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      ‘Stanleyville’ Review: The Most Senseless Game

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      This absurdist farce brings together a cast of odd ducks to compete for an S.U.V.The absurdist farce “Stanleyville” begins with the prim-and-proper pink-coated Maria (Susanne Wuest) witnessing a bird fly into an office window. It’s a random event, but one that shakes her. Life, even for a bird, is full of meaningless humiliations. The film attempts to recreate this initial image of futility with human characters, but the movie makes less of an impression than the bird.Soon after witnessing the death by the window, Maria is approached to participate in a contest in which the winner will receive a shiny orange S.U.V. Maria demurs, until, with the eyes of a fanatic, the contest promoter, Homunculus (Julian Richings), promises that her participation will lead to personal transcendence. At this, she accepts.Maria competes with four other contestants, each one a fussy oddity. There is a one-lunged man who wants to become famous, a fitness and pyramid-scheme enthusiast, a neurotic businessman and a black-clad cynic who simply wants to win a car. Homunculus becomes their proctor, presiding over games where the rules seem arbitrary and the judgment appears subjective. As the players compete, the games become more violent and absurd. But Maria, hellbent on achieving her promised enlightenment, remains convinced their competition has philosophical purpose.The director Maxwell McCabe-Lokos has created a purposefully designed film, filled with meticulously color-blocked frames, and characters whose flashy, leopard-print or sports-blazer costumes describe their entire characters. The curious effect of these micromanaged images is to make even the most violent events seem twee. The contest intentionally lacks meaningful rewards, an obvious metaphor for life’s arbitrary stakes. But as cinema, the lack of purpose becomes a test of patience.StanleyvilleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard: What We Know

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      Mr. Depp has sued Ms. Heard, his ex-wife, on grounds that she defamed him in an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post.The defamation trial in Virginia between the actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has become a fierce battleground over the truth about their relationship, with both sides accusing the other of repeated domestic abuse in what was an unquestionably tumultuous marriage.Before a seven-person jury in Fairfax County Circuit Court, lawyers have questioned witnesses about the events of what has been described as a whirlwind romance that started on a movie set and soured into a barrage of fights and physical confrontations — the details of which vary widely depending on the account.Mr. Depp, 58, sued Ms. Heard, 35, for defamation after she wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post referring to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” After more than a year of legal sparring, Ms. Heard then countersued Mr. Depp, alleging that he defamed her when his former lawyer released statements saying her allegations of abuse were a hoax.Many of the allegations being aired in the courtroom have already been heard in a British case — which Mr. Depp lost — in which the actor sued The Sun newspaper for printing a headline that called him a “wife beater.”The trial, which started with opening arguments on April 12, is expected to last about six weeks.Why is Mr. Depp suing Ms. Heard?Mr. Depp’s lawsuit, filed in 2019, revolves around the 2018 op-ed written by Ms. Heard titled, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”The op-ed does not mention Mr. Depp by name, but in it, Ms. Heard wrote that two years before the article’s publication, she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”In 2016, Ms. Heard was granted a temporary restraining order after showing up to a California court with a bruised face, writing in an application for the order that Mr. Depp had thrown a phone at her face at close range. (The actor denies this.)In the application, Ms. Heard wrote that Mr. Depp had been verbally and physically abusive to her throughout their relationship, detailing a recent incident in which she said he grabbed her by the hair and violently shoved her to the ground. (Mr. Depp wrote in court papers that this was a lie and that she was the one who punched him in the face that night.)Mr. Depp’s lawsuit asserted that Ms. Heard’s abuse allegations were an “elaborate hoax” that cost the actor his career and reputation.“Mr. Depp brings this defamation action to clear his name,” the actor’s lawsuit said.What did Ms. Heard’s op-ed in The Washington Post say?The op-ed says that after she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” she started to experience a backlash to her career.“Friends and advisers told me I would never again work as an actress — that I would be blacklisted,” she wrote. “A movie I was attached to recast my role. I had just shot a two-year campaign as the face of a global fashion brand, and the company dropped me.”She wrote that she saw “in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” Ms. Heard was identified in the op-ed as an ambassador on women’s rights for the American Civil Liberties Union, and in court papers, Ms. Heard said the A.C.L.U. suggested that she write the article and submitted it.Although the trial has become a sprawling inquiry into the couple’s marriage, one of Ms. Heard’s lawyers, Ben Rottenborn, tried to impress upon the jury in open arguments the idea that, ultimately, the case rests on “one piece of paper” — this op-ed.Ms. Heard is countersuing, claiming Mr. Depp had conspired with a lawyer to “attempt to destroy and defame Ms. Heard in the press.”Pool photo by Jim Lo ScalzoWhy is Ms. Heard suing Mr. Depp?The jury is simultaneously considering Ms. Heard’s countersuit against Mr. Depp, which was filed in 2020.Ms. Heard’s defamation claim is against Mr. Depp, but the statements it centers on came from his former lawyer, Adam Waldman, who told the British tabloid The Daily Mail that the actress’s allegations were an “abuse hoax.”Her lawsuit claims Mr. Depp has “authorized and conspired” with Mr. Waldman, who was acting on the actor’s behalf, to “attempt to destroy and defame Ms. Heard in the press.” (Mr. Waldman was not named as a defendant.)What has Mr. Depp said in his testimony?So far, Mr. Depp has testified that he had never struck Ms. Heard, nor any other woman. Instead, he asserted that Ms. Heard was the aggressor in the relationship, engaging in angry tirades and “demeaning name-calling” that would often escalate into physical violence.Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 6In the courtroom. More

