Fighters with Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces recorded themselves conducting an execution while surrounded by dead bodies inside el-Fasher’s Saudi Hospital. As Hiba Morgan reports, it’s the latest example of RSF paramilitaries filming their own actions.
Paramount on Wednesday was expected to cut 1,000 employees, the first wave of a deep staff reduction planned since David Ellison took the helm of the entertainment company in August.
People familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment said the layoffs will be felt throughout the company, including at CBS, CBS News, Comedy Central and other cable channels as well as the historic Melrose Avenue film studio.
Another 1,000 jobs are expected to be cut at a later date, bringing the total reduction to about 10% of Paramount’s workforce, sources said.
The move was expected. Paramount’s new owners — Ellison’s Skydance Media and RedBird Capital Partners — had told investors they planned to eliminate more than $2 billion in expenses, and Wednesday’s workforce reduction was a preliminary step toward that goal.
Paramount has been shedding staff for years.
More than 800 people — or about 3.5% of the company’s workforce — were laid off in June, prior to the Ellison family takeover. At the time, Paramount’s management attributed the cuts to the decline of cable television subscriptions and an increased emphasis on bulking up its streaming TV business. In 2024, the company eliminated 2,000 positions, or 15% of its staff.
The Paramount layoffs are the latest sign of contraction across the entertainment and tech sectors.
Amazon said this week it was eliminating roughly 14,000 corporate jobs amid its embrace of artificial intelligence to perform more functions. Last week, Facebook parent company Meta disclosed that it was cutting 600 jobs in its AI division.
Last week, cable and broadband provider Charter Corp., which operates the Spectrum service, eliminated 1,200 management jobs around the country.
Los Angeles’ production economy in particular has been roiled by a falloff in local filming and cost-cutting at major media companies.
As of August, about 112,000 people were employed in the Los Angeles region’s motion picture and sound recording industries — the main category for film and television production. The data does not include everyone who works in the entertainment industry, such as those who work as independent contractors.
That was roughly flat compared with the previous year, and down 27% compared with 2022 levels, when about 154,000 people were employed locally in the industry, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The industry has struggled to rebound since the 2023 strikes by writers and actors, which led to a sharp pullback in studio spending following the era of so-called “peak TV,” when studios dramatically increased the pipeline of shows to build streaming platforms.
“You saw a considerable drop-off from the strikes and the aftermath,” said Kevin Klowden, an executive director at Milken Institute Finance. “The question is, at what point do these workers exit the industry entirely?”
Local film industry officials are expecting a production boost and an increase in work after California bolstered its film and television tax credits.
But Southern California’s bedrock industry is confronting other challenges, including shifting consumer habits and competition from social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
“There is a larger concern in terms of the financial health of all the major operations in Hollywood,” Klowden said. “There’s a real concern about that level of competition, and what it means.”
COMEDIAN Steve Coogan will pay substantial damages to a university boss for portraying him as a film’s sexist bully.
The actor, 60, co-wrote and starred in 2022’s The Lost King, about the quest to uncover the remains of Richard III.
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Last year, a judge found Coogan and two production companies ‘knowingly misrepresented facts’ in in The Lost King, starring Sally Hawkins and Harry LloydRichard Taylor, chief operating officer at Loughborough University, sued for libel after being characterised as ‘smug, unduly dismissive and patronising’Credit: PA
Richard Taylor was part of the Leicester University team which located the grave of the king — often portrayed as having a hunched back — beneath a car park in the city.
Yesterday, lawyers for Mr Taylor told London’s High Court the parties had settled out of court and that he was being paid “substantial damages”.
Producers will also make changes to the film.
Mr Taylor called it vindication after “a long and gruelling battle”.
Mrs Justice Collins Rice said: “These were momentous historical events and finding yourself represented in a feature film about them must be an unsettling experience, even in the best of circumstances.
“I hope that this very clear statement and the settlement… will help Mr Taylor put this particular experience behind him. ”
Coogan, his production company Baby Cow, and Pathe Productions were not represented in court and did not attend.
However, the star said he was consulting lawyers over remarks made by Mr Taylor — and insisted of his film: “It is the story I wanted to tell, and I am happy I did.”
Richard Taylor was part of the Leicester University team which located the grave of the king — often portrayed as having a hunched back — beneath a car park in the cityCredit: AP:Associated Press
“Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc,” the Japanese anime from Crunchyroll and Sony, claimed the top spot at the domestic box office this weekend, taking in an estimated $17.25 million, according to Comscore.
The R-rated movie, based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s popular manga series, follows teen demon hunter Denji, who is betrayed by the yakuza and killed as he attempts to pay off the debts he inherited from his parents. His beloved chainsaw-powered dog Pochita makes a deal and sacrifices his life, fusing with Denji who is reborn with the ability to transform parts of his body into chainsaws.
“Chainsaw Man,” already a global hit, delivered a blow to Disney and 20th Century’s biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” starring Jeremy Allen White, which came in a disappointing fourth place with an estimated $9.1 million.
Based on the 2023 Warren Zanes book of the same name, the film plumbs Springsteen’s life and career through the creative process, during the making of his 1982 acoustic album “Nebraska.”
The Times described the movie as a “thoughtful exploration of the creative process” that runs out of steam by the end, “meandering aimlessly into a depressive period of Springsteen’s, and it never quite regains its footing.”
In its second week out, the horror sequel “Black Phone 2” took the No. 2 slot, earning an estimated $13 million over the weekend, giving the Universal and Blumhouse movie a domestic total of $49.1 million.
Rounding out the third spot is Paramount’s romantic drama “Regretting You,” the latest film adaptation of novelist Colleen Hoover (“It Ends With Us”). Starring Allison Williams and Dave Franco, it opened to an estimated $12.5 million domestically.
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara” is the most famous line from 1968’s revolutionary “Night of the Living Dead.” It’s a mean taunt that comes from a sibling, unaware that civilization is crumpling around him. In a few moments, his sister will be fleeing across a field barefoot from an undead zombie (terms that are never used in the movie because it’s so ahead of its time) and any Boris Karloff impressions will quickly be forgotten.
The line also sounds remarkably comfortable coming out of the mouth of a drag queen — one of the many sides of shade served in the generously funny and sharp “Queens of the Dead.” Directing and co-writing the film is 42-year-old Tina Romero, daughter of George Romero, “Night’s” original progenitor, whose death in 2017 was met with the kind of belated cultural praise usually reserved for Oscar winners.
Tina Romero understands the legacy of her father better than most. It’s not just a matter of gathering a bunch of bickering survivors inside a besieged location — here it’s a converted Bushwick warehouse — while the outside world goes to hell. (Adding to the film’s bona fides, legendary makeup artist Tom Savini makes a cameo as the city’s mayor on TV: “This is not a George Romero movie,” he warns.) Shrewdly, “Queens of the Dead” also foregrounds the deeper meanings that gore-obsessed knockoffs sometimes miss: the idea that working together across differences is harder than it seems and maybe the monster is already calling from inside the house.
Pink-hued and queered so aggressively that only a prig won’t be able to find some RuPaul-adjacent enjoyment in it, “Queens” stars Katy O’Brian, last seen as Kristen Stewart’s sculpted lust object in “Love Lies Bleeding.” Here O’Brian has much more to do emotionally as Dre, a wanna-be impresario with big dreams for her drag event, Yum, even if her attractions keep bailing and her target audience of influencers is in the process of turning into lumbering flesh-eaters. (They still clutch onto their cellphones, a nice touch.)
Within the makeshift club — a dressing room, a bar, some dance cages that will figure later — tensions flare and Dre has her hands full. Ginsey (Nina West), a hardworking diva, holds down the fort while unreliable protégé Sam (Jaquel Spivey) chooses this moment to show up and ruffle feathers. Unhappy with second billing, a younger queen (Tomás Matos) insists on being called Scrumptious while a gruffly accommodating handyman named Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker, a smart inclusion of George Romero’s blue-collar streak) tries to keep all the pronouns straight.
Confidently, Tina Romero makes room for a wonderfully dumb makeover montage and a daring escape via Pride Parade float. If the comedy overcompensates at the expense of landing every gag, then good on her. It’s long overdue and there’s something touching to the idea that the end of the world might unleash leadership qualities in those who’ve had a rough time existing in the old one.
But a film this well-made and cut (the pacy editing by Aden Hakimi calls back to the elder Romero’s own cutting of his major titles) shouldn’t be relegated to just one kind of audience. Anyone who appreciates horror should find something to smile at here. Maybe it’s the side plot — as satisfying as a worn-in pair of shoes — of Dre’s wife, Lizzie (Riki Lindhome), a hospital nurse, racing across town in an old Impala.
Or, true to zombie movie form, there’s the mid-film arrival of a game-changing character, the synthesizer music pumping. Here it’s Margaret Cho on a motor scooter, cruising through a cloud of exhaust. “You all look healthy enough,” she tosses off, an action hero in the making. And yes, that’s as thrilling as it sounds.
It’s dead certain that if you’ve been a television critic for, ahem, a number of years, you’re going to have reviewed a passel of shows based on the writing of Stephen King, America’s most adapted, if not necessarily most adaptable author. (It’s been a mere three months since the last, “The Institute,” on MGM+.) The latest float in this long parade premieres Sunday on HBO — it’s “It: Welcome to Derry,” a prequel to the 2017 film, “It” (and its 2019 follow-up, “It: Chapter Two”) based on King’s 1986 creepy clown novel, each of which made a packet. (There was a 1990 TV miniseries version as well.)
Developed by Andy Muschietti (director of the films), Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, “Derry” is an extension of the brand rather than an adaptation, which features a white-faced circus-style clown called Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård, back from the movies) who lives in the sewer and comes around every 27 years to feed on children’s fear — fear being the preferred dish of many famous monsters of filmland, and white-faced circus clowns having lost all goodwill in the culture. (No thanks to King. Or Krusty.) And while I assume some of the series’ points may be found within King’s original 1,138-page novel, life is short and that is going to have to remain an assumption. In any case, it’s very much a work of television — not what I’d call prestige television, despite a modicum of well-done fright effects — just ordinary, workman-like TV, with monsters. (Or one monster in many forms.)
It’s 1962 in Derry, Maine, and everywhere else. (Subsequent seasons — prequel prequels — will reportedly be set in 1935 and 1908.) The Cold War is heating up. Schoolchildren, forced to watch animated films about the effects of a nuclear blast, are ducking and covering beneath their desks (a psychological rather than a practical exercise). But the threat of annihilation has done nothing to slow them in their teenage rituals. Bullies chase a target down the street. A group of snobby girls is called the Pattycakes, because they play patty cake, and their leader is named Patty. On the other hand are the kids we care about, the outsiders, banded together in unpopularity. It’s a paradoxical quality of horror films that to be an outsider either qualifies you as a hero or the monster — the insiders are usually just food. Not that the monsters are particular about whom they eat.
