Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      The Composer Who Turns Hayao Miyazaki’s Humane Touch Into Music

      by

      Joe Hisaishi’s scores have helped make Studio Ghibli films indelible. But in concert, the works stand on their own. That’s because “it’s about emotion,” he says.Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Steven Spielberg and John Williams: Some of the greatest filmmakers have cultivated enduring, mutually enriching relationships with musicians. The decades-long partnership between the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki and the composer, pianist and conductor Joe Hisaishi certainly belongs in this hall of fame.Hisaishi first worked with Miyazaki on the eco-minded science-fiction feature “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” released in 1984. He has scored every Miyazaki feature since then, composing wonderfully evocative soundtracks for such favorites as the family fable “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988); the tale of young-girl independence “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989); the period epic “Princess Mononoke” (1997); and the Academy Award-winning “Spirited Away” (2002), a gem about a headstrong little girl that was the runner-up on The New York Times’s list of the 25 best films of the 21st century so far.This week, longtime fans and newcomers alike will be able to hear excerpts from those scores and more, when Hisaishi, 71, leads the American Symphony Orchestra in “Music From the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki,” a series of concerts at Radio City Music Hall starting Saturday. (The performers will also include the MasterVoices choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, as well as the singers Amanda Achen and Mai Fujisawa, who is Hisaishi’s daughter.)While excerpts from the movies will be projected on a giant screen, Hisaishi’s concerts stand on their own and are not meant to be simply compilations of classic scenes backed by a live ensemble.“Watching a film is a whole different thing from hearing the music in concert, which gives the audience a different experience,” the composer said through an interpreter in a recent video conversation.Though Hisaishi’s concerts include clips from films like “My Neighbor Totoro,” they go well beyond compilations of classic scenes.Laurent Koffel/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesIndeed, Hisaishi built the set list as if he were putting together a single large composition, citing Mahler symphonies as a source of inspiration. “For example, the first movement is ‘Nausicaa,’ the second movement is ‘Kiki,’ the third is ‘Princess Mononoke,’ and so on,” he said.Hisaishi (who was born Mamoru Fujisawa but goes by a stage name) is also known to make slight tweaks for concerts. “The images are screened so that you relive the emotions you had watching the film,” Marco Bellano, who teaches the history of animation at the University of Padua, Italy, said in a video chat. “But at the same time when Hisaishi plays these compositions in concert, they are not exactly in the same shape, the same arrangements they have in the films. There is a piece from ‘Porco Rosso’ called ‘Madness’ that is identical in the soundtrack and one of the concert versions, but many other pieces are completely different. It’s really remarkable how he really cares about offering a new experience.”Rest assured that the changes are not drastic and that the concerts preserve the Hisaishi touch. Taken out of “My Neighbor Totoro,” “The Path of the Wind” (which brings to mind another great Japanese musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto) retains its tender melancholy, while “Bygone Days,” from “Porco Rosso” (1992), is still just as wistful live, halfway between jazz and French chanson.For James Williams, the managing director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, Hisaishi’s contributions are a perfect match for Miyazaki’s universe. “When you see those films, there’s a certain humanity about the story lines, and that’s absolutely reflected in Joe’s music,” said Williams, whose orchestra recently recorded an album of Hisaishi’s compositions. “It connects with people, regardless of their culture, and that’s really powerful. What Joe has done is somehow retain that integrity of Japanese culture, brought in that Western tonal system and found a way for the two to retain their identities in perfect harmony.”A distinctive appeal of Miyazaki’s films is that they trust viewers, no matter how young, to figure things out on their own. Partly, this means not using music to reinforce character traits or telegraph expected responses from a viewer. Fortunately, this suits Hisaishi. “The music does not need to match every character,” he said. “Rather, it’s about emotion, something the character might be feeling. And at the very deepest of a movie, the music doesn’t need to tell anything related to the character or even the feelings,” he continued. “There’s already something that the audience might be feeling just watching the film.”“Castle in the Sky,” released in Japan in 1986, neatly illustrates the way the Miyazaki-Hisaishi approach — which also involves knowing when not to score a scene — is different from that commonly found in American animation. In 1999, Hisaishi not only reworked his existing score for that film’s American release, by Disney, but he vastly expanded it, adding music in scenes that previously did not have any.For the American release of “Castle in the Sky,” Hisaishi reworked and expanded the score used in the Japanese version.Studio GhibliHisaishi also refrains from recycling catchy musical phrases over and over within the same movie. “From ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ on, you find more this idea of leitmotif, but it’s different from the Hollywood style, where the leitmotif appears very clearly and is very easy to remember,” Bellano said. “With Miyazaki and Hisaishi, that melody appears when it’s needed and is not repeated many times.”Hisaishi does write stand-alone pieces, including symphonies, and has worked with other feature-film directors — most famously Takeshi Kitano, for whom he scored such 1990s high-water marks as “Sonatine,” “Fireworks” and “Kids Return.”“I started my career as a minimal composer,” Hisaishi said, “and I use more my melodic side in Miyazaki movies and my minimalist side in Kitano movies — they are closer to what originally drew me to music, style-wise.”Still, it is his work with Miyazaki that has placed him solidly on the international music map.Over the decades, the two men developed an intricate working method involving a lot of back and forth. Early in the production process, Miyazaki would give Hisaishi an idea of the story, some sketches, sometimes just a few words. Based on those meager elements, the musician would come up with a so-called image album (which would receive a commercial release down the line). “For ‘Princess Mononoke,’ an early word Miyazaki-san mentioned was tension, as in an arrow’s tension,” Hisaishi said, using the Japanese honorific. He added that this inspired him to write a piece that “eventually became the title theme.” Once the film was ready, Hisaishi would write the score, which could also be released in a symphonic suite version.The composer has not slowed down. In fact, being home during the pandemic further spurred his creativity — and led to an epiphany of sorts that Hisaishi evoked in terms that felt Miyazakian.“It took me seven years to write my first symphony, but in 2020 and 2021, I finished two,” he said, referring to “Dream Songs” and “Songs of Hope.” That experience “made me realize I have a mission as a composer. People watch this changing world and are so disappointed: Where is happiness? What is going on? Look at what’s going on in Ukraine,” he continued. “This is not something we expected to happen again in the 21st century. As a composer, I need to see the world as it is, but I also can’t be disappointed: We do need hope for the future.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Anne Heche ‘Is Not Expected to Survive’ After Crash, Representative Says

