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      The Actress Anamaria Vartolomei Brings a Fearless Streak to Her Roles

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      The actress’s latest film, “Adam’s Interest,” will open the Critics’ Week showcase at the Cannes Film Festival.Anamaria Vartolomei began her film career when she was 12 opposite Isabelle Huppert in a film about a controversial photographer and her daughter. And in the past few years, Vartolomei, now 26, has blazed through a slate so ambitious that it resembles one of Huppert’s typically prolific runs — each film different from the last.The Romanian-born actress’s recent rise began with a heartbreaking starring role in “Happening” as a French university student in the 1960s who seeks an abortion. It won the Golden Lion for best film at the 2021 Venice Film Festival — where the director Bong Joon Ho was the head of the jury. Bong cast Vartolomei in the dystopian film “Mickey 17” as a shrewd shipmate of Robert Pattinson’s repeatedly replicated drone.By the time “Mickey 17” came out earlier this year, she’d projected a mesmerizing mystique in the French blockbuster “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Her fearless streak was also recently on display in “Being Maria,” in which she plays the actress Maria Schneider, star of “Last Tango in Paris,” and “The Empire,” a loopy intergalactic yarn set in rural France.Her latest movie, “Adam’s Interest,” opens the Critics’ Week showcase at the Cannes Film Festival, which runs through May 24. Vartolomei plays a mother who risks losing custody of her child after he is hospitalized. In a video interview — seated beneath a wall of pictures featuring “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Breathless” and “Scarface” — she explained why the film’s raw realism appealed to her and how it was achieved. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.In your career, you tend to choose characters who have limited power or autonomy. But they do what they can with what they have.Yeah, I love this. It speaks to me personally, and I think it speaks to everyone in a way. I mean, freedom belongs to us, but it’s hard to admit that we have power over it. Sometimes we feel like we depend on others’ perspectives regarding our freedom. You think about pleasing others, and you forget what you really want. I like characters that know they want something, but they don’t really know how to obtain it. They finally find a way because if they find their truth, they will find peace.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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      ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,’ Plus 6 Things to Watch on TV This Week

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      The reality show returns to Hulu, while AppleTV+ debuts a new sci-fi series.Between streaming and cable, there is a seemingly endless variety of things to watch. Here is a selection of TV shows and specials that are airing or streaming this week, May 12-18. Details and times are subject to change.Sexy!First there was #MomTok, and then came “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a reality series following a group of TikTok-famous moms who are either practicing Mormons or are in the community. The first season was a hit and became Hulu’s top-watched unscripted series in 2024. Now the ladies from Utah are ready for more dirty sodas, baby daddy drama and rehashing of the swinging scandal. Joining the cast is Miranda McWhorter, who was involved in the original TikTok drama that popularized the group. Add some coconut creamer to your Dr Pepper, read up on the Book of Mormon, and pour your coffee down the drain because Taylor Frankie Paul, Jen Affleck, Demi Engemann and the others are so back. Streaming Thursday on Hulu.Why are Chad Michael Murray and Scott Patterson in Nova Scotia, Canada? Because “Sullivan’s Crossing” is back for a third season, of course. The series follows the neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan (Morgan Kohan) who fled to the small town that her father, Sully (Patterson), lives in to get away from a work-related scandal. Now, three years later, Maggie and Cal (Murray) are officially an item, and the trio are dealing with the aftermath of a diner fire from the Season 2 cliffhanger. It’s about to be cottage season in Canada, and this show perfectly sets those vibes. Wednesday at 8 p.m. on the CW.The Ryan Murphy series “Doctor Odyssey” has left viewers with lots of questions: Was it all a fever dream? Why is this cruise ship equipped with a CT machine? How can we clone Joshua Jackson in real life? It is unclear whether any of these questions will be answered in this week’s finale. The show — which follows the lives of a doctor and two nurses in charge of a cruise ship’s infirmary who spend more time canoodling, drinking and relaxing in the hot tub than doing any actual work — has covered orca attacks, mistaken pregnancies and the dangers of a raw diet. During the season (or series, ABC has yet to renew the show) finale, Max (Jackson) deboards the ship and, needless to say, several natural disasters strike. Thursday at 9 p.m. on ABC and streaming the next day on Hulu.Thrilling!Let’s set the scene for the new thriller series “Duster”: The year is 1972, we’re in the Southwest and Rachel Hilson plays the F.B.I.’s first Black female agent. With Josh Holloway’s character at her side as a getaway driver, the two go on a mission to break up a growing crime syndicate. Of note, this is J.J. Abrams’s first co-writing gig in six years, since “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” Thursday at 9 p.m. on Max.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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      ‘Nonnas’ Review: Oversauced

