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      Questlove’s ‘Summer of Soul’ Wins at Sundance

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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 storyQuestlove’s ‘Summer of Soul’ Wins at SundanceThe documentary took home two prizes while “Coda” won several honors for its fictional tale of a hearing teenager in a deaf family.Sly Stone in the documentary  “Summer of Soul,” about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.Credit…Mass Distraction MediaFeb. 2, 2021A documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, often called the Black Woodstock, and a feature about a hearing daughter in a deaf family took top honors Tuesday night at the first virtual edition of the Sundance Film Festival.In the nonfiction category, both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award went to “Summer of Soul,” a potent mix of never-before-seen concert footage and history lesson by the first-time filmmaker Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove.Among dramatic features, both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award went to “Coda,” an acronym for “child of deaf adults.” Sian Heder (“Tallulah”) wrote and directed the crowd-pleasing tale starring Emilia Jones as a teenager who serves as an interpreter for her working-class family in Gloucester, Mass. Additionally, Heder won the directing award for American features, and the film won a special honor for its acting ensemble.In the world-cinema feature competition, “Hive,” which follows the wife of a soldier missing in the Kosovo war, won both the grand jury and audience prizes as well as the directing award for its filmmaker, Blerta Basholli. Among world-cinema documentaries, “Flee,” Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated look at an Afghan refugee in Denmark, won the grand jury prize. The audience award went to “Writing With Fire,” from Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, about India’s only newspaper run by women of the Dalit, or “untouchable” caste.Other directing winners included, for American documentaries, Natalia Almada, whose “Users” examines the human costs of technology, and in the world cinema documentary category, Hogir Hirori for “Sabaya,” about an effort to save Yazidi women and girls held captive by ISIS.Because of the pandemic, this edition of the festival, which officially ends Wednesday, was pared back and conducted largely online. For a complete list of winners, see sundance.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Resident Artists Are Named

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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 storyKehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Resident Artists Are NamedMembers of the global group share the painter’s passion for using art to explore social change.Kehinde Wiley at the Black Rock artist residence he founded in Dakar, Senegal, in 2019. It is welcoming its second group of artists, filmmakers and writers from around the world. Hilary Balu’s “Voyage vers Mars 5,” explores the flight of populations to other continents.Credit…Jane Hahn for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Updated 2:59 p.m. ETA Congolese painter whose art reflects how globalization and consumerism have transformed African society. A Nigerian-American filmmaker whose work focuses on cultures and experiences of Africans and the diaspora. A visual activist from Texas who forces her viewers to confront issues that are deemed difficult to tackle.These are among the 16 artists selected for the 2021 residency at Black Rock Senegal, the seaside studio in the West African capital city of Dakar belonging to Kehinde Wiley, the painter best known for his portrait of former President Barack Obama.The artists, who will spend several weeks at the lavish studio along a volcanic-rock-lined shore, express themselves in a variety of formats and come from across the globe. But many in this year’s group share Wiley’s passion for using art to explore social change.His most recent works include the stained glass fresco of breakdancers in the Moynihan Train Hall and his “Rumors of War” statue in Richmond, Va. — a Black man with ponytailed dreadlocks on horseback in the style of monuments to Confederate war generals. Wiley is not part of the Black Rock selection committee, which aims to consider the class of artists as a whole and tries to pick a diverse group of residents, including personal identities and nationalities and the medium they work in.Among the residents is Hilary Balu, from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, whose recent brightly colored yet sorrowful series “Voyage vers Mars” explores the tragedy of contemporary migration — in this case the flight of a population to another continent, like astronauts leaving a destroyed earth for another planet.Hilary Balu’s “Voyage vers Mars 5,” explores the flight of populations to other continents.Credit…MAGNIN-AAbbesi Akhamie, who lives in Washington, is a Nigerian-American writer, director and producer whose latest short film, ​“The Couple Next Door” from last year, premiered at the Aspen Shortsfest and won the Audience Choice Award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival.Irene Antonia Diane Reece from Houston uses her family archives as a form of activism and liberation, with some of her work exploring family history and racial identity.Other residents include Delali Ayivor, a Ghanaian-American writer; Mbali Dhlamini, a multidisciplinary artist, and Arinze Ifeakandu, a Nigerian writer who recently graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and writes about queer male intimacy. The residents will each spend several weeks at a time in the studio, with coronavirus restrictions in place, in staggered stages, beginning this month.Some might overlap with Wiley, who has spent much of the past year in Dakar, using the global pandemic as an opportunity to pause and paint, sometimes working with Black Rock residents who have helped him in his work.“I’m learning to view, discuss, and critique art that often depicts the Black body from a range of perspectives that span the globe,” Wiley said in an email exchange. “There’s an unending variety of rubrics through which artists are pushing the possibilities of representation.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Hal Holbrook, Actor Who Channeled Mark Twain, Is Dead at 95

