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      Chucky Returns to Terrorize TV. His Creator Couldn’t Be Happier.

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      There are many delightfully gruesome scenes that fans of the “Child’s Play” horror movies will devour in “Chucky,” the new show based on the popular franchise. The bloody death by dishwasher is a doozy.But newcomers to Chucky, the foul-mouthed killer doll who first terrorized viewers in 1988, might be more surprised by what happens in Episode 2. In it, Jake (Zackary Arthur), a 14-year-old boy who unknowingly purchases Chucky at a yard sale, is miffed that the little maniac has read his diary entries about his crush on a classmate, Devon (Björgvin Arnarson). That’s when Chucky tells Jake about his own queer and gender-fluid child.“You’re cool with it?” Jake asks.“I’m not a monster, Jake,” Chucky replies.He is a monster, of course — an icon of horror cinema with a seven-film canon. But Chucky is also a PFLAG dad.For Don Mancini, the gay man who created the Chucky character, “Chucky” (premiering Tuesday on USA and Syfy) is more than just the franchise’s first foray into episodic television. Its eight episodes offer a chance to pursue some deeply personal themes, including a gay boy’s puppy love, that he wasn’t able to explore when “Child’s Play” hit theaters 33 years ago.“I love the character of Chucky, and I don’t get tired of him,” said his creator, Don Mancini, pictured at his home in Los Angeles. “But in order to keep it alive this long, it can’t just be about a killer doll.”Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times“I wanted to create a final boy instead of a final girl,” said Mancini, 58, in a video call from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s not something I ever saw when I was Jake’s age. Fortunately the world has turned.”Television is no stranger to gay teenage characters in 2021; given the frank depictions of teen sexuality in shows like “Euphoria” and “Sex Education,” Generation Z might greet Jake’s desires with a yawn. Arthur, who recently turned 15, said in an email that it was “an honor to represent” L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers onscreen.“I would be friends with Jake,” he wrote.Mancini, who created the TV series, knows that Jake’s sexuality might rattle some horror fans. It would be, he said, as “if Frankenstein came out as bi.” He has received death threats from a fan who was upset to learn Mancini was gay.“But I’m in a position to do it, so why not?” he said. “The idea of causing some people’s heads to explode was catnip to me.”Buzz around “Chucky” has been building since 2018, when Mancini first announced the series. Production was delayed by a clash over rights to the Chucky character, a conflict that resulted in a 2019 “Child’s Play” reboot that Mancini wanted nothing to do with and that Chucky fans mostly disregard. (Mancini co-wrote “Child’s Play” and wrote the other six films that are considered part of the character’s canon, and directed three of them.) Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, which delayed shooting until March of 2021.An assortment of Chucky paraphernalia adorned Mancini’s home.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesA prop from “Bride of Chucky,” based on a character played by John Ritter.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesThe show’s earliest seeds, however, were planted long ago. Mancini grew up with his parents and four sisters in Richmond, Va., and he caught the horror bug watching the proto-queer Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows.” He came out while studying film at U.C.L.A. in the ’80s; Mancini remembers hearing about fights over Cabbage Patch Kids at the time and thinking “about using a doll as a metaphor for marketing gone awry.”Two films from 1984 were touchstones: “Gremlins,” with its creepy animatronic creatures, and “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”“Freddy was a villain with a very distinct sense of humor, someone who could taunt victims verbally,” Mancini said in a 2019 oral history of “Child’s Play.” “I was quite consciously influenced by that with Chucky, the idea of an innocent-looking child’s doll that spouted filth.”Mancini could have enjoyed the global success of the “Child’s Play” franchise and called it a night. But even after several decades of Chucky, he wasn’t done.“I love the character of Chucky, and I don’t get tired of him,” he said. “But in order to keep it alive this long, it can’t just be about a killer doll.”After working in a couple of writers’ rooms (NBC’s “Hannibal” and Syfy’s “Channel Zero”), Mancini began thinking about a series as a way to take the Chucky-sphere in new directions — “in a subversive but positive way,” he said. In addition to its gay teen story line, a nonstarter for mainstream horror in 1988, “Chucky” also gives fans a long-requested childhood back story for Charles Lee Ray, the killer who supernaturally possesses Chucky.