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      ‘Titanic’ Is My Favorite Movie. There, I Said It.

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      A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets; this is mine.A year ago, I went on a date, and the guy asked me what my favorite movie was. A simple question, but I stammered. His brow furrowed. “Didn’t your profile say that you love movie quotes?” I didn’t want to reveal the truth — not so soon, at least — so I hid behind the Criterion Collection (“ ‘La Strada,’ ‘Rebecca,’ etc.”). Then a scene flashed in my head — a swell of music, an enormous hat: “You can be blasé about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic!” A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets; my secret is that I love “Titanic.” This has been true since I was a 10-year-old in a darkened theater, weeping uncontrollably on my mother’s lap. Like the children onscreen waving farewell to the doomed steamer, I marveled at the grandeur of what was passing before my eyes: a sweeping history lesson and a devastating romance between a first-class passenger named Rose (Kate Winslet) and a below-decks dreamboat named Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio). Until then, my cultural diet had consisted of Rodgers and Hammerstein singalongs and the Disney canon. “Titanic” — rapturous, tragic, real — was an awakening. In just over three hours, the film colored all my notions of grown-up life: love, loss, the female struggle, the unbreakable bond of a string quartet.To my child’s mind, “Titanic” was impossibly vast: It felt as though the movie encompassed the entire mysterious range of human life. It was, unequivocally, the most powerful experience I’d ever had with a work of art — but I was 10. I couldn’t fully understand this feeling of transcendence, so I just kept rewatching. I saw the movie three times when it was released in 1997. The following year, when it came out on VHS — a fat brick of a box set, neatly split into two acts of happy and sad — I routinely popped in the pre-iceberg tape to enjoy with my after-school snack. I began fixating on unlikely features of the film, delighting in its ancillary characters’ banal dialogue: the clueless graybeards (“Freud? Who is he? Is he a passenger?”); the poetry of the bridge (“Take her to sea, Mr. Murdoch. Let’s stretch her legs”); the snobbery of Rose’s mother (“Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they’re not too crowded”). As I matured, I stopped my regular viewings, but the movie continued playing in my mind. I was a melancholy indoor girl myself, and Rose perfectly articulated my teenage ennui: “the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter.” Even in the face of more complex ideas and challenges — like the travails of gender politics or problems of class — I found myself leaning on its casual wisdom and glossy sentimentality. The film’s unsubtle gender commentary began to feel revolutionary. (“Of course it’s unfair,” the chilly matriarch says while tightening the strings of her daughter’s corset. “We’re women.”) In the late ’90s, everyone I knew adored “Titanic,” but I felt in my heart that my own love affair with it was something special. It was, unequivocally, the most powerful experience I’d ever had with a work of art — but I was 10.Two decades’ worth of late-night jokes and revisionist hot takes, however, have coated my feelings of affection in deep shame. (Just last month, “the iceberg that sank the Titanic” appeared in a bit on “Saturday Night Live,” lamenting, “Why are people still talking about this?”) The older I grew, the more my enduring admiration felt like some sort of clerical error in my development, a box I had accidentally checked on my application to adulthood. I told myself it was just a guilty pleasure. How could it be anything else? Saying “Titanic” is my favorite movie would be like saying my favorite painting is the “Mona Lisa”: It suggests a lack of discernment. But for me, the movie’s broadness is kind of the point. What snarky critics don’t appreciate is that the movie is a meme because it is a masterpiece. The film has become a cultural shorthand, a way of talking about ideas that are bigger than ourselves — mythic themes of hubris, love and tragedy — while also making a joke. (Has any line captured our collective quarantine mood more than that old chestnut, “It’s been 84 years …”?) It also won 11 Oscars. This past January, I decided, for the first time in a decade, to watch the movie from start to finish. When I was young — in my Tape 1 years — I was dazzled by the film’s spectacle. And yes, watching again, I fell for it in all the old ways: Jack’s good looks, Rose’s Edwardian walking suit, the allure of a real party. But as the camera panned over the sleeping elderly Rose, I broke into sobs seeing the pictures of her post-Titanic life — riding horses on the beach, climbing onto a flying machine dressed in Amelia Earheart cosplay, posing in an on-set glamour shot. After a year of great loss, the pathos of that moment hit me differently. Never mind her heart — her life went on. She survived a disaster and ended up living a life so full that the experience became just a memory. It was the message in a bottle I needed, one of many that “Titanic” has sent my way over the years. I imagine I’ll be receiving these messages forever — even as an old lady, warm in her bed.Jessie Heyman is executive editor of Vogue.com. More

