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      ‘Meet Me Next Christmas’ Review: An a Cappella Affair to Remember

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      This Netflix Christmas rom-com inexplicably wants to remind viewers that the group Pentatonix still exists.You’d be forgiven if you were convinced in the early goings of “Meet Me Next Christmas” that the Netflix film is just a slightly more expensive Hallmark Christmas movie. combined with a wild-goose chase rom-com.Still, it’s not actually either of these things. This film, directed by Rusty Cundieff, seems to be a bewildering Christmas movie centered on reminding its viewers that the a cappella pop group Pentatonix still exists.After Layla (Christina Milian) is stuck in an airport during a holiday snowstorm, she hits it off with James (Kofi Siriboe), a suave stranger who might also be the man of her dreams. Knowing she’s in a relationship, James proposes that they don’t exchange any information, but instead meet one year later at a Pentatonix Christmas concert (the strangest version of the “Before Sunrise” premise if there ever was one).A year later, Layla, newly single, crisscrosses town for last-minute tickets to the show with the help of Teddy (Devale Ellis), a concierge whom she reluctantly begins to fall for.Their adventures play out with little charm, and the writing is often baffling, including the nonstop references to Pentatonix, who are also awkwardly featured in scenes throughout. (One can practically see their agent negotiating the contractual clauses onscreen.)In recent years Netflix has become a factory for B-rate Christmas movies, with the occasional cheap comfort to be found in its manufactured holiday romances. This bizarre concoction, not so much.Meet Me Next ChristmasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Pedro Páramo’ Review: A Ghost Story Lacking in Spirit

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      In this grave adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s surreal novel, the living pray for salvation and the dead murmur regrets, but the filmmaking is oddly orthodox.The Mexican writer Juan Rulfo’s mystifying 1955 novel “Pedro Páramo” is, at least in the English-speaking world, most often invoked for its influence on Gabriel García Márquez. But admirers of the book (Susan Sontag famously among them) have long cited it as a masterpiece of spare surrealism.It is odd, then, that Netflix’s new adaptation, directed by the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, is a rather orthodox work. Where this rich, metaphysical text might have come alive in dreamlike abstraction, Prieto and his screenwriter, Mateo Gil, instead content themselves with a prestige Western on terra firma — grave, good-looking and uninspiring.The story opens as Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), our narrator, treks to the vale hamlet of Comala in search of its cacique, Pedro Páramo (Manuel García-Rulfo). He arrives to find Pedro dead and the village deserted, save for murmuring specters. From there, the movie becomes nonlinear, restlessly flitting around in time to chronicle how decades of yearning, anguish and the Páramo family’s sins eroded Comala’s spirit. What emerges is a lugubrious and at times frightening ghost saga in which the living fear hell and the dead bemoan past injustices.Yet for all its sprawling, “Pedro Páramo” also has a lot of talking. There are countless scenes of Pedro giving orders; only some of his stooges doing his bidding. The women, helpless and subordinate, mostly listen, except for Dorotea (Giovanna Zacarías), doomed to die penniless and then, from the grave, assist Juan in voice-over. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but at over two hours, this visual adaptation of Rulfo’s only novel rambles without much to say.Pedro PáramoRated R for violence and visions. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Reinventing the ‘Theater Kid’ Label With Help From Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga

