Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      How ‘Bardo’ Turns Collapsing Into Choreography

      by

      Alejandro G. Iñárritu narrates a sequence from his Netflix film “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” where multiple people drop to the ground in Mexico City.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.In one of the many ambitious scenes from “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” (streaming on Netflix), the lead character, Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), comes across a woman who has collapsed on a Mexico City sidewalk. Most passers-by don’t seem to notice her. When someone asks if she is dead, she replies, “I’m not dead. I’m missing.” Soon after, other individuals, one by one, begin collapsing on the sidewalk and in the streets. By the end of this fever dream of a sequence, hundreds of people are on the ground.Narrating the moment, the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu said he wanted to call attention to the thousands of Mexicans who have gone missing over the last decade. He said the scene required 300 extras along with 20 dancers who, guided by the choreography of Priscila Hernández, fell in a precise way that seemed like a dangerous collapse.Read the review of “Bardo.”Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Theater

      The Breakout Stars of 2022

      by

      Here are the actors, pop stars, dancers and artists who broke away from the pack this year, delighting us and making us think.For many of us, 2022 was the year we emerged more fully from our pandemic cocoons, venturing out to movie theaters, museums, concerts — exploring our entertainment with eager, if weary, hearts and eyes before returning home to our TVs. Along the way, artists and performers across the world of the arts had, for the first time in years, the chance to connect more closely and fully with audiences, and deliver big. Here are seven stars who captured our attention in this moment and gave us a fresh perspective.TelevisionQuinta BrunsonIn 2014, Quinta Brunson had a viral Instagram hit on her hands: a series of videos called “The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date.” At Buzzfeed, where she was first paid for taste-testing Doritos, she made popular comedic videos for the site and then sold the streaming series “Broke” to YouTube Red. In 2019, she starred in and wrote for the debut season of HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”That trajectory set her up to deliver a rare feat: a warmhearted but not saccharine network sitcom with a pitch-perfect ensemble cast that has managed to delight critics and audiences — all while illuminating the problems of underfunded public schools. The mockumentary-style comedy, “Abbott Elementary,” which she created and stars in, debuted on ABC in December 2021 and was nominated for seven Emmy Awards this year, of which it won three.“I think a lot of people are enjoying having something that is light and nuanced,” Brunson, 32, told The New York Times Magazine earlier this year. “‘Abbott’ came at the right time.”MoviesStephanie HsuIn “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Stephanie Hsu plays a despairing daughter named Joy and the chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.A24When Stephanie Hsu was a child, she told her mother that she wanted to be an actor. Her mother “pointed at a TV screen and said, ‘There’s nobody that looks like you — that seems impossible,’” Hsu, 32, told Variety this year. Turns out, her presence onscreen was both possible and unforgettable, particularly her jaw-dropping performance in this year’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a mind-twisting acid trip through the multiverse (and the human condition) that was a box-office hit and had critics raving.In “Everything,” her first feature film, Hsu nailed the complex role of both a depressed, despairing daughter (opposite Michelle Yeoh as her mother) and the maniacally evil, chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.“I think it’s so rare that you get to experience the scope of range within one character in one movie,” Hsu told The Times.Next up for the actress is a role in the Disney+ action-comedy series “American Born Chinese”; in Rian Johnson’s Peacock series, “Poker Face,” alongside Natasha Lyonne; and in “The Fall Guy,” an action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.Pop MusicJack HarlowThe rapper Jack Harlow, who released the album “Come Home the Kids Miss You” in May, earned three Grammy nominations in November.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThose on TikTok probably first caught wind of the rapper Jack Harlow in 2020 with his viral track “Whats Poppin.” But it wasn’t until his verse on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” last year — the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 — that his star really began its ascent.Now, the laid-back Harlow, 24 and a Kentucky native, had his first solo No. 1 hit, the Fergie-sampling “First Class,” from his second major-label album, “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” which dropped in May. In November, he earned three Grammy nominations, including for best rap album. And in October, he served as both host and musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.”