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      In 'Tick, Tick … Boom!,' Robin de Jesús Showcases His Range

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      In the film, this queer Puerto Rican actor gets to showcase his range, stepping into a more mature role as Michael.The T-shirt says it all: “This body was built on arroz con gandules.”Arroz con gandules, or rice with pigeon peas, is a Puerto Rican classic, and Robin de Jesús wears the shirt with pride under a burnt orange jacket. When mounds of maduros (fried sweet plantains) arrive with our entrees, each is topped with a tiny Puerto Rican flag. De Jesús, 37, approves.The actor’s family is from rural Puerto Rico, and he grew up in a working-class community in Norwalk, Conn. Known for larger-than-life roles like a gay teenager who dabbles in drag in the movie “Camp,” a spirited maid in the Broadway revival of “La Cage aux Folles” and a boisterous interior decorator in both the play and film versions of “The Boys in the Band,” he wanted to diversify his work.Then along came “Tick, Tick … Boom!.” De Jesús was deeply intentional in auditioning for the role of Michael, an actor turned advertiser, in the film, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.“What kept coming up for me was, ‘I want a quiet performance.’ I want a quiet, subtle, nuance,” de Jesús said at lunch. “And I know that, if I do that, I can showcase maturity.”The movie (in theaters and on Netflix) is an adaptation of a musical about the writing of a musical. The original “Tick, Tick … Boom!” was written by Jonathan Larson — who would later go on to write the rock musical “Rent” — and first performed in 1990. The film tells the tale of an aspiring composer (also named Jonathan and played by Andrew Garfield) pouring himself into yet another musical, this one called “Superbia.” It takes place in the early ’90s, against the stark backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.As his 30th birthday looms, Jonathan’s anxiety manifests as a persistent ticking. He worries about the upcoming workshop of “Superbia,” upon which everything seemingly hinges — and about whether he can succeed in the performing arts at all.Michael, his former roommate and best friend since childhood, has tapped out of the threadbare artist lifestyle, opting instead for a plush career in advertising and a glittering high-rise apartment. He was tired of waiting for hours in line for an audition, just to be cut off after six measures of a song and called the wrong name: “Juan, Pedro, Carlos, lo que sea.”De Jesús with Andrew Garfield in “Tick, Tick … Boom!”Macall Polay/NetflixThat’s not to say that Michael has hardened into a formal shell; he stays playful and supportive of Jonathan’s dreams. We first meet him visiting Jonathan at work in the Moondance Diner, where he drops off copies he made of the “Superbia” script.“Boo-boo, you need to ask yourself,” Michael tells Jonathan, “In this moment, are you letting yourself be led by fear? Or love?”De Jesús said, “I knew that Michael did not have to be pulled and buttoned up, that he was someone who navigated being an artist, a creative, someone who was down and hip, and cool with also doing advertising.”“It didn’t have to just be one thing,” he continued.Although de Jesús has appeared in many major movies, he assumed some other, bigger film star might snag the role of Michael. So he took a risk in his audition. Miranda was impressed.“I’ve seen a lot of productions of ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’ and a lot of the time the guy that gets cast as Michael is someone who looks very at home being a business guy, very dapper, very smooth,” Miranda said in a phone call. “What’s fun about Robin as a choice is that you 100 percent believe this is an artist who thrives in this world. It’s an artist with a business suit on.”Miranda and de Jesús go way back. (So far, in fact, that de Jesús sang at Miranda’s wedding.) In 2005, de Jesús made his Broadway debut in “Rent” as a member of the ensemble and an understudy for Angel, a young drag queen. That same year, he joined the original cast of “In the Heights,” Miranda’s first musical, with a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes.“Quiara and I realized every time he had the ball, he just put a crazy spin on it and knocked it out of the park,” Miranda said of de Jesús. “I am mixing my tennis and baseball metaphors, but so would Robin.”De Jesús earned a Tony nomination for his role as Sonny in “In the Heights.” He received subsequent nominations for “La Cage aux Folles” in 2010 and “The Boys in the Band” in 2019. This year, he presented at the Tony Awards with Andrew Garfield.But so many of his roles came across as youthful or outsize. De Jesús was ready for something fresh.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      The company that produced ‘Parasite’ has bought Endeavor’s scripted content arm.

