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    For $18,500 (and Up), You, Too, Can Travel Like James Bond

    When the (real) world is not enough, new luxury tours offer fans a chance to engage with their favorite film and TV worlds.From the post-apocalyptic bleakness of the TV show “The Last of Us” to the glamorous European destinations in the sprawling James Bond movie franchise, one source of travel inspiration is taking on fresh appeal as pandemic restrictions recede: the fictional worlds of film and television.“Set-jetting” — a play on “jet-setting” — will, travel analysts say, heavily influence the choice of destinations this year. With search traffic surging for the filming locations of the most popular streamed movies and television shows, that entertainment is expected to overtake social media as the top source of inspiration for travelers, according to research from online travel companies like Expedia.In response, destinations, tour operators and even film and TV production companies are striving to offer ever more experiential ways for people to engage with their favorite fictional worlds. The government of Alberta, Canada, is even assembling a map of filming locations for “The Last of Us” devotees to follow on a road trip. (The series was shot in the province.)But perhaps none are so immersive — and extravagant — as a new series of James Bond-themed private tours. They include a high-speed race down the River Thames in the same Sunseeker Superhawk 34 speedboat used in “The World Is Not Enough”; a sail on a vintage yacht along the Côte d’Azur to the Casino de Monte-Carlo, featured in “GoldenEye” and “Never Say Never Again”; and a helicopter ride above the snow-capped Ötztal Alps in Austria, where “Spectre” was filmed, accompanied by the special effects veteran Chris Corbould.People are as drawn to the places in the movies as they are to the plots, said Tom Marchant, a co-founder of Black Tomato, a travel company based in New York and London that was enlisted by the Bond movie producer, EON Productions, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first Bond film, “Dr. No.”The goal of the tours, Mr. Marchant said, was “unparalleled” immersion into the 007 world. The cost? From $18,500 per person for a five-night experience, and from $73,500 per person for the full 12-day experience.The Four Seasons in Cap-Ferrat, the location of a scene in the Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” is offering a themed travel package.Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix‘Transported to the set’For many travelers, the high price of immersion is worth it. Inspired by the bucolic hills and lofty Alps in “The Sound of Music,” the 1965 musical film starring Julie Andrews, Natalie McDonald, an entrepreneur in New York, was willing to pay about 10,500 pounds, or about $12,900, for Black Tomato to plan a cross-country railway trip in Switzerland in 2019 with her daughter, then 12.“It quite literally felt like we were transported to the set,” she said, adding that memories of the journey lingered long after they returned home. “In so many ways it extends the trip in our subconscious.”That desire to be immersed in fictional worlds has also been noted by streaming companies like Netflix, which is expanding its slate of interactive (and much more affordable) events. From Regency-era balls in cities like New York to uncovering a secret government lab at a Los Angeles event, attendees are given the opportunity to dress up and engage with plotlines of shows like “Bridgerton” (from $59 a person) and “Stranger Things” (from $39 for an adult).“We want people to leave feeling like they really got to experience this ‘hero’ moment within a world or a story that they’ve loved,” said Josh Simon, the vice president for consumer products at Netflix. Some three million people have attended such immersive events in 17 cities, and the company is planning more experiences linked to series like “Squid Game.”Other operators are paying attention. The Four Seasons in Cap-Ferrat, the location of a scene in the Netflix series “Emily in Paris,” is offering a Girls Trip on the French Riviera package (rates vary, but can run at least $2,000 for a two-person room). Fans of the series “The Last of Us” are flocking to the show’s locations in Alberta, despite the show’s pessimistic premise of a world inhabited by survivors of a global pandemic.Among the most obvious winners of screen tourism this year, travel advisers say, is the cliffside town of Taormina, Sicily, where the second season of the HBO show “The White Lotus” takes place. One $7,500 weeklong “White Lotus” tour was so in demand that it sold out months in advance, according to Quiiky Travel, a tour operator catering to L.G.B.T.Q. clients.Among the popular destinations for travel this year is the cliffside town of Taormina, Sicily, where the second season of the HBO show “The White Lotus” takes place.Fabio Lovino/HBOWeb traffic for the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace, the show’s location, surged more than 60 percent after the first episodes aired, and bookings are set to be stronger this year compared to last year, the hotel said.