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      ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ Review: The Boy in the Bubble

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      A recent college graduate moves back home, drifts along and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a single mother in this Sundance indie.The American indie “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is the story of a young man finding himself. It isn’t much of a search. He’s pretty much the exact same easygoing, uninteresting guy at the end of the movie that he is at the beginning.Things happen between the start and the finish of his journey inward, true. Mostly, though, feelings and hurts and slights are shared, and lessons learned, none surprising. He and the other characters talk and talk some more, and what they mostly talk about is him, the dim star at the center of this small, bland world.“Cha Cha Real Smooth” had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. But don’t blame the festival, or not entirely. Sundance has always been greater, messier and more diverse — including aesthetically — than the clichés that cling to it. Over time those clichés have changed as the festival has transformed, from its early homespun years to its guys-with-guns era and endless tales of dysfunction. Yet if the festival has retained a reputation for feel-bad-so-you-can-feel-good navel-gazing, it’s partly because it puts a premium on young directors who deliver the most Sundance-y of Sundance movies: coming-of-age tear-jerkers.Although “Cha Cha Real Smooth” opens with an obligatory flashback, Andrew (Cooper Raiff, who also directed) is 22 for most of the story. Recently graduated from college, he works at a fast-food joint and lives in a leafy New Jersey suburb with his mother, brother and stepfather. Andrew pines for his girlfriend, who’s abroad, and has vowed to follow her. But he has no clear path forward, views or interests. (No one here discusses the news, or shows curiosity about the larger world.) He’s nice, dull, quippy, with a toothy smile, full beard and slender frame that bring to mind the British actor David Tennant if David Tennant were a slobbering puppy.Andrew’s path to adulthood largely involves his friendship with Domino (an unconvincing Dakota Johnson), an older, melancholic single mother of a teenager who has autism, Lola (an appealing, spikily real Vanessa Burghardt, who also has autism). Andrew meets them at a bar mitzvah where he’s chaperoning his brother. Andrew notices her straight away, you bet, and before long they’re beaming at each other, exchanging small talk and hitting the dance floor. Women smile at Andrew a lot; at one point, a gaggle of mothers from the bar mitzvah follow him into the parking lot and hire him as “their motivational dancer,” a.k.a. party starter.Soon enough Andrew is playing M.C. at bar and bat mitzvahs, rocking them as he fumbles through the rest of his life. Raiff uses these parties for visual energy and comedy, and while he doesn’t deploy overt stereotypes he flirts with them. Certainly, it’s hard to see him wringing laughs as readily out of, say, confirmations or quinceañeras, much less staging a brawl at one, as he does here, ruining a bar mitzvah (for a kid named Benjamin Schindler, no less) so Andrew can have a teachable moment. As if to reassure the audience that it’s all in good fun, Domino says in one scene, “Sometimes I really envy Judaism.” “Same,” Andrew chirps.Raiff also wrote and helped produce “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” so he is clearly ambitious. But if he has something to say about life, it’s not apparent from this movie. It’s derivative and unpersuasive, and as pandering as any big studio soft sell; it’s filled with stylistic clichés (hovering camerawork, mewling songs), cardboard characters, silly dialogue and absurd narrative contrivances, starting with Domino, a trite male fantasy who’s only a vessel for Andrew’s narcissism. Raiff shrewdly complicates this cliché a touch, though, again, only to exploit it. Their relationship never makes sense; but, then, neither does most of the movie.I didn’t believe a single second in “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” but the movie isn’t trying to convince you of anything. It just wants you to like it. It wants you to smile, nod in recognition, shed a tear or two and feel good about yourself for liking it. It’s an exemplar of American indie entertainment at its most canned and solipsistic.Indeed the most startling thing about the whole thing is Raiff’s regard for his own charms, which presumably explains the close-ups he lavishes on both Andrew and the women who indulge him. Again and again, they gaze on Andrew with misty eyes and crinkly smiles, bathing him in adoration that Raiff clearly shares.Cha Cha Real SmoothRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters and on Apple TV+. More