“I’m looking to get away from rapping in a way where people can marvel at it and more something we can all enjoy together,” he told The Times this year.Soon, Harlow will star in a remake of the 1992 film “White Men Can’t Jump.”ArtTiona Nekkia McCloddenThe artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden in her studio; she had three major presentations of her work in New York this year.Hannah Price for The New York TimesOver the last few years, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, 41, “has emerged as one of the most singular artists of our aesthetically rich, free-range time,” Roberta Smith, co-chief art critic of The Times, wrote in her review of McClodden’s exhibition “Mask/Conceal/Carry,” a meditation on guns shown at 52 Walker in TriBeCa this year. Smith called it a “brooding beast of an exhibition, bathed in blue light.”And that was only one of three major presentations of McClodden’s work in New York in 2022. At the Museum of Modern Art, she presented a room-size fetish-themed tribute to Brad Johnson, a Black gay poet who died in 2011. At the Shed, she celebrated the groundbreaking 1983 festival Dance Black America with a program that included custom dance floors and video portraits of dancers.McClodden, who was a star of the 2019 Whitney Biennial (she won the Bucksbaum Award), emerged as a filmmaker before expanding to boundary-pushing art installations.Amid the pandemic and the George Floyd protests and counter protests, she decided to learn how to shoot guns, an activity that bore “Mask/Conceal/Carry.” “The statement is that I’m in the world, I didn’t try to run away from my position in this world, and I wanted to be able to defend myself,” she told The Times this summer.TheaterJulie BenkoA scene from the Broadway musical “Funny Girl” with Jared Grimes, left, as Eddie Ryan and Julie Benko as Fanny Brice.Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, 2022Few can say they’ve seized an opportunity like Julie Benko, whose monthlong summer run as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” changed a lot for the actress-soprano who stepped into the role full-time between Beanie Feldstein and Lea Michele in the highly talked-about production. But even that degree of pressure didn’t weigh her down.“When you get the chance to play such an amazing role, there’s no need to take it too seriously,” Benko told the Times. “You just have to enjoy it.” Now, Benko has the title of “alternate” in “Funny Girl,” not “understudy,” performing the lead in most Thursday night shows (with an extra performance on Monday, Dec. 26, and for a full week in late February).Benko, 33, had understudied several roles before “Funny Girl,” including in the national “Spring Awakening” tour in 2008, and later in the “Les Misérables” tour, where she worked her way up to Cosette, the protagonist, from roles like “innkeeper’s wife.”In December, she will be performing at 54 Below in New York alongside her husband, the pianist Jason Yeager.Classical MusicDavóne TinesThe bass-baritone Davóne Tines performs a scene in “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)” by Tyshawn Sorey at the Park Avenue Armory.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“No one could accuse Davóne Tines of lacking ambition,” Oussama Zahr, a classical music critic, wrote recently in The Times when reviewing “Recital No. 1: MASS,” the bass-baritone’s personal and thoughtfully arranged Carnegie Hall debut“I really like structures,” Tines, who is in his mid-30s, told The New Yorker of “MASS” last year. “The ritualistic template of the Mass is a proven structure — centuries of culture have upheld it. Anything that I put into it will assume a certain shape. And what I put into it is my own lived experience.”Accolades for Tines have been mounting, including for, this fall, his performance in a staged version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” at the Park Avenue Armory; and for “Everything Rises,” his collaboration with the violinist Jennifer Koh, which opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.In the work, Tines and Koh recount their complicated relationships with classical music as people of color. “I was the moth, lured by your flame,” Tines sings. “I hated myself for needing you, dear white people: money, access and fame.”DanceCatherine HurlinThe ballerina Catherine Hurlin, who was recently promoted to principal dancer at American Ballet Theater, in “Of Love and Rage,” by Alexei Ratmansky at the Metropolitan Opera House.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesShe may only be 26, but the ballerina Catherine Hurlin has been ascending for more than half of her life. As a girl, she secured a full scholarship to the American Ballet Theater’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. Not long after, she became an apprentice with the A.B.T., then a member of the corps de ballet and eventually a soloist in 2018.Then this summer, she was one of three dancers promoted to the role of principal.“The simple serenity of Hurlin’s face, framed by cascading curls, is riveting, as is the daring amplitude of her expressive, singular dancing,” Gia Kourlas, the dance critic of The Times, wrote in June of Hurlin’s performance in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Of Love and Rage.”And in July, when Hurlin made her debut in the double role of Odette-Odile in “Swan Lake,” Kourlas called her “the future of Ballet Theater, the kind of dancer who has a fresh take on story ballets.”Her nickname? Hurricane. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Quiet Girl’ Review: Welcome Home

