Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Marvel’s New ‘Captain America’ Is No. 1, Despite a Backlash and Poor Reviews

      by

      “Captain America: Brave New World” was expected to take in $100 million from Thursday through Monday in North America.At the height of the superhero boom a few years ago, Disney pushed its Marvel assembly lines to run faster and faster. After awhile, quality suffered and ticket sales declined.So Disney slowed the pace. Last year, Marvel released one movie (the megasuccessful “Deadpool & Wolverine”) and two Disney+ series. To compare, in 2021 Marvel churned out four movies (with mixed results) and five Disney+ series.Factory problem fixed?Maybe: Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” was a runaway No. 1 at the global box office over the weekend. The movie, which cost at least $300 million to make and market worldwide, was on pace to sell roughly $100 million in tickets from Thursday through Monday in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Moviegoers overseas were poised to chip in another $92 million or so.Maybe not: “Brave New World” received the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest-ever grade (B-minus) from ticket buyers in CinemaScore exit polls. Reviews were only 50 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which resulted in a “rotten” rating from the site. Just two Marvel movies rank lower on the Rotten Tomatoes meter, and both quickly ran out of box office steam after No. 1 starts that were driven by die-hard fans and marketing bombast.“Brave New World” outperformed analyst expectations amid a racist backlash from some internet users and right-wing pundits, who criticized Marvel’s decision to refresh the “Captain America” franchise by giving the title role to a Black actor. (A “D.E.I. hire,” they maintained in numerous X posts, a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.) Anthony Mackie, who took over the character from Chris Evans, also came under attack as “anti-American” for a comment he made while promoting the film overseas.“Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term, you know, ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mr. Mackie said. “It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Oscars Rewind: How ‘American Beauty’ Lost Its Luster

      by

      At the 2000 Academy Awards, the film won five Oscars, including best picture. Then came 9/11, a tanking economy and Kevin Spacey.It was March 2000, and everything was coming up roses for “American Beauty.”There were the box office receipts (more than $350 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation, against a budget of roughly $15 million, according to the data site Box Office Mojo). The rave reviews (“a hell of a picture,” Kenneth Turan wrote in The Los Angeles Times). The three Golden Globes.“It was bizarre, because I expected it to be a little art house movie,” Alan Ball, who won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay, said in a recent phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. “I think that’s all that any of us expected it to be.”“I had no idea it was going to become what it became,” said Annette Bening, who played a materialistic wife in Ball’s satire about a suburban family whose father, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), quits his office job and becomes obsessed with his teenage daughter’s best friend.Then, even more laurels: Five Oscars, including best picture, director (Sam Mendes), original screenplay (Ball), cinematography (Conrad L. Hall) and actor (Spacey).“I’m a little bit overwhelmed,” a wide-eyed Mendes said in his acceptance speech, as he joined the ranks of Delbert Mann, Jerome Robbins, Robert Redford, James L. Brooks and Kevin Costner as the only filmmakers to win the academy’s top directing honor for their feature directorial debut.“I had a flask in my pocket,” Ball said, recalling the moment. “That was the only way I could kind of deal with it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Chiwetel Ejiofor on the Shakespeare Play That ‘Revolutionized’ Him

      by

      The “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” actor talks about the ways John Coltrane, Paul Cézanne and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie influence him.Chiwetel Ejiofor went to see “Bridget Jones’s Diary” back in 2001, fully expecting to be bombarded by female energy.Instead, he left the theater stunned by how much he related to her, he said: “feeling all of that chaos and a little bit out of step with the world but somehow with optimism and hopefulness and a sort of fake-it-till-you-make-it spirit.”So when the director Michael Morris asked him to discuss “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the franchise’s latest installment, over tea in London, Ejiofor didn’t have to fake anything.“I loved the whole world of it,” he said.This time around, Renée Zellweger’s Bridget is a widowed mother of two, and Ejiofor is Mr. Wallaker, her son’s science teacher and a potential love interest.Not that he would dare attempt to replace Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). “They’re iconic,” he said.But portraying a distinct character at a different, perhaps more challenging time in Bridget’s life “made it incredibly fun to play,” he said — if occasionally poignant. “You can’t hold onto your 30-something self obviously, but if you still maintain a bit of that quality, it assists you in navigating these waters.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Ben Whishaw, as Paddington Once More, Is Here to Make You Feel Better

