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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Minx’ and ‘Office Race’

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      The cheeky Starz show wraps up its second season, and Comedy Central premieres an original film.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, Sept. 4-10. Details and times are subject to change.MondayOFFICE RACE (2023) 8 p.m. on Comedy Central. This original movie from Comedy Central stars Beck Bennett as Pat, a lazy office worker, and Joel McHale as Spencer, his annoying boss. Wanting nothing more than to one-up his boss, who is also fitness obsessed, Pat commits to running a marathon with plans to defeat him. Alyson Hannigan, Kelsey Grammer and J.B. Smoove round out the cast.LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING 9 p.m. on CNN. After its world premiere in January at Sundance, this documentary about Little Richard is coming to small screens for the first time. Directed by Lisa Cortés, the film walks viewers through the rock ’n’ roll pioneer’s complicated personal and professional legacy. John Waters, Billy Porter, Mick Jagger and others help revisit and contextualize his life and his impact.TuesdayDetroit Lions running back Jermar Jefferson.Paul Sancya/Associated PressINSIDE THE NFL: 2023 SEASON PREVIEW 8 p.m. on The CW. The official N.F.L. season is starting on Sept. 7 (after three weeks of preseason games) with a game between the Detroit Lions and the Kansas City Chiefs. And as the season begins, so does this long-running companion show, now on the CW. Hosting this year is Ryan Clark, who’s joined by a panel of former players: Jay Cutler, Chad Johnson, Chris Long and Channing Crowder. The show also features previously unaired highlights and mic’d up commentary from N.F.L. players during games.WednesdayCRIME SCENE CONFIDENTIAL 9 p.m. on ID. Season 2 of the series returns for those fascinated by true crime: In the first episode, the crime scene investigation expert Alina Burroughs focuses on the 1988 murder of Margie Coffey, a young single mother in Ohio. A local police lieutenant was originally convicted in the case and served time in prison. But with advances in DNA and forensic technology, looking back at old cases can provide new information.EVOLUTION EARTH 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). As our planet rapidly changes, animals have had to keep pace and adjust their behavior to survive the ever changing environment. This series, over five episodes, explores areas all over the world (urban, rural, remote), checking in with the animals to see what adjustments they have had to make.ThursdayFrom left: Steven Kolb, Elaine Welteroth, Nina Garcia, Brandon Maxwell and Law Roach on “Project Runway.”Zach Dilgard/BravoPROJECT RUNWAY 9 p.m. on Bravo. The 20th season of this long-running show, and an All-Star season at that, is coming to a close. After many challenges, including creating looks out of toys from F.A.O. Schwarz, designing uniforms for fan-favorite cast members from “Below Deck” and the first ever “free” episode, where contestants could design whatever they wanted, only one person can be crowned winner.FridayMINX 9 p.m. on Starz. Though this series was originally axed by HBO Max before being brought back to life by Starz, it will successfully complete its second season this week. Originally centered on the creation of the first erotic magazine for women in the 1970s, the show’s second installment digs deeper into the lives and experiences of its characters, including Tina (Idara Victor) and Richie (Oscar Montoya), who have gotten closer as Joyce (Ophelia Lovibond) and Doug (Jake Johnson) drift further apart.SaturdayIMITATION OF LIFE (1934) 10 p.m. on TCM. This original film version of Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel follows the widow Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert) and her housekeeper, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers), who decide to start a business together in Atlantic City after Delilah shares her pancake recipe with Bea. The critic Andre Sennwald wrote in his November 1934 review for The New York Times, “On the whole the audience seemed to find it a gripping and powerful if slightly diffuse drama which discussed the mother love question, the race question, the business woman question, the mother and daughter question and the love renunciation question.”SundayTHE MASKED SINGER 8 p.m. on Fox. The goofy competition show, where celebrities don a full-body costume to sing and have judges guess who they are, is back for its 10th season. Nick Cannon is back to host, and the judges Ken Jeong, Nicole Scherzinger, Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg and Robin Thicke are also returning. This special premiere will include performances from some of the show’s alumni as we gear up to guess who Donut, Anteater, Hawk, Hibiscus and S’More are.Norman Reedus in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.”Emmanuel Guimier/AmcTHE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON 9 p.m. on AMC. The last time we saw Daryl Dixon, he was riding away on his bike at the end of “The Walking Dead.” This series starts as he washes up in France and involves himself in an autocratic movement in Paris.DREAMING WHILST BLACK 10 p.m. on Showtime. Originally a BBC and A24 production, this British comedy follows Kwabena (Adjani Salmon), who decides to leave his soul-crushing, dead-end office job to work toward his dream of being a filmmaker. Along the way he has to deal with the financial risk and must manage his love life, all while navigating the racism, microaggressions and elitism. More

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      Venice Film Festival: Emma Stone Is a Bizarro Barbie in ‘Poor Things’

