Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Oak’: A Post-Communist Pinwheel

      by

      Lucian Pintilie’s newly restored mad farce, now at Film Forum, paved the way for the Romanian new wave.Playing the last days of Romanian communism as frenzied farce, Lucian Pintilie’s “The Oak” is set in a world so despoiled a Hieronymus Bosch landscape might seem bucolic by comparison.First shown in 1992, some three years after the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed and a year after a new constitution replaced single-party rule, “The Oak” has been restored and revived for a week at Film Forum. Ensuing decades have scarcely mitigated its power.Following the death of her father, a onetime colonel in the secret police, the disheveled and seemingly demented Nela (Maia Morgenstern) departs the squalid Bucharest apartment they shared and, carrying dad’s ashes in a jar of Nescafé, makes her way to Copsa Mica, the Transylvanian town where she has been hired to teach.The place is a citadel of pollution — industrial and otherwise. Nela is sexually assaulted by a gang of drunken workers. After she is dumped in a hospital bed (its previous occupant unceremoniously relocated to the floor), Nela meets a kindred soul in Mitica (Razvan Vasilescu), a surgeon similarly sent to the Transylvanian back of beyond. Equally unrestrained, Mitica eschews bribes and physically attacks his superiors, often with a fixed grin. The pair team up in a scattershot, anti-authoritarian conspiracy of two.As wildly impulsive Nela, Morgenstern gives a performance no less anarchic than the movie. (It’s a minor irony of cinema history that this whirlwind actress would be best known for her somber portrayal of Jesus’s mother in “The Passion of the Christ.”) She’s so much fun to watch that “The Oak” loses velocity when attention shifts to her cohort.Punctuated with sudden explosions, random mayhem, yelling, cursing, and ringing telephones, “The Oak” is impossibly busy as well as incredibly bleak. Trains stall, bridges flood, trucks crash. The army is perpetually holding drills. The hospital doubles as a charnel house. Officials are ineffectual even in their self-dealing. Ordinary people are pointlessly bellicose.The movie is sometimes exhausting but never dull. Indeed, the pace is dizzying to the point of disorientation. “You can’t be sure which way is up,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review in The Times, watching “The Oak” was like exploring “a house of horrors in an amusement park in space.”Pintilie, who died in 2018, has been called the godfather of the Romanian new wave — an example for the talented young directors who emerged in the early 20th century. “The Oak” provided a template for the journey-to-the-end-of-the-night absurdism found in Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005) and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007). In addition, “The Oak” pioneered a mode that might be called post-Communist grotesque, anticipating the Balkan tumult of the Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica’s “Underground” (1995), the frantic labyrinthine surrealism of Aleksei German’s “Khrustalyov, My Car!” (1998) and the political slapstick of Armando Iannucci’s “The Death of Stalin” (2017).Unlike those three films however, “The Oak” has the quality of a personal exorcism. Made upon Pintilie’s return to Romania after years of self-imposed exile, it is a work of bottled-up fury. The movie’s mad energy suggests that Pintilie, some of whose earlier films were personally banned by Ceausescu, is pounding a stake through the dictator’s heart the better to dance on his grave.The OakApril 28 through May 4 at Film Forum in Manhattan, filmforum.org. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Watch These Great Harry Belafonte Screen Performances

