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      ‘The King’s Daughter’ Review: Sinking or Swimming at Versailles

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      Pierce Brosnan stars as a version of King Louis XIV who seeks to sacrifice a mermaid for immortality in this puerile storybook fantasy that was shot nearly eight years ago.Here’s a tragic tale: Once upon a time, an action-adventure drama began production. Nearly eight years, a title change and a new distribution plan later, the movie finally sees the light of day. Nothing about it feels worth the wait.Puerile and plodding, “The King’s Daughter” — originally called “The Moon and the Sun,” and based on the fantasy novel of that name — begins as the plucky Marie-Josephe (Kaya Scodelario) is recruited to Versailles as a royal composer. Of meager origins, our young heroine thrills at palace life, and even establishes a rapport with France’s august sovereign, King Louis XIV (a puckering Pierce Brosnan). There appears to be an oddly coquettish slant to their relationship until, what a surprise: Marie-Josephe discovers that she’s not an orphaned paysan but Louis’s estranged child. (It isn’t a stretch to guess that titling the movie “The King’s Daughter” was a Hail Mary measure to undercut the principals’ accidental framing as a romantic couple-to-be.)Oh, and there’s also a C.G.I. mermaid (Fan Bingbing) being held captive until an imminent eclipse, when the king will order her sacrifice in exchange for immortality.Directed by Sean McNamara, the movie seems to aspire to the grand, squally allure of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. And shot partly on location at Versailles, the visuals are sometimes splendid. When, for example, Marie-Josephe and a ship captain frolic through Hameau de la Reine, the setting’s natural beauty allows for a momentary respite — until the scene ends, and we’re thrust back into storybook inanity.The King’s DaughterRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom’ Review: Remote Learning

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      In Pawo Choyning Dorji’s film, a teacher is assigned to a school that’s an eight-day walk from where he lives.In “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” an indifferent young teacher, Ugyen, is assigned to a school high in the mountains of Bhutan. This is far from where he’d rather be — Australia — and it’s an eight-day schlep by foot from where he currently lives, the modern Bhutanese city of Thimphu. As Ugyen makes the trek with two guides, the director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, shows the declining population and rising altitude along the way. Lunana numbers less than 100 residents.Ugyen’s charming, yak-herding hosts are an internet-free picture of serenity against the backdrop of verdant, misty slopes. Parables about teachers sent to the provinces are usually a two-way street: education and advancement for the students, life lessons for their instructor. Ugyen (plainly played by Sherab Dorji) is especially undistinguished, and despite teaching the children about math and toothbrushes, he receives the brunt of the story’s enlightenment about the upsides of traditional living.The gently efficient story feels like an attempt to illustrate Bhutan’s real-life “Gross National Happiness” initiative. (The film gives credit to “the noble people of Lunana,” as well as “School Among Glaciers,” a 2003 Bhutanese documentary about a teacher sent to the mountains.) Ugyen’s aspirations to a singing career are amusingly unremarkable in Lunana, where locals croon songs to the valleys as spiritual offerings.About that yak: he’s a gift to Ugyen (to produce dung fuel), and he sits and chews in the background of classroom scenes, just happy to be there. The film basks in a similar mood of mild-mannered contentment.Lunana: A Yak in the ClassroomNot rated. In Dzongkha, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Last Thing Mary Saw’ Review: God Is Always Watching

