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      ‘Fair Play’ Review: Casting a Floodlight on Invisible Labor

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      This documentary, a lucid look at household tasks based on Eve Rodsky’s best seller, pairs actionable guidance with testimony from real families.The advice included within Eve Rodsky’s book “Fair Play,” a guide to sharing domestic labor and achieving harmony in the home, won’t blow your mind. A woman’s time is as valuable as a man’s? Who knew! But there is a fortifying effect to arranging these axioms in sequence.The documentary “Fair Play,” directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom (“The Great American Lie”) and based on Rodsky’s book, reproduces its lucidity by positioning interviews with real families alongside Rodsky’s directives. While its stylings, including perky music and cutesy graphics, can sometimes verge on trite, its insights and guidance are encouraging, actionable and necessary.As our talking-head guide, Rodsky is amiable cinematic company. She describes growing up as the latchkey kid of a single mother, and how the strains she faced in her youth informed her values as a wife and mom. An admirable frankness guides her testimony: Rodsky recounts instances of feeling angry at her husband, and describes the specific ways that she coached him in the art of taking ownership over household tasks.The film’s arguments hit harder in the wake of the pandemic’s lockdowns, which the documentary suggests found moms bearing the brunt of the stress. But most vital is the film’s look at where the United States falls short in its support of parents, particularly its limited access to subsidized child care. The burden of invisible labor can be mitigated on a case-by-case basis, but at the end of the day, it is the system that needs to change.Fair PlayNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      In ‘Living Wine’ Documentary, Natural Wine Transcends the Clichés

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      Forget funkiness. The focus here is farming, culture, the environment, climate change and, yes, great-tasting wine.When the polarizing subject of natural wine arises, the discussion generally spirals to the stereotypes: flawed and funky wines, hippie producers and the debate over definitions. But a new documentary film, “Living Wine,” hopes to change that trite discussion.The film, which opens in selected theaters July 15, focuses on a small group of natural wine producers in California. It examines, with far more nuance than is typical, the myriad reasons they choose to work in natural wine, along with the many rationales for consumers to drink it.In this context, natural wine is presented neither as a trend nor a generational emblem. Involvement is a conscious choice. Though their reasons may overlap, each of the producers in the film has a different point of emphasis.Gideon Beinstock and Saron Rice of Clos Saron in the Sierra Foothills make wine without additives because they believe that method makes the best wines and offers the best expression of their vineyard.“The fact that we don’t add anything is not because it’s natural,” Mr. Beinstock said. “It’s because, why would I add anything? It will not improve the wine.”In the film, all of the producers must deal with the serious consequences of climate change.AbramoramaDarek Trowbridge of Old World Winery in the Russian River Valley believes in the traditional methods embodied by his ancestors, who planted a vineyard in the area almost 100 years ago, before chemical farming became the norm. He wants to express the distinctive terroirs of his vineyards, but he sees himself as a custodian of nature, too, a role that he holds sacred.“I try to work to do good on my farm for the land, for the ecosystem,” he said. “Where I reside spiritually is where I want to reside as a farmer and not separate the two.”For Megan Bell of Margins Wines, who shares a production facility outside of Santa Cruz with James Jelks of Florèz Wines, the reasons are more political, born of her demeaning experiences as a young woman in a male-dominated winery in Napa Valley.“I hated my job,” she said. “I loved what I physically did, but the culture and the way that I was treated, I dreaded going to work every day. Nobody wants to be at work when their abilities are doubted constantly.”She is a minimalist, trying to work efficiently rather than trying to make art, and has chosen to work primarily with grapes and areas that she believes are ignored by the corporate wine world, which she might not have left if she hadn’t felt driven out.“If I worked in a nicer industry, I never would have started my own company,” she said.Megan Bell felt demeaned as a woman in the mainstream industry, so she started Margins Wines.AbramoramaThe reasons to make natural wines are primarily cultural for Dani Rozman of La Onda, in the Sierra Foothills. He wants to wean Americans from the notion that the American wine industry traces directly to modern Europe. Instead, he wants to focus on North and South America, and their centuries of shared grape-growing and winemaking history that began when Spanish missionaries planted the listán prieto, or mission, grape in the Americas.Having worked with farmers in Chile gave him insight into alternatives to mainstream winemaking. “All the equipment is developed to make winemaking easier, but that doesn’t make it better,” he said.Following their personal muses, these producers have all ended up