      by

      While Belafonte’s cinematic output was minimal, he made an impact with each role.With the death of Harry Belafonte, America lost a musical genius and an icon of activism, who rose from a life of poverty to one of massive record sales and sellout concerts, using his fame as a performer to shed light on the causes he believed in.But Belafonte was also a major movie star, and though his cinematic output wasn’t exactly prolific — he appeared, surprisingly, in fewer than two dozen feature films during his 65-year film career — he made a memorable impression each time he was onscreen. Below are a few highlights, all available to stream.‘Carmen Jones’ (1954)Rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Belafonte’s first leading role was only his second film appearance, after a supporting turn in the Dorothy Dandridge vehicle “Bright Road.” He reteamed with Dandridge for Otto Preminger’s film adaptation of the Oscar Hammerstein II musical “Carmen Jones,” itself an interpretation of Bizet’s classic opera “Carmen,” modernized and reimagined for an all-Black cast. The production was notoriously tempestuous, but Belafonte couldn’t have asked for a project more suited to his talents: The picture gave him the opportunity to emote and smolder in equal measure as the young soldier Joe, proving that this was no mere pop singer moonlighting in movies. This was the work of a full-fledged film star.‘The Angel Levine’ (1970)Rent or buy it on Amazon and Apple TV.Yet Belafonte’s first burst of work was short-lived. After a handful of excellent dramatic turns in the late 1950s (most notably in Robert Wise’s “Odds Against Tomorrow,” sadly unavailable to stream), Belafonte devoted his time in the 1960s to his civil rights activism. But he made a triumphant return to the screen in this delightfully odd comedy-drama, playing the title role — an honest-to-goodness guardian angel who comes down to earth to help a poor Jewish tailor (the wonderful Zero Mostel) through a patch of bad luck and bad faith. This kind of material can easily veer into either the maudlin or the blasphemous, but Belafonte’s playful yet practical performance achieves the perfect balance of winking wit and gentle lesson-learning.‘Buck and the Preacher’ (1972)Rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.The comic chops Belafonte exhibited in “The Angel Levine” would come to define his best screen work in the 1970s. Two years later, he teamed with his fellow actor-activist Sidney Poitier for what was clearly intended as a Black riff on “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” with Poitier and Belafonte in the titular roles of Wild West outlaws leading a wagon train away from white bounty hunters. Poitier plays the straight man, as he often did in comedies, allowing Belafonte to have a blast as Reverend Willis Oaks Rutherford, a con artist masquerading as a man of the cloth. When the original director, Joseph Sargent, was fired a few days into shooting, Poitier took over directorial duties, launching a new career in film.‘Uptown Saturday Night’ (1974)Rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Unsurprisingly, when Poitier directed his next comedy, he again approached Belafonte to participate. Poitier co-stars in this rowdy buddy action-comedy with Bill Cosby (fair warning), leaving Belafonte to steal scenes galore — no mean feat when appearing with Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor — in his uproarious turn as Geechie Dan Beauford, a hot-tempered underworld boss. With “The Godfather” fresh in the minds of moviegoers, Belafonte played the role as a spoof on Marlon Brando’s already iconic performance as Don Vito Corleone, complete with rasping voice, puffed cheeks and pencil-thin mustache. It’s an inspired piece of comic acting, and a reminder that the serious-minded performer was just as comfortable with broad, “Saturday Night Live”-style tomfoolery.‘Kansas City’ (1996)Stream it on Amazon Prime and Arrow Player. Rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube.Belafonte took another long break — nearly two decades — from screen acting after “Uptown,” and even then, he appeared first as himself in a pair of star-studded Robert Altman pictures (“The Player” and “Ready to Wear”). But Altman got one more great, full-length performance out of the performer with this period gangster comedy-drama, set in the city and time of the director’s youth. As the underworld boss of Kansas City, the wonderfully named and perpetually whispering Seldom Seen, Belafonte eschews his customary warmth and comic inclinations to play a genuinely menacing villain — the kind of man who never raises his voice, because he never has to. It’s a chilling and unforgettable turn, and indicates the kind of third act he could’ve had as a character actor had he chosen that path.‘Sing Your Song: Harry Belafonte’ (2012)Stream it on Vudu. Rent or buy it on Amazon and Apple TV.Instead, he chose to keep fighting. This late-in-life biographical documentary from the director Susanne Rostock, made with the participation and blessing of the man himself, veers occasionally into hagiography and skims over the messier aspects of his long and complicated life. But there’s so much to celebrate, you can hardly blame its makers. Edited at a snappy clip from a wealth of rich archival materials (film and TV clips, home movies, newsreels) and both new and archival interviews, “Sing Your Song” celebrates Belafonte the artist, but even more, celebrates the man — and a life spent working for the causes he believed in, often putting his own career and comfort at risk.‘BlacKkKlansman’ (2018)Rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.Belafonte’s final film appearance came, significantly, in a work of protest by a provocative Black filmmaker. He appears in the cameo role of the civil rights activist Jerome Turner in Spike Lee’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Ron Stallworth memoir — but he’s also playing himself, imparting history and knowledge of the struggle for civil rights. In his single, haunting scene, Belafonte exhibits not only his skills and charisma as an actor, but the gravitas of his decades in the trenches of the struggle. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Centurion: The Dancing Stallion’ Review: Romance on the Ranch

