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      Nicolas Cage’s Best Performances Onscreen

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      We’ve reached the point in Nicolas Cage’s career when it’s easiest to refer to every new movie he’s in by just describing his antics in them. Dracula Cage, terrible boss — that’s “Renfield.” Moody chef Cage, retriever of beloved animal — that’s “Pig.” Serial killer Cage, servant of Satan — that’s “Longlegs.”The tactic works because it’s easy to imagine Cage donning any of those guises, and a thousand more besides. Many a commenter has noted Cage’s propensity for roles that can be described only as crazy, but the actor’s career is too expansive, and often more nuanced, to be reduced to his unhinged characters. Tell me he’s going to play, I don’t know, a ballet master or a mob boss or an enraged father (as in his latest movie, “The Surfer”) and I’ll believe you, because Cage has proved that he contains multitudes, over and over again. Sometimes he even plays more than one guy in the same movie — as in my favorite of his films, “Adaptation,” in which he appears as twins.That means the best way to get a grip on Cage as an artist is to consider him through his many faces. Even when he occasionally takes that face, um, off.‘Moonstruck’ (1987)The Sincere Love InterestEarly on, Cage worked to establish a career apart from his family name. (The “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola is his uncle, and the directors Roman and Sofia Coppola and the actor Jason Schwartzman are his cousins.) He managed it swiftly in a string of movies that included many performances as a tousled, passionate, somewhat unpredictable young man. What shines through each is a full-bodied commitment to whatever the character’s emotional reality is — all the roiling desires, the suffering, the ecstasy.A great representative performance from this era is his turn as the lovelorn hothead Ronny, who’s smitten with his brother’s fiancée (Cher) in the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck.” Ronny may be missing a hand thanks to a freak bread-slicer accident, but he’s not missing any gallantry, rough-hewn as it is. It’s a charming, uncouth, amorous role, and versions of that Cage show up in the Coen brothers’ “Raising Arizona” (1987) and David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” (1990).(Stream “Moonstruck” on the Roku Channel and the Criterion Channel, or rent it on most major platforms.)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

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      When Taxpayers Fund Shows Like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘S.N.L.,’ Does It Pay Off?

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has proposed an increase in the film tax credit to stay competitive with New Jersey and other states.New Yorkers — and residents of many other states — have paid more for entertainment in recent years than just their Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.Each New York household has also contributed about $16 in taxes, on average, toward producing the drama series “Billions” since 2017. Over that period, each household has also paid roughly $14.50 in production incentives for “Saturday Night Live” and $4.60 for “The Irishman,” among many other shows and movies.Add it all up, and New York has spent more than $5.5 billion in incentives since 2017, the earliest year for which data is readily available. Now, as a new state budget agreement nears, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to add $100 million in credits for independent productions that would bring total film subsidies to $800 million a year, almost double the amount from 2022.Other states also pay out tens or hundreds of millions each year in a bidding war for Hollywood productions, under the theory that these tax credits spur the economy. One question for voters and lawmakers is whether a state recoups more than its investment in these movies and shows — or gets back only pennies on the dollar.New York has one of the largest tax credit programs and makes most of its data public, so we totaled its spending to see which productions benefited the most. More

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      ‘Rust’ Review: Alec Baldwin Western Hit by Tragedy Is a Hard Watch

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      During every scene of this western, I couldn’t stop thinking about the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on set in an entirely preventable tragedy.It’s impossible to watch “Rust,” a period western steeped in death, without thinking about the catastrophe that occurred on set while it was being filmed in New Mexico on Oct. 21, 2021. During a rehearsal, a gun that the star Alec Baldwin was handling discharged a live bullet, fatally wounding the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and injuring the director, Joel Souza. Hutchins was 42; she is survived by a son and her husband, Matthew Hutchins.In March 2024, the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter; she received an 18-month sentence. In July 2024, a case against Baldwin was dismissed after a judge determined that some of the evidence had been mishandled.“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” the judge said.Those words haunt “Rust,” which is now being released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming. The fact that it is now available to the viewing public isn’t enough to justify a review. And, in truth, this is no longer an ordinary movie; it is, rather, a deeply depressing coda to an appalling and entirely preventable tragedy. In general, live ammunition should never be on any film set, per industry standards. Gutierrez-Reed, who was 24 at the time and an inexperienced armorer, was supposed to load the revolver that Baldwin was holding with dummy rounds. But one of the rounds she loaded into the gun was live.This wasn’t the first time that someone died in a preventable accident while making a movie. In 2014, Sarah Jones, 27, was struck by a train while working as a camera assistant on the drama “Midnight Rider.” The project was never finished, and crews began putting Jones’s name on clapboards as part of a campaign known as “Safety for Sarah.” As the cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who had started another safety initiative for more humane working hours, said: “We are making entertainment, and there’s no reason to risk our lives and our health to get a shot.” His words should have been seared into the minds of everyone in the industry, and anyone who flouts safety protocols should be banned.Three and a half years after Hutchins’s death, the only question that seems worth asking about “Rust,” I think, is what does its release mean to her family. In 2022, some members reached a settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the movie’s producers a few months before production resumed. Hutchins was named as one of the movie’s executive producers, and “Rust,” somewhat queasily, has been dedicated to her. A release from the “Rust” representatives states that its original producers will not gain financially from the movie. The terms of Matthew Hutchins’s settlement were sealed, the release said, but it has been confirmed that he and the couple’s son, Andros, will receive profits from the film.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

