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      ‘Marcel the Shell With Shoes On’ Review: Bigger Isn’t Better

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      The one-inch-high shell voiced by Jenny Slate gets a feature-length vehicle, but the transition from YouTube fame is only partly successful.When I was a kid, my sister and I had shelves filled with carefully arranged miniatures, ceramic animals and the tiny, delicate like. I never thought much about these displays, though now I see that collecting and ordering these diminutive emblems of the world is a way children express agency and control as they enter it. It’s no wonder that miniatures seem so charming: They’re time machines. The minuscule gives us access to “the enlarging gaze of the child,” as the philosopher Gaston Bachelard puts it in his book “The Poetics of Space.”This partly explains the tug of “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” about a teeny-tiny creature in a great, big world. He’s a curious fellow, as in inquisitive, but also simply peculiar. For starters, he’s a shell. Not a land snail or one of the sea creatures whose hard protective layer can be found washed up on shores. Marcel is inexplicably alive, even if, from the looks of him, he’s little more than a walking, talking empty carapace, a whatsit about an inch big with one googly eye, two shoes and an animated mouth that’s a font for a high-pitched, babyish voice.That adenoidal falsetto — courtesy of the comic performer Jenny Slate — is a lot. And it could easily have been a deal-breaker. Marcel is very talkative in the way that, at its most sweet and appealing, recalls the sincere burbling of children sharing every single little thing racing through their fired-up minds. At its least attractive, you may grimly flash on the last gasbag you were stuck next to while waiting on some interminable line. It took me time to warm to the voice, admittedly. In part that’s because you can hear all the calculation shaping Marcel’s stream, the coyness and practiced comedy of its ebb and flow, though mostly flow.It’s fine and sometimes productive to see the labor in a performance, but not here. That’s because while “Marcel the Shell” captivates you with its mix of real objects and animation, its nubby textures and huge thumbtacks, for it to work you need to forget about Slate and just go with the lightly surrealistic silliness. It helps, in other words, to fall in love with Marcel. He’s the protagonist, so there’s no escaping him. But caring for him is crucial because, once he’s shown you around and you’ve met his grandmother — another shell voiced by the invaluable Isabella Rossellini — there is not all that much going on, even if quite a bit happens.Marcel was birthed in 2010 in a three-minute-plus short. Created by Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp, who posted it to YouTube, the short introduced Marcel with small strokes, a shoestring budget and rudimentary but effective stop-motion animation. Of indeterminate origin, Marcel lives in a big house, sleeps on bread and drags around a ball of lint with a human hair. “My one regret in life,” he said then, “is that I’ll never have a dog.” With its artful naïveté and a gentle undertow of melancholia, the short racked up millions of views, and what Marcel soon did have was fame, more shorts, a book and now this feature-length vehicle.“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” builds on its predecessors to intermittently productive effect. Once again, Marcel is pulling on lint, making a bed of bread and living in a human house, a wee soul in a land of giants. And as he did before, Marcel is talking to, though often at, a guy. This man has a name, Dean (affably voiced by Camp), and a back story. When the movie opens, he is living in Marcel’s house, which has been converted into an Airbnb with disastrous consequences that give the tale shape and sentimentality. He’s also making a documentary about his unusual roommate that he soon posts to, yes, YouTube.Brands are part of Marcel-land, which is a letdown, as is the part of the story which turns on that quintessentially American chronicle of identity, being and becoming: celebrity. Dean’s portrait racks up views, makes Marcel famous and stirs up trouble; enter Lesley Stahl and gawkers wielding selfie sticks. Some of this is funny, if overly familiar, but the self-reflexiveness of the entire enterprise only breaks the spell that Slate and Camp work hard to maintain — one which Rossellini effortlessly keeps intact with intelligence, beautifully controlled phrasing and a soft, melodious warmth that feels like a tender caress.Marcel the Shell With Shoes OnRated PG for some itty-bitty peril and a death. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Ken Knowlton, a Father of Computer Art and Animation, Dies at 91

