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      ‘Queens of the Qing Dynasty’ Review: Secret Soul Mates

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      When a young woman hospitalized after a suicide attempt forms a bond with an international student, they create a different kind of relationship.The wonderfully bizarre Canadian drama “Queens of the Qing Dynasty” understands queerness the way that bell hooks did: as a “self that is at odds with everything around it.” Directed by Ashley McKenzie like a dream — or a bout of dissociation — the film is a love story, absent sex or romance, about a teenage psychiatric patient in Nova Scotia, Star (Sarah Walker), and a Shanghainese exchange student volunteering at the hospital, An (Ziyin Zheng). The pair make an odd couple, and yet their bond is intuitive, electric.The story kicks off in the aftermath of Star’s suicide attempt, the film’s tone at once bleakly clinical and deadpan absurd. Star, a neurodivergent foster kid with a sardonic sense of humor, clearly doesn’t register the gravity of her actions. Eyes glazed, she seems out of touch with her own body, and she’s not one for rules, like when she’s kicked out of an apartment for opening it to partiers. Eventually, she is institutionalized.Walker, captivatingly raw, makes Star both charming and frustrating in her aloofness. The cinematographer Scott Moore shoots in close-ups that blur at the edges, while the eerie sound design by Andreas Mendritzki gives the frosty Cape Breton location the feel of life on Mars, approximating Star’s dazed point of view.An, a poised international student with bladelike long nails, dreams of transitioning, and — through a kind of buddy system — connects with Star, regaling her with stories of ancient Chinese courtesans, scheming, glamorous dames who never have to work. The two communicate by text: An sends singing videos with their face prettified by a filter; Star, a stream-of-consciousness barrage of messages and voice mail messages that usually go unacknowledged. She doesn’t seem to mind and An isn’t driven away by them, either. They part and reunite and part again.Estranged from their communities, the two embody a different kind of relationship, and McKenzie doesn’t rely on the usual uplifting messaging and strained empowerment arc to humanize An and Star. In one beautifully uncanny scene, the duo stop by a virtual reality gaming studio and, equipped with headsets, plug into the fantasy, playing as flying sorcerers as they shoot the breeze. Their friendship remains mysterious, yet the film, as if by witchcraft, makes their connection feel palpable and true.Queens of the Qing DynastyNot rated. In English, Mandarin and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hour 2 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Review: ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It?’ Probably a Lot

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      Two childhood friends navigate cultural differences in this pleasantly uncontentious romantic comedy.A glossy lesson in how to pour nontraditional content into a traditional rom-com mold, Shekhar Kapur’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” shapes competing notions of happily-ever-after into comfort food. And in case we’re unclear about its middle-of-the-road ambitions, Kapur also gives us a film-within-the-film whose title is “Love Contractually.” Accordingly, anyone who takes longer than 10 minutes to forecast the ending simply doesn’t get out of the house enough.Moving between graceful London locations and a vibrant celebration in Lahore, Pakistan, the story centers on Zoe (Lily James), an English documentary filmmaker, and her childhood friend, Kazim (Shazad Latif), a British-Pakistani doctor. She is a chronic right-swiper on disappointing men; he considers love at first sight a mental health issue and has opted for an arranged marriage to a shy Pakistani beauty (a wonderfully nimble Sajal Ali). Kazim’s journey to the altar, Zoe decides, will make a perfect topic for her new documentary.Written by Jemima Khan, channeling some of her own experiences as the former wife of a Pakistani prime minister, “What’s Love” bundles its perky-sweet tale in Kapur’s signature visual sumptuousness (courtesy of the cinematographer Remi Adefarasin). Bland conversations about love and longing, and a mostly sunny tone, neuter potential conflict in a movie that neither promotes nor disparages arranged marriage. Sadly, its most divisive feature is a grating turn by Emma Thompson as Zoe’s attention-hogging mother, whose behavior is often embarrassing and usually inappropriate.By contrast, the lovely Shabana Azmi gives Kazim’s mother a droll, knowing dignity. “Not too dark,” she warns, instructing a matchmaker on her daughter-in-law preferences. Apparently the filmmakers made the same choice.What’s Love Got to Do With it?Rated PG-13. No sex, they’re British. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘You Can Live Forever’ Review: Do You Love Me Now?