      by

      This luminous drama, Ireland’s entry for best international feature, may not be holiday fare, but it does express the season’s benevolent ethos.A body lies still in a field as girls from afar shout, “Cait! Cait!” For a beat, “The Quiet Girl” sounds an uneasy note. It won’t be the last time this luminous Irish drama — directed by Colm Bairead and based on Claire Keegan’s short story “Foster” — teases dark concerns.Cait (Catherine Clinch, in a splendid debut) lives in a crammed, clamorous house with her parents, sisters, baby brother and another sibling on the way. Which is why her exhausted mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) and idle father (Michael Patric) whisper about sending the 9-year-old to stay with her mother’s people.When Cait’s father delivers her to the Cinnsealaches’ farmhouse, the viewer senses — even if Cait doesn’t yet — that she has won the lottery, or at least been granted a well-ordered reprieve. Eibhlin and Sean Cinnsealach (Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennett) shimmer with compassion but also a profound ache. The availability of a child’s clothes and the trains chugging across the wallpaper of the room Cait sleeps in signal a loss that the film takes its time to address.In Cait’s encounters with nature, Bairead and the cinematographer Kate McCullough capture the first-person perspective of Keegan’s story: leaves flutter and flash by; a ladle sets the still surface of a well in gently rippling motion. They also go beyond it. Although “The Quiet Girl” — Ireland’s entry for the best international feature Oscar — is not holiday fare, there may not be a movie more expressive of the season’s benevolent ethos than this hushed work about kith and kindness.The Quiet GirlNot rated. In Irish Gaelic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Children of the Mist’ Review: Stolen Youth

      by

      A documentarian traces a Hmong girl’s experience with a custom that permits boys to detain girls with the intention of marriage.In the disturbing Vietnamese documentary “Children of the Mist,” a plucky 12-year-old girl named Di is abducted after a Lunar New Year celebration. Her parents are frustrated at best — who will feed the pigs when they go drinking? But their response is not unusual in this remote mountain region of northern Vietnam, where the Hmong — one of the country’s largest ethnic groups — reside.“Bride-napping” is a Hmong custom that permits boys, often with the help of their families, to nab girls and detain them for three days. Throughout this time, the girl can decide whether she wants to go through with the marriage, though in practice, rejections can be violently challenged. That’s the norm in these parts: Di’s mother and older sister were bride-napped as well.Di, however, is the first person in her family to receive a formal education; she’s quick, chatty and understands all too well the pitfalls of her community’s patriarchal mores. Still, she’s a child herself, glued to her phone when she’s not working the field or cooking meals, and prone to engaging in online flirtations.The filmmaker Ha Le Diem shot “Children of the Mist” over the course of three years, integrating herself into Di’s life in a way that complicates the documentary’s otherwise unobtrusive, observational approach. When Di cozies up to a smitten boy, Diem’s camera watches them walk away. The boy says not to follow them, shouting back from a distance that he has no intention of kidnapping Di.Then he does, though Di has no intention of getting married. Diem is told not to interfere, but at one crucial moment, she must. It’s an upsetting scene, though one senses that without the presence of the camera, Di would have fared far worse.Children of the MistNot rated. In Hmong and Vietnamese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Almond and the Seahorse’ Review: Like Sand Through an Hourglass

