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      With ‘Maria’ Biopic, Angelina Jolie Could Make Her Oscar Comeback

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      “Maria,” about the opera diva Maria Callas, plays to the star’s strengths. Its Venice Film Festival debut was timed so the actress could avoid Brad Pitt.She’s one of the most famous actresses to have ever lived, but how formidable is Angelina Jolie’s filmography?After winning the supporting-actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted” (1999), Jolie made a few big hits like “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” as well as a string of movies that remained steadfastly so-so. (Who remembers “Taking Lives,” “Come Away” or “Life or Something Like It”?) Jolie’s most recent movies, the mildly received “Those Who Wish Me Dead” and “Eternals,” were released back in 2021, and her only other Oscar nomination happened ages ago, for Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film “Changeling.”Jolie has said that she takes frequent breaks from acting to spending time with her family, but it’s still been awhile since a movie really leveraged all she has to offer. Perhaps that’s why journalists at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday were quick to herald a career comeback in “Maria,” which stars Jolie as the opera singer Maria Callas: Here, at last, is a project that knows how to take full advantage of her star persona.Directed by Pablo Larraín, “Maria” follows the soprano near the end of her life as she reflects on the pressures of fame, her tortured romance with the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), and a singing career that began to falter as Callas lost confidence in her voice. It’s a meaty role that lets Jolie switch between strength and tremulous vulnerability with a couple of operatic set pieces that have her singing directly to the camera, all but asking the viewer to marvel at that movie-star face.Musical biopics tend to be catnip for Oscar voters, and at Thursday’s news conference for “Maria,” the first question was whether Jolie suspected she might have a shot at gold when taking on this role. The actress demurred, saying the people she was most eager to please were the opera fans familiar with Callas.“My fear would be to disappoint them,” Jolie said. “Of course, if in my own business there’s response to the work, I’m grateful.”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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      ‘Slingshot’ Review: Trapped in Space

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      The paranoia sets in all too quickly in this spare psychological thriller, starring Laurence Fishburne and Casey Affleck.In space no one can hear you scream, and in “Slingshot,” no one can tell you if you’re losing your mind or not. That’s the spare premise of Mikael Hafstrom’s psychological thriller, a film that attempts to graft tropes of the genre onto the inescapable corners of a spaceship, but can’t find the actual parts to make the transfer.John (Casey Affleck) is on a high-level mission with two other astronauts aiming to slingshot themselves onto Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in the hopes of harvesting methane as an energy source. Across the long voyage, the crew repeatedly enters hibernation sleep, which begins to fray their sense of reality. John begins seeing his lover on the ship and can’t tell if his other crew mate, Nash (Tomer Capone), is losing it himself as he begins scheming against Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne).The paranoia sets in all too quickly in this awkwardly paced thriller, and it’s among a handful of defects in a film whose creative process seemed to begin and end with its final twist in mind, haphazardly and unconvincingly working backward to construct what’s necessary to build up to it.Even allowing for its small budget, the film has the look and feel of a cheaply produced cable sci-fi drama, an effect that isn’t helped by its clumsy narrative structure and dialogue, especially in the Hallmark-like romantic flashbacks between John and his lover (Emily Beecham).Affleck and Fishburne do what they can to salvage things, and the final stretch picks up some momentum as it becomes tense between them. But by then, watching them contend with each other is to see two actors as trapped as their characters are in their doomed spacecraft.SlingshotRated R for language and some violent, bloody images. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Wasp’ Review: A Feminine Face-Off

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      This twisty psycho-thriller, about two childhood friends reunited under eerily ambiguous circumstances, is above all a dramatic showcase for its stars, Naomie Harris and Natalie Dormer.Actual wasps make multiple appearances in “The Wasp” — a twisty psycho-thriller by the director Guillem Morales — but the big sting comes courtesy of Heather (Naomie Harris, “Moonlight”), a housewife on the edge residing in Bath, England.Like with Amy Dunne in “Gone Girl,” there’s a lot going on in Heather’s brain. Why, exactly, does she put a hammer through a wasp’s nest while her husband, Simon (Dominic Allburn), hosts a crucial work dinner in the next room? Why does she message Carla (Natalie Dormer, “Game of Thrones”), her grade school bestie-turned-bully after decades of not speaking?The film’s muted color palette and the eerily glacial camerawork adds to this mood of menace. Clues are scattered throughout, like a flashback to Heather’s childhood when she witnessed Carla kill a pigeon. In another scene, Heather mulls over a notification from her ovulation tracker.Little by little, these mysteries are unpacked by way of an outlandish revenge plot that involves Carla, who now works at a grocery store. The elements of each woman’s identity are played like cards: Heather is Black, wealthy, docile and childless; Carla is white, poor, brutish and expecting her fifth baby. Themes of motherhood, class envy and racial trauma float around somewhat indifferently — there’s not much in terms of social commentary beyond the obvious. Still, the tension between the two women comes across, at times rivetingly, because of Harris and Dormer.Adapted from a stage play, “The Wasp” is above all a dramatic showcase for its two actresses — that most of the action takes place in one setting, Heather’s living room, adds to this thespian powder keg. Otherwise, the film is one aha moment after the next without the sense of humor or smarts to back up its fundamental absurdity.The WaspRated R for sexual assault and violence. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Deliverance’ Review: The Power of Camp Compels Him