outside conventional winemaking, and have gravitated to styles of farming without chemical fertilizers and sprays, while employing traditional, preindustrial production methods.Looming over all is the climate crisis, which in California has caused intense heat waves, drought and repeated threats of deadly, destructive fires. Over the course of filming, each of these producers was directly affected by the fires.While these winemakers do not say they work specifically to combat climate change, the film addresses the vast harm that conventional agriculture has exacted on ecosystems and the climate. It also holds out hope that, if the world could step away from chemical farming and focus on building soil health and other regenerative methods, agriculture could be an important part of the solution.Lori Miller, the producer and director of “Living Wine,” is now devoted to natural wines.AbramoramaLori Miller, the producer and director of “Living Wine,” said she was drawn to these subjects because they work on the fringe.“I love telling stories about people outside the normal corporate world, people who are not playing the game but are inspired from within,” she said in a phone interview. “This story fell within the mold.”Though Ms. Miller, whose producer credits include “They Came to Play” and “Shakespeare High,” counts herself as a food and wine lover, she knew little about natural wine before beginning this project.Her brother, Ben Miller, and his family had moved into a new home outside of Santa Rosa, which came with a vineyard. They were dismayed to learn that the vineyard had been regularly sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate, which could have seeped into the well that supplied their household water. He was introduced to Mr. Trowbridge, who began the process of weaning the vineyard from chemical treatments.“That was the impetus for learning more about this,” Ms. Miller said. “I started looking into the wines I was buying, and I had no idea.”She said she tries to buy and cook only organic foods, and was shocked to learn that most of the wines she was drinking bore no relation to the foods she was buying.“I had always assumed wine was a natural beverage,” she said. “But if you go to the grocery store and pull something off the shelf, the likelihood is it was farmed with chemical inputs or farmed in a way that was terrible for the environment.”Darek Trowbridge of Old World Winery sees himself as a guardian of nature and tradition.AbramoramaMs. Miller imagines that those who watch the film might be very much like her, hyperconscious about where their food comes from but giving little thought to the wine. The first words in “Living Wine” come from Mr. Trowbridge:“The natural wine movement is about 20 years behind the organic food movement,” he said. “You can’t see the processing, but typically wine is a manufactured, machine-driven product. That means adjuncts to make it work in a timely manner.“People just don’t understand that,” he continued. “I didn’t know that until I got a master’s degree in winemaking.”With the help of two proponents of regenerative agriculture, Elizabeth Candelario and Dr. Timothy LaSalle, the film traces the rise of chemical agriculture to the repurposing of closed munitions factories after World War II. Nitrogen that went into bombs was instead used to make fertilizer, while nerve gas became an ingredient in pesticides.With the support of the government and Big Agriculture, students and farmers were taught an industrialized form of agriculture to increase production. The industrial methods resulted in far more specialized farming rather than in the more natural, complex ecosystems of preindustrial farming, and built a dependency on Big Ag corporations.“Nature only works in whole systems,” Dr. LaSalle said. “She can’t work separated out. When you bring something in, it changes and causes unexpected consequences.”The film never loses the thread between agriculture and wine, which in many people’s minds is simply a product on a supermarket shelf.“Why would I add anything?” said Gideon Beinstock of Clos Saron. “It will not improve the wine.”Abramorama“Every form of agriculture is detrimental to the environment, on any scale, even a garden, but we try to minimize the footprint,” Mr. Beinstock said.Their winemaking facilities are rustic, far from the wealthy tourist outposts in the popular imagination. They are designed for work, and the labor is difficult. The motivation is more personal expression than profit, yet choosing to work outside the mainstream is stressful in its own ways.“I’m at a spot still where I’ve been on food stamps for a year and I still have other jobs,” said Ms. Bell, of Margins Wines. “Because I’m putting all my money into my business.”She and Mr. Jelks, of Florèz Wines, outfitted their utilitarian facility with secondhand equipment and castoffs. It’s not ideal, and not easy, but it’s liberating.