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      Mark Margolis, Scene-Stealing Actor in ‘Breaking Bad,’ Dies at 83

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      His character, an ex-drug lord in a wheelchair, was unable to speak, but Mr. Margolis, who also appeared in “Better Call Saul,” didn’t need dialogue to wield fearsome power.Mark Margolis, the prolific actor whose simmering air of menace as the fearsome former drug lord Hector Salamanca in “Breaking Bad” transformed the innocent ding of a bellhop bell into a harbinger of doom, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 83.His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital following a brief illness, was confirmed in a statement on Friday by his son, Morgan Margolis. Mr. Margolis lived in Manhattan.Mr. Margolis notched more than 160 credits in movies and on television, gaining particular notice with memorable roles in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” (1983), playing opposite Al Pacino as a cocaine-syndicate henchman, and in the Jim Carrey comedy “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” (1994), in which he played Ventura’s aggrieved landlord with delicious malevolence.He also became a go-to actor for the director Darren Aronofsky, appearing in his films “Pi” (1998), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Fountain” (2006), “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Noah” (2014).But no role made him as instantly recognizable to millions of viewers as Hector in Vince Gilligan’s critically acclaimed series “Breaking Bad,” which ran for five seasons on AMC, starting in 2008, starring Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn, and in its prequel, “Better Call Saul,” which ran for six seasons starting in 2015, starring Bob Odenkirk and Giancarlo Esposito — two of the many actors who appeared in both shows — as well as Rhea Seehorn.The role, in “Breaking Bad,” brought Mr. Margolis an Emmy nomination in 2012 for outstanding guest actor in a dramatic series.An aging former drug cartel don from Mexico, Hector, also known as Tio, had come to live in a New Mexico nursing home, unable to speak or walk following a stroke but still firmly in control of his power as a rival to Walter White (Mr. Cranston), a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher who evolves into a coldhearted kingpin in the crystal methedrine trade.Despite his lack of dialogue in “Breaking Bad,” Mr. Margolis proved a scene stealer from his wheelchair, his eyes bulging, his face trembling with rage, despite the nasal cannula pumping oxygen up his nose and his palm furiously banging his bell, taped to an arm of the chair, whenever he needed attention.“Everybody says, ‘My God it must be difficult to work without words,’” he said in a 2012 interview with Fast Company. “My joke is, ‘No. I’m already grounded in the fact that I’ve been acting without hair for years, and that’s not a problem. So, now I’m acting without words.’”As a young actor, he added, he had trained to communicate emotions without dialogue. He also borrowed mannerisms, including a tobacco-chewing motion with the side of his mouth, from his mother-in-law, who had been confined to a Florida nursing home after a stroke.As viewers discovered in “Better Call Saul,” which featured Mr. Margolis as an ambulatory and verbose Hector, the character had wound up in a wheelchair after a defector in his organization switched his medication to incapacitate him, leading to the stroke.Despite the character’s broken moral compass and hair-trigger rage, Mr. Margolis managed to evoke Hector’s complexity — his humanity, even.“You don’t play villains like they are villains,” he said in a 2012 interview with The Forward, the Jewish newspaper. “You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.”Mark Margolis was born on Nov. 26, 1939, in Philadelphia to Isidore and Fanya (Fried) Margolis. He attended Temple University briefly before moving to New York, where at 19 he got a job as a personal assistant to the method acting guru Stella Adler. He also took a class with Lee Strasberg at his famed Actors Studio.After making brief appearances on television shows like “Kojak” and in movies like the Dudley Moore comedy “Arthur” and Mr. De Palma’s “Dressed to Kill” (both from 1981), Mr. Margolis got his first taste of renown in “Scarface,” playing Alberto the Shadow, a bodyguard and hit man for Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), the Bolivian drug boss who shows Mr. Pacino’s Tony the ropes in the cocaine business.Mr. Margolis, left, played a bodyguard and hit man for a mobster (Paul Shenar, right) in Brian De Palma’s movie “Scarface,” from 1983.Universal/courtesy Everett CollectionIn one slyly comic moment in “Breaking Bad,” Hector is seen watching on television a famous scene from “Scarface” in which Tony spontaneously shoots Alberto in the head when he learns that Alberto’s planned car-bomb murder of a nosy journalist would also kill the journalist’s wife and children.Despite his turns as a Latin heavy, Mr. Margolis, who was Jewish, did not speak Spanish, a point that earned him no shortage of derision from native speakers.“I’ve lived in Mexico,” he said in 2016 interview with Vulture, New York magazine’s culture site. “I know enough of the grammar of it, and I’m pretty good with the accent of it. If I get a good tutor, I can lock into it pretty quickly.”In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife of 61 years, Jacqueline Margolis; a brother, Jerome; and three grandchildren.In the years between “Scarface” and “Breaking Bad,” Mr. Margolis’s prodigious output made him a known actor, if not a famous one. “People will often come up to me and say, ‘You’re that wonderful character actor,’” he told The Forward, apparently half seriously. “But I’m not a character actor. I’m a weird-looking romantic lead.”Unlike most romantic leads, though, Mr. Margolis struggled at times to make a living. Fans, he told The New York Observer in 2012, “think that I’m some sort of rich guy, that everyone in the movies is making the kind of money Angelina Jolie is making.”He and his wife had lived in the same apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood since 1975.At least his turn as Hector provided him with a dash of supplemental income at the show’s peak, after a messaging app called Dingbel appropriated Hector’s simplest bell command — one ding for yes, two for no. Dingbel hired him as a spokesman.As Mr. Margolis told Vulture: “I tell people I’m the second-most famous bell ringer after Quasimodo.” More

