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      in Music

      ‘Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U’ Review: Songs on Overdrive

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      The singer-songwriter is in a reflective state in the director Stacey Lee’s film, which documents a trip from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.Olivia Rodrigo, the pop sensation whose global megahit “Driver’s License” put her career in the fast lane in 2021, is, naturally, driving a car in the first film about her life.She makes the same trip — Salt Lake City to Los Angeles — in the director Stacey Lee’s film on Disney+ as she did to record her wildly popular debut album, “Sour.” It’s a trek that puts Rodrigo in a reflective state, and Lee’s mood-infused film is tailored to appeal to the vintage taste of a Gen Z crowd that loves the grainiest of photo filters. Her subject’s ruminations feel overstated when paired with a retro-chic visual palette, so there are looks of intense longing that would make “Folklore”-era Taylor Swift proud.But the more Lee shows Rodrigo gazing into the distance, whether alone in a hotel room or atop a hill, the more it feels like a director’s cue rather than an organic moment that the camera just happened to catch. In the scenes where Rodrigo is openly sharing parts of her life that led to creating “Sour,” authenticity seems to come more easily.As a performance piece, “Driving Home 2 U” is an exhilarating and intimate showcase for Rodrigo, as commentary about her album’s tracks spills seamlessly, in musical-theater fashion, into “Sour” tunes. Songs are newly arranged and presented in some breathtakingly scenic spots. It’s a film that at least succeeds in making you feel that it really is about the journey, not the destination.Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U (a Sour Film)Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 17 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Outside Noise’ Review: Walking and Talking in Vienna and Berlin

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      Three women laze around German-speaking cities in the languid third feature from the indie director Ted Fendt.“Outside Noise,” a sleepy excursion around Vienna and Berlin, is the third feature from the indie director Ted Fendt (“Classical Period”), and his first to take place mostly in Europe. Its focal characters are young women listlessly pursuing various, indeterminate creative callings. Fendt is more interested in tracing the architecture of their ennui than considering its cause or consequences, and the movie observes their leisure with a warm gaze.We spend most of our time with Daniela (Daniela Zahlner), a literary type partial to flowing linen clothing and messy buns. Natural light filters into her petite Vienna flat, where she suffers insomnia by night and aimlessness by day. The movie begins with Daniela as a New York City tourist. Upon her return to Europe, she stays with her friend Mia (Mia Sellmann) in Berlin, where Daniela reads perched on a windowsill, strolls the city and meets Mia’s graduate-school classmate, Natascha (Natascha Manthe), who asks Daniela, perhaps inappropriately, to lend her some money.This may sound like the beginnings of a plot, but “Outside Noise” hardly revisits the episode. While Fendt previously powered films with awkward humor, here the mood is ruminative. (Alongside Fendt, Zahlner, Sellmann and Manthe are credited as writers.) Fendt shoots on lovely 16-millimeter and 35-millimeter film, and the movie’s texture, along with the women’s musings, at times recall several female-led features from the late 1970s and early ’80s: “Girlfriends,” “Smithereens” and “Variety.” Although less vibrant than those predecessors, Fendt’s film is equally committed to capturing the aura of an independent city dweller finding her way.Outside NoiseNot rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 1 minute. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Superior’ Review: Double Fantasy

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      Two identical sisters reunite under mysterious circumstances in a compelling debut feature from Erin Vassilopoulos.Believe it or not, Alessandra Mesa and Ani Mesa may be one of the only identical-twin sister pairs to lead a theatrical feature since the Wilde twins, who romanced Andy Hardy in “Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble” in 1944. (Yes, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are — gasp — fraternal twins.) “Superior,” a compelling debut feature from Erin Vassilopoulos, casts the Mesas as Marian and Vivian, estranged siblings who reunite when Marian, a cagey chain-smoker, abruptly returns to their hometown claiming she’s just flown in from headlining a rock concert in Paris. “Kind of suspicious,” notes Vivian’s husband, Michael (Jake Hoffman), who grouses that Marian finished off his carton of milk.Outside of their matching faces, the sisters look like opposites. Hewing to the thriller’s manicured visual and sonic palette — it’s so tidy, the room tone sounds threatening — Marian slinks around in leather miniskirts while Vivian grocery shops in a beige trench coat. Yet the script, written by Vassilopoulos (the director) and Alessandra Mesa (the younger of the twin actresses by 14 minutes), reveals that the twins share one thing besides DNA: a terrible taste in men, whether a drag of a spouse who seeks a stay-at-home brood mare or a reptilian abuser (Pico Alexander) who prefers his women drugged and bound.The Mesas prove to be nimble, engaging performers. But for a long stretch, it’s unclear whether the menace of the movie that they are in is building toward anything. (There’s a limit to how often an audience is willing to fall for a hallucination.) When Vassilopoulos finally puts her characters in a squeeze, the tension remains oddly vaporous, as though she has tried to trap a thundercloud in a vice. The violence is presented with a deliberate languor that makes it feel insubstantial. Instead, it is the film’s shaggier pleasures that leave an impression, particularly its soundtrack of ’80s electro disco and a physically shaggy ice-cream parlor manager (played by Stanley Simons) who is too stoned to notice that his new employee is two different people.SuperiorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      ‘You Are Not My Mother’ Review: Parental Misguidance

