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      Nine Provocative William Friedkin Movies to Stream

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      The director specialized in grimy thrillers and social dramas that occasionally courted controversy.An iconoclast even among his New Hollywood peers coming up in the 1970s, the director William Friedkin built a reputation for grimy, high-impact thrillers and social dramas that sought to get a rise out of audiences and frequently drew the controversy they courted.Friedkin, who died Monday at 87, found early success in Hollywood with the one-two punch of “The French Connection” in 1971 and “The Exorcist” in 1973, but his fortunes shifted in the years that followed, which led to a career of unpredictable and often attention-grabbing swerves. One of his best ’80s films, the sleek thriller “To Live and Die in L.A.,” is currently unavailable to stream, but adventurous home viewers will find plenty of scorching work to command their attention.Here are nine films that illustrate Friedkin’s combination of stylistic bravado and willingness to engage on the battlegrounds of race, religion, sexuality and systemic corruption.1970‘The Boys in the Band’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.Though Friedkin’s relationship with the queer community would turn fraught a decade later with “Cruising,” this adaptation of Mart Crowley’s 1968 Off Broadway play was, at the time, the rare American film to focus entirely (and sympathetically) on the lives of gay men. Friedkin was so impressed by the stage production that all the original cast members were brought into the movie, which takes place mostly in the Upper East Side apartment where a fitfully employed writer (Kenneth Nelson) is holding a birthday party and has invited a motley group of friends. The boozy affair that follows zings with filthy one-liners, but tensions rise as the night carries on and the inner lives of these alienated, often closeted men start to surface.1971‘The French Connection’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.Friedkin won his only Oscar, for best director, for this ferociously entertaining policier, which remains one of the great New York movies, a seedy snapshot of the city as it once existed — at least through the jaundiced perspective of a detective who has his share of blind spots. With a style that’s simultaneously propulsive and documentarylike in its evocation of place, Friedkin details a heroin smuggling operation that’s making its way to New York from Marseilles via ocean liner. Standing in the way is Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), a bigot and an alcoholic who’s willing to go to astonishing lengths to solve the case, including a car chase under an elevated train that Friedkin turned into a classic of its kind.1973‘The Exorcist’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu.Any conversation about the scariest movies ever made usually starts with a mention of Friedkin’s demon possession thriller, but the film’s effectiveness involves more than Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” and the terrifying contortions of a young girl’s body and spirit. “The Exorcist” gains an equal amount of power from the unyielding love a mother (Ellen Burstyn) has for her 12-year-old daughter (Linda Blair) as a demon wrests the girl away from her. Once the Roman Catholic Church gets involved, “The Exorcist” builds to harrowing and often frantic sessions between a priest (a superb Max von Sydow) and the ancient evil he’s desperate to whisk away.1977‘Sorcerer’Rent it on Amazon and Apple TV.After huge back-to-back hits with “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist,” Friedkin adapted the same French novel that Henri-Georges Clouzot had turned into “The Wages of Fear,” a suspense classic about desperate workers driving truckloads of nitroglycerin through a mountain pass. After a troubled and expensive production, “Sorcerer” was a box office failure — coming out the same summer as “Star Wars” didn’t help — but it’s now regarded as one of Friedkin’s best, playing to his strengths in location shooting and intense physical action. Roy Scheider leads an international cast as one of four outlaws who accept $10,000 and legal citizenship for the job of driving nitroglycerin on hazardous South American roads to an oil well 200 miles away.1980‘Cruising’Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Friedkin had a habit of courting controversy, but nothing on the level of “Cruising,” a crime thriller that gay rights activists protested vociferously during and after production for a portrait of West Village nightlife they felt stigmatized their community. With that caveat in mind, it’s still one for the time capsule, a sleazy yet compelling story about a serial killer who targets gay men in New York’s leather scene and a detective (Al Pacino) who goes deep undercover to solve the case. It’s an understatement to say that Friedkin does not approach the material with the sensitivity his doubters might have wished for, but the locations have an almost tactile griminess to them, and Pacino’s performance roils with inner torment.1994‘Blue Chips’Stream it on Amazon Prime and Paramount+. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Working from a script by Ron Shelton, who’d made the superb sports comedies “Bull Durham” and “White Men Can’t Jump,” Friedkin tackled the seedy underbelly of college athletics with typical verve, including dramatized basketball action that’s on par with the real thing. Channeling the chair-whipping tempestuousness of Bobby Knight — who appears as an opposing coach in a cameo — Nick Nolte stars as a legendary college coach who’s starting to miss out on “blue chip” recruits. After his first losing season, he risks his reputation and his conscience by deploying school boosters to offer benefits to top prospects, including a rim-rattling center played by future Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal.2003‘The Hunted’Stream it on Max. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.In what would turn out to be his last major studio production, Friedkin executed this drum-tight, underrated action thriller in the “Rambo” mode about a disillusioned warrior on a killing spree and the former mentor tasked with bringing him to justice. Benicio Del Toro stars as a highly trained Delta Force soldier so traumatized by the genocide of civilians in Kosovo that he takes to the American wilderness and starts gunning down hunters. Echoing his performance in “The Fugitive,” Tommy Lee Jones is the F.B.I. “deep-woods tracker” who tries to retrieve him, with the advantage (and disadvantage) of having taught him everything he knows.2007‘Bug’Stream it on Pluto TV. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.In the first of two straight collaborations with the playwright Tracy Letts, Friedkin doesn’t hide the stage roots of a drama that takes place mostly within a rundown Oklahoma motel room, but the feverishness of the camera and sound work, along with the two lead performances, have a strong cinematic intensity. “Bug” is also a vital early showcase for Michael Shannon, who projects enough charisma as a drifter to win over a waitress (Ashley Judd) with relationship problems, but soon reveals a frightening volatility. The supposed discovery of an aphid in the motel bed sends these two lonely people into a paranoid frenzy that Friedkin transforms into an alternate reality.2011‘Killer Joe’Stream it on Pluto TV. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Deploying his relaxed, mellifluous Southern drawl to sinister purposes, Matthew McConaughey channels Robert Mitchum in Letts’s bracing redneck noir about a trailer-park murder scheme in West Texas that goes sideways. In a plot that owes a little something to “Double Indemnity,” Emile Hirsch plays a wayward 22-year-old who enlists his father (Thomas Haden Church) in a plan to kill his mother and split her $50,000 life insurance policy, but when they hire a cop/contract killer (McConaughey) to do the job, he requires Hirsch’s virginal sister (Juno Temple) to serve as human collateral on future payment. A sequence involving a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken may be the least appetizing product placement in history. More

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      William Friedkin’s Final Film to Premiere at the Venice Film Festival

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      “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” with Jake Lacy and Kiefer Sutherland, was the director’s first new drama in more than a decade.The director William Friedkin died on Monday at age 87, leaving behind a filmography that included hits like “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection.”But Friedkin had also completed one last project, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.” Made for Paramount and Showtime, it is set to premiere in a few weeks at the Venice Film Festival, where in 2013 he won a lifetime achievement prize.Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” follows the trial of a naval officer (played by Jake Lacy) who is accused of leading a mutiny against his unstable commander (Kiefer Sutherland). The story was first adapted for the 1954 film “The Caine Mutiny,” which was nominated for seven Oscars including best picture. Though that film and Wouk’s novel take place during World War II, Friedkin contemporized the story and relocated the action to the Persian Gulf.“The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” is Friedkin’s 20th narrative film and his first since 2011’s “Killer Joe,” which starred Matthew McConaughey. In the interim, Friedkin directed a documentary, “The Devil and Father Amorth,” about a purported real-life exorcism.“I’ve looked at a lot of scripts in the last 10 years, and I haven’t seen anything I really wanted to do,” Friedkin said in an interview last year while announcing the project. “But I think about it a lot, and it occurred to me that could be a very timely and important piece, as well as being great drama. ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ is one of the best court-martial dramas ever written.”The Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 30 to Sept. 9, though organizers have not yet announced a premiere date for Friedkin’s film. Unlike high-profile Venice films like Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” and Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” this posthumous effort will play out of competition, as per Friedkin’s wishes: In an expletive-laden scene from the documentary “Friedkin Uncut,” the director ranted against the idea of festival competitions manned by “a bunch of schmucks who call themselves judges.” More

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      Who Is Neil Breen?

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      The producer, writer, director and star has made five imaginative, bewildering low-budget paranormal thrillers, spurring both ridicule and awe.A mysterious orb blares across the sky and punches into the sun-baked bed of a desert landscape. From it a messianic being emerges. For the viewer it’s at this point, early in the 2009 film “I Am Here …. Now,” that the proceedings veer in one of two directions: a solemn polemic about drug use, corporate corruption and environmental exploitation; or an endearingly inept science-fiction parable, the charms of which center wholly on the middle-aged man who plays the alien being. His name is Neil Breen.Breen has produced, written, directed and starred in five films. His sixth, “Cade: The Tortured Crossing,” just opened in select theaters (it screens in New York in August), and if the trailer is any indication, then his singular, if peculiar, vision has remained intact.For the past 18 years Breen has been making imaginative but bewildering low-budget paranormal thrillers in and near his suburban Las Vegas home. Some concern interstellar visitors like the one in “I Am Here …. Now”; others focus on hackers with superhuman abilities. There are talismanic crystals, mystical animals (predominantly eagles or tigers), and what I assume is Breen’s own Ferrari Testarossa. His dialogue tends to be peppered with technological keywords: artificial intelligence, cyberterrorism, metaverse, virtual reality — concepts that Breen never convincingly grasps and that seem abstract considering his films look as if they were made for tens of thousands of dollars. (Breen claims to have funded his early films with his income as an architect.)He serves in multiple roles in each production: location manager, music director, sound effects supervisor, editor, lighting designer, set designer, special effects designer, prop master, stunt coordinator, even legal and accounting services. And it’s his face emblazoned on each poster, making it indisputably clear that the distinguishing feature of a Neil Breen film is Neil Breen.