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      ‘Space Jam,’ My Dad and Me

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      A writer adored the basketball-Looney Tunes mash-up as a boy. Watching the movie again after his father died, he felt the movie resonate in a surprisingly deeper way.When I was 10, I thought the coolest person in the world was Michael Jordan. The second-coolest person in the world was my dad. He played in an amateur men’s soccer league; I preferred basketball, so MJ got the edge. Like a lot of kids who grew up in the ’90s, I revered the seemingly unbeatable Chicago Bulls, and I was devastated when, on Oct. 6, 1993, Jordan announced that he would be retiring from the NBA to play minor-league baseball with the Birmingham Barons. I liked baseball even less than I liked soccer.Jordan’s triumphant return to basketball in March 1995 was a moment of intense relief and exhilaration for me; and when the Bulls won their fourth championship, in the summer of 1996, my enthusiasm for Jordan reached a fever pitch. So when “Space Jam” debuted that autumn, I could not have been more excited. Michael Jordan teaming up with Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes in a feature film about a high-stakes basketball game? It was as if they had scanned my brain and made a movie of my innermost fantasies. I begged my dad to take me to see it, and the minute it was over, I begged him to take me to see it again.He was not especially impressed with “Space Jam,” but it was everything I dreamed it would be. First, it was hilarious. The Nerdlucks, a cabal of short, wormlike aliens who smack one another around like the Three Stooges, had me in stitches; my friends and I impersonated their screechy, helium-pitched voices for months, to gales of approving schoolyard laughter. Jordan’s bumbling, nebbish assistant Stan — played by Wayne Knight, whom I knew as the guy who gets smeared by a dilophosaurus in “Jurassic Park,” another childhood favorite — was hysterically funny. And of course the Looney Tunes cracked me up. When the Tasmanian Devil spins around a basketball court and cleans it single-handedly in a matter of seconds, declaring it “lemony fresh” — that seemed like the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life.Jordan with the Looney Tunes in 1996 — a young basketball fan’s dream lineup.Warner Bros.What I loved most about “Space Jam” was the candid glimpse it seemed to offer of Jordan’s life off the court. I had seen him in action, and in interviews as well as in commercials. But “Space Jam” showed me a family side of Jordan. Here was the star talking to his wife. Here was Jordan watching TV with his kids. And here was a flashback of a young Jordan, shooting hoops in the backyard, talking about his hopes and aspirations with his own dad.His father, played by Thom Barry, has only a small role in “Space Jam”: He appears in the first scene of the movie, watching his son drop bucket after bucket in the moonlight. “Do you think if I get good enough, I can go to college?” asks the young Michael, played by Brandon Hammond. “You get good enough, you can do anything you want to,” the elder Jordan replies. Mike starts rattling off his dreams: “I want to go to North Carolina … I want to play on the championship team … then I want to play in the NBA.”His dad takes the ball and says it’s time for bed. But Michael has one more dream to mention. “Once I’ve done all that,” Michael says, beaming up at his father, “I want to play baseball — just like you, Dad.”In April 2020, as the coronavirus was sending most of the world into lockdown, my dad died suddenly in his home late one night of a heart attack. He was 58. He’d been in immaculate health. We were extremely close, and spoke or texted every day. I was shattered.Around the same time, ESPN began to air “The Last Dance,” the network’s 10-part documentary series about Jordan and the ’90s Chicago Bulls. I watched the show in the weeks following my dad’s death as a distraction from my grief. But I was not prepared for the revelations of the seventh episode, which deals with the death of Jordan’s father, James R. Jordan, at the hands of carjackers in 1993. I was struck by certain similarities: how close Michael had been to his father, how much he relied on him as a mentor and a friend. James Jordan died a week shy of 57.A young Jordan (Brandon Hammond) and his father (Thom Barry) came to mean a great deal years later.Warner Bros.After that episode, I put on “Space Jam.” Again, I was looking for distraction; again, I was floored by grief. That opening scene with young Michael and his father, such a beautiful testament to a parent’s influence, now seemed completely overwhelming. Three years after his death, Jordan Sr. had been resurrected onscreen for a heartfelt tribute. And what’s more, Jordan had invoked his father as the reason he was pursuing baseball — a career move most people had dismissed as ridiculous.When Jordan announced his retirement, back in 1993, he told the gathered reporters that, although he was sad to leave the sport behind, he was glad his father had been alive to see his last game of basketball. The same line appears in “Space Jam,” in a restaging of the retirement news conference, and in light of the earlier scene with Jordan’s dad, the moment has a special emphasis.At the time, pundits could not fathom why someone as gifted as Jordan would give up his place at the top of one sport just to start at the bottom in an entirely different one. Jordan used “Space Jam” in part to explain his decision, to explain that while it looked as if he was following a whim, he was actually following his father. In light of my own loss, it seemed to me that Jordan was pouring his heart out. Watching last year — nearly 25 years later — I was profoundly moved.