“We just stay scrappy and resilient, and we never stop,” Mr. Jelks said.As for natural wines themselves, the film acknowledges that consumers may require time to adjust to them because of expectations that arise from years of drinking commonplace examples, just as a farm-raised tomato might prove shocking to one accustomed to glossy supermarket tomatoes.At a tasting contrasting conventional and natural chardonnays, one consumer described the conventional bottle as “all the things you’re programmed to expect in a chardonnay.” The natural example was different, she said, but was “probably a more true expression of what the actual grape is.”Like a good natural wine, the film is not without some minor blemishes. It’s too black-and-white in its portrait of conventional wine, for one, which offers far more of a spectrum of approaches.Mr. Beinstock is dedicated, he said, to expressing the distinctive character of his vineyard. AbramoramaBut the idealism, selflessness and commitment of the growers and producers is inspiring. Though, as the film states, natural wine accounts for less than one percent of the wine produced in California, they have chosen to act on principle rather than resign themselves in despair.What the film offers in the end is not a formula for the good life, a cliché of California wine country, but a way of living well and reflectively, as Tahnee Shields, a harvest intern at Clos Saron, says about Mr. Beinstock:“His philosophy is, thinking about what a life can look like when you’re in constant cultivation and paying constant attention to something that you’re growing.”Climate chaos can be overwhelming, but Ms. Miller hopes that the film will be motivational.“You can make a difference even if you’re only farming a few acres, or composting in your yard or have a small colony of bees,” she said. “I hope showcasing people who aren’t giving up will be inspiring.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. 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      James Caan, Actor Who Won Fame in ‘The Godfather,’ Dies at 82

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      A Bronx native, he starred in countless movies and TV shows, but was most closely identified with the volatile character Sonny Corleone.James Caan, who built a durable film career in varied roles across six decades but was forever identified most closely with one of his earliest characters, the quick-tempered, skirt-chasing Sonny Corleone in the original “Godfather” movie, died on Wednesday. He was 82. His death was announced by his family on Twitter and confirmed by his manager, Matt DelPiano. Both his family and his manager declined to say where he died or cite a cause.By the time “The Godfather” was released in 1972, Mr. Caan had established himself as a young actor worth keeping an eye on. He had a meaty role in “El Dorado,” a 1966 western that starred John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. (Wayne, Mr. Caan said, cheated at chess games during breaks in the filming.)In “The Rain People,” a 1969 movie that was his first collaboration with the director Francis Ford Coppola, he earned critical praise playing a simple-minded former football player.“Brian’s Song” (1971), an early made-for-television movie, brought him to the attention of a wider audience. Based on a true story, it focused on the friendship between a Black football star, Gale Sayers of the Chicago Bears (played by Billy Dee Williams), and a white teammate, Brian Piccolo. Piccolo died of cancer in 1970 at 26, and Mr. Caan played him with verve and humor in an unabashedly three-hanky film.Then came Mr. Coppola’s “Godfather.” Initially cast as the central figure, Michael Corleone — the role ultimately played by Al Pacino — Mr. Caan ended up playing Sonny, quick to anger and ultimately gunned down on a causeway. He threw himself into the role so fully that for years, he said, strangers would say things to him like “Hey, don’t go through that tollbooth again.”Some even mistook him for a real mobster. “I’ve been accused so many times,” he told Vanity Fair in 2004. “I won ‘Italian of the Year’ twice in New York, and I’m not Italian.”He was in fact Jewish, reared in Sunnyside, Queens, by German-born parents. “I was denied in a country club once,” he said. “Oh, yeah, the guy sat in front of the board and he says, ‘No, no, he’s a wiseguy, been downtown. He’s a made guy.’ I thought, ‘What, are you out of your mind?’ ”Mr. Caan received an Emmy nomination for best actor for “Brian’s Song” and an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor for “The Godfather.” His Oscar competition included Mr. Pacino and another “Godfather” actor, Robert Duvall. The three canceled one another out, and the award went to Joel Grey for “Cabaret.”Mr. Caan’s performance as the pro football player Brian Piccolo in the 1971 television movie “Brian’s Song” earned him an Emmy nomination.ABCBy then, Mr. Caan’s career had kicked into high gear. The decade that followed was especially fertile. Among his roles were a love-struck sailor in “Cinderella Liberty” (1973), a self-destructive professor in “The Gambler” (1974), an anti-authority athlete in “Rollerball” (1975), a fierce World War II sergeant in “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) and a not-too-bright ex-con in “Thief” (1981), a favorite movie of his.Not all his films received favorable notices, but with his rugged good looks and obvious smarts, his acting usually did. Reviewing “Cinderella Liberty” for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote: “Mr. Caan seems to be shaping up as the Paul Newman of the nineteen-seventies. An intelligent, versatile actor with a low-key but unmistakable public personality.”Like Paul Newman, Mr. Caan tried his hand at directing. But he did so only once, with “Hide in Plain Sight” (1980), in which he also acted, playing a man searching for his children after they and their mother are brought into the government’s witness-protection program. The film fared poorly at the box office and left him disenchanted.