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      ‘M3gan’ Review: Wherever I Go, She Goes

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      A state-of-the-art robot doll becomes a girl’s best friend, and dangerously more, in this over-the-top horror film.Allison Williams has a knack for playing it straight. She brings a convincing realism to the most preposterous situations or maybe she’s just an actor with limited range. Whatever the reason, it works, especially in the tricky genre where comedy meets horror. She excelled in a critical role in “Get Out,” and now in “M3gan,” a ludicrous, derivative and irresistible killer-doll movie.Williams plays Gemma, a robotics engineer with no maternal instincts who suddenly must take care of her young niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), after a car accident turned her into an orphan. The synthetic skin of this movie is about how Gemma learns to take care of a child. Thankfully, its bloody heart is far sillier. It’s the comedy of a primly composed mean-girl android turning into The Terminator.This is the kind of scary movie that needs a lead performance that is strong not fragile, deadpan not showy. Williams capably updates the mad-scientist archetype, refusing to pause and ask questions while inventing a doll of the future, one who pairs with a child and adjusts to their needs, filling in as best friend and big sister. Gemma uses Cady as her test case.In a headier movie, there might be some misdirection. But M3gan (performed by Amie Donald) is clearly pure evil from the start. She’s a great heavy: stylish, archly wry, intensely watchful. Her wanton violence never gets graphic enough to lose a PG-13 rating. In early January, when prestige holiday fare tends to give way to trashier pleasures, a good monster and a sense of humor can be enough. This movie has both, and it makes up for a slow start, some absurd dialogue (“You didn’t code in parental controls?”) and a by-the-book conclusion.While the trailer invited comparisons to “Child’s Play,” the slasher film featuring the doll Chucky, that movie had a much grimier, disreputable undercurrent before the sequels and reboots turned goofy. “M3gan” moves with a lighter touch. There’s a scene where a police officer who is investigating the disappearance of a dog blurts out a chuckle, then apologizes, saying, “I shouldn’t have laughed.”I would have preferred a handful more guilty guffaws, though there are a few, including one where M3gan treats a real bully like a doll, with disposable parts. But the tone here sticks to just enough camp to keep the crowd smirking. The director Gerard Johnstone doesn’t go for elaborate suspense sequences or truly intense scares. He wants to please, not rattle. And while there are some hints at social commentary on how modern mothers and fathers use technology to outsource parenting, this movie is smart enough to never take itself too seriously.It’s helped by the comic Ronny Chieng playing Gemma’s boss, a forever annoyed toy manufacturer who, at a rare moment of contentment, trash-talks Hasbro. Any horror fan knows that his jerkiness is as much a sign of impending doom as coeds having sex at a summer camp. When the moment arrives, it does not disappoint. M3gan struts, cartwheels, dances, makes no sense at all. What a doll.M3ganRated PG-13 for cursing, a ripped ear, ruining your childhood. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Teen Stars of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Sue Over Nudity in 1968 Film