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      Vince Vaughn plays a restaurant owner who hires Italian grandmothers to cook for him in this corn-filled gabagool.From the homily-stuffed script (“food is love,” “beautiful is a feeling”) to the relentlessly on-the-button soundtrack (please god, no more “Funiculì Funiculà”), “Nonnas” serves up ethnic comedy on a platter of ham and cheese.Based on a true story, this four-grannies-and-a-funeral caper tosses finely aged ingredients — Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire — into a slurry of Italian caricature and cliché. At its center sits Joe Scaravella (an oddly anemic Vince Vaughn), a Brooklyn transportation worker who, after his mother’s death, decides to honor her by opening a restaurant on Staten Island and hiring Italian grandmothers, or nonnas, as his chefs.Each has a single, identifiable characteristic. Meet Roberta (Bracco), the salty Sicilian and erstwhile best friend of Joe’s mother; Antonella (Vaccaro), the feisty Bolognan widow whom Joe meets at an Italian market; Teresa (Shire), the retired nun with a cheeky secret; and Gia (Sarandon), the independent glamour-puss whose enviable cleavage demands commentary.“How do you bake over those things?,” Roberta inquires, not unreasonably. Sadly, this is as saucy as Liz Maccie’s screenplay allows. Even when Joe reconnects with Olivia (an ill-served Linda Cardellini), the prom date he once unceremoniously dumped, the movie stubbornly refuses to spark. The director, Stephen Chbosky, appears unaware that food can be sexy, or that young Joe — in a glowing, idyllically staged flashback to 40 years earlier — is infinitely more excited by bubbling Bolognese and sugared pastries than his adult self is by Olivia. Their belated dance to Chris de Burgh’s oft-recycled “The Lady in Red” is so lacking in chemistry they might as well be neutered.Corny and cloying, “Nonnas” struggles to gin up energy in a plot whose every roadblock (the dwindling finances, the failed building inspection, the opening-night disaster, the desperate plea for critical attention) is comfortably predictable. The movie’s real drag, though, is a main character with no identity beyond his mother’s depressing house and no personality beyond nostalgia. Joe is a void, and Vaughn — who can occasionally be riveting, as we saw in projects like “Brawl in Cell Block 99” (2017) and the unfairly maligned second season of “True Detective” (2015) — too often shuffles through his scenes as if narcotized.This muffled affect, along with Chbosky’s pedestrian direction and his reliance on overly literal needle drops (again with the Billy Joel?), forces everyone else to work twice as hard. The ladies, professionals all, are up for it, gamely selling sitcom setups and prepackaged sentiment with a gusto that suggests a better, more authentic movie might have lurked beyond the bromides. One where, when a former nun prays for a miracle, it won’t arrive before she has even dusted off her knees.NonnasRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Summer of 69’ Review: A Crash Course in Carnal Knowledge

