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      ‘Transformers One’ Review: Back to the Beginning

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      An animated prequel maps out a tidy mythology while indulging in the toy-smashing thrills of the ’80s cartoons.When settling into “Transformers One,” the latest spinoff of the alien robot franchise, you may have a pang of nostalgia for what suddenly feels like the quaint mayhem of Michael Bay’s original film from 2007.Back then, “Transformers” was about as much of a ludicrous commercial tent pole as you could come up with: Bayhem unleashed on a Hasbro toy. The franchise that film spawned has managed to extend its life force well into a movie era defined by intellectual property equations. Say what you will about Bay’s metal masher, but it was, in its early goings, a blockbuster that had its own ethos. Now, 17 years later, we’re down to an animated prequel for kids.This is all what a cynic may think at the start of “Transformers One.” But by the end, the film offers a different kind of nostalgia, one that harks back to and indulges the toy-smashing thrills that an ’80s kid would get from a dose of the original animated cartoons.This movie, directed by Josh Cooley, scraps everything we associate with its cinematic forebears and goes back to the beginning, creating, on a structural level, an effective origin story of the Transformers universe.Before Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) were enemies, they were best friends and young nobodies, two miners toiling away as part of an underclass that provided the energy for the planet of Cybertron.But after unwittingly finding a clue to the long-lost Matrix of Leadership, the vital key to the their world’s energy, they, along with Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and a young Bumblebee (Keegan-Michael Key), embark on an adventure and uncover a conspiracy that shifts both the fabric of the planet and of their friendship.It’s a completist piece of lore-building that is sturdily developed but frequently includes stiffly explicative dialogue; Hemsworth and Johansson don’t help much, though Henry gives us a believable transformation into villainy and Key is dexterous comic relief. The missteps can be forgiven and even feel somewhat appropriate when it becomes clear just what kind of itch the film means to scratch: to plot out an immersive mythology in order to have some pulpy fun.That philosophy may explain the film’s confounding computer-generated style — one that can have a rich Cybertron universe but also can revert to what feels like a B-rate children’s TV spinoff. The result is a blockbuster animation film that somehow reads both very expensive and inexplicably cheap.Will fans care all that much, though? Most palpable in its frames are the heart and genuine love for this universe, and when the bots start colliding, with action sequences toward the end that are thrillingly punchy, it’s easy to surrender to the lore. In this way, Cooley’s film makes a good spinoff suddenly seem simple: Sometimes all you need is the imagination for heroes and villains, betrayal and glory — and heaps of plastic to smash together.Transformers OneRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      Making ‘The Wild Robot’ Even Wilder

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      Roz, the beloved protagonist of Peter Brown’s popular children’s book, gets a glow-up for the big-screen adaptation.On the cover of Peter Brown’s best-selling children’s book “The Wild Robot” are massive evergreens and a matching dark green seascape. Atop a pile of enormous boulders is a tiny but unmistakable image of a robot: Roz, the book’s protagonist, with her bucket-shaped head, squared-off shoulders and two headlights for eyes.“With a book, the cover is often all you’ve got to pull the reader in,” Brown said in an interview. “I very deliberately designed Roz to look simple, so that when people saw the book cover they would immediately know that it’s a robot.”Movies, however, have a bit more freedom when it comes to automatons. “There’s motion, there’s sound effects, there’s all this other stuff that can tell viewers pretty quickly that they’re looking at a robot,” he added.So when the artists and designers at DreamWorks Animation set about adapting Brown’s book and its mechanical star for the big screen, they let their minds run free. In place of the static, unblinking silhouette of Brown’s book cover, DreamWorks created a leaping, whirling, battling protagonist who can scuttle up steep cliffs like a crab and swing from place to place via long telescoping arms.As the movie unfolds, Roz’s tools are revealed: claws that can climb sheer cliffs; fingers that shoot flames; arms that function as vacuums and leaf blowers; a homing beacon that emerges from the top of her head; DreamWorks AnimationFor a studio like DreamWorks, makers of the “Kung Fu Panda” and “How to Train Your Dragon” franchises, coming up with the dramatic action sequences and cool character design was relatively easy. The challenge for the film, which opens on Sept. 27: keeping the soul of a character that millions of readers had fallen in love with over the course of Brown’s trilogy, a character that was, yes, a robot who could stand alongside Hollywood’s and anime’s most exciting droids and bots, but was also, at heart, an adoptive mother trying her best to care for an orphaned gosling.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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      in Movies

      ‘Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds’ Review: Flights of Fantasy

