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      ‘Videoheaven’ Review: Rewinding the Tape

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      A documentary by Alex Ross Perry examines how movies and TV have portrayed video store culture.Borrowing the format of “Los Angeles Plays Itself” (2004), Thom Andersen’s great, sprawling survey of how movies have depicted Los Angeles, Alex Ross Perry’s archival documentary “Videoheaven” takes on a topic that is considerably more niche: how movies have depicted video stores.The subject is more capacious than it might sound. For one thing, it is intriguingly time-bound. Video stores couldn’t have appeared in movies until the late 1970s, says Maya Hawke, who narrates, in a nod to her role as a video store employee on “Stranger Things.” Eventually, such stores will only be portrayed by people who never experienced them firsthand, she says, “like westerns or the World War II film.”Drawing on Daniel Herbert’s book “Videoland,” Perry traces how films and TV went from showing home viewing as exotic or dangerous (“Videodrome,” “Body Double”) to seeing it as routine. Onscreen, video stores became sites for romantic interaction or potential embarrassment. Pondering a television trope in which a person seeking to rent a pornographic movie is, without fail, shamed, “Videoheaven” describes “an extremely 1990s paradox wherein adults are interested in sexuality but unwilling to admit it.”The observations range from the incisive to the grandiose, and at nearly three hours, “Videoheaven” could stand a tighter edit. Early on, a line of voice-over is sloppily repeated verbatim. And Perry only needs so many clips of obnoxious clerks, even if it’s funny to see David Spade repeatedly typecast in that role.But the material will be irresistible to any cinephile who has spent countless hours in these spaces, and a critic would do well to admit susceptibility. I’ve met Perry a few times over the years, and the first time, he thought I looked familiar — I assume because I had frequented the Kim’s Video where he worked.VideoheavenNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Old Guard 2’ Review: Thurman vs. Theron

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      Uma Thurman joins the expanded cast in this sure-footed sequel to the action blockbuster about a team of immortal heroes.Five years ago, “The Old Guard” injected a tired genre of superhumans in capes with existential alienation and grit. The aim of that film, about a crew of immortal vigilantes who go on rescue missions to help mankind, was admirable but also frequently one note.What could another installment offer? The best that a sequel can: buff out those blemishes, expand the universe and subvert the genre again. In “The Old Guard 2,” superheroes saving humanity is out, gods beefing with gods is in. The film, directed by Victoria Mahoney, is a sure-footed romp that tightens the screws, most immediately by flexing a bigger cast and broadening the lore of the original comic book series. All this expansion starts right where the last one ended. Believed to be lost under the sea for centuries, Quynh (Veronica Ngo), a fellow immortal and lover of Andy (Charlize Theron), has returned. She’s discovered by Discord (Uma Thurman), another mysterious immortal who is opposed to Andy’s meddling in human affairs. Aggrieved and feeling abandoned by Andy, who is now mortal, Quynh then becomes a useful tool for Discord.Whereas the first film was focused on the arrival of a new immortal named Nile (KiKi Layne), this one has forgotten immortals popping up (like Tuah, played by Henry Golding). That means a lot of drama, and fertile ground for these supreme beings reckoning with the most human of experiences: love and betrayal, guilt and regret, all complicated by being alive for millenniums.Ngo is the key anchor to these feelings, providing a strong emotional counterpoint to Theron that was just present in flashbacks the first time around. The shared history in their gazes and the pain and recriminations of losing and finding each other again translates the wistful burden of immortality that the first film mostly said, but couldn’t really make you feel.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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      ‘Heads of State’ Review: John Cena and Idris Elba Are Assassins’ Targets

