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      Watch These 9 Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in October

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      Titles leaving U.S. Netflix this month include a cult comedy hit, a hilarious game show and solid offerings from Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone.This month, subscribers to Netflix in the United States will have one more chance to watch an uproariously funny game show, a beloved girl-power comedy, a family film that adults may love more than kids and two wild cult comedies.All of those, along with some good stuff from Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone, are among the best films and TV shows leaving Netflix in October. Learn more about them below. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘Free Fire’ (Oct. 20)If you don’t like shootouts, then move along, nothing to see here. But if you do love shoot-outs, or if you love inventive gunplay and threatening gun-cocking and artful reloads and the films of John Woo, boy is this the movie for you. This action extravaganza from the writer and director Ben Wheatley (“Kill List”) is essentially a feature-length gunfight, in which various parties assemble in an isolated warehouse for a gun buy before turning on one another. Wheatley finds ingenious variations throughout, keeping the action energetic and fresh, while his first-rate cast (including Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Jack Reynor), resplendent in ’70s duds, squeeze in as much characterization as they can between shots.Stream it here.‘Rango’ (Oct. 27)Plenty of filmmakers have livened up family movies by sliding in winking gags and pop culture references for the grown-ups. But few have done it as unapologetically (and successfully) as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” director Gore Verbinski, who livens up this story of a desert lizard’s adventure in several surprising ways. First, he constructs it as a kiddie “Chinatown,” with our hero stumbling into a Western town where the battle over water rights is getting ugly. And he apparently instructed his leading man, Johnny Depp, to voice the role as a riff on his turn as Hunter S. Thompson in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” even throwing in visual and verbal nods to that very R-rated adaptation. But Verbinski also doesn’t alienate the target audience: Kids will likewise delight in this visually inventive and frequently funny treat.Stream it here.‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’ (Oct. 30)Rarely has a title been so accurate in its description as it is here, and the writer and director Kevin Smith (“Clerks”) tells the tale of two longtime friends (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks), desperate for cash, who turn to the seemingly lucrative world of adult entertainment. The leering title and premise don’t tell the entire story, however. This isn’t just some silly, gross-out sex comedy (though, to be sure, there’s plenty of that). As in his indie hit “Chasing Amy,” Smith knows that there’s no such thing as “just sex,” and, with the help of his charismatic leads, thoughtfully explores what happens when platonic pals decide to take that big leap.Stream it here.‘Billy on the Street’: Seasons 1-5 (Oct. 31)Few contemporary comedians have a persona as distinctive as Billy Eichner’s. A frenzied, impatient pop culture connoisseur, he is quick with a quip and so sly with his insults that they often fly past their targets. Eichner is an unabashedly 21st century personality, which makes it especially amusing that he is best known for the “man on the street” interview — a comedic device that stretches back to Steve Allen and the earliest days of television comedy. “Billy on the Street” is, on paper at least, a game show; he and his celebrity guests offer passers-by the opportunity to win cash and prizes for answering questions and participating in their reindeer games. But the stakes are low and the games are silly; the show exists primarily as a vehicle for his unique sensibility and wit.Stream it here.‘Catch Me if You Can’ (Oct. 31)Leonardo DiCaprio’s apparent agelessness is one of his most fascinating features — we all still think of him as a matinee heartthrob, even in middle age — and Steven Spielberg puts it to fine use in this dashing 2002 comedy-drama, based on the memoir of the con artist and fabulist Frank Abagnale Jr. (which may, itself, have been fabricated). DiCaprio’s Abagnale is a born swindler, masquerading as a doctor, lawyer and airline pilot while kiting checks across the country; the actor’s sensitive portrayal captures gee-whiz likability that made him so successful, while subtly conveying the pain underneath. Tom Hanks is in top form as the by-the-books treasury agent on his tail, but the M.V.P. is Christopher Walken, Oscar-nominated for an atypically understated turn as Abagnale’s absentee father.Stream it here.‘Legally Blonde’ (Oct. 31)When this Reese Witherspoon vehicle hit theaters in 2001, a fair number of critics dismissed it as lightweight, disposable fluff — a reaction strangely appropriate to this story of a young woman whose peers underestimate her based on looks and impressions. But just as Elle Woods thrived, against all odds, at Harvard Law School, this summer comedy has become a cultural touchstone thanks to its quotable dialogue, masterfully modulated lead performance and timeless message about self-determination in the face of adversity.Stream it here.‘Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You’ (Oct. 31)The term “living legend” has been bandied about so freely that it doesn’t seem a grand enough descriptor for Norman Lear, the now 99-year-old writer, producer and philanthropist behind some of the most popular (and groundbreaking) television programs of the 1970s, including “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “One Day at a Time.” This energetic bio-documentary from the directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady tells his story with the appropriate gusto and showmanship, taking a thematic rather than chronological approach that separates it from the standard biographical showcase.Stream it here.