      by

      The actress, 53, has been in a coma since shortly after the car she was in crashed into a Los Angeles home last week, her publicist said in a statement.The actress Anne Heche remained in a coma and was not expected to survive the injuries she sustained in a car crash last week, according to a statement that her publicist released Thursday night on behalf of her family and friends.Ms. Heche, 53, was critically injured on Aug. 5 when the Mini Cooper she was in crashed into a home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, the authorities said. She suffered a severe anoxic brain injury and was being treated at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital, the family statement said.“It has long been her choice to donate her organs and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable,” the statement said.The crash started a fire that took 59 firefighters more than an hour to extinguish, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Ms. Heche was the only person in the car, the authorities said.In 1991, Ms. Heche won a Daytime Emmy award for outstanding younger actress in a drama series, for playing good and evil twins on the NBC soap opera “Another World.”She starred in several popular Hollywood films in the late 1990s, including “Donnie Brasco,” “Wag the Dog” and “Six Days Seven Nights.” She continued to have television roles, including on “Men in Trees” in 2006 and “Hung” in 2009, and performed on Broadway, starring in “Proof” in 2002 and “Twentieth Century” in 2004, for which she received a Tony nomination.She has several projects that are in postproduction, according to IMDb, including “Supercell,” a movie with Alec Baldwin, and the HBO show “The Idol.” She had recently finished filming on “Girl in Room 13,” a Lifetime movie that is scheduled to premiere in September, Variety reported.Mike Ives More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘13: The Musical’ Review: Mild Anxieties in Middle America

