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He was compared to Marlon Brando and James Dean for his acclaimed portrayals of tough, alienated characters, most memorably in Godard’s “Breathless.”Jean-Paul Belmondo, the rugged actor whose disdainful eyes, boxer’s nose, sensual lips and cynical outlook made him the idolized personification of youthful alienation in the French New Wave, most notably in his classic performance as an existential killer in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 88.His death was confirmed by the office of his lawyer, Michel Godest. No cause was given.Like Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean — three American actors to whom he was frequently compared — Mr. Belmondo established his reputation playing tough, unsentimental, even antisocial characters who were cut adrift from bourgeois society. Later, as one of France’s leading stars, he took more crowd-pleasing roles, but without entirely surrendering his magnetic brashness.Like Bogart, Mr. Belmondo brought craggy features and sometimes seething anger to the screen, a realistic counterpoint to more conventionally handsome romantic stars. Like Dean, he became one of the most widely imitated pop culture figures of his era. And like Brando, he was often dismissive of pretentiousness and self-importance among filmmakers.“No actor since James Dean has inspired quite such intense identification,” Eugene Archer wrote in The New York Times in 1965. “Dean evoked the rebellious adolescent impulse, as fierce as it was gratuitous, a violent outgrowth of the frustrations of the modern world. Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection — and more disturbing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total. He accepts corruption with a cynical smile, not even bothering to struggle. He is out entirely for himself, to get whatever he can, while he can. The Belmondo type is capable of anything.”His leading role in “À bout de souffle” — released in the United States in 1961 as “Breathless” — was instantly recognized as trendsetting; subsequent imitators only cemented its importance. Mr. Belmondo’s mop of unruly hair, the way he peered at the world through a twisting web of cigarette smoke, and the way he obsessively massaged his thick, feminine lips with his thumb were so vivid and evocative that they quickly became global signposts of rebellion.Mr. Belmondo in “Breathless.” His on-screen mannerisms became global signposts of rebellion.Films-Around-The -WorldMr. Belmondo was 28 and Mr. Godard was 26 when “Breathless” was being made. The film was based on an idea by François Truffaut, another icon of the nouvelle vague, and began shooting in Paris without a script. Mr. Godard used a hand-held camera — except in the street scenes, when he would sometimes mount the camera on a borrowed wheelchair — and let everyone improvise. The resulting film was rough and ill-shaped, but it had a sense of emotional honesty and verisimilitude that made it electric. Many mainstream critics seemed unsure what to make of it.Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times: “It goes at its unattractive subject in an eccentric photographed style that sharply conveys the nervous tempo and the emotional erraticalness of the story it tells. And through the American actress, Jean Seberg, and a hypnotically ugly new young man by the name of Jean-Paul Belmondo, it projects two downright fearsome characters.”Many critics found Mr. Belmondo’s amoral antihero a little too strong. But others found in the role a raw truthfulness and a thematic boldness at odds with the bulk of what was coming out of Hollywood studios.Restless and a Little BoredMr. Belmondo followed up “Breathless” with a series of celebrated turns for other New Wave directors and was soon widely seen as the movement’s leading interpreter — although in later years he told interviewers that some of the most intellectually ambitious efforts he had been involved in had bored him.When he starred as a steelworker opposite Jeanne Moreau in Peter Brooks’ “Moderato Cantabile” (1960), he said the script, by the French novelist Marguerite Duras, was too intellectual for his taste. He frequently expressed ambivalence about working for esoteric directors like Mr. Brooks, Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni.In other roles Mr. Belmondo was a Hungarian who gets romantically involved with a Provençal family in Claude Chabrol’s “À double tour” (1959) and a young country priest in “Leon Morin, Priest” (1962). He also helped his co-star, Sophia Loren, win an Academy Award in Vittorio De Sica’s “Two Women” (1961), a drama set during World War II in which he played a young Communist intellectual in mountainous central Italy.By the mid ’60s, though, he was chafing at playing the young antihero in film after film.“Lots of times, I’d be out with a chick and some kid would want to give me a bad time,” Mr. Belmondo told an interviewer. “I used to fight it out with them. It’s the same now. Everyone wants to say he’s flattened Belmondo.”The turning point for him came in Philippe De Broca’s “That Man From Rio,” a 1964 over-the-top spy thriller that played like a parody of James Bond. Audiences loved it, and they loved Mr. Belmondo in it. More important, Mr. Belmondo loved doing it. Although some critics who revered the more difficult work of the French New Wave derided Mr. Belmondo as a sell out, he told interviewers that this film remained his favorite.Mr. Belmondo in “That Man From Rio” (1964), an over-the-top spy thriller. It was a turning point for the actor, who had begun chafing at being typecast as a young antihero.Cohen Media GroupLater in his career Mr. Belmondo professed an unpretentious modesty, shrugging off his success, but at his box-office height in the 1960s, he was anything but modest. In an interview with the film critic Rex Reed in 1966, he all but sneered at American fans who were lining up to see his movies.