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    Jamie Foxx in a Lively Courtroom Drama

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    Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones deliver bravura performances in this Maggie Betts film about a funeral-home proprietor in financial trouble.In the opening scenes of this fact-based courtroom drama, which is front-loaded with a sentimentality it ultimately doesn’t need, “The Burial” might elicit some skepticism from viewers. That is, it may be a bit of a stretch to root for a Mississippi funeral-home proprietor with eight locations who’s unable to square some poor business decisions.That funeral-home squire is Jeremiah O’Keefe, played by Tommy Lee Jones, and we meet him at his 75th birthday party in 1995. He had tried to sell a few of his facilities to the slick C.E.O. of a death-care mega-corporation, but when the corporation withholds paperwork, O’Keefe could potentially be squeezed into bankruptcy.This situation gets a lot more interesting. A young Black lawyer working with O’Keefe enlists another Black lawyer, the very rich and flashy Willie Gary, played by Jamie Foxx, to work on the case. The logic is that the O’Keefe’s lawsuit will play to a mostly Black jury. The American way of death, apparently, did not gain more integrity as it became corporatized, and the exploitations of Big Funeral, it turns out, have an ugly racist angle.Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, “The Burial” develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance. The supporting cast is also first rate, with Jurnee Smollett percolating with intelligence as Gary’s female counterpart for the defense, and Bill Camp as the villain, doing an underhanded, clever variant on Jack Nicholson’s performance in “A Few Good Men.”The BurialRated R for language. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      ‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Review: There’s Only One John Boyega

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      In Juel Taylor’s imaginative sci-fi movie, Boyega teams up with Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris to find the forces undermining their community.“They Cloned Tyrone,” an ambitious, nightmarish tale about unsettled identity, opens with an image of two blue eyes, strained at the corners. The camera pulls back, revealing the owner of those peepers to be a grinning white man on a billboard with the tagline “Keep em’ smiling.” In front of the advertisement, Black people debate possible sightings of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson, now allegedly disguising himself with new Black skin. The food mart, with the billboard prominently displayed by its door, is where these gossiping Black folk hold court, and is one of the many institutions that dot the neglected, fictional urban landscape its residents refer to as the Glen.The director, Juel Taylor, sees the Glen as a self-contained world where conspiracy theories are the news section and the neighborhood drunk (Leon Lamar) is a prophet. At the center of it is Fontaine (John Boyega), a multifaceted drug dealer. Whenever he buys a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor from the food mart, he never hesitates to pour a cup for Lamar. He’ll also mercilessly ram an unsuspecting rival dealer with his car, and then later care for that enemy’s invalid mother.Fontaine’s moral compass is survival. The same can be said of the shifty pimp, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), who dispenses women like Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) with the assurance they’ll always come back. While collecting a debt from Slick Charles, Fontaine is savagely gunned down by the dealer he hit earlier. Despite the shooting, Fontaine awakes the next morning unscathed. Was it a dream or something more nefarious?The first hour of “They Cloned Tyrone” is surprisingly talkative. Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo — shady neighborhood acquaintances — team up to investigate Fontaine’s brush with death, sharing extraneous banter that often crowds the narrative and slows the reveal. The three eventually discover a series of elevators in familiar haunts that lead to a subterranean laboratory. Taylor positions these sites as places where an outside force can easily undermine the Black community, rendering it pliant through food, religion and beauty products. You wonder, however, whether the film is portraying these spaces as necessary sites for escapist joy or scrutinizing them as crutches.Another fascinating proposition arises when a Black character utters the phrase “assimilation is better than annihilation.” The film covers issues of upward mobility, respectability politics, racial passing, and the distrust some African Americans have of institutional professionals such as the police, doctors and scientists. Taylor portrays Black self-hatred as a danger equal to these extensions of white contempt.A play on “The Truman Show” by way of “Undercover Brother,” “They Cloned Tyrone” also stands firmly on its glossy style — the evocatively smoky John Carpenter-esque cinematography and the Blaxploitation-inspired costumes — and its spirited performances. Even when the dialogue runs long and the film’s frights offer less terror than you’d want in a sci-fi-mystery flick, an inspired Foxx, a subversive Parris, and a ruthless yet melancholic Boyega, who shoulders the bulk of the dramatic weight, retrofit common stereotypes of urban Black life into the rich, dynamic humanism of its reality.They Cloned TyroneRated R for profanity and nude body doubles. Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix or in theaters. More