      by

      The Broadway show of the same name gets a Netflix screen adaptation directed by Tamra Davis.“13: The Musical,” a plucky crowd-pleaser about the pressure to put on a blowout bar mitzvah, opens with the young Manhattanite Evan Goldman (Eli Golden) raging at his parents’ ultimate party foul. They’ve divorced, forcing the boy and his mom (Debra Messing) to shift their lives — and his pending bash — to the home of his grandmother (Rhea Perlman) in Walkerton, Ind., a town so small that their arrival triples its Jewish population. Nevertheless, the social-climbing eighth grader is determined to pack his dance floor, even if it means enmeshing himself as a love adviser to the school’s most popular kids (JD McCrary and Lindsey Blackwell) and backing away from his initial friends (Gabriella Uhl and Jonathan Lengel) when he discovers that they’re dorks.Briefly, Evan is concerned that his religion will make him an outsider, especially as one classmate, a terrifically funny shallow snit played by Frankie McNellis, warns the other students that bar mitzvahs are “where they make you talk backwards and everyone gets circumcised.” But once the film checks off the expected city versus country gripes about bagels (none), cows (too many) and the unnerving rural silence (“How can anyone sleep with all this quiet!”), the director Tamra Davis aims to sell the film’s young audience on an inclusive vision of America that quickly soothes any apprehensions of antisemitism, as well as most of the other anxieties of adolescence. The screenwriter Robert Horn not only buffs the bullying subplots from the book of his 2008 Broadway musical (which he co-wrote with Dan Elish) until Evan no longer has to punch a football jock in the nose — he’s made the tensions so subterranean that certain dramatic plot points barely make sense.Still, Davis is a veteran at showcasing youthful singing talent. (Her previous credits include the Britney Spears vehicle “Crossroads,” the hip-hop cult comedy “CB4” and the Hanson music video for “MMMBop.”) She and the cinematographer Adam Santelli turn the frame into a shoe box diorama for the dynamic cast, who belt and dance while staring directly at the camera. While every image is as bright and colorful as a new box of crayons, the kids themselves never come across as artificial, thanks in part to Jamal Sims’ naturalistic but crisp choreography, which emphasizes stomps and leans and long-legged strides.The songs, by Jason Robert Brown, aren’t bad either, particularly a bluesy number crooned by the football squad (“Bad News”), a catty rock ballad backed by a marching band (“Opportunity”) and a new-for-the-screen, finger-snapping charmer where Evan entices his schoolmates to sneak into an R-rated horror movie (“The Bloodmaster”) — a gory flick that traumatizes him and the class far more than anything else happening onscreen.13: The MusicalRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Day Shift’ Review: Stakes Out

      by

      Jamie Foxx is a blue-collar vampire hunter and a steadying hand on the tiller of this frenzied action comedy.A series of baroque action sequences strung on twin wires of corn and cliché, the vampire comedy “Day Shift” starts out at a gallop and keeps right on moving. And motion is everything in this Netflix caper — J.J. Perry’s first feature as a director after more than three decades in stunt work — those action scenes hogging most of the filmmakers’ attention and much of their imagination. Jamie Foxx might have top billing, but right there beside him are the professional contortionists whose eye-popping moves are more commonly seen in Las Vegas showrooms than on movie screens.Even so, Foxx, as you might expect, has got this. As Bud Jablonski, a cash-strapped pool cleaner-cum-vampire hunter, the actor radiates blue-collar competence in the midst of escalating buffoonery. Bud has an estranged, exasperated wife and a darling young daughter in need of expensive dental work and school tuition. To pay for both, he must rejoin the union that expelled him for his unorthodox hunting practices. Vouched for by his friend Big John (Snoop Dogg), a cool, cowboy-hatted lady-killer, Bud promises the aggrieved union boss that he will behave. Uh-huh.Set in a sunny San Fernando Valley literally crawling with the undead, “Day Shift” has some sly touches (the übervamp, played by Karla Souza, sells real estate) and an uptight sidekick in Seth (Dave Franco), Bud’s union representative. A dorky desk jockey, Seth is the familiar foil for the hero’s one-liners, but Franco plays him with a sweetness that keeps his fussiness from grating. Frenzied and goofily good-natured, “Day Shift” is all sensation and not much sense — except, of course, in its belief in the absolute utility of a union card.Day ShiftRated R for bloody massacres galore. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Roger E. Mosley, Actor Best Known for ‘Magnum, P.I.,’ Dies at 83