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      For stars like Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga, showmanship is a virtue. That’s a big change from the days when Anne Hathaway was vilified for her effortful work.Ariana Grande used to downplay the fact that she was a theater kid.Yes, she began her career as a teenager on Broadway in the musical “13” before finding fame on Nickelodeon. But when she first set her sights on international pop stardom, she concealed that side of herself. She adopted a disaffected persona and wore oversize sweatshirts as dresses with thigh-high boots. That version of Grande was acting like a girl who didn’t care. (In 2015, she infamously licked some doughnuts and created a national scandal.)Now Grande cares a lot. As a star of “Wicked” alongside Cynthia Erivo, she has thrown herself wholeheartedly into the role of Broadway baby, making it clear that she owes as much to Kristin Chenoweth’s coloratura as she does to Mariah Carey’s whistle tones. She has gone out of her way to demonstrate her commitment to “Wicked,” discussing her long-held love for that Stephen Schwartz musical, dying her hair blond, and announcing on Instagram that she had “decided to put a temporary pin in all things that are not ‘Wicked’ for now.” Grande and Erivo have shown up to multiple events wearing their characters’ signature pink and green. They are not just in “Wicked.” They are living and breathing “Wicked.”Even beyond “Wicked,” this fall’s movie offerings have provided vindication for theater kids everywhere. In addition to Grande and Erivo, a Tony winner for “The Color Purple,” Lady Gaga brought her theater-kid showmanship to Gotham City in “Joker: Folie à Deux.” And two forthcoming art house musicals — “Emilia Pérez,” from the French director Jacques Audiard, and “The End,” from the documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer — embody the theater kid in essence even if they are less Broadway and more Off Broadway in spirit.Ariana Grande in “Wicked.” She has embraced her Broadway beginnings.Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesThe theater kid is also making headway in other areas of entertainment. The pop star Sabrina Carpenter, in her highly kitschy arena tour, comes across as if she’s auditioning for Lola in a revival of “Damn Yankees.” (At a Halloween-themed show in Dallas on Oct. 30, she sang “Hopelessly Devoted to You” in costume as Sandy, Olivia Newton-John’s character from “Grease.”)Carpenter also briefly appeared on the Great White Way for two performances as Cady Heron in “Mean Girls” before the show was shut down because of Covid. Cady’s bully, Regina George, was played by Renée Rapp, who in recent years has turned to sexy, radio-ready ballads, while reminding us of her past as a winner at the Jimmy Awards, the high school musical theater competition. Rapp reprised the role of Regina in the movie version of the “Mean Girls” musical earlier this year. And then there’s Chappell Roan, who borrows from drag as she sings her peppy queer anthems, but whose preference for elaborate costumes has gotten her labeled a theater kid, too.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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      A ‘Wicked’ Tearful Talk With Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande

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      “Excuse me,” Ariana Grande said, flagging down an imaginary waiter. “May we have one million tissues please?”It was midway through the fittingly witchy month of October, and Grande and Cynthia Erivo had convened at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles to discuss their new film “Wicked,” adapted from the long-running Broadway musical. With emotions riding high before its Nov. 22 release, both women teared up frequently while talking about what the movie means to them.On set, things had been no less emotional. “The tears would fall every single time,” Erivo said as she recounted shooting a fraught dance sequence with her co-star. “I didn’t have to try for them, they were always there.”“And I’d catch them,” Grande added.“Wicked” functions as a revisionist prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” with the director Jon M. Chu’s film following Erivo’s green-skinned Elphaba long before she becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. As a young woman at Shiz University, Elphaba is forced to bunk with Grande’s Glinda, a rival-turned-friend who plots to make over her outcast roommate during the fizzy musical number “Popular.”“Wicked,” out Nov. 22, will be followed by “Wicked Part Two” next year.Universal PicturesBut as Elphaba learns the dark secrets that undergird Oz’s Emerald City, the disillusioned young witch finally steps into her own power and belts “Defying Gravity,” the showstopper that, onstage, is meant to bring down the curtain on the first act. Onscreen, the song serves as the climax of the two-and-a-half-hour movie: The rest of the story is saved for “Wicked Part Two,” which was shot in tandem with the first film and is slated for release next November.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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      Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi Beliefs Seen in New Film

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      Recent access to Leni Riefenstahl’s estate has prompted new discussions in Germany about her politics and a reconsideration of her photographs of the Nuba people in Sudan.Two decades after her death, the German director Leni Riefenstahl occupies an uneasy place in film history. She directed two influential movies that are still studied for their aesthetic ambitions despite being propaganda for the Third Reich: “Triumph of the Will,” a visually striking film about the Nazi party’s 1934 rally in Nuremberg, and “Olympia,” about the 1936 Berlin Olympics.After World War II, she was declared a Nazi follower, after four denazification proceedings. Later, Riefenstahl tried to recast herself as an apolitical artist. New access to the estate of the director, who died in 2003 at 101, has prompted a debate in Germany about how to manage her political legacy — and about whether her postwar rehabilitation was based on false premises.Last week, “Riefenstahl,” a documentary by the filmmaker Andres Veiel that uses recordings and letters from the estate to argue she had willfully concealed her support for Nazism, was released in German cinemas. And at a symposium in Berlin last month, researchers presented the results of a yearslong project investigating the impact of Riefenstahl’s photography of the Nuba people in Sudan.In a video interview, Veiel said that renewed scrutiny of Riefenstahl was justified by findings in her estate, which was donated in 2018 to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin and comprises 700 boxes filled with film rolls, photographs and audio recordings, among other items.Riefenstahl welcoming Adolf Hitler in her villa in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin in 1937, in a contact sheet of photos taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer.Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/BildarchivThe material “contradicts the basic perspective, her legend, that she had sold to the outside world,” he said. “Even in her old age, she believed in Nazi ideology.”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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      For ‘Dinner in America,’ a Surprise Theatrical Run Is Dessert

