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New York Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Together' Review: Getting Closer and Closer
Michael Shanks's feature debut, 'Together,' takes all the relationship platitudes you can think of — 'You complete me,' 'You're my better half,' the dreaded 'I need some space' — and spins them into an amusingly icky horror movie about a 30-something couple's codependent relationship. It's clever in concept and kind of silly in execution, which wouldn't be a bad thing if it knew how to commit to its goofiness. The real-life couple and frequent creative team Alison Brie ('Community') and Dave Franco ('Now You See Me') play the leads: Millie is a type-A schoolteacher; Tim, an unemployed musician struggling to get back on track. The couple has just moved from the big city to a secluded upstate dwelling, so you can imagine that tensions flare when the two find themselves alone, forced to confront the problems in their relationship. Are they truly in love or are they just used to each other? A nightmare scene that riffs off Tim's family trauma envisions a woman with a Cheshire-Cat smile sitting next to her husband's rotting corpse. It's the romantic equivalent of the 'This Is Fine' meme that speaks to Tim's fear of flopping (he's dead weight, get it?) and settling into domestic complacency. 'Together' is written and directed by Shanks, but Brie and Franco manage to leave an authorial mark. Brie starred in Franco's directorial debut 'The Rental,' a weirdly self-serious horror movie about a ménage à quatre and a home invasion; as well as Franco's rom-com follow-up, 'Somebody I Used to Know,' which Brie wrote with him. Across these films, there's a fascination with modern romance — the way some couples drift apart and hold on to their fondest recollections — often to a fault. For example, Millie dusts off old memories of Tim when a skeptical gal pal questions their happiness. But what about now? When the couple gets lost during a hike in the wild area around their property and spends the night in a cave, at least it's clear that they share a cute, comfortable rapport. It's enough, in any case, for them to ignore the fact that their shelter resembles a religious burial site, and that one of each of their legs seemed to have become glued together while they slept, leaving open wounds when they peel themselves off each other in the morning. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Home' Review: A Senior Moment of Terror
Scary movies have long considered the twilight years to be twilight zones. Fear of aging, the degenerating body, neglect: In horror, getting old is hell. Such is the case in the new supernatural horror film from the director James DeMonaco, the creator of the 'Purge' franchise. Pete Davidson stars as Max, a graffiti artist who avoids jail time by doing community service as a live-in custodian at a stately and sprawling retirement home in upstate New York. As soon as he arrives, the staff warns him to stay away from the fourth floor, the first ominous sign that something is frightfully amiss. The residents are friendly, if dotty, but something's up with the doctor (Bruce Altman), whose strange obsession with Max's eyeballs manifests in one of the film's more nerve-plucking encounters. As deathly things start happening around the home — messages about 'marked ones' appear on walls, and a resident dies by impalement on a fence — Max realizes the caretakers are anything but. Yet he stays put, one of many disbelief-suspending conundrums that the screenplay (by DeMonaco and Adam Cantor) puts the characters through with a straight face. It seesaws between creepy and dippy, although it pulls no punches in its indictment of the American elder care system. As he did in 'Bodies Bodies Bodies,' Davidson displays a terrific knack for horror dramedy, disarmingly playing an Everyman navigating a deranged world. The cast includes theater heavy hitters — John Glover, Jessica Hecht, Mary Beth Peil — who ace their assignments. The HomeRated R for gore and violence against elders. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
New York Times
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Oh, Hi!' Review: I'll Make You Love Me
