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      Saoirse Ronan Has Lived, and Acted, Through a Lot

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      “I wish I could live through something,” says the teenage title character in the 2017 movie “Lady Bird,” yearning for a life beyond suburban Sacramento.The actor playing her, Saoirse Ronan, had, at that point, already lived through enough for several lives. Then 23, she’d been acting since she was 9, and had already garnered two Oscar nominations. “Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig’s debut as a solo director, would earn Ronan a third. Another followed, in 2019, for her role as Jo March in Gerwig’s “Little Women.”This year, Oscars buzz surrounds Ronan once again, thanks to her leading roles in Nora Fingscheidt’s “The Outrun,” which opens in theaters Friday, and Steve McQueen’s “Blitz,” out Nov. 1st.Ronan’s career reads as a series of evolutions, pushing into new territory with every role — over the years, she has also played a 1950s Irish immigrant in New York, a child assassin, a vampire, Lady Macbeth and Mary, Queen of Scots. Now 30, with over two decades of experience in front of the camera, the Irish actress has committed herself in “The Outrun” to a character containing multitudes: a woman raised in a remote island community, who returns to recover from her addiction to alcohol.In “The Outrun,” Ronan’s character, Rona, returns home to the Orkney Islands in Scotland to recover from her alcohol addiction.Martin Scott Powell/Sony Pictures Classics“It was so much more than just making a film for me,” Ronan said, in a video interview from New York. She described an experience that was both physically and emotionally demanding: “I think actors are sponges, you’re able to open yourself up to everything around you.” For “The Outrun,” that meant swimming in the icy sea, delivering lambs on-camera and going deep into the psyche of a woman in crisis.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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      Stream Maggie Smith’s Greatest Performances

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      In “Downton Abbey,” “A Room With a View” and dozens of other films and television series, she delighted audiences with her portrayal of sharp, tart-tongued and often wryly funny Englishwomen.Maggie Smith, who was 89 when she died on Friday, made her professional stage debut on Broadway in the 1950s, when she was still in her early 20s. In the decades that followed, she worked steadily in movies and television, while regularly returning to the theater.Smith won her first Oscar for the title role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), a charismatic and manipulative teacher who has a profound and, at times, destructive effect on the lives of the teenage girls in her charge. She went on to win another Oscar, a Tony and four Emmys, and became known in her later years for playing a particular type of Englishwoman: sturdy, smart, sharp-tongued and rooted sometimes stubbornly in the traditions of the past.Audiences in the 21st century came to love Smith in two recurring roles: as the heroic Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” movies and as the coolly disapproving Dowager Countess Violet Crawley in the period TV drama “Downton Abbey.” But her career was long and eclectic, with a mix of serious and comic characters, in both supporting and leading roles. Here are 10 of Smith’s best performances that are available to stream:1972‘Travels With My Aunt’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Though she was only in her late 30s at the time, Smith took an early step toward her most familiar screen persona — the dynamic and unforgettable older relative — in this adaptation of Graham Greene’s offbeat adventure novel. Filling in for Katharine Hepburn (who differed with the studio and with her old friend, the director George Cukor, on how best to tell her character’s story), Smith ended up nabbing her third Oscar nomination, playing the eccentric globe-trotter Augusta Bertram, who enlists a stuffy, middle-aged Londoner in one of her illicit moneymaking schemes while hiding her true connection to him. Smith builds an outsize yet complex character via flashbacks that show how she learned to eschew conventional mores and to enjoy life on her own terms.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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      Will Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” Flop?

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      Mr. Coppola has spent $120 million on his new movie, “Megalopolis.” Most box office analysts predict that he’ll get far less in return.Lionsgate executives say they have done all they can. They’ve booked 1,700 theaters, deployed guerrilla marketers to college campuses and pushed to flip negative reviews to their advantage. They have tied the film’s themes to the presidential race in TV ads.And now it is up to moviegoers. Will people plunk down dollars and turn Francis Ford Coppola’s majestically bonkers “Megalopolis” into an against-all-odds success when it arrives on Friday?Or will the $120 million epic — in keeping with months of negative prerelease headlines — go down as a hall-of-fame flop?Most box office analysts are predicting disaster. “Megalopolis” could arrive to as little as $5 million in weekend ticket sales in North America, according to surveys that track audience interest. Ticket sales are split roughly 50-50 with theater owners.But there are glimmers of hope. The film received a 10-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. On Monday, Lionsgate, which is distributing and marketing “Megalopolis” for a fee, staged a preview at IMAX theaters across the country, selling out locations in New York, California, Massachusetts, Utah and Florida. The stunt was an effort to position what is essentially a big-budget art film as a broad-audience blockbuster.“We want everyone to come,” Mr. Coppola, 85, said during a Q. and A. that was part of the IMAX event, clasping his hands together in simulated prayer.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 Wild Robot’ Review: Wonder and Whimsy That Does Compute

