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      ‘Shadow in the Cloud’ Review: There’s Mischief in the Air

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Shadow in the Cloud’ Review: There’s Mischief in the AirA World War II heroine defies death and more in this horror-action hybrid.Chloë Grace Moretz in “Shadow in the Cloud,” directed by Roseanne Liang.Credit…Vertical EntertainmentDec. 31, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETShadow in the CloudDirected by Roseanne LiangAction, Horror, WarR1h 23mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Shadow in the Cloud” is the kind of girl-power action adventure in which women can’t just do anything, they do everything — including fighting sexist boors, enemy fire and a gremlin all at once from the underside of a bomber during World War II.At the center of this spectacle is Maude Garrett (Chloë Grace Moretz), a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officer who joins the bomber’s all-male crew in Auckland, New Zealand, to transport a classified package. By the time we learn what’s inside the package, which dangles precariously from Maude’s arm during her midair stunts, it’s clear that our heroine is defying not just death but also logic.[embedded content]But sillier feats have been performed onscreen (usually by dudes), and it helps that Roseanne Liang’s horror-action hybrid leans confidently into its schlockiness. The colors are grungy, the score synth-heavy and the characters goofy — particularly the men on the flight, who are both annoyed and sexually excited by Maude’s sudden appearance and immediately banish her to the plane’s ball turret.It’s a clever story turn that strips a large chunk of the movie down to Moretz’s charismatic face and the voices of the other actors, who hammily play up their lewd banter over the intercom. Then the C.G.I. gremlin shows up, forcing Maude (and Liang) to maneuver impressively within the cramped space.The twists come rapidly in the movie’s first half; in the second, the narrative dissolves into a zigzag of flying bodies and explosions that bend the laws of space-time. But the implausibility of it all is a perk: There’s never a moment in this rollicking film when you can tell what’s coming next.Shadow in the CloudRated R for scary monsters, foulmouthed men and gory sights. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Happy Face’ Review: Alternative Therapy

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Happy Face’ Review: Alternative TherapyIn Alexandre Franchi’s film, a 19-year-old crashes a support group and leads its members to personal breakthroughs.Robin L’Houmeau in “Happy Face.”Credit…Dark Star PicturesDec. 31, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETHappy FaceDirected by Alexandre FranchiDrama1h 40mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A defiant, generically unclassifiable film that dares viewers to question its sensitivity, “Happy Face” centers on a 19-year-old named Stan (Robin L’Houmeau) who wraps gauze around his head and joins a support group for people with atypical facial appearances. When the assertiveness exercises proposed by the group’s leader, Vanessa (Debbie Lynch-White), don’t do much good, Stan takes command, illustrating for his new friends that cognitive behavioral therapy isn’t nearly as cathartic as dumping trash on gawking restaurant patrons. Stan’s vision for the cohort is a cross between a pushy version of the talking cure and a fight club.Set in Montreal, “Happy Face” foregrounds actors like Alison Midstokke — who has a rare condition that affects the bones and tissues of the face — playing a hand model who sets her sights on full-body shoots, and E.R. Ruiz, as a police officer whose appearance changed as a result of a car crash during a pursuit. They project nuanced, charismatic mixes of confidence and wounded pride. But is it problematic to make a movie in which they need an implausibly poised impostor to lead them to personal breakthroughs, using character-building lessons derived from Dungeons & Dragons?[embedded content]The director, Alexandre Franchi, who wrote the script with Joëlle Bourjolly, hedges against that charge by drawing a strained comparison between Stan and Don Quixote, and by giving Stan unresolved challenges of his own. (His mother, played by Noémie Kocher, with whom he is disturbingly close — she is shown scrubbing him in the bathtub — is dying of multiple brain tumors.)“Happy Face” dares to be distinctive, and that’s something, even if the behavior — particularly Stan’s — isn’t always convincing.Happy FaceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Vanessa Kirby Has Been Waiting for a Role That Scares Her