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      In this thriller set in a Calvinist household in 1843, two women in love struggle against both patriarchal and supernatural forces to be together.“The Last Thing Mary Saw,” as a name, might lead viewers to believe that the titular character has seen some unspeakable horror just before her death. In fact — and this is no spoiler — she has seen such terrors just before having her eyes gouged out. Such is the beguiling, nasty nature of this first feature from the writer-director Edoardo Vitaletti, set at a Calvinist household in 1843.Mary (Stefanie Scott) is the black sheep of her strict, upper-class family. She has fallen in love with their maid, Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), and seems barely interested in hiding it. As Mary’s parents turn to the family’s eerie matriarch (Judith Roberts) for guidance, Mary and Isabelle plan their escape with the help of the downtrodden family guard, Theodore (P.J. Sosko). This main narrative is apparently a retelling, introduced during an interrogation between Mary — now blindfolded, with blood dripping from her eye sockets — and the town constable.Though this is a slow, at times plodding film, it holds more intricacies than that plot summary alone can convey. Each member of Mary’s family has a distinct role in her persecution, and she and Eleanor try to evade them several times before a grisly climax. As a result, “The Last Thing Mary Saw” is as surprising as it is frustrating. Art house horror fans may delight in its supernatural twists and pitch-dark ending, but these mechanisms only serve to muddy the story. In act two, a funeral goes awry and an anonymous villain (Rory Culkin) wreaks havoc, but it is completely unclear how or why any of these agitating events ensue. At best, the film may offer a criticism of a vengeful Christian god — at worst, it paints its lesbian protagonist as a contemptible sinner who was always destined for punishment.The Last Thing Mary SawNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

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      ‘Definition Please’ Review: What Does It All Mean?

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      A grown-up spelling bee star who never left her hometown tries to make sense of the conflicts and challenges in her family.“Definition Please” begins with wee Monica Chowdry winning the Scribbs National Spelling Bee. She claims the title after using up all the time-buying requests allowed, including the one that gives the actor-writer-director Sujata Day’s sincere, Bollywood-winking film its title.Turns out Monica’s ailing mom has been watching video of her little one triumph yet again. Grown-up Monica (Day) lives with her ailing mother in Greensburg, Pa. Monica has the smarts to secure a clinical research position, which she does early in the movie. So why is this minor celebrity with the major vocabulary sticking around?She has her reasons: to care for her mother (Anna Khaja); to hang out with her bestie, Krista (Lalaine), a wisecracking bartender; to coach future spelling bee champs. But mostly, she’s stuck. Will the return of her older brother, Sonny, nudge her?Ritesh Rajan brings overgrown puppy energy to Sonny, who returns home to mark the one-year anniversary of their father’s death. Mother Jaya hopes he’ll stay. That is the last thing Monica wants.More touching than riotous, “Definition Please” proves to be impressively nuanced once it begins revealing why Monica is so prickly around Sonny: He has bipolar disorder. Day depicts Monica’s frustrations, fears and resentments with a patience and depth that feels true to the experience of loving a sibling who is struggling with mental illness.Even more convincing is Khaja’s warm portrayal of a mother who needs her kids to get along. Her machinations may be the stuff of comedy, but her frightened yet steadfast approach to Sonny at his worst is a thing of tender beauty.Definition PleaseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Gaspard Ulliel, 37, 'Moon Knight' and 'Hannibal Rising' Star, Dies Skiing

