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Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More
Take a cinematic journey around the world with these highlights.This month’s picks include a delirious Mexican jungle thriller, an Indian character study about an aging trucker, a Buenos Aires–set drama about bereavement, a whimsical film about a Chinese tourist in Malaysia and the latest feature by the Filipino “slow cinema” auteur Lav Diaz.‘Tragic Jungle’Stream it on Netflix.Yulene Olaizola’s delirious 1920s–set thriller unfolds in the forested borderlands between Mexico and Belize (formerly British Honduras). Agnes (Indira Andrewin), a beautiful British woman of African origin, escapes a forced marriage with a white landowner, only to be swiftly recaptured by a band of Mexican gum harvesters. Her presence sends the men into a frenzy both sexual and territorial: They raise their guard, taking her as a sign of the nearby presence of British harvesters, while also forcing lewd glances and violent advances upon her.Agnes’s look of frightened alarm slowly turns into a smirk as Olaizola unveils the mythical undercurrent of her tale: Her heroine represents the Xtabay, a succubus-like femme fatale of Mayan legend. Yet despite the film’s whispered voice-over and feverish visions, “Tragic Jungle” draws its power from the petty human — or rather, masculine — follies it lays bare. The men encircling one another in the film’s games of profit are greedy, corruptible foot soldiers of colonialism. They don’t need the Xtabay to lure them into the jungle — just a flash of gold (or of skin) is enough to entice them to jump into the deep.‘Milestone’Stream it on Netflix.A middle-age crisis descends like a downpour on Ghalib (Suvinder Vicky), a long-haul trucker in Delhi. Just as he hits a record of 500,000 kilometers, he develops an ache in his back, is faced with a compensation claim from the family of his recently deceased wife and is tasked with training a newbie who might be his eventual replacement, Pash (Lakshvir Saran). In “Milestone,” the director Ivan Ayr distills Ghalib’s converging existential bumps-in-the-road into a melancholy, magic hour–soaked mood piece. Most of the film’s gorgeous scenes unfold in the pink pre-dawn fog of North India, while a minimalist sound design captures Ghalib’s isolation in a hectic world.“Milestone” is a pinpoint-precise character study, with the camera staying close to Ghalib, but Ayr also colors in the broader plight of India’s transportation workers and their fight against a culture of disposability. The crews responsible for loading cargo into trucks are on strike, but Ghalib is too numbed by grief and pain to see beyond the inconvenience this causes him. But the more time he spends with Pash, the clearer his impending fate becomes. The generational chasm between the two reveals itself in a wry exchange: When Pash asks Ghalib why he returned to India after a spell in Kuwait, Ghalib asks, “Ever heard of Saddam Hussein?” Pash is blank. Even as “Milestone” takes some contrived turns, Vicky’s performance grounds the film, conveying grief and alienation without macho broodiness or overwrought restraint.‘A Family Submerged’Stream it on Ovid.tv.The Buenos Aires–set “A Family Submerged” unfolds in a series of diaphanous, sun-smudged scenes — a fitting visual aesthetic for a film that dwells in the limbo of bereavement. María Alché’s debut feature follows the middle-aged Marcela (Mercedes Morán) as she grapples with the recent death of her sister. Much of the film takes place in her and the sister’s dimly lit apartments, where Marcela sorts through objects loaded with memory.There’s a boisterous, lived-in quality to these indoor scenes. Marcela’s three teenagers laugh and fight and talk over each other; assorted visitors walk in and out. Marcela seems to struggle to keep up with the swirling pace of life around her, and her dazedness slowly gives way to hallucinated conversations with long-gone relatives. At the same time, she succumbs to an affair with a friend of her daughter’s while her husband is away on a business trip.There’s a hint of melodrama in “A Family Submerged” — with its grieving heroine, familial conflicts and adultery — but the film never feels the least bit contrived or even scripted. Alché and her performers (particularly Morán) conjure a talky naturalism that makes you feel like you’ve walked, for a brief spell, into the thicket of someone’s life.