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      ‘Annual Animation Show of Shows’ Review: A Mix of Whimsy and Dread

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      This festival’s 22nd edition covers themes of crisis, both personal and planetary, with short works from the likes of Gil Alkabetz and Frédéric Back.In 2016, the celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki was shown footage of animation generated by artificial intelligence. In it, a humanoid form slithers back and forth, its movements startlingly alien. Far from being impressed, Miyazaki was deeply disturbed. To this most humane of artists, the demonstration was “an insult to life.”Thankfully, Miyazaki is unlikely to be offended by the examples of short-form animation presented in the 22nd edition of “The Annual Animation Show of Shows.” Curated by the producer Ron Diamond, the chosen films (nine recent, plus one restored classic) feature multiple techniques (none of them assisted by A.I.) and worldwide talent. Themes include crises both personal and planetary, in tones ranging from whimsical to hopeful to vaguely apocalyptic. Unsurprisingly, the pressures of modern life loom large, with more than one short stressing our dependency on the environment and one another.Two of the sweetest address emotional connections with childlike simplicity. In “Aurora,” the Canadian director Jo Meuris, supported by a lovely musical score and endearing stick-figure drawings, narrates the story of a little girl’s love for a horse. And in the ingeniously evocative “Ties,” the Russian animator Dina Velikovskaya shows how a daughter leaving for college can be the literal thread that unravels the life she has left behind.While none of the offerings directly references the pandemic, one of my favorites, Geoffroy de Crécy’s “Empty Places,” drifts past on a melancholy, meditative mood and world-without-us images. A turntable playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” endlessly repeats; unclaimed luggage circles aimlessly on an airport carousel. The film’s deserted, pastel-hued spaces have a poignancy that’s echoed in “Beseder (Good and Better),” by the Israeli animator Gil Alkabetz, who died earlier this year, and the musician Tova Gertner. Together, they weave gentle song lyrics and artfully distorted figures into surreal vignettes on the stubbornness of pessimism.In general, the vibe is subdued, with several of the more abstract inclusions — like Jeanne Apergis’s “Zoizoglyphe,” whose sounds and images align to portray crowds of birdlike figures panicked by an outsider — demanding more than one viewing to parse. It’s something of a relief, then, to encounter the clarity and earthy realism of Gísli Darri Halldórsson’s “Yes-People (Ja Folkio),” the collection’s sole comedy. Resounding with the familiar grunts, sighs and orgasmic shrieks of the residents of a thin-walled apartment building as they go about their daily lives, this primary-colored charmer delivers a timely plea for tolerance. Even when your neighbors are embarrassingly lusty.Bringing up the rear — and claiming one-third of the compilation’s 90-minute running time — is the English version of the Canadian director Frédéric Back’s digitally remastered, 1987 Oscar winner, “The Man Who Planted Trees.” Buoyed by Christopher Plummer’s velvety narration, the movie follows a lone Alpine shepherd as he plants thousands of acorns, his industry finally rewarded by a forest that transforms his desolate surroundings. Based on a 1953 fable by Jean Giono, Back’s beautifully impressionistic drawings make a simple argument for environmental renewal and individual agency. The film’s idealization of a pared-down life might feel dated, but its do-something message is one that never goes out of style.The 22nd Annual Animation Show of ShowsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘A Man Called Otto’ Review: Tom Hanks Learns Life Lessons

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      Going against nice-guy type (at first), the star plays a misanthrope who’s pulled into caring for a neighboring family in need.In 2016, reviewing the film “A Man Called Ove” for this newspaper, I mused: “Sweden’s official entry for a best foreign-language film at the Academy Awards proves that Swedish pictures can be just as sentimental and conventionally heartwarming as Hollywood ones.”That movie, based on a best-selling Swedish novel, is about a thoroughgoing grump who becomes suicidal after the death of his wife, until interactions with new neighbors soften his heart. One supposes an American remake was inevitable, and here it is, directed by Marc Forster and starring Tom Hanks, with the main character renamed Otto.Usually U.S. remakes of foreign films tend to homogenize the source material. But “A Man Called Otto” is not only more bloated than the Swedish film, it’s more outré, in a way that’s hard to pin down.Forster handles the flashback of the back story (in which the star’s son, Truman Hanks, plays a younger Otto) in gauzy-arty