      by

      A young woman training for a horse dancing competition confronts a medical crisis in this conventional family melodrama.The art of Mexican horse dancing becomes the backdrop for a formulaic family melodrama in “Centurion: The Dancing Stallion,” which stars a stable of equine and human performers gamely mounting a Nicholas Sparks-like story line complete with romance across social classes, a conniving antagonist and grave health crises.The movie begins as the breezy Ellissia (Amber Midthunder), the daughter of a ranch owner (Billy Zane), is training to compete in a local horse dancing competition. The event may sound like fun and games — the animals are clomping crowd-pleasers — but there are also stakes: Ellissia’s family insists a top prize will put their ranch “on the map.” She finds a staunch supporter in Danny (Aramis Knight), a hunky stable hand tasked with caring for Ellissia’s newest mount: the finicky white beauty Centurion.The director, Dana Gonzales, seems at times to embrace an atmosphere of camp. A near-constant stream of slow-motion montages amplifies bouts of action or histrionics, and establishing shots of the homestead, the barn or the outlying fields seem to appear every few scenes, even if the characters have barely moved locations.During its climax, “Centurion: The Dancing Stallion” rather ambitiously aligns the fates of Ellissia and Centurion, intercutting their struggles as they confront parallel medical emergencies. The sequence briefly gestures at the intriguing idea of a psychic alliance between the pair, similar to the one in “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” But then the moment passes, and any challenging questions are pushed aside in favor of third-act mechanics.Centurion: The Dancing StallionRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Harry Belafonte on His Artistic Values and His Activism