“I am honestly sincerely doing the best I can, with the resources that I have, both physically and financially,” Breen said in a 2014 interview with New York Cine Radio. (He didn’t respond to interview requests for this article.)If resourcefulness is considered one of the core tenets of independent film, then Breen could be one of the central filmmakers of the past two decades. When he talks about his work, he tends to proudly reiterate the same anecdotes about how he assembles his casts via Craigslist ads or how he corresponds directly with the theaters that exhibit his work. Instead of ruminating on the meaning of his ambitious if barely coherent forays into science fiction, he’ll explain at length how he feeds his cast and crew.Breen’s entire cinematic approach can be encapsulated in a backyard cookout scene in “Fateful Findings” (2013), in which the characters are actually eating. You get the sense that Breen’s intent here was to simultaneously direct, act and do the catering.A scene from “Fateful Findings” (2013). The drama covers alcoholism, painkiller addiction and unrequited love, but also teleportation.Neil Breen Films, LLC“There’s an uncanny quality,” Cristina Cacioppo, a director of programming at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, said when asked to describe Breen’s films. “Sort of a resemblance to reality, but just sort of like otherworldly.”All of Breen’s films seem clearly to mean something, and watching them, one’s suspension of disbelief is constantly threatened by strange directorial choices. Even when they’re 90 minutes, some feel interminable. In a simple scene of dialogue he’ll freely break the 180-degree rule, a basic staging technique meant to keep the viewer oriented. His later films make generous use of composite photography, and characters will be both uncannily too large and too small in the same ethereal vista. My favorite among his many idiosyncrasies is the thunderously expository dialogue. This is from the 2016 “Pass-Thru”:Media President: I know senior national elected government officials who I can force my political bias and influence on fellow politicians, to vote my way. For a payoff, of course.Thgil (Breen): Isn’t that corrupt?None of this logically anticipates Breen’s dire, cartoonishly violent narratives. “Pass-Thru” culminates in his darkest sequence, with Thgil — another of the messianic aliens in which Breen specializes — walking toward the horizon’s vanishing point. The landscape is strewn with hundreds of thousands of bodies, a genocide he’s issued as punishment for those who’ve abused Earth’s precious resources.“Fateful Findings,” which I and many others consider Breen’s most deranged film, exemplifies the tonal stiltedness and libertarian rage that pervades his work. The first two-thirds qualify as a drama, marked by alcoholism, painkiller addiction and unrequited love. By the time it ends there has been an abduction, murders, teleportation and a revelatory news conference that culminates in six consecutive suicides.With each production, Breen’s audience, drawn from word of mouth and social media, has grown. He began to raise interest when “I Am Here …. Now” played at West Coast theaters like the now defunct Cinefamily in West Hollywood, Calif., where it was marketed as a hilarious oddity.For many audiences the natural response to Breen’s films is laughter. He’s often likened to Tommy Wiseau, whose “The Room” (2003) is considered one of the worst movies ever made, or Ed Wood, whose charmingly ramshackle genre exercises from the 1950s might be considered forerunners of Breen’s work. But these comparisons are shallow. By the end of his career Wood had fallen into obscurity, directing pornography under a pseudonym. And Wiseau seems to have succumbed by self-parody. His six-episode sitcom, “The Neighbors,” and his appearances in other films (like “Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance”) demonstrate none of “The Room’s” manic power.Breen is still making films under the same unpretentious conditions, which is to say they’re just as incoherent as ever, even if they’ve evolved in technical ambition. Whereas his early films favored suburban Las Vegas and the nearby desert, his 2018 cyberthriller “Twisted Pair” is replete with green-screen photography and stock footage. Breen plays a double role, twins Cale and Cade, bestowed at birth with superhuman powers and pitted against each other with potentially world-changing consequences. The action scenes — when Cade freezes time, for instance, or leaps grasshopper-like to the upper floor of a building — contain flashes of “The Matrix.” During these sequences at a 2018 screening at the Music Box in Chicago, the crowd went berserk.In “Twisted Pair” Breen plays a double role, twins Cade (no beard) and Cale (beard).Neil Breen Films, LLC“When I used to go to see the first screenings of films like ‘Double Down’ and ‘I Am Here …. Now,’ I’d be in the back of the theater listening to the audience,” Breen said in the 2014 interview. “The audience may chuckle at parts that I never intended, but in the second half of the film they sort of begin to get it.”Trevor Dillon, who’s programmed Breen’s work at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Calif., said he thought “Neil Breen is very much like ‘I’m about the movies, I am a filmmaker, my movies play at 8 p.m.’” Dillon added that the question “is whether or not there’s a ton of self-awareness there.”“I think he’s a scrappy independent filmmaker and I think he’s an even better businessman,” Dillon added.Jake Isgar has programmed “Twisted Pair” and its forthcoming sequel, “Cade: The Tortured Crossing,” at Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco. “I don’t ever want to call his movies midnight movies or create this other sort of distinction,” he said. “Why should an independent artist who’s putting his own work out there have to be ghettoized in any particular way?”(Like me, Isgar has yet to see Breen’s newest. He said Breen “was very straightforward” and declined to send a screener to preview the film. “He says, ‘Well, you’ve seen my other movies.’”)In his correspondence with theaters Breen stipulates that his movies should screen at around 7 p.m., and that showings should be limited to maintain demand. But embedded in such restrictions one may infer either a resistance to having his work pushed to the fringes, or a pretension in contextualizing it as a mainstream experience. Regardless, Breen’s films continue to engage audiences worldwide.Consider a 2019 showing of “Twisted Pair” in Paris, at Le Grand Rex, the largest movie theater in Europe. At the sold-out screening, put on by the publication Nanarland (“Nanar” is a French colloquialism that roughly translates as “so bad it’s good”), the crowd “went nuts,” the Nanarland co-founder Régis Brochier said. “It was really an incredible screening.”A clip posted to YouTube captures the mania: the roaring crowd spills out from both balconies. People start to stand and clap. The film they’re all there to see hasn’t even begun. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Outlander’ and ‘Hard Knocks’

