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      The Most Adventurous Comedy Right Now Is Also the Most Real

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      John Wilson, Eric Andre and others are drawing on unscripted encounters to elicit deeper laughs but also more vulnerable moments.At the start of the second season of the HBO series “How To With John Wilson,” the titular star, a stammering innocent, visits a mortgage broker to get a loan. Asked his occupation, he sounds stumped. “I’m an, uh, documentarian,” he says, struggling to categorize his work. “Like, uh, it’s kind of like memoir, essay, um.”Pity him. It’s not easy to define this singular show. But one tip-off comes when Wilson offers as collateral a collection of printed-out reactions (including a Mindy Kaling tweet) inside a folder labeled “good reviews.” The exasperated look on the face of the lender operates as a punchline.Wilson, who writes, stars and narrates this self-portrait of sorts, is the quietly radical auteur of a rapidly ascendant branch of comedy that uses the raw materials of unscripted slices of the real world to make jokes. The latest Dave Chappelle controversy or topical “Saturday Night Live” sketch get more headlines, but in a less heralded corner of comedy, a quiet revolution is taking place.Chris (Eric André), center, and Bud (Lil Rel Howery) ask a woman for advice in “Bad Trip.”NetflixThe best gross-out comedy of the year was Eric André’s “Bad Trip,” a movie that blended public interactions between actors and real people into its fiction. The most biting political film in recent memory was not made by Oliver Stone or Adam McKay. It was the 2020 sequel to “Borat.” And the most innovative portrait of New York was not cooked up by Martin Scorsese. It was the HBO series “How To With John Wilson.” I’m not sure if this group of documentary comedy artists, who have elevated a legacy still connected to lowbrow prank humor, can be considered a scene, but they are cross-pollinating and growing in ambition.At the top of this family tree is Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”), whose blockbuster comedies take planned narratives and weave in ridiculous interactions between his outlandish characters and unsuspecting, real people. His heirs includes Jena Friedman, one of the writers of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” who in her “Soft Focus” Adult Swim specials added savvy feminist punch to daring documentary comedy, integrating scenes with real frat boys and online gamers into a comic exposé of our sexist culture. Her recent follow-up is the superb spoof of murder documentaries, “Indefensible” on Sundance TV. “Bad Trip” (2021) belongs to a broader strain, tied to the raucous juvenile stunts of “Jackass,” whose co-creator Jeff Tremaine produced the feature.Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova hit the streets in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”Amazon StudiosNathan Fielder, who has also worked with Baron Cohen, pioneered a more personal, emotionally tender strain in “Nathan for You” (which ended in 2017) playing a mild-mannered consultant who helps small-business owners achieve their dreams. His cringe comedy often began as a spoof of the hustle of American entrepreneurs, but invariably spun off into melancholy, oddly poetic moments. This set the stage for the most ambitious and cerebral example of the genre, “How To With John Wilson,” whose executive producers include Fielder.Wilson builds every episode around teaching some new skill before getting interrupted by a diversion that seems to stumble into a philosophical meditation on a broader theme. An episode on appreciating wine asks how to engage with society without becoming conformist; one about finding a parking spot is a brief for the virtue of boredom. (“Maybe life is just circling just waiting for a spot.”) It’s a show that gathers loose parts (a montage of shots of personalized license plates, say) and somehow turns them into wildly eccentric, oddly poignant comedy.Wilson, our intrepid guide, is incredibly smart at playing dumb, alert to moments of minor revelation, disturbing oddness and layered meanings. But unlike most of the great deadpan comics, he stays off camera, telling his stories through narration, interviews with strangers and carefully curated scenes of New York. The show shares elements with critical video essays by the likes of Matt Zoller Seitz and with Thom Andersen’s fascinating documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” which also invites you to see a city through new eyes. But the new season of “How to,” written by a staff that includes the author Susan Orlean and the comic Conner O’Malley, is much more autobiographical. New York isn’t the main character, as the cliché goes, so much as shots of it are the language used to describe Wilson.Detours take us into his checkered early filmmaking career, including a disastrous early film, “Jingle Berry,” he has stashed away but can’t quite destroy, and brief video of old roommates and a girlfriend. The most surreal (and chilling) personal revelation is a story of organizing a failed rebellion in college when his a cappella group attended a conference hosted by Keith Raniere, the convicted sex trafficker who founded the cult Nxivm.All great comedy reveals the artist, but these intimate new episodes dig deeper, making Wilson more vulnerable than you’d expect. Wilson comes off as an