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      ‘Saturday Fiction’ Review: Theater of History

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      In this period drama set in Shanghai in December 1941, the resplendent Gong Li conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none.The resplendent Gong Li anchors a mysterious — and often mystifying — tale of intrigue in “Saturday Fiction,” the latest feature by the Chinese director Lou Ye. As in films like “Summer Palace” and “Purple Butterfly,” Lou sets a Hitchcockian thriller of identity and passion on the cusp of major historical events, though in “Saturday Fiction,” personal and political dramas collide in particularly combustible ways.The film takes place in December 1941, on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, in a Shanghai occupied by Japan and crisscrossed by Allied and Axis spies. Gong plays a famed actress, Jean Yu, who has just returned to the city after an absence, ostensibly to star in a play directed by her lover, Tan Na (Mark Chao).But Jean’s true reasons remain elusive, mired in a web of allegiances involving, among others, her ex-husband, who has been kidnapped by Japanese forces, and a fatherly French diplomat who tasks her with an espionage mission. Lou further obscures Jean’s motives with some clever, metafictional sleight of hand: Often, the film segues deceptively between onstage rehearsals of Tan’s play and Jean’s offstage encounters.Visually, the effect is one of elegant chaos. The cinematographer Zeng Jian captures a rain-drenched, period-dressed Shanghai in soft black-and-white, with a restless hand-held camera that lends poetry even to high-octane shootouts. On the level of narrative, however, the film tips over into plain old confusion, as Jean’s increasingly illogical actions contribute to one of history’s great disasters.Yet star power is a logic unto itself, and Lou has ensured a limitless supply by casting Gong as an actress-spy. She conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none, seducing us as effortlessly as Jean seduces her enemies.Saturday FictionNot rated. In Mandarin, English, Japanese and French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Marvelous and the Black Hole’ Review: Finding Magic Amid Rage

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      A teenager reeling from the loss of her mother discovers an unlikely companion in an older magician.Sammy Ko (Miya Cech), the protagonist of this dark coming-of-age comedy, ticks all the boxes of adolescent angst. She smokes and acts out at school; secretly gives herself tattoos with a rudimentary rig in her bedroom; and lashes out at her father, Angus (Leonardo Nam), for dating so soon after the death of her mother.When Angus reaches his wit’s end with Sammy, he gives her an ultimatum: commit to a community-college class or go to a camp for troubled kids. During a smoke break in the college bathroom, Sammy meets Margot (Rhea Perlman), a whimsical magician who turns Sammy into her reluctant apprentice.That’s the setup for “Marvelous and the Black Hole,” the writer-director Kate Tsang’s debut feature, which combines folklore, sketch art and sleight-of-hand magic to explore grief, family ties and how to channel rage.Cech is believable as a troubled teenager, and it’s refreshing to see an Asian American girl as a protagonist, but the film has a limited emotional range, jumping among several plot elements without fully fleshing them out. Missing are scenes that show how this death affected Sammy’s relationship with her sister, Patricia, or what the family’s dynamic was before the tragedy. The film focuses instead on Sammy’s all-consuming rage and self-destruction, making it feel one-note, with too few moments of redemption or connection.Marvelous and the Black HoleNot rated. Running time 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Sexual Drive’ Review: Best Served Hot and Heavy

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      Natto, mapo tofu and fatty ramen become objects of titillation in this intriguing Japanese triptych that centers on sex without ever depicting it.A sexless husband queries his wife’s lover over a package of natto. A nervous driver on her way to buy mapo sauce finds her panic attack transform into a paroxysm of passion when she collides with an old schoolmate. And a married man obeys enigmatic instructions to rescue his paramour after she’s kidnapped from a ramen shop.These three encounters form the wry Japanese triptych “Sexual Drive,” directed by Kota Yoshida. Consistently intriguing and occasionally hilarious, the movie does not depict sex itself. Instead, the characters eat food items that become objects of titillation, lust and pleasure: the sticky goo around soybeans, chili oil sizzling in a wok.A man named Kurita (Tateto Serizawa) appears in each vignette as a mysterious raconteur spinning tales of lechery that — however disturbing and perhaps untrue — succeed in rousing his counterparts to their own desires. In two of the stories, Kurita is in conversation with men, and because of this, the movie lends disproportionate attention to the male libido. One can only take so many instances of male characters bragging about a sexual conquest or groaning in shame over being cuckolded.But in the best of the three parts, called “Mapo Tofu,” a woman takes center stage. Driving to the grocery store, the anxious Akane (Honami Sato) bumps into Kurita, whom she used to bully in elementary school, and his memories of that time reawaken her taste for spice. Running a brief 70 minutes, “Sexual Drive” might have benefited from more women owning their appetites, especially since its erotica is such a fascinating new flavor.Sexual DriveNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Stephanie Hsu on the Costumes in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

