elevated standing; his masterful “Killer of Sheep” (1978) is a milestone in American cinema and his reputation long established. There are a number of reasons that “The Annihilation of Fish,” his fifth feature, didn’t reach the world earlier. Among other things, genuine independent filmmaking, the kind that transcends formula and expectations and comes without corporate sponsorship, has always been difficult to market. And Burnett, whose filmography includes “To Sleep With Anger” (1990), a neo-Gothic tale about a Southern interloper that slips between drama and comedy, has always defied compartmentalization. He can’t be pigeonholed.“The Annihilation of Fish” similarly evades classification, genre and otherwise. The movie is often gently funny, though occasionally lurches into boisterous excess, with jolts of slapstick and glints of ticklish nonsense. At the same time, there’s a strong current of melancholy running throughout the story, which complicates and occasionally destabilizes its comedy. There are moments here when you laugh but aren’t sure if you should, and instances when you wonder (and worry) if you’re laughing with the characters or at them, and whether it matters. Most movies prompt you about when it’s time to laugh and to cry; not this one.Written by Anthony C. Winkler, the film tells the tale of Obediah — he goes by Fish — a Jamaican immigrant who’s long lived in a mental facility in New York and claims to be bedeviled by an invisible demon he calls Hank. The demon pops up unexpectedly, as imps tend to do, and Fish keeps him in check by wrestling him. They’re grappling in church soon after the movie opens, a tussle that ends with Fish being abruptly ousted from his group home. “It was like Pearl Harbor,” he protests to a functionary, “sneak attack!” No matter. Soon, he is out the door with his suitcase and headed West, where his story begins in earnest.Fish ends up in that vexed paradise known as Los Angeles, where he moves into a modest, dilapidated apartment building run by a friendly eccentric, Mrs. Muldroone (a winning Margot Kidder). With its lush garden and stained, peeling interior, the building is the sort of place you can imagine the likes of Nathanael West and David Lynch making poetically dark use of. By contrast, Fish settles in with the pragmaticism of someone who must make do with what little life has afforded him: He spruces up his new apartment, transforming squalor into a home. Not long after, he meets Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave).The trickiest character in the movie, Poinsettia is introduced sometime before she and Fish meet; you know she’s important to his story from how Burnett cuts between them, like an anxious matchmaker. A loud, aggressively flamboyant figure given to voluble yowling and mewling, Poinsettia lives in San Francisco and claims to be in a relationship with the invisible and very dead Giacomo Puccini, a fixation that involves some strained comedy. Things improve when she too leaves for Los Angeles (before she does, Burnett tucks in an allusion to “Vertigo,” a classic of mad love), where she moves into the apartment across from Fish’s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Gorge’ Review: How Deep Is Your Love?

      by

      Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy don’t exactly meet cute in this action movie, but they do find romance as well as horror.Somewhere the Baltics, an American and former Marine named Levi, played by a goateed Miles Teller, is assigned to guard a gorge. He’s installed high up in a fancy watchtower that’s equipped with comfortable living quarters, plenty of food and well-stocked bookshelves. Previous occupants have chalked quotes from the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, T.S. Eliot and Cyril Connolly on the walls.An identical tower sits across the gorge. In that one is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), a dark-haired Lithuanian agent. We first see her paying a visit to her accordion-playing father, and we meet Levi being kind to his dog on the beach, so we know they are good people. While they’re instructed by their espionage overlords to distrust each other, they quickly contrive to get physically closer.Directed by Scott Derrickson from a script by Zach Dean, “The Gorge” takes an already implausible premise and then catapults it out of the espionage genre and into science-fiction and horror. As it happens, at the bottom of this gorge are creatures called “the hollow men” (more Eliot!) and these gnarly fellows go on the attack after Drasa blasts Ramones music across the divide.In the meantime, Levi’s commander, played by Sigourney Weaver, is up to no good, ordering the elimination of a previous gorge operative. But for all the elaborate weaponry, production design and (eventually) frantic action offered here, this movie crackles most as a lively pas de deux between Taylor-Joy and Teller, who commendably take their material seriously no matter how seriously ridiculous it gets.The GorgeRated PG-13 for language and violence. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. Watch on AppleTV+. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Notes on Displacement’ Review: Seeking a Fresh Start in Europe

      by

      The artist and director Khaled Jarrar accompanies a group of people from Syria on their way to Germany in this documentary.As its title implies, “Notes on Displacement” is more of a scattered assemblage of scenes than a polished documentary. It follows the director, the Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, over travels from Greece to Germany — by boat, bus, train and frequently by foot — as he accompanies a group of refugees from Syria seeking a fresh start in Europe.Nadira, the matriarch of the main family in the film, was born in Nazareth in 1936, and Mona, her now-adult daughter, was born in a refugee camp for displaced Palestinians in Damascus. Part of what Jarrar, who was born in the West Bank city of Jenin, aims to show is the psychology — and absurdity — of being uprooted in two ways. (“When you get a German passport,” Jarrar tells Nadira near the end, “you can visit Palestine.”)Jarrar, credited with the cinematography and sound, trails his subjects from camp to camp. (“Our dream,” one person says of the twists and turns, “has become to know where we are.”) Although the director occasionally identifies himself as an artist or insists to an authority figure that he has a right to continue filming, there are some points when he needed or chose to keep his camera hidden from view.It is clear that this rudimentary setup means that a lot of the trek was lost. Many night scenes are barely legible, and there are still other moments when Jarrar, on the fly, appears to have been more concerned with recording sound than image. But this hectic, disorienting style is surely part of the message, given that the filmmaker pointedly saves basic biographical information for the closing titles. In its form, “Notes on Displacement” mirrors the terrifying, dangerous journey it chronicles.Notes on DisplacementIn Arabic, with subtitles. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More