fashion. When the older Otto — Hanks reaches back to his excellent work in “Catch Me If You Can” to nail down the man’s overarching irritability — contemplates his happy marriage, his mind always goes back to its earliest times. It’s curious, until the film reveals why it has avoided more recent memories, but by then the omission feels like a withholding cheat.Otherwise, obviousness rules the day here. When Otto visits an incapacitated former friend, the soundtrack spins Kenny Dorham’s version of the jazz chestnut “Old Folks.” Which is always nice to hear, admittedly. Later, a teenager initially upbraided by Otto tells him that Otto’s wife, who had been a schoolteacher, “was the only person who didn’t treat me like a freak, because I’m transgender.” As the television icon Marcia Brady once put it, “Oh my nose!”A Man Called OttoRated PG-13 for themes and language. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Treasure Planet’ at 20: Disney’s Failed Space Odyssey Deserved to Soar

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      This maligned flight of fancy contains a trove of underrated accomplishments worthy of reappraisal.Retro futuristic sailing ships and dazzling action scenes failed to entice audiences when Disney’s “Treasure Planet” opened in theaters on Thanksgiving weekend 20 years ago.The interstellar adventure followed an angsty teenager, Jim Hawkins (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), his deceitful cyborg mentor, John Silver (Brian Murray), and a crew of aliens and anthropomorphic animals across dangerous space phenomena and celestial bodies to find riches in a remote location. The stellar voice cast also featured Emma Thompson as the strict Captain Amelia and Martin Short as the talking robot B.E.N.For the directors Ron Clements and John Musker, who were responsible for some of the studio’s most profitable animated releases including “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin,” this outer space retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s seminal novel “Treasure Island” had been a beloved brainchild for 17 years before its fateful release in 2002.Over the five-day holiday weekend, the space odyssey took in only $16.7 million at the domestic box office, on a budget of $140 million, as well as plenty of unfavorable reviews. Analysts scrambled to determine the cause of such a cataclysmic financial disappointment.Some experts considered it a casualty of an oversaturated family market (“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and “The Santa Clause 2” were still occupying screens), or perhaps it was a victim of a self-serious marketing campaign with a troublemaker animated protagonist.At the time, the Variety critic Andy Klein praised the visuals as up to the “studio’s best,” but felt the “film’s total appeal may be undercut by a script that rarely feels inspired.” Roger Ebert wasn’t taken with the adaptation, writing that “pirate ships and ocean storms and real whales (as opposed to space whales) are exciting enough.”Other experts thought of it as further proof of young viewers’ resistance to animated features in the science fiction genre after the stumbles of “Titan A.E.,” released in 2000, and “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” which debuted in 2001. And still some blamed video games for having captured the attention of preadolescent boys — the perceived target audience. The most concerned went as far as to suggest that Disney should rethink its entire investment in animation. (As we now know, the studio didn’t yield, but two decades later its $180 million sci-fi saga “Strange World” stumbled on the same weekend, bringing in only $18.6 million this past Thanksgiving.)The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.Despite the troubled history of “Treasure Planet,” this maligned flight of fancy contains a trove of underrated accomplishments worthy of reappraisal. Both its technologically advanced visuals and the poignancy of its interpersonal conflicts make it a bright anomaly in the constellation of early 2000s animation that deserved to soar.Told in a world where 18th-century designs and futuristic stylization collide, this is the story of a teenage hero evolving from a boy into a man. Constantly straddling the line between the old and the new, in form and in narrative, Musker and Clements steered the literary classic into the new millennium and beyond the stars.The interstitial essence that defines the film is also reflected in the craftsmanship behind it. An unsung triumph of technical innovation, “Treasure Planet” marked a turning point in the use of 3-D computer graphics in Disney animated features.The veteran animator Glen Keane’s work on John Silver highlighted this transition. The pirate’s body was animated by hand while his bionic arm came to life via computer-generated imagery.Most of the characters, with the exception of the robot B.E.N., were hand-drawn and inhabited virtual sets conceived through a process known as “deep canvas,” which