Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A House Made of Splinters’ Review: Home Is Where the Hope Is

      by

      This film, an Oscar nominee this year for best documentary feature, has an aching sensitivity for the children in a Ukraine shelter.Filmed at a children’s shelter in eastern Ukraine, “A House Made of Splinters” is made with such aching sensitivity that it’s a marvel a camera was used and not some form of mind-meld. Simon Lereng Wilmont, the director and cinematographer, catches his young subjects in the fullness of their feelings — from joy to sorrow — as they wait for a new home.The children land here because of absent parents, typically casualties of alcoholism or war from previous Russian invasions and incursions (the documentary was filmed in 2019 and 2020). Unless another family member steps up, the young ones move into foster care or to an orphanage. Mercifully, the caregivers’ affectionate morning rounds immediately show that this is an institution rooted in love, hope and common sense.Instead of focusing on the staff, though, Wilmont sticks to the perspective of one child at a time, filming for a year and a half across multiple trips. Eva, for example, yearns for her grandmother to take her in and has no illusions that her mother will recover from her addiction to alcohol. Like the others, she has moments of looking weary beyond her years, but she also turns cartwheels to blow off steam.Wilmont hews closer to relationships than daily routines, and takes in the sky-high stakes of friendships, crushes and acting tough. He susses out life forces rather than spiraling despair; he is tender without being sentimental, cleareyed without being cool. A voice-over by one staff member lends gentle framing, and some welcome moral support, as you’re left a sniffling wreck from this compassionate portrait.A House Made of SplintersNot rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      She’s Oscar-Nominated, but Hong Chau Hopes to Stay an Underdog