We open in a movie theater. Robert Preston is on the screen in “The Music Man,” performing “Ya Got Trouble.” (Chronologically accurate foreshadowing!) In the audience is Matty (Miles Ekhardt), a boy way too old to be sucking on a pacifier. Chased from the theater — he’s been sneaking in — it’s a snowy night, and he accepts a ride from a seemingly normal family, who quickly turn abnormal. Suddenly it’s four months later and Matty is an officially missing child.
Taylour Paige, Blake Cameron James and Jovan Adepo play the Hanlon family, who have just moved to Derry, Maine.
(Brooke Palmer / HBO)
The series begins promisingly, setting up (as in “It,” or, hmmm, “Stranger Things”) a company of junior investigators. Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) has a lot of thoughts about aliens and sex; Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler) is studious and serious and has thoughts about Matty. Lilly (Clara Stack) is called “loony” because she spent time in a sanitarium — the King-canonical Juniper Hill Asylum — after her father died in a pickle factory accident. (Not played for laughs, although the pickle is perhaps the funniest of all foods.) Lilly thinks she heard Matty singing “Trouble” through the drain in her bathtub; Ronnie (Amanda Christine), the daughter of the cinema’s projectionist Hank (Stephen Rider), has heard voices in the theater’s pipes. The kids run the film, and supernatural mayhem ensues. It’s pretty crazy! Gross hallucinations — or are they? — will afflict them through the series.
Meanwhile, Air Force Maj. Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) has been transferred to the local base, where secret doings are afoot, involving (classic plot line) the military’s desire to claim and weaponize whatever barely understood dangerous thing that’s out there in the woods. (His value to this operation is that he cannot feel fear, the result of a brain injury.) The Hanlons — including wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige), a civil rights activist in a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat, and son Will (Blake Cameron James) — are Black (as are Ronnie and her father, seemingly accounting for 100% of Derry’s in-town African American population). “Don’t be looking for trouble,” Leroy tells Charlotte, who responds, “There’s going to be trouble anywhere we go. That’s the country you swore your life to defend.” Will, who is scientific, will become friends with Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), an appealingly goofy kid in a band uniform; they’ll both wind up on the Pennywise case.
Typically, the kids — also including Marge (Matilda Lawler, the secret weapon of “Station Eleven” and “The Santa Clauses”), Lilly’s socially desperate friend — are the strongest element in the story and the show; their energy overwhelms the obviousness of the narrative, and whatever takes us away from them, into pace-slowing side plots, is time less well spent.
What else? There’s a Native American element — including the old Indian burial ground story — represented by Rose (Kimberly Guerrero), who runs a thrift store (called Second Hand Rose, in a nice nod to Fanny Brice) and whose indomitable air makes her a kind of counterpart and potential ally to Charlotte. Manifest destiny gets a mention, and the plot will conventionally pose Native humbleness against white hubris. Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) is a Black serviceman with a tragic mental gift, used cruelly by his superiors — a familiar King type. Racism is a recurring theme without becoming a consistent plot point, with messages for 2025. (Rich: “This is America. You can’t just throw people in jail for nothing.” Will: “Are we talking about the same country?”)
Also: A statue of Paul Bunyan is going up in town — and in fact a 31-foot-tall Bunyan statue was unveiled in Bangor, Maine, in 1959. This is pointed to a couple of times, so I would imagine some kind of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man scenario coming in the series’ unseen back half. Or something.
Horror, especially body-horror — there are two monstrous birth sequences in the five episodes, out of nine, available to review — has, you may have noticed, moved from the fringes to the center of popular (even high) culture, with A-list stars signing on and Oscar and Emmy nominations not unlikely. Indeed, the good, cheap, unrespectable, unambitious variety of scare flick has mostly disappeared from the big screen. That “Welcome to Derry” is more of a cheesy B-picture than its makers might like to imagine, assembled from worked-over tropes — somewhat excusable for King having originated many of them — is more in its favor than not. TV remains a haven for cheesiness. Long may it remain so.
Lío Mehiel has been working for a moment like “After the Hunt” for a long time.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino, this thorny morality play of a film set at Yale University pits well-liked professor Alma (played by Julia Roberts) against both her protegé, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), as well as her longtime friend and colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) during a scandal that risks her entire academic career.
Amid that starry A-list cast, the actor plays Maggie’s partner, Alex. The film, which had its world premiere in August at the Venice Film Festival, is Mehiel’s most high-profile project yet.
“There is so much time as an artist where you are doing the work and nobody cares and you have to find within yourself the motivation and the commitment and the drive to keep going,” Mehiel tells The Times. “Because you know that when you are going to be able to reach people, it will be worth it.”
Such a step has been years in the making. Mehiel, who lived in Puerto Rico until they were 5 years old, began their creative endeavors almost as soon as they arrived in New York City, first as a salsa dancer and later as an actor. By the time they were in fifth grade they were attending Broadway auditions, eventually booking a role in the 2003 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” starring Ashley Judd and Jason Patric.
(L to R) Lio Mehiel as Alex and Ayo Edebiri as Maggie in AFTER THE HUNT, from Amazon MGM Studios.
But as they began finding their own sense of self and body, they also found the kind of opportunities that led them to “After the Hunt.” That began in earnest back in 2023, when they starred in Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s film “Mutt” as Feña, a role they booked after cold-emailing the director and telling them they’d do anything to win that part. The film chronicled a particularly hectic day in the life of a young trans man in New York City, as he struggles to rekindle old relationships he’d severed since he’d transitioned. Mehiel’s soulful performance won them a Special Jury Award for Acting at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, putting them on the map as a trans Latine performer to watch.
“Moving forward from ‘Mutt,’ I was really interested in building on that momentum to what’s next,” they say. Not just in terms of their career but in the broader cultural conversation around contemporary queer and trans representation. The following year, they returned to Sundance with Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers,” which walked away from the festival with the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize — the first for a film directed by a Latina director. Like “Mutt,” that sun-dappled film found Mehiel breathing life into a trans character navigating a thorny relationship with their father (played by renowned Puerto Rican rapper Residente).
Mehiel has long been building a body of work that centers on the very work of having a body. Just this past summer, they visited the Salton Sea for a performance installation titled “angels of a drowning myth.” In photos from that day, Mehiel is seen naked and half-submerged into that so-called sea, posing alongside a bust of their own chest made six months after they’d received top surgery. A portrait of a body twice represented, Mehiel’s piece stressed the solidity and malleability of their own body, and the beauty they find within and around it. Their work moves past familiar ideas of the body in transition, gleefully embracing the messiness of the queer experience and refusing the easy siren call of visibility.
“‘After the Hunt,’ is such a beautiful example of that because Alex is a queer and trans character, but we just see them getting home from a run, taking their shirt off, being with their partner, dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with their queerness,” Mehiel says.
That moment Alex first appears on screen is quintessential Mehiel. Not just because of the honeyed intimacy their sweaty, bare chest exudes. But because their appearance immediately reframes everything audiences have heard about this seemingly militant, radical social justice warrior. Alex at first appears as a figure of “woke” culture there to defy the older generation Roberts’ Alma comes to stand for. But there’s more to them than that.
“Alex doesn’t represent all queer people who have a political orientation in the world, all queer people who might attend a protest,” they explain. “I think what Luca did and what Nora did in the script was to give us all an opportunity to move away from identity politics. Instead, they gave each of the characters enough meat on their bones that they get to be complex, messy characters.”
“After the Hunt” may focus on complicated ethical questions surrounding sexual assault allegations at a university, but within that plot, Mehiel sees also a chance for viewers to catch a glimpse of characters like Maggie and Alex who may not otherwise be centered in such stories.
“I’m just excited that there is more exposure that people are having to queer and trans people and to queer relationships, and how that can fit in the context of a ‘normative’ world,” they add. “This is a movie with Julia Roberts, one of our biggest stars and crown jewels of Hollywood and of American cinema. There’s going to be a lot of folks that are going to see it because Julia is in it. And then they’re also going to get to experience a queer and trans person on screen who is likable in some moments and unlikable in others, just as much as every other character.”
That’s been Mehiel’s purpose for years now: to expand what queer and trans characters can look like on stage, on screen and, in turn, in real life. At a time when these communities are vilified by those who wish to harm them, Mehiel insists on the importance of such normalized visibility.
Lio Mehiel seen at the Los Angeles Premiere of Amazon MGM Studios’ “After The Hunt” at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on October 04, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Stewart Cook / Amazon MGM Studios via Getty Images)
“Honestly, exposure to these experiences creates connection more than anything and allows people to feel comfortable,” they add. “Because the political climate right now — for the Latine community and for the trans community — is really hard and heartbreaking and challenging. And I think so much of it has to do with people feeling like they don’t know who these people are.”
A central kernel of the premise of “After the Hunt” is that you never know what someone is going through. And, more to the point, that making assumptions about other people’s experience can be extremely dangerous.
“This movie really serves as a mirror to the people that are watching it,” Mehiel insists. The film confronts audiences with their own biases and refuses any tidy conclusions.
But for Mehiel, the film will forever be remembered as a highlight of a career that is only bound to get bigger and more exciting. Just this year, they spent the summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival starring in Jeremy O. Harris’ new play as well as serving as head of production for “Mother, Daughter, Holy Spirit,” a grassroots fundraiser for the Trans Justice Funding Project, all while continuing to pursue their various interests as artist, writer, and filmmaker. In that context, “After the Hunt” stands now less as a calling card than as a reminder of how far they’ve come and yet how much further they want to go. That film, now playing in theaters and coming soon to Prime Video, will widen the scope and reach of their artistry.
“Watching it, I was like, ‘I fit right into the fabric of the movie,’” they say. “On a personal journey level, I feel confident that I have the skill, the talent and the experience at this point to work with the masters that I dream of working with (if the sexy French filmmaker, Julia Ducournau, ever reads this interview, she should know that I want to work with her).”
Or, in much simpler terms that echo an ethos they’ve brought to bear on and off screen: “I just feel ready and able to actualize the things that I have been dreaming about for a long time.”
Referencing these developments ahead of the screening in Park City, Utah, writer-director Bill Condon told the audience: “That’s a sentiment I think you’ll see the movie has a different point of view on.”
Released in theaters Oct. 10, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is set in the final year of Argentina’s Dirty War, the violent military dictatorship that spanned from 1976-1983. The story begins in the confines of a Buenos Aires prison, where newfound cellmates Valentin Arregui Paz (Diego Luna) and Luis Molina (Tonatiuh) find they have little in common. Arregui is a principled revolutionary dedicated to his cause, while Molina is a gay, flamboyant window dresser who’s been arrested for public indecency.
Undeterred by their differences, Molina punctuates the bleak existence of their imprisonment — one marked by torture and deprivation — by recounting the plot of “The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a fictional Golden Age musical starring his favorite actress, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez), casting himself and Arregui as her co-stars. Transported from their dreary cell to the bright, indulgent universe of the musical, their main conflicts become a quest for love and honor, rather than a fight for their basic human rights.
