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      ‘Snow White’ Review: A Princess’s Progress

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      The new live-action version of Disney’s 1937 animated fairy tale has drawn (maddening) criticism for its casting and an updated story. But liberation only goes so far.Disney’s new “Snow White” is perfectly adequate, though the scene when our heroine stands alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chanting “no justice, no peace” did admittedly give me pause. Yes, this live-action redo of its 1937 feature-length animated film has been called out as woke, but by the end, the overall damage from Snow White’s liberation struggle proves minimal. She still smiles and sings, whistles and works, rejects evil and rescues seven potential incels. Snow White no longer trills about a prince, true, but heteronormativity still has its happy ending. Huzzah!If somehow you’ve missed the most maddening of the nitwit controversies that have been swirling around Disney’s latest remake, good for you for having a life. It is — and has been — a dispiritingly familiar spectacle of bigotry and rank nonsense, with the ugliest twittering centered on the casting of the young Latina actress Rachel Zegler (“West Side Story”), who wasn’t deemed pale enough by trolls to play the title role. Of course the 1937 character is animated and she doesn’t look white as snow, either, because people don’t unless they’re in whiteface.Criticisms of Disney aren’t new, of course, and have reliably come from film critics as well as pundits from both sides of the political spectrum. Disney’s “Aladdin” (1992) ushered in a new age of princess diversity with an Arabian royal named Jasmine, but the film itself fumbled representationally. Critics slammed some of its images as well as song lyrics that were excised from later editions of the movie. As Disney expanded its princess portfolio, it continued to generate praise and criticism for both avoiding and sometimes reinforcing stereotypes, including in “The Princess and the Frog” (2009), which showcased its first Black princess.The Snow White in the new movie isn’t coded as anything other than sweet and spunky. Like her predecessors, she comes with the usual princess prerequisites: a royal patrimony, a dead mother, a killer stepmom and a guy waiting, at times riding in from the wings on a white horse. As in the original film — the studio’s first full-length animated feature — this Snow White is born to a King and Queen who are expediently sidelined. The Evil Queen (as she’s called), who’s played by Gal Gadot with less animation than the typical cartoon royal, talks into a mirror and doesn’t like what she hears. She subsequently makes life miserable for Snow White, who remains spirited enough to sing while mopping.Zegler has enough charm and lung power to hold the center of this busy, overproduced movie with its mix of memorable old and unmemorable new songs. Directed by Marc Webb and written by Erin Cressida Wilson, Snow White 2.0 dusts off Disney’s take on the Grimm fairy tale, modernizes it with girl empowerment and tosses in a bit of “Les Mis”-style storm-the-barricades uplift. Oddly, while the prince in the first film shows up only near the start and end, Zegler’s Snow White has to deal more forcefully with her insipid love interest, presumably to pad the story. He’s a smiler, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who’s been demoted to a commoner and leads a merry band of dancing-and-singing thieves.One of the more striking things about the 1937 film is that as the title “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” suggests, the story largely concerns her relationship with the seven miners. Some friendly critters guide Snow White to the miners’ storybook cottage where she bustles about, cleaning and cooking for Doc, Sneezy and the rest. In effect, before she can have her happily ever after, she continues practicing the housekeeping skills she honed under her stepmother to become a mother-wife to some unthreatening male companions. Shortly after the original Doc says to “search every cook and nanny,” the old Snow White cheerfully steps into those roles. The new Snow White, not so much.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Magazine Dreams’ Review: Pain Without Gain

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      Shown at Sundance two years ago, the film was shelved when its star, Jonathan Majors, was arrested and charged with assault and harassment of his girlfriend at the time.Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) has one goal in life: to be the greatest bodybuilder on Earth. His focus is so single-minded that he has little else to talk about. About a third of the way into “Magazine Dreams,” the shy Killian, having finally worked up the courage to ask, takes Jessie (Haley Bennett), his colleague at a supermarket, on a date.It doesn’t go well. At the restaurant, Killian startles Jessie with his casual disclosure of his mother’s violent death. (“Someone killed her. My dad did. He shot her and then he shot himself. That’s why they’re both dead.”) He orders enough protein to feed a platoon. Then he regales her with details of his regimen and his fear that others don’t respect him. “I’m going to place and get my pro card,” he tells Jessie. “Then I bet they won’t just walk by me.”The too-briefly-seen Bennett has the Cybill Shepherd role in this strained effort to make “Taxi Driver” for bodybuilders. On the evidence, the writer-director, Elijah Bynum, has also studied Scorsese’s other work, particularly “The King of Comedy” (Killian writes obsessive letters to an idol who has made the cover of Men’s Health) and the Steadicam march to the boxing ring in “Raging Bull.”Bynum supplies his own version of that shot midway through, when Killian, having just been savagely beaten by a group of men whose store he has wrecked, arrives at a bodybuilding competition still bloody. In a single, fluid camera movement, Killian enters the building and takes the stage, flexing his muscles and visibly struggling to grin through his pain. It’s an impressive show of bravado from both the actor and the director, albeit in a way that makes it difficult to tell who’s swaggering more — the character or the filmmaker.“Magazine Dreams” bludgeons viewers to show off its sensitivity. Bynum piles on the misery in increasingly bogus ways. As big as Killian is, he has thin skin from the time a judge told him his deltoids were too small. He’s too naïve to realize that posting a video of his training online will invite nasty comments. After he crashes his car, a doctor informs him that he needs surgery. “I can’t have a scar,” Killian replies. “I’m a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders can’t have scars.” Perhaps at a loss as to how to resolve the drama in a less hackneyed manner, Bynum adds guns.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Ash’ Review: Deep-Space Horrors

