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      'Judas and the Black Messiah' Is Hollywood at Its Most Radical

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookIs This the Most Radical Film Ever Produced by Hollywood?“Judas and the Black Messiah” is the rare Hollywood film to explore a vision of Blackness that has nothing to do with white audiences.Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah.”Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner Bros. Pictures, via Associated PressFeb. 16, 2021, 3:13 p.m. ET“Judas and the Black Messiah” is a very good — nearly great — movie about the charismatic Fred Hampton and the way the Black Panther Party was targeted by the United States government. Yet neither the standout performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield nor the sensitive and insightful direction by Shaka King are the most remarkable aspects of the film: Not since Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic “Malcolm X” has there been a mainstream American film this thoroughly Black and radical.Black History Month was a mystery to me as a kid. I could never understand why we were taught some Black history but not nearly enough, not even close. We would learn about Frederick Douglass but not Nat Turner. Booker T. Washington but not W.E.B. Du Bois. Our teachers made a point of telling us about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but completely neglected Malcolm X. With this approach, they tacitly communicated that only the Black historical figures who included white people doing the work of Black liberation were the ones worthy of remembrance. This was especially true when it came to Black radicals. The Panthers, who were important to my community when I was growing up, and the Black power movement were never part of the narrative at school. The same can be said of Hollywood.Hollywood has long told Black stories from the perspective of white people. Think of Oscar-winning dramas like “The Blind Side” (a white adoptive mother comes to the aid of a Black football player), “The Help” (a white journalist awakens to the injustices Black maids face in the civil-rights-era South) or “Green Book” (a white chauffeur helps a Black classical pianist): Instead of exploring what Black characters endured, these movies catered to white audiences, giving them lessons on how to better perform their whiteness while in proximity to Blackness.This tradition of making Black films about white people thus makes the mere existence of “Judas and the Black Messiah” shocking and exhilarating. The movie, available on HBO Max and distributed by Warner Bros., is not exactly hostile to white people, but for a mainstream movie likely to garner Oscar attention, the version of Blackness it depicts, one rooted in an unapologetic love of the descendants of enslaved people, is rare. Surprisingly, it does not apologize for Hampton’s embrace of Blackness nor his deep suspicion of capitalism. It also does not sugarcoat the depiction of the Judas of the title, the F.B.I. plant Bill O’Neal. In another era, if a studio film tackled the material at all, Hampton would have been secondary in the story of a sympathetic informant. Instead, King is intentional about putting us on the side of the Black radicals, and we see the government for what it was: a destructive force.The movie isn’t perfect. Hampton was a fiery speaker, yes, but to fully understand him and his appeal, one must see him in action — a vantage the movie does not afford its viewers. What made him a legend in Chicago was his organizing skills and his undeniable charisma. But his most important achievement was bringing together the Rainbow Coalition, an alliance of the Black Panthers; the leftist, mostly white Young Patriots Organization; and the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican gang that was concerned with human rights. This is not really given much screen time. Instead, the film shows us a Hampton who has already reached his zenith — it does not show us the work he did to get there. Obviously, a film is not a history lesson, but a bit more time could have been devoted to Hampton’s ideas.Recent documentaries like Stanley Nelson’s “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” and Göran Olsson’s “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” have examined the Panthers’ history and what they stood for. There have been a handful of features about the Panthers, most notably the beautiful and intimate “Night Catches Us” (2010), which depicted what happened to former members who tried to make a life outside the party. Perhaps the drama that comes closest to what “Judas” has achieved is a movie about Black nationalism, Lee’s “Malcolm X.” The politics of the two films are similar in that they both depict men who are vocal in their vision of Black self-determination. Yet “Judas” is more explicit about how Hampton married his racial critique with an economic one.It’s clear why we finally got a film like this. Black protesters have forced this country and its cultural creators finally to pay attention to its vicious legacy of white supremacy. Not only have people been in the streets for the past few years chanting “Black Lives Matter,” but Hollywood has also been an explicit target for criticism. It was only a few years ago that #OscarsSoWhite forced the academy to do some serious soul searching about how the industry marginalizes Black talent. More still needs to be done to make the industry an equitable place for all stories and creators, but the work so far is already having an impact.And it’s important to see a film telling a story about Black figures who have been neglected by America’s history books. If nothing else, the movie might inspire viewers to dig deeper and learn more about the Black radicals it depicts. Hampton and the Black Panther Party were always heroes to me; this is a film that does justice to their memory.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Pakistani-American Tale Upends Expectations Onscreen and in Life

