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      ‘The Capote Tapes’ Review: New Narratives and Unanswered Prayers

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      This documentary adds some material to the tragic tale of a great American writer, but also teases at what it can’t deliver.There’s some fascinating and provocative material in “The Capote Tapes” that is diluted by the director Ebs Burnough’s insistence on teasing a question that, arguably, has a self-evident answer.The movie opens with onscreen texts referring to “a journalist’s” archive on interviews about Capote and rumors of an “unfinished scandalous manuscript.” The journalist turns out to be George Plimpton, who published an oral history on Capote in 1997, over a decade after Capote’s 1984 death at age 59. The manuscript would be “Answered Prayers,” excerpts from which caused much disaffection among Capote’s high-society associates when they ran in Esquire magazine in the mid-70s.Capote’s story is one of fierce talent, personal bravery, poor professional ethics, eccentric celebrity, and eventual addiction and dissolution. It’s been dramatized in two notable fiction films. And the man himself features in scores of documentaries. Burnough’s movie very much wants to add something new to the narrative, and it does, introducing Kate Harrington, whom Capote quietly adopted in the ’60s. (It’s a complicated and odd story.)After this, the movie flips and flops from a linear approach and one that implies “Hold on, we’ll get to that manuscript in a bit.” Over a shot of the steel reels of an analog tape recorder rolling, we hear Norman Mailer say “nobody wrote better sentences” — one of the few observations here on Capote’s work. Onscreen, the writer Jay McInerney is unfortunately assigned to deliver a lot of “I want to be a part of it, New York, New York” boilerplate.As for that manuscript, anyone paying attention knows the answer early on. By the end of his life, Capote was such a human wreck that the idea of some kind of posthumous literary time bomb is ridiculous on the face of it.The Capote TapesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Queenpins’ Review: Suburban Scammers

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      Two cash-strapped neighbors devise a multimillion-dollar coupon swindle in this mildly entertaining comedy.“Queenpins” might have been a snappy little comedy had it lost 20 minutes and found a point beyond glorifying grand larceny. Erasing the lead character’s smug-perky narration wouldn’t have hurt, either.Set mainly in suburban Phoenix, Ariz. — with pit stops in other dehydrated locations — the movie smiles on Connie (Kristen Bell), a cash-strapped coupon cutter whose bland good cheer masks a desperate longing for a child.“You’re trying to replace a baby with coupons,” her husband (Joel McHale), a withdrawn I.R.S. agent, accurately observes before largely disappearing from the story. Connie’s true partner, though, is JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), a bubbly neighbor and vlogger looking for a break. Together, they hatch a scheme to steal coupons from a printing facility in Mexico and sell them on YouTube. What could possibly go wrong?Written and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, “Queenpins,” inspired by actual events, can’t decide if its pink-collar criminals are fools or geniuses. Neither can the two men on their trail: a businesslike postal inspector (Vince Vaughn, starved for decent lines) and the movie’s true hero, Ken Miller (an excellent Paul Walter Hauser), an officious loss-prevention officer for a supermarket chain. Ken’s longing for respect makes him a ridiculous, even pathetic figure; but he has a dogged, shabby sense of honor that the film views as a joke and repeatedly undermines.Making no secret of where its sympathies lie, “Queenpins” scampers toward its ludicrous conclusion with less concern for logic than for ensuring that everyone gets what he or she wants. With the possible exception of the audience.QueenpinsRated R for iffy language and icky behavior. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters and on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Dating & New York’ Review: Texts and the City

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      A winning cast helps sell a too-familiar premise about commitment-phobic millennials.“Dating & New York” is consciously framed as a modern fairy tale: It opens with a set of watercolor paintings that portray the city in clean, soft textures and a voice-over informing us that “once upon a time” there, two millennials were cursed with the “paradox of choice.” Wendy (Francesca Reale) and Milo (Jaboukie Young-White) connect through a dating app, meet once and then ghost each other. When they finally rendezvous again, Wendy has drawn up a written contract for a “best friends with benefits” arrangement. The two embark on a relationship they refuse to acknowledge as such.A winning cast helps sell that familiar premise — not just Reale and Young-White, who have definite chemistry and an easy-flowing banter, but also the brassy, scene-stealing Catherine Cohen, as Jessie, a friend of Wendy’s and the new girlfriend of Milo’s friend Hank (Brian Muller). This fantasized New York is, as the characters acknowledge, a small world.Stylistically, “Dating & New York,” a first feature from the writer-director Jonah Feingold, insists on selling its charm. The peppy, fast-paced cutting and constant references to Instagram and podcasts — the movie wouldn’t want you to forget it’s about millennials (or clichés about millennials) — nudge viewers to laugh, as if Feingold were employing the directorial equivalent of push alerts. And for all the tech, the New York of “Dating & New York” feels like it’s been formed from hazy impressions of a less overloaded, less distractible era. The film does score, though, with a one-liner about a man who would lie about his age to land on a “30 under 30” list.Dating & New YorkRated PG-13. Dating and New York. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Muhammad Ali’ Docuseries From Ken Burns Is a Sweeping Portrait