      by

      Though Hong Chau received her first Oscar nomination last month, for playing Brendan Fraser’s caretaker in the Darren Aronofsky drama “The Whale,” it took awhile for the accolade to sink in. In 2017, after a breakout role in Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” she’d been hotly tipped for a nomination that never came, the sort of anticlimax that can make you want to detach from the hubbub of awards season altogether.This time around, there was a better outcome, though she is still sorting out exactly how she feels about it. “My honest reaction to the nomination was just relief,” she said.The 43-year-old Chau didn’t dream of becoming an Oscar-nominated actress: Born in a refugee camp to Vietnamese parents, she grew up in New Orleans and majored in creative writing and film studies at Boston University. After she signed up for an improv class to cure her shyness, her teacher encouraged her to pursue performing, and Chau moved to Los Angeles to seek parts. But success initially proved elusive, and skeptical casting directors told her that booking anything more than a day-player role was beyond her grasp.“After a few years of trying, you think, ‘Is it really worth it to try to dedicate my life to this?’” Chau said. “But what kept me going was the delusional hope that I’d get to work on a cool, weird movie, because those were the movies that I liked. I just kept hoping that something would happen and, thankfully, it did.”After following her big-screen debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” with “Downsizing,” Chau’s career caught fire: She’s been a scene-stealer ever since, in projects like HBO’s “Watchmen” and the recent culinary comedy “The Menu,” in which she plays a coolly hostile maître d’. Chau will next be seen in a raft of auteur-driven films that include Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and “And” from Yorgos Lanthimos, but in the meantime, audiences are still discovering her work in “The Whale,” in which her character, Liz, tends to Fraser’s 600-pound recluse with a whole lot of tough love.Chau is “a force of nature: titanium backbone, suffers no fools, has a bear trap of a memory,” Fraser told me. “Everything is an embarrassment of riches for whoever’s editing her work because of how varied and interesting she is. And she can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Chau in “The Whale.” She initially turned down the chance to audition.A24, via Associated PressNow that the dust has settled from your Oscar nomination, how are you feeling?The things that have touched me the most have been messages from people who have known me since before I wanted to be an actor. My friend from high school called from work and she was like, “Oh my God, I’m shaking right now. I’m hiding in the closet to talk to you because I can’t control my body right now.” I was like, “Why?” But she was starting to tear up on the phone, and it made me get emotional because she was like, “I remember all of those years ago when I went to your improv shows.” I hadn’t thought about that in so long, and stuff like that is meaningful to me. The rest of it, I don’t know. My whole career identity has been about being an underdog and trying to scrap my way into getting parts.Do you mean you were perceived as an underdog, or you felt like an underdog?I felt like an underdog, always really excited and grateful to be a part of things. Now it’s just a weird thing where I feel like, “Do I have to step up? Am I going to be considered a veteran now?” I still feel so new and I’m still learning, so I hope this doesn’t mean that people think I know what I’m doing. I really admire people who are pros, but at the same time, I hope I never become a pro, if that makes sense.You shot “The Whale” in early 2021, not long after you had given birth to your first child. Was it an easy yes?Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.I was fully anticipating not working for the first year while I was a mother, so I was surprised when my agent sent me the script for “The Whale.” I almost didn’t want to read it, because I didn’t want to get attached, and then when I read the script, I felt even more strongly that this wasn’t the right time in my life to tackle something like that because it would take so much work. Also, everything that I’d done had been a specifically Asian character, and because this character wasn’t, I thought the casting net for it must be so wide. I just didn’t want to throw my hat in the ring.About a week passed and my agent came back to me and was like, “They really want to see you. Is this something you want to let go?” During that time, I had thought about it, like, “Oh my gosh, it is a really amazing story and script. I don’t know, can I do it?” They asked for three scenes on tape for the audition. I told my agent, “Here’s one scene. That’s all I had time to do. I think he should know after one scene whether I’m the right girl for him or not.”That’s a flex, Hong!“I don’t have time to do anything else! My baby is crying in the background” [she told the agent]. But Darren called me right after he saw it, somehow my baby cooperated, and we were able to put another scene on tape very quickly.Once you accepted the role, how did you feel?Honestly, I felt like I wanted to barf. I was thinking, “Wow, I’m so tired. How can I possibly be on set and say all these lines? Oh my God, this is more dialogue than I’ve had in all of the things I’ve done combined.” Thankfully, my husband really stepped up and took care of our baby while I was at work and allowed me to do it. And he was the one who also really pushed me to throw my hat in the ring and said that he would be there to support me.Brendan Fraser said Chau “can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesBefore shooting, the actors had three weeks of rehearsal. Is that the sort of thing that you spark to as a performer?I found rehearsals really restrictive, and I don’t think Darren will mind me describing it as that. He obviously knew what he wanted to do, so a lot of rehearsal from the get-go was spent on blocking, and it was so specific so early on. That’s what I had objection to because in my mind, rehearsal means that you just feel everything out without already knowing where you need to be.By the second or third day, I kind of tuned him out a little bit and was able to just focus on Brendan and trying to find those different moments with him. One of the functions of Liz in the script was to show the audience who Charlie was prior to us meeting him in this dire state, and finding those moments of joy and of levity needed to be worked out in rehearsal, because once we got on set, there wasn’t going to be time because of the limitations of the suit that Brendan was wearing. It was incredibly hot to wear silicone, so there wasn’t as much time to futz around.What do you think Liz is like outside the space we see her in during the movie?Well, when I was cast, my agents had thrown out some names of other people who were in consideration for the role. None of them were Asian, and the role wasn’t written specifically as Asian. So once I was cast, the writer Sam Hunter added the line about her being adopted. I think it was a useful bit of information in terms of picturing what it was like for her growing up in Idaho in this very conservative, religious family. That informed a lot of the choices that I made.I asked Darren if I could have tattoos and he said yes, even though you never see them on camera in the movie, because I was like, “Oh, I think she was a raver girl.” I could imagine Liz going to some warehouse parties and rebelling against her super-religious adoptive parents. But that was all just for me, and it felt luxurious, like, “Oh, this only happens on a Darren Aronofsky movie.” No other production would allow me to spend the time or the money on these tattoos.Maybe not, but on projects like “The Menu” or “Watchmen,” I’ve heard you had a lot of input into how those characters would look.Even though they’re limited in screen time, I want them to feel interesting. That’s part of the fun for me. I think a lot of people would maybe look at it in a more pitiful way, like, “Oh, why doesn’t she get to play lead characters? Why just supporting?” But I love supporting characters and I love doing that work to make them feel really full — it’s a little bit of a puzzle where you have to look for clues in the text. It’s not about jockeying for more screen time or more lines or anything like that. I’m usually more entertained or invested in whatever is going on with a supporting character than the lead character.In “The Menu,” Chau plays a stern maître d’ opposite Ralph Fiennes’s imperious chef.20th Century FoxIn past interviews, you’ve said that you don’t necessarily think of yourself as an actor. After a year like the one you’ve had, has that changed?When I say I don’t feel like an actor, it’s because typically whenever you read a profile of an actor, this is all that they’ve ever wanted to do. I don’t know if I could say the same thing, because I didn’t intend on being an actor. I didn’t go to school for it, and I only took improv classes as a way to break out of my shell because I was so introverted. I thought I wanted to be either a writer or an editor, something that was a little bit more solitary, and it’s just odd that I find myself in front of the camera.What do you get out of acting now that’s different than when you first began?I don’t know if I ever wanted anything out of it! I just wanted to be on set, to hang out with people, and to see the finished product. I could be on set all day if I didn’t have a family to take care of. I just love watching everybody work, not even just the actors — I love watching the grips move the lights, and the set decorators tweaking the little drapes. I also feel like my most relaxed and most confident self on set, too. I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m on a red carpet.Red carpets are terrifying! It’s a gantlet of flash bulbs and people shouting your name.It’s not even shouting my name — it’s more like whoever I’m talking to is looking past me to see if there’s somebody more famous coming up so they can quickly wrap up whatever they’re doing with me. That’s been my experience.You said that before “The Whale,” many of your parts were written specifically for an Asian actress. Is that still the case?“Showing Up,” no. Wes’s movie, no. “The Menu,” definitely not, because she was written as Scandinavian. But I never go into it with an agenda of like, “OK, I’m going to turn the stereotype on its head.” I’m always trying to service the script, and however people want to take it, I have no control over that. Even with Elsa in “The Menu,” I thought she was a very dominating character, but during an interview, somebody was asking a question about Asian stereotypes, and she was also Asian. She was like, “Your character reminded me of a maid.” I was like, “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”It’s a shame, honestly, to always be viewing the world and looking for that. You can always bend things in that way if you want to, but it’s not something that I can really spend too much energy trying to anticipate. But I’m also a little hesitant to get on a soapbox about things. My goal is not to be president of the Asian American student body — I just want to do good work and just leave it at that. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The First Fallen’ Review: A Remembrance of Those Passed