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      The actress Stephanie Hsu talks about how clothes convey the full range of character in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a new and genre-defying film set in an expansive multiverse, identity isn’t fixed but fractured into a constellation of possibilities.The movie’s central characters — Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh), her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), and their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu) — travel through various universes as they fight to save their struggling family business and to defeat an all-powerful villain named Jobu Tupaki, who has taken up residence in Joy’s human form. As they jump from one timeline to the next, the characters inhabit numerous distinct selves: their alternate destinies, their untapped skills and their sartorial sensibilities.“I think it’s so rare that you get to experience the scope of range within one character in one movie,” Ms. Hsu, 31, said in a Zoom interview on Saturday.Playing both Joy and Jobu required the actress to mine the depths of depression and explore the destructive highs of mania — an emotional range that the film conveys in part through costume.Ms. Hsu also plays Joy, a young woman grappling with depression and the pressure to please her family.via A24“She is so despondent and so lost and has so much despair and carries that ugliness with her,” Ms. Hsu said of Joy, who is introduced in a somber flannel shirt and an oversize hoodie, the kind of clothing people wear to hide. “But I knew that I could really go there with her because I also was about to get to wear the most fabulous things and be a nemesis.”Jobu’s style is loud, experimental and confrontational. She shows up at various points in head-to-toe tartan, her face obscured by a mask and visor; a preppy pink polo with an argyle sweater vest and a pleated skirt, wielding a golf club as a weapon; a sparkly white Elvis-inspired jumpsuit and a pink wig; a psychedelic zip-up with teddy bears on either sleeve. Her makeup is, likewise, unsubtle and unnerving: She paints red hearts on her cheeks and covers her face in pearls and rhinestones. (A keen observer may notice that one gem is shaped like a teardrop.)Ms. Hsu noted that small details in her costumes and makeup were meant to tether the ruthless Jobu to Joy, who, despite her constant conflicts with her mother, still wants the best for her family.via A24Ms. Hsu said the teardrop and hearts were meant to tether the ruthless Jobu to Joy, who, despite her constant conflicts with her mother, still wants the best for her family. During a fight scene with Evelyn, Jobu wears an outfit that is pure chaos, mashing up the character’s many dissonant styles to an alarming effect. But when she lifts up a fist, she reveals a glove with a cutout in the shape of a heart.“I remember putting that glove on and being like, ‘I love that this fist is actually still symbolizing love and that we’re having this fist fight,’” Ms. Hsu said. “It was just such a helpful reminder for me.”Allyson RiggsShe emphasized that all of the looks were the product of a close collaboration between the film’s costume designer, Shirley Kurata (whom she described as “an artistic genius”), and the directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.“The three of them are maximalists who still care deeply about aesthetics,” Ms. Hsu said. “And so even though I was wearing really crazy things, sometimes it was really important that it was still fabulous and very couture.” Anissa Salazar, who oversaw the production’s hair department, and Michelle Chung, the head of makeup, also contributed to the overall effect.Ms. Hsu said that the look that took the longest to complete was “Goddess Jobu,” as she referred to it, for which she wore a long white gown, an Elizabethan ruff, iridescent makeup and a braided hairdo that culminated in a bagel-like bun at the crown of her head.Ms. Hsu said that transforming into “Goddess Jobu” took the longest of all her looks.via A24“The bagel was a hairpiece,” she said. “And then there are these braids that go across my hair. So that took a lot of glue and things like that. But that one was actually easier than it looked.”Much more challenging, she said, was putting on all the layers of the outfit. “There was a leather bodysuit, leggings, a skirt, gloves and then these arm shields,” she said. “And then we had to also hang jewels on my body.”Ms. Hsu was cast in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” in 2019, a week after she moved to Los Angeles from New York City, a place that had shaped her sense of style.Allyson Riggs“I lived in New York for 11 years. I think that New York really gave me functional swag because you have to walk everywhere,” Ms. Hsu said. “But now when I’m in L.A., it’s really fun to wear fun shoes. I love shoes.”She said that working on the film, seeing herself in Jobu’s various costumes and hearing responses from fans of the movie also gave her the confidence to unlock a more expressive mode of dressing.“I feel like my freak flag flew way higher when I was younger,” Ms. Hsu said, “and so I think I’m trying to embrace that again.” More

