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      ‘Querelle’: Fassbinder’s Defiant Swan Song

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      Anthology Film Archives is screening Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1982 film, based on Jean Genet’s novel, about a young sailor’s criminal and erotic escapades.Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, “Querelle,” released posthumously in 1982, was the most lavish and artificial of the 40-odd movies the prolific filmmaker directed over the course of a 13-year career.A film that recapitulates even as it embalms many of Fassbinder’s concerns, “Querelle” screens in a new digital version for a week starting Friday at Anthology Film Archives.At once lurid and static, a funerary frieze of power plays, treachery and weaponized sex, “Querelle” is faithful to Jean Genet’s sensuous prose-poem novel in tracking the criminal and erotic escapades of the title character, a charismatic young sailor (Brad Davis).Universally desired, Querelle is a killer, a masochist, a smuggler, a stool pigeon, and a participant in a convoluted daisy chain. His brother Robert (Hanno Pöschl) is sleeping with Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau), the madam of a waterfront bordello; Querelle, who allows himself to be sexually used by Lysiane’s husband, Nono (the Fassbinder regular Günther Kaufmann), has sex with her as well. He also seduces (or at least vamps) and frames a good-hearted Polish sailor (Pöschl again) and, throughout the movie, is cruised by his ship’s repressed lieutenant (Franco Nero).This tawdry rondo is frequently accompanied by a celestial chorus and bathed in a golden light, with Davis individually glorified. (Beautiful and inert, he might be a stand-in for Rock Hudson, who was not only closeted but the favorite actor of Fassbinder’s favorite director, Douglas Sirk.) Moreau, virtually the only woman in the film, comments on the turgid delirium by twice singing a ditty taken from Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol” in which the phrase “each man kills the thing he loves” is followed by a jaunty “dadada-dadada.”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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      ‘Close Your Eyes’ Review: The Case of the Unfinished Film

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      For his latest, the Spanish director Victor Erice, known for the classic “The Spirit of the Beehive,” weaves a meta tale of a director looking for an absent actor.A mystery wends through “Close Your Eyes,” a drama in which the past, present and cinema converge. It’s the latest from the Spanish director Victor Erice, who’s best known for the art-cinema paragon “The Spirit of the Beehive” (1973), a dream of a movie about a girl who is deeply troubled by the original “Frankenstein” film. Set around 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, “Beehive” elliptically focuses on a traumatized child and country that, when Erice made this classic, was in the waning years of Franco’s fascist dictatorship.“Close Your Eyes” is the fourth feature-length movie from Erice, who, it’s worth noting, was born in 1940; it’s also his first since “Dream of Light” (1992). The story in “Close Your Eyes” turns on Miguel (Manolo Solo), a melancholic filmmaker who hasn’t directed a movie in several decades and now scratches out a marginal living as a translator. Miguel’s last film, “The Farewell Gaze,” came to an aborted, ignoble finish when his lead actor, Julio (José Coronado), enigmatically disappeared. Without his star, Miguel was unable to finish the movie, which brought his film career to an end and, effectively, caused him to vanish as well.The repressed have a way of returning, as it were. And so it is in “Close Your Eyes,” which follows Miguel as he confronts his old life, his unfinished film and his absent actor, all of whom come back to some kind of attenuated life courtesy of a TV program, “Unsolved Cases.” Miguel agrees to participate in the show, which will revisit his movie’s puzzling history. He sits down for an interview and lets the program present some of the few sequences that he managed to salvage; soon enough, he also tries to find out what happened to Julio, an inquiry that begins practically enough, though it gradually accrues destabilizing existential weight.Written by Erice and Michel Gaztambide, “Close Your Eyes” quickly takes the shape of an investigation, one riddled with doubles, cinematic and otherwise. Much like Julio’s character in the unfinished film — a long, chatty section from it opens the movie — Miguel assumes the role of a detective who’s charged with finding a missing person and even begins wearing the trench coat that Julio wore in the film. These two former compatriots once shared an artistic calling and other interests, including an ex-lover. As the main story unfolds, Miguel’s exploration of the past reveals as much about the investigator as the investigated, and the men progressively seem like doppelgängers. Each has been lost; each will be also be found.Erice extends this doubling motif to the intimate one-on-one conversations that anchor “Close My Eyes,” and which incrementally, and at times almost begrudgingly, propel Miguel’s story forward. Erice tends to shoot the conversations in the earlier part of the movie as face-to-face encounters, with Miguel — an earnest, worried-looking soul — seated directly opposite another equally serious character. Later in the movie, after Miguel meets a stranger called Gardel (also played by Coronado), who helps solve the case of the missing actor, Erice often frames the two men side-by-side, as if twinning them. This visual shift underscores their connections without commensurately deepening either character or the overall movie.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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      ‘Blink Twice’ Review: Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum’s Horror Mystery

