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    Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Busy Caring for a Pony, Pig, Donkey and Malamute

    The longtime actor, now starring in “FUBAR,” on his many animals, good cigars and wanting his kids to outshine him.Arnold Schwarzenegger was smoking a cigar on his patio in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood, lamenting all the things that he had decided to trim from his list of 10 essentials. Most of all his five kids.“I cannot live without my children,” he said on a video call as his pet pig, Schnelly, wandered around. “I need to be in touch daily.”Schwarzenegger was sounding a lot like Luke Brunner, his character in the Netflix series “FUBAR,” which just began streaming its second season. In it, he plays the world’s best spy, and perhaps its most overprotective father, who learns that his daughter is a C.I.A. operative with an ego, just like Dad is.“She says, ‘When they say Brunner, I don’t want them just to talk about you. I want them also to talk about me,’” he said. “It’s the same thing as it is in real life with Patrick, my son, being an actor now and being big time and doing fantastic shows,” including a star turn this year in Season 3 of “The White Lotus.”Was the elder Schwarzenegger feeling a bit competitive? “I hope and wish that he will do bigger things than I’ve ever done,” he said before elaborating on his love of chess and driving his M47 tank. “It’s fantastic when kids are performing better than their parents because that is largely because of them, and it’s also because of you. It’s upbringing.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.ChessI learned to play chess with my father and did that pretty much every day. I have collected chess sets from all over the world, but now 99 percent of the time you play on an app with your friends in Austria or Germany or Hungary or Russia — wherever they are.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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    Action Movies to Stream Now: ‘Exterritorial,’ ‘Fear Below’ and More

    This month’s picks include a gaslit mother, a hungry shark, vengeful French cops, and more.‘Exterritorial’Stream it on Netflix.Sara (Jeanne Goursaud), a German war veteran, is moving to the United States with her son, Josh (Rickson Guy da Silva), to accept a job when he is abducted in the consulate. Although Sara begs for help, the consulate’s smarmy security officer, Eric (Dougray Scott), claims her son was never with her.Like “Flightplan,” another film about a mother searching for her missing child, “Exterritorial,” written and directed by Christian Zübert, makes gaslighting a juicy subject for an action thriller. In her pursuit, which is often slowed by her post-traumatic stress disorder, Sara discovers a secret drug ring and an imprisoned whistle-blower (Lera Abova). An expert in hand-to-hand combat, Sara also engages in bone-rattling scrums with consulate personnel. The oppressively white and bright setting, the psychological angst felt by Sara, and Zübert’s insistence on long takes make “Exterritorial” succeed as a frustrating fight for recognition.‘Fear Below’Rent or buy on most major platforms.In the director Matthew Holmes’s striking shark movie “Fear Below,” a diving team — Clara (Hermione Corfield), Jimmy (Jacob Junior Nayinggul) and Ernie (Arthur Angel) — is hired by a rugged gangster named Dylan (Jake Ryan) to salvage boxes of gold bars trapped in a truck at the bottom of a deep and dirty river. It’s a simple job complicated by a deadly female bull shark circling the treasure.“Fear Below” is both politically conscious — using its 1940s Australian background to comment on the sexism and racism of the era — and downright thrilling. While the wrathful Dylan is an easy-to-hate heel, the shark is commandingly elusive. The dingy water means the bloodthirsty predator can appear anytime, and the extreme close-ups in the divers’ helmets adds to the limited visibility. The two angles combine for a shark movie that ends with a crunch.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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    Review: Thomas Vinterberg’s ‘Families Like Ours,’ on Netflix

