Movies

What more predictable way of introducing a sex addict than, well, with a sex scene?In the first few minutes of “Hooking Up,” which is available on demand, Darla (Brittany Snow) has an intimate encounter with the leader of her sex-addiction support group right before a meeting, smokes indoors and offends a cancer patient. She’s a crass, messy, rule-breaking antiheroine, and her work as a sex columnist only enables her promiscuity, until it becomes so excessive (in-office intercourse with an intern), that she is fired. Darla’s meet-not-so-cute with the aforementioned patient, Bailey (Sam Richardson), who has just learned his testicular cancer has returned, sets off a raunchy rom-com plot.When Darla’s group suggests that as a therapeutic exercise she map the scenes of her past sexcapades, she proposes re-enacting those memories with Bailey on a cross-country trip. The experiment presents Darla with an opportunity to get back in her editor’s good graces with an irresistible pitch for a juicy sexual travel diary. Meanwhile, Bailey, whose scorecard includes only his recent ex, will get to flaunt his new “girlfriend” on a last hurrah before he faces surgery.[embedded content]With his first feature, the director and co-writer Nico Raineau flips gender stereotypes, giving Darla more sexually aggressive traits and Bailey more timid ones But even that feels trite, especially when the itinerary, including the bumps along the way, is consistently foreseeable: opposites bonding, manipulation, self-discovery, then finding their way back to each other — through a cringey epiphany, no less.Hooking UpRated R. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. More

Stephanie Turner adeptly performs the roles of writer, director and troubled lead in “Justine,” a bittersweet drama about a grieving widow who comes to care for a girl with spina bifida. Now streaming on Netflix, the movie is a tightly observed character study that thins out during more expositional moments, but it’s still a thoughtful tale of loneliness and its remedies.Turner plays Lisa, a single mother of two who has been irritable and shut off from loved ones in the months since her husband’s untimely death. Needing money, she leaves her children under the care of her father-in-law and accepts a job as a nanny for Justine (Daisy Prescott), the girl with spina bifida, whose fussy, pampered parents would prefer their daughter spend most of her time at home. (The film was made long before any of the current coronavirus restrictions were put in place.) Justine’s genial mood cuts through Lisa’s melancholy, and they become friends. Both characters have been isolated — Justine not by choice — and could each use a boost to feel a little freer and more alive.[embedded content]As a writer and director, Turner isn’t subtle in illustrating how Justine’s parents’ choices are harmful to her growth. Home-schooled with a regimented schedule, Justine has adapted to her alone time by cooking up a host of imaginary friends, but her gregarious personality leaves her wanting for real social interaction. Worse still, Justine seems to be absorbing her father’s bigotry, innocently parroting swears and racist slurs.The film’s critique of ignorant parenting — particularly when it comes to race — can sometimes feel forced and obvious. But “Justine” makes an earnest case for letting kids live a little. As actors, Turner and Prescott mesh naturally, and Glynn Turman, who plays Lisa’s obliging father-in-law, provides a sympathetic foil to Lisa and her frequent bad temper. The bonds these characters forge are organic and heartfelt; even in sentimental moments, Turner wisely declines to tug on any heartstrings. We care about her characters enough already.JustineNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. More

So much of art is related to when you encounter it. I can never hear anything the way I heard “Illmatic” [Nas’s debut album from 1994]. That album spoke to the neighborhood that I came up in. I wasn’t the character on that album. I didn’t have the same envy or love or lust for the streets. “good kid, m.A.A.d city” — that sounds like me. Because, man, you got somebody that’s actually quite conflicted about the environment they’re born into. They don’t think the environment is that great. Maybe Nas didn’t either, but there was a braggadocio he had about it. The narrator in “good kid, m.A.A.d city” is a kid who is basically trying to cope with his environment. That just felt like me. If you strip the hood away, it’s not clear to me that this kid would be sad the hood was gone, or that he would have any longing to go back.

