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      Pedro Almodóvar, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton on ‘The Room Next Door’

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      The director’s first English-language feature inspires talk of beauty, hope and more collaborations.At Monday night’s Venice after-party for “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar beamed at his leading ladies as they beamed back.I’m not just speaking of the affection shared between Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton and their director, though it was tangible. I’m talking about the actual beams of light that bounced off the women’s sequined gowns and back at their besotted director as we huddled in a room to discuss the Spanish director’s first feature film in English, a long-held goal that allowed him to cast two big Hollywood stars.“They are not actors now, they are like monuments,” Almodóvar said. Certainly, that’s how Moore and Swinton are presented on the poster for the film, which arranges their famous faces in profile as though they were massive mountain ranges.“Big peaks,” joked Moore.“Big sparkly peaks,” Swinton added, nodding to their dresses. “We can only wear sequins for the rest of our lives.”Adapted from the novel “What Are You Going Through” by Sigrid Nunez, “The Room Next Door” casts Moore as Ingrid, a successful author who hears that her former colleague Martha (Swinton) is in the hospital with inoperable cervical cancer. They reunite, swap catch-up stories and once again become fast friends, but Martha has a weighty request to make.With her experimental treatments failing and another taxing round of chemotherapy to come, Martha has booked a vacation house in upstate New York and bought a drug off the dark web. Might Ingrid be willing to accompany her on the trip, knowing that at some point, her friend will kill herself in the room next door?Though Almodóvar is fairly fluent in English, he had long been wary of shooting a feature film in the language. (Even as we spoke, he kept a translator close by for moments when his second language failed him.) Two recent shorts made in English — the gay western “Strange Way of Life” and the extended Swinton monologue “The Human Voice” — convinced Almodóvar to finally write his first feature-length screenplay in the language.But Almodóvar’s films have aesthetic pleasures that go beyond words, and “The Room Next Door” offers so much to look at — whether it’s a lavender sweater, an olive couch or a precisely chosen shade of burgundy lipstick — that is as satisfying as any line of dialogue. A sequence where the two women ransack Martha’s apartment reveals pulled drawers filled with the most beguiling knickknacks, and the upstate vacation house where much of the movie takes place is an architectural stunner. (Like Martha, I’d die to live there, too.)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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      Luca Guadagnino Has a Film at the Venice Film Festival and Curates Homo Faber

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      The film director and designer did double duty in Venice, Italy, debuting a film at the Venice Film Festival along with his curation of Homo Faber, the craftsmanship exhibition.Luca Guadagnino has added creative director to his list of jobs.As a filmmaker, his credits include “Challengers,” the Oscar-nominated movie “Call Me by Your Name” and the upcoming “Queer,” an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s semi-autobiographical novella starring Daniel Craig, which recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. He is also the founder of Studio Luca Guadagnino, an award-winning interiors firm in Milan that has designed several homes, boutiques and, most recently, the Palazzo Talia hotel in Rome.Now, Mr. Guadagnino has marshaled the staging and curation of Homo Faber, a monthlong, biennial craftsmanship exhibition that opened on Sunday at the Giorgio Cini Foundation, a cultural center on San Giorgio Maggiore island in Venice. Homo Faber, which means “man the maker” in Latin, is put on by the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship, a Geneva-based non-profit established by Italian author Franco Cologni and luxury industry billionaire Johann Rupert, chairman of Richemont, which owns the brands Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Alaïa. Mr. Guadagnino partnered with his design studio project manager, Nicolò Rosmarini, to conceive this third edition as a “holistic experience — like a narrative,” he said.To achieve this, Mr. Guadagnino and Mr. Rosmarini created an immersive journey throughout the island’s 16th-century Palladio-designed monastery and assorted buildings that carries visitors through 10 multisensory set pieces, each dedicated to an aspect of the human experience like Childhood, Courtship and Dreams. They designed everything (“the lighting system, the uniforms, the tote bag, the tables, the cover of the cable on the floor,” Mr. Guadagnino said) then filled the rooms with 800 objects by 400 artisans from 70 countries.Reef by Josh Gluckstein, a piece in the exhibition.Matteo de Mayda for The New York TimesJust My Cup of Tea(r)s by Irene Cattaneo.Matteo de Mayda for The New York TimesTanagra’s Metamorphosis 2 by Claire Lindner.Matteo de Mayda for The New York Timesribbon imagined by Studio Luca Guadagnino.Matteo de Mayda for The New York TimesWe 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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      Joaquin Phoenix and the Big Question at the ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Premiere