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      In the wild new comedy from Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”), Stone plays a sexually questing woman with the mind of an infant.“What was I made for?”Though that’s a lyric crooned by Billie Eilish during the climax of “Barbie,” it could just as easily be a question asked by Bella Baxter, the protagonist of “Poor Things.” Played by Emma Stone in this new movie from the director Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”), Bella’s back story is a doozy: She’s a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts, saved after suicide when she’s discovered by a demented doctor (Willem Dafoe) who replaces her brain with the one of the unborn child growing inside her.And you thought Barbie’s creation myth was head-spinning!“Poor Things,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, often plays like a wild, art-house remix of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster doll opus. It, too, is about a sheltered, childlike woman whose quest for knowledge forces her to venture out into the real world, where the complicated politics of gender both appall and fascinate her.But this is no family film: As baby-brained Bella starts to come of age, her lack of inhibitions steers her toward sexual situations that had the Venice moviegoer next to me squirming in his seat.Based on the book by Alasdair Gray and adapted by Tony McNamara (who co-wrote “The Favourite” for Lanthimos and Stone), “Poor Things” introduces Bella shortly after her brain-swap surgery, when she’s still under close observation by Dafoe’s Dr. Godwin Baxter, who has given her his last name, and his mild-mannered assistant McCandles (Ramy Youssef). Quite literally a child in a woman’s body, Bella can barely string words together and is given to shocking outbursts. Even gaining control of her limbs is a challenge: Bella lurches through Baxter’s mansion like a zombie dressed in drag, which I suppose she kind of is.Still, the two men are each beguiled by her, even though the lovestruck McCandles is intimidated by Bella’s dawning self-awareness and erotic curiosity. That presents an opening for the caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who promises to spring her from Baxter’s custody and smuggle her into the real world for a sexual education. But as Bella grows more independent and capable of sophisticated thoughts, all the men who initially spark to her free spirit become increasingly pathetic in their attempts to trap and keep her.Some Venice viewers have crowed that Stone’s go-for-broke character arc all but guarantees her a second Oscar, though I’d apply a lot of caveats to that prediction: This is a wild, eccentric movie full of explicit sex and violence, and older academy voters might bounce off “Poor Things” during the first 20 minutes.Still, the technical aspects of the film are absolutely worth rewarding. Like “Barbie,” it’s a marvel to look at, though the aesthetic is less “dream house” and more “naughty pop-up book.” Filmed with more fish-eye lenses than a Missy Elliott music video, it’s creatively costumed, too: Bella’s signature look — ruffed collar and Elizabethan sleeves on top, inappropriate bloomers on the bottom — is what you might get if you set a time-traveling Lena Dunham loose in the Renaissance.And for moviegoers who found the feminism of “Barbie” to be too introductory, “Poor Things” takes those themes to their R-rated extreme, interrogating gender dynamics and sexuality from nearly every angle (and since this is a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, you know those angles are canted). Bella’s quest for enlightenment will push her from plush suites to whorehouses, but the more hard-earned wisdom she accrues, the more the guys in her orbit will be found lacking. Why shouldn’t she try to remake society in her own image? After all, she’s Bella Baxter. They’re just Men. More

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      Venice Film Festival: Why David Fincher Wanted Michael Fassbender to Look ‘Dorky’

