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      Alec Baldwin Heads to Trial in ‘Rust’ Movie Shooting: Here’s What to Know

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      The trial, scheduled to start with jury selection on Tuesday, will examine whether the actor committed involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of the movie’s cinematographer.The winding prosecution of Alec Baldwin over the fatal shooting on the “Rust” film set is set to arrive at a trial this week in New Mexico, where a jury will be asked to decide whether his role in the death of the movie’s cinematographer amounts to involuntary manslaughter.The case revolves around the events of Oct. 21, 2021, when the gun Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing with discharged a live bullet that killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded the movie’s director. The weapon was supposed to have been loaded with inert rounds that could not fire.The initial announcement that prosecutors were bringing a criminal case against Mr. Baldwin was met with shock from Hollywood, where many consider on-set gun safety the responsibility of a production’s weapons experts and safety coordinators, not its actors. (The movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, has already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison.)The movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and is not expected to be a cooperative witness in Mr. Baldwin’s trial.Pool photo by Luis Sanchez Saturno/EPA, via ShutterstockThe case has put those Hollywood norms to the test and the conduct of Mr. Baldwin, a fixture of the television and movie industry for decades, under a microscope. The proceedings are expected to be highly contested by his lawyers, who have argued for months that the prosecution is a misguided bid to secure a high-profile conviction of a celebrity.The trial is expected to last about two weeks at the Santa Fe County District Courthouse, where the proceedings will be livestreamed. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘MaXXXine’ Director Ti West Is Turning Hollywood Into a Horror Show

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      The Vista is a 101-year-old single-screen movie theater, one of the last of its kind in Los Angeles. A few years ago, midpandemic, Quentin Tarantino bought it, fixed it up, even opened a coffee shop next door and named it after the Pam Grier film “Coffy.” When asked why he bought the Vista or the New Beverly, another single-screen he owns, Tarantino has said: “I’ve got a living room. I want to go to a movie theater.” A few weeks ago I went to a sold-out double feature at the Vista: the film “X” and its prequel, “Pearl.” Both came out in 2022, both were released by the art-house mainstay A24 and both were directed by Ti West, a filmmaker sometimes compared with Tarantino — not least because both have made movies that are obsessed with the process, history and mythology of moviemaking itself. For Tarantino, that film was “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” in which two working actors stumble through the Hollywood of 1969, as one film era crashes into another. For West, it is “X” and “Pearl” and the trilogy’s final film, the newly released “MaXXXine.” These are, like most of West’s films, nominally horror movies. But they are also much stranger and more slippery than that label might suggest. In all three films, the horror stems from the characters’ drive toward stardom and their ruthless, sometimes psychotic ambition, which is fully unleashed by the possibilities of the silver screen.Martin Scorsese, a fan of West’s, wrote to me that he thought each film in the trilogy represented a “different type of horror, related to different eras in American moviemaking.” The first, “X,” is “the ’70s, the slasher era”; “Pearl” is “’50s melodrama in vivid saturated color; “MaXXXine” is “’80s Hollywood, rancid, desperate.” They are, Scorsese wrote, “three linked stories set within three different moments in movie culture, reflecting back on the greater culture.” By smuggling thoroughly modern ideas into films that were also steeped in the aesthetics of the past, Scorsese thought, West had done something bold and thoroughly cinematic.That night at the Vista, after “X” played, West sat onstage with the actress Lily Collins, who is in “MaXXXine,” and they talked about the making of the trilogy. Weeks earlier, over breakfast, West had shared with me an idea he was considering for the event: He wanted to surprise the audience by screening the new film instead of “Pearl.” It would be the first time he put “MaXXXine” in front of a real, live, movie-loving audience, as opposed to critics and press and industry types. The director Ti West, left, on the set of “MaXXXine,” the final installment in a horror trilogy that began with “X” and “Pearl.”Eddy Chen/A24Mia Goth in “MaXXXine.” She plays multiple roles across the course of the trilogy.Justin Lubin/A24The idea delighted West, he explained, because he was always interested in the process of leading an audience to that place where they know something is coming, and they probably have an idea of what it might be, but they find when it arrives that it is not at all what they expected. One of his favorite movie moments that does this is in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” at the end of the bazaar chase, when the crowd separates and a swordsman steps out. Indy looks at him for a beat, and you think to yourself: This is really exciting — he’s going to have a big battle against that guy with the sword! But instead, Indy simply pulls out his gun and shoots the guy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Documentaries of 2024, So Far