    In Thomas Vinterberg’s series on Netflix, climate change forces a country to close, and everyone has to leave.The mini-series “Families Like Ours” on Netflix has an attention-grabbing premise: An entire country, Denmark, decides to shut itself down before climate change can do the job for it. Six million Danes start looking for new homes. Relocation plans are drawn up with Scandinavian efficiency, but European neighbors look upon waves of relatively well-off white refugees with the same distaste they show for Africans and Middle Easterners.The seven-episode series is the first from the Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, known for founding the no-frills Dogme 95 movement with Lars von Trier and, 26 years later, being nominated for a best director Oscar for “Another Round,” which won best international feature in 2021. The handsomely appointed “Families Like Ours,” which Vinterberg wrote, with Bo Hr. Hansen, and directed, breaks just about every rule in the Dogme manifesto, as his films have all along. It is a high-class consumer item, deliberate and hushed.It does, however, have something in common with his one true Dogme film, “The Celebration” from 1998. It subjects an extended Danish family to pressure and traces the fissures of guilt and dependency, the outbreaks of bad behavior and gallantry, that result. “The Celebration,” released when Vinterberg was 29, did this via transgressive, occasionally puerile black humor; “Families Like Ours” offers restrained, tasteful domestic drama. The contrast is startling, but the underlying satisfactions are similar.The new series (it premiered Tuesday on Netflix) will be categorized as a climate-change drama, and it is that. The story appears to take place in an unspecified but near future when waters have risen and efforts to hold them back have met with varying success. But the evidence of danger is mostly offscreen; the crisis is suggested through newscasts and ominous puddles. Vinterberg imagines that the climate crisis will arrive not in floods and heat but in bureaucracy and confusion — endless lines, indecipherable rules, arduous journeys, a constant assault on hope. His vision may not be easily dramatic, but it is convincing.(The overall premise is a more difficult sell. Would the Danes, as disciplined and regimented as they might be, really leave their country as obediently as the series portrays? Wouldn’t many congregate on high ground and fight to stay? The show’s failure to take on that possibility is a problem.)The show is also defined, in part, by the obvious reversal it plays on our expectations for stories about refugees. It is formerly comfortable white people who are standing in the lines, yelling across bank counters and nakedly pleading for handouts and favors. They are shocked by the conditions they face once they make it to Paris or Bucharest.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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    ‘Tyler Perry’s Straw’ Review: The Accidental Bank Robber

    A single mom in Atlanta (Taraji P. Henson) is having a very, very, very bad day.In “Tyler Perry’s Straw,” Janiyah (Taraji P. Henson), a single mom in Atlanta, is having a very, very, very bad day. Her morning was already ragged when the writer-director piles onto her woes a demeaning landlord, a bullying boss, a distant school administrator, a line of disgruntled grocery customers and a road-raging, off-duty police officer. Did we mention that Janiyah winds up in the wrong office at the wrong time in the wrong state of mind?As detectives arrive to a bloody crime scene at the grocery store where she clerks, Janiyah is across the parking lot at her bank, trying to cash her paycheck. Only she doesn’t have identification, and the teller is being a stickler. Soon, Janiyah is waving a gun, something is flashing red in her daughter’s see-through backpack and she has made hostages of the bank employees and a handful of aging customers. Sherri Shepherd portrays Nicole, the branch manager who tries to diffuse the situation, having amped it by telling the police that Janiyah has a bomb.Teyana Taylor (“A Thousand and One”) brings fierce focus to a deteriorating situation as Detective Kay Raymond. The security footage at the grocery store didn’t lie, but Detective Raymond intuits something more has sent Janiyah to the desperate standoff. She steps in as a negotiator.Perry, an unapologetic purveyor of melodrama, mercilessly teases the tension. Will Janiyah hurt the hostages? Will the authorities make a sad situation worse? The ending is perhaps too twisting for its own good. But Henson — so deeply committed to her character’s emotional cratering — still makes us care.StrawNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Gotham Television Awards 2025: The Complete Winners List

