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    Scarlett Johansson Makes Her Debut as Director of ‘Eleanor the Great’

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    Few movie stars today win over critics and convey Old Hollywood glamour as effortlessly as Scarlett Johansson does, all while seemingly impervious to the industry’s convulsions.Now 40, she has been famous most of her life. She turned 10 the year her first movie, “North,” opened in 1994; four years later, she was upstaging Robert Redford in “The Horse Whisperer.” In the decades since, she starred in cult films and blockbusters, made a record with Pete Yorn and earned a couple of Oscar nominations. In between hits and misses, she also married three times (most recently to Colin Jost) and had two children.The kind of diverse professional portfolio that Johansson has cultivated can make life more interesting, of course, but it’s also evidence of shrewd, career-sustaining choices. In 2010, she made her critically celebrated Broadway debut in a revival of Arthur Miller’s tragedy “A View From the Bridge.” (She went on to win a Tony.) That same year, she slipped on a bodysuit to play the lethal Russian superspy Black Widow in Marvel’s “Iron Man 2,” a role that propelled her into global celebrity.On Tuesday, Johansson publicly took on another role when she presented her feature directing debut, “Eleanor the Great,” at the Cannes Film Festival. Playing outside the main lineup, it is the kind of intimately scaled, performance-driven movie that’s ideal for a novice director.June Squibb stars as the 94-year-old Eleanor, who, soon after the story opens, moves into her daughter’s New York apartment. Life gets complicated when Eleanor inadvertently ends up in a support group for Holocaust survivors. It gets even trickier when a journalism student insists on writing about Eleanor. A friendship is born, salted with laughter and tears.I met with Johansson the day after the premiere of “Eleanor the Great.” She first walked the festival red carpet in 2005 for “Match Point,” returning last year with “Asteroid City.” (She’s also in “The Phoenician Scheme,” which is here, too.) It had rained hard the day of her premiere, but the sky was blue when she stepped onto a hotel terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. Seated in a quiet corner shaded by a large umbrella, Johansson was friendly, pleasant and a touch reserved. Wearing the largest diamond that I’ve seen outside of a Tiffany window, she kept her sunglasses on as we talked, the consummate picture of movie stardom.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

      On ‘S.N.L.’, Bad Bunny and Scarlett Johansson Have a Couples’ Feud

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      This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Scarlett Johansson and featuring the musical guest Bad Bunny, began with a sendup of President Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.There was only one way for the final episode of the milestone 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” to begin: with Lorne Michaels announcing that his chosen successor will be — nah, come on, it was another sketch with James Austin Johnson playing President Trump.This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Scarlett Johansson and featuring the musical guest Bad Bunny, began with a sendup of President Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East.Sharing the stage with Emil Wakim (who was playing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia), Johnson said that he’d been enjoying their meals together, “sitting on the floor, dipping our fingers straight into various goops and spreads that I politely scrape under the rug and go eat at a mobile McDonald’s that you built for me.”He added that he was a “big fan of everything that Saudi Arabia has to offer, from the oil to the money to end of list.”Johnson vowed that he didn’t make this trip for his own benefit. “I want to make that clear,” he said. “I did this for the American people and, in many ways, myself. My personal enrichment. I did that too.”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

