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      ‘The Outside Story’ Review: Brooklyn as No One Has Ever Known It

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      In this listless comedy by Casimir Nozkowski, a moping homebody locks himself out, but the resulting interaction with others helps to change his outlook.The comedy “The Outside Story” takes a listless look at the life of Charles (Brian Tyree Henry), who is moping over his breakup with his unfaithful girlfriend, Isha (Sonequa Martin-Green). When Charles chases down a delivery person to offer a belated tip, he gets locked out of his Brooklyn apartment for a day and must set his self-pity aside.This predicament forces him into contact with the neighbors he never bothered getting to know. Unable to re-enter his comfort zone, he asks to use the bathroom of the polyamorous partners upstairs. He charges his phone with the help of the adolescent piano prodigy who lives in his building. Charles is depressed, but affably so. He’s amiable to everyone he meets, even the overachieving police officer (Sunita Mani), who finds a new reason to interrogate Charles each time she circles the block. With the help of his new friends, Charles reflects on his romantic relationship and contemplates reconciliation.The film, which was written and directed by Casimir Nozkowski, sets an easy pace to match Charles’s mild ennui. The only problem is that the movie doesn’t supplement its lack of stakes with style or substance. The cinematography is flat and lifeless, and Charles and his neighbors represent Brooklyn street style with oversize cardigans and rumpled button-ups. This is a toothless version of the city, where disputes between neighbors are solved without a single swear word, where confrontations with police are resolved over a sandwich. Even the streets seem scrubbed of grime, grit, color and texture. It’s a movie with images that are as squeaky clean as its faultless characters, a cinematic view that feels better suited to a sitcom suburb.The Outside StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Citizen Kane’ Is No ‘Paddington 2,’ Says Rotten Tomatoes

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      After an 80-year-old pan resurfaced, the website Rotten Tomatoes recalculated and found that only 99 percent of critics had praised “Citizen Kane.”There is perfect. And then there is almost perfect.And as anyone who’s ever gotten a 99 percent on a test can tell you, the two are not the same thing.“Citizen Kane,” the 1941 Orson Welles classic about the rise and fall of the publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane, long had a perfect critics’ score on the film website Rotten Tomatoes, which had aggregated 115 reviews. Until last month.That is when a rediscovered write-up by a critic who died decades ago played spoiler.The 80-year-old, less-than-effusive review, headlined “Citizen Kane Fails to Impress Critic as Greatest Ever Filmed,” resurfaced last month as part of a new archival project at Rotten Tomatoes. The review, which ran in The Chicago Tribune in 1941 and was quietly added to the “Citizen Kane” page on Rotten Tomatoes in March, brought the classic film, which is regularly placed atop lists of greatest American films, down a peg or two.“You’ve heard a lot about this picture and I see by the ads that some experts think it ‘the greatest movie ever made,’” the critic, whose punny pseudonymous byline was Mae Tinee, wrote. “I don’t.”The problem? It was a little too fresh, apparently.“It’s interesting,” the reviewer wrote. “It’s different. In fact, it’s bizarre enough to become a museum piece. But its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs it of distinction and general entertainment value.”The film’s black and white photography, which has been lauded for years for its atmospheric, noirish touch, was criticized as “shadowy and spooky” by the reviewer, who said it “gives one the creeps.”“I kept wishing they’d let a little sunshine in,” she wrote. (She was a fan of Welles as an actor, though, calling him a “zealous and effective performer.”)With the inclusion of her dissenting opinion, the film is now rated only 99 percent “Fresh” on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer.This means that, according to the review site, there are now 63 films with at least 40 reviews that are now more universally admired by critics than “Citizen Kane.” The site’s “100% Club” includes some predictable classics (“Modern Times,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Maltese Falcon”) and some less predictable recent films (the first two “Toy Story” movies).One member of the club? “Paddington 2,” the children’s film about a bear who, according to the review site, “spreads joy and marmalade wherever he goes.” Its writer and director, Paul King, told The Hollywood Reporter that he while he was pleased the film was on the list, he would not take it edging out “Citizen Kane” too seriously. “I won’t let it go too much to my head and immediately build my Xanadu,” he said.Rotten Tomatoes, which may soon take the critical scores of more classics down to earth as older archival reviews are added to the site, has previously acknowledged that members of the “100% Club” aren’t necessarily perfect.“It’s a tough road for a movie to get a 100% with critics, fraught with peril,”a page on the site devoted to the paragons of perfect percentage says. “What if a small plot hole is big enough to irk a persnickety reviewer? What if the cinematographer didn’t show up that one day for a crucial scene? What if there was a bum performance from one of the background extras?”The Mae Tinee take on “Citizen Kane” was a minority opinion at the time.“In spite of some disconcerting lapses and strange ambiguities in the creation of the principal character,” the critic Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times after attending the film’s 1941 premiere at the Palace Theater, “‘Citizen Kane’ is far and away the most surprising and cinematically exciting motion picture to be seen here in many a moon.”“As a matter of fact,” he added, “It comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood.”The film was also the recent inspiration for Netflix’s “Mank,” a biopic of the “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, which starred Gary Oldman and won two Oscars on Sunday (but which the critics aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes rated only 83 percent Fresh).But there has been a corner of the internet that has argued for years that “Kane,” for all its accolades, was just, well, meh. (See sincere Reddit threads headlined “Is Citizen Kane the most overrated film of all time?” and “Can somebody please seriously in detail explain why Citizen Kane is considered by many critics and moviegoers as the best film ever made.”)And now, with a change of 1 percentage point, those skeptics can rest a bit easier — thanks to Reviewer 116. More

