Goth, Mia

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares189 Views

    ‘MaXXXine’ Director Ti West Is Turning Hollywood Into a Horror Show

    by

    The Vista is a 101-year-old single-screen movie theater, one of the last of its kind in Los Angeles. A few years ago, midpandemic, Quentin Tarantino bought it, fixed it up, even opened a coffee shop next door and named it after the Pam Grier film “Coffy.” When asked why he bought the Vista or the New Beverly, another single-screen he owns, Tarantino has said: “I’ve got a living room. I want to go to a movie theater.” A few weeks ago I went to a sold-out double feature at the Vista: the film “X” and its prequel, “Pearl.” Both came out in 2022, both were released by the art-house mainstay A24 and both were directed by Ti West, a filmmaker sometimes compared with Tarantino — not least because both have made movies that are obsessed with the process, history and mythology of moviemaking itself. For Tarantino, that film was “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” in which two working actors stumble through the Hollywood of 1969, as one film era crashes into another. For West, it is “X” and “Pearl” and the trilogy’s final film, the newly released “MaXXXine.” These are, like most of West’s films, nominally horror movies. But they are also much stranger and more slippery than that label might suggest. In all three films, the horror stems from the characters’ drive toward stardom and their ruthless, sometimes psychotic ambition, which is fully unleashed by the possibilities of the silver screen.Martin Scorsese, a fan of West’s, wrote to me that he thought each film in the trilogy represented a “different type of horror, related to different eras in American moviemaking.” The first, “X,” is “the ’70s, the slasher era”; “Pearl” is “’50s melodrama in vivid saturated color; “MaXXXine” is “’80s Hollywood, rancid, desperate.” They are, Scorsese wrote, “three linked stories set within three different moments in movie culture, reflecting back on the greater culture.” By smuggling thoroughly modern ideas into films that were also steeped in the aesthetics of the past, Scorsese thought, West had done something bold and thoroughly cinematic.That night at the Vista, after “X” played, West sat onstage with the actress Lily Collins, who is in “MaXXXine,” and they talked about the making of the trilogy. Weeks earlier, over breakfast, West had shared with me an idea he was considering for the event: He wanted to surprise the audience by screening the new film instead of “Pearl.” It would be the first time he put “MaXXXine” in front of a real, live, movie-loving audience, as opposed to critics and press and industry types. The director Ti West, left, on the set of “MaXXXine,” the final installment in a horror trilogy that began with “X” and “Pearl.”Eddy Chen/A24Mia Goth in “MaXXXine.” She plays multiple roles across the course of the trilogy.Justin Lubin/A24The idea delighted West, he explained, because he was always interested in the process of leading an audience to that place where they know something is coming, and they probably have an idea of what it might be, but they find when it arrives that it is not at all what they expected. One of his favorite movie moments that does this is in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” at the end of the bazaar chase, when the crowd separates and a swordsman steps out. Indy looks at him for a beat, and you think to yourself: This is really exciting — he’s going to have a big battle against that guy with the sword! But instead, Indy simply pulls out his gun and shoots the guy.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

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Mia Goth on ‘MaXXXine’ and the End of the ‘X’ Horror Trilogy

      by

      Don’t call her a scream queen.Mia Goth may have amassed a filmography dominated by horror films like “A Cure for Wellness,” “Suspiria” and “Infinity Pool,” but she prefers not to limit herself.“I don’t want to be boxed in,” the 30-year-old actress from London said in a video interview. “I want to do everything.” Still, her work involves a fair bit of screaming, and she is quite good at it.The “X” trilogy is no exception. Directed by Ti West, the films follow the lives and crimes of Pearl and Maxine, both played by Goth. As we meet them in the first movie, “X,” Pearl (Goth under a pound of prosthetics) is a sexually deprived older woman with murderous tendencies, and Maxine is a young porn actress who dreams of making it big. They meet when Maxine arrives at a farm for an adult film production being shot there, but their hosts, Pearl and her husband, clash with the crew and things get bloody quickly. The second entry, titled after the main character, serves as Pearl’s origin story, and brought Goth greater recognition for her bold, meme-able performance. The third, “MaXXXine” (in theaters), picks up with its title character in Hollywood when she finally catches a break. All are anchored by Goth’s work, which remains deeply sincere even as it grows delightfully unhinged.Mia Goth says her “confidence as a performer is probably what evolved more than anything” from “X” to “MaXXXine.”Amy Harrity for The New York TimesDistributed by A24, each movie riffs on different styles and eras, with “X,” playing off ’70s exploitation cinema, “Pearl” paying homage to early Technicolor melodramas and “MaXXXine” taking on the ’80s B-movie slasher.In a wide-ranging interview, Goth spoke about working on the trilogy and filming shortly after the birth of her daughter, now about 2, with Shia LaBeouf.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

