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      ‘My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock’ Review: Director’s Commentary

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      A richly detailed essay film imagines Hitchcock commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips.Alfred Hitchcock’s voice remains indelible, like a droll bloodhound trying to hypnotize you over tea. Mark Cousins’s richly detailed essay film “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” imagines the director commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips, with an insider’s knowledge of filmmaking.Lest that premise induce suspicions of artificial intelligence: The impressionist Alistair McGowan reproduces Hitchcock’s plummy drawl. But the insights belong to Cousins, a world-class close reader known for his mellifluous journeys through film history and cinephilia. Over sinuously edited, high-quality clips, his Hitchcock addresses playful and piercing observations to the audience in virtuosic variations on themes: escape, desire, loneliness and so on, from both famous and lesser-known films.Hitchcock’s work here suggests a series of dreamlike passageways through seemingly ordinary worlds where desire and danger open new doors. A typical riff mingles the cinematic and personal: Hitchcock’s “escape” from his British stomping ground to America; the escapist painterly countrysides that recur in his films; and the narrative traps his characters must cheat, like when Paul Newman flees a theater by shouting “fire” in “Torn Curtain.”The resulting director’s commentary from beyond the grave should send any viewer supermarket-sweeping Hitchcock titles onto the queue. Yet whereas scenes like Ingrid Bergman murmuring “you love me” to Cary Grant in “Notorious” are still jaw-dropping, the voice-over conceit can become stifling, and arguably limits our critical point of view.But as Alma Hitchcock reportedly encouraged her creative partner and husband: “Be interested.” Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.My Name Is Alfred HitchcockNot rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Remarkable Life of Ibelin’ Review: More Real Than Reality

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      An unconventional documentary tells the story of a Norwegian gamer — and of how we live life on the internet.Almost from the start, the internet scrambled our sense of reality. You could never really know if whoever you were talking to was the person they said they were. Now it’s hard to know if they’re even a person.This is destabilizing and frightening, and also the premise for a good movie. But there has to be more to the story than just the scary parts. No, we don’t exist physically on the internet, but our virtual selves do things that have real-world consequences, and our emotions and minds, in some phenomenological way, extend into cyberspace, too. For better or worse, the internet is a place in which we live and love and rage and mourn. We bring our humanity with us, the bad parts but also the good ones.Movies haven’t always captured this aspect of 21st-century life well, in part because rendering the internet visually is weird and tricky. I loved Joe Hunting’s 2022 documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality,” filmed entirely inside a V.R. platform, for how it captured love and generosity in virtual space. And now we have Benjamin Ree’s “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which is a rare and beautiful thing: a moving documentary that excavates the question of the “real” in a profoundly humanistic and unconventional way.“The Remarkable Life of Ibelin” is about Mats Steen, a Norwegian man who died in 2014 at the age of 25. Mats lived out his final years nearly immobilized, the result of being born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare inherited disease which presently has no cure. Mats’s family knew him as smart and loving, but grieved while watching him grow more withdrawn as his symptoms progressed. He would spend most of his waking hours on his computer, playing games. “Our deepest regret was that he would never experience friends, love, or make a difference in other people’s lives,” his father, Robert, tells Ree.Mats’s family were loving, attentive and supportive of him to the very end. But they were wrong about the friends and making a difference part. Oh, were they wrong.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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      ‘Black Box Diaries’ Review: A Public Face for #MeToo in Japan

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      In a new documentary, Shiori Ito recounts her yearslong crusade for justice in Japan after accusing a powerful journalist of rape.Not everyone gets to be the heroine of her own story, much less a champion for others. On May 29, 2017, a 28-year-old Japanese journalist, Shiori Ito, did just that when she announced at a news conference that she had been raped in a Tokyo hotel two years earlier by a powerfully connected journalist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi. (He has denied the allegation.) Ito had decided to speak her truth despite intense pressure to remain silent. “People need to know about the horrors of rape,” she told a room of reporters, “and how deeply it affects one’s life.”Undaunted, Ito talks openly throughout “Black Box Diaries,” her moving if sometimes frustrating documentary about how she became a public face of the #MeToo movement in Japan, all while she grappled with police obstructionism, misogynist laws, sexist vitriol and fears about her safety. Going public was gutsy, and unusual. “One of the first things many Japanese women do while still shivering and bleeding at home is to read online about the experience of others — and deciding it’s just not worth pursuing,” David McNeill, an editor at Asia Pacific Journal, wrote in an interview he did with Ito after her first news conference.At the time, to protect her privacy, Ito wasn’t using her surname; not everyone in her family wanted her to speak out. Yet she soon went fully public, and her name became headline news. It remained so as she continued to seek justice in a fight that — as one year turned into another — grew into a cause, eventually becoming part of a national reckoning on sexual violence and harassment. With friends and lawyers, and buoyed by allies and sympathetic strangers, Ito fought to transform Japan’s laws and ideas relating to sexual violence. (In 2023, Japan criminalized nonconsenual sexual acts; in 2019, the United Nations had issued a statement saying the “absence of consent” should be the global definition of rape.)The documentary, based on her 2017 memoir, “Black Box,” is a chronicle of Ito’s ordeal and her fight. As the title suggests — a prosecutor, Ito has explained, called her case a “black box” because it happened behind closed doors — there’s a confessional aspect to her project. The documentary, for one, opens with some first-person statements styled as handwriting, the words running over an image of flowing water. “Please be mindful of the triggers in this film,” it reads, as cherry blossoms drift across the screen. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath if you need to.” As water and petals flow, so do her words: “That has helped me many times.”What follows is effectively a tense and tangled crime story, one in which Ito is at once the victim, lead investigator, dogged prosecutor and crusading reporter. In 2015, following the assault and after she filed a criminal complaint with the police department, Ito realized that she had to become her own advocate. She began chronicling the investigation in secret audio recordings, detailed written records and videos. After prosecutors dropped the case, despite DNA evidence and testimony from a taxi driver who dropped her at the hotel — she decided to take her personal investigation to the world.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 Television

