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      What’s on TV This Week: The Weeknd in Concert and ‘Praise Petey’

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      HBO airs the concert filmed in Los Angeles and the animated Freeform show wraps up its first season.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Aug. 14-20. Details and times are subject to change.MondayLaurence Olivier and Greer Garson in “Pride and Prejudice.”Everett CollectionPRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1940) 4 p.m. on TCM. Before we were introduced to Colin Firth or Matthew Macfadyen as the moody but endlessly charming Mr. Darcy, there was Laurence Olivier in the role. The story, based on the novel by Jane Austen, follows the Bennet family, who are excited by the prospect of two wealthy and eligible bachelors coming to town. Upon meeting, Elizabeth Bennet (Greer Garson) and Mr. Darcy fall into one of the most memorable enemies-to-lovers arcs of all time.TuesdayTHE LOVE EXPERIMENT 10 p.m. on MTV. If the many dating reality shows that already exist (see: “Love Island,” “Love is Blind,” “The Ultimatum,” “Are You the One?” “Bachelor in Paradise”) don’t tickle your fancy, MTV has a new one. This show is as if you were in a dating app and all the men are actually ready for relationships: the three best friends Marcia, Paige, and Tamara (who are in their 20s and 30s) are put inside a “dating utopia” where they go on dates, test compatibility and do some challenges to try to find their lifelong partners.WednesdayGORDON RAMSAY’S FOOD STARS 9 p.m. on Fox. On this show you can’t just be good at cooking — you also have to be an entrepreneur in the making. As this season wraps up, the three final contestants compete for Gordon Ramsay to make a personal $250,000 investment. Who knows, the person who wins this season could also have six restaurants in Las Vegas, just like Ramsay himself.TEMPTATION ISLAND: SECRETS REVEALED 9 p.m. on USA. Just like “Love Island” has its unseen bits episode or how “Big Brother” lets you watch livestreams inside of the house even when episodes aren’t airing, “Temptation Island” is releasing their own version of that. The finale of the fifth season will air later in August, but before that happens, they are showing bloopers and some interesting moments that happened between couples that were left out of the final edit of the show.Saycon Sengbloh in “The Wonder Years.”ABC/Matt MillerTHE WONDER YEARS 9:30 p.m. on ABC. This remake of the 1980s sitcom about a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, Ala., is wrapping up its second season this week. In the hour long finale, there is a birthday celebration, a trip to Florida and some classic family squabbles.ThursdayTHE WEEKND: LIVE AT SOFI STADIUM (2023) 8 p.m. on HBO. On Netflix you can throw on Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” tour. On Disney+, you can watch the BTS “Permission to Dance” concert. And now, The Weeknd has joined the ranks of many artists to come before him who have released televised versions of their concerts. Filmed in Los Angeles in November 2022, his set includes a pretty intense light show and performances of some of his most famous songs.FridayA still from “Praise Petey.”FreeformPRAISE PETEY 10 p.m. on Freeform. This show could be “Schitt’s Creek” in an alternate, cartoon universe. In this show, Petey learns that she has inherited a small town from her dead father, but it turns out he is still alive and running a cult in the town. The kicker is that both shows star Annie Murphy. The cartoon is wrapping up its first season and has not yet been renewed for a second.Saturday50 FIRST DATES (2004) 6:30 p.m. on TBS. Set in Hawaii, this movie follows Henry (Adam Sandler), a marine veterinarian, as he tries to woo Lucy (Drew Barrymore) every day. The problem? Lucy has short-term memory loss and relives every day over and over, which obviously makes it hard for Henry who has to reintroduce himself to her every single day. The movie is a comedy but a Psychology Today article points out that it is a pretty realistic interpretation of a condition called “anterograde amnesia.”HER NAME WAS GRACE KELLY 7 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Grace Kelly captured the attention of the world as she lived what seemed to be a real life fairy tale: After starring in popular films, she married Prince Rainier III and became the Princess of Monaco. A car accident in 1982 took her life, but she has remained in the public’s imagination ever since. This documentary features archival footage and home videos of Kelly, with tapes going back to three years old.BRIDESMAIDS (2011) 8 p.m. on Bravo. “I’m ready to party with the best of them” is what Annie (Kristen Wiig) says after she takes an Ambien and a glass of whiskey on the plane ride to the bachelorette party of her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), before wreaking absolute havoc on the flight. (I say the same thing every time I watch this movie.) The story follows Annie as she reaches emotional rock bottom, all while trying to support her childhood best friend during her pre-wedding festivities. The plot almost takes a back seat to the amazing chemistry between Wiig and Rudolph.SundayFROZEN MARATHON 4:35 p.m. on Freeform. As we settle into the mid-August heat, I wouldn’t hate a trip to Arendelle. If you want to be transported to Elsa’s frozen land full of amazingly catchy songs, sisterly drama and, more important, sisterly love, you can catch both FROZEN (2013) and FROZEN II (2019) back to back on Freeform. More