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      The South Korean media conglomerate whose entertainment arm produced the winner of the 2019 Oscar for best picture, “Parasite,” has acquired a majority stake in the scripted arm of Endeavor Content, a subsidiary of the entertainment company Endeavor Group.Upon closure of the $775 million deal, which was announced late Thursday night, the South Korean conglomerate, CJ ENM, will own 80 percent of the business and the Endeavor Group 20 percent. The companies said they expected the deal to close in the first quarter of 2022.The Wall Street Journal reported the news earlier.“At the end of the day, CJ ENM strives to become a major global studio that encompasses content that appeals to a global audience — like this deal with Endeavor Content, we will continue to expand our presence in the global market,” Kang Ho-Sung, the conglomerate’s chief executive, said in a statement.Endeavor is being forced to reduce its ownership stake in its scripted content business as a result of a settlement this year with the Writers Guild of America, whose writers went on strike to protest what they saw as a conflict of interest at agencies that owned both talent representation businesses and production companies.Endeavor is not required to sell its unscripted assets and will maintain 100 percent ownership of that business.Endeavor Content was formed in 2017 by Graham Taylor and Chris Rice. Today, it calls itself a global film and television studio, and it has produced such projects as “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a Hulu mini-series starring Nicole Kidman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter.” It owns a minority stake in Bruna Papandrea’s production company, Made Up Stories, in addition to PictureStart and Media Res.Mr. Taylor and Mr. Rice will remain co-chief executives of the new company.CJ has been expanding its foothold in Hollywood in recent years. Miky Lee, the vice chair of CJ Entertainment, the Hollywood arm of CJ ENM, rose to the national stage when she accepted the best picture Oscar for “Parasite,” but she was an industry player before then, nudging CJ toward Hollywood in the 1990s with a stake in DreamWorks. Most recently, she invested $100 million in David Ellison’s Skydance Media and was elected vice chair of the board of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.“Having known Miky Lee for more than 25 years, I’m confident that CJ ENM will be excellent stewards of the studio, accelerating and amplifying its projects on a global stage,” Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Endeavor, said in a statement. More

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      The Real Surprise of ‘Passing’: A Focus on Black Women’s Inner Lives

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      By making the lesbian attraction between the main characters more explicit, the drama moves beyond mainstream Hollywood’s white gaze.Midway through the new drama “Passing,” Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), the light-brown-skinned, upper-middle-class protagonist, offers a unique insight into her psyche when she says to her friend Hugh, “We’re, all of us, passing for something or the other,” and adds, “Aren’t we?”Until now, Irene has successfully maintained her cover as both a respectable wife and proud African American woman. But when Hugh (Bill Camp) challenges her by asking why she does not pass for white like her biracial childhood friend, Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), her response is a revelation, startling me almost as much as it did him.“Who’s to say I am not?” she snaps back.In that moment, I realized that what I had considered the B-plot of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, “Passing,” had risen to the surface in the writer-director Rebecca Hall’s adaptation, giving us a narrative that remains all too rare in Hollywood today: the interior world of a Black woman’s mind.When I teach Larsen’s novel to my undergraduate students, I usually start with the obvious: its racial plot and the ways in which Clare finds refuge from racism by identifying as white, only to be tragically alienated from her Black family and community.But I mainly teach “Passing” through what I think is the novel’s real central conflict: same-sex female desire and the paranoia that begins to overtake Irene, and for that matter Larsen’s story line, as a result of her unconsummated relationship with Clare. In a 1986 essay on Larsen’s novel, the critic Deborah E. McDowell explained why this longing had to appear secondary to the emphasis on race. “The idea of bringing a sexual attraction between two women to full expression,” she wrote, was “too dangerous of a move” in 1929. Instead, “Larsen enveloped the subplot of Irene’s developing if unnamed and unacknowledged desire for Clare in the safe and familiar plot of racial passing.”Rather than explore the ways that Irene comes into her sexuality, racial passing — at the height of segregation in America — was considered a far more urgent and thus more conventional theme than that of Black women’s inner lives. As a consequence, Larsen’s novel ended up passing, too, eventually taking “the