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      The ‘Rust’ Shooting Spurs a Debate Over Using Guns on Film Sets

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      Alec Baldwin, who fatally shot a cinematographer with a gun he had been told was safe, has called for productions to hire police officers to monitor gun safety.Ever since the actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer of the film “Rust” last month with a gun he had been told, incorrectly, contained no live ammunition, the debate on the use of firearms on sets has been growing.Dwayne Johnson — the action star whose production company has made gun-filled films like the “Fast & Furious” spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw” — told Variety last week that the company would no longer use real guns on set. Dozens of cinematographers have signed a commitment not to work on projects using functional firearms. And a state lawmaker in California is drafting legislation that would ban operational firearms from sets.Mr. Baldwin, who was a producer of “Rust” as well as its star, weighed in this week with his own suggestion: that productions should hire police officers to monitor safety. Mr. Baldwin posted Monday on his Twitter and Instagram accounts: “Every film/TV set that uses guns, fake or otherwise, should have a police officer on set, hired by the production, to specifically monitor weapons safety.”But many in the film industry see the tragedy more as a problem of failing to adhere to existing firearms safety protocols than of requiring new, stricter protocols, and it is unclear if any of the proposed changes will have the momentum to come to fruition.The “Rust” shooting happened on Oct. 21, after an old-fashioned revolver was placed in Mr. Baldwin’s hands and proclaimed “cold,” meaning that it should not have contained any live ammunition. But it did: As Mr. Baldwin practiced drawing the gun for a scene, it fired a real bullet, law-enforcement officials said, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding its director, Joel Souza. There should not have been any live ammunition on the set at all, according to court papers, and law-enforcement officials are investigating how the gun came to be loaded with a lethal bullet.The backlash to Mr. Baldwin’s proposal to have police officers monitor on-set gun safety included comments from industry veterans like David Simon, the creator of “The Wire,” who tweeted that “the average cop is no more a totem of gun safety than a trained film armorer.”Then there are those calling to ban the use of functional guns — which are supposed to be loaded only with dummies or blanks — on sets. They say that technology has advanced to the point where special effects can be used to create the illusion of convincing gunfire. After the shooting in New Mexico, Craig Zobel, the director of the HBO whodunit “Mare of Easttown,” noted that all of the gunshots on that show were digital. But some studio executives say that there are times when visual effects are not sufficient, and that some actors struggle to make fake weapons that cannot even fire blanks appear convincing.The calls for systematic change are complicated by the fact that it is still unclear exactly why the tragedy occurred.Some crew members voiced concerns about the experience level of the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, whose lawyers have defended her training and commitment to safety and faulted the production. And the film’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, told a detective investigating the case that he should have checked the gun more thoroughly before Mr. Baldwin handled it, according to an affidavit. (His lawyer later said in a television interview that checking the gun was not his job.) But the central question, of how a live round got into the revolver in the first place, remains a mystery.Despite the remaining questions, the fatal shooting has spurred calls for change inside and outside of the film and television industry..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, said days after the shooting that “if the industry doesn’t come forward with very specific accountable safeguards, they should expect that we will.”Stephen Lighthill, the president of the American Society of Cinematographers and one of the prominent signatories of the statement — first reported by Variety — pledging to avoid operational firearms on sets, said that there had not been a wide-scale conversation around what the industry standard should be before the “Rust” shooting. Cinematographers including Bill Pope of “The Matrix” and Mandy Walker of “Mulan” have signed on to the pledge. The statement was posted with a hashtag:#BanBlanks, calling for an end to the use of blank cartridges, which contain gunpowder and paper wadding or wax.Another signatory, Reed Morano, a cinematographer who directed episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” wrote in an Instagram post that she had once been hit by a blank at close range while operating a camera and wished she had thought more about large-scale change then.