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHal Holbrook, Actor Who Channeled Mark Twain, Is Dead at 95He carved out a substantial career in television and film but achieved the widest acclaim with his one-man stage show, playing Twain for more than six decades.Hal Holbrook on stage as Mark Twain in 2005. Mr. Holbrook was 29 when he started playing Twain at 70; as he grew older, he found he needed less and less makeup to look elderly.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021, 12:17 a.m. ETHal Holbrook, who carved out a substantial acting career in television and film but who achieved his widest acclaim onstage, embodying Mark Twain in all his craggy splendor and vinegary wit in a one-man show seen around the world, died on Jan. 23 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his assistant, Joyce Cohen, on Monday night.Mr. Holbrook had a long and fruitful run as an actor. He was the shadowy patriot Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men” (1976); an achingly grandfatherly character in “Into the Wild” (2007), for which he received an Oscar nomination; and the influential Republican Preston Blair in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012).He played the 16th president himself, on television, in Carl Sandburg’s “Lincoln,” a 1974 mini-series. The performance earned him an Emmy Award, one of five he won for his acting in television movies and mini-series; the others included “The Bold Ones: The Senator” (1970),his protagonist resembling John F. Kennedy, and “Pueblo” (1973) in which he played the commander of a Navy intelligence boat seized by North Korea in 1968.Mr. Holbrook was a regular on the 1980s television series “Designing Women.” He played Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” Shakespeare’s Hotspur and King Lear, and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”But above all he was Mark Twain, standing alone onstage in a rumpled white linen suit, spinning an omnisciently pungent, incisive and humane narration of the human comedy.Mr. Holbrook in 1973, when he played the commander of a Navy intelligence boat seized by North Korea in the TV movie “Pueblo.”Credit…Jerry Mosey/Associated PressMr. Holbrook never claimed to be a Twain scholar; indeed, he said, he had read only a little of Twain’s work as a young man. He said the idea of doing a staged reading of Twain’s work came from Edward A. Wright, his mentor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. And Mr. Wright would have been the first to acknowledge that the idea had actually originated with Twain himself — or rather Samuel Clemens, who had adopted Mark Twain as something of a stage name and who did readings of his work for years.Mr. Holbrook was finishing his senior year as a drama major in 1947 when Mr. Wright talked him into adding Twain to a production that Mr. Holbrook and his wife, Ruby, were planning called “Great Personalities,” in which they would portray, among others, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.Mr. Holbrook had doubts at first. “Ed, I think this Mark Twain thing is pretty corny,” he recalled telling Mr. Wright after the first rehearsals. “I don’t think it’s funny.”But Mr. Wright prevailed upon him to stay with it, and in 1948 the character came along when the Holbrooks took to the road with a “Great Personalities” touring production.They first tried the Twain sketch before an audience of psychiatric patients at the veterans hospital in Chillicothe, Ohio — a circumstance Mr. Holbrook explains only vaguely in his 2011 memoir, “Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain.” In the sketch, Mr. Holbrook’s cantankerous Twain was interviewed by Ruby Holbrook:“How old are you?”“Nineteen in June.”“Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever met?”“George Washington.”“But how could you have ever met George Washington if you’re only nineteen years old?”“If you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?”The patients stared straight ahead — “No one was looking at us,” Mr. Holbrook wrote — and guffawed at the laugh lines, proving that “the guys in the ward were saner than they looked” and that the material had legs.The Twain piece became their most popular sketch over the next four years, as the couple crisscrossed the country performing for schoolchildren, ladies’ clubs, college students and Rotarians.Meeting President Dwight D. Eisenhower as Mark Twain at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 1959.Credit…Bob Schutz/Associated PressMr. Holbrook began developing his one-man show in 1952, the year Ms. Holbrook gave birth to their first child, Victoria. He soon looked the part, with a wig to match Twain’s unruly mop, a walrus mustache and a rumpled white linen suit, the kind Twain himself wore onstage. From his grandfather, Mr. Holbrook got an old penknife, which he used to cut the ends off the three cigars he smoked during a performance (though he was not sure whether Twain ever smoked onstage). He sought out people who claimed to have seen and heard Twain, who died in 1910, and listened to their recollections.He had more or less perfected the role by 1954, the year he began a one-man show titled “Mark Twain Tonight!” at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania.Two years later he took his Twain to television, performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Tonight Show.” In the meantime he had landed a steady job in 1954 on the TV soap opera “The Brighter Day,” on which he played a recovering alcoholic. The stint lasted until 1959, when, tiring of roles he no longer cared about, he opened in “Mark Twain Tonight!” at the Off Broadway 41st Street Theater.By then the metamorphosis was complete. With his shambling gait, Missouri drawl, sly glances and exquisite timing, Hal Holbrook had, for all intents and purposes, become Mark Twain.“After watching and listening to him for five minutes,” Arthur Gelb wrote in The New York Times, “it is impossible to doubt that he is Mark Twain, or that Twain must have been one of the most enchanting men ever to go on a lecture tour.”Mr. Holbrook preparing his makeup. With his shambling gait, Missouri drawl, sly glances and exquisite timing, his metamorphosis became complete.Credit…Michael Stravato for The New York TimesBut for Mr. Holbrook, the Mark Twain guise he put on every night was a mask; behind it, he wrote in his memoir, was a lonesomeness that had plagued his early life, beginning when his parents abandoned him as a small child. As an adult he found his marriage, his fatherhood and even his stage life caught in an existential deadlock, with “survival and suicide impulses working in tandem.” His escape, he said, was punishing amounts of work, not to mention the company of friends like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.In his memoir, Mr. Holbrook described an emotional low point in the early 1950s. He was sitting in a hotel room at the end of a long day, still undecided about doing an all-Mark Twain show and feeling lost, when he began rereading “Tom Sawyer” for the first time since high school.“You heard the voices coming right off the page,” he wrote. “This was a surprise, and after a while I began to feel pleasant with myself and that was a surprise, too. Bitterness receded and in its place a boy came crowding in, his friends came in and his family, and it wasn’t very long before I did not feel so lonely anymore. Mark Twain had cheered me up.”Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was born on Feb. 17, 1925, in Cleveland. He was 2 years old when his parents left him. His mother, the former Aileen Davenport, ran off to join the chorus of the revue “Earl Carroll’s Vanities.” Harold Sr. went to California after leaving young Hal in the care of grandparents in South Weymouth, Mass.The young Mr. Holbrook spent his high school years at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana and then enrolled at Denison to major in the dramatic arts, but his education was interrupted by service as an Army engineer during World War II. He was stationed for a while in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he joined an amateur theater group and met Ruby Elaine Johnston, who became his first wife. The couple returned to Denison after the war, and Mr. Holbrook soon became Mr. Wright’s prize student.After he became an established attraction in the United States, Mr. Holbrook took “Mark Twain Tonight!” to Europe, performing in Britain, Germany and elsewhere. German audiences roared when he presented Twain’s view of Wagnerian opera: “I went to Bayreuth and took in ‘Parsifal.’ I shall never forget it. The first act occupied two hours and I enjoyed it, in spite of the singing.”Mr. Holbrook and Emile Hirsch in the 2007 film “Into the Wild.”Credit…ParamountMr. Holbrook toured the country with the show several times a year, racking up well over 2,000 performances. He compiled an estimated 15 hours of Twain’s writings, which he dipped into whenever his routine needed refreshing. He won a Tony Award in 1966 for his first Broadway run in “Mark Twain Tonight!”Mr. Holbrook was 29 when he started playing Twain at 70; as he grew older, he found he needed less and less makeup to look elderly. He continued the act well past his own 70th birthday, returning to Broadway in 2005, when he was 80.After playing Twain for more than six decades, he abruptly retired the role in 2017. “I know it must end, this long effort to do a good job,” he wrote in a letter to the Oklahoma theater where he had been scheduled to perform. “I have served my trade, gave it my all, heart and soul, as a dedicated actor can.”Mr. Holbrook made his Broadway debut in 1961 in the short-lived “Do You Know the Milky Way?” He returned there in the musical “Man of La Mancha,” in Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” and other plays.His scores of television appearances included “That Certain Summer” (1972), a groundbreaking film in which he starred as a divorced man who must ultimately admit to his son that he has a gay lover (Martin Sheen). In the early 1990s he had a recurring role on the sitcom “Evening Shade.”Mr. Holbrook’s many film roles tended to be small ones, although there were exceptions. One was as the mysterious informant Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 film adaptation of the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate cover-up. Another was in “The Firm” (1993), based on John Grisham’s corporate whodunit, in which Mr. Holbrook played the stop-at-nothing head of a Memphis law firm.Mr. Holbrook and his wife, Dixie Carter, at the 2008 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where he was nominated for his role in “Into the Wild.”Credit…Chris Pizzello/Associated PressHis Oscar-nominated performance, in “Into the Wild,” directed by Sean Penn, was as a retired military man who has a desert encounter with a young man on a quest for self-knowledge that would ultimately take him to the Alaskan wilderness. His final screen roles were in 2017, when, at 92, he guest-starred in episodes of the television series “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Hawaii Five-0.”Mr. Holbrook’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1965. In addition to their daughter, Victoria, they had a son, David. His second marriage, to the actress Carol Eve Rossen, ended in divorce in 1979. They had a daughter, Eve. In 1984 he married the actress Dixie Carter, who died in 2010.He is survived by his children as well as two stepdaughters, Ginna Carter and Mary Dixie Carter; two grandchildren; and two step-grandchildren.In adapting Mark Twain’s writing for the stage, Mr. Holbrook said he had the best possible guide: Twain himself.“He had a real understanding of the difference between the word on the page and delivering it on a platform,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2011. “You have to leave out a lot of adjectives. The performer is an adjective.”Richard Severo, Paul Vitello and William McDonald contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in February

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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 storyThe Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in FebruaryOur streaming picks for February, including ‘Parks and Recreation,’ ‘News of the World’ and ‘Bliss.’‘Parks and Recreation’Credit…NetflixFeb. 1, 2021Every month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for February.New to NetflixFEBRUARY 1‘Parks and Recreation’ Seasons 1-7With all the social and political unrest around the world, now is as good time as any to revisit this refreshingly optimistic sitcom. Set in the dysfunctional Middle American city of Pawnee, the show stars the very funny Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a midlevel bureaucrat who motivates a community of skeptics and kooks into making their town more livable. Though “Parks and Recreation” mostly focuses on the relationships between its cast of lovable eccentrics, it’s also about how good-hearted and determined civil servants can make a difference.FEBRUARY 2‘Kid Cosmic’Although the animated science-fiction/superhero series “Kid Cosmic” sprang from the mind (and the pen) of “The Powerpuff Girls” creator Craig McKracken, it looks and feels different from the work he’s done before. This is a more serialized adventure, featuring a group of misfits from a New Mexico desert town who rely on superpowered alien jewels to fight off invaders from outer space. “Kid Cosmic” has a remarkable design, with its loosely sketched lines and pale colors resembling fading old fantasy magazines and comic books.FEBRUARY 3‘Firefly Lane’Based on Kristin Hannah’s popular tear-jerker novel, “Firefly Lane” stars Katherine Heigl as a glamorous but lonely TV personality. Sarah Chalke plays her longtime best friend, whose own life as a wife and mother has recently been disrupted by divorce. The series frames these two women’s diverging situations as a kind of existential mystery. Frequent flashbacks to the characters’ teenage and young adult years allows viewers to make key connections between the troubles of the past and the anxieties of the present.