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      How Chris Messina Forced Matt Damon to Up His Game in ‘Air’

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      The “actor’s actor” ad-libbed so many funny threats that the movie star couldn’t keep a straight face and resorted to improvisation to keep up.Chris Messina has a hard time admitting that he’s funny.Even after his hilarious turn as a silver-tongued sports agent in “Air” and six seasons as a drolly charming doctor on the sitcom “The Mindy Project,” he is surprisingly self-critical when it comes to his comic abilities.“Comedy is so hard,” he said in a recent video call from his home in Los Angeles, adding an expletive for emphasis. “It’s hard to land a joke. So I still struggle with that. I’m best when I either don’t know it’s a comedy or don’t play it as a comedy — then you might find me funny.”This is difficult to believe if you’ve seen “Air.” As Michael Jordan’s outrageous, surly representative David Falk in the story of the creation of the Air Jordan sneaker, Messina is uproarious, screaming and swearing his way through fever-pitch negotiations with voluble panache. In the most memorable exchange, Messina calls the Nike scout and marketer Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) to lambaste him for secretly visiting the Jordan family. Messina goes utterly ballistic, hurtling around his office as he barks threats and insults involving various bits of bodily anatomy. The Ringer described him as the film’s “foul-mouthed” M.V.P.“Phone calls are usually just a bore,” Messina said thoughtfully, displaying an open and eager friendliness, pleased to be discussing the details of a craft he clearly loves. “There’s no one on the other line — sometimes there’s a script supervisor reading the lines off-camera.”Messina in “Air.” His scene partner, Matt Damon, was laughing so much that there were no usable takes of the character straight-faced in that sequence.Ana Carballosa/Amazon StudiosBut for “Air,” the director Ben Affleck had the idea to shoot both sides of the conversation simultaneously. He set up Damon and Messina in offices down the hall from each other, and had two sets of cameras rolling at the same time. “It felt more alive,” Messina said. “Matt and I could talk over each other, then we could improvise, then we could come together and say, ‘How about we change this to this?’ And then go back to our offices and keep going.”As Affleck told me in a recent phone interview, “All of the great lines in that scene are Chris’s improvisation.” And those improvisations, he said, had a particularly strong impact on Damon. “Matt could not keep a straight face. I had to use Matt laughing because there wasn’t a take of him playing it straight. He tried to play it straight, and he just couldn’t.”Damon explained that “it was already really funny on the page.” But when Messina came up with threats, “it dictated how I had to play the scene,” Damon said. “I had to start ad-libbing. I started talking to the background artists next to me, going, ‘It’s David Falk on the phone, sorry,’ and I just started laughing.”“Air” is Messina’s third appearance in an Affleck-directed film, after the Oscar-winning drama “Argo” and the period crime tale “Live by Night.” Affleck said, “I always look for work for Chris because he’s always so good. Every time he’s had the opportunity, he’s always done more than I envisioned or imagined.”Though “Live by Night” was not a commercial success, Affleck said he was “particularly proud” of Messina’s performance, for which he gained 40 pounds. “I said he could wear a body suit. He said no, it wouldn’t be the same,” Affleck said. “I can’t say enough good things about him.”Damon echoed the sentiment, describing his co-star as an actor’s actor, the kind “all the other actors always talk about. Did you see him in this? Or, he’s in that, that’ll be good.”Messina’s career started on the stage. A “tried and true New York theater actor” from Long Island, as he put it, he plied his trade “mostly Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway, and sometimes Off Off Off Broadway, in the Bronx and in Queens and on the Lower East Side.” He speaks of those scrappy early days with a nostalgic air, reminiscing about plays “where the actors outnumbered the audience, or where, when it rained, it would leak on the stage,” he said. In short, he loved it.For a long time, Messina yearned to find glory the romantic way. “I really thought, stupidly, that Mike Nichols would discover me in a play and put me in ‘The Graduate 2,’ you know? I had read about Dustin Hoffman. But that never happened.”Instead, Messina transitioned to the screen. After a couple of small, forgettable parts in films like “Rounders” (with Damon) and “The Siege,” he landed his breakout role, on the final season of the funeral-home drama “Six Feet Under,” playing the amiable, strait-laced lawyer Ted Fairwell, the love interest of Lauren Ambrose’s Claire. On the strength of his work on that HBO drama, he began landing high-profile films, including Sam Mendes’s “Away We Go” and Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” as well as recurring