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Pakistani-American Tale Upends Expectations Onscreen and in LifeIram Parveen Bilal’s “I’ll Meet You There” depicts a parent who supports his daughter’s dream. The filmmaker’s own parents weren’t as sure about her passion.The director Iram Parveen Bilal said, “I was just frustrated with the constant oppressed-Muslim-woman situation that is always pushed forward” in media portrayals.Credit…Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 1:39 p.m. ETIram Parveen Bilal’s newest feature, “I’ll Meet You There,” tells a novel story: A young Pakistani-American woman, Dua (played by Nikita Tewani), wants to pursue a career in dance, a path that would be frowned upon in Pakistan. Instead, her immigrant father, a Chicago police officer named Majeed, encourages her to follow her dream. At the same time, Majeed (Faran Tahir) is ordered to surveil a mosque — essentially to spy on his people, including his father, who has incidentally chosen now to visit from Pakistan.The film’s story lines signal a departure from how Muslims and South Asians have typically been depicted in American cinema: Parents are usually painted as oppressive and rigid. Women are given very little agency. And that’s, of course, assuming the exploration of Islam is not immediately linked to terrorism. Bilal’s film tells a story about being an American Muslim after the Sept. 11 attacks, an experience that can mean a cultural identity clash on multiple fronts.Bilal — who was born in the United States but grew up in Nigeria and Pakistan — wrote the script 10 years ago. But she began to raise financing in earnest in the early days of the Trump presidency. His administration’s travel ban, which affected immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries and has since been rescinded, horrified her and renewed her desire to present Muslims in a different light onscreen. The movie received largely positive reviews when it was selected for South by Southwest last year (before that festival was canceled because of the pandemic). On Friday, the film was released on major streaming platforms.“I do think I was just frustrated with the constant oppressed-Muslim-woman situation that is always pushed forward,” Bilal, 37, said in a recent phone interview, referring to media portrayals in Western television and film. “And all this sort of fresh but nuanced take is exactly why it has been so incredibly hard to get the film financed. Because that is not necessarily, I found, a narrative that was exciting for investors in the system to really support.”How Bilal entered filmmaking itself is a story of defying norms. When she arrived in the United States from Pakistan in 2000 at 17, she had a bright future virtually guaranteed. After qualifying for the Asian Physics Olympiad — an international physics competition — she received a full scholarship to attend the prestigious California Institute of Technology. She went on to earn an environmental science and engineering degree as well as the opportunity to pursue a stable, potentially lucrative career as a scientist — one that would make her South Asian parents, also scientists, proud.Many children of South Asian parents will find Bilal’s trajectory familiar, except for what happened next. She gave it all up after graduating. On a whim, Bilal opted to become a filmmaker, much to the bafflement of her parents, with whom art was never discussed. It was a profession she knew little about, except that she was sure that at heart she was a storyteller, not a scientist. She has since written and directed several short films and two other features.In a phone interview, she discussed her shift from science to filmmaking, and “I’ll Meet You There.” Here are edited excerpts:Nikita Tewani in a scene from “I’ll Meet You There.”Credit…Level ForwardWhen you were growing up, were your parents pressuring you to pursue science?My parents [started] from scratch. Their parents migrated from British India to Pakistan in the Partition and left everything. My father’s father ended up setting up a mechanic and auto workshop, and my mom’s father was a postmaster. For them, education was everything.How did they react to you leaving science to pursue filmmaking?They just weren’t sure that I was going to be able to make ends meet. My mother very clearly said filmmakers and people in this industry only succeed based on who they know and how much money they have. And she said, “We don’t know anybody.”Did your parents disapprove?My mother definitely disapproved, I think, for a really long time. She’d be sitting with the aunties and everybody would be talking about how their kids went to school and are now pursuing engineering or whatever corporate [job] — and she would just be like, “Yeah, Iram went to Caltech,” and then