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      12 Shows and Movies to Watch on Netflix Before They Expire in September

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      This month’s losses are heavy, including films from Noah Baumbach and Wong Kar-wai, along with one of history’s most beloved TV shows.This month’s exits from Netflix in the United States include films by the likes of Noah Baumbach, Wong Kar-wai and Edgar Wright. They also include two of our favorite recent genre series and one of the most beloved television shows ever. (Hint: It had a five-year mission but only a three-season run.) Dates reflect the final day a title is available.‘Kicking and Screaming’ (Sept. 3)The “Marriage Story” and “Frances Ha” director Noah Baumbach made his feature debut with this wry and witty 1995 indie comedy. He tells a story of early-20s ennui, as four university pals (played with verve by Chris Eigeman, Josh Hamilton, Carlos Jacott and Jason Wiles) knock around their college town in the year after graduation, not quite sure what to do with themselves. Baumbach’s dialogue is crisp and quotable, and the relationships are uncommonly rich, thanks in no small part to the performances of Olivia d’Abo, Parker Posey and Cara Buono as the endlessly patient women in their lives.Stream it here.‘Midnight Special’ (Sept. 6)One of the truly unsung gems of the past few years, this energetic and entertaining science-fiction thriller from the writer and director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”) reverberates with the influences of “E.T.,” John Carpenter and early Stephen King, yet synthesizes those styles into something altogether its own. Michael Shannon is in top form as the father on the run with his 8-year-old son (Jaeden Martell, credited as Jaeden Lieberher), whose special gifts have attracted the attention of government officials (led by Adam Driver) and a religious cult (led by Sam Shepard). Kirsten Dunst, Joel Edgerton and Bill Camp round out the ensemble cast.Stream it here.‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ (Sept. 15)With his latest film, “Last Night in Soho,” finally making its pandemic-delayed debut this fall, it’s a fine time to revisit Edgar Wright’s electrifying 2010 adaptation of the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Michael Cera stars as the title character, a likable schlub who falls hard for the perfectly-named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), only to discover that in order to win her heart, she must defeat her “seven evil exes” (including Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Mae Whitman). Wright finds just the right note for his comic book movie, jazzily incorporating the format’s visual touchstones and storytelling devices while juicing the picture with jolts of his unmistakable energy.Stream it here.‘Penny Dreadful’ Seasons 1-3 (Sept. 16)The Tony-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan created this ingenious Showtime series, mixing up a tasty stew of Victorian-era monsters, mythology and literary flourishes. Eva Green is a marvel — scary, funny, entertainingly self-aware — as a monster hunter whose adventures in late 19th century London intersect with the worlds of “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “The Picture of Dorian Grey” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” as well as various gunslingers, werewolves and alienists. Those who know the characters and the books they inhabit will eagerly devour the references and intersections, but even newbies can latch on easily to the show’s dark humor, intricate narratives and copious gore.Stream it here.‘The Grandmaster’ (Sept. 26)Mainstream audiences who have discovered the charismatic Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai by way of Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” would be wise to queue up this 2013 martial arts drama, one of the actor’s many collaborations with the dazzling director Wong Kar-wai. Leung stars as Ip Man, master of the Southern Chinese kung fu style known as Wing Chun, who trained a young Bruce Lee. But Wong’s film is less a biopic than a Lee-style adventure, filled with stunningly photographed fight sequences and action set pieces. Netflix is streaming the film’s U.S. version, which is shorter and simplified but less impressive. Still, even in this truncated form, “The Grandmaster” is an overwhelming experience.Stream it here.‘Air Force One’ (Sept. 30)“Get off my plane!” growled Harrison Ford in this 1997 action extravaganza that, put simply, is “Die Hard” on the president’s airplane. Ford plays President James Marshall, who is en route from Moscow to the White House when a band of terrorists hijack Air Force One, taking his family and staff hostage. But Marshall is a combat vet and decides to back up his “no negotiating with terrorists” rhetoric with action. The director Wolfgang Petersen knows how to direct claustrophobic action (his breakthrough film was “Das Boot”), and Ford is a sturdy anchor, retaining credibility even in the script’s sillier moments. Gary Oldman, meanwhile, has a blast, chewing up copious amounts of scenery as the leader of the hijackers.Stream it here.