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      Hollywood Has a New Way to Dramatize Addiction

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      Recent films dive into the profound grief experienced by so many families. What do they still get wrong?The first words in the film trailer, spoken over ominous piano, come from a doctor with a grim prognosis. “I’m going to level with you, Molly,” he says. “Opioids have a 97 percent relapse rate.” This is an exaggeration, but it has its effect on Molly and her mother, Deb. Deb is a deer in headlights, eyes wrinkled from years of worryand mistrust. Molly looks like Kurt Cobain in zombie makeup: unbuttoned flannel, skeletal frame, sunken eyes, bleached hair, pallid complexion. “You have gone through this 15 times,” the doctor says, and then there’s a fast cut to Molly in a twin bed, twitching in the fetal position, withdrawing from opioids.Next comes the premise. There is a monthly injection, the doctor explains, that “essentially makes you immune to getting high,” locking the brain’s opioid receptors behind a chemical cage not even heroin can penetrate. But there’s a catch. Before getting this injection of naltrexone, Molly must remain opioid-free for a week; otherwise, it could precipitate a severe sickness. Molly dreads this trial: “Four more days? Seriously?” We see a series of tense vignettes between mother and daughter, with Molly, played by Mila Kunis, screaming at Deb, played by Glenn Close: “I’m so sorry that my drug addiction is so incredibly difficult on you!”According to the C.D.C.’s provisional data, more than 90,000 Americans died from drug overdoses between October 2019 and September 2020, the highest rate ever recorded. Dramas about the addictions behind that number may not be fun to watch, but they do feel necessary, given the profound real-world grief they represent. Statistics make us aware of a crisis; art can help us metabolize it.And yet: When this trailer for Hollywood’s newest addiction drama — Kunis and Close in “Four Good Days” — emerged, and my Twitter feed lit up with commentary, most of it was biting. “There are a lot of bad movies about addiction, and this one seems ready to blow them all out of the water,” tweeted an emergency-​medicine physician in Ohio. “I watched this on mute and my god … the camera angles and lighting are every addiction movie cliché ever,” another advocate replied.That was Twitter. In the YouTube comments, I found a parallel universe. “The trailer had me in tears, spot on if you or anyone you love has dealt with any type of addiction,” one commenter wrote. “Them first 4 days are literally the worst,” another said. “This is such a good concept.” Hollywood has produced many vivid tales of druggy debauchery, especially about heroin. In the 1990s, “The Basketball Diaries” and “Trainspotting” showed audiences characters who injected heroin in the seedy underworlds of New York and Glasgow. In the 1970s, you had stories like “The Panic in Needle Park,” in which Al Pacino plays a Manhattan heroin user who falls in love with an innocent young woman and gets her addicted too.Today, many films about drugs have a different vibe. They take place not in cities but in upscale suburbs or in rural areas, and they tell their stories not from the perspective of drug users but of their terrified loved ones. Like “Ben Is Back,” “Beautiful Boy” and “Hillbilly Elegy” — some of Hollywood’s other swings at the opioid era — “Four Good Days” is ultimately a family drama about the power, and the limits, of a mother’s love.Close and Kunis’s family dynamic has the kind of