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      ‘The End’ Review: It’s All Come to This

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      Joshua Oppenheimer’s postapocalyptic musical about a wealthy family in an underground bunker is placidly disturbing.Joshua Oppenheimer is our age’s great bard of cognitive dissonance. His previous two films, “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence,” are technically documentaries about the horrific Indonesian mass killings in 1965-66. But they’re more fundamentally about the extraordinary lengths to which the human mind — or, really, the human soul — is prepared to go in justifying its own coldblooded atrocity. I don’t have to tell you that this goes far beyond one historical event, and so do these two documentaries. The subjects are men who perpetrated the massacre and seemingly feel no remorse at all. Something inside them has rotted away.They’re disturbing films, chilling the viewer to the bone. So, too, is “The End,” which when I first heard about it sounded like a particularly unlikely Oppenheimer project. The film, which he wrote with Rasmus Heisterberg, is not a documentary at all: It’s a musical, set in the nearish future, about a family living in a vast and luxurious underground bunker while the world literally burns above them. And they, it turns out, caused that apocalypse.The man of the house was an oil mogul when the world was alive, a great defender of fossil fuels and an affectionate guardian to his family. He is named only “Father” in the press notes, and played by Michael Shannon, who sings and dances very well. His wife (Tilda Swinton, with an appropriately reedier voice) is a nervy former ballet dancer, spending her days rearranging the well-appointed rooms of their dwelling, the walls of which are decked out with the world’s greatest masterpieces. They brought them when they fled the surface, apparently.Mother and Father have a son (George MacKay, suitably strange) who was born underground and now is in his 20s. He’s been well-educated in this bunker, even doted upon by all of these adults — his parents and the few others they allowed to come with them. His best friend is also his mother’s best friend (Bronagh Gallagher), who in the past was a great chef. They also have an affable butler (Tim McInnerny) and a grumpy doctor (Lennie James). And for decades, that’s been everyone. There’s next to no one left above.Musicals mostly deploy songs when characters are experiencing great emotion: desire, or fear, or exhilaration. But “The End” plays with these expectations, because emotion is a tricky subject for these bunker-dwellers. Yes, they sing lyrical songs with great swelling orchestral harmonies, and sometimes they dance. (Oppenheimer wrote the lyrics, with music by Joshua Schmidt and score by Schmidt and Marius de Vries.) But in between smiles, their faces slip into mask-like panic, with eyes that are dead. Oppenheimer modulates the lighting during the scenes from cool to warm and back again, underlining the vacillating feelings they can’t acknowledge outright.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 a Baby Killer Isn’t a Straightforward Villain

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      The real-life murderer who inspired “The Girl With the Needle” was “a monster,” said the actress who plays her, “but the movie is also about showing you her struggles.”In 1920s Copenhagen, a woman named Dagmar Overbye was convicted of murdering multiple infants whose mothers had paid her to find adoptive families for them. She confessed to killing 16 babies, though the true number of victims was likely higher.One of Denmark’s most notorious serial killers, Overbye is a character in the movie “The Girl with the Needle,” which arrives in U.S. theaters on Friday and is Denmark’s entry for the best international feature Oscar.Yet the film isn’t a true-crime thriller, and Overbye isn’t portrayed as a straightforward villain. Instead the story is about “finding the humanity in these horrible deeds,” the film’s director, Magnus von Horn, said in a video interview — a tall task considering the deeds involve burning, drowning and strangling babies.How to perform the high-wire act of humanizing a killer?“You focus on the characters,” von Horn said.And you have to cast actors fearless enough to pull it off.Enter Trine Dyrholm and Vic Carmen Sonne, the two leads in “The Girl with the Needle,” and two of Denmark’s most boundary-pushing actors.The movie is based on the story of Dagmar Overbye, one of Denmark’s most notorious serial killers.MubiWe 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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      New Movies and Shows Coming to Netflix in December: ‘Squid Game’ and More

