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      ‘Close to You’ Review: Clumsy Overtures of Support

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      This formless drama featuring Elliot Page as a trans man returning home relies on improvised dialogue.The title of the diffuse drama “Close to You” refers to a sweet nothing murmured between old friends on a wintry Canadian lakeshore. Sam (Elliot Page), visiting his hometown for his father’s birthday, takes a walk with his former confidante, Katherine (a stirring Hillary Baack). Katherine expresses that she is glad to be in Sam’s proximity after nearly two decades. He confesses that he was once in love with her.The director, Dominic Savage, draws out the quiet re-establishment of Sam and Katherine’s bond by lingering on charged gazes and dimpled grins. But if their affection is the story’s heart, its exoskeleton is Sam’s turbulent re-immersion into his family, who have not seen him since his transition.Back in his childhood home, Sam fields clumsy overtures of love and support from his parents and grown siblings in a series of one-on-one encounters. It’s here that the film demonstrates its greatest asset: a nuanced understanding of the way queer people are often obliged to allay the anxieties, contrition and discomfiture of their loved ones rather than vice versa.But as attentive as “Close to You” is to family dynamics, its dialogue, which the actors largely improvised, rarely achieves verisimilitude. The problem is most apparent in group scenes, where the jabber feels staged. Savage’s technique works better alongside Sam and Katherine; with a little more zhuzh, their love story might have saved this otherwise formless exercise.Close to YouRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Caligula: The Ultimate Cut’ Review: The Emperor’s New Clothes

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      With the belief that a masterpiece lurks within the mangled original 1980 release, Thomas Negovan has patched together a new version (with less skin) from the Penthouse archive.Based on conventional metrics like, say, tastefulness or storytelling integrity, the 1980 movie “Caligula” is not good. It is, however, completely nuts. And that has turned out to be more than enough to fuel an obsessive cult over the decades.Part of what drives the enduring interest in “Caligula” is its over-the-top combination of outré aesthetics, exploitation-film tropes, a Gore Vidal screenplay, and a cast including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole.Even more crucial is the belief that a masterpiece lurks within the mangled original release. Now attempting to prove that theory is “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” the latest iteration of a film that has gone through an unfathomable number of edits over the decades. This is the rare re-edited version of a movie that features less graphic sex and violence than the original. What kind of world are we living in?Long story short: After production on “Caligula” ended, the producer (and Penthouse publisher) Bob Guccione decided to enliven the rise and fall of the infamous Roman emperor (an impressively committed McDowell) by splicing in pornographic segments.Now Thomas Negovan has patched together a cut that he claims is more faithful to Vidal’s intentions, using nearly 100 hours of footage unearthed in the Penthouse archive. The problem is that the original shoot, directed by Tinto Brass, was so fraught from the start that there seems to have been little agreement on the intentions and tone.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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      Embrace Your Summer Dad Bod. These Movies Show You the Way.

