audience

Movie fans come to Toronto to get an early peek at the year’s awards heavyweights. I didn’t see a knockout punch, but I saw some strong contenders — and in a couple cases, I just got bludgeoned.

Directors Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems”) and David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) faced off with competing docudramas about the sufferings of two professional brawlers whose careers peaked in the ’90s — i.e., new “Raging Bulls” for today’s nostalgists. “The Smashing Machine” is a solo effort from the younger Safdie brother after making a string of energetic cult hits with his sibling, Josh. It stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who could beat almost anyone inside the octagon but struggled to conquer his own demons at home with his then-wife, Dawn (Emily Blunt).

Based on the names and talent involved, I was expecting anything other than what I got: a conventional biopic. Its one bit of flair is a commitment to looking as though it was filmed on VHS. But projected in Imax, it just looked dreary (as did Johnson’s hairpiece). I’ll go another round with it in a more apropos ring.

Michôd’s “Christy” shares several of the same touchstones — the bloodrush of victory, a bruising domestic life, a distracting wig — but gender-flipped. Sydney Sweeney throws a convincing jab as Christy Martin, the first female boxer to make the cover of “Sports Illustrated.” A lesbian from a conservative West Virginia family, she was pressured to hide her sexuality by wearing pastel pink in the ring and marrying her much older, emotionally abusive male coach, Jim Martin (Ben Foster). The script only has a few ideas under its belt, but they’re effective, particularly our dawning recognition that while Christy thinks she’s fighting to prove her worth, she’s really fighting for the patriarchy.

Sweeney is good, even when the leaden dialogue does her a disservice. It’s her first substantial, serious part since 2023’s underseen “Reality” and she seizes the opportunity to be talked about as something other than the internet’s most polarizing ingenue. (Social media is forever singling out one young actress to be damned now and redeemed later, sigh.) As for Foster, who first snagged my attention as the pathetic loon in “Alpha Dog,” he knows how to play a hiss-worthy heel. You spend “Christy” aching to see him get socked in the face. If you need him to take more punishment, he’s just as vile in another TIFF title, “Motor City.”

Tessa Thompson in the movie “Hedda.”

(Prime Video)

At this year’s festival, ladies in corsets did more damage than gals in padded gloves. My favorite mean girl — perhaps even my favorite film of the festival — was Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda,” a devilish and dynamic adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” in which the lead character (played by a fantastic Tessa Thompson) starts firing off her daddy’s old pistols as soon as the opening credits. DaCosta, who also adapted the play into a script, restages the action so that the chaos all takes place during a giant, drunken bacchanal at a rented mansion Hedda can’t afford. Thompson’s scheming newlywed manipulates the other characters with the confidence of a queen who controls all the pieces on the board, but every so often she simply has to flip the table over. The spirit is faithful; the subtext is fresh.

“Mārama,” a striking feature debut by Taratoa Stappard, bills itself as a Māori gothic and the combination works. In 1859 England, a white-passing woman from New Zealand named Mary (Ariāna Osborne) has sailed halfway around the world seeking information about her parents. The globe-trotting lord Sir Cole (Toby Stephens) strong-arms her into becoming his niece’s governess, calling the Māori a “magnificent people” while amusing his guests with parlor room reenactments of whale-hunting expeditions done with massive puppets. “Mārama” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a good ride with first-rate cinematography and production design and a story with one or two more surprises than we expect.

Similarly, “Honey Bunch,” co-directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, is another manor-bound thriller that toys with familiar tropes. An amnesiac bride (Grace Glowicki, a go-for-broke oddball who always gets my attention) arrives at an isolated and secretive trauma center where everyone seems to be screwing with her memories, including her shady husband (Ben Petrie). Straightaway, we have our suspicions about how this is going to go. The first half of the film doesn’t deviate from the formula — it’s a little dull — but the second half is a superb right hook.

Guillermo del Toro’s grisly, occasionally great “Frankenstein,” shot in Toronto and the U.K., hews more faithfully to Mary Shelley’s novel than the 1931 Boris Karloff classic, scrapping the mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers and salvaging the wraparound story of an ambitious explorer marooned in the the Arctic ice. But it’s still very much Del Toro’s own monster. One of his smartest adjustments is retooling the romantic heroine, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), from the ideal childhood sweetheart to a science-loving pacifist with limited patience for egomaniacs like Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein. Costume designer Kate Hawley makes Goth look like an exotic beetle with antenna-ish plumes sticking out of her hair.

Jacob Elordi as the Creature in the movie “Frankenstein.”

(Ken Woroner / Netflix)

Jacob Elordi’s creature amps up the pathos a tad too much for my taste, but there’s no denying how much he’s invested in the role, or how well Del Toro’s critiques about narcissistic inventors suit the present day. Still, Del Toro knows there’s a time and place to boast: At the film’s Toronto premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, he playfully accused his local below-the-line crew of being too humble and made them stand up for applause. “Stop being so Canadian,” he teased.

