Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, 2024.

Directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui.
Featuring Christopher Reeve, Dana Reeve, Alexandra Reeve Givens, Matthew Reeve, Will Reeve, Gae Sexton, Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Whoopi Goldberg, John Kerry, Brooke Ellison, Steven Kirshblum, Richard Donner, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, Bill Clinton, Johnny Carson, Jane Seymour, Barack Obama, and Alexandra Reeve Givens.

SYNOPSIS:

Reeve’s rise to becoming a film star, follows with a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. After which, he became an activist for spinal cord injury treatments and disability rights.

Even though it is close to 50 years since the release of Superman: The Movie, it is still hard to separate Christopher Reeve from his iconic role as the Man of Steel. He embodied everything great about the character, exemplifying Superman’s compassion, kindness and heroism onscreen while playing a perfect dual performance as the dorky Clark Kent. However, Reeve became a real life superman after his tragic horse accident which left him paralyzed, beginning a journey as an advocate for disabled people and working tirelessly to improve their standard of living. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story explores his life before and after the accident, how it shaped him and cemented his legacy on and off the screen.

The documentary’s non-linear style jumps between points at the start of Reeve’s career and his life after the accident, but this helps explore several aspects of his life and character. From his training at Juilliard to his explosive popularity in the aftermath of Superman‘s release, you get a true sense of Reeve’s work ethic, outlook on life and his positivity. The jumps between timeframes serves to heighten both the tragedy of his accident and his strength of spirit to persevere and help others like him.

The doc also sees many friends and family give their perspective on Reeve, from his children Matthew, Alexandra and Will and archival footage of his wife Dana – complete with years of family videos – along with his former partner Gae Exton, close friends Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Daniels, Whoopi Goldberg and many people he worked with or helped through The Christopher Reeve Foundation (later renamed after Christopher and Dana) with archival footage of Superman director Richard Donner and Reeve’s very close friend Robin Williams, himself deceased after a battle with depression. All these voices offer a very personal look into his life and struggle and how inspiring he could be.

While Superman is Reeve’s most well known role, the film does go into his roles from the stage and other films or TV, even going into his post-Superman IV career where he was not getting quite as many offers as he previously was. Even still, though, his career was full of diverse roles where he never allowed himself to be typecast. His directing work is also given focus, especially because his shift to directing came after his accident which, according to the people who knew him, only heightened his determination to live life to the fullest.

As for his paralysis, the film does not shy away from the difficulties he and his family faced including his massive depression in the months after his accident. It is a testament to Reeve’s spirit and determination of how much he accomplished in his life after the accident, not just through his continued film work but the creation of his foundation and campaigning for better quality of life for disabled peoples and research into their conditions. To the film’s credit, it does explore some of the controversy Reeve stirred with the latter as he strove for a ‘cure’ to paralysis and made it a mission to walk again, though that didn’t take away from everything else he and Dana set out to achieve.

On that note, while the doc is called The Christopher Reeve Story it would be incomplete without his massive medical and personal support group, both of which Dana Reeve played a huge part in. The film examines her just as much as it does Christopher from her commitment to stay with him all throughout his ordeal to championing alongside him and after his death. Their connection is in many ways the heart of the film and given proper focus, adding another tragic twist as Dana, a non-smoker, was diagnosed with cancer and passed away just two years after Reeve died.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story very much explores how Reeve came to be the embodiment of Superman’s perseverance and strength in and out of his wheelchair. You don’t have to be a Superman fan to find this an incredibly moving documentary that tugs at the heartstrings while giving depth to his life, character, struggles, family and friendships and showing anyone can follow his example.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.

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“Speak No Evil” is the new horror movie from studio Blumhouse which brought “Get Out” and “Paranormal Activity.” The movie stars Mackenzie Davis — who acted in “Blade Runner 2049” and “Terminator: Dark Fate” — and Scoot McNairy as an American wife and husband living in London. Whilst traveling to Italy with their daughter, they befriend an extroverted British couple, Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their nonverbal son. After the American couple gets home, they receive a letter from their newfound friends inviting them to their home in the countryside.