‘Snowden’ (Oct. 31)There’s a real “back to basics” feeling to this 2016 based-on-a-true-story drama, for which the director Oliver Stone returned to his wheelhouse with this story of government malfeasance, fear and paranoia, framed by one man’s dedication to what he believes is right. Here, that man is Edward Snowden (played with quiet dignity by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the National Security Agency contractor who became the whistle-blower for one of the largest illegal surveillance operations in history. Stone tells the tale with his trademark bristling intelligence and righteous indignation, and he marshals an impressive supporting cast, including Nicolas Cage, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto and Tom Wilkinson.Stream it here.‘Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny’ (Oct. 31)Casual moviegoers assumed Jack Black just fell out of the sky when he stole scenes by the handful in “High Fidelity” and became one of Hollywood’s most valuable comic supporting players. But fans of indie comedy had been watching him for years, primarily as one-half (alongside Kyle Gass) of the comical music duo Tenacious D, a kind of Smothers Brothers for former metal heads. In 2006, the duo made a play for mainstream popularity with this movie, which chronicles their epic quest for a magic guitar pick. It didn’t quite land (box office was middling and reviews were mostly negative), but that’s OK: Tenacious D was always a cult act, so it’s appropriate that they made what has become a cult movie — and a wickedly, weirdly funny one at that.Stream it here.Also leaving: “Beowulf,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Inception” (all Oct. 31). More

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      ‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’ Review: Problematic Secrets Exposed

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      This horror movie from Netflix is a muddled marriage of progressive politics and retrograde style.Commendably diverse and deplorably unscary, Patrick Brice’s teen-slasher movie, “There’s Someone Inside Your House,” attempts to both update and bow to a genre that peaked decades ago. But in trying to have it both ways, Brice has created a messy, overstuffed parody of moral policing that squanders the promise of its cleverly executed opening.That sequence, genius in its simplicity (and the only one to truly justify the film’s title), shows the slaying of a high-school quarterback who brutally hazed a gay teammate. Barely has the deceased’s homophobia been broadcast to the stunned student body when their racist president is also whacked. As the killings — and, arguably more terrifying, online exposures — continue, the movie watches from the viewpoint of a clique of social outcasts led by Makani (Sydney Park, alternating between dazed and woebegone), a transfer student with a traumatic past.Set in small-town Nebraska and adapted from Stephanie Perkins’s novel of the same name, Henry Gayden’s screenplay chokes on immaterial plot strands — like police privatization and the evils of agribusiness — and bland characters. The sole standout is Théodore Pellerin as the prime suspect and Makani’s secret hookup: Dancing on the line between creepy and sexy, Pellerin never misses a step.The same can’t be said for a story that, disastrously, allows Makani’s barely relevant personal issues to elbow those of the killer off the screen. They also muffle the plot’s smartest touches, like a party where students pre-empt an attack by confessing their darkest secrets. Or the killer’s habit of wearing masks resembling each victim’s face, making them quite literally casualties of their own actions. It’s the movie’s best joke.There’s Someone Inside Your HouseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      A Master of Mixing and Matching Movies Gets a Citywide Tribute

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      Amos Vogel is considered America’s seminal film programmer. The New York Film Festival and other institutions are paying their respects on his centenary.Inside every movie buff lives a film critic. Inside every critic lives a film programmer. And inside every programmer’s heart is a place for Amos Vogel.Vogel was America’s seminal film programmer, and so it’s fitting that for his centenary he’s the subject of a citywide tribute now at the New York Film Festival and moving to other theaters later in the season. His New York Times obituary from 2012 begins with the blunt statement that he “exerted an influence on the history of film that few other non-filmmakers can claim.” In 1947, he and his wife, Marcia Vogel, founded Cinema 16, the most important membership film society in American history; after its demise, he directed the New York Film Festival for the first five years of its existence.After being forced out or resigning (accounts vary), Vogel then wrote a book, “Film as a Subversive Art,” an encyclopedic cinematic cabinet of wonders that — with chapters like “The Power of the Visual Taboo” and a still from Dusan Makavejev’s outrageous “WR: Mysteries of the Organism” on the cover — is something like the programmer’s bible. (A revised edition will be available next month from Film Desk Books.) The book is “inexhaustible,” the New York Film Festival’s current director of programming, Dennis Lim, told me via email. “It’s an endless source of ideas but also a reminder of the possibilities of film exhibition and curation.”A child of Vienna’s ninth district — the neighborhood of Freud and Schoenberg — Amos Vogelbaum was one of the many cultural gifts thrust upon America when the Nazis took power in Central Europe. Vogel and his parents lived for six months under Nazi rule before escaping Vienna for New York, by way of Cuba.His initial impulse was to study agriculture and move to a kibbutz. Disillusionment with Israel’s development prompted him to stay in the United States and found another sort of utopian society, Cinema 16. Inspired by the example of the avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, the Vogels began exhibiting a range of movies — experimental psychodramas, poetic documentaries, abstract animations, banned French bedroom farces and forgotten classics, complete with notes. Cinema 16 originally charged admission but switched to yearly subscriptions so as to avoid New York State’s draconian censorship laws.Vogel’s book “Film as a Subversive Art” is “a reminder of the possibilities of film exhibition and curation,” said the New York Film Festival’s director of programming, Dennis Lim.Paul CroninAt its height, in the late 1950s, Cinema 16 had some 7,000 members and regularly filled a 1,600-seat auditorium. It also doubled as a distributor for filmmakers as difficult as Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage. In