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

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      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

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      Sal Piro, ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Superfan, Dies at 72

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      Like many others, he was riveted by the film and attended numerous midnight showings. Unlike many others, he made it the focus of his life.On a cold, snowy night in January 1977, Sal Piro waited in line outside the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the first time. A campy science-fiction/horror musical whose characters include the cross-dressing mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter, it had been developing a following for its Friday and Saturday midnight showings for several months.Mr. Piro didn’t know much about the film, which follows a couple (played by Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) as they seek help at Frank-N-Furter’s castle after their car gets a flat tire. But he was impressed that one of his friends had already seen it 19 times.“So we got in line, made friends with some of other people on line and, once inside, we were both amazed and gobsmacked and under its spell,” the songwriter Marc Shaiman, a friend who was with Mr. Piro that night, recalled in an email.Mr. Piro remembered his excitement at seeing the giant disembodied red lips that open the film with the song “Science Fiction Double Feature”; the infectious “Time Warp” dance; and Tim Curry’s dramatic entrance as Frank, singing “Sweet Transvestite.”“Image followed image and the impact on me was tremendous,” Mr. Piro wrote in “Creatures of the Night: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Experience” (1990), one of three books he wrote or co-wrote about the film. “I began living the movie as it unreeled.”Fans like Mr. Piro soon became fanatics. Showings turned into extreme exercises in audience participation. They dressed as the characters. They shouted comments at the screen. They danced in the aisles during the musical numbers. They threw rice at the wedding scene.Mr. Piro’s love of the movie lasted the rest of his life. In the spring of 1977, he founded the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” Fan Club with several friends, who chose him as their president. He would ultimately see the film some 1,300 times.He was still the club’s president — and the face of the “Rocky Horror” fan universe — when he died on Jan. 22 at his home in Manhattan. He was 72.His sister, Lillias Piro, said the cause was an aneurysm in his esophagus.Mr. Piro is credited with helping to turn the “Rocky Horror” mania that started at the Waverly into a broad phenomenon that spread to other theaters, in New York City and around the world.He organized events with members of the film’s cast and sent out newsletters keeping fans up to date. He coordinated fans’ performances at theater showings, where he would head to the stage to introduce the film with a chant that began “Give me an ‘R’” and eventually spelled out “Rocky.”“He was a very honest guy, you believed in him,” Lou Adler, a producer of the film, said in a phone interview. “He didn’t have ulterior motives. The fan club wasn’t a business or a means to something else, but to make it the very best for the fans, because he was one of them.”In 2010, to celebrate the release of “Rocky Horror” on Blu-ray, Mr. Piro led a “Time Warp” dance with 8,239 participants in West Hollywood, Calif., which Guinness World Records certified as the largest such dance ever.Showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” turned into extreme exercises in audience participation, with audience members dressing as the movie’s characters.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesWhen a young couple walked through the rain to a mad scientist’s castle with newspapers over their heads, audience members similarly sought shelter.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesSalvatore Francis Martin Piro was born on June 29, 1950, in Jersey City, N.J. His father, Paul, was a construction worker, and his mother, Eileen, was a waitress.Mr. Piro attended Seton Hall University from 1968 to 1972, the last two years at the university’s Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, but he did not earn a degree.He taught theology and directed plays at Roman Catholic high schools in New Jersey for three years before being laid off in June 1976. He spent that summer as the drama director of an all-girls camp before moving to Manhattan to pursue a career as an actor.He waited tables and got some roles — and then came “Rocky Horror.”A scene from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” featuring, from left, Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon. Mr. Piro saw the movie more than 1,300 times.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBefore it was a movie, “The Rocky Horror Show,” written by Richard O’Brien, had opened in 1973 as a stage musical in London. It became a smash hit there and had a brief run on Broadway two years later.The film flopped in limited release in September 1975, but it was revived in early April 1976 as the midnight show at the Waverly.And then came Mr. Piro, Mr. Shaiman and an expanding group of like-minded fans who became part of the early vanguard of audience participation. For Mr. Piro, talking back to the screen brought back memories of 1961, when he was 10 years old and watching “Snow White and the Three Stooges” at a theater.