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    Watch Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal Spark in ‘Materialists’

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    The writer and director Celine Song narrates a sequence from her film, which also features Chris Evans.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A meet-cute, an intriguing drink order and a stealth character in the background make for a clever scene in Celine Song’s latest film, “Materialists.” Narrating this sequence, the writer-director said she chose this particular scene to discuss for this series “because it’s the first scene that I wrote.”In it, Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, is at the reception following his brother’s wedding. He rearranges his name card so he can sit next to Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker he quickly starts to hit on.Discussing the scene, Song said she wanted the camera to settle on a long two-shot, in which Lucy and Harry have a thoughtful conversation.“This really reflects how incredible my actors are,” she said, “because we’re really treating them like they’re theater actors having to have a whole conversation while sitting in this two-shot.”During that discussion, Song adds to the narrative with a background moment, a quick introduction of the film’s third lead, John (Chris Evans), who walks through the frame while the two are talking.“I really did want the sound design and the way that he walks by to be something that is maybe not easy to spot in the first watch, but it’s a bit of a secret.”That moment pays off when Lucy tells Harry her drink order toward the end of the scene.Read the “Materialists” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Materialists’ Review: When Dakota Met Pedro (and Chris)

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      The director Celine Song follows up her “Past Lives” with a side-eyeing update on the rom-com, starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.Is heterosexual romance doomed, is the romantic comedy? Those questions swirl with light, teasing provocation in Celine Song’s “Materialists,” a seductive, smartly refreshed addition to an impossibly, perhaps irredeemably old-fashioned genre that was once a Hollywood staple. Set in the New York of today, it stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a professional matchmaker who’s all business until her personal life takes a surprising turn — if more to her than to you — when she’s swept into a romance with two different men. One is a broke dreamboat (Chris Evans as John), the other is more of a superyacht (Pedro Pascal as Harry).Theirs is a sexy, sleek triangle, one that starts taking flight during a wedding after-party where Harry and Lucy have been chatting at the singles’ table. A matchmaker, she introduced the bride and the groom, and now is eyeing up Harry as a prospective client, a so-called unicorn (wealthy, full head of hair, tall). Harry, who’s the groom’s brother, is more interested in her. With sly smiles, they playfully wink and coo, lunge and parry. Just as their flirting begins heating up, John — a waiter and, ta-da, her ex — loudly plunks down bottles of Lucy’s favorite drink order: a Coke and a beer. The lines of attack have been established, and it’s on.Romantic comedies are often described as battles of the sexes, a metaphor that suggests that love affairs are effectively wars. Feelings get badly bruised in “Materialists,” and there’s a sobering shock of violence that’s unusual in screen comedies or romances. But for Lucy and her clients, dating isn’t about winners and losers; it’s transactional, a market for buyers and sellers, and a matter of exchange value. Lucy’s clients yearn, have familiar swoony hopes and dreams, but they’re also consumers with shopping lists that include a prospect’s height, weight, hair (or lack thereof) and age. “She’s 40 and fat,” one disgruntled male client tells Lucy early on about a match. “I would never swipe right on a woman like that.”Blunt and effective, that line is as realistic as it is gasp-out-loud ugly. It also an example of how Song can distill an entire ethos into a single, bracingly unsentimental line. (This is her second feature; her first was the wistful “Past Lives.”) What makes the moment land, though, is how Song uses the contempt in the guy’s voice — it stops Lucy in her tracks — to signal that Song isn’t interested in making just another dopey romance. He sounds insulted, angry, and not just at Lucy or his date (Zoë Winters as Sophie). It makes you wonder what he thinks about women, which introduces a shiver of menace that lingers even after Song shifts tones and focus to settle on Lucy’s budding romance with Harry and her feelings for John.That affair and those feelings are warm, true (or true enough) and, at times, delightful; there are, romance fans know, few movie pleasures as agreeable as watching good-looking, talented actors playact love. It’s especially nice to see Johnson in a lead role that makes the most of her gifts. A consistently surprising actress, she is a supremely, sometimes fascinatingly languorous screen presence, one suggestive of Malibu beaches and excellent weed. She’s been in the spotlight since childhood (her parents are Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson) and seems invitingly comfortable in her own skin, without a trace of that detached quality that can encase some beautiful, famous people like a protective membrane. If anything, Johnson seems lightly amused to be the center of attraction, and entirely aware of why she is.It’s instructive then that the first image of Lucy is a reflection of her face in a mirror. She’s doing her makeup and getting ready for work, and looks attentive yet unreadable. Lucy is soon on the move, her ponytail swinging, easing through New York with a purposefulness that dovetails with Song’s filmmaking. In crisp, breezy scenes, with lilting music and some great sound work, Song introduces the matchmaking company where Lucy is a star employee, her killer, off-kilter sales pitch — “you’re looking for a nursing-home partner and a grave buddy” — and the outwardly independent women who flock to her, women who are edging toward 40 (or older) and are as much in Song’s sightlines as Lucy and her romantic foils are.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      ‘The Last of Us’ Review: On the Road Again