there would be silence. But now I think she’s understanding it, and they’re proud. It’s also just hard for them to understand what success is. For them, success is an Oscar.How has your science background informed your filmmaking?I fundamentally believe that the artist’s mind and the scientist’s mind are very similar because both are bent upon curiosity.In terms of the father-daughter relationship in the film, did you purposely try to subvert the expectations of what audiences have come to expect of South Asian depictions?The fact is that there are a lot of fathers out there in the world who are extremely sweet and positive to their daughters, and this exists. Even the grandfather, he’s still a very soft and sweet man. And I was kind of tired of seeing that narrative. I don’t think it was a conscious thing: “Oh OK, here’s that theme, let’s make it kind of the opposite.” I just think it was always another thing that I’ve often struggled with, that I feel that sometimes women have been conditioned to push the patriarchy more.What impact do you think the film can have today, especially after the Trump presidency?Anti-Muslim bigotry is very much present; communities of color are having to protect [themselves] even more in terms of surveillance. And the fact that this is a family that is just like yours — [the film can] basically humanize and connect so you don’t think of Muslims as unicorns, but they’re actually just like people you would know, like your neighbors. So we’re just hoping to provide another data point of what it means to be Muslim-American and hopefully create more similarities.Because at the bottom of all of this, this is a story about a family trying to reconnect. Yes, they happen to be Muslim. But it’s about secrets, it’s about intergenerational trauma, conflict, those things.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Bored China Propels Box Office Sales to a Record

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Bored China Propels Box Office Sales to a Record“Detective Chinatown 3” received tepid reviews, but Covid-19 travel restrictions drove many to the movies when they might have been journeying to their hometowns instead.“Detective Chinatown 3” raked in a record-breaking $397 million over three days in China, according to estimates, as millions went to movies there during the Lunar New Year holiday.Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 4:18 a.m. ETHundreds of millions of people are stuck in cities around China during this Lunar New Year holiday, as coronavirus restrictions put a halt to a travel season that is usually the world’s largest annual migration. Instead, they are going to the movies — and powering a blowout resurgence at the box office.“Detective Chinatown 3,” the latest installment in a long-running buddy cop series, raked in an estimated $397 million over three days, according to Maoyan, which tracks ticket sales in the country. That set a world record for the largest opening weekend in a single market. The previous record-holder, “Avengers: Endgame,” took in $357 million in its weekend opening in the United States and Canada in 2019.The strong showing was a forceful reminder of the power of the Chinese consumer. While the Chinese economy has come roaring back as the country has largely tamed the coronavirus, shoppers and moviegoers have been slower to open their wallets.Now, people like Sophia Jiang are ready to spend, even on a movie that has received tepid reviews.Over the Lunar New Year holiday, Ms. Jiang, a 40-year-old freelance writer, would typically go with her parents to their hometown in the northern province of Jilin. But the authorities imposed restrictions on visits to ancestral homes this year to stem any coronavirus outbreaks. Photos circulating on Chinese social media showed eerily empty railway cars at a time when travelers are usually packed shoulder to shoulder.Stuck in the southern city of Shenzhen, Ms. Jiang has gone to the movies three times so far during the seven-day holiday, which ends on Wednesday. “Detective Chinatown 3,” she said, was the worst of the bunch.“The story wasn’t that bad,” Ms. Jiang said, “but it wasn’t particularly amazing either, and I fell asleep twice.”The film’s release was held for a year because of the pandemic. Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesQuality aside, China’s booming box office returns offered a promising sign for the global film industry, which has seen movie theaters large and small decimated by the pandemic and has been racked with concerns about the future of moviegoing.By Tuesday morning, China’s total box office takings for the new year had reached $1.55 billion, according to local box office trackers. By contrast, total ticket sales last year in the United States, where many theaters are hanging on for survival, totaled $2.2 billion.“Some have argued that, during the pandemic, people have become accustomed to watching online entertainment at home,” Jane Shao, president of Lumière Pavilions, a Chinese movie theater chain, said in a telephone interview. “But I think this is proof that movie theaters are an effective venue for social gatherings.”Ms. Shao, who oversees 40 cinemas across 26 cities in China, said the Lunar New Year box office returns were like “night and day” compared to last year, when the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan prompted the government to close theaters at the start of the holiday. Recovery had been slow, she said, but the recent numbers have been encouraging.