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      ‘Choose or Die’ Review: Press Start. Or Not.

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      In this horror movie, a vintage computer game forces players to make gruesome decisions.“Choose or Die” almost sounds like a marketing slogan for Netflix’s scroll of mediocrities — but no, it’s just another horror movie on the streaming service. As horror movies go, you could choose better.The source of the horror here is a 1980s computer game with a curse embedded in its coding. The game forces players to make gruesome binary decisions. In a prologue, the first player we see (Eddie Marsan), a collector of Reagan-era knickknacks, must choose whether he wants his son’s tongue or his wife’s ears cut off. If he doesn’t choose — well, you get the idea.Soon the game falls into the hands of Kayla (Iola Evans), an aspiring programmer who lives in a housing complex with her drug-addicted mother (Angela Griffin), and Kayla’s friend Isaac (Asa Butterfield), who has a vast knowledge of analog hacking techniques and whose dwelling looks to have been decorated by the makers of “Seven.” Robert Englund of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is prominently billed for lending his voice to an answering machine (and the game).The game is omniscient, so it knows what’s written on a menu next to Kayla’s laptop, and the choices it offers are largely no-win. (Would you prefer that a flesh-hungry rat charge a door or chew through it to get to your mom?) It also has the ability to manifest “Solaris”-like visions, the better to torment Kayla with the memory of her brother’s death. If any creativity went into “Choose or Die,” a by-turns creepy and hacky feature debut from Toby Meakins, it appears to have been directed solely toward nastiness.Choose or DieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      David Cronenberg and Claire Denis Will Compete at Cannes Film Festival

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      Organizers announced a lineup of nearly 50 movies for the event’s 2022 edition, including 18 in the running for the top honor, the Palme d’Or.LONDON — Movies by David Cronenberg, Claire Denis and Park Chan-wook will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced on Thursday.Films by previous winners Ruben Ostlund, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Cristian Mungiu will also be among the 18 titles in the running for the festival’s top award, as will a movie by the high-profile Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.An initial lineup of nearly 50 movies that will play in this year’s festival was announced on Thursday by Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, in an online news conference.The event will open its 75th edition on May 17 with a comedy called “Z (Comme Z)” by Michel Hazanavicius, a French director best known for “The Artist.” The festival runs through May 28.Cronenberg’s competition entry, “Crimes of the Future,” is his first movie since “Maps to the Stars,” which also premiered at Cannes, in 2014. “Crimes of the Future” stars Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen, and Frémaux noted that it would bring some glamour to the red carpet.Denis’s “Stars at Noon” will be the director’s fifth movie at Cannes. Set in Nicaragua, it tells the story of a blossoming romance between an English businessman and an American journalist.Park is presenting a detective movie, “Decision to Leave.” Although he has never won the Palme d’Or, he won the Grand Prix, the festival’s second-highest award, for his violent thriller “Oldboy” in 2004.Most of the highest-profile movies that will play out of competition at Cannes were known before Thursday’s announcement. Baz Luhrmann will return to the Croisette to present “Elvis,” his biopic of the singer, starring Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as his manager, Col. Tom Parker.On May 18, Tom Cruise is set to appear for the premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick,” the highly anticipated, and repeatedly delayed, sequel to the fighter pilot movie that helped make Cruise a superstar.Frémaux on Thursday announced a few more out-of-competition titles by high-profile directors. Ethan Coen will present his first movie directed without his usual collaborator, his brother, Joel: a documentary called “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” about the rock ’n’ roll pioneer.George Miller, the creator of the “Mad Max” franchise, will also return to Cannes with “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, that Frémaux said was a philosophical “reflection on the history of the world.”In the days leading up to Thursday’s announcement, there were suggestions that the lineup would include a new movie from David Lynch, his first feature since “Inland Empire” in 2006. But on Tuesday, Lynch laughed off the suggestion in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I have no new film coming out,” he said. “That’s a total rumor.”Of the 18 movies in competition, only three are directed by women, Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Les Amandiers” joining Denis’s “Stars at Noon.” Cannes has faced criticism in recent years for the dearth of female contestants for its top prize. Julia Ducournau took last year’s Palme d’Or for “Titane,” her violent horror movie about a woman sexually obsessed with cars. Yet she was only the second woman to win the prize, following Jane Campion’s 1993 win for “The Piano.”The war in Ukraine will also cast a shadow over this year’s event. Since Russia’s invasion, some of Ukraine’s leading movie directors have called on film festivals to boycott Russian directors as a sign of support for Ukraine. Cannes said in a statement in March that it would no longer “welcome official Russian delegations, nor accept the presence of anyone linked to the Russian government,” but added that it would not ban Russian directors, several of whom have faced difficulties operating in their home country.Serebrennikov, who is presenting a competition film about the marriage of a Russian cultural icon, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” spent almost two years under house arrest in Russia because of fraud charges. His conviction was widely seen within Russia as an attempt to crack down on artistic freedom.Frémaux announced that two movies by Ukrainian directors would appear in the festival, including Maksim Nakonechnyi’s “Butterfly Vision” playing in the “Un Certain Regard” sidebar.The jury for this year’s festival has not been finalized, Frémaux said on Thursday, adding that the movie lineup wasn’t entirely complete, either. The list of films would be “fine tuned” next week, he added, because “many films came in late” to the selection committee. More

