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      The Stomach-Dropping, Heart-Tugging Appeal of Climbing Documentaries

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      “Skywalkers” and “Mountain Queen” are strong entries in a genre with great appeal to viewers who themselves might prefer to be sitting.Documentaries in which people climb very tall things have a remarkable track record. “Man on Wire,” James Marsh’s 2008 recounting of Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974, is one of the most acclaimed and successful documentaries of all time. Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi have made two celebrated films about the sport, “Meru” in 2015 and “Free Solo” in 2018. Just do a quick search for “climbing documentaries” and you’ll find dozens — it’s clearly a genre people love.That’s undoubtedly due in part to the fact that most of us (myself included) will never, ever attempt to scale a 3,000-foot cliff without ropes. These movies show us what we can’t otherwise see. Plus, in contrast to the manufactured safety of a fiction film, a documentary is heart-pounding. Your head knows they probably will get out alive — but your stomach sure doesn’t.There’s another reason these movies are so popular, though, and it’s more psychological. As a nonclimber with an aversion to physical risk, I find it hard to fathom what drives those who choose, of their own free will, to put themselves into extreme physical situations that could easily kill them. It must mean something more to them than oxygen-deprived thrills — but what? Two gripping documentaries on Netflix this week come at that question from different directions, but offer similar answers.Lucy Walker’s “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” is a biographical documentary about Lhakpa Sherpa, a Nepalese mountain climber who holds the women’s world record for the most summits of Mount Everest, 10 in all. (And not many men have summited more.) I expected a portrait of an incredibly strong woman, and that’s an apt description for “Mountain Queen.” But Lhakpa’s story is much more complicated than that. Through interviews and footage shot on Everest, Lhakpa — who lives in Connecticut with her teenage daughters — reveals the many obstacles she’s had to overcome, including patriarchal ideas about climbing in her home culture and an abusive marriage to a fellow climber once she moved to the United States.Most important, she shows what drives someone like her toward this kind of extreme sport, and it mainly boils down to wanting to live a life of significance. But Lhakpa’s aim is less about being famous and more about paving the way to a better future for herself and her children. “I want to be somebody. I want to do something good,” she says. “I want to show my two girls how to be brave.”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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      Cheng Pei Pei, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Actor, Dies

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      A trailblazer for women in Asian martial arts cinema, Ms. Cheng rose to fame in the 1960s in Hong Kong.Cheng Pei Pei, a trailblazer for women in Asian martial arts cinema and a star of the 2000 blockbuster “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” died on July 17 in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was 78.Her representatives at Echelon Talent Management confirmed her death in a statement. She was diagnosed in 2019 with a neurodegenerative disease similar to Parkinson’s, they said.Ms. Cheng was born on Jan. 6, 1946, in Shanghai. Trained in ballet and traditional Chinese dance, she began her acting career in Hong Kong in 1964 and became one of the stars of the wuxia genre of martial arts films. Her breakout role was in the mid-’60s kung fu classic “Come Drink With Me.”“Our mom Cheng Pei Pei wanted to be remembered for who she was: the legendary ‘Queen of Martial Arts,’” her family said in a statement. “She loved being an actress and knew, even with her hard work, how fortunate she was to have the career she had.”Ms. Cheng moved to the United States in the 1970s, where her four children were born.She played the villain Jade Fox in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” featuring in some of the film’s most memorable fight scenes.Ms. Cheng chose to keep her medical condition private, her management said.She donated her brain to the Brain Support Network, a nonprofit organization that supports people diagnosed with neurodegenerative disorders. More

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      ‘Find Me Falling’ Review: A Romance With an Edge

