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      ‘The African Desperate’ Review: Double Speak

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      Martine Syms’s whip-smart satire brings the invisible, everyday negotiations of a Black artist to startlingly visual life.Martine Syms’s debut feature derives its title from a Freudian slip. In the opening scene, as Palace (Diamond Stingily), a sculptor at an upstate New York art school, describes her thesis project to an all-white faculty panel, she mispronounces “African diaspora” as “African desperate.” It sounds nonsensical, but no one bats an eye, and the professors continue with their jargon-riddled commentary. This is the art world, a place as open to absurdity as it is closed to diversity. Here, people say made-up terms with grave conviction yet are incredulous that a Black woman like Palace has made it to the Venice Biennale.Drawn from Syms’s own experiences as a visual artist, “The African Desperate” is less an art-school parody as it is a portrait of existential incongruity, where contempt mingles with deep affection. After being anointed a Master of Fine Arts, a frustrated Palace is ready to pack up and leave, but she stays on for 24 final hours of debauchery, coaxed by friends, drugs and potential lovers.As Palace stumbles through a series of neon-hued encounters, ranging in tone from slapstick to dark comedy, Syms brings the invisible, everyday negotiations of a Black artist to startlingly visual life with layers of images and sounds. When a white classmate says she’s never heard of the Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter, Palace doesn’t react, but a meme flashes briefly on-screen with the caption: “What if I told you there were Black theorists?”There’s an echo of Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel” in “The African Desperate,” though Palace’s stuckness in her off-putting milieu is less surreal than tragically banal. As alienating as art school might be, it’s also a refuge for our eccentric, orange-haired heroine.The African DesperateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      To Deal With Film Festival Pressure, Sarah Polley Heads for the Hills

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      Hiking helped the actress-turned-auteur as she premiered her buzzy drama “Women Talking” in Telluride and Toronto.TORONTO — The scene inside the restaurant Lapinou was loud and hectic on Tuesday night as a crowd of Hollywood power players, including Rooney Mara and Claire Foy, navigated narrow hallways, passed plates of beignets and an endless stream of well-wishers with declarations of Oscar buzz.It was the Toronto International Film Festival after-party for the new drama “Women Talking,” though to do any real talking (as opposed to shouting), you had to escape outside, as I did midway through the night with the film’s director, Sarah Polley. Clad in a sharp suit and tie, Polley appeared unruffled by both the noisy soirée and the high-stakes premiere she had just come from.“I feel really happy and calm,” Polley told me with a serene smile. She thought about it, then amended her statement: “Kind of happy — not in a jacked-up, nutty way.”Higher levels of happiness would have been perfectly warranted after the two weeks Polley has just had: Following a successful launch of the film at the Telluride Film Festival, she and her cast flew to Toronto for another warm reception that ensured “Women Talking,” due in theaters this December, will be one of the season’s most-discussed movies.Based on the novel by Miriam Toews, “Women Talking” follows the female members of a Mennonite colony as they decide whether to stay or go. Their cloistered lives have been ruptured by a series of sexual attacks committed by the men of their community, and to stay would preserve the status quo, for better and for worse: While it would keep their families together, the women and their daughters would be in danger of continued assault.But for these Mennonite women, who have never seen a map nor been taught to read or write, leaving the only world they’ve ever known is a tall order, too. So a council is appointed: A group of women, including characters played by Mara, Foy and Frances McDormand, will gather in a hayloft and debate the decision that could change the rest of their lives.Though “Women Talking” has sparked Oscar talk for Polley and her cast after the film’s Telluride premiere two weekends ago, anxieties initially ran high in advance of that first screening. So Polley proposed a hike.“The operating principle was that we should just have a great morning so that if the film goes terribly, we’ll at least have had a great day,” she said. “I think it’s smart to start with something good that can’t be taken away from you.”That mountain trek with her cast went so well that even after the premiere, the actress Jessie Buckley decided to lead them on a second hike the next day. “But Jessie’s actually, like, a really serious hiker,” Polley said, “and I almost passed out, so l turned back.”Hiking was less necessary before the Toronto premiere, since the city is Polley’s hometown, the place where she acted in films like “The Sweet Hereafter” before her segue to directing. In fact, she was so convinced the Toronto audience couldn’t be topped that though “Women Talking” has a busy slate of festival appearances and premieres ahead, from now on, Polley plans to politely excuse herself each time the movie unspools.