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyVanessa Kirby Has Been Waiting for a Role That Scares HerFor her first lead in a film, the actress wanted a character as challenging as many of those she’s played onstage. She found it in Kornel Mundruczo’s “Pieces of a Woman.”“Pieces of a Woman,” which debuts Jan. 7 on Netflix, is the first lead film role for the actress Vanessa Kirby.Credit…Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesDec. 31, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETLONDON — Vanessa Kirby has never given birth, but after shooting her first lead movie role in “Pieces of a Woman,” she kind of feels like she has.“Whenever I see a pregnant woman now, or someone’s telling me that they’ve just given birth, I smile,” she said in a recent video chat. “I feel with them.”The two full days she spent shooting a searing scene for the film could explain this psychic confusion, as could the thorough way Kirby, 32, immersed herself in the role.In “Pieces of a Woman,” which debuts Jan. 7 on Netflix after a limited theatrical release in December, Kirby plays Martha, a pregnant woman whose home birth goes horribly wrong.This pivotal event at the beginning of the film plays out in a 24-minute, single-take scene that starts with Martha’s first contractions and ends in tragedy. The camera follows Martha, her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and a midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), around the couple’s apartment, condensing the agonies of labor into under half an hour.Credit…Benjamin Loeb/NetflixCredit…Benjamin Loeb/NetflixIn September, the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where Kirby won the best actress award, and began to be talked about as an Oscar contender.Kirby said she wanted to portray Martha’s labor as authentically as possible. “That was terrifying, because I didn’t want to let women down,” she added.So she got down to research. Watching many onscreen depictions of birth left Kirby no closer to understanding the experience, she said, since they were so censored and sanitized.“Then I was even more scared, because I realized that I had a responsibility to show birth as it is, not as it’s even edited in documentaries,” Kirby said.She talked to women who had given birth and women who’d had miscarriages, as well as midwives and obstetrician-gynecologists at a London hospital. While she was there, a woman arrived having contractions, and agreed to let Kirby observe the birth.The experience of watching that six hour labor “changed me so profoundly,” Kirby said. “Every second of what was happening to her, I just absorbed.”“It was, I think, probably the best career experience I’ve ever had,” Kirby said of shooting the film.Credit…Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesAnd she began to understand how to play Martha. The woman in the hospital went into a primal, animal-like state, Kirby said. “Her body was taking over and doing it, so that helped me so much for the scene,” she added.Over two days, that long take was shot six times. In a phone interview, the director, Kornel Mundruczo, who also works in theater and opera, said that preparing it was like getting a stunt scene ready: “Lots of planning, but you don’t know what’s actually going to happen.”In the end, each take was different, Kirby said: Martha and Sean’s conversations shifted, the way Martha’s body reacted to the contractions was distinctive each time.“It was, I think, probably the best career experience I’ve ever had,” Kirby said of those two days of shooting. Inspired by the labor she’d observed, she tried to think as little as possible, she said, and not judge what her body was doing in the scene.After a decade of work, “Pieces of a Woman” is Kirby’s first time leading a feature film, and it is a bold and memorable role that shows her flexing her acting muscles. Mundruczo said he needed an actor at Kirby’s exact career point: “Where all of the skills are already there, but the fear is not,” he said. “When you are very established, you are more and more careful.”Left to right: the actress Ellen Burstyn, the director Kornel Mundruczo, and Kirby in a scene from “Pieces of a Woman.” Credit…Philippe Bosse/NetflixKirby has been honing those skills since she was a teenager. She grew up in a wealthy, West London suburb, where she attended a private, all girls’ school and escaped the social pressures of teenage life onstage, in plays and youth drama clubs.“Every time I walked into that space, I suddenly felt not judged at all, I just felt accepted,” Kirby said. “You didn’t have to be anything, or do anything right.”After graduating from college, where she studied English literature, Kirby was accepted to the prestigious London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art in 2009. A few months before term began, though, she was offered three stage roles by David Thacker, a former director-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, who was then the artistic director of the Octagon Theater in Bolton, a town in northern England.Come to Bolton, he told her, and you will learn more from these roles — which included Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Ann Deever in “All My Sons” — than you will in three years of drama school. Kirby agreed, and now describes that season as her training.