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      ‘Daddio’ Review: Two for the Road

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      Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson outclass a humdrum script as two people who talk — and talk — in a New York City taxicab.Handicapped by more than a terrible title, Christy Hall’s “Daddio,” set almost entirely inside a New York City taxicab, tries too hard and lasts too long. A synthetic encounter between a gabby cabby and his self-possessed female passenger, the movie is a claustrophobic two-hander oxygenated in part by Phedon Papamichael’s sleekly gorgeous cinematography.The star power of its leads, Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson, doesn’t hurt either. Injecting nuance and emotional depth into Hall’s uninspired script, the two turn a threatened slog into a mildly enjoyable journey. Penn plays Clark, a tough, salt-of-the-earth type (he actually talks about salt at one point) whose roughened hands and veined forearms are catnip to the camera. Johnson is his last fare of the night, a sophisticated young woman traveling from Kennedy Airport to midtown Manhattan. He calls her Girlie.He is very nosy. When not railing against credit cards and rideshare apps, he peppers his passenger with increasingly personal questions. Initially guarded, Girlie slowly warms to this drive-by philosopher. Through the barriers of age, gender, class and education, their revelations grow more intimate — sometimes implausibly so, as when Clark shares a distasteful anecdote about his first wife, along with his thoughts on what married men want in a mistress. (Hint: It’s not love.) Not that Girlie is clutching her pearls; rather, she’s surreptitiously sexting her tongue-lolling lover.Somehow, Penn never allows Clark’s inappropriateness to become predatory, and Johnson’s marvelously expressive features reveal details the dialogue declines to provide. Yet if there’s a finer point to any of this — beyond yes, talking to strangers is sometimes beneficial — it eluded me. I did, though, appreciate Hall’s choice to flash some texts directly onto the movie screen: Squinting at characters’ smartphones is one of my least favorite activities. Along with listening to gossipy cabdrivers.DaddioRated R for bared breasts and barroom language. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Chronicles of a Wandering Saint’ Review: Are the Meek Blessed?

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      It’s clear that Rita’s life in rural Argentina could use a bit of magic. But her willingness to bend the truth to achieve it heralds disaster.“How do I know if something is a miracle?” This is the question that Rita (Mónica Villa), a 60-something Catholic woman living in rural Argentina, poses to a search engine — though deep down, she already knows the answer. A statue that Rita found while tending to her duties as the local chapel keeper isn’t the long-lost figure of St. Rita. But it’d be a miracle if it were, and miracles mean glory, attention and prestige in her small town.Rita’s simple life — scrubbing pews, tolerating the pretenses of other church volunteers, coming home to her spacey but loyal husband, Norberto (Horacio Marassi) — could use a bit of magic. Yet this desire, and her willingness to bend the truth to achieve it, herald disaster.Directed by Tomás Gómez Bustillo, “Chronicles of a Wandering Saint” begins as a slow-moving scammer comedy. Halfway through, the film receives a jolt, and Rita’s drab surroundings take on an enchanted quality that places the film within the robust tradition of Latin American magical realism.The visually elegant film can also be overly precious and whimsical, though that might be a virtue by some measures. In this regard it shares DNA with the laconic comedies of Aki Kaurismaki. The superior second half, in which Rita’s reality is upended, eases into a realm of fantasy that is admirable — and more effective — because of its uncanny, inventive minimalism.That miracles happen under the most banal circumstances is a bit of a cliché, but the film tackles this conceit with the kind of originality and intelligence that makes you forget there’s a blueprint in the first place.Chronicles of a Wandering SaintNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      Bill Cobbs, ‘Bodyguard’ and ‘Night at the Museum’ Actor, Dies at 90

