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      ‘Paradise Highway’ Review: A Test of Loyalty

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      A truck driver’s brother asks her to deliver a girl to sex traffickers in order to save his life in prison.Growing up in a violent home, Sally (Juliette Binoche) only had one person to rely on: her brother, Dennis (Frank Grillo).Years later, Dennis is in prison, and now depends on Sally, who is a truck driver. When Dennis tells Sally that she must carry illicit cargo or he’ll be harmed, she is determined to come through, even after she finds out that the “package” she’s meant to deliver is a girl named Leila (Hala Finley).“Paradise Highway,” written and directed by Anna Gutto (“A Light Above”), follows Sally and Leila as they run from both the benevolent F.B.I. agents, played by Morgan Freeman and Cameron Monaghan, and the sex traffickers looking to recover Leila. They are kept company only by a shotgun and the radio that connects Sally to a network of other women truck drivers. Their camaraderie and Finley’s performance as the troubled Leila are highlights in a film that otherwise does not quite hit its stride.Perhaps unsurprisingly, Binoche is not believable as a working-class American truck driver, and her lingering French accent seems out of place in that world. In addition, the vague danger to her brother is difficult to accept as enough motivation for her to participate in such a heinous crime.Though it is refreshing to see members of law enforcement focused on recovering and supporting a victim rather than pursuing her abusers, it does not allow for much narrative tension. If only the film had taken a broader view, filling in more details about the lives and motivations of the truck drivers as well as the sex traffickers.Paradise HighwayRated R for language and some violence. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Hansan: Rising Dragon’ Review: Naval Gazing

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      The dutiful Korean war movie “Hansan: Rising Dragon” recounts a spectacular 16th-century naval victory over Japanese invaders.The dutiful war movie “Hansan: Rising Dragon” recounts the successes of the 16th-century Korean national hero Yi Sun-shin, which were previously chronicled in the 2014 film “The Admiral: Roaring Currents.” Directed by Kim Han-min, both films trumpet Admiral Yi’s savvy and courage in fending off the Japanese invaders attempting to conquer the peninsula. This time, the main event is the Battle of Hansan Island in 1592, a Korean victory that is showcased as a feat of both strategy and technology.Part of the movie tracks Yi’s efforts to lay logistical and diplomatic groundwork for a defense, amid internecine squabbles and Japanese espionage. (A daunting array of captions pop up onscreen to help identify the military figures involved.) Yi (Park Hae-il) is portrayed as a wise, deliberate leader, though his noble bearing can easily feel stolid, and the many military confabs tend to sag.A recurring topic of debate is the deployment of turtle ships — stout armored vessels with cannons on all sides and a dragonhead battering ram. When the movie finally opens up into naval warfare, these monstrous ships are worth the wait, roaring through the water in impressive sequences that toggle between wide shots and zooms into the fracas. Much is also made of Yi’s arcing crane-wing battle formation, but its significance is overshadowed by the sheer spectacle of collisions.The film’s dramas are ornately costumed but often stilted and lacking the verve of the battle staging. Even the glories of war can turn stultifying when you’re shown one too many thousand-yard-stare reaction shots by military leaders.Hansan: Rising DragonNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘DC League of Super-Pets’ Review: #ReleaseTheLassieCut

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      Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart voice canine heroes in a family-friendly animated spinoff of the “Justice League” franchise.The animated family comedy “DC League of Super-Pets” proceeds from what can be described as a “sure, why not” premise: Superman now has a Labrador retriever named Krypto the Super-Dog, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, who fights crime and has special powers. The movie combines the conventions of a comic book blockbuster with the tropes of a talking-animal flick, making it something like “Justice League” meets “Shrek” — big, loud and full of bombastic action but with an irreverent, jocular tone. The director, Jared Stern, was a writer of “The Lego Batman Movie” (2017). Like that film, this one spends a lot of time gently mocking its superhero source material. When Lulu (voiced by Kate McKinnon), an evil guinea pig and the story’s megalomaniac villain, captures Clark Kent (John Krasinski), she ridicules the shoddy disguise of his alter ego: “A mustache, maybe, but not glasses!”The movie seems plainly directed at young children who revere superheroes and adore animals. It is at its most successful when it simply lets its leads, Krypto and a fellow canine named Ace (Kevin Hart), put a spin on basic bowwow stuff — as in an early scene involving a city-spanning game of flying fetch. More bewildering are the film’s constant efforts to appease the adults in the audience. What are kids supposed to make of the references to “The Great British Bake Off” in a running gag? And what could they possibly find amusing about an extended, humdrum nod to “The Warriors” (1979)? This brand of arch, inside-baseball riffing is a scourge on modern family films, present in almost every animated movie with an all-star cast. But it’s especially grating delivered by Johnson and Hart, who, despite the vocal talent they have shown in the past, give two of the least inspired voice performances in recent memory.DC League of Super-PetsRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘A Balance’ Review: Critical Distance

