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      Forget Grotesque Sights. David Cronenberg Does Grotesque Desires.

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      “The Shrouds,” the director’s latest, underlines the central difference between his films and all the “body horror” that has come in their wake.In David Cronenberg’s newest film, “The Shrouds,” a widower named Karsh Relikh, played by Vincent Cassell, takes a woman on a blind date to his dead wife’s grave. They stop in front of her tombstone — a double plot, with empty space for Karsh to occupy in the future — and pay their respects in a very Cronenbergian way. On a screen on the headstone is a real-time image of his wife’s body, decaying in its grave, captured by the high-tech metallic “shroud” she was buried in; it is also transmitted to a smartphone app that allows Karsh to zoom and rotate the image at will. This technology allows people to remain connected to their loved ones by watching their bodies disintegrate, like a mash-up of the Buddhist corpse meditation and a mindfulness app. “I can see what’s happening to her,” Karsh says, enraptured, as his date squirms in discomfort. “I’m in the grave with her. I’m involved with her body the way I was in life, only even more.”You know what you are about to be shown: a body in some state of decay. But as the screen traces the desiccated shape of Karsh’s wife, Becca, with tender slowness, the effect is still irrationally startling. Death has rendered Becca’s elegant features down to an anonymized skull. Even so, there is someone on the screen whom Karsh recognizes and responds to at the deepest emotional level. You feel disgust, of course, but also a secondhand intimacy. What’s shocking is not the rotting body but the affection with which it is viewed, a tenderness that allows you to continue looking. You are not encountering death in the abstract, impersonal and horrific: You are seeing it anew, through the devoted gaze of the lover who has been left behind.These days there is nothing so shocking about seeing gruesome things on film. Horror movies are now mainstream, and it’s common for at least a few of the biggest releases at any given megaplex to offer some kind of grisly fright. Violence is also more common than ever on the screens of our laptops and phones, where social media catalogs accidents, bombings and dead children with eerie nonchalance. Despite all this, Cronenberg’s films remain difficult to digest. They are full of disconcerting bodily transgressions, rooted in aberrant desire. They get under the skin, repulsing even viewers accustomed to the usual Hollywood blood and gore. His last film, “Crimes of the Future,” from 2022, prompted one dissatisfied reviewer to write that it “should be renamed crimes against humanity.”Perhaps this is because of the way Cronenberg’s movies tend to relish the things that are most terrifying to the audience. Other horror films share the viewer’s repugnance, even reinforce it; only Cronenberg asks you to imagine what it would be like to be erotically transfixed by a car crash (as in “Crash”) or by tenderly performing ornamental surgeries on your partner (as in “Crimes of the Future”). His films invite you into a morality that does not yet exist, hinting at the possibility that the values and norms of your world could be supplanted someday. In a recent interview, he pointed out that we already possess the technical know-how to make something like his fictional death shrouds: “It’s an imagined technology probably nobody really wants, but I’m saying: What if somebody did want it?” Rather than dwelling in the horror of transgression, his interest is in what lies beyond — in transgression’s intimate life.Lately it feels as if movies are more Cronenbergian than ever, obsessed with triggering our fear of the body’s capacity for gruesome transformation. “The Substance,” a hit from the French director Coralie Fargeat, served up the story of an aging actress who creates a younger, sexier double of herself to stay on top of her body-obsessed industry — but suffers a rapid and freakish decrepitude when the double decides to go rogue. “Mickey 17,” a science-fiction romp from the Oscar winner Bong Joon Ho, follows a high-risk worker who is used as an experimental guinea pig, then cloned and tossed ruthlessly down a recycling chute. In each, we see bodies agonizing under the burden of a monstrous social system.‘It’s an imagined technology probably nobody really wants, but I’m saying: What if somebody did want it?’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Novelist Finds Unsettling Echoes in a Nazi-Era Filmmaker’s Compromises

