movie

OK, I’ll say it. I’m sick of superheroes. I blame the Marvel Cinematic Universe (36 movies and counting over 17 years) and the DC Extended Universe (43 movies and counting, mostly since the late 1970s). Maybe Earth’s not big enough for two universes. They’re running pretty thin these days, down to rebooting reboots, making sequels for prequels and squeezing every ounce from the intellectual property tube to fill out streaming platform minutes.

But there’s always Superman. The Krypton-born alien, orphaned, sent off into space for survival and then raised by adoptive parents in Kansas. He’s now been with American pop culture for 10 decades (eight in film). Despite an outfit modeled after a circus strongman, he’s become a durable, transcendent symbol of the ultimate immigrant and somehow a simultaneous embodiment of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”

Superman’s the classic American good guy, and so this weekend’s opening of the new “Superman” with David Corenswet is a great time to think about the real good guys and gals in American life — that is, if you can find any. Where are all the good guys and gals in America? What qualifies someone for the title these days?

The idea has definitely shifted. It’s as if by sheer screen volume the fake superheroes overwhelmed the public consciousness. Superheroes are dialed up so high we can’t hear what real heroes sound like anymore. A 2008 poll in Britain found almost a quarter thought Winston Churchill was fake, while a majority of Britons believed Sherlock Holmes was real.

We’ve become confused: We prefer to watch fake heroes on screen rather than expect real ones to emerge in life. And so the fake ones become the only kind of hero we recognize.

The historian Daniel Boorstin described this transition from heroism to fame in his 1961 book “The Image.” He noted that heroes in American history were typically known for great public contribution through immense difficulty and danger. It didn’t matter much what they looked like because their deeds had saved lives and mattered to so many.

But pictures and movies changed everything in the 20th century. Heroes became celebrities. We traded away enduring contributions to the public good in exchange for flimsy, flashy fame that works for a paycheck. Value over values; money over all.

This isn’t hard to see. Look at how college sports has been conquered by contracts and name-image-likeness deals. How law firms kowtowed to an administration making unprecedented demands. How media heavyweights keep bending knees to the same. And let’s not get started with social media “influencers” except to say that doing the right and honest thing has been swept aside by the twin tsunamis of popularity and the Almighty Buck.

Where’s our real truth, our real justice, our real American way?

Not in Congress. The “Big Beautiful Bill” is a perfect example. It might take a Mt. Rushmore makeover to honor the profound contributions to cowardice in the votes surrounding this act. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) couldn’t vote fast enough to add trillions to the national debt despite arguing, less than a year ago, that Congress is “turning a blind eye to this $35 trillion in debt,” that it’s “unsustainable” and that “we have to get our fiscal house in order, and we have to do this for our children and our grandchildren.”

Or Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), long-time fiscal hawk on the debt, who repeatedly railed against the Big Beautiful Bill’s deficit spending in the final stretch. And then he voted for it.

Or Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), known for saying “we must ignore calls to cut Medicaid” because “slashing health insurance for the working poor” would be “both morally and politically suicidal.” That was in May. But come July, Hawley voted to cut Medicaid.

The final vote came down to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). In a mid-June town hall, she said, “I have made clear very early on that we cannot move forward with a bill that makes cuts to Medicaid.” And yet, despite the fact that nearly 40,000 Alaskans (more than 5% of the state’s population) will likely lose their healthcare coverage as a direct result of the bill, Murkowski caved.

Sarah Longwell, founder and publisher of the Bulwark, spared nothing in her criticism of Murkowski. She wrote that this one action “defines our pathetic political moment,” embodying:

“Selfishness: I’m taking care of me and mine, the rest of you can pound sand;

Lack of accountability: I know the bill is bad, hopefully someone else will fix it;

Cowardice: I’m scared of Trump and his voters and need to go-along to get along with my GOP colleagues;

Moral rot: I know the difference between right and wrong, and actively chose wrong.”

Not exactly Superman. Sounds more like Lex Luthor at his most self-serving and callous.

We don’t need someone faster than a speeding bullet in the House. We don’t need senators leaping tall buildings in a single bound. We don’t need Superman.

But we do need our Clark Kents and Lois Lanes to step up. We do need our real heroes right now. Maybe Crank or Roy or Hawley or Murkowski will see the movie this weekend. Maybe they’ll find some courage for the next vote.

Maybe.

ML Cavanaugh is the author of the forthcoming book “Best Scar Wins: How You Can Be More Than You Were Before.” @MLCavanaugh

This story contains some spoilers for “Superman.”

In James Gunn’s “Superman,” the titular superhero is devastated when he learns that his birth parents sent him to Earth to subjugate humanity.

In theaters now, the film is set a few years into Superman’s caped career. The Kryptonian — who grew up as Clark Kent on a farm in Smallville, Kan. — always believed a message left to him by these birth parents was an encouragement to use his powers to be a protector and hero. He is more than shaken to learn that was never the case.

It’s Clark’s human father, Jonathan, who points out that the message’s intent doesn’t really matter.

“Your choices [and] your actions, that’s what makes you who you are,” he says to his son.

Being an alien refugee might be why Superman has his superpowers, but it’s who he is as a person that makes him a superhero. And although it is mostly left unsaid, Clark’s kindness and values come from how he was raised — by loving parents in America’s heartland.

Despite “Superman” being as all-American as ever, the movie has become the most recent front in America’s never-ending culture war because of comments made by Gunn acknowledging the character is an immigrant.

But Superman is more a story about the triumph of assimilation and opportunity. As the new movie also shows, Superman would not be Superman if he was not raised by Martha and Jonathan Kent on a farm in Kansas. And as much as Superman is undeniably an immigrant, it’s hard to deny in the current political climate that he also resembles the type of immigrants who have traditionally been more embraced in this country.

Since early last month, the Trump administration has aggressively targeted Latino communities across California. Immigration raids have seemingly indiscriminately taken people from their workplace, on their way to court and even in parking lots. Federal officials have pushed back on claims that these operations have targeted people “because of their skin color.” According to federal authorities, more than 2,700 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in L.A. since early June.

This is not the first time the U.S. government has targeted specific communities of color because of their ancestry. During World War II, 120,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated in wartime camps regardless of their citizenship.

Gunn, however, has long maintained that his “Superman” is “a movie about kindness [and] being good.”

The filmmaker, who has been outspoken in his criticism of President Trump, told the London Times that “Superman is the story of America. … An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.” He reiterated that the movie is about “human kindness.”

The backlash was swift, with familiar right-wing commentators and personalities criticizing the film for allegedly being “superwoke” before it was released. Even former Superman actor Dean Cain has spoken out against Gunn’s comments and the perceived politicization of the character’s story.

In response, comic book fans, including Democratic politicians, have pointed out that Superman — an alien born on the planet Krypton, sent to Earth to escape his planet’s destruction — has always been an immigrant.

“The Superman story is an immigration story of an outsider who tries to always do the most good,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) posted Wednesday on X. “His arch nemesis is a billionaire. You don’t get to change who he is because you don’t like his story. Comics are political.”

“Superman was an undocumented immigrant,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office wrote Thursday on X in response to an image of Trump as Superman posted by the White House.

Others on social media have circulated clips from past Superman media, including from Cain’s show “Lois & Clark,” where the character’s immigration status is addressed.

Despite the accusation and backlash, Superman has never been as “woke” as the current debate makes him seem.

Created by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, both children of Jewish immigrants, Superman’s first official appearance was in the first issue of “Action Comics” in the 1930s. With his iconic red and blue caped costume, the character is known as much for his godlike superpowers as he is for being the ultimate good guy with all-American looks and charm.

His adventures have spanned comics, radio, television and film. Besides evil billionaires, Superman has taken on superpowered supervillains, alien invaders and even his clones, as well as human threats like Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, some Superman stories are more political than others.

But Superman has never been radical in his politics. As a Kryptonian raised on Earth by human parents, the character has been shown in stories where he struggles with his own sense of otherness and belonging because he straddles two worlds. But other than rare outliers, his story has never delved deeply into how immigrants or those perceived as other are treated in the U.S. (For that, consider checking out some “X-Men.”)

That’s because Clark Kent’s immigration status or Americanness will never be questioned because of his appearance. That itself could be subversive, but that’s a debate for a different “Superman” movie.

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

The new “Superman” is in theaters this weekend, written and directed by James Gunn and starring David Corenswet in the title role, with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as villain Lex Luthor. This film is seen as the first salvo of a relaunch of the DC Universe of characters for Warner Bros. and so there is more riding on it than just the outcome of this one film. There are several new characters introduced in the film, perhaps intended to topline future titles of their own.

Samantha Masunaga got into the history of the Superman character onscreen and took a look at what this might mean for DC’s future.

“DC has been playing catch-up with Marvel,” said Arlen Schumer, a comic book and pop culture historian. “They’ve given James Gunn the keys to the DC kingdom and said, ‘You’ve got to restore Superman. He’s our greatest icon, but nobody knows what to do with him. We think you know what to do with him.’”

David Corenswet as Superman and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Superman.”

(Warner Bros Entertainment)

The film has an impulsive sincerity that can be endearing. As Amy Nicholson wrote in her review, “Fine, I’ll say it. I need Superman. I’m craving a hero who stands for truth and justice whether he’s rescuing cats or reporting the news. Cheering for such idealism used to feel corny; all the cool, caped crusaders had ethical kinks. Even his recent movies have seemed a little embarrassed by the guy, scuffing him up with cynicism. I’m with the latest incarnation of Superman (David Corenswet) when he tells Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) that having a big heart is ‘the real punk rock.’”

Amy added, “This isn’t quite the heart-soaring ‘Superman’ I wanted. But these adventures wise him up enough that I’m curious to explore where the saga takes him next. Still, I left chewing over how comic book movies can be so popular and prescient, and yet people who’ve grown up rooting against characters like Lex Luthor cheer them on in the real world. Maybe Gunn can answer that in a sequel. Or maybe our stubborn myopia is what this Superman means when he says, ‘I screw up all the time but that is being human.’”

‘Drive’ in 35mm

Ryan Gosling in “Drive.”

(Academy Museum)

On Saturday the Academy Museum will show Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 romantic thriller “Drive” in 35mm. Composer Cliff Martinez will be there in person. The film is showing as part of the series “Bathed in Light: Saturated Colors in Cinema,” which will also see screenings of Michael Mann’s “Thief,” Walter Hill’s “Streets of Fire” in 70mm (with the director in person), Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers,” Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” Pablo Larraín’s “Ema,” Gaspar Noé’s “Enter the Void,” Hype Williams’ “Belly” and more.

A Los Angeles getaway driver, known only as Driver (played with taciturn cool by Ryan Gosling), falls for his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and soon becomes involved in a caper trying to help out her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) that sets him afoul of a local crime boss (Albert Brooks).

“Drive” won the directing prize when it premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and became something of a cultural sensation at the time of its release, thanks in part to the hypnotic use of dreamy synthesizer music. (And remember Gosling’s scorpion jacket?)

In his original review of the film Kenneth Turan wrote, “‘Drive’ is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It’s a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal. … Impeccably shot by Newton Thomas Sigel, ‘Drive’ always looks dressed to kill. Making fine use of Los Angeles locations, particularly the lonely downtown streets around the L.A. River, ‘Drive’ has a slick, highly romanticized pastel look calculated to win friends and influence people.”

Ryan Gosling in “Drive.”

(FilmDistrict and Bold Films and OddLot Entertainment)

In an interview with Steven Zeitchik, Gosling and Refn discussed their collaboration and the long drives they would take together around the city.

“We would just drive for hours, talking and listening to music,” Gosling said. “And I would say, ‘This is what we want to capture in the movie, this feeling of being in a trance in a car with pop music playing.’”

For his part, Refn added, “I wanted to play with the classic notion of a fairy tale. Driver protects purity, and yet he can slay evil in the most vicious ways possible.”

Zeitchik and Julie Makinen also created a guide to some of the film’s Los Angeles locations, including MacArthur Park, the L.A. River and Point Magu.

Heather McAdams’ handmade films

An image from Heather McAdams’ “Scratchman #2.”

(Heather McAdams)

This week will see two programs of work by the Chicago-based artist Heather McAdams, who, though primarily known as a cartoonist, has also been creating idiosyncratic, handmade films for decades. On Thursday at the Academy Museum will be a program titled “Kind of a Drag: Experimental Films, Documentaries and Scratch Animation by Heather McAdams, 1980-1995,” which will explore the range of McAdams’ filmmaking practice. An ongoing preservation project undertaken by the Chicago Film Society has spurred a revival of interest in her work.

“I spent a lot of time trying to make stuff happen,” said McAdams during a call this week from her home in Chicago. “I’ve always just been really doing a lot of different things, just doing stuff here at home and then all of a sudden the Chicago Film Society discovers this person that’s living up on the north side of Chicago. Those guys are really great and they’re very organized and they’ve got connections. I’ve gone to the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art. You sit around all your life and you go, ‘Why doesn’t somebody call me up?’ And then the next thing when they call you up, you go, ‘Why are they calling me up?’”

Among the films to be shown will be 1980’s “The Scratchman” and 1982’s “Scratchman #2,” in which she scratched right onto the surface of found footage to create lively new images. “You” from 1983 uses Brian Eno’s song “King’s Lead Hat” as the background to a collage of footage. Among other titles showing are two documentary shorts, 1988’s “Meet … Bradley Harrison Picklesimer” and 1995’s “The Lester Film” (co-directed by her husband Chris Ligon), both unconventional portrait films. McAdams will be present for the event, joined by Picklesimer for a Q&A.