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      Johnny Depp, Accused of Spousal Abuse, Says Ex-Wife Was the Aggressor

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      The actor testified in a defamation case that he filed against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, who has said he often struck her during their relationship.The actor Johnny Depp took the stand for the second day on Wednesday to describe his turbulent marriage to the actress Amber Heard, whom he has sued for defamation, accusing her of “demeaning name-calling” that often escalated into physical violence.“It could begin with a slap, it could begin with a shove, it could begin with throwing a TV remote at my head, throwing a glass of wine in my face,” Mr. Depp told a jury at Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia.Ms. Heard has accused Mr. Depp in court papers of repeatedly assaulting her throughout their relationship, from slapping and kicking to dragging her across the floor by her hair and grasping her throat, making her fearful that he would kill her.But over the past few years of legal wrangling in the United States and Britain, Mr. Depp has maintained that Ms. Heard was the one who was violent toward him. In testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Depp denied ever striking Ms. Heard or any woman.“She has a need for conflict, she has a need for violence,” he said of Ms. Heard. “It erupts out of nowhere.”Ms. Heard denied in court papers that she had ever struck Mr. Depp except in self-defense or in defense of her sister.Mr. Depp has sued Ms. Heard for defamation over an op-ed she wrote in 2018 in which she said she was a ​​“public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article did not mention Mr. Depp’s name, but he testified that the time-frame reference in the op-ed was clearly in reference to their marriage, which lasted less than two years.The seven-person jury will also consider Ms. Heard’s countersuit, which asserts that Mr. Depp defamed her when his former lawyer made statements saying that her allegations of domestic abuse were a hoax.During more than five hours of testimony on Wednesday, the jury heard snippets of recorded arguments between the couple. Those included audio of Mr. Depp confronting Ms. Heard about kicking a door into his head the previous night and Ms. Heard asking, “Why are you obsessing over the fact that I can’t remember it the way you remember it?”During his testimony, Mr. Depp strove to present his side of several incidents that have surfaced as their problems in their relationship became public, including the time Mr. Depp’s middle finger was severed. The injury occurred in 2015 while the couple was in Australia for the filming of the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.Mr. Depp told the jury that, at the time, Ms. Heard was angry about a meeting she had with a lawyer about a potential postnuptial agreement and threw two vodka bottles at him, one of which missed while another shattered into his hand, causing his finger to bleed “like Vesuvius.” He testified that he then experienced a “nervous breakdown” and used his bloody finger to write on the walls messages that “represented lies that she told me.”Ms. Heard, who is expected to take the stand later in the trial, has given a very different account of the incident in Australia, writing in court papers that Mr. Depp became violent with her during an argument about his drug use. She has said that at one point he grabbed her by the neck and collarbone and slammed her into a countertop, then hit her with the back of his hand and slammed a phone against a wall until it “smashed into smithereens,” injuring his finger.Upon her return to Los Angeles, Ms. Heard wrote in court papers that “I had a busted lip, a swollen nose and cuts all over my body.”Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 6In the courtroom. More

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      ‘Some Like It Hot’ Musical Plans Fall Opening on Broadway

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      Christian Borle, J. Harrison Ghee and Adrianna Hicks will star in a stage adaptation of the 1959 film comedy about two musicians on the run.A new musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” a classic cross-dressing comedy that is being recalibrated for contemporary audiences, will start performances in November and open in December on Broadway, the show’s producers said Wednesday.The musical will star Christian Borle (a two-time Tony winner, for “Peter and the Starcatcher” and “Something Rotten!”) and J. Harrison Ghee (“Kinky Boots”) as two musicians fleeing the mob after witnessing a gangland massacre, and Adrianna Hicks (“Six”) as a singer they befriend. In the acclaimed 1959 film, those roles were played by Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.The production, first announced four years ago, has faced challenges on its path to Broadway: One of the original producers, Craig Zadan, died; the pandemic prompted the cancellation of a pre-Broadway run in Chicago; and the whole question of how jokes about men dressing as women work has become increasingly contested.“It’s a complicated picture, bracingly ahead of its time in some ways, wincingly dated in others,” A.O. Scott, a critic at large and the co-chief film critic for The New York Times, wrote in 2020.The job of reimagining the story, still set in Prohibition-era Chicago, falls to Matthew López, the Tony-winning writer of “The Inheritance,” and Amber Ruffin, the writer and talk show host. The songs are by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who previously wrote the Tony-winning score for “Hairspray.”Casey Nicholaw, the Tony-winning director of “The Book of Mormon,” will direct and choreograph.“Some Like It Hot” is being produced by the Shubert Organization and Neil Meron, along with MGM on Stage, Roy Furman, Robert Greenblatt, James L. Nederlander and Kenny Leon. The musical will be capitalized for up to $17.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The show is scheduled to begin performances Nov. 1 and to open Dec. 11 at the Shubert Theater. More