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      Action Movies to Stream Now: ‘Call Her King,’ ‘Supercell’ and More

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      From films with swift swordplay to those with mega-tornadoes, this month’s action picks go big.‘Call Her King’Stream it on BET+.Though Jaeda King (Naturi Naughton) practices martial arts, she isn’t your prototypical hero. The married mother is a judge, and she’s presiding over the biggest case of her career. Despite his pleas of innocence, Sean Samuels (Jason Mitchell) has already been convicted of murder and his sentencing is imminent. However, Sean’s brother, Gabriel (Lance Gross), isn’t waiting for the outcome. Armed with a fleet of gunmen, Gabriel, a.k.a. Black Caesar, storms the courthouse to spring Sean. And Jaeda — let’s call her King — uses more than her gavel to fight back.King winds through the baddies with the prowess of Foxy Brown and the confidence of Shaft. But the director Wes Miller’s film is also an origin story of sorts. King’s fight isn’t only with Black Caesar and his crew, but also with the broken justice system itself, and the way it both targets Black people and pits them against one another. Along the way, the nimble Naughton announces herself as a bona fide action star.‘Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman’Stream it on Hi-Yah!Dreamlike and visually expressive, this film by the Chinese writer-director Yang Bingjia takes delight in exploring the formula associated with swordplay movies. It has the cool mythological man of few words: in this case, Blind Cheng (Xie Miao), a visually impaired bounty hunter. It has the innocent maiden: Ni Yan (Gao Weiman), a wine merchant in need of saving from the big bad, He Qufeng (Ben Liu). And just for added flavor, Lady Qin (Zhang Di), Blind Cheng’s unrequited love, acts as femme fatale.“Eye for an Eye” would be entertaining even if it only relied on those tropes. But its delectable kills elevate it even higher. Take the torture scene where Blind Cheng plies a goon for answers not by beating him, but by tying the villain’s every limb to an elaborate array of sharpened liuqin strings. Another character endures the punishment of having arrows slowly pulled from her body. The culminating face-off between Blind Cheng and He Qufeng, a scene bathed in ethereal lighting — blinding white snow amid a pitch-black setting — gives this gore-and-guts film a rare, spellbindingly poetic quality.‘Fighting Olympus’Stream it on Tubi.At first, the writer-director Julian Hampton’s film seems like a simple cop drama. Adhering to his wife’s wishes, the SWAT officer Charles Biddle (Devinair Mathis) retires to a seemingly safe line of work as a cameraman for a dogged investigative reporter. Their assignment turns deadly, however, when men in silver masks appear, leaving Biddle’s fate in the balance. Rucker (Leslie A. Jones), Biddle’s grief-stricken best friend, searches for answers. While the title might be a tiny giveaway, it’ll still be difficult to guess where “Fighting Olympus” goes next.Similar to the Boots Riley film “Sorry to Bother You,” Hampton opts for an ingenious premise to critique white supremacy. This one involves a descent into hell, as well as encounters with dangerous gods and misunderstood demigods alike. Hampton works around the film’s low budget by creating compelling characters. Medusa (Haley Jackson), for instance, is a Black woman. The white Athena stole her child, and then rewrote history to portray Medusa’s Black hair as deadly and ugly. With Medusa’s help, Rucker fights off mask-wearing, gold-sniffing henchmen in a series of obstacles that make “Fighting Olympus” one of the year’s most original action flicks.‘Night of the Assassin’Stream it on Hi-Yah!Yi Nan (Shin Hyun-joon) was once Korea’s deadliest assassin. But heart problems ended his career, making him vulnerable to an unnamed spirit who wants him dead. Hunted and rendered a lonely pauper traveling the countryside in search of a mythical plant rumored to cure such ailments, he stumbles upon bandits attacking Seon Hong (Kim Min Kyung), a widowed tavern owner. He helps the woman; in return she offers him a job as a server. His peace in this quaint village is short-lived after he murders bandits who work for Yi Bang (Lee Moon-sik), an opium dealer, gang leader, government official, and all-around slimy guy.In the writer-director Kwak Jeong-deok’s film, punchy comedy via harsh zooms gives way to kinetic fights as Yi Nan works to protect Seon Hong and her young son from terror. Kwak adds new flavors to swordplay scenes by mounting a camera on Shin for point-of-view shots. The result, particularly in the final battle, which features Yi Nan against so many men his heart might explode, is a ferocious whiplash of splayed, bloody bodies.‘Supercell’Stream it on Hulu.From a nostalgic score with hints of a John Williams influence to the soft, kind lighting, “Supercell,” the director Herbert James Winterstern’s preposterous disaster flick, is in conversation with films from the 1990s like “Twister” and “Jurassic Park.” Using a journal that belonged to his deceased storm-chasing father, the teenage William (Daniel Diemer) leaves his mother (Anne Heche) for West Texas to find his Uncle Roy (Skeet Ulrich). Once reunited with his uncle, William hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps by building a radio capable of detecting storms (an unrealized invention previously taken up by his dad).In the deep ensemble, Jordan Kristine Seamón plays William’s girlfriend Harper, while Alec Baldwin portrays the head of a tourist company who takes storm enthusiasts as close to danger as possible. Rather than living a dream, William finds his disgraced Uncle Roy reduced to the nightmare of driving for Baldwin’s outfit. This big, dumb disaster flick not only features mega-tornadoes as the background to William’s coming-of-age, but it also ends on one of the funniest deaths ever in a film that manages to balance family ache with a wide adventurous canvas. More

