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      ‘Invention’ Review: Patent Pensive

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      In this strange experimental feature from Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez, a grieving daughter investigates the mysterious gadget her father left behind.“Invention” is the sort of D.I.Y. project that’s tough not to admire, even if its aims remain stubbornly private. This strange, personal movie is a mind meld between the experimental filmmaker Courtney Stephens (“Terra Femme”) and the actress Callie Hernandez (“Alien: Covenant”). Stephens is credited as director, while the two share a “film by” credit.Hernandez plays a barely disguised version of herself, “Carrie Fernandez,” who has just lost her father and is now contending with the logistics. The father character, inspired by Hernandez’s own dad, trained as a doctor but later turned to hawking crackpot treatments. He also had a “different” way of handling personal finances, an executor (James N. Kienitz Wilkins) tactfully reminds Carrie. For a start, he conducted business under multiple names.Carrie’s father has bequeathed her the patent for an “electromagnetic healing device,” a contraption that we’re told the Food and Drug Administration has left in legal limbo. Much of “Invention” consists of scenes between Carrie and her father’s associates as she weighs whether the machine was legit — and what to do about it even if it was. “Did you ever use it?” she asks one of the investors (Tony Torn). “Ah, no,” he replies. “I got a stent.”Video clips of Hernandez’s real father pitching treatments on TV and theorizing on how “cells are like your cellphone” are interspersed throughout. The dialogue and the imagery allude to transcendental writers. (“Invention” was shot on 16-millimeter film in Massachusetts.) Periodically, Stephens will cut to moments in which she and the actors break the fourth wall. Whether these meta elements should mean much to those who weren’t involved may be beside the point. “Invention” is committed to finding its own wavelength.InventionNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Coogler and a Dozen Years of Collaborations

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      Of all the storied bonds between visionary directors and their movie star alter egos — Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Pedro Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas, Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams — few have been as seamless as the one between Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan.Since their first meeting, during casting for “Fruitvale Station” (2013), Jordan has starred or appeared in all five features Coogler has directed, including two “Black Panther” movies and “Creed.” Their latest film, “Sinners,” in theaters April 18, raises the ante by assigning Jordan not one part but two — he plays the twin brothers Smoke and Stack, enterprising gangsters who encounter supernatural resistance to the juke joint of their dreams in Jim Crow-era Mississippi.Coogler, a former college football athlete, said he learned the value of a consistent partnership from playing wide receiver.“I knew he was going to be great in the movie,” Coogler said of Jordan in their first collaboration, “Fruitvale Station.”Dana Scruggs for The New York Times“Sometimes I’d have four or five different quarterbacks in a season, and that was always tough,” he said. “It gave me a real appreciation for how important chemistry is when you can find it.”In a joint interview earlier this month, at a cocktail lounge in New York City, Coogler and Jordan broke down their career-long working relationship, film by film. The conversation took an emotional turn during the discussion of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which was made after the death of Chadwick Boseman, star of the original “Black Panther.”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 Voyeurs,’ ‘Cyrano’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Exciting new riffs on 1990s genre movies are among the highlights of this month’s recommendations on your subscription streaming services.‘Cyrano’ (2022)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Edmond Rostand’s late-19th-century play “Cyrano de Bergerac” has proved to be quite a durable text, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise; few things translate as well, no matter the period or genre, than the feeling that the person you love could never feel the same. This adaptation by the director Joe Wright (“Pride & Prejudice”), first presented onstage by the New Group in 2019, changes the source of the title character’s low self-image: Instead of an oversize nose, he is of undersize height. Peter Dinklage is marvelous in the starring role, finding the cockiness and bluster that Cyrano uses to compensate, while showing the beating heart just under that hard surface. He also provides a pleasant baritone for the songs by members of the National, which are the film’s other key deviation from Rostand’s original. They’re a masterstroke, beautifully conveying the longing and regret of this tragic tale.‘The Last Stop in Yuma County’ (2024)Stream it on Paramount+.Three cheers for this A+ premise: The pumps are empty at the last gas station for 100 miles and the truck with the refill is running late, so stranded motorists are killing time at the diner next door — among them, two crooks who made off with a trunkful of bank loot. The writer and director Francis Galluppi works from his own Swiss watch of a script, equally influenced by “The Desperate Hours” and the dusty neo-noirs of the 1990s, where the turns are unpredictable yet organic and precise, and there are chances for every one if its character actors to shine. Snappily paced, delightfully stylish and refreshingly bleak, this movie is an assurance that we’re going to hear much, much more from this gifted first-time filmmaker.‘The Voyeurs’ (2021)Stream it on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.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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      Joan Chen: Exacting Artist, Cool Mom

