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      ‘Hell Is Empty’ Review: Sins of the Father

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      In this bare-bones horror film, a young woman joins a cult and eventually defies its patriarch.In horror, the burden of taking down the patriarchy — whether symbolized by a group of violent men or just one foreboding male monster — often rests on the humble shoulders of a young woman. “Hell Is Empty,” a film by the director Jo Shaffer about a girl who haplessly joins and eventually dismantles a remote cult, follows this tradition. Unfortunately, its heroine is just one in a series of underwritten characters.The film centers on Lydia (Spencer Peppet), a redheaded runaway who is found, unconscious, in the wilderness and brought to the cult compound by its leader, Ed (Travis Mitchell). Lydia joins four other women in a rickety island shack overseen by Ed, who the followers also call Artist, for his prolific paintings of biblical scenes and the apocalypse. One noticeably pregnant follower, Saratoga (Nia Farrell), claims to be a virgin expecting the son of God. Lydia sees no red flags here and happily stays, eventually fighting back against Ed — and two of the other women — only after things get murderous.Forget about hell, the emptiness these filmmakers must address lies primarily in their predominantly female cast of characters. We don’t know where Lydia comes from, nor why it would be a worse place to return to than a cult led by a rapist. There is no plot justification for Lydia’s bizarre acceptance, just as there is little background for anything else in the script, co-written by Shaffer and Adam DeSantes.One of Ed’s followers, Murphy (Aya), stumbles from scene to scene, hunched over and completely mute. An oblivious crony to Ed, she presents a particularly galling caricature of developmental disability, one that is painful to watch in 2022. The movie’s press notes explain that Murphy grew up alone and feral in the forest, but there is no mention of this in the film itself — an apt example of how “Hell Is Empty” renders all its players with aggravating shallowness.Hell Is EmptyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      James Earl Jones Will Have a Broadway Theater Named After Him

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      The landmark theater will be renamed in honor of the 91-year-old actor who has made 21 Broadway appearances and won two competitive Tony Awards.The Shubert Organization, which is Broadway’s biggest landlord, will rename one of its 17 theaters after the actor James Earl Jones, fulfilling a promise made when Black artists pressed for greater recognition in the wake of the 2020 protests against societal racism.The organization said Wednesday that it would name the Cort Theater, a landmark 110-year-old house located on West 48th Street, after Jones, a two-time competitive Tony Award winner who, over six decades, has appeared in 21 Broadway shows.“He’s an icon — he really is one of the greatest American actors, and this is just a perfect match,” said Robert E. Wankel, chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization.In a telephone interview, the 91-year-old Jones said he was honored by the news. “It means a lot,” he said. “It’s too heavy for me to try to define.”The James Earl Jones Theater will be the second Broadway house named for a Black artist; the August Wilson, operated by Jujamcyn Theaters, was renamed for the American playwright shortly after his death in 2005. The Shubert Organization last summer pledged to name a theater after a Black artist as part of an agreement with the advocacy organization Black Theater United; the Nederlander Organization has also promised to take such a step.Jones, best known as the voice of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” films, has had a long and illustrious career on Broadway. He first worked there in 1957, as an understudy in a short-lived play called “The Egghead,” and then starting in 1958 he had a role in “Sunrise at Campobello,” which ran for 16 months at the Cort Theater.Jones recalled that in “Sunrise at Campobello” he had a line — “Mrs. Roosevelt, supper is served” — that he struggled to deliver because of a speech disorder. “I almost didn’t make it through because I’m a stutterer,” he said. “But it became a lot of fun eventually.”Jones’s most recent Broadway performance was in a 2015 revival of “The Gin Game.” He won his two competitive Tonys for best actor, in 1969 for “The Great White Hope” and in 1987 for originating the role of Troy Maxson in Wilson’s “Fences.” In 2017 he won a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.The Cort, which seats 1,084 people, is among Broadway’s oldest theaters; it is currently undergoing a $45 million renovation and expansion, and is expected to reopen later this year, at which time there will be a rededication ceremony. Until now, the theater has been named for John Cort, a onetime vaudeville performer who, by the early 20th century, controlled multiple theaters across the country. Cort was the first operator of the Broadway house that has borne his name. More

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      Gérard Depardieu, Friend of Putin, Denounces ‘Fratricidal War’