“Everybody wants to do ‘Rocky 9’ and ‘Airport 96’ and ‘Jaws 7,’ ” he said in 1981. “And you look and you listen, and what little idealism you have left slowly dwindles.”Mr. Caan with the actress Lilyan Chauvin, left, and his wife at the time, the actress Sheila Ryan, at a movie preview in 1975.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn his prime, Mr. Caan had a man’s-man reputation that he savored. In interviews, he strewed four-letter words like birdseed. He earned a sixth-degree black belt in karate. He roped steers on the rodeo circuit and managed a boxer — pursuits, especially rodeo, that left him with so many stitches and screws in his shoulders and arms that the sportswriter Jim Murray once said, “Jimmy Caan was not born, he was embroidered.”Mr. Caan also had a bad-boy reputation. He was married and divorced four times. He appeared as a character witness for an old friend from Queens who was on trial as a mobster because, he said, stand-up guys stay loyal to their pals. And he had his own brushes with the law.The police questioned him at length in 1993 after a man fell to his death from the fire escape of a Los Angeles apartment where Mr. Caan was staying. The authorities concluded that the death was accidental, and Mr. Caan said he was asleep when it occurred.The next year the North Hollywood police arrested him after he flashed a loaded pistol in public. He said he had done it only to break up a fight. The charges were dropped.Along the way, he checked into a rehab center for an addiction to cocaine that began after his sister, Barbara Licker, died of leukemia in 1981. The two of them had been close — she was president of a movie production company that included James and their brother, Ronald — and her death hit him hard.He barely worked for the next six years and wound up deep in debt. “I got into the whole lifestyle of girls and drugs and partying,” he told Entertainment Weekly, adding that “you really do get caught up in it, and it’s very destructive.”Mr. Caan in a scene from another of his best-known films, “Misery” (1990), in which he played a writer held captive by a crazed fan.Columbia Pictures/Getty ImagesBut he bounced back, starting in 1987 with the Vietnam War drama “Gardens of Stone,” another collaboration with Mr. Coppola, in which he played a tough sergeant. He then took on roles including a writer held captive by a crazed fan (played by Kathy Bates) in the box-office hit “Misery” (1990), directed by Rob Reiner and based on a novel by Stephen King; a tough but romantic mob guy in “Honeymoon in Vegas” (1992); yet another mobster in the comedy “Mickey Blue Eyes” (1999); and a cantankerous book editor in “Elf” (2003).He also turned to television, notably the series “Las Vegas,” on which he was seen from 2003 to 2007 as the president of operations and security chief for a casino. Still, though he worked steadily, his later career lacked the incandescence of his earlier years.Born on March 26, 1940, in the Bronx, James Edmund Caan grew up in Queens, the son of Arthur Caan, a wholesale dealer of kosher meat, and Sophie (Falkenstein) Caan, a homemaker.Street life held his interest more than classrooms did. He dropped out of several schools before settling down at Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan, where he graduated in 1956 at age 16.At Michigan State University, he hoped to make the football team but failed. He switched to Hofstra University on Long Island — Mr. Coppola was a classmate — but dropped out before long. Nonetheless, his interest in acting was kindled there. He went on to study for five years at the well-regarded Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in Manhattan.Mr. Caan at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2010.Hugh Hamilton for The New York TimesAt around that time he met an actress named Dee Jay Mathis, who became the first of his four wives (the lengths of his marriages ranged from 12 years to barely a year). He is survived by his brother, Ronald; five children, the actor Scott Caan and Tara, Alexander, James and Jacob Caan; and four grandchildren. Mr. Caan’s early work included roles in 1960s television series like “Route 66,” “Dr. Kildare” and “Wagon Train.” Movies soon loomed, with “The Godfather” dominant.In that film, he said, he had improvised some of his lines and actions, including two words that he did not invent but that he ushered into the vernacular. Sonny tells Michael how hard it will be to kill the family’s enemies: “You gotta get up like this and — bada bing! — you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.”“Bada bing? Bada boom? I said that, didn’t I?” Mr. Caan said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “Or did I just say bada bing? It just came out of my mouth. I don’t know from where.” More

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      ‘Murina’ Review: Hunting for Independence on Her Terms

