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      in Movies

      ‘Madame Web’ Review: Dakota Johnson Can’t Save This Spidey Spinoff

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      The actress stars as a clairvoyant in the latest entry to the Spider-Man franchise, using her charm to rise above this flat, predictable movie.The only real bummer about “Madame Web,” the latest installment in the Spider-Man chronicles, isn’t that it’s bad, but that it never achieves memorably terrible status. The story is absurd, the dialogue snort-out-loud risible, the fights uninspired. Even so, there are glimmers of wit and competency. And then there’s its star, Dakota Johnson, who has a fascinating, seemingly natural ability to appear wholly detached from the nonsense swirling around her. Most actors at least try to sell the shoddy goods; Johnson serenely floats above it all.A misterioso clairvoyant, Madame Web is a secondary Spider-Man character who met the web-weaver in the comics in 1980 while regally parked on a life-support system shaped like a round-bottom flask. Blind and plagued by a debilitating autoimmune disease, she had a standard super-type get-up — a black unitard veined with lines that converge in a web — that was offset by a white-and-black hairdo that suggested she shared a stylist with Peter Parker’s editor J. Jonah Jameson. She entered with “a smell of ozone and disinfectant and age,” the classy intro explained, and with “a voice that crackles like ancient parchment.”Johnson’s Cassandra Webb — Cassie for short — is far younger and seems more like a patchouli and cannabis kind of gal, despite the frenetic wheel skills she displays in her job as a New York paramedic. Her powers haven’t yet emerged when, after a preamble in the Peruvian Amazon, she is speeding through the city in 2003. As with many superheroes, Cassie has a tragic back story and so on, a generic burden that Johnson’s palpably awkward charm humanizes. If the actress at times seems understandably baffled by the movie she’s in, it’s because she hasn’t been smoothed into plastic perfection by the star-making machinery. Johnson seems too real for the phoniness thrown at her, which is her own super power.The British director S.J. Clarkson has multiple TV credits on her résumé, including a few episodes of the Netflix series “Jessica Jones,” about the hard boozing, fighting and fornicating superhero. Johnson’s Cassie is sadder and more naturally offbeat than Jones, and like most big-screen superheroes, Cassie doesn’t seem to be getting any noncombative action. Yet she too doesn’t fit easily in Normal World. One of the better scenes in “Madame Web” happens at a baby shower, where Cassie inadvertently wipes the smiles off the faces of a roomful of women by talking about her dead mother. It’s squirmy, funny filler: the guest of honor is Mary Parker (Emma Roberts), Spidey’s soon-to-be mom, who chats with his future uncle, Ben (Adam Scott).Clarkson shares screenwriter credit with Claire Parker as well as with the writing team of Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, whose collaborations include a string of critically maligned box-office fantasies: “Dracula Untold,” “Gods of Egypt,” “The Last Witch Hunter” and “Morbius.” (That’s entertainment!)“Madame Web” hits the prerequisite genre marks, more or less, as Cassie starts developing her second-sight skills and begins shuffling into the near future and back. One of the character’s more attractive attributes is that her powers are mental rather than physical, which seems to have flummoxed the filmmakers. The movie never coheres narratively, tonally or, really, any way; one problem is the people behind it don’t know what to do with a woman who thinks her way out of trouble.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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      in Theater