      by

      With “Paddington in Peru,” the British actor voices the beloved bear for the third time. His calming charm remains the franchise’s calling card.Paddington was not part of my childhood. I was a Muppet kid, and Fozzie was my comfort bear of choice.Instead, Paddington came to me as an adult. In 2015, an exceedingly polite, marmalade-slurping fellow in a floppy felt hat and blue duffel coat arrived in theaters and offered an uplifting story about tolerance and pluck. Three years later, the euphorically reviewed “Paddington 2” delivered a reassuring — calming — message about the ugly chaos of modern life: Keep believing in goodness. It’s still out there.So when I recently had the opportunity to talk to Paddington himself, I couldn’t help but turn the interview into a therapy session.It wasn’t actually Paddington, of course. I was on a video call with the British actor Ben Whishaw. He voices Paddington in the PG-rated franchise, the third installment in which, “Paddington in Peru,” arrives in theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday. Our chat was supposed to be about an imaginary world where optimistic bears carry umbrellas and tuck sandwiches under their hats. On the day we spoke, however, my mind was consumed by the real world — the Los Angeles fires, the turmoil of a changing presidential administration, my mother needing heart surgery.Paddington! Say it’s all going to be OK!“I understand,” Whishaw said gently, sounding identical to Paddington in every syllable. “You feel like nothing is stable anymore.”Nicole Kidman with the title character in the first “Paddington” movie.Weinstein CompanyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      A Great James Earl Jones Role That Can Finally Be Seen

      by

      A restored version of Charles Burnett’s 1999 movie “The Annihilation of Fish” opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after being virtually unshown for 25 years.When James Earl Jones died in September at 93, he left behind a great performance that, for 25 years, has gone virtually unseen. The movie, “The Annihilation of Fish,” directed by Charles Burnett, had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 but never received a proper release. Now it’s getting a second chance, in a restoration that opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.“I hope people see it in a fresh light, and look at the talent,” Burnett, 80, said by phone from his home in Los Angeles.A great deal has changed since 1999: Burnett’s masterpiece “Killer of Sheep,” completed in 1977 and accorded a belated opening in 2007, is more widely available than it had been in those intervening years, and an honorary Oscar for Burnett in 2017 put a spotlight on a body of work that has long been championed by critics. The loose movement from which Burnett emerged — the group of film students at the University of California, Los Angeles, who became known as the L.A. Rebellion — has been the subject of academic attention in recent years. And while Jones’s death occurred after the restoration of “The Annihilation of Fish” was completed, the prospect of seeing the actor in one of his finest roles offers yet another reason to check out this surreal and disarming film.Jones plays Obediah Johnson, an immigrant from Jamaica who begins the movie having spent 10 years under institutional care. Obediah, who goes by the name Fish, is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon — an invisible presence that he repeatedly tries to wrestle into submission, baffling those around him.Released from his supervised living situation, Fish makes his way from New York to Los Angeles; he figures that the City of Angels will give him an advantage over a demon. Upon arrival, he moves into a boardinghouse run by an eccentric landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder). Soon they are joined by the woman who becomes the home’s only other resident, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), who is running from an invisible companion of her own: the ghost of Puccini, her lover, with whom she has called it quits. (They can’t marry because California law requires a corporeal presence.)Jones plays Obediah Johnson, who goes by the name Fish. He is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon.Kino LorberWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      If You’re a ‘Bridget Jones’ Fan, You Might Like ‘Crossing Delancey’

