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Clint Eastwood and the Power of a Squint
  + stars: | 2024-11-07 | by ( Manohla Dargis | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: 1 min
Shape-shifters by design, actors have their methods but many also have distinguishing features — sunburst smiles, rolling walks — that become their signatures. And few performers have held us as powerfully as Clint Eastwood, who has cemented himself into the collective consciousness with big guns, tough lines, a dazzling filmography and an indelible signature: the Clint Squint. The squinting man is suspicious, sardonic and worldly wise. He’s tough, he’s cool. Eyes may be windows to the soul, but men like Eastwood like to keep the shades partly drawn.
Persons: Clint Eastwood, Clint Squint, Eastwood
Ben Gottlieb — the touchingly soulful hero of the soulful, delightfully tetchy “Between the Temples” — is a mess. Yet because the filmmaker Nathan Silver has an appreciation for life’s ironies and likes putting a topspin on his comedy, Ben lives with both his mother and stepmother. Ben — a perfect Jason Schwartzman — is a sad sack, but he’s also just sad and for a very good, excruciating reason, too. They reconnect in a bar, where she helps the soused, deflated Ben, a kindness that takes an unexpected turn when she shows up at the synagogue. Judith says they think he “needs to start seeing a doctor,” a suggestion that Ben says he’s open to.
Persons: Ben Gottlieb —, Nathan Silver, life’s ironies, Ben, Ben —, Jason Schwartzman —, he’s, Carla Kessler O’Connor, Carol Kane, Carla, Rabbi Bruce, Robert Smigel, Ben relents, Mason Wells, Meira, Judith, Caroline Aaron, Dolly de Leon, Locations: Ben, New York
‘Inside Out 2’ Review: PUBERTY! OMG! LOL! IYKYK!
  + stars: | 2024-06-12 | by ( Manohla Dargis | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +2 min
When a dumpling of an old lady toddles into the animated charmer “Inside Out 2,” she is quickly shooed away by some other characters. Her name is Nostalgia, and those who wave her off — Joy and Sadness included — tell her it’s too soon for her to show up. If you’ve seen “Inside Out” (2015), your tear ducts will already be primed for the sequel. For much of her life, those emotions have been orchestrated by Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), a barefoot, manic pixie. When “Inside Out 2” opens, Joy is still running the show with Sadness, Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) inside a bright tower called headquarters.
Persons: toddles, , they’ve, Riley, Joy, Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira Organizations: Pixar
The first time that Francis Ford Coppola had a movie in competition at the Cannes Film Festival was in 1967. Coppola made it while he was in film school at the University of California, Los Angeles, and it became his master’s thesis project. A month after the festival, he began directing his first big-budget studio film, “Finian’s Rainbow.” It flopped. He then poured some of his savings into a low-budget studio movie, “The Rain People.” It flopped. Even at Cannes, where the word “art” is used without embarrassment, money keeps an iron grip on both minds and movies.
Persons: Francis Ford Coppola, Coppola, ” Coppola, It’s, Twixt ”, Adam Driver Organizations: Cannes Film, University of California, Cannes Locations: Los Angeles
Following the success of 2015's "Max Mad: Fury Road," which took in over $380 million at the worldwide box office, "Furiosa" tells the origin story of one of the main characters from "Fury Road," Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa. Mel Gibson, the original Mad Max, rarely spoke; same for Tom Hardy, who played Max in "Fury Road." AdvertisementBut it's not as good as "Fury Road"Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron on "Mad Max: Fury Road." Warner Bros. PicturesFor all the praise "Furiosa" is receiving, many critics believe it doesn't surpass Miller's thrilling opus, "Mad Max: Fury Road." "'Furiosa' is a big step down from 'Mad Max: Fury Road,'" opined The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney.
