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      ‘Pedro Páramo’ Review: A Ghost Story Lacking in Spirit

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      In this grave adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s surreal novel, the living pray for salvation and the dead murmur regrets, but the filmmaking is oddly orthodox.The Mexican writer Juan Rulfo’s mystifying 1955 novel “Pedro Páramo” is, at least in the English-speaking world, most often invoked for its influence on Gabriel García Márquez. But admirers of the book (Susan Sontag famously among them) have long cited it as a masterpiece of spare surrealism.It is odd, then, that Netflix’s new adaptation, directed by the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, is a rather orthodox work. Where this rich, metaphysical text might have come alive in dreamlike abstraction, Prieto and his screenwriter, Mateo Gil, instead content themselves with a prestige Western on terra firma — grave, good-looking and uninspiring.The story opens as Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), our narrator, treks to the vale hamlet of Comala in search of its cacique, Pedro Páramo (Manuel García-Rulfo). He arrives to find Pedro dead and the village deserted, save for murmuring specters. From there, the movie becomes nonlinear, restlessly flitting around in time to chronicle how decades of yearning, anguish and the Páramo family’s sins eroded Comala’s spirit. What emerges is a lugubrious and at times frightening ghost saga in which the living fear hell and the dead bemoan past injustices.Yet for all its sprawling, “Pedro Páramo” also has a lot of talking. There are countless scenes of Pedro giving orders; only some of his stooges doing his bidding. The women, helpless and subordinate, mostly listen, except for Dorotea (Giovanna Zacarías), doomed to die penniless and then, from the grave, assist Juan in voice-over. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but at over two hours, this visual adaptation of Rulfo’s only novel rambles without much to say.Pedro PáramoRated R for violence and visions. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi Beliefs Seen in New Film

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      Recent access to Leni Riefenstahl’s estate has prompted new discussions in Germany about her politics and a reconsideration of her photographs of the Nuba people in Sudan.Two decades after her death, the German director Leni Riefenstahl occupies an uneasy place in film history. She directed two influential movies that are still studied for their aesthetic ambitions despite being propaganda for the Third Reich: “Triumph of the Will,” a visually striking film about the Nazi party’s 1934 rally in Nuremberg, and “Olympia,” about the 1936 Berlin Olympics.After World War II, she was declared a Nazi follower, after four denazification proceedings. Later, Riefenstahl tried to recast herself as an apolitical artist. New access to the estate of the director, who died in 2003 at 101, has prompted a debate in Germany about how to manage her political legacy — and about whether her postwar rehabilitation was based on false premises.Last week, “Riefenstahl,” a documentary by the filmmaker Andres Veiel that uses recordings and letters from the estate to argue she had willfully concealed her support for Nazism, was released in German cinemas. And at a symposium in Berlin last month, researchers presented the results of a yearslong project investigating the impact of Riefenstahl’s photography of the Nuba people in Sudan.In a video interview, Veiel said that renewed scrutiny of Riefenstahl was justified by findings in her estate, which was donated in 2018 to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin and comprises 700 boxes filled with film rolls, photographs and audio recordings, among other items.Riefenstahl welcoming Adolf Hitler in her villa in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin in 1937, in a contact sheet of photos taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer.Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/BildarchivThe material “contradicts the basic perspective, her legend, that she had sold to the outside world,” he said. “Even in her old age, she believed in Nazi ideology.”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

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      For ‘Dinner in America,’ a Surprise Theatrical Run Is Dessert