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      Harry Connick Jr. stars as a cranky rocker who returns to Cyprus, the home of the love who inspired a signature hit.When John Allman retreats to a shack on the coast of Cyprus in “Find Me Falling,” he’s already glum. The aging rocker, portrayed by Harry Connick Jr., marches out of his new refuge with indignation and barks at a man standing on the cliff’s edge looking out at the sea. Then the man steps into the air and is gone.It’s a surprisingly flip start to a romantic comedy that — with its intergenerational interplay and sunbaked settings — recalls “Mamma Mia!” Yet the writer-director Stelana Kliris is undaunted by, though not entirely in control of, balancing her material’s at times somber, at other times blithe, notes.The police captain (an amiable Tony Demetriou) tells him, unceremoniously, that the promontory has become a “suicide hot spot.” More put out by this revelation than moved, John begins to build a fence. Naturally, the ramshackle barrier becomes a metaphor for his sealed-off soul. Trying to maintain anonymity, John is dogged by mentions of his first hit: “Girl on the Beach.” After all, the beach was in Cyprus — but that girl, Sia (Agni Scott), is now a woman. Scott brings a measured mix of attraction and wariness to John’s long-ago muse, who is now referred to as the “town’s best doctor.” And Sia has her reasons for their separation.Can a film have its own spoiler alert? In an early, easily decoded bait-and-switch, Melina (Ali Fumiko Whitney) completes a triangle as an aspiring singer and one of the first people to befriend the prickly musician.A South African Cypriot, Kliris exudes affection for the country’s craggy terrain and its people. The film is a tourist office’s, if not quite a rom-com lover’s, dream.Find Me FallingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Why Levan Akin Won’t Show His New Movie ‘Crossing’ in Georgia

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      The director Levan Akin is worried that his latest film, “Crossing,” will inflame tensions around L.G.B.T. visibility in the post-Soviet nation.When Levan Akin’s movie “And Then We Danced,” a romance between men in a Georgian folk-dance troupe, premiered at Cannes in 2019, it became a festival hit and later an Oscars submission. But when it screened in Georgia later that year, the movie’s combination of traditional Georgian culture and gay love sparked violent protests from conservative groups.Akin’s latest film, “Crossing,” which opens in U.S. theaters Friday, also deals with L.G.B.T. themes, though the filmmaker said recently that he had hoped its reception in Georgia would be smoother. Its plot, about a woman who travels from Georgia to Turkey to search for her estranged trans niece, seemed unlikely be perceived as an attack Georgian culture in the same way, he said.But this spring, when Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, erupted in weeks of protests against a law on foreign influence that critics said would hamper Georgia’s chances of joining the European Union, Akin decided against releasing the movie there in such a polarized climate.“There is such political turmoil,” Akin said, “and we don’t want the film to be used as fodder in the debate. I don’t want that to repeat.”In “Crossing,” Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired and unmarried history teacher, travels to Istanbul from the city of Batumi, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, searching for her niece Tekla, who has fled after her family rejected her. Lia is assisted in scouring the city’s narrow streets and packed rooming houses by Evrim (Deniz Dumanli), a trans rights activist and lawyer. They form an unlikely bond — but finding Tekla proves difficult.Lucas Kankava as Achi, and Mzia Arabuli at Lia in “Crossing.”via MUBIWe 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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      ‘Crumb Catcher’ Review: The Smother of Invention

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      An obnoxious inventor wreaks havoc on an upstate honeymoon in Chris Skotchdopole’s tepid psychological thriller.Chris Skotchdopole’s feature directorial debut sounds like it might be about a creature who eats babies from under their high chair. If only.Instead, it’s an aspirationally farcical home invasion thriller that never fully thrills, despite a game cast that does its darnedest to liven up an unfocused script — Skotchdopole wrote and edited his film, too — that’s fashioned from genre odds and ends.The film opens as Shane (Rigo Garay) and Leah (Ella Rae Peck) head to upstate New York to spend their honeymoon at a luxe home they’ve borrowed from Leah’s boss at the publishing house where Shane’s debut novel is to be released. As night falls, there’s a knock at the door and they let in John (John Speredakos), an obnoxious cater waiter from their wedding, and his con artist wife, Rose (Lorraine Farris).Together, the two uninvited grifters reveal a half-baked blackmail plot that centers on a sex video and an investment opportunity in John’s prized invention: a high-end table crumber, that tool fancy restaurants use to sweep between courses. A motormouth, John won’t take no for an answer, and his abrasive entrepreneurialism and irritating demeanor — far deadlier than any hatchet — set the film on a mildly violent path that hopscotches between “The Cable Guy,” “Shark Tank” and “Funny Games.”At the last minute, Skotchdopole throws in a bloody brawl and a shootout, but they aren’t enough to salvage a film that doesn’t quite know how to effectively manipulate issues of class and self-doubt so that his scary movie leaves a mark.Crumb CatcherNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Widow Clicquot’ Review: Champagne Mami

