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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

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

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

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

This latest Joseph Kosinski film — set in a penitentiary that dispenses aphrodisiacs and fear-inducers — couldn’t be more unlike his “Top Gun: Maverick.”With “Spiderhead,” the director Joseph Kosinski returns to screens in what feels like record time, given that his pandemic-delayed “Top Gun: Maverick” opened in theaters just three weeks ago. If that sequel aimed to short-circuit viewers’ higher functions by appealing to nostalgia and working the adrenal glands, the newer movie is a smaller-scale, principally interior production, shot under Covid restrictions, that aims to ponder the deep secrets of the human mind.As if to brace audiences for serious viewing, the film even opens with a logo for The New Yorker, following one for Netflix; it’s based on a short story by George Saunders that the magazine published in 2010. In the movie version, Spiderhead is the name of a penitentiary and research center where prisoners serve as test subjects for psychotropic drugs. These meds, dispensed from packs installed at the base of the spine, serve all sorts of purposes. They can turbocharge libidos, make air pollution look like rainbow-ringed clouds or inspire terror at the sight of a stapler.The head of research, Steve Abnesti, is played by Chris Hemsworth, who glides around the Bond-villain-lair sets in aviator glasses. He delivers smarmy lectures on improving the world and berates his assistant, Mark (Mark Paguio), for not freshening the coffee. Together, the scientists bogart most of what’s enjoyable in “Spiderhead,” with Hemsworth gleefully playing up his character’s nonchalance over his unsound experiments and ethical lapses. “The time to worry about crossing lines was a lot of lines ago,” Steve tells Mark with a wave of the hands.It’s not that Jeff (Miles Teller), the protagonist, who broods over the car wreck that put him in prison, and his love interest, Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett) — an addition from the short story — are entirely boring. But Kosinski’s specialty is tangible action sequences, with planes and explosions, not people who agonize over guilt and punishment. While you can admire Kosinski’s efforts to make a brainy blockbuster, the script (by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) is better suited to the cerebral tendencies of a David Cronenberg or a Steven Soderbergh, rather than a filmmaker apparently set on wresting a crowd-pleaser from dark material.Kosinski does what he can to keep this production, shot in Australia, fast and loose. The room where Jeff and other inmates are observed after dosing wittily resembles a talk show set, with yellow easy chairs. The prison, located on a remote island, is an asymmetrical, almost gravity-defying slab of Brutalist weirdness. The soundtrack is filled with 1970s and ’80s earworms, as if Spiderhead were Studio 54.But Kosinski can’t make the inane philosophizing about free will sound profound or new, and the hectic, hasty finale, lacking the nerve or chilly interiority of the original story, plays like something that blew up in the lab.SpiderheadRated R for an experimental (but quite effective) aphrodisiac drug. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

Strong acting and a cool setting elevate this surreal tale of artistic compulsion.“Poser,” the shivery first feature from Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, is a drifting psychodrama whose menace builds with excruciating slowness. The dazed and dreamy mood, however, is established immediately in the pale face of Lennon (Sylvie Mix), an aspiring podcaster whose seemingly innocent ambition evolves into a much darker obsession.Lennon’s blank affect and almost total lack of back story make her more than a little creepy and an untrustworthy title character. As she infiltrates the underground music scene in Columbus, Ohio, recording bands and random conversations, her physical stillness and intense vibe grow increasingly unsettling. When not insinuating herself into the artists’ social circles, she works as a dishwasher for a catering outfit; at home, she painstakingly labels and files her audiotapes. It takes a while to notice that she hasn’t produced a single podcast.Unfolding in gloomy clubs and freewheeling performance spaces, “Poser” draws vibrancy from Logan Floyd’s atmospheric photography and the quirky participation of real-life musicians. (I especially enjoyed the singer who described her band’s music as “queer death pop.”) When Lennon announces her own musical ambitions and befriends the charismatic performer Bobbi Kitten (playing a version of herself), the movie’s somewhat flaccid plot gets a much-needed shot in the arm. Set against Lennon’s chilly passivity, Kitten’s dazzle is a delight.At once polished and punky, “Poser” is about the maturing of a vampiric personality. Like its music, the movie feels exploratory and raw-edged, yet with a persistent pathos that clings to Lennon and isolates her. Her destination might be predictable, but her detours are rarely less than beguiling.PoserNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

The comic performer David Earl plays a lonely inventor who builds a robot friend in this bionic buddy comedy.For over a decade, the British comedian David Earl has been playing the character Brian Gittins, a shaggy, unfiltered eccentric whose prickly point of view inspires pity and unease. The pseudo-documentary “Brian and Charles,” an unevenly sentimental heart-tugger directed by Jim Archer, finds Brian in a corner of rural Wales feeling depressed and solitary despite the implied presence of documentarians, whom he addresses directly while facing the camera. There’s no evident reason for the mockumentary element, although it gives Earl a chance to mug for the lens.To fix his low and lonely state, Brian builds a robot. Let Silicon Valley chase a sleek future of frictionless rectangles and orbs: Brian’s creation, Charles, is a towering, homemade shambles with gray hair and a doddering shuffle that gives the impression of a retired sheepherder. Chris Hayward, who wrote the movie with Earl, plays the bot and radiates marvelous vocal and physical energy from inside a costume that appears to be constructed from a cardboard box covered in a cardigan, with a mannequin head on a pole poking out of the top. He tests the audience’s ability to become invested in an unapologetically ridiculous concoction — and he succeeds better than the human caricatures who make up the rest of the ensemble, from a stock brute (Jamie Michie) to a potential love interest (Louise Brealey) who is stuck smiling patiently as the robot teaches Brian social skills.As Brian and Charles acclimate to each other, the story appears to be about Brian the crank realizing that he is the cause of his own isolation. (Charles helps in one scene by blurting, “You are boring!”) Too soon, however, this intriguing psychological study turns into a programmatic geeks-vs-bullies story that relies on pushing the easiest emotional buttons.Brian and CharlesRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

Sunshine, ice pops and rainbow flags mark a summer of transformation for a teenager in Berlin in the coming-of-age drama, “Cocoon.”There are butterfly species that have evolved to be invisible to predators until their wings open, and suddenly their backs have the appearance of watchful eyes peering out from the wilderness. Nora (Lena Urzendowsky), the teenage protagonist of the German bildungsroman “Cocoon” is interested in butterflies, even keeping caterpillars in her bedroom. Like them, everything about Nora, except her watchful eyes, seems to blend into the background. Like them, she’s looking for a reason to transform.When the film begins, it’s summertime in Berlin and Nora is 14 years old, a quiet girl, less brash than her blonde and boy-crazy older sister, Jules (Anna Lena Klenke). Nora still has the choppy bangs of a middle school student, and she’s too naïve to know how to use tampons. that the heart flutters her sister experiences around handsome boys, Nora instead feels for girls. Nora falls into a flirtation with an older classmate, Romy (Jella Haase), a tomboy who skinny dips with the class heartthrobs and doesn’t lose her cool over it. As attraction blooms into a tentative romance, Nora grows a little more confident, and her sense of self becomes a little more defined.The writer and director Leonie Krippendorff favors warmth for Nora’s coming-of-age story. Even when Nora encounters things she doesn’t like — boys with their loud rap music, girls with stick-straight hair who slur cold words after sniffing lines in the bathroom — the cinematography lingers on golden light and soft skin. The softness lacks detail, the butterfly metaphors lack originality, but the movie is pleasant, a balmy introduction to adult feelings of desire and belonging.CocoonNot rated. In German, with subtitles. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More