“I decided that the first time it played in Toronto would be the last time I watched the movie,” she said. “There was a sense of completion around it tonight: You’re saying goodbye to all the scenes and every frame of the film.”But if there’s one thing she’ll miss now that she’s no longer watching her film with an audience, it’s the occasional moment in this weighty drama when something light happens and the moviegoers around her realize they’ve got permission to laugh.“That’s when you feel the audience coalescing and having some kind of a collective response,” Polley said. “It’s thrilling to have laughter happen when you’re watching a film like this.” More

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      in Theater

      Satires Like ‘Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul’ Reveal the Art of Acting Faithful

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      In films like “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul” and shows like “The Righteous Gemstones,” pageantry is the top priority.In church satires there’s always a scene in which a ritual, tradition or show of faith becomes a grand spectacle. The joke isn’t the faith itself but the performance of faith — and a performance of virtue, even when that’s far from the truth. If you can pull off that show without a hitch, heavenly paradise may not be guaranteed. But worldly riches likely will be.In the movie “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul,” which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and is both now in theaters and streaming on Peacock, the first lady of a once-popular Southern Baptist megachurch and her pastor husband aim to make a grand comeback after a sexual harassment scandal. When they fail to commit to the performance that in the past had brought success to them and their church, they endure a fall from grace.Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown) is the king and shepherd of Wander to Greater Paths church, where he employs his altar like a stage, delivering rousing sermons during which the spirit may cause him to quiver, shake and strip right out of his church clothes. He sits on a regal throne alongside his wife, Trinitie (Regina Hall). Together they maintain a costly image; Trinitie treats herself to an expensive, elaborate church hat from a shop in the mall, while Lee-Curtis shows off his expansive collection of designer shoes and suits, which he claims helps him with his ministry.Written and directed by Adamma Ebo, the film focuses on Trinitie and how she deals with the consequences of her husband’s sexual indiscretions with members of their congregation. Trinitie already has to put on one kind of performance, as a first lady who supports her husband, honoring their marital vows even when he has dishonored his. But she is also delivering an additional performance: as her husband’s beard. When the film reveals that Lee-Curtis’s transgressions were not with women but with young men, it juxtaposes this reveal with flashback scenes of Lee-Curtis ardently condemning homosexuality to a cheering congregation, showing that he was speaking through a now-transparent screen of hypocrisy and self-hate.The most striking part of the film, however, is how it reads as a bleak, cringe-worthy tragedy rather than a comedy; close-ups of Trinitie’s face show her cracking beneath the surface, and her exasperation and even resentment of her husband form visible watermarks on the perfect portrait of marriage they’ve constructed. Bedroom scenes show Lee-Curtis’s lack of sexual interest in Trinitie, despite her attempts at intimacy. And when Trinitie goes to her mother for marriage advice, she is brusquely shut down, told that even in the current circumstances she can only be a good Christian woman if she stands with her husband until death. Take it from a theater critic: There’s nothing more depressing than watching an unwilling actor trapped on a stage.Walton Goggins on the television series “The Righteous Gemstones.”HBO MaxThis concept is at the heart of many other church satires. In the hilarious HBO comedy series “The Righteous Gemstones,” a family of megachurch royals have their services broadcast on TV, and their masses and church events are as gaudy as festivals; the family even owns a Gemstones-themed amusement park on their sprawling multimansion estate. These Bible rock stars are not just TV preachers, but also recording artists: The siblings Aimee-Leigh Gemstone (Jennifer Nettles) and Baby Billy (Walton Goggins) first rose to fame with their touring religious musical act.In last year’s obscure — and utterly unwatchable — satirical faith-based comedy “Church People,” which features Thor Ramsey, two of the Baldwins (Stephen, William), one of the N*Syncers (Joey Fatone) and Turk from “Scrubs” (Donald Faison), an eccentric megachurch pastor (Michael Monks) comes up with new antics to up the church’s popular appeal, to the chagrin of Guy (Ramsey), a celebrity youth pastor. When a real-life crucifixion becomes the plan for the church’s Easter service, Guy aims to stop the proceedings and return the congregation to the Gospel teachings.Ebony Marshall-Oliver, left, and Cleo King in the play “Chicken & Biscuits.