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      William Smith, Action Star Known for His Onscreen Brawls, Dies at 88

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      In addition to his Hollywood legacy, the Missouri native was also a bodybuilder, a champion discus thrower and a published poet.William Smith, an actor known for his portrayals of villains and his onscreen movie brawls, died on Monday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 88.Mr. Smith’s wife, Joanne Cervelli Smith, said he died at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Country House and Hospital. She did not specify the cause.While Mr. Smith was best known for his roles in action movies like “Any Which Way You Can” (1980), and television shows including “Laredo,” “Rich Man, Poor Man” and “Hawaii Five-O,” the real action came from his offscreen life.He was a polyglot, a bodybuilder, a champion discus thrower and an Air Force pilot during the Korean War, according to his website.Mr. Smith had more than 300 acting credits listed on IMDb from 1954 to 2020. He did many of his own stunts, and sometimes those scenes got heated. He was throwing punches with Rod Taylor for the 1970 film “Darker Than Amber” when the two began fighting each other for real. Both walked away with broken bones.“Now that was a good fight,” Mr. Smith recalled in a 2010 interview with BZ Film.The Columbia, Mo., native solidified his Hollywood status after tussling onscreen with actors like Clint Eastwood, Nick Nolte and Yul Brynner. In the 1980s, the 6-foot-2 actor earned roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders,” (1983) and in “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), for which he was cast as the father of Conan, who was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.His last role was in “Irresistible,” a 2020 film directed by Jon Stewart.In “Rich Man, Poor Man,” he played the dangerous and eccentric character Anthony Falconetti, which he would later reprise in a follow-up to the series, “Rich Man, Poor Man Book II.”Mr. Smith, who was born on March 24, 1933, grew up on a cattle ranch in Missouri owned by his parents, William Emmett Smith and Emily Richards Smith. At the ranch, he would develop a love and admiration for horses and the classic Western lifestyle, according to his website.His family later moved to Southern California, and Mr. Smith immediately began to seek work in films, finding jobs as a child performer and later as a studio extra.Ms. Smith said in a phone interview on Sunday that besides the tough guy roles that made her husband a star onscreen, he had a compassionate side as well. “He’s definitely tough as nails but he had the heart of a poet,” she said.In 2009, Mr. Smith published a book of poetry, “The Poetic Works of William Smith.”The place to find Mr. Smith, even as an older man, was the gym, Ms. Smith said. Young actors often would talk to him between workout sets, and he would share advice, sometimes inviting them to his home to discuss upcoming auditions.In addition to his wife, Mr. Smith is survived by his son, William E. Smith III, and his daughter, Sherri Anne Cervelli.Alyssa Lukpat contributed reporting. More

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      Cannes Film Festival: The Director of ‘Showgirls’ Takes on Lesbian Nuns

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      Paul Verhoeven defends “Benedetta,” which is based on a nonfiction book and set in the 17th century: “I don’t really understand how you can blaspheme about something that happened.”CANNES, France — Forgive them, Father, for they have sinned. Repeatedly! Creatively! And wait until you hear what they did with that Virgin Mary statuette.The bad girls I’m referring to are Benedetta and Bartolomea, two 17th-century lesbian nuns at the center of the new drama “Benedetta,” which debuted Friday at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a delicious, sacrilegious provocation from Paul Verhoeven, the director of “Basic Instinct,” “Showgirls” and “Elle,” and at age 82, Verhoeven proves himself to be as frisky as ever.Based on the Judith C. Brown nonfiction book “Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy,” the film follows Benedetta (Virginie Efira), a young nun so convinced that she is the bride of Christ that she even dreams about a hunky, bare-chested Jesus flirting with her. And why wouldn’t he? Benedetta is a blond bombshell who looks less like a pious 17th-century nun and more like a Charlie’s Angel in disguise, and when the pretty peasant Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) arrives at the convent, she starts making eyes at Benedetta, too.Nun-on-nun action ensues far faster than you might expect, given that this convent is lorded over by a strict mother superior (Charlotte Rampling) and Benedetta is prone to visions that end with the manifestation of stigmata. But as her religious ecstasy turns ever more orgasmic, Benedetta eventually finds a steamier, more earthbound way of chasing that high. “Jesus gave me a new heart,” she tells Bartolomea, exposing one breast. “Feel it.” (Look, they did foreplay very differently in the 17th century.)Once their sexual relationship heats up, these nuns find their habits easy to take off but hard to break. Eventually, a statuette of the Virgin Mary is whittled into a sex toy and after Benedetta and Bartolomea, er, apply themselves to it, the audience at the Cannes press screening applauded the film’s blasphemous nerve. Verhoeven has always had a gift for making the ridiculous feel divine, and now the reverse holds true, too.Still, at the news conference for “Benedetta,” Verhoeven insisted the scene wasn’t blasphemous at all.