The 31st annual celebration of the arts — held proudly in a city that likes to keep things weird — featured headliner presentations of feature films like Pamela Adlon’s directorial debut “Babes,” Alex Garland’s “Civil War” starring Kirsten Dunst, “The Fall Guy” with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, Anne Hathaway’s May-December rom-com “The Idea of You,” horror flick “Immaculate” from producer-star Sydney Sweeney, Dev Patel’s “Monkey Man,” Doug Liman’s “Road House” remake with Jake Gyllenhaal and “Saturday Night Live” vet Kyle Mooney’s nostalgic comedy “Y2K.”

And that list is just the tip of the iceberg.

In an exclusive Shutterstock portrait studio for TheWrap, photographers Andrew H. Walker and Chelsea Lauren captured the film and TV fest’s biggest stars, from Nicolas Cage (“Arcadian”) to Daisy Ridley (“Magpie”) to Marisa Tomei (“High Tide”) and more.

View the full gallery below.

Daisy Ridley, “Magpie”

Marisa Tomei, “High Tide”

Susan Sarandon, “The Gutter”

Nicolas Cage, “Arcadian”

Simona Tabasco, Sydney Sweeney and Benedetta Porcaroli, “Immaculate”

Hunter Schafer, “Cuckoo”

Lucy Boynton, “The Greatest Hits”

Diane Warren, “Diane Warren: Relentless”

Paul Reiser, “The Gutter”

D’Arcy Carden, “The Gutter”

Beau Bridges and Frances Fisher, “Desert Road”

Samara Weaving, “Azrael”

John Leguizamo, “Bob Trevino Likes It”

Barbie Ferreira, “Bob Trevino Likes It”

Ilana Glazer, “Babes”

Julian Dennison, Rachel Zegler and Jaeden Martell, “Y2K”

Nick Kroll, “I Don’t Understand You”

Lilly Singh, “Doin’ It”

Jesse Eisenberg, “Sasquatch Sunset”

Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin, “Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie”

Mark Duplass, “Indie TV Showcase”

Elizabeth Reaser, “The Uninvited”

Fisher Stevens, “A King Like Me”

Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot

Sean Wang, “Didi”

Kyle Mooney and Evan Winter, “Y2K”

Anna Camp, “Neo-Dome”

Tommy Dorfman, “I Wish You All The Best”

Natalie Morales, “My Dead Friend Zoe”

Utkarsh Ambudkar, “My Dead Friend Zoe”

Walton Goggins, “Fallout”

Wilson Cruz, “Star Trek: Discovery”

Prentice Penny, “Black Twitter: A People’s History”

Cazzie David, “I Love You Forever”

The post SXSW 2024 Portrait Studio: Nicolas Cage, Marisa Tomei, Daisy Ridley and More | Exclusive Photos appeared first on TheWrap.

It is easy, perhaps, to take Mickey Mouse for granted, both as an icon and a character. His image, as Disney parks fans will tell you, is everywhere: on the sides of buildings, in nooks and crannies, on t-shirts, in flower beds, up in the clouds.

Though omnipresent, Mickey has had a rich, tumultuous journey, on and off screen, and Jeff Malmberg’s new documentary “Mickey: The Story of a Mouse” takes viewers on a winding road through Mickey’s almost 100-year-old journey.

In 1928, a pioneering little critter manned a river steamboat in a charming little animated musical titled “Steamboat Willie” — the first of its kind to be set to sound. He was industrious, charming and whimsical, without being conniving, precocious or silly. This was Mickey Mouse, who’d been previously introduced in a short called “Plane Crazy,” under the production of the Walt Disney Company, animated by Disney himself and Ub Iwerks.

Malmberg (“Marwencol”) punctuates his documentary with the creation of a new Mickey short, spearheaded by animators Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn and Randy Haycock. The minute-long short features Mickey walking down a hallway, reminiscing about posters of shorts from his past, before he’s sucked into a vortex and transformed into all the various iterations of himself. It’s a convenient framing device, and Goldberg, adorned with colorful Mickey-patterned button-ups, is a cheerful guide to the iconic creature. His enthusiasm for the project, as well as the remarkable history of Mickey, is infectious.

“Mickey” presents Mickey as an allegory for his creator, Walt Disney, and as a stand-in for the “average American.” He (Mickey or Walt, take your pick) began as an enterprising and eager figure from the humble Midwest, acting the role of scrappy businessman and inventor, father and friend. Disney’s first character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was taken from him, which allowed Mickey to act as a type of redemptive venture: the little mouse that could.

The film explores the progression of Mickey’s animation — from a simplistic concoction of circles to something more fluid and complex — and character over the course of his first 50 years. Through the Depression, Mickey becomes more resourceful and generous. Rebecca Cline of the Walt Disney archives suggests that Mickey had a more material effect besides keeping up morale: “There were a couple of companies on the verge of bankruptcy, and Mickey Mouse saved them from disappearing.”

In the 1940s, Mickey went to war. After that, he moved to the suburbs. Through archivists, researchers, artists and a handful of unnamed Mickey fans, we learn how Mickey stood for America, its ups and downs, its business spirit. The evolution of the little mouse who could glosses over the domination of Disney as a corporation, the gluttony of its toy manufacturing, and the growing emptiness of Mickey. Perhaps Mickey is such an endearing piece of iconography, in part, because he’s a blank slate. He is amenable and open to change with the times, the quintessential bootstrap-yanking young man.

