Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Book Review: ‘My Name is Barbra,’ by Barbra Streisand

      by

      MY NAME IS BARBRA, by Barbra StreisandHello, enormous.Of course Barbra Streisand’s memoir, 10 years in the making if you don’t count the chapter she scribbled in longhand in the 1990s and then lost, was going to approach “Power Broker” proportions.For one thing, she is — fits of insecurity notwithstanding — a bona fide power broker: tearing down barriers to and between Broadway, Hollywood, the recording industry and Washington, D.C., like Robert Moses on a demolition bender.For another, as Streisand writes in “My Name Is Barbra,” a 970-page victory lap past all who ever doubted, diminished or dissed her, with lingering high fives for the many supporters, she does tend to agonize over the editing process.After adding back material to her version of “A Star Is Born” for Netflix in 2018 — “I think I made it better. But did I? I’m never quite sure”— she fantasized about new, fuller cuts of both “Funny Girl,” which made her a movie star on arrival, and “Yentl,” her debut as director. Planning her wedding to the actor James Brolin in 1998, she tried to winnow down a long list of desserts before deciding “We’ll just have them all … why not?”It doesn’t take a psychiatrist — though Streisand, 81, has consulted many, played one in “The Prince of Tides” and even incorporated the therapeutic framework into one concert tour — to figure out why she has taken such a big bite out of life. As recounted before in a flotilla of biographies, none authorized (and at least one tell-all by an early roommate, who was promptly ghosted), she grew up deprived both economically and emotionally in a housing project in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Instead of a doll she carried a hot-water bottle — “I swear it felt more like a real baby than some cold doll” — for which a sympathetic neighbor knitted a pink hat and sweater.Such details may be familiar to fans, but for the most part they ring out more resoundingly in Streisand’s chatty, ellipses-strewn telling. She may possess megawatt fame — “a hollow trophy,” she assures us — but between these covers she’s just Bubbe Barbra at a kitchen table, talking about fabrics and fellows who got fresh and “my first fur coat, sold to me as ‘Zorina,’ a.k.a. ‘Alaskan sable,’ but in reality … skunk.”Her father, an educator from an Orthodox Jewish background, died at 35 after a head injury when Barbara, as they spelled it then, was 15 months old and her brother was 9. (She still has her father’s copy of “Tales From Shakespeare” for children on her bedside table: “Who knows? Maybe he had bought it to read to me.”)Her mother remarried a man named Kind who was anything but, gave birth to another little girl, and had distinct Madame Rose undertones, crooning into a broomstick microphone and so forth. “Where are my presents?” she screamed at a Christmas gathering in 1964, by which time her older daughter had released the Top 40 hit “People” and appeared thrice in Vogue. “I’m the mother! She’s nothing without me!”That the film rights to “Gypsy” have slipped from Streisand’s grasp after a prolonged tease seems one of showbiz’s prosecutable crimes. (She even gobbles egg rolls, Mr. Goldstone!) Another: This book, which is adorned with more boldface names than there were sequins on the Arnold Scaasi pantsuit she wore to the Oscars in 1969, has no index. You kind of want to resurrect Spy magazine to make one, as it did for “The Andy Warhol Diaries.”Streisand in 1968 on the set of “Funny Girl” with the film’s director, William Wyler.Columbia/Kobal/ShutterstockLittle Barbara suffered from undiagnosed tinnitus, possibly a bug God planted in her ear urging her to run the hell away from her family’s dysfunction. She vowed to become a performer after seeing Susan Strasberg, the Method guru Lee’s daughter, in “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Cort Theater, later contriving a meeting with Strasberg Sr., who didn’t intimidate her in the slightest. (“He reminded me of my uncle Irving.”)She also was swooning at the movies near Erasmus Hall High, where she was an honors student; her schoolmate Bobby Fischer, the future chess prodigy, “looked like some sort of deranged pilot from a 1940s movie,” she presciently noted.Streisand collected mentors who introduced her to books and records, and scratched up the money for classes in acting, pantomiming a chocolate chip and reading from Jean Anouilh’s “Medea”: “Why have you made me a girl?” Though she hates to fly, she longed to escape, and would become an expert criss-crosser of centuries and cultures onscreen.But it was her shimmery, almost wholly intuitive singing, first at a gay bar and then at the Bon Soir supper club in Greenwich Village, that would first dazzle the public. She found the spotlight “warm and comforting,” quickly lopped off that second “a” from her first name, and reminds us now that the second “s” in Streisand is soft, telephoning Tim Cook to get the pronunciation corrected on Siri.The author salts “My Name Is Barbra,” the title recycled from her 1965 TV special that itself cribbed the name of a Leonard Bernstein song, with Yiddishisms: tchotchkes (she likes pig ones); gonif, or thief (her ex-boyfriend Jon Peters); fakakta (what her then-agent David Begelman called the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story that was the basis for “Yentl”).Then there are the generous dollops of chutzpah. Besides sassing Strasberg, she somehow managed to resist all the advisers who told her to bob her long nose, ditch the thrift-store clothes and choose more standard numbers than, say, Harold Arlen’s “A Sleepin’ Bee,” with lyrics by Truman Capote.Streisand on the set of “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” which she directed and starred in.David James/Tri-Star/Phoenix via Kobal/ShutterstockNobody put Barbra in a corner. She clashed early with the prickly playwright and director Arthur Laurents, insisting she perform the secretary Miss Marmelstein’s eponymous solo in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” from a swivel chair.“You’re never going to make it, you know,” he snarled at her, though the audience went wild for the sequence. “Never!” (They’d reunite later, on the massively successful picture “The Way We Were.”)A lot of men seemed to resent her drive. “I have more talent in my farts than you have in your whole body!” Walter Matthau told her on the set of “Hello, Dolly.” Mike Wallace called her “totally self-absorbed” and made her cry on “60 Minutes.”But many more fell at her feet, including Marlon Brando, who rubbed them. The king of England has sipped Constant Comment from her cup. Pat Conroy, the “Prince of Tides” author, compared her to the goddess Athena. (Athena on Conroy’s dancing: “Boy, he could really fling that tush around!”) Stephen Sondheim rewrote lyrics for her.Tabulating all the boyfriends and admirers — “I thought we were going to have an affair,” the married Mandy Patinkin tearily implored her during “Yentl,” she writes — might require a second index.Though she has a reputation for being controlling (basically the definition of being a director), Streisand here stresses, convincingly if somewhat exhaustively, her spontaneity. Contra Ethel Merman, who famously declared herself Miss Bird’s Eye when presented with new lyrics in rehearsals of “Call Me Madam,” she believes “to freeze something is to kill it.” She wanted to print the words “this is a work in progress” on the back of her 1976 lieder album — Glenn Gould loved it! — an example of her dogged refusal to stay in one lane. “Come to think of it, I should put it on this book, too….”Future editions, then, might excise some of the long block quotes of praise from her peers, like the one purportedly from Tennessee Williams collected by an interviewer whose veracity was questioned by Helen Shaw in The New Yorker. Not to get too Laurents about it, but Streisand maybe could have used a trusted collaborator, a J.R. Moehringer or even a J.J. Hunsecker, to rein in some indulgences, like long lists of boldface friends at later-career concerts.There’s something exuberant and glorious, though, about Streisand’s photo dump of self-portraits and party pics. Indeed about this whole dragged-out banquet of a book. You might not have the appetite to linger for the whole thing, but you’ll find something worth a nosh.There are just so many scintillating Streisands to contemplate over so many years: singer, actress, director, producer, philanthropist, activist, lover, mother, wife, friend, autobiographer. “I would make a very good critic,” she suggests at one point, and as I struggle to put a button on this, all I can reply is: Barbra, be my guest.MY NAME IS BARBRA | More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: The Annual CMA Awards and ‘The Curse’

