Evil

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

This week I spoke to James L. Brooks, whose legendary career includes “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Broadcast News” and “The Simpsons,” about his new film “Ella McCay,” which opens in theaters Dec. 12.

The film stars Emma Mackey as a classic Brooksian heroine: a lieutenant governor of a small, unnamed state with a genuine desire to make other people’s lives better who unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the job of governor.

Albert Brooks and Emma Mackey in the movie “Ella McCay.”

(Claire Folger / 20th Century Studios)

Warm and affectionate toward its characters while also clear-eyed about their all-too-human imperfections, the film is the kind of made-for-adults dramedy that is currently out-of-favor with Hollywood.

“I don’t believe people don’t want comedy,” Brooks said. “Obviously, I hope that you have meat on the bone and that doesn’t mean you can’t do a real scene about real difficulty, especially with this picture.”

Matt Brennan spoke to Renate Reinsve, star of Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” while the two of them toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. Carlos Aguilar spent time with Amy Madigan, the veteran actor enjoying renewed career energy thanks to her role as Aunt Gladys in “Weapons.”

Among the movies’ new releases, Amy Nicholson reviewed Rian Johnson’s latest Benoit Blanc story, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” calling it the “darkest, funniest and best installment yet.”

Mila Kunis, Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in the movie “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”

(Netflix)

Amy also reviewed Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) as they grapple with the death of their young son Hamnet, a grief that results in the play “Hamlet.”

If you are really looking to get away from family this week, consider Julia Loktev’s five-and-a-half-hour documentary “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” which chronicles the fall of one of the last independent news channels in Russia, largely run by women, during the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Loktev and one of the film’s subjects, Ksenia Mironova, will be at the Laemmle Royal for Q&As after certain shows on the 28th and 29th.

As Tim Grierson put it in his review, “During a year in which the worst-case scenarios of a second Trump presidency have come to fruition, ‘My Undesirable Friends’ contains plenty of echoes with our national news. The canceling of comedy shows, the baseless imprisonment of innocent people, the rampant transphobia: The Putin playbook is now this country’s day-to-day. Some may wish to avoid Loktev’s film because of those despairing parallels. But that’s only more reason to embrace ‘My Undesirable Friends.’ Loktev didn’t set out to be a witness to history, but what she’s emerged with is an indispensable record and a rallying cry.”

Also opening this week is another of the year’s most boldly unconventional films, Kahlil Joseph’s “BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions,” a dense, collage-like exploration of Black identity and history, playing at the Lumiere Music Hall. Anyone who saw the recent blockbuster exhibition of artworks by Joseph’s brother, the late Noah Davis, at the Hammer Museum will also find “BLKNWS” a worthwhile experience.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins on the future of the Coen brothers

Cinematographer Roger Deakins photographed at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Roger Deakins is among the most celebrated and best-known cinematographers of his era. A two-time Oscar winner, he has worked with filmmakers such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Sam Mandes, Denis Villeneuve and many more, on films including “No Country for Old Men,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Skyfall,” “Sicario,” “Blade Runner 2049” and “1917.”

Deakins, 76, who often works in collaboration with his wife James Ellis Deakins, has for the past few years been hosting a podcast, “Team Deakins,” interviewing filmmakers. He has recently published “Reflections: On Cinematography,” which is part memoir and part how-to, drawing from his personal archives to explore his work on so many contemporary classics.

On Sunday, the American Cinematheque will screen director Andrew Dominik’s 2007 “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” at the Aero Theatre with both Roger and James present for a Q&A and book signing.

They recently got on a video call from their home in Santa Monica to talk about the book, their relationship and whether to expect another movie from the Coen brothers.

Javier Bardem in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2007 movie “No Country for Old Men.”

(Miramax Films)

One of the things that’s so striking about the book is that it is very much a memoir, the story of your life, but it is told through these movies and an exploration of your artistic practice.

Roger Deakins: Well, that was the balance. We didn’t want it to be a technical manual and we didn’t want it to be a sort of tell-all or just recounting old stories.

James Deakins: When you work in the film business, it’s so intense. Your work is your life.

Roger Deakins: Especially when I started out, shooting in documentaries for a few years, that was the life experience that opened the world to me. I didn’t see the world other than my experiences shooting films, whether it was documentaries or later fiction films, like going together to Morocco to shoot “Kundun.” The life experience actually has always been as important to me as the actual work.

