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      in Television

      When Real Life Calls for a Cheesy Rom-Com Gesture

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      The big boombox moments in Hollywood films are cliché. Yet they can also sustain love in real life.The second time I fell in love, before it began to go well, it went very badly. After only a couple of conversations over coffee, I showed up at my beloved’s apartment and confessed the depth of my feelings — to which she responded, with heartbreaking nonchalance, “Um … what do you expect me to say?” I was so devastated that, in trying to flee, I inadvertently stormed right past her front door and straight into her hallway closet. On my way home, I almost walked into the path of a moving train, then verbally abused the subway conductor for daring to warn me about it. That night I drank an entire bottle of wine, watched the 2005 film adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” for the umpteenth time and cursed my sorry fate.Yes, I know. You don’t have to tell me what I looked like.What did I think I would accomplish, pulling some cheesy rom-com move, as if my life were “Say Anything” or “When Harry Met Sally”? Had Hollywood turned me into a tacky derivative? Relationship advice is awash with warnings to not be duped by films. We poor schlubs out in the world don’t have teams of writers scripting our happy endings, experts caution — and so taking inspiration from rom-coms’ corny gestures just sets ourselves up for disappointment.And it’s true that real life does not tolerate clichés. Falling for someone is a highly individual experience. An unassuming widow’s peak, the sound of their vowels when they’re running late — it’s small, specific details that stoke and justify desire (and that sent me marching to my beloved’s doorstep that night). When we are fervently in love, wrote the novelist Stendhal, “everything is a symbol.” If you have ever disapproved of a friend’s partner, then you were not seeing the same symbols your friend was. But so then, if nothing is more unique than a love affair, how come so many of us watch Nicholas Sparks’s films with the same generic scenes of rain-kissing and love-declaring?It’s because underneath a rom-com’s boilerplate narrative structures, there is extreme passion and ardor and desperation — and all of that is very true to what the actual nonmovie experience of falling in love feels like. Rom-coms resonate with us because we do see ourselves in them: They function as mirrors through which we can pinpoint and understand our own amorphous feelings. And their sweeping gestures also provide encouragement for us to turn our passions into concrete action.I have never seen anyone kiss a lover in the pouring rain — in real life, cold rainstorms are no aphrodisiac — but I have witnessed a grown man get down on bended knee and belt out the worst Nickelback cover. His girlfriend, who hates Nickelback, adored it. I was raised by a man who, after a decade of friendship with a woman, got drunk and flew across the country so he could tell her that he couldn’t wait a moment longer to be together. Years later, my mother’s brother was almost arrested for loudly declaiming his regret outside his wife’s window in the middle of the night. (At least he didn’t use a boombox.)As the sociologist Niklas Luhmann put it, “Showing that one could control one’s passion would be a poor way of showing passion.” I may have made a clown of myself when I showed up out of the blue to declare my love, but nothing else I could have done would have demonstrated the bigness of my feelings more clearly. And I don’t think I would have had the courage to try had I not been bred on a steady diet of finely calibrated melodrama.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

    • 113 Shares36 Views

      in Movies

      Pope Francis, Unlikely Movie Star: From ‘Conclave’ to ‘Francesco’

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      In fictional tales and documentaries, directors approached him as a screen character who was both admired and controversial.Watching Edward Berger’s hit Vatican thriller “Conclave” last year, I found it hard not to think of Pope Francis. The film is fictional, based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, published three years into Francis’s papacy. But one key character in the film is a Mexican archbishop working in Kabul, a reformer calling on the church to focus on those marginalized and historically excluded by the institution.Plenty separated the “Conclave” character from the sitting pope, who died on Monday, the day after Easter. But such a simple yet eloquent onscreen activist could recall only Francis, the first Latin American cleric to assume the papacy. He drew both admiration and controversy, based largely on his concern for the poor, immigrants and refugees; his calls for environmental stewardship; and his efforts on behalf of gay and lesbian Catholics. That work inflamed more conservative wings of the church while endearing him to many, Catholic or not, who saw a new way forward in his life and teachings.And that also made the pope an unlikely movie star. Francis may have been the most cinematic pope, with fictional and documentary representations of him proliferating during his 12-year papacy. Some of those films were made by and for Catholics, like the 2013 documentary “Francis: The Pope From the New World,” produced by the Knights of Columbus; Beda Docampo Feijóo’s 2015 “Francis: Pray for Me,” a biographical drama about his pre-papal days; and Daniele Luchetti’s 2015 “Chiamatemi Francesco,” or “Call Me Francis,” which concentrated on his work as “the People’s Pope.”But many of these movies weren’t really aimed at an audience of the devout. Instead, they show the source of Francis’s wider appeal. His attention to issues of social and cultural import gave filmmakers a way to approach him as a screen character, not just a religious leader. Here are six such films, which help frame Francis’s legacy and illuminate why he made such an appealing subject.‘Pope Francis: A Man of His Word’ (2018)Buy or rent it on digital platforms.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 Television