allows artists to draw detailed 3-D environments, for a striking hybrid aesthetic.A sequence where the main vessel, RLS Legacy (named after Robert Louis Stevenson), must traverse a dangerous supernova serves as imposing example of one of the many instances in which this visionary combination of modern tools and old-fashioned handmade animation astounds. The traditionally animated sailors face the realistically rendered fiery supernova as it becomes a black hole for an action-packed set piece full of interplanetary explosions.Among the final Disney productions to implement substantial 2-D components, “Treasure Planet” was caught between the past and the future of animation.By the early 2000s, the advent of 3-D computer graphic animation as preferred cost-cutting approach over hand-drawn animation had begun to take hold with competitors like DreamWorks, who found success with the Oscar-winning “Shrek,” or Blue Sky Studios, with its box-office hit “Ice Age.”Outside of its irreplicable conception, “Treasure Planet” also tapped into adolescent woes that powerfully spoke to many teens because it treated the flood of emotions young people grapple with as legitimate. The hero here was rough around the edges.For their intergalactic coming-of-age tale, the directors turned Hawkins into a rebellious 15-year-old with a braided rat tail who surfs the skies on a solar-powered board. His father left when he was a child and his loving but worried mother can’t seem to get through to him. To find himself and mature, this brooding heartthrob must leave on an epic quest.Back when it hit theaters, observers may have deemed this version of Jim an unsympathetic lead, but it’s precisely his temperamental attitude, defiance toward authority and guarded vulnerability that make his unconventionally heroic character profoundly relatable.Though not a musical, “Treasure Planet” features a touching montage to the tune of the singer’s John Rzeznik’s “I’m Still Here,” a song written for the film, that bridges Hawkins’s abandonment trauma and his burgeoning relationship with Silver, a figure filling that paternal void.That aching search for validation — the need for a flawed role model to tell you how proud they are of you — comes across with a deep emotional maturity in Musker and Clements’s passion project, written with Rob Edwards.Months after its disastrous stint in cinemas, “Treasure Planet” received an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature, an accolade that, according to reports, came as a surprise to those at Disney. The worldwide gross was a meager $109.5 million. That it was met with disinterest in its time is a tragic outcome for one of the most indelibly out-of-the-box efforts Disney has ever produced.Still underappreciated but not entirely forgotten among those who would discover it on home video growing up, the movie embodies the pioneering spirit of honoring, but still surpassing, what was done before in order to reach new heights.That’s what Hawkins and his band of extraterrestrial misfits are after, and exactly what the pair of seasoned storytellers that brought them to life did with the source material, warts and all. More

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      Stream These 7 Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in January

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      Among the gems leaving for U.S. subscribers next month are two irreverent TV adaptations and the last movie from one of the most successful filmmakers of the 1970s.Streaming services typically clear the deck at the end of the calendar year, changing out significant chunks of their movie and television libraries for new titles, and December 2022 was no exception — not leaving a whole lot for Netflix in the United States to lose in January. But there are a handful of worthwhile items to stream while you can, including an unconventional biopic, two irreverent TV adaptations, two sleeper series and the last movie from one of the most successful filmmakers of the 1970s. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘CHIPS’ (Jan. 12)This R-rated buddy comedy from the actor-turned-filmmaker Dax Shepard doesn’t quite replicate the shaggy charm of his amiable 2012 crime drama “Hit and Run,” but thankfully, “CHIPS” (2017) pays limited reverence to the long-running cop show on which it is based. In this version, Shepard plays a former motocross racer and rookie cop who is paired with an undercover F.B.I. agent (Michael Peña) assigned to sniff out corruption in the California Highway Patrol. Some of the gags fall flat, and Shepard’s real-life wife, Kristen Bell, is wasted in a small, one-note role. But Shepard and Peña make a dynamic odd couple, Vincent D’Onofrio makes for a formidable villain, and the action sequences are executed with skill and panache.Stream it here.