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      A new four-part documentary series by Ken Burns paints a sweeping portrait of a man whose life intersected with many of modern America’s most profound changes.One day in the mid-1990s, Ken Burns had a cold while he was in Los Angeles to raise money for his next documentary. He ducked into a coffee shop for some hot tea, and after paying, one of the 20th century’s most ardent historians turned from the counter and locked eyes with perhaps its most towering icon. Muhammad Ali was sitting in a booth nearby. The two men stared at each other silently for longer than most strangers would — celebrities or not.“There’s was almost no movement on both of us except that kind of opening, that love that happens when you just feel unashamed and unembarrassed by the persistent gaze,” Burns said recently. “This wordless conversation; I have the script in my head, I heard his voice in my mind. But it was just without going over and shaking hands, of course, not asking for an autograph or anything like that.”By that point, Ali was in the clutches of Parkinson’s disease — hence the silence from a man who for many decades couldn’t stop talking: about his own beauty and skill, about how ugly and untalented his opponents were, about the injustice Black people across America had faced for hundreds of years.Nearly three decades later, Burns; his oldest daughter, Sarah; and her husband, David McMahon, have stitched together a sweeping portrait of Ali’s impact from more than 40 years of footage and photographs. “Muhammad Ali,” a four-part documentary series that premieres Sept. 19 on PBS, follows the arc of a man whose life intersected with many of modern America’s most profound changes — and who was also not as widely revered in his prime as he is now.David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and author of “King of the World,” a 1998 biography of Ali, said “it was very clear that a lot of America found him dangerous, threatening to the way people were ‘supposed’ to behave — much less Black people.”“He won people over because he was right about the war,” Remnick continued. “He won people over because as an athlete, he proved himself over and over again to be not only beautiful to watch, but unbelievably courageous. So his athleticism and his superiority as an athlete couldn’t just couldn’t be denied, even when he lost.”In 1978, Ali beat Leon Spinks to win the heavyweight championship for the third time.Michael GaffneyThere has been no shortage of documentaries or biographies about Ali in the last few decades. For the filmmakers, the idea took root in 2014, when their friend Jonathan Eig was working on a book about Ali. (“Ali: A Life,” published in 2017.) Eig’s research led him to believe that a comprehensive film representation of Ali’s life had not been done before, and that the Burnses were the perfect team to do it.McMahon said it took only a few archival clips to convince them of the potential power of a wide-ranging Ali documentary. “There were so many possibilities to tie together all these threads that were kind of out there,” he said. “You’d see documentaries that had been about a single chapter in his life or a single fight, or books covering only a portion of his life.”The more the filmmakers dug into Ali’s life, Sarah Burns said, the more they realized “just how much there was to this story.”“Not just the boxing, obviously,” she said, “but his relationships with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, his family life, his marriages, his draft resistance and his courage and being willing to go to jail for his convictions, and also his battle with Parkinson’s — you know, his later life, his post-boxing life.” That “really hadn’t,” she added, “been explored in as much detail.”The new series traces a path from the young Cassius Clay in Jim Crow-era Louisville to the complicated, at times self-contradictory adult who won the heavyweight title three times and faced down the U.S. government over his refusal to fight in Vietnam. The filmmakers show him as not only a dominant heavyweight during his peak fighting years but also a figure of no small impact on society. Here is “The Greatest” clowning with the Beatles; standing at a podium with Malcolm X; embracing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; calling another Black fighter an “Uncle Tom” for refusing to acknowledge his name change, as a leering Howard Cosell tells the cameras to “keep shooting” the ensuing scuffle; and finally declaring publicly — at risk to his career and endorsements — that he was a Muslim.Ali had relationships with many other prominent 20th century figures, including Malcolm X.ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Live NewsAli’s rise to stardom coincided with a period of intense cultural change in the United States, and his connection to the Civil Rights and antiwar movements is critical in distinguishing Ali the man from Ali the boxer, McMahon said — and in recognizing his impact on American audiences.“You can’t understand his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army without understanding his faith, without understanding the meaning of Elijah Muhammad in his life,” he said, referring to the mercurial and sometimes caustic leader of the Nation of Islam, with whom Ali had a close relationship. “We hadn’t really seen that explained. There were also perspectives that hadn’t been heard; we thought, ‘Who out there could tell us more about his faith?’”Eig, the biographer, shared a huge trove of contacts with the filmmakers, and they started their initial interviews in 2016, a week after Ali died. Dozens of writers, friends and boxing ambassadors participated: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Holmes, Jesse Jackson, the novelist Walter Mosley, the ESPN writer Howard Bryant, the boxing promoter Don King. Over the next several years, the filmmakers unearthed more than 15,000 photographs and dug up footage that had not been seen publicly. A production company that had shot the “Thrilla in Manila,” Ali’s third and final bout with Joe Frazier, in the Philippines, had folded before the film could be used. Their footage was buried in a Pennsylvania archive.