“How many more deaths do we need to mourn to prove that this must change?” Ms. Morano wrote.In California, a Democratic state senator who represents Silicon Valley, Dave Cortese, has been drafting legislation that would ban operational firearms from sets, which he said would effectively also ban blanks. Mr. Cortese said in an interview that the current system for safety protocols around handling guns on sets — guidelines outlined by unions and production companies — were not sufficient to ensure enforcement and accountability.“Right now what’s missing is the consequences,” he said. “Life and death is not an OK consequence of an error or omission.”Another legislative approach that is being considered, Mr. Cortese said, is a restriction on certain kinds of blanks. But his preference is for an outright ban on operational firearms and blanks, which he thinks can be replaced with special effects.“Some people say, ‘Why get rid of them?’” Mr. Cortese said. “Why have them? What’s the point in this day and age?”He said he has scheduled a meeting this week with members of the union local that represents armorers, and a bill would likely be considered in February.Those in the film industry who warn against making such rapid and wholesale changes to the industry say safety protocols are usually clear, and usually closely followed.Michael Sabo, who was propmaster on “The Wire” and oversaw the use of operational guns on the set, said he thinks nonfunctional guns would appear fake to viewers. Instead of a ban, he favors tighter restrictions on who can handle them.“You can have some of the best actors in the world, but if they pull a trigger and nothing happens, it’s not real,” he said. “That’s my biggest problem when they say we should ban guns on sets.”Brooks Barnes contributed reporting. More

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      New Initiative Aims to Change How Movies Portray Muslims

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      An advocacy group has created a worker database with help from Disney to bring more Muslims into the filmmaking process.A new initiative to promote the inclusion of Muslims in filmmaking has been created by an advocacy group with the support of the Walt Disney Company — following a report issued this year that found that Muslims are rarely depicted in popular films and that many Muslim characters are linked to violence.The project, the Pillars Muslim Artist Database, was announced on Tuesday by the Pillars Fund, an advocacy group in Chicago. It produced the earlier report on depiction along with the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and others.Kashif Shaikh, a co-founder of Pillars and its president, said that when the group discussed the findings, those in the industry often said they did not know where to find Muslim writers or actors.The database, Shaikh said, aims to give Muslim actors, directors, cinematographers, sound technicians and others, who could help create more nuanced portrayals, the chance to compose online profiles that can be reviewed by those hiring for film, television and streaming productions.That way, “Muslims around the country would be able to opt in and talk about their talents, talk about their expertise,” Shaikh said. “It was really meant to be a resource for studios, for the film industry.”The report on depiction, “Missing & Maligned,” was issued in June and analyzed 200 top-grossing movies released between 2017 and 2019 across the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.Of 8,965 speaking characters, 1.6 percent were Muslim, the report said. It added that just over 60 percent of primary and secondary Muslim characters appeared in movies set in the historical or recent past. Just under 40 percent appeared in three movies which took place in present-day Australia, the report said, and most of those characters — including “the only present-day Muslim lead” — appeared in one movie, “Ali’s Wedding,” released in 2017.Pillars, along with the Inclusion Initiative and the British actor Riz Ahmed and his production company, Left Handed Films, also released a companion report titled “The Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion” that was intended to “fundamentally change the way Muslims are portrayed on screen.”Before the reports were issued, Shaikh said, Pillars had begun conversations with Disney, which supported the creation of the database with a $20,000 grant.Latondra Newton, senior vice president and chief diversity officer of Disney, said in a statement that the support was part of an ongoing effort “to amplify underrepresented voices and untold stories,” adding: “We are honored to support the new Pillars Muslim Artist Database.”This follows the announcement last week of a guide, “The Time Is Now: The Power of Native Representation in Entertainment,” that was the result of a partnership between Disney and IllumiNative, a nonprofit group that works to raise the visibility of “Native Nations and peoples in American Society.”That guide was created “to help move beyond the outdated, inaccurate and often offensive depictions of Native peoples in pop culture,” the group said in a statement. It includes sections on “Combating Negative Stereotypes,” “Avoiding Cultural Appropriation” and “Supporting Native Storytellers.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Joe Pera and the Surprising Pleasures of Gentle Humor