      Dating Woes? Nina Conti Has the Answer, or at Least Some Jokes

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      In “The Dating Show,” the British comedian and ventriloquist initiates close encounters of the potentially romantic kind. Laughs will definitely ensue.Meaningful, long-lasting connections can take a while to form, but when Nina Conti met her future partner-in-crime, she knew they were simpatico right away.“It was one of those moments where I felt very grounded as soon as I saw his face,” Conti, a British performer and writer, said in a video conversation. “It was the chemistry between my personality and something so cozy about him. You can put him in a handbag, no problem.”It might be worth mentioning that the face in question belongs to Monkey, the puppet that has been Conti’s main scene partner for most of her nearly 25 years as a ventriloquist.“You can actually project anything onto that face,” she said. “Wisdom is what I choose to project onto it. When I look at him, I expect him to say something wise that might get me out of a tight pinch. But it’s weird because onstage it’s kind of the opposite: He’s throwing me in the [expletive] all the time, and I’m clambering to apologize and keep up.”Creating and sustaining personal relationships seems to matter to Conti, who inherited the dummy collection of her lover and mentor, the theater maker Ken Campbell, after he died in 2008. (She explored that grief-stricken time in the 2012 documentary “Her Master’s Voice,” which also follows her to a ventriloquist convention in Kentucky.) Now, close encounters of the potentially romantic kind are at the center of “The Dating Show,” which Conti is performing at SoHo Playhouse through March 2.Monkey, however, is not her main collaborator in that piece — the audience is.“I expect him to say something wise that might get me out of a tight pinch,” Conti said of Monkey. “Onstage, it’s kind of the opposite: He’s throwing me in the [expletive] all the time, and I’m clambering to apologize and keep up.”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesWe 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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      in Movies

      ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ Review: Mostly Positive Vibes

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      This patchy biopic lauds the Marley of dormitory posters, a snapshot of a lifestyle hero who is always the coolest guy in the room.Bob Marley was an enigma, a fascinatingly flawed idealist as most interesting figures are. Born into poverty in Nine Mile, Jamaica, the young Marley had weak singing pipes but a stubborn drive to be heard. He forged himself into the voice of his island and beyond, belting reggae anthems that have become hymnals to the world’s downtrodden, as well as anyone who likes a good groove. He died in 1981 at the age of 36 before he had to witness his legacy undergo a tough cross-examination. Did Marley’s generosity to strangers balance out his dismissal of women? Did his own painful childhood pardon him for being a distant father? Did his sincere proclamations of peace and unity accomplish anything — and is it fair of us to expect that they should?Such grappling is justified, although it wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone. Reinaldo Marcus Green’s patchy and unsatisfying biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” doesn’t even try. It lauds the Marley of dormitory posters, a snapshot of a lifestyle hero who is always the coolest guy in the room. At most, the movie takes his image from flat to lenticular. If you never got to see Marley move, Kingsley Ben-Adir is a fine simulacrum.The problem is the script, credited to Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, Zach Baylin and Green. Smartly, the writers avoid the standard birth-to-grave template to focus on two years in London, where Marley, a pacifist, survived a surge in election-year violence, even when gunmen shot up his house, injuring him and three others. But the film doesn’t have much to say about his time in exile. Was Marley feeling betrayed by his country? Was he homesick? How was he handling his ascension to international superstardom? When Marley and his buddies from the Wailers (who are presented as a doting throng, not as individuals) check out the Clash, we can’t even tell if they’re having fun. (For the curious, the real Marley vibed with punk rock, saying, “Punks are outcasts from society. So are the Rastas.”)Occasionally, we see random flashbacks. The best involve Marley’s relationship with Rita, his wife and backup singer, who is played as a teen by Nia Ashi and in adulthood by a compelling Lashana Lynch, before their outside dalliances reroute their marriage into what’s portrayed onscreen as a chaste, tender loyalty. The rest are missed opportunities for insight into the man.According to personal accounts in Roger Steffen’s first-rate biography “So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley,” the singer’s mother was uncomfortable that her son was half-white and, when she remarried, made the boy sleep underneath the house apart from her new family; here, she’s merely a blurry figure cradling young Marley to her bosom.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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      in Movies