“Space Jam” was not really as candid about Michael Jordan’s home life as I believed when I was 10 and as “The Last Dance” made clear. Understandably, “Space Jam” did not touch on Jordan’s sometimes reckless gambling, nor on his embattled relationship with the media nor his weariness with the demands of fame. But the movie does contain some sincere and deep-seated wisdom about loss, which I was only able to see once I was in mourning myself.It’s about looking up to somebody and wanting to follow in his footsteps. To do right by him. To reflect back the love that person selflessly showed you. And although it might seem strange to say of a movie about Michael Jordan playing basketball with Bugs Bunny, seeing that truth in “Space Jam” after all these years helped me deal with the pain of what I’d lost. More

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      The Riddle of Riley Keough

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      The “Zola” actress has a knack for inhabiting working-class characters who feel real, even though her own family history is as outrageous as it gets.Most actresses play to you. When they’re thinking or feeling something, you know exactly what that thing is. But Riley Keough is a little more elusive.Whether she’s weighing matters of money and sex in “The Girlfriend Experience” or staring down a romantic rival in “American Honey,” Keough, 32, certainly looks like a star — it helps that she inherited ice-blue eyes and a chin curved like a question mark from her grandfather Elvis Presley — even though her screen presence remains unusually impassive and mysterious. What are Keough’s characters thinking? You can never quite tell.This isn’t a bad thing. Instead, it’s the primary source of her allure: That gap between what you don’t know but want to find out is what’s so beguiling. And then, as you scan Keough’s face for flickers of intention and emotion, you realize you’re leaning in.“She’s one of those actors who so effortlessly lands in the feet of her character that it almost seems like it isn’t acting,” said the director Janicza Bravo, who pursued Keough to play Stefani, an exotic dancer with murky intentions, for her raucous new comedy “Zola.” You’re compelled by Stefani even when you don’t fully trust her, and Bravo knew Keough could play that ambiguity to the hilt.“That morsel, that taste, that juice, that flavor — I wanted that,” Bravo said.In late 2018, the “Zola” script was sent to Keough, and a meeting was set at the starry, storied Chateau Marmont, in Hollywood. Bravo got there first and while she waited, a woman came by her table, said hello and began to hover. The Chateau boasted a high level of celebrity density in its prepandemic heyday but every so often, a civilian still got through. And this one wasn’t leaving.Though Bravo nodded back, she was busy scanning the room for her would-be star. But this normie, this noncelebrity, this interloper kept standing by her table like she expected something.And then she said, “I’m Riley.”Bravo apologized profusely to Keough that day, and now she laughs about it. “I had this idea of what I thought she was going to be like — I believed her to be a larger-than-life person — and what landed in front of me was someone with a good deal of ease,” Bravo said. “I’m maybe dancing around it, but I didn’t expect her to be normal.”Me neither. When I met Keough in mid-June at the home of a friend in Los Angeles, I was struck by her calm, undisturbed energy — something I’ve never sensed in even the most wellness-obsessed stars. With Keough, there is no eagerness to please, no need to impress or to have all eyes on her. You feel that you’re simply talking to and observing a normal person.So how does she hold on to that lack of self-consciousness in Hollywood? “I have an ability that’s really hard in this industry to be kind of like, ‘Meh,’” Keough told me, shrugging. “I don’t take things too seriously.”“Zola,” based on a notorious Twitter thread, is about people who use social media as an advertisement, but Keough prefers using it to puncture her own celebrity: Though she has starred in a few films for the hot studio A24, Keough hopped on her Instagram last year to breezily rattle off all the A24 movies she failed to book, including “Uncut Gems,” “Spring Breakers” and “The Spectacular Now.”Directors of those films messaged Keough to offer apologies, but the rejections hadn’t bothered her much to begin with. “I don’t care if I fail,” she said. “I have this attitude of, ‘Well, then I’ll just do better.’” And besides, there were bigger quandaries to spend that energy on.