Can you tell me a little bit more about just the relationship between the two of you, traveling together, working on all these different movies? What has that meant to you?

Roger Deakins: It’s all very weird. That is so not me.

James Deakins: The reason why we work so well together is Roger’s very intent on what he is doing and doesn’t particularly want to talk to other people during that time period. And I do — I love to talk to people. I love to solve problems. I love to do all that. So together we kind of make this whole. But we also have a lot of people come up to us and ask us for relationship advice.

Roger Deakins: When we met, I think I was 41 or something. We were both fairly kind of, not lonely, but we were loners, both of us. And we connected on a film. We met on a film together. James was script supervisor on a film that I was shooting. And after that film, it just seemed obvious to me that we should be together. And it’s been wonderful. We’ve just shared these life experiences together. I couldn’t really understand other relationships, which seemed to work well, where one person goes away and works on a movie for like six months and then comes back home and tries to step back into a relationship like nothing had happened. I don’t see that. So we’ve always shared things together. Doing the podcast was very much James’ idea, but I’ve kind of warmed to it.

James Ellis Deakins, left, and Roger Deakins at the 95th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in 2023.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When people ask for relationship advice, what do they want to know?

James Deakins: They’re saying, “I’ve got to travel so much. How do I keep it together?” Or: How do we work together? Just, will this work? Is it possible? It’s very strange, because we’ve just done a very technical Q&A and my head’s there, and then someone comes up to me — and I can always kind of tell because they’re bearing down on me — and they go, “I just want to ask you…”

Roger, in the book you talk about how, when you were starting out and in film school, you thought of yourself as a director. As you started shooting more for other people, did that create a sense of a path not taken?

Roger Deakins: I would be lying if I was saying there wasn’t a little bit way down deep inside of me that was saying: What if I had tried to become a director instead? But on the other hand, I’ve been part of so many movies with so many really nice, intelligent people. And I really do have a confidence problem. We did try and get together a couple of projects a number of years ago and I just don’t have the confidence. I’m terrible going into a studio and pitching a project.

I’m just not that political person. I love nothing more than being on a set with a whole group of people. I love just working with the camera crew and electricians and the grips and the painters and everybody else. I love that collaboration. And often a director is in a much more lonely place.

Do you feel like you have a signature? What is it that you bring to a project?

Roger Deakins: I hope I don’t have a signature. I hope I just have a way of relating to a story and something in front of me. Maybe there’s some sort of personal perspective.

James Deakins: Well, I think you bring a commitment to the project. And you also are so committed to creating the director’s vision as opposed to you coming in and saying, “Well, let’s make it the way that I always do it.” And so I think you allow what the director has in his head to come out.

Roger Deakins: It’s also really important that you’re not just there to create pretty pictures. Oh, that’s a great sunset, but what the hell does it have to do with this story? Or: Let’s put up five cameras and get a lot of material and we’ll cut something out of it later. That’s the extreme version of something that’s anathema to me.

You say that people confuse pretty cinematography with good cinematography. How do you define good cinematography?

Roger Deakins: Cinematography that’s not noticed. Not noticed because people are too absorbed in the story. When you go to a premiere or any screening and you come out and somebody comes out and says, “Oh, I love that shot where such and such” — that was a mistake because not one shot should stand out. Somebody said, “Oh, wasn’t that a lovely sunset?” Then you’ve taken the audience out of the film. You’ve just drawn attention to the image.

Ryan Gosling in the movie “Blade Runner 2049.”

(Stephen Vaughan / Warner Bros. Pictures)

So even for all the astonishing images you’ve created, you still think that they shouldn’t be noticed?

Roger Deakins: In a way. I mean, obviously on some films you’ve got more license than others. Obviously I could have more fun on “Skyfall” in certain instances, or “Blade Runner,” more than I could on “No Country for Old Men.” “Blade Runner,” I could do these kind of lighting things in the Wallace building because that was part of the character, that was part of his creation, not mine. So it kind of felt integral to the character. But in another situation, I’m never going to do that kind of lighting.

You haven’t shot anything for a few years now. Are you hoping to find something?

Roger Deakins: Kind of. It depends which day you ask me, really.

James Deakins: Really depends on the project. And we haven’t seen anything, really.

A lot of people are very eager for Joel and Ethan Coen to work together again. Have you had any conversations with them?