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      Season 2 of HBO’s zombie drama begins with Joel and Ellie safe and settled. One guess how long that lasts.HBO’s video-game-inspired, postapocalyptic hit “The Last of Us” likes to cover all its zombie bases. The first season emphasized urban hellscapes — lots of cowering and running in the ruins of Boston, Kansas City and Salt Lake City — while moving toward the open spaces of Wyoming. Season 2, premiering Sunday, goes the other direction, starting out as a grisly western — stockaded town, horse patrols, waves of attackers — but moving back to the city, this time an emptied-out Seattle.Wherever it goes, though, “The Last of Us” remains (as my colleague James Poniewozik pointed out in his Season 1 review) a zombie tale that polishes and elaborates on the conventions of the genre but does not transcend them. The course of its action and the dynamics of its relationships run in familiar grooves, lubricated by generous applications of blood and goo.Where the show has differed from the genre standard is in the dramatic weight and screen time it devotes to those relationships, or, seen another way, in its sentimentality. (I say potahto.)Other zombie shows flesh out love, friendship and loyalty just enough to provide a little extra frisson when a character becomes lunch. “The Last of Us,” which was created and is still overseen by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, doesn’t reverse that equation — it still spends time, and a lot of HBO’s money, on elaborate scenes of mayhem, in close quarters or on broad canvases. But it really wants you to care. If the Hallmark Channel had a zombie drama, it might look like a PG version of “The Last of Us.”At the heart of the series, making the greatest demands on our emotions, is the Mutt and Jeff pairing of Joel (Pedro Pascal) — a hard case whose daughter was killed at the beginning of the show’s zombie-spawning fungal pandemic — and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager he met two decades later. Ellie, who would try the patience of adults far saintlier than Joel, happens to be immune to the fungus, and in Season 1 Joel reluctantly agreed to take her on a cross-country journey in pursuit of a cure. They emerged from the perilous, season-long road trip as each other’s surrogate family.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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      ‘Freaky Tales’ Review: Totally Oakland

