Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Will Smith Says He Is ‘Deeply Remorseful’ Over Chris Rock Slap

      by

      In an apologetic video, Mr. Smith addressed questions over his behavior at the Oscars, which resulted in a 10-year ban from the ceremony.Four months after slapping the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, shocking audiences and prompting a decade-long ban from attending the ceremony, Will Smith posted a video on Friday expressing regret over the incident and promising that he was doing “personal work” to address his behavior.“It hurts me psychologically and emotionally to know I didn’t live up to people’s image and impression of me,” Mr. Smith said in the video. “I am deeply remorseful, and I’m trying to be remorseful without being ashamed of myself, right? I’m human, and I made a mistake.”Mr. Smith, who resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences days after the ceremony, apologized to numerous people during the nearly six-minute video — starting with Mr. Rock, who had made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head shortly before Mr. Smith walked up and slapped him on live television. (Ms. Pinkett Smith has been open about her struggles with alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss, and in a statement shortly after the incident, Mr. Smith said a joke about his wife’s medical condition was “too much for me to bear.”)“Chris, I apologize to you,” Mr. Smith said in the video. “My behavior was unacceptable, and I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk.”Shortly after the attack, Mr. Smith won the Oscar for best actor. In the video, he explained that he had failed to apologize to Mr. Rock during his speech because he was “fogged out” following the incident.Mr. Smith said he had tried to contact Mr. Rock later on but had received a message in response that the comedian was not ready to talk and would reach out when he was. Mr. Smith apologized to Mr. Rock’s family, including his mother, Rosalie Rock, who gave a television interview saying, “When you hurt my child, you hurt me.”He also apologized to his own family “for the heat that I brought on all of us,” as well as the other nominees that night for having tarnished their moment.Ms. Pinkett Smith has said little about her own experience of that night, but last month she centered an episode of her online talk show, Red Table Talk, on alopecia, interviewing a woman whose 12-year-old daughter died by suicide as a result of bullying over the condition.Regarding the slap, Ms. Pinkett Smith said: “My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile.”Mr. Rock has not publicly discussed his response to the attack in depth, but earlier this week, at a comedy show in Brooklyn, Mr. Rock mentioned it in a joke. During a portion of his set that was focused on victimhood, he told the crowd that after Mr. Smith slapped him, he shook it off and “went to work the next day,” prompting sustained applause from the audience. A representative for Mr. Rock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In Friday’s video, Mr. Smith seemed to be working to repair his reputation and reassure fans that his behavior at the ceremony did not reflect who he truly is, saying, “There is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave in that moment.”“I know it was shocking, but I promise you, I am deeply devoted and committed to putting light and love and joy into the world,” he concluded. “If you hang on, I promise we’ll be able to be friends again.”Melena Ryzik and Jason Zinoman contributed reporting. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Purple Hearts’ Review: A Marriage of Convenience

      by

      Netflix’s romantic drama, featuring the Disney-minted star Sofia Carson, follows a Marine and a musician who wed out of financial desperation.The romantic Netflix drama “Purple Hearts” tries to wring a heartfelt story from an arrangement that can’t help but feel absurd.Based on the novel by Tess Wakefield, the film depicts the fraudulent military marriage between Cassie (Sofia Carson), a singer-songwriter and Type 1 diabetic, and Luke (Nicholas Galitzine), a former addict who’s attempting to win back his father’s approval by joining the Marines. While they both initially seek the benefits of marriage out of financial desperation, the couple’s dynamic changes when Luke is injured in combat, forcing Cassie into the role of unwilling caretaker.“Purple Hearts” had the potential to be a poignant melodrama — or maybe a sharp satire — about the options available to those left behind by the U.S. health care system. Instead, the film wallows in contrived plots and subplots, made worse by the dearth of chemistry between the two leads. By the time Luke violently confronts his former dealer in a parking garage in what resembles a deleted “Euphoria” scene, you wonder how much of the movie was dictated by Netflix’s content algorithm.The film frames itself as a star turn for Carson, whose character’s ascendance from dive bar performances to opening for Florence + the Machine at the Hollywood Bowl resembles Carson’s own recent rise to fame through the Disney Channel ranks. But the music, just like the marriage, rings hollow.Purple HeartsNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Not Okay’ Review: Posting Through It