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      Yujiro Harumoto’s slow-build morality tale puts an ambitious documentary maker in an uncomfortable position as her life begins to resemble her films.About an hour into Yujiro Harumoto’s knotty and suspenseful morality tale “A Balance,” Yuko (Kumi Takiuchi), a documentary director, argues with an abortion doctor (Ryo Ikeda) that “What’s moral isn’t always what’s best.” It’s a platitude that has already been tested for Yuko, whose life has become suddenly very complicated. But that test is only beginning.“This is all topsy-turvy,” the doctor replies. He doesn’t know the half of it.For the next 90 minutes of this slow-build ethical puzzle, Harumoto relentlessly changes the terms each time Yuko thinks she has determined “what’s best.” By the film’s unsettling denouement, viewers are likely to share her disorientation, in ways that are mostly good (see: challenging, nuanced), even as the plot, with its many conveniences, sometimes strains credulity.When we meet Yuko, she is hustling to complete a documentary about alleged sexual impropriety at a Tokyo school. As her investigation expands, the ethics grow thornier, not least because of corporate pressure and misogyny.Still, she’s a player. Her willingness to stretch certain standards in service of “The Truth” hints at troubles to come. After a parallel event involving her schoolteacher father (Ken Mitsuishi) causes Yuko’s world to cave, she seeks protection in the tools that give her critical distance as a filmmaker — her camera, her insistent questions. It was a nice thought, anyway.Takiuchi’s Yuko, in turns motherly and mercenary, is bewitchingly enigmatic: What drives her? Why does she still live with her father? Mercifully, we receive little back story; it’s enough that she is an ambitious woman, choked by ruthless double standards surrounding sex and autonomy. As the stakes rise, moral clarity turns out to be a luxury not everyone can afford.A BalanceNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 33 minutes. Watch on Film Movement+. More

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      Who Can Play the King? Representation Questions Fuel Casting Debates.

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      Should Shakespeare’s Richard III be reserved for disabled actors? Does the character have to be played by a white man? By a man at all? Three recent productions took different tacks.When three of the most prestigious Shakespeare companies in the world staged “Richard III” this summer, each took a different approach to casting its scheming title character in ways that illuminate the fraught debate over which actors should play which roles.At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, Richard was played by the actor Arthur Hughes, who has radial dysplasia, which means he has a shorter right arm and a missing thumb. The company said it was the first time it had cast a disabled actor to play the character, who describes himself in the opening scene as “deformed.” The production’s director, Gregory Doran, who was until recently the Royal Shakespeare’s artistic director, told The Times of London earlier this year that having actors pretend to be disabled to play “Richard III” would “probably not be acceptable” these days.The Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, took a different tack: It cast Colm Feore, who is not disabled, to play a Richard who has a deformed spine but who is not a hunchback. And in New York City, the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park went in yet another direction, casting Danai Gurira, a Black woman who does not have a disability, as the duke who schemes and kills his way to the throne of England.Their varying approaches came at a moment when an intense rethinking of the cultural norms around identity, representation, diversity, opportunity, imagination and artistic license have led to impassioned debates, and battles, over casting.It has been decades since major theaters have had white actors play Othello in blackface, and, after years of criticism, performances by white actors playing caricatured Asian roles are growing rarer in theater and film, and are being rethought in opera and ballet.Now there are questions about who should play gay characters (Tom Hanks recently told The New York Times Magazine that today he would, rightly, not be cast as a gay attorney dying of AIDS, as he was in his Academy Award-winning role in the 1993 film “Philadelphia”) or transgender characters (Eddie Redmayne said last year that it had been a “mistake” to play a trans character in 2015’s “The Danish Girl”) or characters of different ethnicities and religions. (Bradley Cooper faced criticism this year for using a prosthetic nose to play the Jewish conductor Leonard Bernstein in a forthcoming biopic.)Tom Hanks recently said that today he would, correctly, not be cast as a gay attorney dying of AIDS, as he was in the film “Philadelphia,” which he starred in with Denzel Washington.TriStar PicturesWhile many celebrate the move away from old, sometimes stereotyped portrayals and the new opportunities belatedly being given to actors from a diverse array of backgrounds, others worry that the current insistence on literalism and authenticity can be too constraining. Acting, after all, is the art of pretending to be someone you are not.“The essential nature of art is freedom,” said the Oscar-winning actor F. Murray Abraham, whose many credits include Shylock, the Jewish moneylender of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” though Mr. Abraham is not Jewish. “Once we impose any kind of control over it, it’s no longer free.”And while the recent insistence on more authentic casting promises greater diversity in some respects, it threatens less in others — coming as many women and actors of color are getting more opportunities to play some of the greatest, meatiest roles in the repertory, regardless of whatever race or gender or background the playwrights may have initially envisioned.More About on Deaf CultureUpending Perceptions: The poetic art of Christine Sun Kim, who was born deaf, challenges viewers to reconsider how they hear and perceive the world.