Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Academy Museum Postpones Gala, Citing Israel-Hamas War

      by

      The star-studded Hollywood fund-raiser, which had already been complicated by the actors’ strike, was to have honored Meryl Streep and others on Saturday.It’s hard not to see the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’s attempt to put on this year’s gala — a glamorous party that raises more than $10 million for the museum and burnishes its image by drawing Hollywood A-listers — as anything but ill-fated.First the Hollywood strikes complicated efforts to hold the party, since striking actors are barred from promoting films and few would want to rub elbows socially with executives from the big studios that they are on strike against. That difficulty was ironed out after studio executives, who are among the museum’s biggest financial supporters, agreed not to come and union officials said actors could attend as long as they did not promote films.Then the Israel-Hamas war cast a shadow over the festivities, which had been scheduled for Saturday night. First the museum announced that the red carpet — where stars parade in their finery for photographers before going in — would be canceled. Then, on Thursday, the museum announced that the gala would be postponed.“Out of respect for the devastating conflict and loss of life happening overseas, we have made the decision to postpone the Academy Museum gala this Saturday,” the museum said in a statement on Thursday evening. “We look forward to rescheduling at a later date. We thank everybody deeply for their support.”The gala was to have honored Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, Michael B. Jordan and Sofia Coppola. The chairs of the gala, which is raising money for exhibitions, education and public programs, are the director Ava DuVernay, the actor Halle Berry, the producer Ryan Murphy and the producer Eric Esrailian, a physician and a trustee.The museum through a spokeswoman said it had no further comment. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Five Horror Movies Streaming for Halloween: ‘Appendage,’ ‘Accused’ and More

      by

      Deranged siblings, a creepy voyeur and nasty tricksters are among this Halloween’s scary movie treats.‘Megalomaniac’Rent or buy on major platforms.Martha (Eline Schumacher, magnetic) endures repeated sexual assaults by a worker at the factory where she’s a night janitor. She carries her trauma home to the weird Gothic mansion where she communes with a circle of creeps, including her overprotective serial-killer brother, Felix (Benjamin Ramon), sinister long-limbed creatures that lurk in the hallways and uncanny mirror images of herself. Then there’s the young woman that Felix brought home to be a “kitty,” as Martha calls her. I’ll stop there because to say more would give away too much of this depraved film’s sadistic surprises.Karim Ouelhaj wrote and directed this film, which is loosely inspired by several unsolved murders of women around the Belgian city of Mons in the 1990s — source material that Ouelhaj unflinchingly mines to examine generational wounds and mental illness. The cinematographer François Schmitt makes the horrors look Grand Guignol gorgeous; it looks like a Dior commercial but with stomach-churning violence swapped in for chic pantsuits, a welcome throwback to the movies of the New French Extremity.This film deservedly won the Jury Prize at last year’s Fantasia Film Festival, where the judges called it an “astonishing, brutal piece of art.” I agree, and it’s one of my favorite horror movies of 2023.‘15 Cameras’Rent or buy on major platforms.Sky (Angela Wong Carbone) and her boyfriend, Cam (Will Madden), got lucky with their starter home. It came cheap, with reason: It’s where a landlord murdered one of his tenants, as documented on Sky’s favorite true-crime series, “The Slumlord Tapes.” The house has room for Sky’s sister, Carolyn (Hilty Bowen, hilarious), and adjacent quarters for two young renters, Wren (Shirley Chen) and Amber (Hannah McKechnie). When Cam finds hidden-away cameras that the landlord left behind, he makes the very bad decision to spy on his tenants, until he becomes both the watcher and the watched. It’s here that Danny Madden’s psychological thriller takes off on its ferocious final stretch.Some people might be put off by how the writer PJ McCabe finds laughs in sexual voyeurism of the criminal kind. But I found the film to be a smart, twisted and twisty nail-biter about don’t-mess-with-me women and the piggish men they put up with — until they don’t. It’s a more naturalistic companion of sorts to this year’s “Jethica,” which also starred Will Madden (Danny’s brother) as a guy who doesn’t know when or how to stop being creepy.‘Accused’Stream it on Tubi.Harri (Chaneil Kular) is on a train to his parents’ country home outside London when a deadly bombing strikes the station he just left. When his parents leave home the next morning, Harri settles in for some quiet time with his dog at his side and dark woods out back. But then the authorities release a photo of a suspect who looks a lot like Harri, a resemblance a former classmate points out on social media. Anonymous hands take to social media to claim Harri as the bomber, and in almost real time, we watch as Harri’s life is turned upside down by people eager for vigilante justice based on lies and speculation. Then the phone rings at Harri’s house, and that’s when this well-crafted Tubi original really puts its foot on the gas.In most home-invasion films, the attack happens quickly. But in this tense and timely thriller, the drama comes slowly and deliberately, a shrewd choice that the director Philip Barantini handles assuredly in 88 taut minutes. Kular gives a deeply empathetic performance as a man under siege by assailants on a too-familiar witch hunt in which vengeance is the goal and truth is the victim.‘V/H/S/85’Stream it on Shudder.Bad news: The recent films in the “V/H/S” franchise have been bloated and boring. Good news: The latest entry is pure found-footage mayhem, with two standouts.My favorite is Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “God of Death,” set during Mexico’s devastating 1985 earthquake. As a morning television show opens, the earthquake topples the studio live on air, an effectively terrifying way into the found-footage format. As rescue workers make their way through the rubble in search of survivors, the film morphs into a perverse and gruesome (and darkly funny) disaster film about an underworld god who’s famished for human flesh.I also got spooked by Scott Derrickson’s “Dreamkill,” which channels straight-to-video era horror in a supernatural story about a serial killer who sends videos of murders to the police before they happen. The film takes an evil twist I didn’t see coming and ends with a fantastically gory blood bath.‘Appendage’Stream it on Hulu.If, like me, your idea of an exciting Halloween night is to stay home with a silly-scary movie, invite friends over for this horror comedy from the writer-director Anna Zlokovic.Hannah (Hadley Robinson) is getting worried about a bloody lesion at her hip that keeps growing. And I mean growing: One day it suddenly grows beady eyes and sharp teeth and in a nasty, guttural tone gives voice to Hannah’s insecurities. “You have no good ideas,” the creature growls to her face.When the monster pops out of her body, Hannah wrestles it into submission, a move that unleashes in her a creative streak that impresses her exacting fashion designer boss (Desmin Borges). But Hannah’s little worry-wart parasite is determined to bring its host down, and that’s when she seeks help from an appendage support group whose kindly members have anxious and angry demons of their own — hungrier ones than hers.As a parable about battles with self-criticism and inner doubt, the film is far from subtle. But Robinson’s winsome performance and the goofball creature-feature design by Amber Mari Creations — think “Basket Case” but with feeling — won me over by the end. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      How Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Was Turned Into a Movie

