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      ‘The Actor’ Review: No Direction Home

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      André Holland plays an actor with amnesia in this wonderfully surreal and poignant mystery.As a teenager, I had a recurring dream of visiting my grandmother, only to find her gone, and everything — her street, her rowhouse — looking just a little bit off. Confused, I would sit down on her front step and think, “This is just a dream. I’ll sit here until I wake up.”That sense of being trapped in a dimension partway between the real and the unreal, the familiar and the strange, is the disorienting force of Duke Johnson’s “The Actor.” Adapting the Donald E. Westlake novel, “Memory” — written in the 1960s and published posthumously in 2010 — Johnson and Stephen Cooney have shaped an unsettling, sorrowful journey from damage to a kind of deliverance. However, the man taking that journey, a theater actor named Paul Cole (André Holland), might disagree.A “Twilight Zone”-style voice-over sets a spooky tone and underscores the movie’s committed theatricality. After being caught in flagrante by a furious husband, Paul lands in the hospital with a head injury and without the ability to remember. Stranded in small-town Ohio in the 1950s, knowing only that he has an apartment in New York City, Paul finds a job in a local tannery, a room in a boardinghouse and begins to save for a bus ticket home. Before he can do that, he meets the lovely Edna (a wonderful Gemma Chan) and begins to fall in love — if that’s even possible when your meetings can vanish like missing frames on a roll of film.The notion of life being edited without your knowledge or consent lends “The Actor” a sadness and surreality that the cinematographer, Joe Passarelli, takes to heart. His smudged, smoky images cast a veil of nostalgia over Paul’s plight as he returns to Manhattan and learns from friends that he may not have been a very nice person. Yet, if you can’t remember, does it matter? Do you cobble together a self from others’ memories of you, or do you ditch the past and start over?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With ‘Él,’ Buñuel Turns His Gaze to Male Pathology

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      Luis Buñuel’s Mexican melodrama about a jealous husband who makes his young wife’s life a living hell opens at Film Forum.A blasphemous black comedy, part noir, part case history, Luis Buñuel’s 1953 Mexican melodrama “Él” amply justifies its inadvertently self-reflexive American release title, “This Strange Passion.”One of the rediscoveries of last year’s Buñuel retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, “Él” opens for a week at Film Forum in a fine new 4K restoration.The initial sequence, filmed in the nave of a 16th-century Mexico City cathedral, is a well-attended Holy Thursday Mass. As the camera lavishes attention on ritual foot-washing, so does the suavely aristocratic Francisco Galván (Arturo de Córdova). Then his gaze strays from the row of bare feet waiting to be washed and kissed by attending priests to a well-shod foot belonging to a well-bred señorita, Gloria (Delia Garcés) — and thus, a mad love is born.Francisco, a wealthy, middle-aged virgin, obsessed with regaining ownership of once-upon-a-time family property, turns the force of his pathology on Gloria. He successfully woos her away from her fiancé and, starting on their wedding night, makes her life a living hell. Oscillating between insane jealousy and abject apologies (but ever aroused by the sight of her feet), he becomes increasingly abusive, mentally and physically. At one point, anticipating the climax of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” he finagles her to the top of a mission bell tower and, suddenly enraged, tries to throw her off.Throughout, the madman is protected by his wealth, defended by the Catholic Church and even by Gloria’s mother. “Él” has been taken as a parody of machismo, but it is more pointedly an attack on social class, male privilege and the notion of bourgeois respectability. Behind the stone facade of Francisco’s colonial mansion lies a clutter of chandeliers, tchotchkes and Jugendstil-patterned portals. Adapted from a quasi-autobiographical novel by the Spanish writer Mercedes Pinto, “Él” was further informed by the antics of Buñuel’s brother-in-law and, he’s suggested, his own dreams.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eric Bauza Voices Bugs Bunny and More Looney Tunes Greats

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      “We all want to be like Bugs, but we’re all really Daffy,” said the voice actor Eric Bauza with a hearty laugh during a recent interview in Los Angeles.For the past five years, the Canadian performer, 45, has played both the clever rabbit and the hyperactive duck. He has won two Children’s & Family Emmy Awards for voicing these pair, as well as other characters, in the series “Looney Tunes Cartoons” and “Bugs Bunny Builders.”“Eh … What’s up, doc?”Over the years he’s also summoned Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn and Elmer Fudd.In the director Peter Browngardt’s “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” (in theaters March 14), Bauza voices both Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Distributed by Ketchup Entertainment, the first fully-animated original feature starring these characters to get a theatrical release is a zany, hand drawn, sci-fi romp in which buddies Daffy and Porky must defeat a malicious alien invader.Sitting in a meeting room at the Garland Hotel in North Hollywood, and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Wilma Flintstone (Hanna-Barbera’s “The Flintstones” is among his favorite classic cartoons), Bauza recalled first watching “Looney Tunes” on Saturday mornings growing up in Scarborough, Ontario. The wacky violence and daring humor of those cartoons enticed a young Bauza.As he recounted one of his favorite “Looney Tunes” shorts, “Long-Haired Hare,” in which Bugs Bunny torments an opera singer, Bauza seamlessly shifted into singing in the voice of the famed animated wise guy, “Music hater and a rabbit hater too, apparently,” he recited.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stanley R. Jaffe, 84, Oscar-Winning Producer and Hollywood Power, Dies