      by

      He played Leadbelly and Sonny Liston on the big screen. But his most high-profile role was a rugged, wry Vietnam War veteran opposite Tom Selleck on TV.Roger E. Mosley, whose knack for playing a tough guy with a mischievous streak earned him accolades playing an action-ready helicopter pilot on the hit 1980s television series “Magnum, P.I.,” as well as real-life figures like Sonny Liston and Leadbelly on the big screen, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 83.He died after sustaining injuries from a car accident in Lynwood, Calif., last month that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down, his daughter Ch-a Mosley announced on Facebook.Mr. Mosley, who grew up in a public-housing project in the Watts section of Los Angeles, appeared on dozens of television shows over four decades, starting with 1970s staples like “Cannon” and “Sanford and Son.” He also appeared in the mini-series “Roots: The Next Generations” in 1979.Aspiring to a career in film, he made early appearances in so-called blaxploitation films of the early 1970s like “Hit Man” and “The Mack.” He also appeared in “Terminal Island,” a 1973 grindhouse film that also starred Tom Selleck, who would later recommend him for “Magnum, P.I.”A strapping 6 feet 2 inches tall, Mr. Mosley was often cast as a bruiser. But his natural warmth and humor brought a depth to even the most macho parts, including the title role in “Leadbelly,” a 1976 movie about the brawling early-20th-century folk and blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter, which Roger Ebert called “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.”“Leadbelly” offered Black audiences “the kind of film they’re hungry for,” Mr. Mosley was quoted as saying in a 1976 article in People magazine. “Not a Super Fly character but the story of a man who actually lived.”The next year, he earned critical praise playing Sonny Liston, the heavyweight boxing champion famously dethroned in 1964 by Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay), in the 1977 film “The Greatest,” which starred Ali as himself.While Mr. Mosley’s career continued to build momentum during that decade, it was “Magnum, P.I.,” the popular CBS crime drama that ran from 1980 to 1988, that brought him mass recognition.His character, Theodore Calvin, known as T.C., was a rugged yet wry Vietnam War veteran helicopter pilot who was continually rescuing Thomas Magnum, Tom Selleck’s Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, Ferrari-driving private investigator character, when he landed in danger in the jungles or on the beaches of Maui, where he lived in a guesthouse on a lavish estate. (According to the Internet Movie Database, Mr. Mosley was a certified helicopter pilot but was not allowed to do his own stunts on the show.)The part was originally written for a white actor, Gerald McRaney, The Hollywood Reporter wrote in its obituary for Mr. Mosley, but the producers reached out to Mr. Mosley to bring diversity to the cast.Although Mr. Mosley reportedly had little interest in the role at first because his sights were on work in feature films, he later said he was proud that he helped break stereotypes as one of television’s first Black action stars.Mr. Mosley with Dana Manno in the 1976 film “Leadbelly,” in which he played the folk and blues pioneer Huddie Ledbetter. Roger Ebert called it “one of the best biographies of a musician I’ve ever seen.” Museum of Modern Art“I’m a good actor, but I’m a Black man; there’s a lot of pride in that,” Mr. Mosley told “Entertainment Tonight” in 1985. He always aimed to set a good example for Black youth; for example, he refused to let his “Magnum” character drink or smoke.The show’s diversity, he said, was a factor in its success. “We have myself for Black people, we have John for the Europeans, we have Magnum for the ladies,” he said. (John Hillerman played Higgins, the estate’s stuffy English caretaker — although Mr. Hillerman was actually American.) “We have a little bit of everything for everyone.”When CBS rebooted “Magnum” in 2018, with Jay Hernandez as Magnum and Stephen Hill as T.C., Mr. Mosley appeared in two episodes as a barber.Roger Earl Mosley was born on Dec. 18, 1938, in Los Angeles, the eldest of three children raised by his mother, Eloise, a school cafeteria worker, and his stepfather, Luther Harris, who ran a tire shop in Watts supplying eighteen-wheelers, his son Brandonn Mosley said. (His mother later changed her first name to Sjuan, pronounced “swan.”)In addition to his daughter Ch-a and his son Brandonn, Mr. Mosley’s survivors include his wife, Antoinette, and another son, Trace Lankford. Another daughter, Reni Mosley, died in 2019. His first marriage, to Saundra J. Locke in 1960, ended in divorce.Mr. Mosley was a standout wrestler at Jordan High School in Watts, but after graduation he decided to try acting and took a drama class at the Mafundi Institute, an arts education center in the area. One day, a visiting director from Universal Pictures lectured the class on the self-discipline needed to make it in the field.“I know actors who had to eat ketchup sandwiches,” Mr. Mosley recalled him saying in 1976.Mr. Mosley fired back: “You have the audacity to tell us to eat ketchup sandwiches for our art. I know people who are eating ketchup sandwiches to survive. We need somebody to give us a break.”“Young man,” the director said, “I want to see you at the studio next Wednesday.” More