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      The film became popular on TikTok two years after its quiet initial release. Now, it’s getting a second chance in movie theaters.On a recent weeknight at the IFC Center in Manhattan’s West Village, staff members corralled a 400-person crowd in and out of the doors while swarms circled the lead actors of the sold-out feature playing that night: “Dinner in America.” The film — an angsty rom-com that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 but struggled to find distribution before being self-released in 2022 — has catapulted from crickets to cult status since going viral on TikTok in the past couple of months. Seizing on a rare encore, the filmmakers have rallied fans to support a shot at the theatrical run they never had.“You don’t get second chances in this business,” the film’s writer-director Adam Carter Rehmeier told the audience during a post-screening Q&A. The surprise comeback began around September when an inexplicable bump in TikTok’s algorithm turbo-blasted the movie and its earworm original song, “Watermelon.” Soon after, the film was trending across Hulu (where it is currently streaming), Letterboxd and Google. The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Calif., was one of the first theaters to announce a screening, selling out in less than 24 hours. The nonprofit cinema said the requests for “Dinner in America” were the most they’d received for any film.The plot follows the unlikely musical and sexual chemistry between Simon (Kyle Gallner) and Patty (Emily Skeggs). He’s an on-the-lam, slick crust punk; she’s a mousy 20-year-old whose parents keep her away from strobe lights and on five different medications. She finds refuge from bullies and suburban stupor by mailing Polaroid nudes and love poems to her favorite hardcore band’s ski-masked lead singer, who, coincidentally, is Simon.Emily Skeggs with Gallner in “Dinner in America.”Best and Final ReleasingWhen “Dinner in America” was released for a limited theatrical run, as well as on demand, in 2022, The New York Times gave it a mixed review. The critic Concepción de León wrote that the movie “delivers on surprise and explosiveness, but much of its offensive language, both racist and homophobic, feels gratuitous in a film that might have otherwise landed as an offbeat love story.”But content creators have been lifting up the film. The screenwriter Nic Curcio pitched the film to his TikTok followers as the “love child of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ and Todd Solondz” after noticing the uptick beyond the usual MovieTok nerds. Those millions of viewers, he told The Times, are probably sitting alone in their rooms: “The screening elements bring this whole phenomenon full circle.” The film’s success on social media meant it wouldn’t have to wait decades to achieve an underground cachet.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

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      How ‘Blitz’ Recreates War-Torn London

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      Steve McQueen’s latest film, set in 1940 during Germany’s bombardment of the British capital, draws extensively from contemporary photos, and was shot entirely outside London.In a London train station, a young Black child clutches a suitcase with both hands. Drowning in his coat, he wears a flat cap and a stoic expression, striding toward his future as an evacuee. The photograph, taken during the eight-month-long bombardment of British cities by German forces during World War II, was one of the images that inspired Steve McQueen’s new film “Blitz,” currently in select theaters.The boy, carrying his small suitcase as he evacuated London in 1940, inspired the character of George in “Blitz.”AlamyThe film is told from the perspective of George (Elliott Heffernan), a biracial 9-year-old who is evacuated from London to the countryside as bombs descend on his hometown. Mid-journey, he escapes the train, abandoning his suitcase and weaving his way back to his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), in east London.Doing research for the film, McQueen and its production designer, Adam Stockhausen, were struck again and again by “the incongruity, and the heartbreak,” of images of life in London during the bombing, Stockhausen said in a recent interview. McQueen would see a photo of a woman sweeping out her ruined house or one of a man sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette, the home around him reduced to rubble, and build a scene around it, Stockhausen added.The film’s production design is meticulous — Stockhausen previously collaborated with McQueen on “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows” — and seen through George’s eyes, 1940s London is a sprawling labyrinth. Depicting the sweep of the city was essential to the narrative, Stockhausen said, but shooting in London would have been too difficult and expensive, and the team wanted to avoid a C.G.I. set.Adam Stockhausen, left, the film’s production designer, and Steve McQueen, the director, working on set.via AppleWe 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

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      Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on fiction and nonfiction works about space exploration that were adapted into popular films.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie versions. More

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      Stream These Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in November