Malmberg’s documentary is quick to gloss over rough patches in both Mickey and Disney’s shared histories. In lieu of touching on Walt Disney’s history of anti-Semitism, Malmberg instead shows drawings of Mickey from Polish concentration camps during the Holocaust, as well as pages from the French artist Horst Rosenthal’s comic “Mickey au Camp de Gurs” (“Mickey Mouse in the Gurs Internment Camp”), a 15-page booklet that shows Mickey in the camps alongside other Jewish prisoners under threat of being Jewish himself. The piece ends with Mickey deciding not to be Jewish, redrawing himself as escaping the camp, and walking back to America. In the documentary, this is framed as “Mickey disappears.” (Horst, on the other hand, was executed.)

Though “Mickey” is not interested in the redemption (or renewal) of Walt Disney, neither does it suggest that Mickey himself needs any type of rehabilitation. He is a character who tries; he is always trying, and when he fails, he does so in the spirit of trying. In 1989, Disney threatened litigation toward three day-care centers in Hallandale, Florida, whose outer walls had been painted with larger-than-life murals of Mickey and friends. To the disappointment of the children at the centers, the copyrighted cartoons were removed. “[I]t’s totally ludicrous,” Erika Scotti, one of the centers’s directors, said at the time. “I’d rather have everyone’s energy going to […] a new curriculum.”

This incident is framed a bit differently by the Disney archivists. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve handled every situation perfectly, but there’s really no precedent for a creation like this when it comes to copyright. Mickey’s one of the most popular characters in the world, and there’s really no question we’ve had to learn as we go,” Cline explains. It’s a non-apology, a rare acknowledgment that Disney has misstepped. But these are the issues that arise when a character belongs to both everyone and a profit-centered conglomerate. If Mickey is really a creature of the people, why is Disney allowed to deny anyone use of his image?

In the end, we get a glimpse at the short in progress, the century of Mickey whirling through time. It’s a charming if not simple cartoon, lacking in personality as it doesn’t linger long enough on one Mickey to indulge the viewer. But of course, for one looking for more of Disney’s iconic mouse, “Mickey” argues that all you have to do is look out your window, and sooner or later, there he’ll be.

“Mickey: The Story of a Mouse” premieres on Disney+ Nov. 18.

The post ‘Mickey: The Story of a Mouse’ Review: Disney Doc Explores Character, Icon, Ubiquitous Mascot appeared first on TheWrap.

Who gets a second chance? A third? A 20th? And what is the price to pay for these opportunities? Director Michael Morris’s debut film “To Leslie” is a full-hearted, albeit conventional, ode to Leslie (Andrea Riseborough), a woman trying to break free from herself.

In the film’s opening credits, an old news clip airs: Once upon a time, Leslie won the lottery jackpot of just under $200,000 by playing her son’s birth date. She tells the anchor she wants to use the money to get on her feet, open a diner, maybe — but only after she’s bought everyone a round. More than a few thousand rounds later, we learn that these wide-eyed dreams never came to fruition.

When we meet Leslie, she’s been evicted from her motel room, forced to board a bus back to where her son James (Owen Teague, also appearing in SXSW title “The Cow”) cautiously agrees to put her up. Things go from bad to worse, however, and Leslie once again hops on a bus, this time to her hometown, in an attempt to stumble back to life.

“To Leslie” is unglamorous and unflinching, lilting from dive bars to motels across an errant desert wind. So too is Riseborough’s performance as Leslie. Riseborough, often a chameleon in television and film, takes center stage here in a raw, lived-in performance. Leslie is no two-dimensional addict — she is equal parts frustrating and magnetic. Riseborough brings a humanity and an anger to this performance; it’s not just a woman suffering, but also a woman resisting every part of herself.

Leslie’s odyssey next takes her to Nancy (an under-utilized Allison Janney) and Dutch (an even more under-utilized Stephen Root). Attempts to establish conflict outside of Leslie’s struggles feel vague and ephemeral. Her long-standing bitterness towards Nancy is underdeveloped and underwritten, with Riseborough and Janney taking smug shots at each other. It becomes clear more through telling than showing that Leslie is struggling to remain upright, but the people from her past do not want her to succeed. They resent her money, her chances. Soon after arriving, she’s back out on the street.

Writer Ryan Binaco (“3022”) dedicated “To Leslie” to his own mother, which is part of why it feels so miraculous that the film avoids too much sentimentality. Ugly things happen to Leslie, but she causes them as well. For the first hour of the film, in fact, it seems as though only ugly things will happen to Leslie. When she begins the film evicted from her humble digs, sitting out on the street in the rain, one believes she has hit rock-bottom. Alas, there are a few more bottoms to hit before the movie finally swings upward. That long first act feels, at times, punishing. Sure, Leslie has done wrong, but what is gained watching her suffer more?

Eventually, Leslie crosses paths with Sweeney (Marc Maron) and Royal (Andre Royo), who run the local motel, where she’s granted the space and patience to get back onto her feet. While it can be a tired trope to present a down-on-their-luck person gaining resilience through manual labor, her figurative job cleaning the motel rooms does help Leslie metaphorically clean up her act.

It also doesn’t hurt that Sweeney — the lone figure in town who didn’t know Leslie at the time of her lotto-winning miracle — is willing to sit with her each night to make sure she doesn’t drink. Riseborough and Maron share sweet (almost chaste) chemistry. He is more concerned with helping her get back on her feet than sweeping her off of them, but still, a small romance blooms between them.