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      Don’t expect twists in these bits. The standup, who will be at the New York Comedy Festival, has devised a calming aesthetic with rewards of its own.To bore an audience is one of the worst things a performer can do. It’s among the trustiest truisms of show business. But what if our anxious culture has become so crowded with fast-talking agitators, hyperventilators and disrupters that something soothing and subdued becomes refreshing? Is it possible that the most exciting move is to embrace dullness?The stand-up comic Joe Pera tests this theory. With a rigid back hunching at the neck, he has the appearance of a large turtle, only slower. His fashion is basic suburban dad — Asics, glasses, comfortable khakis — and his dry, gently absurdist material focuses on cold-button subjects like what to have for breakfast. Of the hundreds of performers in the New York Comedy Festival this week, Pera is surely the only one who will say that he doesn’t mind if you fall asleep listening to him.After a year off because of the pandemic, the festival returns with a talent-rich lineup of seasoned veterans (Bill Maher, Colin Quinn, Brian Regan and Marc Maron); midcareer stars (Vir Das, Ronny Chieng, Michelle Buteau and Michelle Wolf); and rising newcomers (Megan Stalter). Since New York has a festival’s worth of comedy every week, the shows I most look forward to are those by Los Angeles comics we don’t see here as often (Nick Kroll) or stand-ups in their prime taking on a bigger stage (Gary Gulman playing Carnegie Hall). But there is also a wealth of small, quirky evenings like “Dan and Joe DVD Show” at the Bell House on Tuesday, standup from Pera and his more animated partner, Dan Licata.Over the past decade, Pera, a Buffalo native, carved out a niche in the New York scene by playing at his own pace, interjecting a soft-spoken, flamboyantly clean presence in the middle of shows full of quick wits and profane punch lines. This month, he has a new book out before the holidays, “A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing But Using the Bathroom as an Escape,” and premieres the third season of his television series whose title, “Joe Pera Talks With You,” is factual and straightforward, like his comedy.Pera plays a choir teacher from small-town Michigan who makes Ted Lasso look like Dexter. The 11 minute-or-so episodes are patiently, gracefully shot without a single swirling camera, goofy font or burst of color. It stands out on the Adult Swim schedule the way a sex tape would on Disney+. There are bits of plot, including a budding romance with a survivalist (played by Jo Firestone, whose consistent likability makes her the Tom Hanks of comedy) or the death of a grandmother, but much of this show hinges on creating a very peculiar tranquil mood.Pera with Jo Firestone in his Adult Swim show “Joe Pera Talks With You.”Adult SwimAt various points, Pera recites facts about lighthouses or beans, before sharing maxims like: “Waiting for someone is just a nice thing to do.” The first episode this season lingers on the pleasure of sitting. It finds Joe helping his friend Gene pick out a chair in a furniture store.Occasionally a political issue will come up, but only briefly, almost as a counterpoint to emphasize that this is not what the show is about. And while the subject of grief became prominent in the second season, the series doesn’t investigate sadness so much as offer tools to ward it off for a few minutes. How about a shot of some amazing fireworks? Or the comforting distraction of a musical put on by kids? Maybe Joe in some funny wigs?Early on this season, Joe Pera looked directly at the camera and asked viewers if they were sitting right now, before assuring us that he was not about to give bad news. Then he asked, if we were sitting on a chair, what kind was it? Not since Mr. Rogers has someone with as much conviction asked the television camera a question and then paused as if he might hear an answer. It’s not the only time Pera evokes that legend of children’s television.He displays the earnest manner and sense of wonder that most people lose by their teenage years. It’s tempting to conclude that his persona is a stunt, a piece of performance art in the Andy Kaufman tradition. Some fans probably enjoy his work as a kind of ironic prank on comedy itself. And he surely understands this, which might be why he often doubles down on the incongruous 1950s wholesomeness, singing the praises of a warm apple pie in the fall or apologizing for swearing. But watch him long enough and what becomes clear is that Joe Pera isn’t after glib laughs. Wait for the wink or the twist, and it never comes.His goal is not to take audiences out of the action by laughing at it, but to envelop them in a muted version of reality, to invite them to surrender to the small pleasures of calm.For years, I refused. I don’t tend to go to art for that, and when I do, I find it in unlikely places, like slasher films or Stephen A. Smith (yes, he makes N.B.A. punditry into an