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      Radu Jude Brings TikTok’s Chaos to the Movies

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      Radu Jude’s films are messy mash-ups of art, literature, advertising and social media, with some dirty jokes thrown in.Halfway through a recent Zoom interview with Radu Jude, the acclaimed Romanian director of “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” he offered a glimpse into his creative process. He pulled out one of the books he’s reading, an illustrated tome about commedia dell’arte. Then he shared his screen to reveal a collection of texts and images — Van Gogh still lifes, Giacometti sculptures, Japanese haikus — saved in folders on his computer. Jude stopped scrolling at a picture he took of a sign posted on an apartment building entrance.“It says ‘Please have oral sex so as not to disturb the other tenants,’” Jude explained, translating from the Romanian with a grin on his face.The autodidact Jude is not above a dirty joke. His work melds tragedy and farce, drawing promiscuously from art, literature, street ads and social media to fuel his brazen visions of Romanian history and contemporary life.Jude’s previous film, the Golden Bear-winner “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” starts out with the making of a humorously sloppy sex tape and concludes with a witch trial against one of the tape’s participants. His latest, “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” arrives in U.S. theaters on Friday.The black comedy follows Angela (Ilinca Manolache), a film production assistant who spends most of her 16-hour workdays in her car, shuttling clients and equipment around Bucharest, Romania’s capital. One of Angela’s gigs entails interviewing former factory employees who were injured on the clock for a chance to feature in a corporate safety video. Scenes from the present-day, shot in black-and-white, are interwoven with colorful clips of another woman named Angela: a taxi driver in the 1980s also chained to a thankless job that involves navigating the streets of Bucharest.Ilinca Manolache as Angela, a film production assistant who spends most of her 16-hour workdays in her car, in “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.”4 Proof FilmWe 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 Sunday Read: ‘Sure, It Won an Oscar. But Is It Criterion?’

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      Aaron Esposito and Daniel Farrell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyIn October 2022, amid a flurry of media appearances promoting their film “Tàr,” the director Todd Field and the star Cate Blanchett made time to visit a cramped closet in Manhattan. This closet, which has become a sacred space for movie buffs, was once a disused bathroom at the headquarters of the Criterion Collection, a 40-year-old company dedicated to “gathering the greatest films from around the world” and making high-quality editions available to the public on DVD and Blu-ray and, more recently, through its streaming service, the Criterion Channel. Today Criterion uses the closet as its stockroom, housing films by some 600 directors from more than 50 countries — a catalog so synonymous with cinematic achievement that it has come to function as a kind of film Hall of Fame. Through a combination of luck, obsession and good taste, this 55-person company has become the arbiter of what makes a great movie, more so than any Hollywood studio or awards ceremony.There are a lot of ways to listen to “The Daily.” Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan. More

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      Five Science Fiction Movies to Stream Now

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      Time loops in Japan, a seductive interface for agoraphobes and artificial intelligence battles make up this month’s science fiction streaming picks.‘River’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.In this Junta Yamaguchi film, the staff and clients of a quaint Japanese inn find themselves stuck in a short time loop: Every 120 seconds, they all rewind. This premise makes it sound as if Yamaguchi himself is stuck on repeat since his previous feature, “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” (2022), was about a loop of the same length. But “River” — once again made in collaboration with the Kyoto theater company Europe Kikaku and the writer Makoto Ueda — feels very different. The often broad humor is still present, but the new movie also effectively creates a wistful mood that can make it feel as if you’re watching a live-action Studio Ghibli feature. Dominating the ensemble is Riko Fujitani’s Mikoto, a young employee who eventually convinces herself that she may have caused the temporal disturbance. After kicking off as a goofy comedy as we meet all the characters and watch them try to process their situation in exactly two minutes, “River” slides into a bittersweet romance. Even the intervention of a deus ex (tempus) machina to resolve the plot doesn’t spoil the film’s whimsical charm.‘Sight: Extended’Stream it on Tubi.The agoraphobic Patrick (Andrew Riddell) hasn’t left his apartment in over a month, working remotely and ordering delivery food. Stepping outside to pick up a prescription sets off a near-meltdown; an invitation to a high school reunion triggers feelings of inadequacy. So when Patrick is offered a miracle new app called Refresh, he jumps on the opportunity. He finds himself immersed in an enhanced reality in which his field of vision essentially becomes a screen on which prompts are overlaid, as well as bonuses and rewards. He can even buy booster packs for things like X-ray vision. Overnight, his life becomes a video game in which he is a triumphant He-Man instead of a loser. He even wins over his old crush, Emily (Nova Gaver).Daniel Lazo and Eran May-Raz’s “Sight: Extended” suffers from an affliction plaguing many of the free fare streaming on Tubi: The acting is perfunctory at best, so don’t go in expecting Actors Studio fireworks. But the movie makes up for it by offering a scarily convincing version of an interface so seductive and so toxic that surely it must be just a few days away from becoming available in real life.‘Ozma’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.“What if dreams are rehearsals?” Jeff (Ferdy Roberts) ponders. “Rehearsals for experiences that are too strange for us to accept.” You can see why Jeff is questioning the fabric of reality, because he is in a film named after a “hyper-evolved, shape-shifting jellyfish” that talks in unmistakably feminine tones (voice by Eva Magyar).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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      Once You Watch an Ernie Gehr Film, You’ll Never See the World the Same Way