Roger Deakins: Well, Joel’s just been directing a film in Scotland, his own film. I’ve talked to Joel on and off lately and, well, actually Ethan not that long ago, but I’m not sure what their plans are now. So that’s all talk. That’s like talking about my football team, Manchester United. What’s the next player they’re going to buy? Who knows?

Points of interest

‘Coming Home’

Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in the movie “Coming Home.”

(Herbert Dorfman / Corbis via Getty Images)

On Monday, the Frida Cinema will show Hal Ashby’s 1978 “Coming Home,” starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight and Bruce Dern. Fonda and Voight both won Academy Awards for their performances and the film was named best picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

“Coming Home” is an exploration of the costs of war at home and also about learning to live with disability. Voight plays a Vietnam veteran who returns a paraplegic, struggling to adjust to his new life. Fonda is a woman whose husband (Dern) is deployed to Vietnam. When she begins to volunteer at the local VA hospital, she reconnects with Voight’s Luke, a friend from high school. As the two begin an affair, all three of their lives are upended.

Critic Kristen Lopez will be there to introduce the screening, as well as sign copies of her new book, “Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies.”

Via email, Lopez explained her selection of “Coming Home,” saying “it’s one of the few movies that, I think, even though it’s not cast authentically, does illustrate the disabled experience in an authentic way. Director Hal Ashby, producer Jane Fonda and star Jon Voight did deep research into disabled veterans, specifically wheelchair users, and it’s the first movie I remember seeing that got the little bits of disabled business correct. It’s also a movie that, even today, is remarkably progressive in how it portrays disability. Luke Martin has a home and a car, he’s self-sufficient, and too often we don’t see how disabled people live.”

‘Putney Swope’

An image from “Putney Swope,” directed by Robert Downey Sr.

(Cinema 5 / Photofest)

Opening the series “Present Past 2025: A Celebration of Film Preservation” at the Academy Museum will be the world premiere of a new 35mm print of Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 “Putney Swope.” A biting satire of how corporate culture handles race, the film stars Arnold Johnson as the title character, who is unexpectedly made president of a major advertising firm and proceeds to upend all of its messaging. Paul Thomas Anderson has often spoken of Downey as an influence — an influence that can be clearly seen in the anti-authoritarian “One Battle After Another.”

In his original January 1970 review, Charles Champlin wrote, “‘Putney Swope’ is not so much a movie as a cartoon with real people. … ‘Putney Swope’ is not for anyone who demands good taste in movies, or restraint, or a presumption of dignity in the human character. But in its youthful, irreverent and uninhibited but medicinal way, ‘Putney Swope’ is shocking good fun.”

Also playing as part of the Academy’s preservation series, which runs through Dec. 22, will be world premiere restorations of William Wyler’s 1934 “Glamour,” John M. Stahl’s 1933 “Only Yesterday,” Lloyd Corrigan’s 1931 “Daughter of the Dragon” and George Marshall’s 1945 “Incendiary Blonde.” Other titles in the series include North American restoration premieres of Konrad Wolf’s 1980 “Solo Sunny” and Mikio Naruse’s 1955 “Floating Clouds,” plus the U.S. restoration premieres of Howard Hughes’ 1930 “Hell’s Angels” and Pedro Almodóvar’s 1986 “Matador.”

‘While You Were Sleeping’

Peter Gallagher and Sandra Bullock in the romantic comedy “While You Were Sleeping.”

(Michael P. Weinstein / Hollywood Pictures)

On Dec. 5, the New Beverly will screen a matinee of John Turteltaub’s 1995 “While You Were Sleeping.” (Take that extra long lunch or just knock off work early. It’s the holidays.) This winsome, utterly charming romantic comedy really helped cement Sandra Bullock’s screen persona and stardom, and deservedly so. A lonely woman (Bullock) who works in a ticket booth for the Chicago Transit Authority quietly pines for a handsome man (Peter Gallagher) she sees every day. After she helps save him from an accident, a misunderstanding at the hospital leads his family to believe she is his fiancée while he is in a coma. Then she meets his brother (Bill Pullman) and the complications really ensue.

In his original review of the film, Peter Rainer wrote, “Bullock is a genuinely engaging performer, which at least gives the treacle some minty freshness. Her scenes with Pullman are amiable approach-avoidance duets that really convince you something is going on between them. Like Marisa Tomei, Bullock has a sky-high likability factor with audiences. She can draw us into her spunky loneliness — you want to see her smile.”

