Michael Zervos embarked on a trip around the world, visiting 195 countries in 499 days and asking hundreds of people exactly the same question – what was the happiest day of your life?
Michael Zervos visited 195 countries in 499 days(Image: Michael Zervos)
A man who has visited every country in the world found two places in particular to be scary and unwelcoming.
Three years ago Michael Zervos embarked on a trip around the world, visiting 195 countries in 499 days and asking hundreds of people exactly the same question – what was the happiest day of your life?
Earlier this year the Greek-American globetrotter returned to Detroit, his goal of reaching all 195 countries in the shortest time ever completed. He stopped the clock at just under 500 days.
The former movie maker was not just motivated by the glory of becoming the speediest nation-visiting completist but also by a desire to understand what makes people tick in different parts of the world. He recently sat down with the Mirror to share some of his insights into what makes people happy in different places.
While Michael stresses that his rapid means of travelling meant he only got a quick glimpse into the cultures of the countries he visited, his insights remain fascinating.
As quick as he is to find positives in the destinations he visited, two places stood out to him as unwelcoming and a little unnerving.
“I had a bad experience in Liberia. I took a picture of a government building. There was no sign to say you couldn’t do it. It turned out to be a money-making scheme. I refused to pay, and they took me to jail,” Michael explained.
It wasn’t just the run-in with the authorities that left a bad taste in the mouth in the West African country. He also endured a more general feeling of unease when exploring.
“Some moments felt surreal. I’d enter a street market, and waves of people would turn to you like, ‘You don’t belong on this street, why are you here?’ Thousands of people would turn to you, and they’d stop what they’re doing. There was a sensation in the back of your neck where something was amiss,” Michael continued.
Another place that left Michael a little shaken was Stabroek Market in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown.
“The locals warned me not to go. It is one of those warehouse-style markets. Drugs are traded openly, and there is sex work as well. As soon as I walked in, it was like a horror movie. There was this guy at the end of the aisle. These deep, dark pockets were obscuring his face. He was staring at me, and he was staring at me. I went down the other aisle, and he followed me. My intuition was to go somewhere else,” Michael recalled.
The UK Foreign Office backs up Michael’s intuition, warning tourists from visiting the market.
“Crime levels are high, and police capacity is low. There are frequent armed robberies, hold-ups, carjackings and other violent crimes, often involving two or more attackers. Passers-by can get caught up in gunfire even if they are not targets because police are armed and shoot back,” the government body warns.
“Muggers can attack in broad daylight, often holding their victims at gunpoint or knifepoint. They may target tourists, particularly if those that show obvious signs of wealth.”
Tiger Bay and Albouystown in Georgetown; Sophia, south Georgetown; Buxton; Agricola and Stabroek Market area are highlighted as areas “where robberies are a daily occurrence”.
Although the experiences unsettled him, Michael is keen to focus on the many positive aspects of the places he visited. One of his favourite countries to visit, and one of the most surprising, was Madagascar.
“The people, food, arts, and geography, everything was just a little outside what you might expect from mainland southern Africa. You’ve got rich biodiversity from having an isolated island where the flora and fauna are pretty different,” Michael explained.
“The faces of the people are extremely interesting, often very authentic smiles and expressions. They are beautiful to photograph. What you see is what you get. They are straightforward and earnest.”
Michael particularly enjoyed asking people in Madagascar what the happiest day of their life is. He has since turned these answers, and those he collected in other countries, into videos posted on his Instagram page.
“It’s like getting life unfiltered there. Even in the city, which isn’t that common, the language is interesting, and the food is unlike anything you’d find in the area. It’s a mix of Indonesian and Indian food, with high levels of spice, fried food, croquettes, and fritters with interesting green, earthy vegetal flavours.”
When it comes to European countries that particularly stood out, Liechtenstein was a surprise hit.
“People call it really boring, but I found it lovely. It’s a city-state nestled in the Alps. When I arrived, they were celebrating the beginning of Lent, a madigra-type thing. There were bands dressed in blue all over the place, playing music late into the night. People were offering me beers. I went to a local theatre and watched a film festival about extreme sports,” Michael said.
TELLURIDE, Colo. — Jeremy Allen White asked all the questions any normal human being would ask when offered the chance to play Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” In theaters Oct. 24, it’s a movie that examines a slice of the rock legend’s career when he was battling depression and creating 1982’s incomparable exploration of alienation “Nebraska,” a record he didn’t know he was making when he recorded the songs on a primitive four-track tape machine in a rented New Jersey home. It turned out to be his favorite of all his albums.
Most of those questions could be boiled down to: Why me? White didn’t know how to play the guitar. He loves to sing but would never call himself a singer. And while he has a relationship with an audience, particularly those who have white-knuckled their way through his Emmy-winning work as Carmy, the talented and troubled chef on “The Bear,” he says it’s a far cry from the bond Springsteen has forged with his fan base for the past 50-plus years.
“The relationship a musician has with fans is so intimate,” White, 34, tells me the morning after the movie had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. “You listen to him in the car, you go to see him live. He’s there in your ear and it’s just the two of you. You feel like you’re being spoken to. Bruce is so important to so many people. It was daunting. I didn’t want to disappoint.”
By the time we talked, though, White was well past any anxiety about disappointing, if only because he had the approval of the person who mattered the most: Springsteen himself.
“Jeremy tolerated me and I appreciated that,” Springsteen said at a festival Q&A, suggesting that his input on the movie was ongoing and significant — and also welcome. He noted that it was easy to sign off on director Scott Cooper’s vision for the movie, which, with its narrow focus on the deep dive of “Nebraska,” he called an “antibiopic.”
“And I’m old and I don’t give a f— what I do,” Springsteen added, laughing.
White and I are sitting in the sun outside his hotel, basking in the warmth the day after a steady rain. Wearing a battered Yankees cap, jeans, boots and a blue pullover, he’s sporting the casual uniform of the festival, if not the Boss himself. White asks if I mind if he lights an American Spirit. He reaches for his lighter. The premiere is over and his mood is light. We dive right in.
Jeremy Allen White in the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
(Macall Polay / 20th Century Studios)
Was there an immediate point of connection with Springsteen? The more I talked with him, the more I learned. And at the point in his life we show in the movie, he was feeling so fraudulent. Not in his work, but as a human. He felt like he was being caught in a lie all the time. And I don’t want to speak for all actors, but I’ve certainly dealt with that kind of feeling.
It feels like there’s a line between your Springsteen and Carmy on “The Bear,” two men carrying generational trauma and emotional baggage they have no idea how to deal with. Do you see that? For sure, you can draw that line. They’re cousins. And they’ve both got their art, something they feel confident about. What Bruce was feeling in his relationship with his father and the environment he grew up in, is he felt incredibly unsafe. And that made it difficult for him to trust people and form real connections. For a long time, the only connection he felt was in that three hours he spent on stage.
But then what do you do the rest of the time? Absolutely. And I’m familiar with those feelings. But my home life as a child was more loving and supportive, so I had to do some creative work to find that tether to Bruce.
You mentioning Springsteen’s dad just popped a thought into my head. Is Carmy’s dad alive? [Long exhale] We don’t know. That’s a decision that’s up to [showrunner] Chris [Storer].
It’s above your pay grade. Well above.
You’re really good at playing men who have trouble articulating their feelings, which puts a lot of weight on your shoulders to convey an interior life through close-ups. Do you like that kind of acting? I do. You have to have an understanding. The camera knows. If you’re just staring at a wall and you don’t have anything going on, the camera will know. The audience will, too.
You do also get to rock out and sing “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.” How did your vocal chords feel afterward? I spent an afternoon singing “Born in the U.S.A.” and I got a migraine and I lost my voice. I saw Bruce afterward and he asked, “What’d you do today.” And I said [affecting a hoarse voice], “Uh, I recorded ‘Born in the U.S.A.’” And he smiles and says, “Sounds about right.”
Most of your singing is the “Nebraska” songs, these delicate acoustic songs about despairing characters who have lost hope. Putting across their stories in these songs feels like its own imposing challenge. I was so focused on just sounding like Bruce and my coach, Eric [Vetro], asks, “What are you singing about? What’s the story? Where’s Bruce coming from? Is he singing from his perspective? Is about his childhood? Is he playing a character?” All these questions that, for an actor, should be right at the front of mind. Because I was so anxious about sounding like him, I found myself blocked by the real thing, which was: How can I just sing the song as honestly as possible?
What song was the breakthrough? “Mansion on the Hill.” Bruce listened to it and said, “You do sound like me. But it’s you singing the song.” And that gave me permission, not just in recording the music, but making a film where I could tell his story but not be afraid to bring myself to it.
Did you have a favorite song? Probably “My Father’s House.” It seemed like a warning for me. There’s regret in it. What I heard is a song about a young man not wanting to regret that he didn’t reach out for his father, who he had a love and connection with earlier. There was an immediacy to it, which you then see with Bruce and his father in the film.
Did it make you want to call your dad? I called him right after recording that song in Nashville. Like many fathers and sons, we have a loving relationship, but we’ve also gone through periods where things have been difficult and it was hard to communicate. Making this film and singing this song has given me another perspective. It also coincides with getting older and having children of my own.
I’m glad you made the call. You can’t have those conversations after a certain point. That’s what I mean about the warning of that song.
You told me yesterday that you and Springsteen had a debate about “Reason to Believe.” What was the source of the disagreement? It’s the last song on the album and Bruce says people confuse it as being hopeful. He says that’s not correct. The song is about a woman whose husband has left her and she stands at the end of the driveway every day, waiting for him to come home. And I hear that, and I think, “Oh, that’s real love. That’s romance. Someone’s gonna drive down that road at some point.”
Either that or this poor woman is just going to be walking up and down her driveway the rest of her life. And no one’s gonna be there. It depends how your ear is on a song.
But you choose to believe. I choose to walk to the end of the driveway. Absolutely.
Would you call yourself an optimist? No. [Laughs] Not really.
“Nebraska” came out in 1982 and was informed by the idea that there was a growing divide between the wealthy and the poor and that what we think of as the American Dream was becoming more elusive. Where do you think the album sits more than four decades later? People are angry. That’s what seems to define our country right now. Anger. And it doesn’t seem to be going away. The songs on “Nebraska” are still going to be speaking to us four decades from now. They’re timeless.
Jeremy Allen White in the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
(Macall Polay / 20th Century Studios)
Did your early dance background help you with the physicality of the role, the way he carries himself on stage or even just walking around? For sure. Finding the way he holds his gravity was important. I put little lifts in the boots and that made my posture change, my legs a little longer. Wearing the pants up to here [he points to a spot above his hips], that gets your gravity in your belly button, where I’m crouched over all the time.
There’s a lot of scenes in diners where he’s sitting with one arm over the back of the booth … … like he’s on his way out almost all the time. One foot in, one foot out.
Musician friends turned you on to “Nebraska” in your early 20s. What music were you listening to then? My folks are a little older so I grew up listening to a lot of music that Bruce listened to — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, the Beatles, the Stones, Aretha Franklin.
Your parents had a strong record collection. Still do. And I grew up in in Brooklyn in the ’90s, so I got really heavy into hip-hop in my teenage years. I discovered Nas and Jay-Z and Big L and Wu-Tang. Tribe. De La Soul. And then I was around for an exciting time in the New York scene. I was young so I couldn’t really experience it, but the Strokes were coming out and LCD Soundsystem. I felt lucky to be close that stuff as it was happening.
The way you’re talking about all this, it feels like music is a fundamental part of your life. Absolutely. I love that it’s always with you. I’ve taken a couple of cross-country trips, and I love putting on Motown. I go through periods where I listen to the same 20 songs for a couple of weeks. But then I’ve got thousands of “liked” songs. And the nice part about a long drive is you can shuffle that and it’s like you’re traveling in time. I love getting to visit past versions of myself through music.
Springsteen takes an eventful cross-country trip in the film. What’s your most memorable one? I did one by myself when I was about 24. I thought I was going to give myself about two weeks to go from New York to L.A. The first week was great. I was enjoying my solitude, listening to a lot of music. Then when I hit Utah, I got incredibly lonely.
Did the landscapes get to you? Maybe. I had a certain amount of anonymity, which I enjoy on a road trip. You don’t know anybody in these towns and that allows you to be whoever you want to be, passing through. I remember getting to Utah and just being desperate to see somebody who knew who I was. And I got a flat in St. George, Utah. It was a disaster. My phone had died. I didn’t have a spare. I was out on the side of the road trying to borrow somebody’s phone. I took that as a sign. After I got it repaired, I raced to have dinner with a friend, because I felt this this crazy loneliness.
Springsteen says everyone has their “genesis moment,” an experience that charts your path. His was watching Elvis Presley perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956. What’s your genesis moment? I had been dancing on stage but I didn’t act until I was 14 when I got up in front of a group in middle school. I had this great teacher, John McEneny, and he was having us do this improvisational exercise — two characters, one speaking, one quiet. And my friend, Yael, was playing a mother and I was playing her child who didn’t know how to speak yet. So I wasn’t speaking, like so much of my work [Laughs].