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      ‘Hit the Road’ Review: Wheels Within Wheels

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      A family trip is the occasion for humor and heartbreak in Panah Panahi’s debut feature.Dad is grumbling in the back seat, which he shares with his motormouth 6-year-old son. The two of them mock and provoke each other like a vaudeville double act, with an element of physical comedy provided by the cast on the father’s leg, which limits his movements and sours his mood. The peanut gallery, up front, consists of the older brother, who is driving, and his mother, who is wittier than her husband but less of a show-off.The four of them enjoy getting on one another’s nerves, which is part of what makes them a family. All in all, they are good company. In real life, you might not want to be stuffed into a car with these people — and let’s not forget their dog, Jesse — on a dusty stretch of Iranian highway, but from the first jokey moments of “Hit the Road” until its heartbreaking end you will not want to be anywhere else.Not that this film, the first feature directed by Panah Panahi, is exactly “Little Miss Sunshine.” The reasons for the trip emerge slowly, as do the hints of anxiety and sorrow that creep into the good-natured banter. The family members have all agreed to leave their cellphones behind (though not all of them have done so), and they worry about being followed. Their vehicle, a beige S.U.V., is borrowed. Property has been sold and favors called in. This isn’t a vacation.The older son must leave the country. We don’t know why, but we can infer that the alternatives are grim. He and his parents try to keep this information from the younger boy, who is told that his brother is going off to get married. It’s not clear that he believes this, but he is protected by the blissful narcissism of childhood as well as the warmth and patience of his mother and father.The destination is a remote, rural border area, where other families in similar circumstances are camped out, making the best of a sad, uncertain situation. Panahi, whose father, Jafar Panahi, is one of Iran’s leading filmmakers, has a storytelling style that is at once clear and elusive. The personalities of the four people in the car are strong and distinct; you’re on familiar terms with them even before you learn their names.But they’re also mysterious, and not only because basic questions — Where do they live? What do they do for a living? How did their trouble start? — remain unanswered. The more time you spend with them, the more complicated each of them becomes, and the more you feel the weight and strength of the bonds that connect them. Hassan Madjooni, who plays the father, is a large, saturnine presence with a special kind of charisma. Hobbled by his leg injury and humbled by age, the character hides a large, tender heart behind a scrim of sarcasm. His wife (the remarkable Pantea Panahiha) clearly has long practice in dealing with his moods and deflecting his darts. The older son (Amin Simiar) is an introvert; his brother (a serial scene stealer named Rayan Sarlak) is very much the opposite.Family life, on the road or off, often involves competition for space. Everyone needs both emotional support and room to breathe, and nobody gets everything they want. That much is normal. What makes “Hit the Road” so memorable and devastating is the way it explores normal life under duress. An unseen, oppressive force — presumably some aspect of the government that has harassed Panahi’s father for more than a decade and tried to prevent him from making films — imposes its will on them. That invisible cruelty makes the tenderness and good humor of this movie all the more precious, and almost unbearable.Hit the RoadNot rated. In Persian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Will Smith, Before the Slap

