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      What ‘Wicked’ Has to Say About Our Current Political Moment

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      By breaking the story into two movies, the emphasis in “Part One” shifts to a nation’s potential decline into authoritarianism. Sound familiar?In the big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) uses magic to defend her sister and unwittingly destroys a courtyard mural of the Wizard at Shiz University. When her outburst shatters the wall, it also unearths an image that has been intentionally covered up: the school’s original founders, animal professors whose ability to speak, teach humans, and organize politically posed a threat to the Wizard’s autocratic reign.This surprising fact is revealed early on, but as I watched it, I realized Elphaba’s discovery came too late.As a repeat viewer of Broadway’s “Wicked,” I’m usually fascinated by how the story’s retrospective lens encourages us to sympathize with Elphaba, who eventually will become the Wicked Witch of the West. Her rich back story — she’s a perennial outsider and highly empathetic person — has forced me to rethink my assumptions about her and reflect on how easily I accepted L. Frank Baum’s own prejudices and his representation of her as a one-dimensional villain in his novel, “The Wizard of Oz.”But, unlike the stage version, which tracks Elphaba as a young adult to her fateful encounter with Dorothy, the movie delves even more into Elphaba’s biography. It follows her to Shiz University, where she ends up rooming with her frenemy, Galinda, later renamed Glinda (Ariana Grande), whose jealousy of Elphaba’s magical powers leads to conflict. The film ends at the characters’ climactic midpoints. “If Part One is about choices,” the director, Jon M. Chu, recently told Entertainment Weekly, “Part Two is about consequences.”But for now that also means the story remains unresolved. At the end of the Broadway version, there’s relief in the surprise ending when we learn that the Wicked Witch was far kinder than we gave her credit for and that she successfully challenged the Wizard’s dominance.Instead, onscreen, Elphaba is left suspended in midair (on her broom), made a scapegoat by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) as the Shiz professor Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), falsely warns the people of Oz about an enemy who must be captured. Madam Morrible goes even further, blasting on the loudspeaker, “Her green skin is but an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature. This distortion! This repulsion! This wicked witch!”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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      Children’s Movies to Stream Now: ‘That Christmas,’ ‘Transformers One’ and More

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      This month’s picks include a sequel to a 1980s Tim Burton classic and an animated tale of a Christmas nearly gone wrong.‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’Stream it on Max.One of the joys of parenthood is introducing your child to classic films that you once loved. It thrills me that my 7-year-old son adores “E.T.” and the original “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” films. Watching him mimic the “Banana Boat (Day-O)” dance in Tim Burton’s 1988 goth horror comedy “Beetlejuice” has been one of the highlights of my year. For older children that love scary-ish movies, Burton’s long-awaited follow-up film is a kooky medley of wacky scares and outrageous scenarios. Winona Ryder returns as a grown-up Lydia. She’s now a widow who hosts a ghost show on TV, and her goth teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), is every bit as brooding as her mother was at her age.Justin Theroux plays Lydia’s smarmy boyfriend, Rory, and Monica Bellucci is Beetlejuice’s (dead) ex-wife, Delores. Michael Keaton masterfully yuks it up again as the titular character, and Catherine O’Hara returns as the pompous artist Delia. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote the script (Seth Grahame-Smith shares story credit). If your children delight in dark tales and don’t mind shrunken heads and some campy gore, this one’s worth a watch.‘That Christmas’Stream it on Netflix.Brian Cox sheds any evidence his tyrannical “Succession” character, Logan Roy, to voice none other than Santa Claus in this animated tale of a Christmas gone (almost) wrong. Based on a children’s book series written by Richard Curtis (yes, the one who wrote “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually”), the plot involves intertwining stories about loneliness and the importance of family and friends — Curtis’s sweet spot.Here we meet Danny (Jack Wisniewski), a new kid in the small fictional seaside town of Wellington-on-Sea. His newly divorced mother (Jodie Whittaker, “Doctor Who”) gets called in to work on Christmas, leaving Danny alone as a blizzard blows into town and strands a bunch of parents so they can’t get to their children’s Christmas pageant. Fiona Shaw (“Killing Eve”) voices the strict Ms. Trapper, who tries to keep the youngsters in line as the town goes haywire, and in a nod to “Love Actually,” Bill Nighy teams back up with Curtis here to voice a character named Lighthouse Bill.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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      ‘Kraven the Hunter’ Review: A Seriously Silly Movie

