Though the new animated feature “Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires” bears the name of one the most emblematic American superheroes, its creation was entirely a Mexican affair.
The action-packed saga reimagines the caped crusader as a young Aztec man named Yohualli, whose father is killed when conquistador Hernan Cortes arrives on the coast of what we know today as the state of Veracruz. By the time Cortes and his troops reach the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the brave Yohualli has become a fierce warrior protected by the bat deity known as Tzinacan (an actual Aztec god that fits perfectly within this fictional narrative).
Produced by Mexico City-based animated outfit Ánima Estudios, a company at the forefront of the medium in the country for over two decades, “Aztec Batman” emerged as an attempt to expand Ánima’s relationship with Warner Bros. Ánima previously produced two CG-animated films based on “Top Cat,” the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon owned by Warner.
Released Sept. 18 on HBO Max, “Aztec Batman” was initially conceived as a miniseries, and eventually took the more concise form of a film. And while it’s a work meant to entertain, the creators hope that it also ignites new curiosity in younger audiences, particularly those in Mexico and of Mexican descent elsewhere, to learn more about Indigenous peoples.
“The movie seeks to generate pride because part of our roots as Mexicans are Indigenous cultures,” Ánima co-founder José C. Garcia de Letona said in Spanish during a recent video interview. “For many of us, the other part comes from the Spanish. We’re not passing judgment because we are a consequence of what happened, but rather giving a slightly more respectful place to the Aztecs and all Indigenous cultures.”
Why focus on the Aztecs out of the numerous civilizations that existed in the territory that now constitutes Mexico? “Because they were the ones who confronted the Spanish. As the name suggests, it was a clash of empires,” Garcia de Letona adds.
“The victors usually decide who the good guys and the bad guys were when they write their version of the story, but they always omit or diminish the other side. And this is an opportunity to tell this chapter of history from a perspective that isn’t often told,” explains director Juan Meza-Leon, a native of Ensenada, in the Mexican state of Baja California Norte, who has worked in the U.S. animation industry since the mid-2000s. While Meza-Leon has a story credit, Ernie Altbacker, a veteran in the world of DC Comics, wrote the screenplay.
Key to the aesthetic and historical authenticity of “Aztec Batman” was the knowledge that Alejandro Díaz Barriga, one of the most prominent historians of Aztec culture, shared with the production.
“Alejandro accompanied us from the script stage to the character design up to the final cut of the film,” explains Garcia de Letona. Díaz Barriga’s contributions included details on how clothing differed depending on the person’s social class, and letting the production know that the Aztecs didn’t have chairs, tables or doors in their daily lives.
The armor for this Batman took inspiration from Aztec eagle warriors and jaguar warriors, and integrated elements referencing the god Tzinacan. For example, the Batman insignia in the film is at once recognizable as an Aztec design, while also instantly identifiable as the superhero’s logo. “We wanted the designs to have that pre-Columbian quality, but at the same time to look appropriate for what they are: comic book characters,” says Meza-Leon.
The animation team behind “Aztec Batman” consisted mostly of Mexican talent with a few other artists in Brazil and Peru. “Many of us in Latin America, myself included, never imagined being part of a Batman project, and that excited us all infinitely,” says Garcia de Letona.
From the onset, Warner insisted “Aztec Batman” should be produced in Spanish first, and then dubbed into English. The Spanish cast includes actors Horacio Garcia Rojas and Omar Chaparro, while the English version features Mexican American actors Jay Hernandez and Raymond Cruz. U.S.-based Mexican filmmaker Jorge Gutierrez (“The Book of Life”) voices Yohualli’s father, Toltecatzin, in both versions.
Whether you watch with the original Spanish track or the English dub, the dialogue is laced with phrases and words in the Nahuatl language, the native tongue of the Aztecs. “Once the story was finalized, we collaborated with a Mexican writer named Alfredo Mendoza, who helped us incorporate the Nahuatl language to differentiate between the different empires since they both speak Spanish in the film,” said Meza-Leon.
Batman’s classic villains are also transformed into characters that exist organically within the Aztec context. The Joker, for example, becomes Yoka, a shaman and right-hand man to emperor Moctezuma who can communicate with the gods. Catwoman appears here as a jaguar warrior, since there were no domestic cats at that point in history in the Americas. Some creative liberties were taken — the Aztec wouldn’t allow women to become trained fighters. The dubious Cortes becomes Two-Face, while Poison Ivy appears as an enigmatic goddess.
“The idea wasn’t to make a copy of the characters, but to capture their essence, so you could say, ‘That’s the Joker,’ ‘That’s Two-Face,’ ‘That’s Catwoman,’ although we never called them by those names,” says Meza-Leon. “We also never call him Batman; it’s Tzinacan or Bat Warrior, but the spirit of the character is there.”
Since the project was originally developed as a series, Meza-Leon has already developed a larger world. If this first chapter succeeds with audiences, an “Aztec Batman” sequel is feasible. The film is currently playing in Mexican cinemas and streaming globally. “I hope it is successful enough for us to continue exploring this alternative version of the conquest of Mexico, because there are still many ideas left,” says Meza-Leon.
Natalia Bryant has made her debut as a creative director with a short film that features a subject matter with which she’s very familiar.
The 70-second piece is called “Forever Iconic: Purple and Gold Always,” and it’s all about the worldwide impact of the Lakers — something Bryant has experienced throughout her life as the oldest daughter of one of the Lakers’ great icons, Kobe Bryant.
The film, posted online Wednesday by the Lakers, is a fast-paced tribute to the team and its fans. It features a number of celebrity cameos — Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani takes batting practice wearing a Lakers cap; current Lakers star Luka Doncic yells “Kobe!” as he shoots a towel into a hamper; fashion designer Jeff Hamilton creates a number of Lakers jackets; actor Brenda Song obsessively watches and cheers for the team on her computer; Lakers legend Magic Johnson declares, “It’s Showtime, baby!”
Mixed in are shots of regular fans paying tribute to the team in their own ways.
“This project was an amazing, collaborative environment with such creative people and we all came together to try and portray the Lakers’ impact, not only in L.A. but around the world,” Natalia Bryant said in a statement released by the Lakers. “Everyone has their own connection to the Lakers. I hope those who already love this team watch this project and remember what that pride feels like. And if you’re not a Lakers fan yet, I hope you watch this, and it makes you want to be.”
Natalia Bryant’s first short film as a creative director is “Forever Iconic: Purple and Gold Always.”
(Los Angeles Lakers)
Bryant, who graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in May, included some famous Lakers clips, such as LeBron James arguing, “It’s our ball, ain’t it?” and her father hitting a buzzer-beating shot against the Phoenix Suns during the 2006 playoffs.
“Such an honor to be apart of this project!” Bryant wrote on Instagram. “Thank you @lakers for having me join as creative director💛lakers family forever”
Lakers controlling owner and president Jeanie Buss also posted the video on Instagram.
“Cheers to the millions of fans around the world who make the Lakers the most popular team in the NBA!!” Buss wrote. “You are the best fans in the league. Congratulations and huge thanks to the amazing @nataliabryant who helped bring this film to life for her creative director debut.”
Lakers superfan Song also posted a number of photos related to the project on Instagram, including one of herself with Bryant.
Warner Bros. said Wednesday it will renew the contract for studio heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy after the two orchestrated a string of back-to-back hits at the box office.
The news is a notable reversal of fortune for the co-chairs and co-chief executives of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.
Only six months ago, the pair was on thin ice after a series of underperforming films, including Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi thriller “Mickey 17” and the Robert De Niro-led mob movie “The Alto Knights.”
But the studio’s prospects dramatically changed in April with the release of “A Minecraft Movie,” which hauled in nearly $958 million worldwide. Shortly after, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” became a lasting hit at the box office, followed by “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1 The Movie” (which Warner Bros. distributed), James Gunn’s “Superman,” horror flick “Weapons” and the final installment of “The Conjuring.”
In a memo to staff Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav credited Abdy and De Luca for the improved performance at the box office.
He touted the studio’s “balanced” slate with big blockbusters, films based on established intellectual property, horror movies and original works.
“Mike and Pam’s unwavering leadership and commitment to this business has been critical to our success this year,” he wrote. “We have a lot to be grateful for and much to celebrate including several of this year’s best reviewed movies, many of which have pierced the culture zeitgeist in profound ways while also delighting moviegoers around the world.”
Warner Bros. recently surpassed $4 billion at the global box office, the first time it has done so since 2019 and the first studio to reach this mark this year.
“We have the privilege to do this job because of the support and trust [Zaslav] has put in us, and in all of you,” De Luca and Abdy said in an internal note to employees. “We could not be more excited to be leading this team as we introduce an exciting slate of films in the coming years and continue making every film experience an event worthy of the Warner Bros. shield.”
If there’s a scene that best encapsulates the tragically abbreviated career of John Candy, it’s not necessarily from his time on the sketch-comedy series “SCTV” or from movies like “Stripes” or “Uncle Buck.” It’s a moment in the 1987 comedy-drama “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” when his reluctant roommate Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) has spent several minutes berating him for his relentless storytelling.
With a lump in his throat, Candy’s wounded character Del Griffith replies that he’s proud of who he is. “I like me,” he says. “My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article — what you see is what you get.”
That moment proves pivotal to two new projects that retrace Candy’s life and work some 31 years after the actor died from a heart attack at the age of 43. The actor would have turned 75 this month.
A biography, “John Candy: A Life in Comedy,” written by Paul Myers (released by House of Anansi Press on Tuesday), and a documentary, “John Candy: I Like Me,” directed by Colin Hanks (released Friday on Prime Video), both rely on Candy’s friends, family members and colleagues to help tell the story of his ascent, his success and the void left by his death.
In their own ways, both the book and the film show how Candy — while not without his demons — was beloved by audiences for his fundamental and authentic likability, and why he is still mourned today for the potential he never got to completely fulfill.
A family photo of John Candy and his son, Chris, seen in “John Candy: I Like Me.” (Prime Video)
John Candy, left, and Steve Martin in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” (Paramount Pictures)
Explaining why it was still important to memorialize Candy all these years later, Ryan Reynolds, the “Deadpool” star and a producer of the documentary, said, “When it’s something people desperately miss, but they don’t know they miss it, it’s a beautiful and rare thing. John Candy is a person that they missed desperately.”