“I don’t really understand how you can blaspheme about something that happened, even in 1625,” he said, offering up excerpts from Brown’s book. “You cannot change history, you cannot change things the happened, and I based it on things that happened.”Verhoeven with Efira, center, and another cast member, Clotilde Courau, at the Cannes premiere on Friday. Johanna Geron/ReutersPerhaps, but Verhoeven’s version still gives the truth a bit of a makeover, since Benedetta and Bartolomea always seem to be sporting eye makeup, foundation and lipstick. Though their faces are never nude, their bodies frequently are, and would it surprise you to learn that when these lithe nuns strip down, they’re as toned and well-manicured as a Playboy centerfold? In the convent, God may be watching, but Verhoeven’s gaze trumps all.If any viewers ding “Benedetta” for serving up religious commentary with a side of cheesecake, Verhoeven remained unbothered. “In general, when people have sex, they take their clothes off,” Verhoeven said matter-of-factly. “I’m stunned, basically, how we don’t want to look at the reality of life.”His actresses expressed no qualms about their sex scene. “Everything was very joyful when we stripped off our clothes,” Efira said, while Patakia told the news media that when Verhoeven is directing, “You forget you’re naked.”Still, they never lost sight of just how much they’d be required to push the envelope.“I remember reading the script to myself and thinking, ‘There is not a single normal scene,’” Patakia said. “There is always something destabilizing.” She added, “So, I immediately said yes.” More

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      Stream Three Great Performances by the Bollywood Star Dilip Kumar

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      As a leading man, Kumar, who died on Wednesday at 98, helped to craft the cinematic image of post-independence India.They called him the Tragedy King.Dilip Kumar was known for throwing himself into serious roles, but the result was always gentler and more complex than his moniker suggested. Born Mohammed Yusuf Khan, he died on Wednesday at 98. The last of a golden Bollywood triumvirate that included Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor, Kumar was among the leading men who helped craft the cinematic image of post-independence India. During a career that spanned six decades, he starred in some of the most beloved and successful Indian films ever made, including the largely black-and-white historical epic “Mughal-e-Azam” (1960), best remembered for its Technicolor dance sequence “Jab Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya” (“Why Fear When You’re in Love?”).In the 1950s and ’60s, his work struck such a lasting chord that it set the template for entire genres that came to define Hindi cinema. The “double role,” for instance, is a commonly employed device in which an actor plays multiple parts, either in stories of lost twins or of reincarnation; Kumar’s films were so definitive that he had a hand in popularizing both versions of the concept. He even played twin brothers in his final film, “Qila” (1998).Three of Kumar’s most famous works are available to stream in the United States. The advantage of watching them is that they feature not three, or even four, but five of his greatest performances, each one more moving and nuanced than the last.‘Madhumati’ (1958)Stream it on The Criterion Channel.Though it was not the first Hindi film to feature a theme of reincarnation, “Madhumati” cemented the now-famous “reincarnation revenge” saga eventually aped by Bollywood hits like “Karz” (1980), “Karan Arjun” (1995) and “Om Shanti Om” (2007). Directed by Bimal Roy and written by Ritwik Ghatak, “Madhumati” follows Devinder (Kumar), a world-weary engineer who takes refuge in an old mansion during a storm. The mansion’s walls and paintings feel inexplicably familiar to him. Before long, he begins to recall memories from a life that was not his own, in which a young artist and estate manager, Anand (also Kumar), had fallen in love with a local tribal woman, Madhumati (Vyjayanthimala), before both were murdered by Anand’s envious employer, Raja Ugra Narain (Pran).Devinder’s attempts to draw a confession out of the still-living Narain would inspire the overarching plots of many imitators, but in “Madhumati,” this revenge scheme is relegated to the final act. The majority of the film luxuriates in Anand and Madhumati’s star-crossed romance, set against the serene hills of Nainital. As Anand, Kumar has an unburdened grace and simplicity; he’s subtly mischievous in Madhumati’s presence, and visibly distracted by an unspoken romantic high whenever they’re apart. As Devinder, however, Kumar pulls off the herculean feat of turning déjà vu — a fleeting sensation — into an ever-present emotional fabric, as he begins to recall and reckon with an impossible kind of grief, though he cannot yet fathom its origin.‘Ram Aur Shyam’ (1967)Stream it on Amazon Prime and Eros Now; buy or rent it on Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube.Like “Madhumati,” Tapi Chanakya’s prince-and-pauper twin comedy would go on to spawn a litany of imitators that also cast major stars to play opposite themselves. The blockbuster success of “Ram Aur Shyam” is largely owed to it playing like a one-man variety act. Kumar portrays twins separated at birth in a story that plays hopscotch across the boxes of tone and genre (a “masala film”). Kumar plays both Ram, a timid, soft-spoken man raised in a wealthy family, and his long-lost twin brother, Shyam, a cocksure villager whose magnetic aura lends itself to action heroics.As Ram, Kumar cowers in the corner of every frame, especially in the presence of his violent brother-in-law Gajendra (Pran). He elicits pity through posture, often lowering himself to the height of his 8-year-old niece, while his hands fidget nervously and hover on-guard near his chest. In contrast, Kumar practically envelops the screen as the roguish Shyam, standing tall even as he leans against walls and pillars. Kumar was known for his immersive Method approach, but “Ram Aur Shyam” proves that no matter how far inward he dove, he was always aware of the camera’s gaze and his relationship to it.