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      ‘The First Noelle’ Review: All I Want for Christmas Is My Ex

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      A young Black editor is set on winning back her ex-boyfriend this Christmas — even if it means breaking up his relationship.One of the mainstays of Mariah season, as devotees of Mariah Carey’s Christmas music have christened the holidays, is Christmas movies, from classic comedies to the contrived romances created by the Hallmark Channel. As many of these films teach us, part of leaning into the holiday spirit is suspending cynicism and embracing cheerfulness and cheesiness. By this measure, “The First Noelle,” directed by Patricia Cuffie-Jones for BET+, certainly fits the bill.This romantic comedy follows an ambitious young book editor named Noelle (Novi Brown) who attempts to win back her ex, Terrance (Todd Anthony), after he returns home for Christmas with a new girlfriend, coincidentally also named Noelle (LaLa Milan). (The former goes by Noe, while the latter goes by Elle.) When Noe’s boss at Ryse Publishing expresses interest in signing Elle as an author, Noe struggles to balance her plan for romance with her aspirations at work.In the world of “First Noelle,” all the authors are Black and have written best-selling work, and Noe’s boss, a Black woman, is a titan in the publishing industry. Sadly, this dynamic does not reflect the industry’s real-life demographics: According to a survey by the children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, only 5 percent of the work force is Black.But it’s hard to become immersed in this aspirational alternate reality because of the movie’s pun-filled and often unbelievable dialogue, as well as lackluster performances delivered by the lead actors. At one point Noe decides whether she wants to look like “chestnuts roasting on an open fire or mistletoe” when choosing an outfit, and several grown adults talk earnestly about writing letters to the North Pole. And some of the tropes in the film — the woman trying to steal another woman’s man, questions about whether it’s possible to “have it all” — feel outdated.Still, for those who love (or love to hate-watch) Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas movie marathon, “First Noelle” could be worth viewing.The First NoelleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on BET+. More

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      ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ Review: Mining the Diamond Myth

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      This documentary positions an intriguing investigation into the rise of synthetic diamonds within a broader excavation of the myths these stones carry.The drama-infused documentary “Nothing Lasts Forever,” directed by Jason Kohn, aspires to mine the mystique surrounding diamonds. Intermixing historical analysis with new discoveries, the film unveils that while diamonds come from the earth, they are really human inventions, for they are only as covetable as the illusions they carry.Kohn develops this idea by focusing on the production and distribution of synthetic diamonds, or diamonds grown in labs. Virtually indistinguishable from their natural forerunners, these manufactured pieces are a disruptive force in the gemstone market. If diamonds aren’t geological rarities, what are they worth?A series of reporting coups add intrigue to the investigation, as when Kohn gains access to an Indian facility that mixes natural diamonds with synthetic ones. But the interviews are this film’s most memorable achievement. In the vein of The New Yorker journalist Janet Malcolm, Kohn wisely opts to sit back and let his more dubious interview subjects hang themselves — particularly Martin Rapaport, an industry bigwig eager to bluster on about the tendency for women to conflate the price of their jewelry with their self-worth.Interestingly, Kohn sometimes intercuts Rapaport’s rants with the images that most likely sparked his misguided views: the original De Beers advertisements that popularized the concept of diamond engagement rings in the first place. That marketing campaigns are built on fallacies isn’t exactly revelatory, but in pairing his excavation of the diamond myth with new inquiries into how the industry is evolving (and how it’s stagnating), Kohn strikes on something valuable.Nothing Lasts ForeverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Warren Beatty Is Accused of Sexually Assaulting a Minor in 1973

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      In a lawsuit filed this week, the plaintiff says Mr. Beatty groomed and coerced her into sex when she was 14 and 15. The actor, who had starred in “Bonnie and Clyde,” was about 35 at the time.Warren Beatty, the famed “Bonnie and Clyde” actor and Oscar-winning director, was accused in a lawsuit this week of sexually assaulting a girl in 1973 when she was 14 and 15.The suit, filed on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that Mr. Beatty used his status as a Hollywood star to “groom, manipulate, exploit and coerce sexual contact” with a minor.The plaintiff, Kristina Charlotte Hirsch, alleges that the abuse took place over several months after she met Mr. Beatty on a film set in Los Angeles when he was about 35. Although the lawsuit does not refer to Mr. Beatty by name, it identifies the primary defendant as an actor who was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying Clyde in “Bonnie and Clyde,” as Mr. Beatty was in 1968.Representatives for Mr. Beatty, now 85, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The lawsuit was filed under a California law from 2019 that allows adults to temporarily override the statute of limitations and file claims related to sexual abuse that are decades old. The so-called look-back window for lawsuits from people older than 40 expires on Jan. 1, 2023.In the lawsuit, Ms. Hirsch describes a relationship with Mr. Beatty that began with him commenting on her looks and providing his phone number before extending invitations to his hotel room. She says he offered to help her with homework and took her on car rides.Eventually, she says, their interactions came to include “oral sex, simulated sex and finally coerced sexual intercourse.” Ms. Hirsch is suing for damages for “severe emotional, physical and psychological distress” that she says continues to this day.Ms. Hirsch’s lawyers, Michael Reck and Michael G. Finnegan, declined to comment, saying they would let the complaint speak for itself.The younger brother of the actress Shirley MacLaine, Mr. Beatty emerged as Hollywood royalty in the 1960s. His role in “Bonnie and Clyde,” which he both starred in and produced, cemented his status as a maverick filmmaker and central figure in what became known as the New Hollywood of the 1970s.The film’s graphic and morally ambivalent portrayal of the violent outlaws divided critics. Mr. Beatty went on to success as a director with the hit comedy “Heaven Can Wait” and won an Academy Award in 1982 for directing the political drama “Reds,” which he also starred in.Mr. Beatty, who became nearly as known for his relationships with famous women offscreen as for his performances, has been married to the actress Annette Bening since 1992. More