“I’ve lived my whole life in a sort of existential crisis,” she told me matter-of-factly, tucking strands of auburn hair behind her ear. “The minute I got to Earth, I was like, ‘What am I doing here? Why is everyone just acting like this is normal?’”Of course, Keough’s childhood was far from ordinary: When she was about 5, her mother Lisa Marie Presley split from her musician father, Danny Keough, and married Michael Jackson. One parent provided access to moneyed fortresses like Graceland and Neverland, while the other lived more modestly, in trailer parks with mattresses on the floor.Keough had no qualms about visiting her father; once, she even told him, “When I grow up, I want to be poor like you.” She hadn’t known then how offensive her remark was, but that bifurcated childhood with her brother, Benjamin, would come in handy in her 20s, when Keough pursued work as an actress: She had amassed enough authenticity to play regular people as well as enough privilege to live her life without much worry.And blasé suits her: In movies like “American Honey” and “Logan Lucky,” about hustlers just trying to get by, her characters feel real and lived-in rather than condescended to. Or, as a recent tweet put it, “Riley Keough understands the white working class way better than J.D. Vance.” Was it glib to compare her to the “Hillbilly Elegy” author turned struggling Senate candidate? Perhaps, but the tweet still got more than 1,000 likes: Keough’s brand is strong.Keough as a sex worker opposite Taylour Paige in “Zola.”  Anna Kooris/A24The Florida-set “Zola” at first appeared to be cut from that same cloth: Stefani is a Southerner and a sex worker, two types Keough has played plenty of in the past. Still, the actress wanted to use this opportunity to push things a little further. “I didn’t want it to be ‘American Honey,’ this really naturalistic, understated performance,” Keough said. “When you do something well, people want it again and then you kind of get stuck.”Bravo wanted her to go big, too. Adorned in blond cornrows and hoop earrings, Stefani shrieks and cajoles in a blaccent so pronounced that even Iggy Azalea might blush. At first, when Keough was trying to find Stefani’s voice, she would text recordings to Bravo: “And Janicza was always like, ‘More, more.’ I was like, ‘OK, if you say so!’”The movie’s Black heroine, Zola (Taylour Paige), can hardly believe the vibe that Stefani is putting down, and in an era when white appropriation of Black culture has become a hot topic, audiences might find themselves shocked by Stefani, too. “Riley said, ‘Am I going to get canceled for this?’” Bravo recalled. “But what she’s playing only lands if you’re going to the extreme. If you’re at all shying away from what it is, it can look like an apology.”The result is the polar opposite of Keough’s more tamped-down performances: Stefani is outrageous, over the line and gut-bustingly funny, even if Keough can sense that some viewers don’t know what do with her.“People are like, ‘Am I allowed to laugh? Am I a bad person?’” she said. “I love that. I’m a little bit of a troll in my heart, and I think I bring that into my work.” And if you have trouble sussing out Stefani’s intentions as she goads Zola into a road trip that quickly turns dangerous, that’s by design.“You don’t know if the whole thing’s a manipulation, even in her moments of being vulnerable,” Keough said. “That’s why I love playing these characters that would seem like the bad guy. It’s so much more fun to make people have moments with those characters where you’re like, ‘I feel bad for her.’ Or, ‘I’m having fun with her. I’d go with her, too.’”“Zola” premiered in January 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival, and Keough was excited for it to come out that summer: She’s always been kind of a searcher, and if the movie led to new and more interesting work in comedies, maybe those roles would help her to understand herself better. Then the pandemic scuttled those plans, and as Keough was adjusting to months off from work, her younger brother, Benjamin, killed himself in July 2020.What followed was “a year of feeling like I was thrown into the ocean and couldn’t swim,” Keough said. “The first four or five months, I couldn’t get out of bed. I was totally debilitated. I couldn’t talk for two weeks.”Even now, Keough finds the tragedy hard to accept. “It’s very complicated for our minds to put that somewhere because it’s so outrageous,” she said. “If I’m going through a breakup, I know what to do with that and where to file it in my mind, but suicide of your brother? Where do you put that? How does that integrate? It just doesn’t.”After the suicide of her brother, Benjamin, Keough went through “a year of feeling like I was thrown into the ocean and couldn’t swim.”Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesKeough got through it with the help of her friends and her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, a stuntman, but first she laid down some ground rules: “I wanted to make sure that I was feeling everything and I wasn’t running from anything,” she said. To that end, Keough recently became a death doula. Instead of helping to facilitate a birth, she guides people through the issues that arise during the final portion of their lives.“That’s really what’s helped me, being able to put myself in a position of service,” she said. “If I can help other people, maybe I can find some way to help myself.”And she has lately found things to treasure about her grief, too, though she admits that if someone had told her to expect a silver lining shortly after Benjamin died, she probably would have replied with expletives. “But there’s this sense of the fragility of life and how every moment matters to me now,” Keough said.It’s her new normal, one she’s still getting used to: Maybe you’re never quite certain where Keough stands because until recently, she hadn’t been all that sure herself. It almost couldn’t be helped with a childhood that whiplashed between two extremes. But now, at 32, she’s finally figured something out.“I think growing up, I was always searching for answers,” she said. “Now I know that everything’s inside me. All you can do is surrender and be present for the experience.” More

