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Watch a Nightclub Scene in ‘Blitz’
The writer and director Steve McQueen discusses a sequence set in the Café de Paris in London.The writer and director Steve McQueen narrates a sequence from his film set in London during World War II.Apple TV+ 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.The film “Blitz” primarily deals with the trials of a mother (Saoirse Ronan) and son (Elliott Heffernan) during World War II in London. But the film expands out to look at the ways the war was affecting the entire city.Narrated by the writer and director Steve McQueen, the sequence featured here doesn’t include the principal actors. It takes place in the Café de Paris, a popular nightclub in the city. The scene’s appearance in the film feels like a diversion, but that’s exactly what those inside the club are seeking.“The symbolic nature of the Café de Paris in the movie,” said McQueen in his narration, “is to show the divide between the rich and poor.”The camera glides through an audience and dancers to get to a stage with a band playing, led by Snakehips Johnson (Devon McKenzie-Smith). A spirited, and somewhat provocative, song is performed by Anita Sinclair (Celeste) that has significance because, McQueen said, it was “what was being played just before the bomb hit that club.”Read the “Blitz” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More
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Best Movies and Shows Streaming in November: ‘Bad Sisters,’ ‘Cruel Intentions’ and More
“Cruel Intentions,” “Music by John Williams” and “Dune: The Prophecy” arrive, along with “Bad Sisters” Season 2.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Cruel Intentions’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 21The 1999 movie melodrama “Cruel Intentions” became a box office hit and inspired multiple sequels, thanks to its twisty plot and sexual frankness, all borrowed from the novel, play and film “Dangerous Liaisons.” The new TV version carries on the tone of the films, following the bed-hopping and betrayals among a group of rich young men and women. Set at a prestigious college, the “Cruel Intentions” series is mainly about two stepsiblings, Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien (Zac Burgess), who are adept at seducing and manipulating their classmates. The pair never seems to care how many enemies they make, so long as everyone fears them.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Libre”Nov. 7“Citadel: Honey Bunny”“Look Back”“My Old Ass”Nov. 8“Every Minute Counts”Nov. 14“Cross” Season 2Nov. 19“Abigail”“Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special”Nov. 20“Wish List Games”Nov. 21“Dinner Club”Nov. 26“It’s in the Game”Nov. 28“Oshi No Ko”Nov. 29“The World According to Kaleb: On Tour”A scene from “The Creep Tapes,” new to AMC+.ShudderNew to AMC+‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 15The “Creep” franchise of found footage horror films features Mark Duplass (who also co-wrote the series with the director, Patrick Brice) as a serial killer who hires aspiring filmmakers to help him make movies, which inevitably end in actual murders. “The Creep Tapes” offers bite-size versions of this premise, with episodes running under a half an hour and featuring a variety of scenarios. Duplass is back as the villain, who changes his name from victim to victim. His vibe rarely changes, though. He is overly friendly and pushy, to the point of being unpleasant; and yet he also seems pretty harmless, right up to when his shtick turns deadly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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4 Surprising Things We Learned From the John Williams Documentary
A new Disney+ film about the prolific film composer chronicles his life and career, with a focus on his famous music for movies including “Jaws” and “Star Wars.”The composer John Williams is responsible for some of the most recognizable music in film history: the epic fanfares in “Star Wars,” the two-note dread of “Jaws” and too many other examples to name without sounding like an IMDb tour of popular American cinema.A new documentary, “Music by John Williams” (streaming on Disney+), introduces audiences to the man behind all of that music, featuring extensive interviews with Williams and glowing interviews with filmmakers he has worked with, including Steven Spielberg (also a producer of the movie), George Lucas and J.J. Abrams.Laurent Bouzereau, the documentary’s director, first met Williams while directing making-of features for the home video releases of Spielberg movies, including “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”In a phone interview, he said the project started as part of Williams’s 90th birthday celebration, but it became clear it would be a waste to not do a full documentary combining his interviews with Spielberg’s archival footage of Williams, now 92, scoring his films. “I wanted people to understand his dedication to an art form,” Bouzereau said. “John is an eternal student.”Here are some takeaways from the film.When he first heard the ‘Jaws’ theme, Spielberg thought Williams was joking.Early in the documentary, Williams recounts the first time he played the opening music to “Jaws” for Spielberg.The director thought he was joking. “I was expecting something just tremendously complex, and it’s almost like ‘Chopsticks,’” he says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Tom Hanks and Robin Wright on ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Here’ and De-aging
It’s not exactly a “Forrest Gump” sequel, but the new movie “Here” does reunite the stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and the filmmakers — the director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri — of that 1994 Oscar-winning favorite. Like the earlier film, the new one also travels across decades, with an unheard-of perspective.In this case, though, the viewpoint is the camera’s: “Here” is filmed almost entirely from one locked-off shot, with a camera positioned in what becomes the living room of a century-old New England home. There are no cutaways or traditional close-ups; no montages or wide-angle transitions. It’s an experiment in cinematic formalism, inspired by Richard McGuire’s ambitious, genre-expanding 2014 graphic novel of the same name.Though the story starts with the dinosaurs and travels all the way through the present day with different characters, it focuses mostly on Hanks and Wright’s boomer couple, Richard and Margaret, whose lives are, by turns, mundane and historicized in that single setting. The furniture and styles change, and with the help of A.I., the stars were also digitally de-aged.“It really is about, why do we remember the moments that we remember?” Wright said.In a video interview this week from New York, she and Hanks spoke about what attracted them to the film (the answer was largely Zemeckis), the enduring appeal of “Forrest Gump,” and what drives their choices now. The technical challenges of “Here” also energized them: There was no crafting — or saving — a performance in the edit; no way to cut around a missed mark except to redo a whole scene. “Tom and I, we’re so spoiled, we don’t ever want to shoot conventional format again,” Wright said of typical cinematography.Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics balking at the visual conceit, and the de-aging. Wright, 58, was having none of it. “It is so simple and beautiful and real and human,” she said. “We all have experienced something in this movie.”Hanks, 68, pondered why cynicism has become, as he said, “the default.”“I remain driven by this never-ending curiosity I have, about how it is true that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people,” he said. The response could be cynicism, he said, but only if you’re seeking “the lowest common denominator.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?