‘Coda’: The Oscar-winning film showcases deaf actors and lives. But some deaf viewers found its hearing perspective frustrating. Seeking Representation: Though deafness is gaining visibility onscreen, deaf people who rely on hearing devices say their experiences remain mostly untold. Name Signs: Name signs are the equivalent of a first name in some sign languages. We asked a few people to share the story behind theirs.Sometimes such casting is considered “colorblind,” in which case audiences are asked to look beyond an actor’s race or ethnicity, or other features. But in recent years the trend has been toward “color-conscious” casting, in which an actor’s race, ethnicity or identity becomes part of the production, and a feature of the character being portrayed.The casting of Mr. Hughes in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Britain was hailed as the first time the company had cast a disabled actor in the title role.Ellie Kurttz, via Royal Shakespeare CompanySome of the varied approaches were underscored by this summer’s productions of “Richard III,” and the different directions each theater took when choosing an actor to play Richard.Richard tells the audience in the opening scene that he is:Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my timeInto this breathing world, scarce half made up,And that so lamely and unfashionableThat dogs bark at me as I halt by themThe remark by Mr. Doran, the director of the Royal Shakespeare Company production, that it would “probably not be acceptable” these days to have actors pretend to be disabled to play Richard caused a stir in theater circles.Not only is Mr. Doran a renowned Shakespearean, but his husband, Antony Sher, who died last year, was one of the most memorable Richards of recent decades, using crutches in an acclaimed 1984 production and writing a book about his portrayal.Mr. Doran, whose production in Stratford-upon-Avon was critically lauded, later clarified his thinking about its casting, explaining that while any actor might be a successful Richard, he believed the role should be reserved for disabled actors until they “have the opportunities across the board now more widely afforded to other actors.”The new staging in Stratford, Ontario, featuring Mr. Feore, listed a “disability consultant” in its credits. His depiction was inspired by the discovery of Richard’s bones nearly a decade ago — the skeleton suggested a form of scoliosis — and rested on the idea that his physique “was less of a medical disability than a social and cultural one,” the company’s spokeswoman, Ann Swerdfager, said in an email. The critic Karen Fricker wrote in The Toronto Star: “As much as I admired Feore’s performance, it did lead me to wonder if this will be the last able-bodied actor making a star turn as a disabled character on the Stratford stage, given crucial conversations currently happening around deaf and disability performance.”And in New York, Ms. Gurira, who has appeared in “Black Panther” and the television series “The Walking Dead,” tried to explore the underlying reasons for Richard’s behavior. “There is a psychological reason for what he becomes,” she said in an interview. “He’s looking at the rules in front of him, and he feels he’s most capable, but the rules disallow him from manifesting his full capability.”The production’s director, Robert O’Hara, said that they made Richard’s difference key to the interpretation. “Richard’s otherness becomes an entire reason for his behavior,” he said in an interview. “He feels like now he has to play a part people projected onto him.”Ms. Gurira, left, said her approach to Richard aimed to get at the “psychological reason for what he becomes.” She appeared with Daniel J. Watts, right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe rest of the cast for the production, which ended its run earlier this month, was notably diverse, and included several actors with disabilities in roles that are not usually cast that way. Ali Stroker, a Tony-winning actress who uses a wheelchair, played Lady Anne; Monique Holt, who is Deaf, played Richard’s mother, the two typically communicating onstage via American Sign Language.“I wanted to open up the conversation from ‘Why isn’t Richard being played by a disabled actor?’ to ‘Why isn’t every role considered able to be played by a disabled actor?’” Mr. O’Hara said.Ayanna Thompson, a professor of English at Arizona State University and a Shakespeare scholar in residence at the Public Theater who consulted on its “Richard III,” argued that the growing embrace of color-conscious casting reflected contemporary understandings of how different attributes inflect both actors’ identities and audiences’ perceptions.“All of our bodies carry meaning on stage, whether or not we want to acknowledge that. And that’s going to affect storytelling,” Ms. Thompson said.She pointed to an example from another play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, friends of Hamlet’s, whom other characters often confuse for each other. “If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are played by Black actors and the Hamlet family is all-white,” she said, “the inability to distinguish carries a whole set of different meanings.”Many productions upend traditional casting to interrogate classics. Women played every role in a trilogy of acclaimed Shakespeare productions directed by Phyllida Lloyd at Donmar Warehouse in London, seen in New York at St. Ann’s Warehouse. A “Julius Caesar” directed by Mr. Doran reset the scene from ancient Rome to modern Africa. Even Hollywood has reimagined some blockbusters, as with the gender-swapped 2016 “Ghostbusters.”Harriet Walter, with hands outstretched, in a 2013 production of “Julius Caesar,” in which all of the roles were played by women. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut as there is a push for greater casting freedoms in some areas, there is an argument for more literalism in others, especially from actors with certain backgrounds who lack opportunities.Some disabled actors are upset when they see Richard III, one of the juiciest disabled characters in the canon, go to someone else. “We all want a level playing field where everybody can play everybody,” said Mat Fraser, an English actor who is disabled and has played Richard, “but my entire career I’ve not been allowed to play hardly anybody.”In 2016, while accepting an Emmy for his turn as a transgender character in “Transparent,” Jeffrey Tambor said that he hoped to be “the last cisgender male to play a transgender female.” Now, with a “Transparent” stage musical being created in Los Angeles, its creator, Joey Soloway, vowed in an interview: “No trans person should be played by a cis person. Zero tolerance.”The conversation on casting has been evolving in recent years.“It used to be that part of the measurement of greatness was your ability to transform yourself,” said Isaac Butler, the author of “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act,” a new history of Method acting. “Is versatility still the hallmark of good acting? And how do you approach it if there are certain identity lines you cannot cross? And which are those identity lines?”Gregg Mozgala, left, an actor with cerebral palsy, says he has to bring his “full humanity to every character I play.” He appeared with Jolly Abraham in 2017 in a production of the play “Cost of Living.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGregg Mozgala, an actor with cerebral palsy, has played roles that are not traditionally portrayed as disabled, as he did playing two monarchs in “Richard III” in New York, and sometimes plays characters written as having cerebral palsy, as he will this fall in a Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Cost of Living.”“I spent years trying to pretend my disability didn’t exist in life and onstage, which is ridiculous, because it does,” Mr. Mozgala said.“Every character I ever play is going to have cerebral palsy — there’s nothing I can do about that,” he added. “I have to bring my full humanity to every character I play.”Some still hold out hope for a day when identity will recede in the conversation.“A hundred years from now, do I hope white actors could play Othello?” said Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s artistic director. “Sure, because it would mean racism wasn’t the explosive issue it is now.” More

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      Why Brandon Perea’s ‘Nope’ Audition Made Jordan Peele Cry

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      The actor’s unexpected take on Angel, the Fry’s worker, so won over the director that he decided during their meeting to rewrite the script.When Brandon Perea was 15, touring the country as a professional dancer and roller skater, he had an epiphany in the parking lot of a Blue Coast Burrito: He would move from Chicago to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.But dreams rarely account for the rough patches. Perea thought he had it made when, at 20, he booked the series-regular role of student Alfonso Sosa, known as French, on the enigmatic Netflix serial “The OA,” but the show was canceled two seasons into its planned five-year arc.“I had so much confidence where I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m probably going to book a bunch of stuff after this,’” Perea said, though new roles proved elusive. “It’s that weird middle ground where ‘The OA’ was a good, life-changing job, but it’s not a piece on your résumé that’s going to beat out the A-list people that want the great stuff. You’re auditioning just in case they say no, and who the hell is going to say no to something great?”Still, Perea kept plugging away at his dream, and his efforts were rewarded when he scored a breakout role in Jordan Peele’s new film “Nope,” which stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as siblings trying to photograph an extraterrestrial entity looming above their California ranch. Their efforts eventually involve the bleach-blond electronics-store employee Angel, whom Perea has a ball playing: Though Angel appears terminally bored when we meet him, he quickly warms to the brother-sister duo, oversharing about his recent breakup and chatting eagerly about “Ancient Aliens” even as their circumstances grow ever more outlandish.Peele was so pleased with Perea’s work that he beefed up the role during the shoot, and now that “Nope” is out (and No. 1 at the box office), the 27-year-old actor is glad he stuck to his convictions.“I call this the miracle job for a reason — this is a God-given miracle for me, because this is far bigger than what I could ever imagine or dream,” Perea told me last week over Zoom. “To be working in Hollywood is a privilege and it’s tough to keep, so you’ve got to be grateful if you can keep it. If I wasn’t grateful, kick me out.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.With Daniel Kaluuya, left, and Keke Palmer in “Nope.” Perea met the film’s stars for the first time during filming. Universal PicturesWhat was going on in your life when you were cast in “Nope”?I hadn’t worked on anything truly significant in a long time, and there were a lot of lows before “Nope.” I got close to a big show — I went in the room three or four times and I just thought, “Oh man, this is it, I’m back” — and then I didn’t get that role. Then there was a really good script, and I felt like I murdered that audition. People I showed the audition to were like, “Oh man, you’re going to book this thing,” and I didn’t end up getting it.But there was a switch for me where I was just like, “You know what? I’m proud at the level that I’m performing at, and someone will trust me someday.” That eased the pressure I put on myself. It was the first time that I came to terms with it so I could move on and not sulk over a job.And then you heard about “Nope”?I got an email for an untitled Jordan Peele project, my first big audition in a long time. I was assuming it’d be a one-liner or something because he’s at the point where he can get any actor in the world to be in his films, but then I saw it was one of the leads. I was like, “Oh my God, he’s seeing auditions for a lead role? That’s insane. I’m going to deliver the