‘Devdas’ (1955)Stream it on Hoopla and The Criterion Channel; buy or rent it on Amazon Prime.Kumar plays only one role in “Devdas,” but the title character’s spiritual struggle makes it feel as if there are two entities at war. The film is based on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1917 novel of the same name, of which there have been 20 screen adaptations. The title role is a calling card akin to Hamlet, and a chance for actors to spiral into an abyss of drunken sorrow. Many great performers have hammed it up along the way (see Shah Rukh Khan in the exotic 2002 version), but Kumar’s take in Bimal Roy’s adaptation is a painfully realistic portrait of a man wrestling with the ugliest parts of his nature.When Devdas reunites with his childhood sweetheart, Paro (Suchitra Sen), all we hear is Kumar’s gentle voice whispering from offscreen. When he finally steps out of the shadows, his eyes are enraptured and enamored, delivering one of the most impactful entrances in Indian cinema. It’s hard not to fall in love with Devdas — which makes it all the more agonizing when his demons and insecurities turn him violently abrasive. Caught between his love for Paro, the courtesan Chandramukhi (Vyjayanthimala) and the bottom of his glass, he becomes consumed by his mistakes. The more he drinks, the more ill he becomes, and Kumar’s masterstroke is the way he turns a physical ailment into an emotional one, blending together his agony and self-loathing until all that’s left is an inescapable haze of regret. Few performances feel as if they run the entire gamut of human emotion. The first time Devdas takes a drink, Kumar runs that gamut in a single scene. More

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      Five Science-Fiction Movies to Stream Now

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      This month’s picks feature family-friendly superheroes, eerie phone calls (and eerier cab rides), alternative universes and a perilous trip to Mars.‘How I Became a Superhero’Stream it on Netflix.Like the series “Lupin,” also on Netflix, this engaging French movie delivers fleet-footed, family-friendly fare that does not talk down to its audience or look as if it’s surreptitiously hawking Happy Meal toys.Douglas Attal’s action comedy is set in a world where special abilities are common enough that a cop like Moreau (Pio Marmaï) is assigned to catch “super-criminals.” He does not look kindly on his new partner, Lieutenant Schaltzmann (Vimala Pons), who is not used to these unusual perps, and off we go with frenemy banter out of the “Lethal Weapon” playbook.The main plot involves a drug that can turn people into human flamethrowers, shooting fire from their hands, but the visual effects are so clunky that it feels as if it’s an afterthought. The movie is on much surer footing when it lets its terrific actors have fun. Marmaï and Pons, who are often associated with the young French auteur cinema, excel in a romantic-comedy register. But the best scenes involve the brilliant Belgian star Benoît Poelvoorde (“Keep an Eye Out”) as Monte Carlo, who used to fight villains with Leïla Bekhti’s Callista in the Pack Royal superteam. Nobody is likely to complain if these two get their own spinoff.‘The Call’Stream it on Netflix.Younger viewers may be perplexed by the odd object at the center of Lee Chung-hyun’s creepy hybrid of science-fiction, thriller and horror. It’s black and clunky, and you talk into it: Yes, that is a cordless phone, connected to a so-called landline. When Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) picks it up, Young-sook (the intense Jun Jong-seo) is on the other end. Both women are about the same age and, as it turns out, live in the same house. Except that Seo-yeon is calling from 2019 and Young-sook from 1999.In the rules governing this Korean movie’s internal logic, you can change both the future and the past, with each person’s present adjusting instantly, in front of their eyes. The bad news is that one of the people is a psychopath. Lee has a firm grasp on the aesthetics and shot framing — everything looks simultaneously gorgeous and unsettling — but more important, the events are easy to follow. There has been, in recent years, a fetishization of hypercomplex plotlines, as if any screenplay requiring an explanatory diagram is automatically granted depth. “The Call” has a clarity that has become rare in this type of storytelling; that makes the film only that much more powerful.‘The Fare’Stream it on Amazon Prime; buy it or rent it on Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.It seems impossible to put together one of these columns without including a time-loop movie: Not only can they be done on the cheap, but they have an addictive quality — the desire to keep coming back is baked in.In D.C. Hamilton’s “The Fare,” a cabby, Harris (Gino Anthony Pesi), picks up a passenger, Penny (Brinna Kelly, who also wrote the screenplay). When he resets the meter, their interaction repeats. He doesn’t realize what’s going on at first; she, on the other hand, has always been ahead of him.Warning bells have been ringing from the start, though: After all, Harris drives an old-fashioned Checker cab in the middle of a landscape so barren, it’s startling to hear the dispatcher mention streets.The film was shot mostly on a soundstage using rear projections, but these budget-minded constraints actually help create a dreamy mood, as if the action were happening in a chiaroscuro netherworld. Visual hat tips to old Hollywood movies and “The Twilight Zone” are an added benefit. (Hamilton is not as successful wringing uniformly solid performances from his cast.)Many such stories focus on the protagonists’ efforts to escape the temporal loop and don’t bother explaining how it came to be. But that aspect is key to “The Fare,” and the left-field reveal turns out to be surprisingly satisfying.‘Parallel’Stream it on Amazon Prime; buy or rent it on Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.One day, four friends discover that an old mirror in their shared house functions as a portal to alternate universes that duplicate ours, with at least one major difference: Time in those places passes much more slowly. This, for example, allows Noel (Martin Wallström from “Mr. Robot”) and Josh (Mark O’Brien) to beat a seemingly impossible deadline for an important business meeting. Leena (Georgia King) passes off artworks from a mirror universe as her own and finally lands a gallery exhibition. As for Devin (Aml Ameen), he keeps trying to find an alt-reality where his father is still alive.The buddies also get to have stoopid fun in mirror worlds without fear of consequences, since they can always retreat to the safety of their regular home — in those scenes, Isaac Ezban’s film feels as if it’s a “Goonies”-type lark, with mindless adults.But after one friend dies and the other three kidnap the mirror version, we enter a game of Whac-a-Mole as unruly paradoxes sprout up and the movie can’t keep them under control. One character’s ambition is revealed to be amorally destructive. Eventually we realize that the worm was in the apple: no need to go find trouble through a mirror when it’s been sitting right there all along.