Since his death, Candy’s immediate survivors — his widow, Rosemary; daughter, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan; and son, Chris Candy — have weighed the pluses and minuses of sharing his life with audiences and the impact it might have on them (the three are co-executive producers on the film). “It’s a balancing act,” said Chris Candy. “You want to live your life and you also want to honor theirs.”
In recent years, Candy’s children said they were encouraged by documentaries like Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” about the children’s TV broadcaster Fred Rogers, as well as Hanks’ film “All Things Must Pass,” about the Tower Records retail chain.
Hanks, whose father, Tom, acted with Candy in films like “Splash” and “Volunteers,” said he struggled at first to find a compelling way to tell the story of Candy, who had a seemingly charmed and uncontroversial acting career, first in his native Toronto and then in Hollywood.
But Hanks said he was drawn into Candy’s story by a particular detail: the fact that Candy’s own father, Sidney, had died from heart disease at the age of 35, right before John turned 5. “It doesn’t take much to think about how traumatic that could be for anyone at any age,” Hanks said.
Chris Candy, from left, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan and Colin Hanks, who directed the Prime Video documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Myers, a musician and journalist who has written books about the band Barenaked Ladies and comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, said he was drawn to Candy as a fellow Canadian and an embodiment of the national comedic spirit.
“If you’re Canadian like I am, you never stop thinking about John Candy,” Myers said. Growing up in the Toronto area, Myers said he and his siblings — including his brother Mike, the future “Shrek” and “Austin Powers” star — were avid fans of sketch comedy shows like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Saturday Night Live.”
But “SCTV,” which launched stars like Candy, Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, meant even more to them. “We watched it from Day 1 and we cheered a little bit harder for them because it was like they were shooting the show blocks away from our house,” Myers said.
Reynolds, who was born and raised in Vancouver, said that Candy’s essential Canadian spirit was crucial to his success as a comic actor.
“In comedy, Canadians typically don’t punch down,” Reynolds said. “It’s more of a self-effacing humor. Their favorite target is themselves. And John did that. On screen, I felt his willingness and joy in self-effacing humor that never really veered into self-loathing humor.”
Ryan Reynolds at the Los Angeles screening of “I Like Me” earlier this month. The actor was a producer on the film.
(Todd Williamson / January Images)
Candy parlayed his repertoire of “SCTV” characters — satirical media personalities like Johnny LaRue and real-life celebrities like Orson Welles — into supporting parts in hit films like “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “The Blues Brothers,” “Brewster’s Millions” and “Spaceballs.”
His penchants for drinking and smoking were well-known and hardly out of the ordinary for that era; they rarely impeded Candy’s work and, in at least one notable instance, seem to have enhanced it: Both the documentary and the biography recount how Candy indulged in a late-night bender with Jack Nicholson before rising the next morning to shoot a scene in “Splash” where his character fumbles, flails and smokes his way through a round of racquetball.
“That’s his work ethic, right there,” said Candy-Sullivan. “He showed up and he did the scene.”
Candy graduated to lead roles in comedies like “Summer Rental,” “The Great Outdoors” and “Who’s Harry Crumb?,” and he found a kindred spirit in the writer and director John Hughes, who helped provide Candy with some of his most enduring roles in movies like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Uncle Buck” and “Home Alone.”
But offscreen, Candy was contending with anxiety and he was sensitive to people’s judgments about his size — remarks which often came directly from TV interviewers who thought nothing of asking him point-blank whether Candy was planning to lose weight.
When he and his sister watched archival footage of these interviews in the documentary, Chris Candy said, “It was, for both of us, uncomfortable. I wasn’t familiar with what he was putting up with and how he would mentally jujitsu in and out of those conversations. He got more and more curt about it as time goes on, and you can see it in the interviews.”
But these psychic wounds didn’t make Candy a cruel or nasty person; he simply absorbed the hurt and redoubled his efforts to be a genial performer.
“If you’re looking for darkness in the story of John Candy, a lot of it’s just internalized pain,” Myers said. “His own coping mechanism was radical niceness to everybody — making human connections so that he would have community and feel like he’s making things better.”
In the early 1990s, Candy seemed to be working nonstop. He appeared in five different feature films in 1991 alone, a year that included duds like “Nothing But Trouble” as well as a small but potentially transformative role in Oliver Stone’s drama “JFK,” where he played the flamboyant attorney Dean Andrews Jr. He was preparing his own directorial debut, a TV film called “Hostage For a Day” in which he starred with George Wendt. Candy also became a co-owner and one-man pep squad for the Toronto Argonauts, the Canadian Football League team.
Eventually, the many demands and stresses in his life came to a head. Amid a grueling shoot for the western comedy “Wagons East” in Durango, Mexico, Candy died on March 4, 1994. He had a private funeral in the Los Angeles area, followed by a public memorial in Toronto that prompted a national outpouring of grief in Canada.
“He represented the best of us,” Myers said. “He was a humanity-centric person. He brought vulnerability and humility to his characters, which is not something you usually see in broad comedy.”
Candy’s films continue to play on television and streaming — both “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “Home Alone” have become year-end holiday staples. But for the people involved in chronicling Candy’s life, there is a creeping sense that the actor’s legacy will not tend to itself, and that the generations who did not grow up with Candy might need reminders of what made him worth remembering.
Hanks recalled a story from the making of “I Like Me” where he and some colleagues were dining at a restaurant where the hostess asked them what they were working on.
“We said we’re making a documentary,” Hanks said. “ ‘Oh, really?’ she goes. ‘Who’s it about?’ It’s about John Candy. She goes, ‘Oh, who’s that?’ No idea who it was. I said, well, have you seen ‘Home Alone’? Remember the polka guy that picks up the mom and takes her in the van? ‘Oh, I loved him. He’s great.’”
Part of his interest in making a film about Candy, Hanks said, is “wanting to showcase the man that people love and remind them why they loved them.”
But there is also the simple pleasure in introducing Candy’s work to people who haven’t seen it before. “If you’re lucky,” Hanks said, “you get to hopefully have them go, ‘God, I want to see those movies. I want to go watch ‘SCTV.’”
Ed Gein may not be America’s most infamous serial killer — he’s eclipsed by the likes of Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer in the public imagination — but his macabre crimes were fodder for several classic horror movies that are permanently imprinted on American minds.
Gein, a Midwestern farmer pushed by personal tragedy into pathological criminality, is the focus of the third season of “Monster,” Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s crime anthology series. The show’s debut season centered on Dahmer (played by Evan Peters) and its sophomore season focused on the Menendez brothers (Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch).
Charlie Hunnam leads the show’s third installment, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” premiering Friday on Netflix, as the titular “Butcher of Plainfield.”
“Serial killer. Grave robber. Psycho. In the frozen fields of 1950s rural Wisconsin, a friendly, mild-mannered recluse named Eddie Gein lived quietly on a decaying farm — hiding a house of horrors so gruesome it would redefine the American nightmare,” reads the show’s official logline.
“Driven by isolation, psychosis and an all-consuming obsession with his mother, Gein’s perverse crimes birthed a new kind of monster that would haunt Hollywood for decades.”
Gein’s enmeshment with his mother inspired the character Norman Bates, the bumbling motelier and murderer of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960). The killer’s habit of fashioning costumes and furniture out of human skin is shared by his fictional counterparts Buffalo Bill (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Leatherface (“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”)
But who was the real Ed Gein, and what moved him to commit the crimes that have fascinated horror directors for decades?
Early trauma
Born in 1906, Gein was raised on an isolated farm in Plainfield, Wis., by an alcoholic father and an ultrareligious mother, whom he adored and defended until her death in 1945.
In “Ed Gein,” a 2001 film based closely on Gein’s life, the killer’s mother teaches her sons that all women (except her) are promiscuous evildoers and restricts her sons’ contact with the outside world. While Gein’s father’s abuse is explicit, his mother’s is insidious — and arguably more deleterious to the young Gein.
“As the film portrays him, Ed Gein never had a chance,” former Times critic Kevin Thomas wrote in 2001.
In his 1989 true crime book “Deviant,” Harold Schechter characterizes the young Gein as a social outcast, resentful of almost everyone but his mother.
“Cut off from all social contacts, completely separated from the life of the community, condemned to an existence of crushing poverty in a remote and desolate region with two tormented and inimical parents, Eddie — never emotionally strong to begin with — was retreating farther and farther into a private world of fantasy,” Schechter writes.
An Oedipus complex
Gein’s father George died in 1940 of heart failure. Gein’s older brother Henry died four years later, reportedly from the same cause — though many believe Henry was actually Gein’s first victim. Then in 1945, the death of Gein’s mother Augusta reportedly triggered the soon-to-be killer’s spiral into psychosis.
The 2023 docuseries “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein” features medical records from 1957, the year Gein, then 51, was arrested. According to these records, Gein began grave digging in the aftermath of his mother’s death. He often took the bodies back to his shed; other times, he mutilated the bodies at their grave sites.
“When questioned as to his reasons for doing this, he stated that he thought it was because he wanted a remembrance of his mother,” the records read. Gein also confessed that, “for a period of time after his mother’s death, he felt that he could arouse the dead by an act of will power. He claimed to have tried to arouse his dead mother by an act of will power and was disappointed when he was unsuccessful.”
The corpses proved to be insufficient surrogates for Gein, who later devolved into murdering middle-aged women who reminded him of his mother. His first victim, 51-year-old tavern owner Mary Hogan, disappeared in 1954, and his second, 58-year-old hardware store owner Bernice Worden, was killed in 1957.
As chronicled in “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein,” Worden’s son Frank alerted authorities to her disappearance after he found shell casings and a trail of blood at their family hardware store. He also found a receipt for antifreeze, which Gein had inquired about the day before Worden went missing.
Upon entering Gein’s farm shed, authorities found Worden’s naked corpse hanging and mutilated “like some game animal that’s been dressed out after the kill,” “Deviant” author Schechter said in the documentary. They also found human skulls fashioned into soup bowls; lampshades and costumes made from human skin; and mutilated female body parts, among other nightmare fuel.
In a recording made on the night of Gein’s arrest and finally unearthed in 2023 — the same ones Hunnam used to inform his voice as Gein for“Monster” — the killer described his gruesome acts as “taken from reading about news magazines and them things. Taking the flesh off, like a head hunter.”