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      “Stop the weapons and negotiate,” the French actor and staunch Russia ally told a news agency.For the past decade, the French actor Gérard Depardieu has been one of the closest Western celebrities to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.In 2013, the movie star became a Russian citizen to avoid taxes in France. In a letter to Russian state television at the time, Mr. Depardieu said, “I love your president, Vladimir Putin, very much and it’s mutual.” Mr. Putin awarded Mr. Depardieu Russian citizenship at a special dinner that year.As tensions between Russia and Ukraine were growing last month, Mr. Depardieu even went on French television to say, “Leave Vladimir alone.”Now, Mr. Depardieu has taken a surprising step toward ruining that cherished friendship when, on Tuesday, the actor denounced the war in Ukraine in an interview with Agence France-Presse, the French news service. “Russia and Ukraine have always been brother countries,” Mr. Depardieu said. “I am against this fratricidal war,” he added. “I say, ‘Stop the weapons and negotiate.’”Best known for 1990s movies including “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Green Card,” Mr. Depardieu later posted part of his statement on Instagram. His agent did not respond to an interview request.Mr. Depardieu’s comments are unlikely to change many Ukrainians’ views of the actor. In 2015, the Ukrainian government included Mr. Depardieu on a list of cultural figures who were a threat to the country’s security. It did not state a reason, but Ukrainian newspapers linked the decision to comments Mr. Depardieu had made questioning Ukraine’s independence. In 2014, at the Baltic Pearl movie festival in Latvia, Mr. Depardieu told reporters that he loved both Russia and “Ukraine, which is part of Russia.”The French tax exile is not the only famous actor to have taken Russian citizenship: Steven Seagal, the American-born star of action movies like “Under Siege,” was naturalized in 2016. On Thursday, Mr. Seagal’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request to discuss the actor’s views on the war in Ukraine.In recent years, Mr. Depardieu has been in the news for controversies aside from his Russia connections. In 2018, French prosecutors investigated rape allegations against him, but dropped the case the following year because of a lack of evidence. More

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      ‘The Jump’ Review: A Seaman’s Story of a Daring Escape

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      This documentary looks back at a Cold War defection drama that took place off the coast of Massachusetts.In its first half-hour, the documentary “The Jump” brings a bracing immediacy to a 50-year-old Cold War incident. In 1970, a Lithuanian sailor, Simas Kudirka, jumped from a Soviet trawler onto a U.S. Coast Guard vessel off Martha’s Vineyard in an effort to defect from the Soviet Union. (The boats were moored alongside each other for talks on fishing rights.)The Soviet crewmen were allowed to forcibly remove Kudirka from the Coast Guard ship and take him home, where he would presumably meet a chilling fate. The episode led to protests in the United States.To lay out these events, the early scenes principally crosscut among three people. Kudirka revisits the Coast Guard vessel he had jumped to a half-century earlier and energetically points out what happened and where.The director, Giedre Zickyte, interweaves Kudirka’s recollections with testimony from the ship’s captain, Cmdr. Ralph W. Eustis, and Lt. Cmdr. Paul E. Pakos, its executive officer, to create a fluid account that shows how the day unfolded from multiple perspectives.When the story shifts to the Soviet Union, Zickyte introduces a K.G.B. interrogator who recalls questioning Kudirka. The sailor received a 10-year sentence but was freed in 1974. In the film, Kudirka revisits a prison where he was held.“The Jump” grows less exciting after that, partly because Kudirka, its most engaging storyteller, was necessarily in the background of efforts to secure his freedom, and partly because his eventual release owed more to incredible luck than to a political breakthrough. In the film, Henry Kissinger recalls that President Gerald R. Ford directly intervened on Kudirka’s behalf. “No professional diplomat would ever have done that,” he says.The JumpNot rated. In Lithuanian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Watch These 13 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in March

