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      ‘Luzifer’ Review: Finding the Devil in Everything

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      A son must save his ailing mother in this disturbing, ambitious religious thriller.In Peter Brunner’s “Luzifer,” a mother and her adult son, Maria and Johannes, live isolated from society in a remote alpine cabin. Maria (Susanne Jensen) is a recovering alcoholic who turned to religion to escape her vices, and imparts the lessons of a pious existence onto Johannes (Franz Rogowski), who functions on the developmental level of a child. The two spend their days subsistence farming, or engaged in deep prayer and sacred rituals.When a developer arrives in the area to build a ski lift for tourists, the pastoral life of this family is threatened. Maria receives angry calls about selling her land, but when she refuses, the developers’ tactics become violently aggressive. She falls ill, ostensibly from the emotional turmoil, and Johannes must save her.
      “Luzifer” conjures palpable unease, rattling the nervous system. The cinematographer Peter Flinckenberg renders this world with an icy aura. The entire film feels enveloped in a cold fog, and at times, haunting images, like a mutilated corpse in a nearby lake, flash by. Tim Hecker’s spectral score pierces the drama throughout, immersing us in a disturbing, transfixing universe.This thriller is ambitious, contemplating the sinister and possessive grip of religious fanaticism; the dangers of capitalist greed; the reverberations of Oedipal desire; familial trauma and abuse, among other themes. But its intellectual aspiration produces an ideologically crowded film, where each philosophical meditation struggles to receive the attention and depth it deserves. Perhaps that is the point: Brunner seems to want to leave us with more questions than answers — or at least, compel us to search for the devil in everything.LuziferNot rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Mubi. More

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      Library of Congress Acquires Neil Simon Papers

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      The collection of approximately 7,700 items, donated by Simon’s widow, includes dozens of unfinished shows, including a screenplay written for Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg.As Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist at the Library of Congress, was digging through the playwright Neil Simon’s manuscripts and papers earlier this year, he made a surprising discovery.Simon, the most commercially successful American playwright of the 20th century, could also draw. Like, really draw.“They’re almost professional,” Horowitz said in a recent phone conversation of some of the pen-and-ink drawings and paintings he found tucked among the scripts. “There are two watercolors in particular that are quite beautiful landscapes.”More than a dozen notepads filled with drawings, cartoons and caricatures by Simon, who died in 2018, was just one of the surprising discoveries Horowitz made in the trove of approximately 7,700 of the playwright’s manuscripts and papers (and even eyeglasses), a collection that the library on Monday announced had been donated by Simon’s widow, the actress Elaine Joyce.An event on Monday at the library in Washington, which will stream live on its YouTube channel at 7 p.m., will include a conversation with the actors Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are starring in the Broadway revival of Simon’s 1968 comedy “Plaza Suite,” as well as remarks by Joyce.The collection includes hundreds of scripts, notes and outlines for Simon’s plays, including handwritten first drafts and multiple drafts of typescripts — often annotated — as well as handwritten letters to luminaries like August Wilson. There are more than a dozen scripts (sometimes many more) for some of his most celebrated shows, including “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “The Odd Couple” and “Lost in Yonkers,” Simon’s dysfunctional-family comedy that won a Tony Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991.Sometimes, Horowitz said, it took some detective work to identify a famous play, which existed in an early version under an alternate title. (An early script for “Lost in Yonkers” has the title “Louie the Gangster,” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” was once “The War of the Rosens.”)“Sometimes you’re not sure when you open the title and then you realize, ‘Oh, this became that,’” he said.The collection includes materials from the 25 screenplays Simon wrote, including “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “The Heartbreak Kid” and “The Goodbye Girl,” for which he won a Golden Globe in 1978. There are also several scripts for shows never completed or produced, such as one titled “The Merry Widows,” written for Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg, and a musical that uses the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, called “A Foggy Day.”“Every time you open a carton, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to be in here?’” Horowitz said.Beyond dozens of unknown works in progress — some comprise just a few scenes, while others have multiple drafts — the archive also includes Simon’s Pulitzer Prize, his special Tony Award and at least two Golden Globes, as well as photographs, programs, original posters and even baseballs signed by several Hall of Famers, among them Tommy Lasorda, Eddie Murray and Tony Gwynn. (Simon was a noted baseball fan.)Dozens of spiral notebooks are also packed not just with revisions and “miscellaneous attempts at plays,” as Simon wrote in one, but drafts of speeches and tributes Simon delivered. In one case, a script for a show called “202 and 204” is interrupted by handwritten letters to cast members of “Lost in Yonkers” for opening night — plus the set designer, lighting designer, even the casting director, Horowitz said.Horowitz said that, once the library finishes combing through the items and putting scripts in alphabetical order, it plans to develop a digital tool similar to the ones they have to search other collections of work by theater professionals like Simon’s close friends Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, with whom he collaborated on the musical “Sweet Charity.”He also hopes that not just researchers, but also producers, might dive into the archives — and that some of the unproduced works might be staged, and the unfinished ones perhaps completed.“It’s so frustrating,” he said, laughing. “I desperately want to know how they end.” More