      by

      In interviews and articles in The New York Times, Mr. Belafonte, who died on Tuesday, spoke about the civil rights movement and his frustration with how Black life was depicted onscreen.Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and activist whose wide-ranging success blazed a trail for other Black artists in the 1950s, died on Tuesday at age 96.A child of Harlem, Mr. Belafonte used his platform at the height of the entertainment world to speak out frequently on his music, how Black life was depicted onscreen and, most important to him, the civil rights movement. Here are some of the insights Mr. Belafonte provided to The New York Times during his many decades in the public spotlight, as they appeared at the time:His musicMr. Belafonte’s string of hits, including “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell,” helped create an American obsession with Caribbean music that led his record company to promote him as the “King of Calypso.”But Mr. Belafonte never embraced that sort of monarchical title, rejecting “purism” as a “cover-up for mediocrity” and explaining that he saw his work as a mash-up of musical styles.He told The New York Times Magazine in 1959 that folk music had “hidden within it a great dramatic sense, and a powerful lyrical sense.” He also plainly conceded: “I don’t have a great voice.”In 1993, he told The Times that he used his songs “to describe the human condition and to give people some insights into what may be going on globally, from what I’ve experienced.”He said that “Day-O,” for instance, was a way of life.“It’s a song about my father, my mother, my uncles, the men and women who toil in the banana fields, the cane fields of Jamaica,” he said. “It’s a classic work song.”His views on film and televisionMr. Belafonte’s success in music helped him become a Hollywood leading man. In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Belafonte and his friend Sidney Poitier landed more substantive and nuanced roles than Black actors had previously received.Nonetheless, Mr. Belafonte was left largely unsatisfied.Writing for The Times in 1968, he complained that “the real beauty, the soul, the integrity of the black community is rarely reflected” on television.“The medium is dominated by white-supremacy concepts and racist attitudes,” he wrote. “TV excludes the reality of Negro life, with all its grievances, passions and aspirations, because to depict that life would be to indict (or perhaps enrich?) much of what is now white America and its institutions. And neither networks nor sponsors want that.”Mr. Belafonte emphasized that his 10-year-old son saw few Black heroes on television.“The nobility in his heritage and the values that could complement his positive growth and sense of manhood are denied him,” he wrote. “Instead, there is everything to tear him down and give him an inferiority complex. He will see the Negro only as a rioter and a social problem, never as a whole human being.”Roughly 25 years later, Mr. Belafonte was circumspect, suggesting in an interview with The Times that little had changed.“Even today, on the big screen, the pictures that are always successful are pictures where blacks appear in the way white America buys it,” he said in 1993. “And we’re told that what we really want to express is not profitable and is not commercially viable.”His politics and activismEven as Mr. Belafonte was in the prime of his entertainment career, he was intently focused on activism and civil rights.“Back in 1959,” Mr. Belafonte told The Times in 1981, “I fully believed in the civil-rights movement. I had a personal commitment to it, and I had my personal breakthroughs — I produced the first black TV special; I was the first black to perform at the Waldorf Astoria. I felt if we could just turn the nation around, things would fall into place.”But Mr. Belafonte lamented that by the middle of the 1970s, the movement had ended.“When the doors of Hollywood shut on minorities and blacks at the end of the 70’s,” he said, “a lot of black artists had been enjoying the exploitation for 10 years. But one day they found the shop had closed down.”Mr. Belafonte remained outspoken about politics in his later years. In 2002 he accused Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of abandoning his principles to “come into the house of the master”; he called President George W. Bush a “terrorist” in 2006, and lamented in 2012 that modern celebrities had “turned their back on social responsibility.”“There’s no evidence that artists are of the same passion and of the same kind of commitment of the artists of my time,” he told The Times in 2016. “The absence of black artists is felt very strongly because the most visible oppression is in the black community.”In 2016 and again in 2020, he visited the opinion pages of The Times to urge voters to reject Donald J. Trump.“The vote is perhaps the single most important weapon in our arsenal,” Mr. Belafonte told The Times in the 2016 article. “The same things needed now are the same things needed before,” he added. “Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die. ” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Tom Jones’ and ‘Couples Therapy’

