Nickel Boys (Movie)

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    ‘Nickel Boys’ Review: Childhood’s Brutal End

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    This visually inventive adaptation of a Colson Whitehead novel follows two boys at an abusive school in Jim Crow-era Florida.The first time that you clearly and truly see the teenage heartbreaker in “Nickel Boys,” he is walking up to a new friend. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) has just arrived at the fictional reform school referenced in the title when he sits down opposite Turner (Brandon Wilson) at a communal table. They’re in a large dining room crowded with children of varying sizes, shapes and bearings, and while some seem to be on the cusp of manhood, many look too obscenely young to be here. Their chatter and laughter obscures the horrors of this place. You only need to look closer to see that some of these children are already ghosts.Different types of kids populate RaMell Ross’s painful, boldly expressionistic adaptation of the 2019 Colson Whitehead novel, “The Nickel Boys.” The children at the school are by turns determined, defeated and stunned, almost hollowed out. Ross cradles them all in a soft, beautiful light. With great sensitivity to the power of the cinematic image — and to the history of abject representations of Black humanity — he keeps on cradling them. Even when the story turns unbearably cruel, Ross insists on beauty as an imperative; it is, among other things, a rebuke to the annihilating ugliness of Nickel and to those who oblige its horrors.Elwood arrives at the Nickel Academy, as it’s called, after he’s unfairly caught up in an injustice. It’s 1962 when a sympathetic teacher Mr. Hill (Jimmie Fails) taps Elwood — a sober, studious 16-year-old high-school student in Tallahassee, Fla. — to take a class at a local college. On his first day to the college, Elwood inadvertently hitches a ride with a car thief. Wrongly implicated in the crime, he is taken from the home he shares with his loving grandmother, Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who, with his parents long gone, is raising him on her own. He’s subsequently sent to Nickel, where his story begins in earnest.“A prison for children” is how a 1903 report referred to the Jim Crow-era emblem, the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which had been founded just three years earlier and would inspire Whitehead’s novel. There, for decade after decade, hundreds of ostensibly troubled boys, most Black, were confined, worked, terrorized and killed. (Among their offenses: “incorrigibility.”) Some disappeared. About 100 children are known to have died at the school from fire, disease, blunt-force trauma and gunshot wounds. After Florida shut down the school in 2011 following several investigations, one by the Justice Department, the state ordered a separate inquiry that led to the excavation of 55 unmarked graves.The movie, written by Ross and Joslyn Barnes, adheres to the novel’s narrative arc even as it condenses the story. In vivid, dreamy visual bursts, Ross glides over Elwood’s early childhood and explores his growing interest in the civil rights movement, which he carries to Nickel. There, Elwood settles into the racially segregated quarters, surveys the scene — he notes the Black students’ tattered clothing — and meets Turner. He also experiences Nickel’s culture of violence when, after defending another kid from bullies, some adult employees take him to a building called the White House. Inside this hell, he is so brutally flogged by a white supervisor (Hamish Linklater as Spencer) that he ends up in the school hospital.Ross takes an oblique approach to this scene, using narrative ellipses to avoid making a spectacle out of sadistic white violence on Black bodies. To that end, as he does from the very beginning of the movie, he shows you only what Elwood sees, a strategy that pulls you to the character and which Ross sustains for an unusually long time for a commercial movie. Through Elwood’s darting eyes and keen ears, you see and hear what he does. In the White House, you hear the rhythm of the strap and the thunderous roar of a fan that never fully obscures the children’s cries. You see a light, a Bible, another boy’s hand clutching a frantically jittering leg. You also see blood on Spencer’s shirt but not how it got there.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gotham Awards Go to ‘A Different Man’ and ‘Sing Sing’

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      The kickoff to awards season has a mixed record but can help lift small films like the two surprise winners.“A Different Man,” a dark indie comedy starring Sebastian Stan, was the surprise best-feature winner at the 34th annual Gotham Awards, which took place Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.Directed by Aaron Schimberg, the film stars Stan as an actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes an experimental surgery to remove tumors from his face, giving him a more conventional appearance. That makeover puts him in danger of losing a leading role to a local bon vivant (Adam Pearson) who also has neurofibromatosis but owns his appearance without shame.Though “A Different Man” is distributed by the hot studio A24, it was considered the lowest-profile contender in its category. Most pundits expected the Palme d’Or winner “Anora” to cruise to victory here and even Schimberg was caught off-guard by the win. “I think I’m not the only person in the room who’s totally stunned by this,” the director said onstage, admitting he had not prepared a speech in advance, fearing it would be “hubris” to do so.In a very fluid Oscar season, the Gotham win could raise the chances of Stan, who also stars in the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” and Pearson, a dark-horse supporting-actor candidate. Though the Gothams’ effectiveness as an Oscar bellwether can fluctuate, three of the four most recent films to triumph there — “Past Lives,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Nomadland” — also went on to be nominated for best picture at the Oscars.The Gothams are most valuable when it comes to helping smaller films like “A Different Man” that rely on an awards-season run to stay in the conversation. Though the ceremony recently lifted its $35 million budget cap for eligible contenders, its nominating juries, which are mostly made up of a handful of film journalists, still tend to favor movies that were made on a shoestring.That includes “Sing Sing,” a prison drama that won the night’s lead and supporting-performance honors for Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin. (The Gothams are gender-neutral.) “Let’s keep doing work that really matters, that makes a difference,” Domingo, who starred in “The Color Purple” and “Rustin” last year, told the audience. “That’s what we can do right now. That can be a light in the darkness.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Most Anticipated New Movie Releases in Winter 2024

