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      ‘The Anthrax Attacks’ Review: Strange Behavior and an Incriminating Flask

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      This documentary by Dan Krauss revisits the case against a scientist the F.B.I. maintained was responsible for a series of bioterrorism attacks after Sept. 11.In the weeks following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, news organizations and two United States senators were sent letters that contained deadly anthrax spores. These bioterrorist attacks killed five people and sickened at least 17 others. In 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed the case and continued to maintain that the perpetrator was Bruce E. Ivins, an Army biodefense expert who killed himself in 2008 as preparations to indict him were underway.In “The Anthrax Attacks,” the director Dan Krauss (the 2014 documentary “The Kill Team,” which he later reworked into a dramatized feature) takes viewers through the investigation. While much of the movie plays as a standard documentary — it features interviews with scientists, former F.B.I. agents, victims of the attacks and the sister of a postal employee who died — it makes substantial use of re-enactments.The actor Clark Gregg stars as Dr. Ivins, and a title card says that his words were taken directly from Ivins’s emails. As portrayed in the documentary, Dr. Ivins was operating under the investigators’ noses. His strange behavior, the timing of his lab activities and his access to an incriminating flask are all held out as evidence against him, although the evidence, the film notes, was also largely circumstantial and lacked a firm link between Dr. Ivins and the mailings themselves.Still, it is slightly sneaky for the film to set up Dr. Ivins as the obvious suspect by making him the film’s center — and by having Gregg play him as an officious, mild-mannered weirdo — only to raise doubts toward the end, in particular pointing to a 2011 report that said the available scientific evidence did not make it “possible to reach a definitive conclusion about the origins of the anthrax.” Many documentaries have dealt with real-life ambiguity by making it part of their structure and argument. This one treats it as an afterthought.The Anthrax AttacksNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      A Chess Champion Resolves Her ‘Queen’s Gambit’ Lawsuit Against Netflix

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      The fictional series had named Nona Gaprindashvili, a pioneering real-life chess champion, and falsely claimed she had “never faced men.” She sued for defamation.Lawyers for the pioneering chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili filed papers in federal court on Tuesday suggesting that they had settled her defamation lawsuit against Netflix over what they had described as a “devastating falsehood” about her in its fictional hit series “The Queen’s Gambit.”The agreement comes almost a year after Ms. Gaprindashvili, the first woman to be named a grandmaster, sued Netflix over a line in the final episode of the series that mentioned her by name and said, incorrectly, that she had “never faced men.” In fact, Ms. Gaprindashvili had played against many male champions over the course of her career, including before the episode in question took place.“An insulting experience” was how Ms. Gaprindashvili described her portrayal in the show in an interview last year with The New York Times.“I am pleased that the matter has been resolved,” said Alexander Rufus-Isaacs, a lawyer for Ms. Gaprindashvili. He provided no additional comment, and declined to say how the case had been resolved or whether any money had changed hands.In court documents filed in June, lawyers for Ms. Gaprindashvili and Netflix had said “parties are working with the Ninth Circuit mediator to explore settlement.”Netflix echoed Mr. Rufus-Isaacs’s statement, saying only that it too was “pleased the matter has been resolved.”In court papers, it had argued that Netflix had been exercising “its constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue” and that the line in question was “part of a fictional television series that addresses a number of significant matters of public interest, including the challenges women faced competing in the male-dominated world of elite chess during the 1960s.”“The First Amendment protects the creator’s artistic license to include the line in the fictional series,” lawyers for Netflix wrote in their motion to dismiss the lawsuit.On Tuesday, lawyers for Netflix also filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss its appeal in the case.“The Queen’s Gambit,” based on the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis, became what Netflix described as its biggest limited scripted series ever. The series, which starred Anya Taylor-Joy, won two Golden Globes and has garnered 11 Emmy Awards; there are also plans for it to be adapted into a stage musical.Alain Delaquérière contributed research. More

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      Venice: Can Iñárritu Beguile Oscar Voters Again With ‘Bardo’?

