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    ‘Eddington’ Review: Once Upon a Time in the Pandemic

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    Ari Aster returns with a dystopian Western farce about a world gone mad that you definitely remember.The first and maybe only true jump scare in Ari Aster’s “Eddington” comes right at the start. A barefoot old man trudges down the center of a road running through an empty Western town. He’s ranting and incoherently raving as he climbs a craggy hill silhouetted against a twilight sky. He gazes, or maybe glares, out at the town below.And then, the jolt, via text onscreen: LATE MAY, 2020.Buckle up and hang on. Now we know why the streets are empty, and the man’s ravings take on some new dimension: Maybe he’s just regular unhinged, or maybe he’s been driven into lunacy by the last eight or so weeks of madness. Or maybe he’s the only sane one left. Who can tell? By late May 2020, even the most unflappable among us felt one raisin short of a fruitcake.We were living with an invisible and potentially extinction-level threat, people were dying and the sirens were unrelenting. But we were also surrounded by screens from which blared real facts, half-facts, fact-shaped nonsense and full-on gobbledygook. It all felt more real than reality itself, which in turn felt like something we had once seen in a movie.That feeling of unreal reality is what “Eddington” sets out to capture, and that is Aster’s specialty. He was introduced to us as a horror director with 2018’s “Hereditary” (family and demonic horror) and 2019’s “Midsommar” (relationship and folk horror), but in 2023 he swerved into obviously personal territory with “Beau Is Afraid” — basically therapy journals dumped out on a table and come to hilarious, psychotically anxious life.I love all of these movies, clearly designed to be feel-bad flicks and also provide twisted catharsis. It is hard to have a medium-size reaction to an Aster joint, and perhaps never more than with “Eddington.” This one is a Western, centering on Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the beleaguered asthmatic sheriff of the titular New Mexico town. He lives with his depressed wife, Louise (Emma Stone), who makes weird little dolls and sells them on the internet, and her mother, Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), who moved in with them when the pandemic started and has gotten really into YouTube conspiracy theorists. (“Coronavirus, they used that word in 2019!” she tells her daughter and son-in-law over breakfast, by way of convincing them that this is all some kind of … well, who knows.)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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      For Stars at the Oscars, a Night of Celebration and Selfies

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      The Academy Awards can be a fraught affair. When many of the world’s biggest stars gather to be validated for their artistry, the tension of parsing the winners from non-winners (not losers!) threatens to stultify the whole thing. But at Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony — where “Anora” (and Sean Baker) won big, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande belted big-hearted songs, and Adrien Brody kissed and was kissed — our photographer caught the stars in unguarded moments of joyful support and celebration throughout the night.Cynthia Erivo, whose rousing duet with Ariana Grande, “Defying Gravity,” opened the ceremony, waved to a familiar face in the Dolby Theater.Rumer Willis and Demi Moore, in the foreground, and Penélope Cruz and Lupita Nyong’o, middle, chatting as Isabella Rossellini looks on.Colman Domingo, with his husband, Raul Domingo, taking a selfie. Ariana Grande, left, enjoyed a moment with her “Wicked” co-star Bowen Yang, center, and Matt Rogers, who co-hosts “Las Culturistas,” a podcast, with Yang.Jeremy Strong, nominated for best supporting actor for his role in “The Apprentice,” was saluted in a speech by his “Succession” co-star Kieran Culkin, who won the award.Mikey Madison celebrated winning the award for best actress for her role in “Anora.” “This is a dream come true,” she said. “I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow.”The nominees for best actor — from left: Timothée Chalamet, Colman Domingo, Adrien Brody, Ralph Fiennes and Sebastian Stan — huddled for an impromptu photo shoot.Emma Stone, last year’s best actress winner for “Poor Things,” poked her tongue at a neighbor.Margaret Qualley embraced her husband, the music producer Jack Antonoff, during a break in the show.Adrien Brody kissed Daniel Blumberg for winning best original score for “The Brutalist.” On the red carpet before the show, Brody had been surprised by a kiss from Halle Berry, who recreated their smooch at the 2003 Oscars.Sean Baker made history Sunday night, tying Walt Disney for most individual Oscars collected in one night, with four. His film “Anora” won five, including best picture.Fernanda Torres, a best actress nominee for “I’m Still Here,” connected with Colman Domingo. She was the second Brazilian to ever receive a best acting nod. Her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, nominated in 1999, was the first.Jeff Goldblum, left, compared cellphones with his wife Emilie Livingston.Cynthia Erivo with Ralph Fiennes, who starred in “Conclave,” a film about the intrigue behind the selection of a new pope that received eight nominations.After his best actor win for “The Brutalist” was announced, Adrien Brody soaked in the moment. He then tossed his gum from the stage to his girlfriend Georgina Chapman.Ariana Grande with Ethan Slater, her co-star in “Wicked,” which was up for 10 Oscars.Demi Moore, left, reached across Margaret Qualley, her co-star in “The Substance,” to greet Qualley’s husband, Jack Antonoff. Moore, a nominee in the best actress category, lost to Mikey Madison. More