‘Steve Jobs’ (Jan. 15)Aaron Sorkin’s spiritual sequel to “The Social Network” finds the Oscar-winning screenwriter again profiling a Silicon Valley innovator with offhand wit and dramatic flair, as directed with ferocity and intelligence by Danny Boyle. Sorkin resists the urge to tell the story of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) in the cradle-to-grave fashion of the Walter Isaacson biography it’s based on, instead dramatizing three important product debuts (in 1984, 1986 and 1998). It’s an ingenious approach, directed with ferocity and intelligence by Danny Boyle; Fassbender, meanwhile, is marvelous, showcasing Jobs’s enigmatic aloofness and occasionally revealing the furious impatience underneath.Stream it here.‘Z Nation’: Seasons 1-5 (Jan. 26)This post-apocalyptic action-horror series wrapped up its five-season run in 2018; it was produced for Syfy by the Asylum, the direct-to-disc-and-streaming company known for its “mockbuster” rip-offs, films designed to fool consumers with titles and stories similar to those of major studio blockbusters. At first glance, “Z Nation” seems like a similar attempt to capitalize on the success of “The Walking Dead” (and its many spinoffs), with its ragtag group of zombie apocalypse survivors. But this is a looser, funkier show than its inspiration, puncturing the occasionally stifling solemnity of “The Walking Dead” with good old-fashioned B-movie gags and thrills.Stream it here.‘She’s Funny That Way’ (Jan. 29)The director Peter Bogdanovich’s final narrative film is a deliberate throwback to his previous screwball comedies, replicating the dazzling energy of his 1972 smash “What’s Up, Doc,” the New York setting of his delightful 1981 rom-com “They All Laughed” and the quicksilver pacing of his underrated 1992 adaptation of “Noises Off.” Owen Wilson stars as a Broadway director with a soft spot for call girls, to whom he occasionally offers financial support to help out of “the life”; Imogen Poots is delightfully dizzy as the recipient of his latest endowment. It’s not quite up to the heights of Bogdanovich’s early efforts, but it’s hard to resist a movie this charming, and his ensemble cast (which includes Jennifer Aniston, Will Forte, Kathryn Hahn and Rhys Ifans) is stellar.Stream it here.‘Addams Family Values’ (Jan. 31)One can’t help but question the timing of this particular exit, as Netflix enjoys the buzz of its original series “Wednesday” — a show that takes its inspiration from the Charles Addams cartoons and the old “Addams Family” television sitcom but especially from Barry Sonnenfeld’s darkly funny ’90s film adaptations. And when assembling this 1993 sequel, Sonnenfeld and the screenwriter Paul Rudnick clearly realized Christina Ricci’s Wednesday was the scene-stealer, building much of the story around her bone-dry wit (including an unforgettable summer camp section). The result is a “Godfather Part II” of black comedy, a rare sequel that surpasses its predecessor.Stream it here.‘Rambo’/‘Rambo: Last Blood’ (Jan. 31)The first two sequels to “First Blood,” starring Sylvester Stallone as the Vietnam veteran John Rambo, were quintessential Reagan-era cinema, a heady brew of the ’60s backlash, social conservatism and nuance-free foreign policy typical of the time. Stallone waited 20 years to make the fourth film, titled simply “Rambo” (2008), which he also co-wrote and directed, presenting his character as a man outside of his time, brought back into action by the tentativeness of his government. The series’s final film, “Last Blood” (2019), was firmly rooted in the Trump era, capitalizing on the fears and paranoia surrounding the border crisis. Both films have brutal but effective action scenes with a seemingly ageless Stallone still doing what he does well. But they’re most fascinating as snapshots of their cultural moments, and reminders of the political potency of mass entertainment.Stream ‘Rambo’ here, and ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ here.‘The Borgias: Seasons 1-3’ (Jan. 31)This well-pedigreed historical Showtime drama — created by the Oscar-winning writer and director Neil Jordan and starring Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI — had the misfortune of premiering in April 2011, the same month HBO debuted “Game of Thrones.” But now, with over a month to binge its 29 episodes, “Thrones” fans might find in it a new source of upscale action and sex, of sneering drama and ruthless political gamesmanship. Irons is on fire as the driven clergyman who ascends to papal power, and the show’s intelligent, well-researched scripts draw effective parallels between the Borgias and later families that sought and wielded political power.Stream it here. More

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      ‘Broker’ Review: It Takes a Village to Sell a Child