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      The director behind award-season favorites ‘Birdman’ and ‘The Revenant’ returns with a personal new movie, but not everyone is a fan.I love a great movie debate, and on only its second day, the Venice Film Festival has kicked off a robust one. As I walked out of the press screening for Alejandro G. Iñarritu’s lengthy new film “Bardo,” I thought I had just watched Oscar catnip, the kind of movie that awards voters typically go gaga for.Then I talked to other people.“Bar-NO,” texted one critic. “Three hours? So self-indulgent,” said a film festival programmer. And in a hotel elevator later that day, an Italian woman segued smoothly from complaining about the weather (“Horrible!”) to the movie (“Also horrible! Why does he have to copy Cuarón?”).She was implying that “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” (to use its full title) takes more than a few cues from Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” and there are certainly some similarities: Like his friend Cuarón, Iñárritu is a Hollywood-venerated filmmaker who has returned to his native Mexico for a Netflix-financed autofiction teeming with long takes, digital tricks and stunning cinematography.The streaming service certainly hopes that “Bardo” can net the same Oscar nominations as the laureled “Roma” (which wound up taking three statuettes), and with Iñárritu at the helm, there’s reason to be bullish: Every film he’s made has received at least one Oscar nomination, and he’s coming off back-to-back best director wins for “The Revenant” (2015) and “Birdman” (2014), as well as a best picture victory for the latter film.So will award voters respond more favorably than that initial wave of Venice filmgoers would indicate? I think so. Certainly, the plot will resonate more with them: “Bardo” is Iñárritu’s riff on “8½”: it’s a surreal dramedy about Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a documentarian making sense of his life story. Though he’s prone to dreamlike visions, Gama’s problems are the kind that middle-aged Hollywood types can relate to: Do I deserve my success, or am I a fraud? Have I spent too little time at home with my family? Will my children be spoiled and entitled?After Iñárritu shot “Amores Perros” in Mexico in 2000, he and his family moved to Los Angeles to pursue mainstream Hollywood success, just as the “Bardo” protagonist did. In many ways, Gama is a thinly veiled Iñárritu stand-in: He’s attired just like his creator and haunted by an old collaborator who now shuns him, which may be a reference to the rancorous professional breakup between Iñárritu and the co-writer of his early films, Guillermo Arriaga.But though the film acknowledges Gama’s flaws, it doesn’t really examine them. Characters tell Gama that he’s too self-involved, too bougie, too fake, and we have to take their word for it, since Gama just shrugs and moves on. Giménez Cacho is appealing but passive in the role, which may inhibit a robust awards run, but the film can definitely rack up several technical nominations: Darius Khondji’s cinematography is superb, and all of Gama’s visions — apartments flooded with sand, subways steeped in fish-tank water — are brought to incredible life by the production designer Eugenio Caballero (who also worked on “Roma”).Past that, we’ll see how well the film connects with the Hollywood types it’s portraying, and whether Netflix is willing to push it as hard (and as expensively) as it did “Roma.” Certainly, “Bardo” implies that streaming services have the coin for it: One of the movie’s most successful jokes is that in the world of “Bardo,” Amazon is about to complete its successful purchase not of a new awards contender but of the entire state of Baja California. Compared with that, what’s the cost of a few hundred for-your-consideration ads and some private planes? More

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      Mohammed Amer Is a Salad Bowl

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      Melting pot? The Houston comedian prefers a different analogy for himself. His new Netflix series, “Mo,” cocreated by Ramy Youssef, should help clarify.ALIEF, Texas — Mohammed Amer started up his black Mercedes and pointed to a corner across from Alief Middle School. The location was laden with meaning.“That’s where I learned to play the dozens,” he said as he turned out of the school parking lot, referring to the age-old game in which combatants insult each other’s mothers.“At first, I took it so personally,” said Amer, who emigrated from Kuwait when he was 9 years old: “‘How could you guys be talking like this to each other? What’s going on in America?’ Then I realized it was just a big bonding experience. And that’s what introduced me to comedy.”It’s a good time to be Amer, who goes by Mo, a Palestinian American comedian who grew up in this diverse, working-class Houston suburb. His new scripted series, “Mo,” premieres on Netflix on Aug. 24. He has a role in the upcoming action-fantasy movie “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson, who taped a spirited introduction to Amer’s most recent Netflix standup comedy special. A youthful 41, he is starting to reap the benefits of years spent busting his tail in the comedy world.But Alief will always be home, even if he currently lives a few miles away, in downtown Houston. It’s where he discovered how it felt to live in a community defined by its diversity — Black, Mexican, Vietnamese, you name it. To drive through Alief is to see tightly packed strip malls filled with the business equivalent of the United Nations: a Vietnamese restaurant next to a Mexican grocery store next to a Parisian bakery.Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, Amer was scared when he first got to the United States after his family fled Kuwait during the first Gulf War. But he quickly found friends from all over the world, and he never really left.He speaks English, Arabic and Spanish, as does his character on the new show, also named Mo. And he finds humor in the tensions that demarcate his various identities. On “Mo,” his girlfriend, Maria (Teresa Ruiz), is a Mexican American woman who runs a garage. (We drove by the inspiration for the shop, which is, indeed, owned by a Mexican American woman.) But he’s scared to commit, partially because of his low self-esteem but also because he knows his mother (played by the Palestinian Jordanian actress Farah Bsieso) won’t approve.Teresa Ruiz plays Mo’s girlfriend, Maria, a Mexican American woman who runs a garage. Rebecca Brenneman/NetflixWhen Maria takes him to confess at a Catholic church, he explains to the priest (played by the local hip-hop legend Bun B) that he is Muslim and the crucifixion iconography really freaks him out. Then he breaks down crying.“In many ways, Mo is the melting pot,” said Ramy Youssef, the Egyptian American star and creator of the Hulu comedy “Ramy,” who created “Mo” with Amer. Yousef also cast Amer in a supporting role on “Ramy,” as the owner of a diner.“Not to use a tired word, but he is very literally multicultural,” Youssef continued. Told of his friend’s analogy, Amer offered a correction: “I like salad bowl better than melting pot. Everybody loses their own identity in the melting pot. In a salad bowl, everything retains its original flavor.”Alief also has an above-average crime rate for the Houston area, a reality that finds its way into “Mo.” One moment, Mo is decrying the existence of chocolate hummus in a grocery store (“That’s a war crime”). The next, he is catching a stray bullet that grazes his arm. Uninsured, he goes to a sort of chop-shop doctor who stitches him up and gives him some lean, a potentially lethal mix of codeine cough syrup and soda, long popular in Houston’s hip-hop scene. (It was a factor in the overdose deaths of the Houston hip-hop favorite DJ Screw, as well as Pimp C, from nearby Port Arthur.) Mo battles a lean addiction throughout the first season.Amer wants to make one thing very clear: “I do not have a codeine addiction. I do not sip lean.” But, like his character, he did used to sell knockoff luxury goods from the trunk of his car, including fake Rolex watches.“There were a lot of drug dealers in the neighborhood that loved flashy stuff but didn’t want to necessarily spend 10 grand,” he said. “Everybody in Alief had a side hustle.” That included the woman in his old apartment building who sold frozen Kool-Aid pops for a quarter.To watch “Mo” and meet Amer is to wonder where the artist and his creation diverge. Many of the important details of the series are true to life. Amer was a child when he arrived in Alief with his family from Kuwait. His father, a telecom engineer, died of a heart attack soon after. And it took Amer 20 years to get asylum and U.S. citizenship, a process dramatized in the series, often humorously. Unhappy with his unreliable Palestinian lawyer, Mo switches to an American Jewish woman, Lizzie Horowitz (the Austin comedian and actor Lee Eddy), which mortifies his mom.From left, Lee Eddy, Farah Bsieso, Omar Elba, Cherien Dabis and Amer in a scene inspired by Amer’s experience waiting 20 years to get asylum and U.S. citizenship.NetflixAmer exudes a sense of authenticity, a quality that endears him to his cast. “He is so honest and genuine,” Bsieso said in a video call. “He doesn’t try to fake anything. He reaches the heart and soul of anybody who listens to him or watches him or works with him.”In his standup work and on “Mo,” Amer’s comedy is shot through with a sense of anxiety, sometimes playful, other times more serious. In his comedy specials, including last year’s “Mo Amer: Mohammed in Texas,” his voice rises in concern and even confusion whenever he addresses a sticky subject (Covid-19, his recent divorce). Mo is often flustered as he navigates his life in the series. Vulnerability is an essential part of his work.“Most of my life has been anxiety, and I think comedy is the way I’ve been able to channel it,” he said. “Standup has been a lifesaving thing for me. Standup allows the space for me to emote how I feel at any moment in time. With standup you spend most of your life getting better at it, but also trying to top yourself. Imagine a brick wall. Every time you go onstage, you chip away at the wall until eventually there’s nothing in front of you except the crowd.”Youssef sees the Mo of the series as a sort of alternative universe Amer.“I think a lot of the antics that happen in the show are daydreams of what would have happened if Mo hadn’t found comedy,” he said. “What if that wasn’t his path and that wasn’t what he was doing? Life is this fork, and you turn left or right. The fun thing about making a show is asking, ‘What if I went left?’ And then we get to write that.”Amer at his alma mater Alief Middle School, where he filmed scenes for “Mo,” near Houston.Eli Durst for The New York TimesAmer turned his car toward his old high school, Hastings, a stone’s throw from another high school, Elsik. The R&B star Lizzo went to Elsik. Beyoncé did, too, and she shot the video for her song “Blow” right down the street, at the indoor amusement park and roller rink Houston Funplex, where Mo has a lean-induced breakdown on the show.Another Elsik alum, the rapper Tobe Nwigwe, plays Mo’s best friend, Nick, on the show. “Mo” is very much a neighborhood affair, shot where it’s set. It stands apart in that regard from many movies and series set in Texas, which often shoot in nearby states — New Mexico, Louisiana — to take advantage of more generous tax incentives. Amer is fiercely proud of his home base; it’s practically a character in the series. He wasn’t about to shoot in Albuquerque.The most compelling conflict in “Mo” pits modernity against tradition. Mo loves hip-hop, and the soundtrack is laden with Houston artists, including DJ Screw, Big Moe and Paul Wall, who also has a funny cameo as a courthouse security guard. He loves his assimilated girlfriend. But he is also a practicing Muslim, committed to his faith and family.“He is modern but also deeply connected with his roots, and we all know that’s a really difficult thing to balance, especially in his position where he is essentially penniless and just trying to maintain his dignity and juggle all these emotions,” Amer said. “He’s definitely modern with the mind-set of the old as well.”He’s the salad bowl. Welcome to the party. Just don’t bring the chocolate hummus. More