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      Watch Bryce Dallas Howard’s Slow Escape in ‘Jurassic World Dominion’

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      The director Colin Trevorrow narrates a sequence featuring the actor, a testy Therizinosaurus and a murky pond.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.We’ve seen the character Claire Dearing, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, run from dinosaurs while wearing high heels in “Jurassic World.” We’ve seen her climb atop a sleeping T-Rex in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.” But her rendezvous with a feathered dino in “Jurassic World Dominion” adds something new to the franchise.For the first time, Howard gets a harrowing solo sequence with a dinosaur. It’s the Therizinosaurus, a feathered creature that is no less menacing even as an herbivore.Discussing the moment, the director Colin Trevorrow said about Howard: “I built this sequence that I felt would both showcase her as an actor, her absolute best long-take looks of horrified terror, while also being able to collaborate with her as a director and really understand the intention of every single shot.”Trevorrow called Howard “one of the most precise and expressive actors. And because she’s also a director, she understands what the scene needs, not just from the perspective of performance, but from filmmaking and craft and form.”One part of the sequence involves a long take that keeps the focus on Howard as she enters a pond hoping to slowly evade the creature.“We tried to make sure that the camera was always very, very slowly moving at the same speed,” Trevorrow said. “So it had that same sense of heaviness and weight to it.”Read the “Jurassic World Dominion” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Andy Garcia Is the Father of the Bride in More Ways Than One

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      The actor, who’s playing the role onscreen and in reality, understands his rigid character: “He’s an amalgamation of everybody I’ve ever known, including myself.”Andy Garcia still believes in the American promise of prosperity for all. “If you come here and you work hard, there’s a future for you,” he said. “There will always be obstacles, but the opportunity is there.”In more ways than one, the Cuban-born Garcia, 66, understands the worldview of Billy Herrera, the patriarch he plays in the new Latino-centric take on “Father of the Bride,” streaming on HBO Max. The poignant reinterpretation highlights the generational plight that immigrants and their American-born children face as they try to communicate with one another. The comedy, from the director Gaz Alazraki and the screenwriter Matt Lopez, also manages to avoid depicting Latinos as a monolith.For his latest lead role, the veteran actor best known for his turns in “The Untouchables,” “The Godfather Part III” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” portrays a proud, self-made Cuban architect whose oldest daughter is about to marry her Mexican sweetheart.At the same time, Herrera’s wife, Ingrid, played by the singer Gloria Estefan (Garcia’s longtime friend and fellow Cuban exile), announces she wants a divorce, leading Billy to re-examine his inflexible beliefs about masculinity, the work ethic and marriage.On a recent sunny afternoon at a golf club in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, Garcia looked appropriately casual chic in a light-blue button-down shirt and beige slacks. Occasionally enhancing his anecdotes with words in Spanish, he spoke about his father’s thoughts on his profession, breaking ground before inclusion was a Hollywood priority, and staying on the entertainment industry “menu.” These are excerpts from our conversation.Garcia in “Father of the Bride” opposite Gloria Estefan, center, Diego Boneta and Adria Arjona. Claudette Barius/Warner Bros.You achieved substantial success long before conversations on representation were as prominent as they are today. What was it like for you at the onset of your career?It was very difficult for someone with a Hispanic surname because you were never considered. There were exceptions to the rule like Raul Julia, and José Ferrer before him. But for people who weren’t established, it was very hard to be considered for anything other than a Hispanic part. When I started in ’78, there were only about five studios, three networks and PBS; there was no cable. You were typecast and the parts they were writing for Hispanics were predominantly gang members and maids. But they wouldn’t consider me for the gang member roles because I wasn’t physically right: In their minds, gang members were only, in the case of Los Angeles, Chicanos.When did it feel like you were starting to break through despite the roadblocks?I was lucky to begin getting some work because I was a member of an improvisational theater