‘Malcolm & Marie’Credit…NetflixFEBRUARY 5‘Malcolm & Marie’The writer-director Sam Levinson — best-known for the social satire “Assassination Nation” and the provocative teen drama series “Euphoria” — shot his intimate, two-character “Malcolm & Marie” during the pandemic. John David Washington and Zendaya play a bickering couple, airing their grievances over the course of one tense night. Levinson cenhances the stripped-down story by shooting his two striking-looking actors in handsome black-and-white, making a movie that echoes the low-budget psychodramas of the indie film pioneer John Cassavetes.FEBRUARY 10‘News of the World’How did it take so long to get Tom Hanks into a western? In “News of the World,” Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War, who in the 1870s ekes out a living riding from town to town, reading newspapers to the locals. Helena Zengel plays Johanna, a preteen kidnap victim whom Kidd tries to return to her family. Based on a Paulette Jiles novel, this film has an episodic structure, designed to lead viewers through a tour of a postwar America still deeply divided. Hanks is the sturdy anchor for a winding story.‘To All the Boys: Always and Forever’Credit…NetflixFEBRUARY 12‘To All the Boys: Always and Forever’In Netflix’s energetic and emotional movie adaptations of Jenny Han’s novel “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and its two sequels, Lara Condor plays a lovestruck teenager named Lara Jean Covey, while Noah Centineo plays her college-bound crush Peter. Last year’s “P.S. I Still Love You” introduced some complications to the first film’s happy ending; and now the third and final part in the trilogy, “Always and Forever” tells the story of how Lara Jean and Peter handle an unexpectedly complicated transition from high school to college.FEBRUARY 19‘I Care a Lot’Don’t look for any sympathetic characters in J Blakeson’s “I Care a Lot,” a blackly comic neo-noir film in which two oddly charismatic creeps try to outwit one another. Rosamund Pike plays a high-class grifter, who exploits the systemic flaws in the elder-care industry to make money off the helpless. Peter Dinklage plays a drug kingpin living under an assumed name, who risks revealing himself when his mother (Dianne Wiest) gets caught up in the scam. Like Blakeson’s entertainingly nasty 2009 debut film “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” this is a well-acted and twisty movie, made for audiences who enjoy watching clever folks be shamelessly awful.FEBRUARY 23‘Pelé’This documentary about the legendary Brazilian footballer Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known as Pelé, is focused primarily on his four World Cup appearances, from 1958 to 1970. Between those years, he went from being an unknown teen from a poor São Paulo neighborhood to becoming universally acknowledged as one of the best ever. The “Pelé” directors Ben Nicholas and David Tryhorn have a wealth of exciting footage of the man in action, but their film is just as much about how Brazil and the world changed during the 1960s.FEBRUARY 24‘Ginny & Georgia’Fans of “Gilmore Girls” should find a lot to like about “Ginny & Georgia,” a drama about a precociously mature teenage girl (Antonia Gentry) and her more free-spirited and libertine mother (Brianne Howey), who are both adjusting to a new life in a quaint New England town. In a reversal of the “Gilmore Girls” premise — where the mom was born of privilege and then fled to a more middle-class existence — in “Ginny & Georgia” the family has seen hard times and is now striving for something better. The core of the show remains the often shaky relationship between a strong-willed parent and her equally headstrong child.Also arriving: “Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready” Season 2 (February 2), “Black Beach” (February 3), “Hache” Season 2 (February 5), “Invisible City” (February 5), “The Last Paradiso” (February 5), “Little Big Women” (February 5), “Space Sweepers” (February 5), “Strip Down, Rise Up” (February 5), “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” (February 10), “The Misadventures of Heidi and Cokeman” (February 10), “Capitani” (February 11), “Red Dot” (February 11), “Squared Love” (February 11), “Buried by the Bernards” (February 12), “Nadiya Bakes” (February 12), “Xico’s Journey” (February 12), “Hello, Me!” (February 15), “Behind Her Eyes” (February 17), “Tribes of Europa” (February 19), “2067” (February 19), “Classmates Minus” (February 20), “High-Rise Invasion” (February 25), “Bigfoot Family” (February 26), “Caught by a Wave” (February 26), “Crazy About Her” (February 26).New to Stan‘Punky Brewster’Credit…StanFEBRUARY 3‘Race to Perfection’The archivists for Formula One auto racing have emptied out their vaults for this seven-part docu-series, which covers the past 70 years of the sport from multiple angles. Packed with original interviews and exciting vintage footage, “Race to Perfection” documents both the history and the evolution of various aspects of racing: from the advances in technology to the personalities of the drivers to some of F1’s most controversial incidents. It’s pitched at longtime fans and novices alike.FEBRUARY 5‘The Virtues’The writer-director Shane Meadows and the actor Stephen Graham are frequent collaborators, best known for their decade-spanning “This Is England” series. The pair reunites for the four-part mini-series “The Virtues,” a heavy drama about a man belatedly confronting childhood trauma. Graham plays an alcoholic whose life is in utter disarray when he returns home to reconnect with his estranged sister. The trip reminds him of incidents he’d long-suppressed, while also pushing him toward a woman (Niamh Algar) with issues of her own.FEBRUARY 12‘Clarice’This thriller series’s title character should be familiar to fans of either the novel or the movie “The Silence of the Lambs.” The show is set one year after the events of “Silence,” and follows the FBI agent Clarice Starling (Rebecca Breeds) as she tackles new cases. Expect a mix of short and longer narrative arcs, splitting the difference between a traditional TV procedural and the more novelistic serialized approach. But don’t expect any direct mention of the infamous serial killer Hannibal Lecter; the character’s rights are owned by a different production company.FEBRUARY 26‘Punky Brewster’In its original incarnation, the 1980s sitcom “Punky Brewster” starred Soleil Moon Frye as an abandoned child, taken in by a cranky old widower and raised with the help of some kindly neighbors and teachers. Frye returns for the revival, playing Punky now as a quirky divorced mother, who upends her family’s life when she considers become a foster parent to a kid a lot like herself. Some of the original cast members will appear, in a series that aims to charm and uplift.Also arriving: “Doll & Em” Seasons 1-2 (February 2), “The Pleasure Principle” (February 4), “The Green Mile” (February 9), “Hassel” (February 11), “Chasing Life” Seasons 1-2 (February 12), “Lucy” (February 12), “Ex Machina” (February 15), “United 93” (February 17), “Perfect Places” (February 18), “The First Team” (February 19), “Children of Men” (February 21), “Casino” (February 23), “Indian Summers” Seasons 1-3 (February 23), “Angel of Death” (February 25), “Scarface” (February 26), “American Gangster” (February 27).New to Amazon‘Bliss’Credit…AmazonFEBRUARY 5‘Bliss’Owen Wilson plays a lonely, hopeless man named Greg in the writer-director Mike Cahill’s haunting science-fiction drama “Bliss.” Greg is experiencing a run of bad luck when he meets Isabel (Salma Hayek), who persuades him that they’re both actually living in a computer simulation. Cahill makes both Greg’s dreary “real” world and Isabel’s more utopian version seem equally valid, leaving the audience wondering until the end whether she’s savvy or crazy. Along the way, he raises pointed questions about whether humans need some kind of misery in their lives to achieve happiness.