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      A slew of great movies and TV shows are leaving Netflix for U.S. subscribers in November. Here’s a roundup of the best.Three inventive and engaging biopics are leaving Netflix in the United States this month, along with a scorching stage adaptation, a thrilling Tom Cruise vehicle and an animated comedy that is decidedly not for the kiddies. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Edge of Tomorrow’ (Nov. 6)Stream it here.If James Cameron remade “Groundhog Day,” it might come out looking like this fast, funny and thrilling Tom Cruise vehicle from the director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”). Cruise stars as a military public relations man with a cowardly streak who is reluctantly thrown onto the front lines, where he discovers he is trapped in a time loop: When he is killed, he jolts awake back at the beginning of his adventure, forced to keep doing it until he gets it right. Emily Blunt is dynamite as the heroic soldier who shows him the ropes (and has a fair number of laughs at his expense), while Liman orchestrates the comic and action beats with equal grace and skill.‘First Man’ (Nov. 14)Stream it here.A common thread of this month’s titles is unconventional biopics — stories about important historical figures that mostly manage to eschew the cradle-to-grave framing, on-the-nose dialogue and shallow insights of too many screen biographies. Take this portrait of Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, which is less interested in telling a broad historical story than an intensely personal one. As played by Ryan Gosling, Armstrong is a modest man, one who takes that “one giant leap” more from a sense of duty and service than from ambition or ego. It’s a character study; the character just so happens to be the first man to walk on the moon. The director Damien Chazelle, re-teaming with his “La La Land” leading man, is as aware of the biopic clichés as you are, and he smoothly sidesteps most of them to make a picture that is surprisingly urgent and emotional.‘Harriet’ (Nov. 15)Stream it here.The “Eve’s Bayou” director Kasi Lemmons directs this similarly outside-the-lines dramatization of the life of Harriet Tubman, brought to scorching life by the gifted Cynthia Erivo (on the big screen this fall in “Wicked”). The telling is fairly direct: Working from a script written with Gregory Allen Howard, Lemmons hits the biographical milestones in Tubman’s journey from slave to runaway to guide for those who wished to do the same. But Lemmons’s direction is artful and lyrical, taking its cues from the visions that Tubman said guided her, which gives the enterprise an almost otherworldly quality. Erivo’s performance is powerful and textured; she is supported by an excellent cast, including Joe Alwyn, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr. and Clarke Peters.‘Sausage Party’ (Nov. 22)Stream it here.Parents who aren’t quite paying full attention might assume that this animated feature about anthropomorphic supermarket foods is typical kiddie fare — and boy, oh boy, would they be in for a surprise. This is very much an R-rated, adults-only venture, the brainchild of the actor and filmmaker Seth Rogen and his frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg. As with their previous films “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express” and “This Is the End,” the jokes are rude and crude, and the cast is stuffed with comic stars. But the nicest surprise of “Sausage Party” is its thoughtfulness; in the end, it’s a pointed examination of conventional wisdom surrounding religion and death, which is not quite what you might expect from a film that culminates in a food orgy.‘Ali’ (Nov. 30)Stream it here.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

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      Watch a Nightclub Scene in ‘Blitz’

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      The writer and director Steve McQueen discusses a sequence set in the Café de Paris in London.The writer and director Steve McQueen narrates a sequence from his film set in London during World War II.Apple TV+ In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.The film “Blitz” primarily deals with the trials of a mother (Saoirse Ronan) and son (Elliott Heffernan) during World War II in London. But the film expands out to look at the ways the war was affecting the entire city.Narrated by the writer and director Steve McQueen, the sequence featured here doesn’t include the principal actors. It takes place in the Café de Paris, a popular nightclub in the city. The scene’s appearance in the film feels like a diversion, but that’s exactly what those inside the club are seeking.“The symbolic nature of the Café de Paris in the movie,” said McQueen in his narration, “is to show the divide between the rich and poor.”The camera glides through an audience and dancers to get to a stage with a band playing, led by Snakehips Johnson (Devon McKenzie-Smith). A spirited, and somewhat provocative, song is performed by Anita Sinclair (Celeste) that has significance because, McQueen said, it was “what was being played just before the bomb hit that club.”Read the “Blitz” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More