      by

      A director crafts an elegiac tribute set during the dawn of the AIDS crisis in Brazil.At the start of his pandemic film, “The First Fallen,” the Brazilian director Rodrigo de Oliveira stakes a claim to the elegiac: A soldier steps through a jungle ruminating in voice-over about those who die early in battle. The significance of this scene — which cuts to Suzano (Johnny Massaro) watching his nephew, Muriel (Alex Bonin), in the surf — is made clearer later. But the meaning of the blood trickling from Suzano’s nose is a given from the beginning.When Suzano, a biologist, returns from Paris to a small city in southeast Brazil to visit his sister, a nurse named Maura (Clara Choveaux), the first wave of H.I.V. and AIDS is on the horizon. It is the last day of 1981, but Suzano doesn’t feel like celebrating. He looks “haggard,” Maura tells him. He has a dry cough.He skips ringing in the new year with friends at a new nightspot. At that club, a performer named Rose (played with furious grace by Renata Carvalho) is being documented by the videographer Humberto (Victor Camilo). Together Suzano, Rose and Humberto will face a crisis with a breadth and scale that they are unlikely to ever fully grasp.Throughout his film, de Oliveira plays with the tension between verisimilitude and the artifice of performance. (Suzano’s increasingly wracking cough comes across as both truthful and melodramatic.) A gay man of a younger generation, de Oliveira mourns the vulnerability of these characters’ bodies while paying tribute to their flourishes and fears. We see death and the spreading of ashes but the film does not end there, instead returning to that jungle from the beginning. There a trio wages a battle that will not save them but might save others.The First FallenNot rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Laurie Metcalf to Return to Broadway in a Horror Story, ‘Grey House’