Persons: , Max, George Miller's, Furiosa, Anya Taylor, Joy, Taylor, Chris Hemsworth's, Critics, Jasin Boland, Owen Gleiberman, Miller, Hannah Strong, Joy doesn't, that's, shouldn't, Mel Gibson, Tom Hardy, John Nugent of, emoting, Charlize Theron, IndieWire's David Ehrlich, Chris Hemsworth, Dementus, He's, there's, Liz Shannon Miller, it's, who's, David Rooney, wouldn't Organizations: Service, Business, Cannes Film, Warner Bros, Hemsworth, Fury, Hollywood, The New York Times Locations: Dementus
Dystopia has rarely looked as grim and felt as exhilarating as it has in George Miller’s “Mad Max” cycle. The thing is, it has started to feel less cool just because in the years since the original “Mad Max” opened in 1979, the distance between Miller’s scorched earth and ours has narrowed. Set “a few years from now,” the first film tracks Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a highway patrol cop who has a semblance of a normal life with a wife and kid. Miller’s latest and fifth movie in the cycle, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” is primarily an origin story that recounts the life and brutal, dehumanizing times of the young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), the hard-bitten rig driver played by Charlize Theron in the last film, “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015). As befits a creation story, “Furiosa” tracks Furiosa from childhood to young adulthood, a downward spiral that takes her from freedom to captivity and, in time, circumscribed sovereignty.
Persons: Dystopia, George Miller’s “, Max ”, Miller, shivers, Max Rockatansky, Mel Gibson, Max, gunning, Anya Taylor, Joy, Charlize Theron, , Fury, ” Max, Tom Hardy, Gibson, Alyla Browne, They’re, Furiosa, Charlee Fraser Organizations: Hall of Justice Locations: Auschwitz
Laurent Cantet, an eminent director who made penetrating films about the prickly undersides of French life and society, died on April 25 in Paris. His screenwriter and editor, Robin Campillo, said he died of cancer in a hospital. That ambiguity infuses the film with a rare tension, as a hapless language teacher struggles with his largely immigrant students, trying (with difficulty) to gain their acceptance of the strict rules of the French language, and French identity. In this frank chronicle of classroom life, the students, many of them from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia — bright, sometimes provocative — have the upper hand. Reviewing “The Class” in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called it “artful, intelligent” and “urgently necessary.”
Persons: Laurent Cantet, Robin Campillo, Cantet’s, Palme, Oscar, Manohla Dargis, Organizations: Murs, Cannes Film, The New York Times Locations: Paris, Africa, Caribbean, Asia, The
‘Challengers’ Review: Game, Set, Love Matches
  + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Manohla Dargis | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +2 min
Guadagnino’s latest, “Challengers,” is about a continually changing love triangle involving two besotted men and a sharp, beautiful woman with killer instincts and personal style. Written by the novelist and playwright Justin Kuritzkes, “Challengers” is fairly straightforward despite its self-consciously tortured narrative timeline. It tracks three tennis prodigies — friends, lovers and foes — across the years through their triumphs and defeats, some shared. A rich boy who cosplays as poor (well, at least struggling), Patrick met Art when they were children at a tennis academy. It’s at that point that they met Tashi, then a fast-rocketing star.
Persons: Luca Guadagnino, Tilda Swinton, , , Dario Argento, Justin Kuritzkes, prodigies, Tashi, Mike Faist, It’s, Patrick, Josh O’Connor Organizations: , U.S . Locations: New Rochelle, N.Y, Flushing , Queens
A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.
Persons: , it’s mesmerizingly, Kirsten Dunst, Alex Garland, Garland, , Jesse Plemons, you’ve Organizations: D.C, Western Forces Locations: United States, Washington, New York, Texas, California, America, British
By the time the documentary “High & Low: John Galliano” enters its second hour, you have learned a little about its titular subject’s life. You’ve learned about his childhood in England, his time studying fashion in school, his habit of indulging to excess. Mostly, you have witnessed the unfolding of one of the most exalted careers in high fashion, a decades-long spectacle filled with sensational designs, leggy beauties and air kisses, all set to the drone of millions upon millions of dollars in annual sales. As interviewees chatter and declaim, Macdonald regularly cuts to runway imagery, which is certainly more enjoyable than enduring Galliano’s prejudices. There’s a surfeit of beauty, though the visual quality of the archival material is suboptimal until the shift to digital.