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      In this coming-of-age tale set off the rugged Croatian coast, a teenage girl strives to catch elusive eels, one of the movie’s hardworking metaphors.The 17-year-old heroine of “Murina” never seems freer than when she’s swimming. Wearing a snorkeling mask, and with a spear gun in one hand, she glides through the water, her strong body propelling her forward. As she descends into the ethereal depths, expertly weaving among the undulating plants and scattering fish, her one-piece suit gleams like a beacon.Julija (Gracija Filipovic), though, is rarely alone, even underwater, and “Murina” isn’t a story of freedom, but about the struggle to achieve it. Along with her parents, Julija lives on a starkly beautiful island off the coast of Croatia. It’s a hard, rugged, sun-blasted speck many hours from Zagreb, but it might as well be the moon. Other people live there, too, but few visitors drop by and then only briefly (you soon learn why). The other inhabitants are the region’s cawing, cooing, slithering animals, including the elusive moray eels Julija hunts.The eels give the movie its title and, like the inviting, enveloping Adriatic Sea, one of its hardworking metaphors. Long, speckled and distinctly phallic, the animals dart in and out of dark holes in the reefs and craggy rock formations, inadvertently playing a losing game of hide-and-seek with predators like Julija and her gruff, domineering father, Ante (Leon Lučev). When they go fishing, she and her father seem perfectly as one, with coordinated cunning and skill, and hypnotically choreographed moves. Underwater there are few signs of the violent emotions that otherwise define their relationship, investing it with jagged tension.A visually striking if overly diffuse tale of an unruly daughter, “Murina” takes place during a visit from an old family friend, Javier (Cliff Curtis). An entrepreneur, Javier arrives by yacht with open arms, a megawatt smile and a crowd of hangers-on. He’s visiting for pleasure and maybe for business; it’s not altogether clear. The writer-director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic uses dialogue prudently, keeping exposition to a minimum and letting details trickle in through naturalistic conversations and in the feelings that tremble in every exchange. Why is everyone angry? Patriarchy? Teenagers? Take your pick.Kusijanovic, making her feature directing debut, plots the family’s dynamic through a roundelay of gazes and with near-geometric precision. By the time Javier arrives, it’s evident that Ante and his daughter are furiously at odds — he yells, she sulks — and that Julija’s greatest, most sympathetic alliance is with her mother, Nela (Danica Curcic). A willowy, haunted beauty who looks far younger than Ante and could pass as Julija’s older sister, Nela serves as a bridge between her husband and daughter. Whether she’s a peacemaker or a collaborationist, a martyr or a patsy, remains one of the story’s provocative questions.A silky, seductive flirt, Javier helps shatter the family’s fragile peace, largely through the promises — real or imagined — he embodies. Each family member has a stake in him. While Nela basks in his attention (and he in hers), Ante tries to negotiate a land deal with Javier that would allow the family to move. Julija greets their glamorous visitor warmly when he arrives, but as her father’s temper erupts into evermore violent rages — his desperation to make the deal fuels his ire, including at his daughter — she draws closer to Javier. Like one of the eels she fishes, she slithers around him, leaving you guessing about who here is the prey.Kusijanovic sticks close to Julija, making canny use of the girl’s limited point of view. You see what she sees, how she looks at a world she doesn’t always understand and how she peers at a horizon that’s at once seductively open and impossibly out of reach. You’re Julija’s ally or that seems to be the idea, though Kusijanovic leans too heavily on your assumed sympathies, including for her young heroine. For the most part, the director cuts loose her characters and lets them and the story’s vague ideas — about gender, sexuality, money and power — swirl and drift, leaving you to decide how and whether they all fit together, or don’t.MurinaNot rated. In Croatian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ Review: A God’s Comic Twilight

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      The director Taika Waititi injects antic silliness, once again, into this Marvel franchise starring Chris Hemsworth, who swings a mighty hammer and flexes mightier muscles.Every so often in “Thor: Love and Thunder,” the 92nd Marvel movie to hit theaters this year (OK, the third), the studio machinery hits pause, and the picture opens a portal to another dimension: Its star, Chris Hemsworth, embraces wholesale self-parody, a pair of giant screaming goats gallop along a rainbow highway and Russell Crowe flounces around in a flirty skirt and Shirley Temple curls. As the movie briefly slips into a parallel realm of play and pleasure, you can feel the director Taika Waititi having a good time — and it’s infectious.This is the fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years and the second that Waititi has directed, following “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). That movie was all over the place, but it was funny (enough) and had a lightness that proved liberating for the series and Hemsworth. “Love and Thunder” is sillier than any of its predecessors, and thinner. A lot happens in overstuffed Marvel Studios fashion. But because the series has jettisoned many of its earlier components — its Shakespearean pretensions, meddlesome relatives and, crucially, Thor’s godly grandeur — the new movie more or less plays like a rescue mission with jokes, tears and smackdowns.It starts with a pasty, near-unrecognizable Christian Bale, who, having been relieved of his DC Dark Knight duties, has signed up with Marvel as a villain with the spoiler name of Gorr the God Butcher. Waititi quickly sketches in Gorr’s background, giving it a tragic cast. Believing himself betrayed by the god he once worshiped, Gorr is committed