The drama that plays out in the film’s second half is much more engaging, the script gaining momentum alongside Leslie. Roadside motels, too, under the eye of cinematographer Larkin Seiple (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), have rarely looked more romantic. (Even a microwave dinner has an air of warmth to it.) Seiple often shoots Leslie in close-up, so we bear witness to every flinch, every tear, every steely gaze.

We know — from life, from “Lost” — that winning the lottery is often more of a curse than a blessing. “To Leslie,” in turn, is an ode to everything that comes after: What can be made not from money, but from grit and determination, love and patience.

“To Leslie” opens in U.S. theaters and on-demand Oct. 7.

The post ‘To Leslie’ Review: Andrea Riseborough Shines in Good-Hearted, If Conventional, Redemption Story appeared first on TheWrap.

Camille Hardman and Gary Lane’s documentary “Still Working 9 to 5” cold-opens with an archival clip of Jane Fonda giving a television interview about “9 to 5,” the 1980 comedy she produced and starred in alongside Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton. As the interviewer presses her about what kind of film to expect from the radical activist, Fonda blurts, “it’s a movie about secretaries fantasizing about murdering their boss,” to which the interviewer responds, “So it’s not a political statement, is it?” This is an assertion that Hardman and Lane will emphatically disprove over the course of the next hour and 40 minutes. 

“Still Working 9 to 5” doesn’t innovate or experiment with documentary form: This is a straightforward talking-heads and archival-footage kind of project. But the access to the film’s stars and producers, as well as notable feminist activists spanning the first and third waves of feminism, is what makes this documentary appealing.

Lane produced and appeared in the 2011 documentary “Hollywood to Dollywood,” depicting the road trip he took with his twin brother Larry to deliver a script to Dolly Parton at her namesake Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, theme park, so his connection to the country star could have perhaps been the boost to get her on board the project. (Larry Lane also serves as a producer.) Parton even contributes a new recording of her iconic, Oscar-nominated theme song “9 to 5,” on which she duets with Kelly Clarkson. 

The first half of “Still Working 9 to 5” is dedicated to the development and production of the 1980 comedy, which had a unique journey to the screen. In the late ‘70s, Fonda and activist partner Bruce Gilbert turned from political action to making films that highlighted the issues they cared about in order to bring attention to, say, the plight of Vietnam vets (“Coming Home”) or the nuclear threat (“The China Syndrome”).

For “9 to 5,” Fonda partnered with the Boston-based labor organization run by Karen Nussbaum in an effort to address the issues facing working women in clerical jobs, at the height of the women’s movement. The script started with data and testimonials that Nussbaum delivered, and the film was cast before a word was written, with Fonda hand-picking Tomlin and Parton as her co-stars.

Fonda emphasizes the importance of craft and genre in delivering these messages to wide audiences. For “9 to 5,” comedy was the sugar that helped the medicine go down as well as a way to visualize real women’s experiences. The resulting film (written by Patricia Resnick and Colin Higgins and directed by Higgins) is both sharply incisive about the real issues facing women in the workplace and appealingly funny, which is part of why it became a cultural phenomenon.

After detailing the production and initial reception of the film in 1980 and its shocking box office success (released in December, it was second only to “The Empire Strikes Back” that year), Hardman and Lane take on the legacy of the film (which they sort of incorrectly deem a “cult” classic) throughout pop culture, as well as its resonance with the various fights for gender parity in the United States. 

“Still Working 9 to 5” tracks the film’s trajectory and its continued long life as a TV series and as a stage musical, alongside various political movements like the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, and the #MeToo movement in 2017. An archival interview with Harvey Weinstein at the 2009 Broadway premiere of the “9 to 5” musical, in which he mentions that everyone in his office wants to kill him, is a truly cringe-worthy piece of footage but a crucial moment for examining the way this story has moved through culture and taken on renewed meaning in different moments in the fight for women’s rights. 

In 2009, it didn’t seem like there was much need for the kind of feminist ideals laid out in 1980’s “9 to 5.” Hadn’t women achieved equality? The reception of the 2019 production in London’s West End would prove that this story wasn’t quite so dated after all, especially in the wake of #MeToo. It’s fascinating to compare the reviews of the film in 1980, with white male critics whining about the heavy-handed message and calling it “silly” and “dumb,” with the reviews of the 2019 West End musical production, which heralds the story’s effervescent energy and lack of argumentative subtlety. 

At times, “Still Working 9 to 5” feels rather continuously repetitive, perhaps because the filmmakers lay out their thesis at the top and then continue to hammer it home, but that might also reflect the frustratingly circular nature of the fight for women’s equality in this country. As activist Zoe Nicholson observes, it’s a constant process of advancement and steps back, something that rings all too true to this day — just look at the current laws being passed restricting reproductive and LGBTQ rights all over the United States. 

It does feel like “Still Working 9 to 5” bites off a bit more than it can chew as it rounds home plate, trying to connect the film to just about every progressive movement of the moment, and the links start to feel a bit harried and scattershot, rather than carefully laid out. The focus on the ERA is the film’s strongest argument, connecting Tomlin’s 1977 speech in favor of the Amendment to present day, as the ERA, finally ratified by the required 38 states, languishes. Though the film starts to get a bit noisy at the end, the call to action for Congress to act on the ERA comes through loud and clear, just like Dolly’s dulcet tones. 