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      A MoMA series shows how the artist pushes the boundaries of cinema in short movies that both delight and baffle.Movies have been around for well over a century, and for roughly half that time, the American filmmaker Ernie Gehr has — playfully, thoughtfully, beautifully — shown us just how far out, in exciting and liberating they can be.Gehr makes moving images that open your mind and pleasurably rearrange your thoughts. His movies tend to be short, have sound and, these days, were shot in digital. By conventional standards not a lot happens; they don’t tell stories per se, even if they say a great deal. What interests Gehr is light, energy, shape, color, rhythm, time, space and the medium’s plasticity. He chops the image up, twirls it around, makes it sing. You could call his work abstract, experimental or avant-garde, but a more fitting description is that it’s just, well, cinematic.A contested, oft-abused word, cinematic can be fuzzy shorthand to describe images that look and move the way we think movies look and move (or should). Gehr challenges such thinking, which is exemplified by one of his most significant early works, “Serene Velocity” (1970), a silent color film that doesn’t have a single soul or any camera moves in it. Instead, partly by changing the focal lengths on a zoom lens, Gehr created an illusion of movement in which a precisely centered shot of a college basement hall becomes a trippy, propulsive, at times eyeball-popping inquiry into film form. He’s still challenging conventions just as trippily.On Friday, the one-week series “Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic” opens at the Museum of Modern Art. Curated by Francisco Valente, this dynamic sampler includes both newer work and restored rarities that have been arranged into six programs. Gehr, who is 82 and lives in New York, is scheduled to appear at each show. MoMA is a fitting place to check out his movies, which in their formal rigor, aesthetic concerns and sheer visual pow make them ideal counterparts to the abstract and nonfigurative work hanging on the museum’s walls.Gehr started making films in the 1960s after serving in the Army and landing in New York, where he chanced upon the work by the avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, a titan of the art. Although Gehr ended up going in a different artistic direction, he was excited both by Brakhage’s work and by the very idea that he, too, might make movies. In an era in which most of us have a video camera in our back pocket, it is impossible to overstate just how mind-blowing it once was for many aspiring filmmakers to realize that they didn’t need to be in Hollywood or have stars, crews and astronomical budgets.Instead, if a would-be filmmaker like Gehr was lucky enough to be in New York in the 1960s — then an epicenter of off-Hollywood cine-adventurousness — he could even borrow a camera. That’s exactly what Gehr did after he visited the Millennium Film Workshop, which was then run by the filmmaker Ken Jacobs and lent equipment for free. Gehr soon had a camera in hand that used 8-millimeter film (a precursor to Super-8), a cheaper alternative to 16-millimeter. Lightweight and easy to use, these cameras made making movies on your own entirely doable.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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      Audience Snapshot: Four Years After Shutdown, a Mixed Recovery

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      Covid brought live performance to a halt. Now the audience for pop concerts and sporting events has roared back, while attendance on Broadway and at some major museums is still down.It was four years ago — on March 12, 2020 — that the coronavirus brought the curtain down on Broadway for what was initially supposed to be a monthlong shutdown, but which wound up lasting a year and a half.The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums and movie theaters and leaving sports teams playing to empty stadiums dotted with cardboard cutouts.Now, four years later, audiences are coming back, but the recovery has been uneven. Here is a snapshot of where things stand now:Broadway audiences are still down 17 percent from prepandemic levels.On Broadway, overall attendance is still down about 17 percent: 9.3 million seats have been filled in the current season as of March 3, down from 11.1 million at the same point in 2020. Box office grosses are down, too: Broadway shows have grossed $1.2 billion so far this season, 14 percent below the level in early March of 2020.Broadway has always had more flops than successes, and the post-pandemic period has been challenging for producers and investors, especially those involved in new musicals. Three pop productions that have opened since the pandemic — “Six,” about the wives of King Henry VIII, “MJ,” about Michael Jackson and “& Juliet,” which imagines an alternate history for Shakespeare’s tragic heroine — are ongoing hits, but far more musicals have flamed out. The industry is looking with some trepidation toward next month, when a large crop of new shows is set to open.Many nonprofit theaters around the country are also struggling — attracting fewer subscribers and producing fewer shows — and some have closed. One bright spot has been the touring Broadway market, which has been booming.— More

