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      Pedro Almodóvar, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton on ‘The Room Next Door’

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      The director’s first English-language feature inspires talk of beauty, hope and more collaborations.At Monday night’s Venice after-party for “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar beamed at his leading ladies as they beamed back.I’m not just speaking of the affection shared between Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton and their director, though it was tangible. I’m talking about the actual beams of light that bounced off the women’s sequined gowns and back at their besotted director as we huddled in a room to discuss the Spanish director’s first feature film in English, a long-held goal that allowed him to cast two big Hollywood stars.“They are not actors now, they are like monuments,” Almodóvar said. Certainly, that’s how Moore and Swinton are presented on the poster for the film, which arranges their famous faces in profile as though they were massive mountain ranges.“Big peaks,” joked Moore.“Big sparkly peaks,” Swinton added, nodding to their dresses. “We can only wear sequins for the rest of our lives.”Adapted from the novel “What Are You Going Through” by Sigrid Nunez, “The Room Next Door” casts Moore as Ingrid, a successful author who hears that her former colleague Martha (Swinton) is in the hospital with inoperable cervical cancer. They reunite, swap catch-up stories and once again become fast friends, but Martha has a weighty request to make.With her experimental treatments failing and another taxing round of chemotherapy to come, Martha has booked a vacation house in upstate New York and bought a drug off the dark web. Might Ingrid be willing to accompany her on the trip, knowing that at some point, her friend will kill herself in the room next door?Though Almodóvar is fairly fluent in English, he had long been wary of shooting a feature film in the language. (Even as we spoke, he kept a translator close by for moments when his second language failed him.) Two recent shorts made in English — the gay western “Strange Way of Life” and the extended Swinton monologue “The Human Voice” — convinced Almodóvar to finally write his first feature-length screenplay in the language.But Almodóvar’s films have aesthetic pleasures that go beyond words, and “The Room Next Door” offers so much to look at — whether it’s a lavender sweater, an olive couch or a precisely chosen shade of burgundy lipstick — that is as satisfying as any line of dialogue. A sequence where the two women ransack Martha’s apartment reveals pulled drawers filled with the most beguiling knickknacks, and the upstate vacation house where much of the movie takes place is an architectural stunner. (Like Martha, I’d die to live there, too.)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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      Joaquin Phoenix and the Big Question at the ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Premiere

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      At the Venice Film Festival with his co-star, Lady Gaga, would the actor answer questions about dropping out of a Todd Haynes movie?Joaquin Phoenix has never been eager to face the press. The 49-year-old actor grants few interviews, speaks with great reluctance about his process, and once walked out on a journalist when asked whether his film “Joker” might inspire copycat violence.Knowing all that, you could already expect tension at the Venice news conference for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” a sequel to the 2019 hit that has Phoenix reprising the comic-book role that won him the Oscar. Still, this meeting with the media was expected to be particularly fraught as Phoenix has not done any press since August, when he dropped out of a film from the director Todd Haynes just days before it was supposed to shoot, scuttling the production and exposing the star to potential legal action.Hollywood has been buzzing about Phoenix’s murky motivations for weeks, not least because the project — a sexually explicit gay romance co-starring the “Top Gun: Maverick” actor Danny Ramirez — was based on an original idea by Phoenix, who brought the project to Haynes and co-wrote it with the “May December” director.Would Phoenix be willing to shed any light on the situation while in Venice or would he skip the news conference entirely, as “Don’t Worry Darling” star Florence Pugh did two years ago amid rumors of a feud with that film’s director, Olivia Wilde? While waiting for the conference to begin on Wednesday afternoon, journalists placed bets on whether Phoenix would bail twice.They were surprised, then, when Phoenix bounded into the room smiling, followed by his director, Todd Phillips, and co-star Lady Gaga. “First of all, hi everyone!” he told the press. “It’s nice to see you.”Phoenix remained upbeat and unexpectedly willing to answer questions until several minutes into the news conference, when a journalist asked whether he would share his reason for leaving the Haynes film. The actor began to answer, then paused, thinking it over.“If I do, I would just be sharing my opinion from my perspective, and the other creatives aren’t here to share their piece,” Phoenix said, referring to Haynes and his partners.He continued: “It doesn’t feel like that would be right. I don’t think that would be helpful, so I just don’t think I will.”Then he added brightly, “Thank you!”Since Phoenix dropped out of the Haynes film, it’s been reported that the actor often gets cold feet and nearly bailed on making the first “Joker.” Phillips implied as much when he talked about how he convinced Phoenix to star in a sequel. “If we were really going to do it, it had to scare him in the way the first one did,” Phillips said.The director admitted to his own nerves in bringing “Folie à Deux” to Venice, since the first film won the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion. “It’s easier to come in as the insurgent instead of the incumbent,” Phillips said.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 First Movie About Pop Music to Nail Its Mediocrity