Filmmaker and artist Heather McAdams with Bradley Harrison Picklesimer, the subject of her 1988 film “Meet … Bradley Harrison Picklesimer” in a photo circa 1982.

(Heather McAdams)

“The couple of things that seem to relate to just about everything I do is working with my limitations, the kind of homemade, work-with-what-you-got type thing,” added McAdams. “I don’t see that necessarily as a complete negative, and that runs through my work. And the other thing is humor, I’m always trying to make myself laugh or make other people laugh, even though everything I do isn’t funny. Sometimes I just get weird and I go sideways and off the tracks or I make a comment about something that might be more spiritual or more important. Sometimes I make something that I go, ‘Oh, God, I wish I didn’t do that.’”

On Wednesday at 2220 Arts + Archives, Mezzanine and Los Angeles Filmforum will host McAdams and Ligon for what is being billed as “Chris & Heather’s Big Screen Blowout,” a screening drawn from their extensive collection of 16mm ephemera. The program will include trailers for films such as “Superchick” and “Trip With the Teacher,” TV performances by Ricky Nelson and Buffalo Springfield and commercials and more. The evening will also include five one-minute animated cartoons McAdams and Ligon made for MTV in the 1990s. The couple will be there for the event as well.

Of the “Blowout,” McAdams said, “It’s fun to just see how the audience reacts as it’s being projected. It’s hard to explain to people exactly what it is, unless they’re super hip and cool.” With a laugh she added, “Like you guys are out in L.A.”

Points of interest

‘Rosa la rose, fille publique’

Marianne Basler, left, in “Rosa la rose, fille publique.”

(AGFA)

On Tuesday, Mezzanine will be putting on 2 shows of the local premiere of a new restoration of Paul Vecchiali’s 1986 “Rosa la rose, fille publique” at Brain Dead Studios.

The film is an intensely emotional melodrama about a Parisian prostitute, Rosa, just turning 20 years old and the most popular among the stable of women run by her pimp, as she grapples with what her future should be. Stylishly shot, the film is marked by a richness of character detail, with a deeply felt performance by Marianne Basler as Rosa, as the world around the Les Halles neighborhood feels particularly vibrant even with its undercurrents of intrigue and violence.

Vecchiali, who died in 2023 and besides directing such films as “The Strangler” and “Encore” also produced Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman,” is among a number of French filmmakers currently undergoing a renewed interest in their work. Luc Moullet will see a tribute series at Lincoln Center in August, while Jacques Rozier currently has a program of his work available on the Criterion Channel. For as much attention as French cinema has gotten over the years, it is exciting to see that there are still new corners to be explored and fresh discoveries to be made.

‘Television Event’

A scene from the TV movie “The Day After.”

(ABC / Disney via Getty Images)

On Friday night the American Cinematheque at the Los Feliz 3 will host a screening of Jeff Daniels’ documentary “Television Event,” which takes a look at the end of the Cold War through the lens of the 1983 TV movie “The Day After,” which dramatized the aftermath of a nuclear weapons attack around Kansas City, Mo., and Lawrence, Kan., with a cast that included Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg and John Lithgow.

Nicholas Meyer, who directed “The Day After,” will be present for a Q&A on Friday moderated by his daughter, screenwriter Dylan Meyer. “Television Event” will also show on Saturday and Monday.

Seen by more than 100 million people when it first aired, the film was shocking for its depiction of the realities of a nuclear attack.

In a 2023 interview with Tim Grierson, Meyer said, “I realized that I didn’t want to make a ‘good’ movie. I didn’t want to make a good movie, because I knew that if I made a good movie, nobody would talk about the subject — they would only talk about the movie. I didn’t want a catchy theme song. I didn’t want brilliant cinematography, I didn’t want Emmy-nominated performances. All I wanted was to make a kind of public service announcement: If you have a nuclear war, this is what it might look like.”

‘Les vampires’

An image from Louis Feuillade’s ‘Les Vampires’

(Academy Museum)

On Sunday the Academy Museum will have a rare showing of Louis Feuillade’s 1915-16 complete 10-episode serial “Les vampires.” Set in the Parisian underworld, it follows a ruthless gang of criminals and the woman (played by the electrifying star Musidora) who infiltrates their ranks.

Modern audiences may also know “Les vampires” as part of the basis for Olivier Assayas’ 1996 film “Irma Vep” and his own 8-episode series adaptation of the film in 2022.

In other news

Free Indie Focus screening

Ana Sophia Heger, left, and Taron Egerton in “She Rides Shotgun.”

(Lionsgate)

This Tuesday we will have an Indie Focus Screening Series event with a free showing of “She Rides Shotgun” at the Culver Theater. Director Nick Rowland and stars Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger will be there for a Q&A. You can RSVP here.

Adapted from the novel by Jordan Harper by screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, the crime thriller involves a man (Egerton), newly released from prison, attempting to protect his daughter (Heger) from the violent gang who is now after them both.

The UK is full of incredible beaches but one that has been dubbed as the most beautiful yet underrated is a must-visit spot for any staycationer this summer

Planning a summer getaway can be a daunting affair with sky-high flight prices, costly airport transfers, and steep accommodation costs, particularly in the likes of France. However, scores of Brits are choosing to forgo foreign jaunts this year, instead opting to uncover hidden gems right here on home turf.

For a top-notch staycation spot that’s stirring quite the buzz, take a trip eastward to the charms of Norfolk’s coastline. Norfolk boasts an array of stunning coastal scenery, from Holkham’s sprawling sands to Wells-next-the-Sea’s extensive quay, yet it’s the buzzing heart of north Norfolk drawing crowds: Cromer. Known far and wide for its exquisite crabs, Cromer is capturing attention as a prime destination in its own regard.

The quintessential seaside town of Cromer sits proudly atop dramatic cliffs, enveloped by the region’s lush woodland and countryside – providing visitors with epic vistas across the North Sea. Cromer’s crown jewel is its celebrated Victorian pier in the town’s centre, a hub of entertainment where guests can savour a show at the Pavillion Theatre, revel in arcade games, or simply meander along taking in the atmosphere; the very same pier also garnered fame in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, reports the Express.

So captivating is Cromer Pier that it snagged the prestigious title of Pier of the Year last year from the National Piers Society, who cited its enormous appeal due to the impeccable upkeep of its traditional Victorian aesthetics and the incredible sea views it affords.

For those with a passion for literature, the charming line from Jane Austen’s Emma might ring a bell: “You should have gone to Cromer… the best of all the sea bathing places. A fine open sea… and very pure air.” Arthur Conan Doyle, famed creator of Sherlock Holmes, drew inspiration from Cromer’s local legends, particularly the tale of the spectral hound Black Shuck, which became the basis for his renowned novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.

What’s on offer in Cromer?

Visitors have been left spellbound by the beach, with one enthusiast taking to Google Reviews to proclaim it “the most beautiful yet underrated beach”. Praise continues to pour in from another reviewer who expressed: “Beautiful town and beach. The beach was almost empty despite it being the school holidays. Beautiful town with both local independent shops and larger chains.” Another visitor shared their enchantment, commenting: “It’s the loveliest town I’ve ever visited… great atmosphere and fantastic fish and chips.”

Cromer is a treasure trove of unique boutique shops, quaint cafes, and delightful bakeries, perfect for a leisurely afternoon stroll. For those keen on a more vigorous activity, the picturesque Norfolk Coastal Path offers a journey through sand dunes and lush countryside.

Sampling the celebrated fresh Cromer Crab is an essential experience for any foodie visiting the area. And if you’re craving some traditional fish and chips, No. 1 Cromer, owned by Michelin-starred chef Galton Blackiston, boasts stunning views of the coast and pier.

He can outrun a train, hold up a collapsing tower on a fiery oil rig and fly around the world to turn back time. But Superman’s greatest challenge might just be saving the DC film franchise.

The Warner Bros.-owned superhero brand — one of Hollywood’s most important — has hit a rough patch in recent years.

Films such as 2023’s “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash” and last year’s “Joker: Folie à Deux” struggled at the box office. Despite owning a lucrative stable of well-known superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, the studio has failed to become a consistent competitor to Walt Disney Co.‘s Marvel Studios.

Now under the new leadership of filmmaker-producer pair James Gunn and Peter Safran, DC Studios is counting on its new “Superman” film, hitting theaters Thursday, to revive not only the Man of Steel series but the entire DC universe.

Choosing the flying Kryptonian refugee to kick-start DC’s new era was a risky bet for Gunn, who wrote and directed the new film.

Although Superman is recognizable all over the world, his aw-shucks demeanor and nearly limitless superpowers have made him a tough character to make relevant to today’s audiences. His global reputation, as an overgrown godlike Boy Scout spouting American ideals, for years made him less hip for modern viewers than his brooding billionaire vigilante counterpoint, Batman.

“DC has been playing catch-up with Marvel,” said Arlen Schumer, a comic book and pop culture historian. “They’ve given James Gunn the keys to the DC kingdom and said, ‘You’ve got to restore Superman. He’s our greatest icon, but nobody knows what to do with him. We think you know what to do with him.’”

“Superman” is expected to gross $130 million to $140 million in the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend on a reported budget of about $225 million, according to analyst estimates. The movie received an 85% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. (Times critic Amy Nicholson said it wasn’t “quite the heart-soaring ‘Superman’ I wanted,” but enough to be “curious to explore where the saga takes him next.”)

Gunn’s efforts on “Superman” faced intense scrutiny online almost from the moment he started working on it. Fans and critics have picked apart the trailers, grousing about the heavy screen time for Krypto the Superdog (inspired by Gunn’s own dog, who is also a foot biter), or how actor David Corenswet, who plays the iconic superhero, is a relative unknown.

Warner Bros. itself is counting on “Superman” to continue a box office rebound stemming from a string of hits including “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines” and “F1.”

Shortly before its release, “Superman” came under fire from right-wing commentators, who criticized comments Gunn made to the Times of London about how Superman (created by a Jewish writer-artist team in the late 1930s) is an immigrant and that he is “the story of America.” He’s an alien from the planet Krypton, after all.

“I think this is a movie about kindness,” Gunn told Variety on Monday at the film’s Hollywood premiere in response to the backlash. “And I think that’s something everyone can relate to.”

That appeal is what Warner Bros. and DC Studios are counting on.

“You need a track record of success to build a brand,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This is a monumental moment for DC with one of their biggest characters of all time and that’s very important to the box office, to the future of DC and to the perception of DC as a brand.”

DC Studios did not respond to requests for comment.

Superman returns

This summer’s Gunn-directed “Superman” is the first stand-alone film about the famous hero in more than a decade, following a history of dramatic ups and downs.

The 2013 blockbuster “Man of Steel,” directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, introduced a grittier, darker tone to the superhero’s story, including Superman’s controversial neck-snapping kill of a villain. “Man of Steel” received mixed reviews from critics, though it hauled in about $670 million in global box office revenue.

That was followed by 2016’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” with Cavill returning and Ben Affleck as Batman, which was panned by critics but made more than $874 million worldwide. Then came the even more reviled “Justice League” the following year, both a critical and commercial disaster for the studio. Ironically, Cavill’s portrayal of Superman was reclaimed by an unruly online fan base demanding that Warner Bros. #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, which it eventually did.

For many, the gold standard of Superman films was 1978’s “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve and directed by Richard Donner.

Schumer remembers watching the sweeping wheatfield scene when Clark Kent says goodbye to his adoptive mother after his father’s death and embarks on his journey to learn who he truly is. Schumer marveled at the camera sweeping from the golden fields to the blue sky, symbolizing the fledgling Superman’s look toward the future. He ended up seeing the movie 10 times in theaters.

While 1980’s “Superman II” was still well-received, the third and fourth installments of the franchise “went off the rails” and became “campy,” Schumer said.

Unlike Marvel, which centralized control under president Kevin Feige, DC and Warner Bros. for years allowed Snyder’s vision to determine the direction of the film universe. Batman, on the other hand, has been successfully molded by multiple filmmakers (e.g. Christopher Nolan, Snyder and Matt Reeves), allowing new aspects of the character to shine through, Schumer said.

“DC Comics, [Superman] is your flagship property, but they’ve often never really treated it like their flagship property,” he said. “This affected the way DC made movies, versus Marvel.”

The studio has also been criticized for its lack of a cohesive vision and framework for its superhero universe, analysts said. The studio allowed its intellectual property to be splintered into parallel storylines, which became chaotic.

It’s why Gunn and Safran were installed as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of DC Studios in 2022.

Gunn seemed a surprising choice to co-run DC Studios. He started as a screenwriter at indie production house Troma Entertainment — known for B horror pictures — and eventually achieved global success in the superhero genre by directing Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” beloved for its irreverent humor. He also had experience with DC, directing 2021’s “The Suicide Squad.”

With the pair at the helm, the goal was to standardize the superhero universe and kick-start a new epoch for the studio. “Superman” is intended to lead off for several upcoming DC movies, including “Supergirl,” starring Milly Alcock, “Clayface,” and “Dynamic Duo” about the Robins — Batman sidekicks Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.

“It’s a table setter,” said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder of site Box Office Theory. “It’s really intended to be the launching of an entirely new era for DC movies and where that might lead.”