group. Casting directors would see me there, and I would land a little thing here and there. But it was very hard to get it going. It took a long time, from ’78 to ’85, to get a part that was integral to the story. When I got “The Untouchables” (1987), I didn’t have to work as a waiter anymore. Before that I was also doing walla groups, which provide all the incidental dialogue in movies. That was my first post-waiter job. It kept my only child back then in Pampers.Were your parents encouraging or concerned by your choices?My father was very concerned about me leaving the family [fragrance] business, which I had worked in all my life and was growing rapidly. As a lawyer by trade and a farmer who worked hard all his life to give his kids opportunities and trained his children to take over the business, it was very difficult for him to see that I was going off in another direction.Not that he wasn’t supportive, but I know he struggled with concern because there was no understanding of what that industry was. It wasn’t like that with my kids. I have two daughters who are actresses. They grew up in it. They understand the pitfalls.My father had no concept of the entertainment business or acting. To him, an actor was Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable. I’m sure in the back of his mind he said, “I love my son, but he’s no Humphrey Bogart.” [Laughs] My mother, on the other hand, was like, “Go and fly. If you break a wing, come back to heal and then decide.” She was more reckless.There’s a scene in “Father of the Bride” where your character and Gloria’s talk about the difficulty of passing along your native language, Spanish, to your American-born children. Did that dialogue speak to you personally?Yes. Growing up we spoke Spanish at home, but we also grew up in Miami, where everybody spoke Spanish. My children have had a harder time with it because no matter how much Spanish we spoke, they always favor English because of the environment. They become more Americanized. They can understand and speak it, but they’re not as fluent. If you’re not on top of it every day and practicing it, the language suffers. We as parents are as much at fault for not ingraining it as much as we should have, because we fall into the pattern of speaking English. We could probably be doing this interview in Spanish, but we’re talking in English.Have you become the father of the bride in your own family?Two of my daughters are getting married. [There was] a wedding on June 11, then the movie, and I have another wedding on July 9. I’m the father of bride three times within a 30-day period. When we saw the movie together, my youngest daughter said, “Dad, you’re nothing like this guy in the movie.” And I go, “Really?” That was her impression.Garcia said his decision to act was concerning to his father, whose conception of actors ran to stars like Humphrey Bogart: “I’m sure in the back of his mind he said, ‘I love my son, but he’s no Humphrey Bogart.’”Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesDo you agree with her or does Billy and his mentality remind you of yourself?He’s an amalgamation of everybody I’ve ever known, including myself, and the traditions of people who come from a conservative background. There’s a psyche that happens with the immigrant populations — in our case we’re political exiles — that you come to this country with a basic understanding that it is a place, with all its flaws and warts, where you’re free to express yourself and to pursue your dreams. We fled, with my parents, like many Cubana to this day fleeing, to seek freedom and opportunities for their families. And when you come here, there is a certain responsibility that you have to honor that freedom and have a strong work ethic and better yourself and your family. That is prevalent in all immigrant stories.That’s a heavy burden to carry.My brother René and I, we always kid that because we come from this situation where everything was taken away from our family in Cuba there’s a part of us that always says, “We have to work hard and save because one day they’re going to come and take everything away from us again.” We all have these trigger points subconsciously that become behavioral patterns. They’re ingrained in you since childhood depending on your journey.Do you long to return to Cuba?Every day.Did you ever consider visiting after the Obama administration eased restrictions on travel to the island for American citizens in 2015?No. It’s like asking a Jewish person if they’d go back to Nazi Germany. Everybody has their own personal reason to go, and I don’t pass judgment. But I’ve been critical of that regime; if I went, they would use it to say, “See, he believes we’re doing the right thing. He’s here vacationing.” They won’t let us in there to do a concert and speak my mind. But I did go back to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base with Gloria and Emilio [Estefan]. We did a concert for the rafters [Cuban refugees] in 1995. At the time, there were around 16,000 rafters in an interim camp.One time the U.S. interests section in Havana invited us — at the time there wasn’t an embassy there — to show my movie “The Lost City” [his 2006 film set in Cuba]. I said, “Can you guarantee my safety?” They said, “We cannot.” And I said, “Thanks for the invite.” But I know many people who have gone to Cuba who are in the public eye. The Cuban ones who have gone, they’re watched. They have government people following them around.You are a prolific performer, playing leads, as in “Father of the Bride,” as well as numerous supporting parts. What’s your philosophy on longevity?I had a conversation with Tom Hanks at an event one time. We were talking about the business and I said, “Tom, I just want to stay on the menu.” When you open the menu, just let me be one of the choices: an appetizer or a main course. If you can stay on the menu, then you can provide for your family and explore your art form. If you’re off the menu, it’s hard to get ordered. If you’re fortunate, you might be the flavor of the month for a moment, but then you’ve got to keep yourself on the menu. Be there for the long haul, for a body of work. More

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      Chie Hayakawa Imagines a Japan Where the Elderly Volunteer to Die

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      The premise for Chie Hayakawa’s film, “Plan 75,” is shocking: a government push to euthanize the elderly. In a rapidly aging society, some also wonder: Is the movie prescient?TOKYO — The Japanese film director Chie Hayakawa was germinating the idea for a screenplay when she decided to test out her premise on elderly friends of her mother and other acquaintances. Her question: If the government sponsored a euthanasia program for people 75 and over, would you consent to it?“Most people were very positive about it,” Ms. Hayakawa said. “They didn’t want to be a burden on other people or their children.”To Ms. Hayakawa, the seemingly shocking response was a powerful reflection of Japan’s culture and demographics. In her first feature-length film, “Plan 75,” which won a special distinction at the Cannes Film Festival this month, the government of a near-future Japan promotes quiet institutionalized deaths and group burials for lonely older people, with cheerful salespeople pitching them on the idea as if hawking travel insurance.“The mind-set is that if the government tells you to do something, you must do it,” Ms. Hayakawa, 45, said in an interview in Tokyo before the film’s opening in Japan on Friday. Following the rules and not imposing on others, she said, are cultural imperatives “that make sure you don’t stick out in a group setting.”With a lyrical, understated touch, Ms. Hayakawa has taken on one of the biggest elephants in the room in Japan: the challenges of dealing with the world’s oldest society.Ms. Hayakawa with other winners at the Cannes Film Festival last month.Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesClose to one-third of the country’s population is 65 or older, and Japan has more centenarians per capita than any other nation. One out of five people over 65 in Japan live alone, and the country has the highest proportion of people suffering from dementia. With a rapidly declining population, the government faces potential pension shortfalls and questions about how the nation will care for its longest-living citizens.Aging politicians dominate government, and the Japanese media emphasizes rosy stories about happily aging fashion gurus or retail accommodations for older customers. But for Ms. Hayakawa, it was not a stretch to imagine a world in which the oldest citizens would be cast aside in a bureaucratic process — a strain of thought she said could already be found in Japan.Euthanasia is illegal in the country, but it occasionally arises in grisly criminal contexts. In 2016, a man killed 19 people in their sleep at a center for people with disabilities outside Tokyo, claiming that such people should be euthanized because they “have extreme difficulty living at home or being active in society.”The horrifying incident provided a seed of an idea for Ms. Hayakawa. “I don’t think that was an isolated incident or thought process within Japanese society,” she said. “It was already floating around. I was very afraid that Japan was turning into a very intolerant society.”To Kaori Shoji, who has written about film and the arts for The Japan Times and the BBC and saw an earlier version of “Plan 75,” the movie did not seem dystopian. “She’s just telling it like it is,” Ms. Shoji said. “She’s telling us: ‘This is where we’re headed, actually.’”That potential future is all the more believable in a society where some people are driven to death by overwork, said Yasunori Ando, an associate professor at Tottori University who studies spirituality and bioethics.