      by

      Movies like “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” rely on savvy tricks and sophisticated techniques to capture a semblance of the live experience.Taylor Swift’s globe-spanning Eras Tour is one of the musical events of the year, drawing record-breaking crowds and making headlines the world over since it kicked off in Glendale, Ariz., in March. Rabid demand has made procuring a ticket notoriously difficult, if not practically impossible. But starting Friday, Swifties will have a more accessible opportunity to catch a glimpse of the live phenomenon, when the concert film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is released by AMC Theaters — a moviegoing event that is widely expected to be a box office smash.Filmed over three nights in August at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., and directed by Sam Wrench, “The Eras Tour,” like most concert films, aims to capture some of the magic of seeing the artist perform live. “The main thing we’re trying to do is provide the theatrical audience with the best seat in the house,” John Ross, the rerecording mixer on “The Eras Tour” and a veteran of many other hit concert films, including Jonathan Demme’s “Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids,” said by phone. “If you were to attend a concert and get the premium seat, that’s my job, to convey that image sonically and situationally.”A scene from “Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.” John Ross, who worked on that film and the new Taylor Swift one, said, “If you were to attend a concert and get the premium seat, that’s my job, to convey that image sonically and situationally.”NetflixBut capturing a live performance is not as straightforward as simply setting up some cameras and microphones and recording what transpires onstage. The demands of a film are incredibly complicated, and faithfully reproducing the look and sound of a concert for the screen is an arduous and painstaking process for the filmmakers and their crews. It’s a delicate proposition — a proposition some filmmakers believe is inherently doomed.“The idea itself, to film a concert, is a bad idea,” said Jonas Akerlund, a film and music video director who made the concert movies “On the Run Tour: Beyoncé and Jay-Z Live” and “Taylor Swift: The 1989 World Tour Live.”He explained, “It will never, ever be as good as the live experience. It’s basically like trying to film fireworks — everybody knows that seeing it live is not the same as seeing it on a TV screen.” But, Akerlund added, the concert film can have value, if looked at in a different way. “You can make it an equally good experience, but it has to be a filmic or cinematic experience rather than trying to compete with the live experience.”The secret to cinematic merit, he said, is having the time and means to shoot it like a proper movie. That means hiring upward of 40 camera operators; shooting over multiple nights; deploying drones, Spidercams and GoPros; and setting aside a separate dress rehearsal day, when the artist plays without a crowd to shoot extra footage, like close-ups that might not have been possible during the live show. All of the footage is assembled in the editing room “with the precision of a four-minute music video” to create the illusion that what you’re seeing was unfolding in real time. “I guess it’s cheating a little bit,” Akerlund said.These kinds of cheats are common and, to hear filmmakers tell it, necessary. When the “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu made “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” he shot the performance and the audience on separate nights, then edited them together because that, paradoxically, made the audience’s reaction feel more authentic. “I always love concert films where it feels like the audience is really there,” he said. But because of the cameras, the sound recording equipment and the lighting, “audiences don’t react as big” as they would on an ordinary night. “You try to emulate what it feels like,” he said.One of the most surprising things about the making of concert films is just how much tends to be emulated, even simulated, rather than merely captured as is. The actual sound of music being played live in an arena can’t merely be taped: “just a recording of the room would be useless,” Ross said. Instead, dozens of microphones — sometimes more than 100 for larger sites — record the vocals, instruments and crowd on separate tracks, and a rerecording mixer carefully blends them together, adding reverb and echo to simulate the sound of the space.Beyoncé and Jay-Z in the “On the Run Tour” movie. The director Jonas Akerlund acknowledged that the film can never be as good as the live experience.HBOIn other words, the tone of the room is essentially applied like a filter to the raw sounds recorded from the artist onstage. This filter, known as impulse response, takes