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘MaXXXine’ Review: Fame Monster

      by

      Mia Goth returns to Ti West’s horrorverse as an actress fleeing a mysterious stalker and a traumatic past.A psychosexual thriller imagined in blood red and cocaine white, “MaXXXine,” the third installment in Ti West’s nostalgia-soaked slasher saga, is part grungy homage to 1980s Hollywood and part sleazy feminist manifesto. Darker, moodier and altogether nastier than its predecessors — “X” (2022) and, later that same year, “Pearl” — this hyperconfident feature is also funny, occasionally wistful and deeply empathetic toward its damaged, driven heroine.That would be Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), the sole survivor of the dirty-movie cast massacred in “X.” Now a successful porn star, Maxine, eager to break into mainstream movies, has relocated to a Hollywood of spectacular seediness. It is 1985 and, as in real life, a killer known as the Night Stalker is terrorizing the city, the so-called Moral Majority is hyperventilating on the sidelines and rock musicians are fighting accusations of satanic intent. In one pungent shot of Maxine’s boot grinding her cigarette stub into the silent film sex symbol Theda Bara’s star on the Walk of Fame, West underscores the transience of the celebrity status that Maxine so desperately seeks.“I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” she declares, repeating the mantra taught by her father, a preacher seen in speckled, black-and-white flashback. Securing a role on a low-grade horror sequel brings her under the wing of its industry-toughened director (a perfect Elizabeth Debicki). Yet Maxine is constantly distracted: Her friends are dying, and two homicide detectives (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan) want to question her; a Louisiana gumshoe (Kevin Bacon, a skeevy vision in crumpled suits and gold-capped incisors) keeps randomly accosting her; and a mysterious, black-gloved stalker haunts the film’s shadows. No wonder Maxine is plagued by panicked recollections of her traumatic past.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

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Infinity Pool’ Review: Body Trouble

      by

      A wealthy writer succumbs to the lure of consequence-free violence in this artfully potent blend of horror and science fiction.For several seconds at the beginning of Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature, “Infinity Pool,” there is nothing but a blank screen and a woman’s whispered question. The woman is Em Foster (Cleopatra Coleman), and it’s clear that her husband, James (Alexander Skarsgard), has been talking in his sleep. Two of the words we hear are “brain death,” and, as the movie glides forward, they feel more and more like a warning.Moneyed yet miserable, the couple has come to an upscale resort on a fictional island, their marriage as becalmed as James’s artistic inspiration. Years earlier, he wrote a poorly-reviewed novel, his inability to follow up — and a lifestyle financed by Em’s father — causing frustration and marital distance. Boredom is unexpectedly alleviated by an invitation to join two European guests, Gabi and Alban (Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert), on a forbidden excursion outside the resort’s strangely fortified compound. Exactly what are the barbed wire and heavily guarded gates trying to keep out?It is probably not what you think: Cronenberg has so far been less curious about external threats than whatever danger lurks inside us. So when a car accident leaves one islander dead and James in police custody, and he is offered a horrifying choice — accept execution or pay for a double to die in his stead — his decision will either transform him or simply activate a rot that was festering all along.The catch is that James must observe the killing. And that’s only the beginning of a movie that some might consider depraved, though its startlingly explicit imagery, including a phantasmagorical orgy, can sometimes distract from its cunning artistry. Soaked in an atmosphere of unrelenting dread, “Infinity Pool” works its canted camera angles and insistent, drumbeat-heavy score to transfixing effect. And when James joins a drugged-out cohort of rich revelers, all of whom are longtime members of the island’s get-out-of-jail-for-a-price program, his self-loathing climbs in tandem with the group’s escalating brutality.Like the gloriously viscous process of creating the replicants, much of “Infinity Pool” might be funny if it weren’t so disturbing. Skarsgard is marvelous, gobbling food like an animal as invigoration and arousal replace emasculation. And Goth (fresh from last year’s “Pearl”) is a human interrobang, silken and seductive one minute, banshee-like the next. The performances sync perfectly with a movie that, in common with its titular amenity, is without visible limits; but there’s more going on here than a nihilistic tableau of unrestrained privilege. Presenting violence as both entertainment and aphrodisiac (as the director’s father, David Cronenberg, did so nauseatingly in his 1997 film, “Crash”), “Infinity Pool” probes deeper into the psychological effects on the perpetrator. It’s a theme the younger director explored brilliantly in his 2020 film, “Possessor” (whose assassin can also kill with impunity), and it shows him grappling with a more twisted and complex morality.“Do you worry that they killed the wrong man?,” James is asked after one double is executed. Surreal, sophisticated and sometimes sickening, “Infinity Pool” suggests that while the elder Cronenberg might be fixated on the disintegration of our bodies, his son is more concerned with the destruction of our souls.Infinity PoolRated R for murderous tourists and militaristic genitals. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Inside the Oscars’ Best-Actress Battle Royale

