Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      The Antihero’s Last Gasp

      by

      In the popular Amazon Prime series “The Boys,” Hughie, an irrepressibly earnest young man who runs with the title group of misfits, is forced to decide — several times — if he’s willing to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for justice. And by “the devil” I mean Billy Butcher, the ruthless, potty-mouthed leader of the team of soldiers and assassins devoted to fighting, extorting, torturing and killing superheroes.Hughie’s our Everyman — our well-meaning protagonist who gets thrown in with Butcher’s crew and serves as his moral compass. While Butcher viciously feeds his vendetta against “supes,” Hughie tries to fight for justice without shedding more blood.In the inside-out world of “The Boys,” which just concluded its third season, Hughie discovers that there are no moral absolutes. The superheroes who are Butcher’s targets? Murderers, rapists, and (in the bland smiling visage of Homelander) a proto-fascist. Clear-cut understandings of who’s a hero and who’s a villain fly — like a bird, like a plane, or like a Superman — out the window.Three members of “The Boys,” who recognize that superheroes aren’t all that super, from left: Tomer Capone as Frenchie, Jack Quaid as Hughie, and Karl Urban as Billy Butcher.Panagiotis Pantazidis/Amazon StudiosAnd with them goes the longstanding comic-book archetype meant to split the difference: the antihero. The old model — the brooding, traumatized crusader in black who toes the line between good and evil, whom we root for even as he descends into moral (and too often, literal) darkness — has become a gross parody of itself.Once a contradictory figure meant to represent both the fresh sins of a modern world and a righteous crusade for justice, the antihero is too often written to such base extremes that it negates the very reason he first became a popular trope — because antiheroes can exist only in a universe in which idealized notions of heroism, and the concept of good and bad, still exist.Plenty of observers have argued that prestige TV reached this impasse, too, when the warped values represented by such beloved characters as Tony Soprano, Walter White and Dexter Morgan grew tired, giving way to the cheery “Ted Lasso” and the family of outsiders in “Pose.”In the comic-book-spawned worlds that, for better or worse, dominate popular culture, creators have tried to resurrect the antihero, to varying degrees of success.There’s more to their struggle than fluttering capes and face-contouring masks. Comic book heroes reflect the morals of our society; the antihero has become a symbol of our muddled ethics and the contradictions we embrace under the guise of justice.‘The Batman’ as Dead EndHow did we get here? We need to talk about that billionaire with the bat fetish — Batman, the quintessential antihero.It’s 1940, just months after his comic book debut, and two goons are escaping in a truck. Into his Batplane our hero goes: “But out of the sky, spitting death the Batman!” one panel reads. In the next he grimaces from the cockpit as he looks through the sight of the plane’s machine gun. “Much as I hate to take human life, I’m afraid this time it’s necessary!” he insists while the bullets fly. He’s only a threat to Gotham’s criminals. He’ll bend the rules but won’t break them.The campy 1960s TV series rendered him into a milk-drinking do-gooder, in keeping with attitudes about violence and ethics in children’s television of the time. When the film franchise began, the directors Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher introduced the dark and garish Gotham. Still, their portrayals were threaded with loony humor and irony.In Christopher Nolan’s movie trilogy, based on the comic book writer Frank Miller’s gritty Dark Knight reboot, Gotham gradually crumbles, the rubble and squalor are palpable, the impact of a crime-ridden city meaningful.Robert Pattinson as the title hero in the preposterously dour Matt Reeves film reboot of “The Batman.” Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.In three hours of listless dolor, Matt Reeves’s oppressively dour “The Batman,” which came out this spring, turned its hero into a comically emo Bat-adolescent. Though Bruce Wayne was traumatized by witnessed his parents’ murder, the film focuses so heavily on his forlorn expressions and tantrums that his pain seemed merely ornamental.It’s why the barbs delivered by a parody like “The Lego Batman Movie” hit their self-serious target. “I don’t talk about feelings, Alfred,” the Lego-block Batman declares while caught mournfully looking at his family photos. “I don’t have any, I’ve never seen one. I’m a night-stalking, crime-fighting vigilante, and a heavy-metal rapping machine.”The Jekyll-and-Hyde SolutionIn the 2018 movie “Venom,” Eddie Brock is a dogged investigative reporter who loses his job (and his relationship) for refusing to compromise his ideals while reporting on the shifty doings at a major corporation. Then he’s infected with Venom, a sentient alien being that controls his body and gives him superhuman abilities. Venom wants to kill and eat people; Eddie wants to help them.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and TV series continues to expand.‘Thor: Love and Thunder’: The fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years, directed by Taika Waititi, embraces wholesale self-parody and is sillier than any of its predecessors.‘Ms. Marvel’: This Disney+ series introduces a new character: Kamala Khan, a Muslim high schooler in Jersey City who is mysteriously granted superpowers.‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’: With a touch of horror, the franchise’s newest film returns to the world of the mystic arts.‘Moon Knight’: In the Disney+ mini-series, Oscar Isaac plays a caped crusader who struggles with dissociative identity disorder.“Venom” is one of several recent films and TV series that make the antihero into a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure, caught between his worst inclinations and best intentions.The Hyde side of the Jekyll-and-Hyde-like antihero Venom.Sony Pictures, via Associated PressIn this year’s “Morbius,” the title character is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist on a search for a cure for his chronic illness. He combines his DNA with a bat’s and becomes newly healthy, but a feral human vampire. He regrets his research, deciding he’s made himself into a monster. Yet when his best friend steals some of the serum for himself, he transforms into an even more vicious beast whom Morbius must stop.That’s another trick to keep the antihero in play: Throw in someone who’s worse than our protagonist. Morality is relative, so at least for a moment, while there are worse villains in the world, we can have something that resembles a hero.Laughing MattersAnother way the culture industry has kept antiheroes popular is by lacing their stories with a dose of often self-deprecating humor. Deadpool, Harley Quinn and the Peacemaker — in the movies and TV series built around them — break the rules and kill rampantly, yet still save innocents.All the while they get distracted by zany side-quests, pal around with odd sidekicks and preen narcissistically. We laugh because they remain fully aware of the pitfalls of hero worship and the ridiculous notion of a bad hero; they either embrace the gray area between good and evil or all but erase it completely, acknowledging that the world is rarely that simple.Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, whose violent ways are laughed off in the movie of that name.Joe Lederer/20th Century Fox, via Associated PressEven his allies find holes in the moral code put forth by the Peacemaker, played by John Cena. “I think liberty is just your excuse to do whatever you want,” one tells him.HBO MaxThe Peacemaker, a character who appeared in James Gunn’s 2021 film “The Suicide Squad” and this year got his own spinoff series on HBO Max, starring John Cena, is a dimwitted, misogynistic Captain America-esque hero who fights for justice — even if that means killing women and children.In “The Suicide Squad,” his teammate Bloodsport calls out the inconsistencies in the Peacemaker’s moral code: “I think liberty is just your excuse to do whatever you want.” And in the series, other characters point out his glaring biases, like the fact that most of the “bad guys” he confronts are people of color.It’s worth stopping to point out that some of the disparity in how antiheroes have evolved can be attributed to the different philosophies of competing franchises.In the family-friendly Marvel Cinematic Universe (owned by Disney) the antihero can be rehabilitated. Black Widow, Hawkeye, the Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, even “The Avengers” antagonist Loki all get redemption arcs, despite the wrongs they’ve committed in the past.The challenge — and it’s a big one, as the franchises morph and blend and reboot, to keep going and going and going — is maintaining any sense of coherence or moral logic.In 2016’s “Batman v Superman,” DC’s miserable Batman fights a miserable Superman over who has the authority to be the hero. In “Captain America: Civil War” from that same year, Marvel’s Captain America and his allies fight Iron Man and his friends over whether or not their actions should be regulated by the government. These battles are equally inane.If one hero is a vigilante on the run for protecting his assassin best friend, and one hero is pro-government but made his money selling guns for warfare, who has the moral high ground? Is there really any difference between a hero and an antihero if everyone is making rules up as they go?Women WarriorsAs I’ve been talking about antiheroes, I’ve been using the pronoun “he.” That’s intentional, because the antihero is so often an avatar of traditional markers of masculinity. He broods over his past. He muscles his way through his obstacles, almost always with a six-pack and bulging biceps. He’s a rapscallion who can fight the law because coded within the archetype is a male privilege that depicts him as an unstoppable force; he is his own judicial system.The female antihero (as scarce as they still are) resists being a cookie-cutter figure. She is less emotionally opaque than her male counterparts, but she can be devious. She is willing to break the rules because she realizes the rules weren’t created for women like her anyway.Krysten Ritter, the title character in “Jessica Jones,” being terrorized by David Tennant as Killgrave.David Giesbrecht/NetflixTake Harley Quinn. She arrived on the scene as the girlfriend of the Joker in an animated “Batman” series. But thanks to Margot Robbie’s dotty performance in “Suicide Squad,” her popularity led to her own film, “Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).” As its lengthy subtitle suggests, the movie frees the character from being a sidekick.The brutally hilarious “Harley Quinn” animated series from 2019 does the same work; it begins with another female villain, Poison Ivy, helping Harley Quinn to realize that her self-worth lies outside of her toxic relationship with the Joker. She can make for herself a life of both high jinks and crime.Jessica Jones, the title character of the Marvel series of the same name, offers a useful contrast to what Batman has become. She, too, witnesses the death of her parents. In her case, it’s caused by an accident that leaves her with superhuman abilities.She is an alcoholic and a loner with trust issues, who for years was assaulted and manipulated by the mind-control villain Killgrave. Her suffering is gender-specific, and when she uses her powers in ways that are less than heroic, she feels utterly human.When Fans Call the ShotsIn a widely seen photo of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, a Proud Boy jumps the railing in the Senate chamber; on his vest, printed over an image of the American flag, is a white skull.This is the logo of the popular comic book character known as The Punisher.The Punisher has been featured in three live-action movies and, most recently, a Marvel TV series starring Jon Bernthal. He’s a Marine-turned-vigilante who begins a vicious war on crime after his family is killed by the mob. Murder, torture, extortion — the Punisher’s methods make Batman’s worst throttlings look like playful slaps on the wrist.Jon Bernthal, who stars in “The Punisher” on Netflix, has publicly taken issue with the alt-right fans who’ve embraced the character as a hero.Jessica Miglio/NetflixHe is also the character who makes most clear that if not handled with care, the ambiguity and sympathetic back story granted a violent antihero can offer real-world cover for despicable actions.For years police and military officers have embraced the character as a can-do man of action. But more recently he’s been adopted by the alt-right Proud Boys, the skull image showing up at the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville as well. Both Bernthal and the character’s creator, Gerry Conway, have publicly chastised the alt-right fans who’ve heralded the Punisher as a hero and adopted him as a model of justice.In fact, this year Marvel Comics has officially moved the Punisher to the dark side; he’s now an enforcer in The Hand, an underground syndicate of supervillains.“The Boys” is especially shrewd on this dilemma, explicitly satirizing toxic fandoms. As the so-called heroes got even more brazen this season, lying and committing crimes in public, their fans grew more enamored with them. What used to look like an engaged fan community was perverted into an incipient fascist movement.Where ‘The Boys’ May Take UsIn the original “Boys” comics on which the TV series is based, everyone is equally corrupt and equally punished. It’s a thoroughly nihilistic vision.The TV version, now that we’re three seasons in, is more optimistic, contending that people are as good as they challenge themselves to be, redeemable when reckoning with their wrongs.In the beginning of this season, Hughie seems to have found a middle place in the war between Butcher’s crew and the superheroes: He leads a government agency set up to regulate the behavior of heroes who’ve stepped out of line.Butcher scoffs at Hughie’s career move, and turns out to be right. Hughie soon discovers the job isn’t what he thought it would be, and the challenges are more than bureaucratic: There’s corruption on this path as well. So Hughie decides Butcher’s brutal approach has been right all along: stopping the superheroes by any means necessary.Butcher, meanwhile, bends his absolutism, occasionally granting supes mercy and even looking after Ryan, the superpowered child who accidentally killed his wife.The categories of hero and villain — and, yes, antihero — don’t do the job in “The Boys,” which is why the series is so arresting. We’re left with complex individuals breaking from the simple archetypes these scripts so often place them in.Such labels are certainly letting us down, and not merely in the world of the comics. Tales of heroes and villains feel, right now, like the stuff of fables. Mass shootings, climate change, human rights, women’s rights — each has been twisted into a narrative of right and wrong that suits the needs of the storyteller, whether that’s the politician, the judge, the voter, the media.About halfway through “The Boys,” one do-gooder supe tries to convince a corrupt corporate henchwoman to do the right thing, but she replies, uneasily, that she doesn’t have superpowers.How can she help save the day? The hero replies, “You don’t need powers. You just need to be human.”Forget the capes, the masks and the powers. We need humans — being good, being bad. As for heroes? They’re the ones who make mistakes and atone for them, who try — and fail, but still try — to stay honest in a broken world. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘A Dark, Dark Man’ Review: Murder and Corruption in Kazakhstan