      by

      PBS’s literary adaptation series tackles Henry Fielding’s classic, and the Showtime docuseries returns with Dr. Orna Guralnik and a new group of couples.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, April 24-30. Details and times are subject to change.MondayWhoopi Goldberg in “The Color Purple.”Warner Bros.THE COLOR PURPLE (1985) 8 p.m. on TCM. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker, this Academy Award-nominated film by the director Steven Spielberg follows Celie (Whoopi Goldberg), a Black woman from the American South over the course of 40 years during the early 20th century. The film explores themes of domestic violence, poverty, racism and sexism, as well as love, friendship and resilience. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin noted that the film glosses over some of the grittier aspects of the novel, but still tells Celie’s story with a sense of “momentum, warmth and staying power.”TuesdayFrom left, Demi Singleton, Will Smith and Saniyya Sidney in “King Richard.”Warner Bros.KING RICHARD (2021) 5:35 p.m. on HBO2e. This Academy Award-nominated film by the director Reinaldo Marcus Green is an emotional yet buoyant look at the rise of the young tennis stars Serena (Demi Singleton) and Venus Williams (Saniyya Sidney). Will Smith, who won a best actor Oscar for this role, plays the girls’ father, Richard Williams, who had plans to catapult his daughters to success even before they were born. A.O. Scott declared the film “a sports drama that is also an appealing, socially alert story of perseverance and the up-by-the-bootstraps pursuit of excellence,” in his review for The Times. “It’s a winner.”WednesdayCHASING CARBON ZERO 9 p.m. on PBS. This new episode from the documentary series NOVA takes a look at the science behind the technology that could help the U.S. reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Through interviews with scientists, engineers and change makers in the environmental sector, the episode examines the country’s current excessive emissions, before identifying the existing technologies and processes that could slash emissions in half by 2030.AWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS 10:30 p.m. on COMEDY. This comedy series starring the rapper and Golden Globe-winning actress Awkwafina as the show’s titular character is back for its third season. The show follows Awkwafina’s Nora Lum, who lives with her father and grandmother, as she navigates coming into her own. The series is based on Awkwafina’s own upbringing in New York City.Thursday(RE) SOLVED 9 p.m. on VICE. This new true crime series takes a second look at some of the most controversial celebrity deaths. Through examinations of police reports and their own sleuthing, professional investigators and armchair detectives re-examine and investigate the causes of death of Hollywood figures such as Bob Saget, Prince and Anna Nicole Smith.100 DAYS TO INDY 9 p.m. on The CW. A new docuseries about the world of open-wheel car racing, also known as Indy car racing, brings viewers on the journeys of racing teams and NTT IndyCar Series drivers as they train to compete in the Indianapolis 500 — a 500-mile race considered to be the sport’s premier competition. This six-part series premieres 100 days before the race and is directed by the Emmy-winning director and producer Patrick Dimon.FridayDr. Orna Guralnik in “Couples Therapy.”SHOWTIMECOUPLES THERAPY 8 p.m. on SHOWTIME. Returning for the second installment of its third season after a yearlong hiatus, this docuseries follows the real-life therapy sessions of couples as they hash out their intimacy issues with Dr. Orna Guralnik, a psychologist and couples therapist. The Times critic Margaret Lyons described the viewing experience as “equal parts insight and voyeurism.” This installment features four new couples navigating topics including polyamory, Mormonism and infidelity.From left, Mark Whitfield, Lizz Wright and Linda May Han Oh in “International Jazz Day from the United Nations.”Steve MundingerINTERNATIONAL JAZZ DAY FROM THE UNITED NATIONS 10 p.m. on PBS. Premiering two days before International Jazz Day, this one-hour television special from the United Nations is a celebratory nod to the history and evolution of jazz. Acclaimed artists will perform original songs and interpretations of classics, with a cast ranging from the legends David Sanborn, Herbie Hancock and Marcus Miller, to modern favorites including Gregory Porter, Joey Alexander and Lizz Wright. The blues singer Shemekia Copeland will open the program with her social justice anthem “Walk Until I Ride,” and a full-cast rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” will close out the night.SaturdayDavid Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.”David Bowie Estate/HBOMOONAGE DAYDREAM 8 p.m. on HBO. The Emmy award-winning filmmaker Brett Morgen’s ode to the singer-songwriter David Bowie is “less a biography than a séance,” A.O. Scott writes in his review for The Times. With the entire contents of Bowie’s archives at his disposal, Morgen weaves together snippets of Bowie’s own narration with never-before-seen footage and music to produce an ethereal “portrait of the artist as a thoughtful, lucky man.”SundayTIME100: THE WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE 7 p.m. on ABC. To celebrate this year’s TIME100 list of the World’s Most Influential People, the global media brand is holding a gala event at New York City’s Lincoln Center. The event will be hosted by the actress Jennifer Coolidge, an honoree from this year’s list, and will feature performances from other honorees, including Doja Cat and Lea Michele.TOM JONES 9 p.m. on PBS. Mid-18th-century England comes alive in this retelling of the classic Henry Fielding novel from PBS’s “Masterpiece,” a literary adaptation series. Told in four parts, the series follows Tom (Solly McLeod), a man of humble beginnings and uncertain parentage, and the sweet, seemingly unattainable heiress Sophia (Sophie Wilde) as they forge a forbidden romance despite their class differences and the tireless meddling of the seductress Lady Bellaston (Hannah Waddingham). More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Evil Dead Rise’ Review: Mommy Issues