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe religious pageantry in these movies and TV shows is only one part of the satire; at the root is the underlying hypocrisy of the characters. In “Honk for Jesus,” it’s Lee-Curtis’s predatory grooming. In Douglas Lyons’s church comedy play “Chicken & Biscuits,” which premiered on Broadway last fall, it’s the newly deceased patriarch and pastor who, his family finds out during his funeral, has a few sinful secrets of his own. In “The Righteous Gemstones,” it’s Baby Billy and Eli (John Goodman), the iron-fisted commander of the church and the Gemstone family, each acting as upstanding shepherds of the faith to achieve money and celebrity while escaping the more unsavory parts of their past. It’s the immoral — and sometimes illegal — activities of Jesse Gemstone (Danny McBride) and Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson).And the show’s wackiest story lines are offered courtesy of Eli’s youngest son, Kelvin (Adam Devine), who finds creative ways to fit his repressed homosexuality into absurd pageants of religious ceremony — like forming a group of muscular all-male, scantily clad disciples, the God Squad, who resolve conflicts by having cross-bearing contests.In the sharp, Tony-winning Broadway musical “A Strange Loop,” an usher named Usher is trying to write a “big, Black and queer” musical — the very show we’re watching — despite the disapproval of his parents and the unhelpful intrusions of his inner thoughts. His mother begs him to “write a nice, clean Tyler Perry-like gospel play.” Usher resentfully sings about writing the shallow, stereotypical artwork his mother wants, and near the end of “A Strange Loop,” the whole production transforms into an over-exaggerated, “overblown yet false display / just like in a gospel play,” Usher sings.Larry Owens, center, in the Broadway musical “A Strange Loop.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKnowing that his sexuality is at odds with the church values to which his mother subscribes, he puts on a performance mocking the sometimes cruel and exclusionary standards many church communities hoist onto their faithful. A threatening lit-up cross appears on set, where Usher condemns himself in a fiery sermon of self-hate while his inner thoughts appear as robed choir members singing a refrain of “AIDS is God’s punishment.” He tells his mother this is the only way he can write a gospel play, but she misreads his scathing satire as truth, tells him he can still save himself from the threat of homosexuality.But in the show’s final scenes, Usher drops the mock gospel play as his thoughts confront him about his intentions, how he claims he’s showing the audience “real life.” “And real life is making hateful anti-Black caricatures in a Tyler Perry-style gospel play?” one asks.So much of the meta show is about traversing the line between reality and fiction, and how we write ourselves in the stories of our lives — when we make ourselves valiant or pitiful, strong or weak, the hero or the villain. Usher can’t write his mother’s gospel play because it contradicts his identity; he’s unwilling to be dishonest, even within a fake play within a musical about a writer writing a musical.One of the saddest moments in “Honk for Jesus” sounds like it should be one of the funniest: Lee-Curtis goads Trinitie into praise-miming (which is, inexplicably, a real practice) on the side of the road outside their church in a desperate attempt to attract congregants. Hall deadpans to the camera, in her elaborate pastel-yellow church dress and matching hat, her face caked in a thick white-and-black mime makeup. Trinitie was once queen of the pulpit, and now she’s just the jester. She and Curtis-Lee stand side by side in front of the camera, but her rage is palpable, even beneath the calm facade. He uneasily tries to carry on with the show — to reestablish himself as the good-guy pastor — but his scene partner seems to have gone mute. More

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      ‘Do Revenge’: Paying Homage to Teen Classics by Way of Hitchcock