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      His work at Bell Labs in the 1960s laid the groundwork for today’s computer-generated imagery in film and on TV.Ken Knowlton, an engineer, computer scientist and artist who helped pioneer the science and art of computer graphics and made many of the first computer-generated pictures, portraits and movies, died on June 16 in Sarasota, Florida. He was 91.His son, Rick Knowlton, said the cause of death, at a hospice facility, was unclear.In 1962, after finishing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Dr. Knowlton joined Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., a future-focused division of the Bell telephone conglomerate that was among the world’s leading research labs. After learning that the lab had installed a new machine that could print images onto film, he resolved to make movies using computer-generated graphics.“You could make pictures with letters on the screen or spots on the screen or lines on the screen,” he said in a 2016 interview, recalling his arrival at Bell Labs. “How about a movie?”Over the next several months, he developed what he believed to be the first computer programming language for computer animation, called BEFLIX (short for “Bell Labs Flicks”). The following year, he used this language to make an animated movie. Called “A Computer Technique for the Production of Animated Movies,” this 10-minute film described the technology used to make it.Though Dr. Knowlton was the only person to ever use the BEFLIX language —he and his colleagues quickly replaced it with other tools and techniques — the ideas behind this technology would eventually overhaul the movie business.By the mid-1980s, computer graphics were an integral part of feature films like “Tron” and “The Last Starfighter.” In 1995, a studio in Northern California, Pixar, released “Toy Story,” a feature film whose images were generated entirely by computer. Today, computer-generated imagery, or CGI, plays a role in practically every movie and television show.“He was the first man to fill a movie screen with pixels,” said Ted Nelson, a computer science pioneer and philosopher who wrote about Dr. Knowlton’s early work. “Now, every movie you see was created on a digital machine.”Kenneth Charles Knowlton was born on June 6, 1931, in Springville, N.Y. His parents, Frank and Eva (Reith) Knowlton, owned a farm in that small community, about 30 miles south of Buffalo, where they grew corn and raised chickens.After graduating a year early from high school as class valedictorian, Dr. Knowlton enrolled in a five-year engineering and physics program at Cornell University, where his parents had first met while studying agriculture before deciding to buy a farm. He stayed at Cornell for a master’s degree, which involved building an X-ray camera using parts from an electron microscope.At Cornell, he met his future wife, Roberta Behrens, and together they joined the Quakers. After he finished his master’s degree, they traveled to Quaker work camps that helped build housing infrastructure for the poor in El Salvador and Mexico, where he contracted polio. He walked with a leg brace or a cane for the rest of his life.It was at Cornell in the mid-1950s that Dr. Knowlton developed his interest in computers — room-size machines operated via punched cards and magnetic tape reels that were just beginning to arrive in government labs, academia and industry. After reading about a group at the Massachusetts Institute Technology that aimed to build computer technology that could translate between languages, like English and French, he joined the project as a Ph.D. student. His thesis advisers included the linguist Noam Chomsky and Marvin Minsky, a founding father of artificial intelligence.At Bell Labs, Dr. Knowlton realized that he could create detailed images by stringing together dots, letters, numbers and other symbols generated by a computer. Each symbol was chosen solely for its brightness — how bright or how dark it appeared at a distance. His computer programs, by carefully changing brightness as they placed each symbol, could then build familiar images, like flowers or faces.Dr. Knowlton and Dr. Harmon’s 12-foot-long computer-generated mosaic of a nude woman was hung on the wall of their boss’s office as a joke. This remastered version was recreated under Dr. Knowlton’s supervision in 2016. Jim Boulton, Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton; remastered from Jim Boulton’s backward-analyzed digital files of Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton’s “Studies in Perception I, 1966.”After experimenting with movies, he applied similar techniques to portraits and other still images. In the mid-1960s, he and a collaborator named Leon Harmon created a 12-foot-long computer-generated mosaic of a nude woman and, as a joke, hung it on the wall of their boss’s office.Their boss, Edward E. David, Jr., the Bell Labs executive director of communications research, who would later serve as science adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, was not amused. But the portrait later caught the attention of the pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, who put it on display in his New York City loft when he launched a project called Experiments in Art