‘Evil’ Season 1 (Sept. 30)With the second season of this supernatural drama migrating from CBS to Paramount+, it’s not too surprising that the first year is leaving Netflix to join it. Katja Herbers, Mike Colter and Aasif Mandvi star as three “assessors” for the Roman Catholic Church, almost like a Ghostbusters team for possessions, sent to determine the validity of such encounters. But “Evil” isn’t just another “Exorcist” rip-off; it has a classy pedigree, coming from the pens of Robert and Michelle King, the team behind “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight.” It is lifted by its uncommonly intelligent dialogue and pointed characterizations — and then it delivers the genre goods.Stream it here.‘Kung Fu Panda’ (Sept. 30)It’s forgivable to assume that this 2008 family favorite was DreamWorks’s transparent attempt to recreate the success of “Shrek”: a potentially franchise-starting, computer-animated feature, rife with pop culture references and built around the personality of a comic superstar. And those assumptions aren’t wrong. But “Kung Fu Panda” is enjoyable in spite of its unmistakable formula, primarily because of the incalculable charisma of its star, Jack Black; he is simultaneously funny, cuddly, sympathetic and inspiring as a slapstick-prone panda who must fulfill his destiny as the “Dragon Warrior.” (The first sequel also leaves Netflix on Sept. 30.)Stream it here.‘The Pianist’ (Sept. 30)Adrien Brody won the Oscar for best actor, and Roman Polanski (controversially) picked up a statue for best director for this 2002 adaptation of the 1946 memoir by the Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman. Brody stars as Szpilman, a popular Polish-Jewish pianist confined to the Warsaw Ghetto, and forced later into hiding, by the Nazi invasion of Poland. Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor, directs the scenes of Nazi terror with a lived-in immediacy that feels like cinematic therapy. But he finds notes of humanity and even hope in Szpilman’s story. Brody is marvelous, disappearing into the role’s pain and joy, while Thomas Kretschmann shines in the complicated role of an unlikely ally.Stream it here.‘The Queen’ (Sept. 30)Before he took on the task of dramatizing the full life of Queen Elizabeth II, the creator of “The Crown,” Peter Morgan, tackled a much shorter period of her reign: the days and weeks immediately after the death of Princess Diana. Yet as the newly elected prime minister, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), pushes the queen (Helen Mirren, in an Oscar-winning performance) to acknowledge the loss of “the People’s Princess,” Morgan’s penetrative screenplay keenly frames their conflict as symbolic of the shifts happening in the roles of Britain’s government and monarchy at that time.Stream it here.‘Star Trek’: Seasons 1-3 (Sept. 30)In light of the franchise’s eventual revenues, budgets and cultural footprint, it’s frankly charming to revisit the original “Star Trek” TV series (1966-1969) and marvel at what a lo-fi endeavor it was. Still, its strengths were evident from the beginning: a setup that allowed for endless imagination; intelligent scripts that slyly framed contemporary issues; and a perfectly balanced cast, from the finely drawn supporting cast to the ying-and-yang acting styles of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Later iterations — like the 2009 cinematic reboot, the seven-season “Voyager” or the four-season “Enterprise,” all also leaving Netflix this month — may have been slicker, but few were as genuine.Stream it here.‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’ (Sept. 30)We’ve seen no shortage of pop music biopics in recent years, with icons like Aretha Franklin, Freddie Mercury and Elton John getting the big-screen treatment. But this 1998 musical drama makes the case for dramatizing the lives of more obscure musical figures — which seems to allow for more dramatic freedom (and comic possibilities). The subject here is Frankie Lymon (Larenz Tate), whose group “The Teenagers” had a giant hit with the title track before disappearing into obscurity. The screenwriter Tina Andrews and the director Gregory Nava (who also directed the more conventional “Selena”) ingeniously tell his story through the eyes of three women (played by Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Lela Rochon), all of whom claimed to have married Lymon, who are battling over his estate. It’s a fascinating, untold story, thoughtfully exploring not only romantic entanglements but also themes of musical exploitation and the fleeting nature of fame.Stream it here.Also leaving: “Boogie Nights,” the “Austin Powers” trilogy and the “Karate Kid” trilogy (all Sept. 30). More

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      ‘Anne at 13,000 Ft’ Review: A Woman Adrift

