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      The Surprise Ending of ‘Dune,’ the Popcorn Bucket

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      What’s in the $24.99 tub, exactly? Lindsay Moyer, a nutritionist, reviews the contents of the movie-snack “vessel.”In the “Dune” movies, a gigantic sandworm can rise from the desert and devour soldiers and military vehicles in its gaping maw. In real life, humans watching movies devour popcorn. These two ideas have been combined to spawn the “Dune” popcorn bucket, a sandworm-shaped tub that is having a cultural moment. The bucket arrives on the heels of other recent popcorn collectibles, like the 16-inch Barbie Corvette snack holder. But is there more to these vessels than meets the eye?Lindsay Moyer thinks about popcorn. She is the senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group focused on food systems and healthy eating. She sat down with The New York Times to discuss what she sees when she considers “Dune: The Popcorn Bucket.” This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Have you seen the “Dune” popcorn bucket?I’ve seen photos. I haven’t seen it in real life.First impressions?It looks pretty wild. It looks like it would actually slow you down in terms of eating. It doesn’t seem ideally designed to serve yourself popcorn out of.Because it is shaped like a worm’s mouth?Yeah, because of all the stuff sticking out of it.Do you like popcorn?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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      Gene Wilder and Frida Kahlo in Their Own Words in 2 New Films

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      These documentaries draw us in by giving the sense that we’re getting the story straight from the artists. But we’re not always getting the full picture.Famous artists are a favorite subject for documentaries right now — probably because people love to watch them. And there are a lot of different ways to tell the story of someone’s life; the more famous they were, the more tools at the filmmaker’s fingertips.Take, for instance, the new documentary “Remembering Gene Wilder,” a uniformly affectionate look at the life and work of the comic actor who died in 2016. (The film opens in theaters in New York on Friday, followed by a national expansion.) Though he did perform onstage, Wilder’s most memorable work was in films like “The Producers,” “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles.”Clips from those films and many others are combined with reflections from many of Wilder’s friends and colleagues, including his frequent collaborator Mel Brooks, Alan Alda, Carol Kane, Richard Pryor’s daughter Rain Pryor and Wilder’s widow, Karen Boyer. Pictures from Wilder’s youth and home video round out a portrait of a man whom everyone describes as gentle, innocent, kind, more or less saintly — and, of course, absolutely hilarious.There’s a danger to this kind of movie, in that viewers get the sense that they’re getting the whole story even though selection bias is inevitably at work. (“Remembering Gene Wilder” mentions only two of Wilder’s four wives, for instance, and judging from the 2018 documentary “Love, Gilda” — about his third wife, the comedian Gilda Radner — there’s a great deal of story left untold.) But the filmmakers made the smart choice to weave narration from the audiobook of Wilder’s memoir into the narrative, drawing the audience closer by giving the sense that we’re hearing the story straight from him.That’s also the technique at work in Carla Gutiérrez’s new documentary, “Frida” (on Prime Video), about the painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54). Her story has been told before, of course. But Kahlo kept copious, frank diaries about her life, her thoughts and her desires in diaries, and her artwork is highly personal. The actress Fernanda Echevarría reads from Kahlo’s journals and letters (in Spanish and English, depending on the language in which they were written), with occasional input from others close to Kahlo.The effect is immediate and personal, as if Kahlo is sitting right there with you, being funny and passionate and scathing and vulnerable. Gutiérrez uses archival footage of Kahlo, as well as paintings that are often animated, as if you’re seeing them come to life the way Kahlo might have in her mind’s eye. The result feels more raw and unfiltered than the one in “Remembering Gene Wilder,” more private and revelatory. But Kahlo always presented herself as a woman painting outside the lines, so it’s only appropriate that a movie about her would, too. More

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      ‘Irish Wish’ Review: Beware of Getting What You Want