      by

      This 1988 rom-com, starring Amy Irving, joins the Criterion Collection this month. But it has been warming hearts for decades.When Warner Brothers released the romantic comedy “Crossing Delancey” in the fall of 1988, it was a modest success, but nothing special. Its reviews were respectful, if not spectacular (“The film’s style is deliberately broad, but the actors give it humor and delicacy,” noted the Times’ Janet Maslin). Its $16 million box office gross (not adjusted for inflation) made it profitable, but no blockbuster. It received a Golden Globe nomination for its star, Amy Irving, but no further major awards recognition. It was the kind of late-1980s mid-budget studio movie that tends to fade away to Tubi streaming and bargain DVDs.But the afterlife of “Crossing Delancey” has proved far more robust. This month, it joins the Criterion Collection, in a handsomely mounted, supplement-packed 4K UHD and Blu-ray edition. It’s also streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of a “New York Love Stories” collection, alongside such established classics as “Annie Hall,” “The Goodbye Girl” and “Moonstruck.” And its most vocal fans are not the boomers and elder Gen-Xers who were going to the movies when it was released; it’s beloved by Millennials and Zoomers who may not have even been alive when it hit theaters.So what makes this gentle would-be romance between a bookstore clerk and a pickle vendor so timeless, so endlessly appealing?From a clinical standpoint, at least to serious cinephiles, it’s a film of historical significance. Its director, Joan Micklin Silver, has been the subject of some critical reappraisal and celebration in recent years as one of the astonishingly few female directors working in the studio system in this era, when even future rom-com titans like Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers were turning their scripts over to male directors. (Silver died in 2020.) Most of her films hold up beautifully, and several are also streaming on the Criterion Channel this month, in an adjacent “Directed by Joan Micklin Silver” collection.“Delancey” also holds the appeal of many New York-set films of the 1970s and 1980s: as a snapshot of a city in flux, an accidental documentary of a Gotham that no longer exists. (Full disclosure: I wrote a book about New York City movies, so I have a vested interest in this topic.) Vintage NYC movies bring back memories for residents of things they miss, and show younger viewers and recent transplants what they never had. In the case of “Delancey,” whose focal character Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving) works in a tony uptown bookstore, we peek inside the era’s vibrant literary culture, from bookstore events that look like gallery openings to employees that read from the pages of Interview magazine to confirm what’s hip. But we also spend time with the weirdos and eccentrics of the city; in one memorable sequence, an old woman regales the clientele of a Gray’s Papaya with her a cappella rendition of “Some Enchanted Evening,” and a customer who’s blasting his boombox at the counter quickly shuts it off (the ultimate sign of respect).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      What to Know About ‘Captain America: Brave New World’

      by

      Need a refresher before seeing “Captain America: Brave New World” in theaters? We explain what has been going on with the superhero.The Marvel Cinematic Universe was vastly different when the last Captain America movie premiered nine years ago. In “Captain America: Civil War,” the supervillain Thanos had not yet snuffed out half of humanity, Tony Stark was still alive and the vibranium shield of Captain America still belonged to Steve Rogers.Now, in “Captain America: Brave New World” (in theaters), the shield and its hefty responsibilities have passed to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the winged Avenger who must decipher the origins of an attack on the President. The film’s plot draws on classic Marvel movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Avengers: Endgame,” but it also features characters from more recent offerings, such as the Marvel series on Disney+, “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.”Here’s what you need to know before watching.How did Sam Wilson become Captain America?Mackie in uniform.Eli Adé/Marvel StudiosFor much of the history of the M.C.U., Captain America was synonymous with Steve Rogers, the frail but big-hearted young man who transformed into one of Marvel’s most recognizable heroes when he received a super serum and an indestructible shield.In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” Rogers befriends Wilson, an Air Force veteran grieving the loss of his wingman. Equipped with the Falcon flight suit, Wilson joins forces with Rogers to combat terrorists and other threats. He quickly becomes one of Captain America’s closest allies, siding with Rogers when the Avengers split into feuding factions in “Captain America: Civil War.” Wilson was one of the many people who disappeared in the five-year “Blip” caused by Thanos’s snap, but he reappeared in “Avengers: Endgame.”In “Endgame,” Rogers goes back in time to return the Infinity Stones but instead of returning to the present day, he decides to stay in the past and live a full life with his lover Peggy Carter. Wilson ultimately finds Rogers sitting on a bench, his face wrinkled and his body aged. Rogers hands him the shield and anoints him as the new Captain America. “I’ll do my best,” Wilson says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Annihilation of Fish’ Review: A Gem That’s Worth the Wait