It’s Carmy’s genesis moment too. Yes. And I remember feeling a presence. I had a hard time focusing as a child, a hard time being present. Still do. But I remember even in silence feeling so at ease and present. And of course I remember the eyes. And even without me doing anything or speaking, I felt attention, people waiting to see what I would do next. And I went, “Whoa.” I felt at peace. I felt present and people were interested. And I thought, “Let me follow this a little bit and see where we can go.”
There’s a scene in the movie, taken from real life, where Springsteen is flipping through the channels one night and stumbles upon Terrence Malick’s “Badlands,” a movie that ultimately influences “Nebraska.” With streaming, we don’t really have those serendipitous discoveries any more. Have you ever had a moment like that? I can’t think of one. But “Badlands” was a favorite of my parents and they showed it to me when I was 13 or 14. Martin Sheen was cool as hell in that role, and I was so impressed with his commitment to that character. And Sissy Spacek conveys so much with so few words.
And like “Nebraska,” “Badlands” was difficult to make. There was a lot of pushback against Malick and what he was trying to do. There was a lot of confusion going on. They weren’t on the same page. Like with Bruce, it took a lot of diligence on Terrence Malick’s part to realize his vision. It’s so beautiful when you hear about the process of making a film is so difficult, and then something so beautiful and perfect comes out.
Where do you like to see movies in L.A.? I love the New Beverly. I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Egyptian not long ago. The Aero, if I’m on the Westside. I miss the Cinerama Dome and the Arclight. New movies, probably the Sunset 5. My favorite thing is go to a movie on a Tuesday at like one in the afternoon. You’re there by yourself. I like seeing movies by myself. Some people get out of a movie and like to start talking about it. I like getting out of a movie and being quiet for awhile.
Did you see “Weapons”? That was my favorite movie theater experience this summer. I loved “Weapons.” And obviously, it’s a great horror film and funny at times and that ending is just crazy. But also I found myself very emotionally affected. To me the horror of the movie was about, from the child’s perspective, looking at all these adults who were totally incapable, whether it was due to addiction or narcissism.
Bringing this full circle, I’m watching this movie about kids feeling unsafe and I thought of the times in Bruce’s upbringing where he felt a similar way and how that made it so difficult to grow up and be trusting. That he ultimately got to that place is so beautiful. I hope people come away from watching this movie feeling that and, if they’re in a place that’s not so good, maybe thinking that connection can still be possible.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
The Venice Film Festival is already underway and next week I will be part of The Times’ team heading to Toronto. The Telluride Film Festival starts today and our own Joshua Rothkopf, Josh Rottenberg and Glenn Whipp are there covering the action.
Many of the season’s most anticipated films will be playing over the next few days. Among world premieres at Telluride are Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” starring Jeremy Allen White as the acclaimed singer-songwriter; Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s popular novel; and Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player,” with Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck international gambler.
Laura Dern, George Clooney and Adam Sandler in the movie “Jay Kelly.”
(Peter Mountain / Netflix)
Among the titles making their North American premieres after premiering at European festivals will be Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Richard Linklater’s two films “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.” Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” premiered earlier this year at Sundance.
This week, Rottenberg spoke to Telluride’s festival director, Julie Huntsinger, who said, “The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there’s hope. They’re not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, ‘I would not miss this for the world’ makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we’ve all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic.”
Even with so much happening elsewhere, there are still plenty of great events happening closer to home right here in L.A. On Wednesday, the Armenian Film Festival begins in Glendale, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Armenian Film Society with the Los Angeles premiere of Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade’s “Monsieur Aznavour,” starring Tahar Rahim as legendary French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.
The highlight of the festival will likely come on Sept. 7 with a conversation between “Sinners” producer Sev Ohanian and writer-director Ryan Coogler about their ongoing creative collaboration. That night will also see an awards gala honoring Ohanian along with actors Madeline Sharafian (“Elio”) and Karren Karagulian, best known for his work in Sean Baker’s films, including “Anora.”
James Brolin on ‘Night of the Juggler’
James Brolin, left, and Mandy Patinkin in the movie “Night of the Juggler.”
(Kino Lorber)
“Night of the Juggler,” directed by Robert Butler and adapted from a novel by William P. McGivern, has been little seen for years, only released on VHS and rarely seen in theaters or on TV. Shot on the streets of late-1970s New York City and released in 1980, the movie captures the grime and sweat of the city, making for a vividly authentic action thriller.
That should all change shortly, as a new 4K restoration distributed by Kino Lorber is playing at the Aero on Sept. 4 with star James Brolin in person for a Q&A. Then the film will get a limited run at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 18, 20 and 22.
In the film, Brolin plays Sean Boyd, a former NYC cop now working as truck driver. His adolescent daughter, Cathy, is abducted by the psychotic Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman), who mistakes her for the daughter of a wealthy real-estate developer. This sets Boyd of on a frantic chase across the city to save Cathy before it is too late.
One dazzling early sequence begins as a chase on foot, finds both Soltic and Boyd stealing vehicles to make it a car chase and ends up with them hopping between cars on a moving subway train. There is a relentlessness to Brolin’s performance that is countered by the creepy, disturbing undertones of Gorman.
Brolin, 85, was on a Zoom call recently from the home in Point Dume he shares with his wife, Barbra Streisand. Turning his computer around to share a distinctly spectacular view of the ocean, Brolin said with a laugh, “I’m a lucky boy.”
Brolin began his career as a contract player at Fox and then Universal, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the first season of the hit TV show “Marcus Welby, M.D.” Among his film credits was 1976’s “Gable and Lombard,” which saw him playing Clark Gable opposite Jill Clayburgh as Carole Lombard for director Sidney J. Furie.
Furie was the original director on “Juggler.” A few weeks into shooting, Brolin broke his foot doing one of the chase scenes. In the time it took to heal, Furie left the project to be replaced by Butler.
James Brolin in the movie “Night of the Juggler.”
(Kino Lorber)
Besides his flowing hair, healthy beard and generously unbuttoned shirt, Brolin acknowledged “Juggler” was a different kind of role and a different kind of movie for him — a grittier project removed from the stalwart fare he was often known for.
“I felt released,” he said. “I felt this is what I’ve always wanted to do.”
Remembering a scene in which he bitterly argues with his ex-wife in the film (played by Linda Miller), Brolin added, “I’ve been married 30 years now, but it’s my third one. The first two were maybe kind of like that. So I was able to unleash on film some of my old nasty feelings.”
Besides Gorman, a Tony winner for his performance in “Lenny,” the cast also featured a young Dan Hedaya as a crooked cop holding a grudge against Brolin’s Boyd and a then little-known Mandy Patinkin as a Puerto Rican cab driver who has no reservations about racing through traffic and provides a running commentary along the way.
“He was like a puppy in those days: ‘Where are you guys going to eat? Can I go with you?’” recalls Brolin of Patinkin. “But for him to get in that car — so fun. He made whatever might have been repetitious about that sequence just full of fire. And right up until the cab crash, which was full-on.”
In his original May 1980 review of the film, Times critic Charles Champlin wrote, “Of its kind, the police-action thriller ‘Night of the Juggler’ is a superior piece of work. The action is non-stop, the dialogue is tough and authentic, the characters major and minor are vivid and credible as the form allows. The people and the New York world in which they movie and work are as real as muggings and racial tension.”
Brolin is happy to see the movie revived. “I’m so proud,” he told me. “It was such a wonderful experience.”
And in case anyone was wondering, yes, Barbra Streisand has seen “Night of the Juggler.”
“She saw it two weeks ago and she said ‘I’m in love all over again,’” said Brolin. “Which made me feel quite good. She thinks it’s a wonderful movie and she loved what I did in it. Because I’m a bore at home.”
Owen Kline on ‘Who Killed Teddy Bear’
Sal Mineo in the movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”
(Cinématographe)
Owen Kline was 7 years old when his grandfather, Joseph Cates, died. Though he knew of his grandfather’s career in show business, working on Broadway and in television, it was not until Kline became a teenage film fan, scouring movie guides and video stores in his native New York City that he discovered Cates had also directed a notorious cult film, “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”
“I’ve collected the receipts on this movie and tried to piece its history together since I was 14,” said Kline, whose parents are the actors Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, during a recent phone call from New York. “Because there’s not much out there.”
A newly struck 35mm print of the film — in a director’s cut including some five minutes of footage removed from the film’s initial 1965 release — is playing at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 2, 6 and 7. The film was restored and scanned by the boutique video label Cinématographe, who have released a 4K disc set loaded with extras.
“Teddy Bear’s” cult reputation has grown over the years as a startlingly lurid artifact taking place in some of the seedier corners of New York City. Sal Mineo plays a young man of ambiguous sexuality who becomes increasingly obsessed with a female bartender (played by Juliet Prowse) at the nightclub where he is a busboy. Elaine Stritch plays the club’s boss.
Elaine Stritch, center, in the movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”
(Cinématographe)
“Every video store in New York, in the cult section, would have a bootleg copy of this movie because for years, until recently, the copyright was just murky,” said Kline. “So that did a great service to its unseemly reputation, as if it was one of the dirty paperbacks you’d smuggle out of one of these adult bookstores in the film.”
As those video stores around New York City began closing, Kline, now 33, would buy up their copies, taking note of the different covers and cuts of the film that were circulating.
Kline noted that within the additional footage in the director’s cut is a moment where Mineo thumbs through a paperback called “Beach Stud” in an adult bookstore, adding to the ambiguity of his character’s sexuality. (And also perhaps a nod to Mineo’s own bisexuality, rumored at the time but not yet public.) There’s also a moment in the new scenes in which a killer kisses the cheek of his dead victim.
“On a film with a laundry list of taboos, suggested necrophilia is a new one,” says Kline. “It does really feel like a throwback film to the pre-Code era. It’s almost like they compiled a gigantic list of these taboos. There’s some really shocking stuff.”
The original Dec. 1965 review in The Times by Margaret Harford called the film “a grim commentary,” while also noting, “No doubt about it, there are a lot of sick people walking around.” The review concludes with the line, “The trend now is never knowing when to stop.”
In a 1996 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Cates downplayed the film’s more shocking elements, while admitting, “Ours was a slightly sleazy film.”
“We didn’t set out about and say to ourselves, ‘Gee, let’s connive to do these things that are tasteless in the movie,’” said Cates. “There was a story and we had to figure out a way to do it.”
Kline’s own feature film, 2022’s “Funny Pages,” will be playing on a double bill with Andrew DeYoung’s recent “Friendship” at the New Beverly on Sept. 16 and 17.
Points of interest
‘52 Pick-Up’ in 35mm
Roy Scheider, left, and John Glover in the movie “52 Pick-Up.”
(American Cinematheque)
As if to prove that NYC does not corner the market on scuzzy depictions of an urban underbelly, Cinematic Void will be screening John Frankenheimer’s L.A.-set “52 Pick-Up” in 35mm on Monday.
A 1986 portrait of the sleazy glory of our city and an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film follows a successful businessman (Roy Scheider) who is caught up in a blackmail scheme when he is videotaped with his mistress. Desperate to keep things quiet so as not to damage the local political aspirations of his wife (Ann-Margret), he finds things escalate quickly and he sets out for revenge. The cast also includes a terrifying Clarence Williams III, Vanity, Kelly Preston and actual members of the adult film demimonde.
Actor John Glover, who plays the deranged lead blackmailer in the film, will be at Monday’s screening for a Q&A. In his original review of the film, Patrick Goldstein noted, “‘52 Pick-Up’ features a couple of stylish performances, especially by John Glover, who brings a flaky intensity to his role as extortionist leader.”
‘Barry Lyndon’ in 4K
Ryan O’Neal, right, and James Magee in the movie “Barry Lyndon.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
On Saturday, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre will host the Los Angeles premiere of a new 4K restoration of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 “Barry Lyndon.” The film will also be shown in 35mm at the New Beverly on Sept. 5, 6 and 7.
An adaptation of the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, the film brings the world of the late 1700s to astonishingly vivid life in telling the story of the wayward adventures of Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), who eventually marries Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson).
The film won four Academy Awards and has over time seen its esteem only rise; now many consider it to be Kubrick’s greatest achievement. Yet, upon release, it confounded viewers, who found its pacing and picturesque imagery to be impenetrable.
Reviewing the film in Dec. 1975, The Times’ Charles Champlin said, “It is ravishingly beautiful and incredibly tedious in about equal doses.” He added, “Kubrick is at once the most zealous and monastic of present film-makers, living in reclusive independence from the larger world of movies, setting himself each time a quite different kind of challenge and then meticulously solving it.”
A January 1974 Times story by Thomas Wood as the film was in production was filled with thwarted attempts to get around the protective veil of secrecy Kubrick designed around it. One frustrated member of the Warner Bros. press team was exasperated by the lack of details about the movie that the studio had, noting, “What can you do with a man who is both a critic’s darling and a box-office winner? You let him pick his own game and make up his own rules.”
‘Sign O’ the Times’ in Imax
Prince performs his “Sign O’ the Times” concert in Paris in 1987.
(FG / Bauer-Griffin / Getty Images)
Starting Friday, Prince’s 1987 concert film “Sign O’ the Times” is getting a one-week run in Imax theaters. Directed by Prince himself, the film is a document of the stage show he created to tour the album of the same name, combining concerts filmed in Europe with footage created on his own Paisley Park soundstages in Minnesota. Seeing Prince’s mastery of performance at Imax scale may actually be too much for a brain to handle.