      by

      Forget the men: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Clockwise from top left, Margot Robbie in “Babylon”; Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”; Danielle Deadwyler in “Till”; Cate Blanchett in “Tár”; Michelle Williams in “The Fabelmans”; and Viola Davis in “The Woman King.”Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures; A24; Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures; Focus Features; Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures, via Amblin Entertainment; Sony PicturesBy their very nature, awards shows are designed to exclude, barring all but a few from the glory of earning a nomination.Still, this year’s race for the best-actress Oscar is so stacked with contenders that I’m ready to comb the academy bylaws for a workaround. Are five slots really enough to honor a field this formidable? Couldn’t we swipe a few more from the wan best-actor category, at least?The truth is, even 10 slots would barely scratch the surface of what the best-actress race has to offer. Many of the season’s most acclaimed films, like “Tár” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” have given career-best signature roles to their leading ladies, though only one woman can collect the Oscar. Meanwhile, a vast array of up-and-comers, actresses playing against type and underdogs worth a second look will be vying simply to make the final five. Here are the women contending in this season’s most exciting category.The Front-runnersIn the fictional world of “Tár,” the conniving conductor played by Cate Blanchett has been showered with an absurd amount of awards. By the end of this season, Blanchett herself may keep pace with her character.The two-time Oscar winner’s bravura performance — she learned German, orchestra conducting and piano for the role — has netted the most notable prizes so far: In addition to nominations from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and Gotham Awards, Blanchett won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival and a pair of leading trophies from the New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The last time Blanchett triumphed with the critics groups on both coasts, she was well on her way to winning her second Oscar, for “Blue Jasmine.”If she wins her third, the 53-year-old would be the youngest woman ever to reach that milestone. (Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand and Ingrid Bergman are the only other actresses to have won three Oscars each for their performances, while Katharine Hepburn holds the record with four.) But those laurels could also count against Blanchett in a race where her strongest competitor has never even been nominated and is angling for a historic win.Michelle Yeoh came close to snagging a supporting-actress nomination for “Crazy Rich Asians” (2018), but this time, she’s undeniable: The 60-year-old’s leading role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” as an ordinary woman who becomes the multiverse’s last hope, should earn Yeoh her first Oscar nod.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.Rian Johnson:  The “Glass Onion” director explains the streaming plan for his “Knives Out” franchise.The role shows off everything Yeoh is capable of — including her athleticism, precise character work and sense of humor — and she has teared up in interviews while discussing how rarely a movie like that is offered to an Asian actress. In a recent awards round table, Yeoh told the other actresses, “I honestly look at all of you with such envy because you get an opportunity to try all the different roles, but we only get that opportunity maybe once in a long, long time.” Indeed, no Asian woman has ever won best actress, and after 94 ceremonies, the only winner of color in the category remains Halle Berry for “Monster’s Ball.”Can Yeoh pull off a landmark victory? It may help that she has a more sympathetic character arc: While Blanchett’s Lydia Tár compels and confounds in equal measure, Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang learns to drop her guard and let love in. But the competition in this category is fierce, and Blanchett isn’t the only heavyweight she’ll be contending with.For playing a character based on Steven Spielberg’s mother in “The Fabelmans,” Michelle Williams is likely to score her fifth Oscar nomination, which puts her behind Glenn Close and Amy Adams as the three living actresses who’ve been nominated the most times without having won. That gives Williams a potent “she’s due” narrative that could siphon votes from both Blanchett and Yeoh; it helps, too, that she gives her all to the part, playing a vivacious woman whose spirit couldn’t be contained by her marriage.The “Till” star Danielle Deadwyler won the first lead-performance trophy of the season at last month’s Gotham Awards, and she’ll need that momentum to overcome striking snubs from the Independent Spirits and Golden Globes. Still, her emotionally precise performance as the mother of Emmett Till has Oscar-friendly heft, since voters often gravitate toward an actor playing a historical figure.It’s rarer that Oscar voters make room for an action heroine in the best-actress category: Though Sigourney Weaver earned a