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    From ‘The Idol’ to ‘Oppenheimer,’ a Nudity Summer Report Card

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    From “The Idol” to “Oppenheimer,” women’s bodies were on display on our screens the past few months. Some executions succeeded with humor, others felt misguided.This has been a summer of women being liberated — from their wardrobes, mostly. The nudity on our screens has been a topic of constant conversation for months, from the provoking premiere of “The Idol” in June to the left-field nudity in “Oppenheimer” (and the interpersonal havoc it wreaked on some relationships, as one viral TikTok can attest to). In each instance the theme, in one respect or another, seems to be liberation: not necessarily of the de Beauvoir variety, but a female character’s liberation from some kind of enclosure, whether societal, cultural or personal, and her nudity is meant to reflect that.Depending on the context of the story, the director’s intention, the work’s perspective or the execution of the shot, a nude scene may serve as shorthand for a character’s newfound physical or spiritual freedom, or even an emotional or psychological breakthrough. Or it may be another case of entertainment using a woman’s body for shock value. What follows is a spoiler-filled survey of the most gratuitous, unforgettable scenes of nudity this summer — and an analysis of which ones succeeded in showcasing the female form with reason and intention, as more than just eye candy.Constant nudity means an unsatisfying night of television.The setup: On “The Idol,” a young pop star named Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), feeling artistically frustrated and in the midst of a nervous breakdown, thrives under the tutelage of a mysterious club owner named Tedros (Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd) who is fostering a cult of skilled wannabe stars.The scene: It’s tough to pick just one nude scene in this disaster of a television show because Jocelyn is perennially stuck in a state of partial undress. In the first few minutes of the first episode we see Jocelyn in an open silky red robe at a photo shoot, arguing with the intimacy coordinator about her choice to do the shoot with her breasts visible.By belittling the job of the intimacy coordinator, the scene appears to be less about building Jocelyn as a character than it is about the series planting a flag in the bedraggled land of lurid television. Jocelyn’s insistence on doing the shoot without covering up is meant to illustrate that she’s a liberated woman, fully in charge of her sexuality, her body, her image. But “The Idol” never figures out what it thinks of its own characters, nor what they want or what to do with them.One of the prevailing questions about the show among viewers was: Are we meant to think Jocelyn is actually talented? It’s unclear whether the show considers its protagonist a true artist or an inept yet deluded peddler of mass-market schlock. Similarly, we don’t know how much control Jocelyn actually has. Her submissiveness to Tedros seems to indicate that she’s being manipulated. So Jocelyn’s daily wardrobe choices — which don’t ever seem to include baggy house clothes for bloated days or cotton pajamas for comfy lounging — seem to be less about her own self-image and freedom than they are about her being trapped in a 24/7 prison of objectification by her public and those around her.But the show makes a messy concluding three-point-turn near the end, proposing that perhaps Jocelyn was the evil mastermind after all. Just like the show can’t have both its earnest, docile starlet and cunning undercover operator, it can’t have a celebrity with both total agency and an obsession with appeasing everyone in their ideas of what she should look like and what she represents as an artist. Either way, with the show’s cancellation, it seems Jocelyn’s career is forever dead, with no Tedros to revive it.Andrew Barth Feldman as Percy and Jennifer Lawrence as Maddie in “No Hard Feelings.”Macall Polay/Columbia Pictures – Sony PicturesFisticuffs in the buff make sexuality besides the point.The setup: In “No Hard Feelings,” Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), a crude and awkward 30-something with commitment issues who’s strapped for cash, responds to an ad from a rich couple seeking a woman to date and deflower their unknowing 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman). Maddie’s attempts at seducing the neurotic and insecure teenager are repeatedly thwarted in the most ridiculous ways, but in the process Maddie and Percy build a real connection.The scene: One night, as Maddie and a reluctant Percy go skinny-dipping at the beach, some bullies try to steal their stuff. Maddie steps out of the water in a full-frontal reveal, which then leads to a very NSFW fight sequence.Here “No Hard Feelings” takes a classic romance trope — the sexy, impromptu post-date dip — and wrings out all of the seduction, instead opting for absurd physical comedy. The scene, which includes an impressive crotch punch, succeeds for Lawrence’s dedication to this juvenile (and creepy) entry into the “raunchy sex comedy” category of forgettable B-movies.The camerawork is respectful, matter-of-fact, with no hint of a lingering eye. Lawrence’s body is not the point of the scene, but the vehicle of the comedy. Her sexuality is incidental; she pummels the beach interlopers so thoroughly that the violence purposely undermines her attempt to appear desirous to Percy.Cynthia Nixon, left, and Sara Ramirez in Season 2 of “And Just Like That…”Craig Blankenhorn/MaxMiranda deserves better.The setup: In the second season of this “Sex and the City” sequel, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) struggles to