In Michael Wilmington’s original review he wrote, “‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’ shows him seemingly as much influenced by Martin Scorsese and ‘The Last Waltz’ — with its smokey, absolute lyricism — as was by Fellini and Dick Lester in ‘Under the Cherry Moon.’ And since the movie is predominately concert footage of his stage show, he’s in greater control here; singer-composer Prince is at the peak of his form. … So as a concert film, judge from the music, ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times is near the top. As a movie – carrying inside it the embryo of other movies – it’s not fully satisfying. But you sense it could be; however he stumbles, Prince gives you the impression he’ll always, catlike, leap back.”
Ted Lasso fans are going wild as one of the show’s biggest stars is taking on a brand new role that’s worlds away from the plucky football comedy
Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein is nothing like his iconic grumpy footballer Roy Kent in a heartwrenching trailer for an upcoming sci-fi drama film.
Helmed by one of the directors of Black Mirror, William Bridges, who co-wrote the film with Goldstein, All Of You is led by the star opposite Imogen Poots in a decades-spanning romance for the ages.
Set in the not-so-distant future, the AppleTV+ film follows two best friends from college who drift apart when one of them takes a test that promises to find your soulmate.
Their lives still cross over the years and they’re forced to confront their unspoken feelings.
An official synopsis for the film reads: “Best friends since college, Simon (Goldstein) and Laura (Poots) drift apart when she takes a test that finds her soulmate despite years of unspoken feelings between them.
Brett Goldstein is nothing like his iconic footballer Roy Kent in his new film(Image: APPLE TV+)
“Over the years, as their paths cross and diverge, neither can deny the feeling that they’ve missed out on a life together.
“Faced with the uncertainty of changing the course of their lives, are Simon and Laura willing to risk everything to experience the love that had been between them all along, or should they accept their fate?”
The trailer, released this week, has already received a rave response from fans who are eager to see the Ted Lasso favourite taking on a new role.
One fan predicted a stellar performance from the leading man: “Brett Goldstein’s ‘face acting’ is next level.
“He can perform an entire, silent dialogue with just one look. It’s so good to see him in a role like this.”
While another quipped: “It’s so weird to see Roy Kent be friendly and not growl every 5 seconds.”
For those still not quite convinced by the tear-jerking trailer, the film has already received critical acclaim after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.
Get tissues prepared for this soft sci-fi romance coming very soon(Image: APPLE TV+)
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It currently stands at an impressive 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics warning fans to have tissues at the ready.
Entertainment Weekly called it a “weepie of the highest order”, adding: “It’s familiar fodder for romantic drama, but it’s of the highest caliber thanks to its sharp script and devastating central performances.
“Watching All of You is like pressing on a bruise, and ooh, baby, it hurts so good.”
Awards Buzz declared: “Goldstein and Poots are both terrific and would certainly be deserving of Golden Globe nominations.”
While Matt Neglia raved: “ALL OF YOU just emotionally soothed and wrecked my heart.
“An aching adult drama about the choices we make, the regrets we feel, and whether or not we actually have soulmates out there for us in the world.
“I adore adult romantic dramas where the conflict doesn’t feel manufactured & the characters behave like adults. I got plenty of that here with two heartfelt & endearing performances from Brett Goldstein & Imogen Poots.”
Are you ready to get your heart broken by All Of You? There’s just a few more weeks to wait before this devastating drama hits screens.
All Of You premieres Friday, 26th September on Apple TV+.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Many fled when wildfires devastated Los Angeles earlier this year, but Guillermo del Toro rushed back in, determined to save his lifelong collection of horror memorabilia.
It’s the same loyalty that finds him making another tough decision to protect the items he loves like family: letting some of them go.
Del Toro partnered with Heritage Auctions for a three-part auction to sell a fraction of a collection that is bursting at the seams. Online bidding for the first part on Sept. 26 started Thursday and includes over a hundred items, with more headed to the auction block next year.
“This one hurts. The next one, I’m going to be bleeding,” Del Toro, 60, said of the auction series. “If you love somebody, you have estate planning, you know, and this is me estate planning for a family that has been with me since I was a kid.”
Del Toro is one of the industry’s most respected filmmakers, whose fascination with monsters and visual style will shape generations to come. But at his core, the Mexican-born horror buff is a collector. The Oscar winner has long doubled as the sole caretaker of the “Bleak House” — which stretches across two and a half Santa Monica homes nearly overflowing with thousands of ghoulish creatures, iconic comic drawings and paintings, books and movie props.
The houses function not just as museums, but as libraries and workspaces where his imagination bounces off the oxblood-painted walls.
“I love what I have because I live with it. I actually am a little nuts, because I say hi to some of the life-size figures when I turn on the light,” Del Toro told The Associated Press, sitting in the dining room of one of the houses, now a sanctuary for “Haunted Mansion” memorabilia. “This is curated. This is not a casual collection.”
The auction includes behind-the-scene drawings and one-of-a-kind props from Del Toro’s own classics, as well as iconic works like Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations for “Frankenstein” and Mike Mignola’s pinup artwork for “Hellraiser.”
A race to save horror history
In January, Del Toro had only a couple hours, his car and a few helping hands to save key pieces from the fires. Out of the over 5,000 items in his collection, he managed to move only about 120 objects. It wasn’t the first time, as fires had come dangerously close to Bleak House twice before.
The houses were spared, but fear consumed him. If a fire or earthquake swallowed them, he thought, “What came out of it? You collected insurance? And what happened to that little segment of Richard Corben’s life, or Jack Kirby’s craft, or Bernie Wrightson’s life?”
An auction, Del Toro said, gives him peace of mind, as it ensures the items will land in the hands of another collector who will protect the items as he has. These are not just props or trinkets, he said, but “historical artifacts. They’re pieces of audiovisual history for humanity.” And his life’s mission has been to protect as much of this history as he can.
“Look, this is in reaction to the fires. This is in reaction to loving this thing,” Del Toro told the AP.
The initial auction uncovers who Del Toro is as a collector, he said. Upcoming parts will expose how the filmmaker thinks, which he called a much more personal endeavor. The auction isn’t just a “piece of business,” for him, but rather a love letter to collectors everywhere, and encouragement to think beyond a movie and “learn to read and write film design in a different way. That’s my hope.”
A house full of ‘unruly kids’
Caring for the Bleak House collection feels like being on “a bus with 160 kids that are very unruly, and I’m driving for nine hours,” Del Toro said. “I gotta take a rest.”
The auction will give the filmmaker some breathing room from the collection’s arduous maintenance. The houses must stay at a certain temperature, without direct sunlight — all of which is monitored solely by Del Toro, who often spends most of his day there.
He selects the picture frame for every drawing, dusts all the artifacts and arranges every bookshelf mostly himself, having learned his lesson from the handful of times he allowed outside help. One time, Del Toro said, he found someone “cleaning an oil painting with Windex, and I almost had a heart attack.”
“It’s very hard to have someone come in and know why that trinket is important,” he said. “It’s sort of a very bubbled existence. But you know, that’s what you do with strange animals — you put them in small environments where they can survive. That’s me.”
Each room is organized by theme, with one room dedicated to each of his major works, from “Hellboy” to “Pacific Rim.” Del Toro typically spends his entire work day at one of the houses, which he picks depending on the task at hand. The “Haunted Mansion” dining room, for instance, is an excellent writing space.
“If I could, I would live in the Haunted Mansion,” he said. “So, this is the second best.”
Building a mini Bleak House
In selecting which items to sell, Del Toro said he “wanted somebody to be able to re-create a mini version of Bleak House.”
Auction items include concept sketches and props from Del Toro’s 1992 debut film, “Cronos,” all the way to his more recent works, like 2021’s “Nightmare Alley.”
The starting bids vary, from a couple thousand dollars up to hundreds of thousands. One of Wrightson’s drawings for a 1983 illustrated version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is the highest priced item, starting at $200,000.
The auction also includes art from legends like Richard Corben, Jack Kirby and H.R. Giger, whose work Del Toro wrote in the catalog “represent the pinnacle of comic book art in the last quarter of the twentieth century.”
Other cultural touchstones in illustration that are represented in the auction include rare images from the 1914 short film “Gertie the Dinosaur,” one of the earliest animated films, and original art for Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” by Eyvind Earle and Kay Nielsen.
“As collectors, you are basically keeping pieces of culture for generations to come. They’re not yours,” Del Toro said. “We don’t know which of the pieces you’re holding is going to be culturally significant … 100 years from now, 50 years from now. So that’s part of the weight.”
The streaming video giant on Monday announced when it will open its first shopping, dining and entertainment complexes to the public.
The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company will open its first Netflix House in the Philadelphia area on Nov. 12. The company’s Philadelphia area location is located at King of Prussia shopping center, while its second Netflix House at Galleria Dallas will open on Dec. 11. A third location in Las Vegas will open in 2027.
The more than 100,000 square-foot space will offer fan experiences, merchandise and food inspired by Netflix content, in an effort to capitalize on its popular shows, movies and franchises.
For example, fans will be able to take selfies with Queen Charlotte, see screenings of “KPop Demon Hunters” and enjoy Netflix-themed food and cocktails, the company said in a statement.
The Netflix House complexes will be free for people to enter. Some fan experiences, such as Top 9 Mini Golf and immersive VR games in the Philadelphia location, will cost money.
Netflix House is part of the company’s push to expand further into in-person entertainment. The firm hosted balls similar to those featured on Regency era romance “Bridgerton” and worked with retailers and brands to sell clothing and other merchandise inspired by “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things.”
Such experiences also serve as marketing for the shows and movies.
The streamer could eventually have 50 or 60 Netflix House locations globally, said Netflix Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos last year at the WSJ Tech Live conference.
We’re a week away from Labor Day weekend and we have one movie slotted in as a best picture Oscar nominee.
That leaves nine spots and whole lot of sharp elbows as we begin the fall film festival circuit next week in Venice and Telluride.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Worst freeway in Southern California? There is only one correct answer, but it’s not the one in our rankings. And that answer is just another reason why, like Sal Saperstein, we dread going anywhere near LAX.
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Fall festivals preview
In case you were wondering — but I think you already know — the movie already assured a best picture nomination is Ryan Coogler’s exuberant horror hit, “Sinners,” a film as entertaining and provocative as anything I’ve seen in a theater in the last couple of years. It was my favorite summer movie, even if it did come out in April. Watching it in Imax 70mm felt like an event, the kind of blockbuster moviegoing experience I’ll remember years from now.
The Venice Film Festival starts Wednesday. On Thursday, I’ll be flying to Telluride. The 50th Toronto International Film Festival begins the following week. Dozens of movies will be premiering at these festivals. Standing ovations will be meticulously — and ridiculously — timed. And when the smoke clears, we’ll have the makings of a slate of contenders that we’ll be covering and debating for the next six months.
Here are some of the world premieres at each festival that I’ll be watching most closely, movies that could be made — or broken — by the next time you hear from me.
Venice
Haute couture. Water taxis. Endless Aperol spritzes.
“Frankenstein”: For Guillermo del Toro, Pinocchio and Frankenstein have always been two sides of the same coin, creations made by an uncaring father, released into the world without much care. Del Toro tackled Pinocchio with his last film, which won the Oscar for animated feature. And now he’s adapting the Mary Shellley classic, promising to include parts of the tragic story never before seen on screen. If anyone can make us shout “it’s alive” again, it’s Del Toro.
“A House of Dynamite”: A new political thriller from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is an event, particularly because it’s her first film since “Detroit” eight years ago. “Dynamite” deals with U.S. leaders scrambling for a response after a missile attack. I’m hoping to embark on a two-hour ride firmly fixed in the fetal position.
“Jay Kelly”: Famous actor (George Clooney) and his devoted manager (Adam Sandler) travel through Europe, pondering regrets (they’ve had a few) and the times they’ve loved, laughed and cried. Noah Baumbach directs from a script he co-wrote with Emily Mortimer. His last movie, 2019’s “Marriage Story,” earned six Oscar nominations, with Laura Dern winning supporting actress. Time for the Sandman to finally get an invitation to the party?
“No Other Choice”: Park Chan-wook adapts the provocative Donald Westlake thriller “The Ax,” which Costa-Gavras adapted in 2005 — but Park apparently wasn’t aware of that movie when he decided to make his own film. Park has been working on it for years, calling it his “lifetime project,” the movie he wanted to stand as his “masterpiece.” He has made some great films — “The Handmaiden” and “Decision to Leave” among them — so it’s hard not be intrigued.
“The Smashing Machine”: I have seen the trailer for this Benny Safdie drama about MMA fighter Mark Kerr so many times that I feel like I have already seen the movie. The blend of Safdie grittiness and Dwayne Johnson star power is sure to generate buzz, but there are whispers that the film simply isn’t all that good. From that trailer, I’m inclined to believe them … but hope to be proved wrong.
Telluride
High altitude, fleece pullovers, repeated discussions about hydration. Lineup not officially announced until Thursday. These are just “rumors.”
