Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Old Oak’ Review: The Audacity of Hope

      by

      A family of Syrian refugees connects with a once-thriving mining town in Ken Loach’s moving drama.“The Old Oak” is named for the pub where much of its action happens — an old drinking hole in a village outside of Durham, England, that’s seen better days. Its back room, once a gathering place for the miners and their families who populated the town a generation ago, has been locked up for many years, fallen to disuse. Its walls are still hung with photographs of those miners taken during the lengthy strike of 1984-1985, a labor effort that ended without the resolution the miners sought and with weakened trade unions. But during the action, the village marched in solidarity — at least for a while — and came together to share meals in that back room, to support one another, a point of pride for the men who were children back then.When the movie begins, it is 2016, the year of the Brexit vote. It’s hard to imagine that kind of unity happening any more. The village has slowly emptied out, closing down places like the church hall, which had been a gathering spot. The village’s real estate is being bought up at auction by entities abroad, driving down the value of houses owned by locals, leaving them with nothing to live on in old age. Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. Children barely have enough to eat. And so in the Old Oak, a handful of regulars sit around, bitterly decrying the state of things.They have lately found a target for their rage: a few families of Syrian refugees who have been settled in the village, helped along by a local charity worker named Laura (Claire Rodgerson) and Tommy Joe Ballantyne (Dave Turner), who goes by TJ and owns the Old Oak. He’s the one who has to listen to the regulars gripe and spew racist epithets about the refugees, always clarifying that they’re “not racist.” He says nothing. He doesn’t think he can. He needs their business to scrape by. He knows their private lives are no picnic either. And if the pub isn’t there, they’ll just go home and wind one another up on the internet anyhow.But TJ is lonely, and cares about the newcomers, though he’s afraid at first to become too involved with their lives. He strikes up an unlikely friendship with Yara (Ebla Mari), a young Syrian woman who speaks English, having learned after two years of volunteering with nurses while living in the refugee camps. Yara has arrived in town with her mother and several younger siblings. They don’t know where their father is because he was taken from them by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Her life has been worse, by any measure, than those of the men in the pub — but it feels almost obscene to make the comparison.You’d know “The Old Oak” was directed by Ken Loach (from a screenplay by his long-running collaborator Paul Laverty) even if his name wasn’t in the credits. His late work is unmistakable, driven by fierce moral clarity and outrage on behalf of the people whom capitalism and Britain’s government, supposedly constructed for citizens’ benefit, have left behind. His previous film “Sorry We Missed You,” for instance, is a blindly infuriated (and infuriating) film about a father who takes a job as a delivery driver to make ends meet, only to discover that everything about this job is designed to prosper the owner but ruin his life and his family.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

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Música’ Review: Rudy Mancuso’s Debut Feature

      by

      Rudy Mancuso stars in and directs an inventive debut feature about a man with synesthesia who tries to manage his complicated life and relationships.The artist Rudy Mancuso has a prolific career that’s hard to define. He sings, shoots puppet skits and films wistful live action shorts set to his own piano tunes. Mancuso uploads most of his output online; however, he opened for Justin Bieber in Brazil, where he once lived. “Música,” Mancuso’s phenomenal feature debut, is a comic trip inside a mind that’s forever feverishly creating — even against his will. In the first scene, Rudy (Mancuso), his semi-autobiographical lead, gets dumped at a diner because his synesthesia won’t allow him to focus on a serious talk about the future. His brain can’t ignore a knife chopping, a broom sweeping, a spatula clanking. The percussion swells, the clatter harmonizes and his romance collapses, leaving Rudy alone in his bedroom with a lamp attached to — oh dear — a Clapper.Mancuso crams all of his passions into the movie, including the puppets (which, with his cartoonish coif, he resembles). He’s playing a character who is occasionally too passive. Yet, he’s made a film that’s confidently, intentionally overwhelming. In Newark, where the movie is set, there’s always life, noise, inspiration banging away in the background. Rudy can’t control his distractions, but he can conduct the cacophony. An interlude involving a boisterous park of people playing checkers, basketball and double Dutch lets him do just that.As balance, the script, written by Mancuso and Dan Lagana, is a tidy coming-of-age tale. Rudy bounces between the needs of three women: his college girlfriend, Haley (Francesca Reale), a charismatic fishmonger named Isabella (Camila Mendes) and his bossy Brazilian mother, Maria (played by his real mother, Maria Mancuso), who turns their living room into a singles bar for potential daughters-in-law. (She serves caipirinhas with paper umbrellas.) Occasionally, Rudy ventures out for advice from a shawarma truck operator (J.B. Smoove), who, when drunk, acts like a trickster sprite.Mancuso, 32, is part of a digital generation that treated the internet like a self-taught film school. Eyeballs were his pass/fail grade. A low-budget, high-imagination director, he’s learned to delight viewers with practical effects and sharp physical timing, citing Charlie Chaplin as his inspiration. (Come to think of it, they have the same hair, too.)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