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      Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting assert in a lawsuit that Paramount Pictures should have known nude images of them in their teens were “secretly and unlawfully obtained.”When Franco Zeffirelli’s film “Romeo and Juliet” was first released in 1968, a brief scene of its teenage star-crossed lovers waking up in bed together nude caused what the film critic Roger Ebert described as “a lot of fuss,” including blaring headlines that Queen Elizabeth II had witnessed the scene at the London premiere.Earning two Oscars and critical acclaim, the film became a classic adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy and a staple of many English classrooms for decades.But now, more than 50 years later, the two actors who portrayed the titular characters, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, have filed a lawsuit against the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, claiming that the bedroom scene was deceptively filmed when they were underage and that they had been assured that no nudity would be included in the final product.The lawsuit, filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, lays much of the blame for the deception at the feet of Mr. Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, but it asserts that Paramount Pictures “knew or should have known images of plaintiffs’ nude bodies were secretly and unlawfully obtained during the performance.”The company is “repackaging what is essentially pornography,” the complaint said.Representatives for Paramount did not respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit.In the scene, Mr. Whiting’s Romeo rises from bed and basks in the Veronese sunshine, his bare backside onscreen for several seconds. Juliet remains mostly tucked under the sheet, before leaping out of bed — her bare chest showing briefly.Ms. Hussey was 16 years old when the scene was filmed, and Mr. Whiting was 17, said Tony Marinozzi, a manager for both of the actors, who are now 71 and 72. (The scene was filmed in September 1967, he said, though the lawsuit that was filed contains an inaccurate date.)According to the lawsuit, Mr. Zeffirelli told the actors that no nudity would be filmed and that they would be wearing flesh-colored undergarments during the bedroom scene, but on the morning of the shoot, he told them that “they must act in the nude or the picture would fail.”The director “showed them where the cameras would be set so that no nudity would be filmed or photographed for use in ‘Romeo & Juliet’ or anywhere else,” the lawsuit said.The actors sued just before the end of a three-year window in California that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations so people who said they were sexually abused as children could file civil cases. In recent days, the state has seen a flood of litigation under the statute, called the California Child Victims Act, before the window expired on Saturday.The lawsuit alleges sexual harassment and childhood sexual abuse, among other claims.Giuseppe Zeffirelli, one of the director’s sons whom he adopted as an adult, said in a statement on Thursday that the scene was “as far from pornography as you can imagine,” noting that his father was an outspoken critic of pornography.“It is embarrassing to hear that today, 55 years after filming, two elderly actors who owe their notoriety essentially to this film wake up to declare that they have suffered an abuse that has caused them years of anxiety and emotional distress,” Giuseppe Zeffirelli, who is known as Pippo, said in the statement.He said that over the years, the actors had maintained a “relationship of profound gratitude and friendship” with Mr. Zeffirelli, noting that Ms. Hussey had worked with the director again in the 1977 mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth,” playing the Virgin Mary.In her 2018 memoir, “The Girl on the Balcony,” Ms. Hussey recalls the filming of the scene, writing that after a makeup artist approached her to apply full body makeup, she confronted Mr. Zeffirelli following a “small panic attack,” and he assured her that she would be wearing a nightgown in the scene.“‘Although should things, you know, flow in another direction, I want you to be ready,’” Ms. Hussey recalled the director saying.The scene was filmed on a closed set, Ms. Hussey recalled in the memoir, meaning that only essential crew members were allowed to be present, but there was one incident in which a “dirty old man” on the crew had to be removed, she wrote.In interviews from around the time of the memoir’s publication, Ms. Hussey had expressed some approval of how the scene was filmed, telling Variety that it was tastefully shot. She told Fox News that “it wasn’t that big of a deal” and that the film’s production crew had become a “big family.”John C. Manly, a lawyer who has long represented plaintiffs alleging sexual abuse, said that Ms. Hussey’s statements as an adult would likely make the case more difficult for her to win.Mr. Marinozzi said that Ms. Hussey’s interviews about the scene showed her trying to “come to grips” with the situation and express her pride for the film and her performance, although, he said, she was never proud of that scene.“They did what they were directed to do because they were professionals,” he said.Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. More

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      ‘January 6th’ Review: Scenes of a Riot

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      A new documentary from Gédéon and Jules Naudet recounts the day of the U.S. Capitol attack.As with their previous projects, the directors Gédéon and Jules Naudet (“9/11,” “November 13: Attack on Paris”) have crafted a documentary that revolves around a national tragedy. “January 6th,” about the U.S. Capitol riot, posed a similar challenge: How exactly does one go about telling a story whose drama and horror is being seen and reported on in real time, and that continues to inundate the country in fragmented pieces in the two years since?The filmmakers take a rather straightforward approach — one that lends the film its power. “January 6th” sticks strictly to a chronological recounting of events, piecing together the progression of the violence that day through video footage and details from talking-head interviews with those who were either defending the grounds or hiding within them.Strikingly, it mostly abstains from theorizing on the political context that could foment an attack like this (see “This Place Rules,” another new Jan. 6 documentary, as the flip side to this coin); instead, we are left simply with what happened on the ground, as told by Capitol Police officers, journalists and lawmakers. In this sense, the film does not offer any particularly new insights, but witnessing the events of Jan. 6 this way — as a matter-of-fact, two-and-a-half-hour montage that seems to occur at once in slow motion and with shocking speed — creates a terror that is perhaps newly visceral and sustained.Across the film is a constant, dreaded creep — of violence escalating and piercing through fences and windows, of the sound of a mob getting closer to barricaded doors. It all adds up to a frightening and necessary document of a deadly day, and also, as the camera continually swoops through a 3-D rendering of the Capitol to transition to a new scene of horror, a grave understanding that things could have gone far worse.January 6thNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Last Resort’ Review: A Martial Arts Hostage Mission