      by

      The play, directed by Joe Mantello and also starring Tatiana Maslany, had a well-reviewed debut in Chicago. It begins performances in April.Horror films have become a rare bright spot for contemporary Hollywood. Now a group of theater artists is hoping the genre can work on Broadway, too.The producers Tom Kirdahy (“Hadestown”) and Robert Ahrens (“Little Shop of Horrors”) said Tuesday that they are planning to bring an unsettling new play, “Grey House,” to Broadway this spring. The production will reunite the actress Laurie Metcalf and the director Joe Mantello, each of whom has won two Tony Awards. Their most recent collaboration, a revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” never made it to opening night because of the coronavirus pandemic.Metcalf, a veteran stage actress also known for her work on television (“Roseanne”) and film (“Lady Bird”), will co-star with Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) and Paul Sparks (“House of Cards”). This will not be Metcalf’s first scary story on Broadway: In 2015 she starred in a stage production of “Misery,” based on the novel by Stephen King.Also in the cast: Sophia Anne Caruso (“Beetlejuice”) and Millicent Simmonds (“A Quiet Place”).“Grey House,” written by Levi Holloway, is about a couple (Maslany and Sparks) who, after crashing their car during a snowstorm, wind up taking shelter in a cabin occupied by a group of teenage girls and a woman who claims to be their mother (Metcalf). The play had a 2019 production at A Red Orchid Theater in Chicago, where the critic Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune hailed it as “a savvy, smart, self-aware new play,” and declared that “it just happens to be legitimately terrifying.”The Broadway production, scheduled to begin previews April 29 and to open May 30 at the Lyceum Theater, will not be eligible for this year’s Tony Awards, but instead will be considered part of the 2023-24 season.Holloway, a Florida native who spent much of his career in Chicago and now lives in Los Angeles, has long worked on integrating deaf and hearing performers — he co-founded Neverbird Project, a theater company for deaf and hearing young people — and one of the characters in “Grey House” is deaf. That character will be played by Simmonds, who is deaf.Holloway said in an interview that the first movie he saw was “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” when he was 5 (his father was a horror buff), but that he has mixed feelings about his play being classified in the horror genre.“It’s a word I’m never quite comfortable with,” he said. “I think all good theater is horror. By my estimation horror asks our characters to change, and they must change in order to survive, and that change usually takes the form of the truth. I think that translates to most great stories.”He said the plot of the play “just comes from my nightmares.”“It’s about a lot of things, most of which I don’t know the words for — it’s about love and pain that we carry, and the shelter we build for them both, and about the way we protect the things that hurt us the most, because who are we without our wounds?” he said. “It’s a contemplation on grief and love and how we sometimes feel safe in our pain.” More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Why I Watch the Closing Credits of Every Movie I See

