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      Peter Bowles, Actor in ‘To the Manor Born,’ Dies at 85

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      In a six-decade career in TV, film and onstage, he played comedy and drama, hapless heroes and villains, often with the air of the archetypal English gent.Peter Bowles, a dapper British character actor who was best known for his role as an arriviste in the popular British television sitcom “To the Manor Born,” died on Thursday. He was 85. The cause was cancer, according to a statement to the BBC from his agent. No further information was available.In a six-decade career, Mr. Bowles, who was the son of servants and grew up without indoor plumbing, appeared in a merry-go-round of productions in television, film and onstage, alternating between comedy and drama, hapless heroes and villains. Whatever character he played, he often projected the air of what his agent called “the archetypal English gent.”Mr. Bowles’s well-known television credits included roles in “Rumpole of the Bailey,” “The Bounder,” “Only When I Laugh” and the recent series “Victoria.” He wrote and starred in “Lytton’s Diary,” about the life of a newspaper gossip columnist. And he achieved success in “The Irish R.M.,” in which he played a British Army officer sent to Ireland as a resident magistrate. The New York Times called the show “devilishly hilarious.”But he was best known for his portrayal of Richard DeVere in “To the Manor Born.” DeVere, the son of Czech-Polish émigrés, is the nouveau-riche owner of a supermarket who buys a grand English manor house from its original owner, Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, played by Penelope Keith. She moves to a nearby small cottage, from which she eyes DeVere’s activities with considerable disapproval.In a 1981 photo, Mr. Bowles and Penelope Keith, who played the original owner of the country mansion in “To the Manor Born.”United News/Popperfoto via Getty Images“The show was a reflection of the disruptions to the English class system by the recently elected Margaret Thatcher, a shopkeeper’s daughter who had poshed up her voice but was committed to social mobility,” Mark Lawson wrote in an appreciation of Mr. Bowles in The Guardian on Thursday.“The casting of the charming Bowles,” he added, “helped to offset the potentially nasty snobbery of the premise.”The sitcom aired from 1979 to 1981 in Britain, where it routinely drew audiences of 20 million, astronomical by British standards. Like other British series he was in, it later aired in the United States on PBS.Peter Bowles was born in London on Oct. 16, 1936. His father, Herbert Reginald Bowles, was a valet and chauffeur to a son of the Earl of Sandwich; his mother, Sarah Jane (Harrison) Bowles, was a nanny employed by the family of the Duke of Argyll in Scotland. (The two met when they both worked for the family of Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper baron and cabinet minister under Winston Churchill.)During World War II, when Peter was 6, the family moved to one of the poorest working-class districts of Nottingham, in the English Midlands, where their house had an outside toilet and no bath.After appearing in amateur plays in Nottingham, Peter won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where his fellow actors included Alan Bates, Peter O’Toole and Albert Finney, with whom he shared a flat.Mr. Bowles started onstage with the Old Vic Company in 1956 with small parts in Shakespeare dramas. Over time, he starred in 45 theatrical productions. He was seen in the early 1990s by the director Peter Hall, who then cast him in a string of plays in London’s West End.Mr. Bowles and Judi Dench in 2006 in a London revival of Noël Coward’s “Hay Fever.” Over a long career, he bounced from the stage to television to the movies. Catherine AshmoreAfter Mr. Bowles left the theater for television and comedy, the BBC famously pronounced that he would never work again in drama. But after several television successes, he defied that prediction and returned to the theater as Archie Rice, a failing music-hall performer, in John Osborne’s “The Entertainer” in 1986; he was the first actor to play the part in London since Laurence Olivier in 1957.Other stage roles included his portrayal of the art dealer Joseph Duveen in “The Old Masters” (2004), a play by Simon Gray about Duveen and the art critic Bernard Berenson, directed by Harold Pinter; and of the “seriously posh, clipped-voice husband” Peter Bliss, as The Times described him, in Peter Hall’s 2006 London revival of Noël Coward’s comedy of manners, “Hay Fever” (also set in an English country house).He continued to act in movies, too, with roles in: “Eyewitness” (1970, released in the U.S. as “Sudden Terror”); “The Steal” (1995); “Color Me Kubrick” (2005) and “The Bank Job” (2008).He is survived by his wife, the actor Susan Bennett, and three children, Guy, Adam and Sasha. More