“It is not impossible to think of a place where euthanasia is accepted,” he said.Chieko Baisho plays an elderly woman in “Plan 75.”Loaded FilmsMs. Hayakawa has spent the bulk of her adult years contemplating the end of life from a very personal vantage. When she was 10, she learned that her father had cancer, and he died a decade later. “That was during my formative years, so I think it had an influence on my perspective toward art,” she said.The daughter of civil servants, Ms. Hayakawa started drawing her own picture books and writing poems from a young age. In elementary school, she fell in love with “Muddy River,” a Japanese drama about a poor family living on a river barge. The movie, directed by Kohei Oguri, was nominated for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in 1982.“The feelings I couldn’t put into words were expressed in that movie,” Ms. Hayakawa said. “And I thought, I want to make movies like that as well.”She eventually applied to the film program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, believing that she would get a better grounding in moviemaking in the United States. But given her modest English abilities, she decided within a week of arriving on campus to switch to the photography department, because she figured she could take pictures by herself.Her instructors were struck by her curiosity and work ethic. “If I mentioned a film offhandedly, she would go home and go rent it, and if I mentioned an artist or exhibition, she would go research it and have something to say about it,” said Tim Maul, a photographer and one of Ms. Hayakawa’s mentors. “Chie was someone who really had momentum and a singular drive.”After graduating in 2001, Ms. Hayakawa gave birth to her two children in New York. In 2008, she and her husband, the painter Katsumi Hayakawa, decided to return to Tokyo, where she began working at WOWOW, a satellite broadcaster, helping to prepare American films for Japanese viewing.“The mind-set is that if the government tells you to do something, you must do it,” Ms. Hayakawa said.Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesAt 36, she enrolled in a one-year film program at a night school in Tokyo while continuing to work during the day. “I felt like I couldn’t put my full energy into child raising or filmmaking,” she said. Looking back, she said, “I would tell myself it’s OK, just enjoy raising your children. You can start filmmaking at a later time.”For her final project, she made “Niagara,” about a young woman who learns, as she is about to depart the orphanage where she grew up, that her grandfather had killed her parents, and that her grandmother, who she thought had died in a car accident with her parents, was alive.She submitted the movie to the Cannes Film Festival in a category for student works and was shocked when it was selected for screening in 2014. At the festival, Ms. Hayakawa met Eiko Mizuno-Gray, a film publicist, who subsequently invited Ms. Hayakawa to make a short film on the theme of Japan 10 years in the future. It would be part of an anthology produced by Hirokazu Kore-eda, the celebrated Japanese director.Ms. Hayakawa had already been developing the idea of “Plan 75” as a feature-length film but decided to make an abridged version for “Ten Years Japan.”While writing the script, she woke up every morning at 4 to watch movies. She cites the Taiwanese director Edward Yang, the South Korean director Lee Chang-dong and Krzysztof Kieslowski, the Polish art-house director, as important influences. After work, she would write for a couple of hours at a cafe while her husband cared for their children — relatively rare in Japan, where women still carry the disproportionate burden of housework and child care.After Ms. Hayakawa’s 18-minute contribution to the anthology came out, Ms. Mizuno-Gray and her husband, Jason Gray, worked with her to develop an extended script. By the time filming started, it was the middle of the pandemic. “There were countries with Covid where they were not prioritizing the life of the elderly,” Ms. Hayakawa said. “Reality surpassed fiction in a way.”Ms. Hayakawa at Cannes with two actors in “Plan 75,” Hayato Isomura, left, and Stefanie Arianne, who plays Maria.John Phillips/Getty ImagesMs. Hayakawa decided to adopt a subtler tone for the feature-length movie and inject more of a sense of hope. She also added several narrative strands, including one about an elderly woman and her tightknit group of friends, and another about a Filipina caregiver who takes a job at one of the euthanasia centers.She included scenes of the Filipino community in Japan, Ms. Hayakawa said, as a contrast to the dominant culture. “Their culture is that if somebody is in trouble, you help them right away,” Ms. Hayakawa said. “I think that is something Japan is losing.”Stefanie Arianne, the daughter of a Japanese father and a Filipina mother who plays Maria, the caregiver, said Ms. Hayakawa had urged her to show emotional restraint. In one scene, Ms. Arianne said, she had the instinct to shed tears, “but with Chie, she really challenged me to not cry.”Ms. Hayakawa said she did not want to make a film that simply deemed euthanasia right or wrong. “I think what kind of end to a life and what kind of death you want is a very personal decision,” she said. “I don’t think it’s something that is so black or white.”Hikari Hida More