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      ‘Funny Girl’ Review: Broadway Revival Shows Why It Took So Long

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      Beanie Feldstein stars as the comic Fanny Brice in the show’s return after almost 60 years.It must be a plot. Why else would it have taken nearly 60 years for “Funny Girl,” the hit 1964 musical about the comic Fanny Brice, to be revived on Broadway, when most Golden Age shows with even half a wit left in them — let alone such a fabulous score — have been revived unto exhaustion?And why does the mild version that finally made it, in a production starring Beanie Feldstein that opened Sunday at the August Wilson Theater, seem likely to prolong rather than break the spell?That I can answer in two words: Barbra Streisman.Or so Jerome Robbins, who “supervised” the original production, misspelled the name of an exciting young singer, then about 20, on a list of possible Fannys he drew up around 1962. That list, which also included such established stars as Judy Holliday, Eydie Gormé and Tammy Grimes, put Streisand, as she was properly but barely known, in third place.She was first on Jule Styne’s list, though. The show’s composer deliberately wrote the “toughest score” he could — rangy and histrionic in places, delicate and restrained in others — so “only Barbra could sing it.”And so it has been. As the show developed, coiling itself around Streisand’s offbeat, aggressive, once-in-a-lifetime talent — not to mention her Brice-like nose, which shows up repeatedly in Bob Merrill’s lyrics — the odds of a truly successful successor diminished. And without a stupendous Fanny to thrill and distract, the musical’s manifold faults become painfully evident.Feldstein with Kurt Csolak, left, and Justin Prescott in the show, directed by Michael Mayer.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo rip the bandage off quickly: Feldstein is not stupendous. She’s good. She’s funny enough in places, and immensely likable always, as was already evident from her performances in the movies “Booksmart” and “Lady Bird” and, on Broadway, in “Hello, Dolly!” You root for her to raise the roof, but she only bumps against it a little. Her voice, though solid and sweet and clear, is not well suited to the music, and you feel her working as hard as she can to power through the gap. But working hard at what should be naturally extraordinary is not in Fanny’s DNA.Still, you can’t blame Feldstein for the show’s problems; that would be like blaming the clown for the elephants. The main elephant is the book, written by Isobel Lennart and fiddled with for this production by Harvey Fierstein, to no avail. Tracing Brice’s rise from gawky waif to Ziegfeld star between 1910 and 1927, along with the corresponding decline of her romance with the “gorgeous” gambler Nick Arnstein (Ramin Karimloo), it bites off more than it can chew and then, at least in Michael Mayer’s production, repeatedly refuses to chew it.The highlights-only approach is a problem in most biographical musicals, exacerbated in “Funny Girl” by its unusually high quotient of fictionalization. Brice’s family was well off, not poor, but the rags-to-riches arc made the plot more appealing. When she met Arnstein, she was no innocent, as suggested by songs like “You Are Woman, I Am Man”; she’d been married already — and he still was. The famous Ziegfeld number in which she stuffs her wedding gown to appear pregnant (“His Love Makes Me Beautiful”) never happened, and if it had, she’d have been fired.Feldstein in “His Love Makes Me Beautiful,” a Ziegfeld number that Fanny plays up for laughs by stuffing her wedding gown to appear pregnant.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut those distortions at least make a good story. The bigger distortions — perhaps necessitated by the fact that Ray Stark, who produced the original, was Brice’s son-in-law — avoid one. Arnstein did not get involved in illegal activities because he hated being supported by Fanny; he was a crook and a jailbird who had been gladly sponging off her from the beginning. Yet Brice, knowing all that, still adored him, which makes a far more interesting tale than the bowdlerized one the show offers, of a duped woman finally and regretfully seeing the light.That Arnstein wasn’t remotely gorgeous, and Karimloo totally is, we can allow. Karimloo also sings beautifully and, to the extent the new book tries to beef up the role, he’s got the beef to do it.Unfortunately the effort is counterproductive. The song “Temporary Arrangement,” in which Nick expresses his mounting fury, has been retrieved from the Styne-Merrill trunk, where it was stashed after one performance in 1964 and should have remained; its intensity comes out of nowhere and rips at the show’s thin fabric. A bit later, Nick gets a version of the title song, which though shot for the 1968 film, starring Streisand and Omar Sharif, was cut for good cause.More happily, when Feldstein sings her own version of “Funny Girl” near the end of the show, it’s simple and touching — not overstretched like her merely loud renditions of the big three hits: “I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”Perhaps that’s because she’s finally just sitting down with no one else onstage. (Most of the musical staging, by Ellenore Scott, is hectic.) But if Fierstein’s stabs at strengthening the secondary characters pull focus from the central one, they do help the production in small ways. As Fanny’s mother, the naturally eccentric comic Jane Lynch brings us closest to the Brice spirit, suggesting in “Who Taught Her Everything She Knows?” that zany ambition is a heritable trait. And though Jared Grimes, as Fanny’s pal Eddie Ryan, is somewhat wasted in that song, he earlier makes a fine cameo of the production’s most notable dance, a stunning tap sequence choreographed by Ayodele Casel.Jared Grimes, center, with, foreground from left: Feldstein, Jane Lynch, Toni DiBuono, Amber Ardolino and Leslie Blake Walker.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat the sequence has little to do with the story is not a deal-breaker; in “Funny Girl,” it may even be an advantage. Nor are Fierstein’s anachronisms and vulgar jokes about sex with chorines and men in trench coats catastrophic. This is not a unified work like Styne’s 1959 hit, “Gypsy,” arguably just as fictional in its portrait of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee yet one of the indisputably great musicals. In that show, no song was allowed to serve less than double duty; everything pointed back to the plot. “Funny Girl” reaches for the same complexity but most often contents itself, except in its best songs, with mere entertainment.If the revival actually provided enough of that, it might prove irresistible. But Mayer’s staging, which at times seems to aim for the ghostly nostalgia of “Follies,” feels lumbering and underfunded, with cheap-looking sets (by David Zinn), a cast of 22 in place of the original 43 and wan new orchestrations for 14 players, based on the glorious originals by Ralph Burns for 25. (You’re going to sell me “People” with two violins?) Only the aptly gaudy costumes by Susan Hilferty suggest the Ziegfeldian overabundance that shows like “Funny Girl” were designed to purvey.This could all have been predicted; over the years, many revivals have been attempted and defeated because the thing a revival is trying to revive is not to be found in the property itself. It’s in the personality of the necessary star: someone not nice but inevitable, not diligent but explosive, not well-rounded but weird. They don’t grow them that way much, anymore, nor write new material for them. Paging Ms. Streisman!Funny GirlAt the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; funnygirlonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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      In ‘The Duke,’ Jim Broadbent Puts an Eccentric at the Center

