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      What’s Your Favorite Soundtrack? We Want to Know.

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      We’re asking readers to share the movie-related albums that they return to again and again.In my tween years, the soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever” was on repeat for months in my bedroom. This was via, ahem, an eight-track tape player. So, three or four cuts, clunky pause, three or four more, and so on. Listening this way was work, that’s how much I loved this music.Too young to see the R-rated movie itself, I only had a hazy — and, as it turned out, completely incorrect — idea of what it was about. Imagine my surprise years later when I discovered it was a drama, not the lighthearted ode to dancing that I pictured. (To put it another way: What if you were expecting “Barbie” and got “Oppenheimer”?) It’s not a bad film, but instead of the moves of John Travolta, it’s the sounds of the Bee Gees and Yvonne Elliman that are permanently etched in my memory.Some of the soundtracks I played incessantly back then, such as “Star Wars” (really more of a score, but still completely thrilling) and “Grease” (c’mon), were more or less universally popular; others (“Fame,” which I haven’t revisited since; no idea if it holds up) seemed like private obsessions. Years later, that’s how the “Garden State” soundtrack felt even though it became a cultural phenomenon.As you can probably tell, I’ve always loved soundtracks. There are the individual songs, of course, but somehow it’s the album-ness of the thing — immersing me in a vibe, and reminding me of where I was and who I was when I first heard it.My favorites (like “Purple Rain,” “Pulp Fiction” and “The Matador”) aren’t too surprising for a Gen X-er like myself. But with “Barbie” and other new movie-related albums in the last year, including the latest, “I Saw the TV Glow,” getting so much love from younger moviegoers, I got to thinking about different eras of film and music and wondering what other soundtracks I should be checking out.So I’m asking you, readers, what soundtracks do you obsess over? Why do you return to them? I would love to hear your thoughts. Fill out the form below, and your response may be featured in an upcoming story. We will not publish or share your contact information outside the Times newsroom, and we will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. More

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      Film Academy Looks Overseas for Donors

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      The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced a global $500 million campaign to shore up its financial future.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday announced a global $500 million fund-raising effort to help diversify its base of support and ensure its financial future in a period of transformation for the film industry and the nonprofit cultural sector.“Both are going through radical business model shifts right now due to changing audience habits and revenue streams,” Bill Kramer, the chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said in an email. “As a nonprofit, and like any healthy organization or company, the academy needs a sustainable and diverse base of support to allow for solid long-term planning and fiscal certainty.”Announced during a news conference in Rome hosted by the Italian film studio Cinecittà, the campaign is called Academy100, in honor of the 100th Oscars ceremony in 2028. The academy plans to use about $300 million of the new funds to bring its endowment to $800 million; the remainder will go toward operating expenses and special projects.The academy currently has an annual operating budget of about $170 million, 70 percent of which comes from its Oscars broadcast deal with Disney and ABC, which runs through 2028. About $45 million of the operating expenses are used by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.Given the challenges experienced by many cultural organizations, the academy has reason to want to shore up its finances. In March, for example, Joana Vicente of the Sundance Film Festival resigned after less than three years as chief executive amid questions about her fund-raising abilities. Last summer, Center Theater Group in Los Angeles announced a series of sharp cutbacks — including suspending productions at the Mark Taper Forum — to deal with drops in revenue and attendance. And the Metropolitan Opera in New York has withdrawn emergency funds from its endowment.The academy said in its news release that the money raised “will endow and fund programs that recognize excellence in cinematic artistry and innovation; preserve our film history; enable the creation of world-class film exhibitions, screenings and publications; train and educate the next generation of diverse global film artists; and produce powerful digital content.”More than $100 million has already been committed to the campaign, the academy said, including support from Rolex, which is based in Switzerland.As part of the effort, the academy plans to host gatherings and events in locations around the world to “become increasingly global,” press materials said, and help develop a global “pool of new filmmakers and academy members and support the worldwide filmmaking community.”The academy said its “expanded international outreach” will include Buenos Aires; Johannesburg; Kyoto, Japan; Lagos, Nigeria; London; Marrakesh, Morocco; Melbourne, Australia; Mexico City; and Mumbai. More