      by

      In this drama, two couples grapple with how their relationships are changed through a partner’s brain injuries.“The Almond and the Seahorse” gets its title from two limbic structures inside the brain: the amygdala and the hippocampus, each shaped like their nickname, which team up to store memories. “It is remarkable what that kilo-and-a-half blob at the top of your neck files away,” a neuropsychologist (Meera Syal) says to a frazzled archaeologist named Sarah (Rebel Wilson) whose husband, Joe (Celyn Jones), has a tumor that causes his cerebral cache to continually delete every minute or so. When it happens, the piano score curdles, the camera swirls in circles, or the film cuts to waves smoothing the sandy creases on a beach — a poetic flourish more impactful than the film’s resolution which is as artificially rosy as a bag of seaside taffy.This debut feature from the directors Tom Stern (a longtime cinematographer for Clint Eastwood) and Jones (who originated the role of Joe onstage, and now adapts the play with its author Kaite O’Reilly) plays out like an educational film strip. Vignettes of Sarah and Joe’s lightly comic struggles are spliced alongside the darker grievances of the couple Toni (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), the latter of whom suffered a traumatic brain injury 15 years ago and gasps in horror every time she’s surprised by her partner’s wrinkles.Smartly, Joe and Gwen are more petulant than pitiful. (They’d both be happier not being reminded of all they’ve forgotten.) If the audience, too, loses track of where things are trudging, the original soundtrack by Gruff Rhys constantly chimes in to describe the plot, crooning, “I want my old life back.” Only when Sarah and Toni meet for the first time, an hour in, does the film allow a genuine conversation — and, gratefully, a moment of recognition.The Almond and the SeahorseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Apology’ Review: Regrets, He’s Had a Few

      by

      A surprise visitor derails a grieving mother’s holiday plans in this gloomy, overwrought family drama.“The Apology” might arrive a week before Christmas and take place on Christmas Eve, but this deeply depressing picture is less ho-ho-ho than no-no-no.With the help of an isolated home, a convenient snowstorm and essentially two actors (unless you count Janeane Garofalo’s pop-in, pop-out turn as the best friend), the writer and director, Alison Star Locke, stirs up a turgid tale of grief, guilt and attempted atonement. It all starts innocently enough as Darlene (Anna Gunn), a sober alcoholic, is preparing to host a family Christmas for the first time in the two decades since her teenage daughter, Sally, disappeared. Darlene, though — who blames herself for being drunk at the time of the disappearance — is clearly a mess.Just as she’s about to topple off the wagon, her long-estranged former brother-in-law, Jack (Linus Roache), arrives bearing surprise gifts and shocking secrets. Jack, it turns out, has feelings — oh boy, does he ever — and he would like to share. First, though, for safety’s sake, he’ll just show Darlene his collection of zip ties and move the kitchen knives out of her reach. Now that they’re both comfortable, the talking can begin.Unfortunately, it never seems to end. A play-like trudge through seesawing power dynamics, bursts of violence, perpetual gloom and a ludicrously attenuated finale, “The Apology” could have doubled its tension by halving its running time. When the resolution of a movie depends in part on a fortuitously constipated dog, the only apology required is from whoever convinced you to watch in the first place.The ApologyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters and available on Shudder. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Harrison Ford Loves His Craft. ‘1923’ Tested His Limits.