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      ‘To Olivia’ Review: Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal Cope With Tragedy

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      This drama about the author and the actress is poignant, elegant and aggravating.A child’s outstretched hand ignored as she stands at her sister’s grave makes an indelible image in “To Olivia.” This drama, often touching but also vexing, recounts the lives of the children’s book author Roald Dahl and the actress Patricia Neal when their 7-year-old daughter, Olivia, died of complications from measles in 1962.Dahl and Neal — portrayed by Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes — are raising their children Olivia, Tessa and Theo in rural England. The book “James and the Giant Peach” has little traction and Dahl is at work on “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Neal has a Tony and impressive film credits. Soon she’ll be mulling the script that will lead to her Oscar, “Hud.” There is tension.How parents mourn a child’s death together — or apart — is among life’s aching mysteries. The director John Hay plumbs the poignancy well but avoids any tussling with Dahl’s legacy, tarnished by antisemitic statements. In 2020, Dahl’s family posted a public apology for the author’s bigoted comments, many of which occurred after the period covered here. That a film intent on depicting Dahl’s humanity — made jagged by grief — might steer clear of his antisemitic views disappoints but hardly surprises. So it’s dumbfounding that the filmmakers take the opposite tack with another famous figure.When Neal and Paul Newman (Sam Heughan) meet before the “Hud” shoot, Newman is reminded that Neal lost a child. His reply — a cinematic fabrication — is terse, coarse and cruel enough to make one think less of a legend. Just the wrong one.To OliviaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 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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      ‘The Tale of King Crab’ Review: In Exile, Both at Home and Abroad

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      This fiction feature debut follows a scandalous son of a physician turned adventurer in spite of himself.The two Italian filmmakers Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, who make their fiction feature debut with “The Tale of King Crab,” are clearly attracted to loners. Their 2015 documentary feature “Il Solengo” explores the world of a real-life contemporary hermit. “King Crab” begins in the same hunting lodge that figured in “Il Solengo” and their 2013 documentary short “Belva Nera.” Here, a group of aging men share a meal and talk about an old story, one of “princes and poor people.”The movie shifts to an unspecified time in the late 19th century, and a small town, where Luciano, the adult son of a local physician, is a prominent scandal: He guzzles wine at a local tavern and talks back at the cops who sit at his table and needle him. He lazily courts the daughter of a dyspeptic farmer. “Here’s a coin,” he says to a tavern owner. “It’s worthless to me. I want to live as I please.”Luciano is played by Gabrielle Silli; in the movie’s first half, he has an outgrown beard that draws out, rather than obscures, his doleful blue eyes. His mien can sometimes remind one of Donald Sutherland or Peter Dinklage. Even when he’s offscreen, his presence cloaks the movie.After Luciano commits a destructive act, the movie’s action shifts to the tail end of South America. The exiled Luciano is here, spruced up and on the hunt for treasure, aided, perhaps improbably to some, by — yes — a king crab. The movie’s depictions of landscapes both sere and fertile, and its all-but-palpable portrayals of isolation, have echoes of the best work of Werner Herzog and Lucrecia Martel. But de Righi and Zoppis here show more genuine affinity than affected influence; they’re moviemakers worth keeping an eye on.The Tale of King CrabNot rated. In Italian and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Dual’ Review: Seeing Double, Inviting Trouble

