Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: Holiday Films and the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball

      by

      The star-studded concert comes to small screens. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “The Polar Express” and “A Christmas Carol” air on various networks.With network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.MondayA CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) 6:45 p.m. on TCM. There are 16 film and TV adaptations (and counting!) of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella, but this is one of the first. Staring Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, this film tells the story pretty much as we all know it: Scrooge hates Christmas and mistreats his employees, including Bob Cratchit (Gene Lockhart), until a series of ghostly visitors show him the error of his ways and a vision of the future.TuesdayTaylor Momsen and Jim Carrey in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”Ron Batzdorff, Universal PicturesHOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (2000) 8:20 p.m. on Freeform. This live-action version of Dr. Seuss’s 1957 children’s book might be the most popular, with Jim Carrey donning a full-body green fur suit and a strange accent. As the people of Whoville are preparing for their favorite holiday, Christmas, the Grinch comes down from his lair on Mount Crumpit with a plan to sabotage it all — until he comes face to face with the sweet and endearing Cindy Lou Who. And (spoiler!) by the end, the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes.WednesdayTHE POLAR EXPRESS (2004) 10 p.m. on AMC. As a child, I was terrified of this movie’s premise: a train pulling up outside of my house to take me who-knows-where. But by the end, I was charmed by the Christmas spirit just like everyone else. The children ride the magical train to the North Pole so that the little skeptical protagonist, Billy, can be proved wrong — Santa Claus actually is real!ThursdayIHEARTRADIO JINGLE BALL 2023 8 p.m. on ABC. The 2023 Jingle Ball show has been touring the U.S. since the beginning of December, but if you’d rather cozy up on the couch to watch instead of filing into an arena, you’re in luck. This broadcast will feature performances by Olivia Rodrigo, Usher, Nicki Minaj, SZA, Niall Horan and many more. I’m most excited to see Sabrina Carpenter perform her Christmas version of “Nonsense.”Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in “Barbie.”Warner Bros. PicturesBARBIE (2023) 9 p.m. on HBO. After a blockbuster summer at the box office, Greta Gerwig’s film has finally landed on the small screen. The movie follows Barbie (Margot Robbie) as she leaves Barbie Land and has the unfortunate realization that, outside, misogyny is alive and well; Ken (Ryan Gosling) obviously thrives. “It’s amusing when Barbie points out a billboard filled with women, mistaking them for the Supreme Court because that’s what the court looks like in Barbie Land, just with more pink,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. “However politically sharp, the gag is an unpleasant reminder of all the profoundly unfunny ways in which this world, with its visible and invisible hands, tries to control women, putting them into little boxes,” she added. For that reason, I can’t help but tear up every time I hear the movie’s anthem by Billie Eilish: “What Was I Made For?”DICK VAN DYKE 98 YEARS OF MAGIC 9 p.m. on CBS. Dick Van Dyke is celebrating his 98th birthday with a two-hour special featuring guests who include Zachary Levi and Rita Ora as well as archival footage from “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”FridayCary Grant and Deborah Kerr in “An Affair to Remember.”20th Century Fox/PhotofestAN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957) 10 p.m. on TCM. Before there was “Sleepless in Seattle,” there was this classic: Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) meet on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner and strike up a friendship and maybe something more — but since they are both with other people, they decide to set a time, six months off, to meet at the Empire State Building. But when the day comes Terry doesn’t show up.SaturdayEXTENDED FAMILY 8 p.m. on NBC. There’s a new sitcom in town, and this one focuses on the peaks and pits of managing family life after divorce. Abigail Spencer and Jon Cryer play Julia and Jim, a former couple who agree that the day they divorced was the best day of their lives, but they find that co-parenting with an ex can be complicated. Episodes will air weekly in January.SundayCHRISTMAS EVE MASS 11:30 p.m. on NBC. Pope Francis leads the traditional annual service from St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      For Tracee Ellis Ross, Happiness Is a Bowl of Olives and Her Own Clothes