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      How ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Reimagined a BookTok Sensation

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      The filmmakers didn’t want to disappoint fans of Casey McQuiston’s novel about the romance between a U.S. president’s son and a British prince.On most Fridays, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London closes at 10 p.m. sharp. But one night last summer, after all of the tourists had spilled back onto the streets of South Kensington, two men slow-danced among the Berninis and Rodins until the sun rose the next morning. A cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by the indie-pop singer Perfume Genius echoed through the sculpture hall, soundtracking their tender moment.The nocturnal scene was a scripted one from “Red, White & Royal Blue,” the film adaptation of the 2019 novel by Casey McQuiston. The two men under the dimmed lights were the actors Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, and they swayed until the director, Matthew López, called “Cut!” around 2 a.m. for a lunch break.“It was just the three of us and our crew,” said López, who’s also the film’s co-writer. “It made for an incredibly intimate, really special night.”The romantic comedy follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, the bisexual son of the first female U.S. president (played by Uma Thurman, with a thick Southern drawl), and Prince Henry, the younger brother of the heir to the British throne who has known since birth that he’s “gay as a maypole.” What starts as a simmering rivalry between the impulsive American (Zakhar Perez) and the buttoned-up Brit (Galitzine) soon develops into a clandestine relationship. Neither is publicly out, and their secret love complicates things, especially for Henry.Amazon Studios and Berlanti Productions secured the film rights to McQuiston’s novel at auction ahead of its May 2019 release, and the book has since spent more than 20 weeks as a New York Times best seller.But best-seller lists don’t fully convey the adoration that “Red, White & Royal Blue” has garnered on BookTok — the literature-loving corner of TikTok — where fans have shared their obsession with the escapist love story en masse, and videos tagged #redwhiteandroyalblue have received more than 500 million views.Jacob Demlow, who frequently posts about “Red, White & Royal Blue” on his “A Very Queer Book Club” account, said he flung his copy across the room in delight when he first encountered it.“I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was all these amazing tropes that romance lovers have loved forever, but there was a couple in it who looked like a couple I would be in,” said Demlow, who estimated that he’d read the novel at least a dozen times. “I grew up watching movies about the girl falling in love with the prince, but I’d never seen that through a queer lens before. It was kind of earth-shattering in ways I still don’t fully know if I can comprehend.”The film, premiering on Prime Video on Friday, hopes to recreate that excitement onscreen, and represents the directorial debut of López, a Tony-winning playwright known for penning “The Inheritance,” as well as writing (with Amber Ruffin) the musical adaptation “Some Like It Hot.” López was working on those projects in 2020 when his agent first floated the idea of turning “Red, White & Royal Blue” into a stage musical.“I read it and said, ‘Yeah, sure, maybe. But let’s talk about the movie,’” López recalled. “I knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50.”The director Matthew López, at right, working with his stars on set. “I knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50,” he said.Rob Youngson/AmazonAfter pleading his case to the producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, López signed on to direct and did a second pass on an original script by Ted Malawer. He cast two lead actors who had cut their teeth on Netflix romances: Zakhar Perez, 31, who starred as Marco in “The Kissing Booth” sequels; and Galitzine, 28, who appeared in the streamer’s military romance “Purple Hearts.” Galitzine also played the prince in Amazon’s Camila Cabello-led “Cinderella.”For both Zakhar Perez and the director, the character Alex’s biracial identity was particularly meaningful. López grew up in Panama City, Fla., with his Puerto Rican father and Polish Russian mother, while Zakhar Perez is of Mexican, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent and was raised in northwest Indiana, where he said there was only one other Mexican family.