‘Three Adventures of Brooke’Stream it on Mubi.Inspired by the ambulatory, serendipity-driven stories of Eric Rohmer and Hong Sang-soo, “Three Adventures of Brooke” plays out a triptych of variations on a couple of days in the summer vacation of Brooke (Xu Fangyi), a Chinese tourist in the Malaysian city of Alor Setar. On the 30th of June — the date is announced via a handwritten title card — Brooke’s bicycle breaks down on a country path. In the first segment, she’s rescued by a local woman her age, with whom she explores touristy locales like a crystal shop and a museum; in the second, Brooke is picked up by three young city-council workers who seek her input for their plans to refurbish and modernize the town; and in the third, she runs into a Frenchman (Rohmer regular Pascal Greggory) at a bicycle repair shop and explores the city with him.These segments are breezy and whimsical, and deceptively minor. Nothing too eventful happens in the film, but every new encounter gently reveals something about the ways in which a place can refract differently through the lenses of familiarity and foreignness. In each episode, Brooke offers slightly varying reasons for her presence in Alor Setar. It’s a recurring red herring that seems to encapsulate one of the film’s central themes: that our desire for mystery and meaning can obscure our view of the simple truths and pleasures of life.‘Genus Pan’Rent it on Projectr.The Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz is known as a master of “slow cinema”: His longest film clocks in at 11 hours, and even shorter recent works exceed the 3-hour mark. But it’s not just the duration that makes his films “slow.” There’s also an austerity to his style, with genre elements and political critique mixing into narratives that unfold patiently, demanding attention and investment.In “Genus Pan,” the filmmaker’s latest, three miners make their way home through a jungle for the bulk of the film’s 157-minute running time (practically brisk, by Diaz standards). It’s the 1990s, and the men’s often rancorous banter keep returning to their exploitative work conditions. Various bribes and brokerage fees leave them with little income for backbreaking, dangerous work, and local military authorities add to their abuse, intimidating and murdering workers without consequence. The 20-something Andres (Don Melvin Boongaling) rails at these injustices, while the middle-aged Baldo (Nanding Josef) and Paulo (Bart Guingona) seem to have become inured — and even complicit — in the system.The film’s title refers to the monkeys that squawk in the jungle, but also to the primitiveness Diaz unearths in his characters. The miners’ journey home ends in a dark turn that spurs further bloody twists. There’s plenty of violence in the film, but it’s shot in a sardonic, make-believe style (enhanced by the black-and-white palette), as if to maintain the focus on the real tragedy: the depravity and desperation that turns all the men in the film into animals. More
This nostalgic animated film follows a taboo love triangle.As sumptuous as it is odd, “No. 7 Cherry Lane” is an exercise in harnessing nostalgia for innovation. The first animated film from the director Yonfan is a deeply eccentric chronicle of a forbidden affair in 1960s Hong Kong, as the spirit of Mao Zedong’s anti-imperialist, communist revolution arrives in what was still a British colony. Fan Ziming, a beguiling English literature student, becomes embroiled in a knotty love triangle between Mrs. Yu, a divorced Taiwanese exile and former revolutionary who now deals in luxury goods, and her daughter Meiling, a nubile 18-year-old student taking English lessons from Ziming.At times, “No. 7 Cherry Lane” unfolds as a hallucinatory daydream, flowing with starry-eyed voice-over narration: “Look how the golden years flowed away,” reads the opening title card, as the narrator describes the time as an “era of prosperity amidst simplicity.” The Hong Kong of 1967 is rendered in rich detail through pencil on rice paper, with radiant color blooming onscreen, illustrations of bustling streets and movie theaters constituting the film’s universe. There are cerebral, erudite dialogues about Proust, French art films and classic Chinese literature that drive the liaisons at its center. The animation is often slow-moving — figures shuffle stiffly across the screen as they muse about art and philosophy, a choice that may challenge viewers accustomed to more fluid gestures. But the approach contributes to the film’s thematic commitment to nostalgia and adds a quiet elegance and slow-paced intimacy to each scene.