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      6 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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      Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.CRITIC’S PICKGoing ape for another ‘Apes’ movie.From left, Raka (Peter Macon), Noa (Owen Teague) and Nova (Freya Allan) in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”20th Century Studios‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’The latest in this sci-fi series follows a group of rebels as they face off against an authoritarian ruler who has twisted the peaceful teachings of a previous leader.From our review:There’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again. That’s what makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved.In theaters. Read the full review.A thermal thriller that’s hot and cold.A scene from “Aggro Dr1ft.”Edglrd‘Aggro Dr1ft’This hallucinatory romp directed by Harmony Korine conveys the journey of an assassin entirely through thermal imaging with added digital effects.From our review:Whether it’s the thermal imaging or the augmentation, the visual style renders eyes practically invisible, leaving the actors without an important means of communication. … That absence might account for why “Aggro Dr1ft” is so unengaging on a narrative level, but the monotony might also have to have something to do with the protagonist, a hit man extraordinaire who is also (gasp) a family man. The world’s greatest assassin has been saddled with the world’s most sophomoric internal monologue. “I am a solitary hero. I am alone. I am a solitary hero. Alone,” he mumbles.In theaters. Read the full review.CRITIC’S PICKThink ‘On the Road,’ but for Gen-Z.From left, Micah Bunch, Makai Garza, Tony Aburto, Nichole Dukes and Nathaly Garcia in “Gasoline Rainbow.”Mubi/courtesy of Department of Motion Pictures‘Gasoline Rainbow’Five teenagers embark on a road trip to a “party at the end of the world” and encounter many fellow misfits along the way in the latest from filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross.From our review:There’s an uncommon sweetness to this film, which is less about running away from something and more about discovering the road of life is littered with goodness, if you know where to look. There’s a loose, languorous quality to “Gasoline Rainbow,” which the Rosses shot using a mostly improvised format, a collaboration between actors and filmmakers. It feels like a home movie, or a documentary — a capture of a slice of life in which there’s no plot other than whatever happens on the road ahead.In theaters. Read the full review.A destination wedding that goes nowhere.Brooke Shields as Lana in “Mother of the Bride.”Sasidis Sasisakulporn/NetflixWe 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 a Village Comes to Life in ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’

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      The director Wes Ball narrates a sequence from his film.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.In this sequence from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” we see how a tribe functions in an idyllic village before threats emerge. The scene follows Noa (Owen Teague), Soona (Lydia Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery) as they return from the ritual of collecting an eagle egg that they will nurture.Narrating the sequence, the director Wes Ball said, “The goal was really just to set up a world that was wonderful, that was ultimately going to be forever changed.”The scene was shot on location in Australia with the principal actors in performance capture gear. Ball said that they shot the sequence twice, once with the actors, and then a second time without the performers. He said he chose the best performance to be digitally dropped into the scene. He also had other performers do their movements on a stage and put them in as background in the scene as well.“It’s an interesting process where I can take all of these different little elements and layer them all together,” he said.Read the “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Back to Black,’ and the Challenges of Dramatizing Amy Winehouse

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      Several depictions of the singer’s life have explored her tense relationship with fame. The new biopic “Back to Black” instead centers her romantic life.In another life, Sam Taylor-Johnson might have crossed paths with Amy Winehouse. The filmmaker and the singer had some mutual friends, “but we never met,” Taylor-Johnson said recently. “It was like a strange sliding doors moment,” she added: “I would arrive somewhere, and she would have just left.”Taylor-Johnson is the director of “Back to Black,” a new biopic about Winehouse that stars Marisa Abela (“Industry”) as the beloved British singer. In the 13 years since Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning in her North London home at age 27, there has been a posthumous album, a tell-all memoir from her father, an Oscar-winning documentary and several museum exhibitions about her life.Some of these projects — most notably the 2015 documentary, “Amy” — emphasized how ferocious public and tabloid interest in her personal life fueled Winehouse’s addictions. (In a review of that documentary for The Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “What’s startling now is to realize that we were all watching her die.”)For Taylor-Johnson, it was time to create a narrative that celebrated Winehouse for “her great achievements,” she said. A documentary is a forensic breakdown of someone’s life, Taylor-Johnson added, whereas she saw her own film as “more poetic.”Sam Taylor-Johnson said she had ignored reviews of “Back to Black.” “If a friend starts to tell me, I hang up on them,” the director said. “I don’t want to be thrown off my path.”Philip Cheung for The New York Times“Back to Black,” which opens in theaters in the United States on May 17, revolves around Winehouse’s turbulent relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, an on-off romance that inspired the artist’s soul-inflected album of the same name. “She tells her story through the narrative of her songs,” said Taylor-Johnson. Using the lyrics as the movie’s main source material put Winehouse’s perspective at the center, she said.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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      What to Know Before Seeing ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’