When they arrive at the countryside, Paddy’s sinister intentions are slowly revealed. What I just described may sound like a snuff film, but “Speak No Evil” is far from that. “Speak No Evil” is an interesting, deliberately paced horror thriller. For much of the movie, Paddy’s sinister intentions are only implied, as what we explicitly see is a man trying to show his friends a good time.

Even in the movie’s earlier sections when anything sinister is implicit, the movie is scary as hell thanks to a wonderful performance by James McAvoy, who has acted in “X‐Men: First Class” and “Split,” among others. He can strike fear into your heart just with a stare or a snide remark. McAvoy makes clear that Paddy is not a person you’d want to be around even when the protagonists seem to enjoy him. So much of the terror comes just from McAvoy’s intense eye contact or lingering stares. It’s an amazing facial performance that sticks with you.

“Speak No Evil” also uses some fascinating film techniques. For example, the majority of the movie has no score; very little music is heard at all throughout the film’s first two acts. It’s not until act three that the score kicks in, just as the scares start in earnest.

The movie also takes a long time to make explicit that anything at all is amiss with Paddy and Ciara. It’s a slow-burn of a horror movie that takes its time to teach you how its characters think and feel before it scares the daylights out of you. When Paddy’s foul intentions are finally made explicit, the movie kicks into high-gear with an explosive, crazy third act sure to terrify you. “Speak No Evil” is playing in theaters now, just in time for Halloween season.

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Kate is a student at the University of Arizona. She loves improv comedy and comic books.

“You know who I miss right now?” Jack Antonoff asks. “Nancy Meyers. I feel like she’s been on a bit of a break.”

The Grammy-winning producer, songwriter and frontman of the rock band Bleachers is standing in the lush garden outside his private recording studio in Hollywood, which — come to think of it — looks like a spot out of one of Meyers’ sumptuously designed romantic comedies. There are gently arcing palm trees, a gleaming built-in barbecue, a refrigerated drawer full of chilled sparkling waters.

“I think we’re cresting out of the moment of film needing to be a harsh slice of reality, and I love that,” Antonoff continues. “With Nancy Meyers” — the director’s most recent feature, for the record, was 2015’s “The Intern” — “a lot of the criticism was always: ‘No one has a kitchen like that.’ And I’m like, Yeah, that’s why it’s cool.”

As a guy who came up in New Jersey’s scrappy punk scene, Antonoff, 40, is perhaps an unlikely Meyers stan. Yet he’s undoubtedly in his high-gloss blockbuster era: This year alone he had a major hand in Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet” — both widely tipped for multiple Grammy nods when nominations are announced on Nov. 8 — and co-produced a track by Kendrick Lamar (“6:16 in L.A.”) as part of Lamar’s world-stopping beef with Drake. He also toured behind Bleachers’ latest LP, composed music for a new Broadway production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and settled into married life with actor Margaret Qualley, to whom he got hitched last year near their home in New Jersey.

Antonoff looked back on it all on a recent afternoon at his studio before heading to a Bleachers gig at the Greek Theatre, where his dad joined the band for a rendition of “How Dare You Want More.”

Do you have a place in L.A. or do you stay at a hotel when you’re here?
No, I love hotels. I live so much of my life in hotels that I’ve really crystallized my experience — I know how to do it. But I also love being home. My partner and I, our life is pretty tight — like a 60-mile radius between New York and New Jersey. You know your home based on the feeling you have when the plane lands. When I get to L.A., I feel excitement: What could happen? I land at Newark or JFK or hopefully LaGuardia and my shoulders drop. I love this studio, but Margaret and I do not sit around and dream about living anywhere else. We’ve reached the point in our life where we’re both working pretty hard, filled with ideas and ambitions, but the magical place we go to in our minds is just being home.

