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      Hattie McDaniel’s Historic Oscar Will Return to Its Desired Home

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      The plaque that McDaniel, the first Black winner of an Academy Award, bequeathed to Howard University has been missing for about 50 years. Now a replacement is on its way.After becoming the first Black person to win an Academy Award, in 1940, Hattie McDaniel called the plaque she received a cherished beacon for all that could be accomplished.McDaniel had earned the award for her portrayal of Mammy, an agreeable slave at the whim of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind,” a movie that arrived as a cinematic triumph but has since been rebuked for its blind eye toward slavery.Before dying in 1952, McDaniel deflected the criticism she received for taking many stereotypical roles throughout her career.“I’d rather play a maid than be one,” she would say, envisioning that her work would open better doors for future Black actors. She also had an eternal resting spot in mind for that beacon, bequeathing the Oscar plaque to Howard University in Washington.But for about 50 years, McDaniel’s plaque has been missing, a cinematic void that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is now filling. The university will receive a replacement plaque this weekend in a ceremony titled “Hattie’s Come Home.”“It’s 100 percent overdue,” said Jill Watts, the author of “Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood.” “It was so meaningful historically as an award. Not just in the history of film, but also within American history and it was meaningful to her personally. She would be absolutely delighted to know that it’s going home to where she wanted it to be.”Kevin Goff, McDaniel’s great-grandnephew, said that his father started petitioning for a replacement plaque in the 1990s, and that the decision would help cement McDaniel’s legacy.Over the years, theories have circulated about the whereabouts of the plaque, which was given to all supporting acting winners from 1936 to 1942 rather than traditional Oscar statues. A spokesman for Howard University did not respond to a request for comment.Goff said there were rumors that the plaque was stolen during student unrest about the university’s mission in the late 1960s.“Apparently, a gentleman said he had thrown it in the Potomac,” he said. “Someone said maybe a drama professor took it with him. But none of it has been verified or proven. It’s never shown up on eBay. So, here we are 50-plus years later and no one has a clue where it is or if it still does exist.”W. Burlette Carter, a professor at George Washington University’s law school, wrote a paper about the missing award more than a decade ago. Her best guess is that it may still be somewhere at Howard, misplaced during a move by the drama department.“That makes sense to me, having worked at a university, that when they moved the department, it got packed and it got lost,” Watts said. “I have this feeling that it’s probably still someplace, tucked away in a box.”Watts said she and several others approached the Academy about replacing the Oscar following her book’s publication in 2005. “We were told no,” Watts said. “Just a flat no.”That stance has shifted. The replacement plaque will soon reside at the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.Jacqueline Stewart, the president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and Bill Kramer, the chief executive of the Academy, said in a news release that the upcoming ceremony would celebrate McDaniel’s remarkable craft and historic win.“Hattie McDaniel,” they said, “was a groundbreaking artist who changed the course of cinema and impacted generations of performers who followed her.” More

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      ‘Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie’ Review: Sit, Roll Over, Save the World

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      In this sequel, the canine gang faces Taraji P. Henson’s villain who sends a dangerous meteor toward Earth. And, yes, Kim Kardashian returns too.Adventure City’s fluffiest heroes return in “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie,” the second film tie-in to the popular Canadian TV show.This time the gang faces a brand-new villain, Victoria Vance, a.k.a. Vee (voiced by Taraji P. Henson), who sends a dangerous meteor toward Earth in an effort to prove herself as a reputable scientist. The Paw Patrol successfully saves Adventure City from disaster, but they soon discover that exposure to the meteor and its magical crystals has given each of the pups unique superpowers: lightning-fast speed, super strength, and so on. This is a particular boon to Skye (Mckenna Grace), the youngest member of the team, who is struggling to fit in as the runt of the litter.Much of the cartoon action and canine wisecracking found in the TV show — and “Paw Patrol: The Movie,” from 2021 — is rehashed here. It isn’t long before Vee joins forces with (former) Mayor Humdinger (Ron Pardo), the mustache-twirling, cat-loving villain from the first film, whose grand plan of stealing the crystals from the Paw Patrol leads to all sorts of antics. There’s even a cameo from Delores, the previous film’s self-absorbed poodle character, voiced by Kim Kardashian.Directed by Cal Brunker, who also helmed the first installment, the film has no shame in being formulaic in plot or execution. Skye’s zero-to-hero plot arc is predictable as they come, though it’s easy to see why younger audiences may find it relatable. The animation is cute, but there are noticeable moments where corners were cut and characters or objects slide awkwardly across the screen.Still, if you can imagine your kiddo enjoying an animated car-chase scene featuring puppies and kittens, set to Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” they’ll probably be thrilled with “The Mighty Movie.”Paw Patrol: The Mighty MovieRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Reptile’ Review: Unusual Suspects