      ‘Players’ Review: Running the Rom-Com Playbook

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      Gina Rodriguez stars in a Netflix movie that recalls the charms of the genre’s heyday.“Players” is an old-fashioned romantic comedy, which means you know the end from the start. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature, a well-deployed one in this case. Practically since Shakespeare, the point of rom-coms is their predictability, and that’s what I love about them. Enemies become lovers, friends become lovers, or we all learn a valuable lesson. Those are the options.The distinctions lie in the specifics, and rom-coms succeed on how memorable those specifics are: enduring a weird Welsh roommate, faking a climax in Katz’s, skewering terrible Christmas sweaters, falling in love over the radio, leading your colleagues in “Thriller” at a work function, enjoying the dulcet strains of AOL’s dial-up tone. I’m showing my age with these references, but you get the idea — the reason we love the great rom-coms are the peculiarities of everyday life that they surface, the minor characters and strange inconveniences that make the characters feel, if not quite relatable, at least like a fantasy version of the lives we are already leading. Which means, of course, that we could find love too.“Players,” directed by Trish Sie and written by Whit Anderson, does not quite rise to the level of memorable specifics; I experienced déjà vu more than once while watching it. Most of its characters are journalists, a time-tested rom-com career that, in the universe of these movies, seems largely decoupled from what it’s actually like to work for a newspaper, or magazine, or website. (Look, I would know.)But if it’s both familiar and a little forgettable, “Players” is fun to watch. Our heroine is Mack (Gina Rodriguez), short for Mackenzie, a sports reporter who works for what appears to be a New York alt-weekly that still has the budget to cover bizarre local sports such as “chess boxing.” She is the consummate cool girl: 33 years old, both a total hottie and a total tomboy, unable to do things like make a real meal or read a book. She spends her nights at the bar and knows way more about sports than her friends, all guys: Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.), who writes about local politics; Brannagan (Augustus Pew), an obit writer; and Brannagan’s little brother (Joel Courtney), whom everyone calls Little. The foursome have an elaborate unwritten set of plays that they run to help one another pick up people at the bar. Hence the title.Mack and Adam dated in college, but they’re just friends now. Mack has set her sights on Nick (Tom Ellis), a Pulitzer finalist war correspondent whom she soon realizes is a real grown-up. Maybe she’s ready to settle down? Ever the helpful companions, the group suits up to help her land her man — but the course of true love, et cetera, et cetera.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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      Jeffrey Wright on ‘American Fiction’

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      A couple of years ago, Jeffrey Wright got an email from the screenwriter Cord Jefferson, who was preparing to direct his first film. Jefferson wanted Wright — a cerebral actor known for his commanding, indelible presence even in supporting roles — to star in “American Fiction,” his adaptation of Percival Everett’s mordant 2001 novel, “Erasure.”“In the letter, Cord described how immediate and personal he found ‘Erasure’ to be,” Wright recalled recently. “And he said that he had begun to hear my voice in his head as he read the book. And then he said, ‘I have no Plan B.’”Wright, who is 58, took the job. His exquisitely calibrated performance as the irascible novelist Thelonious Ellison, known as Monk, recently earned him his first Oscar nomination. It is a recognition, among other things, of his ability to elevate any movie or TV show simply by appearing in it. He has a way of burrowing so deeply into his characters that he seems almost to be hiding in plain sight.From the bracing opening scene of “American Fiction,” in which a slur appears on a blackboard as part of the title of a Flannery O’Connor short story Monk is teaching to a class of college students, the film wades into thorny issues of race, authenticity and what white audiences demand from Black artists — and has great satirical fun doing it.“It’s a conversation that’s at the center of the national dialogue right now, but we lack a fluency in how we discuss race — gasp! — and history and language and context and identity,” Wright said. He was being interviewed at the Four Seasons in Manhattan before flying to Britain to receive the London Film Critics’ Circle’s top award.While (obviously) the film doesn’t solve the problems it identifies, he said, at least it’s willing to engage with them.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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      ‘Upgraded’ Review: Faking It That She’s Made It