      Cannes Film Festival 2025: What to Watch From This Year’s Star-Packed Lineup

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      The event is packed with high-profile English-language movies, including the new “Mission: Impossible” and a Jennifer Lawrence-Robert Pattinson drama.The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival begins Tuesday, and this lineup is particularly star-packed. Which titles could follow in the path of last year’s big breakouts like “Anora” and “The Substance”? Here are the stories we have our eye on this year.It’s a Hollywood-heavy lineup.Though Cannes is traditionally known for showcasing the best in global cinema, the lineup is packed with so many high-profile English-language films that it could be mistaken for a festival in Hollywood.The biggest premieres include “Die My Love,” which pairs Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson as a couple in a crumbling marriage; the new Spike Lee film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” with Denzel Washington; and Wes Anderson’s caper “The Phoenician Scheme,” with Benicio Del Toro leading an ensemble that includes Michael Cera, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hanks and Riz Ahmed.There’s also the romantic drama “The History of Sound,” with Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor; Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” a tribute to the French new wave; and “Eddington” from Ari Aster (“Midsommar,” “Hereditary”), with an A-list cast featuring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler. And if that weren’t Hollywood-heavy enough, Tom Cruise will debut his final “Mission: Impossible” movie on the festival’s second day.Actors are making their directorial debuts.Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson are all Cannes mainstays, but for this year’s fest, the three actors are instead stepping behind the camera for their feature directing debuts. And lest you assume they’re making vanity projects, all three declined starring roles in their own movies.Stewart’s long-in-the-works “The Chronology of Water” will bow first, starring Imogen Poots as a young woman struggling with issues of addiction and sexuality. Next up is “Urchin,” from the “Babygirl” breakout Dickinson, about a London drifter (Frank Dillane) struggling to find his place in society. And the second week of the festival will debut Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” a comedy starring June Squibb.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

      Cannes Film Festival Announces Lineup, Including Scarlett Johansson and Wes Anderson

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      A sidebar to the competition will feature Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut.Movies directed by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Ari Aster are among 19 films that will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced at a news conference on Thursday.The festival’s 78th edition, which opens May 13 and runs through May 24, will also feature the premiere of “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the eighth movie in the action series starring Tom Cruise, playing in an out-of-competition spot.Linklater’s movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless,” a seminal picture in the French New Wave film movement.Richard Linklater at the Berlin Film Festival in February. His “Nouvelle Vague,” playing in competition at Cannes, is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless.”Christopher Neundorf/EPA, via ShutterstockOther movies by American directors appearing in competition are Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” starring Benicio Del Toro as an eccentric businessman; Aster’s “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, and focused on a small-town election; and Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” about an art heist.Julia Ducournau, whose movie “Titane” won the Palme d’Or in 2021, will return to the competition with “Alpha”; and Joachim Trier, who directed “The Worst Person in the World,” a breakout hit that same year, will present a new film, “Sentimental Value.”In recent years, the Cannes competition has premiered a host of movies that have gone on to dominate award season. Last year’s lineup included Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” and Sean Baker’s “Anora” — the last of which won the Palme d’Or and this year’s Academy Award for best picture.A jury led by the French actor Juliette Binoche will announce the winner at a ceremony on May 24.Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which will feature in the competition’s sidebar, is called “Eleanor the Great.”Mario Anzuoni/ReutersOutside the main competition, the sidebar section, known as Un Certain Regard, features the directorial debuts of two prominent actors: Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” in which a woman in her 90s moves to New York and tries to start life afresh; and Harris Dickinson’s “Urchin,” a drama about a homeless person.Aside from the main competition and Un Certain Regard, the festival also has special screenings, out-of-competition slots and a section called Cannes Premiere. Some notable movies playing in those categories include “Private View,” directed by Rebecca Zlotowski and starring Jodie Foster in her first French-language role for over two decades; “Stories of Surrender,” based on Bono’s acclaimed one-man stage show; and “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” by the Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.The honorary Palme d’Or, given each year to acknowledge a contribution to cinema, will go to Robert De Niro. The actor performed the lead in two past Palme d’Or winners: Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” which won the main prize in 1976; and Roland Joffé’s “The Mission,” which triumphed in 1986. More

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      in Movies

      Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater to Compete at Cannes Film Festival