“Matthew and I talked a lot about the mestizo journey,” Zakhar Perez said in a video call before SAG-AFTRA, the actor’s union, went on strike. “Being part Mexican, part lots of other things, I don’t want to say you’re forgotten, but in today’s world, it’s like, you’re either this or you’re that. There’s nothing in between. I’m kind of a cultural chameleon.”“As a young Latiné queer man, I never read something that centered someone like Alex,” López said, echoing his star. “If I had been presented with this character when I was in my late teens, early 20s, it may have changed how I thought about myself.”During the audition process, Zakhar Perez and Galitzine did their chemistry reads via video and did not meet in person until rehearsals began in London. But the nature of the script meant they would need to quickly become comfortable shooting a variety of passionate scenes, which were overseen by the intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt.“Nick and I trusted each other quite quickly,” Zakhar Perez said of Galitzine. “We had to build a sexual tension from dislike to like to love, and we wanted to show that journey through the choreographed, intimate moments.”“I was never going to entirely fulfill the image of this book that the millions of people who love it individually have in their heads,” López said.Jonathan Prime/AmazonIn the book, McQuiston described Alex and Henry’s amorous bedroom — and tack room and hotel room — scenes in great detail, and López said he “never, ever shied away from the sexuality” onscreen.“At times, it’s extremely hungry and at times, it’s really tender,” Galitzine said in a separate prestrike call. “Matthew was always adamant that he wanted to portray gay sex in an accurate way, which he felt maybe hadn’t been the case in other L.G.B.T.Q.+ movies.”While the only lingering sex scene is a carefully cropped, emotional moment, and the only nudity is the flash of a naked buttocks, “Red, White & Royal Blue” received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association.López was surprised: “If we had put six bullets into the prince, we probably would have still gotten PG-13,” he said, and added, “If it had been a man and a woman, I question whether or not it would have gotten an R rating.”(The filmmaker Ira Sachs recently expressed similar confusion over the NC-17 rating for his new film “Passages,” which also features gay sex. The M.P.A. said in a statement to The Associated Press, “The sexual orientation of a character or characters is not considered as part of the rating process.”)In the weeks leading up to the movie’s release, anticipation continued to build among fans, coupled with fears that it might not capture the magic of the book. Some worried about the casting choices, the elimination of several supporting characters or the switch from a fictional queen of England to a fictional king, played in a single scene by Stephen Fry.“I was never going to entirely fulfill the image of this book that the millions of people who love it individually have in their heads,” López said. “I knew from the beginning,” he also emphasized, “that this movie would succeed or fail based in part on the fans’ belief that one of them has made this film. I am one of them.”Broader critiques take issue with the premise of the story itself and the fact that it’s yet another queer romance that involves the distress of coming out. But Demlow of A Very Queer Book Club sees it differently.“There are so many coming-out stories that need to be heard, and we also need more stories that aren’t coming-out stories,” he said. “It’s not that we need less of something. It’s that we need more of everything.” More

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      ‘Heart of Stone’ Review: Mission Improbable