      The Menendez Brothers’ Case Under Review: What to Know.

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      Prosecutors are revisiting the brothers’ convictions in the killings of their parents. It could lead to their release from prison.Over 35 years ago, Lyle and Erik Menendez — then 21 and 18 years old — walked into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion and fired more than a dozen shotgun rounds at their parents.Now, after serving decades behind bars as part of a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the Menendez brothers may be getting a chance at freedom.In early October, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, announced that his office was reviewing the case after lawyers representing the Menendez brothers asked prosecutors to recommend a resentencing, a move that could lead to their release.The reconsideration of their life sentences comes at a time when the Menendez brothers have been thrust back into the media spotlight thanks to the revelation of new evidence, an army of social media defenders and a recent television series and documentary examining their crime and trials.Here’s what to know about the Menendez brothers’ case:What were they convicted of?In 1996, the Menendez brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents, Jose, a music executive, and Mary Louise, a former beauty queen who went by the name Kitty.It was their second trial. Two years prior, a mistrial was declared after two separate juries (one for each brother) deadlocked over a verdict.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 ‘Smile 2’ and ‘Trap,’ Pop Stardom Looks Pretty Terrifying

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      At a time when the business of being Taylor Swift or Beyoncé is booming, these films examine toxic fandom and what can seem like mass hysteria.This article contains spoilers.Last year around this time, audiences were heading to movie theaters to experience the joy of being in the presence of a pop star.“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” had just been released, prompting Swifties and the Swift-curious to descend on multiplexes, friendship bracelets adorning their wrists. Weeks later, the Beyhive would don silver cowboy hats for the release of “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé.” Attending one of these concert films meant having a great time and reveling in the glory of the women onstage who seemed to be doing the same.Now being a pop star at the movies looks a lot more terrifying.Horror centered on pop stars is all the rage these days. In M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap,” released in August, the concert by the fictional Lady Raven (Saleka) is an elaborate setup to nab a serial killer (Josh Hartnett). This weekend, “Smile 2,” directed by Parker Finn, follows Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a troubled Grammy winner with a history of addiction who comes to be possessed by a demon that drives her mad with violent hallucinations. To her fans and her team, it looks like she’s on another, possibly drug-induced spiral, but really a monster is goading her into killing herself.Both these movies are a product of a time when the business of being a pop star is bigger than ever. Events like the Eras and Renaissance tours became zeitgeist-defining moments as well as fodder that filmmakers could mine for inspiration. Shyamalan was even direct about it in an Empire interview. His premise for “Trap”? “What if ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ happened at a Taylor Swift concert?”Saleka as a pop star whose concert is a setup to nab a serial killer in “Trap.” Warner Bros. PicturesBut both “Trap” and “Smile 2” prove that beyond the fun of the setup, the life of a pop star is actually thematically ripe for horror. It’s a high-pressure job in which you never know whether you’re meeting a fan or a predator.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 Theater

