Movies

This may be merely a quirk on this reviewer’s part, but generally it doesn’t bode well for a movie when the opening text, setting up its premise, is in the passive voice. “In the 25th century, time travel has been achieved,” it reads. Additionally, “assassins have been dispatched” to kill those who would make — or, I suppose, would have made — that future world a worse place.By way of example, “Same Boat” — directed by Chris Roberti, who also stars in it — then takes us to a beach in the year 1989. There, a couple of those assassins from the 25th century, James and Mot (Roberti and Julia Schonberg), use a device that looks like what you might call a phaser, but more like what you would definitely call a forehead thermometer, to kill a couple that would have, years later, pioneered reality television.Get it? Yes, surely you do.Cut to the present day on a cruise ship, and James and Mot, who haven’t aged because they are, after all, time travelers, are on the lookout for Lilly, who must die for a reason not immediately specified. Lilly (Tonya Glanz) has just broken up with her goofball boyfriend on the ship, and as James observes her, he develops — you guessed it — romantic feelings for her.[embedded content]Roberti also wrote the screenplay for “Same Boat.” (Two other writers are credited with concocting the story line, which is astonishing considering it’s wafer-thin.) The instinct to give him credit for devising a sci-fi premise that needs almost no special effects quickly diminishes as the movie slogs through a series of what look like filmed scene workshops. (As the end credits tell us, the movie’s cruise-ship shoot was a stealth one.)While Glanz is the only cast member who gets within swinging distance of charisma, Roberti’s chops as a romantic lead are lacking. His way of maintaining some idea of bro cool is to deliver most of his dialogue as if he just woke up. Remember how people used to complain about Marlon Brando mumbling? When James reveals the reason he must kill Lilly — “she discovers a legal loophole that allows for rampant pollution” — it at first sounds like he’s saying, “She shugs a lilo oompah that lows for remnant sloop show.”Same BoatNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, Xbox, Direct TV and through local cable providers. More

After her recent high-profile campaign for New York governor — not to mention untold episodes of “Sex and the City” — Cynthia Nixon struggles to convince as an Eastern European motelier and possible human trafficker. Playing the shady Una in “Stray Dolls,” a small-scale crime thriller, she delivers both performance and accent without fault. Even so, her casting is a problematic distraction, both from the movie’s far less recognizable stars and from a story that’s flimsy to begin with.“I got a big heart,” Una tells her latest acquisition, Riz (Geetanjali Thapa), an undocumented Indian immigrant who has arrived in upstate New York hoping for a better life. Promised a room and a cleaning job, Riz crashes into reality immediately when she meets her roommate, Dallas (Olivia DeJonge), a grasping runaway who steals Riz’s meager belongings at knife-point. They will be returned when Riz has carried out Dallas’s instructions to steal from the motel’s guests, a crime that Riz is adamantly unwilling to commit. Given that we have already seen Una surreptitiously shred Riz’s passport, it’s clear that the newcomer’s reluctance will be short-lived.[embedded content]So begins a depressingly familiar downward spiral as the young women’s fiercely-held dreams of advancement are derailed by fate and their own weaknesses. Pills are popped and imprudent liaisons conducted — most notably with Una’s shiftless son, Jimmy (Robert Aramayo) — as the fallout from a stolen brick of cocaine causes escalating peril. With no plan beyond the next disastrous move, the women are simply reacting to fairly predictable events that the script (by the director, Sonejuhi Sinha, and Charlotte Rabate) fails to weave into an original message.As Riz and Dallas inch from foes to friends (and maybe more), the movie’s vision is too narrow to exploit the obvious gifts of its stars. DeJonge, who strongly resembles the young Kirsten Dunst, has a feisty energy that doesn’t overwhelm the vulnerability beneath Dallas’s brashness. It’s Thapa, though, with her too-wise eyes and steely composure, who gives the movie substance: Initially appearing a helpless victim, Riz gradually reveals a fearlessness and facility with violence that suggest a darker past than she or the writers acknowledge. And when she seals herself in a phone booth to call her anxious family back home, her brightly animated lies transform her shocking behavior into a simple story of immigrant yearning.Despite its sense of dead-end desperation, “Stray Dolls” is made worthwhile by the richness of Shane Sigler’s nighttime cinematography and the consistent empathy of its tone. Sinha, herself a first-generation immigrant, isn’t about to judge anyone for reaching.Stray DollsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