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      Misogyny and racism get their butts spanked in this bold, messy celebration of the Bay Area in the 1980s.Crammed to the margins with peaceable punks, vicious skinheads, ambitious rappers, racist police — oh, and a green supernatural whatsit — Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “Freaky Tales” is a nostalgic homage to the music, movies and personalities of the 1980s.Set in 1987 in Oakland, where Fleck grew up, this revenge-of-the-underdogs picture unfolds through a lens of pop-culture goofiness. Blending multiple genres — action, comedy, horror, martial arts — Fleck and Boden’s screenplay is blunt and broad, a flurry of flyby references only loosely tethered to narrative logic. Bursts of animation and graphic-novel gore lend familiar gimmickry to the film’s four, vaguely connected stories, none of which feel fully cooked.In the first, two teenagers (Ji-young Yoo and Jack Champion) and their fellow punks are forced to defend a beloved music venue from a tribe of marauding neo-Nazis. This segues into a sparking rap battle between a young female duo (Dominique Thorne and Normani, both standouts) and Too $hort (played by the hip-hop artist Symba). The third segment feels more robust, thanks to Pedro Pascal’s performance as a burned-out enforcer trying vainly to escape his violent past. And a bloodily operatic finale sees a loathsome detective (Ben Mendelsohn) pay when a scheme to rob the home of the basketball star Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) goes spectacularly awry.High on revolutionary spirit, “Freaky Tales” is a frisky, frantic pastiche that doesn’t always make sense. (In the third chapter, an unexpected cameo by a major celebrity is such a non sequitur even Pascal seems momentarily flummoxed.) Yet the visuals are meaty, and the filmmakers (whose last feature collaboration was on “Captain Marvel” in 2019) show considerable affection for their movie’s setting. I wish, though, they had focused less on the era’s greatest hits and more on the details of their script. Maybe then we would have learned the provenance of that supernatural whatsit.Freaky TalesRated R for lewd lyrics, slow-motion bloodletting and an exploding racist. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Gladiator II’ Review: Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal Entertain

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      Denzel Washington’s performance shows skill, intensity and absolute confidence in Ridley Scott’s pleasurably immersive epic about ancient Roman fighters.When Denzel Washington sweeps into “Gladiator II” — Ridley Scott’s epic about ancient Rome and men at war and sometimes in love — it’s with such easy grace that you may mistake his character’s loose bearing with indifference. What you’re seeing is power incarnate, power that’s so raw and so supremely self-possessed that it doesn’t announce itself. It just takes. And it keeps taking as warriors enter the Colosseum to fight and die in the blood sport that gives this sequel to Scott’s 2000 drama “Gladiator” its sober backdrop and much of its juice. It is a performance of charismatic evil and of mesmerizing stardom both.Like Scott’s filmmaking in this pleasurably immersive spectacle — with its foreign ancients and mentalities, exotic animals and equally unfamiliar calls to human nobility — Washington’s performance has skill, intensity and absolute confidence. Each man has an unqualified belief in entertainment as a value that’s essential to put over an old-fashioned, inherently audacious production like this, the kind that turns the past into a plaything and doesn’t ask you to worry about niceties like historical accuracy. Both director and performer are also veterans when it comes to popular audiences, and since neither has mellowed or slowed with age (Scott turns 87 this year and Washington 70), they still know how to put on a great show.The first “Gladiator” centers on a Roman general, Maximus (Russell Crowe), who circa 180 A.D. serves an aged emperor, incurs the wrath of a young usurper and ends up clanging swords in the Colosseum, where he quickly becomes a crowd favorite. Crowe, then at the height of his leading-man fame, delivered an appropriately muscular if characteristically sensitive lead performance that holds the screen even when challenged by the vulpine charisma of a scene-stealing Joaquin Phoenix as the new emperor. The two characters are dead by the end and Rome itself seems like it may follow rapidly in their wake; they and all the other ghosts from the original movie haunt the sequel, which is set 16 years later.“Gladiator II” tells the story of another righteous, ostensibly simple man, this time named Lucius (Paul Mescal) who is swept up by violent political forces seemingly beyond his control. The story opens in Numidia, a slice of land hugging the northernmost coast of the African continent. There, in a humming city, Lucius lives with his wife, and while their smiles suggest they’re happy enough, they are both soon suiting up to fight a flotilla of Roman invaders. Led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Romans make quick work of the Numidians. In this regard, the invaders are just as ruthlessly economic as Scott, who demonstrates a commensurate show of his power with the epically scaled, vividly staged and shot warfare.Fast, brutal and absorbing, the shocker opener sets the template for the rest of the movie, which plays — and often feels — like one long, inventively diverse, elaborately imaginative fight. As in the first film, the diversity of the casting here suggests the vastness of the Roman Empire, a variety that’s matched by the many ways characters die: trebuchet, arrow, sword and a (digital) menagerie that includes a saddled rhino and a troop of rampaging baboons. Every so often, the characters put down their weapons to indulge their other vices or to plot an uprising, diverting interludes that advance the narrative and add crucial rhythm, giving the characters enough time to unclench the jaws and for you to keep processing the story.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

