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      Can Works Like 'Don't Look Up' Get Us Out of Our Heads?

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      In the doomsday smash and Bo Burnham’s pandemic musical “Inside,” themes of climate change, digital distraction and inequality merge and hit home.An Everest-size comet is hurtling toward Earth, and in exactly six months and 14 days, the planet will be shattered to pieces, leaving every living creature to perish in a cataclysm of fire and flood. In “Don’t Look Up,” Netflix’s hit climate-apocalypse film, this news largely bounces off the American public like a rubber ball. And they return to their phones with a collective “meh” — opting to doomscroll instead of acknowledging certain doom IRL.With the hope of snapping the masses from their stupor, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, a young scientist with a Greta Thunberg-like disdain for the apathetic, screams into the camera during a live TV appearance: “You should stay up all night every night crying when we’re all, 100 percent, for sure, going to [expletive] die!” She’s swiftly dismissed as hysterical, and an image of her face is gleefully seized on for the full meme treatment. (More spoilers ahead.)What the internet has done to our minds and what our minds have done to our planet (or haven’t done to save it) are two dots that have been circling each other for some time. Now, onscreen at least, they’re colliding, resonating with audiences and tapping into a particular psyche of our moment.In “Don’t Look Up,” a satirical incision from Adam McKay with only humor as an anesthetic, these themes are lampooned in equal measure and in no uncertain terms. Though heavy with metaphors — most important, the comet signifying climate change — its message is clear and not open to interpretation: Wake up!That the movie amassed 152 million hours viewed in one week, according to Netflix, which reports its own figures, suggests a cultural trend taking shape. There’s a hunger for entertainment that favors unflinching articulation and externalization over implication and internalization — to have our greatest fears verbalized without restraint, even heavy-handedly, along with a good deal of style and wit.Learn More About ‘Don’t Look Up’In Netflix’s doomsday flick, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are two astronomers who discover a comet headed straight for Earth.Review: It’s the end of the world, and you should not feel fine, writes the film critic Manohla Dargis.A Metaphor for Climate Change: With his apocalyptic satire, the director Adam McKay hopes to prompt the audience to action. Meryl Streep’s Presidential Turn: How the actor prepared to play a self-centered scoundrel at the helm of the United States.A Real-Life ‘Don’t Look Up’ Moment: The film revives memories of a nail-biting night in the Times newsroom two decades ago.Look at “Inside,” Bo Burnham’s pandemic comedy-musical masterpiece from Netflix last year, in which he pools themes of climate disaster with Silicon Valley’s commodification of our thoughts and feelings, and its reliance on keeping us jonesing for distraction. (In the 2020 documentary “The Social Dilemma,” tech experts who had a hand in building these structures sounded an alarm over what they’d done.)Bo Burnham skewers the internet’s effects on humanity and the planet throughout his Netflix special “Inside.” NetflixIn his sobering song “That Funny Feeling” which has more than 6.7 million views on YouTube alone, Burnham sums it up in one lyric: “The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door.”“Twenty-thousand years of this,” he goes on, “seven more to go.” Most likely a nod to the Climate Clock, which displays messages like “the Earth has a deadline.”At the start of Jim Gaffigan’s new Netflix comedy special, “Comedy Monster,” he responds to opening applause by saying, “That almost makes me forget we’re all going to be dead in a week. I’m kidding. It’ll probably be a month” — seemingly referencing both the pandemic and general vibe.And “Squid Game,” a wildly violent, rich-eat-the-poor satire from South Korea that was a global smash for Netflix last year, while not about climate change, explored many of the same themes as “Don’t Look Up” — wealth inequality, greed, desensitization and voyeurism — flicking at the same anxieties and offering a similar catharsis.As with “Squid Game, ” some critics were lukewarm about “Don’t Look Up” — for being too obvious, shallow and shouty — but many climate scientists were moved and appreciative. In therapy, we’re often told that the best way to address our demons is to speak them out loud, using words that don’t skirt the issues or make excuses for them. Otherwise, they will never seem real, thus can never be dealt with. In “Don’t Look Up,” most people don’t snap out of their daze until the comet is finally in physical view. Do the popularity of shows and movies that don’t mince messages reveal a growing readiness to bring our common dread out of the deep space of our subconscious — to see it, to say it, to hear it?We’ve long been enveloped by a 24-hour news cycle that unfurls in tandem with social media feeds that give near equal weight to all events: Clarendon-tinged vacation photos, celebrity gossip, snappy memes and motivational quotes are delivered as bite-size information flotsam that sails alongside news of political turmoil, mass shootings, social injustice and apocalyptic revelations about our planet.