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      ‘Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain’ Review: Influential Rappers, Still Smokin’

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      This documentary by Estevan Oriol chronicles the rise of a group that he has been around since its inception.In 1991, just a few years after Public Enemy released the single “Bring the Noise,” Cypress Hill, a hip-hop trio out of South Gate, near Los Angeles, released a debut that followed that exhortation to astonishing effect. The rapper B-Real delivered his anti-cop, pro-weed rhymes in a taunting, nasal tone, countered by the abrupt barks of Sen Dog. DJ Muggs created beats that were inventively off-kilter and put high-pitched whistles and sirens under and around hooks that were more than earworms — these tracks got under your whole skin.Directed and narrated by Estevan Oriol, a photographer and filmmaker who’s been around the group since its inception, “Cypress Hill: Insane in the Brain,” named for one of its signature songs, is an often engaging chronicle of the group (which has sold more than 20 million albums), one that is probably best appreciated by fans. B-Real has harrowing tales of his experiences in gangs as a teenager. As he and his cohorts started to make music, they imposed an impressive discipline on themselves, doing two or three years of woodshedding at DJ Muggs’s home before seeking out a recording deal.Their early music was suffused with threat. One of the group’s first hits was titled “How I Could Just Kill a Man,” and its debut album kicked off with an anti-police song titled “Pigs.” Their stance morphed to some extent as they rapped about what they were in favor of — which is prodigious marijuana use. Whatever the mode, the exhilarating abrasiveness of the Cypress Hill sound held true. And in the contemporary interview segments here the members are modest, soft-spoken, thoughtful and hardly at all burned out.Cypress Hill: Insane in the BrainNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. Watch on Showtime. More

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      Why Those Moments of Care for Liza Minnelli and Joni Mitchell Felt Different