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      ‘The New Bauhaus’ Review: Rethinking an Approach to Art

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      This documentary on the interdisciplinary artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy makes the case that he should be a household name.The documentary “The New Bauhaus” celebrates the legacy of the versatile interdisciplinary artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, perhaps best-known for his photography and photograms, and the legacy of the school he started in Chicago. The film, directed by Alysa Nahmias, makes the case that although Moholy-Nagy’s body of work might seem diffuse because it spanned mediums, he deserves to be remembered as one of the great artists of the 20th century — as important as Picasso or Magritte, says Elizabeth Siegel, the photography curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.The film argues that Moholy-Nagy was more concerned with approach than product; he had his students learn biology, for instance, seeking to give them new ways of looking at the world. He didn’t separate artistic pursuits from commercial interests or economic realities. The movie explains how he turned the rationing of metal during World War II into an opportunity to rethink products. As told here, his influence, and the work of his students, can be seen in advertising, the credits of James Bond films and in the shape of a Dove soap bar.The film features informative commentary from academics and particularly from Moholy-Nagy’s daughter Hattula. One former student, Beatrice Takeuchi, says she found an exhibition on Moholy-Nagy too formalized — that he was at his best messing around. In a sense, she might be referring to this movie, which shares the artist’s biography in a conventional way. But it is a good primer, well illustrated.The New BauhausNot Rated. Running Time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      N.B.A. Pros on the Big Screen: Can These Stars Act?

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      We watched LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant and 11 more basketball greats to see how they rate as actors. We were in for a few surprises.Does every N.B.A. superstar really want to be in movies? You might think so, judging by the long and checkered history of players going Hollywood (not to mention the amount of flopping in today’s game). As the newly released “Space Jam: A New Legacy” takes the booming subgenre of films built on hoops talent into the era of remakes, here’s a guide to the best and worst performances by pro basketball players, starting in the 1970s.1979Julius Erving, ‘The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh’Rent it on most major platforms.If we are to believe this goofy 1979 movie — and why not? — basketball at the height of disco meant players doing the splits to celebrate buckets, coaching by astrology and Dr. J as the coolest man alive. Much of his mellow performance is shot in slow motion, adding to its swagger. In one scene, he seduces a woman by taking her to a playground and dunking in street clothes by himself in street clothes. In another, he enters a game by hot-air balloon, wearing a glittery silver uniform, backed by funky soul music. If John Travolta had a sports counterpart, this was it.1979Bernard King, ‘Fast Break’Rent it on most major platforms.In this easygoing drama about a coach (played by Gabe Kaplan at the height of his “Welcome Back, Kotter” fame) who builds an underdog college program, the Knick star Bernard King delivers an understated, lived-in performance as a pool hustler with a silky jump shot. He keeps up with an ensemble of actors without outshining them too much on the court. Compared with the hectic video-game aesthetic of “Space Jam,” this character-driven movie feels refreshingly human.1980Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, ‘Airplane’Rent it on most major platforms.There is no more famous jock cameo than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing himself pretending to be an ordinary commercial airplane pilot. The idea that the seven-foot superstar could disguise himself even after being challenged on it by a young fan is one of the countless jokes in this classic comedy. But when his frustration is supposed to turn into anger, Abdul-Jabbar can’t transcend his coolly unflappable stoicism.1992Marques Johnson, ‘White Men Can’t Jump’Rent it on most major platforms.In the greatest basketball movie of all time, this five-time all-star makes a brief but electric appearance as a guy enraged after getting hustled out of money, clearing the courts by swinging a knife around in ineffectual rage. It’s so convincing that you would never know he became famous for basketball, not acting.1994Bob Cousy, ‘Blue Chips’Stream it on Hulu and Paramount+.Nick Nolte, left, with Bob Cousy as an athletic director in “Blue Chips.”Paramount PicturesThis unsung morality tale