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      Two sisters get transported to a new world and transformed into cats in this whimsical and thoughtful animated feature.You can discover a lot about a fantasy world from its mode of entry: an English wardrobe, a disappearing train platform, a rabbit hole. The means to the phantasmagorical dream world of “Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds,” available on demand, is as playful and fanciful as the destination: You have to hopscotch there.“Sirocco” begins with two sisters, Juliette and Carmen, getting dropped off at a family friend’s house for the weekend. This friend, Agnès, is the author of a popular fantasy book series about an ill-tempered wizard named Sirocco who summons devastating winds to destroy whole towns. When Agnès is distracted, a sentient toy — a testy little fellow with magical powers and a treasure trove of absurd lines — hopscotches the sisters into the kingdom of winds, where they’re transformed into cats. That’s not the end of their problems: Carmen’s at risk of getting married against her will and Juliette is offered as a pet to Selma, an elegant avian adventurer turned opera singer. With the help of Selma, the two sisters set out to find Sirocco to figure out a way to get back home.Directed by Benoît Chieux, who wrote the screenplay with Alain Gagnol, “Sirocco” feels drawn from the same extended family of stories as those from the great Hayao Miyazaki — contemporary fairy tales that skip genre clichés and conventions to provide novel plots where the next step in the journey is always a mystery.The intrigues of this film begin with the animation, which recalls such psychedelic classics as “Yellow Submarine” and “Son of the White Mare.” A town of amphibious residents live in gravity-defying skyscrapers made by Jenga-stacked geometric blocks. Selma travels in a flying opera house kept afloat by a hot-air balloon resembling a jellyfish. And in the sky, clouds churn and move like sentient gobs of putty. The various landscapes of this fantastical world are also marked with expressive coloring-book palettes: The cherry reds and watermelon pinks of a town’s architecture and cliffs are starkly contrasted with the honey and amber browns of desert sands.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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      in Movies

      Barry Jenkins Takes On ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’

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      By his own rough count, the filmmaker Barry Jenkins has seen the 1994 animated movie “The Lion King” around 155 times, many of those viewings with two young nephews and a well-worn VHS tape.So when he was asked to direct the latest installment of the franchise, “Mufasa: The Lion King,” he was already pretty familiar with the story.Who isn’t? “When anybody takes their baby and holds it up like this” — he paused to raise his arms overhead, cupping his hands as though presenting a small but celebrated cub — “you know it’s ‘The Lion King,’” he said. “There are very few things that have that level of cultural penetration.”Familiarity aside, very few things in Jenkins’s career would seem to point to a big Disney animated feature. The director, 44, broke out in 2016 with “Moonlight,” a small-budget coming-of-age film set in Miami at the height of the crack epidemic. It went on to win three Oscars, including one for best picture that, notoriously, was announced only when a “La La Land” producer realized onstage that the wrong movie (his) had been called. Jenkins followed that up in 2018 with “If Beale Street Could Talk,” a romantic drama based on the 1974 James Baldwin novel about childhood sweethearts confronting a nightmare when the young man is unjustly accused of rape.And then Jenkins directed the 10-episode 2021 mini-series “The Underground Railroad,” an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which imagines the abolitionist-era network of escape routes as a literal railway system. “In terms of emotional scope and just the practical logistics of filmmaking, that was by far the most massive thing I’d done,” he said.“Mufasa,” at least in terms of its fandom and the accompanying scrutiny, is likely to be even bigger. Disney is planning a December release for the film, which tells the story of how Mufasa grew up and came to power before siring Simba. It will serve as a prequel to three previous “Lion King” iterations: the original movie from 1994, the 2019 remake and the long-running Tony Award-winning musical. “I don’t know if pressure is the right word,” Jenkins said, “but you do go, OK, I have to live up to this standard that was set by these people who made these films before me.”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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      in Movies

      The Best Movies From 1999, According to Our Critics

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      In our view, these eight comedies, dramas and more have attained classic status 25 years later. Let us know your own picks.On the 25th anniversary of what many argue is the greatest year in movie history, we asked film staff writers and critics to share the movie from 1999 that they love the best or feel is most overlooked. After reading their picks, let us know your choices.Best Comedy‘Being John Malkovich’Capping a decade of high-concept comedies, Spike Jonze’s “Being John Malkovich” (available on most major platforms) raised the stakes with the most outlandish premise yet: When a downtrodden puppeteer (John Cusack) takes an office job to make ends meet, he discovers a hidden portal there that allows him to enter the mind of medium-famous character actor John Malkovich. Jonze’s smartest instinct is to resist piling onto a concept that’s already perilously clever. Instead, the movie is underplayed, intimate and even a little scuzzy-looking. But that approach to Charlie Kaufman’s surprising screenplay leaves room for viewers to wonder as they watch: Why are we so certain that our lives would improve with even a modicum of fame? And are these bodies the wrong containers for what we feel inside? KYLE BUCHANANBuchanan’s other 1999 favorites: “eXistenZ,” “Three Kings,” “Election,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley”Best Drama‘Beau Travail’Claire Denis’s film focuses on the French Foreign Legion soldiers stationed in Djibouti.Pathé TVA haunting exploration of desire and violence, Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail” (available on major platforms) takes place in the East African country of Djibouti, a onetime French territory. There, French Foreign Legion soldiers practice drills, their bodies synced and individualities subordinated. At times, they dance with African women, their gazes uneasily summoning up the history shared by the formerly colonized and their colonizers.Loosely inspired by Herman Melville’s novella “Billy Budd,” Denis’s beguiling tour de force takes shape after one soldier (Grégoire Colin) rescues another, an act that disturbs a sergeant (Denis Lavant). The soldier “seduced everyone,” the sergeant says in voice-over. “Deep down I felt a sort of rancor, a rage brimming.” With minimal dialogue, ravishing visuals and meticulous attention to sensuous detail, Claire Denis elliptically charts what binds these men — tracing lines between love and hate, past and present, nation and self, masculinity and militarism — in a film that remains as disturbing as it is seductive. MANOHLA DARGIS