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      Benicio Del Toro plays a detective investigating a suburban homicide in this overstuffed thriller.The tortuous crime thriller “Reptile,” streaming on Netflix, at times feels like the unwise attempt to cram an entire season of a cops-and-perps show into just over two hours. The movie, peopled with a near-bottomless supply of unsavory rogues, tracks the aftermath of a grisly murder by trailing the policemen on the case. Domenick Lombardozzi (of “The Wire”) is even featured among the crew — although his presence is merely another reminder of the sharper stories this movie aspires to replicate.Set in an overcast marsh town in Maine, the movie opens on a couple facing friction: Will (Justin Timberlake), a real estate mogul, and Summer (Matilda Lutz), an agent at his company, converse tersely while readying a house for a showing. The sheeny manor is all stainless steel and vaulted ceilings, a home that, in its moneyed facade and alienating interior, offers an apt metaphor for the pair’s domestic strife.Once Summer is found stabbed to death in a for-sale property, however, the movie shifts into procedural mode. We swivel to center on Tom (Benicio Del Toro), a detective who’s fresh meat on the local force; he and his wife, Judy (a convincing Alicia Silverstone), decamped to the hamlet following a scandal in Philadelphia. Working under the stony police captain (Eric Bogosian), Tom presents as a weary but devoted enforcer of law and order. “There’s only one thing I love almost as much as I love you,” he smolders, less to Judy than at her, “and that’s being a cop.”Thank goodness for that fidelity, for this particular homicide soon proves a Pandora’s box of treachery and pretense. The poised Summer, during her short life in suburbia, managed to mingle with a legion of kooks and creeps, including her ex-husband, Sam (Karl Glusman), an artist fond of stealing human hair for his sculptures, and her glum confidante, Renee (Sky Ferreira), who seems to resent her pal’s success. That’s not to mention the bratty, well-to-do Will, whose resting pout face is only partially the fault of Timberlake’s restricted acting range.In his first feature, the director Grant Singer (who wrote the screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and Del Toro) demonstrates a knack for building suspense. In one stylish sequence, Tom dials a mysterious number that could be the key to cracking the case. As he listens to the tone, Singer cuts to multiple characters reaching for ringing phones. The small scene oozes with Hitchcockian tension.The trouble with “Reptile” is that this impressive moment-to-moment control does not extend to the contours of the broader story, which the writers overstuff with clumsy twists and contrived devices. Once the film gets around to revealing the culprit, we have already lost interest, enervated in the face of a movie that, like an overeager snake, bites off far more than it can swallow.ReptileRated R for coldblooded murder. Running time: 2 hours 14 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Nowhere’ Review: Sensationalism at Sea

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      This thriller from the Spanish director Albert Pintó follows a pregnant refugee forced to survive in a shipping container adrift in the ocean.Disasters at sea have provided audiences with lurid thrills for hundreds of years, if not thousands. “Nowhere,” the latest addition to the seafaring survivalist tradition, won’t be remembered for long.The film’s protagonist is Mía (Anna Castillo), a pregnant refugee fleeing totalitarian violence alongside her lover, Nico (Tamar Novas). A radio broadcast suggests that they’re escaping a war-torn Spain. But the film proves uninterested in exploring this dystopia, instead settling into generic survivalist sensationalism.Mía and Nico start their journey together along with dozens of other migrants, but the brokers of their passage force the migrants to separate. Nico and Mía are split up. Mía’s struggles intensify as government forces stop the travelers: She hides amid cargo as police officers murder those around her, mostly women and children. Her container is hosed clean of blood, and packed onto a ship.Mía is alone. Her solitude becomes absolute when a storm knocks her container into the ocean. Bullet holes and dubious physics prevent the container from filling with water completely, and Mía is left to drift at sea, responsible for her survival and the survival of her soon-to-be-born child.As directed by Albert Pintó, “Nowhere” is a spectacle of fortune and disaster, good luck and bad breaks. There are some small innovations that strike clever notes — Mía manages to build flotation contraptions from Tupperware and make skylights using power drills. But it’s hard to care about Mía’s efforts to survive when coincidence drives the plot, and the production looks and feels cheap. There’s just one set, a few props and an admirably committed performance from a waterlogged Castillo, who keeps this flimsy vessel afloat.NowhereNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Mami Wata’ Review: An Old God Flickers Out in a New Era