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      Jillian Bell’s feature directorial debut centers on a nerdy teenager who hires a stripper for a sexual education, but the movie favors modesty over vulgarity.High schoolers revving up to lose their virginities by graduation are a teen comedy mainstay. The cheekily titled “Summer of 69,” directed by the comedy actress Jillian Bell, turns the trope on its head, so to speak, by centering on a nerdy young woman who pledges to master a specific sexual position. (You can venture a guess.)Abby (Sam Morelos) is a 17-year-old video game streamer with zero bedroom experience and a whopper of a crush on Max (Matt Cornett), a hunky classmate. So when she hears that he favors that particular position, she hires a local stripper named Santa Monica (Chloe Fineman) for a crash course in carnal knowledge.In her feature directorial debut, Bell conjures a mood of gentle bawdiness cut with sincerity. There’s a visit to the vibrator shop, and a running joke in which Abby misunderstands the nature of certain sex acts. But for the most part, the movie is free of the cutting loose and potty mouthing endemic to its genre. Instead of antics, the movie is powered by a feminist streak in which sexual prowess and even pleasure take a back seat to confidence, friendship and self worth.The modest tone is fitting, for while Abby is on the verge of adulthood, she still acts like a child, and her immaturity bumps up awkwardly against the movie’s ribald premise. Fortunately, “Summer of 69” is a two-hander, and Fineman brings comic chops and genuine feeling to playing the tutor with a heart of gold.Summer of 69Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Juliet & Romeo’ Review: Tragedy Executed as Farce

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      This movie musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers is no “& Juliet” — that is, it’s no fun.There have been scores (sorry) of musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers over the centuries. Not just operas — there’s Berlioz’s dramatic symphony; Prokofiev’s ballet; the comedic jukebox musical on Broadway, “& Juliet,” in which the heroine leaves Romeo to die and chooses life for herself. “Juliet and Romeo,” from the writer-director Timothy Scott Bogart and his composer-songwriter brother, Evan Kidd Bogart, is more self-serious.The movie begins, a narrator says, “In the year 1301” when “Italy was only an idea.” In this movie’s idea of 1301, characters jumble up modern and Shakespearean language; “Romeo, where the hell art thou,” someone from the hero’s posse shouts early on. And while “& Juliet” uses pop songs, for this picture the composers Bogart and Justin Gray try to concoct tunes that sound like those of Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff. “There’s a whole lot of wrong here but we get it right, we get it right,” goes one lyric.Veteran actors including Jason Isaacs, Derek Jacobi and Rebel Wilson add spice where they’re able; the costumes are colorful, and as Juliet, Clara Rugaard is fresh-faced and appealing. (As Romeo, on the other hand, Jamie Ward mostly looks like he’s trying to find a boy band to join.)The Bogarts are sons of Neil Bogart, the blockbuster record exec who empowered both Kiss and Donna Summer back in the day. Watching this largely misbegotten movie (which seems to fulfill all of its aspirations with an utterly tacky ending), then, sometimes brought to mind the sardonic Steely Dan tune “Show Biz Kids.”Juliet & RomeoRated PG-13 for salty non-Shakespearean language, one supposes. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters. More

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      ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ Review: Stalkers

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      In this underbaked slasher film, killer bozos terrorize teens in the American heartland.“Clown in a Cornfield,” a new teen slasher film from the writer-director Eli Craig, is both silly and as sincere as an honor student’s term paper. To its credit, it uses horror to examine the economic woes of the deteriorating Midwest and the emotional shortcomings of the working-class Gen X-ers and baby boomers who never left there.What it could have used is the kind of whip smart satire that made Craig’s superior film “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” (2011) a horror-comedy paragon.The film is set in a small Missouri farming community that was once home to, and defined by, a thriving corn syrup operation with a clown mascot known as Frendo. New in town are Quinn (Katie Douglas, terrific) and her doctor father (Aaron Abrams), who quickly discover how damaged the town became after a mysterious fire crippled the company.Just as Quinn starts to make friends, along come some psychopaths who dress like Frendo and kill select young folk to prevent them from leaving town and achieving their dreams. Or something like that. It’s hard to discern: In adapting Adam Cesare’s novel, Carter Blanchard and Craig have crafted a screenplay that focuses more on grisly (and often gnarly) slaughters than on providing answers to the killer cabal’s motivations. A gay romance provides a sweet if underdeveloped detour.A lackluster horror movie gets points if the leading villain is a real bugaboo. But the Frendos, alas, look like poser versions of Pennywise, Art the Clown and other, scarier horror bozos.Clown in a CornfieldRated R for clown-caused carnage. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Sympathy for the Devil, er Boss: In ‘The Studio,’ the Powerful Are on Defense