“This woman pulled these boxes out and said, ‘They say “Ali” on them — I don’t know what they are,’” McMahon said. “This is Technicolor, it’s 16-millimeter, shot from the apron [of the ring] — it just pops. And you see the fight in ways that had never been seen before.”Ali’s relationship with Frazier, who as a young fighter had been one of Ali’s fans, is one of the thornier aspects of the documentary. Ali’s treatment of him before their fights was quite cruel, employing some of the language of “racist white people,” as one commentator in the series says, to denigrate Frazier (who never forgave him). It’s part of the complex picture of Ali that the series provides: a people’s champion who could be petty; a devout Muslim who was a serial philanderer; an idealist who made a lot of people angry with his refusal to conform to public expectations.Bryant, the ESPN writer, said he didn’t think “people understand why this story is so heroic and so important and so unique.”“We just seem to think that every person out there, if they protest something, if they say something, if they face some sort of sanction, we put them in the same category as Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson,” he continued. “And it’s just such nonsense.”“Name me another athlete where the full weight of the United States government came down on one person. I’m not talking about the N.F.L. saying you can’t play when you’re already a millionaire. Colin Kaepernick obviously sacrificed and lost some things. It’s not the same thing. It’s not even close.”For two of Ali’s daughters, Rasheda Ali (from his second marriage, to Khalilah Ali, born Belinda Boyd) and Hana Ali (from his third, to Veronica Porche), the new documentary is an honest look at the father they knew mainly while he was under the weight of Parkinson’s. The film opens with a shot of him sitting with his oldest child, Maryum, encouraging her to look out the window so he can steal a bite of her food. The footage brought Rasheda to tears.Belinda Boyd became Ali’s second wife and changed her name to Khalilah Ali. Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos“I’ve never seen the family footage — and even the photos!” Rasheda said. “I was like, ‘Wow, where did you get that?’”“He was always making jokes and he was fun,” she added. “That’s the Muhammad Ali people don’t really see regularly.”Hana, who said that anyone other than the Burns would have been making “just another documentary about my father,” also noted that the more intimate footage helped fill in some of the nuances about him.“It’s so hard when you live a life like my father’s, where you’re so accessible, and so photographed, and his story’s been told so many times,” Hana said. “Honestly, I’ve seen so many documentaries about our father, and even just watching the beginning of this one, already, it was just different — it felt more personable.”The series comes to a close as Ali has become, as Ken Burns described it, “the most beloved person on the planet.” The footage of his trembling surprise appearance at the 1996 Olympics, in Atlanta, is a crucial piece of Ali’s lasting image and mythology. But as Burns put it, “mythology is a mask.”Bryant, who argued that Ali changed the relationship between athletes and fans, was more direct about the boxer’s evolving public image in those later years.Ali in Manhattan in 1968. Despite his popularity as a boxer, Ali angered many people with his refusal to conform to public expectations.Anthony Camerano/Associated Press“People hated his guts, and white people didn’t love him until he couldn’t talk,” Bryant said. “There were people — Black and white — who still called him Cassius Clay; there were people who still did not want to give him his due. And there were people who still held a lot against him.”“Then he couldn’t talk, and suddenly he belonged to everybody,” he said.Ken Burns suggested that this public redemption was akin to “a funeral where people are talking really nicely about other people.”“And you go, ‘Why can’t we do this in the rest of our lives?’” he said. “The funeral isn’t for the person who’s dead — the funeral is for the people who are left behind, and we’re always modeling the best, most human behavior. And yet, we don’t seem to be able to bring it to our own lives.”He quoted one of the journalists in the documentary, Dave Kindred, who said that in death, Ali “can’t hurt us anymore; he can’t make us mad anymore.”“He could no longer anger us, he could no longer make it difficult for us, to force us back on our own feelings, our own beliefs, our own prejudices, Burns said. Then there’s this room to forgive and perhaps exalt.”“It’s a long process with him,” he added. “And it’s so interesting that a great deal of that positive progress is from defeat.” More

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      Princess Diana and Michael Jackson Anchor New Biographical Musicals