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      ‘Heartstopper’ Season 2, Watched With L.G.B.T.Q. Teens

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      Three British 16-year-olds took an advance look at Season 2. There was popcorn, giggling and more than a little eye-rolling.This week, the British coming-of-age drama “Heartstopper” returned to laptop screens all over the world. Based on Alice Oseman’s webcomics, the Netflix series follows a romantic relationship between two high school students, Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor), whose friendship group includes a young trans woman, Elle (Yasmin Finney), and a lesbian couple, Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell).The first season of this fizzy, feel-good show amassed 24 million hours of views in its first week, according to Netflix, and received glowing reviews from critics. But does it really reflect reality for British L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers? “It’s probably my only comfort show,” said Sharan Sahota, 16, as she settled into an armchair on a recent afternoon to watch the first four episodes of the new season. In “Heartstopper,” Charlie is outed as gay in eighth grade; Sahota, who identifies as pansexual, was also outed at school around the same age.“It wasn’t a pleasant experience,” she said, adding that seeing a similar ordeal depicted in “Heartstopper” has helped her feel less alone. “If they can get through it, and they’re living happily, so can I,” she said.Sahota, Oscar Wittams-Nangle and Ari Przytulski, all 16, recently gathered in London for a “Heartstopper” watch party. The trio — who attend a weekly youth club run by the charity Mosaic L.G.B.T.+ Young Persons’ Trust — discussed the show’s relevance and accuracy, as well as its surprisingly chaste attitude to sex. There was popcorn, giggling and more than a little eye-rolling.The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity, and contains mild spoilers.In this season, we see Nick struggling to come out as bisexual multiple times. How relevant is coming out to your generation?ARI PRZYTULSKI I think it’s still definitely relevant. Many kids still feel like they have to come out, especially to parents. I came out to my mum twice, first I was gay, then I was like, actually I’m trans.OSCAR WITTAMS-NANGLE Coming out is definitely a pressure. But at least for me, it was always an external pressure that came from other people, rather than something I felt I needed to do for me.SHARAN SAHOTA When you’re outed, you’re just like, “I can’t do anything.” The closet is just glass after that. But when you change environments, you don’t have to come out.PRZYTULSKI I understand why they wrote Nick feeling like he needs to come out to everyone in order to actually be out. But I feel like it would be a better message to show that you don’t need to. You can just exist as an L.G.B.T. person, and just be in a relationship without having to tell everyone that you are this way.From left, Felix (Ash Self), Naomi (Bel Priestley) and Elle (Yasmin Finney) at an art school.Netflix/Samuel DoreWhat do you think “Heartstopper” is doing that other L.G.B.T. films and shows aren’t?PRZYTULSKI What I like about the show is that it doesn’t overdramatize for shock value, or just to play with your emotions. It’s about gay people, but it’s not tragic. A lot of queer films just show how sad it is. Especially in shows like “Euphoria”: It’s all about how horrible everyone is and how everything just goes badly. In “Heartstopper,” people fix stuff by talking.WITTAMS-NANGLE “Queer as Folk” was released in 1999 in Britain. I saw a few reviews draw comparisons to that. And it’s like, not really: It’s not that the reviewers didn’t understand it, but it was definitely a result of them not having this sort of show when they were growing up. There aren’t that many cultural references that they can draw on.What do you make of the lack of sex in the show?PRZYTULSKI A lot of other shows focus way more on sex when it’s not all about that: It’s also your affection toward people. That’s why so many straight people misunderstand us. It’s not about being proud of liking boys, or whoever you like, it’s about the experience of being gay in a heteronormative society.WITTAMS-NANGLE It’s good that “Heartstopper” moves away from sexuality being purely about sex. It does mean more than that to me. It’s an identity, it’s a community. I think there are some things that are sanitized, but I wouldn’t say it would be the portrayal of sexuality.Locke and Connor in Season 2 of “Heartstopper.”Netflix/Samuel DoreWhich aspects are sanitized, do you think?WITTAMS-NANGLE The Harry character is very sanitized. Most queerphobic bullies say things that are a lot worse. I’ve had worse.SAHOTA In real life there’s a whole group of them.WITTAMS-NANGLE Exactly.PRZYTULSKI Whether it’s people staring at you, or it’s people outright harassing you, it’s a constant struggle. I understand why you wouldn’t want to include that in the show, because it’s meant to be a happy show.WITTAMS-NANGLE Also, it definitely is not easy in this country to be able to get gender affirming care, especially at our age, because you need to either have money, or luck.We don’t see Elle’s transition on the show.WITTAMS-NANGLE If you can get past all the waiting lists, all the appointments go well, then maybe you’ll get it on the N.H.S. [Britain’s National Health Service]. But, otherwise, there’s no chance. I think that is a struggle that isn’t shown in any media.Does it matter that the two main characters are two cisgender white boys?PRZYTULSKI I think it does. That’s one of the things that makes it less relatable to me as a trans woman. With Nick and Charlie both being white cis boys, it’s more digestible. They’re the default, and then there’s one variable, that they’re gay, or bi.WITTAMS-NANGLE Personally, I’m fine with it not being perfect, because there is absolutely no way you can make the perfect show for something which is as varied and as individual as living life as a queer person.Do you think “Heartstopper” is aiming for realism, or is it depicting an aspirational world?SAHOTA I think it’s a mix.WITTAMS-NANGLE Aspiration is the word. A lot of people don’t have accepting parents, or don’t have an accepting peer group, don’t have friends they feel comfortable coming out to. I watch the show and I’m like, “I wish my school could’ve been like that.”PRZYTULSKI They’re kissing a lot. They really were shoving each other into the wall. They’re in the middle of school and practically making out!WITTAMS-NANGLE It was quite funny, the changing room scene where they’re like, “We shouldn’t be kissing at school. We need to be discreet.” And they’re talking really loudly. Not doing very well on the discreet thing. More