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      This action movie about U.S. and British leaders, also featuring Priyanka Chopra Jonas, plays like a silly version of a BBC political satire series.As the U.S. President (and former movie star) Will Derringer prepares to meet the British prime minister, Sam Clarke, he has something of a chip on his shoulder. Journalists and aides figure he’s holding a grudge; during his presidential campaign, Clarke took Derringer’s opponent out for fish and chips. Then, the two are thrown together in the run-up to a NATO summit; their determination to patch up their relationship, which isn’t terribly strong to begin with, is eventually enhanced when they’re forced to fend off varied explosive assassination attempts.Directed by Ilya Naishuller, who also made the absurdist action pictures “Hardcore Henry” and “Nobody,” “Heads of State” plays like a season of the BBC political satire series “The Thick of It.” (If the show had been crafted to satisfy the Second City Television characters Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, whose approval of movies was contingent on things “blowing up real good.”) John Cena, the U.S. president, and Idris Elba, the British leader, craft their performances cannily — their characters don’t know they’re in a comedy, which makes things funnier. The way Cena’s face turns blank when his character doesn’t know what to do next (which is often) is particularly effective.The movie contains some intriguing, presumably deliberate nods to auteurist cinema. Like Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2011), it opens at the messy Tomatina (tomato festival) in Buñol, Spain, where a shooting aimed at a secret agent played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas is easily mistaken for an edible splat. As in Steven Soderbergh’s “KIMI,” a popular Beastie Boys tune is blared on a sound system during an action scene. And just like in Mike Judge’s “Office Space,” Stephen Root plays a functionary who is routinely humiliated by his boss. It’s loud albeit harmless japery, best appreciated with your air-conditioning cranked to movie theater levels.Heads of StateRated PG-13 for language and comedic violence. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      ‘40 Acres’ Review: This Land Is Their Land

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      Danielle Deadwyler tussles with cannibals in a disturbing postapocalyptic thriller.“You think bullets grow on trees?” a perturbed Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) asks her daughter. Eleven years into a global famine that has rendered farmland the most valuable resource of this near future, Hailey spends her days training her children to ward off the marauding bandits coveting the fertile family land she tirelessly works.The title of R.T. Thorne’s fierce and striking postapocalyptic thriller, “40 Acres,” is, of course, rife with symbolism. The name stems from Gen. William T. Sherman’s Civil War land promise to Black Americans freed from enslavement. Hailey’s lush rural Canadian property, whose familial ownership dates to 1875, is a fulfilled vow that never came to fruition in the United States. Tellingly, those who trespass on Hailey’s farm, such as a band of killers in the film’s gruesome opening skirmish, are exclusively white.To protect the area, Hailey and her Indigenous partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) — who’s also understandably sensitive to the preciousness of land — rely on their four children. A kindhearted Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) patrols; a perceptive Raine (Leenah Robinson) serves as a sniper; and the growing sisters Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc) and Cookie (Haile Amare) help where they can. Furthering fortifications include an electrified fence, A.T.V.s for roaming, a cache of guns in a fallout shelter and a network of subterranean tunnels suggesting an underground railroad. During the day they practice marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat, and at dinner, Raine presents a report on “The Proletarian Handbook.”Though Hailey prefers isolationism, new threats emerge testing her desire. Through her CB radio she learns that cannibals have massacred several surrounding farms. Her lone friend, Augusta (Elizabeth Saunders), is also missing. Unbeknown to Hailey, Emanuel, who’s desperate to find romance and others his age, takes in a wounded Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), who mysteriously appears in search of help.While we learn much about this family during the film’s five chapters, their surrounding world remains obscured. Hailey speaks about a military faction known as “Union,” but they’re never seen. Is a government still in place? Is there an opposition? Though these cannibals are a menacing presence, they also remain nameless and broad. By seeing the army and the cannibals as the same threat, Thorne limits the film’s dramatic potential to mix race with horror and history.Still, there’s a tense beauty to “40 Acres.” Deadwyler’s forceful energy fills the frame; through her rigid stature and her cleareyed speech, she lends power and humor to this lovingly stern mother. Through wide shots and sweeping tracks, the cinematographer Jeremy Benning juxtaposes this heartland’s soft golden hour magic with the hard violence necessary to defend it. A final freakout, taking place in multiple settings, helps to quench the viewer’s pent-up blood thirstiness, while Hailey’s last-act devotion to Emanuel adds warmth to a chilling apocalyptic story.40 AcresRated R for strong bloody violent content and language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Review: Wonder, Gone Extinct

