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      AMC Says It Will Show More Ads Before Movies

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      The theater chain’s decision brings it in line with what its biggest competitors, Regal and Cinemark, have been doing since 2019, but it risks irking loyal customers.It’s a perennial frustration for moviegoers: The lights go out, the theater falls silent and the anticipation of the movie builds.But wait! Here are a few more ads for you to sit through.Most cinema enthusiasts know that going to the movies comes with a healthy dose of promotion, from the ads onscreen to the ones plastered on drink cups and bags of popcorn. But starting in July, AMC will join its major competitors in running even more commercials before movie screenings begin, in an effort to increase revenue without hiking ticket prices as the industry struggles.The movie theater chain has struck a deal with the cinema advertising company National CineMedia to play commercials in what is known as the “platinum spot” — right before the start of a movie. It is a departure from 2019, when AMC issued a strongly worded statement rejecting the company’s proposal to place ads in that spot. (National CineMedia signed agreements with two of AMC’s rivals, Regal and Cinemark, that year.)In a statement on Wednesday, AMC suggested it was prepared to receive some backlash. But at a time when movie theaters are struggling to get Americans to start going to the movies again, AMC noted that the decision would not make it any more expensive for customers.“For the past five years, AMC has sought out crucial revenue that is not reliant on the increase of base ticket prices,” the company said in the statement. Of the new advertisements, it added that “while AMC was initially reluctant to bring this to our theaters, our competitors have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Watch Ana de Armas Fight Using Kitchen Utensils in ‘Ballerina’

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      The director Len Wiseman narrates an action sequence from “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.”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.In one scene in “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” there may be too many assassins in the kitchen.The film’s title character, the trained killer Eve (Ana de Armas), has made her way to an alpine village in Austria as part of a mission to root out a cult. But violent townspeople keep getting in her way. In a restaurant, Eve encounters a cook who aims to do more with her knife than julienne.What follows is a brisk action scene in which kitchen utensils are wielded violently and plates are smashed frantically.Narrating the scene, the director Len Wiseman said that during rehearsal, the goal was to “explore and use everything in a diner that could be used as a possible weapon.”That included pans, a meat tenderizer and a pile of plates that became the centerpiece of the sequence, as the two performers are seen in an overhead shot smashing dishes over each other’s heads.“This was one of the hardest things to do,” Wiseman said during an interview in New York, “because the plates are breakaway plates. They have one job. They break.” This meant that the actors had to be really careful picking up the plates, but also had to make the action look forceful.In the end, Wiseman and his team just wanted to have a little fun with this sequence. “What I was going for,” he said, “is let’s have this one be violent, but also make people laugh.”Read the “Ballerina” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      In ‘The Phoenician Scheme,’ Real Masterpieces Get a Starring Role

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      Paintings by Magritte and others were borrowed for “The Phoenician Scheme.” Safeguarding them amid the hot lights and chaos of a film set was challenging.At the end of Wes Anderson’s new caper, “The Phoenician Scheme,” there are some unusual credits. In addition to the cast and crew, the artworks featured in the film are listed, complete with ownership details. That’s because the pieces onscreen are not reproductions. They are in fact the actual masterpieces from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, René Magritte and other well-known artists.In the past, Anderson has faked a Kandinsky and a Klimt. Here he went for the real thing.“We have a character who’s a collector, who’s a possessor; he wants to own things, and we thought because it’s sort of art and commerce mixed together this time we should try to have the real thing,” Anderson said via a voice note.What he ended up with was impressive. The fictional collection of the businessman Zsa-zsa Korda, played by Benicio Del Toro, includes Renoir’s “Enfant Assis en Robe Bleue,” which was once owned by Greta Garbo, and Magritte’s “The Equator.” There is also a selection of works from the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany that includes pieces from the 17th century.“The Equator” by René Magritte sits on the mantle behind the film’s cast and director, Wes Anderson, third from right.TPS Productions/Focus FeaturesGetting a collector or an art institution to hand over a painting worth millions of dollars to a film production isn’t an easy task, and the negotiations fell mostly to Jasper Sharp, a curator who had worked with Anderson and his wife, Juman Malouf, on their 2018 exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where Sharp is based.“A film set has vast amounts of light, heat, no climate control, very lax security, people running everywhere with booms and lights and props,” Sharp said in a video interview. “The walls that it will be hung on are made of plywood sometimes. There are less desirable places to hang art, but this was certainly a challenging environment in terms of me trying to persuade someone that they maybe want to lend an object.”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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      ‘Tyler Perry’s Straw’ Review: The Accidental Bank Robber

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      A single mom in Atlanta (Taraji P. Henson) is having a very, very, very bad day.In “Tyler Perry’s Straw,” Janiyah (Taraji P. Henson), a single mom in Atlanta, is having a very, very, very bad day. Her morning was already ragged when the writer-director piles onto her woes a demeaning landlord, a bullying boss, a distant school administrator, a line of disgruntled grocery customers and a road-raging, off-duty police officer. Did we mention that Janiyah winds up in the wrong office at the wrong time in the wrong state of mind?As detectives arrive to a bloody crime scene at the grocery store where she clerks, Janiyah is across the parking lot at her bank, trying to cash her paycheck. Only she doesn’t have identification, and the teller is being a stickler. Soon, Janiyah is waving a gun, something is flashing red in her daughter’s see-through backpack and she has made hostages of the bank employees and a handful of aging customers. Sherri Shepherd portrays Nicole, the branch manager who tries to diffuse the situation, having amped it by telling the police that Janiyah has a bomb.Teyana Taylor (“A Thousand and One”) brings fierce focus to a deteriorating situation as Detective Kay Raymond. The security footage at the grocery store didn’t lie, but Detective Raymond intuits something more has sent Janiyah to the desperate standoff. She steps in as a negotiator.Perry, an unapologetic purveyor of melodrama, mercilessly teases the tension. Will Janiyah hurt the hostages? Will the authorities make a sad situation worse? The ending is perhaps too twisting for its own good. But Henson — so deeply committed to her character’s emotional cratering — still makes us care.StrawNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Philippe Labro Dies at 88; Restless Chronicler of the French Condition