When Argentinian author Manuel Puig began writing the celebrated novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” in 1974, it was just a year into his self-imposed exile to Mexico as his native Argentina lurched toward authoritarianism. By the time the book was released in 1976, a military junta had seized control of the government. The next seven years were marked by the forced disappearance of an estimated 20,000-30,000 people, many of whom were kidnapped and taken to clandestine detention camps to be tortured and killed. Among those targeted were artists, journalists, student activists, members of the LGBTQ+ community and anyone deemed “subversive” by the regime.
Initially banned in Argentina, Puig’s novel has been adapted and reimagined multiple times, including as an Oscar-winning film in 1985 and a Tony Award-winning musical in 1993. With each iteration, the central elements have remained unchanged. And yet, as the 2025 adaptation arrived in theaters this month, this queer, Latino-led story of two prisoners fighting the claustrophobia of life under fascism feels at once like a minor miracle, and a startling wake-up call.
Tonatiuh, left, and Diego Luna in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
(Sundance Institute)
In the months since the film’s Sundance premiere, the parallels between the fraught political climate of 1970s Argentina and that of our present have only become more pronounced.
Amidst these headlines are people just like Molina and Arregui — activists, artists and human beings — finding their own ways to survive and resist an increasingly paranoid and repressive government. And while Arregui’s instinct is to remain unwavering in his cause, Molina’s is to retreat into the glamorous, over-the-top world of the “Spider Woman.”
In dazzling musical numbers expertly performed by Lopez, who delivers each song and dance with all the magnetism of a true Old Hollywood icon, both the prisoners and the audience can’t help but be drawn further and further into her Technicolor web.
Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
(Roadside Attractions)
It might be easy to write these moments off as nothing more than a superficial distraction, as Arregui does early on, and characterize musicals as shallow and cliche. At first, Molina is happy to admit that’s why he loves them, but the truth is more complicated.
During Argentina’s dictatorship, discrimination and attacks by paramilitary groups against LGBTQ+ people became more and more frequent. Molina accepts the role society has cast him in, allowing himself to be the “monster,” the “deviant” or the “sissy” that people want him to be, while retreating mentally into the world of classic films and pop culture. For him, their beauty is a salve — an opportunity to abandon reality and cast himself in a role that doesn’t actually exist for him.
Though he never explicitly claims an identity, it’s made clear that he doesn’t just love “La Luna” — he wants to be her. And in their first feature lead role, the queer, L.A.-born actor Tonatiuh embodies all of Molina’s contradictions — his bluster, his pain, his radiance — to heart-wrenching effect.
As Molina and Arregui grow closer, the boundaries between reality and fantasy begin to melt, and their formerly rigid perceptions collapse along with them. Arregui takes on some of Molina’s idealism, and the musical he once saw as a tired cliche becomes something invaluable: a sliver of joy that can’t be taken from him. A cynic convinced of the world’s brokenness, he realizes that revolutions need hope too.
In the film’s final act, while the world around Molina hasn’t changed, he has. Still trapped within the confines of a society that is doing its best to crush him, he adopts Arregui’s integrity and realizes that he has a choice: “I learned about dignity in that most undignified place,” he says in the film. “I had always believed nothing could ever change for me, and I felt sorry for myself. But I can’t live like that now.”
Like the film within the film, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” isn’t an escape. It’s a lifeline — and a reminder that, even in the darkest of times, art has the power to transport us, sustain us and embolden us to be brave.
What is it about the musical biopic that has inspired so much Oscar love? Is it the genre’s front-row seat on the turbulent, provocative, culture-shifting lives of artists we’ve worshiped from afar? Is it the transformational, go-for-broke acting showcase it affords, and the painstaking period recreation so essential to the journey back in time? Or is it simply the enduring power of popular music and the icons who’ve created and performed it?
With the release of writer-director Scott Cooper’s biographical drama “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” starring kudos magnet Jeremy Allen White in an immersive portrayal of The Boss circa 1982, it feels like the perfect time to flash back on some of the most honored pop-music biopics in Oscars history.
‘A Complete Unknown’ (8 nominations)
Monica Barbaro and Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown.”
(Searchlight Pictures)
This nostalgic snapshot of the early career of legendary folk singer Bob Dylan racked up eight Oscar nominations, including for picture, director (James Mangold), adapted screenplay (Mangold and Jay Cocks), and actors Timothée Chalamet (Dylan), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger) and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez). Though it exited the awards ceremony empty-handed (it also earned nods for sound and costume design), the film enjoyed solid awards-season grosses, largely positive reviews and further burnished Chalamet’s cred as a versatile and chameleonic leading man.
‘Elvis’ (8 nominations)
Austin Butler in “Elvis.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Tracking the meteoric rise and fall of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, this electric, eclectic, midcentury biopic impressed critics, shook up the box office and made a star out of Presley proxy Austin Butler. (Go ahead, say it: “Thank you, thank you very much!”) Though “Elvis” left the building on Oscar night with zero wins from eight nods — including picture, lead actor, cinematography and film editing — the movie brought the hip-swiveling singer back into the zeitgeist and gave director Baz Luhrmann yet another feather in his movie-musical cap.
‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ (8 nominations)
James Cagney stars as George M. Cohan in the 1942 biographical musical drama “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
(Turner Entertainment)
An oldie but a goodie, this popular — and patriotic — musical drama, starring James Cagney as prolific composer-singer-showman George M. Cohan, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including for picture, director (Michael Curtiz), lead actor and supporting actor (Walter Huston). Cagney won his only Oscar for the exuberant role. (He also received nominations for 1938’s “Angels With Dirty Faces” and 1955’s “Love Me or Leave Me,” another musical biopic.) “Yankee” took home additional statuettes for sound and, as the category was then called, best scoring of a musical picture.
‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ (7 nominations)
Levon Helm and Sissy Spacek in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
(Universal Pictures)
Country star Loretta Lynn may have been born a coal miner’s daughter, but Sissy Spacek was born to play her, as evidenced by the Oscar she won for her striking portrayal. The film, which spanned Lynn’s humble Kentucky youth and marriage at 15 through her extraordinary rise to chart-topping fame — and the nervous breakdown that nearly derailed her career — scored seven nominations, including for picture and adapted screenplay (by Thomas Rickman). Spacek, the film’s sole Oscar winner, would go on to earn four more lead actress nominations.
‘Bound for Glory’ (6 nominations)
David Carradine, who played folk singer Woody Guthrie in “Bound for Glory,” strums a guitar at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.
(Keystone / Hulton Archive via Getty Images)
Seminal American folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was a pivotal supporting character in last year’s “A Complete Unknown,” had a biopic all to himself in this lyrical drama directed by the great Hal Ashby. Based on Guthrie’s 1943 autobiography and starring David Carradine as the itinerant, socially conscious musician, the movie was nominated for six Oscars, including picture, adapted screenplay and film editing. It won for Haskell Wexler’s evocative cinematography and Leonard Rosenman’s sweeping score — but remained more of a critical than commercial success.
‘Ray’ (6 nominations)
Jamie Foxx in “Ray.”
(Nicola Goode)
Jamie Foxx took home the Oscar, among many other prizes, for his vibrant embodiment of pioneering singer-songwriter-pianist Ray Charles. The ambitious box-office hit, which followed the influential crossover artist from his childhood in 1930s Georgia (when he went blind) through the late 1970s — and all the successes, detours and struggles in between — garnered six nominations, including best picture and director (Taylor Hackford). Along with the lead actor award, “Ray” won for sound mixing. Foxx also earned a supporting actor nod that same year for his fine dramatic work in Michael Mann’s “Collateral.”
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5 nominations)
Rami Malek in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
(Alex Bailey / Twentieth Century Fox)
Audiences and Academy voters were kinder than many critics to this often dazzling, mega-grossing ($910 million worldwide) portrait of groundbreaking Queen frontman and co-founder Freddie Mercury, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991. Although called out for sanitizing the queer, vocally gifted musician’s private — and not-so-private — life, the movie was nominated for five Oscars, including best picture. With wins for film editing, sound editing, sound mixing and, most notably, lead actor (for Rami Malek’s captivating turn as Mercury), the picture amassed the most statuettes in that year’s race.
‘Lady Sings the Blues’ (5 nominations)
Diana Ross in “Lady Sings the Blues.”
(Paramount Pictures)
Diana Ross made an auspicious feature acting debut in this sprawling biopic about the hardships and triumphs of celebrated jazz singer Billie Holiday. An iconic music star herself — she’d recently left the hit-making Supremes to go solo — Ross earned her first (and only) Oscar nod for her galvanizing recreation. The film received four additional nominations, including for original screenplay and costume design, but won none. Ross, who lost that year to Liza Minnelli in “Cabaret,” would go on to star in just a handful of other films. (“Mahogany,” anyone?)
‘Walk the Line’ (5 nominations)
Joaquin Phoenix in “Walk the Line.”
(Suzanne Tenner / 20th Century Fox)
The life of country-folk-rockabilly star Johnny Cash received a polished, emotionally rich big-screen treatment thanks to fine direction by James Mangold (who co-wrote with Gill Dennis) and powerful star turns by Joaquin Phoenix as the complicated Man in Black and Reese Witherspoon as his resilient wife, singer June Carter Cash. The popular, well-reviewed drama collected five Oscar nominations: lead actor and actress, costume design, film editing and sound mixing. Witherspoon captured Oscar gold — along with a raft of other awards — for her memorable performance.
“What a horrible story! What a hideous play!” a theater critic for the Daily Telegraph lamented after the London premiere of “Hedda Gabler” in 1891. Victorian audiences were repelled by Henrik Ibsen’s fatally attractive newlywed who appears to have it all — the fancy house, the doting husband — only to be violently bored.
But writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Candyman,”“The Marvels”) and her star Tessa Thompson understand Hedda down to the pretty poison in her molecules. Their rollicking redo, set from dusk to hangover at a drunken bacchanal, is vibrant and viciously alive. With apologies to Ibsen’s ghost, DaCosta’s tweaks have sharpened its rage. I don’t think that long-dead critic would like this “Hedda” any better. I think it’s divine.
Thompson’s Hedda is a clever, status-conscious snot raised to believe that her sole purpose is to be a rich man’s wife. With no hobbies or career and no interest in motherhood, her only creative outlets are squandering money and machinating the success of her milquetoast husband, middlebrow academic George (Tom Bateman), who has such a flimsy hold on his bride that his last name might as well be attached to hers with Scotch tape. (It’s Tesman and it’s pointedly rarely used.) Hedda doesn’t love George. In fact, she seems to think he’s a whiny little worm. But she’s dead-set on securing him a promotion to afford her expensive tastes.