The summer’s movies have been hit hard by coronavirus-related closures, with new releases either being postponed or relegated to VOD, but some films seem to have found the perfect release context in the pandemic. Neasa Hardiman’s “Sea Fever,” about an Irish fishing trawler beset by a mysterious infection, is a prime example. If the spooky grandeur of its deep-sea setting is somewhat shortchanged by the home viewing experience, the movie compensates with many topical terrors — such as characters’ arguing about the need to self-quarantine. I shuddered!Siobhan (Hermione Corfield), a bookish marine biology student, is assigned to conduct a field study on a commercial fishing boat run by a rugged couple, Freya (Connie Nielsen) and Gerard (Dougray Scott), and their small crew. “Sea Fever” sets up these characters with just a few, cursory strokes — Siobhan is cold and clinical to a fault; the boat owners are desperate for cash; the crew is overworked but tight-knit like a family — before introducing its phosphorescent monster: a squid-like creature that attaches itself to the vessel and oozes parasitic larvae.[embedded content]Things turn progressively bloodier and gooeyer, but Hardiman focuses her lens on the human drama underlying it all: The profiteering that leads the boat into harm’s way in the first place; the secrets and betrayals that emerge among the crew; and the selflessness the infection demands of them. It’s all very resonant stuff, performed by an earnest and committed cast. But “Sea Fever” speeds through these turns of plot as if to check them off a list, with characters dropping dead before they’ve had a chance to earn our sympathy.Borrowing heavily from movies like “The Thing” and “Alien,” “Sea Fever” doesn’t have much that’s distinct about it, save for a vivid sense of place. Hardiman (who also wrote the script) imbues her story with strains of Irish folklore and the nitty-gritty of the fishing trade. The saturated visual palette — all greens and browns and neon blues — evokes a hint of fantasy, but the director grounds the movie in a kind of spatial realism, carefully deploying the crust and claustrophobia of the ship to atmospheric effect.Unfortunately, this rigor doesn’t extend to the plot. In real life, the most fearsome pathogens are those that defy prediction, but contagion movies work best when the threat abides by some consistent rules that can give structure to the stakes. The monster in “Sea Fever” mutates haphazardly to accommodate the story’s dramatic shifts: in one scene, it goes swiftly from predatory leech to a benign wisp, batted away easily by the heroine. The film also seems unsure about its own shape, switching indecisively between creature feature, epidemic thriller and environmental drama without articulating any meaty ideas.Sea FeverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

LOS ANGELES — Disney has taken an especially hard hit from the pandemic, with its theme parks shuttered, movies postponed and ESPN cable channel without live sports to televise.But the company on Wednesday offered an upbeat update on its newest business — one that may as well have been built for home quarantining: Disney Plus, its Netflix-style streaming service, has 50 million paid subscribers worldwide, an astounding number for a product that is only five months old.Before its November introduction, analysts expected Disney Plus to take until 2022 to reach 50 million subscribers.To compare, Hulu, now owned by Disney, has only about 30 million subscribers after 13 years in operation; Hulu has not yet been introduced overseas. The leading streaming service, Netflix, introduced in 2007, has about 167 million subscribers worldwide.“This bodes well for our continued expansion,” Kevin Mayer, Disney’s streaming chairman, said in a statement.Last month, Disney introduced the service in eight European countries and India, operating under a rollout schedule set last year. Mr. Mayer said Disney Plus would arrive in Japan and Latin America by the end of the year.Analysts say the coronavirus pandemic has most likely helped Disney Plus maintain existing subscribers and attract new ones, as parents look for ways to entertain homebound children. Disney Plus, which offers movies and shows from the Disney, Marvel, Pixar, “Star Wars,” National Geographic and “Simpsons” universes, has also benefited from a low monthly cost — $7 for those paying full price — and zealous marketing. An exclusive Disney Plus offering, “The Mandalorian,” a live-action “Star Wars” series, has been a runaway hit.Disney shares increased about 7 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday, buoyed by the subscriber count.The pandemic has battered Disney, which has lost roughly $70 billion in market capitalization since the beginning of February. With its movie, theme park, television production and merchandise businesses at a near standstill, Disney has slashed executive salaries by up to 30 percent; starting on April 19, the company will begin furloughing nonessential employees.It is unclear how badly the Disney Plus pipeline of original content has been affected. Subscribers have been promised a second season of “The Mandalorian” this year, along with multiple shows featuring Marvel superheroes. Analysts estimate that Disney Plus could lose as much as $1.8 billion annually, with programming a major expense.In an interview with Barron’s on Tuesday, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s executive chairman, floated the possibility of checking theme park guests for fevers to get that business back on its feet as soon as possible. (Summer at the earliest.)“People will have to feel comfortable that they’re safe,” Mr. Iger said. Barring a vaccine, “it could come from more scrutiny, more restrictions,” he added. “Just as we now do bag checks for everybody that goes into our parks, it could be that at some point we add a component of that that takes people’s temperatures.” More