      ‘The Interview’: Nate Bargatze Doesn’t Mind if You Think He’s an Idiot

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      It’s often the case that when stand-up comedians seize the public’s attention, it’s because they exude a sense of danger. They say what others don’t have the nerve to say, about topics others won’t raise, in language others never use. There’s an aura of transgressive truth-telling around this type of comedy star, best exemplified by the likes of Richard Pryor, Chris Rock and Hannah Gadsby — people who met the moment fearlessly.In this moment, though, one so sorely in need of fearless truth-telling, Nate Bargatze has rocketed to stardom by doing pretty much the opposite. Low-key and G-rated, his comedy traffics in comfortably relatable stories about the foibles of family life, his confusion with modern living and being a bit of a dim bulb. He is hardly the first clean stand-up to achieve tremendous success (though stylistic antecedents like Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano were able to ride a bygone wave of smash network sitcoms), but he has done it with no hits to his comedic credibility. It’s instructive, I think, that both my mother-in-law, hardly an aficionado of stand-up, and my best friend, a snob when it comes to the form, were excited to learn I was interviewing Bargatze.The gentle and inclusive approach of Bargatze, a 46-year-old Tennessee native, helped make his tour last year the highest-grossing one by a comedian. Two widely praised turns hosting “Saturday Night Live” (you may have seen his viral sketch “Washington’s Dream”) raised his profile outside the world of stand-up. Just this week, CBS announced that he has been tapped to host the Emmy Awards in September. And he is also branching out with a book, the self-deprecatingly titled “Big Dumb Eyes: Stories From a Simpler Mind,” which will be published on May 6. Such self-deprecation is a Bargatze trademark, but, as I learned, it also conceals some bold ambitions.The stand-up comic discusses having a magician for a father, the challenge of mainstream comedy and his aspirations to build the next Disneyland.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppIt’s interesting to read articles about you since your career has really taken off. The writers always try to explain why you’ve gotten so big. What’s your hunch about that? Talking about relatable things and authenticity. Not that I’m going out for authenticity. But you’re in a world where you have the “Wicked”s and these “Avengers” movies — and that’s great, but there’s not a regular person on a screen anymore. Movies used to be like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “Home Alone”: That’s a regular guy in this movie that you enjoy watching. It’s easier to take in. And you don’t always want to be thought-provoked. That’s something I’ve tried to stay clear of because I’m trying to sell you something. I need you to be able to come and trust that you’re going to get the entertainment that I am showing you that I am selling you.You said you’re selling something, which is an interesting thing to hear. That’s true for just about everyone in the entertainment business, but usually people aren’t explicit in saying it. Why do you think there’s hesitation on the part of some entertainers to say, “I’m selling something”? It’s got this weird self-importance: “I have a platform, so I need to say something.” I’m anti-platform. If I want to give you my opinion and tell you what I think, that’s about me. When I go onstage, I try to remind myself this night’s not about me. If it becomes about me, it’s too much. I can’t handle it. But if I can make it for other people, now I’m an employee and I’m working. It’s not about my self-importance. More

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      in Movies

      David Cronenberg Lost His Wife and the Will to Make Movies. Then Came ‘The Shrouds’