readings from actual physical places, then “synthetically reproduces the sound of a real space like a club or stadium,” said Jake Davis, the lead mix engineer at SeisMic Sound, an audio facility in Nashville that specializes in concert films.Mixers like Jake and his father, Tom Davis, the SeisMic founder, have a lot of control over the sound in a concert film, and making adjustments is a large part of their job. Some are minor refinements. Others are more like corrections: They make the concert film sound more like what the artist wanted than what necessarily occurred on the night it was filmed. “When you lock something down for a DVD or for streaming or whatever it is, once it’s done, it lives forever,” Tom Davis said. “It never goes away. So you kind of want it to be as good as it can be.”Mixers can blend parts of a song recorded on one night with parts from another night to create the best combined version. They can fix an errant flat note in a guitar solo by manipulating it in postproduction, or they can ask an artist to rerecord a weak vocal in a studio, layering it into the mix so that it sounds as if it had been delivered live. “We copy, cut and paste, like you do on a word processor,” Davis said. “If there was a little clam in the first chorus, but he did it fine in the second chorus in the same part, we can cut and paste that. We can do vocal maintenance. We can fix a little pitch issue, or bend a note a little bit.”Although sound mixers record the crowd with a bevy of microphones hidden around the arena, it’s possible — and indeed, common — to exaggerate the sound of that audience, to artificially give the cheering fans some extra kick. “It’s kind of a dirty secret,” Davis said. “But the sound of the real audience is weak. It’s not enough. You end up adding to it, pumping it up. There’s something psychological to hearing other humans having a good time and reacting — it’s like a sitcom and a laugh track.” Jake Davis said that the ideal balance is to “start with the real reaction” and then simply “make it bigger and more obvious.”Of course, part of the appeal of a live show, even on film, is the impression of reality, and a sense of truth is critical. “The goal of the mix is to enhance the energy of the performance that exists as it went down in the best way possible,” Jake Davis said. “You maintain some element of rawness while taking out things that are distracting, the nuances of a wrong note or a background singer being a little bit off.”Swift at the Metlife Stadium show. Dozens and sometimes hundreds of microphones are placed throughout the site to capture the sound for film.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhile the film version strives to be “as good as it can be for the rest of history,” he said, “there’s a fine line between correcting something a little bit and making it perfect, because it’s not going to be perfect live.” It’s a bit like touching up a portrait in Photoshop: it’s tempting to clear blemishes, but too much airbrushing can make you look fake.Paul Dugdale, the director of “Shawn Mendes: Live in Concert” and “Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour,” said that while some live shows might lend themselves to “maximum authenticity” as an approach, other huge pop concerts don’t emphasize the authentic in the same way. “For shows that are quite theatrical, there’s a level of artifice — they’ve got screens, they’ve got pyrotechnics, they’ve got costumes, all that kind of stuff,” he said. “For someone like Taylor, I think that allows you to explore further in terms of camera angles and putting the audience in different positions.”A Swift concert, Dugdale pointed out, can last more than three hours, which affords the director more latitude in how to approach the film formally. “You can create texture just like the live show has texture,” he said. “Sometimes you can go heavy-handed with the director’s hand, and sometimes you can completely let go of the steering wheel and let the artist take over.”Despite the high level of difficulty, the job for filmmakers and sound engineers is quite thankless. The best concert films will, to the unwitting viewer, seem like nothing more than filmed concerts — the filmmaking itself remains invisible.“The goal is that you don’t want people thinking about the fact that this was worked on or changed at all from what it was live,” Jake Davis told me. “You just want the audience to be immersed in the experience and to accept that it’s happening in front of them — to feel like they’re there.” But Dugdale noted that however much he tries to plan out a concert shoot, the live aspect will always prove unpredictable. “Making these films, you can be as prepared as you can possibly be, but in the end you have to hold on for dear life and see how it turns out.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘What About Us?’ Strikes Leave Other Hollywood Workers Reeling.