form of the act it implies,” McDowell concluded.Visually, Hall compensates for the novel’s restraint through stolen glances, flirtatious phrases, and lingering touches and kisses between Clare and Irene. As Irene’s tension mounts, the film externalizes it through other symbols: a loudly ticking grandfather clock, a pot of water boiling over and even her breaking a teapot at a midday social in her home. In these hints, we see both Irene’s desire to break free from the illusion of middle-class domesticity and heterosexuality that she performs, as well as the threat that Clare’s presence poses to Irene’s sense of control.But, to externalize Irene’s internal thoughts and her sublimated identity, the movie makes what is suggested in the novel far more explicit. For example, Irene’s confession to Hugh never actually happens in the book. Hall opted to amp up that moment, she explained in a video for Vanity Fair, because she wanted “to highlight the latent homosexuality and power dynamics” underlying their shared secret.But for all that movie does so very well — its subtle swing jazz score; its beautiful black-and-white montages evocative of the photographers Gordon Parks and Carrie Mae Weems; and the delightful cat-and-mouse performances by Thompson and Negga — it deliberately limits how much access we have to Irene. Such restrictions, after having a glimpse of Irene’s full personality, further reminded me of how few stories about African American female sexuality and subjectivity have been told on the big screen.In other words, at this moment, when Black artists are being celebrated and validated as never before, what does it mean to invest in films that fully move us beyond a racist or sexist gaze and into their innermost thoughts?Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      With 'New York Ninja,' Lights, Camera and, Finally, Action

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      The 1984 kung fu film was shot, but it wasn’t completed. Now, with a new director and newly recorded dialogue, the film sees the light of day.Kung fu fights on roller skates! An ex-C.I.A. Plutonium Killer who can peel off his own face! A battalion of kid ninjas! The promise of Dolemite himself, Rudy Ray Moore, as an insult-spewing police detective!In 1984, audiences had never seen anything like the low-budget epic “New York Ninja,” in which the Taiwanese kung fu performer John Liu directs himself as a high-kicking sound man who avenges his wife’s death.And despite lurid “Coming Soon” ads in the trade magazines (“WHEN YOU BACK A TIGER INTO A CORNER HE COMES OUT FIGHTING!”), audiences never got to see it in 1985. Or 1986. Or the ensuing three decades.“It was one of those things that was on my résumé for years, but I never thought it would see the light of day,” the special effects artist Carl Morano said of “New York Ninja,” which vanished after its distribution company, 21st Century, went bankrupt and sold off its assets.All that remained was a set of film reels with six to eight hours of footage. No audio. No credits or call sheets. No storyboards. Not even a script to explain who exactly the New York Ninja was fighting and why, let alone how the roller skates came into play.Those reels eventually ended up in the vaults of the film distribution company Vinegar Syndrome, known for such disreputable titles as “Christmas Evil” and “Don’t Answer the Phone!” It took a two-year resuscitation effort for Vinegar Syndrome to bring “New York Ninja” to life. The result came out on Blu-ray earlier this month after a few raucously received appearances at genre film festivals, and a theatrical release is slated for early 2022.Liu, right, shot “New York Ninja” in 1984, but the project was abandoned.Vinegar Syndrome PicturesMuch of the reconstruction fell to Kurtis M. Spieler, who is credited as the new iteration’s “re-director” and editor. “What I tried to do was make the most coherent thing I could with the footage I had,” said Spieler, who spent evenings and weekends piecing together a workable edit and then writing a new script to match his cut.This took some effort given the source material. “They had zero resources,” said Morano, who spent most of his estimated special effects budget of $100 on the Plutonium Killer’s melting face. “Different people showed up on different days. We’d meet every morning at the Howard Johnson’s where John was staying and then take a van to the location.”When he arrived in New York, John Liu was already a cult figure in martial arts circles, known for his high kicks and his collaborations with the fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, who went on to work on films like “The Matrix” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”The huge popularity of Bruce Lee put a ceiling on just how familiar audiences were with Liu’s name, according to the film historian Chris Poggiali, a co-author of the new book “These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World.”