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      In this sleek film by Flying Lotus, Eiza González plays a marooned explorer haunted by the killing of her crew mates.The high-concept sci-fi horror film “Ash,” a hazy story about an amnesiac deep-space explorer who awakens to discover her entire crew was killed, is light on answers but heavy on style.The movie begins with a staggered Riya (Eiza González) surveying the mutilated bodies on the cold minimalist floors and walls of her interstellar outpost. There is an unexplainable gash on her forehead and a robotic system alerting her to abnormal activity happening around her. She and her crew members arrived on this distant planet — a craggy world curtained by cobalt-blue shadows and white embers — in search of a potential new home for mankind, but found something far more sinister. If only she could remember what happened.Though not as adventurous, “Ash,” from the musician-turned-director Steven Ellison, known as Flying Lotus, conjures comparisons to “Alien” and “Mission to Mars.” Its futuristic science: a terraforming planet, celestial alignment, parasitic beings — is equally wonky. Because the fractal script doesn’t aim to provide explanations, this film can be confusing. But that incomprehensibility is part of its aesthetically alluring package.By applying psychedelic medical patches to her neck, Riya is able to channel gruesome memories in loud drips and booming drops, releasing a wave of scratchy, blurred frames recalling melted faces and stomach-churning scenes set to Flying Lotus’s brooding score. When another voyager (Aaron Paul) arrives, this incites further questions whose revelations inspire a grisly third act freak-out; the mesmerizing barrage of gore makes for a memorable display.AshRated R for bloody violence, gore and language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How ‘Moneyball’ and ‘Sugar’ Altered the Baseball Movie

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      Two contemporary films reimagined the stories we tell about the sport.From “Eight Men Out” to “Field of Dreams,” baseball movies are usually enraptured by the past. Steeped in traditions, these films celebrate homespun heroes whose anything-is-possible journeys toward a championship elevate our spirits. But two baseball movies from the last 20 years had something else on their minds that would alter how the sport was looked at onscreen. Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” (2011), based on a true story, and Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Sugar” (2008), aren’t about tenacious winners or mythic achievements. Instead, they’re fascinated by failure and community.That notable shift defies a subgenre built on uplift. A baseball movie will often spin a yarn about a band of misfits coming together for an unlikely title run (“Angels in the Outfield”). They can also center once-talented players given one more chance at greatness (“The Natural”), or recall life-changing summers (“The Sandlot”). They tout the majesty, poetry, superstitions and purity of the sport, appealing to truisms lodged in our cultural understanding of fairness: three strikes, you’re out and, as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”Following the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), “Moneyball” aims to critique an unfair system not by yearning for the past, but by deconstructing the present. Beane is an executive whose small market ball club can no longer compete monetarily with big spenders like the New York Yankees, so he hires the nerdy Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and turns to the teachings of Bill James, a writer who preached sabermetrics as a statistically informed way to maximize talent. Beane and Brand’s unorthodox approach puts them in opposition to the team’s irritable old school manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the craggy scouts who rely on their ingrained biases to evaluate players.Pitt plays the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane.Melinda Sue Gordon/Columbia PicturesWhile Beane deconstructs the business of baseball, assembling a stacked roster of discarded players, “Moneyball” the movie also disassembles the subgenre by not really being about baseball. Partway through the film, Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin’s patient screenplay introduces Beane’s young daughter, who hopes the team wins enough for her dad to keep his job. Pitt is wonderful in these scenes, softening Beane’s rigid executive exterior for a kinder, sweeter approach that slowly builds the importance of this father-daughter relationship to the point of Beane turning down a higher paid position with the Boston Red Sox (coincidentally, the A’s are leaving California in 2028 for a lucrative offer to play in Las Vegas).Seeing Beane’s embrace of fatherhood recalls an imperative moment in Ken Burns’s “Baseball.” In that documentary mini-series, Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor, describes baseball as a “community activity,” in which “you find your own good in the good of the whole.” As much as Beane prizes winning in “Moneyball,” his journey becomes about cherishing family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Alain Guiraudie’s Films, Sex Leads to Unexpected Destinations

