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      ‘The Night House’ Review: Mourning Becomes Her

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      A sensational Rebecca Hall plays a grieving widow besieged by potentially occult forces in this superior creepout.The scares land like blows and the eeriness is pervasive in “The Night House,” David Bruckner’s hyper-focused, unnervingly sure follow-up to his 2018 wilderness frightener, “The Ritual.”Fully owning every one of her scenes, Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a New York schoolteacher whose husband of 14 years, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), has just taken his own life. Now Beth wanders around the modernist lakeshore home Owen built, guzzling brandy and tortured by the mystery of his death. The only darkness in their marriage, she confesses to her best friend (Sarah Goldberg) and co-workers, was hers, the result of a traumatic experience years before.From among Owen’s things, baffling clues emerge. A creepy suicide note; architectural drawings that appear to reverse the layout of their home; pictures of strange women on his phone, all resembling Beth. Petrifying sights and sounds haunt her nights and inchoate shadows hover around her. A kind neighbor (Vondie Curtis-Hall) tries to help, but it’s clear he can’t see the bloody footprints straggling from the couple’s rowboat and heading toward the house.As the screenplay teases natural explanations for these sinister goings-on — Extreme grief? Nightmares? Mental illness? — Bruckner maintains a death grip on the film’s mood while his cinematographer, Elisha Christian, turns the home’s reflective surfaces into shape-shifting puzzle pieces. The ending is the least daring of the possible options; but Hall is spectacular, flinty and fraying in a role that leaves her often alone and, in one chilling scene, requires her to contort in disquieting ways. As Beth’s skin undulates to an unseen touch and her throat arcs alarmingly backward, Hall shows us a woman for whom terror and desire have become one.The Night HouseRated R for buried bodies and bumps in the night. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Paw Patrol: The Movie’ Review: Young Dogs, Old Tricks

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      In their first big-screen outing, the frisky rescue pups of the popular animated series “Paw Patrol” stay forever young.While many franchises aimed at children smuggle in some adult-appeal added-value — you know! for parents! — “Paw Patrol” is not one of them. The adventures of the squad of anthropomorphized rescue puppies, set in the environs of Adventure Bay, are entirely toddler-friendly and irony-free.In segments on TVs or tablets, these anodyne tales are effective babysitters. In a movie theater, they require adult oversight. To its possible credit, “Paw Patrol: The Movie” (also streaming on Paramount+) shrugs off this reality and offers only a few feeble internet-mocking japes for the entertainment of grown-ups.Yes, the computer-generated colors, overseen by the director Cal Brunker, are bright, the pups have soulful eyes (they include a newbie, named Liberty, a street-smart dog eager to join the team, which would add another female to the boy-heavy crew, yay), and the story line — in which the megalomaniacal Mayor Humdinger hijacks a cloud-storage machine to ensure blue skies over Adventure City (it’s near the bay) while the head pup Chase undergoes a crisis of confidence — is, um, a story line.To pass the time, viewers over the age of 6 may ponder some questions. Chase (voiced by Iain Armitage) hates Adventure City, where he was abandoned as a young pup. He was adopted and trained by Ryder (Will Brisbin), the little human who I guess you could call the Patrol’s Nick Fury. And Chase remains a pup, as do his colleagues. Is Adventure Bay the opposite of M. Night Shyamalan’s beach that makes you old, only for dogs? Also: The streets of Adventure City are so immaculate that the Patrol could eat kibble off them. So while Mayor Humdinger is indeed a creep, surely someone in municipal government is doing something right, no?By the time one has figured this stuff out, or not, the trim movie has ended, and the kids will have learned simple lessons about courage, team spirit and how it’s OK to fail every now and then, provided you have adequate backup.Paw Patrol: The MovieRated G. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters and on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Cryptozoo’ Review: Wild Things

