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      For an Uncool Car, the Chevy Malibu Made a Huge Mark on the Culture

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      An unassuming car had a surprisingly large cultural footprint.If you asked a child to draw a car, the result would probably be something that looked like the Chevrolet Malibu.For decades, this dependable midsize vehicle was a stalwart of the American road. Because that kind of thing is no longer in demand, it came as no surprise when General Motors announced on Wednesday that it would discontinue the model as it shifts its focus to sport utility vehicles and electric cars.The Malibu never had the back-alley glamour of the Chevrolet Camaro or the brute force of the Chevrolet Impala. It was the ultimate normcore-mobile, made for a time when Americans were content to drive simple, gas-powered sedans, rather than rugged S.U.V.s, high-riding pickup trucks or electric vehicles that cruise along in near silence.A 1964 Malibu had a supporting role in “Pulp Fiction.”Everett CollectionThe Malibu originally appeared in the 1960s as part of Chevrolet’s Chevelle line. It was a consistent seller through the 1970s. For a time, it was used as a patrol car by police departments across the country. General Motors took it off the market in 1983 and brought it back in 1997.Upon its return, the critics were not exactly kind. “Ah, Malibu,” Car and Driver magazine wrote in a 1997 review. “The word evokes images of surf bunnies, movie stars and languid decadence by the sea. Not the sort of vision that comes to mind on first sight of this new Chevrolet sedan. Maybe Chevy misspelled it. Mallibu sounds more like it.”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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      New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie Will Put Gollum Center Stage

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      Andy Serkis, who played the creature in the trilogy, will direct and star in “The Hunt for Gollum,” an expansion of the fantasy epic scheduled for 2026.The next movie in the “Lord of the Rings” franchise will focus on Gollum, one of the series’s most recognizable characters, Warner Bros. Pictures announced on Thursday.Andy Serkis, who played the miniature creature in the original film trilogy, will direct and star in “Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” which is scheduled for 2026, the studio said in a news release.Another “Lord of the Rings” movie will follow “The Hunt for Gollum,” Warner Bros. said. The original trilogy’s director, Peter Jackson, and screenwriters, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, will act as producers on both films. A separate animated movie directed by Kenji Kamiyama, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” will be released in December.“Yesssss, Precious,” Serkis said in a statement. “The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-earth.”In addition to his work in “The Lord of the Rings,” Serkis played Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise and Supreme Leader Snoke in “Star Wars” movies. He has directed “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” and is leading an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”The “Lord of the Rings” movies are based on a series of fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. The trilogy directed by Jackson — “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) — grossed $3 billion combined.About a decade later, Jackson directed a three-part movie series based on Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” Amazon Prime Video released the Middle-earth show “The Rings of Power” in 2022.The announcement of two new “Lord of the Rings” movies comes as David Zaslav, the chief executive of the studio’s parent company, faces criticism for receiving $49.7 million in compensation last year despite the company’s financial troubles. The conglomerate is also reportedly in jeopardy of losing its rights to broadcast National Basketball Association games. More

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      ‘Mother of the Bride’ Review: Brooke Shields Comes Face to Face With an Old Flame

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      Brooke Shields plays a single mother who comes face to face with her college ex-boyfriend at her daughter’s destination wedding in this tired romantic comedy.How often do exes get back together at destination weddings? Based on Hollywood rom-coms, one might assume it’s an epidemic. The last few years alone have seen rancorous pairs reconcile on the tropical beaches of Bali (“Ticket to Paradise”), the tropical coastline of Sydney, Australia (“Anyone But You”) and in the tropical jungles of the Philippines (“Shotgun Wedding”). What a surprise to see the trend reappear in Netflix’s “Mother of the Bride,” set in Phuket, Thailand, at a tropical resort.These movies, as critics have pointed out, are themselves rehashing an older Hollywood trope: the comedy of remarriage, in which a separated couple reunites to find their acrimony transformed into revitalized affection. (A classic example is Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in the 1940 rom-com “The Philadelphia Story.”)In “Mother of the Bride,” that twosome consists of Lana (a committed Brooke Shields) and Will (Benjamin Bratt), ex-beaus who severed ties after college. In Phuket, they discover that their grown children — Lana’s daughter, Emma (Miranda Cosgrove), and Will’s son, RJ (Sean Teale) — are betrothed.“Mother of the Bride” is directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) with an apparent allergy to verisimilitude. Early on, we are told that the opulent Thai ceremony will be bankrolled by Emma’s company (she’s an intern) and livestreamed to “millions of eyes.” These fantasies of pomp and circumstance often serve to make Lana and Will’s budding romance feel like a B-story to the action — although that may be a blessing when the best screwball gag this movie can muster is a pickleball shot to the groin.Mother of the BrideNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Aisha’ Review: Seeking Asylum in Ireland