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      Chris Sanders’s movie about a robotic assistant and the gosling she raises is defined by dazzling visuals and frank ideas about the circle of life.Have you ever thought about the many ways animals show emotion? Consider an inquisitive snout wriggling in the air, tails coiled protectively around cubs and ears perky or drooping depending on mood. For creatures who didn’t evolve to walk upright, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve is a considerably more anatomical business.Among the achievements of “The Wild Robot” is a painstaking regard for details like these. Written and directed by Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon”) and adapted from Peter Brown’s novel, the movie is a dazzling triumph of animation in which you feel the filmmakers’ attention on every frame. In a revivifying turn away from the gag-a-minute, computer-generated extravaganzas clogging up the animated zoological canon, this is a work that cares most about two things: big feelings and great beauty.That’s not to say that its machine is built entirely of new parts. In some ways, this kid-friendly affair about an interspecies found family even leans into its derivative elements. Roz, the bionic hero of “The Wild Robot,” seems designed to evoke the title character in “The Iron Giant,” sharing that monster’s studying eyes and lanky stature. But rather than outer space, she hails from today’s sinister science-fiction analog: the conglomerate Universal Dynamics, which specializes in robotic digital assistants. Think Alexa in hulking metal form.The movie begins as Roz (short for Rozzum Unit 7134) accidentally washes off a cargo ship and ashore a wildlife island, where she swiftly begins scouting for a task that satisfies her serve-at-all-costs programming. After wreaking havoc on some fauna, the robotic assistant (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) stumbles upon a purpose: raising an orphaned, newborn gosling whose kin she accidentally squashed.Brightbill, as she names him, is on the runty side, and although Roz grows more sociable — at first, she can speak only in Robotese, which is so stilted it might as well be Middle English — her ward (voiced by Kit Connor, of the Netflix series “Heartstopper”) struggles to master the basics of his pond and sky habitats. Tagging along for the child-rearing is a rascally fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who alternates between parenting advice and snide remarks. The impending winter imposes a ticking clock on Brightbill’s training: Should he fail to become airborne before migration time, he will perish in the cold, assuming he’s not eaten first.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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      ‘Killer Heat’ Review: Mediterranean Mischief

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      Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a detective running from his past in a murder mystery that is mostly a stiff slog to get through.When it comes to the modern murder mysteries that truly love the genre — the ones that don’t so much subvert but wholeheartedly lean into the familiar tropes of your favorite cheap detective novel — there’s a fine line separating the good and the not-so-good. Not only a properly calibrated twist, but a sense of wit and a legible directorial imagination is what distinguishes, say, your “Knives Out” and “A Haunting in Venice” from a film like “Killer Heat.”The latter, directed by Philippe Lacôte, has the starter elements that might equate to a romp of a detective movie: a hard-drinking private investigator character running from his past, a screenplay based on a short story by the celebrated crime novelist Jo Nesbo. But this film has none of the charm, tension or cinematic energy to elevate those ingredients into a greater sum.It mostly wants to rely instead on brooding, overwrought narration from Nick Bali (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an American expat detective who has landed on Crete to investigate the death of Leo Vardakis (Richard Madden), a member of a wealthy family that controls the island. Penelope (Shailene Woodley), the wife of Leo’s twin brother, Elias, has secretly hired Nick, suspicious of the actual circumstances that led to Leo’s death from a mysterious rock climbing accident. Soon, relationship secrets, along with Nick’s own personal past of betrayal, come to light.The twists and pedestrian dramatics are a stiff slog to get to, and Gordon-Levitt’s once innate charisma has vanished altogether here; his cheap P.I. outfit itself seems to be wearing him more than the other way around. Perhaps that’s the point “Killer Heat” wants to make about a cynical detective who’s just going through the motions. Yet, inadvertently, that ethos has swallowed the film itself.Killer HeatRated R for language, some sexual content, nudity and violence. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      ‘The Babadook’ Is Still an Unnerving Dream 10 Years Later

