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      ‘Atlantide’ Review: Restless and Reckless on the Venetian Lagoon

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      A speed boater and his girlfriend maneuver around the coasts of Venice and its islands in this moody portrait of contemporary youth culture.Those in need of right-brain fuel may find a source in “Atlantide,” a documentary-narrative hybrid film that offers a highly stylized window into Italian youth culture. Thin on story and nearly free from dialogue, the film takes place on the turbid Venetian Lagoon where locals congregate to scroll their phones, speed on motorboats and pump their fists to trap music.Much of the film is spent trailing the solemn Daniele (Daniele Barison), a young skipper from the agricultural island of Sant’Erasmo, as he maneuvers his petite two-seater around the inlet. Like those of his peers, Daniele’s boat bears the name of his girlfriend, Maila (Maila Dabala), who plays passenger on his sea rovings and reluctantly indulges his yen for speed racing.Characters seldom speak, but when they do, the director, Yuri Ancarani, paints the interpersonal moments with admirable restraint. In one sequence, as Maila lays bare her emotions to her manicurist, Ancarani grants the women privacy by fixing his camera not on their faces but on their hands, delicately intertwining across the cosmetic table.It’s a rare moment of intuition in a film that disproportionately favors impressionism over substance. And visually, the film is brimming: Ancarani depicts bridges agape over canals, forts crumbling in ruin and ominous bricola, or wooden poles, protruding from the lagoon like broken bones. Had “Atlantide” granted deeper access to Daniele and Maila, these images might have lent a moody complement to the characters and their struggles. As is, any sense of meaning is cast adrift in a sea of pretty pictures.AtlantideNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Atlanta’ and the Academy Awards