best that I can, but what can I do that’s going to be different than everyone else?”So what was your take on the character?The initial audition was just three pages of simple dialogue of this dude working at an electronics store: “Hi, I can help you over here. Would you like an account with us?” It was very happy, very up. And I was like, “Hmm, you don’t see that when you go into an electronics store. The employees do not want to be there.” So, I played it that way, sent the tape off into the universe, and two weeks later I got a callback to meet with Jordan on Zoom.How did you feel?I was excited, humbled, nervous. I was like, “Man, I’m just happy to meet the dude. If I get the role, great, but also, I’m happy with where I got.” But then I had people around me that were like, “No, dog. Ask, believe, receive. This is your job and you’re going to get this.” And my roommate at the time introduced me to some Steve Harvey motivational videos and that really helped, because that got my confidence way up.I went in with this energy that was like, “I’m not here to audition, it’s a work session. I’m going to set. I’m not here to beg for the job.” And I acted like I already knew Jordan, because I had watched so many of his interviews to prep — I was like, “Yo, what’s good, J.P.? How we doing?” Just very comfortable and not like, “Hello, Mr. Peele, how are you?”Perea said the dialogue he was handed for his “Nope” audition depicted Angel as a happy, up worker. “I was like, ‘Hmm, you don’t see that when you go into an electronics store. The employees do not want to be there.’” Victor Llorente for The New York TimesYou were bringing colleague energy rather than fan energy.Yeah, exactly, and after it was over, I was so proud that I cried. I was alone on my couch, just like, “Man, I don’t even care if I get the job, he’ll book me one day.” And two days later, my reps reach out and they’re like, “Hey, are you free for an improv session this afternoon with Jordan?” I go in the Zoom call and Jordan’s like, “The thing is, the character you brought to the table is far different than what I wrote for. So, I need to see you do it some more ways, because I’d have to rewrite my entire script to cast you in this thing.”I’m like, “Damn, I’m probably out of the job.” And he was like, “You know what? That’s what I’m going to do. Yeah, I’m going to rewrite my script.” I was like, “What?” He was like, “Yeah, man. You got the job.” Boom, instant tears. I started going on a whole spiel: “Man, with Hollywood stuff, you get beat down — it’s a roller coaster full of ups and downs. Thank you for trusting me. You go through a million nos to get one yes, and I’d go through a billion to get this one.” And Jordan started crying as well. I remember him removing his glasses just like, “You got me, man, you got me.”That’s the tricky thing about being a working actor, I’d expect: You can continue to deliver knockout auditions, but you never know if you’re exactly what they’re looking for.It took a while, but I’m so glad I didn’t get the other jobs that I thought I needed and wanted so much. “Nope” came along at the perfect time because now I’m here and I’m prepared. There’s a lot of pieces missing that I really had to learn in life, not just as an actor or as an artist.What would have happened if you booked something like this right on the heels of “The OA”?I just wouldn’t have handled success the best, I think. At that time, I probably would have let it steer me away more from the art form just to get some money grabs or a big following. There was a popular TV show I thought I was close to booking, but I think my intentions were in the wrong place, where I was like, “Oh man, I can get a lot of viewers and young people to be on my side.” I wasn’t looking at it like, “I love this character, I really want to deliver in this series.” So I’m glad there was a no on that front, because it’s a very viral show and — —Was it “Euphoria”?Ooh, you guessed it. You’re good. But everything happens for a reason, and I had to learn that.So Jordan cast you. Then what?It was just an emotional roller coaster right after that — like, “Phew, now I have to go do the job and deliver.” And there was so much mystery. There was no synopsis, I had no clue what the hell I was about to do. On the day I got the movie, Jordan sent me a movie list of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jaws,” “Alien,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “No Country for Old Men.” I was like, “OK, this is a random-ass list of movies. What’s he conjuring up? How does all this stuff connect?” And then a little while later, I get a text message from him being like, “Merry Christmas,” and he sent me a link to the script.”I remember reading it, being like, “Oh my gosh, no one’s going to expect this from Jordan.” And I did not know who the cast was, either, but he just started texting me random hints — he sent me “D.K.,” and I was like, “D.K., Daniel Kaluuya?” We’d even had a little conversation about Kaluuya because I took a nugget from watching his YouTube interviews, where a director gave him a note to never play the funny, always play the truth.Perea said he learned he got the job directly from Peele during a meeting. His reaction? “Boom, instant tears.” Victor Llorente for The New York TimesAfter watching so many videos of Daniel Kaluuya, what happens when you’re actually acting opposite him?The first time that we all met in person was the first time that we met on-screen. I was a stranger to him and Keke, and they already had their bond, so I was like, “Let me play this to my advantage. I’m just going to play Angel throughout, then I’ll say what’s up after.” And that’s what we did. The beats are awkward, and I’m challenging Daniel because he’s giving me eyes. I remember hearing him say to Keke, “My eyes see everything.” So I wasn’t breaking eye contact with him — it was hard nose vs. hard nose. I was like, “I’m here with you.”You posted a video of your emotional reaction to seeing the “Nope” billboard for the first time. What does it mean for you to be on those billboards and posters?My intention when I was younger was just, “I want to be on a billboard.” I wasn’t looking at it from a more complex, deeper meaning. But if you really look at the billboard for “Nope” and dissect it, it’s like, “Wow, I’m on a billboard, but I’m a Filipino Puerto Rican kid sharing this poster with Asian representation, Black representation and a Black director in a big spectacle film.” Man, I’m glad it took this long, because now I appreciate this privilege. Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Jordan Peele — I’m working with some of the best to be doing it right now. I am the new kid on the block, so the fact that I get to share a poster with all those people? I’m very grateful that they trusted me. More