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      in Television

      Rachael Lillis, Who Voiced Popular ‘Pokémon’ Characters, Dies at 55

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      Ms. Lillis voiced the characters of Misty and Jessie in the animated series based on a video game. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in May.Rachael Lillis, an actress who voiced the original English versions of Misty and Jessie, popular characters in the 1990s “Pokémon” anime television series, and later in the franchise’s movies and games as well, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 55.The cause was cancer, according to Laurie Orr, one of her sisters.Ms. Lillis started voice acting in the 1980s, according to her IMDB page, but her big break came in the late 1990s when she was cast in the English version of the “Pokémon” TV series, a popular Japanese anime based on the “Pokémon” video games. In hundreds of episodes over eight years, Ms. Lillis voiced the characters Misty, a trusted friend of the main character, Ash Ketchum, and Jessie, one of the show’s villains.She also voiced those characters in two “Pokemon” movies as the cultural phenomenon grew.Ms. Lillis, who lived in Los Angeles, also was the voice of Jigglypuff, whose fairy song put listeners to sleep and was one of the creatures the characters pursue.Ms. Lillis, who had dozens of other voice credits to her name, had a strong sense of humor and a talent for voice acting, said Eric Stuart, who voiced James, the other member of Team Rocket in the “Pokémon” series, and worked with Ms. Lillis for many years.“If you met her, you’d not say this was so natural for her,” Mr. Stuart said in a phone interview. “Rachael in real life was pretty low key, kind of quiet and sweet,” Mr. Stuart added. “The minute she stepped in that booth it was like this whole other energy came out.”Mr. Stuart first met Ms. Lillis in the mid-1990s, when there were not a lot of people dubbing anime into English.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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      How ‘Inside Out’ and Its Sequel Became a Tool for Therapists and Schools

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      Mental health professionals and educators say the movies are remarkably helpful in providing a common language they can use with children and parents.In 2012, when Olivia Carter was just starting out as a school counselor, she employed all sorts of strategies to help her elementary-age students understand and communicate their feelings — drawing, charades, color association, role playing. After 2015, though, starting those conversations became a lot easier, she said. It took just one question: “Who has seen the movie ‘Inside Out’?”That Pixar hit, about core emotions like joy and sadness, and this summer’s blockbuster sequel, which focuses on anxiety, have been embraced by educators, counselors, therapists and caregivers as an unparalleled tool to help people understand themselves. The story of the moods steering the “control panel” in the head of a girl named Riley has been transformational, many experts said, in day-to-day treatment, in schools and even at home, where the films have given parents a new perspective on how to manage the turmoil of growing up.“As therapeutic practice, it has become a go-to,” said David A. Langer, president of the American Board of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. In his household, too: “I have 9-year-old twins — we speak about it regularly,” said Langer, who’s also a professor of psychology at Suffolk University. “Inside Out” finger puppets were in frequent rotation when his children were younger, a playful way to examine the family dynamic. “The art of ‘Inside Out’ is explicitly helping us understand our internal worlds,” Langer said.And it’s not just schoolchildren that it applies to. “I’ve been stealing lines from the movie and quoting them to adults, not telling them that I’m quoting,” said Regine Galanti, a psychologist and author in private practice on Long Island, speaking of the new film.Audiences have lapped it up: “Inside Out 2” has now grossed more than $1.5 billion globally, shattering box office records for animation along the way. Therapists say the movie’s focus on the character of Anxiety, center, takes experiences that young viewers could find isolating and makes them more relatable.Disney/PixarWe 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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      in Theater

      The People Reimagining ‘Spirited Away’ With Puppets

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      Hayao Miyazaki’s classic film is now onstage, brought to life with elements including a nearly 20-foot-long dragon.“Everyone Who Made This Happen” takes a look at the outsize teams of artists and creative types it often takes to produce a single work.Number of people involved: Around 70, including 30 performers.Time from conception to opening night: Four years and three months.There was never any doubt as to whether the director John Caird’s stage adaptation of “Spirited Away” would incorporate puppets. They were part of his original pitch to Hayao Miyazaki, the writer and director of the beloved 2001 animated film, in which the heroine, Chihiro, and her parents are transported to another world populated by a colorful cast of Japanese spirits and gods. The questions were, which characters should be puppets, and how would they look and work? Toby Olié, 39, the show’s puppetry designer and director, sketched some initial ideas. Then, in 2021, he and Caird; Caird’s co-adapter and wife, Maoko Imai; the set designer Jon Bausor; and six performer-puppeteers held a two-week workshop in a church hall in East London, during which they explored staging with foam and cardboard prototypes.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