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      A woman prepares to battle her clone in Riley Stearns’s imprecise satire that invites questions about the self and then leaves them unexplored.The premise of “Dual,” which hinges on a woman feuding with her clone, feels as if it were cooked up after skimming a book of Jungian psychology. It takes place in a woodland dystopia where cloning is an option for terminal patients seeking to replace themselves. The pair cannot coexist, however; should the sick person recover, he or she must duel the clone to decide who lives on. It’s ego death, literalized.The movie follows Sarah (Karen Gillan), who learns that she suffers from an unidentified, rare and incurable illness. Considering her loved ones, Sarah pays for a clone and begins priming her to fill her shoes. But dual identities are tricky. It turns out that Sarah’s double is less a sponge for her sensibilities than a lovelier, livelier foil, and even once Sarah goes into remission, her boyfriend (Beulah Koale) and mother (Maija Paunio) inexplicably snub her for the substitute.Talk about stellar material for psychotherapy. Yet Sarah — not to mention the movie’s writer and director, Riley Stearns (“The Art of Self-Defense”) — seem nearly indifferent to issues of the self and psyche. Instead, the movie dedicates its run time to Sarah’s training for the obligatory battle against her clone. Aaron Paul, playing Sarah’s solemn and supportive combat coach, offers by far the most effective performance among a cast devoted to deadpan enunciation and blank stares.There is something insincere in this movie’s manner, an aloofness that masquerades as satire but repels inquiry or emotion. “Dual” takes a worthy idea and throws a smoke bomb in its middle, leaving the audience to squint through the haze.DualRated R. She beats herself up. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore’ Review: The Plot Against Muggles

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      Mads Mikkelsen plays an evil wizard with political talent in the latest “Harry Potter” spinoff movie, which also stars Jude Law and Eddie Redmayne.Like so much children’s entertainment these days, “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” is a political primer sprinkled in magic dust. In this third installment in the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise (itself a prequel series to the original “Harry Potter” stories), cuddly critters have mostly been swapped out for darker creatures: Here, scorpionesque freaks guard a prison where activists are tortured (or worse). A chunk of the story is set in 1930s Berlin. The deadly stakes are crystal-ball clear. An alternate subtitle could be “Totalitarianism for Tykes.”It’s a pointed movie from tip to barbed tail. Instead of building the plot around a tedious pursuit peppered with cutesy digital monsters — a misstep in the first two “Fantastic Beasts” films — the returning director David Yates and the screenwriters, J.K. Rowling and Steve Kloves, center “Secrets of Dumbledore” on an election. Grindelwald, the wizard supremacist last seen attempting to incite a global war, hopes to convince the magical world to back his campaign platform to subjugate nonmagical humans. (The role was last played by Johnny Depp; Mads Mikkelsen takes over the role here, and Grindelwald’s threads sound more probable when delivered with Mikkelsen’s bloodless chill.) Rowling’s readers know to refer to nonmagical people as Muggles. To Grindelwald, they’re “animals,” though he concedes they make a good cup of tea.The focus is on the tragic entanglements of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), who once romanced the hate-inciting Grindelwald and still wears an old blood-oath necklace that strangles him for thinking mean thoughts about his former love. On top of being pained by his bad taste in men, Dumbledore must make amends with his grouchy brother (Richard Coyle) and tormented nephew (Ezra Miller), a murky figure so visibly miserable that flies buzz around his hands.With Dumbledore grappling with a family full of grievances, the story barely has any room for Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), the fluttery animal caregiver who tends to the fantastic beasts of the title. Redmayne’s character justifies his existence in the plot by coming into possession of a Qilin (pronounced chillin), a rare, fawn-like creature that holds unusual sway in electoral races — it’s a kind of mammalian dowsing rod that has the power to identify a person’s purity of heart and ability to be a leader. The series seems to be shifting its spotlight away from its supposed lead and his love interest from the previous movies, Tina (Katherine Waterston), who pretty much is only featured in one scene. “She’s very busy,” Newt explains. It feels like a wink to the franchise’s apparent struggle to hold onto actors. Later, in an act of popcorn-movie prestidigitation, all memory of yet another character is erased. No one seems to care.Still, this is the most absorbing and well-paced film in the trilogy to date, despite its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time — de rigueur for modern spectacles that want to convince audiences they’re getting enough bang for their buck. “Secrets of Dumbledore” gestures toward themes of frailty, thwarted intentions and forgiveness. Even the color scheme underscores that this tale exists in shades of gray. It is odd how recent fantasy films seem to be made primarily for adults — it’s hard to imagine kiddos waiting in line for butter beer at a Harry Potter theme park being enthralled by an explainer of how toxic candidates rise to prominence. (A brief detour to Hogwarts serves as a startling reminder that these movies used to rely on actors under 30.) Yet, there’s a lovely visual that should unite audiences of all ages: a teleportation device made from a swirl of floating book pages. The image is a reminder that fiction is not just a history lesson, but a means of escape.Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of DumbledoreRated PG-13 for some fantasy violence, particularly toward magic animals. Running time: 2 hours 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wyrmwood: Apocalypse’ Review: Maximum Zombie Slayage

