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      How Meryl Streep Prepared to Play the President in ‘Don’t Look Up’

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      Meryl Streep explains how she prepared to play a fictional (and not especially competent) U.S. president in Adam McKay’s apocalyptic satire “Don’t Look Up.”Who would you turn to if you learned a comet was on a collision course with Earth and decisive action was required to prevent the extinction of all life on this planet? If your first thought was Meryl Streep, you have made both an excellent and terrible choice.In “Don’t Look Up,” from the writer-director Adam McKay (“The Big Short,” “Vice”), two scientists played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence find themselves facing this end-of-the-world scenario and must turn to a United States government led by the fictional President Orlean for assistance.The good news (for the movie, which will reach theaters on Dec. 10 and Netflix on Dec. 24) is that Orlean is played by Streep, the venerated film and TV star; the bad news (for humanity) is that Orlean is a self-centered scoundrel who cares a great deal about her public image but little to nothing about running the country.Orlean is one of several malefactors in “Don’t Look Up,” a social satire that McKay wrote about climate change but that he fully expects will be interpreted as a commentary on the pandemic. The president is also a character whose many faults and shortcomings Streep delighted in bringing to life, and she credits McKay for giving her and her co-stars the latitude to indulge in awfulness.As Streep explained in a recent phone interview, “He never lost heart or confidence in this vision that he had for this thing, which was to make an atmosphere as free as possible for everybody — just go nuts and do what you want. But with a deadly serious intent.”Here, Streep and McKay explained the steps they followed to put President Orlean in the Oval Office.Create a back story.Based on what she’d read in McKay’s screenplay, Streep said she was already envisioning how President Orlean could have won office. “You could imagine a group of various miscreants was pulled together, and she was the least bad of a lot of other candidates that they could have put out there,” Streep said, adding that she thought of Orlean “as someone whose elderly husband had a lot of money, and she got rid of him, and it was in California so she got half. She had no real agenda except to have and retain power, and when she got there, she just realized that the job was pretty easy.”McKay said that in naming the character, he was thinking of New Orleans — “It’s a fun city, but it’s kind of in jeopardy” — and not the fact that Streep played the author Susan Orlean in “Adaptation.” (The notion that he manifested Streep in the role by naming it for her, McKay said, is “definitely not the case.”)Draw on real-life inspiration.McKay said he thought of President Orlean as “a goulash” of recent chief executives. That meant “the self-serving con man aspects of the last president, the dangerous inexperience of George W. Bush, the slick polish of Bill Clinton, the celebrity of Barack Obama and the coziness with big money,” McKay said. Another inspiration was the finance expert Suze Orman, whom McKay described as “a brash populist with a strong fashion statement.”To that recipe, Streep said she added a dash of the “Real Housewives,” whose televised squabbles often play in her house when her daughters come to visit. Though Streep won an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” she said that performance was instructive only up to a point. Thatcher, she said, “wielded a kind of femininity that was intimidating to men, and part of her power was how she could pull it together — it was very specific to the ladder she climbed there.” Orlean, she said, is “more of our time — algorithmically put together.”Streep on the set. Her look was modeled on that of news anchors.Niko Tavernise/NetflixLook the part.Streep had a hand in devising Orlean’s fashion sensibility, which she said communicated something essential about the character: “So what if she’s 70 years old and dresses like she’s 35?” she explained. “No one told her you can’t be 35 forever.” That meant attire modeled after TV news anchors who, Streep said, “tend to pick these broad swaths of bright, happy colors to put on themselves — no prints, no polka dots or plaids or, God forbid, florals. None of the things that other people wear. Just these power suits and pencil skirts.” It also called for a specific hair regimen: “When I was in high school, you’d set your hair in rollers, then take it out and brush it 100 times,” Streep said. “This is the kind of hair where you take it out of rollers and just leave it like that — the longer the better. And then those are sprayed and crisped and the ends curl out in weird ways. And that’s a thing. It has always escaped me why this was good. So I thought, well, I’m going to try to that — God knows I won’t do it in my real life.”Get ready to face the crowds.All that advance planning may still not fully prepare you for the demands of the presidency, as Streep discovered on her first day of shooting. She had spent several weeks in isolation, as screen actors have been required to do during the pandemic. Then, on the appointed day, she said, “I bundled up in my big down coat, put the dog in the back of my car, drove through a snowstorm to Worcester, Mass., and got out at a stadium and parked.” Once there, Streep said, “They tried to turn me away at several points to get into the set. I said no, I’m in it.” After getting into hair, makeup and costume, Streep took to the stage where she saw her face on a Jumbotron and heard the delayed echo of her voice as she spoke to a crowd of several hundred extras. “And I just lost it,” she said. “I thought, well, I clearly have to retire. I can’t do this. I actually can’t do this. It was really a crisis of confidence.” Needless to say, Streep did find her bearings, but, she said, “it took a while.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Review: ‘This Is Not a War Story,’ Nor Does Coming Home Mean Peace