      by

      “My closet is my happy place,” said the actress, who is starring in “Candy Cane Lane” and “American Fiction.” “It is where dreams are made and looks are invented.”Tracee Ellis Ross finds life after “black-ish” to be quite wonderful.Since finishing her eight-season run on the ABC series last year, she has focused on her hair care company, loaded up on speaking engagements and is starring now in two movies: “Candy Cane Lane,” as the wife of Eddie Murphy’s Christmas decorating-obsessed husband, and “American Fiction,” as the sister of Jeffrey Wright’s flailing writer.And she is dressing herself. Even Ross is surprised by that one.“I spent eight years doing 24 episodes a year, which is about eight months out of the year, wearing the clothes of somebody who was not me,” she said, calling from her parked car in Los Angeles to explain the importance of hot baths, Black art and swimming pools. “I didn’t realize what a joy and a treat it’s been to get up in the morning and figure out what I want to wear.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1OlivesI had a guy I was dating once that was like, “What are those — rocks? Those are disgusting.” I had someone else say to me, “Olives are old-people food.” When I was young, I loved them so much that sometimes I would drink the olive juice. I prefer a green olive. I love a fancy olive. And a treat that I allow myself over Christmas is in olive oil with sun-dried tomato inside the green olive. That olive literally will send me over the edge.2Art by Black ArtistsThere’s something about the ability within the limited real estate, particularly in this country — the systemic racism, the constant navigation of having to figure out how to find safety, be safe, and also be oneself and find joy, I see all of those intersections in art from Black people. It lights me up and inspires and encourages. And I find a sense of safety and identification that really is important to me.3BathsI love being immersed in water, but I don’t like being wet. Confusing, I know. But there’s something that a hot bath does for my nervous system. I have been in rough times in my life where a shower feels too abrasive in that sometimes when I’m processing something or grieving something, it’s too hard for me to let things go, like a shower. Whereas a bath, there’s a gentleness to it.4Playing Dress-Up at HomeMy closet is my happy place. It is where dreams are made and looks are invented. Playing dress-up is something that has brought me joy from such a young age and stealing things from my mom’s closet to all the way now. I collect treasures of clothing, and I wear my clothes and care for them over and over. I love to do it first thing in the morning when I’m still in my glasses, and I strip down out of my pajamas and I just start making outfits.5Matching SetsEverything from underwear and bras to fingernails and toenails. I don’t do mix-matching on sweatsuits. Nope. It’s a top and a bottom that work together. I don’t know that there’s much to say on that other than I like to be coordinated.6My BedIt symbolizes reset. It symbolizes a shift in temperament. It is where I can drop all my facade and any sort of performative mask that I have to wear out in the world. I live alone and I’m single, so I change my sheets once a week — sometimes twice a week if I’ve spilled something. I have a tendency to get hot sauce and potato chips in my bed if I’m not doing my olives.7Audiobooks With Memorable NarratorsI am very particular about who reads to me. The majority of the Ann Patchett novels have been read by Hope Davis, and they were just dreamy. I love listening to audiobooks when I am packing, when I am getting dressed, when I am cooking, when I’m falling asleep. Ann’s newest novel is read by Meryl Streep, and my God was that good.8Sheet MasksI have been known to do up to three or four a day. I think that hydration of the hair, the body, the skin are the key things that keep you youthful and juicy no matter what age you’re at.9Emotional TalksI love having a deep conversation about what people are feeling. It is what I gravitate to. Not everybody likes it, but I do.10Swimming PoolsTo know me is to know I love a pool. When I’m on vacation, I go from work person to vacation person through the pool. I am not a beach person. I don’t love the ocean; it’s not organized enough for me. Too much sand, too much mess, too much. The pool, I know what I’m getting. I’m known for my first dips. I started recording them and putting them on Instagram, and now I’m the first-dip girl. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Disney Is a Language. Do We Still Speak It?

