Movies

Calm authority, an effortless intimacy with the facts, an empathy that’s felt, not merely read off a page: When the American president becomes comforter-in-chief by dint of a national crisis, it’s the toughest part of the gig.As millions of homebound viewers tune into daily coronavirus briefings, who can blame anyone for wanting to return to the leaders from our movies or TV? (No doubt having a screenwriter or two helps.) Setting aside performances based on actual White House occupants (sorry, Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln”), we prioritized big, bold conceptions — including some wonderful weasels — and arrived at 10 picks, roughly in order of best to worst.[embedded content]1998Morgan Freeman ‘Deep Impact’He’s got an easy way with a teleprompter and a voice that could soothe a population facing down an extinction-level event. Freeman’s President Tom Beck is everything you want in a leader when a planet-killing comet is hurtling toward Earth. Never mind that Beck hid this catastrophic news from the world for months, along with the secret U.S.-Russian countermeasure, a nuke-laden interceptor called the Messiah. “There will be no hoarding, there will be no sudden profiteering,” Beck tells his flock, and you actually believe the words will stick. His prayer is sincere. The man knows his Bible quotes.Available to rent or buy on Amazon, FandangoNow, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.1997Harrison Ford, ‘Air Force One’Here is the president as “Die Hard” action hero (and maybe that’s just what your quarantine binge needs). James Marshall — President Trump’s favorite onscreen POTUS — is no ordinary commander-in-chief. He speaks Russian fluently, served in Vietnam with uncommon valor and knows his way around an airplane’s cargo hold — useful for when foreign hijackers make their move after takeoff. Shout all you want, Gary Oldman, but you’re about to get booted mid-flight. Ford’s non-growly scenes before the terrorist siege reveal a family man and college-football fanatic. He’s decisive. If only every national emergency were this clear-cut.Available to stream on Fubo, and to rent or buy on Amazon, Fandango Now, Flix Fling, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.1999-2006Martin Sheen, ‘The West Wing’A show that turned the presidency into a running conversation (and even developed its own piece of grammar, the walk-and-talk, to extend those chats), Aaron Sorkin’s weekly drama did more to ennoble the inner lives of elected officials than most elected officials. Sheen’s complex commitment to the role of Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, a two-term Democrat, is the emotional anchor. While the material definitely skews leftward, there’s no party affiliation to its intellect and fierceness of feeling. Bartlet has too many high points to name, but his weaker moments of shaken faith are the show’s most lasting — that and a piece of strategy scribbled on a pad: “Let Bartlet be Bartlet.”Available to stream on Netflix, or to buy on Amazon, FandangoNow, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.2000Jeff Bridges, ‘The Contender’Bridges’s Clintonesque Jackson Evans is a president of big appetites — a gobbler of oatmeal cookies, a slurper of wine, a smooth talker, a screamer on occasion. Sweatshirt-clad and hyperverbal, he falls in the likable column, mainly for channeling his passions when it counts. During the scandal-tarred confirmation hearings of his vice-presidential nominee (Joan Allen), he goes all in, relishing the gamesmanship and taking on Congress in a confrontation that’s one of the most galvanizing final speeches of a political movie. “A woman will serve in the highest level of the Executive, simple as that,” Evans declares.Available to buy or rent on Amazon, Google Play and Vudu.2006Terry Crews, ‘Idiocracy’In the dumbed-down, trash-clogged America of 2505, the electorate is beguiled by a five-time wrestling champ and ex-porn star who ascends to the highest office in the land. (Note for posterity: The director and co-writer Mike Judge meant this as unthinkable satire.) President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho is a man of his day. As played by Crews with a James Brown-level amount of physical bounce, he electrifies the film, outshining everyone around him. Is he an idiot, though? Give Camacho credit: When facing a mass agricultural crisis involving the watering of crops with a sports drink, he puts the smartest person in charge (Luke Wilson) and heeds the results of science.Available to stream on Max Go or Amazon, or to buy or rent on Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes or Vudu.2012-19Julia Louis-Dreyfus, ‘Veep’Constantly aggrieved at snubs both real and imagined (“She’s gone full-metal Nixon,” whispers an aide), Selina Meyer is, at root, a No. 2. It makes her potentially unsuited to this list. But she does fail upward, making it to the Oval Office via accidental fortune in the form of a resignation. Louis-Dreyfus’s multi-season portrayal is consistently sharp, traipsing into uncharted realms of awkwardness even when the show’s overall narrative wobbles. As president, though, Meyer gets low grades: sneaky slush-fund improprieties, wild swivels on issues, voter suppression, even a war crime involving a drone strike and a dead elephant.Available to stream on HBO Now, HBO Go and Amazon Prime; or to buy on Amazon, FandagoNow, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.1964Peter Sellers, ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’Sellers’s dithering President Merkin Muffley — he of the nasal Midwestern accent and no spine — is one