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      In this striking film by the Nigerian director C.J. Obasi, with the help of a mysterious stranger, a village awakens to what is possible.The old god is dead. A stranger washes ashore. A rebellion begins to simmer, preparing the way for an emerging era. In “Mami Wata,” the archetypes are familiar, but they work to make this Nigerian film a distinctly economical masterpiece.Written and directed by C.J. Obasi (also known as Fiery), this modern fable is both haunting and ravishing, transporting us to a seaside village where Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) communes with Mami Wata, a water goddess who provides good harvests and grants Efe powers to heal the sick.But Efe’s powers seem to dim after one of her daughters, Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh), rebels and steals Efe’s totem.People begin questioning their god, and, noticing that the other villages have hospitals and schools, security and law enforcement, while they rely on Mami Wata, they blame Efe for the stunted progress of their village. Soon after, a man (Emeka Amakeze) mysteriously washes up on the beach, barely alive, and begins to connect both with Efe’s other daughter, the fiercely loyal Prisca (Evelyne Ily), and a group looking to rebel against Efe. Eventually, things come to a crisis point in this allegory about the battle of new versus old, the corrupting influence of power and the shadow of colonial rule.Obasi manages to distill themes that are at once primal and complex with virtuosic simplicity via the film’s arresting score, its refined story and dialogue and its black and white cinematography, which is more striking than most any modern Technicolor fantasy. It’s a tightly controlled vision that, like many parables, induces a sense of the suddenly, viscerally new — in the look of a figure against the ocean, or the words of a mother telling her child to run — in what we’ve seen before and have always known.Mami WataNot rated. In West African pidgin English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Story Ave’ Review: Elevated Training

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      A Bronx teenager looks for a channel for his artistic talent in this debut feature from Aristotle Torres.“Story Ave” is billed as “a story by The Bronx,” which feels fitting — the borough is a major character. Shooting in a narrow aspect ratio, the director, Aristotle Torres, who expanded this debut feature from a short, seems as interested in capturing snapshots of a cinematically neglected pocket of New York — its graffiti murals, its alleyways, its restaurants tucked under elevated train tracks — as he is in the plot. (The title refers to a fictitious subway stop along the 6 line.)The protagonist is Kadir (Asante Blackk), a high schooler grappling with the recent accidental death of his brother. His mother is grieving too, but is ill-equipped to help him cope. Without a sturdy parental figure, Kadir, who has serious artistic potential — pictures of his brother are a signature — is tested by Skemes (Melvin Gregg), the leader of a graffiti gang, who tells him to commit a holdup.But when Kadir chooses an M.T.A. worker, Luis (Luis Guzmán), on a deserted subway platform, his would-be mark instead invites him for Cuban sandwiches at a spot downstairs. Luis bargains away the gun Kadir is carrying, and their eventual friendship gives the movie its most assured and confidently played scenes. (Torres wrote the script with Bonsu Thompson.)The film is cleareyed about Kadir’s artistic values and the potentially dangerous outcomes of his decisions. (Skemes is revealed to have made a similar choice between the art world and gangs.) “Story Ave” is marred by late revelations that appear designed, in a studio-notes sort of way, to clarify motivations. What’s unspoken — and what’s seen — does enough.Story AveNot rated. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Kill Room’ Review: Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson Reunite