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      A young day-care employee struggles to live and love in a world that, much like her, remains a blur.For much of the wispy drama “Anne at 13,000 Ft,” you wait for it to expand on its title and maybe even coalesce into something more than its nebulous parts. The title character is one of those difficult women that the movies just can’t quit and rarely prove as interesting as filmmakers seem to think. Anne obviously has issues — psychological, behavioral, familial — but the movie isn’t big on specifics. It’s a pretty, uninvolving blur.So is its title character. The story, such as it is, centers on Anne (Deragh Campbell), who works in a day-care center and seems to have recently moved into her own pad. She’s skittish and often unfocused, but, at 27, she’s eager to be in the world even if she isn’t ready for its pressures. There are early signs of trouble, including from a co-worker, an older woman who reasonably reminds Anne that she needs to keep an eye on the young children they care for. Anne later throws a cup at the co-worker, calling her dumb.It’s an empty paper cup and no biggie — or so the movie would have you believe. The act earns Anne a gentle, comically indulgent lecture from a supervisor (it only makes Anne seem more childlike) and that’s about it; you may feel less patient and sympathetic. The problem isn’t the cup or the insult, but that the writer-director Kazik Radwanski doesn’t do anything with the incident. Instead, it becomes one in a series of floaty if progressively leaden moments — butterfly wings brushing the skin, a wedding veil sailing in the air, a giddy escape to a roof — that alternately suggest flight, freedom and falling.Things happen, including a parachute jump that kind of explains the title and provides the movie with some ominously airy visuals. Anne’s mother (Lawrene Denkers) indulges her, as does a lover (Matt Johnson), one of several moths drawn to her. These guys all seem just to want to get it on, though that’s too earthy a take for a movie that prettily drifts. This wafting extends to the restless camera, which moves around in agitated fashion, as if to convey Anne’s unsettled mind. Everything else often remains out of focus, underscoring her isolation. Amid the blurred edges, the children look at Anne openly and curiously but without great interest. They’re the truest thing in the movie.One insurmountable problem with “Anne at 13,000 Ft” is that its protagonist isn’t interesting enough, isn’t deeply felt or substantially drawn enough, to serve as the axis for a movie that hovers around mental illness and tries to substitute free-floating metaphors for a story. There’s nothing wrong with messiness and mistiness and camerawork so insistently agitated that it seems to be addicted to amphetamines. But you need something to keep you engaged, like a persuasive lead performance. Campbell tries hard to express Anne’s inner life — she erupts into giggles, lets her face drain, casts her gaze downward — but these pieces also never cohere.Anne at 13,000 FtNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Who You Think I Am’ Review: A Woman of Feeling, in Bed and Out

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      Juliette Binoche plays an academic with a turbulent inner life that makes her complicated romantic life all the more difficult.Juliette Binoche moves through the French drama “Who You Think I Am” as if possessed. From moment to moment, her character — an academic with a turbulent inner life — looks tense or wildly happy. Emotion, by turns, lightens and darkens her translucent face, and changes her body, gait and gestures. She laughs, she cries, expands, contracts. At times, she all but floats down the street, buoyed by the love of a younger man. Then again, she may be less high on him, per se, than on how he makes her feel.Filmmakers can get a lot of mileage just by filling the screen with Binoche’s face, which is often a movie’s greatest special effect. It’s a lovely face, eternally so, yet while beauty tends to pull us in, it doesn’t necessarily hold and bewitch us, keeping us hooked. But Binoche is a virtuoso of sentiment, with a mesmerizing control of her face. She can soften, harden or crumple it into blotchy fragments, and then effortlessly piece it back together, with or without ragged seams. And while she’s a great weeper, more impressive is how these inundations, these eddies of feeling, move under her skin.You get to know Binoche’s character, Claire, through the modern-era version of the confessional box, a.k.a. a shrink’s office. She’s a mess, and a guy is to blame, or so it seems. What transpires proves more complex or at least complicated. There are two guys, Claire tells her new therapist (Nicole Garcia), both perfectly coifed and readily undressed. When the first (Guillaume Gouix), dumped her, Claire reveals, she turned to the modern-era version of the devil, a.k.a. social media, to spy on him. With a seductive photo and a fake identity, Claire transformed into the much younger Clara, sneaking into his life and then into that of the conveniently situated lover No. 2 (François Civil).There are twists and turns, some obvious, others preposterous. Characters come and go (Charles Berling pops in too briefly as Claire’s ex-husband), and time slips away as Claire giggles, glows, musses her hair and