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      This animated film is a rapturously hallucinogenic daydream for mature audiences.In one of the year’s most memorable openers, Matthew and Amber, a hippyish couple voiced by Michael Cera and Louisa Krause, make love under the stars, their naked, fleshy bodies enveloped by the blank, black space that is the forest around them. It’s an eerily enchanting scene flecked with droll humor that gives way to industrial menace when the duo stumble upon a towering chain link fence hiding something both wonderful and terrible: a whole wide world of unicorns, griffins, hydras — you name it.Far from childish playthings, these mythical beings, or “cryptids,” bring our two dazed dreamers violently down to Earth.Imbued with the polychromatic sensibility of 1960s animation like Heinz Edelmann’s work on “The Yellow Submarine,” “Cryptozoo,” the new feature directed by Dash Shaw, with animation directed by Jane Samborski, is a rapturously hallucinogenic daydream for mature audiences.Following the uncanny cold opening, the film presents its real leading lady, Lauren Grey (Lake Bell), a cryptozoologist employed by an aging heiress to wrangle vulnerable cryptids and protect them from a warmongering military man who wants to weaponize them against a growing counterculture movement. These missions take our heroine around the world to desolate tundras, electric jungles — and in the gutter to sketchy strip clubs and writhing orgies.Especially valuable is the baku, a mystical pachyderm capable of sucking dreams — and nightmares — straight out of one’s head. Catastrophe is imminent should the beast fall into the wrong hands.Opposite the “real” world in which cryptids are poached and trafficked is the titular cryptozoo, an amusement park and sanctuary intended to be a steppingstone toward a more integrated world. Here, cryptids of all kinds are commodified into tourist attractions — but at least they do not live in fear.Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia), a Medusa-like being who passes for human by tranquilizing the snakes atop her head and wrapping them in a head scarf, questions Lauren’s gradualist approach. An exoticized, refugee-like figure, she’s a too-familiar symbol of marginalization that magnifies the film’s schematic political commentary. Caught between an authoritarian state that hates them and a profit-driven liberal project that dehumanizes them, the cryptids are obviously better off fending for themselves. “Jurassic Park,” another film about failed utopias, comes to mind.Yet “Cryptozoo” stands out as an aesthetically ambitious undertaking, seducing viewers with its hypnotizing hand-drawn animation and John Carroll Kirby’s pulsing electronic score. The story is interestingly windy enough, but it’s these otherworldly sounds and fluidly surreal, pastel-colored images that will leave you entranced.CryptozooNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 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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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Stand Up to Cancer’ and ‘Nora From Queens’

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      Common, Stevie Wonder and Brittany Howard are slated to perform at a fund-raiser for cancer research. And Awkwafina’s Comedy Central sitcom returns.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, Aug. 16-22. Details and times are subject to change.MondayBEN & JERRY’S: CLASH OF THE CONES 9 p.m. on Food Network. While this title might call to mind the recent debate over the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s political advocacy, the series is pretty tame. “Clash of the Cones” is a reality show in which six ice cream makers compete to create new and unusual flavors, which they feed to discerning judges.TuesdayCHANGELING (2008) 5:40 p.m. on HBO Signature. Angelina Jolie stars in this period drama, which was directed by Clint Eastwood and is based on actual events. The story, set in Los Angeles in the 1920s and ’30s, follows a single mother whose young son goes missing from their Los Angeles home. Months later, authorities present her with a boy that they say is her missing son. She insists that it is not, and is painted as delusional when she tries to argue that point. “When it works best, ‘Changeling’ is a feverish and bluntly effective parable of wronged innocence and unaccountable power,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. But taken as a whole, Scott wrote, the movie presents a “distended, awkward narrative whose strongest themes are lost in the murky pomp of period detail.”WednesdayFrom left, Awkwafina, Lori Tan Chinn and BD Wong in “Awkwafina is Nora From Queens.”Zach Dilgard/Comedy CentralAWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The actress and one-time viral video creator Awkwafina based the concept of this half-hour sitcom on her own upbringing in Queens. The first season saw her character, the fictional Nora, flitting from gig to gig — ride-hailing app driver, real estate assistant — while navigating life at home with her feisty grandma (Lori Tan Chinn), her father (BD Wong) and her cousin (Bowen Yang). The two episodes that kick off the show’s second season, which debuts Wednesday night, involve CBD and time travel. In a 2020 interview with The Times, Awkwafina discussed the show, which premiered after roles in “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Ocean’s Eight” and “The