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      ‘Problemista’ Review: Craven New World

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      The first feature film from the writer and comedian Julio Torres is a social problem drama with the frippery of a Michel Gondry romance.The comedian Julio Torres presents himself like an alien from outer space, an unsmiling observer of Earth paraphernalia. Born in El Salvador, but seeming to hail from somewhere between Andy Kaufman’s fictional Caspiar and Mork’s planet Ork, Torres uses his stand-up, his “Saturday Night Live” skits (he wrote for the show from 2016 to 2019) and, now, his eccentric filmmaking debut, “Problemista,” to indulge his fixations, including plastic toys and ostentatious sinks. Torres can anthropomorphize any object — his 2019 one-man special, “My Favorite Shapes by Julio Torres,” explores the psyche of the airplane curtain dividing first-class from coach — but he has barely taken interest in humanity. The most telling line in “Shapes,” for which he adorned his body with astral flecks of silver glitter, is when Torres announces he will “abruptly do some impressions at you,” emphasizing his refusal to extend himself toward the other beings in the room.Yet “Problemista,” which Torres wrote, directed and stars in, reveals a new willingness to tell a relatable story with a riveting sketch of an honest-to-goodness person. The film is a loosely autobiographical recounting of his ordeal to find an employer willing to sponsor his immigration visa (fittingly, he secured one that deems him “an alien of extraordinary ability”), and Torres’s miseries are familiar to anyone who’s been short of cash in a new city: consistent scrimping and soul-sucking hours sifting through fishy online jobs. Craigslist, embodied by Larry Owens, appears as a junkyard necromancer urging gig seekers to click on a posting labeled “cleaning boy kink.”The need to kowtow seems to have scarred Torres. But the character to watch isn’t his analogue, Alejandro, an aspiring toymaker who tiptoes across the screen as if Torres is wearing a Halloween costume of a shy and ordinary person. (The cowlick is overkill.) Instead, it’s his boss, Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an art critic who sorta-kinda hires Alejandro to assemble a gallery show of paintings by her cryogenically frozen husband, Bobby (RZA). (Torres himself was an archivist for the artist John Heliker and gleefully vents about the database software FileMaker Pro.)Argumentative, venomous and perennially aggrieved, Elizabeth is an embittered New Yorker who spends a quarter of her screen time screaming at tech support over the phone. She’s the kind of malcontent who will, in all sincerity, accuse people of being “in cahoots.” Swinton plays her with her fingernails curled, like a badger looking for a fight. It’s a frightful and gargantuan performance that should come with a trigger warning. I’ve met an Elizabeth. You probably have, 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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      ‘Amelia’s Children’ Review: Mommy Weirdest

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      A villa in Portugal introduces two New Yorkers to more than long-lost family in this comically sick horror movie.A hilariously awful collision of soap opera and horror movie, “Amelia’s Children” teeters so precariously on the cliff top of comedy that one wishes the director, Gabriel Abrantes, had dared to kick it over the edge.Sadly, that does not happen, despite a baffling scene that finds a mother and her two adult sons wiggling enthusiastically to “The Girl From Ipanema.” Witnessing this dismaying display is Riley (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a sharp New Yorker who is beginning to regret giving her boyfriend, Ed (a ruinously bland Carloto Cotta), the gift of a D.N.A. ancestry test for his 31st birthday. Having learned of the existence of his biological mother and a twin sibling, Ed has brought Riley to this Portuguese villa to meet his newfound family. And possibly cause her to lose her mind.“These people are weird,” Riley opines with futile understatement, given that Ed appears mesmerized by his strangely intense brother, Manuel (also played by Cotta, in sexy-handyman mode), and their creepy mother, Amelia (Anabela Moreira). A humpbacked crone and duck-lipped victim of excessive plastic surgery, Amelia is consumed by a vanity that can’t be satisfied by the surgeon’s knife. Viewers intent on plumbing the supernatural secret of her glamour-puss aspirations, though, will find more answers in her bedtime shenanigans than in the strange brown liquid she drops into her guests’ tea.A movie of bad dreams and worse vibes, “Amelia’s Children” is a peculiar, perverse addition to the already-overflowing well of monstrous-mommy pictures. Vasco Viana’s spiffy cinematography classes things up, but the film is too dismal — and its hero too dumb — to qualify as outright camp. Only Riley, as she transforms from girlfriend to hellion, is worth watching: We can’t help but feel that she’s had Amelia’s number all along.Amelia’s ChildrenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      Stream These 8 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in March