loses her bearings. Throughout, there are gestures toward larger issues, including desire, beauty, gender and age. There’s a lot of talking, some dancing and more talking, this being a French movie. In one funny, pointed scene, Claire drives in circles frantically talking to a lover on her cell while her puzzled, exasperated sons watch, waiting to be picked up. Binoche seems to be having a good time, but her character could have benefited from fewer tears and histrionics.Binoche nevertheless fluidly navigates all the narrative switchbacks and emotional storms, enough that you may not mind the pileup of strained developments and coincidences. (You may, however, snort at an expedient car accident, but only because it’s such a howler of a cliché.) You realize all too soon that Claire has a way of making things — life, love — more complicated than need be. Then again, as cutaways to her lecturing in a university classroom remind you, she does teach novels of intrigue and deception like “Dangerous Liaisons.” Given this particular movie, she presumably also lectures on “Cyrano de Bergerac” and topics like the dissimulating heroine.It’s understandable that the director Safy Nebbou, who shares script credit with Julie Peyr, keeps his focus and camera so relentlessly on Claire. (The movie is adapted from a novel by Camille Laurens.) Yet because much of the rest of the story is so underdeveloped — notably Claire’s intimate life with her frustratingly generic children — the character overwhelms everything, including the fragile realism. Some of this is obviously intentional: Claire relates swathes of the movie in the therapist’s office, so it’s all about her. Yet while Claire’s therapist (or rather Garcia) turns out to be an ideal audience, the kind of transference that makes movies work never happens.Who You Think I AmNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi’: How 88rising Crafted an Evocative Soundtrack

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      The Asian arts collective worked closely with the director Destin Daniel Cretton to put its imprint on the anticipated movie.One concert was all it took to spark the idea of the Asian arts collective 88rising overseeing the soundtrack for one of the most hotly watched action movies of the year.It happened in early 2019, when Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of the forthcoming Marvel Studios movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” caught an energetic Los Angeles gig by the Chinese hip-hop group Higher Brothers. “I’ve never been to a show that was primarily made up of Asian Americans who were all just owning themselves,” Cretton said in a recent interview. “Nobody felt like an outsider; I don’t know if you want to call it a punk rock mentality, but everybody was so pumped to be there.”Sean Miyashiro, the 40-year-old founder of 88rising (which includes Higher Brothers on its roster) was there, and when the two met backstage, Miyashiro didn’t need a formal pitch to convince the director of what his artists could do. Cretton “looked like he was hypnotized,” Miyashiro recalled. “He told me he’d never seen a bunch of Asian kids just wilding out like that — thrashing and jumping in the mosh pit. That really stuck with him.”Over the last few years, 88rising has steadily made inroads into the music industry. Its artists rack up millions of streams on listening services; it stages a festival, Head in the Clouds, which will return in November to Los Angeles (the pandemic foiled last year’s event). And the “Shang-Chi” soundtrack is an opportunity to showcase how Miyashiro’s mission for 88rising — to “provide and celebrate Asian creatives, especially in music, no matter where you’re from” — is part of a shift in available creative outlets for Asian Americans across the United States.Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé previously assembled albums that accompanied “Black Panther” and the remake of “The Lion King.” The 88rising roster doesn’t possess a generational megastar (yet), so “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: The Album,” which was executive produced by Miyashiro and 88rising and arrives Friday alongside the movie, functions as a sampler for the label’s offerings.“There’s this trust — that’s what makes the whole machine work,” Niki said.Natt LimRich Brian raps throughout the LP, including on “Run It.”Natt LimRich Brian, whose wry lyricism and laid-back persona made him the first 88rising artist to receive mainstream attention, raps throughout the record. DPR Ian and DPR Live, who Miyashiro calls “two of the most exciting artists coming from Korean R&B,” sound like smooth-voiced Daft Punk robots on “Diamond + and Pearls.” There are also contributions from artists outside of the 88rising universe, such as Anderson .Paak and Jhené Aiko, who serve as a bridge between musical worlds.While the typical orchestral palette — stirring strings, ethereal voices — is used to score “Shang-Chi,” the 88rising album is liberally incorporated throughout the film. The delirious party cut “Run It,” a collaboration between DJ Snake, Rich Brian and Rick Ross, is synced with the hero’s first fight scene, as he battles a group of villains on a city bus. “We were able to go back and forth with Sean and his artists to mold that track, so when you watch that scene, you’ll see very classic scoring techniques but through an electronic song,” Cretton said.In 2015, when 88rising was founded, a close collaboration with a director of a Marvel film might have sounded like an overly ambitious goal. Miyashiro, who was between jobs and “super broke,” as he put it, decided to take the plunge and break ground on his long-gestating dream of centering Asian creatives under one hub.