Del Toro told the audience that when he first saw Karloff’s creation as a boy, he thought to himself, “That’s my messiah, that’s the guy I’m going to follow like Jesus.” But the prize for the most idol-worshipping film in the festival belongs to Baz Luhrmann’s “EPiC,” which stands for “Elvis Presley in Concert.” Constructed from hours of previously unseen live footage from Presley’s stint in Las Vegas, its rapturous showing felt like attending the church of Elvis.

Luhrmann insists that “EPiC” is neither a concert film nor a documentary. I don’t see the issue with calling it either, but it’s also fair to consider it a companion piece to Luhrmann’s 2022 “Elvis.” It certainly shows that Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of the King wasn’t one rhinestone over the top. Here, the real Presley is charismatic as hell, and looks great beaded in sanctified sweat. Whenever he throws a damp scarf into the audience, the women go so crazy you’d think it was the Shroud of Turin.

Luhrmann continues to be outraged that Col. Tom Parker constricted Presley’s artistic growth by parking him in the city of buffet tables rather than letting him tour the world. Presley only did one week of international concerts during his entire career: five shows in Canada, two of them just a 10-minute drive from my theater. You can hear Presley’s resentment toward the better-traveled (and at the time, better-respected) artists stealing his spot on the charts. “It’s so dry in here, I feel like I’ve got Bob Dylan in my mouth,” he jokes. Later, he slings a guitar around his neck to strum “Little Sister,” and then speeds up the tempo and starts belting the Beatles’ “Get Back,” a subtle dig that the boys from Britain weren’t always that original.

A scene from the movie “A Useful Ghost.”

(TIFF)

Speaking of, I can’t wrap up my final dispatch from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival without mentioning the most creative Oscar contender I saw all week: “A Useful Ghost,” which won the Grand Prix of Critics’ Week at Cannes and will be Thailand’s entry for an Academy Award. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s arch hybrid of horror, comedy, romance and political thriller starts when a self-described “academic ladyboy” (Wisarut Homhuan) discovers that his new vacuum cleaner is possessed. From there, the movie defies prediction at every turn.

I ducked into “A Useful Ghost” on a whim, wondering how it would pair with TIFF’s world premiere of “Dust Bunny,” a nice and nasty Roald Dahl-esque adventure in which a little girl hires Mads Mikkelsen to battle a man-eating monster under her bed. I came out of the theater abuzz with energy. Even though some of this season’s noisiest awards hopefuls are rooted in classic genres, there are still directors making movies that feel entirely new — and still audiences delighted to cheer for a big swing.

Tell someone about “The Cortège,” and it may inspire as much apprehension as it does curiosity.

A theatrical procession running this month at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, “The Cortège” promises to explore grief, loss, mourning and our collective disconnection from one another. It’s a dramatic interpretation of a funeral, albeit one with jubilant street-inspired dance and a Sasquatch-like creature. And robots and drones.

I arrived at “The Cortège” just weeks removed from attending a very real, deeply personal funeral for my mother. Did I want to revisit that space as part of my weekend’s entertainment, and would the show inspire a new round of tears? The answer to both turned out to be yes.

“The Cortège” is alternately playful and serious as it explores the cycle of life.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

For “The Cortège” approaches a difficult subject matter with an imaginative question: What if we explore grief not with isolation or solemness, but with wonder? It’s a prompt that’s ripe for an era of divisive politics, financial stress and often isolating technology.

Beginning at twilight and extending into the evening, “The Cortège” starts with an overture, a six-piece band performing in the center of the field. We’re seated either on the grass on portable pads with backs or in folding chairs on an elevated platform.

Soon, a mist erupts on a far end of the field; a lone figure emerges who crawls and then walks to the center. He’ll move in place for much of the show, remaining silent as a fantastical life transpires around him — dancers, ornately costumed characters and larger-than-life puppets will surreally reflect the journey of life.

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Inspired as much by Walt Disney’s approach to fairy tales as, say, Carl Jung’s theories of collective consciousness, “The Cortège” is a revival of an ancient art — the procession — that aims to be a modern rite of passage. A ritual, “The Cortège” is a communal experience, one that seeks to erase borders between audience and performer while imagining a more optimistic world.

Think of it as theater as a healing exercise, or simply an abstracted evening with elaborate, vibrant costumes and choreographed drones creating new constellations in the sky. It’s also a bit of a dance party, with original music composed by Tokimonsta, El Búho and Boreta.