“At the time, the studios were doing anything they could to tie in with Bruce Lee,” Poggiali said. This meant changing Liu’s name on the posters. For example, the poster for the film “Hammerfist” billed Liu as Marty Lee.By the time shooting on “New York Ninja” began in late 1984, one actor no longer attached to the project (if he ever really was in the first place) was Rudy Ray Moore. But Morano’s original shooting script, the only one known to exist, still alluded to “Detective Dolemite,” which made Morano wonder just how scrupulously the script was being followed. “My feeling is that they just kind of winged it,” he said.Poggiali described the final result as “very different from a lot of the other ninja movies at the time.” As Liu’s character frequently slips away from his co-workers to put on his New York Ninja garb and then returns as if nothing had happened, “it’s more like a crime-fighting superhero film, like Clark Kent and Superman.”The names of most of the original cast and crew are lost to time, and Spieler said Vinegar Syndrome tried to find Liu but wasn’t able to. This gave Spieler the chance to start fresh with the audio, commissioning a synth-heavy retro score by the Detroit band Voyag3r and fielding a murderer’s row of genre-film stalwarts to dub the actors.The film’s original reels, which included no actor credits, ended up in the vaults of the film distribution company Vinegar Syndrome.Vinegar Syndrome PicturesJoining the likes of Don Wilson, a.k.a. the Dragon, and Cynthia Rothrock in the recording booth was the 1980s scream queen Linnea Quigley (“Return of the Living Dead”), who here dubs the voice of the frequently imperiled TV reporter Randi Rydell. “They said, ‘You’re playing the reporter, do what you want with it,’” Quigley said. “It seemed like fun — which is wild because I think they kind of wanted it to be serious.”Or, if not exactly serious, at least not too campy. “We’re playing this straight,” said Spieler, who compared the final result to “Miami Connection,” “Samurai Cop” and other so-bad-they’re-kind-of-extraordinary titles. “We’re not trying to play up the silliness because it already comes through naturally.”While it’s impossible to know for sure, Spieler said he suspects Liu wasn’t able to complete filming before the production shut down. “The ending doesn’t feel like it was ever finished,” he said. Vinegar Syndrome originally floated the possibility of filming new scenes, but Spieler was intent on working with what they had.“I asked myself, ‘If my job was to have been an editor in the 1980s, what would I have done?’” he said. “This was how I could maintain the spirit of the original.” (In fact, he didn’t let himself look at Morano’s original shooting script until he completed his own version.)Spieler believes that the intervening decades may actually have done “New York Ninja” some favors. “We knew it was campy and silly and over the top,” he said, “but we also knew it can be appreciated from a modern-day sensibility in a different way.“It’s finding its right audience now.” More

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      The company that produced ‘Parasite’ is in talks to buy Endeavor’s scripted content arm.

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      The South Korean media conglomerate whose entertainment arm produced the winner of the 2019 Oscar for best picture, “Parasite,” is in final talks to acquire a majority stake in the scripted arm of Endeavor Content, a subsidiary of the talent agent Endeavor Group, two people familiar with the negotiations said.Under the deal, which the people familiar with the negotiations said was being valued at $900 million to $1 billion, the South Korean conglomerate, CJ ENM, would own 80 percent of the business and the Endeavor Group 20 percent.The Wall Street Journal reported the news earlier. Neither Endeavor Content nor CJ would comment on the talks.Endeavor is being forced to reduce its ownership stake in its scripted content business as a result of a settlement this year with the Writers Guild of America, whose writers went on strike to protest what they saw as a conflict of interest at agencies that owned both talent representation businesses and production companies.Endeavor is not required to sell off its unscripted assets and will maintain 100 percent ownership of that business.Endeavor Content was formed in 2017 by Graham Taylor and Chris Rice. Today it calls itself a global film and television studio, and it has produced such projects as “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a Hulu mini-series starring Nicole Kidman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter.” It owns a minority stake in Bruna Papandrea’s production company, Made Up Stories, in addition to PictureStart and Media Res.Mr. Taylor and Mr. Rice will remain co-chief executives of the new company, the people with knowledge of the deal said.CJ has been expanding its foothold in Hollywood in recent years. Miky Lee, the vice chair of CJ Entertainment, the Hollywood arm of CJ ENM, rose to the national stage when she accepted the best picture Oscar for “Parasite,” but she was a Hollywood player before then, nudging CJ toward Hollywood in the 1990s with a stake in DreamWorks. Most recently, she invested $100 million in David Ellison’s Skydance Media and was elected vice chair of the board of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. More

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      ‘C’mon C’mon’ Review: Are You My Mommy?

