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      ‘Back to Black’ Review: Another Amy Winehouse Biopic? No, No, No.

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      The facts get softened and shuffled for an Amy Winehouse biopic that leaves her perspective at the edges.The director of “Back to Black,” Sam Taylor-Johnson, has said repeatedly in interviews that the movie is meant to center Amy Winehouse’s story in her own perspective. That may or may not be meant as implicit criticism of “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning 2015 documentary about the singer, which wove together archival interviews — many damning — with family and friends as well as with Winehouse herself to make the case that everyone was at fault for her untimely demise. Either way, Taylor-Johnson’s remarks suggest that Winehouse, who in 2011 died at the age of 27 of alcohol poisoning, has been co-opted in the years since her death. “Back to Black,” then, is an effort to tell the story the way she would have.But, oof. If that was the aim, I’m comfortable saying it failed completely. “Back to Black” has some bright spots. One is Marisa Abela’s performance as Winehouse, which is deeply and lovingly committed, if at times a little distracting. A few sequences work, too, particularly her marathon pub meet-cute with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell), the man whose exceptionally toxic relationship with Winehouse inspired the album for which the movie is named. (Unfortunately there are very few scenes in which we see Winehouse’s songs coming together — usually the best part of a musician biopic.)“Back to Black” starts with Winehouse expressing that she simply wants people to listen to her music and forget their troubles for a while, and to know who she really was. Then it follows her through her early gigs in Camden pubs, her friendships and her fights with boyfriends. When she meets Fielder-Civil, everything changes — and not for the best. Always a heavy drinker, she gradually becomes addicted to all kinds of substances, in part because he is an addict. When he goes back to his girlfriend, she writes angry songs that become “Back to Black.” When he returns, things get worse.Yet the facts of the real Winehouse’s life and struggles are impossible to ignore, and some of the movie’s choices, from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, seem aimed at rewriting her history without her consent. Fielder-Civil, for instance, has said he instigated Winehouse’s first encounter with heroin, but in “Back to Black” she starts shooting up on her own. 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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      ‘Babes’ Review: Adulting, With Babies

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      Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau star in Pamela Adlon’s pregnancy comedy, but it never quite lands.Among life’s biggest disappointments is a movie you wanted to love and didn’t. Alas: That’s what happened with “Babes.” The elements that promised joy were all there, starting with two very funny comic talents in Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau. There’s a screenplay by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, who was a producer on “Broad City,” the kooky, beloved show in which Glazer co-starred. And perhaps most of all, it’s directed by Pamela Adlon, whose chops for this kind of material — a buddy comedy about pregnancy, parenthood and grown-up life — were perfectly honed by her show “Better Things,” which I staunchly believe is among the best TV ever made.But sometimes a pile of good ingredients doesn’t make something delicious, and I guess that’s what happened here. The marketing for “Babes” suggests something akin to “Bridesmaids,” the runaway 2011 hit that reminded Hollywood that raunchy comedies starring women can be hilarious and profitable. “Bridesmaids” owes some of its punch to its rapid-fire rhythm, the pileup of relentless jokes both verbal and physical.“Babes” has plenty of raunch, but it’s otherwise very different. The setup is fairly modest: Eden (Glazer) and Dawn (Buteau) have been best friends since they were kids, and they’re still each other’s person, even though Dawn and her husband, Marty (Hasan Minhaj), moved to the Upper West Side and have a kid just barely out of diapers. Meanwhile, over in Astoria, Eden is free-spirited and single. Dawn and Marty’s second baby is born on Thanksgiving Day, and on the way home from the hospital Eden meets Claude (Stephan James) on the subway. Instant sparks fly, and their connection is undeniable, but Claude goes AWOL after their night together.And then, about a month later, Eden realizes she’s pregnant. When Dawn promises to be there for her, she decides to have the baby. But in friendship, as in all kinds of love, the course never does run smooth.“Babes” is, obviously, about pregnancy, which gives plenty of opportunity for body humor involving fluids and openings and other matters. But it’s just as much about friendship, and about the struggle to maintain connections when life circumstances change. It’s also about how frustrating young parenthood can be, even if you have the ability to pay for help and don’t worry about the roof over your head. In sum, you can almost hear the movie saying, adult life is a land of contrasts, and you’d better just hang on for the bumpy ride.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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      ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Review: A Lonely Avenger