Protests come amid widespread anger over billions of pesos spent on substandard or non-existent flood control infrastructure.

Tens of thousands of people are gathering in the Philippines’ capital, Manila, demanding accountability over a corruption scandal linked to flood-control projects and top government officials, including allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The three-day rally, which begins on Sunday, is the latest display of outrage over the discovery that thousands of flood defence projects across the typhoon-prone country were made from substandard materials or simply did not exist.

Police estimated that 27,000 members of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, or Church of Christ, gathered in Manila’s Rizal Park before noon, many wearing white and carrying anticorruption placards, for the afternoon demonstration.

Brother Edwin Zabala, spokesman for the church, said the three-day rally is aimed at expressing “our sentiment and lend the voice of the Iglesia ni Cristo to the calls of many of our countrymen condemning the enormous evil involving many government officials”.

Other groups were scheduled to hold a separate anticorruption protest later on Sunday at the People Power Monument in suburban Quezon city.

The country’s military reaffirmed support for the government before the planned demonstrations in Manila, where the Philippine National Police say they will deploy 15,000 police as security.

The protests follow allegations that numerous well-connected figures, including Marcos’s cousin and former House of Representatives Speaker Martin Romualdez, pocketed large sums for anti-flooding projects that were low in quality or never completed at all.

Public outrage has flared again after recent storms hammered large swaths of the country earlier this month and left at least 259 people dead, and Marcos has promised that those implicated in the scandal would be in jail before the Christmas holiday.

The Department of Finance has estimated that the country lost up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2bn) to corruption in flood-control projects between 2023 and 2025, some of them referred to as “ghost infrastructure projects”.

A fact-finding commission has filed criminal complaints for corruption against 37 people, including senators, members of Congress, and wealthy businesspeople. Criminal complaints have also been filed against 86 construction company executives and nine government officials for allegedly evading nearly 9 billion pesos ($153m) in taxes.

Among those accused are lawmakers opposed to and allied with Marcos. In addition to Romualdez, these include Senate President Chiz Escudero, as well as Senator Bong Go, a key ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

All three have denied wrongdoing.

Marcos has said his cousin will not face criminal charges “as yet” due to a lack of evidence, but added that “no one is exempt” from the investigation.

“We don’t file cases for optics,” he said. “We file cases to put people in jail.”

Duterte, a harsh Marcos critic, was detained by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands in March for alleged crimes against humanity over his brutal anti-drug crackdowns.

His daughter, the current vice president, said Marcos should also be held accountable and jailed for approving the 2025 national budget, which appropriated billions for flood control projects.

There have been isolated calls, including by some pro-Duterte supporters, for the military to withdraw support from Marcos, but Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, General Romeo Brawner Jr, has repeatedly rejected those calls.

“With full conviction, I assure the public that the armed forces will not engage in any action that violates the Constitution. Not today, not tomorrow and certainly not under my watch,” Brawner said.

The military “remains steadfast in preserving peace, supporting lawful civic expression and protecting the stability and democratic institutions of the republic”, he added.

It takes a certain composure, as a teenager, to walk out onto Taylor Swift’s stage in a sold-out stadium and play an opening set to tens of thousands of fans who have never heard of you. But it takes even more conviction to use the occasion to play music almost guaranteed to leave them squirming — grimy, bloodletting noise-rock and electro about being a sexual menace and growing disillusioned with God.

The now-20-year-old singer-songwriter Sofia Isella did that last year, opening on the Australian run of Swift’s Eras tour. “Taylor was an angel for allowing me to share that stage,” L.A.-raised Isella said. “I wish I could have recorded that feeling. But the show itself is not as nerve-wracking as it is playing for 20 people. There’s something about a giant room that almost feels a little dissociative, like it’s not really happening or it’s not really there.”

“Dissociative” is a decent descriptor for Isella’s music, too — disorienting, unnerving, drawing out emotions you might not understand. But there’s so much skill in the performances and imagination in her arrangements that they may well get Isella — who plays the Fonda Theater on Nov. 16 — onto much bigger stages of her own, just as the world gets much bleaker around her.

“This next record, I’m having so much fun with s— that’s really f— dark,” Isella said. “It’s like, the only way to stop screaming about it is to have a moment laughing about it.”