““The Cortège” builds to a final that invites audience participation — and maybe a little dancing.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

“The Cortège” comes from Jeff Hull, a Bay Area artist best known for devising participatory and mysterious experiences that have used real-world settings as a game board — some may recall the beloved underground experiment “The Jejune Institute.” This, however, is a more personal show. It’s informed as much by the struggles and challenges of adulthood as it is the awe and playfulness that Hull experienced when he was younger, specifically his time working as a teen at Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland, a theme park-like playground for young kids.

“Every day I would follow the yellow brick road and have a magic key and slide down a rabbit hole, and I would wonder why the rest of the world wasn’t like that,” Hull says. “I’ve been trying to make it like that ever since. Why can’t we play? Why does it all have to be barriers? That’s the motivation from a childlike place, but now I also have motivation from a wise elder space.”

In turn, “The Cortège” is part festive renewal and part philosophical recollection. At the start, music is mournful but not quite sorrowful, a lightly contemplative jazz-inspired feel anchored by a steel hang drum. The music shifts through reggae stylings and Eastern rhythms. Performers are robed and instruments are carried on ramshackle wheelbarrows, setting up the transitory mood of the night.

What follows will touch on religious and mystical iconography — we’ll meet three lantern-carrying masked figures, for instance, with exaggerated, regal adornments as they herald a birth. Expect a mixture of old and new technologies. Drones will form to mark a passage of eras, a marching band will conjure New Orleans revelry, and towering, furry creatures may invite youthful spiritedness while militant, robotic canines will represent clashing images of human ingenuity and violence.

Think of “The Cortège” as a ceremonial rite of passage — a show that wants audiences to find healing via community.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

For much of the show, we are asked to wear glowing headphones. Their luminescence highlights the crowd while also creating a more intimate, reflective atmosphere. It’s not quite a sound bath and it’s not quite a play, but as more figures enter the field — some haunting and dreamlike with their bodies shaped like arrowheads, and others sillier bursts of feathered color — “The Cortège” takes on a ceremonial, meditative feel.

While some may indeed come for the outsized costumes and extended dance sequences, Hull says the show is the entertainment equivalent of “shadow work,” that is the therapeutic uncovering of suppressed, forgotten or hidden memories.

“Shadow work is something we need to do as individuals, but it’s also something we need to do as a culture,” Hull says. “Let’s look at ourselves. Let’s look at what we don’t want to admit about ourselves. How can we bring that to life? When you do it as an individual, we’re actually partly doing something for the collective. That’s a big aspect of ‘The Cortège.’ Let’s do shadow work as a cultural moment. It’s not all just meant to be entertainment.”

Audiences are asked to wear headphones during “The Cortège,” creating an intimate relationship with the music.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Ultimately, however, “The Cortège” is an invitation, a hand extended to the audience asking us to consider and reimagine our own journey through life. Emerging from both the traumatic end of a relationship and the death of my mother, I appreciated the way in which “The Cortège” sought to put our existence in perspective, to reinterpret, essentially, the individual as the communal for a celebratory reminder that we’ve all struggled as much as we’ve dreamed.

Hull says “The Cortège” was born from a time of strife.

“What you mentioned, losing a loved one and going through a separation, my version of that is I had Guillain-Barre Syndrome and was walking with a cane. My wife was diagnosed with cancer and then she lost her father. And this was all during a time when the sun didn’t come out. It was dark out, all day, because of the California wildfires. It was a shift between taking everything personally and realizing that all the things I mentioned were things we all have to go through.”

The show is purposefully abstracted, says Hull, to allow audience members to attach their own narratives. It’s a work of pageantry, inspired in part by Hull’s fascination with medieval morality plays, specifically the story of “Everyman,” an examination of self and of our relationship to a higher power.

“The tale of ‘Everyman’ was one in which a universal protagonist met with all of the challenges of life and a reckoning with himself and with God,” Hull says. “That’s literally what we’re doing here. It is a revival of ancient European pageantry.”

Drones will form constellations in the sky during “The Cortège.”

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Hull’s name is well-known among those who follow what is the still-emerging niche of so-called immersive entertainment, media that, broadly speaking, asks participants to take on an interactive role. Those who went deep into “The Jejune Institute,” which ran in the late 2000s in San Francisco and inspired a documentary as well as the AMC series “Dispatches from Elsewhere,” could discover a narrative that examined the fragility — or the allure — of human belief systems. It was often, for instance, compared to a cult.

“The Cortège” is clearly a departure. And Hull today is skeptical of the word “immersive.” Though “The Cortege” invites audiences onto the field in its final act and then asks participants to join in a reception (the afterlife), Hull finds much of what is classified today as immersive to be lacking, emphasizing spectacle and imagery over human emotion.

