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      ‘Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York’ Review: An FM Radio Sensation

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      A look back at a time when “excellence in broadcasting” was taken seriously, including interviews with Joan Jett, Jon Bon Jovi and other stars.It wasn’t long ago that a subset of media enthusiasts took the concept of “excellence in broadcasting” seriously. It was enough of a thing with Rush Limbaugh and his fans that there was a 2010 episode of “Family Guy” sending it up — with Limbaugh’s own participation, even. While the phrase never actually comes up in “Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York,” the movie feels inspired by the concept.Directed by Mitchell Stuart, the documentary recounts the tale of one of the last FM radio sensations in New York — which wasn’t even actually in New York. The station’s studio — bought by Milton Maltz of the Cleveland-based Malrite Communications in 1983 — was in scenic Secaucus, N.J. Free-form FM radio was gone, Album Oriented Rock FM radio was on life support and AM radio was embracing talk, so the new Z100 went to a Top 40 format. The D.J. and programming director Scott Shannon, who was known for a semi-gonzo style, came up from Florida to helm the ship.There’s some nice wonky stuff here about how the station’s chief engineer contrived to make Z100 louder than other stations on the dial. A handful of rock stars (Jon Bon Jovi, Joan Jett) rhapsodize about how great it was to hear their songs on the radio. Shannon himself tells a few mildly amusing stories. But the movie’s prefab on-screen graphics are just one reason “Worst to First” has such a limp tone overall.Some Z100 veterans tell a tale of Madonna haunting the station’s lobby in the early ’80s with a quid-pro-quo offer to get airplay for her first single. She may consider her debt paid in full as she doesn’t show up for a new interview here.Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New YorkNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 4 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Catch the Fair One’ Review: The Fight of Her Life

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      The real-life boxer Kali Reis plays a pugilist in search of revenge.“Catch the Fair One” is a violent, brooding rescue-revenge drama — the kind of genre workout you might expect to find Liam Neeson grimacing his way though around this time of year. With all respect to Neeson, the star of this tough, modest movie brings a different kind of credibility. She’s Kali Reis, a world champion boxer in both the welterweight and middleweight classes. Her nickname is K.O.Reis, who conceived the story with the writer and director Josef Kubota Wladyka, plays Kaylee Uppashaw, a boxer whose best fighting days may be behind her. Kaylee waits tables in a diner, spends nights at a shelter (sleeping with a razor blade tucked into her cheek) and anguishes over the fate of her younger sister, Jaya (Kimberly Guerrero), who has been kidnapped by sex traffickers. Grief, guilt and fury combine to send Kaylee looking for Jaya, and for payback.Kaylee describes herself as half Native American, half Cape Verdean — an identity she shares with Reis — and a strong current of pride and social awareness runs through the film. Jaya and Kaylee’s mother, Debra (Lisa Emery), leads a support group for the families of missing Native women and girls, whose pictures cover the walls outside the meeting room. The trafficking ring is led by a father-son pair of wealthy white men who hide their viciousness behind a facade of respectability.The nexus of racism, patriarchal power and sexual exploitation gives “Catch the Fair One” a pulse of righteous anger, and Reis’s charisma — her willingness to show fear as well as resolve — makes Kaylee a magnetic protagonist. The boxer Shelito Vincent, as Kaylee’s trainer, provides a sparkle of salty wit amid the overwhelming grimness. Shooting in northwestern New York, mostly at night, Wladyka doesn’t find a lot of warmth.As Kaylee probes deeper into this heart of darkness, the plot flattens out into a series of blunt, brutal scenes of reckoning. These aren’t badly executed, but as the bloodshed escalates, some of the film’s ambition starts to leak away. It’s a sincere, moderately effective revenge drama that might have been something more.Catch the Fair OneNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Blacklight’ Review: He’s Off the Books (But You’ve Read This One Before)

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      Liam Neeson plays a top-secret operative in an action movie that teeters between subverting the genre and obeying convention.Liam Neeson is an action star with a particular set of skills: he can drive fast, punch hard and emote with a depth that makes his shenanigans seem inspired by Ingmar Bergman. In “Blacklight,” Mark Williams’s quirky yet middling thriller, Neeson plays an off-the-books operative who takes secret orders directly from the director of the F.B.I. (Aidan Quinn), a power-mad, old-guard bureaucrat irritated that he can’t profess his love for J. Edgar Hoover without triggering “politically correct puppets.”“Blacklight” opens with the assassination of a charismatic, Twitter-hooked politician (Mel Jarnson) seemingly (and uncomfortably) cloned from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, then trots out familiar action-movie characters. A plucky reporter (Emmy Raver-Lampman) smells conspiracy. A heroic G-man (Tim Draxl) runs away from cronies who suspect that he’s flipped. The twist in the screenplay (written by Nick May and Williams, the director) is that the story sticks with the point of view of Neeson’s naïve brute, who in an ordinary film would be a no-name heavy offed in the third act. “Am I the good guy?” he asks. Not really, even to his estranged daughter (Claire van der Boom), who is aghast that her father arrives at his wee granddaughter’s birthday party with a gift-wrapped stun gun — a comic gag that gets tripped up by a treacly piano score and Neeson’s adamant gravitas. After that muddled early scene, the film teeters between subverting the genre and obeying convention. At least Williams displays a bit of inventive flair with novel booby traps and a chase scene that features a lurching garbage truck.BlacklightRated PG-13 for bland swearing and bland shooting. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Unmaking of a College’ Review: School’s Out Forever?

