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      ‘Happily’ Review: Does Long-Lived Love Mean You Need Treatment?

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      In this keeps-you-guessing comedy, Joel McHale and Kelly Bishé play a couple married for 14 years whose mutual passion is undimmed, to the annoyance of their friends.After 14 years of marriage, what kind of couple has sex at least once a day? Probably, in the real world, a jobless one, but never mind that. In “Happily,” Tom (Joel McHale) writes at home and Janet (Kelly Bishé) works at an office, but yes, they (vigorously!) enjoy intimate relations with unusual frequency in this feature debut by the writer-director BenDavid Grabinski. When a bathroom is occupied for an unusual amount of time during a party, the hosts know exactly who’s hogging the private space and why. Consequently, Tom and Janet’s friends, and especially those party hosts (played by Paul Scheer and Natalie Zea), hate them.Two events rattle Tom and Janet’s bliss. First, a home visit from a mysterious stranger played by Stephen Root. Acting as a kind of cosmic overseer, he informs the couple that they’re biological/metaphysical anomalies and demands they submit to his cure. This visit ends badly for him. Then the pair bounces from being disinvited and reinvited to a weekend getaway hosted by another couple of hater friends, and attended by distinctly discontented duos.For a while it’s fun to be kept off-balance, wondering whether the movie is some kind of allegory or, as seems more likely, that the cosmic overseer visit was a prank engineered by one of those friends. Either way, since the visit, Tom and Janet are troubled — by guilt, by dreams, by temptations never experienced before.Grabinski has both wit and energy, and these qualities, along with a game cast, help keep “Happily” afloat for far longer than most made-in-L.A. dark domestic comedies. But the movie wants to do too many things, and grows diffuse. This is a not uncommon glitch with first features; one hopes and expects Grabinski will deliver something more focused next time.HappilyRated R for themes, language, excessive marital bliss. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Vudu, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘The Courier’ Review: Secrets and Spies

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      Benedict Cumberbatch plays a salesman-turned-secret agent in this stuffy Cold War drama.“The Courier,” a true life-based spy thriller set in the early 1960s — and staged to appeal to audiences old enough to have lived through them — stubbornly resists involving or affecting us until it’s almost over. By that time, though, you might have fallen asleep.Ideally, that shouldn’t happen while watching two stand-up guys — one British, one Russian — perhaps narrowly prevent a nuclear apocalypse. But the director, Dominic Cooke (whose 2018 feature debut, “On Chesil Beach,” touchingly conveyed the tragedy of broken intimacy), is either unable to generate tension or simply chooses not to. The Cuban Missile Crisis might loom in the background, but we barely sense its menace as Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), an unremarkable English salesman, is enlisted as an intermediary between MI6 (in the form of a suave Angus Wright) and a Soviet officer named Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze).With its wood-paneled rooms and pluming cigarette smoke, “The Courier” is espionage cinema at its most decorous. Disappointingly, no one is karate-chopping or transforming fountain pens into tiny daggers. (Instead, they have lunch and attend the ballet.) Wynne, we are told, must be given a crash course in tradecraft before accepting Soviet secrets, but Tom O’Connor’s stolid script is actively antithetical to such excitement. We need a montage!Though Jessie Buckley, as Wynne’s suspicious wife, and Rachel Brosnahan, as an amusingly pushy C.I.A. operative, add welcome jolts of female energy, “The Courier” is essentially the story of an extraordinary male friendship. The men’s mutual compassion peaks too late to save the picture, but is no less moving for that.The CourierRated PG-13 for a bit of violence and a blink-and-you-miss-it bedroom scene. Running time: 1 hour 51 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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      ‘Rose Plays Julie’ Review: An Eerie Thriller With Mirrored Traumas

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      Sexual violence and adoption bracket the life of a young woman seeking a family connection and finding a #MeToo legacy instead.As far as #MeToo thrillers go, “Rose Plays Julie” stands out for its unpredictability.A quiet veterinary student in Dublin, Rose (Ann Skelly), has recently discovered that she was adopted and that her original name was Julie. She goes to London to find her birth mother, Ellen (Orla Brady), a television actress who wants no reminders of the circumstances surrounding Julie’s birth and no connection with her daughter. Ellen’s baby was born of rape, and she had asked that there be no further contact with Julie after the adoption.“Rose Plays Julie,” written and directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, frames its sexual trauma as an intergenerational one. It contemplates the double lives of women through the ideas of outer success and inner anguish, as well as the trope of the naïve girl versus the seductive avenger.Just as Ellen plays a character for her day job, Rose “plays” Julie — costumed with a bobbed wig — when she eventually tracks down her biological father, Peter (Aidan Gillen), a famed archaeologist who repeats his pattern of sexual abuse with Rose. Her disguise is not necessary, since Peter does not know her name or that she even exists. The “Julie” identity provides both a shield against her mother’s trauma and a vessel to contain it. Her actions present a thought-provoking interplay of pain and self-preservation.But this device can sometimes work against the story, too. Amid the lush greenery of the setting, the atmosphere is perpetually bone-chilling — complete with an ominously high-pitched score — making the film seem distant and difficult to fully embrace. Even with its unusual approach to exacting delayed revenge, “Rose Plays Julie” remains just a little too cold and calculating.Rose Plays JulieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Fever’ Review: Tropical Maladies