anguished subject, anxious and afraid of confrontation but struggling to connect. This tension is reflected in the form: We only actually see him in quick glances in mirrors or old clips, but the stories are told entirely from the perspective of his camera. Most of his emotional reactions are illuminated by street scenes. When he talks about feeling shock, he shows an image of a Gothic building whose windows resemble a face with a mouth agape.The roots of this brand of comedy date to the pranks of “Candid Camera.” Another touchstone is the late-night talk show tradition of turning interactions with strangers into comedy, from Steve Allen in the 1950s to the literate remote segments by Merrill Markoe on “Late Night With David Letterman” in the 1980s. It’s a strain of comedy that inspired artists like Billy Eichner. The recent documentary comedy examples stretch the canvas created by their forerunners, offering a wider emotional landscape and more complicated ideas.“How To With John Wilson” turns to Quick Evic to get advice about tenant-landlord relations.HBOBut a dark undercurrent remains, one that exploits the humiliation of unsuspecting foils for cheap laughs. Wilson is clearly aware of this and even cops to it. The first episode of this season begins with him buying a building from his landlord. Describing his online real-estate hunt, he says: “You feel like the invisible man. Getting to be a voyeur without any consequences.” His self-awareness doesn’t erase the smirking pleasures of his show, which emerge in the handling of characters like the person who claims to be the reincarnation of President John Adams or the businessman who makes car-shaped caskets. But Wilson rarely mocks. And he isn’t aiming for quick laughs as much as compassionate consideration. His camera treats the figures it encounters with loving attention and usually a lack of judgment.His shows are a reminder of how rarely you see banal details of city denizens doing their jobs on prestige television: The unglamorous everyday of real estate agents, construction workers, commuters. Wilson balances the mundane with the extraordinary (every episode has a moment or two that you can’t believe really happened), heavy subjects with light jokes. He introduces us to people who look like targets (a fan group of “Avatar” obsessives) and makes us see the beauty in their community. This isn’t a show of heroes and villains, but quick portraits of real, complicated people, and its foundational faith is that they are funnier than anything performed by actors. There’s plenty of evidence.Consider a recent viral video of the Fox host Laura Ingraham having a frustrated conversation with a guest talking about the Netflix show “You.” Every time he mentioned the show, she thought he was referring to her, and the dialogue came to seem like a cable-news update of an Abbott and Costello routine. Almost immediately, this minute-long misunderstanding went viral with people of all political stripes retweeting and praising it. One of the only dissents came from Andy Richter, who tweeted: “The fact that people are actually laughing at that Laura Ingraham thing makes me feel like I’ve wasted the last 35 years of my life.”Why did people love this? It was delivered with spot-on comic rhythm, and of course, people love to laugh at cable hosts embarrassing themselves. But part of the reason it worked is because it seemed like a genuine moment, a true burst of spontaneity in a media climate filled with predictable narratives. As soon as the participants confessed it was fake, the interest online vanished.To take another example, the Sacha Baron Cohen comedies that forgo unscripted encounters with real people, “The Dictator” and “The Brothers Grimsby,” did not have the urgency and verve of his documentary comedies.Authenticity has been rightly picked apart by critics, who argue that it’s easily manufactured and so vaguely defined as to be meaningless. And yet, its power and influence on audiences remains undeniable. Authenticity is part of the popularity of stand-up, with comics performing in characters bearing their names and likenesses. And when a standup does something that seems at odds with his persona, the public’s fascination is intense. See John Mulaney, a squeaky-clean comic who recently became a staple of tabloid coverage after drug rehab, divorce and news of a new girlfriend and baby on the way. “You know your life has gone a little downhill when you announce that you’re having a baby, and you get mixed reviews,” he joked at a recent show.Wilson gets at the enduring power of the real in an origin story of sorts in which he describes being denied entry into a Dungeons and Dragons group as a kid and rebelling against fantasy. “When I watched fiction, I could never suspend disbelief and fully immerse myself in the world.” I suspect he’s not the only one.And yet, in the same episode, he tries to change, searching out the value in fantasy (“If you only think about stuff that already exists, the world will never change”) and even recording his dreams. One is of a laundromat where the washers and dryers are replaced by stoves. In one oddly magical coup de théâtre, he actually builds this business, then trains his camera on New Yorkers cracking up and marveling at this bizarre new addition to the neighborhood.It’s a bizarre stunt, proudly random, but also, what a perfect joke for this boundary-blurring genre: Actually making your dream come true. More