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      Movies are full of glamorous hit men. For “The Killer,” the director put his star in a bucket hat: “The $3,000 suit seems like it’s played out.”It’s been 24 years since David Fincher brought one of his movies to the Venice Film Festival, and the last time, things didn’t go so well.“I came here with a little film called ‘Fight Club’” in 1999, he told me during an interview on the Lido this week. “We were fairly run out of town for being fascists.” Even before the premiere of that controversial Brad Pitt flick, the director could sense trouble. “I looked down and the youngest person in our row was Giorgio Armani,” Fincher said. “I was like, ‘I’m not sure the guest list is the right guest list for this.’”So what makes lofty Venice the right place to premiere “The Killer,” Fincher’s new thriller and his first film since the Oscar-winning Hollywood drama “Mank”?“Nothing,” cracked Fincher. “Venice seems like it’s very highbrow — important movies about important subjects — and then there’s our skeevy little movie.”Still, Fincher has always enjoyed toying with people’s expectations. He does it even within the world of “The Killer,” which premiered in Venice on Sunday and stars Fassbender as a hired gun who has to improvise after a fatal assignment goes awry.Based on a French graphic novel and adapted by Andrew Kevin Walker (“Seven”), the film at first feels like a high-end take on the usual genre tropes: There’s the assassin with no name, the innocent woman in the way and the methodical list of revenge targets to be pursued. But then our protagonist’s constant patter of narration starts to show cracks, as the Killer often thinks one thing and does another. By the end, you’ll wonder if we know this guy at all, or whether he’s ever really known himself.And then there’s what he’s wearing. Though Hollywood would have us believe that assassins always look impossibly chic and well-tailored, Fincher puts his protagonist in Skechers, a zip-up fleece and a bucket hat.“He’s totally dorky!” the director said. “We were never intending for it to look glamorous.”Inspiration struck when Fincher flipped through reference photos and landed on a German tourist snapped wearing those nondescript items on the streets of Paris. “I was like, ‘All of this stuff could be purchased in an airport,’” said Fincher, who sent the photo to his costume designer, Cate Adams. “I said, ‘This is what he needs to be, a guy who can get off a plane and buy a whole wardrobe on his way from the gate to the rental car.’”Fincher found no complaints from his leading man, who wasn’t in Venice because of the SAG-AFTRA strike: “Michael’s cool. He was not freaked out about having to look a little dorky.” And that aesthetic extends even to the Killer’s escape from a botched job, which takes place not via high-speed car chase but with a zippy little motor scooter, though Fincher considered taking that sequence in an even dweebier direction. “At one point, we even debated the Razor scooter,” he said, nixing that only because it wouldn’t perform well during a stair stunt.So though the Killer remains a mystery to himself, at least one thing can be said for sure of this indifferently dressed man: He ain’t exactly John Wick.“The $3,000 suit seems like it’s played out,” Fincher said. Still, he was surprised to find someone wearing his protagonist’s silly headwear in another recent assassin movie: “It’s funny because when Pitt told me he had selected a bucket hat for ‘Bullet Train,’ I was like, ‘OK, dude, you’re stepping into our sandbox.’”Though Fincher has a skill for image-making that extends back to the music videos he directed for the likes of Madonna, with “The Killer,” he was more interested in dismantling that sort of cinematic iconography. Instead of a glamorous lair, Fassbender’s character keeps his weapons in a mundane storage locker, and instead of using high-tech gadgets to break into targets’ homes, he orders key-duplication tools off Amazon.“I was like, ‘I want James Bond by way of Home Depot,’” Fincher said. “By the end of this, you should be like, who’s the guy in the rental car line with you, and why is he wearing that outdated hat? You ignore the German tourist at your peril.”And while the movies would have us believe that the world is full of clever, high-flying assassins, Fincher sought to ground his character’s tunnel vision in a more mundane reality. “I love the idea of a Charles Bronson character who’s maybe misdiagnosed adult autistic,” he said. “And before 2023, I’m not sure anybody would have gone, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”So if the Killer’s fashion choices or inner motivations sometimes stump you, just know that’s by design.“He seems to have a hard time reading the room,” Fincher said. “And any room that he goes into, eventually, he’s the only guy in it.” More