‘Tell Me Your Secrets’The lives of three very different characters — a woman on the run (Lily Rabe), a desperate mother (Amy Brenneman), and a sexual predator (Hamish Linklater) — intersect in this mystery/suspense series. As a crime from the past draws this trio closer together, they each reveal secrets about themselves they would’ve rather kept hidden, while also learning more about their friends and neighbors than they may have wanted to know. “Tell Me Your Secrets” is about the lies and delusions that sustain some people; and about what happens when they’re finally told the truth.Also arriving: “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” (February 12).AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The 10 Best Titles Leaving Netflix This Month

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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 storyThe 10 Best Titles Leaving Netflix This MonthAn array of great movies and TV shows are leaving for U.S. subscribers by February’s end. It’s a short month; stream these while you can.From left, Will Ferrell, Steve Coogan and Mark Wahlberg in “The Other Guys,” from 2010, a kind of bridge for the director Adam McKay between films like “Talladega Nights” and “The Big Short.”Credit…Macall Polay/ColumbiaPicturesFeb. 1, 2021, 4:52 p.m. ETThis month’s batch of Netflix exoduses feature some big names — Eastwood, Scorsese, Soderbergh, Verhoeven — and a variety of pleasures, from cop comedy to gangster sprawl to historical documentary, as well as the erotic thriller that launched a thousand imitators (and parodies).Catch these 10 titles before they leave Netflix in the United States by the end of February. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘The Other Guys’ (Feb. 11)Adam McKay began his film career making broadly funny, crowd-pleasing Will Ferrell comedies like “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights”; these days, he is known as the Oscar-winning writer and director of the sharp-edged sociopolitical studies “The Big Short” and “Vice.” This 2010 comedy was the unlikely hinge between those worlds. On its surface, “The Other Guys” is a sendup of buddy cop movies, with Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as second-string New York police detectives. But McKay uses those spoof elements as cover, smuggling in a pointed indictment of the shenanigans that led to financial meltdown, culminating in an informative end credit sequence that now plays like a prologue to “The Big Short.”Stream it here‘Hostiles’ (Feb. 14)Making a Western in the 21st century is a tricky bit of business: It’s a genre knotted up with leftover stereotypes and assumptions, and reckoning with the true legacy of that era, particularly with regard to the genocide of Native Americans, is a bigger job than most filmmakers are willing to accept. This 2017 effort from the writer and director Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart”), on the other hand, deals with those issues head on, focusing on a cavalry officer (Christian Bale) who must put aside his bigotry when he’s forced to escort a dying Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) back to his Montana home. Cooper refuses to romanticize the era or soft-pedal its brutality. It’s a blunt, difficult movie, but a rewarding one.Stream it hereFreddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga as Norman and Norma Bates in a scene from “Bates Motel.”Credit…Joe Lederer/A&E‘Bates Motel’: Seasons 1-5 (Feb. 19)When A&E debuted this “Psycho” prequel series back in 2013, it sounded like a beating-a-dead-horse situation (especially since the franchise had already yielded three sequels, a TV movie and a remake). But the series quickly came into its own, supplementing its original exploration of the rich psychological dynamic between a young Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), with expansive story lines about their family history and the town around them. Ultimately, however, the show works thanks to Highmore and Farmiga, who flesh out two of cinema’s most iconic characters into living, breathing, complicated people.Stream it here‘Basic Instinct’ (Feb. 28)The runaway commercial success of this 1992 mystery would kick-start a yearslong cycle of erotic thrillers — steamy, provocative portraits of murderously attractive women and the reckless men who must have them. But few were put together with the kind of sleek style and sweaty sleaze created by the combustible combination of the director Paul Verhoeven and the writer Joe Eszterhas. Its most controversial elements haven’t aged well, yet it remains a case study in the specific skills required to make truly great trash. It also made Sharon Stone a star, and it’s not hard to see why; her work here is a pulse-quickening combination of noir femme fatale, icy Hitchcock blonde and unapologetic MTV-era sexuality.Stream it here‘Easy A’ (Feb. 28)Another Stone — Emma — also became a star, 18 years later, thanks to her work as a big-screen “bad girl,” although in this case, it’s all an act. The director Will Gluck’s clever riff on “The Scarlet Letter” features Stone as the splendidly named Olive Penderghast, whose entirely fictitious promiscuity turns her into a high school cause célèbre. Bert V. Royal’s screenplay asks properly pointed questions about gender roles and identity while providing juicy roles for a stellar supporting cast (including Lisa Kudrow, Thomas Haden Church, Malcolm McDowell and best of all, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci as Olive’s parents). But the main attraction remains Stone, who puts across the character’s intelligence, wit, self-awareness and self-doubt with charm and poignancy.Stream it here‘The Gift’ (Feb. 28)The actor Joel Edgerton (“Loving”) made his feature debut as a writer and director with this moody, unnerving 2015 psychological thriller. He also co-stars as Gordo Moseley, who tries a bit too hard to ingratiate himself into the life of a former high school classmate (Jason Bateman) and his wife (Rebecca Hall). Edgerton’s crisp screenplay deftly dramatizes the delicacy with which social norms and “good manners” can hide our deepest secrets, and he coaxes a disturbing turn out of Bateman, giving a pre-“Ozark” hint of the darkness lurking beneath his established persona of cheerful ironic detachment.Stream it hereFrom left, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in “Goodfellas.”Credit…Warner Bros.