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      In Mike Mills’s latest film, Joaquin Phoenix plays an uncle who takes care of his precocious nephew during a family crisis.There’s a scene in Mike Mills’s “C’mon C’mon” when a guy talks to his sister about how tough parenting can be. “I have so much sympathy,” he says, with a laugh. It’s a wink-wink moment because everyone knows the challenges. We know them, Mills knows them and so do these characters, who are sensitive and concerned. The brother has been taking care of his sister’s son and is gently mocking himself with his observation — kids are a lot! — though he’s also drawing attention to himself and the work he’s put in.A story about love and the eternal tug of war between self-interest and caring for others, “C’mon C’mon” is a nice movie about characters who are so nice that I almost feel bad for not being nicely disposed toward them or this movie, even with Joaquin Phoenix as the guy and Gaby Hoffmann as the sister. Their characters, Johnny and Viv, get the story rolling when she says she needs to deal with her husband (Scoot McNairy), who’s suffering a mental-health crisis. Johnny steps in to help with her 9-year-old, Jesse, played by Woody Norman, a charmer who looks a bit like a peewee Mathieu Amalric.The story tracks what happens when Johnny, who’s single and has no children, steps into the parenting role. Although it’s foreign territory for him, he approaches his new responsibilities with kindness and openness, if rather too much unconvincing, narratively expedient naïveté. Certainly the family’s redrawn geometry proves beneficial for Viv and Johnny, who were estranged and now frequently check in with each other, phoning and texting. Viv misses her son, and is reaching out, but she’s also coaching Johnny, teaching him how to handle Jesse. And, as the siblings talk and talk, their complex past burbles up.Mills manages the preliminaries seamlessly, creating an instant sense of cohesion and flow: You believe and recognize these people and places. Although he always lavishes conspicuous attention on the visual scheme of his movies — everything is very precise, very arranged — his gift is for the seductive sense of intimacy among characters, which quickly turns actors into people you care about. That’s true even when he’s working with established performers like Christopher Plummer in “Beginners” (an autobiographical movie about Mills’s father) and Annette Bening in “20th Century Women” (about his mother). “C’mon C’mon” was inspired by Mills’s relationship with his child.Shot in black and white, which gives the visuals a jewel-like shimmer and a patina of misplaced nostalgia, the movie opens with Johnny on the road. He’s in Detroit, gathering material for a radio documentary about children. Now, alone in a hotel room, he speaks into a microphone, cycling through his interview questions. He opens with: “When you think about the future, how do you imagine it will be?” He then turns to nature and cities and families, the scene ending just after he asks: “What makes you happy?” Over the course of the movie, Johnny continues to ask these existentially freighted questions, eventually finding his own answers through his evolving relationship with Jesse.And so while Viv cares for Paul, Johnny tends to Jesse. Johnny also takes Jesse on the road with him, so he can work on the documentary. There are giggles and laughs, pinpricks of pain and storms of emotion. Over time, as the connection between Johnny and Jesse tightens, their respective wariness gives way to deeper feelings and mutual appreciation. Yet, while the story’s emotional weight is meant to rest in the moments of tenderness between these two, and especially how they effect Johnny — his issues, his growth, his capacity for love — the characters never register as deeply or have the poignancy of the scenes with the nonprofessional children whom Johnny interviews.Phoenix, bearded and in full shambolic mode (he often looks as if he just woke up), nevertheless makes an appealing center of gravity. That’s useful, because the more Johnny gropes his way through his parenting duties, the more exasperating the character becomes, and the more precious and self-regarding the movie feels. Mills smartly keeps the dramatic incidents in a minor key, and while Johnny and Jesse bond, they also argue over small stuff. Jesse makes sense as a character and periodically acts out — he’s a kid (a person!) and worried about his dad — but Johnny increasingly seems like a storytelling