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      #MeToo Stalled in France. Judith Godrèche Might Be Changing That.

      by

      Judith Godrèche did not set out to relaunch the #MeToo movement in France’s movie industry.She came back to Paris from Los Angeles in 2022 to work on “Icon of French Cinema,” a TV series she wrote, directed and starred in — a satirical poke at her acting career that also recounts how, at the age of 14, she entered into an abusive relationship with a film director 25 years older.Then, a week after the show aired, in late December, a viewer’s message alerted her to a 2011 documentary that she says made her throw up and start shaking as if she were “naked in the snow.”There was the same film director, admitting that their relationship had been a “transgression” but arguing that “making films is a kind of cover” for forms of “illicit traffic.”She went to the police unit specialized in crimes against children — its waiting room was filled with toys and a giant teddy bear, she recalls — to file a report for rape of a minor.“There I was,” said Ms. Godrèche, now 52, “at the right place, where I’ve been waiting to be since I was 14.”Since then, Ms. Godrèche has been on a campaign to expose the abuse of children and women that she believes is stitched into the fabric of French cinema. Barely a week has gone by without her appearance on television and radio, in magazines and newspapers, and even before the French Parliament, where she demanded an inquiry into sexual violence in the industry and protective measures for children.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

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Eli Noyes, Animator Who Turned Clay and Sand Into Art, Dies at 81

      by

      His innovative stop-motion animation influenced a generation of filmmakers, including the creators of Wallace and Gromit.Eli Noyes, a filmmaker whose use of clay and sand in stop-motion animation garnered an Oscar nomination and shaped the aesthetic of Nickelodeon and MTV during the early days of cable television, died on March 23 at his home in San Francisco. He was 81.His wife, the artist Augusta Talbot, said the cause was prostate cancer.Mr. Noyes made his first film, “Clay or the Origin of Species,” in 1965 as an undergraduate student at Harvard. To the accompaniment of a jazz quartet, clay model animals whimsically portray evolution in the movie, which lasts just under nine minutes.Though stop-motion filmmaking had existed for decades and clay was used in the 1950s to create animated characters like Gumby, directors and cinephiles credited Mr. Noyes’s rookie effort with reviving interest in the technique at a time when hand-drawn characters were more popular.“Clay or the Origin of the Species” (1965), Mr. Noyes’s first film, was nominated for an Academy Award.via Noyes familyThe film was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short subject.“This recognition served as a tremendous boost to the credibility of clay as an animation medium, bulldozing a path for even greater works,” Rick Cooper, a former production manager for Will Vinton Productions, a Claymation film company, wrote in the journal Design for Arts in Education.Peter Lord, a founder of Aardman Animations, the English studio that used clay in the production of the “Wallace and Gromit” films, “Chicken Run” and other popular animated features, recalled seeing “Clay or the Origin of Species” on British television when he was getting started as a filmmaker.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