maintain her frayed relationships with her family while figuring out how she defines her sexual identity.The scene: Despite the show’s revolutionary, daring precursor, “And Just Like That…” can’t seem to figure out how to write its characters into a new world of sex, relationships and dating. AJLT also takes a more demure approach to its depictions of sex — which makes Miranda’s two full-frontal nude scenes in Episode 1 especially surprising.A beloved character that many SATC fans read to be coded gay — as did Nixon herself, who has been outspoken about her own coming out journey — Miranda discovers a new dimension to her sexuality once she meets Che (Sara Ramirez), a queer nonbinary comedian. In the first nude scene, part of a season-opening sex montage, Miranda is the only one of the cast members who is exposed, shown nude from the belly up in a pool with Che. At first the montage seems to place the queer romance on equal terms with the cis heterosexual ones, but the moment of nudity does seem as though “And Just Like That…” is calling special, almost self-congratulatory, attention to Miranda and Che.But Miranda struggles to adjust to a new relationship, a new sexuality and a new lifestyle, exemplified by the second scene, where Miranda tries Che’s sensory deprivation tank. Unable to relax, Miranda panics and stumbles her way out of the tank, floundering in the nude. It’s a depiction of the fish-out-of-water metaphor that extends to another scene in the episode that shows her in the bedroom with Che struggling to use a sex toy. Here Miranda serves as a comic aside.Miranda’s arc has been the least forgiving in the series, given how her journey of self-discovery comes at the cost of her relationships and, in these nude scenes and others, her dignity. Miranda’s nascent sexual liberation is graphically defined by gaffes and naïveté. For a show that aims to represent women — and, particularly, middle-aged women, with more diverse bodies and backgrounds and sexual orientations than “SATC” included in its series — “And Just Like That…” unfortunately uses an older woman’s body as a punchline.Stephanie Hsu as Kat, from left, Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Ashley Park as Audrey, and Sherry Cola as Lolo in a scene from the film “Joy Ride.”Ed Araquel/Lionsgate, via Associated PressA well-placed tattoo can create comedy gold.The setup: In “Joy Ride” Audrey (Ashley Park), an Asian American lawyer raised by white parents, travels to China for a business trip that, thanks to her friends Lolo (Sherry Cola), Kat (Stephanie Hsu) and Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), transforms into a crazy vacation full of sex, drugs and misadventures. In one such outing Audrey finds herself in the middle of a threesome with two handsome basketball players. In another, a wardrobe malfunction reveals Kat’s secret genital tattoo.The scene: The movie’s charm lies largely in its dedication to its tried-but-true girlfriends-gone-wild genre of comedy. So even the formulaic setups and telegraphed emotional resolution are entertaining given how much free rein the characters — and the actors playing them — are offered to showcase the film’s absurdity. One of the reoccurring themes in the movie is the importance of being true to yourself, and the nude scenes fall perfectly in line with this idea.Audrey’s emotional journey hinges on her unwillingness to find her birth mother and connect with her culture. Her friends mock her for her uptightness and for her unchecked internalized racism — the knee-jerk trust she shows for a blond white woman over someone who looks like her, her obliviousness to her culture’s food and traditions, her infamously poor track record for dating Asian men. So when she sleeps with two attractive Asian athletes, it’s her liberating moment, when she can let loose sexually and feel open to embracing — literally and figuratively — Asianness.Likewise, Kat’s nude moment — revealing the giant demon head encompassing her full vulva — is the punchline to a classic, tidy setup that traces back to the early scenes of the movie, when Audrey lets slip to Lolo that Kat has a genital tattoo. Lolo’s vulgar line of questioning and theories about Kat’s private art, paired with the reveal that Kat pretends to be a chaste virgin in her relationship with her very Christian fiancé, build up the comedic tension. When her embellished nethers make an appearance, it’s a surprise, but not a sexy one. The garish detail of the demon face — and the pivot to an “internal” view, the camera showing the other three friends peeking into her vagina — rockets the movie’s comedy up to absurd heights without seeming unnecessarily sexualized or exploitative.Florence Pugh is Jean Tatlock and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in the film “Oppenheimer.”Universal PicturesOne man gets to be brilliant, while a brilliant woman gets to be naked.The setup: In “Oppenheimer,” the eponymous father of the atomic bomb (Cillian Murphy) is seen through the lens of his research, shifting politics and personal affairs — including a romance with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) — from his school days to his role as scientific director of the Manhattan Project to his public discrediting in the wake of a 1954 security hearing.The scene: For all of the ways “Oppenheimer” succeeds as a film, from its cinematography and performances to its storytelling, it also commits a cardinal cinematic sin: not just underusing a great actress like Florence Pugh, but also blatantly objectifying her character in gratuitous nude scenes.In Pugh’s first scene, Jean and Oppenheimer meet and banter, as if to show that she’s a worthy intellectual adversary, and therefore a worthy lover for the man-genius. After a meager couple of lines of dialogue Jean is naked, straddling Oppenheimer while instructing him to translate a copy of the “Bhagavad Gita” in his room. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” he translates, immediately transforming the scene into a misogynistic trope so often used in stories about male genius. Jean is not a brilliant thinker with daring politics; she’s not a character with her own story and agency. She is reduced to a body and a brilliant man’s inspiration.In Pugh’s second nude scene, when Tatlock persuades Oppenheimer to take a short leave of the Manhattan Project to spend the night with her in a hotel, she’s the stand-in for temptation. Her passion for him, and his ultimate refusal to continue their affair, helps the film craft an image of a man who is desired not just for his brain, but also his body.But the most unforgivable is Jean’s final nude appearance, imagined by Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), during Oppenheimer’s hearing. The only new information the scene is meant to convey is Kitty’s reaction to the council’s line of questioning about Oppenheimer’s affair with Jean. But Blunt’s acting — the hardness in her eyes, the clear expression of disdain and embarrassment — tells us all we need to know about her emotional response. Here the film yet again erases Jean’s personhood; she exists almost purely within the imagination of Oppenheimer and that of his wife, who like Jean, is similarly underwritten. She’s an underdressed footnote in a story about a smart guy she slept with a few times. What woman would envy that? More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Kim Petras’s New LP and Jennifer Lawrence’s Return

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new album from Young Thug, released as his trial has yet to seat a juror after six months; plus word of a new album from Drake, pegged to the release of a new poetry bookThe conclusion of the ongoing legal battle between Kesha and Dr. LukeThe new album from the meta-pop singer Kim PetrasA check-in on “The Idol,” the louche HBO show about the wages of pop stardom, which is on the verge of its season finale“No Hard Feelings,” the May-December quasi-romance that’s serving as a lighthearted comeback vehicle for Jennifer LawrenceA new collaboration from Juice WRLD and Cordae, and a new song from glaiveSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      Inside the Oscars’ Best-Actress Battle Royale

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      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

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      ‘Causeway’ Review: Companions on a Hard Road to Recovery

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      Superb acting from Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry brings credibility to an underdeveloped story of trauma and friendship.The early scenes in Lila Neugebauer’s “Causeway” find Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence) in the first phase of a long healing process. An Army engineer who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan, Lynsey — with the help of a patient health aide (Jayne Houdyshell) — must relearn the basic functions of daily life, and teach her body to work again.Lawrence, somber and subdued, gradually coaxes her character into view. Lynsey emerges from a state of anxious blankness, recovering language, memory, physical coordination and the contours of her personality. Returning home to New Orleans, she moves in with her mother (Linda Emond), who is too preoccupied with other matters to pay much attention to her daughter.Not that Lynsey needs babysitting. She pressures her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) to clear her for redeployment. Lynsey is tough, solitary and self-sufficient, attributes Lawrence has shown before — notably in the “Hunger Games” movies and in her breakthrough film, “Winter’s Bone” — but rarely in such a low-key, non-heroic mode.The satisfactions of “Causeway,” Neugebauer’s debut feature (the script is by Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel and Ottessa Moshfegh), come from watching Lawrence and her co-star, Brian Tyree Henry, trading quiet, insightful bits of acting. Henry plays James, who owns the repair shop where Lynsey brings her balky old pickup truck. Recognizing each other as fellow loners — and also, perhaps unconsciously, as fellow sufferers — James and Lynsey start hanging out together.Lynsey takes a job cleaning swimming pools, and she and James spend off-hours drinking beer, smoking weed and floating around at the homes of clients who are conveniently out of town. Hanging out this way is a pleasant respite from the stresses and struggles of existence — for James and Lynsey, and for the audience too. But having brought them together, the movie isn’t quite sure what to do with them.James has lost part of a leg in a car crash that killed someone he loved. Lynsey is also haunted by the loss of a family member. The symmetry of their physical and psychological wounds is perhaps too neatly arranged. The bond that develops between them — and the ways that it is, inevitably, tested — is rooted in shared trauma, which is to say in a screenwriting conceit.“Causeway” is both thin and heavy-handed, its plot overly diagramed and its characters inadequately fleshed out. The burden of making it credible falls disproportionately on Henry and Lawrence, superb actors who do what they can to bring the script’s static and fuzzy ideas about pain, alienation and the need for connection to something that almost resembles life.CausewayRated R. Cursing and cannabis. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to watch on Apple TV+. More

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      Can Works Like 'Don't Look Up' Get Us Out of Our Heads?