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      Donald Glover’s series returns for a third season on FX. And the 94th Oscars ceremony airs on ABC.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 21-27. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOW (2012) 6:15 p.m. on Showtime. Channing Tatum returns to theaters this week in “The Lost City,” a big-budget comedy with Sandra Bullock and Daniel Radcliffe. It’s Tatum’s second big movie of the year, after “Dog” in February. Tatum was booked solid in 2012, too: He starred in two Steven Soderbergh movies (“Haywire” and “Magic Mike”), a remake of “21 Jump Street” and “The Vow,” a romantic drama with Rachel McAdams about a marriage derailed by amnesia. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote that the movie itself was a lackluster adaptation of the true story on which it was based, but that the chemistry between Tatum and McAdams stood out. “When they are on the screen together here,” Scott wrote, “there is enough physical charm and emotional warmth to distract from the threadbare setting and the paper-thin plot.”AMERICAN SONG CONTEST 8 p.m. on NBC. The Eurovision Song Contest, a television spectacle, has been held annually overseas since before the British Invasion. “American Song Contest” finally brings a version of it stateside. This musical competition, with Snoop Dogg and Kelly Clarkson as hosts, gathers dozens of performers from all 50 states and has them perform original songs. There are no limitations on genre, which should making for interesting juxtapositions.TuesdayTHE 2022 IHEARTRADIO MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on Fox. LL Cool J will host this year’s edition of the iHeartRadio Music Awards, which will be broadcast live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The lineup of performers includes Jennifer Lopez, Megan Thee Stallion, Jason Aldean and John Legend. Competing for the top prize, song of the year, will be Olivia Rodrigo, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, Silk Sonic, Dua Lipa, Lil Nas X, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and the Kid Laroi.SHACKLETON’S ENDURANCE: THE LOST ICE SHIP FOUND 10 p.m. on History. Frigid water and a merciful lack of wood-eating marine organisms helped the explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship stay recognizable in the century that passed between when it sank, in 1915, and when its wreckage was discovered earlier this month at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula. The discovery involved a multimillion-dollar hunt and the use of undersea drones. This new special will look at the significance of the find.WednesdayJohn David Washington in “BlacKkKlansman.”David Lee/Focus FeaturesBLACKKKLANSMAN (2018) 5:20 p.m. on FXM. John David Washington and Adam Driver play a pair of police detectives who infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan during the 1970s in this Spike Lee joint. They’re a somewhat odd couple for that particular job. Washington’s character, Ron Stallworth, is the first African American officer hired by the Colorado Springs Police Department; Driver’s character is a Jewish officer named Flip Zimmerman. (Stallworth is a real person — the movie is based on his memoir of a similar name.) When the movie came out in 2018, A.O. Scott called it Lee’s “best nondocumentary feature in more than a decade and one of his greatest.”ThursdayATLANTA 10 p.m. on FX. What will “Atlanta” look like outside Atlanta? The third season of Donald Glover’s surreal comedy series is set mostly outside Georgia. Outside the United States, actually: Alfred, the fictional rapper known as Paper Boi (played by Brian Tyree Henry), goes on a European tour, bringing along Earn (his cousin and manager, played by Glover), Darius (their enigmatic friend played by Lakeith Stanfield) and Van (Earn’s it’s-complicated girlfriend, played by Zazie Beetz. The location change should make for a surprising set of episodes — not that the show has been lacking in stylistic twists. Wesley Morris, in a Times column in 2018, summed up the second season by saying, “No episode looked or felt the same as the one before it.”FridayMarin Alsop in “The Conductor.”Alessandra Fratus/Cargo Film and ReleasingGREAT PERFORMANCES: THE CONDUCTOR (2022) 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Marin Alsop became the first woman to lead a major orchestra in the United States when she took over the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007. This documentary, directed by Bernadette Wegenstein, looks at Alsop’s career through the conductor’s own recollections and interviews with musicians who have either been pupils of Alsop’s or who have otherwise been affected by her work. While Alsop’s story is exceptional, the documentary itself takes a “fairly standard approach,” Ben Kenigsberg said in his review for The Times. “The most engaging portions,” he wrote, “involve music-making itself.”SaturdayTHE GODFATHER (1972) 6 p.m. on Paramount Network. Since its release in theaters 50 years ago this month, the original “Godfather” has been shown on TV more times than they shot Sonny on the causeway. Here’s a chance to rewatch it for its anniversary alongside its equally acclaimed sequel, THE GODFATHER PART II (1974), which airs on Paramount Network at 10 p.m. Watch them together to see Francis Ford Coppola’s growth as a director. “You have to understand, as a filmmaker, I didn’t really know how to make ‘The Godfather,’” Coppola said in a recent interview with The Times. “I learned how to make ‘The Godfather’ making it.”SundayKristen Stewart at an event for Academy Award nominees on March 7. The actual ceremony is on Sunday.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesTHE 94TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. You can count on seeing a handful of unpredictable things at any given Oscars ceremony. This year, we know when one of them will come: at the moment the best actress winner is announced. The race for that honor is unusually open this year, with no obvious favorite among the nominees: Jessica Chastain, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart. (As The Times’s awards-season columnist, Kyle Buchanan, recently wrote, nearly every ceremony this season has offered a different lineup of women.) The race for the top honor, best picture, is down to “Belfast,” “CODA,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Car,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley,” “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story.” Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall and Amy Schumer are the hosts. More

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      Writers Guild Awards Keep up Momentum for ‘CODA,’ ‘Don’t Look Up’