“I learned everything there,” she said. Working with Thacker taught her to trust herself, to find her own way as an actor, rather than waiting for other people to tell her what to do, she said.Kirby has been working steadily ever since, with lead roles in the West End, as well as high profile supporting roles in films and British TV costume dramas. She starred as Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of “The Crown,” a performance that earned her a BAFTA award. Her Margaret fizzes with restless energy, an ideal foil for Claire Foy’s restrained Queen Elizabeth.In 2018’s “Mission Impossible — Fallout,” she played the White Widow, a glamorous black-market broker who carries a knife in her garter, and knows how to use it. She is slated to appear in two further “Mission Impossible” sequels.Credit…Alex Bailey/NetflixCredit…Chiabella James/Paramount PicturesEven as these supporting roles brought her critical praise and awards, Kirby wasn’t in a hurry to find her first onscreen lead role, she said. She’s played many complex characters onstage: women like Rosalind, the fiercely intelligent heroine of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” She was holding out for an onscreen lead in whom she could feel some of Rosalind’s “magic,” she said, which made performing “like flying when you step onstage.”“I could never find those roles at all onscreen,” she said. So she waited, using her smaller parts as opportunities to observe and learn, asking Anthony Hopkins about his craft when they worked together on the British TV drama “The Dresser,” and watching how generous Rachel McAdams was onset for the film “About Time,” she said.It’s fitting, given Kirby’s theatrical background, that “Pieces of a Woman” started life as a play, written by Kata Weber, Mundruczo’s partner, who drew on the couple’s own experience of losing a child. The play “Pieces of a Woman,” which is set in Poland, consists of only two scenes: the birth, and an explosive dinner with Martha’s family that occurs about halfway through the film adaptation. Its 2018 premiere, directed by Mundruczo at the TR Warszawa theater in Warsaw, was a hit, and the production is still in the company’s repertoire.Around the time Mundruczo turned 40, five years ago, he started wanting a bigger audience for his work, he said, so he switched from working in German, Hungarian and Polish; “Pieces of a Woman” is his first English language film. In adapting the play for the big screen, Mundruczo set it in Boston, he said, because he felt the city’s Irish Catholic culture mirrored Poland’s conservative social landscape.The loss of a pregnancy is rarely featured in onscreen entertainment. Mundruczo said he hopes watching Martha’s experiences will encourage “people to be brave enough to have their own answer for any loss,” he said.Kirby said she found that women who had experienced pregnancy loss were “actually really relieved” to talk about it.Credit…Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesIn recent months, the model Chrissy Teigen and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, (writing in The New York Times), have shared stories of their experiences with pregnancy loss. Kirby said that, while researching for the role before filming, she found that women who had experienced one were “actually really relieved to talk about it,” and appreciated that someone wanted to understand.“Pieces of a Woman” was shot over just 29 days last winter, but Kirby said it took months for her to shake off the experience of playing Martha. “I knew my job was to feel it, to feel what she felt,” she said. Carrying that degree of empathy was “really difficult and disturbing,” she said, but added that the privilege of spending time inside another’s experience is what she loves about her work.Kirby’s next project will see her co-starring as Tallie, one of two farmers’ wives who fall in love in the United States in the 19th-century in “The World To Come,” a meditative drama from the Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold slated for theatrical release next month.And after that? Kirby said she was reading scripts, on the hunt for the next role that will scare her. She’s looking for an “untold story about women,” she said, that will feel as urgent to tell as Martha and Tallie’s did.“What’s that expression?” she said. “Feel the fear, and do it anyway.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jazz Onscreen, Depicted by Black Filmmakers at Last

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookJazz Onscreen, Depicted by Black Filmmakers at Last“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Sylvie’s Love” and “Soul” understand the music and its place in African-American life, a welcome break with Hollywood history.Hitting the right notes: The pianist Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) playing in a combo led by a saxophonist (Angela Bassett) in “Soul.”Credit…Disney Pixar, via Associated PressDec. 29, 2020, 1:33 p.m. ETMidway through “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the new Netflix drama based on August Wilson’s acclaimed stage play, the title character drifts into a monologue. “White folk don’t understand about the blues,” muses Rainey (Viola Davis), an innovator at the crossroads of blues and jazz with an unbending faith in her own expressive engine.