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      In Echo of Soviet Era, Russia’s Movie Theaters Turn to Pirate Screenings

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      In a Cold War throwback, some venues are showing bootleg versions after Hollywood studios pulled films from the country. Still, viewer numbers have tanked.Since the invasion of Ukraine, Hollywood’s biggest studios have stopped releasing movies in Russia, and Netflix has ceased service there. But recently, some of the companies’ films have started appearing in Russian movie theaters — illegally.The screenings are reminiscent of the Soviet era, when the only way to see most Western films was to get access to a pirated version. Whereas those movies made their way to Russians in the form of smuggled VHS tapes, today, cinemas in the country have a simpler, faster method: the internet. Numerous websites offer bootleg copies of movies that take minutes to download.Some theaters in Russia are now openly screening pirated movies; others are being more careful, allowing private individuals to rent out spaces to show films, free or for a fee. One group, for example, rented out several screening rooms at a movie theater in Yekaterinburg, then used social media to invite people to buy tickets to watch “The Batman.”Theatergoers can also see “The Batman” in Ivanovo, a city about a five-hour drive from Moscow, in at least one venue. In Makhachkala, capital of the Dagestan region, in the Caucasus, a movie theater is screening “Don’t Look Up”; and in Chita, a city near the border with Mongolia, parents can take their children to watch “Turning Red,” the animated film from Disney and Pixar.Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky and Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy in “Don’t Look Up.”Niko Tavernise/NetflixIn “Turning Red,” an animated Disney/Pixar feature, a teenager is transformed into a giant red panda.Disney+Robert Pattinson is the star of “The Batman.”Warner Bros.These surreptitious screenings are the latest attempt by movie theaters in Russia to survive after American studios like Disney, Warner Brothers and Paramount left the country in protest. Before the war in Ukraine, movies produced in the United States made up about 70 percent of the Russian film market, according to state media.But despite the attempts to draw viewers, last month, Russians barely went to the movies. Theaters saw ticket sales fall by about half in March, compared with the same period last year, according to the country’s Association of Theater Owners.Artem Komolyatov, 31, a video game producer in Moscow, noticed the shift when he and his wife went on a Friday date to the movies a few weeks ago. With everything that has been going on politically, the two of them wanted to spend a couple of hours in a relaxed environment with other people, Komolyatov said, “watching something together, maybe laughing and crying.”They chose “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” a film from the independent American studio A24, which stopped releasing films in Russia in mid-April.The scene they found when they arrived at the movie theater was bizarre, Komolyatov said. “Besides us, there were three other people,” he said. “We went at 8 p.m. on a weekend. Usually the theater is completely full.”The Cinema Park complex in Moscow on April 12. The poster on the right is for “Uncharted,” with Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, which came out just before the Ukraine war started.Nikolay Vinokurov/AlamyGiven the dearth of viewers and of content, the Association of Theater Owners predicted that at least half the movie theaters in Russia would go out of business in the next two months.Even if that prognosis is true, history has shown that films will reach audiences with or without legal channels. Decades ago, Soviet citizens gathered in empty office spaces, living rooms and cultural centers to view pirated copies of Western classics like “Rocky,” “The Terminator,” and “9 ½ Weeks” that had made their way behind the Iron Curtain.During the tumultuous years that followed the crumbling of the Soviet Union, piracy continued to be the main access point for Hollywood films in Russia. Movies recorded on VHS tapes that were sold at local markets were often clearly shot on a hand-held camcorder in a movie theater. Continuing a Soviet tradition, the movies were dubbed into Russian with a time delay by voice actors, often just one for all the male characters, and another for the women.Once the first Western-style movie theater opened in 1996 in Moscow, illegal distribution paths began to peter out, according to a study by the Social Science Research Council, a New York-based nonprofit. In the early 2000s, Russians flocked to theaters to see legally distributed global hits like “Avatar” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” Russia became the ninth-largest foreign box office market, according to the Motion Picture Association.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3Biden’s speech. More

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      Watch Alexander Skarsgard Battle the Undead in ‘The Northman’