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      Rediscovering Australia’s Generation of Defiant Female Directors

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      Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Essie Coffey and others had waited years to tell their stories, as a Museum of the Moving Image series shows.In the opening moments of Gillian Armstrong’s debut feature, “My Brilliant Career” (1979), a freckled, tawny-haired young woman stands in the doorway of her house in the Australian outback and declares: “Dear countrymen, a few lines to let you know that this story is going to be all about me.” The woman is Sybylla, played by a fiery, young Judy Davis, and she dreams of a long, fruitful career as a writer — love, marriage, motherhood and all of society’s other expectations be damned.Sybylla’s words might as well have been the rallying cry for a whole generation of Australia’s female filmmakers, who had waited for years to tell their own stories. Their defiant and eclectic body of work is the subject of Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema, a fascinating series that opened last week at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens, N.Y.“My Brilliant Career,” which shot Armstrong into global prominence, was the first feature to be directed by an Australian woman in more than 40 years. In 1933, “Two Minutes Silence,” the fourth and final feature by the three McDonagh sisters — Isabel, Phyllis and Paulette — had closed out a brief but booming era of early Australian cinema in which women had been active as producers and directors. (The MoMI series includes the 1929 film “The Cheaters,” the only feature by the McDonagh sisters for which a print still exists.)The intervening decades had drastically shrunk not just opportunities for women interested in film, but the scope of Australian cinema itself. Stiff competition from Hollywood and the ravages of World War II had more or less shuttered the country’s film industry by the 1960s. Government initiatives to subsidize production and establish a national film school eventually spurred a rebirth in the 1970s. The Australian new wave, as this resurgence came to be called, thrust antipodean cinema onto the world stage with stylized, maverick films like Bruce Beresford’s “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie,” Fred Schepisi’s “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” and George Miller’s “Mad Max.”Tracey Moffatt in “BeDevil,” a horror anthology she also directed.Women Make MoviesThe new wave was a male-dominated movement, with many of the films flaunting a grisly, macho vision of Australian culture; Armstrong often stood out as the sole female exception. But “My Brilliant Career” also represented the beginning of another kind of renaissance in Australian cinema — one led by women. Between the late 1970s and the 1990s, a number of women directed landmark films across genres, introducing rousing new feminist narratives to the Australian screen.“My Brilliant Career” is one of many firsts in the aptly named MoMI series, which was curated by the programmer and critic Michelle Carey. These include Essie Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal” (1978), often hailed as the first documentary to be directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman; the dystopian lesbian heist film “On Guard” (1984), written and directed by Susan Lambert and believed by some to be the first Australian film made with an all-women crew; and Tracey Moffatt’s rollicking three-part horror anthology, “BeDevil” (1993), regarded as the first feature to be directed by an Aboriginal Australian woman. Then there’s “Sweetie” (1989), the oddball black comedy that was the debut feature of Jane Campion, who would go on to make “The Piano” (1993), the first film by a woman to win a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.This flurry of breakthroughs resulted from two intersecting developments: the creation of state film institutions like the Australian Film Television and Radio School and the Australian Film Commission in the 1970s; and campaigns by women’s and Aboriginal groups to demand policies that would ensure fair access to these public resources. Armstrong was part of the inaugural class of 12 at the school, whose graduates also include Campion and her “Sweetie” cinematographer Sally Bongers, as well as Jocelyn Moorhouse, who produced the 1994 crossover hit “Muriel’s Wedding.” “Proof,” Moorhouse’s disarmingly mordant feature debut as a director, is part of Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema.While state support helped nurture a fledgling mainstream industry, it proved crucial in the development of a feminist documentary and experimental film tradition in Australia, which benefited greatly from the commission’s Women’s Film Fund. “On Guard” is a striking example. Lambert’s hourlong movie follows a group of lesbians who scheme to destroy the data held by a multinational company, U.T.E.R.O., which they suspect is performing illegal reproductive experiments on women. A kind of Aussie sister-film to Lizzie Borden’s 1983 cult classic, “Born in Flames,” “On Guard” subverts patriarchal control in both form and narrative. Told in short, sleek fragments, the film strips the heist thriller of all its usual machinations and violence, instead dwelling on the everyday struggles of its heroines — be it