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      Phil Tippett’s World in (Stop) Motion

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      The animator and visual effects artist, whose credits include “Jurassic Park” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” has directed his passion project, “Mad God.”A maverick of stop-motion animation and a restless Renaissance man, Phil Tippett is the visual effects alchemist responsible for emblematic sequences in some of the most popular American film productions of the 1980s and ’90s.Tippett’s indelible gifts to cinema include animating the AT-AT walkers in “The Empire Strikes Back,” lending his deep knowledge of dinosaurs to visualize the velociraptor kitchen scene in “Jurassic Park,” and building and animating the imposing ED-209 robot seen in the “RoboCop” franchise.The director of “RoboCob,” Paul Verhoeven, has long been impressed with Tippett’s handcrafted style.“Personally, with a lot of digital stuff I often don’t believe it, but with Phil, I believe it,” Verhoeven said in a phone interview. “He can make characters move in a way that you don’t doubt for a second that they are there. And he can integrate these stop-motion creatures with the rest of the shots, which is very difficult to do.”Tippett’s animation and visual effects work have factored into films like “RoboCop,” left, “Jurassic Park,” center, and “The Empire Strikes Back.”From left, Orion Pictures; Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment; and Lucasfilm Ltd.Tippett, 70, also worked on sequences for Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers.” The filmmaker emphasized the value of Tippett’s contributions.“In my eyes, his participation was as important as my own,” Verhoeven said. “I really thank him for what he did for my movies.”For Tippett, a prosperous profession began as a childhood fascination with the tactile magic of the monsters in “King Kong” (1933) and “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” (1958). After pursuing a conceptual art education at the University of California, Irvine, he honed his unique skill set experimenting with stop-motion, and then making commercials at the Cascade Pictures studio in Los Angeles.As a part of the teams that helped realize the imaginative worlds of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Tippett earned two Academy Awards.“I always thought of myself as a choreographer working on movies, and that was my relationship with directors,” Tippett said. “Everything that I did was performance-based.”During a recent video interview, Tippett wore a comfortable sleeveless black shirt and sat caressing his long white beard, like a biblical figure lost in our current era. He was at his work space at Tippett Studio in Berkeley, Calif., where his ventures are born.Of all of the feats to his name, “Mad God,” a stop-motion feature now in theaters and streaming on Shudder, proved the most taxing. Thirty-three years in the making — from his earliest sketches and storyboards in 1987 to its completion in 2020 — this macabre magnum opus tracks an enigmatic character as he descends into the bowels of a Dante-like realm plagued with death, violence and grotesque creatures.A scene from “Mad God,” directed by Tippett.Shudder“‘Mad God’ was motivated by the unconscious and not by intention,” Tippett said. “It was a religious experience for me in the sense that I just I felt like I was transcribing messages from the great beyond. I do not seek; I find.”In the early 1990s, Tippett conceived three minutes of what would become “Mad God” with the help of the crew that worked on the “RoboCop” films. But after they moved on, proceeding on his own became too daunting.Unsure of precisely where the kernel of inspiration for “Mad God” had originated, Tippett spent the next two decades devouring information on a variety of subjects to expand on it: theology, archaeology, paleontology and psychoanalysis.It wasn’t until about 12 years ago, when young colleagues at Tippett’s studio saw him archiving that original footage and galvanized to support him, that the fulfillment of his vague concept seemed possible.Volunteers from local schools also joined the makeshift production, which slowly began taking shape with resources gathered from several successful Kickstarter campaigns. After a few years, Tippett had completed 45 minutes (in three separate segments) of this free-flowing idea, at