For the latest Weekend Watch Party, our critics cued up “His Girl Friday,” Howard Hawks’s fast-paced 1940 newspaper comedy about a big-city editor and the ace reporter who also happens to be his ex-wife. The romantic, journalistic and political high jinks that drive the picture defy easy summary, but there are a lot of spoilers here. The two leading players — Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson and Cary Grant as Walter Burns — have a lot to say. As did our own newsroom motormouths and, of course, the soul of any paper, printed or digital — you, our readers.A.O. SCOTT Our predecessor Frank Nugent was not a fan of this movie. In his review for The Times, he wrote that “hysteria is one of the communicable diseases and ‘His Girl Friday’ is a more pernicious carrier than Typhoid Mary,” a metaphor that sounds even worse today than it did at the time.Not everything about this movie has aged well. The racism baked deep into the plot and floating through some of the dialogue leaves a bad taste, and the gender politics are a perpetual source of argument.In all that snappy dialogue is a ‘joke’ about a ‘colored’ woman giving birth to a ‘pickaninny.’ And yes, it was offensive even in 1940. And there were alternative entertainments that didn’t go there, even in 1940. Who doesn’t love Cary Grant? I know I do. So, this is not about purity tests, it is about what is and is not considered important when many Americans choose what they elevate as ‘perfect.’ — Mary C., Charlotte, NCSCOTT Other readers responded to the movie’s snap and vivacity. After 80 years, it’s still alive. And I wonder if you’d mind putting on your film historian’s hat — maybe it’s tall and pinstriped, like one of Hildy’s — and say where you think that energy comes from.This pic features FIVE different kinds of comedy: One: Verbal wit (She’s not an albino, she was born right here). Two: Slapstick (Hildy’s hat falls over her face, she can’t get her arm in her coat-sleeve) Three: Social Satire (the corrupt administration, fatuous and bumbling). Four: Farce (Hiding Earl in the roll-top; hauling Bruce’s mom out bodily). Five: Surrealism (naming Ralph Bellamy, Archie Leach, thus breaking the fourth wall). — Meyertune, NYCMANOHLA DARGIS Speaking of hats — let’s start with Hildy’s. She wears two that, like her matching striped suits, say different things about her and, like everything else in this film, add meaning. The first is a jaunty, Seuss-like confection (“a co-star in its own right,” wrote one reader, BD Klinger) that sits on her head like a chimney and that she wears when she enters the film. Her second hat is a quieter number worn when she visits a press room crammed with male colleagues. Like her similarly restrained second suit, it announces that she’s getting down to serious business.Hildy’s clothes say plenty before she opens her mouth. And so does her physicality. She powers into the film soon after it opens with a terrific whoosh. She parks her fiancé, Bruce (the invaluable Ralph Bellamy), near the entrance of The Morning Post, where she’s a reporter. Then with graceful resolve, she sails through the cacophonous newsroom, first pausing to chat up two female telephone operators and then full steam ahead toward Walter. She owns this space. And while there’s disagreement about Hildy’s character and how independent, much less feminist, she is, I think Hawks makes it clear from the start she’s a driving force — which says a lot about him.A reader — hello Stu Freeman — chided us for not mentioning Hawks in our party invite. But of course we were going to talk about Hawks and hoping that the readers would chime in, too.Pacing! Brilliant direction. And yes, Cary Grant is the greatest movie actor of all time.— Kim, CTSCOTT Your description of how Hildy owns the space is a tribute to both Russell’s charisma and Hawks’s craft. Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers and a lot of others passed on the role; as reader Ira Joel Haber put it, “every female star with the exception of Lassie turned the part of Hildy down, and it finally landed in Roz’s lap.” In earlier versions of the story, Hildy was a man, a Hildebrand instead of a Hildegard. That’s how it was in “The Front Page,” Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s original play, and in the 1931 screen adaptation, directed by Lewis Milestone, with Adolphe Menjou as Walter and Pat O’Brien as Hildy.What changes isn’t only the gender, but also the genre. A somewhat stagy newspaper picture is transformed into one of the great comedies of remarriage (to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Stanley Cavell) and also a masterpiece of cinema. The technique isn’t showy — it never is with Hawks — but the breakneck kineticism that can sometimes leave you breathless is visual as well