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      ‘Never Gonna Snow Again’ Review: You’re Getting Warmer

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      There’s a stranger in town, and his touch is hypnotic, which is just what these icy, disaffected people needed.When Zenia (Alec Utgoff), a handsome masseur with an enigmatic smile, arrives at a wealthy gated community in Poland, he quickly gains a reputation among the depressed locals for his extraordinary — perhaps even magical — healing abilities. It doesn’t hurt that the majority of his clients are anguished women, and that Zenia’s warm, attentive touch purges them of their routine misery, if only for a little while.From Edward Scissorhands to Peter Sellers in “Being There,” the curious outsider figures as a spiritual balm to their bourgeois malaise. In many ways, “Never Gonna Snow Again,” which the Polish filmmaker Małgorzata Szumowska co-directed with the cinematographer Michał Englert, follows suit.Zenia, a Ukrainian migrant worker born exactly seven years before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, is no otherworldly idiot — though the condescension he faces suggests his employers believe otherwise.As Zenia becomes a community fixture, the lives of his alienated clients unfold in a series of vignettes, at turns bleakly somber, but also cheeky. We meet, among others, a housewife overwhelmed by her impudent children; an alcoholic woman obsessed with her three bulldogs; a bohemianesque widow whose creepy son manufactures synthetic drugs. Bored, they begin to lust after Zenia while dealing with their anxieties around class, climate change and Polish identity — issues that Szumowska and Englert subtly integrate, yet leave opaque.From the sterile symmetry of the neighborhood, composed of lifeless McMansions, the film cuts away to glimmering images of a shadowy forest, moments of uncanny enchantment meant to visualize the sublime experience produced by Zenia’s hypnosis sessions.Utgoff is irresistibly compelling, instilling in his character a silent yet singular presence worthy of the “superhero” status that he ultimately acquires. Yet Zenia, the flesh and bones human, emerges in fragments — a shimmying dance routine, a moonlit scooter ride with his security guard pal — indicating there’s much more here than meets the eye, if we could only truly see.Never Gonna Snow AgainNot rated. In Polish, Russian, French and Vietnamese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Vicky Krieps Gave Hollywood One More Try. It Wasn’t So Bad.

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      The “Phantom Thread” actress, burned by the experience of promoting the movie in the United States, retreated to art-house obscurity. Now, she’s back in the M. Night Shyamalan blockbuster “Old.”RAMBROUCH, Luxembourg — Four years ago, Vicky Krieps seemed destined for Hollywood stardom. The Luxembourgian actress had emerged from near obscurity to star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” in which she portrayed the tormented muse of a domineering fashion designer played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Her performance — vulnerable, prickly, anguished — garnered critical raves and suggested the arrival of a major new talent.Then Krieps seemed to vanish, turning down a host of Hollywood offers, including a big-budget action movie, and instead taking smaller roles, mostly in European art-house films and German television.“I needed two years,” she said recently, sitting in the backyard of her family’s 200-year-old home in rural Luxembourg. The experience of being in the public eye, she said, “was almost traumatizing.”This summer, however, Krieps, 37, is back in the spotlight, with lead roles in two movies at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (Mia Hansen-Love’s “Bergman Island” and Mathieu Amalric’s “Hold Me Tight”). And in a move that signals an end to her self-imposed Hollywood exile, she is also starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s glossy new horror fable, “Old,” which arrived in U.S. movie theaters on July 23.Krieps, who is self-deprecating and warm in person but prone to earnest tangents about art and nature, said that the notion of “Old” being shown in so many theaters was stressing her out.