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      Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe on Yorgos Lanthimos’s New Film

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      In the new Yorgos Lanthimos film “Kinds of Kindness,” a character played by Emma Stone recounts a dream in which she was the denizen of a bizarre world. “There, dogs were in charge,” she murmurs. “People were animals, animals were people.” But being brought to heel by their canine masters wasn’t as bad as it sounds, she says: “I must admit, they treated us pretty well.”Compared with how the human beings treat each other in “Kinds of Kindness,” a dark new comedy that just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is in theaters June 21, the dogs would surely be an improvement.Comprised of three separate stories with the cast members recurring in different roles, “Kinds of Kindness” begins with the tale of Robert (Jesse Plemons), a corporate underling whose every interaction in life — including what to eat, how to speak or even who to marry — is controlled by a boss (Willem Dafoe) whose decisions send poor Robert into a tailspin. The second story follows Daniel (Plemons again), who becomes convinced that his wife (Stone) is not who she claims to be and coaxes her into insane tasks to prove herself.And in the third sequence, cult members played by Stone and Plemons search for a woman able to wake the dead, though the whims of their guru (Dafoe) dictate that this mysterious woman also be a certain height and weight and have an identical twin. (Even when it comes to awesome supernatural powers, there are dealbreakers.)Dafaoe and Stone worked on Lanthimos’s “Poor Things” together, for which she won the best actress Oscar. “I still don’t know what that was,” Stone said. “That was cuckoo bananas.”Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesOn Saturday afternoon in a hotel here in Cannes, I met with Stone, Plemons and Dafoe to try to make sense of this triptych. According to the actors, Lanthimos isn’t keen to give too much away. “Yorgos says he likes it when people have different takes on the movie,” Dafoe said. “I think that’s the strength of it.”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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      What We Lose When ChatGPT Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson

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      OpenAI has good reason to aim for a bot voice à la the one in “Her.” But that film was about relationships. What does this real-world turn say about us?When Spike Jonze’s romance “Her” was released in 2013, it sounded both like a joke — a man falls in love with his computer — and a fantasy. The iPhone was about six years old. Siri, the mildly reliable virtual assistant for that phone, came along a few years later. You could converse in a limited way with Siri, whose default female-coded voice had the timbre and tone of a self-assured middle-aged hotel concierge. She did not laugh; she did not giggle; she did not tell spontaneous jokes, only Easter egg-style gags written into her code by cheeky engineers. Siri was not your friend. She certainly wasn’t your girlfriend.So Samantha, the A.I. assistant with whom the sad-sack divorcé Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) fell in love in “Her,” felt like a futuristic revelation. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, Samantha was similar to Siri, if Siri liked you and wanted you to like her back. She was programmed to mold herself around the individual user’s preferences, interests and ideas. She was witty, and sweet and quite literally tireless. In theory, everyone in “Her” was using their own version of Samantha, presumably with different names and voices. But the movie — which I love — was less the tale of a near-future society, and more the coming-of-age story of one man. Theodore found the strength to return to life in a brief, beautiful relationship with a woman who fit his needs perfectly and healed his wounds.It was thus a tad jarring to hear the voice of the virtual assistant in last week’s announcement of the newest version of ChatGPT, probably the best known artificial intelligence engine in the very real world of 2024. Among other things, the new iteration, dubbed ChatGPT-4o, can interact verbally with the user and respond to images shown to it through the device’s camera. Those who watched the live demo from OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, were quick to note that she sounded a whole lot like Samantha — which is to say, like Johansson.Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, told The Verge that the resemblance was incidental, and that ChatGPT’s nascent speech capabilities have used this voice for a while. But once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.Those who watched the live demo from OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, were quick to note that she sounded like Samantha.Warner Bros. PicturesFurthermore, OpenAI founder and chief executive Sam Altman has professed his love of “Her” in the past. Following the announcement, he posted the word “her” to his X account. And on his blog post about the news, he wrote, “It feels like A.I. from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.”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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      At the Cannes Film Festival, Discoveries From Andrea Arnold and Rungano Nyoni