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      Filmed in South Korea, the new movie from Hirokazu Kore-Eda turns a potentially grim tale into a poignant road picture.On a rainy night in the South Korean city of Busan, a young woman leaves her infant son outside a church, near — but not inside — the “baby box” that is there to collect abandoned children. Two police officers have staked out the church, and one of them places the child in the box, where he is found by traffickers who plan to sell him on the illegal adoption market.This sad, ugly situation, soaked in greed and desperation, is the premise of “Broker,” a sweet and charming film by the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda. Kore-Eda, who won the top prize at Cannes in 2018 for “Shoplifters,” brings a gentle humanity and a warm playfulness to stories that might otherwise be unbearably grim. His characters, who often live at the margins of modern society, find tenderness and camaraderie in harsh circumstances. Without undue optimism or overt sentimentality, he discovers a measure of hope amid the cruelty and misfortune.The baby, whose name is Woo-sung, lands in the temporary custody of Sang-hyeon (Song Kang Ho) and Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won). They aren’t really bad guys, let alone criminal masterminds. Dong-soo, who grew up in an orphanage, works part-time in the church. Sang-hyeon, who has spent time in jail and owes money to loan sharks, operates a struggling laundry business. When Woo-sung’s mother, So-young (Lee Ji-eun), tracks them down with second thoughts, they insist on their good intentions. “Think of us as Cupids” uniting children with loving parents, Sang-hyeon says, or maybe “twin storks” delivering longed-for bundles of joy. For a fee, of course, but they’re willing to cut So-young in on the action.“Broker” is partly a road movie, winding its way through the cities and towns of South Korea as the baby-sellers and their new partner look for suitable parents for Woo-sung. They are pursued by those police officers — played with salty deadpan by Bae Doona and Lee Joo-young — who are like the stars of their own buddy-cop picture, easing the tedium of long hours in their unmarked car with weary banter and nonstop snacking.Along the way — as if to add a layer of sitcom to the genre sandwich — the brokers take in Hae-jin (Im Seung-soo), a soccer-mad 8-year-old boy from Dong-soo’s orphanage who stows away in their battered minivan. There’s also a murder, and an underworld conspiracy gathering in its wake. At times it seems as if a whole season of K-drama might be coiled into a little more than two hours.But somehow, “Broker” doesn’t feel overplotted, overly cute or excessively melodramatic. Kore-Eda has an emotionally direct style, a way of fusing naturalism and fable that recalls the neorealist magic of Vittorio De Sica. His characters are silly, suffering, dignified creatures, on whom the audience’s sympathy descends like grace.It helps that the superb cast is anchored by Song, the stalwart Everyman perhaps best known as a fixture of the Bong Joon Ho cinematic universe. His character is both the comic spark in “Broker” — sporting a haphazardly adjusted baby carrier on his chest and launching into occasional jeremiads about the sorry state of the laundry industry — and the source of its dramatic credibility. Part scapegoat, part hero, he is at the center of the story even as he is also the loneliest person in it.And it’s the specter of loneliness, as much as anything, that haunts this movie. Woo-sung, cherubically untroubled, is a symbol of the love, connection and fulfillment that money can’t buy and that is therefore commodified by a society determined to make money the measure of everything. Kore-Eda, remarkably, doesn’t counterfeit a happy ending, but he also refuses despair. He’s an honest broker of heartbreak.BrokerRated R. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical’ Review: Youth in Revolt

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      This musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel is a jolt of sour candy guaranteed to make you grin.Bitterness never tasted so sweet as it does in “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical,” a jolt of sour candy guaranteed to make you grin. Roald Dahl was 72 when he published his tale of a telekinetic girl genius avenging herself upon on a school headmaster who shot-puts kids out of the classroom window. The novel was Dahl’s righteous payback for his own British boarding school education where the instructors freely beat the students and slipped slivers of soap into boys’ mouths at night if they snored.His writing forever burned with a youthful sense of injustice, and among the many smart decisions the director Matthew Warchus and the writer Dennis Kelly have made in adapting “Matilda” for the stage, and now screen, is reimagining their title character, played with empathetic ferocity by Alisha Weir, as a bit of a proto-Dahl herself, a bright child bursting with stories that take aim at the adults who try to trod on her intelligence. When Weir, just 11 when she filmed the movie, narrows her blue eyes and sings, “Sometimes, you have to be a little bit naughty,” you believe she’s capable of conquering anyone who blocks her path.Matilda’s parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough) are dimwits and cheats. Her school’s motto