“I carry this huge paradox: I’ve become an actor, but I don’t want to be seen — it doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “I’m really scared that people might recognize me.”In “Phantom Thread,” Krieps plays the muse and lover of a dressmaker, played by Daniel Day-Lewis.Laurie Sparham/Focus FeaturesIn “Old,” Gael García Bernal and Krieps play a couple who witness their children turn into adults in a span of hours.Universal PicturesIn the film, which also stars Gael García Bernal, she plays a mother of two who, while on a family vacation, becomes trapped on a beach where people grow old at a vastly accelerated rate. Her character, who witnesses her children turn into adults in a span of hours, is the film’s emotional anchor, and Krieps has received widespread praise for her performance.In a Zoom interview, Shyamalan said that he had been a fan of the actress since “Phantom Thread,” and that he had been drawn to her “classical dignity.” He added: “It’s so beautiful having someone of her caliber being so vulnerable at the center of a genre film.”Her decision to do the movie, she said, stemmed from a confluence of factors. Amid the pandemic, she had been thinking a lot about the nature of time: “I felt that the film could tell us something about how we as people live in a construction of time and space, running from A to B, but really running from ourselves.”But she also said she had increasingly come to terms with anxieties that emerged with the release of “Phantom Thread.” At that time, she said, she had approached her career — and life — without much of a plan, and had been unprepared for the promotional demands and industry attention.Krieps, who now mostly lives in Berlin with her two children, said that her desire for self-effacement was largely rooted in her upbringing in Luxembourg, a tiny duchy squeezed between Belgium, France and Germany. The country’s size is conducive to modesty, she said.Krieps said that “Old” had something to say about how people are “running from A to B, but really running from ourselves.”Julien Mignot for The New York TimesA self-described “dreamy” teenager, after high school she left Luxembourg for South Africa, where she spent a year volunteering as a teacher for children with AIDS. While there, she had an epiphany about pursuing an acting career in a damascene moment involving a low-lying mountain that she glimpsed from a road. “I had a deep connection to this mountain and its energy,” she said, “and I decided I wanted to be someone who can capture this feeling, and release it, maybe on a stage.”After enrolling in (and leaving) acting school in Zurich, she cobbled together a living with mostly small roles in German television and film. Then one day she received an email with a video audition request that she distractedly misread on her phone as an invitation to try out for a student film project. “I was sitting on the bus and had just started an interesting conversation with a stranger — you know how it is,” she said.She sent in a submission, recorded on her phone, and it wasn’t until she received a call from her agent alerting her that Anderson had liked the video that she realized it was for “Phantom Thread.”The movie’s press tour, she said, had been a culture shock. She had never had a credit card, and when she arrived in Los Angeles, she was surprised to discover that she would need one to check into her hotel. “I said, ‘I’ll go to a campground — I don’t care.’” (The hotel eventually relented.)Then came her media training: “It was a woman telling me what was wrong about me and to not say my opinions,” she said. “I walked through L.A. in shock, thinking, ‘Oh my God, is this what they want from me?’”That experience cemented her decision to evade international scrutiny by returning to Europe. Her work there included a supporting role in “Das Boot,” a German TV series and, more recently, “Hold Me Tight” in French and “Bergman Island,” Hansen-Love’s long-gestating English-language project. That film, set to be released in the United States on Oct. 15, centers on a filmmaker couple (played by Krieps and Tim Roth) who visit the Swedish island of Faro, where the director Ingmar Bergman once lived.Hansen-Love, a French movie director, said in a telephone interview that Krieps had a “melancholy that is very European” and compared her acting style to that of Isabelle Huppert.“I had thought: ‘Phantom Thread’ will go away again, people will forget me,” Krieps said.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesIn “Bergman Island,” Krieps’s character has a series of encounters that make her question her role as a mother, partner and artist. Krieps said that her character’s search for an identity had also helped her overcome some of her own reluctance about Hollywood.“This woman is trying to find a solution to the question of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is real?’ The answer is: There is no real,” she said, adding that the realization had pushed her to become more open-minded about what projects she wanted to pursue.Krieps said she would be willing to make more big-budget American movies in the future, though her post-pandemic schedule is already packed. She recently completed filming “Corsage,” a German-language biopic of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and her upcoming projects include a “Three Musketeers” adaptation and a film by the Belgian director Philippe Van Leeuw, in which she is set to play a United States border agent, her first onscreen attempt at an American accent.Her return to U.S. filmmaking, she added, felt a little bit like closing a book that she had left unopened. “I had thought: ‘Phantom Thread’ will go away again, people will forget me — but I can’t undo this movie,” she said. “It’s like undoing who I am.” More

