Wolfs (Movie)

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    11 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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    Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.Critic’s PickA double dose of dark comedy.Sebastian Stan in “A Different Man.”A24‘A Different Man’Edward (Sebastian Stan), a man with a condition that warps his facial features, discovers his problems are internal after he gets cosmetic surgery and meets another man, Oswald (Adam Pearson), who has the same condition in this dark comedy written and directed by Aaron Schimberg.From our review:Like many literary and cinematic fables before it — think of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” or “The Elephant Man” — “A Different Man” is really a morality play, of a kind. It’s just that the moral isn’t all that straightforward. It’s about a societal obsession with particular standards of beauty. The fact that conventionally attractive people, or people with certain features and skin colors, tend to encounter more success in life simply by dint of genetic luck is explicit throughout. But that fact is so obvious, and stated so blatantly outright, that it feels like a joke.In theaters. Read the full review.Like two cool cats who just swallowed the canary.Brad Pitt and George Clooney enter their Redford-Newman era in “Wolfs,” written and directed by Jon Watts.Apple TV‘Wolfs’George Clooney and Brad Pitt play underworld fixers — the people you call to make criminal evidence disappear — who begrudgingly team up for a job.From our review:It isn’t remotely tense or mysterious, and its modest thrills derive wholly from the spectacle of two beautifully aged, primped, pampered and expensive film stars going through the motions with winks and a degree of brittle charm. The movie is a trifle, and it knows it. Mostly, though, “Wolfs,” written and directed by Jon Watts, is an excuse for its two leads to riff on their own personas, which can be faintly amusing and certainly watchable but also insufferably smug. It’s insufferable a lot.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickGirls gone gory.Demi Moore in “The Substance.”Mubi‘The Substance’In this body horror stunner directed by Coralie Fargeat, Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is an aging starlet who tries a new drug that promises to create a younger, better version of herself (Sue, played by Margaret Qualley). It performs as advertised, but with disastrous and disgusting consequences.From our review:Be warned: This is a very gory and often bombastic movie. The logic is also not airtight, especially when it comes to whether, and how, Sue and Elisabeth share a consciousness. … It’s all metaphor, though, not in the least bit meant for a literal analysis. That’s an awkward thing to mix into a movie that turns every subtext into text, which means its constant hammering of its points starts to feel patronizing, as if we might not get it. But it’s also quite funny, and the worse things become for Elisabeth, the harder it is not to giggle with glee. By the end, things have become monstrous and mad.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickSisters, under the skin.Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne in “His Three Daughters,” directed by Azazel Jacobs.NetflixWe 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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      ‘Wolfs’ Review: Brad Pitt and George Clooney as Themselves

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      They play underworld fixers in this trifle of a movie, though really they’re here to look enviably fabulous.“Wolfs” — a new something or other starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt — would like you to think it’s a thriller with a helping of comedy, though maybe a comedy with guns and guts. Whatever the case, it isn’t remotely tense or mysterious, and its modest thrills derive wholly from the spectacle of two beautifully aged, primped, pampered and expensive film stars going through the motions with winks and a degree of brittle charm. The movie is a trifle, and it knows it. Mostly, though, “Wolfs,” written and directed by Jon Watts, is an excuse for its two leads to riff on their own personas, which can be faintly amusing and certainly watchable but also insufferably smug. It’s insufferable a lot.Clooney and Pitt play underworld fixers, the kind of misterioso professionals whom people with power and money hire to clean up their messes. Much like the character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” played by Harvey Keitel — named Winston Wolfe but known as the Wolf — the fixers here swoop in and, with some elbow grease and a duffel bag large enough to hold a body, discreetly make the problem go away, or that’s the idea. Tarantino’s influence is conspicuous throughout “Wolfs,” most notably in its reams of self-aware dialogue, theatricality, casual violence and focus on characters talking to and at each other, including in a diner booth.The fixers in “Wolfs” meet cute, as it were, early on when Pitt’s unnamed character interrupts Clooney’s mid-job inside a sprawling penthouse in a New York hotel. Since neither character has a name, it’s easier to refer to the actors playing them, which is very much to the movie’s meta-referential point. Clooney is tidying up a gruesome mess involving a local politician, Pam (a reliably appealing Amy Ryan). Faced with a potentially career-torpedoing situation — there’s blood and shattered glass on the floor, along with what may be the body of a dead male prostitute — Pam has speed-dialed a mysterious number hoping for help. Clooney comes to the rescue, and it’s on.Pitt’s arrival baffles Clooney and adds to what becomes a messier, more dangerous problem. After some teasingly testy back and forth, the two settle into a wary partnership. Pam cleans up and splits as Clooney cleverly deals with her mess in between side-eyeing Pitt. (If you ever wanted to know how to unobtrusively move a body, this movie offers a helpful to-do list.) And then Pitt spies a backpack holding several bricks of drugs, and the cleanup becomes instantly far more complicated. It gets trickier still when the body turns out to be alive, and he flees into the night. Called the Kid (Austin Abrams), he looks a bit like Griffin Dunne in Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” another nocturnal adventure that racks up mileage in downtown New York.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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      George Clooney Talks About Biden and ‘Wolfs’ With Brad Pitt

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      He also addressed the release plan for his new movie, “Wolfs,” co-starring Brad Pitt.Midway through a Venice news conference for the crime caper “Wolfs,” one reporter told George Clooney that she would ask the question on everyone’s minds.“That I look so good up close?” Clooney quipped.Though the 63-year-old was certainly sporting a nice tan, the big question wasn’t about his movie-star looks or even about “Wolfs,” which premiered Sunday evening at the Venice Film Festival. Instead, Clooney was asked about the effect of a July 10 guest essay he wrote for The New York Times Opinion section that called on President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to step down as the Democratic nominee.At the time, it was considered one of the most high-profile examples of Hollywood’s big-donor class losing confidence in President Biden after his debate against Donald J. Trump in June. Some journalists in the Venice press room applauded Clooney at the mention of his influential essay, but the star demurred. “The person who should be applauded is the president, who did the most selfless thing that anybody’s done since George Washington,” Clooney said about President Biden, who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee for the Democratic Party in late July. “All the machinations that got us there, none of that’s going to be remembered and it shouldn’t be. What should be remembered is the selfless act.”Alluding to the ascension of Harris, Clooney continued, “I’m very proud of where we are in the state of the world right now, which I think many people are surprised by. And we’re all very excited for the future.”Still, that wasn’t the only tricky question Clooney had to field during the news conference. Co-starring Brad Pitt, “Wolfs” is an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser — the two actors play rival fixers who must reluctantly work together to cover up a crime scene. The movie was originally earmarked for a wide release in theaters before debuting on Apple TV+. But after the streamer endured a recent run of theatrically released flops like “Argylle” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” that plan was significantly cut back.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