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      The victories are good news for those films’ Oscar chances: The best picture winner usually also picks up a screenplay trophy.A sudden Oscar front-runner and a dark-horse contender took top honors at the Writers Guild Awards on Sunday night, as the heartwarmer “CODA” and the satirical “Don’t Look Up” prevailed in the adapted and original screenplay categories, respectively.“This is real, legitimate excitement,” the writer-director of “Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay, said in a pretaped speech. Though several awards shows have returned to in-person gatherings, the WGA ceremony was virtual, and nominees were asked to send in their acceptance speeches ahead of time. Only the winner’s was played during the ceremony.Several major films were ineligible for the WGAs this year because they were not written under a bargaining agreement with the WGA or its sister guilds. So “Belfast” and “The Worst Person in the World” (in the original-screenplay category) and “The Power of the Dog” and “The Lost Daughter” (in the adapted category) were not in the running. And because that significantly whittled down the pool of big contenders, most pundits expected the writer-director Sian Heder’s “CODA,” based on the 2014 French film “La Famille Bélier,” would prevail with the Writers Guild, though “Don’t Look Up” still faced stiff competition from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza.”Can the WGA victors also win their Oscar races now that “Belfast” has lost its awards mojo and the surging “CODA” beat “The Power of the Dog” at this weekend’s influential Producers Guild Awards? In a recent screenplay contest at the BAFTAs, “CODA” pulled out another surprise win over “The Power of the Dog,” its biggest best-picture rival. Since the path to the top Oscar almost always winds through the screenplay categories, an adapted-screenplay win for “CODA” on Oscar night could foreshadow the film’s ultimate fate.And though “Don’t Look Up” has a tougher path to the best-picture Oscar, with no notable awards-season wins until now, the WGA victory at least suggests that the original-screenplay race will remain one to watch.Here are some of the other WGA winners:Documentary: “Exposing Muybridge”Drama series: “Succession”Comedy series: “Hacks”New series: “Hacks”Original long-form series: “Mare of Easttown”Adapted long-form series: “Maid” More

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      Peter Bowles, Actor in ‘To the Manor Born,’ Dies at 85

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      In a six-decade career in TV, film and onstage, he played comedy and drama, hapless heroes and villains, often with the air of the archetypal English gent.Peter Bowles, a dapper British character actor who was best known for his role as an arriviste in the popular British television sitcom “To the Manor Born,” died on Thursday. He was 85. The cause was cancer, according to a statement to the BBC from his agent. No further information was available.In a six-decade career, Mr. Bowles, who was the son of servants and grew up without indoor plumbing, appeared in a merry-go-round of productions in television, film and onstage, alternating between comedy and drama, hapless heroes and villains. Whatever character he played, he often projected the air of what his agent called “the archetypal English gent.”Mr. Bowles’s well-known television credits included roles in “Rumpole of the Bailey,” “The Bounder,” “Only When I Laugh” and the recent series “Victoria.” He wrote and starred in “Lytton’s Diary,” about the life of a newspaper gossip columnist. And he achieved success in “The Irish R.M.,” in which he played a British Army officer sent to Ireland as a resident magistrate. The New York Times called the show “devilishly hilarious.”But he was best known for his portrayal of Richard DeVere in “To the Manor Born.” DeVere, the son of Czech-Polish émigrés, is the nouveau-riche owner of a supermarket who buys a grand English manor house from its original owner, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, played by Penelope Keith. She moves to a nearby small cottage, from which she eyes DeVere’s activities with considerable disapproval.In a 1981 photo, Mr. Bowles and Penelope Keith, who played the original owner of the country mansion in “To the Manor Born.”United News/Popperfoto via Getty Images“The show was a reflection of the disruptions to the English class system by the recently elected Margaret Thatcher, a shopkeeper’s daughter who had poshed up her voice but was committed to social mobility,” Mark Lawson wrote in an appreciation of Mr. Bowles in The Guardian on Thursday.“The casting of the charming Bowles,” he added, “helped to offset the potentially nasty snobbery of the premise.”The sitcom aired from 1979 to 1981 in Britain, where it routinely drew audiences of 20 million, astronomical by British standards. Like other British series he was in, it later aired in the United States on PBS.Peter Bowles was born in London on Oct. 16, 1936. His father, Herbert Reginald Bowles, was a valet and chauffeur to a son of the Earl of Sandwich; his mother, Sarah Jane (Harrison) Bowles, was a nanny employed by the family of the Duke of Argyll in Scotland. (The two met when they both worked for the family of Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper baron and cabinet minister under Winston Churchill.)During World War II, when Peter was 6, the family moved to one of the poorest working-class districts of Nottingham, in the English Midlands, where their house had an outside toilet and no bath.After appearing in amateur plays in Nottingham, Peter won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where his fellow actors included Alan Bates, Peter O’Toole and Albert Finney, with whom he shared a flat.Mr. Bowles started onstage with the Old Vic Company in 1956 with small parts in Shakespeare dramas. Over time, he starred in 45 theatrical productions. He was seen in the early 1990s by the director Peter Hall, who then cast him in a string of plays in London’s West End.Mr. Bowles and Judi Dench in 2006 in a London revival of Noël Coward’s “Hay Fever.” Over a long career, he bounced from the stage to television to the movies. Catherine AshmoreAfter Mr. Bowles left the theater for television and comedy, the BBC famously pronounced that he would never work again in drama. But after several television successes, he defied that prediction and returned to the theater as Archie Rice, a failing music-hall performer, in John Osborne’s “The Entertainer” in 1986; he was the first actor to play the part in London since Laurence Olivier in 1957.Other stage roles included his portrayal of the art dealer Joseph Duveen in “The Old Masters” (2004), a play by Simon Gray about Duveen and the art critic Bernard Berenson, directed by Harold Pinter; and of the “seriously posh, clipped-voice husband” Peter Bliss, as The Times described him, in Peter Hall’s 2006 London revival of Noël Coward’s comedy of manners, “Hay Fever” (also set in an English country house).He continued to act in movies, too, with roles in: “Eyewitness” (1970, released in the U.S. as “Sudden Terror”); “The Steal” (1995); “Color Me Kubrick” (2005) and “The Bank Job” (2008).He is survived by his wife, the actor Susan Bennett, and three children, Guy, Adam and Sasha. More