about a Bobby Knight-like college coach (Nick Nolte, crusty as ever) tempted into corruption is filled with performances by famous players (Shaquille O’Neal, Larry Bird) and coaches (Rick Pitino, Knight). They all capably play versions on themselves, but the revelation here is the Boston Celtic great Bob Cousy, who transforms into a morally ambivalent athletic director. It’s a startlingly assured performance from a Hall of Famer from the early years of the N.B.A.1996Shaquille O’Neal, ‘Kazaam’Stream it on Disney+.Shaq is the most charismatic big man in history, funny in cameos and as a talking head, but as the star of his own movie, his track record is more like his foul shooting. The year before he would make one of the most forgettable DC superhero movies (“Steel”), he delivered this much-mocked performance as a rapping genie in this schmaltzy fantasy. Trying to grant the wishes of a blandly likable white kid with divorced parents, he lumbers through, shouting his lines, mugging and even burping for laughs.1997Dennis Rodman, ‘Double Team’Rent it on most major platforms.Despite winning three Razzie Awards for this Jean-Claude Van Damme flop, Dennis Rodman is actually a plausible action star. He convincingly kickboxes, looks good in flamboyant get-ups (lots of hair die and leather) and wryly delivers corny lines riffing on his persona. (“You’re crazier than my hairstylist.”) All of this movie’s camp humor comes from the glint in his eye, which he needs when delivering one of many basketball references, despite the fact that he’s not supposed to be a player but rather an extremely tall arms dealer.1998Ray Allen, ‘He Got Game’Stream it on HBO Max.Making your major movie debut opposite Denzel Washington must be as daunting as entering the pros and guarding LeBron James in your first game. Exuding innocence and quiet charisma, Ray Allen, in the meaty role of Coney Island basketball prodigy Jesus Shuttlesworth, accounts himself well, even if you never forget he’s moonlighting. He’s persuasive as a diffident, paralyzed high school star with buried anger at his father. It’s a role player of a performance that executes the game plan skillfully, occasionally with panache.1998Gheorghe Muresan, ‘My Giant’Rent it on most major platforms.At 7 foot 7 inches, the Romanian center Gheorghe Muresan was the tallest player in the history of the N.B.A. That was enough for a solid pro career, even if his skills, especially early on, were unrefined. But for amateurs, acting can be tougher than sports. In this Billy Crystal buddy movie, he’s stuck in a slump. It can be hard to understand him (English is not his first language), and in his reaction shots, he might hold another record: least expressive star in the history of comedy.2012Kevin Durant, ‘Thunderstruck’Rent it on most major platforms.When it comes to movies starring Brooklyn Nets, “Uncle Drew,” featuring Kyrie Irving, is flashier and funnier. But there’s nothing in it as impressive as Kevin Durant pretending to be awful at basketball in this rigorously wholesome “Freaky Friday”-like movie in which he accidentally trades talents with a clumsy high school kid. A common trope for this genre (“Space Jam” also includes a plot point with N.B.A. stars losing their skills), Durant really commits to being bad, adjusting his form in subtle and consistent ways. It’s a cringey delight to watch this perfectionist trip making a crossover, airball a dunk and miss his patented midrange shot, over and over again.2018Kyrie Irving, ‘Uncle Drew’Rent it on most major platforms.You know that old guy on the playground who everyone underestimates because he looks slow and out of shape, but then dominates the game through wily moves and sneaky change of pace. Kyrie Irving’s performance is an affectionate ode to this figure, right down to the sweatpants. Most current stars moonlighting in movies perform versions of themselves, so it’s a bold move for Irving to try a completely different character, doing a nice job shifting his posture to a hunch and affecting a weary voice. And if he seemed a little stiff, it’s not easy to act underneath such an elaborate makeup job.2019Kevin Garnett, ‘Uncut Gems’Stream it on Netflix.On-court personality usually doesn’t translate to the screen, but this is a notable exception. Playing an amped-up version of himself, Kevin Garnett was as intense and ferocious getting in Adam Sandler’s face as he was with Patrick Ewing.1996Michael Jordan, ‘Space Jam’Michael Jordan has enough star power to light up a commercial or a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, but his wooden acting needed the animation of Bugs Bunny to make the original Tune Squad a powerhouse.2021LeBron James, ‘Space Jam: The Original Legacy’Stream it on HBO Max.Who’s better: M.J. or LeBron? This endless sports-talk debate over the greatest ever usually focuses on stats amassed and rings won, but now we have another metric to argue over: Who is the best — or more precisely, least terrible — lead actor? It’s close, but James gets the edge, showing more range playing opposite cartoons, pretending to be the overbearing sports dad along with the goofy big-kid corporate hero, even tapping into sloppy sentiment that Jordan reserves for meme-able Hall of Fame inductions. More

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      My Summer of Hitchcock and Cold Cherries