My son at that point was 12 years old. So he was only beginning to develop an aesthetic. That was the first album where he was like, “Man, this is great.” And I was like, “Yeah, it really is great” — not, “This is great and I’m just trying to be into what you’re into.” I didn’t have the same visceral feeling [as when I heard “Illmatic”] — that’s like falling in love. When I heard “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” it couldn’t hit me the same way, but goddamn, it did hit. It hit hard.

I think Kendrick makes the most emotionally mature rap I’ve ever heard. He has levels of vulnerability: Watching people get out of the hood and being jealous of them, because you think there’s only room for X number of people to make it out. I mean, who the hell confesses to that?

Sometimes you hear stuff that’s reminiscent of the ’90s and it doesn’t feel like it has advanced. It’s just redoing Wu-Tang or Nas. But Kendrick took what he was supposed to from all of that and did something totally different. I have a great admiration for him.

Interview by Wesley Morris More

“People have told us they’re watching!” the comic Elana Fishbein exclaimed into her laptop’s webcam from her Brooklyn apartment Saturday night. “Is that correct?” At the moment, she occupied one of several squares arranged on a screen.Another comic, Eleanor Lewis, responded from her apartment, in a separate square, “Like Tron, we’ve been digitized into the matrix.”It was an unfamiliar setting for a comedy show. Typically on Saturday nights, Fishbein, Lewis and others would be performing the improv show “The Armando Diaz Experience” at the Magnet Theater in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. But with the coronavirus pandemic forcing theaters and clubs in New York to close, seemingly overnight, the city’s comedy scene has been working to reconstitute itself online. Venues and performers across the country are looking for new ways to reach audiences now that the physical spaces that up-and-coming stand-ups and improv teams call home are in jeopardy.In the best of times, unless you’re a Chris Rock or Jerry Seinfeld, comedy doesn’t pay well, if at all. For little-known comics, this is a particularly harrowing moment. Already the Upright Citizens Brigade, the improv theater that is a New York institution, has laid off its teaching and production staff, according to memos obtained by the freelance journalist Seth Simons.“If you’re a comedian, you are doing shows and you’re doing open mics and all of that is now off the table,” said Jaffer Khan, 30, a comic who recently moved to New York from Houston.Fishbein, who has been with the Magnet through much of its 15-year history as a teacher and performer, put the stakes of an extended closure in stark terms: “We will probably close if there isn’t massive relief efforts for small businesses, period.”Livestreaming was one way to ensure the show could go on. For $2 to $12 a ticket, Fishbein and her castmates performed on Zoom — a virtual meeting app — as an ensemble from their separate homes, acting out spontaneous bits for their webcams instead of in person onstage. Though community is key to improv, these comics had to find a way to be on the same page without being on the same stage. As it turned out, there wasn’t much physical humor, and they lacked the one thing that all comedians long for: the validation of laughter from a physical audience. There was no way they could tell what was funny and what was not. All they had was each other.