addition to promoting the “beat” cinema of “Pull My Daisy” and “The Flower Thief,” Cinema 16 provided American premieres for Jean Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game” (introduced by Renoir), several of Luis Buñuel’s Mexican films, and movies by the great Japanese directors Yasujiro Ozu and Nagisa Oshima. Cinema 16 also showed the first short films by Agnès Varda and Melvin Van Peebles, among many others.As a programmer, Vogel was a master of the mix and match. One particularly great show included Carl Theodor Dreyer’s expressionist horror film “Vampyr” (1932), Kenneth Anger’s homoerotic home movie “Fireworks” (1947) and George Franju’s surreal abattoir documentary “Blood of the Beasts” (1949). Vogel’s programs typically juxtaposed avant-garde work and short documentaries with scientific fare. (As befits his Viennese roots, he had a fondness for psychiatric shorts like “Experimental Masochism” or “Unconscious Motivation.”)The young Vogel liked to present himself as a firebrand. In a 1961 Village Voice cover story headlined “‘I Step on Toes From Time to Time,’” it was part of his bold declaration that “I’ll show anything — political, homosexual, religious, erotic, psychological — which needs to be seen.” Indeed, Cinema 16 was the first New York venue to present the full-length version of Nazi propaganda films like “Triumph of the Will” as objects of study.When I met Amos, some 20 years after the Voice article, he was less combative than amiably avuncular. Gently, he reprimanded me for having written a purposelessly contentious piece about a long-ago contretemps occasioned by his refusal to show Brakhage’s “Anticipation of the Night” at Cinema 16. “One decision should not define a career,” he told me, words that might serve as a film critic’s motto.Carl Theodor Dreyer’s horror film “Vampyr” was part of one of Vogel’s adventurous programs.The Criterion CollectionHe had a profound sense of mission. During his time at the festival, he fought budget cuts and strove to create something like the American Film Institute at Lincoln Center. He was opposed to any sort of commercialization, genuinely shocked that what was then known as the Film Society of Lincoln Center might accept money from Philip Morris, aghast that the year he quit, the opening film was a trendy Hollywood comedy, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.”Upon joining the festival selection committee, I naïvely suggested distributing free tickets to avant-garde filmmakers and other needy types. “Amos used to do that” came the disapproving answer. The Vogel festival was generous. It was ridiculously easy to crash the press screenings and there were dozens of sidebar screenings and discussions at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts that, if memory serves, were virtually free.“We show what can be done if certain cultural elements and the serious art or documentary are brought together,” Vogel had told the Voice in 1961. “There lies the basis for a film culture. But who knows in America if such a condition will ever spread and really take hold?”If it has, the esteem in which Vogel is held by his successors can be gauged by the unprecedented attention paid his centennial. The festival has been presenting a seven-part “Spotlight” series dedicated to Vogel’s programming, recreating specific shows and presenting favorite movies. Later this month, Anthology Film Archives will show eight reconstructed Cinema 16 bills, and the Museum of Modern Art will screen five programs with a science and nature theme. In November, Film Forum is reprising a tribute to Cinema 16 shown in 1986. The Museum of the Moving Image, Metrograph and Light Industry are also taking part, drawing on “Film as a Subversive Art.” Outside New York, the Arsenal in Berlin and the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna have organized similar multipart events.“Vogel” is German for “bird.” With due respect to Charlie Parker, the message this season is Vogel Lebt, “Bird Lives!” More

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      ‘V/H/S/94’ Review: The Right Snuff

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      This lo-fi horror omnibus is a grisly, gory gem.“V/H/S” is a series of found-footage horror anthologies whose constituent shorts are made to seem like the contents of old, and possibly haunted, videocassettes. The problem to date has been that, like most omnibus films, the quality of the segments ranges wildly, so that the odd effective short winds up sandwiched between shorts that are decidedly second-rate.“V/H/S/94,” the fourth movie in the franchise, is the first wholly successful one, for the simple reason that each of its four unique, 1990s-set segments is a winner. I suppose it doesn’t cohere into anything more than the sum of its parts. But this is the first time I’ve felt the anthology horror format really worked, and gosh, the parts are really good.The first installment, and my favorite, is Chloe Okuno’s “Storm Drain,” which stars a note-perfect Anna Hopkins as a daytime TV news reporter assigned to cover a spate of mysterious sightings around the city sewage system. Okuno and her cinematographer, Jared Raab, recreate the period aesthetic so precisely that the footage looks like it’s been unearthed from a local broadcast news archive; the low-grade video style is cleverly used to obscure the image, heightening the suspense. “Storm Drain” has wit, verve, and integrity, and its gross-out punchline is the highlight of the film.Things get grosser still in “The Subject,” Timo Tjahjanto’s gory, ludicrously over-the-top entry, which plays out with the madcap gusto of a first-person shooter. Tjahjanto had the best segment by far in the 2013 “V/H/S/2,” with the sinister cult thriller “Safe Haven,” but here he exchanges slow-burn dread for outrageous ultraviolence in the finest grindhouse tradition.It’s an exuberant counterpoint to the installment that precedes it, Simon Barrett’s “The Empty Wake,” which buzzes with some of the same nervous, understated tension of John Carpenter’s short “The Gas Station,” from the 1993 horror anthology “Body Bags.” The finale, “Terror,” is a playful, lo-fi lark centered on an extremist militia in possession of a dangerous supernatural weapon. Directed with humor and visual invention by Ryan Prows, it keeps its secrets under wraps until the very last moments, to compelling effect. The payoff makes for a terrific conclusion to a consistently impressive four-part film.V/H/S/94Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