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      At New Directors/New Films, the Kids Are Not All Right (Nobody Really Is)

      by

      This year’s edition of the festival tends toward familiar art-house fare, but there are standouts in which characters young and old grapple with childhood.The terrific Ukrainian documentary “Intercepted” — screening in this year’s New Directors/New Films festival — is an austere and harrowing chronicle of life, death and indifference. For roughly 90 minutes, it juxtaposes images from everyday life in Ukraine with audio gleaned from phone calls between Russian soldiers and their families. As the camera steadily focuses on the devastations of war, you hear these soldiers talking about what they’re doing, how they’re feeling, what they ate, what they plundered and who they killed.Directed by Oksana Karpovych, “Intercepted” is tough to watch — and listen to — and it’s also one of the strongest movies in an uneven lineup running Wednesday through April 14. It’s also one of a number of movies that, by turns bluntly and elliptically, either focus on young people or on adults grappling with childhood in some manner. “Intercepted,” for one, includes heart-skippingly upsetting images of Ukrainian tots and teens being just kids, riding bikes and frolicking against a cityscape of bombed buildings, though some of its most indelible and dreadful sections feature snippets from the Russians and their families.In one clip, as a soldier talks to a woman, presumably his wife, their children cry out, “We love and miss you.” Separately, another soldier details how he helped torture Ukrainian captives. “If I go there, too,” his mother says, “I would enjoy it like you.”A joint venture of Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New Directors/New Films focuses on emerging filmmakers; it culls from other festivals across the world and, over the years, it has showcased artists as diverse as Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-wai, Spike Lee, Pedro Almodóvar and many others now lost to time. Given that there were relatively few high-profile platforms for younger filmmakers when the event was founded in 1972, its commitment to young talent was laudable; events like Sundance and SXSW, it’s worth noting, didn’t yet exist. There are far more festivals now, and the website for New Directors says its focus is on filmmakers “who speak to the present and anticipate the future of cinema, and whose bold work pushes the envelope in unexpected, striking ways.”“Intercepted,” directed by Oksana Karpovych, contrasts images in war-torn Ukraine with audio from Russian families.Christopher NunnThat’s an estimable goal, and while I’m unsure how any movie could foresee the future of cinema, I love the optimism of that statement. There has been some worrying chatter about the health of festivals following the pandemic and the industry strikes — late last year, the Toronto International Film Festival cut a dozen staff positions — yet the international circuit remains essential. Among other things, festivals serve as promotional tools, function as markers of distinction in an image-saturated world and help turn audiences into dedicated communities that sustain the larger film ecology. New Directors, for instance, was among the festivals that drew attention to upstarts like Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      The Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in April

      by

      “Fallout,” “Girls State” and a “Bluey” special are streaming.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Fallout’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 11This sardonic postapocalyptic action-adventure series combines elements from different games within the larger “Fallout” video game franchise, which since its debut in 1997 has delighted gamers with a mix of rich storytelling and wry wit. The series has Ella Purnell playing Lucy, an exemplary citizen in an underground bunker colony on an Earth ravaged by nuclear warfare. When circumstances force Lucy to the surface, the sunny optimism she learned from her father (Kyle MacLachlan) is tested by her encounters with scavengers, mutants and heavily armed soldiers in robotic armor. Developed by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (the team behind “Westworld”) with the showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet (the co-writer of “Captain Marvel”) and Graham Wagner (a “Portlandia” writer), “Fallout” aims to be the rollicking, irreverent counter to all the dour end-of-the-world TV shows.Also arriving:April 1“House” Season 1April 4“Música”April 5“How to Date Billy Walsh”“Alex Rider” Season 3April 12“Apartment 404”April 18“Dinner With the Parents” Season 1“Going Home With Tyler Cameron” Season 1April 25“Them: The Scare” Season 2Cecilia Bartin in “Girls State,” a documentary directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss on Apple TV+.Whitney Curtis/Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Girls State’Starts streaming: April 5The 2020 documentary “Boys State” followed a group of Texas high schoolers at a politics-themed summer camp. For this sequel, the directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine cover a similar camp from a different perspective, embedding with Missouri high school girls as they run for office, draft resolutions and hear court cases, emulating the functions of a state government. This particular edition of Missouri’s Girls State was held on the same campus as Boys State, inviting direct comparison between the programs (which differ in their levels of rigor). It also happened not long after the draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision was leaked. As with the earlier film, Moss and McBaine avoid turning their subjects into simplistic heroes or villains. Instead, “Girls State” honors these bright, concerned young ladies’ earnest interest in making friends and becoming better leaders.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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Barbara Rush, Award-Winning TV and Film Actress, Dies at 97