parts on the cable dramas “Damages” and “The Newsroom.”Matt Damon said Messina was the kind of actor “all the other actors always talk about. Did you see him in this? Or, he’s in that, that’ll be good.”Amanda Hakan for The New York TimesMost viewers, though, probably know Messina best for his work on “The Mindy Project,” starring as the sometimes ill-tempered, sometimes charismatic Danny Castellano opposite the series creator, Mindy Kaling. When casting began in 2011, Kaling was specifically seeking actors she “hadn’t seen do a lot of comedy” or, if they were experienced, “weren’t the usual suspects they always send you,” she said in a recent interview.She knew he was perfect straight away. Describing him as one of the most comical actors she’s worked with, she said Messina was “so rooted in the truth of his character that he can’t help but be funny.”She attributes that expressly to the fact that he is not a traditional comedian. “Your average sitcom actor wants to hit their moments, make the day, and go home. Chris isn’t like that,” she said. “It’s almost exhausting, the level of honesty and truth he brings to every scene. He was really listening to my character and reacting if the character did something funny or absurd. He made me a better actor. I was listening better when I was with Chris, because he set the bar so high.”Although Messina proved well suited for the role, he originally didn’t even want to do it, turning down the part multiple times before relenting. (“Mindy wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he explained.) He was, he said, “very worried about every aspect of it,” including the commitment to a network comedy with 20-plus episodes per season, potentially for many years — perhaps making it more difficult for him to do the kind of serious work he dreamed of as a performer.“I wanted to do ‘Dog Day Afternoon.’ I wanted to do ‘Midnight Cowboy,’” he said. Though he liked the role and Kaling, “I was afraid of it running forever.” And, of course, he was afraid of something else: the genre. “I was afraid of not being able to keep up with them comedically,” he said. “I am afraid of jokes.”On the other hand, being afraid is what Messina wants. “Being scared of a role, of an opportunity, being challenged, that’s what I’m looking for. Maybe it’s corny or too actorly, but I do like finding closed doors inside of me.” More

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      ‘Hypnotic’ Review: A Twisty Thriller Sends Ben Affleck on the Run

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      Alice Braga plays a psychic and Affleck a cop in this action-packed Robert Rodriguez picture that gets a little overly ambitious.Seasoned moviegoers complain these days that blockbuster franchises and formulaic streaming fare have all but squeezed out the midbudget character-driven drama. But it’s worse than that. The state of the biz isn’t doing wonders for tight, low-budget, midlength action thrillers with sci-fi or supernatural plot hooks, either. So on learning that, after almost a decade working primarily in television or on movies with a strong Y.A. slant, the dynamic director Robert Rodriguez has a Ben Affleck-led suspense thriller called “Hypnotic” in theaters, even a casual genre hound might cock an intrigued eyebrow.Affleck plays Donald Rourke, a detective in Austin, Texas, who is traumatized by the kidnapping of his small daughter several years back. On a stakeout one day, he and his crew surveil a chilly-voiced older man (William Fichtner) whose cryptic words mesmerize several hapless bystanders and compel them to carry out a bloody bank job. Beating Fichtner’s character to the safe deposit box he is after, Rourke finds a Polaroid of his own daughter, with an enigmatic message scrawled beneath.A phone message leads him to the psychic Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), who explains the existence of “hypnotics,” powerful beings who can control others with their words and thoughts. Conveniently, Affleck has a psychic block that prevents him from being affected. His partner doesn’t, though. After a grisly scene in which Rourke’s partner, now hypnotized, tries to sever his own wrist from a handcuff in order to kill them, Rourke and Diana have to flee to Mexico.If the movie were just these two going from action set piece to action set piece with Braga’s character pulling Jedi mind tricks along the way, it would have been satisfactory. Rodriguez, after all, has always been a way-above-average camera director and action choreographer. But he’s going for something more ambitious here. When Rourke starts seeing a Mexican street extending into the air and curving, you grok that the director — who has his own studio in Austin, where this was shot — is going for a homegrown Christopher Nolan variant.This is, arguably, biting off more than “Hypnotic” can comfortably chew, both conceptually and for the production. When Affleck is confronted by a posse of psychics wearing crimson sports jackets, for instance, you wonder if maybe he’s wandered into a convention of Red Lobster senior managers. As the scenario veers into familial-sentimentality-with-shootouts territory, the goofiness quotient increases. But the movie is, if nothing else, ruthlessly efficient enough in delivering its crowd-pleasing bits that truly starving suspense genre hounds, at least, won’t necessarily mind.HypnoticRated R for violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Hoping to Draw Moviegoers and Filmmakers, Amazon Heads to Theaters