Fortunately, “No. 7 Cherry Lane” transcends pure wistfulness or intellectual indulgence. The film embraces a lovely surreal sensibility that bleeds through all of its details: puffs of smoke wafting off a theater screen into the characters’ world; a clowder of cats explaining Hong Kong’s floor-numbering practices; effervescent, jarring synth pop soundtracking the peak of a violent protest. These details seem minor, but they infuse an otherwise heady film with heart and levity. The movie’s bizarre and sexually explicit dream sequences, which include the abduction of a Taoist nun and Ziming being pleasured by a cat, further illustrate the film’s enigmatic quality — but they also prevent it from becoming a simple trip down memory lane. Consider this film a master class in world-building, a bewildering but poignant dream — one that will leave you with plenty of burning questions.No. 7 Cherry LaneNot rated. In Mandarin, Cantonese, French and Shanghainese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. Watch on Criterion Channel. More
He was a hard-working actor and not merely a doppelgänger. But his claim to fame on film, TV and the stage was that he looked like Bogie.Lon Chaney was immortalized in a 1957 film as the “Man of a Thousand Faces.” Robert Sacchi could capitalize on only one: his conspicuous resemblance to Humphrey Bogart. He played it for all it was worth.That similitude projected him into a circumscribed but lucrative career that included the title role in the 1980 film “The Man With Bogart’s Face” and the part of Bogie himself in touring theatrical companies of Woody Allen’s comedy “Play It Again, Sam.”Mr. Sacchi died on June 23 in a hospital in Sherman Oaks, Calif., his daughter, Trish Sacchi Bertisch said. He was 89.As early as the 1940s, the decade of “The Maltese Falcon,” “Casablanca” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” when Mr. Sacchi (pronounced SACK-ee) was attending Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, friends and neighbors noticed that he was a ringer for Bogart.Still, it would take more than two decades for him to receive notice as the irreverent, snarling and brusque actor’s look-alike. That career began in the early 1970s — first on the road in “Play It Again, Sam,” the story of a man who gets romantic advice from an imaginary Bogart, and then as the title character in “The Man With Bogart’s Face,” a comedy about a private eye named Sam Marlow (his first and last names were shared with detectives Bogart had played) who undergoes plastic surgery to look like Bogart.Adapted from Andrew J. Fenady’s 1977 book of the same name, the movie also featured several performers, including Yvonne De Carlo, Mike Mazurki and George Raft (in his final film), who years earlier had co-starred with Bogart himself.Reviewing “The Man With Bogart’s Face” (also known as “Sam Marlow, Private Eye”) in The New York Times, Tom Buckley wrote that Mr. Sacchi, “who has been doing a Bogart look-alike turn on college campuses, shows considerable acting skill in the title role, although his hopes for future employment in films would seem to be limited.”Humphrey Bogart in a publicity photo for the 1945 movie “Conflict.”Warner Bros., via Getty ImagesRobert Sacchi in a 1981 episode of “Fantasy Island.”Walt Disney Television, via Getty ImagesHe managed nonetheless to find employment as Bogart: in a one-man show called “Bogey’s Back,” in television commercials, in a Phil Collins music video and in a voice-over for an episode of the HBO horror anthology series “Tales From the Crypt” in 1995.Robert Patsy Sacchi was born on March 27, 1932, in Rome and immigrated with his parents, Alberto and Marietta (D’Urbano) Sacchi, to New York when he was a baby. His father was a carpenter.After graduating from high school, he earned a degree in business and finance from Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., and a master’s degree from New York University.In addition to his daughter Ms. Bertisch, he is survived by his wife, Angela de Hererra; a son, the producer John Sacchi; six children from an earlier marriage, Robert Sacchi Jr., Barbara Cohen, Felicia Carroll, Maria Tolstonog, Lisa Osborne and Anthony Sacchi; his brother, Mario Sacchi; and three grandchildren.Mr. Sacchi had some success in parts not related to Bogart, including roles in three 1972 films: “The French Sex Murders,” “Pulp” and “Across 110th Street.” He had some non-acting success as well: In the 1980s, he recorded a rap single, “Jungle Queen,” which was a hit in Germany, and he worked on a book with the boxer Willie Pep about slum children who grew up to achieve fame in the ring.Yet he would remain best known for how he looked. His 5-foot-8 frame, brooding eyes, furrowed brow and craggy face cried out for a famous movie line to be rewritten as “Here’s lookin’ at me, kid.”He accepted that it was his face that gained him attention. But as a teenager, at least, he would have chosen a different one.“I mean, I never thought Bogie was too terrific-looking,” Mr. Sacchi once said. “Like most kids at the time, I wanted to look like Gregory Peck.” More
