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      'Lunana,' a Movie From Bhutan, Is Nominated for an Academy Award

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      “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. It’s now an Academy Award nominee, a first for Bhutan.THIMPHU, Bhutan — As a crew of 35 people prepared to make a movie in Bhutan’s remote Lunana Valley, they faced a slew of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema.“They did not even know what a camera was or what it looked like,” Namgay Dorji, the village schoolteacher, said in a telephone interview.On Tuesday, the movie, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” was nominated for an Academy Award — a first for Bhutan. Its director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, said he had been on an “improbable journey” ever since deciding to shoot the film, his first, in a Himalayan village about three miles above sea level.“It was so improbable that I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish,” said Mr. Dorji, 38, who is from a rural part of Bhutan that is east of Lunana.“Somehow we now find ourselves nominated for an Oscar,” he added. “When I found out, it was so unbelievable that I kept telling my friends: ‘What if I wake up tomorrow and I realize all this was a dream?’”The ‘dark valley’“Lunana,” which was released digitally on Friday, tells the story of a young teacher from Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, who is assigned to work at a remote mountain school against his will. He dreams of quitting his government job, emigrating to Australia and pursuing a career as a singer.Yogesh Gurav, a boom operator, during the filming of “Lunana.” The crew sent their equipment into the mountain valley on mules.Pawo Choyning DorjiBut the teacher, Ugyen, is fascinated by the people he meets in Lunana — particularly 9-year-old Pem Zam, a radiant student with a difficult home life. As the months go by, he begins to take his job more seriously.Mr. Dorji, who wrote the script, said he made a teacher the protagonist after reading news reports about Bhutanese educators quitting their jobs. He saw that as a symbol of discontent in a poor, isolated country where globalization has caused profound social changes.Bhutan prides itself on measuring, and maximizing, the “gross national happiness” of its roughly 750,000 people. But Mr. Dorji said young Bhutanese increasingly believe that true happiness lies abroad, in places like Australia, Europe or New York City.He said he picked the Lunana Valley as the film’s setting because it presented a dramatic contrast with a “well-lit” foreign city. The area is isolated even by the standards of this remote Himalayan kingdom; in Dzongkha, the national language, lunana means “dark valley.”“My idea was: Can we discover in the shadows and darkness what we are so desperately seeking in the light?” Mr. Dorji, who divides his time among Bhutan, India and Taiwan, said in an interview from Taipei, Taiwan.Keeping it naturalTurning his vision into a movie was a giant undertaking. The Lunana Valley borders far western China, has glacial lakes and some of the world’s highest peaks, and cannot be reached by car. When health workers administered coronavirus vaccines there last year, they had to fly in by helicopter and walk from village to village through snow and ice.When Mr. Dorji’s film crew traveled to Lunana in the late summer of 2018, they transported their firewood, batteries, solar chargers and other essential gear on mules. They brought nonperishable rations, such as of dried pumpkin and mushrooms, because there was no refrigeration. And when they arrived, they had to build their own temporary housing.There was just enough solar power to shoot the movie on a single camera, but not enough for Mr. Dorji to review his footage each night after shooting, as most directors do. So he had to go by his instincts and hope for the best.His cast presented another challenge. The three main roles were played by nonprofessional actors from Thimphu. The others were all from Lunana — a place where families survive through subsistence agriculture and by harvesting a valuable alpine fungus — and had never even seen a movie.“The camera in front of them could have been a yak, for all they cared,” Mr. Dorji said.Pem Zam, left, and Sangay Lham in a scene from “Lunana.”Samuel Goldwyn PicturesMr. Dorji said he adapted to his characters’ lack of experience by tailoring the script to their lives, encouraging them to essentially play themselves. Pem Zam, for instance, goes by her real name in the movie.Mr. Dorji also shot scenes in the order in which they appear in the film, so that his actors could let their characters develop with the story. He also added scenes that he felt were poignant examples of real village life. One example: In a scene where Ugyen teaches his students how to use a toothbrush, they aren’t acting; they really didn’t know.The result is a film that successfully captures a sense of innocence, the Oscar-winning director Ang Lee told Mr. Dorji in a video call last month. He described “Lunana” as a “breath of fresh air.”