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      Star-led titles including Jerry Seinfeld’s animated feature, a James Brown biopic and a Steve Martin-Meryl Streep rom-com are leaving the streaming service. Watch them while you can.There’s a fascinatingly wide array of big titles leaving Netflix in the United States in March — everything from kiddie cartoons to star-heavy dramas to action extravaganzas. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Bee Movie’ (March 1)Stream it here.You can’t accuse Jerry Seinfeld of embarking on a traditional career in the years since his eponymous sitcom concluded in 1998. He remains one of the most reliably excellent stand-up comedians in the game, but he has resisted the surely tempting follow-ups: doing another conventional television series (he created and hosts the laid-back shoptalk talk show “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”) or making a “Seinfeld”-style movie.Instead, he co-wrote, produced and voiced the lead role in this animated family comedy, starring as Barry B. Benson, a honeybee who mounts a lawsuit against the entire human race. Little kids will love it, adults will get a kick out of the celebrity voice actors (including Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Rip Torn, Patrick Warburton, Oprah Winfrey and Renée Zellweger) and everyone in between will enjoy it ironically.‘This Is Where I Leave You’ (March 1)Stream it here.This adaptation of Jonathan Tropper’s best seller boasts one of the most impressive ensemble casts of the mid-aughts: Jason Bateman stars as a beleaguered yuppie whose father has just died; Adam Driver, Tina Fey and Corey Stoll are his siblings; Jane Fonda is their mother; and Connie Britton, Rose Byrne, Kathryn Hahn and Timothy Olyphant turn up as romantic interests past and present. All are brought together, at the deceased patriarch’s request, to sit shiva for a backbreaking seven days. Hilarity and high tension ensue. The director Shawn Levy has some trouble keeping a consistent pace and tone, but the skill of the cast pulls the film through the rougher spots, and the familial dynamics are relatable to the point of occasional discomfort.‘Get On Up’ (March 16)Stream it here.The current vogue of jukebox biopics shows no sign of slowing, thanks to the impressive grosses of films like “Bob Marley: One Love,” even though most of these dramas are still trafficking in tropes that should have been decimated by the pitch-perfect satire of “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” a decade and a half ago. But credit where due: Tate Taylor’s biopic about the “Godfather of Soul,” the hardest-working man in show business, the one and only James Brown, zigs where most of these movies would zag. The inventive screenplay by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth hopscotches through his life, eschewing the cradle-to-grave march of so many biopics for a more stream-of-consciousness approach, with Brown frequently breaking the fourth wall to address his audience (and comment on the action) directly. There are some telling erasures, personally and politically, but the picture moves fast, and is loaded with great songs (Mick Jagger is a producer of both the film and its music). Also top-notch is its ensemble cast, including Dan Aykroyd, Nelsan Ellis, Craig Robinson, Jill Scott and Tate’s “The Help” stars Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, and Chadwick Boseman convincingly fills Brown’s (big, tall) shoes.‘Savages’ (March 16)Stream it here.After a rough run in the early 2000s, the director Oliver Stone took a shot at recapturing some of his “Natural Born Killers” juju with this 2012 adaptation of Don Winslow’s crime novel. It’s not altogether successful — mostly because of the severe lack of charisma and danger from its stars, Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson — but Stone keeps things moving at a brisk pace, and gets excellent late-period performances out of three key supporting players: John Travolta, as a cheerfully corrupt D.E.A. agent; Benicio Del Toro, as an utterly amoral enforcer for a Mexican drug cartel; and best of all, Salma Hayek as the head of the cartel, turning her customary purring sexiness into eye-opening menace.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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      2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival Preview

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      A range of films, many of them animated, some hilarious, some serious, bubble up at this year’s festival in New York, where kids can vote for awards.One of the cinematic highlights of the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival could be described, at least partly, as a wild-goose chase. Or, more precisely, a domestic-hen chase.That animated feature, “Chicken for Linda!,” follows a guilt-stricken single mother trying to buy the main ingredient of her daughter’s favorite dish. But since grocers are on strike in their French city, the desperate mother steals a live hen. The bird flees from her car’s trunk to a watermelon truck to the space behind an armoire, with adults and children, including the high-spirited young daughter, Linda, in hot pursuit.A simple farce? Not exactly. The film, by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, also includes time shifts, a singing ghost, an exploration of memory and multiple references to death — that of Louis XVI and Linda’s beloved father, as well as the chicken’s potential demise. Done in loose, almost abstract animation, the movie, which is billed as the festival’s “centerpiece spotlight,” is about as far as an audience can get from typical commercial children’s fare.It is also exactly the kind of unusual work to expect at the festival, which begins on Saturday and continues on weekends through March 17 with a slate of 18 feature presentations and more than 70 short films. About three-quarters of those titles are animated.“I think when you see live action, you’re very enraptured with someone else’s story,” Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director, said in an interview. But with animation, she added, “you’re very excited also about your own, because I think you’re paying attention to the medium, you’re paying attention to the way that artists are using different techniques and different storytelling approaches. That really forefronts the idea of creativity and possibility.”Villaseñor and Nina Guralnick, the festival’s executive director, did not set out to focus on animation this year, but found that those films were often the most interesting. Ever since the festival’s founding in 1997, it has shown its audience — cinemagoers as young as 3 and as old as 18 — work that they’re unlikely to see anywhere else, including features that have previously been shown almost exclusively at festivals for adults.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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      ‘Dune: Part Two’ Review: Bigger, Wormier and Way Far Out

