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      ‘Fatal Attraction’ and the Disappearance of Erotic Thrillers

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      Elyssa Dudley and Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon Music“Fatal Attraction” came out when Wesley Morris was 11, and it’s made a permanent impression on the way he thinks about certain aspects of lust and suspense. “There’s a lot wrong with this movie, and yet — and yet! — it’s such a good movie,” he said. Wesley invited Parul Sehgal, a staff writer at The New Yorker, to discuss the movie, starring Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.Both Wesley and Parul watched “Fatal Attraction” over and over as preteens, and they’ve rewatched it multiple times since. “Every time I see this movie, I identify with a different character,” Parul said. “I have a different sense of what this movie is about.”As Wesley and Parul break down the most powerful scenes, they are reminded of the loss of high-stakes sex onscreen today. They discuss why the erotic thriller genre has disappeared — and what they could gain from seeing more genuine, grown-up sex in movies.Michael Douglas and Glenn Close star in “Fatal Attraction,” directed by Adrian Lyne.Ullstein Bild via Getty ImagesHosted by: Wesley Morris and Jenna WorthamProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy Dorr More

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      New York’s Movie Theaters, From Art-House to Dine-In

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      New York is the nation’s moviegoing capital, especially for cinephiles who treasure archival prints, experimental cinema and concession stands that go far beyond the standard offerings. Below is a guide to the city’s art houses.Alamo DrafthouseFinancial District, 28 Liberty Street, Suite SC301, Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn, 445 Albee Square West, Brooklyn. drafthouse.com.This dine-in chain, based in Austin, Texas, has a hip aesthetic and is noted for its brews, queso and screenings of cult classics, in addition to regular showings of new releases. A revived version of Kim’s Video has set up shop within the Manhattan location. A Staten Island theater is scheduled to open this summer.Angelika Film CenterAngelika Film Center, 18 West Houston Street, Manhattan. Cinema 123 by Angelika, 1001 Third Avenue, Manhattan. Village East by Angelika, 181-189 Second Avenue, Manhattan. angelikafilmcenter.com.The original Angelika Film Center is the downtown six-screen theater where you can catch art-house releases, like “Petite Maman” or “Anaïs in Love,” while the subway rattles underneath. The brand name has also been appended to the Village East, whose main auditorium is a gorgeous old Yiddish stage theater. In addition to showing new releases, it hosts “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and periodic revival screenings, and like its uptown sibling, the Cinema 123, it is equipped to show 70-millimeter film.Anthology Film Archives32 Second Avenue, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org.New York’s polestar of avant-garde film (and the preservation of it) for more than 50 years, Anthology was started by some of experimental cinema’s most important promoters (Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney) and practitioners (Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka). In addition to retrospectives, the theater hosts a rotating series, Essential Cinema, that is free with membership; programming includes seminal narrative works by Alexander Dovzhenko and F.W. Murnau and medium-expanding nonnarrative films from Ken Jacobs and Michael Snow.Brooklyn Academy of Music30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn; bam.org.At any given time in the main BAM building in Fort Greene, three out of four screens show new releases, while one holds retrospectives, such as ones on films shot in New York City in the 1990s or others that place David Lynch’s work alongside movies he influenced. Occasional screenings take place at the BAM Harvey Theater a few blocks away.Film at Lincoln CenterElinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, and Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan; filmlinc.org.Lincoln Center’s film arm, the hosting organization of the New York Film Festival, runs a year-round theater with one of the largest screens in town: the Walter Reade. There you can catch adventurous revivals, such as programs on the Hungarian director Marta Meszaros or the Japanese actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka, and contemporary series, like the annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema. Across the street is the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, which houses two screens and a food-and-wine bar, Indie.Film Forum: Come for the popcorn; stay for the cinematic edification.Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesFilm Forum209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.A New York institution for more than 50 years — it has been at its present location since 1990 and added a fourth screen in 2018 — Film Forum hosts some of the most extensive retrospectives in town, often showing dozens of films from a director or from stars like Toshiro Mifune and Sidney Poitier. Regular attendance constitutes a cinematic education in itself, and the popcorn, to which moviegoers apply sea salt themselves, is a delicacy.French Institute/Alliance FrançaiseFlorence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan; fiaf.org.This classy venue with excellent sightlines hosts screenings on Tuesdays. The programming consists of new and vintage films from France, with English subtitles, bien sûr. Series typically have a theme — it might be Wes Anderson selecting favorites by Ophüls and Truffaut or a program of recent French comedies.IFC Center323 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; ifccenter.com.This Greenwich Village five-screen theater boasts four first-rate auditoriums (and one cubbyhole) and typically shows many more than five movies in a given week, usually with a short beforehand. Shows can start as early as 10 or 11 a.m. and, on the weekends, as late as midnight. The concession stand sells T-shirts that substitute directors’ names for those of heavy metal bands.Japan Society333 East 47th Street, Manhattan; japansociety.org.This theater’s annual Japan Cuts series is probably the largest single showcase of recent Japanese cinema on the New York cinephile’s calendar. For the rest of the year, new movies share screen space with classics, often shown on 35 millimeter.Light Industry361 Stagg Street, Brooklyn; lightindustry.org.This microcinema, which specializes in experimental film and typically holds screenings on Tuesday nights, hosted its final program at its longtime Greenpoint location in April. It will reopen by June on Stagg Street. Past screenings have varied widely; they’ve included early work by William Castle, a four-hour Mexican serial from 1919, Hollis Frampton and Owen Land films on 16-millimeter and a marathon of “Police Squad!” episodes.Maysles Cinema343 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan; maysles.org.This small (about 60 seats) Harlem venue specializes in documentaries — it was founded by the director Albert Maysles, of “Grey Gardens” fame. The programming often places an emphasis on social issues and local artistry.Metrograph7 Ludlow Street, Manhattan; metrograph.com.An ever-changing (and expensive!) selection of international candies, a nook of a bookstore and a high-class restaurant, the Commissary, are among the features of this Lower East Side two-screen venue, which opened in 2016. (Many don’t notice, but it sits across the street from the neglected Loew’s Canal Theater.) The retrospectives, such as a recurring series of the programmers’ favorites, organized alphabetically, have a correspondingly artisanal feel.Museum of Modern Art11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; moma.org.MoMA has been showing movies since the 1930s, when Iris Barry, the museum’s first film curator, helped advance the idea that films should be collected as art. Today the institution’s two main theaters screen films from its own collection and archives around the world (the annual series To Save and Project highlights recent preservation work). Admission to most screenings is free with membership.Museum of the Moving Image36-01 35th Avenue, Queens; movingimage.us.The high ceilings and blue wall padding give a faintly futuristic feel to the 267-seat Redstone Theater, the main auditorium in this museum in Astoria. That works well when a favorite like “2001: A Space Odyssey” is playing on 70 millimeter. More specialized fare sometimes is shown in the Bartos Screening Room down the hall.Nitehawk CinemaProspect Park, 188 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn. Williamsburg, 136 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn. nitehawkcinema.com.These stylish dine-in theaters have several screens that show new releases and perennial favorites (“Carrie,” “Face/Off”) from brunch time to midnight-snack time. Both venues have bars.The Paris Theater, once a destination for French film, is now leased by Netflix.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesParis Theater4 West 58th Street, Manhattan; paristheaternyc.com.Once a go-to destination for French cinema and films with a literary pedigree, the Paris briefly closed in 2019, but then was leased by Netflix, which uses it for theatrical runs of its streaming titles (like Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”) and older movies intended to complement them. It’s one of the few remaining New York theaters with a balcony.Quad Cinema34 West 13th Street, Manhattan; quadcinema.com.When this Greenwich Village theater opened in 1972, having four screens was unusual. (“A new way to go to the movies,” boasted a New York Times ad on the first day.) It reopened in 2017 after a renovation that gave it bigger, comfier seats for viewing new art-house releases, like “A Hero” or “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” Plus, there’s an adjoining bar.Roxy Cinema New