Selling an American hero

But while Superman has generated toy sales, animated series and multiple movies, the character is hard to get right.

Schumer remembers how audiences laughed when Reeve’s Superman tells a scoffing Lois Lane that he was fighting for truth, justice and the American way in the 1978 film, at a time when America was reeling from the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War.

“This idea of truth, justice and the American way was deemed, even back then, hokey,” Schumer said. “And in a sense, it kind of still is.”

From the beginning, Superman has been a quintessential American immigrant story.

Two sons of Jewish immigrants, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, introduced the superhero in 1938 in “Action Comics #1,” which told the tale of the alien, eventually known as Kal-El, who was sent to Earth to escape his dying planet. The comic was “an overnight smash success” that helped launch the comic book medium and the idea of the superhero, Schumer said.

In later stories, Superman’s Midwestern upbringing in Smallville, Kansas and his eventual move to the big city of Metropolis also mirrored the journeys many Americans were making during that time.

But today, there’s questions about whether Superman’s strong American symbolism will be a turnoff for global audiences, who have recently bristled at tariffs and trade policies enacted by President Trump.

“That assumption of Superman being a challenging character in some territories is a legitimate factor,” Robbins said. “What it’s going to come down to is the movie itself and how well it connects with international audiences.”

One advantage: The film snagged a coveted Imax slot — which can boost box office revenue and make a film more of an “event.”

The movie also comes as the once white-hot market for superhero films has cooled, both domestically and abroad. Even Marvel has recently seen lower box office results for its films — despite critical praise, “Thunderbolts*” grossed about $382 million worldwide on a budget of $180 million, paling in comparison to past films.

The potential for “Superman” overseas earnings could be big. Forecasts from entertainment industry analytics firm Cinelytic based on publicly available data found that “Superman” could make about $531 million in global box office revenue, with the top four most likely international markets in Britain, Germany, France and Australia.

Gunn brushed off questions about Superman’s archetypal American symbolism, telling the Times of London in an interview that his own market research found that international audiences viewed the Man of Steel as a global figure.

“He is a hero for the world,” he said in the interview.

But Superman has long-suffered from his lack of flaws and inability to really examine the American ideals he represents, said Annika Hagley, associate dean of the school of social and natural sciences at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, who teaches a course on superheroes and politics.

Over time, Superman’s advocacy of America has remained constant, despite the evolving perception of the U.S. both at home and abroad, she said. That’s in contrast to his Marvel counterpart, the seemingly U.S.-centric Captain America, who evolved from fighting Nazis during World War II to questioning the morality of government surveillance, Hagley said.

While Superman’s immigrant backstory could lend itself to complex narratives about the treatment of newcomers in the U.S., DC has so far failed to evolve his story to address those questions, she said. He did, however, change his motto to the more borderless “truth, justice and a better tomorrow” in recent years.

As an immigrant in a post-9/11 era, “Superman is a security threat, but he’s also boring,” she said. “They’ve tried to make him less American, they tried to make him more alienated and it just hasn’t hit home for an audience in the way that the Marvel characters have.”

Gunn’s “Superman” does touch on America’s role in geopolitics. In a recent trailer for the film, Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane interviews Corenswet’s Superman, questioning whether his involvement in a foreign country’s conflict and “seemingly acting as a representative of the United States will cause more problems around the world.”

“I wasn’t representing anybody except for me,” he interjects. “And doing good.”

Floating in the vastness of unknowable space, our miniscule planet contains all of our stories — victories and tragedies orbiting around a dying star. But what if we could leave it all behind and start anew elsewhere? To migrate if you will.

Elio Solís (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) dreams of leaving Earth — he feels he doesn’t belong. As day turns to night, the eponymous orphaned boy in Pixar’s new intergalactic adventure looks up at the sky and wonders if perhaps somewhere out there, on another levitating rock or among a still undiscovered alien race, he might feel more at home.

The animated voyage, with its themes of alienation and aliens, arrives at a time when immigrants in this country, and Latinos at large, have become the target of brutal ICE raids that ignore due process and racially profile citizens and undocumented people alike.

In turn, the production of “Elio” also illuminates the regressive political climate in this country. Last week, a piece published by The Hollywood Reporter claimed that leadership at Pixar erased the protagonist’s queer identity, prompting the original writer-director Adrian Molina to exit the project, with Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian stepping in to co-direct “Elio.” Had his take come to fruition, Molina, who is Mexican American, would have become the first Latino and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to solo direct a movie for Pixar.

Still, the version that did make it to the screen, where Elio feels ostracized because of his obsession with extraterrestrial life and all its possibilities, remains relevant. Though not overt about his ethnicity, the movie features visual nods to Elio’s Latino upbringing: a Day of the Death altar (pertinent since Molina co-directed “Coco”), a Spanish language song on the radio and colorful conchas as part of a feast.

It’s not a stretch to think that the premise of a Latino kid alienated for who he is and who believes that he won’t ever feel fully accepted in the place he calls home could speak to millions of Latino children across this country; especially here in California, witnessing the disturbing, life-threatening consequences of the administration’s policies.

Elio (voice of Yonas Kibreab), left, and Glordon (voice of Remy Edgerly) in Disney and Pixar’s “Elio.”

(Disney/Pixar)

Kids who must be wondering why there are masked men violently abducting people that look like their family members solely based on their appearance, or why their parents don’t want to leave the house, or why the vendor near their school hasn’t shown up in weeks.

They might be devastated to learn via online chatter that the people in charge of this country don’t want them to feel like they belong, even if they were born here. Now think about the children whose parents were among those taken. Words fail to estimate the trauma they must be experiencing without any certainty of when or if they’ll be reunited.

How do you explain to a child that the president of the United States is gleefully targeting anyone he deems looks “illegal,” regardless of their immigration status? That millions of people in this country harbor such hatred against immigrants that they cheer on an ill child being deported, children crying for their mothers and people dying in detention centers?

“I voted for this,” they write on social media endorsing the inhumane atrocities their government is committing against people they consider “criminals.” But their rigid version of legality only applies to immigrants from underprivileged backgrounds, those who have no choice but to cross borders without documents in order to survive, to aspire to a dignified life. The “right way” is not available to the poor, and those in power know it.

Down here in our chaotic reality, the villains currently have the upper hand. But up in space, nobody asked Elio for a passport or questioned the validity of his existence. On the contrary, the leaders of other planets, who gathered in a striking locale known as “Communiverse,” take his claim that he is the leader of Earth at face value and the singular boy rises to the occasion. Elio helps deescalate a conflict with a space warlord and reconnects with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) by befriending and then saving the life of the warlord’s young son.

Unfortunately, “Elio” has become Pixar’s biggest box office failure, despite being one of the studio’s best reviewed releases in recent years. Grosses were low globally, perhaps as a result of poor marketing or because audiences have been conditioned to wait for Disney’s animated films to hit streaming rather than seeing them in theaters.

But while that outcome can’t entirely be attributed to Latinos not going to the movies, when millions who are part of the audience that most devoutly purchase tickets in this country — we see movies even though the movies don’t often show us — are frightened to step outside their door, one can’t help but wonder if the numbers for “Elio” would be at least slightly different if the ICE raids were not terrorizing the community. If people are afraid to even go to the grocery store, movie theaters are certainly not a priority.

This country takes Latinos for granted, including how our money impacts Hollywood.

I hope that “Elio” lands in front of Latino children soon, and that they see that the hero who saves not only himself but the entire planet is a Latino boy who ultimately redefines the meaning of home on his own terms. Amid the horrors, I also wish for them to not feel alone, and that they know thousands of people have taken to the streets to speak up for them.

People who believe they do belong here, that they are not “aliens” or “invaders,” but integral part of this country. And that their parents and others in their lives, documented or not, deserve dignity and compassion, no matter what the overlords do to deny them.

A sequel? For spring? Groundbreaking.

After 19 years and some mixed messages from the cast, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is officially in production and set to hit theaters in May.

The original film, based on the 2003 bestselling novel by Lauren Weisberger, is set in the cutthroat New York City fashion industry. Here’s everything we know so far about the upcoming sequel.

Who‘s returning from the original cast?

Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci will be reprising their roles for the highly anticipated sequel.

Joining the stars onscreen will be Tracie Thoms — who played Lily, the best friend of Anne Hathaway’s character, Andy Sachs — and Tibor Feldman, who is reprising his role as Irv Ravitz, chairman of Runway’s parent company, Elias-Clarke.

Director David Frankel, who led the first film to a $326 million worldwide box office haul, will be returning, as will screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (co-creator of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”).

Who isn’t returning?

Adrian Grenier’s Nate Cooper, Andy’s boyfriend who’s since been dubbed by the internet as the “real villain” of the film, reportedly won’t be back for the sequel.

Who’s joining the cast?

Kenneth Branagh will join the cast to play the husband of Streep’s character, Miranda Priestly. Other notable additions include actors Lucy Liu, Justin Theroux, B. J. Novak and Pauline Chalamet.

What‘s “Devil Wears Prada 2” about?

While plot details are being kept under wraps, the movie reportedly follows Streep’s Miranda as she navigates a floundering magazine publishing industry. and reunites with Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton, who is now a high-powered executive. The movie is set nearly 10 years after the original and may also borrow from the book’s 2013 sequel, “Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns.” Let’s hope there’s a nod to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, the inspiration for Miranda’s character, stepping down from her post.

What’s the release date for the sequel?

Disney’s 20th Century Studios announced the start of production with a stylish teaser on June 30. The movie will open in theaters May 1, giving fans plenty of time to get ready.

If you’re itching for a refresh, you can stream the original “The Devil Wears Prada” on Disney+ and Hulu. The movie is also available to rent on Prime Video.

Embeth Davidtz’s home is so quiet. Nestled in Brentwood Park, the 59-year-old actor’s spacious yet cozy place feels like a sanctuary, the skylight in her kitchen offering plentiful afternoon sun. Once owned by Julie Andrews, the house is where Davidtz feels most comfortable. It’s taken most of her life to find somewhere that made her feel that way.

“I seldom leave,” she says, smiling. “I’m not someone who likes to run around. I like being here.”

She’s lived in this house for about 20 years — it’s where she and her husband raised their children, now 22 and 19. She moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and before then, hers was a completely different world. Lately, that world has rarely been far from her thoughts.

In the early 1970s, when Davidtz was eight years old, she moved from America with her South African parents to Pretoria, in the midst of that country’s apartheid system. Long wanting to come to terms with the institutional racism she witnessed during her childhood, she has done something that previously had never held much interest: write and direct a movie. Pivoting from an on-screen career of stellar, precise performances in movies like “Schindler’s List,” “Junebug” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” Davidtz has at last made a directorial debut with “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” (in theaters Friday), a gripping and somber drama based on Alexandra Fuller’s acclaimed 2001 memoir about growing up in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The film is about Fuller’s family, but it’s also very much about the lessons Davidtz never wants to stop learning herself.

“It’s a constant processing,” she says of how she is always reckoning with her past. “I think I’ll probably have to grapple with it till the day that I die — what I remember seeing.”

Davidtz, Lexi Venter and Rob Van Vuuren in the movie “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.”

(Coco Van Oppens / Sony Pictures Classics)

Set in 1980, the year that the African region known as Rhodesia, ruled by a white minority, would become the independent nation of Zimbabwe, “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” features Davidtz as Nicola, an angry, alcoholic policewoman whose privileged life crumbles as the Zimbabwean War upends the country’s racial power imbalance. However, the movie is not told from Nicola’s perspective but instead, from that of Bobo, her 8-year-old daughter (played with beguiling immediacy by newcomer Lexi Venter), who reflects Fuller’s own blinkered worldview at the time. As Bobo provides voice-over narration, we witness a disturbingly naturalized culture of colonialism in which our main character, a seemingly innocent child, bikes through town with a rifle slung on her back and parrots the racist attitudes espoused by white landowners around her.

Zimbabwe isn’t South Africa, but when Davidtz read Fuller’s stark memoir, the similarities of racial injustice were striking.

“She cuts you off at the knees,” says Davidtz. “You recognize it, then you feel shame.”

Davidtz was born in Indiana, but after some time in New Jersey, her family moved to Pretoria when she was eight. Her 17 years in South Africa left their mark. Even though she’d never written a screenplay before “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” she had been working on something about her upbringing. But after reading Fuller’s memoir, Davidtz says, “I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s the definitive book on it. I’m never going to be able to write a book like that.’”

“I wouldn’t say mine was a happy childhood,” she continues. “I think it was very unhappy in ways. Did I love Africa? Yes. But was it an idyllic childhood? No.”

Bobo’s bigoted views — the girl has come to believe Black people don’t have last names and are secretly terrorists — weren’t what Davidtz experienced growing up. “My family didn’t act that same way, they didn’t speak that same way, but you were part of the system by being there,” she says.

Like Bobo’s family, Davidtz did not enjoy many luxuries, except in comparison to the help around her. “If you had servants in your home, you were part of the system,” she says. “[My parents] certainly were not out marching for civil rights. They fell in that gray area.”

Not that Davidtz excludes herself from the racist mindset that’s evident in Bobo, who enjoys spending time with her family’s housekeeper, Sarah (Zikhona Bali), despite treating her as beneath her. That relationship picked an emotional scab for Davidtz. “There’s uncomfortable memories that I have,” she admits. “I remember playing with [Black] children and being bossy and being just an a—hole.”