      by

      The matriarch of a family ends up demon-possessed in this blood-drenched entry in the long-running horror franchise.The horror movie, a genre known for sparsely populated locales like cabins in the woods and outer space, has been spending more time in the city.Some of the most creative scary movies of the past decade have taken place in an abandoned Detroit (“Barbarian,” “Don’t Breathe,” “It Follows”). In the recent “Scream,” Ghostface moved from the suburbs to the subway. And now the latest entry in the “Evil Dead” franchise spills swimming pools of blood mostly inside a dilapidated high-rise apartment in Los Angeles.One might explain the rise of urban horror as working on fears rooted in rising crime or the pandemic’s emptying out of downtowns, but that focuses more on content than form. And the pumping heart of the “Evil Dead” movies has never been ideas, but aesthetics. Sam Raimi’s original trilogy made stylish Grand Guignol gore that evoked Jean-Luc Godard’s response to a question about why he used so much blood. “Not blood,” he corrected. “Red.”Lee Cronin, who directed “Evil Dead Rise” with many more colors of bodily fluid, is a meticulous creator of stunning shots. His camera doesn’t move. It dances, shifting, spinning, occasionally knocked on its side like a running back in a collision. He avoids clichés like a face suddenly appearing in a mirror but finds new ways to scare with the reflection of an image. And the way he mixes the foreground and background is pleasingly disorienting. For him, clearly, the city offers a new palette. He does wonders with the warped view through a keyhole of an apartment. The trees that come alive and tie down victims in the original “Evil Dead” are replaced by rusty and aggressive wires from a rickety elevator.As for the plot, who cares? As with every “Evil Dead,” a creepy book is found and demonic hell breaks loose. That’s all that matters. This time, the characters are not a group of friends but a family, including a tattoo-artist mother, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), her kids (Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher) and their chain saw-wielding aunt (Lily Sullivan). But this shift also doesn’t make that much of a difference. There are so many horror movies these days that dig deeper into the anxieties and fears of family and motherhood; though still, bravo to whoever came up with the tagline: “Mommy loves you to death.”Character and story are secondary to an atmosphere of industrial gloom, clanking heaters, ambient neighbor noise and the clutter of families cramped together. There is a spectacular new monster at the end, and the most disturbing set pieces involve ordinary household objects like (gulp) a cheese grater.The previous “Evil Dead” movie from a decade ago was a more direct reboot, while this one pays homage to the past, but not too much. It opens with the signature shot of the franchise, a racing camera, low to the ground, but this sets up not a scare, but a joke — one I won’t ruin, but that pokes fun at the original, breaks the fourth wall and announces a new day. And yet, with a few exceptions, largely from the performance of Sutherland, who captures some of the borscht belt swagger of Freddy Krueger, it’s the last moment of arch comedy.With the original “Evil Dead” and particularly its sequel, Raimi didn’t just make splatter beautiful. He proved it could be hilarious. The two recent movies are far more grim. Even though there is an inherent absurdity to the excess on display, they seem less interested in the humor of horror. The absence of Bruce Campbell, the hammy protagonist of the original trilogy, is felt. Scary villains are a dime a dozen, but a funny hero? They’re hard to come by.Evil Dead RiseRated R for elevators of blood and sharp objects near eyeballs. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Benjamin Millepied Uses Movement to Reinvent ‘Carmen’ on Camera