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      “Spermworld,” “Onlookers” and “32 Sounds” are worth watching for the different ways they allow us to see the world.Now that 2024 is half over, I’ve started collecting candidates for my list of the year’s best films — and that, of course, includes documentaries. I’ve written about many great nonfiction films already this year (including some favorites like “Songs of Earth,” “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus” and “Art Talent Show”). Yet plenty fly under the radar, so I wanted to highlight three documentaries I haven’t written about that are worth your time.The first is “Spermworld” (Hulu), directed by Lance Oppenheim (who also made the recent, amazing HBO documentary series “Ren Faire”). Oppenheim’s singular style is dreamlike, heightening reality so it becomes poetic and unworldly. In this movie, he follows several “sperm kings,” men who connect with would-be parents looking for sperm donors via the internet, rather than at a sperm bank. The movie illuminates the reasons they choose to donate as well as the reasons people seek donors in this unconventional way. That premise could be cheesy, exploitative or salacious. Instead, it’s gripping and empathetic and unlike anything you’d expect. (The documentary is based on a 2021 New York Times article, and is a New York Times co-production.)I also loved “Onlookers,” Kimi Takesue’s unusual film about tourism in Laos. You can imagine a journalistic approach to this topic, which might involve interviews and investigative work, or perhaps a first-person travelogue approach. But Takesue eschews all those tools for something entirely different: a series of long takes, set up as locked, wide camera shots. Tourists and locals amble through the frame, taking pictures, talking to one another, buying items and going about the activities typical of tourism in the region. What you slowly realize you’re watching is the way that constant observation creates a certain sort of performance as well as disruption. Tourists are there to look at locals, and locals look right back at them, watching their behavior as well. But there’s an extra layer, because here we are as viewers, watching people be watched. So who is the real onlooker?A final film worth seeking out is Sam Green’s “32 Sounds” (Criterion Channel), an immersive sound documentary that Green has toured as a live performance throughout the world over the past few years. Now it’s available for home viewing, and the good news is that the experience is just as excellent through your headphones as it might be in a theater. That’s because “32 Sounds” aims to make you aware of the world of sound literally vibrating around you, and it’s designed to make you feel as if you’re inside the documentary rather than just watching it. Green narrates the film, which is both funny and full of ruminations on how sound creates meaning in our lives. Sometimes onscreen text instructs you to close your eyes so you can pay fuller attention to what you’re hearing. It’s the sort of movie that can change the way you live, and that’s what the best films do, isn’t it? More

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      Mia Goth on ‘MaXXXine’ and the End of the ‘X’ Horror Trilogy

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      Don’t call her a scream queen.Mia Goth may have amassed a filmography dominated by horror films like “A Cure for Wellness,” “Suspiria” and “Infinity Pool,” but she prefers not to limit herself.“I don’t want to be boxed in,” the 30-year-old actress from London said in a video interview. “I want to do everything.” Still, her work involves a fair bit of screaming, and she is quite good at it.The “X” trilogy is no exception. Directed by Ti West, the films follow the lives and crimes of Pearl and Maxine, both played by Goth. As we meet them in the first movie, “X,” Pearl (Goth under a pound of prosthetics) is a sexually deprived older woman with murderous tendencies, and Maxine is a young porn actress who dreams of making it big. They meet when Maxine arrives at a farm for an adult film production being shot there, but their hosts, Pearl and her husband, clash with the crew and things get bloody quickly. The second entry, titled after the main character, serves as Pearl’s origin story, and brought Goth greater recognition for her bold, meme-able performance. The third, “MaXXXine” (in theaters), picks up with its title character in Hollywood when she finally catches a break. All are anchored by Goth’s work, which remains deeply sincere even as it grows delightfully unhinged.Mia Goth says her “confidence as a performer is probably what evolved more than anything” from “X” to “MaXXXine.”Amy Harrity for The New York TimesDistributed by A24, each movie riffs on different styles and eras, with “X,” playing off ’70s exploitation cinema, “Pearl” paying homage to early Technicolor melodramas and “MaXXXine” taking on the ’80s B-movie slasher.In a wide-ranging interview, Goth spoke about working on the trilogy and filming shortly after the birth of her daughter, now about 2, with Shia LaBeouf.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Mother, Couch’ Review: The Family That Stays Together