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      Shooting Investigators Get Search Warrant for Alec Baldwin’s Phone

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      Detectives are nearly two months into the investigation of how a live round got into a gun that discharged on a New Mexico film set, killing a cinematographer.A judge on Thursday granted the police access to Alec Baldwin’s smartphone, nearly two months into the investigation around how a gun he was practicing with on the set of the film, “Rust,” fired a live round, killing the movie’s cinematographer and wounding its director.Mr. Baldwin said in a police interview on Oct. 21, the day of the fatal shooting in New Mexico, that the gun discharged while he was preparing for a scene in which he takes the old-fashioned Colt revolver out of his shoulder holster and cocks the hammer, according to an affidavit filed in the application for the search warrant. Detective Alexandria Hancock asked Mr. Baldwin and his lawyer to hand over his phone, the affidavit said, but was told to obtain a warrant.The application for the search warrant said that the detective “believes there may be evidence on the phone, due to individuals using cellular phones during and/or after the commission of crime(s).” Detective Hancock, according to the affidavit, “was also made aware there were several emails and text messages sent and received regarding the movie production ‘Rust’ in the course of the interviews.”The search is meant to collect “all information and data from the cellular phone in relation to the production of ‘Rust,’ and any member working on the production.”The application said that Mr. Baldwin was brought into an interview room at about 5:12 p.m. the day of the shooting and that he agreed to speak with detectives after being advised of his Miranda rights. “Alec advised in the scene he slowly takes the gun out of the holster, then very dramatically turns it and cocks the hammer, which is when the gun goes off,” it said. “He said it was supposed to be a ‘cold gun’ so no flash charge or anything should have gone off.”In a television interview earlier this month, Mr. Baldwin said he did not pull the trigger of the gun he was practicing with when it fired a live round. He said he did not fully cock the hammer of the gun, but pulled it back as far as he could and let it go in an action that might have set it off.“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property,” Mr. Baldwin said in the interview with ABC News. “Someone is ​responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”Mr. Baldwin has been cooperating with investigators in the case; the affidavit said the actor had contacted Detective Hancock “numerous times” by telephone and text messages. A representative for Mr. Baldwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the search warrant. More

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      ‘President’ Review: Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Democracy

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      In a riveting new documentary, Camilla Nielsson follows the first democratic election in Zimbabwe since 1980.Eight months after Robert Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe autocratically for nearly 30 years starting in 1980, was ousted in a 2017 coup, the nation was set to elect a new president in its first democratic election since the start of Mugabe’s rule.Camilla Nielsson gives viewers a front-row seat to that July 2018 election in “President,” a riveting documentary that follows Nelson Chamisa, a charismatic 40-year-old lawyer, as he runs against Emmerson Mnangagwa, the strongman who unseated Mugabe.Nielsson’s access to Chamisa allows for an intimate look at the Catch-22 of establishing a democracy amid state-sanctioned violence and corruption, and the grit of those fighting for it. The juxtaposition of the candidates’ strategies is apparent when, as both sides arrive at a courthouse for a pivotal case, the camera pans first to the pile of papers with which the opposition will make its case and then to the police stockpiling nightsticks.Chamisa says repeatedly that he is willing to die for his cause. His charisma and connection to the people make him an excellent anchor for the film, reflecting and representing Zimbabwe’s decades-long struggle for a fair democracy. The film includes harrowing images of citizens being beaten, hosed down and shot at by the military and police for demonstrating in support of Chamisa.President Mnangagwa claims victory in the election, despite allegations of vote rigging that are raised by the opposition. It’s a somber end to a film that opens with and is undergirded by Zimbabweans’ hope for change.PresidentNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Last Words’ Review: Cinema After the End of the World