raw verisimilitude only talented actors can recreate. But if anything here were to be praised for realism, it wouldn’t be the drama; it would be the boredom. In between scenes both poignant and preachy, Molly languishes in her mother’s suburban home, smoking unenjoyed cigarettes in a plastic chair in the garage. Kicking heroin involves skull-crushing levels of boredom, tired but wide awake, no hope of feeling comfortable; they call it “kicking” because of the way your legs grow cramped and restless. When Molly’s not smoking in the garage, she’s twiddling her thumbs, biding her time.Hollywood still needs to reduce a complex illness into something like a sports movie or boxing match.But a Hollywood movie cannot just be about boredom. It requires a meaty emotional conflict, preferably one that can be resolved in a couple of hours. Deb, for instance, says she blames doctors who overprescribed painkillers for Molly’s addiction, but the audience later learns that she left her family and that Molly grew up in a volatile, loveless home. A daughter’s feeling abandoned by her mother, the mother’s blaming herself for her child’s addiction — here is something we can chew on.The demands of mass-market Hollywood dramas seem almost engineered to prevent honest portrayals of addiction. The films now conceive of it as a medical illness instead of a moral failing, which is positive. But Hollywood still needs to reduce a complex illness into something like a sports movie or boxing match. Molly either wins or loses, gets high or not. Her illness must ultimately be conquered by valiant displays of will. She must survive a cold-turkey withdrawal while her mother, whom she has burned one too many times, musters her last ounces of support and compassion.The harrowing withdrawal, with its days of hellish sweats, is the most obvious aspect of addiction to dramatize: a trial of grit from which the character emerges transformed. Perhaps this is why naltrexone seems to be a favorite among some of America’s drug-court judges, who may view withdrawal as its own form of redemptive punishment. Maintenance treatments are arguably more effective and don’t require patients to be sick for a week, but they do not follow the dramatic path in which a character must reach a gripping, life-altering crisis point. Addiction, however, does not follow defined dramatic arcs. For some, treating it is a repetitive, yearslong process of trial and error. For others, it’s even more anticlimactic, and therapy and medication do the trick. Yes, some do recover after a cathartic breakthrough. But those stories tend not to bring viewers closer to addiction; if anything, they create distance, reducing tangles of human desire into melodrama and pity. You come away thinking, At least I’m not like that.In stories about “Four Good Days,” critics have marveled at how Kunis is “unrecognizable” in her “transformation” into what Hollywood thinks a heroin user looks like. Molly is gaunt, with rotting teeth and scabs dotting her face — a severe case. The film implies that this is her make-or-break shot at recovery, that it all comes down to this one moment. You’re unlikely to see less sensational arcs in today’s Hollywood dramas: say, people who make their progress slowly, who falter, who benefit from harm reduction, who learn that recovery is about more than their own will to endure suffering, whose addiction isn’t even their biggest problem in life. Such stories could surely be interesting ones. But in order to tell them, Hollywood would need to kick a very old habit. Source photographs: Screen grabs from YouTube More

