Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Zeros and Ones,’ ‘Juliet, Naked’ and More Streaming Gems

      by

      Looking for something different to stream? We have options for you.A new year is upon us and your subscription streaming services have added plenty of new movies — though, at first glance, not much outside of the usual churn-and-turn of titles. But we’ve plucked out a few notable exceptions, an eclectic mixture of action thrillers, romantic comedies, thought-provoking documentaries, and much more.‘Zeros and Ones’ (2021)Stream it on Hulu.Distressingly few major filmmakers took the opportunity to dramatize the particulars of daily life in the Covid-19 pandemic. Abel Ferrara was a notable exception, crafting this lean, mean (less than 90 minutes) story of an American soldier-for-hire (Ethan Hawke) attempting to foil a plot to blow up the Vatican in a locked-down Rome. It sounds like a formula thriller, but Ferrara doesn’t work with formulas; he works with vibes, and the thick sense of paranoia and pandemic-era solitude are palpable and powerful. Plus, Hawke is at the top of his game, portraying not only the leading role but that character’s revolutionary brother, a dual performance that allows the actor to play two types he does especially well: the unhinged wild man and the austere, tightly wound professional.‘Juliet, Naked’ (2018)Stream it on Amazon.If you like your Hawke a little bit lighter, take a look at this charming romantic comedy, adapted from the author Nick Hornby’s 2009 novel. Hornby is best known for “High Fidelity,” a peerless portrait of how a certain type of young man uses pop music to both idealize women, and carefully cultivate an emotional distance from them. “Juliet” plays like what it is: an older, wiser man’s return to those themes, as a longtime fan (Chris O’Dowd) drives his girlfriend (Rose Byrne) into the arms of the musician (Hawke) he idolizes.‘The Homesman’ (2014)Stream it on HBO Max.There’s no questioning Tommy Lee Jones’s place as one of our last, great grizzled leading men, bringing a sense of gruff gravitas and no-nonsense authority to his acting work. Less noted, but just as worthy of acclaim, are his too-occasional forays into filmmaking, most recently with this masterfully assembled adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s Western novel. Jones knows the genre down in his bones, which is perhaps how he pulls off the miraculous balancing act of both serving and subverting its tropes; what appears, at first, to be a “Rooster Cogburn”-style tale of an old coot and a prim lady’s journey through the Wild West reveals itself to be something quite a bit more eccentric, complicated and (gasp) feminist than that.‘The Raid 2’ (2014)Stream it on Netflix.If you’re looking for breathless, relentless action, you can’t do much better than Gareth Evans’s sequel to his 2012 cops-and-crooks extravaganza “The Raid: Redemption.” That film isn’t on Netflix, but narrative continuity isn’t exactly front of mind anyway; Evans is a master of the bone-crunching set piece, the more participants and unlikely the location, the better. The highlight is hard to pin down, but this viewer’s vote goes to the extended subway confrontation between our hero, a man with a baseball bat and a woman with two furiously-flying hammers.‘Gemini’ (2018)Stream it on HBO Max.The writer and director Aaron Katz was best known, in the late 2000s, as one of the primary practitioners of the so-called “mumblecore” movement, but there’s nary a trace of that aesthetic in this sleek, sharp-edged mixture of neo-noir thriller and Hollywood satire. Lola Kirke is endlessly charismatic and empathetic as Jill, the best friend and personal assistant to Heather, a white-hot young actress (Zoë Kravitz, well on her way to embodying the role herself). But when Heather turns up dead and Jill looks like the best suspect, she has to clear her own name — and, in the process, discovers there was much more to Heather than she ever knew.‘Appropriate Behavior’ (2015)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Desiree Akhavan writes, directs and stars in this devastatingly funny, breathtakingly candid and unexpectedly sexy comedy-drama, which caused something of a sensation at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. It’s easy to see why; Akhavan is a singular comic voice, and since she’s playing a variation on herself (a bisexual Brooklynite filmmaker, daughter of immigrants), the picture boasts an offhand candor and casual approach to ethnicity, class and identity that makes it distinctive even among the indie set. She followed it up with the 2018 Sundance winner “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” and remains a filmmaker to keep an eye on.‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.The footage plays out in its entirety right at the beginning: a three-plus minute home movie, shot in 1938 by David Kurtz, in the streets of a pleasant-looking Polish village. Seventy-one years later, Kurtz’s grandson Glenn discovered that badly-decomposing film, and became obsessed with unlocking it. It’s a detective story, attempting to piece together the particulars of who and what we see, solely from what’s in the frame; Bianca Stigter’s documentary sticks to those confines, playing and replaying the film, sped up and slowed down, zoomed in, chopped up and reassembled. But this gives way, as it must, to the horrifying details of what happened in this, one of many Jewish communities wiped out by the Holocaust, and ‘Three Minutes’ is ultimately, chillingly haunted by the terrible gulf between the cheerful people in those images, and what became of them in the years that followed.‘Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool’ (2019)Stream it on Netflix.Stanley Nelson’s snapshot of the jazz icon checks all the expected bio-doc boxes: career highlights, archival footage, insights aplenty both from contemporaries and successors. But “Birth of the Cool” gets an extra kick from the words of Davis himself, with the actor Carl Lumbly voicing juicy (and often expletive-laden) quotes from Davis’s autobiography. And though the dates and names are fully accounted for, Nelson devotes particular energy to pinpointing the power of Davis’s music, and what made it so special; in those sections, he carves out a niche somewhere between screen biography and music criticism. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘RRR’ Picks Up Oscar Nomination for Best Song

      by

      Pop quiz: What are the three R’s?They aren’t reduce, reuse, recycle — this awards season, one of the hottest topics of conversation has quickly become the Telugu-language Indian action spectacular “RRR,” or “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” which picked up an Oscar nomination for best song on Tuesday.The movie, which stars two of India’s most popular actors — Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. — is set in Delhi during the early 1920s and follows two patriotic but philosophically opposed men who team up to rescue a kidnapped girl (Twinkle Sharma) from British colonial officials (Alison Doody and Ray Stevenson).The film was already a worldwide box office success when it was released in March — it was directed by one of India’s most successful filmmakers, S.S. Rajamouli, with a whopping $72 million budget — and grossed $65 million during its opening weekend.But now, it has become the rare Indian hit to catch on with American viewers outside the Indian diaspora, thanks to word-of-mouth social media buzz and an unusual theatrical rerelease strategy.After the film, originally distributed by Sarigama Cinemas, initially played at 1,200 screens across the country in March — and began streaming on Netflix in late May — Dylan Marchetti, the president of the distributor Variance Films, saw its potential crossover appeal when he watched it repeatedly with enthusiastic audiences.So Variance got in touch with Sarigama, and they took the rare step of relaunching the film — sold to moviegoers as an “encoRRRe” — which led to its breakthrough in the United States.Speaking to The Times in August, Cristina Cacioppo, who programmed “RRR” at the Nitehawk Prospect Park in Brooklyn, said it drew moviegoers in the 20-to-30 age range, most from outside the Indian diaspora.“There was an overall wave of joy throughout,” Cacioppo told The Times. “You could feel the room smiling, the jaws dropping.” (More than three hours of Charan and Rao wrestling tigers; pulling off a daring bridge rescue involving a motorcycle, a horse and a flaming train car; and schooling British partygoers as they dance in perfect synchronization in matching suspenders will do that.)Josh Hurtado, a consultant at the independently run Potentate Films who collaborated with Sarigama and Marchetti on a one-night-only theatrical revival of “RRR” in June, told The Times that many attendees praised the film for the same reasons that had previously discouraged them from watching new Indian movies: “long run times, song and dance numbers, and ridiculous action” he said. “People come out saying they wish that this three-hour movie were longer.”The film also gained a robust afterlife on TikTok, with its earwormy syncopated dance number “Naatu Naatu” (Telugu for “Native Native”), becoming a viral hit thanks to Charan and Rama Rao’s playful syncopated dance moves and infectious singing. (The lyrics are by Chandrabose, while M.M. Keeravani composed the music.)After winning a Golden Globe for best original song earlier this month, as well as a Critics Choice Award for best foreign language film and a New York Film Critics Circle award for best director for Rajamouli, the film has its sights squarely trained on the big one: a best song Oscar for Charan and NTR Jr.’s joyous extravaganza of shoulder rolls, arm pumps and hook steps. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Ke Huy Quan Says His Oscar Nomination Is ‘So Unbelievably Surreal’

      by