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      With its seventh entry, the popular dinosaur franchise is starting to show signs of wear.In the 32 years since dinosaurs started roaming the earth again — that is, since “Jurassic Park” opened in theaters — a list of required ingredients for entries in the franchise has evolved. They always center on scientists and adventurers, usually bickering with one another. There’s always some shadowy billionaire, or billion-dollar corporation, lurking in the background. Kids are always in peril. And of course, there are always dinos.Save for the dinosaurs, this could describe pretty much any summer Hollywood blockbuster. But the “Jurassic” movies — of which the new film, “Jurassic World Rebirth,” is the seventh — have a particularly distinctive quality, something I rarely encounter in big-budget cinema. They’re action-packed and filled with peril, yes. But each movie also gives way, however briefly, to a sense of quiet awe.Cinema is well-suited to provoking wonder. In the art form’s early days, just seeing moving images left viewers astonished (and, in some cases, panicked). It has always felt a little like magic, the experience of watching another world emerge, drawn with lights, through a frame hung on a wall. Adding sound to the experience made it even more amazing, and most cinematic innovations over the past century — everything from Smell-o-Vision to 3-D to 4DX — try to wow the audience even more.Jonathan Bailey and Scarlett Johansson in “Jurassic World Rebirth.”Jasin Boland/Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentBut mainstream movies have often leaned more on spectacle (a shark chomping in the water, superheroes zooming through the air, Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane) than awe, which is a quieter thing. Awe makes us feel small, and it feels good. The first “Jurassic Park” movie introduces the dinosaurs in a way that makes the characters, and the audience, stop talking and thinking about anything else and just stare. These giant, stately creatures — the franchise is especially fond of the sort with long, curving necks — are tremendous to behold, and John Williams’s score swells to symphonic heights. Yeah, you know that’s not a real dinosaur. But who cares? You feel small and hushed in the presence of something great, and ancient, and achingly beautiful.Every “Jurassic” movie has repeated this moment, trying to re-evoke in the audience that feeling of awe, with somewhat diminishing returns. But sometimes they still manage it. For instance, the 2022 installment, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” is not a very good movie. But it succeeds on this one specific front by moving the big dinosaur moment to a wintry landscape. Two Brachiosauruses have wandered into a place where loggers are working. They’re being slowly led away from the spot, and the burly men are silently watching. These animals can’t move quickly, but they’re not in a hurry either. Their ancestors were here long before ours, and their bodies carry the memory of a land before time.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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      How ‘Colors of the Wind’ Became a Generational Rallying Cry

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      Thirty years after Disney released “Pocahontas,” the film’s Oscar-winning song has taken on a life of its own with millennial and Gen-Z fans.In January, Lanie Pritchett expressed her displeasure with the second inauguration of President Trump by passionately lip-syncing a 30-year-old Disney song.“I had this rage in me,” the 22-year-old theater major at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas said in an interview. “It was a rough day for a lot of people. I thought, I can’t do much, but I can share my thoughts.”Her thoughts were encapsulated in a few lines from “Colors of the Wind,” the power ballad from Disney’s 1995 animated film, “Pocahontas.” Specifically, “You think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you / But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.”She uploaded a TikTok video with the overlay, “me arguing with magas for the next four years” — and a caption explaining that her progressive views partly stem from “Pocahontas” being her “favorite princess movie growing up.” It quickly racked up more than half a million views.Pritchett, who is a lesbian, was raised in a conservative household in East Texas, where she and her sister would give living-room performances of “Colors of the Wind” while the “Pocahontas” DVD played in the background. She now views the song as an important commentary on queer inclusivity, cross-cultural understanding and environmentalism.“Obviously, that movie has its problems,” Pritchett said, “but the music was really good.”In fact, 30 years after Disney released “Pocahontas” in theaters in June 1995, the film’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning track has broken out as a beloved entity with millennial and Gen Z fans.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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      What to Stream After You’ve Seen ‘F1’