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      Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s buff Marvel hero is overshadowed by unabashedly fun villains.Built on brawn, J.C. Chandor’s action sci-fi picture “Kraven the Hunter” is limited by incomprehensible plotting and dodgy one-liners delivered by a cast who seem to be practicing their worst Russian accents. If not for the bevy of anticlimactic fights, “Kraven the Hunter” could be so bad it’s good. Instead, it’s merely another excursion away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Sony’s series of defanged comic book villains.Kraven’s baffling origin story finds a jumbled through-line in half brothers Sergei and Dmitri’s tight-knit relationship. Sons of Russian drug dealer Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe, adopting a low, growling accent), the boys are persistently pushed by their bloodthirsty father to be stronger than Sergei’s mother, who recently died by suicide. To harden them, Nikolai takes them hunting in Ghana. “Shoot to kill. Fun,” Nikolai grumbles. Fun for Sergei is short-lived when a lion mauls him. Only a potion provided by a passerby named Calypso saves Sergei, imbuing him with otherworldly vision, agility and strength.Fast forward 16 years and a hulking Sergei (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now a vigilante known as “Kraven the Hunter,” who’s pursuing criminals that remind him of his estranged father. Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), a Russian mercenary who can morph into a rhino, is not only worried that Kraven will soon pursue him. Aleksei also wants to eliminate his rival Nikolai. Aleksei kidnaps Dmitri and dispatches a time-morphing assassin called the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) to pursue Kraven. With an adult Calypso (Ariana DeBose) providing aid, Kraven tries to free Dmitri.Thankfully, “Kraven the Hunter” doesn’t take itself too seriously. Like Sony’s “The Venom” franchise and “Madame Web,” the story is incidental to these larger-than-life characters. While Taylor-Johnson does his best Hugh Jackman impression — posing for glamour shots of his ripped body before crawling and flying across the frame — only a couple of actors here know exactly what movie they’re in. Abbott is captivatingly slippery, rolling his slender frame and casting his bewitching eyes on his victims with cool intent. Nivola, on the other hand, is the type of ham you’d find in Joel Schumacher’s Batman films. From his surprising hissing to his stocky build, every choice he makes is spontaneous yet wholly grounded in this troubled character.If the action in “Kraven the Hunter” was as well conceived as its villains, it’d be a riot. Unfortunately, the brawls are physically detached from the environment. The choreography lacks punch and design; the compositions are spatially unaware. Kraven and Aleksei ‘s final tussle, an anticlimactic mud fight in the middle of a field, ends as quickly as it began. The film adds a pound of revenge and an ounce of a surprise to its final moments, but these ingredients, including the entertaining silliness, aren’t enough for “Kraven the Hunter” to catch the biggest game — our admiration.Kraven the HunterRated R for violence, blood and daddy problems. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      36 Things That Stuck With Us in 2024

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      The movie scenes, TV episodes, song lyrics and other moments that reporters, critics, editors and visual journalists in Culture couldn’t stop thinking about this year.The Last Scene in a Film‘Challengers’Mike Faist in “Challengers.”MGMReal tennis, like real dancing, happens when the body is rapt and alive, where visceral sensation takes over and the only thing left is the crystallization of every nerve and muscle, both aligned and on edge. That last match was a dance.— More

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      ‘Carry On’ Review: Travel Nightmares Amplified

