Movies

The seemingly natural sparkle Anne Hathaway brings to her screen performances looks drained out of her for “The Last Thing He Wanted,” an adaptation of Joan Didion’s 1996 novel. This is apt. Hathaway’s journalist character Elena McMahon is an exemplary Didion heroine: a woman worn down to her last nerve.Directed by Dee Rees (“Mudbound”), who wrote the screenplay with Marco Villalobos, the movie plunges Elena into the 1980s geopolitical turmoil around the United States’s funding of Contras in Nicaragua. Didion’s novel keeps historical details obscured: The book never mentions Ronald Reagan or his secretary of state, George Shultz. They appear here; Schultz, played by Julian Gamble, is practically a supporting character. Elena’s misadventure motivation is personal: Her ailing father (Willem Dafoe) is himself a gun runner, and she imprudently chooses to carry out his last big score.[embedded content]With its near-telegraphic flashbacks and forwards, and first-person narration by an unnamed journalist writing in 1990s present day, Didion’s novel creates the impression of a slow-motion, backward-running film of a land-mine explosion. Rees jettisons the narrator and irons out the story into a linear structure. While never satisfactorily untangling the source material, she takes other, extreme liberties with it.The big problem with the movie isn’t the muddle, but the strain. A shot of Hathaway half-standing in a corner of a hotel room, limbs limp, bathed in the ever-so-golden light of sunrise through a window, doesn’t hit home so much as hammer the forehead. And making Ben Affleck’s uber-diplomat character look even more like George Reeves, the original Superman, than Affleck did in 2006’s “Hollywoodland,” in which he played that role, is not exactly subtle. The wolf in pop-culture-iconography sheep’s clothing! What incredible irony!The Last Thing He WantedRated R for violence, sexuality, language and George Shultz. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. More

A single Chinese billionaire, an investor and former taxi driver named Liu Yiqian, has spent at least $200 million on art in recent years, including $170 million for a Modigliani nude in 2015.With China as the second-largest market for the global movie industry, approval or rejection by the government in Beijing can make or break a movie’s bottom line.Orchestras from around the world plan tours of China years in advance, seeing them as a way to sell tickets, raise their profile and cultivate China’s growing wealthy class as donors.But now, as China struggles to get the coronavirus epidemic under control, the country is essentially closed for business to the global arts economy, exposing the sector to deep financial uncertainty. Movie releases have been canceled in China and symphony tours suspended because of quarantines and fears of contagion. A major art fair in Hong Kong was called off, and important spring art auctions half a world away in New York have been postponed because well-heeled Chinese buyers may find it difficult to travel to them.“It’s just not realistic to plan to offer things that are objects we know people want to see in person during a time when they can’t get here,” said Lark Mason, the founder of iGavel, one of six auction houses that have postponed many of their sales. “It does mean we have to scramble a bit because, OK, we don’t have this amount of revenue coming in. What are we going to do to fill the gap?”The virus has infected more than 48,000 people and killed more than 1,350 in China. As tens of millions of people are sealed off in cities there, new questions are emerging about how the virus, named SARS-CoV-2, is transmitted. Even art dealers who expect business to suffer because of closed borders and mandatory quarantines say they understand that stopping the contagion comes first.Still, there will be a financial impact. China was the third-biggest art market in the world in 2018, according to last year’s Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report, accounting for 19 percent of the $67 billion spent on art that year. (The United States, at 44 percent, and United Kingdom, at 21 percent, had the top two spots.)Last week, Art Basel Hong Kong, an annual art fair scheduled for mid-March, was canceled, depriving dealers and artists of a major opportunity to show works to customers based in China and beyond. The fair attracts droves of visitors who descend on the region for art shows, cocktail gatherings and yacht parties in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Hanoi and Tokyo before, during and after the fair. Some of these have been postponed or canceled as well.In Hong Kong, the cancellations come after months of political protests that have convulsed the city and left much of the territory on shaky footing. More

A bouncy version of the old show tune “(You Gotta Have) Heart” introduces Tanya Wexler’s “Buffaloed” and its incorrigible heroine, Peg Dahl (Zoey Deutch) — a woman in constant, agitated motion. We meet her charging toward a showdown with her nemesis, Wizz (a marvelously sleazy Jai Courtney), her possession of a heart still to be determined. What she does have, though, is a mouth.Often, she uses it to insult Buffalo’s football team, its chicken-cartilage delicacies and its stagnating economy. An inveterate and gifted small-time hustler, Peg dreams of an Ivy League education and financial freedom. A stretch in jail for forgery scarcely dims her ambition; and when she’s hounded by debt collectors — and learns that delinquent debt is Buffalo’s main industry — she persuades Wizz to give her a desk in his scummy collection agency. Of course, she’s a natural.[embedded content]Simultaneously rowdy and slick, “Buffaloed” is exuberantly paced and entirely dependent on Deutch’s moxie and pell-mell performance. Brian Sacca’s script is zippily entertaining as Peg starts her own shop and hires a misfit crew of money-grabbers whose success ignites an interagency war. At this point, the movie’s focus on pitch-black, blue-collar comedy is diffused by a hectic series of escalating attacks and reprisals; but Guy Godfree’s cinematography remains bright and breezy and the supporting actors — especially Judy Greer as Peg’s worn-out single mother — never miss a beat.Reminiscent of “The Big Short” (2015), Peg’s snappy, direct-to-camera lessons on the collections industry present debtors as eternally fruitful marks. Unlike the earlier movie, though, “Buffaloed” isn’t particularly outraged; it’s just grateful that Peg and her talents have finally found a home.BuffaloedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More