“Nothing existed at the time, which is staggering to think about because this was only six years ago — there was not one media platform or YouTube channel dedicated to this type of creativity,” he said. “So I was like, ‘Man, we should do that.’ And it just took off.”A one-time employee of Vice, where he helped found the electronic music website Thump, Miyashiro had the instincts for identifying and packaging compelling content. After Rich Brian went unexpectedly viral in 2016 with his self-released song “Dat $tick,” Miyashiro signed him to 88rising. In an equally savvy move, he and his team filmed a video where established rappers reacted to the song. (21 Savage, a skeptic in that video, has since collaborated with Rich Brian and also appears on the “Shang-Chi” soundtrack.)Despite its ascendance onto a larger stage, those involved with 88rising stressed that it’s still an independent brand that’s learning how to operate in real-time. “It feels like a family; it’s very tight knit; it’s not like this major company with thousands of employees,” said the 88rising singer Niki, who appears on several songs on the “Shang-Chi” album. “The same people that I’ve worked with four years ago are the same people that I’m still on a text thread with today.”Though 88rising has steadily grown from those early days, the “Shang-Chi” album represented a very different kind of assignment. Miyashiro and Cretton said Marvel was mostly hands-off with the music. However, there were some ground rules. None of the songs could include cursing, and Miyashiro had to install a bank vault’s worth of security programs on his computer before he could see any material from the movie.The pandemic threw the process for a loop, too. After the Covid-19 lockdowns began, Miyashiro didn’t hear from Cretton for months. “Frankly speaking, I forgot about it,” he said. The conversation picked back up over the summer, with Miyashiro and Cretton hashing out the loose thematic framework for the album, which parallels the movie: a young Asian American, beholden to his family lineage and expectations, must grow into his own person.Miyashiro’s mission for 88rising is to “provide and celebrate Asian creatives, especially in music, no matter where you’re from.”Philip Cheung for The New York TimesWarren Hue appears on “Always Rising” (alongside Niki and Rich Brian), “Lazy Susan” (with 21 Savage, Rich Brian and Masiwei) and “Foolish” (with Rich Brian and Guapdad 4000).Natt Lim“We didn’t want to make music about a superhero,” Miyashiro said. Instead, he wanted to depict what it’s like to absorb a particular environment while growing up, citing Kendrick Lamar’s album “good kid, m.A.A.d. city” and the film “Goodfellas” as references. The movie begins in San Francisco, and Miyashiro, who was raised in San Jose, said the Bay Area was a big inspiration: “I took a lot about what I saw and what life at home was like: life with my friends, getting into trouble, mischief, all these different themes wrapped around growing up as an Asian American kid in California.”Beyond that initial template, and the demands of whatever particular scene Cretton happened to be scoring, Miyashiro let his artists have free rein. “There’s this trust — that’s what makes the whole machine work,” Niki said. “He doesn’t really micromanage or anything; he’s very much allowing us to find ourselves, and just be completely what we want to be.”The realities of recording during a pandemic, with a roster that splits time between Asia and America, introduced additional pressures. Warren Hue, a Indonesian-born rapper who’s featured on multiple tracks, recorded in both Jakarta and Los Angeles; Niki said she tracked her vocals with a USB microphone in her guest room in Los Angeles. “We had to take Zoom calls super late at night, into 4 a.m.,” said Miyashiro, who noted that they did rapid testing for every in-person studio session.But sleeplessness has long been a demand of Miyashiro’s quest to expand 88rising and further a musical dialogue between Asian, American and Asian American audiences. It’s exceedingly rare to find a company that puts out pan-Asian music, he pointed out: Korean labels tend to stick with Korean artists, and so forth. “When we’re growing up in America, it’s all Asian homies — we’re kicking it with everybody,” he said. “So naturally, we’ll work with creatives from a lot of different countries, and we’re really proud of that, too.”Cretton, who was born and raised in Hawaii, said he never listened to any Asian American musicians growing up, simply because he wasn’t aware that any existed. “As a kid, you don’t really think you’re missing anything until your brain develops enough to realize, ‘Oh, that’s kind of weak,’” he said.“When I go to an 88rising show, I’m seeing a reflection of myself not only up onstage, but also in those giant crowds of Asian faces,” he added. “There’s an exhilaration and a release that almost feels like a buildup of generations who’d lacked that. It’s very exciting to be at a point where new artists are being celebrated across all cultures.” More