    “Adolescence” picked up three wins, including the award for breakthrough limited series.“Adolescence,” the gripping mini-series about Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy who is accused of killing a girl from his school, received three trophies at the second annual Gotham Television Awards on Monday night, including one for breakthrough limited series.Stephen Graham, who played Jamie’s father, Eddie, won for outstanding lead performance in a limited series. Owen Cooper, who played the troubled teenager, shared a win for outstanding supporting performance in a limited series with Jenny Slate for “Dying for Sex.”“Adolescence,” which beat “Dying for Sex,” “Get Millie Back,” “Penelope” and “Say Nothing” in the limited series category, quickly became popular among viewers and critics after it was released on Netflix in March.Margaret Lyons, a television critic for The New York Times, wrote that the show’s third episode was “one of the more fascinating hours of TV I’ve seen in a long time.” The show also stirred debate about whether the British government should restrict children’s access to smartphones to stop them from viewing harmful content.On Monday night, at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan, Kathy Bates won for outstanding lead performance in a drama series for “Matlock” and Aaron Pierre won for outstanding performance in an original film for “Rebel Ridge.” Brian Tyree Henry, who broke out in “Atlanta,” received the performer tribute award for his portrayal of Ray Driscoll, an ex-con who robs drug houses by pretending to be a federal agent, in “Dope Thief.”The Gotham Awards, which have recognized film excellence since 1991, began adding television categories in 2015. Last year it split off the TV honors into their own ceremony in Manhattan.The film awards, which take place each December, represent the beginning of the Oscars season. The Gothams seem to be positioning the television awards, which come less than two weeks before voting begins for Primetime Emmy nominations, to play a similar annual role in TV’s awards season. But it is too soon to gauge what effect, if any, they might have on the Emmys. (Primetime Emmy nominations will be announced in July and the awards will be given out in September.)Here is the full list of Gotham Television Awards winners:Breakthrough Comedy Series“The Studio”Breakthrough Drama Series“The Pitt”Breakthrough Limited Series“Adolescence”Breakthrough Nonfiction Series“Social Studies”Outstanding Lead Performance in a Comedy SeriesJulio Torres, “Fantasmas”Outstanding Lead Performance in a Drama SeriesKathy Bates, “Matlock”Outstanding Lead Performance in a Limited SeriesStephen Graham, “Adolescence”Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Comedy SeriesPoorna Jagannathan, “Deli Boys”Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Drama SeriesBen Whishaw, “Black Doves”Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Limited SeriesOwen Cooper, “Adolescence,” and Jenny Slate, “Dying for Sex”Outstanding Original Film, Broadcast, or Streaming“Pee-wee as Himself”: Matt Wolf, director, and Emma Tillinger Koskoff, producerOutstanding Performance in an Original FilmAaron Pierre, “Rebel Ridge” More

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    ‘Dept. Q’ Review: Netflix’s Nordic-British-American Noir

    Matthew Goode plays a traumatized Edinburgh detective in a complicated cold-case series that’s less than the sum of its influences.“Dept. Q,” this week’s new cop show on Netflix, is a study in internationalism. Largely written and directed by an American, Scott Frank, it is based on a novel by the Danish crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen and set and filmed in Scotland with a British cast led by Matthew Goode.That might stand out given the current trans-Atlantic vibe, but of course the show, which premieres Thursday, has been in the works for years. And if anyone is going to remain committed to peaceful relationships across multiple markets, it will be Netflix.The ambitious, nine-episode season also reflects the history of Frank, a talented writer and director who has had his highs (“Out of Sight,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) and his lows (“Monsieur Spade”). He likes to roam among genres, with a home base in literary American crime (“Out of Sight,” “Hoke,” “A Walk Among the Tombstones”) but forays into the western (“Godless”), science fiction (“Minority Report”), period melodrama (“The Queen’s Gambit”) and others.For “Dept. Q,” in which Goode plays a damaged Edinburgh detective tasked with assembling a new cold-case unit, Frank (who developed the show with the British writer Chandni Lakhani) gets to play mix-and-match in one place. The influence of Nordic noir on the traditional British mystery has been established for several decades now, but Frank adds some American flavor to the cocktail.The buddy-cop pairing of Goode’s Carl Morck and Alexej Manvelov’s Akram Salim, a Syrian immigrant with an unsettling knack for extracting confessions, is probably more richly drawn than it would be otherwise; the interplay of Goode and Manvelov is one of the show’s main pleasures. And as is usually the case in Frank’s productions, “Dept. Q” has an overall flow and fluency — a style that is, if not always seductive, consistently engaging.(A 2013 Danish film based on the same source, “The Keeper of Lost Causes,” is dour by comparison, though some might find its 96-minute running time preferable to the seven and a half hours of the series.)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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    Stream These Movies and TV Shows Before They Leave Netflix in June