      by

      The lives of hundreds of thousands of crew members have been upended, and even a deal between the actors and the studios might not help much in the short term.Katie Reis has been a Hollywood lighting technician for 27 years, rigging equipment for movies like “Independence Day” and TV shows like “Quantum Leap.” But she hasn’t had a paycheck since May, when the first of two strikes — screenwriters, then actors — forced cameras to stop rolling.Ms. Reis, 60, has since been turned down for jobs at Target and Whole Foods. She is now looking into seasonal work at the mall.Her son Alex, a high school senior, recently had to go without new shoes for the start of classes. “If I go into Alex’s college fund, I have probably four, five months left,” she said. “But then I have nothing.”The recently settled screenwriters’ strike and the continuing actors’ strike have upended the lives of hundreds of thousands of crew members — the entertainment industry’s equivalent of blue-collar workers — and many are growing desperate for work. Caught in the crossfire for more than five months, they have drawn down savings accounts that in some cases were already diminished because of the pandemic. Some have been unable to afford groceries. A few have lost their homes.The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, for example, which represents 170,000 crew members in North America, estimated that its West Coast members alone lost $1.4 billion in wages between May and Sept. 16, the most recent date for which data was available. The extreme loss of hours worked, in turn, hurts funding for pension and health care plans.Even if entertainment companies and the actors’ union come to an agreement soon — which became less likely after the collapse of negotiations this week — production is not expected to return to normal until January at the earliest, in part because of the time it takes to reassemble creative teams, a process complicated by the coming holidays. Preproduction (before anyone gathers on a set) for new shows can take up to 12 weeks, with movies taking roughly 16 weeks.“I’m trying to manage my panic because it’s not going to be over when the strikes are over,” said Dallin James, a hairstylist who counts on red carpet premieres and other studio-related work for about 75 percent of his income.Dallin James, a hairstylist, said workers like him were “collateral damage” in the Hollywood strikes.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 screenwriters, reached a tentative agreement with studios on Sept. 24 and soon called off its 148-day strike. Writers have celebrated their new contract as the equivalent of winning a Super Bowl, describing the pay raises and improved working conditions they secured as “exceptional.” The Writers Guild said on Monday that its members had ratified the contract with 99 percent voting in favor.The actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, appeared to be closing in on a deal of its own after being on strike since July 14, clearing the way for Hollywood’s assembly lines to grind back into motion. But talks between the guild and the studios broke down after a session on Wednesday, creating more uncertainty. The actors have asked for wage increases, including an 11 percent raise in the first year of a new contract; a revenue-sharing agreement for streaming shows and films; and guarantees that studios will not use artificial intelligence tools to create digital replicas of their likenesses without payment or approval.Cue whipsawing emotions for entertainment workers who didn’t have a say in the strikes and who won’t be receiving a pay increase when they return to work.“I understand why they had to go on strike,” Mr. James said. “On the other hand, what about us? We haven’t really been considered in all of this. It feels like we’re collateral damage.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains with unions on behalf of the major entertainment companies, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.More than two million Americans work in jobs directly or indirectly related to making TV shows and films, according to the Motion Picture Association, a trade organization. They include writers, actors and other “above the line” creative personnel, along with studio executives. But a vast majority contribute in more humble ways. They are set dressers, camera operators, carpenters, location scouts, painters, costume designers, visual effects artists, stunt doubles, janitors, payroll clerks, assistants and chauffeurs.A big-budget superhero movie can easily employ 3,000 people, with the cast numbering fewer than 100, including credited extras.Gabriel Sanders, a longtime boom mic operator in Georgia, has started teaching fitness and yoga classes.Audra Melton