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      Stream Maggie Smith’s Greatest Performances

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      In “Downton Abbey,” “A Room With a View” and dozens of other films and television series, she delighted audiences with her portrayal of sharp, tart-tongued and often wryly funny Englishwomen.Maggie Smith, who was 89 when she died on Friday, made her professional stage debut on Broadway in the 1950s, when she was still in her early 20s. In the decades that followed, she worked steadily in movies and television, while regularly returning to the theater.Smith won her first Oscar for the title role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), a charismatic and manipulative teacher who has a profound and, at times, destructive effect on the lives of the teenage girls in her charge. She went on to win another Oscar, a Tony and four Emmys, and became known in her later years for playing a particular type of Englishwoman: sturdy, smart, sharp-tongued and rooted sometimes stubbornly in the traditions of the past.Audiences in the 21st century came to love Smith in two recurring roles: as the heroic Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” movies and as the coolly disapproving dowager countess Violet Crawley in the period TV drama “Downton Abbey.” But her career was long and eclectic, with a mix of serious and comic characters, in both supporting and leading roles. Here are 10 of Smith’s best performances that are available to stream:1972‘Travels With My Aunt’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Though she was only in her late 30s at the time, Smith took an early step toward her most familiar screen persona — the dynamic and unforgettable older relative — in this adaptation of Graham Greene’s offbeat adventure novel. Filling in for Katharine Hepburn (who differed with the studio and with her old friend, the director George Cukor, on how best to tell her character’s story), Smith ended up nabbing her third Oscar nomination, playing the eccentric globe-trotter Augusta Bertram, who enlists a stuffy, middle-aged Londoner in one of her illicit moneymaking schemes while hiding her true connection to him. Smith builds an outsize yet complex character via flashbacks that show how she learned to eschew conventional mores and to enjoy life on her own terms.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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      Watch a Chaotic Rehearsal in ‘Saturday Night’

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      The director Jason Reitman narrates a sequence from his film about the production of the first episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Spoiler alert, making the show wasn’t easy.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Creating chaos onscreen requires a lot more planning than it might seem. That’s the case in this sequence from “Saturday Night,” the latest film from Jason Reitman, which looks at how the first episode of the long-running NBC sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” came together.In the scene, the “S.N.L.” cast members John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris are rehearsing a sketch.“At the beginning, you know, it’s going through the normal steps and trying to figure out camerawork,” Reitman says of the scene in his narration, and by the end, “it’s a total catastrophe.”So how did Reitman go about building this out-of-control situation? For one, he put his background actors through a boot camp, where they learned how to do the jobs of the crew people they were portraying. And beyond that, he created detailed plans for the production team to follow.“We had to choreograph this movie like a dance film,” Reitman said. “I’d have a giant whiteboard like a football coach. And I would have to write plays for all the extras and background actors and crew, just so everyone would know where to be.”Read the “Saturday Night” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Q&A: Maisy Stella of ‘My Old Ass’ on Her Rise to Fame

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      Maisy Stella stars in “My Old Ass,” a new coming-of-age film. After years as a child actor, she says it was going to high school that helped her prepare.Maisy Stella couldn’t have guessed that the thing that would prepare her for her first major film role would be … being a regular teenager.In 2012, when she was 8, a video of her and her older sister, Lennon, singing Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” took off online — a narrower era of the internet when harmonized covers and cup percussion could charm millions of strangers. The duet, which now has more than 31 million views, landed the pair a segment on “Good Morning America.” Soon after, they were cast in the soapy country music drama, “Nashville.”But it was a four-year pause from acting Ms. Stella took after six years on “Nashville” to attend high school that laid the groundwork for her return to the screen. Now, she stars in “My Old Ass,” where she plays Elliott, a restless teenager whose mushroom trip conjures her 39-year-old future self (played by Aubrey Plaza). The film, written and directed by Megan Park, plays with the buoyant idealism of youth, face-to-face with the hard-earned wisdom of adulthood.Ms. Stella’s high school sojourn of backpacks and lockers and prom — all the things she had romanticized from watching movies — turned out to be just the dose of adolescence she needed to play a starry-eyed Elliott.“My prep for ‘My Old Ass’ was those four years,” Ms. Stella, 20, said. “I can’t imagine how different I would have been in the movie if I had been working consistently since the time I was eight.”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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      As ‘Saturday Night Live’ Starts 50th Season, Here’s What Cast and Crew Remember About the Debut

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      As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin said.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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      Francis Ford Coppola and ‘Megalopolis’: What to Know

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      The controversies surrounding the new epic include accusations of on-set problems, a pulled trailer and more.Francis Ford Coppola waged war with studio heads throughout the making of “The Godfather.” Production on his 1979 Vietnam War epic, “Apocalypse Now,” was so troubled — there was a typhoon and a near-fatal heart attack — that it was chronicled in a documentary.So it’s not exactly a surprise that his latest movie, “Megalopolis,” a nearly two-and-a-half-hour futuristic fable about the battle between art and greed that stars Adam Driver, arrives in theaters Friday mired in controversy.The 85-year-old filmmaker’s self-financed passion project, which he conceived all the way back in the 1970s, has earned headlines about a reportedly chaotic shoot, allegations of misconduct and questions about the film’s commercial prospects. While we wait to see whether it will find a place in the canon of Coppola masterpieces or go down as a $120 million mistake, here is a guide to the movie’s complicated history.When did this all start?More than four decades ago. Yes, you read that right — Coppola first had the idea toward the end of filming “Apocalypse Now” in the late 1970s. The new project, he told Film Comment in 1983, would confront big questions — the why and what of existence. It simmered on the back burner for years — Coppola scrapped and re-envisioned the script in each subsequent decade — until he finally began shooting it in 2022.Why did it take so long to make?Coppola followed up “Apocalypse Now” with “One From the Heart,” a 1982 musical romance that bombed at the box office, grossing a mere $636,796 against a $26 million budget. That meant he was stuck making studio-friendly films for a decade so he could pay off his debts. (A film called “Megalopolis,” after all, hardly portends a small budget.)But even after “The Godfather Part III” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” put him back on track, studios remained cautious about signing on, fearing a repeat of the infamously chaotic production of “Apocalypse Now.” Also, after Sept. 11, the idea of a film about New York City being rebuilt after being nearly destroyed hit a little too, well, close to home.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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      ‘The Bouncer,’ ‘Pearl’ and More Streaming Gems