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      A sidebar to the competition will feature Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut.Movies directed by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Ari Aster are among 19 films that will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced at a news conference on Thursday.The festival’s 78th edition, which opens May 13 and runs through May 24, will also feature the premiere of “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” the eighth movie in the action series starring Tom Cruise, playing in an out-of-competition spot.Linklater’s movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless,” a seminal picture in the French New Wave film movement.Richard Linklater at the Berlin Film Festival in February. His “Nouvelle Vague,” playing in competition at Cannes, is about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic “Breathless.”Christopher Neundorf/EPA, via ShutterstockOther movies by American directors appearing in competition are Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” starring Benicio Del Toro as an eccentric businessman; Aster’s “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, and focused on a small-town election; and Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” about an art heist.Julia Ducournau, whose movie “Titane” won the Palme d’Or in 2021, will return to the competition with “Alpha”; and Joachim Trier, who directed “The Worst Person in the World,” a breakout hit that same year, will present a new film, “Sentimental Value.”In recent years, the Cannes competition has premiered a host of movies that have gone on to dominate award season. Last year’s lineup included Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” and Sean Baker’s “Anora” — the last of which won the Palme d’Or and this year’s Academy Award for best picture.A jury led by the French actor Juliette Binoche will announce the winner at a ceremony on May 24.Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which will feature in the competition’s sidebar, is called “Eleanor the Great.”Mario Anzuoni/ReutersOutside the main competition, the sidebar section, known as Un Certain Regard, features the directorial debuts of two prominent actors: Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” in which a woman in her 90s moves to New York and tries to start life afresh; and Harris Dickinson’s “Urchin,” a drama about a homeless person.Aside from the main competition and Un Certain Regard, the festival also has special screenings, out-of-competition slots and a section called Cannes Premiere. Some notable movies playing in those categories include “Private View,” directed by Rebecca Zlotowski and starring Jodie Foster in her first French-language role for over two decades; “Stories of Surrender,” based on Bono’s acclaimed one-man stage show; and “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” by the Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.The honorary Palme d’Or, given each year to acknowledge a contribution to cinema, will go to Robert De Niro. The actor performed the lead in two past Palme d’Or winners: Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” which won the main prize in 1976; and Roland Joffé’s “The Mission,” which triumphed in 1986. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Is a Throwback Amid Summer Blockbusters

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      Directed by Greg Berlanti, the film amounts to a Hollywood experiment: Is there still room at the multiplexes for original movies aimed at grown-ups.“Fly Me to the Moon” is the kind of movie that isn’t supposed to succeed in theaters anymore, at least if you listen to franchise-obsessed studio executives.The story is a period piece and completely original: In 1968, a government operative (Woody Harrelson) hires a marketing virtuoso (Scarlett Johansson) to convince the public — and Congress — that a troubled NASA can pull off its scheduled Apollo 11 moon landing. Stylish and devious, she clashes with the rigid launch director (Channing Tatum) and secretly — as a backup, to be used only in an emergency — arranges for a fake landing to be filmed on a soundstage. What’s the harm?Hollywood marketers will tell you that ticket buyers eschew movies that mash together genres. And “Fly Me to the Moon” is part drama, part comedic caper, part romance, part fiction and part true story. Particularly in the summer, studios prefer to serve up mindless popcorn movies aimed at teenagers. “Fly Me to the Moon” is entertainment for thinking adults, the kind that Mike Nichols (“Working Girl”) and James L. Brooks (“Broadcast News”) made in the 1980s.So the question must be asked: How on earth did “Fly Me to the Moon” manage to score a wide release in theaters at the height of blockbuster season? The film rolls into 3,300 theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday.Shouldn’t it be going straight to streaming?In many ways, the film’s unexpected journey to multiplexes reflects the degree to which Hollywood runs on the vagaries of chance. “Fly Me to the Moon” started out as a streaming movie — full stop. Apple TV+ paid an estimated $100 million for the project in March 2022, and the contract called for no theatrical release of any kind.But then Greg Berlanti got involved.It was June 2022, and Mr. Berlanti, the wunderkind television producer, had just turned 50. That milestone prompted a degree of uncomfortable self-reflection, compounded by his mother’s recent death. At the same time, the entertainment business was changing — the streaming-driven “peak TV” era was winding down — and Mr. Berlanti wasn’t entirely sure where to focus his professional attention.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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Review: This NASA Rom-Com Stays Earthbound