“Squid Game,” a global streaming sensation last year, explores themes of wealth inequality, greed and desensitization.NetflixAs Burnham, personifying the internet in his song “Welcome to the Internet,” with more than 62 million YouTube views, asks: “Could I interest you in everything all of the time?”Next month, Hulu will premiere the mini-series “Pam & Tommy,” a fictionalized account of the release of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s personal sex tape, which was stolen from their home in 1995 and sold on what was then called the “World Wide Web.” The show presents the tape as helping the web become more mainstream by appealing to base human compulsions — an on-ramp to what would lie ahead.The pandemic has sent us further down this rabbit hole in pursuit of distraction, information, connection, all the while we try to shake that sense of impending doom.At one point in “Inside,” while curled up in the fetal position on the floor under a blanket surrounded by jumbles of cords — an image worthy of a pandemic-era time capsule — Burnham, his eyes closed, ruminates on the mess we’re in.I don’t know about you guys, but, you know, I’ve been thinking recently that, you know, maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit — you know, maybe that was a bad call by us. Maybe the flattening of the entire subjective human experience into a lifeless exchange of value that benefits nobody, except for, you know, a handful of bug-eyed salamanders in Silicon Valley — maybe that as a way of life forever, maybe that’s not good.In “Don’t Look Up,” the chief “bug-eyed salamander,” a Steve Jobs-like character and the third richest man on the planet, is almost completely responsible for allowing the comet to collide with Earth; his 11th-hour attempt to plumb the rock for trillions of dollars worth of materials fails. In the end, he and a handful of haves escape on a spaceship, leaving the remaining billions of have-nots to die.Juxtaposed with Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men on Earth, launching into space on his own rocket last year — a trip back-dropped by pandemic devastation (and a passing blip on the cultural radar) — is beyond parody … almost.Near the end of “Don’t Look Up,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, an awkward astronomer turned media darling, delivers an emotional monologue. Staring into the camera, he implores: “What have we done to ourselves? How do we fix it?” Funny. We were just asking ourselves the same thing. More

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      ‘Munich: The Edge of War’ Review: ‘Well Navigated, Sir’ (Not!)

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      With clenched jaws and furrowed brows, this plodding procedural attempts to glorify Neville Chamberlain, played here by Jeremy Irons.Shortly after “Munich: The Edge of War” opens, a young couple have an anniversary lunch at a restaurant. It’s 1938, and the husband, who works in the British Foreign Service, tells his wife that Hitler is threatening to invade Czechoslovakia, and if that happens Britain and France will be obliged to respond militarily. Just as the husband delivers this sober news, the wife — wearing an indulgent smile and the openly bored look of someone listening to the weather report — perks up. The waiter has brought their Chablis finally.Unlike that wife, Hitler at least gets some grudging respect and decent dialogue in this potboiler about the diplomatic efforts to stop Germany. Based on the best seller by the British novelist Robert Harris, the movie weds fact with fiction for a story about estranged friends, Hugh (George MacKay) and Paul (Jannis Niewöhner), occupying opposite side of the geopolitical divide. Hugh works at 10 Downing Street and is married to the aforementioned cliché, Pamela (Jessica Brown Findley). Paul serves in the foreign ministry in Berlin and has a tart, politically astute lover, Helen (Sandra Hüller).For the most part, this movie comes across as a feature-length attempt to glorify Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who engaged in the much-debated diplomatic strategy of appeasement in the run-up to World War II. Played by a sadly juiceless Jeremy Irons in funereal mode, the Chamberlain here is a quietly heroic figure who perceptively negotiates with Hitler to avoid another war. Yet while Chamberlain is the story’s champion — a noble defender, historical bone of contention and revisionist argument rolled into one phlegmatic figure — the movie’s more energetic and visually engaging heroic duties have been relegated to Hugh, Paul and the supporting players in their orbits.The movie opens with a glimpse of the good old days at Oxford when Hugh and Paul were in love with the same Jewish free spirit, Lena (Liv Lisa Fries). Years later, Hugh is in obsequious functionary mode at Downing Street and hovering attentively over Chamberlain (“well navigated, sir”) while Paul is busily conspiring to boot out Hitler (a spidery and strange Ulrich Matthes). For much of what follows, Hugh and Paul occupy their respective narrative territories. As the plot thickens, the filmmakers — the movie was written by Ben Power and directed by Christian Schwochow — try to build tension by cutting back and forth between the two lines of action that eventually, predictably converge.All this editing busywork doesn’t help enliven “The Edge of War,” a plodding bureaucratic procedural that features many, many characters strategizing in various spaces with furrowed brows and clenched jaws, mostly in relentless medium close-up. Every so often, these talking heads prove they have bodies and rush or just walk down a corridor and into an office, car or plane, where they continue to scheme, furrow and clench. On occasion, someone has a drink or makes love or goes outside for a breather. In Britain, ordinary citizens are either agitating for peace or preparing for war; in Munich, German soldiers salute one another, hailing Hitler in front of shop windows defaced with anti-Semitic threats.As the story grinds to its spoiler-free finale, it becomes increasingly clear that the movie would have been vastly improved if the filmmakers had ditched the dueling band o’ brothers story line and instead focused on Paul and his efforts to assassinate Hitler, always a surefire audience pleaser. Hugh is largely a reactive character — a minor planet orbiting Chamberlain’s fading star — and enough of a dreary presence and conceit that you start to feel grudging sympathy for his ridiculous wife, if not the people who put such snortingly terrible dialogue in her mouth. For his part, MacKay is playing a witness to history, which may explain all his