and Technology, or E.A.T., in the fall of 1967, aiming to develop new collaborations between artists and engineers.The New York Times published an article about the event the next day, including a picture of Dr. Knowlton’s image of the nude woman, titled “Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I).” It was believed to be the first full-frontal nude printed in the pages of The New York Times. A year later, the picture was part of a landmark exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art called “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age.”Dr. Knowlton remained at Bell Labs until 1982, experimenting with everything from computer-generated music to technologies that allowed deaf people to read sign language over the telephone. He later joined Wang Laboratories, where, in the late-1980s, he helped develop a personal computer that let users annotate documents with synchronized voice messages and digital pen strokes.In 2008, after retiring from tech research, he joined a magician and inventor named Mark Setteducati in creating a jigsaw puzzle called Ji Ga Zo, which could be arranged to resemble anyone’s face. “He had a mathematical mind combined with a great sense of aesthetics,” Mr. Setteducati said in a phone interview.In addition to his son Rick, Dr. Knowlton is survived by two other sons, Kenneth and David, all from his first marriage, which ended in divorce; a brother, Fredrick Knowlton; and a sister, Marie Knowlton. Two daughters, Melinda and Suzanne Knowlton, also from his first marriage, and his second wife, Barbara Bean-Knowlton, have died.While at Bell Labs, Mr. Knowlton collaborated with several well-known artists, including the experimental filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek, the computer artist Lillian Schwartz and the electronic-music composer Laurie Spiegel. He saw himself as an engineer who helped others create art, as prescribed by Mr. Rauschenberg’s E.A.T. project.But later in life he began creating, showing and selling art of his own, building traditional analog images with dominoes, dice, seashells and other materials. He belatedly realized that when engineers collaborate with artists, they become more than engineers.“In the best cases, they become more complete humans, in part from understanding that all behavior comes not from logic but, at the bottommost level, from intrinsically indefensible emotions, values and drives,” he wrote in 2001. “Some ultimately become artists.” More

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      How Alton Mason Went from ‘Male Model of the Year’ to ‘Elvis’

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      Once known for doing back flips on the runway, the 24-year-old makes his acting debut playing Little Richard.Name: Alton MasonAge: 24Hometown: PhoenixNow Lives: A hotel room on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, although he is usually traveling. “I live in Terminal 2 in Delta,” he said, jokingly. “It’s just me and my suitcase!”Claim to Fame: Mr. Mason is an actor, filmmaker and model known for doing back flips and other acrobatic moves down the runway for Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Versace, Valentino and other major labels. In addition to being named Model of the Year by Models.com for four years in a row, Mr. Mason was the first Black male model to walk in a Chanel show. “Now, I represent so many people that may identify with my story, my vision, my culture and me,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be able to open doors.”Mr. Mason did a backflip at the Louis Vuitton men’s wear show in Paris in 2019. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesBig Break: Mr. Mason was studying acting at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles and interning for the choreographer Laurieann Gibson when he was discovered by a modeling agent on Instagram in 2015. He went to New York City for the first time that year and landed a major show: Yeezy Season 3, held at Madison Square Garden. “This show felt transcendental,” he said. “I left that show, got a dollar slice of pizza, and flew back to L.A. with a clearer vision of levels I could reach.”Latest Project: In January, Mr. Mason walked in Virgil Abloh’s final collection for Louis Vuitton in Paris. “Virgil was like a brother to me in this industry,” he said. “He gave a platform for me to shine and believed in me, and being in that tribute really hit home.” Mr. Mason recalled how Mr. Abloh encouraged him to perform his signature runway move at a 2019 show in Paris. “Backstage, after I got off the runway, he came up to me and said, ‘I want you to go out there and do something,’” Mr. Mason said. Dressed in a purple silk suit, he executed a series of back flips. “Virgil walked back in and said, ‘You killed that!’”A scene from “Elvis,” in which Mr. Mason plays Little Richard.Warner Bros.Next Thing: Mr. Mason makes his acting debut in the Baz Luhrmann biopic “Elvis,” in which he plays Little Richard. Mr. Luhrmann met Mr. Mason at a 2019 GQ Australia awards show, where Mr. Mason gave a speech that impressed the director. They struck up a conversation at the after-party and Mr. Mason was soon cast in the movie. “I’m paying tribute to such a legend, such an icon — someone that I embody the essence of,” he said.Moves Like Michael Jackson: “I grew up with a bunch of Black cousins in the South and we would always be in the living room dancing and watching Michael Jackson,” he said. “A lot of the moments you see me moving on the runway are really spontaneous; it’s improvised, never choreographed. These are just feelings that come to me and I let them all free.” More