Chris Pratt leaps to 2051 to save our planet from aliens in this hyperventilating sci-fi spectacle.It is never good news when a phalanx of armed, balaclava-wearing dudes falls from the sky in the middle of a World Cup soccer game.“We are you 30 years in the future,” their leader announces to the stunned crowd. “You are our last hope.” Heeding the call is a high school biology teacher named Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). Dan has a doting wife (Betty Gilpin), an adoring young daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and — because action heroes rarely embark on wholesale slaughter without some unhealed psychological hurt — the requisite estranged father (J.K. Simmons).Dan also believes that his life has a special purpose, and so does “The Tomorrow War,” Chris McKay’s time-travel spectacle in which clichés rain as fast and as furiously as bullets. In 2051, an alien civilization is in the process of gobbling up humanity, requiring a worldwide draft of present-day citizens who will “jump” into the future to join the war effort. This process — which resembles the Rapture, except the destination is hell instead of heaven — dumps the terrified conscripts on a post-apocalyptic Miami beach. From there, Dan and a handful of confreres (including an amusing Sam Richardson and Mary Lynn Rajskub) battle a welter of special effects to reach an undersea laboratory where a military scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) is developing an alien-fighting toxin.Sucking ideas from across the sci-fi spectrum — “Alien,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Starship Troopers,” “Jumper,” I could go on — Zach Dean’s screenplay grows more ludicrous by the minute. People are launched into the mayhem without basic training (Richardson’s character can’t even load a gun). And when saving the world requires the assistance of a volcanologist, the sole option is a 12-year-old boy. (Dean does deserve credit, though, for a plot that both hints at global warming and insists scientists will be our salvation.)As for the extraterrestrials, we’re almost an hour in before we see one: Bleached, tentacled and maximally toothy, they’re so exhaustingly aggressive it’s a relief to learn that, like the Creator, they’re only active for six days a week. That’s about as long as this 140-minute assault feels, with its crude dialogue (“We are food, and they are hungry”), overexcited score and characters so formulaic they might as well be cereal-box figurines. “The Tomorrow War” is betting its flash will blind us to its vacuity. And why not? It worked for “Avatar.”The Tomorrow WarRated PG-13 for death, destruction and alien abuse. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More
It’s more of the same in this sequel to the 2017 comedy featuring the voice of Alec Baldwin.Grab your briefcases: The boss baby has returned in “The Boss Baby: Family Business,” directed by Tom McGrath, another infant adventure that hits the same notes as the original, and has little to show for it.The former boss baby, Ted (Alec Baldwin), is now a rich businessman in a big-boy suit. His brother, Tim (James Marsden), has his own family, though he worries about his daughter Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt), an A-type who opts for handshakes over hugs. Tim gets recruited for a mission by his younger daughter, Tina (Amy Sedaris), another boss baby. With the help of some new magical baby formula, Ted and Tim transform back into their younger selves and go undercover in a school for gifted children that has an evil secret.At some point Tim asks Tabitha if she wants to hear the story about how he and baby Ted saved the world again, but she passes. “It was a good story, wasn’t it?” Tim tries, but she says, “Well, it didn’t really make a lot of sense.” “The jokes were good, right?” Tim asks. Tabitha makes a noncommittal noise.At least the film is self-aware? Aside from that, the imaginative but nonsensical narrative threads leave a minefield of plot holes in their wake. There are some good laughs throughout, though none feel particularly novel. And the continued attempts to make corporate culture into something cute and funny by adding a pacifier seems out of touch with how harshly we criticize toxic workplaces now.A baby in a suit? Always cute. Recycled gags? Not so much — this “Boss Baby” just didn’t get the memo.The Boss Baby: Family BusinessRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and on Peacock. More