art). But those are my eccentric tastes. And while his aesthetic seems like ingratiating wholesome Americana, there’s an avant-garde obscureness underneath it. You have to work a bit to get it. Adventurous types should try.By slowing down and reducing everything to simple comforts, Pera can tap into a child’s view of the world, back when we dealt with boredom most creatively by creating races between rain drops on windshields or finding shapes in clouds.Many of his shows linger so reverentially on everyday things — the supermarket, a song by the Who — that they seem almost spiritual. Other times he appears to push the concept of banal normal life so far as to find the comic weirdness within. At one point in the first episode, an old stranger drives by him, stops and asks for Pera’s phone. The man takes a photo of himself and hands the phone back to Pera. It’s an odd moment that in a different show could make for cringe comedy, but here, this random gesture comes off as vaguely generous and inexplicable. I chuckled. You might not. But it’s best not to think about it too much.Early in the pandemic, Pera released a special called “Relaxing Old Footage With Joe Pera,” which featured stock video of waterfalls and coffee pots along with comments like this statement about watching trees: “I can’t be the only one who wants to watch Old Chico, a 9,000-year-old spruce, after reading the news.” More

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      ‘Sooryavanshi’ Review: Cops on a Crusade

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      The latest in Rohit Shetty’s Bollywood cop franchise is both overstuffed and paper-thin.Over the last decade, the Bollywood director Rohit Shetty has built a flamboyant Cop Cinematic Universe with crowd pleasers — “Singham,” “Singham Returns,” and “Simmba” — about righteous policemen with anger issues and physics-defying stunt capabilities. Shetty’s latest installment tries to up the ante (a fool’s errand, given how over-the-top each of the prior movies already is) by smushing them all together: The movie’s titular Anti-Terrorism Squad officer, played by the action veteran Akshay Kumar, is joined by the supercops of the previous films (Ajay Devgn and Ranveer Singh) for a bullets-and-brawn extravaganza.But movies are not math, and three is not always better than one. “Sooryavanshi” is both overstuffed and paper-thin. Its haywire maximalism — including a relentless, deafening soundtrack and cuts so rapid and inconsistent as to make you dizzy — ornaments a patchy bomb-scare plot whose heroes and villains are both numbskulls, making unconvincing gaffes to keep the narrative moving.Even more egregious is the film’s uncritical jingoism. Shetty’s crusading state warriors, whose violence and vigilante tactics are played for laughs and hoots, have always seemed a bit tone-deaf, but “Sooryavanshi” veers into apologism: The film is rife with gleeful scenes of police brutality and pernicious stereotypes about Muslims. Whenever Sooryavanshi is confronted about Islamophobia (an increasingly urgent issue in India), he starts singing the praises of the single Muslim cop on his force as if to remind everyone what a “good Muslim” looks like.“Sooryavanshi” is weighed down by such endless, didactic soapboxing, while the rest of this erratic film devotes itself to juvenile jokes (Sooryavanshi referring to his wife, Ria, as “Hernia” and “Malaria”) and sultry songs that offer the film’s female lead, Katrina Kaif, her only meaningful screen time.SooryavanshiNot rated. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Zazie Beetz and Regina King on Their Big Battle in ‘The Harder They Fall’

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      In the Netflix western, the two actresses, playing members of rival cowboy gangs, engage in an epic fight. Here, they break down the scene.“Trudy’s mine,” hisses Stagecoach Mary Fields (played by Zazie Beetz), her eyes blazing.Trudy Smith (Regina King) ducks into a dye barn, its rafters hung with swatches of color.Their eyes lock, Mary empties her shotgun onto the floor. Trudy tosses her pistol to the side.“Let’s go,” Mary spits out. A wild fight scene ensues between the two members of rival cowboy gangs: bodies hit windows, teeth crunch into hands and horseshoes hurl toward heads.Toward the end of the new Netflix western “The Harder They Fall” — a reminder that Black cowboys should be as much a part of the genre as anyone else — Mary and Trudy duke it out in an epic fight that nearly ends in death.Although the director, Jeymes Samuel, is a singer-songwriter known as the Bullitts, he has dabbled in filmmaking, and “The Harder They Fall” is his first feature. In a video interview, he clarified that he wasn’t reimagining the western — he was “replacing” it.“What I was doing with that fight, I’ve done it the whole film,” he said. “The whole film is reverse psychology on what we know as the western and puts up a mirror.”Historians estimate that one in four cowboys were Black, a fact that was hardly reflected in the conventional westerns popular in the 20th century, which were largely devoid of people of color.In creating the film, his aim was to counter two tropes of traditional westerns: people of color shown as less than human; and women appearing subservient and less than men. “Westerns have never given light to women and their power in that period,” he said. That’s why Samuel, who wrote the screenplay with Boaz Yakin, inverted gender roles in the Mary-Trudy battle.