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Erin Moriarty Is a Woman Among ‘The Boys’

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      The actress in the hit superhero satire mulled her role in an age of online bullying and token feminism: “Thank God there are characters like this.”Erin Moriarty just stopped a stranger in his tracks. But it wasn’t because he recognized her as a star on one of TV’s most popular shows, or because he was taken by her charm.We were tucked into a quiet corner table on an outdoor patio in West Hollywood, where an attentive server had been mid-stride when he overheard Moriarty, a star of the hit Amazon show “The Boys,” describe her belief that feminism had become an “obligatory thing for studios to exhibit.” He tentatively performed the briefest of check-ins and scurried away.“I love how he hears the word ‘feminism’ and his approach starts to slow,” she said with a laugh. She took a sip of black iced coffee and resumed her thoughts.“I think it’s dangerous,” she said. “I feel like we’re putting a Band-Aid on systemic diseases that we’re not inoculating against.”As the highest-billed actress on “The Boys,” Moriarty, 29, has had to think a lot about performative feminism lately, and whether the show that made her famous is really part of the solution. On one level, the series, which returned for Season 4 on Thursday, is satire, centered on the exploits of a team of morally depraved superheroes known as the Seven.The show targets the steroidal conventions of the genre, along with the corporate pandering and exhibitionist feminism that often accompany it. Much of that critique is focused through Moriarty’s character, Annie January, better known as Starlight.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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      ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Review: A Mirthless Joyride

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      Directing without his brother, Ethan Coen brings the usual mix of highbrow references and petty crimes, but this road movie just stalls out.The title of Ethan Coen’s leaden romp “Drive-Away Dolls” summons up the vulgar excesses of old-school exploitation cinema, with its horrors and pleasures, carnage and flesh. If only! The promising setup involves two friends — the dreary duo of Margaret Qualley as Jamie and Geraldine Viswanathan as Marian — who, during a 1999 road trip from Philadelphia to Florida, come into possession of a briefcase wanted by some bad, violent men. There will be blood, yup, if not enough to obscure the inert staging, D.O.A. jokes and wooden performances.This is the most recent movie that Ethan Coen has made without his brother, Joel, his longtime collaborator. (Ethan also made the 2022 documentary “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.”) To a degree, “Drive-Away Dolls” seems of a piece with the Coens’ practice of playing with story forms (film genres and otherwise), which they have consistently satirized, upended and all but gutted. Mixing the ostensibly high with the putatively low, they sample and riff on populist and rarefied sources, the spiritual and the material. This can create a fascinating doubling in the sense that there’s the movie in front of you and its layered references, all of which can flow together when they don’t congeal, which alas happens here.Written by Coen and his wife, Tricia Cooke, “Drive-Away Dolls” opens on an old-style neon bar sign spelling out the word “Cicero,” immediately suggesting that you’re in familiar Coen territory. This nod to the philosopher puts you on alert, but it also feels like bait for those aficionados eager to sift through signs and meanings (which can be a self-flattering exercise for filmmakers and for viewers). Soon enough, the camera is prowling inside the bar where a panicked-looking man (Pedro Pascal as the Collector) sits in a booth clutching a briefcase to his body. After exchanging words with a curiously hostile waiter, the Collector scurries down a shadowy Chandleresque mean street before taking a fatal turn into a nightmarish alley.This particular briefcase contains another of moviedom’s great whatsits, one of those mysteries that, like knowledge itself, some people have, others are desperate to obtain and still others eventually regret having. After some character introductions — enter Jamie, Marian et. al. — and pro forma scene-setting, the movie gets down to business and the briefcase changes hands. For reasons that make sense mostly as a screenwriting contrivance, the two friends secure a car from a guy named Curlie (Bill Camp) and hit the road, with plans to visit Marian’s aunt in Tallahassee. There’s some sweet, sticky stuff, too: Jamie, who has broken up with her girlfriend, a tough cop named Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), thinks Marian needs to get laid. Marian does too, so there are more bars in their future.The women’s journey proves eventful; yet while they rack up both miles and conquests, and despite some flashy editing, “Drive-Away Dolls” remains inert. After their car blows a tire, Jamie and Marian find the briefcase in the trunk along with a hatbox. The two cases contain clues — by turns grisly and notionally amusing — which fit into a larger story that incorporates enough dildos to secure the movie its R rating; nods to Henry James; a dog named after Alice B. Toklas; and assorted attractions, including a family-values politician (Matt Damon), a dapper gangland boss (Colman Domingo as the Chief) and a couple of quarrelsome cartoon minions (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson as the Chief’s Goons).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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      Sundance Film Festival: ‘Freaky Nights’ Is the Hot Ticket