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      Religion comes between two girls falling in love in the 1990s in this sweet coming-of-age film bathed in grunge hues.In “You Can Live Forever,” Jaime and Marike do many things teenagers in love do, like looking soulfully into each other’s eyes and making out in a car’s back seat. They also knock on doors to proselytize for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.Yeah, that last one is going to be a problem for budding lesbians.Complicating matters further, Jaime (Anwen O’Driscoll) is a recent transplant to their small Quebec town and goes along for the religious ride only to be with Marike (June Laporte), a believer who was raised in “the Truth.”The intersection of homosexuality and faith has been explored in film before — Sebastián Lelio’s “Disobedience,” set among the Orthodox Jewish community, is a high-profile recent example — and Mark Slutsky and Sarah Watts’s story benefits from being rooted in Watts’s own experience growing up gay in the 1990s. As if to underline that the film is set in that decade, Jaime never seems to take off her flannel and beanie, and kisses Marike to the sound of the Breeders; Gayle Ye’s cinematography is also a nice washed-up hue, as if bleached of bold colors — very true to the grunge sensibility.Otherwise “You Can Live Forever” sticks to a fairly common coming-of-age trajectory. There is a sense of a missed opportunity in that we see the action through the eyes of Jaime, who is more accepting of her sexuality from the start, leaving Marike a tantalizing blank. She initiates every move with Jaime, only to segue into Bible study or a double date with boys. How does Marike rationalize this new love and her faith? Even the Breeders don’t have a song for that.You Can Live ForeverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ Review: Motherhood and Boyhood in a New Home

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      This intimate drama gives a moving, if imperfect, look at a Korean immigrant mother’s struggle to raise her son in 1990s Canada.A few minutes into “Riceboy Sleeps,” an imperfect but ultimately moving drama written and directed by Anthony Shim, the film falls into that dreaded trope of immigrant stories: the smelly lunchbox moment. The experience comes for young Dong-hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang) when he opens the Korean meal his mom packed him and is taunted by elementary school classmates.Later, he asks his single mother, So-young (Choi Seung-yoon), who emigrated from Korea to Canada with Dong-hyun after the father died by suicide, to pack him a less conspicuous lunch. It’s one of a few ways that Shim’s film, which eventually flashes forward to track So-young’s struggle to raise and connect with her son during his teenage years (when he is played by Ethan Hwang), emphasizes in an almost perfunctory way the racism and hardship the pair faces in a new country in the ‘90s.Even while it’s hampered by these rough edges, the movie is terrifically scored and beautifully shot. (Though the cinematographer Christopher Lew’s astute camerawork is too often left to do heavy emotional lifting that the writing can’t.) Most of all, the film is elevated by Choi, who naturally communicates the strength, tenderness and pain of So-young’s life.It’s not until the spectacular third act of the film, when mother and son travel to Korea, that everything clicks more fully into place, as Shim lets the landscape and his actors take over. The camera finally sits still, capturing small moments of connection that further contour unspeakable wounds — giving a window into a past life that So-young could never fully escape.Riceboy SleepsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Unrest’ Review: The Times Are Not A-Changin’

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      A factory worker joins with a group of anarchist watchmakers in this marvelously crisp drama.At the center of every mechanical clock is a spiral — the unrest as it’s known in Switzerland — and it’s a smart metaphor for Cyril Schäublin’s marvelously crisp study of anarchist watchmakers in the 1870s Saint-Imier valley. These women and men are aggrieved by long hours, dehumanizing labor, high taxes, health insurance costs, voting disenfranchisement, income inequality, surging nationalism and the pressures of an increasingly global economy. All of this while being distracted by an emerging mass-produced technology — the photograph — which allows them to stare at pocket-size images of influential strangers (executed rebels, mostly) like ye olde social media. This emboldened era believes its teetering system will collapse. We know it won’t. Time, Schäublin implies, is quite literally circular.The film punctures that airless sense of fate which can suffocate period pieces and restores this moment of upheaval to immediacy. Schäublin