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      In this action film set in Bangkok, a special forces guy goes in to rescue his wife and daughter.When first seen in this Bangkok-set action film, its hero, Michael, played by the martial-arts-conscious actor Jonathan Patrick Foo, seems a perfunctory sort of family man, to say the least. Parked on a sofa watching old Popeye cartoons, he all but sneers at his irritated wife, Kim, and whiny child, Anna, as they prepare to run errands. And he barely notices when Kim drops divorce papers in front of his face.So the biggest surprise in this woefully inept and threadbare picture is that when Michael discovers that Anna (Angelina Ismalone) and Kim (Julaluck Ismalone) are being held hostage at a locale actually called Saving Bank — nobody involved in this film will win any awards for inspired place-naming — he, instead of shrugging, instantly turns into a reasonably motivated killing machine. As it happens, he is on the couch because he’s one of those unspecified special forces guys, and his missions really take it out of him.Meanwhile, at Saving Bank, a team of what seems like dozens of black-masked mercenaries (to infer from the credits, they’re played by the same batch of guys in rotation) is trying to snatch a bio-weapon stashed in a safe deposit box. Their frantic leader is played by Clayton Norcross, who seems to be actively pursuing a multicount indictment for crimes against acting.The movie was written and directed by Jean-Marc Minéo, who is highly trained in martial arts. He could have stood some training in cinematic spatial relations. The Saving Bank occupies a single floor of what’s supposed to be a tall building (we never see it whole), and all the other floors are, conveniently enough, unoccupied raw space — the better for Foo to dutifully kick and shoot masked stuntmen. This endeavor might have tried the alternative title “Die Hard on a Budget,” except even that would have been hopelessly optimistic.Last ResortRated R for perfunctory kicking and shooting, and some language. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Old Way’ Review: Mild Mild West

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      Nicolas Cage phones it in as a deadly, taciturn gunslinger in this middling western.“The Old Way” is a cheap, run-of-the-mill western, which is an appealing quality. We don’t get a lot of westerns these days, and when we do, they tend to be serious and substantial, like “Wind River” or “The Power of the Dog.” In the 1930s and the 1940s, studios like RKO, Monogram and Republic were churning out dozens of low-budget westerns as B pictures annually, and though not all were great films, the cumulative impression was of a vibrant genre teeming with technical skill and creative brilliance. I can’t recommend “The Old Way” — so blandly written and listlessly directed — on the strength of its individual merits. At the same time, I wish we had 50 movies like it coming out every year.The director, Brett Donowho, previously directed “Acts of Violence” (2018), one of those dismal Bruce Willis shoot-em-ups that looks like the star strolled onto the set for an afternoon by accident. “The Old Way” has a similarly perfunctory feel, with Nicolas Cage sleepwalking through his role as the ruthless Montana cowboy Colton Briggs, roused from gunslinging retirement by a lackluster quest for revenge. Alongside his adolescent daughter Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), Briggs pursues a nondescript gang of black hats, led by the nefarious, speechifying James McCallister (Noah Le Gros).It’s a distinctly low-effort affair across the board, from the simplistic plotting (our heroes chase the bad guys, then find them) to Cage’s performance, absent any of the self-aware wit he demonstrated in last year’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” And while it’s true that a certain tepid aspect is common to most B westerns, those of the ’30s and ’40s were made with a baseline competence that “The Old Way” is woefully lacking.The Old WayRated R for some graphic violence, torture and strong language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Candy Land’ Review: Truck-Stop Thrills