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      Lee Daniels directs Andra Day and Glenn Close in an exorcism tale that includes melodrama along with the scares.The director Lee Daniels frees his actors to exorcise their demons with audacious performances that rank among the most memorable of their careers. (If you’ve yet to see the mischief Nicole Kidman gets up to in “The Paperboy,” you’re in for a hoot.) With “The Deliverance,” a riotously wacky horror flick, Daniels adds actual demons, too, sending his latest troubled heroine, Andra Day, straight over the edge. Day, a Grammy-winning musician, earned a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for her performance in Daniels’s “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” Not only can she sing and act — here, she’s an outrageous scream queen.Day plays Ebony, a single mother plagued by bills, alcohol addiction and her own violent temper. Her three glum children — Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins), Nate (Caleb McLaughlin) and Shante (Demi Singleton) — have endured years of abuse even before something wicked in their new home urges the tykes to hurt themselves and each other. Adding to the pressure, Ebony’s born-again, floozy mother, Alberta (Glenn Close), has moved in to recover from cancer (and criticize her daughter’s cooking), while a social worker named Cynthia (Mo’Nique) drops by to monitor the kids’ bruises, and, when pushed out the door, hurls as many nasty quips as she gets. When the spooky business starts, Ebony barely notices. She simply slams the basement door and keeps on trucking.The script by David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum is a riff on the 2011 case of Latoya Ammons, whose claims that evil spirits had overtaken her family were corroborated by a Department of Child Services case manager, a medic, a police captain and a priest. But “The Deliverance” is driven by Ebony’s struggle to convince anyone to believe her — the pitiless authorities refuse to look past her own flaws. To the audience, however, she deepens into a riveting character study, particularly in one close-up where Ebony agonizes over whether maintaining her truth is worth the terrible personal consequences.Glenn Close in “The Deliverance.”Aaron Ricketts/NetflixWe 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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      ‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ Review: A Search for a Black Luminary

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      Two digital sleuths set out to find the woman who lent her image to computer software in this scattered documentary.Upon the release of the 2017 podcast “Missing Richard Simmons,” the host Dan Taberski said that he didn’t want to tell the story in a first-person documentary, because that sort of nonfiction film — the kind that stars the storyteller — is hard to pull off without it seeming self-indulgent.In “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” another personal investigation into an erstwhile public figure, the director Jazmin Jones doesn’t even try to avoid the self-indulgence pitfall. She decks it out with candles and uses it as headquarters.Scattered but amiable, the film centers on Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross as they set out to uncover the mysteries of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, a ’90s software program that featured a beaming Black woman on its packaging. Operating out of an atmospheric office lined with trinkets, the duo follow a loose, makeshift plan: analyze Mavis Beacon’s legacy as a Black digital assistant, and interview the woman who portrayed her, named Renée L’Espérance.The former of these ambitions soon proves a more revealing and productive use of time. L’Espérance is elusive, and the duo’s quixotic efforts to locate her lapse into seances and tarot readings. (LexisNexis is a better bet.)“Seeking Mavis Beacon” still goes down smoothly, at least until its conclusion; while other films tie up too neatly, this one could use a bow at all. It helps that Jones and Ross are clever and likable guides — come to think of it, they would have made excellent podcast hosts.Seeking Mavis BeaconNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Reagan’ Review: Dennis Quaid’s Time-Hopping Cold War Drama