      On Tuesday morning, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and their “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert met on a video call to watch the announcement of the Oscar nominations together, and as the sci-fi hit racked up each of its stunning 11 nominations, the group would toast, gasp, cheer and yell.“It was so loud, we could barely hear what anyone was saying,” said a laughing Quan, who received his first Oscar nomination Tuesday for playing Waymond Wang, the sweet-natured husband to Yeoh’s multiverse-saving laundromat owner. How did he react when his name was read?“I was jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my voice, exactly the same way that I did when I got the phone call from my agent that the Daniels wanted me to play Waymond,” Quan said during a phone interview conducted a half hour after the announcement. He described Tuesday as one of the happiest days of his life. “It’s so surreal. I am ecstatic.”“Everything Everywhere” represents a major career comeback for Quan, who rose to fame as a child actor in films like “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” but quit acting for decades when he found roles for an Asian actor hard to come by. While watching “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, Quan began to mull a return, and two weeks after asking an agent friend to represent him, he was sent “Everything Everywhere” and went out on his first audition in years.Now, he’s Oscar-nominated for it, and alongside Yeoh, his co-star Stephanie Hsu, and “The Whale” actress Hong Chau, history has been made: There have never been so many actors of Asian descent nominated in the same year.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.“I’ve been watching the Oscars for more than 30 years now, and every single year, I would imagine myself being on the red carpet, being in that room with everybody,” Quan said. “Of course, as the years went by, the chance of it ever becoming true slowly dissipated. And when I stepped away from acting for so long, I didn’t think that dream would ever come back. So to be here today, to hear the announcement, it is so unbelievably surreal. It’s crazy, and I’m speechless.”Opposite Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Quan planned to spend the day celebrating with family: “For so many years, they were so worried about me. To see how happy they are means the world to me.Allyson Riggs/A24, via Associated PressLike the “CODA” star Troy Kotsur last year, Quan has cruised through the season picking up every supporting-actor trophy in sight, from the Gothams to the Golden Globes to the Critics Choice Awards. It’s an outcome he never could have foreseen when he wrapped the film in early 2020 and then, over the pandemic, failed to book even a single follow-up role.“That year and a half was horrible because every tape we would send in, we would get no response back,” he said. “I was so afraid I was going to lose my health insurance. I called my agent, saying, ‘Get me anything, it doesn’t matter what, I need to make the minimum to get health insurance.’”But Quan’s taped auditions still came to naught, and he lost his insurance just a few months before “Everything Everywhere” came out in March 2021. “I was so dispirited,” he said, remembering a desperate call he placed to “Everything Everywhere” producer Jonathan Wang: “I said, ‘You’ve seen the movie. Can you please tell me, am I any good in it?’ He said, ‘Ke, why are you asking such a stupid question?’ And I said, ‘Because nobody wants to hire me.’ And Jonathan says, ‘Well, you just wait. Just wait until the movie comes out.’”Since then, Quan said, it’s been a sea change in how he’s been perceived. People who used to stop him on the street and ask, “Are you the kid from ‘Indiana Jones’?” now recognize him as Waymond from “Everything Everywhere,” and he will soon be seen in Season 2 of “Loki” and the forthcoming series “American Born Chinese.”“It’s been the greatest, wildest ride,” said Quan, who was eager to celebrate the day’s success with his wife, Echo — “We didn’t think a day like this would ever, ever happen” — and to call family members who had stuck by him and sent proud texts all through awards season.“For so many years, they were so worried about me,” he said. “To see how happy they are means the world to me, so I just want to spend the day with my family.”As I brought our call to a close, something new dawned on Quan, and he began to talk … well, all at once.“Kyle! From this day forward, I will always be ‘Oscar-nominated actor Ke Huy Quan’!” he said. “How great is that? Oh my gosh, I see it all the time when I go watch trailers, when people talk about actors — ‘Oscar-nominated actor Leonardo DiCaprio.’ It sounds so nice. And now, my name is going to sound like that, too.”He laughed in disbelief. “Awesome!” Quan said. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Filming Eugene O’Neill When the Elements (and Investors) Don’t Cooperate

      by

      Starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris, Jonathan Kent’s adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” started production, only to lose key financing.WICKLOW, Ireland — “Strong winds, gradually subsiding” read the call sheet.Jessica Lange, Ed Harris and Jonathan Kent, the director of the forthcoming film version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” were standing in a rehearsal room here in early November, listlessly running through lines. Harris, playing James Tyrone, an aging former matinee idol, touched his toes and did squats as he spoke, while Lange, playing his fragile, morphine-addicted wife, Mary, flitted distractedly around the room.Producers and assistants, phones glued to ears, bustled in and out, anxiously monitoring the stormy weather that prevented the cast and crew from heading to the set: a house modeled on the Monte Cristo Cottage in Connecticut, the seaside home of O’Neill’s family that provides the setting of this autobiographical play. The go-ahead came several hours later. The shoot finished close to midnight as Kent and the cast tried to push through the day’s packed schedule.It wasn’t the first storm the production had weathered, literally and metaphorically. One day after filming began on Sept. 19, the lead producer, Gabrielle Tana, discovered that their biggest chunk of financing had fallen through. “I had to go to the set and tell them we were shutting down,” she said.On location in Ireland, the Tyrones’ home is based on Eugene O’Neill’s seaside family home in Connecticut.Patrick RedmondTana (whose credits include “Thirteen Lives” and “The Dig”) said it was one of the worst moments of her long career. “I let them know I wasn’t giving up, and was already in conversations with investors,” she said.During the nail-biting weeks that followed, she spent endless hours in meetings trying to drum up the money. Remarkably, the cast — including Ben Foster and Colin Morgan, playing the Tyrone sons — as well as most of the crew and production team, never wavered in their commitment to the project. A handful of staff members, including the director of photography and some production design workers, weren’t able to stay with the production. The rest waited it out in this coastal region about an hour south of Dublin.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.“We were shocked at first, of course,” said Lange, who played Mary Tyrone in 2000 in London, and won a Tony Award for the role in a production directed by Kent that transferred from the West End to Broadway in 2016. “But never once did we think it wasn’t going to happen. We just hung in, went to the pub, took long walks. We really became friends and cared deeply for one another, because we were going through the same thing.” She added, “I think that in some way it added to our intensity and passion for doing this.”Three weeks of waiting to restart, Harris said, allowed him “to sit back, think about the character, calm down, and just be this dude rather than worrying about playing such a classic, important role.”The actors also made calls. Foster made a connection to the British theater producer Bill Kenwright, who had worked with Lange on productions of “Long Day’s Journey,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie” in the West End and on Broadway.Ben Foster, left, with Colin Morgan, helped make calls when crucial financing fell through.MGM“I knew we would figure it out,” Foster said. “If we had to do it as a sock puppet show, we’d do that till we raised the money.”The sock puppet show was averted; Kenwright came through. “He was our knight in shining armor,” Tana said. A few other knights had to be found too, including the film producer Gleb Fetisov.First adapted for the screen in 1962, “Long Day’s Journey” is Kent’s debut feature. “This is, probably, the greatest American play, the invention of the dysfunctional family drama, and when you do it in the theater, there is a sort of reverence from the audience,” Kent said. “I thought that perhaps with film, one could shred that reverence a bit and allow its rawness and immediacy through.”Then he factored in current events that coincided, like the opioid epidemic and the coronavirus lockdown. “Here are these four, addicted not just to drugs and alcohol, but to each other, endlessly going over the past, the missed opportunities and failure, trapped in a house by the sea,” he said. “Somehow it felt resonant.”Lange said that she and Kent first talked about a film version during the Broadway run. “I immediately thought, yes!” she said, adding that Mary Tyrone “gets under your skin like no other character I have ever played; you never come to the end of it. And because of the nature of filmmaking, there is so much more subtlety that can be brought to light: the expression in the eyes, the subtle shift in the voice.”Tana first heard about the idea when the actor Ralph Fiennes, a friend of Kent’s, asked her to help with the project, which is scheduled for release this fall. She was intrigued and engaged the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire — his “Good People” had been directed by Kent — to adapt the drama, which needed to shrink from an almost-four-hour theatrical event to an under-two-hour film.