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      Back in theaters for its 10th anniversary, the haunting movie never really left, with a legacy that includes an entire horror subgenre.Before I even saw “The Babadook” I was scared of the Babadook. He quickly became such an icon of horror that the idea was immediately unsettling.Invented by the Australian director Jennifer Kent for her 2014 film, Mister Babadook is a creature from a children’s pop-up book that suddenly appears in the home of Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The brute is crudely drawn, with a top hat, long spindly fingers and teeth that form a grimace. “If it’s in a word or in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” the foreboding red hardcover reads.Despite his silly name and somewhat dapper attire, the Babadook is the stuff of nightmares, inexplicable but threatening. And as you watch Kent’s film, the terror only intensifies. You never actually see the corporeal form of the Babadook, but he infiltrates Amelia, an exhausted mother grieving after her husband was killed while driving her to the hospital to give birth to Samuel. He has grown into an erratic little boy who believes monsters are lurking in their house and has behavioral issues in school. When the Babadook book suddenly appears out of nowhere, his fears seem justified. Amelia, however, tries to pretend everything is normal.She has buried her pain, allowing it to fester into a bloodthirsty animosity toward her own spawn. The Babadook latches on to what’s been growing inside of her.When the film was originally released, it grossed just a little over $960,000 domestically (and a little over $10 million worldwide). Yet like the Babadook himself, the film has cast a long shadow that grows only more encompassing as it celebrates its 10th anniversary with a rerelease starting Thursday.The character became an internet phenomenon, even making an appearance in the Urban Dictionary. One popular post from 2016 featured the comedy writer Katie Dippold announcing that for Halloween she had “dressed as the Babadook but my friend’s house had more of a grown-ups drinking wine vibe,” complete with a photo of herself out of place in full Babadook drag. Somehow the creature also turned into a gay icon. (Well, he is quite fabulous.)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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      Test Yourself on These Sports Books Adapted Into Films

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on sports books that have been adapted into films within the past 25 years.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie adaptations. More

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      ‘Room Next Door’ Claims Top Prize at Venice Film Festival

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      The film, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, is the director Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut.“The Room Next Door,” directed by Pedro Almodóvar, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on Saturday by a competition jury led by Isabelle Huppert. In the film, a journalist with cancer (Tilda Swinton) asks an old friend, played by Julianne Moore, to stay with her when she decides to take her own life.“It is my first movie in English, but the spirit is Spanish,” Almodóvar said of his adaptation of “What Are You Going Through,” the 2020 novel by Sigrid Nunez. In accepting the award, the acclaimed auteur spoke of the decision to end one’s life in circumstances of unresolvable pain as a fundamental right.Moore’s vigil with Swinton takes place in a rented house in upstate New York. The small cast features John Turturro as a former lover and Alessandro Nivola as a police investigator. Almodóvar won a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and, in 2021, opened the event with his film “Parallel Mothers” (for which Penélope Cruz won the best actress prize).The 81st edition of the festival opened with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Tim Burton’s sequel to the original 1988 supernatural comedy. Other prominent films included “Maria,” “Queer,” “Babygirl,” “Joker: Folie à Deux,” “Wolfs,” “Cloud,” “April,” “Pavements,” “The Order” and “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter Two.”Despite sweltering heat, the stars were back in full force in Venice after last year’s actors’ strike. The list of boldface names was remarkable: Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig, Lady Gaga, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Antonio Banderas, Cate Blanchett, Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder, Kevin Costner, Michael Keaton, Swinton and Moore.The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to “Vermiglio,” an intimate period drama by Maura Delpero set in an Italian mountain village. The Silver Lion for best director went to Brady Corbet for “The Brutalist,” a three-and-a-half-hour drama about a Hungarian Jewish architect in America. Dea Kulumbegashvili won the Special Jury Prize for “April,” an acclaimed film about a Georgian doctor who performs abortions despite a ban on the procedures.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