energetic eye widening; too bad the character has no detectable inner life.Paul is the better, more effective figure partly because he faces the more obvious and immediate threat, one that’s largely conveyed through Hitler’s paranoia (and, well, Hitler himself), Nazi iconography and your own knowledge of history rather than the reams of dialogue or the filmmaking. This danger gives Paul’s part of the story juice as does Niewöhner’s fine impression of a pressure cooker leaking steam. Adding much-needed interest too are the women in Paul’s life. They’re stereotypes and certainly objectionable — Lena is more symbol than person — but at least they don’t read as insults to half the world’s population. As Helen, Hüller may not have much to do, but her vitality and intelligence are irrepressible.Munich: The Edge of WarRated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Donkeyhead’ Review: You Really Can’t Go Home Anymore

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      A writer living in Canada finds herself back home with her Punjabi immigrant parents.It’s going on seven years since Mona (Agam Darshi), a failed Punjabi Canadian writer in her mid-30s, moved back to her childhood home to care for her father (Marvin Ishmael), who has cancer. When his health deteriorates and he lapses into a coma, Mona begins to unravel as she realizes his death would remove her only meaningful purpose in life.Written and directed by Darshi, “Donkeyhead” is a kind of coming-of-age film, only its heroine is an extremely late bloomer. When her accomplished siblings — Rup (Huse Madhavji), Sandy (Sandy Sidhu), and Parm (Stephen Lobo), Mona’s twin brother — come home, the aimlessness of Mona’s existence is thrown into sharp relief.“Donkeyhead” attempts to build out complex family dynamics with humor and an eye toward Sikh immigrant culture — a nosy aunt transforms Mona’s home into a reception space for relatives to pay their respects to the dying patriarch.But Darshi’s script lacks flair, and often resorts to cringe-inducing clichés, as when Mona whisks her stuffy siblings away to a local bar and initiates a singalong to the Canadian national anthem. Secrets emerge as tensions come to a head over dad’s will and the fate of the family home, and — predictably — Mona’s siblings aren’t as put together as they seem.The black sheep of the family who outwardly resists Sikh tradition, Mona is also in an affair with a married man, Brent (Kim Coates), who — like her father — is yet another obviously tenuous source of comfort destined to slip away. Despite her minor rebellions, Mona remains a frustratingly opaque character; a stereotypically troubled woman whose eventual awakening merits a shrug at most.DonkeyheadNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Definition Please’ Review: What Does It All Mean?

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      A grown-up spelling bee star who never left her hometown tries to make sense of the conflicts and challenges in her family.“Definition Please” begins with wee Monica Chowdry winning the Scribbs National Spelling Bee. She claims the title after using up all the time-buying requests allowed, including the one that gives the actor-writer-director Sujata Day’s sincere, Bollywood-winking film its title.Turns out Monica’s ailing mom has been watching video of her little one triumph yet again. Grown-up Monica (Day) lives with her ailing mother in Greensburg, Pa. Monica has the smarts to secure a clinical research position, which she does early in the movie. So why is this minor celebrity with the major vocabulary sticking around?She has her reasons: to care for her mother (Anna Khaja); to hang out with her bestie, Krista (Lalaine), a wisecracking bartender; to coach future spelling bee champs. But mostly, she’s stuck. Will the return of her older brother, Sonny, nudge her?Ritesh Rajan brings overgrown puppy energy to Sonny, who returns home to mark the one-year anniversary of their father’s death. Mother Jaya hopes he’ll stay. That is the last thing Monica wants.More touching than riotous, “Definition Please” proves to be impressively nuanced once it begins revealing why Monica is so prickly around Sonny: He has bipolar disorder. Day depicts Monica’s frustrations, fears and resentments with a patience and depth that feels true to the experience of loving a sibling who is struggling with mental illness.Even more convincing is Khaja’s warm portrayal of a mother who needs her kids to get along. Her machinations may be the stuff of comedy, but her frightened yet steadfast approach to Sonny at his worst is a thing of tender beauty.Definition PleaseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Jeremy Irons Is Transported by Renzo Piano and a Dog Named Smudge

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      The star of the new Netflix movie ‘Munich — The Edge of War’ discusses his first Broadway gig and the connection between Irish fiddling and jazz.“Am I talking too much?” Jeremy Irons asked. “I tend to get a bit loquacious.”With that voice — you know the one — he can talk as long as he wants.Irons was calling from his home in Oxfordshire, England, to discuss “Munich — The Edge of War” and his portrayal of the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.Based on Robert Harris’s historical thriller, the Netflix movie follows four frantic days leading up to the 1938 Munich conference, where world leaders tried to avert war by allowing Hitler to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, which had a large German population. In Munich, Chamberlain also signed an agreement between Britain and Nazi Germany that he said would ensure “peace for our time.”“I love reappraisals of history, and Robert was very keen to try to clear the name, to a certain extent, of Chamberlain,” Irons said. “I think we do understand that Chamberlain was a man between a rock and hard place at that time.”After reflecting on his own history and the sources of his contentment, Irons has, in recent years, chosen to work less and revel more in immediate pleasures.