Her personal connection to “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” goes deeper. Fuller’s mother was a drinker; in Davidtz’s family, it was her father, who studied applied mathematics and physics in the States. She sees his alcoholism as the byproduct of an idealism that got crushed.

“He was a physical chemist; he was a scientist,” she says, “and his whole thought was this altruistic thing of, ‘I’m going to take everything that I’ve learned and bring it back [to South Africa].’ That’s where the alcoholism emerged. That government that was running South Africa really tightly controlled everything that my father did. I think they were highly suspicious of somebody coming from America. He very much felt his wings were clipped. And so the bottle got raised.” (These days are happier ones for her dad: “He’s medicated; he’s calmer,” she says. “He doesn’t drink anymore.”)

“This [performance] was hard and it was scary, but it was necessary,” Davidtz says of her turn in “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” as a racist farm owner in Rhodesia.

(Matt Seidel / For The Times)

Davidtz can’t quite pinpoint where her passion for performing originated. “No one else has it,” she says of her family. “I really think that 7-year-old me sat in my living room in New Jersey watching the ‘Sonny & Cher’ show. Cher with that hair was just the most glamorous, amazing thing I’d ever seen. And then, suddenly, we land in this dirty, dusty farmhouse with my dad in decline and no television.”

Davidtz escaped Pretoria — at least in her mind — by going to the movies, including an early, formative screening of “Doctor Zhivago,” David Lean’s 1965 historical romance. “My mind was blown by the sweep, the story, the epicness,” she recalls. “Maybe I wanted, somehow, to remove myself from that dirt and squalor and aspire to something.”

“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” doesn’t contain the gratuitous violence you often see in films about racism. In its place is a codified class structure ruled by its white characters, who strongly encourage the locals to vote for approved candidates in the upcoming election in order to maintain the status quo. But once revolutionary Robert Mugabe comes to power, that old system gives way, leading to an unsettling scene in which Nicola wields a whip to keep Black Africans off what she considers to be her farm.

The questionable optics of a white woman telling a story about Zimbabwe entered Davidtz’s mind. She did her homework about the region, even though she ultimately had to shoot in South Africa because of Zimbabwe’s current political unrest. She spoke with her cinematographer, Willie Nel, about how the film had to look.

“I need the light shining through her eyes like that,” Davidtz remembers. “I want the closeup on the filthy fingernails. This is the way Peter Weir gets in super-close, how Malick [shows] skies and nature.” And she made sure to center her pessimistic coming-of-age narrative on the white characters, condemning them — including young Bobo.

“I don’t think a Black filmmaker could tell the experience of a white child,” she says. “I think only a white filmmaker could tell that. [Bobo] misunderstands a lot of what [the Black characters are] doing. That was deliberate — I tried to handle that really carefully. I’m certainly not trying to make the white child sympathetic in any way.”

She was just as adamant that Nicola be an utterly unlikable, virulent bigot. “You needed her to be diabolical in order to show what really was happening there,” says Davidtz. “I saw people behave like that.”

This isn’t the first time she’s played the villain, but she wanted to ensure there was nothing sympathetic or devilishly appealing about Nicola. Recalling her portrayal of the superficial, materialistic Mary Crawford in the 1999 adaptation of “Mansfield Park,” Davidtz observes, “She was just cheerfully going about her life — being diabolical, but with a smile. She was charming. That was more acceptable, more palatable.” She allowed none of that here, tapping into the desperation of a woman whose self-worth is wrapped up in the subjugation of those around her.

The veteran actress has often done terrific work by going small, her breakthrough coming as a Jewish maid prized by Ralph Fiennes’ sadistic Nazi in 1993’s “Schindler’s List.” More recently Davidtz has earned rave reviews in series like “Ray Donovan” and “The Morning Show.” She doesn’t do showy and she’s the same in person, appealingly modest and soft-spoken. But in “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” she gives a boldly brazen performance as Nicola, a portrait of ugly, entitled hatred. Although Davidtz felt anxious playing such a demonstratively racist character — especially around her Black cast — she also found it a refreshing change from how she usually approaches a role.

“This [performance] was hard and it was scary, but it was necessary,” she says, Getting herself to such a dark place for “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” was easy, though. The trick? “I didn’t have time,” she says. “Everything was focused on only the three hours [a day] that I had with the kid. It was like, ‘I got to get this quick,’ and I was on my last nerve, which was great for the character — I was pretty worn down by the time we shot a lot of my stuff.”

“When you’ve been in a place where things have been so wrong, you spot it really quickly in other places,” Davidtz says of injustices occurring both in America and abroad. The actor and director is photographed at home with her two rescue dogs, Parfait (front) and Zoomie.

(Matt Seidel / For The Times)

Similarly to “The Zone of Interest,” which Davidtz reveres (“I love that film,” she declares, awed), “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” illustrates the insidiousness of bigotry by stripping away the simplistic moralizing. Bobo, her parents and the other white settlers benefit from an unjust system, always presented matter-of-factly, as the adults relish their domestic bliss at the expense of the indentured locals. I ask Davidtz if she’s showing us what everyday evil looks like.

“Evil’s a strong word,” she replies. “I’d say ‘oblivious’ or ‘unconscious’ or ‘culpable.’ It’s all of the above. I really wanted to reveal something the way ‘The Zone of Interest’ revealed something. It’s the casual racism. An ordinary person watching [the film] goes, ‘Oh, my God, that was normal to them. That was their normal.’ Then you see the full picture. Then, the evil of it shows up.”

In her memoir, author Fuller writes about her later political awakening, a process Davidtz underwent as well. “I saw moments around me — horrible, violent police arresting men on the streets, the people chucked into the back of police vans,” she says. “Just that terrified feeling inside and knowing, ‘If you’re white, you’re safe. If you’re Black, you’re not.’ Then as I got older, [there was] the disconnect between what I’m seeing and what is right.”

According to Davidtz, “the scales fell off” once she attended South Africa’s liberal Rhodes University in the early 1980s and started taking part in protest marches. “I felt like that was the big awakening,” she says, “but it’s an awakening that continues.”

There is one frequent sound in the calm oasis of Davidtz’s home: the chatter of news broadcasts. “It’s often on in the background,” she says, “but I think it’s a habit that’s eroding my peace of mind.” She admits to the same conflicted feelings many in Los Angeles have, a desire to stay informed of everything that’s happening — the ongoing war in Gaza, the stories out of Ukraine, the violent ICE raids in Southern California — but not succumb to despair and anger. No amount of quiet can tune out the world, and Davidtz doesn’t want to.

“When you’ve been in a place where things have been so wrong, you spot it really quickly in other places,” she says of the injustices occurring both here and abroad. “One thing that we can do is say what we think.” Remembering her own childhood, and pondering what prompted her to make this movie, she suggests, “I think it comes from watching something silently for a long time. I think that part of me will never want to not say, ‘I don’t think this is right.’”

With “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” Davidtz is speaking up, but she knows those bad old days aren’t over. In fact, they’ve never been so present. As the film ends, Bobo takes one last look at the town and the locals that shaped her. There’s a glimmer of hope that, one day, this girl will outgrow the racism she’s ingested. But the land — and the pain — remains. Davidtz has not allowed herself to look away.

Fine, I’ll say it. I need Superman. I’m craving a hero who stands for truth and justice whether he’s rescuing cats or reporting the news. Cheering for such idealism used to feel corny; all the cool, caped crusaders had ethical kinks. Even his recent movies have seemed a little embarrassed by the guy, scuffing him up with cynicism. I’m with the latest incarnation of Superman (David Corenswet) when he tells Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) that having a big heart is “the real punk rock.”

Director James Gunn’s antsy reboot skips past the origin story of infant Kal-El slamming into Kansas in an escape pod from Krypton. Instead, this “Superman” opens with Corenswet’s savior slamming into Earth again, this time after losing his first fight. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and his bionic minions have batted Superman around Metropolis like a toy, forcing him to flee to his Fortress of Solitude in Antarctica with 14 broken bones and a busted bladder. The starkness of the white snow against his bright costume looks like a blank page asking: Who should Superman be today?

The Superman myth has always been a fable of collision: a near-perfect alien challenged to protect fragile, scared humans who struggle to accept that we’re not the bestest beings in the universe. Here, Kal-El’s parents (Bradley Cooper and Angela Sarafyan) are heard insulting Earthlings outright — “The people there are simple and profoundly confused” — which, for the franchise, is actually going a little easy on humankind. Historically, we tend to let him down, going back to his surprisingly spiky movie debut in 1951’s “Superman and the Mole Men” (note the lack of a “versus”), in which George Reeves protected the outsiders of the title from a rural American mob. “Obviously, none of you can be trusted with guns, so I’m going to take them away from you,” he lectures the townsfolk, pretzeling their shotguns. “Stop acting like Nazi storm troopers!”

Gunn isn’t that punk rock. He’s pop punk; he wants to be liked by a mass audience. Having taken control of the DC Universe, he’s pivoted away from gloom to concoct a Superman who isn’t too sweet or too serious — frankly, he’s a little stupid. After a hasty resuscitation from his adorable dog Krypton and his robot butlers (voiced by Alan Tudyk, Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker, among others), Superman races back into battle before he’s healed. He gets beaten senseless again.

Stupid is a smart idea for a 21st century reboot. Superman’s stymied do-gooder impulse feels right for an era where you can’t say “Save the whales” without some genius asking why you don’t care about plankton. The goal might have been to make him super naive. But Gunn doesn’t do sincerity, so this Superman comes off as obtuse and overwhelmed — which, even for a Julliard-trained actor like Corenswet, is pretty impossible to pull off with any personality. His dimples and blue eyes are empathetic. But he mostly just looks dazed.

This Superman is all impulsive energy, much like his unhousebroken puppy, who also wears a cape and tramples on things when he tries to help. They’re essentially the same species. Superman gets distracted midfight by his urgent need to protect a squirrel; Krypto spends one brouhaha looting a pet store. Superman’s reporter girlfriend of three months, Lois (a savvy and sensible Brosnahan, kitted in fabulous ‘70s-style threads), is well-aware of his dual identity and the flaws in his hasty reactions to injustice. She points out that physically threatening the thuggish president of fictional Boravia (Zlatko Buric) to stop invading weaker countries is technically torture. “People were going to die!” Superman sputters. Lois’ reticence about him mirrors our own vacillation with the DC Universe’s new direction: We need to see something more from this guy before we commit.

In this script, the lines of good and evil aren’t drawn in black and white or even gray — they’re a tangle of squiggles. There are no neat solutions, no shortcuts and there’s no way for Superman to defend himself when Hoult’s Luthor drums up a dubious sex scandal to accuse the Kryptonian of “grooming” humanity and hires an actual room of typing monkeys to ruin his online reputation. (You may remember that before Gunn was hired to oversee DC Studios, Walt Disney fired him from Marvel when a blogger behind Pizzagate unearthed the director’s old shock-jock jokes about pedophilia and 9/11. Clearly, that grievance is still on his mind.)

The plot is impatient but entertaining enough. The villainous billionaire Luthor, who Hoult plays like a beady techno-zealot, has several schemes up his fancy sleeve. One involves a tent city in the desert that hides a portal to an extrajudicial jail for his enemies, both interstellar and domestic. (He’s got green-skinned babies and a sobbing ex-girlfriend in there.) Gunn has sarcastically tried to make the place look cheery — Luthor’s henchmen are dressed in mismatched Hawaiian shirts — but the sequence might give you the shivers.

Gunn is known for wrangling groups of weirdos (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “The Suicide Squad”) into blockbuster action-comedies. His instincts are to spray everything with silly string and slap on a wacky soundtrack. Here, there’s actually a very good doom metal electronic score by John Murphy and David Fleming, but the movie stiffens up whenever it needs to get real. When we visit Clark Kent’s family farm, it’s touching to see his childhood bedroom. But his plainspoken Ma and Pa (Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vince) have been made to talk so slowly they sound like they have brain injuries. It’s as though “Superman” isn’t sure how to be earnest without whacking us over the head with it.

The script is way more confident when Gunn gets to scribble in the margins, whisking in Milly Alcock’s party-hardy Supergirl for a fast and fun cameo. (She’ll have her own movie next summer.) Luthor’s main henchwoman, known only as the Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría), is constructed from skittering robotic cells that let her change form like a Swiss Army Knife, while his latest ditzy blonde girlfriend, Eve (a very funny Sara Sampaio), wriggles her way into becoming a memorable highlight. One of the film’s umpteenth kaiju fights introduces the corporate-sponsored Justice Gang, a trio of apathetic superheroes spearheaded by Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) with Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi). They dispatch a monster so gracelessly that Superman finally gets some sense knocked into him. “There’s got to be a better way to do this,” he groans.

The movie’s tone shape-shifts just as recklessly as an outer space inmate named Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan) who can transform into explosive acid. Gunn is compelled to show us his entire vision for the DC Universe. But as he cuts from a slow-burning gag about a garage door opener to a legitimately brutal execution to a whizbang combat scene set to a song that whoops, “Fun fun fun!,” I just wished I was having more of it.

This isn’t quite the heart-soaring “Superman” I wanted. But these adventures wise him up enough that I’m curious to explore where the saga takes him next. Still, I left chewing over how comic book movies can be so popular and prescient, and yet people who’ve grown up rooting against characters like Lex Luthor cheer them on in the real world. Maybe Gunn can answer that in a sequel. Or maybe our stubborn myopia is what this Superman means when he says, “I screw up all the time but that is being human.”

