Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)’ Review: Struggling to Transmit

      by

      Questlove’s new documentary aims to dissect the forward-looking brilliance of Sly Stone and his band, but mostly it traces their downward arc.Partway through this new Questlove documentary about Sly Stone, his band, the Family Stone, and the joyous, urgent funk they made, I got a little sad. Not for Stone, per se, and not for fame’s warping effect on his personality and relationships or for the serious drug addiction that maybe helped him cope with being that recognizable. (If “psychedelia” was a look, he looked it: piles of hair often cherried by a hat; capes, tight leather and denim; shirts, vests and jackets that never ever seemed to close.) I got sad because I could predict the notes the movie would hit — collapses, breakups, recriminations, redemption.I could make that prediction because of all the “Behind the Music” I’ve watched. This movie, “Sly Lives!,” tells Stone’s life as one of those “… and then it all fell apart” stories. Ahmir Thompson, the director better known as Questlove, proceeds with more care — with ardor even — than that series, which ran for about 17 years on VH1 and developed a formula that itself became an addictive experience. You don’t know “binge watch” until you’ve lost an entire day on that show’s roller coaster.“Sly Lives!,” which is streaming on Hulu, traces the arc of a vital career, and down is where, for a time, it led. Stone is an artist partly responsible for making “too much, too fast,” in the rock ’n’ roll universe, feel inevitable now. And if George Clinton happens to surprise you with the news that he and Stone had been using crack and were arrested in 1981 for possession, withholding that discovery constitutes minor cultural malpractice. Yet how does a filmmaker devise an alternative to the old rise-before-demise template? Failing that, how does a filmmaker enliven the journalism of the format with insight, feeling, personality, an argument?Questlove would like “Sly Lives!” to brush the dust from Stone’s pop pedestal, to celebrate his music as sui generis polymathic synthesis and as hip-hop’s bedrock, to imply that his ethos, zeal, caution and nerve persist in his scores of studio-wizard and rhythm-vision progeny: for starters, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Lenny Kravitz, Outkast, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, LCD Soundsystem, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Steve Lacy. But the movie gets lost in the gulf between standard, if illuminating, biography and roiling existential crisis.For “Sly Lives!” is a title with freight. “The Burden of Black Genius” is what follows in a parenthetical, but “Black” gets a strikethrough. The film opens with its director asking for a definition of “Black genius” from Clinton, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip, Nile Rodgers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and the guitarist Vernon Reid. Thought bubbles ensue. André 3000’s endorsement of Black genius as a phenomenon he loves “when it happens” is as near an answer as anyone gets. And Stone, who’s 81 now, evidently couldn’t be cajoled into comment.He was born Sylvester Stewart and reared in Vallejo, Calif. His musical life began in the church and was fortified by playing records on the radio station KSOL and producing songs for other Bay Area acts at Autumn Records. He stopped studying music in college and, in 1966, formed a band of his own with his siblings, Rose (keys) and Freddie (guitar), alongside Cynthia Robinson (trumpet), Jerry Martini (sax), Greg Errico (drums) and Larry Graham (bass). (They all provided vocals. But one of the film’s quieter achievements is the reminder that Stone was the pre-eminent funk singer — growls, yelps, wails; pulpit and pelvis.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘La Dolce Villa’ Review: Sweet Italian Nonsense

      by

      A light as air romantic comedy about a cheap villa in a fictional town capitalizes on the “Emily in Paris” model, with pasta.From the start, I had many questions about “La Dolce Villa,” directed by Mark Waters, most of which are easy enough to answer but stick in the mind nonetheless. Why, for instance, is the hot middle-aged dad, Eric (Scott Foley), so incredibly mad at his 20-something daughter, Olivia (Maia Reficco), for wanting to purchase a literal villa in Italy for the whopping price of one euro? Why, for that matter, is her Italian so good? Why does Eric seem so convinced the one-euro Italian villa situation is a complete scam, despite, presumably, living in a world that has the internet? Why does everyone in the tiny, remote, fictional town of Montezara, in which this villa can be found, speak extremely accomplished, crystal-clear English? And why does it feel like “La Dolce Villa” is actually funded by an Italian tourist bureau?The same answer applies to each of these: It’s a Netflix movie, designed expressly for the “Emily in Paris” audience. That is to say, it’s a glossy fairy tale about Americans having lighthearted adventures in Europe, getting into scrapes and falling in love and charming the pants off all the locals.I’ve basically explained the premise, but let’s add that Eric, a widower, and Olivia are from Ohio. After a couple of bad traveling mishaps in the past, Eric is convinced Italy is the worst place ever. He used to be a chef, but now he’s a corporate guy — yet when he sees the villa, with its capacious broken-down kitchen, the gears start to turn. Olivia is more of a free spirit, and she’s made friends with the mayor of Montezara, Francesca (Violante Placido), who is beautiful, around Eric’s age and full of big plans for her little town. Montezara is populated by an assortment of contractors, nonnas and beautiful young people. Everybody eats pasta and rides bikes through the countryside.And Montezara seems full of villas available for one euro, part of a movement in Italy to infuse new life into communities that are in danger of becoming ghost towns. (In the movie and in real life, buyers have to commit to renovating the building within a few years, which can cost thousands of dollars but is still much cheaper than buying a house virtually anywhere else.) It’s basically paradise on earth, and of course, Francesca and Eric — being single, middle-age and extremely beautiful — will meet cute and have a series of slapsticky mishaps and you know the rest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ Review: A Screwball Heroine Is Back