“‘The White Lotus’ worked as a business accelerator for us,” said Lorenzo Maraviglia, the hotel’s general manager, adding that the sudden interest after the show was something he had never witnessed before. Like their fictional counterparts, guests at the hotel can visit local wineries, cruise on a Vespa around the Sicilian streets and sip an aperitivo in its restaurant (though the underlying tensions are not guaranteed).Bow ties and bubblyAs they wait to learn who will replace the actor Daniel Craig, whose last appearance as James Bond was in 2021’s “No Time to Die,” Bond superfans willing to pay for one of Black Tomato’s 60 custom tours will have the opportunity to peruse Bond costumes and props, with tales from the Bond archive director, Meg Simmonds, in London. If they’re looking for an adrenaline rush, they can learn fight sequences with Lee Morrison, a stunt coordinator and former stunt double for Daniel Craig, also in London. Or they can listen to insider tales over a Parisian dinner with Carole Ashby, the British actress who appeared in “Octopussy” and “A View to Kill.”They will also be able to indulge in the brands featured in the Bond world, including an Aston Martin workshop (the spy’s car of choice) in Millbrook, England, and a private tour of the Bollinger vineyards (the spy’s Champagne of choice) in the village of Ay, France.And then there is the tour’s most lavish offering: the 12-night journey called “The Assignment,” from $73,500 per person, which begins in London and takes travelers on a five-location European tour ending in Venice. A narrative component is potentially in development, Mr. Marchant said, so attendees can live out a Bond plot of their own.For Bond fans on a budget, there are other options. Rob Woodford, a former taxi driver in Britain who runs tours based on popular film and television series, is anticipating a busy year ahead. His James Bond-themed tours try to include an element from most of the 25 films in the series. This year, he is thinking of teaming up with a speedboat company to recreate the breathless scene from “The World Is Not Enough.”“Wouldn’t that be a good idea — to recreate Pierce Brosnan shooting down the River Thames?” he said, adding: “You’ve got to reinvent yourself a bit.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Riverdale’ and ‘Royal Crackers’

    Riverdale returns for a seventh season on the CW, and a new animated comedy series comes to Adult Swim.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, March 27- April 2. Details and times are subject to change.MondayJosh Lucas and Reese Witherspoon in “Sweet Home Alabama.”Peter Iovino/Touchstone PicturesSWEET HOME ALABAMA (2002) 7:30 p.m. on Freeform. In this romantic comedy, Melanie Smooter (Reese Witherspoon) is a fashion designer in New York who lies her way into the perfect life. With a great career and a high-profile boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey), she finally feels like she belongs. That is until her boyfriend proposes and Melanie remembers the husband (Josh Lucas) she left behind seven years ago in their country town in Alabama. In order to keep her facade going, Melanie hatches a plan to sneak back home and get an official divorce. However, things don’t go as planned when her husband refuses to sign the papers. “The film did beautifully nail the warring affections so many of us transplanted Southerners feel in New York City,” Elizabeth Schatz wrote in a column for The New York Times.TuesdayRENOVATION 911 9 p.m. on HGTV. Set in Minneapolis, the series premiering this week follows two emergency restoration experts, the sisters Lindsey Uselding and Kirsten Meehan, over eight episodes, as they rescue homes that have been damaged by fires, floods, storms and other catastrophes.WednesdayRIVERDALE 9 p.m. on The CW. After the town was saved from disaster in Season 6, Jughead (Cole Sprouse) is left reeling when he finds himself transported to the 1950s in the show’s seventh and final season. With his friends seeming to have no memory of their real lives, Jughead must find his way back to the present day to save them while navigating a repressive, conformist world.ThursdayKEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES (2016) 7:35 p.m. on FXM. The Gaffneys live a predictable life until the Joneses move in next door. Intrigued by their new neighbors’ flawless looks and worldly personalities, Jeff Gaffney (Zach Galifianakis) and his wife, Karen (Isla Fisher), befriend the couple. But the Gaffneys soon discover that Tim (Jon Hamm) and Natalie Jones (Gal Gadot) are government spies, after they find themselves entangled in one of their missions.FridaySamuel L. Jackson, left, and Alexander Skarsgard in “The Legend of Tarzan.”Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) 8 p.m. on AMC. After living mostly in the jungles of Congo, Tarzan (Alexander Skarsgard) has finally acclimated to life in London after moving there to be with his wife, Jane Porter (Margot Robbie). But their lives are disrupted when Tarzan is asked by King Leopold of Belgium to make a trip to Africa. Tarzan agrees only after a friend persuades him that King Leopold might be enslaving the people of Congo. After arriving, Tarzan and Jane are attacked by mercenaries paid off by Captain Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz). Rom had struck a deal with the leader of a Congo tribe (Djimon Hounsou), who agreed to give mineral rocks needed by the king in exchange for Tarzan. “There’s something touching about ‘The Legend of Tarzan,’” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times, “which as it struggles to offer old Hollywood-style adventure without old Hollywood-style racism, suggests that perhaps other fantasies are possible — you just need some thought and Mr. Jackson.”THE GREAT AMERICAN JOKE OFF 9:30 p.m. on The CW. This new comedy series, hosted by Dulcé Sloan, centers on the art of telling a good joke. Each episode goes through several rounds of telling as many quick gags as possible in accordance with specific categories. Each round will have a winner, decided by Sloan.PSYCHO (1960) 10 p.m. TCM. Based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, this thriller follows Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary who steals a large sum of money from her employer and runs away to California to be with her lover, Sam (John Gavin). On the run and hiding from the police, Marion grows tired and finds herself at the Bates Motel. When she’s never heard from again, Marion’s sister, Lila (Vera Miles), and Sam team up to look for her.SaturdayJae Head, far left, Quinton Aaron and Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side.”Ralph Nelson/Warner Brothers PicturesTHE BLIND SIDE (2009) 8 p.m. on CMTV. Based on the true story of Michael Oher, a former offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, the film follows Oher’s (Quinton Aaron) life as a homeless teen drifting in and out of the school system before Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) and her husband, Sean (Tim McGraw), take him into their home. Leigh Anne soon recognizes Michael’s football abilities and helps him hone his skills while also giving him love and comfort. “The film’s makers had created a deeply earnest picture aimed less at tastemakers than at people in the middle: sports fans, families, churchgoers and do-gooders,” Michael Cieply wrote in his review for The Times.IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) 10 p.m. on TMC. Adapted from the 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst, this movie tells the story of Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), a white single mother and struggling actress who has Broadway aspirations; and Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a homeless, widowed Black mother. The two women are on Coney Island when they find their daughters playing together. Lora soon hires her new friend as a caretaker for her daughter while she pursues her dreams. The movie shows how the two women face difficulties with motherhood and confront race and identity. “This tale of two single mothers, one Black and the other white — and of maternal love, exploitation and crossing the color line — is a magnificent social symptom,” J. Hoberman wrote in his review for The Times.SundayROYAL CRACKERS 11 p.m. on ADULT SWIM. This animated comedy series follows two brothers: Stebe, the loving, responsible father and husband; and Theo Jr., a middle-aged bachelor trying to relive his glory days. Together they live in their comatose father’s house, counting down the days until he dies and they inherit his cracker company empire. Unbeknownst to either of them, the empire is crumbling, and the brothers, along with their family, must put their differences aside to try to save the company. 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    ‘Tori and Lokita’ Review: Precarious Lives in Exile