      The Holocaust’s Grandchildren Are Speaking Now

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      Toward the end of “A Real Pain,” a movie written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg coming to theaters on Nov. 1, two first cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin approach the house in a Polish town where their recently deceased grandmother had lived before the Holocaust.Eisenberg’s character, David, the more reserved of the pair, proposes the two leave stones on the doorstep, riffing on the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves.“She’s not buried here,” says Culkin’s cousin, Benji.“Yeah, I know, but it’s the last place she was in Poland,” says David. “It’s the last place any of us were.”The improvised remembrance, the interruption of self-awareness, the confused sense of duty — all are characteristic of how American descendants of the Holocaust’s victims two generations removed today commemorate an event that, nearly 80 years after it ended, can feel like something that still governs their lives, not to mention the lives of Jews and everyone else.This cohort is known as the third generation of Holocaust survivors, and “A Real Pain” is representative of their output. Which is to say: It is often not about the Holocaust at all. The cousins go together on an organized tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in Poland, but much of it — excepting a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp — is lighthearted. David and Benji grieve mainly not for the Holocaust but for their grandmother, who survived it. They struggle with their own problems, including the dissipation of their relationship. They question why they are even there.Jesse Eisenberg on the set of his new movie, “A Real Pain,” about the grandsons of a Holocaust survivor visiting Poland.Agata Grzybowska/Searchlight PicturesWe 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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      ‘Fantastical’ Is a Catfishing Horror Story About Toxic Fandom

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      “Fanatical,” an eye-popping film directed by Erin Lee Carr, details the bizarre 16-year ordeal that the duo and their fans endured.The turn-of-the-century internet was organized not around content selected for us by algorithms, but around shared interests that we sought out. Whether you loved a band or were devoutly religious or had questions about your sexuality, someone had made an AOL chatroom or a message board or a LiveJournal community where you could meet people like you. It was often invigorating and life-affirming, especially if you felt lonely in the real world. It seems like the exact opposite of today’s personality- and ad-driven internet.The new, eye-popping documentary “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara” (Hulu), directed by Erin Lee Carr, is about that era and what became of it. But the lens through which it tells the story involves a truly bizarre series of events related to Tegan Quin, who with her twin sister, Sara Quin, formed an eponymous indie pop band that became huge right as the social internet was taking off. At the start of the film, Tegan says she’s never talked publicly about the situation before, which began 16 years ago. In fact, she admits to Carr, she already kind of regrets talking about it now.The duo started to become famous after their 2004 album, “So Jealous,” when the sisters realized their growing audiences skewed young, mostly female and mostly queer. Their concerts were safe spaces, and their fans often found one another through sites devoted to the band. Both women, but Tegan in particular, were active on the internet, and made a point of connecting with fans both online and at shows. They fostered a community.But “Fanatical” is not a profile of the band or its fans. It’s a horror story.In 2008, a fan named Julie contacted a Facebook profile that appeared to be Tegan’s. A yearslong messaging relationship ensued, one that turned close and even intimate. But then, in 2011, Tegan did something that felt off to Julie. So she contacted the band’s manager.From there emerged the kind of mystery that’s actually a nightmare, a story Carr tells through interviews with fans, the band’s former management, a few experts and both sisters. The user Julie had been talking to for years wasn’t Tegan at all — it was someone impersonating Tegan, a user they all started calling “Fake Tegan,” or “Fegan.” For Julie, this relationship had been deeply meaningful, especially since Tegan and Sara’s music was a way to process her fear when, as a college student, she began to question her own sexual orientation. When “Fegan” turned aggressive, even verbally abusive, she was wounded — and realizing that years of her life had been spent unburdening her secrets and her soul to someone who wasn’t Tegan was horrifying. As the band and their management discovered, these intimate messaging relationships went far, far beyond Julie — and so did the fallout.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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      ‘Union’ Review: Amazon Workers Unionize

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      As this documentary by Brett Story and Stephen Maing chronicles, the efforts to unionize a warehouse in New York were successful — but also a grind.When employees at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island voted to unionize in 2022, the result was seen as a major victory for organized labor. A year earlier, the documentarians Brett Story (“The Hottest August”) and Stephen Maing (“Crime + Punishment”) got on the ground with the workers and the organizers; in their engrossing new film, “Union,” they show how the vote’s outcome was hardly assured.The filmmakers introduce Christian Smalls — a founder of the Amazon Labor Union, the group striving to represent the workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center — as he grills food at a tent outside the warehouse. Even then, in 2021, Smalls is already, as a woman meeting him puts it, “low-key famous,” having been fired in 2020 after planning and attending a walkout over pandemic safety conditions.“Union” is partly about the grind of organizing: of chatting with workers over burgers, of attending video meetings, of resolving petty disputes. Smalls’s leadership does not always command the group’s full confidence. Natalie Monarrez, an early ally, grows disillusioned as “Union” proceeds. “I can’t leave one boys’ club at Amazon and work for another boys’ club in the union,” she tells Madeline Wesley, an organizer and recent college graduate who becomes another compelling voice in the story.Like Barbara Kopple’s organized labor documentary “American Dream,” “Union” is as interested in intra-union disputes as it is in the fight writ large. But the external obstacles are clear as well, as Smalls and company face daunting math and an anti-union campaign from inside, where the sometimes-tense footage, the filmmakers have said, was shot by the workers themselves.UnionNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More