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      The Starz series comes back for a sixth season and the HBO documentary series on NFL training camp follows the New York Jets.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. 7-13. Details and times are subject to change.MondayCameron Diaz, Dermot Mulroney and Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”Tri-Star PicturesMY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING (1997) 8:10 p.m. on Starz Encore. In this movie, the sexual tension between Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) and Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney) (the ring-stuck-on-the-finger scene, if you know you know) makes the plot feel almost irrelevant. But, if we were to focus on plot, the story follows Julianne as she tries to end the marriage between her best friend, Michael, and his fiancée Kimberly Wallace (Cameron Diaz) before it has even started. The story is filled with mostly just shenanigans on the part of Julianne and culminates in an ending that is simultaneously happy and heartbreaking.THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). If you took “The Great British Bake-off” but made it American and focused on cooking instead of baking, that would be this show. The eight-part competition series features cooks from all different parts of the U.S. who showcase their signature dishes.TuesdayHARD KNOCKS 10 p.m. on HBO. In mid-July, NFL players fly out to university campuses near home base for their respective teams and start the hard work that goes into training for the season. And since 2001, HBO cameras have been there filming one team as they prepare — this year the series focuses on the New York Jets. Most notably, sports fans will get a glimpse of the four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers as he begins his first season with the Jets.WednesdayErik Gunn, David Eigenberg and Tony Huynh in “LA Fire & Rescue.”Casey Dunkirk/NBCLA FIRE & RESCUE 8 p.m. on NBC. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: that is Steve Brady (David Eigenberg) from “Sex and the City.” Perhaps even more important, it’s Lieutenant Christopher Herrmann from “Chicago Fire,” which has the same producers as this new docu-series that follows the days of firefighters at the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Wildfires, medical emergencies, crimes and accidents are featured in these episodes, and of course a station visit from Eigenberg.ThursdayFIGHT TO SURVIVE 8 p.m. on The CW. If you are a fan of “Survivor,” “Alone,” “Naked and Afraid” or “American Ninja Warrior,” you might be seeing some familiar faces on this show. Seventeen contestants, all alumni from those shows, are sent to a remote tropical island to try to survive for a chance to win $250,000 in this quasi social experiment.THE CHALLENGE 10 p.m. on CBS. If you prefer a competition show that is perhaps not as harrowing but still has familiar faces, this might be the show for you, because honestly they aren’t that much different. Alumni from “Big Brother,” “Love Island,” “Amazing Race” and “Survivor” compete in physical challenges and have the chance to win $250,000. T.J. Lavin returns as host.FridayOUTLANDER 8 p.m. on Starz. We’re halfway through the seventh season of the show that originated in the World War II era and there are lots of loose ends to tie up. Spoilers ahead! As Claire (Caitriona Balfe) discovers the body of Jamie (Sam Heughan) on the battlefield, she learns that a second Battle of Saratoga is imminent, and Roger (Richard Rankin) makes a plan to time travel back to his son.MEN IN KILTS 9:35 p.m. on Starz. Not so dissimilar to some aspects of “Outlander” I suppose (you’ve definitely seen a kilt or two on that fictional show), this documentary series follows the actors Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish on a road trip to learn more about their heritage. In the first season they traveled around Scotland but now their travels are taking them around New Zealand.SaturdayJudd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in “The Breakfast Club.”Universal Pictures/Everett CollectionTHE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) 7:30 p.m. on CMT. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s there is a good chance you daydreamed about your crush coming to your window with a boombox propped on their shoulders (no? just me?) — and you can thank an iconic scene in this movie for that. Watching this will answer the question: What happens when you gather up the athlete, the brain, the bully, the princess and the loner and put them in detention together? In this movie “which he wrote and directed, John Hughes lets the kids challenge, taunt and confront each other as if this were ‘Twelve Angry Men,’” Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The New York Times.HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON (1957) 8 p.m. on TCM. Keeping up with our theme of survivalist competition show (and World War II, for that matter), this fictionalized version puts Mr. Allison, a Marine corporal played by Robert Mitchum, and Sister Angela, a Roman Catholic nun played by Deborah Kerr, stranded on an island in the South Pacific. As they are in constant danger of enemy attacks, they are forced to hide and survive together.SundayBILLIONS 8 p.m. on Showtime. This show, which dives into the world of New York City banking and insider trading, is Showtime’s longest running drama. And this week, it is coming back for its seventh and final season. The most anticipated part of this season is the return of the main protagonist, the hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis). When the character left in season 5, he was moving to Switzerland to avoid prosecution from the Attorney General of New York Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), so his return is likely going to be anything but smooth.TELEMARKETERS 10 p.m. on HBO. Though a documentary about telemarketers may not catch one’s attention, this is less about the practice of telemarketing and more about the true crime scheme two employees of a New Jersey call center were unknowingly covering up. The documentary follows them as they work to uncover the conspiracy that’s been a part of their day to day for the past 20 years. More

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      ‘Barbie’ Is a Sleeper Hit in China