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      ‘And Just Like That …’ Season 2, Episode 8 Recap: Domestic Bliss

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      Carrie and Aidan play house. Miranda and Charlotte get back to work.Season 2, Episode 8:Who could have guessed that Che would be the hero we needed to finally ask, out loud, the burning question so many of us have had for Carrie and Aidan for the last 20 years or so?“I mean come on,” Che says to them innocently enough. “Why did this not work out the first time?”It’s a question Carrie hasn’t been able to get out of her head since that fateful Valentine’s Day dinner in last week’s episode. When this week’s kicks off, we find out Carrie and Aidan have been fully back on, spending night after night in hotels, living on $26 room service omelets.It’s not just that they’re dating again. As Carrie tells it to Miranda, she and Aidan are connected in a way now that feels beyond what they ever had. Could it be, Carrie wonders as she walks down the street — clad in some strange jammies-and-slippers get-up with a baby blankie coat to match — that some toxic attachment to Big never allowed her to truly let Aidan in. Maybe she missed out. Maybe, she tells Miranda, Big was a “big mistake.”It kind of makes sense, then, that Carrie and Aidan find themselves playing house, gaming out a life that could have been.Of course, Aidan lives in a Virginia farmhouse with his three sons and an undisclosed number of chickens, but when he’s in New York, he and Carrie essentially live together. They rent out Che’s apartment, saving Che from a string of unruly Airbnb-ers, and when Carrie and Aidan discover that Che has little to no houseware to speak of, they all but clean out a Williams Sonoma (or Crate and Barrel or wherever they are) to fill that void, looking as happy as any couple picking out items for their wedding registry.Naturally, Carrie and Aidan quickly become a “we.” It’s a little too quick for Seema, who dodges Carrie’s invitation to join her and Aidan for dinner. It’s not just jealousy that Carrie has a new boyfriend and Seema doesn’t. The real hurt she feels, as Seema confesses to Carrie over a melodramatic cigarette on Madison Avenue in the rain, is that Carrie has experienced great love — not once, but twice. The harsh truth for Seema is that she may never get that chance. And if she winds up third-wheeling in the Hamptons house she and Carrie are supposed to share this summer, that feeling is going to weigh on her a little too heavily.The Hampton plans are nixed, and Seema insists that she needs space. Carrie lets her go, even though she doesn’t want to.While Carrie and Aidan are rapidly advancing their relationship, both Miranda and Charlotte are taking off in their careers. Although Miranda is merely an intern at Human Rights Watch, she is thrilled about her new position — she’s finally free from corporate law and instead engaged in actual do-gooding. Her fellow interns, who are much younger but have been at the organization longer, are less thrilled when Miranda becomes the supervisor’s pet and is immediately selected for the coveted role of note-taker while they’re stuck slaving over citations. They quickly ice out Miranda like a couple of high school mean girls.Charlotte, on the other hand, has an entirely different, more enlightening experience with the younger set at work.Leading up to her first day at Kasabian Gallery, Charlotte finds herself obsessed with an extra few tummy pounds that simply will not do underneath her perfect new gallerina dress. She consumes nothing but bone broth all week and double bags herself in shapewear, but the “pooch,” which is nearly nonexistent, remains.Charlotte shows up to work, sucked and tucked, covering her midsection with her coat as if she were hiding a pregnancy. But when a 20-something co-worker, who is larger than Charlotte but confidently baring her midriff, swoops down the stairs and tells Charlotte her dress is fierce, Charlotte shakes off all the drama she internalized during the heroin chic era.It’s an abrupt about-face, which is kind of jarring, but as a Xennial who bore witness to Y2K’s relentless body shaming, I can attest, at least anecdotally, that Gen Z is truly an inspiration to older women everywhere in their unabashed embrace of all body sizes and their devil-may-care attitude toward which women are “allowed” to wear certain garments. Even though the crop-top queen Britney Spears ruled our youthful years, few millennial and Gen X women had the stick-slender body type at the time “required” to sport that look. Today, girls bare whatever bellies they’ve got. And as becomes clear immediately to Charlotte, that attitude is helping women of all ages to finally exhale.The best revelation of the episode, though, comes toward the end, when Carrie stops wondering about all of her past missteps and instead starts understanding them.Back in Che’s kitchen, between sips of beer, a quiet pause lingers over Che’s question: Why did things go so wrong between Carrie and Aidan? To Carrie, the answer simple.“Because I made a mistake,” Carrie says, clearly, and with conviction. But the look she gives Aidan right after says even more. Carrie isn’t referring only to the affair she had with Big, which broke up her and Aidan the first time. Nor is she talking only about the cold feet she got during their engagement, which split them up the second time — though certainly those events appear to be huge regrets.Carrie knows now that choosing Big over Aidan, at all, was a colossal blunder, and that the last couple of decades could have been far happier and more fulfilling if she had chosen a life with Aidan instead.And honestly, hallelujah. A significant portion of the fan base (me!) agrees and has never really gotten over it.Carrie and Aidan embrace, and I couldn’t help but wonder … can’t we just end the series right here?Things still taking up space in my brain:It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure out that when Carrie tells Seema she can’t have space because space between friends just leads to more space, she is talking about Samantha. Luckily, Seema doesn’t abscond to London and finds the strength to show up to the “we” dinner, with a smile to boot.If Carrie and Aidan fizzle out by the season finale, I truly don’t know if I can take it. Big got 20-some years. The Aidan stans are owed our longer arc. More