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      Lindsay Lohan plays a book editor whose romantic dream comes true in this Netflix rom-com. But then Ed Speleers shows up in a red sports car.Lindsay Lohan’s well-loved early comedies involve her playing characters pretending to be someone else: think of the chaotic swaps of “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky Friday,” or the social climbing of “Mean Girls.”In “Irish Wish,” Lohan takes up another character who’s role-playing in her own life: Maddie, a diligent book editor who suddenly finds herself in another version of the world, where she’s marrying the handsome author she handles.The story doesn’t start that way. The guy, Paul (Alexander Vlahos), originally falls for Maddie’s friend Emma (Elizabeth Tan). Paul and Emma prepare to marry at his family’s manor in County Mayo, Ireland (cue extremely green touristic panoramas). Attending as a guest, Maddie takes a fateful walk and voices her wish that she were the bride instead. Presto — thanks to Saint Brigid, apparently — she wakes up at the manor, engaged to Paul.The movie (directed by Janeen Damian and written by Kirsten Hansen) skips over Maddie savoring the outcome of her wish, and shifts right into charming comedy around her confusion, including having no memory about how she got engaged. Maybe that’s another way of expressing that the match was never going to be a great fit. Paul is a bit of cad, and not even entertainingly awful. But hark, an alternative to this alternate reality appears with James (Ed Speleers of “You”), a photographer she meets by chance who’s forthright, sensitive and the owner of a sweet red sports car.Maddie warms to James’s wisdom, and her wedding plans with Paul begin to unravel. There’s also a worthy subplot about Maddie’s growing independence from her phone-clingy mother (Jane Seymour), but mostly the movie is a determinedly mild addition to the Lindsay Lohan “what-if” universe.Irish WishNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      In the Oscars Audience, Candid Photos From the Ceremony

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      Red carpet photographs are able to convey indelible moments of celebrity magnetism and spectacular glamour. But no step-and-repeat can bottle the crackling anticipation, the eruption of victory, the sting of loss or the quiet exchange between individuals amid a sea of superstars like these candid shots from the audience at Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony.Inside the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, our photographer captured moments viewers may not have caught otherwise. These images offer a peek at the year’s most celebrated actors and filmmakers interacting with one other, and not the camera, as we usually see them. Whether that be Florence Pugh looking intently at Christopher Nolan as she rests her hand gently on his arm; Messi the Border collie sitting poised and unfazed as a man, who is lying on the floor, claps faux paws in his face; Colman Domingo and Danielle Brooks leaning over a seated Da’Vine Joy Randolph with wowed expressions; or Lily Gladstone, Emma Stone and Ramy Youssef standing inches apart, gripping each other, their faces nearly touching.Clockwise from left: Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Jennifer Lawrence and Cooke Maroney. Randolph won the best supporting actress Oscar for her role as a cafeteria matriarch in “The Holdovers.”Amir Hamja/The New York TimesEmma Stone and her husband, Dave McCary, celebrated her best actress win for her role in “Poor Things,” along with her co-star Mark Ruffalo at right.Greta Gerwig, facing away, and Billie Eilish embraced, with Finneas O’Connell behind them. Eilish and O’Connell collected the trophy for best song for “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie.”Clockwise from top left: Martin Scorsese; Carey Mulligan; the “Godzilla Minus One” team with their trophies for best visual effects; and Dominic Sessa, a star of “The Holdovers.”Messi the Border collie, a star from “Anatomy of a Fall,” had fake paws held up in front of him to create the illusion that he was clapping.The Gretas (Lee, standing, and Gerwig) held hands.Florence Pugh with her “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan. Their historical drama triumphed on Sunday, winning seven Oscars, including for best picture.Clockwise from top left: Sandra Hüller and Jonathan Glazer, who directed her in “The Zone of Interest”; Cord Jefferson (facing away), director and writer of “American Fiction,” and Jeffrey Wright, its star; Colman Domingo and Zendaya; Christopher Nolan (facing away) and Cillian Murphy.Power players: Steven Spielberg, left, Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas. Nolan and Thomas, who are married, produced “Oppenheimer,” along with Charles Roven (not pictured).Robert De Niro, far left. Colman Domingo, who was nominated for the titular role in “Rustin,” and Teo Yoo (in front of him), from “Past Lives,” took a selfie.Colman Domingo and Danielle Brooks chatted with Randolph (seated). Emma Stone leaped from her seat, as John Mulaney presented the award for best sound from the stage.Audience Report is a series that looks at people looking. Produced by Jolie Ruben and Amanda Webster. More

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      ‘Classe Tous Risques’: Bromance in the Dark