      by

      LOS ANGELES — In the course of 20 months and in the midst of a pandemic, Harrison Ford filmed a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” sequel in England. He shot a 10-part comedy, “Shrinking,” in Burbank. He herded cattle up a mountain in subzero Montana temperatures for “1923,” the latest prequel to the hit western series “Yellowstone.”He also celebrated his 80th birthday.“I’ve been working pretty much back-to-back, which is not what I normally do,” said Ford, unshaven, wearing bluejeans and boots and easing into a chair at the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel here earlier this month. He was in Los Angeles for one night, for the premiere of “1923,” debuting Sunday on Paramount+. From here, it was on to Las Vegas the next morning for the next screening, yet another stop after a stretch of filming, travel and promotion that would exhaust an actor half his age.“I don’t how it happened,” Ford said, taking a sip from his cup of coffee. “But it happened.”It has been 45 years since Ford leaped off the screen as Han Solo in the first “Star Wars” movie, laying the foundation for a blockbuster career in which he has personified some of the most commercially successful movie franchises in film history. He has appeared in over 70 movies, with a combined worldwide box office gross of more than $9 billion. By now, it would seem, he has nothing left to prove.But at an age when many of his contemporaries have receded from public view, Ford is not slowing down, much less stepping away to spend more time at his ranch in Jackson, Wyo. He is still trying new things — “1923” represents his first major television part — still searching for one more role, still driven to stay before the camera.“I love it,” he said. “I love the challenge and the process of making a movie. I feel at home. It’s what I’ve spent my life doing.”And why should he slow down? Ford shows no sign of fading, physically or mentally — he was fleet and limber as he strode into the Luxe for our interview, cap pulled down, and later, as he worked the room at the post-premiere party at the Hollywood restaurant Mother Wolf. In his pace and eclectic choice of roles, including the weathered and weary rancher Jacob Dutton of “1923,” he seems as determined as ever to show that he can be more than just the swashbuckling action hero who gave the world Han Solo and Indiana Jones.“He can rest on his laurels: He doesn’t need to work financially,” said Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars” and who, at 71, does not miss the 5 a.m. wake-up calls and the hustling for the next role. “To be doing another ‘Indiana Jones’ — I’m in awe of him.”Ford is known for being gruff and nonresponsive, an actor not given to introspection and with little patience for “put me on the couch” questions. There were flashes of that during our 45 minutes together. “I know I walked myself into that dark alley where you’re now going to have to ask me to describe the character,” he said at one point. “And I don’t want to.”But for the most part Ford was forthcoming, relaxed and contemplative. This was a promotional tour, and after a half-century in the business, he knows how to do this. “I’m here to sell a movie,” Ford said, though, of course, he was there to sell a TV show — and to some extent, himself.“I don’t want to reinvent myself,” he said. “I just want to work.”Ford, center, as Jacob Dutton, an earlier patriarch of what will become the Dutton ranching empire of “Yellowstone.”Emerson Miller/Paramount+Jason Segel, left, with Ford in the Apple TV+ show “Shrinking,” of which Segel is a creator. Ford will play a psychiatrist, his second major TV role.Apple TV+FORD WAS ALWAYS more than just another charismatic Hollywood action star. He could act. There was the swagger and the smirk, but they were put to service in presenting complex heroes with flaws and self-doubt, including John Book, the detective in “Witness”; Jack Ryan, the C.I.A. analyst at the center of the Tom Clancy novels that inspired the films; and Rick Deckard, battling bioengineered humanoids in “Blade Runner.”That style distinguished him for much of his career from monosyllabic, musclebound action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude Van Damme, and it has always been integral to his appeal: Hamill said he was struck by it the first time they acted together.“He was impossibly cool, world-weary, wary, somewhat snarky, flippant,” Hamill said.Television isn’t entirely new territory for Ford. When George Lucas cast him as a white-cowboy-hat-wearing drag racer in the 1973 film “American Graffiti,” Ford was 30, making a living as a part-time carpenter in Los Angeles. By then he had already been picking up modest roles in series like “Ironside,” “The Virginian” and “Gunsmoke” since the late 1960s.His role in “1923” is anything but modest: the great-great-great uncle of John Dutton III, the family patriarch portrayed by Kevin Costner in “Yellowstone,” TV’s most popular drama. As with “Yellowstone,” the scope of “1923” is vast — the Western vistas, the sweeping aerial shots, the complexity of the characters and their stories. It also features another major star, Helen Mirren, as his wife, Cara, the tough matriarch of the family.Ford watches little television — he said doesn’t have the time — and he knew little about “Yellowstone” when his agent first brought him the role. (In preparation, he watched some of “1883,” the first “Yellowstone” prequel, which follows an earlier generation of Duttons as they travel west by wagon train to establish the family ranch.) Based on an advance screener of the pilot, the cinematic ambitions of “1923” would be familiar to anyone who has watched “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad.” But they have, these past four months, been a pleasant surprise for Ford.“They keeping calling it television,” Ford said, gesturing with a twist of his upper torso to a television screen in the next room. “But it’s so un-television. It is, you know, a huge vista. It’s an incredibly ambitious story that he’s telling in epic scale. The scale of the thing is enormous I think for the television.”Ford said he had agreed to the role after Taylor Sheridan, the lead creator behind the “Yellowstone” franchise, brought him to his ranch outside Fort Worth and sketched out the character. (“I’m 80, and I’m playing 77,” Ford said with a wry grin. “It’s a bit of a stretch.”) Ford was intrigued by Dutton, a stoic and somber rancher who must battle in the final years of his life to protect his land and family.