      by

      This exceptionally grim police procedural recalls films like Bong Joon Ho’s “Memories of Murder” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.”“A Dark, Dark Man” is set in a stretch of Kazakhstan where few people seem to live, yet corruption pervades every corner.When this police procedural, directed by Adilkhan Yerzhanov (“Yellow Cat”), premiered in 2019, it was a regular feature film. Its distributor has carved it into three episodes for streaming purposes. That’s unfortunate, because its pacing and visual style — much of the action unfolds in long shot — are clearly designed for big-screen immersion.Its methods and themes also recall such acclaimed art-house titles as Bruno Dumont’s “Humanité,” Bong Joon Ho’s “Memories of Murder” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” even if it stands in those pictures’ shadows.For its first third, “A Dark, Dark Man” issues grim revelations with breathtaking rapidity. Poukuar (Teoman Khos), a gullible local, is coerced by a mysterious man into providing evidence that will be used to frame him for the rape and murder of an orphan boy. (We later learn that the boy is the fourth such victim.) Bekzat (Daniyar Alshinov), the detective antihero, arrives at the scene to investigate what now looks like an open-and-shut case.In this district, suspects have a tendency to be found dead before trials. Bekzat can’t stage Poukuar’s suicide so easily, though, after a journalist, Ariana (Dinara Baktybayeva), turns up to accompany Bekzat on the investigation. She might even push him to pursue the lurking serial killer in earnest.The mystery aspect is handled obliquely. The film is more of a mood piece, and much of its pitch-black humor derives from the contrast between the barren landscape and the sheer number of horrors it contains. (When Bekzat and Ariana arrive in a village, an old woman greets him: “You killed my son. Two years ago. During questioning.”) Only the closing moments seem less nervy.A Dark, Dark ManNot rated. In Kazakh and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Watch on MHz Choice. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Grown-ish’ and ‘The Old Man’

