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      ‘Whirlybird’ Review: Chasing a Story, From the Air

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      This documentary remembers the daring helicopter reporting of a couple in Los Angeles.According to “Whirlybird,” a documentary directed by Matt Yoka, the sprawling freeways of Los Angeles — and the difficulties they posed for reaching breaking-news events quickly — prompted Zoey Tur, along with Marika Gerard, her wife and partner in journalism at the time, to start reporting from a helicopter. They were stringers, Marika explains, and always needed new videos. Cars didn’t cut it, especially once they became parents. There is harrowing, if retrospectively charming, footage in which their young daughter, Katy Tur, now an MSNBC anchor, assists while she accompanies them on a pursuit.Once they took to the air, the pair gave a big boost to the news service they ran, and they could also report live. They flew over the intersection of Florence and Normandie filming the beating of the truck driver Reginald Denny, one of the earliest incidents in the 1992 riots. The documentary presents a lengthy account of how they found O.J. Simpson’s Ford Bronco. Marika says they were the first on the scene.Drawing on an amazing video stockpile from the 1980s and ’90s, “Whirlybird” is an editing feat. (The news clips and Marika consistently refer to Zoey by the name she was known by during the period recounted, before a gender transition.) The movie also has elements of a psychodrama: Building a family business around adrenaline turns out to be suboptimal for relationships and health. Zoey had a heart attack at 35. Despite the fires, floods and body count, “Whirlybird” plays like one big home movie.WhirlybirdNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Last Matinee’ Review: Killer Attractions

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      Set in a movie theater, this droll splatterfest is aimed straight at the jugular.On a rainy evening in Montevideo in 1993, a hulking figure enters a shabby movie theater where the day’s final showing of a horror feature is about to begin. The auditorium is almost empty — a young couple here, some boisterous teens there — and, in the projection booth, a distracted student (Luciana Grasso) is subbing for her ailing father. An encounter between the ominous figure and a young boy results in a dreamlike shot of multicolored candy balls bouncing down a staircase — an image that will later be repeated, only with far more disgusting spherical objects.“The Last Matinee” epitomizes a style I think of as slow horror — not in the sense of a foot-dragging narrative, but in the extreme patience and relish with which it attends to its abominations. The steady hand on this particular wheel belongs to the Uruguayan director Maxi Contenti, whose name hints at a placid temperament, yet whose tastes run to the gloriously gory. In one prime example, captured with amused precision by the cinematographer Benjamín Silva, the blood from a smoker’s sliced throat is upstaged by the milky haze of his final puff.Tipping his hat to the Italian thriller genre known as giallo, Contenti (who wrote the unfussy script with Manuel Facal) sets up a string of witty, highly specific slayings of audience members unaware they’re both voyeurs and prey. Underscoring this cheeky duality, the filmmakers cast Ricardo Islas — the real-life director of the 2011 feature playing in the theater — as the killer. He’s described in the press notes only as the Eye-Eater, which tells you everything you need to know; all I know is I may never look at a jar of pickles the same way again.The Last MatineeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In Spanish, with subtitles. In theaters. More

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      ‘John and the Hole’ Review: Growing Pains

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      A young boy becomes obsessed with experiencing adult freedoms in this icy first feature.“When do you stop being a kid?,” John (Charlie Shotwell), 13, asks his bemused mother (Jennifer Ehle) midway through Pascual Sisto’s “John and the Hole.” The question offers a key to this modern-day fable, one that John is dangerously fixated on answering.Chilly, enigmatic and more than a little spooky, “John and the Hole” patrols the porous border between child and adult with more style than depth. Smart and unreadable, John takes unidentified medication and robotically slams tennis balls at an unseen coach. An air of bland obliviousness permeates his affluent, perfectly nice family, including a sweet-natured older sister (Taissa Farmiga) and a father (Michael C. Hall) who buys him expensive gifts. So when he enacts a perilous plan to achieve an ersatz independence, his behavior is all the more shocking.Tautly written by Nicolás Giacobone (adapting his own short story), “John and the Hole” reveals the fragility of prosperity as a shield against deep dysfunction. As Paul Ozgur’s camera, accompanied by Caterina Barbieri’s eerily minimalist score, floats lazily through John’s spacious home and over the treetops of a neighboring wood, the movie’s sleekness becomes a shell that’s difficult to breach. Distressing digressions to a conversation between a young girl and her mother emphasize the movie’s surreality and remind us that, for some, freedom can be more terrifying than seductive.Constructed with an artfulness that suggests ideological complexity, the movie is finally too withholding and ambiguous to fully engage. The entire cast is excellent, yet there’s something repellent about John’s inscrutability: His affect is too flat, his motives too mysterious. When he urges his mother’s friend to stay and have dinner with him, I found myself whispering to her, “Please don’t!”John and the HoleRated R for swear words and sociopathic behavior. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Vivo’ Review: A Musical Tale That Goes Offbeat