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      ‘The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart’ Review: The Right Kind of Melodrama

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      Sigourney Weaver stars in an Australian family thriller full of stormy emotions and strangely beautiful terrain.The title of the new Amazon offering “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart,” with its echo of V.C. Andrews’s Gothic novels of family calamity, is a case of truth in advertising. The seven-episode Australian mini-series, which is based on the novel by Holly Ringland and premiered Thursday on Prime Video, is an unapologetic melodrama — a family saga in which lies and secrets proliferate beyond all reason, putting parents and children, friends and bystanders, through unnaturally intense storms of emotion.That it’s also entertaining, moving and vividly atmospheric is a pleasant surprise in a time when melodrama tends toward the banal (some variety of soap opera) or the scolding (some variety of humorless social critique). “Lost Flowers” is a reminder that when it is handled with skill, sophistication and a measure of restraint, melodrama can be as satisfying as any other style of storytelling.The story involves a complicated web of relationships centering on Thornhill, a flower farm that doubles as a refuge for troubled women, who are called “flowers.” Some of the women, though not all of them, are escaping abusive men. The farm is run by a forbidding matriarch, June (Sigourney Weaver), with the help of her Indigenous lover, Twig (Leah Purcell), and their adopted daughter, Candy (Frankie Adams).June is one pole of a story in which the keeping of shameful family secrets is the foundation of tragedy. The other pole is Alice, who is a child when we first see her (played by Alyla Browne) and knows nothing about June, her grandmother. Savage events unite them early on so that they can spend the rest of the series being drawn together and, as Alice works her way through June’s lies, torn apart again.Most of the first half of “Lost Flowers” is tied to the point of view of this young Alice, and the director and cinematographer, Glendyn Ivin and Sam Chiplin, give these episodes the seductive texture of an ominous, doom-tinged fairy tale. Using the strangely beautiful landscape of the New South Wales coast, they create an ambience that reflects Alice’s childlike, wavering apprehension of the unreasoning violence that regularly bursts into her life.They are helped immensely by Browne, who gives a terrific performance even though Alice spends several episodes mostly mute while recovering from trauma. Sadness, rebelliousness and a puckish sense of humor are there in her eyes. Though she shares the screen with Weaver and with the Australian star Asher Keddie, who plays a sympathetic but self-righteous local librarian, Browne draws you right to her.Alycia Debnam-Carey plays an older version of Alice, who after a 10-year leap forward in the story appears to be repeating harmful family patterns.Amazon StudiosMidway through, the series jumps ahead more than a decade, and Alice, now a young woman played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, finds herself in another magical setting — this time a national park where a volcanic crater provides a haven for wildflowers.The change of scenery is symbolic — away from the protection of the farm, Alice is free both to find herself and to start repeating harmful family patterns when it comes to men. And the writing, led by the series’s showrunner, Sarah Lambert, dries out a little along with the landscape. These episodes feel more like something we’ve seen before, though a bit of the earlier enchantment lingers in a plot strand involving Twig’s long road trip in search of Alice.What carries you through, finally — as you might expect — is Weaver. “Lost Flowers” doesn’t play to her traditional strengths — the taciturn, bottled-up June doesn’t provide much of a canvas for Weaver’s regal-yet-feral intelligence or her deadly sense of humor. She can get more out of sheer presence and stubborn charisma, however, than most performers do from busily acting, and in the later episodes she takes over, carrying off some wonderful moments as June slows down and opens up. Weaver’s work in series has been sparse and unpredictable; getting to spend seven episodes with her is the icing on the melodrama. More

