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    With ‘Companion’ and ‘Novocaine,’ Jack Quaid Makes Comedy Painless

    Jack Quaid can guess what people must think of him: Entitled. Overconfident. A jerk, no doubt about it.“Who I am comes with a certain expectation,” he said over breakfast — black coffee, fruit plates — on a Thursday in late January.Quaid, 32, is the son of the actors Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. (That DNA is strong. You can see his father when he smiles, his mother when he squints.) He grew up in Santa Monica, Calif., grabbing snacks from the craft services table on his parents’ sets and attending a private school with a common room where he could screen his camcorder movies. (An early magnum opus: “Bicycle Cops.”) Which is all to say that Quaid grew up with privilege, and he knows what privilege, unexamined and unacknowledged, can do to a person. He can turn that arrogance on for auditions, which explains why his first role was as a villain in “The Hunger Games” and why he can now be seen as a very bad boyfriend in the thriller “Companion” (in theaters).But the real Quaid is earnestly, acutely, even painfully aware of his privilege. In rooms where people don’t know him, he finds himself, he said, “apologizing for existing.” He isn’t jealous of his parents. (Please, he has been to therapy.) He loves his parents. He loves the life they have given him. “But there’s definitely a need to prove myself,” he said. “There is a little bit of something with identity and thinking, do I have any value outside of them?” As he said this, the divot in his forehead, which deepens when he’s stressed or concerned, had become a crevasse. “Not to say I’m complaining,” he added.Jack Quaid, the son of the actors Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, is earnestly aware of his privilege.Hannah Edelman for The New York TimesOver the last several years, Quaid has proved himself. And as the star of two movies out this winter, his value as a leading man is confirmed. He is beautifully smarmy in “Companion,” a romantic thriller with a sci-fi twist. (Avoid the trailer if you don’t want that twist unfurled.) And he is a sweetheart of an accidental action hero in the punchy thriller “Novocaine,” due March 14, in which he plays a timid assistant bank manager with a congenital inability to feel pain. (Quaid’s own pain threshold: “Not high!”) He is also currently wrapping the fifth and final season of “The Boys,” Amazon’s body fluid-soaked antisuperhero show. He leads the cast as Hughie, a normal-ish guy in an enthusiastically abnormal world. And he has two other movies in postproduction, the thriller “Neighborhood Watch” and the action comedy “Heads of State.”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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    A New Documentary Uncovers One of Pop’s Tragic Mysteries: Q Lazzarus

    Her haunting song “Goodbye Horses” had a star turn in “The Silence of the Lambs,” but the enigmatic artist behind it seemingly vanished for decades after.For years, it was one of pop music’s most persistent mysteries: Whatever happened to Q Lazzarus? And furthermore: Who was she in the first place?Most listeners who had heard of the genre-bending artist — if they’d heard of her at all — encountered her song “Goodbye Horses” in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 blockbuster “The Silence of the Lambs” as the backdrop to the scene where the serial killer Buffalo Bill applies makeup and poses strikingly nude. The creepy new wave track, with its minor-key, sci-fi synths and androgynous vocals, harmonized impeccably with the scene’s ominous visuals.“Goodbye Horses” was the only single Q Lazzarus officially released on a physical format while she was alive, but it came with an incredible story: Demme had encountered the musician at her day job — as a taxi driver — and fell in love with the music she played during the ride. But after her song’s star turn in his film, Q Lazzarus’s career stalled, and by the mid-90s, she had seemingly vanished entirely.Some fans and journalists made efforts to track down this enigmatic voice over the years, but the filmmaker who ended up telling her story in the new documentary “Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus” met the artist born Diane Luckey the same way Demme did: in her cab.“Getting into her car was a completely coincidental or fated, as Q and I both felt, meeting,” Eva Aridjis Fuentes, the movie’s director, said in an interview. The two sang along to Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”; Aridjis Fuentes thought the woman behind the wheel looked familiar, and asked if she’d ever seen Q Lazzarus. They formed a friendship that resulted in Aridjis Fuentes’s film, which opens in a handful of cities including London, Los Angeles and New York next month, with a streaming release expected to follow. On Friday, the Brooklyn record label Sacred Bones will release its soundtrack — effectively the first full-length Q Lazzarus release.“We’re doing this documentary to let you know what went wrong and what happened,” Luckey says in the film. “The truth” about why she disappeared: “Because I had to.”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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    Watching ‘Shoah’ in Berlin, 80 Years After Auschwitz

