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      ‘My Cousin Vinny’ at 30: An Unlikely Oscar Winner

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      Much like Vinny in the South, the film was a fish out of water at the Academy Awards. But the comedy endures, thanks to a generous Joe Pesci and a fiery Marisa Tomei.When the culture-clash courtroom comedy “My Cousin Vinny” landed in theaters on March 13, 1992, the critical response was mostly positive. The Times’s Vincent Canby found it “inventive and enjoyable,” The Los Angeles Times’s Peter Rainer called it “often funny” and The Hollywood Reporter deemed it “a terrific variation on the fish-out-of-water/man-from-Mars story formula.”One phrase you won’t find in any of those reviews is “Oscar worthy.” Yet “Vinny” proved just that, landing an Academy Award for best supporting actress a full year after its original theatrical release — one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history, and a trophy that would prove both a blessing and a curse for its recipient, Marisa Tomei.Her performance as Mona Lisa Vito, the long-suffering fiancée and legal secret weapon of Joe Pesci’s title character, was a breakthrough for the Brooklyn-born actress, who had done her time Off Broadway and in the world of soaps and sitcoms. “I was fresh to the business and didn’t know how movies worked,” Tomei explained in 2017, “but Joe chose me for the part, then took me by the hand and guided me immensely, so I got very lucky.”“Vinny” concerns a pair of New York University students who, while driving through Alabama, are falsely accused of murder. They’re so desperate for legal representation that they call upon the only lawyer they can afford: Vincent LaGuardia Gambini (Pesci), a cousin of one of the accused and a novice who has just passed the bar after six attempts.Pesci roars into town in a pink Cadillac convertible at the eleven-and-a-half minute mark; on the DVD audio commentary, the director, Jonathan Lynn, calls this, with characteristically British understatement, “a star entrance.” And that’s an accurate assessment of Pesci’s station — he had just won an Oscar for his menacingly funny work in “Goodfellas,” and “Vinny” was one of his first attempts to leapfrog from supporting player to leading man.But Pesci wasn’t the only star making an entrance; a gum-smacking Tomei scores the first two laughs in the scene, first with her retort to his assertion that she sticks out “like a sore thumb” — “Oh, yeah, you blend” — and then her heartbroken realization, “I bet the Chinese food here is terrible.”Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.A Makeover: On Oscar night, you can expect a refreshed, slimmer telecast and a few new awards. But are all of the tweaks a good thing?Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage.A Hit: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” is the season’s unlikely Oscar smash. The director Bong Joon Ho is happy to discuss its success.  Making History: Troy Kotsur, who stars in “CODA” as a fisherman struggling to relate to his daughter, is the first deaf man to earn an Oscar nomination for acting. ‘Improbable Journey’: “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. In a first for Bhutan, the movie is now an Oscar nominee.It’s noteworthy that Pesci cedes those laughs to her, and continues to do so throughout the picture, playing the George to her Gracie (though she is, clearly, the smarter one). A lesser actor might try to upstage her, but Pesci had been the scene-stealer before, in films like “Raging Bull” and “Easy Money”; he knew how to step back and let his co-stars shine. And this principle of generosity is most pronounced in the courtroom climax, when Vinny puts Mona Lisa on the stand as an automobile expert (she worked in her father’s garage), giving the testimony that exonerates his clients.It’s clear why the commitment-shy Vinny falls in love with Mona Lisa all over again. She charms everyone from judge to jury to onlookers, and, in turn, the moviegoing audience. Credible, fiery, funny and energetic, she and Pesci turn what could’ve been broad caricatures into grounded, empathetic characters.But “My Cousin Vinny” is not what we think of as an “Oscar movie,” and Tomei’s is not what is conventionally considered an “Oscar performance.” Credit where due to 20th Century Fox: When the film was an unexpected commercial success ($52 million on an $11 million budget), the studio spent some of those profits on a “For Your Consideration” campaign, paying off in her nomination for best supporting actress — alongside Judy Davis (“Husbands and Wives”), Joan Plowright (“Enchanted April”), Vanessa Redgrave (“Howards End”) and Miranda Richardson (“Damage”), formidable competition indeed.If the nomination was a surprise, Tomei’s victory over her distinguished competition was a shock. She was a newcomer triumphing over veterans, an American television actress taking on distinguished stage thespians from abroad, and, perhaps most importantly, the only comic performance against a quartet of scorching dramatic turns. And for all of those reasons, when Jack Palance opened the envelope and called Tomei’s name, it sent a shock wave through the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.Tomei with her Oscar for her performance as Mona Lisa Vito.Barry King/Liaison, via Getty ImagesMaybe the uniformity of Tomei’s competition canceled each other out in her favor. Maybe she had the home court advantage. Or maybe, in a flurry of dramatic performances, the comedic joy of Mona Lisa Vito was a breath of fresh air.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      Watch Robert Pattinson Take Flight in ‘The Batman’