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      Alain Guiraudie broke through with “Stranger by the Lake.” In his new movie, “Misericordia,” eroticism and death are also intimately entangled.Carnal urges drive the characters in the films of the French director Alain Guiraudie toward absurd and sometimes dangerous mishaps. In his sexually audacious narratives, which usually play out in the countryside, the temptation of the flesh is a potent catalyst.“I don’t know if you can say that desire is what drives all of cinema, but it’s certainly what drives my cinema,” Guiraudie said via an interpreter during a recent video interview from his home in Paris.That artistic mandate guides his latest picture, “Misericordia,” which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday. When it came out in France, it received eight nominations for the César Awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, and was named the best film of 2024 by the renowned French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.The movie follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) as he returns to the small rural town of his youth, where he soon becomes the prime suspect in a murder, while also awakening the lust of the local Catholic priest.For Guiraudie, 60, eroticism and death are intimately entangled. “There are two situations in which we return to our most primitive instincts: sex and violence,” he said. “I see an obligatory connection.”Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay in “Misericordia.” Like most of Guiraudie’s movies, it is set in the countryside.Sideshow/Janus FilmsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Ghostlight,’ ‘Watcher’ and More Streaming Gems

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      A pair of carefully crafted character studies and three female-fronted thrillers are among the gems hidden on your subscription streaming services this month.‘Ghostlight’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.So few films concern the daily lives of the working class, in any meaningful way, that it’s sort of astonishing when one comes along that feels so embedded there. That’s the case with this heart-tugging drama from the directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (“Saint Frances”), in which a grieving father stumbles into a community theater production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Keith Kupferer is marvelous as the father, beautifully capturing the frustrations and emotional limitations of his class and generation, while Katherine Mallen Kupferer performs modestly as his wife, until a late moment that absolutely clobbers you. And that, in many ways, holds true for the entire movie.‘Goodrich’ (2024)Stream it on Max.“This midlife crisis is no walk in the park, I’ll tell you that,” snorts Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) near the end of this poignant comedy-drama, and while his daughter Grace (Mila Kunis) notes the mathematical improbability that 60-something is “midlife,” the sentiment stands. Andy, the owner-operator of a Los Angeles art gallery that’s seen better days, is in free-fall. His wife has just checked herself into rehab, much to his bafflement (he’s so checked out, he never noticed her addiction), leaving him to care for their elementary-school aged twins himself. Keaton is credited as an executive producer, and it’s easy to see why the project was important to him; the writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer hands him a stellar showcase, a guy who talks fast and thinks faster, and whose inherent likability helps soften his obvious flaws. The result is a poignant examination of getting older and wondering if you’ve lost it — whatever your particular “it” may be.‘Saint Maud’ (2021)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gene Winfield, Whose Cars Starred in Film and on TV, Dies at 97

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      He was know for modifying cars with innovative metal work and paint jobs, and for building vehicles like the Galileo shuttle for the original “Star Trek” series.Gene Winfield, a hot rodder and prominent car customizer who built fanciful vehicles for “Star Trek,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and other television series and for films like “Blade Runner” and “Sleeper,” died on March 4 in Atascadero, Calif. He was 97.His son, Steve, said he died in an assisted living facility from metastatic melanoma. He had also been diagnosed with kidney failure.Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention in the late 1950s with a two-door 1956 Mercury hard top called the Jade Idol.According to the custom car website Kustorama, he transformed the Mercury for a customer by adding features like handmade fenders rolled in aluminum in the front end; headlight rings made from 1959 Chrysler Imperial Crown hubcaps; a television set integrated into a new dashboard; and a steering column taken from an Edsel.The restored Jade Idol in Salinas, Calif., in 1981. Mr. Winfield first attracted national attention in the late 1950s with the car, a customized two-door 1956 Mercury hardtop.David GrantAutomobile magazine described the Jade Idol as having “a sharklike presence that represented a new direction in customs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gemma Chan Gets Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ More as She Gets Older

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      The actress, now starring in “The Actor,” talks about Schubert, “In the Mood for Love” and other art, food and pets that she loves.After captivating audiences as the glamorous Astrid in “Crazy Rich Asians,” Gemma Chan was sent quite a few scripts with dignified but unhappy wives.She sensed trouble ahead.“There’s a danger of being typecast,” she said. “But I’m still a work-in-progress pushing back on that. I want to do something different and show something different and tell a different story.”Her new film, “The Actor,” directed by Duke Johnson, checked those boxes. Chan plays Edna, a costume designer in a factory town and the romantic interest of an amnesiac.She had loved Johnson’s haunting animated movie “Anomalisa,” and she responded similarly when she read “The Actor.”“Then I spoke to Duke about how he planned to shoot it, which was in quite a different way to anything that I’ve shot before,” she said. “Quite experimental, bringing elements that were quite theatrical and quite stylized.”Chan has also wrapped “Josephine,” with Channing Tatum, about an 8-year-old who witnesses an assault. And she is producing her own work: an adaptation of the “Rise of the Empress” fantasy book series for Amazon Prime Video, and an unconventional history of Anna May Wong, considered to be the first Chinese American movie star.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More