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      The movie has exceeded box office expectations, as China’s female moviegoers celebrate a film that addresses women’s rights head-on.There were plenty of reasons to think the “Barbie” movie might have a hard time finding an audience in China. It’s an American film, when Chinese moviegoers’ interest in, and government approval of, Hollywood movies is falling. It’s been widely described as feminist, when women’s rights and political representation in China are backsliding.But not only did the film screen in China — it has been something of a sleeper hit, precisely because of its unusual nature in the Chinese movie landscape.“There aren’t many movies about women’s independence, or that have some flavors of feminism, in China,” said Mina Li, 36, who went alone to a recent screening in Beijing after several female friends recommended it. “So they thought it was worth seeing.”Despite limited availability — the film, directed by Greta Gerwig, made up only 2.4 percent of screenings in China on its opening day — “Barbie” has quickly become widely discussed on Chinese social media, at one point even topping searches on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. It has an 8.3 rating on the movie rating site Douban, higher than any other currently showing live-action feature. Theaters have raced to add showings, with the number nearly quadrupling in the first week.Though not nearly as hotly anticipated as in the United States, where it left some movie theaters running low on refreshments, “Barbie” has set off its own mini-mania in some Chinese circles, with moviegoers posting photos of themselves decked out in pink or showing off glossy souvenir tickets. As of Wednesday, the movie has earned $28 million in China — less than the new “Mission Impossible,” but more than the latest “Indiana Jones.” American movies’ hauls have been declining in general in China, in part because of strict controls on the number of foreign films allowed each year.Mia Tan, a Beijing college student, saw “Barbie” with two friends, in an array of festive attire that included a peach-colored skirt and pink-accented tops. During a scene in which the Ken dolls realized that being male was its own qualification, she joked that the characters sounded like fellow students in their major.Theaters in China have raced to add showings of “Barbie,” with the number nearly quadrupling in the first week.Cfoto/Future Publishing, via Getty Images“The movie was great,” Ms. Tan said. “It used straightforward dialogue and an exaggerated plot to tell the audience about objective reality. Honestly, I think this is the only way to make women realize what kind of environment they’re in, and to make men realize how much privilege they’ve had.”The discussion about women’s empowerment that “Barbie” has set off is in some ways a rare bright spot for Chinese feminists. In recent years, the authorities have arrested feminist activists, urged women to embrace traditional gender roles and rejected high-profile sexual harassment lawsuits. State media has suggested that feminism is part of a Western plot to weaken China, and social media companies block insults of men but allow offensive comments about women.Some social media comments have disparaged “Barbie” as inciting conflict between the sexes, and moviegoers have shared stories of men walking out of theaters. (In the United States, conservatives have similarly railed against the movie.)At the same time, public awareness of women’s rights has been growing. Online discussions about topics such as violence against women have blossomed, despite censorship. While many of China’s top movies in recent years have been chest-thumping war or action movies, a few female-directed movies, about themes like complicated family relationships, have also drawn huge audiences.And the Chinese government has proved most intent on preventing feminists from organizing and gathering, rather than stopping discussions of gender equality writ large, said Jia Tan, a professor of cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.Even some Chinese state media outlets have offered cautious praise of the movie’s themes. One said that “Barbie” “encourages contemplation of the status and portrayal of women.” Another quoted a film critic as saying it was normal that the topic of gender would stir disagreement, but that “Barbie” was actually about the perils of either men or women being treated with favor.In a sign of how Chinese women’s expectations have shifted, some of the most popular — and critical — online reviews of “Barbie” came from women who said it hadn’t gone far enough. Some said they had hoped a Western movie would be more insightful about women’s rights than a Chinese one could be, but found it still exalted conventional beauty standards or focused too much on Ken. Others said they felt compelled to give the movie a higher rating than it deserved because they expected men to pan it.Vicky Chan, a 27-year-old tech worker in Shenzhen, said she thought mainstream conversations about feminism in China were still in their early stages, focusing on surface-level differences between men and women rather than structural problems. The movie’s critique of patriarchy was ultimately gentle, she said — and that was probably why it had gotten such wide approval in China, she said in an interview. (Ms. Chan gave the movie two stars on Douban.)A display of Barbie toys in Beijing in 2013.Andy Wong/Associated PressSome lingering wariness of feminism and its implications was evident at the recent Beijing showing of “Barbie,” where several audience members — male and female — told a reporter that they saw the movie as promoting equal rights, not women’s rights. Opponents of feminism in China have tarred the movement as pitching women above men.The Chinese subtitles for “Barbie” translated “feminism” as “nu xing zhu yi,” or literally “women-ism,” rather than “nu quan zhu yi,” or “women’s rights-ism.” While both are generally translated as “feminism,” the latter is seen as more politically charged.Wang Pengfei, a college student from Jiangsu Province, also drew that distinction. He had liked “Barbie” so much that he wanted to take his mother to see it, feeling she would appreciate the movie’s climactic speech about the double standards imposed on women.But Mr. Wang also said he was alarmed by what he called extreme feminist rhetoric, with women declaring that they didn’t need men. He liked the movie, he said, because it hadn’t gone as far as some other films did.“If Chinese women are really going to become independent,” he said, “it won’t be because of movie gimmicks.”Vivian Wang More

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      Mark Margolis, Scene-Stealing Actor in ‘Breaking Bad,’ Dies at 83