“It feels really awkward,” Fishbein, 37, said in an interview later. “First of all, we were all trying to deal with technical difficulties that we had never dealt with before. But because we’re improvisers, I think we’re pretty adaptable.” She added, “It was interesting to see how you could play in different ways using proximity, object work and your screen.” (Full disclosure: This writer is part of a sketch-writing team at the Magnet and performs standup.)Still, Rick Andrews, 33, an improv comedian who also took part in the online show, said, “It was cool as performers to see people in the chat and on Facebook afterward, not just being like, ‘Oh it was funny, I liked the show,’ but talking about how it was meaningful for them to connect back to this community because we’re all kind of isolated right now.”The “Armando Diaz Experience” sold around 250 tickets — more than triple what the l space at the Magnet can accommodate. Several other Magnet shows have since gone this route as well.It was not unlike what many late-night television shows tried in recent weeks. Except in those cases, some staff members served as seat fillers. Shortly thereafter, most of the broadcasts went on hiatus, though the hosts have been uploading bits online, like Jimmy Fallon’s “At Home Edition” on YouTube.Club owners, too, have been trying to adapt to the new reality. Stand Up NY, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, invited 50 comedians to come in Tuesday and separately livestream individual 15-minute sets to the empty house. Those at home looking for a laugh could access the feed all day for $5. Several other venues, large and small, around the country, tried similar approaches, including STAB! Comedy Theater in Sacramento, the Curious Comedy Theater in Portland, Ore., and the Stand near Union Square in New York.“I’ve been thinking about livestreaming for years, but I always pushed it off because I was focused on filling the seats at the club,” said Dani Zoldan, the owner of Stand Up NY. As the pandemic continued to make headlines, Zoldan said, “within a half of a second, I pivoted.”He added, “We have the stage. We have a venue. Comics will want to take part. They have nothing else to do. We’re giving them a platform to come, go onstage and work out their material.”Zoldan, 39, added that his goal was to make the programming streamable every day. “When I found out that this could affect my business and we can possibly close for several months, I right away think, ‘Opportunity!’”Khan, who took part in the Stand Up NY event, said that the difference in performing without a physical audience went beyond whether a joke landed.”There’s no qualitative judgment you can make on that set whatsoever,” Khan said. For example, he said, a no-name comedian could be followed by Dave Chappelle, but who could tell whether one was better than the other if there was no audience reaction?Livestreaming also provided outlets for comedians who could no longer travel to shows. Kelly Bachman, 28, and Dylan Adler, make up the cast of “Rape Victims Are Horny Too,” an hourlong musical that debuted last month at Caveat, a comedy theater in downtown Manhattan. Adler and Bachman — who made headlines when she confronted Harvey Weinstein at a bar where she was performing for charity — were set to take the show on tour until the coronavirus struck. Now they intend to livestream it this week“Like basically all comedians, I’m out of a job right now,” Bachman said. “We perform because we love it. We also perform for a living, and it’s what we do. Fish have to swim. Comedians have to tell jokes. But you can’t perform without an audience. Like a lot of other comedians, I’m trying to figure out a way to keep doing what I do.”If the shutdown lasts months, there may be a sea change in the way comedy is delivered and taken in. Digital ticket sales alone are not nearly enough to keep physical spaces afloat, given rents and other overhead costs. At improv spaces like the Upright Citizens Brigade, the Magnet and the People’s Improv Theater, classes provide much of the revenue. At clubs, the bar is a crucial source of cash. In the meantime, comedians will have to make do with their laptop screens.As Andrews said, “We’re trying to raise money and stay alive.” More