      by

      The choreographer is trying his hand at filmmaking with an experiment that merges drama, dance and music.PARIS — Benjamin Millepied probably didn’t need to take on any new life challenges. A former principal dancer with New York City Ballet, the French-born Millepied has been an established, sought-after choreographer for almost two decades, has directed the Paris Opera Ballet, and runs the L.A. Dance Project, which he founded in 2012. And he recently moved back to Paris with his wife, the actress Natalie Portman, and their two young children.Now, Millepied, 45, has also directed his first feature film, “Carmen,” starring Paul Mescal, Melissa Barrera and Rossy de Palma, with an original score by Nicholas Britell (“Moonlight,” “Succession”). The movie is a hard-to-categorize blend of drama, dance and music that draws loosely on the narrative of Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera, setting much of the action on the Mexico-U.S. border, with Mescal as a traumatized war veteran who saves Barrera’s Carmen, a Mexican immigrant fleeing from danger.Millepied had long been a keen amateur photographer and a cinephile, and had made a number of short dance films, when, through Portman, he met Britell. “We began to talk about movies and about collaborating,” Millepied said. “‘Carmen’ was the idea that stuck.”In a telephone conversation, Britell mentioned that he had recently found an email exchange with Millepied from more than 10 years ago in which they had discussed “Carmen” as “a touchstone for imagining an experimental dream world.” Britell added that although neither man was entirely sure what that meant at the time, “the wonderful thing about working with Ben is that he is open to following his instincts and to experimentation. He had such a strong sense of what he was looking for, but also left me to make my own discoveries about how the music would work.”The hybrid, idiosyncratic nature of the film was a draw for Mescal (“Normal People,” “Aftersun”). “It was so unconventional, outside of any genre I could firmly put my finger on, which was a challenge that really appealed to me,” he said.Mescal signed on because the concept “was so unconventional, outside of any genre I could firmly put my finger on, which was a challenge that really appealed to me.”Ben King/Goalpost Pictures/Sony Pictures ClassicsPart of that challenge, he added, was the dancing. “I am not a dancer, but Benjamin knows how people’s bodies work,” he said. “He knew what I could do, which was essentially to support Melissa.” Barrera (“In the Heights,” “Scream VI”) added that the experience of making the film had been “different from anything else I’ve done.”“I am a very rational actor, always overthinking things, wanting clarity,” she said. “Benjamin would say, ‘Trust me: Everything is communicated with body language and eyes.’”After the movie showed at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, critics were divided. For IndieWire, David Ehrlich wrote: “‘Carmen’ is stretched across a few too many borders to ever feel like it’s standing on solid ground. And yet, it’s undeniably exhilarating.” Other reviewers were less sure. “It’s an unsteady composition, a frenzied combination of willowy movement pieces, an ecstatic score and a too-loose narrative,” Lovia Gyarkye wrote in The Hollywood Reporter.Over coffee, Millepied discussed the critical reaction to the film, the allure of “Carmen” and working with actors. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Why did you want to direct a film?I always had a personal hobby of taking photos, a need to really look at what I was interested in visually. And I have always loved film; I remember watching “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and Satyajit Ray’s “The Music Room,” when I was around 9 years old. When I was at the School of American Ballet in my teens, I went to movies all the time. I always had this dream at the back of my head about directing a film.What was the pull of “Carmen”?Early on, when I was starting to think about the story, I had dinner with [the director] Peter Sellars and mentioned I wanted to make a “Carmen” film. He got kind of passionate, and said, “You have to reinvent it, it’s a terrible story.” I thought he was right. It’s a 19th-century tale, where the woman gets punished for her sins by getting murdered, and can’t love or be loved. I was interested in her essence — her freedom, her fire.I wanted to tell this woman’s story. It definitely had something to do with my relationship with my mother, to a connection to family history and emotions.Did you think of your version as a musical?I was interested in how to tell a modern story, and use music and dance in a way that doesn’t pause the narrative, isn’t decorative but integral. In the end, the movie tells a lot of the story through movement.The collaboration with Nicholas was huge, and the part of making the film that was closest for me to making a ballet. We would sit at the piano and I would describe the scenes I had in mind, and he would write music and send it to me. It really influenced the mood and aesthetic — gave me visual ideas just as if I was creating a dance.What kind of preparation did you do?I have too much respect for the craft, effort and practice it takes to choreograph something not to be equally conscientious about directing. I watched and analyzed hundreds of films, read film histories and found amazing resources online. I fell in love with so many directors that I felt were choreographers, who moved people and the camera with such imagination and complexity. Elia Kazan, Kurosawa, Bresson, Antonioni, Sally Potter, Kubrick: I watched, I watched, I watched, and I learned.I also made a short narrative film, a “Romeo and Juliet,” with Margaret Qualley, which I never showed but was very helpful in showing me the process.Rossy de Palma with Barrera in the film. Barrera said Millepied asked her to communicate with her body language and eyes.Goalpost Pictures/Sony Pictures ClassicsTalking about the way you worked, Rossy de Palma said, “The camera becomes another dancer and dances with you.” Did your experience as a choreographer help as a film director?I think it helped with the physicality of the acting. We shot some of the movie in Australia, and while the actors were quarantining, I had them do Gaga classes, a technique for exploring every part of your body. It’s a great thing to do to make sure your expressiveness is not just cerebral. And it definitely helped with staging complex scenes. I think also, because of my background, I was unafraid of letting bodies speak: using physicality to tell the story.How did you approach directing actors?I had the benefit of listening to Natalie talk about her experiences and collaborations. It was daunting, definitely, and I had to rely on my instincts about what felt true to the story. Obviously you need to know the back story of your characters inside out, but you also have to let them surprise you. I was lucky to have great actors. We were playful, we were free with the dialogue, and we always tried to see if there were interesting places to go.The film had mixed reviews at Toronto, some quite negative. How did you feel about that?I have too much experience of being reviewed to think about that too much. When George Balanchine premiered Liebeslieder Walzer, a masterpiece of 20th-century ballet, someone said to him, “Look how many people are leaving.” He said, “Look how many people are staying.”I make my work with as much discipline as I can, and I am very lucky to be able to do that; it’s a great honor. The financial stakes for movies are very different to making a ballet. But, you know, if I can’t make films freely, I’ll make furniture. There are always ways to be creative. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A Tourist’s Guide to Love’ Review: A Wearyingly Familiar Trip

