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      ‘Pray Away’ Review: Atoning for an Anti-Gay Stance

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      In this documentary, people who had promoted the idea that sexual orientation could be changed express their regrets.The Netflix documentary “Pray Away” profiles several people who, in the public sphere and in the context of Christianity-cloaked “conversion therapy,” peddled the idea that homosexuality could be changed, and who now regret the suffering they caused. It also features one activist, Jeffrey McCall, who identifies as previously transgender and still pushes the ideas the others believed in.The director Kristine Stolakis devotes much of the film to the past lives the members of the first group have disavowed. Yvette Cantu Schneider speaks of how she went to Washington, D.C., in the 1990s and became a savvy spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, the right-wing Christian organization. Michael Bussee, a founder of Exodus International, considered one of the major organizations that preached that sexual orientation could be changed, was both an early promoter and an early skeptic.The harms conversion therapy causes, and the tactics it uses, aren’t news at this point, and “Pray Away” is more interesting when it focuses on how most of its subjects eventually embraced gay and bisexual identities despite having formerly been so public in their homophobia. Some shifts weren’t long ago.Randy Thomas says that after seeing the protests that followed the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California (but was ultimately overturned), “a voice inside me said, ‘How could you do that to your own people?’” Julie Rodgers describes appearing on TV opposite conversion therapy survivors and feeling like she was “sitting on the wrong side of the circle.” In 2013, The New York Times quoted her as saying she would stay single rather than date women. The movie follows her as she prepares to marry her fiancée.Pray AwayRated PG-13. Discussions of sex-related matters. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Marsha Mason’s ‘New York Loft in a Hayfield’

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      After more than two decades in New Mexico, the actress and director is back on the East Coast, with new digs and a renewed focus on the theater.From the front, Marsha Mason’s house in Washington, Conn., is modest as can be — low slung, with small windows — no reason to stop and covetously gawk.“It looks very unassuming,” said the similarly unassuming Ms. Mason, 79, a four-time Oscar nominee (including for 1973’s “Cinderella Liberty” and 1977’s “The Goodbye Girl”), who plays Arlene on the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” now in production for its final season.But stroll around to the back, and it’s a different story altogether: an expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass framed in gray cedar, and a terrace with a seating and dining area that runs the width of the rectilinear structure, making the great outdoors feel part and parcel of the great indoors (and vice versa).Think of the house and the eight-acre setting as Ms. Mason’s Act Three.After more than two decades in Abiquiu, N.M., where she built a 7,000-square-foot house and an art barn, and started a business that specialized in organic medicinal herbs, Ms. Mason was eager to downsize and refocus her attention on theater work — in particular, directing.Marsha Mason, a four-time Oscar nominee and two-time Golden Globe winner, lives in a custom-built contemporary house in Washington, Conn. Much of the furniture in the house comes from her previous residences. Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesMarsha Mason, 79Occupation: Actor and directorSense of direction: “I feel that getting more serious as a theater director came out of building houses. It’s all about preproduction.”To be sure, she has lovely memories and no regrets.“When I moved to New Mexico, the movie business was changing. It was getting very youth-oriented, and roles weren’t coming as much as before,” she said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In some ways, I was having a little bit of an identity crisis. What Abiquiu was about was me maturing and becoming a full-blown human being, in that I had my show-business work and a lot of other, different work.“It was an interesting place during all those years,” she added. “Gene Hackman lived there while I was there. Jane Fonda lived there. And my friend Shirley MacLaine lived up a mountain across the road. She’d come down to my house for Christmas dinner on a golf cart dressed as Santa.”“I knew I wanted this house to have a great room,” she said.