      by

      President Dwight D. Eisenhower once praised Walt Disney for his “genius as a creator of folklore.” When Disney died in 1966, the line made it into his obituary, evidence of its accuracy. Folklore, defined broadly, is an oral tradition that stretches across generations. It tells people who they are, how they got here and how they should live in the future. The company Disney created appointed itself keeper of these traditions for Americans, spinning up fresh tales and (more often) deftly repackaging old ones to appeal to a new century.It started with Mickey Mouse, but as his company turns 100, Disney’s legacy — advanced in hundreds of films and shorts and shows, mass-produced tie-in merchandise, marvelous technical advancements, gargantuan theme parks around the world — was the production of a modern shared language, a set of reference points instantly recognizable to almost everyone, and an encouragement to dream out loud about a utopian future. Walt Disney was a man who gazed backward and forward: speaking at the opening of Disneyland in 1955, he proclaimed: “Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.” But what happens when that promise is broken and the reference points are siloed? When his company struggles at the box office like a regular studio and faces cultural headwinds like any artist?Walt Disney at the opening of Disneyland, extolling the hope of a brighter tomorrow.USC Libraries/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDisney told stories of folk heroes (Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan), princes and princesses, and even, occasionally, a mouse, all while leading the pack on ever-shifting technologies. (He was, among other things, the first major movie producer to make a TV show.) A sense of optimism ruled Disney’s ethos, built on homemade mythologies. The lessons of his stories were simple, uplifting and distinctly American: believe in yourself, believe in your dreams, don’t let anyone make you feel bad for being you, be your own hero and, most of all, don’t be afraid to wish upon a star. Fairy tales and legends are often disquieting, but once cast in a Disney light they became soft and sweet, their darker and less comforting lessons re-engineered to fit the Disney ideal. It was a distinctly postwar vision of the world.And we ate it up, and we exported it, and we wanted to be part of it, too. “One of the most astounding exhibitions of popular devotion came in the wake of Mr. Disney’s films about Davy Crockett,” Disney’s obituary explained, referring to a live-action 1950s shows about the frontiersman. “In a matter of months, youngsters all over the country who would balk at wearing a hat in winter were adorned in coonskin caps in midsummer.”The coonskin caps were a harbinger of things to come. Halloween would be dominated by princesses and mermaids. Bedsheets and pajamas would be printed with lions and mopey donkeys. Adults would plan weddings at a magical kingdom in Florida. Audiences around the world would join in the legends. Once-closed countries like China would eventually open their doors, leading the company — aware that success in this new market meant fast-tracking children’s introduction to Mickey, Ariel and Buzz Lightyear — to open English-language schools using their characters and stories as the teaching tools. History would show that Eisenhower was onto something when he referred to Disney as a creator, not just a reteller, of folklore.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?  More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Michel Ciment, Eminent French Film Critic, Is Dead at 85

      by

      He helped define cinema as high art for generations of moviegoers and filmmakers in France and beyond, even if he irked some of them with his passion for Hollywood.Michel Ciment, a French film critic whose passion for cinema helped define it as serious art for generations of French moviegoers, directors and producers, even while irking some of them with his unabashed love of American film, died on Nov. 13 in Paris. He was 85.His death was confirmed by the film magazine Positif, for which he had long served as editor in chief, and by the Cannes Film Festival, which called him “a free spirit with an insatiable curiosity” and “the embodiment of cinephilia.”Mr. Ciment (pronounced SEE-mah) derived his authority from just that: his unbounded love of movies and an encyclopedic knowledge of film that sprang from it. He was an adept of the uniquely French cult of movies as high art, and of the great director as genius. But that was counterbalanced by an embrace of “all types of cinema,” the Cannes festival said, a passion born in his childhood addiction to American westerns and