to destroying other deities. It’s potentially rich storytelling terrain, particularly given Thor’s stature and Marvel’s role as a contemporary mythmaker. But while Bale takes the role by the throat, as is his habit, investing the character with frictional intensity, Gorr proves disappointingly dull.For the most part, Gorr simply gives Thor another chance to play the hero, which Hemsworth does with a stellar deadpan and appreciable suppleness. He’s always been fun to watch in the role and not just because, as the slavering camerawork likes to remind you, he looks awfully fine with or without clothes. Hemsworth knows how to move, which is surprising given his muscled bulk, and is at ease with his beauty. He’s also learned how to deploy — and puncture — Thor’s inborn pomposity, although by the time the final credits rolled in “Ragnarok” that haughtiness had turned into shtick. Thor is still a god, but also he’s now a great big goof.To that end, Thor enters midfight on a battlefield washed in grayish red light, preening and posing and showboating alongside characters from Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” With Guardians (Chris Pratt, the raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper, etc.) on backup, Thor vanquishes the enemy with his customary hyperbole — he strikes the ground, reaches for the heavens, flips his hair — and a new hammer the size of a backhoe shovel. He also destroys a temple that looks right out of an airport gift shop. This synergistic foreplay isn’t pretty, and neither is the rest of the movie, but it announces Waititi’s sensibilities, his irreverence and taste for kitsch.From the start, the “Thor” series has pushed and pulled at its title character, by turns enshrining and undercutting his supernatural identity, raising him up only to bring him crashing back down to Earth. The movies have, almost to a fault, emphasized Thor’s frailties: He has daddy issues, a sibling rivalry and romantic woes. Gods, they’re just like us! Thor’s love life humanized him for good and bad, though his romance with an astrophysicist — Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster — worked best as ballast for the he-man action. Jane wasn’t interesting, despite Portman’s febrile smiles, but, after sitting out the last movie, she’s back.Why the encore? Well, mostly because Waititi, who wrote the script with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, doesn’t seem to know what else he can do with Thor. By the end of “Ragnarok,” the character had been repeatedly cut down to size. He’d squabbled with his brother and wittiest foil (Tom Hiddleston as Loki). His long hair was chopped off and his kingdom annihilated, and gone too were the heavyweights who had helped fill the story’s holes with their magnetism and personality. Anthony Hopkins (Thor’s dad) exited, as did Cate Blanchett (sis). Thor fought, loved and lost, and then he packed on the pounds and went to hang with the Avengers.“Love and Thunder” revs up the “Thor” franchise again with the usual quips and beats, programmatically timed blowouts, brand-extending details, a kidnapping and a welcome if underused Tessa Thompson. Her Valkyrie, alas, receives less screen time than Jane, who’s given a crisis as well as special powers, a blond blowout and muscles that inflate and deflate like party balloons. Jane’s new talents don’t do much for the story and read as a dutiful nod to women’s empowerment (thanks). Portman does what she can, yet she’s so tightly wound that she never syncs up with the loosey-goosey rhythms the way Thompson and Hemsworth do.Waititi’s playfulness buoys “Love and Thunder,” but the insistence on Thor’s likability, his decency and dude-ness, has become a creative dead end. The movie has its attractions, notably Hemsworth, Thompson and Crowe, whose Zeus vamps through a sequence with a butt-naked Thor and fainting minions. It’s a delightful and cheerfully vulgar interlude, and critically, it reminds you of the sheer otherworldliness of these beings who — with their vanities, cruelties, deeds, mysteries and powers — turn reality into myth and stories into dreams. Like movie stars, gods aren’t like us, which of course is one reason we invented them.Thor: Love and ThunderRated PG-13 for superhero violence. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Sea Beast’ Review: Of Monsters and Men

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      In this new animated film from Netflix, a monster hunter and an orphan become unlikely allies at sea.“Live a great life and die a great death,” goes the mantra of the monster hunters in Netflix’s new animated movie “The Sea Beast.” It’s a spirited battle cry, sure, but it’s also a morbid one, made only more grisly by the fact that the first character to say it is a child.At first, the world of this film, directed by Chris Williams (“Moana,” “Big Hero 6”) and written by Williams and Nell Benjamin, seems comfortably didactic. The people of an island kingdom have been raised to fear the giant sea monsters that stalk the ocean. Ships full of hunters heroically fell the beasts and bring bits of their carcasses home to the king and queen. It doesn’t take a genius to see the creepy side of this, or to wonder when the film will introduce its inevitable paradigm shift.That shift is mainly instigated by a little girl named Maisie (voiced by Zaris-Angel Hator), the same character who first champions dying “a great death.” Orphaned when her two creature-hunter parents perished on the job, Maisie has raised herself on tales of loathsome beasts and the legendary sailors who slay them. She most idolizes a famous ship called the Inevitable. When the boat docks within striking distance of her stifling group home, she sneaks away to climb aboard.The crew of the Inevitable has been ordered by royal decree to kill a massive monster called the Red Bluster. If the mission fails, the monarchy will decommission the ship. This adds stakes for Jacob (Karl Urban), an illustrious hunter who is next in line to be captain, and the aged Captain Crow (Jared Harris), who has held a grudge ever since he lost an eye to the beast. Jacob, who becomes Maisie’s unwitting comrade, has his own past marred by monstrosity.