“The character is not the usual character for me,” Ford said, likening it to his role playing a psychiatrist with Jason Segel in “Shrinking,” created by Segel and Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein (of “Ted Lasso”), debuting next month on Apple TV+. “I’ve never been to a psychiatrist in my life.”“I’m aware of the interest in the politics of the characters,” he said of the “Yellowstone” franchise. Of his own character, he added: “I’m not interested in the man’s politics.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFilming “1923” tested his resilience and his love of the craft. Montana proved a brutal place to work; the cast and crew encountered blinding blizzards and stunningly cold temperatures during 10-hour days spent almost entirely outdoors.“It was a nightmare,” said Timothy Dalton, a former James Bond, who plays a rancher who challenges Ford for control of the land. “We are on top of a hill with a blasting wind coming at us. The cameras freeze up. Your toes freeze up.”Ben Richardson, who directed most of the “1923” episodes, described filming Ford as he rode horses up steep mountains, against knife-sharp winds, as Dutton herds cattle to higher altitudes and the promise of fields to graze.“I’ve never had a complaint from him,” Richardson said. “I can’t express how much of a team player he is — to the point that it’s shocking. He’s Harrison Ford. He could be doing anything. I’m sure there are people who would prefer to have a double standing in. He did not.” He added that he had “probably seen ‘Blade Runner’ 20 times,” studying how Ford presented himself onscreen.“There’s something truly compelling about watching him deal with difficult situations,” he said.From Ford’s earliest days as Han Solo, he has been wary of being typecast as a go-to action hero. He agreed to do the blockbusters urged on him by a Lucas or Steven Spielberg, but he also sought more than laser guns and bullwhips, gravitating to films like Peter Weir’s “Witness” (1985), and to directors like Alan J. Pakula (“Presumed Innocent,” “The Devil’s Own”).“I always went from a movie for me to a movie for them,” he said, referring to directors — and audiences — with a taste for action-hero blockbusters. “I don’t want to work for just one audience.”So it is that Ford will play a rancher in “1923” and a therapist in “Shrinking”— six months before his fifth “Indiana Jones” movie, “The Dial of Destiny,” opens in June.“He doesn’t get the credit for the diversity of his choices that he has chosen,” Hamill said. “Everybody loves ‘Indiana Jones,’ but we know what it is, and we’ve seen it before — he could do those for the rest of his life. The fact that he is doing something more challenging and more thought-provoking is something I admire about him.”Ford (right, with Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill) leaped off the screen in his breakout role as Han Solo in the first “Star Wars” movie 45 years ago.20th Century FoxFord, left, with Sean Connery in the third movie of the “Indiana Jones” franchise, “The Last Crusade.” The fifth is scheduled for June 2023.Paramount Pictures, via Everett CollectionA CENTRAL PARADOX of Ford’s biography is that “Star Wars,” the franchise arguably most responsible for reshaping the industry in its image, made him one of the last true movie stars, a man whose name alone could sell tickets; Hollywood’s shift from star vehicles to intellectual property, from big screen to small, can now be neatly tracked over the arc of his career.“Star Wars” united a country — crossing geographic, class and political lines — enthralling audiences who gathered in theaters to share in its fairy-tale story of love and adventure. These days, audiences are made up of friends and family gathered in a living room, and Ford faces questions about whether the “Yellowstone” franchise is a paean to Red America.“I’m aware of the interest in the politics of the characters,” he said, adding that he had no interest in the political beliefs of Jacob Dutton. (Ford, who was born in Chicago to Democratic parents and supported Joe Biden against Donald Trump in 2020, suggested that the audience for “Yellowstone” was so vast that it was unlikely to be made up of only Republicans.)When Ford began working on “1923,” Sheridan told him to approach it as if it was 10 hourlong movies. “And that’s the way it feels to me,” Ford said. “But we’re working at a television pace. There’s something about movies that allows for, you know, a little bit, you know, a kind of luxury of time and a certain …”He hesitated as he considered the risks of a road better not taken, of Harrison Ford weighing in on the merits of movies versus television. “I don’t think I really want to get too deep into this because there’s no place to go with it, for me.”“I’m doing the same job,” he said. “It’s just being boxed and distributed in a different way.”At a time when many contemporaries are winding down, Ford still keeps a demanding schedule. “I love it,” he said of his work. “It’s what I’ve spent my life doing.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFord is not a pioneer. He resisted television for many years, and in finally relenting, he is following other major box office stars — Kevin Costner on “Yellowstone” and Sylvester Stallone on “Tulsa King” — who have joined Taylor Sheridan television productions.Still, as he prepared to attend the premiere of “1923,” at a big screen tucked away in an American Legion Hall in Hollywood, it was clear where his heart remained.“The important thing is to go into a dark room with strangers, experience the same thing and have an opportunity to consider your common humanity,” Ford said. “With strangers. And the music — the sound system is better, right? The dark is deeper, right? And the icebox not so close.”Ford paused at his revealing reference to a kitchen appliance from another era — the era when he grew up. He could not help but laugh at his lapse. “Icebox!” he said. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘See You Friday, Robinson’ Review: Dear Godard