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      This month’s under-the-radar streaming suggestions include unexpectedly poignant action flicks, highly stylized horror pictures and documentaries about art thieves and sperm donors.‘The Bouncer’ (2019)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.It was very easy, for quite some time, to dismiss Jean-Claude Van Damme as just another blank-slate action star. But something truly fascinating has happened as he’s grown older — in his best roles, he’s leaned into his vulnerability, playing his age rather than ignoring it. He no longer seems like a guy who can win every fight, so his fights are far more interesting. His face, like Clint Eastwood’s, has grown richer as its lines grow deeper and harder, and like Eastwood, he does his best acting when he seems to be doing nothing at all. This rough-and-tumble crime thriller from the gifted action director Julien Leclercq (“Sentinelle”) gives Van Damme plenty of character moments — it’s quieter and moodier than your typical bone-cruncher — but when the action beats arrive, they’re lean, mean and effective.‘A Bigger Splash’ (2016)Stream it on Max.With the director Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Queer” on the fall festival circuit, it’s a fine time to check out this sun-soaked psychological thriller, which also serves as an excellent adieu to the summer season. It finds the rock star Marianne (Tilda Swinton) and her boyfriend, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), relaxing poolside on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria when they’re visited by two unexpected guests: the music producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) and his recently discovered daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson). Sparks fly, tempers flare and libidos follow; every performance is a stunner, and Guadagnino navigates each turn of events with sly grace.‘Pearl’ (2022)Stream it on Netflix.Mia Goth, with pitchfork, as the title character in “Pearl.”A24We 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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      ‘Megalopolis’ Review: The Fever Dreams of Francis Ford Coppola

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      The director’s latest is a great-man story about an architect, played by Adam Driver, driven by ideals and big plans. It’s a personal statement on an epic scale.Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is a bursting-at-the-seams hallucination of a movie — it’s wonderfully out-there. At once a melancholic lament and futuristic fantasy, it invokes different epochs and overflows with entrancing, at times confounding images and ideas that have been playing in my head since I first saw the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival. There, it was both warmly received and glibly dismissed, a critical divide that’s nothing new for Coppola, a restlessly experimental filmmaker with a long habit of going off-Hollywood.Nothing if not au courant, “Megalopolis” is a vision of a moribund civilization, though also a great-man story about an architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of a better world. An enigmatic genius (he has a Nobel Prize) with an aristocratic mien and a flair for drama, Catilina lives in a city that resembles today’s New York by way of ancient Rome, though it mostly looks like an elaborate soundstage. As familiar as Fifth Avenue and as obscure as the far side of the moon, it is a world that mirrors its real counterpart as a playpen for the wealthy and a prison-house for the destitute. The city haunts Catilina; it also inspires him.What Catilina dreams of is a “perfect school-city,” in which people can achieve their better selves. It’s an exalted aspiration, as seemingly boundless but also as sheltering as the blue sky, and one that invokes a long line of lofty dreamers and master builders. There are predictable obstacles, mostly other people, small-minded types without vision, idealism or maybe just faith. Among these is the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a consummate politician with no patience for fantasies or for Catilina. Their animosity runs through the story, which is narrated by Catilina’s aide, Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), dense with incident and populated by an array of noble souls and posturing fools.The fools prove better company in “Megalopolis” than most of the upright types, though with their all-too human comedy they’re not always distinguishable. They begin rushing in after the jolting opener, which finds Catilina dressed in inky black and uncertainly climbing out of a window in the crown of the Chrysler Building. Before long, he is standing with one foot firmly planted and the other shakily raised over the edge. He calls out “time stop” and everything — the clouds above, the cars below — freezes, only to restart at his command. He looks like a colossus, though also brings to mind the early-cinema clown Harold Lloyd hanging over a different abyss in “Safety Last!” (a title that could work for this audacious movie).It’s quite the to-be-or-not introduction. Given that filmmakers are in the business of stopping time, Catilina’s entrance also reads as an auteurist mission statement. So it’s a relief when Catilina gets off that precipice, even if Coppola never really does. The filmmaker has a thing for dreamers and their great, big dreams, and it’s easy to see “Megalopolis” — which he mentioned in interviews as early as 1983 — in autobiographical terms. Like Catilina, Coppola has endured and almost been consumed by catastrophic setbacks (most notably with his founding of a film studio that nearly ruined him), only to rise phoenixlike from the ashes. It’s one reason that “Megalopolis” feels like a personal statement on an epic scale.Giancarlo Esposito plays a consummate politician with no patience for the architect’s fantasies.LionsgateWe 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