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      The director Matt Reeves narrates a sequence in which Batman flees the police from a rooftop using his batsuit.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.In this scene from “The Batman,” a superhero flies, but it’s mostly by the seat of his pants.Batman (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in an interrogation room after an altercation he was present for turned deadly.Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), who has developed a partnership and trust with Batman, secretly helps him flee the scene. But in Matt Reeves’s take on the series, the Caped Crusader doesn’t have a smooth handle on his tech.In his narration, Reeves said that he wanted to present a less polished version of Batman than we’ve seen before.“Rob as Batman is never really in control,” Reeves said. “He’s just barely making it.”Reeves went in this direction with the character to humanize him a bit and make him more relatable. When Batman reaches the ledge in the scene, he’s actually afraid of how high up he is.For the flight tech, Reeves found inspiration in wingsuits, a webbed jumpsuit used in extreme sports like skydiving and BASE jumping to experience more airtime. Some of the shots of the sequence are patterned after YouTube videos Reeves watched of wingsuit moments in all their harrowing, will-they-survive-or-not wonder. And strategic camera placement makes it feel like the audience is taking that harrowing, blundering journey right along with the Batman.Read the “Batman” review.Read an interview with Matt Reeves.Learn more about the ending of “The Batman.”Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘The Batman’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      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

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      ‘The Cherry Bushido’ Review: That Fighting Spirit

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      Japanese nationalism and religious faith fuel a battle in the spirit realm in this awkward martial-arts fantasy.I’m positive I’ve never seen anything like “The Cherry Bushido.” It’s terrible — not even in a way that I tend to want from my demon-studded, karate-chopping, English-dubbed international-warfare polemics. But this movie means every speech about the power of religious faith and the restoration of Japanese might (and boy, are there plenty of those). It’s not kidding about every slash of samurai sword, either, even though most of those are awkward, too. I’m talking about the kind of entertainment where as soon as three young women in martial-arts robes stand poised for action, back-to-back-to-back, on comes a piano-kissed rock song that this stationary bike of a movie suddenly summons the zest to pedal hard to.Plotwise, the made-up Republic of Sodorrah keeps sending test missiles over Japan. And a band of young spiritualist patriot-activists taps a college student named Shizuka (Yoshiko Sengen; dubbed by Kana Shimanuki) to help save this movie’s Japan from its military past and current governmental fecklessness. Enough with this talk of diplomacy and sanctions; Japan must defend itself in the ways of the old Japanese traditions, she writes in a news editorial about the response to Sodorrah — which, given the arrows that arc from one spot on the movie’s map to Japan, seems a lot like China.Shizuka suffers nightmares of nuclear Armageddon that correspond with a divine prophecy of Japan’s destruction. But that real-world threat takes a back seat to all the trips to the movie’s spirit realm, where the glowing essences of Shizuka and the gang exit their physical selves to do battle against the Great Demon of Hades and his dozens of masked goons. (Ryuji Kasahara wears a lot of Halloween makeup to play the Great Demon, and he’s the one person here really willing to go for it.)Now’s as good a time as any for a movie about a bellicose national neighbor and extra-strength patriotism; for a movie with a theme song whose lyrics have been translated as, “It’s not that I hate men/It’s that men are too weak/I can’t find any stronger than me.” But the movie has been written by Sayaka Okawa and directed by Hiroshi Akabane with big eager-pupil energy that needs you to know everything it knows, which includes centuries of Japanese military affairs and how ruthless Japan was to its neighbors during World War II, for starters. The movie rolls out archival footage to imply as much. (Apparently, this is news to Shizuka and her nationalistic pluck.)So an air of retributive justice hangs over this thing like a cloud. It’s all a mess of ideology and theology, of flowing robes, flying fists, karma, camp, cant and can’t: can’t act, can’t kick, can’t marshal any art.The Cherry BushidoRated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Offseason’ Review: Shuttered Island