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      Mr. Cobbs was not a household Hollywood name, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize.Bill Cobbs, a prolific character actor whose half-century career bloomed while he was middle-aged and ranged from “Sesame Street” to “The Sopranos” to “Night at the Museum,” died on Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire region of California. He was 90.His death was announced on social media by his brother, Thomas G. Cobbs, and confirmed by his agent, Carmela Evangelista. No cause was given.Mr. Cobbs was not a Hollywood star, but his face was one anyone who watched TV or movies over the past several decades could recognize. He appeared in more than 200 films and television shows and was also a prominent theater actor.Born Wilbert Francisco Cobbs in Cleveland, Mr. Cobbs spent eight years working as a radar technician in the Air Force, where he started doing standup comedy, he said in a 2012 interview with the podcast “Movie Geeks United.” He also worked at I.B.M. and as a car salesman.His experience in the Ossie Davis play “Purlie Victorious,” a comedy about a Black preacher’s efforts to reclaim his hometown church, had an especially profound effect on his career.“That play taught me that there were a lot of things I could say in theater, on the stage and in movies and in television, that were very important, that were meaningful things, that in addition to being a means of entertaining people and touching them in different ways, there were things you could say related to the human condition,” he said.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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      The Long, Strange Road to Alec Baldwin’s Manslaughter Trial

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      On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for New Mexico’s First Judicial District, was driving along a lonely stretch of the mountain highway connecting Santa Fe and Taos when her cell service abruptly returned and her phone started pinging — message after message. She pulled over to the side of the road and began scrolling: Alec Baldwin had accidentally shot two people on a movie set in her jurisdiction. Carmack-Altwies had planned to spend the next couple of days alone in the mountains before celebrating her 43rd birthday with her wife, a retired investigator for the state, and their two children. Clearly that was not going to happen.Listen to this article, read by Pete SimonelliThe shooting occurred at 1:46 p.m. that day at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a family-owned Old West movie set about 20 miles southeast of Santa Fe that had been rented out by “Rust,” an independent film that Baldwin was both starring in and producing. The bullet he inadvertently fired passed through the upper body of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and lodged near the spine of Joel Souza, the director. Souza was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Santa Fe; Hutchins was airlifted to a trauma center in Albuquerque and died a short time later.Carmack-Altwies was nearing the end of her first year in office. She had been an assistant district attorney specializing in violent crimes when her boss made a bid for Congress. She ran to succeed him — her first foray into electoral politics — and won easily, inheriting a jurisdiction that covers three counties: Los Alamos, Rio Arriba and Santa Fe. She’s a Democrat in a Democratic district, though the label connotes something very different in New Mexico, a rural hunting state whose voters tend to place a high value on the Second Amendment, than it does in, say, New York or California. Carmack-Altwies turned around and went back to her office in Santa Fe, where she spent most of the night on the phone with the local police, trying to make sure that the movie set, now a potential crime scene, was properly secured. In the days that followed, reporters from all over the world descended on Santa Fe. Carmack-Altwies held her first news conference about the incident six days later outside the Sheriff’s Department. She was asked if she intended to prosecute anyone. “I do not make rash decisions, and I do not rush to judgment,” she said. “All options are on the table at this point.”Bonanza Creek Ranch, the movie set where Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun in October 2021, leading to his indictment on charges of involuntary manslaughter.Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal, via ZUMA/AlamyWe 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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      Kino Film Collection, a Streaming Alternative to Netflix and Hulu

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      The service is an art house answer to what’s missing on some of the more popular streamers.Even those who swear by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and their ilk must admit that the platforms leave something to be desired when it comes to art house titles.Netflix is perpetually chasing nostalgia or algorithmic trends. Prime is going for crowd-pleasers and classics. And Hulu can devote only so much energy to its film selection when most people still think of it as a TV service. So streaming consumers seeking independent films, foreign cinema and documentaries (other than true crime) may have to look elsewhere. We previously highlighted Mubi as one option; the new Kino Film Collection service is another.Like Shout! TV, Kino is tied to a brand beloved by cinephiles: Kino Lorber began as a film distributor in the late 1970s, and it is one of the most reliably high-quality home video labels, with particular emphasis on classic American cinema. It took some time to find the right formula for its streaming service, starting first, in 2019, with the à la carte Kino Now (an “arthouse iTunes”) before introducing Kino Film Collection late last year. Initially only available as an Amazon Prime Video channel, it became a stand-alone service in May, with its own app on Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV and Android TV.So what does it offer? Well, foremost and unsurprisingly, there are Kino Lorber’s own theatrical and home video titles, an impressive array of contemporary indies that includes “Martin Eden,” “Bacurau,” “Close to Vermeer,” “La Syndicaliste,” “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of ‘Midnight Cowboy’” and the Oscar-nominated “Four Daughters.” Several of these are found in a selection highlighting Critic’s Picks from these very pages, a wise organizing principle if there ever was one.Other sections are similarly well curated. As has (thankfully) become de rigueur for the streamers, a selection of “LGBTQ+ Stories” highlights queer cinema, past and present, for Pride Month. The Cannes Film Festival concluded a few weeks back, but the “Cannes Favorites” sidebar is still up, and well worth exploring. “Thought-Provoking Documentaries” includes explorations of everything from jazz music to the hedonism of Studio 54 to the history of the Great White Way. But the highlight may well be the robust selection of “Classics,” which runs the gamut from German Expressionism to nunsploitation.The Kino Film Collection interface is easy to use, and the image is excellent, with streams (of new releases in particular) frequently Blu-ray quality. The price is similarly nice: A monthly subscription is only $5.99 per month, or $59.99 annually, and a current promotion offers 20 percent off that annual rate. The service’s total number of available films is smaller than that of its art house streaming competitors Mubi and the Criterion Channel, but the price point is proportionately lower. (Mubi is currently $14.99 monthly, while Criterion charges $10.99 per month.)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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      ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ Director Talks About Capturing the Star’s Seizure