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      This summer’s “Trap,” from M. Night Shyamalan, works hard to turn its fictional star — and her fans — into heroes.Last fall, I went with friends to see a popular British rock band at Madison Square Garden. I went in a fan of the group, but with every interchangeable song, every self-important gesture, I grew farther apart from the crowd around me: The more they enjoyed the music, the more it bored me. I had been pulled into a conversation with 20,000 other people, but I had nothing to say. By the first set break, I wanted to leave; by the third, I needed to escape.Cooper (Josh Hartnett), the protagonist of M. Night Shyamalan’s recent thriller “Trap,” probably knows how I felt. A hunky, hopelessly square man in his 40s, Cooper has taken his teenage daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to see her favorite musician, Lady Raven. Cooper is a model dad, bringing his daughter to the special matinee and searching for the perfect concert T-shirt — but whatever his desire to support her fandom, he can’t share it. Instead he spends the concert wandering the arena halls, surreptitiously listening to something else.Lady Raven is played by the independent pop musician (and daughter of the director) Saleka Shyamalan, who wrote a full album of original songs for the film. She has been cast as the kind of blandly contemporary pop star who might reasonably appeal to teenagers. Glimpsed in brief, her music comes across as snappy, dutiful and necessarily muted, each melody just memorable enough to register without pulling our focus from Cooper.This being a Shyamalan film, there must also be a twist. The model dad is in fact a notorious serial killer with a victim in his safe house. The concert has been set up to trap him. Yet you don’t side with the police: Listening to Lady Raven with him, you sympathize with Cooper’s need to get out.“Trap” is hardly the first film to make use of fictional music — fake pop songs that let directors and musicians create alternate cultural realities in the shadow of our own. Many of cinema’s made-up hits are genuinely catchy. But they rarely transcend pastiche: Mostly, they convince us via their similarity to songs we already know.Some of the best come from spoofs. In “This Is Spinal Tap,” from 1984, the titular metal group is captured in a low moment — failing albums, low ticket sales — but a survey of their past hits, like “(Listen to the) Flower People” and “Gimme Some Money,” reveals how absurd their popularity has been all along. (The music, though, is easy to believe in: Silly as they seem, Spinal Tap rocks.) Similarly, the Lonely Island’s songs from “PopStar: Never Stop Never Stopping” (2016) combine undeniable hooks with ridiculous content: a braggadocio anthem about humility, a sex jam about a woman with an Osama bin Laden fetish. The punchlines wouldn’t land if the songs supporting them were not fluent in the language of contemporary pop-rap; to properly spoof this kind of music, you have to love it, at least a little.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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      James Darren, Actor, Singer and ‘Gidget’ Heartthrob, Dies at 88