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      A Times Reporter on the SAG-AFTRA Actors’ Strike and Hollywood’s Future

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      Lights. Camera. Action? Brooks Barnes, who covers the entertainment business, discussed the state of film and television amid an industrywide shutdown.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.It was around 1 a.m. one Thursday last month when Brooks Barnes received the email he’d been waiting up for.“SAG-AFTRA TELEVISION, THEATRICAL AND STREAMING CONTRACTS EXPIRE WITHOUT A DEAL,” read the subject line on the email, sent by a union representative.Movie studios and unionized actors failed to reach a deal after weeks of negotiations. Hours later, members of SAG-AFTRA’s national board voted to strike, and tens of thousands of actors joined the screenwriters already on the picket lines over issues including pay. The decision brought film and television productions to a standstill and left the fate of Hollywood hanging in the balance.“When something big like this happens, you just have to put down everything else you’re working on,” said Mr. Barnes, a reporter who covers Hollywood for The New York Times. In an interview, he shared his thoughts on Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in more than 60 years and on how the repercussions may be coming to a theater near you. This interview has been edited.What do unionized actors want?There’s a long list of things; their proposals are detailed and specific, down to what a background dancer gets paid for rehearsal time, for example. But the main sticking point is that actors want residual payments from streaming services.In the traditional model, actors would get paid for the work that they do on a TV show or movie; they would get paid residuals once that show or movie was resold as a rerun on TV. Sometimes the residual money could be huge, depending on a show’s popularity.In the streaming era, that model has changed. Actors still get paid a residual for streaming work. But it’s essentially a flat fee. Actors want those payments to be based on a show’s popularity — more for a hit like “Stranger Things,” for example, and less for something that flops.The other big sticking point is artificial intelligence. Actors want guardrails so their likenesses will not be reused digitally without their approval and a payment.Using an actor’s likeness without their consent makes me think of a recent “Black Mirror” episode, in which characters’ likenesses were used in bizarre ways without their permission.That’s exactly what this is about, but it’s also to protect background actors. In a crowd scene, they might scan a background actor’s likeness and reuse it in another movie just to populate the scene. It doesn’t have to be Salma Hayek or Tom Cruise.How does the writers’ strike fit into all this?The writers are on strike for similar issues, including residual payments. Writers are also looking for a type of quota system; they want studios to staff a writers’ room with a minimum number of writers. Streaming services often use minirooms, a type of writers’ room used early in the show-development process that involves half as many writers. Basically, they’re doing much of the same work with fewer people. The union wants protections against those job cuts. How soon will we see the repercussions of the actors’ strike?Viewers won’t see too many repercussions for a while because the assembly pipelines work so far in advance; a lot of upcoming TV series and films are already finished. But some big movies planned for Christmas have been pushed to next year, and the fall TV schedule will be heavy on reality shows and reruns. Actors are also not allowed to promote any of the work that they have already finished. And that’s crucial to studios; they want actors on talk shows and podcasts to promote their projects.You recently wrote about a factor that’s contributing to the strikes: the absence of a power broker to help mediate.Yes, the last Hollywood strike took place in 2007-8. In those days, it was a simpler business; Netflix was mostly an indie company and had just begun streaming. Back then, there were studio elders and senior statesmen who could come in and say, OK, let’s iron this out and get back to work. That kind of person doesn’t exist so much anymore.Why not?Companies just have different cultures and priorities — a Netflix versus a Disney versus an Apple. The other reason is some of the studio executives who could mediate have had problems. Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has become a bit of a villain for comments he made about the strike on CNBC, so he’s not really the greatest person to generate trust. You need someone whom both sides trust, respect and will listen to.I wonder about your thoughts on the success of “Barbenheimer” at the box office. It feels bittersweet.It’s exciting to know that Hollywood can still deliver these kinds of cultural thunderclaps, but the reality is the reality: The hits are few and far between. And it’s hard to feel very good about the business when hundreds of thousands of people are on strike or impacted by the strikes. More