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      Venice, Day 1: See the Almodóvar, Free the Nipple

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      The director was the toast of a glamorous dinner with Penélope Cruz, Isabelle Huppert and Denis Villeneuve, who talked about “Dune” as if he were a proud parent.VENICE — Denis Villeneuve, the director of “Dune,” wanted to apologize in advance.“This will be a long answer,” he said, “because of the Champagne.”We were at the Hotel Excelsior on Wednesday night for the lavish opening-night dinner of the Venice Film Festival, where the bubbly flowed freely, guests like Isabelle Huppert and Jane Campion supped on pink prawn tartare, and a wide array of major films — including “Dune,” Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel,” the Princess Diana drama “Spencer” and Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” — all waited to make splashy debuts on the Lido over the next week and a half.Jane Campion x Isabelle Huppert pic.twitter.com/HOsnH9qng0— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) September 1, 2021
      Though Venice was one of the few major film festivals to mount an in-person edition in 2020, this year’s program is significantly more robust. Many consider Venice to be the kickoff to awards season, an expectation goosed even further by the presence on the Venice jury of the last two auteurs to direct best-picture winners: Chloé Zhao, whose “Nomadland” premiered here last year, and the “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, the jury president.Will Villeneuve’s “Dune” be that kind of contender? The sci-fi drama, adapted from the Frank Herbert novel, has loftier aspirations and a more refined eye than most would-be blockbusters. Villeneuve (whose credits include “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049”) will debut “Dune” on Friday with a starry cast expected to show up to the premiere, including the lead Timothée Chalamet, who arrived in Venice via speedboat on Wednesday.At dinner, Villeneuve told me Venice is “the perfect way to launch the movie and it’s the first time that I’ve had time to really finish — usually, I’m finishing movies and then releasing them three days later.”Instead, the French Canadian director has had the better part of a year to tinker, as “Dune” was supposed to come out in November 2020 before a pandemic-induced delay. Now, on the verge of its Venice premiere (and with a release date rescheduled for Oct. 22), Villeneuve talked about “Dune” almost as if he were a proud, anxious parent about to send his young child off to school.“I think it has a soul,” he said. “I recognize myself in it. It’s my biggest project and still, I have the most intimate relationship with it. I know it can walk by itself, but what will other people think?”Villeneuve paused. “How do I say it in English?” he wondered, before finding the words: “I just have to let it go.”Denis Villeneuve said of “Dune”: “I have the most intimate relationship with it. I know it can walk by itself, but what will other people think?”Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockThough Venice is limiting audiences in each theater and requiring moviegoers to wear masks (and to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test), the festival still offers the most glamorous launchpad for movies since Cannes in July. Still, even in ideal circumstances (or especially because of them), it can be daunting to show your film to an expectant international crowd ready to gauge its award prospects.That goes double when you’re first in line. “You are more vulnerable if it’s the opening,” said Pedro Almodóvar, whose “Parallel Mothers” was selected as the opening-night entry of the festival. How did he feel in the hours before the premiere? Not nervous, he told me. Just a little exposed.Fortunately, reviews were strong. This intimate, precisely judged drama stars Penélope Cruz as a Madrid photographer who suspects her newborn baby was switched at birth with the child of an unwed teenage mother (Milena Smit). Though that logline is outrageous, the film is surprisingly down to earth and accessible, even as Cruz’s character is driven to increasingly desperate decisions.“I didn’t want to ask myself what I would have done in that situation until I had finished the movie,” Cruz said at dinner. “She and I are very different, but when I look back now, I feel I would have done something similar. The way Pedro wrote these imperfect mothers, it makes it impossible for you to judge them.”