I'm no expert on romance tropes, but I understand there's one that aficionados refer to as 'forced proximity,' in which two characters are unable to escape one another's company and, I presume, wind up falling madly in love. There's something to it: the idea that if someone was just forced to spend enough time in your physical presence, they'd come to see how irresistible you actually are. The appeal is obvious: not only the romance, though that's of course the point, but also the suggestion that you are, in fact, just that alluring. 'Oh, Hi!' is slightly more realistic twist on that setup, plausible but drawing on the same fantasy, albeit with a dose of darkly funny irony. Written and directed by Sophie Brooks, it is the tale of Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman), who are headed upstate for a romantic weekend away. Their rapport is playful and intimate, but slowly we realize this is also a new relationship; they're learning about one another, still trying to impress one another, still unable to keep their hands off one another. They're still figuring each other out, and it's sweet. It's all very lovely until they decide to get kinky in the bedroom. One of them makes a confession, and things take an unexpected turn. I don't want to spoil what happens next, but I will say that after some panicking, Iris has to call her best friend, Max (the always delightful Geraldine Viswanathan), and Max's boyfriend, Kenny (John Reynolds), for help, and everyone tries to solve the problem they've inadvertently created in ways that only get comically worse. The first half-hour or so of 'Oh, Hi!' is genuinely charming, mostly because Gordon (who has a story credit on the film) and Lerman seem like they're having a lot of fun with one another: drinking wine, cooking, swimming in the lake and watching fireflies on the back deck. There's a whole subgenre of low-budget independent films shot in houses just north of New York City — usually horror or comedy, or both — and they tend to be lovely to watch, not just because the surroundings are beautiful. Perhaps actors just relax in that setting, or maybe it's the vacation-like location. In any case, I wanted to go rent a car and join them. But by the midpoint, the plot starts to drag, feeling repetitive. It's sort of baked into the setup: There's a stuckness to the whole premise. This is fundamentally a film about how a relationship built on mismatched expectations is probably never going to work, and about how easy it is to have those mismatched expectations in today's dating landscape. It's not necessarily that some golden age of courtship and monogamy and marriage was better for everyone involved; it's just that introducing casual relationships and situationships and all kinds of relational configurations into the socially acceptable mix means those who don't communicate are pretty much doomed from the start. That's the gist of the film, and that's where it lands, but it spins its wheels for a while getting there. So to the degree it works — and it does, a lot of the time — it's a testament to its performers, especially Gordon and, once she arrives on the scene, Viswanathan, both of whom bring an energy to the screen that always has a touch of mischief, like they could veer off into lunacy or ecstasy at any time. Give either of them the right script and enough space to play in, and they're just fantastically fun to watch. Gordon, as the film's true protagonist, gets to ripple through her full range, and if by the end we're a little exhausted, she seems like she is, too, in a way that feels cathartic. The course of true love is never, ever going to run smooth. Oh, Hi!Rated R for sex, kink, nudity and language, plus some possible danger. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.
New York Times
24-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
TikTok Loves the New York City He Built Out of Balsa Wood
Good morning. It's Thursday. Today we'll meet a man who built New York City — in miniature. We'll also get details on why Representative Mike Lawler has decided to run for re-election rather than take on Gov. Kathy Hochul. In Joe Macken's New York, the Empire State Building stands tall — eight inches tall. The supertalls of Billionaire's Row go a couple of inches higher. West 42nd Street is no wider than his thumb. And the United Nations looks out on a cement floor in a $140-a-month storage unit complex, because Macken has lost track of where he put the East River. Macken built a miniature New York by hand in his basement in upstate New York, 165 miles from the real thing — office towers, apartment houses, brownstones, garages, thousands and thousands of buildings. It took him 21 years, a third of his life. Now he has become something of a social media star. His first video on TikTok, posted on July 13, has been viewed eight million times. He said his wife was annoyed that he had not spruced up the wall behind him. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
22-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Shuttered NY College Campus Sale to Give Bondholders 50% Recovery Rate
A group of local residents in upstate New York is planning to buy the shuttered Cazenovia College campus for $9.5 million — a sum that, when combined with other funds, is estimated to give bondholders a recovery rate of just over 50%. Cazenovia College, a liberal arts institution, closed in the summer of 2023, amid enrollment pressures facing small schools across the US. It had sold about $25 million of municipal bonds in 2019 secured by school revenues and a mortgage on the campus, which was appraised at $24 million at the time, according to bond documents.