“The Sea Beast” is capably animated. Its backgrounds and underwater shots are particularly stunning, though the characters’ facial expressions rarely live up to the enthusiastic voice acting. Its fantastical creatures range from uninspired (the Red Bluster) to irresistible (an aquatic sidekick of Maisie’s named Blue). There are other fun visual choices, like a beach with bubble-gum pink sand, and the film has an impressively diverse ensemble of background characters. Even when the story drags, a lively score by Mark Mancina keeps things zippy.Of course, sluggish storytelling is not ideal, particularly in a movie intended for kids. “The Sea Beast” doesn’t earn its nearly two-hour running time; it easily could have stuck the landing if only it had fewer diversions. For instance, Captain Crow takes the Inevitable on a sinister side quest that introduces a character who, despite much dastardly foreshadowing, never resurfaces.But this script’s greatest sin is its steadfast predictability. Lessons are learned and enemies are fought, but nothing very surprising happens in between. The unlikely duo assembles; the spunky little girl gets a cute animal as a buddy; good and evil are not actually as they seem. Last year, Pixar released “Luca,” which offers its own take on prejudice, found family and sea monsters, and it’s hard, while watching “The Sea Beast,” not to draw comparisons. “Luca” is by far the more heartfelt, original and stylish of the two.The Sea BeastRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Ni Kuang, Novelist and Screenwriter for Martial Arts Films, Dies at 87

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      Best known for fantastical thrillers that doubled as political allegories, he also wrote hundreds of martial arts films for Bruce Lee and others.HONG KONG — Ni Kuang, a prolific author of fantasy novels imbued with criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and a screenwriter for more than 200 martial arts films, died here on Sunday. He was 87.His death was announced by his daughter-in-law, the actress Vivian Chow, on social media. She did not state the cause but said he died at a cancer rehabilitation center.Best known for his fantastical thrillers, Mr. Ni wrote the screenplays for many of the action movies produced by the Shaw Brothers, who dominated the Hong Kong market. He also created the story lines and central characters for Bruce Lee’s first two major films, “The Big Boss” (1971) and “Fist of Fury” (1972), although the screenwriting credit for both films went to the director, Lo Wei.In the Chinese-speaking world, Mr. Ni was perhaps best known for the “Wisely” series, a collection of about 150 adventure stories first published as newspaper serials. The stories told of the title character’s encounters with aliens and battles with intelligent monsters, but they sometimes also contained pointed political criticism.Born in 1935 to a working-class family in Shanghai, Mr. Ni was given two names at birth, as was the custom: Ni Yiming and Ni Cong. Information on his parents was not immediately available, but it is known that he had six siblings.He began working in his teens as a public security official during China’s land-reform movement, believing in the Communist Party’s promise of a more egalitarian future. But he quickly grew disillusioned after being given the task of writing daily execution notices about landowners, who were blamed for China’s rural poverty and persecuted as public enemies. When he questioned whether they had committed other crimes to warrant a death sentence, his superiors rebuked him.Bruce Lee in “Fist of Fury” (1972), for which Mr. Li created the story line and the central characters. He did not receive screenwriting credit, but he did for more than 200 other martial arts films.Golden Harvest Company“That was the beginning of my distaste for the party,” he said in a 2019 interview with Paul Shieh, a prominent lawyer and television host, for RTHK, the Hong Kong public broadcaster.His troubles did not end there. While stationed in Inner Mongolia, Mr. Ni mated a crippled wolf with two dogs, then raised a pack of their cubs in secret. When the cubs attacked a more senior official, he was punished and made to write long essays of contrition. In public sessions where so-called class enemies were denounced, he got in trouble for giggling. He was also branded as an anti-revolutionary after being caught dismantling wooden planks from a footbridge to burn as fuel during a cold spell.A friend had warned Mr. Ni that he could face heavy penalties for his transgressions and helped him steal a horse so he could escape, Mr. Ni said in the RTHK interview. He returned to Shanghai, where he paid smugglers to help him stow away on a boat to Hong Kong in 1957.At first, Mr. Ni made less than 50 cents a day doing factory work and odd jobs. In interviews, he described in great detail the first meal he had paid for with his earnings: a bowl of rice topped with glistening slabs of fatty barbecued pork.Mr. Ni soon found a vocation as a writer of serialized fiction when The Kung Sheung Daily News accepted a manuscript he wrote, “Buried Alive,” about land reform in mainland China. He threw himself into writing full time, saying in interviews that at the peak of his career he wrote as many as 20,000 words a day. He published the first installments of the “Wisely” saga in the newspaper Ming Pao in 1963.