If Hedda had been born a man, she’d be leading armies into battle like her late father, General Gabler, who spawned her out of wedlock. Instead, she takes out her aggression on civilians. Using her charm offensive, Hedda goads naive spouses to cheat, recovering alcoholics to drink and depressives to wander off into the darkness with a revolver. Some of her havoc is calculated, most of it is out of pique that others are living braver, more fulfilling lives. All of it feels like a cat tipping over water glasses just to see them shatter. Like the nasty seductress of “Dangerous Liaisons,” she’s a warning that frustrated women aren’t merely a hazard to themselves — they’re a menace to the society that made them.
Inspired by her antihero, DaCosta manipulates Ibsen to suit her own goals. She’s updated the play’s setting to 1950s England, a similar-in-spirit era in which well-bred women were kept domesticated. (I can’t wait for someone to do a version among the tradwives of Utah.) From there, DaCosta has smartly tightened the narrative, which used to have a key scene at an off-stage bachelor party to which Hedda was pointedly not invited. “What a pity the fair lady can’t be there, invisible,” Ibsen’s Hedda grumbled at being left home while the men got to carouse.
In DaCosta’s version, the whole drama unfolds during a martini and cocaine-fueled rager at Hedda’s mansion, a party she’s throwing to impress George’s potential new boss, Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch), who she hears has a bohemian streak. At her own happening on her own turf, Hedda couldn’t be more visibly in command. She rallies the guests to hurl her former classmate, Thea (Imogen Poots), a wretchedly earnest drip, into a nearby lake and gets the whole room grooving to a dance band’s cover of “It’s Oh So Quiet,” the swinging hit that the Icelandic pop singer Björk would popularize a half-century later. It’s a great song pick with manic crescendos — You blow a fuse, zing boom! The devil cuts loose, zing boom! — that capture Hedda’s feverish mood shifts.
We know this evening will go wrong from the film’s opening shot of Hedda facing down two policemen who keep interrupting her explanation of the last 24 hours. “Where should I start?” she says with smothered exasperation. As we cut back to watch the night unfold, a shot of Hedda surveying the crowd from an upstairs landing feels like she’s looking at a game board — Clue, perhaps? — with a weapon stashed in every room. Which threat is most pressing? The pistols she keeps in a leather box, the precarious crystal chandelier or the lake’s deep waters outside?
Thompson is marvelous in the role. Even the way she chomps a cherry off a cocktail toothpick has menace. I first saw her as the lead in “Romeo and Juliet” at a 99-seat theater in Pasadena when she was barely 20 years old (there’s so much talent in our small stage scene), so it’s a nice reminder that the funny and soulful actor of the “Thor” and “Creed” franchises is also a hell of a good classical performer and a worthy star on her own.
She wears Hedda’s lovely mask with confidence — red lips, lush cheekbones, cool demeanor — and periodically allows it to slip. Editor Jacob Schulsinger often allows Hedda a tiny hesitation before she charges ahead ruining people’s lives, long enough to know that she’s considering the consequences. “Sometimes I can’t help myself, I just do things all of a sudden on a whim,” she admits to the nosy Judge Brack (Nicholas Pinnock), revealing a sliver of weakness. She’s almost (nearly) asking for help. Yet, the judge just wants to maneuver her into bed. How tedious.
DaCosta boldly layers race and sexuality on top of Ibsen’s tale. She’s gender-swapped Hedda’s ex-lover, Eilert, into a lesbian named Eileen (a swaggering Nina Hoss), a brilliant, openly norm-defying author who is George’s job-seeking competition (and the only person Hedda enjoys kissing). If earlier incarnations of Hedda didn’t dare defy social rules when she was white and straight, being Black and queer adds so much additional peril that the script barely needs to say out loud. The new tension is there in just a few whispers, as when Hedda overhears a guest murmur that their hostess is “duskier than I thought she would be.” Hedda doesn’t acknowledge the slight. That would mean admitting vulnerability. She simply starts destroying the speaker in the very next scene.
What’s wiser? Eileen’s determination to face down the boys and be accepted for her full self or Hedda sneaking around and steering everyone’s fates behind the scenes? They can’t team up — they’re doomed to tear each other to shreds. And as much glee as we get watching Hedda’s rampage, it aches to see these two formidable women reduce each other to hysterics (to use the medical diagnosis of the day).
From our 21st century perspective, they both have a right to be mad and they both might be mentally ill. DaCosta doesn’t offer a verdict, but she plunges us so deeply into Hedda’s headspace that we can hear how certain things set her off. Insults hit her with a knife-like hiss of air; fresh schemes get her charging around to Hildur Guðnadóttir’s tumultuous, percussive score.
Costume designer Lindsay Pugh has done incredible work outfitting the film’s central female roles. Hedda wears bullet-like strands of pearls that choke her neck and a jade-colored gown that seems to molder into a festering, jealous shade of green. When her rival, Poot’s Thea, arrives underdressed, Hedda forces her into a hideous frock with fussy bows and an ungainly skirt. Poots, her nose raw and red, her character kicked when she’s down, gamely looks a fright, trusting that moral fiber will expose Hedda’s ugly insecurities.
But Pugh’s stroke of genius is putting Eileen not in some sort of mannish suit but in a bombshell dress that highlights her curves like a primal goddess. It’s pure feminine power — just like the film itself — and when Eileen struts into a room of her all-male colleagues, that dress exposes how fast the tenor can shift from awe to jeers and how little wiggle room she or any woman has for error.
‘Hedda’
Rated: R, for sexual content, language, drug use and brief nudity
A few months ago, my younger daughter, Darby, and I were settling into our seats at the local AMC. As the previews rolled, she gasped. “I know that voice,” she said. “That’s Aidan. Mom, that’s Aidan.”
I looked up just in time to see a familiar shock of brown curls. It was indeed Aidan Delbis, former member of the Falcon Players at Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, a kid I had seen perform alongside my daughter in countless student plays.
Only now he was seated at a kitchen table with Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone as the words “Bugonia” and then “directed by Yorgos Lanthimos” flashed across the screen.
“Did you not know?” I asked my daughter. CV is a fine public school with a good theater program, but it isn’t exactly an incubator for nepo babies and aspiring stars. That one of their own had stepped off last year’s graduation stage and into a major film production should have been very big news long before a trailer hit theaters.
“No,” she said, furiously messaging various friends. “But now they will.”
Now they will indeed. When he joined the cast of “Bugonia,” Delbis didn’t just become a part of Lanthimos’ highly anticipated remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 black comedy “Save the Green Planet!” He also entered the mythology of which Hollywood dreams are made: A 17-year old sends in his first-ever open-call submission and lands a major role in a very big movie.
With a script by Will Tracy and obvious Oscar potential, “Bugonia” had its world premiere in August at this year’s Venice Film Festival before launching onto the festival circuit, including screenings in Toronto and New York, in preparation for its release this Friday. A slightly absurdist, darkly funny thriller with political undertones, it revolves around the kidnapping of a pharmaceutical company’s CEO, Michelle (Stone), by wild-eyed conspiracy theorist Teddy (Plemons) and his loyal cousin Don (Delbis).
From left, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in the movie “Bugonia.”
(Atsushi Nishijima / Focus Features)
Teddy believes Michelle is an alien sent to destroy Earth. Don believes in Teddy. Though he falls in with Teddy’s plans, he often questions them, serving as a continual reminder that even within Teddy’s paranoid view of the universe, there is such a thing as going too far. Don is, in many ways, the heart of the film.
He is also, like the actor who plays him, autistic.
Delbis — who chooses to self-describe as autistic rather than neurodivergent — is not someone who has long nursed dreams of stardom. He took drama classes all through high school, but it wasn’t until his junior year, Delbis says, “that I started to get more into the process. I found the general process of acting, of understanding and investing in different personalities, to be fun and sometimes scary.”
Still, he says, “I wasn’t really sure that I wanted it to be my main career. But it so happened that this happened while I was in high school, and here we are.”
Here is the Four Seasons on a very rainy October afternoon where Delbis, now 19, has just finished his first solo photo shoot and is sitting, fortified by Goldfish crackers (his go-to-snack), for his first long one-on-one interview. He went to some of the film festivals and just returned from “Bugonia’s” London premiere, where he signed autographs on the red carpet and enjoyed flying first class. His parents, Katy and David Delbis, are seated nearby, as is his access and creative coach, Elaine Hall.
Delbis is a tall, good-natured young man who speaks with a distinctive cadence and in an unwaveringly calm tone. Aside from a habit of repeating himself as he searches for what he wants to say next, he seems more comfortable discussing his experience with filmmaking than many of the dozens of more experienced actors I have interviewed in this very hotel over the years.
“We should try to be more empathetic to people with different worldviews because you never really know what those people are going through,” Delbis says. “The movie feels very relevant to that theme.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“It all started,” he says, “when my mom was friends with this agent, April, and one day she sent Mom an audition that seemed pretty promising, so I submitted for that. And they really liked it and called me back.”
It actually started a bit further back than that. With Plemons and Stone already cast, Lanthimos had decided that he wanted a nonprofessional actor to play Don.
“We went really wide in trying to find someone really special,” the Greek-born director of “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” says in a phone interview. “With these two experienced actors, I wanted to bring in a different dynamic. As we looked at people, I felt that the character would be more interesting if he was neurodivergent.”
Casting director Jennifer Venditti put out an open call, which April Smallwood of Spotlight Development saw and sent to Delbis’ mother, Katy.
“A happy-go-lucky young man, neurodivergent — it practically described Aidan,” Katy says in a later interview. La Crescenta may not be an industry hub, but, like many in L.A., the Delbis family has a Hollywood connection. Aidan’s older brother, Tristan (who is also neurodivergent), works at a movie theater; father David is about to retire after years at the Writers Guild Health Fund; and Katy, a self-described “creative,” has done some acting herself. But no one saw film-acting as a potential career for Aidan, who was set to take a gap year after high school. And, Katy says, she had no idea what sort of movie it was for. “It said for a ‘big film,’ but they always say that.”
She thought of it a bit like the time Delbis, a member of the high school track team, decided he also wanted to try out for basketball. “As I drove him to the school,” Katy said, “I told him that he might not get on since there were a lot of kids who had been playing basketball for years, which he had not. He said, ‘Mom, I just want to see what it’s like.’”
Now Delbis wanted to see what it would be like to audition for a “big film.”
Aidan Delbis in the movie “Bugonia.”
(Atsushi Nishijima / Focus Features)
He had recently performed the Vincent Price monologue from “Thriller” for the school talent show, which Katy filmed on her phone, so Smallwood submitted that. Venditti called Smallwood the next day and met with Delbis over Zoom. Thus began a monthslong process of meetings, rehearsals and auditions.
“We focused on him right away,” Venditti says. “He seemed to have it all. And he was very committed.”
“I was really unaware of how big a project it was,” Delbis said. “I had never seen a film by Yorgos.”
In March, Lanthimos, Stone and Plemons were in L.A. for the Oscars, so they all met with Delbis and came away impressed.
Lanthimos thought of casting a neurodivergent actor in a part because it would bring a natural clarity and unfiltered unpredictability to the role. He didn’t consider it any more challenging than working with any other actor. And when he met Delbis, Lanthimos says, “I just thought: That’s him.”