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      The Grueling Process of Making the Horror Movie ‘Beaten to Death’

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      The director Sam Curtain and the actor Thomas Roach discuss making a new ultraviolent horror movie so grueling that it left its lead hospitalized at the end of the shoot.From “Slumber Party Massacre” to “It Follows,” some of the most memorable horror movie titles double as pint-size plot summaries. That’s the case for Sam Curtain’s “Beaten to Death,” a mercilessly violent new movie that has critics dog-earing their thesauruses for superlatives to describe its savagery. So far, there’s “gauntlet of extreme horror” and “non-stop nightmare.”Now in theaters, “Beaten to Death” is high on depravity and low on plot. It’s about a man, Jack (Thomas Roach), who travels to a desolate stretch of Tasmania and encounters deranged locals who kick, punch, slice and, in the film’s most horrific scene, blind him and leave him to roam the landscape alone. In an interview, Roach said the role’s physical demands were “very challenging”; near the end of the 30-day shoot, he was hospitalized overnight for an inflamed kidney.Roach said he would consider it a badge of honor if there were walkouts at American theaters. “Hopefully we’re going to make a few people squeamish,” he said.Curtain and Roach recently spoke over Zoom from Tasmania about their love of gross-out horror and what’s so Australian about extreme cinema. (The film is a nonunion Australian project, and not impacted by the SAG-AFTRA strike.) The interview has been edited and condensed.Sam, why did you make this film?SAM CURTAIN Horror’s just fun. Even if it’s the most disturbing thing, it’s still enjoyable.Would you describe this film as enjoyable?CURTAIN [Laughs] No. Even though it’s shockingly violent, there’s a bit of playfulness to it. This onslaught that Jack receives, it’s like oh no, not again. Oh no, not again. Because it’s our friend, Tom, playing the role, it’s like, what could we do to Tom?That blinding scene is tough to watch.CURTAIN It was a lot of fun. What excited us was what we referred to as “the black” — after Jack has had his eyes gouged out, you get his blinded point of view, and what you hear can be creepier than what you see. In a cinema, that’s the one I’ve been waiting for, to see how people respond to that couple of minutes of pure black on the screen with just sound design. The sound you hear in that scene is Thomas vomiting. Our poor sound guy listening to [makes a retching sound] is hard to forget.Roach in a scene from “Beaten to Death.”Welcome Villain FilmsWhy make it so violent?CURTAIN We thought it was an opportunity to create a scene that’s really quite shocking. We were being strategic as well. If we can create a scene that gets people talking, that can only help the movie.Was there a film that inspired you?CURTAIN The “Hills Have Eyes” remake. That’s a really nasty little movie, but also it’s quite beautifully shot. It’s out in the desert and the gore is really good and there’s action to it. Besides that, it was classics like “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” — what I think they call hicksploitation.Thomas, why did you take this role?THOMAS ROACH Sam and I were out having drinks when he pitched me the idea. As soon as he said “lead,” he had me. [Laughs] I was concerned with the extreme nature of the role and what it would take to get it done. I probably did underestimate that, because it was quite demanding in the end, physically and emotionally.It was as grueling as it looks?ROACH Yeah. I spent a large portion of the shoot with these big, heavy appliances over my eyes and I couldn’t see at all. That was quite isolating. Between takes you’re just sitting in darkness and you don’t know what’s going on around you. It’s strange how quickly you withdraw into yourself. I found myself not really contributing to conversations around me because I didn’t know where anyone was. I just sat there. I had to be taken like a toddler to the toilet.I wanted to spend the movie acting like I was in a state of shock. I was shivering and tensed up and hyperventilating for a lot of it. Before we’d start rolling, to the chagrin of everyone on set, I’d go into a coughing fit and get to the edge of where I would vomit and then be like, ready to roll. You end the day sore all over.Is there something uniquely Australian about the film?CURTAIN The Australian characters, these big burly blokey-blokes with thick Aussie accents.ROACH The whole “Crocodile Dundee” bloke — maybe outside of Australia they think everybody’s like that. We wanted to turn that on its head. The archetypal characters we have in our movie are quite toxic. The landscape is also a character. The real antagonists are the elements, specifically Tasmanian.Thomas, would you be in a movie like this again?ROACH Would I do it tomorrow? No. I’m either a glutton for punishment or an idiot, but I would do it again. More