“The Cortège,” says Hull, is “not a metafiction.” Or don’t think of it as a show about a rite of passage. It’s intended to be a rite of passage itself. “That’s kind of the thesis of this piece,” Hull, 56, says, before expanding on his evolved take on the immersive field.

“There’s this world of immersive entertainment, but what are we immersing ourselves in?” he says. “Is this just sensory stimulation? Is this gesturing at the numinous? Is this referencing the mystical? There’s no meta-narrative here.”

Hull’s hope is “The Cortège” will erase the line between the performative and the restorative. “We all want to have a pretend metafictional relationship to transformative experiences rather than genuine transformative experiences,” he says.

Not quite a play and not quite a dance show, “The Cortège” incorporates elements of both during its procession.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

We can get there, Hull believes, by engaging with an art form that has largely been discarded by the Western world.

“We are reconnecting a lost lineage to that which is ancient and to that which is eternal,” Hull says. “A procession is people walking together; that is simply what a procession is. Where are they walking from? They’re walking from their past. Where are they walking to? They’re walking toward the future. That’s what we’re doing.”

I won’t spoil the moment that made me tear up other than to say it was not due to the jolting of any memories. For “The Cortège” is also exultant — a procession, yes, but a walk into an imagined world.

Julio Torres is always in search of the next challenge. The writer, comedian, actor and producer is adding the title of playwright to his ever-growing, multi-hyphenate list of occupations. Since his days as an Emmy-nominated writer for “Saturday Night Live,” Torres has written and starred in the Peabody Award-winning HBO Max original series “Los Espookys,” wrote and starred in the HBO Max original series “Fantasmas” and directed, wrote and starred in his first feature film, “Problemista,” co-starring Tilda Swinton.

For his latest venture, Torres made his way to the stage — admittedly not knowing exactly what goes on in the theater, but willing to take a shot with his first comedic play, “Color Theories.” In it, the audience gets a closer look at the eccentricities that frame his imaginative inner world.

As the son of a civil engineer and architect/fashion designer, Torres’ knack for world building comes as no surprise. In a recent feature for Architectural Digest, Torres opened the doors to his wonderland Brooklyn studio apartment, which contained escapist daydream corners and custom futuristic furniture made of glass, chromatic metals and mirrors, all cut and shaped into squiggles and sharp edges. With elements of retro-elegance and the ambiance of a playhouse, Torres’ vision is nostalgically absurdist and highly refined.

The same can be said about most of his work, including his vision for “Color Theories.” In order to bring his ever unpredictable vision to life, Torres teamed up with longtime scenic design collaborator Tommaso Ortino to create a fantastical surrealist stage for his live theatrical debut, which took place Sept. 3 at the Performance Space New York, located in downtown Manhattan.

Julio Torres performs in “Color Theories” at the Performance Space New York.

(Emilio Madrid)

Before Torres begins his performance, the audience is greeted by a giant book doused in bold, mostly primary colors, a grandfather clock with the numbers melted off its face à la Dalí and tall, blank scrolls. On top of the book lies a giant lipstick-stained wine glass, and an actor lying face down in a bubble-shaped, burgundy satin cloak — or, Drew Rollins playing the role of spilled wine. Rollins is accompanied by Nick Myers, who sits on the side of the stage dressed as a music box in silver foil and oversized pearls. They both play the roles of Torres’ stagehands and narrative helpers. Costumes were designed by Muriel Parra, best known for her work in “A Fantastic Woman” (2017), “Neruda” (2016) and “The Settlers” (2023).

Once the lights come down and the play begins, the whimsical characters crack open the giant book, revealing a stark contrast of blank pages. They proceed to open a flap where the comedian emerges, from the cushioned interior of his own creation. He begins by describing the abstract personalities of different letters of the alphabet, referring to them as staff with “wants, needs, hopes and dreams.” From there, he seamlessly transitions into the definition of the first color on the list: navy blue, which represents (American) bureaucracy, policing and control. Throughout the play, this “law and order” blue encroaches on the existence of every color selected by Torres.

Upon noticing that Torres is spending too much time discussing navy blue, his robotic buddy Bebo — also a recurring character in “Fantasmas” — pops out of the giant clock and serves as a colonel of time and color story order. (He also happens to be blue.)

What Torres dubs as “relaxed” green, “commercial-portrayals-of-joy” yellow, “lusty and ragey” red, “teenage” orange, “soft” beige and “mysterious” purple are all accompanied by playful examples of behaviors, objects and societal conditioning that represent each color. The operatic sound effects paired with each color were created by Lia Ouyang Rusli, who was tasked with the important role of not only composing the sounds for each color, but their respective emotions. Torres explained in a separate interview: “Green should also sound like we combined the sounds of yellow and blue, and so that’s fun.”