“Just from watching that first tape, you could see there was something so magnetic about him,” said Stone during a recent phone interview. (She is also a producer on the film.) “Don is the audience’s window, the one who can see through the charade.”
Still, there were many more steps to take.
“It’s a big leap for any nonprofessional,” Stone says. “It’s a big part in what is essentially a three-hander.”
From left, director Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons at the Venice Film Festival, where “Bugonia” had its world premiere in August.
(Alessandra Tarantino / Invision / AP)
For an autistic actor, it’s an even bigger leap. As talented as Delbis might be, he also had to be able to handle the pressures, boredom and chaos of a film set. Venditti reached out to Hall. The founder of the Miracle Project and mother to a now-adult neurodivergent son, Hall is an acting coach who has worked for more than 20 years to increase the presence and understanding of neurodivergent and disabled people. She is often asked to gauge the ability of actors to take on a certain role — their ease with the material, their physical stamina, their level of independence and their emotional accessibility.
Delbis, she says, ticked all the boxes. He loves horror films, he was on the track team and he was, at the time, about to travel without his parents on a school trip to Sweden.
He is, as he says himself, “a low-key guy,” so Hall gave him some exercises to help him portray more extreme emotions and prepare him for when other cast members might do the same. (One subsequent rehearsal involved a scene in which one of the actors screamed repeatedly.)
Often, Hall says, perfecting these exercises can take weeks; Delbis, working with his mother, did it in a weekend. She also helped him prepare for his meeting with and then chemistry read with Plemons.
Delbis says he was “a bit nervous, though I don’t know why.” He did not recognize Plemons’ name or his face. “I had watched ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I didn’t realize Jesse played Todd. Halfway through [the read], I told him he looked like Todd and he said, ‘That’s because I played him.’ I’ve seen him in other things since then,” Delbis adds. “He’s a very solid actor.”
More important, he says, “Jesse seemed to me to be a very cool guy.”
That feeling is mutual. “When we brought Aidan in, I was excited and a little nervous,” Plemons says during a phone call from London. They started with one of the more extreme scenes from the film. “I was finding my feet too. When it became apparent that he was going to be fine with the darker scenes, I said, ‘This is him; this is Don.’”
While all this was happening, Delbis was finishing his senior year, which included a starring role in a production of “Almost Maine.” “It was not overly hard,” he says, but sometimes it was a lot. “I did one read and then I had to go to rehearsal for the play.”
Venditti remembers that day very well. “Here we were being so careful, treating him like he was fragile and not wanting to overload him,” she says laughing, “and he’s just calmly multitasking.”
When Delbis got the role in May, he and his family signed a nondisclosure agreement, which is why none of his friends knew his news after graduation, and Delbis and his family flew to the U.K. to begin filming. It was a tough secret for his parents to keep. But “any time it looked like I might slip,” Katy says, “Aidan shut me down.” He celebrated his 18th birthday near the set outside of Windsor, where production ran for three months before moving for two weeks in Atlanta.
Hall was hired to be Delbis’ on-set access and creative coach, a job she believes she has invented, meant to make the experience for neurodivergent and disabled actors easier. She suggested that Lanthimos and Tracy simplify Delbis’ script pages, stripping down the description of action “so he wouldn’t get stuck thinking he had to do exactly what was on the page,” she says, which they were happy to do.
“We didn’t want to put any limits on him,” Lanthimos says.
Delbis chose most of his costumes (except a beekeeping suit, motivated by the plot, which he says “was very hot”), which mirrored his own wardrobe preferences down to the horror film t-shirts and mismatched socks. Even the food Teddy and Don eat during the film reflects Delbis’ taste: mac ’n’ cheese, taquitos, spaghetti.
Hall ensured Delbis had extra time before filming, during which she could help him prepare with rehearsal and centering exercises. She visited the set before he arrived so she could tell him exactly what to expect and worked with the production team to ensure that he had his own space between takes. “They built us a little house, with horror posters on the wall and stuffed animals that looked like his cats,” she says. As there were no Goldfish available in the U.K., the production had them flown in.
“Having Elaine there was amazing,” Venditti says. “The idea of having someone to act as eyes and ears of what people are actually experiencing on set, I think it’s groundbreaking. I don’t know why we haven’t done it before.”
Delbis spent a fair amount of time with Plemons, who Hall said occasionally stepped in to help if she had to be away from set.
“We did a decent amount of goofing around,” Delbis says. “The bond that developed between us occurred quite naturally. I consider Jesse a friend.”
For his part, Plemons enjoyed being around someone who spoke his mind.
“I so appreciated Aidan’s inability to tell a lie,” Plemons says. “On a set, you spend so much time waiting around, and he would say, ‘What are we doing? What is taking so long?’ Which was exactly what I was thinking. He’s a very smart, sensitive, self-assured guy, and if you’re unclear in what you’re saying, he will let you know.”
“Aidan is just so funny,” says his “Bugonia” co-star Emma Stone. “We spent a lot of time together in a basement and Aidan had so many jokes about that.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Stone says that while she and Delbis had a friendly rapport, she hung back a little when they weren’t shooting. “I didn’t want to form the same kind of bond Aidan had with Jesse because [in the film] it’s them against me and I didn’t want to do too much to mess with that.”
But, the two-time Oscar winner says, “Aidan is just so funny. He was on a jag during the kidnapping scene. We spent a lot of time together in a basement and Aidan had so many jokes about that.”
“I went through all of ‘Bugonia’ thinking I had never seen Emma in anything,” Delbis says. “Then I realized my parents had shown me a clip of a woman getting very involved in a birthday card — ‘Pocketful of Sunshine’ — and that was from ‘Easy A.’”
When he was filming, Delbis was all business. Several of the takes which he ad-libbed made it into the film and Delbis is proud of that.
“Despite being in more extreme situations than I’ve been in, there’s something of Don’s emotion and struggles that did feel very familiar to me,” he says. “Feelings of great distress and helplessness and conflictedness and confusion. I have felt that in classes in high school.”
“Aidan has great instincts,” Lanthimos says. “In a scene toward the end [of the film], he was so moving, it was the first time I have ever teared up on set.
There were difficult days — one moment with Plemons, Delbis says, took many takes. “It was hot AF and involved me getting more worked up that I am used to getting,” he remembers. But he appreciated Lanthimos’ willingness to let him try things. “In one scene, Jesse throws a chair and I thought that seemed pretty cool. So at the end of the day, they let me throw a chair. I hope that makes it into the outtakes reel.”
He was also very pleased when the crew threw him a s’mores party at the end of filming. “There was a fire pit on set that looked perfect for s’mores,” he says. “And I told them that, so it was my idea to have a s’mores party.”
Delbis is happy with how the film turned out, including his performance. “I think I looked pretty baller in that suit,” he says of one scene. Though he doesn’t have an opinion on the authenticity debate — whether autistic actors should always be the ones to play autistic characters — he thinks it’s “cool that writers and directors are starting to be more conscientious and give more realistic and respectful depictions of neurodivergent people and characters.”
He is more concerned that audiences understand what he thinks is the most important message of the movie.
“We should try to be more empathetic to people with different worldviews because you never really know what those people are going through,” he says. “The movie feels very relevant to that theme. God knows, people aren’t always willing to be tolerant.”
Netflix on Tuesday said its third-quarter revenue jumped 17% to $11.5 billion, powered by the hit animated film “KPop Demon Hunters.”
The Los Gatos-based streamer reported a net income of $2.5 billion during the third quarter, up 8% from the same period a year ago but well below the $3 billion analysts had projected, according to FactSet.
Revenue was in line with analyst estimates and was boosted by increased subscriptions, pricing adjustments and more ad revenue.
The company said it incurred a $619-million expense related to a dispute with Brazilian tax authorities.
“Absent this expense, we would have exceeded our Q3’25 operating margin forecast,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday. “We don’t expect this matter to have a material impact on future results.”
Netflix shares, which closed Tuesday at $1,241.35, fell 5% in after-hours trading.
As it continues to dominate the streaming market with more than 301 million subscribers, Netflix has been investing in a diverse slate of content, including new movies rolling out in the fourth quarter such as Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” as well as the final season of sci-fi hit “Stranger Things” and family-friendly games for the TV such as Boggle.
“KPop Demon Hunters” has garnered more than 325 million views in its first 91 days on the service. The movie, about a trio of powerful singers who hunt demons, was released in June.
It bested 2021 action film “Red Notice,” which had been previously its most watched film in its first 91 days on Netflix with 230.9 million views.
On Tuesday, Netflix also announced a licensing deal with toymakers Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc. to make toys including dolls, action figures, youth electronics and other items related to “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Popular TV shows launched in the third quarter include the second season of the Addams family spinoff series “Wednesday” and the second season of drama “My Life With the Walter Boys.”
“When you have a hit the size of ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ it stirs the imagination of where you can take this,” said Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, in an earnings presentation.
He said the film benefited from Netflix’s platform, allowing superfans to repeat view it and make it appealing for audiences to watch in theaters as well. “We believe this film, ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ actually worked because it was released on Netflix first,” Sarandos added.
The company said in the fourth quarter it expects revenue to grow another 17% due to growth in subscriptions, pricing and ad revenue.
For the full year, Netflix is forecasting revenue of $45.1 billion, up 16%, and said it is on track to more than double it ad revenue in 2025.
Like other entertainment companies, Netflix has been taking steps to diversify its business in a challenging landscape, as production costs for TV and movies increases and studios consolidate.
“With entertainment industry employment becoming more precarious, Netflix is slyly pivoting its content strategy to rely more on live sports, YouTubers, creators and podcasters,” said Ross Benes, a senior analyst with research firm Emarketer in a statement.
But some investors still remain skeptical about the future of subscription streaming services, as the technology behind video generation tools powered by AI get more sophisticated, making it easier to replicate visual effects and customize content to viewers.
“Netflix’s core lay-back easy-to-watch scripted content is potentially most at risk by the emergence of generative AI compared to peers,” said John Conca, analyst with investment research firm Third Bridge. “Netflix will need to channel its earlier days and find a way to remain nimble, even though it’s now the 800-pound gorilla in this space to deal with this threat.”
On Tuesday, Netflix said it is using generative AI to improve the quality of its recommendations and content discovery on its platform. Creators on Netflix are also using AI tools for their projects, including filmmakers for comedy “Happy Gilmore 2” using generative AI and volumetric capture technology to de-age characters.
Ajike “AJ” Owens was a dedicated 35-year-old mother of four when she was shot and killed by her 58-year-old neighbor, Susan Lorincz, in June 2023. The tragedy, which rocked the otherwise peaceful, tight-knit community of Ocala, Fla., followed years of Lorincz making habitual calls to the police to report neighborhood kids, including Owens’, for playing in a vacant lot next to her home. Lorincz, who is white, claimed that the children — most of whom are Black and were under 12 — were a threat, citing one of the nation’s many “stand your ground” laws, which allow individuals to use deadly force to protect themselves if they feel their life is in danger.