“Gremlins,” with its creepy animatronic creatures, and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” were touchstones for Mancini when he created the maniacal doll.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesWhat ultimately sold the networks on the show was authenticity, said Alex Sepiol, executive vice president for drama series at NBCUniversal Television and Streaming.“When he told us about centering this chapter of the story on a gay teen and how personal that was to him, we embraced the notion,” Sepiol wrote in an email.Once shooting finally began, in Toronto, it took about 100 days to complete. A group of six or seven puppeteers at a time worked in close quarters to bring Chucky to life — the doll is “99.5 percent puppet,” Mancini said — which made following coronavirus protocols extra important. (An actor sometimes performs as Chucky’s double.)Mancini’s preference for practical effects over computer-generated ones goes back to the first film.“I’m old school, but I think it’s much more fun to do things practically,” he said.The queerness of the series won’t surprise longtime Chucky fans: “Child’s Play” may be the queerest of the big horror franchises. A gay supporting character died a spectacular death — a horror badge of honor — in the fourth film of the series, “Bride of Chucky” (1998), which also signaled a pivot to campy horror-comedy. “Seed of Chucky” (2004) introduced Chucky and his bride, Tiffany (voiced by Jennifer Tilly), to their transgender child, who goes by Glen and Glenda (a shout-out to Ed Wood’s B-movie “Glen or Glenda”). Other gay characters appear in “Curse of Chucky” (2013) and “Cult of Chucky” (2017).“The idea of causing some people’s heads to explode was catnip to me,” Mancini said about the choice to make the new series’s protagonist an openly gay teenager. Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesA view into Mancini’s home office.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesMancini enjoyed “consciously injecting” queer content into the films, he said, but “Chucky” is “the most autobiographical” work of his career. It’s there in small details, like the poster of the cast of “The Outsiders” that Jake has in his bedroom, the same one Mancini had as a kid. (Unlike Jake, Mancini did not hang it next to a Pride flag.)But there are darker memories embedded in “Chucky,” which follows the doll as he terrorizes Hackensack, N.J., in order to protect Jake from bullies. (It’s not as heroic as it sounds.) Mancini experienced bullying and abuse from his own father for being gay, he said; one particular scene from the pilot, in which Jake’s father (Devon Sawa) hits the boy during an argument over Jake’s sexuality, was particularly challenging.“The actors and crew were aware that this was very personal to me,” said Mancini, who wrote and directed that episode. “It was cathartic to see it acted out.”To help him swim in such emotional waters, Mancini brought back longtime collaborators from the “Child’s Play” universe, including Brad Dourif, the original voice of Chucky, and Alex Vincent, who reprises his role as Andy, Chucky’s young owner in the first two films.Also returning is Tilly, a close friend of Mancini’s and a major player in the franchise, having portrayed Tiffany in four films. (His chunky gold necklace that reads, “CHUCKY DADDY”? It’s from her.)Tilly said that she believed “all people who are disenfranchised” will feel seen in the show’s underdog through lines and complex family dynamics.“The show has really important lessons, but it’s not like an ‘After School Special,’” she added. “In its humanity, it’s going to show people how the world is and how to behave.” More

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      Watch Daniel Craig in Action in ‘No Time to Die’

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      The director Cary Joji Fukunaga narrates a sequence featuring the actor as James Bond.