“All the men in the film, when they have conflict, they pick up guns,” Samuel said, adding, “It takes the two women to literally throw away their guns and duke it out.”Regina King as Trudy Smith. She, Beetz and their stunt doubles practiced the fight in their off hours.David Lee/NetflixAlthough the actresses, part of a star-studded cast, worked closely with their stunt doubles, Nikkilette Wright and Sadiqua Bynum, most of the final cut features the actresses themselves — because the stunt doubles were simply too good at their jobs. The stand-ins’ work “was too clean,” Samuel said. “In that particular scene, it was perfect and neat, whereas I needed the urgency. When you put Zazie and Regina together, neat went out the window.”Beetz, King, Wright and Bynum practiced the fight on their own time in a hotel conference room in Santa Fe, N.M., where much of the movie was shot. As rough and tumble as the scene may look onscreen, Beetz said in a phone interview that it was all very carefully choreographed.“We also wanted the fight to look scrappy, because we wanted it to look real and intense and how people really would potentially fight,” she said. “I think it’s just a testament in general to the shift in film and the shift in how we see women and their physical abilities.”As part of her preparation, the actress read about Stagecoach Mary Fields, the first African American woman in the United States to be a mail carrier on star routes — routes handled by contractors who were not employed by the Postal Service. (Many of the main characters are based on real historical figures, but Samuel fictionalized the vast majority of the plot.) Fields was enslaved until she was around 30 years old, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Then she went on to live a whole new life.“There was a lot of formerly enslaved people who moved to the West, and the culture of the United States wasn’t as established in the West,” Beetz said. “So there was more mobility for Black people. And there really were towns that were all Black, and they were self-sustaining, and it was an interesting place where Black people could thrive.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Les Éternels’: les super-franchises redescendent sur Terre

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      Après “Nomadland”, Oscar du Meilleur Film, la réalisatrice Chloé Zhao s’essaie au blockbuster avec le dernier-né des Marvel, un casting séduisant à l’appui.Tout au long des “Éternels”, le dernier-né — mais certainement pas le dernier! — des Studios Marvel, on devine combien la réalisatrice Chloé Zhao a dû lutter pour réduire à taille humaine ce show d’envergure industrielle. Ses efforts transparaissent dans la sincérité des interprétations et les moments d’authenticité qui ponctuent le film d’émotion. Mais c’est un combat titanesque. Tandis que Zhao s’applique à huiler la machine de larmes et d’émotions, ses efforts semblent refléter la bataille menée par ses attachants super-héros contre une force qui cherche à contrôler leur destin.Créés par Jack Kirby, un visionnaire des comics américains, “Les Éternels” font leur apparition sur papier en 1976 (“Quand les Dieux descendent sur Terre!”) et ont refait surface plusieurs fois depuis. Puisque Marvel a (pour le moment) mis fin au cycle des films Avengers, il était acquis qu’il allait dépoussiérer un autre groupe de potentielles super-franchises. Pour ce faire, le studio a choisi Zhao (“Nomadland”) pour lancer la machine, avec un casting trié sur le volet dans le monde du divertissement. Angelina Jolie est là, avec des cheveux tristounets et un maquillage ultra-glamour, tout comme Gemma Chan, Salma Hayek, Don Lee, Kumail Nanjiani, un indispensable Brian Tyree Henry et deux tombeurs de la série HBO “Game of Thrones”.Figurant parmi les créations moins connues de Kirby, les Éternels sont des divinités humanoïdes principalement empruntées à la mythologie grecque, mais dotés d’une orthographe excentrique : Thena, Ikaris, Sersi, et ainsi de suite. Leur histoire est bien élaborée et ils ont pour mission de protéger l’humanité. (À en juger par le piteux état dans lequel nous et la planète sommes, ils n’ont pas fait du très bon boulot.) Comme l’explique un des personnages, ils interviennent dans les conflits entre les humains en cas de nécessité. Un rôle qui évoque celui des Casques bleus des Nations Unies. Mais comme l’humanité est perpétuellement attaquée par les Déviants, de hargneux ennemis, les Éternels doivent perpétuellement redescendre dans l’arène — une habitude interventionniste qui fait référence de manière assez evidente à celle des États-Unis.