Dinosaurs ruled the box office once again this weekend as “Jurassic World Rebirth” hauled in a strong $147.3 domestically over the five-day Fourth of July period to kick off what industry insiders hope will be an impressive month at movie theaters.

The holiday total for “Jurassic World” in the U.S. and Canada exceeded industry expectations. Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World” reboot was expected to gross $120 million to $130 million during its long opening weekend, according to analyst and studio projections.

The movie unseated Apple’s Brad Pitt racing film “F1 The Movie,” which landed in second place with $26.1 million domestically, bringing its total to $109.5 million in North America, according to distributor Warner Bros.

“Rebirth’s” 2022 predecessor, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” debuted with $145 million from its first three days of release and went on to collect $1 billion globally. The new movie carries an estimated production budget of $180 million, not counting marketing costs.

Big-budget creature features have global appeal, as the numbers showed. Opening in 82 countries outside the U.S. and Canada, “Rebirth” grossed $171 million internationally. That included $41.5 million from China, proving that Hollywood movies can still do well in the Middle Kingdom despite the dominance of local production in the populous country.

The global total for “Rebirth’s” opening was $318.3 million.

Directed by Gareth Edwards (“The Creator,” “Rogue One”) and starring Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, “Rebirth” earned unenthusiastic reviews from critics, notching a 52% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The “Jurassic” franchise has seen multiple iterations since Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park,” based on the popular Michael Crichton science fiction novel, wowed audiences with its combination of practical and computer-generated effects that gave the T. rex and other killer dinos their stunning realism. That film spawned not only sequels but toys, theme park attractions, animated series and video games.

Although the sequels, starting with Spielberg’s own “The Lost World,” never achieved the acclaim of the original, they continued to mint money for Universal and Spielberg’s production company, Amblin.

Prior to “Rebirth,” the “Jurassic” movies had grossed a total of roughly $6 billion worldwide, not adjusting for inflation, according to box office website The Numbers. The first “Jurassic Park” grossed $978 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, which is equal to $1.86 billion in today’s dollars.

The latest “Jurassic” movie did not get a slot at Imax theaters, since those were taken up by “F1.” Next week, the valuable Imax real estate will be taken up by Warner Bros. and DC Studios’ “Superman.” Films shown on Imax often reap bigger box office numbers, aided in part by the higher ticket prices at those theaters, and because they’re viewed as more of a must-see event.

“Jurassic World” is the first of three big tentpole films arriving this month in theaters. In addition to “Superman,” Walt Disney Co. and Marvel Studios’ “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opens in a few weeks.

July has historically been one of the strongest summer months at the box office, putting more pressure on these three films to deliver.

Despite big box office gains in April and May, June saw a string of underperforming films such as Lionsgate’s “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” Sony Pictures’ “Karate Kid: Legends” and Disney and Pixar’s original animated effort “Elio.”

Theatrical business in June was 25% lower compared to the pre-pandemic average of June 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to David A. Gross’s FranchiseRe movie industry newsletter. It was also down 5.3% compared to last June, which saw big hits like Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.”

“We see this ebb and flow,” said Shawn Robbins, founder of the website Box Office Theory. “These next four to five weeks will certainly give us a sense of how to grade the summer overall.”

Hold on to your water glasses because you can hear the plot of “Jurassic World Rebirth” coming from a mile away. A ragtag group of adventurers land on a remote island planning to exploit dinosaur DNA — and some of them get chomped. The only new thing about this seventh installment is the cast: Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali as freelance covert operatives Zora and Duncan, Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Henry Loomis and Rupert Friend as a pharmaceutical titan named Martin who wants to treat coronary disease by harvesting samples from three massive reptile hearts. Gauging by the response every time this sequel has come up in conversation, it should have been subtitled: “This Time There’s No Chris Pratt.”

I went to the theater with my own heart as big as a Titanosaur’s. (Goofy name aside, it’s a real herbivore and you’ll see a herd of them.) After all, screenwriter David Koepp wrote the screenplay for the 1993 original and the franchise’s latest director, Gareth Edwards, made a serviceable “Godzilla.”

Alas, Edwards has made “Godzilla” again. “Jurassic World Rebirth” is a straight monster movie with zero awe or prestige. It’s incurious about its stomping creatures and barely invested in the humans either, tasking Johansson and most of the cast to play fairly similar shades of hardy and determined. You’ll see a nod to the 1962 adventure “One Million Years B.C.” (you know: Raquel Welch, fur bikini), which is more of a template than a kitschy joke. There isn’t a shiver of surprise about who gets the chomp, only disappointment that the fatalities are so bloodless — they’re mild even for PG-13.

Some of this ennui is by design. The narrative backdrop is that after 32 years of who-coulda-thunk-it rampages, humankind is tired of dealing with the darned things. Audiences can relate.

To establish this miserliness of spirit, the present-day scenes start with a Brooklyn traffic jam caused by an escaped sauropod lying collapsed and dying on the side of the road. It’s the same species that transformed Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum into giddy, glassy-eyed children, only now drained of all majesty. Some creep has even spray-painted its hindquarters with graffiti.

Plenty more dinosaurs will arrive in the film’s two-hour-plus running time: swooping Quetzalcoatlus, splashing Mosasaurus, frilled Dilophosaurus and a bitty Whoknowswhatasaurus that Ali’s Duncan keeps in a bamboo birdcage by his boat dock in Suriname. But the only one that made me feel anything was that pathetic sauropod abandoned like a sidewalk sofa.

A beat later, “Rebirth” cuts to a shuttering museum exhibit where workmen are trashing their copy of that iconic banner that reads “When dinosaurs ruled the earth.” The original “Jurassic Park” inspired a generation of kids to dream of scientific discoveries. This era is throwing in the towel.

The action sets sail with a hefty oceanic sequence where Edwards leans on his expertise in sluicing fins and underwater ka-thumps. Our heroes also scoop up a rather ungrateful shipwrecked family: yachtsman Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his daughters Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Teresa’s good-for-nothing boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono). Initially, we can’t wait for Iacono’s louse to get eaten but we come to treasure his comic relief, particularly when Xavier wanders off to relieve himself next to a nest of velociraptors. Danger lurks and the doofus just stands around with his johnson in his hand.

Eventually, the crew makes land on Ile Saint-Hubert near French Guinea, where a genetic dinosaur laboratory was evacuated 17 years earlier. In an opening flashback, we learn that a technician concocting a freakish T. rex littered a Snickers wrapper, causing a chain reaction that within two minutes resulted in the snacker becoming a snack.

You may consider yourself inured to product placement. Even so, its use here is brazen and strange, from this case of death by chocolate to an “E.T.” embezzlement in which Isabella befriends a baby Aquilops with red rope licorice. There’s even a scene in an abandoned convenience store which, despite a decade and a half left in the custody of pesky dinosaurs, the snack labels remain tidily pointed toward the camera. At least that setting has a modified raptor pausing at a soda cooler to admire its reflection.

I don’t think Johansson and Ali will take as much pride in “Rebirth,” assuming they bother to watch it. Both get through the film without embarrassing themselves, in part because neither is very committed. Johansson’s tough security expert swaggers, Ali smiles and our sturdy goodwill for both actors keeps us from holding the movie against them. Early on, the two get one scene together where they put on a pretense of speaking in shorthand about the emotional costs of a career in Blackwater-style skulduggery. It has the air of a stretch before buckling in for a long haul flight.

This is composer Alexandre Desplat’s “Jurassic” debut and he dutifully reworks John Williams’ famous notes of wonder and yearning a few ways, like a subtle tinkling when Bailey’s strapping science geek imagines the joy of witnessing a dinosaur not in a zoo or a theme park, but in the wild. Bailey is a fine actor and his Loomis would be the soul of the movie if he wasn’t battling for screen time. He’s the only character who seems to like dinosaurs — everyone else sees them as dollar signs or boogeymen.

The series itself has gotten so bored with the beasties that it continues to invent new ugly mutants. “Rebirth” unleashes the Distortus rex — imagine a parakeet’s head on a bodybuilding cockroach. All the dinos struggle to feel convincing as they seem to change size every time you look at them (and the CG backdrops are chintzy). Yet, I still prefer the trusty regulars like the amphibious Spinosaurs, who resemble dog-paddling hellhounds, the pecking Quetzalcoatlus that gulps people like sardines and, of course, the Tyrannosaurus rex, now striped and able to hide in ways that defy physics but at least get an audible chortle.

“Rebirth” is a confounding title for a downbeat entry that’s mostly preoccupied by death and neglect. Who knows whether we’re at the head or tail of the Anthropocene, but the movie seems weary of our dominion. “I doubt if we make it to even 1 million,” Loomis admits, adding that he hopes to die in shallow silt so he can become a fossil too. With the franchise officially out of ideas, how about skipping to “Jurassic Park: One Million Years A.D.” so a futuristic species can resurrect us for some malevolent fun and games?

Sex Education star Simone Ashley will return to screens in the fourth season of Bridgerton, and the actress has opened up about filming intimate scenes for the hit Netflix show

Bridgerton sensation Simone Ashley has opened up about feeling “very safe and comfortable” while shooting steamy scenes for the smash-hit series, Bridgerton. The star of Sex Education, who is also on the cusp of dropping her first album, labelled the Netflix sensation Bridgerton as pure “fantasy”.

Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar, she said: “It’s about, ‘What if?’ and how love conquers all. Bridgerton represents nudity with a sense of romance, and I felt very safe and comfortable in what I was choosing to show to the world.”

With the fourth instalment of the period drama set to hit screens next year, Ashley shared with the publication: “‘That show just gets bigger and bigger. Everyone has gone off to do incredible things, but we come back and it’s like time hasn’t moved.”

READ MORE: Bridgerton star facing ‘Hollywood erasure’ despite acting alongside Brad Pitt

Recounting her bold move to Los Angeles at the tender age of 18, she revealed: “I was really scrappy. Since I was little, if I wanted something, I would do anything I could to get it. So, I took some modelling jobs to pay the bills and got into acting through that.”

Gracing the digital cover of Harper’s Bazaar, Ashley divulged that her upcoming album was born out of a recent split. She explained: “It’s going to be somewhat confessional… and beautiful and messy.

“Good songs don’t come from times when my life is regimented and predictable. They come when I am feeling vitality, and usually you either feel that way when your heart’s broken, or you’re euphoric. This work has been an amazing channel to put all those feelings into.”

For more stories like this subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Weekly Gulp, for a curated roundup of trending stories, poignant interviews, and viral lifestyle picks from The Mirror’s Audience U35 team delivered straight to your inbox.

This new career move comes after Ashley’s recent role in rom-com Picture This. Following the release of that movie, the Bridgerton star opened up about the importance of diversity in romantic-comedies.

The Sex Education icon, who was born to Tamil parents, stars as photographer Pia – who is juggling a failing business while dealing with the arrival of her ex and her parents’ concern for her love life. The feel-good movie was released on Amazon Prime Video on 6 March and also stars Hero Fiennes Tiffin.

She added: “I would say the younger me is kind of like, ‘Oh my gosh, we did a rom com and it’s an Indian girl leading it!'” Although she wishes she could have seen diverse characters when she was younger, she hopes Picture This helps with it. She said: “To put it simply… When it comes to this movie, I just want brown women to have it and to just win!”

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China is a popular travel destination in Asia and one tourist visited a busy city in the country and shared everything that blew him away during his three-day trip

China, one of the world’s most populous and powerful nations, is a magnet for tourists thanks to its booming economy, vast military, status as a manufacturing powerhouse, and cutting-edge technology. The country’s iconic attractions like Beijing’s Great Wall and Forbidden City are major draws for tourists.

With its deep historical roots, stunning natural scenery, and dynamic culture, not to mention the delectable Chinese cuisine, China continues to draw visitors from all corners of the globe. Riyan Ruparelia, a content creator known as Bearded Travels, took to TikTok to share his travel experiences in Chongqing, one of China’s major central cities. Chongqing is celebrated for its rugged terrain and has earned the nickname ‘Mountain City’, nestled near the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers.

In his TikTok video, Riyan exclaimed: “China is living in the future so here’s everything that blew my mind on my most recent three-day trip to Chongqing.

“Starting off with the hotels, the majority of which have smart rooms where you can control pretty much everything from the click of a button, including this huge projector screen and they literally have smart toilets everywhere.”

He stayed at the ISEYA Panoramic Hotel, where room service is delivered by “an entire robot“, which he was amazed by.

The tourist was amazed by the city’s “insane” engineering feats, noting that Chongqing was “built on a mountain” and has a population of over 30 million people.

Riyan remarked: “You can be in a main square with shops and restaurants all around you and then realise you’re on the 22nd floor and if that’s not enough, the engineers actually built an entire train track into a residential building which then proceeds to wrap around a mountain, and believe it or not the train doesn’t make any noise whatsoever.”

The travel content creator was also impressed by the prevalence of electric cars in China, many of which were unknown brands that offered “super luxurious” features and “absolutely incredible performance”.

Riyan continued: “And if you’re in two minds you can get a bike slash car but what blew my mind most was the skyline at night time. This city lights up and it feels like you’re in some sort of sci-fi movie.

“The drone shows every Saturday are next level so if you want a taste of the future then make sure to pay China a visit because it will really surprise you.”