      by

      One show, on Freeform, begins its fifth season while the other, on FX, wraps up its first.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.Monday2022 MLB HOME RUN DERBY 8 p.m. on ESPN. As part of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Week, which includes its All-Star Game and the M.L.B. draft, it will be hosting its annual Home Run Derby. For the past two years Pete Alonso has been the winner of this event and the $1 million cash prize that goes along with it. With Alonso competing again this year, he is the one to beat.SID AND NANCY (1986) 10 p.m. on TCM. This movie, which centers on the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, tells a fictionalized tale of the breakdown of the relationship between Sid (Gary Oldman) and Nancy (Chloe Webb). Though the film is somewhat of a love story, the couple’s actual relationship ended in 1978 when Spungen died at age 20 and Vicious died months later of an overdose while awaiting trial for her murder. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote in her 1986 review of the film that “what it does best is to generate odd, unexpected images that epitomize the characters’ affectlessness and rage.”TuesdayFrom left: Nick Jonas, Shakira and Liza Koshy in “Dancing With Myself.”Fernando Decillis/NBCDANCING WITH MYSELF 10 p.m. on NBC. This show featuring viral dancing challenges, a live studio audience and the celebrity judges Nick Jonas, Shakira and Liza Koshy is wrapping up its first season this week. Each episode features 12 contestants who learn short dances, often similar to TikTok dances, and then the live audience members vote for their favorites. “This is a show that is for everyone,” Shakira told The Times for an article in June. “It’s about celebrating the love of dance and personal stories among all people, not just professionals.”Wednesday2022 ESPY AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. The ESPY awards are going to be held on Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Steph Curry is stepping into the host role and he is up for three awards. (He has previously won two: Best Male Athlete in 2015 and Best N.B.A. Player in 2021.) The ESPYs announced the nominees in late June and the public voting period ended on Sunday. Other nominees include Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Katie Ledecky.GROWN-ISH 10 p.m. on Freeform. “Grown-ish” is coming back for a fifth season this week, with familiar faces, new faces and minus some characters. Season 4 of the show ended with a high school graduation which was a farewell to six characters: Ana, Nomi, Jazz, Luca, Sky and Vivek. Yara Shahidi (Zoey), Trevor Jackson (Aaron) and Diggy Simmons (Doug) are all returning to the show as their characters move from high school to college. Six new cast members — Matthew Sato, Tara Raani, Justine Skye, Amelie Zilber, Ceyair Wright and Slick Woods — are joining the show. This season will have an eight-episode run.ThursdayPrince during his Purple Rain Tour.Nancy Bundt/PBSPRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION: THE PURPLE RAIN TOUR 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). On March 30, 1985, at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., Prince took the stage. Though it was previously available in 2017, the video recording of the concert has been remastered. The PBS broadcast of the show features performances of “Delirious,” “1999,” “Little Red Corvette,” and an 18-minute version of “Purple Rain.”THE OLD MAN 10 p.m. on FX. “The Old Man,” based on the novel by Thomas Perry of the same name, is wrapping up its first season this week. The show, which stars Jeff Bridges (Dan Chase), John Lithgow (Harold Harper) and Amy Brenneman (Zoe), follows a man who left the C.I.A. and has since been living off the grid. “The seriousness of the show’s approach to Chase, and Bridges’s excellence in the role, are what set ‘The Old Man’ apart,” Mike Hale wrote in his review for the Times, “but it’s also (through Week 4) a well-above-average if unusually pensive and introspective spy thriller.” The completion of this season has been a long time coming — the show first paused production at the start of the pandemic and then again when Bridges began chemotherapy for lymphoma and contracted the coronavirus while undergoing treatment.FridayKILLER’S KISS (1955) 8 p.m. on TCM. After his feature film debut “Fear and Desire” in 1953, Stanley Kubrick followed it up with this film noir. After a budding romance begins to form between Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) and Gloria Price (Irene Kane), Gordon must search the city for Price after her evil boss kidnaps her. “Using Times Square and even the subway as his backdrop, Mr. Kubrick worked in an uncharacteristically naturalistic style despite the genre material, with mixed but still fascinating results,” the New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote in her 1994 review of the film.SaturdaySUPERSTAR RACING EXPERIENCE 8 p.m. on CBS. This show, which aired its first season last summer, is finishing up a second season this Saturday. Every Saturday since mid-June, CBS has aired one race of the six-race, short-track racing series. The season began this year at the Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., and finishes up Saturday at the Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio. For the season finale, Dave Blaney, alongside his son Ryan Blaney, will represent Sharon Speedway.SundayJACKASS SHARK WEEK 2.0 9 p.m. on Discovery. Shark Week is back this Sunday and it will kick off with a collaboration with the cast of “Jackass,” for a second year in a row. Last year, the cast members performed stunts with the sharks that led to the guest star Sean McInerney, a.k.a. Poopies, getting bitten by a shark and rushed to the hospital. This year, McInerney is heading back into the shark-infested waters, alongside Chris Pontius, Wee Man, Jasper Dolphin, Dark Shark and Zach Holmes to overcome his fear of sharks. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Netflix, Still Reeling, Bets Big on ‘The Gray Man’