“It was a devastating year for our industry, but people have been thrilled to come back to the theaters,” Ms. Shao said.“Detective Chinatown 3” had initially been slated for release during last year’s holiday. China’s theaters for the most part reopened in July, but most have been limited over this month’s holiday to 75 percent seating capacity, and only 50 percent in areas like Beijing, which have recently seen small outbreaks.Theaters have been instructed not to sell concessions, further eating into profits. Movie ticket prices over the holiday were higher than usual, helping to overcome the gap.The film features two bumbling detectives, played by Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran, who go to Tokyo to investigate the murder of a powerful businessman. Online, audiences criticized its excessive product placement advertising, scenes of abuse against women and scattered plot threads. But the movie benefited from the strong brand recognition of the “Detective Chinatown” franchise.The Lunar New Year holiday has traditionally been a coveted window for film releases, and moviegoers, like these in Beijing, had a diverse selection from which to choose.Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesThe Lunar New Year holiday has traditionally been a coveted window for film releases, and moviegoers had a more diverse selection to choose from than in past years. Coming in second place over the weekend was “Hi, Mom,” a time-travel comedy that grossed $161.9 million, according to Maoyan. “A Writer’s Odyssey,” an adventure film, took third place, with $48.4 million.Rudolph Tang, 41, a classical music critic, said he had seen all three. But he said he felt especially compelled to watch “Detective Chinatown 3” in part because he remembered seeing a poster for the movie on the facade of the historic Grand Cinema in Shanghai at the height of China’s coronavirus outbreak a year ago, when the normally bustling streets had been emptied and cinemas closed.“Seeing the film brought back a lot of memories of the hardship that people have been through,” Mr. Tang said in a telephone interview. “I felt like I was making a statement that the scar has healed in China and that people can return to cinemas now and watch movies.”Last year, box office revenue totaled $3.13 billion in China, making it the world’s largest movie market, ahead of the United States. But it is not clear whether the Chinese film industry’s early momentum this year can propel it beyond its performance of 2019, when it posted $9.2 billion in sales.China’s box office success will depend partly on Hollywood’s pace of recovery. Though domestic productions have been on the rise, China still has a large appetite for Hollywood films, and many theater managers are hoping that titles like “No Time to Die,” the latest Bond film, and Disney’s “Black Widow” stay on schedule for theatrical releases later this year.It is also unclear what role the unique circumstances of this year’s Lunar New Year holiday might have played in the weekend’s impressive box office performance. Air travel was down 72 percent in the first week of the holiday travel period compared to the same time last year, according to Chinese state media. Train travel was down by 68 percent in the first two weeks of the travel season compared to last year.Still, the phenomenon of going to the movies over the Lunar New Year holiday appears to be here to stay.“Celebrating Lunar New Year in China has traditionally meant setting off firecrackers, eating dumplings and watching the Spring Festival Gala,” said Yin Hong, a film professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Now, more and more, going to the movies with family is being incorporated into that tradition.”Though domestic productions have been on the rise, China still has a large appetite for Hollywood films, like Ant-Man.Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesCoral Yang and Liu Yi contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Tom Stoppard’ Tells of an Enormous Life Spent in Constant Motion

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBooks of The Times‘Tom Stoppard’ Tells of an Enormous Life Spent in Constant MotionThe playwright Tom Stoppard during an interview in New York City, 1972.Credit…William E. Sauro/The New York TimesFeb. 15, 2021Updated 6:49 p.m. ETThe Czech-born Jewish playwright Tom Stoppard arrived in England with his family in 1946, when he was 8. They’d managed to flee Czechoslovakia ahead of the Nazis, and had spent years in Singapore and in India. He’d later call himself a “bounced Czech.”Stoppard took to England, his adopted country. He was impressed with its values, especially free speech. He was as impressed by one of its sports: cricket.He played in school (Stoppard skipped college) and, once he’d found success in the theater, on Harold Pinter’s team in London, the Gaieties. Their rival was a team from The Guardian newspaper. Pinter was an ogre on the pitch. He presided, Stoppard said, “like a 1930s master from a prep school.” Stoppard was the wicket-keeper, stylish in enormous bright red Slazenger gloves.Stoppard is not an autobiographical playwright. But his obsession with cricket led to one of the great moments in his work. His play “The Real Thing” (1982) is about theater, relationships and politics — one character is an actress, another tries to help free a Scottish soldier imprisoned for burning a memorial wreath during a protest. The play includes what’s become known as the cricket-bat speech, of which here is an excerpt:“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel 200 yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly … (He clucks his tongue to make the noise.)”The way the cricket bat taps a ball, and makes it sail an improbable distance, becomes, in Stoppard’s hands, a metaphor for writing. No living playwright has so regularly made that beautiful (clucks his tongue to make the noise) sound.Credit….