According to travel experts at China Discovery, tourists flock to Chongqing mainly for the Yangtze River cruise which offers breathtaking views of the majestic Three Gorges Dam.

Besides the inspiring landscape, Chongqing is renowned for its local cuisine, most notably, the spicy hot pot.

The clip on TikTok by Riyan has racked more than up over 80 comments. One user said: “Omg I can’t get my head over this! This is crazy! I do want to visit China!”

Another user was floored by the advancement, saying: “They are so far ahead it’s amazing.”

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Our colleagues at De Los ran a thoughtful and provocative interview this week with Patricia Riggen, director of “Under the Same Moon,’ which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Andrea Flores spoke to Riggen about the film’s legacy and how it might be different trying to make the film today.

“Under the Same Moon” traces the journey of 9-year-old Carlitos (Adrián Alonso) as he heads from Mexico to Los Angeles to find his mother Rosario (Kate del Castillo), an undocumented worker. He is aided along the way by another migrant, Enrique (Eugenio Derbez). Also featuring America Ferrera in a small role and an appearance by the band Los Tigres del Norte, the movie is currently available for rent on multiple digital platforms.

Adrián Alonso in the 2007 movie “Under the Same Moon.”

(Twentieth Century Fox)

At the time, the film broke box-office records for a Spanish-language film in the U.S., audiences resonating with its heartfelt emotions and focus on the bond between and mother and son.

“If I made ‘Under the Same Moon’ right now, I would not make it like that,” said Riggen. “It would be dark as hell.”

Riggen added, “I wanted to make a movie that the Latino audience connected with and immigrants could watch. But the tone would be different. I would do a deep dive into the problem. I stayed away from making the movie political and concentrated more on the love story with the mother-son relationship. … Now I feel like it’s time to have more of a political angle. Half the country still believes that immigrants are criminals, but being able to feed your loved one is a human right.”

Riggen said she and “Same Moon” screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos have been working to adapt the story into a series.

“I find Hollywood, my industry, to be a little bit responsible for the hostility that Latinos and immigrants find as a community in the U.S.,” Riggen said. “Our representation of Latinos has rarely been positive. We have to turn things around and represent the community in a positive light, not just the negative way that is prompting hostility by half of the country.”

Fireworks and more for the Fourth

Sasha Jenson, left, and Matthew McConaughey in the 1993 movie “Dazed and Confused.”

(Gabor Szitanyi / Gramercy Pictures)

Maybe it’s just me, but this year the Fourth of July is feeling extra emotional: fraught and complicated as America as a concept, an ideal and a current practical reality that feels so imperiled and fractured. It’s difficult not to be in a mode of reflection rather than celebration. Local theaters are coming through with an array of films to help you meditate on the state of the nation, get away from all that or maybe a bit of both.

The New Beverly Cinema will be screening “Dazed and Confused,” Richard Linklater’s 1993 ode to hanging out as a pathway to figuring yourself out, on Friday afternoon. “The Return of the Living Dead,” Dan O’Bannon’s horror-comedy, set over the Independence Day holiday, will play in the evening on Friday and Saturday.

Steven Spielberg’s 1981 “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” still a rousing action-adventure delight, will be at Vidiots on Friday. Tim Burton’s 1985 “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” will play Friday and Saturday. Vidiots will also be showing John Carpenter’s painfully prescient 1988 sci-fi-action classic “They Live” on Saturday in 35mm.

Harrison Ford and Karen Allen on the set of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1980.

(Lucasfilm Ltd.)

The American Cinematheque will screen Robert Altman’s “Nashville,” which, with all its contradictions, might sum up America about as well as any movie can. It plays at the Egyptian on Friday. I recently spoke to one of the film’s stars, Ronee Blakley, about the film’s enduring impact. “It was just a bunch of talent put together by a bunch of great people,” she said.

The Cinematheque will also screen the original Cannes cut of Richard Kelly’s 2006 “Southland Tales” at the Los Feliz 3. With a ridiculously huge cast including Dwayne Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, a convoluted conspiracy plot and a musical number with Justin Timberlake, the film captures something about 21st century America that few others manage. I spoke to Kelly about the film in 2019, ahead of when the Cannes cut played for the first time in the city.

“It was this really incredibly ambitious, sprawling film,” Kelly said. “I was writing graphic novel prequels and it was just too much. We really didn’t have the technology or the resources to finish it. It was that the ambition was just overflowing. I didn’t have the discipline at the time to reign myself in. So we knew we were going into a situation where we had to just put our best foot forward. I think it was my lawyer who said at the time that getting into the competition at Cannes was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to ‘Southland Tales.’”

Roy Scheider in the 1975 movie “Jaws.”

(Universal Pictures)

On Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl will be a 50th anniversary screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” with a live performance of John Williams’ score by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by David Newman.

The Frida Cinema will be showing Brian De Palma’s “Blow-Out,” which contains an astonishing sequence set against a fireworks display, along with a whole week of other Fourth of July-themed movies, including “Nashville” and “Dazed and Confused.”

70mm festival returns

Tom Hulce as Mozart in the 1984 movie “Amadeus.”

(Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn.)

The American Cinematheque is launching the latest edition of its 70mm festival this week and it is (again) such a warm confirmation of why this is such a special moment for moviegoing in Los Angeles. The intersection of a specific print of a certain title at an exact time and theater leads to experiences that simply cannot be repeated.

This year there are a handful of new titles and prints to the selection. Among those being promoted as playing the series for the first time are Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs,” David Lynch’s “Dune,” Milos Forman’s “Amadeus,” Joel Schumacher’s “Flatliners,” John McTiernan’s “Die Hard,” and Ivan Reitman’s “Ghostbusters”

George Wyner, left, Rick Moranis and Mel Brooks in the movie “Spaceballs.”

(Peter Sorel / MGM)

Also among the films playing will be Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo,” John Ford’s “The Searchers,” Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch,” Jacques Tati’s “Playtime,” Paul Verhoeven’s “Total Recall,” James Cameron’s “Aliens,” Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s “West Side Story,” Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” Tony Scott’s “Top Gun” and Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts.”

Keke Palmer in Jordan Peele’s 2022 horror movie “Nope.”

(Universal Pictures)

Filmmaker Willard Huyck will be present for a screening of his “Howard the Duck.” Director Margaret Honda will be there for 70mm screenings of the experimental films “Spectrum Reverse Spectrum” and “Equinox.”

More recent titles have also been programmed: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” and “The Master,” Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist.”

Points of interest

‘In the Mood for Love’ 25th anniversary

Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 movie “In the Mood for Love.”

(Janus Films)

To commemorate the film’s 25th anniversary, Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” is back in theaters along with the rarely seen short film, “In the Mood for Love 2001” that reunites the film’s stars, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung.

In the 2022 Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, “In the Mood for Love” was the highest-ranking film released during the 21st century. The story of two people in 1962 Hong Kong, each married to others yet feeling an intense connection, unsure of how to act on their emerging bond, the film is an overwhelming emotional experience in which every slight nuance or touch takes on cascading impact.

In his original review, Kenneth Turan wrote, “A swooningly cinematic exploration of romantic longing, both restrained and sensual, luxuriating in color, texture and sound, this film raises its fascination with enveloping atmosphere and suppressed emotion to a ravishing, almost hypnotic level.”

‘Sinners’ on streaming

Michael B. Jordan, center, in the movie “Sinners.”

(Warner Bros. Entertainment)

Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” starts streaming today on Max. Whether you are just catching up to the movie or checking it out again, it’s nice to have it so easily accessible. (And a 4K disc will be available next week.)

The story of twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, as they return to their hometown in 1930s Mississippi to open a juke joint nightclub only to be beset by roving vampires, “Sinners” is an astonishing horror film and a thoughtful treatise on legacy. And makes for a fine Fourth of July movie as well.

In her review of the film, Amy Nicholson wrote, “What a blood rush to exit Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ aware that you’ve seen not merely a great movie but an eternal movie, one that will transcend today’s box office and tomorrow’s awards to live on as a forever favorite. If the cinema had a dozen more ambitious populists like Coogler, it would be in tip-top health. The young filmmaker who started his career with the 2013 Sundance indie ‘Fruitvale Station’ had to make three franchise hits — one ‘Rocky’ and two ‘Black Panthers’ — before getting the green-light to direct his own original spectacle. It was worth the wait. Let the next Coogler get there faster.”

This essay is adapted from Merrick Morton’s “La Bamba: A Visual History,” published by Hat & Beard Press.

“Dance!! Dance!! Dance!! to the music of the Silhouettes Band!!” read the handbill. The Silhouettes featured Ritchie Valens — “the fabulous Lil’ Richi and his Crying Guitar!!” — at a 1958 appearance at the San Fernando American Legion Hall in Southern California.

He was 16 years old. The Silhouettes was Ritchie’s first band, and they launched him into history. But a silhouette itself is an interesting thing: You can see the general shape of something while you hardly know the figure casting the shadow. Valens’ musical story begins with the Silhouettes, and we have been filling in his story, and projecting ourselves onto it, ever since he left.

A founding father of rock ’n’ roll, he would lose his life barely a year later, when the plane carrying members of the Winter Dance Party Tour — Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens — crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, in an Iowa snowstorm. A Chicano icon. A stranger.

Ritchie was a kid playing his guitar to make money for his family and one song he played was a version of “Malagueña.” The number was rooted in centuries-old Spanish flamenco music that had spread in all directions, becoming a classical music melody and a Hollywood soundtrack go-to by the 1950s. In his hands, it became a catapult for guitar hero god shots.

Candid shot of Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly during the Winter Dance Party Tour.

(C3 Entertainment)

“Malagueña” communicated experience and rico suave flair to his audience. Meanwhile, his mom was selling homemade tamales at his shows in the American Legion Hall. This guileless 17-year-old, Chicano kid from Pacoima found a way to introduce himself to America by taking something familiar and making it feel like nothing you had heard before.

From the beginning, Ritchie heard the possibilities in turning a familiar sound forward. He saw, even as the teenager he will forever be to us, how in reinventing a song, you could reinvent yourself. Listen to “Donna,” the heartfelt love ballad that felt familiar to Chicano ears, listeners who for years had tuned in to Black vocal groups. In the process, he cleared the way for so much great Chicano soul to come in the next two decades.

Valens performing to a packed house.

(C3 Entertainment)

Most of all, of course, listen to “La Bamba.” A centuries-old song from Veracruz, Mexico; the tune has African, Spanish, Indigenous and Caribbean DNA. In the movie, he encounters the song for the first time when his brother Bob takes him to a Tijuana brothel, but however he first heard it, Valens viewed it as a prism, a way of flooding all that was in front of him with his voice and guitar.

The music he made came from Mexico, and it came from Los Angeles, where 1940s Spanish-language swing tunes, Black doo-wop sounds and hillbilly guitar-plucking were mashed together in a molcajete y tejolote. Most of all, it came from the radio, which lined up sounds that were not like the ones that came right before and blasted them out on AM stations from corner to corner across the Southland. Radio devoured difference and transformed it, and if Ritchie is now regarded as a pioneer of Chicano music, he was in his own, brief time, a product of AM democracy, a silhouette with a spotlight shining on him.

Danny Valdez knew all the songs. In the early 1970s, the artist and activist had released “Mestizo,” billed as the first Chicano protest album put out by a major label. The singer-songwriter and his buddy Taylor Hackford would drink beer, belt out Ritchie Valens songs and make big plans. They talked about someday shooting a movie together, with Valdez playing Ritchie and Hackford directing. “Neither of us had a pot to piss in,” said Hackford, “so we never made that movie.” But years later, after Hackford had a hit with “An Officer and A Gentleman,” Valdez called him and raised the idea once more.

There were many steps to getting “La Bamba” on the screen, but it began with an understanding that it would be about the music. That meant they had to make the music feel alive — namely the handful of recordings produced by Bob Keane that Ritchie left behind. The owner of Del-Fi Records, Keane was a guiding figure in the singer’s life, recording his songs, urging him to mask his ethnicity by changing his name from Richard Steven Valenzuela and giving him career advice. Keane booked Gold Star Studios, cheap at $15 an hour, and brought in great session musicians as Ritchie’s backing band, including future Wrecking Crew members Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye. But the recordings he made were not state of the art, even in their own time.

“They weren’t high-quality,” said Hackford, comparing them to the early Ray Charles sessions for the Swing Time label. “I had a commercial idea in mind, of music selling the film, of people walking out of the theater singing ‘La Bamba’ who had never heard of it before,” he said. That meant he needed contemporary musicians who understood the records and could re-record Ritchie’s songs and reach an audience that was listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and George Michael.

Valens signing autographs for his fans.

(C3 Entertainment)

Ritchie’s family, including his mother, Connie, and his siblings, had already heard that Los Lobos were playing “Come On, Let’s Go” live in East L.A. When the band played a concert in Santa Cruz, where the Valenzuela family was living by the 1980s, a friendship grew.

“Danny and I knew Los Lobos in the ‘70s when they were just starting out,” says writer and director Luis Valdez, “when they were literally just another band from East L.A. We were very fortunate that they were at that point in their career where they could take on this project. Without Los Lobos, we wouldn’t have Ritchie. David Hidalgo’s voice is incredible. I don’t think we could have found other musicians to cover him. They come from East L.A., they’re all Chicanos. They were paying an homage. We happened to be in the airport together when they got the news that ‘La Bamba’ had become number one in the national charts.”