Persons: John Galliano ”, You’ve, you’ve, Hitler, Kevin Macdonald, Galliano, Macdonald, Abel Gance’s, , Givenchy, Josephine, Lolita, Dior, Paris’s Organizations: Locations: England, Dior
“Anatomy of a Fall” earned five Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director. But it’s Sandra Hüller’s chilly performance at the center of the film, our critic Manohla Dargis argues, that provides the true mystery behind this whodunit. “When it’s all over,” Manohla says, “you immediately want to turn to the person you’ve seen the movie with and say, ‘Oh my god, let’s talk about this. This is amazing. What did we just watch?’”On today’s episode
Persons: Sandra Hüller’s, Manohla Dargis, ” Manohla,
Having gone big in “Dune,” his 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s futuristic opus, the director Denis Villeneuve has gone bigger and more far out in the follow up. Set in the aftermath of the first movie, the sequel resumes the story boldly, delivering visions both phantasmagoric and familiar. Like Timothée Chalamet’s dashingly coifed hero — who steers monstrous sandworms over the desert like a charioteer — Villeneuve puts on a great show. The art of cinematic spectacle is alive and rocking in “Dune: Part Two,” and it’s a blast. “Dune” made it clear that Villeneuve isn’t that kind of textualist.
Persons: Frank Herbert’s, Denis Villeneuve, , — Villeneuve, , Jon Spaihts, Stephen McKinley Henderson Organizations: Villeneuve
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. 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. 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. After some character introductions — enter Jamie, Marian et.
Persons: Ethan Coen’s, , Margaret Qualley, Jamie, Geraldine Viswanathan, Marian —, Ethan Coen, Joel, Ethan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Coen, Tricia Cooke, , Cicero, , Pedro Pascal, Marian et, Bill Camp, Marian’s, Beanie Feldstein, Marian Locations: Philadelphia, Florida, Tallahassee
The Danish drama “The Promised Land” takes its old-fashioned remit with enjoyable seriousness. There, on a vast shrubby expanse thought untamable yet beloved by the Danish monarch, Kahlen hopes to work the land and establish a settlement for king, country and himself. Written by Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen, the well-paced story briskly takes Kahlen from the poorhouse to the royal palace minutes after opening, establishing the reach of his ambition. (The movie is based on the novel “The Captain and Ann Barbara” from the Danish writer Ida Jessen.) In return, Kahlen wants a title, a manor and servants; effectively, he wants to become one of them.
Persons: Mads Mikkelsen, Mikkelsen, Ludvig Kahlen, Kahlen, Nikolaj Arcel, Arcel, Anders Thomas Jensen, Ann Barbara ”, Ida Jessen Locations: Jutland, Denmark, Danish
Three Americans, three Russians and one exceedingly cramped office hovering 250 miles above Earth — what could possibly go wrong? Given the typical genre coordinates, the 95 minute running time and historic hostilities between Russia and the United States, the more relevant questions here are when and how quickly and entertainingly things will go kablooey in “I.S.S.,” an enjoyable, low-wattage thriller set on the International Space Station. There are nothing but bilateral hugs and smiles when the space newbie Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) arrives on the station, having been shot into the story on a Russian Soyuz rocket. The movie — written by Nick Shafir and directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite — flashes its wailing red alarms early and often. The space station itself — a cluttered warren with tangles of wires, claustrophobic chambers and eerily weightless bodies — makes a convincing pressure cooker.
Persons: Kira Foster, Ariana DeBose, John Gallagher Jr, , Nick Shafir, Gabriela Cowperthwaite —, who’s, Alexey, Pilou, gruffly, Kira Organizations: Space, Russian Soyuz Locations: Russia, United States, “ I.S.S, Russian
Can a movie musical based on a Broadway musical based on a film comedy that in turn was based on a parenting book be any good? Sure — if only because the writer-producer Tina Fey and the producer Lorne Michaels have made sure that little has changed in their money-printing property since the first movie hit theaters in 2004. It’s not especially tart and is undeniably over-padded, but its charms and ingratiating likability remain intact. There, she meets nerds and jocks, alphas and betas, and attracts the notice of the queen bee, the aptly named Regina (Reneé Rapp, who played the role on Broadway). Flanked by her vassals, Karen (Avantika) and Gretchen (Bebe Wood), Regina reigns supreme at school where, as the student body’s most attentively studied subject, she is feared, desired and loathed, at times simultaneously.
