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      Will Smith, Before the Slap

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWill Smith’s outburst at the Oscars last month derailed the broadcast, his coronation as best actor later that night and the public good-guy image he’d carefully cultivated for several decades.But while much ink has been spilled about the slap and its meaning, far less has been devoted to what the slap truly overshadowed: the breadth and depth of Smith’s acting career. Since the late 1980s, after he transitioned from full-time rapper to sometime television actor, Smith has been building an impressive résumé onscreen, one with creative highs that have often been overshadowed by the sheer scale of his A-list success.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Smith’s long journey from rapper to television star to bankable superhero icon, how his creative choices have paralleled his personal journey and some possible options for his next steps.Guest:Soraya Nadia McDonald, senior culture critic for AndscapeConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      ‘Charlotte’ Review: An Artist’s Brief Life

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      This animated biopic about the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon takes faithful inspiration from her life. What if it had taken more energy from her art?In the animated biopic “Charlotte,” about the German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, the film’s most eloquent moment may be its last. Concluding on an image of the French Riviera as the sounds of a Nazi roundup can be heard, the directors Éric Warin and Tahir Rana come closest to capturing Salomon’s brief life with its tensions between the creative and the nihilistic.The actress Keira Knightley voices Salomon, who became known posthumously for “Life? or Theatre?,” the vast series of autobiographical gouaches she painted while living in the South of France. In 1938, her parents sent her from Berlin to the American philanthropist Ottilie Moore’s estate in Villefranche-sur-Mer, where her maternal grandparents had relocated.“Life? or Theatre?” — now considered an early graphic novel — is made up of 769 paintings, which are thick, unsettling and expressionistic.Like her opus, the film covers Salomon’s youth in Berlin with her father, a physician, and stepmother, an opera singer; her romance with her stepmother’s voice coach, Alfred Wolfsohn (a very fine Mark Strong); her time at Berlin’s Academy of Arts; her relationship with her grandparents; and, yes, the rise of the Third Reich.But the demons closing in on her in France don’t only wear brown shirts. Jim Broadbent gives voice to her grandfather with a sternness that hints as his tyranny. It is her grandfather’s vindictive revelation of the family’s history of mental illness and suicides that spurs Salomon to create her masterwork.“Charlotte” takes faithful inspiration from the artist’s life, and understatedly renders the facts of her tragic death before the credits. On the day Salomon arrived at Auschwitz, she was killed. She was 26 years old, and pregnant.In the end, “Charlotte” is bereft of the spirit of the artist who made the uncanny “Life? or Theatre?” What an even better tribute the movie would have been had it also taken heated energy from Salomon’s art.CharlotteNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Petite Maman’ Review: Into the Woods