      by

      In this social media satire, a young woman desperate to find her purpose executes a heinous hoax.In our era of branding and ubiquitous social media, where posts masquerade as life stories and mere traits become entire identities, it can feel inadequate — even impossible — to just be yourself. That’s how Danni Sanders, the ditsy antiheroine played by Zoey Deutch in “Not Okay,” becomes the most hated person on the internet. She can’t be just an upper-class 20-something living in “J train Bushwick,” so she pretends to be a survivor of a terrorist attack. As satires go, this one by the writer and director Quinn Shephard is hardly subtle — but though it lacks narrative finesse, “Not Okay” is brimming with provocative in-jokes for the extremely online.As the film opens, YouTube drama channels explain Danni’s deception, and several real-life influencers eviscerate her. Reece Feldman (or @guywithamoviecamera, to his more than 800,000 TikTok followers) both appears in the film and is credited as its “social media consultant.” Notably, Caroline Calloway, the messy influencer who rose to online infamy for bungling a self-run workshop series, is a recurring reference. Danni watches her makeup tutorials and reads articles about her on the subway. Calloway eventually makes a cameo in the film playing herself.“Not Okay” stabs at the adverse effects of social media on our psyches and mostly succeeds at making Danni more than just “a privileged white girl who thinks she’s the main character,” as a woman played by Shephard calls her. But the film is ultimately more content to luxuriate in the toxic sludge of internet culture than it is to try and clean it up. Giving Calloway the spotlight is a prime example. Like Danni, Calloway essentially rose to prominence for behaving erratically in public. “Not Okay” may sympathize with its protagonist’s mental health struggles, but it also leeches its clout from real, pitiable people.Not OkayRated R for sex, lies and a weed vape. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      An Avant-Garde Film That Went for Laughs Instead of Scandal

      by

      Nothing controversial: Adolfas Mekas’s “Hallelujah the Hills,” from 1963, is romantic slapstick, with two guys competing for the same young woman.The early 1960s was the golden age of underground movies. Some, like Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures,” provoked scandals. Others were too explicit to be written about (see Barbara Rubin’s “Christmas on Earth”). At least one was a commercial success: Adolfas Mekas’s “Hallelujah the Hills.”“A wild spoof on art movies by a new American director scored a surprise success Saturday at the New York Film Festival,” Eugene Archer reported in the New York Times in 1963, the festival’s first year.Returning to Lincoln Center for three shows, part of a series devoted to the early ’60s avant-garde, “Hallelujah the Hills,” may be the series’s most conventional selection — a feature-length movie with actors, some even professional, and a semblance of plot, shot in crisp black and white by Ed Emshwiller, an underground filmmaker of great technical expertise.The movie is romantic slapstick, set far from the bohemian Lower East Side in sylvan Vermont. Two guys, Jack (the intrepid photographer Peter Beard) and Leo (painter and assemblagist Marty Greenbaum) are infatuated with same young woman, Vera (“a lovely and enigmatic winter sprite” per Archer’s review). She is played by two different actresses (Sheila Finn and Peggy Steffans), both with a marked resemblance to Jean-Luc Godard’s muse Anna Karina. The rivals court Vera in different seasons over the course of seven years — a crisis arises when both show up for Thanksgiving.As its title suggests “Hallelujah” is nothing if not exuberant. Adolfas Mekas, the younger brother of Jonas Mekas and, like him, an immigrant from rural Lithuania, was in his late 20s when he made the movie. Pratfalls and drunken antics abound. Beard gives a particularly athletic performance — at one point bounding bare-assed through deep snow. (With his horn-rimmed glasses, Greenbaum seems more the Woody Allen type.)Jump cuts are common, too. Very much an American homage to the French new wave movie, “Hallelujah” suggests a frothy “Jules and Jim” made in the insouciant style of “Shoot the Piano Player.” Perhaps there was a two-way street. As “Hallelujah” was a hit at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, reviewed by Godard, it’s not inconceivable that it was an inspiration for his 1964 “Band of Outsiders.”“Hallelujah” is not unduly sappy, although it does demand a tolerance for madrigal jazz (heavy on a tinkly harpsichord) and rampant cinephilia. “I haven’t seen a movie in 10 days,” Leo complains. The rivals play at being Kurosawa samurai. There are nods to not only Godard but the early cinema of Charlie Chaplin, Mack Sennett and W.C. Fields. Late in the movie, Mekas interpolates a celebrated bit of ice floe excitement from D.W. Griffith’s 1920 “Way Down East.” The sequence still works and so, in a more limited way, does “Hallelujah the Hills.”Actually, as fashionable as Mekas’s film once was it has an atavistic quality. Beneath the surface lurks a Lithuanian folk tale about rival princes and a princess (or goddess) linked to the changing seasons. Hallelujah indeed.Hallelujah the HillsJuly 29, Aug. 2 and 3, at Film at Lincoln Center, Manhattan, filmlinc.org. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Honor Society’ Review: Ivy League Strategist’s Cynical Shell Is Cracked