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      The spark of inspiration for “The Director,” Daniel Kehlmann’s new historical novel about a filmmaker toiling for the Nazi regime, came during the first Trump administration. Kehlmann noticed Americans taking special care about what they said and to whom they said it. The self-censorship faintly echoed stories he’d heard from his father, who was a Jewish teenager in Vienna when the Third Reich came to power.The word “Austria,” for example, was banned by the regime. Suddenly, everyone lived in Ostmark.Kehlmann, a boyish 50-year-old born in Munich, has long been fascinated by the ways that citizens accommodated Hitler’s dictatorship. He centers his novel on the largely forgotten G.W. Pabst, an Austrian film director who gained fame in the era of silent movies and flamed out in Hollywood in the 1930s.Through an unfortunate happenstance — he’d returned to Austria to check on his ailing mother just as war broke out — Pabst was stuck when the Nazis slammed shut the borders. Eventually, he worked for the German film industry, which was overseen by the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.In Kehlmann’s telling, this was both a nightmare and a golden opportunity.“That’s the crazy irony here,” he said. “Pabst had more artistic freedom of expression under Goebbels than he did in Hollywood. And that’s what I really wanted to write about. A world where everybody is forced to make compromises all the time. And eventually, those small compromises end in a situation that is completely unacceptable, completely barbaric.”Kehlmann is surprisingly buoyant and sunny given the darkly comic pickles he regularly creates for his characters. During a three-hour conversation at a small kitchen table in his Harlem apartment, he held forth on his work, his life and on politics, which became unnervingly relevant to his latest novel when Donald Trump was re-elected.Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film “Pandora’s Box.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jack Black’s ‘Minecraft Movie’ Song, ‘Steve’s Lava Chicken,’ Hits the Charts

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      “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie,” made the Billboard Hot 100. He charted before with a song from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”Don’t call him a one-hit wonder. Jack Black made a surprise return to the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week with another unlikely song from a video game movie: “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie.”The song entered the chart at 78, fueled by its popularity on TikTok, where it has been used in more than 280,000 videos. On Spotify, the song has racked up nearly 22 million streams.“Steve’s Lava Chicken” is Black’s second Hot 100 hit from a video game-themed movie. In April 2023 his song “Peaches,” from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” peaked at 56 on the chart, according to Billboard.What makes “Steve’s Lava Chicken” so unusual is its length: It is just 34 seconds, which Billboard said set a record as the shortest song in the chart’s 67-year history. It is nearly three minutes shorter than the average length of last year’s No. 1 hits, according to Hits Songs Deconstructed, a company that provides analysis of hit songs.Black, a movie star known for playing quirky characters, is also a musician. He appeared in “School of Rock,” a film about a failed rock star who pretends to be a substitute teacher, and lampooned heavy metal with the comedy-rock duo Tenacious D, alongside Kyle Gass.“A Minecraft Movie,” co-starring Black and Jason Momoa, was released more than three weeks ago and has earned nearly $380 million domestically at the box office. Warner Bros. Pictures wants to cash in on the craze — and people who want to shout “I am Steve” and “Chicken jockey.”The studio announced that it would host a “block party” on Friday at participating theaters where fans can embrace the film by singing or meme-ing along to their favorite songs and scenes. More

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      Liked ‘Havoc’? Here are Five Movies to Stream Next