“They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there,” she says as she readies herself to record in a Chicago studio in 1927. “They don’t understand that that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better, you sing because that’s your way of understanding life.”Time seems to roll to a stop as Rainey speaks. The divide between her words and what white society is ready to hear lays itself out wide before us. That, you realize, is the fertile space where her music exists — an ungoverned territory, too filled with spirit, expression and abstention for politics and law to interfere.But maybe this scene is only so startling because of how rare its kind has been throughout film history. The movies, with few exceptions, have hardly ever told the story of jazz through the lens of Black life.Now, inexcusably late, that is beginning to change.Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) views her music as a way to understand life.Credit…David Lee/NetflixPiloted by the veteran theater director George C. Wolfe, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is one of three feature films released this holiday season that center on jazz and blues; all were made by Black directors or co-directors. The other two are New York City stories: “Sylvie’s Love,” by Eugene Ashe, a midcentury romance between a young jazz saxophonist and an up-and-coming TV producer, and “Soul,” a Pixar feature directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Kemp Powers that uses a pianist’s near-death experience to pry open questions about inspiration, compassion and how we all navigate life’s endless counterpoint between frustration and resilience.The films present Black protagonists in bloom — musically, visually, thematically — giving these characters a dimensionality and a depth that reflects the music itself. It calls to mind Toni Morrison’s explanation for why she wrote “Jazz,” her 1992 novel: She wanted to explore the changes to African-American life wrought by the Great Migration — changes, she later wrote, “made abundantly clear in the music.”The new films outrun many, though not all, of the issues dogging jazz movies past, which have historically done a better job contouring the limitations of the white gaze than showing where the music springs from or its power to transcend. White listening and patronage don’t really enter these new films’ narratives as anything other than a distraction or necessary inconvenience.A jazz musician lands in a relationship that ultimately works in “Sylvie’s Love,” starring Nnamdi Asomugha and Tessa Thompson. Credit…Amazon StudiosEarlier this year, the critic Kevin Whitehead published “Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film,” a survey of jazz’s long history on the silver screen. As he notes, jazz and cinema grew up together in the interwar period. But in those years and well beyond, Whitehead writes, the movies consistently whitewashed jazz history: “In film after film, African-Americans, who invented the music, get pushed to the margins when white characters don’t nudge them off screen altogether.”It was true of “New Orleans,” a 1947 film starring Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday that was supposed to be about Armstrong’s rise but was rewritten, at the behest of its producers, to put a tale of white romance at the center. It was true of “Paris Blues,” a 1961 vehicle for Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, based on a novel about two jazz musicians’ interracial love affairs; that key element, however, was more or less erased in the screenplay. Ultimately the movie is about the struggle of Newman’s trombonist, Ram, to convince himself and others that jazz is worthy of his obsession. He insists that a career as an improvising musician requires such singular devotion that he won’t be able to sustain a relationship.In the past few years, jazz has shown up onscreen most prominently in the work of Damien Chazelle. His “Whiplash” (2014) and “La La Land” (2016) tell the stories of young white men who, like Ram, are torturously committed to playing jazz and the feeling of excellence it gives them. In these movies, jazz is a challenge and an albatross. But in “Sylvie’s Love,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Soul,” the music is more a salve: a river of possibility running through a hostile country, and — as Rainey says in Wilson’s script — simply the language of life.In “Whiplash,” Miles Teller plays a driven drummer being pushed by J.K. Simmons’s relentless teacher.Credit…Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics“Whiplash” focuses on the relationship between a demonic music teacher (played by J.K. Simmons in an Oscar-winning performance) and his most committed young student, Andrew (Miles Teller), who is driven by the desire to become a master drummer. The film offers a glimpse into jazz’s current afterlife in conservatories, where students learn its language through charts and theoretical frameworks, but most teachers give little attention to the spiritual or social makings of the music. Here again, we come up against the slightly misogynistic — and deeply depressing — idea that devotion to the music can’t coexist with romantic love and care: Andrew’s dating conduct is disastrous, and he proudly explains that it’s because of the music.