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      ‘The Friend’ Review: The Writer vs. the Great Dane

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      Naomi Watts plays a writer in mourning who is given a formidable gift from a friend in this adaptation of the Sigrid Nunez novel.Across the compact space of a rent-controlled Manhattan apartment, a frazzled writer and a dog the size of a small pony exchange pleading looks. It’s a classic odd-couple setup, and you might call the central duo in “The Friend” unlikely roommates. But, more to the point, they’re two grieving souls, brought together by the death of a man who was a pivotal figure in both their lives.As the writer, Iris, Naomi Watts is an engaging fusion of intellectual acuity and emotional translucence. The role of Apollo goes to a magnificent fellow named Bing, a harlequin Great Dane with one brown eye, one blue, and an exceptionally expressive pair of eyebrows. Left to Iris by her friend and mentor Walter, a literary lion and a bit of a cad played with a mournful gaze by Bill Murray in a few well-deployed flashbacks — or perhaps merely hoisted upon her by Walter’s dog-averse widow (Noma Dumezweni) — Apollo is no magical creature, no cuddly cure for writer’s block. He’s a full-fledged character, and a mysterious one at that.At first the screen adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s exquisite novel of the same name, a quiet miracle woven of wry glances at New York literati and a piercing ache, feels too smooth, too glossy. But if Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the writer-directors, can’t match the novel’s sharp first-person narration, they find the sweet spot between sardonic and openhearted as Iris and Apollo get to know each other, and as she sorts out the complexities of her friendship with Walter. Theirs was a bond that inspires a bit of envy on the part of his widow and former wives (a sympathetic Carla Gugino and Constance Wu, in hissable frenemy mode).Refreshingly, Iris’s single status is not viewed as a problem to be solved. The problem is whether she should keep Apollo, and given his size, it’s a situation that announces itself to the world, sparking the warnings of her building’s superintendent (Felix Solis), the concerns of a neighbor (Ann Dowd) and snarky cracks from strangers.McGehee and Siegel (“Montana Story”) juice this smart, affecting feature with sly nods to big-screen New York romances. This is a love story, after all, and one with a keen grasp of the mournful, curious glances between its two leads — of how much goes untranslated between them, and how much is conveyed.The FriendRated R for sexual references and doggie genitalia. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Death of a Unicorn’ Review: Into the Woods (Chomp, Chomp)

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      Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega play a father and daughter who run down a mystical beast and end up running amok with a monstrous brood.There’s no real spoiling “Death of a Unicorn,” an unabashedly nonsensical movie that doesn’t take anything too seriously, itself included. There are misty-eyed parent-child moments, digs at the wealthy, nods at the environment. Mostly, though, the whole thing is a wall-to-wall goof, despite the grandeur of its mystical attraction, whose traditional rangelands have included the King James Bible, illuminated manuscripts, medieval tapestries, fantasy literature, pop culture, children’s playrooms and Ridley Scott films (well, two: “Blade Runner” and “Legend”). Here, it nearly ends up as roadkill on a remote Canadian highway.The guy behind the wheel, Elliot (Paul Rudd), is busy yammering and trying to placate his demonstrably unhappy daughter, ahem, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), when he hits something big with his rental car, causing it to spin out. Elliot is en route to his boss’s remote family compound to deal with some pressing business that he hopes will insure his and his daughter’s future. They’re clearly loving but also clouded with grief from the death of Ridley’s mother, a tragedy that informs Elliot’s determined careerism and Ridley’s melancholy, both of which flicker on and off throughout the movie, amid jokes and pratfalls, scheming and dealing, firing guns and rampaging monsters, some with two legs and others with four.What happens next is a high-concept, middlebrow, low-stakes comedy about the haves and the (kind of) have-nots that’s effectively an elevator pitch — be afraid of unicorns, be very afraid — stretched to feature length. The setup is a mush of old standbys (the comedy of rich fools, the horror of other people) spiced up with myth, headline news and cinematic allusions. The writer-director Alex Scharfman has, for one, borrowed visual and thematic ideas from the unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters, the medieval branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he’s clearly watched nerve-shredders like “Alien.” As he’s noted in interviews, he has also drawn inspiration from the Sackler family, the longtime owners of Purdue Pharma.The story kicks in once the unicorn in question goes splat. Much of what ensues takes place at the boss’s preposterously grandiose lodge — nay, castlelike fortress — tucked in wilderness and protected by armed guards. There, Elliot and Ridley pull up with a small motionless unicorn in the car that soon proves very much alive; high jinks ensue with enough scrambling silliness to suggest that Scharfman is also familiar with Abbott and Costello. To that comic end, Rudd and Ortega soon run amok with the rest of the sterling cast, starting with the peerless Richard E. Grant as Odell Leopold, the paterfamilias whose villainous bona fides are evident the minute you hear that this brood owns a pharmaceutical giant.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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      ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ Review: A Sour Note