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      Gareth Evan’s action film starring Tom Hardy delivers a fire hose of action. If you want the punches to keep coming, we recommend these five movies.The new action extravaganza “Havoc” debuted on Netflix over the weekend with a bang — or, more accurately, nonstop bangs, a flurry of gunfire, spurting blood and breaking bones. It’s the latest effort from the writer and director Gareth Evans, who has established himself as a master action stylist in only a handful of features and shorts (and the first series of the British television show “Gangs of London”). If you’ve watched “Havoc” and are up for more — more of Evans’s distinctive aesthetic, more breathless action, more police corruption, or more of its star — here are a few suggestions.‘The Raid: Redemption’ (2012)Stream it on Netflix; rent or buy it on major platforms.Evans first came to international prominence with this fast, furious action epic, made in Indonesia and spotlighting the talents of its star, Iko Uwais, who also served (along with his co-star Yayan Ruhian) as the choreographer for the stunning fight scenes. The narrative is lean and mean, focusing on an elite team of paramilitary police — including the rookie officer Rama (Uwais) — who mount an ambitious raid on a crime-infested apartment block. Their target is the kingpin Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy), but he’s populated the building with an assortment of underlings, henchmen and small-time crooks that stand between him and these would-be invaders.This simple setup echoes the structure of countless video games, where the heroes must take out level after level of various middlemen before coming face to face with the “final boss.” Approaching the “Raid” films like video games is wise, particularly in understanding how the bruised and beaten Rama manages to take a licking and keep on ticking. The Welsh-born Evans met the martial artist Uwais while working on a documentary about pencak silat, an Indonesian form of fighting that combines multiple styles (kicking, punching, grappling, throwing and makeshift weapons) into a ferocious, all-or-nothing assault. Evans ingeniously incorporates that spirit into his filmmaking, coming up with an electrifying mixture of cop yarn, kung fu movie and U.F.C. match.‘The Raid 2: Berandal’ (2014)Stream it on the Roku Channel; rent or buy it on major platforms.Gareth Evans narrates a sequence from his film.Akhirwan Nurhaidir and Gumilar Triyoga/Sony Pictures ClassicsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Director Pedro Almodóvar Through the Eyes of His Stars

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      In advance of a gala celebration of the director’s career, we asked nine actresses about working with the auteur. They painted a picture of a precise artist.“I want to be an Almodóvar girl/Like Maura, Victoria Abril,” the singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina crooned in 1992. The song was an ode to Pedro Almodóvar, who even then was a master of passionate cinematic liaisons, often starring defiant women in love.Over 45 years, numerous actresses have shared that desire to be part of his boldly saturated universe, where despair and elation, sex and violence, tenderness and intense hatred often occupy the same frame. “It’s a club that I really relish being in,” as Julianne Moore put it in an interview.Film at Lincoln Center will celebrate that legacy with its highest honor, the Chaplin Award, at a gala on Monday where the presenters will include Dua Lipa, John Waters and Mikhail Baryshnikov.“Even though he constantly reinvents himself and no two of his films are the same, you can always identify a Pedro film by watching just one frame,” said Penélope Cruz, one of his most loyal collaborators. She said Almodóvar’s films pay “homage to all women.”She and Moore were among nine actresses who talked to me about working with the auteur, describing him as both a precise and unique collaborator. Here’s what else they said:Julianne Moore, ‘The Room Next Door’ (2024)“That slightly elevated sense to his stories, the colors, the composition, the energy and the beauty, all of that is Pedro,” Moore said.Iglesias Más/El Deseo and Sony Pictures ClassicsThe first time Moore walked into Almodóvar’s apartment for a rehearsal of “The Room Next Door,” she was stunned. She had seen almost every object there and all the hues in one of his films. Moore described this as “physicalized storytelling,” because the human drama he conjured up also materialized in the eye-catching costumes and sets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Symbolism in ‘Sinners’

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      Beneath the spectacle of an action-packed vampire movie, the film has plenty to say about what is sacred and what is profane.This article contains detailed spoilers.Ryan Coogler’s fantastical new Black horror film, “Sinners,” is a critical smash, a box office hit. But the director’s latest collaboration with the actor Michael B. Jordan has also left viewers with plenty to unpack. Jordan plays the “Smokestack twins,” Smoke and Stack, who return from working with Al Capone in Chicago to open up a juke joint in their Mississippi hometown. They arrange for their cousin Sammie, the blues-loving son of a disapproving preacher, to perform for the opening. But Sammie’s talents quickly attract a group of white vampires who threaten to overtake the town.“Sinners” is a work that’s interested in moral dichotomies. There are monsters and victims, of course — it’s a vampire movie. But when the film’s characters, objects and themes are examined through the lens of its political subtext, quite a bit is revealed about how “Sinners” defines good and evil in this supernatural version of the Jim Crow South. What follows is a spoiler-filled breakdown of what the film considers sacred, and what it deems profane.The SacredThe GuitarSammie treasures his guitar, given to him by Smoke and Stack, who told their cousin that it once belonged to the Delta blues great Charley Patton. The guitar represents the storied history of Black music, as when Sammie (Miles Caton) plays in the twins’ juke joint and summons Black artists and music makers from the distant past and future. Sammie’s music also attracts Remmick, the main vampire (played by Jack O’Connell), but also ultimately destroys him: In a confrontation, Sammie smashes his guitar over Remmick’s head, giving Smoke the opportunity to stake him.Miles Caton as Sammie in “Sinners.” Warner Bros. PicturesHaving survived the vampires, Sammie wanders around clutching the broken neck of his guitar, still believing it was Charley Patton’s. Smoke eventually reveals that Stack had lied and that the guitar had belonged to their father, proving that there’s power even in one’s personal legacy. Even though the guitar doesn’t belong to a blues legend, it doesn’t mean that an artist like Sammie can’t elicit the power of Black culture through it.The ChurchThe main chunk of Sammie’s story begins and ends at church. His father, a preacher, insists that Sammie quit the blues and pursue the same vocation. The church scenes frame the vampire horror, showing the place of worship as a safe place for the Black community. But it’s also where Sammie feels alienated by his father; it’s an institution of traditional values that can be limiting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rosa Barba Lights Up MoMA With Her Love of Cinema