“I act to live, I don’t live to act,” he said.In his 50s, as leading-man roles waned, he found himself “behaving not terribly well because I was bored,” Irons, now 73, said. So he channeled his creative energy into the restoration of his 15th-century Kilcoe Castle in West Cork, Ireland. Now he is rebuilding a cottage on an island about 100 yards offshore that he occasionally swims to.“I used to think, when I was a young man, that the epitome of wisdom and what I should aim for in my life is to be able to sit beneath a tree and be entirely happy,” Irons said. “And I found the tree — it’s next to this cottage. And I sit under it, and I look at the view and look at the land around me, and I’m entirely happy.”Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Noah’s Flood” by Benjamin Britten I used to play the violin in the school orchestra. We got together with all the other school orchestras around, and we went into the amazing Gothic abbey in the middle of the town, and some professional singers came down to play the leads. And we rehearsed for three days “Noah’s Flood,” with the kids playing the little animals getting onto Noah’s ark. One morning I walked out of the abbey, and it hit me like a thunderbolt: “Where am I? Where have I been? I’ve been somewhere that I want to get back to.” It was the first time I had that thought, and it’s stayed with me. And that, I suppose, is why I shall never stop working. I’ll always keep looking for the opportunity to go into the foreign land.2. David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” I remember seeing “Lawrence” when I was about 12. I think I was mesmerized by Peter O’Toole and by his blue eyes. But I was also mesmerized by the scale of the picture and the great emotion within the picture, and I thought, “I’d love to tell stories that way.”3. “Brideshead Revisited” “Brideshead” was a sort of turning point. Then, of course, it was a great success and helped me get out of what I call the gravitational field of English actors. I was doing plays in the West End with my name above the title, but the way you got your name known at that time in England was really on the television. They said, “We’d love you to play Sebastian.” And I said, “No, I want to play Charles.” I’d actually just played a rather similar character to Sebastian in “Love for Lydia,” in that he loved his mother too much, he drank too much and he fell off a bridge in Episode 8. I looked at Charles, and I thought, “Now, he’s a really interesting guy, because he’s so typically English. I know all about that. I’ve been educated to be that man.”4. The Cusack family I’m an Anglo-Saxon, middle-class boy. I come from good, boring English stock. And it makes my wife [the actress Sinead Cusack] terribly cross when I say this, but I love breeding dogs, and I know that crossbreeds are so much more interesting. And I felt I needed a bit of crossbreeding. I needed a bit of Celt.And so when I had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Miss Cusack, with all her color and history, I was joining in this artistic dynasty. I began to enter that Celtic twilight, that way of life, which I have wallowed in since.5. Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” I got a request to start rehearsal of this play in London called “The Real Thing” by Tom Stoppard, whom I’d never met. And I read the play and thought, “Good God, he knows me. This is me on the page.” But I couldn’t do it because I was doing this film “Betrayal.” Then I heard news through the grapevine that Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline had come to London and had gone to look at “The Real Thing.” And I thought, “Bugger that for an idea.” So I called my American agent, Robbie Lantz, and I said, “Robbie, you’ve never done anything for me so far. Now, if you don’t get me ‘The Real Thing,’ I’m leaving you.”After a month or two, I was asked to play it opposite Meryl. But then Meryl, like she always does, she decided not to do it. And Glenn Close did it. So that was my introduction to New York and to Broadway, playing a part which I was made to play.6. West Cork, Ireland David Puttnam, the film producer, had moved to just outside Skibbereen, and as I sat in his dining room, I thought, “I’m home.” I travel so much, and I’d never had that feeling before. Why did I feel I was home? Because I suppose I was brought up on the Isle of Wight, where the sea is very much part of the land. West Cork, even more so. There’s always a boat in the farmyard. It has, historically, a slightly anarchic element. It’s a place of hunting, a place of music and of conversation. And I found myself settling into West Cork with an absolute, delightful happiness.7. T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” The “Four Quartets” is his greatest work. I fell in love with its complexity and its simpleness. It made me realize that the way to hear poetry is to hear it aloud. Josephine Hart, who wrote “Damage,” started a series of poetry readings at the British Library, and she would ask actors to read. She had started giving me Eliot. Eliot is a very complicated poet, and I read it without a lot of preparation, on a bit of a wing and prayer. Valerie Eliot, who was his widow, came up to me and said, “I think you’re today’s voice of Eliot. I think you should record his work.” So now I have recorded all his work with the BBC.8. Martin Hayes and the Gloaming They made a television series in Ireland and asked six middle-aged personalities if they would learn something new. And they asked me, Would I learn Irish fiddle? Martin gave me these lessons, and this man is an absolute magician. The first time we met, I started playing the “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” by Handel. He stopped me after about 15 seconds. “Wait, wait, wait. Is that the note you wanted?” I said, “Well, that’s how it’s written.” He said, “No, no, no, no. The music’s yours. It comes out of you.” And I realized at that moment that Irish music is jazz.9. Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia I had a period when I thought I was going to have to stop being an actor. One of the things I thought I might do instead was to be an architect. And I got to know Renzo Piano, who has become a great friend. He allows his imagination to travel without embarrassment. This particular building, which he built for the New Caledonians as an arts center, is just stunning because not only is it dazzling, but it comes out of the place.10. His dog Smudge Smudge, I just need. I got her from the Battersea Dogs Home when she was eight weeks old. She is now 7, lying at my feet with great patience. And she’s a very important part of my work and my life because she gives me respite. She reminds me it’s only a [expletive] film and that actually a walk or dinner is much more important. She’s extremely tactile, which is lovely because I’m quite tactile. And now, when you aren’t allowed to be tactile with other people, it’s wonderful. You’re still allowed to be tactile with your dog. So I’m able to cuddle her without getting into any trouble. More

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      Animated Movies for Adults That Are Generating Oscar Buzz

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      A handful of animated features gaining attention this awards season take a more mature approach.Since the inception of the best animated feature Oscar category in 2001, the Academy has sporadically celebrated thematically mature works alongside box-office powerhouses aimed at audiences of all ages. These more adult-oriented titles are often hand drawn productions conceived abroad in languages other than English and without the involvement of large corporations.Some of these notable candidates have included the Cuba-set romance “Chico and Rita,” the poetic, French-language drama on fate, “I Lost My Body,” and an adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel “Persepolis.”Their recognition at the Oscars helps to push beyond any assumptions that the medium’s sole virtue is to serve as a vehicle for children-oriented narratives.It also evinces that the studio-dominated American animation industry seldom finances this type of audacious filmmaking. One exception that earned an Academy nod is Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion meditation on loneliness and companionship, “Anomalisa.”The current batch of contenders vying for a slot among the final five nominees showcases multiple examples of storytelling with emotional substance tackling grown-up matters with idiosyncratic visual flair.Previously nominated for the fantastical family saga “Mirai,” the Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda plugs back into his interest in the online lives we lead — a topic he undertook in “Summer Wars” (2009) — with the soul-stirring, music-fueled, digital fairy tale “Belle” (in theaters Jan. 14).Borrowing tropes from Disney’s 1991 “Beauty and the Beast,” but repurposed to fit his vibrant aesthetic, Hosoda builds a virtual universe known as U, where people coexist in the form of bright-colored avatars tailored to their physical traits and personalities.Inside this intangible realm, the apprehensive teenager Suzu (voiced by Kaho Nakamura) transforms into a hyper-confident pop star. But when a troubled user, an enigmatic cloaked dragon, begins wreaking havoc, reality bleeds into this seemingly idyllic escape. The rousing action, awe-inspiring world construction and entrancing soundtrack belie tougher subjects.With affecting gravitas, “Belle” confronts the lapse in communication between parents and children, as well as the neglect and abuse committed against young people by their guardians. Still, rather than demonizing the interactions we have via our internet personas, Hosoda presents this alternative mode of engagement as an avenue for sincere connection.Conversely, the fascinatingly immersive mountain climbing drama “The Summit of the Gods” (streaming on Netflix) maps a story of dual obsession that unfolds entirely in animated iterations of existing locations: Mount Everest, the Alps, Tokyo, all of which are no less remarkable in painterly renderings. The French-produced film (based on the manga by Jiro Taniguchi) portrays the strenuous and perilous activity like a spiritual pursuit.Hellbent on reaching the world’s highest peak, the reclusive climber Habu (voiced by Éric Herson-Macarel) has spent years preparing to accomplish it alone. At the same time, the photojournalist Fukamachi (Damien Boisseau) is on a quest to find the camera that belonged to the real-life mountaineer George Mallory, who died on the north face of Everest. Their separate desires soon become inextricably intertwined.A scene from “The Summit of the Gods.”NetflixBefore making “Summit,” the director Patrick Imbert had served as the animation director on hyper stylized projects such as the acclaimed fable “Ernest and Celestine.” But here, his first solo directorial effort, there’s a more austere approach to the character design to make its exploration of the human longing for the unknown, and not the stylization, the focus. Though most of us may never understand what compels people to risk it all at such altitudes, “Summit” attempts to get us as close to that zenith as possible through sensory impressions.Staying in our sufficiently complicated real world, two films this year reinforce a trend that points to animation as a route to understanding the cultural and geopolitical intricacies of Afghanistan. These entries join recent standouts like Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar nominated “The Breadwinner” and the movingly bleak French title “The Swallows of Kabul.”First, there’s the already multi-awarded refugee odyssey “Flee” by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, a nonfiction piece tracing a young man’s treacherous trajectory from 1980s Kabul in turmoil to the safety of his adoptive home in Copenhagen. The subject, Amin (a pseudonym used to protect his identity), befriended the filmmaker when they were both teenagers.Given the severity of the circumstances depicted and that they’re based on factual events, “Flee” calls to mind Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir,” an animated documentary from Israel that was nominated for the best international feature Oscar in 2009.A scene from Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s film “Flee.”Final Cut for RealAnimation empowered Rasmussen and his team to materialize Amin’s hazier, most traumatic memories in lyrical fashion and let viewers into the past not only as it happened, but also as he experienced it, with a vividly resonant immediacy. Underlying his hazardous passage is Amin’s concealment of his sexual orientation.