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      The streaming company released Ben Affleck’s “Air” on 3,500 movie screens this week, and it plans to open 10 to 12 films theatrically every year.It was a full house at the AMC Town Center in Las Vegas in September when Ben Affleck slipped into the darkened theater. He wanted to see how his new film, “Air,” would play with a test audience, some members of which might have shown up just to escape the scorching heat outside.To his amazement, the crowd went nuts for the movie, about Nike’s efforts in the 1980s to lure a young Michael Jordan to its struggling basketball brand. The viewers clapped when Chris Tucker appeared onscreen, and they hooted for Viola Davis.“People were cheering before they said a line,” Mr. Affleck said in an interview.And that left him feeling rather deflated. He exited the theater and called Matt Damon, his longtime collaborator and new business partner.“God, man, this is tragic,” Mr. Affleck recalled telling Mr. Damon. “I haven’t had a movie play in a theater like this in years. And it’s going on a streamer.”He added, “I felt like Charlie Brown with the football.”But a funny thing happened on the way to Amazon’s Prime Video service, which bankrolled the $130 million film. After similar raucous screenings in Los Angeles, Amazon decided the film would go to theaters first — opening on 3,500 screens in the United States this week, and more than 70 other markets worldwide. It will play for at least a month and is the company’s largest theatrical release since it began making movies in 2015.“Originally we thought, well, our customers are on Prime, so that’s where we need to deliver our movies, but we’re now thinking of the bigger audience and assuming that most of the United States are Prime members anyway,” Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon and MGM Studios, said in an interview. “So why wouldn’t you offer these movies theatrically and allow people to come back to that experience and then move directly to Prime afterwards?”She added, “It’s only the beginning for us.”Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is a veteran TV executive and was initially wary of releasing films theatrically.Danny Moloshok/ReutersAmazon now says its ultimate goal is to release 10 to 12 movies a year in theaters. Not all will be on as many screens as “Air” or play as long. Rather, each theatrical strategy will be based on the perceived box office potential. And other films will still debut on Prime Video.The news is a huge victory for the beleaguered theatrical exhibition business, with year-to-date ticket sales down 25 percent from before the pandemic.“It’s not really about just playing ‘Air,’” said Greg Marcus, chief executive of the Marcus Corporation, a movie entertainment and lodging business in Milwaukee. “The bigger, more important story is its commitment to doing a theatrical slate so that some of it’s going to work and some of it won’t. Success should be judged over an entire slate and include all revenue generated throughout the life of the slate.”Between the advent of streaming and consumer habit changes brought on by the pandemic, Hollywood has been constantly re-evaluating how it thinks about movie theaters. The common wisdom over the past year is that superhero movies still draw crowds (even if the numbers are waning), as do films with wild spectacle (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) or established characters (“Creed III”).Less certain are the films that Mr. Affleck prefers to traffic in, especially when he’s behind the camera: adult dramas with touches of comedy and an earnest feel-good bent, like his Oscar-winning “Argo.” Recent Oscar contenders, like Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” disappointed at the box office.But a strong performance for “Air” could indicate to the industry that movies for adults are still viable in theaters. Apple, which previously eschewed theaters, already has plans to release both Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” theatrically this year.That could encourage other distributors to release more films in theaters, and filmmakers eager for streaming money but still yearning for their work to be seen on the big screen may look to Amazon. (“Air” brought in $3.2 million at the box office on Wednesday, and Amazon is expecting it to gross a modest $16 million through the weekend.)