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      Though the history-inflected “Furiosa” and “Megalopolis” were the hottest tickets, films by Andrea Arnold and Rungano Nyoni proved to be discoveries.It must say something about the anxious state of the movie world that two of the hottest tickets at this year’s Cannes Film Festival draw inspiration from ancient Rome. In George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” Chris Hemsworth zips around a wasteland like a heavy-metal charioteer, while in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” Adam Driver plays a guy named Cesar. That each movie offers a vision of a culture in decline seems too on the nose for this festival, where attendees celebrate the art amid nervous chatter about the state of the industry.This year’s festival opened Tuesday under gray skies, as if nature itself were mirroring all the gloom and doom. Yet while the opening-night movie, the unfunny French comedy “The Second Act,” was a dud, the hourlong ceremony that preceded it was unexpectedly touching. The show’s focus on women that night was instructive, and it suggested that Cannes, a festival that has long promoted the cult of the male auteur, is trying to do a better job of righting a historical gender imbalance. Mind you, the number of female filmmakers who get a chance to strut the red carpet remains low: There are only four in the main competition.Louis Garrel, left, and Vincent Lindon in “The Second Act,” from Quentin Dupieux.Chi-Fou-Mi/Arte France CinémaYet things do seem better here, and at least the festival is keen to show its support for women filmmakers. During the ceremony, which was hosted by the French actress Camille Cottin (“Call My Agent”), an emotional Juliette Binoche presented Meryl Streep with an honorary Palme d’Or, and the festival went bonkers over Greta Gerwig. She’s heading this year’s competition jury, which includes two other women filmmakers: the Turkish screenwriter Ebru Ceylan and the Lebanese director Nadine Labaki. When it came time for Gerwig to appear, the festival played a highlight reel of her work and, in giant letters beamed on an even more giant screen, announced that she had “conquered the world in three films.”It was corny, but, reader, I teared up. Among other things, the love for Streep and Gerwig was a break from the drumbeat of bad news about the American movie business. Heading into 2023, Variety had predicted an “extremely bumpy” year for Hollywood; 12 months later, it changed the diagnosis to “rocky” and a conveniently concise headline explained why. “Strikes, Box-Office Bombs and ‘Huge Leadership Vacuum’: Hollywood Says Goodbye to Worst Year in a Generation.” Even Jerry Seinfeld, in an interview with GQ, said “the movie business is over.” I’d already booked my Cannes hotel and flight, so I went anyway.That’s because while the American entertainment business is in the midst of another of its recurrent crises, this hasn’t stopped artists around the world from making movies. The festival as well as several other programs outside the official selection are presenting more than 100 new movies this year from celebrated veterans and untested directors alike, some who may soon dazzle us. In other rooms in and around the Palais — the hulking center where I spend most of my time here sitting in the dark — an estimated 14,000 industry representatives, including buyers and sellers, have some 4,000 finished movies and projects on the table in what is the world’s biggest international film market.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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      When a Tale of Migration Is Not Just Fiction

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      The two teenagers on the screen trudging through the endless dunes of the Sahara on their way to Europe were actors. So were the fellow migrants tortured in a bloodstained Libyan prison.But to the young man watching the movie one recent evening in a suburb of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, the cinematic ordeal felt all too real. His two brothers had undertaken the same journey years ago.“This is why they refused to send me money to take that route,” said Ahmadou Diallo, 18, a street cleaner. “Because they had seen firsthand how dangerous it is.”Critics in the West have praised the film “Io Capitano” — nominated for the 2024 Academy Award for best international feature film — noting its visceral yet tender look at migration to Europe from Africa. It is now showing in African countries, and is hitting close to home in Senegal. That’s where the two main characters in the movie embark on an odyssey that epitomizes the dreams and hardships of countless more hoping to make it abroad.Last month, the film’s crew and its director, Matteo Garrone, took “Io Capitano” to a dozen places in Senegal where migration isn’t fiction. They screened it in youth centers, in schools, even on a basketball court turned outdoor movie theater in Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, where Mr. Diallo and hundreds of others watched it at sunset on a big screen.Seydou Sarr, left, and Moustapha Fall, who play the lead roles in “Io Capitano,” in Guédiawaye, last month.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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      Dabney Coleman, Actor Audiences Loved to Hate, Is Dead at 92