Now award-winning filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, with the support of producer-husband Nikon Kwantu and such nonfiction luminaries as Sam Pollard and Soledad O’Brien, has chronicled the two years leading up to Owens’ death in “The Perfect Neighbor,” premiering Friday on Netflix after an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run. Composed almost entirely of police body camera footage, the moving and powerful verité documentary uses the case to depict the perils of such laws, which are all too easily misused or abused in a society where not every claim of self-defense is treated equally.
A jury convicted Lorincz of manslaughter in August 2024, but the repercussions of her erratic and violent behavior continue to impact the Owens family and their neighbors. Gandbhir, whose sister-in-law was a close friend of Owens, hopes “The Perfect Neighbor” will honor Owens’ memory while showing how our nation’s growing fear of “the other” and the proliferation of “stand your ground” laws are a deadly combination.
Initially, you weren’t planning on making a film about this tragic killing, but you were documenting the aftermath of the crime. Why?
We got a call the night Ajike was killed, and we immediately jumped into action to try to help the family. We stepped in to be the media liaisons. They looked to us to try to keep the story alive in the media, just because they were worried [it would be overlooked]. This is Ocala, Fla., the heart of where “stand your ground” was born. Susan wasn’t arrested for four days because they were doing a “stand your ground” investigation. We were not thinking about making a doc, really. We were just terrified that there would be no justice.
But in Ajike’s case, there’s reams of footage and audio recordings that captured what happened. How were you able to obtain so much of that material from the police department?
Anthony Thomas, who works with [civil rights attorney] Benjamin Crump, had sued the police department through the Freedom of Information Act and got them to release all of the material that they had pertaining to the case. That’s how we got the footage. What came to us was the police body camera footage, detective interviews, Ring camera footage and cellphone footage. There was also all the audio calls that Susan had made to the police, and then after the night of the [killing], the calls the community had made. There was basically a plethora of stuff that we were handed, in a jumble, and Anthony was like, “Sort this out. See if you can find anything that makes sense for the news, like snippets we can share.”
I was surprised at how much material there was, and I’m just talking about what made it into the film.
It speaks to how much Susan called the police. Basically, the body cam footage [was a result of those calls]. What’s interesting is the reaction when we screened the film for the community. They agreed to be part of this so we wanted to show them before it came out. We’re very concerned with participant care and the ethics of this. They said that they didn’t think that we had everything, because Susan [allegedly] called the police sometimes, like, 10 times a day. They [said they] think the police gave us maybe what they could organize, where they don’t look terrible. But they don’t think that that’s everything.
Ajike “AJ” Owens, pictured on the poster, was shot and killed by her neighbor in 2023. The crime is at the center of Geeta Gandbhir’s new documentary “The Perfect Neighbor.”
Ajike’s mother, Pamela Dias, has been a major force in keeping her daughter’s memory alive — and seeking justice. How did she feel about you making this film?
I went to Pamela and said I could make a movie and maybe we could make a change. It’s quite an endeavor to try to change gun laws or the “stand your ground” law, but maybe we can reach people. She said yes. This is a woman who by her own admission was blinded by grief [when Ajike was killed], who said she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. But she knew even then that her daughter’s story had to be told. She said her daughter died standing up for her kids, and she felt it was her turn to stand up.
I told her the material was graphic. But Pam was inspired by Emmett Till and how his mother had an open-casket funeral and told the photographers to take pictures because she wanted the world to know what had happened to her baby. Plus, we thought about George Floyd and [how footage of his killing] sparked a movement. It is a terrible thing to bear witness, but if we let these things continue to happen in the shadows, then they will happen forever. It’s only by bearing witness that things might change.
What about your own emotional well-being while making this film?
See all my gray hair? [Laughs.] I realized later it was grief work for me, because I needed to know what happened. I had to know what happened. I couldn’t understand how someone could pick up a gun and kill their neighbor over children playing nearby. How did we get here? So many questions were just eating me, so the work was in some ways cathartic. Then once we had it all strung out and I thought it was a film, I brought on Viridiana Lieberman, who’s our editor. We had a similar sensibility about what we wanted this to be and we really committed to living in the body camera footage.
“Body camera footage is a violent tool of the state,” Gandbhir says. “It’s often used to criminalize us, particularly people of color. It’s used to dehumanize us, to surveil us, to protect the police. What I wanted to do with this material was flip that narrative and use it to humanize this community.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Why not use narration?
I worked for 12 years in narratives and scripted before I segued into documentary. I learned that the best vérité documentaries are show and not tell. If you tell people what they’re seeing, there’s some room for doubt or for your bias or some questioning around it. But to me, this footage plays like vérité. There’s no reporter on the ground. There’s no one influencing what’s happening in the neighborhood, other than the police who are coming in and asking questions. I felt that made the footage and the story undeniable. No one could say that we were down there asking provocative questions. And the body camera footage is so incredibly immersive, I wanted people to have the experience of what the community experienced.
How would you describe what they went through?
Their experience felt a bit like a horror film. You have this beautiful, diverse community living together with a strong social network, taking care of each other and each other’s kids. What was so powerful to me in the body camera footage is you really got to see this community as they were before [the tragedy], and you never get that. There’s horrible shootings all the time, and we see the aftermath, right? We see the grieving family, we see the funeral. We have to re-create what their lives were like before. And in this, you see this beautiful community thriving and living together, and that was so profound. I wanted to rebuild their world so everyone could see the damage done by one outlier with a gun. How she was the only one who was repeatedly calling the police and seeing threats where there were none.
We’re used to seeing police body cam footage used as evidence following a police brutality incident, or as entertainment in true crime shows. It’s used to tell a very different story in your film.
I wanted to subvert the use of body cam footage. Body camera footage is a violent tool of the state. It’s often used to criminalize us, particularly people of color. It’s used to dehumanize us, to surveil us, to protect the police. What I wanted to do with this material was flip that narrative and use it to humanize this community.
Why do you think that Susan was not seen as a threat by the police?
She’s a middle-aged white lady. She weaponized her race, her status, and she kept trying to weaponize the police against the community. The fact that she was using hate speech against children [she allegedly called them the N-word]. She was filming them. She was throwing things at them. She was cursing at them. But the police didn’t flag her as more than just a nuisance…. After the third time she called and it was unfounded and not about an actual crime, there should have been some measure taken to reprimand her. They didn’t tell the community that they could file charges against her: “She’s harassing you all. She’s harassing your children.” It was systemic neglect. And honestly, should the police be a catch-all for everything? Probably not. But they were not equipped. They didn’t take the necessary steps and the worst outcomes happened, which is that we lost Ajike, and Susan is in prison for the rest of her life. I’m sure that’s not the outcome she wanted.
There’s a moment in the film where a policeman knocks on Susan’s sliding glass door. She doesn’t know it’s a cop. She opens the curtain and screams at him in a terrifying, almost demonic voice. It’s quite a switch from her nervous, genial 911 calls.
Yeah, the jump scare. That was one of the moments where I was like, “Oh, there she is.” And the 911 call, after she shot Ajike. She was hysterical. Then her voice changes when she says, “They keep bothering me and bothering me, and they won’t f— stop.” I felt my heart clench, because it’s like, “Oh, there she really is.” She has this way of going between victim and aggressor. A little Jekyll and Hyde. It’s frightening.
The victim/aggressor dynamic is part of what makes “stand your ground” laws so dangerous. They can be weaponized.
“Stand your ground” policy was born in Ocala and now it’s in around 38 states, in different forms. It’s a law that emboldens people to pick up a gun to solve a dispute. If you can other-ize your neighbor to the extent of [killing] them, the question is, what else will you do? What else will we tolerate? As human beings, how we show up in our communities is a reflection of how we show up in the world. This film takes place on this tiny street, but it is a microcosm of what is happening today. Susan represented the dangers, and that little community represented the best of what’s under threat.
The film puts those moments on pause to share the long and complex relationship between the United States and Japan through the prism of baseball, and through the stories of four Japanese players — Ohtani included — and their journeys to the major leagues.
Baseball has been a national pastime in both nations for more than a century. A Japanese publishing magnate sponsored a 1934 barnstorming tour led by Babe Ruth. Under former owners Walter and Peter O’Malley, the Dodgers were at the forefront of tours to Japan and elsewhere.
In 1946, however, amid the aftermath of World War II, the United States government funded a tour by the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Director Yuriko Gamo Romer features archival footage from that tour prominently in her film.
“I thought it was remarkable,” she said, “that the U.S. government decided, ‘Oh, we should send a baseball team to Japan to help repair relations and for goodwill.’ ”
On the home front, Romer shows how Ruth barnstormed Central California in 1927, a decade and a half before the U.S. government forced citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps there. Teams and leagues sprouted within the camps, an arrangement described by one player as “baseball behind barbed wire.”
The film also relates how, even after World War II ended, Japanese Americans were often unwelcome in their old neighborhoods, and Japanese baseball leagues sprung up like the Negro Leagues.
In 1964, the San Francisco Giants made pitcher Masanori Murakami the first Japanese player in Major League Baseball, but he yielded to pressure to return to his homeland two years later.
San Francisco Giants pitcher Masanori Murakami, shown on the a pro baseball field in 1964, was the first Japanese athlete to play in Major League Baseball.
Now, star Japanese players regularly join the majors. In that 2023 WBC, as the film shows at its end, Ohtani left his first big imprint on the international game by striking out Trout to deliver victory to Japan over the United States.
On Friday, Ohtani powered the Dodgers into the World Series with perhaps the greatest game by any player in major league history.
In previous generations, author Robert Whiting says in the film, hardly any American could name a prominent Japanese figure, in baseball or otherwise. Today, Ohtani’s jersey is baseball’s best seller, and he is a cultural icon on and off the field, here and in Japan.
Fans cheer as Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani hits his third home run during Game 4 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
British actor Samantha Eggar, the Oscar-nominated star of films including “The Collector,” “Doctor Dolittle” and David Cronenberg’s “The Brood,” has died. She was 86.
Eggar died Wednesday evening, her daughter Jenna Stern announced Friday on Instagram. Stern said her mother died “peacefully and quietly surrounded by family” and recalled being by the actor’s side “telling her how much she was loved.” A cause of death was not revealed.
Stern described her mother, who was also a prolific TV actor, as “beautiful, intelligent, and tough enough to be fascinatingly vulnerable.”
Eggar pursued a film career that spanned the 1960s to the 1990s and was most celebrated for her work in “The Collector,” directed by William Wyler. The psychological horror movie, based on John Fowles’ novel of the same name, featured Eggar as the youthful art student abducted by a reclusive young man portrayed by Terence Stamp. For the thriller, Eggar collected the Cannes Film Festival‘s actress prize plus a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
After the film’s release, Eggar secured numerous roles, notably in the 1967 iteration of “Doctor Dolittle” opposite Rex Harrison, “Walk, Don’t Run” with Cary Grant, “The Molly Maguires” and “The Walking Stick.”