      by

      The country music show airs for the 57th year. Showtime airs a new show with Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone.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, Nov. 6-Nov. 12. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFRIENDS MARATHON beginning at 10 p.m. on Nickelodeon. I can easily say that Chandler Bing is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time — so last week’s news of the death of Matthew Perry (the actor who portrayed him on “Friends”) was especially devastating. Though unexpected, shocking and heartbreaking, I am going to try to focus on Perry’s gift that keeps on giving. This sitcom marathon starts with “The One With the Baby on the Bus” (no explanation on this needed) and goes into the wee hours of the morning. Please read this next sentence in Chandler Bing’s iconic intonation: Could I be anymore thankful that this show exists?TuesdayBehind the scenes with Bobby Flay on his show “Beat Bobby Flay.”Evan Sung for The New York TimesBEAT BOBBY FLAY: HOLIDAY THROWDOWN 9 p.m. on Food. The chef Bobby Flay has been beating most people he goes up against on his long-running competition show and I am sure nothing is going to change during this holiday themed show (returning for a second season). The “Holiday Throwdown” spinoff starts with a Thanksgiving- episode, where Flay will compete against the chefs Darnell Ferguson and Bryan and Michael Voltaggio (who are brothers) to make the best Thanksgiving meal.STAND UP & SHOUT 9 p.m. on HBO. This is like the movie “Fame” for a modern era. Instead of taking place in the 1980s at New York High School of Performing Arts, this movie, a documentary, follows students at the Hill-Freedman World Academy who are taught how to write and produce original songs — and of course, perform them. It also touches on the positive effects that music education can have on a community.WednesdayTHE 57TH ANNUAL CMA AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. Grab your cowboy boots and get ready for performances of “Leave Me Again” (Kelsea Ballerini), “White Horse” (Chris Stapleton), “Where the Wild things Are” (Luke Combs), among others, as Country Music Awards presenters hand out honors for entertainer of the year, album of the year and more.REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 8 p.m. on NBC. NBC’s Lester Holt, Kristen Welker and Hugh Hewitt are set to moderate the third Republican debate of this election cycle, broadcast live from Miami. As of the time of publication, Governor Ron DeSantis, former Governor Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, former Governor Chris Christie and Senator Tim Scott have qualified to participate. There are fewer candidates this time around as Republican National Committee has raised the threshold for qualifying in terms of both polling numbers and the number of donors.Xander Black, left, and Cecilia Aldarondo in “You Were My First Boyfriend.”via HBOYOU WERE MY FIRST BOYFRIEND 9 p.m. on HBO. In a style similar to the quirky “PEN15,” this documentary(ish) feature, shows the filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo reliving some of the defining moments of her less than ideal teenage years through re-creations of scenes with herself and actors. She also tracks down old friends and enemies with the ultimate goal of self-acceptance.ThursdayHAIRSPRAY (1988) 9 p.m. on TCM. Though I can’t help but be partial to Zac Efron as Link Larkin in the 2007 edition of this film, I can appreciate the original as well. The movie follows the Baltimore teenager, Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), who gets a big break in her dreams of stardom when she is hired onto “The Corny Collins Show.” She starts a romance with Link (in this case, Michael St. Gerard) and fights to integrate the show. John Waters directs in what may be one of his most tame productions (most of his other movies are rated X, but this is PG).FridayClaire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.”Merrick Morton/20th Century FoxWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO AND JULIET (1996) 9 p.m. on TCM. This Baz Luhrmann rendition of the classic tale takes place far away from Europe and is instead set in the fictional Verona Beach, Calif., and the Capulets and the Montagues aren’t warring families, but rival gangs. The movie “invents a whole new vocabulary for a story of star-crossed young love,” Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review. “It calls for pink hair, screaming billboards, tabloid television stories, music-video editing and a little hot dog shack called Rosencrantzky’s on Verona Beach.”SaturdayALBERT BROOKS: DEFENDING MY LIFE 8 p.m. on HBO. Albert Brooks might be best known for the 1987 film “Broadcast News,” which earned him an Academy Award nomination, but his directing, acting and comedy career has been nothing if not diverse. From voice acting on “The Simpsons” and “Finding Nemo,” to his roles in “Drive” and “Taxi Driver,” Brooks has done a little bit of everything. This documentary features a look at Brooks’s career from the perspective of castmates, friends and family, as well as Brooks himself.SundayTHE CURSE 10 p.m. on Showtime. Are Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone a pair I really saw acting together? Not really. Am I here for it? Absolutely. This comedy follows husband and wife Asher (Fielder) and Whitney (Stone) as they struggle to conceive a baby under the shadow of a supposed curse — all of this happening as the couple star in a “Love It or List It”-type HGTV show. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Nicolas Cage on ‘Dream Scenario’ and Fame