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      At the Venice Film Festival with his co-star, Lady Gaga, would the actor answer questions about dropping out of a Todd Haynes movie?Joaquin Phoenix has never been eager to face the press. The 49-year-old actor grants few interviews, speaks with great reluctance about his process, and once walked out on a journalist when asked whether his film “Joker” might inspire copycat violence.Knowing all that, you could already expect tension at the Venice news conference for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” a sequel to the 2019 hit that has Phoenix reprising the comic-book role that won him the Oscar. Still, this meeting with the media was expected to be particularly fraught as Phoenix has not done any press since August, when he dropped out of a film from the director Todd Haynes just days before it was supposed to shoot, scuttling the production and exposing the star to potential legal action.Hollywood has been buzzing about Phoenix’s murky motivations for weeks, not least because the project — a sexually explicit gay romance co-starring the “Top Gun: Maverick” actor Danny Ramirez — was based on an original idea by Phoenix, who brought the project to Haynes and co-wrote it with the “May December” director.Would Phoenix be willing to shed any light on the situation while in Venice or would he skip the news conference entirely, as “Don’t Worry Darling” star Florence Pugh did two years ago amid rumors of a feud with that film’s director, Olivia Wilde? While waiting for the conference to begin on Wednesday afternoon, journalists placed bets on whether Phoenix would bail twice.They were surprised, then, when Phoenix bounded into the room smiling, followed by his director, Todd Phillips, and co-star Lady Gaga. “First of all, hi everyone!” he told the press. “It’s nice to see you.”Phoenix remained upbeat and unexpectedly willing to answer questions until several minutes into the news conference, when a journalist asked whether he would share his reason for leaving the Haynes film. The actor began to answer, then paused, thinking it over.“If I do, I would just be sharing my opinion from my perspective, and the other creatives aren’t here to share their piece,” Phoenix said, referring to Haynes and his partners.He continued: “It doesn’t feel like that would be right. I don’t think that would be helpful, so I just don’t think I will.”Then he added brightly, “Thank you!”Since Phoenix dropped out of the Haynes film, it’s been reported that the actor often gets cold feet and nearly bailed on making the first “Joker.” Phillips implied as much when he talked about how he convinced Phoenix to star in a sequel. “If we were really going to do it, it had to scare him in the way the first one did,” Phillips said.The director admitted to his own nerves in bringing “Folie à Deux” to Venice, since the first film won the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion. “It’s easier to come in as the insurgent instead of the incumbent,” Phillips said.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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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, Max, Hulu and More in September

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      “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist,” “A Very Royal Scandal,” a “Walking Dead” spinoff and “Agatha All Along” arrive.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘A Very Royal Scandal’Starts streaming: Sept. 19Earlier this year, Netflix debuted a movie called “Scoop,” about the complicated negotiations that led to Prince Andrew’s headline-making 2019 interview with BBC Two’s “Newsnight,” covering his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The three-part mini-series “A Very Royal Scandal” tells the same story in a little more detail, with a screenplay from Jeremy Brock (the co-writer of “The Last King of Scotland”). Michael Sheen plays Prince Andrew, while Ruth Wilson plays Emily Maitlis, the interviewer, who kept pressuring the prince with follow-up questions, asking him to account for all the time he had spent with Epstein over the years.Also arriving:Sept. 10“The Money Game”Sept. 24“Evolution of the Black Quarterback”Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol’ Season 2Starts streaming: Sept. 29When this spinoff of “The Walking Dead” was first announced, it was supposed to be the story of the soulful hunter Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and his hard-edge pal Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) venturing into new territories together in a zombie-ravaged world. But when that territory turned out to be Europe, McBride had to drop out for what was described as logistical reasons. Her Carol made a cameo at the end of Season 1 though; and she is now on board for Season 2 (as well as an already announced Season 3). This new season will find Carol searching for her friend in France, while Daryl reluctantly gets more involved with the twisted political situation overseas, trying to help some good people make things better.Also arriving:Sept. 6“The Demon Disorder”Sept. 7“All You Need Is Death”Sept. 12“The Tailor of Sin City”Sept. 13“In a Violent Nature”Sept. 16“Candice Renoir” Season 10Sept. 20“Dandelion”Sept. 26“Wisting” Season 5Sept. 27“Oddity”Sept. 30“The Bench” Seasons 1-2We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In a Biopic of Robbie Williams, the Star Is a CGI Monkey.