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      His “Kramer vs. Kramer” won for best picture in 1980, one of many high points in a career that saw him in top jobs, twice, at Paramount.Stanley R. Jaffe, a former Hollywood wunderkind who became president of Paramount at 29, then left after just a few years to become an Oscar-winning producer of films like “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Fatal Attraction” and “The Accused,” died on Monday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 84.His daughter Betsy Jaffe confirmed the death.Mr. Jaffe was known as a hands-on producer, and his work on “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979), a searing divorce drama, showed why.The movie was based on a 1977 novel of the same name by Avery Corman, and he bought the rights immediately after it was published. He persuaded a reluctant Dustin Hoffman to play the father, Ted, and cast the relatively unknown Meryl Streep to play his wife, Joanna.The film was a commercial and critical success. Along with the Oscar for best picture, it won for best actor (Mr. Hoffman); best supporting actress (Ms. Streep); and best director and best adapted screenplay (both for Robert Benton).Mr. Jaffe backstage with his best picture Oscar, for “Kramer vs. Kramer,” at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1980.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesIn addition to winning the best picture award, “Kramer vs. Kramer” also won for best actor (Dustin Hoffman) and best supporting actress (Meryl Streep).Stanley Jaffe Productions/Columbia PicturesMr. Jaffe was not quite 40 when he won the Academy Award, but he was already a veteran heavyweight in Hollywood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Some Vegans Were Harmed in the Watching of This Movie

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      A film critic who provides “vegan alerts” for animal cruelty goes beyond onscreen violence. Milk and eggs are problematic, too.Inside a dark theater in Midtown Manhattan, Allison McCulloch watched “Kraven the Hunter,” an origin story for the obscure Spider-Man villain, while jotting notes on a white piece of paper smaller than a Post-it.Fur clothing.Taxidermied animals.Characters eating steak.McCulloch is the Roger Ebert of vegans, a dedicated cinephile who cares as much as anyone about acting and cinematography — and more than almost anyone about onscreen portrayals of dairy, poultry and beef.In the short reviews she writes for the app Letterboxd, she includes her overall critique as well as “vegan alerts,” flagging signs of animal products in a one-woman quest to highlight animal welfare onscreen, even in details most viewers would overlook.“People might think a glass of milk is innocuous,” she said. “It’s not. It’s full of violence.”Some of McCulloch’s vegan alerts for “Kraven the Hunter,” with Aaron Taylor-Johnson: “Sergei catches and eats raw fish” and “tiger rug.”Columbia Pictures/Marvel, via Sony PicturesMcCulloch has documented her opinion on 24,082 movies on her Letterboxd account, putting her in the top 100 out of the app’s more than 18 million members. Movies starring animals are almost a lock for vegan-friendly ratings, with films like “Flow” and “Kung Fu Panda 4” getting four stars.“Kraven the Hunter,” about a criminal-tracking vigilante played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, flopped by traditional measures (“incomprehensible plotting and dodgy one-liners,” Robert Daniels wrote in The New York Times). But it worked on some level for McCulloch, who was surprised by how it framed Kraven as a kind of conservationist who shares a supernatural connection with the creatures he encounters, and hunts criminals instead. She even gave the movie one “vegan point” for Kraven’s decision to not shoot a lion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna’ Review: Confusing Accounts

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      The Hulu documentary challenges ideas around who is responsible for the death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust.”“I don’t know how you get justice from an accident.” In 2021, the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of the movie “Rust.” The new Hulu documentary “Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna,” directed by Rachel Mason, a friend of Hutchins, is not a chronicle of Hutchins’s life, nor a tribute to it. The film is instead a plodding but cleareyed account of the confusion, blame and scandal around her death.The documentary begins with a brief overview of the case, highlighting some of the crew members who were involved. The film goes on to challenge a schematic reading of who is responsible for Hutchins’s death, and even suggests that certain “Rust” producers were never held accountable for mismanaging the production.One compelling section highlights an email received by the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, which scolded her for neglecting her prop duties to focus on firearm supervision. The revelations offer new perspectives on a tragedy that was already thoroughly covered in the media.The film’s biggest letdown lies in its cursory tour of who Hutchins was apart from her final hours. Despite testimony from Hutchins’s friends that repeatedly references her artistry, Mason rarely incorporates clips of Hutchins’s cinematography outside “Rust.” When the documentary does find time for a montage of her work, it is only to illustrate a point about where the guns onscreen are being aimed.Last Take: Rust and the Story of HalynaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      Keeping Up With Highbrow Art While Raising a Child

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      It’s not easy, but here’s how Mark Krotov, the publisher of the literary magazine n+1, attempts it, often with his 6-year-old daughter along for the ride.Being the 6-year-old daughter of Mark Krotov, the publisher and one of the editors of the literary magazine n+1, is an all-access pass to New York City’s foreign films and contemporary art.“She’s always very, very receptive to stuff,” he said of his daughter, Daria Krotov-Clarke, whom he and his wife, Chantal Clarke, a writer, are raising in Queens. “If I had to do a lot of persuading, I don’t think we would be leading the active life that we do.”“The goal on weekends is always to leave the house in the morning and not come back until the late afternoon,” said Krotov, 39, who has been n+1’s publisher since 2016.The magazine and arts organization, which publishes political commentary, essays, criticism and fiction, celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this year. The name comes from the algebraic expression, a nod to the idea that there is always something vital to be added to a conversation.Ahead of a party for n+1’s latest issue at the magazine’s office, Krotov said, “there’s a lot of rearranging, sweeping and beer purchasing to do.”Graham Dickie/The New York TimesIt’s a philosophy that Krotov, who was born in Moscow and moved with his family to Atlanta in 1991, tries to adopt in his own life. He makes an effort to see the films, exhibitions and performances that come up in the pieces he edits.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More