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      Claude Sautet’s 1960 existential buddy adventure opens Friday at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration.“Film noir” is a French coinage but France’s homegrown crime movies, a staple of the 1950s and early ’60s, seldom get their due in the United States, however first-rate they might be. Case in point: Claude Sautet’s 1960 slam dunk “Classe Tous Risques,” known in English as “The Big Risk.”Dubbed, dumped, and unreviewed upon its 1963 U.S. release, Sautet’s existential adventure was belatedly discovered some 20 years ago. Largely unseen since, it opens Friday at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration.On the lam in Italy, the veteran mobster Abel Davos (France’s then reigning pug-ugly Lino Ventura) suffers from acute mal du pays. A tough guy who needs only a split second to accelerate from 5 to 50 mph, this volatile ruffian is further humanized as a devoted family man (traveling with his wife and two small boys in tow) and, as the film will reveal, a loyal comrade who expects the same in return.Looking to finance their comeback, Davos and a confederate (Stan Krol) stage a brazen daylight snatch-and-grab on a busy street in central Milan. Their mad dash for the French border involves multiple stolen cars, a diversionary motorbike, a hijacked speedboat, and a beachfront shootout. The partners are separated midway through only to meet again, going in opposite directions on the highway. The escape pauses for an exultant critique: “We’re the greatest!”Its title an untranslatable pun on train fares and insurance policies, “Classe Tous Risque” was adapted from a novel by José Giovanni, a French-Corsican ex-con with an unsavory wartime past and an inside knowledge of French penitentiaries. (The supporting actor Krol was a prison pal.) The film’s bang-bang opening invites the adjective “breathless” and indeed “Classe” has an actual relationship to Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature: Afraid to fetch Abel when he holes up in Nice, his old gang dispatches Eric Stark, a freelance criminal played by the “Breathless” lead Jean-Paul Belmondo.“Classe” and “Breathless” were shot back to back and appeared within weeks of each other in March 1960. “Classe,” however, failed to set the world on fire although the great Jean-Pierre Melville was a fan and subsequently directed his masterly “Le Deuxième Souffle” (1966) from a Giovanni novel with Ventura cast in a similar role. Rereleased in Paris in 1971, “Classe” fared better; championed by the young cinephiles known as “MacMahonists” after their favorite revival theater.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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      ‘The Tuba Thieves’ Review: The Real Meaning of Listening

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      In this film, the artist Alison O’Daniel uses the theft of tubas from Southern California high schools as a central hub in a wheel with many spokes.To hear a tuba is to feel it. The vibrations pulse through your body, and its giant bell is even designed to make the air shudder a bit. A tuba is also much harder for a thief to pilfer than, say, a piccolo, or even a trumpet. Yet from 2011 to 2013, tubas started disappearing from high schools in Southern California, for no obvious reason and with no explanation.The news of the tuba thefts formed a jumping-off point for the artist Alison O’Daniel, who used it as the central hub in a wheel with many spokes. The resulting film, “The Tuba Thieves,” is kind of a documentary — or at least, it has documentary elements. But there are re-creations and a dramatized story with fictionalized characters woven throughout as well, all exploring the role sound plays in our world, both for those who take it for granted and those to whom access is denied. O’Daniel, a visual artist who identifies as Deaf/Hard of Hearing, has a keen interest in sound as an integral element of human life, and “The Tuba Thieves” expands that query in many directions.The result, admittedly, is not particularly easy to follow. “The Tuba Thieves” is not very interested in explaining itself; its connective tissue is an idea, an exploration, and it’s designed to be more absorbed than understood. But for the patient audience, it’s richly illuminating. The film is open captioned, so no matter how you see it, you’ll see descriptive text onscreen. Sometimes that text interprets sign language — in fact, the title credits are signed by a character, Nyke (Nyeisha Prince), and much of the film’s dialogue is in ASL. Sometimes the text describes sounds. And sometimes it’s a little cheeky; “[ANIMALS GROWL],” one caption reads, and then is immediately replaced by “[MACHINES GROWL],” with images to match them both.Nyke, who is Deaf, is one of the film’s main recurring figures. Scenes with her father (Warren Snipe) and her partner, whom the film only calls Nature Boy (Russell Harvard), unpack her fears about becoming a parent — what if something happens to the baby, and she can’t hear it? — and the joy she takes in music. Another of the film’s characters is Geovanny (Geovanny Marroquin), a drum major at Centennial High School, from which tubas have been stolen; the theft affects the marching band’s performance as well as Geovanny’s life. Both Nyke and Geovanny are based on the actors’ lives, but you can clearly sense the truth coming through: that sound hearing is one thing, but listening is another.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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      ‘Snack Shack’ Review: The Kids Are Alright