and the cinematographer Silvan Hillmann shoot scenes like a documentary. The camera lurks at a distance while the actors speak as casually as if they’re wearing hidden mics; the shot list could be transplanted as is to a fast fashion factory in present-day Bangladesh. Yet, to Schäublin, this story is more personal than his strictly anthropological movie lets on. His grandmother worked at a Swiss watch factory, and said her own grandmother had, too.Outside the building, the real-life Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov) tangles politely with a smiling, implacable gendarme (Laurent Ferrero). Inside, a few more characters emerge: the politically ambitious factory owner (Valentin Merz), a handful of female employees (Clara Gostynski, Monika Stalder, Laurence Bretignier) and a series of bloodless managers who loom over the ladies’ hunched bodies with a stopwatch timing their productivity. There’s a bitter irony in the realization that the workers are constructing their own doom. Now that seconds can be measured, every one of them counts.UnrestNot rated. In Swiss German, Russian, French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Chile ’76’ Review: Domestic Unease That Twists Into Intrigue

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      Manuela Martelli’s new film examines the Pinochet dictatorship through the eyes of a woman who never intended to play an active role.In 1973, the socialist government of Chile was overthrown by a military junta led by Gen‌‌. Augusto Pinochet, with the backing of the United States. Thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands fled the country under Pinochet’s dictatorship, which lasted for 17 years and was maintained through violence. ‌With the new film “Chile ’76,” the director Manuela Martelli joins the company of Chilean filmmakers like Pablo Larraín and Sebastián Leilo, who have made thought-provoking movies reflecting on the Pinochet regime and its impact on the lives of everyday people. Martelli’s initial inspiration for the story came from a source close to home. She imagined the loss felt by her grandmother, who died by suicide in 1976, one of the most violent years of the dictatorship, before Martelli was born.The protagonist of “Chile ’76” is Carmen (Aline Küppenheim), a regal woman of middle age. She’s a grandmother and a career flight attendant who now lives a comfortably bourgeois lifestyle with her husband in Santiago. When the story begins, she’s in the process of overseeing renovations to her family’s beachside vacation home. Carmen occupies her time alone with charitable work, guided by the sanguine priest of the town, Father Sánchez (Hugo Medina).Carmen is discomforted by the sanctioned brutality around her — early on, she witnesses distraught neighbors being dragged away in the streets. But Carmen’s comfortable existence is not directly disrupted until Father Sánchez asks her to care for a fugitive hidden in the church. She acquiesces, nursing Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda), a wounded revolutionary, back to health. She transports antibiotics for his injuries, and lies to the suspicious authorities to cover her tracks. Anxiety becomes Carmen’s constant companion as telephones buzz on lines that might be tapped, and neighbors pry, posing inconvenient questions.Martelli’s film demonstrates remarkable skill in reconstructing he time period, giving consideration both to recreating the appearance of the era and its emotional tenor. She filmed in beach towns that have remained relatively unaltered since the ’70s, and she complements the look of crumbling building facades with wood-paneled interior sets. It’s a world that’s both worn and warm; even the wallpaper comes in cozy plaid.Yet Martelli’s detailed, beautiful frames aren’t signs of empty aestheticism. Her eye for composition mirrors that of her protagonist, a person of elegant tastes who is drawn into a political plot that intrudes upon her capacity to redesign. The film’s original score blends electronic and orchestral music, and acts as an indicator of Carmen’s justified paranoia, entering in moments when her routines are most disturbed. As an entrant into the growing canon of Chilean films responding to the Pinochet dictatorship, “Chile ’76” is a sly genre exercise, an example of how political repression can squeeze a domestic melodrama until it takes the shape of a spy thriller.Chile ’76Not rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Film and TV Writers on Strike Picket Outside Hollywood Studios