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      The fifth installment of George Miller’s series delivers an origin story of Furiosa, the hard-bitten driver played here by Anya Taylor-Joy.Dystopia has rarely looked as grim and felt as exhilarating as it has in George Miller’s “Mad Max” cycle. For decades, Miller has been wowing viewers with hallucinatory images of a ravaged, violent world that looks enough like ours to generate shivers of recognition. Yet however familiar his alternative universe can seem — feel — his filmmaking creates such a strong contact high that it’s always been easy to simply bliss out on the sheer spectacle of it all. Apocalypse? Cool!The thing is, it has started to feel less cool just because in the years since the original “Mad Max” opened in 1979, the distance between Miller’s scorched earth and ours has narrowed. Set “a few years from now,” the first film tracks Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a highway patrol cop who has a semblance of a normal life with a wife and kid. That things are about to go to hell for Max is obvious in the opening shot of a sign for the Hall of Justice, an entry that evokes the gate at Auschwitz (“Work Sets You Free”). You may have flinched if you made that association, but whatever qualms you had were soon swept away by the ensuing chases and crashes, the gunning engines and mad laughter.Miller’s latest and fifth movie in the cycle, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” is primarily an origin story that recounts the life and brutal, dehumanizing times of the young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), the hard-bitten rig driver played by Charlize Theron in the last film, “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015). Miller’s magnum opus, “Fury Road” is at once the apotheosis of his cinematic genius — it’s one of the great movies of the last decade — and a departure narratively and tonally from the previous films. In “Fury,” Max still serves as the nominal headliner (with Tom Hardy taking over for Gibson), but the movie’s dramatic and emotional weight rests on Furiosa, her quest and her hopes.As befits a creation story, “Furiosa” tracks Furiosa from childhood to young adulthood, a downward spiral that takes her from freedom to captivity and, in time, circumscribed sovereignty. It opens with the 10-year-old Furiosa (Alyla Browne) foraging in a forest close to a paradisiacal outpost called the Green Place of Many Mothers. Just as she’s reaching for an amusingly, metaphorically ripe peach, her idyll is cut short by a gang of snaggletooth, hygiene-challenged bikers. They’re soon rocketing across the desert with Furiosa tied up on one of their bikes, with her mother (Charlee Fraser) and another woman in pursuit on horseback, a chase that presages the fight for power and bodies which follows.The chase grows exponentially tenser as Miller begins shifting between close-ups and expansive long shots, the raucous noise and energy of the kidnappers on their hell machines working contrapuntally against the desert’s stillness. While the scene’s arid landscape conjures up past “Mad Max” adventures, the buttes and the galloping horse evoke the classic westerns from which this series has drawn some of its mythopoetic force. Max has often seemed like a Hollywood gunslinger (or samurai) transplanted into Miller’s feverish imagination with some notes from Joseph Campbell. The minute Furiosa starts gnawing on her captor’s fuel line, though, Miller makes it clear that this wee captive is no damsel in distress.Furiosa’s odyssey takes a turn for the more ominous when she’s delivered to the bikers’ ruler, Warlord Dementus (a vamping Chris Hemsworth), a voluble show-boater who oversees a gaggle of largely male nomads. Wearing a billowing white cape, Dementus travels in a chariot drawn by motorcycles and keeps a scholar by his side. He’s a ridiculous figure, and Miller and Hemsworth lean into the character’s absurdity with a physical presentation that is as outlandish as Dementus’s pomposity and (prosthetic) nose. It’s hard not to wonder if Miller drew inspiration for the character from both Charlton Heston’s heroic champion and the Arab sheikh in the 1959 epic “Ben-Hur,” a very different desert saga.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 Accused of Misconduct on ‘Megalopolis’ Set