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      Once you’ve spent some time on the track with Brad Pitt, steer your way toward these other suspenseful racing movies and shows.For racing fans, Brad Pitt fans and those in between, the drama “F1” has made its way to theaters. Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, an aging driver enlisted to save a failing team fronted by a young hot shot (Damson Idris). The fast-paced movie aims for authenticity with help from a notable pro: Lewis Hamilton — the face of Formula One and a seven-time world champion — advised on technical details and has a producer credit. For those who have seen “F1,” and are looking to get their next full-throttle fix, these movies and shows, all available to stream, are worth a spin.‘Grand Prix’ (1966)James Garner in “Grand Prix.”MGMStream it on Watch TCM. Rent or buy it on major platforms.Heralded as the lead car to which all racing films follow, John Frankenheimer’s movie broke ground with its innovative use of vehicle-mounted cameras, jarring real-life footage and quick-jump editing (now a staple in the genre). “Grand Prix” throws viewers into the action with first-person driver perspective; the camera cars reached nearly 200 miles per hour during shoots. The film’s star, James Garner, drove in every race and even caught fire during a filmed crash. Viewers would be forgiven for fast-forwarding through the sleepy love stories to skip right to the action, which earned “Grand Prix” three Oscars in technical categories. This racing-movie primer checks many boxes: speed, glamour, drama and a slick opening sequence in Monaco, F1’s undisputed Valhalla.‘Senna: No Fear. No Limits. No Equal.’ (2011)Ayrton Senna in the documentary “Senna.”Universal PicturesStream it on Netflix.No documentary captures the heart of F1 better than “Senna,” which won two BAFTAs and masterfully weaves the story of Ayrton Senna da Silva, the Brazilian racer who figures prominently on F1’s Mt. Rushmore. Including never-before-seen footage from the Formula One archive, along with personal footage, the doc follows young Ayrton, seemingly born to race, as he relocates to Europe, battles discrimination and later, battles Formula One itself for driver safety. The model-handsome Senna typified the daring nature of F1 as he quickly became unstoppable in the rain, which can debilitate drivers. His three world championship wins made him a one-word brand and put Brazil on the racing map. Sadly, Senna’s determination to keep drivers safe was marked by his own tragic death in a 1994 crash. Poignant and powerful, “Senna” transcends racing as it documents a worldwide icon gone too soon.‘Rush’ (2013)Chris Hemsworth, center, as James Hunt in “Rush.”Jaap Buitendijk/Universal PicturesRent or buy it on major platforms.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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      ‘Rust’ Crew Members Settle Civil Suit With Producers, Court Papers Show

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      The lawsuit accused the producers of negligence in the fatal shooting of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the movie’s set in 2021.Three crew members who worked on the Western movie “Rust” reached a settlement this week in a lawsuit arising from the 2021 fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the film’s set, according to court documents and lawyers.They were seeking compensation from the producers of the movie, including Alec Baldwin as the lead actor and co-producer. The suit accused the film’s producers of negligence and failing to follow industry safety rules, allegations that the producers denied.The full terms of the settlement were not immediately available. Lawyers for the producers did not comment or were not immediately available on Saturday.The three crew members were independent contractors in New Mexico, where “Rust,” which was released last month, was filmed on a set outside Santa Fe. One was a dolly operator responsible for building and operating the apparatus for camera movement; another was the costumer; the third managed all the nonelectric support gear.All three were on the set when Mr. Baldwin positioned an antique-style revolver for the camera on Oct. 21, 2021. Mr. Baldwin had been told that the gun was “cold,” meaning it had no live ammunition.But as he practiced drawing the gun — in a scene in which his character was cornered by the authorities in a small church when he decides to shoot his way out — the revolver went off, discharging a live bullet, which killed Halyna Hutchins, the movie’s cinematographer, and wounded the director Joel Souza.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