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      The British actor has spent six decades seeking out carefully observed, often quirky characters. In his latest film, he’s also the lead.LONDON — In Room 45 of the National Gallery here, Jim Broadbent surveyed Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington. It was not his first encounter with the painting. But, “I haven’t seen him next to Napoleon before,” he said, nodding toward Vernet’s study of the French emperor hanging nearby.Broadbent’s latest film, “The Duke,” is based on the real-life theft of the portrait in 1961, and comes to theaters on Friday. The actor, 72, plays Kempton Bunton, who held the painting ransom in protest against what he saw as unfair taxes on ordinary people.If any of the hordes of tourists visiting the museum over the Easter holiday knew they were standing a few feet away from one of Britain’s great character actors, they didn’t let on. To many young people, Broadbent is Professor Slughorn, the affable Hogwarts potions master in the Harry Potter films. Their parents may have seen him portray Harold Zidler, the mustachioed owner of the Moulin Rouge, or Bridget Jones’s father.Broadbent, center, as Harold Zidler in “Moulin Rouge!”20th Century Fox, via Everett CollectionProfessor Slughorn (Broadbent) and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.The story of Bunton, a mischievous taxi driver, failed playwright and possible cat burglar from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has given Broadbent another eccentric character. “You couldn’t sell it as a piece of fiction,” Broadbent said earlier, in the gallery’s restaurant. “Stealing a picture from the National Gallery? It’s too far-fetched.”On the 50th anniversary of the heist, Bunton’s grandson, Christopher, 45, had the idea to tell his family’s story. Inspired after reading his grandfather’s plays, he drafted a script, he said in a recent video interview, and emailed 20 British production companies. He received six replies, including one from the producer Nicky Bentham. Richard Bean and Clive Coleman reshaped the script and Roger Michell (“Notting Hill”) signed on to direct, followed by Broadbent as the lead.“I don’t remember reading a script quite like it,” said Broadbent, remarking on its old-fashioned quality. With a whimsical sense of humor softening its satirical bite, it reminded him of the films produced by London’s Ealing Studios in the 1950s, like “The Lavender Hill Mob” or “The Ladykillers.” When Bunton is tried in court, he addresses the jury as though they were the audience at a stand-up show.Broadbent has been honing his own comic instincts since childhood. He grew up in Lincolnshire to artist parents, and attended a Quaker school, where he would impersonate his teachers with studied accuracy, realizing that if he got it right, people would really laugh. “I think that’s what drew me into character acting,” he said. The impressions weren’t just about mimicry, “It was actually observing and nailing essential characteristics.”His alert blue eyes and gawky 6-foot-1 frame lend themselves well to physical comedy, though his looks, he said, have facilitated a versatile career. “I was never going to be the regular sort of good-looking, handsome chap,” he said. “From the word go, since I wasn’t easily castable in any particular thing, I knew I had to cast my net very wide.”When he graduated from drama school at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1972, he wrote to 100 theater companies looking for work. He soon became a fixture on London’s repertory scene.When the filmmaker and theater director Mike Leigh met Broadbent over drinks in 1974, he found the actor “very, very cautious,” Leigh said in a recent phone interview. Leigh is known for his improvisational style of working, which Broadbent “wasn’t sure whether he could do,” Leigh said.Broadbent describes himself as “resistant to authority” but said he “never