York2 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; roxycinematribeca.com.Located in the basement of the Roxy Hotel, this plush red screening room offers a mix of revivals (often on 35-millimeter film) and second-run programming — recent releases that have been in theaters awhile.Spectacle124 South Third Street, Brooklyn; spectacletheater.com.A grungy Williamsburg microcinema started in 2010, Spectacle has a calendar as eclectic as it is inscrutable. There’s horror and martial-arts fare that tends toward the obscure, along with a lot of international titles that never turn up in other New York venues.United Palace4140 Broadway, Manhattan; unitedpalace.org.One of the original Loew’s Wonder Theaters — movie palaces built in the late 1920s, with one in each borough except Staten Island (Jersey City got it instead) — this architectural marvel in Washington Heights is an attraction in itself. It’s now run by an organization that promotes interfaith artistic events, but the theater also hosts concerts and, generally once a month, movie screenings. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a neighborhood resident, chipped in for a new screen and projector. More

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      ‘Happening’ Review: An Abortion Story, an Existential Drama

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      In this powerful French movie set in the early 1960s, a young woman struggles to obtain an abortion when the procedure was criminalized.Her body, her choice, her life. That’s the unambiguous refrain that runs through “Happening,” a powerful French drama about a woman seeking an abortion. Set in the early 1960s, when the procedure was criminalized in France, it arrives in the United States at a fraught moment, with the Supreme Court seemingly poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. When I first saw the movie, it felt like a warning shot from a still-distant land. Now it feels urgently of the moment.The world seems lush with possibilities for Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei, restrained and deeply empathetic), a 23-year-old student attending school in the southwest. There, she lives in a women’s dorm, hangs out with friends and sometimes goes with them to a bar, where she drinks and flirts and bobs to the rock ’n’ roll. Sometimes, she visits her reserved but loving parents (Sandrine Bonnaire plays her mother), who own a bistro, a welcoming space that she inhabits freely, whether she’s chatting with customers or studying in the back. But Anne’s horizons extend beyond her family’s. She wants to continue her studies. She wants to write.The director Audrey Diwan quickly makes you want the same for Anne by inviting you into a life that has just begun to bloom. With visual intimacy, calm rhythms and a sensitive touch, Diwan traces its textures and rituals, drops in on lectures and catches the intellectual hum. By day, Anne and her friends casually discuss Camus and Sartre. Later, though, when their talk turns to sex, these young, capable women stammer and even panic, and the palpable heat that they’ve stirred up — simply by being young and alive — condenses into an oppressive fog. It might help if they were reading Beauvoir, but she’s not on the curriculum.Based on the short, impressionistic memoir by the same title from the celebrated French writer Anne Ernaux, “Happening” recounts what it was like to be a young woman whose life changed — and world ominously narrowed — in 1963 with an unwanted pregnancy. In her book (published in 2000), Ernaux shifts between the past and the present, often commenting on what she did and felt decades earlier. Her approach underscores the memoir’s tension between its two time periods and its distinctly drawn subjects, but also puts the past at an emotional remove: The young Annie struggles under the coolly intellectual, contemplative gaze of her older self.Diwan’s sympathies are evident from the start (the camera hovers near Anne like a caring, at times anxious friend), and so are her smart choices. She’s ditched the older Ernaux’s comments to focus exclusively on the younger woman’s desperate efforts to secure an abortion, which intensifies the drama and shakes off its dust. The movie has the usual early 1960s trappings that you expect in period stories, with its knee-brushing skirts and twangy guitars. Yet because Diwan doesn’t embalm the story in history (or with fetishistic production and costume designs), she has also closed the distance between the past and the present.The story unfolds piecemeal. Anne is newly pregnant shortly after the film opens, and is soon checking her panties for signs of her period. “Still nothing,” she writes in her calendar, adding an exclamation mark. The days slip by. She talks to an acquaintance who works at a factory (a flash of an alternate reality), practices conjugating Latin verbs (“to act”) and visits a solicitous doctor (Fabrizio Rongione in a brief, vivid turn). When he asks if she’s had sex, Anne lies — “no” — right before he says that she’s pregnant. “Do something,” she demands. “The law is