gangster movies.Mr. Ciment was an unabashed Americanophile in a French cultural environment in which checking the anti-American box is often a prerequisite to being taken seriously. He was sometimes reproached for it, his son Gilles recalled; in later years he became a senior lecturer in American Civilization at the University of Paris.He communicated his enthusiasm for film, beginning with his first critical forays in the early 1960s, in a torrent of books, reviews, interviews and radio broadcasts. (His status in the world of film criticism was such that he was often interviewed by other critics.)Mr. Ciment celebrated the great directors of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s in books on Joseph Losey, Stanley Kubrick, Elia Kazan and Francesco Rosi, each thick with probing interviews in which critic startles director with his detailed knowledge of their films.These directors trusted him and opened up to him because, he told the Toronto Film Review in 2020, “I asked questions that were about philosophy, about history, about politics.”His son recalled: “They would say that an exchange with Michel Ciment was like nothing else. With him, he really knows your film, he remembers the characters’ names. And then he would put your film in relation to the history of cinema.”For his book “Kazan on Kazan” (1973), Mr. Ciment spent 10 days with the director and conducted 40 hours of interviews. That was typical of his methods. He favored those who believed, like him, that “all the arts are found in cinema,” as he put it to an interviewer this year with the radio channel France Culture. For him, the superior film combined visual, aural and literary greatness.A 2009 book by Mr. Ciment compiling interviews he conducted with many movie directors. They opened up to him, he said, because “I asked questions that were about philosophy, about history, about politics.”Berg Publishers“All the great directors I hung out with — whether it was Losey, Kubrick, Kazan — they had a generalized culture,” Mr. Ciment said in the radio interview. “These were people who had read an enormous amount, who listened to music, who had seen lots of paintings.”He criticized contemporary directors like Quentin Tarantino, who, he said, work in a cruder idiom and have “encouraged the young toward an absence of culture.”The son of a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant tailor who narrowly escaped being rounded up with other Jews in Paris by Nazi collaborators during World War II, Mr. Ciment traced his pro-American views to childhood memories of the liberation of France in 1944.“At 6, to see the Americans disembark, pitching cans of food, chewing gum — it’s thanks to them we regained our liberty,” he told France Culture.In contrast to the sometimes doctrinaire impulses of that other pole of French film criticism, the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, where directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut propagated theories of cinema that they went on to put into practice, Mr. Ciment’s instinct at Positif was free-form.“Always a bit anarchist, libertarian, we couldn’t have cared less about fashions,” he told the Toronto Film Review. “We said what we thought about films, what we loved about films, without preconceptions.”His serious approach to film is evident in his book about the politically oriented realist Italian director Francesco Rosi, who made films about the mafia, corruption, injustice and war. Implicit in the book is the idea that film is as worthy of close analysis as serious literature, a view Mr. Ciment gained from his early studies with two postwar French masters of literary and philosophical criticism, Paul Benichou and Gilles Deleuze.Mr. Ciment praised Mr. Rosi for “hunting down the lie, cornering it in its hide-out,” for a “close engagement with reality in which the smallest false step would have been a betrayal,” and for being “conscious of the impossibility of reaching the truth.”Even in this early book, Mr. Ciment’s attention to detail in film is evident: At one point, referring to Mr. Rosi’s antiwar film “Many Wars Ago” (1970), he asks the director why “the night battle sequence is predominantly blue in color.”Mr. Ciment, second from left, with fellow members of the jury for the 1978 International Film Festival in Cannes, France. The American director Alan J. Pakula is third from left, and the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann is next to him. Jean Jacques Levy/Associated PressMichel Jean Ciment was born on May 26, 1938, in Paris to Alexander and Helene Cziment. His father “Frenchified” the name after the war, Gilles Ciment said. Michel’s father, who had immigrated from Hungary in the early 1920s, was a tailor