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      ‘The Interview’: Bill Murray Says He’s Not the Man He Used to Be

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      In Bill Murray’s new movie, “The Friend,” currently in theaters and based on the beautifully bittersweet novel by Sigrid Nunez, he plays Walter, a writer and professor who is best friends with Iris, played by Naomi Watts. Through an upsetting course of events, Iris, who lives in a modest apartment in Manhattan, winds up having to take in Walter’s Great Dane. Not exactly ideal for her or the dog, and not exactly thoughtful of Walter.Witty and charismatic but also self-centered and responsible for real damage, Walter shares much in common with many of Murray’s late-career roles. I often think of the dramatic parts that he has specialized in since the late ’90s (consider the melancholy men of a certain age in “Rushmore,” “Lost in Translation,” “On the Rocks,” “St. Vincent” and so on) as being akin to alternate-world versions of the comedy characters that made him a star. Because Peter Venkman in “Ghostbusters” or Phil Connors in “Groundhog Day,” to pick just two of his most memorable comedic creations, could also be selfish and mean but, in the end, got away with it. Not so with Walter and his ilk. It’s as if Murray’s latter-day characters are suffering the karmic payback owed to his earlier ones.A similar balancing act — between charm and callousness, buoyancy and bad moods — has surfaced in Murray’s offscreen life too. Yes, he is a globe-trotting avatar of joyful surprise, known for his party crashing and playful high jinks, but directors and co-stars like Geena Davis, Lucy Liu, Richard Dreyfuss and Harold Ramis have said Murray was, to put it very mildly, not easy to work with. And in 2022, a female staff member working on the film “Being Mortal” claimed that Murray, who is 74, behaved inappropriately with her on set. She said that he straddled her and kissed her through masks, which they were wearing as part of Covid-19 protocols. The production was shut down, and eventually they reached a settlement.Given all this, Murray, enigmatic and mercurial, is a hard one to figure out. But on a rainy day in late March, at a hotel in downtown Manhattan, I had a chance to try.Listen to the Conversation With Bill MurrayThe actor talks about his new film “The Friend,” his jerky past and what he doesn’t get about himself.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppYou know, at The Times earlier today, your co-star in “The Friend,” the dog, was having his photo taken. He is a striking dog: 150 pounds, a Great Dane. His name is Bing. Bing! He lives in Iowa, and after a nationwide search he was chosen as the dog of the moment. He wasn’t wearing a tight sweater or anything. He was just the most capable dog. More

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      For Pierce Brosnan, the World Is Just Enough

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      On the last day of March, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, fans approached the actor Pierce Brosnan every few minutes. Some addressed him as Mr. Brosnan, some as Mr. Bond, a reference to the four James Bond movies he made in the 1990s and early 2000s. (Brosnan has a face that demands honorifics.)Dressed in chic monochrome — navy trench, navy pants, a navy ascot at the neck of a navy shirt — he was gracious with them all, if lightly evasive. (And yes, he is the rare man who looks plausible in an ascot.) At 71, he doesn’t often show the whole of himself. People see what they want. Mostly they see Bond.“They miss a lot,” he said. “But it’s not up to me to show a lot. It’s not up to me to do anything but be pleasant.”There has always been more to Brosnan than meets the eye, although what meets the eye is obviously very nice. “He is very fortunate in the genes department,” said Tom Hardy, his co-star on the new Paramount+ gangster series “MobLand.” Brosnan refers to it all as “the Celtic alchemy.”Pierce Brosnan, center, with Helen Mirren and Anson Boon, plays a dapper killer in the new crime drama “MobLand.”Luke Varley/Paramount+, via Associated PressA longtime painter and art enthusiast, Brosnan counts “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a 1999 art heist caper, as the favorite of his movies, mostly because he got to keep the paintings. So when promotional duties brought him to New York — he splits his time between Malibu and Hawaii — he squeezed in a museum visit.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 Coming to Netflix in April: ‘Black Mirror,’ ‘You’ and More

