Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Drop’ Review: The Ultimate Doomscroll

      by

      A first date turns hellish when a terrified woman’s phone is cloned by an anonymous psycho in this stylishly silly thriller.Modernizing the paranoid templates of thrillers like Joel Schumacher’s “Phone Booth” (2003) and Wes Craven’s “Red Eye” (2005), “Drop” invites us to observe a disastrous dinner date with a potentially fatal dessert.The unsuspecting diners are Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widowed therapist with a traumatic past, and Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a hunky photographer with a debatable future. After three months of skittish texting, Violet has finally agreed to meet Henry in person at a luxury restaurant atop a Chicago skyscraper. And just as she’s overcoming her first-date jitters — and the dizzying view from their window table — her phone beeps: Someone is sending anonymous, increasingly menacing messages using an AirDrop-style app that only operates within 50 feet. It would be easier to identify the culprit if every one of their fellow diners were not also staring at their phones.Like a Jenga tower with half the pieces removed, Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach’s wobbly script grows more preposterous by the minute. (Not least because no woman as cautious as Violet would be this careless with her phone’s privacy settings.) Which doesn’t mean that “Drop” isn’t fun: Park your left brain at the door and enjoy Ben Baudhuin’s snappy editing, Marc Spicer’s glowing, gliding images and the easy chemistry between the two leads. The mood might be more ick than eek, but Fahy is wickedly entertaining as a woman casting around for an escape from her online tormentor — if she fails to obey his commands, the sister and young son she left at home will be murdered — and charming the seemingly saintly Henry into finishing a date with someone he must believe to be at least a little nuts.While reprising the kicky, repetitive style that drove “Happy Death Day” in 2017 and, two years later, its less compelling sequel, the director Christopher Landon diverts us with visual gimmicks. Cell messages splay across the screen and inside a bathroom stall, and a shoal of brunette herrings swim through the movie. Apparently, almost every man in Chicago — including Violet’s date, her meter reader and a random encounter at the bar — sports brown hair and a beard. Just like her unidentified attacker in the film’s opening scene.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Amateur’ Review: An Unsafe World

      by

      Rami Malek stars in a spy movie that struggles with its conspiratorial angle.For about 20 minutes, “The Amateur” is pretty exciting: It’s glossy, it’s beautifully cast, and it boasts an intriguing premise. Charlie Heller (Rami Malek), a C.I.A. cryptographer — the movie informs us right off the bat that he has a “big brain” — bids his beloved wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), goodbye as she’s off to London for business. Arriving at work, he receives a batch of highly secretive encoded files from a long-running anonymous source, and when he cracks them open he realizes they reveal a series of rogue operations all over the world, ordered by some high-ranking official at the agency, that resulted in civilian deaths. And then, he receives word that Sarah has been killed in an attack at her hotel in London.Solid setup. But though Charlie commences globe-trotting in search of revenge, the movie somehow feels like it’s treading water, going nowhere at all. He concocts an elaborate plot to force the misbehaving C.I.A. bosses into giving him some training in various agent-like activities (shooting, fighting, making improvised explosive devices), which they do, under the tutelage of the gruff Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne). Then, before the bosses catch onto his true plan, he takes off with agents on his tail. It’s a classic case of This Guy Knows Too Much and Must Be Eliminated.“The Amateur” — based on Robert Littell’s 1981 novel, also adapted for a 1982 film — is shaped like a jet-setting vigilante spy flick, served alongside a heaping dose of conspiracy thriller. Those genres tend to overlap well, given their penchant for overly complicated plots, futuristic tech gadgets and a deep sense of paranoia. This one has some of the other hallmarks, too — the dead wife, the mysterious informant, the chases through foreign streets. Working with the cinematographer Martin Ruhe, the director James Hawes serves up the kind of images that seem full of meaning and menace, which is what you want from this kind of movie. Malek underplays Charlie — not the kind of guy you normally find at the center of a spy movie — which means his moments of true emotion feel suitably poignant. And Jon Bernthal, Catriona Balfe, Holt McCallany, Julianne Nicholson and Michael Stuhlbarg round out an excellent cast.But there is, to put it colloquially, just no there there. I get that “The Amateur” isn’t interested in Bond-style comedy, opting instead for dramatic beats befitting a bereaved husband and the limits of revenge, I think. But this screenplay (written by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli) promises a lot from the start, and then delivers little to back it up. After a while, the narrow escapes and Charlie’s occasional tech-aided gotchas become repetitive. It felt a bit like the life was draining away from the movie the longer it went on — as if this was more of an imitation of a good movie than an actually good movie. (The technical name for this among critics is a “nothingburger.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Pink Narcissus’: A Home Movie Both Abject and Erotic