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      Clint and Ron Howard Remember When They Were Just ‘The Boys’

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      In a new memoir, the showbiz siblings recall their experiences growing up on “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Star Trek” and other Hollywood classics. But they weren’t all happy days.Growing up, Clint and Ron Howard never had to dream of stardom, because as children they’d already achieved it. Ron was just 6 when he was second-billed on “The Andy Griffith Show” and 8 when “The Music Man,” featuring him crooning “Gary, Indiana,” was released. Clint, his younger brother, was racking up roles on “Bonanza,” “Star Trek” and “Gentle Ben.”Today they are both Hollywood veterans: Ron, 67, is an Academy Award-winning director (“A Beautiful Mind”) and co-founder of Imagine Entertainment, while Clint, 62, is a prolific character actor who’s shown up everywhere from “Seinfeld” to the “Austin Powers” movies.But their lives were transformed by their time as child actors and the influence of their parents, Rance Howard and Jean Speegle Howard, who left Oklahoma to pursue their own ambitions of becoming actors — goals that were surpassed countless times over by the accomplishments of their two sons.Ron and Clint Howard retrace this formative period in a new book, “The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family,” which will be released by William Morrow on Tuesday. In their alternating accounts, the Howards look back on their parents’ lives, their own upbringings and their success at staving off the darker aspects of their profession — at least until the realities of adolescence and adulthood reared their heads.“The Boys” will be released on Oct. 12.William Morrow, via Associated PressWhen the brothers spoke in a video interview last month, they talked about how writing “The Boys” had helped reconnect them to each other and to their family history.“We’ve remained close, but we’re 3,000 miles apart and busy with our own families,” Ron Howard said, adding that the book “has everything to do with trying to put our lives into the context of who our parents were and what they gave us.”“We wouldn’t have done it just to tell our story,” he added. “Once again, Mom and Dad pulled us together.”Clint and Ron Howard talked about their early starts in show business, their earliest brushes with fame and how their parents helped them keep it together. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.It’s well-known that you’re the children of actors, but you’re not exactly Barrymore scions. What were your parents like? How did they find it in Hollywood?RON HOWARD There’s no reason they should have succeeded. They didn’t know a thing about where they were going. They weren’t bohemians, they weren’t hippies, but they certainly were not conservatives. But they had this dream. They had to chase that horizon. And when they got to the horizon, they never really fit in. They were always a little cornpone. Hence the term that they applied to themselves, sophisticated hicks.Were you ever made to feel that you were the breadwinners of your family?CLINT HOWARD We didn’t take show business home with us. Both Dad and Mom worked their tails off. Mom was just a championship mom. She was on the P.T.A., she was a basketball mom, she was a baseball mom.RON Dad was a kid-actor whisperer. But he said, I work with you boys because you’re my sons and I think you can learn something. I don’t think he believed this was our career for the rest of our lives. I don’t think he wanted to project that desire upon us.The book he and his brother wrote, Ron Howard said, “has everything to do with trying to put our lives into the context of who our parents were and what they gave us.”Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesYou probably could have lived much larger on the money you were earning — why didn’t you?RON We always lived on Dad’s salary. Somebody wanted to do an Opie line of clothing — I’m sure it would have meant hundreds of thousands of dollars at the end of the day. Mom and Dad turned that down for me because they didn’t want me wasting my time on that.CLINT We were never short for anything. But we didn’t go on vacation. They didn’t buy new cars. Once a year, Ron and I got new school clothes. No one was chasing those intoxicating elements that modern life or show business can overwhelm you with.As children, you were regularly crossing paths with venerated Hollywood artists. Clint, you got to meet Walt Disney when you were working on “The Jungle Book.” What was that like?CLINT I was completely blown away when Walt walked in and said, “You’re doing a fine job, Clint.” I was truly a Disney baby. But I was a little irritated that I hadn’t worked in more Disney shows. [Laughter.]RON Too bad you didn’t just say, “What took you so long? Walt, how many times have I been to Disneyland? Where’s the quid pro quo here, Walt?”CLINT These people all seemed pretty friendly but they weren’t handing out the contracts. I never got on “The Mickey Mouse Club.”Were either of you ever jealous of each other?CLINT Our age difference was ideal. Being five years apart, I would look at my brother and go, there’s no chance that I can kick his butt. There were a few times we would get into a fight over baseball cards or a toy, and Dad would physically pull us apart. He would say, you boys are going to want to be good friends when you grow up. So why don’t you just knock it off?RON He would say you have a chance to be good friends when you grow up.There’s a period you describe in the book, where things were starting to wind down for Ron on “The Andy Griffith Show” and Clint was beginning to take off on “Gentle Ben.” Did that create tension between you?RON I felt envy over what Clint was achieving. He was really popular at school, an excellent athlete, gregarious, smart, confident. Things that I don’t necessarily feel or exude. And I admired that about his persona. And I could see it in the work he was doing as well. He was a hell of a good child actor. The system is set up to make child performers feel like failures as they go through adolescence, that most vulnerable period, and I was beginning to experience that. Clint experienced a version of it later.CLINT I worked on “Gentle Ben,” I was one of the coleads of a television series that was really popular for a short period of time. What really knocked my chin in the dirt was getting hired to work on a TV series called “The Cowboys.” The job ended up just sucking. It was a bad show. I was still making money but the work was poor. That, and then pimples. Dad and Mom warned us about this period of show business. We knew it was coming. There was just no way to really quantify how I was going to feel about it.