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      The “Black Panther” star Letitia Wright shows understated vulnerability in this immigrant drama by Frank Berry. Josh O’Connor (“Challengers”) also stars.When an administrator says “I’m sorry” at a shelter for asylum seekers in “Aisha,” the phrase has seldom sounded so galling. An exemplar of the upending power people can wield in bureaucracies, the administrator repeatedly makes things difficult for Aisha, a young Nigerian woman petitioning for permanent residence in Ireland.The “Black Panther” star Letitia Wright descends from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to give a quietly fierce performance as Aisha, an asylum seeker in the writer-director Frank Berry’s drama. The reasons for her request unfold during visits with her legal counsel, in video talks with her mother in Lagos and at the careful prodding of the shelter’s fledgling security guard (played with hangdog sympathy by Josh O’Connor of “Challengers”). All the while, Wright breathes deep vulnerability into Aisha’s unsurprising reticence.At the beauty salon where she works, Aisha’s rightly cagey as she listens to her customers. But at the shelter, she turns warm, when she gives makeovers to fellow immigrants. As he did for his award-winning prison film, “Michael Inside,” Berry used nonprofessional actors with intimate experience of the system — here, Ireland’s International Protection Office, which processes asylum applications — he wanted to depict. It’s a gesture that keeps the film from lapsing into melodrama.Will Aisha convince the decision makers that she cannot safely return to Nigeria? Will Aisha and Conor’s hushed friendship bud into something more? “Aisha” resists tidy answers through the gentle force of its performances and by staying on the rebuffs and uncertainty Aisha suffers.AishaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ Review: Glow-Stick Dreams and Thermal Nightmares

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      Harmony Korine (“Spring Breakers”) parties too hard in this fusion of feature filmmaking and video game.A perennial provocateur with reliably adolescent interests, the filmmaker Harmony Korine does not make life easy for his apologists. At some point, maybe apologies aren’t in order. But for those who found unlikely poetry in the degraded-videotape stylings of Korine’s “Trash Humpers” or the neon nocturne of “Spring Breakers,” the director now offers “Aggro Dr1ft,” which depicts the ostensibly mind-altering odyssey of an assassin, Bo (Jordi Mollà), who calls himself the world’s greatest.Korine shot “Trash Humpers” on VHS, reviving a moribund format. For “Aggro Dr1ft,” his gimmick is to capture the entire movie with thermal imaging — as a starting point, anyway. The heat maps have been colored over with animation and assorted digital fussing that makes it impossible to discern relative temperatures with accuracy. (Are front and rear tires supposed to spin in different colors, or does that car need a mechanic?)Once again taking coastal Florida as a setting, the director makes the most of his glow-stick palette, filled with fiery yellows and aquamarines. “Director” may be the wrong word, though; the onscreen credit is simply “by” Harmony Korine, who has apparently forsworn any impulse to control his material. Using a synth score by the hip-hop producer AraabMuzik to give the proceedings a pulse, Korine thrills to hypnotic potential of cherry-red ocean waves, swoons over strippers whose intimate regions throw visible sparks, and dwells on Bo’s wife (Chanya Middleton) as she jiggles her rear end for the camera. Faces are scribbled over with robot doodles and skeletal X-rays. Gunfire registers as flashes of pure white.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. (Perceptual psychologists, take note.) 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 to himself in voice-over.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 Prince’ Review: Let New Passions Bloom

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      Sex, death and domination fuel this beautifully enigmatic pastoral drama from France, which presents the gay coming-of-age of an apprentice gardener.It’s not immediately apparent how courtly intrigue figures in “A Prince,” Pierre Creton’s spellbinding French pastoral drama, though sex, death and domination hang palpably in the film’s crisp, Normandy air.Creton, a veteran director working at the margins of France’s film industry, looks to the divine powers and chivalric codes that fuel swords-and-shields epics like “Game of Thrones,” but whittles these elements down to a mysterious essence. A subtly medieval score — distinguished by the thrum of a mandolin and composed by Jozef van Wissem — draws out a surreal dimension. Eventually, the film shifts into explicitly sexual and mythological terrain with a B.D.S.M. edge, and the score keeps pace, taking on a folk metal vibe.The story is slippery by design, loosely tracking the gay coming-of-age of an apprentice gardener, Pierre-Joseph, played for the most part by Antoine Pirotte. Creton, who also works as a gardener in real life, plays the older version of Pierre-Joseph, so “A Prince” also reads as an autofictional memory piece.Throughout the film, a series of wordless and seductively austere tableaux, Pierre Joseph forms bonds with various individuals in his rural community. Multiple narrators, including Françoise Lebrun (“The Mother and the Whore”), speak in retrospect, as if looking back from the afterlife at the characters onscreen. These connections are tangled: for instance, Lebrun voices Françoise Brown (played by Manon Schaap), the head of a horticulture school. Yet Lebrun also plays the onscreen version of Pierre-Joseph’s mother.The effect may seem frustrating at first, but it ultimately feeds into the kind of alternative, communal lifestyle that the film showcases so beautifully.Pierre-Joseph eventually comes to form a throuple with Alberto (Vincent Barré) and Adrien (Pierre Barray), his mentors. The naked bodies of these much older gentleman appear suggestively weathered next to their younger lover’s sprightly form. Yet there is no mention of taboo. That passion could bloom in such spontaneous and unexpected forms is part of this enigmatic film’s potency.A PrinceNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Andy Serkis and Owen Teague on ‘Planet of the Apes’ Franchise