‘Stowaway’Stream it on Netflix.A scientist (Daniel Dae Kim) and a physician (Anna Kendrick) are on an exploratory journey to Mars under the leadership of their commander (Toni Collette, who gets to keep her Australian accent for a change). The entire mission is endangered when the crew discovers the title character (Shamier Anderson): There simply won’t be enough oxygen for four people.Joe Penna’s film is more concerned with practical matters and intimate human dilemmas than large-scale, interstellar whiz-bang. Life-or-death decisions must be made, and “Stowaway” brings up major issues: How do you evaluate a life’s worth? How do you rank a person’s value and decide who lives and who dies? These are tough questions, and the movie struggles when it needs to dig deeper — there is little chance anybody will mistake Penna for Andrei Tarkovsky. At the same time, “Stowaway” does not shy away from the consequences of actions, and Kendrick’s presence anchors the viewer: She is believable as a medical prodigy, while her Everywoman quality gives genuine poignancy to the doctor’s choices. More

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      It’s Hollywood Barbie’s Moment (and She’s Bringing Her Friends)

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      For 62 years, Barbie has been the hardest-working woman in the toy aisle, using a dizzying array of outfits and accessories — and, lately, changing body shapes and skin tones — while gliding from one career to the next. Astrophysicist Barbie. Ballerina Barbie. Chicken Farmer Barbie. Firefighter Barbie.But she has never pulled off the ultimate transformation: Barbie, live-action movie star.Time and again, her corporate overlords at Mattel have teamed with Hollywood studios to make a big-budget film in hopes of forging a new revenue stream while giving Barbie new relevance. Time and again, nothing has emerged, in part because Mattel has tried to micromanage the creative process, alienating filmmakers. (You want Barbie to do what?) Financial turbulence and executive turnover at Mattel haven’t helped.A similar situation has played out with other Mattel brands, including Hot Wheels, American Girl and Masters of the Universe — a humiliation given the success that other toy companies have had in Hollywood, which loves nothing more than a movie concept with a built-in fan base.The inventive “Lego Movie” took in nearly $500 million at the global box office in 2014 for Warner Bros. and the Lego Group, resulting in a sequel and two spinoffs. Paramount Pictures and Hasbro have turned the Transformers action-figure line into a $5 billion big-screen franchise over the last 14 years; a seventh installment is on the way and will undoubtedly deliver the same halo for Hasbro as the previous films, driving up the company’s stock price and turbocharging demand for Transformers toys.With money like that on the line, Mattel has clung to its Hollywood dream. “There is ‘Fast and Furious 9’ and Hot Wheels zero,” said Ynon Kreiz, Mattel’s newish chief executive, referring to Universal’s hot-rod film franchise, which has taken in $6.3 billion worldwide since 2001. “That is going to change.”There are signals — 13 of them — that Mattel is not playing around this time.Margot Robbie will star in “Barbie,” a live-action movie directed by Greta Gerwig.Pool photo by Chris PizzelloUnder Mr. Kreiz, who has overseen a stunning financial turnaround at the company since becoming its fourth chief executive in four years in 2018, Mattel has moved to turn its toys into full-fledged entertainment brands. It now has 13 films in the works with various studio partners, including “Barbie,” a live-action adventure starring Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”) and directed by the Oscar-nominated Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”). Ms. Robbie, who is also one of the producers, described the big-budget film in an email as being “for both the fans and the skeptics,” a theatrical endeavor that will be “really entertaining but also completely surprising.”The script, by Ms. Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”), even pokes fun at Barbie and Ken, her plastic paramour.As in, what happened to their genitals?“I’m excited about this movie because it’s emotional and touches your heart and honors the legacy while reflecting our current society and culture — and doesn’t feel designed to sell toys,” said Toby Emmerich, chairman of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, where “Barbie” is pointed toward a 2023 theatrical release.The dozen other films in Mattel’s pipeline include a live-action Hot Wheels spectacle; a horror film based on the fortunetelling Magic 8 Ball; a wide-audience Thomas the Tank Engine movie that combines animation and live action; and, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, a big-screen Masters of the Universe adventure about the cosmos that includes He-Man and his superheroic sister, She-Ra.Mattel also has 17 television series in production, including “Masters of the Universe: Revelation,” which arrives on Netflix on July 23.NetflixMattel, Universal and Vin Diesel are collaborating on a live-action movie based on Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, a tabletop game introduced in 1966. Lena Dunham (HBO’s “Girls”) is directing and writing a live-action family comedy based on Mattel’s Polly Pocket line of micro-dolls. Lily Collins (“Emily in Paris”) will play the title role and produce; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the distribution and financing partner.