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.The stunts begin early in “No Time to Die,” the latest chapter of the Bond franchise, and the last with Daniel Craig as its star.This scene comes after Bond has woken up from an explosion meant to kill him. He knows immediately that his partner, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), is in danger. He tries to race back to her on foot, but gets cornered on a bridge by the same men responsible for the explosion. Deciding the best direction for his escape is down, he leaps from the bridge using power cables that are strung along it.Narrating the scene, the director Cary Joji Fukunaga said the locations that he, his production designer, Mark Tildesley, and his cinematographer, Linus Sandgren, found during scouting helped to drive the narrative direction. They used a bridge in the Italian town of Gravina in Puglia.The sequence was shot with Imax cameras, which presented a challenge because they’re so bulky. It limited how many the crew could use to cover the action. Scenes with this kind of stunt complexity are usually filmed with as many as five cameras, but often they only had two Imax ones to work with at a time. Fukunaga said they had to be very “surgical” about shooting to make sure they captured all they needed within their time constraints.Later in the sequence, Bond is cut off by Primo (Dali Benssalah), who tracks him down by motorcycle. Bond leaps on Primo and knocks him off his ride. To make that moment happen, Fukunaga said he relied on the “Texas Switch”: the camera is first on Craig, but when it pans away from him, a double enters the shot to perform the stunt.Read the “No Time to Die” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      James Bond Returns and Theaters See Reason for Hope

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      “No Time to Die” has taken in more than $300 million worldwide. The overall box office remains fragile, however, and the future for films that aren’t part of big-budget franchises is unsure.LOS ANGELES — Movie theaters are finally bouncing back from the pandemic, with solid turnout over the weekend for the latest James Bond spectacle, “No Time to Die,” giving Hollywood its third box office success in the span of a month. For coronavirus-battered multiplex chains, it’s reason for a celebratory martini.But the box office is still extremely fragile, analysts say, and one of the doomsday scenarios about the pandemic’s lasting impact on theatergoing has been coming true: The only movies attracting sizable attention in cinemas are big-budget franchise films. The audience for smaller dramas and comedies seems — at least for now — to be satisfied with home viewing, either buying films through video on demand or watching them on streaming services.“Superhero, action and horror movies are performing well in theaters, particularly when they are offered exclusively and not simultaneously available to stream,” said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy. “But parts of the business remain down. Dramas, character-driven and art-house movies were under pressure before the pandemic, and the bar is going to be even higher now.”“No Time to Die,” billed as the 25th installment in the Bond franchise and with Daniel Craig in his fifth and final turn as 007, took in an estimated $56 million from 4,407 theaters in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore. In partial release overseas, “No Time to Die” collected an additional $257 million, according to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and its overseas distribution partner, Universal Pictures International. (Amazon bought MGM for $8.5 billion this year.)“No Time to Die,” featuring Daniel Craig’s final turn as James Bond, was originally scheduled to come out in April 2020.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesBecause of the pandemic, more moviegoers have been holding off on ticket-buying decisions until the last minute, analysts say, making it difficult for studios to predict how a movie will perform. Going into the weekend, domestic estimates for “No Time to Die” ranged from $36 million to more than $70 million, depending on what research firm was doing the prognosticating. The film’s franchise predecessor, “Spectre,” took in $70.4 million in North America over its first three days in 2015.“No Time to Die,” which received strong reviews and an A-minus grade from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls, was the first major movie to be affected by the pandemic. It was originally scheduled to roll out in theaters in April 2020. MGM and the London-based producers who control the franchise, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, pushed back the release to November 2020 and then again to this month.Theaters keep roughly 50 percent of total ticket sales, which means the expensive “No Time to Die” is unlikely to turn a profit for MGM. The film cost an estimated $250 million to make and a further $150 million to market worldwide. But the film sold enough tickets over its first three days in theaters to qualify as a success, in part because of interest from older ticket buyers, who have been avoiding theaters over coronavirus concerns.About 36 percent of the weekend audience in North America was over the age of 45 and roughly 57 percent was over 35, according to Erik Lomis, president of distribution at United Artists Releasing, an MGM affiliate. Mr. Lomis said that exit polls indicated that 25 percent of ticket buyers had not been to a theater in 18 months.