Isella grew up in Los Angeles in a family with enough entertainment-biz acclaim to make being an artist feel like a viable career. Yet they still let her be feral and freewheeling in developing her craft. Her father, the Chilean American cinematographer Claudio Miranda, won an Oscar for 2012’s “Life of Pi” and shot “Top Gun: Maverick” and the recent racing hit “F1” (Her mom is the author Kelli Bean-Miranda). Looking back on her bucolic childhood in L.A., Isella recalled it filled with music and boundless encouragement, worlds away from her social media-addled peers.

“I’d been homeschooled my whole life,” Isella said. “My mom would leave little trails of poetry books for me to find, and my dad would set up GarageBand and leave me for hours with all the instruments and nothing but free time. I didn’t even have a phone until I was 16. When I first was on TikTok, I saw everyone had the same personality, because they had been watching each other for so long. Being around kids my age was so strange, because I’d grown up around adults — like, ‘Oh, these kids are so sweet and kind and adorable, but they think I’m one of them.’”

After her family temporarily moved to Australia during the pandemic and Isella began self-releasing music, it became clear that her talents set her very far apart. Drawing on her early background in classical music and a fascination with scabrous rock and electronic music, she found a sound that melded the Velvet Underground and Nico’s elegant miserablism, Chelsea Wolfe and Lingua Ignota’s doom-laden art metal and the close-miked , creepy goth-pop of Billie Eilish’s first LP.

Isella began self-releasing music during the pandemic. Since then, she’s landed opener spots on multiple high-profile tours.

(@okaynicolita)

Her early music showed a withering humor and skepticism of the culture around her (“All of Human Knowledge Made Us Dumb,” “Everybody Supports Women”), but singles came at rapid clip and translated surprisingly well on the social media platforms she loathed (she has 1.3 million followers on TikTok). It all got her onto stages with Melanie Martinez and Glass Animals and, eventually, Swift. (A Florence + The Machine arena tour opening slot is up next.)

On 2024’s writhing EP “I Can Be Your Mother,” songs like “Sex Concept” had the sensual fatalism of poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, paired with the drippy erotic menace of Nine Inch Nails. “I’ll bend him over backwards, give him something to believe in,” she sings. “We’ll play the game, both go insane and then we’ll call it even … I’m the only god that you’ll ever believe in.”

“The first EP was this whole story of giving birth to yourself, this giant stretched-out muse,” Isella said, leaning into a stemwinder about the genesis of art. “It just doesn’t feel like it’s coming from me. It feels like it’s coming from some weird thing I somewhat worship.”

A May 2025 follow-up, “I’m Camera,” dealt with the depersonalizing effects of sudden attention. On “Josephine,” she makes tour life feel like a proverbial grippy-sock vacation to the breakdown ward — “I’m sock-footed, sick and selfish holding strangers’ hands … I lost something, I sold it, I only remember the ache.”

Isella’s wariness of institutions extends to her recording career. She’s still independent for now — surprising for an artist on Swift’s radar — and uncompromising about what a label would demand of her compared to what they can provide. “I’ve met with a lot of the big dogs, and they’re very kind people, but I just love the feeling of being independent,” Isella said. “Maybe I’ll change my mind on that, but I’m trying to fully understand a label and what its functions are, what it gives the artist in a social media day. I’m trying to fully assess that before I sign any magic papers.”

Her newest material (and her subversively eerie, Francesa Woodman-evoking music videos like “Muse”) feel perfectly timed to the apocalyptic mood in L.A. and the U.S. now, where an inexorable slide to ruin feels biblical. “Out In the Garden,” from September, hits some of the Southern gothic moods of Ethel Cain, but with a sense of acidic pity that’s all her own. “That there’s a small part of me that’s envious / That you full-heartedly believe someone is always there,” she sings. “That will always love you, and there’s a plan for you out there.”

Even at her bleakest, there’s a curdled humor underneath (her current tour is subtitled “You’ll Understand More, Dick”). But if this little sliver of young fame has taught Isella anything, it’s that even when everyone wants a piece of you, no one is actually coming to save any of us.

“There’s nothing with weight, nothing that’s meaningful, to blind faith,” Isella said. “On this next record, I’m about to go really angry because religion really pisses me off, it inflames me. But it’s the most beautiful placebo to imagine that there’s a father that loves you no matter what you do. I’m a really lucky person in that I’ve always been safe and protected, but if you’ve had a rough life, that is insanely powerful to imagine that and believe that.”