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    ‘Ballerina’ Review: Ana de Armas Twirls Into ‘John Wick’ Franchise

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    Ana de Armas twirls into the franchise as a ballerina-assassin with vengeance on her mind in this by-the-numbers cash grab.With a title as cumbersome as its germinating mythology, “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” is a stone-cold, self-infatuated effort to couple another boxcar to the franchise money train. I regret to report that Keanu Reeves’s titular assassin does not appear in a tutu.He does pop in, though, ever so briefly, lest we lose interest before the promised fifth installment. Set during the events of “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” (2019), “Ballerina” is besotted with Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a lithe and lovely orphan who saw her father murdered and is obsessed with revenge. Inducted into the Ruska Roma, a cultlike clan whose ballet school fronts a contract-killer training facility, Eve practices pirouettes and punches with equal enthusiasm. Her toes are bloody, but her resolve is undimmed.A luxe orgy of mass murder, “Ballerina” dances from one bloody melee to another, its back-of-a-matchbook plot (by Shay Hatton) driven solely by arterial motives. As Eve defies the ballet school’s director (Anjelica Huston, more formidable than a roomful of Baryshnikovs) to pursue the well-protected head of a rival clan, the movie tends the franchise flame with a Wick-world checklist of familiar tropes. Like the impossibly creative, perfectly executed, utterly ridiculous fight sequences, which include Eve’s father single-handedly overcoming a literal boatload of would-be assassins, or Eve laying waste to the lethal residents of an entire Austrian village. Outlandish weaponry is a given, and “Ballerina” delights in deploying everything from expensive cookware to ice skates. There’s even a hulking, Dolph Lundgren type wielding a flamethrower.From time to time, the feverish slaughter pauses respectfully to allow English and Irish acting legends to inject brief moments of gravitas. Ian McShane’s menacingly dapper Winston is around to offer foster-fatherly advice and drop murky hints about Eve’s true parentage, and Gabriel Byrne appears as the mysterious head of the rival family and the bearer of further familial secrets. It’s all a bit much for Eve, who seems more relieved than scared when Wick himself shows up with a contract to stop her one-woman rampage. I suspect the audience will be equally thankful.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

      In ‘Towards Zero,’ Agatha Christie Gets Steamy

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      A new three-part TV mini-series streaming on BritBox amps up the themes of forbidden desire and psychological distress in the detective novelist’s 1944 book.In the second episode of the BBC’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation, a bride walks into the hall of a large country house and finds her husband standing on the elegant curved staircase, with his head buried beneath the silk evening gown his ex-wife is wearing.This, it is clear, is not a stereotypically cozy Christie retelling.Instead, this three-part limited series, “Towards Zero” — which comes to BritBox on Wednesday — takes the forbidden desire, well-heeled nihilism and murderous emotion from Christie’s 1944 novel of the same name and gives those a distinctly contemporary feel.“It’s incredibly dark, interesting material,” said Sam Yates, the show’s director. Since Christie’s novels have already been adapted so many times, “the choice is do them exactly by the book every time, or let them live for the moment,” said Yates, who also directed “Vanya,” the inventive one-man Chekhov adaptation currently playing Off Broadway and starring Andrew Scott.The show features a love triangle between Audrey, played by Ella Lily Hyland, center; and Nevile and Mimi.James Pardon/Mammoth ScreenFor “Towards Zero,” Yates and the writer Rachel Bennette chose the moment, tweaking their source material for today’s audience, as shown by the steamy interaction on the staircase, which pushes the characters to violent extremes.Set in 1936 among the British upper class, “Towards Zero” opens with a love triangle playing out around a much-publicized divorce. Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a playboy tennis star, is ending his marriage to Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland), on whom he cheated with the younger and more assertive Kay (Mimi Keene), who would become his wife.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 Royal Tenenbaums” Introduced Gene Hackman to a New Generation

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      His performance in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” introduced Hackman to a new generation, and his presence helped define the film.When the director Wes Anderson and the actors Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray and Gwyneth Paltrow took the stage in 2011 for a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary of Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” there was no need for small talk before addressing the elephant in the room.“So, no Gene Hackman?” began the director Noah Baumbach, the panel’s co-moderator, introducing an apparently genuine nervousness into the discussion.Hackman, who was found dead on Wednesday afternoon with his wife at their home in Santa Fe, N.M., at the age of 95, loomed over “The Royal Tenenbaums” in every possible sense.Within the film, of course, he is the paterfamilias — he is Royal Tenenbaum, “the displaced patriarch,” as Hackman put it in an on-set interview — of the remarkable, scattered family at the center of Anderson’s third film, the one that took him from art houses to the mainstream.That 2011 panel dived into Hackman’s presence, particularly an off-camera gruffness, that distinguished him from the whimsy typical of Anderson’s work. Here was the avatar of 1970s grit and paranoia — who had won an Oscar playing the bad-boy narcotics detective Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection” — dropped into a very different type of cinematic vision, from a very different generation.The tone throughout the panel, particularly from Anderson, was respectful and appreciative. But it was clear that Hackman stood out on set. At the time of filming “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Hackman was already considering a retirement that just a few years later he announced and stuck to, Anderson said. None of the panelists had been in touch with Hackman during the intervening years, they said. And they all remembered him being terse with Anderson.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