      by

      Nicolas Cage is not afraid to go big. This is, after all, a man who channeled the grandiose gestural acting of German expressionist films while starring in “Moonstruck” and was nearly fired from “Peggy Sue Got Married” for using a voice he had modeled on the Claymation sidekick Pokey from “Gumby.” Even the decision to change his name — born Nicolas Coppola, he traded his filmmaking family’s famous moniker for the comic-book superhero Luke Cage’s — allowed him to invent a personal mythology in line with his outsize ambitions.“When you think of ‘Nic Cage,’ I wanted people to think you were going to see something just a little bit unpredictable, a little bit scary,” he told me last month on the balcony of a Beverly Hills hotel. “It’s not going to be the same old, same old.”But at some point, that bigness is exactly what audiences came to predict from him. Over the last decade, YouTube supercuts emerged that combined Cage’s most go-for-broke moments into one marathon meltdown, while popular memes — like the “You Don’t Say” image that is based off his wide-eyed expression from “Vampire’s Kiss”— made it seem like pure outlandishness was his stock-in-trade. Cage could sense that shift but felt powerless to stop it: How should a star react when the public’s changing perception starts to turn like a tidal wave?Cage sent up his persona by playing a heightened version of himself in last year’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” but found even more to mine in “Dream Scenario,” which has its limited release next Friday. The A24 film, which is produced by Ari Aster and written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, casts Cage as Paul Matthews, a mild-mannered college professor who inexplicably starts to turn up in people’s dreams. For Paul, who has spent years yearning for the same level of renown as his more published peers, this sudden surge of viral stardom is unexpected but not entirely unwelcome. Still, once those collective dreams become nightmares, the hapless professor is helpless against the public backlash.“For me, this movie is an interesting analysis about the experience of fame,” said Cage, who called “Dream Scenario” one of the five best scripts he’s ever read. (The others are “Leaving Las Vegas,” which won him the Oscar for best actor, “Raising Arizona,” “Vampire’s Kiss” and “Adaptation.”) And though Paul is a well meaning but ineffectual academic — “Some folks would call him a ‘beta male,’” the actor said — this is Nicolas Cage we’re talking about: His version of boring can’t help but be fascinating, and it’s a hoot to watch Paul plod through his scenes in hiking boots and an oversized parka, meeting each new indignity with objections raised in a fussy, pinched voice.Cage as a professor who goes viral in “Dream Scenario.”A24The film earned strong reviews at its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, and taken in tandem with his praised lead performance in “Pig” (2021), the 59-year-old Cage certainly appears to be on a critical upswing. Just don’t call it a renaissance, as some pundits have: Yes, Cage’s career has zigged from Oscar-winning dramas to action tentpoles, with a recent zag to direct-to-video thrillers that helped pull him out of debt. But all along, he was making indies — like the hallucinogenic “Mandy” (2018) — that still allowed him unfettered access to the big swings he does best.“I’m a little conflicted, because is it a renaissance?” Cage wondered. “I’m still approaching the material with the same process that I’ve always been approaching it with.” He thought about it for a moment. “Perhaps it’s more of a rediscovery,” he said.Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did you end up in “Dream Scenario”?I was a huge admirer of Ari Aster, “Midsommar” and “Hereditary” in particular. I had wanted to work with him, and we were talking about maybe doing something episodic on television, but it wasn’t quite right for me. Then he sent me this script. I guess they had some other actors in mind at first, but I read it and right away, I responded to what I could inform Paul Matthews with.And what was that?All the feelings that I went through around 2008, 2009 when I stupidly Googled my name online and I saw, “Nicolas Cage Losing [It].” Somebody had cherry-picked all these freakout scenes and cobbled them together without any regard for how the character got to that level of crisis. And then it started going viral, exponentially growing, and became memes.I was confused, I was frustrated and I was stimulated. I thought, “Maybe this will compel someone to go look at the actual movie and see how the character got to that moment,” but on the other hand, I was like, “This isn’t what I had in mind when I decided to become a film actor.” I had that feeling of weight for years, and when I read “Dream Scenario,” I said, “Finally I can do something with these feelings, and I can apply them to Paul Matthews.”Paul isn’t sure why he’s gone viral in people’s dreams, but at first, he’s flattered by the attention. When you first started experiencing fame, was it that same sort of thrill?Gosh, it’s been so long. I started acting professionally, I think, when I was 15. I wasn’t into film performance for fame or accolades, so the first few times it started to happen with autographs, I was confused how to receive it. I almost felt ashamed of being happy that someone wanted my autograph, like, “Well, that’s a pride thing. That’s not why I’m in it.”Cage knows what it’s like to go viral. When a supercut of his freakout scenes was posted online, he recalled thinking, “This isn’t what I had in mind when I decided to become a film actor.”Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesWhat’s interesting is I don’t wake up in the morning and say to myself, “Oh, I’m famous.” I sometimes still meet people and they’re acting a bit different, and I think, “What’s wrong? What did I do?” And I go, “Oh, they saw me in a movie.” But more than ever, I know not to go out now if I’m not in a good mood. I just stay home. I don’t want to blow somebody’s day because I was in a bad mood and didn’t sign every autograph.Paul isn’t necessarily looking for the limelight, but there is a part of him that wants to be published and validated. The desire to be recognized somehow motivates a lot of people — including actors, I would think.If you want to be famous, make money, get an award, that’s OK, but that’s only going to get you so far. Sure, it’s nice to be regarded. Like Gary Oldman said, the sound of applause is never to be taken lightly, and gosh knows I’ve had enough tomatoes. But the point of it all is telling a story and having it connect