“I do not blame them,” he said, puffing on a cigar and stretching out his long legs underneath a table at Harry’s Bar in Venice. “I am worth standing in line to see.”By this time there were rumors that despite having been married since 1955 to Elodie Constantin, a former ballerina, Mr. Belmondo was involved with other women. When Mr. Reed asked him about this, he shrugged that off, too.“Listen, I am only 32 years old,” he said. “I’m not dead. And please remember, I am French. I am happily married this year, but next year? Who knows?”A year later the marriage had ended in divorce. Mr. Belmondo had three children with Ms. Constantin. The eldest, Patricia, died in a fire in 1994, but their younger daughter, Florence, and a son, Paul, survive him.The divorce was rumored to have resulted from a romance by Mr. Belmondo with one of his co-stars, Ursula Andress. He and Ms. Andress did have a long-term public relationship after the divorce. He was later romantically involved with another actress, Laura Antonelli. But not until 2002, when he was 70 years old, did he marry again, to 24-year-old Nathalie Tardivel. That marriage ended in divorce six years later. They had a daughter, Stella, who also survives him.A Left Bank BoyhoodJean-Paul Belmondo was born on April 9, 1933, in the middle-class Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. His family moved to the city’s Left Bank when he was a boy, and he grew up in the neighborhoods around Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His father, Paul Belmondo, who was born in Algiers to a family of Italian origin, was a highly regarded sculptor. He later told interviewers that his son had been a tempestuous boy who had gotten into frequent scraps and did poorly in school.The boy’s mother, Madeline Rainaud-Richard, pushed him to do better, but he resisted, Mr. Belmondo later recalled. Finally, he dropped out of school altogether as a teenager. At 16, he became an enthusiastic amateur boxer (although his famous smashed nose came not from an organized bout but from a playground dust-up), giving it up only when he turned to acting.“I stopped when the face I saw in the mirror began to change,” he said.For several years, until he was 20, his parents paid for acting lessons at a private conservatory. After a six-month military tour in Algeria, he returned to Paris in 1953 and was accepted into the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique, where he studied for three years. The school, a conservative one, didn’t know what to do with the insolent young man who sauntered onto the stage in a Molière play with his hands in his pockets.When, at his graduation, in 1956, Mr. Belmondo was awarded only an honorable mention by his teachers, the other students hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him from the theater as he flashed an obscene gesture at the judges.Mr. Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve in François Truffaut’s 1969 movie “Mississippi Mermaid.” Film DeskFor all his flamboyance and occasional fistfights, Mr. Belmondo was said to be a consummate professional on the set. Although in later years he continued to work now and then with the great directors of the New Wave — most notably with Truffaut in “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969) — most of his energies went into mainstream favorites. Many of his films after the mid-1960s were made by his own production company.More and more Mr. Belmondo became known for popular adventures, usually comic thrillers. And he became famous for elaborate stunts in which he took great pride in performing himself. He hung from skyscrapers, leapt across speeding trains, drove cars off hillsides. Co-stars said he seemed all but fearless. While shooting one scene in South America, he was warned that a river, into which he was about to plunge for a scene, was filled with poisonous snakes and piranha. Mr. Belmondo grabbed a chunk of corned beef and slung it into the murky water. When nothing happened, he jumped in and filmed the scene.He said he had decided, “What the hell, if they’re not going to chew on that, they’re not going to eat me.”Finally, an injury during the filming of “Hold-Up” in 1985, when he was 52, forced him to leave the stunts to the stunt men.Hollywood Was Not for HimThroughout, the Belmondo cult endured, though more in France than around the world. His French fans knew him by his nickname, Bebel (pronounced bay-BELL).No matter the scene, no matter the co-stars, whatever mayhem was breaking out onscreen, Mr. Belmondo was always able to affect a calm, cool remove, as though he was more amused than aroused by the activity swirling around him. He brought a touch of comedy to his action roles and a hint of danger to his comic roles; one could well imagine him playing the reluctant, wisecracking hero in American action series of the 1980s like “Die Hard.”Mr. Belmondo never made the transition to Hollywood, largely because he didn’t want to. “Why complicate my life?” he said. “I am too stupid to learn the language and it would only be a disaster.”Mr. Belmondo in 2007. By choice he never made the transition to Hollywood. Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 1989 he was awarded the Cesar Award for best actor, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for his performance in Claude Lelouch’s “Itineraire d’un enfant gate,” playing a middle-aged industrialist who fakes his death and then sails the world.By this time he had slowed his frenetic pace, making only nine movies in the 1980s, compared to 41 in 1960s and 16 in the 1970s. He cut back even more in the ’90s, when he made only six films, but this was due in part to a belated career shift. Mr. Belmondo had not appeared in a live production since 1959 when he returned to the theater in 1987. Particularly well-regarded was his sold-out run as “Cyrano de Bergerac” in Paris in 1990.A stroke in 2001, however, forced him to stop working. Not until eight years later was be back before the cameras, shooting “Un homme et son chien” (“A Man and His Dog).” Released in 2009, it tells the story of an older gentleman who, accompanied by his loyal dog, suddenly finds himself without a home.Late in life, when he was a little thicker and much grayer, Mr. Belmondo liked to affect some of the self-effacing modesty that was noticeably absent when he was at his peak in the 1960s.When an interviewers asked him to explain his enduring popularity, especially with women, Mr. Belmondo responded with his usual casual shrug.“Hell, everyone knows that an ugly guy with a good line gets the chicks,” he said.Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting. More

The internet’s favorite mollusk is the subject of a new film. In the process of making it, she realized, “I was doing something that actually was very personal.”TELLURIDE, Colo. — Jenny Slate is at a loss for words. It’s Friday night at the Telluride Film Festival and the actress has just deplaned from her first flight in 17 months, still foggy from quarantine, a period when she became the mother of two distinct but equally profound projects: a brand-new baby girl and a feature-length movie she spent a decade creating.Slate is here because of her voice work on Marcel the Shell, the unlikeliest of internet sensations. No bigger than a nickel, this stop-motion mollusk with a single googly eye and shoes pilfered from a Polly Pocket doll set the web afire when she and the filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp uploaded a three-minute video to YouTube back in 2010. That short, which illustrated Marcel’s quiet optimism — “I like myself and I have a lot of other great qualities” — generated immediate interest, ultimately garnering more than 31 million views in all. (Two more shorts followed in 2011 and 2014.)Marcel’s voice is distinct from Slate’s other animation work, whether it’s Harley Quinn in “Lego Batman” or Tammy Larsen in “Bob’s Burgers.” (She voiced Missy Foreman-Greenwald in “Big Mouth,” until 2020 when she stepped down, saying, “Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.”) Marcel has a high-pitched, melancholic timbre that could make you cry as easily as laugh. (“Some people say my head is too big for my body and I say, ‘Compared to what?’”) And it was so infectious, it prompted appearances on the late-night talk show circuit, two best-selling books, memes, tattoos and offers for television shows and commercial sponsorships.But Slate and Camp, who first created Marcel as a married couple but are now involved in other relationships, were so protective of Marcel that rather than take an easy payday — offers Slate admits would have helped them when they were struggling artists — they spent the next decade turning him into a feature film.It was a painstaking process that involved a troop of animators and designers. Friday night marked the culmination of all that work when “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” had its world premiere. The 90-minute mockumentary tracks an emerging documentary filmmaker, Dean (Camp), who moves into an Airbnb only to discover the one-inch Marcel, along with his memory-challenged grandmother Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) and his pet lint, named Alan, grieving after a mysterious tragedy has taken the rest of their community from their cozy abode.Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp at work on the film. Alan Del Rio Ortiz and Michael RainesSlate compares the process of making the film to watching one of those science videos of a flower blooming in fast motion.“You just wake up one morning and there’s a flower and it’s blue,” Slate said. “That’s what this feels like.”Slate, a bit shyer and more reserved than you would expect, is still contemplating her post-pandemic life. More content than when she and Camp first created Marcel as a funny bit for a friend’s comedy show, Slate says she no longer feels the need to make people laugh (not even her therapist) and is less interested in pleasing others, an emotion she believes is the result of the “love infinity loop” she is currently experiencing with her infant and her fiancé, Ben Shattuck.“We were in process for so long and this character has had so many different functions for me,” she added. “At first, I think I just needed to prove to myself again that I’m funny. And then I realized that I was doing something that actually was very personal to me. So making the movie was trying to show this very interior part of myself. I just can’t believe that it worked.”And worked it has. The Hollywood Reporter called it “a sweet, uncomplicated film whose message about self-compassion and community feels especially prescient.” And IndieWire deemed it a critic’s pick, naming it “the cutest film about familial grief you’ll see all year, perhaps ever.”