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      Though Gen Z is the subject, the director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson wanted to honor and critique high school movies of the ’90s.“You’re probably going, ‘Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?’” Cher Horowitz mused in the opening montage of “Clueless,” laughing with friends in her Jeep Wrangler and splurging at Tiffany’s on Rodeo Drive. That scene, set to the Muffs’ pop-punk cover of “Kids in America,” painted a heady portrait of ’90s youth and excess.Twenty-seven years later, a new version of “Kids in America” — by the indie-pop singer Maude Latour — plays in “Do Revenge” as throngs of rich, Gen Z teens spiral into various states of ecstasy and despair after they unwittingly ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms at a school dinner.The Netflix dark comedy (out Sept. 16) is full of such winks to its teen film forebears. There’s a guided tour of the school’s cliques (as seen in “Mean Girls,” “10 Things I Hate About You” and more) and a requisite makeover (a staple in “Clueless,” “She’s All That” and so many others). But many of the “Do Revenge” references also serve as a playful reckoning, blending nostalgia with wholly contemporary tastes and issues.“I’m obsessed with high school movies,” the director and writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson said. “But, very specifically, this type of film that I just feel like doesn’t get made anymore.”While in postproduction on her first film, the 2019 rom-com “Someone Great,” she and one of the producers, Peter Cron, began analyzing her favorite ’90s entries in the genre — “Clueless,” “Cruel Intentions,” “10 Things” and “Jawbreaker” — and common threads of campiness and satire emerged. And, with the exception of “Jawbreaker,” they were all reimaginings of classic works. (That would be “Emma,” “Dangerous Liaisons” and “The Taming of the Shrew,” respectively.)Camila Mendes said her role defied the usual studio note to make women more likable: “What ends up happening is you get these really one-dimensional female characters.” Kim Simms/NetflixRobinson and Cron brainstormed vintage material they could rework in a high school setting. Cron suggested looking to Alfred Hitchcock. “Rear Window” had gotten the teen treatment in the 2007 thriller “Disturbia.” What about his 1951 noir “Strangers on a Train”? Instead of two grown men swapping murders, two teen girls could concoct a plot to “do revenge” of the nonviolent kind on their exes.The similarities pretty much end there, but from that germ of a concept, Robinson and her co-writer, Celeste Ballard, crafted the acerbic tale of Drea, a queen bee who becomes a social pariah after an intimate Snapchat video she sent to her boyfriend, Max, is leaked to their entire Miami prep school; and Eleanor, a mysterious outsider looking to bring down a girl from summer camp.“Teenage girls are fascinating. They are these little engines of chaos,” said Robinson, who created the MTV series “Sweet/Vicious” and co-wrote “Thor: Love and Thunder.” She added, “High school in and of itself is its own stage and the perfect way to tell these types of twisty, turny stories.”She found her leads in the “Riverdale” star Camila Mendes and the “Stranger Things” actress Maya Hawke. In supporting roles are standouts from other recent teen-centric fare, including Austin Abrams (“Euphoria”), Alisha Boe (“13 Reasons Why”), Talia Ryder (“Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between”) and Rish Shah (“Ms. Marvel”). The assembled cast, fittingly, dubbed themselves “The Revengers.”Both Mendes, 28, and Hawke, 24, were skeptical about taking on another teen role, but Robinson’s vision and the characters’ complexities on the page convinced them this wouldn’t be a typical return to the genre.“I was like, ‘Oh, wait, this is really good and really smart. And it’s not just another high schooler. It’s the most badass, psychopath high schooler that I’ve ever read,’” Hawke said of her character, Eleanor. She’s not simply chaotic and crazy, Hawke added, “she’s a hurt person with motive.”Camila Mendes, left, and Hawke were both wary of playing another teenage character but signed on after reading the script. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait, this is really good and really smart,’” Hawke said.Kim Simms/NetflixMendes, who plays Drea, echoed her: “You get this note so much in Hollywood that’s always like, ‘We don’t want her to be too unlikable. She’s got to be likable.’ And then what ends up happening is you get these really one-dimensional female characters. Drea is not that.”While a leaked Snapchat serves as the MacGuffin and texting is pervasive, the director, along with the production designer Hillary Gurtler and the costume designer Alana Morshead, didn’t try to force too many Gen Z-specific trends. Instead the three millennial women tried to create a vibrant “girl world” that blended the past and the present in a colorful way.“Between Gen Z and millennials, you’ve got an incredibly smart audience, visually attuned more than any other previously,” Gurtler said. “So instead of pandering directly to somebody, it’s like, let’s build this incredible world, and their tastes and vision will meet it.”Morshead modeled the Rosehill prep school uniforms after those common in South Korea but reimagined them in a Miami-fied pastel palette of lavender and mint. She sourced accessories and streetwear from small labels run by women and people of color, including Miracle Eye, the Mighty Company and Muaves, and added a smattering of vintage couture where the budget allowed.But perhaps most important in crafting the film’s overall feel, Robinson said, was the music. To achieve a no-skips CD experience like the movie soundtracks she loved as a teenager, Robinson opted for hits by Hole, Meredith Brooks and Fatboy Slim alongside newer needle drops from Olivia Rodrigo, Muna and Caroline Polachek. She hired Este Haim and Amanda Yamate to create an original, neo-noir-tinged score, and enlisted the music supervisor Robert Lowry to pull it all together.