nomination for “Aliens,” Charlize Theron found no traction for “Mad Max: Fury Road.” But there’s more to what Viola Davis does in “The Woman King” than just wielding a spear. Her fierce warrior is weary and her battle yells pack a cathartic punch. If the movie can make it into the best-picture lineup, Davis should be swept in.Damien Chazelle’s debauched Hollywood dramedy “Babylon” has earned wildly mixed reviews, but the director helmed two Oscar-winning performances — Emma Stone in “La La Land” and J.K. Simmons in “Whiplash” — and that pedigree has pushed Margot Robbie into contention for her role as a fledgling actress convinced of her own star quality. Nominations for “I, Tonya” and “Bombshell” prove that voters like Robbie in ambitious-striver mode, though the movie is stuffed so full of characters that she can’t quite dominate the proceedings like some of her best-actress competition.Oscar voters might consider an ingénue like Ana de Armas for her performance as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” NetflixThe Women Waiting in the WingsCan two Oscar favorites overcome muted streaming launches in a year when theatrical contenders reign supreme? “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” hands Emma Thompson a sexually frank showcase role that had Oscar pundits buzzing at January’s Sundance Film Festival, but the film’s quiet June debut on Hulu drew fewer headlines. And despite a best-picture win this year for “CODA,” Apple TV+ still struggles to get all those “Ted Lasso” and “Severance” viewers to watch exclusive movies like “Causeway,” though the film features a strong, back-to-basics lead performance from Jennifer Lawrence.At least “Blonde” managed a streaming debut that got people talking, though the punishing Netflix drama about Marilyn Monroe had some awfully loud detractors. Can its star, Ana de Armas, rise above those pans? She managed a Golden Globe nomination, at least, and Oscar voters love to single out a rising ingénue, but the film will prove a tough sit in a year with plenty of better-received options.In the first hour of “Empire of Light,” Olivia Colman plays a movie-theater worker who opens herself up to an appealing romance, but in the second, the character goes off her meds and the movie goes off the rails. Even if those two halves don’t quite cohere, Colman definitely gets some big moments to play, and the actress has so quickly become an Oscar mainstay (over the last four years, she has been nominated three times and won once) that she should be considered a perennial option for the final five.Rooney Mara is spirited and sensitive in “Women Talking,” but the studio’s decision to campaign her as a lead actress is tenuous: In this ensemble drama about conflicted Mennonite women, Mara has scarcely more screen time than Claire Foy or Jessie Buckley, who are being positioned as supporting-actress contenders. Then again, Mara is no stranger to category high jinks: Six years ago, she was nominated as a supporting actress for “Carol,” even though she was clearly playing that film’s protagonist.Keke Palmer won a New York Film Critics Circle award for supporting actress for “Nope” even if it really was a lead performance. Universal PicturesThe Dark-Horse ContendersIf social media memes could be counted as accolades, Mia Goth would surely give Blanchett’s haul a run for her money: The young actress’s work in “Pearl,” in which she plays a farm girl who’d kill for stardom, has Twitter awash in Goth GIFs. Ti West’s technicolor horror drama isn’t the sort of thing that Oscar voters usually go for, but Goth is fearsomely committed, knocking out a tour de force, eight-minute monologue that’s topped only by a sustained closing shot of the actress smiling until she cries. At the very least, it’d make for one memorable Oscar clip.I hope that as the membership of the academy grows ever more international, more powerhouse performances will be recognized in languages other than English. In Park Chan-wook’s South Korean noir “Decision to Leave,” Tang Wei is a terrific femme fatale, while Léa Seydoux delivers her finest work as a single mother in the French drama “One Fine Morning.” And Oscar voters who regret snubbing Vicky Krieps for “Phantom Thread” could make it up to her by checking out the royal drama “Corsage,” in which she plays Empress Elisabeth of Austria with beguiling irreverence.Comedic actresses are too often undervalued by Oscar voters, but Aubrey Plaza spent 2022 proving she was capable of much more: Fans of her breakout performance in HBO’s “The White Lotus” should check out her dark, edgy work in the drama “Emily the Criminal,” which earned nominations from the Gothams and Indie Spirits. And “Nope,” which topped our critic A.O. Scott’s list of the best films of the year, boasts a charismatic star turn by Keke Palmer that recently earned a win from the New York Film Critics Circle, even if the group had to pretend she gave a supporting performance to get her out of the way of Blanchett’s leading win. Normally, I’d discourage that kind of category fraud, but in this crowded year, I sympathize with the desire to bend some rules. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Pearl’ Review: A Farmer’s Daughter Moves Up the Food Chain