      by

      Angourie Rice plays an initially unappealing character, as a Harvard striver with sneaky moves.There’s a species of Young Adult novels — and their attendant film adaptations — that wears sophistication on its sleeve. Mostly for the purpose of demonstrating that sophistication won’t save the anguished teenage soul — see “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” In the teen rom-com, sophistication usually manifests itself in a near-endless stream of pop culture references.“Honor Society,” directed by Oran Zegman from a script by David A. Goodman, comes out of the gate flashing a formal and thematic sophistication so dazzling it might take you a while to realize it’s actually a Young Adult movie. The relentlessly driven title character, Honor (Angourie Rice, whom you may remember from “The Nice Guys,” terrifically appealing throughout), snidely dismissive of her working-class parents, has crafted a persona ruthlessly focused on getting out of her one-horse town and into Harvard. A place where “mediocre people get outsized opportunities,” she tells the camera.Notes of “Election” and “Rushmore” here are strong. Some fully grown-up viewers will feel old seeing Christopher Mintz-Plasse, of “McLovin” fame in “Superbad” (2007) playing the (ultimately sleazoid) guidance counselor who feeds Honor the unpleasant surprise that she’s actually one of four students vying for his Harvard recommendation.This news motivates Honor to weave a manipulative web that grows spectacularly tangled. One of her foils, Michael, is played by Gaten Matarazzo, that winsome kid from “Stranger Things”; Michael responds with sweet-natured goofiness to Honor’s temptress moves. So of course he is the one to crack her cynical shell.A twist whipsaws the movie into a darker place, one in the vicinity of Patricia Highsmith. But no murder takes place, and the movie’s resolution confirms what one may have suspected all along: Its dominant room tone is kinda-sorta that of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”Honor SocietyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

    • 50 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Medusa’ Review: Liberated Women