with your audience, where they’re in on that secret with you, where they felt like they had an experience.As Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew, you grew up adjacent to fame. What was your impression of fame before you experienced it yourself?I remember once going to the theater in San Francisco to see “All That Jazz” with my uncle. As he was walking down the street, I was lagging, and everyone was saying, “Francis Coppola. Francis Coppola. Francis Coppola.” I thought, “OK, that’s what’s fame is: People whisper your name when you pass.”Do you still think fame is like that?Well, when my first son was really little, he used to call me “Nicolas Cage,” so he must have heard it from people. He didn’t call me “Dad.”Can you relate to Paul’s experience going to a restaurant, where he can sense that people are staring at him and trying to snap covert pictures?I’ll take every picture. I wouldn’t go to a restaurant unless I was able to meet people well and be thankful that they liked the movie. I’m comfortable with it now, but when I was a kid, I had to learn how to get there.Scenes from a career: clockwise from top left, Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” (with Elisabeth Shue), “Vampire’s Kiss,” “Raising Arizona” (with Holly Hunter) and “Adaptation.”Clockwise from top left: United Artists; MGM, via Alamy; 20th Century Fox; Columbia PicturesPeople are eager to pull out their phones around Paul, hoping to catch a viral moment that could help them piggyback off his own notoriety. That’s a very new wrinkle on fame.And very real. I’ve had things happen to me where I go to a bar in Sin City on a Saturday, and I have no idea that someone’s videotaping me and it goes on TikTok. It’s like, “OK, no more bars for me, man.” But it’s a new world. And that’s another reason I like this movie: It’s relevant. This is the way it is in the 21st century. This isn’t the way it was when Bogart was making movies.I wonder if we aren’t accelerating toward a point where people say, “Look, there’s just too much information in too many of our heads at too many moments of the day.” Certainly, “Dream Scenario” is addressing that sort of collective subconsciousness, but the desire to unplug from it sometimes feels so overwhelming.Alan Moore, the great graphic novelist, said we’re going to a place where information is going to be deployed so fast that eventually we’re all just going to become steam. But the thing is, Kyle, we have to evolve, we have to progress. This is the way it is, and it’s staying. I shudder to think what’s next. Is it going to be in a chip in our brains? I don’t know. But whatever it is, we’re evolving, and I want to find a way to work with it.You’ve been working lately with a lot of emerging filmmakers, like Kristoffer Borgli and Michael Sarnoski, who directed “Pig.”That, I am so grateful for. I always knew that it would take a young filmmaker who would have grown up with me in some way saying, “I want to try this,” and I have the humility to say, “You’re half my age and you’re twice as intelligent, I’m going to give you the controls.” But it’s interesting to be rediscovered by someone from a different generation. I think they haven’t had their dreams whipped out of them yet. They’re still full of potential and imagination of what they can accomplish, and that keeps me fertile.When you were starring in blockbuster studio films, were your representatives keen to keep you there instead of indies?That was the deal, that I was always going to go back to the well of independent drama, my roots. With the bigger movies, there’s too many cooks in the kitchen, too many people giving you notes. But with an experience like “Dream Scenario,” I’m with my director and we have the floor and we’re experimenting together. It’s important to have that intimacy to get to the really truthful expression of film performance. That’s harder to do on a big movie.What did you get out of your blockbuster leading-man era?It was a dream come true. I was told, “You can’t do it. You don’t look like one of those guys. What makes you think you can pull it off?” I said, “Well, I’m a student and I think I can try this and learn something from it. It’s going to be a challenge. Let’s see if it works.” Well, it worked maybe a little too well, and I got in that cycle. But at the time when I was doing these adventure films, it was considered not the done thing. My agent was saying, “You’re an actor’s actor. Why do you want to do that?” Because I never did it before! Keep it eclectic, keep it challenging.Cage is so mindful of his effect on fans that he prefers to stay home rather than “blow somebody’s day because I was in a bad mood and didn’t sign every autograph.”Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesSomething you’re not keen to do, though, is engage with social media.I’m not on any social media. I don’t want to tweet, I don’t want to be on Instagram or TikTok. That’s largely because I feel like that’s the only way I could stay close to a certain golden-age idea of what a film actor should maybe be, where you didn’t have that much access. Jack Nicholson refused to go on talk shows.You’re not afraid of going on talk shows.I personally think talk shows are a great interview, because you can get the tone, you can get the flavor, you can get the nuance expressed. You don’t have to worry that it’s going to be misinterpreted. That now is the danger, clickbait: You say something and then that gets transmogrified into something you didn’t say, and then suddenly that becomes your truth.I don’t want to walk on eggshells and keep editing myself because I want to give you an authentic interview, and I want that to be enjoyable for your readers. But there’s a dance there. I know something’s going to get cherry-picked and cobbled together, and they’re going to take it and say I said something I didn’t say. But can you imagine if John Lennon gave an interview today, what would happen?If you reread magazine interviews from a few decades ago, it’s astonishing how candid celebrities were willing to be.I do think people genuinely enjoy authenticity, just like they feel a connection with a performance that feels real to them. But again, we’re in this time where it will get repurposed. That sometimes happens to me, and we know the reason behind it: The clickbait sells. But I am going to choose to stay authentic, and I’m not going to let it get in the way of us having a conversation that is stimulating in some way. I just can’t let that happen. I don’t want to live in fear of that. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Are ‘Elf’ and ‘Love Actually’ the Last Holiday Classics We’ll Ever Get?