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      ‘Day Shift’ Review: Stakes Out

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      Jamie Foxx is a blue-collar vampire hunter and a steadying hand on the tiller of this frenzied action comedy.A series of baroque action sequences strung on twin wires of corn and cliché, the vampire comedy “Day Shift” starts out at a gallop and keeps right on moving. And motion is everything in this Netflix caper — J.J. Perry’s first feature as a director after more than three decades in stunt work — those action scenes hogging most of the filmmakers’ attention and much of their imagination. Jamie Foxx might have top billing, but right there beside him are the professional contortionists whose eye-popping moves are more commonly seen in Las Vegas showrooms than on movie screens.Even so, Foxx, as you might expect, has got this. As Bud Jablonski, a cash-strapped pool cleaner-cum-vampire hunter, the actor radiates blue-collar competence in the midst of escalating buffoonery. Bud has an estranged, exasperated wife and a darling young daughter in need of expensive dental work and school tuition. To pay for both, he must rejoin the union that expelled him for his unorthodox hunting practices. Vouched for by his friend Big John (Snoop Dogg), a cool, cowboy-hatted lady-killer, Bud promises the aggrieved union boss that he will behave. Uh-huh.Set in a sunny San Fernando Valley literally crawling with the undead, “Day Shift” has some sly touches (the übervamp, played by Karla Souza, sells real estate) and an uptight sidekick in Seth (Dave Franco), Bud’s union representative. A dorky desk jockey, Seth is the familiar foil for the hero’s one-liners, but Franco plays him with a sweetness that keeps his fussiness from grating. Frenzied and goofily good-natured, “Day Shift” is all sensation and not much sense — except, of course, in its belief in the absolute utility of a union card.Day ShiftRated R for bloody massacres galore. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      These 'Spider-Man' Villains Return in 'No Way Home'

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      Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina and Jamie Foxx talk about reprising their bad-guy roles in the blockbuster sequel.They were very good at being bad.At the dawn of the “Spider-Man” film franchise in 2002, Willem Dafoe, the acclaimed actor of movies like “Shadow of the Vampire” and “The Last Temptation of Christ,” inaugurated the superhero series with a credible, formidable villain, Norman Osborn — otherwise known as the Green Goblin.Two years later, Alfred Molina, the distinguished star of film (“Frida,” “Boogie Nights”) and theater (“Art”), donned the mechanical tentacles of the nefarious Otto Octavius — a.k.a. Doctor Octopus — for a sequel, “Spider-Man 2.”Another decade and another iteration of the franchise went by, and the mantle of eminent evildoer was passed to Jamie Foxx, an Academy Award winner for “Ray,” who played Max Dillon and his high-voltage alter ego, Electro, in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”Each reset — not to mention the fact that some of the characters died in their films — seemed to preclude the possibility that these actors and the bad guys they played could ever meet up in a single film.But that comic-book fantasy became cinematic reality in the current blockbuster “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” in which an errant spell cast by Doctor Strange brings Osborn, Octavius and Dillon into a dimension where Tom Holland wears the Spidey suit. (Oh yeah, the movie also unites Holland and his “Spider-Man” predecessors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield — blah, blah, blah.)For Dafoe, Molina and Foxx, “No Way Home” allowed them to share (or steal) trade secrets. The movie also gave their bad guys the opportunity to try out being good guys: as Molina explained, “All the villains got a chance to not just redeem ourselves but find a deeper, more nuanced level to fill out our characters and make them richer.”In individual interviews, the actors talked about being recruited to the “Spider-Man” franchise, returning for “No Way Home,” and the process and pleasures of doing their dirty deeds. These are edited excerpts from those conversations.What do you remember about first being offered your role in the “Spider-Man” series? What was different about superhero movies at the time?WILLEM DAFOE They offered the Goblin/Norman Osborn part to many people before they arrived at me. I was shooting a film in Spain [“The Reckoning”], and they sent the casting director to Spain and we shot a little audition in my hotel room. It wasn’t business as usual. But it was something I was very interested in doing, and I had a good feeling for Sam Raimi [who directed the original “Spider-Man” movies]. Of course, some people, at that point, thought it was very strange to make a film out of a comic. But I saw there could be a great pleasure and a great adventure in it, so I pursued it.The Green Goblin — and that mask — in the first “Spider-Man.”Sony PicturesALFRED MOLINA These movies have become very specific and almost forensic in the way they’re made. They have to appeal to all kinds of quadrants. On Sam Raimi’s film, I found the best way to handle the enormity of the event was to remember that as an actor, you’re a small cog in a much, much larger machine. You don’t spend a great deal of time exploring character or motivations, particularly if you’re playing a villain. But for me, that’s part of the joy of it — of turning a moment into, hopefully, a fun piece of storytelling.