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      The director Zoë Kravitz creates an uneasy atmosphere in her abduction horror flick, starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum.For a film like “Blink Twice” to land its horror-stained commentary on sexual assault and cancel culture as well as class and race, it would need a director capable of pushing beyond basic social politics. In her debut feature, Zoë Kravitz is not that director.Rather her film, for which she also wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, exists more as a concept than a complete idea. The same could be said of the film’s protagonist, Frida (Naomi Ackie). She pines for the lifestyle of the disgraced tech mogul Slater King, played by Channing Tatum, Kravitz’s partner.Frida and her roommate, Jess (Alia Shawkat), work as servers at a gala — which allows the two women to switch into eye-catching dresses to mingle with the rich. When Frida snaps her heel, it’s Slater who helps her up, leading to a night of reverie culminating in an invite to his private island, where he has retreated after issuing a public apology for actions the film leaves relatively unknown.For the tech mogul’s entourage, Kravitz has assembled an impressive cast: Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment and Levon Hawke. These men are meant to elicit dread, with an appetizing drink in hand. But only Slater King’s therapist, Rich (Kyle MacLachlan), knows how to play pleasantness as threatening.Kravitz crafts an uneasy atmosphere. Days and nights blend into one for an endless summer filled with perfume and parties, producing a double-edged pace that has snap even while it lulls viewers into malaise. The cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra uses shadows to carve Ackie’s face, foretelling the angst she’ll feel when friends begin to disappear, gaps in her memory occur and an exoticized Indigenous woman calls her by another name.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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      ‘Megalopolis’ Trailer Pulled for Featuring Fake Movie Critic Quotes

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      To promote Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, the spot used supposed lines from The Times, The New Yorker and others to suggest critics were wrong about him.A new trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” featuring fake negative quotes from film critics has been pulled by the movie’s distributor, Lionsgate, a spokesman for the company said Wednesday.The trailer, which was posted in the morning, featured quotes from well-known film critics of the past including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, Vincent Canby of The New York Times and Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times panning previous Coppola films like “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”However, as the critic Bilge Ebiri first reported in Vulture, the quotes are not real. The trailer has now been pulled from YouTube, after amassing more than 1.3 million views in the single day it was online.“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,’” a spokesman for the company said in a statement. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”“Megalopolis,” which was self-financed by Coppola and is due in theaters Sept. 27, was initially unable to find a buyer until Lionsgate stepped in. The epic fantasy premiered to a decidedly mixed reception at the Cannes Film Festival. On Rotten Tomatoes, it stands at just 53 percent fresh among critics. The trailer seemed to be an effort to show that reviews don’t always get it right when it comes to Coppola’s work.The spot quoted Kael as saying “The Godfather” was “diminished by its artsiness,” when in reality she wrote about it glowingly. While Canby, who served as senior film critic at The New York Times from 1969 to 1993, wasn’t a fan of “Apocalypse Now,” calling it an “intellectual muddle,” he didn’t use the phrase “hollow at the core” as the trailer indicates.The trailer also featured fake quotes from Andrew Sarris in The Village Voice, Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly, and Rex Reed in The New York Observer and The New York Daily News, according to the Vulture report.John Simon of National Review is also included in the spot, and a writer for the magazine posted on X that the staff was checking the archive but believed it to be false.It is unclear how the faked quotes were created. Some on social media, speculating that artificial intelligence tools were used, started feeding prompts to ChatGPT looking for similar results.Lionsgate would not comment on whether ChatGPT or other tools powered by artificial intelligence were used for the trailer.The pulled trailer was not the first controversy surrounding the film. A report in The Guardian in May quoted anonymous sources accusing Coppola of trying to kiss female extras on the set of a nightclub scene. An executive co-producer, Darren Demetre, has said he was unaware of any harassment complaints made during the production, and Coppola later told The Times, “I’m not touchy-feely,” Coppola said. “I’m too shy.” More

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      What ‘It Ends With Us’ Gets Wrong (and Right) About Domestic Abuse

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      Its depiction of love-bombing and psychological abuse rings true, experts say, but other oversimplified aspects could send a dangerous message.A person trying to escape an abusive relationship, on average, needs seven attempts to actually leave. Lily Bloom, the protagonist of the new drama “It Ends With Us,” needs only one.In the hit adaptation of the best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, Bloom (Blake Lively) is a young woman who grew up watching her father repeatedly hit her mother and who sees her own marriage to the seemingly perfect neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, also the film’s director) deteriorate into physical and emotional abuse. When Bloom learns she’s pregnant with Kincaid’s child after a violent night, she decides to get out.Professionals who counsel domestic violence survivors or work on related issues say “It Ends With Us” is an oversimplified depiction of being in and leaving an abusive relationship. But whether it’s a potential tool for advocacy or an unattainable vision of escaping abuse depends on whom you ask.“I think it’s very likely that people are going to come to the movie and see themselves in Lily,” said Pamela Jacobs, the chief executive officer of the nonprofit organization the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. She said that although “It Ends With Us” had problems, she was surprised by how well it showed abuse overall.The big inaccuracy to professionals is how easily Bloom leaves once she realizes she is being abused. In real life, she would probably have faced stalking, harassment and other escalating pressure tactics, including violence.In “It Ends With Us,” Bloom and her husband peacefully part ways after a single conversation. Jacobs said Bloom’s departure was unrealistically smooth thanks to her financial independence (she owns a flower shop) and unwavering community support, including from her best friend, who is also Kincaid’s sister.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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      ‘Femme,’ ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ and More Streaming Gems