Farewell” had brought her a new level of stardom. “Nora is where a lot of us find ourselves in our 20s,” she said. “What’s next? Do you find success and suddenly it fixes everything? No, life is an open-ended question.”IN THE SAME BREATH (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. Nanfu Wang, a co-director of the well-received 2019 documentary “One Child Nation,” about the history of China’s long-lived one-child policy, takes on another politically difficult subject in this new documentary, which looks at the Chinese and United States governments’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Wang explores the flaws in those responses, and how many of the consequences of political decisions fell on the shoulders of health care workers.WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) 12:30 a.m. on TNT, and on TBS and TNT on-demand platforms. For an apocalyptic scenario that’s entirely fictional, skip “In the Same Breath” and watch this take on H.G. Wells’s classic sci-fi story of invaders from space. This adaptation — the third in Steven Spielberg’s 2000s run of dark sci-fi films which includes “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “Minority Report,” — stars Tom Cruise as a New Jersey father who fights to protect his two children (played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) as the alien tripods descend. If you’d prefer sci-fi with a higher fashion sense — Cruise’s character navigates much of the film in a hoodie — consider instead BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) with Ryan Gosling, which airs at 7:55 p.m. on HBO Signature.ThursdayHaruko Sugimura, left, and Setsuko Hara in “Late Spring.”ShochikuLATE SPRING (1949) 8 p.m. on TCM. The Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu kicked off a cycle of films about families with “Late Spring,” one of his most celebrated movies. The story follows a widower (Chishu Ryu) who is convinced to force his only daughter (Setsuko Hara) to marry, despite her wishes. In 2005, the critic Roger Ebert wrote that “Late Spring” is “one of the best two or three films Ozu ever made.” TCM is showing it alongside several other Ozu movies, including TOKYO TWILIGHT (1957) at 5:30 p.m. and BAKUSHU (1951) at 10 p.m. A large collection of Ozu’s films — including EARLY SUMMER (1951) and AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (1962) — is also available to stream online through the Criterion Channel.FridayHERCULES (2014) 11 p.m. on TNT. What happens when you take Greek mythology, turn it into a graphic novel, and adapt that graphic novel into a movie from the “Rush Hour” director Brett Ratner? You get this 2014 blockbuster, which casts Dwayne Johnson as Hercules. (He might be one of the few performers who can make the 1990s animated Disney Hercules character look like a pipsqueak.) The plot, which imagines a Hercules who leads a gang of mercenaries, takes some liberties with the traditional myth: In his review for The Times, Ben Kenigsberg labeled this movie “tongue-in-cheek revisionist mythology, pitched at classics students who prefer to attend their lectures stoned.”SaturdaySTAND UP TO CANCER 8 p.m. on various networks including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. The seventh edition of this cancer research fund-raiser will be hosted by Anthony Anderson, Sofia Vergara, the comedian Ken Jeong and his wife, Dr. Tran Ho, who is a physician and a cancer survivor. The broadcast is slated to include appearances by Jennifer Garner, Matthew McConaughey and Ed Helms, and performances by Common, Stevie Wonder and Brittany Howard.SundayCindy Adams in “Gossip.”ShowtimeGOSSIP 8 p.m. on Showtime. The life of the longtime New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams is the subject of this new, four-part documentary. The series uses Adams’s career as a way to look at the history of American tabloids over the past several decades — she started writing a column for The New York Post in the late 1970s, soon after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. More

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      Times Analyzed 3,000 Videos of Capitol Riot for Documentary

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      Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.On Jan 6., as rioters were attacking the U.S. Capitol, Times journalists on the Visual Investigations team were downloading as many recordings of the violence as they could find.Over the next six months, the team, which combines traditional reporting techniques with forensic visual analysis, gathered over 3,000 videos, equaling hundreds of hours. The journalists analyzed, verified and pinpointed the location of each one, then distilled the footage into a 40-minute documentary that captured the fury and destruction moment by moment. The video, the longest the team has ever produced, provides a comprehensive picture of “a violent assault encouraged by the president on a seat of democracy that he vowed to protect,” as a reporter says in the piece.The visual investigation, “Day of Rage,” which was published digitally on June 30 and which is part of a print special section in Sunday’s paper, comes as conservative lawmakers continue to minimize or deny the violence, even going as far as recasting the riot as a “normal tourist visit.” The video, in contrast, shows up-close a mob breaking through windows, the gruesome deaths of two women and a police officer crushed between doors.