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and television series continues to expand. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’: The web slinger is back with the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series.‘Hawkeye’: Jeremy Renner returns to the role of Clint Barton, the wisecracking marksman of the Avengers, in the Disney+ mini-series.‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’: The superhero originated in comics filled with racist stereotypes. The movie knocked them down.‘Eternals’: The two-and-a-half-hour epic introduces nearly a dozen new characters, hopping back and forth through time.JAMIE FOXX All I can tell you is that my kids finally thought I was cool. “OK, we get all that other stuff you’ve been doing. But what? You’re going to go where? Are you kidding me?” They just loved Andrew Garfield. I was so jazzed to be able to be a kid myself. Watching the “Spider-Man” television show, back in the day, when his web was like a shoestring or whatever, and then to be part of this huge, huge world, it was just mind-blowing.After your movies, did you ever feel pangs of disappointment to see the “Spider-Man” franchise continue without you?DAFOE Even in the second and third installments [of the Raimi films], having me do little cameos, it was a pleasure to just see everyone again and stick my toe in the pool. But I didn’t have the imagination of continuing on.MOLINA I just walked away from my movie thinking, well, that was fun. I really had a great time. But I never thought, oh God, I wish they’d bring him back. I never had any kind of hankering to do it again. When your character dies, you go, that’s it.FOXX You can never look at it that way. If you look at the disappointments of what could have been, you can never do this business.How were you approached about “No Way Home,” and how much did you know about the other actors who were participating in it?DAFOE When Amy Pascal [a “Spider-Man” producer] and Jon Watts [the director of “No Way Home”] called me up and said we’d like to pitch you this idea, I thought, this is crazy. But let’s see what they have to say. I really didn’t want to do a cameo. I wanted to make sure there was something substantial enough to do that wasn’t just a tip of the hat. And the other thing was, I said I really want there to be action — I want to take part in action scenes. Because that’s really fun for me. It’s the only way to root the character. Otherwise it just becomes a series of memes.MOLINA When I got asked to come in for a meeting with Amy and Jon, I actually thought it was for a completely different project, maybe to play another villain, or maybe an interview for some retrospective documentary. As the years had gone by, I thought, they may well bring Doc Ock back. But I never thought they’d bring him back with me. I was witness to my body changing, things moving. I walked in completely innocent. Like everyone else, I didn’t know the full extent of where the film was going. I didn’t get to read a whole script — I just saw the pages pertinent to me.Molina opposed Tobey Maguire as our hero in “Spider-Man 2.”Melissa Moseley/Sony PicturesFOXX They were able to keep the mystique alive in a world where mystique doesn’t exist, anywhere. There’s Instagram posts and it’s about how many likes you get. Imagine if Picasso was screenshotting everything, everybody could see it, like, “Eh, I don’t want to buy that painting.” They kept everything under wraps and we all bought into something.Did anything change about how you played your characters in the new film?DAFOE I must be honest, I am aware that there was some criticism of that [Green Goblin] mask in the original one. We heard it enough that it was probably a consideration, to change it up a little bit. I don’t think about that because I don’t think about emoting with my face. My face follows my heart. It’s just an expression of what you’re feeling.MOLINA In my original film, the tentacles — I almost said my tentacles — they were mechanical. They were played by puppeteers who gave them personality. We were like a gang — I dubbed us the Octourage. But this time around, the technology is so much more advanced that the tentacles were computer-generated and I was on my own. That was a whole other way of looking at it.FOXX There was a character I played in “Baby Driver,” his name was Bats. He got killed off, but this was an opportunity to let Bats a little bit in on Electro. He wasn’t like, I want to [expletive] everybody up — I just want to get mine. Everybody flying through the air, looking good, got girlfriends. That now becomes the mantra of Electro.Had you previously met the actors who play your fellow villains? What was it like encountering them on “No Way Home”?DAFOE [Alfred and I] started at about the same time, so I was aware of his work and I’d see him through the years, so it was fun to see him and hear his stories. He’s got a million of them. And it was really fun to work with Jamie, because I’ve loved him ever since “In Living Color.” He’s a supremely sweet and energetic guy.MOLINA Willem and I met each other briefly on the set of Sam’s movie. They brought me to watch Willem doing a scene as Doc Ock, just a little practical joke, which was delightful. For me, Green Goblin is the absolute zenith of