“Ballad of a Small Player”: Edward Berger premiered “Conclave” at Telluride last year and it worked out fine, going on to earn eight Oscar nominations and emerging as a viable, sillier alternative for those looking to vote for something other than “Anora.” Berger’s latest is about a high-stakes gambler (Colin Farrell) holed up in China, desperate for a way out of his debts and past sins. As awards voters loved “Conclave” and Berger’s misbegotten “All Quiet on the Western Front,” attention must be paid.
“Hamnet”: Paul Mescal is everywhere. And now he’s playing William Shakespeare in a drama about the Bard and his wife rediscovering each other after the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Why not? Especially when the film is directed by Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and has the brilliant Jessie Buckley on board as Shakespeare’s better half.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”: Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce! Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen as he goes lo-fi making his acclaimed album “Nebraska.” History tells us that actors starring in music biopics are rewarded handsomely, and, given what we’ve seen of White on “The Bear,” he seems a perfect choice to play a brooding Bruce.
Toronto
Weather that veers between spring, summer and fall in the course of a week. Poutine. Splashy premieres of movies that have already played at other festivals.
“Christy”: Sydney Sweeney has been in the news lately. Maybe you’ve heard? But she’s about to make a serious awards-season play in this sports biopic about boundary-shattering boxer Christy Martin, a young gay woman fighting to establish an identity that runs counter to her conservative upbringing. Will the work be good enough to rise above the noise around the actor?
“The Lost Bus”: Paul Greengrass, like Bigelow, has been absent from the conversation for a bit. His last movie, the fine western “News of the World,” was swallowed by the pandemic. Now he’s back with a survival drama, one with California roots, as a father (Matthew McConaughey) and a teacher (America Ferrera) try to bring a bus full of school children to safety during the deadly 2018 Camp fire.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that no one is truly safe. That gathering dread fueled some great ’70s paranoid thrillers, such as “The Parallax View” and “The Conversation,” but it’s been difficult to replicate that eeriness in today’s extremely online world, when our devices explain and obfuscate with abandon, conspiracies are lifeblood and we feel persecuted one day, invincibly anonymous the next.
The nifty premise of “Relay,” a new white-knuckle ride from “Hell or High Water” director David Mackenzie, is that a certain type of tech-savvy hero can, if not completely ease your anxiety, at least navigate a secret truce with those out to get you. And Riz Ahmed’s solitary off-the-grid fixer, Ash, who hides in plain sight in bustling New York, can do it without ever meeting or talking to you: His preferred mode of traceless communication is the text-telephone service that hard-of-hearing people use in conjunction with message-relaying operators. Like a ready-made covert operation, it keeps identities, numbers and call logs secret.
For the simple fact that “Relay” is not about an assassin (the movies’ most over-romanticized independent contractor), screenwriter Justin Piasecki’s scenario deserves kudos. Rather, Ash’s broker helps potential whistleblowers escape the clutches of dangerously far-reaching entities — unless, of course, they want to settle for cash. It’s a fascinatingly cynical update: Should we make an uneasy peace with our tormentors? (Hello, today’s headlines.)
Before those questions get their due, however, “Relay” sets itself up with clockwork precision as a straightforward big-city nail-biter about staying one step ahead. Seeking protection from harassment and a return to normal life, rattled biotech scientist Sarah (Lily James) goes on the run with incriminating documents about her former employer. When she’s rebuffed by a high-powered law firm, she’s provided a mysterious number to call. Ash, armed with his elaborate vetting methods, puts Sarah through the paces with rules and instructions regarding burner phones, mailed packages and a detailed itinerary of seemingly random air travel. It doesn’t just test her commitment, though — it’s also a ploy to scope out the corporate goons on her trail: a dogged surveillance team led by Sam Worthington (who should maybe only play bad guys) and Willa Fitzgerald.
As the story careens through airports and post offices and New York’s hidey-holes, the cat-and-mouse chase is dizzyingly enjoyable, worthy of a Thomas Perry novel. We wait for the missteps that threaten everything, of course, and they begin with learning that Ash is a failed whistleblower himself, one who is beginning to question his chosen crusade. Another vulnerability, recognizable in the occasional cracks in Ahmed’s commanding stoicism, is the loneliness of the gig. So when a restive Sarah, on one of their protected calls, gently prods for a smidgen of personality from her mysterious unseen helper, one is inclined to shout, “No feelings! Too risky!”
But that, of course, is the slippery pleasure of “Relay,” which pits individuals against venal institutional might. Flaws are the beating hearts of these movies, triggering the peril that makes the blood pump faster. Some of that effectiveness is undercut by some off-putting music choices, but McKenzie’s command of the material is rock solid, Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography achieves a sleek, moody metallic chill and Matt Mayer’s editing is always fleet. In a year that’s already given us one superlative case of adult peekaboo — Steven Soderbergh’s “Black Bag” — “Relay” proves there’s still more room for smart, punchy cloak-and-dagger options.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
The LAT published its fall movies preview this week, taking a look at what is coming up through Thanksgiving. There is a list of the 21 movies we’re most excited about, which includes a broad selection of styles, genres and tones.
Some of these titles have already been seen at festivals, but many have not. And if even a fraction of them pan out, it should make for quite a season.
Zoey Deutch, photographed in Hollywood in July.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
I spoke to actor Zoey Deutch and director Richard Linklater about their collaboration on “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking 1960 debut feature “Breathless.” Deutch plays American-born actor Jean Seberg, who was living in Paris at the time and agreed to be in the movie. After Godard’s film made her an international star, Seberg had an unpredictable career until her death in 1979 at only age 40.
“Is the rest of her life incredibly fascinating and intense and tragic? Yes,” said Deutch. “But Rick was really adamant on telling a story at a very specific moment in time. We’re not telling anything that happens after. Godard is not a legend yet. You don’t know who this guy is, what he’s doing. He’s not who he was later. Don’t read the last page of the book when we’re still on Page 1.”
“When I first met Jennifer, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s Jennifer Lopez, what the hell?’” Tonatiuh recalled. “I must have turned left on the wrong street because now I’m standing in front of her. How did this happen? What life am I living?”
And Tim Grierson spoke to Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest for an in-character interview as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel from the rock group Spinal Tap for their long-awaited sequel, “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.” (Director Rob Reiner also is interviewed in character as documentary filmmaker Marty DiBergi.)
“Can I ask a question?” Tufnel interjects at one point. “This has begun? The interview?”
Pocasters choice at ‘Friend of the Fest’
Shelley Duvall, left, Wesley Ivan Hurt and Robin Williams in Robert Altman’s “Popeye.”
(American Cinematheque)
Already underway, this year marks the third edition of the American Cinematheque’s “Friend of the Fest” series, in which podcasters pick their favorite movies to show. Most of the screenings will have the podcast hosts doing live intros, while some will even be recording live shows on site.
“It’s mostly trying to find that middle ground,” said Cindy Flores, film programmer at the American Cinematheque, in an interview this week. “You don’t have to be a connoisseur or a film geek or a cinephile. Everybody loves film. And that’s the great thing about the podcast festival is that you get to see a wide variety of titles and choices and things that people are interested in.”
The popular Ringer podcast network will have four shows represented, with “The Big Picture” selecting “Michael Clayton,” “The Watch” showing “24 Hour Party People,” “House of R” choosing “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Midnight Boys” presenting “Blade.”
Other podcasts in the series include “The Dana Gould Hour” showing “Carnival of Souls,” “Office Hours Live” with the “Weird Al” Yankovic-starring “UHF” (in a rare 35mm print with possible surprise guests), “Upstairs Neighbors” showing “Bottoms,” “Lifted” showing “Misssissippi Masala,” “Cinematic Void” screening “River’s Edge,” “Flightless Bird” choosing “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” and “Ticklish Business” presenting “Design for Living.”
A scene from the 1985 movie “Clue.”
(American Cinematheque)
The LAT’s own Amy Nicholson, along with her “Unspooled” co-host Paul Scheer, have selected the Kevin Costner sci-fi film “Waterworld.”
The “Linoleum Knife” podcast will screen “Clue” from a newly-made DCP that will feature only one of the film’s multiple endings, selected by hosts Alonso Duralde and Dave White.
The podcast “Perf Damage” is hosted by the husband-and-wife team of Charlotte Barker and Adam Barker, who actually worked on restoring their selection: the L.A. premiere of the new 4K update of Robert Altman’s “Popeye.”
Marc Maron, who will be shutting down his “WTF” podcast later this year, will screen Altman’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller.”
Points of interest
Elizabeth Taylor triple bill
Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the 1968 film “Boom!”
(Express Newspapers / Getty Images)
As part of its “Summer of Camp” series, the Academy Museum will feature on Sunday a triple bill of Elizabeth Taylor movies, all screening in 35mm, with “Secret Ceremony” and “Boom!” — both from 1968 and directed by Joseph Losey — and then Brian G. Hutton’s 1972 “X Y & Zee.” These are all visually rapturous movies with some amazing costumes and will make for an incredible daylong experience.
In the horror-tinged psychodrama “Secret Ceremony,” Taylor co-stars with Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum. Adapted by Tennessee Williams from his own play “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,” “Boom!” pairs Taylor with her real-life paramour Richard Burton in some astonishing Mediterranean locations. “X Y & Zee” co-stars Michael Caine.
In May 1968, Times film critic Charles Champlin wrote, “Filmland’s reigning vaudeville act, the Flying Burtons, are together again in a sleek, aberrational and posturing piece of nonsense called ‘Boom!’ … ‘Boom!’ is gorgeous to look at. Losey’s sense of place is I think unsurpassed by any director now working, and Mrs. Goforth’s house, with its sun-baked walls and cool, dark, artful interiors, its talking bird and chained monkey, the waves crashing on the rocks below the terrace, is perfectly realized.”
Elizabeth Taylor, with producer Elliott Kastner on the set of “X, Y and Zee” in London in 1971.
(Frank Barratt / Getty Images)
In June 1968, Kevin Thomas published an interview with playwright Williams. Of “Boom!” he said, “It’s a beautiful picture, the best ever made of one of my plays. I think Elizabeth has never been that good before. I don’t know whether the public is going to buy it, for Lord’s sake. I hope they do for Elizabeth’s sake as well as my own. … I can always make out, but inwardly she’s a very fragile being.”
In his Nov. 1968 review of “Secret Ceremony,” Champlin continued the thought on Losey, writing, “His most notable gift is the care and skill with which he conveys the atmosphere generated by a particular house or place.”
In a 1970 item as Taylor was about to begin shooting “X Y & Zee,” she was asked if she would consider retiring. “I’m so lazy, I think I should retire,” she responded. “The unfortunate thing is I enjoy acting.”
‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ 10-year anniversary
Kristen Wiig, left, Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård in the movie “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.”
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Also on Sunday, the Gardena Cinema will host a 10th anniversary screening of “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” with a Q&A with producer Miranda Bailey. Adapted from the hybrid novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, it was the debut feature from Marielle Heller, who would go on to make “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” as well as “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and “Nightbitch.”
Starring Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgård, the story is about the sexual awakening of a 15-year-old girl in 1976 San Francisco.
Reviewing the film, Rebecca Keegan wrote, “Big summer action movies can be thrilling, but if you really want to feel your heart pounding out of your chest, try being a 15-year-old girl for 101 minutes. That’s the running time of ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl,’ a rare gem of a movie that takes its audience inside the ecstatic, confused and unapologetically horny brain of a girl named Minnie Goetze. ‘Diary’ is a vivid and often shocking story of growing up female in 1976 San Francisco, told with tenderness and humor by first-time director Marielle Heller and starring a blue-eyed lightning bolt of an actress named Bel Powley as Minnie.”
In an interview with the director at the time, Heller said, “Teenage girls are represented really poorly; I think we as a society are afraid of teenage girls. We’re definitely afraid of their sexuality, and so teenage girls are either shown in this really virginal state or this really slutty state, but it’s never what it actually felt like to be a teenage girl as a full human.
“You’re just as complete of a person as a teenage boy,” she added. “Holden Caulfield is a really complex character, so where’s our female Holden Caulfield? It just felt really important, the chance to represent teenage girls in a way that actually felt real.”
‘Cooley High’
On Wednesday the Academy Museum will present 1975’s “Cooley High” in 35mm with director Michael Schultz and actors Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs and Glynn Turman present for a conversation with academy governor and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
Written by Eric Monte and based on his own experiences growing up in Chicago, the film is set in 1964 and follows two high school friends through a series of endearingly freewheeling misadventures.
In a 2019 article on the occasion of a screening and tribute at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater — now included on the Criterion Collection disc of the film — Susan King spoke to many involved in the making of “Cooley High.” Robert Townsend, who would go on to make “Hollywood Shuffle” and most recently be seen on “The Bear,” had a one-line role as a teenager. “The movie changed my life,” he would say.
“It’s a movie, but it’s making me laugh, it’s making me think, and to me that’s what real movies do — speak to people that look like me and speak to everybody,” said Townsend. “That was my first lesson from Michael Schultz.”
‘The Lovers on the Bridge’ in 4K
Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche in the movie “The Lovers on the Bridge.”
First shown at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, the movie would not get a release in America until 1999. The story of a street performer (Denis Lavant) and an artist losing her eyesight (Juliette Binoche), the film is told with dazzling flair and overwhelming style. Unable to shoot on the actual Pont Neuf bridge in Paris where the plot is set, Carax built a full-scale replica, said to be at the time the largest set ever built in France.