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWill Smith’s outburst at the Oscars last month derailed the broadcast, his coronation as best actor later that night and the public good-guy image he’d carefully cultivated for several decades.But while much ink has been spilled about the slap and its meaning, far less has been devoted to what the slap truly overshadowed: the breadth and depth of Smith’s acting career. Since the late 1980s, after he transitioned from full-time rapper to sometime television actor, Smith has been building an impressive résumé onscreen, one with creative highs that have often been overshadowed by the sheer scale of his A-list success.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Smith’s long journey from rapper to television star to bankable superhero icon, how his creative choices have paralleled his personal journey and some possible options for his next steps.Guest:Soraya Nadia McDonald, senior culture critic for AndscapeConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      ‘Charlotte’ Review: An Artist’s Brief Life

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      This animated biopic about the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon takes faithful inspiration from her life. What if it had taken more energy from her art?In the animated biopic “Charlotte,” about the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, the film’s most eloquent moment may be its last. Concluding on an image of the French Riviera as the sounds of a Nazi roundup can be heard, the directors Éric Warin and Tahir Rana come closest to capturing Salomon’s brief life with its tensions between the creative and the nihilistic.The actress Keira Knightley voices Salomon, who became known posthumously for “Life? or Theatre?,” the vast series of autobiographical gouaches she painted while living in the South of France. In 1938, her parents sent her from Berlin to the American philanthropist Ottilie Moore’s estate in Villefranche-sur-Mer, where her maternal grandparents had relocated.“Life? or Theatre?” — now considered an early graphic novel — is made up of 769 paintings, which are thick, unsettling and expressionistic.Like her opus, the film covers Salomon’s youth in Berlin with her father, a physician, and stepmother, an opera singer; her romance with her stepmother’s voice coach, Alfred Wolfsohn (a very fine Mark Strong); her time at Berlin’s Academy of Arts; her relationship with her grandparents; and, yes, the rise of the Third Reich.But the demons closing in on her in France don’t only wear brown shirts. Jim Broadbent gives voice to her grandfather with a sternness that hints as his tyranny. It is her grandfather’s vindictive revelation of the family’s history of mental illness and suicides that spurs Salomon to create her masterwork.“Charlotte” takes faithful inspiration from the artist’s life, and understatedly renders the facts of her tragic death before the credits. On the day Salomon arrived at Auschwitz, she was killed. She was 26 years old, and pregnant.In the end, “Charlotte” is bereft of the spirit of the artist who made the uncanny “Life? or Theatre?” What an even better tribute the movie would have been had it also taken heated energy from Salomon’s art.CharlotteNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Petite Maman’ Review: Into the Woods