“La La Land” follows a pianist, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), who’s a few years out of music school. At the start, he’s seen dyspeptically punching the tape deck in his convertible, trying to memorize the notes on a Thelonious Monk recording as if they’re times tables. He views himself as a guardian of jazz’s past glories, and he’s committed to opening a club that will preserve what’s often framed as “pure” jazz. It’s a cultural legacy that, as a fellow musician played by John Legend gently reminds him, has not exactly asked for his help — though that doesn’t deter him.There’s a stark difference between these characters’ ways of relating to jazz and those of, say, Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha), the saxophonist in “Sylvie’s Love,” or Joe, the pianist in “Soul.” As Sylvie watches Robert play, she’s seeing him settle into himself deeply. There’s no gap between who he is on and offstage, except that he may be freer up there. Performing doesn’t become an unhealthy obsession; it’s life.While “Sylvie’s Love” hinges on a “Paris Blues”-like tension between art and romance, the two are ultimately able to coexist. Spike Lee’s “Mo’ Better Blues” (1990) and “Crooklyn” (1994) got halfway there, showing what it looks like for jazz musicians to have loving marriages. (Lee, whose father is a jazz musician, does not make it seem easy. But possible? Yes.) “Sylvie’s Love” takes that conflict and melts it away, as a great screen romance can.In “Soul,” Joe says that “the tune is just an excuse to bring out the you.”Credit…Disney Pixar, via Associated PressOn many levels, the most expansive and affecting of the new jazz films is “Soul.” A pianist and middle-school band teacher, Joe, is on the brink of death when his spirit sneaks into the Great Before, where uninitiated souls prepare to enter bodies upon birth. There he meets 22, a recalcitrant soul whom the powers that be have failed to coax into a human body.In his classroom, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) preaches the glories of jazz improvisation, drawing on a true story that the famed pianist Jon Batiste, who ghosted the music that Joe plays, had told the movie’s director, Docter, and co-director, Powers. “This is the moment where I fell in love with jazz,” Joe says, recalling the first time he stepped into a jazz club as a kid. He caresses the piano keys as he speaks. “Listen to that!” he says. “See, the tune is just an excuse to bring out the you.”After an accident lands Joe in intensive care and his soul drifts out of his body, he and 22 hatch a plan to get him back to life. All souls, he comes to find out, need a “spark” that will touch off their passion and guide them through life. He knows immediately that his is playing the piano. That, he says, is his purpose in life. But one of the spiritual guides-cum-counselors that populate the Great Before (all named Jerry) quickly sets him straight. “We don’t assign purposes,” this Jerry says. “Where did you get that idea? A spark isn’t a soul’s purpose. Oh, you mentors and your passions — your ‘purposes,’ your meanings of life! So basic.”Their conversation is left wonderfully open-ended. But the point becomes clear, subtle as it is: Above meaning, above purpose, above any means to an end, there’s just life. Which is to say, music.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Night of the Kings’ Review: Telling Tales to a Captive Audience

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Night of the Kings’ Review: Telling Tales to a Captive AudienceAncient tradition fuses with modern struggles in a prison in Ivory Coast.Koné Bakary, center, in “Night of the Kings.”Credit…NeonDec. 29, 2020, 1:07 p.m. ETNight of the KingsDirected by Philippe LacôteDrama, Fantasy1h 33mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.As the new arrival at a violent prison, the young man at the center of “Night of the Kings” faces a tough crowd. He’s assigned the ceremonial duty of telling stories all night, while the convicts’ ailing capo, Blackbeard, fends off succession plots. Philippe Lacôte’s restless film — a rare United States release from Ivory Coast — braids together its struggles for survival to suggest an entire country fighting to emerge.Lacôte crosses the open-ended energy of griot traditions with the surging tensions of the prison’s close quarters. Given the honorary title “Roman,” the storyteller (fresh-faced Koné Bakary) stands up in a crowded main room to spin forth the origin story of Zama King, a gangster who roamed Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city, during the country’s post-electoral chaos in the 2010s. Lacôte splices in clips of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who resisted his election loss.A chorus of inmates heckles and embellishes the burgeoning tale with pantomimes and song, while Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu, the mayor in “Les Misérables”) broods over his decline. Zama’s back story eventually jumps tracks to show a C.G.I.-enhanced battle between a queen (the artist Laetitia Ky) and her brother. Denis Lavant even pops up as a character named Silence, with a bird on his shoulder.“It doesn’t even make sense!” one prisoner protests, and the movie keeps edging from compressed into sketchy, with Zama King oddly remaining a blank. But having also sat through two and a half hours of “Wonder Woman 1984,” I found myself daydreaming that the superhero’s time could be magically yielded to Lacôte to flesh out his evocative mythmaking.Night of the KingsNot rated. In French, Dyula and Nouchi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch through Angelika Film Center’s virtual cinema.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Wonder Woman and Her Evolving Look