One of Eggar’s most memorable roles was in Cronenberg’s “The Brood,” released in 1979. She starred as Nola Carveth, a mental patient receiving radical psychotherapy treatment amid a series of mysterious murders. The film also starred Oliver Reed and Art Hindle.
Throughout her film career, Eggar also appeared in scores of television series ranging from “Anna and the King” (opposite “The King and I” star Yul Brynner), “Starsky & Hutch,” “The Love Boat” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Her more substantial TV roles included a voice-acting part in the animated series “The Legend of Prince Valiant,” which ran for two seasons, and a stint as Charlotte Devane on the daytime drama “All My Children.”
The actor also lent her voice as Hera in Disney’s “Hercules,” then reprised the role in the animated classic’s spinoff video game and TV series.
Eggar was born March 5, 1939, in Hampstead, London. Her father was a British Army brigadier and her mother served as an ambulance driver during World War II. She studied art and fashion at the Thanet School of Art and pursed acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, according to a statement her daughter shared. Later in life, Eggar returned to the stage, performing “The Lonely Road” at the Old Vic and “The Seagull” at Oxford Playhouse and Theatre Royal, Bath.
She also brought her talents to radio, lending her voice to more than 40 productions for the California Artists Radio Theatre. Eggar was an animal enthusiast and supporter of several environment and health causes.
“Samantha Eggar will be remembered not only for her unforgettable performances but for her generosity, wit, and love of life,” the statement said.
Eggar is survived by her children Nicolas and Jenna, grandchildren Isabel, Charlie and Calla; and sisters Margaret Barron, Toni Maricic, and Vivien Thursby.
Brenda Blethyn stars in the upcoming drama film Dragonfly, which has been described as “shocking” and “violent” by critics
The latest trailer for Brenda Blethyn‘s “shocking” drama Dragonfly has just dropped and it’s already proving a massive hit with audiences after scoring 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film also features Andrea Riseborough and Jason Watkins, with the storyline centring around Coleen (Riseborough) who becomes horrified by the treatment her elderly neighbour Elsie (Blethyn) is enduring, prompting her to volunteer her assistance without charge.
Nevertheless, the synopsis suggests that Colleen’s motives might not be quite what they seem. As suspicions mount, a devastating incident triggers a brutal chain of events that could irreversibly transform both women’s existence.
The trailer opens with Elsie recognising that looking after someone is “a lot of hard work” after Colleen volunteers her assistance. Colleen insists that it’s what neighbours are “supposed to do”, but the trailer swiftly shifts into darker territory as Elsie looks petrified by a telephone ringing in her house, and Colleen’s true intentions come under scrutiny from Elsie’s son (Watkins).
“I’ve been hurting all my life, Elsie, to be honest,” Colleen confesses, as we witness her menacingly observing Elsie through a glass panel in her front door, reports Chronicle Live.
Following its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, Dragonfly currently boasts a 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes. In our critique, we called the film “a powerful and compelling drama that explores those that society shuns, building to an ending you won’t forget”.
The Hollywood Reporter penned: “Is this tonal swerve a little gimmicky? Probably, and the film will not be to everyone’s taste. But it is a skillfully rendered exercise in terror.”
ScreenAnarchy remarked: “While cinema in general still tends to romanticise loneliness, Dragonfly shows it for what it is: a routine series of everyday, excruciating experiences that always build up to something that tends to be horrific, more often than not.”
The Guardian lauded it as “a stark, fierce, wonderfully acted film”, while Culture Mix observed: “Dragonfly isn’t just a ‘slow burn’ psychological drama.
“This well-acted movie about two lonely people and home caregiving takes an extreme turn in the last 20 minutes to a shocking ending that’s sure to be divisive.”
Last year, Blethyn spoke candidly about securing the role in the film after wrapping up Vera, reminiscing at the British Film Institute: “I was home, I hadn’t even unpacked my bag, and my agent called me and said, ‘Oh, you’ve been offered a film.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to do a film. I haven’t unpacked yet.'”.
“She said, ‘Oh, it is with Andrea Riseborough.’ I said, ‘Oh, is it?’ And she said, ‘And it starts next week because somebody had dropped out and it’s written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams.'”.
“I said, ‘Oh, well, I better have a little read of it just to… but no, I’m not doing it, but I’ll have a read of it.’ And I liked it, so I did it.”
Dragonfly premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2025. A cinema release date is yet to be announced
THEY say an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – and in the case of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter it could hardly be more appropriate.
Yesterday we revealed Apple Martin’s first photoshoot, posing with a python in an ad campaign for fashion brand Self-Portrait.
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Apple Martin’s recent fashion roles have fuelled accusations she could be this year’s Ultimate Nepo BabyCredit: Gap Studio/Mario SorrentiShe recently collaborated with her famous mum Gwyneth Paltrow for a high profile Gap shootCredit: Mario Sorrenti / Gap / BEEMApple with her famous dad, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin
And last week saw her collaboration with her mum for a high-profile Gap shoot.
But the 21-year-old model, singer and socialite insists we should all forget the nepo baby label — because it’s all thanks to her parents “instilling a work mentality in her”.
“I should not be entitled to anything, I have to work,” she said in a recent interview.
But what Apple means by “work” is raising a few eyebrows in the world of showbiz.
Singing on records by her dad’s band Coldplay, cameos in her mum’s Netflix documentaries, and even a movie role — despite having zero acting experience — are only fuelling accusations that she could well be this year’s ultimate nepo baby, or the child whose success is seen as resulting from their parents’ connections.
A showbiz insider said: “Apple has all the qualities to be the new It girl.
“She’s got girl-next-door looks and has a sweet and innocent demeanour, but deep down she has a wild side.
“She’s sure to ruffle a few feathers as she makes her way in the modeling world.
“And whether she likes it or not, she’s definitely one of the nepos to watch.”
But showing she is not afraid to hit back at the naysayers, the fiery model said: “I constantly remind myself how grateful I am to have these opportunities. I know this is not a normal way to grow up, by any means.
“But my parents did a really good job of instilling in me that I shouldn’t be entitled to anything.”
Apple claims she always wanted to be a model, recalling how she “did run runway walks” in her bedroom while dressed for school, practising her version of Ben Stiller’s Blue Steel pose from the film Zoolander.
She said: “I’ve always been obsessed with fashion. I remember when my mum would do fittings for photoshoots when I was younger, I’d love to just hang out while she was getting her make-up done on set.”
My parents did a really good job of instilling in me that I shouldn’t be entitled to anything
Apple Martin
Given that dad Chris is the super-clean frontman of the world’s most inoffensive band, Apple’s personality — as well as her looks — is perhaps more aligned with her Hollywood-star mum, who knows all too well about divisive images.
Gwyneth — herself the nepo baby of film director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner — was a self-confessed party girl in the Nineties and famously bragged about loving the buzz of “doing cocaine and not getting caught” during her twenties in New York.
It’s yet to be seen how Apple gets her kicks on a night out, but her parties have certainly gained quite a reputation after police were forced to shut down one particularly raucous bash in 2022 with 50 of her pals at Gwyneth’s estate in the Hamptons — the affluent seaside resort on New York’s Long Island.
Apple insists her parents have ‘instilled a work mentality’ in herCredit: The Mega AgencyApple with mum Gwyneth Paltrow in 2016Credit: gwynethpaltrow/instagramApple’s first photoshoot was for a new Self Portrait fashion campaignCredit: Ryan McGinley
Mum was out of town at the time but according to neighbours, the revellers were “partying like rock stars” and made so much noise, angry locals had no choice but to call the cops.
Apple reportedly ended up receiving a fine for hosting a gathering without a permit. Her parents have a combined worth of £320million, so it’s unlikely she would have struggled to pay it.
Apple, who was born in London, was educated in California, attending the £30,000-a-year Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, where she graduated in 2022.
She is now studying English and history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Her taste for fashion has been evident since she got a job in a clothes shop aged 15.
I don’t think we need another celebrity child in the world
Apple Martin
She attended her first runway show in 2023, sitting front row at the Chanel Haute Couture show in Paris, and said afterwards she was developing her own style, a mix of “classic ’90s and cool grandpa”.
Apart from brief appearances in her mum’s Netflix shows and Instagram pictures, as well as singing on Coldplay songs — including 2021 single Higher Power — Apple has only entered the limelight in the last few years, when signs of her personality have begun to shine through.
In April this year she gave a bolshy take on growing up in the public eye for high-end fashion mag Interview — where she worked as an intern — in which she admitted she used to be “anxious about making mistakes”.
She added that she had been put off showbiz because “I don’t think we need another celebrity child in the world.”
She continued: “I just try to do what feels right and block out anything regarding me in the news to the best of my ability.
“And I’m getting a lot better at being like, ‘F*** it’. I’m not going to be scared. I just want to do what seems fun and figure my life out.”
But Apple’s steely approach was put to the test last year when she made her debut at the high-society Le Bal des Débutantes — a modern version of the old debutante ball — in Paris.
The bash at the $1,000-a-night Hotel Shangri-La was supposed to signal her arrival, in a stunning Valentino gown, as a new Hollywood power player.
But instead Apple suffered an online backlash after she was accused of deliberately photobombing a fellow guest and forcing her out of the frame, then pouting and posing for several photos.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin with their children Apple and Moses
After the footage went viral, social media users branded her “obnoxious”, “entitled” and “giving Regina George” — a reference to the notorious queen bee in the 2004 movie Mean Girls.
But rather than give a mature response, Apple instead poked fun at the situation, posting a video on TikTok with a pal jokingly stating that they are both “a delight” and “very funny” — which only served to earn her the nickname “Rotten Apple”.
Gwyneth was also at the ball with ex-husband Chris and Apple’s 19-year-old brother Moses, who is the lead singer in up-and-coming band Dancer.
She has previously admitted that despite Apple’s recent claims that her parents don’t want her to be “entitled”, there is little doubt that she is — but Gwyneth sees it as positive.
Talking about Apple and her pals, she said: “They have, and I mean this word in the best possible way, a sense of entitlement that’s beautiful.
“It’s not spoiled . . . I find it very uplifting and heartening that we all seem to be going in this direction together.”
Even so, Gwyneth knows Apple’s spiky side too, having received a ticking off from her for posting a snap of her on Instagram when she was 14.
Apple commented under Gwyneth’s post, ranting: “Mom we have discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent.”
Sassy response
She later deleted the remark after her mum replied: “You can’t even see your face.”
Apple also gave a sassy response when her mum posted a picture of herself making breakfast while topless, writing: “Did I steal your shirt by accident”.
And she also ripped into Gwyneth’s morning routine while trolling the TikTok account of her lifestyle brand Goop, saying: “She eats nothing except for dates and almond butter,” adding that Gwyneth had been on a cleanse “since the day I was born, apparently”.