“That is a very big deal that shows the power of Bond,” Mr. Lomis said. “This movie is going to remind a lot of people how fun it is to go to the movies, and that will hopefully help the whole industry. We need a more mature audience to return.”Greg Durkin, the founder of Guts and Data, a film research firm, said that “No Time to Die” had a “fantastic” opening weekend, “especially given the audience composition and how older moviegoers have been more hesitant to return to theaters.” Mr. Durkin estimated that, without the pandemic, “No Time to Die” would have opened to about $62 million in domestic ticket sales.“No Time to Die” arrived after the superhero sequel “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (Sony) generated $90 million at North American theaters between Oct. 1 and 3 — the highest opening weekend of the pandemic era. The global total for “Let There Be Carnage” now stands at $186 million. Another superhero movie, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings” (Disney-Marvel) sold about $75 million in tickets over its first three days in theaters in early September, setting a Labor Day weekend record (pandemic or otherwise). It has since collected $400 million worldwide.“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” also had big ticket sales in its opening weekend this month.Sony Pictures Entertainment, via Associated PressBut films that are not fantasies or part of existing franchises have been struggling, adding to worries that cinemas in the post-pandemic era will offer much less variety. The concern is that old-line studios will reroute most dramas, comedies, documentaries and foreign films to streaming services, as they have been doing during the pandemic, leaving cinemas to become even more of a movie-as-theme-park-ride business.Recent theatrical disappointments have included “Dear Evan Hansen,” a big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical; “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” about the overly emotive televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker; “Respect,” an Aretha Franklin bio-musical starring Jennifer Hudson; and the art-house drama “Blue Bayou.” Clint Eastwood’s latest film, “Cry Macho,” and the period mob drama “The Many Saints of Newark” both arrived to muted ticket sales, in part because Warner Bros. released them simultaneously in theaters and on the HBO Max streaming service.So far this year, the art film distributor Magnolia Pictures has released 17 films that have collected roughly $1 million at the North American box office combined, according to the database IMDb Pro. In 2019, Magnolia released 16 films that generated about $6 million.The next weeks and months will either add to worries or ease them, as studios begin to release a more steady stream of non-franchise films, including sophisticated offerings with Oscar aspirations. “The Last Duel,” a historical drama directed by Ridley Scott and starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jodie Comer and Adam Driver, will roll out exclusively in theaters on Friday. “The French Dispatch,” directed by Wes Anderson and featuring an all-star cast, is scheduled for exclusive theatrical release on Oct. 22.“We need studios to release a wider range of movies,” said Patrick Corcoran, a spokesman for the National Association of Theater Owners, which represents 35,000 movie screens in the United States. “Right now, theaters are like grocery stores where you can only buy steak,” he continued, referring to effects-driven spectacles. “People also want cereal. They also want fresh fruit and vegetables.” More

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      Give Phoebe Robinson the Title She Deserves: Boss

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      The comic has a publishing imprint, TV deals, even a primer on leadership she wrote after noting the absence of Black women’s perspectives in business books.Mention “The Devil Wears Prada” to the comic Phoebe Robinson and she’ll lean forward and tell you she has some opinions. The real villain in the tale of an ultra-demanding fashion magazine editor and her assistant is the assistant’s boyfriend, played by Adrian Grenier, for complaining when she has a work event. “Do you know centuries of women stood by their men pursuing careers?” Robinson said over lunch. “Adrian, calm down.”As for the title character — Miranda Priestly, the Anna Wintour-type boss — Robinson, 37, has more mixed feelings. “It’s easier to judge someone from afar,” she said, adding that women of her generation had to be tough to get ahead. “At the same time, you don’t have to be a monster.”In a time when pop culture and the news are filled with portraits