“It’s a precious, precious, very simple but very touching movie,” Mr. Lee said. “Thank you for going through all that and sharing your country and culture with us.”An unlikely hit“Lunana” is Bhutan’s first Oscar entry since “The Cup,” a 1999 film that was written and directed by Mr. Dorji’s teacher Khyentse Norbu. That film, which chronicles the arrival of television in a monastery, was not shortlisted or nominated for an Academy Award.The Bhutanese government submitted “Lunana” for last year’s Oscars, but it was disqualified: The national film committee had gone so long without submitting a film for consideration that it was no longer officially recognized by the Academy.For the 2022 awards, the country formed a special selection committee. And in December, “Lunana” was among 15 shortlisted of 93 Academy Award submissions from around the world. On Tuesday, it was one of five films — alongside others from Japan, Denmark, Italy and Norway — nominated for an Oscar in the International Feature Film category.Karma Phuntsho, the selection committee’s chairman, said “Lunana” reflects the maturation of a domestic film industry that’s only about three decades old.“I have been encouraging my friends in the film industry to look beyond the small Bhutanese market and share our stories with the world,” he said. “Pawo has done that with a flair and it is a proud moment for all Bhutanese and friends of Bhutan.”Mr. Dorji with some of his cast. Kinley WangchukMr. Dorji said the film was made on a $300,000 budget — “peanuts when it comes to filmmaking” — and that he never expected to have much help publicizing it. Now it’s being distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films and marketed by a public relations agency with offices in New York and Beverly Hills.News of the film’s success has trickled back to Lunana, according to Kaka, a 51-year-old village headman there who goes by one name. “The people back home are happy that their village has become known to the world,” he said by telephone.Namgay Dorji, 35, the real-life schoolteacher whose experience of living in the Lunana Valley for a decade inspired parts of the script, said the film’s international success had inspired him to stay in the area longer than he had once planned to.“When I was in front of the camera, I wasn’t that excited,” said Mr. Dorji, the schoolteacher, who appeared in the film as an extra. “But after watching it and listening to the children’s dialogue, I realized how much hardship our community has had to overcome.”Chencho Dema reported from Thimphu, Bhutan, and Mike Ives from Seoul. More

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      Douglas Trumbull, Visual Effects Wizard, Dies at 79

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      His technical savvy was on display in films like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Star Trek: the Motion Picture,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner.”Douglas Trumbull, an audacious visual effects wizard who created memorable moments in a series of blockbuster science-fiction films, including the hallucinogenic sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in which an astronaut in a pod hurtles through space, died on Monday at a hospital in Albany, N.Y. He was 79.His wife, Julia Trumbull, said the cause was complications of mesothelioma.With colleagues, Mr. Trumbull was nominated for visual effects Oscars for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Blade Runner” and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” but perhaps his most stunning work came in “2001” — his first big break in motion pictures.He was in his early 20s when Mr. Kubrick hired him as a $400-a-week artist, and his first job was to create graphics for the 16 screens that surround the “eyes” of HAL 9000, the seemingly omniscient computer that controls the Discovery One spacecraft at the center of “2001.”Then, using a process called slit-scan photography, he conceived the trippy five-minute scene in which the astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) soars at hyperspeed in his pod through a phantasmagorical cosmic passageway in the universe.Mr. Trumbull used a motorized camera that tracked to a slit in a rotatable rectangle of sheet metal, behind which he manipulated illuminated art — wedding his ambitious youthful vision to Mr. Kubrick’s.Keir Dulleau in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). Mr. Trumbull’s first job after being hired by the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, was to create graphics for the 16 screens that surround the “eyes” of the seemingly omniscient HAL 9000 computer.Warner Bros. via Museum of the Moving Image, New York“It wasn’t about the normal cinematic dynamics of close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots and reversals and conflicts and plot,” Mr. Trumbull told The New York Times in 2012. Mr. Kubrick, he said, “was trying to go into another world of first-person experience.”Over the next half-century, Mr. Trumbull became known as one of the film industry’s most innovative visual effects masters. He used old-school tools like mattes and miniatures to enhance science fiction films before digital effects animation became the industry standard.