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      The director Robert Eggers narrates a scene that pits the star against a most unfriendly zombie.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A quiet moonlit scene turns into a rousing fierce fight with an undead mound dweller in this scene from “The Northman.”Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard), the Northman of the title, is seeking to avenge his father’s death. But he requires a special sword that he must retrieve from a burial mound. He’ll just need to pry the weapon from the hands of the mound dweller buried there. Oh, and fight that undead figure when he is roused.Discussing the scene, the director Robert Eggers said that the barely visible moonlit shots in the film “are almost black and white, to the point where I wonder if my D.P. and I made a mistake,” he said, referring to the director of photography, Eggers’s longtime collaborator Jarin Blaschke. The stark glimmers of these moments are based on time Blaschke spent in remote parts of Africa, far from any light pollution. The images are enhanced by an ashen coloring the costume designer and production designer put on the clothing and set to enhance the visuals.Much of the fight with Skarsgard (6-foot-4) and Ian Whyte (7-foot-1) was shot in a vertically roomy space in long, unbroken takes. It became a way to help audiences be “more immersed in the fight,” he said. “And it’s also easier to follow each beat of the fight as a story.”Read the “Northman” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘The Northman’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      ‘Bad Roads’ Review: A Wartime Anthology

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      The movie, with its four vignettes about Ukraine, was the country’s submission for best international feature film for the Oscars.When Natalya Vorozhbit’s modern war drama “Bad Roads” was selected as the Ukrainian submission for best international feature film for the 94th Academy Awards back in September, it failed to make enough of a dent with Oscar voters to earn a nomination. But times have changed, and the anthology film, playing now in theaters and on virtual cinemas, has garnered renewed attention for its wide release during the ongoing Russian invasion.Viewers looking for precise commentary on current events will be disappointed, though this is hardly Vorozhbit’s fault. Rather, the four wartime stories in “Bad Roads” fall short on delivering any meaningful insight into the nature of conflict, relying instead on moments of lackluster tension and shock value that greatly overstay their welcome.The most memorable vignette of the film, for better or worse, is its third, where a female journalist (Maryna Klimova) is held hostage by a sadistic soldier (Yuri Kulinich). The segment drags on interminably as the woman is beaten, tortured and humiliated by her captor while trying to appeal to his humanity, before the whole miserable ordeal is cut short by a brisk act of violence. The tidy ending makes the lead-up feel, regrettably, like a waste of time.The other stories in “Bad Roads” feel undercooked at best, even if they may present a compelling premise. The film’s opening vignette, which depicts a tipsy school headmaster (Igor Koltovskyy) trying to get through a road checkpoint without a passport, shows how the collision between war and civilian life can produce results that are both brutal and laughably nonsensical. If only the rest of the film dared to engage with the same complexity.Bad RoadsNot rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      Where’d All the Method Acting Go?

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      Elyssa Dudley and Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIn the 20th century, method acting was everywhere. Actors went to extreme lengths to inhabit the complicated psyche of a character, sometimes making audiences deeply uncomfortable. Think Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull” or Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now.” But in 2022, in our heyday of superhero blockbusters and bingeable story lines, the Method seems to be fading away.Wesley invites Isaac Butler — critic, historian and author of “The Method: How the 20th Century Learned to Act” — to dissect the Method. They discuss where it came from, its most legendary practitioners, and whether Hollywood has a place for it today.‘They are absolutely in two different movies’One of the examples of the Method that Wesley and Isaac break down is from “Supergirl” (1984). Helen Slater stars as Supergirl, alongside Faye Dunaway, who plays her archnemesis, Selena.Dunaway’s use of the Method “allows her to be so identifiably different and more intense than everybody else in that movie,” Wesley said. She has a “grand performance of this witch character,” Isaac added. “And she’s just, like, really going for it. And it’s big and embodied and really fun to watch.”In contrast to Dunaway, Slater is “much more unwashed” and has a “just-fell-out-of-the-costume-trailer kind of line delivery,” Isaac explained. It’s like they’re “in two different movies,” he said.Check out their differing performances in the clip below:Hosted by: Wesley Morris and Jenna WorthamProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy Dorr More

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      ‘Crush’ Review: A Banksy Who Might Shred Homework