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      Jack Willis, TV Producer and Empathetic Filmmaker, Dies at 87

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      A survivor of a crippling accident, his documentaries and news coverage for public television focused on poverty, race and other social issues.Jack Willis, a journalist and television executive who won several Emmys and a Polk Award for his innovative films and news and documentary programming during the embryonic years of cable and public broadcasting, died on Feb. 9 in Zurich. He was 87.He underwent assisted suicide at a clinic there, his wife, Mary Pleshette Willis, said. He lived in Manhattan.When he was in his late 30s, Mr. Willis broke his neck in a body surfing accident that temporarily left him a quadriplegic before he miraculously recovered, his wife said, inspiring a television movie. But after a half century, the injuries were taking their toll. Six years ago, he broke his hip and began using a wheelchair, she said.From 1971 to 1973, Mr. Willis was director of programming and production for WNET, the public television station in New York, where he introduced innovative local news coverage as executive producer of “The 51st State,” a program that took its name from the zany 1969 mayoral campaign of the author Norman Mailer, who proposed that New York City secede from New York State.The program, which won an Emmy Award, focused on communities rather than the more traditional fare of the nightly local news.Patrick Watson, center, the anchor of the WNET program “The 51st State,” moderated a discussion of racial tensions in New York City in 1971. Mr. Willis was the program’s executive producer. WNET records, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries“He pioneered in-depth local coverage of New York’s outer boroughs on WNET, focusing on long-ignored and disenfranchised minorities and immigrants, often letting them speak for themselves,” said Stephen B. Shepard, former editor in chief of Business Week and founding dean of the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. “For Jack, it was always about the people affected by government decisions.”Mr. Willis was an executive producer of another Emmy-winning series, “The Great American Dream Machine,” a weekly 90-minute program on PBS. The television critic John J. O’Connor of The New York Times, writing in 1971, said the program had been conceived as “a free‐form program that could offer the viewer worthwhile bits and pieces of humor, controversy, entertainment, investigative reporting, opinion, documentary and theatrical sketches.”“It has been called a hodgepodge of the brilliant and the trite,” he added, but concluded that it was “one of the most exciting and imaginative segments of television to come along this season.”Looking back, Mr. Willis himself told The Times in 2020: “It was a great time in public television. If you thought it, you could do it.”Marshall Efron, left, and Andy Rooney, two of the stars of the PBS program “The Great American Dream Machine,” in 1972. Mr. Willis was its executive producer. WNETIn 1963, he directed his first documentary, “The Streets of Greenwood,” a 20-minute film about a voter-registration drive in the Mississippi Delta. Collaborating with two friends, Phil Wardenburg and John Reavis, Mr. Willis shot it with a camera he had borrowed from the folk singer Pete Seeger, whose concert in a cotton field was featured in the film.In 1979, Mr. Willis shared the George Polk Award for best documentary with Saul Landau for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” The film focused on the journalist Paul Jacobs’s investigation of radiation hazards from atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s and ’60s and the federal government’s efforts to suppress information on its threat to public health.Two other films he produced — “Lay My Burden Down” (1966), about the plight of tenant farmers in rural Alabama, and “Every Seventh Child” (1967), questioning tax subsidies and other government benefits for Catholic education — were shown at the New York Film Festival.Mr. Willis wrote, directed and produced “Appalachia: Rich Land Poor People” (1968), which exposed grinding poverty largely caused, the film argued, by corporate greed, racism and ineffective local government.Mr. Willis’s commitment to civil rights was reflected in his enduring friendship with the singer Harry Belafonte, an activist in the movement, who described Mr. Willis in an email as “a soul brother” whose “intellect and humor, combined with his courageousness, make him one of the most precious people I have ever known.”“For those on the political left,” Mr. Belafonte added, “he was living proof of the proverb, ‘You can cage the singer but not the song.’”Jack Lawrence Willis was born on June 20, 1934, in Milwaukee to Louis Willis, a manufacturer of women’s shoes, and Libbie (Feingold) Willis, a homemaker. The family moved to California when he was 9.He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1956 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also played shortstop on the varsity baseball team. He liked to recall that he was recruited by a Boston Red Sox minor-league team.Mr. Willis dropped out of U.C.L.A. School of Law to serve in the Army for two years, then graduated in 1962 and moved to New York, where he hoped to connect with a job teaching in Africa or the Middle East.While waiting for a job abroad that never materialized, he worked briefly in television for Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera” and David Susskind’s “Open End.”He ran a movie production company in California, then was hired as vice president for programming and production at CBS Cable, a short-lived but well-received performing arts channel.From 1990 to 1997, Mr. Willis was president of KTCA, the public television station in Minneapolis-St. Paul, then returned to New York, where, working for George Soros’s Open Society Institute, he developed a media program. In 1999, he was a founder of Link TV, a nonprofit satellite TV network. He retired in 2011.Jack Willis in an undated photo. via Mary WillisIn addition to his wife, he is survived by their two daughters, Sarah Willis and Kate Willis Ladell; three grandchildren; and his brother, Richard.Mr. Willis and his wife wrote a book, “… But There Are Always Miracles” (1974), about his body-surfing accident in 1969 off Southampton, N.Y. They had been planning to marry when a crashing wave broke his neck and left him paralyzed from the chest down. He was told he would never walk again.After two operations and six months of inpatient rehabilitation, he walked out of Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in Manhattan. The couple married a year later.His story was adapted into a TV film, “Some Kind of Miracle” (1979), with a screenplay by the couple. They wrote and produced other films together.Shortly before he died, Ms. Willis said, her husband told her that the accident had “taught me to put everything in perspective — including the fear of failure.” He admitted to no regrets, she said, “except,” she quoted him as saying, “for taking that wave and turning down the Boston Red Sox.” More