for The New York Times“It’s desperate — our crews are really suffering,” said the actress Annette Bening, who is the chair of the Entertainment Community Fund, a nonprofit that provides emergency financial assistance and other services to workers in the industry. “These are people who are hardworking, who have a lot of pride. They are not used to being in a position of having to ask for help. But that’s where we are now.”With her husband, Warren Beatty, Ms. Bening has been among the celebrity donors to the fund, which has distributed more than $8.5 million to roughly 4,000 film and television workers since screenwriters went on strike. (That breaks down to $560,000 a week, compared with about $75,000 a week before the strikes.) The organization also hosts online workshops to help Hollywood workers navigate eviction notices, among other topics.“This is going to have a long tail,” Ms. Bening said. “We still expect a significant increase of inquiries in the coming months, even once work resumes.” (Ms. Bening, a four-time Oscar nominee who stars in the coming Netflix film “Nyad,” about the marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, has walked picket lines with other actors in recent months. She said the actors’ strike was “imperative” given the deterioration of working conditions and compensation levels in the streaming era.)Other Hollywood nonprofits have also been distributing money and holding food drives, including the Motion Picture & Television Fund and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, a charity that provides financial assistance to workaday performers. The foundation, which is associated with the actors’ union but is run independently, has been processing more than 30 times its usual number of applications for emergency aid, or more than 400 a week.Starting on Sept. 1, Los Angeles-area workers enrolled in the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan were allowed to withdraw up to $20,000 each for financial hardship. By Sept. 8, workers had pulled roughly $45 million, according to a document compiled by plan administrators that was viewed by The New York Times. A spokesman for the plan said no updated information was available.Robin Urdang, a music supervisor in Los Angeles whose credits include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and the film “Call Me by Your Name,” has no pension plan to fall back on. To pay for living expenses, Ms. Urdang has been dipping into money she had been saving for a down payment on a house.“It’s depressing,” she said, adding that she typically works on four to seven projects at once. Ms. Urdang is still working a bit, including on a series for Amazon that was past the filming phase of production when actors went on strike. But she spends much of her day crocheting sweaters and reading books.Even so, Ms. Urdang said she sympathized with the writers and actors. Streaming has also changed her fortunes considerably. She used to do a lot of work on broadcast television, where an episode would go from script to on air in two weeks. (Most music supervisors, who select and license songs, are paid half their fee at the start of production and the other half when episodes are completed.) Now she does the same amount of work, but the payment schedule on an eight-episode streaming show is spread out over a year.“So I understand where they’re coming from,” she said.The studio shutdown has been felt most severely in California and New York. The strikes have cost the California economy more than $5 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom. But the strikes have also darkened soundstages across the country, as well as in Canada and England. Georgia, for instance, has three million square feet of soundstage space.Gabriel Sanders, who lives in Decatur, Ga., with his wife and two daughters, is a longtime boom mic operator who has worked on films like “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and series like “Law & Order: Organized Crime.” As the strikes have dragged on, Mr. Sanders has turned to teaching fitness and yoga classes.“It’s good for my soul, but it doesn’t pay very well,” he said.His wife, Carey Yaruss Sanders, a voice instructor, has started a pet-sitting and dog-walking business to help make ends meet.Mr. Sanders said there had been “a lot of internal fighting” in the crew community about the strikes, with some people, like him, cheering on the actors and writers and others saying, “Enough already, we just need to get back to work.”“I have no resentment — do what you have to do to protect your rights,” Mr. Sanders said, referring to the strikes. “But that doesn’t mean it has been easy.” More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Talks Between Striking Actors and Studios Are Suspended