“I didn’t really care about them being the most recognizable songs. I wanted them to elicit a feeling in you,” Robinson said. “It was less about the name-iness of the artists or the songs, and it was way more about, does the song bring you back to a time?”Visual nostalgia is likewise key. Teens play croquet on a lawn à la “Heathers.” The popular kids perch on a fountain just as they did in “Scream.” There’s a “10 Things”-inspired paintball date. Eleanor drives a vintage luxury car in a nod to Sebastian’s prized possession in “Cruel Intentions.” And to explicitly tie up the connection between “Do Revenge” and ’90s pop culture, Robinson cast Sarah Michelle Gellar in a small but satisfying role as Rosehill’s headmaster, virtually the only adult character.The costume designs used a Miami-inspired palette of pastels. Kim Simms/NetflixYet, unlike the homogeneity of many high school films of the past, the filmmakers wanted “Do Revenge” to more broadly reflect the youth of today. It centers the stories of Latina and queer teens and, aspirationally, doesn’t allow characters to hurl insults about physical appearance or sexuality. These girls might dub someone a “human Birkenstock” but never a “full-on Monet,” a shift Robinson said she felt a “responsibility” to convey.“We tried to root it all in character, rather than appearance or identity,” Robinson said. “You can be biting. You can be satirical. But those surface-level jabs, those types of mean comments, I hope that they just go away. They’re so boring. If you’re going to be mean, be smart.”Here, the popular bad boy is a nail-polish-wearing, earring-adorned trust fund kid whose androgynous style was partly inspired by that of Harry Styles. “I liked updating that from the mean guys in those ’90s movies we’d seen before,” the costume designer Morshead said. “He doesn’t have to be the stereotypical, brooding jock.”Max’s villainous nature hides behind performative ally-ship — he starts a school club called the Cis Hetero Men Championing Female Identifying Students League — and faux feminist gestures.“I know so many people like that in Hollywood,” Mendes said. “There’s definitely this ongoing joke with me and my female actress friends where we talk about how there are so many Maxes in Hollywood, it’s insane. They’re adored by the public, but all the people in the industry know what they’re capable of, and it can be incredibly frustrating.”In fact, in “Do Revenge” no one is what they seem on the surface. The lines between good and evil characters are blurred, and many who do terrible things find their way to accountability and redemption by the film’s end.“I think that cancel culture is stunting people’s want and ability to actually grow past the wrongs that they’ve committed,” Robinson said. “This whole film is about saying, ‘Yeah, you did some bad stuff. You made some bad choices, but every day is a day where you can become better if you want to turn the corner.’” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Gameboys: The Movie’ Review: An Online Relationship Gets Real

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      This spinoff film from a web series deals with how a young couple handles the highs and lows of a relationship during the pandemic.In “Gameboys: The Movie,” the consequences and uncertainties of the pandemic are the star of the show.Before this feature-length spinoff, the Filipino web series “Gameboys” (later shown on Netflix) used the boys’ love genre — made popular in manga — to confront how the pandemic was taking a toll on relationships. The show introduced audiences to the livestream gamer Cairo (Elijah Canlas) and one of his fans, Gavreel (Kokoy De Santos), with the two finding one another during Luzon’s lockdown and, amid intense isolation, interfacing online. With the film, their relationship moves from the virtual to the in-person realm.And when the two move in with each other, they, like with many pandemic pairings, are forced to deal with some of the more unsavory parts of being together (too much attention, when to shower and the like). Their evolving dynamic is complicated when the quarreling quasi-lovers Terrence (Kyle Velino) and Wesley (Miggy Jimenez), and Gavreel’s conservative Aunt Susan (Angie Castrenc), crash their pandemic home.“Gameboys: The Movie,” directed by Ivan Andrew Payawal and written by Ash M. Malanum, does not take the comic situation and run with it. Instead, it leads with a teen soap tone, and despite billing itself as a film, feels structurally more like a string of episodes smashed together. It toggles between a desktop movie (like the horror film “Unfriended”), with characters on FaceTime or livestreaming, and a straightforward one. But it is at its best when it lets harsh reality — particularly the sacrifices people who love each other have to make — disrupt its more predictable and adolescent impulses.Gameboys: The MovieNot rated. In Tagalog and Filipino, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Atlanta’ and Fall Previews