“I think there is a legitimate case to be made that some movies are better experienced in the theater with a group of people,” Mr. Affleck said. “If they can provide robust theatrical releases where the movies are well supported, then it will move Amazon to the front of the pack.”When Ms. Salke, a veteran television executive, took over Amazon’s studio in 2018, her knowledge of the movie business was cursory at best. She had spent years overseeing television at NBC, shepherding hits like “This Is Us.” At the beginning of her tenure, she plunked down close to $50 million for five movies at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The films, including “Late Night,” and “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” underperformed.Suddenly, Amazon, which had been a friend to the theater business with its films “Manchester by the Sea” and “The Big Sick,” was no longer interested in the cutthroat world of box office receipts, where the entire industry knows if a movie is a success or a failure by Saturday morning of opening weekend.“It was like, why would we put ourselves through that step if it’s going to tear down the film and require us to double our investment in marketing to get to Prime to kind of turn that story around?” she said.When Amazon bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2021, there was trepidation that the historic label would be reduced to a tile on the Prime website. MGM had recently been resurrected by Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdy and had made theatrical commitments to filmmakers like Mr. Scott, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sarah Polley.Instead, Ms. Salke seems to have been influenced by the executives at MGM. She also saw how films Amazon acquired during the pandemic — like “Coming 2 America” and “The Tomorrow War” — did as streaming-first movies.“The performance of those films on the service already made us feel like we want to go bigger on the movie side,” she said. “Then we’re buying MGM and closing that deal. We have more movies.”While Mr. DeLuca and Ms. Abdy decamped for a job running Warner Bros., the MGM executives who remained had shown Amazon what a successful theatrical strategy could look like. It culminated in the early-March release of “Creed III,” which has grossed close to $150 million in North America, outperforming its predecessors.In the meantime, Ms. Salke has consolidated her power. The company’s new head of film, Courtenay Valenti, who will oversee both Amazon and MGM after a long career at Warner Bros., will report to her instead of to Mike Hopkins, Ms. Salke’s boss and the senior vice president of Prime Video, Amazon Studios and MGM. And Ms. Salke said she would not waver from her theatrical strategy no matter how “Air” performed.“We are committed,” she said.Matt Damon and Viola Davis star in “Air,” which tells the story of Nike’s pursuit of Michael Jordan.Amazon StudiosThere is no guarantee that Amazon’s strategy for “Air” will succeed. With many moviegoers requiring a spectacle before buying a ticket, a film that is shot primarily in office buildings and never actually shows the face of the actor playing Michael Jordan could be a difficult sell.Sue Kroll, the studio’s new head of marketing, argues that despite the setting and the talky nature of the film, “Air” has the makings of a crowd pleaser.“It really does take you to another place,” she said of the movie, which stars Mr. Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, a sad-sack basketball scout asked to find up-and-coming basketball stars to endorse Nike shoes.“It’s emotional. It’s funny. And it has a lot of heart,” Ms. Kroll added. “I think it can pave the way for a lot of other great movies out there that should be seen theatrically.”The company hopes so. At the end of April, it will release Guy Ritchie’s “The Covenant,” an MGM film that stars Jake Gyllenhaal as an Army sergeant ambushed in Afghanistan. On Sept. 15, it will release “Challengers,” an MGM movie that stars Zendaya as a tennis player turned coach. “Saltburn,” a film from the “Promising Young Woman” director Emerald Fennell, which Amazon acquired out of Cannes last year, will open sometime in the fall.Ms. Valenti, who started last month, is still putting her full schedule together. “There is fantastic development here, but movies don’t grow on trees,” she said, before adding that she thinks her job will be made easier because of Amazon’s commitment to marketing its films, wherever they land.“The only way you attract the best talent, the best filmmakers, the best storytellers to make their larger-than-life films here,” Ms. Valenti continued, “is because they have to know that their movies aren’t going to die in the quicksands of the service.” More

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      ‘Halftime’ Review: Let’s Get Loud