      by

      One look is enough to challenge the myth of the genius auteur calling all the shots. I watch the closing credits of every movie I see. I learned from my parents, who would always sit in the dark theater watching the names scroll down the screen while the ushers trickled in and the rest of the audience collected their belongings. Their ritual confused me as a kid: “Muppet Treasure Island” was over; Kermit and his friends were reunited; and the villain had his comeuppance. But my parents were still in their seats, eyes on the screen. What more were they expecting?My parents were practicing what now feels like a lost pastime, one I happily joined in as I got older. Back in the golden age of Hollywood, the credits (albeit far less comprehensive) appeared at the beginning of the movie, for all to see. Now they run at the end, like the answers to a special round of movie trivia for those in the know. Before Google and IMDb, if you weren’t sure of the name of a certain scene-stealing character actor, or who was responsible for the exquisite editing, the credits were your source of confirmation. Childhood movie nights at home with my parents and brother would often end with us opening “The Film Encyclopedia,” by Ephraim Katz, an impressive A-to-Z volume that compiled bios and credits from the silent era to the early aughts. We’d go down rabbit holes and hop from one actor or director to another.“You were right — it was a young Norman Lloyd!”“Well spotted! What else was he in?”The first line of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Love of the Last Tycoon” could describe my coming-of-age: “Though I haven’t ever been on the screen, I was brought up in pictures.” Both of my parents have backgrounds in film — they met cute while working on an independent feature — and I grew up visiting sets with my dad when I was on break from school. I remember sitting in a director’s chair next to Sidney Lumet, watching the monitor. It seemed to require hours of takes to get through one page of dialogue. When I got bored of watching the (in)action, I played slapjack with the director of photography’s daughter on one of the sets that wasn’t being used. I visited the wardrobe department and practiced sewing in a straight line on a sheet of loose-leaf paper. I learned about other crew assignments too, including the script supervisor, who showed me her clipboard with the meticulous notes she kept to ensure each scene’s accuracy and consistency. I learned the difference between a gaffer and a grip, and soon I began using acronyms like “D.P.” — they made me feel like an insider.Because of this, I especially loved movies about movies. I watched “Singin’ in the Rain” over and over as a child; in college, I fell hard for “Day for Night” (“La Nuit Américaine”), François Truffaut’s love letter to cinema. My parents, who had their own version of a movie romance, say that the film manages to capture the daily joys and frustrations of life on set. It also conjures that bittersweet moment when the film wraps and the cast and crew go their separate ways. It’s the nature of the business. I imagine that for industry people like my parents, reading the credits is akin to looking through an old yearbook, spotting familiar names and wondering wistfully what so-and-so is up to these days.Our culture of on-demand binge-watching conditions us to race past the credits, taking for granted the collective creative efforts behind the movies and TV shows we so voraciously consume. Many streamers shrink credits, making them illegible on our screens; some even allow us to skip them entirely. Post-credits sequences, meanwhile — a mainstay of franchise fare like the Marvel films — have trained audiences to regard credits as mere backdrops for the latest Easter egg or teaser. We forget that countless individuals, each a storyteller in their own right, make our viewing possible. The distinction between art and “content” is lost.There’s a line in Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” that suggests attention is a form of love — a statement that resonates in this era of diminished attention spans. That’s one of the reasons I linger to watch the credits, and I encourage anyone with an appreciation for movies, and for the people who make them, to stay after the final scene. One look at the credits is enough to challenge the myth of the genius auteur calling all the shots. Credits are the closest that many behind-the-scenes, below-the-line artists and technicians get to a curtain call. These unsung collaborators — the crew members we don’t see hitting the talk-show circuit or strutting down the red carpet, but whose long workdays and skillful labor are an essential source of film magic — deserve their moment in the spotlight.So I’m heartened when I notice those moviegoers who, like me, take a few extra minutes to sit through the credits. They might be looking for the name of someone they know, or curious about the shooting locations. Maybe they’re savoring the closing music while they reflect on what they’ve watched. And, yes, maybe they’re partially hoping to discover a bonus scene. It doesn’t matter. We’re in the same club. An unspoken intimacy and solidarity exists among us, the attentive viewers, and the village of filmmakers we honor. Sometimes I’m tempted to seize on this connection. I could offer a nod or a glance of recognition. Even bolder, I imagine turning to them and asking, “So, what did you think?” Above all, though, I think of my parents — and the other members of the extended moviemaking family — every time I stay behind in my theater seat. I hope I do them credit.Emma Kantor is a writer and editor at Publishers Weekly. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Black Bear,’ ‘Sharp Stick’ and More Streaming Gems