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      Irene Taylor, director of the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” talks about the decision to include a grueling scene of the pop star in crisis.This article contains spoilers.Celine Dion welcomed the cameras. For the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” (streaming on Amazon Prime Video), the singer set no restrictions on what to film.What follows is a painfully intimate portrait of a pop star’s body fighting itself. Dion announced in 2022 that she had stiff person syndrome, an autoimmune neurological condition that causes progressive stiffness and severe muscle spasms. During a session with her physical therapist that was being filmed for the documentary, Dion has a seizure. The camera continued to roll throughout the medical crisis.In an interview via video call on Monday, the director, Irene Taylor, discussed shooting the documentary and why Dion’s emergency was included in the final cut. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How far into preproduction did you learn about Dion’s illness?I spoke with her at length, and I did not know she was ill. We were in the middle of the pandemic and I didn’t think twice about her being at home. Most of us were, and performers around the world were sort of out of commission temporarily.We got to a place where we agreed to make the film. It was several weeks after that mutual decision that her manager asked me for a call. I figured it must be something serious because we got on the phone that day, and he told me that Celine was sick and that they didn’t know what it was. We were filming several months before there was a definitive diagnosis.After getting the diagnosis, was the conversation on the table to stop filming?Definitely not. When I realized that a) she had a problem with no name and b) when I actually started filming I could see how her body looked different, her face looked different, I was able to focus. The iris of my perspective got much smaller.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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      Jonathan Majors Is Cast in First Movie Role Since Assault Conviction

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      Mr. Majors, who was sentenced to a year of domestic violence programming and was dropped by Marvel, is set to star in the independent thriller “Merciless.”Jonathan Majors will lead a feature film for the first time since he was found guilty of assaulting and harassing his girlfriend, a conviction that doomed a lucrative contract with Marvel Studios and imperiled his status as one of the fastest-rising stars in Hollywood.Mr. Majors, who starred in “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” last year, has been cast in “Merciless,” a supernatural thriller about a C.I.A. interrogator out for revenge. The movie will be directed by Martin Villeneuve and produced by Christopher Tuffin, an executive producer of the films “Sound of Freedom” and “Peppermint.”Mr. Tuffin said he believed in second chances and had decided to work with Mr. Majors because he was a “generational talent.”“We live in a culture that treats people as disposable, on both sides,” he said. “I believe that this matter has been adjudicated in the courts and he has a right to go back to his career.”A representative for Mr. Majors declined to comment.Mr. Majors was convicted of a reckless assault misdemeanor and a harassment violation in December, months after an altercation inside an S.U.V. that his girlfriend Grace Jabbari said turned violent. He was acquitted of two other charges that required prosecutors to prove he had acted with intent.A judge sentenced Mr. Majors to 52 weeks of domestic violence programming.In court testimony, Ms. Jabbari said she and Mr. Majors had gotten into an argument in Manhattan while they were dating. She said that he had twisted her arm and that she subsequently felt “a really hard blow across my head.” Mr. Majors did not testify but through his lawyer and in an interview on “Good Morning America,” he disputed Ms. Jabbari’s account and denied assaulting her.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