“There was never an agenda of ‘Let’s improve this,’” Lindsay-Abaire said in a video call from New York, adding that there isn’t a word of text in the film that wasn’t written by O’Neill. “It was the opposite: Let’s maintain what we love while telling the story in a different medium. It wasn’t using a machete as much as a scalpel. We took the dramatic Hippocratic oath: Do no harm to O’Neill!”Film, he pointed out, has communication tools that the stage doesn’t have. “You can sometimes replace four lines with a close-up,” he said. “We kept asking, does the character need to say that, or can they just act it?” He and Kent also discussed ways to make the drama more cinematic, by withholding some information that O’Neill reveals early. “Ghosts, hauntings, what is Mary doing up there? We wanted to lean into some mystery, to hint at things and reveal them more slowly,” Lindsay-Abaire said.Ed Harris joined the production when Gabriel Byrne had a scheduling conflict. Jessica Lange first discussed the idea of an adaptation when she performed the play on Broadway.MGMGabriel Byrne, who had starred opposite Lange onstage, was slated to reprise the role, but he fell out due to scheduling conflicts. Tana emailed Ed Harris, who had appeared with Lange in the movie “Sweet Dreams” almost 40 years earlier. He said yes immediately. “As tough as it was when the money fell out, it was the most rewarding film acting experience I’ve had in quite a while,” Harris said. Kent, he added, “gave us the freedom to just be those people — that it wasn’t a sacred text, that this was about human beings, not a dried-up historical piece.”Kent said that he had considered updating the 1912 setting, but had decided that too many fundamental details would have to be altered. Still, “to the designer’s chagrin, I asked that the costumes not be too ‘period,’” he said. “Whatever the setting, the text makes it a living, contemporary thing.”Two weeks of rehearsal before the start of the shoot allowed the four main actors to begin to build a family dynamic. “I immediately fell head over heels for my parents,” Foster said, adding that he had brought some foraged greenery from the actual Monte Cristo cottage as a talisman.“The rehearsal time was all about finding out what might work for character,” Morgan said. “A director who isn’t as theater-versed as Jonathan might work out camera angles first, then what the character does within. But I think the best directors work so that the camera is actor-led, and that’s how Jonathan approached it.”Then, almost immediately, came the hiatus and a roller coaster of emotions. “The bonding of that time was actually wonderful,” Foster said. “Historically I don’t socialize a lot with fellow actors. But in this case, it really did become a family.”The difficulty of making the film, Tana said, is indicative of the changing cinematic landscape. “It’s really hard now to make this kind of literary, straightforward, old-school independent movie,” she said. “There is so much value to this: these great, great actors doing a great American play that every kid studying literature will be able to watch. But it’s a sea change moment in our field in the way we access content, how it is monetized, where the resources are.”Kent agreed that the film goes against the current grain, but added: “We all have mothers, fathers, our terrible sense of failures and disappointments and guilt. I think what we crave from film or theater is truth about our human experience. There is an audience for that.” More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘American Masters: Roberta Flack’

      by

      The ABC reality dating show returns for its 27th season, and the PBS series looks at the singer Roberta Flack.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, Jan. 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. This long-running reality dating series is back for its 27th season. This one includes visits to the Bahamas, England, Hungary and Thailand, as Zach Shallcross, a 26-year-old tech executive who has also appeared on “The Bachelorette,” dates 30 women.Christian Bale and Charlotte Le Bon in “The Promise.”Jose Haro/Open Road FilmsTHE PROMISE (2016) 6:45 p.m. on HBO Signature. Terry George, the director of the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” explores another genocide in “The Promise.” Set in 1915 in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, the film follows a love triangle between an Armenian medical student, Mikael (Oscar Isaac); a French-Armenian artist, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon); and an American journalist, Chris (Christian Bale). In her review for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis called the film “a big, barren wartime romance that approaches the Armenian genocide with too much calculation and not