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      A handful of low-key but formidable dramas dominate this month’s under-the-radar recommendations on your streaming subscription services.‘Femme’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.It’s a deceptively simple premise: The drag performer Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is badly beaten in a homophobic attack, only to find the main attacker (George MacKay) cruising for companionship months later. Unrecognized out of drag, Jules decides to entrap and humiliate his attacker, and if you think you know where this is going, you’re in for a surprise. Rather than rehashing the tired, simplistic tropes of the revenge thriller, the writing and directing duo Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping explore the emotional complexities of the trap Jules must set — and in doing so, pose compelling questions about Jules’s own sense of self-worth. Stewart-Jarrett is marvelously understated, carefully choosing when to let his character’s carefully cultivated persona slip, while McKay is chillingly convincing in his tricky characterization of a closeted, self-loathing gay man.‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ (2023)Stream it on Netflix.Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a new sixth-grade teacher who finds out exactly how fragile her sense of trust and idealism is in this harrowing drama from the director Ilker Catak. An atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia pervades this German school, thanks to a rash of petty thefts that have teachers and students alike side-eyeing each other. Carla entraps the seemingly clear culprit, and immediately regrets it. Catak, who wrote the screenplay with Johannes Duncker, squeezes the classroom and faculty spaces like a vice, expertly building operatic tension and discomfort (Marvin Miller’s gripping score does much of the work) out of everyday stress, seemingly careening toward an inevitable, violent conclusion; “I wish it had all worked out differently,” Carla says near the end, and by that point, you’re likely to agree.‘I Smile Back’ (2015)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.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’s on TV This Week: ‘The Anonymous’ and the Democratic National Convention

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      A new competition show airs on USA and Bravo. And Kamala Harris will be officially nominated as the party’s candidate across networks.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Aug. 19-25. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION starting at 6:30 p.m. on various networks. On July 21, President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. By Aug. 6, Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic Party’s nomination, making her the first woman of color to win a major party’s nomination. Through Thursday, the Democratic National Convention will take place in Chicago, culminating in Harris becoming the party’s official nominee — just in time for the first debate between her and former President Donald J. Trump on Sept. 10.THE ANONYMOUS 11 p.m. on Bravo, USA and Syfy. This new competition show involves two universes — the real world and an anonymous one. In the anonymous world, players say and do what they think will get them farther in the game, but under a cloak of anonymity. Each week, players try to guess who each person is in the real world, all in an attempt to win the $100,000 prize.TuesdayFrom left: Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins “The Shawshank Redemption.”Columbia Pictures, via PhotofestTHE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994) 8 p.m. on AMC. Based on a Stephen King novella, this movie stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a man sent to prison after the murder of his wife and her lover. Dufresne maintains his innocence and forms a bond with Morgan Freeman’s character, Red. “Without a single riot scene or horrific effect, it tells a slow, gentle story of camaraderie and growth, with an ending that abruptly finds poetic justice in what has come before,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The New York Times.WednesdayMOULIN ROUGE (1952) 8 p.m. on TCM. These days, when “Moulin Rouge” comes to mind, you likely think of the flashy Baz Luhrmann remake with Nicole Kidman’s gaudy elephant suite. But before that, there was this version, which is more of a biopic of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted the famous scenes from the Moulin Rouge in Paris. “From the fairly intoxicating opening, with dancers swirling in the smoky haze and the overcrowded climate of the wine-colored Moulin Rouge, to the last poignant sequence wherein Lautrec sees these same dancers ghosting through the rooms of his family’s château near Albi as he lies on his painful deathbed, the exquisiteness of the illustration is superlative and complete,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The Times.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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      Where to Stream the Films of Alain Delon

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      A look at 10 standout films featuring the actor, who died on Sunday at 88.Most reviews of the films Alain Delon made at his 1960s and ’70s peak mention either his beauty or his inscrutability. Very often they bring up both.Despite his looks, the French star, who died on Sunday at 88, was not a typical leading man. He did not do romance and mostly avoided the relationship dramas so popular in his home country, even though he won his single César Award for one, “Notre Histoire” (1984). For the most part, Delon steered clear of lighthearted fare — the over-the-top spaghetti swashbuckler “Zorro” (1975) is one of the few such outliers. Instead, Delon will forever remain associated with the bleak thrillers and noirs he focused on after the mid-1960s. Sometimes he played the cop, other times the criminal. Always he looked as if he was withholding something — as an actor, he was never afraid of silence.Luckily, a large number of Delon classics are available to stream. Here are 10 of the best ones, in chronological order.‘Purple Noon’Stream it on the Criterion Channel; rent or buy on Apple TV or Amazon.Has there ever been a more handsome, conscience-free psychopath than Delon’s Tom Ripley? The actor was 25 when his breakthrough hit came out, in 1960, and his magnetism made the character’s dangerous pull on men and women completely inevitable. Delon is a major reason this film remains one of the best Patricia Highsmith adaptations ever, and his youthful cockiness and lethal charm continue to burn the screen.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