      by

      The two comedies opened on the same date in 2003 and have stood the test of time. A changing Hollywood landscape might make another such day impossible.On Nov. 7, 2003, American audiences had the opportunity to see either “Elf” or “Love Actually” for the very first time in theaters. They could find themselves humming “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” along with Will Ferrell or sobbing to “Both Sides Now” with Emma Thompson. They could imagine themselves running through Central Park to save Santa or dashing through Heathrow to catch their beloved before a flight. And chances are, many of the moviegoers who watched those films on that fateful day in November have revisited them since. After all, both have become bona fide seasonal classics.Every year around this time, you’re likely to turn on the television and find one of them playing. “Love Actually,” the British multistory rom-com, has been debated to within an inch of its life. (Is it sweet? Cynical? Romantic? Fatphobic?) The broader Will Ferrell comedy “Elf” has been adapted into a Broadway musical and an animated TV special. You can even look up how to make Buddy the Elf’s spaghetti doused in M&Ms and chocolate syrup.“Elf” was an immediate hit, topping the box office during its second weekend and ultimately grossing about $220 million worldwide. “Love Actually,” which opened in limited release, had a slower burn but eventually grossed $244 million worldwide. Both now seem like relics of a different time — an era when movies received the kind of dedicated theatrical releases that allowed them to win over viewers and give them that hard-to-define classic status, putting them in a pantheon that includes the likes of “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Home Alone.” What are the chances that a new holiday film could join those ranks of those cherished comfort watches?These days it’s rare to find a movie like “Love Actually” or “Elf” in theaters. The holiday-themed titles that land on the big screen tend to be violent — aimed at audiences that can handle a little gore with their mistletoe. Last year, David Harbour played Santa as a John Wick-style killer in “Violent Night.” On Dec. 1, the bloody revenge tale “Silent Night” arrives from action filmmaker John Woo. It’s also billed as from “the producer of ‘John Wick.’” When did Christmas get so vengeful?The lighter fare, meanwhile, has migrated largely onto computer screens and televisions via streaming and cable. Some of the most insistent purveyors of material sweeter than eggnog are Hallmark, which spits out dozens of forgettable flicks every year, and Netflix, which has established what it calls a “Holiday Universe” that includes franchises like “The Princess Switch” with Vanessa Hudgens. Last year, one of its marquee titles was “Falling for Christmas,” featuring Lindsay Lohan in a snowy “Overboard” rip-off.Ferrell with Daniel Tay in “Elf,” which marries New York jokes with throwbacks to TV holiday specials.Alan Markfield/New Line ProductionsEven once bankable stars are putting their Christmas vehicles online. Amazon is set to release “Candy Cane Lane” in December. It stars Eddie Murphy in what was billed in a promotional email as his “first holiday film,” a distinction that seems to ignore “Trading Places.”On the one hand, thanks to the churn at places like Hallmark and Lifetime, which will collectively release upward of 50 new holiday movies this year, it feels as if the genre is more robust than ever. On the other, the idea of getting a new film that’s as revered and rewatched 20 years on as “Elf” and “Love Actually” feels far-fetched.For the somehow uninitiated: “Elf,” directed by Jon Favreau, charts the adventures of Ferrell’s jovial and naïve Buddy, a human who’s raised in the North Pole by Santa’s elves and who ventures to New York in search of his birth father, a cranky children’s book editor played by James Caan. The movie contains conscious throwbacks to Rankin/Bass animated Christmas specials, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (1964), as well as cheeky jokes about New York City without ever getting too racy. (My favorite bit is when Buddy says, “I traveled through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, passed the sea of swirly twirly gumdrops, and then I walked through the Lincoln Tunnel.”)Whereas “Elf” was rated PG, “Love Actually” drew an R; yet despite some nudity and cursing, it outdoes “Elf” in earnestness. The directorial debut of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill” scribe Richard Curtis, the movie weaves together the stories of lovestruck Londoners around the holidays. There’s Hugh Grant as the prime minister moony-eyed over one of his employees (Martine McCutcheon); Emma Thompson as the sad wife whose husband (Alan Rickman) is possibly straying; and Liam Neeson as the widower whose young stepson (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) has a big crush. The list goes on.When the two films were initially released, neither saw the other as competition, according to “Elf” producer Todd Komarnicki and “Love Actually” producer Tim Bevan of Working Title Films.“We were toe-to-toe battling with ‘Master and Commander,’” Komarnicki said, referring to the Peter Weir high-seas period drama starring Russell Crowe. He added, “For me, ‘Love Actually’ is just a movie that I really dug.” (Both holiday movies would land in the Top 20 highest grossing films worldwide for 2003, ahead of “Master and Commander.”)And Bevan didn’t even think of “Love Actually” as a Christmas movie. “You sort of knew that it was Christmas-y because of the songs and all the rest of it,” he said. “But it felt like a romantic comedy rather than a Christmas movie.”Instead, he viewed “Love Actually” as a follow-up to the successes of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill,” both of which contributed to the rise of the British rom-com as a bankable industry. To be clear, Bevan does understand why it’s so linked with Christmas.“It’s about eight or nine different strands where there are different great emotions going on about love and family and all of the rest of it,” he said. “That’s the element that makes it Christmas-y.”Christmas entertainment is, at this point, eternal, but looking back, the early 2000s were bursting with holiday spirit. After midcentury films like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street” offered existential musings on the seasons, a wave of edgier new favorites emerged in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “Home Alone,” both written by John Hughes, offered Yuletide satires of the nuclear family with zany antics. “Elf” and “Love Actually,” meanwhile, each felt, in their own way, like optimistic responses to the Sept. 11 attacks, with reminders that cynicism can be overcome. But 2003 also saw the release of “Bad Santa,” a pioneer in the now common subgenre of the raunchy Christmas movie that includes “The Night Before” (2015) and “A Bad Moms Christmas” (2017).It takes time, of course, for a movie to become a classic, which is why it’s easy to say definitively that “Elf” and “Love Actually” deserve that designation. “Probably a decade later you think, ‘Wow, people are still watching that movie at Christmas time,’” Bevan said of realizing “Love Actually” had become a perennial favorite.And while there are certainly external factors that go into the popularity of both of these titles — including the fact that television programmers throw them on ad nauseam in the winter months — there has to be some unconscious collective decision that a movie deserves to be watched time and time again. Partly it’s that these films were emblematic of a certain communal experience when audiences gathered to watch them way back in 2003. “The sad thing is, had we made both of those movies for streamers today, I would argue we would not be having this conversation in 20 years’ time,” Bevan said.While he and Kormanicki insisted their movies could get theatrical runs now, “Elf” and “Love Actually,” with their midbudget sensibilities, would probably feel like outliers in the current theatrical landscape. With a few exceptions — like 2019’s “Last Christmas,” based on the Wham! song — there doesn’t seem to be much of a home for holiday entertainment in theaters, unless it is somehow profane or bloody. Even Ferrell’s most recent attempt at Christmas fare, the 2022 Dickens-inspired musical “Spirited” with Ryan Reynolds, was made for Apple TV+, a streamer.Streaming was ostensibly supposed to make movies more accessible, but instead it just makes them feel more disposable. And that’s not to say the streamers haven’t released some genuinely engaging Christmas material among the heaps of dreck, like the visually inventive Netflix animated feature “Klaus” (2019) or Hulu’s queer rom-com, “Happiest Season” (2020), starring Kristen Stewart. Still, the holidays thrive on nostalgia, and it’s hard to be nostalgic for the latest Vanessa Hudgens princess movie you watched while simultaneously scrolling through your Instagram feed.If I’m being honest, in the past 20 years I’ve had “Elf” and “Love Actually” playing in the background countless times while I putter around or hang out with family, but that’s largely because I know them both nearly by heart. My mother typically demands a joint viewing of “Love Actually” at some point every year. And yet the reason I have such affection for it is because each subsequent viewing reminds me of a previous one, which in turn makes me think back to when I watched it for the first time in the basement of a multiplex in 2003. More