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      As an author (often blurring the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction), a film director, a lyricist and a host of TV and radio shows, he sought to capture his epoch.Philippe Labro, a prolific journalist, author, movie director and songwriter whose lyrical prose, boundless curiosity and oft-repeated determination to “forage in deep waters” offered France a sweeping image of itself over several decades, died on Monday in Paris. He was 88.His death, in the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, was caused by lymphoma of the brain, which was diagnosed in April, said Anne Boy, his longtime assistant. Mr. Labro lived in Paris.A restless spirit, notebook always at his side, convinced that journalism was an exercise in unrelenting observation, Mr. Labro pursued a lifelong quest to capture his epoch by any means. “He wrote our popular, French, and universal history,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a tribute on X, “from Algeria to America” and from Herman Melville to Johnny Hallyday, the French rock ’n’ roll superstar.In 24 books, including novels and essays; seven movies; lyrics to popular songs; and several television and radio shows, Mr. Labro probed the enigma of existence. No one medium sufficed. Truth, he believed, lurked between fact and fiction, and so he refused to be confined by one or the other. Quoting Einstein, he called life a “dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” That piper was his muse.Mr. Labro arrived as a guest for an official state dinner with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady, Jill Biden, at the Élysée Palace in Paris in June 2024.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Labro also liked Victor Hugo’s observation that “nothing is more imminent than the impossible.” He had good reason. It was in the United States, on Nov. 22, 1963, that Mr. Labro, then 27, achieved fame as the first French newspaper correspondent on the scene in the immediate aftermath of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.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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      Chefs Pick Their Favorite Food Films

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      Nancy Silverton, Daniela Soto-Innes and more talk about the movies that have inspired and continue to reignite their love of cooking.The rigor and schedule of professional cooking don’t allow for many movie nights, but that’s not to say chefs don’t find inspiration on the big screen. When we asked a handful of food-world figures about the films that make them want to cook or eat or both, they spoke about narratives that remind them of the joy of a leisurely meal, food’s ability to comfort and what drove them to cook in the first place. Here, 11 chefs discuss the food films, old and new, that still excite them.From left: Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi and Andréa Ferréo in the 1973 film “La Grande Bouffe,” directed by Marco Ferreri.Collection Christophel/Alamy Ruth Rogers, 76, chef and owner of the River Café, London: “La Grande Bouffe” (1973)I saw this film when I was living in Paris, in 1973. We were there because Richard [the architect Richard Rogers, Ruth’s late husband] was building the Pompidou Center. The movie was quite controversial when it came out. It’s about a group of friends who decide they’re going to eat themselves to death. They get together and start to binge. These four men just absolutely love to eat; it’s their great thing in life. My husband and I loved this movie, so we decided to judge people on whether or not the film made them hungry or disgusted. We, of course, were hungry. Years later, I was having lunch with Francis Ford Coppola, and he told me it was his favorite food movie too.Kel Mitchell, left, and Kenan Thompson in the 1997 film “Good Burger,” directed by Brian Robbins.© Paramount/Everett CollectionCharlie Mitchell, 32, chef of Saga, New York City: “Good Burger” (1997)I watched “Good Burger” again this year. I’m from Detroit but I live in New York City, and when I’m homesick I usually get nostalgic for food, music or films. I must’ve been in elementary school the first time I saw it, probably on VHS. I always connected with the character [Ed (played by Kel Mitchell), a cashier at the burger restaurant where the film is set]. He’s in his own world, and he creates this sauce that everyone loves. I felt like I was the only person in my friend group and community who was interested in food at a young age: Everyone was loving Dragon Ball Z and I enjoyed cooking dinner for my mom or cooking with my grandmother on the weekend. So “Good Burger” was about connecting with that character who was in his own world having so much fun cooking.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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      ‘Sunlight’ Review: A Man Wakes Up in a Camper, Monkey at the Wheel

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      In Nina Conti’s absurdist love story, a radio host and a new friend have nowhere to go but up.When it comes to monkey costumes, you can keep your “Better Man” biopic C.G.I. Nina Conti’s “Sunlight” brings its own bizarro, handmade appeal: A gnarly love story that starts with a guy waking up in an RV driven by a simian-suited stranger. It’s a movie within the indie subgenre of comic encounters between lost outsiders, but powered by its own fringe logic of attraction and rebellion.The stranger in the toylike disguise turns out to be a woman (Conti) fleeing her manipulative stepfather, who took over her mother’s motel. That’s where she found Roy (Shenoah Allen) after a failed suicide attempt in his room. Her name, we eventually learn, is Jane. The RV actually belongs to Roy, a mild-mannered radio host burdened by a hectoring mom and tough memories of his deceased father.Not exactly a meet-cute, but their cracked road trip never loses its warmth under the New Mexico sun. The big question looms: Just who is Jane, and why the blank-eyed monkey suit? But we also wonder how Roy got to his wit’s end. “Sunlight” essentially follows two people helping each other extract and preserve what’s left of their sanity and will to live.Conti bases Jane’s furry alter-ego on her monkey ventriloquist act, part of her career in British TV and theater. A little of “Sunlight,” which she directs and co-wrote with Allen, goes a long way. But there’s still something to seeing a performer go for broke, purging a character’s shame and despair through a screwy, confessional sense of humor.SunlightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More