“In providing the definitive account of what happened that day, the piece serves to combat efforts to downplay it or to rewrite that history,” said Malachy Browne, a senior producer on the Visual Investigations team who worked on the documentary.“It serves the core mission of The Times, which is to find the truth and show it.”Haley Willis, a producer on the team who helped gather the footage, said that some of the searches required special techniques but that much of the content was easily accessible. Many of the videos came from social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler, a platform that was popular with conservatives and later shut down. The team also collected recordings from journalists on the scene and police radio traffic, and went to court to unseal body camera footage.“Most of where we found this information was on platforms and places that the average person who has grown up on the internet would understand,” Ms. Willis said.In analyzing the videos, the team members verified the images, looked for specific individuals or groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, and identified when and where each one was filmed. Then they put the videos on a timeline, which allowed them to reconstruct the scenes by the minute and track the key instigators.David Botti, a senior producer, said the team wanted to use this footage to explain how the riot happened, to underscore just how close the mob came to the lawmakers and to explore how much worse it could have gotten. For example, the investigation tracked the proximity of the rioters to former Vice President Mike Pence and an aide who was carrying the United States nuclear codes.“It’s rare to get an event of this magnitude that’s covered by so many cameras in so many places by so many different types of people filming with different agendas,” Mr. Botti said. “There was just so much video that someone needed to make sense of it.”Dmitriy Khavin, a video editor on the team, said he wanted viewers to feel like they were on the scene. But he also recognized the images were graphic, so he tried to modulate the pace with slower moments and other visual elements like maps and diagrams.“This event was overwhelming,” Mr. Khavin said. “So we worked a lot on trying to make it easier to process, so it’s not like you’re being bombarded and then tuning out.”Carrie Mifsud, an art director who designed the print special section, said her goal was similar, adding that she wanted to stay true to the video’s foundation. “For this project, it was the sequence and the full picture of events,” she said. Working with the graphics editors Bill Marsh and Guilbert Gates, she anchored the design in a timeline and included as many visuals and text from the documentary as possible to offer readers a bird’s-eye view of what happened.“My hope is that the special section can serve as a printed guide to what happened that day, where it started, and the aftermath, Ms. Mifsud said.For the journalists on the Visual Investigations team, it was challenging to shake off the work at the end of the day. Mr. Khavin said images of the riot would often appear in his dreams long after he stepped away from the computer.“You watch it so many times and look at these people and notice every detail and digest the anger,” he said. “It is difficult.” More

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      Pat Hitchcock O’Connell, Director’s Cast Member and Daughter, Dies at 93

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      She spent time on the sets of films directed by her father, Alfred Hitchcock, and acted in three of them, including “Psycho.” She later wrote a book about her mother’s role as his cinematic partner.Pat Hitchcock looks at the troubling scene unfolding before her in her father’s 1951 thriller, “Strangers on a Train”: Bruno Antony — a psychopath who has strangled the estranged wife of a man, Guy Haines, he has just met and believes would in turn kill his father — is demonstrating his murderous technique on a society matron at a party.“You don’t mind if I borrow your neck for a moment, do you?” asks the oleaginous Bruno, played by Robert Walker. He places his hands on her neck and starts to throttle her.Miss Hitchcock, playing the sister of the woman Guy wants to marry, is seen in a blurry background shot, her expression curious. But it quickly turns to horror as she watches the matron struggle for breath; she sees that Bruno is staring at her, probably because she is wearing glasses like those the murdered woman had worn.She finally freezes in shock after some other partygoers pry Bruno’s hands from the woman’s neck, and he collapses.Miss Hitchcock says nothing in the scene, but it is perhaps her most notable in a modest career that included small roles in two more of her father’s films: “Stage Fright” (1950) and “Psycho” (1960), in which her character, Caroline, is a co-worker of Marion, played by Janet Leigh.