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      It’s awards season, and a bunch of great Oscar-winning and -nominated films are leaving this month. Check them out while you can.The Academy Awards arrive at the end of March, and the titles leaving Netflix in the United States this month are steeped in Oscar glory, including multiple nominees and winners for best picture, actor, actress and more. They also include hit comedies, erotic thrillers and family favorites. Queue up these 13 movies before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘Howards End’ (March 15)This 1992 adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, and is a quintessential example of the “Merchant-Ivory film”: a period literary adaptation of impeccable design and intelligent craft. But Merchant-Ivory productions were too often inaccurately dismissed as airless, stuffy, overly intellectual affairs; “Howards End” is a robust, energetic picture, rife with familial betrayal, long-simmering attractions and class resentment. Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham-Carter are all excellent, but the standout is Emma Thompson, who won her first Oscar for her searing work as the protagonist Margaret Schlegel.Stream it here.‘Philomena’ (March 21)The British comic actor Steve Coogan — best known for his long-running turns as Alan Partridge and as a fictionalized version of himself in the “Trip” movies and BBC series — did a surprising shift to the serious when he co-wrote and co-starred in Stephen Frears’s adaptation of the nonfiction book “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.” Judi Dench received an Oscar nomination for best actress for her heart-wrenching performance as the title character, an Irishwoman who sought out the son she was forced to give up for adoption a half-century earlier. Coogan (nominated for best screenplay) is the journalist who assists her and uncovers a horrifying story of religious hypocrisy.Stream it here.‘Lawless’ (March 27)The director John Hillcoat and the musician and screenwriter Nick Cave, who first collaborated on the unforgettable outback Western “The Proposition,” re-teamed for this story of bootlegging brothers in Depression Era Virginia. The cast is jaw-dropping: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Noah Taylor and Mia Wasikowska all get a chance to shine, and if nothing else, “Lawless” is a priceless opportunity to watch some of our finest thespians rub elbows. But it’s thoughtful and entertaining besides; its Australian auteurs might seem an odd fit for such an inherently American tale, but their outsider perspective keeps them from overly romanticizing this criminal family’s “entrepreneurial” exploits.Stream it here.‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’ (March 28)The “Wire” star Idris Elba is in top form in this handsome biopic of Nelson Mandela, tracking his journey from childhood in Apartheid-era South Africa through his protest, imprisonment, release and triumphant election as the nation’s first democratically elected president. The film is plagued by the issues of brevity so common to the biopic form, but the electrifying performances of Elba and Naomie Harris as Mandela’s wife, Winnie, give the picture its forward momentum and a sense of urgency.Stream it here.‘Blood Diamond’ (March 31)Leonardo DiCaprio snagged his third Academy Award nomination for his quicksilver turn as Danny Archer, a morally slippery smuggler and mercenary. Archer will do just about anything for a payday, so his initial presence in Sierra Leone circa 1999 is purely financial, but the more he learns about the struggles of civilians and the barbarism of loyalists, the less he can shrug off what he sees as the price of doing business. The director Edward Zwick is particularly proficient at personalizing stories of political and historical conflict (his earlier films include “Glory,” “The Siege” and “The Last Samurai”), and he is, as ever, a fine actor’s director, stewarding solid work from not only DiCaprio but also his co-star Djimon Hounsou, an Oscar nominee for best supporting actor.Stream it here.‘Bright Star’ (March 31)Jane Campion is heavily favored to win this year’s Oscar for best director for her stunning navigation of “The Power of the Dog.” Her masterful direction is rendered even more impressive by her long absence from the big screen; “Dog” was her first feature film since this fact-based romance, released in 2009. She tells the story of the poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his late-in-life romance with his muse, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Other filmmakers might have focused on Keats and viewed Brawne as a mere passing fancy. But as she has throughout her career, Campion is fascinated by the emotional push-pull of romantic entanglements and the unexpected ways women find their power in these encounters.Stream it here.‘Gremlins’ (March 31)The rules have become part of pop culture consciousness: Don’t give them water; keep them way from bright light; and whatever you do, never, ever feed them after midnight. Of course, rules are made to be broken, and one of the purest pleasures of Joe Dante’s giddily entertaining 1984 smash is his winking acknowledgment that we’re waiting for all hell to break loose. Dante’s gift for barely-controlled chaos gives just enough discipline to Chris Columbus’s witty screenplay, while its cheerful disemboweling of twinkly, small-town values feels particularly subversive for a Reagan-era movie.Stream it here.‘I Love You, Man’ (March 31)The best Judd Apatow comedy that Apatow had nothing to do with, this shaggily charming 2009 comedy finds newly engaged (and likably uptight) Paul Rudd seeking out an adult male pal for the first time, and finding himself pulled into the orbit of goofy man-child Jason Segel. The writer and director John Hamburg (“Along Came Polly”) never quite builds up much in the way of stakes, but it’s such a pleasure to watch his stars play — as well as such welcome supporting players as Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtin – that you likely won’t mind.Stream it here.‘Interview With the Vampire’ (March 31)Anne Rice’s best-selling, long-running “Vampire Chronicles” finally made it to the silver screen in 1994, with Tom Cruise in the leading role of the vampire Lestat, a role whose sexual fluidity and camp theatricality seemed to many (including Rice herself) out of the actor’s reach. Yet Cruise acquits himself nicely, conveying the character’s charisma and menace, while Brad Pitt captures the hopelessness of the narrator, Louis. But the show stealer is Kirsten Dunst in a haunting performance as Claudia, a vampire who is “turned” as a child and remains locked at that age. The director Neil Jordan beautifully mixes the story’s Gothic horror and dark comedy elements, ladling on the Bayou atmosphere for extra spice.Stream it here.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      SAG Awards 2022: Updating List of Winners