“We were never short for anything,” Clint Howard said. “But we didn’t go on vacation. They didn’t buy new cars. Once a year, Ron and I got new school clothes. No one was chasing those intoxicating elements that modern life or show business can overwhelm you with.”Rozette Rago for The New York TimesIn an era and an industry where drugs were prevalent, Ron avoided them fastidiously while Clint had a long period of addiction and recovery. Why do you think you had such different experiences?RON I was very introverted and my group of friends were likewise. I wasn’t really allowed to go to parties. If I was invited once or twice, I think my parents said no. But Clint was in a different group, much more socially mature. I also resented some of the restrictions that my parents put on me, and I was constantly imploring them to use a lighter hand with Clint.CLINT I had just some sort of odd fascination with smoking weed. To the point where I literally practiced — I took some pencil shavings from my pencil sharpener and I twisted up a joint and tried to smoke it. Ron was the first, he was a little more nerdy. I was socially more outgoing. I ended up with a group of friends where it was no big deal. The problem is, once that train leaves the station, it can get going pretty darn fast. It’s a slippery slope and I was throwing down the Crisco.Ron, did you ever feel guilty that you had somehow let your little brother down and hadn’t protected him from this?RON Yes, I did feel that. When we knew Clint was smoking pot, I said, look, it’s not the horrible curse of the demon you fear it might be. But as Clint started to go further, by then I was married and beginning to have kids. I was concerned and I tried to offer support and go to meetings. I continued to work with Clint and cast him when it made sense. I remember telling him pretty late in his period of abuse — we used a lot of baseball terminology — I said, you’re a bona fide .300 hitter who’s batting about .217.CLINT I have that letter. You wrote it on stationery from a New York hotel room.RON I was thinking about you while I was on the road. But I was very proud of Clint for having navigated it. That achievement meant so much to Mom and Dad, probably more than anything any of us had achieved.CLINT My recovery wasn’t easy-peasy, clean and snazzy. Ron had a lot to do with it and Dad had a lot to do with it, too. I struggled with Mom passing away, but I was very proud of the moment I could drop my nine-year chip in her coffin. I only wish it was a 10-year chip.What’s your favorite performance that your brother has given?RON Clint was tremendous in “The Red Pony.” But as I was doing research for this, I had forgotten that we had both been on “The Danny Kaye Show,” and there was this sketch where I was supposed to be this kid James Bond character and Clint was my boss. He nailed that scene. When I watched it, I said, my God, look how present he is. He really is playing a 50-year-old, hard-bitten guy, and I buy it.CLINT He talks about me being in “The Red Pony,” but I never got a chance to do what he did in “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.” There’s a scene in that movie where he has this panic attack that turns into a tantrum, and he just was so believable. I’m going, the guy’s got chops. Also, as a young man, he did a movie, “Act of Love.” That was weighty material and he nailed it.RON That was a euthanasia story, based on a real event, where a younger brother had been beseeched by the other to end it after a horrible accident. There’s a courtroom scene where he’s talking about how much he loves his brother and Clint was going through a difficult time during this period. It was one of the most personal moments I ever generated onscreen, because I was channeling my own sense of love and despair for what Clint was going through. The tears and the emotions were real — they came from my own gut. More

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      ‘Distancing Socially’ Review: Scenes from a Quarantine

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      Little happens in this comedy that follows Hollywood players lonely in lockdown.“Write what you know,” the adage goes. Ben (Rory Scovel) takes these words to heart in “Distancing Socially,” a so-called comedy set during the coronavirus lockdown. Unfolding on screens in a series of interconnected vignettes, the movie begins with Ben, a screenwriter, pitching his idea for a romantic comedy that occurs over video calls.One would be forgiven for guessing that Ben is a proxy for Chris Blake, the movie’s writer and director, who conceived of “Distancing Socially” during the pandemic and shot it remotely by shipping iPhone rigs to actors. The vast ensemble of characters includes Ben’s producer Noel (Alan Tudyk), his financier Andy (Andy Buckley) and Andy’s colleague Ella (Melanie Chandra), who works in casting.A majority of the characters hold Hollywood jobs — save for a poet, a musician and a blogger — and an oddly large number are recently single and boohooing over their exes. Those in committed partnerships don’t get off scot-free, though; they insist that their wives or kids, somewhere offscreen, are driving them nuts.Predictable Covid-era gags about delivered groceries, germaphobia and computer glitches pepper the script, but the real problem here is the expository dialogue. Every time a new character appears, his or her name and relation to the story is awkwardly stated, and then likely reiterated in case we missed it the first time. It’s fine that nothing major happens in this charmless quaran-com; it is concerning, however, that neither the audience nor the actors, sitting stiffly behind their screens, are given reason to care.Distancing SociallyRated R. Broken hearts and bad Wi-Fi. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Russian Film Crew Has Arrived at Space Station