      by

      Looking for something different to stream? We have options for you.This month’s suggestions for the hidden gems of your subscription streaming services cut a wide swath of genres and styles, including a piercing psychological thriller, a moody marital drama and a buck-wild sex comedy, with a handful of first-rate documentaries to keep you anchored in reality.‘Black Bear’ (2020)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.When Aubrey Plaza arrived on the scene over a decade ago, her bone-dry wit, acerbic delivery and M.V.P. supporting turns in comic films and television suggested the second coming of Janeane Garofalo. But her electrifying dramatic work over the past few years — on “The White Lotus,” in “Emily the Criminal” and in this scorching portrait of psychosexual one-upmanship from the writer and director Lawrence Michael Levine — suggests something closer to Gena Rowlands. The wildly unpredictable psychological drama begins as a love triangle, with Plaza as an actor-turned-filmmaker on a remote retreat with a married couple (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon, both excellent). Over the course of a long night, the trio flirt, hint and accuse, rearranging and regrouping their allegiances, until … well, then it goes somewhere else entirely, grippingly blurring the lines between life, art and their respective commentaries.‘Take This Waltz’ (2012)Stream it on HBO Max.The director Sarah Polley has been running the awards gauntlet for her latest film “Women Talking.” On Twitter, she took a moment to winkingly, winningly note the debt owed her by one of her competitors, requesting “that Steven Spielberg return my cast from ‘Take This Waltz.’” And “The Fabelmans” co-stars Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen are marvelous in Polley’s sophomore outing, as Margot and Lou, an easy-breezy couple whose comfortable marriage is drawn into doubt when Margot is suddenly thunderstruck by her attraction to a new neighbor (understandably, as he’s played by Luke Kirby). Polley masterfully takes what could have been a weepy melodrama or a scolding screed and turns it into a nuanced and probing meditation on what it truly means to be faithful.‘Sharp Stick’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.Lena Dunham’s 2022 was a study in contrasts, with two night-and-day feature films to contemplate: her Amazon original “Catherine Called Birdy,” which seemed to challenge the very notion of who Dunham is and what she does, and the indie comedy-drama “Sharp Stick,” which took those notions into new and provocative territory. Her focus is Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a 26-year-old nanny who, rather ill-advisedly, discards her virginity with the scuzzy burnout father (Jon Bernthal) who employs her. Dunham’s knack for writing amusingly self-destructive women and dopey men remains intact, and her own turn as the mother caught in the middle is as thorny and complicated as the movie surrounding it.‘Cosmopolis’ (2012)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.The mixed reception that greeted Noah Baumbach’s recent film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” served as another reminder that there seems something uniquely tricky about turning the author’s thematically and historically dense works into quicksilver cinema. But in 2012 the director David Cronenberg was up to the challenge with “Cosmopolis,” turning DeLillo’s chronicle of a day in the life of a young billionaire into a snapshot of self-destruction in the Occupy era, while Robert Pattinson makes a particularly effective DeLillo protagonist, all cold surfaces and questionable motives.‘The Monster’ (2016)Stream it on HBO Max.Bryan Bertino’s tight, compact thriller finds a fiercely independent tween girl (Ella Ballentine) and her alcoholic mother (Zoe Kazan) on a long, tough drive through the lonely night — and then stranded in their car, wrecked while swerving to avoid a wolf on the road. But that wolf was trying to escape from another animal, and the women soon supplant the wolf as its prey. That sounds simple enough, but that’s also not all Bertino is up to; the picture’s intricate and ingenious flashback structure makes it increasingly clear that these two are perfectly capable of being just as monstrous to each other.‘The Pez Outlaw’ (2022)Stream it on Netflix.Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel’s documentary tells the story of Steve Glew, a collector, seller and smuggler of Pez candy dispensers — or, more accurately, Glew tells the story himself, not only narrating his tale with cheerful comic vigor, but starring in the documentary’s energetically stylized dramatizations of his various heists and high jinks. That irreverent approach is the right one for this low-stakes story, which takes the tools of the increasingly ubiquitous Netflix true crime documentary and exposes them as ridiculous. ‘Leave No Trace’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.When the Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, it was one of many national stories that quickly receded to the background in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of claims of sexual abuse finally came to light, ultimately surpassing 82,000 accusers. Irene Taylor’s documentary details the history of the organization, and its pattern of protecting accused pedophiles in its midst (all the while ostracizing gay Scouts and Scoutmasters as dangers to children). Taylor assembles an anatomy of a conspiracy, detailing exactly how these secrets were kept so safe for so long, all while tracking down survivors from around the country to hear their stories. It’s a troubling, infuriating piece of work, assembled with a delicate mixture of righteous indignation and necessary sensitivity.‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song’ (2021)Stream it on Netflix.Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s documentary is not, it should be noted, a traditional biographical portrait of the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, and thank goodness, as there have been plenty of those. Instead, the filmmakers examine the long, strange, fascinating history of the title song — now easily his most recognizable composition, deployed in media of all kinds, covered by every artist worth their stripe, but initially a forgotten track on a poorly selling album. That odyssey, from ignored to iconic, is an inherently dramatic one, and Gellar and Goldfine bring it to life with panache, all while acknowledging that Cohen’s particular passion made its very inception something akin to musical magic. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Snowfall’ and the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards

      by

      The final season of the drama series “Snowfall” airs on FX, and the 54th annual N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards are live on BET.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Feb. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayRUTHLESS: MONOPOLY’S SECRET HISTORY 9 p.m. on PBS. This documentary follows the true origin story of the popular board game Monopoly, and Parker Brothers’ shady patent of the game. Highlighting the inventor and feminist Lizzie Magie, a community of Quakers and an unemployed Depression-era engineer, viewers will learn about the true creator of Monopoly and how it became a board game staple.Henry Fonda in “Young Mr. Lincoln.”Criterion CollectionYOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. Directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker John Ford, this biographical drama airing on Presidents’ Day focuses on the early life of President Abraham Lincoln. By delving into the people and experiences that influenced him, the film follows a young Lincoln (Henry Fonda) in his journey from grocer to lawyer and ultimately to his interest in politics. In his 1939 review of the film for The New York Times, Frank S. Nugent described it as “not merely a natural and straightforward biography, but a film which indisputably has the right to be called Americana,” adding that “it isn’t merely part of a life that has been retold, but part of a way of living when government had advanced little beyond the town meeting stage.” In 2003, “Young Mr. Lincoln” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.TuesdayDON’T LEAVE ME BEHIND: STORIES OF YOUNG UKRAINIAN SURVIVAL 10 p.m. on MTV. Airing three days before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this documentary focuses on the stories and experiences of Ukrainian teenagers who have been displaced by the war — using the journeys of two specific refugees in Poland as a vehicle to examine the trauma of such displacement, separation from family and the resilience developed to adapt to a new life.WednesdaySNOWFALL 10 p.m. on FX. Set in Los Angeles in the 1980s, this series takes inspiration from stories of C.I.A. involvement in the birth of the crack cocaine epidemic. The show follows the increasingly intertwining narratives of Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), a young drug dealer; Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), a C.I.A. agent; and El Oso (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), a Mexican wrestler. “‘Snowfall’ is, when it’s on its game, one of the most engrossing shows on TV,” wrote the Times critic Mike Hale in 2021. The sixth and final season is centered around a brewing civil war that threatens to destroy Franklin’s family, and the actions he takes to survive.ThursdayVivien Leigh and Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”Everett CollectionA STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) 4:30 p.m. on TCM. This multiple Oscar-winning film, featuring an array of award-winning actors, follows the story of Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a disgraced high school teacher from Mississippi struggling with her mental health, as she moves to New Orleans to seek refuge and start a new life with her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), and Stella’s abusive husband, Stanley (Marlon Brando). The drama — adapted from Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name — “throbs with passion and poignancy,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1951 review for The Times. Williams collaborated with the film’s director and screenwriter on the screenplay.FridayA FEW GOOD MEN (1992) 8 p.m. on BBC America. Adapted by Aaron Sorkin (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) from his 1989 Broadway play of the same name and directed by the Emmy-award winning actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, this legal drama follows the military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) as he defends two Marines charged with the murder of a colleague at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Inspired by an incident that took place at the naval base in 1986, the film explores the intersection of internal politics and justice in cases involving military personnel. “The screenplay is a good one, directed with care and acted, for the most part, with terrific conviction,” wrote Vincent Canby in his 1992 review of the film for The Times.SaturdayAnthony Anderson at the 2020 N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Chris Pizzello/Invision/APN.A.A.C.P. IMAGE AWARDS 8 p.m. on BET. An annual awards ceremony presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to honor outstanding performances by people of color in film, television, music and literature, this year’s Image Awards will be the first in-person event in three years. Hosted for the ninth year in a row by the “black-ish” star Anthony Anderson, the event will air live from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, in California. New categories have been added to this year’s ceremony, including outstanding hairstyling, outstanding makeup and outstanding costume design. Notable nominees include the films “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “The Woman King” and “Till”; and the actors Daniel Kaluuya, Will Smith, Keke Palmer and Letitia Wright.SundayWHEN METAL RULED THE ’80s 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on REELZ. This documentary series from Viacom International Studios UK explores the stories behind the rise of metal, a dominating force in the U.S. and British music scenes in the 1980s. The series begins with the 1970s origins of the metal glam scene, following the genre’s evolution through the formation of groups like KISS and Guns N’ Roses. The first two episodes, one hour each, feature performance footage and interviews with figures such as Marty Friedman, the lead guitarist for thrash metal band Megadeth; Derek Shulman, the record executive who signed Bon Jovi; and Michael James Jackson, a producer for the KISS hit album “Lick It Up.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Wins Big at the BAFTAs