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      Jack Willis, TV Producer and Empathetic Filmmaker, Dies at 87

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      A survivor of a crippling accident, his documentaries and news coverage for public television focused on poverty, race and other social issues.Jack Willis, a journalist and television executive who won several Emmys and a Polk Award for his innovative films and news and documentary programming during the embryonic years of cable and public broadcasting, died on Feb. 9 in Zurich. He was 87.He underwent assisted suicide at a clinic there, his wife, Mary Pleshette Willis, said. He lived in Manhattan.When he was in his late 30s, Mr. Willis broke his neck in a body surfing accident that temporarily left him a quadriplegic before he miraculously recovered, his wife said, inspiring a television movie. But after a half century, the injuries were taking their toll. Six years ago, he broke his hip and began using a wheelchair, she said.From 1971 to 1973, Mr. Willis was director of programming and production for WNET, the public television station in New York, where he introduced innovative local news coverage as executive producer of “The 51st State,” a program that took its name from the zany 1969 mayoral campaign of the author Norman Mailer, who proposed that New York City secede from New York State.The program, which won an Emmy Award, focused on communities rather than the more traditional fare of the nightly local news.Patrick Watson, center, the anchor of the WNET program “The 51st State,” moderated a discussion of racial tensions in New York City in 1971. Mr. Willis was the program’s executive producer. WNET records, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries“He pioneered in-depth local coverage of New York’s outer boroughs on WNET, focusing on long-ignored and disenfranchised minorities and immigrants, often letting them speak for themselves,” said Stephen B. Shepard, former editor in chief of Business Week and founding dean of the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. “For Jack, it was always about the people affected by government decisions.”Mr. Willis was an executive producer of another Emmy-winning series, “The Great American Dream Machine,” a weekly 90-minute program on PBS. The television critic John J. O’Connor of The New York Times, writing in 1971, said the program had been conceived as “a free‐form program that could offer the viewer worthwhile bits and pieces of humor, controversy, entertainment, investigative reporting, opinion, documentary and theatrical sketches.”“It has been called a hodgepodge of the brilliant and the trite,” he added, but concluded that it was “one of the most exciting and imaginative segments of television to come along this season.”Looking back, Mr. Willis himself told The Times in 2020: “It was a great time in public television. If you thought it, you could do it.”Marshall Efron, left, and Andy Rooney, two of the stars of the PBS program “The Great American Dream Machine,” in 1972. Mr. Willis was its executive producer. WNETIn 1963, he directed his first documentary, “The Streets of Greenwood,” a 20-minute film about a voter-registration drive in the Mississippi Delta. Collaborating with two friends, Phil Wardenburg and John Reavis, Mr. Willis shot it with a camera he had borrowed from the folk singer Pete Seeger, whose concert in a cotton field was featured in the film.In 1979, Mr. Willis shared the George Polk Award for best documentary with Saul Landau for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” The film focused on the journalist Paul Jacobs’s investigation of radiation hazards from atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s and ’60s and the federal government’s efforts to suppress information on its threat to public health.Two other films he produced — “Lay My Burden Down” (1966), about the plight of tenant farmers in rural Alabama, and “Every Seventh Child” (1967), questioning tax subsidies and other government benefits for Catholic education — were shown at the New York Film Festival.Mr. Willis wrote, directed and produced “Appalachia: Rich Land Poor People” (1968), which exposed grinding poverty largely caused, the film argued, by corporate greed, racism and ineffective local government.Mr. Willis’s commitment to civil rights was reflected in his enduring friendship with the singer Harry Belafonte, an activist in the movement, who described Mr. Willis in an email as “a soul brother” whose “intellect and humor, combined with his courageousness, make him one of the most precious people I have ever known.”“For those on the political left,” Mr. Belafonte added, “he was living proof of the proverb, ‘You can cage the singer but not the song.’”Jack Lawrence Willis was born on June 20, 1934, in Milwaukee to Louis Willis, a manufacturer of women’s shoes, and Libbie (Feingold) Willis, a homemaker. The family moved to California when he was 9.He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1956 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also played shortstop on the varsity baseball team. He liked to recall that he was recruited by a Boston Red Sox minor-league team.Mr. Willis dropped out of U.C.L.A. School of Law to serve in the Army for two years, then graduated in 1962 and moved to New York, where he hoped to connect with a job teaching in Africa or the Middle East.While waiting for a job abroad that never materialized, he worked briefly in television for Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera” and David Susskind’s “Open End.”He ran a movie production company in California, then was hired as vice president for programming and production at CBS Cable, a short-lived but well-received performing arts channel.From 1990 to 1997, Mr. Willis was president of KTCA, the public television station in Minneapolis-St. Paul, then returned to New York, where, working for George Soros’s Open Society Institute, he developed a media program. In 1999, he was a founder of Link TV, a nonprofit satellite TV network. He retired in 2011.Jack Willis in an undated photo. via Mary WillisIn addition to his wife, he is survived by their two daughters, Sarah Willis and Kate Willis Ladell; three grandchildren; and his brother, Richard.Mr. Willis and his wife wrote a book, “… But There Are Always Miracles” (1974), about his body-surfing accident in 1969 off Southampton, N.Y. They had been planning to marry when a crashing wave broke his neck and left him paralyzed from the chest down. He was told he would never walk again.After two operations and six months of inpatient rehabilitation, he walked out of Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in Manhattan. The couple married a year later.His story was adapted into a TV film, “Some Kind of Miracle” (1979), with a screenplay by the couple. They wrote and produced other films together.Shortly before he died, Ms. Willis said, her husband told her that the accident had “taught me to put everything in perspective — including the fear of failure.” He admitted to no regrets, she said, “except,” she quoted him as saying, “for taking that wave and turning down the Boston Red Sox.” More

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      ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ and the Lessons Few Horror Films Get Right