    A commemorative screening of the monumental documentary came as some artists are questioning whether Germany’s Holocaust remembrance culture stifles free speech.On the first Sunday of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” (1985) — a nine-and-a-half-hour documentary about the Holocaust — screened to a nearly full house in the auditorium of the city’s Academy of Arts.Tricia Tuttle, the festival’s new director, spoke before the film, along with a curator from Berlin’s Jewish Museum and Dominique Petithory-Lanzmann, the director’s widow. Tuttle called the screening a “triple remembrance”: This year is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the 40th anniversary of “Shoah,” and the centenary birthday of Lanzmann himself, who died in 2018.The mood was reverential. “Shoah” — which consists of interviews with Holocaust survivors, bystanders and perpetrators, as well as footage of the sites referenced by the speakers, such as the Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps — is widely considered one of the greatest documentaries of all time. Its monumental length is key to its power; it suspends viewers in the act of witnessing humanity’s capacity for evil and its astonishing resilience, which we see washed across the subjects’ faces as they tell their stories.There’s no denying Lanzmann’s achievements or the significance of “Shoah,” yet the festival’s commemorative programming — which also includes the world premiere of “All I Had Was Nothingness,” a documentary by Guillaume Ribot that pays homage to “Shoah” — also plays out amid growing concerns that Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance is stifling the free speech of other artists.Lanzmann, the director of “Shoah,” joined the French resistance against Nazi Germany as a teenager. He appears in “Shoah” as a passionate, at times even aggressive, interlocutor.Les Films AlephLast year, the film festival, known here as the Berlinale, came under fire after filmmakers participating in the event (including the directors of “No Other Land,” a documentary currently nominated for an Oscar) were denounced by German officials and festival executives for making statements in solidarity with Palestinians.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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    Why Everyone Is Still Talking About ‘Paddington 2’

    With the third movie now in theaters, let’s look at how the 2018 film became a sleeper hit, thanks to Hugh Grant’s villain and its showstopping end credits.“Paddington 2 is the greatest film ever made,” one user posted on X in 2022.This tweet was not ironic.In the seven years since its release in January 2018, the film about a marmalade-loving bear’s quest to find the perfect gift for his beloved aunt has become an internet phenomenon, spawning memes, think pieces and an endorsement from Nicolas Cage. For a time, it was the best-reviewed film ever on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.“A very eclectic group of people respond to it in the way that they do,” David Heyman, a producer on “Paddington 2” and its 2015 predecessor, “Paddington,” said in a recent phone conversation from his home in London. The Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, for example, confessed to Heyman he was a fan.Now with the third feature-length installment in the franchise, “Paddington in Peru,” in theaters — and already having passed the $100 million milestone at the international box office — it is hard to imagine that when “Paddington 2” first arrived in theaters stateside, it was only a modest box office success. Since its DVD and streaming releases, a devoted community of online fans has sprung up around it, evangelizing about the outsider bear who brought joy to their lives.“There’s humor in it for adults; there’s humor for children,” said Heyman, who grew up reading the Paddington books, written by the British author Michael Bond. “It never feels patronizing or like it’s talking down to its audience. It has a big, beating heart.”All three films are based on the children’s books about the duffle-coated, hard-staring bear, first published in 1958. In the first movie, Paddington emigrates from Peru to London in a story inspired by the World War II rescue operation that brought nearly 10,000 children from Nazi-occupied Europe to England. The second film, directed by Paul King, who wrote the script with Simon Farnaby, is an action adventure with stunning set sequences, following Paddington through a court trial, a prison escape and a daring pursuit by train.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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    South Korean Actress Kim Sae-ron Is Found Dead

    The 24-year-old star, once a prolific child actor, appeared at the Cannes Film Festival and on Netflix, until a drunk-driving incident in 2022 derailed her career.South Korean actress Kim Sae-ron, a former child star whose promising career suffered a setback in recent years after a drunk-driving incident, was found dead in her home on Sunday afternoon, police said.Ms. Kim, who was 24, was discovered by a friend who had visited her house, according to the Seongdong Police Station in Seoul. The police on Monday said Ms. Kim’s death was a suicide. One of South Korea’s most lauded young actors, Ms. Kim had not appeared in any shows since she faced public criticism after being convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol in 2022.Her death marks the latest tragedy to strike South Korea’s booming but high-pressure entertainment industry, which has faced criticism for the toll it places on the mental health of its burgeoning stars. A celebrity’s popularity is often contingent on a spotless reputation, experts say.Over the past few years, several young stars were ruled to have died by suicide, one after receiving hate messages for being outspoken and opinionated, and another after a legal battle put her romantic and sex life in the public domain.Ms. Kim started her acting career by starring in “A Brand New Life,” a film about a girl abandoned in an orphanage, in 2009. She was 9 years old when the movie premiered and was invited to the Cannes Film Festival.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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    BAFTA Awards Winners: ‘Conclave,’ ‘Anora’ and ‘The Brutalist’ Take Home Top Prizes