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      A stubborn matriarch played by Ellen Burstyn lodges in a furniture store and wages emotional warfare with her adult children.In a furniture store devoid of customers, an elderly matriarch, referred to only as “Mother” and played by Ellen Burstyn, has settled on a couch. That is, she’s really settled on a couch. She’s sitting on it and refusing to budge. She promises that if anyone tries to move or carry her off the couch, she will struggle to the extent that, “I will fall and hit my head so hard it will burst.”No one in “Mother, Couch” is inordinately pragmatic, or else this movie, written and directed by Niclas Larsson, adapted from a novel by Jerker Virdborg, would be much shorter. Granted, Burstyn’s character, first seen in black wraparound sunglasses and sporting a helmet-like flip hairdo, is a formidable figure. And stranding her multi-accented adult children (it’s explained, weakly) in the store with her over a few days is one way to effect yet another cinematic contemplation on Why Families Are Dysfunctional.Mother’s children are Ewan McGregor’s David, buttoned-down and flying apart; Rhys Ifans’s Gruffudd, medium shambolic by default; and Lara Flynn Boyle’s Linda, snarling and swearing a blue streak.Apple, meet tree: Mother is stubborn, and frankly mean, albeit more formal in her language. “I never wanted any children, David,” she practically snarls after having given this son a nasty cut on the palm that won’t heal. Hey! Symbolism! Or, one should say, another bit of symbolism.While the film’s premise may suggest black comedy (and the sometimes fake-jaunty, fake-portentous score by Christopher Bear underscores that idea), Burstyn’s character, which the actor plays with her customary expertise, is so utterly disagreeable that viewing the picture is a mostly anxious experience with not much of a reward at the end, which shifts to magic realist mode for lack of anywhere better to go.Mother CouchNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Imaginary’ Review: Off to Another World

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      This poignant animated film casts the world of imaginary friends as an arena to reckon with emotional turmoil and loss of innocence.Imagination is the abstract space that can most potently symbolize childlike joy and wonder — at least, according to the opening scene of “The Imaginary,” with its sweeping fantastical vistas sprouting from the inside of a child’s mind. In truth, our imaginations and the friends we make along the way are, within this poignant and inventive animated film directed by Yoshiyuki Momose, arenas where we reckon with emotional turmoil and the loss of innocence.The third work out of Studio Ponoc, an offshoot of the revered Studio Ghibli, the movie follows Rudger (voiced by Kokoro Terada), the imaginary (i.e. imaginary friend) of Amanda (Rio Suzuki), a young girl who recently lost her father. Their days of play are interrupted when Mr. Bunting (Issey Ogata), a mustachioed villain accompanied by a wordless spectral imaginary, tries to consume Rudger and separates him from Amanda. After he is sent to a kind of imaginary heaven, Rudger must team up with other imaginaries to find and save her.It’s a visually splendid film with a restless inventiveness — too restless, at times. The movie falters periodically under the weight of its own dream logic, which can be hard to follow or flimsily constructed as the story gains momentum. But it’s mostly easy to move past those flaws in a work of such rich magical realism and heart.While the film is pushing for the kind of grand emotional and mythic proportions of a Ghibli work, it may not exactly stack up for some viewers with such great expectations. But, held up against more recent imagination-centric stories (with apologies to John Krasinski), Yoshiyuki’s film has the creative verve to sweep you away nonetheless.The ImaginaryRated PG for scary images, peril, thematic elements and some violence. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Kill’ Review: The Title Says It All. Over and Over Again.