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      This month has a ton of new titles arriving for U.S. subscribers, including a Nate Bargatze special and the return of “Squid Game.”Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of December’s most promising new titles for U.S. subscribers. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Black Doves’ Season 1Starts streaming: Dec. 5Created by Joe Barton (known for the stylish series “Giri/Haji” and “The Lazarus Project”), this twisty thriller has Keira Knightley playing Helen, a secret agent so deeply undercover that she is married to the British politician she is spying on — and is the mother to his children. When Jason (Andrew Koji), a man Helen was having an affair with, is very publicly assassinated by London mobsters, Helen’s boss, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), and her close colleague Sam (Ben Whishaw) try to keep the investigation into the murder from reaching back to her and blowing her cover. “Black Doves” is set in a pulp fiction version of England where everyone is hiding something and no one fully trusts anybody — a place where information is currency and people survive on guile.‘Maria’Starts streaming: Dec. 11The third film in the director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of biopics (after “Jackie” and “Spencer”), “Maria” is a showcase for Angelina Jolie, who plays the opera diva Maria Callas. Set during the final week of the singer’s life, the movie has Callas in a druggie stupor, imagining that she is sitting for an interview in which she reflects on her tumultuous life. Jolie reportedly spent months in opera training, not to learn how to copy Callas’s voice but rather to make sure she could stand, move and breathe like a master.‘No Good Deed’ Season 1Starts streaming: Dec. 12At the start of this dark dramedy, a Los Angeles couple, Paul (Ray Romano) and Lydia (Lisa Kudrow), are anxious to sell their house: a beautiful, century-old home in an upscale neighborhood. A handful of motivated buyers, played by Luke Wilson, Linda Cardellini, Teyonah Parris, O-T Fagbenle, Abbi Jacobson and Poppy Liu, circle the property while Paul and Lydia try to hide their secret reasons for the sale — and their relationship with a dangerous ex-con played by Denis Leary. Similar to the creator Liz Feldman’s previous Netflix series, “Dead to Me,” “No Good Deed” is about people who seem outwardly to be enjoying some material success but whose personal lives are in shambles; privately, they all feel they’re on the brink of disaster.‘Your Friend, Nate Bargatze’Starts streaming: Dec. 24The stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze was popular before he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time in 2023, but that episode — and a second hosting gig in October — helped boost him into comedy’s A-list. This month, Bargatze will be hosting a Christmas-themed variety show for CBS (airing on Dec. 19 and also available on Paramount+); and then on Christmas Eve, he will debut this third Netflix stand-up special. It makes sense for Bargatze to be delivering new material at a time when families are gathering and looking for something to do. He is one of the rare modern comics whose profanity-free jokes are suitable for pretty much all ages, touching on such universal topics as marriage, parenting and how to navigate the modern world’s sometimes confusing etiquette.‘Squid Game’ Season 2Starts streaming: Dec. 26The first season of the Korean mystery-thriller “Squid Game” became an unexpected international phenomenon, captivating audiences with its depiction of an elaborate tournament in a remote location in which desperate people risk their lives for a huge cash prize. As Season 2 begins, rumors about the game have begun to leak out, and several people are looking to find it — including the former players Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun). The series’s Emmy-winning writer-director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, returns for the second of a planned three-season run, bringing back the visually spectacular and nerve-racking contests of Season 1. He also adds more social commentary, examining the brokenness of a world, very much like our own, where such a deadly underground competition could exist.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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      ‘Our Little Secret’ and More New Holiday Movies to Stream