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      Carey Mulligan briefly warms this damp, downbeat comedy about two lonely men and their musical obsession.Like many of us nowadays, I needed a reason to laugh. My mistake — encouraged by the offbeat bona fides of the British performers Tom Basden and Tim Key — was expecting “The Ballad of Wallis Island” to provide one.Bereft of chuckles or even a substantial story, this maudlin musical fable never escapes the drag of a lead character with supporting-player energy. From the instant Herb McGwyer (Basden) washes up — quite literally, having tumbled out of a rowboat — on the fictional Wallis Island, it’s clear he’s a drip. A decade earlier, Herb was a big deal in folk music as one half of the popular duo McGwyer Mortimer; now he’s a struggling solo artist who can’t even finance his latest album.All of which explains his sodden arrival on this depopulated rock, the home of an eccentric lottery winner named Charles (Key), who has offered Herb an astonishing half-million pounds to play a single concert. Herb’s annoyance at the lack of a showbiz welcome — no car, no publicist, no fancy hotel — intensifies when he learns that his host, a lonely widower, will be the sole audience member. And that this McGwyer Mortimer superfan has also persuaded Herb’s former bandmate and erstwhile lover, Nell (Carey Mulligan), to join them, apparently hoping that the two will rekindle their artistic, and perhaps even their romantic alchemy.For the sake of Nell, who now prefers cooking chutney to composing tunes, viewers should hope otherwise. Petulant and whiny, Herb is such a charmless sourpuss it’s a relief when Nell shows up with a cheery husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), in tow. Yet rather than mine this awkward ménage for much-needed humor, Basden and Key’s screenplay hustles Michael hastily offscreen to search for puffins. (Lest we be left in suspense, he pops back at the end to confirm he found 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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      Why ‘Last Tango in Paris’ Derailed Maria Schneider’s Life

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      “Being Maria” uses the actress’s own words to show how the star’s frank discussion of the experience was an early salvo in the #MeToo movement.In a 1983 interview for a French television show, the actress Maria Schneider was asked whether she would mind if the program broadcast a clip from “Last Tango in Paris,” a film she had made 11 years earlier. “No,” she said, pleadingly. “I’d rather not.”Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, that movie depicts the heated sexual relationship between a young Frenchwoman, Jeanne (Schneider), and an older American expat, Paul (Marlon Brando). What ended up making “Tango” more infamous than famous was a scene in which Paul forces himself on Jeanne, with the help of a smear of butter.That scene would haunt Schneider, who died at 58 in 2011, the rest of her life. In a 2007 interview, she said that the moment had been sprung upon her with no warning: “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci.”It’s easy to see why this posed a moral and ethical problem for the director Jessica Palud, whose new film, “Being Maria,” stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Schneider and Matt Dillon as Brando.“That was the big question mark when we started writing our film: Do we re-enact the scene or not?” Palud said in a video interview from France. “Everybody I talked to who had known Maria mentioned the trauma caused by that scene, so I just couldn’t avoid it.”“Being Maria” starts with Schneider observing her father, the well-known French actor Daniel Gélin (Yvan Attal) on a set. She is fascinated by the world of filmmaking, and right away we are conscious of the importance of who is watching and who is being watched. When, not long after, the 19-year-old Maria is cast in “Tango” and becomes the focus of attention, Palud felt it was important to continue to concentrate on the woman’s gaze.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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      ‘Being Maria’ Review: The Muse’s Side of the Story