is “Bambinatum est magitum” — “Children are maggots” — and its headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull (a go-for-broke Emma Thompson), is the type of monster who gets introduced chin hair first, the camera then tiptoeing backward to gawk at her broken capillaries and drab olive dress, padded at the shoulders and bosom until she resembles a tank. “Discipline! Discipline! For children who aren’t listening!” Trunchbull croons into a bullhorn while forcing her charges through a muddy obstacle course littered with barbed wire and explosives. The only moments of cross-generational kindness come from one teacher (Lashana Lynch), who is too tremulous to stand up to her boss, and from a traveling librarian (Sindhu Vee), who allows Matilda to spin fictions instead of entrusting her with her fears.The songs, written by Tim Minchin, are marvelously witty, and Warchus directs them at a clip. The seven-time Tony nominee, who also serves as the artistic director of the Old Vic theater in London, is clearly overjoyed to be able to send his cinematographer, Tat Radcliffe, sprinting down school hallways in pursuit of his ensemble of skilled young actors as they skulk through Ellen Kane’s sharp-elbowed choreography, which seems influenced by movements as varied as zombie hordes and dressage.For a film that takes this much glee in cruelty — Matilda is called “a brat,” “a bore,” “a lousy little worm” and “a nasty, little troublemaking goblin” in her first three minutes onscreen — it also includes scenes of genuine loveliness: a hushed number set in a hot-air balloon above the clouds, a jazzy sequined show of support for a tortured fellow classmate, and even a soft focus fantasy sequence where Trunchbull imagines a better life for herself. The children disappear, a herd of white horses gallop into frame, and for one moment, our villain is no longer the tyke tyrant, but a woman who wishes she could let her hair down and smile.Roald Dahl’s Matilda the MusicalRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: Kennedy Center Honors and New Year’s Eve

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      This year’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony airs on CBS. And various networks offer New Year’s Eve festivities.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, Dec. 26-Jan. 1. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE YEAR: 2022 9 p.m. on ABC. For over a decade, ABC and its anchors have offered an annual retrospective look at the year’s biggest news stories. (Of course, whether a look back at the past year sounds like a gift or a nightmare is something viewers will have to decide for themselves.) The 2022 program includes segments on pickleball, Taylor Swift’s Ticketmaster saga and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.TuesdayHalle Berry, left, and Patrick Wilson in “Moonfall.”Reiner Bajo/LionsgateMOONFALL (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. You know you’re in for a particular kind of movie when its trailer shows characters yelling “Hang on!” in three different scenes. And you know you’re in for the “hang on” kind of movie when it’s directed by Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”). Both things are true of “Moonfall,” a sci-fi disaster flick about two former astronauts (Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson) who join forces to save the planet after a geeky amateur researcher (John Bradley) discovers that the moon is heading for a collision with Earth. In a New York Times review, Ben Kenigsberg wrote that the movie’s off-planet element “flirts with the transcendently goofy,” but that “Emmerich spoils it by crosscutting to a useless narrative thread on Earth.”AMERICAN MASTERS: GROUCHO & CAVETT 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). “If Groucho never existed, we would sense a lack in the world of comedy, like the planet in the solar system that astronomers say ought to be there.” Those words, attributed to the TV host Dick Cavett, kick off this feature-length documentary, which looks at the friendship — and mentorship — between Cavett and the pioneering comic Groucho Marx. Through new interviews with Cavett and archival footage of Marx (who died in 1977), the documentary follows Marx and Cavett’s relationship from their first meeting, at the funeral of the playwright George S. Kaufman in 1961, until Marx’s death, and looks at how their friendship was a bridge between two generations of comedy.WednesdayTHE 45TH ANNUAL KENNEDY CENTER HONORS 8 p.m. on CBS. This year’s Kennedy Center Honors recognized a multigenre, multigenerational group of artists: the singer Gladys Knight; the actor and filmmaker George Clooney; the rock band U2; the singer-songwriter Amy Grant; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León. The ceremony earlier this month, footage of which will debut on CBS on Wednesday, featured tributes to the honorees from an array of familiar faces, including Garth Brooks, Mickey Guyton, Ariana DeBose, Matt Damon, Sheryl