Writing about the film in 1999, Kevin Thomas said, “Leos Carax’s ‘The Lovers on the Bridge’ has the raw, gritty look of a documentary on the homeless, but it is in the grand tradition of heady screen romances. It’s a throwback to the golden era of both Hollywood and of the fatalistic French cinema that teamed such international icons as Jean Gabin and Michelle Morgan … a go-for-broke dazzler that takes constant chances, dares to go over the top, indulges in one anticlimactic scene after another, only to make such risks pay off all the more at the finish.”
“Splitsville” lands at a moment when every comedy released to theaters feels like a battle cry, an attempt to defend audiences’ rights to have a good time at the movies.
Directed by Michael Angelo Covino, who also produces, co-writes and co-stars alongside Kyle Marvin, the film continues the duo’s comic exploration of bad choices, in which men predictably make poor decisions and are depicted as vain, infantile and often motivated by their worst impulses. (It’s funny because it’s true.)
As the movie begins, Carey (Marvin) is married to Ashley (Adria Arjona), who tells him she has been seeing other people and wants a divorce. He seeks solace from his best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife, Julie (Dakota Johnson), who tell Carey they are in an open relationship. Soon Carey sleeps with Julie and all sorts of jealousies and complicated feelings arise among the four of them.
“Splitsville” — the title appears briefly onscreen as the neon sign of a dessert stand — is outwardly a satire of bourgeois aspirations, modern marriage and how no one really understands the dynamics of what goes on with other couples. But the film is actually more concerned with the absurdities of male friendship, to the extent that Covino and Marvin are perennially enamored of themselves and can’t help from centering their own antics.
Their previous movie, “The Climb,” was also about two friends locked into an up-and-down relationship alternating between of moments of betrayal and gestures of support. While they are not playing the same specific characters from “The Climb,” they are very much playing the same type. Covino is seemingly more smooth and together, though riddled with insecurities, while Marvin initially appears hapless and vulnerable, with an emotional intelligence that reveals him to be savvier than he first appears. So they basically meet in the middle.
The entire movie has a disappointing air of smug self-regard about it, with an expectation the audience will adore everything about the characters as much as they do. What at moments feels like a nascent interrogation of contemporary masculinity ultimately suffers from the very impulses it seems to want to parody. (We hear numerous times that one of them is generously endowed.)
Both Arjona and Johnson are asked to play variations on personas they have depicted elsewhere. Arjona has the same earthy warmth she did in “Hit Man,” while Johnson exhibits a placid air of controlled chaos similar to what she showed earlier this year in “Materialists.” They undoubtedly elevate the movie, though too often their characters feel like game pieces manipulated on a board controlled by the film’s male leads.
Johnson and Arjona are movie stars, beguiling and captivating. Covino and Marvin seem like a couple of guys who somehow wandered onscreen. The tension is never reconciled and is constantly throwing the story off balance.
In “The Climb,” there is a moment where Covino and Marvin briefly wrestle, a ludicrous sight of two grown men tussling on the ground. Here that beat expands into a full-blown fight scene that goes on for more than six minutes, as Paul attacks Carey after learning he slept with Julie. Smashing furniture, breaking drywall, destroying a fish tank (while saving the fish) and somehow singeing off Carey’s eyebrows, the fight scene is the movie’s centerpiece, one of its major selling points and indicative of everything that both works and doesn’t. It is funny, escalating ridiculously, but it is also too outlandish for the characters and the story and only really exists as something that Covino and Marvin simply wanted to do for themselves.
They’re good at jokes but much weaker on meaning, stumbling when it comes to making it all add up to something. With a background in advertising, Marvin and Covino are strong on short, punchy ideas conveyed through strong visuals. They may eventually be better served by making work they do not appear in — their performances are the weakest thing about their movies so far. Even as they remain a promising duo, “Splitsville” never quite fully comes together.
‘Splitsville’
Rated: R, for language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity
A wave of purple and hot pink hair and cartoon K-pop bops is taking over multiplexes.
With summer blockbusters in the rearview mirror and only a few new films out, movie theaters expected a bit of a lull at the box office this weekend.
Then Netflix dropped a bombshell. The streamer would release its hit animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” — already a viral phenomenon on streaming — in theaters Saturday and Sunday for sing-along screenings.
The movie will be shown on more than 1,750 screens in the U.S. and Canada, with 1,150 shows sold out as of Thursday, according to industry sources. It’s an unusually high-profile move by Netflix into cinemas, which is using the big screen experience to capitalize on and promote one of its biggest wins.
Packed houses include the theaters of Dallas-based Look Dine-In Cinemas, which has locations in Glendale, Redlands, Downey and Monrovia.
“This will be the dominant force for the weekend,” said Look Chief Executive Brian Schultz. “We could put it on every screen in our auditorium.”
But is this theatrical release really gonna be golden, to paraphrase one of the musical’s most infectious earworms? We won’t know for sure. Or at least how golden.
Los Gatos-based Netflix will not release box office figures, sticking with the company’s long-standing policy that has long frustrated industry pros. All the same, based on presale numbers, the movie could haul in $16 million to $22 million, according to estimates from analysis site Box Office Theory. That total, if Netflix reported it, would unseat the expected official No. 1 domestic movie, “Weapons.”
The release is a welcome surprise for theater owners — particularly in the doldrums of summer, when even late breakout hits like Warner Bros.’ horror film “Weapons” have been out for weeks. But it also underscores the tricky relationship between exhibitors and Netflix, which has famously eschewed traditional theatrical film releases.
But the streamer has long been adamant that its focus is on growing its subscriber base — not on developing a theatrical business. Earlier this year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the theatrical movie experience was “outdated” for most people. When the company does theatrical releases, it views them as marketing efforts.
That has led to long-standing complaints from theater owners, who argue that streaming has lessened their business and trained audiences to wait until films are available at home.
“Netflix and a sizable share of theatrical exhibition have spent so many years toeing the line as frenemies, if not outright adversaries,” Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at ticket seller Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory, said in an email. “This is a weekend that again highlights how they could, and perhaps should, start working together more often to the benefit of both sides.”
The film, produced by Culver City-based Sony Pictures Animation, is the most-watched original animated movie in Netflix’s history, according to the streamer.
It’s also now the second-most-watched film ever on Netflix behind the 2021 action-comedy “Red Notice” starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. The movie’s soundtrack has also been a hit, with the song “Golden” peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and continuing to hold onto a high ranking.
“KPop Demon Hunters” focuses on a popular girl group called Huntr/x that uses its music and dance moves to battle evil, including a demon boy band. The movie has spawned a number of memes, including close-ups of the characters’ expressive faces.
The music, as well as the film’s strong female characters, were a draw for Heather Hollingsworth and her 10-year-old daughter, Kayleigh, who have now watched “KPop Demon Hunters” multiple times and are planning to see a screening this weekend with Kayleigh’s best friend and her mom. “Golden” is Hollingsworth’s favorite song from the film, and the one that gets stuck in her head most.
“The songs are really catchy,” said Hollingsworth, 41, a speech language pathologist who lives in Littleton, Colo. “Also the characters’ vulnerability being their strength — that strong friendship — it’s a very powerful message.”
Though they could continue watching “KPop Demon Hunters” at home on Netflix, Hollingsworth said the appeal of the theatrical screening was the social experience.
“There’s something about having it in a movie theater that is way more fun for the kids, especially,” she said.
The sing-along screenings follow similar showings for “Wicked,” as well as concert films such as Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” and Beyonce’s “Renaissance World Tour.” Unlike “KPop Demon Hunters,” those films were exclusively in theaters first, resulting, in the case of “Wicked” and Swift, in hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales.
For Look Cinemas, sing-alongs have long been big business and often result in a demand for party bookings, Schultz said. Indeed, tickets for “KPop Demon Hunters” have been selling in large groups.
“It’s going to make for a very fun weekend,” he said.
Times staff writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this report.
“Honey Don’t!” is a smutty desert mystery in which the detective, Honey O’Donohue (Margaret Qualley), never gets around to solving the central crime. She’s too busy seducing women and swatting down randy men. I’d call the opening murder a red herring except it’s really more like a fish left to cook in the blinding Bakersfield sun.
The second film co-written by Ethan Coen and his collaborator and wife Tricia Cooke (the first was 2024’s “Drive-Away Dolls”), it’s less preoccupied by the challenge of who’s responsible for that corpse than by its own overarching question: Why not? Why not let Margaret Qualley prove she has the electricity to power an audience through any plot? Why not pivot from “The Big Lebowski” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to an announced trilogy of tatty lesbian exploitation pictures? Why not, when a couple has earned the industry clout to shoot the script they want with the cast they want, make exactly the movie they want, even if this pulpy B-picture isn’t very good? Who’s going to tell them, honey don’t?
To be clear, there’s enough to like in “Honey Don’t!” to get you through its 89-minute running time. I’d watch Qualley stride around barking at people for twice as long and her supporting cast, which includes Aubrey Plaza as Honey’s latest lover and Chris Evans as an oily pastor, is delivering at top level, i.e., Coen-worthy. (Newer talent Josh Pafchek pockets his scenes as a moronic Australian brute.) The script has several zingers that are so good you want to applaud right in your seat, particularly an insult Honey slings at her estranged daddy (Kale Browne). Even the extended intro credits have a witty energy that makes you forgive that they’re tap dancing to pad the length.
Still, as with the sillier “Dolls,” which also starred Qualley as a hot-to-trot queer queen, the film is so shaggy that it feels longer than it is. I finished both movies double-checking my watch in astonishment that they really were under an hour and a half.
Qualley’s Honey is a headstrong investigator who is so independent, she refuses to let her secretary (Gabby Beans) make her a cup of coffee. Frankly, she’s not that impressive as a private dick. Honey is only passingly curious why a client died before their first meeting and so predominately distracted by tangental side quests — her troubled teen niece (Talia Ryder), her dalliances with Plaza’s husky lady cop — that the resolution doesn’t involve much brilliant deduction. We know from the first scene that Honey needs to keep a close eye on a mysterious stranger named Cher (Lera Abova). Ultimately, the French femme fatale catches her attention for other reasons.
Across town, the corrupt Reverend Drew (Evans) is swaying his parishioners to sleep with him in the name of godly submission. “I want to see your bosoms jouncing during fellowship,” he commands a member of his flock. The preacher is one of the biggest sinners in Bakersfield, not merely because both he and Honey may as well be using the phone book as a checklist of conquests. A normal thriller would frame their dynamic as cat versus mouse. Here, it’s more like plague and vaccine. Honey is immune to his sales pitches for heterosexuality and holy salvation.
Honey is a brazenly preposterous creation: a 21st century woman who insists on using a Rolodex, something that was headed toward extinction before Qualley was even born. Striding through brush in seamed stockings and high heels — and changing wardrobe multiple times a day just because she can — she’s the only character who never breaks a sweat (except in the bedroom).
Qualley keeps her cool from head to toe: eyebrows stern, line deliveries cucumber-crisp. Like a brassy classic dame, she says exactly what she means. When the local homicide officer, Marty (Charlie Day), makes a pass at her, she bluntly replies, “I like girls.” The guy doesn’t listen — he just keeps pestering her — which makes their dynamic play like some sort of clunky runner about how men are dense.
Marty’s pursuit is that. But Honey’s retort is also how the real-life Cooke shot Coen down the first time her future husband asked her out on a date. More than anything, it’s evidence that “Honey Don’t!” primarily exists as the couple’s own affectionate in-joke. “Tricia’s queer and sweet and I’m straight and stupid,” Coen said last year in an interview with the Associated Press. Both describe their three-decades-plus marriage as “nontraditional.” Both also insist that they’re making these pulp flicks as a unit and don’t care who gets credit for what, claiming that Coen is cited as the director of “Honey Don’t!” simply because he’s the one in the DGA.
Coen is, of course, half of another twosome with his brother Joel that also enjoys defying labels. Their filmography zigzags between thrillers and comedies, lean exercises and awards heavyweights, never making the same movie twice. It’s as though their guiding compass is to stay ahead of audience expectations. The pair has been on a creative break since 2018’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and it’s been tempting to use their separate projects as an opportunity to examine who each sibling is as an individual. If you watched Joel Coen’s black-and-white “The Tragedy of Macbeth” in a double feature with “Honey Don’t!” you’d leave convinced that the elder Joel was the stylist and the younger Ethan the wit — that Joel wears a monocle and Ethan a grease-painted John Waters mustache.
But they might just be tricking us again. It’s just as valid to say the brains behind those two movies are William Shakespeare and Tricia Cooke, especially the latter as she seems to have had the stronger hand in shaping the two sexy Qualley capers we’ve seen thus far. (The third already has a title: “Go Beavers.”)
As sloppy as it is, there’s no denying that “Honey Don’t!” works as a noir with a pleasant, peppery flavor. Yet, there’s a snap missing in its rhythm, a sense that it doesn’t know when and how its gags should hit. When a playboy (Christian Antidormi) swaggers up to a bar and orders a shot of cinnamon schnapps, the line clangs like it landed better on the page. A few scenes later, a low-level drug dealer goes home to his Bolivian grandmother (Gloria Sandoval) who is such a caricature — bowler hat, lap full of dried chili peppers — that you suspect the character was designed to get more of a laugh. I did giggle when Honey visited her sister, a worn-out hausfrau named Heidi (Kristen Connolly), and kids kept popping out of the corners of her home one after another like rabbits from a hat.