Forensic psychiatrist N.G. Berrill, who was interviewed in the Gein docuseries, said Gein was likely referencing midcentury pulp magazines that laid out the atrocities carried out by the Nazis during World War II. Ilse Koch, the wife of a Nazi commander, had a lampshade made from the skin of murdered inmates.
“The fact is, when you see all the bodies piled up and you see people as disposable, you understand that people were experimented with, if you’re inclined emotionally or psychologically to that type of thinking, even if you don’t want to admit it, it grabs your attention in sort of the wrong way,” Berrill said.
Gein ultimately confessed to murdering Hogan and Worden and robbing more than 40 graves, though he denied cannibalism and necrophilia claims. While initially convicted of first-degree murder in Worden’s death, he was eventually declared not guilty by reason of insanity — diagnosed as schizophrenic — and was institutionalized until his death due to complications from cancer in 1984.
The small-town horror story heard around the world
Gein’s crimes shocked his community and the country.
“He’s a kind of meek, unremarkable man who could have been your neighbor. And there’s something eerie about that, that is disruptive to our collective ideas of, ‘What is a monster?’” said Jooyoung Lee, a serial homicide researcher at the University of Toronto, in “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein.”
Some people’s fascination with Gein even verged into fandom, according to Hamish McAlpine, producer of the 2000 film “Ed Gein.”
“Apparently there are 182 websites devoted to Ed Gein,” McAlpine told The Times in 2001. “There is even an Ed Gein fan club. You can buy Ed Gein memorabilia. You can buy a bust of Ed Gein, Ed Gein ashtrays and even Ed Gein calendars.”
Echoes of Gein in Hollywood
Gein’s simmering psychosis coupled with the barbarity of his crimes made him an ideal horror archetype.
Gein was the inspiration for Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho,” which Alfred Hitchcock adapted into the 1960 film of the same name. In Hitchcock’s movie, Bates, like Gein, exhibits severe attachment to his mother. Bates murders his victims due to a form of dissociative identity disorder that drives him according to her will.
“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” Bates famously says in the film.
Gein is among the serial killers who “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) director Jonathan Demme said inspired his film’s villain Buffalo Bill, who, like Gein, skinned his victims.
That killer quirk also made its way into “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” which sees the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface sporting a mask made of human flesh. The indie horror film’s director, Tobe Hooper, said that as a child he heard Gein’s story from his relatives who lived in Wisconsin.
“They told us the story about this man who lived in the next town from them, about 27 miles or so, who was digging up graves and using the bones and skin in his house,” Hooper said in a 2015 interview with director Barend de Voogd.
“That was all I knew about it. They didn’t mention his name,” Hooper said. “But to me he was like a real boogeyman. That stayed in my mind.”
“Maigret,” premiering Sunday on PBS, is the fourth British series (plus one failed pilot) to be titled “Maigret,” after its main character, Georges Simenon’s Paris-based police detective. As I’ve written here before, he’s my favorite fictional detective, both because the stories serve my Francophilia — they provide a virtual map of the city and beyond — and for his ordinariness as a middle-aged, middle-class, happily married man, who is thoughtful, kind, uncomfortable around the rich and sympathetic to the poor, including many who might be counted among the criminal class. You wouldn’t call him melancholy, exactly, but he feels the weight of the job, of his difficult superiors, of the wicked world. He’s an honest policeman who describes himself as a “functionnaire,” a civil servant, and whose belief in justice might sometimes lead him to letting a malefactor escape. And he likes his food, and he likes his drink.
That the new series, starring Benjamin Wainwright (“Belgravia: The Next Chapter”), is set in the present day is not unusual. With 75 novels and 28 stories published between 1931 and 1972, it’s impossible to locate the character in any specific time anyway; most adaptions are set in the time in which they’re filmed, but even the period adaptations don’t necessarily reflect the year of publication.
Nor does the fact that “Maigret” 2025 swerves from the original texts distinguish it from films and series that have preceded it — most of them, obviously, made in France, where Maigret has many times appeared on the big screen, notably portrayed by French film icon Jean Gabin and recently by Gérard Depardieu in a well-regarded 2022 film, also called “Maigret,” as well as two long-running television series. The latter, another “Maigret,” which ran from 1991 to 2005, starred Bruno Cremer, widely regarded as the best — or among the best, to not start any arguments — of the screen Maigrets. Maigret series have also appeared in Russia, Italy and Japan; America, to the extent we’ve been interested, has imported English-language adaptations from the U.K., which is once again the case.
What’s different this time is that Maigret himself has been given a makeover, made younger, buffer, sexier, slightly more of an action hero, with the beard often assigned to the modern police detective. If you come to the series with a love for Simenon’s character — envisioned by the author as “a large powerfully built gentleman [with] a pipe, a bowler hat, a thick overcoat” and more or less faithfully represented in previous films and series — you’ll have to overlook this transformation, or else look away. The question of whether Wainwright’s Maigret is, you know, really Maigret, is one surely to be debated among the fans.
Meanwhile, there are other Maigrets waiting for you by way of comparison, officially or unofficially streaming. What follows is a short guide (mostly) to the English-language “Maigrets”; each has it charms and most are recommended.
A new “Maigret” has arrived on PBS, starring Andrea Lucas (Kerrie Hayes), from left, Karim Lapointe (Reda Elazouar), Jules Maigret (Benjamin Wainwright), Joseph Torrence (Blake Harrison) and Berthe Janvier (Shaniqua Okwok).
The first screen Maigret, included here for historical interest and because a subtitled version is available on YouTube. Directed by Jean Renoir the year after the novel was published — Simenon, fast out of the gate, published 10 Maigret novels that year — and starring his brother Pierre as Maigret, the film is moody, foggy, dark and slow and has the advantage of actually representing its period. Pierre Renoir’s Maigret is stoical and efficient, and will not be vamped by Winna Winifried’s peculiar femme fatale, as hard as she tries.
Charles Laughton, ‘The Man on the Eiffel Tower’ (1950)
From the novel “La Tête d’un homme (A Man’s Head),” also from 1931, the first English-language adaptation lists “the city of Paris,” on whose streets it was filmed, among the cast in the opening credits. (It’s a trip in time and space.) Laughton plays Maigret with dry humor, though he’s capable of being roused when exasperated or angry, as he often will be here. Co-producer and co-star Franchot Tone chews the beautiful scenery (in color) in a battle of wits Maigret and you both know he’s bound to lose. Directed by Burgess Meredith, who also plays a murder suspect, it adds a thrilling chase up the actual Eiffel Tower, no special effects required. (Laughton isn’t doing the chasing.) Dark film noir compositions alternate with bright sunny street scenes. Stream on Tubi.
Rupert Davies, ‘Maigret’ (1960)
Fifty-two episodes across four seasons were made of this BBC series, shot on video, as many British series were then, and so acted largely on soundstages, which suits a character whose job consists largely of asking questions and listening to other people talk; long interrogations, often lasting overnight, with beer and sandwiches brought up from a neighboring restaurant, are a specialty of the house. (What location filming there is, is actually Paris, in the heart of the nouvelle vague era.) Davies’ Maigret is active and energetic without breaking a sweat, very much a man who makes things happen. Davies also played the detective in a 1965 theatrical production, “Maigret and the Lady,” by Philip Mackie. Stream on Prime Video and Apple TV+.
Richard Harris, ‘Maigret’ (1988)
This version is a curiosity, which gives us Maigret without the Simenon. Harris is a rangy, bespectacled, Irish-y Maigret in this oddity, feature-length failed pilot, with an original story by Arthur Weingarten, whose other credits include “The Mod Squad,” “Ironside” and “T.J. Hooker,” much of which is set on a cruise ship. (Real Paris locations are also featured.) Located firmly in its era, with a synthesized score, it features a Maigret in need of a haircut, wearing his sweater misbuttoned as he explains the case to the gathered suspects — some sort of acting choice, I guess — but also in a tuxedo drinking a cocktail with an umbrella stuck in. (Not very much in character in either case.) The signature pipe is very much a smoking presence, making Harris, on record as a huge fan of the books, look a little like Popeye. Stream on YouTube.
Michael Gambon, ‘Maigret’ (1992)
A period piece set in post-World War II Paris, this series logged two seasons of six episodes each. This is where I discovered the character, when it aired on PBS, before I moved over to the books, and it remains my favorite interpretation. Gambon, who in an odd coincidence followed Harris in the role of Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” films is (not unlike Dumbledore, after all) soft-spoken but stern when necessary. With his thinning hair and a mustache you can forget is there, he melts into his surroundings — this is the first of these series to substitute Budapest for Paris — becoming one sympathetically with his city and its citizens. A scrappy Geoffrey Hutchings shines as Sgt. Inspector Lucas, Maigret’s right hand. Stream on BritBox.
Rowan Atkinson, ‘Maigret’ (2016)
The man who was — is? — Mr. Bean plays it absolutely straight in the role — indeed, he is the most serious, saddest and possibly gentlest Maigret to date; it’s as if he feels all that prevents the world from breaking to pieces. Set in the mid-1950s, slightly after the Gambon “Maigret,” it comprises four feature-length episodes, in the current manner of British mystery adaptations, including a “Night at the Crossroads” that differs greatly from the book and previous film. An often compelling production, this series, too, was shot, handsomely … in Budapest. Stream on BritBox.
Benjamin Wainwright, ‘Maigret’ (2025)
And so, back once again in Hungary, we come to this year’s model. Police headquarters have moved from the dusty old warrens at the Quai des Orfèvres, as in the real world, a hop and a skip from Notre-Dame, to a gleaming new digs with plenty of light and all modern conveniences out in Clichy. There are changes that make good sense for a series set in 2025, including some gender and ethnic diversity injected into the “Faithful Four,” Maigret’s team of close collaborators, and among the characters they encounter. Madame Maigret (Stefanie Martini), always an intelligent and helpful partner, gets a job as a medical professional; Maigret, whom in olden days was brought coffee and served dinner, brings home takeout, cooks a little, helps with the dishes. And they’re trying for a baby.