unsparing,” he replies.As five weeks turn into seven and Anne’s belly swells, “Happening” becomes an existential thriller. Her situation becomes worrying, then excruciating. There’s nowhere for Anne to go for help and no one to turn to, or so it seems to her, creating a sense of mounting isolation that Diwan’s intimate filmmaking only underscores. Anne’s friends are terrified of getting pregnant (“it’d be the end of the world”); she can’t talk to her parents; her doctors are afraid or hostile. The confidence in the state — in the soundness of its institutions and systems — that’s an article of faith in many contemporary French movies is notably, harrowingly, absent.One surprise of “Happening” is that the world it portrays, with its moralistic whispers and prohibitions, bears no relationship to the popular image of French sexuality, specifically that of the nubile Frenchwoman, which once set tongues and fingers wagging. In 1957, the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther (in an article headlined “Probing Foreign Films”) huffed that “the startlingly shaped” Brigitte Bardot had “become France’s undisputed champion in the international sexpot race.” Two years later in a very different consideration of Bardot, Beauvoir noted that the star was more popular in the United States than at home: “In France, there is still a great deal of emphasis, officially, on women’s dependence upon men.”Diwan engages history, the world and the brutal cost of paternalism, at times obliquely. There are no explanatory newspaper or radio bulletins to parse, no righteous speeches; there’s scarcely any exposition at all. Instead, there is Anne up against a world of innumerable barriers, a world with pleasure and hope, yes, but also sexual shaming, furtive looks, hushed confidences and desperate actions. In the library, Anne peers at a medical-book illustration of a gestating woman; later, she takes knitting needles from her mother. Throughout, Diwan’s gaze remains clear, direct, fearless. She shows you a part of life that the movies rarely do.By which I mean: She shows you a woman who desires, desires to learn, have sex, bear children on her terms, be sovereign — a woman who, in choosing to live her life, risks becoming a criminal and dares to be free.HappeningRated R for sexuality, self-harm and graphic imagery. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Reflection’ Review: Through a Looking Glass of Horrors

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      The film, set against the backdrop of fighting in the Donbas region in 2014, would be bracing and haunting even if it weren’t so timely.“Reflection” is interested in the impact of casual violence on everyday life, right from its opening tableau: a lengthy shot in which the protagonist, a surgeon, Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi), chats with Andriy (Andrii Rymaruk), the man now living with Serhiy’s ex-wife (Nadiya Levchenko) and helping raise their daughter. The daughter (Nika Myslytska) prepares for a paintball battle in the background. Soon the sounds of that barrage drown out the men’s friendly conversation about artillery and medical supplies.The situation seems all the more charged if you know that “Reflection,” written, directed, photographed and edited by Valentyn Vasyanovych, is a Ukrainian film. It would be a bracing, haunting work even if it weren’t so timely. The movie premiered last year, before Russia attacked Ukraine in February, and it begins in November 2014, against the backdrop of fighting by Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region. (It is a follow-up of sorts to Vasyanovych’s “Atlantis,” set in 2025 in the ostensible aftermath of that conflict. That film now plays like a dispatch from an alternate timeline — grim, but not as grim as 2025 will look after a much wider war.)“Reflection” follows Serhiy on a mission to the front, where his van gets lost and he is captured. The movie principally unfolds in fixed long shots, but when the camera moves, it is startling: What appears to be a single take follows Serhiy as he is interrogated, tortured, led to a basement, hosed down and, as he shivers, commanded to inspect a corpse for signs of life. This, and cremation, will be his job until the second half, when the horrors he has witnessed go provocatively, largely unmentioned. As the cryptic final moments suggest, “Reflection” is a film about how war requires people to comprehend the unspoken and unseen.ReflectionNot rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      Performing a Comedy About Abortion, Watching the Supreme Court