“Still Working 9 to 5” opens Friday, Sept. 16, in U.S. theaters.

The post ‘Still Working 9 to 5’ Review: Doc Examines 1980 Comedy’s Impact on Ongoing Fight for Gender Equity appeared first on TheWrap.

In writer-director Eli Horowitz’s labyrinthine, mostly unpredictable thriller “Gone in the Night,” becoming increasingly risk-adverse is one clear symptom of getting older.

Part unlikely friendship tale and part potpourri of genre tropes orchestrated as a parade of red herrings, this debut feature takes on modern culture’s blatant disdain of aging and veneration of youth.

It begins with a common sequence: two people driving on an empty tree-lined road. They are, of course, heading toward an isolated destination in the middle of nowhere. Middle-aged hydroponics expert Kath (Winona Ryder) and her younger, man-child boyfriend Max (an amusingly annoying John Gallagher Jr.) have decided on an impromptu getaway to a rented forest abode as part of an ongoing dynamic in which he constantly dares her to be more adventurous.

In “Gone in the Night,” Horowitz lays down strong eeriness early: He harnesses the inherently unnerving atmosphere of a place amid nature and toys with the language of cabin-in-the-woods films that immediately raise flags in the viewer. For example, the camera makes us hyper-aware of a large storage container near the home — too bad, we won’t know its significance for a while.

Once at the location, Kath and Max discover the place was likely double-booked and is currently occupied by a couple of 20-somethings with an uneasy vibe, ghostly Al (Owen Teague, also at SXSW with “To Leslie”) and vivacious Greta (Brianne Tju, Amazon’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer”). They allow Kath and Max to stay the night. From these early exchanges, clues of the movie’s age-related themes emerge — Max comments about Kath’s deteriorating eyesight or a discussion about their less-than-exciting first date.

But the scary-movie setup doesn’t unfold as one might expect. Instead, what ensues is Kath’s search for answers about who the young people really are, after learning Max may have run away with Greta. With her confidence tarnished, given that her idiot partner potentially left her for a younger woman, Kath meets Barlow (Dermot Mulroney), the property’s owner, and sets out on a caper with him as her understanding sidekick.

At this point, the construction of the narrative turns intensely nonlinear, as if someone had opened a jigsaw puzzle and scattered all the pieces on a table. The story now comes at us in segments that go back and forth between the past and the present, revealing new information on what may have happened, but also directing us to new theories about the possibility of a cult, or perhaps even a supernatural entity, being involved in the ordeal.

Via this decidedly piecemeal approach, surely to conceal the twist for as long as possible, Horowitz begins making his points about mid-life crisis more overtly. The screenplay is at its most compelling when Kath speaks frankly about the reenergizing morale boost she gets from dating Max, despite or perhaps because of his juvenile antics. But this out-of-order display of revealing moments also provides Max’s reactions to assumptions about his age from those younger than him as well as the expectations from his chronological peers on how he should behave.

Although this approach of Arndt-Wulf Peemöller’s editing maintains intrigue and forces us to chase the truth as if in an escape-room setting, what’s most notable about Horowitz and co-writer Matthew Derby’s greatly entertaining work here is the utilization of genre as a moldable frame to distill real-world anxieties about the passage of time and who we become when the years and decades start piling on. Their aim regarding how to flesh out some of the plot traps they set is not always on target, but the philosophical foundation feels fresh.

There’s a familiarity to Ryder in this role since Horowitz leans on her natural, self-deprecating charisma that makes her quest relatable. One can easily comprehend why she feels so jilted by what she believes is an unfaithful boyfriend or why she ultimately chooses peace and silence over excitement. The lightness in her performance counteracts the darker tone that some of the occurrences around her evoke. That she grows plants — which inevitably wilt — for a living comes off as a curious nod back to the unpostponable march of time for all living things.

As Barlow comes into Kath’s life, the film hints at the possibility of a bond developing between them, with echoes of a romantic comedy. They share intimate details while sipping on sodas, and for an instant, it seems the director might flip the script on us once more. These segments should feel more out of place, but in Ryder and Mulroney’s comfortably friendly turns, they sort of make sense.

When he talks about a genetic illness that has afflicted his father, and which he fears will come for him, our attention is yet again redirected. But the closer we get to finding out how all these people and situations fit together, the shorter each chapter becomes, almost as if desperately trying to drag out the climax. The film’s final third — particularly, what transpires in a defining scene — takes the genre-defying attributes of the writing to their limits, which results in something awkward and almost ridiculously hilarious moments. Though not entirely jarring considering what came before, this in-your-face WTF confrontation goes against the slightly more subdued commentary interspersed throughout.

However, it’s also in this portion that Kath gives a speech, whether the character means it or not, that explicates the feeling of watching the clock of one’s life go by, unable to turn it back or to recapture the idealized version of ourselves in the past. (Don’t fret, the eponymous “cow” — from the film’s original title, “The Cow” — eventually makes its way to the screen.)

In this house of mirrors about chasing the fountain of youth that Horowitz has built, maybe the point is that losing one’s edge, as far as society is concerned, is only the beginning of something more liberating.

“Gone in the Night” opens Friday in U.S. theaters.