“Marcel” is one of a handful of films debuting at Telluride that is looking for a buyer. And despite it being in the works for nearly a decade, it’s one of many films at the festival, including Mike Mills’s “C’mon, C’mon,” Joe Wright’s “Cyrano” and Peter Hedges’ “The Same Storm,” that feel like a response to our current mood of anxiety and alienation. “I’m really pleased that the film is arriving at this moment,” said Camp, who argues that the serendipitous timing suggests that “we were already feeling increasingly isolated and vulnerable even before Covid hit.”Back in 2010, when Marcel first emerged, Slate said, she was “waiting to get fired from ‘Saturday Night Live,’” which she worked on for one unhappy year. Yet the voice that activates Marcel was one she never used on the sketch show.“I felt like I had done every voice that I could have done in order to save myself there and then suddenly, this voice that I had never done before, came out of my mouth,” she said. “Looking back on it, it was a real choice to use it just for myself, privately. This wouldn’t have belonged on ‘S.N.L.’ anyway and it was this very lovely opening to a belief that there is a world outside of the tiny, narrow hallway that contains what you perceive as your own failure.”Marcel and his grandmother, left, voiced by Isabella Rossellini. Gabrielle RussomangoTo make the film, Slate and Camp spent a year and a half recording improved audio sessions. Then their co-writer and editor, Nick Paley, and Camp dedicated an equal amount of time turning those snippets of improv into screenplay form. That eventually became an animatic (audio with music and storyboarded visuals) they could watch and screen for test audiences to make sure it all worked before they shot the live action and then, finally, the stop-motion animation. “Ultimately, we sort of backed into an indie version of the Pixar process,” Camp said.Yet, the basic premise always remained: Marcel had lost the majority of his shell family because of an argument involving humans.“We always liked that the overflow of the emotionality from the human world had caused this major disruption in the shell world,” said Slate, adding that the creation of Nana Connie was long part of the plan. “The idea was what do you do when your life as you know it has been broken apart, and the only person that remembers it would be starting to not remember at all.”It’s that poignancy and heartbreak that gives the movie its center. It’s also the creative project that Slate is most proud of. Nowadays she sings songs to her daughter in Marcel’s voice. (She believes he is a better singer than she.) And though she doesn’t know what is next for this sweet but stubborn avatar of herself, it’s clear Marcel has burrowed himself deep inside her.“I always think of Marcel as my truest self, and what I would really like to be like if my ego, and the trappings of being a woman in patriarchy, didn’t get in the way.” More

Camila Cabello stars in this musical reimagining of the fairy tale, which centers on an orphaned maiden who yearns not for true love but for corporate success as a dressmaker.Once upon a time, Cinderella dreamed of owning a business. Or so the story goes in Kay Cannon’s new movie, which drags the princess tale into the 21st century with Top-40 pop songs, self-aware dialogue and a trite girlboss sensibility.Among the countless iterations the story has weathered through the ages, this “Cinderella” (streaming on Amazon), starring Camila Cabello as the orphaned maiden, is forgettable. It is oddly transfixing, though, as a study in the semiotics of the modernized fairy tale. In this anachronism-laden kingdom, Ella fantasizes not about princes on steeds but about becoming a ball gown tycoon. “You’re gonna know my name,” she belts out in an original opening number, as she imagines a bazaar shop called Dresses by Ella.This craving for corporate success takes the place of other, more familiar Cinderella story themes. The flinty Stepmother (Idina Menzel) receives a series of singalong numbers, while the Fabulous Godmother (Billy Porter) delivers sassy punch lines and a few wand waves. But neither matriarchal figure shares a meaningful connection with our heroine, and even Ella’s dead mother, whose presence often hovers over Cinderella stories, barely matters; early on, Ella happily sells her late mother’s heirloom broach as part of an original dress design.Dialogue also receives an update. Forget “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”: Here, the town crier raps, the ne’er-do-well Prince (Nicholas Galitzine) banters with his sovereign bros and the stuffy King (Pierce Brosnan) and Queen (Minnie Driver) harrumph over whose throne is taller. Everyone speaks in concrete, self-referential terms — a du jour dialogue styling often associated with screenwriting by Joss Whedon. “Yes, I was just crying and singing about it, like, two minutes ago,” Ella whines, when the Godmother asks if she wants to go to the ball.There are hints of the pep and panache that enlivened fizzier jukebox musicals like “Pitch Perfect,” for which Cannon wrote the screenplay. But with a narrative this asinine, even Driver crooning the opening notes to “Let’s Get Loud” is hard to appreciate. Ella uses the ball as a networking event, the monarchy lets a woman lean in at the table and everyone lives obnoxiously ever after, at least until the next Cinderella remake.CinderellaRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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

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

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

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

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