wanted, particularly, that resistance to define who I am.” Alex Ingram for The New York TimesBut the director saw an emotional intelligence, and cast Broadbent as a “very gentle, Northern, working-class guy” in “Ecstasy,” at the Hampstead Theater. Impressed by Broadbent’s rare sensitivity, and anticipating his range, Leigh cast him again in his next production, “Goose-Pimples,” where the actor “played the exact opposite, a really nasty fascist character.” In total, the pair have worked together seven times.In the 1980s, Broadbent was rarely offstage — except when he was on TV. Helen Mirren, who plays Dorothy, Bunton’s wife in “The Duke,” said in an email that it was impossible to remember when she first encountered her co-star’s work, “as he has been a part of our theater and screen landscape for so long, but it was probably in ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’ and ‘Blackadder,’ two iconic comedy TV programs in Britain.”Soon, Broadbent was craving new challenges, and a change of pace. “I felt very easy onstage, and hadn’t felt that on the bits of filming I’d been doing, and was so self-conscious in front of a lens being put up your nose,” he said, and so moved more toward films.Another collaboration with Leigh, the feature “Topsy-Turvy,” won him a prize at the 1999 Venice Film Festival, and was a hit in the United States. “That was the beginning of that: You become awardable,” Broadbent said. The awards led to work with Hollywood directors like Baz Luhrmann and Martin Scorsese.“There’s a whole bunch around that time, like ‘Moulin Rouge!’ — it’s completely out of my comfort zone, I certainly wouldn’t have cast myself in that role at all,” Broadbent said, “you know, singing and dancing.” But he won a BAFTA for his performance. And then in 2002 he won an Oscar for playing the literary critic John Bayley in “Iris,” a role “I tried to persuade Richard Eyre that I wasn’t right for,” Broadbent said. Bayley, he thought, was “a sort of cerebral academic, which is not me at all.”This Hollywood period gave Broadbent the freedom to be more selective when choosing his later projects. He described himself as “quite famously picky” and in 2002 politely declined to be named an officer of the Order of the British Empire, an honor awarded by the Queen. In person, he is modest and self-effacing — not one to draw attention to himself.When he isn’t acting in work that appeals to him, Broadbent turns to carving life-size puppets from wood to “find my creative outlet,” he said. “It’s another way of just inventing characters,” and the sculptures have a gnarled quality with haunted expressions.In “The Duke,” Broadbent (center) plays the mischievous taxi driver, failed playwright and possible cat burglar Kempton Bunton.Nick Wall/Sony Pictures ClassicsThe appeal of “The Duke” came partly from being directed by Michell again (the pair worked together on the 2013 film “Le Week-End”). Bunton’s story turned out to be Michell’s final project, and he died in September last year. “Roger had it all,” Broadbent said. “He was very sensitive to people, and their vulnerabilities and strengths.”Broadbent was also drawn to Bunton’s complexity. “He was a failed playwright, an activist, fairly unemployable for any extended period,” Broadbent said. According to Christopher Bunton, the actor made his grandfather “slightly more lovable” than he was in real life.Though Broadbent’s parents were conscientious objectors to World War II, the actor said he personally prefers to “keep a low profile.” He described himself as “resistant to authority” but said he “never wanted, particularly, that resistance to define who I am.” Bunton, by contrast, campaigned for what he believed in, like an exemption for retirees from Britain’s annual TV license fee. “He was prepared to stand up, and make his presence felt, and complain in a way that I have never done,” the actor said.Broadbent, Leigh said, “is a consummate character actor. He doesn’t play himself.” More