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      When Joan Chen was in her early 20s she met with the director Ang Lee about starring in his 1993 film “The Wedding Banquet,” a New York-set rom-com about a Taiwanese American in a relationship with another man who marries a woman in need of a green card. Chen was a star in China but had recently moved to Los Angeles, and was intrigued.“Getting married for a green card was something we all kind of thought about,” she said during a recent video interview from her home in San Francisco. “I had such a wedding myself. So it’s a great story.” (She has since remarried.)But it took years to get the funding and Chen never ended up playing the role of the bride. The actress, who turns 64 this month, plays the bride’s mother in the remake directed by Andrew Ahn, in theaters April 18.“I feel like it’s some sort of a karma, it’s some sort of a closure,” she said, her voice growing almost wistful. “It’s also interesting, time passing yet we’re all still here. So fortunate. What a wonderful thing.”Joan Chen in San Francisco. “I’m, in a way, becoming a character actor,” she said.Amy Harrity for The New York TimesThe details of her character, May Chen, are a sign of the changing times: Rather than denying the sexuality of her daughter Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), May is a vocal L.G.B.T.Q. ally who gets down with lion dancers and a drag queen. Angela agrees to marry the boyfriend (Han Gi-chan) of her best friend (Bowen Yang) when the groom agrees to pay for in vitro fertilization treatments for the bride’s girlfriend (Lily Gladstone), in exchange for a chance to stay in the United States.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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      Marvin Levy, Oscar-Winning Publicist to Spielberg, Dies at 96

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      For 42 years, Mr. Levy strategized behind the scenes to promote Steven Spielberg’s movies and ensure that the director was seen as Hollywood’s de facto head of state.Reporters trying to get interviews with Steven Spielberg would sometimes grouse that his publicist’s job amounted to speaking a single word: “No.”But Marvin Levy, who served as Mr. Spielberg’s publicist for 42 years, was responsible for much more than body blocking the fifth estate (which he usually did with a gentlemanly grace). Mr. Spielberg did not become Mr. Spielberg because of his filmmaking alone: For 42 years, Mr. Levy was behind the scenes — promoting, polishing, spinning, safeguarding, strategizing — to ensure that his boss was viewed worldwide as Hollywood’s de facto head of state.In addition to representing him personally, Mr. Levy helped devise and lead publicity campaigns for 32 movies that Mr. Spielberg directed, including several with sensitive subject matter, like “The Color Purple” (1985), “Schindler’s List” (1993) and “Munich” (2005).Mr. Levy died on April 7 at his home in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 96. His death was announced by Mr. Spielberg’s production company Amblin Entertainment.Mr. Levy with his wife, Carol, and Steven Spielberg in 2014.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, via Amblin EntertainmentOver Mr. Levy’s 73-year entertainment career — an eternity in fickle and ageist Hollywood — he worked on more than 150 movies and TV shows. He helped turn “Ben-Hur” (1959), “Taxi Driver” (1976) and “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979) into hits.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