The majority of the townsfolk that Honey encounters are such incurious mouth-breathers that the humor can feel hostile. The film’s worldview is that most people are, as Coen describes himself, straight and stupid. That’s worked out well enough for him. He’s won four Oscars and, more importantly, the ability to do whatever he darned well pleases.
‘Honey Don’t!’
Rated: R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, some strong violence, and language
Our last issue of the 2025 cycle is now out in the world, which means it’s time for this editor to switch from binge-watching TV at home to seeing movies in one of L.A.’s many frigid screening rooms. (Not a bad way to get through the dog days of summer, honestly.)
But before I return you to the newsletter’s regularly scheduled programming, here’s a look at some highlights from our Aug. 19 issue. Catch you in November when we open the first Envelope of Oscar season!
Digital cover story: Michelle Williams
(JSquared Photography / For the Times)
As heavy as its subject matter may be, “Dying for Sex” is the only series this season that actually left me doubled over in laughter.
My reaction stemmed from a moment early on in FX’s limited series where Molly, the kinky cancer patient at the core of the story, stumbles into a ransomware trap online. As played with slapstick brilliance by Michelle Williams, she leaps out of her laptop camera’s sight line as though it had metamorphosed into a dangerous animal — a scenario that only gets funnier when she’s joined on the floor by her friend and caretaker, Nikki (Jenny Slate).
As Williams, Emmy-nominated for lead actress in a limited series or TV movie, tells contributor Lorena O’Neil in this week’s digital cover story, those who suggest she’s only interested in serious fare are mistaken. “Dying” in particular required a sense of humor, Williams reveals: “My best friend recently lost another of her best friends to cancer, and she would tell me about the conversations they would have cheek to cheek lying in a hospital bed and how in those moments they found the thing to point at and laugh about, so [the series] felt very true to me.”
TV’s watercooler woman
Carrie Coon in “The White Lotus.”
(HBO)
Anytime I’ve seen complaints on social media about this summer’s “TV tumbleweeds,” I have thought to myself: “They must not be watching ‘The Gilded Age.’”
HBO’s delicious portrait of conniving old- and new-money New Yorkers in the late 19th century has ripened over three seasons into a reliably entertaining (if politically suspect) melodrama, thanks in no small part to Carrie Coon’s unabashedly ambitious society wife, Bertha Russell. Her cunning machinations, which this season included foisting a British duke on her reluctant daughter, have helped turn the series into a hit. Which also makes Coon responsible for not one but two watercooler successes in 2025 alone.
In her recent interview with contributor Gregory Ellwood, the (too modest) actor credits “White Lotus” co-stars Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb for her character’s final-episode monologue becoming a viral sensation this spring. (It also likely clinched her Emmy nomination for supporting actress in a drama.) But having followed Coon since Season 1, Episode 6, of “The Leftovers,” I’m comfortable saying she probably played some part in earning those big moments. You don’t capture buzz on two shows in a row by pure chance.
Words to live by
Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma in “Andor.”
(Lucasfilm Ltd.)
The stirring speech Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) delivers to the Galactic Senate in “Andor” isn’t just the culmination of the series’ long-gestating political plotline, the moment at which the senator throws in her lot once and for all with the Rebellion — at grave risk to her life.
It is also, thanks to the careful work of Emmy-nominated writer Dan Gilroy, a memorable piece of oration in its own right, drawing on real-life examples such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi to give a major turning point in the “Star Wars” universe genuine historical weight.
Gilroy joined me via Zoom recently to annotate the speech, from its unassuming opening line to its pointed use of the word “genocide.”
BAD Bunny fans were left gobsmacked after spotting an A-List movie star at the singer’s latest gig.
Fellow concert-goers at the vocalist’s home-town gig in Puerto Rico did a double take after the Mad Men alum was seen in the crowd.
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An A List movie star has been spotted at singer Bad Bunny’s residency in Puerto RicoCredit: AFP
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They donned a white bucket hat and trainers as they attended the gigCredit: TikTok/@ariannagdavis
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Jon Hamm was seen boogying around in scenes which left fans shockedCredit: TikTok/@ariannagdavis
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Bad Bunny was performing at the Jose Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San JuanCredit: TikTok/@ariannagdavis
Golden Globe award winner Jon Hamm donned a white and blue patterned shirt paired with a white bucket hat and trainers for the lengthy show at the Jose Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan.
Part of his No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí residency, Bad Bunny‘s VIP guest was seen boogying with a glass of drink in hand.
The Baby Driver actor, 54, then busted out a series of energetic dance moves, throwing his right arm in the air, as he embraced the tunes.
His appearance was captured on TikTok where one user confessed: “Seeing Jon Hamm vibing out at the Bad Bunny concert in Puerto Rico was not on my 2025 bingo card.”
They added: “A whole vibe” before hailing him “an icon.”
Another TikTok user confessed: “I can’t stop watching this video.”
One put: “He’s living his best life” as a fan added: “This man is everything I expected him to be.”
A fan then surmised: “Just another reason to love him.”
SUPER FAN
Jon has previously gushed over the Monaco hitmaker and his talents – and spoken publicly about his plans to head to the gigs.
The Morning Show’s Victoria Tate reveals filming secrets for upcoming fourth season including if Jon Hamm is returning
The Morning Show star told Today ahead of the August show: “We’re hoping to go to Puerto Rico.
“I’m excited because he’s doing this residency where he’s doing a month and a half of shows in Puerto Rico.
“First of all, I think it’s really cool that he’s going back to his home, to really give back to the fans.
“He’s reserving the first four, five or 10 shows, or whatever it is, for only residents of Puerto Rico, which is so cool.”
Meanwhile, on a previous Saturday Night Live episode, he added of the chart star: “He’s a really nice guy.
“And he’s funny. And he’s fun and his music is awesome.
“You can’t listen to his music and not smile. I just love his story.
“He’s a really nice guy. He’s funny.”
He then told how the music icon had given him the nickame Jon Jamón which is the Spanish translation of his name.
Meanwhile, Jon isn’t Bad Bunny’s sole famous fan.
Recently, he sparked a bromance with LeBron James as they headed to a party after another of his home town gigs.
At the time, a source told the US Sun of Bad Bunny’s aims for the shows and said: “It’s an elaborate thing where he is making the tickets available at a low price, you have to prove you’re a fan and a Puerto Rican resident, like people have to get the tickets at the supermarket he worked at when he was a kid.”
They added: “LeBron was at the concert, there were a bunch of videos of them together, but before that, they had hung out and played golf together all day.”
The insider added that the NBA star is still a newbie at golfing and has been enjoying the sport lately.
They added: “After all that they partied their a**es off at the St Regis property nearby with a lot of beautiful women.”
“They have this fun new bromance energy going on.”
BUNNY CAREER
Bad Bunny has collaborated with artists including J Balvin, Ozuna, Farruko, El Alfa, Arcángel, and Daddy Yankee.
He’s also made guest appearances on songs by Drake, Dua Lipa, Cardi B, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, and Will Smith.
He rose to fame almost immediately after he released “Soy Peor” (“I’m Worse”) in 2016.
While speaking to Rolling Stone, the musician described himself as being a wallflower, though he developed a reputation at school for coming up with creative raps.
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Jon was hailed as ‘living his best life’ at the event after being captured on TikTokCredit: TikTok/@ariannagdavis
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JON has previously spoken of his appreciation for the chart starCredit: AFP
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He played Don Draper in Mad MenCredit: Lionsgate
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He is on stage for his No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí residencyCredit: AFP
Movies from India’s prolific film industry have found success on the world stage before.
“RRR,” an over-the-top Telugu-language action film, energized audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere a few years ago, even scoring a history-making Oscar for its original song “Naatu Naatu.” Hindi screenings have long drawn crowds to American multiplexes.
But the filmmakers behind “Ramayana” — an upcoming two-part epic based on one of the most important ancient texts in Hinduism — have something more ambitious in mind.
The massive productions — each estimated to cost $200 million to $250 million — are aimed not merely at an Indian audience, nor are they meant to appeal primarily to Hindus, who number an estimated 1.2 billion globally, according to Pew Research Center.
Rather, the goal is to turn “Ramayana,” with its grand-scale adventure story and high-tech computer-generated effects, into a full-blown international blockbuster, filmed specifically for Imax’s giant screens in what is intended to be the largest-ever rollout for an Indian film, according to its backers.
Executive Namit Malhotra — who is financing and producing the project through his firm Prime Focus — set the bar high in a recent interview with The Times, comparing his film to the likes of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” and the movies of Christopher Nolan.
While Hollywood studio bosses talk about reaching all four demographic “quadrants” (men and women, young and old) with their tentpole movies, Malhotra wants to draw two additional categories: believer and nonbeliever. For such a so-called six-quadrant movie to work, to use Malhotra’s terminology, it would have to succeed in the U.S.
“In my mind, if people in the West don’t like it, I consider that as a failure,” Malhotra told The Times recently. “It is meant for the world. So if you don’t like it, shame on me. We should have done a better job.”
Poster art for the upcoming film ‘Ramayana.’
(DNEG)
It’s a major gamble for Malhotra, who founded Prime Focus in Mumbai in 1997. The firm expanded significantly when it acquired British effects house Double Negative, and rebranded as DNEG. Malhotra owns nearly 68% of the parent company, Prime Focus Ltd.
He’s going to great lengths to make sure his big bet pays off. DNEG, headquartered in London with offices in India, Los Angeles and elsewhere, is handling the visuals. The firm has produced special effects for global studio features for years, creating Oscar-winning work for such movies as Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” and Nolan’s “Tenet.”
“Ramayana” is directed by Nitesh Tiwari, the man behind 2016’s “Dangal,” the highest-grossing Bollywood film ever, including huge sales in China. Hans Zimmer and prolific Indian musician-composer A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”) are collaborating on the score, while the visual effects and production design team includes veterans from “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Avengers: Endgame” and the “Lord of the Rings” franchise.
The success of “RRR,” which told the story of two Indian legends with larger-than-life abilities fighting British imperialism, is one reason Malhotra is confident that “Ramayana” might connect with Westerners more familiar with the Bible and “The Odyssey” (the subject of a much-hyped 2026 Nolan film) than with Hindu mythology. U.S. cinephiles have in the past embraced mythical Asia-set films such as Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Life of Pi.”
So why not “Ramayana?”
After all, family, good vs. evil and personal striving are all key themes that transcend national borders.
“Emotions are universal,” said Tiwari in a video call. “If the audience connects with you emotionally, I think they will connect with the whole story. Emotions have powers to travel across boundaries.”
Filmed entirely on soundstages, the first part of “Ramayana” is scheduled to hit theaters next year, with a significant push from Imax. “Part 2,” currently in production, is planned for 2027. Each part is timed for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. The films do not yet have a U.S. distributor.
This comes as Imax has beefed up its clout as what is increasingly seen as a linchpin component for the release of big-screen movies, not just for Hollywood spectacles but also, lately, for local language films. Imax showcased just a handful of Indian movies on its screens in 2019, according to Chief Executive Richard Gelfond. Last year, the company played 15.
So far this year, international films made in their local language have accounted for more than 30% of Imax’s total global box office revenue, Gelfond said. Much of that tally came from “Ne Zha 2,” a Chinese-produced animated film that grossed roughly $2 billion worldwide, mostly from its home country.
As such, Gelfond has high hopes for “Ramayana.” “Judging from what we’ve seen, this has all the elements to be a global success,” Gelfond said.
At its core, “Ramayana,” based on the epic poem from thousands of years ago, tells the story of Hindu deity Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and his quest to rescue his love Sita from the demon king Ravana.
A three-minute teaser trailer introduced the concept, emphasizing the big names attached (including actors Ranbir Kapoor as Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana), displaying some “Game of Thrones” opening credits-style visuals and conveying the tale’s historical importance. “Our truth. Our history,” reads the onscreen text. The video has 9.4 million views on YouTube.
“Ramayana” is a quintessentially Indian story. It has been adapted for stage and screen before, perhaps most notably as a series for Indian TV in the late 1980s.
For the new version, Malhotra wants to eliminate any language barriers. DNEG is using syncing technology from its Brahma AI unit to seamlessly present the film in local languages for international audiences. In the U.S., for example, the movie will screen in English.
“It’s a global film from the day we start,” he said. “I’m not trying to make it to appease Indian people in India. … If you go and watch ‘Ramayana’ and your family watches it, and people in India watch it, what’s the difference? It should speak to you like any other film.”
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Stuff we wrote
Number of the week
Airing election misinformation continues to be expensive for cable news networks.
Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election that aired on the right-wing news channel.
The network announced the settlement with the voting equipment maker Monday but did not apologize for its reporting.
Fox News settled a similar case with Dominion in 2023 for $787.5 million after it aired incorrect election claims. Newsmax is much smaller than Fox, which continues to battle a lawsuit from another voting machine company, Smartmatic.
Streaming is getting closer to another major milestone. According to Nielsen’s the Gauge report, streaming services accounted for 47.3% of U.S. TV usage in July, compared with 22% for cable and 18.4% for broadcast. That’s what happens when there’s new “Squid Game” on Netflix and there’s not much on regular TV.