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      The Woman Who Captured ‘Jaws,’ Then Worked to Undo the Damage

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      A documentary tracks the extraordinary life of Valerie Taylor, spearfishing champion turned passionate conservationist on behalf of endangered sharks.Steven Spielberg needed a real shark. Before the young director began filming “Jaws” with his famously malfunctioning animatronic beast in Martha’s Vineyard, he hired two underwater cinematographers to film great white sharks off the coast of South Australia.Skilled divers and well-known in their home country, the Australian couple Ron and Valerie Taylor set off to capture the footage that would be used in the climactic 1975 scene in which Richard Dreyfuss’s Hooper, seemingly safe in a shark cage, confronts the monster terrorizing beachgoers.But, as Valerie Taylor, the subject of a new documentary, said in a recent video interview from her home in Sydney, “You might be able to direct a dog or a human or a horse, but you can’t direct a shark.”It quickly became clear that the Taylors were battling two unwilling parties: the shark and the professional stuntman, Carl Rizzo, who didn’t know how to dive and panicked at being lowered in the cage. As he waffled on the boat deck, the shark approached, became tangled in the wires supporting the cage and ultimately snapped the empty container loose from the winch, sending it plummeting into the depths.Ron filmed the whole thing underwater, while Valerie grabbed a camera on the ship and shot overhead. Spielberg was so enamored with the footage of the unexpected turn of events, he had the script rewritten to accommodate it, altering Hooper’s fate from shark bait to survivor as the animal thrashed overhead.Valerie’s work on “Jaws” is just one chapter in her incredible life, which saw her shift from lethal spearfisher to filmmaker and pioneering conservationist. “She was like a Marvel superhero to me,” the Australian producer Bettina Dalton said. “She influenced everything about my career and my passion for the natural world.”Taylor worked as an underwater cinematographer. Her mother told her, “Try what you like. It can’t hurt you and you’ll learn.”Ron and Valerie TaylorThat reverence led Dalton to team up with the director Sally Aitken for the National Geographic documentary “Playing With Sharks,” which follows Taylor’s career and is now available on Disney+.Born in Australia and raised mostly in New Zealand, Valerie, now 85, grew up poor. She was hospitalized with polio at age 12 and forced to drop out of school while she relearned how to walk. She began working as a comic strip artist then dabbled in theater acting, but hated being tied to the same place every day.“I had a good mother. She said, just do what you like. Try what you like. It can’t hurt you and you’ll learn,” Valerie, her statement earrings swinging under her silver hair, told me emphatically. When she began diving and spearfishing professionally, however, her mother was “horrified.” Valerie added, “I was supposed to get married and have children.”She did eventually marry Ron, a fellow spearfishing champion who was also skilled with an underwater camera, and they began making films documenting marine life together. Valerie, with her glamorous “Bond girl” looks, became the focal point since they could fetch more money if she appeared onscreen. They were together until Ron died of leukemia in 2012.“Here’s this incredible front-of-house character, and here’s an amazing technical wizard,” Aitken said. “Together, they realized that was a winning combination.”Not only did Valerie have a magnetic on-camera presence, she had a rare ability to connect with animals, including menacing sharks, which were then little understood.“They all have different personalities. Some are shy, some are bullies, some are brave,” Valerie said. “When you get to know a school of sharks, you get to know them as individuals.”After she killed a shark while shooting a film in the 1960s, the Taylors had an epiphany: sharks needed to be studied and understood, rather than slain. They quit spearfishing entirely, and Aitken likened their journey from hunters to conservationists to that of John James Audubon.Taylor on a dive in 1982. Many of the underwater scenes she witnessed in her early days no longer exist, she said.Ron and Valerie Taylor“I have that sort of personality that I don’t get afraid. I get angry,” Valerie said. “Even when I’ve been bitten, I’ve just stayed still and waited for it to let go — because they’ve made a mistake.”Still, she conceded, “I don’t expect other people to behave like I do.”Her signature look, a pink wet suit and brightly colored hair ribbon, could be seen as a defiant embrace of her femininity in a male-dominated industry, but it was also a simple way for her to stand out in underwater footage. “Ron wanted color in a blue world,” Valerie said. “He said, ‘Cousteau has a red beanie, you can have a red ribbon.’ That was that.”When asked, she shrugged at the idea that she faced additional challenges as the only woman on boats full of men for most of her life, especially in the ’50s and ’60s, when women were still largely expected to stick to traditional roles.“I was as good as they were, so there you go. No problem,” she said. “And, although I didn’t realize it, I was probably as tough.”The “Playing With Sharks” filmmakers, who pored over decades of media coverage and archival footage, described Valerie as someone who faced an uphill battle on multiple levels but who was also seen as an intriguing novelty.“Of course, she had to fight to be taken seriously,” Aitken said. “She was working class. She was someone who really had very little education. I think the culture saw her as extraordinary. That in itself can be a liberating path, precisely because you are singular.”When “Jaws” became an instant, unexpected blockbuster in 1975, the Taylors realized that the movie was doing harm that they’d never considered: Recreational shark hunting gained popularity and audiences feared legions of bloodthirsty sharks were stalking humans just below the surface. In reality, there are hundreds of species of sharks, and only a few have been known to bite humans. Those that do usually mistake people for their natural prey, like sea lions.“For some reason, filmgoers believed it. There’s no shark like that alive in the world today,” Valerie said. “Ron had a saying: ‘You don’t go to New York and expect to see King Kong on the Empire State Building. Neither should you go into the water expecting to see Jaws.’”Valerie and Ron Taylor worked together until his death in 2012. Ron and Valerie TaylorIn an attempt to quell public fears, Universal flew the Taylors to the United States for a talk-show tour educating the public about sharks, and Valerie said, “I’ve been fighting for the poor old, much maligned sharks and the marine world, in general, ever since.”In 1984, she helped campaign to make the grey nurse shark the first protected shark species in the world. Her nature photography has been featured in National Geographic. The same area where she and Ron filmed their “Jaws” sequence is now a marine park named in their honor. And she still publishes essays passionately defending animals.Yet, shark populations have been decimated around the world, primarily because of overfishing, and Valerie said many of the underwater scenes she witnessed in her early days no longer exist.“I hate being old, but at least it means I was in the ocean when it was pristine,” she said, adding that today, “it’s like going to where there was a rainforest and seeing a field of corn.”Despite all that’s covered in “Playing With Sharks,” Valerie said, “it’s not my whole life story, by any means.” There was the time she was left at sea and saved herself by anchoring her hair ribbons to a piece of coral until another boat happened upon her. Or the day she taught Mick Jagger how to scuba dive on a whim. (He was a quick study, despite the weight belt sliding right down his narrow hips.) She also survived breast cancer.Though she still dives, her arthritis makes being in the colder Australian waters difficult, and she’s eager to return to Fiji, where swimming feels like “taking a bath.”“I can’t jump anymore, not that I particularly want to jump,” she said. “But if I go into the ocean, I can fly.” More

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      Universal Pictures Spends Big for New 'Exorcist' Trilogy

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      The deal, expected to be announced this week, is for more than $400 million and is a direct response to the streaming giants that are upending the film industry’s economics.LOS ANGELES — Heads are spinning in Hollywood: Universal Pictures and its streaming-service cousin have closed a $400 million-plus megadeal to buy a new “Exorcist” trilogy, signaling a sudden willingness to compete head-on with the technology giants that are upending entertainment industry economics.Donna Langley, the film studio’s chairwoman, teamed with Peacock, NBCUniversal’s fledgling streaming service, to make the purchase, which is expected to be announced this week, according to three people briefed on the matter. These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the still-private deal, said the price was in the vicinity of the $465 million that Netflix paid in March for