    In the new movie from the Dardenne brothers, two underage African migrants struggle to make a home in an unkind land.Like most of the films from the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, their latest — the harrowing “Tori and Lokita” — is a story about outcasts. And like most their films, it too is a suspense thriller about moral conscience, one that takes place in and around a gray, Belgian city. There, two young African migrants are struggling to make a home in an unkind world in which nearly every human exchange is transactional and carries the threat of betrayal.Tori and Lokita — played by Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu, both appealing nonprofessionals — are living at a gently chaotic children’s center and passing as brother and sister; they’re also in limbo. Tori, a young-looking 12, has his residency papers, but the 17-year-old Lokita hasn’t yet been granted hers. Faced with the specter of Lokita’s deportation, the two are intensely focused on finding a way for her to stay in the country. They pore over her story, rehearsing what she should tell immigration officers, all while trying to dodge the smugglers whom they owe money and running orders for a local (illegal) cannabis dealer.The movie opens with Lokita in the middle of an immigration interview, the camera fixed on her in close-up — for two progressively uneasy minutes — as she responds to offscreen questions. Her face and voice are composed at first, her answers a touch canned, though everything shifts when the interviewer challenges her story. Because there are no cutaways to the questioner, your gaze, your focus, remains on Lokita, compelling you to keep looking even as the queries keep coming and she begins to crumble and then to cry, her testimony and self-possession undone by the soft droning of dehumanizing power.The interrogation is uncomfortable to watch, which is the point. The Dardennes aren’t simply forcing you to see Lokita, to see her bravery and tremulous vulnerability, they are also making you a witness to state violence. The story’s most conspicuous villains are the drug dealer and his gang as well as the smugglers, all of whom hound and exploit the children relentlessly, demanding money and, in the case of the dealer, worse from Lokita. Yet, as the movie underscores, the larger fault here lies with a country — and by extension, its people — that treats migrants so inhumanely (some worse than others).The interview is stopped, and the scene wraps up quickly — there’s a cut to some anxious white faces — and Tori and Lokita are soon regrouping and rushing, always rushing, toward their next move. They falter and stumble, moments of difficulty that the Dardennes intersperse with scenes of tender intimacy that fill in their back story and other interludes that insistently remind you that, however independent and resourceful the pair may seem, these are children. When Tori asks an immigration officer, “Why can’t my sister have her papers?,” the Dardennes (who aren’t above jerking tears) keep the camera at the boy’s level.However unvarnished the Dardennes’ movies appear, however seemingly plain and obvious, their approach is refined, and the movies themselves are highly stylized. The stories tend to be fairly simple and feature naturalistic dialogue, nondescript locations and marginalized young characters; and it’s crucial to underline that Tori and Lokita are their first Black protagonists. The precarity of the lives that the Dardennes explore give the stories feeling and tension while their directorial choices — including where they put the camera and how they situate characters in the world — give their work its characteristic ethical politics.The story takes a turn, narratively and tonally — the rhythms seem to quicken or at least your pulse does — after another of Lokita’s immigration interviews goes badly. The dealer offers to get her counterfeit papers, if she works at a cannabis grow house tending the plants out in the boonies. She does, and there, cut off from Tori in this sprawling, windowless space, she waters and fertilizes the plants and is supplied basic necessities by indifferent minders. Lokita has effectively become a prisoner while the more resourceful Tori continues to scramble in the outside world, a bleak situation that mirrors their respective immigration statuses.Time and again in the Dardennes’ movies, imperiled and isolated characters are saved — by themselves, by others — in moments that express the filmmakers’ humanism. It’s easy to imagine or, really, hope that something similar will happen in “Tori and Lokita,” a possibility that starts to seem more and more like magical thinking, particularly given how abjectly African migrants are often treated. Surely, you think, someone decent will step up to offer help. What I didn’t grasp when I first watched the movie is that the act of grace I was anxiously waiting for had happened before the movie began. Lokita had once saved Tori; they saved each other. Yet in a world as barbaric as this one, who else is willing to step up?Tori and LokitaNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Worst Ones’ Review: The Gazes of Children

