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    ‘The Meaning of Hitler’ Review: Understanding Fascism

    This docu-essay inspired by Sebastian Haffner’s 1978 book of the same title argues that Hitler was disturbingly ordinary.The docu-essay “The Meaning of Hitler” proceeds with caution. The film, inspired by the historian and journalist Sebastian Haffner’s 1978 book of the same title, seeks to understand the combination of personal pathology, political shrewdness and mass complicity that allowed Hitler to create the Nazi regime. It also finds disturbing 21st-century echoes.But the filmmakers, the wife-husband directorial team of Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker (“Gunner Palace”), are wary of contributing to any mystique that surrounds Hitler, not least because they find little in Hitler’s background that makes him unique. Early on, a narrator expresses concern about the project: “Is it possible to make a film like this without contributing to the expansion of the Nazi cinematic universe?”Although the film features Holocaust historians like Saul Friedländer, Yehuda Bauer and Deborah Lipstadt and the authors Martin Amis and Francine Prose, it approaches Hitler from a variety of disciplines. The psychiatrist Peter Theiss-Abendroth says that Hitler has been assigned almost any diagnosis available, but he suggests that such speculation invariably creates excuses for culpability. Bauer notes that Hitler’s psychological problems were no different from those of millions of others. The movie delves into technology to explain how advances in microphones enabled Hitler’s theatrical style of oration. An archaeologist discusses the excavation of the Sobibor death camp.So is “The Meaning of Hitler” really playing with fire? It is when it trails the Holocaust denier David Irving on a visit to Treblinka. Irving makes offhand anti-Semitic remarks so flagrantly offensive it’s difficult to see what’s edifying about including him.But that misstep aside, “The Meaning of Hitler” takes a multifaceted, often counterintuitive approach to examining the underpinnings of fascism.The Meaning of HitlerNot rated. In English and German with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Apple TV and other streaming services. More

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    ‘Homeroom’ Review: Salutations for the Class of 2020

    This documentary from Peter Nicks follows Oakland High School seniors as they fight for social justice and face Covid-19 on their way to graduation.On their first day of school in 2019, members of the senior class at Oakland High School in Oakland, Calif., looked forward to Instagram posts and a year of tuning out teachers who drone on about math and classroom rules. More engaged classmates, like Denilson Garibo, a student governing board representative, might have anticipated that the year would include social justice organizing. But it would have been hard for the class of 2020 to predict the changes that the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests would bring to their lives. This unprecedented year is captured in vérité style in the heartfelt documentary “Homeroom.”The film maintains a tight structure, beginning on the first day of school and ending with graduation day. The director Peter Nicks shows these students to be socially engaged and thoughtful, and his camera patiently watches as teenagers articulate what they want from their education. School board meetings become a central focus of the film, as Denilson pushes for changes in policy, including a motion to remove police officers from Oakland schools.Nicks does not disrupt his observations to introduce every pupil by name, nor are there talking-head interviews to pause the action. The editing finds what is harmonious in how these teenagers express themselves, creating the impression of a class that speaks with a unified voice. When the pandemic forces the students into sudden isolation, the loss of their collective energy curbs the film’s momentum, and the contemporaneity of these events means that there is little suspense or surprise in the film’s second half.But, like a diploma, it’s easy to imagine how the rewards of this carefully observed documentary could accrue with a little time.HomeroomNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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    ‘The East’ Review: Imperialist Blues