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      In this Australian zombie sequel, a soldier helps a pack of vigilantes rise up against his evil boss.“Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” was about as calm as a Chihuahua on cocaine, and its new sequel is no exception. The opening titles for “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” appear over sounds of chaos: tires screeching, machine guns firing, zombies wailing. If you’d like to see the horror-action equivalent of an old metal rock musician lighting his electric guitar on fire and then playing it with his teeth, this is your movie.Though the leads from “Road of the Dead,” Brooke (Bianca Bradey) and Barry (Jay Gallagher) reappear here, the main character is Rhys (Luke McKenzie), a tough soldier with a Mad Max level of resourcefulness and a dead brother-size chip on his shoulder. Brooke killed said brother, so when Rhys’s conspicuously twitchy, blood-covered boss (Nick Boshier) orders him to hunt her down so they can experiment on her — Brooke is a hybrid, able to calm down her zombie side by drinking blood — he doesn’t hesitate. But after nabbing Grace (Tasia Zalar), another hybrid and one of Brooke’s allies, Rhys starts to realize that not all zombies are expendable.“Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” is a must-see for zombie fans, thanks to a quick-witted script by the director, Kiah Roache-Turner, and his brother, Tristan Roache-Turner. In a humorous segment set to the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song “Red Right Hand,” Rhys blows away a horde of advancing zombies, then wrangles the stragglers into watering his plants and powering his home.Since this film aims to say that hybrids like Brooke and Grace deserve human rights, it’s strange to see the standard zombies discarded so carelessly. But nobody is watching “Wyrmwood: Apocalypse” for its ethics. In these films, where blood splatters the camera within the first five seconds, high-octane, sicko glee reigns supreme.Wyrmwood: ApocalypseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Cuba Gooding Jr. Pleads Guilty to Forcible Touching