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIn 2014, Ms. Mason sold the 247-acre property and returned to the New York area, where she had typically owned or rented an apartment even after moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s with her second husband, the playwright Neil Simon. (The marriage ended in 1983.)This time, she decided to hang her hat in western Connecticut, where she had friends in the area. Briefly under consideration was a large house with many bedrooms, many nooks and many crannies. “Then I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to have something of that size again,’” Ms. Mason recalled. “But I asked the owners if they would sell the hayfield that was attached to the house, and they agreed.”It took a while to conceptualize this, the fourth home she would be building from scratch. (The others were in New Mexico and Los Angeles.) But Ms. Mason was clear on certain points long before the heavy machinery rolled in: She wanted it to be all on one floor and of manageable dimensions. She wanted solar panels (but didn’t want to see them), radiant heat, a great room, a “really nice bathroom” and a guest room on the opposite side of the house from her own quarters.“The design grew out of all that,” Ms. Mason said of the resulting 2,600-square-foot contemporary, which she is fond of characterizing as a “New York loft in a hayfield.”A photo of Ms. Mason and her friend Paul Newman hangs in the laundry room. The two bonded over their love of car-racing.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times“I find that, in general, it’s the details that set things apart — what kind of door you choose or what kind of sconce,” she said, offering the example of the bright red bookcase that on one side houses a television screen and, on the other, serves as gallery space for several paintings. “I knew I wanted to do certain things like that.”The house is a study in contrasts: plain exterior and — thanks to a trove of furniture and art from around the world and from various stages of her life and career — vibrant, eclectic interior. Here, a 19th-century Spanish chair; there, a sofa from Design Within Reach. Over there, a country French bureau.Twenty-five years ago, when Ms. Mason was being honored at a film festival in Egypt, she did some shopping and brought back a game table with parquetry inlay and mosaic chairs. Those made their way from New Mexico to Connecticut. A pair of spindle chairs with rush seats and leather cushions were bought for the Bel-Air house that she shared with Mr. Simon. After the couple split, she kept the chairs, which have since been outfitted with crushed-velvet pillows.The Tulip dining table and chairs were bought post-divorce when she moved into a co-op on Central Park West. They’re now in a corner keeping company with a vivid abstract and a painted wood sculpture of a mother and child that was part of the décor during her years with Mr. Simon.Three wood female figures from Thailand and a wooden head of a merry-faced king from one of Ms. Mason’s trips to India are displayed atop the Stûv fireplace that dominates the great room. A Ganesh statue sits sentry in the hall outside her bedroom.Ms. Mason bought the game table and chairs in Egypt 25 years ago, when she was being honored at a film festival.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesBehind the antique rosewood desk in the office are shelves with assorted trophies, among them two Golden Globes. And perhaps because distraction is always welcome when you’re folding towels and sheets, a wall in the laundry room is given over to framed award citations and photographs of Ms. Mason’s stepdaughters, of her with her father, and of her with Paul Newman. The two became fast friends through their shared passion for auto racing. “He eventually invited me to Lime Rock, here in Connecticut, his home track, and I drove one of his GTs,” she recalled.“The sink where I wash up after I do my gardening is here in the laundry room,” Ms. Mason said. “So I see these pictures every day.”Moving into the house necessitated winnowing, she said. Many things were jettisoned or left behind for the new owner in Abiquiu.“This place,” she added, “reflects my sense of aging and ‘what do you need?’ not ‘what do you want?’ It’s about a few nice pieces as opposed to a lot of nice pieces — the whole psyche of simplifying.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      Stream These Five International Films Now