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      Gal Gadot plays an international superspy who teams up with an all-powerful computer in this ludicrous and derivative Netflix espionage thriller.In the early going, “Heart of Stone” seems like a pretty routine action thriller about spies. Gal Gadot stars as Rachel Stone, a rookie hacker for an MI6 unit; when we meet her in the movie’s opening sequence, she’s in the middle of a covert mission to ensnare an arms dealer in the Italian Alps, ferrying her elite squad of operatives past high-tech security systems, mainly by tapping away at a computer, looking very serious and saying stuff like “writing a new access code … the system’s offline!”As tradecraft goes, this is not exactly John le Carré. But soon the bland espionage intrigue gains a surprising wrinkle: It transpires that Stone is a double agent working for another, even more secret intelligence agency, known as the Charter, which controls an all-powerful computer called the Heart. A kind of omniscient algorithm described at one point as “the closest thing mankind has to perfect intelligence,” the Heart has access to “trillions of data points” that effectively allow it to predict the future. Wired into the Charter headquarters via earpiece, Stone receives prophetic guidance from the Heart’s tech guru (Matthias Schweighöfer) to be transformed into an all-seeing superhero.The Heart’s on-the-fly analyses are rendered as big floating digital maps clogged with barely legible graphs and statistics, and Schweighöfer, scrutinizing the data, is forced to spend much of his screen time standing there waving his hands around in a vain effort to look like he’s actually controlling something. (Steven Spielberg made this same sort of thing look cool in “Minority Report,” but the “Heart of Stone” director Tom Harper does not have quite the same touch.) And yet, even if the computer shenanigans look goofy, they’re more interesting than the movie’s run-of-the-mill spy thrills. Bewilderingly, Rachel’s access to the Heart is severed early in the film’s second act — dragging us right back to the mundane cloak-and-dagger stuff.Computerless, Rachel gets her hands dirty through car chases, fist fights and more to regain control of the Heart’s predictive powers. Here, the movie’s influence shifts from “Minority Report” to a franchise also starring Tom Cruise: “Mission: Impossible,” from which “Heart of Stone” steals multiple set pieces in their entirety. A motorcycle chase strikingly similar to the exquisite one from “Rogue Nation” looks flat and pedestrian by comparison, with dull staging and a corny gag; its knockoff “Fallout” HALO jump, however, is shameless plagiarism, made all the more insulting by appearing so ludicrously fake. Cruise jumped out of an actual airplane. Gadot free falls through bad C.G.I.Cruise’s adversary in the latest “Mission: Impossible” is an omnipotent algorithm with the power to destroy humanity — a metaphor for the data-driven forces of the streaming landscape eroding the sanctity of the cinema. What does it say that in “Heart of Stone,” from Netflix, the heroes work for the computer, and the powerful algorithm is represented as a force for good? If Cruise is trying to save the movies, as he’s often credited with doing, he’s trying to save us from films like this.Heart of StoneRated PG-13 for intense action, strong language and some graphic violence. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Striking Writers and Studios Agree to Restart Negotiations

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      The two sides in the Hollywood stalemate will formally meet on Friday, after an informal sidebar session last week.As television and movie writers started their 101st day on strike on Thursday, the leaders of their union said they had agreed to formally restart negotiations with studios for a new three-year contract.“Our committee returns to the bargaining table ready to make a fair deal, knowing the unified W.G.A. membership stands behind us and buoyed by the ongoing support of our union allies,” the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee said in a statement. The session will take place in Los Angeles on Friday.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of entertainment companies, declined to comment. Carol Lombardini, the alliance’s president, contacted the Writers Guild on Wednesday with a request to return to formal negotiations. Her appeal followed an informal sidebar session between the two sides late last week.After that meeting, the Writers Guild sent a note to its 11,500 members saying Ms. Lombardi had indicated a willingness by studios to sweeten their contract offer in some areas, including finding ways to safeguard writers from artificial intelligence technology. The note added, however, that Ms. Lombardini had said studios “were not willing to engage” on other Writers Guild proposals, including success-based residual payments from streaming services. The note said guild leaders would not return to negotiations until studios were willing to engage on all proposals.The announcement of a return to the bargaining table was the first positive development in a dual labor walkout — tens of thousands of actors went on strike in mid-July — that has brought Hollywood production to a halt. Late-night television shows immediately went dark, and broadcast networks have retooled their fall seasons to include mostly reality series.Last week’s session, which lasted about an hour, was the first time the lead negotiators from each side had sat down in person since May 1, when talks collapsed. Both sides had characterized it as a meeting to determine whether it made sense to restart talks. With a strike starting to hurt companies and writers alike, was there a give-and-take to be had? Pressure has been increasing from multiple directions to reach an agreement.“It is critical that this gets resolved immediately so that Los Angeles gets back on track, and I stand ready to personally engage with all the stakeholders in any way possible to help get this done,” Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, said in a statement last Friday.Screenwriters and actors are worried about not receiving a fair share of the spoils of a streaming-dominated future. They say streaming-era business practices have made their profession an unsustainable one.Many streaming shows have eight to 12 episodes per season, compared with more than 20 made for traditional television. Writers are fighting for better residual pay, a type of royalty for reruns and other showings, which they have said is a crucial source of income for the middle-class writer whose compensation has been upended by streaming.The Writers Guild also wants studios to guarantee that artificial intelligence will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation. The studios rejected the guild’s proposed guardrails, instead suggesting an annual meeting on advances in technology. (In recent weeks, studio executives have said in interviews that they made a mistake by not taking the union’s A.I. concerns more seriously.)The studios defended their offer after negotiations broke down, saying in a statement that it included “generous increases in compensation for writers.” The primary sticking points, studios have said, are union proposals that would require studios to staff TV shows with a certain number of writers for a specified period, “whether needed or not.”Caught in the crossfire of the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ guild is known, are tens of thousands of crew members and small businesses (dry cleaners, caterers, lumber yards) that support movie and television production. The 2007-8 writers’ strike cost the California economy more than $2 billion, according to the Milken Institute, which recently estimated that losses this time could be double that figure. More