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      How ‘I’m Just Ken’ Won the Oscars Without Winning an Actual Oscar

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      Working off ideas from Ryan Gosling and Greta Gerwig, the choreographer Mandy Moore created the crowd-pleasing number in days.Sixty-two dancers. One week of cast rehearsals. Ncuti Gatwa, didn’t arrive until Friday. Slash showed up on Saturday.“I’m Just Ken” was the showstopping number of Sunday’s Oscar telecast, and it probably wouldn’t have come together in as seamless a fashion if not for choreographer Mandy Moore, who has designed dance sequences for a Taylor Swift world tour and a film musical.“Um, it was definitely up there with ‘La La Land’ and the Eras Tour,” she said when asked about how “I’m Just Ken” ranked in terms of career challenges.Expectations were high before the ceremony. There were reports that the backup Kens would be shirtless, and in an interview on the red carpet, Mark Ronson, who was up for an Oscar for the song along with Andrew Wyatt, promised an “absolutely bananas spectacle.”While the dancers were fully clothed (and a different “Barbie” song would win the Academy Award), Moore’s troupe did deliver on Ronson’s promise. It helped that her partner in crime through the whole endeavor was Ryan Gosling, Oscar-nominated for his role as Ken in “Barbie,” who not only eagerly donned the pink sequin suit but also sang live and had clear ideas about how the number should go.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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      Donna Langley, Universal Chair, Bet Big on ’Oppenheimer’

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      Under Donna Langley’s leadership, Universal has managed the rare feat of achieving creative dominance and commercial supremacy at the same time.“Queen!”It was a Friday night in January, and Snoop Dogg had just rolled into a cocktail party hosted by Donna Langley, NBCUniversal’s chief content officer and studios chairwoman. His shouted greeting, paired with a jaunty deferential dance, seemed to leave her a bit embarrassed. “We’re here to celebrate filmmakers and films,” Langley told the room a few minutes later. “This is not about me.”For an executive who ardently prefers to stay in the background — she declined to be interviewed for this article and dispatched a lieutenant to try and kill it — the 2024 Oscar trail has been an awkward one. Like it or not, this moment in Hollywood history is very much about her.It was Langley who, in a wild bet on a three-hour period drama about a physicist, gave Christopher Nolan the money to make “Oppenheimer.” It won seven Oscars on Sunday, including the ones for director and best picture. Nolan started his acceptance speech for best director by saying, “Donna Langley — thank you for seeing the potential in this.”Nolan’s film helped Universal be No. 1 at the worldwide box office in 2023, ending an eight-year reign by Disney.Antony Jones/Getty ImagesDa’Vine Joy Randolph won the supporting actress Oscar for her performance as a grieving mother and boarding school cook in “The Holdovers,” which was released by Focus Features, a specialty film studio that Langley also oversees.In a rare achievement, Universal’s creative dominance has coincided with commercial supremacy: The studio was No. 1 at the worldwide box office in 2023, selling nearly $5 billion in tickets and ending an eight-year reign by Disney. Moreover, Universal reached audiences the old-fashioned way — by serving up movies from a mix of genres, with nary a superhero to be found. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.4 billion) led the way, followed by “Oppenheimer” ($958 million), “Fast X” ($705 million), “Five Nights at Freddy’s” ($291 million) and “Migration” ($279 million).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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      Al Pacino Awkwardly Announces Best Picture Oscar for ‘Oppenheimer’

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      Al Pacino put a room full of Hollywood stars a little bit on edge to close out the 96th Academy Awards.Rather than listing all 10 nominees while presenting the best picture Oscar, or offering a conventional “And the Oscar goes to,” Pacino simply said “Here it comes” before slowly opening the envelope.“And my eyes see ‘Oppenheimer,’” Pacino said next, to tepid applause from an audience that seemed unsure whether that statement was the most important proclamation of the night.“Yes, yes,” Pacino, 83, said of the movie that was considered the favorite to win best picture and finished with a night-best seven awards.At that point, on came the music, and cheers rose from the crowd. The camera cut to Christopher Nolan, the film’s director, and Emma Thomas, one of its producers, as they stood up and made their way to the stage.Did Jimmy Kimmel see it coming? Just minutes earlier, Kimmel, the host of the ceremony, made a joke about needing to tear up the envelope that said Emma Stone had won best actress for “Poor Things,” an allusion to the epic “Moonlight”/“La La Land” best picture mix-up of 2017. More