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      The French director Céline Sciamma’s enchanting new movie centers on a young girl who discovers a mysterious friend in a storybook forest.Céline Sciamma’s luminous “Petite Maman” is a once-upon-a-time tale with a twist. Set in present-day France, in an isolated hamlet made for solitude and imagination, it is a story about family ties, childhood reveries and unanswerable questions. It’s also a story about finding someone who, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle — the piece you knew existed but just needed you to find it — completes the picture. Put differently, it is a story about love.Soon after it opens, the 8-year-old Nelly — the extraordinary, self-possessed Joséphine Sanz — and her parents travel to pack up her grandmother’s house. Nelly’s mother grew up there, and like all childhood homes, this one has become a haunted house, though its rooms feel steeped in sadness rather than fear. It’s a domestic time capsule of a kind, a modest, Spartan, poignantly forsaken place with faded wallpaper. Nelly regards it all with sober curiosity. And, as she moves through it, you note the white sheets draped over the furniture and the medical hand-bar over the grandmother’s bed, a mournful reminder of past difficulties.With delicacy, minimal dialogue and lucid, harmoniously balanced images, Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) invites you into a world that is by turns ordinary and enigmatic. Part of the mystery is that it’s unclear what kind of story this is and where — with its charming child and restrained melancholy — it could be headed. Sciamma doesn’t tip her hand. Instead, she asks you to watch and listen, and to cozy up with Nelly. By withholding information, Sciamma is also encouraging you to look at this place and story with the open eyes of a child, which means putting aside your expectations of how movies work.Like many fairy tales, this one really begins in the woods. As Nelly’s mother (Nina Meurisse) and father (Stéphane Varupenne) start packing up the house, Nelly explores the surrounding area, with its bare trees and quiet. As a child, her mother built what she calls a hut in the forest and now Nelly would like to do the same. So, she wanders the pretty woodland, scuffs its carpet of vividly colored leaves and uses an acorn to fashion a whistle. When she blows on it, the wind gently picks up, as if answering her call. Later that night, nestled in her mother’s childhood bed, Nelly and her mom whisper as shadows gather on the walls.The next day, Nelly returns to the woods and sees a little girl in a bright red sweater dragging a long, heavy branch. The stranger hails Nelly, waving and beckoning to her: “Can you help me?” Nelly does. With silent, serious purposefulness and to the sounds of distant, rumbling thunder, the girls carry the branch, which now draws a straight line between them. The other girl leads them to a hut that she has already begun building, a ramshackle, teepee-like structure fashioned from tree brush and twine. Nelly scrutinizes the other girl and then, without a word, picks up a piece of wood and adds it to the makeshift shelter.As she does throughout “Petite Maman,” Sciamma guides you to observe this scene with the same focus as Nelly. As it discreetly keeps step with the girls, the camera remains tethered to Nelly’s point of view, so you see what she sees. This creates a bond between you, and it raises prickles of tension: You’re concerned about Nelly, and you’re wondering, too, about this stranger. But you’re also watching Nelly make smart decisions as she cautiously sizes up the other girl, who introduces herself as Marion (Gabrielle Sanz, Joséphine’s sister). At one point, you notice that the children look remarkably alike and that they are dressed in similar colors.As these two little strangers become friends, the story crystallizes. It’s wild! It’s also delightful and weird, and eventually very moving. Yet even as she slides the strange pieces into place and the movie seems to shift into recognizable genre terrain, Sciamma keeps a lid on the filmmaking, retaining the steady calm that’s characterized it from the start. There’s no shouting, no shrieking, from the wind or from the children. The emotions aren’t amped and there are no loud jolts (only revelations), an absence of heightened inflection that keeps your attention on the world — makeshift, welcoming, private — that the girls create together.The exact quality of that world remains mysterious, even as Sciamma normalizes it. This feels right. “Petite Maman” is a coming-of-age story, but not every moment needs explanation. Some things, like love, Sciamma seems to say, are ours to discover, nurture, share or not, which feels like an ethic and an auteurist (and feminist) statement of intent. Like Sciamma’s other movies, this one concerns women and girls, their rituals, bonds, ways of becoming and being, how they are seen and how they hold their own. In the past, Sciamma’s focus has drifted into the socially conscious; at other times, it has simply drifted. But there isn’t a false note or superfluous image in “Petite Maman,” which runs a just-right 72 minutes. It’s perfect.Petite MamanRated PG for an offscreen death. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘¿Y Cómo Es Él?’ Review: A Fraught Buddy Comedy