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      From “Our Little Secret” to “The Merry Gentlemen,” a roundup of several holiday movies to stream this season.“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” the song goes. “There’ll be parties for hosting/Billions of movies for bingeing.”If the Andy Williams chestnut doesn’t actually mention streaming, that’s only because it came out long before Hallmark, UPtv, Great American Family and Lifetime decided to flood the holidays with movies. But because time is a finite resource, the following selection of new seasonal offerings focuses on releases from the major platforms. And remember: If you see someone stranded in a blizzard once, it’s a plot development. If you see it 10 times, it’s a cliché. If you see it 50 times, it’s a holiday-movie convention — and this time of year, we love conventions.‘Dear Santa’Stream it on Paramount+.This year’s entry in the bad Santa subgenre goes all out. And that’s because the bearded, stocky guy in a red outfit is actually Satan (Jack Black). He has been summoned by young Liam (Robert Timothy Smith), who mistakenly switched two letters in his note to Santa. And now the devil won’t leave until Liam has requested three wishes, which sounds more straightforward than it turns out to be. “Dear Satan” does not fully deliver on this mouthwatering premise, which is surprising considering the movie is directed by a Farrelly brother (Bobby) and the casting is on point — you feel Black has waited all his life to play this part. Still, there are enough nuts for this fruitcake to go down easy.Watch for: gastrointestinal distress.‘Hot Frosty’Stream it on Netflix.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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      Is the Awkward ‘Diversity Era’ of Hollywood Behind Us?

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      The past decade’s clumsiest attempts to cram new faces into old stories now feel like a moment, and a genre, of their own.Hollywood has its eras, often apparent only in retrospect. Think back several years: Do you remember packed theaters giving Black-power salutes at screenings of “Black Panther”? Do you remember when an all-female version of “Ghostbusters” was treated as a pioneering development? Do you remember when the writer of a “Star Wars” film described the Empire as a “white supremacist (human) organization” after Donald Trump’s 2016 election? Has enough time now passed to say that was all a bit strange?Looking back, you can see a period when identitarian politics were in cultural ascendancy; you can spot the moments when our media overlords — on their back feet over rage at the crimes of Harvey Weinstein, the paucity of nonwhite nominees at the Oscars, the aftermath of George Floyd’s death — vowed to change their ways and atone for their past. But what was particular to the Hollywood of the 2010s was the way these politics fused with the industry’s insatiable demand for sequels, spinoffs and reboots, giving us a curious and mercenary new invention: the inclusive multimillion-dollar blockbuster. (The BIPOCbuster, if you will.) It’s the same old thing, but with a bold and visionary new twist: fewer white guys.Or at least it was. The moment is easier to see now that it has ebbed. Many of the films it produced seemed to imagine themselves as barrier-breaking productions, landmarks like “In the Heat of the Night.” In reality, they have come to feel more like a niche genre of their own, the way spaghetti westerns or blaxploitation films do — unique products of a particular cultural moment that now require context and explanation to understand. They remind me, more than anything, of 1980s action flicks, a genre whose tropes and ideologies feel almost comically redolent of a specific era, whether the films are good or so-bad-they’re-good. This was the decade of Sylvester Stallone’s going back to Vietnam to try to win the war for Reagan’s America in “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” the decade of flat-topped martial-arts commandos, good cops who don’t play by the rules, gunshots that make cars explode, brawny henchmen machine-gunned by the dozens. But by the time we reached the 1993 meta-action-comedy “Last Action Hero” — an irony-laden genre sendup in which a boy magically gets to become the sidekick to a fictional hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger — you could hear the death knell of the kinds of films Schwarzenegger and Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme had been making for years.Is that what watching “Barbie” might feel like in 10 years — once, perhaps, “the patriarchy” feels like a clearly of-the-moment choice for a Big Bad? The tropes of this passing era are as familiar and easily spotted as with older periods. There is, for one thing, the showy, self-satisfied gender-swapping, as with that 2016 election-year reboot of “Ghostbusters.” That movie prompted enough openly misogynistic and racist backlash to make it look as if it must be a noble endeavor — as if any Hollywood executives who got reactionaries frothing at the mouth must be accomplishing something important, even if all they did was tweak the balance of characters in a dusty franchise.Hollywood was right that audiences were hungry for different stories.Then there are the paper-thin “diverse” characters parachuted into major films — put front and center on every poster but given curiously little to do as the plot unfolds. Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel was set up as the most powerful superhero in the Marvel universe but ended up playing no decisive role in its most important films. (She was later joined by a Black woman and a Muslim woman in the sequel “The Marvels,” another in a series of firsts, but still a throwaway film.) Many attempts to diversify old intellectual property only emphasized how awkward and unwelcoming those worlds were to the kinds of people they wanted to include: The characters could do nothing to change the old logic of the stories they were dropped into.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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      Gotham Awards Go to ‘A Different Man’ and ‘Sing Sing’