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      Steven Spielberg Gets Personal in ‘The Fabelmans’

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      Over more than 50 years, Steven Spielberg has directed movies about every subject under the sun. Sharks, dinosaurs, extraterrestrials both friendly and not, pirates, spies, soldiers and heroes both historical and imaginary. Not many filmmakers can match his range. But one subject Spielberg has avoided is himself.Until now. “The Fabelmans” is a disarmingly, at times painfully intimate movie about a family closely modeled on the Spielbergs. It’s a portrait of the auteur as a young man that also tells the story of an unraveling marriage. Sammy Fabelman, played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle, is the only son and oldest child of Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), who move from New Jersey to Arizona and then Northern California in the 1950s and ’60s. As Sammy discovers his cinematic vocation — shooting movies at home, at school and with his Boy Scout troop — he witnesses Mitzi’s deepening unhappiness and Burt’s inability to deal with it.Written with Tony Kushner, his collaborator on “Munich,” “Lincoln” and “West Side Story,” “The Fabelmans,” which opens in theaters this weekend, takes Spielberg into uncharted narrative territory. I spoke with him this month via video call about his journey into his own past, and also about the present and future state of the movies. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.“The Fabelmans” tells a story you’ve obviously lived with for a very long time. I was curious about what made it finally rise to the surface.The impetus to actually get serious about telling it on film didn’t seriously occur to me until the pandemic.When the pandemic first hit, some of my kids flew in from the East Coast, and they all took up residence in their old bedrooms and Kate [Capshaw, his wife] and I got a lot of our family back. It was very disconcerting not to go into work. Directing is a social occupation, and I’m very used to interacting with people every single day. I was not really acclimating to the Zoom world very well.I had a lot of time on my hands. I used to get in my car and drive for hours — all around Los Angeles, up Pacific Coast Highway, over to Calabasas, over near Twentynine Palms. And that gave me more time to think about what was happening in the world.I started thinking, what’s the one story I haven’t told that I’d be really mad at myself if I don’t? It was always the same answer every time: the story of my formative years growing up between 7 and 18.From left, Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Keeley Karsten, Sophia Kopera and Julia Butters as the Fabelmans, fictional versions of the Spielbergs. Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentYou’ve dealt with families before. You’ve dealt with a childhood in the suburbs before, with divorce, but never literally from your own experience. Was it hard to go there?“Close Encounters” was about a father’s voluntary separation from the family to pursue a dream at the expense of losing his family. “E.T.” was a story of a kid who needed to fill the hole that a separation had dug out of his life, and he just happened to fill it metaphorically with this little squishy guy from outer space.This story was no longer going to be about metaphor. It was going to be about lived experiences, and what was difficult was facing the fact that I might really tell the story. In theory, it was easy to talk to Tony Kushner about, would you collaborate with me in trying to arrange all these interesting disparate experiences into a movie narrative?When we started writing this — Tony in New York, me in L.A. on Zoom — it started to become real, something that was tactile and triggering in all of these memories. It did become very difficult.It’s hard to hold someone’s hand over Zoom, but Tony did a good job in giving me the kind of comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life, secrets between myself and my mother that I was never ever, ever going to talk about. Neither in a written autobiography, which I’ve never done, or on film. But we got into those tender trenches.You’ve dealt with Jewish themes and topics before, certainly in “Schindler’s List” and “Munich,” but this is the first time you’re going into a specifically Jewish American experience.I didn’t experience antisemitism growing up in Arizona, but I had a major experience with it completing high school in Northern California.Friends would always call me by my last name. So, the sound of Jewishness always rang in my ear when my friends would call across the hallway, “Hey Spielberg,” and I was very self-conscious about that.Being Jewish in America is not the same as being Jewish in Hollywood. Being Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle and immediately being accepted as I have been in that circle, by a lot of diversity but also by a lot of people who in fact are Jewish. But when I was making those little 8-millimeter movies in school, at first my friends thought it was kind of weird.It was sort of unprecedented. Nobody had cameras except a Japanese 8-millimeter camera that parents usually controlled, and they were only used for family home movies and things like that. But I was basically weaponizing my social life with a camera to curry favor with these athletic, popular kids who eventually all wanted to be in my movies.In a way, the camera was a social passport for me. I was passionate about telling stories, but I was also passionate about belonging to something that I hadn’t been invited to belong to ever before. So, making these little movies was like a magic pill in a way.His co-writer, Tony Kushner, gave the director the “comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life, secrets between myself and my mother that I was never ever, ever going to talk about.