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      Sci-fi Movies to Stream: ‘Shin Ultraman,’ ‘Dry Ground Burning’ and More

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      This month’s picks include cute-robot charm and alien abduction angst.‘Shin Ultraman’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.From the start, it’s obvious that this is not a regular Kaiju movie. The genre, in which gigantic beasts à la Godzilla lay waste to cities and swaths of countryside, is not known for restraint, but “Shin Ultraman” is completely, unpredictably off the wall.Captain Tamura (Hidetoshi Nishijima, from the radically different “Drive My Car”) leads a task force dedicated to fighting the big monsters that turn up with clockwork regularity. “For some reason, Kaiju only appear in Japan,” someone quips about the creatures’s absence elsewhere in the world. But even this elite squad is flabbergasted when a mysterious helmeted giant clad in a superhero-like red and silver bodysuit shows up. Called Ultraman (a popular character who has been the subject of many iterations since its introduction in 1966), the newcomer helps the overwhelmed team battle aliens like Mefilas (Koji Yamamoto).Both a reboot and a riff, “Shin Ultraman,” which was directed by Shinji Higuchi and written by Hideaki Anno (the pair also collaborated on “Shin Godzilla” in 2016), is a surreal trip. It’s hard to oversell the eye-popping invention and droll humor on display here, but it’s Higuchi’s mise en scène that stands out, packed with odd angles and seemingly arbitrary shots, as when a character opens a computer file and the movie cuts to her feet under her desk. Shiro Sagisu’s score is equally bonkers and disruptive, incorporating 1960s pop, thrash riffs, chamber suites and jazzy noodlings. It all amounts to pure joy.‘Tang and Me’Stream it on Amazon.Chances are you haven’t heard of Deborah Install’s “A Robot in the Garden” (2015), unless you live in Japan, where the novel has been adapted into a radio play, a stage musical and now this charming kid-friendly movie.Ken (Kazunari Ninomiya) has a terminal case of arrested development, whiling away his days playing elaborate virtual-reality games and avoiding any hint of household work. One day, a rusty, taped-up robot turns up in the garden, offering its name as Tang. Shortly thereafter, Ken’s fed-up wife, Emi (Hikari Mitsushima), kicks him out of their house. So he sets out for Atobit Systems, the company that manufactured Tang, to trade that old model for a brand-new one, which he will then give to Emi to get back in her graces.The latest from the prolific director Takahiro Miki (“The Door Into Summer”) does not revolutionize the cute-robot genre, but it is very effective. Naturally, Ken will change for the best, thanks to Tang — whose mysterious origin and initial purpose are at the heart of the story — but this utter predictability is a feature, not a bug, and is embraced as such by the film. Young viewers are likely to clamor for a toy version of the adorable bot, while their parents are more likely to be interested in the movie’s awfully believable near-future, in which delivery drones crisscross the sky and robots are absolutely everywhere in our daily life.‘Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.When the Levan family moves to a quaint Western town, the teenage Itsy (the excellent Emma Tremblay) is not especially pleased: She is now living in the middle of nowhere, plus being singled out as the new kid is never fun. Maybe that’s why she immediately connects with her new classmate Calvin (Jacob Buster, a charmer bound to resurface in bigger-budget projects), who is ostracized as the local weirdo. Calvin is a heartthrob in nerd clothing — more specifically in a spacesuit, which he is prone to wear to school — and is on a quest to find the parents (Will Forte and Elizabeth Mitchell) he hasn’t seen in 10 years. He is convinced they were taken by aliens one fateful night and has been searching the skies ever since. Itsy pretends to befriend him for a journalism project, though it’s clear she’s actually taken by Calvin’s quirky sincerity, and perhaps even by his far-fetched story about extraterrestrial creatures secretly visiting Earth whenever a certain comet gets close.Jake Van Wagoner’s film is a throwback to 1980s family-friendly fare, and it nicely captures the formula’s basic elements, down to the presence of a smart-aleck little boy (Itsy’s brother, Evan, played by Kenneth Cummins), an unironic embrace of the cutesy and the cheesy in equal proportions and, perhaps most important, a general good nature.‘Life Cycle’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.Carl (Adam Weber) lives in his grandparents’ rec-room-like basement, seems to survive on power bars and takeout, and watches old black-and-white movies on an ancient-looking TV set. The only other living presence in that den is Vetro (voiced by Kory Karam), an animatronic head with enormous blue eyes sitting on Carl’s desk. A computer programmer, Carl is ambitious: “You are to become human,” he informs his creation. To that end, Vetro has been endowed with the ability to generate “new expansions.” In other words, he is sentient and can upgrade himself. One of his first moves is to give himself a new “multilayered emotional matrix,” and it doesn’t take long for Vetro to exhibit somewhat cunning traits — he can be both obsequious and creepy.The writer-director Christopher Morvant’s most distinctive spin on the thriving A.I. genre was to make Vetro a cartoonish animatronic/puppet character that looks goofy yet comes across as unsettling, especially since Morvant often shows him in startling close-ups. The movie is, admittedly, overlong, especially since it’s essentially a talkathon between Carl and Vetro, and the writing is not quite strong enough to sustain the more complex philosophical issues it raises. But “Life Cycle” does have a few surprises in store, and Morvant’s sui generis world nimbly juxtaposes technologies that feel pulled from completely different eras. Pretty good for a movie shot in a garage in a month.‘Dry Ground Burning’Rent or buy it on Amazon.Set in an impoverished Sol Nascente, in Brazil, Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós’s film is tough to categorize. “Dry Ground Burning” follows the activities of a women’s gang, led by Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), that steals oil and resells it as gas to groups of bikers. Add to that mix the re-entry into society of Chitara’s half sister, Léa (Léa Alves da Silva), who is newly released from prison. In conventional hands, these could be an action-packed thriller’s starting point. Pimenta and Queirós go down a completely different road, both in form and in content.We are in a dystopian pamphlet targeting the far-right policies of Brazil’s authoritarian former president Jair Bolsonaro, which were devastating for the poor, the minorities and the outcasts at the movie’s heart. All of this is put together with a documentarylike matter-of-factness, increased by the fact that the cast is made up of non- or semiprofessional actors. When scenes set during, say, a raucous bus trip or a religious ceremony hypnotically go on and on as if in real time, you might wonder if Frederick Wiseman had suddenly gone to Brazil. Tip: Go with the flow — you can’t rush life, politics or this film. More