as verbal.Every room has its mood, every scene its particular choreography, even when (rarely) the characters are sitting down. The three-way lunch date with Walter stealing Bruce’s seat and Hildy’s hand (for now just to light his cigarette). The card game in the press room. The quiet jailhouse tête-à-tête between Hildy and poor Earl Williams, a moment more intimate than any she has with Walter or Bruce. “Production for use” may be the dubious political nostrum that landed Williams on death row, but it also could stand as the slogan for the brilliant economy of Hawks’s filmmaking.The performances by the two principals are almost acrobatic feats: to retain clarity and sense notwithstanding a rapid-fire delivery of words and a liberal dose of sarcasm, playful insult, bemusement, innuendo, and scattered asides. That’s the chief genius of the film, to me, and it goes as much to the writing. — Jeffrey W., NYIt’s a fabulously detailed screenplay played with perfect timing and tone by even the actors with the smallest parts. — Green TeaDARGIS Other than changing Hildy to a woman, Hawks’s genius as a director is evident in how he deals with constricted spaces that fill the film. The three-way lunch is a perfect example. It seems so simple — just three people talking — but it’s virtuosic in its staging, acting and editing, its eyeball rolling and yammering. One of my favorite moments is of Hildy simply raising a hand to quiet Walter. It’s such a small, intimate, unmistakable gesture, the sort of signal that couples develop as part of their private language. We’re just 15 minutes in and we know Bruce doesn’t stand a chance.You also know he’s doomed because he talks so slow, at least when compared with everyone else. Readers narrowed in on the speed of the dialogue — an apparent 240 words a minute, far faster than the average speaking rate — which is another crucial Hawks choice. Most readers loved the pace, though some felt it was too fast (much like Zooey Deschanel’s character in the “Saturday Night Live” parody of the film). All I know is that it’s clear that too many latter-day screwball stylists (ahem, Aaron Sorkin) never learned one of this film’s great truths: that women are equal to men.I haven’t seen this movie in many years and watched it last night with three generations of quarantined family. It is as charming as ever but now reads to me, in this moment, as more about people frantically trying to convince themselves that everything is okay, all evidence to the contrary. The film never goes outdoors to the streets that are teeming with Red Menace, violence, and suffering; through the windows we see a gallows and a body on a sidewalk. While Hildy and Walter joke and flirt, a state-sanctioned execution is advanced by corrupt politicians. — Victoria, MASCOTT About those men. There’s no question that Cary Grant’s serpentine charm wins out over Ralph Bellamy’s stick-in-the-mud decency, but not everyone is “sold American” on Walter Burns. He’s a manipulator, a bit of a gaslighter and there are hints of physical abuse in the back story. (Note Hildy’s correction of “happy” to “slap-happy” and her later reference to Walter’s having “fingerprints” on her. All in fun, of course, but still.) As Hildy herself says, he’s “wonderful, in a loathsome sort of way.” He certainly isn’t honest or nice, but he is Hildy’s equal because, above all, he’s interesting.And that view of marriage — as a constant battle of wills that will be sometimes horrible but never boring — combines cynicism and idealism in a way that matches the movie’s jaundiced, loving view of journalism. A nest of vipers and scoundrels, but the only hope for democracy!DARGIS A nest with a smart, hard-charging woman. Hildy is a wonderfully complex character, one that frustrates as well as delights. You can see her weeping as a defeat, true, but I think that it makes her human, certainly more so than Walter. And, unlike so many men in the movie, she is supremely competent: her jailhouse interview, for one, says more about her competency than any word of dialogue. Walter may be a great manipulator, it is Hildy who’s speedily making, talking, writing her own destiny.This is simply the greatest newspaper movie of all time. Nothing captures how much fun it can be, how reporters can at the throats of their colleagues and rivals and suddenly band together when there’s an external threat and how facing jail, a wrongful execution, loss of the woman you love you’re only thought is “do you wanna see us get scooped?”—Mike, Houston More