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      The animated musical, about a kinkajou who goes on a journey to deliver a song, may have an uneven story, but the movie’s stellar songs, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, reflect the artist at his best.It’s all about the beat — in music and in “Vivo,” a new animated movie (streaming on Netflix) with an uneven story but dynamite songs from the “Hamilton” maestro himself, Lin-Manuel Miranda.In the film, from Sony Pictures Animation and directed by Kirk DeMicco, Vivo (Miranda), a musically talented kinkajou (a tropical mammal that looks like an adorable monkey-cat hybrid) busks the streets of Havana, Cuba, with his owner Andrés (Juan de Marcos). But after a tragedy, Vivo must journey to Florida to deliver a love song to his owner’s former musical partner and long-lost love, the famous Marta Sandoval (Gloria Estefan).A death, a journey, a multicultural cast of characters whose first language is music: “Vivo” feels like it’s in conversation with other recent animated movies with these themes, like “Coco” and “Soul.” The representation is essential, but there’s the risk of “brown characters finding grief and love through the beauty of music” becoming the new trope.Certainly “Vivo,” despite its exuberant beginning and heartfelt ending, struggles to offer more than odd turns and clichés in the rest of its story. The exacting Vivo is buddied up with the rambunctious purple-haired Gabi (Ynairaly Simo). Side characters — three off-brand Girl Scouts, two awkward spoonbills looking for love, a vicious python, Gabi’s exasperated mother — are meant to add humor and dramatic pitch but are too clumsily integrated to do much of either.So thank the Broadway gods for the film’s stellar music. Miranda’s songs incorporate his signature rapid-fire rapping, along with quick tempo changes and genre mash-ups. Gabi’s song, “My Own Drum,” with its grade-school Nicki Minaj-esque rap and auto-tune, is the jam I didn’t know I needed in my life.“Vivo” has cuteness to spare, even if the rest is hit or miss. But, we all know, the beat goes on.VivoRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Swan Song’ Review: Udo Kier, on His Own and Fabulous

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      In this drama from Todd Stephens, Kier plays an Ohio hairdresser who takes a long walk to do one last job — on a corpse.The German-born actor Udo Kier has one of those faces that can turn from angelic to demonic in an instant. His eyes are in part heavenly lapis lazuli, in part impenetrable quartz. He’s an invariably uncanny presence. Directors who have hired him more than once include Paul Morrissey, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Dario Argento, Lars von Trier, and S. Craig Zahler.These days, more often than not, he’s cast in character roles, rarely asked to carry a movie. For “Swan Song” though, he’s in almost every frame. One could say he’s a revelation, but longtime Udo partisans always knew he had this kind of performance in him. And as the title of this movie, written and directed by Todd Stephens, indicates, the role is age-appropriate for the 76 year old.Kier plays Pat, a former hairdresser now in a Sandusky, Ohio, nursing home. Back in his heyday, his flamboyance was mostly accepted in this straight community as a byproduct of his profession. In assisted living, he sneaks More cigarettes and obsessively folds paper napkins. Soon a lawyer arrives, asking him to do, as they say in crime movies, one last job: to style a dead ex-friend for her funeral.There’s some bad blood here: “Bury her with bad hair,” Pat responds, despite the promise of a $25,000 honorarium. But he soon rouses himself and takes a long walk into town. Memories and hallucinations accompany his painful, sentimental journey.Kier is unfailingly captivating in the film, which makes it all the more bothersome that the film itself doesn’t match him. A few plot inconsistencies seem like arbitrary land mines designed to trip Pat up, and the device of having certain characters speak wisdom from beyond the grave doesn’t land.Swan SongNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      A New Improv Theater Tries to Be the Anti-U.C.B. Is That a Trap, Too?