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      The pair arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday, aiming to shoot scenes for the first feature film made in orbit.The Russian crew — an actress, a director and their professional astronaut guide — arrived at the International Space Station with a mission to shoot scenes for the first feature-length film in space.Roscosmos, via ReutersThe first dog in space. The first man and woman. Now Russia has clinched another spaceflight first before the United States: Beating Hollywood to orbit.A Russian actress, Yulia Peresild, a director, Klim Shipenko, and their veteran Russian astronaut guide, Anton Shkaplerov, launched on a Russian rocket toward the International Space Station on Tuesday. Their mission is to shoot scenes for the first feature-length film in space. While cinematic sequences in space have long been portrayed on big screens using sound stages and advanced computer graphics, never before has a full-length movie been shot and directed in space.Whether the film they shoot in orbit is remembered as a cinematic triumph, the mission highlights the busy efforts of governments as well as private entrepreneurs to expand access to space. Earth’s orbit and beyond were once visited only by astronauts handpicked by government space agencies. But a growing number of visitors in the near future will be more like Ms. Sherepild and Mr. Shipenko, and less like the highly trained Mr. Shkaplerov and his fellow space explorers.A Soyuz rocket, the workhorse of Russia’s space program, lifted off on time at 4:55 a.m. Eastern time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.Before the launch on Tuesday, the MS-19 crew posed for photos and waved to family and fans in Baikonur. Mr. Shipenko, the director of the film which is named “The Challenge,” held up a script as he waved to cameras.“We didn’t forget to take it with us,” he said, according to a translator, before he boarded a bus with the other crew members to get dressed in their flight suits.The crew then raced to catch up with the space station in a trip that took only three hours. Known as a “two-orbit scheme,” it was unusually fast, as journeys to the lab in space typically last between eight and 22 hours over multiple orbits around Earth. (The first three-hour trip was performed by a Soyuz spacecraft in 2020 for Russia’s MS-17 mission, carrying two Russian astronauts and a U.S. astronaut.)The MS-19 spacecraft carrying its three-person crew was expected to dock with the space station at 8:12 a.m. But because of what a mission control official in Moscow described as “ratty comms” between the capsule and mission control in Moscow, possibly the result of weather conditions on Earth, Mr. Shkaplerov, the mission’s commander, was forced to abort an initial automated docking attempt. Mr. Shkaplerov instead manually steered the spacecraft to a port on the station’s Russian segment.“Up, down, left, right,” the mission control official in Moscow instructed Mr. Shkaplerov, as he steered the spacecraft closer to the station’s Russian segment. “Do what you’ve trained for. You’ll be fine.”The capsule latched onto the space station around 8:22 a.m. slightly behind schedule. Opening the hatch door was also delayed as the crew checked for air leaks, and as the Russian astronauts already on the station lined up their first shot: Ms. Peresild’s arrival.“They’re going to open the hatch from their side, and then they’re going to float towards the camera, correct? So we need to stay out of the picture,” Oleg Novitsky, one of two Russian astronauts who’ve been on the station since April, asked mission control in Moscow.Pyotr Dubrov, the other resident of the Russian segment, was behind a large digital cinema camera, recording and waiting for the MS-19 crew to open the hatch door and board the station. When it finally opened more than two hours after docking, at 11 a.m., out floated Mr. Shkaplerov and a smiling Ms. Peresild, followed by Mr. Shipenko, her director. The three then participated in a welcoming ceremony with the space station’s current crew of seven astronauts from NASA, Russia, Europe and Japan, with Ms. Sherepild in a red jumpsuit while her fellow new arrivals wore blue.A screengrab from a video by the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos showed Yulia Peresild entering the I.S.S. on Tuesday.Roscosmos, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I still feel that it’s all just a dream and I am asleep,” she said. “It is almost impossible to believe that this all came to reality.”The two film crew members will spend nearly two weeks moviemaking on the space station before returning on Oct. 17 aboard the MS-18 Soyuz spacecraft. Mr. Novitsky will leave with the film crew, and Mr. Shkaplerov will remain on the station.“Undoubtedly, this mission is special, we have people going to space who are neither tourists nor professional cosmonauts,” said Dmitri Rogozin, director general of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. He said he hoped the flight would help the agency attract a new generation of talent.As an actress, Ms. Peresild has performed in some 70 roles onscreen, and Russian movie publications have named her among the top 10 actresses under 35 years old. She may be best known among Russian moviegoers for “Battle for Sevastopol” (2015), in which she played the role of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the deadliest Red Army female sniper during World War II.But her prominence alone wouldn’t have been enough to secure her a seat to orbit: She was picked for the flight from some 3,000 contestants in a two-stage selection procedure that involved both tests of creativity and a stringent medical and physical fitness screening.Ms. Peresild will also become the fifth Russian woman to travel to space, and the first aboard the space station since 2015, when Elena Serova returned to Earth.Aboard the space station, Ms. Peresild will star in “The Challenge.” It’s about a surgeon, played by Ms. Peresild, who embarks on an emergency mission to the orbiting lab to save the life of an ailing cosmonaut (to be performed by Mr. Novitsky). Few other details about the plot or the filming aboard the station have been announced.The crew, using hand-held cameras both on board the capsule and in the space station, started filming scenes for the movie as the spacecraft approached the outpost, Rob Navias, a NASA spokesman, said on Tuesday.For “The Challenge,” cinematic storytelling may take a back seat to the symbolism of shooting a movie in space. The production is a joint project involving Russia’s space agency Roscosmos; Channel One; and Yellow, Black and White, a Russian film studio.Anton Shkaplerov, Klim Shipenko and Ms. Peresild boarding the Soyuz before launch on Tuesday.Roscosmos, via ReutersLike a lot of private missions