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      For the Most Complex Heroines in Animation, Look to Japan

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      The girls and women of anime tend to experience the conflicting emotions of real life. That’s because the auteurs try to create “an everyday, real person.”At a time of widespread debate over the depiction of women in film, the top Japanese animators have long been creating heroines who are more layered and complex than many of their American counterparts. They have faults and weaknesses and tempers as well as strengths and talents. They’re not properties or franchises; they’re characters the filmmakers believe in.Like many teenagers, Suzu in Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle” (released here this year and available on major digital platforms) has a life online that overshadows her daily existence: her alter ego, the title character, is the reigning pop diva of the cyberworld of U. In real life, Suzu is an introverted high school student in a flyspeck town — even her best friend calls her “a country bumpkin.” But she still wins sophisticated listeners, as her music reflects the love and pain she has experienced, especially since the death of her mother, who drowned saving a child from a flooded river.Suzu misses her, but she’s also angry at her for sacrificing herself for “a kid whose name she didn’t even know.” Suzu went so far as to abandon her impressive musical gifts because her mother encouraged them. American heroines may express a longing for a vanished parent, but not the deep, complicated emotions of this reworking of “Beauty and the Beast.” The protagonist of the Disney version misses her father when she agrees to become Beast’s prisoner, but she never mentions her mother. Nor does Jasmine in “Aladdin.”In a video call, Hosoda said he believed a major shift occurred in animation when the Disney artists made Belle a more independent, intelligent and contemporary young woman than her predecessors. She wanted a more exciting life than her “poor, provincial town” could offer — a desire Snow White or Cinderella never expressed. “When you think of animation and female leads, you always go to the fairy tale tropes,” Hosoda said through a translator. “But they really broke that template: It felt very new. Similarly, what we tried to do in ‘Belle’ is not build a character, but build a person: someone who reflects the society in which we live.”With Suzu in “Belle,” the director Mamoru Hosoda tried to create “someone who reflects the society in which we live.” Studio ChizuThe beast that Suzu encounters in U is not an enchanted prince, but Kei, an abused adolescent who struggles to protect his younger brother from their brutal father. To save the boys, Suzu discards Belle’s glamorous trappings and reveals herself to be the plain high school girl she is. When she sings as herself, she touches the boy she wants to help and her grieving heart, too. Because Japanese animated features are made by smaller crews and on smaller budgets than those of major American films, directors can present more personal visions. American studios employ story crews; Hosoda, Hayao Miyazaki, Makoto Shinkai and other auteurs storyboard entire films themselves. Their work isn’t subjected to a gantlet of test audiences, executive approvals or advisory committees.Shinkai broke box office records in Japan in 2016 with “Your Name” (now on digital platforms). It begins as a body-swapping teen rom-com but develops into a meditation on the trauma many Japanese still suffer after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.Mitsuha is bored with her life in the rural town of Itomori; Taki, a student in Tokyo, wants to be an architect. One morning, they wake up in each other’s bodies and have to navigate daily life not knowing where to find anything or who anyone is.Taki and Mitsuha are caught up in a body-switching tale in “Your Name,” but it is Mitsuha who must overcome her fear to save family and friends.Funimation FilmsAs the body-swapping recurs, they learn about each other through their surroundings, establishing a bond that transcends physical distance and time. Mitsuha revels in the sophisticated attractions of Tokyo. Taki draws the Itomori he sees through Mitsuha’s eyes, but that leads him to a shattering discovery: The town was destroyed three years earlier by a devastating meteor strike.Desperate to warn Mitsuha, he reaches out to her through Shinto-inflected magic. They meet briefly at twilight, when the boundaries between worlds become permeable in Japanese folklore. Like any awkward teenagers, they laugh, quarrel, shed tears and vow to be together again, but they also formulate a plan to save the people of Itomori.When Taki vanishes, Mitsuha acts. She’s not a princess on a quest to preserve her realm like Moana, or Poppy in “Trolls 2.” She’s a frightened girl trying to save her family and friends from a deadly threat. She defies her pompous politician father, and uses her intelligence and resolve to overcome her fear and save hundreds of lives. But any capable high school girl could do what Mitsuha does: She doesn’t need superpowers to save the day.