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      This documentary tells the story of a liberal-arts college that faced an existential crisis, and of how students fought back against the way potentially drastic decisions were made.“The Unmaking of a College” presents Hampshire College in Massachusetts as a canary in the coal mine of liberal-arts education. As a young college (its first students entered in 1970), it has a smaller endowment and fewer decades’ worth of alumni donors than its competitors. That leaves it vulnerable to demographic shifts like a declining college-age population, a problem for small colleges nationwide.But “The Unmaking of a College,” directed by a Hampshire alumna, Amy Goldstein, is not simply a story of a college facing an existential crisis, but of how, in the movie’s telling, that crisis was badly handled. On Jan. 15, 2019, Miriam Nelson, then Hampshire’s president, issued a letter with a bombshell in its third paragraph: Hampshire was “carefully considering whether to enroll an incoming class” that fall. Students and faculty members say they were caught off guard. A lack of freshmen could send the college into a death spiral.These issues catalyzed a 75-day student sit-in, which the movie shows as it unfolded. Joshua Berman, who was embroiled in the events and is an interviewee in the movie, filmed some of the footage that is used. We hear from students like Rhys MacArthur, who worked in the admissions office (a fraught place at that moment), and alumni, like the documentarian Ken Burns.The closing titles say Nelson “would not agree to be interviewed.” While others try to explain her perspective, her nonparticipation leaves an unavoidable hole. And the testaments to Hampshire’s distinctive academic culture aren’t especially germane. Hampshire may be experimental and hip, but in its sustainability issues, it’s hardly unique.The Unmaking of a CollegeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Death on the Nile’ Review: Dead in the Water

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      Kenneth Branagh’s second adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories forgets the simple pleasures of ensemble excess and pure messing about.The trickiest part of a murder mystery isn’t solving the crime. It’s keeping the intrigue and fun alive until then. “Death on the Nile,” Kenneth Branagh’s second adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories, forgets the simple pleasures of ensemble excess and pure messing about.After Poirot’s lavish origin story set in World War I, we’re whisked away to a London music club with some spicy dancing, and then to an Egyptian wedding holiday. There, a love triangle fans the flames for a blowup. The preening heiress Linnet (Gal Gadot) and her beau, Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) can’t shake Simon’s lurker ex, Jacqueline (Emma Mackey), who follows them onto the fateful Nile riverboat.As in many Christie screen adaptations (this one written by Michael Green), a motley bunch awaits accusation on board. The former comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French reunite as Linnet’s socialite godmother and companion. Sophie Okonedo and Letitia Wright play Salome, a blues singer, and her business-savvy daughter (a nice reimagining of Angela Lansbury’s Salome, a tippling erotic novelist in the 1978 version). There’s also a criminally underused Annette Bening as a painter, and Russell Brand as a doleful doctor.But their byplay remains rather airless, except for Okonedo, Mackey and Thomas Bateman as Poirot’s hapless, vaguely Wodehousian pal. Round and round Poirot goes, as does the circling camerawork, before he performs the reliably satisfying triple-axel-twisty feat of exegesis in front of the suspects.More often than not, Branagh’s Poirot simply lacks personality, and the film’s absolutely smoldering epilogue oozes more mood than all the rest put together.Death on the NileRated PG-13 for violence (it’s a murder mystery) and sexual material. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Fabulous Filipino Brothers’ Review: For Better or for Worse

