‘The Stroll’ Review: Archive-Driven Doc On NYC Trans Sex Workers Is a Wonder

Dick and Angel Strawbridge have unveiled a “gorgeous” transformation of one of the bedrooms at their stately chateau. Showcased on their popular show Escape To The Chateau, we’ve seen the couple transform all areas of the stunning 19th-century building, in the small market town of Martigné-sur-Mayenne in Western France.

There is a raw, dangerous yet distinctly unapologetic demeanor to the grainy archival footage in the documentary film The Stroll, now streaming on HBO, where transgender sex workers bravely walk the streets of New York City and solicit potential customers cruising by in their cars. Winner of the Special Jury Award – Clarity of Vision at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, The Stroll is the story of director Kristen Lovell’s experience living on the streets in the ‘90s and making money as a sex worker in the Meatpacking District of lower Manhattan. 

Spoiler alert: This review contains key plot points for the final episode of The Idol. When it was first announced, The Idol seemed like a natural progression for the Weeknd.

Guy Lodge Film Critic In their 2018 film “The Dead and the Others,” directors João Salaviza et Renée Nader Messora turned their lens generously to the Krahô people of northeast Brazil, documenting a longstanding way of life under threat from developers and politicians, and giving their non-professional subjects ample leeway for improvisation in presenting themselves on screen. Their ambitious, formally limber follow-up “The Buriti Flower” resumes their study of the Krahô, but with an expanded scope, as it examines ideological and generational conflict within the tribe: protectively insular tradition on one side, outward-facing activism on the other. Blending candid vérité with extravagant flourishes of fiction, the film sees its helmers sharing screenwriting duties with a trio of Krahô locals, and feels more textured for their collaboration.

The Last Match (★★★☆☆), it might not matter who wins or loses the titular duel between American champion Tim Porter (Drew Kopas) and Russian upstart Sergei Sergeyev (Ethan Miller). In Alex Levy’s cleverly staged production at 1st Stage, however, the charmingly boastful Sergei clearly emerges as the more fully realized and engaging of the characters.Brilliantly embodying the young challenger’s drive, hunger, and athleticism, Miller also adeptly delivers Sergei’s trash-talking sense of humor, as the play unwinds its tale of the foes’ hard-fought match on-court, amid side glances to pivotal moments in their off-court lives.Yet, Miller rises above the script’s tendency to lean on Sergei as comic relief, and invests the guy with personality beyond his bad-boy insults, aggressive style of play, and mane of wild curls.

Given the buzz at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, you may have already heard of “The Deepest Breath.” Directed and written by Laura McGann, this documentary profiles Italian freediver Alessia Zecchini on her quest to break a world record with the help of safety diver Stephan Keenan. READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated Films At The Sundance Film Festival Freediving, while sounding thrilling, is a dangerous extreme sport in which competitors attempt to reach the greatest depth without using scuba gear.

Lisa Kennedy Fashionista Jenna Jones (Gabrielle Union) took quite the tumble from her position in New York’s world of style. In “The Perfect Find” — Netflix’s visually vibrant, cinema-loving, if not quite perfect, rom-com — her professional and romantic plummet is documented in opening credits that cleverly use an animated collage to relate her story. So, when we meet Jenna in person ,she’s without a job, and her man (D.B. Woodside) of 10 years has moved on … or so it seems. The 40-year-old is sporting baggy sweats, and not because she’s headed to the gym. She’s been living in her parents’ home licking her wounds, for a year, when her mother calls her out on it. The scene between mother (Janet Hubert) and grown-ass daughter is amusing and promising. As are the musical and visual choices director Numa Perrier makes that evoke Old Hollywood in a film with characters decidedly not Old Hollywood.

David Benedict “What was I thinking when I made this deal?” So sings Holly Martins (Sam Underwood) towards the end of the new musical adaptation of “The Third Man.” Indeed. As it turns out, the mystery at the heart of the show is not the expected “Whatever happened to Harry Lime?” – the man of the title – but what possessed a creative team as distinguished as director Trevor Nunn and bookwriter Christopher Hampton to imagine that what Carol Reed’s still-astonishing classic film needed was to be taken offscreen and planted onstage with added songs. The dismaying production provides no answer. The opening is ominous in completely the wrong way. Yes, we’re still in Vienna in 1947 but it feels like a failure to resort to a voice-over to explain necessary information about how, in the wake of the war, the city has been divided up into sectors under the control of warring nations. The storytelling, it’s clear, is going to be bald.

TOWIE star Lydia Bright was glowing as she visited the famous closet of Sex and the City icon Carrie Bradshaw. The mum, 32, wore a flattering long white summer dress and a beige hat as she attended a star-studded preview event in London, celebrating Sex and the City.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music It is an interesting time to be Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. the Weeknd. Last summer, he was criss-crossing North America on his “After Hours Til Dawn” stadium tour while simultaneously doing reshoots for his HBO series, “The Idol.” This summer, he’s watching the reactions to the deeply controversial show while criss-crossing Europe on the second leg of the tour, which will move to Latin America and Asia into next year. He’s also doing press for the Emmy campaign for his HBO concert documentary released earlier this year, “The Weeknd: Live at SoFi Stadium.” All the while, he’s been recording, as he always is. Despite, and because of, the polarized reactions to the first episodes of “The Idol,” the show has scored big ratings and even bigger conversation.

