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      A ‘Taxi Driver’ Remake: Why Arthur Jafa Recast the Scorsese Ending

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      The artist has gone back to his filmmaking roots, re-examining what he sees as racial undertones in Martin Scorsese’s classic 1976 movie.Call it a return to his roots. The artist Arthur Jafa began his career as a cinematographer, working with his then-wife, Julie Dash, on the acclaimed “Daughters of the Dust” (1991) and with Spike Lee on “Crooklyn” (1994), before garnering art world fame, including a Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, for “Love is the Message, The Message is Death,” a snapshot of Black life in the United States created from collaged video footage. Jafa’s practice has embraced film and video, sculpture, installation, and even painting.His newest film, which goes on view Thursday at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea, has a provocative conceit: Jafa has remade the shockingly violent climax of a classic of American cinema — Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976) — in which the main character Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, storms into a seedy Times Square brothel and kills everyone in sight in order to save Iris, a child prostitute played by Jodie Foster, then 12 years old.In the original movie — what Jafa calls the “redacted version” — these characters, including Iris’s pimp Sport (played by Harvey Keitel), were white. That never felt right to Jafa. When he discovered that the film’s celebrated screenwriter, Paul Schrader, had intended Sport to be African American, he decided to “restore” the movie by introducing Black actors, except for De Niro and Foster. In the 73-minute-long film, titled “******” — or as the artist pronounces it, “Redacted” — we see this recut version of the bloody climax over and over, each time slightly but crucially different. The result is extraordinary — both technically and conceptually — and brings to the surface the racist animus long accepted as underpinning Bickle’s barely contained rage. (Quentin Tarantino also criticized the decision to change the character to white in his 2022 book, “Cinema Speculation.”)Arthur Jafa cast a replacement actor, right, as the pimp in “Taxi Driver,” originally played by Harvey Keitel, then skillfully wove in the new footage and rerecorded the voices. via Arthur Jafa and Gladstone GallerySchrader, who is still making movies at 77, said in a recent telephone conversation that the change to his original vision was the right call. “Someone at Columbia Pictures said to Marty, ‘we’re going to have a riot in the theater if we cast Sport as Black,’ and I realized they were completely right.”“I think it would have been a much more vile and revolting film if his hatred was directed completely at people of color,” he added. “You can’t make something that is so off the meter that it can’t be seen or that people simply can’t bear watching.” (Martin Scorsese did not return several calls seeking his comment.)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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      ‘Girls State’ and ‘Boys State’ Document Politics Through Teenagers’ Eyes

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      Though both documentaries follow programs for rising high school seniors, their differences speak volumes about the challenges the participants face.Documentaries about the American political system are legion, and grow every week. You can bet we’ll be seeing dozens more by the time this year’s presidential election rolls around. But “Boys State” (Apple TV+), the 2020 documentary directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, came at government from a different and very refreshing angle. That film chronicles a few participants in the Boys State program run by the American Legion in Texas and every other state except Hawaii. It’s an immersive mock government approach, designed to give rising high school seniors a taste of campaigns, diplomacy and the structure of American government.“Boys State” is charming for a few reasons. The participants are terrific onscreen, but more important, their relative youth means even the more politically savvy are still balancing — and in some cases, clinging to — an idealism and optimism about the American democratic process. A week isn’t enough to turn anyone into a hard-bitten cynic; instead, it feels like we, the adults in the audience, are the ones learning lessons, being reminded of what we hope, or wish, our system could be.To my delight, McBaine and Moss followed up this year with “Girls State” (Apple TV+), this time set at the Missouri Girls State in 2022. (Here’s my colleague Natalia Winkelman’s full review.) That year, Missouri’s Girls State and Boys State took place on the same college campus, though they’re separated, with little contact between the two groups.I initially expected “Girls State” to mirror “Boys State,” but it’s a whole different animal and, I think, maybe an even better movie. For one, filming just happened to coincide with the week following the leaked draft of what would ultimately be the Dobbs decision, which struck down Roe v. Wade. The program’s girls, many from small Missouri towns, seem genuinely diverse politically — and that means that matters like abortion law and bodily autonomy are frequent points of discussion.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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      Directing ‘Monkey Man,’ Dev Patel Makes Himself an Action Hero