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      Children’s Movies to Stream: ‘The Super Mario Bros.Movie’ and More

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      This month’s picks include a monkey’s quest, a splashy version of a beloved Nintendo franchise and a Lego adventure packed with Disney princesses.‘The Monkey King’Watch it on Netflix.This Netflix original is based on “Journey to the West,” a famous 16th-century Chinese novel written during the Ming dynasty. The story follows a magical monkey named Sun Wukong — voiced here by Jimmy O. Yang and referred to only as Monkey King — who is born from a rock and cast out by the other monkeys in the forest. Growing up, he longs to be one of the all-powerful Immortals. He goes on a quest to hell and back to defeat 100 demons, the requirement to fulfill his dream.The tale has been adapted for TV and games, and there’s an anime version, but this latest telling adds a character named Lin (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport), a scrappy village girl who becomes the monkey’s traveling companion. They encounter Buddha (BD Wong) and demons like the frenetic, fearsome Dragon King (Bowen Yang, from “Saturday Night Live”), who occasionally breaks into song. The main character goes from a lovable, pitiful little simian to a self-centered trickster who steals a glowing magical staff (which looks and sounds a lot like a “Star Wars” light saber). He’s not exactly endearing (my son loved him, though), but the propulsive energy of his quest will entertain smaller kids who aren’t scared of characters who have gleaming red eyes and sharp teeth. Ron J. Friedman, Steve Bencich and Rita Hsiao wrote the script, and Anthony Stacchi (“The Boxtrolls,” “Open Season”) directed.‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’Watch it on Peacock.My son calls this movie “The Brothers Mario,” which sounds like another type of film entirely. This splashy big screen version of the beloved 1980s Nintendo franchise might not wow longtime fans of the game, but youngsters who will one day think the 1980s are ancient times should be wildly entertained.There was a 1993 live-action movie starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi, two Brooklyn brothers who work as plumbers and have to save the city from monsters. This time, the brothers inhabit a colorful animated world where Luigi (Charlie Day) becomes the prisoner of the evil Bowser (Jack Black), a dastardly villain who wants to wage war on Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her kingdom, and then marry her. With Luigi held captive, Mario (Chris Pratt) teams up with the princess, Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) and Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) to free Luigi and keep the princess safe.Yes, it’s a lot, but children who have no clue the games exist will still be able to follow the plot. When I asked my son why he loved the movie so much, his reply was simply, “I like the fighting.” So there you have it. Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic directed.‘Lego Disney Princess: The Castle Quest’Watch it on Disney+.If a smorgasbord of Disney princesses is what your kid needs, this 49-minute girl-power adventure — starring Ariel (voiced by Jodi Benson), Moana (Auli’i Cravalho), Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) and Snow White (Katie Von Till) — should do the trick. An ominous storm brews, and the princesses are sent to a mysterious castle, where the dastardly Gaston (Richard White) holds King Triton (Jim Cummings) captive. Gaston plans to take over the kingdom of each princess, unless the five of them can complete a series of challenges, like getting Aladdin’s flying carpet and finding the Sundrop Flower in the Dark Forest. With their little claw-like Lego hands, the princesses follow Ariel’s cry of, “Let’s go slay all day, ladies!” — and set off on adventures across oceans and into the Dark Forest.There are plenty of fun references to the princess movies that came before (Gaston sings, “Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat!”) and a feisty Snow White reminds everyone, “I kept a house of seven bachelors orderly and on task!” The director Michael D. Black made several Lego shorts before taking this project on, and the screenplay by Jenny Lee and Rachel Vine leans into themes like the power of female friendship and the fact that girls — even those made of Legos — can slay.‘Rumble’Watch it on Amazon Prime Video.Imagine a planet where pro wrestlers are gigantic monsters instead of mere humans, and you have “Rumble,” a movie about an uncoordinated, out-of-shape underdog named Steve (voiced by Will Arnett) who takes on the sports world. The story is inspired by Rob Harrell’s graphic novel “Monster on the Hill,” which depicts a realm where each town is represented by a mighty monster, save for one town, where the not-so-menacing Steve lives.In this computer-animated film, a girl named Winnie (Geraldine Viswanathan) decides to coach Steve and turn him into a fearsome competitor who can restore glory to their town. Her dad used to coach monsters, so Winnie is trying to honor him by following in his footsteps. Hamish Grieve, who worked in the animation department on films like “Monsters vs. Aliens,” directs. There are fun training montages, shout-outs to movies like “Dirty Dancing,” and — most important for kids — humongous beasts wrestling each other. Steve and Winnie’s friendship also gives you two heroes to cheer.‘The Slumber Party’Watch it on Disney+.It starts with three teenage girls speeding through the streets of their quiet little town aboard a giant motorized hedgehog, and it only gets nuttier from there. Based on the book “The Sleepover,” by Jen Malone, this family-friendly riff on the “Hangover” franchise is about a sleepover birthday party that devolves into chaos when the girls wake up and realize their bestie Anna Maria (Valentina Herrera) is missing — and they don’t remember a thing. Of course booze, drugs and gambling are not to blame for the blackout. Instead, the girls had surprised Anna Maria with a magician called Mesmer (Tituss Burgess) who had hypnotized them all. And when they wake up, Megan (Darby Camp from “Big Little Lies”) discovers she has a shaved eyebrow and is wearing a hoodie that belongs to the hottest guy in school, Jake (Ramon Jose Rodriguez). The action kicks up when the girls embark on a quest to find Anna Maria (you’ll have to watch the movie to find out how they wind up on that hedgehog).There are plenty of comic moments courtesy of Camp’s Megan and her sleepover pals, Veronica (Alex Cooper Cohen) and Paige (Emmy Liu-Wang), and the writer Eydie Faye (“Fuller House”) and the director Veronica Rodriguez succeed in capturing the sweetness and absurdity of growing up. More

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      Stream These Great Movies Before They Leave Netflix in September