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      From life stories (“A Complete Unknown,” “The Fire Inside”) to animated tales (“Moana 2,” “Mufasa”), these are the films we can’t wait to see this season.November‘EMILIA PÉREZ’ Four actresses — Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz — shared a prize at Cannes for their performances in this unlikeliest of musicals, about the friendship between a Mexican cartel kingpin (Gascón) and a lawyer (Saldaña) hired to arrange the kingpin’s gender transition. Jacques Audiard directed. (Nov. 13; Netflix)‘HOT FROSTY’ Remember “Mannequin”? This sounds kind of like that, except instead of a mannequin coming to life, it’s a snowman (Dustin Milligan), and instead of Andrew McCarthy, it has Lacey Chabert. (Nov. 13; Netflix)‘ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT’ This film from Payal Kapadia was the first Indian feature to compete at Cannes in 30 years; it won the Grand Jury Prize, effectively second place. It concerns two women (Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha) in Mumbai. One has a husband living abroad; the other is navigating an interfaith relationship that she strives to keep quiet. (Nov. 15; in theaters)Karla Sofía Gascón, left, is the title drug kingpin and Zoe Saldaña is the lawyer helping arrange her client’s gender transition.Netflix‘ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE’ The rocket man himself recalls how he soared to stardom in this documentary, shot during preparations for his 2022 appearances at Dodger Stadium, purportedly his final North American concerts. (Nov. 15 in theaters, Dec. 13 on Disney+)‘GHOST CAT ANZU’ Anzu is a big, fluffy, animated talking cat whose antics give Garfield a run for his money in this anime favorite from the festival circuit. (Nov. 15; in theaters)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Film Festival Pitches Its Ever-Expanding, Global Tent

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      Standout selections include “Nickel Boys,” the Mumbai-set “All We Imagine as Light” and the documentary “Dahomey,” about African repatriation.Every year, the New York Film Festival sets up a big tent at Lincoln Center and invites its hometown to the greatest show on earth, or at least to watch some of the finest movies from across the globe. This year is no different, with standout selections that include the opening-night attraction, “Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross’s tender, beautifully expressionistic adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel; “All We Imagine as Light,” Payal Kapadia’s delicately observed, stirring drama about three women living in Mumbai; and “Dahomey,” Mati Diop’s intellectually electrifying documentary about the fraught complexities of repatriation.Over the decades, the festival’s tent has grown larger and its attractions more expansive. The main lineup and the Spotlight section feature a mix of established and lesser-known auteurs, as well as a smattering of stars. This is where you can find the recommended latest from Mike Leigh (“Hard Truths”) and Pedro Almodóvar (“The Room Next Door”), as well as the second and third parts of Wang Bing’s absorbing documentary trilogy about young people in China — “Youth (Hard Times)” and “Youth (Homecoming)” — which together run a whopping 378 minutes, about an hour longer than Julia Loktev’s 324-minute “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” about journalists in today’s Russia.Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths.”Creativity MediaIn 1963, its inaugural year, the festival presented 21 new feature films, and created a major stir. Not everyone on Lincoln Center’s board had been happy about the prospect of movies sharing space with the performing arts, with one member carping, “What’s next, baseball?” The festival programmers pushed on, and the film lovers came running. A critical and financial success, the ’63 iteration even made the cover of Time magazine, which trumpeted that the event “may well mark for Americans a redefinition of what movies are and who it is that sees them.” Six years later, the cultural legitimation of movies hit another milestone with the formation of what’s now known as Film at Lincoln Center, which runs the festival.Given that such snobbism about movies now seems quaintly absurd, and given too the ubiquity of festivals, it can be difficult to convey what the New York Film Festival meant when it was founded. Although Cannes and Venice had been around for decades, festivals hadn’t yet emerged as the crucial international distribution network that they are now for smaller, less mainstream work. In 1963, the big Hollywood studios were releasing bloated epics like “Cleopatra,” and art houses and audiences were both quickly growing. Yet the movies still had a maddening reputation problem. In an editorial titled “The Film as Art” published the day the first festival opened, The New York Times made a sweetly sincere case for the event.“Moviegoers and moviemakers are divided into two unequal parts in this country,” the editorial began. “The vast majority of the moviegoers go to see what the moviemakers call ‘product.’” The selections in the festival, by contrast, the editorial continued, “dignify movies in this country; tell the world that we too are interested in cultural efforts.” I’ve quoted these words before, and I’m sure that I laughed the first time I read them. Even so, they bear repeating given the state of the art and industry, especially in the United States, where movies are still referred to as product (and content) and the Oscar race tends to generate more attention than the movies do. These days, any defense of art bears repeating.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oscar Contenders Emerge After Film Festival Season