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      in Television

      NBC Says It Will Not Air the Golden Globes in 2022

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      The group behind the awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has been under pressure for its lack of Black members and its financial practices.NBCUniversal announced Monday that it would not broadcast the 2022 Golden Globes, an abrupt blow to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that puts on the film and television awards show. The association relies on the money the network pays for the rights to broadcast the ceremony, and NBC’s move throws the future of the show into doubt. More

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      South African Filmmakers Move Beyond Apartheid Stories

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      Films about South Africa once focused on apartheid, but a new generation of directors and producers is making hits about modern life and love for global audiences.JOHANNESBURG — One of South Africa’s top film producers squinted at a monitor as a hush settled over the crew. Cameras zoomed in on an actress playing a dealer of fine art — chicly dressed in a pencil skirt made from bold African textiles — who offered a coy smile as an old flame stepped into her gallery.It’s the opening scene of a new Netflix movie about high-powered Black women, wealth and modern city life in Johannesburg — one in a flood of productions from a new generation of South African filmmakers. They are bent on telling their own stories on their own terms, eager to widen the aperture on a country after a generation of films defined by apartheid, poverty and struggle.“We call it the legacy exhaustion, the apartheid cinema, people are exhausted with it,” Bongiwe Selane, the producer, said a few days later in the editing studio. “The generation now didn’t live it, they don’t really relate to it. They want to see stories about their experiences now.”Those stories have been buoyed by recent investment from streaming services like Netflix and its South Africa-based rival, Showmax, which are racing to attract audiences across the African continent and beyond, and pouring millions into productions by African filmmakers.Bongiwe Selane, at the Usual Suspects Studios in Johannesburg. She said people want to see stories about their current experiences, not just from the apartheid era. Joao Silva/The New York TimesIn South Africa, where for decades the local film industry has been financed by and catered to the country’s white minority, the new funding has boosted Black filmmakers — a cultural moment that parallels the one playing out in Hollywood.Netflix’s first script-to-screen South African productions — the spy thriller “Queen Sono” and “Blood and Water,” a teen drama about an elite private high school — have won fans locally and topped the streaming giant’s international charts.“I know especially in the States, a lot of people were excited to see a Black, dark-skinned girl play a lead character in Netflix,” Ama Qamata, 22, a star of “Blood and Water,” said one recent afternoon in Johannesburg on set for a local soap opera.As a makeup artist touched up her merlot-red lipstick, showrunners shouted into walkie-talkies to set up the day’s scene: A woman at a funeral accidentally falls into the grave of the man she is accused of killing. “Over the top, but the audience loves it,” one line producer, Janine Wessels, quipped.Soap operas like this have been a favorite on local television for years, but many were imported from the United States. “Blood and Water” takes another familiar American genre — the teen drama — and turns the tables: It’s a story set in Cape Town, featuring mansion parties with bouncers, bartenders and infinity pools soaked in neon lights — and has been eaten up by American audiences.Often likened to “Gossip Girl,” the show was the first original African series to be ranked in Netflix’s Top Ten chart in several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and South Africa.“One of my proudest moments was people from the continent just saying ‘Wow, you really represented us in good light, you really showed the world the filmmaking we’re capable of,’” Ms. Qamata said.Ama Qamata on set of the series “Gomora” in April.Joao Silva/The New York TimesIn the three decades since apartheid, much of South African cinema has been shaped by its legacy.Hollywood studios have flocked to the country to film blockbusters about Nelson Mandela and the struggle’s other heroes. The South African government has promoted apartheid-focused entertainment on local television as part of the country’s own efforts to reckon with its history.Other local fare catered largely to the country’s white Afrikaans minority, who could afford cable and outings to movie theaters mostly in malls and wealthy suburbs — a long, expensive trek for many Black South Africans living in the country’s old townships.