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      ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ and the Lessons Few Horror Films Get Right

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      Ti West is the rare genre director to understand the original and honor it with a movie, “X,” that also works on its own terms.Fifteen years ago, I sat down with 20 or so of the most prolific serial killers in the world, responsible for hundreds of stabbings, decapitations and other unspeakable murders — and was absolutely charmed. A get-together of directors of scary movies, including Wes Craven, Eli Roth, Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli and Robert Rodriguez, this event, semi-jokingly referred to as “the masters of horror dinner,” was giddily jovial. Just as comedians tend to be more serious in person than you expect, horror artists are, generally speaking, very funny.The one time I recall the mood turning solemn was when discussion shifted to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974). With its director, Tobe Hooper, shyly nibbling on his salad, everyone took turns describing the first time they watched this unlikely masterpiece. They spoke in vivid, awe-struck detail, as if recalling a religious epiphany.Of the classic horror movies of its era, none is more revered among genre filmmakers. Yet “Chain Saw” has been stubbornly hard to imitate in comparison with peers like “Night of the Living Dead” and “Halloween,” which spawned entire genres. You can detect the influence of “Chain Saw,” however, in a spate of recent movies, including Ti West’s “X,” a thrilling new indie from A24 that captures the disreputable pleasures of 1970s horror with slickly modern refinement.Brittany Snow in “X,” from Ti West. The film’s kinship with “Chain Saw” is clear from the visual vocabulary.A24The peculiar strengths of “Chain Saw” have rarely been replicated because they are often misunderstood. Despite its unsubtle title, this is a formally exquisite art film, packed full of gorgeously nightmarish images, as poetic as they are deranged. The movie is less bloody than its reputation. While every bit as intense as its title, its violence is staged with misdirection absent from the sequels and remakes.Another misperception, internalized even by experienced and admiring critics, involves its most famous character, Leatherface. In a Variety review last year, Owen Gleiberman drew the ire of horror fans when he called “Halloween” a “knockoff” of “Chain Saw,” then defended his stance in an essay locating the signature of both movies in the killer’s mask. “It expresses his identity,” he writes of Leatherface, “and his identity is that he has no identity.”Gleiberman was on solid ground with “Halloween,” whose killer is a psychology-less abstraction, murdering without motivation, but Leatherface is more than just a boogeyman. While he is introduced committing some of the most startling kills in cinematic history, the majestically maniacal last act of “Chain Saw” shifts our perspective on him from hulking slayer to stammering stooge. Without resorting to a tedious back story, the movie positions Leatherface as a monster and a victim, bullied into his dirty work by his cannibalistic family. He is closer to the misunderstood creature from “Frankenstein” than to a garden-variety slasher villain.The feat of “Chain Saw” is to make us empathize with its scariest figure without diminishing the disorienting, teeth-chattering horror. Few movies pull this off.In “Nightmare Alley,” Guillermo del Toro, a “Chain Saw” fan, has directed a movie that also introduces a terrifying figure, a circus geek, before making us question our original judgment. In turning his monster-movie preoccupations into prestige, humanist filmmaking, del Toro has lost some of the scares (and fun) along the way. His movie is worn down by its seriousness, only to come alive in a final scene that ends with a direct visual quotation from the memorable final close-up of “Chain Saw,” when the last survivor cries so hard she laughs.Marilyn Burns in the original “Chain Saw.” The ending has been quoted in movies like the recent “Nightmare Alley.”Bryanston Distributing/AlamyThe recent Netflix reboot of “Texas Chainsaw” has the opposite problem. It abandons the nuance of the original, adopting the Gleiberman view of Leatherface as a one-note killing machine. The result is a boringly rote series of slayings. More novel is the slickly entertaining “Fresh,” an urban horror story about the hell of modern dating in which a single woman meets the perfect guy, who it turns out isn’t. It takes places in a world seemingly distant