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      His character, an ex-drug lord in a wheelchair, was unable to speak, but Mr. Margolis, who also appeared in “Better Call Saul,” didn’t need dialogue to wield fearsome power.Mark Margolis, the prolific actor whose simmering air of menace as the fearsome former drug lord Hector Salamanca in “Breaking Bad” transformed the innocent ding of a bellhop bell into a harbinger of doom, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 83.His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital following a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement on Friday by his son, Morgan Margolis. Mr. Margolis lived in Manhattan.Mr. Margolis notched more than 160 credits in movies and on television, gaining particular notice with memorable roles in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” (1983), playing opposite Al Pacino as a cocaine-syndicate henchman, and in the Jim Carrey comedy “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” (1994), in which he played Ventura’s aggrieved landlord with delicious malevolence.He also became a go-to actor for the director Darren Aronofsky, appearing in his films “Pi” (1998), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Fountain” (2006), “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Noah” (2014).But no role made him as instantly recognizable to millions of viewers as Hector in Vince Gilligan’s critically acclaimed series “Breaking Bad,” which ran for five seasons on AMC, starting in 2008, starring Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn, and in its prequel, “Better Call Saul,” which ran for six seasons starting in 2015, starring Bob Odenkirk and Giancarlo Esposito — two of the many actors who appeared in both shows — as well as Rhea Seehorn.The role, in “Breaking Bad,” brought Mr. Margolis an Emmy nomination in 2012 for outstanding guest actor in a dramatic series.An aging former drug cartel don from Mexico, Hector, also known as Tio, had come to live in a New Mexico nursing home, unable to speak or walk following a stroke but still firmly in control of his power as a rival to Walter White (Mr. Cranston), a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher who evolves into a coldhearted kingpin in the crystal methedrine trade.Despite his lack of dialogue in “Breaking Bad,” Mr. Margolis proved a scene stealer from his wheelchair, his eyes bulging, his face trembling with rage, despite the nasal cannula pumping oxygen up his nose and his palm furiously banging his bell, taped to an arm of the chair, whenever he needed attention.“Everybody says, ‘My God it must be difficult to work without words,’” he said in a 2012 interview with Fast Company. “My joke is, ‘No. I’m already grounded in the fact that I’ve been acting without hair for years, and that’s not a problem. So, now I’m acting without words.’”As a young actor, he added, he had trained to communicate emotions without dialogue. He also borrowed mannerisms, including a tobacco-chewing motion with the side of his mouth, from his mother-in-law, who had been confined to a Florida nursing home after a stroke.As viewers discovered in “Better Call Saul,” which featured Mr. Margolis as an ambulatory and verbose Hector, the character had wound up in a wheelchair after a defector in his organization switched his medication to incapacitate him, leading to the stroke.Despite the character’s broken moral compass and hair-trigger rage, Mr. Margolis managed to evoke Hector’s complexity — his humanity, even.“You don’t play villains like they are villains,” he said in a 2012 interview with The Forward, the Jewish newspaper. “You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.”Mark Margolis was born on Nov. 26, 1939, in Philadelphia to Isidore and Fanya (Fried) Margolis. He attended Temple University briefly before moving to New York, where at 19 he got a job as a personal assistant to the method acting guru Stella Adler. He also took a class with Lee Strasberg at his famed Actors Studio.After making brief appearances on television shows like “Kojak” and in movies like the Dudley Moore comedy “Arthur” and Mr. De Palma’s “Dressed to Kill” (both from 1981), Mr. Margolis got his first taste of renown in “Scarface,” playing Alberto the Shadow, a bodyguard and hit man for Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), the Bolivian drug boss who shows Mr. Pacino’s Tony the ropes in the cocaine business.Mr. Margolis, left, played a bodyguard and hit man for a mobster (Paul Shenar, right) in Brian De Palma’s movie “Scarface,” from 1983.Universal/courtesy Everett CollectionIn one slyly comic moment in “Breaking Bad,” Hector is seen watching on television a famous scene from “Scarface” in which Tony spontaneously shoots Alberto in the head when he learns that Alberto’s planned car-bomb murder of a nosy journalist would also kill the journalist’s wife and children.Despite his turns as a Latin heavy, Mr. Margolis, who was Jewish, did not speak Spanish, a point that earned him no shortage of derision from native speakers.“I’ve lived in Mexico,” he said in 2016 interview with Vulture, New York magazine’s culture site. “I know enough of the grammar of it, and I’m pretty good with the accent of it. If I get a good tutor, I can lock into it pretty quickly.”In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife of 61 years, Jacqueline Margolis; a brother, Jerome; and three grandchildren.In the years between “Scarface” and “Breaking Bad,” Mr. Margolis’s prodigious output made him a known actor, if not a famous one. “People will often come up to me and say, ‘You’re that wonderful character actor,’” he told The Forward, apparently half seriously. “But I’m not a character actor. I’m a weird-looking romantic lead.”Unlike most romantic leads, though, Mr. Margolis struggled at times to make a living. Fans, he told The New York Observer in 2012, “think that I’m some sort of rich guy, that everyone in the movies is making the kind of money Angelina Jolie is making.”He and his wife had lived in the same apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood since 1975.At least his turn as Hector provided him with a dash of supplemental income at the show’s peak, after a messaging app called Dingbel appropriated Hector’s simplest bell command — one ding for yes, two for no. Dingbel hired him as a spokesman.As Mr. Margolis told Vulture: “I tell people I’m the second-most famous bell ringer after Quasimodo.” More

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      Thanks to Carol Burnett and Dolly Parton, New Life for a 1988 Film