[ Read Charles McGrath’s profile of Hermione Lee. ]The adjective “Stoppardian” — to employ elegant wit while addressing philosophical concerns — entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978. His plays are trees in which he climbs out, precariously, onto every limb. These trees are swaying. There’s electricity in the air, as before a summer thunderstorm.Stoppard’s best-known plays include “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “The Real Thing,” “Arcadia” and “The Coast of Utopia.” (His most recent, “Leopoldstadt,” is closed, for now, because of Covid-19.) He co-wrote the screenplay for “Shakespeare in Love,” and has written or worked on dozens of other movie scripts. He’s written a novel and flurries of scripts for radio and television.Now 83, he’s led an enormous life. In the astute and authoritative new biography, “Tom Stoppard: A Life,” Hermione Lee wrestles it all onto the page. At times you sense she is chasing a fox through a forest. Stoppard is constantly in motion — jetting back and forth across the Atlantic, looking after the many revivals of his plays, keeping the plates spinning, agitating on behalf of dissidents, artists and political prisoners in Eastern Europe, delivering lectures, accepting awards, touching up scripts, giving lavish parties, maintaining friendships with Pinter, Vaclav Havel, Steven Spielberg, Mick Jagger and others. It’s been a charmed life, lived by a charming man. Tall, dashing, large-eyed, shaggy-haired; to women Stoppard’s been a walking stimulus package.There’s been one previous biography of Stoppard, by Ira Nadel, published in 2002. Lee says that Stoppard “didn’t read it.” She must be taking his word.Lee is an important biographer who has written scrupulous lives of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather and Penelope Fitzgerald. Her Stoppard book is estimable but wincingly long; it sometimes rides low in the water. The sections that detail Stoppard’s research for his plays can seem endless, as if Lee has dragged us into the library with him and given us a stubby pencil. Like a lot of us during the pandemic, “Tom Stoppard: A Life” could stand to lose 15 percent of its body weight.Lee owns a sharp spade, but don’t come here for dirt. Stoppard has long been a tabloid fixture in England; the spotlight on his relationships sometimes became a searchlight. But Lee makes the case that people, even his ex-wives, of which there are two, find him a decent sort. He’s remained loyal to old friends. He’s a family man who kept his office door open to his children. He kept the same agent and publisher for decades.The biographer Hermione Lee, whose new book is a life of the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard.Credit…John CairnsHow did he get it all done? I’m with Antonia Fraser, who wrote in “Must You Go?,” a memoir of her years with Pinter, that she loves to hear the details of a writer’s craft, “as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.”First of all, Stoppard does a landslide of topical research before he begins to write. Second, he needs cigarettes. Lee says he lined up matches on his desk sometimes, and told himself he wouldn’t stop writing until he’d lit 12. He doesn’t drink much; that has helped. Although he has had spacious offices in which to work, he prefers to write at the kitchen table, late into the night, after everyone else has gone to bed.He will obsessively listen to one song while working. He wrote one of his first plays to Leadbelly’s “Ol’ Riley.” He listened to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues” while writing “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” and John Lennon’s “Mother” while writing the play “Jumpers.”He liked to have breakfast every morning with his family (he has four children), along with a pile of newspapers. When does he sleep? Lee mentions an occasional nap at sunset.Lee tracks the arc of Stoppard’s politics over time. Most people turn to the right as they age; Stoppard went the other way. One reason this book entertains is that Stoppard has had an opinion about almost everything, and usually these opinions are witty.He thinks, for example, that art arises from difficulty and talent. “Skill without imagination,” one of his characters says, “is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.” (The character’s name is Donner, and Stoppard has said: “Donner is me.”)Stoppard is a maniacal reader who collects first editions of writers he admires. Asked on the BBC radio show “Desert Island Discs” in 1984 to choose the one book he’d bring to a desert island, he replied: Dante’s “Inferno” in a dual Italian/English version, so he could learn a language while reading a favorite. His idea of a good death, he’s said, would be to have a bookshelf fall on him, killing him instantly, while reading.