The action is naturally adjusted for modern technology — of course, one of the attractions of the earlier and period series is that there is none. Wainwright’s Maigret doesn’t smoke a pipe, but he carries one, inherited from his late father, who managed the estate where Maigret grew up, which is knitted into the series as a long arc (three two-part episodes, incorporating multiple cases). Wainwright, appropriately low-key, is fine — the least interesting of these actors to my mind — but if you’re looking for a new detective series set in Budapest-as-Paris, this is nicely made and sufficiently involving, with an excellent supporting cast. I would like to think that a weather report on the radio is a nod to Simenon’s habit of opening a story with a description of the season and the climate, but perhaps that is overthought. Watch on PBS and stream on PBS.org, the PBS app and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video channel.
Contestants that missed out on the chance to audition for Britain’s Got Talent over the past week may soon have their moment on the stage as bosses are planning to film the lost episode
Plans are in motion to film missing Britain’s Got Talent scenes after Simon Cowell was forced to drop out(Image: Trae Patton/NBC via Getty Images)
Britain’s Got Talent has been thrown into chaos after show boss Simon Cowell suffered an injury – with a scramble now on to make up for lost time. The long-running ITV reality show is currently filming the 19th season – having launched all the way back in 2007.
But the latest season got off to a bad start over the past week – as auditions planned for Thursday had to be abandoned after Simon, 65, suffered a bash to the head. Hopefuls that were expecting to be judged in Birmingham were left disappointed when an entire day of filming was scrapped.
And now show bosses are scrambling to recover the episode so that the auditionees can have their moment on the stage. The process is said to be a strain due to the last minute nature of organising filming that would normally take weeks of planning.
A source told The Sun: “It looks like they will hold the supplementary session on Friday, then continue with the scheduled days of auditions continuing for a further week. They feel so bad for all the people left disappointed by what happened last week and want to do what they can to make things right – even though it’s going to take a lot of last-minute organising.”
The Mirror has contacted representatives of Britain’s Got Talent for comment. The update comes days after Simon was spotted with a graze on his forehead, and it was revealed he had injured himself. A source previously told The Sun: “Simon had a terrible headache and migraine – caused by an accidental bump on the head.
“He’s fighting fit now, though – and was revelling in being in Birmingham and back in his judge seat.” The Mirror has contacted Simon’s spokesperson for comment.
The man himself has addressed the drama, sharing a video of himself on social media which made light of his injury. He declared in a video shared via Instagram: “It’s Simon, I’m alive and I’m in Birmingham, I just want to say thank you for all your get well messages.”
He then focused the camera on his grazed forehead, but then produced a happy smile. As he was forced to drop out of filming at the end of last week, former X Factor contestant Stacey Solomon was parachuted in to fill the vacant judges’ seat during auditions on Friday.
The mum-of-five, 35, took to her Instagram stories to post a picture of the iconic BGT stage with her name in lights on the iconic stage. Alongside the picture, Stacey wrote: “What in the alternative universe is going on. A dream.”
Simon has previously opened up about the debilitating migraines he occasionally suffers, which interfere with his work.
He previously explained that he often wears red-tinted glasses to help counter the effects of studio and stage lighting.
The star, who turns 66 on Tuesday, has suffered a string of injuries in recent years. In 2020, he broke his back after falling off an electric bike at his Los Angeles home – an accident that required surgery and months of recovery.
Cowell, who is engaged to Lauren Silverman and father to 11-year-old Eric, described the injury as a harsh reminder of his vulnerability at the time.
In 2017, he also suffered a serious head injury after falling down the stairs at his London residence. At the time, he said: “Sometimes we get a reminder that we’re not invincible, and this was certainly mine. It was a huge shock.
“They think I fainted because I had low blood pressure and so I have got to really take good care of myself to sort that out. After all I am a dad and have more responsibility than ever,” he told his fans at the time.
Fans of the seminal, long-running podcast “WTF With Marc Maron” — and I count myself among them — have been treated to thousands of deep-dive interviews with a starry array of actors, musicians, comics and even some politicians (Barack Obama was a guest in 2015). It’s also been an intimate window into the conflicted inner life of the show’s eponymous host. Maron has seemingly pulled few if any punches in his podcast’s opening monologues as he’s held forth on everything from his fraught emotional state and his two-decade struggle with drug and alcohol addiction (he’s been sober since 1999) to the untimely 2020 death of his romantic partner, the well-regarded indie filmmaker Lynn Shelton (“Humpday,” “Your Sister’s Sister”).
Much of this personal territory and more is revisited in the absorbing, fly-on-the-wall-style documentary “Are We Good?” (named after Maron’s “WTF” sign-off phrase), produced and directed by Steven Feinartz.
Feinartz, who also directed Maron’s last two HBO stand-up specials, began filming his subject in 2021. He trailed Maron as he performed in comedy clubs from Los Angeles to Montreal, recorded his podcast from the garage studio of his Glendale home, visited with his elderly father and, most pivotally, worked through the soul-crushing loss of Shelton. That loss becomes the driving force of the doc, with Maron’s grief informing his daily life and thought process, while also providing cathartic, darkly humorous fodder for his stand-up gigs.
It’s a tricky balancing act that Feinartz depicts with candor, grace and patience, never letting the film’s provocative pathos turn overly grim or sentimental. A stand-up bit in which Maron recalls his ghoulish urge to snap a hospital selfie after bidding goodbye to the deceased Shelton (don’t worry, he decided against it) provides a gulp-worthy example of the comic’s brazen yet reflective approach to the world around him.
That Shelton died at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic made for an additionally cruel and difficult time for Maron, who was unable to share his pain with many others as social distancing took over. He eventually found the funny in that conundrum as well, incorporating the memory into his routine with satiric glee.
Anyone familiar with Maron’s grumpy, F-bomb-tossing persona will likely savor these 90 or so minutes in his swirlingly neurotic company. He unabashedly leans into that vibe here, even while wrangling his pair of self-possessed cats. While Maron sometimes kvetches about Feinartz’s hovering cameras, he seems to have given him a kind of all-access pass to his daily life in a way that belies his trademark crankiness. He may be a reluctant showman, but he’s a showman nonetheless.
The uninitiated, however, might find Maron somewhat less engaging. He readily self-identifies as “selfish, anxious and panicky” and for some, a little of that may go a long way. Still, it’s not hard to relate to his many cogent musings (“How do you love somebody else if you really can’t love yourself?”) as well as to respect he clearly had for Shelton, who’s seen here in an array of luminous, heartbreaking clips.
Other comic talents such as Nate Bargatze, David Cross, Caroline Rhea, Michaela Watkins and John Mulaney also weigh in, bringing a mix of the sincere and the droll to their frank and friendly observations about Maron. On his podcasts and elsewhere, Maron has spoken at length about growing up with narcissistic, emotionally detached parents and how that dynamic likely laid the groundwork for his problematic sense of self. Although that’s not discussed in great detail here, the scenes between Maron and his dad, Barry, now in his mid-80s and living with dementia, have a subtle poignance that shows a kinder, more accepting side of the comedian than perhaps even he might have expected.
Meanwhile, a bit more could have been made of Maron’s acting work, a sideline that’s gained momentum over the last decade or so with worthy roles on TV’s “Glow” and “Stick,” and in films including “Joker” and the upcoming “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” Maron’s oft-stated uncertainty about his acting ability and the push-pull he has admitted to feeling might have dovetailed nicely with his other qualms.
That said, the profile, which features vivid archival and personal footage and photos of Maron throughout the years, is by no means comprehensive, nor does it try to be. At heart, it’s about a vulnerable man at a unique moment in time and how his past has prepared him — or perhaps not. And we are definitely good for experiencing this singular artist up close.
On the day that Michele Mulroney was elected president of the Writers Guild of America West, writers won a significant victory. After writers protested ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for days, the network brought the late-night show back on air.
“Our currency is words and stories, and the freedom to be able to express ourselves is really important, and so our members could not feel more strongly about this and of course we will be speaking out and lobbying and working in any way we can to protect this fundamental right,” Mulroney said in a recent interview.
Mulroney, formerly the WGA West vice president and a writer on the 2017 “Power Rangers” movie and 2011 film “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” enters her new role at a time when the industry is facing significant challenges.
Those include major consolidation in the industry as studios look to cut costs and move TV and film production overseas because of hefty financial incentives. The climate has been tough for many writers who have struggled to find work after enduring a 148-day strike in 2023. After the walkout, writers did secure groundbreaking protections for AI in contracts, but they are still confronting AI models ripping off their work without compensation.
As the guild gears up for contract negotiations next year, Mulroney said she plans to build on earlier gains in AI and other areas, and aims to convince the studios to pay more for WGA’s health plans amid rising healthcare costs.
“It’s going to need some support from the companies,” Mulroney said. “Their drastic pullback in production and employment led to a pretty severe industry contraction that has contributed to some strain on our funds. We’ll be looking to them to help fix that with us.”
When asked about whether she thinks there is appetite among WGA’s members for another strike, Mulroney said “it’s way too early to speculate about that.”
“It’s really hard out there in the industry for all industry workers and for many of our members, but our members have shown time and again that when they have to, when it’s necessary, we are ready to fight for the contract we deserve,” Mulroney said.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers declined to comment, but in an earlier statement said its members look forward to working with her “to address key issues for WGA writers and to strengthen our industry with fair, balanced solutions.”
A studio-side source who was not authorized to comment said that the WGA health plan faces “complex financial challenges that require a balanced approach to align with market norms and ensure long-term stability.”
To keep costs down, studios have been moving more productions to the U.K. and other countries offering significant financial incentives, shrinking job opportunities for entertainment industry workers in Southern California. Some have had to move out of state to look for jobs.
Unions including the WGA lobbied for California to boost annual funding for its film and TV tax credit program and succeeded in raising that amount to $750 million, from $330 million.
“This was a real bright spot of good news in an otherwise really bleak and tough time for our industry,” Mulroney said in an interview last week. “Now there needs to be federal action on this, too, so we’ll continue working with our allies to try to keep production in the U.S., and specifically in Hollywood, in Southern California.”
Mulroney declined to comment on President Trump’s renewed threat to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films.
Another big worry for writers has been artificial intelligence. The WGA has been outspoken about wanting studios to sue AI companies that writers say are taking their scripts for training AI models without their permission. Earlier this year, studios including Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery took legal action against AI companies over copyright infringement.
“We were glad to see some of the studios come off the sidelines and file lawsuits to protect their copyright from these AI companies that are stealing our members’ work to build their models,” she said. “I think we will probably be dealing with AI and wrangling that for the rest of our lives, right?”