to space these days, Channel One and Roscosmos hope the film can prove to the public that space isn’t reserved for only government astronauts. One of the production’s core objectives is to show that “spaceflights are gradually becoming available not only for professionals, but also for an ever wider range of interested persons,” Channel One said on its website.Mr. Rogozin, the Russian space agency leader, said he hopes the mission will make “a truly serious work of art and a whole new development of the promotion of space technologies,” in order to attract young talent to Russia’s space program.Funding for Russia’s space program is beginning to wane. Starting in 2011, when the U.S. space shuttle program ended, NASA could only send astronauts to the International Space Station by paying for expensive rides on one of Russia’s Soyuz rockets. But that ended in 2020 when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon proved itself capable of sending astronauts from American soil. And recently, the United States ended purchases of a Russian rocket engine long used for NASA and Pentagon launches to space, which generated billions in revenue for Moscow.Is this really the first movie that has been made on the space station?“The Challenge” is the first full-length movie that will use scenes filmed in orbit. The movie will include about 35 to 40 minutes of scenes made on the station, Channel One says.Other kinds of productions have been made in space in the past, like “Apogee of Fear,” an eight-minute science fiction film shot by Richard Garriott, a private astronaut, in 2008. Mr. Garriott, a video game entrepreneur, paid $30 million for his seat on a Soyuz spacecraft, which he booked through Space Adventures, a space tourism broker. The company is booking future missions to the space station aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.Several feature-length documentaries have relied heavily on video shot aboard the station. “Space Station 3D,” a short 2002 documentary about the space station’s construction, was one of the earliest IMAX productions filmed in space.Are there other plans to film in orbit?Tom Cruise may have plans to film something on the space station, but it’s unclear exactly when. Deadline, a Hollywood news publication, reported in 2020 that Mr. Cruise would fly to space aboard one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules for an action-adventure film directed by Doug Liman. Jim Bridenstine, who served as NASA’s administrator under President Donald Trump, confirmed the plans on Twitter at the time and lauded them as a chance to galvanize the public around space exploration.Russia’s space agency announced its intention to send an actress to the space station shortly after Mr. Cruise’s plans emerged.The Nauka multipurpose laboratory module, left, docked to the International Space Station alongside a Soyuz spacecraft in July.Roscosmos, via ReutersWhat problems have the Russians had with the space station recently?Astronauts have been living aboard the space station, a science lab the size of a football field, for more than 20 years, and it’s starting to show signs of decay, particularly on the Russian side.Several air leaks on the Russian segment of the outpost have been detected in recent years, although none have posed immediate danger to the station’s crew. Astronauts found a leak in Russia’s Zvezda service module last year by using tea leaves, and patched the leak with space-grade glue and tape. Another gradual air leak is ongoing, and its source has eluded Russian space officials.And in July, Russia’s new science module, Nauka, carried out a chaotic docking procedure: Shortly after locking onto the station, the module’s thrusters began to fire erroneously, spinning the entire space station by one-and-a-half revolutions. None of the seven astronauts on board were harmed, but it was a rare “spacecraft emergency” that sent NASA and Russian officials scrambling to return the station to its normal orientation.Who else is going to the space station soon?Traffic at the space station will be busy for the next few months.On Oct. 30, NASA is scheduled to send a crew of three U.S. astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut to the space station for a roughly six-month stay. The mission, named Crew-3, will be NASA’s fourth trek to the station using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, a spacecraft developed with a mix of NASA and private funds.Then, more private missions. Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, will launch to the orbital laboratory aboard a Soyuz rocket on Dec. 8 for a 12-day stay. Mr. Maezawa, an art collector and the tycoon behind the Japanese fashion retail site Zozotown, booked his first mission to space with SpaceX in 2018, aiming to one day ride the company’s Starship rocket around the moon. That won’t come until 2023, and for Mr. Maezawa’s sooner Soyuz flight, he’ll bring a producer and a camera along to document his trip.Then on Feb. 21, three private astronauts, paying $55 million each, will fly to the space station in a Crew Dragon capsule booked by the company Axiom Space. They will be joined by a fourth crew member, a retired NASA astronaut who will essentially serve as their guide.Valerie Hopkins and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting from Moscow.Sync your calendar with the solar systemNever miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other astronomical and space event that’s out of this world. More

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      The Future of Movies Collides With the Past at the New York Film Festival