“Flee” (in theaters) would make Oscar history if it received nominations in all three categories of animation, documentary and international feature (representing Denmark).Its boundary-blurring presence this awards season, having already won the best nonfiction film award from the New York Film Critics Circle and the best animation award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, provides a prime case study for animation’s merit and effectiveness across genres and formats.A scene from “My Sunny Maad,” directed by Michaela Pavlatova.Negativ FilmThe other hard-hitting account that takes place in Afghanistan, though decades later, “My Sunny Maad,” received a surprise nomination from the embattled Golden Globes. The seasoned Czech animator Michaela Pavlatova, who was Academy Award-nominated for her 1993 short film “Words, Words, Words,” here makes her first animated feature with this domestic drama based on a novel by Petra Prochazkova.The Czech student Herra (voiced by Zuzana Stivinova) moves to Kabul after marrying an Afghan man. Unable to have children, they adopt the timid orphan Maad (Shahid Maqsoodi) to form a loving nucleus, yet the household dynamics with extended family members, as well as growing national unrest, continuously put strain on their marriage.Though so far it has only had a limited awards qualifying run in theaters, this unsparingly poignant film warrants major attention. Blending subdued magical realism with unfiltered harsh truths, Pavlatova addresses the vulnerable position of women in a strictly patriarchal society.While the previously mentioned contenders are international productions, two rare American independent titles also delve into adult themes: Dash Shaw’s zany adventure “Cryptozoo” (streaming on Hulu) and Morgan Galen King and Philip Gelatt’s gruesome fantasy epic “The Spine of Night” (available on demand).A scene from “Cryptozoo,” directed by Dash Shaw.Magnolia PicturesAn unassumingly profound blast of invention, “Cryptozoo” centers on numerous mythological creatures, known as cryptids, being haunted both by those who wish to exhibit them in an amusement park and by the U.S. military to deploy as weapons.Both “Cryptozoo” and “Spine” are welcome additions to the landscape of mature animated features stateside that for long has had few fiercely autonomous role models, like the veteran animator Bill Plympton and the prolific Don Hertzfeldt, who have managed to retain full creative control of their idiosyncratic comedies by working with limited resources.Whether it means benefiting from European state funds (“The Summit of the Gods, “Flee,” “My Sunny Maad”), establishing a self-sufficient company (like Hosoda’s Studio Chizu) or becoming cleverly frugal to sustain a career, the common denominator between these films appears to be that they exist outside the systems that hinder animation’s full potential. 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      ‘Cheer’ Is Back. Here’s Where the Jerry Harris Case Stands.

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      The Emmy-winning Netflix documentary series returns for a second season on Wednesday without its breakout star, who is awaiting trial in a case involving child sexual abuse imagery.Last month, Netflix announced a surprise second season of its Emmy-winning documentary series “Cheer,” which follows a national champion cheerleading team from Navarro College, a small-town Texas community college.While the new season shifts the focus to a fresh group of cheerleaders, one recent graduate remains in the news: Jerry Harris, the Navarro cheerleader whose “mat talk” and constant optimism in Season 1 made him a talk-show darling, has cast a shadow over the show. Twin teenage boys sued Harris in September 2020, accusing him of sexual abuse. He was also arrested that month on federal child pornography charges and remains in custody.The nine-episode season addresses the case from the start and includes an hourlong episode featuring on-camera interviews with Harris’s former cheerleading teammates from Navarro; the team’s coach, Monica Aldama; the brothers who are suing Harris; their mother; and the USA Today reporters who broke the news.Here’s what to know about the accusations against Harris, who is now 22, the status of his case and where Season 2 picks up.Jerry Harris in “Cheer.”NetflixWhat is Jerry Harris accused of?In September 2020, the twin brothers, who were then 14 years old, filed a lawsuit in Texas accusing Harris of sending them sexually explicit messages via text and social media, demanding they send him nude photos of themselves, and, while at a cheerleading competition in 2019, asking one of them for oral sex. Harris befriended the boys when they were 13 and he was 19, USA Today reported. Harris, of Naperville, Ill., was arrested by the F.B.I. in September 2020 and charged with production of child pornography.In a voluntary interview with the F.B.I. after his arrest, Harris acknowledged that he had exchanged sexually explicit photos on Snapchat with at least 10 to 15 people he knew were minors; had sex with a 15-year-old at a cheerleading competition in 2019; and paid a 17-year-old to send him nude photos.In the months that followed, federal agents interviewed other minors who said they had had relationships with Harris. In December 2020, they filed additional charges against him including four counts of sexual exploitation of children, one count of receiving and attempting to receive child pornography, one count of traveling with the attempt to