The Los Angeles headquarters of Metaphysic, a Hollywood visual-effects start-up that uses artificial intelligence to create digital renderings of the human face, were much cooler in my imagination, if I’m being honest. I came here to get my mind blown by A.I., and this dim three-room warren overlooking Sunset Boulevard felt more like the slouchy offices of a middling law firm. Ed Ulbrich, Metaphysic’s chief content officer, steered me into a room that looked set to host a deposition, then sat me down in a leather desk chair with a camera pointed at it. I stared at myself on a large flat-screen TV, waiting to be sworn in.But then Ulbrich clickety-clicked on his laptop for a moment, and my face on the screen was transmogrified. “Smile,” he said to me. “Do you recognize that face?” I did, right away, but I can’t disclose its owner, because the actor’s project won’t come out until 2025, and the role is still top secret. Suffice it to say that the face belonged to a major star with fantastic teeth. “Smile again,” Ulbrich said. I complied. “Those aren’t your teeth.” Indeed, the teeth belonged to Famous Actor. The synthesis was seamless and immediate, as if a digital mask had been pulled over my face that matched my expressions, with almost no lag time.Ulbrich is the former chief executive of Digital Domain, James Cameron’s visual-effects company, and over the course of his three-decade career he has led the VFX teams on several movies that are considered milestones in the field of computer-generated imagery, including “Titanic,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” But in Ulbrich’s line of work, in the quest for photorealism, the face is the final frontier. “I’ve spent so much time in Uncanny Valley,” he likes to joke, “that I own real estate there.”In the spring of 2023, Ulbrich had a series of meetings with the founders of Metaphysic. One of them, Chris Ume, was the visual-effects artist behind a series of deepfake Tom Cruise videos that went viral on TikTok in early 2021, a moment many in Hollywood cite as the warning shot that A.I.’s hostile takeover had commenced. But in parts of the VFX industry, those deepfake videos were greeted with far less misgiving. They hinted tantalizingly at what A.I. could soon accomplish at IMAX resolutions, and at a fraction of the production cost. That’s what Metaphysic wanted to do, and its founders wanted Ulbrich’s help. So when they met him, they showed him an early version of the demonstration I was getting.Ulbrich’s own career began during the previous seismic shift in the visual-effects field, from practical effects to C.G.I., and it was plain to him that another disruption was underway. “I saw my career flash before my eyes,” Ulbrich recalled. “I could take my entire team from my former places of employment, I could put them on for eternity using the best C.G.I. tools money can buy, and you can’t deliver what we’re showing you here. And it’s happening in milliseconds.” He knew it was time to leave C.G.I. behind. As he put it: “How could I go back in good conscience and use horses and buggies and rocks and sticks to make images when this exists in the world?”Back on Sunset Boulevard, Ulbrich pecked some more at his laptop. Now I was Tom Hanks — specifically, a young Tom Hanks, he of the bulging green eyes and the look of gathering alarm on his face in “Splash” when he first discovers that Daryl Hannah’s character is a mermaid. I can divulge Hanks’s name because his A.I. debut arrived in theaters nationally on Nov. 1, in a movie called “Here.” Directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Eric Roth — a reunion of the creative team behind “Forrest Gump” — and co-starring Robin Wright, “Here” is based on a 2014 graphic novel that takes place at a single spot in the world, primarily a suburban New Jersey living room, over several centuries. The story skips back and forth through time but focuses on a baby-boomer couple played by Hanks and Wright at various stages of their lives, from age 18 into their 80s, from post-World War II to the present day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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The Metrograph Theater Starts a Film Magazine
A throwback publication courts cinephiles with stories featuring Ari Aster, Maggie Cheung, Daniel Clowes, Clint Eastwood and Ann Hui.At a time when print media is on the way out and streaming technology has slashed into box office returns, a band of downtown cinephiles in New York has started a film magazine.The Metrograph, a biannual publication from the art-house theater of the same name, will make its debut in December. The first issue, priced at $25, includes an in-depth interview with Clint Eastwood, a critical appraisal of the Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, an essay on Filipino action movies and an analysis of a single shot of Maggie Cheung from the 1996 film “Irma Vep.”