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      Natasha Lyonne’s Success Is Driven by a Sense of Mortality

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      Natasha Lyonne has her funeral all planned out.Not just planned, really, but choreographed, produced and directed, complete with music cues and writing prompts, to calibrate the emotion just right. “Otherwise it can run long,” she explained. So Lyonne, the downtown vivant actress, writer and director, has diligently assigned her passel of famous friends “jobs that they didn’t want.”There will be a month of commemorative screenings at Film Forum and songs by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs (“I have a sworn promise that she performs; I’m very grateful”) and the “Color Purple” star Danielle Brooks, because her voice “breaks my heart.” The comedian John Mulaney will be on hand to punch up material. “I actually tasked him with writing speeches for people that wouldn’t want to get onstage,” Lyonne said, like her BFF Chloë Sevigny. “I was like: You need to give Chloë some jokes.”The plot she acquired, at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, alongside her boyfriend at the time, Fred Armisen, she has now graciously ceded to his wife, Riki Lindhome. “I probably don’t want to be buried in Los Angeles anyway, if I’m honest,” she allowed. But she’s still making him the funerary musical supervisor.That Lyonne, at 45, has thought at length about her own demise is, to anyone who knows her or her oeuvre, not surprising. All of her recent, most celebrated projects — including “Russian Doll,” the Emmy-winning Netflix series; “Poker Face,” the retro crime procedural on Peacock; and her latest role, in the Netflix drama “His Three Daughters” — find her confronting life’s end. She does it with a spectacular, bewitching buoyancy. Even in “His Three Daughters,” in which she displays an unexpected reserve (but exuberant hair) opposite Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen as estranged sisters caring for their father in his last days. It’s earning her Oscar talk.As a producer, Lyonne “likes the grind and the hustle, and the hard work that comes with it,” said Amy Poehler. “That’s not always the case.”OK McCausland for The New York TimesSo, when we found ourselves in an East Village restaurant on a drizzly Friday night, ordering a dessert made of Pop Rocks and talking about death, it felt just as the universe — or New York City, same difference — intended.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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      After ‘The Substance,’ Watch These Body Horror Movies

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      As “The Substance” hits theaters, here’s a look at eight other films in the goopy subgenre of body horror.In some scary movies, the sources of horror are closer than in your town or even in your house — they’re in your very own skin.These films belong to a subgenre called body horror: movies that depict various transformations, mutations and degradations of the human form. The terrifying changes often emphasize the futility of our efforts to control our horribly unpredictable bodies. We like to think of ourselves as a mind managing a body, but these movies remind us that we’re ultimately at the mercy of the meat sacks we walk around in.Coralie Fargeat’s newest film, “The Substance” (in theaters), starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, participates in this robust tradition, depicting an aging starlet who uses an experimental new drug to create a younger, better version of herself. As you might guess, the treatment causes some unexpected and disgusting side effects, satirizing society’s (and particularly Hollywood’s) obsession with wanting women to stay stereotypically beautiful and youthful — at any cost.If you’re looking for a primer on the subgenre, here are eight films that will give you a crash course in the gutsy, the gory and the goopy.‘The Thing’ (1982)Stream it on Peacock.Kurt Russell in “The Thing.”Universal Pictures/AlamyWe 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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      ‘The Babadook’ Is Still an Unnerving Dream 10 Years Later

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      Back in theaters for its 10th anniversary, the haunting movie never really left, with a legacy that includes an entire horror subgenre.Before I even saw “The Babadook” I was scared of the Babadook. He quickly became such an icon of horror that the idea was immediately unsettling.Invented by the Australian director Jennifer Kent for her 2014 film, Mister Babadook is a creature from a children’s pop-up book that suddenly appears in the home of Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The brute is crudely drawn, with a top hat, long spindly fingers and teeth that form a grimace. “If it’s in a word or in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” the foreboding red hardcover reads.Despite his silly name and somewhat dapper attire, the Babadook is the stuff of nightmares, inexplicable but threatening. And as you watch Kent’s film, the terror only intensifies. You never actually see the corporeal form of the Babadook, but he infiltrates Amelia, an exhausted mother grieving after her husband was killed while driving her to the hospital to give birth to Samuel. He has grown into an erratic little boy who believes monsters are lurking in their house and has behavioral issues in school. When the Babadook book suddenly appears out of nowhere, his fears seem justified. Amelia, however, tries to pretend everything is normal.She has buried her pain, allowing it to fester into a bloodthirsty animosity toward her own spawn. The Babadook latches on to what’s been growing inside of her.When the film was originally released, it grossed just a little over $960,000 domestically (and a little over $10 million worldwide). Yet like the Babadook himself, the film has cast a long shadow that grows only more encompassing as it celebrates its 10th anniversary with a rerelease starting Thursday.The character became an internet phenomenon, even making an appearance in the Urban Dictionary. One popular post from 2016 featured the comedy writer Katie Dippold announcing that for Halloween she had “dressed as the Babadook but my friend’s house had more of a grown-ups drinking wine vibe,” complete with a photo of herself out of place in full Babadook drag. Somehow the creature also turned into a gay icon. (Well, he is quite fabulous.)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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      ‘Never Let Go’ Review: Do the Woods Have Eyes?

