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      ‘Cabrini’ Review: Embarking on a Pious Mission

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      From the team behind “Sound of Freedom,” this biopic of an Italian nun in 19th-century New York City is stuffed with sanctimonious speeches.“Cabrini,” a cluttered biopic of an Italian nun on a mission in 19th-century Manhattan, is directed by Alejandro Monteverde and produced by Angel Studios. You may recognize the names as the team behind “Sound of Freedom,” the 2023 conservative hit thriller.Yet this new, pious tale, assembled around the ecumenical theme of perseverance, almost makes one nostalgic for the frisson of provocation. The gauzy goodness of this film is axiomatic, and its litany of sanctimonious speeches (“the world is too small for what I intend to do”) generally repels inquiry, let alone controversy.The story begins as Francesca Cabrini (Cristiana Dell’Anna) and Catholic nuns from her order immigrate to New York to run an orphanage in Five Points, the Lower Manhattan neighborhood plagued by violence and adversity. She goes on to challenge various clergymen and politicians in her quest to save the youth and aid the downtrodden, namely, Italians. I should mention that the saintly striver is all the while giving support to a former prostitute, hoping to open a hospital and enduring a lung condition with a terminal prognosis.It’s inspiring stuff, rendered stodgy and repetitive. The screenplay contains numerous scenes of Cabrini striding through opulent rooms as she goes head-to-head with bureaucratic white men; several sequences could have been scrapped in favor of more time spent with the rabble of orphans under her care. Among the multitude, only one suffering boy, bravely volunteering as a representative case, is accorded a name and a back story.CabriniRated PG-13 for some sinful material. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      What the ‘Rust’ Jury Heard About How Live Rounds Got on a Film Set

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      The prosecution pointed to a photo of the film’s armorer, arguing she had brought the live rounds. Her lawyers tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary ammunition supplier.Ever since a real, live bullet discharged from the gun that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing with on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021, killing the cinematographer and wounding the director, one question has vexed everyone involved: How did live ammunition end up on a film set, where — all agree — it absolutely should never have been?The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was found guilty on Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter in the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and faces up to 18 months in prison. The jury found that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 26, had behaved negligently by failing to check that all of the rounds she loaded into Mr. Baldwin’s revolver were dummies, which are inert rounds that look real but cannot be fired.The question of where the live ammunition came from in the first place has hung over the case from the start. The original investigation by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office did not reach a conclusion on where the live rounds had come from.During the trial, prosecutors sought to convince jurors that it was Ms. Gutierrez-Reed who was responsible for bringing the rounds onto the set. The defense asserted that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who did not testify, was not at fault, and tried to focus attention on the movie’s primary weapons and ammunition supplier, Seth Kenney, who took the stand and denied responsibility.Here is what emerged during the trial about the live ammunition, and where it may have come from.Ms. Gutierrez-Reed during the trial.Pool photo by Eddie MooreProsecutors zeroed in on a box of rounds from the set.When investigators arrived at the chaotic scene shortly after the shooting, on Oct. 21, 2021, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed showed a lieutenant from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office a cart where she kept guns and ammunition and drew his attention to a box of ammunition where she said that she had retrieved the rounds she put in Mr. Baldwin’s revolver.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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      Oscars 2024 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture, Actor and Actress?