      by

      Originally released anonymously, this homoerotic fantasia by James Bidgood gets its first theatrical run in 54 years at Metrograph.As its title suggests, “Pink Narcissus” is something of a hothouse flower. A feature-length movie, shot over a period of seven years on eight-millimeter film and elaborate sets constructed in the filmmaker’s tiny Manhattan apartment, it’s also a labor of love — focusing largely on a single actor.Originally released anonymously, this homoerotic fantasia created by the photographer James Bidgood, newly restored by the film and television archive at the University of California, Los Angeles, gets its first theatrical run in 54 years at Metrograph, starting April 11.The breathtaking opening sequence in which a full moon is glimpsed through a tangled forest is as fastidious as a late 1930s Disney animation, an association supported by a musical track heavy on program music like Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” Soon, amid busy butterflies and fluttering flowers, Bidgood’s young star, known as Bobby Kendall, makes his first appearance.The movie has no dialogue and, so far as I can tell, no women. Dressed variously in tight white jeans and short kimonos, but most often posed as a nude odalisque, Kendall plays a kept rent-boy whose fantasies provide a succession of set pieces, as when he imagines himself as a matador whose bull is a hard-charging biker. Kendall also participates in a toga party and is entertained by a provocative belly dancer in a male seraglio.Sex acts are implied and full nudity coyly veiled. Explicit yet decorous, “Pink Narcissus” is founded on a dialectic between the erotic and the abject. The rococo apartment and an idealized natural world of rosy sunsets vie with a dank public urinal and an invented, garbage-strewn Times Square where pushcarts sell vibrators and other sex toys. Charles Ludlam can be glimpsed among the denizens of this sordid domain, but more than Ludlam’s “ridiculous” theater, Bidgood’s precursors are taboo-breaking movies like Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” and Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Angel Studios Turns to Viewers of Faith to Greenlight Movies

      by

      The company behind “Sound of Freedom” follows an unusual strategy that relies on an army of subscribers to its streaming platform.When “Sound of Freedom,” a $14.5 million indie film about child trafficking based on the life of a Homeland Security agent, stormed the box office to become an unlikely $250 million hit, practically nobody saw its runaway success coming.Except Neal Harmon.Harmon is the chief executive of Angel Studios, a self-described “values-based distribution company,” that he founded in 2013 in Provo, Utah, with his brothers Daniel, Jeffrey and Jordan as well as their cousin Benton. Even before a rave review from Ted Cruz and a private screening held by Donald J. Trump, the reception for “Sound of Freedom” was effectively preordained, Neal explained in a recent interview, because the studio’s million-member Angel Guild had endorsed the film before the company decided to acquire the distribution rights.Jim Caviezel in “Sound of Freedom,” the breakout hit that went on to earn $250 million at the box office.Angel Studios“We definitely knew it was going to be successful because of the guild’s reaction,” Neal said. “We knew it was going to be really well received.”Most distributors rely on the instincts of a programming team, which typically attends festivals and watches screeners like a prospector sifting for gold. Angel’s model defers to the subscribers of its streaming platform, which has grown to become one of the most-downloaded apps on the Apple TV store, occasionally surpassing Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.In addition to a library of original content, the Angel app features short-form concept videos for potential movies or TV shows. Subscribers, or guild members, answer short surveys about the videos, and based on the results, Angel decides whether to greenlight projects. Subscriber fees are funneled back into the films and shows in production, essentially turning Angel’s system into a wide-scale crowdfunding model.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Film at Lincoln Center Chooses Daniel Battsek as Next President

      by

      At the production company Film4 he was instrumental in financing British movies. In New York, his goal is to attract a younger, more diverse audience.Film at Lincoln Center, the nonprofit organization that programs the New York Film Festival, has named the British movie executive Daniel Battsek its next president.From 2016 until early 2024, Battsek, 66, was chairman of the British production company Film4, overseeing the financing of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017) and “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022), among other releases.Battsek will succeed Lesli Klainberg, who had led Film at Lincoln Center since 2014 before stepping down last year.In an interview, Battsek, who will take over in May, said the centrality of film in the New York City cultural landscape had always appealed to him.“In many other cities, including London, film is much further down the culture ladder than it is here,” said Battsek, who was based in New York as president of Miramax Films before joining Film4. “I love that cinema is seen as being on a level with opera and ballet and theater.”Battsek’s appointment comes amid an industrywide downturn as movie theaters struggle to attract an audience that has yet to return to prepandemic numbers and are increasingly contending with competition from streaming services.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Is Yoko Ono Finally Getting Her Moment?