contrivance, as well as a lesson in enlightened gender roles.At one point, Johnny picks a book up from Viv’s desk. “Motherhood,” he reads in thoughtful voice-over, “is the place in our culture where we lodge or rather bury the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human.” As he continues reading, the text shifts to mothers themselves: “Why on earth should it fall to them to paint things bright and innocent and safe?” These are good questions. The answers are also staggeringly obvious, and it’s difficult to know whether Mills thinks these thoughts are revelatory or whether he wants us to think that Johnny — a 21st century, presumably well-educated, ostensibly enlightened bougie, NPR-style journalist — has been living under a rock.It’s hard not to regret that “C’mon C’mon” isn’t about Viv, a spiky, persuasively honest character who’s actually one of the mothers Johnny reads about. But, much like the children whose words and faces are sprinkled throughout the movie, Viv is mostly on hand to help Johnny on his journey. Unlike her, these kids aren’t fictional, and their inclusion is a terrible miscalculation: “C’mon C’mon” is too slight and too narrow a vessel to bear the intense weight of their reality. These children are tentative, painfully sincere and at times terribly raw. And while their future may not necessarily be bright, unlike Johnny, they manifestly do live in the mind-blowing, heartbreaking great big world.C’mon C’monRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Princess Switch 3’ Review: Meow, It’s Fiona’s Turn

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      A golden star on loan from the Vatican to crown the holiday tree in tiny Montenaro has been stolen. What’s a royal family to do?One of the most satisfying moments of “The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star” is seeing the scheming villain Fiona, in sequined beanie and stiletto sandals, swabbing the floors of the local convent and orphanage, working off the hefty community service sentence she earned last year in the previous edition of this seasonal Netflix movie series directed by Mike Rohl.The only scene to top it is when Fiona (Vanessa Hudgens) tries to walk a dog, and ends up being hauled along a snow-dusted sidewalk like a sled by the very Great Dane at the end of the leash. But it turns out that even this batty outsider has something to contribute when her cousin Queen Margaret (also Vanessa Hudgens) needs her help — and can commute her community service.Margaret and Fiona’s look-alike cousin from America, Stacy (also played by you-know-who), is on hand with Prince Edward (Sam Palladio), her handsome but clueless husband, for the much-anticipated Christmas pageant. One thing is certain: The celebration will be dripping with enough lights to run up a staggering electric bill. What they don’t suspect is that an intrigue of Continental proportions is going to shake up the impeccable snow globe that is Montenaro.That intrigue would involve the Star of Peace, a precious decorative relic from the Vatican (who knew there was a lending library there?), which has barely arrived when it mysteriously disappears. What the royal retinue needs is an expert on the criminal mind: in a word, Fiona.When the flamboyant answer to their prayers sashays into the room, she locks eyes with Stacy’s husband and greets him with a purring “Hello, royal six-pack.” That’s how she talks. And she meows, and says “Zzzzzzzttttt!”Anyone who has seen one of these movies can just take over for the characters and guess their lines as easily as the three cousins can swap clothes and accents to impersonate one another.Interchangeable though the cousins may be, Fiona grabs the spotlight this year. Through her connections she produces an ex, Peter Maxwell (Remy Hii), a former Interpol officer with the sophisticated suite of crook-catching tools needed to retrieve the Star. But, paving the way for more sequels that are less superficial, she is drawn as the one character who actually grows, who steps out of her one-dimensional bad-girl type to reveal her vulnerability. Sharing some long-buried memories, she helps us understand why she is cold and distant when she puts down her peppermint martini and feather boa.The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the StarRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn’ Review: No Sex, Please, We’re Romanian