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      Ti West is the rare genre director to understand the original and honor it with a movie, “X,” that also works on its own terms.Fifteen years ago, I sat down with 20 or so of the most prolific serial killers in the world, responsible for hundreds of stabbings, decapitations and other unspeakable murders — and was absolutely charmed. A get-together of directors of scary movies, including Wes Craven, Eli Roth, Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli and Robert Rodriguez, this event, semi-jokingly referred to as “the masters of horror dinner,” was giddily jovial. Just as comedians tend to be more serious in person than you expect, horror artists are, generally speaking, very funny.The one time I recall the mood turning solemn was when discussion shifted to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974). With its director, Tobe Hooper, shyly nibbling on his salad, everyone took turns describing the first time they watched this unlikely masterpiece. They spoke in vivid, awe-struck detail, as if recalling a religious epiphany.Of the classic horror movies of its era, none is more revered among genre filmmakers. Yet “Chain Saw” has been stubbornly hard to imitate in comparison with peers like “Night of the Living Dead” and “Halloween,” which spawned entire genres. You can detect the influence of “Chain Saw,” however, in a spate of recent movies, including Ti West’s “X,” a thrilling new indie from A24 that captures the disreputable pleasures of 1970s horror with slickly modern refinement.Brittany Snow in “X,” from Ti West. The film’s kinship with “Chain Saw” is clear from the visual vocabulary.A24The peculiar strengths of “Chain Saw” have rarely been replicated because they are often misunderstood. Despite its unsubtle title, this is a formally exquisite art film, packed full of gorgeously nightmarish images, as poetic as they are deranged. The movie is less bloody than its reputation. While every bit as intense as its title, its violence is staged with misdirection absent from the sequels and remakes.Another misperception, internalized even by experienced and admiring critics, involves its most famous character, Leatherface. In a Variety review last year, Owen Gleiberman drew the ire of horror fans when he called “Halloween” a “knockoff” of “Chain Saw,” then defended his stance in an essay locating the signature of both movies in the killer’s mask. “It expresses his identity,” he writes of Leatherface, “and his identity is that he has no identity.”Gleiberman was on solid ground with “Halloween,” whose killer is a psychology-less abstraction, murdering without motivation, but Leatherface is more than just a boogeyman. While he is introduced committing some of the most startling kills in cinematic history, the majestically maniacal last act of “Chain Saw” shifts our perspective on him from hulking slayer to stammering stooge. Without resorting to a tedious back story, the movie positions Leatherface as a monster and a victim, bullied into his dirty work by his cannibalistic family. He is closer to the misunderstood creature from “Frankenstein” than to a garden-variety slasher villain.The feat of “Chain Saw” is to make us empathize with its scariest figure without diminishing the disorienting, teeth-chattering horror. Few movies pull this off.In “Nightmare Alley,” Guillermo del Toro, a “Chain Saw” fan, has directed a movie that also introduces a terrifying figure, a circus geek, before making us question our original judgment. In turning his monster-movie preoccupations into prestige, humanist filmmaking, del Toro has lost some of the scares (and fun) along the way. His movie is worn down by its seriousness, only to come alive in a final scene that ends with a direct visual quotation from the memorable final close-up of “Chain Saw,” when the last survivor cries so hard she laughs.Marilyn Burns in the original “Chain Saw.” The ending has been quoted in movies like the recent “Nightmare Alley.”Bryanston Distributing/AlamyThe recent Netflix reboot of “Texas Chainsaw” has the opposite problem. It abandons the nuance of the original, adopting the Gleiberman view of Leatherface as a one-note killing machine. The result is a boringly rote series of slayings. More novel is the slickly entertaining “Fresh,” an urban horror story about the hell of modern dating in which a single woman meets the perfect guy, who it turns out isn’t. It takes places in a world seemingly distant from Texas massacres. But when the main character says he’s from Texas and his