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      In new musicals about Princess Diana, Cary Grant and Michael Jackson actors get a chance to embody icons while spotlighting their individual talents.Just before the pandemic I ambivalently attended a performance of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.” I knew some Tina Turner songs, and I was vaguely aware of her marriage to the abusive Ike Turner. I was only barely acquainted with her global celebrity, and skeptical about the depth a biographical jukebox musical could offer.Though I had qualms about the show — particularly the depictions of violence — I left the theater feeling ebullient. I sneaked out near the end of what turned out to be essentially a postshow concert, but I hung on to the image of Adrienne Warren, as Turner, onstage.What resonated with me was her spectacular star power — what most people would call presence. This is always what draws me in to Broadway productions about iconic figures: how an actor’s impersonation can also be a way to showcase their own star quality.Whether or not the show can live up to the legend, however, is often a different story.With the resurrection of Broadway this fall will come another handful of impersonations to test the hypothesis. Starting Nov. 2, we will see Jeanna de Waal as the Princess of Wales in “Diana,” who, thanks to her style, charisma and, ultimately, tragic death, became a mythic figure.Diana is once again front and center in the cultural conversation, whether in “The Crown”; as a shadow figure in the royal drama between Buckingham Palace and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; or in the forthcoming biopic “Spencer,” with Kristen Stewart in the title role. (Naomi Watts played the part too, in the 2013 film “Diana.”)Starting Nov. 2, Jeanna de Waal, above with Roe Hartrampf as Prince Charles, will star as the Princess of Wales in “Diana” at the  Longacre Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the musical’s initial run at La Jolla Playhouse, critics noted how de Waal nailed Diana’s coquettishness, though the character’s ballads (music and lyrics by the Tony Award winners David Bryan and Joe DiPietro) do lean toward an unrestrained earnestness. And despite de Waal’s performance, the show was criticized for zipping so quickly through so many moments of a shortened life that the emotional impact was dulled.Will “Diana” capture the audience’s hearts on Broadway? And what impact will the Netflix recording of the show, which will be available for streaming before the theatrical opening, have on the prospects of the live production? As someone who’s been eating up “The Crown” (especially Emma Corrin’s performance as the princess), I look forward to finding out.Also in November, Lincoln Center Theater’s “Flying Over Sunset” will bring the beloved Hollywood leading man Cary Grant to life in the tap-dancing person of Tony Yazbeck.The musical, with a score by Tom Kitt and Michael Korie, imagines Grant; the playwright and politician Clare Boothe Luce; and the novelist Aldous Huxley sharing an acid trip in 1950s California. (All three were public about experimenting with L.S.D., but their cosmic connection is a product of the writer-director James Lapine’s script.)“He was one of the most famous Hollywood movie stars of all time,” Yazbeck said of Grant in a video preview for the show. “When you get offered this, you have to rise to that level, but also put your own stamp on it.”He seems poised to pull it off, and turning Grant (a child acrobat) into a former tap dancer plays to his strengths. Yazbeck already exudes charm; a well-pressed suit, a classic side sweep and the chance to dance should allow him to do more than imitate the beloved film star.From left, Tony Yazbeck as Cary Grant, Harry Hadden-Paton as Aldous Huxley and Carmen Cusack as Clare Boothe Luce in “Flying Over Sunset.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThen it’s Michael Jackson’s turn.“MJ the Musical,” with direction and choreography by Christopher Wheeldon and a book by Lynn Nottage, begins performances on Dec. 6.Like “Diana” and “Flying Over Sunset,” it was delayed by the pandemic. But this show faced further upheaval when Ephraim Sykes, the Tony-nominated star of “Ain’t Too Proud,” dropped out of the title role.The producers still promise 25 hits from the King of Pop, and you have to expect we’ll see that cherry red “Thriller” jacket and bedazzled glove. But now it’s up to the largely unknown Myles Frost to bring to life that instantly recognizable voice and dance genius.The musical as biography is a challenging form. How do you pair pop hits from an existing catalog to significant events in a life without undercutting the drama or underselling the songs?Michael Jackson’s life, of course, poses its own set of challenges. What will the script make of allegations of abuse on the part of this megastar, which dented his reputation without dulling the affection for his music?And will the qualities that make Myles Frost special be able to shine through when he is playing Michael Jackson? For “MJ” to succeed, the performer’s individual flair shouldn’t be swamped by the icon’s.There is no shortage of screen biopics — two about Aretha Franklin came out this year alone. But they don’t entice me the way the stage equivalents do.Adrienne Warren as Tina Turner in “Tina – The Tina Turner Musical” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe stage feels more upfront about its masquerade. No matter how accurately an actor playing Michael Jackson may moonwalk while singing “Billie Jean,” the very immediacy of your interaction with him in, say, a sold-out show on a Saturday night, forces you to sit in the uncanny valley: This isn’t the Michael you know, of course, but the real-time likeness — and unlikeness — both showcase the celebrity and reveal the talents of the performer.What emerges is a hybrid, an approximation of a person that takes into account the public image — the legend and mythos — reflected through the prism of an actor’s experience, understanding and, finally, ability.Here’s another way to think about it: I accompanied a friend to a locksmith kiosk recently where we were informed in advance that the keys being copied wouldn’t look exactly like the originals.When I consider the impersonators coming this fall, I think of her new set of keys — perfectly imperfect clones. Their look is different, their shape is different, but the mechanics still work. It’s all about the job well done. More

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      Venice Film Festival: Tim Blake Nelson Gets the Lead. Someone Send Him a Tux.