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      Best Movies and Shows Streaming in May: ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Murderbot’ and More

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      “Duster,” “Summer of 69,” “Overcompensating,” “‘Deaf President Now!” and more are arriving, and “Poker Face” returns.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Overcompensating’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 15The comedian and social media content creator Benito Skinner both created and stars in this raunchy campus comedy, about freshmen trying desperately to fit in with their peers — while hiding their actual personalities and desires. Skinner plays Benny, a former high school athlete who does not want his family or his classmates (or maybe even himself) to realize he’s gay. On the first day of college, Benny meets Carmen (Wally Baram), who is recovering — poorly — from a bad breakup. The two bond immediately, but while Carmen thinks she just met her next boyfriend, Benny thinks he has found someone who can pretend to be his girlfriend. “Overcompensating” is set in a broadly comic version of university life, where everyone is sex- and status-obsessed. But Skinner also sincerely explores what it’s like for young people to use a new environment to reinvent themselves.‘The Better Sister’Starts streaming: May 29This twisty mini-series stars Jessica Biel as Chloe, a rich and successful New York City media mogul who calls the cops from her family’s summer house after her husband, Adam (Corey Stoll), is found murdered. While the homicide detectives Nancy (Kim Dickens) and Matt (Bobby Naderi) investigate the crime, Chloe seems unusually interested in keeping them from learning about certain aspects of her life — like her strained relationship with her sister Nicky (Elizabeth Banks). Nicky, a reckless free spirit, is also Adam’s ex and the biological mother of Adam and Chloe’s teenage son, Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan). Cocreated by Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado, “The Better Sister” (based on an Alafair Burke novel) is both a mystery with lots of red herrings and the study of a sad sibling rivalry.Also arriving:May 1“Another Simple Favor”May 6“David Spade: Dandelion”May 8“Octopus!”May 20“Motorheads” Season 1May 22“Earnhardt”May 27“The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy” Season 2From left, Tim Rarus, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Greg Hlibok and Jerry Covell in “Deaf President Now!,” a documentary film directed by Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim.Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Deaf President Now!’Starts streaming: May 16Back in 1988, Gallaudet University’s students drew international headlines when they shut the college down for a week, angrily rejecting the appointment of yet another hearing president — at a time when the institution had never had a deaf one. For the documentary “Deaf President Now!,” the Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) and co-director Nyle DiMarco (a Gallaudet alum) have collected rarely seen student-shot footage of those protests, and combined them with news clips, re-creations and fiery new interviews with the campus leaders. The film delivers a fascinating look back at a pivotal moment in civil rights history that doubles as a gripping political thriller, piecing together the details of the demonstration and how, day by day, these courageous young adults turned the tide of public opinion.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

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      ‘Vulcanizadora’ Review: Guilt Trip