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      Awards shows are a natural setting for honoring aging legends. It’s reassuring when they don’t try to hide the frailty that aging can bring. The first 53 minutes of music’s biggest night rolled along smoothly. This year’s Grammys had centerpiece performances from Olivia Rodrigo and BTS, plus a big reception for the newly minted Oscar winner Questlove; Trevor Noah, the host, told jokes that offended nobody’s spouse. It was only after Rodrigo accepted the award for Best New Artist that something unexpected happened. Noah introduced the celebrated singers Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell, to a surge of applause. When the camera cut away from him, the two artists were already standing at a nearby lectern, having skipped the ceremonial walk from backstage. Both are in their 70s, and both were honored this year: Raitt earned a lifetime-achievement award, while Mitchell won a Grammy for Best Historical Album (awarded before the main broadcast) and was named Person of the Year by the Grammy-affiliated nonprofit MusiCares. Raitt still tours and is set to release a new album this month, but Mitchell’s appearance was more exceptional. After suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015, she receded from public life during her recovery. Now her every appearance is treated as a seismic event by legions of grateful fans.The Grammy crowd greeted them with a standing ovation. Some camera angles revealed a cane gripped firmly in Mitchell’s right hand. “Overwhelming,” she whispered to Raitt, before the applause died down. Then she stood by as Raitt did much of the talking, reacting to a lavish compliment about her work with exaggerated deflection. Raitt set Mitchell up to introduce the next performer, about whom she was meant to say: “Please welcome an extraordinary artist and beautiful human being — a stunning, brave and truthful voice, my brilliant friend and ambassador, Brandi Carlile.” But when it came to the word “truthful,” Mitchell stopped. Without missing a beat, Raitt leaned over and smoothly filled in the missing word, gently cuing Mitchell to find the rest of the line.One columnist wrote that Gaga’s behavior ‘turned me to a puddle.’The moment recalled another interaction, just a week earlier, at the Academy Awards. That entire evening has been overshadowed by a single event, but even when that gossip was fresh, some attention still lingered on a surprise appearance by Liza Minnelli, who presented the award for Best Picture alongside Lady Gaga. They, too, simply materialized at the side of the stage. Minnelli was using a wheelchair, and as their own standing ovation ebbed, Gaga said: “You see that? The public, they love you.”“Oh, yes, but what am I — I don’t understand,” Minnelli responded brightly, her hands trembling as she shuffled through the cards she was meant to read. “I got it,” Gaga said. She took Minnelli’s hand, lauding her as “a true show business legend” and recognizing the 50th anniversary of “Cabaret,” for which Minnelli won Best Actress. When it was time for Minnelli to speak again, she seemed to falter at the task of introducing nominees. Again, Gaga leaned over: “I got you,” she whispered, her voice audible over the telecast even as the camera cut away. “I know,” Minnelli responded.I wasn’t the only one to feel moved by these small acts of care, aimed at quietly helping an older person through a potentially overwhelming experience. Each moment was widely praised on social media. A columnist for The Colorado Sun wrote that Gaga’s behavior “turned me to a puddle,” while a writer for The Cut called it “profoundly moving.” The sheer vigor of people’s approval might say something about how rare it is to see ordinary gestures of support in contexts like awards shows, which tend to be stiff, scripted and spotlit, always highlighting the confidently glamorous and the glamorously confident. These casual gestures of assistance would be unremarkable if you saw them in daily life. And yet they took on, in these otherwise plasticine habitats, a special dramatic weight.To watch Minnelli is to marvel at the genuine artistry that still might bloom from an impossibly screwed-up entertainment industry.Awards shows are a natural setting for honoring aging legends; this is why lifetime-achievement awards exist. Still, America retains a broad uneasiness with the blunt realities of getting older. Our most sprightly legends — the Jane Fondas, Warren Beattys and, until recently, Betty Whites — are invited onstage and praised for how great they look, but the actual frailty that accompanies aging tends to be hidden. Ailing celebrities often disappear from public life; only after they die do we learn about their health challenges.In this sense, Mitchell’s and Minnelli’s appearances carried slightly different emotional valences. Mitchell’s felt like a public reassurance that she was doing well. While accepting her preshow Grammy, she thanked her physical therapist, who accompanied her to the stage; days earlier, she sang her 1970 hit “Big Yellow Taxi” onstage with Carlile and others at a MusiCares ceremony. The reaction to Minnelli was more explicitly reverential, as if viewers were suddenly realizing that she would not be with us forever. The Oscars worship the amorphous concept of “the movies,” and Minnelli — daughter of Judy Garland, a fixture of culture across seven decades — is bona fide movie royalty. And unlike the (relatively) youthful Grammys, the Oscars ceremony loves to bow at the altar of old Hollywood. In 1996, Kirk Douglas received an honorary award, shortly after a stroke that affected his speech; in 2011, he showed up at age 94 to announce the Best Supporting Actress award. Nobody seemed to mind that he hit on one of the hosts (Anne Hathaway) and the winner (Melissa Leo); they were happy to pay tribute while they could. But seeing Minnelli, physically weakened yet immortally bright-eyed, stirred something in me that I am not used to feeling while watching these idolatrous shows. To say that Minnelli is Hollywood royalty is not mere book-jacket copy; to learn about her life, and to watch her in movies like “Cabaret” or shows like “Liza With a Z,” is to marvel at the genuine artistry that still might bloom from an impossibly screwed-up entertainment industry. We are so used to seeing her move with unbelievable energy that it was difficult to see that energy restrained. But I was grateful to see her on her own terms, rather than reading conspiratorial guesses about her health, and happy that the academy invited her to present. And, like so many others, I was endeared by the reassuring presence of Lady Gaga; much as she has in her work with the 95-year-old Tony Bennett, she seemed intuitively prepared to act as companion to a legend.Perhaps it’s not just the televisual rarity of moments like these that affects people. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a particular phrase being used often on social media: “give them their flowers.” The idea is that we should honor the figures important to us while they’re still around to cherish it — a notion I’ve seen repeated more and more during the pandemic, as hundreds of thousands have died, public figures included. Seeing Mitchell and Minnelli receive their flowers was heartwarming, sure; the magnitude of their work cannot be overstated. But many of us very literally have not been able to see older loved ones in years. The most vulnerable still remain at a distance, unsure if it will ever feel entirely safe to go out in public again. Maybe that’s why so many reacted so strongly to seeing elderly figures offered a little support as they participated in these grand events. What we see here is a communal tenderness we might all better will into existence, so we can welcome one another back into a world where fragility is increasingly hard to ignore.Source photographs: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images; screen grabs from YouTube.Jeremy Gordon is a writer in Brooklyn whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation and other publications. More