“Young women need smart, playful films that speak to them without condescension,” Ms. Dunham said.Mattel has also announced movies based on View-Master, American Girl and Uno, the ubiquitous card game. (If you think an Uno movie sounds like a satirical headline from The Onion, consider this: There are non-Mattel movies in development in Hollywood that are based on Play-Doh and Peeps, the Easter candy.)All or some or none of Mattel’s movie projects could connect with audiences — if they come to fruition at all. That is the nature of the Hollywood casino.“Familiarity with a toy or character is a start, but no movie makes it without clever character and story development,” said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy.Toys have a surprisingly strong track record as film fodder. Other hits include the 2016 animated musical “Trolls,” based on the wild-haired dolls, and “Ouija,” which cost $5 million to make in 2014 and collected $104 million worldwide. (Pixar did not base “Toy Story” on a toy, but it has populated the franchise with classics, including Barbie.) But the genre has also had wipeouts, notably “Battleship,” which Universal and Hasbro based on the board game and cost more than $300 million to make and market. It arrived to $25 million in North American ticket sales in 2012.The head of Mattel Films, Robbie Brenner, right, with Mr. Kreiz and Richard Dickson, Mattel’s president and chief operating officer.Rozette Rago for The New York Times“UglyDolls,” adapted from a line of plush toys, was a smaller-scale box office disaster for STX Films in 2019. Mattel itself got bruised in 2016 when “Max Steel,” a modestly budgeted film based on an action figure, arrived to near-empty theaters. It received a zero percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregation site.“Unless you can make something that feels really sticky and really interesting and really authentic, there’s no point in doing it,” said Robbie Brenner, who heads Mattel Films, which was created in 2018. (Mattel’s previous movie division, Playground Productions, was started in 2013 and folded in 2016.)Ms. Brenner said she had approached all of Mattel’s properties with the same question: “How do we flip it on its side a little bit while still respecting the integrity of the brand?”Mr. Kreiz said he was not interested in making thinly disguised toy commercials. In a shift from the Mattel of the past, “we want to give our filmmaking partners creative freedom and enable them to do things that are unconventional and exciting,” he said. “Focus on making great content and the rest will follow.”He added, however, that Mattel did not “sign a deal and disappear.”The message appears to be resonating in Hollywood, allowing Mattel to attract A-plus talent. The “Barbie” team is one example. Tom Hanks has agreed to star in and produce an adaptation of Major Matt Mason, an astronaut action figure introduced by Mattel in 1966; Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar-winning writer of “A Beautiful Mind,” is working on the screenplay. Marc Forster (“World War Z”) is directing and producing that “Thomas & Friends” movie. And Daniel Kaluuya, who won an Oscar in April for his role in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” is involved with a Mattel film project based on Barney, the interminably perky purple dinosaur.Even Ms. Brenner has a sophisticated film pedigree. She produced the AIDS-medication drama “Dallas Buyers Club,” which received six Oscar nominations in 2014, including one for best picture. (It won three: actor, supporting actor, and makeup and hairstyling.) Before that, she was a senior executive at 20th Century Fox and Miramax.“Barbie DreamHouse Adventures” is already steaming on Netflix.MattelMattel’s momentum in Hollywood has resulted, in part, from a turnaround at the company as a whole. Mattel has fixed many of its core problems, making it less risk averse, according to Richard Dickson, Mattel’s president and chief operating officer.“Five years ago, the foundations that our brands were sitting on were not strong enough,” Mr. Dickson said.When Mr. Kreiz arrived in April 2018, the toymaker was reeling from gut punches, some self-inflicted. It had lost Disney’s lucrative princesses toy license to Hasbro. A crucial retail partner, Toys “R” Us, had evaporated in a cloud of bankruptcy. Millennial parents had turned on Barbie, dismissing her as vapid and noninclusive. And some of Mattel’s other stars — American Girl, the glam Monster High crew — were adrift, unsure of how to compete for the attention of a generation of iPad-wielding children.Total revenue plunged to $4.5 billion in 2018, from $6.5 billion in 2013, and a profit of more than $900 million in 2013 became a loss of $533 million.Mr. Kreiz stabilized Mattel by restructuring its supply chain and reducing costs by $1 billion over three years, in part by closing factories and laying off more than 2,000 nonmanufacturing employees. At the same time, a long-gestating modernization plan for Barbie began to pay off in a major way. She now comes with roughly 150 different body shapes, skin tones and hairstyles; Wheelchair Barbie was such a runaway success last year that Wheelchair Ken recently arrived.In 2020, with parents looking for ways to entertain children at home during the pandemic, Mattel sold more than 100 Barbie dolls a minute, Mr. Dickson said. (Juli Lennett, toy industry adviser for NPD Group, backed him up.)Revenue totaled $4.6 billion last year, and Mattel posted a profit of $127 million. In the first quarter of 2021, sales increased 47 percent from a year earlier, the company’s highest growth rate in at least 25 years. Mattel’s stock price has climbed 52 percent since Mr. Kreiz took over.Mattel, based in El Segundo, Calif., is now turning to the next phase of Mr. Kreiz’s growth plan. With a vast catalog of intellectual property, Mattel wants to become more like Marvel, which started as a comics company and transformed into a Hollywood superpower.“In the mid- to long term, we must become a player in film, television, digital gaming, live events, consumer products, music and digital media,” Mr. Kreiz said.And by player he means player. Mattel has a long history in direct-to-DVD animated movies, for instance, but its television division, run by Fred Soulie, is working to capitalize on the streaming boom. The company has a long-term deal to make one or two Barbie cartoons for Netflix annually. “Masters of the Universe: Revelation,” an animated series from the filmmaker Kevin Smith (“Clerks”), arrives on Netflix on July 23.In total, Mr. Soulie has 18 shows in production, including a revamped “Thomas & Friends” and a new incarnation of “Monster High.” An additional 24 are in development.“We’ve been planting a lot of seeds,” Mr. Soulie said, “and we’re about to see the results.” More