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘The Black Church’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat’s on TV This Week: ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘The Black Church’Richard Brooks’s classic adaptation of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” airs on TCM. And Henry Louis Gates Jr. looks at the history of African-American faith communities in a PBS documentary.Robert Blake, left, and Scott Wilson in “In Cold Blood.”Credit…Columbia PicturesFeb. 15, 2021, 1:00 a.m. ETBetween 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, Feb. 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.MondayIN COLD BLOOD (1967) 8 p.m. on TCM. The “hard blue skies” that Truman Capote described as hovering over rural Kansas in his pioneering 1966 nonfiction book, “In Cold Blood,” are turned black and white in this celebrated film adaptation from Richard Brooks. The movie dramatizes the 1959 quadruple murder that Capote’s book made famous, in which two men, Perry Smith (played by Robert Blake) and Richard Hickock (Scott Wilson), killed four members of a wealthy family in Holcomb, Kan., in a botched home robbery. Brooks’s adaptation has an eerie realism; it was shot largely on location, including on the farm where the actual murders took place, and was made to have a documentary feel. It’s all set to an unsettling score by Quincy Jones. The sum of those parts, Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1967 review for The New York Times, is a movie that “sends shivers down the spine while moving the viewer to ponder.”THOR: RAGNAROK (2017) 6:15 p.m. on TNT. Marvel Studios enlisted Taika Waititi, the New Zealand filmmaker known for serving up offbeat humor in movies like “What We Do in the Shadows,” to breathe new life (and laughs) into its “Thor” franchise with “Thor: Ragnarok,” a blockbuster with a secret superpower: self-deprecation. Chris Hemsworth returns as the god of thunder, this time with a new villain to save the world from — Hela, the goddess of death, played by Cate Blanchett — and a cheekiness to go with his long blonde hair.TuesdayA scene from “The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song.”Credit…McGee MediaTHE BLACK CHURCH: THIS IS OUR STORY, THIS IS OUR SONG 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosts this new two-part documentary about the role of Black religious spaces and communities as centers of faith, resilience and organization for generations. He interviews a range of figures including religious leaders like Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie and the newly minted senator Rev. Raphael Warnock; musicians like John Legend, Jennifer Hudson and Yolanda Adams; and other prominent voices including Oprah Winfrey and the philosopher Cornel West. Gates also explores the current place of African-American faith communities in the era of the Black Lives Matter and environmental justice movements. “The church gave people a sense of value, and of belonging, and of worthiness,” Winfrey says. “I don’t know how we could have survived as a people without it.”From left, Adrian Groulx, Joseph Lee Anderson and Stacey Leilua in “Young Rock.”Credit…Mark Taylor/NBCYOUNG ROCK 8 p.m. on NBC. The world has seen many versions of Dwayne Johnson over the years — Dwayne “the wrestler” Johnson, Dwayne “the ‘Fast and Furious’ star” Johnson and, of course, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson — so it’s fitting that three different actors play Johnson in this sitcom series based on his life. Dreamed up by Johnson and the “Fresh Off the Boat” creator Nahnatchka Khan, the show portrays Johnson during three periods of his childhood and young adulthood, telling a fictionalized version of his upbringing and mining comedy from the experiences that shaped him, which go well beyond hitting the Bowflex.WednesdayLINCOLN (2012) 8 p.m. on HBO. Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is this month. Pay homage to the birthday boy by revisiting Steven Spielberg’s epic portrait of the 16th president, with an Academy Award-winning lead performance from Daniel Day-Lewis. The screenplay, written by Tony Kushner, is built around two momentous events in Lincoln’s political life: the Gettysburg Address and his second Inaugural Address. Much of the plot is focused on Lincoln’s arduous efforts to get a bill passed in Congress. The result is “less a biopic than a political thriller,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “a civics lesson that is energetically staged and alive with moral energy.”ThursdayTHE WIDOWER 10 p.m. on NBC. More than a decade of reporting went into this new true-crime mini-series from the producers of “Dateline NBC.” The show looks at a murder case with a remarkably chilling premise: A Las Vegas man calls the police to report that his wife has been murdered in a home invasion, but the subsequent investigation reveals that three of the man’s former wives also died under mysterious circumstances. This naturally raises questions about his role in the deaths.FridayPatrice O’Neal performing at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan. O’Neal, who died in 2011, is the subject of “Patrice O’Neal: Killing Is Easy,” a documentary on Comedy Central.Credit…G. Paul Burnett/The New York TimesPATRICE O’NEAL: KILLING IS EASY 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The stand-up comic Patrice O’Neal was known for