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      For Panah Panahi, Being the Son of an Iranian Auteur Wasn’t Entirely Helpful

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      He was long paralyzed by the prospect of being compared with Jafar Panahi. But it was his sister who spurred the young director to make his acclaimed new film.The Iranian director Panah Panahi is the son of the embattled auteur Jafar Panahi, who since 2010 has been banned by the Islamic theocracy from making films. But for the younger filmmaker, it was the heartache of being away from his only sibling — along with the collective disillusionment of his compatriots — that informed his debut film.The wondrously bittersweet “Hit the Road” tracks a family’s ordeal helping their elder son clandestinely leave Iran. Amid the underlying sorrow of the impending separation, as well as the country’s economic and social hardships, humor offers comfort, often thanks to the adorably impish younger son, played by an extraordinary child actor, Rayan Sarlak.Speaking via an interpreter on a video call from his home in Tehran, Panahi, 38, discussed his initial apprehension about following his acclaimed father, the change in their communication since the project, and the influence of the master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. Here are edited experts from the conversation.Hassan Madjooni, left, and Amin Simiar as father and son in Panahi’s “Hit the Road.”Kino LorberLike the young man in “Hit the Road,” have you considered leaving Iran?This is the general situation of all Iranians, and especially Iranian youth. We are stuck in complete despair. No matter how hard you try to be positive and go on fighting, we feel completely trapped. The only possible option is this dream, sometimes reality, of fleeing. Many of my friends have come to this conclusion. I have considered it, of course. The problem is that since cinema is my passion and only way of expression, I cannot make films elsewhere. I can only make films about people that I know intimately, people whose relationships I know.Being the son of Jafar Panahi, did you have any hesitation about becoming a filmmaker?This was my greatest preoccupation. It completely paralyzed me for years. I was worried about being compared to my father. It took a long time for me to overcome this block. But when you have struggles like this, you reach a point when either you withdraw, or you just decide to finally take the plunge. It was really thanks to my girlfriend that I was finally able to be more lighthearted about it, to see that the stakes were not that tragic. That’s how this film was born, finally.Did you ask your father for any feedback when writing the screenplay?For years I thought that becoming a filmmaker would be entering his world, and I wanted to resist mixing our identities as filmmakers, so I would never even share any film ideas with him. We don’t have the kind of relationship in which we talk about our views on things. We only talk about films. But once the script was completed and I was showing it to people and asking for advice, I realized: “Why don’t I meet with my father, if all these young filmmakers are coming to him for advice and he’s always very generous? Why am I depriving myself of his help?” A whole new side of our relationship opened thanks to this film.Rayan Sarlak as the younger son in “Hit the Road.”Kino LorberSounds like he’s a bit like the father in “Hit the Road,” who is darkly funny but has trouble expressing affection.Exactly. He recognized our relationship and the way we finally connected to each other.For years, the Iranian government has persecuted your father. How has this situation impacted your work?Once he was arrested, we became different people. Even if it was just the four of us at home, if we wanted to say something that was a bit critical about the regime, we would start whispering, thinking they might be listening to us. This paranoia really became part of our lives. The process of writing the script acted as a therapy session for me. For instance, the sequence in which they are driving and suddenly the mother thinks they are being followed was something I had written spontaneously without knowing why. But when I was revising my script, I realized this was because we live with this fear of being under surveillance.I understand that because of this, your sister, Solmaz Panahi, had to leave Iran. How did her departure shape the creation of “Hit the Road”?It was the emotional inspiration for the film. My father decided to let my sister [who had acted in a film of his and was arrested at one point] leave the country because they would use her to threaten him. We invited our friends to share the moment before she left. I remember very vividly we were all trying to put on happy faces and listen to music so that we didn’t bring her down, but occasionally I would see somebody going in a corner to cry. The very mixed feelings of this evening stayed with me and probably nourished the project.Pantea Panahiha and Simiar in the film. Cars figure into Iranian films because they’re relatively private spaces in the country, Panahi said.Kino LorberSome reviews note that you served as an assistant to the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami. How influential was he in your artistic development?I wasn’t an assistant on Kiarostami’s films. I was more of an assistant on my father’s films. But Kiarostami was a great figure in my life because when I was a kid, my father was his assistant, and they would travel a lot together scouting locations for films. During all these travels, I was always the kid sitting in the back listening to them, observing them. I learned a lot from Kiarostami because of this privileged relationship, but also because he is one of the major artists of our country. Many of Kiarostami’s films are among my favorite films. He’s a mentor for anyone in Iran who’s interested in filmmaking.Characters traveling by car is a trope in Kiarostami’s films, in your father’s work and in your debut. Why do you think this is so present in Iranian cinema?There are some restrictions that are very specific to our cinema. For instance, women in our films cannot be shown with their heads uncovered. But at home, women don’t have their head covered because they are with their family. As soon as you show a scene at home with a woman covered, it’s artificial. The intermediate space between the indoor scenes and the streets where you are repressed and watched is the car, in our lives but also in our films. When you’re in your car, you have a relatively private space in which you can listen to the music you want to, in which even if your scarf falls off, they won’t arrest you. This space has become like a second home for all of us Iranians, and so this reflects quite naturally in our films, too. More