    This thoroughly generic war movie explores the Netherlands’ colonial legacy in Indonesia.At the tail-end of World War II, an armed conflict broke out that is known today as the Indonesian War of Independence. The Dutch, after having lost their former colony to the Japanese in 1942, regrouped and deployed forces to reconquer the archipelago in 1946. Naturally, Indonesian nationalists were having none of it. And perhaps even more predictably, the Dutch Army responded with a violent campaign.“The East,” a bloated and thoroughly generic war movie by the Dutch filmmaker Jim Taihuttu, reckons with the Netherlands’ colonial legacy by spotlighting this overlooked moment in history. The details may be novel — even eye-opening for some — but this story of white guilt and brutality feels mighty old.For one thing, Johan (Martijn Lakemeier), a young, idealistic soldier, disillusioned by the impotence of Dutch efforts to fend off rebel forces, quickly acquires a taste for blood. A volunteer recruit hoping to make spiritual amends for the sins of his Nazi-collaborator father, he is initially the most polite and benevolent of his group of juvenile, sex-obsessed troopers. The good boy goes bad, however, when he meets Raymond “The Turk” (Marwan Kenzari), a mustachioed brute known for his merciless tactics. Cue the firing squad, terrorized villagers, and shame-fueled inner torment.The jumbled script straddles two timelines: the events in Indonesia and Johan’s return to the Netherlands after completing his service. It’s all bleakness and self-loathing without the momentum or punch. Neither a joyless, immersive thrill ride (“1917”) nor a cartoonish display of tough-guy patriotism (“Midway”), “The East” fits squarely into the tradition of Vietnam War movies like “Platoon,” whose depictions of imperial carnage and psychic derangement might have once been provocative. Today, a film like “The East” feels more like a numbing recapitulation.The EastNot rated. Running time: 2 hour 17 minutes. In Japanese, Dutch and Indonesian with subtitles. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Lost Leonardo’ Review: Art, Money and Oligarchy

    This documentary about the painting “Salvator Mundi” packs the fascination and wallop of an expertly executed fictional thriller.To paraphrase John Lennon, Leonardo da Vinci is a concept by which world civilization (such as it is) measures artistic mastery.“The Lost Leonardo,” a documentary directed by the Danish filmmaker Andreas Koefoed, is a disquieting confirmation of this idea. It’s the story of how a painting purchased for a little over $1,000 was soon identified — if not wholly authenticated — as a Leonardo, and eventually wound up in the hands of a Saudi oligarch who spent more than $400 million on it. Among other things, this picture freshly demonstrates that a conventionally structured documentary can pack the fascination and wallop of an expertly executed fictional thriller.The globe-trotting narrative begins with Alexander Parish, a self-described “sleeper hunter” — an art buyer who looks for catalog mistakes — purchasing the painting “Salvator Mundi” from a New Orleans dealer. Working with the renowned art historian and restorer Dianne Modestini, Parish and his financial partner Robert Simon determine they have a Leonardo on their hands. And so the movie moves from “The Art Game” to “The Money Game.”Into this narrative, “The Lost Leonardo” weaves coherent mini-treatises on restoration, art dealerships, free ports, the true nature of the auctioneering business and more. The art critic Jerry Saltz blusters that the painting is not just not a Leonardo, but that it’s garbage. The writer Kenny Schachter is more considered and rueful in expressing his doubts. Footage of spectators reacting to the painting suggests that one can produce a Pavlovian response to an artwork merely by labeling it a Leonardo. The movie also features F.B.I. and C.I.A. figures, the New York Times investigative journalist David Kirkpatrick and Leonardo DiCaprio.It’s a dizzying tale. And whether or not you believe “Salvator Mundi” to be a real Leonardo, it’s ultimately a disgusting one.The Lost LeonardoRated PG-13 for language. In English and French with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Materna’ Review: Mommy Issues