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      The Abasta family of California is celebrating a wedding. The Basco family writes, directs and stars in this warm, welcoming comedy.The family at the center of the poignant comedy “The Fabulous Filipino Brothers” is a raucous and big-hearted bunch. The Abasta siblings are prone to bickering, but they’re just as quick to offer support. The chemistry apparent in this portrait of a tight-knit Filipino American family isn’t faked: The Abastas are played by real siblings, the Bascos, who have been working in film and television for decades. One of them, Dante Basco, directs, and he and his brother Darion wrote the story together.The movie revolves around preparations for a Filipino wedding in their hometown, Pittsburg, Calif. The film’s structure is episodic, following the siblings one at a time as they prepare for, attend and recover from the wedding. Derek Basco plays Dayo, the eldest brother, who has taken on responsibility for the food at the reception. Dante Basco is Duke, a successful businessman who is tempted to change his life after an encounter with a former lover. David (Dionysio Basco) is the party boy and, most movingly, there is Darion Basco as Danny, the depressed middle child whose spirits are revived by a date with a woman he meets online Teresa (Liza Lapira). The one sister, Doris (Arianna Basco), acts as the movie’s narrator.The plot is loose, more oriented toward hanging out with its characters than in driving them to revelations or catharsis. But the director ties the eclectic siblings together through the dialogue, which frequently contemplates the family’s Filipino identity, and through the use of color. Every frame is flush with warm, saturated color, and the vibrant quality of the images conveys joyous generosity. The most poignant appeal of this movie is the feeling it creates of being welcomed into a family that radiates all things bright and good.The Fabulous Filipino BrothersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Irwin Young, Patron of Independent Filmmakers, Is Dead at 94

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      As the head of a prominent film processing laboratory, he helped directors like Spike Lee, Michael Moore and Frederick Wiseman early in their careers.Irwin Young, who through his Manhattan film processing laboratory gave support to the early careers of directors such as Spike Lee, Frederick Wiseman and Michael Moore, died on Jan. 20 in Manhattan. He was 94.His daughter Linda Young confirmed the death, at a rehabilitation facility.Over nearly a century, DuArt Film Laboratories processed and printed studio features, documentaries, newsreels, boxing films from Madison Square Garden, network news footage and commercials. But Mr. Young, who took over the company when his father died in 1960, was best known as an ally of independent filmmakers, some of whom could not always pay for his company’s services on a timely basis early in their careers.“He was the biggest mensch in the business,” the documentarian Aviva Kempner, who produced “Partisans of Vilna” (1986) and directed “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” (1998), said in a phone interview. “He really cared for the subject matter you were making a film about. If you needed a favor, he was there for you.”Mr. Young deferred $60,000 in costs incurred by Mr. Moore for three years as he made “Roger & Me,” his documentary about the social damage caused by General Motors’ layoffs of 30,000 workers in Flint, Mich. Warner Bros. later paid $3 million for the rights.When Mr. Lee was a graduate film student at New York University, his films were processed and printed at DuArt. So was his first feature, “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986).“I didn’t have the money, but Irwin let me develop the film, print the dailies, and he gave me some slack; he’d say, ‘When you get the money, pay me,’” Mr. Lee said in an interview. But Howard Funsch, DuArt’s treasurer, threatened to auction the negative if Mr. Lee didn’t pay. Mr. Lee said he found the money.He added: “I don’t think Irwin knew that Howard was putting the squeeze on me. And it doesn’t detract from how Irwin believed in and supported young filmmakers.”Mr. Young had a practical side as well. He made two investments in the 1970s that helped secure DuArt’s long-term future: He acquired the 12-story building in Midtown Manhattan where the laboratory had long been located, freeing it from the whims of a landlord; and he bought a two-thirds interest in a television station in Puerto Rico, which brought in a strong flow of revenue that helped improve DuArt’s bottom line.He also oversaw DuArt’s expansion into a process that benefited independent filmmakers: blowing up 16-millimeter negatives into 35-millimeter prints, which have a better chance at being commercially viable.And he added to DuArt’s photochemical film processing business by branching into film-to-video transfers and online video editing in 1970, and into digital work, including effects, titles and restorations, in 1994.But last August, Ms. Young, DuArt’s president and chief executive since 2017, announced that its business was being shuttered because it was no longer economically viable to stay independent. Its building was recently put up for sale.Mr. Young served with various organizations that dealt with independent filmmakers, including Film at Lincoln Center, where he was president, and Film Forum, where he was chairman.In 2000, he received the Gordon Sawyer Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his technological contributions to the film industry.Irwin Wallace Young was born on May 30, 1927, in the Bronx. His father had been a film editor before he and other partners acquired a film lab that was going out of business. His mother, Ann (Sperber) Young, was a homemaker.“I used to see film processed, amazing to a child,” Mr. Young told The New York Times in 1996.The family name had been changed from Youdavich by his uncle Joe, the lyricist of songs including “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”After serving in the Navy, Irwin entered Lehigh University. He graduated in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and then joined DuArt, where his roles included working in black-and-white film quality control and being part of the team that processed Eastman color negatives for the first time at any film lab. After his father died, Mr. Young became DuArt’s president and chief executive.Mr. Young’s interest in independent film was ignited when his older brother, Robert, was a producer and writer and the cinematographer of “Nothing but a Man” (1964), a feature about a Black couple dealing with racism in Alabama. Irwin Young provided all of the film’s laboratory work.“I was attracted to independent filmmakers because of their spirit,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2003. “I came from a very political family, so I responded to a lot of their messages. We needed each other.”Mr. Wiseman needed Mr. Young’s patience when his first documentary, “Titicut Follies” (1966) — about the way patients were treated at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Mass. — was banned by a state court on the grounds that it violated the inmates’ privacy.“I didn’t pay him for six years because all my money went into the lawsuit,” Mr. Wiseman said in an interview. “And he was always friendly and helpful about distribution; he knew everybody.”Mr. Young’s support of filmmakers led him to become an accidental preservationist: He stored their negatives, at no charge, some for decades, largely on the top floor of the DuArt building on West 55th Street. He reasoned that if he held on to the negatives, he might generate more business from making prints.But, he told The Times in 2014: “I have trouble throwing away film. We never threw anything away. It’s because we were film people.”Film cans were stacked, floor to ceiling, often without any idea what was inside or who the director was. In 2013, three years after Mr. Young closed down his traditional film processing business, a project was started to create an index of the thousands of negatives there.Mr. Young began a collaboration with the organization IndieCollect, which sends orphaned film negatives to archives such as the Library of Congress and the Motion Picture Academy; restores them; and finds new audiences for the films.“We went through 5,000 films — about 50,000 cans,” said Sandra Schulberg, the president of IndieCollect. “Irwin was happy to come up as we were doing the inventorying. Each can was like opening a locked treasure.”She said that her group found homes for 3,500 of the negatives.Negatives of films by Mr. Lee, Mr. Wiseman, Gordon Parks, Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, James Ivory, Ang Lee and Susan Seidelman were found, as were forgotten works like “Cane River,” a 1982 love story dealing with race issues made by Horace Jenkins, an Emmy Award-winning Black director, who died shortly after the film’s premiere in New Orleans.In addition to his daughter Linda, Mr. Young is survived by another daughter, Dr. Nancy Young; his brother; and four granddaughters. His wife, Diane (Nalven) Young, died in 2004.Mr. Moore knew little about filmmaking when he began making “Roger & Me” and was told by another director, Kevin Rafferty, that he should bring his undeveloped film to Mr. Young.“He said ‘Let me develop this for you,’ and he watched the first reels and said, ‘Listen, this is incredible, I’m going to help you, and you can pay me what you can,’” Mr. Moore said, recalling his first conversation with Mr. Young in 1987. “That was almost three years: from early 1987 to 1989, up until the last print was needed to go to the Telluride Film Festival.”He added, “Without his patronage, I’m convinced there wouldn’t have been a ‘Roger & Me.’” More