The post ‘Gone in the Night’ Film Review: Winona Ryder Confronts the Passage of Time in a Thriller Packed with Twists appeared first on TheWrap.

Though he is just one man, José Andrés has the energy and drive of dozens. After arriving in New York from Spain in 1991, his outsized talents and personality propelled him to fame as one of the first modern celebrity chefs. His D.C. hotspot Jaleo kicked off an expansion that eventually encompassed around 30 restaurants, cookbooks, a range of kitchen products, classes at major universities and TV appearances.

But as Ron Howard chronicles in “We Feed People,” the closer Andrés got to having it all, the more aware he became of how many others had nothing. 

Andrés’ NGO, World Central Kitchen, started in 2010 but kicked into high gear in 2017 in response to Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria. When he faced bureaucratic obstacles from government organizations he pushed them aside impatiently, in a quest to establish his own, sustainable form of aid. As he says in the film, “I am good at seeing opportunity where others see mayhem.” So while President Trump was tossing rolls of paper towels into a despairing crowd, Andrés and his group were sourcing safe kitchens, any available water and food, chefs to cook and volunteers to distribute.

“We don’t only feed people,” he teaches a local member of the Puerto Rican relief team as they study a map of towns in need. “We create systems.”

Most of the movie provides visual proof of this ethos, as the camera — often held by members of the volunteer team — follows him from one devastated community to the next. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes: each disaster requires a new system, and the beauty of Andrés’ approach is the way in which he rethinks calcified tactics. Most notably, he forcibly rejects the easy, and barely-edible, MREs offered by the government, in favor of locally influenced, personally cooked meals.

Though this method might feel more complicated, it becomes, remarkably, far more practical, making use of available products, supporting struggling businesses and providing both emotional and physical nourishment when and where they’re most needed.

Howard also gives us glimpses of other people in Andrés’ overfilled life: the heroic wife and loving daughters he too rarely sees, the volunteers he inspires, the staffers who have to find practical ways to manifest his grand vision — and are sternly taken to task when they don’t or can’t. One of the most electric moments of the film involves an argument with a colleague that brushes up against bullying. Andrés insists on explaining himself to an unsettled witness, talking over her as she tries to shut his excuses down.

But these humanizing sections are really too brief; an expansion of personal stories would have allowed the film to feel fuller and more complex. Climate-minded viewers might also wish the movie had delved deeper into the implications of so many of these disasters, which, Andrés bluntly observes, are now multiplying with terrifying speed.

His hands-on contribution to literally millions of global citizens is genuinely astounding in its generosity, innovation, and practical application. But without the depth of other threads, the movie itself (which was executive produced by WCK CEO Nate Mook and Richard Wolffe, the managing director of José Andrés Media) can come across as less cinematic than advertorial.

“We Feed People” does feel like a partner project to WCK’s photobook “We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico One Meal at a Time,” and even to Andrés’ vivid, on-location social media videos. One could easily imagine the movie being played at a World Central Kitchen gala, motivating guests to greater support.

But as education and, especially, inspiration, the movie wholeheartedly succeeds. Those who don’t know about WCK, and even those who do, will be awed to see how individual efforts truly do make a difference. As Andrés notes, while racing to yet another crisis, there will never be a shortage of need. Many viewers may, in fact, end the movie and go straight to his Twitter feed to learn even more. They’re likely to find him in Odessa, Lviv or any one of the border spots where his team is currently feeding hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.

“We Feed People” premieres Friday on Disney+.

The post ‘We Feed People’ Film Review: Ron Howard Documents José Andrés’ Mission to Nourish Bodies and Souls appeared first on TheWrap.

“Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off” opens with a montage of failures. Hawk, now in his 50s and easily the most famous skateboarder of all time, is trying to land a 900. To pull the trick off, he has to complete two and a half aerial spins, essentially hurtling himself and his skateboard through several mid-air somersaults before landing neatly back on a wooden ramp.

Hawk already landed this trick, over two decades ago at the 1999 X Games. He is reportedly the first to ever successfully do so. It was a feat akin to Tonya Harding’s triple axel or Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10. Yet here Hawk is, relentlessly determined to do it again.

He flings himself across an indoor ramp, slamming into the wood over and over as he blunders each attempt. The film’s opening titles begin over a shot of Hawk’s upended skateboard, wheels still spinning in the foreground. Hawk sits at the back of the frame, his head hanging low.

This documentary by Sam Jones (“Off Camera,” “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”) chronicles Hawk’s prodigious, at times challenging, skateboarding career, but it also analyzes its subject with a keen psychological eye. Why is this man, after nearly 40 years of unbelievable success, still risking his life to break records?

Lance Mountain, one of Hawk’s peers, probably says it best: “Tony is competing against Tony. He’s always been competing against Tony.”

Through a series of interviews with Hawk, as well as his family, friends and peers, Jones dissects that perfectionism. Maybe it came about because Hawk’s mother, who had him at 43, would regularly refer to him as a “mistake.” Maybe it’s just an inherent part of success. Maybe — and this is very much my personal theory, not the documentary’s — Tony Hawk is like this because he is a Taurus. 

Whatever the reason, “Until the Wheels Fall Off” feels less about Hawk, the person, and more about this particular neurosis. That might be because Hawk makes for a withholding interview subject, speaking stoically about his father’s death and referring to his own recovery in a rehab facility, perhaps the documentary’s most personal aside, as a time when “I checked myself into a place.” There are mentions of his tumultuous personal life, including his struggles with infidelity and his regrets as a father, but Wikipedia can ultimately tell you more about Hawk’s past marriages than this documentary can.