One of the most poignant moments of the play is during his green monologue, when Torres reminisces about the video store he grew up visiting in San Salvador. He unashamedly admits he never returned a movie on time, so the owner would bargain the late fee with him based on if the movie was requested during the days it was off the shelf or not.

“This was all working perfectly fine until Blockbuster came in and suddenly we were in a navy blue system,” he explains — with a nod to the U.S. influence on El Salvador, namely in the way American capitalism infringes on countries within reach of its empirical tentacles.

Immigration status is a recurring theme in much of Torres’ work. In his directorial debut, “Problemista,” Torres plays the protagonist Alejandro, who scrambles to find a work visa in 30 days after being fired from his job — and makes desperate attempts to earn quick cash in an effort to pay his legal fees. In “Color Theories,” Torres describes several run-ins with airport immigration authorities and the complications of traveling with a Salvadoran passport.

He recounts being turned away from entering Costa Rica because his passport was too wrinkled — and of being taken to an interrogation room for not knowing he needed a travel visa to enter the U.K. While detained, he noticed authorities had branded the interrogation area as a pseudo-mental wellness safe space — messaging that contradicted the reality of his experience.

Torres uses blue and red to exemplify his anti-capitalist stance by endearingly explaining how those with extreme wealth maneuver tax evasion, how governments allow and excuse war crimes, and how pervasive individualism prevents progress. “Color Theories” reaches its apex when Torres begins discussing the space between the shades black and white — neither representing good nor evil, but rather the known and the unknown.

Julio Torres’ new play “Color Theories” at Performance Space New York.

(Emilio Madrid)

It’s a beautiful way to take what have become very divisive points of view and create an atmosphere of shared humanity among the audience. From here, the colors that become the focal point are bright, airy mixes of pastels, which highlight the beauty in all of our differences and ranges of knowledge.

In just over an hour, Torres delivers a concise portrait of how he navigates and experiences the world in terms an elementary schoolchild can understand — which he jokes about by saying the play will be taken to schools across the U.S. His character development transitions from a justified frustration to the conclusion that humans behaving as though they know it all is the ultimate act of hubris.

“Color Theories” does not communicate as a pessimistic rant about the world but rather examines how government and institutions of power shape our society — and how that power complicates and often oppresses the everyday reality of the average person — by using humorous, universally relatable vantage points and lighthearted pop culture moments.

Noel Gallagher scanned the audience at the Rose Bowl on Saturday night and pointed down at a fan in the front row. “Young lady, what’s your name?” he asked, tilting his head to try to catch the answer. “I can’t really hear you, but this next song is for you.” As he spoke, a camera found a woman wearing an Oasis T-shirt openly weeping — openly sobbing — and sent her image to the giant video screens flanking the stage. “She’s been in tears all night, this girl,” Gallagher added, “which I hope is not a review of the f— gig.”

Not far from it, in fact: Since launching its reunion tour in early July, Oasis — the swaggering British rock band formed in the early 1990s by Gallagher on guitar and his younger brother Liam on lead vocals — has been traveling the world inspiring great outpourings of emotion wherever it goes. On social media, memes have proliferated equating the catharsis to be had at an Oasis concert to a form of therapy; more than one observer has suggested that gathering with tens of thousands of people to sing along with the Gallaghers’ songs might turn out to be the cure for the male loneliness epidemic.

Along with the blockbuster ticket sales and the pop-up merch stores, this nightly purification ritual has positioned Oasis Live ’25 — the band’s first run of shows in more than a decade and a half — as this year’s version of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Which of course some tour was destined to be: At a moment of encroaching technological alienation, humans are naturally searching out opportunities for real-world connection (which is one reason why thousands paid money last month to sit in a movie theater and watch Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters” for the second — or fifth, or 12th — time with other humans).

Oasis performs Saturday night at the Rose Bowl.

(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

Yet I’m not sure I’d have called that it would be an old rock group with three guitarists that would get it done, never mind this old rock group in particular: The first of two dates at the Rose Bowl, Saturday’s sold-out show came 31 years after Oasis almost broke up for the first time following a chaotic 1994 gig at the Whisky a Go Go where the famously combative Gallaghers — having mistaken crystal meth for cocaine, as the story goes — nearly came to blows; Oasis’ long-promised breakup finally took in 2009, after which the brothers spent years trading savage insults in the press (and anywhere else they could do it).

How exactly Noel, now 58, and Liam, 52, managed to come back together hasn’t yet been told; one suspects that sufficiently humongous bags of cash had something to do with it. On the road, the Gallaghers are accompanied by Oasis’ original guitarist, Paul Arthurs (known delightfully as Bonehead), along with Gem Archer on guitar, Andy Bell on bass, Joey Waronker on drums and Christian Madden on keyboards. At the Rose Bowl, celebrities in attendance included Paul McCartney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billie Eilish, Metallica’s James Hetfield, Laufey and MGK — a varied list of names that tells you something about the broad appeal of classic Oasis songs like “Wonderwall,” “Roll With It,” “Some Might Say,” “Champagne Supernova” and “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” the last of which was the tune Noel dedicated to the woman shedding tears of joy in the front row.