both his searing humor and for the respect he commanded from his comedy peers during his career, which ended with his death in 2011. This documentary, directed by Michael Bonfiglio (“Jerry Before Seinfeld”), looks at O’Neal’s life, humor and legacy. It includes interviews with Colin Quinn, Bill Burr, Kevin Hart and other comics who admired O’Neal.SaturdayLILIES OF THE FIELD (1963) 8 p.m. on TCM. This year’s movie awards season is just starting to ramp up, but it’s already certain to be remembered for decades to come as the Academy Awards and other shows try to honor movies released during a year when theaters were largely closed and studios had to shelve many of their biggest releases. In 1964, Sidney Poitier was a one-man awards-season history maker: He became the first African-American to win the Academy Award for best actor, for his performance in “Lilies of the Field.” The film stars Poitier as nomadic former G.I. who stumbles upon a group of Roman Catholic nuns living in the Arizona desert, and eventually helps them build a chapel.SundayTHE VACCINE: CONQUERING COVID 8 p.m. on Discovery. This special looks at the development of Covid-19 vaccines through interviews with people on several sides of that colossal challenge, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins, and scientists from Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. It also looks at the experiences of some early trial volunteers.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Turns 30

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      ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Turns 30Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs.”Orion PicturesIs it a horror movie? A psychological thriller? Do such distinctions even matter when it comes to a movie like “The Silence of the Lambs”? It was released on Valentine’s Day 1991, and all I know is that I’ve seen “Silence” more times than I can recall → More

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      Lana Condor Says Goodbye to ‘To All the Boys’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixLana Condor said she wanted to show her character “stepping into the world as a young woman choosing herself for the first time.”Credit…Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexExit InterviewLana Condor Says Goodbye to ‘To All the Boys’The actress discusses being one of the few Asian-Americans to headline a rom-com and pushing to make Lara Jean more independent.Lana Condor said she wanted to show her character “stepping into the world as a young woman choosing herself for the first time.”Credit…Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 12, 2021, 2:31 p.m. ETThe first two films in the Netflix trilogy “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” pretty much checked every box on the teen rom-com boy-drama bingo card: a boy next door, a boy doomed to be on the losing end of a love triangle and, most important, the boy who helps hatch a fake dating plot that inevitably becomes … not so fake.So when it came time to film the final installment, Lana Condor, who plays Lara Jean, the girl at the center of it all, was just about ready for a change of pace: “It’s called ‘To All the Boys,’” the actress, 23, said in a Zoom interview on Monday. “It’s been about the boys. From Day 1. We get it.”“To All the Boys: Always and Forever,” which begins streaming Friday, sets aside Team Josh and Team John Ambrose and Team Peter in favor of Team Lara Jean, as she finds herself on the brink of some major life decisions with high school graduation approaching. She’s come a long way from the hopeless romantic who wrote down her feelings in sweeping love letters rather than acting on them, a habit that set off the antics of the first film when the letters inadvertently made their way to their recipients.Condor in character as Lara Jean, in the final installment of the trilogy.Credit…Sarah Shatz/NetflixA lot has changed for Condor, too. She became a star overnight with the first installment, in 2018, and post-“To All the Boys,” she’s set to star in and executive produce a new comedy series for Netflix.But first, after several years of a whirlwind work schedule, she’s focused on settling into her new home in Seattle with her boyfriend, the actor Anthony De La Torre, and her dog, Emmy. As she prepares to say goodbye to the character that has defined her career so far, Condor discussed what it means to be one of the few Asian-American actresses to headline a romantic comedy and why the Lara Jean of “Always and Forever” is her favorite. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.This time last year, you surprised fans at the Paris Theater in New York for a screening of the second film of the trilogy — an experience that seems pretty foreign now. How does it feel looking back?That was really emotional and made me feel just overwhelmed with joy. I’ve put so much of myself into these movies because I love them. And they’ve also changed my life. But looking back, I was running on fumes at that point, because it was shooting the movies back-to-back and then going on the big press tour. I wish that I had taken it all in and really been present.Before auditioning, Condor read the novel the first film was based on. She remembers thinking, “This is an Asian-American girl falling in love and this is something we need to see.”Credit…Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York