Finally …
Listen: No Joy, “Bugland.” Excellent ’90s-style rock.
Marvel fans say this blockbuster was their best movie of 2025 and you’ll soon be able to stream it at no extra cost
Disney+ will soon be streaming one of the best comic book movies of the year at no extra charge.
The film is currently available to rent or buy at home, though you’ll still have to pay up to £13.99 on platforms such as Apple TV, Prime Video and Sky Store.
Thankfully, there’s not long to wait until Disney+ users will be able to stream the film whenever they want without paying anything on top of their monthly subscription.
Comic book fans have called it one of Marvel Studios’ best blockbusters in years – and, no, it’s not the recently released The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Instead, we’re talking about Thunderbolts*, which is set to debut exclusively on Disney+ on Wednesday, 27th August.
Starring Florence Pugh, David Harbour and Sebastian Stan, the film follows an unlikely team of heroes and villains from across the Marvel universe who reluctantly team up to protect the Earth from a dangerous and unpredictable new threat.
Superhero fans have called Thunderbolts* Marvel’s best movie in years(Image: MARVEL STUDIOS)
Pugh returns as Yelena Belova, the new Black Widow, an elite mercenary who is struggling to find her place in the world when the enigmatic Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) entrusts her with an important but suspicious new mission.
Following a period of disappointment for the superhero franchise, both box office and critical, Marvel fans were pleasantly surprised when Thunderbolts* burst onto the big screen back in April.
One five-star Google review described the film as an “absolute gem of the superhero genre”.
“If you’re looking for a fresh, high-octane adventure with a unique twist, Thunderbolts is exactly what you’ve been waiting for,” they went on to promise.
“This story is a masterclass in reimagining the traditional superhero team-up, featuring a lineup of antiheroes, former villains, and morally ambiguous characters who are forced to work together for a common cause.”
Someone else gushed: “Thunderbolts* was an incredible surprise. This movie fixes so many of the problems that recent MCU projects have suffered from.
“It actually feels like one director was in charge of this, not a committee of executives. The humor also feels natural, not forced.
Florence Pugh shines as Marvel’s new Black Widow Yelena Belova(Image: MARVEL STUDIOS)
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“Which makes everything better. It doesn’t feel like this movie was reworked and reshot a thousand times. The characters are also great. Every actor is doing their absolute best and their chemistry is great.”
Another die-hard fan raved on X: “Had the time of my life with #thunderbolts! One of the best mcu projects in recent years.
“The movie does an outstanding job of exploring its themes surrounding mental health. I absolutely love [the] team and their dynamic, I cared so much about all of them. Easy 10/10.”
And a final viewer admitted: “Shocked how good THUNDERBOLTS* is. Putting emphasis on the character work and practical action makes this feel like the old Marvel that had us for a decade plus.
“Wish we’d gotten this sooner. Helps that this dysfunctional team has chemistry too.”
Will you be checking out Thunderbolts* for the first time or giving the film a much-deserved rewatch next week?
Thunderbolts* will be available to stream on Disney+ from Wednesday, 27th August.
What’s the one thing from your childhood that your mom threw away that haunts you to this day?
Ben Stiller has one, a souvenir from what today would be called a riot but back in the 1970s registered as perfectly normal behavior.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope newsletter and the guy still holding out hope that those baseball cards are going to turn up in a box someday.
In this week’s newsletter, let’s look at what our Envelope cover star Ben Stiller misses.
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Cover story: Ben Stiller has no time to waste
(Shayan Asgharnia / For The Times)
For this week’s cover story, Stiller and I talked a lot about his love for the New York Knicks, a passion kindled early and one that became an “addiction” this year as the team tried to win its first NBA championship since 1973. His dad, Jerry Stiller, took him to lot of games as a kid. Two of Jerry’s friends, Stanley Asofsky and Carnegie Deli co-owner Fred Klein, had season tickets, and they knew all the players and refs and would introduce them to Ben.
Jerry also took his son to baseball games, both the Yankees and the Mets. The Yankees were Ben’s favorite — though his commitment to them was nowhere near his love for the Knicks — and when they won the American League championship series in 1978, Stiller ran out onto the field with his friend Jonathan Harris, as one did in New York. (Or, really, anywhere else … but especially New York.) He even scooped up a chunk of the right-field turf and took it home with him on the D train.
“I had it in my room for two years,” Stiller says.
“And then,” I guessed, “your mom threw it away.”
“My mom threw it away,” Stiller affirms. To be fair to Anne Meara, the sod was old and crumbling and probably had bugs in it. And yet …
“It was a prized possession,” Stiller says. “I had it on a piece of tinfoil on a shelf. Maybe if I had been really lucky and had picked up a base, my mom wouldn’t have made me get rid of that.”
Stiller told me he wouldn’t be directing any episodes of “Severance’s” upcoming third season to free him up to make a feature film, a World War II survival story about a downed airman in occupied France who becomes involved with the French Resistance. Stiller has spent most of this year helping prep the third season and wants to be clear that the show is “a real priority.” But after a long break, he’s ready to return to feature filmmaking.
“Severance” star Adam Scott understands, though he finds it hard to imagine the set without Stiller. Scott remembers exactly what he told Stiller when they were shooting the jaw-dropping, mood-shifting Season 2 finale.
“I was just like, ‘Dude, this is our ‘Temple of Doom,’” Scott told me, referencing the second “Indiana Jones” movie. “And I was in absolute paradise the entire time, not just because ‘Temple of Doom’ is my favorite movie, but because we were getting to do it all. There’s the marching band. There’s a fight scene. There’s the running in the hall. We had the big scene where Mark talks to Outie.”
“And when we finished it, we were all so tired,” Scott continues. “But I could see how happy Ben was. It was such a showcase for him.”
And now, he’ll be returning to making movies — the one thing as a kid he always wanted to do.
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Madigan’s diabolical turn deserves a champion
Julia Garner and Josh Brolin in “Weapons.”
(Quantrell Colbert / Warner Bros. Pictures)
I’m going to tread lightly when it comes to spoilers for Zach Cregger’s horror movie “Weapons,” currently the No. 1 movie at the box office.
But I’m also of the mind that you should see “Weapons” knowing as little as possible about it. So anything I write could be considered a spoiler, though I should also note that I’m someone who never watches movie trailers and will go so far as to close my eyes and cover my ears in a theater to avoid them. Sometimes I think the only reason I’m still writing about movies is that the job allows me to see films in advance and not have them ruined. I love flying blind.
You probably know that “Weapons” follows what happens in an American town after 17 children disappear one night, all of them simultaneously running out the front doors of their homes, arms outstretched, at precisely 2:17 a.m. Cregger unravels the mystery from multiple, often overlapping points of view, calling to mind Paul Thomas Anderson’s audacious epic “Magnolia,” right down to the presence of a clumsy, mustachioed cop.
Well into the movie, we meet Madigan’s Aunt Gladys in a principal’s office at the school that the missing kids attended. All of the children were in the same class. Gladys says she is the aunt of the one child from the class who didn’t run off into night. There’s some understandable curiosity and concern over this boy, Alex (Cary Christopher, another standout in a very good year for child actors), and Gladys is here to reassure everyone that Alex — and his parents — are doing just fine.
Gladys is perhaps not the most reliable messenger. She is wearing a bright-red wig and multiple layers of makeup, a presentation that suggests she has spent a lifetime watching Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” Something is off, and, hoo boy, are we about to find out what that something is.
Madigan is excellent, disarming and adept at concealing, to a point, the hidden core of good ol’ Aunt Gladys. Again, I’m treading lightly. If you’ve seen it, as I’m sure many of you have, you know just how delightfully insane her work in the movie is.
Critics groups love to reward the delightfully insane. They also love to champion genres, like horror, that tend to be marginalized at the Oscars.
So I’d expect some group — perhaps New York, maybe L.A. — could be eager to plant a flag for Madigan as a much-deserved, out-of-the-box supporting actress choice. She’s 74, has enjoyed a fine career on stage and screen and, along with her husband, Ed Harris, made a principled stand (or sit) at the 1999 Academy Awards, refusing to applaud when Elia Kazan took the stage to receive an honorary Oscar.
It’s easy to get swept up in the success of “Weapons” and the countless stories sifting through its ending and themes. Once the film leaves theaters and the fall festival awards contenders start dropping, Madigan will need a champion or two to put her back into the conversation.
History might be on her side, though: Davis earned a lead actress Oscar nomination for “Baby Jane.” And Ruth Gordon won the supporting actress Oscar for “Rosemary’s Baby” for the same kind of deliciously diabolical turn that Madigan gives in “Weapons.”
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This week, The Times published a series of articles looking at possible different futures for Los Angeles. Greg Braxton wrote two pieces, including one about Hollywood’s long-standing fascination with depicting the destruction of the city, including “Escape From L.A.” to “Blade Runner,” “This Is the End” and many more.
Anthony Edwards in the movie “Miracle Mile.”
(Hemdale Film Corp.)
Braxton noted, “In ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself,’ [Thom Andersen’s] 2003 documentary chronicling the portrayal of the city through cinema history, Andersen aims his own wrecking ball. The film’s narrator quotes the late Mike Davis, a noted historian and urbanist, when he says that Hollywood ‘takes a special pleasure in destroying Los Angeles — a guilty pleasure shared by most of its audience.’”
He also specifically examined “Miracle Mile,” Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 apocalyptic romantic adventure drama featuring the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard from La Brea to Fairfax.
Robert Altman’s centennial
Director Robert Altman speaks at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977.
(Levy / Associated Press)
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is in the midst of “Robert Altman’s America: A Centennial Review,” a look at the monumental filmmaker’s wildly unpredictable body of work to mark 100 years since his birth. The designated home of Altman’s personal print collection, the archive will show many of the films in 35mm.
Writing when Altman was to receive an honorary Oscar (an occasion that turned out to be just a few months before his death in 2006), Peter Rainer called him “perhaps the most American of directors. But his Americanness is of a special sort and doesn’t really connect up to any tradition except his own.”
Comparing Altman to such filmmakers as John Ford, John Huston, Frank Capra, Sam Peckinpah, Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges, Rainer added, “Altman, who has ranged as widely as any of these directors across the American panorama, is a more mysterious and allusive artist. He is renowned for the buzzing expansiveness of his stories, the crisscrossed plots and people, but what strikes home most of all in this sprawl is a terrible sense of aloneness. … If being an American means being rooted to the land, to a tradition, a community, then it also means being forever in fear of dispossession. Altman understands this better than any other filmmaker. It’s what gives even his rowdiest comic escapades their bite of woe.”
The series began last week with “Nashville,” a movie that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and which this column has recently discussed. This Saturday there will be a fantastic double-bill of 1977’s “3 Women” starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek with 1982’s “Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” starring Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Cher.
Shelley Duvall in Robert Altman’s “3 Women.”
(20th Century Fox Film Corp. / Photofest)
Other pairings include “M*A*S*H” and “Brewster McCloud,” “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split,” “Thieves Like Us” and “Kansas City,” plus “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Popeye.” The series concludes with separate screenings of “The Player” and “Short Cuts,” which reestablished Altman’s vitality in the 1990s.
As Times critic Charles Champlin once wrote, “When Altman’s movies are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are infuriating because there is something so arrogantly self-destructive about them.”
In a 2000 interview with Susan King for a retrospective at LACMA that included a 25th anniversary screening of “Nashville,” the often-irascible Altman had this to say about his career.
“There isn’t any filmmaker who ever lived who has had a better shake than I did,” he said. “I have never been out of work and the only thing I haven’t made are these big, popular films. I have never wanted to and I never will. I would fail at it. I would be late for work.”
‘Close Encounters’ in 70mm
Melinda Dillon and Cary Guffey in the 1977 movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
(Columbia Pictures)
The American Cinematheque is premiering a newly-created 70mm print of the director’s cut of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The film will play at the Egyptian on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then at the Aero on Aug. 29 and Aug. 31.
“Close Encounters” was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Spielberg’s first for directing. It won for Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography as well as a special achievement award for its special effects.
The story, of course, revolves around a series of sightings of UFOs around the world that leads to a spacecraft being studied in Wyoming and interactions with extraterrestrial beings. The cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and François Truffaut.
In his original review of the film, Charles Champlin wrote, “The special effects conceived by Spielberg and executed by Douglas Trumbull and a staff that seems to number in the hundreds are dazzling and wondrous. That’s not surprising: The surprise is that ‘Close Encounters’ is so well leavened with humor. … ‘Close Encounters’ stays light on its legs, mystical and reverential but not solemn. It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle.”
Points of interest
Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and ‘Vivre sa vie’ in 35mm
Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Vivre sa vie.”
(Janus Films)
Anyone looking to prepare for the upcoming release of Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and a snapshot of Paris at the moment of the French New Wave, might well want to check out Sunday’s 35mm screening of Godard’s 1962 “Vivre sa vie” at the Los Feliz Theatre.
Starring Anna Karina, then in the midst of a tempestuous marriage to Godard, the film features what may be her greatest performance as Nana, an aspiring actress who finds herself drawn into the world of prostitution. The film stretches from the manic joy of her dancing around a pool table to the quiet devastation of seeing her tear-stained face as she watches a movie. There’s also an utterly heart-wrenching conclusion.