nearly enough heat.” But viewers with an interest in the subject matter might still find the movie absorbing.TuesdayRoberta Flack in “American Masters: Roberta Flack.”Leroy Patton/Ebony Collection, via Warner Music GroupAMERICAN MASTERS: ROBERTA FLACK 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). “There isn’t another pop-soul singer around with the versatility and refinement of Roberta Flack,” the critic Stephen Holden wrote in The Times in 1981 after watching Flack perform at Carnegie Hall. Her music has topped Billboard charts with No. 1 singles like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and this special documents her rise to stardom and her experience as a Black woman both in and out of the studio. Along with home movies, archival photos and unreleased music, the documentary includes interviews with Flack herself, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Yoko Ono and Angela Davis.WednesdayNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INVESTIGATES: LSD & THE PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION 10:15 p.m. on National Geographic. On Jan. 1, Oregon became the first state to legalize the adult use of psilocybin mushrooms (long known as “magic” mushrooms) amid a rising recognition of their ability to improve the effects of a variety of mental health conditions, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. This timely special dives into exactly how psychedelics are being used to heal modern ills after a decades-long ban.ThursdayTHE CHOSEN (1981) 10 p.m. on TCM. Set in 1940s Brooklyn, “The Chosen” is a coming-of-age story that follows an unlikely friendship between Danny (Robby Benson), a Hasidic Jew, and Reuven (Barry Miller), a more secular Jewish schoolboy. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the film, based on the Chaim Potok book by the same name, is at its best when it “describes the Hasidic culture through Danny and his reactions to the secular world.”FridayIN THEIR OWN WORDS: CHUCK BERRY 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Through a collection of original singles written and performed in the latter half of the 1950s, Chuck Berry shaped the nascent genre of rock ’n’ roll while staying true to his roots and experiences. Using interviews with his widow, son and grandson, along with Berry’s colleagues and other musicians, this documentary follows Berry’s journey from growing up in segregated St. Louis to becoming a foundational figure in 20th century popular music.SaturdayChadwick Boseman in “Black Panther.”Marvel StudiosBLACK PANTHER (2018) 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on FX. “Black Panther” became the highest-grossing film of all time by a Black director when it was released in 2018. Featuring Chadwick Boseman (who died in 2020), Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o and Daniel Kaluuya, the movie follows T’Challa (Boseman), the heir to the throne of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, as he and his allies defend against outside challengers. But the film is about much more than that. “Race matters in ‘Black Panther,’” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times, “and it matters deeply, not in terms of Manichaean good guys and bad but as a means to explore larger human concerns about the past, the present and the uses and abuses of power.” Its highly anticipated sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” is currently in theaters.SundayGOOD WILL HUNTING (1997) 5:50 p.m. on Showtime. This classic is what Janet Maslin described in her Times review in 1997 as a “Cinderella story.” The titular Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he solves a near-impossible math problem left on a chalkboard. The film follows Will as those around him, including a psychotherapist played by Robin Williams, learn of his genius, and he reckons with the direction of his future. “The script’s bare bones are familiar,” wrote Maslin, “yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart.” More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Edward R. Pressman, Film Producer Who Boosted Many Careers, Dies at 79

      by

      Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Kathryn Bigelow and other directors were just starting when he took on their projects.Edward R. Pressman, a prolific film producer who guided some of the earliest movies by Brian De Palma, Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow and other leading directors, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 79.The cause was respiratory failure, his family said.Mr. Pressman was producer or executive producer on almost 100 movies across a range of genres. His career began in the late 1960s and by 1988 had already resulted in enough acclaimed films that he was the subject of an 11-movie retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.The New York Times said then that he “has been distinguished by his dedication to both highly literate and decidedly quirky movie projects