from Texas massacres. But when the main character says he’s from Texas and his mother has died, horror die-hards will tense up in recognition. It’s a deft, disquieting little shocker, but unlike the 1974 “Chain Saw,” which has an unhinged spirit that even after many viewings makes you think anything could happen, the twists in “Fresh” are a little too predictable to really jar sensibilities.The best movies made in the spirit of “Chain Saw” grasp that the source of its deepest madness is the family dynamics. Rob Zombie’s gnarly Firefly trilogy (“House of 1000 Corpses,” “The Devils’ Rejects,” “3 From Hell”) and the original and remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” (both terrific) capture the relatable dread of a dysfunctional family, taken to a Grand Guignol extreme.The Netflix “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” forgoes the nuance of the original for a boringly rote set of kills.Yana Blajeva/NetflixTi West’s “X” centers on a confrontation with a disturbed rural family in 1970s Texas, an elderly couple who appear creepy and hostile, before their vulnerabilities are exposed and they also become poignant. The film’s kinship with “Chain Saw” is most obvious in its stunning visual vocabulary: The ominously vast blue sky, a strobe-light editing sequence, a long view of a screen door from inside a creaky house. There is the dread evoked by rusty tools and wrinkly skin — and even an echo of the scene of Leatherface doing a balletic spin.With these images, West is working the erogenous zones of horror fans. He can overdo it (we didn’t need the “Shining” reference), but while the contours of the plot are straight out of “Chain Saw” — city kids jump into a van heading into rural Texas before stumbling upon a house of horrors — he is smart enough to tell his own story.His sitting ducks are making a low-budget pornographic movie inspired by the success of “Debbie Does Dallas.” It helps to know that “Chain Saw” was made by a seedy New York company, Bryanston Distributing, that was flush from the success of the famous sex film “Deep Throat.” The line between horror and porn was blurry in the 1970s. They shared some of the same artists, audiences and grimy theaters. At a time when the reputation of scary movies was much lower, pornography was being taken seriously. This is the cultural backdrop of “X,” but also in part its subject, and the film keeps searching for the intersection between sex and violence. In one pointed sequence, West juxtaposes a scene of staged seduction with one of real menace, underlining the echoing tension.Mia Goth, left, Owen Campbell and Martin Henderson in the new film “X.”A24Paul A. Partain, left, Allen Danziger, Teri McMinn, Burns and William Vail in Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic.Bryanston Distributing/AlamyWhereas “Texas Chain Saw” was about economic displacement (new technology cost Leatherface and his family their jobs at the slaughterhouse), “X” is about sexual displacement, how the old inevitably gives way to the young. The resentment this inspires is the fuel of the horror, which the victims don’t see coming. They are too busy trying to become famous making a film. The young, idealistic director of the sex picture just wants to make a “good dirty movie,” but tensions rise when his girlfriend tries to join the cast. He refuses, saying, disingenuously, that he can’t change the script. She counters that audiences care less about plot than about sex, asking: “Why not give the people what they’re paying for?”Even if Ti West identities with the director, he doesn’t give him the better argument.After making a series of elegant, slow-burn scary films like “The Innkeepers” and “The House of the Devil” that have earned critical praise if not blockbuster grosses, West has now made a movie full of flamboyantly gory kills and leering sex scenes. You might say he finally gives the horror crowd what they’re paying for. But instead of compromising his aesthetic, indulging in the traditional muck of the genre actually loosens and expands that aesthetic. His movies have long paid homage to the delirious blood baths of the grind-house era. But this is his first that feels like one.Horror has always been about repressed pleasures. Like comedy, it also depends on the shock of the unexpected. “Chain Saw” is a disreputable exploitation flick made with such artistry that it transforms into high art. “X” arrives in a different context, an era of so-called elevated horror and the kind of respectability that should make any gore-hound nervous. So West has reversed the trick. He made an A24 production with the spirit of a B movie. More