That’s not a knock against Hawk. He has a complex relationship to notoriety and seems sympathetically uncomfortable in the role of documentary subject. Even in middle age, his characteristically sunken eyes adorned with wrinkles and his floppy hair streaked with gray, it’s difficult not to associate the aloof Hawk with joyful, childlike recklessness.

For millennials, he heralded in the early-aughts glory days of Mountain Dew, the X Games and “Tony Hawk’s Underground” video games. For Gen X, he was a fixture in Thrasher magazine and Bones Brigade VHS tapes. “Until the Wheels Fall Off” captures and celebrates those eras in Hawk’s career and in the history of skateboarding more generally.

Still, “Until the Wheels Fall Off” works better as a humanistic exploration than it does as a biography, making its Hawk focus occasionally feel like a weakness. Editor Greg Finton (“Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”) does an admirable job with scores of interviews and archival material, but the film can still feel jumpy as it whips from broader topics, like the video boom or skate-park demolitions, to personal minutiae. This documentary is at its strongest when it is most contemplative, particularly toward the end, as Hawk’s peers ponder why, after years of damaging his body by skateboarding, he’s doing more extreme tricks than ever.

That is where the film’s standout voice, Rodney Mullen, gets to shine. Mullen, a freestyle skateboarder who prefers to refer to the sport as an art form, addresses the interviewer with shining eyes and a kind voice. In an impassioned monologue that lends the documentary its name, he speaks about skateboarding with a kind of sublime reverence. Despite the bodily costs, he insists, “this is the luxury of having spent my life doing what I love.”

“I’m not going to give up until the wheels fall off,” Mullen goes on. “That’s what I’m made of. I wish I could relate the intangibles to you.”

“Until the Wheels Fall Off” also struggles to fully elucidate its more abstract concepts: freedom, passion, perfection, fearlessness, gratitude, love. That’s not for lack of trying. Jones, also the film’s cinematographer, has situated each of his subjects outdoors, often surrounded by green space, lending the project a much-needed sense of openness.

The tearjerker of a score by Jeff Cardoni (“The Kominsky Method,” “Silicon Valley”) feels at home among the soundtrack’s many rock anthems. Though Hawk is not very forthcoming, other subjects, particularly the other pro skaters, are. They try to explain the incredible, inimitable feeling that drives them, the euphoria that only comes from being brave enough to risk your life.

In the same way that Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” appears to be about a group of skateboarding friends but ultimately winds up addressing masculinity, adulthood and the cycle of abuse, “Until the Wheels Fall Off” is a film that uses skating to access some of the bigger topics on its mind. But where “Minding the Gap” smartly focuses on those deeper issues, this film somewhat muddles them with standard biographical fare.

It’s hardly a mortal sin. Hawk’s life is interesting, and despite its two-hour runtime, this doc goes down smoothly. Still, it’s difficult not to wonder how much greater it could have been if Jones, like Hawk pushing to re-perfect his greatest ever trick, had gone just a little bit further.

“Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off” premieres April 5 on HBO.

The post ‘Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off’ Film Review: Legendary Skateboarder Makes a Reticent Doc Subject appeared first on TheWrap.

Richard Linklater digs into his own salad days for “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood,” an animated feature that fondly recalls the NASA moment in a way that’s more reminiscent of “Amarcord” or “Crooklyn” than of “First Man.”

As a kid who was born in 1960 and grew up in the suburbs of Houston, like the film’s young hero, Linklater had a front-row seat to the race to the moon. In this delightfully evocative exercise in nostalgia, he captures the way that children will remember historic events in the context of what else was on TV, which siblings got to sit on the couch, and how your favorite song made you feel.

The story here is ostensibly about young Stan (voiced by Milo Coy), a schoolboy recruited by NASA (because of his exemplary science projects and a three-year record earning the Presidential Fitness Challenge certificate) to go to the moon before Neil Armstrong to test out a capsule that has accidentally been made too small for adult astronauts. But no sooner does Stan upchuck during his first G-force simulation than adult Stan (a droll Jack Black) hijacks the narration and takes a long detour into the sights and sounds and memories of growing up as a youngest child in late-’60s suburbia.

This charming walk down memory lane — which includes everything from “Dark Shadows” to grandparents who remember the Depression to riding to the beach on the back of pick-up trucks and using gasoline-soaked rags to wipe the tar off your feet — is the heart of “Apollo 10 1/2,” and it’s an exhilarating, Proustian wave of reminiscences. Unlike the “memberberries” school of nostalgia that can reduce itself to “I had that lunch box!” Linklater gets granular and specific (and thus universal) about his memories and his perceptions of the world at that time.

(As a youngest child of a large family myself, I can attest to the details Linklater recalls here, from early exposure to pop music via your older sister’s 45 RPM records to squeezing into the tiniest and least comfortable parts of a station wagon on group outings.)

There’s no dark underbelly to Linklater’s recollections — this isn’t “Fanny and Alexander” or the comics of Lynda Barry, where children vacillate between heartbreak and wonder — but the sunny technological optimism of the late-’60s is inevitably tinged with regret and irony as we understand where the world went from there. The future, as they say, ain’t what it used to be, and if nostalgia, as Don Draper famously noted on “Mad Men,” is “the pain from an old wound,” audiences are left to bring that pain to the film and not vice versa.