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Sofia Coppola’s Best Needle Drops

      by

      Hear songs that memorably accompanied scenes in “The Virgin Suicides,” “Lost in Translation,” “Priscilla” and more.Finely chosen songs are the lifeblood in almost all of Sofia Coppola’s films, including “The Virgin Suicides.”Paramount ClassicsDear listeners,Few working filmmakers curate soundtracks with as much flair, style and intentionality as Sofia Coppola: Consider the melancholy dream-pop smeared through “Lost in Translation,” the new-wave tunes that give “Marie Antoinette” a playful modernity, or the eerie, weightless Air score that haunts the sleepy suburbs of “The Virgin Suicides.”Coppola’s latest film, “Priscilla” — based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, “Elvis & Me” — comes out today, and it features some of her boldest and most unconventional musical choices yet. That’s apparent right from the movie’s opening scene, in which the celestial sounds of Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” fade unexpectedly into the Ramones’ 1980 cover of a Ronettes ballad, “Baby, I Love You.”These aren’t obvious choices when it comes to soundtracking a movie about Elvis, but since Presley’s estate did not grant Coppola permission to use his music in the film, the obvious choices were off the table. No matter. Coppola — along with the music supervisor Randall Poster and the band Phoenix, whose frontman, Thomas Mars, is Coppola’s husband — used those limitations to create something more distinctive and personal than a standard biopic carpeted wall-to-wall with Presley tunes. (Plus, you know, one of those already came out last year.) They have instead crafted a movie that re-centers a woman too often pushed to the side in her own life story, and found the music — some historically accurate, some imaginatively not — that reflects her own increasingly disillusioned perspective.“Priscilla” may be the Coppola movie most explicitly about music, but finely chosen songs are the lifeblood of almost all of her films. Coppola characters often use music as a tool of communication, to sing or suggest things they can’t say aloud. Think of the unforgettable karaoke scene in “Lost in Translation,” or the way the imprisoned Lisbon sisters in “The Virgin Suicides” use their record player to communicate with the forbidden boys of the outside world.Today’s playlist is a collection of some of the greatest needle drops in Sofia Coppola’s filmography. Pour yourself a glass of Suntory, gaze dreamily out a window and press play.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Jesus and Mary Chain: “Just Like Honey”Only I know what Bill Murray whispers to Scarlett Johansson at the end of “Lost in Translation”: “The Jesus and Mary Chain. ‘Psychocandy.’ It’ll change your life! (Don’t expect quite as much from the rest of the discography, though.)” (Listen on YouTube)2. Gang of Four: “Natural’s Not in It”This spiky, 1979 post-punk song that opens Coppola’s 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” immediately signals that this isn’t going to be an ordinary biopic — it’s going to be one with a deliciously anachronistic soundtrack. There’s a sly irony to the way Coppola uses it here, too, since the politics that Gang of Four espouses on “Entertainment!” aren’t exactly simpatico with the excesses of Versailles. (Listen on YouTube)3. The Ramones: “Baby, I Love You”Ever aware of the importance of plunging the audience directly into a film’s atmosphere, Coppola sets the tone of “Priscilla” by running this swooning 1980 Ramones cover of the Ronettes over the opening credits. (Listen on YouTube)4. Heart: “Magic Man”The seductive, bowl-cutted Trip Fontaine (played by Josh Hartnett) blows into “The Virgin Suicides” to the tune of this period-specific Heart classic, indicating to the Lisbon family that he and his aviator shades are a very particular kind of trouble. (Listen on YouTube)5. Gwen Stefani: “Cool”From the 2010 film “Somewhere” — in my opinion, Coppola’s most underrated, and one of her best — this Gwen Stefani ode to getting along with your ex soundtracks a memorable scene between an absent, movie-star father (Stephen Dorff) and his preteen daughter (Elle Fanning). The girl practices an ice-skating routine while her father watches from the bleachers. That she’s framed in a wide shot, and in long, unbroken takes, emphasizes both the distance between them and the affection of her father’s gaze. “Cool” is a perfect accompaniment for such a bittersweet moment. (Listen on YouTube)6. Air: “Playground Love”The French electronic duo Air composed the gauzy, atmospheric score for Coppola’s 1999 debut, “The Virgin Suicides.” Variations on the lead melody of “Playground Love” wind through the film like a recurring theme, before the haunting song — featuring vocals from Coppola’s future husband, Mars — plays over the closing credits. (Listen on YouTube)7. Bow Wow Wow: “I Want Candy”One of the great montages in the S.C.C.U. (Sofia Coppola Cinematic Universe) is the pastel-hued, shamelessly indulgent shopping spree scene that comes midway through “Marie Antoinette,” to the tune of this early ’80s bop. Let them eat candy! (Listen on YouTube)8. Sleigh Bells: “Crown on the Ground”This blown-out, sky-scraping song from Sleigh Bells’ singular 2010 album “Treats” — an underappreciated founding document of hyperpop — opens Coppola’s 2013 film “The Bling Ring” with a time-stamped jolt. (Listen on YouTube)9. The Cure: “Plainsong”If you’re going to use the Cure’s achingly gorgeous “Plainsong” in a movie, the scene had better be epic. Coppola understood this, and made it the sumptuous soundtrack to Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s coronation. (Listen on YouTube)10. My Bloody Valentine: “Sometimes”Kevin Shields, the famously slow-working singer and guitarist of the shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine, wrote four original songs for the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack — some of the first music he’d released since his group’s landmark 1991 album, “Loveless.” But it’s My Bloody Valentine’s dream-pop classic “Sometimes” that underscores one of the movie’s most beloved scenes, as Johansson gazes out of a taxi window in the middle of the night, the passing neon of Tokyo rendered a romantic blur. (Listen on YouTube)11. Tommy James & the Shondells: “Crimson and Clover”In “Priscilla,” Elvis and Priscilla share their first kiss in the late ’50s to the tune of this woozy classic — which, in reality, came out in 1968. I like the way the critic Stephanie Zacharek describes this anachronism in her review of the film: “After Elvis bestows his first, gentle kiss on Priscilla’s lips, she enters a fugue state, having shifted to a new plane of existence. At that point, it’s Tommy James & the Shondells’ ‘Crimson and Clover’ that cocoons around her like a whisper, a song from the future, a haunting in advance.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Roxy Music: “More Than This”A spot-on choice — world-weary, full of ennui, still showing off some taste — of what Murray’s “Lost in Translation” character Bob Harris would sing at karaoke. (Listen on YouTube)13. Dolly Parton: “I Will Always Love You”I don’t want to spoil exactly when this song plays in “Priscilla,” but I do want to give you some context that will make the moment hit even harder. Elvis loved Dolly Parton’s 1974 hit and wanted to record it himself, but his manager, Col. Tom Parker, asked for at least half of Parton’s publishing rights. Though it killed her to turn him down — Elvis! — selling off her publishing was a bridge too far. So she said no. Karma took until 1992 to arrive. “Then when Whitney’s version came out,” Parton said, “I made enough money to buy Graceland.” (Listen on YouTube)Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Sofia Coppola’s Best Needle Drops” track listTrack 1: The Jesus and Mary Chain, “Just Like Honey”Track 2: Gang of Four, “Natural’s Not in It”Track 3: The Ramones, “Baby, I Love You”Track 4: Heart, “Magic Man”Track 5: Gwen Stefani, “Cool”Track 6: Air, “Playground Love”Track 7: Bow Wow Wow, “I Want Candy”Track 8: Sleigh Bells, “Crown on the Ground”Track 9: The Cure, “Plainsong”Track 10: My Bloody Valentine, “Sometimes”Track 11: Tommy James & the Shondells, “Crimson and Clover”Track 12: Roxy Music, “More Than This”Track 13: Dolly Parton, “I Will Always Love You”Bonus TracksOn this week’s new music Playlist, we’ve got fresh tracks from Olivia Rodrigo, Megan Thee Stallion, Torres and more. Listen here.Also, there’s a new Beatles song? Sort of? In a Critic’s Notebook from earlier this week, Jon Pareles considered the wistful, uncanny “Now and Then.”And finally, regretfully, in Tuesday’s newsletter I provided the wrong link to Sam Sodomsky’s wonderful Pitchfork interview with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. For real this time: Read it here. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in November