TimesWhat was making this last film like for you?I remember thinking, “How did I get here?” I wanted nothing more than to finish it the way that I would be super proud of Lara Jean. So I was just hellbent; I was constantly talking to the director and the producers and writers and everyone like, “You guys, we need to show her stepping into the world as a young woman choosing herself for the first time.”It was a crazy emotional experience, because the last few years have been the greatest ups and the greatest downs of my life. [She has said she felt burned out after the first film.] I love the movies, the friends I made in the movies, the story — I love the color scheme of our movies, the pinks and the teals. So knowing it’s the last time I’ll be in the bedroom, the last time I’ll be in the school, all these things that I’ve been spending so much time in in the past three years, is emotional. I’m going to miss it a lot.What was it like filming in Korea?We went during typhoon season. So I was like, who thought of this? But it was amazing. We were just shooting touristy things, so we got to shoot at all locations that we would have gone to as normal tourists. We would meet people on the street and people would walk into the shot as we’re filming and just be like, “Oh hi! I love your movie!” And we’d be like, “You’re in it.”Condor and Noah Centineo in “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” the first film in the series.Credit…NetflixHow did you feel about the way Lara Jean’s story came to an end?Something I’m the most proud of is she never really loses her weird little -isms and quirks, and she never loses or changes her personality. That’s really hard not to do when you’re in high school. Yes, the Lara Jean we see in the third movie is a grown Lara Jean, and she’s different in that she has life experience now, but ultimately the things that make her her, she never let go of.Did you get to keep any of the clothes?Did I get to keep any of the clothes? No. Did I steal the clothes? Yes. We spent hours and hours for every outfit making it perfect, because we saw from the first movie that girls actually went out to buy the outfits.In the third movie, they have this bowling jersey that we mimic from “The Big Lebowski,” so I have that. I have the hatbox, which is not a piece of clothing, but I wasn’t going to leave the set without it. I have this blue silk jacket that she wears during a scene with Peter [in Part 1] when she’s talking about people leaving — “The more people you let into your life, the more that can walk right out.” I love that. I took a pair of jeans, which is not exciting, but it’s very hard to find a good pair of jeans.The movies are based on Jenny Han’s books, and it’s fun spotting her cameos in each film — what has your relationship with her been like for the past few years?She’s like my sister. We’re always on the phone for hours and hours. When we first were talking years ago, she said, “I just want you as Lana and as a young Asian-American girl to have the same opportunities that Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss would have or Kristen Stewart as Bella from ‘Twilight.’” And that was before we even knew we would have three movies. I’ve never had anyone say that to me, particularly as an Asian-American actress — almost to the point where I was like, is that even possible?Next up for Condor is a Netflix comedy series that she’s set to star in and executive produce.Credit…Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York TimesWas that representation aspect top of mind for you when making the movies? Did it add any extra pressure?I read the book immediately before the audition, and that’s when I was like, OK, this I have to have. Because this is an Asian-American girl falling in love and this is something we need to see.But when we were making the movies, it almost was like I was just being Lana. Because ultimately, it’s about a young girl falling in love and showing that anyone can fall in love. So I think that it was in my mind, but it also wasn’t. Because I don’t walk around in life like, Asian Lana going to the store, Asian Lana going to pick up food, Asian Lana walking my dog.We’ve reached the end of what Jenny Han has written for Lara Jean. But do you see a scenario in which we might see more of this story unfold, or in which you might play this character again?I think never say never. [But] the third is all I know. To me, that’s the ending. But I would really like to see Lara Jean and Peter in their mid- to late 20s. Like they’ve gone through college, and I want to see what they’re like in the work space. I have this dream that Lara Jean is working in some realm of literature, I don’t know, in New York, writing, living her life. Because I personally have this feeling that they’re going to try to make it work in college, but they’re going to have to grow separately to be fully ready to come together.But I know for a fact that they’re going to get married; they’re going to live happily ever after. I just think they might need to grow as individuals first. And then I’d love to see them meeting each other again — she’s like at a cafe writing an article for a newspaper she’s working for, and he happens to be there, and they meet again in a new way where they’re older and developed. That would be so cool. If it happens, you heard it here first.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More