    Four unrelated women with serious emotional baggage are connected by an incident on the subway in this indie drama directed by David Gutnik.In “Materna,” the debut feature by David Gutnik, four anguished New York women are connected by an incident on the subway involving — surprise, surprise — an unhinged man (Sturgill Simpson). Subtler and more focused than cloyingly grandiose interlocking dramas like “Crash,” it takes an interest — as the title suggests — in motherhood and mothering: the anxieties related to pregnancy and child-rearing; the guilt and frustrations born of generational rifts.The film’s four sections recount the events leading up to each woman’s arrival to the same train car, and the outburst that takes place therein is visualized repeatedly from each one’s troubled head space.Jean (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a VR artist whose mother constantly badgers her to freeze her eggs; Mona (Jade Eshete) is an actress struggling to connect with her estranged mother, a Jehovah’s Witness; Ruth (Lindsay Burdge) is a wealthy stay-at-home mom whose young son, she’s convinced, is being persecuted by his school’s politically correct agenda; Perizad (Assol Abdullina, who also serves as a co-writer along with Gutnik and Eshete), travels to her native Kyrgyzstan after the death of a relative, and spends time with her mother and grandmother.Perizad’s story, buoyed by Abdullina’s weary, yet searching gaze, achieves an emotional tenor that the preceding vignettes lack, enfeebled as they are by dialogue — and text messages — that announce precisely the issues at stake.Each section, however, leaves its mark: Jean’s story veers toward science fiction horror when artificial insemination takes on an eerily literal meaning; naturalistic camerawork lends Mona’s heated sessions with an acting coach a delirious intimacy; and the tension between Ruth and her ideologically opposed brother (Rory Culkin) erupts into an arresting, if predictably sketched, dramatic showdown.If only their bond amounted to more. As it stands, the glue uniting these women of different ethnicities and backgrounds reads like a failed attempt to carve a more ambitious meaning out of individual stories already brimming with possibility.MaternaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming services. More

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    ‘Free Guy’ Review: Don’t Hate the Player

    Ryan Reynolds brings his nice-guy charisma to the role of a video game character who doesn’t want to stay on the sidelines.One day you’re just heading to your job at the bank, preparing for its daily spate of robberies, and the next you find out that you’re a side character in a video game. Tough break.That’s the scenario in which Guy (Ryan Reynolds) finds himself in the perky though predictable new adventure-comedy “Free Guy,” directed by Shawn Levy. Guy is comfortable with his monotonous life in the game Free City until he meets a player named Millie (Jodie Comer), a coder who is looking for proof that Antwan (Taika Waititi), the money-hungry mogul behind the game’s virtual world, stole her code. With help from her friend and partner Keys (Joe Keery), Millie attempts a code heist with a leveled-up Guy, who has become a viral hero in the gamersphere.“Free Guy” is as agreeable as its main actor; Reynolds taps into his endless well of nice-guy charisma to deliver an adorable brand of humor that feels like “Deadpool” Lite. And the various comic-relief characters (Lil Rel Howery as Guy’s clueless best friend, Waititi as the toxic boss) and cameos (a priceless Channing Tatum and a Marvel surprise) make for a perfectly enjoyable experience.But innovative? Not so much. Conceptually, “Free Guy” recalls a PG-13 version of “Westworld” (fewer stabbings, no sex). The interesting existential tidbits about agency, morality and artificial intelligence play second string to the straw-man argument about the baseness of consumerism. The jokes, too, feel neatly packaged; they’re sometimes funny, but never surprising.It’s no spoiler to say that art wins over capitalism, the phoned-in romantic subplot is resolved and everyone’s happy in the end. “Free Guy” has charm, but there’s not much memorable in the same old quest, same old boss fight, then game over.Free GuyRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Marcia Nasatir, Who Broke a Glass Ceiling in Hollywood, Dies at 95