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      In this post-apocalyptic drama, a young man meets the grizzled last guardian of a cinematic archive, played by Nick Nolte.This new film directed by Jonathan Nossiter, adapted by Nossiter from a novel by Santiago Amigorena, begins, in Sun Ra’s phrase, after the end of the world. Addressing the camera directly, a young man named Kal (played by Kalipha Touray in his feature debut), informs us that it’s 2086, and that he has a story to tell “about the end of humanity.” But he soon despairs: “I have nothing to say.”He goes on anyway. An ecological disaster, during which much of Europe is engulfed by water, has stranded Kal’s unschooled generation. He wanders the ruins of Paris alongside his pregnant sister. They come upon reels of celluloid film, their origin the Cineteca di Bologna. Inspired, Kal goes on a pilgrimage.In Bologna, he finds a grizzled character — played by Nick Nolte, a past master in this department — who’s protecting a film archive and maintaining a bicycle-and-hand-crank-operated projector. (In this world, electrical outlets are a thing of the past.) After getting to know each other — the two men make a batch of 35-millimeter film together, a process we are walked through the less wonky steps of — the duo heads to Athens seeking other survivors of the apocalypse.They find characters there. Some are sagelike, some are withdrawn; they’re played by the likes of Stellan Skarsgard and Charlotte Rampling, both regulars in Nossiter’s short filmography.Kal and Nolte’s character show movies to a dwindling population among ancient ruins. This makes for some evocative imagery, as do some films that Kal makes with that new stock. Call the arrangement “Cinema Purgatorio.” The movie’s depiction of age — specifically, age as it affects movie stars — has real potency. This extends beyond its ostensible message, delivered by Kal: “We live and die by the stories we tell each other.” The stronger statement “Last Words” ends up making is that we die no matter what.Last WordsNot rated. In English, Mandinka and French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Mother/Android’ Review: How to Protect When You’re Expecting

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      In this sci-fi thriller, a pregnant woman and her boyfriend try to outrun hordes of vengeful robots.“Mother/Android,” written and directed by Mattson Tomlin, offers exactly what it says on the tin. The protagonist, Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz), is a college student unsure about her relationship with her boyfriend, Sam (Algee Smith), when she discovers she is pregnant. That same night, the servant androids that occupy most well-off American homes (including Georgia’s) collectively glitch and turn murderous, and the country becomes a war zone.There is a mother. There are androids. This film pulls the former off more elegantly than the latter, due in large part to a stunning performance from Moretz.The bulk of the film takes place nine months after that fateful night. The country’s remaining humans occupy the military camps that dot the country, protected from androids by electromagnetic transmitters. Sam and Georgia, now past her due date, hope to flee to Korea via Boston, but they have to brave the wilderness ahead — a.k.a. “No Man’s Land” — first. Unfriendly soldiers, bloodthirsty robots and the pregnancy all complicate their plan.For a movie set during a robot apocalypse, “Mother/Android” offers little in the way of world building. It’s unclear why the androids are revolting or what they want, just as it’s uncertain how America hopes to save itself. This undercooked backdrop is both a blessing and a curse: It offers ample room for the film’s strong emotional core, but it can also be hopelessly distracting. This is a movie about a young woman fighting to create a family for herself against all odds. Also, cyborgs?The androids are effectively creepy (think “Terminator” skeletons mixed with zombies), and Moretz sells Georgia’s turmoil so gamely as to overshadow the ridiculous premise. A standout turn by Raúl Castillo sends the film into a twisty third act. It’s a bizarre movie, but there’s enough action to help you zip through this overstuffed story even if you’re not sure why you (or Georgia, or Sam) are there in the first place.Mother/AndroidRated R for robotics (and dismemberment). Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Swan Song’ Review: Second Life

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      In this future-set drama, Mahershala Ali plays an ailing father who decides whether or not to clone himself for the sake of his family.Cloning is such an unsettling and outlandish prospect that it naturally lends itself to sinister adventures (and sometimes farce). But “Swan Song,” a science-fiction drama written and directed by Benjamin Cleary, posits a scenario of doubling that’s just as much about acquiring emotional intelligence as it is about reckoning with existential and practical ramifications.Cameron (Mahershala Ali) is an ailing graphic designer who doesn’t have long to live. Loathe to abandon his wife, Poppy (Naomie Harris), and their young son, he secretly undertakes a procedure that will create a replica of himself — physically identical, possessing his memories, yet healthy. But will the double really be Cameron in any meaningful sense, or will he simply be fulfilling Cameron’s role in life? Will his family even notice? And is Cameron OK with that?After an especially scary fainting episode, the switch is set to happen in a secluded compound on a lake, where the caring-but-firm scientist (Glenn Close) assures Cameron that this sort of thing will soon be common. We get a sense of the time period’s science-fiction parameters through a mix of banal and mildly “Black Mirror” details: driverless cars are a rule, talking droids serve snacks on trains, and contact lenses can record and transmit what you see.Cleary’s story walks us through the steps of Cameron’s transition. He meets his new doppelgänger in the flesh — temporarily named Jack — and uploads his memories. Mild comic relief comes from Cameron’s hangouts with a recently transitioned person (Awkwafina) at the compound. We get glimpses of Cameron’s family life and its strains, as well as a flashback to his meet-cute with Poppy, all of it suggesting how grief, belief and love might take on unfamiliar forms with new technological possibilities.But any mind-bending conceit or special effect pales before Ali’s incredibly fine-tuned talents. Playing opposite a digital replica of oneself almost doesn’t merit comment anymore, but Cameron and Jack are an entrancing study in the subtlest shifts in energy and feeling. When Cameron first meets his clone, the welter of apprehension, curiosity and concern is apparent on Cameron’s face, but Ali’s crowning touch is Jack’s faint expression of sympathy toward the man he will replace.Ali’s focus and presence makes us believe that both of these men are equally alive and feeling the brunt of this deeply uncanny predicament. This is less a conceptual thumbsucker than a tightly focused, almost miniaturist drama about moving on. Whenever something goes awry, we worry less about Pandora’s box dystopia than about the psychological toll of Cameron’s limbo. Perhaps more so than any film that’s received the tagline, it’s effectively about being true to yourself.Swan SongRated R for heated language. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters and on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘The Novice’ Review: A Freshman Effort Worthy of Varsity