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      Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya make an appealing pair in Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up film, and the actors fit together with tangible ease.Having gone big in “Dune,” his 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s futuristic opus, the director Denis Villeneuve has gone bigger and more far out in the follow up. Set in the aftermath of the first movie, the sequel resumes the story boldly and quickly, delivering visions both phantasmagoric and familiar. Like Timothée Chalamet’s dashingly coifed hero — who steers monstrous sandworms over the desert like a charioteer — Villeneuve has tamed a Leviathan. The art of cinematic spectacle is alive and rocking in “Dune: Part Two,” and it’s a blast.The new movie is a surprisingly nimble moonshot, even with all its gloom and doom and brutality. Big-screen enterprises, particularly those adapted from books with a huge, fiercely loyal readership, often have a ponderousness built in to every image. In some, you can feel the enormous effort it takes as filmmakers try to turn reams of pages into moving images that have commensurate life, artistry and pop on the screen. Adaptations can be especially deadly when moviemakers are too precious with the source material; they’re torpedoed by fealty.“Dune” made it clear that Villeneuve isn’t that kind of textualist. As he did in the original, he has again taken plentiful liberties with Herbert’s behemoth (one hardcover edition runs 528 pages) to make “Part Two,” which he wrote with the returning Jon Spaihts. Characters, subplots and volumes of dialogue (interior and otherwise) have again been reduced or excised altogether. (I was sorry that the great character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson, who played an eerie adviser in the first movie, didn’t make the cut here.) The story — its trajectory, protagonist and concerns — remains recognizable yet also different.“Dune” turns on Paul Atreides (Chalamet), an aristocrat who becomes a guerrilla and crusader, and whose destiny weighs as heavily on him as any crown. In adapting “Dune,” Villeneuve effectively cleaved Herbert’s novel in half. (Herbert wrote six “Dune” books, a series that has morphed into a multimedia franchise since his death in 1986.) The first part makes introductions and sketches in Paul’s back story as the beloved only son of a duke, Leto (Oscar Isaac), and his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). When it opens, the royals, on orders from the universe’s emperor, are preparing to vacate their home planet, a watery world called Caladan, to the parched planet of Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune.The move to Arrakis goes catastrophically wrong; Paul’s father and most members of House Atreides are murdered by their enemies, most notably the pallid, villainous House Harkonnen. Paul and the Lady Jessica escape into the desert where — after much side-eyeing and muttering along with one of those climactic mano-a-mano duels that turn fictional boys into men — they find uneasy allies in a group of Fremen, the planet’s Indigenous population. A tribal people who have adapted to Dune’s harsh conditions with clever survival tactics, like form-fitting suits that conserve bodily moisture, the Fremen are scattered across the planet under the emperor’s rule. Some fight to be free; many pray for a messiah.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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      ‘Spaceman’ Review: What Happened Here?

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      Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan star in a baffling Netflix misfire about a man in, well, space.When was the last time you looked at the exquisite list of synonyms for the word “baffled”? They may be among the best in the English language: puzzled, nonplused, discombobulated, flummoxed, stumped, fogged, wildered, buffaloed. They’re delicious, delightful, full of consonants, evocative of a very particular feeling: you’re presented with something that seems as though it should be clear, but you can’t make it make sense.The occasion for my bout of word nerdery is the Adam Sandler movie “Spaceman,” and for that I thank the film. It is not a particularly confusing movie on its own, in part because we’ve seen its likes before: a spaceman, alone in the inky blackness, goes a little nuts, and also gains clarity on his life back on earth. What’s flummoxing about “Spaceman” isn’t what it is, but why it is.Some bad movies were never going to be good (“Argylle”). Other bad movies never even tried (“Madame Web”). But “Spaceman” is that exquisite rare third thing — an awful movie, a very bad movie indeed, whose lousiness was almost certainly not apparent while it was in production.Every sign points toward, if not a masterpiece, at least a pretty interesting genre experiment. The film has Sandler, whose acting chops are often underrated, in a dramatic role as the titular spaceman, whose name is Jakub. It has the great Carey Mulligan, who is currently up for a best actress Oscar, playing his estranged, pregnant wife Lenka. It is scored by the ubiquitous Max Richter. Its director, Johan Renck, also directed the outstanding mini-series “Chernobyl,” among the best television made in the past decade. And though it’s the screenwriter Colby Day’s first major feature, it’s based on Jaroslav Kalfar’s novel “Spaceman of Bohemia,” which won praise from science fiction critics.I haven’t read Kalfar’s book, but a critic at The Guardian called it “‘Solaris’ with laughs,” which gives me a clue as to what may have gone awry. There’s some “Solaris” swimming around inside “Spaceman,” and also some “Gravity,” some “Interstellar,” some “First Man,” some “Ad Astra.” What there aren’t are laughs.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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      ‘Outlaw Posse’ Review: Van Peebles Is Back With a Western