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      This poignant drama directed by and starring Talia Lugacy follows a traumatized Marine as she tries to connect with a group of fellow veterans at home.“American Sniper,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Saving Private Ryan” — “I hate those movies,” says Isabelle (Talia Lugacy), a U.S. Marine recently returned home from combat. Painfully inhibited, neglected by her family and racked with guilt over her meaninglessly violent actions overseas, Isabelle is not at ease in this world. She struggles to find reasons to go on.
      At least she is not alone. Isabelle joins a multigenerational group of veterans who create antiwar artwork and poetry out of paper they fashion from discarded military uniforms. There she meets Will (Sam Adegoke), who has been blaming himself for the death of a vet he had been a mentor to, Timothy Reyes.“This Is Not a War Story,” which Lugacy also directed, is a naturalistic, chat-heavy narrative that captures the difficulties wrought by the unimaginable trauma individuals face as they attempt to forge connections and find peace after war. It opens with Timothy drifting around the New York City subway, taking pills and ultimately dying unnoticed in his seat, a warning about the perils of coming home. The cast is supplemented by real-life veterans in supporting roles who speak to their own experiences.In the film, Will uneasily takes Isabelle under his wing. “I hate the word ‘healing,’” he observes. “It’s not some point of arrival. It’s something you’re doing all the time.”Unfolding at a restlessly melancholy pace, the film is less a plot-driven story than an assemblage of conversations and encounters. Its power lies in the tentative friendship that takes root between Isabelle and Will. Though their discussions — which touch frankly on issues including the horrors of Abu Ghraib — can seem contrived and literal-minded, the edgy vulnerability and emotional stiltedness the actors bring to their characters’ rapport is palpable and authentic. When the two eventually achieve a more relaxed, harmonious relationship, it feels like a minor miracle.This Is Not a War StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

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      ‘Beans’ Review: Growing Up Fast in the ’90s

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      A middle school student comes of age during a standoff between the police and Mohawk residents during the 1990 Oka crisis in Canada.The drama “Beans” sets its coming-of-age story during the 1990 Oka crisis, when Mohawk residents of Oka, Quebec, began protesting the expansion of a golf course into Native burial ground. The characters in the story are fictional, but “Beans” takes place during a real period of turbulence in Eastern Canada, as Mohawk people were harassed by their neighbors and the police.The film’s heroine, Tekehentahkhwa (Kiawentiio), is a Mohawk middle schooler with a bright smile and braids. Her family calls her Beans. She’s still learning about the world when her hometown suddenly becomes the site of a major conflict. Gunshots ring out in the forest where she plays. People throw rocks at her mother’s car. Beans seeks out guidance from an older girl, April (Paulina Alexis), but no matter how much April pretends to be in control, she and Beans are still children. And this crisis has rattled even their elders, even Beans’s dauntless mother, Lily (Rainbow Dickerson).This is the first fictional film directed by the documentarian Tracey Deer, and she brings a good eye for which characters might make a compelling story. Deer emphasizes the styles of the period — the high ponytails and neon windbreakers opposite police uniforms. But her heroes aren’t fighters; they are the children and mothers who must navigate empty grocery shelves and taunting mobs.In choosing her protagonists as she has, Deer has made a canny portrait of Mohawk domestic life during a modern conflict. The difference between this and other homefront movies is that usually war is depicted as happening far away. Here, Beans has to make sense of a fight where her home is the battlefield, too.BeansNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘A Cop Movie’ Review: When a Uniform Is a Costume