supervillains, and he plays him with such relish. For my money, he’s the top man.FOXX Alfred is the funniest guy on the planet. But then, the first time I saw Willem, I said, I’ve got to bow seven times, bro. He said, [bashful Willem Dafoe voice] “Ah, Jamie, you’re so nice, thank you so much, Jamie.” I said, no, bro, you’re going to get these seven bows. I would just watch these guys work and even small things that they would do, I’d say, ooh, I’mma steal that.Foxx in his first go-round as Electro, in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” 2014Sony PicturesYour characters in “No Way Home” each have ample opportunity to be very bad and the chance to turn good. Which side do you prefer?DAFOE Whenever you play a role, it is you and it isn’t you. If you’re going to play one of these archvillains, it’s the most natural thing in the world to cultivate the opposite of what they lead with. You develop a vulnerability and an insecurity against the confidence of the aggression. We all have that little devil on one shoulder and that little angel on the other shoulder. I remember as a kid seeing cartoons with that image. God knows it stayed with me.MOLINA They’re two very different things, but in a way they belong to each other. Whatever element in Doc Ock that is villainous is made more villainous in the minds of the audience because of their knowledge of his goodness. And at the same time, his return to decency is even more poignant because of what we know he’s capable of doing and has done.FOXX Oh, it’s always great to be bad, bro. What makes the superheroes super is how bad the villains can be.If any of the characters you’ve previously played could appear in the same movie, who would you want to see team up?DAFOE Once you finish something, you’ve got to make room for the next thing. So I don’t have much of an imagination for that kind of thing. Maybe I’m a little simpler. One at a time, one at a time.MOLINA Just off the top of my head, I think it might be cool if Doc Ock met up with Diego Rivera [from “Frida”] and lent him the tentacles so he could finish off all those glorious murals. He could get so much work done. He could be working on four or five canvases at the same time.FOXX Oh, man, Django [from “Django Unchained”], Willie Beamen [from “Any Given Sunday”] and Electro would be crazy. If they could share, they’d be like, yo, I need a little bit of that electricity over here. More

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      In ‘Soul’ on Disney+, Pixar Has Its First Black Lead Character

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Soul’ Features Pixar’s First Black Lead Character. Here’s How It Happened.Mindful of animation’s history of racist imagery, the studio aimed to make the jazz pianist at the center of the film as specific as possible.The movie centers on Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist with a day job as a middle-school music teacher.Credit…Disney/PixarDec. 22, 2020, 3:15 p.m. ETAll Pixar features arrive with technical innovations, but “Soul,” opening Dec. 25 on Disney+, breaks important new ground: The movie centers on the studio’s first Black protagonist, Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist on what might be the biggest day of his life, and the creative team includes the company’s first Black co-director, Kemp Powers.In general, Black stories and talent remain underrepresented in American animation, onscreen and off. You can hear Black stars in supporting roles (Samuel L. Jackson as Frozone in the “Incredibles” movies) or voicing animals (Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith in the “Madagascar” series). But “Soul” is only the fourth American animated feature to make Black characters the leads, following “Bebe’s Kids” (1992), “The Princess and the Frog” (2009) and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018).“To me, Joe represents a lot of people who aren’t being seen right now,” said Jamie Foxx, who provides Joe’s voice. “Joe is in all of us, regardless of color. To be the first Black lead in a Pixar film feels like a blessing, especially during this time when we all could use some extra love and light.”Knowing their work on “Soul” would be minutely scrutinized, the director Pete Docter, the co-screenwriter Mike Jones and the producer Dana Murray, who are white, set out to create a character who would be believably Black while avoiding the stereotypes of the past.The journey of Joe Gardner — and “Soul” — began four years ago, when Docter felt at loose ends after winning his second Oscar, for “Inside Out.” Murray recalled, “Pete had this feeling, ‘Is this it? Do I just do this again?’ I don’t know if it was a midlife crisis as much as a midlife what-am-I-doing? moment.”Docter began wondering about the origins of human personalities, and whether people were born destined to do certain things. Jones added, “In our first meeting, he told me, ‘Think about an idea set in a place beyond space and time, where souls are given their personalities.’”Docter said he and Jones worked for about two years to develop Joe, a Black middle-school music teacher and musician from Queens. But something was missing. “We wanted somebody who could speak authentically about this character and bring some depth to him,” Docter said. “That’s when Kemp Powers came on,” as the film’s co-directorPowers’s background is in live action and journalism; he adapted the coming film “One Night in Miami” (also due Dec. 25) from his own play. But he felt at home in the new medium. “Animation is a very collaborative, iterative