for the great French fashion houses, and his wife worked with him.One morning in July 1942, the police came by the house to warn Helene that her husband had best not come home that evening: It was the eve of the great roundup of Paris Jews known as the Vel’ d’Hiv, named after the stadium where they were taken. Some 13,000 Jews were seized and subsequently sent to the death camp at Auschwitz.The elder Mr. Ciment escaped to Normandy and was hidden by peasants there for the duration of the war. His son followed him there, and his wife went back and forth from Paris.The family regrouped in Paris after the Liberation, and Michel Ciment went on to study at two prestigious secondary schools, the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and the Lycée Condorcet. It was as a student that he discovered, in the intense Paris film culture of the day, the great silent films of Erich von Stroheim, F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.He later studied at the Sorbonne and received a Fulbright Scholarship in the early 1960s, allowing him to study at Amherst College in Massachusetts. “It was American education that completely confirmed me in my tastes,” Mr. Ciment told France Culture.He made his debut as a critic with a defense of Orson Welles in Positif in 1963. He later joined its staff and went on to become editor in chief.From the 1970s on he published a stream of books. Besides the ones on Kazan and Rosi, there were others on American cinema, Losey, Stanley Kubrick and Theo Angelopoulos as well as “Passport to Hollywood,” a book of interviews with directors, including Roman Polanski, Milos Forman and Wim Wenders.In addition to his son, he is survived by his second wife, Evelyne Hazan-Ciment. His first wife, Jeannine Ciment, who worked with him at Positif, died in 1986.Mr. Ciment’s passion for film never flagged. As Jérôme Garcin, his colleague on the popular French public radio cultural review “Le Masque et La Plume,” said of him in the French magazine L’Obs, “At 85, he remained, when the lights went out and the magic lantern began to dispense onscreen its dream-colors, a child in wonderment.” More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Watch Jeffrey Wright Grapple With Stereotypes in ‘American Fiction’

      by

      The screenwriter and director Cord Jefferson narrates a sequence from his film.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 conventional Black novel comes to life, with both comedic and dramatic results, in this scene from “American Fiction.”The film, written and directed by Cord Jefferson, who adapted Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, “Erasure,” follows the writer Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), who goes by Monk, through his frustrations with the kinds of stories he thinks Black writers are allowed to tell.After one of his more academic books has poor sales, a frustrated Monk decides to pen a more stereotypically Black story under a pseudonym. That book’s title is “My Pafology.” In this scene, as Monk begins to write, his clichéd creations come alive before him: Willy the Wonker and Van Go, played by Keith David and Okieriete Onaodowan.Narrating the scene, Jefferson said that this sequence doesn’t appear in the novel; rather, the book recreates the entirety of “My Pafology” within its pages. To make Monk’s writing cinematic, Jefferson chose to stage it with Monk at the desk writing, his characters acting out his dialogue around him.While humor is the intention of the scene, Jefferson said, “Ok and Keith David are such great actors that you have this inclination to take them seriously.” He said that nuance, and the desire to not play the scene too broadly, only makes the scene better.Read the “American Fiction” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Readers on the Best Movies, TV, Music and Theater of 2023

      by

      When our critics shared their top film, TV, pop music and theater picks, readers suggested “Billions,” “The Holdovers,” “Sabbath’s Theater” and others.Every year, our critics review numerous movies, television shows, musicals, plays, operas, dance performances, music and more. And come December, they whittle down their favorites to a list of 10.But what are best-of lists if not an invitation to critique?Here’s a look at readers’ comments across several popular categories.Television | Movies | Theater | Pop MusicCharlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor) in Season 2 of “Heartstopper.”NetflixBest TVIn a year when the television industry was turned upside down by strikes, and when corporate fantasies of unlimited growth seemed to find some kind of ceiling, there was still almost too much good stuff to keep up with. Luckily, we