      by

      Anthony and Joe Russo like to go big.In 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” the directing brothers shocked fans when they erased half the global population and allowed their Marvel superheroes to fail. The next year, they raised the stakes with the three-hour “Avengers: Endgame,” a film that made $2.79 billion at the global box office, the second-highest figure ever to that point.And now there is “The Gray Man,” a Netflix film that they wrote, directed and produced. The streaming service gave them close to $200 million to trot around the world and have Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans portray shadow employees of the C.I.A. who are trying to kill each other.“It almost killed us,” Joe Russo said of filming.One action sequence took a month to produce. It involved large guns, a tram car barreling through Prague’s Old Town quarter and Mr. Gosling fighting off an army of assassins while handcuffed to a stone bench. It’s one of those showstoppers that get audiences cheering. The moment cost roughly $40 million to make.“It’s a movie within a movie,” Anthony Russo said.“The Gray Man,” which opened in select theaters this weekend and will be available on Netflix on Friday, is the streaming service’s most expensive film and perhaps its biggest gamble as it tries to create a spy franchise in the mold of James Bond or “Mission Impossible.” Should it work, the Russos have plans for expanding the “Gray Man” universe with additional films and television series, as Disney has done with its Marvel and Star Wars franchises.Ryan Gosling stars in “The Gray Man,” which Netflix will start streaming on Friday.NetflixBut those franchises, while turbocharged by streaming and integral to the ambitions of Disney+, are first and foremost theatrical enterprises. “The Gray Man” is coming out in 450 theaters. That’s a far cry from the 2,000 or so that a typical big-budget release would appear in on its opening weekend. And the film’s nearly simultaneous availability on Netflix ensures that most viewers will watch it on the service. Films that Netflix releases in theaters typically leave them much faster than movies from traditional studios.“If you’re trying to build a franchise, why would you start it on a streaming service?” asked Anthony Palomba, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business who studies media and entertainment trends, specifically how consumers’ habits change.The film comes at a critical time for Netflix, which will announce its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Many in the industry expect the results to be even grimmer than the loss of two million subscribers that the company forecast in April. The company’s first-quarter earnings led to a precipitous drop in its stock price, and it has since laid off hundreds of employees, announced that it will create a less expensive subscription tier featuring commercials and said it plans to crack down on password sharing between friends and family.Despite the current rough patch, Netflix’s deep pockets and hands-off approach to creative decisions made it the only studio that was able to match the Russos’ ambitions and their quest for autonomy.“It would have been a dramatically different film,” Joe Russo said, referring to the possibility of making “The Gray Man” at another studio, like Sony, where it was originally set to be produced. The brothers said going elsewhere would have required them to shave off a third of their budget and downgrade the action of the film.One person with knowledge of the Sony deal said the studio had been willing to pay $70 million to make the movie. Instead, the Russos sold it to Netflix in an agreement that allowed Sony to recoup its development costs and receive a fee for its time producing it. Sony declined to comment.The movie includes nine significant action sequences, including a midair fight involving emergency flares, fire extinguishers and Mr. Gosling’s grappling with a parachuted enemy as both tumble out of a bombed-out plane, Anthony Russo said.“Ambition is expensive,” Joe Russo said. “And it’s risky.”Netflix, even in this humbling moment, can pay more upfront when it isn’t saddled with the costs that accompany much bigger theatrical releases. And for Scott Stuber, Netflix’s head of global film, who greenlighted the “Bourne Identity” franchise when he was at Universal Pictures, movies like “The Gray Man” are what he has been striving to make since he joined the company five years ago.“We haven’t really been in this genre yet,” Mr. Stuber said in an interview. “If you’re going to do it, you want to deal with filmmakers who over the last decade have created some of the biggest franchises and the biggest action movies in our business.”“We’re not crazily reducing our spend, but we’re reducing volume,” Scott Stuber, the head of global film for Netflix, said.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe Russos are also producing the sequel to “Extraction” with Chris Hemsworth for Netflix and just announced that Netflix would finance and release their next directing venture, a $200 million sci-fi action film, “The Electric State,” with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.Mr. Stuber pointed to the “Extraction” sequel and a spy film starring Gal Gadot, “Heart of Stone,” both set for release next year, as proof that the company is still taking big swings despite its struggles. He did acknowledge, however, that the recent business realities have forced the company to think harder about the projects it selects.“We’re not crazily reducing our spend, but we’re reducing volume,” he said. “We’re trying to be more thoughtful.”He added: “We were a business that was, for a long time, a volume business. And now we’re being very specific about targeting.”Niija Kuykendall was hired from Warner Bros. late last year to oversee a new division that will focus on making midbudget movies, in the range of $40 million to $50 million, which the traditional studios have all but abandoned because their box office potential is less certain. And Mr. Stuber pointed to two upcoming films — “Pain Hustlers,” a $50 million thriller starring Emily Blunt, and an untitled romantic comedy with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron — as examples of the company’s commitment to films of that size.In recent months, Netflix has also been criticized by some in the industry for how much — or how little — it spends to market individual films. Its marketing budget has essentially stayed the same for three years, despite a significant rise in competition from services like Disney+ and HBO Max. Creators often wonder whether they are going to get the full Netflix marketing muscle or simply a couple of billboards on Sunset Boulevard.For “The Gray Man,” Netflix has sent the Russos and their cast to Berlin, London and Mumbai, India. Other promotional efforts have included national television ads during National Basketball Association games and the Indianapolis 500 and 3-D billboards in disparate locations like Las Vegas and Krakow, Poland.“It’s very large scale,” Joe Russo said of Netflix’s promotion of “The Gray Man.” “We’re doing a world tour to promote it. The actors are going with us. It feels a lot like the work we did to promote the Marvel films.”Netflix released “The Gray Man,” which also stars Chris Evans, in theaters the week before it becomes available for streaming.NetflixFor the smaller-scale theatrical release, Netflix will put “The Gray Man” at some of the handful of theaters it owns — like the Paris Theater in New York and the Bay Theater in Los Angeles — and with chains like Cinemark and Marcus Theaters. And even though Joe Russo calls “The Gray Man” “a forget-to-eat-your-popcorn kind of film,” Netflix will not disclose its box office numbers.The theatrical side of the movie business is a conundrum for Netflix. The studio’s appetite for risk is often greater than that of traditional studios because it doesn’t spend as much money putting films in theaters and doesn’t have to worry about box office numbers. On the flip side, the lack of large-scale theatrical releases has long been a sticking point with filmmakers looking to display their creativity on as big a screen as possible and hoping to build buzz with audiences.And the strength of the box office in recent months for films as different as “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (which the Russos produced) has prompted many to rethink the influence of movie theaters, which the pandemic severely hobbled.Mr. Stuber acknowledged that a greater theatrical presence was a goal, but one that requires a consistent supply of movies that can connect with a global audience.“That’s what we’re trying to get to: Do we have enough of those films across the board consistently where we can be in that market?” he said.It would also require Netflix to reckon with how long to let its movies play exclusively in theaters before appearing on its service. While the theatrical window for the “The Gray Man” is very short, the Russos hope the film will show that Netflix can be a home for the type of big-budget crowd pleasers the brothers are known for.“Knowing that you have, ultimately, a distribution platform which can pull in 100 million viewers like it did on ‘Extraction,’ but also the potential for a large theatrical window with a commensurate promotional campaign behind it,” Joe Russo said, “you have a very powerful studio.” More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      L.Q. Jones, Who Played Heavies With a Light Touch, Dies at 94