Alas, you’re on tour.
I love playing shows. But it’s funny that I ended up doing this for a living because I dislike travel greatly. I like cars a lot. We’re actually not doing buses anymore. For this tour, I looked at it — there’s a real tour manager in my head because I did it for so long — and I’m like, OK, let’s structure this so if the drive is under five hours, you go to bed in the hotel, you wake up at 9 and you get there in time for soundcheck. I love sitting in a car listening to music, having to pee so bad, then you finally stop and you get to pick out some cool snacks.

You’re known to jump into the audience during a Bleachers show. You ever get skeeved out being touched by so many people?
One of the reasons I do what I do is because when I’m playing, that’s about the only two hours in my life when I don’t think about that. I’ve been described as a next-level germaphobe. Still wear a mask on the plane — I’m not worried about COVID, I just think they’re disgusting. Haven’t touched a doorknob since, you know, 1990. But I have a great relief of my demons when I get onstage.

You turned 40 this year.
I feel really excited about it. I don’t wish for my life to be over, and I don’t enjoy how fast it all goes — that fills me with the existential dread that we all live with. But a lot of my artistic heroes have furthered a vision through age. My favorite artist of all time when I was really young was Tom Waits. And it was about the journey: What was he thinking when he did “Foreign Affairs”? How did he get to “Mule Variations”? Who is the pirate? Who is the crooner? Same with the Beatles or Joni Mitchell or Bruce [Springsteen] or [Martin] Scorsese or Fiona Apple. These are all people that made a value of the concept of carrying on.

When “The Tortured Poets Department” came out, you identified yourself in a tweet as a “Down Bad” head. What is it about that song?
It just captures this vacillation of the human experience so perfectly for me — like, I’m dancing, I’m driving in the dark. Am I crying? Am I making out with someone? It does a thing that a lot of my favorite songs do, where it just puts me in a place.

Is there a particular sound you’re proud of?
Just the totality of it: the LinnDrum; the tremolated, wobbling synth; the shimmering guitars. I could dissect it, but it just grabs me as soon as I hear it. It’s like a born universe.

That’s a vivid phrase.
I feel that way about “August.” I feel that way about “Cruel Summer.” I feel that way about [Lana Del Rey’s] “Venice Bitch.” They just put you there in that universe. And you can’t believe them when they happen, because they’re the hardest to try to plan. They kind of come out of thin air, whereas some songs are these mountains that you work on forever.

“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” feels very non-thin-air-ish to me. That’s one where I can hear the thinking in your production.
It’s all about the juxtaposition between the sadness of Taylor’s lyrics and the humor and the joy of the music. It’s a person singing about how hard it is to be in the spotlight all the time but also about how strong they are. On a production level, I wanted the literal voices of people fluttering around in the song because I want people to be like, “Who are all these people in the room?” That’s the experience of what she’s talking about. I love that type of song that re-presents to the audience the glory of the job and how destructive it can be.

Because you can relate?
I know that feeling so well. You’re up there and there’s no tomorrow and there’s no yesterday. Then you’re done: Oh my God, tomorrow. Oh my God, yesterday. Have I rung a bell I can’t un-ring? Am I too far down a path to turn around — and if so, what are the implications? When I have kids, what will happen?

Do those intrusive thoughts ever happen while you’re playing?
Never.

You’re fully in it till you’re offstage.
Till about 10 minutes after being off, which is actually a dangerous time because I can eat like a whole pizza in that 10 minutes. It’s a little bit like sleepwalking. I’m still not really present in my body when I’m in that heightened place, and I can consume an amazing amount of food.

What do you do instead of eating a whole pizza?
I get offstage and go right back to the room with the band. We talk about the show, maybe do a bit of a celebration. We need to come down together. After that I’ll see a few people. But when I’m done, I want to go to bed. It’s before the show that I like to be social. I remember Bruce came to see us at Radio City [in 2022], and he got there early because he played some songs with us. He was just sitting in my room and people were kind of coming and going. At one point, he looked at me and was like, “I don’t know how you do this, man — I need to be alone before the show.” For the first time, I was like, am I doing this wrong?

Back to “Tortured Poets”: By Taylor’s standards, this album was somewhat coolly received by tastemakers when it came out. Yet I sense a burgeoning reappraisal. Some prominent folks seem to be coming around to it.
Story of my life, baby.