“This magazine is meant to be an extension of what happens at Metrograph, and everything about Metrograph is intended to enhance moviegoing and the seductiveness of cinema,” Annabel Brady-Brown, the magazine’s editor, said. “We want this magazine to evoke that feeling you get when you go to Metrograph on a Saturday afternoon with a friend or on a date.”The photo on the cover — showing the cinematographer Ed Lachman standing next to the director Jean-Luc Godard in the early 1980s — conveys the idea that this is a publication for devout film fans.The issue features a wide-ranging conversation between Ari Aster, the director of “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” and the graphic novelist Daniel Clowes. Steve Martin also interviews the two men behind Deceptive Practices, a consultancy founded by magicians that has advised a number of film productions, including “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “The Prestige.”The editorial team takes a look at the coming issue soon after it went to print.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Juror #2’ Review: Clint Eastwood Hands Down a Tough Verdict
In his latest (and perhaps last) movie as a director, Eastwood casts a skeptical eye at the criminal justice system in a mystery starring Nicholas Hoult.Clint Eastwood has been such a familiar force in American cinema for so long that it’s easy to think you’ve got him figured out. Yet here he is again, at 94, with a low-key, genuine shocker, “Juror #2,” the 42nd movie that he’s directed and a lean-to-the-bone, tough-minded ethical showdown that says something about the law, personal morality, the state of the country and, I’m guessing, how he feels about the whole shebang. He seems riled up, to judge from the anger that simmers through the movie, which centers on a struggle to find justice within — though perhaps despite — an imperfect system and in the face of towering self-interest.Justin (a very fine Nicholas Hoult) has just finished fixing up a baby nursery at home when he walks into a Savannah, Ga., courtroom to report for jury duty. He and his wife, Allison (Zoey Deutch), are expecting, and tying themselves into knots of worry because several years earlier, their last pregnancy ended tragically. For them, his civic duties couldn’t have come at a worse time. Even so, Justin shows up, eager and attentive, and before long is seated on a jury in a criminal case that takes an abrupt, unexpected turn: The defendant has been charged with murder, and Justin quickly realizes that he himself might be the real killer.Did he or didn’t he is one question, and the start of a mystery, both procedural and existential, that soon finds Justin playing at once a freaked-out juror, potential culprit and dogged detective. The defendant on trial, James (Gabriel Basso), has been accused of murdering his girlfriend, Kendell (Francesa Eastwood, the director’s daughter). They’d been drinking at a local dive when they began arguing. They went outside, where it was dark and pouring rain, and continued to fight in front of a smattering of customers who had followed them. She walked off alone, he trailed after her in his truck, and before long she was dead.It’s a deliciously twisted setup, like something out of an old film noir in which the hero becomes the main suspect and, by desperate default, also slips into the role of a detective working the case. In this movie, voir dire has scarcely ended — Eastwood, who famously likes to work fast, races through the typical preliminaries — when Justin is sweating in the jury box and listening to the prosecutor, Faith (Toni Collette), and the defense lawyer, Eric (Chris Messina), make their cases. Before long, the lawyers have made their closing arguments, and Justin is sequestered in a room with 11 people who are also on the case.Eastwood takes a bit of time to find his groove. The opener is, by turns, pokey and rushed, and you can almost feel his impatience as he lines up the story’s pieces. He doesn’t seem to have spent much time thinking about the movie’s visuals; they look fine, I wish they looked better. He seems especially uninterested in Justin’s home life, and given how dreary and claustrophobic it looks, you can hardly blame him. Once the trial begins and the lawyers start prodding and probing, Eastwood settles in nicely. Justin realizes that he was at the bar the same night as the defendant and victim, triggering a series of jagged flashbacks that, as the trial continues, grow longer, more detailed and, in time, help fill in the larger picture.Written by Jonathan A. Abrams, “Juror #2” is a whodunit in which justice turns out to be as much on trial as the defendant. Both sides seem to have a weak case. The defendant is shady, the autopsy inconclusive, the only witness questionable, and there’s an enigma among the jurors, most of whom just want to go home. And while Eric nevertheless delivers a righteously indignant defense, Faith seems overly eager to wrap things up, partly because she’s running for district attorney and already fake-smiling like a glad-handing politician. Their arguments are shrewdly handled, pared down and delivered in a dynamic volley of edits that turn their speeches into a he-said, she-said duel, with a stricken Justin caught in the middle.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