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      Two midlife losers reckon with past mistakes on a despairing and oddly haunting trip into the woods and out of their heads.Midway through “Vulcanizadora,” the fifth feature from the eccentric indie actor and filmmaker Joel Potrykus, his character, Derek, asks his best friend, Marty (Joshua Burge), to consider that hell might be no more than never-ending anxiety.“Can you imagine that? Being nervous forever?” The two are hiking through a Michigan forest en route to a terrible, as yet unrevealed destination, and viewers familiar with Potrykus’s work will feel a stab of amusement: Perpetual unease is a state he has always imagined with exquisite precision.Revisiting the losers we met a decade ago in “Buzzard,” “Vulcanizadora” wonders where slackers go when their adolescent behaviors no longer serve. Nowhere good, is the answer, as these pitiable, middle-aged misfits gradually reveal lives that are likely unsalvageable. Marty, a small-time crook, is facing a second stint in prison and living in his childhood basement. Derek is divorced, estranged from his young son (played by Potrykus’s real son, Solo) and unreliably medicated. Both are depleted from past mistakes and on the verge of making one of the worst imaginable. When everyone thinks you’re a no-count, then nothing you do can ever count.Potrykus, though — an inveterate hand-to-mouth practitioner — persists in treating the lost and the left-behind as if they matter, and his signature empathy is pronounced here. As is his fascination with fire as an arbiter of emotional disturbance: Like the pyromaniac of “Ape” (2014), Marty may be an arsonist, and his emphatic wretchedness finds expression in a lingering, hauntingly surreal close-up of black snake fireworks slowly uncoiling.Spasmodically funny, though hardly a comedy, “Vulcanizadora” is raw, moving and, briefly, horrifying. In the press notes, Potrykus admits to having worried that becoming a father would cause him to soften and “start telling stories of hope and inspiration.” That may be the funniest joke of all.VulcanizadoraNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Words of War’ Review: Portrait of a Fearless Reporter

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      The Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya is the subject of a film that honors her bravery.The sort of movie in which a story’s inherent power is enough to oil otherwise creaky biopic machinery, “Words of War” dramatizes the life of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who became known for her tenacious reporting on the second Chechen war and for her undaunted criticism of Vladimir V. Putin. The movie opens with an apparent attempt on her life — a poisoning on an airplane — and ends with her death in 2006, when she was murdered in her Moscow apartment building.In between, it recounts the tremendous risks that Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) faced in finding and persuading people to talk. When she travels to Grozny, she has difficulty earning the confidence of Chechens, who believe that no Russian reporter can be trusted. One says that she is trying to illuminate “the black hole of the world.” The Russian military eyes her warily, too (a major threatens to slit her throat), and soon an agent (Ian Hart) visits her while she is getting coffee and a croissant in Moscow — to make it clear he’s keeping watch.The closing credits acknowledge that the filmmakers (James Strong directed a screenplay by Eric Poppen) have taken some dramaturgical liberties, including inventing the Hart character. Politkovskaya’s own description of serving as a hostage negotiator at a Moscow theater in 2002 differs in tenor from the portrayal of events onscreen. Some deviations are inevitable, but the expository dialogue — and the convention of having Russian characters speak English, with British accents — are distractions. Even so, Politkovskaya’s bravery, and Peake’s commitment to honoring it, is enough.Words of WarRated R for violence and descriptions of brutality. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ Gets Muted Release, Years After Fatal Shooting

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      The filmmakers said that they hoped the finished product would honor the work and memory of its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was shot and killed on the set.How do you plan the rollout of a film that became notorious for an on-set tragedy?The ill-fated western “Rust” has been trying to figure that out. The movie is finally being released on Friday, three and a half years after its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was shot and killed by a real bullet fired from an old-fashioned revolver that its star, Alec Baldwin, was rehearsing with on a set in New Mexico.Now that the film is finally coming out after years of lawsuits, investigations and two criminal trials, its rollout has been decidedly muted. Unable to find traction at better-known film festivals, “Rust” premiered last fall at a small cinematography festival in Poland. Now, as it is being released in a limited number of theaters (with none so far in New York City) and on demand, it is forgoing the traditional red-carpet premiere, and Mr. Baldwin has not sat for any splashy interviews.The filmmakers said that their overriding goal in finishing the film and pushing for its release was to showcase the final work of Ms. Hutchins, who was a 42-year-old up-and-coming cinematographer when she was killed. And a legal settlement calls for some of the film’s earnings to go to her husband and son.“If I was to make a direct plea to someone about seeing the movie,” said the film’s director, Joel Souza, “I’d say that a lot of really good people worked really hard on finishing this movie to honor her.”Mr. Souza was injured in the shooting by the bullet that killed Ms. Hutchins, which passed through her and lodged in his shoulder. He said that at first he doubted he would ever want to return to the movie business. But eventually a plan came together to finish “Rust,” with Mr. Souza back in the director’s chair.The plan not only had the blessing of Ms. Hutchins’s husband, Matthew Hutchins, but it was at the heart of a settlement agreement he reached with the movie’s producers, including Mr. Baldwin, after he filed a wrongful-death lawsuit.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