‘GoodFellas’ (Feb. 28)This 1990 gangster epic from Martin Scorsese seems to come and go from Netflix every couple of months, but it’s going again, so catch it while you can. Ray Liotta stars as the real-life wiseguy Henry Hill, a low-level grinder for a New York crime family whose high-spirited, backslapping life of crime descends into a paranoid nightmare of drugs and death. Robert De Niro is both affable and terrifying as Hill’s mentor, while Joe Pesci won an Oscar for his unforgettable role as a hot-tempered gunman with an itchy trigger finger. (He’s very funny, but don’t tell him that.)Stream it here‘Gran Torino’ (Feb. 28)Clint Eastwood directs and stars in this 2008 drama about a bitter and bigoted Korean War veteran who spends most of his days sitting on the porch of his Detroit home and growling at his Hmong neighbors — until he strikes up an unlikely friendship with young Thao (Bee Vang), and begins to understand the difficulties of Thao’s life. Much as his 1992 masterpiece “Unforgiven” complicated and re-contextualized Eastwood’s many Western films, “Gran Torino” subtly examines the casual racism of the actor’s police dramas, suggesting one of the most quietly daring ideas of his late filmography: that it’s never too late to change the limited ways we see the world.Stream it here‘Haywire’ (Feb. 28)Steven Soderbergh is known for many types of movies — indie character studies, Oscar-winning dramas, crowd-pleasing heist movies — but few thought of him as an action director until he built this vehicle for the mixed martial artist Gina Carano in 2012. Eschewing many of the more irritating techniques of contemporary action cinema (like cut-to-ribbons editing and overpowering music), “Haywire” is essentially a gender-flipped James Bond adventure, with Carano as a for-hire operative who gets burned by her employer (Ewan McGregor) and has to save her own skin. The results are sleek and action-packed, offering the distinct pleasure of watching Carano pick off an all-star cast (including Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender) one by one.Stream it hereDan Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s documentary “LA 92” looks at the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.Credit…Nick Ut/Associated Press‘LA 92’ (Feb. 28)On the 25th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising (following the acquittal of four white police officers who were caught on tape beating a Black motorist, Rodney King), the Oscar-winning documentarians Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin (“Undefeated”) assembled this harrowing ticktock of the protests, rioting and unrest of those days. Jettisoning such documentary standbys as contemporary retrospective interviews and “voice of God” narration, the filmmakers instead rely solely on archival footage from the time. The effect is shattering, creating a visceral immediacy that parachutes the viewer into that earthshaking moment, with no clear resolution in sight.Stream it hereAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sundance Diary, Part 4: Contending With Snow and Tech Support

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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 storySundance Diary, Part 4: Contending With Snow and Tech SupportThe New York weather adds a Park City ambience, but watching online from home presents un-festival-like obstacles.A scene from Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated “Flee,” about an Afghan refugee in Denmark.Credit…Sundance InstituteFeb. 1, 2021A.O. Scott, our critic at large, is keeping a diary as he “attends” the virtual Sundance Film Festival, which runs through Wednesday. Read previous entries here and here.Sunday, 10 p.m. Eastern time: The arrival of snow in New York definitely adds a taste of authentic Park City-in-January atmosphere, except of course that I don’t have to slog through the blizzard to get to screenings. Which is mostly a relief, even as it removes an essential element of self-congratulation from the festival experience. Critics and journalists like to compete over who can see the most movies in a single day. Four is pretty basic. Five gives you something to feel smug about. Six is impressive, though not everyone will believe you.But at home, watching six movies feels less like a rare and heroic feat of journalistic stamina than an all-too-usual, somewhat pathetic exercise in quarantine self-care, akin to taking in a whole season of “The Great British Baking Show” in one sitting. That isn’t something I’d brag about or even admit to having done. Also not something anyone would pay me to do, I don’t think.Anyway, for the record (and for the money): Today’s viewing included four documentaries and two features. I didn’t make it to the end of each one — walking out of movies is one of the guilty pleasures of festival-going. The highlights were two documentaries about contemporary American adolescence: Peter Nicks’s “Homeroom,” which follows a group of Oakland high school seniors through the tumult of the 2019-20 academic year; and Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt’s “Cusp,” which observes a summer in the lives of three Texas teenagers, Aaloni, Brittney and Autumn.Michael Greyeyes in a scene from “Wild Indian,” directed by Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.Credit…Eli BornMonday, 11 a.m. Eastern time: This morning I am unable to log onto the Sundance site to catch up on movies I missed over the weekend, a frustration that mirrors the experience of being shut out of a screening, without the trek through ice and snow. While the tech support people process my plea for help, I’m reviewing my notes from the weekend.“Flee,” directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, is an animated documentary organized around the memories of an Afghan refugee living in Denmark. It’s reminiscent of “Persepolis” in some ways — a personal, family story of displacement and self-reinvention set against a background of war and political struggle — but with its own tactful, melancholy aesthetic.“Wild Indian” is a strong debut by Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr., the kind of spare, locally grounded, socially conscious drama that is a Sundance staple. “Passing,” Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of the Harlem Renaissance novel by Nella Larsen, is a subtle, somewhat mannered meditation on race, identity and desire, shot in evocative black and white and anchored by the intriguing lead performances of Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga as childhood friends who re-encounter each other as grown women living on opposite sides of the color line.The glitch has been corrected. Back to the screening room, to make up for lost time — as soon as I shovel some snow.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Movie Festival for One, on a Tiny Nordic Island