mother has died, horror die-hards will tense up in recognition. It’s a deft, disquieting little shocker, but unlike the 1974 “Chain Saw,” which has an unhinged spirit that even after many viewings makes you think anything could happen, the twists in “Fresh” are a little too predictable to really jar sensibilities.The best movies made in the spirit of “Chain Saw” grasp that the source of its deepest madness is the family dynamics. Rob Zombie’s gnarly Firefly trilogy (“House of 1000 Corpses,” “The Devils’ Rejects,” “3 From Hell”) and the original and remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” (both terrific) capture the relatable dread of a dysfunctional family, taken to a Grand Guignol extreme.The Netflix “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” forgoes the nuance of the original for a boringly rote set of kills.Yana Blajeva/NetflixTi West’s “X” centers on a confrontation with a disturbed rural family in 1970s Texas, an elderly couple who appear creepy and hostile, before their vulnerabilities are exposed and they also become poignant. The film’s kinship with “Chain Saw” is most obvious in its stunning visual vocabulary: The ominously vast blue sky, a strobe-light editing sequence, a long view of a screen door from inside a creaky house. There is the dread evoked by rusty tools and wrinkly skin — and even an echo of the scene of Leatherface doing a balletic spin.With these images, West is working the erogenous zones of horror fans. He can overdo it (we didn’t need the “Shining” reference), but while the contours of the plot are straight out of “Chain Saw” — city kids jump into a van heading into rural Texas before stumbling upon a house of horrors — he is smart enough to tell his own story.His sitting ducks are making a low-budget pornographic movie inspired by the success of “Debbie Does Dallas.” It helps to know that “Chain Saw” was made by a seedy New York company, Bryanston Distributing, that was flush from the success of the famous sex film “Deep Throat.” The line between horror and porn was blurry in the 1970s. They shared some of the same artists, audiences and grimy theaters. At a time when the reputation of scary movies was much lower, pornography was being taken seriously. This is the cultural backdrop of “X,” but also in part its subject, and the film keeps searching for the intersection between sex and violence. In one pointed sequence, West juxtaposes a scene of staged seduction with one of real menace, underlining the echoing tension.Mia Goth, left, Owen Campbell and Martin Henderson in the new film “X.”A24Paul A. Partain, left, Allen Danziger, Teri McMinn, Burns and William Vail in Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic.Bryanston Distributing/AlamyWhereas “Texas Chain Saw” was about economic displacement (new technology cost Leatherface and his family their jobs at the slaughterhouse), “X” is about sexual displacement, how the old inevitably gives way to the young. The resentment this inspires is the fuel of the horror, which the victims don’t see coming. They are too busy trying to become famous making a film. The young, idealistic director of the sex picture just wants to make a “good dirty movie,” but tensions rise when his girlfriend tries to join the cast. He refuses, saying, disingenuously, that he can’t change the script. She counters that audiences care less about plot than about sex, asking: “Why not give the people what they’re paying for?”Even if Ti West identities with the director, he doesn’t give him the better argument.After making a series of elegant, slow-burn scary films like “The Innkeepers” and “The House of the Devil” that have earned critical praise if not blockbuster grosses, West has now made a movie full of flamboyantly gory kills and leering sex scenes. You might say he finally gives the horror crowd what they’re paying for. But instead of compromising his aesthetic, indulging in the traditional muck of the genre actually loosens and expands that aesthetic. His movies have long paid homage to the delirious blood baths of the grind-house era. But this is his first that feels like one.Horror has always been about repressed pleasures. Like comedy, it also depends on the shock of the unexpected. “Chain Saw” is a disreputable exploitation flick made with such artistry that it transforms into high art. “X” arrives in a different context, an era of so-called elevated horror and the kind of respectability that should make any gore-hound nervous. So West has reversed the trick. He made an A24 production with the spirit of a B movie. More