      by

      This neon-soaked feminist thriller takes aim at Brazil’s evangelical communities by depicting a girl gang that targets sinners.In “Medusa,” a pop music-scored spooky story about women’s liberation, a group of churchgoing gals in Brazil play Christian Stepford Wives by day, and by night, rove the streets wearing white masks, terrorizing women they deem tramps into repentance.The writer and director Anita Rocha da Silveira takes a visual approach that feels played out, deploying the same blood-splattered fluorescent backdrops and techno-inflected bodily grotesquerie of recent feminist horror films like “Titane.”Yet these extremes also feel appropriate given the South American nation’s increasingly zealous movement against L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and sex positive culture. U.S. audiences might find this familiar, though in Brazil, where the rate of homophobic hate crimes is one of the highest in the world, there are in fact Evangelical gangs seeking to violently cleanse their communities.Rocha da Silveira lays hard on the creepy nature of indoctrination as it plays out in modern times: Mari (Mari Oliveira) and her girlfriends perform catchy worship songs for their congregation, and the queen bee Michele (Lara Tremouroux) makes YouTube beauty tutorials that demonstrate how to snap Christian friendly selfies.Mari undergoes an awakening after one of the gang’s midnight crusades leaves her with a facial scar. Fired from her cosmetic surgery job and certain of her eternal spinsterdom, she begins working at a clinic for people in comas, hoping she can make herself useful by taking a picture of the mythical Melissa, a sinful celebrity whose face was set on fire by a religious warrior.Eventually, with help from an attractive co-worker, Mari begins to realize the pettiness of her ways.Though dressed in shock-value clothing, “Medusa” is also a straightforward character study, tackling issues like the scourge of Western beauty standards and the difficulties of leaving an abusive relationship along the way. Most important, Mari’s evolution feels real, her triumphs genuinely moving. It’s here that “Medusa” presents an astute idea: The righteous mob is terrifying, but equally nerve-racking is leaving it.MedusaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Blue Island’ Review: In Hong Kong, the Past Is Present

      by

      In this hybrid of documentary and dramatization, real-life Hong Kong students re-enact the struggles of activists from earlier generations.In “Blue Island,” a hybrid of documentary and dramatization from the director Chan Tze Woon, real-life students from contemporary Hong Kong perform re-enactments of the political struggles of previous generations.Two students, Anson Sham and Siu Ying, step into the shoes of a couple, Chan Hak-chi and Git Hing, who fled to Hong Kong from the Cultural Revolution in 1973; part of the re-enactment of the escape is crosscut with documentary footage of a crackdown on demonstrators in Hong Kong in 2019. Elsewhere, Keith Fong Chung-yin, a student activist, meets with and plays Kenneth Lam, who traveled to Beijing in 1989 in solidarity with the protesters in Tiananmen Square.The younger subjects’ recent experiences color their portrayals. “You’re not just playing a 20-year-old Kenneth in the ’80s. You are also playing yourself,” the director instructs Fong, in one of many moments when the movie breaks the fourth wall. Elsewhere, Raymond Young, incarcerated by the British for bulletins he circulated in 1967, sits in a prison cell with Kelvin Tam Kwan-long, the student protester playing him (who notes that he’s been charged with rioting and is awaiting trial himself), and tells him that time will erode his ideals.“Blue Island” shows how Hong Kong residents have redefined themselves over time. Tam, while playing Young in 1967, defiantly tells a British official that he is Chinese. A moment later, Tam, still in costume but now appearing as himself, insists to an interrogator that he is not Chinese, but a Hong Konger.The movie concludes with a lengthy, silent montage of people who have faced charges for their involvement in pro-democracy activism. It is impossible to watch “Blue Island” without admiring their courage. The past-present parallelism is provocative, but it also seems faintly superficial — a way of eliding distinctions and streamlining history.Blue IslandNot rated. In Cantonese, Mandarin and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Sona Movsesian Leans on The Rock, Cher and Mister Rogers