“Apollo 10 1/2” isn’t viewed entirely through rose-colored glasses, of course. Adult Stan recalls that corporal punishment was still benignly (but painfully) practiced by both teachers and parents, and there is acknowledgment that even at the height of the space race, many Americans viewed it as a waste of federal funds (when many cities were in impoverished decay) and that landing on the moon was in many ways a “triumph of the squares.” (Vietnam, riots, and campus unrest were happening, yes, but when you’re nine, that’s just something on television.)

Once again working with animation director Tommy Pallotta, his collaborator on previous animated features “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly,” Linklater achieves a warmer and literally fuzzier effect. As opposed to relying entirely on motion-capture and rotoscoping, Linklater and Pallotta worked together to achieve a more 2D look to the animation, which not only fits the film’s themes about the soft focus of memory but also allows the integration of rotoscoped TV footage (encompassing everything from “The Beverly Hillbillies” to Walter Cronkite’s Apollo 11 coverage) in a way that makes it look like part of, but also separate from, the world of Stan and his family.

When Linklater burst onto the scene in 1991, his film “Slacker” was held up alongside Douglas Coupland’s novel “Generation X” as being definitive chronicles of the post-Boomers as they came of age. (Ironically, both Linklater and Coupland were born in the early 1960s, making them de facto Baby Boomers themselves.) Over the course of a rich and varied career, Linklater has demonstrated that he has many stories to tell, from a variety of angles.

Still, this dewy recollection of life in suburban Houston — at a time when all the buildings (including the Astrodome) were shiny and new, and the imminent moon landing seemed to signal infinite possibilities for space travel and technology — is an essential Generation X text, a reverie of childhood before Watergate, when kids drank Tang, adults smoked and the future spelled opportunity instead of eventual apocalypse.

“Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” premieres on Netflix April 1.

The post ‘Apollo 10 1/2’ Film Review: Richard Linklater’s Nostalgic Reverie Is Less ‘First Man,’ More ‘Crooklyn’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“You’re so pulled into the specifics that seem so personal that you buy the fantastic element that makes it seem real,” Linklater told TheWrap. “There’s still tricks you can do as a storyteller to lull the audience and pull them into a headspace. I kind of do that with a long take in actors: oh it must be real, it’s all so real. It’s not. It’s all written and rehearsed. Everything is a magic trick.”

“Apollo 10 1/2,” which premieres at SXSW, is one of his best tricks in years. The animated film — the third in his career after “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly” — transports audiences back to the space race in 1969 and the Houston, Texas, community that was centered around NASA, where all the action was happening. It imagines that NASA has accidentally built its space shuttle too small and looks to a pre-teen Houston local to secretly pilot its trip to the moon — a mission called Apollo 10 1/2 — all before Neil Armstrong actually gets there.

But that’s just the connective tissue for a movie that explores many facets of life in 1969 Houston and how it felt to be a kid at that moment in time. And the narrative grapples with how the world at large seemed to be rapidly changing in exciting and terrifying ways, all at once.

“Heart transplant, push-button phone, AstroTurf; it was all the same to me. Wow! What will they think of next? It’s so funny to me, we think, ‘Oh, it’s so archaic and backwards,’ and it’s like no, that’s not how it felt at all,” he said. “It was future shock. We were living in science fiction. It was so exciting, but it’s the olden days now. It’s how it felt to be a little kid. Technofuture was so cool and optimistic, and the real world — as the real world can be — there was a lot of doom and gloom in the air, too. I tried to capture the dissonance in a young person’s mind.”

And while it might seem like the protagonist in the film’s love of pop culture and baseball is the perfect proxy for Linklater himself, “Apollo 10 1/2” is not “specifically autobiographical.”

Linklater’s dad did not really work for NASA (though the mom of the film’s narrator, Jack Black, most certainly did), he didn’t go to the junior high nearest to NASA (just a different one nearby), and his family wasn’t quite the size of the boy in the movie (though he was the youngest sibling). He’d rather not get hung up on the specifics though.

“It was just called being a kid. I just thought I would smother people in absolute specificity. It’s kind of a trick, sort of like a good counter narrative,” he explained. “But at the top of the list is entertainment. You want to make a fun movie that wants to get what you want to express.”

“Apollo 10 1/2” was also done as an animated film when Linklater couldn’t crack how it would work as live-action. While it has some “rotoscoped” elements that resemble some of his past animated films, the technique used for “Apollo 10 1/2” was more traditional animation, which was necessary to give the movie a blend of realism and fantasy.

“The movie’s about creativity, it’s about the past and memory. It all takes place in the brain — it’s a construct, memory,” he said. “The whole movie I started envisioning this memory, scrapbook fantasy thing. We could achieve that in a less literal way than live-action.”

But “Apollo 10 1/2” does have some remarkable attention to detail that you wouldn’t notice just by watching it. Seemingly minor details about what they watched on television were carefully mapped out, such as that “The Wonderful World of Disney” was actually called “The Wonderful World of Color” at that time in 1969.

“If you really match up the times and dates, that episode that’s on ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ is the absolute episode that was on that day at that time. Janis Joplin was on Dick Cavett at that time. Those four films at the drive-in were showing that night in Houston, Texas, at drive-ins. We really tried to get that exact with those kinds of details,” he explained.