      by

      The final season of “The Crown” and the mini-series adaptation of a Pulitzer-winning novel highlight this month’s slate.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘All the Light We Cannot See’Started streaming: Nov. 2Based on Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning 2014 novel, the four-part mini-series “All the Light We Cannot See” follows two young people across a decade, up to the moment when their paths finally cross, in a bombed-out European city during World War II. One is French: Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti), a blind teenager who carries the memory of her father (Mark Ruffalo) and the spirit of her great-uncle (Hugh Laurie) as she hides from the Nazis and transmits secret radio broadcasts filled with philosophy, literature and music. The other is German: Werner Pfennig (Louis Hofmann), a reluctant soldier who became a military radio operator in part to locate those broadcasts, which he treasures. The screenwriter Steven Knight and the director Shawn Levy amp up the wartime action in Doerr’s book, inserting flashbacks to the two main characters’ back stories between scenes of them dodging bullets and shrapnel during the Battle of Saint-Malo in 1944.‘Nyad’Started streaming: Nov. 3In this unusual underdog sports drama, Annette Bening plays Diana Nyad, the long-distance swimmer who in her 60s came out of retirement and tried multiple times to do something she had dreamed of for three decades: swim nonstop from Cuba to Key West, without the protection of a shark cage. Jodie Foster plays Nyad’s best friend and chief cheerleader, Bonnie Stoll, while Rhys Ifans plays the skilled seaman who pilots their support boat. The Oscar-winning documentary filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi make their narrative directing debut with “Nyad,” bringing some of their knack for true-life adventure (seen in the likes of “Free Solo” and “The Rescue”) to the harrowing swimming sequences. Bening brings a lot of her own intense energy to the picture too, embodying a stubborn athlete who refuses to let age, childhood demons or the fraying patience of her supporters keep her from her goal.‘The Killer’Starts streaming: Nov. 10The director David Fincher and the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker are longtime collaborators who first worked together on the stylish 1995 serial killer thriller, “Seven.” They offer a more grounded take on the crime genre with their adaptation of the French comic book series “The Killer.” The movie pays homage to the French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville, who specialized in stark crime stories, suffused with ennui and populated by emotionally distant antiheroes. In “The Killer,” that role is filled by Michael Fassbender, whose unnamed protagonist travels the world, assassinating the former associates who have turned against him. Fincher and Walker eschew the fantastical exaggerations of franchises like “John Wick” and “The Mechanic” in favor of plainer costumes, weapons and scenarios, intending to capture this hired gunman’s exhaustingly obsessive nature.‘The Crown’ Season 6, Part 1Starts streaming: Nov. 16Queen Elizabeth II was still alive when the first season of this internationally popular biographical drama series debuted in 2016; and now the show is coming to an end, a year after her death. Although the show’s writer-producer Peter Morgan said he has had the ending of “The Crown” planned out for a while, the queen’s memory and legacy will undoubtedly shadow this final run of episodes. Season 6 primarily focuses on how the death of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) affected the relationship between the royal family and the U.K. populace, altering the meaning of the monarchy. Imelda Staunton returns as the queen, to wrap a saga that began in the 1950s with the end of King George VI’s reign and has since tracked the profound social changes of the late 20th century.‘Rustin’Starts streaming: Nov. 17This acclaimed biopic stars Colman Domingo as the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, perhaps best-remembered for being one of the primary organizers of the 1963 March on Washington — the occasion for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Rustin’s contributions to the movement often happened behind the scenes, complicated by two aspects of his personal and public lives: that he was openly gay, and that he was involved at different times with various communist and socialist organizations. Directed by the accomplished theater director George C. Wolfe from a screenplay by Julian Breece and the Oscar-winning “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, “Rustin” mostly follows its subject in the ’60s, telling a story about how activism can sometimes push people to face the limits of their own progressive ideals.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Locked In”“Mysteries of the Faith” Season 1“Nuovo Olimpo”“Wingwomen” (a.k.a. “Voleuses”)Nov. 2“Onimusha” Season 1Nov. 3“Blue Eye Samurai” Season 1“Daily Dose of Sunshine” Season 1“Ferry: The Series” Season 1“Selling Sunset” Season 7“Sly”Nov. 8“The Billionaire, The Butler, and the Boyfriend”“Cyberbunker: The Criminal Underworld”“Escaping Twin Flames”Nov. 10“At the Moment” Season 1“Fame After Fame” Season 1Nov. 14“How to Become a Mob Boss”Nov. 15“Stamped from the Beginning”Nov. 16“Best. Christmas. Ever!”Nov. 17“All-Time High”“Believer 2”“CoComelon Lane” Season 1“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” Season 1Nov. 21“Leo”Nov. 22“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America” Season 2“Squid Game: The Challenge” Season 1Nov. 24“A Nearly Normal Family”Nov. 28“Love Like a K-Drama” Season 1Nov. 29“American Symphony”Nov. 30“Family Switch”“Obliterated” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Leonardo DiCaprio Plays Dim in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