      by

      A horror-movie killer gets a surprising origin story in Ti West’s prequel to “X.”If you have seen “X,” Ti West’s ingenious and heartfelt pastiche of ’70s horror and hard-core pornography, you know that Mia Goth plays two roles. (If you haven’t seen it, there are spoilers ahead.) She is Maxine, an aspiring movie star and the designated survivor of a rural killing spree. Disguised by prosthetic makeup, she is also a horny and homicidal farmer’s wife named Pearl, and does a lot of killing.In “Pearl,” which Goth wrote with West, she repeats that role, playing Pearl as a horny and homicidal farmer’s daughter. That’s not the setup for a dirty joke, and this prequel, set in 1918, is less of a dirty movie than “X” aspired to be. There is some sex and plenty of gore, but mostly an atmosphere of feverish, lurid melodrama leavened with winks of knowing humor and held together by Goth’s utterly earnest and wondrously bizarre performance.More than 50 years before the events in “X,” Pearl lives on the same Texas farm, with its creaky yellow house, its cavernous barn, and a hungry alligator in the pond. Her life is an endless cycle of toil and frustration. Her husband, Howard, is away at war, leaving her alone with her parents: a pious, dictatorial German mother (Tandi Wright) and a father (Matthew Sunderland) who has been incapacitated by the flu. Money is scarce, and Pearl escapes by sneaking off to the movies while she’s running errands in town.She dreams of running off to pursue a career in pictures, practicing song-and-dance routines in anticipation of a big break. She also practices what we know from “X” will be one of her later vocations. When a goose wanders into the barn and looks at her funny, she impales it on a pitchfork and feeds it to the alligator. The arc of “Pearl” charts her progress up the food chain, from poultry to human prey.The bloodshed is at least as grisly as the slaughter in “X,” but “Pearl” occupies a different corner of the slasher-movie universe. It isn’t especially suspenseful — the identity of the killer is never in doubt, and her victims don’t elicit much sympathy — but it has a strange, hallucinatory intensity. The emotions and the colors are gaudy and overwrought, the music (by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams) is frenzied and portentous, but the film is too sincere, too tender toward its peculiar heroine, to count as camp.It’s also a bit thin and undercooked, but Goth’s performance transcends its limits. She is by turns childlike, seductive and terrifying. Pearl falls into an affair with the local movie-house projectionist (David Corenswet), who introduces her to French pornography and dazzles her with the promise of a Bohemian life free of small-town constraints. She seethes and simpers around her parents, and tries to be friends with her wholesome blonde sister-in-law (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Through it all, Pearl grapples with stifling social and domestic expectations and with her irrepressible hunger for freedom, fame and erotic release.Goth might remind you at times of Judy Garland in youth, of Shelley Duvall in the ’70s, or of a demonically possessed Raggedy Ann doll, but she has her own fearless and forthright intensity. West wants you to see that Pearl, a monster in the making, is also a heroine for the ages. Goth will make you believe it. Or else.PearlRated R. Stay out of the barn, and the basement. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More