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      Seth Rogen’s cringe-y Hollywood honcho is well-intentioned but ineffectual. The actor’s awkward laugh has never been put to better use.Matt Remick desperately wants to be considered important. His problem is that he’s recently become a Hollywood mogul, which is like getting a job as a DEI consultant right now. The timing’s not great.This week, in the best episode of the debut season of the fizzy Apple TV+ series “The Studio,” Remick, played with impeccable neediness by Seth Rogen, arrives at the Golden Globes full of anticipation, only to be disappointed to find influencers taking selfies, instead of famous actors wanting to talk to him. Pushed aside by Charli D’Amelio, he strikes a weary tone: “I remember when the red carpet of the Golden Globes actually stood for something.”It’s a wonderfully dry and absurd joke, treating the most superficial part of awards season with preposterous gravity. But it’s also funny because Rogen says the line as if he’s straining to play a part that doesn’t quite fit him, a man of consequence.“The Studio,” which was just renewed for a second season, belongs to the genre of Hollywood satire in which fictional characters interact with real celebrities playing presumably more vain and craven versions of themselves (see also “Hacks”). But what makes the show distinctive is its exploration of a broader, more topical theme: the collapse of the power of bosses in prestige industries.Not long ago, it seemed as if everyone wanted to be the head of a Condé Nast magazine, a major book publishing house or a studio. Now whether the editor of Vanity Fair is a good job is an open question. Tech oligarchs have the most swagger in the culture, and social media has diminished the marketing muscle of publishers and studios. While managing the decline of traditional media is a challenge for the movie business, it’s an opportunity for satirists.Rogen and his longtime partner, Evan Goldberg, who are among the creators of “The Studio,” locate and exploit this cultural shift, giving comedy a new kind of corporate suit. Their insight is that the Hollywood mogul, long seen as an intimidating, cigar-chomping heavy, can now credibly be positioned as a comedic underdog — or even a likable buffoon.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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      ‘Friendship’ Review: Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd Hit Maximum Cringe

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      Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd star in the kind of comedy you watch from behind your hands.One of the most unforgivable (and unforgettable) sins you can commit in youth, say around the sixth grade, happens when you’re desperate to join a new friend group. You want to be cool. You want to be part of their circle. So when someone cracks a joke, you laugh with everyone, then add your own hilarious rejoinder — and everyone just stares. Some invisible line has been crossed. You took the joke too far, and now it’s dead and, with it, your social life, your reputation and your chances of ever being happy again.This feeling goes a long way toward explaining why “Friendship,” the new cringe-com starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, is often funny and always distressing. The feature debut of the writer and director Andrew DeYoung definitely shares DNA with “I Think You Should Leave,” Robinson’s hit Netflix comedy series, in which he usually plays a guy who can’t quite make out the social cues everyone else seems to follow without trying. So he’s always doing something bizarre, and it’s funny because it’s uncomfortable.This makes Robinson the perfect, and possibly only, lead for DeYoung’s script. It’s about a man named Craig Waterman who has attained the markers of adulthood — a lovely wife (Tami, played by Kate Mara), a teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer) who still at least talks to him, gainful employment, a nice-enough house — but is functionally still the sixth grader in that friend circle.Except Craig, being a certain variety of grown American man, doesn’t have friends, per se. He has Tami, who is almost unbelievably nice to him given he’s sort of a putz: obsessed with avoiding Marvel spoilers, loyal to only one brand of clothing that he apparently sources from a restaurant called Ocean View Dining. His co-workers joke around with one another on their smoke breaks, which he watches from his office window, nose all but pressed against the glass. Then, one day, he meets the new neighbor, Austin Carmichael (Rudd), who turns out to be the coolest guy Craig could imagine. Austin has a mustache. He’s the local weatherman. He plays in a band. He buys antique weaponry. He knows just which rules to break to have a good time.So Craig develops a kind of obsession with Austin, not exactly the creepy kind but not exactly uncreepy, either. Hanging out with Austin, Craig can see a different future for himself, one in which he is a rad, manly, sought-after leader who jams out on the drums and impresses everyone around him. If Craig hangs out with Austin, people will want to be his friend, too.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