“My father wanted a contrast to Janet, someone more bubbly,” she told The Washington Post in 1984. “I barely remember the whole thing, and most people forget I’m in ‘Psycho.’ I say, ‘How can you possibly remember, after everything else that happens?’”Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell — whose connection to her famous father included writing a book about his wife and collaborator, Alma — died on Monday at her home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. She was 93.The death was confirmed by her daughter Tere Carrubba.Patricia Hitchcock was born on July 7, 1928, in London. Her mother, Alma (Reville) Hitchcock, was a film editor who played a critical role as a writer, adviser and story consultant to her husband, a relationship Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell explored in the 2003 book “Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man,” written with Laurent Bouzereau.Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell explored her mother’s professional partnership with her father in a 2003 book.Miss Hitchcock visited her father’s movie sets in England and moved with her parents to the United States in 1939 after her father received an offer from the producer David O. Selznick to direct “Rebecca” (1940). The move came just after the start of World War II in Europe.“My father was devastated because his mother was in England,” Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell told the Television Academy in a 2004 interview. “And I remember him trying to get a call through and the operators saying there are no more calls to the country because of the war.”Miss Hitchcock made her Broadway debut at 13 in John Van Druten’s 1942 comedy “Solitaire,” playing the central role of Virginia, a rich girl who befriends a hobo. She had been recommended for the role by the actress Auriol Lee, who had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Suspicion” the year before.Reviewing the play in the The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote, “She plays Virginia with childish innocence and sincerity.”She had roles in two other Broadway shows, “Violet” (1944) and “The High Ground” (1951). By then, she had already been onscreen in “Stage Fright” as a school friend of Jane Wyman, who played an aspiring actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell was attending at the time. She would graduate in 1950.After “Strangers on a Train,” she was seen mostly on television. She had roles in the sitcoms “My Little Margie” and “The Life of Riley” and in anthology series like “Matinee Theater,” “Playhouse 90” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” a series of mysteries and thrillers that featured her father’s droll onscreen introductions.“I think ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ really brought him to the public because they got to see him,” Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell, who appeared in 10 episodes between 1955 and 1960, said in the Television Academy interview. “He loved it. He had the best time doing those lead-ins.”While her acting career was linked to her father, she made clear in her book that her mother had a strong cinematic partnership with him, which included screenwriting credits on “Suspicion” and “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943).“He would find a story and then take it to my mother and have her read it,” she told the BBC in 1997. “And if she thought it would make a film, he would go ahead with it and have a treatment and screenplay done.”In addition to her daughter Tere, Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell is survived by two other daughters, Mary Stone and Katie Fiala; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. Her husband, Joseph O’Connell, a sales consultant in the trucking business, died in 1994.Mrs. Hitchcock O’Connell said she wished she could have acted in more of her father’s pictures. But that wish went unfulfilled.“I would have loved it if he had believed in nepotism,” she said in the BBC interview. “But he only cast people if he thought they were absolutely right for the part. I could have told him a lot of parts I would have liked to have played, but he didn’t believe it.” More

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      How Jennifer Hudson Prepared to Play Aretha Franklin