Liam Gallagher, left, and Noel Gallagher at the Rose Bowl.

(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

The songs indeed were the thing on Saturday. Oasis sounded great, with those three guitars snarling and shimmering over sturdy grooves that mapped a middle ground among punk, glam and late-Beatles balladry; Liam’s voice was somehow both brawny and sweet as he reached for the high notes with a kind of taunting effortlessness. And the brothers engaged in a bit of lovable stage business, as when Liam — looking superb as always in his signature shades and anorak — balanced a tambourine on his head and offered gnomic shout-outs to Woody Woodpecker and to the sword swallowers in the audience.

But this was the least showy pop show I’ve seen in years; Oasis’ comeback is as much about the crowd as it is about the band — as much about the people singing along with the music as it is about the people making it. Song after song took the imperative mood: “Acquiesce,” “Bring It On Down,” “Fade Away,” “Stand By Me,” “Cast No Shadow,” “Slide Away” — each a command happily obeyed until the next one was issued forth, each abstract enough in its emotional specifics to satisfy whatever need it might meet. (“Someday you will find me / Caught beneath the landslide / In a Champagne supernova in the sky” still makes gloriously little sense.)

Because they’d done so much to bring the audience together, you couldn’t help by the end of the concert to long for a glimpse of a little brotherly love between the Gallaghers. They obliged during the finale, Liam circling Noel then clapping him on the back as the last chords of “Champagne Supernova” rang out and fireworks filled the sky with smoky light. It wasn’t much, and it was more than enough.

NEW YORK — If Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vaults into national prominence as a Democratic leader, he may one day look back at Thursday as a key step in that direction.

SiriusXM announced that it was giving Beshear’s new podcast a national platform starting this month, along with featuring him in a regular call-in show on its Progress network.

President Trump’s appearances on podcasts were a pivotal media strategy in his successful 2024 Republican campaign. Moving forward, mastering a personal podcast could replace soft-focus biographies or wonky books as a way for politicians to increase their profiles.

Beshear said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this summer that he will “take a look” at running for president in 2028. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also in the circle of potential presidential nominees, started his own podcast earlier this year.

Speaking to the anxiety of Americans

In an interview, Beshear said a motivating factor in his own podcast was people who have come up to him, especially during the Trump administration, to talk about their anxieties.

“That’s how Americans feel,” he said. “They feel like the news hits them minute after minute after minute. And it can feel like chaos. It can feel like the world is out of control. With this podcast, we’re trying to help Americans process what we’re going through.”

He’s already done nearly two dozen podcasts, with his audience heavily weighted toward Kentucky residents. His guests have included some potential Democratic presidential rivals, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, former Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and Kentucky-born actor and comic Steve Zahn have also appeared.

Beshear, the son of a former governor who’s been leading Kentucky since 2019, talks issues himself. Two of his friends, a Republican and a Democrat, are regular guests, and his 16-year-old son helps Dad navigate some youthful lingo.

Newsom attracted attention — some of it negative among Democrats — for interviewing conservative guests Steve Bannon, Michael Savage and Charlie Kirk on his podcast.

“I did disagree with him on certain guests because I don’t like to give oxygen to hate,” Beshear said. “But Gavin is out there really working to communicate with the American people, and he deserves to be commended for it.”

Newsom’s podcast started slowly in the marketplace but has caught fire in recent weeks, his regular audiences jumping from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, said Paul Riismandel, president of Signal Hill Insights, an audio-focused market research company.

The California governor’s increased visibility, particularly on social media, is likely a factor in the growing popularity of the podcast, Riismandel said. But it’s also a function of how podcasts often catch on: Many tend to be slow burns as audiences discover them, he said.

Learning to master the format of podcasts

Whether ambitious politicians start their own podcasts or not, they’re going to have to be familiar going forward with what makes people successful in the format.

“With a podcast, the audience expects a more unfiltered, authentic kind of conversation and presentation,” Riismandel said. If politicians come across as too controlled, looking for the sort of soundbites that will be broken out in a television appearance, it’s not likely to work, he said. They have to be willing to open up.

“That is something that is probably new for a lot of politicians,” he said, “and new for their handlers.”

Beshear’s first podcast for SiriusXM will feature an interview with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), conducted in the company’s New York studio and debuting Sept. 10. The Progress network will air Beshear’s podcasts regularly on Saturdays at 11 a.m. Eastern.

The first live call-in show will be next Tuesday at noon, with Beshear joined by Progress host John Fugelsang.