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      The “Pulp Fiction” actors Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson reunite in a bloody saga that is past its “best by” date, but includes an all-star supporting cast.As far as “Pulp Fiction” pairings go, the actors Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson in the satirical crime comedy “The Kill Room” generate more pleasure than seeing Bruce Willis and John Travolta in last year’s hackneyed action thriller “Paradise City.”This is because “The Kill Room,” directed by Nicol Paone from a script by Jonathan Jacobson, gives them a good deal of scenery to chew on together, at least at the beginning.Thurman, a producer on the film, plays Patrice, a gallerist in Manhattan who is refusing to crumble as she faces a set of financial shortfalls. Jackson plays Gordon, a bialy craftsman known to his associates as “Black Dreidel,” whose Jersey City bakery is a front for organized crime.Gordon looks after an assassin, Reggie (Joe Manganiello), whose hits are making them enough cash to potentially alert the authorities. As a cover, he instructs Reggie to start painting and enlists Patrice in a money-laundering scheme in which each canvas represents a murder, and is sold for a respectable amount of money via a respectable check.But the script’s sendup of the gallery world is stale, as is its depiction of organized crime, which has a group of vulgar Russian guys at the top. The premise rests upon a tired and philistine notion about modern art, here iterated by an indignant criminal’s protest, “My five-year-old makes better paintings than that with his fingers.”And while the supporting cast is replete with performers we like to see — Debi Mazar, Larry Pine, and Thurman’s daughter, Maya Hawke, as a feminist artist — the script, in the end, does little to support them.The Kill RoomRated R for violence, language. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Flora and Son’ Review: Once, With More Feeling

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      The writer-director John Carney, whose feature “Once” made musical waves, returns with another charming songwriter tale.“Flora and Son,” a satisfying demimusical from the Irish writer and director John Carney (“Once,” “Sing Street”), opens with an unexpected blast of techno. This kind of hard, sweaty beat propels our churlish heroine Flora (Eve Hewson), although by the end of the first sequence, it’s clear that the clubbing, and the booze, and the one-night stands have given her a perpetual hangover. Barely in her 30s, the self-destructive single mother is throwing away her future with an assist from her feckless ex, Ian (Jack Reynor, sputtering and hilarious), and their 14-year-old son, Max (Oren Kinlan), a thief and would-be rapper. It’s a testament to Hewson’s extraordinary charisma that her character can openly wish Max would get kidnapped and we root for her anyway. But since she’s saddled with the boy, Flora foists a junked guitar on him as a birthday present. “It’s a piano,” she jokes. The lad is unimpressed.This is Carney’s saltiest ode to creative expression — and, peculiarly, his most relatable. Every one of his earlier leads would consider themselves musical. Not Flora. One night, when she’s drunk and watching “American Idol,” she signs up for cheap online lessons from a YouTube instructor named Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a somewhat pretentious Springsteen clone barely scraping by in Los Angeles. (Jeff has, however, apparently stage-decorated his home with movie star-worthy lighting.) Flora explains that she just wants to impress men — specifically him, and would he also strip off his shirt? Jeff declines.How is Carney going to convince the audience that his angry trainwreck can convert herself into a rock goddess? Carney knows that we’re uneasily expecting yet another underdog-turned-superstar crowd-pleaser, and so he teases us into a state of suspense. There’s an enjoyable irony in a script that celebrates folk guitar while structuring itself like house music — the whole running time feels like we’re on the dance floor with Flora waiting for the cliché to drop. At the same time, Flora and Jeff slowly co-write a love ballad that echoes through the movie, its evolving incarnations allowing the filmmaker to serve chewable lessons on the qualities of strumming versus plucking, the purpose of a bridge, and the difference between a ditty and a hit. Carney also works in a subtle dig at twee coffeehouse darlings with ukuleles and a blunter attack directed at, uh, James Blunt.The film can be sloppy with its montages. A hip-hop video featuring Max is cut together more to make us laugh than as something he’d actually share online. (An image-conscious tween would cut those bloopers.) The buildup to the climax is rushed, and the final shot is, I guess, a hazy implication that music belongs to everyone? But Carney has already made that point sublimely. In the movie’s most delicate scene, Flora presses play on a Joni Mitchell performance that she’s been assigned as homework and turns away to wash dishes. Yet Mitchell’s voice gradually pulls Flora back to the screen. How beautiful to watch a song crack open a hardened heart. Not everyone can be a professional artist — but we can all welcome art into our lives.Flora and SonRated R for raunchy talk and colorful parental guidance. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More