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      The director Michael Gracey hopes Americans will finally get the British hitmaker, who’s depicted warts, fur and all in “Better Man,” debuting at the Telluride Film Festival.Dance, monkey, dance. Sing, monkey, sing. The British pop star Robbie Williams has always felt like a performing monkey. He has described himself that way when remembering eras of his life: his days as a young boy, trying to prove to his father that he had the “It factor” required to become a star; when he was a teenager and landed his dream job as the fifth member of the boy band Take That; and finally as an adult trying to start a solo career.Recent biopics of the band Queen and Elton John have proved that audiences are willing to taking a fantastical ride through pop-stars’ common trajectories of rise and fall and rise again. But will they be so amenable when the protagonist is played by a computer-generated monkey?Yes, you read that correctly. In the coming musical biopic “Better Man,” the character of Robbie Williams is a chimp, though everyone else around him is human. It’s a leap that the director Michael Gracey, best known for the smash “The Greatest Showman,” is betting moviegoers will take, even those in the United States where Williams is hardly a name despite his international stardom.The monkey, said Gracey, “was the thing for me that clicked, and it was also the thing that made the film near impossible to finance.”His plan was to rely on the magicians at Weta FX (“Avatar: The Way of Water”) in New Zealand to design a computer-generated monkey, something similar to the process that turned Andy Serkis into Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise. For “Better Man,” the stage actor Jonno Davies wore the gray motion-capture suit for the entire production and was then rendered into simian form. For the chimp’s face, the eyes of the actual pop star were used.This approach not only doubled the budget of the movie, but also seemed just too far afield for most backers. Multiple times, Gracey said, “I would sit down with financiers. They would say, ‘Director of “The Greatest Showman,” Robbie Williams. I couldn’t be more excited about this. How much do you think?’ And I would say, ‘Well, there’s just one thing: Robbie in the film is being portrayed by a monkey.’ And they would say, ‘Oh, yes, in some dream sequence, or he looks at his reflection and he sees himself as a monkey.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, the entire film.’ Their faces would just drop and they would say, ‘OK, well, this is the end of the meeting.’”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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      Telluride Film Festival Embraces a Political Lineup

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      The films partly reflect the business realities of Hollywood, which is still grappling with the aftereffects of the writers’ and actors’ strikes last year.As luck would have it, the documentary filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer was recording a conversation with James Carville, the longtime political analyst and subject of Mr. Tyrnauer’s new movie, in May 2023 when a national poll revealed that likely voters favored former President Donald J. Trump over President Biden by seven percentage points.“It knocked me right off my horse,” Mr. Carville said in the film. That moment set in motion his contentious 18-month campaign to encourage Mr. Biden to drop out of the race.“I was old. I knew a little bit about what the job entailed, and I had a platform,” Mr. Carville, 79, said in a recent interview. “I felt like I didn’t have another choice.”Mr. Tyrnauer didn’t have much of a choice, either: He needed to change his film, initially about Mr. Carville’s 30-year career as a very public political consultant, into a more immediate chronicle of Mr. Carville’s effort to alter the course of the presidential election and Mr. Biden’s decision to drop out of the race.On Friday, the final result — “Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid!” — will debut at the Telluride Film Festival. It is one of 15 documentary films, many about current events, at the Labor Day weekend festival, a four-day confab in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado that caters to Hollywood’s cognoscenti and is often a harbinger for the fall awards season.Others include “Zurawski v Texas,” from the directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, which tracks the efforts of Molly Duane, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, to fight a Texas law that limits health care options for pregnant women. (The lead plaintiff in the case, Amanda Zurawski, and her husband, Josh, appeared onstage at the Democratic National Convention last week to share their story.) “Separated,” from the famed director Errol Morris (“The Fog of War”), examines the U.S. border family-separation policy enacted by the Trump administration. “No Other Land,” a joint project by a Palestinian activist and an Israeli journalist, details daily life for a West Bank village under Israeli occupation.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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      Rudy Franchi, Who Put Movies at the Center of a Technicolor Life, Dies at 85