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      “Black Mirror” and “You” are back this month, alongside a bunch of promising new titles.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’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.)‘Pulse’ Season 1Started streaming: April 3Fans of frenetic, bloody scenes of emergency room traumas have been well served lately, first with the Max hit “The Pitt” and now with Netflix’s new medical drama “Pulse.” Created by Zoe Robyn (who runs the show alongside the veteran writer/producer Carlton Cuse), “Pulse” has Willa Fitzgerald playing Danny, an E.R. resident at a Miami hospital, who is promoted to a position of authority after an H.R. complaint is lodged against a colleague, Xander (Colin Woodell). While trying to rally the skeptical staff in the middle of several escalating crises — including a hurricane and its aftermath — Danny reflects via flashbacks on her messy personal and professional relationship with Xander.‘The Clubhouse: A Year With the Red Sox’Starts streaming: April 8The Boston Red Sox finished the 2024 baseball season at 81-81, missing the playoffs for the third straight year. But they had stretches when they showed real promise, thanks to a core of talented young players like Jarren Duran, Rafael Devers and Brayan Bello. The latest docuseries from the producer and director Greg Whiteley (“Last Chance U,” “Cheer”) covers the Sox’s highs and lows last year, from spring training until game 162. Whiteley is known for getting intimate access to his subjects, and “The Clubhouse” is no exception. Baseball is full of big personalities, and this series gets up close and personal with them. Whiteley’s crew catches the complex preparations that go into every game, along with the mental and emotional struggles modern athletes endure when they make mistakes.‘Black Mirror’ Season 7Starts streaming: April 10Season 6 was a bit of a departure for the satirical science-fiction anthology “Black Mirror,” with more folklore-focused episodes and fewer stories about futuristic technology. Season 7 gets back to basics, with episodes that ask the kind of unsettling, ripped-from-the-zeitgeist questions the series’s creator, Charlie Brooker, is known for. What if a lifesaving medical intervention were available only as a subscription service? Could super-advanced computing programs alter our memories? Can A.I.-aided replications of pop culture be as satisfying as the originals? These ideas and more are explored by casts that include Rashida Jones, Issa Rae, Paul Giamatti, Peter Capaldi and Cristin Milioti. The season also includes the first “Black Mirror” sequel, in a feature-length episode that revisits the world of the Season 4 fan-favorite “U.S.S. Callister.”‘You’ Season 5Starts streaming: April 24The TV adaptation of Caroline Kepnes’s “You” novels comes to an end with Season 5, completing the saga of Joe (Penn Badgley), a handsome and charming young man who has a habit of becoming dangerously, murderously obsessed with women. The show began as a twisted riff on romantic comedies, imagining what those stories might be like if their Prince Charmings had a secret violent streak. But as Joe has met other sociopaths and tried to control his impulses, “You” has evolved into a pitch-dark serial-killer thriller, depicting a world teeming with predators. The final season begins with our antihero married and seemingly secure, but it does not take long before some new characters — including a quirky bibliophile (Madeline Brewer) and a ruthless corporate schemer (Anna Camp) — provoke Joe into resuming old habits.‘The Eternaut’ Season 1Starts streaming: April 30In 1957, the Argentine comic book writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld co-founded the anthology magazine “Hora Cero,” for which he began writing the adventures of a time-traveling, dimension-hopping, alien-fighting, scuba-mask-wearing Everyman. One of the first sustained attempts at a mature, science-fiction comics series, “The Eternaut” became a favorite of genre connoisseurs; and for decades, movie and TV producers have tried to adapt it. Netflix and the writer-director-producer Bruno Stagnaro have finally gotten the job done with a series that begins with an apocalyptic event — a freakish, deadly summer snowfall, descending on Buenos Aires — and then follows an ordinary guy, Juan Salvo (Ricardo Darin), as his simple fight for survival turns gradually into something more epic.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 Jack Black and Jason Momoa Share a Mine Cart in ‘A Minecraft Movie’

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      The director Jared Hess narrates an adventure sequence from his film, involving a cozy ride.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.Redstone and piglins and creepers, oh my!Fans of Minecraft will recognize a few of the game’s elements in this scene from “A Minecraft Movie.” But the sequence is also a good comic excuse to stuff Jack Black and Jason Momoa into a mine cart together.The scene takes place in the redstone mines, where Steve (Black) has brought Garrett (Jason Momoa) and Henry (Sebastian Hansen) to access his diamond stash. But trouble is afoot in the form of a piglin biological superweapon, who has an arm cannon ready to blast the protagonists. They plan an escape via mine cart, using redstone to power their way out.The film’s director, Jared Hess, said that he worked with his production designer Grant Major (the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy) to build many of the sets practically, including this mine set, and then extended those sets with visual effects.“We had a ton of fun coming up with the size of the mine cart design,” Hess said, “because we wanted to fit Jack and Jason in the same cart. And they are two of some of the juiciest hunks in motion pictures.”He said the actors felt the circulation in their thighs was being cut off, so they had to take a lot of breaks, but they ultimately made it through.“This was such a fun sequence to shoot,” Hess told me. “Lots of laughs on set, it was great.”Read the “Minecraft Movie” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘When Fall Is Coming’ Review: Cooking Up a Mystery