    “Anora” and “The Brutalist” also took home major prizes at the British equivalent of the Oscars, tipping the scales again.“Conclave” won the best movie title at the EE British Academy Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday — adding the latest twist to a chaotic awards season in which no one movie has dominated the major ceremonies.The film, which stars Ralph Fiennes and was directed by Edward Berger, is a thriller about the selection of a new pope. It took home four awards on Sunday at Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, commonly known as the BAFTAs. The other three prizes were in minor categories: best editing, best adapted screenplay and outstanding British film.In securing the best film award, “Conclave” beat Sean Baker’s “Anora,” a dramedy in which an exotic dancer marries the son of a Russian oligarch, and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” about a Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) rebuilding his life in the United States after the Holocaust.It also triumphed over the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and “Emilia Pérez.”“Conclave” hadn’t previously featured among the major winners this awards season. It only secured one Golden Globe, for best screenplay, at a ceremony in which “Emilia Pérez” and “The Brutalist” were the big winners. More recently, the momentum for the best picture Oscar had swung to “Anora,” after that movie picked up major honors at this year’s Critic’s Choice ceremony and the Directors Guild of America and Producers Guild of America awards.Yet the prominence of “Conclave” at the BAFTAs will give the movie momentum going into this year’s Academy Awards, scheduled for March 2. There is significant overlap between the voting bodies for both awards, and the BAFTAs and Oscars regularly have the same winners.The cast and crew of “Conclave” looked stunned when the best film prize was announced. Isabella Rossellini, who plays a nun in the movie, stood onstage smiling gleefully throughout Berger’s acceptance speech, in which he said he was “deeply humbled” to see his film receive the honor.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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    Marvel’s New ‘Captain America’ Is No. 1, Despite a Backlash and Poor Reviews

    “Captain America: Brave New World” was expected to take in $100 million from Thursday through Monday in North America.At the height of the superhero boom a few years ago, Disney pushed its Marvel assembly lines to run faster and faster. After awhile, quality suffered and ticket sales declined.So Disney slowed the pace. Last year, Marvel released one movie (the megasuccessful “Deadpool & Wolverine”) and two Disney+ series. To compare, in 2021 Marvel churned out four movies (with mixed results) and five Disney+ series.Factory problem fixed?Maybe: Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” was a runaway No. 1 at the global box office over the weekend. The movie, which cost at least $300 million to make and market worldwide, was on pace to sell roughly $100 million in tickets from Thursday through Monday in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Moviegoers overseas were poised to chip in another $92 million or so.Maybe not: “Brave New World” received the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest-ever grade (B-minus) from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls. Reviews were only 50 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which resulted in a “rotten” rating from the site. Just two Marvel movies rank lower on the Rotten Tomatoes meter, and both quickly ran out of box office steam after No. 1 starts that were driven by die-hard fans and marketing bombast.“Brave New World” outperformed analyst expectations amid a racist backlash from some internet users and right-wing pundits, who criticized Marvel’s decision to refresh the “Captain America” franchise by giving the title role to a Black actor. (A “D.E.I. hire,” they maintained in numerous X posts, a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.) Anthony Mackie, who took over the character from Chris Evans, also came under attack as “anti-American” for a comment he made while promoting the film overseas.“Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term, you know, ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mr. Mackie said. “It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”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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    Oscars Rewind: How ‘American Beauty’ Lost Its Luster

    At the 2000 Academy Awards, the film won five Oscars, including best picture. Then came 9/11, a tanking economy and Kevin Spacey.It was March 2000, and everything was coming up roses for “American Beauty.”There were the box office receipts (more than $350 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation, against a budget of roughly $15 million, according to the data site Box Office Mojo). The rave reviews (“a hell of a picture,” Kenneth Turan wrote in The Los Angeles Times). The three Golden Globes.“It was bizarre, because I expected it to be a little art house movie,” Alan Ball, who won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay, said in a recent phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. “I think that’s all that any of us expected it to be.”“I had no idea it was going to become what it became,” said Annette Bening, who played a materialistic wife in Ball’s satire about a suburban family whose father, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), quits his office job and becomes obsessed with his teenage daughter’s best friend.Then, even more laurels: Five Oscars, including best picture, director (Sam Mendes), original screenplay (Ball), cinematography (Conrad L. Hall) and actor (Spacey).“I’m a little bit overwhelmed,” a wide-eyed Mendes said in his acceptance speech, as he joined the ranks of Delbert Mann, Jerome Robbins, Robert Redford, James L. Brooks and Kevin Costner as the only filmmakers to win the academy’s top directing honor for their feature directorial debut.“I had a flask in my pocket,” Ball said, recalling the moment. “That was the only way I could kind of deal with it.”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