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      Halle Berry plays the ultimate helicopter parent in this new horror movie, where evil lurks in the trees beyond the family cabin.Morbid moments are frequently the bread and butter of horror movies, but “Never Let Go” serves them up in helpings that become repellent. It’s directed by Alexandre Aja, whose past work, including a remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” is also as crass and pretentious in almost equal measure.Halle Berry, the star of “Never Let Go,” plays the mother of two young boys, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV), who all live in a cabin in a forest clearing. The surrounding woods are tangled and dark. She and the kids have to tie thick ropes around themselves when they leave the cabin to forage for food. According to Berry’s matriarch, “the Evil” is in those woods, and one touch will infect a family member, who would then bring it back to the house. So they all hold onto the rope to stay safe.The movie plays peekaboo with its central conceit — is “the Evil” real, or is mom just off her rocker? There are some jump scares at the outset, followed by a series of nonsensical plot turns that may annoy viewers.After one of the boys does something unspeakably stupid (he’s a kid, yes, and an ostensibly brainwashed one, yes, but still), it’s hard to keep caring. Berry is drained of glamour for her role here, and she performs with fierceness; the two boys are also stalwart, but what the movie asks these child performers to do doesn’t add up to effective horror — it’s just opportunistic and gross.Never Let GoRated R for language, grisliness and morbid imagery. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘In the Summers’ Review: Understanding a Father’s Flaws

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      The film, by Alessandra Lacorazza, follows two siblings as they visit their father, played by Residente, in New Mexico.“In the Summers” follows two siblings, Violeta and Eva, as they visit their father over four staggered summers from childhood to adulthood. Most of the year, they live in California with their mother, but both she and their lives there go unseen. The film, told in chapters, depicts only the most sweltering months, which they spend in Las Cruces, N.M., with their father, Vicente, played by René Pérez Joglar, also known as the rapper and singer Residente.The movie, written and directed by Alessandra Lacorazza, won the top prize for an American fiction feature at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It increases in power as it proceeds, as Violeta (played in succession by Dreya Castillo, Kimaya Thais Limon and, from last year’s “Mutt,” Lío Mehiel) and Eva (Luciana Elisa Quiñonez, Allison Salinas and Sasha Calle) grow older and gain sharper understandings of their father’s flaws. Each segment begins with their arrival at the airport. Vicente’s temper is apparent in the first section, when he explodes at a stranger in an amusement park after she tries to help a sick Eva.Soon after that, Vicente’s dangerous driving habits emerge as a motif. In one chapter, to impress the children, he swerves recklessly at night, making a game out of not stopping. In another, Violeta has to prevent him from driving drunk. (Emma Ramos as Carmen, the bartender who drives them home and who has known Vicente for years, is in some ways Lacorazza’s secret weapon. Her character becomes a watchful eye and sounding board for the siblings.)Vicente can’t seem to keep track of Violeta and Eva’s ages. But even with his wavering attention, he is capable of flashes of warmth. He works as a tutor and has a knack for explaining things. In a sweet early scene, he pours chili flakes on a pizza to illustrate how scientists can estimate the number of stars in a given area. And even at his most irresponsible — he introduces the teenage Violeta to marijuana, reasoning that it’s better to smoke it in a safe place — he often means well. A late scene in which he haltingly tries to apologize for his shortcomings constitutes the film’s most perfectly underplayed moment.Pérez Joglar becomes the movie’s through line, a constant presence who has to act against a changing roster of co-stars. If the casting shifts aren’t always persuasive, Vicente’s limited ability to perceive Eva and Violeta is part of the point. The structural conceit is the most engaging aspect of “In the Summers,” even if it gives the storytelling some perspective issues. (While Vicente sees Violeta and Eva only during the summer, they in theory see each other much more regularly.) Lacorazza’s deftness with actors, feel for the setting and aesthetic decisions — shooting in the snapshot-like 1.66-to-1 aspect ratio, or leaving the characters’ Spanish without subtitles — help the drama ring true.In the SummersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Featherweight’ Review: Boxing Is Easy. Retirement Is Hard.