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      His role as a surfer in that trendsetting hit movie led to success on television shows like “The Time Tunnel” and “T.J. Hooker,” and on the pop charts.James Darren, an actor and singer whose starring role as a California surfer in the “Gidget” movies made him one of the most popular heartthrobs of the late 1950s and early ’60s, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 88.His son Jim Moret said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure.Mr. Darren, a Philadelphia native who didn’t surf and wasn’t even a particularly strong swimmer, had been a contract player with Columbia Pictures when he was cast as an aspiring surf bum in “Gidget,” which also starred Sandra Dee in the title role and Cliff Robertson as the Big Kahuna, the leader of a surfing gang.Released in 1959, the movie told the story of a high school girl who befriends that gang in Malibu and develops a crush on Mr. Darren’s character, Moondoggie. It was a hit, and it became one of the first signs of the surfing craze that would soon include the music of the Beach Boys and the “Beach Party” films.Mr. Darren and Sandra Dee in a scene from “Gidget,” the 1959 movie that made him a star.Columbia Pictures, via Getty ImagesMr. Darren went on to play the character in two more “Gidget” films, “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” (with Deborah Walley in the title role) and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (with Cindy Carol); land a role in the acclaimed 1961 World War II drama “The Guns of Navarone”; carve out a long career in prime-time television, including a starring role on the 1966-67 time-travel series “The Time Tunnel”; and release a number of singles and albums, first as a purveyor of lightweight pop tunes and later as a lounge singer whose repertoire consisted mostly of standards.Before he was cast as Moondoggie, a character with a prominent singing role, Mr. Darren had never sung professionally. At first the studio considered having him lip-sync to someone else’s voice.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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      Daniel Craig Gets Explicit in Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’

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      At the Venice Film Festival, the star said he embraced the scenes with sexual encounters: ‘If I wasn’t in the movie and saw this movie, I’d want to be in it.’If you know Daniel Craig only as James Bond, “Queer” is liable to throw you for a loop. In this new film from Luca Guadagnino, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, Craig, 56, plays a drug addict whose sexual escapades and heroin use are filmed with matter-of-fact candor.But if you knew Craig even before he was pressed into Her Majesty’s Secret Service — when he was still an up-and-coming young actor who appeared in risky, sexually explicit films like “Love Is the Devil” and “The Mother” — then you might guess that “Queer” is much more in line with his sensibilities than some of the big studio fare he’s made recently are. At the film’s Venice news conference, he all but confirmed that hunch.“If I wasn’t in the movie and saw this movie, I’d want to be in it,” Craig told reporters. “It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there. They’re challenging but hopefully incredibly accessible.”Adapted from the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, “Queer” follows Lee (Craig), an American expat wasting away in Mexico City. Most of Lee’s waking hours are spent pursuing some sort of high, whether that means drinking to excess in dive bars, cruising any handsome man to cross his path, or shooting up heroin while all alone in his apartment.In his linen suits, Lee lurches through life like a well-attired zombie until he meets Allerton (Drew Starkey), a beguiling young drifter whose sexuality seems up for grabs. Does he like Lee or does he just like being liked? Allerton says awfully little, which only beguiles Lee even more. As the older man’s romantic obsession grows, he entices Allerton to help him search for a drug that can supposedly induce a type of telepathy; if it can be scored, maybe he’ll learn what the object of his affection is really thinking.Written in the early 1950s but not published until 1985, the Burroughs novel is slight and scuzzy. Guadagnino takes a much different approach to the source material, building lavish sets (this Mexico City was erected at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios) and imbuing the story with a sweeping romanticism.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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      At Telluride, Experimental, Topical and Sometimes Crazy Movies

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      A documentary made with Legos and a biopic starring a CGI monkey showed alongside films about abortion restrictions and other subjects in the news.As the 51st edition of the Telluride Film Festival came to a close on Monday, the films seemed to sort themselves into two categories: experimental or topical. The documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville and the musical director Michael Gracey each took big, ambitious swings to tell the stories of Pharrell Williams and the British pop star Robbie Williams (no relation). One used Legos. The other a CGI monkey. Other filmmakers turned the lens on issues in the news like transgender-care laws, abortion restrictions and further matters facing voters in the November election.And as always, conversations swirled around what will and will not go the distance to the Oscars in March.The director of Telluride, Julie Huntsinger, told the media at the start of the festival on Friday to prepare themselves for some crazy movies (though she used a more colorful term). It was less a warning than a promise, and it was followed by Neville’s film “Piece by Piece,” which was filmed entirely with Legos, depicting pop and rap superstars like Jay-Z, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams.“What if nothing is new?” Williams says in the glossy depiction of his life, due in theaters Oct. 11. “What if life is like a Lego set and you’re just borrowing from everyone else?”Later that evening Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”) relied on the magicians at Weta FX to depict Robbie Williams as a monkey, an approach that allowed the audience to “see Robbie as he sees himself,” the director told the crowd. Robbie Williams compared the experience of debuting his story to being “like an 11-year-old who’s having the best day possible.”“Piece by Piece” uses Legos to tell the story of Pharrell Williams.Focus FeaturesWe 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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      George Clooney Talks About Biden and ‘Wolfs’ With Brad Pitt