    In their feature, the directors Lisa Akoka and Romane Gueret build a provocative critique of filmmaking practices.A freckled girl, Maylis (Mélina Vanderplancke), sits in a classroom that has been turned into a casting venue. Her gaze could be described as apathetic were it not for the way she challenges Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh), a fictional filmmaker, at the start of the keen drama “The Worst Ones,” from Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret. Those two real directors’ movie follows Gabriel as he films in an economically depressed neighborhood in Northern France. That Gabriel gives Maylis a nonspeaking role speaks volumes.The faces of Vanderplancke and the other nonprofessional actors here are memorable, as are their gazes. And this is one the conceits of Akoka and Gueret’s movie (which they wrote with Eléonore Gurrey): a gaze can resist objectification.The title comes from Maylis’s shrewd observation about whom Gabriel intends to cast — and why. Maylis is one of four youngsters the filmmaker and his assistant hire. He casts Lily (Mallory Wanecque), struggling with grief after her brother’s death, as the lead, a pregnant 15-year-old. Gabriel chooses the pint-size brawler Ryan (Timéo Mahaut) to be Lily’s little brother. Ryan has found a haven with his sister, Mélodie (a terrific Angélique Gernez). Also cast: Jessy (Loïc Pech), an initially cocky and grateful 17-year-old.Gabriel’s interest in marginalized children is authentic, if exploitative. Akoka and Gueret get at that tension by widening their focus to include their character’s lives, as well as glimpses of a wisely wary community.Luminously photographed and nimbly edited, “The Worst Ones” — which won the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 — offers a provocative critique of filmmaking practices. It also presents a subtle defense of the onscreen miracles revealed by the young and the raw.The Worst OnesNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Petite Solange’ Review: Coming of Age as Your Parents Divorce

    Axelle Ropert’s carefully calibrated film from France follows a girl experiencing the pain of having to accept her parents as people with faults.Early in the French film “Petite Solange,” four family members make eye contact with one another in turn in a measured series of close-ups. It’s a quiet expression of intimacy, and the moment establishes their balance and bond as a group. It also illustrates the compassionate gaze of the writer-director, Axelle Ropert, who spins a conventional divorce story into a focused melodrama about the loneliness of youth.Ropert filters the film’s events through the experience of Solange (Jade Springer), a precocious girl on the brink of adolescence. Her parents are in the arts — Aurélia (Léa Drucker) is a stage actress and Antoine (Philippe Katerine) runs a musical instruments shop — and Solange relishes spending time with them in their creative work spaces. Delight gives way to despair, however, once the couple starts fighting and Solange witnesses her home steadily turn from a safe haven into a conflict zone. Jarred by this new reality, Solange retreats socially, and Ropert captures her dejection in a pair of vivid sequences set after sundown in Nantes, where the family lives.The director allows her protagonist’s pain to protract and pulsate without narrative fuss; even scenes of turmoil unspool with a deliberate delicacy. Sometimes, a sentimental score distracts from the careful images. But as Solange’s teenage woes bubble up and then cool to a simmer, Ropert reveals a knack for calibrating emotion. It can be agony to accept one’s parents as people with needs and faults all their own, and Ropert observes Solange’s coming-of-age lucidly and without judgment.Petite SolangeNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘A Good Person’ Review: Zach Braff’s New Chapter