“They called themselves the spiritual inheritors of Ritchie Valens,” says Hackford. “And they went in and re-recorded Ritchie’s songs plus several that he had played in concert but never recorded.” Now Hackford had his own album of old tunes that turned in a forward direction.

Next, Hackford made sure there were roles for modern performers to play the classic rockers from the Winter Dance Party Tour. He cast contemporary performers who could re-record their material too: Marshall Crenshaw as Buddy Holly, Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochran and Howard Huntsberry as Jackie Wilson.

Then there’s the surprise of the first song heard in the film — a rumbling version of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” that had Carlos Santana, hired as a soundtrack composer, playing with Los Lobos, and Bo himself offering a fresh vocal over everything.

“We were so happy to have the touch of Carlos Santana as part of Ritchie’s story,” said Luis Valdez. “It’s his guitar that underscores a lot of the scenes and he had a theme for each of the players. We screened the whole movie for him first and he was very moved by it and ready to go right away once he saw it without his contribution. He was alone on the soundstage at Paramount, where we recorded his soundtrack, doing his magic with his guitar. He became a great friend as a result of that. It’s incredible what an artist can do.”

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens in the 1987 film “La Bamba.”

(Merrick Morton)

The original soundtrack recording topped the Billboard pop charts and went double platinum.

Hackford loved pop music; his first feature film, “The Idolmaker” (1980), was a rock musical. Releasing hit music became a key promotional element of the package. In advance of 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman” came “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. It went to No. 1 a week after the opening. For 1984’s “Against All Odds,” he selected Phil Collins to sing the title cut, a song released three weeks before opening; the song soon went No. 1. 1985’s “White Nights” had two No. 1 songs, Lionel Ritchie’s “Say You Say Me” and Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin’s duet “Separate Lives.”

One looming problem for “La Bamba” was that the 1987 moviegoing public was not familiar with the name Ritchie Valens. Hackford had ideas for that as well. He set out to introduce him to contemporary audiences — convincing the studio to fund a unique teaser trailer to run weeks before the official movie trailer went into theaters.

The producer assembled a parade of familiar faces to reintroduce Valens. The short film included Canadian hitmaker Bryan Adams and Little Richard talking about the icon. There was also the vision of Bob Dylan in a top-down convertible riding along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 17-year-old Dylan was present at a Valens concert in Duluth, Minn., just days before the plane crashed; he popped up talking about what Valens’ music meant to him. “You bet it made a difference,” said Hackford.

After the “La Bamba” soundtrack became a hit (there was also a Volume Two), Los Lobos made the most of their elevated success. They had experienced head-turning celebrity with “La Bamba,” and they followed it up with “La Pistola y El Corazón,” a gritty selection of mariachi and Tejano songs played on acoustic traditional instruments. They had banked cultural capital and directed their large new audience to this music that many had never heard before. “La Pistola y El Corazón” won a Grammy in 1989 for Mexican-American performance.

The “La Bamba” soundtrack helped set a precedent for the crossover global success of Latin music, which has become a major force in mainstream pop culture. From Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez to Shakira, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, Becky G, Anitta, J Balvin, Karol G and Maluma, among others who are dominating the charts, racking up billions of streams, headlining massive tours and festivals.

Does Hackford think “La Bamba” helped set the table for subsequent Latino pop star success?

“I think the one who set the table was Ritchie Valens. He recorded a song in Spanish, a rock ’n’ roll version of a folk song, and he made it a huge hit.

“I challenge you, any party you go to — wedding reception, bar mitzvah, whatever it is — when ‘La Bamba’ comes on, the tables clear and everybody gets up to dance. That’s Ritchie Valens; he deserves that credit. We came afterwards.”

RJ Smith is a Los Angeles-based author. He has written for Blender, the Village Voice, Spin, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. His books include “The Great Black Way,” “The One: The Life and Music of James Brown” and “Chuck Berry: An American Life.”

Barefoot, in shorts and a tropical-themed short-sleeved shirt, Will Burroughs walks through the narrow backyard of his Venice home and passes a football to his 7-year-old son Jack.

It’s a playful moment that instantly sparks the curiosity of the family’s Australian cattle dog, Banjo, who comes running from the first floor of the newly added accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, at the rear of the property.

Even though it’s a small gesture, it encapsulates what Burroughs and his wife, Frith Dabkowski, hoped for when they added the ADU to their backyard.

With their home in the background, Frith Dabkowski and husband Will Burroughs are joined by their son Jack and dog Banjo on a single ribbon of wood that runs the entire length of the garage.

“They’re fun,” architect Aejie Rhyu said of the creative couple as she walked by the undulating two-story ADU she helped them realize.

Rhyu’s assessment helps to explain the joy that permeates the family compound, from the pink Los Angeles Toile wallpaper in the bedroom (humorously adorned with illustrations of L.A.’s beloved mountain lion P-22, the La Brea Tar Pits and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre) to the tricked-out garage on the first floor, which includes overhead bike storage, an espresso maker, a mini-fridge and a large flat screen TV that allows Sydney-born Burroughs to watch Formula 1 car races and cricket games at 4 a.m. when his family is asleep.

The one-bedroom unit features a full kitchen, custom millwork, colorful bathroom tile and a waterfall island that dips to create a dining room table.

Like so many ADUs in Los Angeles, the couple’s addition was driven by a need for more space to accommodate work and family life. At a time when California ADU laws continue to evolve to encourage more housing, the couple saw it as an opportunity to demolish their garage and build a new multipurpose flexible space that includes an office, garage and housing for family members from Australia who stay for weeks at a time.

To help them create an ADU that was fun and ambitious, Burroughs reached out to his childhood friend, Australian architect James Garvan, whom he has known since kindergarten.

A view of the ADU, including its rooftop terrace, from the street …

… and from the backyard.

Garvan said that when he first received a call from Burroughs about designing an ADU, he was impressed by the American concept of adding a second home on the same property as a larger one. “It’s an elegant way to activate parts of the city that are otherwise unused,” he said.

The couple collaborated with Garvan on the design plans, but because he was in Australia, they subsequently engaged local architect Rhyu to deliver the project. Despite his location on the other side of the world, Garvan worked with the team during FaceTime and Zoom meetings.

The ground floor of the ADU serves as a garage, office and media room for the family.

Burroughs installed a subwoofer speaker beneath the sofa to give the garage the feel of a movie theater during family movie nights. “Jack went flying off the couch when we watched “Top Gun,” he said, laughing.

“We wanted to contribute to the street and not just to the backyard,” Garvan said of a neighborhood tour he took on FaceTime with Burroughs. “It was crucial that the ADU referenced the neighborhood. That’s why we have the lovely tapered geometry and white fence paneling as cladding — it continues the fence and ties the house to the neighborhood.”

The couple, 41-year-old marketing executives who met while working at an advertising agency in San Francisco, may have wanted a showstopper. But they also wanted to respect their neighborhood, where small bungalows coexist alongside enormous, newly built homes in a Brutalist style.

Dramatic shutters that can be opened and closed give the ADU the feel of a music box.

“We were adamant about not having a monolithic structure,” Burroughs said, emphasizing the neighborhood’s diverse architectural styles where noted Los Angeles architects such as Frank Gehry, Ray Kappe and Barbara Bestor have all practiced their craft.

Dabkowski, who was born in England and moved to Dallas when she was 11, shared a similar perspective in not wanting the ADU to stand out too much. “I grew up in the suburbs where homes were built in a development and all looked the same,” she said. “I love the array of different houses in Venice, but it is jarring when people build something out of scale with the neighborhood.”

Situated on a corner lot, the two-story ADU appears simple and square from the street and curvaceous and soft from the backyard. While the traditional 1949 bungalow out front is one level, the ADU out back is tall but doesn’t overwhelm the atmosphere of the street.

Working with Plot Design LA, the family were able to preserve a segment of the backyard, which gives the dog and kids room to run around. “There’s a nice thoroughfare,” Burroughs said. “Kids ran around and threw water balloons at Jack’s 7th birthday party.”

Jack Burroughs, 7, plays with blocks as the family dog Banjo runs into the ADU.

Once inside the compound, the ADU, which cost approximately $450,000 after several increases due to the custom millwork and spiral staircase, is not what you would expect. And that’s precisely the point.

“We told James from the beginning that the ADU is separate from the house and is supposed to be different,” Burroughs said.

Pink Los Angeles Toile wallpaper from Flavor Paper adds a touch of whimsy in the bedroom of the ADU.

Clad in stained cedar siding with shutters that open and close like a music box, the ADU is composed of a 460-square-foot garage on the ground floor and a 560-square-foot one-bedroom unit one flight up. A custom steel spiral staircase connects the two floors on the outside of the building, as it would have eaten up too much space if placed inside. Above it all is a rooftop terrace with views of Santa Monica, the Marina and Penmar Park, with Burroughs affectionately comparing it to “being up in the trees.”

Inside, the open-plan kitchen, living room and dining area are flooded with natural light from two large circular skylights. A waterfall island, equipped with storage on either side, dips to form a dining room table. Floor-to-ceiling custom cabinets in the kitchen continue into the living room, where they create a media center. Adjacent to a queen-sized Murphy bed, there’s a stackable washer and dryer, as well as a linen closet. Cork tile flooring adds warmth and serves as an acoustic buffer to help separate the unit from the office space below.

Architect Aejie Rhyu of ARA-la Studio in Los Angeles collaborated with Australian architect James Garvan on the project, which took more than a year to complete.

Working with interior designer Danielle Lanee, Dabkowksi added colorful accents to the living spaces to make the interiors “warm, inviting and fresh.”

“They wanted the ADU to be a fun experience for their guests,” noted Rhyu. “There’s an outdoor shower. Colorful lighting. It’s quite different from the main house, but it works because it’s situated on a corner lot. When you are in the backyard, you note that, but from the street, it almost feels like its own separate structure.”

Will Burroughs and his future architect James Garvan prepare to rollerblade in Sydney, Australia.

(Courtesy of James Garvan)

At one point, Burroughs worried they were having too much fun with the colorful interiors, which include pink and red clé tile in the bathroom, pale green custom cabinets in the kitchen and pink Flavor Paper wallpaper in the bedroom. “I was worried it would feel like you were living in a Mondrian painting,” he said.

Now that it’s complete, however, Burroughs is thrilled with the way it turned out. “Frith added a lot of whimsy to the ADU,” he said. “I love that it feels homey and functional, and I love the balance with the architecture. Once you walk inside, you don’t feel like you’ve sacrificed form or function.”

In Sydney, where he grew up, Burroughs said architecture is often designed in harmony with the landscape. Here, his childhood friend was assigned the same task. “I was impressed that James was able to take a rectangular block … and make it sit beautifully with the trees and fence line,” he said. “And Aejie took drawings from afar, accomplishing them by walking around with a camera and reviewing drone footage. Aejie was able to take his high-order thing and make it work.”

Looking ahead, the couple envisions the unit could work as a rental, but for now, it has been booked by family and friends, including those who were displaced by the Pacific Palisades fires in January. The couple have hosted Burroughs’ parents for six weeks at a time, and friends with three kids — who shared the Murphy bed — stayed for 10 days.

In the living area of the ADU, custom millwork includes a Murphy bed, floor-to-ceiling storage, a linen closet and a stackable washer and dryer.

“It’s nice to have enough space where family can come and stay comfortably for a decent amount of time,” Dabkowski said. “Staying in an Airbnb is expensive.”

The ADU impressed Burroughs’ parents so much that they hired Gavan to design a home for them in Sydney now that they are downsizing.

“They were so impressed with the skylights, the airflow of the unit, which improves our quality of life tremendously,” Burroughs said. “Our mothers are best friends. He’s [Gavan] going to be a part of the family even more now.”

“I am happy that my friends like their home, but I hope the community likes it too,” Gavan added. “I hope it contributes positively to the streetscape.”

The ADU is designed to engage with the landscape and nestle into the garden, says architect James Garvan.

The couple treasure the personality and history of their 1949 bungalow. “We just love it so much and don’t feel like we need to match the ADU,” Dabkowski said. “The old and the new can live in harmony together.”

(Lisa Boone / Los Angeles Times )

Downton Abbey is back for one final movie – with the likes of Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan and Joanne Froggatt all returning for the movie sequel

Downton Abbey has given fans a first look at the final movie trailer. The cast of the hit ITV show, which was turned into a movie franchise, is back for one last time – with many of the famous faces gracing out screens again.

Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern and Paul Giamatti are all back for the movie alongside Penelope Wilton, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Laura Carmichael and Harry Hadden-Pato.

Joanne Froggatt, Allen Leech, Robert James-Collier, Lesley Nicol and Sophie McShera complete the cast alongside Raquel Cassidy, Kevin Doyle, Michael Fox, Dominic West, Arty Froushan, Joely Richardson and Douglass Reith.

The grand finale of Downton Abbey will see the Crawley family and their staff navigate the 1930s. Mary is front and centre as she navigates a public scandal whilst the family face financial issues.

Elsewhere, the whole household struggles with the fall out as the family must face change as they prepare for a new chapter – but what does the family face and how will it all end for the Crawleys and their staff?

Simon Curtis has directed the movie, whilst creator Julian Fellowes has done the screenplay. He will also produce alongside Gareth Neame and Liz Trubridge and Nigel Marchant is executive producer.

Joanne – who plays Anna Bates – previously admitted it was going to be hard to say goodbye to her character for good.