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      Will Smith Calls Bradley Cooper ‘Beautiful’ at National Board of Review Gala

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      “Licorice Pizza” was the big winner at the annual National Board of Review film awards.The National Board of Review awards gala is not televised. This fact was announced onstage by its host Craig Melvin and giddily repeated by several guests.The awards gala is among the last in the run-up to this year’s Oscars and, free of television, the night has a reputation for speeches that are chummy, quite long and laced with profanity. This year’s gala, at Cipriani 42nd Street on Tuesday night, did not disappoint.“We just have a rip-roaring good time,” said Annie Schulhof, the board’s president.Alana Haim, left, and Cooper Hoffman accepted the award for breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesIlda Mason starred in “West Side Story.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesFrom left: Bradley Cooper, Zazie Beatz and Spike Lee.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe guests included film executives, producers and a smattering of big-name stars like Julianne Moore, and many in the crowd made ample use of the complimentary Bellinis offered by a phalanx of servers in white jackets. There were also three open bars, along with free-flowing wine poured during the steak and shrimp salad dinner.The speeches delivered on the promise of backslapping and swear words but — mercifully — tended toward brevity.Will Smith, who was awarded best actor for his performance in “King Richard,” took the stage around 8:15 p.m. and pointed to Bradley Cooper at a nearby table. “I can’t even concentrate, he’s so beautiful,” he said.Alana Haim also gave Mr. Cooper a shout-out when she accepted her award for best breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza,” which she shared with Cooper Hoffman. “It means so much to have Bradley Cooper give us this award because you were actually the first real actor we had ever acted with,” said Ms. Haim, who wore a sleeveless, Kelly-green gown by Marni. She also referred to the cast and crew as “family.”Questlove accepted the best documentary award for “Summer of Soul.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesChris Rock, left, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who won for best director for “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJulianne MooreRebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesMarcus Samuelsson, the chef and television personality, took the “family” trope one step further, referring to Spike Lee as “Uncle Spike” for inspiring him to become a chef. Mr. Lee wore a hat that looked like a chef’s toque when he introduced Questlove, who won best documentary for “Summer of Soul.”Ilda Mason, who wore a white Naeem Khan gown adorned with beaded flowers, accepted the best actress award on behalf of her “West Side Story” castmate Rachel Zegler (she was shooting on location for “Snow White”). Ms. Mason’s voice cracked with emotion when she read her friend’s thank you message from her phone.As the ceremony drew to a close around 9:30, Chris Rock presented Paul Thomas Anderson with the award for best director for “Licorice Pizza,” the night’s big winner. He bemoaned the National Review Board for being “so cheap they don’t have a prompter.” “I’m coming here for Paul Thomas Anderson, a person who has never cast me in anything,” he said, using stronger language. “Not even to wash his car,” he added. More

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      Will Smith Calls Bradley Cooper ‘Beautiful’ at Film Gala