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      A diverse board of comics is trying to build an inclusive, accessible institution. But knowing what they don’t want to be may not be enough.When the Upright Citizens Brigade permanently closed its New York operations last year, the news hit Corin Wells like a death in the family. She moved to the city because of U.C.B., invested time and money, evolving from a student to a teacher and in the uncertain early months of the pandemic, the theater represented an anchor to the past and hope for the future. “When I got the email, I cried,” she said in a video call. “I didn’t have anything to go back to.”Then a sense of betrayal sank in, one shared by many improvisers, particularly since U.C.B. had held onto its theater in Los Angeles, where its founders are mostly based. “We were the bastard child,” Wells said. “Decisions were being made for us that did not serve us, almost like taxation without representation.”In recent years, U.C.B. had moved its popular Del Close Festival from New York to the West Coast, closed its East Village theater and exited its longtime space in Chelsea. But for Michael Hartney, the last artistic director of U.C.B. New York, the final straw came when the institution took out a Paycheck Protection Program loan worth hundreds of thousands of dollars before closing his theater. He felt “very gamed,” sparking an epiphany and a call to Wells to propose starting their own improv theater. She immediately agreed. They brought other U.C.B. veterans to form a board that met remotely every week last summer.“We wanted to reinvent what the improv theater looked like,” Wells said.The challenge: How do you hold onto the good parts of the Upright Citizens Brigade but avoid the flaws that made it so susceptible to collapse?Squirrel Comedy Theater is trying to reinvent how an improv institution is run.Gus Powell for The New York TimesOf all the art forms hurt during the pandemic, none was disrupted as much as improv comedy. Legacy institutions like Second City and iO in Chicago were sold after economic turmoil and a racial reckoning. In New York, the vanishing of U.C.B., a longtime juggernaut, left a vacuum that many are now competing to fill. It’s a moment of remarkable flux, turmoil and opportunity. Relative newcomers to New York like Asylum NYC (currently in U.C.B.’s old 26th Street home) and the Brooklyn Comedy Collective (which recently moved into a new space in Williamsburg), are both offering classes and putting on shows. And staples like the Pit and Magnet (which both scaled down in the pandemic) have started to reopen, producing shows and offering classes, virtually and in person.And what began with Hartney’s phone call is now the Squirrel Comedy Theater, the name a wry reference to the term for people who practice Scientology outside of the official organization. Even though the Squirrel was born in part from disenchantment, it still distinguishes itself by its faith in the aesthetic of the Upright Citizens Brigade. “The U.C.B. taught us a method of creating comedy that works,” Hartney said. “Those other theaters are amazing and valuable, but they don’t teach that. We feel like it has to keep going.”The Squirrel started as a residency in June at the Caveat, a theater on the Lower East Side. Hartney and his board, which includes the improvisers Lou Gonzalez, Patrick Keene, Maritza Montañez and Alex Song-Xia, are looking at real-estate options.The Squirrel has started a residency at the Caveat theater on the Lower East Side.Gus Powell for The New York TimesThe board members quickly came to a consensus on principles that would put them in contrast with their former home. Squirrel would be nonprofit (which until recently was very unusual for improv theaters), pay onstage talent (U.C.B. did not), and in an effort to remove barriers of entry, open classes to any student, regardless of level. Because it’s nonprofit, the Squirrel’s long-term sustainability may depend not just on ticket sales and class fees, but on its ability to raise money, too.Its mission statement emphasizes a commitment to diversity, inclusion and representation. U.C.B. also claimed to value inclusion, instituting a diversity scholarship, but that often didn’t translate to the stage. In June 2020, it came under considerable criticism for its diversity efforts, leading its founders to announce they were giving power to a “board of diverse individuals.”So how will Squirrel be different?Hartney and Wells say it starts with leadership. In contrast to the U.C.B.’s founders — Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh — this board includes no straight white men or women and are majority Black, Indigenous or people of color. Hartney described himself as “a de facto artistic director,” which he said he was very hesitant about because of the appearance of continuity, but added that because of his experience, others insisted. Whereas programming decisions at U.C.B. were made by himself alone, now the group decides.When asked if they would program a troupe like the Stepfathers, a popular, talent-rich company that ran at U.C.B. for many years with performers like Zach Woods and Chris Gethard, he shakes his head: “I’m not excited about an all-white weekend team.”Michael Hartney, in red, is the de facto artistic director, a job he held at U.C.B.Gus Powell for The New York TimesOn Sunday, the Squirrel did premiere a weekly show with a diverse cast, Raaaatscraps, that was hosted by two former members of the Stepfathers, Connor Ratliff and Shannon O’Neill, also veterans of the most famous U.C.B. show, Asssscat. Without mentioning the old theater, O’Neill went onstage and described the show as a “renamed, rebranded” version of Asssscat, and it relied on the same format: A monologue by a surprise guest (Janeane Garofalo this time) inspires a long-form improv.How the Squirrel navigates its relationship to the U.C.B. is going to be an evolving process that Wells said will depend to some degree on trial and error: “What’s going to sell tickets: An old U.C.B. team with a recognizable name or a new group of artists who will bring their friends? “It’s a hard balance,” she said, adding that they need to do both. “Always be testing.”But one guiding principal is a skepticism of permanence, of shows that run indefinitely, even of founders who stay too long. “We designed this to be taken over,” said Hartney, who doesn’t see himself at this job in 10 years. “We want the next people to address the changing needs of this community.”U.C.B. built its reputation in part as an incubator of stars like Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer and Donald Glover, and the Squirrel wants to be a competitive environment for ambitious comics as well as a warm, welcoming community. Hartney recognizes that there can be a tension. Of the board members, “I am probably the one most interested in hosting an ‘S.N.L.’ showcase,” he said.Wells is, too. It will surely help the Squirrel get attention from people in comedy that last week, Wells was named one of the new faces at Just For Laughs, the industry festival. It’s an irony not lost on her that building a theater in opposition to U.C.B. can tie you to it. “In a perfect world, we could separate ourselves,” she said, but in every conversation they’ve had, U.C.B. “has always been a part. I think to be able to fix a system that U.C.B. set in place, you kind of had to live in it.” More