with child care, domestic division of labor or living an openly gay life.Essie Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal” serves as both a manifesto and an heirloom for her descendants.Ballad FilmsMoffatt’s movies similarly reimagine cultural and film tropes, but through the lenses of gender and race. The short film “Nice Coloured Girls” uses clever juxtapositions of image, voice and text to turn a wily story about three Aboriginal women who seduce and scam white men into a historical meditation on the power plays between early settlers and the women’s ancestors. This theme of colonial haunting is expanded with raucous invention in Moffatt’s “BeDevil,” which draws on Aboriginal folklore to tell a series of modern-day gothic tales. Tracing lines between past and present evils — colonialism, gentrification, cultural appropriation — with an irreverent and experimental approach to editing and sound, “BeDevil” refashions Australian history as a deeply unsettling ghost story. Like many films in the MoMI series, “BeDevil” feels startlingly ahead of its time.As does Coffey’s “My Survival as an Aboriginal,” despite its simple and straightforward documentary structure. Made one year before “My Brilliant Career” — and no less seminal than that film in inspiring an entire tradition of filmmakers — “My Survival” is both a personal manifesto by Coffey and an heirloom for her descendants. Coffey speaks bluntly, straight into the camera, of the violence suffered by her people, the Muruwari, at the hands of white settlers. Then she sets out with the camera, brusque and determined, to ensure that her heritage is preserved and passed down to future generations. She teaches the local children the traditional skills of her people — hunting, gathering, surviving in the bush — and laments that their education has left them without this essential cultural knowledge. At the end, Coffey declares, “I’m going to lead my own life, me and my family, and live off the land. I will not live a white-man way and that’s straight from me, Essie Coffey.”Between Sybylla’s fictional “this story is going to be all about me” in “My Brilliant Career” and Coffey’s raw and real “I’m going to lead my own life,” a whole history of Australian women’s cinema was born.“Pioneering Women in Australian Cinema” runs through Aug. 14 at the Museum of the Moving Image. Go to movingimage.us for more information. More

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      B.J. Novak Went to Texas Looking for ‘Vengeance’ and Found America

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      A funny story that B.J. Novak likes to tell from the making of his new movie is about the day he thought he was having a stroke. Are you chuckling yet?At the start of 2020, Novak, a writer, comedian and alumnus of “The Office,” had finally gotten the green light to make “Vengeance,” a dark comedy set in small-town Texas. That’s when he thought he was slurring his speech and called a colleague to ask if he was noticing it, too.As Novak recalled, “I was like, you hear that, don’t you? And he said, I do. And I called my doctor and went in the next morning for an M.R.I., and they said you’re fine, and I realized I’m terrified to make this movie.”Like a lot of the humor that appeals to Novak — whose symptoms, rest assured, were completely psychosomatic — what’s funny about this story is a matter of perspective. You can laugh at it in relief, when you know the person telling it is no longer in danger.This is a theme that comes up frequently in “Vengeance,” which blends some of the awkward cringe comedy that “The Office” was famous for with a knowing, cynical sharpness that would never fly in the hallways of Dunder Mifflin.The film, which opens Friday, is Novak’s debut as a feature director and screenwriter, and he stars in it as Ben Manalowitz, a self-assured New York writer. When Ben learns that a woman he dated casually — very casually — has died under hazy circumstances in her Texas hometown, he travels there in hopes of turning the story into a hit podcast.Though Ben arrives with selfish motives and a stereotypical sense of red-state values, he grows enamored of the dead woman’s family (played by Boyd Holbrook, J. Smith-Cameron, Isabella Amara and Dove Cameron, among others). His investigation also leads him to an astute record producer (Ashton Kutcher) who exerts an ominous influence over the town.Boyd Holbrook, left, with Novak in a scene from the new film “Vengeance.”Patti Perret/Focus FeaturesFor Novak, “Vengeance” is an ambitious attempt to step out of his sitcom comfort zone and see if he can make it as an Albert Brooks-like leading man. As he said of his acting résumé, which has included small roles in “Inglourious Basterds” and other films, “I’m very much a reaction-shot guy. I’ve never been a point-of-view character.”“Vengeance” is also one of a small number of original comedies that will receive a theatrical release, and getting it made required a level of commitment that Novak had never expected.“I really felt like a madman on the corner,” he said. “I’m going to star in this movie, and it’s a comedy but also a thriller but also a love story. But it’s also about how technology does this to us. I really thought I was nuts, but I kept going.”One afternoon in June, Novak was relaxing in the patio of a hotel in downtown Manhattan, where he’d presented “Vengeance” at the Tribeca Festival. For the first time in several months, Novak said, “I haven’t been under some terrible cloud of writing and editing and fighting. I really like it.”Face to face, Novak, who turns 43 on July 31, comes across as easygoing and effortlessly humorous. Describing his life as a Boston-area transplant now residing in Los Angeles, he said, “Everyone in L.A. assumes I live in New York, which I take to mean: You’re Jewish, right? Or, I haven’t seen you in a while.”But there’s an intensity that colors all his anecdotes about “Vengeance,” whose central premise he had been kicking around for several years.