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      ‘Best Summer Ever’ Review: Not Just Another Song and Dance

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      A largely disabled cast leads this charming teen musical.“Best Summer Ever” is a high school musical. It isn’t “High School Musical” — it’s better. Tender and exuberant, it includes set pieces modeled on “Footloose” and “Grease,” and feels closer to those films in spirit than to the Disney Channel. This is the kind of movie that vibrates with the energy of the people who made it, whose enthusiasm radiates from the screen. The actors and filmmakers seemed to have had an extremely good time bringing “Best Summer Ever” to life. Watching it made me happy.In Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli’s film (available on demand), Tony (Rickey Wilson Jr.) is the star quarterback who privately yearns to become a ballet dancer. Sage (Shannon DeVido) is the daughter of pot-dealing hippies whose nomadic lifestyle has made it hard for her to settle down. Tony and Sage fall for one another at summer camp, but when summer ends, and Sage winds up at Tony’s school, the young lovers are besieged by the usual teen movie crises — the scheming cheerleader (MuMu), the football rival (Jacob Waltuck), and of course the big game, whose outcome rests heavily on Tony’s reluctant shoulders.This is all very familiar. What’s novel is the cast, which is largely made up of actors with a range of physical and mental disabilities; these disabilities are never remarked upon, and disability doesn’t figure into the plot. The effect of this inclusiveness is a feeling of amazing warmth and camaraderie, at its most compelling during the film’s many original musical numbers, which are staged and shot with verve. The cast has wonderful screen presence — particularly DeVido, whose turn as the lovelorn heroine is magnetic. Representation matters. And in “Best Summer Ever,” it makes the movie come alive.Best Summer EverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Anthony Hopkins Accepts Oscar, Paying Tribute to Chadwick Boseman

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      “At 83 years of age I did not expect to get this award,” Hopkins said of his best actor win in a video posted early on Monday morning.About four hours after he won best actor at the 93rd Academy Awards in an upset, Anthony Hopkins delivered his acceptance in a video from Wales, taking a moment to acknowledge the actor who had been widely expected to win posthumously, Chadwick Boseman.“At 83 years of age I did not expect to get this award — I really didn’t,” said Hopkins, who won for his role as a patriarch struggling with dementia in “The Father.”On Sunday night, Hopkins became the oldest actor to win the award, almost three decades after his first Oscar win in the category, for “The Silence of the Lambs.”The award provided a strange ending to the ceremony. When Boseman was awarded a Golden Globe for best actor earlier this year, the emotional acceptance speech given by his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, was the emotional highlight of the night. Perhaps with that in mind, the Oscars switched the traditional order of categories this year so that the best actor award came last, after the best picture had already been awarded.Boseman, who had been widely expected to win, did not — and Hopkins was not present to accept the award in person or virtually, resulting in a stilted, anticlimactic ending.Chadwick Boseman, in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”David Lee/Netflix, via Associated PressSocial media erupted with indignation at the win, with many saying the award should have gone to Boseman for his role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Boseman died of colon cancer at age 43 in August, months before “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was released.“I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman who was taken from us far too early,” Hopkins said in his video, which was posted to social media.Posted in the morning in Wales, the video was short and sweet, with Hopkins thanking the typical cast of characters in the caption to his Instagram post: the film’s production company, his talent agency, his family.“Thank you all very much,” Hopkins said. “I really did not expect this.” More

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      Chloé Zhao Wins Oscar for Best Direct of 'Nomadland'

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      Chloé Zhao on Sunday became the first woman of color, first Chinese woman and second woman ever to win the Oscar for directing, capping off a historically impressive run of honors she has amassed this awards season for her work on the drama “Nomadland.”In accepting the award, Zhao recalled a phrase she had learned as a child that she said translated from Mandarin to “people at birth are inherently good.” “I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world,” she said. “So this is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves. And to hold on to the goodness in each other, no matter how difficult it is to do that. And this is for you, you inspire me to keep going.”This year’s Oscars marked the first time in its history that more than one female filmmaker was nominated for the best director in a single year. In addition to Zhao, Emerald Fennell scored a nomination for “Promising Young Woman.”Before this year, only five female filmmakers had been recognized in the director category. In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first and only woman to be named best director until Zhao won the category on Sunday.Earlier in the awards season, Zhao took home the top directing prize at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards and the Directors Guild Awards and she has won similar accolades from several other groups.“Nomadland” has also garnered wide praise and several honors. The movie tells the story of a widow who travels the country in a van and joins the itinerant work force while connecting with other Americans she meets along the way. Zhao adapted the movie from Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book of the same name and used several nonprofessionals in the cast, including people featured in Bruder’s book.Zhao, who adapted and helped produce “Nomadland,” was nominated for four Oscars in all: directing, adapted screenplay (which she lost to Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller of “The Father”), editing and best picture. More