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      A viral video scandal ensnares a Bucharest schoolteacher in Radu Jude’s biting, bawdy and brilliant Covid-age fable.The English title of Radu Jude’s new feature, “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” strikes me as deliberately clumsy, in keeping with the cacophonous, off-kilter tone of the movie itself. My Romanian isn’t what it should be, but I might quibble with “loony,” since the porn in question — a three-minute clip that is the first thing audiences see — doesn’t seem especially crazy. It’s certainly explicit, but the lunacy Jude is interested in exploring has less to do with what’s happening on camera than with some of the reactions to it.A decidedly amateur piece of adult cinema, the video shows a married couple exuberantly enjoying each other’s company. The action, recorded on a cellphone, is inadvertently comical (a mother-in-law knocks on the door in medias res) and mildly kinky. There’s a lot of breathless dirty talk, and also a latex flogger, a magenta wig and a leopard-print mask — the costume-party kind, not the Covid-precautionary kind.There will be plenty of those in evidence later, when the camera (now wielded by professionals) moves out into the noisy, pandemic-anxious streets of Bucharest and the focus shifts from sex as a conjugal pastime to sex as a political and cultural issue. That’s where the bad luck comes in. The naughty video has made its way onto the internet — exactly how is a matter of some ambiguity — causing problems for one of the participants, Emilia Cilibiu (Katia Pascariu), a history teacher at a prestigious secondary school. Outraged parents have demanded a meeting, and much of the movie consists of Emi (as she is called) preparing for that event and then enduring it.But plot summary is more than usually irrelevant here. “Bad Luck Banging” announces itself as “a sketch for a popular film,” and it unfolds, in its first two-thirds, as a portfolio of documentary gleanings and notebook entries rather than as a linear narrative. Shooting in the summer of 2020, Jude and his team were clearly constrained by the realities of Covid-19, but they also succeeded in turning a bad situation to creative advantage, facing the awfulness and absurdity of the present with wit, indignation and a saving touch of tenderness.In the first section (following the pornographic prologue), Emi walks through Bucharest, talking on her phone and pursuing various errands. Dressed in a sober gray suit, her blue surgical mask double-looped over her ears, she navigates a tableau of bustling urban banality, her own stress visible in her eyes and brows.She tries to purchase a single Xanax at a pharmacy and is given an herbal remedy instead. She pays a visit to the school director (Claudia Ieremia), whose apartment is a scene of baroque domestic chaos. The atmosphere in the shopping malls and open-air markets is even more hectic, and much less polite. Citizens lower their masks to scream obscenities at one another. Rudeness is so endemic that it seems like its own form of civility. Graphic remarks about someone’s genitals — or, more often, their mother’s genitals — sound almost neighborly.This dissonant city symphony ends on a somber note, in a shot of a closed-down movie theater with a “For Rent” sign in the window. In the scheme of things, this may be a minor catastrophe, but it segues into a litany of disasters that make up the film’s essay-like middle chapter.Taking a break from Emi and her plight, Jude compiles a “short dictionary of anecdotes, signs and wonders.” The entries run from “August 23, 1944” (the date Romania left the Axis and joined the Allies in World War II) to “Zen” and consist of brief skits and snippets of archival and social-media video. With grim humor, they glance at ugly facts of human existence — war, misogyny, household violence, racism, workplace exploitation — and pay special attention to Romania’s complicity in the two major forms of 20th-century totalitarianism.Some of that information will be on the exam — or will at least resurface when Emi faces her accusers in an open-air, socially distanced inquisition in the courtyard of the school. The indignant parents include an airline pilot, a military officer, an Orthodox priest and a hipster intellectual who reads long passages of sociological theory from his phone. (He may actually be on Emi’s side, but with an ally like that, who needs trolls?) Someone invokes the name of Mihai Eminescu, Romania’s national poet of the 19th century, and Emi responds by reciting one of his lesser-known bawdy poems.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More