which point he decided to double the running time to make a feature.A collection of designs for “Mad God” in Tippett’s studio.Eric Ruby for The New York TimesEric Ruby for The New York TimesEric Ruby for The New York TimesTippett, who is not fond of digital techniques, pushed to achieve nearly every aspect of this gruesome parable via in-camera, practical means — the way he has always done it. This can be seen in the meticulously detailed craft on display in each increasingly bleak frame.He used a fish tank and corn syrup to conjure up the cloudy opening sequence that features a plastic replica of the Tower of Babel he bought online. He shot a surgery scene with live-action actors at a low frame rate to mimic the movement of stop-motion animation, and for three years he enlisted the assistance of up to six students, one day a week, to fabricate piles of melted plastic soldiers.“I wanted to make something ugly and beautiful at once,” said Tippett, who cited the work of the painter Hieronymus Bosch as a major influence.Tippett also mined his own subconscious for creative fuel. “During the period that I was working on ‘Mad God,’ I was a prolific dreamer,” he said. “Every night I’d have these amazing dreams that I would write down and use.”“Mad God” constitutes the most complete expression of his erudite image-making expertise, but its consummation nearly drove him to real madness. Hyper-focused on finishing, working obsessively for hours on end and drinking daily, Tippett subjected himself to such exhaustion he landed in a mental health facility. He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.“As it happens to many artists like Beethoven or Carl Jung, particularly if what they’re working on is over a protracted period of time, it really popped my cork at the end of it,” he said. “My manic side is my superpower, but if I don’t manage that, it can destroy me.”“I wanted to make something ugly and beautiful at once,” Tippett said of “Mad God.”Eric Ruby for The New York Times“The strongest thing about Phil as an artist is that he feels everything to the extreme,” Dennis Muren, an Oscar-winning veteran in the visual effects industry and a longtime friend of Tippett’s, said in a phone interview. “He wants that feeling to come across on the screen and it doesn’t matter how it gets there.”“This movie taught me a lot about myself,” Tippett said. “I didn’t even think that I had the capacity to do something of this magnitude.”Tippett is relieved that “Mad God” has left his psyche and his studio, and has now haunted film festival audiences to great reception; he mischievously recounted the time a family with young children walked in to watch the film, only to run away soon after.“That was amusing because if you hear, ‘It’s an animation film by the guy who worked on ‘Star Wars,’ people think, ‘Kids will love it. It’s like a Pixar film.’ And well, it ain’t,” he said.A grateful Tippett confessed that, because of the priceless creative opportunities he’d been given, he could easily be convinced that our reality is a simulation. While he said he would never again attempt a project as all-consuming as “Mad God,” he doesn’t regret having gone through the ordeal. And he’s already written a sequel.“It would be very embarrassing to die and not have taken the opportunities that were handed to me, not to make something that was unique,” he said. More

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      ‘My Fake Boyfriend’ Review: Deepfake Dating

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      A gay man gets trapped in a web of lies after his overeager best friend concocts an artificial relationship for him on social media.The real villain of “My Fake Boyfriend,” from the director Rose Troche, is New York City dating culture. Everyone seems perpetually ready to move onto the next hottie or hookup app that grabs their attention.That’s partly why Andrew — the protagonist, played by Keiynan Lonsdale — has been tolerating Nico (Marcus Rosner), an egomaniacal soap opera star. Aiming to cut Andrew off from Nico, Jake, Andrew’s best friend (played by Dylan Sprouse), devises a fake boyfriend for him, blasting Photoshopped couple pics all over Andrew’s social media timelines. His scheme yields mischief, reckonings, and, eventually, real romance.To set expectations, it’s best to think of “My Fake Boyfriend” as two movies. There’s the gay rom-com, focused on Andrew, that Pride month viewers have presumably tuned in for, and then there’s an almost “Black Mirror”-ish comedy, centered on Jake, about a meddling techie who gets caught up in his best friend’s life. Because it’s such a complex set piece — creating and maintaining a fake person online is quite an undertaking, even in this movie, where the logistics are oddly breezy — Jake’s pixelated dreamboat takes up screen time that could be better spent on Andrew’s quest for real love.That’s not to say Jake is a complete distraction. He has some of the zaniest lines, and Sprouse is delightfully game for all of them. But once Andrew meets Rafi (played by Samer Salem, who could probably seduce a wall), it’s hard to want to watch anything else. Their chemistry is off the charts, though this film’s R rating is tragically all talk, no action.My Fake BoyfriendRated R for rowdy humor. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘Sing, Dance, Act: Kabuki Featuring Toma Ikuta’ Review: A New Path