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      He brought French classics to New York, published a film magazine, worked as a Hollywood publicist and (as seen on “Antiques Roadshow”) thrived selling vintage posters and kitsch.Rudy Franchi, who during a kaleidoscopic life brought French films to New York City, indulged in trysts with Hollywood stars as a publicist, operated one of the country’s largest vintage movie poster businesses and appraised ephemera — most memorably, a lunch menu from the Titanic — on PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow,” died on Aug. 6 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 85.The cause of his death, at a nursing home, was lung cancer that had metastasized, his family said.Mr. Franchi’s life was highbrow, lowbrow and sometimes surreal.Along with movie posters, his store, the Nostalgia Factory, dealt in kitsch — Mickey Mouse watches, British cookie tins, StarKist “Charlie the Tuna” piggy banks. His career included a stint at a tabloid newspaper fabricating stories, like one that claimed that President John F. Kennedy was living secretly (though comatose) on an island after his assassination.“Rudy was definitely a character,” Grey Smith, a longtime vintage poster appraiser and dealer, said in an interview. “He was fascinating to be around because he had all of these crazy stories, and he could really talk about anything.”Mr. Franchi was not a gadfly, per se, but he was the sort of person whose name was familiar in the letters-to-the-editor departments of newspapers, especially The New York Times. It published six of the many missives he sent in on topics like the foreign exchange rates of American Express traveler’s checks, a critique of Playbill magazine and a brief history of neon signs.In a 2010 episode of “Antiques Roadshow,” Mr. Franchi appraised a grizzly bear skin that its owner said had once belonged to Bette Davis. The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      ‘The Crow’ Review: Resurrected and It Feels So Bad

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      Hoping to skate by off moody vibes, this revamp of “The Crow” comic book series seems derived from a flattened, Hot Topic image of the hero.In the long and winding road it took to finally get to “The Crow” — with some 15 years of recasts, rewrites, and director switches — the one constant that has remained is that this version would not be a remake of the 1994 film of the same name. It would, the mantra went, instead be a reimagining of the original comic book series by James O’Barr about a man, resurrected from the dead, enacting vengeance on the small-time gangsters who killed him and his fiancée.It’s a sensible distinction to make for any movie revamp, but here is a particularly important and likely futile disclaimer to evade existing in the shadow not only of a cult classic, but also of a tragic and storied legacy — the accidental on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee — that shrouded and ultimately fueled the original film’s beloved status. “The Crow” of 2024 was never meant to be, couldn’t ever be, a version of that movie, a grittily stylized, rough-edged gothic melodrama whose pain and grief was so deeply absorbed by fans because those very things bled beyond the frame.That, of course, is fine and all. But ultimately what this version, directed by Rupert Sanders, is spiritually derived from is neither the film nor the comic, but rather the flattened popular image that the film produced — a Hot Topic-style version of alternative consciousness.“Do you think angsty teens would build shrines to us?” Shelly (FKA twigs) asks Eric (Bill Skarsgard) about their love story, the film’s central romance, whose edgy sensitivity is packaged with as much real feeling as a perfume ad starring Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. You might think of Shelly’s line as a kind of wink at how Lee’s image became a beacon for brooding cynicism for an entire generation.But the real punchline is that the film itself is the embodiment of that kind of hollow emo teen worship, throwing vague echoes of “Joker,” “John Wick” and “Constantine” into a laundry machine and hoping faded shades of black eyeliner remain.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