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      Those in picket lines at the headquarters of companies like Netflix were critical of working conditions that have become routine in the streaming era.Ellen Stutzman, a senior Writers Guild of America official, stood on a battered patch of grass outside Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles. She was calm — remarkably so, given the wild scene unfolding around her, and the role she had played in its creation.“Hey, Netflix! You’re no good! Pay your writers like you should!” hundreds of striking movie and television writers shouted in unison as they marched outside the Netflix complex. The spectacle had snarled traffic on Sunset Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon, and numerous drivers blared horns in support of a strike. Undulating picket signs, a few of which were covered with expletives, added to the sense of chaos, as did a hovering news helicopter and a barking dog. “Wow,” a Netflix employee said as he inched his car out of the company’s driveway, which was blocked by writers.In February, unions representing 11,500 screenwriters selected Ms. Stutzman, 40, to be their chief negotiator in talks with studios and streaming services for a new contract. Negotiations broke off on Monday night, shortly before the contract expired. Ms. Stutzman and other union officials voted unanimously to call a strike, shattering 15 years of labor peace in Hollywood, and bringing the entertainment industry’s creative assembly lines to a grinding halt.“We told them there was a ton of pent-up anger,” Ms. Stutzman said, referring to the companies at the bargaining table, which included Amazon and Apple. “They didn’t seem to believe us.”The throng started a new chant, as if on cue. “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! This corporate greed has got to go!”Similar scenes of solidarity unfolded across the entertainment capital. At Paramount Pictures, more than 400 writers — and a few supportive actors, including Rob Lowe — assembled to wave pickets with slogans like “Despicable You” and “Honk if you like words.” Screenwriting titans like Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen,” “Lost”) and Jenny Lumet (“Rachel Getting Married,” “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”) marched outside Amazon Studios. Acrimony hung in the air outside Walt Disney Studios, where one writer played drums on empty buckets next to a sign that read, “What we are asking for is a drop in the bucket.”Another sign goaded Mickey Mouse directly: “I smell a rat.”But the strike, at least in its opening hours, seemed to burn hottest at Netflix, with some writers describing the company as “the scene of the crime.” That is because Netflix popularized and, in some cases, pioneered streaming-era practices that writers say have made their profession an unsustainable one — a job that had always been unstable, dependent on audience tastes and the whims of revolving sets of network executives, has become much more so.The streaming giant, for instance, has become known for “mini-rooms,” which is slang for hiring small groups of writers to map out a season before any official greenlight has been given. Because it isn’t a formal writers room, the pay is less. Writers in mini-rooms will sometimes work for as little as 10 weeks, and then have to scramble to find another job. (If the show is greenlit and goes into production, fewer writers are kept on board.)“If you only get a 10-week job, which a lot of people now do, you really have to start looking for a new job on day one,” said Alex Levy, who has written for Netflix shows like “Grace and Frankie.” “In my case, I haven’t been able to get a writing job for months. I’ve had to borrow money from my family to pay my rent.”Lawrence Dai, whose credits include “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “American Born Chinese,” a Disney+ series, echoed Ms. Levy’s frustration. “It feels like an existential moment because it’s becoming impossible to build a career,” he said. “The dream is dead.” More

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      Will Poulter Is Just Getting Used to His Superhero Era

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      The once-gawky British actor buffed up to play Adam Warlock in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” But he says, in his head, he’s still 5-foot-4.Even when people don’t know Will Poulter’s name, they recognize his face. It helps that the 30-year-old Brit has been acting for half his life and has racked up an eclectic list of film credits, though he’s also blessed with a pair of distinctive eyebrows that are as curvy and expressive as a fleur-de-lis. They pull people in, even if those people aren’t always sure where to place the on-the-cusp actor.