form, which felt very akin to live theater,” he said. He was initially hired for 12 weeks as a writer, but his contract was extended. “Later, I got promoted to co-director, because Pete really wrapped me into the process.”Nevertheless, Powers understood the pitfalls of his role: “Some people might relish the idea of saying they speak for Black people, Black Americans, whatever: I am not one of those people,” he said, adding, “I’m absolutely a Black man, and I know my history; at the same time, I can’t speak for all the Black men who are from New York; I can’t speak for my generation.”Kemp Powers, co-director of “Soul,” said the filmmakers were aware of animation’s history of racist imagery. “At the same time, we didn’t want them to be white characters who happen to be brown-skinned. We had to give them distinct looks.”Credit…Texas Isaiah for The New York TimesMurray said Pixar recognized that “if Joe’s going to be Black, we’d need a lot of help,” She said Britta Wilson, the company’s vice president of inclusion strategies, helped build an internal “Cultural Trust” made up of some of the studio’s Black employees, a group that was diverse in terms of gender, jobs and age. “We also talked to a lot of external consultants and worked with Black organizations to make sure we were telling this story authentically and truthfully,” Murray added.Powers said they were all aware of the specificity needed for Joe’s character. “Treating the Black experience as a monolith makes things a lot easier: You can have one Black person rubber-stamp something and use that as your excuse for not having tried harder to get it right.”He recalled that the individual consultants brought a range of viewpoints: “We’d have 20 Black people in a room: We’d ask a question and get 20 different answers.” Their debates sometimes “broke along generational lines, which was interesting: Things I think are fine may seem offensive to the younger generation. Everyone had a different take, which made the job exponentially harder, but that care was needed.”Further complicating their work was the fact that animation is a medium of caricature: No human is as squat and angular as Carl in Pixar’s “Up,” yet audiences accept him as a crabby old man. For “Soul,” the Pixar crew strove to create characters who were recognizably Black while avoiding anything that recalled the racist stereotypes in old cartoons, from Mammy Two Shoes, the Black maid in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, to George Pal’s stop-motion Jasper.Docter, who has written about animation history, acknowledged, “There’s a long and painful history of caricatured racist design tropes that were used to mock African-Americans.”He recalled that when he was making “Up,” he worried about how the design of the Asian-American scout Russell might be perceived. Docter said his fellow Pixar director Peter Sohn, a Korean-American artist, advised him, “‘Korean eyes are shaped differently than Caucasian eyes. Look at me and draw what you see: The truth isn’t racist.’”Powers agreed that there was an important difference between “leaning into and taking pride in those features and making fun of those features.” Pixar, he said, was mindful of the sorry images from animation history. When it came to designing appealing but stylized characters, the artists “took care not to make them insulting. At the same time, we didn’t want them to be white characters who happen to be brown-skinned. We had to give them distinct looks, so they’re not just boring, monotone characters.”To create those looks, Pixar artists and technicians needed to capture the textures of Black hair and the way light plays on various tones of Black skin. Murray said they brought in the cinematographer Bradford Young, whose work includes “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” to consult as well.Finding the voice that fits an animated character is as challenging as finding the best performer for a live-action role. “You have a voice in your head that you can write to,” Jones explained. “We needed Joe to have ambition, to want to play music at the highest level, but we also needed Joe to be excited to teach what he loves — jazz — to his students, all of which Jamie provided.”Although Foxx has voiced animated characters before, he still had to adjust his performance. “When I got in the recording booth, I was delivering the lines with all kinds of facial expressions and gestures,” Foxx said. “They were like, “Uh, Jamie, let’s try that again and remember … we can’t see you.”During the film, Joe argues — and bonds — with a recalcitrant soul known as 22, who refuses to enter a human body. As 22, Tina Fey found the purely vocal performance liberating. though she too has done other voice-overs before: “I could let go of any worry about how I looked. Even as a comedy person, you’re always thinking a little bit about finding your light and standing up straight. It’s so freeing to not have to do that.” (The relationship between Joe and 22 grows increasing complicated, but neither actor wanted to say anything that might spoil the plot twists.)Reflecting on the creation of “Soul,” Powers said, “When someone told me I was Pixar’s first Black director, I said that can’t be right. Pete said — and my hope is — this is an indicator of changes that are going to be pretty rapid.” There are more animators of color and women in the business than there were 15 or 20 years ago, he noted. “It’s sad it’s taken this long, but I’m glad it’s coming finally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More