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      Will Smith Calls Bradley Cooper ‘Beautiful’ at National Board of Review Gala

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      “Licorice Pizza” was the big winner at the annual National Board of Review film awards.The National Board of Review awards gala is not televised. This fact was announced onstage by its host Craig Melvin and giddily repeated by several guests.The awards gala is among the last in the run-up to this year’s Oscars and, free of television, the night has a reputation for speeches that are chummy, quite long and laced with profanity. This year’s gala, at Cipriani 42nd Street on Tuesday night, did not disappoint.“We just have a rip-roaring good time,” said Annie Schulhof, the board’s president.Alana Haim, left, and Cooper Hoffman accepted the award for breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesIlda Mason starred in “West Side Story.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesFrom left: Bradley Cooper, Zazie Beatz and Spike Lee.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe guests included film executives, producers and a smattering of big-name stars like Julianne Moore, and many in the crowd made ample use of the complimentary Bellinis offered by a phalanx of servers in white jackets. There were also three open bars, along with free-flowing wine poured during the steak and shrimp salad dinner.The speeches delivered on the promise of backslapping and swear words but — mercifully — tended toward brevity.Will Smith, who was awarded best actor for his performance in “King Richard,” took the stage around 8:15 p.m. and pointed to Bradley Cooper at a nearby table. “I can’t even concentrate, he’s so beautiful,” he said.Alana Haim also gave Mr. Cooper a shout-out when she accepted her award for best breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza,” which she shared with Cooper Hoffman. “It means so much to have Bradley Cooper give us this award because you were actually the first real actor we had ever acted with,” said Ms. Haim, who wore a sleeveless, Kelly-green gown by Marni. She also referred to the cast and crew as “family.”Questlove accepted the best documentary award for “Summer of Soul.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesChris Rock, left, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who won for best director for “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJulianne MooreRebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesMarcus Samuelsson, the chef and television personality, took the “family” trope one step further, referring to Spike Lee as “Uncle Spike” for inspiring him to become a chef. Mr. Lee wore a hat that looked like a chef’s toque when he introduced Questlove, who won best documentary for “Summer of Soul.”Ilda Mason, who wore a white Naeem Khan gown adorned with beaded flowers, accepted the best actress award on behalf of her “West Side Story” castmate Rachel Zegler (she was shooting on location for “Snow White”). Ms. Mason’s voice cracked with emotion when she read her friend’s thank you message from her phone.As the ceremony drew to a close around 9:30, Chris Rock presented Paul Thomas Anderson with the award for best director for “Licorice Pizza,” the night’s big winner. He bemoaned the National Review Board for being “so cheap they don’t have a prompter.” “I’m coming here for Paul Thomas Anderson, a person who has never cast me in anything,” he said, using stronger language. “Not even to wash his car,” he added. More