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      After Uproar, Matt Damon Tries to Clarify Comments on Anti-Gay Slur

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      The actor was recently quoted as saying that he had decided to “retire” the word his daughter calls the “f-slur” after she objected to a joke he made.Facing a backlash after he was quoted saying he had recently decided to “retire” a homophobic slur, the actor Matt Damon said in a statement on Monday that “I do not use slurs of any kind.”The statement followed an interview published this week by The Sunday Times in which Mr. Damon recounted a conversation with his daughter during which he “made a joke” that moved her to write him an essay on the historical harm of what she calls “the ‘f-slur for a homosexual.’”“She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous,” Mr. Damon said, according to The Sunday Times, a British newspaper. “I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”In the statement, which was obtained by Variety, Mr. Damon said that he had never “called anyone” the word in his “personal life” and that he understood why his framing in the interview “led many to assume the worst.”He added that in the conversation with his daughter, he had recalled that as a child growing up in Boston he had heard the slur being used on the street “before I knew what it even referred to.”“I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003; she in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly,” Mr. Damon said in the statement. “To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice.”“This conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening,” he continued. “I do not use slurs of any kind.”In the Sunday Times interview, Mr. Damon seemed to suggest that the word had come up in a joke.“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” Mr. Damon said in the interview. “I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie “Stuck on You”!’”He did not specify in the interview which of his daughters the interaction happened with.Many on social media were unimpressed by Mr. Damon’s story, saying that he should have known better years — not months — ago. Some also wondered why Mr. Damon shared the story in the first place.Charlotte Clymer, a former Human Rights Campaign press secretary, said on Twitter that although she understood the sentiment of the story, “This is like 10+ years ago kinda stuff. And he knows better.”This is not the first time that Mr. Damon has courted controversy with comments about L.G.B.T.Q. people.In 2015, he told The Guardian that in acting, it was key that “people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play,” adding that he imagined “it must be really hard” for gay actors to be public about their sexuality. On The Ellen Show, Mr. Damon defended the remarks, saying that “actors are more effective when they’re a mystery.”In his statement on Monday, the actor acknowledged that “open hostility” against L.G.B.T.Q. people was not uncommon.“To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community,” he said. More

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      Zazie Beetz Grew Up With Shel Silverstein and Nina Simone