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      “Licorice Pizza” was the big winner at the annual National Board of Review film awards.The National Board of Review awards gala is not televised. This fact was announced onstage by its host Craig Melvin and giddily repeated by several guests.The awards gala is among the last in the run-up to this year’s Oscars and, free of television, the night has a reputation for speeches that are chummy, quite long and laced with profanity. This year’s gala, at Cipriani 42nd Street on Tuesday night, did not disappoint.“We just have a rip-roaring good time,” said Annie Schulhof, the board’s president.Alana Haim, left, and Cooper Hoffman accepted the award for breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesIlda Mason starred in “West Side Story.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesFrom left: Bradley Cooper, Zazie Beatz and Spike Lee.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe guests included film executives, producers and a smattering of big-name stars like Julianne Moore, and many in the crowd made ample use of the complimentary Bellinis offered by a phalanx of servers in white jackets. There were also three open bars, along with free-flowing wine poured during the steak and shrimp salad dinner.The speeches delivered on the promise of backslapping and swear words but — mercifully — tended toward brevity.Will Smith, who was awarded best actor for his performance in “King Richard,” took the stage around 8:15 p.m. and pointed to Bradley Cooper at a nearby table. “I can’t even concentrate, he’s so beautiful,” he said.Alana Haim also gave Mr. Cooper a shout-out when she accepted her award for best breakthrough performance in “Licorice Pizza,” which she shared with Cooper Hoffman. “It means so much to have Bradley Cooper give us this award because you were actually the first real actor we had ever acted with,” said Ms. Haim, who wore a sleeveless, Kelly-green gown by Marni. She also referred to the cast and crew as “family.”Questlove accepted the best documentary award for “Summer of Soul.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesChris Rock, left, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who won for best director for “Licorice Pizza.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJulianne MooreRebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesMarcus Samuelsson, the chef and television personality, took the “family” trope one step further, referring to Spike Lee as “Uncle Spike” for inspiring him to become a chef. Mr. Lee wore a hat that looked like a chef’s toque when he introduced Questlove, who won best documentary for “Summer of Soul.”Ilda Mason, who wore a white Naeem Khan gown adorned with beaded flowers, accepted the best actress award on behalf of her “West Side Story” castmate Rachel Zegler (she was shooting on location for “Snow White”). Ms. Mason’s voice cracked with emotion when she read her friend’s thank you message from her phone.As the ceremony drew to a close around 9:30, Chris Rock presented Paul Thomas Anderson with the award for best director for “Licorice Pizza,” the night’s big winner. He bemoaned the National Review Board for being “so cheap they don’t have a prompter.” “I’m coming here for Paul Thomas Anderson, a person who has never cast me in anything,” he said, using stronger language. “Not even to wash his car,” he added. More

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      ‘Windfall’ Review: Money Talks

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      A wealthy couple is detained by an incompetent thief in this airless Netflix drama.If you can remain awake until the final moments of “Windfall,” then yes, something exciting actually happens. But that’s a very long wait in Charlie McDowell’s oppressive Netflix drama, a gabby hostage movie with a single, covetable location and three unappealing characters.A frozen opening shot of the exterior of a luxury California home forewarns of the tedium to come. A scruffy thief (played by Jason Segel at his most gormless) is poking languidly around the property, as if trying it on for size. He might be the most inept robber since the doofuses in “Home Alone,” but his lack of skills proves irrelevant when the home’s owners, a tech billionaire and his wife (Jesse Plemons and Lily Collins), return unexpectedly and acquiesce to his demands for money. More, they even encourage him to up his asking price.Shot in Ojai in 2020 (not far from where McDowell filmed his 2014 feature, “The One I Love”), “Windfall” is dramatically flat and logically wanting. As the three wait for the agreed-upon loot to arrive, the meandering script (by Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker) includes a farcical sauna lockdown and a surprise visit from a luckless gardener. Multiple escape opportunities are ignored, especially by the wife, who spends most of the movie lounging and looking fed up. One can hardly blame her.Yet despite the shambolic plot and shuffling camera (briefly roused to a sprint during a woodland chase), Plemons digs beneath his character’s arrogance to unearth something like disgust — for his marriage, his money and his subjugation by a ridiculous interloper.“Why do we keep pretending this guy is an actual threat?,” he asks his wife, angrily. He should probably be asking the screenwriters.WindfallRated R for a greedy husband and a wife gone wild. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Jane by Charlotte’ Review: A Mother-Daughter Duet