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      In this tense thriller, Taron Egerton plays a T.S.A. agent who goes up against an implacable terrorist (Jason Bateman). The man has a funny idea of what he wants to bring on a plane.If you’re a fan of white-knuckle-tension suspense thrillers, you know the debate as to whether or not the 1988 classic “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. “Carry-On,” directed by the expert technician Jaume Collet-Serra, makes absolutely no bones about being a Christmas movie as it seeks to work your nerves in the “Die Hard” tradition.The setting here is a Los Angeles airport. The T.S.A. agent Ethan Kopek, played by Taron Egerton, finds himself the unwilling pawn of a determined terrorist hellbent on getting a nasty package on an eastbound jet. Kopek has a history of not putting himself out there — for years he’s tamped down his ambitions to become a real police officer — who is now blackmailed into stepping up in all the wrong ways. The alternative is a staggering body count.While the character details are conventional and treacly — what do you know, Kopek’s beautiful wife (Sofia Carson) also happens to be pregnant with the couple’s first child! — the suspense mechanisms of T.J. Fixman’s script, which support a fat-free running time of nearly two hours, are consistently tightly wound.As Kopek’s nameless tormentor, Jason Bateman is chilling. A lot of actors who’ve spent their careers playing relatively amiable characters, as Bateman has, can barely restrain themselves from winking at least a little when they take on a bad guy role. But the actor only ever knuckles down at being loathsome.While the picture doesn’t break any new genre ground, it has several jaw-dropping set pieces, including an incredibly physical fight inside a speeding car. Collet-Serra’s staging is excellent throughout. The simulated airport setting is filled with hustle and bustle that looks just as annoying as real air travel is, especially during the holidays. Except this particular airport is way more sparkling and clean than any in real life.Carry OnRated PG-13 for violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘September 5’ Review: When the Munich Games Changed Our News

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      Tim Fehlbaum’s journalism procedural, starring Peter Sarsgaard, tracks the broadcast coverage of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics.A tense ethical showdown with the racing pulse of a thriller, “September 5” revisits the day in 1972 when the Munich Olympics became a very different kind of international spectacle. Before dawn that morning, while many of the world’s elite athletes were still sleeping in the Olympic Village or drunkenly heading for bed, eight heavily armed members of Black September, a militant Palestinian group, easily scrambled over a perimeter fence in the village. They quickly made their way to the building where the Israeli delegation was housed and took 11 of its members hostage, shooting two men, who soon died.This grim flashpoint sets “September 5” in motion, but the movie isn’t about the hostages, the militants or the Middle East. It’s a journalism creation story about the men and a few women from ABC Sports who — originally in Munich to report on fencing, boxing and other athletic competitions — ended up abruptly making history themselves when they covered a major news story globally on live television. The correspondent Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker), for one, who had established the network’s first Middle East bureau, may have thought he would be enjoying a break by covering the Olympics. He was soon huddling on a balcony, bringing a conflict from the region into homes worldwide while coolly reassuring colleagues, in a mic-drop bit of dialogue, that he’s safely out of range of an exploding grenade.Jennings and the other boldfaced-journalism names hover in and around “September 5,” which centers on a handful of behind-the-scenes ABC employees, including an earnest young producer, Geoff (John Magaro). Along with a German translator, Marianne (Leonie Benesch), and a French-Algerian engineer, Jacques (Zinedine Soualem), Geoff is among the first in the group to hear the gunfire that breaks the early quiet. He rouses Roone Arledge, who had brought the Olympics to the network and was the president of ABC Sports. Arledge went on to become the president and chairman of ABC News, superstar status that might explain the flattering decision to cast the camera-friendly Peter Sarsgaard in the role.It takes a few beats for Geoff and the rest of the crew to grasp the magnitude of what’s happening nearby, but once they do, they step on the gas and just go, go, go. Setting an accelerated pace that rarely eases, the director Tim Fehlbaum, who wrote the script with Moritz Binder (Alex David is billed as a co-writer), smartly skips over the usual people-and-places introductions and the throat-clearing rest. Instead, he stirs up a whirlwind of frenetic motion, homing in on the ABC team, and tries to figure out what they’re actually covering. The network’s main face for the games, Jim McKay — who’s seen only in smoothly incorporated archival footage — was meant to have the day off. He was soon in his studio chair earpiece in place, anchoring and delivering updates live on camera.Fehlbaum leans heavily into the logistics of getting the crisis on the air, a focus on the labor and the deadline-fueled energy, which gives the movie the quality of a journalism procedural. People race down halls, burst into rooms, fire up monitors, grab rotary phones and bark into walkie-talkies as big as cinder blocks. (The movie is an analog fetishist’s delight.) Amid the kinetic motion, staffers like Marvin (a very good Ben Chaplin) clench jaws to discuss next moves, telegraphing the tough arguments to come. Among the movie’s stealthiest surprises is that each moving part, every rushed phone call and snap decision, is part of a feature-length argument that the filmmakers are making about journalism in the age of mass spectacle.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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      ‘Dirty Angels’ Review: Women on a Mission