during the last two decades.” And he still had some three decades and more than 60 movies ahead of him.Jack Nicholson as the labor leader Jimmy Hoffa in the 1992 film “Hoffa.” Mr. Pressman persuaded David Mamet to write a screenplay, recruited Mr. Nicholson to star and made an unconventional choice for director: the comic actor Danny DeVito.Liaison/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Pressman’s name is on films about intriguing real-life figures — “Hoffa” (1992), with Jack Nicholson as the Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa; “The Man Who Knew Infinity” (2015), which starred Dev Patel as the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan; “Paterno” (2018), the HBO film in which Al Pacino portrayed the football coach Joe Paterno. It is on action fantasies like “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), the movie that brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to stardom. It is on scalding crime dramas like “Bad Lieutenant” (1992) and “American Psycho” (2000).His biggest claim to fame, especially early in his career, may have been his willingness to take a chance on unproven talent.One of his first forays as a producer was a movie about a murder that may or may not have been committed by one of two formerly conjoined twins, “Sisters” (1972) — Mr. De Palma’s breakthrough in the creepy crime genre. (Mr. Pressman was also a producer on a 2006 remake, directed by Douglas Buck.) Two years later, he produced Mr. De Palma’s comic drama about a disfigured composer who sells his soul, “Phantom of the Paradise,” which has become a cult favorite.Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in “Badlands” (1973), the first feature directed by Terrence Malick. Mr. Pressman said he was partial, especially early in his career, to movies like this one that were “the expression of a single vision.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesIn between those two he produced the first feature directed by Mr. Malick, “Badlands” (1973), which starred Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, both still early in their careers, as criminals on the run. In 1981 he produced the horror film “The Hand,” the first studio feature directed by Mr. Stone.In 1990 he and Mr. Stone were producers on the crime drama “Blue Steel,” a film by another relative newcomer, Ms. Bigelow; 30 years later she became the first woman to win the directing Oscar, for “The Hurt Locker.” Mr. Pressman also took a chance on David Byrne, the lead singer of Talking Heads, producing Mr. Byrne’s feature debut as a director, the offbeat comedy “True Stories” (1986).Whatever project he was involved in, Mr. Pressman generally avoided the hands-on approach some other producers favor.“The hardest thing I’ve learned over the years is that I’m getting paid a lot of money to produce a movie, but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing,” he told The New York Times in 1992, when he was making “Hoffa.” “I don’t need to impose myself.”Nonetheless, he knew he played a vital role.“It’s the creative urge that makes me work,” he told American Film magazine for a 1988 article. “The pleasure is, to some extent, vicarious, but it’s no less creative for that. It is creating a world by bringing together creative financing with creative filmmakers. In a sense, producing can be compared to conceptual art.”Although Mr. Pressman and his company, Pressman Film, worked with major studios, he was partial, especially early in his career, to independent films — movies that were “the expression of a single vision,” as he put it in a 1989 interview with SBS of Australia, like “Badlands,” which was both directed and written by Mr. Malick.Other times, he viewed his job as bringing together the right director, writer and actor, as with “Hoffa” — he persuaded David Mamet to write a screenplay, recruited Mr. Nicholson to star and, after a few other candidates proved not to be a good fit, made an unconventional choice for director: the comic actor Danny DeVito.“I think of myself as a catalyst in attracting the key elements,” he told The Times.And sometimes he was the person who validated a director’s vision, as he was for Ms. Bigelow on “Blue Steel,” which, in addition to directing, she wrote with Eric Red.“The script for ‘Blue Steel’ was rejected multiple times; the general response was, ‘Could the NYC police officer be a man instead of a woman?’” Ms. Bigelow said by email. “I said, no. Then Ed Pressman agreed. Jaimie Lee Curtis played the officer. Ed offered a lifeline.”Charlie Sheen, left, and Michael Douglas on the set of “Wall Street” (1987), one of many movies on which Mr. Pressman worked with the director Oliver Stone.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty ImagesEdward Rambach Pressman was born on April 11, 1943, in Manhattan. His parents, Jack and Lynn (Rambach) Pressman, founded the Pressman Toy Corporation, and, especially after his father died when he was a teenager, there was some expectation that Edward would go into the family business, but his interests veered to other things.At Stanford University, he studied philosophy, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1965, and he first started thinking about a career in the movie business.