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      ‘Last Summer’ Review: Growing Pains

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      Sunny days turn to sweaty nights on the Mediterranean coast in this Turkish coming-of-age film that follows a teenage boy who pines for his older sister’s best friend.The film “Last Summer” plays like an extended montage advertising the arresting views and clear Mediterranean waters of southern Turkey. Like a migratory fish, the teenage Deniz (Fatih Sahin) is lucky to spend summers on this divine coastline beaching, discoing and bronzing in the seaside town where his family has a cottage. This gauzy coming-of-age movie (on Netflix) is set during the summer of 1997, as Deniz tags along with his cool older sister, Ebru (Aslihan Malbora), while nursing puppy love for her teasing bestie, Asli (Ece Cesmioglu).The director Ozan Aciktan is interested in exploring how Deniz’s crush on Asli, a flirtatious young woman, reflects his yearning for what he sees as the confidence and thrills of adulthood. When he accompanies Asli and her friends to a high cliff, Deniz shows off by jumping off into the sea. Although he survives the plunge, the gash he gets on his foot is a sign that while growing up is exhilarating, it is not without pain.The film’s attention to Deniz’s growing pains is useful as Asli, a lovely but hazy character, meets a charming older man, and Deniz’s shy longing takes a jealous turn. Tension builds over sunny days and sweaty nights. But upon reaching its climax, the movie fails to fulfill. Asli’s feelings seem to change on a whim, and Deniz suffers no consequences for his mistakes. For all the beauty of its dazzling vacation setting, “Last Summer” coasts, but not toward any satisfying destination.Last SummerNot rated. In Turkish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      The Schlock-Horror Drive-In That Rose From the Grave

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      Many drive-in theaters got a boost during the pandemic. But the scene at the Mahoning Drive-In in rural Pennsylvania is something else entirely.It was about 2 a.m. on a Sunday when the gross-out horror-comedy “Class of Nuke ’Em High” started playing at the Mahoning Drive-In. This was the last screening at TromaDance, an annual showcase of low-budget horror and sex comedies produced by the Queens-based Troma movie studio. Earlier that evening, about 600 cars had piled into the drive-in in Lehighton, Pa., but by 2 a.m., only the die-hards remained. Kevin Schmidt, an extra in the film, was among them.He had driven to the Mahoning from Summit, N.J., and hadn’t seen the movie projected on screen since it was first shown in Jersey City in December 1986. “This is the only time I can justify driving 100 miles to see a movie,” Mr. Schmidt said much earlier in the evening.By the time the evening was over, it had been another success for the Mahoning, a 72-year-old drive-in theater that was left for dead just seven years ago. And while the pandemic has helped spur a small-scale revival of the drive-in, it doesn’t quite explain what’s going on at this theater in rural Pennsylvania an hour south of Scranton.“There’s a feeling of excitement that I get every time I drive past the Mahoning’s sign and see the huge screen get closer and closer,” said Andrew Ramallo, who drove from his home in Rego Park, Queens. His car was one of dozens with out-of-state plates. In fact, he has made the 100-plus-mile drive from New York to Lehighton a half-dozen times since 2019. “Like visiting an old friend,” he said, “there’s an overwhelming sense of familiarity.”Robert Humanick, an assistant projectionist, loading a film into one of the theater’s original projectors.Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesThe Mahoning is not the only successful drive-in theater in the area. There’s the Delsea in Vineland, in southern New Jersey, and the Hi-Way in Coxsackie, in upstate New York, but they mostly screen new movies that are also showing at indoor theaters. A few New York City drive-ins screen older movies, including the Skyline in Greenpoint and the Bel Aire Diner in Astoria. But the movies they show can probably be streamed at home. And they don’t have a devoted audience willing to travel hundreds of miles to see them.Movie screenings at the Mahoning Drive-In often feel like events. Films are shown in double and triple features, sandwiched between older (and often bizarre) movie trailers. You might take in “Escape From New York” and “Invasion U.S.A.,” which play after vintage church advertisements (“Worship at the church of your choice”) or an anti-cable-TV screed (“Don’t let pay TV be the monster in your living room”). It is, in the words of Mr. Schmidt, “a special place.”Fans lining up last month to meet Mr. Kaufman at TromaDance, a festival featuring the Troma studio’s  movies, Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesThe Mahoning Drive-In opened in 1949, part of a wave of drive-ins that became popular in America after World War II, first with parents and their young children, and then with teenagers who sought unchaperoned privacy. “Most teenagers didn’t have many places that they could go to be alone,” said John Irving Bloom, a drive-in historian. “The drive-in was one of those places.”Mr. Bloom is the author of 11 books, including “Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History,” but he is better known as the redneck TV character Joe Bob Briggs, host of the popular horror movie showcase program “The Last Drive-In” (on AMC’s Shudder streaming service). Mr. Bloom’s show will shoot a live episode on July 17 at the Mahoning Drive-In. The movies he’ll present, as always, will