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      In the Netflix documentary about Jennifer Lopez’s life and career by the director Amanda Micheli, the political moments are brief, and then it’s back to rehearsal.A film about Jennifer Lopez and her performance at the Super Bowl in 2020 was bound to generate headlines, but the Netflix documentary “Halftime” makes sure it happens. The multihyphenate’s accomplishments can stand on their own without, for instance, a single publicity baiting remark from her boyfriend, the actor Ben Affleck.His cameo is only a small part of the brand management at play here as the director Amanda Micheli does her best to effectively tell a full-bodied story that reaches beyond what it seems Lopez wants you to know.A political moment — like when Lopez calls President Trump an expletive for his remarks connecting Mexican immigrants and crime — is only a political moment for so long, and then it’s back to rehearsal or the makeup chair. Complex topics like being a woman in a male-dominated movie industry and Hollywood double standards are explored briefly; more often, Lopez comments on fan-service subjects like the tabloids and that iconic Versace dress from the 2000 Grammys.The most captivating arc is how and why Lopez became so outspoken during the Trump era. She says that worrying about her children’s futures, and “living in a United States she didn’t recognize,” galvanized her. But even those scenes build tediously to what should feel like a more triumphant ending, when she shares why she couldn’t, in good conscience, agree to take the Super Bowl halftime stage without standing against anti-immigration measures. By the end, Lopez wins her fight with the National Football League to include children in cages as a human rights statement.In “Halftime,” she is seen in top J. Lo form, an empowering Hollywood icon with an inspirational story to share. Is that reason enough to watch this scattershot portrait? It depends on if she had your love to begin with.HalftimeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Deep Water’ Review: Love and Loathing in New Orleans

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      An unhappy husband raises suspicions when his wife’s lovers begin to disappear.Two decades have passed since Adrian Lyne made “Unfaithful,” maybe his best film, though not his best known. (That would be his 1987 sizzler, “Fatal Attraction.”) A slickly accomplished purveyor of the erotic thriller, Lyne doesn’t make love stories so much as lust stories — specifically, the way an incorrigible sexual appetite can rip a life apart.On paper, then, he seems the perfect choice to direct “Deep Water,” an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel about a dangerously sick suburban marriage. Vic (Ben Affleck) is retired, enjoying his tech-derived fortune by mountain biking and raising snails. (Glistening gastropod close-ups suggest this hobby has some ominous narrative purpose; let me know if you find one.) Vic’s gorgeous wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas) — rarely seen without a glass in one hand and a lover in the other — favors little black dresses that shrug off as easily as her sobriety. Vic might be tortured by her flagrant infidelities, but how can you stay mad at a woman who gets topless just to wash the dishes?Filmed in New Orleans and soaked in boozy parties where Melinda’s public humiliations of her husband earn the pity of Vic’s friends, “Deep Water” (a French version was released in 1981) is a ridiculous murder mystery that could have worked much better as a study of sexual masochism. (The marriage has no heat, yet there’s sly relish in Melinda’s cruelty and a psychological puzzle in Vic’s pained stoicism.) Alternatively, had the story been set in the 1950s of Highsmith’s novel, when divorce was more stigmatized and alcohol the favored alternative, Vic’s forbearance — not to mention all those parties — might have made more sense.As it is, Affleck is left with little to play but a sorry, perpetually glum cuckold. When the movie opens, a previous lover of Melinda’s has mysteriously disappeared. “I killed him,” Vic tells the dimwitted replacement (Brendan C. Miller), and we wonder if he’s capable of joking. And as Melinda’s flings — including a cheesy pianist who woos her by playing “The Lady Is a Tramp” — continue to vanish, a local writer (Tracy Letts) grows suspicious. Even Vic’s 6-year-old daughter (a delightful Grace Jenkins) looks at him askance.None of this is ever less than preposterous. Though heaven knows I’m grateful for any grown-up movie these days, “Deep Water” is in many ways a baffling return for Lyne, whose advertiser’s eye for the allure of an image is repeatedly undercut by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson’s messy, often mystifying screenplay. Eigil Bryld’s caressing camera is fully up to any task his director sets him, but the movie appears chopped into misaligned chunks and dangling loose ends, its scenes spat out as randomly as bingo balls.Originally intended for theatrical release, “Deep Water” has landed on Hulu, possibly because of nervousness over its themes. Yet there’s surprisingly little sex, and what there is has none of the vividness and tactility Lyne is known for. Like Vic’s snails, who must be starved before they can be consumed, “Deep Water” feels like a movie that’s had everything of interest well and truly sucked out.Deep WaterRated R for bored fellatio and passionate murders. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      Jennifer Lopez on 'Marry Me,' Fame and Ben Affleck