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      How Nicolas Cage Parodies Himself in ‘Massive Talent’

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      Tom Gormican, the director of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” narrates a sequence featuring the star and Pedro Pascal.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Nicolas Cage gets his acting mojo back in this scene from the meta action comedy “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”Here, Cage, who plays the fictionalized version of himself named Nick Cage, is spending time with a superfan, Javi (Pedro Pascal). Javi has paid Nick to be his guest for his birthday. Reduced to taking such gigs instead of parts in major Hollywood movies, Nick has reached a low point in his career and has decided to give up acting. But Javi won’t allow that, creating a performance exercise with Nick that forces him to showcase his craft.Discussing the sequence, Gormican said that Pascal had a lot of weight on his shoulders. “He had to act like a bad actor as the character,” he said, “but not bad enough that it would yank you out of the scene.” For his part, Cage delved into his screen history to deliver dual levels of self-parody, including a tongue-in-cheek line from “Con Air.”At the scene’s end, the two characters leap from an 85-foot cliff, a moment that Gormican accomplished with two stunt performers who did the leap twice while five cameras were rolling to capture it.Read the “Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Polar Bear’ Review: On Thin Ice

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      This Disneynature documentary traces one female polar bear’s journey from cub to mother.Catherine Keener narrates and acts as a guiding ursine presence in “Polar Bear,” the latest Disneynature documentary to be released on Disney+, just in time for Earth Day. Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson, the film recounts a female polar bear’s journey from a cub traveling by her mother and brother’s side to being a mother of her own, navigating the ever-shrinking ice flows and seal population that the bears depend on for their survival.Apart from its flashback storytelling, “Polar Bear” is as straightforward as these family-oriented animal documentaries come, with Keener providing a one-woman personification of the polar bears’ lives. In one scene, as the protagonist wrestles with her brother while their mom hunts a seal, Keener quips, “I wanted to help her, but I was busy.” In another, when the starving family is forced to chow down on seaweed during the lean summer months, Keener voices her distaste of the marine algae like a kid being forced to eat spinach at the dinner table.This can get awkward: Early on, the film establishes male polar bears as a looming threat to its central family, then quickly backtracks when it’s time for our main character to find a mate. But to its credit, “Polar Bear” isn’t just playing in the snow; there’s a very conscious through-line of conservation, highlighting how climate change has negatively affected the Arctic’s ecosystem, and the film ends with a postscript encouraging donations to Polar Bears International.Polar BearRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More