“Ultimately, Mitsuha still loses her hometown; she moves to Tokyo,” Shinkai said in an interview via email. “Since the 2011 earthquake, Japanese people have been living with the fear that our cities may disappear. But even if that happens, even if we have to move somewhere else, we go on living. We meet someone special. That’s what I wanted Mitsuha to do, who I wanted her to be.”The trend toward complex heroines isn’t new in anime. Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning “Spirited Away” (released in Japan in 2001 and now on HBO Max) grew out of his dissatisfaction with the superficial entertainments offered to adolescent girls in Japan. “I wanted the main character to be a typical girl in whom a 10-year-old could recognize herself,” he explained through a translator in an interview. “She shouldn’t be someone extraordinary, but an everyday, real person — even though this kind of character is more difficult to create. It wouldn’t be a story in which the character grows up, but a story in which she draws on something already inside her that is brought out by the particular circumstances.”The protagonist, Chihiro, begins as a petulant adolescent: Her “skinny legs and sulky face” symbolize her overprotected, underdeveloped personality. The trials she faces in Yubaba’s Bathhouse, a spa for nature spirits sullied by human pollution, force Chihiro to develop untapped resources of strength, courage and love. By the end of the film, the sulky girl has been replaced by a more confident, capable young woman who cares about others. Her transformation shows in the animation: Early on, she runs like a fussy child, eyes half-closed. Later, when she goes to a save a friend, she runs all out, knees and elbows pumping.In Isao Takahata’s “Only Yesterday” (1991, now on HBO Max), Taeko has an unexciting job and a tiny apartment in 1982 Tokyo. But she’s 27 and single at a time when Japanese women were expected to marry before 25. Bored with her mundane existence, she decides to visit country cousins she stayed with years earlier.Taeko is surprised to discover her fifth-grade self has accompanied her on the trip. The spectral presence of the girl she once was triggers a flood of memories: School friendships, fights with her sisters, the onset of puberty. By exploring who she was, Taeko learns who she wants to become in a moving, understated portrait of a woman at a crossroads in her life.Like Greta Garbo, Chiyoko Fujiwara in Satoshi Kon’s “Millennium Actress” (released here in 2003 and available on the Roku Channel) retired from the screen at the height of her fame. After 30 years of seclusion, she grants a documentarian, Genya Tachibana, an interview. As Chiyoko reminisces, Tachibana and his jaded cameraman find themselves inside her tangled memories — and movies. As an adolescent in the 1930s, Chiyoko fell in love with a wounded artist who was fleeing the dreaded thought police.Kon effortlessly shifts the narrative from reality to memory to film. In Japanese-occupied Manchuria, bandits attack the train on which the teenage actress is traveling. A door in the burning railroad car opens into a fiery castle in a feudal period film: Chiyoko plays a princess determined to join her lord in death. As a 19th-century geisha, she shields the artist from the Shogun’s troops in Kyoto; as an astronaut, she goes on a mission to find him, knowing she won’t be able to return. The visual complexity of the film mirrors Chiyoko’s personality. Kon depicts her as an independent woman who made her own decisions: what profession to pursue, when and whom to marry, when to divorce, what roles to play, when to retire.Although almost all Japanese animation directors are male, more women have been moving into important roles in recent years as producers, writers, musicians and more. Their contributions are affecting the way girls and women are depicted onscreen.O-Ei, in Keiichi Hara’s “Miss Hokusai” (released here in 2016, and now on digital platforms), is based on a real person, the daughter of the great printmaker Katsushika Hokusai. Although only a few works can be attributed to her with certainty, O-Ei was an artist in her own right, and many historians believe she assisted her father when his abilities faltered in old age.Rapunzel in “Tangled” covered the walls of her tower room with paintings, but she shows little interest in art once