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      In the doomsday smash and Bo Burnham’s pandemic musical “Inside,” themes of climate change, digital distraction and inequality merge and hit home.An Everest-size comet is hurtling toward Earth, and in exactly six months and 14 days, the planet will be shattered to pieces, leaving every living creature to perish in a cataclysm of fire and flood. In “Don’t Look Up,” Netflix’s hit climate-apocalypse film, this news largely bounces off the American public like a rubber ball. And they return to their phones with a collective “meh” — opting to doomscroll instead of acknowledging certain doom IRL.With the hope of snapping the masses from their stupor, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, a young scientist with a Greta Thunberg-like disdain for the apathetic, screams into the camera during a live TV appearance: “You should stay up all night every night crying when we’re all, 100 percent, for sure, going to [expletive] die!” She’s swiftly dismissed as hysterical, and an image of her face is gleefully seized on for the full meme treatment. (More spoilers ahead.)What the internet has done to our minds and what our minds have done to our planet (or haven’t done to save it) are two dots that have been circling each other for some time. Now, onscreen at least, they’re colliding, resonating with audiences and tapping into a particular psyche of our moment.In “Don’t Look Up,” a satirical incision from Adam McKay with only humor as an anesthetic, these themes are lampooned in equal measure and in no uncertain terms. Though heavy with metaphors — most important, the comet signifying climate change — its message is clear and not open to interpretation: Wake up!That the movie amassed 152 million hours viewed in one week, according to Netflix, which reports its own figures, suggests a cultural trend taking shape. There’s a hunger for entertainment that favors unflinching articulation and externalization over implication and internalization — to have our greatest fears verbalized without restraint, even heavy-handedly, along with a good deal of style and wit.Learn More About ‘Don’t Look Up’In Netflix’s doomsday flick, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are two astronomers who discover a comet headed straight for Earth.Review: It’s the end of the world, and you should not feel fine, writes the film critic Manohla Dargis.A Metaphor for Climate Change: With his apocalyptic satire, the director Adam McKay hopes to prompt the audience to action. Meryl Streep’s Presidential Turn: How the actor prepared to play a self-centered scoundrel at the helm of the United States.A Real-Life ‘Don’t Look Up’ Moment: The film revives memories of a nail-biting night in the Times newsroom two decades ago.Look at “Inside,” Bo Burnham’s pandemic comedy-musical masterpiece from Netflix last year, in which he pools themes of climate disaster with Silicon Valley’s commodification of our thoughts and feelings, and its reliance on keeping us jonesing for distraction. (In the 2020 documentary “The Social Dilemma,” tech experts who had a hand in building these structures sounded an alarm over what they’d done.)Bo Burnham skewers the internet’s effects on humanity and the planet throughout his Netflix special “Inside.” NetflixIn his sobering song “That Funny Feeling” which has more than 6.7 million views on YouTube alone, Burnham sums it up in one lyric: “The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door.”“Twenty-thousand years of this,” he goes on, “seven more to go.” Most likely a nod to the Climate Clock, which displays messages like “the Earth has a deadline.”At the start of Jim Gaffigan’s new Netflix comedy special, “Comedy Monster,” he responds to opening applause by saying, “That almost makes me forget we’re all going to be dead in a week. I’m kidding. It’ll probably be a month” — seemingly referencing both the pandemic and general vibe.And “Squid Game,” a wildly violent, rich-eat-the-poor satire from South Korea that was a global smash for Netflix last year, while not about climate change, explored many of the same themes as “Don’t Look Up” — wealth inequality, greed, desensitization and voyeurism — flicking at the same anxieties and offering a similar catharsis.As with “Squid Game, ” some critics were lukewarm about “Don’t Look Up” — for being too obvious, shallow and shouty — but many climate scientists were moved and appreciative. In therapy, we’re often told that the best way to address our demons is to speak them out loud, using words that don’t skirt the issues or make excuses for them. Otherwise, they will never seem real, thus can never be dealt