film roundup

Asteroid City (Dir. Wes Anderson). Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks. Overstuffed even by Wes Anderson’s customary standards, the dapperly dressed writer-director’s latest is another nesting-doll feature about familial and societal discord performed in feather-ruffling deadpan. An animated roadrunner clues us in to at least one of the superficial influences, and indeed, the remote desert town of Asteroid City—where a sprawling, starry cast gathers to act out a widescreen movie that’s actually a play that’s in reality (maybe) a television documentary about the play’s making—has the aura of a Chuck Jones fantasyland populated entirely by depressives. Anderson commits to the impassive more than usual here as he attempts a broad statement on an America-of-the-mind, a country pondering several existential crises, particularly the big query: “Are we alone in the universe?” The answers the film hints at would be more powerful if any of the characters popped like the expectedly stellar set design, built from the ground up in the Spanish countryside outside Madrid. But for maybe the first time ever, not one of Anderson’s people rate higher than a puppet. [PG-13] HH

Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com.

Passages (Dir. Ira Sachs). Starring: Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos. Writer-director Ira Sachs brings a commandingly personal stamp to all his projects (see his 2005 feature Forty Shades of Blue if you haven’t already), and this brisk, unnerving love triangle is among the best work he’s done. Bisexual filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski) is a charming manipulator married for fifteen years to wispy printmaker Martin (Ben Whishaw), but is now infatuated with actress Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who he feels strangely drawn to. Sachs and his cowriter Mauricio Zacharias portray the ebb and flow of the characters’ unique situation—from casual fling to even-tempered divorce to tempestuous throupledom to… much, much worse— with a casually elliptical approach. Each jump forward in time elides any and all expected narrative beats. This is mostly a drama of implication in which revelations come not directly from in front, but unex-

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EVER SINCE STATELY PHILADELPHIAtrumpeter Terell Stafford made his bones as part of ensembles led by Bobby Watson, Shirley Scott, and McCoy Tyner, the classical-turned-jazz brass man has maintained his presence as one of the boldest, noblest players. To go with the majestic music that he makes and leads in differently-sized settings, Stafford’s an educator, the man behind Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance program and out-of-town orchestral performances for the school’s Symphony Orchestra, Studio Orchestra, and Choir. So, what can Stafford do for an encore after his Temple orchestra’s recent Lincoln Center NYC jazz debut, his contribution to the Temple Jazz Sextet, its new album, and its tribute to Philly icons John Coltrane and Jimmy Heath? Release his most personal album, Between Two Worlds. Stafford’s Between Two Worlds tackles the warm ideal of family at his label and family in his home.

That’s all well and good. Yet, despite having interviewed Stafford a dozen times since Time to Let Go, there are still a million things that I don’t know about him. So, as he jumps in his car for an early gig rehearsal in New York City, A.D. Amorosi pries into Stafford’s inner life.

A.D. Amorosi: With all that you’ve done as part of the Philadelphia jazz and educational scene, I never realized that you weren’t born here—you were born in Florida and lived in Chicago before Philly. How did you make your way here?

Terell Stafford: That’s hilarious. Blame the railroad. My dad worked for Amtrak, and we moved from Florida to Chicago, from Chicago to Maryland, then Maryland to Pennsylvania. When we got here, I got my Masters degree at Rutgers. That’s when I met all of my Philly friends and family.

A.D. Amorosi: Did you take quickly to those Philly friends? Was Philadelphia a welcoming place?

Terell Stafford: It was welcoming mainly because of Tim Warfield. Knowing him and playing with such a locally beloved saxophonist, I wanted to learn jazz while getting my master’s and playing classical trumpet. Tim and I would hang out, and he taught me everything I know. One night, he called and told me that the great Bootsie Barnes could not make his regular gig with Shirley Scott and asked if I would come along with him as he was hanging. I went with them, and after the first set, Shirley called me onstage to play. That was the beginning of it all. I started to do gigs with Ms. Scott, and then I joined her when she led the band for You Bet Your Life with Mr. Cosby.

A.D. Amorosi: That was your way in.

Terell Stafford: Definitely. From there, I met everyone, all the Philadelphians, and everyone welcomed me. It was great.

A.D. Amorosi: You mention the great Philly mistress of the Hammond organ Ms. Scott. What was she like?

Terell Stafford: We called her ‘Aunt Shirley’ because she wanted to ensure everyone was happy and cared for. But the one thing I remember most about her was her honesty. That came through in all of her playing, certainly, but when I was living in the Downingtown area, we were neighbors. We would drive in together three days a week to tape You Bet Your Life in Philadelphia. It was incredible; we’d drive, we’d talk, we’d laugh. Then one day, she asked if she could ‘tell me something.’ Right there, she told me that it would be great if I could work on my articulation. “What could I be doing better?” She reminded me that I came from the classical world and that my articulation was good but unidentifiable. Nothing about me came through in my articulation.

A.D. Amorosi: That’s cold.

Terell Stafford: Wow, right? But I asked her what particularly I could work on, and she told me to go to the chromatic study in the Arbans book. She played trumpet before she played the organ, so she knew those studies. She told me to hit the books, work on that and write as many articulation variations as possible. So, I did. Then she told me to use those articulations in the lines I play; that would give me an identity, my sound. People would get to know me through my physical sound and my articulation. She told me to listen to Lee Morgan and how expressive he was with his articulation. Clifford Brown, too, though he had a different kid-of articulation. I got homework assignments from Shirley Scott.

A.D. Amorosi: So, after all that is said and done, what would you say is your signature, chromatically, emotionally—the thing that sets you apart? I believe your classical studies give you a warm stateliness you don’t hear in jazz. Something regal.

Terell Stafford: What’s interesting about that question is that when I started to play trumpet at age 13, my mom was also a trumpet player. She didn’t teach me, but she told me that while being around so

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