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      A bereaved woman is trapped on a mysterious island in this atmospheric horror movie.An island might seem an ideal setting for a horror movie — what’s scarier than having nowhere to run? — but restricted characters can also leave you with limited narrative options. “Offseason,” the latest feature from the writer and director Mickey Keating, is a good example: Despite a wonderfully eerie atmosphere, this moody examination of guilt and mourning is too generic to scare and too predictable to surprise.The story (which in some ways resembles the recent HBO series “The Third Day”) centers on Marie (Jocelin Donahue), who learns that the grave of her recently deceased mother, Ava (Melora Walters, seen in flashback), has been desecrated. Almost as disturbing, the grave was located on the very island that Ava had expressly forbidden she be buried. Desperate to solve both mysteries, Marie and her boyfriend (Joe Swanberg, barely registering) head to the storm-battered spot where, it being the end of the summer season, the bridge is about to close and the residents are about to turn very, very weird.What unfolds is an uninspired blend of familiar spooky devices. But Keating, wisely continuing his collaboration with the marvelous cinematographer Mac Fisken, designs an effectively ominous world of mist-wrapped trees and a frothing shoreline that shades into a baleful gray horizon. And one scene featuring Richard Brake as the threatening Bridge Man is so strangely, surreally shot and performed that the character appears sui generis.It might sound odd to describe a horror movie as soothing. And yet there were entire stretches of “Offseason” where I was content to watch Marie wander from one disturbing discovery to another, more shackled by her grief than by any supernatural entity.OffseasonNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Adam Project’ Review: Back Talk to the Future

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      Ryan Reynolds plays a time traveling wise cracker in Shawn Levy’s science fiction adventure.Early in “The Adam Project,” a pipsqueak asthmatic named Adam (Walker Scobell) and his golden retriever gallivant through the woods among shimmering falling debris. The cause of the wreckage, Adam learns, is a time jet that was crash landed by his older self (Ryan Reynolds) traveling from the future. This is pure ’80s sci-fi pastiche for the ages. Add a few flying saucer chases, cook up a quickie solution to the grandfather paradox and this movie might have fallen at the intersection of “E.T.” and “Back to the Future.”Instead, “The Adam Project,” directed by Shawn Levy, might as well be called “The Ryan Reynolds Project.” Last summer, Levy and Reynolds teamed up under a different Hollywood juggernaut to deliver the clamorous video game flick “Free Guy.” This new movie (on Netflix) is a comparable package — noisy and formulaic, but still occasionally enjoyable. Reynolds recycles his trademark twerpy charisma, using quips to punctuate battle scenes that are spiced up with special effects. Mileage for the actor’s wise guy persona will vary — I’ve personally had my fill for several lifetimes, with or without time travel — and it’s hard here to separate the movie from the leading man.This is because Reynolds imbues Adam with such excitable, exhibitionistic energy he might as well be waving jazz hands. Levy and the screenwriters, Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, have crafted in “The Adam Project” a vehicle that enables Reynolds to multiply his shtick by two. By allying Adam with himself, not only can Reynolds poke fun at his adversaries — “your outfits are incredible,” he gushes at one point to a squad of henchman — he can actually mock his own insufferableness. “You have a very punchable face,” he tells Adam the preteen early in their peregrinations. Scobell, for his part, mirrors Reynolds’s mien with precision, making the duo feel less like Marty McFly and Doc Brown than twin sidekicks who stumbled into the spotlight.Their adventure begins when the adult Adam, visiting 2022 from 2050, explains to his kid accomplice that time travel has ruined mankind, and impeding its invention is their only hope. Complicating the mission is Adam’s dad, Louis (Mark Ruffalo), a physicist who models traversable wormholes, and Louis’s ruthless business associate, Maya (Catherine Keener). How tampering with the past will upset the future — including Adam’s marriage to fellow insurgent Laura (Zoe Saldaña) — is a mystery that the movie declines to dwell on.Blissfully under two hours, “The Adam Project” is no modern classic. But it does benefit from an affecting finale that pays special attention to Adam’s strained relationship with his father. Reynolds may play the smart aleck, but beneath Adam’s zingers he is compensating for a profound pain, and Louis is critical in activating his son’s tender side. It’s an unexpectedly sweet note to end on. Or perhaps it’s just that after a double dose of wise cracking, some authentic feeling is a welcome respite.The Adam ProjectRated PG-13. A little battle, a lot of prattle. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Gold’ Review: Dry Heave