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      Venice Film Festival: How It Became an ‘Oscar Launchpad’

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      For the past decade, not a year has gone by without major awards-season contenders bowing at the festival.These days the race for the Oscars starts in Venice. Of the past 10 best picture winners, four have premiered on the lagoon, including, most recently, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” in 2020. That film also took the festival’s main prize, the Golden Lion, making it the second film after Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (2017) to claim that double distinction.This is a remarkable turnaround for a film festival, which opens on Wednesday and runs through Sept. 7, whose international standing was slipping in the early aughts. Much of the credit for this reversal of fortune goes to the festival’s leader, Alberto Barbera. When Barbera’s current term as artistic director began in 2012, the festival was struggling to attract films by Hollywood studios.“It was much easier to go to Toronto to spend less money and to make a proper promotion for the domestic market,” Barbera said, referring to the Toronto International Film Festival, which is held in early September. “But losing the presence of Hollywood studios was a big risk for Venice,” he continued, adding that he feared a disastrous chain effect if major American studios turned their backs on his festival.After Alberto Barbera became the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival in 2012, he went to Los Angeles twice a year to court Hollywood executives.Yara Nardi/ReutersBarbera convinced the Venice Biennale, which runs the festival, to renovate screening rooms and facilities that had not been updated in decades. He also flew to Los Angeles twice a year to meet with the heads of studios and independent film companies to court them.In his second summer on the job, Barbera’s efforts bore fruit when the festival opened with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” which starred George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.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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      ‘Kinds of Kindness’ Review: Everybody’s Looking for Something

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      Yorgos Lanthimos returns with a twisted fable triptych about dominating and being dominated.You could endlessly pick apart “Kinds of Kindness,” but I don’t recommend it. The closest to a précis you’ll get for the film comes at the start, when the strains of the Eurythmics’ banger “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” ring out over the opening titles. The lyrics repeat the discomfiting notion that:Some of them want to use you.Some of them want to get used by you.Some of them want to abuse you.Some of them want to be abused.Well, who am I to disagree?“Kinds of Kindness” is a return to a certain form of form, if you will, for the director Yorgos Lanthimos, fresh off his warmer, cuddlier films “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.” His earlier movies, “Dogtooth,” “Alps,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and “The Lobster” — all four written with Efthimis Filippou, who was his collaborator on “Kinds” — are less accessible, more deranged, less logical, more disturbing. Which is of course why they’re so polarizing. And so beloved.I expect “Kinds of Kindness” to take its place among that latter group, with its vibrantly, defiantly off-putting stance and sidesplittingly sick sense of humor. It’s a triptych that at first seems slight, then gains meaning the longer you hold its three seemingly disconnected short films in juxtaposition and peer through the overlaps. All three share a cast that includes some returning Lanthimos players, like Margaret Qualley, Willem Dafoe and Emma Stone, who won her second Oscar earlier this year for “Poor Things.” There are newcomers, too: Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, Joe Alwyn and especially Jesse Plemons, who won the best actor prize at Cannes for his performance.Plemons is the main character for most of the film. In the first segment, he plays a man whose every move is dictated by his boss (Dafoe), until it isn’t. In the second, Plemons is a cop whose researcher wife (Stone) goes missing on a desert island; when she returns, he’s convinced she’s not actually his wife. And in the third, Plemons and Stone play members of a strange cult (led by Dafoe and Chau) who are desperately seeking a young woman who will become its spiritual leader.It’s all presented with the eerie air of a very dark comedy, the sort where sudden savagery can come crashing through the wall at any second. Violence and cruelty are the drivers of “Kinds of Kindness,” often presented not as the opposite of that kindness but as kindness itself. This strange world calls for delicious off-kilter performances, and the cast — particularly Stone, who’s proven her mettle in this regard, and Plemons — deliver. If you think you know what’s happening in a scene, just wait.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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      Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons and Willem Dafoe on Yorgos Lanthimos’s New Film