Mulroney, 58, ran uncontested, receiving 2,241 votes or 87% of the votes cast, according to the union. CBS series “Tracker” writer and co-executive producer Travis Donnelly became vice president, and TV comedy show “Primo” executive producer Peter Murrieta became secretary-treasurer.
Mulroney grew up in the U.K., the daughter of a factory worker and a janitor. She’s served on the union’s board of directors for four terms and as an officer for six years prior to being elected president.
Mulroney’s background was in theater and theater directing, but she had always dabbled in writing. In her 20s, she worked in development for a British TV and film studio where she read a lot of scripts, which led her to think, “Maybe I could write one of those things.”
Her first writing gig was for a PBS children’s show called “Wishbone,” about a Jack Russell terrier who imagines himself as a character in literary classics. She’s been a screenwriter for 25 years and is based in West Hollywood with her husband and writing partner, Kieran.
Mulroney succeeds Meredith Stiehm, who led the union during the 2023 strike.
Kimmel coming back on air was a parting gift to Stiehm, said Mulroney, adding that the union is still watching the situation.
“We’re still monitoring,” Mulroney said. “I somehow doubt this is the last instance we’re going to see where censorship and free speech are going to be a topic.”
Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s horror film “Bone Lake” announces itself with a startlingly cheeky opener and closes with a bloody gore-fest, the song “Sex and Violence” by U.K. punk outfit the Exploited spelling out the thesis of the film for us. It’s about the intertwining of sex and violence, you see. But what unfolds between these naughty, viscera-drenched bookends is less of a traditional horror film and more of a psychosexual thriller, like “Funny Games” played between two, young attractive couples, with a setup borrowed from “Barbarian.”
In the script by Joshua Friedlander, a double-booking of a secluded rental mansion becomes a double date when Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita) stumble in on the intimate weekend vacay of Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi). The couples decide to make the best of it and stay, promising to rock-paper-scissors for the house if anything gets “weird.”
And get weird it does. While Diego and Sage seemed perfectly happy on arrival, the sexy, uninhibited Will and Cin have a way of nosing out their insecurities, finding the cracks in their connection and weaseling their way in. Suddenly, their lackluster sex life is on trial, and Sage’s resentment about financially supporting Diego while he pursues his dream of writing a novel bubbles to the surface.
Like any weekend-goes-awry horror movie (e.g., “Speak No Evil”), the female half of the couple catches a bad vibe that her male partner dismisses, due to his vested interest in wanting to stay. For Diego, it’s the promise that Cin will share his writing with his favorite author, for whom she claims to work. They overlook the red flags, blow off their opportunities to leave and decide to go all in with this wanton pair, drinking, playing games, breaking into secret rooms and dodging sexual overtures from each of them.
Morgan and her cinematographer Nick Matthews make the location fun to look at, with a saturated color palette and clever camera movements. However, there are scenes where the film is frustratingly dim and underlit, even if it might be justified by the power going out during a storm.
While there’s a certain verve and style to the middle section, where Will and Cin draw in their prey and toy with them, the Grand Guignol climax bears no rhythm or suspense; it’s merely a bludgeoning of the audience with carnage — too much too late.
Other blunt instruments? Roe and Nechita, who don’t play their roles with any subtlety. Roe’s Will comes off as a dangerous himbo; Nechita’s Cin is an over-the-top minx in her seduction of both Diego and Sage. While Hasson’s Sage is a plausibly strident freelance journalist type, you wonder if she has much experience with female friendship, because Cin’s manipulation is so painfully obvious. Pigossi’s self-obsessed novelist, however, is perfectly pitched in his all-around obliviousness.
There’s a kernel of something fascinating at the center of “Bone Lake,” a melding of sex and violence into gestures that are familiar from true crime stories. But there’s not enough motivation baked into the big third-act twist, and the performances just aren’t strong enough to suggest anything deeper.
“Bone Lake” offers up an appealing surface but it’s ultimately too shallow to get you immersed.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
‘Bone Lake’
Rated: R, for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout and some drug use
When we first encounter Daniel Day-Lewis in “Anemone,” we only see him from the back, but there’s no mistaking him. Chopping wood outside his character’s rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere, he drives the ax down again and again, ferociously focused on the task at hand. At his best, which was often, Day-Lewis pursued acting with a primal clarity. Fittingly, his return to the big screen after announcing a retirement in 2017 is in a movie that exudes the same stark, elemental quality. He didn’t just co-write this tale of two estranged brothers excavating their complicated history — he imbues it with his essence, its reason for being.
“Anemone” isn’t just a film about family but one made by a father and his son. It’s the feature directorial debut of Ronan Day-Lewis, who collaborated with his Oscar-winning dad on the screenplay. Ronan, better known as a painter in New York’s contemporary art world, chronicles a collection of still lives who jostle themselves out of an emotional stupor.
Set in England some time during the mid-1990s, the movie opens as Jem (Sean Bean) says goodbye to his melancholy partner Nessa (Samantha Morton) and troubled son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) to venture out into the forest to reconnect with his younger brother Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), whom he hasn’t spoken to in 20 years. A deeply religious man — he has “Only God Can Judge Me” sternly tattooed across his back — Jem is on a mission whose purpose will only slowly be revealed. When he arrives at Ray’s cabin, Ray knows it’s him before he even sets eyes on his brother. For several agonizing minutes, they sit together saying nothing, as Black Sabbath’s mystical ballad “Solitude” plays softly on the stereo. The tense silence will be the first of several battles of will between the two men, neither willing to yield.
Day-Lewis, now 68 and whose last film was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” seems carved out of stone as Ray, his close-cropped hair and imposing gray goatee suggesting a man who doesn’t just live off the grid but thrives there. Lean and athletic, with a wildness in his eyes, Ray displays the same antagonism as Day-Lewis’ Bill the Butcher from “Gangs of New York” or Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood.” Ray’s mysterious and fraught history as a member of the British military during the Troubles is a festering boil this film will eventually lance. His brother, who also served in the military, has come to speak to Ray about something more personal, but the hells they experienced in that conflict are the larger issue they must confront.
Shot by cinematographer Ben Fordesman in the Welsh countryside, “Anemone” takes place largely in a sprawling woods, Ronan Day-Lewis lending the flinty drama a mythic grandeur. Bobby Krlic’s mournful score is alternately dreamy and eerie, the instrumental music abruptly cutting out in the middle of a hypnotic passage. Wordless interludes find Jem and Ray dancing to music or sparring as boxers, their simmering feud reduced to its core elements of rugged masculinity and sibling rivalry. The artist-turned-filmmaker even incorporates a striking image from one of his oils — that of a translucent horselike creature — as an enigmatic visual motif that proves more ponderous than poetic.
This is not the first time Daniel Day-Lewis has worked closely with family. Twenty years ago, he starred in his wife Rebecca Miller’s father-daughter fable “The Ballad of Jack and Rose.” Both that film and “Anemone” concern solitary men who opted out of society, only to discover that such a plan is difficult to sustain. But they also both suffer from what might be described as an excess of dramatic seriousness, which is especially true of “Anemone.” Whether it’s Morton’s perpetually scowling expression in the infrequent cutaways to Brian’s life back home or the on-the-nose emphasis on looming gray clouds, there’s no question a storm is coming. Even “Anemone’s” rare moments of levity feel drained of color, the weight of this family’s Dark Past so severe that not an ounce of light (or lightness) can be permitted to escape.
Not surprisingly, the star almost makes the movie’s suffocating gloom resonate. “Anemone” allows Day-Lewis to be volcanic when Ray launches into a disturbing, ultimately revolting monologue about a recent run-in with a pedophiliac priest from childhood. Later, when the film finally explains why Ray abandoned the world, Day-Lewis delivers a teary confession that doesn’t have much fresh to say about the insanity of war but is nonetheless ennobled by how he unburdens his stoic character through cascading waves of anger and shame.
Even when he’s been fiery, nearly frothing at the mouth, Day-Lewis has always been a master of stillness, relying on his tall, taut frame to hint at the formidable power or menace underneath. (When his characters explode, it’s shocking, and yet we somehow knew the blast was imminent.) For Ray, a man full of rage who has no patience for religion, sentimentality or forgiveness, his brother’s arrival is an unwelcome event, and even when a slight thawing occurs between them, Day-Lewis remains coiled, ready to strike, their fragile truce constantly in danger of being upended.
But because Jem, like so many of these characters, is underwritten, Bean has to fall back on generalized manly intensity, which turns their showdowns into actorly exercises. The interactions are bracing but also a bit studied — the performers’ technique is more impressive than the story, which too often is merely a delivery device for misery disguised as searing truth.
There’s reason to celebrate that Daniel Day-Lewis has chosen, at least temporarily, to cancel his retirement, but “Anemone” as a whole strains for a greatness that its star effortlessly conveys. Amid the film’s self-conscious depiction of a brewing tempest, he remains a true force of nature.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is transformed by prosthetics for his Mark Kerr roleCredit: AP
WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.
Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.
In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.
Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.
He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.
A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.
Acting muscles
And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.
But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.
American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.
We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.
But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.
Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.
Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.
Screen beauty Emily Blunt shows off stunning figure in backless dress at London premiere of Smashing Machine
The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.
As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.
While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.
Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.
But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?
They just might.
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
(15) 112mins
★★★★★
3
Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia WalkerCredit: PA
KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.
The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.
The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.
Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.
The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.
Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.
It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.
LINDA MARRIC
FILM NEWS
THE Simpsons movie sequel is in the works and set to be released next summer.
GEORGE Clooney plays a movie star on the edge in Jay Kelly.
CONCLAVE director, Edward Berger, has announced he’d love to direct a new Bourne film.
HIM
(18) 96mins
★☆☆☆☆
3
Retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans, pictured) invites Cameron to a secluded training campCredit: PA
HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.
In short, this is a mess.
The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.
When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.
But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.
Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.
Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.
Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.
Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.
Longtime FilmLA executive Denise Gutches has been named the nonprofit’s new chief executive.
Gutches, who has served as FilmLA’s chief financial and operating officer since 2011, will assume her new role on Jan. 1. FilmLA President Paul Audley will retire at the end of December after a 17-year tenure with the organization, which announced the change Wednesday morning.