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      Stream These 10 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in August

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      We’ve rounded up the best of what’s leaving this month, which includes a lot of favorites, among them two Oscar winners. Catch them while you can.Two recent (and worthy) Oscar winners lead the list of titles exiting Netflix in the United States this month, alongside two horror favorites, two action extravaganzas and one of the most beloved romantic comedies of its time. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Les Misérables’ (Aug. 15)Anne Hathaway won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her turn in this adaptation of the musical theater sensation, itself adapted from the novel by Victor Hugo. The director, Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”), shot live performances of the song on set — most movie musicals feature actors lip-syncing to studio recordings — and the unconventional technique made for some remarkably raw and vulnerable performances, especially in the case of Hathaway’s show stopper “I Dreamed a Dream.” Some of Hooper’s other risks don’t pay off as handsomely (casting Russell Crowe in a role requiring a strong singer was … a choice), but this one is worth streaming for Hathaway’s electric work alone.Stream it here.‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ (Aug. 31)Barry Jenkins followed up the triumph of “Moonlight” with this emotionally resonant adaptation of the novel by James Baldwin. Preserving the novel’s original setting, Jenkins beautifully recreates the Harlem of the 1970s, in which Fonny (Stephan James) and Tish (KiKi Layne) fall in love and begin to make a life, only to have it interrupted by the systemic forces around them. Regina King won an Oscar for best supporting actress, summoning her considerable force and sensitivity as Tish’s mother, who takes on a doomed mission to clear Fonny’s name; Brian Tyree Henry is unforgettable as an old friend who becomes a cautionary tale.Stream it here.‘The Italian Job’ (Aug. 31)So much of the original “Italian Job” is so delightfully but specifically of its late-60s Swinging London moment that it would seem a fool’s errand not only to remake it but also to update it. F. Gary Gray’s 2003 version pulls it off by taking a minimalist approach, choosing simply to adopt the original film’s most memorable elements (big heist, colorful crew, Mini-Coopers) and otherwise basically start from scratch. The cast — including Yasiin Bey, Seth Green, Edward Norton, Donald Sutherland, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron and Mark Wahlberg — is charismatic, the set pieces are crisply executed, and the big climax is an all-timer.Stream it here.‘A Knight’s Tale’ (Aug. 31)Another period musical, this one from the writer and director Brian Helgeland (an Oscar winner for co-writing the “L.A. Confidential” screenplay), takes a similar swing-for-the-fences approach, scoring its story of jousting and romance in 14th century England with ’70s rock hits like “We Will Rock You” and “Takin’ Care of Business.” It’s wildly anachronistic but joyfully so, as Helgeland and his attractive cast — including the charismatic golden boy Heath Ledger, the striking ingénue Shannyn Sossamon and the sneeringly villainous scene-stealer Rufus Sewell — strike just the right balance of good humor and old-fashioned earnestness.Stream it here.‘Mean Girls’ (Aug. 31)Tina Fey was still known only as a writer and an occasional on-camera performer at “Saturday Night Live” when she penned this inventively loose adaptation of the nonfiction study “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” by Rosalind Wiseman. Fey dramatizes Wiseman’s anthropological survey of teenage clique culture by telling the tale of Cady (Lindsay Lohan), a longtime home-schooler entering the hellscape of high school life for the first time. The director Mark Waters, who deftly directed Lohan in the previous year’s “Freaky Friday” remake, confidently orchestrates the curricular chaos, which includes brief but hilarious appearances by Fey and her “S.N.L.” castmates Ana Gasteyer, Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler, and by then-up-and-comers like Lizzy Caplan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried.Stream it here.‘Paranormal Activity’ (Aug. 31)The beauty of horror, for the low-budget filmmaker attempting to break into the biz, is that it doesn’t require stars, expensive locations or even (if you do it right) elaborate special effects. The genre is the star, and if a filmmaker can create tension and suspense with minimal resources, the cash can roll in. That’s certainly what happened with this 2009 shocker, put together on a shoestring budget of $10,000 and grossing just shy of $200 million worldwide. The movie’s writer, director and editor, Oren Peli, cleverly turns his technological shortcomings into bonuses, crafting a found-footage story of things going bump in the night with gooseflesh raising inventiveness.Stream it here.‘The Ring’ (Aug. 31)Hideo Nakata’s 1998 Japanese horror thriller “Ringu” had such a beautifully simple but arresting premise — a videotape is so disturbing that anyone who watches it will die within days — that it was probably only a matter of time before it was remade for American audiences. Gore Verbinski’s 2002 variation can’t quite pack the novelty punch of the original, but it is deliciously unnerving all the same, collecting heavy helpings of dread and perturbing imagery and seasoning them with a light touch of meta-commentary. (Are we, the horror movie audience, any wiser than those poor souls onscreen?) Naomi Watts provides a rooting interest as the cynical reporter investigating the tape’s mysterious origins and the spell it casts.Stream it here.‘Salt’ (Aug. 31)Angelina Jolie fronted her fair share of action movies, but she never really seemed to find the right vehicle for her particular talents. Except this once. In Evelyn Salt — a clever super spy who may be a Russian mole, or a C.I.A. operative, or both, or something else entirely — Jolie lands on the perfect role for her distinctive blend of butt-kicking athleticism, sensuality and intelligence. She also has the right director for the job in Phillip Noyce, the spy movie specialist (his filmography includes “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger”) who can navigate breathless action sequences and espionage exposition with equal aplomb.Stream it here.‘She’s Gotta Have It’ (Aug. 31)Spike Lee helped launch the ’90s indie movement and a renewed interest in Black cinema, to say nothing of his own durable career, with this, his 1986 feature debut. Lee writes, directs, edits and memorably co-stars as Mars Blackmon, one of the three men vying for the physical and emotional attention of Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), a Brooklyn graphic artist who has decided not to settle for any one suitor. The picture’s low-budget seams occasionally show, and its sexual politics are occasionally out of date (particularly in the third act). But the cinematic energy, fierce comic spirit and unflinching realism of Lee’s best work is already on display in this formative effort, which also inspired a recent Netflix series adaptation.Stream it here.‘Sleepless in Seattle’ (Aug. 31)The writer and director Nora Ephron recaptured the box office magic of “When Harry Met Sally” (which she wrote for the director Rob Reiner) with this sparklingly romantic and sweetly funny riff on “An Affair to Remember” (and its own various remakes and iterations). Tom Hanks stars as a single father and recent widower whose searching call to a late-night radio talk show goes the mid-90s equivalent of viral; Meg Ryan is a soon-to-be-wed journalist who falls for this voice in the night and pursues his affections, against all odds (and her better judgment).Stream it here. More