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      Netflix’s “13” Brings Back Memories For Its Stage Cast

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      For the creators and cast of the 2008 musical “13,” a new Netflix adaptation brings back memories — theatrical and hormonal.It’s one thing to wrangle a few Von Trapp kids. Some Matildas. A Gavroche or two.But a baker’s dozen of newly minted teenagers, raging hormones and all, packed into a handful of dressing rooms backstage in a Broadway theater? And aside from the crew, the musical director — and, yes, three child wranglers — no adults in sight?This was the great experiment of “13,” the 2008 coming-of-age musical both about and performed by a group of kids going through one of the more chaotically vulnerable stages of life. The show, about a 13-year-old named Evan juggling his parents’ divorce, his upcoming bar mitzvah and a seemingly life-shattering move from New York to the middle of Indiana, was not just a test in managing this particular company — an all-teen cast and band — but in finding exactly what the audience appetite was for a work that sat squarely in the limbo between Disney and “Spring Awakening.”Adult reviewers were lukewarm — though, to be fair, the 14-year-old companion of the New York Times critic Ben Brantley found it to be “pretty good” — and “13” closed three months after opening night, one of numerous Broadway casualties during the recession.But in the years since, the show, with music by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, has found renewed life in schools — and now on Netflix, where a new generation of tweens have picked up the mantle with a film adaptation that began streaming on Friday.Most of the original cast members are now in their late 20s. They’ve graduated from having adolescent showmances to planning their weddings. Some are still acting or directing or choreographing, on TV and Broadway and elsewhere; others have left the business entirely.And one actress — Ariana Grande, making her Broadway debut as the gossip-prone, flip-phone-wielding Charlotte — has become a bona fide pop supernova.Ahead of the film’s release, members of that cast, band, creative team and production crew looked back on their memories of the show — in conversation with a reporter who, years earlier, at age 11, happened to be sitting in the audience of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater to see “13,” her first Broadway musical. Here are edited excerpts from our discussions.A book editor at Scholastic reached out to Jason Robert Brown to see if he would be interested in brainstorming a new project: an original musical that would also tie into a new book series. The collaboration eventually fell through, but not before Brown thought up a pitch: a story about young teenagers that would become the framework for “13.”JASON ROBERT BROWN (music and lyrics) Dan Elish had seen me do an interview where I said I really wanted to do a show with a bunch of dancing teenagers. We were doing “Parade” in the same season as “Footloose,” and people didn’t respond to “Parade” very well when it came out — it’s very heavy. I got the sense that we were spending the whole season competing against dancing teenagers.DAN ELISH (book) He was kidding, you know? But I had just had this young adult novel come out, about two eighth grade boys in New York. Maybe I was the guy to write the Great Dancing Teenager Musical.BROWN Dan sent me a copy of his novel. And I liked it, but I didn’t think it was a musical. But I said, “If you’re into working on something with me, I do have this idea that I came up with once about a show with nothing but 13-year-olds in it.” And Dan said, “Sure, that sounds fun.”The musical premiered in 2007 at Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. As the show’s producers set their sights on Broadway, the writer Robert Horn and the director Jeremy Sams joined the creative team and started searching for their New York cast.JEREMY SAMS (director) We saw hundreds of kids in New York and L.A. from all over the place. It was absolutely obvious, the more kids we saw, who we should have in our show. When Ariana Grande turns up, and Liz Gillies and Allie Trimm and Graham [Phillips], it’s quite clear. I’ll never forget when Ariana sang to me and Jason. BROWN At the end of the opening number, there are four scat solos. And I remember a day [in rehearsal] with everyone going around the piano and just improvising, and some of them clearly were like, I have no idea how to improvise a solo. And some of them were Ariana Grande.Ariana Grande, left, with Williams, Phillips and Chris Raymond during the opening night curtain call. Walter McBride/Corbis, via Getty ImagesARIANA GRANDE (Charlotte) Working with Jason is the ultimate master class — not only in musicianship, but his storytelling and creativity, his problem solving. I remember him leaving the room whenever they felt something was missing and coming back 30 minutes later with a brand-new brilliant song.AARON SIMON GROSS (Archie) I was simultaneously working and star-struck at virtually all times.ELIZABETH GILLIES (Lucy) Ariana and I joke about it a lot, because she was so social and making friends with everyone. And I was so hard core back then when I first started auditioning that I just kind of tucked away into a corner. I was so determined to book this role that I didn’t want to talk to anyone until we started the reading process.BRYNN WILLIAMS (Cassie) All of our pressure was self-inflicted. We wanted to do well because we wanted to prove that we were capable. But there wasn’t any outside pressure at all; they did a fantastic job of treating us like professionals while also being aware that we were teenagers.BROWN A lot of them had done more Broadway shows than I had. And my feeling was, look, I’ve written some hard music, but I know it’s possible. I wasn’t going to simplify it for them unless they couldn’t do it. But let’s find out first. And they all rose to it.ROBERT HORN (book) It was so interesting to see