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      A mysterious artist and a love triangle are at the center of this high-school comedy, which can’t quite decide whether to be preposterous or sincere.“Crush,” the debut feature of the director Sammi Cohen, is a cuddly, flimsy teenage comedy about a high-school love triangle. The plot hinges on two secrets: the identity of a mysterious campus artist known only as King Pun (whose oeuvre includes spray-painting the words “nice rack” by the gym’s basketball cart) and the furtive kisses enjoyed by Paige (Rowan Blanchard), a frustrated, love-struck young illustrator who is suspected of being King Pun. Paige’s flames, Gabriela (Isabella Ferreira), a popular flirt, and AJ (Auli’i Cravalho), a tongue-tied enigma, lead the track team. They also happen to be sisters. Paige’s romantic struggle is at once unusual and oddly undramatic — much like the dynamic between her flamboyantly straight best friends, Stacey (Teala Dunn) and Dillon (Tyler Alvarez), who constantly hook up with each other while competing in an election for student body president.An erratic pace forces “Crush” to breeze past many ideas that never get developed. These include a simmering rivalry between the sisters and a case for the importance of art, which Paige addresses in a rousing speech that is presented as though creative liberation — not sexual liberation — was the movie’s point all along. The scriptwriters, Kirsten King and Casey Rackham, evidently can’t decide whether the film should be sincere — as its endearing leads play it — or preposterous, which it becomes whenever Paige’s mom (Megan Mullally) shows up. At one point, she barges in to reminisce about the time she shagged the lead singer of an Aerosmith cover band.It is clear from the offset which sibling will win both Paige’s affection and the obligatory climactic smooch. The journey there can drag. More fresh is the movie’s sex-positive empathy, a trait exemplified in one scene by Stacey, who delivers a caveat as she thrusts her peers into a kissing closet: “Since this is 2022, we will not make someone make out if they don’t want to.”CrushNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Hello, Bookstore’ Review: A Bibliophile and His Shop in Close-Up

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      This documentary makes it clear why, when the pandemic threatened Matthew Tannenbaum’s store, book lovers weren’t ready to say goodbye.Matthew Tannenbaum’s reading voice beckons. Which may be a funny thing to remark upon given that we see his face nearly nonstop in “Hello, Bookstore.” Then again, the documentary about this bookstore owner, directed by A.B. Zax, is a tribute to the love of reading and the pleasures of a smartly stocked bookstore. Tannenbaum’s fondness for his store and its wares is a beautiful thing to behold, even at its most vulnerable.Starting in Spring 2020, the coronavirus put a hurt on Tannenbaum’s ledger; soon the shop in Lenox, Mass., which he bought in 1976, called simply the Bookstore, was teetering. Tannenbaum started a GoFundMe campaign in August 2020, but that’s just the accidental hook for this affectionate portrait.Zax began this love letter earlier, in fall 2019, his digital camera often watching like a fly-on-a-shelf. So, the dark days of the pandemic are intercut with scenes of sun-dappled or wintry afternoons. Leaves collect as the door opens to new, returning and — because the Bookstore is one of those havens and Tannenbaum one of those raconteurs — sojourning customers.We see regulars and literary wayfarers. We also meet Tannenbaum’s daughters, who have shared him with the store since the mid-1990s, when Tannenbaum’s wife (their mother) died.We also learn about his life. Brooklyn-born, Tannenbaum was discharged from the Navy ready to have his mind expanded. His memoir about coming into his intellectual own at Frances Steloff’s Gotham Book Mart was published in 2009. Tannenbaum pays forward those Book Mart lessons: bantering, browsing and connecting — for a spell with a glass door between the customer and him. And sometimes he just sits down, puts his feet up and reads: A curator doing his inspired thing.Hello, BookstoreNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Fortress: Sniper’s Eye’ Review: Back to the Bunker

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      A barely-seen Bruce Willis heads up this lifeless action sequel set in a remote forest compound.In the wake of Bruce Willis’s recent diagnosis of aphasia, it’s worrying to note that he has no fewer than seven movies still waiting to be released. We can only pray that one of them is a more worthy swan song than Josh Sternfeld’s execrable “Fortress: Sniper’s Eye,” a sequel so dumb that no effort by Willis could reasonably be expected to save it.Not that he’s onscreen long enough for us to judge, given that his character, a battle-hardened former C.I.A. agent named Robert, spends most of the movie conveniently confined to a hospital bed nursing a gunshot wound. Roughly a month after the murder-y assault detailed in last year’s “Fortress” (the name of a nebulous forest retreat with a high-tech command bunker), we find the survivors reassessing their lives — and, one hopes for the actors who play them, resolving to make better career choices.Before landing in that bed, Robert had journeyed to Russia to rescue the supposed widow of his nemesis, a gloating villain unaccountably played by Chad Michael Murray. Elsewhere, Robert’s cyber-savvy son (Jesse Metcalfe) is making eyes at Kate (Kelly Greyson), the impressively ripped director of the facility whose habitual crop-top-and-shorts ensemble — as we learn when the inevitable second assault kicks off — also comes in commando olive.Plot-wise, Alan Horsnail’s screenplay is as dull as the cinematography and as awkward as the performances. It does, however, make swiping money from a U.S. Treasury website look so easy we should probably all be doing it.Fortress: Sniper’s EyeRated R for ropy action and risible acting. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More