      by

      A new biography and film about Yoko Ono offer more opportunities to assess her contributions to culture. Two pop music critics debate if they’re worthy of their subject.LINDSAY ZOLADZ Are we living through a Yokossance? Though the 92-year-old conceptual artist, musician and Beatle widow Yoko Ono has spent much of the past decade far from the public eye dealing with health issues, each year seems to bring a new opportunity to reassess her contributions to culture.In the 2020s alone, there has been a tribute album, a small shelf’s worth of biographies and, just last year, a blockbuster, career-spanning show of her artwork at London’s Tate Modern. (That retrospective, “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” comes to Chicago in October.) All of that followed Peter Jackson’s long-awaited 2021 Beatles documentary “Get Back,” which reignited debates about Ono’s influence on the band she was unfairly accused of “breaking up.”David Sheff, a longtime friend of Ono’s who is best known for writing a memoir about his son’s struggles with addiction, “Beautiful Boy” (Ono gave him permission to title it after a John Lennon song), argues strongly against that assumption in his new biography, “Yoko.” He even takes it a step further, proposing that “it’s possible that the band stayed together longer than they would have because of Yoko,” since she gave Lennon several years of relative groundedness during which the Beatles made “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.” “During the writing and recording of those albums, John had a foot out the door,” Sheff writes. “If he hadn’t had Yoko, the other foot might have followed sooner than it did.”We get extended glimpses of Ono and Lennon a few years later in “One to One: John & Yoko,” Kevin Macdonald’s forthcoming documentary that focuses on a well-told chapter of their story, their time living in New York City in the early 1970s.“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” on display in Germany last September. The retrospective comes to Chicago in October.Martin Meissner/Associated PressI’m curious, Jon: Did either Sheff’s biography or Macdonald’s film add anything to your understanding of Ono? I’m also thinking of an essay that our colleague Amanda Hess wrote in 2021 about Ono’s transfixing presence in “Get Back.” She said she had observed the slow evolution of Ono from “a cultural villain” into “a kind of folk hero.” Do you think that shift is now fully complete?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Arrives as a Surprise Box Office Smash

      by

      Weekend ticket sales totaled $163 million, Warner Bros. said, more than double the expected amount, ending a Hollywood dry spell.There are no fail-safe formulas in Hollywood, but this one comes close:Take an established yet underexploited (or musty) cultural property — preferably one that stirs strong feelings of nostalgia among young adults — and add stars playing to type, abundant visual effects and a savvy marketing campaign that makes core fans feel appreciated.It’s difficult to pull off, but Legendary Entertainment has done it repeatedly. The most recent example came over the weekend with “A Minecraft Movie,” which was made in partnership with Warner Bros. The film sold an astounding $163 million in tickets in North America from Friday through Sunday, according to Warner Bros., which distributed the film in addition to co-producing it. (On Sunday, analysts had estimated $157 million for the weekend.)Before release, citing advance ticket sales and surveys that track consumer interest, analysts had projected a domestic opening weekend of closer to $80 million. “It’s an absolute blast to see moviegoers around the world coming together to celebrate their love for Minecraft,” Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairs of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, said in a statement.“A Minecraft Movie,” a PG-rated comedic fantasy starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa and based on the 2009 block-building video game, also scored overseas, where it took in an additional $151 million.The film cost $150 million to make, not including global marketing costs. Warner Bros. covered 75 percent of the budget. Legendary, which is independently owned, shouldered the balance. Reviews were mixed.Hollywood in general, and Warner Bros. in particular, badly needed a hit. Box office revenue in the United States and Canada fell 11 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2024, in part because of major flops like “Snow White” (Disney) and “Mickey 17” (Warner Bros.). There were also other underperformers, including a pair of low-budget duds from the once-unstoppable Blumhouse horror studio.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      At 30, ‘A Goofy Movie’ Has Made a Serious Impact

      by

      The 30-year-old animated Disney film has fans across generations. Now, a documentary looks back at its legacy.“If we listen to each other’s heart / We’ll find we’re never too far apart,” sang the fictional pop star Powerline (voiced by Tevin Campbell) during a 2017 screening of “A Goofy Movie” at El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.The ecstatic reaction from those in attendance confirmed to Kevin Lima that the first movie he ever directed, originally released on April 7, 1995, had indeed amassed an adoring fandom.“I sat amongst an audience who was singing along, repeating back dialogue with the characters onscreen, dancing in their seats,” Lima recalled during a recent video interview from his home in Mill Valley, Calif.“A Goofy Movie” observes the often hilarious, and at times thorny relationship between Goofy (voiced by Bill Farmer), the lanky anthropomorphic dog from Disney’s classic cartoons, and his teenage son, Max (Jason Marsden), as they go on a road trip that will bring them closer.A scene from “A Goofy Movie,” which follows a father-son road trip.Buena Vista PicturesUnlike most Disney films made during that time, this heartfelt father-son adventure was a contemporary story entrenched in the 1990s via its upbeat pop music and the characters’ wardrobes. Lima described it as “an animated film that feels like a John Hughes movie.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More