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      Alison Leiby had just performed her show “Oh God, a Show About Abortion” when she learned of the leaked draft opinion showing that the court could be on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade.After finishing a preview performance of her hourlong stand-up show about reproductive rights, “Oh God, a Show About Abortion,” the comedian Alison Leiby was finishing dinner Monday night when she checked her phone.She had dozens of messages, all about the breaking news that a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion showed that the court appeared to be poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.“It was just an absolute confrontation with reality, that this is not theoretical anymore,” Leiby, a self-described abortion rights activist perhaps best known for work co-producing “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” said in an interview.As Leiby began to process what this potential decision would mean for the country, she also realized that she needed to quickly start thinking about how it might reshape her show, a 70-minute stand-up set about her own unwanted pregnancy and how it was resolved with a Saturday afternoon trip to Planned Parenthood. So at Tuesday evening’s preview at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York, she addressed the news at the top of the show.“I’m not going to ignore the literal elephant in the room,” Leiby said on Tuesday, thanking the person behind the lone guffaw in the audience for getting her wordplay.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Ross Douthat: The leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade is not a surprise, but the strategy behind it is something of a mystery.Roxane Gay: Whoever leaked the draft wanted people to understand the fate awaiting America. So people can prepare. So they can rage.Emily Bazelon: By suggesting in the draft that the progress women have made is a reason to throw out Roe, Justice Samuel Alito has turned feminism against itself.Bret Stephens: Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down. But overturning it would do more to replicate its damage than to reverse it.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher talks to an abortion rights advocate about the draft opinion and the future of abortion rights in America..“I’m not changing anything in response to the news, but I understand that your feelings toward it might be different,” Leiby said. “If something is funny, not funny, cathartic — feel that. That is valid. I’m not up here dancing for applause. We’re in this together.”Zoe Verzani, right, spoke to Leiby after the performance at the Cherry Lane Theater.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe news that the court could be on the verge of overturning Roe, which would lead to immediate abortion bans in some states and prompt others to move to issue bans and restrictions, comes as theaters and cinemas around New York City and the nation are presenting works about abortion.In Atlanta, performances of “Roe,” a play by Lisa Loomer focused on the plaintiff in the landmark case and the lawyer who argued it in front of the Supreme Court, begin Friday. The same day, the Metrograph Theater in New York will begin a series devoted to films that touch on or explore abortion, including Josef von Sternberg’s 1931 drama “An American Tragedy” and the 1987 romantic comedy “Dirty Dancing.” And this summer, a small nonprofit theater in Chicago will premiere “Roe v US,” a play billed as giving “voice to the women who made the choice.”The same night Leiby’s show opens in the West Village, a play that looks at abortion through a very different lens is scheduled to be held at a theater in Midtown: “Oh Gosnell,” about Kermit Gosnell, a doctor who was convicted of murder in 2013 following botched late-term abortions. The case became a rallying cry for the anti-abortion movement. Phelim McAleer, an Irish-born filmmaker and producer, said that he had seen Leiby’s show billed as an “abortion comedy” and decided to counter it by producing a play about Gosnell that draws its text from a grand jury report and trial transcripts, saying he wanted to give audiences an “alternative viewpoint.”The show has faced difficulties: The theater it originally planned to use backed out, and two of its seven actors walked out shortly before previews were set to begin.Intent on making sure the play goes ahead at its new venue, McAleer — who has made documentaries questioning the opposition to fracking, and said he was working on a film about Hunter Biden — said that he was still processing the Supreme Court news. “It definitely means the Gosnell story is more relevant than ever and plays about abortion are more relevant than ever,” he said.Leiby and McAleer’s two shows could hardly be more dissimilar. One is a comedy about an uneventful abortion procedure that makes a case for broad abortion access and the other is a graphic play about an infamous abortion provider whose clinic was described by prosecutors as a “house of horrors.” But Leiby and McAleer share one similar goal: to talk about, and to get audiences to listen to, a work about abortion.This week there will be a staged reading of “Oh Gosnell,” a play about Kermit Gosnell, a doctor who was convicted of murder in 2013 following botched late-term abortions.Russ Rowland“Oh God, a Show About Abortion,” — which is being presented by the comedian Ilana Glazer and directed by Lila Neugebauer — is scheduled to run through June 4. After seeing an earlier iteration of Leiby’s show, Jason