“To be honest,” Poulter said, “the bulk of my interactions are, ‘Do I know you from somewhere? Are you the guy from that thing? What have I seen you in?’”Often, this forces Poulter to cycle through a list of his projects until something clicks. Do they remember him as the shy dork who received kissing lessons from Jennifer Aniston in “We’re the Millers,” or the brash friend who meets a bad end in “Midsommar”? Or maybe they grew up on some of the YA franchises he co-starred in, like the “Maze Runner” series and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”?Poulter is a patient man, but his willingness to oblige a stranger can still lead to some awkward moments. “No one wants to be put in a position where you’re reciting your C.V.,” he said. Likening himself to a supporting character from “The Simpsons,” he added: “I often feel like I’m doing a Troy McClure impression: ‘You may know me from such things as…’”After this weekend, Poulter’s “where do you know me from” conversations will receive a cut-to-the-chase trump card: He’s joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing the caped superhero Adam Warlock in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” Described in the comic books as a genetically engineered perfect being, Poulter’s Warlock has glittery-gold skin and dangerous powers: Imagine an Oscar statuette that can shoot cosmic beams out of its hands, and you’re halfway there.Poulter as Adam Warlock in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” Whether he returns to the Marvel Cinematic Universe depends on fan reception.Jessica Miglio/MarvelIntroduced flying through outer space to the stirring guitar rock of Heart’s “Crazy on You,” Warlock is a significant figure in Marvel lore, though he’s still coming into his own when we meet him in the new “Guardians” film: Ejected from his birthing cocoon a bit too early, Warlock has a sense of right and wrong that is up for grabs, which gives Poulter several surprising beats to play as he butts heads with the Guardians and considers joining their side.“He brought life and reality to someone who is essentially a child in the body of an adult,” said the film’s writer-director, James Gunn, who picked Poulter over a wide field of hot Hollywood hopefuls. “And,” Gunn added, “he got yoked.”Ah yes, the great yokening. Though he was often cast as scrawny geeks earlier in his career, Poulter’s been through a recent, gym-aided glow-up: 6-foot-2 and Marvel-muscular with a thick head of blond hair, he has followed in the path of fellow British actors Nicholas Hoult and Dev Patel, who played realistically awkward teenagers onscreen before blossoming into Hollywood heartthrobs.Just a few years ago, Poulter was bullied on social media for his looks, but after his physical transformation, he’s been the subject of thirst tweets and internet-boyfriend articles. It’s enough to give a guy whiplash, and Poulter said he’s parsing the head trip.“It’s quite odd, because I’ve sort of formed my personality around looking a certain way,” he admitted. “Psychologically, I’m still 5-foot-4 because that’s what I was at school. Even being tall is something that I’m still getting used to!”Poulter is polite and humble without a trace of former-child-actor neediness. In early March, when I met him for strip-mall soul food in Los Angeles, he had gotten up early to watch an Arsenal soccer game and was eager to follow the match with a big bowl of jambalaya. “Will is completely easy, listens to everything, and is simultaneously very serious and game for anything,” Gunn said. “He’s down to earth and just plain fun to be around.”And though Gunn selected him to play a golden god, Poulter is too self-deprecating to let that kind of role go to his head.“I knew when I was cast that they were definitely going in a different direction than ‘perfect man,’” he told me, grinning.“Will is completely easy, listens to everything, and is simultaneously very serious and game for anything,” James Gunn said. Rosie Marks for The New York TimesTHOUGH IT CAN come with its own special baggage, Poulter has always considered acting to be a safe space. As a preteen growing up in Hammersmith, London, he would spend his entire school week looking forward to drama class on Friday morning, a place where he could kick off his shoes and explore creatively.When he was 12, his drama teachers encouraged him to audition for the charming indie comedy “Son of Rambow”; he landed the film’s breakout role on his first try and filmed it for eight weeks during his summer holiday. “For that to be my introduction to the film industry, I couldn’t have asked for a gentler, nicer, more wholesome experience,” he said. “It really lit the fire in me to want to do it again.”Poulter has worked steadily ever since — you may have also seen his supporting roles in prestige dramas like “The Revenant” and “Detroit” — while also navigating the unique challenge of growing up in the public eye. At 19, his role as awkward virgin Kenny in “We’re the Millers” elevated his profile but led to an uptick in jeers and catcalls from strangers; later, after playing a bespectacled computer-game designer in the 2018 “Black Mirror” episode “Bandersnatch,” some social-media users made such cutting comments about his looks that Poulter announced he’d be stepping back from Twitter to preserve his mental health.That’s