      by

      The sides said they remained far apart on the most significant issues, dealing a blow to hopes that the entertainment industry could soon fully roar back to life.Negotiations between the major entertainment studios and the union representing tens of thousands of actors have collapsed, with both sides saying on Thursday morning that they remained far apart on the most significant issues.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, said that it was suspending talks because they were “no longer moving us in a productive direction” after a session on Wednesday. SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, which has been on strike since July, accused studio executives of “bully tactics,” and said the studios recently presented an offer “that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began.”The collapse of the negotiations is a significant setback for the entertainment industry, which has essentially been at a standstill for months because of dual strikes by actors and screenwriters. On Monday, more than 8,000 screenwriters ratified a new three-year contract with the studio alliance, formally ending their monthslong labor dispute. There was optimism that a deal with the actors would follow and that Hollywood could soon fully roar back to life.But with actors continuing to strike, most television and movie production remains suspended. The financial fallout has been significant. The California economy has lost an estimated $5 billion. Tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes workers have been out of work for months. Share prices for many major media companies have dropped, and now there is a further threat to next year’s box office results.Like their counterparts in the screenwriters guild, leaders of the actors’ union have called this moment “existential.” They are seeking wage increases, as well as protections around the use of artificial intelligence. Actors have now been on strike for 91 days; screenwriters recently returned to work after a 148-day walkout. The last time both unions had been on strike at the same time was 1960.When negotiations between the actors’ union and the studios resumed last week — just days after the studios and screenwriters had reached a tentative agreement — it represented the first time that the sides had met since the actors went on strike on July 14. There were five bargaining sessions, and many industry observers believed that the talks would soon lead to a deal.In a statement released early Thursday morning, the studio alliance said it had offered wage increases, met “nearly all of the union’s demands on casting” and proposed further protections around the use of A.I. The alliance also said it offered “the same terms that were ratified” by both the writers’ and directors’ unions regarding wage increases and streaming royalties.The alliance also said, however, that the actors’ union wanted a viewership bonus that “would cost more than $800 million per year, which would create an untenable economic burden.”Union leaders accused studio executives of walking away from the bargaining table “after refusing to counter our latest offer.”“These companies refuse to protect performers from being replaced by artificial intelligence, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation, and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue YOUR work generates for them,” union officials said in a statement addressed to members. “Our resolve is unwavering,” the statement continued. “Join us on picket lines and at solidarity events around the country and let your voices be heard.” More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Road Dance’ Review: A World War I Weepie

      by

      Based on a Scottish best seller, the movie is a standard period drama that arrives at hard truths with a hammy delivery.Set in the Outer Hebrides, a verdant archipelago to the west of mainland Scotland, “The Road Dance” is a standard period drama that arrives at hard truths with a hammy delivery.Kirsty (Hermione Corfield) is a restless beauty living with her sister and mother in a remote crofting (small tenant farming) community. It’s the years around World War I, and forced conscriptions are sweeping the nation — including Kirsty’s beau, a poetry-reading softy named Murdo (Will Fletcher).Before Murdo and three other local men are shipped off to the Western Front, the village honors them with a night of dance and drink. It’s here that Kirsty will be violently raped, an assault which the director, Richie Adams, depicts blurrily, unfolding in darkness.Adapted from the 2002 Scottish best seller by John MacKay, this run-of-the-mill weepie spends the bulk of its time detailing the aftermath of the attack. Kirsty becomes pregnant, and she’s forced to conceal not just her physical state but her mental trauma from the snooping members of her ultrareligious town. Cryptic sermon scenes about sinners and Satan play throughout Kirsty’s ordeal, raising the stakes — though Kirsty’s not the only one who has gone through hell and back in these parts, as evidenced by a whisper network of wizened women who band together to pull her through.The culprit remains unknown until the bitter end, a revelation served with a bland sort of twist — that any man is capable of such violence. It’s an uninspired take, along with the use of rape as a plot device.Shifting between stagy sincerity and startling realism (the labor scene is particularly colorful), “The Road Dance” is a vividly rendered, if ultimately schematic portrait of feminine resilience.The Road DanceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 50 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Divinity’ Review: Missed Conception