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      This muddled film, based on a true story, chronicles the origins of the French champagne house Veuve Clicquot.In the age of fizzy corporate biopics, “Widow Clicquot” — which chronicles the origins of the French champagne house Veuve Clicquot — has a couple of things going for it. Set in the 1800s around the Napoleonic Wars, the film, based on a true story, is boosted by the historical sweep and feminist credentials.Directed by Thomas Napper, it’s got all the trappings of a swoony epic à la the 2005 “Pride & Prejudice” (Joe Wright, that film’s director, is a producer on “Widow Clicquot”). But ambitious as it is in scope, the film is also somewhat charmless and dour, caught between wanting to deliver the passion audiences expect from a period romance and constructing a suspenseful underdog tale. It’s too bad it never finds a winning balance.Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot (Haley Bennett) is 26 when her husband, François (Tom Sturridge), the heir to a champagne business, dies. There are two timelines: One shows Barbe-Nicole, now considered one of the world’s first modern businesswomen, fending off her male skeptics as she takes command of the vineyard. Force majeure (wartime embargoes; spoiled shipments of bubbly) ruins her finances, but Barbe-Nicole perseveres, eventually creating an in-demand vintage and inventing a new process (the riddling table) that speeds up production.The second thread looks back to Barbe-Nicole’s marriage with François and his gradual descent into madness, which was exacerbated by his addiction to opium. The cinematographer Caroline Champetier (“Annette”) captures the lovebirds in warm, luminous colors, providing a sharp contrast with the gloomy interiors of the wartime narrative.Placing François at the emotional center of Barbe-Nicole’s mission, however, feels awkward and disingenuous, and the back-and-forth nature of the film kills the momentum. The brooding score, by Bryce Dessner, tells us that we’re in the realm of big drama, though I wish the film itself generated enough feelings to match.Widow ClicquotRated R. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Join or Die’ Review: Come Together

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      This documentary about the work of Robert Putnam, who wrote “Bowling Together,” argues that Americans can save democracy by becoming joiners.In the wake of the 2016 election, a new type of film briefly emerged: the liberal “how did we get here” documentary. It doled out insights, and visited with “ordinary” folks across the country to take the temperature of the political divide.“Join or Die,” directed by the siblings Rebecca Davis and Pete Davis, recalls those postelection films. Narrated by Pete and essentially framed as a plea to save the United States, it centers on the work of Robert Putnam, an academic who has dedicated his life to arguing that American civic engagement is in decline. Putnam articulated his thesis in “Bowling Alone,” first published as an article, and then in 2000 as a book.Putnam is Pete’s former professor, and the directors dedicate most of their running time to laying out the author’s queries, methods and findings while supporting them visually with montages and engaging collagelike animation. Throughout, the film unabashedly adopts Putnam’s doctrine: Become a joiner or democracy is doomed.Some of the film’s points feel simplistic, and questions linger. (I expect they would be answered by reading “Bowling Alone” rather than watching a movie about it.) The film also breaks up its Putnam biography by spending time with a handful of Americans who benefit from local communities — but these mini-profiles are too brief to resonate. Better to hew close to Putnam, whom the film regards with a deferential but congenial attitude.Join or DieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More