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      The prizes are being handed out Sunday night. Check back here for live updates.Will the Screen Actors Guild Awards being broadcast on Sunday evening bring clarity to the Oscar race? As Kyle Buchanan, The Projectionist columnist, has pointed out, because the Hollywood actors’ guild, SAG-AFTRA, votes on the prizes, they are considered by many to be the strongest precursor when it comes to predicting Oscar momentum in the acting races.The awards will be handed out at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif., and televised simultaneously on TBS and TNT beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m. Pacific. You can also watch the following day on HBO Max.Stars from the original Broadway run of “Hamilton” — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr. and Daveed Diggs — are expected to open the show. And Kate Winslet is due to present a lifetime achievement award to Helen Mirren.Check back here for live updates of the winners. More

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      ‘Tyler Perry’s A Madea Homecoming’ Review: Tyler’s Hard Lemonade

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      Tyler Perry revives his signature character — this time for Netflix — in a fast, nonsensical new Madea movie.Midway through “Tyler Perry’s A Madea Homecoming,” there’s a gag that captures the humor of Perry’s multimedia Madea franchise. Perry halts the plot for a black-and-white flashback where his short-tempered, unfiltered titular matriarch tells the story of how she kick-started the Civil Rights movement by threatening her man’s mistress, Rosa Parks, who then took sanctuary on a Montgomery bus. As proof, Madea brandishes a photo she took in the moment on her smartphone. “My aPhone,” she says, “because they didn’t have iPhone back then — it was A before I.” It’s unapologetic, irreverent nonsense — but it should get a laugh, so why not? Perry, who claimed that he would retire his signature character after 2019’s “A Madea Family Funeral,” has resurrected Madea, it seems, in that same spirit: simply because he can.This installment finds Madea hosting her great-grandson’s (Brandon Black) college graduation party. The event is really a pretext for a dozen family members to bust each other’s chops; to cackle when Mr. Brown (David Mann) sets himself on fire. It also gives Madea an audience to which she can voice her conflicting feelings about the Black Lives Matter movement: She’s annoyed that her granddaughter Ellie (Candace Maxwell) became a police officer, threatening Madea’s weed stash, but she’s equally irked at the idea that protesters could burn down her corner liquor store.The script has plot twists so cuckoo they make soap operas look cowardly. Perry has even worked in a visit from his across-the-pond cross-dressing counterpart, the Irish comic actor Brendan O’Carroll, who plays the bosomy Agnes Brown on the Irish sitcom “Mrs. Brown’s Boys.” As the film speeds to a slapdash resolution, you might miss Perry’s one good speech about love — “Stop building them walls and build you some fences” — which can’t counterbalance a half-dozen hopelessly ridiculous ones. He’s apparently in a rush to get to the end credits sequence, where he changes into short-shorts and a blonde wig to lampoon the 2019 Beyoncé concert film “Homecoming.” Is there a reason this happens? Probably just because he can.Tyler Perry’s A Madea HomecomingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Bappi Lahiri, India’s ‘Disco King,’ Dies at 69

