Ghostlight (Movie)

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    9 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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    Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.Critic’s PickAll the emotions!Joy (Amy Poehler) and Anxiety (Maya Hawke) are two of the voices in the head of Riley, who is turning 13 and acquiring the feelings that come with it.Pixar/Disney/Pixar, via Associated Press‘Inside Out 2’In the sequel to the Pixar charmer “Inside Out,” Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) develops a new range of (anthropomorphized) emotions like Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and Envy (Ayo Edebiri) when she reaches puberty.From our review:Franchises often bank on nostalgia, so it’s easy to fall for “Inside Out 2,” which works largely because the first one does wonderfully well. The new movie conforms to the original’s ethos as well as inventive template, its conceit and visual design, so its pleasures are agreeably familiar.In theaters. Read the full review.Putting the “community” in community theater.Dan (Keith Kupferer) in “Ghostlight.”Luke Dyra/IFC Films‘Ghostlight’This family drama directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson follows Dan (Keith Kupferer) as he struggles to navigate relationships with his wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), and daughter, Daisy (Katherine May Kupferer), after tragedy strikes. He finds solace in joining a local production of “Romeo and Juliet.”From our review:It’s a gentle story, full of tender moments, and knowing that the parents and daughter in the main cast are a family in real life increases the warmth. There’s a complexity to their conversations, the way their interactions are never one-note (as parents and teens often are in films), that you can sense has its roots in real life. By the end of the film, their emotional bond carries the story.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickMore like coming-of-rage.From left, Deena Ezral, Zafreen Zairizal, and Piqa in “Tiger Stripes.”Dark Star Pictures‘Tiger Stripes’After she gets her first period, Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) begins to experience strange and supernatural changes to her body in this feature debut from Amanda Nell Eu.From our review:Anyone who has gone through adolescence — in other words, everyone — knows the kind of myths, silences and shame that often accompany a maturing body. Eu smartly weaves that universality together with local myths and legends, and the result is a little eerie and unsettling, a film about dark things we’re afraid to speak about.In theaters. Read the full review.A swing and a miss.Ted (Logan Marshall-Green), left, makes his living as a stadium peanut vendor and Marty (David Duchovny) plays his father, a Red Sox fan, in “Reverse the Curse.”VerticalWe 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

      ‘Ghostlight’ Review: With Patient Ears, Attend

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      The film is a gentle, emotional drama about a family struggling to stay together. It’s also about the power of theater.The therapeutic value of theater is no secret. Everything from role play to full-out drama can be part of the health practitioners’ toolbox. But even a young person who finds themselves sobbing onstage in a role in the high school play knows there’s something regenerative about stepping into someone else’s shoes for a while.That’s the gist of “Ghostlight,” named for the single bulb often left burning in a theater when all the rest of the lights are shut off, keeping it from total darkness. If that sounds like a metaphor, it is. There are metaphors aplenty in “Ghostlight,” written by Kelly O’Sullivan (“Saint Frances”) and directed by O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson. The pair are partners, with a young child, which is worth noting mostly because “Ghostlight” centers on a family rocked by tragedy and brought together by theater. (O’Sullivan is an alumna of the school at Chicago’s eminent Steppenwolf Theater Company — this is familiar territory for her.)The story centers on Dan (Keith Kupferer), a stoic construction worker who is trying to hold his family, and himself, together after the tragic death of a teenage son, the details of which the movie at first keeps us from knowing, for reasons that eventually become clear. His wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), is a teacher, and their teenage daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is a theater kid with a belligerent streak. It’s obvious the family isn’t OK. It’s volatile, stressful work to stay afloat.After Daisy gets herself suspended from school, Dan is about at his limit, and after an outburst at work he gets put on leave, too. He doesn’t want to tell his family. A serendipitous encounter with an onlooker named Rita (Dolly De Leon) leads him into an unexpected place: a rehearsal for a local production of “Romeo and Juliet,” which has just lost a player. Rita badgers him into reading lines for a day. He keeps coming back.It’s a gentle story, full of tender moments, and knowing that the parents and daughter in the main cast are a family in real life increases the warmth. There’s a complexity to their conversations, the way their interactions are never one-note (as parents and teens often are in films), that you can sense has its roots in real life. By the end of the film, their emotional bond carries the story. Have a few tissues on hand.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

      Sundance Film Festival: ‘Freaky Nights’ Is the Hot Ticket

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      “Freaky Tales” with Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis and Normani, gets a raucous premiere as Hollywood turns out in force for the festival.Hello from the Sundance Film Festival in frigid Park City, Utah, where your faithful Projectionist will spend the next week answering important questions like: Are we about to discover the next great filmmaker? Is it possible to look chic in a puffer jacket? And wait, there’s a Neon party tonight? Why didn’t I get an invite?The festival is celebrating its 40th edition this year, but it’s a Hollywood 40, meaning some effective nips and tucks have kept Sundance seeming fresh and vital even as the industry it’s a part of has changed considerably. In the ’90s, every independent filmmaker dreamed of launching their career at this festival as the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh had. Now, with the independent-film market in a precarious position, talent comes to Sundance to schmooze and say, “What I’d really like to do is make a limited series.”And hey, the festival programs those now, alongside the documentaries, shorts and narrative films that remain Sundance’s bread and butter. Some movies have premises so outrageous that you could only find them here: In “Love Me,” Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun play a buoy and satellite who fall in love, while “Sasquatch Sunset” casts Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough as an unrecognizable pair of Bigfoots and, I’m told, plays things utterly straight.Other movies evoke past Sundance classics. On Thursday, I watched “Ghostlight,” about a troubled family that finds solace by staging Shakespeare: It reminded me of the Sundance hit “CODA,” down to the third-act performance that had audiences weeping. Then I booked it to the documentary “Girls State,” a distaff sequel to Apple TV’s 2020 Sundance pickup “Boys State.” The new one follows hundreds of teenage girls as they try to craft a mock government.The opening night’s hottest ticket was “Freaky Tales,” a gonzo anthology starring Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis and the pop singer Normani. Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who’d previously brought their films “Half Nelson” and “Mississippi Grind” here, “Freaky Tales” follows four interconnected stories set in 1987 Oakland that all tend to climax in outrageously bloody scenes of revenge. Whenever the red stuff spurted, the audience hooted.Though Sundance has introduced a virtual portion to its festival that will be available next week, people remain eager to attend in person. Pascal, one of Hollywood’s most overbooked actors, made the briefest of trips to Park City just so he could attend the raucous “Freaky Tales” premiere. “Ghostlight” directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson were even more determined to make it to the festival: Though they were still shooting their film just three months ago, thanks to fleet work from their editors, the two were able to submit a first cut to Sundance in early November, just four days after they’d wrapped.It helped, O’Sullivan said, that she had another ticking clock that demanded quick work: She shot the film while eight months pregnant.“I said we had a hard out,” she joked at the premiere. More