she escapes. In contrast, O-Ei strides assuredly through 19th-century Edo, confident in her talent and her place in its vibrant artistic culture. She focuses on her drawing and can’t be bothered with the traditional female duties of housekeeping. “When the place gets too dirty, we move,” she says bluntly.O-Ei reflects the experiences of women in modern Japan who are escaping the sexism of its traditional culture, including the female artists who worked on the film. Hara explained via email: “I have no direct experience of O-Ei’s state of mind: I can only guess. But co-producer Keiko Matsushita, actress Anne Watanabe (who provides O-Ei’s voice) and singer-songwriter Ringo Sheena, who are very strong-minded, creative women pursuing their goals with great determination, may have related to O-Ei at a more personal level. The film reflects the love and dedication they put into it.” More

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      ‘Rise’ Review: To Be Giannis

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      The story of the real-life N.B.A. superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo is told with heartfelt charm in this endearing Disney+ biopic.“Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,” Mirin Fader’s biography of Giannis Antetokounmpo, portrays the Greek-born basketball superstar as a young man of sweet-natured innocence and irrepressible enthusiasm. Immigrating to the United States to play pro ball for the Milwaukee Bucks, where he was the 15th overall pick in the 2013 N.B.A. draft, he sees everything through eyes of guileless wonder: He’s dazzled by chocolate custard and hot dogs, by peanut butter bars and mixed-berry smoothies.Even American lingo fascinated him. “The day he learned the expression ‘Yo mama,’” Fader writes, “he ran around the locker room screaming, ‘Yo mama! Yo mama! Yo mama!’”This childlike charm, as much as his generational talent, is what has endeared Giannis to legions of N.B.A. fans, including many who don’t support the Bucks. “Rise,” the director Akin Omotoso’s biopic about Antetokounmpo, understands this well. This story of an ambitious, talented underdog clawing his way from obscurity to stardom hits most of the expected beats of a scrappy sports drama — the energetic training montages, the heart-wrenching setbacks, the motivational speeches designed to induce a few rousing tears.But Omotoso keeps Giannis’s plucky vigor front and center, and directs the film with a warm, earnest wholesomeness that perfectly suits the disposition of its charismatic subject. It’s not simply a movie about how Giannis became one of the most dominant players in the league. It’s about why Giannis is so lovable.Much of this effect is achieved by the fine work of the ensemble cast. Uche Agada, as Giannis, strikes just the right balance between powerful athleticism (demonstrated in some well-choreographed on-court action) and breezy elan (demonstrated, above all else, in the actor’s winning smile) that are the real Giannis’s defining characteristics.The movie makes clear the importance to Giannis of family — much of the drama revolves around how Giannis’s ascent imperils his undocumented Nigerian family’s illegal residency in Greece — and Day Okeniyi, as the Antetokounmpo patriarch Charles, is especially lovely in a role that exudes parental tenderness. The film’s fidelity to the letter of biographical truth occasionally puts it in the territory of sports-drama cliché. But sometimes life really does unfold the way it does in pictures.RiseRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Beba’ Review: Learning From Ancestors

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      An Afro-Latina filmmaker explores her identity and generational trauma growing up in New York City and attending a predominantly white college.What’s most striking about the autobiographical documentary “Beba,” aside from the intimate lens and stunning cinematography, are its moments of vulnerability, which plunge the viewer into the Afro-Latina filmmaker’s familial and personal traumas, including heated arguments with her mother and her white friends.The film, written, directed and produced by Rebeca Huntt, traces her family’s migration to New York City, through her years at Bard College upstate, and then her move back to her parents’ place on Central Park West.“Beba,” which refers to Huntt’s childhood nickname, is not a glossed-over immigrant redemption story. Through poetry, narration — featuring the voices of writers like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde — and interviews with family and friends, Huntt, the daughter of a Black Dominican father and a Venezuelan mother, pieces together painful parts of her family and social history, extracting her own identity out of the remnants of her trauma. “Every one of us inherits the curses of our ancestors,” Huntt states. A focus is on her adversarial relationship with her mother and the tension that unfolds between them on and off camera. Huntt also interrogates her relationships to white friends amid rising racial and political tensions.Underexplored are the dynamics with and between the men in the family. Huntt’s father, who seems to be an idealized figure, is interviewed, but shies away from difficult questions. One gets the sense that he is let off the hook, perhaps because Huntt’s relationship with her mother takes up so much space. Though Huntt’s brother is a large part of the narrated story, the two are estranged, and his absence in the film is palpable. Still, “Beba” is profound. The filmmaker delves into all of who she is, including darker or more destructive aspects of her identity, pushing viewers to see Huntt’s complexity — and perhaps their own.BebaRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Vedette’ Review: A Cow’s Trouble in Paradise