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      Greg Berlanti’s movie, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum as only mildly mismatched lovers, is set against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 landing.Speaking of the American moon landing of 1969, which he watched on television, Vladimir Nabokov rhapsodized in an interview, that, “treading the soil of the moon gives one, I imagine (or rather my projected self imagines) the most remarkable romantic thrill ever experienced in the history of discovery.”In “Fly Me To The Moon,” an occasionally engaging comedy set against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the romance is entirely earthbound.The director is Greg Berlanti, a veteran of swoony prime-time dramas like “Dawson’s Creek” and “Riverdale,” whose big-screen pictures include the ghastly 2010 rom-com “Life as We Know It” and the surprisingly (and effectively) earnest teenage coming-out comedy-drama “Love, Simon.” The script is by Rose Gilroy (she’s the daughter of the “Velvet Buzzsaw” auteur Dan Gilroy and the actress Rene Russo) from a story by Bill Kirstein and Keenan Flynn.But the movie lives and dies with its lead actors, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. As lovers who are only mildly mismatched, they never seem to falter, no matter what potentially stupefying paces the movie puts them through.Johansson is Kelly Jones, or rather, “Kelly Jones,” a perky, persistent, charmingly dissembling advertising executive whose pitches are often as phony as her name. Her ignoble hidden past is one reason she accepts a pitch from a shady White House operative, Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson, slipping into comedic disreputability like he’s putting on a comfortable smoking jacket), who knows all about her and offers to make that past disappear if she successfully markets the Apollo 11 mission.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 Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot

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      What does artificial intelligence sound like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now A.I. developers are cribbing from the movies, crafting voices for real machines based on dated cinematic fantasies of how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed upgrades to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, was learning how to hear, see and converse in a naturalistic voice — one that sounded much like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a husky timbre, a soothing affect and a sexy edge. She was agreeable and self-effacing; she sounded like she was game for anything. After Sky’s debut, Johansson expressed displeasure at the “eerily similar” sound, and said that she had previously declined OpenAI’s request that she voice the bot. The company protested that Sky was voiced by a “different professional actress,” but agreed to pause her voice in deference to Johansson. Bereft OpenAI users have started a petition to bring her back. More

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      in Movies

      What We Lose When ChatGPT Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson

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      OpenAI has good reason to aim for a bot voice à la the one in “Her.” But that film was about relationships. What does this real-world turn say about us?When Spike Jonze’s romance “Her” was released in 2013, it sounded both like a joke — a man falls in love with his computer — and a fantasy. The iPhone was about six years old. Siri, the mildly reliable virtual assistant for that phone, came along a few years later. You could converse in a limited way with Siri, whose default female-coded voice had the timbre and tone of a self-assured middle-aged hotel concierge. She did not laugh; she did not giggle; she did not tell spontaneous jokes, only Easter egg-style gags written into her code by cheeky engineers. Siri was not your friend. She certainly wasn’t your girlfriend.So Samantha, the A.I. assistant with whom the sad-sack divorcé Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) fell in love in “Her,” felt like a futuristic revelation. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, Samantha was similar to Siri, if Siri liked you and wanted you to like her back. She was programmed to mold herself around the individual user’s preferences, interests and ideas. She was witty, and sweet and quite literally tireless. In theory, everyone in “Her” was using their own version of Samantha, presumably with different names and voices. But the movie — which I love — was less the tale of a near-future society, and more the coming-of-age story of one man. Theodore found the strength to return to life in a brief, beautiful relationship with a woman who fit his needs perfectly and healed his wounds.It was thus a tad jarring to hear the voice of the virtual assistant in last week’s announcement of the newest version of ChatGPT, probably the best known artificial intelligence engine in the very real world of 2024. Among other things, the new iteration, dubbed ChatGPT-4o, can interact verbally with the user and respond to images shown to it through the device’s camera. Those who watched the live demo from OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, were quick to note that she sounded a whole lot like Samantha — which is to say, like Johansson.Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, told The Verge that the resemblance was incidental, and that ChatGPT’s nascent speech capabilities have used this voice for a while. But once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.Those who watched the live demo from OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, were quick to note that she sounded like Samantha.Warner Bros. PicturesFurthermore, OpenAI founder and chief executive Sam Altman has professed his love of “Her” in the past. Following the announcement, he posted the word “her” to his X account. And on his blog post about the news, he wrote, “It feels like A.I. from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change.”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