These are unusual times for everyone, including Matt Reeves. Best known as the director of sci-fi action films like “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” and as a creator of TV’s “Felicity,” he’s returning to television as an executive producer of the Amazon series “Tales From the Loop.”That show, which was created by Nathaniel Halpern and released on Friday, offers a blend of speculative fiction and character drama (featuring Jonathan Pryce) as it tells interlocking stories set in a town that is home to an immense and enigmatic science experiment. In an unconventional twist, “Tales From the Loop” is adapted from paintings by the Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag.Reeves is also the director and a writer of “The Batman,” the latest reboot of that DC comic-book vigilante, with Robert Pattinson in the title role. As with numerous other film productions, work on “The Batman” was suspended last month amid the coronavirus outbreak. Reeves, 53, has remained with his family in London, where they are sheltering in place.In a phone interview on Tuesday, he said he was eager to get back to work while remaining mindful of more immediate priorities: “There are certain moments where you realize, OK, what do we have to do to make our loved ones and the people that we care about safe?”Reeves spoke further about the creation of “Tales From the Loop” and “The Batman” and the personal touch he tries to bring to his projects. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Why did you decide to adapt a collection of paintings?There’s something incredibly cinematic about Simon’s vision. They’re filled with not only a sense of wonder but also a sense of melancholy. That’s exactly what we connected to.How did you then turn those paintings into a TV series?Nathaniel saw an opportunity to do something that was like a sci-fi “Winesburg, Ohio,” the Sherwood Anderson book, and that’s one of my favorite books. The whole idea that each chapter is a beautiful, stand-alone short story and when you read the whole thing together, there’s a sweep of ideas, of [the character] George Willard’s coming-of-age. We talked a lot about “Our Town.” Jonathan Pryce is like the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” and he’s introducing you to these tales.Were you trying to avoid the tropes of other science-fiction shows that are more pessimistic about humanity and technology?From the beginning, the intent was that it wouldn’t be dystopian. It was never meant to be like “The Twilight Zone” — “It’s a cookbook!” — where the big narrative twist is the thing. We don’t have twists. There’s narrative, but it provides opportunities to explore through a sci-fi lens the mysteries of our lives.Did you always want to make science fiction and fantasy?I came to genre kind of late. When I first began filmmaking, I thought I wanted to make humanist, Hal Ashby-type comedies. That opportunity didn’t really present itself for me. But then I discovered how the surface of genre can be a way to use metaphors to do very personal work.Can you bring a Hal Ashby touch to your big-budget tentpole movies?I’ve been incredibly lucky in each of the genre films I’ve done. The “Apes” films were very personal to me. When I came in on “Dawn,” my son was about 1 ½, and just starting to speak, and there was an urgency with which I could see that he had the intelligence to speak but not the actual facility yet. That was the way [Andy Serkis] played [Caesar, the intelligent chimpanzee], he was aching to speak. There was something there about human nature and animal nature and the war between them. That was the thing that I really connected to.Is that really possible on a film like “The Batman,” where many masters have to be served?Of course these things have to be mined in a way that can make these companies money. You never know whether the people in charge of those I.P.s [intellectual properties] are going to be open to your vision. But if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have done “Batman.” I was like, look, there have been some great “Batman” films and I don’t want to just make a “Batman” film. I want to do something that has some emotional stakes. My ambition is for it to be incredibly personal using the metaphors of that world. It feels like this really odd throwback to the movies I came up on from the ’70s, like “Klute” or “Chinatown.” I’m not saying we’re achieving anything like that. Those are masterpieces. But that’s the ambition.What was it like to have a production of that size halted by a global pandemic?The whole thing is quite surreal. As much as we wanted to proceed, we wanted to make sure we were safe. We didn’t want anyone on our crew to get sick. But there was a crew member who actually got it, an incredible dialect coach named Andrew Jack, and he passed away. We were all in utter shock and heartbroken. It’s been weeks since we shut down, so I don’t think it was passed among the crew. But it’s very, very upsetting.When something like that happens, can you even begin to contemplate going back to work?Of course, [I want] to come back when the time is right. I’ve worked on a few things where, for various reasons, you have to stop for a moment — a cast member gets sick, and you have to shut down for a week. You can take stock of what you’ve done and prepare for what’s coming. I don’t think it’s a moment where I’m going, “Why aren’t we shooting?” I’m thinking, “There are bigger things.”Do you think the demand for this kind of escapism will be even greater when audiences are finally able to see it?I hope so. With “Tales,” and what we’re trying to do with “Batman,” is create just enough distance so that you can have the fantasy of saying, wow, what if I could experience that one impossible thing? You have a level of wish fulfillment. But it connects to your life in a way that doesn’t feel entirely like an escape. It can really touch you, but it gives you just enough distance that you don’t have to feel the pain of it too much. More