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      “Freaky Tales” with Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis and Normani, gets a raucous premiere as Hollywood turns out in force for the festival.Hello from the Sundance Film Festival in frigid Park City, Utah, where your faithful Projectionist will spend the next week answering important questions like: Are we about to discover the next great filmmaker? Is it possible to look chic in a puffer jacket? And wait, there’s a Neon party tonight? Why didn’t I get an invite?The festival is celebrating its 40th edition this year, but it’s a Hollywood 40, meaning some effective nips and tucks have kept Sundance seeming fresh and vital even as the industry it’s a part of has changed considerably. In the ’90s, every independent filmmaker dreamed of launching their career at this festival as the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh had. Now, with the independent-film market in a precarious position, talent comes to Sundance to schmooze and say, “What I’d really like to do is make a limited series.”And hey, the festival programs those now, alongside the documentaries, shorts and narrative films that remain Sundance’s bread and butter. Some movies have premises so outrageous that you could only find them here: In “Love Me,” Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun play a buoy and satellite who fall in love, while “Sasquatch Sunset” casts Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough as an unrecognizable pair of Bigfoots and, I’m told, plays things utterly straight.Other movies evoke past Sundance classics. On Thursday, I watched “Ghostlight,” about a troubled family that finds solace by staging Shakespeare: It reminded me of the Sundance hit “CODA,” down to the third-act performance that had audiences weeping. Then I booked it to the documentary “Girls State,” a distaff sequel to Apple TV’s 2020 Sundance pickup “Boys State.” The new one follows hundreds of teenage girls as they try to craft a mock government.The opening night’s hottest ticket was “Freaky Tales,” a gonzo anthology starring Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis and the pop singer Normani. Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who’d previously brought their films “Half Nelson” and “Mississippi Grind” here, “Freaky Tales” follows four interconnected stories set in 1987 Oakland that all tend to climax in outrageously bloody scenes of revenge. Whenever the red stuff spurted, the audience hooted.Though Sundance has introduced a virtual portion to its festival that will be available next week, people remain eager to attend in person. Pascal, one of Hollywood’s most overbooked actors, made the briefest of trips to Park City just so he could attend the raucous “Freaky Tales” premiere. “Ghostlight” directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson were even more determined to make it to the festival: Though they were still shooting their film just three months ago, thanks to fleet work from their editors, the two were able to submit a first cut to Sundance in early November, just four days after they’d wrapped.It helped, O’Sullivan said, that she had another ticking clock that demanded quick work: She shot the film while eight months pregnant.“I said we had a hard out,” she joked at the premiere. More