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      How the World Ends in ‘The Life of Chuck’

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      The screenwriter and director Mike Flanagan narrates a sequence from his film, featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Violet McGraw. (Plus, Chuck.)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.A whimper? A bang? In this scene from “The Life of Chuck,” the world ends with a TV glow.At the center of the sequence is Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is walking through a dark neighborhood as all is falling apart. His phone has died and he is headed to see his ex-wife when he encounters a young woman (Violet McGraw) on roller skates and strikes up a conversation. Their moment is interrupted by the cool glow of screens, all mysteriously projecting images of a man named Chuck (Tom Hiddleston).In his narration, Flanagan said, “What I found really striking about this scene when Stephen King wrote it is that it’s a very kind of casual conversation of two people who just happen across each other during this apocalyptic time.”The sequence is shot in a neighborhood near Mobile, Ala., where, Flanagan said, “we took over the power grid and basically blacked out the entire world there.”For the glowing screens, rather than using expensive visual effects, Flanagan said, “we accomplished this the very old-fashioned way by hanging televisions in the windows on their sides and prerecording these videos and running around hitting play on each of them in order to get the image to appear.”Read the “Life of Chuck” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Sisu,’ ‘Final Score’ and More Streaming Gems

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      This month’s streaming suggestions include poignant biographical portraits, coming-of-age dramas, a late-career leading role for a legend and more.‘Sisu’ (2023)Stream it on Peacock.You have to congratulate the Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander for his commercial savvy: With this sleeper hit, he’s concocted a lean, mean mixture of the most joy-buzzer elements of “John Wick” and “Inglourious Basterds.” Set in the final days of World War II, it tells the story of a gold prospector (Jorma Tommila), who looks, at first, like a harmless soul. But he has a past. A former commando, he’s described as a “one man death squad,” and when a Nazi platoon steals the gold he’s recently recovered, he sets about getting it back — and killing anyone who gets in his way. Helander stages his action with grindhouse glee, cheerfully breaking bones by the handful and spurting blood by the bucket, and indulging his audience in the simple pleasure of watching Nazis squirm.‘Final Score’ (2018)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.“Die Hard” is approaching its 40th anniversary, but it still casts a large shadow over action cinema (as we’ve seen). Yet the quality so few of its imitators manage to replicate is the unique charisma of the star Bruce Willis, whose John McClane was both an action hero and a relatable, vulnerable Everyman. This taut thriller, which is essentially “‘Die Hard’ in a sports arena,” boasts a rare, successful match for that protagonist. Dave Bautista’s compelling mixture of soul and brawn is a good, clean fit for Knox, a vacationing retired military man battling Russian revolutionaries who have taken over a London stadium during a high-profile football match; he’s likable and charismatic, which keeps the stakes high. Scott Mann’s direction is energetic, executing crisp action beats, including a motorcycle chase down the arena’s corridors and an especially memorable kitchen brawl. It’s somehow both ingenious and ridiculous, and that’s just as it should be.‘Jazzy’ (2025)Stream it on Hulu.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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      Match These Books to Their Movie Versions

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. With the summer-movie season here, this week’s challenge is focused on novels that went on to become big-screeen adventures. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions. More

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      in Television

      ‘We Were Liars,’ Plus 7 Things to Watch on TV This Week

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      The adaptation of E. Lockhart’s Y.A. horror novel comes to Prime Video, and “The Gilded Age” returns for a third season.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, June 16-22. Details and times are subject to change.Managing familial expectations.In 2014 E. Lockhart released her young adult psychological horror novel “We Were Liars.” Nearly a decade later the book, after making its rounds on #BookTok, is now coming to small screens as a series with the same name. It follows Cadence Sinclair (Emily Alyn Lind), who returns to her family’s summer home in Beechwood, a fictional island off Martha’s Vineyard, two years after a mysterious incident that left her with amnesia. Three generations of the old-money Sinclair family gather, along with some of Cadence’s childhood friends, and it seems that everyone is keeping some type of secret. Streaming Wednesday on Prime Video.Based on Edith Wharton’s posthumously released and incomplete novel, “The Buccaneers” is back for its second installment. The first season focused on five young women, part of the upper echelon of 1870s high society, who were trying to find their purpose. These new episodes, which feature Leighton Meester in a guest role, will be a little bit more serious, with a focus on motherhood, abusive husbands and will-they-won’t-they relationship arcs. Streaming Wednesday on Apple TV+.If you miss the comfy and cozy atmosphere of “Dawson’s Creek,” you are in luck because the creator Kevin Williamson is back with a new show, “The Waterfront,” which actually takes place in North Carolina (“Dawson’s Creek,” though filmed there, was set in Massachusetts). The series follows the Buckley family, who once ruled the town with their fishing and restaurant businesses but are now struggling to keep things afloat after the patriarch (Holt McCallany) had two heart attacks. Streaming Thursday on Netflix.Every so often my hometown, Troy, N.Y., gets transformed into 1880s moneyed Manhattan with temporary regal facades on every building, gravel on the roads, countless horses milling about — oh, and with the principal cast members of “The Gilded Age” taking up residence to film a new season. This week the third one, which will feature lots of twist and turns, according to one of its stars, Louisa Jacobson, comes to small screens. And, of course, the usual promises of betrothal, household chaos and marriages of opportunity will continue. Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO and streaming on Max.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 ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Star Mason Thames Is Still Freaking Out