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      Films have much to say about taking a dad bod on vacation — from cheap laughs to the sartorial glories of Gérard Depardieu. Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter and somehow made the tailoring guru Derek Guy — better known by his handle @dieworkwear — an internet star, men’s wear has been the subject of more volcanically impassioned discussion online than ever. Where should the button on a suit jacket sit? Are brown shoes ever acceptable? Cargo shorts: yes or no? We are all critics of fit and silhouette now, pursing our lips in displeasure at every collar gap. But even in the final month of a brutally hot summer, one question remains underexplored: How should the thick-middled man present himself on the beach?The best answers to this question come not from the internet but from movies. In a culture dominated by the young, fun and hard-bodied, the middle-aged big man struggles for visibility; he is dismissed as unimpressive, a cultural dead weight. (Women, of course, often experience far more profound and vicious versions of this.) The silver screen has traditionally devoted itself to the glorification of slender frames, washboard abs and hourglass figures. But amid its celluloid profusion of perfect 10s, there is a small but important subgenre of films examining the dramas — corporeal, sartorial, emotional — of the blockily built man at the seaside. If you, like me, are the proud owner of a dad bod and urgently need relief from the heat, the world’s filmmakers have a message: You are not alone.To be fair, the stories of doughy dudes by the water are not always happy ones. The role is usually played for laughs, with extra pounds often symbolizing a defect of character. One thinks of the Russian oligarch Dimitry in the recent eat-the-rich satire “Triangle of Sadness,” lounging on a superyacht in vise-tight swimmers and a libidinally flowing gown, his gut round as the earth. Or the volatile movie executive Jack Lipnick in “Barton Fink,” tyrannically calling the shots in 1940s Hollywood from a poolside recliner, his supersize trunks hitched up to his navel. Or there’s the wetsuited dad that Kevin James plays in the 2010 comedy “Grown Ups,” who clears the pool at an amusement park after his urine turns a patch of water blue.For a more subtle portrayal, consider the 2016 Greek thriller “Suntan,” which explores, with uncommon sensitivity, the beachbound big boy’s pathologies and fears: the fretting over attire, the embarrassment of the torso reveal, the sense of liberation once hidden under the water. “Suntan” follows Kostis, a balding middle-aged doctor living on an Aegean island, as he descends into despair and madness after becoming obsessed with Anna, a lithe and carefree 21-year-old on a beach holiday with friends. But it is a wardrobe drama as much as a beach one: For Kostis, the question of how to dress as a balloon-bellied man is intimately tied to the question of how to be. His emotional constipation (and eventual doom) are literalized through his clothing, which remains unchanged even as he experiences a sexual awakening with Anna and then confronts her eventual rejection. From the film’s beginning to its end, we see the dumpy doctor dragging himself to the beach in the same tired get-up of long pants pulled over swimming shorts, grubby white business shirt, bucket hat and dusty Crocs.No actor has ever expressed the potential of the brick-bodied man on vacation more confidently than Gérard Depardieu.Other movies offer more hopeful looks, though they still often disappoint. In “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Philip Seymour Hoffman played the husky expat playboy Freddie Miles with a baggy charisma, his summer looks a mix of generous tan suits, billowy shirts, snug shorts and unlaced boat shoes. (He ends up being bludgeoned to death with a marble bust, so he may not be the best model.) In Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 crime comedy “Sexy Beast,” much of the action takes place around the pool owned by Gary Dove, a former London mob figure enjoying retirement at a seaside villa in Spain. Dove’s serenity, and his wardrobe, are disrupted by an unwanted visit from his former associate Don, a skewer-thin psychopath who wears his shirts tucked in and mocks Dove as a “big oaf,” a “fat crocodile” and a “blob.” The relaxed outfits of Dove’s seaside life — the wide white pants, draping shirts and chunky gold chains — are soon replaced by business suits and mousy overcoats as he heads back to London for one last job. Leisure is thick; business is thin.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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      ‘Alien: Romulus’ Review: Go Ahead, Scream (No One Can Hear You)

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      The seventh installment of the series centers on Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a contract worker in an outer-space mining colony, and her friend Andy (David Jonsson), an android.Some movie sequels take a series in new directions, adding original ideas, new characters, different approaches and, at times, heft and myth. Other sequels are more like filler. They help plug the spaces between movies and keep the franchise’s brand in the public’s imagination, all while trying to make some cash. The newest “Alien” movie, “Alien: Romulus,” the seventh installment in this storied, apparently inexhaustible cycle of films, is perfectly adequate filler.Since Ridley Scott’s “Alien” burst into gripping, gruesome life in 1979, the series has generated hits and misses, tankers of acidic slobber and a sizable body count. The franchise turned Sigourney Weaver into an icon and gave David Fincher his start as a film director. As the movies piled up, they also reminded you that the original “Alien” is a masterpiece and that even the lesser follow-ups that Scott directed, “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant,” have their virtues, among them striking visuals, filmmaking intelligence, a curiosity about the cosmos, and a twinned appreciation for the mystery of life and the inevitability of death.“Alien: Romulus” is a nuts-and-bolts action-adventure horror story with boos and splatter. It doesn’t have much on its mind but it has some good jump scares along with a disappointingly bland heroine, a sympathetic android and the usual collection of disposable characters who are unduly killed by slavering, rampaging extraterrestrials. In series terms, the events in “Romulus” take place between those in “Alien” and those in the second film, “Aliens.” Written and directed by James Cameron, and crowded with big guns and bulging biceps, “Aliens” is largely notable for its swaggering action sequences that have become de rigueur in the series and for giving Weaver’s Ripley a muscular makeover while turning her into a surrogate mom.Directed by Fede Álvarez (“Don’t Breathe”), who shares script credit with Rodo Sayagues, “Romulus” tells a familiar, half-baked story of adversity, gritty perseverance, quick thinking and a drag-down fight for survival. It centers on Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a 20-something contract worker in a grim outer-space mining colony. There, along with Andy (David Jonsson), a glitchy android that she loves and calls her brother, Rain yearns to leave the sunless planet and the punishing conditions that condemned both her parents to early deaths. She soon gets her chance when some other friends share that they’re planning an escape in an abandoned space station that has conveniently drifted above their planet.Álvarez gets through this setup economically, and it isn’t long before Rain and company are creeping through the station’s eerily empty corridors, exploring its topsy-turvy rooms and pondering its not particularly mysterious mysteries. (Álvarez spends a lot of time showing off his sets, which are more engaging than the writing.) Spaeny, who played Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” is an appealing performer — her youth and slight frame deceptively suggest near-childlike vulnerability — and you’re on Rain’s side straightaway. What keeps you rooted there is largely a matter of film-going habit and franchise familiarity: She’s the heroine and Ripley’s symbolic heir, after all, and the monsters are coming.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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      ‘Jackpot!’ Review: Dystopia, Hollywood Style