Persons: Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels, Elvis Mitchell, Mark Waters, Lindsay Lohan, Ben Brantley, It’s, ingratiating, Fey, Cady, Reneé Rapp, Gretchen, Bebe Wood, Regina Organizations: New York Times Locations: Kenya, Regina
I found myself at the movies this year more often than last. And though neither metric has yet rebounded to prepandemic levels, it finally feels like the movies are, in some sense, back. Maybe it was the monotony of at-home streaming or just the desire to finally get off the couch. A quick scan of The New York Times’s list of the year’s best movies makes the point. The films, picked by the critics Manohla Dargis and Alissa Wilkinson, span a number of genres, including dramas and biopics.
Persons: I’m, Manohla Dargis, Alissa Wilkinson, Wes Anderson, Steve McQueen, Rockwell, Celine Song, , Martin Scorsese Organizations: Office, Osage Locations: York, Chilean
Best Movies of 2023
  + stars: | 2023-12-01 | by ( Manohla Dargis | Alissa Wilkinson | More About Manohla Dargis | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +3 min
I saw hundreds of new films with a variety of plots and styles made on every imaginable scale and budget. The movies have ostensibly been at death’s door at least since the shift to sync sound, which isn’t to undersell the industry’s business woes. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was “cursed,” read one headline; “‘Mission: Impossible 7’ falls short of expectations,” ran another. The moaning in the trades gave way to klaxon horns when much of SAG-AFTRA went on strike on July 14. This year also reminded us that a mass audience will happily get out of the house for movies without superheroes.
Persons: Manohla, Rockwell, Martin Scorsese, shutdowns, Topsy, , bullish, Indiana Jones, , AFTRA, Barry Diller, “ Barbie ”, “ Oppenheimer ” Organizations: Yahoo, Sundance Film, Writers Guild, SAG, Paramount, Marvel Locations: Cannes
Even the evening has an inviting velvetiness, as if all of life’s shadows have been banished. They meet when a TV actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), visits Gracie (Julianne Moore), the inspiration for her next role. Gracie lives in a large waterfront house in Savannah with her husband, Joe (Charles Melton), their teenage twins and two Irish setters. Of course I was: Haynes is having fun, at least for a while, partly to play with our expectations about where the movie is headed. That partly explains why he’s drawn to the woman’s film, with its focus on ordinary life, its domestic spaces, moral quandaries, political dimensions and tears.
Persons: Todd Haynes’s, , , Haynes, Elizabeth, Natalie Portman, Gracie, Julianne Moore, Joe, Charles Melton, He’s, he’s, Molly Haskell Locations: Savannah
Frederick Wiseman’s transporting documentary “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,” centers on a dynasty of French chefs who live and work in a pastoral region in central France named Ouches, some 65 miles west of Lyon. The chef Daniel Boulud includes the Troisgros salmon recipe in several of his cookbooks. “Menus-Plaisirs” is Wiseman’s 44th documentary and the first that he’s made since “City Hall” (2020), which notionally focuses on the administration building for the city of Boston. (In between “City Hall” and “Menus-Plaisirs,” he made one of his rare forays into fiction, “A Couple,” about Sophia Tolstoy.) Wiseman directed, edited and served as one of the producers on “Menus-Plaisirs,” which runs a heroic four hours (about a half-hour shorter than “City Hall”!).