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      He gained fame as a young Hannibal Lecter and the designer Yves Saint Laurent. He died after a skiing accident weeks before he is to appear in a Disney+ series.Gaspard Ulliel, a star of French cinema best known outside his native country for portraying the young Hannibal Lecter in “Hannibal Rising” and the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent in “Saint Laurent,” died on Wednesday, the day after a skiing accident in France. He was 37.Mr. Ulliel’s family confirmed his death in a statement to Agence France-Presse, the French news service.His death, from a head injury, according to the French press, came just weeks before Mr. Ulliel is to appear in Marvel’s “Moon Knight” series for Disney+, scheduled to debut on March 30.Roselyne Bachelot, France’s culture minister, was among the many French political and cultural figures to pay tribute to him. “His sensitivity and the intensity of his acting made Gaspard Ulliel an exceptional actor,” she said on Twitter. “Cinema today loses an immense talent.”Mr. Ulliel was born in a suburb of Paris on Nov. 25, 1984. He appeared in numerous French TV shows and movies while still a teenager and studied film at a university in Paris, hoping to be a director. But he had to drop out when his acting career took off, he told The New York Times’s T Magazine in 2010, though a return to directing was “still in my mind,” he said at the time.In the same interview he talked of his love for skiing, saying: “Half my family comes from the French Alps. As a child, I almost skied before I walked.”Mr. Ulliel played a young Hannibal Lecter in the 2007 film “Hannibal Rising.”Keith Hampshere/Weinstein Company and Metro-Goldwyn-MayerHis rise to global prominence came in 2003 with his first leading movie role, in “Strayed,” playing an itinerant teenager helping a woman flee Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. Karen Durbin, in a review in The Times, said he was the “scene stealer” of the film.“He seems fully arrived, showing us the facets of a complex and mercurial character like a blackjack dealer shuffling a deck of cards,” she wrote.For the performance, Mr. Ulliel was nominated for a César award, France’s version of the Oscars.He became more known to audiences in the United States when he took the lead in “Hannibal Rising,” the 2007 prequel to the 1991 hit “The Silence of the Lambs,” playing Hannibal Lecter as an oddly sympathetic, if still horribly murderous, character. The film received mixed reviews.But he won more unanimous praise for later films like “Saint Laurent” (2014) and “To the Ends of the World,” a 2018 war film set in Vietnam. A.O. Scott, reviewing “Saint Laurent” in The Times, said that Mr. Ulliel portrayed the designer Yves Saint Laurent as having never experiencing a moment of self-doubt throughout his career while “conveying a haunting, quietly charismatic mixture of sensitivity and coldness.”In “Saint Laurent,” Mr. Ulliel portrayed the titular French fashion designer.Cannes Film Festival, via Associated Press“Saint Laurent” brought Mr. Ulliel a nomination for the best actor award at the Césars, an honor he won in 2016 for his performance in Xavier Dolan’s “It’s Only the End of the World,” in which he played a prizewinning writer who comes home to tell his family he is dying.Suitably for someone who portrayed one of fashion’s biggest idols, Mr. Ulliel moved easily in the fashion world as well, having appeared on the cover of French Vogue and fronting a campaign for the scent Bleu de Chanel.No details on his survivors were immediately available. More

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      France’s Colonial Conflict, Filmed From Both Sides

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      “The Olive Trees of Justice,” a neorealist take on the Algerian War made with nonprofessional actors, is newly restored and still resonates today.Shot in Algeria on the eve of independence, “The Olive Trees of Justice” is the only fiction film by the American documentarian James Blue and, based on a novel by the French Algerian writer Jean Pélégri, one that acknowledges colonial oppression as well as post-colonial displacement.Blue’s movie, which had its United States premiere in 1963 as part of the first New York Film Festival, has been revived at Metrograph, newly restored and still resonant.Unsurprisingly, “Olive Trees” has a strong neorealist component. A pre-credit statement announces it as a movie without professional actors. The protagonist Jean (Pierre Prothon) is a young pied-noir — a settler of European descent — who has returned to Algiers from France to be with his dying father (played by Pélégri, who also wrote the screenplay). Some of the strongest scenes follow him through the city’s barricaded streets, hillside slums and bustling markets. In a moment that feels more stolen than staged, French soldiers shut down traffic to check an abandoned shopping bag for explosives. Evidently, the production was itself targeted by right-wing settlers.The movie also has an existentialist aspect. Like the antihero of Camus’s “The Stranger,” also set in Algiers, Jean experiences the death of a parent and views himself as a foreigner in his native land. Prothon has the anguished blankness of a Robert Bresson principal. (Not coincidentally Pélégri had just played the police detective in Bresson’s “Pickpocket.”) Maurice Jarre’s solemn, modernist score adds the underlying angst, as do the helicopters hovering over the city, which, midway through the film, shuts down for Ashura, an Islamic day of mourning.Jean’s return is a trip into his past, shown in extended flashbacks. His dying father, a self-made man, is not so much nostalgic for his lost vineyard (taken by creditors) as for a world “where everyone knew their place.” Jean’s memories are now tainted by a relative’s desire to hold on to her farm by any means necessary and the news that his childhood best friend has joined the National Liberation Army in the mountains.The pervasive sense of impending conflict evoked an unusually personal response from the New York Times reviewer Howard Thompson. Self-identified as a “moviegoer from Dixie who has never set foot in North Africa,” Thompson wrote that the portrait of French settlers forced to enclose their vineyards with barbed wire “suggests trouble clouds scudding over a placid but firmly run plantation of yore.” This nostalgic characterization of slavery notwithstanding, Thompson praised the film’s balance. And indeed Blue is a sympathetic witness to a zero-sum conflict.Having won an award at Cannes in May 1962, “Olive Trees” opened in Paris that June, eight months after hundreds of Algerians were massacred in the city, with French revanchists still planting bombs. The war had come home. Some found the film’s measured gravity a palliative. The Times correspondent Cynthia Grenier reported its praise by critics across the political spectrum who “seemed to have but one regret: that no Frenchman had the courage to make such a film” — perhaps with good reason. The movie utterly failed to attract a French audience.“Olive Trees” is steeped in ambivalence — a dilemma manifest in the abrupt, impulsive decision Jean makes in the movie’s final moments.The Olive Trees of JusticeFriday-Sunday, in person and streaming at Metrograph, Manhattan; metrograph.com. More