of the actor’s subtler achievements. High-minded to a fault (the liberal politician Adlai Stevenson was an influence), the character represents the director Stanley Kubrick’s flintiest bit of commentary: Niceties and manners won’t matter when a rogue Air Force general orders a nuclear attack and the doomsday clock ticks down. Listen to how Muffley minces around the Soviet premier’s bruised ego during a cringe-worthy hotline call (“Of course, it’s a friendly call!”), or how he openly worries about his ultimate place in history. He’s also the one who insists, immortally, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here — this is the War Room.”Available to stream on the Criterion Channel and Crackle, or to buy or rent on Amazon, FandangoNow, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.1964Henry Fonda, ‘Fail Safe’The director Sidney Lumet’s grittier films (“Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Prince of the City”) were still on the horizon when he spearheaded this Cold War thriller, a bunker-to-bomber race against time that, for all its visual panache, couldn’t avoid comparisons with the slyer “Dr. Strangelove,” released only months earlier.Regardless, Fonda brings dignity to his nameless world leader sweating out the seconds. Shielding his face in shame, he orders the unimaginable and takes full responsibility. The film has a near-cosmic sense of sacrifice; it exists in a political space where idealism is a president’s main weapon.Available to stream on the Criterion Channel, or to buy or rent on Amazon, FandangoNow, Google Play and Vudu.1981Donald Pleasence, ‘Escape From New York’Pleasence lent an icy gravity to John Carpenter’s “Halloween” as a heroic psychiatrist, an atypical role for a man often cast as the heavy. For this film, their second collaboration (written by Carpenter as an oblique response to Watergate), he’s back to being a worm, if an immensely watchable one. Converting Manhattan into a maximum-security prison may have been this guy’s idea to begin with, or so it’s implied by the terrorists taking down Air Force One. The way Pleasence’s aloof, unnamed head of state haltingly says goodbye to his staff as his emergency pod’s door slides shut (“God save me … and watch over you all”) speaks volumes. Later, we’ll watch him brandish a machine gun and give Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken the cold shoulder.Available to stream on IMDb TV, CBS All Access and Shudder; to rent on Amazon; or to rent or buy on Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.1970Gordon Pinsent, ‘Colossus: The Forbin Project’After placing the nation’s nuclear arsenal in the hands of a passionless supercomputer programmed to never act rashly, an American president looks on aghast as the artificial intelligence locates a sister system in Russia. Together, the two mainframes become increasingly willful.A dated but fun piece of fearmongering, the film was forgotten in the long shadow of the similar “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but Pinsent (better known for his performance opposite Julie Christie in the 2006 “Away From Her”) is indelible: a charming POTUS of Kennedy-esque swagger who’s often accessorized with a cocktail glass. He’s eventually reduced to being a bit player in his own administration — and an unwitting betrayer of the human race.Available to stream on Hoopla. More

The coronavirus pandemic scuttled South by Southwest and delayed the Cannes Film Festival. Niche releases never got a chance to play across the country — and the theaters they would have played at face an uncertain future. But several festivals, theaters and art-house distributors have tried to offer online substitutes. This list should be considered a small sampling.FestivalsTribeca Film FestivalOriginally scheduled for April, Tribeca has been postponed until further notice. But since March 17, the festival has posted one short each day on its website under the rubric “A Short Film a Day Keeps the Anxiety Away.” All the shorts are made by Tribeca Film Festival alumni, and they tend to allude to the current state of isolation and uncertainty. “Let’s Not Panic,” from 2015, stars Lyle Friedman as a woman with a crush on her therapist — a crush that he assures her could only come to anything in the event of a complete breakdown of societal norms. Cue an asteroid, hurtling toward Earth.SXSW 2020 ShortsThe email marketing service Mailchimp and the film distributor Oscilloscope have started a web page where viewers can — for free — watch shorts that would have been shown at South by Southwest. Even without an event in Austin this year, the festival handed out awards, and the streaming titles include some of the winners, like “No Crying at the Dinner Table” and “Regret.” Go to mailchimp.com/presents/SXSW.ReelAbilities Film Festival: New YorkThis annual festival shows movies that raise awareness of the perspectives of the disabled, like “Code of the Freaks,” a documentary examining representation in Hollywood movies, and “25 Prospect Street,” about a Ridgefield, Conn., theater that hires people with disabilities. The festival will take place on its original dates, March 31 to April 6, but it has moved online at reelabilities.org. Screenings can be watched at their scheduled times or for 24 hours afterward, and Q. and A.s will be available as well.TCM Classic Film Festival: Special Home EditionAfter canceling its annual Hollywood-based festival of vintage films, Turner Classic Movies will instead run a kind of simulated festival on television from April 16 through 19. The lineup — “A Star Is Born” (1954), “North by Northwest,” “Lawrence of