Why do you think that is?
Not to be esoteric or poetic about it, but time is my only critic. Myself and everyone I work with feels that way. All that matters is how the stuff ages. I’ve been a part of or personally made so much work at this point that hit a certain way when it came out, only to see what happened with it eight months later, a year later, three years later. So when I say I don’t care about reviews, it’s not an ego thing. It’s like, how can you care?

It’s worth noting that, until “Tortured Poets,” the reviews were pretty uniformly positive.
Totally. But, you know, we’re artists — we’ll find the one bad comment. The system is very clearly designed so that if I have a moment of universal acclaim, then a think piece on the other side comes out. So the lesson is clear, which is that it’s the work and how it ages. I never want to win a moment.

That’s kind of what the band Fun. was, huh? Big deal at the time — “We Are Young” at No. 1, song of the year at the Grammys, yadda yadda. Now nobody talks about Fun.
I think you’re illustrating why I chose to not do that much longer. I know when something will age well, and that’s why I stay with the things that I want to do. There was something very accidental about Fun., which is also what stressed me out about it. It wasn’t my band.

Why was that stressful?
Because I’m a bandleader and I’ve always been a bandleader. I like singing my lyrics. I like telling my story. My attraction to being on the road — would “proselytizing” be the right word for it? — comes from explaining a point of view that I come from and inviting people into it. So if I’m not getting that, I don’t really want to do it much. There’s a lot of people in my life who, when Fun. was this massive band and I was obsessively making the first Bleachers album, they were like, “What are you doing? What is this? Is this ego?” And I was like, “No, you have to feel yourself. And I don’t feel myself.” It’s that simple.

Question about Sabrina: You and she have both suggested that “Sharpest Tool” is your favorite song on “Short n’ Sweet.” Why?
I guess it’s that “born universe” thing. When we made it, we were kind of like, “What is this?” The tone of it’s kind of odd. I can’t tell if it’s uptempo or downtempo. It puzzles me and delights me. I feel that way about “Please Please Please” too. If you think about that song before it became a hit, it doesn’t really slide into anything that’s happening in any way. I’m not being a douchebag and trying to make the story sound cooler. But no one sat around and was like, “This is gonna ride up the charts!”

Sabrina wasn’t the only pop act to break out in a big way in 2024. It was also the year of Chappell Roan and Charli XCX. Why did so many people want to hear from new voices?
I don’t think people wanted to hear from new voices as much as some new voices came with the f— goods. And the thread between Charli and Chappell and Sabrina is that they’re artists who’ve been killing for a long, long time. I’ve been aware of Sabrina for years and years and years. Charli has been redefining and crystallizing her sound for over a decade. I hope that on the industry side, all the notes are taken.

Is this a moment for the record industry to pat itself on the back and say, “Hey, look, artist development is alive”?
It’s a moment for the record industry to consider who they’ve been dropping and ignoring. It’s a moment for people to remind themselves that artists get better the more space and freedom they’re given to barrel down their path. The lesson from a label point of view is: Don’t chase something that’s having a moment online. Chase something you love and believe in.

Do you ever play Monday morning quarterback with records that don’t work?
Nah. I’m so wrapped up in my universe that I don’t listen to a lot of other things, and I certainly don’t have opinions on them.

I feel like I half-believe you.
I mean, I hear things here and there, and I can talk my s— if I’m alone with friends. But I’ve never heard something and been like, “Here’s what they should’ve done.” My Spotify Wrapped every year is hilarious because I’m really only listening to what I’m working on. My No. 1 song last year was the theme from “Nacho Libre” because when I’m on a plane with anyone in my family, I do a bit where I play it on a loop really loud on my phone.

The end of Taylor’s Eras tour is almost upon us. Will you go to at least one more show?
I think I’ll definitely make that happen. I don’t want to miss another chance to experience it. It’s an incredible thing to behold. You have to see it so many times because you have to vacillate between watching the show and watching the audience. I could cry watching some of these people. What they’re going through — it’s beautiful.