“Back then, I wrote novels as a living, to feed mouths and get through the day, so I had no way of writing exquisitely,” he said, adding that he had time for neither research nor revision while writing. “I could only rely on what was in my head.”Although he never returned to the mainland, his early life experiences there often figured into his writing, even as his fiction became more supernatural. “Old Cat,” a “Wisely” novel first published in 1971, was inspired by a gray-blue Persian cat that had kept Mr. Ni company when he was locked in a hut as punishment. He had spent hours untangling its knotted, matty hair, he said in an interview. The cat in the novel battled aliens.In a speech at the Hong Kong Book Fair in 2019 about his legacy as a science-fiction writer, Mr. Ni argued that his work did not really fit into that genre as it is traditionally defined. He had once avoided writing about aliens, he said, but found them to be convenient narrative devices when he was stuck on a plot.“My science fiction is completely different from Western science fiction or what most people would consider ‘hard’ science fiction,” he said.Having completed only junior high school, he added, he lacked a proper understanding of science. He drew more from ancient Chinese myths and legends.Mr. Ni also brought his imagination to the big screen, earning screenwriting credits for movies that included “One-Armed Swordsman,” which broke Hong Kong box-office records in 1967.Mr. Ni married Li Guozhen in 1959. She survives him. His survivors also include their daughter, Ni Sui, and their son, Joe Nieh. Over the years, Mr. Ni did not hold back in his critiques of the Chinese Communist Party, and he described Hong Kong as a refuge for free thinking. But he was pessimistic about the city’s future under Beijing’s tightening grip.His 1983 novel, “Chasing the Dragon,” was widely cited as a prescient description of the political backdrop that prompted pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, followed by a sweeping crackdown.In the book, Mr. Ni writes about an unnamed metropolis that is reduced to a shell of itself:There’s no need to destroy the architecture of this big city, no need to kill any of its residents. Even the appearance of the big city could look exactly the same as before. But to destroy and kill this big city, one only needs to make its original merits disappear. And all that would take are stupid words and actions coming from just a few people.When asked by Mr. Shieh of RTHK what disappearing merits he meant, Mr. Ni said, “Freedom.”“Freedom of speech is the mother of all freedoms,” he continued. “Without freedom of speech, there is no other freedom at all.” More

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      ‘Moon, 66 Questions’ Review: Daddy Issues

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      This elliptical drama by the Greek writer-director Jacqueline Lentzou rousingly summons the inner turmoil of a young woman who returns home to care for her ailing father.The writer and director Jacqueline Lentzou’s “Moon, 66 Questions” takes cues from astrology, using Tarot cards to represent each new chapter of a story about a young woman, Artemis (Sofia Kokkali), who returns to Athens to care for her ailing father.Her father, Paris (Lazaros Georgakopoulos), has a degenerative disease that renders him almost speechless and incapable of easy movement. Forced into an unprecedented intimacy, daughter and father grapple with their new bond, gradually revealing the near-nonexistence of their past one.Though there is an eventual revelation that throws Artemis’s woes into sharp relief, this moving character study — the kind that sinks beneath the skin — avoids the intricate plotting of a neatly packaged personal development. Instead, “Moon” is an elliptical drama that pieces together banal VHS recordings overlaid with spoken diary entries, tense familial encounters, and displays of solitary, existential angst rousingly performed by Kokkali.And as the title suggests, the film yields more questions than it does answers.How old is Artemis and where was she living before her return? For how long? What happened to her relationship with her family and why is she the only member taking responsibility for this man she does not truly know?Lentzou, with her first feature no less, gets at something much knottier about what it feels like to get older and perceive your parents as full people, in all their flaws and vulnerabilities; the pains and pleasures of adulthood, contrary to expectation, yield just as much, if not more, unpredictability than in youth.That’s why Lentzou’s use of astrology works so beautifully. The film’s moody textures and atmospheric unease goes hand in hand with the pseudoscience, emblematic as it is of a yearning for certainty in a dark and infinitely mutable world.Moon, 66 QuestionsNot rated. In Greek, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More