with. In “Don’t Look Up,” most people don’t snap out of their daze until the comet is finally in physical view. Do the popularity of shows and movies that don’t mince messages reveal a growing readiness to bring our common dread out of the deep space of our subconscious — to see it, to say it, to hear it?We’ve long been enveloped by a 24-hour news cycle that unfurls in tandem with social media feeds that give near equal weight to all events: Clarendon-tinged vacation photos, celebrity gossip, snappy memes and motivational quotes are delivered as bite-size information flotsam that sails alongside news of political turmoil, mass shootings, social injustice and apocalyptic revelations about our planet.“Squid Game,” a global streaming sensation last year, explores themes of wealth inequality, greed and desensitization.NetflixAs Burnham, personifying the internet in his song “Welcome to the Internet,” with more than 62 million YouTube views, asks: “Could I interest you in everything all of the time?”Next month, Hulu will premiere the mini-series “Pam & Tommy,” a fictionalized account of the release of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s personal sex tape, which was stolen from their home in 1995 and sold on what was then called the “World Wide Web.” The show presents the tape as helping the web become more mainstream by appealing to base human compulsions — an on-ramp to what would lie ahead.The pandemic has sent us further down this rabbit hole in pursuit of distraction, information, connection, all the while we try to shake that sense of impending doom.At one point in “Inside,” while curled up in the fetal position on the floor under a blanket surrounded by jumbles of cords — an image worthy of a pandemic-era time capsule — Burnham, his eyes closed, ruminates on the mess we’re in.I don’t know about you guys, but, you know, I’ve been thinking recently that, you know, maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit — you know, maybe that was a bad call by us. Maybe the flattening of the entire subjective human experience into a lifeless exchange of value that benefits nobody, except for, you know, a handful of bug-eyed salamanders in Silicon Valley — maybe that as a way of life forever, maybe that’s not good.In “Don’t Look Up,” the chief “bug-eyed salamander,” a Steve Jobs-like character and the third richest man on the planet, is almost completely responsible for allowing the comet to collide with Earth; his 11th-hour attempt to plumb the rock for trillions of dollars worth of materials fails. In the end, he and a handful of haves escape on a spaceship, leaving the remaining billions of have-nots to die.Juxtaposed with Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men on Earth, launching into space on his own rocket last year — a trip back-dropped by pandemic devastation (and a passing blip on the cultural radar) — is beyond parody … almost.Near the end of “Don’t Look Up,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, an awkward astronomer turned media darling, delivers an emotional monologue. Staring into the camera, he implores: “What have we done to ourselves? How do we fix it?” Funny. We were just asking ourselves the same thing. More

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      ‘Don’t Look Up’ Review: Tick, Tick, Kablooey

      by

      Adam McKay wants you to know that it’s the end of the world and you should absolutely, unequivocally not feel fine. (But do laugh.)Movies love to menace Earth. It’s human nature. In some of the most plausible doomsday flicks — “Meteor,” “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” — a big space rock threatens annihilation. Usually, if not always happily, someone finally comes to the rescue, though that isn’t the case in the 1951 film “When Worlds Collide.” Before it makes good on its title, this shocker rockets survivalists on an ark to colonize another planet, which is more or less what Elon Musk has talked about with Space X.The director Adam McKay is not in the mood for nihilistic flights of fancy. Our planet is too dear and its future too terrifying, as the accelerated pace of species extinction and global deforestation underscore. But humanity isn’t interested in saving Earth, never mind itself, as the recent Glasgow climate summit reminded us. We’re too numb, dumb, powerless and indifferent, too busy fighting trivial battles. So McKay has made “Don’t Look Up,” a very angry, deeply anguished comedy freak out about how we are blowing it, hurtling toward oblivion. He’s sweetened the bummer setup with plenty of yuks — good, bad, indifferent — but if you weep, it may not be from laughing.Maybe bring