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      In 2017, during the funeral of his wife and longtime collaborator Carolyn Zeifman, the director David Cronenberg found himself struck by an unusual impulse: As the coffin holding her dead body was lowered into the ground, he wanted more than anything to get into that box with her.That reluctance to let go is taken to even more morbid extremes in Cronenberg’s new movie, “The Shrouds,” about a high-tech cemetery where the ongoing decomposition of a corpse can be viewed through a video livestream meant for the loved ones left behind. When those graves are mysteriously vandalized, it’s up to the cemetery owner Karsh (Vincent Cassel) to determine the culprits, who he suspects may have something to do with the death of his own wife (Diane Kruger).The 82-year-old Cronenberg has always been guided by a unique point of view as a filmmaker, and his classics like “Scanners,” “Videodrome” and “The Fly” helped establish the body-horror genre. Still, he admitted in an interview via Zoom this month that “The Shrouds” could be considered one of his most personal films: It’s not for nothing that Cassel is costumed to look like his director, donning dark suits and teasing his gray hair upward in a familiar manner.Cronenberg movie moments, from left: Stephen Lack in “Scanners”; Debbie Harry in “Videodrome” and Jeff Goldblum in “The Fly.”Canadian Film Development Corporation; Universal Pictures; Twentieth Century Fox, via Getty ImagesEven so, Cronenberg cautioned against drawing too many links between himself and his lead character.“As soon as you start to write a screenplay, you’re writing fiction, no matter what the impetus was in your own life,” Cronenberg said. “Suddenly, you’re creating characters that need to come to life. And when you start to write them, they start to push you around if they’re really alive.”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

    • 138 Shares41 Views

      in Movies

      Walton Goggins on the Song in His ‘White Lotus’ Character’s Head

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      The actor, also seen in “The Righteous Gemstones” and the new movie “The Uninvited,” on dirt biking, his father’s clothing advice and the music that makes him think of Rick Hatchett.These days it seems as if Walton Goggins is everywhere.He’s Rick Hatchett, consumed with avenging his father’s murder, in “The White Lotus.” Baby Billy Freeman, shilling in the name of God, in “The Righteous Gemstones.” The nose-less bounty hunter, known as the Ghoul, in “Fallout.”But Goggins didn’t initially make the cut for “The Uninvited,” a film written and directed by his wife, Nadia Conners, about an older woman who shows up at the home of an actress and her agent husband just as their big Hollywood party has started.Conners originally envisioned “The Uninvited” as a play and staged readings in Los Angeles, New York and London. “I wasn’t invited to be Sammy in any of them,” Goggins said of the husband character.Then Conners turned her script into a screenplay. “I texted her from the plane when I finished it — crying emojis, crying emojis, crying emojis,” Goggins recalled. “And I said, you’ve really cracked this for yourself.” The role was his.In a video call from Los Angeles, Goggins — who lives in New York in the Hudson Valley — talked about shaking off the work day, never washing raw denim and joyriding with his son, Augustus. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Drinking Wine by the FireplaceThis fireplace is a hundred years old and the centerpiece of this living room that has hosted Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walt Disney, Babe Ruth and even members of the House of Windsor. I end every night in the same spot, sitting on the same stool, with a bottle of wine created by Arianna Occhipinti that we found when we were vacationing in Sicily.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