be a surprise.According to Mr. Bloom, drive-in attendance started to decline when multiplex theaters proliferated across the country. In the 1970s, many drive-ins survived by showing pornography, and by the 1980s, he said, most drive-in theater owners had sold their land to big-box stores like Walmart.The Mahoning never went out of business. But by 2014, attendance was sometimes as low as 10 cars per show. An industrywide shift from film to digital projectors left the drive-in’s owners with a dire choice: either spend $50,000 for a new digital projector, which would allow the theater to show the latest movie studio releases, or stop showing new movies altogether. Many owners would have either begrudgingly put up the money or folded outright — but Jeff Mattox, the drive-in’s longtime projectionist, did something weirder. He bought the place and decided not to change a thing.Mark Nelson, the Mahoning’s general manager: “I wanted to be a part of this wild, wacky thing.”Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesMuch of the open-air theater’s equipment hasn’t changed since he arrived in 2001. Mr. Mattox estimated that he has had to replace only one gear in the theater’s film projectors, which date back to 1949. Replacing those old workhorses with digital projectors would change the Mahoning Drive-In’s fundamental character. “It would have ruined the whole drive-in look,” he said.His conviction was infectious.Two of the drive-in’s enthusiastic volunteer employees, Virgil Cardamone and Matt McClanahan, provided Mr. Mattox with a solution: abandon the new movies and exclusively screen older cult and genre movies, all shown on film prints rather than digital projectors.Mr. Mattox was initially skeptical. Netflix was well on its way to domination, and a number of competitors were also launching apps. Who would come to a drive-in to see a movie they could stream at home? But he put his faith in keeping things retro.It’s not just a drive-in but a social event.Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesThe Mahoning Drive-In’s programming was only fitfully successful throughout its first two seasons, but word soon spread about themed programs like “Bite Night” — a Steven Spielberg double feature of “Jaws” and “Jurassic Park.” After that, the drive-in’s thousand-car lot began to fill up on a regular basis. The nearby Mahoning Inn motel started filling up with movie fans on weekends.Since then, programming has become more eclectic thanks to the suggestions of Harry Guerro, a film collector from New Jersey who has lent the drive-in many features, shorts and trailer reels from his considerable collection.Mr. Guerro, a founding member of the Philadelphia film programmers group Exhumed Films, suggested themed showings, like Zombie Fest and Camp Blood, which have gone on to be the Mahoning Drive-In’s most successful recurring events.Though it’s the party atmosphere that gives the Mahoning its unique character, Mr. Guerro said he felt emboldened by its thriving fan base. He hopes to experiment more soon by showing more than just older horror movies, which he says are unquestionably the Mahoning Drive-In’s biggest draw.Strictly speaking, he isn’t even an employee. But he’s nonetheless invested. “I mostly want to give people the opportunity to experience or re-experience films that I love on the big screen with an audience of like-minded individuals.”The concession stand sells popcorn and vinyl records. The drive-in’s owner has bet on keeping things retro.Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesMr. Guerro is not the only one working with the Mahoning Drive-In who lives out of state. The theater’s manager, Mark Nelson, regularly commutes about two and a half hours from Dobbs Ferry, just north of New York City. He started volunteering at the drive-in 2015 and is now a paid employee. “I wanted to be a part of this wild, wacky thing,” Mr. Nelson said. “The staff were best friends, and the customers were just as crazy for films as the people working there.”John Demmer, a carpenter from Nutley, N.J., works at the Mahoning Drive-In with his wife, Cindy, albeit as unpaid volunteers. The two, who are both 54, have built elaborate costumes, props and sets for customers and celebrity guests to take photos in since last year. They work closely with an amateur set designer named J.T. Mills who has volunteered at the Mahoning since 2018.At this year’s TromaDance, the Demmers sat in lawn chairs next to a newly renovated drive-in speaker that Mr. Demmer found and repaired while antiquing in Detroit. They fondly recalled their first visit to the Mahoning Drive-In last year, when they dressed up as Willy Wonka and Veruca Salt for the annual opening-night double feature, “The Wizard of Oz” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”A moment from the recent Troma take on Shakespeare.Amanda Mustard for The New York TimesTo celebrate their 35th anniversary, the Demmers visited the Mahoning Drive-In to rewatch “The Thing.” It was the first movie they had seen as a couple.“You don’t just sit in a car and watch the movie,” Mr. Demmer said. “You actually become part of the entertainment. You could argue that seeing the movie is secondary to being there with your friends.” Mrs. Demmer agreed and said she was looking forward to the upcoming Joe Bob Briggs screenings — a “major recognition” for the drive-in and its staff.There was such a high demand for “Joe Bob’s Jamboree,” in fact, Mr. Mattox said, that Ticket Leap, the Mahoning Drive-In’s online vendor, crashed soon after tickets for the event were released. Two of the event’s four evenings sold out immediately after the website was restored.When Mr. Bloom shows up as Joe Bob Briggs at the Mahoning Drive-In this month, it will be his first visit, but he already understands the outdoor theater’s appeal. “It’s partly nostalgia, but it’s also partly because people now live on the internet,” he said. “They make friends on the internet, but they never meet these friends. So now people go to the drive-in to meet people that they already know.” More

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      Cannes Film Festival: ‘Val,’ ‘The Velvet Underground’ and Famous Jerks