have three critics who do that for a living — and luckier still, they offered three different prisms through which to view the year in TV, at home and abroad.Of course, there is no world in which “Succession” and “Reservation Dogs” weren’t each going to appear twice, and our readers seemed OK with that. As for other reader favorites like “Only Murders in the Building” and “The Gilded Age,” maybe next year. (Sorry, “Billions,” your time is up.)Here’s a look at what some of our readers said.Michel Forest of Montreal, Quebec:No love for “Billions”? Come on! Sure, it was cartoonish at times, but it was such a fun show to watch, with great acting and some of the best dialogue on TV. Anyway, I’ll watch anything with Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, they are such great actors!Jodi Schorb of Gainesville, Fla.:I thought Season Two of “Heartstopper” was honest and adorable. One can only take so many murder-mysteries and moody thrillers. It’s hard to make an earnest comedy, let alone one that treats gay, transgender, straight and (a surprise) asexual protagonists with such tenderness. If we are going to add one rom-com on the list, “Heartstopper” deserves some love.Richard Laible of Winnetka, Ill.:Great list EXCEPT you left off the best show of the year, “Lessons in Chemistry”! You should really send out an edited list … and maybe an apology (j/k).Barry Keoghan stars in “Saltburn.”Amazon StudiosBest Movies“Barbenheimer” signaled a great year for movies, and our critics recognized the “Oppenheimer” half of the phenomenon, along with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,” “Past Lives” and others. Readers, on the other hand, questioned the merits of “Asteroid City” and “Oppenheimer,” and named “The Holdovers,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Barbie” as favorites.Peter Malbin of New York City:I just saw “Saltburn,” and it was outstanding. Well-acted and original film set in Oxford and an English manor house. The story is entertaining and sexy. Barry Keoghan is brilliant! He was also in “Banshees of Inisherin.” “Saltburn” should be at the top of the lists!Beth Samuelson of Oakland, Calif.:Where is “Maestro” on these lists? A terrific film that should not be missed. And the reviews have been excellent!Charise M. Hoge of Bethesda, Md.:The exclusion of “Barbie” from this list is like putting her back in the box … that powerful (yes, powerful) film deserves recognition.Jill Krupnik of Brooklyn, N.Y.:I am a little surprised that my personal favorite — the wondrous “The Boy and the Heron” — didn’t make even an honorable mention, but here we are.Perhaps Brian Seifert of Cincinnati summed it up best:Critics see a lot of junk, so they like the intense, quality-issue movies that come along. Average people deal with a lot of junk, so they like lighter entertainment to escape and relax. The two groups have never been farther apart.From left, Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley in the musical “Shucked.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBest Theater“Purlie Victorious,” “A Doll’s House” and “Just for Us” were among Jesse Green’s picks for the year’s best theater. Many of the plays and musicals that resonated in 2023 deftly married elements of drama and comedy. Our readers pointed out some of the shows that — despite being fan favorites or being beautifully performed — didn’t make our list.Eric Bogosian, the New York actor and playwright, praised “Sabbath’s Theater,” as did several other commenters. “What are you afraid of? Great performances by three of our greatest actors and actresses? Please …,” he wrote.Marcia W. Orange of Fort Lee, N.J.:“Shucked” deserved more love and attention. It was the most original and laugh-out-loud-funny show I have seen in years … even better than “Book of Mormon.” What a pity more people haven’t seen it.Joseph LaFalce of South Orange, N.J.:How can any roundup of the best of 2023 not include the phenomenal “Parade,” including the unique staging and heartbreaking performances by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond?Raissa Lim of New York City:RIP to the magnificent “Here Lies Love” by David Byrne. It was the best Broadway show I saw this year, and the best theater experience of my life. Never again will Broadway see that same confluence of superb talents come together to create an extraordinary and indescribable experience. It was a brand-new kind of art form, not the standard narrative theater audiences have come to expect, so perhaps the wrong standards were sometimes applied when assessing it. Its minor narrative weaknesses were more than offset by other elements such as video artistry, lighting, set design, music, choreography — making for an overall spectacular