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      This month’s picks include a deadpan Moroccan comedy, a Polish film about an influencer, a nail-biting Indian crime thriller and more.In the age of streaming, the earth is flat — screen-size, with travel to faraway destinations only a monthly subscription and a click away. We’ve journeyed through the world of options and chosen the best new international movies for you to watch.‘The Unknown Saint’Stream it on Netflix.In the prologue of Alaa Eddine Aljem’s charming comedy, a robber-on-the-run hides a bag of cash in the middle of the Moroccan desert right before he’s picked up by the cops. When he returns after some years in prison, he finds that there’s now a mausoleum dedicated to “The Unknown Saint” on top of his loot, and an entire village around it.Milking the quirks of small-town life and the strange workings of faith and superstition, “The Unknown Saint” embroils a cast of droll, deadpan characters in amusing high jinks. There’s the thief and his dolt of a sidekick, ironically nicknamed “the Brain”; a newly arrived doctor faced with a daily parade of petty hypochondriacs; and a barber who doubles as a D.I.Y. dentist.Undergirding the film’s playful satire is a sincere regard for the things that often fuel belief: survival, sustenance, hope. We soon learn that the villagers are migrants from a neighboring drought-stricken town, where a lone farmer still prays for rain, while the explosions from a nearby construction project signal fast-approaching change, though they’re sometimes mistaken for signs from God. Rich with such revelatory details, “The Unknown Saint” turns its slight, sketch-like premise into a deceptively profound parable.‘Sweat’Stream it on Mubi.That life on social media can be lonely and shallow is not a revelation, but in “Sweat,” a behind-the-screens glimpse into the life of a Polish fitness influencer, the director Magnus von Horn pushes past moralistic presumptions to get at the heady emotional rush of the digital realm. Right from the first scene, a bootcamp-style workout session at a mall, the camera plunges us deep into the weird intimacies of internet celebrity, staying close to Sylwia (Magdalena Kolesnik) as her trainees swarm around her with almost religious fervor.Like the hundreds of savvy self-marketers who have built empires on Instagram, Sylwia seemingly subsumes every aspect of her life — her meals, her shopping, her choice of taking the stairs instead of the elevator — into her brand. Is she conning her fans or herself? “Sweat” poses this not as a judgment but as a genuine existential question. A particularly candid post muddies things even further as fans eager to overshare accost Sylwia in public spaces, while a stalker parks himself outside her apartment.These developments take some dark turns, but “Sweat” is more a character study than a drama, following Sylwia closely as she goes through her daily routines. The camera remains trained on Kolesnik’s face, which masterfully conveys the currents of emotion that ripple under a stoic, camera-ready surface.‘Nayattu’Stream it on Netflix.“Nayattu” unfurls a labyrinthine cat-and-mouse chase amid the venal world of police and politicians in the South Indian state of Kerala. Three small-time cops are caught up in a road accident that results in the death of a man from a lower-caste community, and with the local elections just around the corner, the incumbent chief minister demands that the unlucky officers be made scapegoats. As they flee across the state, other police on their tail, the rot of systemic corruption slowly reveals its horrifying depths.Even with its barreling, twist-a-minute narrative, the film abounds in dense, scene-setting detail — such as the tug-of-war contest that opens the film. The thrilling sequence foreshadows the macho posturing and one-upmanship that color this world. And a later moment pithily drives home the chasm between the vested interests of the powers-that-be and the needs of the people they serve: When the cops-on-the-run suggest to a farmer involved in a raucous water dispute that the police might be of help, he replies: “The police will ask for documents, witnesses, evidence. All we need is some water.”‘Air Conditioner’Stream it on Mubi.This magical-realist mystery from Angola is resounding proof that to make truly inspired cinema, all you need is resourcefulness and a vision. A marvel of low-budget world-building, the film unfolds in a sweltering Luanda struck by a most unusual techno-disaster: Air-conditioners keep falling from buildings, causing injuries and worsening the already unbearable heat wave.On the radio, we hear politicians make grand statements about import bans and trade wars, while on the ground, the poorest of the poor are forced to bear the brunt of the problem. Two such folks, the security guard Matacedo and the maid Zezinha, are tasked with fixing a wealthy apartment owner’s air-conditioner. Their quest leads them into the ramshackle shop of an eccentric electrician — a kind of Luandan Doc Brown — whose crazy experiments seem to summon the ghosts and lost memories of Angola’s civil war.But don’t go into “Air Conditioner” expecting clear answers and resolutions. Set to a transcendent jazz score, the film moves unpredictably between fantasy and gritty reality, summoning historical trauma and contemporary malaise through a séance of melding moods, colors and sounds.