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      Two documentaries take different approaches to their star subjects. One, about the actor Val Kilmer, prefers to be hands-off. The other, about Lou Reed, welcomes complications.CANNES, France — As the documentary “Val” begins, a young, bare-chested Val Kilmer lounges on the set of “Top Gun” and claims that he’s nearly been fired from every movie he’s made. Then Kilmer’s lips twist in a smirk. He’s not playing for sympathy. He’s bragging.At the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, two documentaries debuted about famously prickly pop-cultural figures, but despite that promising first scene, “Val” would rather recontextualize the actor as a misunderstood softy. Perhaps you remember the stories about Kilmer, a major 1990s movie star whose career fizzled amid rumors that he was difficult to work with. Well, “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, lets the 61-year-old actor retell those tales more sympathetically, in his own voice.Or, to be more precise, the voice of his son Jack, who delivers the documentary’s first-person narration. Throat cancer has ravaged Val Kilmer’s signature purr, and Jack Kilmer, an actor, is an acceptable voice substitute who nevertheless sounds far more easygoing than his father ever did. Kilmer has been recording himself since childhood, and over decades of home movies, he and his son paint the picture of an undervalued artist who always wanted to give his all, even when Hollywood wasn’t interested.Jack’s narration is so good-natured that it may take you a little while to realize that Kilmer dislikes nearly every film on his résumé that a fan might want to hear about. “Top Secret,” his first film, was “fluff” that Kilmer says he was embarrassed to appear in, and he practically had to be strong-armed into making the jingoistic Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun.” On “Batman Forever,” Kilmer claims the studio machine thwarted his attempts to deliver an actual performance, so he instead patterned his Bruce Wayne on soap-opera actors.All the while, Kilmer was recording elaborate audition tapes for the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, efforts that “Val” devotes nearly as much screen time to as the roles he actually booked. Here’s the funny thing, though: Kilmer was a much better actor in the movies he hated! In the clips of “Top Gun,” you see Kilmer at his most loose and playful because he isn’t taking anything about the movie seriously, but when we watch his “Full Metal Jacket” audition — or when he practices lines from “Hamlet,” a dream role he never got to play — Kilmer’s charisma calcifies, and he becomes far too preening and pretentious.Much of the footage in “Val,” directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott, was shot by Kilmer over the years.Amazon StudiosSo was he as big a jerk as had been rumored? “Val” sidesteps the story about his stubbing his cigarette out on a cameraman or the “Batman Forever” director Joel Schumacher’s claim that the actor was “psychotic”; here, Kilmer simply says he quit playing Batman because the suit was too arduous. In a segment about the notorious 1996 flop “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Kilmer portrays himself as the troubled production’s serene moral compass; you’d never know that a fed-up Brando threw Kilmer’s cellphone in the bushes and reportedly said, “Young man, don’t confuse your ego with the size of your salary.”Much is made, too, of Kilmer’s romance and marriage to the actress Joanne Whalley, though we hardly hear her speak in all of Kilmer’s home-video footage. After they divorce and he fights for more time with their children, the film lets his noble, aggrieved phone calls to Whalley play out nearly in full. I’d expect that unchallenged point-of-view from a celebrity memoir. I’m not sure I buy it in a documentary.By contrast, the new Todd Haynes documentary “The Velvet Underground,” which also debuted at Cannes on Wednesday, is all too happy to confirm every story you’ve ever heard about the singer-songwriter Lou Reed being a self-obsessed jerk. Like Kilmer, Reed claimed that anyone who beefed with him was simply interfering with his artistic process, but unlike “Val,” this film isn’t afraid to show how badly Reed wanted to be famous, and how much he resented collaborators who could wrest the spotlight from him.Todd Haynes’s documentary examines Lou Reed (center, with a reclining Andy Warhol in sunglasses), and his band, the Velvet Underground. Apple TV+Reed died in 2013, and other important figures in the film like Andy Warhol (credited with steering the early career of Reed’s band, the Velvet Underground) and the singer Nico have long since passed. Haynes isn’t interested in incorporating a lot of archival clips to bring those lost voices to life; instead, this artsy documentary lets the living members of the band, like the instrumentalist John Cale and drummer Moe Tucker, do more of the heavy lifting.“The Velvet Underground” is no conventional music documentary: For one, it uses hardly any performance footage, though some of the band’s most iconic songs, like “Candy Says” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” play often in the background. Haynes is more invested in conjuring a vibe, placing the viewer smack in the middle of the mid-60s milieu that produced seminal figures like Reed and Warhol.And though Haynes is clearly a fan of his subject, he isn’t afraid to complicate that vibe, either. One of the film’s most welcome talking heads is the critic Amy Taubin, who recalls what was so beguiling about Warhol and Reed’s artistic scene, then adds a spiky observation: If you weren’t pretty enough, Taubin claims, all those men eventually lost interest in you.Let’s face it, famous people are narcissists: If you’re going to will yourself into fame and then stay there, it’s practically required. Haynes explores that concept in a way “Val” can’t quite bring itself to do. Even if “The Velvet Underground” is less of a comprehensive documentary and more of a perfume that lingers for a while, evoking a time and place, at least it’s not afraid to add a few sour notes in pursuit of a more full-bodied scent. More