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      Starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Matt Dillon, this French drama chronicles the life of the actress Maria Schneider after her traumatic experience on the set of “Last Tango in Paris.”When it comes to telling stories about the victims of abuse, filmmakers are often faced with a dilemma: to show or not show the act of violence. Showing could mean exploiting the victim’s pain to satisfy viewers’ curiosity; not showing could mean hedging around a hard truth.Jessica Palud’s “Being Maria” — a biopic of Maria Schneider, a French actress perhaps best known for playing the mistress of Marlon Brando’s character in “Last Tango in Paris” — chooses to show.In 1972, when the 19-year-old Schneider was shooting one of the film’s many sex scenes, Brando (with the director Bernardo Bertolucci’s blessing) improvised without telling her his intentions, using a stick of butter to perform what on-screen looks like anal penetration.“Being Maria” recreates the scene — and it’s a tough watch. Anamaria Vartolomei, who plays Schneider, conveys shock, discomfort, fear and shame in distressing close-ups. When the scene cuts, Brando (Matt Dillon), who had previously been chummy with Maria, looks sheepish. Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) is unapologetic; he tells Maria the scene was meant to be intense.Loosely adapted from the memoir “My Cousin Maria Schneider,” by Vanessa Schneider, the film doesn’t stick around too long on Bertolucci’s set. Benjamin Biolay’s treacly string score adds an unsavory sentimental touch, but the rest of the film is quite sober as it moves through the decade of Schneider’s life after “Last Tango.”Showing how Schneider’s trauma festered over time — and eventually calloused over — the film moodily weaves together scenes of her struggles with addiction, nights at the discothèque and experiences on other movie sets, relying on Vartolomei’s edgy, delicate performance to signal Maria’s underlying anxieties. If the meandering nature of the film makes the psychic fallout seem tonally scattered, it nevertheless conveys the sense that she’s sleepwalking through life — and always fighting to snap out of it.Being MariaNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Do You Know the Classic Works That Inspired These Popular Family Movies?

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      “The Lion King,” first released as an animated film in 1994, has spawned multiple adaptations and sequels, including Julie Taymor’s 1997 Broadway production and a soundtrack companion album by Beyoncé for the 2019 computer-enhanced movie version. The plot of the story, about a young lion finding his place in the world, has been compared to which play by William Shakespeare? More

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      Sasha Stone, an Original Oscars Blogger, Takes on Hollywood

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      Sasha Stone, who has been covering awards season since the ’90s, has recast herself as a voice against what she perceives as the industry’s liberal status quo.Earlier this month Sasha Stone watched the Oscars alone at her home in a town outside Los Angeles. For someone who has spent more than two decades as one of the premier chroniclers of awards season, it was a notably unglamorous way to take in the ceremony. But she was thrilled that “Anora,” the frantic story of a New York stripper’s romance with a young Russian man, took top honors as part of a historic haul.Stone believed the film had the virtue of not pushing a partisan agenda, which has become one of the top criteria for her when judging a movie. When she made her name as an Oscars blogger, Stone believes she fit neatly into the Hollywood status quo and the brand of liberalism it represented — often onscreen. She says now she sees the error of her old ways, even if she continues to understand the old ways better than conservatives who were never part of that world.“Here is where I run into problems with the right,” Stone said in an interview the day after the ceremony. “They’re never going to give any credit to the Oscars or Hollywood. I knew the script was going to be, ‘The Oscars suck,’ and I was going to have to stand apart from that.”Stone’s advice to the right: Take the win. And after some Monday-morning carping, it collectively did. The ceremony drew praise from conservatives for its largely apolitical content (just one brief comment about President Trump by the host, Conan O’Brien) and for Kieran Culkin’s acceptance speech, in which he publicly asked his wife for more kids — “relatable to any middle-American,” said a Daily Caller writer.Mikey Madison in the Oscar-winning “Anora,” a favorite of Stone’s. NeonStone, 60, is that increasingly familiar figure in conservative life: an apostate from the mainstream, in recovery from her earlier liberalism. During the 2010s, as popular culture appeared to be moving to the left, she had been out in front, celebrating pathbreaking Oscar winners like “Moonlight” and “Parasite.” She also publicly supported Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr.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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      Inside the Controversy Surrounding Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Remake

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      Disney knew that remaking “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as a live-action musical would be treacherous.But the studio was feeling cocky.It was 2019, and Disney was minting money at the box office by “reimagining” animated classics like “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Jungle Book” as movies with real actors. The remakes also made bedrock characters like Cinderella newly relevant. Heroines defined by ideas from another era — be pretty, and things might work out! — were empowered. Casting emphasized diversity.Why not tackle Snow White?Over the decades, Disney had tried to modernize her story — to make her more than a damsel in distress, one prized as “the fairest of them all” because of her “white as snow” skin. Twice, starting in the early 2000s, screenwriters had been unable to crack it, at least not to the satisfaction of an image-conscious Disney.“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which premiered in 1937, posed other remake challenges, including how to sensitively handle Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy and Doc. (One stalled Disney reboot had reimagined the dwarfs as kung fu fighters in China.)Still, Disney executives were determined to figure it out. They had some new ideas. More important, the remake gravy train needed to keep running.“It’s going to be amazing, another big win,” Bob Chapek, then Disney’s chief executive, said of a live-action “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at a 2022 fan convention.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