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      Memory and storytelling are intriguingly intertwined in work by world-class filmmakers that confounds and intrigues.For almost six decades, the New York Film Festival has offered a glimpse of the movie future. That has certainly been true this year, with the Lincoln Center screening rooms populated and a busy season of streaming and theatrical releases ahead. Over two autumn weeks — the 59th edition of the festival runs through Sunday — New York cinephiles are treated to a series of sneak previews, early chances to see films that will make their way into the wider world over the next few months.Part of the function of the event is to spark word of mouth and media coverage, to tease the Oscar race and handicap the art-house box office, and to see what people are inclined to argue about. Will it be the lurid provocations of Julia Ducournau’s “Titane”? The wide-screen western psychodrama of Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”? The aching, low-key intimacy of Mike Mills’s “C’mon C’mon”? There has been something reassuring about the ritual of those questions, and about the conversations, blessedly unrelated to pandemics or politics, that they promise.But the excitement of novelty has been tinged with nostalgia. Apart from the required masks and proof of vaccination, this New York festival seemed a lot like the earlier ones. The blend of favored auteurs and up-and-comers felt familiar, and not in a bad way. We expect to see Todd Haynes, Wes Anderson, Bruno Dumont and Hong Sangsoo in this setting, and also to stumble into discoveries and reappraisals. I didn’t know what to expect from “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?,” from the Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze. After having seen it — a slow-moving, semi-magical romance with a ruminative voice-over and leisurely shots of the town of Kutaisi — I’m still not sure what to make of it. That, too, is a quintessential festival experience.A scene from the Bucharest-set “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.”Silviu Ghetie/Micro FilmAfter watching most of the main slate and a handful of other offerings — and dealing with the inevitable regret about what I’ve missed — my main takeaway is a feeling of comfort. This is unusual, and in the past I might have seen that as a form of disappointment. What I tend to look for, what I believe in to the point of dogmatism, is art that is challenging, difficult, abrasive, shocking. I saw a few attempts at that, including “Titane,” which in spite of its bright colors, extreme violence and sexual aggression didn’t quite succeed for me, and Radu Jude’s “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” which very much did.Jude shot his film on the streets of Bucharest in 2020, where people are masked, anxious and rude. Like that setting, the story — of a schoolteacher caught up in a culture-war sex scandal — is unpleasantly contemporary, and the overall mood of the picture is rough and dyspeptic. This is the opposite of escapism, and while I can’t say “Bad Luck Banging” is a lot of fun, it has a purgative, present-tense power. This is how we live, and it’s awful.What’s the alternative? Or, more precisely, is there a kind of aesthetic relief from current reality that doesn’t amount to a denial of it? An answer that seems to appeal to many filmmakers at the moment is to treat the medium as a vehicle of memory, to use its tools to construct a record of the past with room for its ambiguities, blank spaces and clashing perspectives.Tilda Swinton is an Englishwoman living in Colombia in “Memoria.”NeonThe most radical and overt gesture of this kind comes, aptly enough, in “Memoria,” from the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Like his earlier features (including “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”), this one is dreamy and elusive, less a story than a succession of moods and existential puzzles. Tilda Swinton plays an Englishwoman living in Colombia who starts hearing a loud noise inaudible to anyone else. She asks a young sound engineer to help synthesize what she hears, which turns out not to be the only strange phenomenon she encounters.In a small town in the mountains she meets a man with the same name as the engineer who claims to remember everything that has ever happened to him. Not only that, he can decode “memories” of past events stored in rocks and other inanimate objects. His consciousness is so saturated, he says, that he has never left his hometown, and never watched any movies or television. His new acquaintance is surprised, and tells him some of what he’s been missing. Sports. News. Game shows.It doesn’t sound very persuasive. What would he do with those images? But I don’t think “Memoria” is dismissing its own technology so much as it’s reminding the audience how much more there is to reality than our attempts to represent it. The film is mind-blowing in its ambition and strangeness, but also decidedly modest, as if it were one of those stones packed with information that we might someday learn to unlock.The most memorable films about memory at the festival felt similarly (though also specifically, uniquely) open-ended, inconclusive. Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II,” like “Memoria,” evokes memory in its title, and looks through a double rearview mirror. Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a London film student in the 1980s, recovers from the death of her lover (Tom Burke, as seen in “The Souvenir”) by turning their relationship into the subject of her thesis project. That movie is also called “The Souvenir,” which makes “Part II” a kind of making-of pseudo-documentary as well as a memoir, a coming-of-age story and a time capsule of the later Thatcher years.Milena Smit, left, and Penélope Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers.”Sony Pictures Releasing InternationalPedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers” moves both forward and backward, with love and politics on its mind. It follows the entwined lives of its two main characters, women (played by Milena Smit and Penélope Cruz) who give birth in the same hospital, over a period of several years. Their fates unfold under the shadow, at times imperceptible, at times unavoidable, of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship that followed. The intersection of historical trauma and individual destiny isn’t an uncommon theme in contemporary cinema, but Almodóvar handles it with characteristic elegance and a profoundly melancholy humanism.Almodóvar, the avatar of Spain’s youthful post-Franco awakening, is now in his early 70s. His film will close the festival this weekend, bookending a triptych of major work by his generational cohort. Joel Coen, born in 1954, and Jane Campion, born in 1957, both came on the scene, like Almodóvar, in the 1980s, and are both asserting their seniority by breaking out in new directions: Coen with his swift-moving, stirring “The Tragedy of Macbeth” (his first film without his brother, Ethan) and Campion with the tragic “Power of the Dog.” These movies look like throwbacks — “Macbeth” to the black-and-white Shakespeare of Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier; “Power” to sprawling Technicolor epics like “Giant” — but they are also signs of life. And portents, maybe, of the future. More