    A former book editor and agent, she got her first movie studio job, at United Artists, when she was 48. She insisted on being hired as a vice president.Marcia Nasatir, who was the first woman to become a vice president of a major Hollywood studio — although, unlike some female executives who followed her, she never got to run one — died on Aug. 3 in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 95.Her sons, Mark and Seth, confirmed the death, at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Country Home and Hospital.Ms. Nasatir — “the first mogulette,” as she called herself in her email address — was a forerunner of female Hollywood executives like Sherry Lansing, who became the first woman to head production for a studio at 20th Century Fox in 1980, and Dawn Steel, who achieved another first when she was named president of Columbia Studios seven years later.“She was a grande dame, our first female elder,” Lucy Fisher, a former vice chairwoman of Columbia TriStar Pictures, said by phone. “She gave me my first job, as a reader, at United Artists. And she helped me get my next job, with Samuel Goldwyn Jr.“She asked me: ‘Do you really want the job? Then go back and put on a pair of hose.’ I said, ‘Marcia, I don’t own a pair of hose,’ and she said, ‘Good luck.’”Ms. Nasatir began her path to Hollywood as a single mother in New York in the 1950s, when she was hired as a secretary at Grey Advertising. After successful stints as an editor at Dell Publishing and Bantam Books, she left for Hollywood to become a literary agent; her clients included the screenwriters Robert Towne and William Goldman.In 1974, she approached Mike Medavoy, a former top agent who had just been named vice president of production at United Artists. “I hear you’re moving to United Artists,” she said, recalling the conversation years later in “A Classy Broad: Marcia’s Adventures in Hollywood” (2016), a documentary directed by Anne Goursaud. “I think he said, ‘I’m going to need a good story editor,’ and I said, ‘How about me?’”They met soon after for breakfast, and he offered her a story editor position, in which she would look for books, scripts and plays to turn into movies. It was a traditional job for women in Hollywood. But, at 48, she wanted more and demanded that she be hired as a vice president. (Her title was vice president of motion picture development.)“It seemed to me,” she told The Arizona Republic in 1985, “that I would be a more effective employee, and my opinions would be more respected by writers and actors, if I had the title of vice president instead of story editor.”Mr. Medavoy, in a phone interview, said that Ms. Nasatir had brought “taste and reach” to United Artists.“She was strong-willed and tough but really fair,” he said, “and she got everybody to sign on to being that way, to being collegial.”Ms. Nasatir with Mike Medavoy, who hired her at United Artists. “She was strong-willed and tough,” Mr. Medavoy recalled, “but really fair.”A Classy Broad/Marcia Nasatir ProductionsMs. Nasatir worked closely with Mr. Medavoy from 1974 to 1978, a fruitful period for United Artists that begot films like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Carrie,” the 1976 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Bound for Glory” and “Coming Home” — whose female lead, Jane Fonda, thanked Ms. Nasatir when she accepted her Oscar for best actress.It was Ms. Nasatir who gave Sylvester Stallone’s screenplay for “Rocky” to the producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff. The film won the Oscar for best picture and had a worldwide gross of more than $117 million (nearly $555 million in today’s money).“‘Rocky’ is, of course, the perfect fairy tale,” Ms. Nasatir said in “A Classy Broad.”Her tenure at United Artists did not have a fairy-tale ending. When Mr. Medavoy and four other executives, including the chairman, Arthur Krim, left United Artists to create Orion Pictures in early 1978, they did not ask her to join them as a partner. And she did not get Mr. Medavoy’s job at United Artists, where he had been in charge of worldwide production; it went to a man, Danton Risser.She resigned and joined Orion as a vice president, hoping that her former colleagues would make her a partner. But that did not happen.“They didn’t want to split things six ways, and didn’t value what my contribution was,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.Mr. Medavoy said in the interview that it was “interesting” that Ms. Nasatir had felt disappointed at not being asked to be a partner at Orion. “Was it because she was a woman? No,” he said. “It was the fact that there were five of us already.”Marcia Birenberg was born on May 8, 1926, in Brooklyn and grew up in San Antonio. Her father, Jack, sold cloth for men’s fine woolen apparel; her mother, Sophie (Weprinsky) Birenberg, had been a garment worker in New York City before her wedding and talked about going on strike “as one of the greatest moments in her life,” Ms. Nasatir once said.Wanting to be a newspaperwoman, Ms. Nasatir studied journalism at Northwestern University and the University of Texas, Austin, but did not graduate.In 1947 she married Mort Nasatir, who was later president of MGM Records and publisher of Billboard magazine; the marriage ended in divorce after six years. She joined Grey Advertising in about 1955 and left after a few years for another secretarial job, at Dell, where she worked for the publisher. While there, she became an editor and recommended that Dell buy the paperback rights to “Catch-22,” Joseph Heller’s dark satirical novel about World War II. Within a year of its publication in 1962, it had sold two million copies.Ms. Nasatir in 2017. In recent years she and the screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. had reviewed movies online as “Reel Geezers.” Richard Shotwell/Invision, via Associated PressMs. Nasatir moved on to Bantam Books, where her biggest coup was suggesting that the company publish the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy within days of its release in 1964, kicking off the genre of “instant” books. She also worked on acquiring paperback rights to books that were being adapted for movies, a role that brought her into contact with Evarts Ziegler, a Hollywood agent, who hired her for his agency in 1969.She left after five years because Mr. Ziegler would not raise her $25,000 salary (about $146,000 today).“He said, ‘You don’t have anyone to support; a man has a family support,’” she recalled in “A Classy Broad.” “And I said: ‘Zig, I support myself. Why shouldn’t I make as much as a man?’”United Artists offered her $50,000, and after her four years there and one year at Orion, she was briefly an independent producer before being hired to run the film division of Johnny Carson’s company Carson Productions. While there she agreed to take on, when other studios would not, Lawrence Kasdan’s “The Big Chill” (1983), about former college classmates who gather for the funeral of one from their circle. She became its executive producer, and it proved to be a moderate box office success and an enduring favorite among many baby boomers.From then on, her career toggled between holding executive positions, with Fox and Phoenix Pictures (which Mr. Medavoy co-founded), and producing films, including “Hamburger Hill” and “Ironweed” (both in 1987), “Vertical Limit” (2000) and “Death Defying Acts” (2008).Starting in 2008, Ms. Nasatir and the screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who had been a client of hers when she was an agent, reviewed movies online as “Reel Geezers.” Close friends, they were passionate and deeply informed about moviemaking. He could be dyspeptic. She was more laid back. They kibitzed. They squabbled.In addition to her sons, she is survived by two granddaughters and a sister, Rose Spector, the first woman elected to the Texas Supreme Court.Being hired at United Artists had historic significance for Ms. Nasatir, because the studio’s founders had included the actress Mary Pickford. But despite that precedent, she was not destined to run United Artists — or any other studio.“If I had been born 20 years later, I would have been the head of a studio, which I would have liked,” she told Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter in 2013. “But I’m content with how things turned out for me and happy to see other women carry the torch even further.” More