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      Cameras follow Ikuta, an actor on popular Japanese teen dramas in the 2000s, as he learns Kabuki’s expressions and movements from a friend.Toma Ikuta grew up around people who excelled at performance. While appearing on several popular Japanese teen dramas in the 2000s, Ikuta attended high school with other young actors and singers, so many of whom rose to fame that Ikuta and his best friend, the Kabuki actor Matsuya Onoe, bonded over not getting as many acting gigs as their peers. As Ikuta grew older, watching his classmates pursue their careers beyond the teen idol phase began to take a toll on his own self-esteem: “There was jealousy,” he admits in the new Netflix documentary “Sing, Dance, Act: Kabuki Featuring Toma Ikuta,” adding, “or rather, I felt ashamed for the first time.”The film, directed by Tadashi Aizawa, follows Ikuta, now in his mid-30s, as he works to fulfill his lifelong dream of acting in a Kabuki performance, where he feels that he truly belongs. His passion for the art form was inspired by Onoe’s late father, also a prominent Kabuki actor, and it’s Onoe himself who leads the production and teaches Ikuta the fundamentals of Kabuki-style expression and movement, including roppo, the dramatic way that Kabuki performers may exit the stage, and mie, the distinct poses that actors settle on during moments of emotional intensity.Even for viewers with no relationship to Ikuta or his prior roles, “Sing, Dance, Act” provides a fascinating look into Kabuki theater and the particular sets of skills that are required to pull off such idiosyncratic performances. And it’s undoubtedly satisfying to watch Ikuta, initially unsure of himself, transform into a promising Kabuki actor who leaves even the pros in admiration. In perhaps the film’s clearest window into what makes Kabuki mastery so elusive, a renowned Kabuki actor points out how impressed he was by a single, subtle turn that Ikuta made during one of his scenes. “I doubt anyone else noticed it,” he admits. But “as a professional,” he adds: “Wow, he pulled it off!”Sing, Dance, Act: Kabuki Featuring Toma IkutaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Stay Prayed Up’ Review: Spreading the Gospel of Love

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      A new documentary about the gospel ensemble the Branchettes and its guiding light, Lena Mae Perry, is a plain-spoken tribute.In the opening moments of “Stay Prayed Up,” the plain-spoken and pleasant documentary about a gospel music ensemble, a young boy waves the viewer inside a bright-white church that almost glows in the North Carolina sunshine. There, the Branchettes are both performing and recording a live album. The smiling kid promises that the proceedings are “going to be churchy” and that you might find some friends inside.The film can’t be called world-historical or any such thing. But the group, led by Lena Mae Perry (and backed by instrumentalists called the Guitarheels), is inspiring in the ways of both shaking the rafters and invoking peace in the valley.Perry, a singer in her 80s and the guiding light of the Branchettes, is a presence both formidable and gentle. A powerful alto, she founded the group in the early 1970s with two now-departed comrades, Ethel Elliott and Mary Ellen Bennett. The trio forged a distinctive three-part harmony and eventually built a following in the state.Perry was raised on a tobacco farm, and proudly recalls her expertise at tying up tobacco leaves. The work wasn’t hard, she insists; it was just what her family did. She recalls her experiences of racism with a similar equanimity, no doubt a result of her religiosity — a belief in the gospel of love that appears profound but not inordinately dogmatic.Her group now encompasses several generations. The Guitarheels’s leader, Phil Cook, a pianist from Wisconsin, sheepishly admits that his first exposure to the music was via the 1993 Whoopi Goldberg comedy “Sister Act 2.”This movie is directed by D.L. Anderson and Matthew Durning and was produced under the banner of Spiritual Helpline, which is also the name of the record label, started by Cook, that made the Branchettes’ live album. As self-promotional ventures go, this is an effort of integrity and good will, and packs in a lot of spirited music that more or less sells itself.Stay Prayed UpNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. In theaters. More