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      He also addressed the release plan for his new movie, “Wolfs,” co-starring Brad Pitt.Midway through a Venice news conference for the crime caper “Wolfs,” one reporter told George Clooney that she would ask the question on everyone’s minds.“That I look so good up close?” Clooney quipped.Though the 63-year-old was certainly sporting a nice tan, the big question wasn’t about his movie-star looks or even about “Wolfs,” which premiered Sunday evening at the Venice Film Festival. Instead, Clooney was asked about the effect of a July 10 guest essay he wrote for The New York Times Opinion section that called on President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to step down as the Democratic nominee.At the time, it was considered one of the most high-profile examples of Hollywood’s big-donor class losing confidence in President Biden after his debate against Donald J. Trump in June. Some journalists in the Venice press room applauded Clooney at the mention of his influential essay, but the star demurred. “The person who should be applauded is the president, who did the most selfless thing that anybody’s done since George Washington,” Clooney said about President Biden, who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee for the Democratic Party in late July. “All the machinations that got us there, none of that’s going to be remembered and it shouldn’t be. What should be remembered is the selfless act.”Alluding to the ascension of Harris, Clooney continued, “I’m very proud of where we are in the state of the world right now, which I think many people are surprised by. And we’re all very excited for the future.”Still, that wasn’t the only tricky question Clooney had to field during the news conference. Co-starring Brad Pitt, “Wolfs” is an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser — the two actors play rival fixers who must reluctantly work together to cover up a crime scene. The movie was originally earmarked for a wide release in theaters before debuting on Apple TV+. But after the streamer endured a recent run of theatrically released flops like “Argylle” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” that plan was significantly cut back.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 Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, Max, Hulu and More in September

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      “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,” “A Very Royal Scandal,” a “Walking Dead” spinoff and “Agatha All Along” arrive.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘A Very Royal Scandal’Starts streaming: Sept. 19Earlier this year, Netflix debuted a movie called “Scoop,” about the complicated negotiations that led to Prince Andrew’s headline-making 2019 interview with BBC Two’s “Newsnight,” covering his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The three-part mini-series “A Very Royal Scandal” tells the same story in a little more detail, with a screenplay from Jeremy Brock (the co-writer of “The Last King of Scotland”). Michael Sheen plays Prince Andrew, while Ruth Wilson plays Emily Maitlis, the interviewer, who kept pressuring the prince with follow-up questions, asking him to account for all the time he had spent with Epstein over the years.Also arriving:Sept. 10“The Money Game”Sept. 24“Evolution of the Black Quarterback”Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol’ Season 2Starts streaming: Sept. 29When this spinoff of “The Walking Dead” was first announced, it was supposed to be the story of the soulful hunter Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and his hard-edge pal Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) venturing into new territories together in a zombie-ravaged world. But when that territory turned out to be Europe, McBride had to drop out for what was described as logistical reasons. Her Carol made a cameo at the end of Season 1 though; and she is now on board for Season 2 (as well as an already announced Season 3). This new season will find Carol searching for her friend in France, while Daryl reluctantly gets more involved with the twisted political situation overseas, trying to help some good people make things better.Also arriving:Sept. 6“The Demon Disorder”Sept. 7“All You Need Is Death”Sept. 12“The Tailor of Sin City”Sept. 13“In a Violent Nature”Sept. 16“Candice Renoir” Season 10Sept. 20“Dandelion”Sept. 26“Wisting” Season 5Sept. 27“Oddity”Sept. 30“The Bench” Seasons 1-2We 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