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      Pedro Almodóvar, Master of Mystifying Films, Wrote a Book He Can’t Classify

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      Pedro Almodóvar is widely considered Spain’s greatest living filmmaker, but he sees himself as a writer first — a “fabulist,” in his telling. His extravagant plots took twists that were hard to predict or even pin down. The tale of two men who form a bond looking over two comatose women in “Talk to Her.” The story of a plastic surgeon who operates on a captive man, changing him to a woman against his will in “The Skin I Live In.”Of his more than 20 feature films, Almodóvar wrote or co-wrote nearly all of them. He had probably spent more days at a writing desk than on a set.As it turned out, he had been writing many other things, too — short stories, diary entries, a few unclassifiable essays — nearly the entire time he was making films. The tales sat in several mysterious blue folders, collected by his assistant Lola García over the course of the director’s many moves to different apartments in Madrid. In 2022, at the urging of the Spanish literary editor Jaume Bonfill, Almodóvar had a look at what had been saved over the years.“It was like seeing a dimension of Pedro that I didn’t know,” said Bonfill, adding that the manuscripts they sorted through contained writings the director had composed as a teenager as well as items Almodóvar had seemingly written decades later. The collection, “The Last Dream,” will be published in English on Sept. 24 by HarperVia.“The Last Dream” is due out Sept. 24 in the United States.HarperVia, via Associated PressJust what this collection is exactly is as much of a mystery as the folders were. Was this a memoir? (One piece was a journal entry written a couple of years back.) Was it fiction — or sketches of ideas that could be fiction — unfinished stories the director never turned into a film? (There is a tale about Count Dracula joining a monastery in Spain.) Much like with his films, Almodóvar feels little need to clarify his output into any defined genre.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

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      ‘Gladiator II’ Delivers Friends, Romans and Sharks

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      How the Colosseum, filled with water and stocked with predators, becomes the scene of epic naval combat in Ridley Scott’s sequel.When “Gladiator” was released in 2000, fans and critics applauded its visual effects and production design, from the towering Colosseum to the detailed costumes and prowling tigers.More than two decades later, the architects of that film reassembled for a daunting task: building a sequel that captured what people loved about the first film’s visuals, while also finding fresh ways to surprise viewers.“Gladiator II” (in theaters Nov. 22) includes familiar elements — tightly choreographed sword fighting and lofty speeches about the Roman Empire — but it adds combat scenes in the Colosseum that include a rhino in one sequence and sharks in another.“It’s epic, beyond epic,” said Arthur Max, the production designer who, along with the director Ridley Scott and the producer Douglas Wick, is part of the brain trust behind the two films. “Everything we did on the first one was amplified to a much greater size and scale.”Much of the movie’s production design draws on meticulous research, with Max traveling to the Museum of the Roman Ships of Fiumicino, to conservation laboratories in Pompeii and to museums in Athens, among other locations. They also examined models of warships at the British Museum in London and studied illustrations from military history books.But the film also takes some creative license, since many of the images and scenes sprang from Scott’s imagination. Eschewing a computer for pen and paper, Scott would often envision scenes and then draw them out for his team to re-create onscreen.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

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      ‘Uglies’ Review: Beauty Is a Beast

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      Joey King plays a teenager in a dystopian world where cosmetic surgery seems to be the cure for inequality.“Uglies,” based on the young adult book series by Scott Westerfeld, presents a cheekily vapid solution to world peace: At age 16, everyone is surgically enhanced to be pretty, thus eradicating inequality and conflict.Here, pretty has a template — imagine the uncanny valley of Instagram face with shiny eyes and full cheeks. Pre-operation, the teenager Tally Youngblood (Joey King) initially can’t wait to be made over. As she chirps, “Becoming moldy and crinkly? That goes against everything we’ve been taught!”The original book in the series was first optioned in 2006, at the dawn of the dystopian young adult craze, but the genre has mildewed in the years since — and the book’s early fans are now old enough to bemoan their own wrinkles.Still, one might counter that in the years in between, cosmetic transformations became an openly acknowledged right of passage for a class of celebutante influencers — a reality that may have occurred to the screenwriters Jacob Forman, Vanessa Taylor and Whit Anderson and the director Joseph McGinty Nichol, known as McG. (One could easily imagine Kris Jenner as an adviser to Laverne Cox’s imperious Dr. Cable, the leader of the lovelies.) To help woo the current generation of 11-year-olds, McG has concocted a fantastical, glossily repellent digital landscape that glows with neon and constant fireworks, causing the film to feel at once too sincere and too artificial.King plays Tally with more conviction than the movie deserves, alongside Keith Powers and Chase Stokes as her crushes and Brianne Tju as a punkish hoverboarder who yearns to join an anti-surgery agrarian conclave whose members reach self-actualization by reading Thoreau’s “Walden.” Though viewers can’t help but notice that the rebels are also naturally telegenic.UgliesRated PG-13 for some violence and action, and brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Killer’s Game’ Review: Catch Him if You Can