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAntisemitism is a specter in this movie that to some extent is chased away, which reflects the feeling of a lot of Jewish Americans in that time — a kind of optimism about their prospects in America. That hits a little differently in the present, when there seems to be a resurgence of antisemitism in some of its most toxic forms.Antisemitism is only coming back because it’s being encouraged to come back. It’s not coming back because it ebbs and flows over the decades, but there has been an invitation to a toxic dance based on antisemitism being part of an ideology of separation and racism and Islamophobia and xenophobia, and it’s come barreling back. A lot of people who probably never had much of an antisemitic thought but did feel toward people of color — they felt differently, let’s say, than my sisters and I were ever raised to believe or feel, and suddenly antisemitism becomes part of the package. It’s been weaponized and it’s been encouraged more and more since 2015 or ’16.I was struck by what you said about the camera as a way of belonging. For Sammy Fabelman, the camera is his way to get closer to people and to be included, but it’s also what separates him from people because he’s in the position of the observer.I’m not going to spoil plot developments for readers, but there’s a very important truth about his parents’ marriage that Sammy discovers because of what he sees through the camera. I don’t know if that’s really what happened or if it’s a metaphor for how cinema works.No. It really happened. That was one of the toughest things, I think, that I had to sit down and decide to expose, because it was the most powerful secret my mom and I shared since my discovery when I was 16. Sixteen years old is too young to realize that my parents are people, and also, the struggle not to hold that against them.I’m also struck by the way it was discovered, because one thing that I’ve always thought about you as a filmmaker is that you convey a lot of emotional and psychological information by means other than dialogue — through body language or facial expressions or the unspoken energy passing through the scene. What’s remarkable about this film is it shows you doing that by accident, or maybe instinctively.I think it was probably instinctively because as my wife always says, there are no accidents. She said, you know, you couch that in a joke, but there are no jokes.That’s very Freudian.The thing is, I was always in control of the movies I was making even as a 12-year-old kid. I was in control of all my films until this moment where I discovered I had no control over the information that was pulverizing for a 16-year-old kid. It’s something I’ll never forget, and it’s something my mom and I talked about for decades afterward.Do you think that made you want to reassert control over what you were doing, over the stories, over the images?Exactly. And maybe even make those images happy and friendly. I’ve not been in therapy. I went to my father’s psychiatrist to try to get a letter that I was crazy, so I wouldn’t have to fight in Vietnam. That was the only time I ever went to an analyst. By the way, it turned out he was very pro-Vietnam and would never write me the letter, and I wasted two months, three days a week, while I was going to college.So movies, and my relationship with Kate and my kids and my closest friends and with the stories I choose to tell, that has probably been as therapeutic as anything I could have done in Freudian or Jungian therapy.Was it different to be working with actors who are playing people very close to you and a version of you?I’m trying to phrase this in a way that will make sense to you. When I tried to cast “The Fabelmans” like every other movie — with the best actors I could find that fit the role — I realized that wasn’t going to work, that there was going to have to be more about the familiar and less about the accomplished. Meaning, I was looking for great actors, but I needed actors that had already, in other films, struck me as similes for my mom and dad, and obviously, with less objectivity, struck me as similar to myself. As much as we can ever judge ourselves to really go out and find somebody like us.So it became much, much harder, and I needed to know them in a different way. I needed to already have felt, oh, something about her reminds me of Mom and there’s something about him that reminds me of Dad. So, that limited the playing field. I considered a lot of actors, but my eventual choice came down to actors that were great like Paul Dano and Michelle Williams. Two of the finest actors I’ve ever worked with.After more than 50 years, this is the director’s most personal film yet. Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWere there particular performances of Paul’s and Michelle’s that struck you?My favorite performance up to that point of Michelle Williams was “Blue Valentine,” but the most forthright performance, more different than anything she ever done before, was when she played Gwen Verdon in “Fosse/Verdon.” I realized, Oh my God, she can really step far away from everything I’ve ever seen her do to completely reinvent herself through a character, and that gave me tremendous encouragement.There’s also the fact that Mitzi herself is a performer, a musician and dancer, and that part of her personality is very important and poignant in the film.She was a performing artist, but she was also, as a mother, a performing artist of a mother. Just to give you a little insight: She was so much more peer than parent that my three sisters even from a very young age refused to call her Mom or Mommy and only called her Lee, her first name. I’m the only one that called her Mom or Mama. And that’s because she wanted to be part of the gang and wasn’t necessarily interested in being the truant officer of the family or the responsible caregiver. She wanted us to look at her like one of us.That I think comes through in the movie and there is also just the temperamental contrast between Mitzi and Burt. The movie is partly about their discovery and their son’s discovery that they’re fundamentally mismatched.My dad, like me, couldn’t sing on key, but he loved classical music and he appreciated her artistry as a pianist and a classical music lover. Their mutual love was classical music.I remember being dragged to [Philadelphia Orchestra] concerts. I didn’t understand classical music as a kid. It was scary. It was intimidating, and it was way too loud. My mom and dad were in heaven sitting together with me in the middle. Often they would hold hands across my lap, and Mom and Dad would get tears in their eyes, but that’s where it stopped. My dad’s side of the brain beyond that was science. My mom’s side of the brain beyond that was performing art.This is a movie about movies and also a movie about the history of movies: it begins with Cecil B. DeMille and ends with John Ford. The way I read that, because I’m a film critic, is that you’re tracing the tradition of moviemaking that you’re a part of.I see the showman in myself that was C.B. DeMille, but I’ve always loved John Ford’s compositions. I’ve both studied and been very aware of his compositions. Ford was a hero of mine, and I got such great instruction from him, which he sort of made more of a bollocking than anything else. But I didn’t come out of that saying, Oh my God, he scared me to death. I came out of that so inspired.I was only about 16 when I met him, and I didn’t know anything about his reputation, how surly and ornery he was and how he ate young studio executives for breakfast. That only came later when people began