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    In ‘Dying for Sex,’ Michelle Williams Isn’t Looking for Love

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    In this new series, based on a true story, Michelle Williams plays a terminally ill woman who wants to devote her remaining days to sexual exploration.Oh how the body keeps the score in “Dying for Sex,” an eight-episode FX dramedy, arriving Friday on Hulu, about a woman with terminal cancer. And if the big mort is near, maybe some petite mort is in order.Michelle Williams stars as Molly, who is sitting in an inert couple’s therapy session with her mild husband (Jay Duplass) when she answers a call from her doctor. Her cancer is back, and it’s Stage 4. She walks out of the office and out of her sexless marriage and into the loving embrace of her BFF (Jenny Slate) and a world of unbridled sexual exploration.Well, bridled a little, in that Molly engages in some bondage play as the show goes on. Her medication is making her horny, but also, simply being alive is itself a horn-inducing endeavor. She experiments with everything, starting with a marathon masturbation session where she tries a variety of vibrators and erotica: a cam guy, a nature documentary, the movie “Speed.” She has never really tried to figure out what she likes, and she’s never had an orgasm with a partner. She wants both of those things to change, and she can’t waste any more time.“You’re going to be dead in five years,” she tells herself. “Nothing matters.” Might as well hit on the guy in the elevator.Might as well swipe and swipe and have all kinds of interesting encounters. She’s not looking for love, she’s looking for pleasure — though she finds a bit of both. She unlocks her inner domme and gets the rush of her life by (consensually) kicking her neighbor (Rob Delaney) squarely in the penis. Unfortunately, this act also breaks her hip; the cancer is in her bones.“Dying” is based on a true story and adapted from the nonfiction podcast of the same name, which was created by the real-life Molly, Molly Kochan, and her best friend, Nikki Boyer, who is a producer on this show. (Kochan died in 2019.) The TV series was created by Kim Rosenstock and Elizabeth Meriwether, and it lives and dies by Williams’s performance.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 Music

      Timothée Chalamet Sings Live for the Bob Dylan Biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown’

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      The actor’s vocals so impressed the film’s director that he used the live recordings, instead of those prerecorded in a studio. Here’s a look at other actors who have hit their own high notes in musical biopics.In one trailer for the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” a fan pleads with the musician, played by Timothée Chalamet, saying that she can’t hear the music at his sold-out concert.Chalamet, his eyes hidden behind Dylan’s trademark Ray Ban sunglasses, his hair a frizzy mop, responds: “I’ll sing louder.”Biopics have often relied on creative license to portray a star, but Chalamet’s words are not just blowin’ in the wind. The songs in “Unknown,” directed by James Mangold, have resonated through generations, and Chalamet’s voice was so impressive that his live vocals — sung while performing in character — were kept for the final cut.That is not the industry standard. Some films use an original artist’s track while an actor lip-syncs. When actors in biopics do sing, it is common for them to record the vocals in a studio and then overdub them onscreen. Singing live on camera can leave a performance falling flat, especially if the actor is not a trained vocalist.But when done well, live vocals can add a touch of realism.“The idea was to get a little bit different sound in each different venue by using practical microphones from the period,” Tod Maitland, the sound mixer for “Unknown,” said in an interview with Variety this month. “That helped create a nice tapestry of sounds. But Timmy went 100 percent live. It was pretty amazing.”It’s not Chalamet’s first time at the mic — he sang in the 2023 film “Wonka,” and attended LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school in New York City.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 Movies

      ‘Sam & Kate’ Review: It’s a Family Affair

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      Darren Le Gallo’s drama stars two real-life parent-child duos — Dustin and Jake Hoffman, and Sissy Spacek and Schuyler Fisk — as lonely small-towners looking for love.“Sam & Kate” is the kind of film in which a car breakdown kindles a romance, fireworks provide the backdrop for a first kiss and a misplaced box (almost) ends a relationship.It’s a story about serendipity, except the signs from the universe that drive Darren Le Gallo’s film, a drama about finding love after loss, feel a little too … plotted. Twists of fate lose their magic when they’re obvious as clumsy script contrivances.If there’s a ring of truth to the film, it’s in the casting. The movie stars two real-life parent-child pairs: Dustin Hoffman and Jake Hoffman play a father-son duo, Bill and Sam, while Schuyler Fisk and Sissy Spacek appear as Kate and her mother, Tina. Sam is an aspiring artist who has returned to his hometown to take care of the ailing, cantankerous Bill; Kate, a bookstore owner, is grieving a personal tragedy (the details are revealed gradually) and trying to manage Tina’s hoarding problem.Sam asks Kate out and is gently turned away, but — per the fantasies of many a spurned man — he persists, and she finally gives in.Sam and Kate are such broad archetypes that it’s hard to feel the depth of their scars or the spark of their chemistry. The younger Hoffman’s messy hair and hangdog face do little to explain why, exactly, Sam is such a sad sack. The effervescent Fisk is mostly tasked with smiling sadly — until, of course, Sam draws Kate out of her shell with his supposed charms.The parents, however, fill out their thin roles with an authentic melancholy that “Sam & Kate” struggles otherwise to muster. Underneath Bill’s orneriness and Tina’s neuroses, one glimpses two aging actors confronting their own mortality with touching candor.Sam & KateRated R for crass language and some scenes of pot smoking. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More