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    ‘Misha and the Wolves’ Review: Fuzzy Memories

    Did an ostensible Holocaust memoirist really spend her childhood running with wolves? This documentary has answers.The documentary “Misha and the Wolves” revisits a semi-infamous episode in Holocaust appropriation. In a 1997 book, an author named Misha Defonseca claimed that, as a child during World War II, she had trekked through the woods living with a pack of wolves.The spoiler-averse will want to stop reading. But about a decade later, her story was exposed as a fraud. The film, directed by Sam Hobkinson and streaming on Netflix, recounts how various people — a publisher, Jane Daniel; a genealogist, Sharon Sergeant; and a Holocaust survivor, Evelyne Haendel, who tirelessly researched the case in Belgium — uncovered information about Defonseca’s real wartime experiences.The movie also tries to illustrate the nature of deception, to the point of lying to the viewer. A person labeled by name as an ordinary talking head turns out to be a performer on a set; at a critical moment, we see her wig removed. But “Misha and the Wolves” is most absorbing when it deals with the search for truth. Haendel, who spent her own childhood during the Holocaust hiding as a Catholic, recalls how she pored over old phone books and other records.“Misha and the Wolves” plays best on first viewing, with its surprises intact. The current documentary “Enemies of the State” deals more provocatively with verification issues in a less publicly settled case. Still, “Misha and the Wolves” shows how, in certain situations, people too polite to demand evidence can be hoodwinked. The film’s late efforts to portray Defonseca as at least some sort of victim don’t wash.Misha and the WolvesRated PG-13 for lies. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More