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      An assassin (Dave Bautista) meets his match (Sofia Boutella), but a diagnosis sets off an absurd chain of events in this rom-com action movie.“The Killer’s Game” begins with an atypical boy-meets-girl scenario. The high-end assassin Joe Flood, played by the bullet-headed Dave Bautista, spies his future love, the modern dancer Maize (Sofia Boutella), as he interrupts one of her performances in an ornate hall in Budapest. The interruption is a violent one: He shoots one of the spectators, and while Joe has the discretion to use a silencer, his prey’s bodyguards get a little loud. In the ensuing melee, Joe winds up in possession of Maize’s cellphone.On returning it, Maize offers Joe a dinner for his troubles. Here we learn that Joe, while brazen and prolific in the art of homicide, is a little awkward with the ladies. As he and Maize become a match, there’s trouble in paradise.Joe is plagued by headaches, and on learning that he has an incurable condition, he asks his own people — the colorful, loosely affiliated union of assassins — to take him out. (He receives his assignments, and his money, from his wise old handler, who is played by Ben Kingsley.)J.J. Perry (“Day Shift”), a stunt performer and coordinator who’s worked on the “John Wick” franchise, directs this rom-com action movie, whose conceits borrow from the “Wick” franchise rather heavily.While those conceits work well enough in movies starring Keanu Reeves, here they fall flat. The action choreography is better than passable, although Perry adds grindhouse-movie levels of gore and dismemberment in a dubious effort to up the thrill quotient.The Killer’s GameRated R for lots and lots and lots of violence. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Bob Weatherwax, Trainer of Lassie and Other Celebrity Dogs, Dies at 83

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      Like his father, who taught him the interdisciplinary roles needed for the job, he bred and coached the collies who played the heroic star of television and movies.Bob Weatherwax, a Hollywood dog trainer who carried on his father’s legacy of breeding and coaching collies to play Lassie, the resourceful and heroic canine who crossed flooded rivers, faced down bears and leaped into the hearts of countless children, died on Aug. 15 in Scranton, Pa. He was 83.His family said his death, at a Department of Veterans Affairs facility, was caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Mr. Weatherwax took over as Lassie’s primary trainer in 1985 after the death of his father, Rudd Weatherwax, whose collie Pal starred alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall in the hit 1943 film “Lassie Come Home,” as well as several other movies and the “Lassie” television show, seen on CBS and in syndication from 1954 to 1973.As his father’s apprentice, Mr. Weatherwax learned the interdisciplinary roles — talent agent, pooch geneticist and acting coach — that were necessary for managing the Lassie brand.Treating Lassie, a rough collie, as a genuine Hollywood star was a high priority. That standard was originally set by Louis B. Mayer, a founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that released “Lassie Come Home.” After the film’s premiere, Mr. Mayer called his friend Howard Hughes, who owned Trans World Airlines, to request that Lassie be permitted to fly with passengers, not in the cargo section. Lassie flew in first class.Mr. Weatherwax embraced his talent-manager role. He also embraced the perks of traveling with a celebrity.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

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      ‘Winner’ Review: Not Like Other Girls