of bad bosses, Robinson has been thinking a lot about what makes a good one. In the past few years, she has evolved from a hustling stand-up into a mini-mogul with a staff, a production company and myriad projects. This year alone, she released a Comedy Central series, “Doing the Most With Phoebe Robinson”; shot her debut hour special (“Sorry, Harriet Tubman,” premiering Oct. 14 on HBO Max); started a book imprint, Tiny Reparations; guest-hosted for Jimmy Kimmel; sold a half-hour sitcom; and wrote her third book, “Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes,” which is, among other things, a primer on leadership. If that’s not enough, she’s in the process of moving.Robinson backstage before filming her new comedy special, “Sorry, Harriet Tubman.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“It’s a lot, not going to lie,” she said, pointing out that her career models have shifted from comics like Wanda Sykes to multihyphenates like Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling.Robinson’s style has always been down to earth, self-deprecating, with proudly basic music taste (U2 is a lodestar). Her instinct was to be the cool boss, she said, but the uneasy looks on her employees’ faces after she asked them to go bowling on a Friday night taught her a lesson: “I was like: ‘Right right right right right, I get it. If my boss asked me to hang out on a Friday I’d be like, no, I see you every day, I’m good.’”The first time I saw Phoebe Robinson was a decade ago. She had been doing stand-up for a couple of years, typically in vests, jeans and a T-shirt. “I dressed so nothing would signal I’m a woman,” she said, adding that she was hyperaware of being the only female comic in the room. “I was so insecure and nervous.”Even then, she had an ingratiating voice that cut through the clutter of competition, often playing with language, tweaking words, showing signs of a literary bent that would eventually lead her to publishing. When I reminded her of a joke she told about movies that cast handsome people as rapists, she cringed, saying she would do that in a more nuanced way now. At that moment, the sunlight shifted and she grabbed her sunglasses. Before putting them on, she said: “I don’t want you to think I’m doing this to look cool.”In early August, a week before shooting her new special at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Robinson walked onstage at Union Hall in a headband and comfy dress. The Delta variant had forced audiences to put their masks back on and she wasn’t hearing the explosive laughter that she had only weeks earlier, even though the crowd immediately responded when she started talking about her relationship, which has become a regular part of her act. “I’m the Rosa Parks of the bedroom,” goes one line aimed at her British boyfriend. “I’m not getting up for any white man.”Robinson decided to write about leadership after realizing there were a dearth of business books with a Black woman’s perspective.Penguin RandomhouseA week later, Robinson said she was too in her head in that show, that she needed to remind herself to have fun. “It’s hard to stay in the moment for someone like me who is always thinking about the next 20 moves,” she said by phone.Robinson had done a chunk of material about the difference between her 20s and 30s, including one bit about being more concerned with frivolous things earlier, like shaving body hair, which she did so much, she said, “that she didn’t read a book for 10 years.”Now she’s an author and publisher who tries to read a book a week. “I miss that innocence a bit,” she said, explaining that she didn’t have to worry about her employees or brand back then. A few years later, her profile would grow thanks to a regular show with Jessica Williams called “2 Dope Queens” that moved from small rooms to HBO. In the years since, she said, their paths have diverged. “It’s one of those things where you meet for an amount of time and then you grow in different ways.”A multitasker at heart, Robinson has juggled writing, performing and podcasting. She even recently joined Michelle Obama on her book tour, interviewing the former first lady, a major career turning point for Robinson, one that also provides the set piece closing out her new special.An imprint that would let her champion writers of color had been a longstanding dream that Robinson pitched over the pandemic. She said her first book, the 2016 best seller “You Can’t Touch My Hair,” was rejected by every publisher except Plume (which now runs her imprint), and the reason she heard was that books by Black women don’t sell. That stuck with her. Following the September debut of “Please Don’t Sit,” Tiny Reparations has two releases set for the spring, both debut novels by authors of color: “What the Fireflies Knew,” by