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      The French director Céline Sciamma’s enchanting new movie centers on a young girl who discovers a mysterious friend in a storybook forest.Céline Sciamma’s luminous “Petite Maman” is a once-upon-a-time tale with a twist. Set in present-day France, in an isolated hamlet made for solitude and imagination, it is a story about family ties, childhood reveries and unanswerable questions. It’s also a story about finding someone who, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle — the piece you knew existed but just needed you to find it — completes the picture. Put differently, it is a story about love.Soon after it opens, the 8-year-old Nelly — the extraordinary, self-possessed Joséphine Sanz — and her parents travel to pack up her grandmother’s house. Nelly’s mother grew up there, and like all childhood homes, this one has become a haunted house, though its rooms feel steeped in sadness rather than fear. It’s a domestic time capsule of a kind, a modest, Spartan, poignantly forsaken place with faded wallpaper. Nelly regards it all with sober curiosity. And, as she moves through it, you note the white sheets draped over the furniture and the medical hand-bar over the grandmother’s bed, a mournful reminder of past difficulties.With delicacy, minimal dialogue and lucid, harmoniously balanced images, Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) invites you into a world that is by turns ordinary and enigmatic. Part of the mystery is that it’s unclear what kind of story this is and where — with its charming child and restrained melancholy — it could be headed. Sciamma doesn’t tip her hand. Instead, she asks you to watch and listen, and to cozy up with Nelly. By withholding information, Sciamma is also encouraging you to look at this place and story with the open eyes of a child, which means putting aside your expectations of how movies work.Like many fairy tales, this one really begins in the woods. As Nelly’s mother (Nina Meurisse) and father (Stéphane Varupenne) start packing up the house, Nelly explores the surrounding area, with its bare trees and quiet. As a child, her mother built what she calls a hut in the forest and now Nelly would like to do the same. So, she wanders the pretty woodland, scuffs its carpet of vividly colored leaves and uses an acorn to fashion a whistle. When she blows on it, the wind gently picks up, as if answering her call. Later that night, nestled in her mother’s childhood bed, Nelly and her mom whisper as shadows gather on the walls.The next day, Nelly returns to the woods and sees a little girl in a bright red sweater dragging a long, heavy branch. The stranger hails Nelly, waving and beckoning to her: “Can you help me?” Nelly does. With silent, serious purposefulness and to the sounds of distant, rumbling thunder, the girls carry the branch, which now draws a straight line between them. The other girl leads them to a hut that she has already begun building, a ramshackle, teepee-like structure fashioned from tree brush and twine. Nelly scrutinizes the other girl and then, without a word, picks up a piece of wood and adds it to the makeshift shelter.As she does throughout “Petite Maman,” Sciamma guides you to observe this scene with the same focus as Nelly. As it discreetly keeps step with the girls, the camera remains tethered to Nelly’s point of view, so you see what she sees. This creates a bond between you, and it raises prickles of tension: You’re concerned about Nelly, and you’re wondering, too, about this stranger. But you’re also watching Nelly make smart decisions as she cautiously sizes up the other girl, who introduces herself as Marion (Gabrielle Sanz, Joséphine’s sister). At one point, you notice that the children look remarkably alike and that they are dressed in similar colors.As these two little strangers become friends, the story crystallizes. It’s wild! It’s also delightful and weird, and eventually very moving. Yet even as she slides the strange pieces into place and the movie seems to shift into recognizable genre terrain, Sciamma keeps a lid on the filmmaking, retaining the steady calm that’s characterized it from the start. There’s no shouting, no shrieking, from the wind or from the children. The emotions aren’t amped and there are no loud jolts (only revelations), an absence of heightened inflection that keeps your attention on the world — makeshift, welcoming, private — that the girls create together.The exact quality of that world remains mysterious, even as Sciamma normalizes it. This feels right. “Petite Maman” is a coming-of-age story, but not every moment needs explanation. Some things, like love, Sciamma seems to say, are ours to discover, nurture, share or not, which feels like an ethic and an auteurist (and feminist) statement of intent. Like Sciamma’s other movies, this one concerns women and girls, their rituals, bonds, ways of becoming and being, how they are seen and how they hold their own. In the past, Sciamma’s focus has drifted into the socially conscious; at other times, it has simply drifted. But there isn’t a false note or superfluous image in “Petite Maman,” which runs a just-right 72 minutes. It’s perfect.Petite MamanRated PG for an offscreen death. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘¿Y Cómo Es Él?’ Review: A Fraught Buddy Comedy

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      A jealous man tries to exact revenge on his wife’s lover, but ends up taking a road trip with him instead.“¿Y Cómo Es Él?”, a Mexican love-triangle comedy by the Argentine director Ariel Winograd, translates to “And What’s He Like?”“He,” we find out immediately, is Jero (Omar Chaparro), a taxi driver and businessman, who is the lover of Marcia (Zuria Vega), who is married to Tomás (Mauricio Ochmann).The film opens with Tomás, our edgy protagonist, scrutinizing pictures of a dashing hunk while on a flight to Puerto Vallarta.Tómas, unemployed, jealous and insecure, tells Marcia he’s traveling for a job interview. He’s actually on his way to kick Jero’s butt — or tase him, or blow him to pieces with a machine gun. These violent fantasies play out in comic bursts, but when faced with the opportunity to exact revenge, Tómas gets cold feet. Then, he accidentally stabs himself, passes out, and wakes up in his nemesis’s back seat.It turns out that Jero is a pretty nice guy — he even offers Tomás a ride back to Mexico City.Cue the fraught male bonding, which (predictably for this kind of straight guy buddy comedy) includes a trip to a brothel and run-ins with thuggish debt collectors.The film, a remake of a 2007 Korean film bluntly translated as “Driving With My Wife’s Lover,” will seem retrograde to contemporary viewers. In addition to homophobic quips, the premise relies on the idea that an adulterous wife is the greatest offense to a man’s dignity. As such, it caters to an older, more traditional Latino audience who might still be tickled by such a conceit — and for whom the cast, which includes Chaparro (a prolific comedian and singer), along with several other popular Mexican personalities, will be a draw.Though Winograd questions the film’s gender biases in the conclusion, he does so unconvincingly. At a quick 95 minutes, at least the whole thing zips by, however brainlessly.¿Y Cómo Es Él?Rated PG-13. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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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