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      An executive producer said he wasn’t aware of complaints and called the contact “kind hugs and kisses on the cheek.”As anticipation for the premiere of “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in more than a decade, built to a fever pitch at Cannes, the director faced accusations Tuesday that he tried to kiss extras during a nightclub sequence.A report in The Guardian detailing the film’s chaotic production said that according to anonymous sources, Coppola pulled women to sit on his lap, and tried to kiss scantily clad extras.In response, a representative for Coppola referred to a statement from the executive producer Darren Demetre, published by The Hollywood Reporter, in which he said, “I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behavior during the course of the project.” Demetre also noted in the statement that during two days of shooting a “celebratory Studio 54-esque club scene,” the director “walked around the set to establish the spirit of the scene by giving kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players. It was his way to help inspire and establish the club atmosphere, which was so important to the film.”The article focused largely on the movie’s unusual production conditions and, citing an unnamed crew member, said that Coppola stayed in his trailer for hours at a time, delaying filming.Mariela Comitini, a first assistant director on “Megalopolis,” told The Times through a representative, “I can say working alongside Francis Ford Coppola was an honor. I watched as Francis created a vibrant, professional and positive environment on set, and I wish I could be part of the celebration in Cannes. As one of the industry’s most well-respected master filmmakers, Francis was undaunted by the enormity of this undertaking, and he finished the film on time and on budget.”The report was published in advance of the film’s Thursday premiere in the Cannes competition, where the stakes are high since the movie has yet to find U.S. distribution. (After an early screening for buyers, one source told Puck that it had zero commercial prospects but that that wasn’t a bad thing.) On Tuesday, Coppola, best known as the director of the “Godfather” trilogy, posted a teaser for the dystopian “Megalopolis” that reflected ancient Roman influences and featured hallucinatory special effects.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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      ‘How to Have Sex,’ ‘Miller’s Girl’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Provocative debuts from two exciting new female filmmakers lead off this month’s roundup of recommendations from your subscription streaming services.‘How to Have Sex’ (2024)Stream it on Mubi.The title is provocative, but this is no how-to manual; instead, the writer and director Molly Manning Walker tells a contemporary coming-of-age story that will reverberate with viewers of all ages and sexes. Her focus is on Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a 16-year-old British girl on a post-exams holiday in Crete with her friends. They plan to party, drink and hook up, and the latter is of particular import to Tara, who is keen to lose her virginity — less out of desire or romanticism than to simply get it over with. Manning is a cinematographer making her feature directing debut, and she deftly uses compositions, color and sound to convey Tara’s isolation, desperation and disappointment. She gets a big assist from McKenna-Bruce, a charismatic and empathetic lead who can whisper, in a throwaway line or discreet gesture, everything you need to know about this young woman’s past and present.‘Miller’s Girl’ (2024)Stream it on Netflix.The first-time writer and director Jade Halley Bartlett makes occasional rookie errors in this psychosexual drama. But she has a knack with actors, particularly Jenna Ortega, who plays the lead role of a brainy teen seductress with wit and verve. Bartlett photographs Ortega like a movie star, and she comes off like one; she has a particular way of chewing on a line of loaded dialogue, and she and Martin Freeman (as the creative writing professor whose professional interest becomes personal) create a specific, uneasy but undeniable chemistry that smooths over the script’s rougher stretches. The third-act turn into a 21st century “Oleanna” is effective, with Bartlett inventively intermingling her levels of fiction and cleanly visualizing the inevitable he said/she said conflicts. The moment when Ortega decisively takes the upper hand is screen acting of the highest order.‘Men’ (2022)Stream it on Max.The writer and director Alex Garland narrates a sequence from his film starring Jessie Buckley.Kevin Baker/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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      The Power of the ‘Planet of the Apes’