Kai Harris, a coming-of-age story, and “Portrait of a Thief,” by Grace Li, about an art heist. “I don’t want to read trauma all the time. That’s something I have been particular about,” Robinson said. “I really want hopeful stuff.”Robinson filming her special at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes” is filled with thoughts on management and work, the product of an immersion in business books, podcasts and personal experience. The book is in part a response to the absence of Black women’s perspective in this genre. She writes: “Where’s ‘Lean In’ for us?”Robinson calls herself a “reformed workaholic,” but she’s not short of plans: an idea for a romantic comedy, a talk show, specials she would produce and, perhaps the most challenging one, a two-week vacation. Meanwhile, she must manage a growing business. With the pandemic, people are questioning how they work, and while Robinson understands balking at excessive hours, she insists there’s a middle ground that involves working more efficiently. She has cut down on meetings, for instance. “I love Zoom but I don’t need to see your face,” she said.Robinson said she knew that stereotypes about Black women might get her judged more harshly, but she had learned that one of the hard things about being a boss is asking your employees to do things they don’t want to do. “As someone who does comedy where you want everyone to feel good, you’re like, oh, I’m the problem?” she said, laughing at herself.Miranda Priestly isn’t as far from her as she used to be. “It’s really tough to be a boss,” she said, “because you have to accept you are going to piss people off.” More

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      ‘No Time to Die’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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

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      ‘Illustrious Corpses’: A Mafia Thriller Heavy With Metaphors

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      Francesco Rosi’s film, released in 1974 when Italy feared a coup d’état, remains astute analysis of corruption. A new restoration is at Film Forum.An absorbing, resonant, at times near majestic whodunit, “Illustrious Corpses” is the Italian analog to Watergate-era conspiracy thrillers like “The Parallax View” and “The Conversation.” The movie, first seen here at the 1976 New York Film Festival, is at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration through Oct. 21.As directed by Francesco Rosi, one of the most political of Italian filmmakers, “Illustrious Corpses” aspires to the metaphysical. The opening sequence, partially set to Chopin’s Funeral March, has an elderly gentleman pay a visit to the sacred mummies in a dank church catacomb and, reaching for a flower, fall from an assassin’s bullet — the first of many judges to be shot. “The mafia killed him,” one orator later announces at the judge’s funeral. “He was the mafia,” shout the youthful demonstrators in the street, thus laying out the movie’s particular logic.“Illustrious Corpses” is based on the novel, “Equal Danger,” by Leonardo Sciascia, a Sicilian author who wrote often about the mafia, ultimately as metaphor. His afterword to “Equal Danger,” Sciascia calls it “a fable about power anywhere in the world.” Still, although Italy is never mentioned, the locations — recognizably Palermo, Naples and Rome — are scarcely allegorical.By contrast, Rosi’s protagonist is something of an abstraction or a useful cliché. Tough, honest Inspector Rogas (the veteran roughneck Lino Ventura) is tasked with solving the first murder and those that follow. As he theorizes a culprit, an existential policier plays out against a background of strikes and demonstrations, under constant state surveillance. There are strong hints of unseen forces. Playing a judge, Max Von Sydow materializes as a version of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor advancing a theology of judicial infallibility.In his 1976 review, the New York Times critic Vincent Canby called “Illustrious Corpses” “a dazzling example of fashionably radical Italian filmmaking — elegantly composed, breathlessly paced, photographed in the beautiful, drained colors of a landscape in mourning for the sun.” He also found the movie drained in another way, so broad in its “indictment of government” as to lack any real force.In fact, made during a time when Italy had ample reason to fear a coup d’état, “Illustrious Corpses” is not only topical but quite specific in addressing a bombing campaign waged by the right-wing extremists to destabilize the country as well as the “historic” compromise by which the Italian Communist Party joined the Christian Democratic government. More explicit than the novel, the movie ends with a communist official inverting a