      by

      The madcap Londoner returns in a third sequel that is just as deliciously satisfying as the first movie in the series — maybe even more.Even though Bridget Jones fans are used to zany plot developments, few could have anticipated the twist in the new installment of her film series: Miraculously, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” reconnects with the deft balance of bubbliness, high jinks and emotion that was the hallmark of the movie that started it all in 2001, “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”That is a surprise, indeed, because of the first two sequels’ diminishing returns. The previous entry in the franchise, “Bridget Jones’s Baby,” may have ended with our heroine (Renée Zellweger) as the beaming new bride of her soul mate, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), but the franchise itself was in dire straits. Labored and unfunny, that film, from 2016, sounded like a cinematic death rattle rather than peals of joyous wedding bells.Michael Morris’s “Mad About the Boy” opens with Bridget a widow of four years — happiness is always fleeting, a bittersweet undercurrent that anchors those generally buoyant movies.She is as messy and disheveled as ever, the kind of mom who sets pasta on fire and lets her young children (Mila Jankovic and Casper Knopf) run the house. Fortunately, she still has the same supporting friends (James Callis, Shirley Henderson and Sally Phillips). She also continues to hang out with the suave playboy Daniel Cleaver, portrayed, as always, by Hugh Grant — how the Bridget Jones movies have, over the years, handled this now unpalatable type qualifies as magic of the highest order. And blessedly, Emma Thompson pops back as Bridget’s gynecologist, pronouncing “syphilis” in a way that deserves to start a thousand TikTok memes.Still, it’s time for Bridget to move on and make the most of her 50s. In short order, she falls into the toned arms of the 29-year-old Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall, “The White Lotus”), who rescues her from an ill-fated attempt to climb a tree — one of many instances of slapstick in the movie, a wise decision considering Zellweger’s expert physical comedy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Disney to Diminish Content Warnings Shown Before Classic Films

      by

      In addition to wording changes, the warnings will no longer autoplay at the beginning of movies such as “Dumbo” and “Peter Pan.”Disney is preparing to downplay the content warnings on its streaming service that accompany classic movies that include racial stereotypes, altering their language and decreasing their visibility.The content warning that currently autoplays on Disney+ before movies such as “Dumbo” (1941) and “Peter Pan” (1953) cautions of “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures,” adding, “These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.”The new disclaimer will warn that the movie “may contain stereotypes or negative depictions” and will not appear as introductory text that plays before the beginning of a film, a company spokesman said. Instead, the language will now appear in the details section of certain films, where viewers will have to navigate to find it. (As of Wednesday morning, the original content warning still appeared on Disney+.)Disney is also changing the diversity component of how it rates its executives and makes compensation decisions. Company leaders will now be graded on a “Talent Strategy” performance factor instead of a “Diversity & Inclusion” one, Sonia Coleman, Disney’s senior executive vice president and chief human resources officer, said on Tuesday in an email seen by The New York Times. The new factor will cover how executives “incorporate different perspectives,” “cultivate an environment where all employees can thrive” and “sustain a robust pipeline.”The changes were earlier reported by Axios.The evolution of Disney’s content warnings comes in the wake of other decisions the company has made that signal a shift in strategy on hot-button cultural issues.Pixar, a division of Walt Disney Studios, removed a transgender story line from an upcoming animated series, a decision that became public in December, after the presidential election, though Disney said it was made last summer. Last year, the company also declined to release an episode of a different animated show, Disney Channel’s “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,” that depicted a transgender character’s interest in sports.In 2022, Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, said publicly that some of the company’s products had grown too political and ordered a review of upcoming projects.In December, Disney decided to settle a defamation suit brought by President Trump for $15 million plus legal fees. The accusation concerned an on-air statement made by the ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos that Mr. Trump had been found “liable for rape” in a New York civil trial, when in fact the president had been found liable for sexual abuse (the judge in the case noted that New York has a narrow legal definition of rape).Disney executives, including Mr. Iger, were motivated to settle primarily by the fear that the company could lose the case. But they were also worried about Mr. Trump’s treatment of ABC News should the suit continue and about the company’s reputation among the broad cross-section of consumers it wants to reach. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ Review: Anthony Mackie’s Turn