      by

      In Mitra Farahani’s film, Jean-Luc Godard and the Iranian writer-director Ebrahim Golestan undertake an epistolary dialogue, puttering and pondering at their homes.In “See You Friday, Robinson,” Mitra Farahani orchestrates a freewheeling correspondence between Ebrahim Golestan, the Iranian director and writer, and Jean-Luc Godard, who spent 60-plus years reinventing cinema. The playfully profound film connects the pair through word and image, as they exchange emails, putter, and ponder, one in Sussex, England, the other in Rolle, Switzerland.Farahani marries homebody scenes to a Godardian style of compressed reflections and audiovisual flourishes. Golestan, a retiring figure in a Gothic mansion, puzzles over Godard’s sometimes nutty-sounding koans, which arrive with attachments such as Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son,” a clip from the dolphin-dog friendship film “Zeus and Roxanne,” and selfies.Godard is by turns merry and moody, with intimations of mortality in his ruminations; a touching camaraderie emerges when both men weather hospital visits. Godard’s laundry-draped domesticity is endearing, and his hands-on approach to working with images — watching and making them — remains invigorating.Golestan, a key figure in Iran’s pre-revolutionary cognoscenti linked to the poet Forough Farrokhzad, yields the perspective of a monumental exile: impressed by Godard but readily skeptical. “It’s fine if he’s saying something brilliant that I don’t get,” he says, musing on Godard’s Christian upbringing and whether he has a female companion. His letters sound more traditionally discursive than Godard’s, suggesting a greater contrast between modernist sensibilities.With Godard’s recent death, Farahani (who co-produced Godard’s film “The Image Book”) also gives us a fond remembrance, like a drink with an old friend who never stopped thinking onscreen.See You Friday, RobinsonNot rated. In French and Persian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More