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      The kickoff to awards season has a mixed record but can help lift small films like the two surprise winners.“A Different Man,” a dark indie comedy starring Sebastian Stan, was the surprise best-feature winner at the 34th annual Gotham Awards, which took place Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.Directed by Aaron Schimberg, the film stars Stan as an actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes an experimental surgery to remove tumors from his face, giving him a more conventional appearance. That makeover puts him in danger of losing a leading role to a local bon vivant (Adam Pearson) who also has neurofibromatosis but owns his appearance without shame.Though “A Different Man” is distributed by the hot studio A24, it was considered the lowest-profile contender in its category. Most pundits expected the Palme d’Or winner “Anora” to cruise to victory here and even Schimberg was caught off-guard by the win. “I think I’m not the only person in the room who’s totally stunned by this,” the director said onstage, admitting he had not prepared a speech in advance, fearing it would be “hubris” to do so.In a very fluid Oscar season, the Gotham win could raise the chances of Stan, who also stars in the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” and Pearson, a dark-horse supporting-actor candidate. Though the Gothams’ effectiveness as an Oscar bellwether can fluctuate, three of the four most recent films to triumph there — “Past Lives,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Nomadland” — also went on to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars.The Gothams are most valuable when it comes to helping smaller films like “A Different Man” that rely on an awards-season run to stay in the conversation. Though the ceremony recently lifted its $35 million budget cap for eligible contenders, its nominating juries, which are mostly made up of a handful of film journalists, still tend to favor movies that were made on a shoestring.That includes “Sing Sing,” a prison drama that won the night’s lead and supporting-performance honors for Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin. (The Gothams are gender-neutral.) “Let’s keep doing work that really matters, that makes a difference,” Domingo, who starred in “The Color Purple” and “Rustin” last year, told the audience. “That’s what we can do right now. That can be a light in the darkness.”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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      Book Review: ‘Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film,’ by Julie Gilbert

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      In “Giant Love,” the novelist’s great-niece chronicles the Texas saga’s divisive reception and the epic film adaptation that’s now better known than the book.GIANT LOVE: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film, by Julie GilbertAs if to defy her adult height of 5-foot-1, the writer Edna Ferber lived large, traveled widely and typed long and often.Her dozen-odd novels were Dagwood sandwiches of intergenerational drama, hotly seasoned with social commentary. “So Big,” about a female farmer and her son in a Dutch community outside Chicago, sauntered off with the Pulitzer Prize in 1925. “Show Boat,” set along the Mississippi River, inspired an oft-revived musical and three movies. And then there was her penultimate epic, in some ways her ultimate, published in 1952: “Giant,” about a Texas cattle rancher’s evolution throughout his long marriage to a more progressive Easterner, and much else besides.Its depiction of discrimination against Mexicans and the mores of the nouveau riche made many Texans very, very angry. (A woman who read an excerpt in Ladies’ Home Journal detected Ferber “trying to weave in the race prejudice you Northerners, especially Jews, are always raving about,” and declined to buy the book.) In one of her memoirs, “A Kind of Magic,” Ferber likened the general response to being publicly hanged and dropped through a sheet of glass: “cut into hamburgers.”The 1956 film version, directed by George Stevens in panoramic 35 millimeter and starring Rock Hudson as the rancher Bick Benedict, Elizabeth Taylor as his wife and James Dean as a ranch hand turned oil tycoon, was better received, won Stevens an Oscar and helped inspire the blockbuster television series “Dallas.”Ferber’s great-niece, Julie Gilbert, who wrote an excellent biography of her published in 1976 and is a novelist and playwright herself, has now gone back to focus on the development of this one work. Replete with interviews old and new and the comma-challenged, sometimes UPPERCASE notes and correspondence of its strong-willed subject, “Giant Love” is a tender and patient homage to a titan of American letters who has fallen most grievously out of fashion.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