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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 Movie Festival for One, on a Tiny Nordic IslandSweden’s Goteborg Film Festival has taken social distancing to the extreme, offering one attendee a week on a barren island, with only the competition films for company.Lisa Enroth, an emergency nurse, will spend a week in an isolated lighthouse keeper’s cottage, watching the 70 movies in competition at the Goteborg Film Festival.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021As they do at the opening of any star-studded film festival, photographers scrambled for position, training their lenses on the spot where audience members would alight. But when the first — and only — guest of honor arrived, she was clad not in a tuxedo or sparkly gown, but in jeans and an orange puffer jacket (designer unknown). There was no red carpet beneath her feet, only bare frozen ground. And instead of sauntering into a plush cinema buzzing with celebrities, she climbed into a speedboat and zipped off across the frigid water to a tiny island where she would settle in for the first premiere.As festivals around the world grapple with the pandemic, the Goteborg Film Festival, which opened in Sweden’s second largest city on Jan. 29, hasn’t so much accepted social distancing as escalated it. Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone.Hamneskar, a rocky outcrop some 25 miles from Goteborg, was nicknamed Pater Noster by sailors who would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they neared its treacherous waters.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesSome festivals, like Venice’s in September, have faced the pandemic as diminished versions of their normally glitzy selves, with alternately seated theaters and mandatory temperature checks. Others, like Sundance and the Berlinale, now pushed until March 2021, have gone entirely digital, offering streaming access to films and other events. Some organizers are postponing their festivals, crossing their fingers that further down the line pandemic regulations will allow for a more usual festival experience: On Jan. 27, the Cannes festival announced that it would take place in July, rather than its customary May.But at Goteborg, the Nordic countries’ most important festival, organizers have made an unusual virtue of necessity. “So many people who have been home alone, unable to meet friends or family, have turned to cinema for company and comfort,” said the festival’s artistic director, Jonas Holmberg. “We wanted to experiment with that, to isolate that feeling, and take it to the extreme. So we thought, ‘Why don’t we isolate the person on a small island with nothing but films?’”As the only country in Europe to resist a formal lockdown, Sweden has followed its own path through the pandemic, neither recommending mask use nor shutting down schools until December, when a disproportionately high mortality rate from the disease forced it to change strategy.But much of the country has complied with guidelines issued by the government, and after months of even voluntary social distancing and lockdowns, a wintry week alone on an island with only movies for company might seem the last thing most people would need. Yet when an evocative online video announced the contest, over 12,000 people applied for the solo experience. On Jan. 19, the festival selected Lisa Enroth, a 41-year-old emergency nurse from the town of Skovde, in southern Sweden, as the winner.Some of the films Lisa Enroth will have the opportunity to see while on Pater Noster, from left: “Tove,” “Conference” (a film from the Social Distances section), “The Conversations of Donkey and Rabbit” (a short film from the Lockdown Cinema section), “Pleasure,” “Incredible Thoughts of a Woman on a Tier” (a short film from the Lockdown Cinema section) and “Another Round.”Credit…via Goteborg Film Festival Like health care workers everywhere, Enroth has found the past several months stressful. “Every day at the hospital we’ve been dealing with so much,” she said. “With all the patients, and all the new protocols, I’ve never felt so unisolated in my life.”So when she saw the video’s call for applications, she didn’t hesitate. “Alone in nature, on an island? Plus movies? I was like, ‘Yes, I need this.’”The hospital agreed to give Enroth time off (“My boss is a movie buff,” she explained) and on Jan. 30, a boat brought her to Hamneskar, a rocky outcrop some 25 miles from Goteborg that was nicknamed Pater Noster by sailors who would recite the Lord’s Prayer as they neared its treacherous waters. There, she took up residence in the former keeper’s cottage that sits aside the island’s cast-iron lighthouse, and settled in for the movie marathon.During her time on Pater Noster, Enroth will have access to the 70 films screening at the festival, which include the Finnish Oscar contender “Tove,” Thomas Vinterberg’s acclaimed “Another Round” and the Goteborg native Ninja Thyberg’s “Pleasure,” all of which are competing for best Nordic film. International films in competition include Emma Dante’s “The Macaluso Sisters,” set in Sicily, and Charlène Favier’s “Slalom,” about elite downhill skiers abused by their coach. There is also a separate section, called Social Distances, featuring films created in response to the pandemic, and one called Lockdown Cinema for short films made in quarantine.Streamed through the festival’s website and available to the public, all of the films have scheduled premiere times online. But a handful of viewers are also having their own unusually isolated encounters with them. Coinciding with each online premiere, the films will also screen at Goteborg’s Draken movie theater (capacity 708) and the Scandinavium arena (whose 12,000 seats normally host concert goers or hockey fans) for a single viewer who has won a seat through a raffle.A screening for one (in this case, Lova Lakso) at the Draken movie theater in Goteborg.Credit…Ines Sebalj for The New York TimesAt each venue a red carpet leads the viewer to the assigned seat. And although popcorn is not available, other enjoyments may be. “In some cases,” hints the festival director Holmberg, “it may be possible the filmmaker will be there to present the film.”By staging one-person viewings in iconic locations, Holmberg hopes to preserve some of the sense of occasion that an in-person festival generates. But here again, the festival organizers are experimenting. “We want to see, how does being alone affect the film experience? What happens when you’re doing nothing besides watching the film?” he said.Although she will post a daily video diary on a dedicated page of the festival website, Enroth has agreed to eschew all other forms of communication and entertainment — no phone, no books — during her time on Pater Noster. She said that she wasn’t worried about getting lonely, but didn’t rule out the possibility she may “start talking to the furniture.” And, like Holmberg, she was also interested to see how her week on the island changes the experience of watching films. “The first day, it’s just ‘Oh, I’m alone, watching a movie.’ But a few days in, I might be like, ‘OK, these people are my only company. What if I hate them?’” she said.But for the self-professed science fiction fan (her favorite movie is “The Never Ending Story”), even that will be a welcome escape. “I love watching movies, because it makes me let go of work and everything else that’s going on right now,” Enroth said. “It’ll be great to be surrounded by someone else’s reality.”“Alone in nature, on an island? Plus movies?” said Enroth. “I was like, ‘Yes, I need this.’”Credit…Erik Nissen JohansenAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘9to5: The Story of a Movement’ and ‘The Equalizer’