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      LOS ANGELES — Of course the fireplace is lit at Jennifer Lopez’s house. It’s a rainy day just a week before Christmas, and her Spanish-style Bel-Air estate is decorated as you would expect: pine garland strewn around the mantle, orange roses on the coffee table, a professionally trimmed Christmas tree in the living room.It’s like a page from a Restoration Hardware catalog, right down to the star herself, dressed in the couture version of the work-from-home uniform: chunky beige sweater, cream sweatpants, blinged-out Timberlands. Her hair is pulled back in a bun and a touch of makeup highlights her impossibly dewy skin. The giant diamond studs affixed to her ears are the one true giveaway of her status as one of the most famous women on the planet.Which makes you wonder, does anything happen by accident in Jennifer Lopez’s life? It’s a question to be pondered especially after her newish boyfriend, Ben Affleck, pops in for a kiss and a whispered conversation near a giant gingerbread house that’s iced with the words “Affleck Lopez Family.”After all, this is a woman who has successfully navigated the treacherous waters of celebrity for close to three decades, endured round after round of public romances and breakups, refashioned herself from dancer to singer to actress to producer. At 52, a time when female stars usually find themselves in an ageist and sexist Hollywood purgatory, she seems to be more relevant than ever.To play a superstar at a vulnerable moment, Lopez said, “I had to remind myself in this movie that this was actually a safe place to let those feelings out.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesHer new movie, the sparkly romantic comedy “Marry Me,” long-delayed by the pandemic, opens in theaters and on Peacock on Valentine’s Day weekend. In it, Lopez plays a J.Lo-like superstar trying to negotiate a love life amid the trappings of uber-fame. (Sound familiar?) She will play another bride in “Shotgun Wedding,” due out this summer, before trading the gowns for a role as a deadly assassin in Netflix’s upcoming film “The Mother,” which she planned to finish shooting in the Canary Islands after the Christmas holiday.At some point the streaming service, which last year signed a multiyear deal with Lopez’s company, Nuyorican Productions, will also release a documentary that chronicles the year she turned 50 and all her disparate worlds coalesced: legitimate recognition for her acting in “Hustlers” (she earned her second Golden Globe nomination and a SAG Award nod), her 2019 international concert tour and the halftime show at the 2020 Super Bowl. The year, she said, “when everything I had worked for in movies, music and fashion just started happening.”“Marry Me,” which Lopez began working on years ago with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, her former agent turned producing partner, is in some sense an explanation of what it’s like to exist under Lopez’s spotlight, something she calls “a very specific life.” It is also a high-wire act, a bet that she can revive a genre that’s been left for dead by both the studio system and the rom-com stars of the past.A scene from “Marry Me,” featuring Lopez and Owen Wilson as her love interest.Universal PicturesFor Goldsmith-Thomas, Lopez’s decision to go from “Hustlers,” which upped her cred as a serious actress, to “Marry Me,” which aligns more with her earlier success as a stalwart of the rom-com (“Maid in Manhattan,” “The Wedding Planner”), makes perfect sense. “We loved making ‘Hustlers,’ but that doesn’t mean that’s all we should do,” she said. “She had an opportunity to pull the curtain back and make a film about what it was like to live and to love in a glass bowl, to have your mistakes amplified and crucified across all platforms, and to ultimately find your way in spite of it. Add to that the ability to produce, and perform a soundtrack to that journey, and we’d be fools not to make it.”In “Marry Me” Lopez plays Kat Valdez, a global pop star who intends to marry her boyfriend, also a worldwide sensation (played by the Colombian singer-songwriter Maluma), in front of millions of fans in a televised stunt. Moments before the big “I do,” Valdez discovers he has been cheating on her, calls off the ceremony while onstage and opts to marry the poor schlub in the audience (Owen Wilson) holding a “Marry Me” sign. Think “The Bodyguard” meets “Notting Hill” complete with a soundtrack by Lopez.The movie is both a frothy pop fantasy and a glimpse into a life few are lucky enough to lead. Any obsessive Lopez fan will surely examine it closely for clues into Lopez’s own psyche, specifically how lonely it can be at the top, where the cocoon of entitlement can often feel like a cage. And they won’t be wrong.With “Marry Me,” Lopez returns to rom-coms, a genre that has been left for dead by studios.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLopez recalled filming a scene in which her character returns home after the stunt ceremony has gone south, depleted and still in her gown. She turns on Jimmy Fallon, only to see him insult her during his late-night monologue, and she starts to cry. It’s a hint of vulnerability you don’t often see from Lopez and one that took some time for the actress to reach.“Once you’ve gotten burned a few times, you realize, ‘I have to be careful.’ If things are too deep and you put them out there, somebody might step on your heart,” she said, adding an expletive.The film’s director, Kat Coiro, admired Lopez’s quest for perfection. “There is a choreography even in her acting,” she said. Yet for the scene to work, Coiro asked Lopez to repeat it a number of times to break down that veneer. The result feels real, or as real as Lopez will allow herself to be.“I had to remind myself in this movie that this was actually a safe place to let those feelings out,” said Lopez, seated in front of that garlanded fireplace. “They’re making fun of me, that hurts. My instinct was to act like it didn’t.”Lopez has spent decades trying to find that balance between what the public wants from her and what she is willing to give to them. She still loves doing meet-and-greets with fans after concerts. Coiro, for one, was stunned with just how much time she was willing to give them.“She’s so ubiquitous that sometimes she doesn’t get the credit she deserves,” the director said. “I think there’s something of that in this film.” When Kat Valdez “talks about never winning any awards, I think that was a moment that was true to life,” Coiro continued. “She’s been around. She has fans like nobody else, and because of that high profile sometimes she’s not looked at in a certain way.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘The Tender Bar’ Review: Where Everybody Knows His Name

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      Ben Affleck serves up whiskey and wisdom in George Clooney’s adaptation of the best-selling memoir by J.R. Moehringer.Every kid should have an Uncle Charlie. That’s the sentiment voiced by J.R. Maguire early in “The Tender Bar,” and it’s hard to disagree. By the end of the movie, directed by George Clooney and adapted from J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir, it’s clear that what J.R. means, most simply, is that every child should have an adult who loves them unconditionally: someone who listens, gives good advice and answers hard questions as truthfully as possible.In movie terms, it doesn’t hurt if that person is also Ben Affleck. Uncle Charlie, a Long Island bartender who is loyal to his friends and family and devoted to his car (a beautiful blue-green Cadillac convertible), is like an older, 1980s-vintage version of Chuckie Sullivan, Affleck’s character in “Good Will Hunting.” He likes to drink, smoke, crack wise and philosophize, but his calling in life is to be there for a vulnerable, promising young man when no one else will.Affleck is very good at this. He doesn’t oversell either Charlie’s cool or his warmth, and doesn’t let the audience or J.R. in on all of Charlie’s secrets. We see him mostly through the boy’s eyes, as a heroic, benevolent, somewhat mysterious figure, but Affleck’s weary, stoical demeanor suggests dimensions beyond what a child might comprehend. (The young J.R. is played by Daniel Ranieri; grown-up, retrospective narration is provided by the voice of Ron Livingston.) The nuances of Affleck’s performance help ground the movie in small, specific emotions. Its understatement, though, can be a limitation as well as a virtue.The obvious thing to say about Charlie is that he’s a surrogate father. J.R.’s real dad (Max Martini) is an unreliable, largely absent, self-absorbed disc jockey. He sometimes calls, rarely shows up and lives mainly as a voice on the radio. (“The Voice” is his professional alias.) “The Tender Bar” begins when J.R. and his mother, Dorothy (Lily Rabe), move into her parents’ rambling house in Manhasset. Dorothy’s brother Charlie lives there too, as do a bunch of other cousins and siblings.We don’t learn too much about them. The focus is on J.R.’s relationships with Dorothy and Charlie, and on his search for The Voice. Grandpa, in the splendidly cranky person of Christopher Lloyd, shows up now and again to swear or break wind, and once in a while to show a little tenderness.J.R.’s second home is the bar, called the Dickens, where Charlie pours drinks for the regulars and dispenses what he calls “male science” to his nephew. In keeping with the joint’s literary name (there’s a fading likeness of Charles Dickens painted on the side of the building), Charlie keeps books as well as bottles on the shelves. He encourages J.R. to read, and then to write.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Oscar Contenders Like Lady Gaga and Ben Affleck Go Big