whole. I’m sorry for those obstinate souls who didn’t see it for their own obscure reasons. They missed a once-in-a-lifetime experience (that does NOT glorify the Marcoses but instead pays tribute to a true hero). Indeed, perhaps bovine audiences get what they deserve when flying cars and dancing lions beat out truly groundbreaking artistic excellence at the box office.Caroline Polachek at the Montreux Jazz Festival in July.Valentin Flauraud/Keystone, via Associated PressBest Pop MusicOne of the albums that had the biggest impact in 2023 actually came out at the tail end of 2022: SZA’s “SOS.” Between their albums and song lists, our three pop music critics agreed “SOS” was one of the year’s best, along with LPs from Olivia Rodrigo and 100 gecs. Beyond that, their tastes widely diverged from one another — and, it turns out, from our readers’. (Michael Hasse, a reader in Paris, created this helpful Spotify playlist with albums recommended in the comments.)Roddy P Glass of London:I will add my vote to “Now and Then,” though secretly, in the quiet of my heart, I know it comes nowhere near the standard the Beatles have always given us: perfection.”Penny Beach of Boise, Idaho:Where is Noah Kahan? Definitely should be on this list.Charles Grissom of Raleigh, N.C.:I know these lists are about pop music, and that is driven by 20-somethings. But Jimmy Buffett’s posthumous 2023 album “Equal Strain on All Parts” is wonderful music and storytelling, and the song “Portugal or PEI” is an absolute gem.Patrick Tierney of Louisville, Ky.:I love these lists but [Lindsay] Zoladz’s in particular. Rodrigo, Polachek, and Debby Friday all made my top 10 and show how much the present and future of pop/rock/dance music is led by creative young women. I’d add to the group three very different artists — yeule, Die Spitz, Avalon Emerson — that made this a great year for new music.Scott McGlasson of Minneapolis, Minn.:None of my faves of the year were even mentioned: Tim Hecker, the Necks, the National, Blonde Redhead, PJ Harvey. I know, I’m old and not a music critic…John Franz of East Bangor, Pa.:I was shocked to see some songs and performers I’ve actually heard of. Peter Gabriel’s album is brilliant. Not sure if the new Stones album is their best work. I found Dolly’s album hilarious; she’s a gem who I never listened to much before this new album. That’s about it. Seems to me that any song from the Tedeschi Trucks album should be on the list. Kenny Wayne Shepherd. And how about Jason Isbell’s great new album.Dan Cain of Washington, D.C.:I vote for Yo La Tengo’s “This Stupid World.” Best album in a while from one of the founding bands of indie rock. Just listen to the first 30 seconds of the opening track, ideally at a very loud volume. It’s great.Paul Kevin Smith of Austin, Texas:I don’t know why she doesn’t get more attention, but Jessie Ware’s “Begin Again” was a perfect pop/disco song released this year.And we’ll leave the last words to John Weston of Chicago:So many comments here seem to rest on the idea that musical progress ended when John Bonham died, Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed, the Beatles broke up, the Big Bopper died, or Chuck Berry or Bessie Smith (let’s be honest, none of y’all would have cared when she died … like most of the world at the time), when “The Rite of Spring” was first performed, when Beethoven finished his Ninth Symphony or with Liszt’s use of the tritone in “Dante Sonata” (how dare he!).To all of those such commenters and thinkers, I shall quote the one and only Bob Dylan (referenced by many on this thread):Mothers and fathers throughout the land/Don’t criticize what you can’t understand/Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command/Your old road is rapidly aging/Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand/For the times they are a changin’. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      The Best Movies of 2023 by Genre

      by

      We look at the finest in science fiction, horror, action and international films, all available to stream.Science FictionEnvironmental disaster and artificial intelligence run amok have emerged as the major science-fiction concerns of our time. Compared to those, gray, almond-eyed aliens in flying saucers, hellbent on destroying humanity, feel like a throwback to simpler times. But “No One Will Save You,” Brian Duffield’s genre exercise, is deceptive.Kaitlyn Dever plays Brynn, a demure semi-recluse who turns out to be surprisingly adept at fighting back the murderous visitors. The movie uses the suspenseful logistics of physical survival to grab viewers; Duffield has a terrific command of economical action filmmaking. But that is not the reason I’ve been mulling over