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      A jealous man tries to exact revenge on his wife’s lover, but ends up taking a road trip with him instead.“¿Y Cómo Es Él?”, a Mexican love-triangle comedy by the Argentine director Ariel Winograd, translates to “And What’s He Like?”“He,” we find out immediately, is Jero (Omar Chaparro), a taxi driver and businessman, who is the lover of Marcia (Zuria Vega), who is married to Tomás (Mauricio Ochmann).The film opens with Tomás, our edgy protagonist, scrutinizing pictures of a dashing hunk while on a flight to Puerto Vallarta.Tómas, unemployed, jealous and insecure, tells Marcia he’s traveling for a job interview. He’s actually on his way to kick Jero’s butt — or tase him, or blow him to pieces with a machine gun. These violent fantasies play out in comic bursts, but when faced with the opportunity to exact revenge, Tómas gets cold feet. Then, he accidentally stabs himself, passes out, and wakes up in his nemesis’s back seat.It turns out that Jero is a pretty nice guy — he even offers Tomás a ride back to Mexico City.Cue the fraught male bonding, which (predictably for this kind of straight guy buddy comedy) includes a trip to a brothel and run-ins with thuggish debt collectors.The film, a remake of a 2007 Korean film bluntly translated as “Driving With My Wife’s Lover,” will seem retrograde to contemporary viewers. In addition to homophobic quips, the premise relies on the idea that an adulterous wife is the greatest offense to a man’s dignity. As such, it caters to an older, more traditional Latino audience who might still be tickled by such a conceit — and for whom the cast, which includes Chaparro (a prolific comedian and singer), along with several other popular Mexican personalities, will be a draw.Though Winograd questions the film’s gender biases in the conclusion, he does so unconvincingly. At a quick 95 minutes, at least the whole thing zips by, however brainlessly.¿Y Cómo Es Él?Rated PG-13. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Saturday Fiction’ Review: Theater of History

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      In this period drama set in Shanghai in December 1941, the resplendent Gong Li conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none.The resplendent Gong Li anchors a mysterious — and often mystifying — tale of intrigue in “Saturday Fiction,” the latest feature by the Chinese director Lou Ye. As in films like “Summer Palace” and “Purple Butterfly,” Lou sets a Hitchcockian thriller of identity and passion on the cusp of major historical events, though in “Saturday Fiction,” personal and political dramas collide in particularly combustible ways.The film takes place in December 1941, on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, in a Shanghai occupied by Japan and crisscrossed by Allied and Axis spies. Gong plays a famed actress, Jean Yu, who has just returned to the city after an absence, ostensibly to star in a play directed by her lover, Tan Na (Mark Chao).But Jean’s true reasons remain elusive, mired in a web of allegiances involving, among others, her ex-husband, who has been kidnapped by Japanese forces, and a fatherly French diplomat who tasks her with an espionage mission. Lou further obscures Jean’s motives with some clever, metafictional sleight of hand: Often, the film segues deceptively between onstage rehearsals of Tan’s play and Jean’s offstage encounters.Visually, the effect is one of elegant chaos. The cinematographer Zeng Jian captures a rain-drenched, period-dressed Shanghai in soft black-and-white, with a restless hand-held camera that lends poetry even to high-octane shootouts. On the level of narrative, however, the film tips over into plain old confusion, as Jean’s increasingly illogical actions contribute to one of history’s great disasters.Yet star power is a logic unto itself, and Lou has ensured a limitless supply by casting Gong as an actress-spy. She conveys depths of pain and longing even when the script offers none, seducing us as effortlessly as Jean seduces her enemies.Saturday FictionNot rated. In Mandarin, English, Japanese and French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Duke’ Review: Suspect’s 61