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      The writer Mona Awad on an evening tradition passed down by her mother.Summer brings with it a certain set of rites and rituals — and everyone’s are personal and unique. For our weeklong ode to the season, T has invited writers to share their own. Here, Mona Awad describes the simple pleasures of eating frozen cherries while watching films by Alfred Hitchcock.A few summers ago, I had to have hip surgery. “Might be a long recovery,” my surgeon warned. And as for its success? “We’ll see.” Four to six weeks of crutches followed by three to six months of physical therapy. Pain killers and ice. This would be my summer of uncertainty. This would be my summer of suspense and lying still. This would be my summer of Hitchcock and cold cherries. More

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      Spike Lee Accidentally Reveals Palme d’Or Winner Early: It’s ‘Titane’

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      Julia Ducournau becomes the second woman to win the top prize, after Jane Campion in 1993. The surprise reveal came at the start of a chaotic ceremony.CANNES, France — The 2021 edition of the Cannes Film Festival gave its top prize, the prestigious Palme d’Or, to the French film “Titane.”A wild serial-killer story with some of the most controversial scenes of the festival, “Titane” was directed by Julia Ducournau, who became just the second woman to win the Palme, after Jane Campion took the prize in 1993 for “The Piano.”And though “Titane” had been hotly tipped as a prime contender for the Palme, that reveal came much earlier than intended: At the beginning of the closing ceremony, when the jury president, Spike Lee, was asked to announce the first prize of the night, he misunderstood and read off the first-prize winner instead.“Don’t do it!” shouted the actress-director Mélanie Laurent, a jury member seated next to Lee. But the cat was already out of the bag.(At a news conference after the ceremony, Lee said that he had no excuses and that “I messed up,” adding, “I’m a big sports fan. It’s like the guy at the end of the game in the foul line, he misses the free throw or a guy misses a kick.” He also said he apologized to the Cannes organizers. “They said forget about it.”)The accidental “Titane” reveal was only the first of several chaotic moments at the ceremony, as the spoiled Palme reveal was followed by a best-actor prize for Caleb Landry Jones for the Australian tragedy “Nitram.” When a nervous-looking Jones took the stage, he appeared sick to his stomach, said, “I cannot do this,” and beat a hasty retreat.Still, by the time a teary Ducournau was brought out at the end of the ceremony to finally accept her Palme, she had embraced the chaos. “This evening has been perfect,” she said, “because it’s so not perfect.”Julia Ducournau, left with her star, Agatha Rousselle, became the second woman to win the Palme d’Or in Cannes history.Eric Gaillard/ReutersOther major winners included Leos Carax, who took the best-director prize for his eccentric musical “Annette,” best-actress winner Renate Reinsve for the Norwegian romantic dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” and a pair of ties: The second-place prize was split between “A Hero,” from the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, and the Finnish drama “Compartment No. 6,” while the third-prize tie went to the Nadav Lapid film “Ahed’s Knee” and “Memoria,” starring Tilda Swinton.At the last Cannes film festival, held in 2019, the Palme winner was “Parasite,” the first major prize Bong Joon Ho’s film took on its path to the best-picture Oscar. Though “Titane” is far too gory to become a major Oscar contender, its Palme win firmly establishes Ducournau as a major international director only two feature films into her career.Correction: July 17, 2021An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the winner of the best director prize. He is Leos Carax, not Leox Carax. More

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      In ‘Fear Street,’ a Lesbian Romance Provides Hope for a Genre

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      Mainstream horror rarely lets queer women be the heroes. The Netflix trilogy takes a defiant stance with a relationship that covers centuries.This article contains spoilers for the “Fear Street” trilogy.Type “queer horror films” into a search engine and you’ll get a bevy of articles poring over every gesture, sentence of dialogue and subtext in movie history, from “Psycho” to “The Babadook.” While queer characters have, in the last two decades, begun to move to the center in films like “Spiral” and “The Retreat,” they’re still too often merely implicit, made to seem like the other, or simply killed off.But in the director Leigh Janiak’s “Fear Street” movies, a Netflix trilogy inspired by the author R.L. Stine’s horror series, queer people not only are the lead characters, but a lesbian romance propels the entire narrative. For Janiak, that was intentional. It was an “opportunity to tell a story that hasn’t been told within that genre very often, if at all,” she said. “That involves creating this queer love story that drove everything.”In Janiak’s recollection, Stine’s stories were mostly “very straight and very white.” But “Fear Street: 1994,” which kicks off the Netflix slasher trilogy that includes successors set in 1978 and 1666, presents a gay Black teenager, Deena (Kiana