      by

      His face was familiar, mostly in westerns, during a career that spanned five decades. He also directed the cult film “A Boy and His Dog.”L.Q. Jones, a hirsute, craggy-faced, swaggering Texan who guilelessly played the antihero in some 60 films and dozens of television series, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. He was 94.His death was confirmed by his grandson Erté deGarces.A former stand-up comic, Mr. Jones also tried his hand as a bean, corn and dairy rancher in Nicaragua and once described himself as “but several hours away from three degrees — one in law, one in business, one in journalism” at the University of Texas.But he was lured to the Warner Bros. studios when a college roommate, Fess Parker, the actor who later played both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, persuaded him to audition for a minor role in the 1955 film “Battle Cry,” directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from Leon Uris’s novel.Mr. Parker sent him a copy of the book and a map with directions to the Warner lot. Mr. Jones was cast in two days.Billed as Justus E. McQueen (his birth name), he made his first appearance onscreen as the movie’s narrator introduced a group of all-American Army recruits being shipped by train to boot camp. The camera then panned to a character named L.Q. Jones.“Then, abruptly, the narrator’s voice drops to the scornful tone of a 10th-grade math teacher doling out detention,” Justin Humphreys wrote in “Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget” (2006).“‘There’s one in every group,’ he tells us, as we see L.Q. mischievously giving one of the other soldiers-to-be a hotfoot,” Mr. Humphrey added. “There could have been no more perfect beginning to L.Q. Jones’s career in the movies. The word that best sums up his overriding screen persona is hellion.”The actor pirated the character’s name for his own subsequent screen credits. From then on, Justus McQueen was L.Q. Jones.Mr. Jones joined the director Sam Peckinpah’s stable of actors, appearing in “Ride the High Country” (1962), “Major Dundee” (1965) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969), in which he and his fellow character actor Strother Martin play rival bounty hunters and, as the studio described their manic competition for the highest body count, “bring their depraved characters to life with a childish energy.”Mr. Jones was also frequently seen in the stampede of westerns that arrived on TV in the 1950s and ’60s, including “Cheyenne,” “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train” and “Rawhide.” His films included the 1968 westerns “Hang ’em High,” in which he slipped a noose around Clint Eastwood’s neck, and “Stay Away, Joe,” with Elvis Presley. Among his other screen credits were Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” (1995) and Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), his last film.Don Johnson and friend in “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), which Mr. Jones directed. “I hope he goes on directing,” one reviewer wrote. But he didn’t.LQ/JAFMr. Jones directed, produced and helped write “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), a dark post-apocalyptic comedy starring Don Johnson and Jason Robards, based on the book of the same name by Harlan Ellison.“‘A Boy and His Dog,’ a fantasy about the world after a future holocaust, is, more or less, a beginner’s movie. It has some good ideas and some terrible ones,” Richard Eder wrote in his New York Times review.“This is the second film directed by L.Q. Jones, better known as an actor,” Mr. Eder continued. “It is not really a success, but I hope he goes on directing.”He didn’t. “A Boy and His Dog” acquired a cult following, but Mr. Jones returned to what he did best. He preferred the independence of choosing the villainous roles that appealed to him, and that measured his success, to the prospect of directing someone else’s script and wrangling larger-than-life egos.“Different parts call for different heavies,” Mr. Jones told William R. Horner for his book “Bad at the Bijou” (1982).“I have a certain presence,” he explained. “I play against that presence a lot of times, and that’s of a heavy that is not crazy or deranged — although we play those, of course — but rather someone who is a heavy because he enjoys being a heavy.”“It’s really hard to say what they’re looking for when they pick me,” Mr. Jones said. “A lot of times your heavy is not that well presented in the script. Most times he’s too one-sided. So we look for things to bring to being a heavy: a certain softness; a vulnerability that makes him human; a quiet moment when he’s a screamer most of the time; a look; the way he dresses; the way he walks into a room.”Mr. Jones was born Justus Ellis McQueen Jr. on Aug. 19, 1927, in Beaumont, Texas. His father was a railroad worker; his mother, Jessie Paralee (Stephens) McQueen, died in a car accident when he was a child. He learned to ride a horse when he was 8.After graduating from high school, he served in the Navy, attended Lamar Junior College and Lon Morris College in Texas, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin. His marriage to Sue Lewis ended in divorce. In addition to his grandson, his survivors include his sons, Randy McQueen and Steve Marshall, and his daughter, Mindy McQueen.Mr. Jones seemed to measure success less by his bank account (he once described himself as “independently poor”) than by professional gratification. But he had a sense of humor about it.“I’m around somewhere, probably just counting my money,” the message on his telephone answering machine said. “When I get through, if I’m not too tired, I’ll return your call.” More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ | Anatomy of a Scene