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      The veteran character may have been featured in Coen brothers movies, but for a small western, he’s the one who is working hard to get it seen.VENICE — The first time Tim Blake Nelson went to the Venice Film Festival was three years ago, as one of the featured players in the western anthology “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. As Nelson soon learned, trailing those filmmakers around Venice can open an endless number of doors.“Traveling to a film festival with the Coens is a completely different experience than traveling with any other movie,” said Nelson, whose breakout role came in “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” also directed by the Coen brothers. “It’s like being associated with Picasso or Matisse.”This year, Nelson is at Venice to support “Old Henry,” a western he’s starring in. It’s a much smaller movie than “Buster Scruggs” — Nelson has even described “Old Henry” as a “micro western” — and it comes from Potsy Ponciroli, a young filmmaker who’s still earning his spurs. That means Nelson is shouldering a lot more responsibility than he did during his first trip to the festival.“We’re on a completely different stratum,” Nelson said. “I think this might be one of the lowest-budget movies ever to premiere in Venice! This is a very small movie, and it’s kind of extraordinary that we’re here next to ‘Dune.’”But modesty works in the movie’s favor: “Old Henry” is a solid-as-a-rock western that, as it goes on, gently suggests it’s about more than you’d anticipated. In a rare leading role, Nelson plays Henry, a widowed farmer living on a small patch of land in the Oklahoma territory. It’s 1906, and Henry’s teenage son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis), is anxious to seek adventure, leave the farm, and wrest himself from the grip of his overprotective father.But adventure finds them instead when Henry and Wyatt happen upon a nearly dead cowboy and his pouch full of cash. When Henry brings both back to his farm, it isn’t long before a sinister gunslinger (Stephen Dorff) comes sniffing around for that bounty. And in the standoff that follows, maybe father and son will come to learn more about each other than either was expecting.“As an actor who’s 57 years old and has been doing this a long time, there’s something incredibly exciting about being associated with a younger filmmaker who’s created something very special,” Nelson said Monday night at da Ivo, a Venice restaurant that had been recommended to him by his “O Brother” co-star George Clooney, who held his bachelor party there.For a supporting player like Nelson, who recently appeared in HBO’s “Watchmen,” leading roles like the one in “Old Henry” are few and far between. Still, Nelson is humble about the promotion. If anything, it just means he’s taking on more responsibility to get the film seen.“It’s tricky because when you’re a character actor who’s been in a lot of movies, people tend to inflate your value,” said Nelson. “They think, ‘Oh, if he’s in my movie, then I can get financing or critical attention.’ They’re actually wrong, because there are a lot of character actors out there. I always say that I’m not some sort of magic bullet.”And though the films at Venice are dominated by stars like Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and Penélope Cruz, who can earn headlines simply for what they wear on the red carpet, Nelson harbors no such illusions.“I’m wearing an outfit picked out by my wife,” Nelson told me, tugging at the lapel of his black jacket. “Because I forgot to pack two blazers, we actually bought this jacket today, two blocks away from here.”So, yes, Tim Blake Nelson is headlining a movie at one of the most glamorous film festivals on earth, but no, he does not return to his room at the Hotel Excelsior to find a free Tom Ford tuxedo sent over by a stylist.“I wish!” he said, laughing. “That’d be great. But you know, I don’t say this disingenuously: Nobody’s ever sent me any suits. And there were no offers for this. None.”Nelson grinned. “I’m not complaining,” he said. “It’s just, we’re a bit of a minnow.” More

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      Where to Stream Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Best Performances