Sometimes, pessimism pays off.For instance, last year, around the same time that the coronavirus invaded the human population, Marc Maron stood onstage in Los Angeles and asked: “Isn’t there something that could bring everyone together and realize we have to put a stop to like almost everything? What would it take?” Then he answered his own question: “Something terrible. That’s what brings people together. Nothing good.”In “End Times Fun,” released on Netflix last week, Maron, 56, imagines doomsday scenarios with baroquely grim imagery: skies aflame, waters rising, lizard infestations, melting faces, technological singularity. His apocalyptic mood might have once seemed like typical hyperbole, the latest gloom and doom from a neurotic progressive in the age of Trump, but it now has the thundering resonance of prophecy. Maron meets the moment not just because we are all inching closer to his dark worldview, but also because he’s the rare comedian to ask the really big questions, the existential ones that take on more urgency in a crisis.[embedded content]When people are frightened, as they are now, they often turn to religion, which for Maron, doesn’t only mean prayer or visiting houses of worship. In the first show I saw of his in 2000, “Jerusalem Syndrome,” he described Disney, Microsoft and other corporate giants as our new gods, calming fears and providing comfort — for a price, of course. He also has repeatedly poked fun at his own shaky devotion. “I think I’m spiritual, maybe not,” he said in a previous special, summing up a certain brand of faith in a secular age.“End Times Fun,” a state-of-the-nation special, is his most ambitious production, sometimes to a fault, veering from reflective to raunchy, covering everything from the anti-vaccination and #MeToo movements to evangelical politics. Some of his premises, about the shadiness of Trump or the sexuality of Pence, are too familiar. What stands out is his anchoring theme: a skepticism of unshakable belief of any kind.Speaking in a deadpan that gets raspier the longer the sentence goes, Maron, who wears jeans, a vest and a bushy beard, has left his old anger behind. He sounds more seen-it-all weary, impatient with anyone who thinks they have answers, including his fellow podcaster Joe Rogan, whom he needles for selling health supplements before saying he’ll get some flak about it online from “the monoculture of freethinkers,” a salvo that seems aimed at the class of commentators and comics reflexively at war with political correctness. Maron describes himself as “85 percent woke, the other 15 percent I keep to myself.”He singles out three major American religions: Fox News, Christianity and the Marvel Universe. He spends the least time with Fox, while he is quick to point out that Marvel and Christianity were both “created in Jewish writers’ rooms.” In Jewish comedy, pride has always hidden right underneath self-hatred, a paradox Maron examines (and inhabits) as well as anyone.After three and a half decades in comedy, Maron has evolved into a sneakily clever joke mechanic. Smuggling punch lines into asides or seeming tangents, he attempts to approximate more of a conversation than a setup-and-punch line structure, one full of Socratic dialogues, short stories and barroom theories. Sometimes he seems more interested in a literary flourish than a belly laugh. His final joke is not hilarious but it calls back to no fewer than four different ones from the previous hour. In earlier specials, he almost fetishized spontaneity, but his work now is more overtly writerly, intricate and structured.Over the years, Maron has been on several comedy vanguards, from the birth of the alt scene in the 1990s to the podcast revolution more than a decade ago, but with age and success, he has become firmly part of the establishment, a television star whose podcast is as likely to feature Brad Pitt gushing over the host’s self-titled IFC show as a scrappy comic talking shop. (Full disclosure: I have appeared on it, and on a recent episode, he discussed me reviewing his special, the first time I have received a review invite by podcast.) Maron is now the old guard. It’s not uncommon to hear young comics poke fun at him. It’s part of the price you pay for a decade of nostalgizing in public as well as the inevitable hypocrisies you engage in if you live long enough. Maron hates comic-book culture, but of course he appeared in the movie “Joker.”Experience should humble you. And in an era of righteous certainty and flamboyant superficiality, what sets this special most against the grain is its commitment to doubt. He begins by imagining himself on the couch at a loss, wondering whether he can trust the few things he thinks he knows, which, in his accounting, number seven. When Maron says “I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s pretty clear the world is coming to an end,” the first part is just as important as the second. Comics tend to speak with authority on whatever subject they are hammering away on, but Maron keeps explaining how little he knows what he knows. The shaky ground that truth sits on is a rich subject in an age of disinformation and charges of fake news.With an assured hold on the material, the special’s director, Lynn Shelton (who also directed him in the 2019 indie comedy “Sword of Trust”), underlines the theme of the slipperiness of truth by constantly shifting views of the comic, adopting a multiplicity of shots and angles, most intimate, none taken from below or on high to give the impression of power or omniscience. Her visuals tell a story: There are many different ways to look at the same thing.At the end of one Maron’s riffs, he turns to the audience and says “Am I right?” This rhetorical device has become a comedy cliché, but he breathes new life into it merely by saying it with conviction. It’s rare to hear a comic seem like he actually wants to know. But he doesn’t. It’s a setup to the real message of this comic sermon that follows, a refrain that echoes what a lot of people feel about the state of things right now. Answering his own query yet again, Maron says, “I don’t really know.” More