“Parallel Mothers” is Cruz’s seventh film with the director. “I look at him and feel like he could give his life for the film,” she said. Because of that, Cruz was determined to show the camera her most vulnerable depths as an actor: “The standard is really high and he gives me a character that is a treasure, so I don’t want to disappoint him. I try every day to give him a hundred percent.”Speaking of matters of exposure, Almodóvar was amused at the recent reaction to the poster for “Parallel Mothers,” which crops a lactating nipple as if it were the pupil in an eye shedding a single milk-tear. Upon the poster’s release last month, Instagram banned the image for nudity and then, after an online uproar, promptly unbanned it.“It’s not erotic at all!” Almodóvar protested. “You have to be very dirty to think there’s something sexual about it.”The 71-year-old director doesn’t use Instagram himself, but he knows what he’s up against. “What is very dangerous for all of us is that it’s a machine that decides to reject the poster,” he said. “It’s an algorithm, there is nobody in charge that I can talk to.”But for the time being, at least, Almodóvar has conquered the algorithm. As I left the director, other guests at the dinner swooped in to take selfies with him. You’ll never guess where they posted them. More

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      ‘The Big Scary ‘S’ Word’ Review: Socialism for Beginners

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      This documentary serves up the merits of socialism with a stuffed compendium of formulations from experts, historical precedents and just-folks testimonials.The word “socialism” is often used as a boogeyman to scare voters, with little or no reference to actual substance. Enter Yael Bridge’s “Big Scary ‘S’ Word,” a stuffed compendium of formulations from experts, historical precedents and just-folks testimonials. Hope is not a policy, as the saying goes, so Bridge gamely tries to provide both, fleshing out ideals with examples.The (crowded) talking heads posit socialism as a democratic and equitable way of running our world. The touchstones include leaders such as Eugene V. Debs, the Milwaukee mayor Frank Zeidler, and yes, Bernie Sanders; as well as empowering endeavors like the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry in Cleveland, Ohio, and the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.The film’s humble sampling of socialism on the march might be a revelation to viewers accustomed to red-baiting or egghead stereotypes. In Oklahoma, a single-mom schoolteacher joins a strike, while a socialist legislator treads a lonely path in Virginia’s fusty State Assembly, where lobbyists close ranks with well-off politicians.But it’s just as hard to shake the struggling construction worker who opens the film: To him, it feels like there’s a war on. The man’s off-the-cuff eloquence suggests that Bridge’s dutiful approach could use the boost of companion viewing — perhaps Raoul Peck’s coruscating analysis of imperialism, “Exterminate All the Brutes.” (Cornel West does bring on some fire in declaring that capitalism’s industrial revolutions occurred alongside the labor of the enslaved and the vast displacement of Indigenous peoples.)With its alternate ideas for addressing urgent societal and economic needs, Bridge’s educational documentary helps envision other ways of getting things done, at a time when there’s ever more that needs doing.The Big Scary ‘S’ WordNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 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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      ‘Wild Indian’ Review: Reckoning With the Past to Save the Present

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      This drama from Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. captures the various wounds of individual, familial and generational trauma.“Some time ago, there was an Ojibwe man, who got a little sick and wandered West,” the intertitle at the start of “Wild Indian” states. The camera finds a man stooped and slowly making his way through the woods and follows him for a spell. “Little” is an understatement: His face is covered with pox blisters. This more-than-cautionary note sets the tone for the First Nations writer-director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s symbolically rich and subtle thriller focused on two cousins who share a secret about a rending act of violence.As boys on a Wisconsin reservation, the cousins, Makwa and Teddo, have lives that are different by degrees. While Makwa’s home is far more brutal, both boys live in poverty, with empty beer bottles crowding tabletops. Teddo’s folks seem absent. Makwa’s are viciously present. The arbitrary violence endured by Makwa doesn’t make sense until a priest at the boys’ school delivers a homily. He tells his young audience that it was the story of Cain and Abel, with its lessons in suffering and worthiness, that “introduced resentment into the world.”After a defining incident in the woods, the cousins’ paths diverge. Teddo (a sympathetic Chaske Spencer) spends decades in and out of prison. “What happened to your face?” his sister (Lisa Cromarty) asks