      by

      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Watch Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman Reunite in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’

      by

      The director Taika Waititi narrates a battle sequence that has the two connecting onscreen again.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A battleground becomes the site of a bittersweet reunion in this scene from “Thor: Love and Thunder.”Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is facing an attack on New Asgard by Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). He has help from Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), but also from powerful projectiles scattering through the air and taking out Gorr’s creatures. Those projectiles turn out to be pieces of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, which he last saw when it was destroyed by Hela (Cate Blanchett) in “Thor: Ragnarok.” The pieces reassemble into a whole, but now Mjolnir is being wielded by a new figure whose costume looks a lot like Thor’s.It turns out to be the Mighty Thor, or Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and the scene becomes a passionate reunion on multiple fronts.The director Taika Waititi discussed how he sought to play up both the action and the comedy of the moment, while highlighting Thor’s self-doubts.At the beginning of the film, Thor is “going through a lot of insecurity, trying to find himself,” Waititi said.So when the Mighty Thor appears, Waititi said, the moment is challenging for Thor because “he doesn’t know who he is and he’s seeing someone else dressed just like him.”The scene is also a reunion for the stars Hemsworth and Portman, who haven’t been in the franchise together since “Thor: The Dark World” (2013).The final shot of the sequence shows that they get along, quite literally, like a house on fire.Read the “Thor: Love and Thunder” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Daisy Edgar-Jones Would Like the Ingénue Phase of Her Career to End Now