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      The actor must complete six more months of treatment with no new arrests under his plea deal.The actor Cuba Gooding Jr., who had been accused by more than 20 women of groping or forcibly kissing them in encounters that dated back more than two decades, pleaded guilty in Manhattan on Wednesday to one count of forcible touching.The count, a misdemeanor, charged that he had forcibly kissed a woman at a nightclub in Manhattan in 2018.Under terms of the plea, Mr. Gooding must continue for six more months in alcohol and behavior modification treatment that he has been undergoing since 2019, and he must have no new arrests, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.If he fulfills the terms of the plea, he can then withdraw the plea and plead to a lesser charge of harassment, a violation, with a sentence of time served, the office said. Also, the record of the plea will not be sealed, the office said.If Mr. Gooding does not comply with the terms of his deal, the misdemeanor guilty plea would stand and he could face up to one year in jail.In a hearing on Wednesday in State Supreme Court, Justice Curtis Farber asked Mr. Gooding if the charge to which he was pleading guilty was true.“Yes, your honor,” Mr. Gooding said. “I kissed the waitress on her lips.”“I apologize for ever making anybody feel inappropriately touched,” Mr. Gooding said in court, adding that he was a “celebrity” and did not want people he met to “feel slighted.”Mr. Gooding had faced a criminal trial on charges of unwanted sexual touching of three women in Manhattan restaurants and nightclubs in 2018 and 2019. The Manhattan district attorney’s office had asked a judge to admit as witnesses 19 other women who it said had come forward to accuse Mr. Gooding of such conduct.Mr. Gooding’s “prior acts demonstrate that his contacts with their intimate parts are intentional, not accidental, and that he is not mistaken about their lack of consent,” the district attorney’s office wrote in a court filing in October 2019.The judge initially ruled that two of the additional accusers could testify against Mr. Gooding at trial, which would have allowed prosecutors to argue in court that Mr. Gooding had exhibited similar conduct for years.But an assistant district attorney, Coleen Balbert, revealed in court on Wednesday that Justice Farber later reversed this ruling, meaning that the additional accusers’ testimony could not be introduced at trial, something that previously had not been made public, she noted.Asked about any such later ruling by the judge, a court spokesman, Lucian Chalfen, said, “In the pendency of any criminal case, there are always discussions about what may or may not be introduced.” Mr. Chalfen said Justice Farber’s later ruling still would have allowed the district attorney’s office to call the additional accusers to rebut any defense testimony in the trial.Mr. Gooding was originally charged in connection with an encounter on the night of June 9, 2019, during a party at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar, an expensive lounge at the Moxy NYC Times Square hotel in Manhattan. The accuser said that Mr. Gooding placed his hand on her breast without her consent and squeezed, according to a criminal complaint.He was later charged with pinching a woman’s bottom at a Manhattan nightclub in October 2018 and with an additional incident at Lavo, an Italian restaurant on East 58th Street, in September 2018 — the episode to which he pleaded guilty.In court, Mr. Gooding’s lawyer, Frank Rothman, said his client was also prepared to apologize to the women in the two other incidents.One of those accusers — the woman in the incident at the hotel in 2019 — addressed the court on Wednesday.“I won’t lie,” the woman, who identified herself as Kelsey Harbert, said. “I’m very disappointed that we are here today discussing a plea deal.”Ms. Harbert said that she wanted to talk about what had happened to her and also to explore some broader issues, which drew an objection from Mr. Rothman, who said she should not be “making a statement for the rest of society.”Ms. Harbert, saying she would limit her comments to her own experience, told the court that she had been “super excited” to see Mr. Gooding and then encounter him while she was out one night with friends. Her excitement turned to dismay, however, when she felt his hand on her breast, she said.“I was mortified,” she said. “My body was being placed under the dominion of someone else without my consent.”Ms. Harbert said it was “very devastating” to her that Mr. Gooding would have the chance to “move on” after six months, while she has experienced continuing feelings of trauma and violation as a result of her contact with him.After Ms. Harbert completed her statement, the defense lawyer, Mr. Rothman, spoke again, saying he had watched a video recording depicting the events at the hotel. “What she said happened here for the last 20 minutes is a product of her imagination in large part,” Mr. Rothman said.After court, Mr. Rothman said in a phone interview, “This case should have been resolved years ago.” He said that he had met with the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, after he took office in January, who “took a harder and more in-depth look at the pros and cons of the prosecution.”“We reached an agreement that all sides could live with,” Mr. Rothman said. “It’s fair and appropriate under all of the circumstances.”Mr. Gooding, a Bronx native, had his first major success playing the lead role in the 1991 film “Boyz n the Hood,” and he won an Academy Award in 1997 for his supporting role in “Jerry Maguire.” He played O.J. Simpson in the 2016 television series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.” More