‘Lina From Lima’Stream it on HBO Max.“Lina From Lima” is the rare film about immigrant labor that is as attuned to the vibrant inner lives of workers as it is to their hardships. Maria Paz González’s exuberant indie follows a Peruvian maid, Lina (Magaly Solier), who works for an affluent family in Chile. As Christmas approaches, Lina tries to scrape together enough money to buy presents for her teenage son, who seems to be drifting away from her in their WhatsApp and video calls. Lina burns with yearning — for her son, for home, for love, sometimes just for sex — and finds her escape in glamorous musical daydreams in which she pictures herself as a synchronized swimmer, a cabaret dancer, even Our Lady of Sorrows.Real life has its own adventures, too, mostly with the other immigrant workers Lina encounters at her hostel and at work, and sometimes invites for hookups on the plastic-covered beds of her employer’s swanky, in-construction house. These moments of breezy comedy don’t blunt the blow of Lina’s disappointments, as when she realizes she can’t afford her trip home for Christmas. Powered by Solier’s enthralling, openhearted performance, Lina emerges as a woman who contains multitudes even as she aches for more. More

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      From ‘Call My Agent!’ to Hollywood Career

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      The French series was a pandemic hit in the United States. And now its star, Camille Cottin, is emerging to find herself in demand.At some point during the pandemic, perhaps between the debut of “Ted Lasso” last August and “Bridgerton” in December, you may have happened upon Netflix’s French import “Call My Agent!” (“Dix Pour Cent” in French), a sweet yet absurd sendup of the global entertainment complex as seen through the lens of a Parisian talent agency where the agents are mostly good-hearted lovers of cinema at the beck and call of their highly demanding clients.If so, you were one of millions who discovered Camille Cottin, the French actress who played Andrea Martel, the hard-nosed striver with the piercing green eyes who is trying to keep her agency afloat while her personal life falls apart.The show was one of the few joys of the pandemic, one that prompted viewers to sample additional international content like “Lupin” and “Money Heist,” overcoming “the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles” that the “Parasite” director, Bong Joon Ho, referred to during his 2020 Golden Globes speech. The success of “Call My Agent!” has prompted spinoffs in Britain, Quebec and Turkey. And there is now talk of a stand-alone movie that will see Andrea Martel headed to New York.But Cottin, 42, whose background includes theater and sketch comedy, completely missed the phenomenon that “Call My Agent!” became in the United States while she was in lockdown in Paris with her husband and two young children. Turns out, she was just as miserable as the rest of us.“I was quite worried in the pandemic and I was a bit paralyzed,” Cottin said in English during a recent video call. “I wanted to be creative, but I wasn’t at all. Also I had the feeling like I’m never going to work again. I was scared.”“Now you tell me during the pandemic everybody watched ‘Call My Agent!’ I was miles away, imagining that I was buried alive,” she added with a grim laugh.Cottin as a talent rep in Paris in “Call My Agent!” with Grégory Montel, left, and Assad Bouab.Christophe Brachet/NetflixCottin was conducting this interview in a car on her way home from a costume fitting for the Cannes Film Festival. (No “Call My Agent!” fans, the fitting did not involve a fussy feathered gown like the one Juliette Binoche awkwardly donned at the end of Season 2.) Cottin’s new film “Stillwater,” in which she plays Virginie, a working actress and single mother who guides Matt Damon’s remorseful father through an ill-conceived journey in Marseilles, has just debuted to mostly positive reviews. Manohla Dargis called her “electric” in The New York Times. Vanity Fair called her performance “bright and winsome.”But this moment in the car was far less glamorous. Her 6-year-old daughter was fast asleep, head in mom’s lap. And when the car stopped, I could see the multitasking Cottin at work, scooping up her groggy child, a poof of pink taffeta in one arm, her video call still on in