    • 100 Shares54 Views

      in Movies

      There’s a Feeling We’re Not in Hollywood Anymore

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      Movies and TV productions are rapidly leaving California to film outside the United States, where labor costs are lower and tax incentives greater. Industry workers are exasperated.It would have been simple to shoot the game show “The Floor” in Los Angeles. The city has many idle studios that could have easily accommodated its large display screen and the midnight-blue tiles that light up beneath contestants.But Fox flies the show’s host, Rob Lowe, and 100 American contestants thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to answer trivia questions about dogs, divas and Disney characters at a studio in Dublin. It makes more financial sense than filming in California.In the past few years, as labor costs have grown after two strikes, producers of reality shows, scrappy indie movies and blockbuster films have increasingly turned away from Los Angeles to filming locations overseas.Those business decisions have considerable consequences for the industry’s thousands of middle-class workers: the camera operators, set decorators and lighting technicians who make movies and television happen. Frustration has reached a boiling point, according to more than two dozen people who make their living in the entertainment industry. They say that nothing short of Hollywood, as we know it, is at stake.“This is an existential crisis — it’s an extinction event,” said Beau Flynn, a producer of big-budget movies like “San Andreas,” which despite being about an earthquake in California was filmed mostly in Australia. “These are real things. I am not a dramatist, even though I’m in the drama field.”Productions have been filmed outside the United States for decades, but rarely has Hollywood work been so bustling overseas at a time when work in Hollywood itself has been so scant. Studios in European countries are bursting at the seams, industry workers say. And film and television production in Los Angeles is down by more than one-third over the past 10 years, according to FilmLA data.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 Movies

      5 Free Movies to Stream on Tubi, Plex and PlutoTV

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      In films like Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend,” you’ll find new beginnings in time for spring. Here’s a rundown of what’s currently on Tubi, Plex and PlutoTV.Spring, with its blooms and many unfurlings, is a time of awakening. Yet birth and renewal also means being confronted with the cold light of day.The early seconds of Josephine Decker’s 2018 film “Madeline’s Madeline” opens on a theater exercise that doubles as a kind of transformation for its teenage protagonist. “What you are experiencing is just a metaphor,” she’s assured. But what it represents will prove to be confusing and brutal; growing into the world often is.Spring, of course, also welcomes the budding of new romance. In the films from this month, you’ll recognize the sudden possibilities of love, in its wonder and its terror, along with the prickly realities of coming of age. For these (mostly) young characters, it’s a season of change. Watching them, one can only hope they make it out the other end intact.‘Weekend’ (2011)Stream it on PlutoTV.The fleeting encounter is an age-old archetype kept alive by the most romantic, and perhaps idealized, corners of our imagination. But in this story of a two-night stand by Andrew Haigh (“All of Us Strangers”), a brief connection is rendered achingly deep and real.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 Movies

      The ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Hand Flex: One Gesture and the Web Is Still Swooning

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      Say “hand flex” to a fan of the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” and they will know exactly what you mean.The gesture comes early in the director Joe Wright’s sumptuous version of the story. Keira Knightley’s bold Elizabeth Bennet is leaving Netherfield Park after picking up her ill sister Jane (Rosamund Pike). The reserved Mr. Darcy, played by Matthew Macfadyen, helps Elizabeth into a carriage. She had previously overheard Darcy insult her, calling her “tolerable,” and the tension between them is palpable. But when he touches her, something happens. She looks down, her gaze lingering on his gesture. As he walks away, the camera captures Darcy’s hand. His fingers stretch outward like an impulsive, unconscious tic. Her touch is almost too intense for him to handle.In the nearly 20 years since the film came out, the hand flex has become perhaps the defining beat from Wright’s take on the novel. It’s the subject of countless social-media posts, critical essays and TikTok dissertations. Search “hand flex” on TikTok or X and you’ll find the term even being applied to scenes from other films and TV shows. “This is my equivalent of the hand flex” is shorthand for “this tiny gesture gives me butterflies.”The word I kept encountering when talking to people and reading about the hand flex is “yearning.” Darcy, in the early phases of the story, keeps up a mask around Elizabeth, but his subconscious actions reveal just how much he desires her. To many, it’s devastatingly hot. And now, for the anniversary rerelease of “Pride & Prejudice” on April 20, the hand flex is commemorated with official merchandise.

      @lassoedmoon My first enamel pin design dedicated to our true Roman Empire The Hand Flex™️ #prideandprejudice #enamelpins #ethicallymade #smallbusiness ♬ Marianelli: Dawn – From “Pride & Prejudice” Soundtrack – Jean-Yves Thibaudet

      @mimiharlowrobinson Reply to @yahaira.corona THE HAND FLEX 2! #EnvisionGreatness #OverShareInYourUnderwear #prideandprejudice #prideandprejudice2005 #mrdarcy #janeausten ♬ Once Upon a December by Alexander Joseph – Alexander Joseph 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