Madeira), as the heroine. When it comes to her romance with Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), Deena allows nothing to get in the way — not a witch (Elizabeth Scopel) who put a curse on her town back in the 17th century, a killer in a skull mask or an ancient evil incarnate now taking the form of a white male cop (Ashley Zukerman).It’s not easy, as the films show. At the start of “1994,” Deena and Sam have broken up and the latter is passing as straight, with a jock boyfriend to boot, in order to satisfy her homophobic mother and society itself. The ’90s, as any millennial can attest, might have been an era when girls imitated mainstream pop stars like Brandy, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, but it also made it hard for those like Deena who fell outside of those cultural norms. She listens to Garbage, rocks oversize flannel and is into girls.Welch and Madeira in the first “Fear Street” film, set in 1994. Amid the scares, genre tropes are upended.Netflix“First of all, she’s not white,” Janiak said. “Second of all, she’s butch. Even if she wanted to try to pass as a straight girl like Sam, she couldn’t. Society looks at her right away and says, ‘I know who you are. I know what you are.’ So, she’s been forced to take ownership of that, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy for her. She’s still a teenager in 1994.”Other characters throughout the updated “Fear Street” universe similarly defy the typical “wholesome, white final girl” trope that has helped to define the genre. Deena and Sam’s classmate, Kate (Julia Rehwald), is an alpha Filipina American cheerleader. Deena’s brother, Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), spends hours in AOL chat rooms dedicated to conspiracy theories about the countless murders that have plagued their town, Shadyside, for years. There’s also Martin (Darrell Britt-Gibson), the dutiful mall attendant who’s continually profiled by the police.These characters don’t just play supporting roles or serve as punch lines for the leads. They are the protagonists anchoring the story. In addition to directing a fun, genuinely scary trilogy that thoughtfully pays homage to classics like “Scream” and “Friday the 13th,” Janiak wanted to shine “a light on a whole town of marginalized people that have been told that they’re outside.” She added, “And build that into the DNA. Not just have it be a gimmick of the movies.”They’re also the heroes. In a tender scene in “1994,” when Sam finally stops denying her feelings for Deena moments before the former becomes possessed, Deena makes a crucial vow to Sam. “Tonight, even though we are in hell, I feel like I have another chance with you,” she tells her. “I am not going to lose you again. Because you and me are the way out.”This simple statement is often heard in horror, but it’s usually uttered by a man to his female love interest. In “Fear Street,” the promise of a future feels more significant: It signals a change that requires Deena to be sent back to 1666. There, as Sarah Fier, the queer woman who was persecuted as a witch and hanged on account of her love for another woman (also played by Welch), she can seek justice against the same kind of hatred and violence that keeps Deena and Sam apart in the present day.In “1666,” Janiak wanted to highlight the idea that women who were accused of being witches back then were those who merely didn’t fit the standard.They were labeled witches “because they were other, because they were looking too long at the other girl, or because they didn’t want to get married,” she said. “They weren’t falling in line with whatever societal lines were.”As it turns out, the animus that humankind displays — as with Solomon (also played by Zukerman), who rallies an entire town to persecute Sarah in “1666” — is just as deadly as a witch’s curse, if not more so. It allowed Janiak to look beyond the supernatural scares to examine the evils of our fellow man. “That, to me, is always the scariest thing,” Janiak said. “I thought this was a cool opportunity that we could visit crazy genre villains, but then ultimately get to that underlying thing of ‘Who’s the real monster here?’”Ultimately, the “Fear Street” films are aspirational — though there is obviously much carnage along the way. Deena and Sam help to save the town, but more important, they preserve their love for each other. “The trilogy allowed us to give a little bit of hope that I don’t think usually exists in horror movies,” Janiak said, and with a laugh added, “When you only have an hour and a half, you’ve just got to kill everyone. But the experiment of the movies allowed us to push and question and change things a little bit.”And it was necessary. More

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      Stream These Five Action Films Now