the other, a bright Parisian sky in the background. She paused for a moment to put her daughter to bed before continuing the conversation on the floor of her bathroom, a compromise she made with her child, who asked her not to stray too far. Then her husband, Benjamin, came home. “The father is here!” she exclaimed. “Virginie would have had to handle that situation alone.”After a small role in the 2016 “Allied,” starring Brad Pitt, “Stillwater” represents Cottin’s biggest introduction yet to American audiences. It just may be the role that lets her officially cross over from obscure French actress to global sensation. Later this year she will star opposite Lady Gaga and Adam Driver in Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci,” playing Paola Franchi, the girlfriend of Maurizio Gucci (Driver). And she’s set to reprise her role as Hélène, a high-ranking member of the assassin organization the Twelve, in BBC’s “Killing Eve.”The international community awakened to Cottin’s charms far before all of us in the United States were stuck at home. When “Call My Agent!” showed up on British television, Cottin discovered the show had found an audience across the English Channel. It was 2019, and she was attending a casting director festival in Kilkenny, Ireland, with her own French agent. Suddenly she was the center of attention.“They were like, ‘Oh could I make a selfie with you?,’ and I was like, ‘What? You’re the James Bond casting director,’” she said, laughing.That trip and another to London led to her casting in “Gucci” and to her meeting the producer of “Killing Eve.”Cottin said she was much less assured than her agent character: “If I have to make a choice, it will take me too long, always too long. And I will ask everybody his opinion about it.”Tania Franco Klein for The New York TimesYet “Call My Agent!” had no bearing on the “Stillwater” director Tom McCarthy’s decision to cast Cottin. He hadn’t yet seen the show when he met her. Rather, he hired her based on an audition that he said astonished him and his co-writers, Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré.“You kind of can’t keep your eyes off her when she is on the screen,” he said in a recent interview from France. “She’s a bit scattered, a bit all over the place. She’s funny, she’s self-deprecating, she’s empathetic. She’s tough. She’s straightforward. And I feel like after watching her for a year and a half in the edit room, every moment with her is very lived.”To Cottin, Virginie, who is open and nurturing and always looking for something to fix (like Damon’s Oklahoman roughneck), is a near facsimile of herself.“Virginie is the closest character I’ve had to play to me,” she said even though it’s one of the few roles she’s played in English. “We have the same energy. And until now, I’ve mostly been counted for women with a lot of more tension. A bit more in control.”There is a disarming ease to Cottin that is evident on initial introduction and belies the icy veneer of her “Call My Agent!” character. She doesn’t take herself too seriously — McCarthy calls her “goofy” — and you realize quickly how great her potential for comedy is. It’s a skill she exhibited in her most well-known French role, playing the lead in the prank TV show “Connasse,” which means “bitch” in her native tongue. Her exploits included scaling Kensington Palace in search of an introduction to Prince Harry.Cottin with Matt Damon and Lilou Siauvaud in “Stillwater.” She won the role on the strength of her audition. The director hadn’t seen “Call My Agent!”Jessica Forde/Focus FeaturesA “Call My Agent!” producer, Dominique Besnehard, described Cottin as “the pretty, biting, bold one” who in the role of Andrea “is very good at going from harshness to fragility.”To Cottin, it’s a character she both admires and understands, yet still finds at a remove from her own personality.“I have much less assurance than Andrea. She is more self-confident and strategic and good at making decisions,” she said. “If I have to make a choice, it will take me too long, always too long. And I will ask everybody his opinion about it.”Cottin is decidedly not uncertain about her career, but as an actress in her 40s she is more aware that the highs she’s experiencing today may not predict the highs she will see in her future.“Maybe if I was 20, I would think, ‘Oh my God, maybe I’m going to have an Oscar,’” she said, laughing, in a mocking American accent. “It’s never vertical. You can make a step, you can consider that you’ve been up and then suddenly, you can go down. Nothing is a straight line. I see these projects as trips, great trips. I can’t say, ‘Oh, now that I’ve done that I can tell you what’s coming next,’ because I don’t know. And it doesn’t mean that it will happen again.”Besnehard suggested she could have a career like Binoche, taking roles both in France and the United States. “I hope the American people would not monopolize her,” he said.McCarthy sees a much clearer trajectory.“I predict great things for Cami and not just because of our movie, which I think she’s sensational in but it’s just her time,” he said. “You can feel it when someone’s earned a moment in their career, and put in the work, and they’re ready to take control of it.” More