“We’ve always had the local industry and funders sort of dictating how our stories should be told,” Ms. Selane, the producer, said. “Our financiers say, you can’t say that or if you say it that way you will offend our white subscribers.”Productions about apartheid were important in documenting the country’s history and exposing the roots of an economy that remains one of the most unequal in the world, where wealth is still concentrated mostly in the hands of whites and a small Black elite.But in recent years, the country has also undergone major demographic and economic shifts. The first South Africans who grew up after apartheid are now adults, asserting their voices on social media and in professional workplaces. And a growing Black middle class has been eager to see itself reflected onscreen — and showing it with their wallets.Actors Ntobeko Sishi, Thembi Seete and Zoliza Xavula during filming of the soap opera “Gomora” in Johannesburg in April.Joao Silva/The New York TimesIn 2015, the film “Tell Me Sweet Something,” about an aspiring young writer who finds unlikely love in Johannesburg’s hipster hangout Maboeng, hit number five in South Africa, blowing the lid off box office expectations for locally made romantic comedies.A year later, “Happiness is a Four Letter Word” — the prequel to Ms. Selane’s latest film that opens with the art gallery scene — outperformed several Hollywood releases in South African movie theaters on its opening weekend.The movie revolves around three bold women navigating a new South Africa. There is Princess, a serial dater and owner of a trendy art gallery; Zaza, a glamorous housewife having an illicit love affair; and Nandi, a high-powered lawyer who gets cold feet on the cusp of her wedding.“Audiences would come up to me to tell me how they also had a guy who broke their heart and they want to see that, to watch something where apartheid is not in the foreground,” said Renate Stuurman, who plays Princess. “It can be in the background, surely, it’s what brought us here, but people were happy to be distracted.”Netflix and Showmax pounced on such stories to capture audiences in Africa, where streaming is projected to reach nearly 13 million subscriptions by 2025 — up fivefold from the end of 2019, according to Digital TV Research, an industry forecaster. For Netflix, the investment is part of a larger push to acquire a generation of Black content.Musicians rehearsing on the set of “Gomora” in Johannesburg in April. The changing demographics of South Africa have led to a shift in the cinematic offerings.Joao Silva/The New York Times“We’re aiming to become a strong part of the local ecosystem in terms of growing the capacity and talent in the market,” said Ben Amadasun, director of Africa Originals and Acquisitions at Netflix. “The basis is that we believe that stories can come from anywhere and travel everywhere.”Since 2016, the company has snapped up content from filmmakers in South Africa and Nigeria, home to the industry popularly known as Nollywood. Nigerian filmmakers have churned out thousands of movies — many produced with just a few thousand dollars and one digital camera — since the late 1990s.Nollywood films won fans across English-speaking Africa, but South Africa is chipping away at its dominance, industry leaders say.For the past two decades, South Africa has hosted major Hollywood studios drawn to its highly skilled workers and government-issued rebate on all production costs spent in the country.Cape Town’s streets were transformed into Islamabad for the fourth season of Homeland; studios constructed models of Robben Island for “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom;” and crews flew helicopters, crashed cars and set off massive explosions in downtown Johannesburg for “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Of the roughly 400 films made in South Africa between 2008 and 2014, nearly 40 percent were foreign productions, according to the National Film and Video Foundation, a government agency.For filmmakers here, the shoots were often a source of frustration. The studios brought in their own directors and leading actors — who sometimes played South African characters — while sidelining South Africans to jobs as assistants and line producers.The productions “weren’t looking for our intellect or perspectives, they were looking for Sherpas,” said Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, a filmmaker.Jahmil X.T. Qubeka at The Bioscope cinema in Johannesburg.Joao Silva/The New York TimesBut increased investment in South Africa’s already thriving film industry means that local creatives like Mr. Qubeka have come closer to realizing their ambitions. His new production, “Blood Psalms,” a series for Showmax, employs massive sets reminiscent of “Game of Thrones,” green screens to concoct magical powers, and elaborate costumes of armor and golden crowns.Inside an editing suite in Johannesburg one recent morning, Mr. Qubeka chatted with an editor slicing together shots for the show, about a queen battling a world-ending prophecy — a plot drawn from African mythology.“The true revolution,” Mr. Qubeka said, “is that we as South Africans are being sought out for our perspective and our ideas.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘144’ and ‘Pride’