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      This month’s picks span the globe and range from a solemn meditation on grief to a fight against bloodthirsty sharks.For action fans seeking out new movies on streaming, there are plenty of car chases, explosions and fist fights to sift through. We help by providing some streaming highlights.‘Agent Revelation’Stream it on Amazon.I love inventive microbudget films. It’s rarer to discover these treats in the action genre, since the form often requires higher production values. But “Agent Revelation,” from the writer-director Derek Ting, manages to deliver big thrills on a smaller scale.Ting also stars in this high-concept sci-fi movie as Jim Yung, a C.I.A. reject infected by an alien-made biological weapon: a red dust known as the Ash. While usually deadly to humans, the Ash instead gives Jim heightened reflexes and strength. When Dr. Victoria Jansen (Carole Weyers), the head of a secret underground military installation, hears of Jim’s survival, she recruits him for testing, pushing him through dangerous exercises. These claustrophobic battles featuring tactical movements through mazes provide the film’s biggest action moments.But the smart world-building is equally impressive. Jim comes under the watchful eye of the base’s rich benefactor, Alastair (Michael Dorn), the Morpheus to Jim’s Neo. Alastair teaches Jim how to harness the energy of his powers to wield against the invading aliens. A cross between “The Matrix” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Agent Revelation” places grand sci-fi imagination into a modest package.‘Great White’Rent or buy on Amazon or Google Play.Since the premiere of “Jaws” in 1975 made sharks a six-letter scare, the toothy predators remain a cinematic go-to for easy frights and outsized action. “Great White,” an Australian-set flick from the director Martin Wilson, follows in the footsteps of “Deep Blue Sea” and “The Meg” to deliver hair-raising survivalist set pieces.The financially submerged couple Charlie (Aaron Jakubenko) and Kaz (Katrina Bowden) provide private airplane tours to travelers. Joji (Tim Kano) and Michelle (Kimie Tsukakoshi), an affluent couple, employ the guides and their cook, Benny (Te Kohe Tuhaka), to transport them to an isolated atoll. Then, the menacing title character disables their plane, leaving them adrift in a raft. To pull through, the stranded humans engage in wild sea battles with the unrelenting shark, leading to an abundance of over-the-top defense methods involving weaponized paddles and flares against a sharp set of pearly whites. After watching “Great White,” it’s still not safe to go back in the water.‘Her Name Was Jo’Stream it on Amazon.If you turned Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” into a road movie, you might end up with something like the writer-director Joe Duca’s intimate coming-of-age adventure trek “Her Name Was Jo.” The 10-year-old title character (Mary Cate Williams) lives along the Shenandoah River with her abusive, drug-addled stepfather. She dreams of one day traveling to Los Angeles to find her real dad, a folk singer whose records she often listens to for comfort.When her stepfather overdoses, Jo decides to take her best friend, Selma (Elisa Duca) cross country in search of the singer. Along the way the pair steal a car, are held hostage, help a pregnant woman deliver her baby and shoot their way through every hurdle. Closer to a drama than a big action or adventure spectacle, “Her Name Was Jo” is given a tragic edge through a heart-pounding score melded with touching folk ballads.‘Night in Paradise’Stream it on Netflix.For audiences well-versed in gangland films, the South Korean writer-director Park Hoon-jung’s “Night in Paradise” may offer few surprises. Rather, the simple mob thriller gives blood-soaked comfort in its familiarity. Park Tae-goo (Um Tae-goo) is a brash enforcer for the suave crime lord Mr. Yang (Park Ho-san). After the assassinations of Park’s half sister and niece, he is convinced that the hit was placed by a rival kingpin in the Bukseong clan, causing Park to murder that mob boss with the savagery of Viggo Mortensen’s tough guy in “Eastern Promises.”Park runs away to the tiny island of Jeju to hide, where he forms a platonic bond with the terminally ill Jae-yeon (Jeon Yeo-been). The stoic companions navigate a huge, bloody power grab between Yang and the merciless new Bukseong leader, Chief Ma (Cha Seoung-won), as Park becomes their shared scapegoat.The film’s director takes great pleasure in carnage. An extravagant barnyard shootout leads to jets of blood, and later, there’s a gory one-on-20 brawl involving a car key. Vicious knife fights likewise turn bathhouses into slaughterhouses. And all are captured with a clean, steady hand, allowing viewers, with a gleeful smile, to marvel at the unrepentant brutality.‘Riders of Justice’Rent of buy on Amazon, Google Play or AppleTV.When you first see the buzz-cut, salt-and-pepper bearded Mads Mikkelsen as Markus, a Danish soldier stationed in Afghanistan, you assume Anders Thomas Jensen’s “Riders of Justice” will offer only high-octane action. The death of Markus’s wife in a train bombing, however, adds deep, unexpected heart to this revenge flick.Now a single dad to his daughter, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), the stoic Markus must punish those who carried out the attack and grapple with his repressed anguish. Jansen explores how grief leads to a search for answers to the unanswerable. It’s that quest that makes Markus susceptible to a theory by two earnest scientists (Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lars Brygmann) and a computer whiz (Nicolas Bro) that the bombing was perpetrated by a gang to silence a witness.Mikkelsen gives a well-shaped performance by adding exterior emotional textures to a character whose inner turmoil makes him prone to raging outbursts. His agile acting makes “Riders of Justice” a singularly humanist action film. More