    • 88 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Inu-oh’ Review: Dazzling Anime Meets Medieval Epic

      by

      This modern riff on “The Tale of the Heike,” from 14th-century Japan, takes some confusing turns. But the animation is undeniably wonderful.Visually sumptuous and narratively tangled, the anime “Inu-oh” takes place in 14th-century Japan. The main story does, at least. It tells of two young, audaciously talented castaways — a blind musician and a cursed dancer — who meet one dark evening. After the usual how-do-you-do, they begin performing for each other and quickly slide into enchanted sync. Together, they frolic and jam and whirl, and before long they’re levitating, gyrating against an expanse of shimmery stars as they orbit each other like heavenly bodies.It’s fitting that these characters meet on a bridge, given that the movie spans past and present, reality and fantasy. It’s based on a novel, “The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-oh Chapters,” by the Japanese writer Hideo Furukawa that riffs on “The Tale of the Heike,” a foundational medieval epic about clans engaged in civil war. A font of innumerable interpretations, the original tale reaches a climax with the battle of Dan-no-Ura, during which the Heike clan is defeated, the child emperor drowned and a sacred imperial sword lost. That sword pops up periodically in “Inu-oh” — but good luck understanding why.What the sword — which at times drips blood — has to do with our two whirling strangers isn’t altogether clear. Those who’ve read Furukawa’s novel, which doesn’t seem to have been translated into English, may have no issue tracking the movie’s labyrinthine turns, its time shifts, storytelling elisions and fantastical flourishes. After the first hour or so and having forgotten much of the (confusing!) introductory exposition, I gave up trying to fit the pieces together. Instead, I just grooved along on the often-spectacular animation, savoring its watery hues, vivid character designs and recurrent, galvanizing embrace of near-abstraction.The director Masaaki Yuasa (“Ride Your Wave”) opens “Inu-oh” with a great whoosh of images that announce his visual ambitions and give you little time to establish your bearings. After a short, vivid sprint across time, the story settles on Tomona (voiced by Mirai Moriyama), a boy who lives in a fishing village with his parents. One day, two royal emissaries commission Tomona’s father to dive for a mysterious treasure. It goes disastrously wrong; the father is killed and Tomona blinded. He leaves home but soon finds a calling, becoming a biwa (lute) player and eventually meeting the stranger on the bridge.That would be Inu-oh (Avu-chan, from the rock band Queen Bee), and his background adds complications. A pariah born with severe deformities, including an arm that’s longer than his coltish legs — when he runs, it trails him as perilously as Isadora Duncan’s scarf — Inu-oh hides his face under a gourd mask. He also speaks with an adenoidal whine and scrambles about with feverish agility that evolves into a kind of superpower after he and Tomona meet. Together, they hit the road and refine their talents: Inu-oh becomes a performing sensation and Tomona a proto-rocker, complete with squealing biwa and admirers.Given the attention Yuasa lavishes on these passages, it’s clear that he loves the idea of 14th-century performers rocking out like modern-day arena gods. If nothing else, these interludes have a storytelling clarity and directness that’s otherwise lacking here. (The script is by Akiko Nogi.) Certainly it’s amusing to watch Tomona jam: He plays his biwa behind his head à la Jimi Hendrix (to be clear, the resemblance is strictly gestural), whips around his luxurious mane and bares his chest, lathering up the crowd. Yet while in time the performances reveal truths about the players and their lives, they rapidly grow tiresome.Still, sometimes beauty is enough (or almost). And “Inu-oh” is often visually arresting, starting with an early interlude that, with its washes of color, delicate figures, negative space and lateral movements, looks like an animated scroll painting. This sequence, like the rest of the movie, retains a strong trace of the human hand and shows a deep grasp of (and pleasure in) the medium’s plasticity, all of which are too often absent in contemporary commercial animation. Even as Yuasa’s approach changes from section to section — as he plays with texture, volume and hue and gently shifts the balance between the figurative and the abstract — his extraordinary touch remains evident in each line and in every eye-popping swirl.Inu-ohRated PG-13 for mild peril and death. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ and Gen Z’s Struggle to Connect IRL