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      Aim-for-the-fences performances from Lady Gaga, Ben Affleck and many others are making waves, and we’re here for the outrageous fun.There’s a great story Minnie Driver tells about the director Joel Schumacher, who responded dryly after a co-star complained that Driver’s performance in “The Phantom of the Opera” was too over the top.“Oh honey,” Schumacher replied, “no one ever paid to see under the top.”I’ve thought about that bon mot a lot during this movie season, where so many stars seem to be swinging for the fences. Think of Lady Gaga and Jared Leto, who go so daringly big in “House of Gucci,” or Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as televangelists in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” where they pitch their performances nearly as wide as Tammy Faye Bakker’s mascara-laden eyes.In “The Last Duel,” Ben Affleck has outrageous fun playing his costume-drama blowhard to the hilt, and the fact that he does it all in a blond wig and a nu-metal goatee makes the role even more over the top. And then there’s Kristen Stewart, who eschews her trademark minimalism for the awfully maximalist “Spencer,” where she is asked to wobble, shout, dance and heave, sometimes all within the same scene.Ben Affleck as a costume-drama blowhard in “The Last Duel.”Jessica Forde/20th Century StudiosAfter the last Oscar season celebrated the quiet, naturalistic “Nomadland,” it’s a kick to see so many of this year’s prestige dramas go in a different direction and embrace enormousness. In an era dominated by superhero movies, perhaps smaller films now need a performance that feels event-sized. Or maybe, after a period when so many of us have led circumscribed lives, it’s invigorating simply to watch actors shake off their shackles and go for broke.Whatever the case, it’s working. “Tick, Tick … Boom!” is animated by Garfield’s gusto as the composer Jonathan Larson, a man who operates at an 11 at all times. Watching him, I remembered the “30 Rock” joke where Jenna Maroney lobbied the Tonys to add a category for “living theatrically in normal life.” And this month brings a double dose of big Cate Blanchett performances in “Don’t Look Up,” which casts her as a terrifyingly “yassified” cable-news host, and “Nightmare Alley,” in which she treats the film’s eye-popping production design as if it were all custom-made for her femme fatale to slink on.I don’t mean to suggest that these outsize performances are a miscalculation. Quite the opposite: An actress like Blanchett is as tuned in to the tone of her movies as a singer who asks for the intended key and then begins belting. When a skilled performer is able to hit all those high notes, it’s more than just technically dazzling: It makes the softly played notes to come feel even more resonant.Cate Blanchett, center, with Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara in “Nightmare Alley.”Kerry Hayes/Searchlight PicturesBut hey, there’s nothing wrong with simply being dazzled for the sake of it. It’s fun when Bradley Cooper shows up in “Licorice Pizza” to terrorize the young leads with wild, nervy electricity: Just when it feels like the film is coming to a close, Cooper adds enough of a jolt to power “Licorice Pizza” for 30 more minutes. Part of the thrill of watching such a big performance is that you know how much derision is at stake if the actor fails to nail it. Just think of poor Ben Platt in the film adaptation of “Dear Evan Hansen”: His crying jags, so potent on the stage, proved unfortunately memeable in the movies.And sometimes, the most fascinating thing about a film is the frisson between a performer who goes big and co-stars who don’t. The first time I saw “The Power of the Dog,” I’ll admit I didn’t connect with Benedict Cumberbatch, whose performance as the sadistic cattle rancher Phil Burbank felt far too broad. After all, his primary scene partners are Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, a real-life couple who happen to be two of the best practitioners of American naturalism: They can do anything onscreen and not only will you believe it, you’ll hardly even catch them doing it. Up against them, I found Cumberbatch too mannered, like an actor determined to show his work.Benedict Cumberbatch opposite Kodi Smit-McPhee in “The Power of the Dog.”NetflixBut the second time I watched the film, I realized all of that artifice is perfect for Phil, who is concealing more than just his silver-spoon upbringing and degree from Yale. Put the pieces of his back story together and you’ll realize that Phil’s grime-covered cowboy act is all shtick, a performance of machismo so fraught that an interloper like Dunst threatens it because she doesn’t have to put on any sort of act at all. It took nerve for Jane Campion, the movie’s director, to assemble that sort of cast and trust that it would work, just as it took nerve for Cumberbatch to push things just a little further than some actors would deem comfortable.And hey, at least those bigger-than-average performances will make for some good Oscar clips. Many of the stars who’ve gone for broke have been earning awards attention, though I do want to go to bat for Affleck, who is delicious as the pompous count in “The Last Duel” and deserves serious supporting-actor consideration. The Golden Globes instead nominated him for his low-key work in “The Tender Bar” — a mistake, since the only thing Affleck has done this year that’s even comparable to “The Last Duel” is the contribution he made to pop culture as one half of Bennifer 2.0.Maybe that’s part of the fun of these supersized performances: They’re finally scaled to the level of celebrity that we count on someone like Affleck or Gaga to serve. So often, Hollywood has asked the stars who live largest to shrink themselves down for critical acclaim. But where’s the fun in that? They made that screen big for a reason. More