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      FX airs the start of the fourth season of the Emmy- winning show. ABC shares its fall previews.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, Sept. 12-18. Details and times are subject to change.Monday74TH EMMY AWARDS 8 p.m. on NBC. Shifting from the usual Sunday night ceremony, the ceremony celebrating all things television is back on Monday, with Kenan Thompson as the host. The ceremony will be held in person at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. “Succession” leads the nominations with 25 potential awards — including in the categories of best actor and actress and best supporting actor and actress, for many of the main cast members. “Ted Lasso” follows closely behind with 20 nominations. Presenters will include Will Arnett, Kelly Clarkson, Selena Gomez, Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler and others.TuesdayTHE COME UP 9 p.m. on Freeform. This new reality show focuses on six Gen Zers as they navigate New York City after the height of the pandemic. The stars of the show, Taofeek Abijako, Fernando Casablancas, Ben Hard, Claude Shwartz, Ebon Trower and Sophia Wilson, work on their careers and figure out where they belong within their friend groups and social circles. Four episodes will premiere back-to-back on Tuesday and then two episodes will air each week that follows.WednesdayABC FALL PREVIEW SPECIAL 8:30 p.m. on ABC. The cast of “Home Economics” will host an evening dedicated to sneak previews of what is to come on ABC this fall. One new show, “Alaska Daily,” stars Hilary Swank as a reporter who leaves New York behind to work at a local Alaska paper. Another new show, “The Rookie: Feds,” stars Nathan Fillion as an F.B.I. officer who brings in Simone Clark (played by Niecy Nash-Betts) to investigate a former student who is suspected of committing a terrorist attack. They will also show previews of the upcoming seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Bachelor in Paradise” and “Abbott Elementary.”THE CHALLENGE USA 9 p.m. on CBS. The first season of this show is wrapping up, with one man and one woman to be crowned champions and a $500,000 cash prize. “The Challenge USA” differs from the original “The Challenge,” which has been airing on MTV for over 30 seasons, as it has contestants from U.S.-based reality shows, as opposed to contestants from all over the world. The participants come from shows like “The Amazing Race,” “Survivor,” “Big Brother” and “Love Island USA.”ThursdaySTRAIGHT NO CHASER: The 25th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The a cappella group Straight No Chaser, which was formed at Indiana University, is celebrating its anniversary with a concert back where it all began — in Indiana. The group which is touring the United States this year, performs some classic covers including “Proud Mary” and “Lean on Me,” as well as newer pop songs like “I’m Yours” and “All About That Bass” in this recorded concert.From left: Olivia, Shelia, Paxton and Cindy with Kelly Ripa and Anderson Cooper on “Generation Gap.”ABC/Raymond LiuGENERATION GAP 9 p.m. on ABC. This quiz show pairs up family members to answer questions about each other’s generations. Hosted by Kelly Ripa, each episode has also featured a special guest, including the YouTuber Colleen Ballinger (in character as Miranda Sings), and the actor Judd Hirsch. For this week’s episode — the 10th and final one of the season — the guest is the journalist Anderson Cooper.ATLANTA 10 p.m. on FX. After a four-year hiatus between Season 2 and Season 3, fans of this show will be happy that Season 4 is arriving this week, less than four months since the Season 3 finale. After last season’s romp through Europe, the characters are back in Atlanta. “If ‘Atlanta’ has always been hard to pigeonhole — it’s comedy, except when it’s drama, except when it’s horror,” James Poniewozik wrote in his New York Times review of the Season 3 premiere earlier this year, “that may be because it is about complicated people whose circumstances are always just a nudge away from any of these.”FridayDYNASTY 9 p.m. on the CW. This show, staring Elizabeth Gillies, Grant Show and Adam Huber, is finishing up its fifth and final season this week. It is based on the 1980s soap opera of the same name and features a rivalry between the Carrington and Colby families, but the show has had its own plot lines instead of building on the original show’s stories.SaturdayMeryl Streep, left, and Amanda Seyfried in “Mamma Mia!”Peter Mountain/Universal PicturesMAMMA MIA! (2008) 6:20 p.m. Based around the songs of ABBA, this movie tells the story of mother and daughter duo, Donna and Sophie (Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried), as Sophie prepares for her wedding. Hoping to meet her father, Sophie invites to the wedding three men whom her mother wrote about in her diary the summer before she was born. Harry (Colin