    A handful of great titles are leaving as early as the first weekend of the month. Catch them while you can.Oscar winners and tasteful trash get equal footing among the titles departing Netflix in the United States next month, alongside a compulsively watchable crime show, a pitch-perfect Jane Austen adaptation and a cult classic in the making. (Dates reflect the first day titles are unavailable and are subject to change.)‘Beginners’ (June 1)Stream it here.The writer and director Mike Mills crafts a lovely, lively combination of memory play and serio-comic romance, weaving together two tales of complicated romance. Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a modern man, scruffy and sensitive, who falls for a French actress (Mélanie Laurent); his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), a recent widower, has just come out as gay at the tender age of 75 and is rapturously in love with the much younger Andy (Goran Visnjic) when his health takes a turn. Mills’s sharp and sensitive screenplay gracefully sidesteps the clichés of both the coming-out movie and the disease-of-the-week movie, with a big assist from the talented cast. Plummer took home a well-deserved Oscar for his memorable supporting turn, Laurent and Visnjic are lovable but not overly idealized, and this is one of the best showcases to date for McGregor’s cozy charm.‘Burlesque’ (June 1)Stream it here.Critics were not exactly kind to this 2010 ode to the pleasures of contemporary burlesque from the writer-director Steven Antin — a world in which that old time hoochie-coo has been reclaimed as a rich text of performative femininity, peekaboo voyeurism and good old-fashioned camp. And it’s easy to see why; little in his screenplay is particularly original. But that familiarity is part of the movie’s appeal. Without winking at the audience or condescending to the material, he cheerfully borrows and deploys the standard narratives of such lower-rung showbiz tales. Christina Aguilera is charismatic as that old chestnut the naïve Midwestern girl with big dreams, while Cher plays the wise old veteran who shows her the ropes with offhand wit and seen-it-all wariness.‘Pride & Prejudice’ (June 1)Stream it here.The striking success of the recent 20th anniversary theatrical rerelease of this 2005 award winner is even more surprising when reflecting on its presence on Netflix — viewers could quite easily have stayed home to stream this adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, but its admirers love it so much that they plopped down their ticket money all over again. It’s not hard to understand why; Joe Wright’s direction is both sweeping and intimate, tender and evocative, while Deborah Moggach’s screenplay captures succinctly the wit and romantic longing of Austen’s text. Throw in a peerless cast (including Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Tom Hollander, Keira Knightley, Jena Malone, Rosamund Pike, Donald Sutherland and a pre-“Succession” Matthew Macfadyen) and you’ve got one of the finest Austen adaptations to date.‘Two Weeks Notice’ (June 1)Stream it here.Once upon a time, the multiplexes were filled with affable little romantic comedies, in which great-looking stars bantered gamely and pretended not to be perfect for each other for 90 minutes before finally realizing what we all knew during the opening credits. Now, when those films are made at all, they often go straight to the streamers, rarely showcasing stars as bright as Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant, who shared the screen in this 2002 rom-com from the writer and director Marc Lawrence (one of the writers of Bullock’s 2000 treat “Miss Congeniality”). The plot is negligible and the complications silly; all that matters is the chemistry, and Bullock and Grant have chemistry to spare.‘Trap’ (June 11)Stream it here.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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    Why I Find Comedy in Difficult Places. Like My Dad’s Stroke.

    Mike Birbiglia’s father didn’t want him to become a comedian. But after writing a comedy special about him, he understands his dad better.There’s a story in my new Netflix comedy special, “The Good Life,” where I’m fiercely arguing politics with my father at his house about 20 years ago. The conversation got so meanspirited that when I walked out to my car, my dad didn’t even say goodbye.I said, “Bye, Dad.”And he said, “Well, you’ve gone another way.”At that point in “the special I say, “My whole life I wanted to be my dad, and at a certain point I decided I wanted him to be me.”But if I’m being honest, that’s not what I thought in the moment. I thought something along the lines of, “What is he thinking? He’s just wrong.”About a year ago, my dad had an acute stroke that put him in the hospital for months and now he’s home with care. He can’t stand up. He can’t walk. He can speak, but he doesn’t remember anything that’s happened in the last 12 months. This is a huge change for my family. My dad has always been a big personality. Sometimes too big. When I was a kid, he’d sometimes fly off the handle. So in my special, I make the joke that the silver lining is that as horrible as the stroke has been, “if I’m being completely honest, it has calmed him down.”One night, after I made that extremely dark joke, the audience didn’t know how to feel about it. It sort of sat there. I think the audience thought, Are we allowed to laugh about this guy’s ailing father? So I improvised a line: “Most of the jokes tonight are for you, but some of the jokes are for me. This is a coping mechanism. And I hope it is for you too.” That lit up the crowd. There was an acknowledgment that this was something I was really grappling with. 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