Beshear stressed that his work for SiriusXM is “not just aimed at a Democratic audience.”

“We’re aiming,” he said, “at an American audience.”

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

“Splitsville” lands at a moment when every comedy released to theaters feels like a battle cry, an attempt to defend audiences’ rights to have a good time at the movies.

Directed by Michael Angelo Covino, who also produces, co-writes and co-stars alongside Kyle Marvin, the film continues the duo’s comic exploration of bad choices, in which men predictably make poor decisions and are depicted as vain, infantile and often motivated by their worst impulses. (It’s funny because it’s true.)

As the movie begins, Carey (Marvin) is married to Ashley (Adria Arjona), who tells him she has been seeing other people and wants a divorce. He seeks solace from his best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife, Julie (Dakota Johnson), who tell Carey they are in an open relationship. Soon Carey sleeps with Julie and all sorts of jealousies and complicated feelings arise among the four of them.

“Splitsville” — the title appears briefly onscreen as the neon sign of a dessert stand — is outwardly a satire of bourgeois aspirations, modern marriage and how no one really understands the dynamics of what goes on with other couples. But the film is actually more concerned with the absurdities of male friendship, to the extent that Covino and Marvin are perennially enamored of themselves and can’t help from centering their own antics.

Their previous movie, “The Climb,” was also about two friends locked into an up-and-down relationship alternating between of moments of betrayal and gestures of support. While they are not playing the same specific characters from “The Climb,” they are very much playing the same type. Covino is seemingly more smooth and together, though riddled with insecurities, while Marvin initially appears hapless and vulnerable, with an emotional intelligence that reveals him to be savvier than he first appears. So they basically meet in the middle.

The entire movie has a disappointing air of smug self-regard about it, with an expectation the audience will adore everything about the characters as much as they do. What at moments feels like a nascent interrogation of contemporary masculinity ultimately suffers from the very impulses it seems to want to parody. (We hear numerous times that one of them is generously endowed.)

Both Arjona and Johnson are asked to play variations on personas they have depicted elsewhere. Arjona has the same earthy warmth she did in “Hit Man,” while Johnson exhibits a placid air of controlled chaos similar to what she showed earlier this year in “Materialists.” They undoubtedly elevate the movie, though too often their characters feel like game pieces manipulated on a board controlled by the film’s male leads.

Johnson and Arjona are movie stars, beguiling and captivating. Covino and Marvin seem like a couple of guys who somehow wandered onscreen. The tension is never reconciled and is constantly throwing the story off balance.

In “The Climb,” there is a moment where Covino and Marvin briefly wrestle, a ludicrous sight of two grown men tussling on the ground. Here that beat expands into a full-blown fight scene that goes on for more than six minutes, as Paul attacks Carey after learning he slept with Julie. Smashing furniture, breaking drywall, destroying a fish tank (while saving the fish) and somehow singeing off Carey’s eyebrows, the fight scene is the movie’s centerpiece, one of its major selling points and indicative of everything that both works and doesn’t. It is funny, escalating ridiculously, but it is also too outlandish for the characters and the story and only really exists as something that Covino and Marvin simply wanted to do for themselves.

They’re good at jokes but much weaker on meaning, stumbling when it comes to making it all add up to something. With a background in advertising, Marvin and Covino are strong on short, punchy ideas conveyed through strong visuals. They may eventually be better served by making work they do not appear in — their performances are the weakest thing about their movies so far. Even as they remain a promising duo, “Splitsville” never quite fully comes together.

“Honey Don’t!” is a smutty desert mystery in which the detective, Honey O’Donohue (Margaret Qualley), never gets around to solving the central crime. She’s too busy seducing women and swatting down randy men. I’d call the opening murder a red herring except it’s really more like a fish left to cook in the blinding Bakersfield sun.

The second film co-written by Ethan Coen and his collaborator and wife Tricia Cooke (the first was 2024’s “Drive-Away Dolls”), it’s less preoccupied by the challenge of who’s responsible for that corpse than by its own overarching question: Why not? Why not let Margaret Qualley prove she has the electricity to power an audience through any plot? Why not pivot from “The Big Lebowski” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to an announced trilogy of tatty lesbian exploitation pictures? Why not, when a couple has earned the industry clout to shoot the script they want with the cast they want, make exactly the movie they want, even if this pulpy B-picture isn’t very good? Who’s going to tell them, honey don’t?

To be clear, there’s enough to like in “Honey Don’t!” to get you through its 89-minute running time. I’d watch Qualley stride around barking at people for twice as long and her supporting cast, which includes Aubrey Plaza as Honey’s latest lover and Chris Evans as an oily pastor, is delivering at top level, i.e., Coen-worthy. (Newer talent Josh Pafchek pockets his scenes as a moronic Australian brute.) The script has several zingers that are so good you want to applaud right in your seat, particularly an insult Honey slings at her estranged daddy (Kale Browne). Even the extended intro credits have a witty energy that makes you forgive that they’re tap dancing to pad the length.