“He had this ability that I don’t think most people have — to see a final image in his mind and somehow figure out what was needed to get that image on film,” said Gene Kozicki, a visual effects historian and archivist. “Sometimes those images were crazy, like a diaphanous cloud traveling through space heading toward the Enterprise,” the spacecraft in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979).For Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), Mr. Trumbull’s team injected white tempera paint into an aquarium filled with a mixture of fresh and salt water to create the ominous clouds that announced the coming of the extraterrestrial mother ship.For Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982), Mr. Trumbull used, among many other things, models and images projected onto blimps and buildings to fashion the look of a bleak, dystopian future Los Angeles.When Philip K. Dick — whose book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” was adapted into “Blade Runner” — saw a segment of Mr. Trumbull’s visual effects on a local newscast, he recognized them approvingly as “my own interior world,” he told an interviewer shortly before his death in 1982.An image from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982), for which Mr. Trumbull fashioned the look of a bleak, dystopian future Los Angeles. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesFor “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” Mr. Trumbull oversaw the docking of the shuttle with the Enterprise and Spock’s spacewalk, a wild excursion (partly through a “plasma energy conduit”) that has obvious visual links to “2001.”“I thought it would be fun to just get kind of abstract and make it a fantasy dream sequence in a way, not literal,” he told TrekMovie.com in 2019.In 2012, Mr. Trumbull received the George Sawyer Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his technological contributions to the film industry and the Georges Méliès Award from the Visual Effects Society.Douglas Hunt Trumbull was born in Los Angeles on April 8, 1942. His mother, Marcia (Hunt) Trumbull, was an artist; his father, Don, worked in visual and special effects, most notably on “The Wizard of Oz,” but had gone to work as an engineer in the aircraft industry by the time Douglas was born.His father “never mentioned much about ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ except that he had something to do with the lion’s tail, the apple tree and rigging the flying monkeys,” Douglas Trumbull told VFXV, a magazine devoted to visual effects, in 2018.Growing up, Douglas was a fan of science fiction movies, became fascinated with photography and could build crystal radio sets. After high school he worked for an electrical contracting firm while studying technical illustration at El Camino College in Torrance, Calif.For “Close Encounters,” Mr. Trumbull’s team injected white tempera paint into an aquarium to create the ominous clouds that announced the coming of a U.F.O. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesHe took a job with Graphic Films in Los Angeles, where his paintings of space modules and lunar surfaces appeared in documentaries for NASA and the Air Force. He was hired for “2001” after Mr. Kubrick noticed his work on a 15-minute film, “To the Moon and Beyond,” which was produced in Cinerama 360 and exhibited during the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens.After working on “2001,” Mr. Trumbull created space scenes in “Candy” (1968), a comedy based on the novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg; provided visual effects for “The Andromeda Strain” (1971), about a team of scientists trying to contain a deadly alien microorganism; and directed his first film, “Silent Running” (1972), in which botanical life has ended on Earth and plants are kept in a greenhouse on a space station by an ecologist played by Bruce Dern.Although Vincent Canby of The Times called “Silent Running” “simple-minded,” he praised its “beautifully eerie and majestic special effects — particularly its spaceship that looks like horizontal Eiffel Towers attached to gigantic oil tankers.”Mr. Trumbull resuscitated his father’s film career by hiring him for “Silent Running,” “Close Encounters” and “Star Trek.” The senior Trumbull also worked on George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” but his son was too busy for that one.Douglas Trumbull’s affinity for vivid visual effects led him to conceive ways to produce films with a format that more closely approached reality. He created Showscan, a cinematic process in which 70-millimeter film is projected at 60 frames per second (35-millimeter