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      With her kind eyes and guileless smile, Hélène Vincent plays a sweet old French lady. But looks can be deceiving in this François Ozon film.For “When Fall Is Coming,” the French filmmaker François Ozon has cooked up a little mystery and an enigmatic heroine. A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations. It’s there in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (Hélène Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we’re reminded, and as Ozon’s movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer.Ozon’s efficiency and polished style are among his appeals — his films include “Under the Sand” and “Swimming Pool” — and he lays out this movie with silky ease. In precise, illustrative scenes he takes you on the rounds with Michelle, mapping her pleasant environs, charting her routines and introducing her small circle of intimates, including another local, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longtime, charmingly earthy friend. For the most part, the pieces fit together, though a few things seem off. For one, Marie-Claude’s son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), is in jail when the movie opens (though soon out); for another, Michelle’s daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), is viscerally, inexplicably, hostile to her mother.Michelle’s life and the setup seem so pacific that the movie initially teeters on the soporific; which works as a sneaky bit of misdirection. Because just when everything seems a little too frictionless, someone prepares poisonous mushrooms for lunch, and someone else eats them, a turn that puts you on alert (where you stay). Ozon, who also wrote the script, continues to lightly thicken the plot but also withholds information, and before you know it, this obvious story has become an intrigue. One bad thing leads to another (and another), and the air crackles with menace. Michelle and Valérie argue, Marie-Claude falls seriously ill, Vincent takes a suspicious trip. Yet the more that things happen, the less you know.Ozon sprinkles the story with hints, summons up the ghost of Claude Chabrol (bonjour!) and, during one vividly hued autumn walk, evokes Grimm’s fairy-tale “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” about two sisters. He also foregrounds doubles: The sisterly Michelle and Marie-Claude don’t have partners, and each has a difficult adult kid. Despite their nominal similarities, Valérie and Vincent are notably different; he and his mom are openly loving, for one. By contrast, the minute that Valérie and her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), drive in from Paris to visit Michelle, the mood turns ugly. Valérie is petulant and nakedly greedy, and she soon asks for Michelle’s house. “I’ll owe less in taxes when you die,” she says before taking a swig of wine.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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      ‘The Luckiest Man in America’ Review: Taking a Game Show for a Spin

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      Paul Walter Hauser stars as a real-life contestant on “Press Your Luck” who pulled off an improbable trick.The ideal way to watch “The Luckiest Man in America,” a dramatization of a real-life game show incident, is to go in cold — to see these events unfold as TV viewers did. If you’ve never heard of Michael Larson, a contestant who appeared on CBS’s “Press Your Luck” in 1984, then it is best to save YouTube for later.In the movie’s version of events, Michael (Paul Walter Hauser) earns his spot on the program by crashing an audition, claiming to be someone he’s not. Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn), one of the show’s creators, nevertheless sees star potential in his Everyman persona.Is Michael a loose cannon? The screenplay, by Maggie Briggs and the film’s director, Samir Oliveros, paints him as, at minimum, maladroit. He wears shorts with his tie and jacket. A woolly hairdo and beard look more freakish on Hauser than the real Michael’s did on him. The character also seems fine with bending the show’s rules, like the one that forbids phone calls during breaks.Then Michael starts winning tens of thousands of dollars. And he keeps taking turns, even though each time he stands to lose it all. From here, the movie shifts into procedural mode, as the team in the control booth tries to sort out whether Michael is crazy or crafty. Shamier Anderson plays an employee who sleuths out Michael’s background during the taping. Oliveros is more selective in providing access to the protagonist’s thoughts.The events, and the mind games, appear to have been goosed for dramatic interest. (One preposterous, surely invented interlude finds Michael wandering onto a talk show set and baring his soul to the host, played by Johnny Knoxville.) But it is still fun to watch Michael and CBS compete for the upper hand.The Luckiest Man in AmericaRated R. Language unfit for daytime TV. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Hell of a Summer’ Review: Shallow Cuts

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      Summer camp counselors run afoul of a masked killer in this limp, uninspired slasher throwback from Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk.Setting a slasher at a summer camp is sort of like wearing sandals with socks: There’s no law against it, but you’d better know what you’re doing. A wry throwback horror movie like “Hell of a Summer,” blatantly indebted to cabin-strewn ‘80s classics like “Sleepaway Camp” and “Friday the 13th,” screams for the confident guidance of a filmmaker enamored with the genre — someone like Eli Roth, say, whose grindhouse tribute “Thanksgiving” exuded affection for old-school slashers in its every gout of blood.Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, the writers, directors and stars of “Hell of a Summer,” take a more conservative, and therefore more boring, approach to their horror homage. A largely forgettable cast of teens and 20-somethings hang around Camp Pineway cracking irreverent, Marvel-style quips as they wait to be butchered by a knife-wielding maniac, whose kills lack both the cruelty and inventiveness of even the most run-of-the-mill slashers of the genre’s heyday. There’s a coming-of-age angle involving Jason (Fred Hechinger), a 24-year-old counselor struggling to grow up, but it’s vague and noncommittal, straining for something to say.Wolfhard and Bryk don’t relish violence or gore: “Hell of a Summer” is surprisingly tame, with most of its kills kept tastefully offscreen. In the second act, an annoying teen with a peanut allergy comes face to face with the killer, who brandishes a jar of peanut butter menacingly — a perfect opportunity for a bit of gnarly comeuppance, except that the filmmakers cut away. It shows a fatal lack of conviction at a moment that requires slasher-loving brass. Where’s the fun in that?Hell of a SummerRated R for violence, strong language and mild sexual references. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More