Still, as with the sillier “Dolls,” which also starred Qualley as a hot-to-trot queer queen, the film is so shaggy that it feels longer than it is. I finished both movies double-checking my watch in astonishment that they really were under an hour and a half.

Qualley’s Honey is a headstrong investigator who is so independent, she refuses to let her secretary (Gabby Beans) make her a cup of coffee. Frankly, she’s not that impressive as a private dick. Honey is only passingly curious why a client died before their first meeting and so predominately distracted by tangental side quests — her troubled teen niece (Talia Ryder), her dalliances with Plaza’s husky lady cop — that the resolution doesn’t involve much brilliant deduction. We know from the first scene that Honey needs to keep a close eye on a mysterious stranger named Cher (Lera Abova). Ultimately, the French femme fatale catches her attention for other reasons.

Across town, the corrupt Reverend Drew (Evans) is swaying his parishioners to sleep with him in the name of godly submission. “I want to see your bosoms jouncing during fellowship,” he commands a member of his flock. The preacher is one of the biggest sinners in Bakersfield, not merely because both he and Honey may as well be using the phone book as a checklist of conquests. A normal thriller would frame their dynamic as cat versus mouse. Here, it’s more like plague and vaccine. Honey is immune to his sales pitches for heterosexuality and holy salvation.

Honey is a brazenly preposterous creation: a 21st century woman who insists on using a Rolodex, something that was headed toward extinction before Qualley was even born. Striding through brush in seamed stockings and high heels — and changing wardrobe multiple times a day just because she can — she’s the only character who never breaks a sweat (except in the bedroom).

Qualley keeps her cool from head to toe: eyebrows stern, line deliveries cucumber-crisp. Like a brassy classic dame, she says exactly what she means. When the local homicide officer, Marty (Charlie Day), makes a pass at her, she bluntly replies, “I like girls.” The guy doesn’t listen — he just keeps pestering her — which makes their dynamic play like some sort of clunky runner about how men are dense.

Marty’s pursuit is that. But Honey’s retort is also how the real-life Cooke shot Coen down the first time her future husband asked her out on a date. More than anything, it’s evidence that “Honey Don’t!” primarily exists as the couple’s own affectionate in-joke. “Tricia’s queer and sweet and I’m straight and stupid,” Coen said last year in an interview with the Associated Press. Both describe their three-decades-plus marriage as “nontraditional.” Both also insist that they’re making these pulp flicks as a unit and don’t care who gets credit for what, claiming that Coen is cited as the director of “Honey Don’t!” simply because he’s the one in the DGA.

Coen is, of course, half of another twosome with his brother Joel that also enjoys defying labels. Their filmography zigzags between thrillers and comedies, lean exercises and awards heavyweights, never making the same movie twice. It’s as though their guiding compass is to stay ahead of audience expectations. The pair has been on a creative break since 2018’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and it’s been tempting to use their separate projects as an opportunity to examine who each sibling is as an individual. If you watched Joel Coen’s black-and-white “The Tragedy of Macbeth” in a double feature with “Honey Don’t!” you’d leave convinced that the elder Joel was the stylist and the younger Ethan the wit — that Joel wears a monocle and Ethan a grease-painted John Waters mustache.

But they might just be tricking us again. It’s just as valid to say the brains behind those two movies are William Shakespeare and Tricia Cooke, especially the latter as she seems to have had the stronger hand in shaping the two sexy Qualley capers we’ve seen thus far. (The third already has a title: “Go Beavers.”)

As sloppy as it is, there’s no denying that “Honey Don’t!” works as a noir with a pleasant, peppery flavor. Yet, there’s a snap missing in its rhythm, a sense that it doesn’t know when and how its gags should hit. When a playboy (Christian Antidormi) swaggers up to a bar and orders a shot of cinnamon schnapps, the line clangs like it landed better on the page. A few scenes later, a low-level drug dealer goes home to his Bolivian grandmother (Gloria Sandoval) who is such a caricature — bowler hat, lap full of dried chili peppers — that you suspect the character was designed to get more of a laugh. I did giggle when Honey visited her sister, a worn-out hausfrau named Heidi (Kristen Connolly), and kids kept popping out of the corners of her home one after another like rabbits from a hat.

The majority of the townsfolk that Honey encounters are such incurious mouth-breathers that the humor can feel hostile. The film’s worldview is that most people are, as Coen describes himself, straight and stupid. That’s worked out well enough for him. He’s won four Oscars and, more importantly, the ability to do whatever he darned well pleases.