engage in sexual conduct with a minor and one count of enticement, for a total of seven counts related to five minor boys. The indictment says these acts took place between August 2017 and August 2020 in Florida, Illinois and Texas. If convicted, Harris could face 15 to 30 years in federal prison.How has Harris responded to the accusations?In December 2020, he pleaded not guilty to the multiple felony charges. Harris’s lawyer, Todd Pugh, did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.Where does the new season of “Cheer” pick up?When we left the Navarro College team at the end of the first season, it was after they had won the 2019 junior college division of the National Cheerleaders Association and National Dance Alliance Collegiate National Championship in Daytona, Fla. Cue a “Today” show invite, an “Ellen DeGeneres Show” appearance and an “S.N.L.” parody.Season 2 began filming in January 2020 but came to a halt amid the pandemic shutdowns. The 2020 national championship was canceled because of Covid. Filming resumed in September 2020, tracking the team’s journey to the 2021 championship in April. (We won’t spoil it here, but if you want to know how they fared, well, we won’t stop you.)From left, Grant Lockaby, Lexi Brumback, La’Darius Marshall and Morgan Simianer in Season 2 of “Cheer.”NetflixThis season, the series follows the new cheer team as they get ready to compete against the rival Trinity Valley Community College. It also follows a few cast members from Season 1 (Gabi Butler, La’Darius Marshall, Lexi Brumback and Morgan Simianer all return).It addresses new challenges the team has faced since it claimed the 2019 title, including the departure of the head coach, Aldama, to compete on “Dancing With the Stars” in Los Angeles. She made it to Week 7 out of 11, but was 1,500 miles away from her squad when the allegations against Harris became public in September 2020.How does “Cheer” address the allegations?After Harris’s absence is mentioned in Episode 1, the show devotes almost the entire hour of Episode 5 to examining the case. It includes interviews with the twins, who discuss their decision to go public and the fallout from the accusations.The episode also includes interviews with Harris’s former teammates, who struggle to reconcile the bubbly, positive cheerleader they thought they knew with the crimes he is accused of committing. Aldama reveals that Harris wrote her a letter in which he said he hoped to become a motivational speaker one day.The one person we don’t hear from is Harris. In the press notes for the series, the “Cheer” director, Greg Whiteley, said he hadn’t talked to him, adding that Harris’s lawyers had prevented it. Netflix said Harris’s lawyers declined to comment for the series.Where is Harris now?Harris has been held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago since his September 2020 arrest after a judge suggested he would pose a danger to the public if released. No trial date has yet been set. A case status hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. More

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      Maggie Gyllenhaal Has Dangerous Ideas About Directing

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      Maggie Gyllenhaal has never shied away from difficult roles. The actress has been pushing boundaries for years with performances of complicated characters like an assistant playing sadomasochistic games with her boss (“Secretary”), the daughter of an arms dealer caught up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (“The Honorable Woman”) and a sex worker in 1970s New York (“The Deuce”).But it’s the job of director and screenwriter of “The Lost Daughter,” an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same title, that may be her riskiest role yet.The film, set on a sun-drenched Greek island, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a middle-aged literature professor on a solo working vacation who gets entangled with a young mother, Nina, played by Dakota Johnson. As she becomes more involved with Nina and her sprawling family, Leda’s past and the decisions she made as a younger woman seep into the present, with strange and at times deeply disturbing results.Like the novel, the film (which begins streaming Dec. 31 on Netflix) confronts complicated questions that women face at different stages of their lives. At its center is the intensely fraught push and pull of motherhood, but it also touches on ambition, sacrifice, aging and art.Already, the film, which won best screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, has attracted awards-season attention, including a raft of nominations from critics’ groups and others. Last month the film won four Gotham Awards, including best feature. Over a long lunch in the West Village, Gyllenhaal — dressed in various shades of appropriately Aegean blue — talked about being a female director today, taboos around motherhood and what it means to translate Ferrante to film. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Dakota Johnson, left, and Olivia Colman in “The Lost Daughter.”Yannis Drakoulidis/NetflixWhat drew you to Ferrante?I started with the Neapolitan novels. She was talking about things I had almost never heard expressed before. Oh my God, this woman is so messed up, and then within 10 seconds of that, thinking I really relate to her, and so am I so messed up or is this something that many people feel but that we’re not talking about? I found it ultimately both disturbing but also really comforting because if someone else has written it down, you think, oh, I’m not alone in what I thought was a secret anxiety or terror, or even the other side of the spectrum, the intensity of joy and connection.Then I read “The Lost Daughter” and I thought, what if instead of all of us having that experience of feeling alone in our rooms, what if I could create a situation where it was communal, where these things were actually spoken out loud?The film shows the joy of being a mother but also the frustrations. Why do you think it’s so rare to see that tension