why, now that the tide has turned toward appreciative tweets instead of cruel jokes, Poulter is skeptical about putting any stock into what social media has to say about him. “It shouldn’t inform how I treat myself, because I don’t know those people,” he said. “One of the dangers with social media is we can conflate things that exist online to the real world without even questioning it. We just carry the one and don’t really ask whether it actually adds up at the end of the day.”He smiled. “That’s a bad math analogy from someone who’s heavily dyslexic.”He’s seen tweets that compare pictures of his gawky character from “We’re the Millers” to his modern-day, muscular incarnation, as though they couldn’t possibly be the same person. “People are acting like I played Kenny Miller in 2013 and then woke up and now I look like I do, like there was some strange and mystical explanation behind it,” he said. “I just grew up, like every other human being on Earth.”But unlike Adam Warlock, who emerges from his birthing cocoon with a perfect physique, Poulter’s new look took time to attain: He began lifting weights at the start of the pandemic and found the regular fitness regimen did wonders for his mental health. A looming shirtless scene in the Michael Keaton-led limited series “Dopesick” spurred Poulter to step up his workouts, and by the time he began auditioning for “Guardians,” he had already reached the sort of shape that meant he could plausibly play a superhero.“If you want to do it in a way that’s safe and is entirely natural, you have to be prepared to spend a long period of time doing it,” Poulter said. “There’s no way that I could’ve got into the shape that I got had I not been working out for a number of years prior and built up foundations.”Though social-media posts now thirst for him, Poulter is skeptical: “It shouldn’t inform how I treat myself, because I don’t know those people.”Rosie Marks for The New York TimesIf people think his physical transformation happened overnight, Poulter worries they’ll believe he turned to enhanced means to attain it. “Obviously, there’s a lot of pressure out there on young people, both men and women, regarding body image,” Poulter said. “I’m being kind of careful in the words, but if you’re going to promote the process by which you achieved said body goal, I think you have to be fully transparent about how you got there.”Are other actors less than transparent about getting yoked? “Potentially,” Poulter demurred. “It’s not for me to say.”Still, even if Poulter took the long road to his Marvel musculature, he knows it hasn’t stopped people from speculating. “The rumor mill was mad,” he said. “My own mum was sending me something from someone being like, “Has Will had plastic surgery?’”Though Poulter tries to brush all that off, one viral clip still gnaws at him: On YouTube, a physical trainer analyzed a shirtless photo of Poulter from “Dopesick” and criticized his team on the assumption that they had trained him to diet in a certain way.“It’s got millions of views,” Poulter said. “Does it bug me that anyone might believe that, or think that I went about it in a different way that would contradict what I’m an advocate of? For sure. But I guess it’s about learning to relinquish your control over that sort of thing and just hope that there’s enough people who know what’s up.”As we finished lunch, Poulter chatted with our server; over the course of our meal, I had watched it dawn on her that she knew who he was. “You’re very funny,” she eventually told Poulter, who thanked her.We discussed his impending worldwide press tour for “Guardians,” though Poulter said he genuinely didn’t know whether Marvel had bigger plans for him beyond this film: “It kind of hinges on how people respond to the character,” he said. “If the fans don’t like Adam Warlock, obviously I’m going to be pretty gutted. My family’s opinion means a lot, but it’s not necessarily going to bring me back as the character.”But even if it proves to be a one-off, playing Warlock was a valuable experience, Poulter said. When he first started on the production, Gunn told him that he shouldn’t be afraid to screw up, even if those mistakes might make him feel self-conscious. For someone who struggles with how he can be perceived, that advice was scary but also freeing: It meant that he could take big swings and feel safe, and that he could learn to forgive himself when things didn’t go to plan.Those are the sort of realizations that keep Poulter enamored with acting even when so many other things about his chosen career can be tricky. “It can be stressful, it can be painful, and plainly speaking, it can be difficult to do and a strain on your mental health, but I also think it’s very necessary to reflect on your own psyche and think about its impact on the world around you,” Poulter said. “It’s a lovely psychoanalytical journey that I’m really enjoying.” More