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      This month’s losses for U.S. subscribers include some of the most beloved titles and characters ever to grace a screen.The titles leaving Netflix in the United States are a real smorgasbord this month, from genre movies to children’s fare to two of the most beloved Oscar winners in cinematic history. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Colette’ (Sept. 12)You may think you know what you’re getting when you click “play” on a period literary biopic starring Keira Knightley — but the director Wash Westmoreland is delightfully uninterested in hewing to expectations. This is no ordinary period literary biopic, because the French writer Colette was no period literary figure; she was an ahead-of-her time scribe and an unapologetically bisexual hedonist whose lust for life made for especially lively prose. Knightley is clearly having a good time subverting her prim-and-proper persona, while Dominic West is deliciously doofy as the man who brings her out of her shell before receding into her long shadow.Stream it here.‘Annihilation’ (Sept. 29)The writer and director Alex Garland is a rare creator of science fiction who truly seems interested in the “science” piece of the puzzle; unlike many of his contemporaries, who use the tools of futuristic fare as window dressing for mediocre action and adventure, he crafts films of ideas, approaching the possibilities of future technologies and alien interactions with contemplation and intellectual heft. Like his “Ex Machina” before it, this adaptation of the novel by Jeff VanderMeer is also as interested in character as it is in genre (if not more so), focusing on a biologist (a fine, and occasionally ferocious, Natalie Portman) who is investigating a possible alien life force while also grappling with the recent death of her husband (Oscar Isaac). Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson round out the cast.Stream it here.‘Clear and Present Danger’ (Sept. 30)Harrison Ford’s second outing as Tom Clancy’s venerable hero Jack Ryan is a tense, well-crafted geopolitical thriller. Newly appointed as the C.I.A.’s acting deputy director, Ryan uncovers a scorcher of a secret: a covert war, conducted by intelligence operatives against a Columbian drug cartel, authorized at the top levels of the U.S. government. Willem Dafoe, Joaquim de Almeida and the “Mission: Impossible” favorite Henry Czerny are among the evil-doers, while James Earl Jones returns as Ryan’s boss and confidante. Ford’s “Patriot Games” director, Phillip Noyce, also returns, a director so deft at putting together a suspense sequence that he manages to generate nail-biting tension with a scene about deleting some files.Stream it here.‘Lawless’ (Sept. 30)The director John Hillcoat and the musician-turned-screenwriter Nick Cave reunited after the triumph of “The Proposition” (2005) for this 1930s crime film with a phenomenal cast, including Jason Clarke, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska. Cave’s story, adapted from the historical novel “The Wettest County in the World” by Matt Bondurant, concerns the bootlegging Bondurant brothers (Clarke, Hardy and LaBeouf), who find their business interests threatened by a crooked U.S. Marshal (Pearce) and a rival bootlegger (Oldman), among others. The period costumes and settings are stunning, and the sprawling cast meshes nicely; Hardy is especially strong as a man of few words but furious fists.Stream it here.‘A League of Their Own’ (Sept. 30)This 1992 smash, directed by Penny Marshall, is based on the true story of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed in 1943 to help keep the national pastime going while World War II pulled male ballplayers out of the majors. Geena Davis stars as Dottie Hinson, star catcher of the Rockford Peaches, and Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan, the former baseball star and current drunk who coaches the team when he’s sober (which is infrequent). With able support from Jon Lovitz, Madonna, Lori Petty, David Straitairn and many more, this one is smoothly assembled, sensitively acted and riotously funny.Stream it here.‘Nanny McPhee’ (Sept. 30)A decade after winning the Oscar for her screenplay adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility,” Emma Thompson returned to the typewriter to pen the film version of a slightly less venerated literary property: the “Nurse Matilda” children’s novels, by the British author Christianna Brand. But it doesn’t feel like slumming; Thompson invests her screenplay with all the winking wit you would expect, and she absolutely goes for broke in her performance of the title role, a kind of warts-and-all Mary Poppins. The director Kirk Jones orchestrates the chaos with a sure hand.Stream it here.‘Rocky I-V’ (Sept. 30)The first five films of the Rocky franchise — starring, written and sometimes directed by Sylvester Stallone — vary wildly in style, quality and critical and commercial reception. But taken together, they create a fascinating portrait of mainstream American moviemaking from the late 1970s to the early ’90s, as the modest, character-driven drama of the 1976 original slowly but surely gave way to the montage-heavy, jingoistic bombast of “Rocky IV” from 1987. But for better or worse, each film offers its own pleasures, from the specificity of Stallone’s dialogue to the richly played supporting characters (particularly Talia Shire’s Adrian and Carl Weathers’s Apollo Creed) to the crowd-pleasing closing bouts.Stream “Rocky” here, “Rocky II” here, “Rocky III” here, “Rocky IV” here and “Rocky V” here.‘Star Trek’ / ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ (Sept. 30)When J.J. Abrams was announced as the director of a newly rebooted series of “Star Trek” films, he was still best known for his television work. The decision smacked of some desperation; after several “Star Trek” television spinoffs and numerous big-screen resurrections, what could anyone (let alone a not-yet-proven filmmaker) add to the mythos of the original “Enterprise” crew? But Abrams’s inaugural 2009 entry was an absolute treat, a sleek, well-cast popcorn picture that reinvigorated the original characters and story while also playing appropriate tribute. The 2013 follow-up, “Into Darkness,” is less successful but still an entertaining diversion, particularly for Benedict Cumberbatch’s take on Ricardo Montalbán’s villainous “Khan.”Stream “Star Trek” here and “Star Trek: Into Darkness” here.‘Titanic’ (Sept. 30)The 1912 sinking of the Titanic luxury cruise liner remains a source of fascination (and tragedy) in American culture, thanks in no small part to the long shadow cast by James Cameron’s 1997 Oscar winner and box office champion. It’s the kind of film that can be described only as “old fashioned”— not as a slam but simply as a statement of fact. Cameron so deftly mixes spectacle and special effects with poignant human interest (thanks primarily to the warmth and chemistry of its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) that one is legitimately reminded of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” It’s a throwback epic, and its appeal has proved timeless.Stream it here.‘Warm Bodies’ (Sept. 30)We’ve seen no shortage of zombie horror in the 21st century, from “28 Days Later” — written by the aforementioned Garland — to the “Dawn of the Dead” remake to the (paradoxically) unkillable “Walking Dead” series and its many spinoffs. But we haven’t seen very many zombie rom-coms, which makes this 2013 charmer from the writer and director Jonathan Levine (“Long Shot”) all the more commendable. Adapting the novel by Isaac Marion, Levine tells the story of R (Nicholas Hoult, later of “The Great”), a zombie who falls hard for the still-living Julie (Teresa Palmer). Well, every relationship has its issues.Stream it here. More