Firth), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Sam (Pierce Brosnan) show up and chaos ensues. “Really, this movie is incapable of harming anyone,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “except moviegoers with the good taste and bad manners to resist its relentless, ridiculous charm.”STAND BY ME (1986) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O’Connell and Corey Feldman star in this coming-of-age story based on Stephen King’s “The Body.” The story follows the four boys as they go on an overnight hike to try to find a body of a boy who was hit by a train. “Mostly, there is a lot of boys’ talk and good fellowship and an unstated and stated appreciation of this grand episode in their lives and how nothing will ever equal the comradeship of this summer,” Walter Goodman wrote in his New York Times review of the film.SundayJessie T. Usher in “Tales of the Walking Dead.”Curtis Bonds Baker/AMCTALES OF THE WALKING DEAD 9 p.m. on AMC. Each episode in this spinoff anthology series of “The Walking Dead” is a different story in the same post-apocalyptic world. The season’s sixth and final episode follows a couple traumatized by the state of the world, and who might be living in a haunted house. More

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      in Movies

      In ‘The Fabelmans,’ Steven Spielberg Himself Is the Star

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      But it’s Michelle Williams who burns brightest in this film based on Spielberg’s childhood, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” is the movie every fall film festival was dying to have, but only Toronto got it. And at the Saturday-night premiere, the collective excitement was making people lose their minds.It wasn’t just the enthusiastic audience, many of whom had come straight from the well-received premiere of the “Knives Out” sequel “Glass Onion.” And it wasn’t just the giddiness of Cameron Bailey, who runs the Toronto International Film Festival, as he introduced the filmmaker for the first time. Even Spielberg himself got carried away in the madness.“I’m so glad I came to Toronto,” he said. Thank you, Steven. Same. #TIFF22 pic.twitter.com/wLAwQW58IW— Cameron Bailey (@cameron_tiff) September 11, 2022
      “I’m really glad we came to Toronto!” exclaimed the 75-year-old director, noting that this would be the first time a film of his had played at a film festival. That claim would appear to sweep away the New York Film Festival showings of “Bridge of Spies” and “Lincoln,” the Cannes premieres of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “The BFG,” and the South by Southwest bow of “Ready Player One,” but hey, sometimes you’ve got to clear the table before you can set it.And at least his lie felt emotionally true, since the stakes were so significant: By landing “The Fabelmans,” Toronto could fortify itself after two pandemic-diminished years, while Spielberg could claim the friendliest possible audience for his most personal film yet.Written by the director and his frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, “The Fabelmans” is an only slightly fictionalized retelling of Spielberg’s own coming-of-age. Sammy Fabelman (played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle) is a movie-mad kid who stages increasingly elaborate short films that star his sisters, classmates and semi-supportive parents. His dad, Burt (Paul Dano), is too swept up in his computer-programming job to understand Sammy’s artistic inclinations, but his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is a free spirit who never got to realize her dreams of working as a pianist and encourages Sammy to follow his bliss.Their mother-son bond is strong, and when Sammy films her dancing on a family trip and later shows her the edited footage, Mitzi beams. “You see me,” she says. But Sammy sometimes sees too much: As he gets older, he notices that Mitzi’s strong bond with her husband’s best friend (Seth Rogen) borders on an emotional affair. And as the family moves from New Jersey to Arizona and then finally to California, the ties that bind begin to fray.I found “The Fabelmans” to be only secondarily Spielberg’s origin story; primarily, it’s a look-at-what-she-can-do Michelle Williams vehicle, and the actress really goes for it, attacking this part like someone who knows she’s been handed her signature role. Based on Spielberg’s late mother, Leah, Mitzi is a dramatic personality, prone to flights of fancy and intense mood swings, and at any given moment, she’ll laugh, cry, sing or pack the kids into the car for an impromptu tornado chase. You love her, but she’s a lot — on this, the viewer and Sammy both agree — and Williams finds exactly the right moments to dial back the bigness and remind you that there is something private and vulnerable at the core of this very outgoing woman.Spielberg told the Toronto crowd that he’d had Williams in mind to play his mom ever since he saw her work in “Blue Valentine” (2010), which earned Williams the second of her four Oscar nominations; if she is campaigned as a supporting actress for “The Fabelmans” (as I suspect she will be, despite her ample screen time), this could very well propel the well-respected 42-year-old to her first win, just a year after Spielberg’s “West Side Story” actress Ariana DeBose topped that same race.Spielberg films always have plenty of Oscar upside, and “The Fabelmans” will be a strong contender in the picture and directing categories (and could even score a nod for Judd Hirsch, who puts in a scene-stealing cameo as Mitzi’s uncle), but the film is gentler, shaggier and more intimate than some of his other awards-season juggernauts, and there’s no need to oversell it at this early date. Even Spielberg, sensing all the hype in the room, sought to downplay speculation that “The Fabelmans” served as any sort of magnum-opus finale.