      by

      What happens when Gen Z loses Wi-Fi? Using horror and humor, the cast and filmmakers of the new slasher film aim for a generational portrait.A lip-locking close-up is the first we see of Sophie (played by Amandla Stenberg) and Bee, her girlfriend of six weeks (Maria Bakalova). Seemingly pulled from the pages of a fairy tale, Sophie confesses her love for Bee as they lie in a green meadow surrounded by nature. Within seconds, that affectionate scene gives way to a shot of the two absorbed in their phones as agitating dings and notifications dry up any remnants of intimacy or passion.These juxtaposed moments in the new satirical slasher “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies” ridicule the inability of its Generation Z characters to establish meaningful connections when a blinding screen forms a glaring barrier: “Sophie is expecting Bee to perform this intense level of vulnerability, even though she perhaps has not earned it,” Stenberg explained in a video call, “and I think that’s something that we expect now of everyone because we all perform vulnerability on the internet.”That’s one of several ways the film — about a group of privileged, internet-hungry 20-somethings stranded at a house party — tries to paint a portrait of the generation born within a few years before and after the millennium. Using humor, horror tropes and a cast of young stars, the film forces its characters to reckon with their nondigital identities and pokes fun at their symbiotic relationship with cellphones, their jargon based in trauma and the despot-like force of the group chat.As the director Halina Reijn said in a video call, “when the Wi-Fi goes out, it’s like they lose oxygen.”Soon after arriving at the isolated mansion, Sophie, Bee and their friends play Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, a party game involving a mysterious killer the players must identify and vote off in each round. But when the power goes out amid a hurricane, real bodies begin to fall. The characters’ behavior turns beastlike, Reijn said, and they forget how to respond to a crisis disconnected from the digital world.From left, Stenberg, Bakalova, Pete Davidson (David) and Rachel Sennott (Alice) in the film. The characters expect an intense level of vulnerability in person “because we all perform vulnerability on the internet,” Stenberg said.Eric Chakeen/A24“We can totally live in the face of death and still speak about things that are so unimportant but are so big to us,” Reijn said, adding, “I find that funny and tragic, of course, at the same time.”Stenberg, the star of “The Hate U Give” and the forthcoming “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte,” served as an executive producer of the film and drew on her own experience with digital life. She said the screenwriter Sarah DeLappe (a playwright known for “The Wolves”) embedded the script with so much wit that the moments of hypocrisy and vapidity became easy to create. “The point is not to say that Gen Z is not intelligent or sophisticated, but rather to provide a commentary for how absurd the circumstances” are, Stenberg said. (DeLappe was not available for comment.)Among those moments, the partygoers, friends since childhood, playfully film TikToks over the Tyga-Curtis Roach anthem “Bored in the House” and rave about social media likes.Gen Zers rely heavily on digital spaces for self-expression, community building and news gathering, Stenberg noted, but also face a sense of cognitive dissonance as they try to stay present in virtual life and reality. Indeed, said Sarah Bishop, a professor of communication studies at Baruch College, “for them to be able to defamiliarize or step back from this massive presence in their life is asking them to do something impossible, right? It’d be like asking them to imagine living without solid food.”Alice, played by Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”), invites her 40-year-old Tinder match, Greg (Lee Pace), to the house party. In Reijn’s view, Greg serves as a bridge for older viewers: He tries to learn the rules of the game but uses sports analogies a dad might use, like “the best defense is a good offense,” and just bewilders the younger crew. For Reijn, who at 46 is a Gen Xer, Greg represented her personal detachment from Gen Z. “This goes, of course, for every generation that grows older, you always, sort of, lose touch,” she said.Sennott with Lee Pace, who plays Greg, a 40-year-old Tinder match.Gwen Capistran/A24Still, Reijn wanted the film to be real and honest but also funny, as each character shared the primal urge to belong when online usage swallows self-awareness.“I think we live in a time where we’re all very narcissistic, because we’re constantly on the camera,” she said. “Right now, we’re constantly aware of how we look and that is, of course, unprecedented, right? Normally, that was just actors, or musicians and now it’s all of us.”Despite the physical danger each character faces, their virtual realities remain central to the plot. As the lifelong friends, drunk and high, try to determine who the killer in the game is, Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) exclaims that her boyfriend, David (Pete Davidson), is gaslighting her. David’s response: The word is meaningless, and all she did was read the internet. Be more original.With the use of trauma-centered jargon like “gaslight,” “trigger,” “toxic” and “narcissist,” overuse can cheapen the language’s original value, Wonders said.“I think Gen Z has a brilliant, brilliant way of latching onto words, giving them so much beautiful meaning and having it spread like wildfire across cultures,” she said, “and then have it swallowed by irony.”Viewers can’t help but laugh at the friends’ misery as they take emotional stabs at each other. Sophie erupts about the double standard between Black and white drug users, but rather than admitting the disparity, Alice responds, “I’m an ally.” Or when Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) questions Sophie about ghosting the group chat, she responds, “You trigger me.” Herrold, who declared this her favorite scene, said the cast spent late hours editing and rewriting the sequence to make sure it remained relatable.“A lot of the Gen Z language, ‘gaslight’ and all that, some of that was cut and we were like, ‘No it has to stay in here,’” Herrold said.Bakalova, Mhya’la Herrold (Jordan) and Stenberg. Herrold said the cast made sure that Gen Z jargon wasn’t cut from the film. A24“Bodies Bodies Bodies” is one of a number of films from A24 to try to capture a generation — think “Spring Breakers” and “Lady Bird” before it — this time to the tune of Charli XCX’s “Hot Girl,” epitomizing the egotism of post, reply and repeat.This includes group chats. Comparable to cliques at a high school lunch table, the chat dictates who is in and out of the friend group. These chats hold political meanings, Stenberg said, and when Sophie strolls into the party without properly notifying the chat first, the house grows hostile.“I’ve been in friend groups before where it’s a big deal if someone is removed from the group chat or someone is added,” she said, “and it’s this horrendous, toxic thing where someone’s presence can be physically determined.”From digital media addictions to gripping group chats, Stenberg said, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” doesn’t aim to classify social media as the villain but the mirror within us all.“We have to think carefully and intentionally about how those tools can bring out and amplify the parts of us that are the scariest,” she said. More