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      With his feature filmmaking debut, “Monkey Man,” Dev Patel joins a list of performers known for dramas taking on unlikely parts.Ten years ago, when Dev Patel started thinking about making the film that would eventually become his feature directing debut, “Monkey Man,” he was not getting offered roles that, in his words, had “any sort of ass kickery involved or coolness.”“I think if I was to feature in an action film back then, the roles I was getting were more akin to the comedic relief, sidekick, the guy that can hack the mainframe,” he said in a phone interview. (Indeed in 2014, he was playing a tech-savvy character on the TV series “The Newsroom” and was about to reprise his role as the sweet but goofy romantic hero in “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”)In “Monkey Man,” however, Patel is not relegated to the sidelines. He plays Kid, a young man who slashes, punches and shoots his way through elite circles in a fictional Indian city. He seeks revenge on behalf of his mother, who was brutalized by a police chief now working for a corrupt politician, who is in turn supported by an evil guru. Inspired by the tales of the half-monkey Hindu god Hanuman, Kid takes on those in power who are abusing members of lower castes. The film, which was released Friday, is both Patel’s homage to the action genre, an obsession that started when he watched Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” (1973) as a child, and an attempt to remake it in his own image, wanting to tell a politically charged story with a hero who looks like him.Patel in “Monkey Man.” His character arc goes from underground wrestling to besuited action.Universal Pictures“Monkey Man” also marks Patel, 33, best known for his turn in the Oscar best picture winner “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), as the latest actor to transform himself into an action star. Gone are the days when the genre belonged to the Sylvester Stallones, Jason Stathams and Jackie Chans of the world. Especially, in a post-“John Wick” era, actors who made their names in serious dramatic work (and sometimes comedy) have decided to make the leap to action.The “Better Call Saul” star Bob Odenkirk, after playing a retired assassin in “Nobody” (2021), is now set to reunite with that film’s screenwriter, Derek Kolstad, for an action flick called “Normal.” In 2022, David Harbour, from “Stranger Things,” turned into a terrorist-pummeling Santa for “Violent Night.” And this year, Jake Gyllenhaal is throwing punches in “Road House,” while Ryan Gosling is getting his stunt man on in “The Fall Guy.” (Both of those men have flirted with action before, it is worth noting.)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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      ‘Monkey Man’ Review: Dev Patel Is Kid, a Human Punching Bag

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      Dev Patel stars as Kid, a human punching bag who comes up with a plan to avenge a past wrong. The hits keep coming and the hero keeps taking them in this rapid-fire film.The thriller “Monkey Man” opens on a tender scene and a nod to the power of storytelling, only to quickly get down to down-and-dirty, action-movie business with a flurry of hard blows and faster edits. For the next two frenetic hours, it repeatedly cuts back to the past — where a mother and child happily lived once upon a bucolic time — before returning to the grubby, raw-knuckle present. There, the hits keep coming and the hero keeps taking them, again and again, in a movie that tries so hard to keep you entertained, it ends up exhausting you.Set largely in a fictional city in India, “Monkey Man” stars Dev Patel as a character simply called Kid who, in classic film-adventure fashion, is out to avenge a past wrong. To do that, Kid, who works as a human punching bag in shadowy ring fights (Sharlto Copley plays the M.C.), must take repeat beatings so that he can, like all saviors, triumphantly rise. Before he does, he has to execute a complicated plan that pits him against power brokers working both sides of the law. As with most genre movies, you can guess how it all turns out for our hero. More

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      ‘Coup de Chance’ Review: Woody Allen’s Usual With a French Twist