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      Performances from the two main characters elevate this boisterous teen comedy to the level of raunchy art.On the face of it, Adam Rehmeier’s “Snack Shack” is a fairly standard-issue teenage stoner comedy: Lifelong friends in small-town Nebraska spend a summer avoiding town bullies, hustling for cash and competing for the affections of a dreamy neighbor, while boozing, toking and amply cursing in their spare time. But with its rambling momentum and quick-witted, almost musical dialogue, it feels less like “Superbad” than a Robert Altman movie, sort of like a pint-size “California Split.” As if to drive home the comparison, “Snack Shack” starts at an off-track betting parlor.The friends are A.J. (Conor Sherry), the bashful straight man, and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle), the easygoing party animal. It’s a familiar dynamic, but it’s made fresh by the performances, which are exemplary. Sherry plays A.J. with cringing self-loathing, inherited and desperate to be cast off. LaBelle, by contrast, is a whirlwind of manic adolescent enthusiasm: Brash and boisterous, a cross between Kevin McCallister and Steve Stifler, he’s the movie’s bawdy M.V.P. As he delivers the most artful swearing since Peter Capaldi in “In the Loop,” it’s hard to believe that this is the same LaBelle who was recently so wide-eyed and tender as Sammy Fabelman.Rehmeier maintains a good handle on compelling if straightforward material, and he demonstrates commendable restraint: He avoids the easy period jokes that come with the movie’s early ’90s setting, and as the plot takes a dramatic turn in the last act, he keeps clear of sentimentality. He also has a keen sense of what to emphasize and what to downplay. He rushes through the stuff with the bullies, as if wary of clichés, but takes time to linger on moments that matter, like A.J. and his father (the great David Costabile) sharing a well-deserved beer.Snack ShackRated R for strong language, drug and alcohol use, mild violence, some sexual content and wall-to-wall raunchiness. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In Theaters. More

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      ‘Knox Goes Away’ Review: A Not-So-Simple Plan

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      Michael Keaton is quietly compelling as a beleaguered hit man in this downbeat thriller.Movies rarely pause to simply watch a character think, and not all actors can withstand the scrutiny. Michael Keaton, however, has always been uncommonly adept at telegraphing intent with minimum dialogue. So when, early in “Knox Goes Away,” his character, a contract killer named John Knox, is warned by his doctor of an imminent mental health crisis, Keaton’s control is more eloquent than any breakdown.Unfolding over seven weeks, “Knox Goes Away” is, like its antihero, smart, unconventional and almost obsessively careful. Its unhurried pacing and mood of quiet deliberation won’t be for everyone; but this low-key thriller resolves its shockingly high stakes with a twisty intelligence. Knox is a creature of habit, a lover of philosophy (his longtime Polish escort — the wonderful Joanna Kulig, of Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2018 romance, “Cold War” — calls him Aristotle) — and a prized professional. But when his final job goes very wrong, and the blast radius threatens to enclose his criminal associates, Knox must accelerate his retirement plan. Of course his long-estranged son (James Marsden) chooses just this moment to beg for help in resolving an emergency of his own.The pleasure of “Knox Goes Away” lies in the tension between Knox’s rapidly deteriorating mental faculties and his meticulously devious plan to solve both predicaments, all while hoodwinking the cunning detective (Suzy Nakamura) following behind. Both Al Pacino and Marcia Gay Harden are perfectly understated in small, crucial roles, and the film (Keaton’s second as director, after his similarly brooding 2009 drama, “The Merry Gentleman” ) relishes their restraint.At a time when too many actors are cosmetically prohibited from raising an eyebrow or wrinkling a nose, Keaton reminds us that an expressive face is still a movie’s most valuable asset.Knox Goes AwayRated R for cold blood and a hot temper. Running time 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More