      by

      Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest is unlike any Scorsese protagonist because, well, he’s dumb as rocks. And that changes the film in a fundamental way.The demimondes depicted by the American master Martin Scorsese vary widely — his New York stories alone span three centuries — but they have one common requirement: It takes intelligence, of one kind or another, to navigate them. His protagonists are smart, street smart, shrewd, skillful or some combination of those qualities as a rule.That rule is broken in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Normally, a character like Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) — a World War I veteran turned henchman in a plot to murder Osage people for their oil profits in 1920s Oklahoma — would either rise to the top of his uncle Bill Hale’s organization, or wise up and fight to stop it on his own. Ernest does neither, precisely because he lacks the qualities Scorsese has spent a lifetime depicting.Henry Hill (Ray Liotta with Lorraine Bracco) serves as our guide to the Mafia in “Goodfellas.”Warner Bros.The quintessential Scorsese protagonist, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) also serves as the narrator of “Goodfellas.” It’s not just that he is a canny operator who helps plan a fictional version of the most lucrative heist in American history — his voice and his street smarts guide us through the Mafia’s underground society. It’s difficult to imagine Ernest having the know-how to pull off either task.DiCaprio in “Gangs of New York.” To survive, his character has to think fast.Ernest is not the first DiCaprio character to live a double life in Scorsese’s world. Amsterdam Vallon and Billy Costigan, his characters in “Gangs of New York” and “The Departed,” are undercover agents embedded in sophisticated crime organizations. They must think on their feet much faster than a man whose only task is to swindle a sick woman.DiCaprio in “The Aviator” as Howard Hughes, a leader more typical of a Scorsese protagonist.Miramax FilmsIn his more antiheroic roles for Scorsese, DiCaprio has played leaders like the tycoon Howard Hughes (“The Aviator”) and the stock scammer Jordan Belfort (“The Wolf of Wall Street”), rather than stooges like Ernest.“Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro with Sharon Stone) dealt with various risks in “Casino.”Universal PicturesSam Rothstein, a.k.a. Ace (Robert De Niro), the mob-associated gambling executive in “Casino,” and Jesus of Nazareth (Willem Dafoe) in “The Last Temptation of Christ” are also leaders, ones who operate under great personal physical risk at that. Their very different lives routinely present them with challenges the likes of Ernest could never surmount.Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer as a couple figuring out their position in a stratified society.Philip Caruso/Columbia PicturesThe same goes for Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) from “The Age of Innocence.” Their doomed romance forces them to navigate the societal mores of wealth and status, with no all-powerful figure like King Hale (De Niro) to back them up.De Niro as Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver.” He was expert with weapons, if not social cues.Sony PicturesNo one would mistake Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta, the iconic De Niro characters from “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” for geniuses, but each was brilliant in his own way at the application of violence.As a comedian, Rupert Pupkin (De Niro, with Jerry Lewis) isn’t too sharp but he has other skills.20th Century FoxUnlike Bickle or LaMotta, Rupert Pupkin, the painfully unfunny would-be comedian played by De Niro in “The King of Comedy,” is no good at all at his chosen field. However, he successfully carries out a plan to kidnap the talk-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) and ransom him for a turn in the spotlight.Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) has seen better days in “After Hours.”Warner BrosPerhaps the closest a Scorsese character gets to Ernest is Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) in the black comedy “After Hours.” Like Ernest, Paul is a man in over his head (Hackett can’t hack it). But he’s an otherwise normal and competent person having one crazy night in downtown Manhattan, not a murderer.Ernest is not an average Joe suffering a series of mishaps, like Hackett. Nor is he able to serve as a Henry Hill-esque narrator-navigator for the criminality of King Hale. He barely seems aware of what’s happening with his own small stake in the wider conspiracy, much less able to explain the entire thing to others. With even the mean success of a normal Scorsese criminal out of reach, Ernest is good for little more than relaying messages about murdering unarmed sick people — a task at which he fails as often as he succeeds — and occasionally chipping in by poisoning his own wife.Indeed, Ernest is too thick — intellectually, emotionally morally — to do much of anything but allow his hand to be forced, first by King, then by the federal agents tasked with taking him down. He never really learns, never really comes clean, never really grasps the monstrousness of what’s happening until it’s too late. He’s just not sharp enough to see it, or to allow himself to be shown. The man is a zero — the mental and moral void into which King Hale’s Osage targets and their allies disappear.The Scorsese movie we get out of him is very different as a result. A sharper character would have implied that it takes some canniness, cunning or charisma to plunder a land and its people. Instead, Ernest shows us that the bigotry and greed that fueled the genocidal campaign against the Osage are ultimately stupid, and the resulting tragedy all the sadder for it. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘What Happens Later’ Review: Meg Ryan Revisits the Meet-Cute

      by

      The rom-com queen directs and stars opposite David Duchovny in this two-hander about former lovers who reconnect after 25 years.Few can compete with Meg Ryan’s rom-com résumé. As the star of three classics penned by Nora Ephron — “When Harry Met Sally,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail” — she may as well be the mascot of the genre’s late 1980s and ’90s golden era. “What Happens Later,” which she both directs and stars in, is an appropriate homecoming for a seasoned pro.Ryan and her co-star, David Duchovny, portray Willa and Bill, former lovers who stumble across each other at a tiny regional airport while the two are waiting out a snowstorm. (They share the name “W. Davis,” and the identity confusion is part of what leads to their reunion meet-cute.) With their connecting flights delayed indefinitely, the exes quickly catch up on what’s happened in the 25 years since they last crossed paths. Bill has a steady job and a family in Boston; Willa is a massage therapist and chakra healer in Austin. Clashing personalities lead to petty bickering and some harsh words, but their banter confirms the chemistry is still there.“What Happens Later,” which Ryan wrote with Kirk Lynn and Steven Dietz (based on Dietz’s play “Shooting Star”), feels purposely lost in time. Its story is bottled within the liminal space of the airport — its exact location remains a mystery — which puts the focus on the two leads trying to reconcile their pasts with their present. Ryan adds a dash of magical realism, turning the airport intercom into a cheeky voice-over that responds to Willa and Bill. These fantasy elements are mostly played for laughs, but the dreaminess and isolation of the darkened airport offer an excuse for Willa and Bill to open up to each other and consider whether their reunion really was determined by fate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More