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      Venice Film Festival: Adam Driver Calls Out Netflix and Amazon Amid Strikes

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      His film “Ferrari,” a big-budget indie from Michael Mann, is the kind of adult drama the major studios have shied away from.The name placard on the dais said “A. Driver,” and if you’re making a Ferrari movie, you’d certainly better have one.This particular Driver happened to be in high demand at the Venice Film Festival, which bowed on Wednesday and has mostly had to make do without famous movie stars as the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike prohibits actors from promoting films made by most major studios. But since the new Michael Mann-directed film “Ferrari” will be released domestically by Neon and internationally by STX — two companies that aren’t members of the group that Hollywood guilds are striking against — its star, Adam Driver, was free to make the trip to Venice and add A-list appeal to a festival in dire need of it.“I’m proud to be here, to be a visual representation of a movie that’s not part of the A.M.P.T.P.,” Driver said on Thursday at the news conference for the film, referencing the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. He praised the interim agreement devised by SAG-AFTRA that allows stars to promote independent films as long as their distributors agree with the terms the actors’ guild is seeking.“Why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon and STX International can meet the dream demands of what SAG is asking for — the dream version of SAG’s wish list — but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t?” asked Driver, who has previously promoted Netflix movies like “Marriage Story” and “White Noise” in Venice. “Every time people from SAG go and support movies that have agreed to these terms with the interim agreement, it just makes it more obvious that these people are willing to support the people they collaborate with, and the others are not.”After the crowd at the news conference applauded, Mann added, “No big studio wrote us a check. That’s why we’re here, standing in solidarity.”You wouldn’t think while watching it that “Ferrari” is an indie movie. With a reported budget of $95 million, this is the sort of lavish adult drama that Mann used to make for major studios all the time. But movies like “Heat,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Ali” and “The Insider,” all films Mann made in the 1990s or early 2000s, have fallen out of favor in our superhero-saturated era, and expensive prestige releases like this one have recently struggled to break out at the box office.Can the record-breaking success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” reinvigorate the sort of big-budget dad drama that used to be a theatrical staple? “Ferrari” is counting on it, even if its fellow December releases, like “Wonka” and “The Color Purple,” don’t necessarily lend themselves to “Barbenheimer”-level portmanteaus. (“Wonkari” and “Ferple” just sound like off-brand Pokemon.)Like Nolan’s summer hit, “Ferrari” is about a midcentury visionary with a wandering eye: Driver’s Enzo Ferrari is a racer-turned-automaker who’s feuding with his wife (Penélope Cruz), hiding a mistress (Shailene Woodley) and trying to save his namesake company before it goes belly up. Mann tracks him during the summer of 1957, when it seemed like so many of Ferrari’s problems could be fixed by a single, momentous race. If one of his drivers can win the dangerous, thousand-mile race Mille Miglia, Ferrari reasons, it would stoke enough demand to lift the company’s fortunes. Still, his single-minded pursuit of that goal turns out to be a life-or-death matter with all sorts of unexpected casualties.It may be hard now to conceive of “Ferrari” as a Driver-less vehicle, but over the many years that Mann tried to mount it, the director flirted with leading men like Robert De Niro, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, who went on to topline the Mann-produced “Ford v Ferrari” (2019). The 39-year-old Driver is called upon to play a man two decades older for most of the film’s running time, but that gray-haired intensity actually suits him: His Ferrari is hard-nosed and compelling, like a too-serious MSNBC commentator who slowly attracts an ardent, horny fan base.Regardless of whether “Ferrari” can chase the box-office success of “Oppenheimer,” Driver said it was a miracle it was made at all, summing up the film’s truncated production schedule and false starts in a way that his title character could understand.“It’s hard not to get philosophical about an engine — the amount of pieces that have to come together, similar to films, and work on the exact right timing in the exact right moment,” he said at the news conference. “And then there’s the element of human intuition and reflex. It’s a 50/50 marriage, and that’s very much filmmaking.”When all those different elements manage to coalesce on a premium race car — or a big-budget indie film — it’s beautiful, Driver said. “It also makes you aware of how many things could go wrong at any moment,” he noted. “It’s a special thing to be part of.” More