      by

      The German-language antiwar movie won best film, best director and five other awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.Felix Kammerer starred in the antiwar movie “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won best film at the BAFTAs.Reiner Bajo/Netflix, via Associated PressIn a shock to this year’s awards season, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a German-language movie set in the trenches of World War I, was the big winner at the EE British Academy Film and Television Arts Awards in London on Sunday night.The Netflix movie was named best picture at the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs. The antiwar film beat four higher-profile titles, including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the sci-fi adventure starring Michelle Yeoh, and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy about the ending of a friendship on a small island.“All Quiet” also beat Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” biopic and “Tár,” Todd Field’s drama about a conductor accused of sexual harassment. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel of the same title, “All Quiet on the Western Front” won six other awards, including best director for Edward Berger, best adapted screenplay and best film not in the English language.During the ceremony, Berger seemed overcome by the wins. While accepting the award for best adapted screenplay, he mentioned the movie’s antiwar message and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.‘Tár’: A Timely Backstage DramaCate Blanchett plays a world-famous conductor who is embroiled in a #MeToo drama in the latest film by the director Todd Field.Review: “We don’t care about Lydia Tár because she’s an artist; we care about her because she’s art,” our critic writes about the film’s protagonist.An Elusive Subject: Blanchett has stayed one step ahead of audiences by constantly staying in motion. In “Tár,” she is as inscrutable as ever.Back Into the Limelight: The film marks Field’s return to directing, 16 years after “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children” made waves.One Indelible Scene: An episode of generational and ideological strife involving Lydia and an earnest student is more complicated, and simpler, than it might seem.“There are no heroes in any war,” he said.Edward Berger won best director for “All Quiet on the Western Front” at the BAFTAs. He mentioned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in his acceptance speech for best adapted screenplay.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“All Quiet” was expected to do well at the awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars. When the BAFTA nominations were announced last month, it secured 14 nods and tied with Ang Lee’s 2000 action film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” for the highest number of nominations for a movie not in the English language.British critics raved about the movie upon its release. Danny Leigh wrote in The Financial Times that Berger “expertly handled” the challenge facing any antiwar film: how to stop war from looking glamorous. “Here, dawn quagmires lit by dots of orange flame and troops mad-eyed with animal fear register both as fine cinema and potent fury,” Leigh said.Peter Bradshaw said in The Guardian that “All Quiet” was “a powerful, eloquent, conscientiously impassioned film.”American critics were less effusive. Ben Kenigsberg, writing in The New York Times, said the film “aims to pummel you with ceaseless brutality.”The BAFTAs have long been seen as a bellwether for the Oscars, scheduled for March 12, because of an overlap between their voting bodies. “All Quiet” is nominated for nine categories at those awards, including for best film.Steven Spielberg’s award favorite “The Fabelmans” wasn’t nominated for best movie or best director at the BAFTAs; it received one nomination, for best original screenplay.Before “All Quiet” swept the main prizes, this year’s BAFTAs, held at the Royal Festival Hall in London, had a variety of winners, with the major acting gongs being shared by three different films.Cate Blanchett won best actress for playing a conductor in crisis in “Tár.” She beat nominees that included Viola Davis for her performance in “The Woman King,” Danielle Deadwyler for her role as Emmett Till’s mother in “Till,” and Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Accepting the prize, a tearful Blanchett thanked her fellow nominees for “breaking the myth that women’s experience is monolithic.”Cate Blanchett won best actress for playing a conductor in crisis in “Tár.” Henry Nicholls/ReutersAustin Butler won the best actor award for his title role in “Elvis.” Butler last month took the same prize at the Golden Globes and was nominated for best actor at the Oscars.“The Banshees of Inisherin,” one of this award season’s most highly touted movies, did not leave the BAFTAs empty-handed, taking four awards, including best original screenplay, best supporting actor for Barry Keoghan and best supporting actress for Kerry Condon.The ceremony, hosted by Richard E. Grant, was short on drama, though Carey Mulligan, nominated for “She Said,” was accidentally announced as the best supporting actress instead of Condon.The incident occurred when Troy Kotsur, the deaf star of “CODA,” was announcing the category’s winner with an interpreter. The mistake was edited out of the show’s television broadcast in Britain. More