“We have a lot to do in this creative economy,” Gutches said in an interview. “I am definitely up for this challenge.”
The leadership transition comes as Hollywood tries to lure back film and television production that has relocated to other states and countries in search of lower costs and more generous tax incentives. Earlier this year, California increased the annual amount allocated to its own film and TV tax credit program and expanded the eligibility criteria in hopes of jump-starting production in the Golden State.
In the most recent application period, 22 TV series were awarded tax credits amid heightened interest in the program. Eighteen of those series will film largely in the Los Angeles area.
Gutches said she is hopeful the sweetened incentives will provide a boost to the Greater L.A. area, which has seen a sharp decline in production since the pandemic, dual writers’ and actors strikes and a pullback in spending from the studios.
FilmLA — which handles film permits for the city of Los Angeles and unincorporated areas of the county — is also working with government partners to smooth the process of filming in L.A., she said.
“We think that that’s highly critical to ensure that we can make the Los Angeles region more attractive with the new film and television tax credit,” she said. “Our mission is to keep filming here and streamlining it, and that’s really what we’re going to focus on.”
The transition to Gutches’ leadership began months ago when Audley asked the nonprofit’s board not to renew his contract.
His decision came after the group’s staff was cut to 74 employees from 117, reflecting industry changes and a slowdown in local production activity.
“It’s really about right-sizing the executive level staff of an organization of this size,” Audley said. “It just makes good business sense.”
Celebrated for decades as Hollywood royalty, Jane Fonda could easily be living a comfortable life of extravagance and leisure.
Instead, the 87-year-old actor and Vietnam War-era provocateur is as likely to be seen knocking on voters’ doors in Phoenix on a balmy summer afternoon as sashaying down a red carpet at a glitzy movie premiere.
Politically active for more than a half-century, Fonda is now focusing her energy, celebrity, connections and resources on fighting climate change and combating the “existential crises” created by President Trump.
Calling fossil fuels a threat to humanity, Fonda created JanePAC, a political action committee that has spent millions on candidates at the forefront of that fight.
“Nature has always been in my bones, in my cells,” Fonda said in a recent interview, describing herself as an environmentalist since her tomboy youth. “And then, about 10 years ago … I started reading more, and I realized what we’re doing to the climate, which means what we’re doing to us, what we’re doing to the future, to our grandchildren and our children.
“Our existence is being challenged all because an industry, the fossil-fuel industry, wants to make more money,” she said. “I mean, I try to understand what, what must they think when they go to sleep at night? These men, they’re destroying everything.”
Rather than hosting fancy political fundraisers or headlining presidential campaign rallies, Fonda devotes her efforts to electing like-minded state legislators, city council members, utility board officials and candidates in other less flashy but critical races.
Fonda said her organization took its cue from successful GOP tactics.
“I hate to say this, but you know, in terms of playing the long game, the Republicans have been better than the Democrats,” she said. “They started to work down ballot, and they took over state legislatures. They took over governorships and mayors and city councils, boards of supervisors, and before we knew what had happened, they had power on the grassroots level.”
Fonda said her PAC selects candidates to back based on their climate-change record and viability. The beneficiaries include candidates running for state legislature and city council. Some of the races are often obscure, such as the Silver River Project board (an Arizona utility), the Port of Bellingham commission in Washington and the Lane Community College board in Oregon.
“Down ballot, if you come in, especially for primaries, you can really make a difference. You know, not all Democrats are the same,” she said. “We want candidates who have shown public courage in standing up to fossil fuels. We want candidates who can win. We’re not a protest PAC. We’re in it to win it.”
On Wednesday, Fonda announced that she is relaunching the Committee for the First Amendment, which was initially formed after the blacklisting of Hollywood actors, directors, screenwriters and others who were labeled communists or sympathizers by the House Un-American Activities Committee after World War II.
“The McCarthy Era ended when Americans from across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression,” Fonda said. “Those forces have returned. And it is our turn to stand together in defense of our constitutional rights.”
The Trump administration has pressured media companies, law firms and universities to concede to its demands or face repercussions. The suspension of ABC’s late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel, which has been rescinded, is among the most prominent examples.
“The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry,” Fonda said.
Since her birth, Fonda’s life has been infused by political activism.
Her father witnessed the lynching of a Black man during the 1919 Omaha race riots when he was 14, casting him into becoming a lifelong liberal.
Though such matters were not discussed at the dinner table, Fonda’s father raised money for Democratic candidates and starred in politically imbued films such as “The Grapes of Wrath,” about the exploitation of migrant workers during the Dust Bowl, and “12 Angry Men,” which focused on prejudice, groupthink and the importance of due process during the McCarthy era.
But his daughter Jane did not become politically active until her early 30s.
“Before then, I kind of led a life of ignorance, somewhat hedonistic,” she said. “Maybe deep down, I knew that once I know something, I can’t turn away.”
In “Prime Time,” Fonda’s 2011 memoir, she describes the final chapter of her life as a time of “coming to fruition rather than simply a period of marking time, or the absence of youth.”
“Unlike during childhood, Act III is a quiet ripening. It takes time and experience, and yes, perhaps the inevitable slowing down,” she wrote. “You have to learn to sort out what’s fundamentally important to you from what’s irrelevant.”
In 1972, Fonda appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Tout Va Bien,” about workers’ rights in the aftermath of widespread street protests in France four years earlier. It was her first role in a political movie and coincided with her off-screen move into activism.
Fonda’s most noteworthy and reviled political moment occurred the same year, when she was photographed by the North Vietnamese sitting atop an antiaircraft gun.
Actor and political activist Jane Fonda at a news conference in New York City on July 28, 1972. Fonda spoke about her trip to North Vietnam and interviews with American prisoners in Hanoi, Vietnam.
(Marty Lederhandler / Associated Press)
The images led to Fonda being tarred as “Hanoi Jane” and a traitor to the United States, which had deployed millions of American soldiers to Southeast Asia, many of whom never returned. Fonda says it is something she “will regret to my dying day.”
“It is possible that it was a setup, that the Vietnamese had it all planned,” Fonda wrote in 2011. “I will never know. But if they did, I can’t blame them. The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake.”
Fonda’s political beliefs have been a through line in her Hollywood career.
In 1979, she played a reporter in “The China Syndrome,” a film about a fictional meltdown at a nuclear power plant near Los Angeles. The movie’s theatrical release occurred less than two weeks before the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
The 1980 movie “9 to 5,” starring Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton, was a biting comedy that highlighted the treatment of women in the workplace and income inequality long before such issues were routinely discussed in workplaces.
Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are harassed office workers in the 1980 movie “9 to 5.”
(20th Century Fox)
Two years later, as home VCRs grew popular, Fonda created exercise videos that shattered sales records.
She urged women to “feel the burn,” and revenue from the videos funded the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a political action committee founded by Fonda and Hayden.
This year, Fonda offered signed copies to donors to JanePAC, which she created in 2022.
“I’m still in shock that those leg warmers and leotards caught on the way they did,” Fonda wrote to supporters in April. “If you’ve ever done one of my leg lifts, or even thought about doing one, now’s your chance to own a piece of that history.”
UCLA lecturer Jim Newton, a veteran Los Angeles Times political journalist and historian of the state’s politics, described Fonda as confrontational, controversial and unapologetic.
“She’s remarkable, utterly admirable, a principled person who has devoted her life to fighting for what she believes in,” said Newton, who quotes Fonda in his new book, “Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening.”
Newton added that Fonda’s outspoken nature certainly harmed her career.
“I’m sure that there are directors, producers, whatnot, especially in the ‘70s and ‘80s, who passed on chances to work with her because of her politics,” he said. “And I’m sure she knew that, right? She did it. It’s not been without sacrifice. She’s true to herself, like very few people.”
A year after Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1990, she married CNN founder and philanthropist Ted Turner, who she once described as “my favorite ex-husband.” Though Fonda largely paused her acting career during their decade-long marriage, she remained politically active.
In 1995, Fonda founded a Georgia effort dedicated to reducing teenage pregnancy. Five years later, she launched the Jane Fonda Center for Reproductive Health at Emory University.
After Fonda and Turner divorced, she worked with Tomlin on raising the minimum wage in Michigan and then launched Fire Drill Fridays — acts of civil disobedience — with Greenpeace in 2019.
Jane Fonda speaks during a rally before a march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House as part of her “Fire Drill Fridays” rally protesting against climate change on Nov. 8, 2019.
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Fonda said she decided to create her political action committee after facing headwinds persuading Gov. Gavin Newsom to create setbacks for oil wells in 2020.
“He wasn’t moving on it, and somebody very high up in his campaign said to us, ‘You can have millions of people in your organization all over California, but you don’t have a big enough carrot or stick to move the governor. … You don’t have an electoral strategy,’” Fonda recalled. “Since we’ve started the PAC, it’s interesting how politicians deal with us differently. They know that we’ve got money. They know that we have tens of thousands of volunteers all over the country.”
Initially concentrated on climate change, JanePAC has expanded its focus since Trump was reelected in November.
“We’re facing two existential crises, climate and democracy, and it’s now or never for both,” Fonda said. “We can’t have a stable democracy with an unstable climate, and we can’t have a stable climate unless we have a democracy, And so we have to fight both together.”
Fonda’s PAC has raised more than $9 million since its creation through June 30, according to the Federal Election Commission.
In 2024, JanePAC supported 154 campaigns and won 96 of those races. The committee gave nearly $700,000 directly to campaigns and helped raise more than $1.1 million for their endorsed candidates and ballot measures. In 2025, they have endorsed 63 campaigns and plan to soon launch get-out-the-vote efforts in support of Proposition 50, Newsom’s ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional districts that will appear on the November ballot.
Arizona state Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, the minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives, recalled Fonda’s support during the 2024 election, not only for his reelection bid but also a broader effort to try to win Democratic control of the state Legislature.
In addition to raising $500,000 at a Phoenix event for candidates, De Los Santos recalled the actor spending days knocking on Arizona voters’ doors.
“It is a moral validator to have Jane Fonda support your campaigns, especially at a time when corporate interests have more money and more power than ever, having somebody in your corner who’s been on the right side of history for decades,” said De Los Santos, who represents a south Phoenix district deeply affected by environmental justice issues.
Voters are often stunned when Fonda shows up on their doorstep.
“I’ve had people walking out of their laundry room and dropping all the laundry,” Fonda said with a laugh.