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      A lonely teenager is traumatized by her mother’s volatile behavior in this impressive horror debut.A baby in a stroller sits alone on a deserted nighttime street. A young mother sprawls on a bed, limbs bound and head shrouded. A teenage girl cowers before classmates who are threatening to set her on fire.These are only a few of the chilling images in Kate Dolan’s arresting debut feature, “You Are Not My Mother,” a skin-crawling merger of Irish folklore and family secrets. At once deeply metaphorical and genuinely distressing, the film hovers anxiously around Char (Hazel Doupe), a withdrawn and bullied teenager who’s becoming increasingly alarmed by the erratic behavior of her mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken). When Angela disappears, only to reappear the following day without explanation, the mystery of her whereabouts is only deepened by the unfazed reaction of Char’s grandmother (Ingrid Craigie). In this household, the silences scream.Set just outside Dublin during the run-up to Halloween, “You Are Not My Mother” leaves much of its supernatural thrust to vagueness and allusion, focusing instead on Char’s responses to her mother’s terrifying transformation. Pale-faced and wide-eyed, Doupe is heartbreaking; but it’s Bracken who has the more challenging role, flitting from hostile to loving, severe to vulnerable, energized to near-catatonic. In one startling scene, performed to Joe Dolan’s toe-tapper “You’re Such a Good Looking Woman,” she slowly turns a simple dance into a petrifying act of predation.Imaginative and spooky, “You Are Not My Mother” shows just how frightening — and stigmatizing — a parent’s mental illness can be to a child. Trapped in her suffocating suburb, where steel-colored skies press down on crouching rooftops (the wonderfully moody cinematography is by Narayan Van Maele), Char is alone. If she should find a champion, it won’t be from inside her house.You Are Not My MotherNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Rachel Zegler, ‘West Side Story’ Star, Is Invited to the Oscars After All

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      On Sunday she revealed on Instagram that she had not been invited to the ceremony, prompting an outcry. She has since been added as a presenter.It looks as if Rachel Zegler, who plays Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” is going to the Oscars.She has been invited to be a presenter at the Oscars, and Disney is working to rearrange the production schedule on her current project, a live-action version of “Snow White,” to make it happen, according to two people briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid a conflict with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Oscars.How the arrangement came together provides a glimpse into how the Hollywood gears can sometimes grind.It started on Sunday, when Zegler, 20, posted a photo of herself in a blue gown on Instagram. A follower commented, “Can’t wait to see what you’ll be wearing on Oscar night.”Zegler replied that she had not received an invitation to the ceremony, during which “West Side Story” is up for seven awards. The ceremony will be broadcast this Sunday on ABC from Los Angeles. ABC is owned by Disney, which released the film last year.“I’m not invited,” she wrote, “so sweatpants and my boyfriend’s flannel.”She added that she would support the film from her couch. “I hope some last minute miracle occurs and I can celebrate our film in person,” she wrote, “but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes, I guess.”The challenge involves much more than invitations. Zegler is filming “Snow White” in London, and getting her to the Oscars and back will require Disney to rework schedules for hundreds of cast and crew members. The film, already on a tight schedule because of delays related to the coronavirus pandemic, is a $200 million production.A spokeswoman for the academy, which confirmed Zegler’s addition to the presenter lineup in a statement later on Wednesday, declined to comment. A representative for Zegler did not respond to a request for comment.Word that Zegler had not been invited to the ceremony drew a swift backlash from her followers and others on social media, including Russ Tamblyn, who played Riff, the leader of the Jets street gang, in the original “West Side Story” in 1961. They wondered why a lead actress in a film that had received a best picture nomination would not be invited to the ceremony.The film’s Oscar nominations include best picture, best director for Spielberg and best supporting actress for Ariana DeBose. Zegler, who is not nominated for an Oscar, won a Golden Globe for her role.Vimal Patel More