Zinoman wrote in The New York Times that, “Without a trace of didacticism, she finds humor in the messy, confusing, sometimes banal experience of an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion.”The show tells her story: of a 35-year-old comedy writer who learns she is pregnant in a hotel bathroom in St. Louis. She is so confident in her disinterest in having children that in the act, she compares her eggs to those by Fabergé (“feminine but decorative”). At Leiby’s first mention of Planned Parenthood, a group of young, female public health students who were in the audience burst into cheers.One member of the group, Zoe Verzani, 24, who wore a hot-pink Planned Parenthood T-shirt to the show this week, said that she thought Leiby handled the material just right.Understand the State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      ‘In Front of Your Face’ Review: Clumsy Interactions, Pensive Revelations

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      This film is a minor addition to the South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s continuing investigation of human embarrassment.It often seems as though the most devoted fans of the prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo regard him as incapable of making an inessential work. Because his films play with theme and variation, the logic goes, they are best viewed in tandem, as installments in a continually refined investigation of the clumsy, painful, droll ways that people, often booze-slicked, interact. A current series of Hong’s features at Film at Lincoln Center presents most of the titles on double bills.But if Hong is consistent in his material and his style, down to his signature zooms, his features are uneven in quality. For every “Hotel by the River” (2019), he makes a quickie that seems to have leaped straight from inspiration to screen. With its limited settings and characters, noodled synthesizer score (composed by Hong himself) and long takes that court cringe comedy but also look like they were simply practical, “In Front of Your Face,” one of two Hong movies from last year’s New York Film Festival, falls into the minor camp.Sangok (Lee Hyeyoung) is a former actress visiting South Korea from her home in the United States. Her sister, Jeongok (Cho Yunhee), remarks that there’s a lot they don’t know about each other anymore. Sangok has a meeting with Jaewon (Kwon Haehyo), a Hong-like filmmaker — she compares his movies to short stories — who wants to cast her.A stain on an outfit from an impulsive meal, a changed meeting spot and the absence of food at the new location pose obstacles before Sangok confides in Jaewon, in a revelation that contains the film’s point. The secret is poised somewhere between triteness and disarming simplicity.In Front of Your FaceNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Wayne Wang Still Isn’t Satisfied

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      On the 40th anniversary of his breakthrough drama, “Chan Is Missing,” the auteur says a new generation of Asian American filmmakers must make more challenging work.Sitting in a booth in a dive bar in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the same one where he shot scenes for his 1985 gem, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart,” Wayne Wang was still frustrated. We had spoken five years earlier, when he expressed dismay at how little had changed in Hollywood and the indie scene since the 1982 release of “Chan Is Missing,” his seminal neo-noir that was the first Asian American film in modern cinema to gain widespread distribution.Now, things are a little different — for Wang’s own legacy, for a new generation of Asian American filmmakers, for the state of movies. And yet, the elder auteur, whose journey since that breakthrough took him across art-house avenues into Hollywood studios and back out, is still unsatisfied. When it comes to Asian American directors, “none of the filmmakers have really dug in to say these are our own stories and these stories are on one level universal, another level, very specific to our culture,” he said.On the 40th anniversary of “Chan Is Missing,” Wang, sharply dressed and sprightly at 73, is experiencing a belated moment of wider recognition. He’s celebrating two retrospectives, in Berkeley and Los Angeles, a restored director’s cut of his audaciously experimental “Life Is Cheap … But Toilet Paper Is Expensive” (1989), and the Criterion Collection releases of “Chan” and “Dim Sum.”One would be hard-pressed to find any filmmaker who not only daringly chronicled Chinese life in a time when it was unthinkable in American cinema, but also parlayed all that into one of the more eclectic careers in Hollywood, that includes two entries (“Chan” and “The Joy Luck Club”) on the National Film Registry. There are the Hong Kong films (“Chinese Box”) and the New York films (“Smoke”); the near career-ending erotic picture (“The Center of the World”); the pure Hollywood period (“Maid in Manhattan”); and the return to his culturally specific indie roots (“Coming Home Again”).