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      A conversation with Serkis, the star of the earlier films in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, and Teague, the lead of the latest film, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”Noa, the hero of the new “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” is no Caesar, the commanding, Moses-like leader of the Apes, played by Andy Serkis, in the preceding three movies in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise. Instead, Noa, played by Owen Teague, is a young chimp, tentatively poised between boyhood and manhood, intimidated by his father, the leader of the Eagle clan, and respectful of the troupe’s laws.But in “Kingdom,” (due May 10), Noa must face the same kinds of trials that Caesar underwent, and ponder the same moral dilemmas about the relationship between apes and humans, including the enduring question of whether peaceful coexistence can ever be possible. And his quiet brooding and subtle shifts of expression must register via performance capture — a complex process that records the movement and facial expressions of human actors and transforms them digitally into the faces of the apes.A scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” featuring Noa (Teague), Nova (Freya Allan) and Raka (Peter Macon).20th Century StudiosIn a video conversation, the director Wes Ball said setting “Kingdom” some 300 years after Caesar’s death allowed for tonal and narrative continuity with the previous movies, but also offered “the freedom to be brave and do something different. We’re an extension of the Ceasar legacy, but also our own story.”Then, he said, the biggest task “was finding a new Andy Serkis. There was so much anxiety around that idea.” But after seeing Teague’s physicality and facial expressivity in an audition tape, he said, he knew they had found Noa.Luckily, the original Andy Serkis was around to help Teague, mostly known to date for supporting roles, find his leading inner ape. In a video interview, the two men discussed working with performance capture, creating a detailed imaginary world for the characters, and a finding the right balance between human and ape in movement and speech. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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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      ‘Gasoline Rainbow’ Review: We’re on a Ride to Nowhere

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      This semi-fictional tale of a road trip for weirdos is full of joy.The thesis of “Gasoline Rainbow,” the latest cinematic fantasia from the brothers Bill and Turner Ross, is articulated in its first moments, in voice-over set atop a sunset. “Sometimes when I look at night, I see that light over the hills, and I just wonder what it’s like … to be there,” a youthful voice says wistfully. The speaker wants to know if they’re alone in being who they are — a “weirdo,” as they put it. “I want to be out,” they continue. “I want to be myself, I want to be accepted. I want to be loved for who I am.”Technically we’ve not yet met this person, but that doesn’t matter: We know them. The misfit outsider is a familiar character in movies and literature, and often possesses some wisdom that people trapped in the more conventional daily grind can’t see. There’s a tiny bit of the prophet in every outsider — and, of course, all prophets are outsiders.“Gasoline Rainbow” is a technically fictional tale of five such misfits who get in a car and go on a journey toward the Pacific Coast. I say “technically,” because like much of the Rosses’ work, there’s not much separation between reality and make-believe. Their previous film, for instance, the 2020 sorta-documentary “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” sets up a scenario — the final night at a Vegas dive bar, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election — and populates it with real drinkers, who have a real rager on camera. But the bar itself wasn’t technically closing, it wasn’t in Vegas and these people weren’t regulars there. What, you might ask yourself, are you watching?You are watching people figure out how to live at the end of the world, how to relate to one another and find joy in the middle of loss and uncertainty. Whether or not the scenario is staged, the human heart of it is absolutely real. “Gasoline Rainbow” is a little like “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets,” in that the five teenagers at its center, playing versions of themselves, are looking for a “party at the end of the world” that they’ve heard about. But mostly they are there to be with one another, and it’s obvious their real personalities are part of the story.The five travelers — Tony Aburto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia, Makai Garza — are all friends in Wiley, Ore. (a town which, incidentally, doesn’t exist). They’re seeking “one last fun adventure we can all do together” before they have to return home and get real jobs. These are kids who didn’t like school and didn’t like home life. In another movie, they’d be delinquents running from the law.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