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      “Oppenheimer” is the best picture favorite, but the best actress race is full of suspense. Our expert predicts which films and artists will get trophies on Sunday.Best PictureOscar voters love biopics like “Oppenheimer.”Universal Pictures“American Fiction”“Anatomy of a Fall”“Barbie”“The Holdovers”“Killers of the Flower Moon”“Maestro”✓“Oppenheimer”“Past Lives”“Poor Things”“The Zone of Interest”Let’s be real: The best picture race is locked up for “Oppenheimer.” Christopher Nolan gave Oscar voters an IMAX-sized helping of their favorite genre — the great-man-of-history biopic — and after the movie made nearly a billion dollars worldwide, its path to the top Oscar was clear.Still, why not add some stakes to the situation? See whether you can sabotage the people in your Oscar pool by convincing them that a dark-horse candidate can topple Nolan’s mighty contender.Suggest, for example, that “The Holdovers” may mirror the little-film-that-could trajectory of “CODA” (though you’d better leave out that “The Holdovers” didn’t win the top prize at the Producers Guild Awards, as “CODA” so tellingly did). Note that the expansive international contingent of the academy could swing things toward “Anatomy of a Fall” (though if that were the case, we would have seen signs of it at last month’s BAFTA ceremony). Or mention that the path to best picture tends to go through the screenplay categories, and since “Oppenheimer” is in danger of losing a writing trophy to “American Fiction” or “Barbie,” maybe those movies are the real threats.Say anything you want! Have fun causing a little chaos. Just be sure to mark down “Oppenheimer” on your own ballot, because it’s winning.Best DirectorCillian Murphy, left, getting notes from his “Oppenheimer” director, Christopher Nolan.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesJonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”✓Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”Though the 53-year-old Nolan has come to be regarded as the premier blockbuster director of his generation, one feat he still hasn’t managed is winning an Academy Award. That will finally change this weekend, completing a journey that started 15 years ago when the Oscars expanded the amount of best picture nominees after his film “The Dark Knight” was snubbed in the two top categories. Now, Nolan will win both.Best ActorMurphy has won major precursor awards for his performance. Universal PicturesBradley Cooper, “Maestro”Colman Domingo, “Rustin”Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”✓Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”Giamatti has a “he’s due” veteran narrative, and Cooper gave the sort of transformative performance that voters often flip for. But it’s the “Oppenheimer” star Murphy who is best positioned to take this Oscar for holding down the huge ensemble of the best picture front-runner. Contenders who have won the SAG and BAFTA awards, as Murphy has, don’t tend to falter at the finish line.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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      ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Review: Kristen Stewart, Crazy (and Scary) in Love

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      In this neo-noir, the ever reliable, always watchable actress plays a small-town loner who’s struck by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious drifter.Watching Kristen Stewart is always an adventure. A performer who makes good movies better and dreary movies tolerable, she has a restlessness that has made her one of the more interesting attractions in American film. She has a gift for making a character’s inner life transparently readable, and while she can be subtle and withholding, it is her fascinatingly unquiet presence that draws you in, an itchy intensity that can keep her (and you) on edge. Pauline Kael wrote that Jane Fonda’s “motor runs a little fast” — so does Stewart’s.In her latest vehicle, “Love Lies Bleeding,” a neo-noir in a violent and winkingly nasty key, Stewart plays Lou, short for Louise, a small-town loner somewhere in New Mexico, yearning to escape a classic dead end. If this were a 1940s noir, Lou would be fixing jalopies in a dingy garage while waiting for a dame to stroll in to change his fate. That’s more or less what happens here, except that it’s the ’80s, and Lou is a woman who works in a gym where she’s wasting away, unclogging toilets and slipping steroids to bulked-up juicers. Then, a beautiful stranger walks into the gym and changes her life, as sirens sometimes do in movies.The stranger, Jackie (a good, physically imposing Katy O. Brian), immediately catches Lou’s eye. It’s destiny, Old Hollywood style, and it lights the movie up and sets it on its incendiary way. What happens is hot, yummy stuff, but romances like these need something to get in their way, whether it’s a bag of loot, a jealous ex or just a contrivance. This movie obliges with violence, lots of guns, spooky flashbacks and a classic villain, played by a fantastic Ed Harris with a sneer and an epically terrible wig. There’s a lot of extravagantly and comically bad hair in “Love Lies Bleeding,” along with equally rotten teeth and souls.It’s a good guess that the director Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”) has read James M. Cain or seen some of the films made from his hard-boiled books; she may have thumbed through a few Jim Thompson novels, too. (Glass wrote the script with Weronika Tofilska.) “Love Lies Bleeding” isn’t on par with Cain or Thompson, and overselling a comparison would be silly. Even so, when Jackie first walks into the gym, the world-altering effect she has on Lou recalls the moment when the drifter in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” meets his kismet: “Then I saw her,” he says, “her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her.”Lou and Jackie’s don’t connect until after the gym closes and the darkness is wrapping them in its embrace. Outside, they meet and greet, sizing each other up with hungry eyes and faint smiles. First, though, they need to deal with some narrative interruptus. One of the gym rats hits on Jackie after the gym closes, but when he grabs at her, she punches him, hard. He hits her right back in an exchange that, among other things, announces the movie’s bad-ass attitude as well as Jackie’s fearlessness, her recklessness and rage. It also effectively serves as violent foreplay to Lou and Jackie’s progressively unhinged and dangerous romance.They fall into bed quickly, and the story soon heats up, too. A bodybuilder en route to a contest in Vegas, Jackie has drifted into town, as mysterious types tend to do, where she soon lands a job to earn some cash. She crashes with Lou, who — after a steamy night and a cozy morning-after breakfast — is understandably eager for Jackie to stick around. Yet Lou also remains super-jumpy and wary, like someone permanently looking over her shoulder, and Stewart gives the character a tremulous energy that vibrates in her every look, gesture and head bob. At times, you can almost see the anxiety spreading under her skin like an electric current.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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      Buddy Duress, Who Came Off the Streets to Find Stardom, Dies at 38