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      This strange and ambitious Mexican film plays like a combination of “Cops,” “F for Fake” and “When Harry Met Sally.”Ambitious, heady and distinctive, if easier to admire in theory than engage with moment to moment, “A Cop Movie” has a conceptual strangeness that’s difficult to overstate. It’s as if someone combined “Cops,” “F for Fake” and “When Harry Met Sally.”Directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios (“Museo”), the film, from Mexico, initially appears to be a straight documentary. It opens with a sequence in which Teresa, one of the two main police officers, responds to a call about a woman in labor. After Teresa radios to check on an ambulance that isn’t coming soon enough, she grabs gloves to deliver the baby herself, even though, she says, the academy didn’t give her medical training.Exactly what training Teresa has becomes murkier. If the high-stakes situation doesn’t immediately indicate that “A Cop Movie” isn’t playing by ordinary documentary rules, the splashy wide-screen compositions, use of zooms as punctuation, careful camera setups and subjects’ habit of commenting toward the viewer all signal that something is up. By the time Teresa is breaking the fourth wall — yes, there’s a fourth wall — while cradling a colleague who has been shot, Ruizpalacios is clearly employing dramatization. Narrative expectations come into play when he reveals that Teresa and her partner, Montoya, are romantically involved.It would be easy to give too much away, but “A Cop Movie,” viewed one way, is a fake documentary that establishes its unreliability, then recasts itself as a documentary of a deception. It equates performing official duties with playing a character; the audience’s distrust may mirror a civilian’s distrust for authority. And as in the Stanford prison experiment, the uniform makes the officer.A Cop MovieRated R. Violence and a bit of sex. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘All Is Forgiven’ Review: A Distinctive First Feature

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      A father with a drug problem tries to reconnect with his daughter.Mia Hansen-Love’s latest film, “Bergman Island,” is a simultaneously enigmatic and provocative treatment of the knotty intertwining of life and art. Her first feature, “All Is Forgiven,” from 2007, is getting its U.S. debut this week, and it confirms that the writer-director’s beguiling (and to some, confounding) cinematic voice was all but fully mature from the start.For its first two-thirds, “All Is Forgiven” commits to an impartial portrayal of Victor (Paul Blain, rock-star charismatic), a would-be writer and feckless recreational drug user. Bouncing between Vienna and Paris with his Austrian partner, Annette (Marie-Christine Friedrich), and their precious 6-year-old daughter, Pamela, Victor finds that descending into full-time junkiedom is like falling off a log. His love for his wife and daughter is sincere, but in the face of his need for heroin, it ceases to matter. His dishonesty is unblinking and his violence unthinking. Hansen-Love depicts it all without a flinch.The movie then jumps 10 years ahead. As with her film “Eden” (2015), the director does nothing to visibly age her adult actors; the space they inhabit is a circumscribed cinematic one, not a simulation of a realistic timeline. But Pamela has grown into a teenager (played by Constance Rousseau, the older sister of Victoire Rousseau, who plays the character as a child), and a now-cleaned-up Victor is eager to reconnect with her. Intrigued but cautious, Pamela agrees to meet, over her mother’s objections.Those familiar with Hansen-Love’s other films will not be too surprised that her scenario withholds certain story components that other directors might consider essential. Her movies have a delicacy of style that can make them seem gossamer-thin at first. But the atmosphere the director creates, once fully breathed in, has an emotional gravity that becomes devastating as it settles.All Is ForgivenNot rated. In French and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and on Metrograph’s virtual cinema. More

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      ‘Mark, Mary & Some Other People’ Review: Till Death Do They Waffle

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      In this romantic comedy, a couple opens their relationship to prove they can be married and modern.A generation ago, it would be demographically unexceptional for the newlyweds of Hannah Marks’s delightful romantic comedy “Mark, Mary & Some Other People” to vow till-death-do-they-part at 26. But in this era — and this economy — Mark (Ben Rosenfield), a dog walker/aspiring inventor, and Mary (Hayley Law), a naughty maid/aspiring singer, are a freak show to their single friends who razz the pair for buying into institutionalized monogamy.Marriage is, like, totally lame and repressive, goes the argument, no matter how many mushrooms the kooky couple gobbled on their honeymoon. And so the peer-pressured Mark and Mary open their bedroom to some other people — lots of other people — to prove they can be married and modern.Marks, just 28 herself, is a sharp and funny observer of today’s youth paradox: How can her generation build stability on a foundation of temp jobs, shifting social mores and the suspicion that the entire planet might collapse before they cash in their 401(k)s? (Related: Why bother growing up at all?)These doubts lurk in the shadows of this candy-tinted charmer. Mostly, the director spotlights how the easily bruised Mark and the recklessly confident Mary are too immature to commit to their own commitment — and too broke for therapy. The editor Andy Holton notes the forced laughs, the anxious tequila shots, the cookies stress-eaten in the pillaged marriage bed, all over a soundtrack of swoony pop. It’s clear these overgrown kids are careening toward adult-size pain. But Marks’s infatuation with her flawed lovebirds also seduces the audience. If Mark and Mary could see their chemistry through the camera’s lens, they’d embrace becoming old, gray and hopelessly passé.Mark, Mary & Some Other PeopleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Simple as Water’ Review: Family Ties That Span the Globe