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      Will Smith Calls Bradley Cooper ‘Beautiful’ at Film Gala

      by

      “Licorice Pizza” was the big winner at the annual National Board of Review film awards.The National Board of Review awards gala is not televised. This fact was announced onstage by its host Craig Melvin and giddily repeated by several guests.The awards gala is among the last in the run-up to this year’s Oscars and, free of television, the night has a reputation for speeches that are chummy, quite long and laced with profanity. This year’s gala, at Cipriani 42nd Street on Tuesday night, did not disappoint.“We just have a rip-roaring good time,” said Annie Schulhof, the board’s president.Alana Haim, left, and Cooper Hoffman accepted the award for breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesIlda Mason starred in “West Side Story.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesFrom left: Bradley Cooper, Zazie Beatz and Spike Lee.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe guests included film executives, producers and a smattering of big-name stars like Julianne Moore, and many in the crowd made ample use of the complimentary Bellinis offered by a phalanx of servers in white jackets. There were also three open bars, along with free-flowing wine poured during the steak and shrimp salad dinner.The speeches delivered on the promise of backslapping and swear words but — mercifully — tended toward brevity.Will Smith, who was awarded best actor for his performance in “King Richard,” took the stage around 8:15 p.m. and pointed to Bradley Cooper at a nearby table. “I can’t even concentrate, he’s so beautiful,” he said.Alana Haim also gave Mr. Cooper a shout-out when she accepted her award for best breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza,” which she shared with Cooper Hoffman. “It means so much to have Bradley Cooper give us this award because you were actually the first real actor we had ever acted with,” said Ms. Haim, who wore a sleeveless, Kelly-green gown by Marni. She also referred to the cast and crew as “family.”Questlove accepted the best documentary award for “Summer of Soul.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesChris Rock, left, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who won for best director for “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJulianne MooreRebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesMarcus Samuelsson, the chef and television personality, took the “family” trope one step further, referring to Spike Lee as “Uncle Spike” for inspiring him to become a chef. Mr. Lee wore a hat that looked like a chef’s toque when he introduced Questlove, who won best documentary for “Summer of Soul.”Ilda Mason, who wore a white Naeem Khan gown adorned with beaded flowers, accepted the best actress award on behalf of her “West Side Story” castmate Rachel Zegler (she was shooting on location for “Snow White”). Ms. Mason’s voice cracked with emotion when she read her friend’s thank you message from her phone.As the ceremony drew to a close around 9:30, Chris Rock presented Paul Thomas Anderson with the award for best director for “Licorice Pizza,” the night’s big winner. He bemoaned the National Review Board for being “so cheap they don’t have a prompter.” “I’m coming here for Paul Thomas Anderson, a person who has never cast me in anything,” he said, using stronger language. “Not even to wash his car,” he added. More