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      ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ Review: Blood on the Water

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      This horror movie, based on a chapter from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” is set on a cargo ship unwittingly transporting an evil demon.Horror heads are accustomed to screeching at the screen, “Don’t go in the basement!” In “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” I found myself inclined toward the reverse exclamation: “Just go below deck and kill him already!”Based on a chapter in Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula,” this squally scary movie is set on a London-bound merchant ship doomed to a bloody routine. Days are safe, but sundown brings the terrorizing thirst of the vessel’s vampire stowaway, who emerges in darkness to bite a few necks before retiring to his makeshift cargo coffin.The regularity of Dracula’s circadian timetable raises the question: Why doesn’t the crew just attack around noon? It could have saved the movie’s beneficent hero, Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a boatload of trouble.The movie begins as Clemens, a British doctor, appeals to Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) to join the Demeter’s company. The only educated man onboard, Clemens nonetheless proves an able deckhand, winning the favor of both the salty first mate, Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), and the captain’s wide-eyed grandson, Toby (Woody Norman).But “The Last Voyage,” directed by André Ovredal, doesn’t waste time on characterizations. Before long, bad omens and creaky floorboards give way to repetitive, swollen set pieces as Dracula picks off the shipmates one by one. The script does find time for a feeble feminist gesture — the story’s sole woman can cock a rifle — and a monologue about racism. These efforts to update the tale are about as successful as those of the sorry crew, whose fates were written over a century ago.The Last Voyage of the DemeterRated R for fighting and biting. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Love Life’ Review: Encounters in Grief

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      In this Japanese drama from Koji Fukada, the death of a child alters life for a couple and for the boy’s previously absent father.The Japanese writer-director Koji Fukada made his international mark with “Harmonium” (2017). Like that film, “Love Life,” his latest feature, concerns a family shaken up both by an interloper’s arrival and by a sudden tragedy, this time in the reverse order.Taeko (Fumino Kimura) is raising a 6-year-old son, an Othello board game prodigy named Keita (Tetta Shimada), with her husband, Jiro (Kento Nagayama). The arrangement wasn’t Jiro’s original plan: He had been preparing to marry a colleague, but he cheated on her with Taeko and ended up marrying Taeko instead. Taeko was already a mother to Keita, whose father abandoned them. Now Jiro’s parents, especially his dad, scorn Taeko and Keita as not theirs.Then — in a development that occurs around 20 minutes in, necessitating a spoiler warning — Keita dies while sustaining a concussion in a bathtub accident, after wandering off during a party. (Fukada, who elsewhere favors a placid, unobtrusive visual style, plays the drowning for suspense with an exceptionally cruel slow zoom.)The death lures back Keita’s absent father, Park (Atom Sunada), a South Korean man who is also deaf, and who, crashing the funeral, immediately hits Taeko before slapping himself. The recriminations, and efforts to downplay recriminations, begin. Taeko can’t forgive Park for leaving, but she also believes he needs her help. Jiro feels guilty for his relative lack of guilt.It’s more a grief triangle than a love triangle, and a late revelation alters its symmetry, erasing hard-won sympathy for one character. Part of Fukada’s rationale may be that straightforward catharsis would be too easy. But his drama is facile in other ways, particularly in its use of child endangerment as a device.Love LifeNot rated. In Japanese, Korean and Korean sign language, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters. More