projection is usually at 24 frames per second).He shot part of “Brainstorm” (1983), his second directorial effort, with a Showscan camera. That film — about scientists who devise a system that can record and play a person’s thoughts — is better known for the death of one of its stars, Natalie Wood, during production. Mr. Trumbull fought to complete the film, but it could not be exhibited in Showscan because theaters would not invest in the necessary equipment until all studio films were shot in that format.But developing the Showscan camera earned Mr. Trumbull, Robert Auguste, Geoffrey Williamson and Edmund DiGiulio the Motion Picture Academy’s Scientific and Engineering Award in 1992.Mr. Trumbull in action in 2011, the year he returned to traditional filmmaking after many years of designing theme-park attractions and other projects and working for Imax.Joseph HeckThe experience led him to detour from Hollywood filmmaking and move to the Berkshires, where he worked on projects for the rest of his life. He developed simulator-based attractions like “Back to the Future: The Ride” for Universal Studios Florida, which opened in 1991, and, using Showscan, created “Secrets of the Luxor Pyramid,” a virtual reality experience featuring three films, at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, in 1993.In 1994, he signed a deal to bring his simulator-ride technology to Imax. He also served for a time as the company’s vice chairman.In addition to his wife, Mr. Trumbull is survived by his daughters, Amy Trumbull and Andromeda Stevens; his stepdaughter, Emily Irwin; his stepsons, John Hobart Culleton, Ethan Culleton and John Vidor; nine grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; his sister, Betsy Hardie; his stepsister, Katharine Trumbull Blank; and his half sisters, Kyle Trumbull-Clark and Mimi Erland. His marriage to Cherry Foster ended in divorce; his marriage to Ann Vidor ended with her death.Mr. Trumbull returned to traditional moviemaking when the director Terrence Malick, a friend, asked him to help on his film “The Tree of Life” (2011). Working as a consultant, Mr. Trumbull helped conjure the kaleidoscopic sequence that depicts the Big Bang and the creation of life on Earth, using chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, carbon dioxide, flares, spin dishes, fluid dynamics and high speed photography, he told cinematography.com in 2011.“It was a freewheeling opportunity to explore, something that I have found extraordinarily hard to get in the movie business,” he said. “We did things like pour milk through a funnel into a narrow trough and shoot it with a high-speed camera and folded lens, lighting it carefully and using a frame rate that would give the right kind of flow characteristics to look cosmic, galactic, huge and epic.” More

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      Mifune’s Transcendent Films, With and Without Kurosawa

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      Yes, the Japanese team was one of cinema’s great collaborations. But Film Forum’s salute to Toshiro Mifune shows that he was a superb actor no matter who was in the director’s chair.Toshiro Mifune once wrote of his collaboration with the director Akira Kurosawa, “I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him.”OK. Fine. Those were 16 pretty great movies the two of you made together. But you made roughly 170 movies! Never?We can judge whether Mifune, who died in 1997, was being a little too harsh on himself (and his many other directors) beginning this weekend at Film Forum, where a four-week festival will present 33 of the great Japanese actor’s films, as well as a documentary, “Mifune: The Last Samurai.”It includes all the movies Mifune and Kurosawa made together — certified masterpieces like “Seven Samurai” and “Rashomon,” as well as less well-known but excellent pictures like “High and Low” and “Red Beard.” The chance to see them on a theater screen shouldn’t be missed.But a lot has already been said about those films — I don’t have much new to offer on “Seven Samurai” — and it’s the other half of the Film Forum program where you’re more likely to find some surprises.As a contract player for the Toho studios, Mifune never stopped working — according to “The Last Samurai,” at the peak of his career he appeared in 27 movies in a four-year period. Some of them were filler, no doubt, but the 1950s and ’60s were a great era for Japanese film, and when he wasn’t with Kurosawa, Mifune got to work with other top-flight directors like Hiroshi Inagaki and Masaki Kobayashi.Here, in the order they were made, are some highlights from the series’s non-Kurosawa productions. Mifune might not have been working with his favorite director, but watching these, it’s clear that he still brought his expressive physicality, his quicksilver emotion and his unparalleled charisma to the set every day.Mifune making his film debut as a bank robber on the lam in “Snow Trail.”Janus Films‘Snow Trail’Mifune’s first feature, a tense and bittersweet 1947 thriller filmed in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido, feels as if it could be a Kurosawa film. That’s probably because Kurosawa wrote the screenplay for the director, Senkichi Taniguchi. The 27-year-old Mifune had been discovered in a Toho cattle call for actors, and he’s shockingly handsome, with a wild lock of hair hanging down over his face. He also knew how to command the camera from the very start. As the youngest and most ruthless of a group of bank robbers on the lam, he’s a tight bundle of angry, nervous energy — you spend the picture waiting for him to explode. (As an older and more conscience-stricken crook, Takashi Shimura makes the first of many appearances alongside Mifune.)