writing more about him. I felt I really escaped that office with my life.I was watching that and thinking a lot about the current uncertain state of movies and that experience of being overwhelmed by something on the big screen — that’s the primal moment in this movie and may not be something that future generations will have.Yes, but there’s been stages throughout history where we’ve seen how Hollywood has countered the impact of losing a great market share of the audience to TV. In the early ’50s they invented CinemaScope and then 3-D [became popular].They had something on NBC called “Saturday Night at the Movies” [beginning in 1961] and you didn’t have to go out to a movie on Saturday night. You could stay home and watch television because NBC was designing films especially for audiences that didn’t want to leave the house. This is nothing new.The pandemic created an opportunity for streaming platforms to raise their subscriptions to record-breaking levels and also throw some of my best filmmaker friends under the bus as their movies were unceremoniously not given theatrical releases. They were paid off and the films were suddenly relegated to, in this case, HBO Max. The case I’m talking about. And then everything started to change.I think older audiences were relieved that they didn’t have to step on sticky popcorn. But I really believe those same older audiences, once they got into the theater, the magic of being in a social situation with a bunch of strangers is a tonic.Those audiences, I believe, left the theater if the movie was good and said aren’t you glad we went out tonight to see this picture? So, it’s up to the movies to be good enough to get all the audiences to say that to each other when the lights come back up.Spielberg would like to see streaming services give movies a longer theatrical run. That said, if he were making “The Post” today, he’d consider Apple or Netflix just so he could reach more viewers.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesI wonder about what kinds of movies people will go out to see vs. what they prefer to stay home to watch and how the industry in whatever shape it’s in figures that out.The industry is trying to figure that out right now. I found it encouraging that “Elvis” broke $100 million at the domestic box office. A lot of older people went to see that film, and that gave me hope that people were starting to come back to the movies as the pandemic becomes an endemic. I think movies are going to come back. I really do.Certainly, there’s no question that the big sequels and movies from Marvel and DC and Pixar and some of the animated movies and horror films still have a place in society. And hopefully comedies come back, because you can’t laugh as hard at home as you can in an audience.I don’t watch a lot of my movies with audiences, but my wife said you have to watch “The Fabelmans” at Toronto. We can sit in the back row, but you have to watch once, and it was a great experience. I was terrified, but the movie plays to a big audience of 2,000 people, and in the funny parts, it played like a big comedy.I think there has to be a concerted effort on the part of movie directors to demand that the streaming services footing the bill for most of these films give their movies a chance to be exhibited theatrically and not just in four theaters to qualify for awards. It’s going to have to come from all of us — the WGA [the Writers Guild], the DGA [the Directors Guild] and eventually the academy.When you’re first starting out, and a streaming service gives you a chance to direct your first movie, of course the streaming service is going to call the shot, but I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t like their movies to be shown on a big screen. I don’t know anyone that would say, no, I’d rather it be shown on an iPad or in a living room.Certain movies are perfectly suitable to the iPad or the living room. So the decision that executives and executives like myself at Amblin Partners have to make is: Do we consign this movie to a streaming service or this other movie to a four- or six-week theatrical window? Those are decisions that I am making based on my other job, which is running a small film company.That sounds like something fairly new, given especially that theatrical seems to be, and already was, I think, before the pandemic, dominated by franchises, tentpoles, by the movies that exhibitors know will make money for them. It just seems a narrower slot to get these kinds of non-I.P. movies into theaters.Yeah. We don’t want these chains to file Chapter 11. We want theaters to stay open. By the same token, and speaking very honestly, I made “The Post” [about the Pentagon Papers] as a political statement about our times by reflecting the Nixon administration, and we thought that was an important reflection for a lot of people to understand what was happening to our country.I don’t know if I had been given that script post-pandemic whether I would have preferred to have made that film for Apple or Netflix and gone out to millions of people. Because the film had something to say to millions of people, and we were never going to get those millions of people into enough theaters to make that kind of difference. Things have changed enough to get me to say that to you.A number of films that I think were wonderful works of cinema seem to have their moment and then vanish into the algorithm.We started amassing libraries [of films on home video] the same way we would amass LPs as I did as a kid. My film collection vastly outnumbered my LP collection.But today, it’s all in the cloud, and we don’t have the shelf space anymore to put our beloved movies as part of the cultural heritage that inspired us to become better people, to find values that movies can communicate often faster than your parents can. What I miss is the hard copy. I miss the antiquity that I can hold in my hand and put into a player, but I’m an old-fashioned guy.I’m 75 years old. I know what it’s like to possess something that I adored. I know what it’s like to possess the LP of [the score for] “Lawrence of Arabia” and then years later to have the actual DVD of it. I treasure that. More

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      Leslie Phillips, Comic Actor Who Sorted Wizards, Dies at 98