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      In this unabashed love letter to former president Ronald Reagan, Dennis Quaid fights the Cold War with conviction.In his long career, Dennis Quaid has sometimes played politicians. He’s been former President Bill Clinton (“The Special Relationship”) and was the president in the musical comedy “American Dreamz” with Hugh Grant and Willem Dafoe. Now, in “Reagan,” Quaid portrays former President Ronald Reagan with, if not brilliance, at least evident conviction. Time truly holds surprises for all of us.The movie, directed by Sean McNamara from a screenplay by Howard Klausner, opens with Quaid as the 40th president leaving a speech site and walking right into an assassination attempt. The picture then moves to present-day Moscow. Jon Voight plays Viktor Petrovich, a retired K.G.B. agent with an accent straight out of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” who narrates the story of Reagan to a younger functionary. And so we shift back to the 1980s, and then back to Reagan’s early years in radio and Hollywood. (Mena Suvari plays Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, and Penelope Ann Miller is Nancy.)In the first eight minutes, the movie makes as many temporal shifts as a 1960s Alain Resnais work, albeit quite less gracefully.Why is Reagan’s story relayed by a K.G.B. guy? Because in this unabashed love letter to the former president, Reagan was the force behind the fall of the Soviet Union. The movie implies that this “evil empire” collapsed as a result not just of his presidency, but of his anti-Communist activism during his entertainment career in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. These eras are depicted in scenes strongly suggesting that before shooting, the cinematographer, Christian Sebaldt, happened upon a fire sale on diffusion filters at the camera store.The cast is dotted with cameos from the actors Lesley-Anne Down and Kevin Dillon; the prominent Hollywood conservatives Kevin Sorbo and Robert Davi also appear as seals of approval, one infers. It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.ReaganNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘1992’ Review: Can They Get Along?

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      The uproar that followed the Rodney King verdict serves as a mere backdrop for fathers and sons to work out their issues in a heist thriller.The Los Angeles riots ultimately amount to little more than a plot device in “1992,” a rote heist thriller that tosses in a double dose of father-son melodrama. Or maybe the paternal bonding has been grafted on to the caper. Either way, nothing in the foreground of this hacky effort, directed by Ariel Vromen, is as interesting as what is happening in the backdrop — which is to say, the Rodney King verdict and its aftermath.Mercer (Tyrese Gibson) is a former gang member six months out of prison and now the sole custodian of his teenage son, Antoine (Christopher A’mmanuel), who resents him for not having been around. With the verdict set to be announced, Mercer wants Antoine to come straight home from school. Things “might get a little crazy out there today,” he says. Antoine doesn’t exactly listen; Mercer, searching for him that evening, catches up with Antoine right after he has thrown an object through a shop window. Later, the two are subject to a racist traffic stop in one of the film’s few potent scenes.Separately, the uproar that follows the acquittal becomes an excuse for a family of thieves to try to steal $10 million worth of platinum from the factory where Mercer works. After all, the city’s attention is elsewhere.But the hothead dad (Ray Liotta, in one of his final roles) likewise has trust issues with his sons (Scott Eastwood and Dylan Arnold). And when Mercer and Antoine seek refuge at the factory, the movie devolves into a tedious series of standoffs and tests of loyalty. The look is drab, the action is barely coherent, and Liotta deserved to go out with a better line than “I did the best that I could, son. I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.”1992Rated R. Gun violence and racial slurs. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Movie Trailers Have Gotten Worse. Why Aren’t Studios Having Fun With Them?

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      Promos give away too much or too little or are misleading or don’t leave anything out. We could go on. But there are ways to fix them.I know the trailer for David Fincher’s 2010 drama, “The Social Network,” by heart.We hear the soft sounds of a children’s choir singing Radiohead’s “Creep” as a montage of mundane Facebook interactions flashes across the screen. When the voices hit the lyric “you’re so very special,” the camera zooms out of a pixelated image to reveal the face of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg. It’s almost a minute in when footage from the actual movie starts to play and Zuckerberg chatters about wanting to get into Harvard final clubs. From there it’s a quick escalation of tension that reaches a peak when Andrew Garfield strides onscreen screaming, “Mark!” That’s when the tagline appears: “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”Just thinking about it, I get chills. “The Social Network” is a great movie. The “Social Network” trailer is also a great movie. It just happens to be only 2 minutes and 30 seconds long.Movie trailers are, at their most basic level, marketing, of course. But they can also be so much more, little short films unto themselves, defined by excellent editing and the ability to create a feeling of thrilling anticipation. I love a great trailer, yet I can’t help but feel that there’s been a drought recently. And I’m not alone. My social media feeds are flooded with trailer-related complaints. (Currently one of the main targets is the trailer for “Speak No Evil,” which has been charged with showing the entire movie.)With studios scrambling to fill theaters, they seem to be struggling to figure out what kind of trailers will draw audiences. Instead of taking chances, they are making creatively inert spots. There are trailers that give away too much (“Trap”), trailers that are disappointingly generic (“A Quiet Place: Day One”) and trailers that feel tonally off (“Gladiator II”). Mostly, no one is having any fun with them anymore.Throughout Hollywood history, trailers have taken many forms. In the industry’s early days, the appeal to the audience was direct. The trailer for “Citizen Kane” spends about 30 seconds on a shot of a microphone descending while the director and star Orson Welles explains in voice-over that “what follows is supposed to advertise our first motion picture.” 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