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      Why is this long-running film series so gripping and effective? Because it doesn’t monkey around.When the very first “Planet of the Apes” movie opened in 1968, the movie critic at The Times, Renata Adler, found it unremarkable. “It is no good at all, but fun, at moments, to watch,” she wrote, deeming it an “anti-war film and a science-fiction liberal tract,” with the apes representing “militarism, fascism and police brutality.” It’s probably safe to say she wasn’t expecting it to become one of the longest-running science-fiction franchises in Hollywood history.I cannot quite blame her — and not just because endless sequels weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. Watching the 1968 film, you see how close it could have veered toward a quick extinction. At times the whole thing has the quality of a skit. Actors wear monkey suits and masks (“wonderful anthropoid masks,” as Adler put it), and the attempt to draw a parallel between the apes’ civilization and the viewers’ can feel a little clumsy. It’s 1968, so there are winking catchphrases like “you can’t trust the older generation” and “never trust anyone over 30,” slogans that had been adopted by the counterculture. Had I been the reviewer back then, I might have called it “sometimes hamfisted.”Yet with regrets to Adler, the movie does work on its own terms, and it has held up extraordinarily well over the past 56 years. Charlton Heston stars as the captain of a four-person space crew that crash-lands on a planet that feels unfamiliar, where talking apes rule and humans, such as they are, have been enslaved. (One member of the crew is female, which I suppose was meant to suggest something futuristic; the first American woman didn’t go into space until 25 years after “Planet of the Apes” premiered.)Charlton Heston, far left, starred in the first “Planet of the Apes” film, from 1968.APJAC ProductionsThe movie was based on a 1963 satirical novel by the French author Pierre Boulle, who also wrote the novel “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Rod Serling, the creator of the wildly popular science-fiction TV show “The Twilight Zone,” was brought on to adapt the book for the screen. Serling’s influence is obvious from the first moments, which involve Heston in monologue about philosophical matters. More time has passed on Earth than in the spacecraft, since they’re moving at the speed of light. “Seen from out here, everything seems different,” he says. “Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely.”“Tell me, though,” he continues. “Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who has sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother, keep his neighbor’s children starving?”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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      Cannes Film Festival: Red Carpet Roundup

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      Jane Birkin pairing her beaded dress with a basket. Madonna in a Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra and a garter set. Kristen Stewart barefoot in Chanel chain mail. Spike Lee in a sunset-inspired suit.The Cannes Film Festival, with its sheer preponderance of red carpets and boardwalk photo ops, its blockbusters and art house flicks, has given the world more indelible fashion moments than any other festival. In 2002, Sharon Stone made so many dramatic red carpet entrances as a member of the Cannes jury that she managed to revive her flagging career through the power of clothes alone.Even before the start of this year’s festival, which officially takes place from May 14 through May 25 on the French Riviera, attendees began throwing down the fashion gauntlet.The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who is in Cannes to promote “Furiosa,” the latest “Mad Max” movie, made waves by stepping out in a Jacquemus straw hat so large it doubled as a portable sunshade. The filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose job as president of the festival’s competition jury means packing 10 days’ worth of outfits, stopped by a photo call wearing an hourglass-effect, blue-and-white-striped milkmaid dress straight from the latest Maison Margiela couture collection.Also hopping on the seaside stripes trend were the actor Chris Hemsworth, fresh off co-hosting the Met Gala, who stepped out in a blue-and-white-striped Etro suit, and Meryl Streep, who posed in a white Michael Kors pantsuit and a navy-and-white-striped shirt.Indeed, what makes the festival such irresistible eye candy is that it’s not only a parade of grand gowns and tuxedos, but also a panoply of accessible sunshine style.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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      Cannes: Greta Gerwig, Lily Gladstone and the Weight of Politics at the Fest

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      The festival opened with questions for the jury about Indigenous representation, #MeToo rumors and other timely topics.Early on in the meta French comedy “The Second Act,” which was opening the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night, a father (Vincent Lindon) and daughter (Léa Seydoux) are sitting in his car and chatting about her boyfriend. But just a few lines into the scene, Lindon cracks and refuses to perform it.As he leaves the car to stalk across a field, Seydoux pursues him and tries to continue running their lines. But he is undeterred, claiming the current state of the world is too dire for light comedy.“You’ll carry on as if nothing was wrong, as if everything was fine and dandy?” Lindon says to her. “Mankind is nearly done, and you want to play my daughter in an indie movie?”Though the festival has only just begun, the question of how much the outside world should intrude on cinema has become a pertinent one. At a meeting with the news media on Monday, the Cannes artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, was peppered with so many queries about real-world issues — from the war in Gaza to the #MeToo controversies currently swirling in the French film industry — that he snapped, insisting that he would prefer Cannes to stand apart from such things.“We’re trying to have a festival without this polemical aspect,” Frémaux said. “We’re very careful to maintain that the reason people come here is because of the cinema.”That may be, but the real world can still be felt here: For two weeks, Cannes is a bubble, but a bubble can be popped.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