that divide between the incredible work ethic that they had at such a young age, and the talent and commitment they bring to it — and the next moment they’re running off and getting into trouble. And you realize that they’re kids.Case in point: an out-of-town tryout in the summer of 2008 at Goodspeed Musicals in Chester, Conn.BROWN In the middle of July or August or whatever it was, we just let loose 20 kids on this little town in Connecticut, all living in the same house. They were 13 years old; they were a bunch of punks.GILLIES The closest thing we had to entertainment was the pizzeria, a graveyard and the woods.EAMON FOLEY (Richie) It was summer camp with the most talented kids in the world. Like wildly creative children who, one half of the day, had this really sick show being built on their talents, and then the other half of the day were running through the woods and smoking weed out of Gatorade bottles.HORN Someone got caught with a joint. I’m not going to mention names.Through the Goodspeed run, and even as performances began on Broadway in September 2008, the show was constantly changing.HORN We were writing it with those kids. They were giving us the authenticity. I can bring my humor and storytelling, but I was never a 14-year-old girl.DELANEY MORO (Kendra) They were so good at giving us agency to share our ideas, and they would pick up on things that we said or did and try to write it in.GRAHAM PHILLIPS (Evan) New jokes were being put in and taken out. Depending on how the audience reacted, I’d put up one of five fingers [onstage, directed at Horn in the audience]. If it was really bad, I’d put up a crooked index finger. That was like the equivalent of a trombone womp, womp.From left: the composer Jason Robert Brown, the book co-writer Robert Horn and Phillips, the musical’s leading (young) man.via Robert HornBROWN I put in a big finale of the first act at Goodspeed — my idea was a James Brown soul revue kind of thing. That lasted one performance. But on Broadway, we had a whole Dance Dance Revolution number that replaced it.HORN At one point, the girls came out in these background-singer sparkly dresses, and then all these Dance Dance Revolution machines came out — and poor Graham Phillips, who was phenomenal, was not a dancer.ALLIE TRIMM (Patrice) We spent hours teching it so that we had the Dance Dance Revolution arrows lighting up to match with our choreography.The actors weren’t the only teenagers onstage.BROWN We also had a band that was entirely kids. So that was a whole other level of crazy — of course, that’s the kind of crazy that I most enjoyed, the kid musicians.TOM KITT (musical director) They were just a joy. They were game for anything. The band was onstage and I, of course — the one adult — was hidden by scenery.CHARLIE ROSEN (swing bass, guitar and percussion) We were kids — we had shortcomings, you know? We weren’t the greatest sight readers. But Jason didn’t dumb down any of his writing. We really had to step up and become professional musicians way earlier than even kids in college might really understand — things that they don’t teach in music school, like showing up on time and rehearsal etiquette and how to follow your music director.GRANDE I think it is safe to say that all of us quickly developed the discipline and stamina that we’d have for the rest of our careers doing eight shows a week as young teenagers, even just vocally alone.For the cast, backstage was often more dramatic than the show itself.PHILLIPS I was sharing a dressing room with Eric Nelsen [playing Brett], who was dating Liz at the time, who was sharing a dressing room with Ariana, who I was dating at the time.BROWN Robert really got into the gossip.HORN Somebody would be going out with somebody, and then a few days later, they’d be going out with somebody else.PHILLIPS I remember a lot of sneaking around. I became more acquainted with the nooks and crannies of the Jacobs Theater than probably anybody else. One of the wranglers was really good at finding me.TRIMM Everyone was figuring out their sexuality and finding themselves. And I think everybody was kind of going through such a massive awakening of who we are as people, which is kind of a funny, beautiful parallel to the show.Eli Golden, center, is Evan in the Netflix movie, which includes adult actors and some new songs.Alan Markfield/NetflixBut in some ways, when “13” closed in January 2009, it still wasn’t finished. Brown and Horn spent six months tearing the show apart and revising the version that would be licensed in schools for community theater productions.BROWN I always loved “Brand New You,” at the end of the show. And I remember watching it one night, maybe somewhere toward the end of the run, and thinking this is what the whole show was supposed to have been, as far as this audience is concerned. A lot of exactly what I started saying: It should have been teenagers dancing. It should have been this sort of kinetic rock-concert sort of thing. And instead, over the course of developing it, it had become very personal and very intimate.GILLIES The audiences [at Goodspeed] were so receptive, and our theater was very quaint. By the time we got to Broadway, it was a whole other animal. It’s a very large stage for a very intimate, small show.BROWN We had invited a whole bunch of kids to the dress rehearsal, and it was a very young and a very rowdy audience. I just remember the shrieks that the show got that night. I called my wife and I said, “I think we have a hit.” And I was so wrong. But I wish I could have just frozen the show that night, because that feeling was exactly what I wanted. More

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      ‘Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story’ Review: Surviving the Grind