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      Zac Efron stars in an unrelentingly miserable post-apocalyptic movie from the Australian actor and director Anthony Hayes.There’s a type of blunt, brutal fable about men and avarice that has been reworked every decade or so since Erich von Stroheim’s silent epic “Greed” was released in 1924. The middling “Gold,” directed by Anthony Hayes from a screenplay he wrote with Polly Smyth (who is also Hayes’s spouse), is one of them. It rides on the dusty coattails of touchstones of the genre: think “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” the “Mad Max” franchise and “There Will Be Blood.”“Gold” is set on a sunbaked wasteland, in a future in which an apocalyptic war has scarred the earth. (The film was shot in Australia, so the mettle of “Mad Max” hovers over each frame.) Among the blackened craters left by the war live a few sweaty, irritable survivors, all of whom go unnamed — as if they’d waste too much saliva introducing themselves. Zac Efron and Hayes play antisocial strangers car-pooling across the badlands. During an unplanned pit stop, Efron’s character, the more soft-bellied of the two travelers, discovers a massive chunk of gold bigger than both men combined. Hauling it out of the sand will be a test of endurance for the characters — who Efron and Hayes ground in a weary, wary reserve — and for the audience, which must suffer watching Efron’s skin become riddled with sun blisters that appear to be supercharged by radiation. There’s no missing the message that we’re in a dog-eat-dog world. But we’re shown an actual dog eating a dog just in case.The movie’s mood is unrelentingly miserable. Its cinematography, by Ross Giardina, is bleached-bone bright; its soundscape features more buzzing flies than music. The closest thing to hope comes from a line that the script — apparently calling for us to value our own planet while we still can — has Efron pant to a scorpion: “Look at you, crawling on a massive cluster of gold your whole life and you don’t even know it.”GoldRated R for pain and anguish. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Ultrasound’ Review: Trapped in a Murky Mystery

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      This genre hybrid opens on a dark, stormy night, takes a turn into a narrative maze only to dead end despite some promising kinks.One of the attractions of contemporary puzzle movies — with their ambiguities and labyrinths, unreliable narrators and storytelling thickets — is that their complexities are by turns beguiling and confounding but also familiar. Life takes some navigating, and so do Christopher Nolan movies; capitalism is dehumanizing, just like in the Wachowskis’ “Matrix” series. The stories may be bummers, but at least you’ll have fun putting all their jagged pieces together or just savoring their inscrutable depths.Sometimes, though, the mysteries prove unsatisfyingly murky, which is the case with the genre hybrid “Ultrasound.” A low-key science-fictiony puzzler, it opens in textbook fashion on a dark, stormy night with Glen (Vincent Kartheiser) motoring alone on a deserted road in the rain. When he drives over some nails, he abandons his car and seeks shelter in a nearby house. Uh-oh, you think, having seen a few movies. The people inside, Art (Bob Stephenson, the movie’s ace in the hole) and Cyndi (Chelsea Lopez), seem friendly, but so did Norman Bates. They also seem off-kilter, cagey, devious.For his part, Glen looks wary, but because he’s a narrative cog rather than a character, he also makes a lot of seemingly foolish choices. He drinks too much with Art and then crawls into bed with Cyndi. You half expect Glen to end up hanging from a meat hook with an apple in his mouth. But he makes it home, and soon Art comes knocking and then so does Cyndi. Glen is pulled back into a busily plotted yet anemic story that involves a woman who may or may not be pregnant, a conservative politician, and some lab-coat types milling around a Cronenbergian research facility. There, things happen, mostly bad.In time, the director, Rob Schroeder, and writer, Conor Stechschulte, introduce some undercooked ideas about surveillance, mind control and contemporary politics. (The movie is based on Stechschulte’s multivolume comic “Generous Bosom.”) More characters enter, notably a skittish researcher, Shannon (Breeda Wool), who plays an outsize role in the more focused second half. Working with a shoestring budget and actors of widely divergent abilities, Schroeder keeps things moving along while also managing the difficult task of creating and sustaining an atmosphere of suffocating unease.There are some promising glints here and there, flashes of mordant wit and obvious ambition. But like too many movies, “Ultrasound” is better at setting up its story than delivering on its promise, as if the filmmakers were still pitching ideas in the elevator. The first hour or so consists of a series of enigmatic scenes that gesture — and keep gesturing — at the story’s larger mystery but don’t build to create a coherently integrated (and involving) whole. The results are frustrating and fragmentary. And while these pieces finally converge, by the time they do, the movie’s claustrophobia has become oppressive and you’re looking for the exit.UltrasoundNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More