“I remember that just as Snow White was about to bite into the poisonous apple, a voice from the theater warned audibly, ‘You’ll be sooorry!’” he wrote in “Creatures of the Night.”Mr. Shaiman, the future Tony Award-winning composer and co-lyricist of “Hairspray,” said that he and Mr. Piro, friends from community theater in New Jersey, felt compelled to shout their comments at the screen once others began.“Sal & I, both HUGE hams, knew we had to join in,” said Mr. Shaiman, who added that he had seen the film more than 70 times.Mr. Piro, Mr. Shaiman and others in the small group who saw “Rocky Horror” early on will be the subject of a scripted movie, based on “Creatures of the Night,” to be filmed this summer.“It’s hard to think of making the movie without him,” Adam Schroeder, one of the producers, said by phone.Mr. Piro’s involvement in “Rocky Horror” was consuming, but it wasn’t a paying job. Over the years, he wrote greeting cards, a column for The Fire Island News, the three “Rocky Horror” books and the questions for a “Rocky Horror” trivia game.He had a handful of film and TV roles — he played a “Rocky Horror” M.C. in a 1980 episode of the series “Fame” and a photographer in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again” (2016), a made-for-TV remake of the original film.From 1991 to 2014 he worked at the Grove Hotel, in the Cherry Grove community on Fire Island, first as the entertainment director of its Ice Palace nightclub and then as the manager of both the hotel and the nightclub. He also wrote and directed theatrical shows for the Arts Project of Cherry Grove.In addition to his sister, he is survived by two brothers, James and Joseph.Mr. Adler said that he saw Mr. Piro at a film event last month at IFC Center, as the Waverly, where “Rocky Horror” became a hit, is now known.“He said to me we’re both reaching ages where something might happen to either one of us,” said Mr. Adler, who is 89. If that happened, he said Mr. Piro asked him, “Who’s going to watch over Rocky?” More

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      Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Win DGA Award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

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      The duo triumphed for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The guild’s winner has won the best director Academy Award 17 of the last 20 times.BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Directors Guild of America gave its top prize for feature-film directing on Saturday night to Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan for their sci-fi hit, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh as the unlikely savior of an embattled multiverse. It is only the third time in DGA history that a duo has won the best-director prize, after Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (“West Side Story” from 1961) and Joel and Ethan Coen (the 2007 “No Country for Old Men”).“What the hell?” a gobsmacked Kwan said while accepting their prize at the ceremony, held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.Scheinert, who said months ago that he had never expected their unusual film to become a major awards contender, was similarly stunned. “This is crazy!” he said.“Everything Everywhere” is the second film co-directed by Scheinert and Kwan, who began their career in music videos before making the leap to the big screen with their 2016 film “Swiss Army Man,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.Their point of view is far quirkier than what the Directors Guild tends to go for, but earlier in the night, Kwan said he had been taught to think that being a director was more like being a party host than a general, and thanked his crew “for bringing their best selves to our ridiculous, absurd, beautiful, personal party.”Scheinert and Kwan triumphed over stiff competition, including Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”), who is the most honored filmmaker in DGA history, with 13 nominations and three wins. The other nominees were Todd Field (“Tár”), Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) and Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”).Next month’s best-director race at the Oscars will present another competitive matchup, with the same men nominated except for Kosinski, who was replaced by “Triangle of Sadness” helmer Ruben Ostlund. Still, Scheinert and Kwan can now be presumed to have the edge in that race, since the DGA winner has won the best director Oscar 17 of the last 20 times.Though no women were nominated in the feature-directing race, the DGA award for documentary filmmaking went to Sara Dosa for “Fire of Love,” about volcano-obsessed scientists. And the DGA prize for the best first-time filmmaker went to Charlotte Wells for the father-daughter drama “Aftersun,” which received an Oscar nomination for lead actor Paul Mescal. Since “The Lost Daughter” director Maggie Gyllenhaal won the same DGA trophy last season, this is the first time the first-timers’ award has gone to female filmmakers in back-to-back years.Here are the top winners. For the complete list, go to dga.org:Feature: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”First-Time Feature: Charlotte Wells, “Aftersun”Documentary: Sara Dosa, “Fire of Love”Television Movies and Limited Series: Helen Shaver, “Station Eleven” (“Who’s There”)Dramatic Series: Sam Levinson, “Euphoria” (“Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”)Comedy Series: Bill Hader, “Barry” (“710N”) More

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      Stella Stevens, Hollywood Bombshell Who Yearned for More, Dies at 84