“This is not because I’m going to retire and this is my swan song,” he told Toronto. “Don’t believe any of that!” More

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      ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ Wins Best Film at Venice Film Festival

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      The director, Laura Poitras, praised Nan Goldin, the photographer and subject of her film, in her acceptance speech.“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” directed by Laura Poitras, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on Saturday by a competition jury led by Julianne Moore. The film, about the photographer Nan Goldin, was the rare documentary to win the Golden Lion and won over strong competitors.“I’ve never met anyone like Nan,” Poitras said in her acceptance speech, praising Goldin as “courageous” in her protests against the Sackler family, whom Poitras described as “ruthless.” The film examines Goldin’s art, life and her activism in protesting the family and Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, for their roles in the opioid crisis. Poitras, whose 2014 film “Citizenfour” won the Oscar for best documentary, thanked the festival for recognizing that “documentary is cinema.”Poitras also called for the release of Jafar Panahi, the imprisoned Iranian director who directed “No Bears,” which premiered at the festival, and encouraged “all of us to do whatever we can.” She also spoke of the memory of the late influential documentary executive, Diane Weyermann.The 79th edition of the festival opened with Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise,” an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. Other prominent films included “The Whale,” “Blonde,” “Tár,” “Bones and All,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Un Couple,” “Bardo,” “The Son” and “The Eternal Daughter.”Unlike many other festivals, the Venice Film Festival continued in person during the past two years, despite the pandemic. But this year, the Venice event especially thrived. Stars like Timothée Chalamet and Ana de Armas enthralled the robust crowds, and critical debate and red-carpet buzz were never in short supply. (Still, Covid remained a presence: Absent at the ceremony was one competition jury member, the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who Moore explained had tested positive.)The Silver Lion Grand Jury prize went to Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer,” her feature about a novelist who becomes engrossed in the trial of a woman accused of leaving her baby on a beach to perish — a story based on a true tale. The Silver Lion award for best director went to Luca Guadagnino for “Bones and All,” the first Lion for the Italian film director.The Special Jury prize went to Panahi for “No Bears.” His award was accepted by two of the film’s actors, Mina Kavani and Reza Heydari, in his absence. The audience gave a standing ovation.The Volpi Cup for best actress was awarded to Cate Blanchett, who played the fictional famous composer at the center of “Tár,” directed by Todd Field. The best actor award went to Colin Farrell for his portrayal of an Irishman whose pal abruptly ends their friendship in Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Taylor Russell won the Marcello Mastroianni Award, which recognizes an outstanding emerging actor, for her performance as a young cannibal in “Bones and All.”The best screenplay honor was given to McDonagh, who wrote and directed “The Banshees of Inisherin” and who won the same honor in 2017 for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Diop’s “Saint Omer” also received the Lion of the Future Award for best debut feature. (Diop has already directed an acclaimed feature, the documentary “We,” which won a top award at the Berlin Film Festival.)In the Orizzonti section of the awards, which runs parallel to the primary competition, the top honor was given to Iranian filmmaker Houman Seyedi’s “World War III.” The film also featured a best actor award winner in Mohsen Tanabandeh, who played the protagonist.This edition’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement went to Paul Schrader, whose film “Master Gardener” played out of competition, and to Catherine Deneuve. A Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award went to Walter Hill, whose film “Dead for a Dollar” played out of competition. More