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      In movies like “9 to 5” and “Tootsie” and on TV shows like “Buffalo Bill,” he turned the portrayal of egomaniacal louts into a fine art.Dabney Coleman, an award-winning television and movie actor best known for his over-the-top portrayals of garrulous, egomaniacal characters, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 92.His daughter Quincy Coleman confirmed the death to The New York Times but did not cite the cause.Mr. Coleman was equally adept at comedy and drama, but he received his greatest acclaim for his comic work — notably in the 1980 movie “9 to 5,” in which he played a thoroughly despicable boss, and the 1983-84 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” in which he starred as the unscrupulous host of a television talk show in Buffalo.At a time when antiheroic leads, with the outsize exception of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, were a rarity on television comedies, Mr. Coleman’s distinctly unlikable Bill Bittinger on “Buffalo Bill” was an exception. A profile of Mr. Coleman in Rolling Stone called Bill “a rapscallion for our times, a playfully wicked combination of G. Gordon Liddy and Groucho Marx.” (“He has to do something terrible,” Bill’s station manager said of him in one episode. “It’s in his blood.”)Mr. Coleman’s manically acerbic performance was widely praised and gained him Emmy Award nominations as best actor in a comedy in 1983 and 1984. Reviewing “Buffalo Bill” in The Times, John J. O’Connor said Mr. Coleman “manages to bring an array of unexpected colors to his performance” and called him “the kind of gifted actor who always seems to be teetering on the verge of becoming a star.” But the ratings were disappointing, and “Buffalo Bill” ran for only 26 episodes.Mr. Coleman with his co-star Geena Davis in a scene from the 1983-84 NBC sitcom “Buffalo Bill,” in which he played the unscrupulous host of a television talk show in Buffalo.Frank Connor/Stampede Productions, via Everett CollectionMr. Coleman revisited the formula in 1987 with the ABC sitcom “The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story,” in which he played a similar character, this time an outspoken sportswriter for a struggling newspaper. He garnered another Emmy nomination for his performance and won a Golden Globe. But low ratings, this time combined with friction between Mr. Coleman and the producer Jay Tarses (who, with Tom Patchett, had created “Buffalo Bill”), led to its demise after just one season.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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      Judge to Rule Next Week on Whether to Dismiss Alec Baldwin Case

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      During a heated hearing, Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers claimed prosecutors had improperly presented evidence to the grand jury considering the fatal shooting on the set of “Rust.”A judge in New Mexico will rule next week on whether to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter indictment against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the “Rust” film set, after she closely questioned the lead prosecutor on Friday about her handling of grand jury proceedings.Lawyers for Mr. Baldwin — who was rehearsing with an old-fashioned revolver on the set in 2021 when it fired a live bullet, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins — had lodged numerous objections to how the case has been handled, calling the prosecution “an abuse of an innocent person whose rights have been trampled to the extreme.”The defense claimed at a hearing on Friday that the prosecution had not sufficiently shown the jurors evidence that could have supported Mr. Baldwin’s case. That included presenting witnesses who could have bolstered the defense’s contention that Mr. Baldwin had no reason to think that the gun was loaded with live ammunition and that actors are not responsible for gun safety on film sets.“The court can have no comfort in this indictment; it can have no comfort in the way it was procured,” a lawyer representing Mr. Baldwin, Alex Spiro, argued at the hearing, which took place virtually. “It cannot possibly believe it was fair and impartial.”Mr. Baldwin’s lawyers have assigned blame to the movie’s weapons specialist, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a trial this year and sentenced to 18 months in prison, and to the movie’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, who has acknowledged that he failed to properly inspect the gun that day and took a plea deal.Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer of the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, N.M., questioned the lead prosecutor in the case, Kari T. Morrissey, on the defense’s complaints about how she had presented the case to the grand jury. The judge pressed Ms. Morrissey on the defense’s claim that she had “steered grand jurors away” from their proposed witnesses.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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      Action Movies to Stream Now: ‘Midnight,’ ‘The Childe’ and More