And Linklater spent years soliciting home movies and photos from people who lived it in order to recreate ’60s homes and Houston landmarks like the Astroworld amusement park that are long gone, all of which contribute to the film’s larger fantasy.

“We were finding images, kind of a lookbook for everything we’d have to create in the animation and we needed reference. It was quite an undertaking,” he said. “But it seemed appropriate for a movie about the Apollo era, those years, where everything was such a long process, a decades vision. It was a long, ‘someday we’ll have a finished film. Someday we’ll have our own little moonshot. Every film feels like that one, but this one especially feels like that.”

“Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” premieres at SXSW on Sunday and debuts on Netflix on April 1.

The post How Richard Linklater Made His Animated Fantasy ‘Apollo 10 1/2’ Feel So Realistic: ‘Everything Is a Magic Trick’ appeared first on TheWrap.

The year is 1979. Six ambitious and enterprising young Houstonians with aspirations of fame, fortune and artistry decide to have a go at making “The Farmer’s Daughter,” a low-budget dirty movie aimed at boosting the cast and crew’s dreams of fame and fortune. 

Maxine (Mia Goth), a coked-up stripper working at Bayou Burlesque, thinks this is just the ticket to international stardom. Her boyfriend, Wayne (Martin Henderson, “The Gloaming”), acts as the archetypically gung-ho executive producer who talks a great game. Though ostensibly influenced by avant-garde cinema and the French New Wave, director R.J. (Owen Campbell, “My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To”) needs to start at the bottom in order to cut his teeth in filmmaking. His girlfriend and boom operator Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, 2022’s “Scream”) is a prude who doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into. Vietnam vet Jackson (Scott Mescudi a/k/a Kid Cudi) and Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) round out the cast.  

While in their “Plowing Service” van en route to a Texas farm for their location shoot, they rubberneck at the sight of a cow carcass, the first of the film’s many casualties. There’s a closeup of splatter where rubber meets the roadkill, a sign of things to come. “X” foretells much of its proceedings either through imagery or dialogue, so it’s a bit mind-boggling that West asked attendees at the SXSW Film Festival premiere to be circumspect regarding spoiling; he himself doles out foreshadowing and corny innuendos like candy on Halloween. Even ominous musical cues drop early and often. 

Upon the “Daughter” cast and crew’s arrival at the farm, they are greeted by hostile old man Howard (Stephen Ure, “Mortal Engines”) and his shotgun. He seems to have forgotten all about his phone conversation with Wayne and mistakes him for someone “from the county.” Meanwhile, his wife, Pearl (also Goth), creepily peers out from the window. Wayne, apparently, neglected to mention he was bringing an entire crew, and Howard does not like the look of the lot of them. He asks for their discretion, mentioning offhand that Pearl is unwell and can be triggered. 

With Goth in dual roles, obviously, there are some thematic pairings going on. In addition to being a menacing presence who is exceedingly handsy, Pearl, a failed dancer, represents the fate Maxine fears most, rotting away in anonymity. While Pearl is secretly peering at Maxine and Jackson in action on the set, flashes of Pearl are spliced into the sex scene in progress. This is certainly a high-concept genre exercise, although it’s unclear where West is headed with it. The killings are not consistent with this theme and don’t particularly make sense through this lens. The implicit lesbianism here also feels gratuitous. 

There are also parallels between “X” itself and “The Farmer’s Daughter,” the plot of which involves Jackson’s character turning to a farm for help when his car breaks down, and Bobby-Lynne’s titular character suggesting they get it on before daddy gets home to give him a lift. They don’t want to make daddy angry — and the same can be said about the film crew and Howard. 

“X” is as gleefully sleazy and gory as one might imagine. It’s pretty equal-opportunity when it comes to nudity — yes, even Pearl’s. Its first slasher scene is sustained as if the perpetrator has been waiting for a long time to do this. Peter Jackson’s WETA Workshop is responsible for the special effects, and its grotesqueness definitely recalls that from the New Zealand filmmaker’s early-career horror films, in a good way. 

West runs the gamut of 1970s techniques like wipe transitions and split screens. The film-within-a-film has the requisite grainy 16mm look with Academy ratio. He deploys a red filter during a scene where so much blood is spilled that it completely covers the van’s headlights. 

His decision to humanize and empathize with the villains is bold but doesn’t quite work to the benefit of a horror film. Generally, the less we know, the more is left to our imagination. (The film’s prequel, “Pearl,” also starring Goth, is apparently already in the can, and it’s difficult to see what else there is to say about this character.) West’s most interesting choice has little to do with period details: A televangelist (Simon Prast) is constantly on TV in the background, punctuating the entire film, true to the slasher subgenre’s overall sex-negativity.  

The sound design is obnoxiously loud, which makes the performers’ Southern accents even more difficult to decipher, although the only audio in the film’s most effective scene is dripping water and buzzing flies. 

Perhaps the real accomplishment of “X” and films like it is to recognize that there are indeed artistic and entertainment values in grindhouse cinema, which has only recently begun to be evaluated critically or deemed worthy candidates for preservation and restoration. If critics and scholars can engage with “X” and “The House of the Devil” on an academic level, it’s an easy jump to the films that begat the progeny.

“X” opens in US theaters March 18.

The post ‘X’ Film Review: Ti West Pays Homage to ’70s Sleaze in Stylish Slasher appeared first on TheWrap.