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      In this documentary, a professional skateboarder turns down the Olympics for the chance to live openly.When Leo Baker began skateboarding professionally in the early 2000s, skateboarding was mainly a hobby for punks. There were no Olympic trials for national teams, and advertisers were only beginning to notice the profits that could come from marketing sneakers and T-shirts to kids doing kick flips.Leo was a prodigy, but as a youth skateboarder, he wasn’t out as transgender and nonbinary. Erroneously, he was perceived as someone who could become the poster child for young women in skateboarding.The documentary “Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story,” directed by Nicola Marsh and Giovanni Reda, uses a combination of archival, observational and interview footage to demonstrate how Leo navigated a career as a decorated professional skateboarder while managing the stress of gender dysphoria and public misconception.When the documentary begins, it’s the year leading up to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Leo has qualified for the United States’ first women’s team, and he is conflicted about that decision. The public misconception of his gender causes him great pain, but he is afraid that coming out will end his career. Supported by family and friends — many of whom are also queer veterans of the skateboarding scene — Leo ultimately chooses to live openly as a transgender person and withdraws from the Olympic team.The directors have made a compact film, but their footage packs a punch. Leo is a dynamic and generous subject, and he allows the filmmakers access through an intimate struggle, as he is misgendered publicly and seeking support from loved ones privately.This is a candid look at one person’s experience with coming out, a humane document that shows the bravery and resilience of queer people who seek relief from the categories that are imposed on them.Stay on Board: The Leo Baker StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Stream These 9 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in August

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      Of the many movies leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers this month, these are the ones most worth checking out.There are scares aplenty in the titles leaving Netflix in the United States at the end of the month, with two contemporary horror favorites and one absolute classic departing the service. We can also recommend a handful of first-rate thrillers, one of the most quotable comedies of the 21st century and a Kevin Costner Western that’s neither “Dances With Wolves” or “Yellowstone.” (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Conjuring’ (Aug. 20)When this modestly-scaled haunted house movie hit theaters in summer of 2013, few could have imagined that it would not only become so profitable — returning $319 million worldwide on a $20 million budget — but also spawn a multi-movie “universe” of eight films and counting. But that was all to come; the pleasures of this initial entry are simple, rooted in the authenticity of its ’70s setting, the grounded performances by Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor and the confident direction from James Wan (particularly his execution of one of the single best jump-scares in recent memory).Stream it here.‘In the Line of Fire’ (Aug. 30)Clint Eastwood made a rare late-career acting-only appearance in this first-rate thriller from the director Wolfgang Petersen. Eastwood stars as the Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, one of the agents working in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That connection catches the attention of a potential assassin (John Malkovich), who baits Horrigan into a game of cat and mouse by threatening to repeat history on his watch. Malkovich was nominated for an Academy Award for his chilling turn as the ruthlessly intelligent killer, but Eastwood’s performance is the real deal; the taciturn actor finds striking notes of vulnerability and melancholy for his guilt-ridden character.Stream it here.‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ (Aug. 31)Will Ferrell’s breakthrough vehicle was one of the most culturally inescapable comedies of the 2000s, endlessly quoted and memed, and for good reason: It’s a screamingly funny comedy, taking an absurd concept (the 1970s-set story of a local “Action News” anchor) to its absolute limit, thanks to a spot-on turn from Ferrell as a dopey blowhard, great supporting work from the likes of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Fred Willard, and Christina Applegate’s perfectly modulated turn as his foil turned love interest. But it was also the feature directorial debut of the future Oscar winner Adam McKay, who was already using broad comedy as cover to smuggle in headier themes (this time, of gender roles, toxic masculinity and media ineptitude).Stream it here.‘Cliffhanger’ (Aug. 31)Few megastars have mounted as many comebacks as Sylvester Stallone (one of the many parallels between the actor-filmmaker and his most famous creation, Rocky Balboa). He was rebounding from an ill-advised attempt at comedy — remember “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”? — when he fronted this white-knuckle thriller in 1993. The boilerplate script (which Stallone co-wrote) amounts to “Die Hard” on a Mountain, with Stallone as the rugged but desperate hero, John Lithgow as the elegant terrorist villain and the Rocky Mountains as the locale. But Stallone and Lithgow fill their roles nicely, and the director Renny Harlin (previously of, by no coincidence, “Die Hard 2”) orchestrates the mayhem with panache.Stream it here.‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Aug. 31)Christopher Nolan capped his Batman trilogy — and followed up “The Dark Knight,” one of history’s most commercially and critically successful comic book films — with this 2012 action epic. It’s neither as thrilling as “The Dark Knight” nor as narratively efficient as the earlier “Batman Begins,” and it borders on bloated at nearly three hours. But there’s something boldly operatic to its ambition, to how Nolan folds in new villains, post-Occupy politics and a decidedly unheroic tone of borderline nihilism. Tom Hardy’s Bane is a true terror, and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman is a gem of complex sensuality.Stream it here.