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      in Television

      Pee-wee Herman Was Exuberant. Paul Reubens Kept Things Quiet.

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      Speaking with the actor was an entirely different experience than watching him play his career-defining character.Pee-wee Herman was noisy. He was boisterous. He had a voice that would shoot up several decibels without warning, whether he was inviting his TV viewers to play a game of connect the dots or interrogating his friends about the whereabouts of his missing bicycle. The mysterious nature of his character — was he supposed to be a man, a child or a man pretending to be a child? — seemed to excuse his exuberant energy and excessive volumes, and he, in turn, gave that same permission to his audience. Like he told us on “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” his kids’ show that wasn’t really just for kids, “You all know what to do when anyone says the secret word, right?” That’s right: “Scream real loud!”Paul Reubens, who created and played Pee-wee Herman for more than 40 years, and who died on Sunday at the age of 70, was quiet. It wasn’t simply that he had a gentle manner or a decidedly un-Pee-wee-like reluctance to call attention to himself — he also had a natural speaking voice that was soft enough to be drowned out by a passing breeze. As Reubens told me when I first interviewed him in 2004, he was aware of this duality, between what his spirited alter ego promised and what he delivered in person, out of character. Fans might have expected Pee-wee levels of intensity, but face-to-face, he said, “Now I’m kind of like this. Putting people to sleep.”There was not much mystery about Reubens, which seemed to be how he wanted it. Without the gray suit and red bow tie, he was just a guy who appreciated kitschy toys, vintage children’s television shows and making people laugh. His liveliness and creativity were expressed through Pee-wee, whom he portrayed in his own media projects and in late-night interviews. Even in the minor movie roles and TV gigs he did before Pee-wee went big-time, he was still pretty much playing the Herman character.These days we intuitively understand the distinction between the public and private lives of celebrities, between what they wish us to see and what we might later learn about them. Reubens didn’t just draw a bright line between Pee-wee and Paul; he completely compartmentalized them and, for a time, had us happily believing they were distinct individuals. His beloved persona was so much his own independent entity that, in the closing credits of works like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” Pee-wee Herman is simply billed as “HIMSELF.”Perhaps that’s what made Reubens’s 1991 arrest for indecent exposure so jarring: Beyond its reminder that he and Herman were not the same person, there was the disconcerting possibility that the wholesome Pee-wee would be punished for his creator’s offense. In the aftermath, Reubens wondered if the character would just be obliterated, sending him back “to my total anonymous civilian life,” as he told me in an interview in 2010.At that time, Reubens was preparing to bring “The Pee-wee Herman Show” to Broadway, and he seemed less concerned with how his past scandals had affected him than how they might have tarnished the title character.“I wrecked it to some degree, you know?” he said. “It got made into something different. The shine got taken off it.”None of this appeared to matter to his fans, who shouted out their proclamations of love and loyalty — to Pee-wee Herman — while I watched him walk the streets of Manhattan in his traditional costume. A few days later, having reverted to Paul Reubens, he seemed genuinely surprised by all the affection. In a voice as soft as can be, he said the experience was “so weird and so great at the same time.”“It was odd, and it was fantastic,” he said. “Both, rolled into one.” More

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      in Movies

      Paul Reubens Was More Than Pee-wee. Here are 8 Great Performances.