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      She starred alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis. But she wanted to direct and write, and she felt held back by industry sexism.Stella Stevens, whose turn as an A-list actress in 1960s Hollywood placed her alongside sex symbols like Brigitte Bardot, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch, but who came to resent the male-dominated industry that she felt thwarted her ambitions to be more than a pretty face, died on Friday at a hospice facility in Los Angeles. She was 84.Her son, the actor and director Andrew Stevens, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.Ms. Stevens was among the last stars to emerge from Hollywood’s studio system, an arrangement that guaranteed her work but, she often said, also limited her creative aspirations. She won a Golden Globe in the “most promising newcomer” category for her role in “Say One for Me” (1959), a musical comedy starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds, but felt coerced into joining the cast of “Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962), an empty Elvis Presley vehicle.Like Ms. Welch, who died on Wednesday, Ms. Stevens was ambivalent, if not outright indignant, about being cast as a Hollywood sex symbol. She described herself as introverted and bookish, and she sought to work with auteurs like John Cassavetes, who cast her as the female lead in “Too Late Blues,” his 1961 drama about a jazz musician (played by Bobby Darin).”I wanted to be a writer-director,” she told the film scholar Michael G. Ankerich in 1994. “All of a sudden I got sidetracked into being a sexpot. Once I was a ‘pot,’ there was nothing I could do. There was nothing legitimate I could do.”She worked with many of the top directors and actors of the 1960s. She starred as the love interest of the title character, a timid college professor who undergoes a personality transformation, in “The Nutty Professor” (1963), which Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in; “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963), a romantic comedy directed by Vincent Minnelli; and “The Silencers” (1966), a spy spoof starring Dean Martin.In between, though, she had to take a series of mediocre roles in mediocre movies, and critics came to view her as a star who was perpetually kept away from realizing her full potential.From left, Shelley Winters, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall and Ms. Stevens in “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).20th Century FoxTwo exceptions came in the early 1970s: She acted opposite Jason Robards in “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970), a comic western directed by Sam Peckinpah, and as part of an all-star cast assembled for “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), joining Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Gene Hackman in an overturned ocean liner.By then her sex-symbol days were fading, and Ms. Stevens hoped to have the time and reputation to become a director. But female directors were almost unheard-of at the time, and her attempts to get support for what she called “a marvelous black comedy” that she wanted to make met repeated dead ends.“Every man I’ve gone to for four years has smiled at me and then double‐crossed me,” she told The New York Times in 1973. “Every man I’ve talked to in every office in this industry has tried his best to discourage me from directing. They don’t want me to find out it’s so easy because it’s supposed to be terribly hard.”Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on Oct. 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Miss., though she often told interviewers she was from a town called Hot Coffee, a nearby community. Her agent said anything sounded better than “Yazoo.”Her father, Thomas, worked for a bottling company in Yazoo, and her mother, Estelle (Caro) Eggleston, was a nurse. When Stella was still young, they moved to Memphis, where her father worked in sales for International Harvester.Stella dropped out of high school at 15 to marry Herman Stephens. They had one child, Andrew, and divorced in 1956. (She later changed her surname to Stevens because, she said, it was easier for people to pronounce.)Ms. Stevens in 1968. She worked with many of the top directors and actors of the 1960s, but she also had to take a series of mediocre roles in mediocre movies.Jack Kanthal/Associated PressShe returned to school after the divorce and earned a high school diploma. She enrolled at Memphis State College, now the University of Memphis, with plans to become an obstetrician.She also took up theater. A role in a college production of William Inge’s “Bus Stop” brought an invitation to audition in New York, and by 1959 she was in Los Angeles, on a three-year contract with 20th Century Fox.She finished three movies in six months, including “Say One for Me,” but the studio dropped her soon after. With a young son to feed, she took an offer from Playboy to pose nude for $5,000. After the shoot, she said, Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s publisher, would pay her only half and told her that she had to work as a hostess at the Playboy Mansion to earn the rest.Before the photos ran she signed a new contract, with Paramount. She asked Mr. Hefner to cancel the magazine feature, but he refused, and she appeared as Playmate of the Month in the January 1960 issue, a few months before winning her Golden Globe.“People don’t realize how horrible men can be toward a beautiful woman with no clothes on,” she told Delta magazine in 2010.Her relationship with Playboy remained complicated. Despite her anger at Mr. Hefner, she posed nude for the magazine two more times. She then sued Mr. Hefner and Playboy in 1974, citing several instances of invasion of her privacy, but the case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired.In 1998, Playboy named Ms. Stevens 27th on its list of the 20th century’s sexiest female stars, just behind Sharon Stone.Ms. Stevens in 2002. She became a regular guest star on television shows. Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesIn addition to her son, Ms. Stevens is survived by three grandchildren. Her longtime partner, Bob Kulick, died in 2020.Despite her career’s post-1960s fade, Ms. Stevens remained eager to work. She turned to television and had roles in some 80 episodes over the next four decades. Most of them were guest appearances on shows like “Murder, She Wrote,” “The Love Boat” and “Magnum P.I.,” though she was also a member of the regular cast of several shows, including the soap opera “Santa Barbara.”When she did return to film, it was often for soft-core erotic thrillers and campy horror movies, like “Chained Heat” (1983), in which she played a prison warden, and “The Granny” (1994), in which she played a wronged grandmother who comes back to life to get revenge on her scheming family.She eventually did get into the director’s chair, for “American Heroine,” a 1979 documentary, and “The Ranch,” a 1989 comedy starring her son. She also wrote a novel, “Razzle Dazzle” (1989), which featured a thinly fictionalized version of herself.“I don’t feel I’ve been successful yet,” she told The Vancouver Sun in 1998. “I’m still waiting to be discovered. I see myself as a work in progress. I keep trying to work and improve and do things I’m proud of.”Danielle Cruz contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ Review: Willy-Nilly Killy Old Bear

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      A childhood favorite gets a threadbare horror treatment.He’s ruthless and occasionally machete-wielding like Jason Voorhees. He’s seen surrounded by bees like Candyman. And he’s got an appetite for, as the subtitle suggests, blood and honey. This isn’t your grandparents’ Winnie the Pooh. In 2022, the A.A. Milne-created character rumbled and tumbled into the public domain. Now, with this horror take on the beloved bear, the British filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield has taken it upon himself to see how much mileage he can get out of a gimmick. As it turns out, it’s not much.Pooh Bear and his pals in the Hundred Acre Wood have been mutated from the cuddly animals of childhood imagination into grotesque and cannibalistic monsters. When Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) abandons the creatures to go to college, their resentment toward him curdles into bloodlust, and Pooh and Piglet decide to terrorize a group of five nearly identical-looking and underwritten young women (led by Maria Taylor) vacationing in a rental home nearby. From there, the film limps from one slasher cliché to the next, with little gusto.It’s rather disappointing that Frake-Waterfield’s movie is so threadbare. Though it is intermittently handsomely assembled, displaying the director’s eye for composition, “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” barely exploits its premise. It’s not funny enough to have anything clever to say about its gag, and it’s not exciting enough to be a competent horror movie. It hardly leans on the easiest component that should make the film: that the misdeeds of our youth can just as easily come back to haunt us.Winnie the Pooh: Blood and HoneyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ Review: Splat

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      The latest installment in the Marvel franchise never takes flight despite its hard-working cast, led by Paul Rudd and a new villain played by Jonathan Majors.Busy, noisy and thoroughly uninspired, “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is the latest, though doubtless not the last, installment in a Marvel franchise that took unsteady flight in 2015. Simply titled “Ant-Man,” that first movie was two hours of nonsense and branding, and disappointing enough to suggest that the character would be more farm-team material than A-lister. Given Marvel’s own superpowers, though, the movie turned out to be a hit, ensuring that the buggy guy would dart around for a while. Three years later, the agreeably buoyant sequel “Ant-Man and the Wasp” followed, and was an even greater success.“Quantumania” will most likely vacuum up yet more cash, partly because there’s not much else shiny and new in theaters now, never mind that this movie isn’t especially new or shiny. A hash of recycled ideas and schtick, it borrows from Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” the “Star Wars” cycle and Marvel’s own annals and largely serves as a launching pad for a new villain, Kang (Jonathan Majors). Once again, after some perfunctory table-setting, Ant-Man a.k.a. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his brainiac romantic partner, Hope Van Dyne a.k.a. the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), suit up, flying high and zipping low to save their family and the world amid quips, the usual obstacles and household drama. (Kathryn Newton plays the Ant kid.)Directed by Peyton Reed from Jeff Loveness’s barely-there script (the first movies each had multiple writers), “Quantumania” bops along innocuously at first, buoyed by the charm and professionalism of its performers and by your narrative expectations. Something is going to happen. After some jokey blather and reintroductions (hello again, Michael Douglas), it does, and once again Ant-Man et al. are sucked into the so-called Quantum Realm, a woo-woo alternative universe filled with swirls of color and looming threats. It’s there that Hope’s mother, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), as