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      He was a homeless heroin dealer when the Safdie brothers put him in their movies, and the critics raved. But the recklessness that gave his acting authenticity thwarted his career.Buddy Duress, a small-time heroin dealer living on the streets of the Upper West Side who became a sensation in the New York film scene as an actor and muse for the movies “Heaven Knows What” and “Good Time,” which launched the careers of the filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, died in November at his home in Astoria, Queens. He was 38.The death, which was disclosed only in late February, was from cardiac arrest caused by a “drug cocktail” including heroin, his brother, Christopher Stathis, said.Mr. Stathis said their mother, Jo-Anne Stathis, was seriously ill in November, so he withheld news of the death, hoping to inform her himself at an appropriate time. By early December, he said, he had told her and several other people, but nobody in Mr. Duress’s circle made an announcement. Mr. Duress had been out of the public eye and in jail frequently in recent years.At the height of his career, in the mid-2010s, directors made trips to Rikers Island to visit and audition Mr. Duress. He acted alongside Michael Cera and Robert Pattinson, and critics said he stole scenes. At the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, he strolled down the red carpet of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the main theater, to a standing ovation, then shoved his face in front of a French TV camera shouting, “What’s up, Queens?”He was ungovernable and thrill-seeking, traits that, on the set, gave his performances authenticity but that also led him to squander opportunities. Each time, though, he said he would finally change: He was ready to dedicate himself to acting.Mr. Duress around the time of the filming of “Heaven Knows What.” The movie, portraying life on the streets of New York, sparked his friendship with the filmmaker Josh Safdie.Eléonore HendricksWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Oscars Carpet Color Goes Back to Red

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      Following the surprise of last year’s champagne-hued rug, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled a bright red one on Wednesday at the Dolby Theater.After a red carpet reveal last year that upended the foundations of Hollywood’s staid tradition — it was champagne-colored — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed on Wednesday that, this year, it would be returning to the traditional red.The actress Hong Chau on the champagne-hued carpet last year. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesRihanna stops for photographs at the Oscar’s last year.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesLast year’s departure from tradition was prompted by the introduction of an orange — sorry, sienna — tent over the carpet that offered the couture-clad arrivals shelter from a forecast rainstorm, which Lisa Love, a red-carpet creative consultant for the Oscars, told The New York Times necessitated the color change to prevent a color clash.After initially considering a chocolate brown carpet, she said, they settled on the champagne color, which, next to the sienna tent, “was inspired by watching the sunset on a white-sand beach at the ‘golden hour’ with a glass of champagne in hand, evoking calm and peacefulness,” she told The Times.Ms. Love acknowledged in the interview that the 50,000-square-foot-rug, which was very much giving “Shoes-off house!” vibes, might be a challenge to keep clean.“It will probably get dirty — maybe it wasn’t the best choice,” Ms. Love said at the time. “We’ll see!” (Heavy rain indeed arrived, and online commentators also questioned the decision.)Last year’s champagne carpet — the first time in more than six decades that the academy’s arrival rug was not red — was part of a trend of colorful carpets that have swept premieres, galas and award ceremonies across the country in recent years. See the Emmys (gray) and the world premiere of “Barbie” in Los Angeles in July (pink, obviously).Red carpets have been a staple at premieres and galas since 1922, when the showman Sid Grauman rolled one out for the 1922 premiere of “Robin Hood,” which starred Douglas Fairbanks, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The Oscars adopted it beginning with the 1961 ceremony, and, ever since, the special shade — known as Academy Red — has been instantly recognizable in photos.But the attention-grabbing rugs have historically presented a challenge for stylists. Red is often not flattering, Mindi Weiss, an event planner who has worked with the Kardashians, Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres, told The Times last year.“The color of red carpets has changed because of fashion,” she said. “It has to match the dresses, and the red clashed.” More

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      Christopher Walken’s Hidden ‘Dune’ Connection