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      After film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, a slate of contenders has emerged. Still, there are few front-runners.Fall foliage may still be weeks away, but the tea leaves of Oscar season are ready to be read.Now that festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto have concluded and all but a handful of this year’s contenders have had their first public peek-out, the story is beginning to come into focus. And unlike the last two years, which were dominated by the season-long sweepers “Oppenheimer” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” this race seems much more wide open.Still, two movies already look like significant contenders across the board. One is “Conclave,” a handsomely mounted thriller about sneaky cardinals plotting to pick a new pope. It premiered at Telluride and stars Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. Some of my fellow journalists sniffed that “Conclave” was just a potboiler with prestige trappings, but I think that’s exactly what will appeal to Oscar voters, who love to reward a rip-roaring yarn as long as it’s well-made with a soupçon of social-issue relevance. Directed by Edward Berger, whose “All Quiet on the Western Front” won four Academy Awards, “Conclave” could be a big hit with audiences, too.If Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” felt like the biggest movie of Venice, that’s in part because of its mammoth 215-minute run time, which comes complete with a 15-minute intermission. There’s no denying the outsize ambition of this film, which was shot on the old-fashioned VistaVision format and chronicles the epic tribulations of a Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) as he emigrates to America after World War II. Expect plenty of awards recognition for Corbet and supporting performers Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones, as well as a surefire Oscar nomination for Brody, who somehow still holds the record for the youngest best-actor winner after taking that Oscar at 29 for “The Pianist.”Two buzzy performances from big stars also debuted in Venice. Daniel Craig looks likely to earn his first Oscar nomination, for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” in which he plays an American expat besotted with a young man in midcentury Mexico City. And Nicole Kidman won the best actress award at Venice for the erotic “Babygirl,” which also finds her falling for a younger man. (Perhaps age-gap romances are the new Oscar bait.)The Venice trophy will help Kidman build a case for her sixth Oscar nomination (she won for “The Hours”), though she’ll face a surplus of strong lead-actress contenders who also emerged from the fall fests: Angelina Jolie as the opera diva Maria Callas in “Maria”; the Brazilian star Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here”; Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a mouthy malcontent in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths”; and the double act of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in Pedro Almodóvar’s empathetic “The Room Next Door,” which won the top prize in Venice, the Golden Lion.The director Jason Reitman has crafted a crowd-pleaser in “Saturday Night,” a comedy about the chaotic backstage negotiations that preceded the debut episode of “Saturday Night Live,” though its wide Oct. 11 release will have to go well if the movie hopes to sustain the momentum it earned from Telluride and Toronto. “Joker: Folie à Deux” has the opposite problem: Though this sequel to the billion-dollar hit is certain to make money when it’s released next month, it was coolly received by Venice critics and will face a much more uncertain awards future than its predecessor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Telluride, Experimental, Topical and Sometimes Crazy Movies

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      A documentary made with Legos and a biopic starring a CGI monkey showed alongside films about abortion restrictions and other subjects in the news.As the 51st edition of the Telluride Film Festival came to a close on Monday, the films seemed to sort themselves into two categories: experimental or topical. The documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville and the musical director Michael Gracey each took big, ambitious swings to tell the stories of Pharrell Williams and the British pop star Robbie Williams (no relation). One used Legos. The other a CGI monkey. Other filmmakers turned the lens on issues in the news like transgender-care laws, abortion restrictions and further matters facing voters in the November election.And as always, conversations swirled around what will and will not go the distance to the Oscars in March.The director of Telluride, Julie Huntsinger, told the media at the start of the festival on Friday to prepare themselves for some crazy movies (though she used a more colorful term). It was less a warning than a promise, and it was followed by Neville’s film “Piece by Piece,” which was filmed entirely with Legos, depicting pop and rap superstars like Jay-Z, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams.“What if nothing is new?” Williams says in the glossy depiction of his life, due in theaters Oct. 11. “What if life is like a Lego set and you’re just borrowing from everyone else?”Later that evening Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”) relied on the magicians at Weta FX to depict Robbie Williams as a monkey, an approach that allowed the audience to “see Robbie as he sees himself,” the director told the crowd. Robbie Williams compared the experience of debuting his story to being “like an 11-year-old who’s having the best day possible.”“Piece by Piece” uses Legos to tell the story of Pharrell Williams.Focus FeaturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More