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWonder Woman and Her Evolving LookShe remained steadfast in her decades-long fight for justice, but her costumes ranged from a golden-eagle emblem and skirt to a W logo breastplate and leggings.Wonder Woman’s costume has morphed over the years, as showcased in a cover for Wonder Woman No. 750, drawn by Nicola Scott.Credit…Nicola Scott/DCDec. 29, 2020Updated 10:25 a.m. ETIn a trailer for “Wonder Woman 1984,” the title hero is clad in golden armor. That image had fans’ pulses racing because in comic books, the metallic suit is what the heroine dons for major battles. Wonder Woman, who was introduced in 1941, is part of DC’s Holy Trinity of heroes that includes Superman, who debuted in 1938, and Batman, who premiered in 1939. Like the outfits of her fellow heroes, Wonder Woman’s costume has evolved over time and even occasionally received a complete makeover. Here are some notable looks from the Amazing Amazon over the years.1941Sensation Comics No. 1Credit…Harry G. Peter/DCThe very first image of Wonder Woman (who debuted in All-Star Comics before starring in Sensation and then her self-titled series) shows her in her original costume, with a golden eagle emblem on her chest and a flowing, star-spangled skirt. Diana — as Wonder Woman is known on Paradise Island, the home of her Amazon sisters — takes part in a competition to return the marooned pilot Steve Trevor to America. Spoilers: She wins! And she’s given the costume as designed by her mother, Queen Hippolyta. The outfit has changed over the years. Her skirt got shorter until it resembled the bottom half of a bikini. She also sometimes eschewed red boots for red sandals, which were secured by straps leading up to the knees.1968Wonder Woman No. 179Credit…Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano/DCIn 1968, during a visit to Paradise Island, Wonder Woman learns that her sisters are leaving for another dimension. Diana stays behind and performs the “awesome Amazon rite of renunciation,” forsaking her powers. She returns to Earth, goes mod and, under the tutelage of her blind mentor, I-Ching, learns martial arts in order to continue her fight for justice. This status quo lasted until 1972. It was overturned thanks in part to an intervention by Gloria Steinem, who had protested Wonder Woman’s depowering. Steinem went on to put the heroine, clad in her traditional costume, on the cover of the first issue of Ms. magazine that year.1981Wonder Woman No. 288Credit…Gene Colon and Dick Giordano/DCIn the aftermath of an adventure in Washington, D.C., where Wonder Woman was then based, representatives from a new charity approach her. They want the heroine to endorse their organization — the Wonder Woman Foundation — and to consider wearing a new breastplate with a stylized double W. She’s reluctant, but after discussing the idea with her mother, who encourages her to wear it, she comes to a realization: “The cause will make the ‘W’ stand not just for ‘Wonder Woman’ — but for women everywhere.” She dons it and declares: “It doesn’t look half bad, at that. Who knows? It might grow on me.”1986Wonder Woman No. 1Credit…George Pérez/DCA reboot in 1986 led to a retelling of Wonder Woman’s origin and her journey to America. This version of the heroine was younger and somewhat naïve but an even more ferocious warrior. Her revised look equipped her with more armaments, including a battle ax, a shield and a spear. Even her tiara was weaponized and made razor sharp. She once used it to behead Deimos, the Greek god of terror, who was threatening the world.1994Wonder Woman No. 93Credit…Mike Dedato Jr./DCIn 1994, Queen Hippolyta had a vision of Wonder Woman’s death and conducted a new contest for the title. (She also made sure that her daughter lost.) Diana emerged with shorter hair and a uniform that managed to show even more skin thanks to matching black bike shorts and sports bra. By 1995, she had returned to a modified version of her familiar look, with fewer white stars on the bottom half of her costume but a huge tiara and a larger WW emblem that extended to a wider belt. The ’90s were rough for DC’s trinity: Superman died in 1992, Batman had a severe spinal injury in 1993, and Wonder Woman died in 1997. Ah, comics.2001Wonder Woman No. 173Credit…Adam Hughes/DCWonder Woman’s golden armor has its roots in “Kingdom Come,” a 1996 story set in a future