with touching sorrow when she sees the paw print tattoo across his cheek after he’s been released.The first time we see the adult Makwa, he’s setting up a shot on a golf course. Played by Michael Greyeyes, he has a chiseled beauty. He has done well in California. He has a corporate gig (with Jesse Eisenberg giving a fidgety performance as his boss), a loving wife (Kate Bosworth), a dark-haired toddler and an apartment with gallery-size walls, the better to display Native-themed artwork. He now goes by Michael. The transit from cherubic-faced Makwa to an emptied soul to a corporate striver who leverages his Indigenous identity appears complete — although a disturbing encounter at a strip club underscores that Michael is still writing his history of violence.As for Teddo, much took place while he was incarcerated: His mother died; his nephew was born; life and loss went on. It’s no surprise he’s coiled and angry. Still, he nearly lets his ache for vengeance recede. Nearly. Teddo asks after Makwa and tracks him down. It takes a nimble and deft compassion to capture the various wounds of individual, familial and generational trauma. What Corbine does with the cousins’ inevitable reuniting teases his film’s doleful prologue and the priest’s Sunday sermon. The ensuing violence and its aftermath are chilling, woeful and utterly consistent with the tragedy that began long before a fateful afternoon in the woods.Wild IndianNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 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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      ‘Worth’ Review: Appraising Lives

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      This drama starring Michael Keaton is a surprisingly effective movie about a tricky subject — the creation of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.The central question of “Worth” is whether it’s possible to reduce a life to a dollar value. The film, directed by Sara Colangelo (the American remake of “The Kindergarten Teacher”), dramatizes the creation of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which the federal government established after the attacks to limit lawsuits against the airlines. The lawsuits’ downstream effects, the reasoning went, could sink the United States economy.“Worth” follows Kenneth R. Feinberg (an excellent, Boston-accented Michael Keaton), the lawyer appointed as the special master of the fund, through the two-year process of defining the project’s parameters and of getting potential plaintiffs to sign on.Notwithstanding skepticism from others, including Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), the business manager of Feinberg’s firm, it takes some time for the film’s Feinberg to understand he has underestimated the grief of the bereaved. Cold and imperious, he barely gets a word in at his first town hall with the victims. He discovers he won’t be able to farm out every interview or clerical assignment. A man who shuts out the world by listening to opera on headphones, he will have to leave his rarefied comfort zone.Even assessing “Worth” as entertainment feels fraught. Only survivors can judge whether its Hollywoodized simplifications are appropriate. The screenplay, by Max Borenstein, substantially funnels the breadth of criticism directed at Feinberg into the character of Charles Wolf (a superb Stanley Tucci), who, as he did in real life, runs a website demanding fixes to the fund. The other potential beneficiaries are composites. Laura Benanti plays a firefighter’s wife whose husband left more obligations than she knew. Andy Schneeflock appears as a man whose same-sex partner died in the Pentagon attack. The deceased’s parents and Virginia law don’t recognize the relationship.With most characters standing in for swaths of people who didn’t fit Feinberg’s formulations, “Worth” itself risks reducing individuals to types. Still, it’s probably impossible to make a mainstream movie without such streamlining, let alone to make a movie like “Worth,” on a subject that is not only challenging but superficially too technocratic for a two-hour movie. There are not many classic films about heroic legal settlements.For all the ways in which it might give short shrift to the politics or policy of the fund, “Worth” is uncommonly moving by the standards of biopics and certainly by the standards of movies that risk addressing 9/11 so overtly. Colangelo directs with what appears to be conscious restraint, in ways by turns calculated and powerful. She keeps the faces of figures who will die in the attacks just out of view as they leave their spouses for work the morning of Sept. 11. She doesn’t re-create images of the burning towers except in a reflection in Feinberg’s train window. A lengthy pan gradually reveals the size of a wall of missing-persons posters.The principal performances are uniformly strong, even with actors who do not resemble their real-life counterparts. Is it possible to reduce such complexities to an absorbing procedural? “Worth” argues yes.WorthRated PG-13. Trauma from the attacks. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More