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      In this biopic, a documentary crew follows the boxer Willie Pep during his 1960s comeback.In “The Featherweight,” James Madio nimbly portrays Willie Pep, the boxing champion from Connecticut whom The Ring magazine once nicknamed the Hartford Tornado.The movie, directed by Robert Kolodny, opens on the acclaimed pugilist in 1964, two decades after he started his career and five years after he first retired. At 42, Pep has been selling autographed photos and other memorabilia, a requirement and curse of a fading fame. He often appears with his nemesis, Sandy Saddler (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), a Black featherweight champ who is along for the downward slide.Pep is angling for a comeback, which is the reason a documentary film crew is trailing him. “The Featherweight” is the fruit of their fly-on-the-wall ubiquity.In Hartford, Pep lives with his much younger wife, Linda (Ruby Wolf), an aspiring actress, and his mother (Imma Aiello), who doesn’t much like Linda. His grown son, Billy Jr. (Keir Gilchrist), is openly antagonistic. Talk about bobbing and weaving.Pep often engages the crew with a sweet and cocky slyness, which befits a boxer who would amass almost 230 wins during his career. That doesn’t mean he’s happy being filmed bullying one of Linda’s fellow actors or being battered at his old gym once he returns to his former trainer, Bill Gore (Stephen Lang).Kolodny handles his movie-as-documentary conceit with subtle flair and finesse. For a subgenre as crowded with movies as boxing has weight classes, “The Featherweight” isn’t a knockout. But it does land more than a glancing blow.The FeatherweightNot rated. In English, with some Italian in subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Eureka’ Review: No More Cowboys and Indians

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      This intriguingly languorous Western by the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso explores the existential plight of Indigenous Americans in three separate timelines.In the beginning of “Eureka,” we’re plunged into the Wild West — and it’s pretty much how the movies have always imagined it. A rogue gunman (Viggo Mortensen) hitches a wagon ride into town; unfriendly locals squint at him in a rowdy pub; guns are drawn and brains are blown out.There’s something overly affected — comically macho — about this standard revenge plot. That’s by design. We zoom out from the black-and-white drama, which is playing on a TV set, and enter the modern world: colorful, yes, but with none of the exaggerated emotions and chest-thumping justice-seekers of the earlier sequence.“Eureka,” an intriguingly languorous, visually audacious drama from the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso, is about the existential plight of modern-day Indigenous Americans — people too often trapped in the fictions created by others.In the present, we follow the wonderfully deadpan Alaina (Alaina Clifford), a cop in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, where the problems far outnumber the staff on the sheriff’s payroll. That’s not to say that Alaina fends off gunslingers — there are missing children, people with intense substance abuse problems; grim realities that feel distressingly typical.In another plotline, Sadie (Sadie LaPointe), a young woman with a deceptively chipper manner, shoots hoops by herself; visits her cousin in jail; chats with an actress (Chiara Mastroianni) passing through the reservation. LaPointe’s is a beautiful performance: a slight crack in her voice, the flicker of her eyes, conveys the strength it takes to persist — to keep a straight face — within such bleak circumstances.Ultimately, the film feels a bit misshapen. A third act set in the jungles of Brazil in the 1970s depicts tribe members discussing their livelihoods as gold prospectors encroach on their lands. Here, extra-long shots of wild splendor and oblique talk of dreams makes the film go from patient to listless. At this stage, it’s a challenging sit, but perhaps that’s the point considering where we started.EurekaNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘All Shall Be Well’ Review: Aching With Absence

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      The indignity of being someone’s spouse while they are alive and merely a friend after their death is the theme of this extraordinarily moving Hong Kong drama.The delicately crafted drama “All Shall Be Well” opens on the easy intimacy between life partners. Angie (Patra Au Ga Man) and Pat (Maggie Li Lin Lin) amble along a wooded path, their elbows softly bumping. Back in their apartment, Angie scoops tea leaves while Pat pours boiling water. Later, the pair sit before their vanity sharing daubs of moisturizer.Set in Hong Kong, this graceful picture of love soon swivels to become one of loss when Pat dies unexpectedly. Nearly catatonic with grief, Angie finds comfort with in-laws, particularly Pat’s luckless brother, Shing (Tai Bo), and his superstitious wife, Mei (Hui So Ying). But the family closeness collapses once an attorney informs them that, without a will or marriage license from abroad, Pat’s estate — including the home the couple lived in for decades — will go to Pat’s next of kin, Shing.The indignity of being someone’s spouse while they are alive and merely a friend after their death is the theme of this moving film, which brims with compassion and uses a silky light touch. The writer-director, Ray Yeung, prefers his camera static or, when observing Angie’s queer chosen family, dollying ever so slightly, as if to telegraph the buoyancy they bring.But the film’s most extraordinary trick is how Pat’s presence hovers over the film. It is a feat of filmmaking and performance that a character only onscreen for a few scenes can feel truly missed by the audience. The home Pat and Angie built together aches with her absence, and so does the film.All Shall Be WellNot rated. In Cantonese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More