      by

      The co-host of “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” talks about the best Girl Scout cookies and adulting at Disneyland.“The World’s Worst Assistant,” a new memoir by Sona Movsesian, recounts what happens when an ambitious young woman who excelled at both the Burger King drive-through and the NBC page program managed to turn things around when she landed a job as Conan O’Brien’s assistant — a deal she sealed by asking if she could lie down during the interview.“The HR rep told me that Conan liked my couch joke,” she writes. “I got my job working for Conan because I made a joke about being lazy — foreshadowing at its best.”Thirteen years later, Movsesian, who co-hosts the podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” has amassed plenty of skills and work experiences rarely boasted about on LinkedIn. Once, for example, she watched 58 episodes of “Friends” on the clock over a four-day period because she’d heard that Robert De Niro’s assistant had watched 55. Sleeping on the job? How to “abuse your corporate card without technically embezzling”? “Worst Assistant” has illustrated guides for that.But Movsesian’s story is not about celebrating laziness or ineptitude. It’s about how two flawed people who were meant to be together found each other: a boss accepting an employee for who she is and how she does her job, and an employee accepting her boss for everything that he is.“I give Sona the space to be Sona (see book),” O’Brien writes in the foreword, “and she in turn gives me the space to knock a delicious cupcake out of her hand just as she is about to take a bite.”Here, the world’s worst assistant talks about the movie she’s watched the most, the TV she can watch with her kids and the Girl Scout cookies she buys in bulk. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Cher Cher is a very important person, and not just because of her contributions to culture and fashion. She’s part Armenian, and I’m Armenian. For us, we have very few famous people in the limelight, and no one is bigger than Cher. She’s an icon, and the fact that she’s half Armenian was a really big deal for all of us, especially growing up.2. The Evil Eye The Evil Eye is in a lot of cultures, including Armenian culture. It’s a round eye that’s usually blue, white and black. It keeps the evil eye away from you. If people are trying to curse you in some way or wish ill upon you, it pushes that away and protects you. It’s in my car. It’s in my house. It’s at work. It’s a big part of who I am as an Armenian and who I am as a human being.3. “Galaxy Quest” “Galaxy Quest” is the first movie I saw in the theaters four times. When I ran out of people to go with, I went and saw it in the theater by myself. I’d never done anything like that. I don’t know why, I just always felt like it was weird to go to the movies by yourself. “Galaxy Quest” broke that seal for me.4. Fred Rogers We have twin, 1-year-old boys. My husband and I were like, what could we watch with them that we won’t hate? And so we bought all the old seasons of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The episodes are timeless. There’s an episode where he meets Yo-Yo Ma. After, he’s like: Let’s reflect on how Yo-Yo Ma talked about how he would feel playing the cello. And there is just a minute of complete silence. No one would ever do that now. No one would ever not do anything for a minute.5. “Cheers” I started bingeing the entire series about six years ago. Then I met the man who would become my husband, and I found out he was also bingeing “Cheers.” We were at almost the same place. When he told me that, I was like: Oh, we have to get married and we have to finish “Cheers” together.6. The Rock Wrestling was a big part of high school for me. It was like a soap opera I didn’t realize I needed in my life. And The Rock was the most important character. When The Rock left wrestling, he took my wrestling love with him. But I’ll still watch anything he’s in. I don’t care if I’m interested in it, I will abandon my kids and go to the movies for a couple hours.7. Cock Sparrer When I met my husband, he was in a Cock Sparrer cover band — a British punk rock band. It’s a genre I’d never really gotten into, but when we heard that Cock Sparrer was playing in Santa Cruz, we went and saw them. It was really cool to connect with my husband in that way, to see something that he loved in a genre that he loved and then realize I also really liked it, too.8. “Step Brothers” Years ago, after I bought a condo, I cut a window in the wall between the kitchen and the living room specifically so I could watch “Step Brothers” while cooking. With Will Ferrell movies, the more you watch them, the more you catch the nuance in things. But I also love that I can put it on, do something else and then stare at the TV at any point and laugh at whatever is happening.9. Disneyland When I was a kid, I was filled with absolute wonder when I went to Disneyland. My mind would explode. Now I can go there and buy a Popsicle and then five minutes later I can buy popcorn and then two minutes later I can have chicken tenders. I can do Disneyland the way I wanted to do Disneyland as a kid, but I can do it as an adult because I’m paying for it.10. Girl Scout Cookies Girl Scouts is where I met my core group of friends when I was in elementary school. Today, it doesn’t matter if you’re a co-worker’s daughter or a stranger on the street. If you say “I’m a girl scout — will you buy some cookies?” I will say yes and I will buy an inordinate amount of cookies from you. Most of the time, it’s Samoas. More