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      Study Finds Sustained Progress for Female Directors and Filmmakers of Color

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      But women of color are still not getting feature directing jobs in Hollywood, the annual report on top-grossing movies finds.For the first time in a long time, Dr. Stacy L. Smith is feeling optimistic. The director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has been studying the gender and race breakdown of Hollywood’s top-grossing directors since 2007, and finally has some good news to report. For the first time since her work began, Smith has seen sustained progress for women and people of color working behind the camera.Over the 15 years of the study, which analyzed 1,542 directors, only 5.4 percent were women. In 2020, that percentage rose to 15 percent and in 2021, it stood at 12.7 percent. Despite that recent drop, and despite the fact that the proportion is nowhere close to reflecting the American population, which is 51 percent female, Smith is encouraged that the numbers have stayed in the double digits for a sustained period of time.“I think that the people that are running these large companies that are largely responsible for about 90 percent of the market share are finally starting to diversify,” Smith said in a phone interview. “And we’re not only seeing this with gender, we’re also seeing big gains with race/ethnicity in the second year of the pandemic. Despite the uncertainty around the box office, there seems to be a concerted effort to correct the biases of the past.”The news comes the day after “The Power of the Dog” director Jane Campion made history, becoming the first woman to be nominated twice in the best director category for the Academy Awards. (She was previously nominated in 1994 for “The Piano.”)When it comes to underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, which includes Black and Latino filmmakers, the percentage of directors reached a 15-year high: 27.3 percent. The group with the least amount of traction directing features are women of color, who still make up only 2 percent of the total.“When Hollywood thinks of a woman director, they’re thinking of a Caucasian woman, and when they think of a person of color directing, they’re thinking about a male,” Smith said, pointing to the fact that female directors of color earn the highest reviews according to Metacritic yet most often are given lower production budgets and fewer marketing dollars from their studio beneficiaries.To address this disparity head on, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative is starting a $25,000 scholarship program for a woman of color during her senior year at an American film school. In addition to the financial aid, the winning student will be advised by a group of Hollywood executives and talent, including Donna Langley, the chairman of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, and Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, among others.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More