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      in Movies

      ‘Bronco Bullfrog’: Hello Young Lovers

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      Barney Platts-Mills’s 1969 feature about aimless East End teenagers in love comes to Film Forum after a cinematic rediscovery.An auspicious first feature, Barney Platts-Mills’s “Bronco Bullfrog” fell between the cracks — a belated example of British “kitchen sink” naturalism that arrived in 1969 before the wave of disaffected youth films by Mike Leigh and Alan Parker.Still, the writer-director Platts-Mills lived to see his movie restored and revived, if not to enjoy its American rediscovery, heralded by a weeklong run at Film Forum in New York.Platts-Mills intended “Bronco Bullfrog” as a British equivalent of Italian neo-realism: A cast of nonactors recruited from the streets of London’s depressed East End enact a story that might have been their own. Indeed, the movie grew out of a short documentary, “Everybody’s an Actor, Shakespeare Said,” that Platts-Mills made about an improvisatory workshop established by the radical theater artist Joan Littlewood in the neighborhood.The camera tilts down from smoky factories to a world of grimy alleys, dreary housing projects and aimless teenagers, who are introduced smashing into a cheap cafe to find nothing more than a few pence and some stale cakes — the first of many disappointments. A similarly barren establishment is where diffident Del (Del Walker), 17, an apprentice welder with a bad Beatles haircut, first courts discomfited Irene (Anne Gooding), a gawky 15-year-old schoolgirl in a micro mini.The couple’s awkwardness is compelling. According to Platts-Mills — who at 25 wasn’t much older than his actors — the movie was largely improvised because the cast hadn’t bothered to read the script. Del and Irene are frequently at a loss for words but, in the Littlewood tradition, Platts-Mills gives their relationship a Shakespearean framework. Irene’s mother loathes Del as instinctively as Del’s father hates Irene. What brings the couple closer is precisely their inability to find a place to be together.The fantasy of escape is underlined by the movie’s title. Bronco Bullfrog (Sam Shepherd) is the neighborhood hero — newly escaped from reform school to embark on a dead-end career of petty larceny. Del and Irene suggest lumpen mods; Bronco is a suedehead with wide suspenders and polished work boots. He has style but no sense, happily hiding out amid cartons of stolen consumer goods he is unable to fence.Movies are part of the daydream. In a rare liberating moment, Del pays for a movie ticket then opens a theater’s side door for a small crowd of crashers that includes a jolly grandmother. A corresponding scene has Del and Irene venture into London’s West End to discover they don’t have enough money to see “Oliver!,” a candy-color musical treatment of criminalized youth.Platts-Mills’s film is unpretentiously atmospheric: The thick Cockney accents require subtitles, and Audience, an East End prog band, supplies a credible score. Its understatement impressed the New York Times critic Roger Greenspun who, appreciative, wrote that, “It takes a while, with ‘Bronco Bullfrog’ to realize that you are witnessing a love story, so free is it from the rhetoric of love, or love stories.”“Bronco Bullfrog” is essentially a study in frustration — economic, sexual, even cosmic. (Del matures at the very moment that his life unravels.) But its bleak ending is mitigated by the energy of the cast and the spirit of the filmmaking.Bronco BullfrogPlays Friday, March 25 through Thursday, March 31 at Film Forum, Manhattan; filmforum.org. More

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      in Theater

      ‘CODA’ Is Being Developed Into a Stage Musical by Deaf West

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      The theater plans to work with the Oscar-nominated film’s producers to adapt the story of a teenager torn between helping her deaf family and singing.The Oscar-nominated film “CODA,” in which a hearing child of deaf parents pursues a passion for singing, is being developed into a stage musical by Deaf West Theater, a highly regarded Los Angeles-based nonprofit with a strong track record in musical theater.The project, which does not yet have a creative team or a production calendar, is a joint venture between the theater and two of the companies that produced the movie, Vendôme Pictures and Pathé Films.“CODA,” written and directed by Sian Heder, is nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture. The film is about a high school student torn between helping her family, which runs a fishing boat, and pursuing a newfound interest in singing; she is the only hearing member of her family. (CODA is an acronym for child of deaf adult.)“‘CODA’ is unique among the entire canon of feature films in that it features us in our natural setting: among the world at large and among our own, often at home or in private settings,” DJ Kurs, the artistic director of Deaf West, wrote in an email interview. “As a Deaf person, I knew from the start that ‘CODA’ would make a perfect musical: It addresses our relationship with music and how we move through the world of sound like immigrants in a foreign country, learning new, seemingly arbitrary rules on the fly.”Deaf West, founded in 1991, is the nation’s most prominent theater focusing on what it calls “Deaf-centered storytelling,” and its productions are generally performed in both American Sign Language and spoken English by casts that include deaf and hearing artists.The theater has previously staged five musicals, including two revivals that transferred to Broadway, “Big River” in 2003 and “Spring Awakening” in 2015. Both were nominated for Tony Awards. “CODA” would be the second musical originated by the company; the first was “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” in 2007.“Professional musical theater was largely inaccessible to our community for the most part until our production of ‘Big River’ was staged in bigger houses in L.A. and N.Y.,” Kurs wrote. “Now we have musical theater aficionados within our community, and that’s a beautiful thing. I would wager that the art form of signed musical theater is still in its infancy.”10 Movies to Watch This Oscar SeasonCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      in Movies

      Hollywood Crosses the Pond

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      Hollywood Crosses the PondEshe Nelson�� Reporting from Liverpool, EnglandMr. Lunt recalls watching a Batman stunt double launch himself off the top of one of the Liver Building’s towers. “It was very, very exciting,” he said. Liverpool is used to being a stand-in for American cities. It is 1920s New York in “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and the Brooklyn docks in “Captain America: The First Avenger.”More than 80 percent of the record amount spent in 2021 on film and high-end TV productions in Britain is from American and other overseas production companies. More