when new heroes run amok in the absence of Superman. In that tale, Wonder Woman uses the armor after tensions at a prison for out-of-control superpowered beings boils over. The armor was later introduced in her present-day adventures. In a 2001 story, an alien menace named Imperiex sets his sights on Earth. Wonder Woman and Queen Hippolyta answer the call to arms, but only Diana survives — for a time. As comic books have taught fans, nearly every character death is undone, and Hippolyta was later resurrected.2010Wonder Woman No. 600Credit…Don Kramer and Michael Babinski/DCThe year 2010 saw Wonder Woman reach issue No. 600 thanks to some creative comic book math that combined three volumes of her series to get to this mostly celebratory issue. “Mostly” because one of this stories revealed that Wonder Woman’s timeline had been altered. In this new reality, Diana had been sent away as a child to escape the destruction of Paradise Island and retained only hazy visions of her life as Wonder Woman. On the bright side, this new world order led to a new uniform — one that completely covered her legs! Other changes: Her red-and-gold gauntlets left a W-shaped impression on those unlucky enough to be struck by them.2011Wonder Woman No. 1Credit…Cliff Chiang/DCIn 2011, DC rebooted its entire line. The heroes were presented as younger, which erased several longstanding relationships, and many of them were clad in overly designed, armor-like costumes. Wonder Woman’s new look featured additions to previous uniforms (a choker and matching armband) and subtractions from those looks (goodbye, pants). The color palette was also more subdued: a deeper red breastplate (with muted stars), dark blue shorts and boots, and silver accessories (save for the golden lasso of truth).AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Herself’ Review: She Does It All

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Herself’ Review: She Does It AllAfter fleeing her abusive husband, a woman figures out how to build a new home for herself and her daughters.Clare Dunne in “Herself.”Credit…Pat Redmond/Amazon StudiosDec. 29, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETHerselfDirected by Phyllida LloydDramaR1h 37mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.When a housing authority can’t provide the residence you need, why not build one yourself? The option obviously isn’t widely available. But a concatenation of circumstances, and the kindness of an old family friend, gives Sandra, a mom fleeing an abusive husband, the chance to do just that in “Herself.”Clare Dunne, who co-wrote the screenplay with Malcolm Campbell, plays Sandra, who leaves her monstrously violent spouse, Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson), taking her two young girls. Early on, the movie, set in Ireland, has a bit of a Ken Loach vibe, as the hard-working Sandra negotiates various unhelpful bureaucracies trying to set up a new domestic situation.The idea of building her own home is born out of some sessions with the computer search engine. The land and some moral support come from an aged woman Sandra looks after.A trip to the hardware store proves that the internet doesn’t give you all the instructions you need for such an ambitious undertaking as house-building. And an interaction with a rude clerk introduces her to an initially reluctant ally, a construction man, Aido (Conleth Hill), who’s acquainted with Gary. Not in a pleasant way. His sympathy for Sandra compels the overworked fellow to lend her a hand.Then it’s “It Takes a Village” time as Sandra’s friends and neighbors pitch in. Mini-montages of concrete-pouring and beam-raising ensue, accompanied by pop songs like Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ “New Shoes” and the David Guetta/Sia collaboration “Titanium.” The director, Phyllida Lloyd, who primarily works in theater, did oversee both the stage and film versions of “Mamma Mia!” after all.The presence of the resentful Gary looms, and Anderson’s performance makes the looming register. Even when he crouches down by Sandra’s car window to tell her he’s getting counseling, Gary exudes menace. He’s clearly poised to strike, and when he senses an opportunity, he does. And as the bad dominoes start to fall, Sandra starts coming apart.As a character, Sandra hasn’t a huge amount of depth — she’s mostly defined by traits, like anger and resilience. But that’s part of the movie’s point; her state is something to which the world has ground her down. And after a while the movie itself, for all its sporadically sunny moments, looks like it’s not going to let up on her. This is a feminist movie with a Sisyphean dimension that’s disquietingly universal.HerselfRated R for language and violence. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Animates Jazz

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Animates JazzA look at the ways filmmakers and musicians collaborated to present an accurate view of players’ artistry.Concept art from the movie. The filmmakers consulted several players and worked with the pianist Jon Batiste to convey jazz musicianship.Credit…Pixar/DisneyPublished More