two sequels to the 2019 whodunit “Knives Out.”Universal had no immediate comment.The “Knives Out” and “Exorcist” deals — both negotiated by Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists superagent — solidify a new streaming gold rush. The eye-popping talent paydays of 2017 and 2018, when Netflix scooped up big-name television creators, have migrated to the film world.The proliferation of streaming services and their scramble for subscribers has driven up prices for established film properties and filmmakers. At the same time, traditional movie companies are under more pressure than ever to control those same creative assets; moviegoing has been severely disrupted by the pandemic and may never fully recover.Linda Blair as the possessed Regan in the original “Exorcist,” which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture.Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated PressIt is surprising, however, that Universal and Peacock have come to the table in such a major way. NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, has started to devote more resources to the little-watched Peacock. Programming from the Tokyo Olympics is available on the service, for instance. But Hollywood has heretofore viewed the year-old Peacock as unwilling to compete for top-tier movie deals.Universal’s decision to revisit “The Exorcist” is striking in and of itself. The R-rated 1973 film about a baffled mother (Ellen Burstyn) and her demonically possessed daughter (Linda Blair) was a global box office sensation — “the biggest thing to hit the industry since Mary Pickford, popcorn, pornography and ‘The Godfather,’” as Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times in 1974. It has become a cultural touchstone, the type of film that fans and critics guard as sacrosanct.Universal is not remaking “The Exorcist,” which was directed by William Friedkin from a screenplay that William Peter Blatty adapted from his own novel. But the studio will, for the first time, return the Oscar-winning Ms. Burstyn to the franchise. (Two forgettable “Exorcist” sequels and a prequel were made without her between 1977 and 2004.) Joining her will be Leslie Odom Jr., a Tony winner for “Hamilton” on Broadway and a double Oscar nominee for “One Night in Miami.” He will play the father of a possessed child. Desperate for help, he tracks down Ms. Burstyn’s character.Suffice it to say, Satan is not thrilled to see her again.David Gordon Green, known for Universal’s blockbuster 2018 reboot of the “Halloween” horror franchise, will direct the new “Exorcist” films and serve as a screenwriter. The horror impresario Jason Blum (“Get Out,” the “Purge” series) is among the producers, along with David Robinson, whose company, the independent Morgan Creek Entertainment, has held the “Exorcist” movie rights. The Blumhouse film executive Couper Samuelson is among the executive producers. (Blumhouse has a first-look deal with Universal.)The first film in the trilogy is expected to arrive in theaters in late 2023. Under the terms of the deal, the second and third films could debut on Peacock, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.Donna Langley, Universal’s chairwoman, and the horror maestro Jason Blum, who will help produce the new trilogy.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for CinemaconIn a business sense, the deal reflects the boldness of Ms. Langley, chairwoman of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. In the wake of the pandemic, which brought movie production to a halt, she led an effort to develop safety protocols to get the assembly lines moving again. In the case of “Exorcist,” she led a push inside NBCUniversal to pull off the big-money deal.The cost of the package is so high because Ms. Langley and her deals maven, Jimmy Horowitz, did not play by Hollywood’s old economic rules; they took a risk and played by new ones — those used by streaming insurgents like Netflix, Amazon and Apple to outbid traditional film companies, at least until now.The old model, the one that studios have used for decades to make high-profile film deals, involves paying fees upfront and then sharing a portion of the revenue from ticket sales, DVD purchases and television rerun licensing around the world. The bigger the hit, the bigger the “back end” paydays for certain talent partners.The streaming giants have done it differently. They pay more upfront — usually much, much more — in lieu of any back-end payments, which gives them complete control over future revenue. It means that talent partners get paid as if their projects are hits before they are released (or even made). The risk for talent: If their projects become monster hits, they do not get a piece of the windfall. More

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      ‘Dune’ and Princess Diana Biopic to Debut at a Starry Venice Film Festival