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      Whether he was doing his own stunts in action films or being nonchalant in literary adaptations, the actor was magnetic.One word often comes up when reading about Jean-Paul Belmondo: cool. The French actor, who died on Monday at 88, never appeared to try hard, bringing a nonchalant effortlessness to all his roles. Belmondo did not look like a typical leading man — The New York Times described him as “hypnotically ugly” in 1961 — but he had charm and the unbothered casualness that the French call “désinvolture.”This son of artists had a taste for boxing, and swiftly eschewed being pigeonholed — he appeared in a high-minded literary adaptation one minute, performed his own stunts in a feisty caper the next. Through the 1960s and early ’70s, he alternated between art-house fare and quality commercial productions, then focused squarely on the latter, which might explain his often adversarial relationship with the French cinema establishment. When his performance in Claude Lelouch’s “Itinerary of a Spoiled Child” earned him a nomination for best actor at the 1989 César Awards, for example, he encouraged voters not to pick him; he won anyway and did not attend the ceremony.Luckily, a representative sample of Belmondo’s films is available for streaming. Here are 10 of them, in chronological order.‘Breathless’Stream it on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.This film, released in the United States in 1961, launched the careers of Belmondo and the director Jean-Luc Godard, and remains a formally thrilling pop-noir touchstone of the French new wave. Belmondo had a lower profile than his co-star, Jean Seberg, but his punk charisma burns the screen. A cigarette permanently dangling from his lips, he ambles along with the insolence of youth, his insouciant yet focused energy matching the jazzy, finger-snapping soundtrack. Many actors would have faded next to the vibrant modernity of Godard’s filmmaking; Belmondo fed on it.‘Le Doulos’Stream it on Plex TV; rent or buy it on iTunes.For many years, Belmondo’s rival as France’s sexy male lead was Alain Delon, whose tightly wound composure was a perfect fit for the director Jean-Pierre Melville’s cerebral, stylish movies. Yet Belmondo’s collaboration with the master filmmaker was just as fruitful. “Le Doulos,” from 1962, is Melville’s first great noir, and Belmondo is all contained brutality in it. A slightly raised eyebrow, the quirk of a mouth almost make you want to sympathize with his Silien, but menace is always there, the sense that this guy could shoot you at any time.‘That Man From Rio’Rent or buy on most major platforms.One of Belmondo’s frequent collaborators was Philippe de Broca, the director of fleet-footed, witty films. In this 1964 hit, his character travels all the way to Brazil to save his abducted girlfriend. The combination of comedy, adventure and romance is a perfect fit for Belmondo, and the wonderfully piquant Françoise Dorléac was among his best screen partners — their spiky screen chemistry is wonderful to behold.You can make it a double bill with de Broca’s zany Hong Kong-set “Up to His Ears,” from 1965, in which the actor plays a suicidal millionaire who decides life is worth living when mysterious henchmen try to kill him. Ursula Andress, with whom Belmondo then began a relationship, plays a fetching ethnologist earning spare change as an exotic dancer. Ah, the 1960s. …‘Pierrot le Fou’Rent or buy on most major platforms.In 1965, Godard gave Belmondo another superb role as an out-of-sorts man who escapes from his hohum life with Anna Karina (who wouldn’t?). This is one of Belmondo’s finest performances because he allows a poignant vulnerability to show, instead of hiding it behind a cocksure confidence. In a lovely scene, he and Karina speak-sing while dance-walking, and the craggy-faced young man with the squashed nose is pure poetry.‘Mississippi Mermaid’Stream it on Amazon.As the trailer to this 1969 film put it, “suddenly you realize two things: You’re in love, and you’re in danger.” Belmondo was cast against type as a man obsessed with — and manipulated by — a scheming Catherine Deneuve in François Truffaut’s adaptation of a William Irish novel. Alas the movie tanked, maybe because audiences were not ready to see Belmondo so blinded by passion that he came across as passive. “Mississippi Mermaid” was more subtle than that, though, and is worth rediscovering.‘Borsalino’Rent or buy it on Amazon and iTunes.Belmondo and Delon: the yin and yang of French cinema, muscular warmth versus icy distance. The pair had already appeared in “Is Paris Burning?” in 1966, but they were just two in a whole bunch of international marquee names. Four years later, they headlined a 1930s-set story as two Marseille gangsters who forge an alliance till death do them part. (Real life was more complicated, as Belmondo took Delon to court over who would be listed first in the credits.) Helmed by the genre craftsman Jacques Deray (“La Piscine”), “Borsalino” endures thanks to its ridiculously charismatic leads, with Belmondo as the very definition of raffish.‘The Scoundrel’Rent or buy it on Amazon and YouTube.Confusingly, this 1971 de Broca movie has different English titles, including the clunky literal translation “The Married Couple of the Year Two” and the fairly descriptive “The Scoundrel” and “Swashbuckler” — guess who that describes? No matter: This is a sterling example of a certain kind of period, well-made entertainment that has long been popular in France. The film is a high-spirited screwball comedy of marriage set during the French Revolution, in which Belmondo and Marlène Jobert (Eva Green’s mother) prove their love by constantly bickering. Both are marvelously at ease in that register, and Belmondo gets to indulge in stunt work, too.