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      ‘The Green Knight’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      Take a Journey With Dev Patel in ‘The Green Knight’

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      The director David Lowery narrates a sequence from the film, featuring the actor and Erin Kellyman.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.The director David Lowery drew inspiration from the cosmos, Hammer horror films and an Ewoks TV movie to build this ethereal scene in “The Green Knight.”Dev Patel stars as Gawain in this adaptation of the 14th-century poem that sends its protagonist on a long, deadly quest. Gawain has several intriguing encounters along the way, including this one at a cottage, where he comes across a spirit named Winifred (Erin Kellyman).She implores him to help retrieve her head, which was decapitated and thrown into a spring. The scene, which was shot at night, has a haunting quality, and while Lowery and his crew shot in a real location in Ireland, he said he wanted the atmosphere to mimic the gothic, soundstage look of a horror film from the British company Hammer. And he said an underwater portion of the scene was inspired by the made-for-TV movie “Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure,” in which a character gets pulled into a magical pond. “That terrified me as a child,” he said, “and that’s directly what this is pulled from.”Read the “Green Knight” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      In ‘Mr. Corman,’ Joseph Gordon-Levitt Looks Inward and Asks, ‘What If?’

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      For his new Apple TV+ comedy series, Gordon-Levitt imagined what his life might have been like if he hadn’t been so lucky. “It’s probably the most me-ish thing I’ve ever made.”Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the first to admit he’s had it pretty good. He has had a wildly successful acting career on stages and screens spanning over three decades. He sings, dances, writes and directs, and he does a decent Nirvana cover. He has a wife and two kids and he hardly seems to age. More

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      ‘The Last Mercenary’ Review: Still Kicking

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      In this diverting action comedy, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a former secret agent forced back into action to save his estranged son.At 60, Jean-Claude Van Damme has racked up roughly as many features as birthdays. Noting this prolificness, the strangely compelling “JCVD” (2008) showed the Belgian bruiser ruminating on the options available to an aging action star.“The Last Mercenary (Le Dernier Mercenaire)” arrives on Netflix as one of those options, with Van Damme evincing an impish self-awareness about himself and the genre that nurtured him. As Richard Brumère, a famed secret service agent rumored to have once felled a rhino with his bare hands, the actor is in fine fettle. It might take him a bit longer to film a stunt, but, thanks to Thierry Arbogast’s skill with a camera, the seams in the action barely show.That’s as well, because Richard prefers hands and feet to guns. And when his estranged son (Samir Decazza) is falsely accused of arms trafficking, Richard must return to Paris after a 25-year absence to set things straight. This will demand multiple disguises and international locations (the movie was filmed mostly in Ukraine), a fresh batch of sidekicks and, probably, a great deal of stretching.A farcical fusion of terrorism, stolen identity and father-son healing, the plot (by the director, David Charhon, and Ismaël Sy Savané) is bloated and sentimental. The middle section droops and not all the performances pop. (Though Nassim Lyes lays it on with a shovel to play a “Scarface”-obsessed villain.) But the fight scenes have wit and Van Damme delivers his lines with just the right amount of weary good humor.“You’ve aged,” a former colleague (played by none other than Miou-Miou) observes, and it’s a testament to the film’s tone that the comment, far from being a burn, is almost a caress.The Last Mercenary (Le Dernier Mercenaire)Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More