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      He made a name for himself in British satires, then late in his career reached a different audience as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter movies.Leslie Phillips, a British actor who in a career that began before World War II played numerous comic roles, then reached new generations of filmgoers when he provided the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 98.His agent, Jonathan Lloyd, confirmed the death.Mr. Phillips began acting as a teenager, supporting his family after his father died in his 40s. His fledgling career was interrupted by military service at the end of World War II, but in the mid-1940s he resumed it, although at first mostly in “the murkiest, rat-infested old playhouses and music halls in the North of England,” as he put it in his autobiography, “Hello” (2006).He eventually began to have success on radio, most notably on the long-running comedy show “The Navy Lark,” and he went from bit roles in films and on television to larger ones. He drew good notices for his performance in the Gene Kelly film “Les Girls” in 1957.Mr. Phillips, right, drew good reviews for his performance in the 1957 movie “Les Girls” with, from left, Jacques Bergerac and Gene Kelly.via Everett CollectionWhen he returned to England from Hollywood after that film, he told The Daily Telegraph in 2010, “I had a whole load of scripts to choose from.”“I went against my agent and said I’d do ‘Carry On Nurse,’” he added — an early entry in what became a series of popular, quickly made film comedies that over the next decades satirized the military, the medical profession, British history and even the soft-core “Emmanuelle” movies.Mr. Phillips also appeared in “Carry On Teacher” (1959) and “Carry On Constable” (1960), but he wasn’t really part of the ensemble of actors who were the core of those movies. Years later, though, in 2010, he was the presenter for “Carry On Forever!,” a BBC Radio 2 look back at the franchise.He turned up in another satirical film series, in “Doctor in Love,” in 1960 and “Doctor in Trouble” in 1970. By 1978, The Evening Post of Reading could say that Mr. Phillips “has been one of Britain’s best known and loved actors for more than 40 years,” and his career was barely half over.He worked regularly in British television after that, including recurring roles on “Chancer,” “The House of Windsor” and other series in the 1990s. He continued to appear in film comedies but also turned up in dramas, including “Out of Africa” (1985) and “The Jackal” (1997).Mr. Phillips worked on the stage as well, and though he was known for comedic catchphrases — his distinctive delivery of “Well, hello!” and “Ding dong!” were famous from the movies — he sometimes felt compelled to point out that he had a wider range.“I’ve done all the classics,” he said in the 2010 interview. “I’ve been to Stratford.”He certainly put serious actorly thought into what may have been the performance experienced by more filmgoers than any of his others: his voice work as the Sorting Hat, the all-knowing headwear that sorted new students at the Hogwarts wizarding school into their houses in the Harry Potter films, which began in 2001 with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” directed by Chris Columbus.“I worked only with the director and was given a great deal of time to get the voice right,” he told the NewsQuest Media Group in 2002. “It is quite a moment in the movie, it was a very important role to get right.”He reprised the role in several of the sequels.Leslie Samuel Phillips was born on April 20, 1924, in the Tottenham area of London to Fred and Cecilia Phillips.“I grew up surrounded by illness,” he told The Daily Mail of London in 1999, and his father, who worked for the gas board, died when Leslie was young. His mother, hoping the boy could generate some income, sent him to a stage school, and by age 14 he was going on national tours.“Always people in the cast became my uncles and aunts,” he said. “I learned a lot. They encouraged me to read and taught me all the things I hadn’t done at home or school. It was as much an education as a job.”After the war he married Penelope Bartley, an actress, and they had four children before divorcing in 1965. She later died in a fire. His second wife, Angela Scoular, also an actress, died by suicide in 2011. His survivors include his third wife, Zara Carr.In the mid-1980s Mr. Phillips’s 92-year-old mother was left seriously injured in a mugging; he said the attackers had beat her unconscious because she wouldn’t give up her handbag, which contained some family mementos. She died after several months in the hospital.“It was the biggest tragedy of my life,” he told The Daily Mail in 1993. “Horrific. I used to go into hospital to visit her and then go walking round the streets, looking for a boy wearing the yellow sweatshirt she’d described to the police.”If his personal life was full of dark episodes, his career continued to give him satisfaction.“I seem to have a very overall appeal,” he said in 2002, the year after he had been in both the first Harry Potter movie and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” another movie aimed at a youthful audience. “I get the most wonderful letters from elderly people who follow my career, and then I get an enormous amount of letters from young people.” More

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      ‘Incredible but True’ Review: Track to the Future

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      A suburban couple makes a life-altering discovery in the basement of their new home in this delightfully odd comedy.However you respond to the wacky oeuvre of the French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, its loopy originality is cheering. Through a string of out-there movies featuring killer tires, monstrous insects and cursed outerwear, he has remained committed to exposing the sadness behind much of human silliness. Whatever his subject, it’s never solely about the goof.He has also typically been blessed with actors skilled at selling dotty setups with deadpan ease. In “Incredible but True,” he has the stellar support of Alain Chabat and Léa Drucker (currently starring in the marvelous Epix series “War of the Worlds”), who play Alain and Marie, a fondly becalmed couple who impulsively purchase a suburban home. On the urging of their excitable real estate agent (Stéphane Pezerat), the couple investigates a trapdoor in the basement which conceals a strange tunnel. Where — and to when — the tunnel leads will upend their lives and rearrange their destinies.Coming in at a tight and talky 74 minutes, “Incredible but True” is a sweetly absurd time-travel comedy that coats its lunacy in a touching poignancy. While Alain, as unwavering as his puff of silvery hair, manages a stressful work client and the hypermasculine posturing of his boastful boss, Gérard (Benoît Magimel), Marie becomes dismayingly obsessed with the tunnel’s wonders. Her bizarre behavior — like the droll adventures of Gérard’s recently installed, Bluetooth-enabled electronic penis — has a desperate quality: In this movie, the diminutions of aging are rarely out of mind.For Alain, though, happiness means simply surviving middle age without the assistance of a temporal blip or an iPenis. Even one with three speeds.Incredible but TrueNot rated. In French and Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 14 minutes. Watch on Arrow. More

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      Mahler’s Having a Moment. He’s Got Lydia Tár to Thank for It.