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      Awkwafina and John Cena star in a fitfully funny near-future comedy with strangely mixed metaphors.In the near future, things are not very different. People wear the same clothes as we do, ride the bus to work, call each other on cellphones and stay in terrible Airbnbs run by hosts from hell. In the near future, everything is still expensive. And if you want to be an actor, you move to Los Angeles.Yet a few things have changed. Following the Great Depression of 2026, the government of California — as desperate for money as its people are — instituted a Grand Lottery in which one citizen of Los Angeles wins some huge sum. Sounds great, but unfortunately whoever wrote the law seems to be a fan of “The Purge.” Until sundown on Lottery Day, anyone who successfully kills the lottery winner (all weapons allowed except guns) gets the winnings. After sundown, murder becomes illegal again, until next year.Somehow the Michigander Katie (Awkwafina) missed this news, and thus had the bad fortune to arrive in Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting the night before Lottery Day 2030. She, of course, accidentally wins the $3.6 billion jackpot while at an audition. Suddenly, everyone is after her, and the only person she can maybe trust is a “freelance protector” named Noel (John Cena, who may be Hollywood’s most dependably funny actor). He’ll get her safely to sundown. Probably.This is quite the dystopian view of the future, though other movies have proposed that within a few decades, we’ll resort to state-sanctioned violence to secure our daily bread. In the world of Boots Riley’s comedy “Sorry to Bother You,” for instance, game show contestants beat themselves to a pulp to collect money and pay off their debts. Or, of course, there’s “Squid Game.”More dystopian, though, is the sense that in this version of the near future, nobody is capable of relating to anyone except through money. Only hours into her new L.A. life, Katie tells off a man (Adam Ray) who’s complaining loudly about his young daughter’s failure to get acting jobs that will line his pockets — as his daughter sits right next to him. Moments later, Katie meets a kind older woman (Becky Ann Baker) who wishes her luck, and then, quietly, swipes Katie’s watch.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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      10 Movies Starring Gena Rowlands, From ‘The Notebook’ to ‘Opening Night’