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      What begins as a romantic rescue becomes a blood bath when bandits on a train attack and rob passengers and our Romeo cracks multiple heads in return.We are almost halfway through the Indian action extravaganza “Kill” before the title card slams onscreen, by which point its simple imperative — and the film’s entire raison d’être — has been obeyed so many times it’s essentially redundant. Much like the movie’s English subtitles: The dialogue might be in Hindi, but the language of blood and bones is universal.Speaking it fluently is Amrit (Lakshya), a hunky military commando who has followed his childhood sweetie, Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), onto an express train to New Delhi in the hope of rescuing her from an arranged marriage. The lovebirds’ quivering reunion, however, is rudely interrupted by a horde of bandits armed with knives and hammers. What they lack in sophistication, they more than make up for in enthusiasm as they set about robbing the terrified passengers. Can Amrit and his military buddy (Abhishek Chauhan) stop them? Will the lead villain (a seductively menacing Raghav Juyal) upstage our baby-faced hero? How many objects can be inserted into a human head?To answer these questions, the writer and director, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, leaps into fifth gear and rarely downshifts. As Amrit arguably does more damage than the zombies in “Train to Busan” (2016), the cinematographer Rafey Mahmood, working with the action specialists Parvez Shaikh and Se-yeong Oh, meticulously captures near-continuous martial-arts sequences of balletic brutality. Exhausted as the actors appear, spare a thought for the film’s Foley artists, whose repertoire of squishy, crunchy and splattery sound effects must have been sorely taxed.Manipulative to the max (one upsetting murder is almost pornographically protracted), “Kill” is dizzyingly impressive and punishingly vicious. In the press notes, the director tells us that he once slept through a similar attack by armed train robbers. No one is sleeping through this one.KillRated R for 52 varieties of knife wound, one weaponized bathroom fixture and several ugly sweater vests. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      This Service Cat Has a Big Job: The Apocalypse

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      The director of “A Quiet Place: Day One” was confident a cat could take on the end of the world. But could the feline actors win over Lupita Nyong’o?How did a cat named Schnitzel win the starring role of Frodo in “A Quiet Place: Day One”? He impressed the director Michael Sarnoski with his nonchalant confidence, rugged looks and intelligent face.“He had a lot going on behind his eyes,” Sarnoski said in an interview last week, when the film made its theatrical debut. “A lot of the other cats were really adorable but almost too cutesy, like they would be in a cat food commercial. And Schnitzel had a little bit of an edge, like you could kind of believe he was a bit of a world-weary street cat.”Frodo has a lot to be weary about in this cinematic universe. The film, a prequel to the 2018 horror movie “A Quiet Place” and its 2021 sequel, chronicles aliens invading Earth and attacking everything that makes a sound.Lupita Nyong’o plays Sam, a cancer patient caught in the apocalypse with her service cat while visiting New York. Though most people want to escape Manhattan, Sam knows she is dying regardless and just wants to go to Harlem, where she grew up, and grab a slice of pizza. She meets a British law student named Eric (Joseph Quinn), who agrees to join her, and the cat becomes a comfort to them both. (Sam is a poet, hence Frodo’s literary name.) And spoiler warning: Audiences will be happy to know Frodo makes it out alive.Sarnoski, who also wrote the screenplay, grew up with cats and knew he wanted Sam to have an animal companion. But the creature would need to be able to navigate an urban apocalypse in silence. A dog would bark at a threat, and something like a bunny, say, wouldn’t fit in the grit of Manhattan. But it’s common to see cats around the city, wandering the streets or guarding delis. Frodo even meets a bodega cat, played by a ginger-and-white shorthair named Stanlee, a runner-up for the lead role.“A lot of people are like, ‘Why doesn’t the cat make more noise?’ But cats are very smart, predatory creatures,” Sarnoski said, adding that he believed a cat would recognize the danger and figure out how to survive. “I figured a cat would have a shot.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More