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      Who is Caesar? And how did apes learn to talk, anyway? Your burning questions about the “Planet of the Apes” franchise answered.For some, the name “Planet of the Apes” might conjure memories of Charlton Heston in 1968. But the most recent incarnation of the sci-fi franchise has been going strong since 2011. These “Apes” movies feature no fuzzy costumes or heavy prosthetics, and instead are feats of computer generated performance capture technology.The latest one, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” (in theaters), is both a direct sequel to its predecessors and a bit of a reboot of the property. Whereas the first three films in this new series took place within a relatively compact timeline, “Kingdom” jumps centuries into the future. And yet, thematically, it is still deeply connected to what came before. So what should you know going in?Caesar is dead. Long live Caesar.Directed by Wes Ball, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” takes place “many generations” after the first trilogy of films in this monkey business: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014) and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017). Yet, those movies’s protagonist, Caesar, is perhaps the most important unseen character in “Kingdom.” He’s long dead — we see a glimpse of his funeral — but his legacy as a leader is debated and referred to throughout the plot.Caesar (Andy Serkis) and Will Rodman (James Franco) in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”20th Century StudiosSo who is Caesar?Caesar is a chimp, played by the performance capture king Andy Serkis. “Rise” (streaming on Hulu), directed by Rupert Wyatt, introduces Caesar as a baby. His mother was a lab chimp who is killed when she lashes out. The scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) takes Caesar in and raises him himself. (“Rise” is the only movie where humans are more central to the story than apes.) As Caesar grows up it is clear he is remarkably intelligent thanks to the drug that Will has been working on, which is meant as an Alzheimer’s cure. As Will and his team continue to develop the formula it eventually becomes clear that it makes apes smart but unleashes a deadly virus on the human race. (More on that later.) Caesar still has affection for Will and his human caretakers, but he leads an uprising of mistreated apes.In “Dawn” (on Hulu and Max), which was directed by Matt Reeves and takes place about “10 winters” after the events of “Rise,” humans encounter Caesar’s camp and ask him to help them restart a dam for their survival. Caesar, being the benevolent leader he is, obliges, but is met with resistance from Koba (Toby Kebbell), an ape who saw the worst of humanity in captivity before his escape. Koba plots to overthrow Caesar by making it look like humans murdered him, and therefore leads a crew of apes to attack the humans’ compound. Caesar, however, survives and must break one of his cardinal rules: “Ape not kill ape.”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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      ‘Poolman’ Review: In the Sun Too Long

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      Chris Pine’s shaggy debut feature has a charismatic cast that rambles along with him on a Los Angeles detective adventure.In “Poolman,” Chris Pine’s debut feature, he plays Darren, a distractible pool cleaner who becomes an amateur detective when he learns of a municipal conspiracy in Los Angeles. The sure-why-not plot, modeled on the California water grab in “Chinatown,” is less interesting than the charismatic cast that rambles along with Pine on his excellent adventure.Pine’s yarn was savaged when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but the sour response is a bit like getting mad at a golden retriever for rolling around in the grass. A shaggy civic gadfly, Darren grandstands at City Council meetings and becomes so self-absorbed that he forgets what his girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does for a living. His Jungian psychiatrist, Diane (Annette Bening), and her story-spouting filmmaker hubby, Jack (Danny DeVito), look after him like foster parents, while apparently overseeing some kind of movie about his life.Darren is clued into the unnecessarily confusing water scheme by June (DeWanda Wise, glamorous and gorgeously costumed), who’s an assistant to his nemesis on the City Council (Stephen Tobolowsky). But the amateur sleuthing through Los Angeles landmarks — smartly shot on film by Matthew Jensen (“Wonder Woman”) — plays second fiddle to what’s really a collection of warm character sketches and mild eccentricities punctuated by meditative visions.Pine wisely avoids winks to the audience. But he whiffs at making the mystery especially gripping, leaving one instead to savor the moments, like a note-perfect Bening calmly talking Pine’s befuddled pool man through his latest setback.PoolmanNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More