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      The Austrian composer’s Symphony No. 5 is the obsession of the conductor played by Cate Blanchett — and of the fans of her latest film.For a 70-minute Austrian symphony first performed more than a century ago, Mahler’s Fifth makes a surprisingly strong case for itself as the song of the season.No, Gustav Mahler didn’t occupy the top 10 spots in the Billboard Hot 100, as Taylor Swift did last week, and the piece’s lush fourth movement has yet to be co-opted by the TikTok crowd. But the symphony, which plays a central role in the new Cate Blanchett drama, “Tár,” seems to have a way of sticking with audiences long after they’ve left the theater, finding its way onto the strolling, cleaning and cooking playlists of listeners who might otherwise be more inclined toward Adele, OneRepublic or Beyoncé.Enjoying a brisk autumn day walking around Manhattan listening to Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. I’ve been TÁR-pilled.— jeff becomes her 🔮 (@jheimbrock) October 19, 2022
      Dalton Glass, a tech worker in Lakeland, Fla., is not a total stranger to classical music: He listened to a lot of it as a child, and as an adult, he hears at least a bit whenever he has an incoming call. (His ringtone of several years is a snatch of Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”) Still, he has some blind spots.“I’d never heard Mahler before in my life until that movie,” said Mr. Glass, 30. Now, he said, the piece is in regular rotation.Cate Blanchett as the fictional conductor Lydia Tár on the cover of a new soundtrack album.Deutsche GrammophonThe model for the “Tár” soundtrack cover is a 1993 release featuring Claudio Abbado.Deutsche GrammophonMr. Glass’s fascination with the film — he and a friend talked about it for the entire hourlong drive home from Tampa, where he caught the first of the two screenings he has seen to date — echoes the fixation of the imperious heroine brought to life by Ms. Blanchett.‘Tár’: A Timely Backstage DramaCate Blanchett plays a world-famous conductor who is embroiled in a #MeToo drama in the latest film by the director Todd Field.Review: “We don’t care about Lydia Tár because she’s an artist; we care about her because she’s art,” our critic writes about the film’s protagonist.An Elusive Subject: Blanchett has stayed one step ahead of audiences by constantly staying in motion. In “Tár,” she is as inscrutable as ever.Back Into the Limelight: The film marks Field’s return to directing, 16 years after “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children” made waves.Learning to Act: Sophie Kauer, a cellist in real life and in the film, had zero acting experience when she auditioned. She learned the craft from Blanchett, and from Michael Caine videos.In “Tár,” Mahler’s Fifth is something of a white whale for the celebrated (fictional) maestro Lydia Tár, the only Mahler symphony she has yet to record with a major orchestra in order to complete what audiences are told is a kind of Grand Slam of conducting. Throughout the film’s two and a half hours, she pursues the live recording with single-minded intensity, even as her professional and personal lives begin to unravel amid the fallout from her abuses of the power of the podium.Gage Tarlton, a 24-year-old playwright who lives in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, saw the movie in large part because he is a huge fan of Cate Blanchett. “I’ve loved Cate Blanchett for a really long time,” he said. “If Cate Blanchett is in a movie, I’m going to see it.”Although many of Mr. Tarlton’s feelings about the film are proving to be a slow burn — he said he “docked half a star” from his initial appraisal of the movie on Letterboxd after taking some time to puzzle out the story’s lingering questions and ambiguities — he didn’t waste any time adding some Mahler to his life.“I looked it up as soon as I got home,” he said.Others seem to have had the same idea. In October, streams of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 on Apple Music were up 150 percent from the previous month, according to data provided by the platform. Compared with the same month last year, they had more than tripled.Of the many recordings of the symphony available for streaming, Mr. Tarlton’s go-to is a 1993 Deutsche Grammophon album featuring the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Claudio Abbado. In the movie, Ms. Blanchett’s Tár uses that album’s cover image, a photograph of Abbado marking up a score while seated in a concert hall, as a model for her own Deutsche Grammophon photo shoot.“I actually tried a couple different ones, and that is the one that I like the most,” Mr. Tarlton said.A deliciously — or perhaps deliriously — meta concept album issued by Deutsche Grammophon shows Ms. Blanchett in a similar pose. It features audio excerpts from the film, original compositions by the Oscar-winning composer Hildur Gudnadottir and Ms. Blanchett plunking out “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”So when the soundtrack slipped the notice of even some dedicated fans of the movie, it was very possibly a function of timing: It came out on Oct. 21, the very same day as a certain blockbuster album whose first-week sales obliterated expectations of what was possible in the streaming era.The entry of Mahler’s Fifth into pop culture echoes the resurgences of works by Beethoven and Pachelbel in the 1970s and 1980s.Photo illustration by Kyle Berger for The New York Times“I listened to Taylor’s album probably at 5 a.m. the day after it came out,” said Millie Sloan, 47, referring to Ms. Swift’s album “Midnights.” Ms. Sloan, an account manager at her family’s construction company in Atlanta, said she was not aware of the “Tár” tie-in album. She said on Twitter that she had been listening exclusively to Mahler and “Midnights” for a week — though not on the same playlist. (“It’s a different listen,” she explained.)Ms. Sloan maintains a playlist of instrumental music that she encounters in the wild on TV and in movies, so the symphony had an obvious home in her Spotify account. What was less clear was where it would fit into her life.