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      Maya Da-Rin’s extraordinary film details the intimate life of an Indigenous family in the Brazilian city of Manaus.The urban world simmers with magic in “The Fever,” Maya Da-Rin’s meditative feature about an Indigenous family in Manaus, Brazil. The middle-aged Justino (Regis Myrupu), a native of the Desana tribe, works as a security guard at a cargo port, while his enterprising daughter, Vanessa (Rosa Peixoto), is about to leave her job as a nurse to go to medical school on a scholarship.Da-Rin quietly observes their routines of work and home, intertwining two elliptical layers of reality. As Justino contends with the ennui of his job and his impending separation from Vanessa, he contracts a mysterious fever; at the same time, a strange animal roams through the nearby rainforest. The film never spells out its secrets, which nonetheless invest every shot with ethereal beauty: The cranes that move giant cuboid containers at Justino’s port inscribe geometric poetry into the sky, while a rich layer of ambient sound envelops the film, adding texture even to its silences.“The Fever” colors in the experiences of Brazil’s Indigenous community through the casual racism Justino and Vanessa face at work, including taunts about the shapes of their eyes and ignorance about the diversity of Native languages. The characters are stoic in public, but at home, Justino responds with his own judgments. “They don’t even know how to look into dreams,” he says of white doctors. “They have big eyes, but they can only see what’s in front of them.” By showing us the world through Justino’s searching gaze, Da-Rin gives us an elusive but powerful sense of the limits of our own vision.The FeverNot rated. In Tukano and Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In virtual cinemas, including Film at Lincoln Center. More

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      ‘City of Lies’ Review: Dirty Cops and a Dangerous Conspiracy