hankies, though don’t look for speeches about climate change and global warming. Rather than directly confronting the existential horror of our environmental catastrophe, McKay has taken an allegorical approach in “Don’t Look Up” with a world-destroying comet. Oh sure, on its website, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (yes, it’s real) isn’t worried about near-Earth objects, as they’re called: “No known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years.” Whew. But no matter. The planet is on fire, and so is McKay, who’s embraced his inner Roland Emmerich (“2012”) with a fury by lobbing a great big joke at us.That joke is definitely on us or soon will be in “Don’t Look Up,” which follows a studiously curated ragtag collection of scientists, politicians, military types, journalists and miscellaneous others who face — or don’t — the threat of a rapidly approaching comet. “I heard there’s an asteroid or a comet or something that you don’t like the looks of,” a visibly bored president of the United States (Meryl Streep) says to some anxious scientists who have been granted an imperial audience. The scientists really don’t like what they’ve seen but the president has other things on her mind, including upcoming elections and the friendly perv she’s trying to get placed on the Supreme Court.Packed with big names, many locations and ambitiously staged set pieces (and a lot of giddily terrible hairdos), the movie is a busy, boisterous mixed bag, and whether you laugh or not you may still grit your teeth. The story opens in an observatory where Jennifer Lawrence, who plays a grad student, Kate Dibiasky, first spots the comet. Kate’s giddiness over her discovery soon turns to fear when her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (a terrific Leonardo DiCaprio), crunches some numbers and realizes the worst. Together, they pass along the bad news. Enter NASA (Rob Morgan), the military (Paul Guilfoyle) and the White House, which is where the movie’s breeziness takes a turn for the ominous.Also for the frantic, strident and obvious. McKay’s touch here is considerably blunter and less productive than it has been in a while. In his two previous movies — “The Big Short” and “Vice” — he blended comedic and dramatic modes to fascinating effect. He experimented with tone and pitch, and played up and down different scales, from the deadly serious to the outrageously silly. It didn’t always work. It proved easier to get into McKay’s groove when you laughed at, say, Margot Robbie explaining subprime mortgages while she’s taking a bubble bath in “The Big Short” than when you watched Christian Bale’s Dick Cheney discussing another American war in “Vice.”The stakes are higher still in “Don’t Look Up,” which grows progressively more frenetic and wobbly as the inevitability of the catastrophe is finally grasped by even the most ridiculous of the movie’s buffoon-rich cast of characters. One problem is that some of McKay’s biggest targets here — specifically in politics and infotainment — have already reached maximum self-parody or tragedy (or both). What is left to satirically skewer when facts are derided as opinion, flat Earthers attend annual conferences and conspiracy theory movements like QAnon have become powerful political forces?Even so, McKay keeps swinging hard and fast, and from the start, establishes a sense of visceral urgency with loose, agitated camerawork and brisk editing that fits the ticking-bomb story. He slings zingers and stages bits of comic business, making fine use of funny faces, jumping eyebrows, slow burns and double takes. Part ethnographer, part sociologist, he is especially good at mining the funny-ha-ha, funny-weird spaces in between people. But he’s not always in control of his material, including some cheap shots that slide into witless sexism. Presidential vanity is always a fair target, but too many of the digs directed at Streep’s character play into gender stereotypes.Streep is a great deal of fun to watch when she’s not unintentionally making you cringe, and Lawrence gives the movie a steady emotional pulse even at its most frantic. McKay’s work with DiCaprio is particularly memorable, partly because Dr. Mindy’s trajectory — from honest, concerned scientist to glib, showboating celebrity — strengthens the movie’s heartbreaking, unspeakable truth: Human narcissism and all that it has wrought, including the destruction of nature, will finally be our downfall. In the end, McKay isn’t doing much more in this movie than yelling at us, but then, we do deserve it.Don’t Look UpRated R for violence, language and the apocalypse. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More