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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: ‘9to5: The Story of a Movement’ and ‘The Equalizer’A new documentary on PBS looks at the roots of a women’s rights organization. And Queen Latifah stars in a reboot of “The Equalizer” on CBS.“9to5: The Story of a Movement” revisits an organization that fought for better treatment of women in the workplace.Credit…Richard BermackFeb. 1, 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. 1-7. Details and times are subject to change.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: 9TO5 — THE STORY OF A MOVEMENT 10 p.m. on PBS. The filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar (“American Factory”), co-directed this new documentary about the founding of 9to5, National Association of Working Women. The organization was started by a group of secretaries in Boston in the 1970s. The documentary revisits its roots, and the larger groundswell of feminist activism from which it grew. It includes interviews with the organization’s founders and others related to the movement — including Jane Fonda, who starred alongside Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in the 1980 farce “Nine to Five,” which took inspiration from the organization’s back story.TuesdayA scene from “Fake Famous.”Credit…HBOFAKE FAMOUS (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. Nick Bilton, a journalist who has written extensively about technology for publications including Vanity Fair and The New York Times, is the director of this new documentary. The film follows Bilton as he gathers a trio of relatively unknown young people — an actress, a real-estate professional and a fashion designer — and helps them try to become “famous” social-media influencers. He uses a variety of artificial tactics to do that, like setting up photo shoots that make the subjects’ lifestyles appear lavish, and helping them purchase fake Instagram followers. The documentary includes at least one scene in which one of its subjects drives a car while holding two smartphones.GROUNDHOG DAY (1993) 8 p.m. on AMC. Real-life Groundhog Day is on Tuesday, so naturally AMC is showing this classic comedy about an ornery weatherman (Bill Murray) reliving the same day over and over and over. You can also see it at 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 3 p.m., 5:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. (seriously).WednesdayA RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961) 10 p.m. on TCM. The first week of Black History Month is a fitting time to revisit “A Raisin in the Sun.” Lorraine Hansberry made history with it in 1959, when she became the first Black woman with a play produced on Broadway. The original Broadway cast — including Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Claudia McNeil — later starred in this classic film version. Its screenplay, which Hansberry adapted from her original play, retells the story of the Youngers, a Black family that has to decide what to do with a large insurance payment, and faces relentless discrimination when its members try to buy a home in a fictional white neighborhood in Chicago.ThursdayCynda Williams and Denzel Washington in “Mo’ Better Blues.”Credit…David Lee/Universal City StudiosMO’ BETTER BLUES (1990) 6:50 p.m. on Showtime. You can watch a trio of Spike Lee movies on Showtime on Thursday night, beginning with Lee’s 1994 Bed-Stuy coming-of-age story “Crooklyn” at 4:55 p.m., and ending with Lee’s 1989 opus “Do the Right Thing” at 9 p.m. In between those two, the network will show “Mo’ Better Blues,” Lee’s music-heavy comedy-drama about a jazz trumpeter, Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington). The music in the movie is largely by Lee’s father, the jazz bassist and composer Bill Lee; its plot involves Bleek’s complicated love life and his band’s financial issues, which are driven by their gambling-addicted manager (Lee), and which raise questions about the relationship between art and money. “An artist has to be a businessman today,” Lee explained in an interview with The Times in 1990. “Money means a lot. It equals power. If my films did not make the money they make, I couldn’t make the demands I make. A studio knows I’ll have final cut.”FridayBADLANDS (1973) 6:15 p.m. on TCM. Terrence Malick took inspiration from a brief, bloody real-life episode for this, his directorial debut. Based loosely on a string of murders committed in the 1950s, “Badlands” casts Martin Sheen as a 25-year-old Midwestern garbage collector and Sissy Spacek as an underage girl who runs off with him. The two take a murderous road trip across the Midwest. The film, Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The Times in 1973, is “ferociously American.”SaturdayRose Byrne and Steve Carell in “Irresistible,” a satire about a political operative.Credit…Daniel Mcfadden/Focus FeaturesIRRESISTIBLE (2020) 8 p.m. on HBO. After years of staying away from the social media center of couch commentary, Jon Stewart finally joined Twitter last week, weighing in on — of all things — the internet-fueled stock market kerfuffle revolving around the video-game retailer GameStop. Stewart’s voice has largely been absent from the political-commentary realm since he stopped hosting the “Daily Show” in 2015, but he dipped his toe back into it last year with “Irresistible,” a satire about a savvy political consultant in Washington, D.C., named Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell), who swoops into a small Wisconsin town to run a mayoral campaign. Gary’s quest to get his candidate — a farmer and retired Marine played by Chris Cooper — elected is complicated by the arrival of a Republican adversary (Rose Byrne). The result is a film that feels like “a stale corn chip trampled into Party-convention carpeting,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times. But, she notes, Byrne “gives Faith a bitingly droll politesse that tells us she has Gary’s number: She knows he’s as comfortable with his privilege as she is with hers.”SundayIn “The Equalizer,” Queen Latifah stars as a fresh version of the show’s fleet-footed vigilante.Credit…Barbara Nitke/CBSTHE EQUALIZER 10 p.m. on CBS. The 1980s action series “The Equalizer” got a pair of ultraviolent film adaptations during the 2010s, with Denzel Washington taking over for the original series’s star, Edward Woodward, on laying-waste-to-bad-guys duty. The franchise comes full-circle with this new TV reboot, which stars Queen Latifah as a fresh version of the show’s fleet-footed vigilante. CBS clearly has high hopes for the new series; they’re airing it right after the Super Bowl, which begins on the network at 7 p.m.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More