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Emergency Declaration’ Review: Midair Contagion

      by

      The “Parasite” star Song Kang-ho plays a detective working to thwart a plan to unleash a deadly virus on unsuspecting plane passengers.It’s not enough for a disaster movie to rely on spectacle and peril; the crisis must allow characters to transcend their baser instincts so they might inspire hope. “Emergency Declaration,” a piercing thriller from the South Korean writer-director Han Jae-rim, manages to deliver excitement and melodrama out of a ludicrous story line.The premise for Han’s script borrows heavily from the “Airport” film series and “Air Force One.” In the movie, a troubled passenger (Yim Si-wan) releases a deadly virus aboard a plane heading from South Korea to Honolulu. The infected first develop a rash and then their blood vessels start bursting. The ensuing panic among the passengers spreads faster than the pathogen and demonstrates how greed and fear can lead to selfish survival tactics.Their flight is a race against time and a lesson in personal sacrifice that unearths a number of secrets: Hyun-soo, the plane’s co-pilot (Kim Nam-gil) despises Jae-hyuk, a disgraced former aviator (Lee Byung-hun, “Squid Game”) who is traveling with his young daughter. All are infected. On the ground, In-ho, a police sergeant (Song Kang-ho, “Parasite”) whose wife is on the plane, is desperately searching for a vaccine. Each actor, especially a raw Song, provides a sturdy performance in a narrative whose emotional course corrections occur so frequently that the film can feel directionless.Han pulls at his audience’s heartstrings by relying on redemptive shifts in tone for Jae-hyuk, whose climactic landing, edited for maximum sweaty palms, defies all gravity and logic, while offering an easy dose of disaster movie joy.Emergency DeclarationNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. In theaters. More