you’re laboriously reminded, spent many enigmatic years and where, after the some narrative delay, the mysteries of that adventure are revealed.The Realm features darkly ominous hues, fractal shapes, biomorphic organisms, streams of fire and strange beings, including Bill Murray, as a lord, who briefly drifts in on the vapors of his celebrity and flirts with Pfeiffer before drifting out to cash his paycheck. Murray notwithstanding, there are enough attractions to keep your eyes engaged, and the creature design is fairly witty. It isn’t pretty; the palette runs toward dun and dull red with slashes of marine blue. But it is diverting to see how movies realize alternative realities, and at least some of the C.G.I. wizards here — who do yeoman’s work in movies like “Quantumania” — seem to have spent time studying the deep-space images captured by the Hubble Telescope.As is too often the case in the franchise realm, far less attention has been paid to the story. None of what transpires is surprising, which puts the burden on the actors. Rudd is fine. A professional cutie-pie, he is a reliably anodyne presence, a human warm blanket. Good-looking but not dangerously so, he has easy charm and a signature crinkly smile that telegraphs that he isn’t worried, so you shouldn’t be, either. Mostly, he excels at playing a durable Hollywood type — the ordinary guy who proves extraordinary — a character that flatters half the audience and will never go out of style as long as men run Hollywood.Pfeiffer, Majors and Douglas (as Hope’s equally big-brained dad) are the truer stars of this show, and each brings something valuable to the mix. (Lilly’s character now feels like an afterthought.) For the most part, Majors strikes important poses while glowering imperiously. But he brings some complicated, wounded intensity to his role, and while his sotto-voce delivery sometimes edges into near-parodic Shakespearean overstatement, he effortlessly holds your attention, as do the sublimely chill Douglas and Pfeiffer. Douglas has even less to work with than Pfeiffer, who turns out to be the movie’s M.V.P., but they’re both wonderful to watch even when doing nothing much at all, which of course is its own kind of superpower.Ant-Man and the Wasp: QuantumaniaRated PG-13 for comic-book violence. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Where Culture Flows Along London’s River Thames

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      The Southbank Center, the host of this year’s British Academy Film Awards, has become a focal point of the city’s arts and culture scene.LONDON — As Lisa Vine looked out over the River Thames from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Southbank Center’s Royal Festival Hall main foyer, she recalled first coming here as an 11-year-old girl in 1957 to attend a concert.Over the decades, Ms. Vine, a retired teacher and native Londoner, who had stopped in for coffee on the way back from a nearby errand, has seen a lot of change here. She has not only watched the Southbank Center develop — with the Queen Elizabeth Hall opening in 1967 and the Hayward Gallery the next year — she has also seen the area around it grow and change, with the addition of artistic and performance spaces including the National Theater, the British Film Institute, the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe.“I remember when the river was dull,” she said, looking out at a panorama that includes the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Now, she noted, “there is so much going in terms of concerts and events, but I don’t get out here as often as I should.”That’s the sentiment of Londoners and visitors alike. With so much going on at the Southbank Center, from classical music concerts, dance premieres and D.J. sets to poetry, film and literature festivals, it would be impossible to attend every event. And all of those happenings — at a venue that’s open five nights a week, where about 3,500 annual events take place — have made the Southbank Center one of the focal points of London’s arts and culture scene.Hosting the British Academy Film Awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs, for the first time on Sunday is yet another big moment in the storied history of the space, which has had everyone from Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Jacqueline du Pré to David Bowie, Michelle Obama and Greta Thunberg grace its stages.The Royal Festival Hall, as seen from the Hungerford Bridge. The venue opened in 1951, kicking off the development of what would become the Southbank Center. Bjanka Kadic/Alamy“We’re so thrilled about the central location of the Royal Festival Hall and accessibility of the space, enabling us to program our most ambitious and inclusive night for attendees yet,” Emma Baehr, the BAFTAs’ executive director of awards and content, wrote in an email. (The awards have previously been hosted in various locations, most recently the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington.) “Southbank is the largest arts center in the U.K., home to the London Film Festival and in the heart of London on the River Thames — having staged our television awards there for several years, it felt a natural move for us.”The Royal Festival Hall — which seats 2,700 — was opened in 1951 by King George VI, along with his daughter Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, during the Festival of Britain, which was centered on the south bank of the Thames. The area had been devastated during World War II and its derelict buildings and factories were razed to build a number of temporary structures for the festival.During the next few decades, not only did the Southbank Center develop — both the 