Tonie Marshall, a French-American filmmaker and actress and the only female director to win a César award, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, died on Thursday in Paris. She was 68. France’s Equalities Ministry, which oversees matters of gender equality, confirmed the death but gave no further details, The Associated Press reported.Ms. Marshall was not well known outside of France, but at home she was a prominent woman in the male-dominated French film industry. Though she resisted being labeled a feminist, she confronted sexism head-on in her later movies. She became a vocal supporter of the French #MeToo movement and helped open up the industry to more women.After 30 years as an actress and 10 as a director, Ms. Marshall created a sensation in 1999 with her movie “Venus Beauty Institute,” about three women who work in a beauty salon and their search for love and happiness. It swept the top three César awards — for best film, best director and best original screenplay (by Ms. Marshall) — and one of its protagonists, Audrey Tautou, won the César for most promising new actress.Ms. Marshall researched the film by frequenting her local beauty salon, watching the interplay of clients and employees and listening to their dialogue. One day, a woman came in, removed her top and bra and sat there naked in what Ms. Marshall saw as a display of power, not exhibitionism; the scene is replicated in the movie.Her cinematic style was deeply influenced by the director Jacques Demy, who most famously directed “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964) and “The Young Girls of Rochefort” (1967).But in “Venus Beauty Institute,” Ms. Marshall paid direct homage to another French film that examined love from a woman’s point of view — “Belle de Jour” (1967), directed by Luis Bunuel and starring Catherine Deneuve.Ms. Marshall was especially enthralled with a famous scene in “Belle de Jour” in which Ms. Deneuve, playing a bourgeoise wife who is secretly a prostitute, is given a small, lacquered box by a client. She opens and closes it, without the audience seeing what is inside. Another character asks her how she can have sex with the unappealing man who gave it to her. “What do you know about love?” Ms. Deneuve responds.The scene was one of her inspirations in making “Venus.” After seeing “Belle de Jour,” she told Cineaste magazine in 2000, “I was left wondering, ‘What do I know about love?’”Ms. Marshall said she had been embarrassed to be the only woman ever to receive a César for directing in a country that had so many talented female directors.But she had also been ecstatic for herself, she said, finding the honors a vindication of sorts, since the film had had little financial backing and took four years to make.“Success felt good, considering so many people had spat on this film for so long,” she said in an interview in 2018 with the French journalist Marion Sauvebois.“Sometimes when I try to make a film and things get tough, I tell myself, ‘Remember, you aren’t mad. Maybe people will see something in it too,’” she said. “Or maybe they won’t. It’s a lottery.”Ms. Marshall was born on Nov. 29, 1951, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just west of Paris. She grew up in the movie business, the daughter of Micheline Presle, a French film actress, and William Marshall, an American actor, director and producer who was once married to Ginger Rogers.Ms. Marshall started out as a television actress in 1971. She later landed a bit role in Mr. Demy’s “A Slightly Pregnant Man” (1973), a star-studded comedy in which she acted alongside her mother as well as Ms. Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni.She made her directorial debut with “Pentimento” (1989), a comedy that she also wrote in which a boy and girl meet during a funeral. Her other directing credits include “Nearest to Heaven” (2002), starring Ms. Deneuve and William Hurt; “Sex, Love and Therapy” (2014); and “Number One,” her last feature film, which was released in 2017 in the United States and the United Kingdom as “Woman Up!”The movie tells the story of an ambitious corporate manager who faces vicious sexism as she aspires to become the first female managing director of a major French company.Ms. Marshall said it took several years to make the film. Her original idea was to follow a network of eight influential women working in industry, politics, media and sports and their ambitions and confrontations with men, she told Eye for Film, a British film publication, in 2017.“Not a single TV channel showed any interest,” she said. “So I put it on the back burner.”As time went by, though, she added, she found herself stewing over society’s attempts to put women “back in their place,” which to her meant “at home looking after children and keeping quiet.” So she dusted off her idea. This time, instead of telling the stories of eight women, she narrowed her focus to one.Just as she had researched “Venus” in a real beauty salon, she researched “Woman Up!” through in-depth discussions with female corporate executives.“Their anecdotes and testimony gave me a lot of material, and everything in the film is based on fact,” she told Ms. Sauvebois.One important thing she learned that surprised her, she said, was that regardless of how qualified women are to do the top job, they are often overcome with self-doubt and decline to become No. 1, preferring to be No. 2 or 3.“And yet,” she said, “there are men without their skills or qualifications who just click their fingers, say, ‘I want it, I want it,’ and they get ahead.” More