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      Hollywood blockbusters are back on the program after a less celebrity-driven edition last year, but the event will still be far from business as usual.“Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated science-fiction epic starring Timothée Chalamet, and Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer,” which dramatizes Princess Diana’s decision to divorce Prince Charles, are among the movies that will premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival.The festival, scheduled to run from Sept. 1-11, will also see the presentation of new films by Pedro Almodóvar (“Madres Paralelas,” starring Penélope Cruz), Ridley Scott (“The Last Duel,” with Matt Damon) and Jane Campion (the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring “The Power of the Dog”), as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter,” based on a novel by Elena Ferrante and starring Olivia Colman.The star-studded lineup, announced at a news conference on Monday, suggests that this year’s festival will be a more glamorous affair after last year’s scaled-down pandemic edition, which featured few celebrity names.The presence of some Hollywood blockbusters on the program shows that “Americans have emerged from the lockdown and they are ready to restart,” Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, said at the news conference.Some of the most anticipated U.S.-funded movies will appear out of competition, including “Dune,” the latest attempt to adapt that Frank Herbert novel following efforts by David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Scott’s “The Last Duel,” starring Damon as a knight who challenges his squire, played by Adam Driver, to a duel after his wife (Jodie Comer) accuses the sidekick of rape.“Halloween Kills,” the latest movie in the “Halloween” horror franchise, will also premiere out of competition. It stars Jamie Lee Curtis, who will receive the festival’s lifetime achievement award.In the competition, Almodóvar’s “Madres Paralelas” (“Parallel Mothers”), about two women who meet in a hospital where they are about to give birth, is one of 21 films that will compete for the Golden Lion, the festival’s main prize.It will be up against Larraín’s “Spencer,” starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana; Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” about a sadistic ranch owner; and Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” about a gambler caught in a revenge plot.Five of the 21 competition films are directed by women, Barbera said — down from eight last year. “It might seem a step backward, but that is just a partial point of view,” he added. Female directors appeared to have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic more than their male counterparts, he said, adding, “I really hope they will have a comeback.”Bong Joon Ho, the director of “Parasite,” will chair the competition jury that also includes the British actress Cynthia Erivo and Chloé Zhao, the director of “Nomadland,” which won last year’s Golden Lion and went on to win the Academy Award for best film.This year’s festival may see the return of blockbusters to Venice, but it will still be far from business as usual. Roberto Cicutto, the festival’s president, said at the news conference that rules introduced last year to limit the spread of the coronavirus, such as compulsory seat reservations and masks for indoor screenings, would likely continue.In line with Italian government regulations coming into force Aug. 6, anyone attending screenings, or even eating indoors at the festival site, will be required to show proof of having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, a recent negative test result or a certificate showing proof of having recovered from the illness in the past six months.Italy’s government announced the requirements this month as virus numbers rose across the country. On Sunday, the public health authorities reported new 4,742 cases. That is far down from this year’s peak of over 25,000 new daily cases in March, but the rise in cases has caused concern in a country that the pandemic hit hard last year.“This year, we hoped we could be more relaxed,” Cicutto said. “For the time being, it isn’t so. But we continue to hope.” More

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      Pulitzer-Winning Critic Wesley Morris Captured the Moment