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      In this documentary, two French filmmakers meet a formidable Swiss cow and, under her impassive gaze, ruminate on her Alpine life.Few places are lovelier for cows to ruminate in than the Valais in southern Switzerland. This alpine region’s most famous attraction is the Matterhorn, but it is also where you find a breed of cattle known as Hérens. There, on lush, steep slopes, these brown-black animals graze and graze some more, at times using their horns to plow into the dirt and one another.The title subject of the French documentary “Vedette” is a typically brawny specimen with a massive head and formidable bass-y moo. She looks so tough, so intimidating, though this may be fantasy; it is, after all, easy to imagine all sorts of nonsense about animals. That’s certainly one of the lessons of “Vedette,” which was directed by Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard, who are married, although it’s unclear if they entirely grasp their movie’s contradictory messages, its untapped complexities or its downright weirdness.Over a leisurely, sometimes slack hour and a half, the filmmakers tell an initially inviting and benign story of one cow and the sparsely populated area in which two- and four-legged creatures exist side by side, seemingly much like generations have done before. With Bories serving as the narrator and interviewer, and Chagnard handling the cinematography, the directors introduce a world that looks almost untouched by modernity, despite technologies like cellphones and portable milking machines. A lot of this seems genuine and true, even if there’s also a tourist-board quality to the upbeat tone and some of the hovering camerawork.Amid copious beauty shots of cows and land alike, the movie skitters from the personal to the lightly ethnographic and the quasi-sociological. One ritual that’s distinct to this region is cow fighting — “combats de reines” or “battle of queens” — bloodless, surprisingly watchable spectacles in which pairs of bovines push against each other’s heads. (Their horns have been dulled.) Each winner is then matched with another cow until a head-ramming champion is declared queen. She receives a little crown of flowers for her troubles; for their part, the proud owners earn bragging rights to owning a queen, a honor Vedette has long held.It’s not clear why, when or how this ritual emerged, which is typical of Bories and Chagnard’s frustratingly incurious approach. There’s much you never learn here, including fundamentals about dairy farming. Cows need to have calves to produce milk, and at one point, you see Vedette during a difficult birth. The calf needs to be pulled out using an obstetric chain, and right after it’s born, it disappears; like most dairy calves, it was probably sent to another farm or to slaughter. The possibility that Vedette’s calves were turned into veal chops might be a bummer for some viewers, but it would provide a true picture of life for most dairy cows.The movie loses its thread and interest midway through after Vedette loses a fight. As they do throughout, the owners speak about Vedette’s feelings — how it affects “her morale” — anthropomorphizing that Bories doesn’t question and repeatedly echoes. To spare Vedette’s ostensible shame, the owners move her alone to a barn next to the directors’ home, where Bories sings her a song and reads aloud passages from Descartes’s “Animals Are Machines.” I imagine the filmmakers thought this charming, though they’re also clearly fumbling toward some greater awareness about animals beyond the purely instrumental.“Vedette” joins a recent roster of documentaries about the uses and abuses of farm animals (others include “Cow” and “Gunda”). It’s disappointing that Bories and Chagnard fail to add anything to this environmentally urgent topic beyond their own surprise that these animals are more than indistinguishable milk factories. Vedette is a nice cow; she deserves more consideration than she receives. This shallowness is especially disappointing given the shocker ending, which throws everything that’s come before into a new, mind-bending light. I’ll say no more other than, as history teaches us, some queens lose more than their crowns.VedetteNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More