Arabia” — might not sound all that different from ordinary TCM programming, but interviews from past festivals will be interspersed with the movies.Greenwich International Film FestivalThis Connecticut festival, which was scheduled to start in late April, will instead unfold as an online event May 1-3, with a selection of films and interviews. (Certain live events have been postponed for the fall.) The virtual lineup includes a program of Connecticut-related shorts and a sampling of documentaries and fiction features, like the Argentine film “High Tide,” shown at Sundance, about an affluent woman who endures a string of Buñuelian complications after she has a fling with a contractor. Go to greenwichfilm.org for more information.Indie FilmsKino MarqueeThe distributor Kino Lorber began an innovative partnership to keep art houses in business. If you want to see the wild, acclaimed Brazilian feature “Bacurau,” Kino’s most recent theatrical release, simply go to kinolorber.com/film/bacurau and select the cinema you would like to “see” it at. (Pay attention to the dates it’s playing there.) A $12 admission gets you five days of streaming, and the theater you’ve chosen gets a share of the virtual ticket price. More than 100 theaters stand to benefit, ranging from Film at Lincoln Center in New York to the Austin Film Society in Texas, the Olympia Film Society in Washington and Alamo Drafthouse locations. (You can also see Ken Loach’s take on the gig economy, “Sorry We Missed You,” which benefits Film Forum in New York.)Film Movement’s Virtual CinemaThis works more or less the same way as Kino Marquee but for a different distributor, Film Movement, which otherwise would have had five movies in theaters. They are: the kinetic Chinese noir “The Wild Goose Lake”; the Polish Oscar nominee “Corpus Christi”; Bertrand Bonello’s “Zombi Child,” an intellectual horror riff that cuts between present-day France and Haiti beginning in 1962; and two revivals, Bruno Barreto’s “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands” (1978) and Luchino Visconti’s “L’Innocente” (belatedly released in the United States in 1979). Go to filmmovement.com, select the movie you want to watch, then pick the theater that you want to benefit. The partners include BAM Rose Cinemas in New York, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago and the Loft Cinema in Tucson. Music Box StreamLocalMusic Box Films follows Kino Lorber and Film Movement’s lead with its own theater-streaming partnership. The service begins Friday with the Georgian feature “And Then We Danced,” about a dancer who finds himself attracted to a male newcomer in his troupe — an attraction that could jeopardize his position with the homophobic company. The cinemas splitting profits with Music Box include the Little Theater in Rochester, N.Y., and the Belcourt in Nashville. Go to musicboxfilms.com/streamlocal for more information.Oscilloscope: Circle of QuarantineThe distributor Oscilloscope Labs is holding off on putting the new releases “Saint Frances” (which opened last month) and “The Infiltrators” (which was scheduled to open March 27) online for now, but it is offering 10 digital downloads for $49.99, and giving $10 from each package to the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund, a crowdfunding initiative to support out-of-work New York City theater employees. Go to store.oscilloscope.net and on the Circle of Quarantine page, there are instructions on how to sign up along with a lengthy list of available films, including “Meek’s Cutoff,” from Kelly Reichardt, whose “First Cow” was one of the casualties of the coronavirus theater closures. More

The documentary “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” due Wednesday on Netflix after winning accolades at the Sundance Film Festival, drops viewers directly into the lives of disabled teenagers at Camp Jened in the Catskills in the 1970s. There were fun and games — and serious conversation that would propel the nascent disability rights movement.One of the stars is Judy Heumann, who proved just as inspiring as a counselor rallying campers around a meal as a pioneering disability rights leader organizing activists to fight for access.In her 20s, Heumann, who had polio as a child, battled the New York City Board of Education to become a teacher. She then led a 25-day sit-in in 1977 in San Francisco, demanding the enforcement of federal legislation that was a precursor of sorts to the Americans With Disabilities Act. After working in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Heumann released a memoir, “Being Heumann.”Speaking by phone Friday about the documentary — directed by Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, and produced by the Obamas — she discussed Camp Jened, what has changed since the 1950s and what needs to be done. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did this start at Camp Jened?We were focusing on who we were and what we wanted to be and began over these years to look at what our fears and concerns were.I had always been raised that, both because of my Jewishness and the importance of education in our family, but also this real belief that in the United States, if you worked hard and followed the rules, you would be able to achieve what you wanted. But that was becoming clearly more problematic for those of us who had disabilities.People were working hard and doing many things. But using The New York Times as an example, The Times was not covering disability as a civil rights issue — it was covering it as a medical issue, even when we were having demonstrations in New York City in 1977. The media at large was not depicting us in a positive way. Telethons were a significant way that people were getting information, which focused on helpless people. So camp was this playground. We were dating like you would if you didn’t have a disability, we were swimming, and playing baseball and arts and crafts, but we were also having time to gather our own voices.It was a liberating time; we could be ourselves and it absolutely helped formulate our futures.How did you and the movement get to Berkeley, Calif.?I got a call from Ed Roberts in the Bay Area, a leader who had been involved in setting up the Disabled Students Program and the Center for Independent Living. He had been trying to identify people that might be interested in coming to Berkeley to study and to learn about the Center for Independent Living.He asked if I would be interested. Nanci D’Angelo was a good friend. We moved out and then people that knew me and Nanci began moving out. Neil and Denise [Jacobson, who later married]; Ann Cupolo Freeman and Valerie [Vivona] were friends.Myself, Nanci, Neil, Denise, Valerie, Ann — we had our disabilities at birth or when we were young. Our experience was different than most of the people in the Berkeley center — most were spinal cord injury or acquired disabilities.At the San Francisco sit-in, were you worried about medical conditions, about asking people to stay?No. We were all adults, and what was important was to help make sure that we were able to get people in and out of the building who could help people. I’m not wanting to be cavalier — there were some people who couldn’t stay the whole time.We cared about each other; we came together for the same purpose. People recognized that the cause we were fighting for meant something to us individually as well as to a bigger group.How did you rally people with different sets of experiences with disability?In the grass-roots groups and [the Center for Independent Living] we had to recognize that discrimination against one was discrimination against all — that we needed to look at putting aside, I’m blind, I’m deaf, I had polio, whatever it may be, and focus on the fundamental changes; that ultimately brought us together and keeps us together. What about life before the A.D.A.?If you couldn’t walk, how would you get on a bus? You couldn’t.When we were in elementary school, we all came home and did stuff together, but once people started going to high school things changed because we were unable to do the things that our peers were doing. Teenagers would take a bus and go visit a friend, or go to the movies. I went to high school in a completely different school, because none of the high schools my friends went to were accessible. That’s why camp also played a very important role.Looking back, since Camp Jened, what has been heartening?In the ’50s and ’60s, where there were no laws, there were at least one million disabled children out of school — that is no longer true. [The Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed in 1975.] Buses and trains were not accessible, housing didn’t have accessibility standards, and there was a very weak emerging disability-rights movement, and internationally, it was similar.What’s happened is the formation of groups like the International Disability Alliance; the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, a treaty modeled on the A.D.A. (although we were unable to get the U.S. Senate to recommend ratification). We have the emergence of a stronger disability rights movement in the U.S. Organizations like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network run by people with autism, and organizations working cross-disability. Parents in the United States have also been gaining their voice.Tell me more about the treaty.The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disability — it’s important. I’m married to Jorge Pineda; he is a disabled guy from Mexico, and it’s given me a deeper perspective of the issues that disabled people are facing in other countries. [In countries that have ratified the treaty] it would guarantee the right to an education, end discrimination in employment, ensure roads and transportation and housing were built accessibly. This was the result of people finally acknowledging the discrimination existed.A committee out of Geneva does oversight. We in the U.S. have no one on that committee because we haven’t ratified it.What has been less heartening?We have much further to go. If you look at the media, representation of other minority groups has exploded, in advertising, for example, and on television, streaming; and there is a bump in the area of disability. But when I see someone with a disability in an ad, I’m drawn to it, it’s unusual. It is important for people to see themselves, to hear themselves.Violence against disabled individuals — it doesn’t get discussed. Nor do we discuss people who have experienced violence acquiring disabilities.Has politics today affected the disability rights movement? Is there still unity?We’re talking about 56 million people in the United States — and one billion people around the world — so I don’t want to say, you know, we’re one unified group.Ending discrimination, not just in the area of disability, but more broadly is what we’re looking at — and when you look at how the movement began, it was disabled people who were going to school together, to camps together, and that has been expanding. The voices of disabled individuals with different types of disabilities — [the movement] is looking at issues impacting disabled individuals from different racial backgrounds where discrimination is multifaceted. More