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      In this heavy-handed action movie, Eva Green plays a Marine who leads a squad trying to rescue schoolgirls in Afghanistan.The action thriller “Dirty Angels” — a fictional story about a group of soldiers who set out to rescue kidnapped schoolgirls in Afghanistan held hostage by members of the Islamic State, or ISIS — suffers from the discord between the real-life conflicts that make up its setting and the cartoonish characters who propel its plot.It opens by introducing its villain: Amir (George Iskandar), a smirking ISIS member who will soon lead the capture of the schoolgirls. He kills indiscriminately, but in case that isn’t enough to telegraph his terror, an ominous score overlays his every move. Who could stop him but our hero, Jake (Eva Green, grunting her lines)? She’s a steely Marine, who was once held captive by ISIS and joins the women-led recovery mission to avenge her former unit.The director, Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”), uses his genre pedigree to assemble a series of bloody shootouts that build the women’s squad-goals morale while establishing their toughness. They even elect to ditch names — too girlie, surely — in favor of “functions”: Mechanic (Rona-Lee Shimon), the Bomb (Maria Bakalova), Shooter (Emily Bruni), Geek (Jojo T. Gibbs).But while the movie flouts traditional gender roles, it easily plays into stereotypes about race and religion. The saviors speak English and the terrorists speak Pashto; in one sequence, the commandos slip into enemy territory by donning niqabs as disguises. The title, presumably a gesture at the rescue team being female but ruthless, is at least accurate: For much of her time onscreen, Green is covered in grime.Dirty AngelsRated R for brutal violence. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Young Werther’ Review: Updating an 18th-Century Love Triangle

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      This charming film, starring Douglas Booth and Alison Pill, bridges the gap between Goethe’s novel and the adaptation’s modern New York City setting.There is a boisterously nimble quality to the way in which Douglas Booth plays the titular character of “Young Werther.”With hair perpetually coifed, Werther has the look of an uppity trust-fund kid, but Booth plays him more like a dandy mixed with a golden retriever, transported from another era yet born yesterday.His interpretation bridges a kind of spiritual gap between the 18th-century German novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that the film is based on and the modern New York City milieu that this charming adaptation takes place in. The movie, written and directed by José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço, focuses on the trials of Werther, an idealistic young man caught in a love triangle. After meeting and falling in love with Charlotte (Alison Pill), a woman he spends a whirlwind night with at a party, Werther is stunned to hear that she’s already engaged. Charlotte’s fiancé, Albert (Patrick J. Adams), is stable and sweet, but he doesn’t make time for her. Werther, on the other hand, is a romantic adventure.He is all jokes and jolly energy, an irresistible foil to Charlotte’s typically constricted outlook. Booth and Pill make for a pair worth rooting for, but it’s Booth in particular, just barely but believably not of this world, who lends the film its winning sensibility.He’s helped by the film’s warmly pleasing focus, where the edges of the frame blur around the central characters, often Werther and Charlotte laughing and falling for one another. It’s as if we’re looking through a telescope, a representation of both the tunnel vision of love and also of a tragic romance of centuries past.Young WertherRated R for some language and sexual references. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More