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      This month’s picks include crypto terrorism, gaslighting, an undercover mission and more.‘13 Bombs’Stream it on Netflix.The espionage action-thriller “13 Bombs” acutely blends quick back-stabbing with big explosions. In the film, interest rates and economic inequality are running rampant in Jakarta, Indonesia. To even the odds, a Robin Hood-type group, led by a mysterious figure code-named Arok (Rio Dewanto), has planted 13 bombs across the city that will explode if thee group isn’t paid a ransom in crypto cash. As a result, two unwitting crypto traders named Oscar (Chicco Kurniawan) and William (Ardhito Pramono) are picked up by Karin (Putri Ayudya), a steely counterintelligence agent who is worried about a mole in her ranks.The director Angga Dwimas Sasongko loves a good shootout, and this film brims with them. As Karin races through Jakarta, the highlights include a SWAT-led raid on an office building and an all-out assault on Arok’s hide-out. You could probably fill an entire theater with the number of bullets fired just in these two raucous scenes, and probably slice through glass with the film’s sharp and shattering editing.‘The Childe’Rent or buy on most major platforms.Marco (Kang Tae-joo) is a boxer taking dives and using the payoffs to care for his ailing Filipino mother (Caroline Magbojos). His father is a rich Japanese man his mother had an affair with, and Marco is an outcast because of his mixed-ethnic parentage. A possible golden ticket arrives when his father, who he has never met and is now dying, flies him from the Philippines to Japan with promises of finally building a relationship. Instead, Marco is thrust into a power struggle between his wealthy half brother (Kim Kang-woo) and half sister (Jeong Ra-el) for the family business. Even worse, an assassin known as the Nobleman (Kim Seon-ho) has been hired to kill him.While Marco is a sympathetic lead, it’s the zealous Nobleman — who switches from hunting Marco to befriending him — who is the real draw: He is gleefully sadistic, laughing as he savagely kills every goon the half brother sends after Marco. In a film with wonderful verticality — the camera tilts upward for exciting rooftop chases — Kim is extraordinarily athletic. By the final hallway confrontation in the bowels of a luxurious mansion, he is soaked in blood and loving it.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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      ‘Megalopolis’ Director Says He Has No Regrets About $120 Million Film

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      At a Cannes news conference that ignored recent allegations, the director said he was already writing his next film.At the Cannes Film Festival news conference on Friday for his new film, “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola entered holding hands with his granddaughters.“When I came here for ‘Apocalypse Now,’ I had Sofia on my shoulder,” Coppola said of his daughter, who also became a director.That trip to Cannes took place 45 years ago and ended with a major laurel, as “Apocalypse Now” won Coppola the Palme d’Or. It’s anyone’s guess how the new film will fare, since “Megalopolis” premiered at Cannes on Thursday night to wildly mixed reviews and has yet to score a distributor.A futuristic melodrama about a visionary architect (played by Adam Driver), “Megalopolis” is the first film in 13 years from the 85-year-old Coppola, best known for directing the “Godfather” trilogy. But on the dais at Cannes, he was eager to share credit for the movie with his cast, which also includes Aubrey Plaza, Nathalie Emmanuel and Giancarlo Esposito.“We made it together — I didn’t make the film,” Coppola insisted. “When you make a film like this, I didn’t know how to do it, let’s face it. The movie makes itself.”The news conference started 20 minutes late, limiting the number of questions that could be posed, and none of the journalists who were called on asked Coppola about a recent report in The Guardian in which anonymous sources described a chaotic “Megalopolis” shoot and alleged that Coppola tried to kiss some of the female extras featured in a nightclub scene. (Executive co-producer Darren Demetre has said he was unaware of any harassment complaints made during the production, but acknowledged that Coppola gave “kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players.”)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