Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Clive Revill, Original Voice of Emperor Palpatine in ‘Star Wars,’ Dies at 94

      by

      His voice can be heard for only a minute in “The Empire Strikes Back,” but it provided the first draft of a character that would be a mainstay of the franchise for decades.It was a minute that changed the course of the “Star Wars” franchise. In “The Empire Strikes Back,” the now-celebrated 1980 sequel, audiences were treated to the first on-camera sighting of Emperor Palpatine.After receiving only a glancing mention in the first movie, he could have looked and sounded like anything. A human. A Wookiee. A droid. A turtle. There was, instead, a disfigured, robed face — portrayed by the actress Marjorie Eaton — that terrified fans and etched the character into “Star Wars” lore.But Palpatine’s voice — cool, crisp and commanding — belonged to Clive Revill, who in about 60 seconds set the stage for one of the most feared and infamous characters in science fiction. Mr. Revill died on March 11 in Sherman Oaks, Calif., his daughter, Kate Revill, said on Thursday. The cause, she said, was complications of dementia. He was 94.Palpatine’s appearance, however brief, is pivotal. In the conversation with Darth Vader it is established that Vader, already an iconic villain, has a boss — one whom Vader himself fears. Additionally, Palpatine recognizes Luke Skywalker as a true threat.In just a few lines, Mr. Revill established Palpatine as a cold, dominant figure.When the original trilogy was rereleased in 2004, his voice was replaced by that of Ian McDiarmid, who played Palpatine in subsequent “Star Wars” films, starting with “Return of the Jedi” (1983). But in various iterations of Palpatine since the original — including the franchise films, the video game “Fortnite” and even Lego re-enactments — the character’s voice is built on Mr. Revill’s work.“Those voices are all influenced by this first example,” said Greg Iwinski, a writer on the animated “Star Wars” series “Young Jedi Adventures.” “That was 45 years ago. That’s the importance of that legacy. He was the first guy to do it.”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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Sundance Picks Boulder, Colo., as Its New Home

      by

      The Sundance Film Festival is venturing to a new ski town.After a year of deliberations, copious site visits and scores of plane rides, the board of the Sundance Institute has chosen Boulder, Colo., to host its film festival beginning January 2027.“Boulder is a tech town, a college town, it’s a really creative town,” Eugene Hernandez, the festival’s director, said. “It’s just a really creative place. And that integration of the artsy community with the university side of it all is really dynamic.”It’s also 10 times the size of Park City, Utah, where the festival has been held since the actor and director Robert Redford started it in 1981. As the festival kept growing, Park City began bursting at the seams.Ebs Burnough, chair of the Sundance Institute, said the move to another mountain town would help Sundance maintain its connection to the natural world. “It’s easy to get drawn into that amazing thing that Robert Redford really believed in, which was that commune between the artist and nature, and to actually be able to get away from the verticalness of cities.”The Macky Auditorium Concert Hall in Boulder will host Sundance Film Festival screenings.via Sundance Film FestivalTo frequent Sundance goers, the move to Boulder is likely to be less jarring than shifting the location to Cincinnati, one of two other finalist cities. Salt Lake City was also in the running, and the loss of the festival will be significant to the state of Utah. The festival generated $132 million in revenue for the state in 2024, according to a report released by the festival.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

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Hollywood Has Not Recovered Jobs Lost During Strikes, Report Says

      by

      Many entertainment industry workers have been jobless for months, leading state officials to consider increasing subsidies to keep film and television production in California.Hollywood has yet to recover the jobs in film and television production that were lost when strikes by writers and actors brought production to a halt in 2023 as the industry was shifting, according to a report released Thursday.The report by the Otis College of Art and Design found that jobs in the entertainment sector in 2024 remained 25 percent below their 2022 peak, when the industry was working to make up for time lost during the pandemic shutdown.One measure of production, the number of shooting days in Los Angeles County, decreased by 42 percent last year compared to 2022, according to the report.“The film, TV, and sound sector appears to be settling into a new normal characterized by lower employment and production levels when compared to its pre-strike peak,” the report said.Michael F. Miller Jr., a vice president at the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees who oversees film and television production for the union, said that over the two-year period from 2022 to 2024, roughly 18,000 full-time jobs had evaporated. One recent survey of more than over 700 crew members found that almost two in three reported that their income fell short of expectations last year.The new report found that the entertainment sector added almost 15,000 jobs last year, but that the gains were not enough to make up for all the jobs lost during the strikes.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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A Working Man’ Review: Blue Collar, Bloody Hands