Écrit par Zhao avec d’autres scénaristes, “Les Éternels” s’inscrit dans le style de la maison Marvel, tant visuellement que dans sa narration. C’est très chargé, presque trop, et on navigue entre film de guerre, film romantique, comédie et drame familial. Il se classerait plutôt bien dans la catégorie retrouvailles-entre-copains : une bande de vieux amis se retrouve — avec réticence ou enthousiasme — pour reformer leur groupe de musique ou, en l’occurrence, botter des derrières cosmiques. Malheureusement, le film consacre un part démesurée de ses deux heures et demie à revisiter les plus gros tubes du groupe, tandis que les Éternels passent leur temps en explications. Les flashbacks coupent Zhao dans ses élans et les bavardages viennent brouiller un peu davantage une histoire déjà alambiquée.En tant que potentiel premier épisode d’une nouvelle série, le film fait office de longue présentation au public où l’on passe en revue (qui sont-ils, que font-ils ?) les pouvoirs, les susceptibilités, les histoires et les relations entre ces dix Éternels. Ça fait du monde à l’affiche — mais dans cette constellation hollywoodienne, certaines étoiles brillent plus fort que d’autres. La tête d’affiche Sersi (Gemma Chan) est, un peu à contrecœur, une héroïne bienveillante qui vit à Londres et sort avec Jon Snow — alias Dane Whitman, joué par Kit Harington — jusqu’à ce que les Déviants, et les ennuis, surgissent dans cette ville vieillissante et sale. L’incursion ennemie déclenche la réunion et l’entrée en scène amusante du frère de Jon Snow, Robb Stark, alias Richard Madden, qui joue Ikaris. Lui et Sersi ont un passé ; ce n’est pas compliqué.L’immense super-pouvoir du film, ce sont ses acteurs qui lui insufflent de la chaleur, voire un peu de passion, et une pulsion de vie que les nombreuses et bruyantes scènes d’action n’étouffent jamais complètement. Henry, Lee et Barry Keoghan (le terrifiant gamin de “Mise à mort du cerf sacré”) contribuent beaucoup à maintenir notre sympathie en éveil. Phastos, le personnage d’Henry, est le plus vivant des deux, en partie parce que son super-héros a une véracité identifiable, mais surtout parce que l’acteur a un sens naturel de l’empathie et une vraie délicatesse d’expressivité. Lee offre un peu de comique bienvenu et fait office de faire-valoir étonnamment efficace pour Jolie (y aura-t-il un spin-off de M. et Mme Éternel?), tandis que Keoghan ajoute son grain de menace piquante.Les trois précédents long-métrages de Zhao sont des drames d’échelle modeste centrés sur des personnages privés de leurs droits — le genre de film que le courant commercial dominant laisse de côté. La réalisatrice aime faire appel à d’anciennes formules et à de nouvelles idées, et s’intéresse aux questions d’identité et aux valeurs fondatrices américaines comme l’autonomie. Dans “The Rider”, le personnage principal est un Amérindien qui est cowboy; “Nomadland” suit une femme, la soixantaine, qui prend la route après à la Grande Récession. Si l’intimité de son œuvre antérieure, sa portée et son calme relatifs font d’elle un choix apparemment inhabituel pour Marvel, ses films se tiennent à distance de l’ouvertement politique, comme beaucoup de films indépendants américains. Zhao cadre bien avec une entreprise internationale qui cherche à n’offenser absolument personne.Par-dessus tout, la réalisatrice possède l’une des compétences les plus essentielles au job : elle sait gérer les acteurs. Car par-delà tous les effets spéciaux et les combats sans fin, les films de Marvel sont aussi centrés sur leurs personnages que les films de James Bond, et ils ont besoin d’interprètes charismatiques et de personnalités séduisantes pour faire tenir ensemble toutes leurs pièces détachées. (Ce n’est pas un hasard si beaucoup de réalisateurs Marvel sont des anciens du festival du film de Sundance.) “Les Éternels” bénéficie aussi du toucher de Zhao pour les paysages naturels et de son amour des grands espaces. Cela n’arrive pas assez souvent mais parfois, dans certains moments d’accalmie, les Éternels et leurs mondes se rejoignent et les grandes questions existentielles qui sous-tendent l’histoire — qu’est-ce qu’on fait là, qui suis-je ? — arrivent même à transcender la marque. More

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      Watch the 1960s Come Alive in ‘Last Night in Soho’

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      Edgar Wright narrates a dreamy sequence from his film featuring Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy.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.A song from Cilla Black and some flashing lights from a French bistro summon a little dreamy 1960s magic in this scene from “Last Night in Soho,” a thriller by the director Edgar Wright.Thomasin McKenzie stars as a fashion student with ’60s obsessions who is, as Wright puts it, “supernaturally switched on.”As she goes to sleep in her new flat, she has a dream that takes her back to her favorite decade, across a busy street in London and into a lavish nightclub. In this video, Wright explains the more-complicated-than-it-looks nature of timing flashing lights to the beats of a song, as well as other practical effects he used to create a mirror-image moment (actually building a “mirror” set and using twin actors on either side of it).Read the “Last Night in Soho” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Last Night in Soho’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More