‘Stavisky …’Stream it on Kanopy.On the surface, Belmondo plays to type — albeit a rich criminal rather than a lowlife — in this 1974 film based on the true story of Alexandre Stavisky, a shady financier and swindler who became the linchpin of a huge scandal that rocked France in 1934. But the role and the performance are not cookie-cutter period biopic, because this is from the cerebral director Alain Resnais. “Stavisky …” emphasized mood over action (a fantastic score by Stephen Sondheim helped) and toyed with chronology, but its idiosyncratic approach to genre did not sell. Belmondo proceeded to turn his back on artier fare and unabashedly dedicated himself to selling the most tickets possible.‘The Professional’Rent or buy on most major platforms.In the late 1970s and the mid ’80s, Belmondo ruled the French box office with a string of action movies. Some of them had a comic bent, others were tough-guy noirs. This Georges Lautner smash from 1981 squarely belongs to the second type, with our star playing a leather-jacketed secret agent embroiled in a plot involving French interests in Africa. The best part of the movie is the face-off between Belmondo and his foil, terrifically portrayed by Robert Hossein (the two often worked together at the theater, with Hossein directing). Bonus: One of Ennio Morricone’s best scores of the 1980s.‘Half a Chance’Rent or buy on most major platforms.Belmondo and Delon joined forces again for this 1998 comic thriller in which Vanessa Paradis tries to find out which of them is her father. (Sound familiar?) The director Patrice Leconte (“Monsieur Hire”) enjoys playing with his aging male stars’ images: Belmondo gets to climb from a moving convertible to a helicopter, for example. His face an epic landscape of creases and furrows, he is simply irresistible as an extroverted, rambunctious fast-talker, and makes a meal out of the most innocuous scraps of dialogue. More

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      Whether Dancing or Still, the Body in ‘Ema’ Tells the Story

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      In Pablo Larraín’s unsettling film, Mariana Di Girolamo stars as a dancer who finds freedom through reggaeton dance.Ema is the oddest of things: a dancer with a passion for setting things on fire. In “Ema,” Pablo Larraín’s film, the title character has a particular look, too: bleached hair slicked back so severely that it appears to be shellacked to her head. That hairstyle, hard and impenetrable, is like a coat of armor, which makes sense. Ema is made of ice. Until she dances.Set in the coastal city of Valparaíso in Chile, “Ema,” now in theaters and on Amazon and other digital platforms starting Sept. 14, tells the story of a couple, an older choreographer and a younger dancer — Gastón (Gael García Bernal) and Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) — who adopted but then abandoned a Colombian boy named Polo. The reason they give up the boy turns out to have something to do with fire; he’s fond of it. It’s not hard to draw conclusions about who might have encouraged him.Ema is a member of her husband’s experimental dance company, and it’s no secret that she has lost interest in it — and in him. Her obsession is reggaeton and its dance, which she relishes for its aggressive sensuality; outside of the dance studio with her friends, her body is electric as she lets her limbs fly and her hips shake. Gastón is not impressed. To him, reggaeton is music to listen to in prison, “to forget about the bars you have in front of you.”Their generation gap is apparent as Gastón continues: “It’s a hypnotic rhythm that turns you into a fool. It’s an illusion of freedom.”Moving like a unit: A scene from “Ema,” with choreography by José Vidal.Music Box FilmsIs it? Who is Ema? She gave up her son, but seems to want him back. She’s a seductress who carries — and uses — her body with steely, precise intention. While her inner world is a mystery, it’s clear what reggaeton allows her to feel: free.Dance is the key. But unlike so many films and television series of late, it isn’t a superficial layer tacked onto the story. In “Ema,” Larraín, the director of “Jackie” and the coming “Spencer,” has given dance, or movement, a leading role. It’s also a means to an end that extends beyond conventional choreography: How can dance bring Ema closer to freedom? Whether she is alone or with her friends — a collective body moving as one — her physicality spreads across every scene. And she doesn’t even have to be moving: Her inner vibrations are just as lucid in stillness.Because of that, the film, with its dreamlike score, is something of a dance, too — floating, gliding and