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      Two decades after his previous Black western, Mario Van Peebles is back in the saddle again. This time, his son, Mandela, is with him.The wacky, low-budget quest “Outlaw Posse” by the writer-director Mario Van Peebles is not a direct sequel to his innovative Black western “Posse,” from 1993. It’s a companion piece, built in the same universe, that is equally indebted to the history of Black cowboys and the need for restorative justice in America.As Chief, an outlaw hiding in Mexico, the playful Van Peebles wears a dark-colored cowboy outfit similar to the one he sported in “Posse,” and mirroring what his father, Melvin Van Peebles, wore in his 1971 Blaxploitation flick “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.” That film was the first father-son pairing between them; it’s fitting to see Mandela Van Peebles now teaming with his dad as Decker, the estranged son of Chief.Like “Posse,” “Outlaw Posse” concerns a cache of gold commandeered by a Black soldier. Set in 1908, the gold was stolen by Chief from the Confederate government decades ago for the purpose of reparations. A malicious squad of white men, led by the sadistic, one-handed Angel (William Mapother), is pursuing Chief’s ragtag gang across Montana.Angel takes Decker’s family hostage, forcing him to infiltrate his dad’s band of outlaws and report back. Along the way, historical figures like Stagecoach Mary (an underused Whoopi Goldberg) and funny characters like Horatio (Cedric the Entertainer) appear.In direct conversation with cinema’s many spaghetti westerns, Van Peebles’s shaggy script relies on winking nods and plentiful shootouts in lieu of production value. “Outlaw Posse” may not be innovative, but its regard for family affairs is worth treasuring.Outlaw PosseRated R for sweetback content, language and brief partial nudity. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Dune: Part Two’: Here’s Everything You Need to Know

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      Before you see the second film in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the sci-fi epic, try this refresher on spice, the Imperium and the Kwisatz Haderach.Since the weird, wild universe of “Dune” emerged from the pages of Frank Herbert’s novel in 1965, filmmakers have yearned to bring it to the screen. In the 1970s, Alejandro Jodorowsky was thwarted in his attempt to turn his elaborate vision into cinematic reality. In 1984, David Lynch was forced to cram volumes of lore into two hours, and the result was an ugly-beautiful disaster. In the latest foray, Denis Villeneuve has created an engrossing, believable world, smartly dividing the first book in the series into two parts. “Dune: Part One” was a critical and box office hit when it was released in 2021, and now “Part Two,” which opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, is poised to pick up where the last film left off. Here’s a primer to bring you up to speed.Where are we?In the film, Paul Atreides becomes a member of the Fremen, a native people of the planet Arrakis living mostly in its hidden corners. Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.“Dune” is set about 20,000 years in the future, and much of the series takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis. Part of the galactic empire of the Imperium, which is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam, Arrakis is vital because it offers a necessary resource — spice — that exists nowhere else. In “Part One,” the emperor transferred control of Arrakis from the brutes of House Harkonnen to their longtime foes, House Atreides. But the gift was a trap, something Duke Leto Atreides suspected but hoped to turn to his advantage by establishing an alliance with the Fremen, a native people of Arrakis who live mostly in its hidden corners. Before Leto’s plans could bear fruit, the emperor secretly sent his elite force to aid Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) in regaining control of the planet and in destroying Leto’s troops and family. (In the process, Leto died.)Why is spice so important?“Part Two” opens with the words “Power over spice is power over all.” After a religious revolt against robots millenniums before the start of the series, the use of intelligent machines was banned. People have since relied on preternatural abilities that are developed through training and the use of psychotropic drugs such as spice, which can expand consciousness and extend life. The resource is particularly crucial to the navigators, who enable interstellar travel.What’s the deal with Paul Atreides?Paul Atreides battling Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler) to determine who will control the spice — and the universe.Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is the son of Leto and his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), who is a member of the Bene Gesserit, a mystical sisterhood that surreptitiously manipulates the levers of power. It has been seeding self-serving myths and conducting a breeding program for generations. The relationship between Leto and Jessica had been arranged in hopes that she would give birth to a daughter who could then conceive the Kwisatz Haderach — a male Bene Gesserit with “a mind powerful enough to bridge all space and time.” Instead, Jessica bore Leto the son he desired. (A Bene Gesserit can control everything that goes on in her body.)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