      Jean Marsh, Actress Who Co-Created ‘Upstairs, Downstairs,’ Dies at 90

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      She not only helped develop the hit 1970s show, but also acted in it, and had a decades-long career in film, TV and theater.Jean Marsh, the striking British-born actress who was both the co-creator and a beloved Emmy-winning star of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” the seminal 1970s British drama series about class in Edwardian England, died on Sunday at her home in London. She was 90.The cause was complications of dementia, the filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, her close friend, said.“Upstairs, Downstairs” captured the hearts, minds and Sunday nights of Anglophile PBS viewers decades before “Downton Abbey” was even a gleam in Julian Fellowes’s eye.The show, which ran from 1971 to 1975 in England and from 1974 to 1977 in the United States, focused on the elegant Bellamy family and the staff of servants who kept their Belgravia townhouse running smoothly, according to the precise social standards of Edwardian aristocracy. Ms. Marsh chose the role of Rose, the household’s head parlor maid, a stern but good-hearted Cockney.The New York Times review, in January 1974, was affectionate. John J. O’Connor described the show as “a charmingly seductive concoction” and a “frequently marvelous portrait.” He praised Ms. Marsh for playing Rose with “the perfection of a young Mildred Dunnock.”By the time the show ended its American run, it had won a Peabody Award and seven Emmys. Ms. Marsh herself took home the 1975 Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a drama series.Robert Blake and Ms. Marsh hold up their Emmys for best actor and best actress in a drama series at the Emmy Awards in 1975.Associated PressWe 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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      Alex Garland Pairs With a Veteran to Engage in Realistic ‘Warfare’

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      The filmmaker directed his latest picture with Ray Mendoza, a U.S. Navy veteran of the Iraq War. They wanted to depict, with a sense of urgency, war as it is really experienced.The climactic sequence in last year’s “Civil War,” a movie about an imagined military conflict in the United States, was unusual — and not only because it depicted insurgents storming the White House, breaching the Oval Office and assassinating the president.It was also action shown in a way that films do not often depict. The gun-toting fighters communicate constantly about needing to reload. They awkwardly trade off shooting down hallways. Their rhythm is observably different than what moviegoers are used to.The movie’s writer and director, Alex Garland, whose previous work includes “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” had given the scene’s reins to Ray Mendoza, a U.S. Navy veteran of the Iraq War turned Hollywood military consultant. Mendoza had used combat veterans as extras.“When you saw veterans, in effect, directed by a veteran, something came out of it, which was something that I hadn’t really seen in cinema,” Garland said in a recent interview.It gave Garland an idea. What if, he proposed to Mendoza late into the postproduction of “Civil War,” the two men made a film together, this one entirely depicting combat without typical cinematic trappings like compressed time, character study or traditional plot structure? What if the movie were just 90 minutes of war?Charles Melton, center, is one of the marquee actors in the film.Murray Close/A24We 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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      Watch Rami Malek Explode a Pool in ‘The Amateur’

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      The director James Hawes narrates a sequence from his film.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A glass-bottom pool that straddles two buildings can make for quite a luxurious swim, as long as nobody tries to blow it up.The fate of one high-rise swimmer doesn’t look good in this scene from the spy thriller “The Amateur,” in which Rami Malek plays Charlie Heller, a C.I.A. cryptographer out to avenge his wife’s death. But more than guns and fists, he’s using intelligence and craftiness to get the job done.Here, Charlie encounters one of his targets, Mishka Blazhic (Marc Rissmann), who has been given solo access to a hotel pool for a night swim. Interrogating Mishka, Charlie informs him that he is holding the remote control to a device that is decompressing the air between the sheets of glass at the base of the pool. If he triggers the device, the glass will shatter.Narrating the sequence, the director James Hawes said that there were few locations in the world with pools that sit between two buildings.“We were lucky enough to find a location in London that gave us that,” he said, “but they weren’t going to let us blow it up.”Hawes said that he and his crew used it to shoot a portion of the scene, but then they built a life-size section of the pool in a studio, which allowed them to fill the pool with water and explode it. They even rigged up a stunt person to be sucked back as the bottom gave way.“So a lot of the work is done in camera,” he said, “and only then does VFX start to take over.”Read the “Amateur” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More