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      In the new Yorgos Lanthimos film “Kinds of Kindness,” a character played by Emma Stone recounts a dream in which she was the denizen of a bizarre world. “There, dogs were in charge,” she murmurs. “People were animals, animals were people.” But being brought to heel by their canine masters wasn’t as bad as it sounds, she says: “I must admit, they treated us pretty well.”Compared with how the human beings treat each other in “Kinds of Kindness,” a dark new comedy that just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is in theaters June 21, the dogs would surely be an improvement.Comprised of three separate stories with the cast members recurring in different roles, “Kinds of Kindness” begins with the tale of Robert (Jesse Plemons), a corporate underling whose every interaction in life — including what to eat, how to speak or even who to marry — is controlled by a boss (Willem Dafoe) whose decisions send poor Robert into a tailspin. The second story follows Daniel (Plemons again), who becomes convinced that his wife (Stone) is not who she claims to be and coaxes her into insane tasks to prove herself.And in the third sequence, cult members played by Stone and Plemons search for a woman able to wake the dead, though the whims of their guru (Dafoe) dictate that this mysterious woman also be a certain height and weight and have an identical twin. (Even when it comes to awesome supernatural powers, there are dealbreakers.)Dafaoe and Stone worked on Lanthimos’s “Poor Things” together, for which she won the best actress Oscar. “I still don’t know what that was,” Stone said. “That was cuckoo bananas.”Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesOn Saturday afternoon in a hotel here in Cannes, I met with Stone, Plemons and Dafoe to try to make sense of this triptych. According to the actors, Lanthimos isn’t keen to give too much away. “Yorgos says he likes it when people have different takes on the movie,” Dafoe said. “I think that’s the strength of it.”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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      Our Favorite Photos From the Oscars Red Carpet

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      The 96th Academy Awards bowed on Sunday with a return to tradition: The red carpet was, well, red. A year after Hollywood’s stars made their way across a champagne-colored rug, and several months after work stoppages led by actors’ and writers’ unions came to an end, they were greeted once again by the familiar décor.And judging by the bright smiles captured by our photographer, Sinna Nasseri, who was on hand at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, those in attendance were in the mood to celebrate. The starry arrivals included cast and crew of the year’s most-talked-about films, from “Barbie” to “Oppenheimer” (the night’s big winner with seven Oscars) to “Poor Things.” A few of our favorite Oscars snaps are below for your scrolling pleasure. — REBECCA THOMASColman Domingo, joined by Steven Spielberg, was one of several first-time Oscar nominees. Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons arrive at the ceremony.On Oscar night, the arrivals are often as closely watched as the show.Paul Giamatti, a best actor nominee this year.Dominic Sessa, a star of “The Holdovers,” has his photo snapped.Jamie Lee Curtis greeted Yi Yan Fuei, a star of the documentary short “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” as her director and grandson Sean Wang looked on. Bradley Cooper with his mother, Gloria Campano, at left.Sandra Hüller. The best actress nominee had two films in contention for awards: “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.”Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, hand in hand.At center, Milo Machado-Graner and Swann Arlaud, stars of “Anatomy of a Fall.”Emma Stone was honored for her performance in Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things.”Anya Taylor-Joy makes an arrival.Danielle Brooks, nominated for supporting actress in “The Color Purple,” has said she spent six months auditioning for the part of Sofia.Cillian Murphy, the star of “Oppenheimer,” and his wife, Yvonne McGuinness. The film won seven Oscars, including a best actor statue for Murphy.Billie Eilish became a two-time winner in the best original song category with her win for “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie.”Lily Gladstone, who has Blackfeet and Nez Percé heritage, made history with her best actress nomination for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”Ariana Grande makes a grand entrance.Greta Gerwig with her partner and “Barbie” collaborator, Noah Baumbach.Jeffrey Wright, at right, the Oscar-nominated star of “American Fiction,” strikes a pose.Martin Scorsese with his daughter Francesca Scorsese.Nicolas Cage hit the red carpet.Florence Pugh sparkled.Robert Downey Jr., the winner for best supporting actor for his role in the much-celebrated “Oppenheimer.” More