      by

      Jason Statham plays a construction worker who’s as deft at breaking bones as he is at building high-rises.The writer-director David Ayer began his career concocting scripts for action thrillers that put some psychological nuance into their boom-boom pyrotechnics. Yes, Denzel Washington’s chest-beating boasts in “Training Day” (2001) made theaters quake even if they weren’t equipped with Dolby, but there were further dimensions to his character.It seems as if he threw all that sort of thing out of his tool kit around the time of “Suicide Squad” (2016). Ayer’s pictures are purely blunt-force objects now, and effective ones. And all the more persuasive when Jason Statham stars in them.In “A Working Man,” whose script was coauthored by Ayer and Sylvester Stallone, Statham plays a construction worker with a violent past from which he’s trying to distance himself. (Fat chance in this kind of movie.) When the daughter of his boss is kidnapped, he’s is compelled to go to labyrinthine and brutal lengths to get her back.This movie follows up on Statham and Ayer’s 2024 “The Beekeeper,” a similar payback punishment picture whose forced premise wasn’t helped by its garishly dressed villains. The villains here are garishly dressed too, but there’s a rationale: They’re Russian. In any event, Statham racks up bad-guy kills like he’s collecting Pokémon.As the kidnapped daughter, Jenny, Arianna Rivas takes fruitful advantage of her character’s efforts to fight back, showing acrobatic action chops. The star’s old “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” mate Jason Flemyng plays a slimy oligarch, and David Harbour is Statham’s wise pal (and armorer); it’s a satisfying cast all the way down. In a peculiar touch, near the end of the movie, its slimiest villain, played by Kenneth Collard, puts on a costume that makes him look like the Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins’s legendary villain, Coffin Joe. I dug it.A Working ManRated R for violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Penguin Lessons’ Review: A Unique Approach to Teaching

      by

      Steve Coogan plays Tom Michell, an English teacher in 1970s Argentina, whose small new friend makes his class a hit.A movie aspiring to be a droll animal-led comedy and an examination of a dictatorship has an intimidating number of needles to thread. The director of “The Penguin Lessons,” Peter Cattaneo, also made “The Full Monty,” so he has some experience with crowd-pleasing films, at the same time being deft with unusual subject matter.The movie begins with a familiar disclaimer that it’s based on true events. The actor Steve Coogan plays Tom Michell, a teacher from southern England who is unhappily assigned to an upper-class boy’s school in 1970s Argentina. (Jeff Pope’s script is based on Michell’s memoir of the same title.)On an idle day at the beach in nearby Uruguay, Tom encounters a penguin emerging from an oil spill. Hoping to impress a woman he’s met there, Tom brings the creature back to his hotel, cleans it off and tries to return it to the ocean. No luck. The penguin believes he’s made a friend.Once Tom returns to Argentina, he contrives to make the penguin he has named Juan Salvador a teaching tool, and his English class becomes wildly successful. (While Juan Salvador is supposedly a creature of the wild, he executes all sorts of cute bits that only a trained performer can pull off.)Things get serious when one of Tom’s housekeepers is swept up in the military dictatorship. Tom opts to abandon his apolitical facade because the penguin has taught him how to care about others. While Juan Salvador is a shameless exhibitionist, Coogan’s performance is understated; he conveys Tom’s softening without nudging the viewer too much. On the other hand, the misuse of Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky” on the soundtrack is egregious. The rest of the picture is largely winsome and inoffensive.The Penguin LessonsRated PG-13 for language. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Julie Keeps Quiet’ Review: Coping at Her Own Speed