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      In this sleazy slasher by the writer and director John Swab, a group of sex workers adopts a former member of a religious cult.In “Candy Land,” a group of truck-stop sex workers, or “lot lizards,” assembles daily by a gas-station bench, scarfing down Twinkies and Coca-Cola between sexual romps in the back seat or the bathroom stall. It’s not glamorous, but there is a certain allure to their world and its trailer-park chic, sustained by the patchwork heart of their found family. Girlfriends Sadie (Sam Quartin) and Liv (Virginia Rand), Riley (Eden Brolin), Levi (Owen Campbell), and Nora (Guinevere Turner), their madam of sorts, all live in a motel, but together they make it feel like home.The work is dangerous — at one point, Levi, the only male member of the crew, bludgeons a client to death in self-defense. But things soon get a little weirder: The bloodied body of a john turns up in the bathroom, his hands crossed over his chest in some kind of holy gesture; then Remy (Olivia Luccardi), a snaggletoothed virgin and a former member of a religious cult, appears at the bench, a bit too willing to be taken under the group’s wing.It’s a textbook setup for a sleazy slasher. Written and directed by John Swab, “Candy Land” is standard grindhouse fare — more serious and less conceptually adventurous than its recent counterparts, Ti West’s “X” and “Pearl” — though not without its fair share of pleasurable nastiness. Like West’s porn-meets-evangelicalism double feature, “Candy Land” mines its thrills from the intersection of sex, repression and brainwashing.It also pivots around the charms of its leading lady.Luccardi, a genre regular, has the twinkling eyes of a lunatic. Last year, in the indie horror film “Soft & Quiet,” she played the new girl in a club of white supremacists who reveals herself to be the most unhinged among them; as Remy, she gradually shows her cards in a similarly disturbing manner. She’s a scream queen in the making, and “Candy Land” is her liveliest showcase yet.Candy LandNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Alcarràs’ Review: Labor of Love

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      In this naturalistic drama from Spain, a family confronts the impending loss of its generations-old farm.Inside a car at the edge of a peach orchard, three children shoot finger-pistols at imagined aliens, when a crane rumbles into view, interrupting their extraterrestrial fantasies with earthly terrors. In “Alcarràs,” the second feature from the Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, a Catalan family’s loss of their farm is an upheaval of cosmic proportions.As the film opens, the Solé clan realizes that the neighborly handshake that sealed their ownership of the land decades ago no longer holds water; the current landowner plans to raze their trees and build a solar farm. As the family undertakes its final harvest, the middle-aged man of the house, Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), spirals into a manic frenzy and quarrels with his brother-in-law, who decides to take the landowner’s offer of a job. Tiffs break out between Quimet and his sisters, while his kids — including the tall, industrious Roger (Albert Bosch), and the teenage Mariona (Xènia Roset) — embark on their own small rebellions.Simón and her cast of nonprofessional actors achieve a luminous naturalism. Scenes rush and flow into each other, and subplots emerge and fade like ripples in a pond, as the focus floats languidly from one character to the other. The film is a flurry of chatter and labor — picking, digging, lifting, hunting — that drives home the centrality of the farm to the family’s sense of time and togetherness.If “Alcarràs” feels as delicate as a summer afternoon, it can also feel as slight: Simón only occasionally zooms out of the Solés’ tight-knit world to show us the political stakes of their predicament. Yet the film’s striking images — a girl’s made-up face, sullen amid a crowd of colorful revelers; solar panels gleaming sinisterly below a full moon — leave an indelible trail.AlcarràsNot rated. In Catalan, Spanish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Mars One’ Review: Hope on the Horizon

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      This film from Gabriel Martins follows the dreams of a Black Brazilian family living on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte.The Brazilian director Gabriel Martins shot his tender-eyed family drama “Mars One” in 2018, shortly after the election of Jair Bolsonaro. Martins intended to hold up the billion-dollar space colonization project as a symbol of hope. Since then, it’s gone bankrupt, and the disillusionment only deepens this film about the struggle to feel satisfied on earth.Deivinho (Cícero Lucas), a working class kid on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, yearns to join the Mars One mission. His father, Wellington (Carlos Francisco), a maintenance worker, is all-in on a more lucrative plan to turn his shrimpy son into a soccer star. Deivinho’s sister, Eunice (Camilla Damião), hopes to afford an apartment with her girlfriend (Ana Hilário), while his mother, Tércia (Rejane Faria), a housekeeper, just wants a good night’s sleep after a bomb threat prank that her loved ones wave off as a joke. Though the family members are supportive of each other, the cinematographer Leonardo Feliciano prefers to shoot them in isolation, often from behind as they gaze out at the horizon. (They spend more time staring at the city than the stars.)Dreams are incubators for dissatisfaction, Martins seems to sigh. He’s not above leaning on cloying music and groaner contrivances to milk empathy. We predict before the characters catch on that Deivinho’s club tryouts will happen on the same day as a Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture. Yet, the film’s emotions are otherwise scrupulously fair — the dad might be blinkered, but he clearly loves his boy.While Bolsonaro’s victory celebration opens the film, these parents would call themselves contentedly apolitical. Never once do they express jealousy toward their wealthy clients, who include the soccer player Juan Pablo Sorín as himself. Instead, the audience takes up the burden of wanting more for these good people then they’re willing to imagine.Mars OneNot rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More