    The filmmaker behind “Garden State” has created a fully drawn female character in Florence Pugh’s grieving addict. But this recovery drama often has too heavy a hand.An interesting litmus test of the shift in our zeitgeist’s consideration of female characters — or of female agency at large — exists in the space between the release of Zach Braff’s “Garden State” in 2004 and the reconstituted consensus around the film in the next decade.The movie remains a charming piece of mid-aughts indie quirkism, but over the years its character Sam, played by Natalie Portman, became emblematic of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope: a hollow tool, conjured by purportedly sensitive male indie fantasies, to help the protagonist on his journey toward self-actualization. That isn’t the case with “A Good Person,” Braff’s latest film. Its strongest quality, in fact, is how fully embodied and how human Florence Pugh is as the grieving Allison, a woman who is undone by a car accident that kills her sister- and brother-in-law-to-be.Yet, there’s another storytelling mechanism Braff has repurposed and coarsely dialed up. Like “Garden State,” in which Andrew (Braff, who wrote and directed the film) has been medicated and stuck his entire life after being involved in the accident that killed his mother, “A Good Person” sees Allison suffocated by guilt and desperately seeking to escape herself through opioids.Soon, she falls into addiction, a downward spiral the film handles quickly. After Allison hits rock bottom, she goes to an A.A. meeting, where she bumps into Daniel (Morgan Freeman), whose son she had planned to marry and whose daughter died in the crash. Daniel, a recovering alcoholic whose sobriety is being tested as he struggles to raise his granddaughter on his own, has always blamed Allison, who was driving the car, for the crash. The unlikely bond Pugh and Freeman create becomes the beating heart of the film, and there is rich emotion in Allison and Daniel’s shared struggles as they sketch the contours of their pain to each other.Allison’s sparkling life before and her descent after the accident are written with such a heavy hand and confused tone, however, that much of the film reads as a crassly manufactured setup for the arc of redemption and healing that follows. A climactic moment at a party involving Allison’s and Daniel’s sobriety is so bizarre and overwrought, you might find yourself shocked to learn it’s not a dream sequence.Braff is going for something broader than indie naturalism, so perhaps the film calls for less subtle brushstrokes. But the result is something that rings with far less thoughtfulness than he’s clearly capable of (particularly in light of the opioid crisis that the film mentions), despite Pugh’s remarkable attempts to ground the story.This isn’t to say that “A Good Person” is disingenuous: Braff wrote the script while wrestling with the deaths of several loved ones in the last few years. But the film would do better understanding that its core sufferings, of mourning and of self-blame, are dramatic enough. Instead it gets lost in raising the stakes to center a big-hearted tale of recovery. The real story is in the quiet moments, where the silence of grief hangs palpably between Allison and Daniel, ever-present and consuming.A Good PersonRated R for drug abuse, language throughout, and some sexual references. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Walk Up’ Review: Good Friends Make Bad Neighbors

    Hong Sang-soo’s latest film traces the relationships in a small Seoul apartment building as they evolve and grow heavier with complications.Just five months after the theatrical release of “The Novelist’s Film,” the fantastically prolific filmmaker Hong Sang-soo offers “Walk Up,” an equally spare and melancholy study of the small moments that define a life. A conversation falters. Another bottle is opened. Three people share drinks and their universe is completely reordered.More than most filmmakers, Hong makes movies that benefit from being considered as pieces of a much greater whole. Since the mid-90s, he has directed more than 30, and each I’ve seen tells a talky, minor-key tale of life at the borders of art and self, of relationships and time, set among a sophisticated subset of Seoul’s contemplative class. Think Eric Rohmer but with a lot more Soju.“Walk Up” follows suit, a simple but not simplistic portrait in black-and-white, tracing the relationships in a small Seoul apartment building as they evolve and grow heavier with complications. At the center is a successful filmmaker, Byungsoo (Kwon Haehyo), who brings his semi-estranged daughter, Jeongsu (Park Miso), to a boozy meeting with an old friend (Lee Hyeyoung) who owns the building. With hindsight, the meeting seems to alter the course of Byungsoo’s life, from triumph toward tragedy. But as Hong shows, the seeds of Byungsoo’s undoing were there all along. Tragedy arrives often by drips, failures by slow accretion.Like many great artists, Hong appears in some ways to be trying to tell the same story over and over, each new film an attempt to solve the same essential riddle about what makes us tick. Just as well. For decades, Giorgio Morandi painted almost nothing but bottles and vases. What sublime and subtle insights arise from the variations!Walk UpNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More