      by

      Daisy Edgar-Jones bravely walked onstage, her face a ghastly white. Under her arm, a human head.“How could you do this to me!” she bellowed at Henry VIII.As the ghost of Anne Boleyn, Edgar-Jones, the hitherto quiet child, now slathered in face paint and clutching a homemade severed body part, found herself suddenly enamored with the spotlight.“That was the first time I remember being aware of the joy of departing from yourself,” Edgar-Jones said.She recounted this pivotal school-play memory on a breezy June afternoon, perched on a cream-colored couch in a cream-colored luxury hotel suite in West Hollywood. The cream-colored dress she’d been wearing for a series of engagements earlier that day had begun to unravel, prompting a change into an oversize black blazer, T-shirt, shorts and chunky G.H. Bass loafers, all of which now stood in cool contrast to the generic palette around her.At 24, the British actress is proving a reliable standout. In a string of major roles over the past two years, she’s morphed from brooding lover (“Normal People”) to cannibal-horror heroine (“Fresh”) to defiant Mormon (“Under the Banner of Heaven”). Her latest venture, the lead in the movie adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” arrives in theaters on July 15.In the romantic drama based on the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, Edgar-Jones play Kya, an abandoned girl who raised herself in the marshes of North Carolina and eventually lands in court, accused of murder.Clockwise from top left: “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “Normal People,” “Under the Banner of Heaven” and “Fresh.”Clockwise from top left: Michele K. Short/Sony Pictures, via Associated Press; Enda Bowe/Hulu; Michelle Faye/FX; Searchlight PicturesDuring her audition for the part via video, in 2020, Edgar-Jones brought the director Olivia Newman to tears and hooked one of the producers, Reese Witherspoon.“From her first screen test, she felt every moment of abandonment and loneliness that was written on the page,” Witherspoon wrote in an email. “Her work is so honest, it breaks my heart every time I watch it.”The film, shot in Louisiana, required Edgar-Jones to take boating and drawing lessons, and work with a dialect coach to hone a Carolina drawl. Her own accent is a soft-spoken mash-up of vernaculars, thanks to her Northern Irish mother and Scottish father.She was raised in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, the only child of Wendy, a film and TV editor, and Philip, the head of entertainment at Sky, the British TV broadcaster. A few years after her Boleyn awakening, Edgar-Jones auditioned at age 15 for the National Youth Theater with a monologue from “Romeo and Juliet” — a loving tribute to Claire Danes’s performance in the Baz Luhrmann iteration.A perk of the prestigious program, which counts Helen Mirren and Daniel Day-Lewis among its alumni, was the members-only open casting calls, including one for Sofia Coppola’s planned adaptation of “The Little Mermaid.” While the project fizzled before Edgar-Jones got very far, the casting director introduced her to the talent agent Christopher Farrar, thus giving her representation and the confidence to continue. She considered college but ultimately turned down several universities, instead taking odd jobs as a barista and a waiter while she soldiered on with auditions.“I give Daisy a hell of a lot more credit than I’d give myself at 24,” said her “Fresh” co-star Sebastian Stan. “There’s an awareness to her that I think, at that age, is hard to find.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“I had some income and some semblance of hope,” she said. “It was, at first, a gap year, and then it became a gap life.”After a string of smaller roles in British productions, her big break came playing Marianne opposite Paul Mescal’s Connell in “Normal People.” When the series premiered in April 2020, it was the early days of the pandemic, and the Sally Rooney adaptation provided an intimate escape for viewers muddling their way through a shutdown world. Mescal’s chain necklace and Edgar-Jones’s bangs — an impulsive salon decision after a string of failed auditions — became overnight sensations.“I watched Daisy in ‘Normal People’ and was blown away by the subtlety of her performance and the impact of her choices,” Witherspoon wrote, praising “the most utterly honest performance that made me lean in and say, ‘Who is that?’”But as enthralled as viewers were with the actors playing the show’s laconic lovers, the fanfare was kept at a literal distance from Edgar-Jones, locked down in London.“I was being told that things were significant or changing, but I was just in my bedroom,” she said. “I was having this odd experience of being on Zoom the whole time having interviews, and then I’d go on my once-daily walk and someone would stare at me, but I didn’t know if it was just because they hadn’t seen another human being or if they had seen me in a show. It was really strange.”She garnered Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations while spending the next year and a half isolated on sets in Calgary, Vancouver and New Orleans. Then, this past spring, she went through what she terms a “baptism of fire,” bouncing from her first red-carpet premiere (for “Fresh”) to her first Vanity Fair Oscar party and her first Met Gala in quick succession.“You know how a swan, when they’re on the river, they’re floating along really gracefully but underneath their legs are ——” she mimicked paddling furiously. Her crescendo on the Met steps wearing Oscar de la Renta “was like that,” she said. “Perhaps I looked calm, but I was terrified.”Her de facto societal debut coincided with the release of “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a true-crime drama series in which she played Brenda Lafferty, a Mormon woman who, along with her 15-month-old baby, was brutally murdered by religious extremists in 1984.In flashbacks, we see Brenda perform “The Rose,” pursue a broadcast journalism career and embolden other Mormon wives. But despite the heinous crimes at the show’s center, we never see Brenda’s actual killing or her lifeless visage onscreen. Compare that with, say, “The Staircase,” which took every opportunity to show Toni Collette meeting a graphic end.“That was something I felt was really important,” Edgar-Jones said of the omission. “Why would you want to capture the worst thing that could happen to somebody? Instead, you let their life be what’s defining.”Edgar-Jones is aiming for the career of a Jamie Lee Curtis, a Tilda Swinton or a Frances McDormand, women with an “unconventional idea of what a lead female should be.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesShe took the responsibility of playing a real person “incredibly seriously,” her co-star Andrew Garfield said, noting a certain “brilliance and joy” that he sees emanating from Edgar-Jones, onscreen and off.“There’s something unnameable that certain people have,” he said. “And, yeah, it’s talent. But it’s also a charisma and the kind of instant identification that you feel as an audience member where you go, Oh, I know this person, and I love this person. Even without them saying anything, you can feel their soul moving in a certain way and you want to follow whatever journey they’re on.”The two actors became fast friends while shooting in Canada. Off the clock, Edgar-Jones took a particular liking to electric bike and scooter rentals. “She would ride those scooters into the bitter winter months in Calgary until her hair started to freeze,” Garfield said. “She’s all about fun.”That includes routinely importing her own DJ equipment to spin house and disco tracks for her co-stars after work. Edgar-Jones is blissfully passionate about music in general: She often makes playlists for her characters (Kya’s involved a lot of Bat for Lashes and Blood Orange’s “Coastal Grooves” album) and plays guitar. She’s also developed a bond with the singer Phoebe Bridgers, who is in a relationship with Mescal of “Normal People.” Despite having, as Bridgers put it, “every opportunity to have the world’s craziest ego,” Edgar-Jones exudes wide-eyed enthusiasm. She is exceedingly polite — and perhaps a gentle liar — cheerfully telling the waiter who brought her a Pepsi instead of her requested Coke during our talk, “That’s fine. They taste the same.” And although she describes herself as shy, those who know her say she can also be uproariously off-color.In the past, her fair skin and brunette bangs have led some to describe her as the love child of Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson. More recently, “Stranger Things” fans have delighted in her perceived resemblance to Eddie Munson, the beloved Season 4 character played by Joseph Quinn. “I do see it,” she said, adding that she and Quinn once met by chance at a “Soul Train”-themed club night in London. “I think I now know what I’m wearing for Halloween.”During off-hours on the “Heaven” shoot, Edgar-Jones rode electric scooters and bonded with her co-star Andrew Garfield, who said: “She would ride those scooters into the bitter winter months in Calgary until her hair started to freeze. She’s all about fun.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBut career-wise, she hopes to emulate Jamie Lee Curtis, Tilda Swinton or Frances McDormand: women who have forged careers in Hollywood built on longevity and who found some of their greatest successes once they’d shed any trace of the ingénue.“These women are able to really transform,” she said, “and also play characters that are funny and complicated and, at times, the unconventional idea of what a lead female should be.”Sebastian Stan, who co-starred with Edgar-Jones in the twisty comedy-thriller “Fresh,” sees echoes of another screen legend in her work.“I give Daisy a hell of a lot more credit than I’d give myself at 24. There’s an awareness to her that, I think at that age, is hard to find,” he said and compared her to a young Meryl Streep. “I’d like to think that as she gets older, her performances are only going to get more and more rich.”Edgar-Jones has a plan to make that happen. Her bucket list includes working with Wes Anderson, Barry Jenkins, the Coen brothers, the Daniels and Greta Gerwig. And she hopes to stretch herself into the unexpected, perhaps by playing “someone really evil,” doing more comedy or directing.“I really want to just learn and learn and learn and make mistakes and learn from them,” she said, “and be free to play and ride the journey wherever it goes.” More