But when asked how she stays grounded, Apple said: “Hanging out with my friends and trying to have a normal college experience makes me feel more normal.
“That’s how I like to unwind. We’ll sit down and do little guitar playing sessions, one person will play and the others will sing.
“I also love watching reality TV with my friends. There was one day we spent five hours on the couch and just watched old episodes of America’s Next Top Model.”
Normal? Or nepo? You decide.
Apple made her debut at the high society Le Bal des Débutantes in ParisCredit: tiktok/@parismatch
Looking for things to do in L.A.? Ask us your questions and our expert guides will share highly specific recommendations in our new series, L.A. Times Concierge.
My 73-year-old mother is coming to visit from the East Coast. She recently had hip surgery and it’s painful for her to walk too far. She likes quirky experiences like sushi on conveyor belts. I live in Sawtelle. Other times she has come we have gone to the Getty Villa, a couple studio tours, live taping of “Jeopardy!” and a local ramen place. She likes places with a backstory. For example in Boulder, she wanted to drive past the house where JonBenétRamsey had lived because she is obsessed with true crime. One thing she did say she wanted to do was try to see “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — CJ Schellack
Here’s what we suggest:
First off, your mom sounds like a good time. And I agree with her: The best places to visit often have an interesting backstory. Let’s start with the food. Given that your mom likes sushi experiences, make a stop at Yama Sushi Marketplace, conveniently located in your neighborhood. The family-owned Japanese seafood shop sells restaurant-quality sushi at takeout prices, writes Tiffany Tse in our guide to Sawtelle. “Just point to what catches your eye, and the staff will slice it fresh, sashimi-style, right in front of you,” she adds. Or if you’d prefer to check out another revolving sushi spot, check out Kura, which has a Sawtelle location.
To satisfy your mom’s appetite for one-of-a-kind, quirky experiences, head to Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park. Yes, it’s a bit of a push from your hood — don’t go during rush hour — but it’s worth the trek, especially if you have a sweet tooth. The 100-year-old family-owned shop is stacked with aisles of rare sodas from around the globe, nostalgic candies and retro toys that its 82-year-old owner John Nese tells me “you can’t find anywhere else.” In the back of the shop, next to the make-your-own-soda station, there’s a deli stand that sells “blockbuster” sandwiches — a name that was inspired by boxing legend Rocky Marciano who, after tasting one, declared “This is a real blockbuster!” (Pro tip: If Nese is there when you visit — and the likelihood is high because he “practically lives there,” he says — be sure to ask him for a rec.)
Once you’ve secured your snacks, grab a picnic blanket or low chair and head over to Hollywood Forever Cemetery to watch a movie — a favorite L.A. experience for many of my colleagues. Through Halloween, Cinespia is hosting movie nights at the cemetery where stars like Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Johnny Ramone are laid to rest. Films are projected onto a mausoleum wall and moviegoers sit on the lawn (an open area with no graves). There’s a designated wheelchair user and companion area with restrooms close by, and accessible parking is available with a placard (though you’ll still need to buy a parking pass in advance).
But if you think your mom would be more comfortable indoors, check out the Quentin Tarantino-owned New Beverly Cinema, known for screening double features of classic, indie, cult and foreign flicks the old-fashioned way — on 35mm film. As Michael Ordoña writes in our guide to the best movie theaters in Los Angeles, “the New Bev is just what a rep cinema should be. It’s cozy, with a mellow, enthusiastic vibe. Surprises sometimes occur.”
To tap into your mom’s inner true crime fascination, make a visit to some of L.A.’s darker landmarks. “I like to take friends visiting from the East Coast on a drive along the Sunset Strip to show them where famous people died, like Belushi at Chateau Marmont and River Phoenix outside the Viper Room,” senior audience editor Vanessa Franko tells me. (Bonus: You don’t even need to get out of your car.) But if you prefer an actual tour, visit the Greystone Mansion and Gardens, where oil heir and homeowner Ned Doheny and his secretary, Hugh Plunkett, were found dead in 1929. Times travel writer Christopher Reynolds recommends it, saying that at this destination, you get “a crime scene, filming location and L.A. oil history, all in one.” We’ve also curated a list of 12 iconic L.A. film and TV horror homes that’s worth checking out (the filming location for the WB series “Charmed” is featured in the photo illustration above). I hope that you and your very cool mom have the best time. Please send us pictures if you hit up any of these spots.
Diane Keaton, the actress who starred in some of the biggest movies of the last half-century, including the “Godfather” and “Annie Hall,” while serving as a style trend-setter and a champion of Los Angeles’ past, has died. She was 79.
Her death was first reported by People and confirmed by The New York Times.
In an extraordinary run during the 1970s when she was dominant, her career spanned the high points of American cinema: Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia saga and several of Woody Allen’s urbane comedies, climaxing in an Oscar win for her culture-changing turn as the title character in 1977’s “Annie Hall.” Keaton’s catchphrase, “Well, la-di-dah,” became iconic.
Over her career, she received four Oscar nominations for lead actress, winning for “Annie Hall.”
Born in Southern California, Keaton achieved fame in the 1970s through her frequent collaborations with Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. She appeared in three “Godfather” movies as well as eight Allen films. Her star turn as Annie Hall earned her critical raves and made her a fashion icon of the era with Annie’s fedora hats, vests, ties and baggy pants. The Times once called her look “fluttery, vulnerable, almost unbearably adorable.”
“Annie’s style was Diane’s style — very eclectic,” designer Ralph Lauren said in a 1978 story in Vogue, soon after the movie came out. “She had a style that was all her own. Annie Hall was pure Diane Keaton.”
She was often asked if she got tired of the notoriety “Annie Hall” brought her, including the magazine covers, think pieces and fashion homages.
“No, I’m not. Everything is because of ‘Annie Hall’ with Woody. He has a great ear for women’s voices. I’m so grateful to him; he really gave me an opportunity that changed my life,” she told The Times in 2012. “I’m never disappointed about people talking to me about ‘Annie Hall.’ But I will say, a lot of people don’t know ‘Annie Hall’ exists, and that’s just the way it goes — goodbye! It’s bittersweet.”
She managed to capture the cultural zeitgeist in later films. In 1987, she played a successful businesswoman who upends her life to care for a relative’s baby in “Baby Boom.” In 2003, she won acclaim in “Something’s Gotta Give” for playing a successful writer navigating with romance in her 50s.
Keaton also got Oscar nominations for “Reds” (1982), “Marvin’s Room” (1996) and “Something’s Gotta Give.”
Keaton was a patron of the L.A. arts scene and also gained note as a champion of architecture preservation, remaking grand homes across the region. In collaboration with the Los Angeles Public Library, she edited a book of tabloid photos called “Local News” that ran in the Los Angeles Herald-Express.
In a 2018 interview with The Times, she said she felt privileged to still be working.
“I know what I am by now,” she said. “I know how old I am. I know what my limitations are and what I can and can’t do. So if something appeals to me, I’m definitely going to go for it.”
Later in life, Keaton became a major voice in architecture preservation.
She grew up Santa Ana during the post World War II housing boom in the 1950s and told The Times in an interviews she loved going to open houses with her father
“My father took me to see model homes, which I thought were palaces,” Keaton said.
She began buying and fixing up landmark homes around L.A., especially those of the Spanish colonial style.
“You have to get to know a house and try to keep its integrity. I try to honor the architect,” she said. “I love to go into an empty house. You look at the house and start to feel what it might need.”
“There are so many house treasures, unsung gems, all over Los Angeles,” she said.
Explaining how she came to edit the book of L.A. tabloid photos, Keaton told The Times the L.A. city library came up to her at a swap meet.
The librarian said, ‘There’s these files in the basement of the Central Library’ — the most beautiful building. I took a look. There are books and books to be made out of those images. This is a brilliant archive.”
In recent years, Keaton had become a hit on Instagram, posting photos of architecture, fashion and more. In an interview in 2019, she said she was still very active, eager to work and try new things but was also thinking more about her mortality.
“Of course, you think about it. How can you not?” she said. “I mean, I’m 73. How long do you live? It’s really important what those years are like.”
Keaton death brought tribute across Hollywood and beyond.
“She was a very special person and an incredibly gifted actor, who made each of her roles unforgettable. Her light will continue to shine through the art she leaves behind. Godspeed,” said Nancy Sinatra.
Get ready to enter the Grid: “Tron: Ares” has finally hit theaters.
Directed by Joachim Rønning, “Tron: Ares” is the third installment of the classic sci-fi franchise that kicked off with the 1982 film “Tron.” And like many modern movies that are part of an expansive Hollywood franchise, “Tron: Ares” makes sure to leave the door open for future storytelling.
“Tron: Ares” does so in the closing moments of the movie’s main story as well as in a stinger that plays after the credits start to roll.
The film, which picks up sometime after the events of “Tron: Legacy” (2010), stars Jared Leto as an advanced AI program named Ares created by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), a programmer and rising CEO of a tech corporation. Greta Lee portrays Eve Kim, also a programmer and the CEO of the tech company once led by original “Tron” hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).
Although extensive knowledge of the previous films is not necessarily required to understand “Tron: Ares,” fans of “Tron” and “Legacy” will be the first to recognize the significance of the doors that the film leaves open. (Turn back now if you want to avoid spoilers.)
Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger in “Tron: Ares.”
(Leah Gallo / Disney)
The mid-credits scene is a callback to ‘Tron’
“Tron: Ares” ends with Julian — the grandson of Flynn’s original “Tron” rival, Edward Dillinger — escaping into Dillinger Corp.’s Grid.
The mid-credits scene shows Julian taking in the wreckage of his digital world before noticing and activating his identity disc. After taking ahold of the glowing circular object, his digital suit starts to form in a familiar silhouette.
Those who have seen “Tron” will recognize that Julian’s suit resembles that of Sark, the villainous program written by Ed Dillinger, who led the original film’s Master Control Program army. In “Tron,” Sark was played by David Warner, who also portrayed Ed.
The scene further cements Julian as the successor to his grandfather’s legacy and leaves the possibility open for his return as a villain in a future “Tron” installment.
Jared Leto as Ares in “Tron: Ares.”
(Leah Gallo / Disney)
‘Tron: Ares’ ends by teasing a future link-up with ‘Tron: Legacy’
The new “Tron” movie ends by hinting that Ares’ story is not quite over, either. In the final moments of the film, Ares is shown looking at images of Quorra, a character portrayed by Olivia Wilde in “Tron: Legacy.”
Quorra, like Ares, started her existence in the Grid and eventually made her way out into the real world. But Quorra isn’t a man-made program; she is an “isomorphic algorithm,” or a digital being who spontaneously came into existence in the Grid. She was introduced in “Legacy” as Flynn’s charge who was learning about humanity from him.
Could a meeting between Ares and Quorra be in the “Tron” franchise’s future? Only time (and likely “Tron: Ares’” box office returns) will tell.