‘Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol’ (Aug. 31)It speaks to the high quality of the entire series that no clear consensus seems to exist on the best film of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. But there’s a strong case to be made for this, the fourth entry, which was the live-action directorial debut of the Pixar alum Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”). Tom Cruise returns as Agent Ethan Hunt, this time drawn into the complex, globe-trotting pursuit of a nuclear terrorist who frames Hunt and his team for a bombing at the Kremlin. Simon Pegg, back from Part 3, offers welcome comic relief, the new additions Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton add considerable spice, and two of the set pieces — the aforementioned Kremlin sequence and Cruise’s gripping climb of the Burj Khalifa — are among the franchise’s best. (The series’s first and second installments also leave Netflix at the end of the month.)Stream it here.‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (Aug. 31)Wes Craven went from a genre journeyman to a horror icon — and launched one of the most venerable slasher franchises ever — with this 1984 creeper. Craven wrote and directed this story of suburban teens that find their dreams haunted — often with deadly, real-life results — by the neighborhood boogieman, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Heather Langenkamp is the resourceful protagonist, while Johnny Depp, in his film debut, is one of the more memorable victims. Subsequent sequels would highlight Krueger with greater prominence but diminishing returns, effectively turning the films into horror-comedies. But this inaugural entry is a lean, mean, scare machine, filled with terrifying images and well-crafted suspense.Stream it here.‘Public Enemies’ (Aug. 31)Twenty-five years later, Depp was at the height of his career, starring as the Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in this crime epic from the director Michael Mann (“Heat”). Mann also co-wrote the script for this fact-based tale, which tells the parallel stories of Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the F.B.I. agent using all of the tools of the agency to track him down. Mann’s use of contemporary digital photography was controversial at the time, but it is an inspired choice, giving the picture a contemporary sheen that keeps it from feeling like dusty, unapproachable history.Stream it here.‘Wyatt Earp’ (Aug. 31)Some good movies just suffer from rotten timing. That was certainly the case with this 1994 western epic, which re-teamed the writer and director Lawrence Kasdan with his “Silverado” star Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, their film hit theaters six months after “Tombstone,” which also told the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the gunfight at the OK Corral. But the two films tell the same story in a very different way: “Tombstone” is a brisk, contemporary interpretation, emphasizing action and thrills (it shared a director with “Rambo”), while “Earp” is an old-fashioned, character-driven western in the style of John Ford (who made his own Earp film, the classic “My Darling Clementine,” in 1946). But time has been kind to Kasdan’s take, and the popularity of western TV dramas like Costner’s “Yellowstone” make “Wyatt Earp” ripe for rediscovery.Stream it here.Also leaving:“Taxi Driver” (Aug. 25), “Wind River” (Aug. 27), “The Departed,” “Goodfellas,” “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Rise of the Guardians,”“Starship Troopers,” ‘Titanic” (all Aug. 31). More

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      Stream These 10 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in August

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      Of the many movies leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers this month, these are the ones most worth checking out.There are scares aplenty in the titles leaving Netflix in the United States at the end of the month, with two contemporary horror favorites and one absolute classic departing the service. We can also recommend a handful of first-rate thrillers, one of the most quotable comedies of the 21st century and a Kevin Costner Western that’s neither “Dances With Wolves” or “Yellowstone.” (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Conjuring’ (Aug. 20)When this modestly-scaled haunted house movie hit theaters in summer of 2013, few could have imagined that it would not only become so profitable — returning $319 million worldwide on a $200 million budget — but also spawn a multi-movie “universe” of eight films and counting. But that was all to come; the pleasures of this initial entry are simple, rooted in the authenticity of its ’70s setting, the grounded performances by Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor and the confident direction from James Wan (particularly his execution of one of the single best jump-scares in recent memory).Stream it here.‘The Visit’ (Aug. 25)M. Night Shyamalan’s career was in rough shape by the mid-2010s after a series of big-budget, high-profile, major studio flops. So he performed a miraculous reinvention, stripping his style down to its bare bones and teaming up with the genre producer Jason Blum to make this low-budget yet frighteningly effective chiller. Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould star as teenage siblings who head to their long-estranged grandparents’ house for an extended visit and find much of what happens there … disturbing. Shyamalan deftly mixes elements of comedy, horror and found footage into a darkly entertaining package, and in the process, he reminded audiences of his considerable gifts.Stream it here.‘In the Line of Fire’ (Aug. 30)Clint Eastwood made a rare late-career acting-only appearance in this first-rate thriller from the director Wolfgang Petersen. Eastwood stars as the Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, one of the agents working in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That connection catches the attention of a potential assassin (John Malkovich), who baits Horrigan into a game of cat and mouse by threatening to repeat history on his watch. Malkovich was nominated for an Academy Award for his chilling turn as the ruthlessly intelligent killer, but Eastwood’s performance is the real deal; the taciturn actor finds striking notes of vulnerability and melancholy for his guilt-ridden character.Stream it here.‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ (Aug. 31)Will Ferrell’s breakthrough vehicle was one of the most culturally inescapable comedies of the 2000s, endlessly quoted and memed, and for good reason: It’s a screamingly funny comedy, taking an absurd concept (the 1970s-set story of a local “Action News” anchor) to its absolute limit, thanks to a spot-on turn from Ferrell as a dopey blowhard, great supporting work from the likes of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Fred Willard, and Christina Applegate’s perfectly modulated turn as his foil turned love interest. But it was also the feature directorial debut of the future Oscar winner Adam McKay, who was already using broad comedy as cover to smuggle in headier themes (this time, of gender roles, toxic masculinity and media ineptitude).Stream it here.‘Cliffhanger’ (Aug. 31)Few megastars have mounted as many comebacks as Sylvester Stallone (one of the many parallels between the actor-filmmaker and his most famous creation, Rocky Balboa). He was rebounding from an ill-advised attempt at comedy — remember “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”? — when he fronted this white-knuckle thriller in 1993. The boilerplate script (which Stallone co-wrote) amounts to “Die Hard” on a Mountain, with Stallone as the rugged but desperate hero, John Lithgow as the elegant terrorist villain and the Rocky Mountains as the locale. But Stallone and Lithgow fill their roles nicely, and the director Renny Harlin (previously of, by no coincidence, “Die Hard 2”) orchestrates the mayhem with panache.Stream it here.‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Aug. 31)Christopher Nolan capped his Batman trilogy — and followed up “The Dark Knight,” one of history’s most commercially and critically successful comic book films — with this 2012 action epic. It’s neither as thrilling as “The Dark Knight” nor as narratively efficient as the earlier “Batman Begins,” and it borders on bloated at nearly three hours. But there’s something boldly operatic to its ambition, to how Nolan folds in new villains, post-Occupy politics and a decidedly unheroic tone of borderline nihilism. Tom Hardy’s Bane is a true terror, and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman is a gem of complex sensuality.Stream it here.‘Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol’ (Aug. 31)It speaks to the high quality of the entire series that no clear consensus seems to exist on the best film of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. But there’s a strong case to be made for this, the fourth entry, which was the live-action directorial debut of the Pixar alum Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”). Tom Cruise returns as Agent Ethan Hunt, this time drawn into the complex, globe-trotting pursuit of a nuclear terrorist who frames Hunt and his team for a bombing at the Kremlin. Simon Pegg, back from Part 3, offers welcome comic relief, the new additions Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton add considerable spice, and two of the set pieces — the aforementioned Kremlin sequence and Cruise’s gripping climb of the Burj Khalifa — are among the franchise’s best. (The series’s first and second installments also leave Netflix at the end of the month.)Stream it here.‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (Aug. 31)Wes Craven went from a genre journeyman to a horror icon — and launched one of the most venerable slasher franchises ever — with this 1984 creeper. Craven wrote and directed this story of suburban teens that find their dreams haunted — often with deadly, real-life results — by the neighborhood boogieman, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Heather Langenkamp is the resourceful protagonist, while Johnny Depp, in his film debut, is one of the more memorable victims. Subsequent sequels would highlight Krueger with greater prominence but diminishing returns, effectively turning the films into horror-comedies. But this inaugural entry is a lean, mean, scare machine, filled with terrifying images and well-crafted suspense.Stream it here.‘Public Enemies’ (Aug. 31)Twenty-five years later, Depp was at the height of his career, starring as the Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in this crime epic from the director Michael Mann (“Heat”). Mann also co-wrote the script for this fact-based tale, which tells the parallel stories of Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the F.B.I. agent using all of the tools of the agency to track him down. Mann’s use of contemporary digital photography was controversial at the time, but it is an inspired choice, giving the picture a contemporary sheen that keeps it from feeling like dusty, unapproachable history.Stream it here.‘Wyatt Earp’ (Aug. 31)Some good movies just suffer from rotten timing. That was certainly the case with this 1994 western epic, which re-teamed the writer and director Lawrence Kasdan with his “Silverado” star Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, their film hit theaters six months after “Tombstone,” which also told the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the gunfight at the OK Corral. But the two films tell the same story in a very different way: “Tombstone” is a brisk, contemporary interpretation, emphasizing action and thrills (it shared a director with “Rambo”), while “Earp” is an old-fashioned, character-driven western in the style of John Ford (who made his own Earp film, the classic “My Darling Clementine,” in 1946). But time has been kind to Kasdan’s take, and the popularity of western TV dramas like Costner’s “Yellowstone” make “Wyatt Earp” ripe for rediscovery.Stream it here.Also leaving:“Taxi Driver” (Aug. 25), “Wind River” (Aug. 27), “The Departed,” “Goodfellas,” “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Rise of the Guardians,”“Starship Troopers,” ‘Titanic” (all Aug. 31). More