“Oh my goodness, it’s going to be hard! We’ve said goodbye a few times, thinking, ‘This is the end’, at the end of the seasons. Then we did one movie and we wondered if we’d get a second movie.

“This really is, the third and final, so this really is goodbye. It’s going to be emotional, but all good things must come to an end, I suppose,” she said.

Joanne also teased a “full circle” moment in the final film. She said: “We come to the core of the family and the servants, what the future will be and looking back at where the family have got to now. It’s a beautiful full-circle moment that it comes to at the end.

“There was a stage where reality TV came in and it was all the rage. There wasn’t much drama being made in the UK.

“That was sad but then eventually it came good again and Downton Abbey was one of the first shows to sort of bring back the eagerness for good drama. It’s been amazing to ride it all out and still be around to tell the tale.”

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Hollywood’s relationship with artificial intelligence is fraught, as studios balance the need to cut costs with growing concerns from actors, directors and crew members. But in China, efforts to use AI in entertainment are taking a more no-holds-barred approach.

The China Film Foundation, a nonprofit fund under the Chinese government, plans to use AI to revitalize 100 kung fu classics including “Police Story,” “Once Upon a Time in China” and “Fist of Fury,” featuring Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee, respectively. The foundation said it will partner with businesses including Shanghai Canxing Culture & Media Co., which will license 100 Hong Kong films to AI companies to reintroduce those movies to younger audiences globally.

Chow Yun-fat stars in director John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow” in 1986.

(Cinema City)

The foundation said there are opportunities to use AI to tell those stories through animation, for example. There are plans to release an animated version of director John Woo’s 1986 film “A Better Tomorrow” that uses AI to “reinterpret” Woo’s “signature visual language,” according to an English transcript of the announcement.

“By empowering cultural storytelling with technology, we can breathe new life into the classics and tell China’s stories farther and louder,” said Zhang Pimin, chairman of the China Film Foundation, at the Shanghai International Film Festival earlier this month.

The project raised eyebrows among U.S. artists, many of whom are deeply wary of the use of AI in creative pursuits.

The Directors Guild of America said AI is a creative tool that should only be used to enhance the creative storytelling process and “it should never be used retroactively to distort or destroy a filmmaker’s artistic work.”

“The DGA strongly opposes the use of AI or any other technology to mutilate a film or to alter a director’s vision,” the DGA said in a statement. “The Guild has a longstanding history of opposing such alterations on issues like colorization or sanitization of films to eliminate so-called ‘objectionable content’, or other changes that fundamentally alter a film’s original style, meaning, and substance.”

The project highlights widely divergent views on AI’s potential to reshape entertainment as the two countries compete for dominance in the highly competitive AI space. In the U.S., much of the traditional entertainment industry has taken a tepid view of generative AI, due to concerns over protecting intellectual property and labor relations.

While some Hollywood studios such as Lionsgate and Blumhouse have collaborated with AI companies, others have been reluctant to announce partnerships at the risk of offending talent that have voiced concerns over how AI could be used to alter their digital likeness without adequate compensation.

But other countries like China have fewer guardrails, which has led to more experimentation of the technology by entertainment companies.

Many people in China embrace AI, with 83% feeling confident that AI systems are designed to act in the best interest of society, much higher than the U.S. where it’s 37%, according to a survey from the United Nations Development Program.

The foundation’s announcement came as a surprise to Bruce Lee Enterprises, which oversees legal usage of Lee’s likeness in creative works.

Bruce Lee’s family was “previously unaware of this development and is currently gathering information,” a spokesperson said.

Woo, in a written statement, said he hadn’t heard from the foundation about the AI remake, noting that the rights to “A Better Tomorrow” have changed hands several times.

“I wasn’t really involved in the project because I’m not very familiar with AI technology,” Woo said in a statement to The Times. “However, I’m very curious about the outcome and the effect it might have on my original film.”

David Chi, who represents the China Film Foundation’s Special Fund for Film and Urban Development, said in an interview that Chan is aware of the project and he has plans to talk with Chan’s team. A representative of Chan’s did not respond to a request for comment.

“We do need to talk … very specifically how we‘re using animated or AI existing technology, and how that would combine with his image rights and business rights,” Chi said. Chi did not have an immediate response to the DGA, Bruce Lee Enterprises and Woo’s statements.

AI is already used in China for script development, content moderation and recommendations and translation. In postproduction, AI has reduced the time to complete visual effects work from days to hours, said He Tao, an official with the National Radio and Television Administration’s research center, during remarks at the festival.

“Across government agencies, content platforms, and production institutions, the enthusiasm to adopt and integrate AI has never been stronger,” He said.

During the project’s announcement, supporters touted the opportunity AI will bring to China to further its cultural message globally and generate new work for creatives. At the same time, they touted AI’s disruption of the filmmaking process, saying the “A Better Tomorrow” remake was completed with just 30 people, significantly fewer than a typical animated project.

China is a “more brutal society in that sense,” said Eric Harwit, professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “If somebody loses their job because artificial intelligence is taking over, well, that’s just the cost of China’s moving forward. They don’t have that kind of regret about people losing jobs and there are less opportunities for organized protest against the Chinese government.”

A scene from the movie “Once Upon A Time In China.”

(Golden Harvest)

Hollywood guilds such as SAG-AFTRA have been outspoken about the harm AI could have on jobs and have fought for protections against AI in contracts in TV shows, films and video games. The unions have also pushed state and federal legislators to create laws that would give people more protections against deep fakes, or videos manipulated to show a person endorsing an idea or product that they don’t actually support. There is no equivalent of that in China.

“You don’t have those freestanding labor organizations, so they don’t have that kind of clout to protest against the Chinese using artificial intelligence in a way that might reduce their job opportunities or lead to layoffs in the sector,” Harwit added.

U.S. studios are also going to court to challenge the ways AI companies train their models on copyrighted materials. Earlier this month, Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures sued AI startup Midjourney, alleging it uses technology to generate images that copy the studios’ famous characters, including Yoda and Shrek.

In China, officials involved in the project to remaster kung fu films said they were eager to work with AI companies. They said that AI will be used to add “stunning realism” to the movies. They are planning to build “immersive viewing experiences” such as walking into a bamboo forest duel and “feeling the philosophy of movement and stillness.” In areas such as animation, new environments could be created with AI, Chi said.

“We are offering full access to our IP, platform, and adaptation rights to partners worldwide — with the goal of delivering richer, more diverse, and high-quality AI enhanced film works to global audiences,” said Tian Ming, chairman of Shanghai Canxing Culture & Media Co. in his remarks earlier this month. Tian said there is no revenue-sharing cap and it is allocating about $14 million to co-invest in selected projects and share in the returns.

The kung fu revitalization efforts will extend into other areas, including the creation of a martial arts video game.

Industry observers said China is wise to go back to its well of popular martial arts classics out of Hong Kong, which have inspired U.S. action movies for decades.

There’s also not as much risk involved for China, said Simon Pulman, a partner at law firm Pryor Cashman.

“They’ve got very little to lose by doing this,” Pulman said. “If it can potentially enhance the value of those movies, there’s very little downside for them.”

China’s film industry has grown significantly compared to decades ago, boosted by the proliferation of movie theaters, including Imax screens, in the country.

In the past, China’s box office relied heavily on U.S. productions like movies from the “Fast & Furious” and Marvel franchises, but now local movies dominate the market. The Chinese animated movie “Ne Zha 2” grossed $2.2 billion at the box office globally.

But those Chinese productions generally don’t draw large U.S. audiences when they’re released in the States. The classic martial arts movies, however, have a global following and enduring legacy.

“People love martial arts movies, because action travels,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “It doesn’t matter what language it’s in, if you have a great action sequence and great fighting sequences.”

Emmy nominations voting ends tonight at 10 p.m. PT. Still need help with your ballot?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Still time to bite into a “Jaws” doughnut and peruse my picks for this year’s Emmy races. (An ordinary bagel will do.)

My personal picks in 15 Emmy categories

There are more than 100 Emmy categories, and if you scrolled through each and every one of them on the Television Academy’s website, you are probably one of those people who read the terms and conditions on a document before signing your name.

For me, simply filling out the following 15 categories — five each for comedy, drama and limited series — left me exhausted and in need of a sweet treat. And I already finished my “Jaws” doughnut. Maybe this cherries jubilee? Paul Giamatti would approve.

Without further ado, here are my picks and a brief line of reasoning for each. And if it’s predictions you’re after, you can find our full BuzzMeter panel’s choices here.

Bridget Everett in “Somebody Somewhere.”

(Sandy Morris / HBO)

COMEDY SERIES
“Abbott Elementary”
“The Bear”
“Hacks”
“A Man on the Inside”
“Only Murders in the Building”
“The Rehearsal”
“Somebody Somewhere”
“The Studio”

Yes, “The Rehearsal” is a comedy.

COMEDY ACTRESS
Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”
Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”
Bridget Everett, “Somebody Somewhere”
Natasha Lyonne, “Poker Face”
Jean Smart, “Hacks”

Last call on nominating Everett (and her magical series), which has won a Peabody.

COMEDY ACTOR
Ted Danson, “A Man on the Inside”
Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”
Seth Rogen, “The Studio”
Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”
Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”

Best Netflix comedy: “A Man on the Inside,” anchored by Danson, still a master of light laughs.

COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Liza Colón-Zayas, “The Bear”
Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”
Kathryn Hahn, “The Studio”
Linda Lavin, “Mid-Century Modern”
Jane Lynch, “Only Murders in the Building”
Catherine O’Hara, “The Studio”
Sheryl Lee Ralph, “Abbott Elementary”

Colón-Zayas won last year, probably for the episode that she submitted this year. It’s weird when shows drop their new seasons in June.

COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTOR
Ike Barinholtz, “The Studio”
Colman Domingo, “The Four Seasons”
Paul Downs, “Hacks”
Harrison Ford, “Shrinking”
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear”
Tyler James Williams, “Abbott Elementary”
Bowen Yang, “Saturday Night Live”

Thank you, Sal Saperstein!

Tramell Tillman in “Severance.”

(Apple TV+)

DRAMA SERIES
“Andor”
“The Last of Us”
“Paradise”
“The Pitt”
“Severance”
“Slow Horses”
“The White Lotus”
“Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light”

Voting for “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light” checks a couple of boxes.

DRAMA ACTRESS
Kathy Bates, “Matlock”
Britt Lower, “Severance”
Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Kaitlin Olson, “High Potential”
Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”

Moss won this Emmy eight years ago. With the show ending, she has earned a parting gift.

DRAMA ACTOR
Sterling K. Brown, “Paradise”
Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”
Pedro Pascal, “The Last of Us”
Adam Scott, “Severance”
Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”

“Why don’t you say whatever speech you’ve got rehearsed and get this over with.” Godspeed, old friend. Also: Joel’s parting words should flash onscreen any time an Emmy winner goes long at the podium.

DRAMA SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Carrie Coon, “The White Lotus”
Taylor Dearden, “The Pitt”
Fiona Dourif, “The Pitt”
Tracy Ifeachor, “The Pitt”
Katherine LaNasa, “The Pitt”
Julianne Nicholson, “Paradise”
Parker Posey, “The White Lotus”

Women of “The Pitt” > Women of “The White Lotus”

DRAMA SUPPORTING ACTOR
Patrick Ball, “The Pitt”
Gerran Howell, “The Pitt”
Jason Isaacs, “The White Lotus”
Damian Lewis, “Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light”
Jack Lowden, “Slow Horses”
Tramell Tillman, “Severance”
John Turturro, “Severance”

I don’t know. Tillman might deserve the Emmy for this alone.

Christine Tremarco and Stephen Graham in “Adolescence.”

(Netflix )

LIMITED SERIES
“Adolescence”
“Dope Thief”
“Dying for Sex”
“The Penguin”
“Say Nothing”

“Adolescence” should win everything.

LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE ACTRESS
Kaitlyn Dever, “Apple Cider Vinegar”
Cristin Milioti, “The Penguin”
Lola Petticrew, “Say Nothing”
Michelle Williams, “Dying for Sex”
Renée Zellweger, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”

OK, maybe not everything, as “Adolescence” doesn’t have a submission here. Zellweger probably won’t win because comic acting rarely does, even though it most definitely should.

LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE ACTOR
Colin Farrell, “The Penguin”
Stephen Graham, “Adolescence”
Brian Tyree Henry, “Dope Thief”
Kevin Kline, “Disclaimer”
Cooper Koch, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

Farrell has already won so many awards for “The Penguin,” it feels like either A) he must have won the Emmy too or B) he hasn’t, and good God, let somebody else have a prize. (Like Graham.)

LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Erin Doherty, “Adolescence”
Ruth Negga, “Presumed Innocent”
Deirde O’Connell, “The Penguin”
Imogen Faith Reid, “Good American Family”
Jenny Slate, “Dying for Sex”
Christine Tremarco, “Adolescence”

Doherty will likely win for the series’ third episode, the taut two-hander with Owen Cooper. But the fourth episode is just as good — maybe even better — featuring a heart-rending turn from Tremarco as the mom trying to hold it together.

LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE SUPPORTING ACTOR
Javier Bardem, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”
Owen Cooper, “Adolescence”
Rob Delaney, “Dying for Sex”
Rhenzy Feliz, “The Penguin”
Hugh Grant, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”
Ashley Walters, “Adolescence”

Cooper will soon become the fifth teen actor to win a Primetime Emmy.