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      Filmed in five separate countries, this documentary follows, with ambitious scope and devastating intimacy, Syrian families displaced by war.Megan Mylan’s latest documentary feature takes a humble idea — telling intimate and humanizing stories of Syrian families affected by their home country’s civil war — and achieves it on a nakedly ambitious scale. Filmed over five years in five separate countries, “Simple as Water” is anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun.The film is book ended by vignettes featuring Yasmin, a mother of four living in a refugee camp near the dockyards of Athens, who is fighting to reunite her children with their father in Germany. Her story provides an optimistic through line for Mylan’s other subjects, who offer a much more devastating and uncertain look at the struggles of trying to build a new life in an unfamiliar place. In Turkey, a single mother with no time to care for her children attempts to take them to an orphanage, but her eldest son — a 12-year-old who has assumed the role of caretaker while she’s at work — steadfastly refuses to go.In Pennsylvania, a delivery man named Omar applies for asylum for himself and his teenage brother. Through gradual reveals, we learn that Omar’s brother is not only an amputee, but that he appeared on CNN as a child after his leg was blown off in a Syrian rocket strike.These stories avoid triteness by lingering on the daily, unassuming routines of their characters: after-school basketball games, a sunset walk through an orchard, the fashioning of a makeshift toy out of some string and a milk crate.The level of access that Mylan and her team receive is remarkable on a personal front as well as a political one — a segment that takes place in Syria was shot with the help of two women from Damascus who are credited under pseudonyms. It’s one of the more contemplative moments in “Simple as Water,” bridging together Mylan’s ruminations on parenthood with the uncertainty of a nation’s future.Simple as WaterNot rated. In Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Lawyers for ‘Rust’ Armorer Say Gun Was Briefly Unattended Before Shooting

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      The weapon handed to Alec Baldwin was left on a tray for several minutes, said the lawyers. Earlier, they had said it had been unattended for hours.The lawyers for the armorer on the film “Rust” — who has been under scrutiny since Alec Baldwin fatally shot the movie’s cinematographer with a gun that was not supposed to contain live ammunition — said in interviews on Wednesday that the gun had been left unattended for hours, but later corrected themselves to say it had only been several minutes. The gun left on a prop cart had been loaded with six dummy rounds by the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who took the prop ammunition from a box labeled “dummies,” said one of her lawyers, Jason Bowles. Dummy rounds contain no gunpowder and are used to resemble bullets on camera.Earlier in the day, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers, Mr. Bowles and Robert Gorence, said in a television appearance and in an interview with The New York Times that the guns had been left unattended for about two hours on that day, including during the crew’s lunch break. Mr. Bowles later said they had been mistaken, and after consulting Ms. Gutierrez-Reed again, he said they had been locked up in a safe during lunch and had only been left unattended for a total of five to 10 minutes. Mr. Bowles said Ms. Gutierrez-Reed asked her colleagues to watch the cart when she wasn’t there but remembered seeing it left unattended at various points that day.At about 11 a.m. on Oct. 21, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 24, loaded three firearms that were going to be used later that afternoon during a filming session, including the .45 Long Colt, Mr. Gorence, said. “Was there a duty to safeguard them 24/7?” Mr. Gorence said. “The answer is no, because there were no live rounds.”Even though the gun was declared “cold,” meaning it was not supposed to contain any live ammunition, a live round was in the revolver that killed the movie’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded the director, Joel Souza. The key question in the investigation is how it got there.According to an affidavit released last week by the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office, the firearms were secured inside a safe on a “prop truck” at lunchtime and Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told a detective that the head of the film’s prop department, Sarah Zachry, opened the safe after lunch and handed the guns to her..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;}Mr. Bowles said that after lunch, the film’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, asked for the firearm; Ms. Gutierrez-Reed then spun the gun’s cylinder and showed him all six rounds inside — which she believed to all be dummies. Mr. Halls then entered the set, a wooden church, while Ms. Gutierrez-Reed remained outside because there were not supposed to be any gun discharges happening inside that she needed to be present for, the lawyer said.“Hannah thinks the gun is secured,” Mr. Bowles said. “So she goes and does her prop duties.”In addition to working as the film’s armorer, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed was a props assistant, which made it difficult for her to focus fully on her job as armorer, her lawyers have said. She was a nonunion worker and was on the set for about 17 days before the shooting occurred.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s first job as head armorer was on a western called “The Old Way” starring Nicolas Cage, which was filmed this year, fueling concerns from colleagues on both that film and “Rust” who worried she was too inexperienced for the job.Her lawyers disputed those claims, saying Ms. Gutierrez-Reed trained with her father — the weapons expert Thell Reed — from a young age, and that she would like to continue being an armorer.“She’s a female, 24 years old in a male dominated profession,” Mr. Gorence said. “She wants to work at what she’s been trained to do.” More