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      The obsessive ambitions of a college rower are masterfully orchestrated in a debut feature by the writer-director Lauren Hadaway.In “The Novice,” the impressive debut feature from the writer-director Lauren Hadaway, Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a college freshman who finds purpose in the masochistic ecstasy of team rowing.Alex isn’t suited to the demands of her sport. She’s not as strong as her crew mates, and she’s not as team-oriented as they are either. But she becomes obsessed with rowing, driven to achieve her goal of making the school’s varsity squad, even if her incessant efforts alienate her peers and coaches. Not even Alex’s first queer romance with Dani (Dilone), a confident teaching assistant, can draw Alex out of her fixation. She begins her season as a novice, and threatens to end it as a zealot.Hadaway has crafted a film that thematically and visually resembles Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” for which she served as a sound editor. But where Chazelle’s film followed a protagonist with world-class aspirations, the modest scale of Alex’s ambitions keeps “The Novice” more grounded as a character study, and helps the film steer clear of overblown statements about success. The protagonist merely wishes to be the worst rower on her team’s best boat.Without the pressure of narrative grandeur, Hadaway is free to go big in her filmmaking style. She uses maximalist techniques like slow motion, rapid editing and deep space staging to create dreamlike sequences of Alex’s isolation. Fuhrman’s performance matches the filmmaking for its intensity. The movie achieves a surreal allure — at times, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue because the images and the sound design are already communicating so much. If the story’s hero can only aspire to the middle of the pack, the beginner behind the camera shows no such limitations.The NoviceRated R for intense sequences of distress, language, brief nudity, and some sexual content. Running time: 1 hours 34 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘A Naija Christmas’ Review: Honoring a Mother’s Wish

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      In this romantic comedy on Netflix, the first son to find a wife inherits the family home. But that task is harder than it might appear.With naughty nods made nice by a few twists, “A Naija Christmas” might seem to be an entertaining albeit middle-of-the-road holiday romantic comedy. Only that road cuts through Lagos, Nigeria.As the Nigerian film industry’s first Christmas comedy since it became a Netflix partner, this romp about three brothers trying to make their mother’s holiday wish a reality is festive and illuminating. The director Kunle Afolayan teases most of the well-worn holiday movie tropes while treating viewers to Naija-flavored themes of class, gender and faith.After a humiliating gathering where her women’s group reminds her of what she lacks, Mama (Rachel Oniga, who died earlier this year) has an arm-twisting proposal for her sons, one intended to nudge them toward marriage and eventually grandchildren. Whichever one of them secures a future wife by Christmas will inherit the family home.This will be no small feat. The oldest son, Ugo (Kunle Remi), is a music producer and a romantic cad. He’s also in debt to a loan shark. Can Ajike (Segilola Ogidan), a nice church girl, alter his path to perdition? The middle son, Obi (Efa Iwara), a nerd, recently devised a too-public proposal to his girlfriend and boss, Vera (Linda Osifo). His jilting went viral. And the youngest son, Chike (Abayomi Alvin), is genuinely smitten with a down-low love interest, whom the comedy coyly teases with a slow reveal.While her menfolk bumble, Mama and her status-conscious women friends prepare for the annual Christmas pageant. This one’s to be held in, as one member says with trepidation, “the ghetto.” Yes, elitism makes more than a cameo here — the movie’s reminder that some attitudes are never in the spirit of the season.A Naija ChristmasNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch on Netflix. More