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      For the new biopic “Respect,” the singer researched the life of a yearslong friend and role model to better understand the circumstances that shaped her.Jennifer Hudson had plenty of time to think about how to portray Aretha Franklin onscreen. In 2007, soon after Hudson won the Academy Award for best supporting actress — for playing a girl-group singer in “Dreamgirls” — Franklin told Hudson she should play her in a biopic, starting a decade-long friendship filled with weekly conversations. Like Franklin, Hudson grew up singing in church, and she has poured gospel virtuosity into pop songs. And like Franklin, whose mother died at 34 of a heart attack, Hudson experienced sudden, devastating loss: her mother, brother and nephew were murdered in Chicago in 2008. In her career, Hudson has repeatedly paid tribute to Franklin, from using a Franklin song for her “American Idol” audition in 2004 to singing “Amazing Grace” at Franklin’s funeral in 2018. Now, Hudson is playing Franklin in the biopic “Respect” that comes to theaters this week.“Every artist, every musician, you’ve got to cross paths with Aretha, especially if you want to be great,” Hudson said in a video interview from Chicago, where she lives; her gray cat, Macavity, prowled in the background. “She’s always been present in my life in some form, even when I didn’t know it.”As Hudson explained the choices that went into her performance, she said that through the movie, she came to understand just how much of a “blueprint” Franklin was. “Our church music was based solely on her. The ‘Amazing Grace’ that I grew up singing in church came from her ‘Amazing Grace’ album. I didn’t realize that until we were doing research on the film.”Hudson, 39, is both the star and an executive producer of “Respect.” The film chronicles Franklin’s life from her childhood — as a vocal prodigy singing in church alongside her father, the eminent Reverend Clarence L. Franklin — through her pregnancy at 12, her frustrating years singing jazz standards at Columbia Records, her triumphant emergence as the Queen of Soul at Atlantic Records, and the pressures and drinking that threatened all she had achieved. Its story concludes in 1972 with Franklin reclaiming her church heritage to record her landmark live gospel album, “Amazing Grace.”Hudson as Aretha Franklin opposite Tituss Burgess in “Respect.”Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM“Respect” is the first film directed by Liesl Tommy, who was born in South Africa under apartheid and has worked extensively in theater, directing reconceptualized classics and politically charged new plays like “Eclipsed,” about women during the civil war in Liberia. (She was nominated for a best director Tony for that production.) To write the screenplay for “Respect,” Tommy brought in the playwright Tracey Scott Wilson, whose grandfather was a preacher.“When I pitched my idea of the film,” Tommy said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it was that it should start in the church and end in the church. The theme of the film was the woman with the greatest voice on earth, struggling to find her voice. I wanted to know how a person sings with such emotional intensity.“A lot of people have brilliant voices,” she continued, “but she’s the only one who delivers songs the way she does. I don’t think you become the Queen of Soul if you have an easy ride. There was a lived experience that allowed her to sing like that.”Franklin was celebrated anew after her death in 2018. The long-shelved concert film made when she recorded the “Amazing Grace” album was finally released that year. And National Geographic devoted a full season of its television series “Genius” to Franklin, with Cynthia Erivo in the title role. “Aretha Franklin lived a life where there’s room for many, many versions of many stories about her,” Tommy said. “She deserves that.”“Respect” juxtaposes the personal and political currents of Franklin’s career: forging a feminist anthem with “Respect” while grappling with an abusive husband, appearing regularly with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while supporting controversial figures like the Black Power activist Angela Davis. One of the rawest scenes involves Franklin singing at King’s funeral. “Imagine being Aretha Franklin in that era and Dr. King, whom she was so close to, being assassinated,” Hudson said. “Imagine the suffering and the pain she was going through. But in her position, she still had to be that person to be the light in such a dark time. That’s hard.”Though Hudson had spoken regularly with Franklin, she still had to conduct research: “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesStill, Hudson and Tommy were determined to place Franklin’s music at the center of the film. “Everybody is, like, ‘We’ve never seen a biopic with this much music, where you get to hear the songs,’” Hudson said. “This is not a musical. It’s a biopic about artists, musicians. But I can’t think of any biopic or musical that has been done this way.”As executive producer, Hudson said, “I wanted to make sure the right songs were in the film. I wanted ‘Ain’t No Way.’ If I’m just an actor, I don’t really get a say, but with this, it’s like, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t do this unless “Ain’t No Way” is a part of it.’”In an extended recording-studio sequence, Aretha’s sisters, Carolyn and Erma Franklin, sing all the backup vocals — not Cissy Houston, whose wordless soprano counterpoint transfigures the song. “That is part of artistic license,” Tommy said. “You can only have so many characters. You have to keep it focused.”To create immediacy, Hudson delivered Franklin’s onstage performances by singing live on camera — not lip-syncing, not dubbing in vocals afterward. “I wanted to experience it as she did in her life,” Hudson said. “Whatever we were re-enacting and recreating that she did in her life, if it was live, it’s like, ‘Well, let’s do it live.’ ‘Amazing Grace’ was live. ‘Ain’t No Way’ was live. ‘Natural Woman,’ we’re going to sing it live. So it could be authentic to what really was in her life.”Franklin was an accomplished gospel pianist as well as a singer, skills forged in her childhood in the church. Her early, commercially unsuccessful albums for Columbia backed her with celebrated jazz musicians and elaborate orchestral arrangements. It was elegant but in the 1960s, it was already old-fashioned.Hudson — with Marc Maron, left, and Marlon Wayans — learned to play piano for “Respect.” Quantrell D. Colbert/MGMHer return to the piano was one catalyst for her indelible Atlantic hits, defining the groove with churchy foundations and building a visceral call-and-response between her fingers and her voice. Hudson, after a career of working solely as a singer, set out to learn piano. “It was an actor’s choice to say ‘I cannot play Aretha Franklin without learning some element of the piano,’” Hudson said. “And now, when I’m learning music, I no longer just look at the top line, the melody line, the singing line. I’m considering it as an arranger. What key is that in? What is the progression?”Hudson also pondered how to reinterpret Franklin’s songs. Their voices are different: Hudson’s is higher and clearer, Franklin’s bluesier and grittier, and Hudson wanted to emulate Franklin without copying her. “I was using her approach, just allowing whatever that influence is that she’s had on me to come through, while using her inflections and different nuances,” Hudson said. “It was more about the feeling than matching the notes.”Despite their years of conversations, Hudson still had to research Franklin. “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music,” she said. “I know from my experiences of being around her, I used to be like, I can’t really tell where I stand. She didn’t give you much.” So Hudson set out to understand the era in which she grew up and other circumstances to get a sense of what it was like to be a woman then. “It wasn’t for me until literally in the middle of scenes that I realized, the things she had been saying to me, she was speaking from experience. Her greatest expression was through her music — and that was real.” More

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      ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ Review: Don’t Be a Woman, Either

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      In the long-awaited sequel to the 2016 chiller “Don’t Breathe,” a blind veteran battles more home invaders.In horror films, dogs often die. People die too, of course, and female characters are usually the quickest to perish.There are exactly two women and two dogs in “Don’t Breathe 2.” More women are killed than dogs. Such is the chilling moral landscape of this sequel directed by Rodo Sayagues, who wrote both “Don’t Breathe” films with Fede Álvarez, the first movie’s director.“Don’t Breathe,” a runaway 2016 hit, saw a blind veteran turned killing machine, Norman (Stephen Lang), face off against three delinquents in a twist on the home invasion genre. In that film, the robbers were ransacking his house for riches, but Norman was hiding a darker secret involving twisted dreams of fatherhood that were dashed during the heist.In the sequel, our antihero (still played by Lang) has somehow acquired a daughter, Phoenix (Madelyn Grace). He tirelessly trains her in fighting and survival skills, but rarely lets her leave the house. Phoenix is so cooped up that she dreams of life at a children’s center. When some goons show up to kidnap her, a bloody showdown ensues, and her true parentage is revealed.This film is harsh on women and girls, even by horror standards. After dispatching one of its only two women within the film’s first 15 minutes, “Don’t Breathe 2” sticks Phoenix between two despicable patriarchs. And compared to his competition, Norman looks like Father of the Year.“Don’t Breathe 2” is plenty lively, full of violence and action, but a rancid narrative (and some seriously terrible dialogue) overpowers the script. And at the center of it all is Phoenix, needlessly shouldering a violent man’s neuroses at the tender age of 11. At least she gets out alive.Don’t Breathe 2Rated R for ubiquitous impalement and “Midsommar”-level skull-crushing. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More