900-seat Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery, which holds contemporary art exhibitions, are fantastic examples of 1960s Brutalist architecture — but the area around it did, too.The British Film Institute, which hosts film festivals and has helped fund a number of films including the BAFTA-nominated movies “Aftersun” and “Triangle of Sadness,” opened its first theater in 1957 under the Waterloo Bridge. And the National Theater, under the direction of Laurence Olivier, opened its doors next to the institute in 1976.Members of the royal family, including Princess Elizabeth, center, opened the Southbank Center’s Royal Festival Hall in 1951 during the Festival of Britain.Associated PressThat festival centered on the redeveloped south bank of the Thames, where the Royal Festival Hall, right, sat alongside a typical British pub.Frank Harrison/Topical Press Agency, via Getty ImagesAbout a mile east is Shakespeare’s Globe, which first opened in 1599 and then burned down in 1613 during a performance of “Henry VIII” (a second theater was later built but was eventually closed by parliamentary decree in 1642). The newest version of the theater opened in 1997 and now houses two stages including the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where plays and concerts are performed by candlelight. A stone’s throw from the Globe is the Tate Modern, the world-class modern and contemporary art museum housed in a former power station that opened its doors to the public in 2000.“I spend my life in a constant state of FOMO because there is always something happening,” said Stuart Brown, B.F.I.’s head of program and acquisitions, adding that the area is quite magical because of its location by the river and the architecture of the buildings. “You’ve got these incredible world-class artistic offerings to people through music, theater, visual arts, film, and all those experiences can inspire us, move us, make us think about the world differently.”The American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, backstage at the Royal Festival Hall circa 1963. Ms. Fitzgerald is among the luminaries who have appeared at the London venue. David Redfern/Redferns/Getty ImagesMusic has always been a highlight of the programming at the Southbank Center and with six resident orchestras — including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Aurora Orchestra — almost every evening there is some kind of concert.“Music is absolutely central to everything we do,” said Elaine Bedell, the chief executive of the Southbank Center. However, she added that classical music audiences globally had not returned to full pre-Covid strength and that that was something she and her colleagues wanted to address. “We have a very dynamic new head of classical music, Toks Dada, who has a very clear strategy and has very ambitious plans for bringing new audiences to classical music.”The Purcell Sessions have been part of that overall strategy to bring in younger audiences to various genres, including classical music. Housed in the same building as the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room is an intimate stage with just 295 seats. The series based there is a chance for up-and-coming musicians, some of whom work across different art forms, to showcase their talents. “It has always had this legacy of experimentation,” Ms. Bedell said. “The idea is, it’s a real space for collaboration, innovation and invention.”The Purcell Room, of course, is not the only space for collaboration and experimentation. For 40 years the Southbank Center has had an “open foyer” policy in the building that houses the Royal Festival Hall, which connects to the other Southbank buildings through a series of outdoor concrete walkways. Like the year-round free exhibitions, and the concerts outside during the summer Meltdown festival, the foyer is open to the public seven days a week as a civic space. Weekly music jams, dance groups and language clubs meet up there to practice.“That sense of openness and inclusiveness is the unique thing about the Southbank Center,” Ms. Bedell said, adding that there are cafes and restaurants scattered across the cultural campus that help add to the center’s revenue. “I like the idea that people kind of feel their way to use the space.”Over the years, the various cultural institutions along the river’s south bank have cross-pollinated on projects. For a number of years, the British Film Institute has used the Royal Festival Hall for premiere screenings during the London Film Festival. Last year during the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition “In the Black Fantastic,” which focused on Afrofuturism, the institute hosted a talk with Ekow Eshun, the show’s curator.“We have a warm and collaborative relationship with other organizations on the south bank, meeting regularly as leaders to learn from each other and share best practice,” Kate Varah, the executive director of the National Theater, wrote in an email. “We’re all asking similar questions as we navigate through the permacrisis, and it’s more important than ever that we share our experiences and have a forum for collective ideas.”During the lying-in-state of Queen Elizabeth in September, a number of the spaces worked together to entertain — through poignant music and archival film of the royal family — the thousands of mourners who stood in the queue that snaked past the cultural institutions before heading across the river to Westminster Hall.The interaction between the venues is just one of the reasons fans of the area like Ms. Vine say they love it so much.“It is a wonderful place, one of my favorites in London,” she said. 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