“I did put it on while I was cooking dinner the other day,” she said. But after gamely trying to soldier through the meal, she and her husband ultimately found the piece “a little too exuberant for a dinnertime listen.” She now listens to it mostly while walking and doing chores.The symphony (full title: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor) is regarded as one of Mahler’s greatest achievements. First performed in Cologne, Germany, in October 1904, the piece was once described by a New York Times critic as “the first of Mahler’s orchestral works in which the ensemble seems to embody a single mind: a churning, reflective and obsessive being. It is, to be sure, a neurotic mind, full of mercurial and unpredictable reactions.”It is far from the first classical composition to enjoy a moment of sudden pop cultural relevance. Particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, plum placements in popular films thrust masterworks into the mainstream. Among those to get a boost from Hollywood: Pachelbel’s Canon (“Ordinary People”), Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” (“Apocalypse Now”) and Beethoven’s Fifth, a cheekily reconfigured version of which — “A Fifth of Beethoven,” anyone? — figured in the disco-era bible that is the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.Mahler’s Fifth does seem to have achieved an unusual distinction: featuring prominently in two New York Film Festival darlings that opened in American movie theaters last month. In addition to its star turn in “Tár,” there is “Decision to Leave,” a fast-paced detective thriller by the South Korean director Park Chan-wook that makes defiant use of the symphony’s fourth movement. More

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      Jovan Adepo and Thundercat on Jazz, Superheroes and Ego Death

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      Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the “Watchmen” actor and the musician.The anime-loving singer and jazz-trained bassist known as Thundercat occupies such a specific place in popular music, it’s easy to forget how ubiquitous he is: Apart from his own funk- and jazz-inflected R&B releases, the 38-year-old artist (born Stephen Bruner in Los Angeles) has collaborated over the years with everyone from Erykah Badu to Kendrick Lamar to the California crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies.The 34-year-old actor Jovan Adepo, born in England but raised mostly in Maryland, is also approaching his own left-of-mainstream breakout: He first gained notice in the 2016 film version of August Wilson’s “Fences” (1986), acting opposite Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, the latter of whom directed the movie and became something of a mentor. After appearing in HBO’s “Watchmen” in 2019 as the masked vigilante Hooded Justice, Adepo will next be seen in the director Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” (out Christmas Day), in which he plays the fictional jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer in a historical epic set in 1920s Hollywood, as it transitioned from silent films to talkies.Having just played a trumpeter — he first tried his hand at the instrument in middle school — Adepo’s been thinking a lot about musicians he admires, and Thundercat topped the list: Both have tattoos honoring the goofy 1980s cartoon that inspired the latter’s mononym, and they also have overlapping interests in jazz, superheroes and the power of faith in making art, all of which informed a conversation in October at a studio in Los Angeles, in the middle of the city they also share.Jovan Adepo: Thundercat, we’ve actually met before — we have a mutual friend, and you were playing in England and I came to see you, but we missed the set because my friend and I stopped for food.Thundercat: You can’t ever let him live that down.J.A.: We stayed and watched the rest of the show: The Red Hot Chili Peppers were performing, and then I had a couple of drinks and was like, “I may never meet this dude, so I’m going to say what’s up.” My dad told me, “Be cool about it. You’re a grown man. Shake his hand.” That’s exactly what I hope I did, but I was mad awkward.T.: I remember it, it’s cool. You should always say something, always give the person their flowers while they’re alive. But I’ve definitely been cussed out a couple of times for trying to say hi: once with Drake’s security team — nobody has put hands on me like that other than my dad.T Magazine: Does being in the business and knowing how it works make it harder to form close relationships with other artists?T.: You attract what you are, but Los Angeles is the epitome of turned-on-its-head: Whatever you thought, it can change at the drop of a hat. You can go from being poor to the richest man in the world. Your life can end within five minutes of you touching a substance. You meet a lot of fake people — a lot of people who can’t wait to project and let you know who they think they are. But when the real ones come around, it’s timeless.Adepo as Sidney Palmer in “Babylon” (2022), directed by Damien Chazelle.Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesT Magazine: Jovan, when did you start following Thundercat’s work?J.A.: I first got introduced to his music in college — I was obsessed. And then I got this tattoo [inspired by the 1985-89 “ThunderCats” cartoon] in 2020. Mine was a gift from a tattoo artist in Los Angeles after my Emmy nomination [for “Watchmen”].I grew up with music: My dad was big on jazz, and that’s partly why I wanted this part in “Babylon.” One of my favorite songs is John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman’s “Lush Life” (1963). It’s incredibly depressing, but a beautiful song. I have it on vinyl, and that’s played in my house all the time.T Magazine: Thundercat, you were in a jazz band in high school. What’s your relationship to the genre now?T.: For me, it’s about composing and writing. The act of improvisation, it’s built into my DNA. That’s the only way I can describe it. Jazz can be a shade or hue of something — and it’s important to always express the jazz in the music, because that’s not only our history [as Black people and Americans] but it also represents the want for something different, the stab in different directions.But it’s always in relation to what’s going on in pop culture at the time. Everyone loves what Kendrick did [with 2015’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” to which Thundercat contributed]. That’s one of the highest points of jazz music, but it always takes something new to remind people what jazz is.T Magazine: It goes back to the fundamentals. Jovan, how did you develop yours with acting?J.A.: I was playing football in college, but I was trash. If you ever have a dream of going pro, you’re sometimes the last to realize if that’s not an attainable goal. I was also doing church plays, and there was a lady who came up to me and said, “You’re so good. You should get into acting. I have a sister in Los Angeles who’s doing her thing.” Fast-forward, I decide I want to come out to L.A. just to write screenplays, and her sister was Viola Davis. That’s how I met her, in 2013, and she told me, “You need to study everything. You didn’t go to Juilliard. So you need to go to every acting class. And if there’s anything that you can do better, make a living doing that.”My first job was “The Leftovers” [from 2015-17]. That was with no résumé, but the creator of the show, Damon Lindelof, saw my audition and was like, “That guy.” He took me out of Inglewood, working at Sunglass Hut.T.: Being a musician is also its own terror — there was never a point in my life where I wasn’t one, but there were a couple of summers that I worked at the comic store.J.A.: Being discovered doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a collection of small happenings. When I met with Viola and her husband [Julius Tennon], it wasn’t like, “We’re gonna put you in our next gig.” It was like, Get to work. And maybe we’ll run into each other in line.T.: In the great words of Floyd Mayweather: “Hard work.”J.A.: Heart first.T.: For me, I look at my albums more like snapshots or photos of where I am. I don’t like talking about this, but I spent many years as an alcoholic. There were different degrees, but it was very cloudy for me for a long time. Even with the album “Drunk” (2017), there came a moment where I had to be honest with myself about what that was. It served a purpose. If I was still dealing with those things, I would probably be dead.T Magazine: How do you get around your ego when first collaborating with folks like Washington and Lamar, and still make great art?J.A.: My ego was nonexistent.T.: Ego death is a real thing.J.A.: It behooves you to come in with your palms open and be able to learn. And that’s served me well. I’ve always been good at confiding in older actors, and I just like hanging around older people better. They make fun of you: Denzel called me “peanut head.”T.: I toured with Erykah Badu for many years, recording on the [2000s “New Amerykah”] albums. Once, we were in prayer before going onstage. And she had this moment where she was like [to the rest of the band], “I don’t know if any of y’all knew, Thundercat is an artist. I just want you to understand he’s different.” She used to put me right up front with her and we would dance. That woman changed my life. She showed me what it means to be an artist.T Magazine: You both have a deep fondness for comics. There’s an argument that, in a more secular world, superheroes act as our gods. Do you think of them like that?J.A.: That’s a hard question to answer —T.: Superheroes have attributes that are otherworldly for sure. Art is meant to inspire, and you’ve got different generations when it comes to comics: “Superman” was [originally] important [in the 1930s] because it made kids’ minds wander. A lot of times — even when you read things like the Bible — you hear these stories, but you’re wanting to touch and feel them. Comics create a tangibility.This is not me saying God is or isn’t real. I grew up Christian. You get different versions and different iterations, but those connections create respect at a young age. It stays with you.J.A.: That’s also my upbringing. My mom was a missionary in our church, and my dad is a deacon. They would always call when I was going in for little roles and I’d say, “I don’t know why I’m an actor, I’m not that great,” to which they responded, “When was the last time you prayed?” That question makes you feel awkward, like, you know you’re gonna lie. But then they’re always like, “I’m praying for you, a lot of hands are praying for you.” You gotta have something like that to keep you centered.T.: Oh, yeah. This world will kill you.T Magazine: How do you define success?J.A.: It’s funny because I feel like a lot of actors, when they get questions like that, say that they do this solely for the art. But if that were the consensus for all actors, we could just do monologues in our basement, you know? I want people to see me.T.: It’s multifaceted.J.A.: You want to be able to vibe with your music, but then you also want to be able to feed your family and see the fruits of your labor. But I think, for me, it just starts with wanting to be remembered.This interview has been edited and condensed.Grooming: Simone at Exclusive Artists Management. Photo assistant: Jerald Flowers More