      by

      An immortality drug causes social disruption in this ludicrously dystopian sci-fi experiment.In an old-as-time dichotomy, the women in Eddie Alcazar’s “Divinity” fall into roughly two categories: pliable prostitutes or those who have been deemed “pure.” The first group wears slinky, sparkly onesies; the second sports unadorned, flesh-toned bodysuits that render them as uniform as the spermatozoa in Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (but Were Afraid to Ask)” (1972). For a movie concerned primarily with reproduction, the connection seems apt.A misbegotten blend of the futuristic and the antiquated, “Divinity” is an unintentionally comical sci-fi diatribe obsessed with beautiful bodies, bickering brothers and biblical symbolism. The title refers to a drug that promises to bestow immortality, with the unfortunate wrinkle that users — apparently most of humanity — are rendered sterile. Men are transformed into obscenely pumped poseurs, pleasured by gorgeous women with zero body fat and extremely limited fashion choices. In the background, members of the creepy purity posse — women who have never taken the drug — plot to put their unsullied uteruses to work repopulating the planet.Shot mainly in stark black and white using specially made film stock, this oppressive, inarticulate dystopia unfolds mostly in a remote desert compound belonging to Jaxxon Pierce (Stephen Dorff). Continuing the work of his dead father (Scott Bakula, seen in gritty video diaries), who invented the drug, Jaxxon tinkers with the formula, unaware that two alien brothers (Moises Arias and Jason Genao) have descended from the stars to teach him a lesson by getting him high on his own supply.This all plays as completely bonkers, albeit presented with punishing solemnity. A style experiment assembled mainly using storyboards in place of a script, the movie combines live action and stop-motion animation, old-school prosthetics and retro accessories. The occasionally arresting visuals, though, are repeatedly undercut by dumb dialogue and often atrocious acting, the whole experienced through a wall of throbbing, squawking sound. This is not the movie to see if you are nursing a hangover.Exploring some of the same ground he covered in his previous feature, “Perfect” (2019), Alcazar has made what feels like a very grouchy film, one that rails against our craving for youth and beauty and chides those who choose pleasure over procreation. There is something undeniably sad, though, in both its naïveté and its reliance on repurposed tropes, like the winking television ads that recall Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” (1997). And I have to ask: If everyone here is supposedly focused exclusively on pleasure, why can’t we feel some? Instead, “Divinity” is deeply depressing, the announcement “Steven Soderbergh Presents” above the title (he’s the executive producer) perhaps not the antidote to the funk that its maker might have hoped.A more daring movie might have explored the notion that limited reproduction could offer some benefit to our struggling planet. But “Divinity” (at least for those who are inclined to hang around long enough to learn the drug’s ingredients) appears to favor a more retrograde anti-science message. You won’t have to squint too hard, though, to spot the irony in a narrative that cheerleads for fertility, yet is itself too barren to entertain.DivinityNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Jamie Foxx in a Lively Courtroom Drama

      by

      Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones deliver bravura performances in this Maggie Betts film about a funeral-home proprietor in financial trouble.In the opening scenes of this fact-based courtroom drama, which is front-loaded with a sentimentality it ultimately doesn’t need, “The Burial” might elicit some skepticism from viewers. That is, it may be a bit of a stretch to root for a Mississippi funeral-home proprietor with eight locations who’s unable to square some poor business decisions.That funeral-home squire is Jeremiah O’Keefe, played by Tommy Lee Jones, and we meet him at his 75th birthday party in 1995. He had tried to sell a few of his facilities to the slick C.E.O. of a death-care mega-corporation, but when the corporation withholds paperwork, O’Keefe could potentially be squeezed into bankruptcy.This situation gets a lot more interesting. A young Black lawyer working with O’Keefe enlists another Black lawyer, the very rich and flashy Willie Gary, played by Jamie Foxx, to work on the case. The logic is that the O’Keefe’s lawsuit will play to a mostly Black jury. The American way of death, apparently, did not gain more integrity as it became corporatized, and the exploitations of Big Funeral, it turns out, have an ugly racist angle.Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, “The Burial” develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance. The supporting cast is also first rate, with Jurnee Smollett percolating with intelligence as Gary’s female counterpart for the defense, and Bill Camp as the villain, doing an underhanded, clever variant on Jack Nicholson’s performance in “A Few Good Men.”The BurialRated R for language. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More