‘Samurai Saga’Mifune’s Macbeth in “Throne of Blood” is widely celebrated, but fewer people know that he is also an excellent Cyrano in Inagaki’s 1959 adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” It’s a kick to see Mifune in a role in which his mastery of language is more important than his looks and just as important as his fighting ability (though swordplay is crucial to the story, of course). French 19th-century romance transfers well to the 17th-century Shogunate; Inagaki stages the famous first-act poetry duel on a Kabuki stage, with Mifune dealing sword blows between verses to an entire company of attackers. And Mifune’s ability to play the alpha male with notes of humor and abashment suits him perfectly when it comes to the ultimate rom-com hero.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Jean-Pierre Jeunet on “Amélie” and “Bigbug”

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      The French director is candid about his fights with Harvey Weinstein and his reasons for working with Netflix. And he can’t hide his joy about a rerelease of “Amélie.”The French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a conjurer of whimsical visions for the big screen, like his most beloved work, “Amélie.” But for his first movie in nearly a decade, “Bigbug,” out Friday, he chose to work with Netflix.This retro-futuristic comedy, which debuted Friday, is set in 2045, when artificial intelligence facilitates most quotidian tasks but also threatens mankind. Featuring Jeunet’s signature irreverence and colorful mise en scène, “Bigbug” follows an ensemble cast of offbeat characters and their domestic robots, confined to a technologically advanced home by the malevolent androids that now rule the world. Together they must find a way out.Jeunet considers it a cynical entry in an oeuvre that includes “Delicatessen” (1991), about a murderous landlord and his tenants in a postapocalyptic reality, and “The City of Lost Children” (1995), a steampunk fantasy centering on a mad scientist who steals children’s dreams.Speaking shortly before the recent Oscar nominations, the director, 68, said that two decades later it still pains him that “Amélie” didn’t win any of the five Academy Awards it was up for in 2002.He said he believed the academy shut out his film over the producer Harvey Weinstein’s awards campaign tactics. “It was a punishment, not for me but for him,” he said. “But this was our year! That is a trophy I would have liked to have.”Jeunet was speaking from his home in Paris. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Claude Perron in a scene from the retro-futuristic “BigBug.”NetflixWere you thinking about the dystopias of your earlier films, like “The City of Lost Children” and “Delicatessen,” when you were writing “Bigbug”?I used to say this was “Delicatessen 2.0.” No, the concept was to make a cheap movie, because all my films are very expensive and I was looking for something with a single set, like “Delicatessen.” It was a concept to write a story with people stuck in a room and it was created before Covid, which is funny. We wrote this story during the shooting of “The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet” [about a boy genius on a cross-country journey]. I’m sure you don’t know about it.I actually have seen it.Oh, you saw it! Cool, because Harvey Weinstein did everything he could to kill that movie. [Laughs] Have you seen it in 3-D?Yes, it played in a couple theaters in 3-D in 2015. I remember it took a long time to be released in the U.S.I know, because he didn’t care. I refused to modify the film. Of course he wanted to re-edit, but now it’s fun to imagine him in jail. [Laughs]Can you elaborate on what happened with Harvey Weinstein on that film?He told me, “We will do something better than with ‘Amélie.’ I promise.” But when after some test screenings he was like a gallery owner saying to the painter, “We’re going to modify the green because in U.S. we don’t like green. I will ask the framer to put some blue instead.” I refused. I said, “I won’t change one frame.” So he punished me like he punished everybody. He wanted to do that with “Amélie” as well, but he couldn’t because it was such a success. He never touched a thing.Your films often feature mechanical gadgets. “Bigbug” has a lot of robots that were physically built.I love to imagine these objects because I get to keep them. I don’t know if it’ll be possible with Netflix. I hope so. Two years ago, a beautiful exhibition of props from our movies in Paris and in Lyon had 180,000 admissions. I was waiting for money for “Bigbug” and nobody wanted to produce it. But yes, it was such a pleasure to imagine the robots, especially Einstein [a mechanical bust resembling the physicist]. He had 82 motors inside to move.Thinking of how “Bigbug” presents technology, are you afraid of the future or what the future may hold for humanity?I am just curious, because I am not young and I would like to live to see what will be the next gadget, the next iPhone, the next GPS. Maybe there will be more drama, maybe nothing. Maybe the earth will disappear like in “Don’t Look Up.” I’m curious more than afraid. If I had kids, maybe I would be more scared about the future.What do you believe it says about the future of our flawed species?I hate messages. But if there is a message in “Bigbug” it is that artificial intelligence will never kill human beings because they will stay stupid. They don’t have a soul. They try to have a sense of humor, but they don’t understand anything. [Laughs]Jeunet working with François Levantal during production of “BigBug.”Bruno Calvo/NetflixWhy do you think it was difficult to find the funds to produce “Bigbug”?Because in France, when you have something original you’re [expletive]. It was the case with “Delicatessen.” The same for “Amélie.” It was too weird, too quirky, as you say in English. With Netflix it was kind of a dream. They wrote me and said, “Do you have something?” And I said, “Yes, I have a film, but in France nobody likes it. You won’t like it.” [Laughs] They told me, “Send it.” Twenty-four hours later it was greenlighted!Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Marry Me’ Review: Putting ‘I Do’ on the To-Do List

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      As a pop star who weds a math teacher in a stunt wedding, Jennifer Lopez is all business. But the original songs shine.The director Kat Coiro narrates a sequence from her film featuring Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson and Maluma.Universal PicturesRarely are romantic comedies titled more desperately than “Marry Me.” There is something pleasing about the bluntness. And because it’s a command that involves Jennifer Lopez, we’re permitted to skate atop the movie’s despair. But the ice is thin. Lopez has rarely stayed emotionally still long enough to luxuriate in moods less emphatic than “I will” and “I do.” Her comedies argue for restlessness as a quest for true stability: The right man soothes her nerves, dispels her doubts, restores her worth. But none of those movies has been as point-blank as this new one, whose original source is a punky graphic novel.The pop star she’s playing, Kat Valdez, has agreed to a stunt wedding during a live concert (and before a presumed online audience of 20 million) with her pop star boyfriend, Bastian. Within minutes of the ceremony, Kat discovers that he’s been messing around with one of her assistants but she decides to wed someone and picks the divorced dad (Owen Wilson) holding a “marry me” sign in the crowd. Lopez performs this choice so lifelessly yet with such automatic determination that it’s fair to classify the sign as a cue card.This brand-new relationship is Kat’s way of mourning her suddenly old one. Introspection and grief never cross her mind. “Why do I pick the wrong guy?” is as inward as things get. Amazingly, the next day, she endorses sticking with the brand logic of the marriage while doing yoga in her soulless high-rise home. She couldn’t have selected a blander, less objectionable stranger for a husband than Charlie Gilbert. He teaches middle-school math, co-parents one of those only-in-a-movie preteens (she’s spunky yet unsure of herself) and speaks in Wilson’s drawling whine.Jennifer Lopez, left, portrays a pop star who weds a teacher played by Owen Wilson in the romantic comedy “Marry Me.”Universal PicturesCharlie dislikes the demands of Kat’s celebrity. “Her entire life is sponsored,” he cries, upon watching her shoot a post for Vitamix. But he concedes to the arrangement because, it seems, the daughter (Chloe Coleman), a big Kat Valdez fan, will finally believe her dad likes fun. He never sits her down to talk about fun’s downsides. Does she know why he and her mom aren’t together? How aware is she that Kat’s been married three other times and that one of those marriages lasted for two days? It doesn’t matter because this movie vows to satisfy all involved parties.Does “involved” include me? I just kept counting the missed opportunities. Once, at about the halfway point, Charlie bets Kat that she can’t give up her accouterments of affluence and live like, say, Jenny from the block. Yet what Kat requests in exchange is so … puny — for Charlie to open some social media accounts — that I hurt for her imagination. (That’s