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      For his piercing insights on race and culture, Wesley Morris recently received his second Pulitzer Prize. But he won over colleagues long before that.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Wesley Morris was ready for his medal.In 2012, he had just won his first Pulitzer Prize for criticism, as a writer for The Boston Globe, and was at the ceremony at Columbia University with his mother. But when he wondered out loud where he could pick up the award, he got a surprise.“Oh, sweetie,” Tracy K. Smith, that year’s poetry winner, told him. “We don’t get a medal, only the public service winner gets that. We get a paperweight.” (OK, she was exaggerating a little.)“My mom was like, ‘Oh my God, Wesley,’” he said, laughing.It was the rare oversight for Mr. Morris, a deep thinker and New York Times critic at large who recently won his second Pulitzer Prize for criticism, the only person to receive that award twice.He was recognized for an ambitious body of work over the past year on race and culture that included not only incisive essays about the racial justice movement and the impact of cellphone videos on Black Americans, but poignant personal pieces like a Times Magazine story about how growing a mustache was connected to his sense of Blackness.“I love important, weighty ideas,” he said, though he added that he also likes considering topics that are lighthearted and frivolous.Gilbert Cruz, The Times’s culture editor, said Mr. Morris’s pieces stood out for their scope and accessibility.“He has a unique ability to step back, look across the cultural and social landscape and speak to us in a way that makes it seem as if we’re engaged in a conversation,” Mr. Cruz said. “A funny, smart, sometimes emotional and always riveting conversation.”Sia Michel, The Times’s deputy culture editor who has edited Mr. Morris’s work for three years, similarly praised both Mr. Morris’s intellect and his common touch. “He has an imposing sense of critical authority and moral authority but always invites the reader in,” she said.Mr. Morris said his dreams of becoming a critic dated back to when he received an assignment in eighth grade: Write a report after either reading Howard Fast’s 1961 novel “April Morning” or watching the TV movie version of it. He decided to do both, then wrote a scathing critical review.“You didn’t really do what I asked you to do,” he recalls his teacher, John Kozempel, telling him. “But you did do a thing that exists in the world. It’s called criticism, and this is a good example of it.”Of course, not everyone can write elegant essays that educate even when they excoriate, and which provide an entry point to a conversation rather than closing a door to opposing views. But when Mr. Morris begins to put words on a page, the ideas flow.“I don’t know how I feel about a lot of things until I sit down to write about them,” he said. “That’s my journey as a writer — to figure out where my brain, heart and moral compass are with respect to whatever I’m writing about.”When Mr. Morris files a story, Ms. Michel said, she always knows she’ll get four things: surprising pop cultural and historical connections; a brilliant thesis; at least one “breathtaking” passage that reads like poetry; and a memorable, revised-to-perfection ending.“He always reworks his last graph until it slays,” she said.Mr. Morris said his biggest challenge is that he has so many ideas, he never has time to pursue all of them.“I can be paralyzed by my glut of ideas,” he said, “which often means I wait to write things until the last minute.” He added that he’s been known to write 3,000-word pieces on a same-day deadline.Yet somehow, amid writing for the daily paper, the Sunday Arts & Leisure section and The Times Magazine, as well as co-hosting the weekly culture podcast “Still Processing,” Mr. Morris manages to make time for everyone, his podcast co-host, Jenna Wortham, said.When Mr. Morris won his first Pulitzer in 2012, Mx. Wortham, who uses she/they pronouns, was a newly hired Business reporter for The Times who had been assigned to write a story about him. They left a voice mail message and sent an email to Mr. Morris.Thinking he would be too busy to respond right away, Mx. Wortham went out for coffee but after returning found a long, thoughtful voice mail from Mr. Morris with “more information than I needed.”“It left the deepest impression on me,” Mx. Wortham said. “And I remember thinking I would strive to be someone who always made time for other reporters.”Their friendship, which began six years ago, has only blossomed and deepened since then, Mx. Wortham said.“I’ve seen Wesley give a barefoot unhoused man money for a pair of shoes and absolutely demolish a dance floor with equal amounts of grace,” she said. “There’s no one like him, and we are all so lucky to exist in this iteration of life alongside him.”Although Mr. Morris’s profile is much higher now, he said he intended to respond to every one of the hundreds of congratulatory emails, texts, calls and Twitter messages he received after this year’s win — a goal that’s still in progress.“I’m still not done,” he said recently. “Even with strangers, if someone took a second out of their life to congratulate me for this, it’s important to me to say thank you.” More