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      He helped popularize the genre with some of the country’s biggest hits of all time, including “I Am a Disco Dancer.”Bappi Lahiri, an Indian film composer who combined the melodrama of Bollywood film plots with the flamboyance of disco’s electronic orchestra sound, setting off a pop craze in India that earned him the nickname “Disco King,” died on Feb. 15 in Mumbai. He was 69.The cause was obstructive sleep apnea, said his son, Bappa, who was his arranger, manager and bandmate.Mr. Lahiri was an up-and-coming pop musician in 1979 when he traveled to the United States to play a series of gigs for Indian American audiences. While there, he toured nightclubs in San Francisco, Chicago and New York and caught the final months of American disco fever. In New York, he bought a Moog synthesizer, multiple drum machines and so much other music equipment that it filled two taxis.On returning home, his experiments with those instruments culminated with a career-making soundtrack to a hit movie, “Disco Dancer” (1982). It was a musical in a disco style — insistent bass lines under soaring horns and strings — and a declaration of love to the genre. In one scene, a frenzied crowd and the protagonist, a superstar disco musician, spell out the word “disco” and chant it.“Disco Dancer,” which traces the rise to stardom of a young street urchin named Jimmy and his fights with a family of thuggish plutocrats, became the first Indian movie to earn 1 billion rupees (about $230 million in today’s dollars), and its soundtrack helped fuel disco mania in India.It also supercharged the career of its sad-eyed, bouffant-wearing star, Mithun Chakraborty, and produced two of the catchiest dance tunes in the history of Indian pop, each sung by Mr. Chakraborty onscreen: “I Am a Disco Dancer” and “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja.”Long after the movie was shown in theaters, those songs endure across India. At weddings they’re known to inspire everyone from aging aunties to pals of the groom to boogie onto the dance floor.Mr. Lahiri would undergird many of his disco songs with a recognizably Indian melody, and he soon realized that he had hit on a winning formula, leading to 1980s hits like “I Am a Street Dancer,” “Super Dancer” and “Disco Station Disco.” He earned a place in the Limca Book of Records, which notes worldwide achievements by Indians, by recording the soundtracks to 37 movies in 1987 alone.He also developed a mega-celebrity’s fashion sense inspired by his boyhood reverence for Elvis. The look included tinted sunglasses worn indoors and out, velvet track suits and shiny jackets swaddling his pillowy bulk, and a mound of gold jewelry hanging from his neck.“I remember once a man refused to accept that I am Bappi Lahiri,” he once told The Times of India, “because I was wearing a coat to protect myself from cold and he couldn’t see my gold chain.”Bappi Lahiri was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on Nov. 27, 1952. His parents, Aparesh Lahiri and Bansur (Chakravarty) Lahiri, were singers who met while performing for the public broadcaster All India Radio. As a child Bappi showed talent playing the tabla, a traditional Indian drum, and, at the recommendation of the popular singer Lata Mangeshkar, he studied with the tabla master Samta Prasad.His family moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) when he was a teenager to further Bappi’s career. There he found a powerful ally in the family’s spiritual guru, Amiya Roy Chowdhury, who gave him a letter of introduction to the Bollywood star Dev Anand.Mr. Lahiri’s decades-long composing career ranged beyond disco to encompass Indian classical forms like ghazal as well. In all, he is believed to have composed about 9,000 songs that appeared in 600 or so movies. In his most productive periods he would book four studios in a single day and use as many as 100 musicians for one song.The funeral parade for Mr. Lahiri in Mumbai earlier this month. By the end of his life, he is believed to have composed around 9,000 songs for 600 or so movies.Vijay Bate/Hindustan Times via Getty ImagesIn addition to his son, Mr. Lahiri is survived by his wife, Chitrani (Mukherjee) Lahiri, whom he married in 1977; his mother; a daughter, Rema Bansal; and two grandsons.Though interest in disco had faded in the United States by the time Mr. Lahiri gained fame, he became a central part of the disco phenomenon elsewhere, particularly the Soviet Union. “Disco Dancer” was among the most popular films in the U.S.S.R., and Mr. Lahiri’s songs still serve as standards in musical shows on Russian television.During the 2018 soccer World Cup in Russia, a journalist with India’s Express News Service found the country full of “Jimmy” fans.“Everyone knows him where I come from,” one local fan, identified only as Yuri, was quoted as saying as he took out his phone. “Let me show you which of his songs is my favorite.” More