In an appreciation of Karina after her death in 2019 at age 79, Justin Chang wrote, “We often speak admiringly of a performer’s screen presence or charisma. Karina possessed something more: flinty intelligence and deadpan wit, dark feline eyes that could project playfulness and melancholy without her saying a word. She incarnated both a matter-of-fact toughness and an expressive glamour worthy of a silent screen star.”
‘Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues’
Barbara Hershey in 1972’s “Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues.”
(Warner Bros.)
The Aero Theatre will have a rare screening of 1972’s “Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” in 35mm on Sunday afternoon. Director Paul Williams and actors Barbara Hershey and John Lithgow will be on hand for a Q&A moderated by screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, who recently declared it “the best 1970s movie you’ve never heard of.”
Adapted from a novel by brothers Michael Crichton and Douglas Crichton (credited as “Michael Douglas”), the story involves a Harvard student (Robert F. Lyons) who takes a job from his best friend (Lithgow, in his film debut) delivering marijuana across the country. Along the way he meets a woman (Hershey) and after she gets busted by a corrupt cop (Charles Durning), he tries to set things straight.
‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’ and ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’
Lisa Kudrow, left, and Mira Sorvino in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.”
(Mark Fellman / Touchstone Pictures)
On Saturday and Sunday, the New Beverly Cinema will have a double-bill of two comedies from 1997: David Mirkin’s “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” and George Armitage’s “Grosse Pointe Blank.”
With a screenplay by Robin Schiff adapting her own play, “Romy and Michele” is about two friends (Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino) who concoct a plan to impress everyone at their 10-year high school reunion by lying about how successful they are. The film also features clothes by “Clueless” costume designer Mona May.
In his original review, Jack Matthews wrote, “The dead-pan performances of Sorvino and Kudrow, who played Michelle in the original play, are perfect. Romy and Michelle are cartoon characters, but the actresses make them both real and enormously sympathetic. … Beneath the endless silliness of the movie beats a real heart, and its theme of loyal friendship keeps propping it up every time the thin walls of the story seem about to collapse. Though ‘Romy and Michelle’ doing Tucson doesn’t take us much further than Beavis and Butt-head doing America, the ride, and the company, are a lot more fun.”
John Cusack stars as Martin in 1997’s “Grosse Pointe Blank.”
(Melinda Sue Gordon / Hollywood Pictures)
From a screenplay by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and star John Cusack, “Grosse Pointe Blank” features Cusack as a succeful hit man attempting to attend his 10-year high school reunion and rewin the heart of an old girlfriend (Minnie Driver). That is, until a cadre of competing assassins and federal agents all show up as well.
In his original review, Kenneth Turan drew comparisons to Armitage’s earlier caper comedy “Miami Blues,” writing, “A wild at heart, anarchic comedy that believes in living dangerously … Clever enough to make jokes about Greco-Roman wrestling and make them funny, ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’s’ greatest success is the way it maintains its comic attitude. Working with a smart script and actors who get the joke, director Armitage pulls off a number of wacky action set pieces. Even if you think you’ve heard actors say, ‘I love you, we can make this relationship work,’ in every conceivable situation, this film has a few surprises in store.”
In other news
U.S. premiere of ‘Onda Nova’ in 4K
An image from 1983’s “Onda Nova,” being released in the U.S. for the first time.
(Spamflix)
Also on Sunday, Mezzanine will have the U.S. premiere of a 4K restoration of the 1983 Brazilian film “Onda Nova,” which translates as “New Wave.” Directed by Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia, the film was withheld by the Brazilian dictatorship and only released there after a lengthy legal battle. It is thought to have never before screened in the U.S.
Women’s soccer was banned in Brazil until 1979, and women were only allowed to start teams in 1983, the year “Onda Nova” was produced. The film brings a defiantly queer and anarchically rebellious attitude to the story of a group of women on a newly formed soccer team and features special appearances by figures involved in Brazil’s struggle for freedom, including musician Caetano Veloso, journalist Osmar Santos and well-known male athletes Casagrande and Wladimir.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
Greg Braxton did an interview with the ever-quotable Spike Lee this week. Lee’s newest film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” starring Denzel Washington, is in theaters next week and begins streaming on Apple TV+ on Sept. 5. Lee will make an appearance at the Egyptian Theatre next Thursday for a Q&A after a screening of the film.
The film is adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” in which a wealthy businessman believes his son is kidnapped and must scramble to put together the ransom money. When his son is found, it turns out that actually it is the son of his driver who has been abducted. The criminals still want their ransom, creating a moral dilemma for the businessman.
Lee likens the relationship between “High and Low” and “Highest 2 Lowest” to that between the renditions of the song “My Favorite Things” as done by Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” and performed by saxophone great John Coltrane.
“It’s a reinterpretation,” he says. “There’s a history of jazz musicians doing reinterpretations of standards. We’re jazz musicians in front of and behind the camera.”
Spike Lee, photographed in New York in July.
(Victoria Will / For The Times)
Likewise, audiences will bring their own feelings to how they would respond to the ethical dilemma at the center of the film.
“That is what makes the whole scenario great,” Lee continues. “Everyone would answer that situation differently. [Toshiro] Mifune laid down the foundation. He handed the baton to Denzel and Denzel took it, and did not miss a motherf—ing stride. You know like those brothers in the Olympics? We don’t drop the baton.”
The new film marks the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington, a collaboration that also includes “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Malcolm X,” “He Got Game” and “Inside Man.” Lee hopes it won’t be the last. Even at 68, the director maintains an enthusiasm and focus for his work and the future.
“I’m just getting started,” he says. “As an individual and an artist, when you’re doing what you love, you win. I don’t see the finish line, the tape.”
“Highest 2 Lowest” also features a performance by Latin jazz great Eddie Palmieri, who died this week at age 88.
‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’ turns 40
The late Paul Reubens, in his most famous role as Pee-wee Herman, on the big screen at the TCL Chinese Theatre for a special screening of 1985’s “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” at 2023’s AFI Fest.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
On Saturday the Academy Museum will present a 40th anniversary screening of Tim Burton’s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” which finds Paul Reubens’ signature character on an epic quest to recover his beloved bicycle. As part of the evening’s program, the actual prop bicycle will be presented to the museum on behalf of Reubens’ estate.
The debut feature of director Tim Burton — who has recently found new success with the series “Wednesday” — “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” is an endlessly surprising and delightful film, one in which absolutely anything seems possible.
In his original review of the film, Michael Wilmington drew comparisons to Peter Lorre and Soupy Sales in attempting to describe the particular appeal of Reubens’ petulant, perennially childlike character.
“That’s what makes the character work: this sense of absolute, crazed conviction. And it makes the movie work as well — for its own audience,” Wilmington said. “Be forewarned: This film is not for anyone whose taste in humor runs only to silky Oscar Wildean epigrams or naturalistic comedies of the ‘Tootsie’ school. The wrong crowd will find these antics infantile and offensive. The right one will have a howling good time.”
Paul Reubens in the HBO documentary “Pee-wee as Himself.”
(Dennis Keeley / HBO)
The recent documentary “Pee-wee as Himself,” Matt Wolf’s startlingly intimate documentary on Reubens, includes recordings made just a few days before his 2023 death and is currently nominated for five Emmy awards.
The film explores Reubens’ life and how the explosive popularity of the Pee-wee character came to overwhelm him.
“We’re all entitled to our inner lives,” Wolf said in an interview for the paper with Dave Itzkoff. “Artists, particularly, are many different people inside. Paul was no exception, except the way he went about that was more extreme than perhaps you or I.”
‘Children of Men’ in 35mm
Clive Owen in the movie “Children of Men.”
(Jaap Buitendijk / Universal Pictures)
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 “Children of Men,” will screen at the Academy Museum in 35mm on Wednesday. (Frankly, the movie does not play out nearly often enough.) As part of the museum’s ongoing Branch Selects program, “Children of Men” was selected by the cinematographers branch in recognition of the work by Emmanuel Lubezki, whose work here is staggering for how often it hides the difficulty of what is being accomplished, creating a sense of naturalism amid complicated technical achievements.
Set in 2027 Britain, the film presents a frightening scenario in which no child has been born on Earth for 18 years. Theo (Clive Owen) is a former activist-turned-disillusioned bureaucrat resigned to a staid hopelessness. An encounter with his former lover Julian (Julianne Moore), who has become even more of a militant, leads him to shepherding a young woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to safety. She is well along in a secret pregnancy that could literally save the world.
In reviewing the film, Kenneth Turan wrote, “The best science fiction talks about the future to talk about the now, and ‘Children of Men’ very much belongs in that class. Made with palpable energy, intensity and excitement, it compellingly creates a world gone mad that is uncomfortably close to the one we live in. It is a ‘Blade Runner’ for the 21st century, a worthy successor to that epic of dystopian decay. … This is a world of rubble, fear and hopelessness whose connections to our own are never forced; Cuarón is such a fluid director with such a powerful imagination, they don’t have to be. This could well be our future, and we know it.”
Kevin Crust wrote a piece spotlighting the use of sound and music in the film, noting, “After a provocative ending that keeps audiences in their seats for the credits, ‘Children of Men’ continues to reward aurally, finishing strongly with two politically pointed songs. Leaving us with Lennon singing the anti-nationalist rant ‘Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)’ and Jarvis Cocker declaiming global society’s ills with an unprintable refrain in ‘Running the World,’ Cuarón emphasizes the timelessness of this future-set film and stamps it with a humanistic double exclamation point.”
Points of interest
‘The Heartbreak Kid’ is back again
An image from 1972’s “The Heartbreak Kid,” starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd.
(LMPC via Getty Images)
We have mentioned Elaine May’s 1972 “The Heartbreak Kid” in these parts before, but any time it screens is worth mentioning. The Eastwood Performing Arts Center will be screening the film Friday and Saturday from the 2K scan of a 16mm print overseen by film historian and programmer Elizabeth Purchell. (I spoke to Purchell about creating the scan last year.) Cybill Shepherd, one of the film’s stars, will be there to introduce the Friday night show.
Long notoriously difficult to see because of rights issues, the film is back in regular rep-house rotation thanks to this new scan — a true treat for local audiences. Seeing the film with a roomful of people laughing along is an experience not to be missed.
Directed by May from a screenplay by Neil Simon, the film stars Charles Grodin as a man who deserts his new bride (Jeannie Berlin) on their honeymoon so he can pursue another woman (Shepherd).
In a review at the time, Charles Champlin wrote, “We are in the presence of a harsh social commentary, revealing again the dark side of Simon’s humor as well as some of Miss May’s own angers (reflected in her first feature ‘A New Leaf’) about the men having it their own way, to everyone’s discomfort.”
‘Bully’ and ‘Another Day in Paradise’
Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Nick Stahl, Rachel Miner and cast in the movie “Bully.”
(Tobin Yelland / Lionsgate)
Though photographer-turned-filmmaker Larry Clark is now largely known for his 1995 debut feature “Kids,” he did go on to make other films. The New Beverly Cinema will spotlight two of his best with 2001’s “Bully” and 1998’s “Another Day in Paradise” as a double bill Monday and Tuesday.
“Bully” is based on the 1993 true story of a group of South Florida teens who murdered someone in their own circle of friends. Graphic, sweaty and sleazy, the film has an emotional and psychological intensity that makes it deeply disturbing. The cast includes Brad Renfro, Nick Stahl, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Minor, Kelli Garner, Michael Pitt, Daniel Franzese and Leo Fitzpatrick.
In a review of the film, Kevin Thomas compares “Bully” to “Over the Edge” and “River’s Edge” for its study of disaffected youth, noting, “Clark presents virtually all the young people in his film as doomed by clueless parents, a boring, arid environment saturated with images of violence and their own limited intelligence. Yet Clark so undeniably cares for these kids, illuminating their out-of-control rage and passions with such clarity, that it’s hard to dismiss him as a mere sexploitation filmmaker.”
Clark’s second feature, “Another Day in Paradise,” is still arguably his most conventional film, something of a post-Tarantino riff on “Drugstore Cowboy” as a young drug-addicted couple (Vincent Kartheiser and Natasha Gregson Wagner) fall under the tutelage of an older drug-addicted couple (James Woods and Melanie Griffith) who introduce them to a life of petty crime.
In a review, Thomas said, “‘Another Day in Paradise’ is as mercurial and reckless in tone as are its junkie characters, and Clark catches all these quicksilver shifts with unstinting perception and even compassion. As contradictory as it is energetic, the film takes as many risks as its people do and as a result strikes a highly contemporary nerve.”
A riveting and shockingly candid feature by Richard Natale chronicled the behind-the-scenes struggles between Clark, actor Woods (also a producer) and co-producer and co-writer Stephen Chin over final cut of the movie. Things reached a head on the evening of the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, leading to this most unusual quote from Chin: “The Larry Clark that punched me out in Venice is not the Larry Clark I know as a friend.”
For his part, Clark, who checked himself into rehab soon after that incident, said the attack came after a day in which he did “about 40 interviews and had about 60 margaritas. I was out of control. I have no defense. My motto is to never plead guilty. But in this case, I plead guilty.”