“I had a roommate my senior year whose father was a director,” he told American Film in 1991, “and we’d talk about making films.”The prospect of actually doing so seemed remote, he said, but it became a reality when, studying for a year at the London School of Economics, he met Paul Williams, a fellow American who was going to Cambridge and who shared his growing interest in films.“I thought he was, you know, Cecil B. De Mille,” Mr. Pressman said, “and he thought I was Louis Mayer.”They jointly produced a short that Mr. Williams wrote and directed, “Girl” (1967). Two years later they combined again on a feature, “Out of It,” again written and directed by Mr. Williams; Jon Voigt was in the cast, as he was for Mr. Pressman’s next project with Mr. Williams, “The Revolutionary” (1970).Mr. Williams had only a limited career after that, but Mr. Pressman was on his way.His later movies included Mr. Stone’s “Wall Street” (1987), a defining movie of the 1980s. It was while making Mr. Stone’s “The Hand” that Mr. Pressman met Annie McEncroe, who was in the cast (for most of her movie career she was billed as Annie McEnroe); they married in 1983. She survives him, along with their son, Sam Pressman, an executive at Pressman Film; a sister, Ann Markelson; and a brother, Jim. Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), directed by John Milius and produced by Mr. Pressman. In addition to producing prestige films, Mr. Pressman liked making movies based on pulp magazine and comic book characters.Universal Pictures-Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty ImagesIn addition to advancing the careers of directors and actors, Mr. Pressman advanced a genre: He was big on making movies based on pulp magazine and comic book characters, something that was not as common when he began doing it in the early 1980s as it is today, in the age of digital effects.“Conan the Barbarian” and its sequel, “Conan the Destroyer” (1984), were based on the pulp character created in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard, and Mr. Pressman’s comics-inspired films included “The Crow” (1994) and several sequels, as well as “Judge Dredd” (1995).“Comic books, video games, interactive software — these are all areas where artists can create with great freedom and imagination,” he told Business Wire, prophetically, in 1993. “They will be a major part of the motion picture industry’s future.” More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Wandering Earth II’ Review: It Wanders Too Far

      by

      The audacious sequel to Frant Gwo’s 2019 sci-fi blockbuster follows survivors working to avert planetary disaster, but it loses much of the glee of its predecessor.Upon its release, “The Wandering Earth,” Frant Gwo’s 2019 film about a dystopia in which Earth is perilously pushed through space, was minted as China’s first substantial, domestic sci-fi blockbuster, with the box office returns to prove it.The film was entertaining enough, but its ambitious scope had something of an empty gloss to it, partly because the story’s drama wasn’t grounded in anything beyond the showy cataclysm. Its audaciously messy sequel, “The Wandering Earth II,” seems to have taken note and sprinted, aimlessly, entirely in the other direction. Losing all of the glee of its predecessor, the movie instead offers nearly three hours of convoluted story lines, undercooked themes and a tangle of confused, glaringly state-approved political subtext.Boasting a bigger budget and greater expectations — the Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau has been added to the cast — “Wandering Earth II” is, narratively, a prequel. Gwo’s follow-up takes place years before the events of the first film and focuses on the United Earth Government’s initial efforts to push Earth out of our solar system, a move intended to avoid planetary disaster. It sets up flimsy ideas about dystopian geopolitics, man versus machine, and the nature of human consciousness (partly as a back story to the “2001: A Space Odyssey”/evil HAL 9000 knockoff plot of the first film).This is all just in the first hour of setup, before the film does a fast-forward to the next conflict, years later, when humankind needs to nuke the Moon. The premise might be laughable, but silly narrative ideas didn’t get in the way of a good time in the first film. It’s hard to say how much of a true cinematic achievement “The Wandering Earth” was when it gave China its very own “Armageddon,” but after this sequel trips over its armful of melodramatic plotlines and conspicuously nationalist messaging, you’re left wishing you just savored the mindless fun the first time around.The Wandering Earth IINot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 53 minutes. In theaters. More