      by

      She received a Golden Globe in 1954 as that year’s rising star and appeared in movies alongside Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman.Barbara Rush, the supremely poised actress who rose to fame with supporting roles in 1950s films like “Magnificent Obsession” and “The Young Lions,” died on Sunday at her home in Westlake Village, Calif., in Los Angeles County. She was 97.The death, in a senior care facility, was confirmed by her daughter, Claudia Cowan.If Ms. Rush’s portrayals had one thing in common, it was a gentle, ladylike quality, which she put to use in films of many genres. She was Jane Wyman’s concerned stepdaughter in the 1954 romantic drama “Magnificent Obsession” and Dean Martin’s loyal wartime girlfriend in “The Young Lions” (1958), set during World War II. In 1950s science fiction pictures like “It Came From Outer Space” and “When Worlds Collide,” she was the small-town heroine, the scientist’s daughter, the Earthling most likely to succeed.Ms. Rush with Frank Sinatra in the 1963 film “Come Blow Your Horn,” about a swinging Manhattan bachelor’s life.Paramount Pictures, via Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesIn both “The Young Philadelphians” (1959), with Paul Newman, and “The World in My Corner,” a 1956 boxing film with Audie Murphy, Ms. Rush was the prized rich girl. In “Bigger Than Life” (also 1956), with James Mason, she played a vapid but supportive wife. And in “Come Blow Your Horn” (1963), with Frank Sinatra, she played the only “nice girl” in a swinging Manhattan bachelor’s life.But she did transcend type occasionally, as an Indian agent’s bigoted wife, for instance, in the western “Hombre” (1967), with Paul Newman. She also played Kit Sargent, the Hollywood screenwriter attracted to and repelled by the ruthless title character in the classic 1959 television production of “What Makes Sammy Run?”Ms. Rush in 1966. Her stage work became a second career. John Downing/Express, via Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesWe 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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘Godzilla x Kong,’ Destruction, But Not Much Concern

      by

      The latest sequel in the Monsterverse has plenty of destruction, but little concern about the death toll.This article contains spoilers for “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”By the end of “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” the latest in the so-called Monsterverse franchise from Warner Bros., multiple cities around the world have been rendered essentially uninhabitable and treasured monuments have been turned to dust. Godzilla, Kong and their adversaries flatten sections of Rio, ripping buildings in half during their climactic brawl, as a monster that can shoot ice from its mouth coats the coastal setting, presumably freezing a bunch of citizens as well.Earlier, the two big guys punch their way through the pyramids in Cairo as tourists and locals scramble away from falling rocks. On top of that, at one point, Godzilla also takes up temporary residence in the Colosseum in Rome after he stomps through that locale. It’s frankly pretty cute the way he curls up to nap in the ancient amphitheater like a puppy, but the fact that he probably killed thousands of people getting to his makeshift bed isn’t really addressed.Directed by Adam Wingard, the film cares more about the beasties than it does anything else. Given the cartoonish tone Wingard is working in — Godzilla turns pink in this one while he and Kong fight a giant evil ape named the Skar King with a bone whip — it makes sense that there isn’t much dwelling on the human toll. Still, the sheer level of destruction is so outsize it’s almost amusing. Sure, you go into a Godzilla flick expecting for some structures to crumble, but this just feels extreme, especially in how casually it shrugs off the fact that monsters have just toppled thousands of years worth of history and countless lives.Over the years, films starring Godzilla and his pals have varied wildly in how they deal with the creatures’ victims — they have been serious and outright silly. While sometimes Godzilla can be a way to explore very human fears, at other times he’s just an outlet to watch things go boom. “Godzilla x Kong” puts him firmly in this noisy camp, which makes the treatment of death just seem careless.Perhaps one of the reasons “Godzilla x Kong” is so striking in how little it seems to think about damage is that the last “Godzilla” movie to hit theaters was entirely concerned with Godzilla as a representation of trauma.A scene from “Godzilla Minus One.”Toho CompanyWe 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