But others don’t know who she is and Fonda doesn’t tell them.
Jane Fonda
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s amazing. You wouldn’t think that in just a few minutes on someone’s doorstep, you can really find out a lot,” Fonda said, recalling discovering her love of canvassing when she was married to Hayden.”I loved talking to people and finding out what they care about and what they’re scared of and what they’re angry about.”
Fonda does not walk in lockstep with the Democratic party. In 2023, she joined other climate-change activists protesting a big-money Joe Biden fundraiser. They argued that the then-president had strayed from the environmental promises he made when he ran for election, such as by approving a massive oil drilling project on the North Slope of Alaska.
Fonda said she supported Biden’s 2024 reelection despite disagreeing with some of his policies because of the threat she believed Trump poses.
“When you see what the choice was, of course you’re going to vote,” she said. “I get so mad at people who say, you know, ‘I don’t like him, so I’m not going to vote.’ [A] young person said to me, we already have fascism. They don’t know history. You know, we don’t teach civics anymore, so they don’t understand that what’s happening now is leading to fascism. I mean, this is real tyranny.”
But she also faulted Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris after she became the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, as well as 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for failing to speak to the economic pain being experienced by Americans who backed Trump.
“They’re not all MAGA,” she said.
Many were just angry and hurting, she said, because they couldn’t afford groceries or pay medical bills. Fonda believes many now have buyer’s remorse.
Fonda reflected on the parallels between the turmoil in the 1960s and today. In the interview, which took place before the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, she argued that today’s political climate is more perilous.
“I’m not sure that what we have right now in the U.S. is a democracy,” she said. “It’s far graver. Far, far graver now than it was.”
Fonda said she remains driven, not by blind optimism, but by immersing herself in work that she believes makes a difference.
“This is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life,” she said.
The lead of the horror-tinged heart-tugger “Good Boy” is a copper-colored retriever named Indy who pads around an eerie house deep in the New Jersey woods investigating its mysterious creaks, shadows and smells. Like the Method-style actors of “The Blair Witch Project,” he goes by his real name onscreen. An ordinary dog without a whiff of Hollywood hokum, Indy doesn’t do implausible stunts like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin or comprehend anything that his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), says besides simple phrases: sit, stay and, gratefully, the title itself. But we’re invested in the mindset of this mundane hero. His nose twitches are as dramatic as an ingenue’s gasp.
First-time feature director Ben Leonberg raised Indy as a pet first, movie star second. Along with his wife, Kari Fischer, who produced the film, Leonberg shot “Good Boy” in his weekend house, staging scenarios for Indy to explore until he had enough material for a (barely) full-length spook show. Even at 72 minutes, “Good Boy” is belabored in the middle stretch. It would make a fabulous one-hour TV special.
Using his personal footage, Leonberg (who also edited the film and did its gorgeous, inky-wet cinematography) opens with a montage of Indy growing up from a tiny puppy to a loyal best friend. We love the dog more in five minutes than we do some slasher final girls who’ve survived several sequels. Indy is the most empathetic scream queen of the year so far — and I mean that literally as his breed, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling retriever, is known for its high-pitched wail. American Kennel Club lists the Toller as the U.S.’s 87th most popular dog. I expect this movie will lead to an uptick. (Steve Martin already has one.)
What’s wrong in Indy’s new home? A pair of tragedies wind together like vines, although from the dog’s point of view, the distinction between them isn’t always obvious. This battered two-story home with ominous scratches on the basement door has been in Todd’s family for six generations, as the cemetery out back proves. Bequeathed to the youngish urban hipster by his grandfather (indie cult icon Larry Fessenden), a misanthrope who willed his taxidermy collection to a vegan, it’s a good place to disappear.
Todd, who’s in bad physical and emotional shape, has isolated himself in this scraggly, foggy forest to get some privacy from his sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman). There’s also a past death that the dog is able to perceive. A sniff of a rotting old chair frightens Indy so much, he wets the rug.
“Scaredy pants,” Todd teases Indy. The dog can’t explain what only he knows.
Several unnerving things are happening at once, including the presence of a silhouetted stalker, old bones that give the dog nightmares and Todd’s unpredictable mood swings. There’s also a ghost in the movie, I think — at least, there’s a heavy hinge that shouldn’t be able to open without a spectral nudge. Indy stands about two feet tall, so the camera often stays at that height too, gliding close to the floor where the view from under the bed looks as big as an airplane hangar.
A realistic dog’s-eye view of a creepy cabin is a good hook, although people hoping to see an otherwise satisfying genre thriller will feel a bit underwhelmed that Leonberg and his co-screenwriter Alex Cannon are conflicted about pushing the scary elements of the film too far into the supernatural. With a complicated backstory off the table (Indy looks restless whenever adults are having a conversation), the movie taps into our burgeoning belief that animals do have a special sixth sense, like how hospice workers know to pay special attention to whoever gets night visits from the resident pet.
Still, “Good Boy” doesn’t stray too far from the film’s core strength: a normal dog doing normal dog things. In a twitch, a head tilt or a whine, Indy communicates his emotions: curious, lonely, contented, confused, fretful, desperate or petrified. There’s no CG in the dog’s performance, no corny reaction shots and no use of animal doubles either. Todd’s own legs, however, are often doubled by Leonberg, an onscreen switcheroo that’s possible because the lens doesn’t tend to look up.
I liked the plot better on a second watch when I knew not to expect Jamie Lee Curtis on all fours. The ending is great and the build up to it, though draggy, gives you space to think about the interdependence between our species. Dogs are wired to be our protectors and yet, through generations of nurturing, they’ve come to trust that we’ll also protect them. The inarticulate betrayal in the film is that Todd isn’t making good decisions for anyone. His bond with Indy is pure and strong, yet one-sided in that Todd is too distracted to ease the dog’s fears. Indy is bereft to be left alone for long stretches of time in a strange house. But he can’t do a thing about that, nor the sputtering electricity, the fox traps in the brush and the neighbor (Stuart Rudin) who skulks around in hunting camouflage.
In Todd’s facelessness, he’s a stand-in for whatever you want: absentee parents, a struggling partner or child or friend. There’s a scene in which he comes home in obvious need of a cuddle, only to push his dog away. Maybe you’ve been both people in that shot: the person overwhelmed by their own pain and the loved one who has no idea how to soothe them. It’s terrifying to love someone this much, to give them the full force of your devotion only to get locked outside.
Consciously or not, Leonberg has made a primal film about helplessness. Watching it, I was knocked sideways by a sense memory of how it felt to be a child. Like Indy, kids get dragged around to places they don’t want to go to for reasons that aren’t explained, and when they whine, they’re commanded to pipe down. Even as we get older — when our own point of view can stand taller than two feet — the things that truly scare us are the ones that make us feel small and confused.
‘Good Boy’
Rated: PG-13, for terror, bloody images and strong language
President Trump again suggested that films made outside the U.S. should be subject to a 100% tariff, a move he said would help rejuvenate film production in America but that has been greeted with skepticism by many in Hollywood.
“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote in a post Monday morning on his Truth Social platform. “California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.”
The post did not include details on how such a tariff would work or how it would be levied. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time Trump has floated a tariff on films made overseas to combat so-called runaway production.
In May, Trump said he was authorizing the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative to begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
That announcement surprised studio executives, who said at the time that they had no advance notice of the move. Shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reached out to the White House, offering to work together to create a federal film tax incentive, which many in the industry have said they would prefer over a tariff.
Newsom responded to Trump’s dig by sharing on X a screenshot of a news headline detailing the recent increase in applications for California’s revamped film and TV tax credit program next to a headline about Hollywood studios’ stock performance after Trump’s initial call in May for a 100% tariff on films made outside the U.S. “Almost like we know what we’re doing,” Newsom wrote in his post. “Almost like Donald Trump absolutely does not.”
Countries including Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand have developed generous film tax credit programs, which, along with lower costs, have increasingly lured productions out of the U.S. California has been particularly hard hit by the production exodus.
In response, states have also upped their individual tax credit programs, including California, which has now more than doubled the annual amount allocated to its film and TV tax credit program and expanded its eligibility criteria.
The Motion Picture Assn., the lobbying arm of Hollywood’s major studios, was not immediately available for comment.
On Monday, California congressional representatives reiterated their support for a federal film tax incentive program to support the U.S. film business.
Noting that a tariff could have “unintended and damaging consequences,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he was “ready to work with this administration” and colleagues “on both sides of the aisle” to pass a major federal film tax credit.
The California senator is currently working on a proposal for a federal film incentive, a Schiff spokesperson said.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer, also called for movement on a federal tax incentive, saying that a 100% tariff on films made overseas would only increase costs for consumers.
“I’m relieved President Trump recognizes that we are losing a signature American product: the domestic film and TV industry,” she said in a statement. “I hope the President will join us in pioneering a real solution that levels the playing field with international competition.”
It has been used as a location for a number of blockbuster movies and TV shows known for the stunning views and ‘timeless architecture’ with lots to do for everyone to enjoy
The infamous castle recognisable to Potterheads(Image: Getty Images)
A Northumberland castle, known for its appearances in blockbuster films and hit TV shows, has been named one of the top film locations to visit in the UK.
The castle has been praised for its ‘timeless architecture’ and ‘stunning’ surroundings. For years, the cast and crew of the popular drama Vera have descended upon the North East each summer to film new series of the beloved show.
While Gateshead, Newcastle and South Shields have all featured, it’s Northumberland that has been the primary filming location, with numerous spots in the area taking centre stage as Brenda Blethyn retired from her iconic role earlier this year.
Northumberland also made waves on the big screen in 2025, following the release of Danny Boyle’s zombie sequel 28 Years Later. The film shot straight to the top of the UK film charts after its summer release.
The Oscar-winning director utilised various locations in the region for his story, including Rothbury, Kielder and Holy Island, reports Chronicle Live.
While it didn’t make an appearance in 28 Years Later, Alnwick Castle is no stranger to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, having now been named one of the top film locations in the UK by travel gurus at Holiday Cottages.