      by

      A teenage regional tennis star moves on at her own pace after her ex-coach is dismissed under a cloud of suspicion.“Julie Keeps Quiet” ignores the usual movie playbook on post-trauma drama with its unusually internal portrait of a teenage tennis player, Julie. After her ex-coach is suspended under murky circumstances, she prefers not to share details of his behavior. But her feelings in the aftermath run deep, and this Belgian film’s virtue lies in its fidelity to her path and her pace.Her life is rooted in the routine and repetition of training and school among (supportive) peers, whether serve-and-volleys or German class. She evades questions from administrators and friends about Jeremy (Laurent Caron), her former instructor, even though he still calls her with doom-laden pep talks. You wonder when the story, written by the director, Leonardo van Dijl, and Ruth Becquart (who plays Julie’s mother), will tip her into a spiral.Instead, her low-key confidence as a player — her biggest smile in the film comes with success on the court — slowly manifests in her growing resolve and clarity in addressing the Jeremy situation. She recalibrates with a new coach, Backie (Pierre Gervais), and takes breathers with her dog. (The tennis star Naomi Osaka lends her imprimatur as an executive producer.)Tessa Van den Broeck, a newcomer, plays Julie with zero affectation. She seems plucked from a high school roll call, or maybe from a film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose company co-produced this one. Nicolas Karakatsanis’s twilit 35-millimeter cinematography mirrors her character’s preoccupied state, echoed by Caroline Shaw’s cracked-lullaby score. It’s a film that maintains that Julie’s story is available only when she’s ready to tell it.Julie Keeps QuietNot rated. In Dutch and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Holland’ Review: Nicole Kidman Goes Dutch

      by

      Set in a Michigan town designed to evoke the Netherlands, this thriller has red herring on the menu.“Holland” is set circa 2000 in Holland, Mich., a real town founded by Dutch settlers and distinguished by its windmill, tulips and other tributes to the Netherlands. Red herring is also on the menu in this second feature from the director Mimi Cave. The film’s unusual backdrop, unresolved subplots and dream-sequence fakeouts are ultimately all distractions from a story that doesn’t make much sense.Cave’s dating thriller “Fresh” (2022), starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, was also not a model of narrative logic. This time, there are signs that connective tissue may have gotten lost in the editing. (Rachel Sennott, from “Bottoms,” appears for what barely qualifies as a cameo.) Yet there is just enough effort to tie up loose ends that “Holland” can’t be hand-waved as accidental avant-garde.Nancy (Nicole Kidman), a home economics teacher, suspects that her husband, Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), an optometrist, is having an affair because he so often goes on business trips. She persuades Dave (Gael García Bernal), who teaches shop and harbors a reciprocated crush on Nancy, to help investigate. (Dave’s life before his move to Holland is one of many matters that Cave and the screenwriter, Andrew Sodroski, tip as important and then mostly ignore.)It is hard to catalog the plot holes without giving too much away, but between the gluteal surgery in “Fresh” and a stabbing here, Cave is apparently not a stickler for continuity when it comes to injuries. A framing device suggesting that some events might be imagined acts as little more than a shoddy excuse.HollandRated R for some violence and sex, but this is hardly Paul Verhoeven’s Holland. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Grand Tour’ Review: A Quiet Knockout

      by

      The Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes’s black-and-white film follows a colonial official on a 20th-century odyssey across Asia, with his fiancée in pursuit.In “Grand Tour,” a lush, melancholy story of yearning, a man treks across Asia in flight from his fiancée. But this one-sentence plotline barely scratches the surface of the Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’s magnificent black-and-white film, which mixes mannered studio footage with fluid documentary images to build a world that doesn’t abide by traditional rules of time, space or scale.It’s 1917, and Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a colonial official working for the British who is stationed in Burma, is awaiting the arrival of his fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate). Conflicted about the relationship, he abandons his bird of paradise bouquet and embarks on a jagged journey across the continent. As he traverses city and jungle, Molly scrambles behind, sending him telegrams as she follows his every move.Shot on soundstages during the pandemic, these narrative sequences evoke the refined grandeur of classic Hollywood epics. Cloaking the screen in moody chiaroscuro, Gomes finds mystique in Edward’s stoicism and poetry in Molly’s heartbreak. But “Grand Tour” also complicates this splendor. In pairing scenes of the couple with present-day footage from South and East Asia, Gomes gestures at a troubling history of cinematic distortions.He drives his ideas home by periodically cutting in footage of performances — marionettes, karaoke, puppetry. These cultural shows urge the audience to consider how we relate to entertainment, to grapple with what engages us and why. Beauty is pleasurable, but the film’s use of evocative visuals to focus on storytelling more broadly is what makes it a quiet knockout.Grand TourNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. In theaters. More