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      This dramedy starring Emilia Jones depicts the life and times of Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistle-blower.“Winner,” an oddly perky dramedy by the director Susanna Fogel (who wrote “Booksmart”), is loosely based on the life of Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor and Air Force linguist who was arrested in 2017 for leaking a top-secret report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. (She was released from prison in 2021.)But the eerie docudrama “Reality,” from last year, starring Sydney Sweeney as the titular polyglot, captured the tragedy of Winner’s case far more effectively than “Winner,” a sweeping biopic that presents her as something like an American Girl doll for the “I’m not like other girls” set.Extending from her adolescence through the aftermath of her arrest, “Winner” portrays the young woman as an endearing anomaly, with an anti-authoritarian streak shaped by her leftist father (Zach Galifianakis). Winner (Emilia Jones) is a pink-gun-toting animal lover and relentless freethinker who openly questions mainstream explanations for 9/11.The paradox of the real Reality Winner is that, despite her idiosyncratic views and her ability to speak the Pashto language, she was pretty normal. The film underscores this dynamic — she goes shopping with her mother (Connie Britton), moves in with her boyfriend (Danny Ramirez), powers through her 9 to 5 and eats dinner on the couch while watching CNN.This quirky girl-power comedy gives way to something darker as Winner becomes aware of U.S. government secrets, with the director drawing a connection between Winner’s political idealism and the public’s seemingly willful indifference toward corruption and human rights abuses. In this sense, the character plays to the archetype of the “social justice warrior” with some conservative touches. That’s the big problem with this strange film, which tries to humanize its protagonist but winds up making her feel plastic.WinnerRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Girls Will Be Girls’ Review: Surviving High School

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      The filmmaker Shuchi Talati’s debut feature follows a model student and her stifled mother, who are both vying for the attention of a new crush.“Girls Will Be Girls,” the debut feature from the Indian filmmaker Shuchi Talati, is a careful, naturalistic coming-of-age story with a clunky title.This film aims to explore how women’s sexuality is stifled in patriarchal settings. The story takes place in the 1990s at a conservative Indian boarding school in the Himalayas, where the straight-A senior Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) must balance her academic duties with her new crush on Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), a sly charmer and recent transfer student.Here, one might expect “Girls Will Be Girls” to take the same route as countless other adolescent tales of obedient girls who meet naughty boys. But Talati is less interested in bringing us on a raw emotional journey than she is in looking at the effects of repressive rules on women. As Mira grows close to Sri, so does her mother, Anila (Kani Kusruti), who oversees her daughter’s studies from a home nearby. Anila’s own social and romantic frustrations manifest in her also vying for Sri’s attention.The screenplay suffers from some unevenness, but it never wavers in its empathy. It helps that Talati demonstrates a keen eye for composition; her static shots often make use of mirrors and other frames within the frame. These elements give “Girls Will Be Girls” a distinct sense of perspective, and imbue even the more familiar aspects of its story with fresh feeling.Girls Will Be GirlsNot rated. In Hindi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Matt and Mara’ Review: Will They or Won’t They?

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      Two former college friends reconnect for a possible romance in this irritatingly vague and vapid drama.Whatever the bond between the title characters of “Matt and Mara” (Matt Johnson and Deragh Campbell), it’s an uncomfortable one. How could it be otherwise when one of them is constitutionally unable to recognize her needs and the other is clearly accustomed to satisfying his?Either way, these two belong anywhere but together. He’s confident and pushy, a successful author whose recent collection of short stories has been widely praised. She’s pensive and cautious, a creative writing professor with a hot husband (Mounir Al Shami) and a small daughter, neither of whom seem of particular concern when Matt, a friend from college, shows up and elbows his way into her life and her classroom.A nebulous bid to capture the tension between a seemingly cozy marriage and a romantic fling, and between the academy and the outside world, “Matt and Mara” is less a movie than an idea for one. It doesn’t help that neither character is likable, or that the director and writer, Kazik Radwanski, fills the screen with close-ups in lieu of information. Potentially shattering declarations are made and fade without remark, as when Mara announces to her husband, an experimental musician, and a group of their friends that music is essentially meaningless to her. What this says about her, or her marriage, we are left to guess.Matt is similarly a cipher, though Mara’s skittishness makes him appear more bullying than besotted. There is something so deeply indistinct about these characters that their actions are often puzzling. One minute Mara seems repelled by Matt’s emotional directness, the next she’s erupting with jealousy when he has an innocent dinner with an acquaintance. Yet if she’s made of glass, as Matt claims at one point, then he’s made of rubber in a movie constructed almost entirely from thin air.Matt and MaraNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More