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      Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker head up this artless procedural about the murders of two rap artists.Languishing since 2018, Brad Furman’s “City of Lies” is the latest attempt to monetize the unsolved 1990s murders of the rap artists Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G.) and Tupac Shakur. The killings, previously wrestled with on film and in print, have spawned a morass of theories that would give even the most experienced filmmaker pause.Not Furman, though, who (with the screenwriter Christian Contreras) sets about dramatizing Randall Sullivan’s 2002 nonfiction book, the aptly named “LAbyrinth,” with rather more appetite than artistry. His focus is Russell Poole (Johnny Depp, confusing somnolent with serious), a former Los Angeles police detective still tormented by his investigation into Wallace’s death decades earlier. We know this because his depressing apartment is liberally plastered in details of the case.Into this psychological swamp comes Jack Jackson (Forest Whitaker), a journalist who’s working on a 20-year retrospective of the crimes. Jackson needs information, while Poole — who believes that the L.A.P.D. was actively involved in Wallace’s killing and the ensuing cover-up — needs a confessor. So we’re off down memory lane to watch Poole battle police corruption, hostile suspects and his antagonistic superiors.At heart a movie about one man’s self-destructive obsession (Poole was forced to resign two weeks shy of his pension), “City of Lies” has an underlying, unexpected poignancy. The look is grimy and the atmosphere is grim; but what could have been a moody character study or a taut conspiracy thriller is instead a dreary procedural, a misbegotten mush of flashbacks, voice-overs and dead ends.City of LiesRated R for offensive language and deadly weapons. Running time: 1 hour 52 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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      Yaphet Kotto, James Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYaphet Kotto, Bond Villain and ‘Alien’ Star, Dies at 81The actor, who descended from Cameroonian royalty, was known for his roles in movies like “Midnight Run” and the TV show “Homicide: Life on the Street.”Sigourney Weaver and Yaphet Kotto in “Alien.”Credit…20th Century Fox, via Associated PressMarch 16, 2021, 4:47 a.m. ETYaphet Kotto, an imposing actor who descended from African royalty and was known for playing tough characters in a roster of films like “Alien” and “Midnight Run,” died on Monday near Manila in the Philippines. He was 81.His death was confirmed on Tuesday by his agent, Ryan Goldhar. His wife, Thessa Sinahon, announced it in a Facebook post. No other details were immediately available.Mr. Kotto, who said he came from Cameroonian royalty on his father’s side, began studying acting at 16 at the Actors Mobile Theater Studio, according to Variety, and by 19 he had made his professional theater debut in “Othello.”He often played police officers, criminals and other hardened personalities onscreen. He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of President Idi Amin, the murderous Ugandan strongman, in the 1976 television movie “Raid on Entebbe.”He also starred as a police lieutenant in the 1990s-era TV hit “Homicide: Life on the Street,” an ex-convict in the 1978 film “Blue Collar” and a prison guard in “Brubaker,” a 1980 movie about a prison farm also starring Robert Redford.Mr. Kotto as Lt. Al Giardello in “Homicide: Life on the Street.”Credit…James Sorensen/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesHe even played a pair of Bond villains in the 1973 film “Live and Let Die”: both a corrupt Caribbean dictator and that character’s alter ago, a drug trafficker named Mr. Big.In 1993, Mr. Kotto, who stood 6-foot-3, told The Baltimore Sun that such roles presented a distorted image of what he was really like.“I want to try to play a much more sensitive man. A family man,” he told the newspaper. “There is an aspect of Black people’s lives that is not running or jumping.”Yaphet Frederick Kotto was born on Nov. 15, 1939, in Harlem and grew up in the Bronx. His father was Cameroonian royalty, The Baltimore Sun reported. His mother was of Panamanian and West Indian descent. The couple separated when Mr. Kotto was a child, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents.Mr. Kotto in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die.”Credit…MGM/UA Entertainment Mr. Kotto married three times; he and Ms. Sinahon, who is from the Philippines, wed in Baltimore in 1998.Mr. Kotto had six children. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.One of Mr. Kotto’s first parts was a supporting role in the 1964 film “Nothing but a Man,” about a Black couple who face discrimination in the Deep South. He would go on to have more than 90 other acting credits, in film, in television and on Broadway.Notably, he played Parker, an engineer tasked with repairing a spaceship in “Alien,” the 1979 blockbuster from Ridley Scott.In the 1988 action-comedy “Midnight Run,” co-starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, he played the F.B.I. agent Alonzo Mosely, whose stolen ID becomes fodder for a running joke. And in “The Running Man,” a dystopian 1987 thriller set in what was then the near future (2019), Mr. Kotto played a resistance fighter alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in a fascist version of America.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Riz Ahmed and Steven Yeun Make History at the 2021 Oscar Nominations

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nominations HighlightsNominees ListSnubs and SurprisesBest Director NomineesStream the NomineesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRiz Ahmed and Steven Yeun Make History at the 2021 Oscar NominationsFor the first time, two men of Asian heritage are up for best actor. Their films, “Sound of Metal” and “Minari,” are also up for best picture.March 15, 2021Updated 5:19 p.m. ETRiz Ahmed in “Sound of Metal.”Credit…Amazon Studios, via Associated PressSteven Yeun in “Minari.”Credit…David Bornfriend/A24, via Associated PressIt’s been nearly 20 years since a man of Asian heritage notched a best actor nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.But this year, for the first time in the 93-year history of the Academy Awards, there are two: Steven Yeun (“Minari”), who was born in South Korea and raised in the United States, and Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), who is a Briton of Pakistani descent. Both Ahmed and Yeun are first-time nominees.Their inclusion is especially notable because despite a spate of Asian-led films in recent years, including last year’s best picture winner, “Parasite,” the academy had failed to recognize the performers.Just two actors of Asian heritage have ever been nominated in the category: The Russian-born Yul Brynner (“The King and I”), and Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi,” “House of Sand and Fog”), whose father is Indian. Brynner and Kingsley each won the award once.Yeun and Ahmed have some tough competition: The other three nominees this year are Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), who won a posthumous Golden Globe for best actor in a drama, Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) and Gary Oldman (“Mank”).The New York Times’s co-chief film critic A.O. Scott called Yeun’s performance in “Minari,” as a Korean immigrant father who moves his family to the Ozarks, “effortlessly magnetic.” Scott praised his proclivity for finding “the cracks in the character’s carefully cultivated reserve, the large, unsettled emotions behind the facade of stoicism.”Ahmed won acclaim for his performance as a drummer who loses his hearing in “Sound of Metal,” which the Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis praised for its “extraordinarily intricate” sound design. She singled out Ahmed for his “tweaking urgency that’s poignantly credible — he’s a study in distress.”Even though only four men of Asian heritage have ever been nominated for best actor, the situation is far more bleak in the best actress category, where only one woman of Asian heritage has ever been nominated (Merle Oberon for the 1935 drama “The Dark Angel”), and none has won.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More