      by

      The latest Marvel movie introduces a new Captain America in the form of a political thriller.Picture this: a suspected killer running from the government; a gruff president staving off enemies on a plane; a brainwashed former soldier embroiled in a conspiracy. It’s not the spiky political thrillers “The Fugitive” or “Air Force One” or “The Manchurian Candidate,” it’s “Captain America: Brave New World.”Then again, the film recruited Harrison Ford into a cinematic universe that single-handedly welded the modern movie wink — why not give us what we expect? In its early goings, “Brave New World” does indeed read partially as a paranoid ’90s genre film trapped in a Marvel movie, struggling to break free from its franchise constraints: too much setup, too many villains, too much thinly scattered lore.After Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), a.k.a. the new Captain America, retrieves a valuable substance known as adamantium from the villain Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito as a hammy iteration of Gus Fring, his “Breaking Bad” character), he brings it back to a grateful President Ross (Harrison Ford). At a gathering meant to announce a global treaty around adamantium’s usage, the president is nearly assassinated by Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly, a bright spot), a former soldier who goes rogue. Wilson, in turn, goes off to find the mystery villain who is controlling not only Bradley, but also what eventually becomes a hulking-mad Ross.It’s all a lot to process and yet not nearly enough to hold your attention. For all of the movie’s genre ambitions, the only wisps of tangible political intrigue to be found are in the ones unintended, or via allusions to ones already explored (global class politics and the mixed messages about a Black Captain America in the film’s TV precursor, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”).What’s left instead is a movie whose idea of tension is mostly to move at light speed with constant explication. The film, directed by Julius Onah, has the frayed tailoring of a movie marked by reshoots and changes: The writing is stiff and the ensemble is mostly charmless, while the visuals are slapdash.As the new Captain America, Mackie was perhaps doomed from the start. And yet, he lacks the megawatt magnetism to elevate, or even just obscure, the poor construction of a tentpole franchise on his own. He is a far better actor elsewhere, but here his stand-alone avenger and the bad blockbuster only show the loose seams.What the film mostly relies on instead is Ford, not only as an actor, but as his alter ego. When the Red Hulk finally does appear, it’s an add-on — a last-ditch effort to instead recapture the kind of fan-service glee of Marvels old. With its cheap action and garish visuals, it’s then that we enter yet another genre altogether: action-figure commercial.Captain America: Brave New WorldRated PG-13 for hulk smashes. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      A Lost Silent Film About Lincoln Was Unearthed by an Intern

      by

      “The Heart of Lincoln,” a 1922 movie directed by the pioneering filmmaker Francis Ford, was found at a stock-footage library on Long Island.No intern task is too small. Not getting coffee, not running errands and certainly not rummaging through piles of old films only to dig up a long-lost piece of history.When Dan Martin was asked to sort through dozens of old film cans, some of which were rusted shut, at Historic Films Archive, a stock-footage library on Long Island, he was happy to do the unglamorous work. He described the company’s climate-controlled storage vault as a “dark, concrete basement” flush with films.“This is the sort of thing that you go to school for as a film preservation student,” said Martin, 26, who is studying at Toronto Metropolitan University.Standing in the vault during the final week of his internship last August, Martin could have picked his next stack of films from any number of shelves. The one he happened to select included a remarkable discovery: five film cans containing 16-millimeter film of “The Heart of Lincoln,” a 1922 picture that was one of more than 7,000 silent films considered lost by the Library of Congress.“The Heart of Lincoln,” directed by and starring Francis Ford, was among roughly 10,000 films donated about 20 years ago from a university in the Midwest, said Joe Lauro, the owner of Historic Films Archive. “Most of the films from that collection were educational films that were shown in classrooms,” he said. Those films were typically discarded by the institutions when they became worn out.It is the second Lincoln film by Ford — a pioneer in early Hollywood and the older brother of John Ford, the Oscar-winning director — that has been found in recent years. In 2010, a copy of his “When Lincoln Paid” (1913) was discovered by a contractor during a demolition of a New Hampshire barn.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Watch Adrien Brody Defend His Art in ‘The Brutalist’

      by

      The director Brady Corbet narrates a scene from his film, which is nominated for 10 Academy Awards.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.An architect defends his work to concerned financiers in this scene from “The Brutalist.”In the period drama, Adrien Brody stars as the Jewish Hungarian architect László Tóth, who has been commissioned to design a community center in Pennsylvania. During this sequence, László is walking a group of community advocates and financiers through the construction site. One of those people is Jim Simpson (Michael Epp), a local architect concerned more about the ballooning costs of the project than the vision of it.Narrating the sequence, Corbet said that they shot the scene in a granite quarry outside of Budapest “because we couldn’t afford to build a set.”The conversation in the scene becomes heated, and builds up to a moment where László essentially tells Jim that everything ugly in the world is Jim’s fault. The one-take sequence has a single establishing cutaway shot.Corbet said that he prefers to shoot his scenes in one take because, “that sunlight-in-a-box feeling that you have, that you’ve captured this ephemeral thing, it only occurs in sequence takes.”Read the “Brutalist” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More