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      He played dozens of memorable roles on big and small screens throughout his career. We’ve rounded up what to watch and where to watch it.Paul Reubens, who died on Sunday at age 70, will always be remembered for his beloved alter ego, the perpetually childlike Pee-wee Herman — a character so popular that it was able to carry a stage show, movies and a TV series. But Reubens also made memorable impressions playing a variety of supporting characters of the big and small screens — like Penguin’s father in “Batman Returns” and the turtleneck-wearing fixer Mr. Vargas in “The Blacklist,” just to name a few out of dozens.Looking for more? Here is a list of Reubens’s greatest hits and how to watch them. (Note that his recurring Emmy-nominated turn on “Murphy Brown” as the network president’s nephew is not included because that series’s original run is not streaming. Start the petition!)‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’ (1985)Rent or buy it on most major platforms.This film may well be one of the most extravagantly weird comedies of the 1980s — and possibly ever. A breakthrough for both Reubens and the director Tim Burton, the film built on the Reubens’s live show, which had been captured for an HBO special in 1981 (and is available on Max). Strapped into a fitted gray suit with a bright red bow tie, his face a collection of sharp angles in a kid’s idea of Kabuki makeup, Pee-wee is simultaneously innocent and crafty, unencumbered by social mores and deliciously arch, accessible to all and cultishly weird. And Reubens brought him to life in a performance of utter physical and verbal precision.‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ (1986-1990)Buy it on several major platforms.Like the finest children’s shows, this series delighted both the younger set and its parents. The first could laugh at Pee-wee’s antics and his gallery of wacky friends, while the second would get a kick out of the double entendres, the brilliant art direction and the surreal guest stars — like Grace Jones turning up to sing “The Little Drummer Boy” in a Christmas special. The show, which aired for five seasons on CBS on Saturday mornings, remains one of the oddest productions to ever land on American televisions.‘Flight of the Navigator’ (1986)Stream it on Disney+.Reubens had distinctive intonations, and he put them to good use in extensive voice work, especially during the 2010s. An earlier example is this family friendly science-fiction film from 1986 in which he voiced Max, the computer helming the Trimaxion Drone Ship on which the pint-size hero, David (Joey Cramer), found himself. Sadly, Reubens’s second outing with the movie’s director, Randal Kleiser, did not turn out quite as charmingly: It was “Big Top Pee-wee,” the disappointing sequel to “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” (The final entry in the movie trilogy, “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” premiered on Netflix in 2016.)‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (1992)Stream it on Max.The year after Reubens’s career was temporarily derailed by indecent exposure charges in 1991, he began quietly making his way back with small, quirky roles like Amilyn, the henchman of a vampire kingpin (Rutger Hauer), in the original “Buffy” movie. Sporting a dashing goatee and looking as if he’d just escaped from a prog-rock band, Reubens chewed the scenery with gusto. He fully embraced camp in a death-by-stake scene that went over the top, and then did not even stop there. (It continued after the end credits.)‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ (1993)Stream it on Disney+.Reubens reunited with Burton for this stop-motion classic in which he voiced Lock, who with Shock (Catherine O’Hara) and Barrel (the composer Danny Elfman, who did the music for “Big Adventure”) forms a trio of minions who are “Halloween’s finest trick-or-treaters.” Together, they assist the villain Oogie Boogie (Ken Page) and, most important, sing “Kidnap the Sandy Claws.” Reubens and his team even went on to perform the song live.‘30 Rock’ (2007)Stream it on Hulu and Peacock.Reubens’s gift for the, shall we say, unusual found one of its most outlandishly grotesque outlets with the simultaneously funny and unsettling Prince Gerhardt — an inbred royal with a terrifying left hand who felt as if a John Waters character had suddenly invaded a prime-time sitcom. Sadly, Gerhardt appears only in Episode 12 of the show’s first season.‘Portlandia’ (2015)Stream it on AMC+; rent or buy it on most major platforms.As the lawyer defending a couple of Goths played by Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein in the series’s Season 5 finale, Reubens gets a fitting speech that includes the line “Being weird is not a crime!” He turns it into a statement of pride and a rallying cry, as well as a moment of, well, weirdness.‘Mosaic’ (2018)Stream it on Max.Reubens was terrific as the gay best friend of a successful author and illustrator played by Sharon Stone in this Utah-set murder drama from Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon. Sardonic and supportive, his character, J.C. Schiffer, was the dream confidante, and Reubens beautifully underplayed him. For some insights into his sensibility, you can read his account of shooting the series on his official website, complete with candid photos. More