“It comes from the fact that I was born and brought up a mess,” Wang said, explaining the zigzagging. After immigrating to the Bay Area from Hong Kong in 1967 at 18, he was suddenly enmeshed in an America of Quaker families, counterculture figures, the Black Panthers, and urgently political-minded folks in San Francisco’s Chinatown.Wang, who is working on an adaptation of a short story by Yiyun Li and a small-screen series about a Chinese American family, spoke about his career, going to Francis Ford Coppola for advice, and working with Jennifer Lopez. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Victor Wong in “Life Is Cheap … But Toilet Paper is Expensive.” a 1989 Wang film that has been restored. Forever Profits ProductionsPeter Wang in “Chan Is Missing,” which largely used its actors’ feelings about Chinese American identity.Nancy Wong/Wayne Wang ProductionsForty years later, “Chan Is Missing” still feels timeless in how it reckons with Chinese American identity politics. Did you intend to make a film that put a stamp on Chinese American identity?I didn’t think like that. I just wanted to make an interesting, complex film. More what the Chinese and the Chinese American community is, which includes the new immigrants. It was more that than identity. Because mainstream America had no idea who we were.And yet the film is adamant about not trying to offer a neat depiction of who or what the community is. It feels unencumbered by the idea of making a political statement.Because everybody around me who was Asian or Chinese or Japanese wanted to make a film about how badly we were treated. There was always a message. That gave me a clear picture of where I didn’t want to go. I wanted to do something a little more complicated, a little more questioning rather than saying, “We were really badly treated on Angel Island” [the immigration station in California].I only had a script for the structure of the film. Most of the time, what people are saying came from themselves. I would maybe ask them, What do you think Americans really think of the Chinese? [The lead actor] Mark Hayashi always said, “Oh God, this identity [expletive] is old news, man.” I said, “Then put it in the movie!”You then made a string of films about the Chinese diaspora that eventually led to “The Joy Luck Club.” Did you want to bring your sensibilities to the mainstream?It was a pretty conscious step.It was a studio film with an all-Asian cast in 1993. Did it feel like a breakthrough at the time?Absolutely. People were calling from Hollywood, and I knew I had to grab that energy pretty quickly. And that energy wasn’t so much “Chinese American films are really going to do well for us.” But that was also when I said, between “Chan,” “Dim Sum,” “Eat a Bowl of Tea,” “Joy Luck Club,” I’ve got to do something else. Otherwise I’m going to get locked into this one box. I’d been working on a script with Paul Auster, “Smoke.” Miramax said, “What do you want to do next? We’ll just give you the money.”It’s striking that with your success, you did a small movie. You didn’t seem to be trying to climb the ladder.I wasn’t trying to climb the ladder. I just saw Francis Ford Coppola in [an interview], talk about how the thing that drove him was basically fear and not knowing what he was doing. I was kind of functioning in that same way. I wanted to get into a film that I don’t completely understand.You and Coppola were both San Francisco-based filmmakers. Were you friends?My office was in his building, and we would run into each other and have little talks. When I shot “Smoke,” I was working with Harvey Keitel and Bill Hurt. I went to him [Coppola] and asked, how do you work with actors? I hadn’t worked with big Hollywood stars, and I was freaked out by it. Francis basically said, if you find the right person, you give them something to do, and they’ll be fine.I really respect [Hurt], but he’s a nut case in some ways. Throughout the first half of the shoot, we got to be pretty good friends. Then we had three days off, and he came back and had a football helmet on. I went to put my hands on his shoulders, and he said, “What are you doing? Are you trying to push me down the stairs?” So he turned like that. And the football helmet, he said, “I need to protect myself today, you’re going to hit me.” [Laughs] But he [was] one of the greatest actors, so subtle and so sensitive to everything.What led you to eventually do a full-on studio film like “Maid in Manhattan”?“Center of the World” got such bad reviews and everybody hated what I did that I couldn’t get a meeting in Hollywood. One bad film, especially an edgy sex film, you get written off. And the producers of “Maid in Manhattan” came calling. It was probably the most difficult thing I ever did. First day, the executives said, [Ralph Fiennes is] losing his hair in the front — it’s not very good. What can we do? They were more concerned about Ralph Fiennes’s hair.Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes in “Maid in Manhattan,” which Wang shot at the height of the paparazzi frenzy over the actress’s initial relationship with Ben Affleck. Barry Wetcher/Columbia PicturesHow was it working with Jennifer Lopez?It was difficult. She went out on dates every night with Ben Affleck. And in New York [where filming took place], there’s a law where the paparazzi could be in your face shooting stills. The only time they could not do it is when we’re doing a real take. So during rehearsals, they were literally right here, and there were a lot of them.During this period, were you at peace with doing purely studio films?There’s always that question. I knew in the back of my head, I could always leave and go back to what I did before. It just got a little difficult to get off that Ferris wheel.As you’ve returned to indie films, the landscape for marginalized voices like yours has changed.I don’t disagree, but not to the degree that I feel they should be. There’s a lot more Asian American films. I mean, anything from Ali Wong to “The Farewell” [from Lulu Wang].Did you like “The Farewell?”I like it better than the other films, maybe only because it’s more similar to mine. I’m prejudiced that way. It’s about family. But I don’t see anybody trying to do something in a more brave way. They’re still trying to please executives and then to please an audience more, rather than going out there with whatever budget they have to do something that’s challenging.The director and actor Justin Chon was in your most recent film, “Coming Home Again.” What do you think of his films?I think “Gook” was the most challenging film out there. Justin has got it in his heart to do it. And I feel the pain every time I talk to him working on something. Because the producers want a certain thing, and it’s really hard for him.But do you empathize with Asian American filmmakers trying to appease studios or audiences to break through?I talked to [the “Fast and Furious” franchise director] Justin Lin about this. He said, every year the studios make maximum 15 films [each] or something, and if one is made by an Asian American, that is progress. I tend to agree. But at the same time, was there another film completely outside the system that’s challenging the system or doing something really different? No.Not just Asian Americans, it’s across the board. Formally interesting and challenging films are just not being made. All the films are dumbed down to what I would call a Disney level. [Laughs] That’s all dangerous in the long run.The way “Chan Is Missing” happened — made for less than $25,000 on weekends by a crew with day jobs — could a film like that be made now and find an audience?If you get a grant or an independent investor, I think it could still happen again. When you are dealing with interesting characters and a certain kind of humanity, and it’s written well, you can get there. I have a strong belief in that. I have to. Otherwise I would probably just cut meat or something and be a butcher. [Laughs] More

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      ‘Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon’ Review: Beyond ‘Crazy Train’

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      Forty years after Rhoads’s death, small rock venues across the nation still host tribute shows honoring him. This new documentary explains why.As those of a certain generation (OK, boomer) are well aware, a sobering number of rock greats met their ends in aviation catastrophes. The documentary “Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon” delves into the 1982 plane crash that took Rhoads’s life. Just 25, and still the relatively new guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, Rhoads didn’t much like flying. But, wanting to take some aerial photos to send his mom, he accepted a ride in a private plane piloted by a guy who thought it was funny to fly dangerously close over the tour bus in which Osbourne and crew were sleeping.It’s a sad end to a story that, as told in this movie directed by Andre Relis, is weirdly lopsided. Rhoads made both his name and arguably his best music over a period of only two years or so, with Osbourne on the albums “Blizzard of Ozz” and “Diary of a Madman.” Before that, he had been a founding member of the band Quiet Riot. Relis’s movie spends a lot of time on the pre-superstardom Riot years, which are replete with tales of internecine weirdness and elusive record deals redolent of “This Is Spinal Tap.”While his eclectic, sometimes classically inflected approach is heard to memorable effect on the Osbourne records — his riff for the song “Crazy Train” is one for the ages — attempts here to pin down what made Rhoads great vary. One friend marvels that he could play “fast,” “slow,” “crunchy” and “blues.” A guitar tech, Brian Reason, on the other hand, gives a nicely wonky breakdown of Rhoads’s showstopping solo style, with insights into his use of effects and the volume control.Rhoads comes off as a pleasant guy (never a big partyer; he tried to counsel Osbourne on his excessive drinking) and a genuine ax savant who died with a lot more music in him.Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar IconNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More