quote associated with the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, “the truth isn’t always revolutionary.”Casting contributes to the film’s sardonic gravitas. Along with Von Sydow, the French war horses Charles Vanel and Alain Cuny appear as a pair of judges and Luis Buñuel’s frequent alter ego, the urbane Fernando Rey, plays a duplicitous minister of security. Despite the youthful radicals massed around the edges, “Illustrious Corpses” is, as the title suggests, an old man’s world. The corrupt gerontocracy is disrupted only when Tina Aumont (the daughter of camp icon Maria Montez) makes a scene-stealing appearance as a witness to murder.Illustrious CorpsesThrough Oct. 21 at Film Forum, Manhattan; filmforum.org. More

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      ‘Suzanna Andler’ Review: French Riviera Blues

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      This film takes place in a single afternoon, as Suzanna, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, contemplates her bourgeois marriage.The central figure in the French drama “Suzanna Andler” is a woman for whom passion, tragedy and indecision elicit the same response — a shrug. Her voice never raises; her face rarely betrays her emotions. She speaks to her friend, her husband and her lover in the same monotone. Even a raise of the eyebrows is too active for this inert film.Suzanna (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is the chic wife of a wealthy businessman. He neglects her, or they neglect each other, and in Suzanna’s leisure time, she has taken a younger lover, Michel (Niels Schneider). The film takes place in a single afternoon, as Suzanna contemplates renting a summer home with her husband’s money.Michel comes to visit, and his presence pushes Suzanna to consider pending decisions that haunt her. Should she rent the house? Should she leave her husband? Should she drink herself to death? Who cares?“Suzanna Andler” is an adaptation of a play by the writer Marguerite Duras, best known in cinema for her contributions to the screenplay of the 1959 film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour.” The director Benoît Jacquot’s interpretation of Duras’s disaffected characters leads him to keep his images detached. Pans and zooms show the same dispassion that his characters profess. Lovers kiss, and the camera moves away from the action.It’s a test of patience to watch these glass figurines discuss their romantic entanglements, the doll house on the Riviera that they will maybe rent, the bourgeois marriages they will maybe leave. Even the camera seems bored, as if it might wander off.Suzanna AndlerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘South of Heaven’ Review: Anything for Love

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      Jason Sudeikis plays a paroled felon who vows to give his dying lover the best year of her life.In “South of Heaven,” a Texas melodrama that’s as convincing as a taxidermied jackalope, Jason Sudeikis plays Jimmy Ray, a freshly paroled felon with a rootin’-tootin’ case of bad luck. His childhood sweetheart (Evangeline Lilly) is dying of a strain of cancer that’s beatified her into a smiling, glowing ever-patient saint. Yet, the couple’s 12-year engagement is further delayed by a series of creeps and coincidences that will force Sudeikis’s cornball bank robber to brandish an electric drill and, eventually, a gun. Can’t a good guy get a honeymoon?Aharon Keshales, who directed the film and wrote it alongside Kai Mark and Navot Papushado, aspires to say something about misunderstood antiheroes and the futility of escalating vengeance. (His and Papushado’s previous thriller, “Big Bad Wolves,” had real bite.) Here, however, the execution is at once laconic and nonsensical. There’s not just one car crash ex-Machina — there’s two.Perhaps the script could have been half-salvaged if it steered into the kind of steroidal masculine rampage that might star Liam Neeson. But in style and tone, “South of Heaven” asks to be taken earnestly, a flaw magnified by Sudeikis’s aw-shucks performance, all twitchy, tiny smiles that demand the audience’s love even as Jimmy makes one ludicrous choice after another. At one point, his character’s predicament is symbolized by a claw machine clenching a teddy bear.There are a few technical bright spots. While mostly tasked to shoot in tasteful monochrome, the cinematographer Matt Mitchell does pull off a nifty tracking shot of a home invasion, and the composer David Fleming puts down the acoustic guitar to score Jimmy’s job at a loading dock with a rattling of frisky percussion. That scene is meant to evoke monotony, but it has more zip than all of the whizzing bullets to come.South of HeavenNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More