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      Mason Thames was very, very nervous. The actor, then 15 years old, had arrived in London for another round of auditions on his quest to land the lead role in Universal’s live-action adaptation of “How to Train Your Dragon,” and the pressure was mounting.He had been a toddler when the original DreamWorks Animation film was released in 2010, and he grew up obsessing over the animated trilogy about Hiccup, a teenage Viking who befriends an injured dragon named Toothless. Now, the chance to play his childhood hero was within his grasp.As Thames fretted between chemistry readings with potential co-stars, Nico Parker, the actress who would eventually land the role of Hiccup’s love interest, Astrid, caught a glimpse of his anxious energy.“He was pacing back and forth, and my chest hurt from how cute he was,” Parker, who was then 18, recalled. “He was just the sweetest little angel; I can’t even put it into words.”Thames continued to be on edge as the two actors performed a scene together for the film’s executives. But when he delivered one of his scripted comedic lines, Parker broke character and burst out laughing, causing Thames to follow suit. Her flub, Thames said, instantly put him at ease and changed the course of the session.It wasn’t until after they’d both won the roles that he learned the truth: “She said she messed up on purpose to make me feel better because she saw how nervous I was,” Thames said. “That was the sweetest thing anybody could have ever done.” (Parker noted that she was also nervous. “I was just trying to hide it a bit more than he was.”)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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      Inside Universal’s Big Bet on ‘How to Train Your Dragon’

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      In an era of skepticism around live-action remakes, Universal believes audiences will take flight with Hiccup and Toothless again.In 2020, Dean DeBlois publicly blasted live-action remakes of animated films as “lazy” studio endeavors.The director who, along with Chris Sanders, had made the 2002 Disney animated “Lilo & Stitch” and the 2010 DreamWorks Animation release “How to Train Your Dragon,” said that he viewed such remakes as “a missed opportunity to put something original into the world.”Then, two years later, DeBlois received a call from the Universal Pictures president, Peter Cramer, asking if he’d be interested in directing a live-action version of “How to Train Your Dragon.”“At the expense of seeming like a hypocrite, I thought, well, I’m either going to sit here and pout and watch somebody else do it,” DeBlois said in a video interview with The Times, “or I could jump in and shoulder the blame or help to change the narrative.”Now, as the live-action “Dragon” arrives in theaters on Friday, DeBlois is enthusiastically attached to the type of movie he formerly criticized.A lot could have gone wrong: DeBlois had never made a live-action feature before Universal put him in charge of the $150 million remake, and the genre as a whole is facing increased skepticism from audiences and studios alike. (Disney reportedly put its “Tangled” remake on hold indefinitely in the wake of underwhelming box office for “Snow White” this spring.)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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      Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Busy Caring for a Pony, Pig, Donkey and Malamute

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      The longtime actor, now starring in “FUBAR,” on his many animals, good cigars and wanting his kids to outshine him.Arnold Schwarzenegger was smoking a cigar on his patio in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood, lamenting all the things that he had decided to trim from his list of 10 essentials. Most of all his five kids.“I cannot live without my children,” he said on a video call as his pet pig, Schnelly, wandered around. “I need to be in touch daily.”Schwarzenegger was sounding a lot like Luke Brunner, his character in the Netflix series “FUBAR,” which just began streaming its second season. In it, he plays the world’s best spy, and perhaps its most overprotective father, who learns that his daughter is a C.I.A. operative with an ego, just like Dad is.“She says, ‘When they say Brunner, I don’t want them just to talk about you. I want them also to talk about me,’” he said. “It’s the same thing as it is in real life with Patrick, my son, being an actor now and being big time and doing fantastic shows,” including a star turn this year in Season 3 of “The White Lotus.”Was the elder Schwarzenegger feeling a bit competitive? “I hope and wish that he will do bigger things than I’ve ever done,” he said before elaborating on his love of chess and driving his M47 tank. “It’s fantastic when kids are performing better than their parents because that is largely because of them, and it’s also because of you. It’s upbringing.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.ChessI learned to play chess with my father and did that pretty much every day. I have collected chess sets from all over the world, but now 99 percent of the time you play on an app with your friends in Austria or Germany or Hungary or Russia — wherever they are.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