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      An ESPN documentary looks at life inside the W.N.B.A. bubble. And a mini-series about L.G.B.T.Q. rights in America debuts on FX.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, May 10-16. Details and times are subject to change. More

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      ‘Wrath of Man’ Review: ‘H’ Has Some Fury

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      Jason Statham plays H, a movie tough guy you don’t want to mess with, in Guy Ritchie’s action film.The filmmaker Guy Ritchie has long shown an eagerness to take a whack at almost any blockbuster format a given studio is willing to offer him. Witness the noisome “Sherlock Holmes” period pictures he’s made with Robert Downey Jr., or his more recent live-action consideration of Disney’s “Aladdin.” But his most enjoyable movies remain the tough, nasty crime thrillers with which he kicked off his career back in 1999 with “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.”His new “Wrath of Man” is such an item, although it’s more somber and less rollicking than the likes of “Lock.” It’s also a remake, of the 2004 French film “Le Convoyeur.” Ritchie fares better here with secondhand material than he did with “Aladdin,” not to mention “Swept Away” (2002).Jason Statham plays Hill, a mysterious, taciturn tough guy who takes a job at an armored car company that recently was hit by murderous robbers. His trainer, called Bullet, shortens Hill’s name to “H.” “Like the bomb,” Bullet explains to a co-worker.H proves his mettle by single-handedly putting down a truck hijacking, during which, in an inordinately satisfying moment, he takes out a punk played by the pop musician Post Malone. H’s co-workers hail him as a hero, but other characters wonder who exactly this guy is, and what he’s doing at this job.As Kirk Douglas in “The Fury” and Liam Neeson in “Taken” have shown, there are certain men with whose family one ought not to mess with. Here Statham is one of them. The gravity of H’s true mission accounts for the movie’s tone. Ritchie reveals crucial story points with clever time-juggling editing, and keeps up the tension well into the movie’s climax, which delivers exactly what the viewer will have come to hope for.Wrath of ManRated R for violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      The Film That Made ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’ Possible

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      Melvin Van Peebles had to go to France to make “The Story of a Three Day Pass,” the tale of a Black soldier on leave that’s full of bold directorial choices.I don’t think anyone who sees the title “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” forgets it. The eye-popping film made Melvin Van Peebles a pioneer of 1970s American cinema and pure independent hustle. But a few years earlier, Van Peebles directed his first trailblazer in France: “The Story of a Three Day Pass,” his feature debut, which was released commercially in 1968 and is opening at Film Forum on Friday in a new restoration. More

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      in Music

      We, Tina

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      Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherShe’s simply the best. A new documentary on HBO (called, simply, “Tina”) explores Tina Turner’s tremendous triumphs, but we wanted to go deeper. We talk about how her entire career was an act of repossession: Taking back her name, her voice, her image, her vitality and her spirituality made her one of the biggest rock stars in the world, even in her 50s.Tina Turner at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, July 2019.Charlie Gates for The New York TimesOn Today’s EpisodeWesley’s ‘We, Tina’ playlistWesley compiled his all-time favorite Tina Turner tracks onto a playlist. Have a listen.◆ ◆ ◆The music icon’s life onscreenTina Turner in 1973, in a scene from the documentary “Tina.”Rhonda Graam/HBO, via Associated PressFor many, Jenna included, the movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993) has been their biggest reference point for Tina Turner up until this point. The biopic, which stars Angela Bassett as Turner, follows the artist’s life with her abusive first husband, Ike Turner.After watching “Tina” (2021), a documentary that recently dropped on HBO Max, Jenna realized how much of the singer’s narrative is missing from the 1993 film.“As incredible as that movie is, it’s not sufficient for her life story,” Jenna said. “It’s so painful to watch. It doesn’t lean enough into how much she shaped and changed music.”◆ ◆ ◆Her liberating live performances“Tina Turner is someone I regret never seeing live,” Jenna said. Her live performances were electric — like her 1988 concert in Rio de Janeiro. She was 48 at the time, on a tour that spanned over 200 dates. She was as fit and vibrant as ever, performing to a record-breaking crowd of over 180,000 people. Wesley remarked, “I mean, just to be one of those people screaming Tina Turner’s name. …”Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Mahima ChablaniEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrExecutive Editor, Newsroom Audio: Lisa TobinAssistant Managing Editor: Sam DolnickSpecial thanks: Nora Keller, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani and Desiree IbekweWesley Morris is a critic at large. He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his criticism while at The Boston Globe. He has also worked at Grantland, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. @wesley_morrisJenna Wortham is a staff writer for The Times Magazine and co-editor of the book “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew. @jennydeluxe More