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      Rosa Barba makes artworks with film. But you wouldn’t call them movies.Sometimes she shoots them with 35-millimeter cameras and beams them onto screens. Other times, she turns celluloid and projectors into whirring sculptures, or choreographs musical performances with flickering light.“Film is kind of the key word,” Barba, 52, said recently. “But, in the end, maybe you can’t say they are films anymore: It’s a film about film, or it’s about the idea of a film.”Film might be her medium, material or subject, but there are many other ideas in Barba’s works, too — about ecology, landscape, science and the nature of knowledge. All her signature obsessions come together at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from May 3, where an installation of her work, called “The Ocean of One’s Pause,” runs through July 6 in the museum’s Kravis Studio, a space devoted to experimentation.The presentation brings together 12 works from the last 16 years, with performances on six dates throughout the run, that add up to a statement on her expanded understanding of cinemaRosa Barba’s “Composition in Field” (2022), a light box overlaid with text-printed celluloid strips, cracking as they turn on motorized reels. Strips are printed with a poem by Charles Olson.“Cinema, for me, is the moment when you start a kind of embarkation,” Barba said in an interview at her Berlin studio. It wasn’t just light, sound, or movement, she said; it was “a chemical reaction” when those elements come together and trigger or unveil something for the viewer — Holland Cotter of The New York Times once described this as an ability “to knock the pins out from under tyrant logic and clear a space where difference can thrive.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Watch Ben Affleck Line Dance in ‘The Accountant 2’

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      The director Gavin O’ Connor narrates a sequence from the film featuring the actor and Jon Bernthal.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Ben Affleck kicks up his sneakers on the dance floor in this spirited sequence from “The Accountant 2.”Affleck’s character, Christian Wolff, an autistic C.P.A., has gone with his brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal), to a country western bar. Using calculations, Christian quickly figures out the pattern of a line dance and joins in.Discussing the scene in an interview, the film’s director, Gavin O’ Connor, explained that the scene was meant to accomplish several things as the film moves deeper into the second act. He added, “Bill Dubuque, our writer, and I wanted to abandon the plot and just make a hard left turn and go spend time with the brothers in a social environment so we can deepen their relationship while also allowing Christian the opportunity to connect with a woman in a way he’s never done before.”This leads to a moment in which Braxton expects his brother might make a fool of himself, but things turn out differently.“It dramatizes his mathematical brain, because you watch him start to look at the footwork and it all starts to compute very quickly,” O’Connor said in the interview.He also said Affleck attended several rehearsals to get the moves right: “We had a choreographer named Jennifer Hamilton who was wonderful, and before we got to the rehearsal stage, she was presenting me with a bunch of different ideas, because there are a lot of variations on line dancing, and then we narrowed it down.”They worked out the choreography with the dancers before bringing Affleck in. “Then Ben just did his thing,” O’Connor said. “Christian didn’t have to be great. He just had to do it. So it was never important that he lit the place on fire.”Read the “Accountant 2” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More