then, all of a sudden, turning on a dime. “Ema” is an action film, but not in the conventional sense: The body is the action. And while there is dialogue, words add up to less than the deliberate pacing of each scene and the poetic power of Di Girolamo’s frame.In a magnetic solo at the port, dusky light envelops Di Girolamo’s silhouette as she stands with her back to us and her legs wide apart. Her right arm, bent at the elbow, is raised, her hand in a fist. Rocking her hips, she swings from side to side as her arms open and close. It is hypnotic, but she’s no fool. She’s strong and tenacious; you sense the tension leaving her body through her dance.Di Girolamo in a dance scene at the port in “Ema.”Music Box FilmsAs she picks up the pace, walking with purpose and changing direction, her back undulates and her angled arms carve through the air to an imaginary beat. Moments later, she’s on a carousel ride, but there are echoes of her dance: As she grips her horse’s pole, she sways, dipping from side to side; she’s almost relaxed.Once she stops moving, her expression changes: Her thick brows frame a stony face. She is catlike with the kind of stare that makes you feel invisible; at the same time, she dances as if you were invisible. She’s beyond needing an audience.Di Girolamo is not a trained dancer, though she studied flamenco for a few months as a teenager. Her mother decided she would be better off doing that than being in therapy. “It was literally a therapy for me,” Di Girolamo said in a recent Zoom interview. “It gave me the necessary tools to be empowered and to continue ahead.”But she does love to dance. (Her husband is a D.J.) In “Ema,” she had tools to help her body acclimate to her character: One was the hair, which helped her to see Ema as an energy — like the sun, like fire. “She’s very hypnotic, and in some ways she’s very dangerous or destructive,” Di Girolamo said, “but you also want to be close to her.”“She’s very hypnotic, and in some ways she’s very dangerous or destructive,” Di Girolamo said of Ema, “but you also want to be close to her.”Music Box FilmsThe other was her training. Di Girolamo worked closely with the Chilean choreographer José Vidal, whose company appears in the film. Mónica Valenzuela was also part of the choreographic team, and her focus had more to do with the reggaeton moments. “I think Pablo wanted more of a nasty movement that I wasn’t apparently quite able to find,” Vidal said with a laugh, in an interview. “So she came to add some spice. It’s not like there is phrase one, phrase two — it is a mix of all of the materials.”Vidal’s choreographic approach involved studying Di Girolamo’s mobility: the flexibility of her spine, the range of her arms. He then turned that into a language. “More of a street dance, reggaeton sort of thing,” he said. “But it never came directly from that. My intention was, OK, we’re going arrive there. But we’re going to arrive there coming from an inside place.”The process began with immersive work that helped Di Girolamo to “connect into herself, into her emotions, into her structure,” Vidal said. “How does it feel to move here” — he patted his chest and swayed his shoulders — “and what connects you with each emotion? It was never about making her imitate or repeat something directly.”Vidal on the set. To choreograph for Di Girolamo, he studied her mobility and turned it into a language.via FabulaDi Girolamo also had to blend in with the professional dancers in Vidal’s company. The opening scene features an excerpt from his “Rito de Primavera,” inspired by “The Rite of Spring.” To dance in it, Di Girolamo studied ballet and Pilates. “I don’t have very good posture, so we worked on it,” she said. “I had to understand the limits and the possibilities of my body.”That led her to find Ema’s physicality — her rhythmic, weighted walk and the way she invades space both to intimidate and to get what she wants. “Dance was very important for me to understand how she seduces the other characters,” Di Girolamo said. “It’s the tool she has, and she’s conscious about that tool.”She spent a lot of time on the floor breathing. Vidal called it an initiation into the body, into the movement. In addressing her posture, Vidal focused on opening her chest, which in turn paved the way to showing her tasting freedom, even being vulnerable. There’s a reason the scene at the port feels so fresh and spontaneous.“I remember it was very cold, and Pablo said, ‘Mariana, now you have to improvise a dance scene,’” Di Girolama said. “I was like, what? But I started dancing. I used the same steps of the choreography, but I deconstructed them. I’m not very good at improvisation, but if I have some tools, some things that I know, I can do something with it. I kind of deconstructed the choreography to make a new one.”It wasn’t easy. “I was very nervous,” she said. “It’s like singing. It’s a very personal thing. It’s like a window of our souls.” More