Crow, Jason Moran, Alicia Hall Moran and Eddie Vedder.REAR WINDOW (1954) and THE WINDOW (1949) 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TCM. Here’s a novel midcentury-mystery pairing: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” and “The Window,” a 1949 film noir directed by Ted Tetzlaff, who a few years earlier was the cinematographer on Hitchcock’s “Notorious.” These two movies also have somewhat similar setups. The classic “Rear Window” casts James Stewart as housebound photographer who believes there has been a murder at a neighboring home; “The Window” centers on a nine-year-old boy (Bobby Driscoll) who suspects the same.ThursdayREADY PLAYER ONE (2018) 11 p.m. on TBS. To see two wildly different sides of Steven Spielberg, consider pairing his semi-autobiographical period drama, “The Fabelmans” (now in theaters), with his sci-fi bonanza “Ready Player One,” a movie that manages to be nostalgic despite being set in 2045. That’s because its dystopian world uses late 20th- and early 21st-century pop culture as its building blocks. The story, adapted from Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel of the same name, centers on a young man (Tye Sheridan) searching for treasure left behind by a dead virtual-reality world-builder (Mark Rylance).FridayRosamund Pike and Ben Affleck in “Gone Girl.”Merrick Morton/20th Century FoxGONE GIRL (2014) 7:25 p.m. on HBO. The musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, of the band Nine Inch Nails, composed the scores of two movies playing in theaters right now: Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” and Sam Mendes’s “Empire of Light.” For an earlier example of their movie music, see this thriller from David Fincher, about a husband and wife (played by Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike) whose lives derail when the wife, Amy, goes missing, and the husband, Nick, becomes a suspect in her disappearance.A SOLDIER’S STORY (1984) 8 p.m. on TCM. The playwright Charles Fuller won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982 for “A Soldier’s Play,” about an investigation into the murder of a Black Army sergeant on a segregated Louisiana military base in the 1940s. And he wrote the screenplay of this film adaptation, which was directed by Norman Jewison and scored by Herbie Hancock. Fuller died in October, which makes the end of the year a poignant time to revisit the film.SaturdayNew Year’s Eve decorations in Times Square earlier this month.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockNEW YEAR’S EVE SHOWS on various networks. How do you take your New Year’s Eve programming? With sugar? See MILEY’S NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY, hosted by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton, at 10:30 p.m. on NBC. With extra twang? How about NEW YEAR’S EVE LIVE: NASHVILLE’S BIG BASH, hosted by the singers Jimmie Allen and Elle King and the anchor Rachel Smith, at 10:30 p.m. on CBS. With a Times Square neon glaze? Try DICK CLARK’S NEW YEAR’S ROCKIN’ EVE WITH RYAN SEACREST 2023 at 10:30 p.m. on ABC. For those without cable TV, or who just want to watch the New York ball drop with minimal fuss, there’s a free livestream of the Times Square scene at timessquarenyc.org.SundayDIONNE WARWICK: DON’T MAKE ME OVER (2023) 9 p.m. on CNN. This new documentary about the singer Dionne Warwick’s art and activism pairs archival materials with an impressive slate of interviewees that includes Quincy Jones, Gladys Knight, Olivia Newton-John, Smokey Robinson, Elton John, Snoop Dogg, Gloria Estefan and Alicia Keys. The doc picked up solid reviews when it opened at the Toronto International Film Festival last year; it makes its wider debut on Sunday. More

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      ‘Babylon’ and the Case of the Missing Bob Haircut

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      Margot Robbie’s 1920s silent-screen star wears her locks long and frizzy — and that’s by design, as the director Damien Chazelle and hairstylist explain.At the start of the epic “Babylon,” Margot Robbie’s character, a rising silent-film star named Nellie LaRoy, quite literally crashes into a Hollywood bigwig’s party — her car hits a statue — and then proceeds to take over the dance floor, her voluminous hair whipping back and forth as she headbangs to a jazz score. In a sea of the kind of bobbed hairstyles usually associated with the 1920s, Nellie’s long frizzy mane stands out as Robbie wields it almost like another appendage.The hairstylist Jaime Leigh McIntosh was terrified. “I will be honest, it was freaking me out,” she said in a recent interview via video. “I was just like, I’m going to be stoned in the village square. My fellow hair stylists are going to be like, ‘That’s not period correct.’”But McIntosh and the film’s writer-director, Damien Chazelle, also made sure that as anomalous and modern as Nellie’s hair might seem for the 1920s, there was historical precedent for it. What results is a look that evokes