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      Camila Mendes plays a broke assistant posing as an art world bigwig in this slyly charming romantic comedy.Good artists copy; great artists steal. I coined that — OK, Picasso supposedly did. But the maxim may as well be stamped across the forehead of Ana Santos (Camila Mendes), a broke, harried auction house assistant who, after scoring a major work trip to London, falls into posing as an art world V.I.P.In “Upgraded,” a sly charmer on Amazon Prime Video, not only is Ana dealt the lucky break to London, but she also obtains a flight upgrade to first class, where her seat happens to be next to Will (Archie Renaux), the unassuming heir to a fine art fortune. Mistaking her for an art scene notable, the British flirt welcomes Ana into the fold, setting in motion an impostor comedy stacked with ritzy outings, make-out montages and close calls with Ana’s persnickety boss (Marisa Tomei).Directed by Carlson Young, “Upgraded” also takes a page from the Picasso handbook, borrowing liberally from “The Devil Wears Prada” and other stories of industrious underlings faking it to make it. Indeed, one senses that Mendes, a chic and effortless leading lady, would have made for a much more palatable Emily in Paris.The movie is unevenly directed, and some scenes struggle to clear even the low bar set by more polished streaming originals. But Young succeeds nonetheless in channeling the freshman thrill of plunging into an alluring adult milieu. Its class-conscious foundations ensure that “Upgraded” never veers into lifestyle porn, but many of its fairy-tale pleasures hinge on vicarious consumption — much like the art world.UpgradedRated R for language in its blue period. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      Book Review: ‘What Have We Here?,’ by Billy Dee Williams

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      His charming memoir “What Have We Here?” traces the path from a Harlem childhood to “Star Wars,” while lamenting the roles that never came his way.WHAT HAVE WE HERE? Portraits of a Life, by Billy Dee WilliamsMy first awareness of Billy Dee Williams was the stuff of hushed beauty parlor conversation I was too young to appreciate. “After all these years he’s still fine,” elders whispered in my periphery as they flipped through an interview in an Ebony magazine that was treated as an heirloom. His piercing gaze leaped out across time. “That’s our Billy!” another giggled.As he tells it in “What Have We Here?,” his effortlessly charming new memoir, the actor’s only ambition was to be everyone’s Billy — a star to cross color lines. Modeling his life on visions of old Hollywood glamour, he wanted to be heralded not just by Black women fantasizing about their chance to be with him, but by teens, men, children, and people of all colors and circumstances.Playing Lando Calrissian in the “Star Wars” trilogy — the debonair, cape-wearing and bravado-filled hero of interstellar proportions — eventually granted Williams his wish, catapulting him into the public stratosphere. “He wasn’t written Black or white,” Williams points out. “He was beyond that. Bigger than that. … He was a star.”Williams was born in 1937 at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance, the artistic and cultural movement of the 1920s and ’30s when Black possibility bloomed. Nina Mae McKinney, believed to be the first Black actress with a Hollywood contract, and Hulan Jack, Manhattan’s first Black borough president, lived on his block on West 110th Street.He and his twin sister, nicknamed Lady, were welcomed into a world stitched together with love he would spend his life emulating. Their grandmother Annette Lewis Bodkin, the “Queen Dowager” of the home, laid down the rule of law. Loretta Bodkin, their mother, was a trained opera singer and friend of Lena Horne who dreamed of fame and toiled to ensure her children could do what she was unable to. Their father, William December Williams, was a laborer who worked long hours to support his family — and helped his son develop a sense of style.“He taught me how to put a hat on,” Williams writes, “using two fingers and a thumb, grasping the brim in a way that prevented my fingerprints from smearing the crown.”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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      in Movies

      Oscar Nominees Luncheon 2024: Best Looks and the ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Dog

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      At the annual Oscar nominees luncheon, there is always a top dog that even a ballroom full of A-listers will clamor to meet. Last year, that honor went to the “Top Gun: Maverick” producer Tom Cruise, a star so huge that the other nominees began to orbit him, biding time until they could dart in to kiss the ring.The luncheon held Monday afternoon at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., initially seemed to lack that supernova presence, even though there were plenty of famous names including Robert Downey Jr., Emma Stone and Martin Scorsese. Still, they’ve all grown too used to each other to engage in much genuflection: When you treat an awards campaign like a full-time job, the other contenders might as well be your co-workers.From left, Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos and Margot Robbie at the nominees luncheon on Monday in Beverly Hills.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesSterling K. Brown (“American Fiction”), left, with the producer Nicky Bentham and the director Misan Harriman of the nominated live-action short “The After.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesMartin Scorsese, whose best director nomination for “Killers of the Flower Moon” is his 10th, the most for a living director.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWas there anyone who could jump-start this starry but sleepy scene? I didn’t think so, until I saw supporting actress nominee America Ferrera turn to her left, look down and gasp.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