“We live in divided times, quote-unquote, because we communicate completely on our own timelines,” he said. “It was from my experience dating and being a somewhat shallow person who didn’t really know what he was missing until it was too late.”Novak added, “Every year that went by, it became a more topical film, which I didn’t ever intend it to be.”Novak, concerned about starring in the film as well as directing, had a panic attack before shooting started.Erik Tanner for The New York TimesBetween 2015 and 2018, Novak said, he took research trips to Texas cities like Abilene and Pecos, seeking to dispel his misconceptions about a part of the country he assumed would be unwelcoming.“I thought that these huge dudes with beards and pickup trucks would be very suspicious of a Hollywood blue-state guy, and I found the exact opposite,” he said. “It’s the warmest culture I ever found. I went to Easter dinners and people would show me the poetry they had written.”Novak returned from his travels with the foundation for what would become “Vengeance,” and with the intention that he would play the lead. “I wrote the role to be impossible to cast with anyone but me,” he said. “You know, superficial with a possible hidden heart, blah blah blah.”Though the movie can be equally scathing in its satirical treatment of snobbish urbanites and credulous country folk, Novak said that the “Vengeance” screenplay benefited from lessons he learned while working on “The Office.”In particular, he said the sitcom taught him “the confidence to throw away your best joke if it didn’t feel authentic or damaged the character long-term — if you play an emotional moment honestly, the laugh will be more satisfying later.”That said, Novak also had to remind himself it was OK to depict his “Vengeance” character with some positive attributes — an approach he would have never taken at “The Office,” on which he, Mindy Kaling, Paul Lieberstein and other writers portrayed its supporting miscreants.On that show, Novak said, “We were too shy to pitch anything redeeming, so we played the least redeeming characters. We were all allergic to that in the writers’ room.”The cast for “Vengeance” grew to include Issa Rae, who plays a podcast producer Ben is hoping to impress; the singer-songwriter John Mayer, who plays one of Ben’s self-centered New York friends; and Kutcher, who previously employed Novak as an on-camera accomplice for his MTV prank series, “Punk’D.”Kutcher said he was particularly impressed with a long monologue that his character delivered, about people who seem to care less about the lives they lead than the digital records of them that they leave behind.“When you look at human behavior, and the obsessive nature of chasing that dopamine hit from posting every moment we think is interesting or cool or funny, you realize his theory has merit,” Kutcher said.Also, Kutcher said, he appreciated that Novak was open to letting him play his character with a mustache. “I just saw him having a mustache. I don’t know why,” Kutcher said.But as production moved forward, Novak became increasingly anxious about feeling that he had to carry the movie as the leading man, setting off his panic attack. It was in this time that he reached out to Mayer for what Novak described as “handsomeness coaching.”Mayer has been a longtime friend of Novak’s, dating to “The Office.” (In an email, Mayer explained that he allowed the show to use his song “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in return for a Dundie Award.)Mayer said he could not remember all the suggestions he offered Novak, but one of them was to give up alcohol before he started shooting. “First and foremost, you have to put drinking away,” Mayer said. “I know people wince just hearing that stuff. But that’s the truth.”He continued, “I think I mentioned getting the right haircut, basic stuff. But how sweet and vulnerable is that, for B.J. to ask before filming what advice I could give him?”Novak had to remind himself it was OK to depict his “Vengeance” character with some positive attributes — an approach he would have never taken at “The Office.”Erik Tanner for The New York TimesA few weeks into filming, production was suspended for several months because of the pandemic. At times Novak found himself juggling duties on the film and his FX on Hulu anthology series “The Premise.”“I filmed the FX show and then I went back to filming ‘Vengeance,’” he started to say, then corrected himself. “No, I was editing ‘Vengeance’ while I was writing. It was a mess, and I had Covid.”“I took extra time, because I was writing poorly and editing poorly because my brain was bad for a few weeks,” he said. “They were both going badly at various points because I couldn’t balance them and I thought I could.”Now “Vengeance” arrives in theaters on the heels of the blockbusters “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Jurassic World Dominion” and “Thor: Love and Thunder,” at a time when many other low-budget comedies and dramas about more earthbound matters are being released directly to streaming platforms.Jason Blum, the chief executive of Blumhouse, one of the companies that produced “Vengeance,” said the film could have just as easily received a streaming release.“I can’t tell you we didn’t contemplate that during the pandemic,” he said. “We contemplated every possible distribution outlet, ever.”But, Blum said, his company has had success with films from writer-directors who blended comedy and thriller genres, like Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” and he was hopeful that “Vengeance” might find a similar lane.“This movie is exactly the kind of movie that people say they want to see,” Blum said. “If it does well, it’ll open a path to put other original movies in theaters, too, not just movies based on existing intellectual property.”For Novak, the theatrical release is an opportunity to show “Vengeance” to the same people he hopes it captures, and to determine if they appreciate how he has depicted them.“I really want Texans to like it,” he said. “I wanted to make this Texans’ favorite movie. I even put a Whataburger in it. I remember seeing Dunkin’ Donuts in ‘Good Will Hunting.’ As a Bostonian, you just felt so seen.” More