his daughter’s version of proof of life.) There’s a movie in that premise, nonetheless. Maybe even some stakes: Kat may yet discover where she keeps the wine glasses and how to properly use a Vitamix (they’re called lids, Kat.) And, online, Charlie might meet a woman who dreams of even more for him. And hopefully, Lopez would play her, too.She has her moments as Kat. They’re mostly physical: mincing down a school hallway in formfitting, scarlet couture under a parka; uttering the word “Peoria” then appearing there, as if the mother ship abandoned her. Here is a star who’s been performing for so long that performance is all, as an actor, she knows. If Kat isn’t teaching Charlie’s math students how to dance in order to calm their pre-competition jitters, she’s luring them into singing one of her hits at a school formal. This is Lopez’s best mode, and she’s always known it.But rather than indulge her stardom and its candy shell, the movie, which Kat Coiro directed from a screenplay credited to three writers, seems to apologize for them. Kat wishes for a kind of pedestrian normalcy, a common prayer of princesses in everything from the delight of “Roman Holiday” and “Notting Hill” to the despondence of “Beyond the Lights” and “Spencer.” “Marry Me,” though, has an awkward, translucent ply. Kat’s discography includes a catchy convolution whose chorus is “I am the love of, the love of my life.”So many parallels exist between Lopez’s character and what, in reality, we know Lopez has withstood that the movie all but doubles as one of those brand-burnishing docu-selfies, right down to a crowd-pleasing retreat into the arms of a white suitor after someone charismatic and brown has let her down. The Colombian singer Maluma plays Bastian; he’s a bag of cuddles here, masquerading as a red flag. At some point, Kat even notes that she’s never been nominated for anything. (The happiest we see her in the whole movie is on Grammy nomination day.)The original songs are the best things in the movie. Those, and the two or three scenes in which Sarah Silverman — as Charlie’s sidekick and, somehow, a school guidance counselor — appears to abandon a script that it pained me to watch her obey. The pain extends to Lopez. I spend her movies waiting for the moments in which she seems most relaxed and least forced, when the effort has fallen away and the person she’s playing is free to do and be and feel. “Marry Me” is a sad tale that’s too busy leaping from plot point to plot point for Lopez to express anything close to real. It tells a lot and shows nothing.I keep referring to her and Kat as entertainers, which, of course, they are. But what Lopez performs here — what she’s frequently performing — is the business of entertainment. She’s the star as executive, and all she often lets us see is execution. (Kat’s truest friend is her manager, an efficient Englishman, whom John Bradley plays with persuasive concern.) Kat and Charlie don’t meet much of each other’s families. And the movie denies them any chance to explore the weirdness of this relationship. He’s something Kat must do — although not carnally, never that; we just get a morning after in which she’s long removed herself from his bed and is taking work calls. Which is fine. But don’t call this love when all we see is task management.Marry MeRated PG-13. Kisses, cunning, backup dancers in body suits with nuns’ habits. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters and streaming on Peacock. More

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      ‘Marry Me’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      Watch Jennifer Lopez Perform in ‘Marry Me’

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      The director Kat Coiro narrates a sequence from her film featuring the actress and Maluma.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.An outsized pop performance strikes some tender emotions in this scene from “Marry Me.”Jennifer Lopez stars as Kat Valdez, a pop star who had planned to marry another musician, Bastian (Maluma), at a concert before she discovers he’s been cheating on her. She decides to marry a random concertgoer, Charlie (Owen Wilson), instead.This scene comes after Charlie and Kat have been spending time together, getting a feel for each others’ lives, when Bastian asks Kat to perform with him again at Madison Square Garden, doing a ballad version of their hit song “Marry Me.” Charlie doesn’t attend the concert, but watches at home and is struck by the chemistry between Bastian and Kat onstage. Narrating the scene, the director Kat Coiro said she wanted this performance to be the biggest event of the film to contrast Kat’s superstar life with Charlie’s modest teacher life.To pull the sequence off, which involves reactions from a packed audience, Coiro and her team filmed the crowd at one of Maluma’s concerts and paired that with footage of Lopez and Maluma performing in an empty Madison Square Garden.Read the “Marry Me” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More