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      Charlotte Gainsbourg makes her directorial debut with an elusive portrait of her mother, the French-English star Jane Birkin, at age 74.“Jane by Charlotte,” the directorial debut of the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg (“Antichrist”), is a meandering and elusive documentary portrait of Gainsbourg’s mother, Jane Birkin. An “It” girl of the 1960s and ’70s, Birkin is known for starring in risqué art-house films (like “Blow-Up”), and for her romance with Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she collaborated on a hit album before starting her solo singing career.Gainsbourg pays homage to Agnès Varda’s 1988 docudrama, “Jane B. par Agnès V.,” which captures Birkin, age 40, considering her status as a muse and icon. “Jane by Charlotte” sees Birkin at 74 and picks up on fixations of hers apparent in that earlier film — her love of bulldogs, photographs and motherhood — as well as her ideas about femininity.In contrast to Varda’s metanarrative approach, Gainsbourg’s is straightforward, switching between elegantly staged mother-daughter conversations and home video-esque footage of Birkin’s everyday activities — like performing her music in Japan, gardening with her granddaughter and visiting a bulldog breeder.Gainsbourg purports to look at her mother as she’s “never dared before,” hoping to close a rift between them. Birkin speaks, rather obliquely, about intimate subjects like her lifelong dependency on sleeping pills and her maternal insecurities — the premature death of her first daughter, Kate Barry, looms over the film.Clearly a pet project for Gainsbourg (whose own electronic pop songs feature prominently in the soundtrack, clashing against her mother’s classic tunes), the documentary is defiantly insular and lacking in context.When Gainsbourg and Birkin visit Serge’s famed black-walled Paris home, for instance, the dwelling’s peculiarities are taken for granted. (The house has remained mostly unchanged since Gainsbourg’s death in 1991 and is now going to be a museum.) Those devoted to the Gainsbourg-Birkin universe may delight in the miscellanea presented here, but Gainsbourg has no interest in rendering her mother’s life, or their relationship, accessible or particularly fascinating to the uninitiated. This makes for an occasionally trivial experience, but one senses Gainsbourg doesn’t care — she might have made the film for no one but herself.Jane by CharlotteNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘More Than Robots’ Review: An International Battle

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      Despite the movie’s title, robots are the subject and spectacle of this lighthearted film about a high school robotics competition.The documentary “More Than Robots” (streaming on Disney+) centers on an international high school robotics competition. Despite the movie’s title, robots are, in fact, the subject and spectacle of this lighthearted film.Working in groups over the course of several weeks, young inventors participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition to create industrial-size robots that are complex enough to move automatically, shoot projectiles and even climb. The organization that runs the competition was founded by the inventor Dean Kamen, who wanted to host an event that would develop the skills of young engineers. (The international reach of the competition drew powerful patrons: When the organizers of the tournament present the season’s challenge, they acknowledge that the competition is sponsored by Lucasfilm.)The documentary follows four teams in early 2020 as they prepare for regional competitions in Japan, Mexico and California. The most memorable scenes come from the two teams in Los Angeles, each led by their teachers Fazlul and Fatima, who are also a married couple. Despite the apparent differences in funding between the two schools, both mentors encourage their students to build robots that stand up to the hard knocks of engineering battles.The movie is the first documentary feature directed by the actress Gillian Jacobs. As a filmmaker, she made the wise choice to feature bright-eyed inventors who are able to make technical innovation sound approachable in talking head interviews.Ultimately, though, the documentary lacks balance and growth in its storytelling. Jacobs has more footage to show from the tournament in Los Angeles than either Japan or Mexico, and this imbalance has the unfortunate effect of making the international story lines feel neglected. Like many of the young inventors she documents, Jacobs has created a project that doesn’t fall apart at first touch. But her film doesn’t meet the mark for excellence, either.More Than RobotsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More