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      “Tokyo Pop,” starring Carrie Hamilton, a daughter of the comedian, was a critical hit that had fallen into obscurity and has now been restored.When “Tokyo Pop” opened in April 1988, critics were upbeat, at least about its lead actress, Carrie Hamilton, a newcomer to movies who had appeared on TV’s “Fame.” The Los Angeles Times critic Sheila Benson wrote that Hamilton stalked through the film “straight into our hearts.” In The New York Times, Walter Goodman praised the movie, about an aspiring American pop star in Japan, for its “rhythm and zing.” The opening titles were designed by the artist Keith Haring at the height of his fame.But by November 2019, when a print of “Tokyo Pop” played at the Japan Society in Manhattan, the film had fallen into obscurity. The theatrical distributor, Spectrafilm in Canada, was long defunct. Although VHS copies existed, the movie never made it to disc or streaming. Even its director, Fran Rubel Kuzui, hadn’t seen it — her debut feature — in three decades. And Hamilton, a daughter of Carol Burnett, had died of cancer at 38 in 2002.But the Japan Society showing proved to be the start of the film’s second life. During the post-screening Q. and A., Sandra Schulberg, president of the preservation organization IndieCollect, volunteered from the audience that she would love to restore and rerelease the film. After a complicated search for original elements, and financial help from backers including Burnett and Dolly Parton, that restoration is here. “Tokyo Pop” opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and will continue at engagements throughout the country.“You don’t think about that when you make something: How will I feel about this in 35 years? Especially your first film,” Kuzui, 78, said at an interview in New York in June, the day after the restoration had its premiere at the Museum of Modern Art.Hamilton with Diamond Yukai in “Tokyo Pop,” directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui. She herself hadn’t seen the film in three decades.Kuzui Enterprises, via Kino LorberAlthough she used to love seeing the video on Blockbuster shelves, and every year or so would get queries from festivals, she knew little about what had happened to the film, other than that she paid $40 a month to keep the internegative in storage. In the pre-internet days, without the distributor, there wasn’t much way to check in on the film’s afterlife, she explained. Thanks to digital and streaming, she added, “my generation is the first generation that I’ve seen that really is having an opportunity to look back on work in such a broad sense.”The fish-out-of-water scenario of “Tokyo Pop” was personal to Kuzui, who was raised in Great Neck, N.Y., and is married to Kaz Kuzui, a Japanese film producer whom she met when she was a script supervisor and he was an assistant director. The movie centers on Wendy (Hamilton), a backup singer in New York who on impulse travels to Japan at a time when American culture was all the rage there. With the language barrier a struggle, she is helped by Hiro (Yutaka Tadokoro, now better known as Diamond Yukai), a frustrated rock musician who speaks a little English. They begin a relationship and, with some reluctance, she joins his band covering American hits. Hamilton herself wrote — and is shown performing — the closing-credits song.Although Kuzui wrote the screenplay with her friend Lynn Grossman, “Tokyo Pop” was made with a mostly Japanese crew — unusual at the time for any American director, let alone a woman. Kuzui remembered that even her calls of “Action!” were perceived as unfeminine shouting.Part of the subtext of the movie, she said, was that she didn’t want to become an example of a gaijin, or foreigner, who was dependent on Japan. When Wendy’s star starts to rise there, it’s because she’s viewed as a novelty. “Foreigners in Japan — they were not held to, and they still aren’t held to, exactly the same rules that Japanese people follow,” Kuzui said. If she was going to be successful as a director, she felt, it couldn’t be with that sort of advantage.Although she and Kaz have divided their time between the United States and Japan for 40 years — they made much of their living handling the Japanese distribution of American independent films like the Coen brothers’ “Barton Fink” and David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” — Kuzui said that for a long period, she would go back and forth every six to eight weeks because she lacked a visa. She has always seen herself as living in the United States. “I really didn’t start living in Japan until the pandemic,” she said.Hamilton’s mother, Carol Burnett, said she remembered the actress telling her she had a difficult time with her bleached hair.Kuzui Enterprises, via Kino LorberKuzui went on to direct only one other feature, which many more people saw: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992). Pointing to an admiring 2022 article in The Atlantic, Kuzui believes that even that film may receive the kind of re-evaluation that she anticipates for “Tokyo Pop.” It’s in the zeitgeist, she said, that audiences are giving a fresh look to work made in the 1980s and ’90s.Kazu Watanabe, who programmed “Tokyo Pop” at the Japan Society and now runs distribution at Grasshopper Film, discovered the film while curating a series on outsiders making movies in Tokyo. He thought the movie held up, even in small ways, and, unlike some films of the era, seemed in tune with modern sensibilities. “There’s a scene where the two leads are in bed together, and then she changes her mind, doesn’t want to sleep with him,” he said. “And it’s done so matter-of-factly. There’s no big dramatic scene about it.”Schulberg of IndieCollect said she wanted to restore the film in part because it was a remarkable directorial debut by a woman “who in my view never got the opportunities and attention she deserved.”Burnett, speaking by phone in early July, before the actors’ strike, recalled when Hamilton was shooting the film. “I remember she had a terrible time, she said, with her hair, because the bleach or whatever it was over in Japan made her hair fall out,” Burnett said, with a laugh. “So she wore a lot of scarves and kind of had to make do with what she had.” In an anecdote Burnett also recounted in “Carrie and Me” (2013), her book about her relationship with her daughter, she said that Marlon Brando somehow saw “Tokyo Pop” and called Hamilton to discuss a project — which Hamilton turned down.While Burnett occasionally searches for her daughter on YouTube and reads the comments, keeping tabs on her “small following,” she added, “I’m thrilled that, again, after all these years, people are going to discover her all over again.” More