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      She delivered vulnerable portraits in movies as varied as “A Woman Under the Influence,” with John Cassavetes, and the drama “The Notebook.”Gena Rowlands, who died Wednesday at the age of 94, was widely regarded as one of the best actresses of her generation, known for her vulnerable portraits of women in states of crisis. Her most acclaimed performances came through her prolific and intensely creative collaboration with her husband, the director, writer and actor John Cassavetes, who gave her parts like the housewife in turmoil in “A Woman Under the Influence.” Even after his death in 1989, Rowlands would continue to work with family members, starring in the directorial efforts of their son, Nick, and her daughter Zoe. And while she became a star of the 1970s with films that broke new ground in independent cinema, in her later years she was introduced to a younger generation, thanks to Nick Cassavetes’s blockbuster tear-jerker, “The Notebook.” Here is where to watch some of her best work.Rowlands with John Marley in “Faces,” an early collaboration with John Cassavetes.United Archives, via Getty Images1968‘Faces’Stream on the Criterion Channel or MaxPerhaps the first true example of the magic Rowlands and John Cassavetes could make together came in the form of “Faces.” (Before that, she had an uncredited role in his debut, “Shadows,” as well as a part in his more conventional “A Child Is Waiting,” starring Judy Garland.) But “Faces,” made on a shoestring budget, was the project that started to reveal how unique their partnership could be. In Cassavetes’s drama about tensions between a married couple played by John Marley and Lynn Carlin, Rowlands is Jeannie, a call girl who becomes entangled with the husband in the equation. In Cassavetes’s tight close-ups and long takes you can see how Rowlands embodies the naturalistic milieu he was developing. When we first meet Jeannie she’s a good-time gal, partying with much older men, singing “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” but soon her eyes snap into focus, unwilling to be denigrated, as she develops affection for Marley’s character.Peter Falk with Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence,” directed by John Cassavetes.Everett Collection1974‘A Woman Under the Influence’Stream on the Criterion Channel or MaxWe 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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      Gena Rowlands, Actress Who Brought Raw Drama to Her Roles, Dies at 94

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      Gena Rowlands, the intense, elegant dramatic actress who, often in collaboration with her husband, John Cassavetes, starred in a series of introspective independent films, has died. She was 94.The death was confirmed by the office of Daniel Greenberg, a representative for Ms. Rowlands’s son, the director Nick Cassavetes. No other details were given.In June, her family said that she had been living with Alzheimer’s disease for five years.Ms. Rowlands, who often played intoxicated, deranged or otherwise on-the-verge characters, was nominated twice for best actress Oscars in performances directed by Mr. Cassavetes. The first was the title role in “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974), in which her desperate, insecure character is institutionalized by her blue-collar husband (Peter Falk) because he doesn’t know what else to do. The critic Roger Ebert wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times that Ms. Rowlands was “so touchingly vulnerable to every kind of influence around her that we don’t want to tap her because she might fall apart.”Her second nomination was for “Gloria” (1980), in which she starred as a gangster’s moll on the run with an orphaned boy.Ms. Rowlands and John Marley in “Faces,” which Renata Adler of The New York Times called “a really important movie” about “the way things are.” Like many of her movies, it was directed by Ms. Rowland’s husband, John Cassavetes.United Archives, via Getty ImagesBut it was “Faces” (1968), in which she starred as a young prostitute opposite John Marley, that first brought the Cassavetes-Rowlands partnership to moviegoers’ attention. Critics spread the word; Renata Adler described the film in The New York Times as “a really important movie” about “the way things are,” and Mr. Ebert called it “astonishing.”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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      Jay Kanter, Agent for Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, Dies at 97

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      Later a studio executive, he was among the last of the power brokers who dominated Hollywood in the latter half of the 20th century.Jay Kanter, whose long career as an agent to the stars — including Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly — and later as an influential studio executive made him one of the last of the generation of power brokers who dominated Hollywood in the late 20th century, died on Aug. 6 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 97.His son Adam Kanter confirmed his death.An acolyte of the superagent Lew Wasserman, Mr. Kanter was renowned as much for the career he led as for the stories people told about him.He was a junior agent at MCA, Mr. Wasserman’s agency, in 1948 when he was asked to retrieve Mr. Brando from the train station.Mr. Kanter took Mr. Brando to his aunt’s house, and the next morning to a meeting with the director Fred Zinnemann, who wanted to cast Mr. Brando in his next movie, “The Men.” Apparently Mr. Kanter made a good impression, because when he suggested that they proceed to MCA to meet some of its agents, he recalled, Mr. Brando replied: “I don’t have to meet anybody. You’re my agent.”Mr. Brando’s Hollywood career was on the verge of stardom. And now, so was Mr. Kanter’s.“Suddenly I was getting all these calls from these heads of studios,” he recalled in a 2017 interview, and within a few years he represented a long line of A-list talent.The Kanter-Brando story became a bit of Hollywood lore, so much so that it provided the inspiration for a 1989 sitcom, “The Famous Teddy Z,” about a Hollywood star who picks out a mailroom clerk (played by Jon Cryer) as his agent.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