Alison Herman TV Critic “You can spend all the time in the world in here,” a chef tells his eager protegé as they work in a temple of haute cuisine. “But if you don’t spend enough time out there…” There’s no need for him to finish the sentence. The mentor’s meaning is clear enough: To achieve greatness, you need to expand your horizons. This piece of advice comes close to the halfway point of the second season of “The Bear,” long after the FX half-hour has applied the insight to itself. Last year, the tale of a family-owed Chicago sandwich shop taken over by a prodigal son became a surprise summer hit by staying tightly focused on its central location. Each of its eight episodes unfolded like a stage play, as the staff of the Original Beef of Chicagoland careened through the cramped kitchen, confronting their latest crisis. This M.O. reached its apotheosis in the widely acclaimed penultimate episode, a 20-minute tracking shot that began with the Beef opening itself to online orders and ended with relationships strained to their breaking point.

When Kristen Lovell relocated to New York in the ’90s, she lost her job as she began her transition. She needed money and began sex work in a Manhattan Meatpacking district area called “The Stroll.” Decades later, co-directors Lovell and Zachary Drucker remember that time in a new HBO documentary of the same name.

Netflix has unveiled a new trailer for ‘Wham!‘, an upcoming feature-length documentary about the ’80s pop duo of the same name.The documentary, which is slated for release on Netflix globally on July 5, takes a look at the history of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley and their time in Wham!, from the time they had first met as teens, to their pinnacle of stardom and behind-the-scenes look at the group’s ups and downs during the height of their fame, while also paying tribute to the life and career of Michael.‘Wham!’ features archival footage from the duo’s history and never-before-seen interviews with George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley and more. Watch the trailer for Netflix’s ‘Wham!’ documentary above.Wham! celebrated a short but successful career, running from 1981 until their disbandment in 1986.

What better way to come to know a public figure than to discover them in their own words, or, better yet, their own singing voice? Filmmaker Allison Ellwood seems drawn to that notion because she let it guide her as she crafted the smart and sentimental “Let The Canary Sing.” The new documentary is a colorful force of nature underscored by the fierce soundtrack of life, embodying the best parts of its subject in the name of nostalgic exploration. After all, music can tell beautiful stories, and this journey is no exception.“Let The Canary Sing” chronicles the rise of legendary 1980s rock star Cyndi Lauper and the complications that came for her career along the way.

Murtada Elfadl Taking on an expansive topic, the contribution of Black astronauts to the American space program, Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza’s “The Space Race” derives its strength from the specific and detailed stories of its subjects. Spanning almost 60 years of historical narrative and concentrating on a handful of scientists who broke barriers, the National Geographic doc is the type that makes the audience question how they have never heard of these people before. Cortés and de Mendoza interweave archival footage with the testimony of the astronauts in a fast-paced and informative way. Rapidly unraveling the fascinating story, they demand the audience’s attention and reward it. Blink or look away for a second and an interesting factoid might be missed. But their greatest asset proves to be the astronauts themselves. Their recollections are emotional and humorous, going a long way to paint such a captivating narrative. The astronauts talk of the weight of being an example and the challenges of having to navigate both white and Black spaces in order to succeed. Yet most movingly, they talk of the camaraderie born of being together in these hallowed and mostly white spaces.

Jessica Kiang Over the course of his first three features — “Ilo Ilo,” “Wet Season” and this year’s “Drift” — Singaporean director Anthony Chen has developed a signature style. It is a graceful, lucid classicism, a mode that in its straightforward sincerity is not fashionable in our abrasive moment, but can yield significant satisfactions. That is certainly true of his second film of 2023, “The Breaking Ice,” which describes, in a trio of perfectly judged  performances, the burgeoning, momentous and yet fleeting connection between three differently lonely people — a love triangle with rounded, snowdrift corners. Yu Jing-Pin’s lovely photography contrasts wintry wides and warm close-ups, as writer-director Chen carves out three characters against the frozen landscapes of Yanji, a small Chinese town in shouting distance of the North Korean border. This is the current home of Nana (Zhou Dongyu, “Better Days”) an unfulfilled bus-tour guide who switches on her ready smile for her passengers — and switches it off just as quickly when she turns away to massage her cold, cramping feet.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic When you see a documentary about a game-changing pop star, you assume you’re going to get the story of the music, and also a good look at the life, and that there’ll be enough (on both counts) to go around. I was eager to see “Let the Canary Sing,” a documentary portrait of Cyndi Lauper, because it’s directed by Alison Ellwood, who made “The Go-Go’s” a few years back, and that movie had everything: the drama, the trauma, the saga of a total pop-music reset, as we watched the Go-Go’s bust down doors that had been too tightly shut for too long. Cyndi Lauper was no less revolutionary a figure, arriving in the early ’80s, along with Madonna, to announce that we were in the midst of a seismic new definition of what it meant to be a female pop star. The definition was: a star who could rule — and change — the world.

Ezra Miller’s erratic behavior that landed the star in court in Hawaii and Vermont in 2022, to the Warner Bros. shakeup in October 2022 that led to James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over the limping DC Studios.Running time: 144 minutes.

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC is making a film about a young British aid worker killed in the line of fire in Ukraine.

When she won a Golden Globe for “The Devil Wears Prada,” Meryl Streep said it best about what the role of costume design could be in moving pictures while thanking costume designer Patricia Field: “That was like special effects for our movie.”Indeed, “special effects” is what the effervescent Pat Field touch brings to any project that she signs her name under, the most popular among them undoubtedly being HBO’s “Sex and the City.” With perhaps the exception of “Mad Men” has there been another culturally iconic TV series in the last quarter century that informed, even evolved how people dressed in their daily lives?So it’s no easy task to do justice to the life and legacy of Field, a colorful New York City personality with a recently published book about her life. (Field doesn’t call it a memoir, as that word sounds too final to her.) But more versed in episodic outputs such as CNN’s four-part docuseries “American Style” than feature-length films, director Michael Selditch gives this gigantic task a shot anyway in “Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field” with mixed results.