onscreen?I think it’s a combination of two things. Partly there hasn’t been a lot of space for women to express themselves, so an honest feminine expression is unusual. But there’s also a kind of cultural agreement not to talk about these things because we all have mothers. We’re all like, I don’t want my mother to have been ambivalent.I just tried to be as honest as I possibly could be. This is about normalizing a massive spectrum of feelings. I think especially for young Leda and for Nina, their desire — their massive intellectual desire, artistic desire, physical desire — it’s bigger than what they’ve been told they’re allowed to have or need, and I definitely relate to that.The scenes with the young children are so powerful. How did they relate to your own relationship with your children?Bianca, one of the daughters of young Leda, she’s like a mind matched for her mother. My children are like that, too. They are the most beautiful challenge to me. Like, wow. I can’t believe you understood that and saw that.Movies don’t often explore the frustrations of motherhood,  Gyllenhaal said, because “we’re all like, I don’t want my mother to have been ambivalent.”Daniel Arnold for The New York TimesThe film can be seen in many ways as a horror film. Was that a choice?I wanted it to be a thriller. The book is not really a thriller, but I amped that up because I thought it would ultimately give me more artistic freedom. I wanted to even dare myself to move it into horror, a horror movie about the internal workings of her mind. She’s not bad, she’s like you. And I liked the idea of having a classic structure to hang my hat on. I have found in the past that I get the most freedom of expression as an actress when there is really clear structure.I’m not sure I’ll do that next time. I was on the jury at Cannes this year, probably two or three weeks after I finished my final mix. Looking at some really, really interesting films, I realized, oh, you can do whatever you want if you’re following something truthful and I don’t think I knew that.What was the hardest part about adapting?I found that adapting actually used a similar muscle to the one that I have used as an actress in terms of taking a text, whether it’s excellent or has got problems, and figuring out the essence of this piece of material. There are some things that are literal, but they’re so strange. Like the line, “I’m an unnatural mother.” That’s just 100 percent Ferrante, a straight lift, but a lot of people told me, take that line out. I also really did do what [Ferrante permitted] and changed many, many things but I really believe that the script and the film are really in conversation with the book.Leda is a writer, and showing her ambition in her early years is a big part of the movie. Did you see “Bergman Island” this year? Both movies wrestle with the question of whether you can fully be a woman and an artist at the same time.I do believe there’s such a thing as women’s writing and women’s filmmaking. There are really interesting feminist women who do not agree with me. I think that when women express themselves honestly, it looks differently than when men express themselves honestly. This is really dangerous to talk about. When I am let loose, given a little bit of money and space to tell the story I want to tell, it’s about motherhood. It is about the domestic, and it does include a lot of scenes in the kitchen. Can stories about the domestic really be seen as high art? Because to me it’s an opera. I do not come from women whose apron strings were tied to the kitchen. My mom is a professional person [Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal is a screenwriter and director], my grandmother was a pediatrician in the ’40s and my great-aunt was a lawyer. I’m educated and I’ve got a professional life, and yet my identification as a mother is a massive part of me.What was it like to work with Olivia Colman?Olivia really didn’t like to talk about much. I wonder, actually, if it’s because it was relatively recently that she got power as an actress, if she feels similarly to the way I feel as an actress, which is it’s very rare that somebody values my ideas. They will say they do, but people are irritated by actresses with a lot of ideas. I’m not an idiot, and so I mostly keep them to myself. I remember asking Olivia if she likes to rehearse, and she said, I don’t, actually, and I totally relate to that.Gyllenhaal on the set of “The Lost Daughter.” She said that as an actress, she found it “very rare that somebody values my ideas.”Yannis Drakoulidis/NetflixWho inspires you as a director?Fellini and Lucrecia Martel, who is also not ever literal. I love Claire Denis, I’ve talked a lot about Jane Campion, and David Lynch. And then I didn’t really work with him, but I did a weeklong reading of a play with Mike Nichols. He loved his actors, and he taught me. I remember reading [in the recent biography “Mike Nichols: A Life”] about him saying, I’m so sorry if you don’t want to shoot “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in black and white. Then you should find another director. I’m going to leave. There were a couple of times with this film where I had to say this is wrong. We were going to shoot in New Jersey, but that was wrong. I’m like, I don’t know what to tell you.The theme of translation is obviously important to the characters. Leda translates Italian literature, but also, you’re translating Ferrante. What does the role of translator mean to you?There’s this little section in Rachel Cusk’s book “Kudos,” which I’ve pulled up a few times because I’ve been thinking about adaptation in general. Here is the quote: “I translated it carefully and with great caution as if it were something fragile that I might mistakenly break or kill.” I loved that. She’s saying when I read your book something was communicated to me that was so valuable that I had never heard spoken out loud before that electrified me, that made me understand something about myself, and I had to hold this idea in my hands and carefully bring it over to the other side. More