this nearly dialogue-free movie since it premiered on Hulu in September: The story is actually about psychological survival.An outcast in her small town, Brynn is haunted by a traumatic event in her past, and when she fights for her life, her battle plays like an extreme version of a coping mechanism. I’ve read several theories about the ending, but the entire movie is coded, with the aliens’ retro appearance being a major clue. Under its straightforward exterior, “No One Will Save You” is a melancholic look at what Brynn does not just to live, but to live with herself. — ELISABETH VINCENTELLIStream “No One Will Save You” on Hulu.HorrorA scene from “The Outwaters.”CinedigmMy two favorite horror movies this year took apples-and-oranges paths to clock me in the face and rip out my heart.“The Outwaters” starts as a lighthearted found-footage account of four friends on a trip to the desert. But almost an hour into the film, a silhouetted figure appears in the dark distance, and that’s when the writer-director Robbie Banfitch shifts into gut-punching high gear with a frenzied maelstrom of screams, grunts, creatures and guts. The result is an experimental fever dream, a sustained and visually stunning sensory assault — I could smell fear — that’s singularly thrilling. Turn up the volume for a true razor’s edge experience.Paul Owens’s low-fi “LandLocked” delivers equally brutal blows but with softer gloves. It’s about a young man (Mason Owens, the director’s brother) who finds a VHS-era camera in his family’s old home that lets him glimpse his past wherever he points the lens. (Owens used his real-life family’s tapes as footage.) Even in empty rooms, demons long thought to be buried instead lurk, and in the film’s most terrifying passage, one monstrously emerges. It’s an assured, understated and deeply creepy slow-burn study of memory, loss and, most meaningfully, fatherhood. — ERIK PIEPENBURGStream both “The Outwaters” and “LandLocked” on Tubi.ActionJorma Tommila in “Sisu.”Antti Rastivo/Freezing Point Oy/LionsgateAt first glance, Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), the silent, bruising figure in the Finnish World War II exploitation film “Sisu,” wouldn’t strike you as an activist. After all, he is a stoic prospector who, at the outset of the writer-director Jalmari Helander’s film, discovers a mother lode of gold. But the action genre is often where bold political statements are made through simple symbolic figures. So when the vicious SS tank commander Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie) learns of Korpi’s riches, what arises is a Finnish anti-imperialist story with elements of female empowerment.Helander interweaves these themes through common action tropes. There is the cadre of Finnish female prisoners of war held by the Nazis who will eventually become the kind of army familiar to the exploitation genre, ultimately, winning their bodily freedom. The retired Korpi is also an unstoppable killing machine so feared by the Russian army, it nicknamed him the Immortal. Helldorf throws everything at Korpi: tank shells, bullets and a minefield. Korpi remains unbowed. His repeated return from near-death scenarios is a wonderful gag that marries comical violence with thematic heft, turning “Sisu” into this year’s sharpest resistance film. — ROBERT DANIELSRent or buy “Sisu” on major platforms.InternationalPaula Beer in “Afire.”Sideshow/JanusFor me, this year in international cinema is defined by two images: one of red fumes filling the skies above a German forest in “Afire,” and the other of blindingly blue waves towering over a Tahitian beach in “Pacifiction.”“Afire” is a horror-inflected summer comedy about vulnerable masculinity and bemusing desire from Christian Petzold, known for his postmodern period melodramas (“Transit,” “Phoenix”). “Pacifiction” is a woozy thriller about modern-day colonialism from Albert Serra, the Catalan filmmaker with an acclaimed oeuvre of formally stringent, often historically perverse films (“Liberté,” “The Death of Louis XIV”). Both movies move away from their directors’ usual obsessions with the past. They are animated, instead, by a trembling anxiety about the apocalyptic stakes of the present.In “Afire,” forest fires spurred by climate change spell doom for a group of four young lovers. In “Pacifiction,” a nuclear threat lurks in the ocean, the dark waters barely concealing the machinations of imperialist powers. If the elements rise dramatically to the heavens in both, it’s less to inspire awe than caution — a warning that the forces we have knowingly, venally wreaked upon the world and on one another may just consume us all. — DEVIKA GIRISHStream “Afire” on the Criterion Channel and “Pacifiction” on Mubi. More