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      Children’s Movies to Stream: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and More

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      This month’s picks include a stereotype-defying shape-shifter, superpowered shelter pets and the newest “Guardians of the Galaxy” adventure.‘Nimona’Watch it on Netflix.Nimona is a shape-shifter, a monster, a misunderstood hellion with a heart of gold. Voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, the title character busts into a futuristic world where knights defend the castle and the powerful might not be as benevolent as they’d like the citizens to believe. Based on a best-selling graphic novel by ND Stevenson and directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (who also co-directed “Spies in Disguise”), this 2023 animated feature from Netflix gives young children a mile-a-minute main character who slides between “good guy” and “bad guy” status, defying the usual stereotypes. Stevenson has called the story a transgender allegory, and the L.G.B.T.Q. representation is a welcome change from the usual kids’ movie universes, where knights fall in love with princesses, not with each other. Here, Riz Ahmed voices Ballister Boldheart, a knight who has been wrongly accused of murdering Queen Valerin (Lorraine Toussaint). Ballister reluctantly allows Nimona to help him take down a corrupt system, prove his innocence and reunite with his partner, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). As a character, Nimona has zero chill and might prove a little tough for adults to watch for any length of time, but my son was entertained by the character’s constant motion, chaotic energy and what-will-come-next transformations.‘Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie’Watch it on Netflix.Many youngsters will already be familiar with the hit French series “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir,” about two Parisian teen superheroes named Marinette (voiced by Cristina Vee for the English-speaking cast) and Adrien (Bryce Papenbrook), who secretly transform into Ladybug and Cat Noir to save their city from villains. They’re members of The Miraculous, a group of protectors who vanquish evil all over the world. This time, the superheroes get nearly two hours of screen time to join forces and stop the evil Hawk Moth (Keith Silverstein) from unleashing destruction throughout the City of Light. Directed by Jeremy Zag, who co-wrote the screenplay with Bettina López Mendoza and also wrote the songs, the 2023 movie amps up the action, with plenty of scenes in which Ladybug and Cat Noir fly over Parisian landmarks and battle the bad guys. There are musical numbers, moments of valor, and enough silly humor and flirty banter between the real-life teenagers and their alter egos to keep elementary-age kids watching. The vibrant reds and purples that make the series stand out visually are on full display, and the same girl power theme that defines the series carries over to the film.‘Heroes of the Golden Mask’Rent it on Amazon Prime and Vudu.In this Arcana Studios 2023 production directed by Sean Patrick O’Reilly, an orphan named Charlie (voiced by Kiefer O’Reilly) is trying his best to survive on the mean streets of his city. Just as Charlie is about to get nabbed by the cops for another petty crime, a door opens and a strange figure offers him a quick escape in the form of a magic portal. Charlie hops through, and he’s transported to an ancient Chinese kingdom called Sanxingdui. He meets an unlikely group of golden-masked superheroes who tell Charlie they need his help defeating a ruthless enemy set on conquering the kingdom. At first Charlie schemes to help the heroes with the secret intention of taking the golden masks, but lessons are learned and Charlie discovers that money and greed aren’t the most important things in life. The animation looks a little like a low-budget video game, and the writing and performances are definitely not awards-season worthy, but Patton Oswalt voices a blue ogre named Aesop, Ron Perlman voices Kunyi, and Christopher Plummer, before his death, voiced the character Rizzo. It’s a bit of a mishmash, but if your kid is craving swordplay, winged tigers and dragons that look like they mated with a moose, give this one a try.‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’Watch it on Disney+.The final installment of the director James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy, released in May, might not go down as the best of the three, but it should entertain older elementary school and middle school kids who’ve come to love Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Drax (Dave Bautista). When we meet back up with the Marvel gang, Star-Lord is grieving Gamora, who died in “Avengers: Infinity War.” Never fear, though! Gamora (sort of) returns to the crew in the form of a time-traveling variant, but this Gamora has no memory of her relationship with Peter. The story largely centers on Rocket, and the Guardians’ attempts to save his life and take down the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), an evil scientist who created Rocket and who is now intent on mutiny. Cooper brings some genuine emotion to Rocket’s journey, and Iwuji portrays a formidable villain.‘DC League of Super-Pets’Watch it on Max.One could easily imagine this movie being pitched in a conference room: An animated superhero movie, but about their pets! The delightful simplicity of it would be tough to pass up. Here, we have Dwayne Johnson voicing Superman’s dog, Krypto, a pup whose favorite chew toy is a little squeaky Batman doll. Youngsters won’t care about the voices behind the adorable super-pets, but Kevin Hart, Keanu Reeves, Kate McKinnon, Natasha Lyonne and Marc Maron make a formidable cast. Krypto was sent to Earth as a puppy to look after Superman (voiced by John Krasinski), so the two have a sweet bond that might make both children and adults feel a little weepy because dogs are the best. Krypto can fight crime, but he’s a misfit when it comes to relating to non-superhero dogs. When Superman proposes marriage to Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde), he takes Krypto to a shelter to meet some other dogs, so he won’t feel like a third wheel, and just like that, a league of super-pets is formed. With a screenplay by the “Lego Batman Movie” writers Jared Stern and John Whittington, this 2022 charmer, directed by Stern and Sam Levine, has enough action, sweetness and humor to warrant multiple viewings. More