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      Despite its Parisian setting, the setup is familiar from any of Allen’s New York movies: An act of infidelity presents a dilemma. Some of the jokes are funny.“Coup de Chance,” the latest from Woody Allen, looks and plays like many of his recent movies, only better; it sounds like them, too, except that it’s in French. Set entirely in France, it features well-heeled, loquacious narcissists who circle one another in a comic-dramatic story that touches on existential worries and folds in lightly jaundiced observations about life. There are pretty people and handsome homes, repressed lives and unleashed desires, the usual. As is often the case in Allen’s movies, there’s also an act of infidelity, which presents a dilemma, if not an especially torturous one. The jokes are fairly muted; some are funny.In a pleasant surprise, it centers on a woman, Fanny Fournier (Lou de Laâge), who didn’t make me cringe once. She’s intelligent as well as attractive, for starters, somewhere in her 30s and on her second husband, Jean (Melvil Poupaud). She lives in Paris, works at an auction gallery and seems interested in the world. Her life has texture and perhaps meaning, even if it’s a haut bourgeois bubble. There’s a Birkin bag on her arm when you meet her, as well as a maid to fetch drinks and a driver to deliver her and Jean to their country house, one of those quietly expensive retreats that most of us read about while waiting to get our hair cut. More

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      Watch an Elaborate One-Shot Montage in ‘Música’

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      Rudy Mancuso, the film’s director, composer, co-writer and star, narrates this sequence, which plays out in real time with movable sets.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.What’s the best way to narratively portray a life that has become nearly impossible to manage? How about with a one-take montage sequence that seems nearly impossible to pull off?That’s what Rudy Mancuso goes for in his debut feature, “Música” (streaming on Amazon Prime Video), which he directed, composed, co-wrote (with Dan Lagana) and stars in.The character he plays, Rudy, has been dividing his attention between the three closest women in his life: his girlfriend, Haley (Francesca Reale), with whom he’s hit difficult times; his mother, Maria (Maria Mancuso), and a new woman he is getting to know, Isabella (Camila Mendes). He’s lying to all three. “On the page, it was actually called the ‘Rhythm of Lies,’” Mancuso said in his narration.The scene is shot on a warehouse stage, with sets flying in and out to represent the different encounters Rudy has with these women. He moves from setup to setup, changing his clothes along the way, with lighting cues syncopated to the music. (Watch for that moment where Rudy starts a kiss with one woman, freezes in place and finishes the kiss with another woman.)Mancuso said that he and his crew needed half a day of rehearsal and a half a day of shooting 14 takes to pull it all off along.“This would not have been possible without the hard work of my production designer, Patrick Sullivan, and my amazing DP, Shane Hurlbut,” he said.Read the “Música” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Scoop’ and Prince Andrew’s Newsnight Interview: What to Know

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      A new Netflix film dramatizes the 2019 BBC conversation that led to the royal stepping back from public life.When Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, agreed to be interviewed on the BBC in November 2019, he likely didn’t expect it would one day inspire a feature film. But “Scoop,” which comes to Netflix on Friday, follows a TV musical and a documentary in depicting the 58-minute interview and its fallout. (Amazon is also producing an upcoming limited series.)In the explosive conversation, Prince Andrew discussed his friendship with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and denied allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Viewers were appalled by his comments, and British and international news media characterized the appearance as a PR disaster. In the following days, Prince Andrew announced he would step back from public life.Though the interview was conducted by the journalist Emily Maitlis, “Scoop” emphasizes the work of Sam McAlister, the producer who secured it. The Netflix film is based on McAlister’s memoir, “Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews,” which was published in 2022.Here’s what else to know about the interview and its fallout.Why did the interview take place?When Maitlis asked Prince Andrew on-camera why it was the right time to “speak out” and give a rare public interview, he replied: “Because there is no good time to talk about Mr. Epstein and all things associated.”By November 2019, Prince Andrew was widely acknowledged as one of Epstein’s friends, with whom he was known to have vacationed and partied. In a 2015 civil case, Virginia Roberts Giuffre accused Epstein of forcing her to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew when she was 17. Buckingham Palace denied the accusation.Sewell, and Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis, in “Scoop.”Peter Mountain/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