      by

      The director Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular film from 1999, starring James Earl Jones, is finally receiving a theatrical release.Obediah Johnson — the lost-and-found soul played by a magnificent James Earl Jones in “The Annihilation of Fish” — has a barrel chest and a voice that sounds like it emerged, warmed and polished, from unfathomable depths. It’s an instrument that many know from “Star Wars” and “The Lion King,” in which Jones voiced two of the most totemic fathers in movies. Yet the eloquence of his basso profundo was also instrumental in lesser-known works like “Annihilation,” Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular view from the margins that is receiving a theatrical release 26 years after its first public screening at a film festival.It seems shocking that it’s taken this long for the film to hit theaters given Burnett’s elevated standing; his masterful “Killer of Sheep” (1978) is a milestone in American cinema and his reputation long established. There are a number of reasons that “The Annihilation of Fish,” his fifth feature, didn’t reach the world earlier. Among other things, genuine independent filmmaking, the kind that transcends formula and expectations and comes without corporate sponsorship, has always been difficult to market. And Burnett, whose filmography includes “To Sleep With Anger” (1990), a neo-Gothic tale about a Southern interloper that slips between drama and comedy, has always defied compartmentalization. He can’t be pigeonholed.“The Annihilation of Fish” similarly evades classification, genre and otherwise. The movie is often gently funny, though occasionally lurches into boisterous excess, with jolts of slapstick and glints of ticklish nonsense. At the same time, there’s a strong current of melancholy running throughout the story, which complicates and occasionally destabilizes its comedy. There are moments here when you laugh but aren’t sure if you should, and instances when you wonder (and worry) if you’re laughing with the characters or at them, and whether it matters. Most movies prompt you about when it’s time to laugh and to cry; not this one.Written by Anthony C. Winkler, the film tells the tale of Obediah — he goes by Fish — a Jamaican immigrant who’s long lived in a mental facility in New York and claims to be bedeviled by an invisible demon he calls Hank. The demon pops up unexpectedly, as imps tend to do, and Fish keeps him in check by wrestling him. They’re grappling in church soon after the movie opens, a tussle that ends with Fish being abruptly ousted from his group home. “It was like Pearl Harbor,” he protests to a functionary, “sneak attack!” No matter. Soon, he is out the door with his suitcase and headed West, where his story begins in earnest.Fish ends up in that vexed paradise known as Los Angeles, where he moves into a modest, dilapidated apartment building run by a friendly eccentric, Mrs. Muldroone (a winning Margot Kidder). With its lush garden and stained, peeling interior, the building is the sort of place you can imagine the likes of Nathanael West and David Lynch making poetically dark use of. By contrast, Fish settles in with the pragmaticism of someone who must make do with what little life has afforded him: He spruces up his new apartment, transforming squalor into a home. Not long after, he meets Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave).The trickiest character in the movie, Poinsettia is introduced sometime before she and Fish meet; you know she’s important to his story from how Burnett cuts between them, like an anxious matchmaker. A loud, aggressively flamboyant figure given to voluble yowling and mewling, Poinsettia lives in San Francisco and claims to be in a relationship with the invisible and very dead Giacomo Puccini, a fixation that involves some strained comedy. Things improve when she too leaves for Los Angeles (before she does, Burnett tucks in an allusion to “Vertigo,” a classic of mad love), where she moves into the apartment across from Fish’s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More