The castle, which served as the backdrop for key scenes in the first two films, including the iconic flying lesson in The Philosopher’s Stone, has also played host to the cast and crew of big-budget blockbuster Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the acclaimed period drama Downton Abbey and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In their glowing review of the famous landmark, Holiday Cottages wrote: “Northumberland has long been a favourite location for filmmakers because of its captivating history and landscapes that seem almost otherworldly, and one of its most famous landmarks is Alnwick Castle, which will be instantly recognisable to fans of a certain wizarding franchise as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first two films.
“Visitors can wander through the Outer Bailey, where Harry first learned to fly on a broomstick with Madame Hooch, and children and adults alike can experience the magic themselves by taking part in the castle’s Broomstick Training Lessons, while the courtyards recall the memorable scenes when the flying car came crashing down in the early films.”
The travel site heaps praise on Alnwick, describing it as a ‘joy to explore’ with its enchanting cobbled streets, unique shops and stunning coastline, all contributing to its ‘magical’ staycation appeal.
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For many, Omara Portuondo is best known for her participation in the Buena Vista Social Club; but the nonagenarian has lived many lives before and after the formation of the internationally recognized Cuban group. The new PBS documentary, “Omara: Cuba’s Legendary Diva,” looks to reexamine and capture the beauty and the chaos of these other many lives.
Directed by Hugo Perez, the feature — which premieres Sept. 26 on your local PBS channel — tells Portuondo’s personal history not only through the lens of her Afro-Cuban heritage but also through the prism of a woman confronting the realities of Cuba’s longstanding political strife.
“It immediately occurred to me that I was being given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work with a great artist in the twilight of their career — imagine taking a time machine and going back in time to work with Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday in their later years,” Perez said in a press release.
“When we began, Omara was in her late eighties, and still touring extensively around the world. Yet despite the fact that she was still selling out venues across the globe, she was confronting ageism from promoters and journalists who only wanted to write about her ‘final tour.’ I felt that there was an opportunity not just to create a portrait of an iconic artist but to document how she responded to age bias with verve and panache and not just a little sauciness. Never count a Cuban woman down and out.”
Born into a mixed-race family in Havana on Oct. 29, 1930, at a time when such relationships were considered taboo, Portuondo began gracing the stage at age 17 by joining the dance group of the famed Tropicana Club. As a member of Cuarteto d’Aida in the 1950s, she sang alongside Nat King Cole and toured the U.S. while also recording albums. From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Portuondo found continued success as a solo act and even ventured into the world of film and television.
Ever involved in the political events of the moment, she never shied away from performing songs dedicated to revolutionaries like Che Guevara. In 1974, the singer recorded an album dedicated to the U.S.-ousted Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende.
In the mid-1990s, Portuondo began traveling the world with the renowned Cuban musical ensemble, the Buena Vista Social Club. The band’s fame skyrocketed in 1999 after German filmmaker Wim Wenders made a documentary about the musicians titled “Buena Vista Social Club” that received numerous awards and was nominated for an Academy Award. At the heart of the film were moments when Portuondo’s talents jumped off the screen and worldwide audiences could see the power and history behind her artistry.
The story of the Buena Vista Social Club was turned into an eponymous musical in 2023, with Portuondo featured as one of the main characters. After the musical hit Broadway in 2025, Natalie Venetia Belcon — who portrayed Portuondo as part of the show’s original Broadway cast — won the Tony for featured actress in a musical at this year’s awards.
While, for many, Portuondo’s impact and star power emanates from all things Buena Vista Social Club, the new documentary spotlights how Portuondo has not slowed down her hustle at her advanced age as she continues touring worldwide. Included in the movie are interviews with musicians from across the globe, like Diego el Cigala, Roberto Fonseca and Arturo O’Farrill.
The film also captures some of Portuondo’s more recent performances, which reveal new depths of the singer’s soulfulness and power.
“I also wanted to make a film that would show her in performance today, spotlighting songs that would help carry us through the story of her life,” the movie’s director said. “When she sings about love, Omara plumbs the depths of heartbreak, and I could not imagine telling her story without seeing her singing these great songs.”
The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman has addressed the backlash the Netflix film adaptation has received.
Last month, the eagerly awaited film version of The Thursday Murder Club dropped on Netflix.
Drawing from the debut novel in Richard Osman’s bestselling series, the movie showcased a stellar ensemble including Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Helen Mirren, under Chris Columbus’s direction.
The plot centres on four pensioners residing at Coopers Chase retirement community nestled in picturesque English countryside. Weekly, they convene to examine cold cases and unsolved crimes.
Yet chaos ensues when these amateur sleuths become entangled in an actual investigation following a genuine killing.
Speaking about the criticism during a This Morning appearance, writer Richard Osman confessed he harboured doubts about certain film elements that strayed from his original work.
The 54-year-old even raised these concerns with Steven Spielberg, who served as producer via his Amblin Entertainment company.
When Ben enquired whether he now visualises his characters as the film’s cast members, Cat pointed out how differently Ron appears in the book versus Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal.
Richard responded: “He is very different! I wasn’t involved in the film, really, so I claim no credit for it.”
Ben asked Richard about his thoughts on the film adaptation of his book, which had sparked some controversy among fans.
He asked: “It’s not quite the same, significantly different parts from the book. How have you responded to that? How do you feel about that?”
Richard responded: “I’ve written my version of the book and that’s the Thursday Murder Club and it’s available in all good book shops and it’ll be there forever, that’s my version.
“That’s the version that’s come from my heart. I’m not going to be the person to sit down and do an adaptation for a film because I’ve done it already, so you have to give it to brilliant people.”
The author emphasised that the book had to be condensed into a two-hour film, which would’ve been considerably longer if everything he’d written was included.
He added: “They have to make choices that you wouldn’t necessarily make yourself. But that’s the fun of the thing.”
Ben then questioned whether Richard had the opportunity to voice any concerns to the production crew. Richard admitted: “I can reveal, I did say that a couple of times.”
When Cat asked if he had spoken to Stephen Spielberg, Richard confirmed he had, jokingly adding: “Ask me if he listened. But they know what they’re doing!”
This Morning continues weekdays on ITV from 10. The Thursday Murder Club is available to stream on Netflix.
WHAT time is it? It is a question Leonardo DiCaprio’s stressed-out fugitive Bob Ferguson is asked over and over again in this black comedy.
Wearing a dressing gown and bad shades, Bob doesn’t have the answer because he’s too stoned to remember the code he was given by a left-wing terror group called the French 75.
But I can tell you that the time is absolutely right for One Battle After Another.
This is a political satire that skewers both the extreme right and the extreme left at a moment when both sides are to the fore in the real world in the United States.
The time is also well overdue for this piece of cinematic dynamite that will have you on the edge of your seat — from laughter or the high-octane action.
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, it is a work of genius that fuses the best elements of his films There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights.
It begins 16 years ago with Bob helping to free refugees at a US border crossing.
During the raid his girlfriend, the wonderfully named Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), orders Sean Penn’s military officer Steven J Lockjaw to “get up” his private parts.
The French 75’s increasingly reckless terrorism ends in a thrilling chase and Bob needing to go into hiding with the baby daughter he shares with Perfidia.
Most of the story is set in the current time, with Lockjaw coming after Bob and his daughter Willa.
As things get wilder, the audience is introduced to a bunch of incredible characters, including members of the white supremecist Christmas Adventurers Club, gun-toting nuns and Benecio Del Toro’s always-cool martial arts instructor Sergio.
Leonardo DiCaprio leads stars at London premiere of One Battle After Another
The serene Del Toro is a perfect comic foil for the frantic DiCaprio who spends a lot of time running around shouting “f, f, f***.”
In one of the standout screwball moments, Sergio keeps repeating “four” as Bob is reluctant to jump out of his moving car like “Tom Cruise”. It is just one of many quotable lines.
But the most memorable scene brings the movie’s various plots to a perfect, heart-racing conclusion.
All of the cast are outstanding, with DiCaprio and newcomer Chase Infiniti as Willa most likely to be nominated for awards.
If there is any justice this film will get one Oscar after another.
GRANT ROLLINGS
3
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson
THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 2
(15) 96mins
★★☆☆☆
3
The second instalment in the Strangers trilogy is a bafflingly incoherent mess
DIRRECTED by Renny Harlin, this second instalment in the Strangers trilogy is a bafflingly incoherent mess.
It picks up right after the events of Chapter 1, but instead of expanding on Bryan Bertino’s original 2008 home-invasion nightmare, it devolves into a clumsy blend of borrowed horror tropes held together by a barely coherent backstory.
Chapter 2 follows the survivor, Maya (Madelaine Petsch), as she is relentlessly pursued by masked killers in a sleepy American town.
Despite her injuries, Maya must find the strength to stay alive and tell the tale.
Petsch is committed to the physical demands of the role, fighting a CGI boar in a bafflingly out-of-place sequence.
However, the film’s drawn-out and repetitive cat-and-mouse chases become truly unbearable.
Narratively, the film is all over the place lurching from home-invasion suspense to slasher to survival horror.
The only thing that prevents it becoming a total farce is Harlin’s occasional use of a few inspired jump scares.
As a middle chapter, this feels like a placeholder for the next film.
LINDA MARRIC
DEAD OF WINTER
(15) 98mins
★★★☆☆
3
Emma Thompson’s Barb displays ingenious ways to survive
IF you were casting for a Ramboesque heroine, Emma Thompson would not be the first name to spring to mind.
But in this rescue of a kidnap victim from a remote cabin thriller, it is the Love Actually actress displaying ingenious ways to survive.
Set in northern Minnesota in the US, Thompson’s Barb heads out in a snow storm to a lake that had a sentimental value to her recently deceased husband.
There she comes across a man who has tied up a young woman in his cellar.
Unable to go to get help, Barb vows to save the girl herself.
But the man is not her main concern, because it is a gun-toting woman played by Judy Greer who is the one with the least to lose by fighting to the bitter end.
Thompson is remarkably good when Barb is stitching up a bullet wound in her arm with fishing wire, and the attention to detail in the sets also impresses.
But choosing her isn’t enough to make this last- person-standing drama feel particularly original.
Like the tracks that Barb leaves in the snow, you know where most of the plot turns lead.
GRANT ROLLINGS
FILM NEWS
STEPHEN KING’s novella Rat is being turned into a movie.
MILLIE BOBBY BROWN is to play US gymnast Kerri Strug in biopic Perfect.
CHRISTIAN BALE and Jessie Buckley star in Undead Lovers, based on Frankenstein.