      by

      Rachael Leigh Cook stars in this bland rom-com as a travel executive exploring Vietnam and getting over a breakup.The first thing we learn about Amanda (Rachael Leigh Cook) in “A Tourist’s Guide to Love” is that she works for a high-end agency called Tourista World Travel. But nobody in this Netflix film even comments on the fact that “turista” is slang for vacation-wrecking diarrhea. That puzzling choice and its utter lack of consequences are the only surprise in Steven Tsuchida’s film, a rom-com that so scrupulously fulfills every cliché of the genre, it might as well have been devised by ChatGPT.Amanda is dispatched to Vietnam to check out a small tour company that Tourista is considering buying to develop its market in the area. The assignment is also a good distraction: She was recently dumped by her dull accountant boyfriend, John (Ben Feldman). Going undercover as a regular tourist, albeit an extremely well-prepared one, she’s immediately drawn to the floppy-haired guide, Sinh (Scott Ly). He is the kind of dreamboat who has both abs and sensitivity, and can show Amanda not just his country’s beauty, but how to enjoy life.Sinh eventually doffs his shirt at the beach and emerges from the water in resplendent slow motion, because the clichés here are as tightly packed in as tchotchkes in a traveler’s suitcase: Amanda is a perky American Type A; village elders are cute as buttons and wise as Yoda; street food is tantalizing; jaded Westerners rediscover themselves as they ditch their phones and bask in a rural experience made only sweeter by the knowledge that it’s temporary. The soundtrack’s catchy Vietnamese songs provide the only fizz in this otherwise flat concoction.A Tourist’s Guide to LoveNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More