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      The “Atlanta” actress talks about her latest film, “Nine Days,” her desire to become a doula, her love affair with all things French, and how Debussy and Lianne La Havas got her through some difficult times.In “Nine Days,” Zazie Beetz plays Emma, an unborn soul in an otherworldly limbo interviewing to inhabit a human body on Earth, or else vanish into oblivion. But unlike the other candidates in Edson Oda’s supernatural drama, Emma is seemingly unconcerned — she shows up late for her first appointment — with winning over Will (Winston Duke), who will decide her fate. Instead, she approaches the exercises to test her fitness with a guilelessness that at first confounds him — but that ultimately impels him to confront his own tumultuous existence.“I think that Emma is in some way what we all would hope to be in our purest sense of childhood wonder,” Beetz, who is German American, said. “She’s also somebody who’s very present. She might not have the opportunity to live, but there is something that is a semblance of life right there with her right now.”Conversing with Beetz, who speaks with an almost wide-eyed enthusiasm, you get the feeling that her onscreen outlook may not be too far from her real one.Still, the woman has range. An Emmy nominee for the role of Van, who shares a daughter with Earn (Donald Glover), in FX’s “Atlanta,” she will soon star alongside Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba in Jeymes Samuel’s western “The Harder They Fall,” and Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock in David Leitch’s assassin thriller “Bullet Train.”Beetz was taking a break from shooting the new seasons of “Atlanta” — she revealed no plot details, other than mentioning a foray to Paris, a city that made her list of cultural essentials — when she called from the Minnesota family home of her fiancé, the actor David Rysdahl (who also appears in “Nine Days”). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy For a very long time after school, I would come home and listen to that every day as my wind-down. It was one of the pieces of music that guided me through my first experiences with anxiety and mood issues. And to this day I think of it as this meditation that guided me through one of my first emotionally very difficult times.2. Shel Silverstein As a child, I adored Shel Silverstein. I had many of his poetry books that I read over and over and over again. He had a very child-friendly playfulness in his work that also reflected very seriously on how we should engage with the world, a body of work that was philosophical and thoughtful and not condescending. It’s important to not condescend to children.3. “Fruits” by Shoichi Aoki My dad, when I was 11 or so, he gave me this book, just randomly came home with it one day. It’s photographs, one after another, of Japanese people of all ages dressed in Harajuku street fashion. It changed my point of view on how I could dress myself. My parents tell me from when I was very young, I was very clear that I wanted to clothe myself. And I’m still this way. I’ve always been like, “How do I create my own thing?” And “Fruits” — the colors and the combinations, and no rules around how you can express yourself — was positive and joyful and so unique. The next day, I came to school in this rainbow outfit. And then for years I was known as the Rainbow Girl.4. Doodling My entire life, all of my notebooks in school, constantly, constantly doodling, just an endless doodle of doodles. I couldn’t sit still without having a piece of paper and a pen with me. Even in note-taking, I was always very interested in making my notes look aesthetically pleasing. I think this is also partially a reason I’m still very analog. I can’t have an electronic planner.5. Nina Simone One of the first songs I consciously realized was hers that had a very profound impact on me was “Four Women.” I remember hearing that for the first time and I was dancing to it. It’s not just about music and it’s not just about sound. It is about truth. You feel her pain and her human self. That is also femininity and strength in womanhood and her unapologetic approach to her blackness and what she represented during her time. Of course, there are other artists that do a similar thing. But I don’t think Nina Simone makes it pretty, and that draws me in.6. “Zazie dans le Métro” My namesake is “Zazie dans le Métro,” which is a French book by Raymond Queneau, and [Louis Malle] made a movie of that. I grew up watching this movie. This film is about Paris relatively soon after World War II. The story is about a 10-year-old girl named Zazie who visits her uncle and her aunt in Paris for the weekend, and shenanigans ensue. Even though I would watch the German version, I always felt like I was her and this was me. I felt driven to be able to read my namesake and watch the film in its original language. So I was a French major in college and then I lived in Paris for a year.7. “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth” I am obsessed with midwifery, to the point where I looked into school. I wanted to be a doula. A few years ago, David gifted me for Christmas this book because I am so interested in this transition and in this complete surrender of power in a way. I think women are looking death squarely in the eye as you give birth to a little being who is still, in my point of view, attached to the universe. I’ve never given birth, so maybe I’m romanticizing it all, and it’s terrible. But I want to help women feel empowered on their journey.8. Knitting When I was 8, my mom taught me very basic stitches. For a long time I could knit in one style: rectangle. Then four years ago, I picked it up in a serious way. I devoured videos on YouTube and bought all these books and taught myself a craft and a trade. And now I’m like: “I’ve learned a skill. I can make things that are useful to people.” I’ve found great pride in that.9. Period Clothing One of my most transformative moments in acting is when I put the costume on. It informs the character so much. It changes how they move, it changes how they engage with the world and who they are. I am enamored with the Jane Austen world. One of my favorite movies is “Marie Antoinette” by Sofia Coppola. And a huge part of that is the costuming and the aesthetic of it all. On red carpets, my inspiration for hair is honestly Marie Antoinette, and in my head that’s what my hair looks like — though obviously not what it looks like in real life.10. Lianne La Havas I discovered her when I was in college, and I felt this immediate kinship. She’s around the same age as me. She is also mixed race and her hair was similar to mine. At the time, the natural hair movement in the U.S. was just getting its wings, and I identified so much with how she looked. Each album she comes out with, she’s grown up more, and I’ve grown up in this same way. I feel this quiet friend who I’m like, “I know you.” More