Persons: Frederick Wiseman’s, Les, Michel, who’s, Bois, Michel’s, Pierre, Jean, Daniel Boulud, he’s, notionally, , Sophia Tolstoy, Wiseman, Le Bois, Marie Organizations: Michelin, , Locations: France, Lyon, Boston, , Roanne
I co-wrote and directed ‘Maestro.’ It was very important to me, at the onset of this scene, that she be in a position of power. So, her on the windowsill, the light haloing her behind, waiting for whoever was gonna come in to be scolded. No!” “I think you’re letting your sadness get the better of you.” “This has nothing to do with me! “If you’re not careful, you’re going to die a lonely, old queen.” Mommy, daddy! Outside the window, this Snoopy sort of represents where he is in his life.
Persons: I’m Bradley Cooper, ‘ Maestro, , Felicia, She’s, Leonard Bernstein, , Carey Mulligan, he’s, they’re, we’ll, you’re, Matty Libatique, Snoopy
More startling, though, is that the movie is also often eccentric and at times eccentrically funny. You expect refined craft and technique from Scott and the pleasures of spectacle filmmaking at its most expansive. It opens in Paris amid that convulsion of violence called the Terror, with surging, shouting crowds and the metallic hiss of the falling guillotine blade. Aristocrats are losing their heads (Scott re-creates one execution with gory verisimilitude), and Napoleon Bonaparte — a mesmerizing, off-kilter, lumpish Joaquin Phoenix — will soon profit from the chaos. Before long, the story has jumped forward and now Napoleon is in the southern French port city of Toulon, where he strategically routs the Anglo-Spanish fleet that has taken the city.
Persons: Kane, ” Orson Welles, Welles, Ridley Scott, “ Napoleon, ” Scott, Napoleon ”, Scott, Karl, Napoleon Bonaparte —, lumpish Joaquin Phoenix —, Napoleon Organizations: Locations: “ Kingdom, Europe, Africa, Russia, Paris, Toulon
Modestly scaled and tonally perfect, “Fallen Leaves” opens in a fluorescent hell-on-earth and ends with a vision of something like paradise. A lot of the drinks are downed hurriedly and often furtively by a man, while elsewhere a woman listens to sad songs. A Finnish writer-director best known on the international festival circuit (“Fallen Leaves” won a major award at the 2023 Cannes), Kaurismaki makes movies — precise, austere, plaintive — that resist compartmentalization. Set in contemporary Helsinki, “Fallen Leaves” opens on the woman who listens to sad songs; it’s a habit that suggests she’s a familiar genre type — she isn’t. That’s pretty much what happens when a supermarket manager later fires Ansa for taking some expired food.
Persons: Aki, Kaurismaki, she’s, Alma Poysti, Ansa, Kaurismaki doesn’t Locations: Finnish, Cannes, Helsinki, , Ukraine
Every so often an actor so dominates a movie that its success largely hinges on his every word and gesture. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Pacifist, ex-con, singer, lutist, socialist — Bayard Rustin had many lives, but he remains best known as the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was Rustin who read the march’s demands from the podium, remaining near King’s side as he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Several activists have asked King to lead a mass protest against the forthcoming Democratic National Convention. The protest, Rustin explains, will send a message to the party and its nominee, the front-runner John F. Kennedy.
Persons: Colman, “ Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr, lutist, Bayard Rustin, Rustin, “ Rustin ”, George C, Wolfe, Julian Breece, Dustin Lance Black, King, John F, Kennedy, Roy Wilkins, Chris Rock, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Jeffrey Wright Organizations: Jobs, Lincoln, Democratic, Convention, U.S, Representative, Harlem Locations: , Washington, Rustin
Along the way, Preciado draws attention to the construction of identity and that of the movie itself, fusing form and subject. Preciado’s most provocative conceit is that he shares the role of Orlando with 20 other trans and nonbinary individuals of different ages, hues and shapes. Like her Orlando, his travels widely (if on a shoestring budget), undergoes metamorphoses and weaves through the centuries. By sharing the role of Orlando, Preciado shifts the story from the individual to the collective, taking it out of the private realm and into the public sphere. “I wouldn’t exactly say that either,” Orlando says with a Mona Lisa smile.
Persons: Woolf, , Christine Jorgensen, Orlando, Amir Baylly, Liz Christin, Dr, , she’s, ” Orlando, Mona Lisa Organizations: Orlando Locations: Orlando
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