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      Jon Bernthal’s Guide to Making It as a Supporting Actor

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      For Jon Bernthal, the purest kind of acting happens as part of an ensemble.“It’s such a collaborative art,” he said. “The best thing you can do as an actor, whether you’re the lead of the show or you’re just coming in for a day, is to lift everybody up and try to be a great teammate.”That attitude served Bernthal well on the sports drama “King Richard,” in which he plays Rick Macci, the upbeat, mustachioed tennis coach who took the fledgling superstars Venus and Serena Williams under his wing while sometimes butting heads with their father, Richard (Will Smith). Though he comes into the film late, Bernthal proves so charming that he helped power “King Richard” to a recent Screen Actors Guild nomination for outstanding cast in a motion picture, and has even been the beneficiary of awards buzz himself.With his rough-hewed looks and eagerness to plunge deeply into character, Bernthal has become one of Hollywood’s busiest actors. In the last few months alone, the 45-year-old Bernthal has popped up in the Sandra Bullock drama “The Unforgivable,” the “Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” and the Angelina Jolie firefighting film “Those Who Wish Me Dead”; he’ll next be seen in Lena Dunham’s Sundance movie “Sharp Stick,” and the series “We Own This City” on HBO and “American Gigolo” on Showtime.From left, Bernthal with Will Smith, Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney in “King Richard.” Bernthal auditioned for the part.Chiabella James/Warner Bros. Part of the reason Bernthal works so much is that he has no ego about whether he is No. 1 on the call sheet. Whether it’s a brief cameo in “Wind River,” a flashy supporting role in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Walking Dead,” or the lead in a series like “The Punisher,” Bernthal will still give his all, and he has a lot of hard-won wisdom about how to succeed as an ensemble player.“With a lot of the decisions I make, it’s never about the size of the role,” Bernthal told me recently over Zoom. “Does the script move me? Does it scare me? The people involved, are they people that have affected me?”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.When you show up on a movie and they’ve already been shooting for weeks, what is it like to find your place there as a supporting actor?Every set has its own culture and has its own methodology. If you’re there from the beginning, you get to be a real part of welcoming others in when those people come in on their first day. When I showed up on “Sicario,” Emily Blunt made me feel like she had been waiting for me to get there: “Oh my God, Jon Bernthal! I just saw you in ‘Wolf of Wall Street,’ I’m so glad you’re here.” Whether it was real or not, she made me feel 100 feet tall. DiCaprio does the same thing.On the other hand, I also love it when I come in and don’t know a soul and I don’t have to be a part of their culture at all. My friend James Badge Dale and I talk about it like we get to be hired assassins: We go in, throw down and walk away. There’s something unbelievably liberating in that. My favorite thing in movies is when you see a character come and go, and you’re so curious where they go next.How can you be sure that when you get on set with the lead actor — whether it’s Sandra Bullock in “The Unforgivable” or Will Smith in “King Richard” — you’re going to be able to find some chemistry?With Sandy, she could find chemistry with anyone. Again, she’s one of those people where you walk onto set and she’s so unbelievably welcoming and present — we just immediately started talking about our kids and connecting and laughing. But look, I’ve been with movie stars who are absolutely intent on letting you know that they’re movie stars, and when the scene cuts, everybody goes back to their trailers and it’s completely ridiculous. That’s when I know it’s all about those precious moments between “action” and “cut,” and I’ve got to get myself ready on my own.I assume you’re at the point now where you don’t always have to audition …But I did audition for “King Richard.” The director, Reinaldo Marcus Green, hadn’t seen me do anything like that and I really welcomed the opportunity. Man, for me, there’s nothing better than an audition. It’s the only time you get to put something down that’s totally yours and nobody gets to influence it. If I’m asked to be on set after I’ve auditioned, I know I’ve earned my way there.Jon Bernthal likes to remind himself how lucky he is now to be working: “I remember casting directors looking at my big nose and my giant ears and just being like, ‘What are you doing here?’”Pat Martin for The New York TimesSo how do you deal with it when those auditions don’t pay off?When you look at the entertainment industry, it’s amazing how doors are slammed in your face. I remember casting directors looking at my big nose and my giant ears and just being like, “What are you doing here?” Feeling like you don’t belong, agents never returning your phone calls. You get so much rejection and people make you feel so small, and the second that things start to change for you, those same people all want something.But you’ve got to remind yourself how lucky you are to be doing this, even when it’s not working out. Look, when I was starting out and I was going through really hard times, my wife was an I.C.U. trauma nurse, so there’d be plenty of times I would get home and I would have tears in my eyes of frustration and then my wife would talk about her day. The things she was encountering — holding somebody’s hand as they were passing, or letting somebody know that they weren’t going to ever see a family member again — just put it all in such clear perspective for me.Your first screen roles were guest-star spots on TV procedurals like “CSI,” “Without a Trace” and two different “Law and Order” spinoffs. What do you remember about that time?I remember being so wide-eyed and so naïve. One of the first TV sets I walked into, they told me to go to hair and makeup, and I didn’t know what hair and makeup was. So I just went into a trailer, and the lead of the show was changing in that trailer and she yelled, “Get out,” and threw a shoe right at my head. I had to do a scene with her that day!It took a real long time for me to feel comfortable on-set. I remember Vincent D’Onofrio talked to me after a take when I did his show [“Law and Order: Criminal Intent”], and he said, “Hey, what you did there was pretty good.” Something like that can carry you through months of rejection. I always try to remember that with young actors, because the littlest thing can keep you going.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Jon Stewart to Receive Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