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      The film became popular on TikTok two years after its quiet initial release. Now, it’s getting a second chance in movie theaters.On a recent weeknight at the IFC Center in Manhattan’s West Village, staff members corralled a 400-person crowd in and out of the doors while swarms circled the lead actors of the sold-out feature playing that night: “Dinner in America.” The film — an angsty rom-com that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 but struggled to find distribution before being self-released in 2022 — has catapulted from crickets to cult status since going viral on TikTok in the past couple of months. Seizing on a rare encore, the filmmakers have rallied fans to support a shot at the theatrical run they never had.“You don’t get second chances in this business,” the film’s writer-director Adam Carter Rehmeier told the audience during a post-screening Q&A. The surprise comeback began around September when an inexplicable bump in TikTok’s algorithm turbo-blasted the movie and its earworm original song, “Watermelon.” Soon after, the film was trending across Hulu (where it is currently streaming), Letterboxd and Google. The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Calif., was one of the first theaters to announce a screening, selling out in less than 24 hours. The nonprofit cinema said the requests for “Dinner in America” were the most they’d received for any film.The plot follows the unlikely musical and sexual chemistry between Simon (Kyle Gallner) and Patty (Emily Skeggs). He’s an on-the-lam, slick crust punk; she’s a mousy 20-year-old whose parents keep her away from strobe lights and on five different medications. She finds refuge from bullies and suburban stupor by mailing Polaroid nudes and love poems to her favorite hardcore band’s ski-masked lead singer, who, coincidentally, is Simon.Emily Skeggs with Gallner in “Dinner in America.”Best and Final ReleasingWhen “Dinner in America” was released for a limited theatrical run, as well as on demand, in 2022, The New York Times gave it a mixed review. The critic Concepción de León wrote that the movie “delivers on surprise and explosiveness, but much of its offensive language, both racist and homophobic, feels gratuitous in a film that might have otherwise landed as an offbeat love story.”But content creators have been lifting up the film. The screenwriter Nic Curcio pitched the film to his TikTok followers as the “love child of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ and Todd Solondz” after noticing the uptick beyond the usual MovieTok nerds. Those millions of viewers, he told The Times, are probably sitting alone in their rooms: “The screening elements bring this whole phenomenon full circle.” The film’s success on social media meant it wouldn’t have to wait decades to achieve an underground cachet.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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      How ‘Blitz’ Recreates War-Torn London

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      Steve McQueen’s latest film, set in 1940 during Germany’s bombardment of the British capital, draws extensively from contemporary photos, and was shot entirely outside London.In a London train station, a young Black child clutches a suitcase with both hands. Drowning in his coat, he wears a flat cap and a stoic expression, striding toward his future as an evacuee. The photograph, taken during the eight-month-long bombardment of British cities by German forces during World War II, was one of the images that inspired Steve McQueen’s new film “Blitz,” currently in select theaters.The boy, carrying his small suitcase as he evacuated London in 1940, inspired the character of George in “Blitz.”AlamyThe film is told from the perspective of George (Elliott Heffernan), a biracial 9-year-old who is evacuated from London to the countryside as bombs descend on his hometown. Mid-journey, he escapes the train, abandoning his suitcase and weaving his way back to his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), in east London.Doing research for the film, McQueen and its production designer, Adam Stockhausen, were struck again and again by “the incongruity, and the heartbreak,” of images of life in London during the bombing, Stockhausen said in a recent interview. McQueen would see a photo of a woman sweeping out her ruined house or one of a man sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette, the home around him reduced to rubble, and build a scene around it, Stockhausen added.The film’s production design is meticulous — Stockhausen previously collaborated with McQueen on “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows” — and seen through George’s eyes, 1940s London is a sprawling labyrinth. Depicting the sweep of the city was essential to the narrative, Stockhausen said, but shooting in London would have been too difficult and expensive, and the team wanted to avoid a C.G.I. set.Adam Stockhausen, left, the film’s production designer, and Steve McQueen, the director, working on set.via AppleWe 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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      Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on fiction and nonfiction works about space exploration that were adapted into popular films.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie versions. More