both Clara Bow and Janis Joplin with a bit of the Bible’s Samson thrown in. “I wanted it to be like someone just took her from the woods,” Chazelle said.The wild Nellie symbolizes the ethos of the sprawling movie, which takes the classic narrative of a starry-eyed ingénue and adds a layer of excess and scatological humor. Chazelle was intent on creating a portrait of the 1920s that didn’t look like the one audiences knew from, say, “Great Gatsby” adaptations. “He was just like, ‘There’s got to be another ’20s out there,’” McIntosh recalled. “‘We just keep kind of regurgitating the same looks and the same fashion, and there must have been other things happening.’”In the months before shooting began, she and Chazelle sent reference photos back and forth. He gave her a list of films and documentaries to watch, but the production team was also on a hunt for images of people not filtered through a movie lens. She and the makeup artist Heba Thorisdottir leafed through the book “Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots” for examples of what unvarnished people of the era might look like. Chazelle in particular was drawn to images from portrait studios. “Like Man Ray portraits, but less famous than that,” he said.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.“There’s only so much of what you would call documentary photography, candid camera stuff, but there’s a lot of really out-there, wild, transgressive studio photography that wound up inspiring a lot of the costumes, too, where people would put on crazy, crazy stuff that even the pre-Code movies of the time would never allow you to put on,” Chazelle said, referring to the Hays Code, which imposed morality restrictions on film starting in the 1930s. It was not just the hairstyles that caught his eye, he added, but also the “risqué-ness that was accepted in the wardrobe both of men and women at the time.”Anything that bucked conventional wisdom about the time sparked inspiration. McIntosh cited footage she found of women at a long hair competition and an image of Miss Philadelphia 1924, her hair a mess of frizz around her face before falling into long ringlets. Chazelle looked to the silent film star Clara Bow — “Margot and I both loved just how bird’s nest-y Clara Bow’s hair could get,” he said — but also the less well known Lili Damita, who sometimes appeared with a big curly mop. “I just kept coming back to photos I would find of women of the time with long hair, with wild long hair,” Chazelle said. “I just couldn’t get over those photos because of how un-1920s they felt. They felt so counter to expectations.”As Chazelle and McIntosh found — and as Rachael Gibson, who bills herself as the Hair Historian — confirmed, it was a misconception to think that all women in the 1920s wore their hair short. “We just kind of think, ‘Oh everyone had this hair,’” Gibson said. “But that’s not the reality.”Still, the images Gibson has seen of Nellie struck her as incongruous. (At the time of the interview, she had not yet seen the movie.) “It’s not superlong and it’s kind of got this natural wave to it, and it’s really unlike anything else that we associate with that era,” she said.That too was the point. One of the words Chazelle kept using, McIntosh said, was “timeless.” As he identified Nellie’s historical counterparts, Chazelle also kept in mind “spirits” he wanted her to evoke. Those included the musicians Joplin and Courtney Love and the actresses Jean Harlow and Julie Christie. Chazelle felt Nellie needed to “always have a foot in a different era as though she sort of came from the future,” and used ’80s punk culture as a reference, too.To determine the specific length and style, McIntosh and Chazelle went through multiple rounds of tests, putting Robbie in various wigs to see not just how they looked but eventually how they moved as she walked and danced. “I never expected it to be as complicated as it wound up being,” Chazelle said. “We locked it down right in the nick of time.”Once they settled on her long locks, Robert Pickens built a wig that could both withstand Nellie’s thrashing and convey the “grittiness” of the era. Without air conditioning, Pickens said, “people are sweating. To communicate all that through hair we went with a really fine texture.”Going into filming, McIntosh was still nervous. It wasn’t until she saw Robbie shoot the opening dance number that she suddenly realized, “‘It all makes complete sense. This is genius.’ It took me a while. I was a little stubborn but I got there.”Later in the film, Nellie’s hair is cut into a more recognizably period finger-wave bob as she tries to rehabilitate her flailing career by fitting in with high society. It looks awkward. Her power has been sapped from her, almost like Samson’s when his hair was cut.“I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, what have we done to her?’” McIntosh said. “Which is so funny because normally you’d be like, ‘Oh, wow, look at this beautiful finger wave,’ but because it was on Nellie it was so wrong.” More