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      The comedian and former host of “The Daily Show” will receive the Kennedy Center’s annual comedy honor at a ceremony in April.Jon Stewart may no longer be a nightly presence in Americans’ living rooms, but he’s stayed busy directing a film, joining Twitter, making cameos on his friend Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” debuting his own, and now, winning a comedy prize.The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced on Tuesday that it will recognize the 59-year-old former “Daily Show” host’s political satire and activism when it presents him with its 23rd annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, given to individuals who have “had an impact on American society in ways similar to” Twain, at a ceremony on April 24.Stewart, who was host of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” on Comedy Central for 16 years, stepped away in 2015 to pursue other passions including filmmaking and social activism on behalf of 9/11 first responders. Last fall, he debuted a new biweekly issues-comedy show on Apple TV+, “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” which brings together people affected by different parts of a global problem, like war and the economic issues, to discuss the way forward.Deborah F. Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, said in a statement: “For more than three decades, Jon Stewart has brightened our lives and challenged our minds as he delivers current events and social satire with his trademark wit and wisdom. For me, tuning into his television programs over the years has always been equal parts entertainment and truth.”Previous winners of the Mark Twain Prize include Bill Murray, Dave Chappelle, David Letterman, Eddie Murphy, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett and Ellen DeGeneres. The award has been presented annually since 1998, excepting the pandemic years 2020 and 2021. The prize was also given to Bill Cosby, in 2009, but the Kennedy Center rescinded it in 2018 after he was convicted of sexual assault. His conviction was overturned by a Pennsylvania court last year. More