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      The actor who plays the malevolent emperor in the new film actually brought an element of the saga to life once before. Remember “Weapon of Choice”?If you turned on MTV for any length of time in 2001, you almost certainly saw Christopher Walken flying around the lobby of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an era when music videos were far more hotly discussed than they are now, it was a weird sight. Walken’s trim shock of gray hair matched his gray suit, punctuated by a red tie; he looked less like the movie star he was than some guy on a long layover.The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a weird little ditty that did make you want to dance. Having trained as a dancer in his youth — and done a great deal of tap and more in “Pennies From Heaven” (1981) — Walken was well equipped for the concept that the video’s director, Spike Jonze, had cooked up: Normal-looking man hanging out in a hotel lobby hears the song, starts dancing, then flies off a mezzanine before, eventually, returning to his seat. The video was a hit, winning several MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy.The lyrics to “Weapon of Choice” (sung by Bootsy Collins) are heavily distorted — the point isn’t the words so much as the hypnotic beat. But if you listen closely, you can pick up the line “Walk without rhythm/and it won’t attract the worm.”Yes, it’s a reference to “Dune.”In Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, giant ancient sandworms that live beneath the desert on the planet Arrakis are hugely dangerous to humans, though their power can be harnessed for travel and other purposes. They’re one of the most famous elements of the story, so instantly identifiable that they were made into a dubiously conceived popcorn bucket for the release of Denis Villeneuve’s new “Dune: Part Two.” And they’re attracted to rhythmic thumps on the surface, so the Fremen — people who live in the Arrakis desert — walk in strange, loping, arrhythmic steps to avoid accidental detection.In the video, Walken even seems to be imitating those steps:These lyrics also appear. They could mean anything, of course.Don’t be shockedby the tone of my voiceCheck out my new weaponweapon of choiceBut it certainly would make sense if it was a reference to “the voice” (or is it THE VOICE?), a powerful vocal distortion that the mystical sisterhood Bene Gesserit use to control people in “Dune.”This was all a funny reference in 2021, when the first installment in Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune” appeared in theaters. But it got much funnier in “Dune: Part Two.” In the new film, the role of Emperor Shaddam — who engineered the extinction, or so he thought, of the House Atreides, making him technically the baddest of the bad guys — is played by Walken himself.Coincidence? Maybe. Delightful? Absolutely. More

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      ‘Ricky Stanicky’ Review: Best Fiends Forever

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      In this slapdash, off-color comedy directed by Peter Farrelly, three buddies use the same imaginary friend as an excuse to get them out of binds.“Ricky Stanicky,” a sloppy shock comedy by the director Peter Farrelly (of the Oscar-winning “Green Book”), is named for an imaginary friend conjured up by three childhood pals (Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler and Andrew Santino). As kids, the lads made their fictional buddy take the fall for a Halloween prank gone wrong.Decades later, they’ve rebranded Ricky as a heroic figure who lives in Nairobi, returning to the States only when the guys want an excuse to ditch their significant others for a bros-only vacation. After one weekend trip goes awry, the longtime liars are forced to prove that Ricky exists.That’s the film’s premise. But the only person invested in it is John Cena as Rod, a broke and salacious nightclub performer hired to embody Ricky for a weekend. Playing this filthy-minded, flop-sweating boozehound, Cena barges into the plot with the get-it-while-you-can gusto of a raccoon upending a trash bin. The joke is that Rod takes his paid acting gig seriously, and he boasts a hustler’s gift for sensing what people want him to say. While the high jinks are too haphazard to give him a credible — or heck, even coherent — character arc, Cena is here and there able to seize moments to show us the fissures in his layered personas, a fragile construction of confidence, ego, vulnerability and need.Pity the script itself suffers from a hopeless identity crisis. Since “Ricky Stanicky” made its debut on the 2010 Black List of the best unproduced screenplays, the project has been circled by three other potential Rickys (James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix and Jim Carrey) and passed through too many hands. It now boasts six credited screenwriters yet feels like a jumble of ideas sticky-noted together during a single lunch break. (Kudos to whoever came up with the dig at how little the friends actually know about Nairobi.)When an investment banker (William H. Macy, whose gameness extends through the end credits) offers Ricky a job, the loosey goosey slapstick momentarily aspires to become a social mobility farce. It’s also, briefly and unconvincingly, about traumatic childhoods, stunted relationships, corporate do-gooderism and vapid local news. In a moment of astonishing chutzpah, Rod-as-Ricky also advises people to be their authentic selves.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