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      Emma Stone Wins Her Second Best Actress Oscar for ‘Poor Things’

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      Last year’s Oscar for best actress went to a universe-hopping laundromat owner who at one point appears to have hot dogs for fingers. Naturally, this year had to go even stranger.The award went to Emma Stone for her performance in the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed “Poor Things” as Bella Baxter, once dead but resurrected by a mad scientist, who implanted the brain of her unborn child into her skull.The result is a full-grown woman with the impulses of an infant, until she progresses into a child testing boundaries and searching for independence in a world where men are accustomed to dictating women’s lives.Stone, who was visibly overwhelmed in her acceptance speech, shared a conversation she had with Lanthimos, who is a frequent collaborator.“The other night I was panicking, as you can kind of see happens a lot, that maybe something like this could happen,” she said, “and Yorgos said to me, ‘Please take yourself out of it.’ And he was right because it’s not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.”The victory is Stone’s second for best actress: she won for her turn as a striving Hollywood performer in the 2016 musical “La La Land.”In the fantastical, absurdist world of “Poor Things,” Stone’s Bella Baxter is charmingly blunt, brash and intent on being free to experiment. In one memorable scene at a restaurant in Portugal, Baxter launches into a wild and silly dance, inspiring her lover (played by Mark Ruffalo) to furiously try matching her vigor.“She’s drinking up the world around her in such a unique and beautiful way that I just dream I could,” Stone, 35, said in an interview with The Times in November.This past year was something of a crossroads for Stone’s career as she made a sharp turn away from the kind of mainstream roles that made her famous (“Easy A,” “The Help”). On TV, Stone starred alongside Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie in “The Curse,” a satire of a home renovation show filled with little absurdities that almost rival the duck-headed bulldog in “Poor Things.”Baxter’s unusual character arc provided Stone a unique actor’s playground as her character learned how to walk and talk, discovered her sexuality, learned the deepest horrors of humanity, and sought to forge her own life as an adult.“I felt like I kind of lived with her for a long time,” Stone told Vanity Fair. “Yorgos and I still talk about how we miss her now.” More

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      How to Watch the Oscars: Date, Time and Streaming

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      An earlier airtime and an unusual presenter approach are among the changes at this year’s ceremony.Watching the Oscars doesn’t usually require an instruction manual.But this year, to make sure you catch the goodness of Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” — in what we can only hope will be a faux fur coat — there are two crucial steps you must take.One: Be in your preferred watching position — popcorn popped, possibly in a “Dune” bucket, Snuggie on — an hour earlier on Sunday. In a break from the traditional 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific start, this year’s ceremony is scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m., an effort by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to stick to prime-time hours.And two: When we say 7 p.m., we mean what-was-until-2-a.m.-on-Sunday 6 p.m., because — that’s right — daylight saving time is here once again. Don’t forget to set your clocks — if you still have clocks — forward an hour.You may have heard that “Oppenheimer,” with a pack-leading 13 nominations, is a lock to win best picture. This is accurate. But even if we’re certain how the night will end, the getting there is the fun part. Here’s everything you need to know.What time does the show start and where can I watch?In a perk for those who like going to bed early, this year’s show begins at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Sunday is also the start of daylight saving time, so remember to set your clocks an hour forward before you go to bed on Saturday night.On TV, ABC is the official broadcaster. Online, you can watch the show live on the ABC app, which is free to download, or at abc.com, though you’ll need to sign in using the credentials from your cable provider. There are also a number of live TV streaming services that offer access to ABC, including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV, which all require subscriptions.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