After his wedding night, a workaholic gets cursed with previewing how his life will turn out, one year at a time.The British TV comedy “Spaced” had a recurring bit where Simon Pegg would half-apologetically remind his chatty friend to hurry up her story: “Skip to the end?” The same urge came to mind while watching the Australian romantic comedy “Long Story Short,” which is like a recurring bit at feature length.It’s a what-if story: Teddy (Rafe Spall), a workaholic, gets cursed with previewing how his life will turn out, one year at a time. The fast-forwarding starts after his wedding night. He wakes up to find his wife, Leanne (Zahra Newman), pregnant and their house fully furnished. Baffled, he asks surprised questions and gets surprised responses. Soon he’s leaping to another year, and another, and another. The baby becomes a toddler; Leanne’s frustrations with Teddy worsen; separation, an old flame, and a robust bearded period for Teddy follow.Spall summons a kind of early Ryan Reynolds haplessness, talking a mile a minute while catching up. But a sheepish pall steadily creeps over the whole endeavor (written and directed by Josh Lawson, who’s also in the movie), and it doesn’t help that the wanly drawn Leanne could use her own movie to snap out of her own character’s malaise independently.The dangers of going through life on autopilot are clear early on, though the movie gives Teddy’s buddy Sam (Ronny Chieng) cancer to drive the lesson home. It’s a bit of a torturous premise for Teddy — one long I-told-you-so — and even though Lawson shows mercy by the end, I began to wish the bliss of total day-to-day oblivion for the guy.Long Story ShortRated R. 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
The documentary examines the many lives of the stand-up and activist who inspired a generation of performers.In a remarkable article from October 1960, Ebony magazine asked why there were no Black stars in comedy, blaming racist double standards held by audiences and television bookers as well as a new sensitivity (the term “politically correct” had not been coined) that wouldn’t tolerate performers trafficking in stereotypes from the minstrel era. Three months later, Dick Gregory, mentioned briefly as a “newcomer,” made the question irrelevant in one night.When the manager at the Playboy Club in Chicago discovered the crowd was made up of white Southern businessmen in town for a convention, he suggested that Gregory postpone. The comedian refused, went onstage and killed. He did so well, his contract there was extended, and led to national press and an appearance on “The Tonight Show.” Gregory became a crossover star, a pioneering comedic social critic who inspired a generation of stand-ups.“The One and Only Dick Gregory,” an aptly titled new documentary, does justice to this fabled performance, setting the scene and the stakes. But what stands out most about this revolutionary moment in comedy is what a small role it plays in the overall portrait here. Gregory, who died in 2017, lived so many lives that he presents a challenge for anyone trying to document them. The director Andre Gaines tries to capture as many as possible, to a fault. By covering so much ground, it doesn’t have room to dig too deep. But along with some very funny footage of a master of his craft, it offers a convincing argument that while Gregory became famous for his comedy, what made him such a riveting cultural figure is what he did after he left it behind.Gaines recruits a talent-rich cast of comics (Wanda Sykes, Dave Chappelle) to describe the performer. Chris Rock is particularly insightful and blunt, comparing Gregory’s relaxed, patient, cigarette-wielding delivery with that of Chappelle. Gregory was ahead of his time in his material on police brutality and racism, but just as he became a star, his activism heated up. A demonstration for voting rights in Mississippi was a turning point, and the movie covers his work and relationships with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the N.A.A.C.P. leader Medgar Evers. By the 1980s, Gregory had stopped playing clubs and became an early health and wellness guru while still waging a broad array of political fights, going on fasts and long runs to earn attention for causes like fighting hunger and obesity.There’s clearly a price to pay for living as active a life as Dick Gregory did. He was rarely home to see his family (his kids are astute talking heads), and toward the end of his life, legal troubles led to financial collapse and the loss of his home. The last half-hour is jarringly downbeat if slightly underexamined, with Gregory returning to clubs and appearing in a Rob Schneider movie, “The Hot Chick,” that allows him to get much-needed health care coverage.The legend of Dick Gregory gives way to a peek of him as a more complex man, albeit one much funnier than most everyone else. On the reboot of his talk show, Arsenio Hall asked him what drove him. Gregory retorted: “My bills.”The One and Only Dick GregoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Showtime platforms. More