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      This film from the director Roger Michell has a compelling art-thief protagonist, but is weighed down by soggy family drama.A Robin Hood figure polarizes England in “The Duke,” an ambling, sentimental account of the 1961 heist of Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. The police assume that the thief is a criminal mastermind. The public imagines the villain from Dr. No (1963), who displayed the purloined painting in his lair. But the man standing trial is a more unusual suspect: a 61-year-old cabdriver, Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), who claims that he swiped the art over frustration that the British government would rather spend money lionizing the dead than lifting up its working class. His ransom notes demand a charitable donation. (The real painting was returned in 1965; Bunton turned himself in.)An anti-establishment autodidact with a quick stride and a fast mouth — “I feel about 23,” he says, and for a moment Broadbent’s gleaming eyes make you believe it — Bunton is a rabble-rouser and a compelling hero for this film by the director Roger Michell, who died in September after a career of humanist charmers including “Notting Hill” and “Venus.” It is a pity that Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s script mires Bunton in a soggy family drama about an unresolved death; an elder son (Jack Bandeira) who flirts with crime; and a wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren, so sheepish as to be near invisible), who is humiliated that her husband prefers prison to a stable home. These rather generic subplots diffuse the movie’s vibrant blue-collar crusade, which gets a boost from a tizzy jazz score. Thankfully, a barrister Jeremy Hutchinson (Matthew Goode) steps in to reward Bunton’s principles with a rousing defense. Though the climatic court battle feels a tad too inspirational, even Goya might admit that’s just what a flattering portrait does.The DukeRated R for swearing and a brief sexual scene. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Marvelous and the Black Hole’ Review: Finding Magic Amid Rage

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      A teenager reeling from the loss of her mother discovers an unlikely companion in an older magician.Sammy Ko (Miya Cech), the protagonist of this dark coming-of-age comedy, ticks all the boxes of adolescent angst. She smokes and acts out at school; secretly gives herself tattoos with a rudimentary rig in her bedroom; and lashes out at her father, Angus (Leonardo Nam), for dating so soon after the death of her mother.When Angus reaches his wit’s end with Sammy, he gives her an ultimatum: commit to a community-college class or go to a camp for troubled kids. During a smoke break in the college bathroom, Sammy meets Margot (Rhea Perlman), a whimsical magician who turns Sammy into her reluctant apprentice.That’s the setup for “Marvelous and the Black Hole,” the writer-director Kate Tsang’s debut feature, which combines folklore, sketch art and sleight-of-hand magic to explore grief, family ties and how to channel rage.Cech is believable as a troubled teenager, and it’s refreshing to see an Asian American girl as a protagonist, but the film has a limited emotional range, jumping among several plot elements without fully fleshing them out. Missing are scenes that show how this death affected Sammy’s relationship with her sister, Patricia, or what the family’s dynamic was before the tragedy. The film focuses instead on Sammy’s all-consuming rage and self-destruction, making it feel one-note, with too few moments of redemption or connection.Marvelous and the Black HoleNot rated. Running time 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Sexual Drive’ Review: Best Served Hot and Heavy

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      Natto, mapo tofu and fatty ramen become objects of titillation in this intriguing Japanese triptych that centers on sex without ever depicting it.A sexless husband queries his wife’s lover over a package of natto. A nervous driver on her way to buy mapo sauce finds her panic attack transform into a paroxysm of passion when she collides with an old schoolmate. And a married man obeys enigmatic instructions to rescue his paramour after she’s kidnapped from a ramen shop.These three encounters form the wry Japanese triptych “Sexual Drive,” directed by Kota Yoshida. Consistently intriguing and occasionally hilarious, the movie does not depict sex itself. Instead, the characters eat food items that become objects of titillation, lust and pleasure: the sticky goo around soybeans, chili oil sizzling in a wok.A man named Kurita (Tateto Serizawa) appears in each vignette as a mysterious raconteur spinning tales of lechery that — however disturbing and perhaps untrue — succeed in rousing his counterparts to their own desires. In two of the stories, Kurita is in conversation with men, and because of this, the movie lends disproportionate attention to the male libido. One can only take so many instances of male characters bragging about a sexual conquest or groaning in shame over being cuckolded.But in the best of the three parts, called “Mapo Tofu,” a woman takes center stage. Driving to the grocery store, the anxious Akane (Honami Sato) bumps into Kurita, whom she used to bully in elementary school, and his memories of that time reawaken her taste for spice. Running a brief 70 minutes, “Sexual Drive” might have benefited from more women owning their appetites, especially since its erotica is such a fascinating new flavor.Sexual DriveNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More