Film

Fans of the seminal, long-running podcast “WTF With Marc Maron” — and I count myself among them — have been treated to thousands of deep-dive interviews with a starry array of actors, musicians, comics and even some politicians (Barack Obama was a guest in 2015). It’s also been an intimate window into the conflicted inner life of the show’s eponymous host. Maron has seemingly pulled few if any punches in his podcast’s opening monologues as he’s held forth on everything from his fraught emotional state and his two-decade struggle with drug and alcohol addiction (he’s been sober since 1999) to the untimely 2020 death of his romantic partner, the well-regarded indie filmmaker Lynn Shelton (“Humpday,” “Your Sister’s Sister”).

Much of this personal territory and more is revisited in the absorbing, fly-on-the-wall-style documentary “Are We Good?” (named after Maron’s “WTF” sign-off phrase), produced and directed by Steven Feinartz.

Feinartz, who also directed Maron’s last two HBO stand-up specials, began filming his subject in 2021. He trailed Maron as he performed in comedy clubs from Los Angeles to Montreal, recorded his podcast from the garage studio of his Glendale home, visited with his elderly father and, most pivotally, worked through the soul-crushing loss of Shelton. That loss becomes the driving force of the doc, with Maron’s grief informing his daily life and thought process, while also providing cathartic, darkly humorous fodder for his stand-up gigs.

It’s a tricky balancing act that Feinartz depicts with candor, grace and patience, never letting the film’s provocative pathos turn overly grim or sentimental. A stand-up bit in which Maron recalls his ghoulish urge to snap a hospital selfie after bidding goodbye to the deceased Shelton (don’t worry, he decided against it) provides a gulp-worthy example of the comic’s brazen yet reflective approach to the world around him.

That Shelton died at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic made for an additionally cruel and difficult time for Maron, who was unable to share his pain with many others as social distancing took over. He eventually found the funny in that conundrum as well, incorporating the memory into his routine with satiric glee.

Anyone familiar with Maron’s grumpy, F-bomb-tossing persona will likely savor these 90 or so minutes in his swirlingly neurotic company. He unabashedly leans into that vibe here, even while wrangling his pair of self-possessed cats. While Maron sometimes kvetches about Feinartz’s hovering cameras, he seems to have given him a kind of all-access pass to his daily life in a way that belies his trademark crankiness. He may be a reluctant showman, but he’s a showman nonetheless.

The uninitiated, however, might find Maron somewhat less engaging. He readily self-identifies as “selfish, anxious and panicky” and for some, a little of that may go a long way. Still, it’s not hard to relate to his many cogent musings (“How do you love somebody else if you really can’t love yourself?”) as well as to respect he clearly had for Shelton, who’s seen here in an array of luminous, heartbreaking clips.

Other comic talents such as Nate Bargatze, David Cross, Caroline Rhea, Michaela Watkins and John Mulaney also weigh in, bringing a mix of the sincere and the droll to their frank and friendly observations about Maron. On his podcasts and elsewhere, Maron has spoken at length about growing up with narcissistic, emotionally detached parents and how that dynamic likely laid the groundwork for his problematic sense of self. Although that’s not discussed in great detail here, the scenes between Maron and his dad, Barry, now in his mid-80s and living with dementia, have a subtle poignance that shows a kinder, more accepting side of the comedian than perhaps even he might have expected.

Meanwhile, a bit more could have been made of Maron’s acting work, a sideline that’s gained momentum over the last decade or so with worthy roles on TV’s “Glow” and “Stick,” and in films including “Joker” and the upcoming “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” Maron’s oft-stated uncertainty about his acting ability and the push-pull he has admitted to feeling might have dovetailed nicely with his other qualms.

That said, the profile, which features vivid archival and personal footage and photos of Maron throughout the years, is by no means comprehensive, nor does it try to be. At heart, it’s about a vulnerable man at a unique moment in time and how his past has prepared him — or perhaps not. And we are definitely good for experiencing this singular artist up close.

On the day that Michele Mulroney was elected president of the Writers Guild of America West, writers won a significant victory. After writers protested ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for days, the network brought the late-night show back on air.

“Our currency is words and stories, and the freedom to be able to express ourselves is really important, and so our members could not feel more strongly about this and of course we will be speaking out and lobbying and working in any way we can to protect this fundamental right,” Mulroney said in a recent interview.

Mulroney, formerly the WGA West vice president and a writer on the 2017 “Power Rangers” movie and 2011 film “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” enters her new role at a time when the industry is facing significant challenges.

Those include major consolidation in the industry as studios look to cut costs and move TV and film production overseas because of hefty financial incentives. The climate has been tough for many writers who have struggled to find work after enduring a 148-day strike in 2023. After the walkout, writers did secure groundbreaking protections for AI in contracts, but they are still confronting AI models ripping off their work without compensation.

As the guild gears up for contract negotiations next year, Mulroney said she plans to build on earlier gains in AI and other areas, and aims to convince the studios to pay more for WGA’s health plans amid rising healthcare costs.

“It’s going to need some support from the companies,” Mulroney said. “Their drastic pullback in production and employment led to a pretty severe industry contraction that has contributed to some strain on our funds. We’ll be looking to them to help fix that with us.”

When asked about whether she thinks there is appetite among WGA’s members for another strike, Mulroney said “it’s way too early to speculate about that.”

“It’s really hard out there in the industry for all industry workers and for many of our members, but our members have shown time and again that when they have to, when it’s necessary, we are ready to fight for the contract we deserve,” Mulroney said.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers declined to comment, but in an earlier statement said its members look forward to working with her “to address key issues for WGA writers and to strengthen our industry with fair, balanced solutions.”

A studio-side source who was not authorized to comment said that the WGA health plan faces “complex financial challenges that require a balanced approach to align with market norms and ensure long-term stability.”

To keep costs down, studios have been moving more productions to the U.K. and other countries offering significant financial incentives, shrinking job opportunities for entertainment industry workers in Southern California. Some have had to move out of state to look for jobs.

Unions including the WGA lobbied for California to boost annual funding for its film and TV tax credit program and succeeded in raising that amount to $750 million, from $330 million.

“This was a real bright spot of good news in an otherwise really bleak and tough time for our industry,” Mulroney said in an interview last week. “Now there needs to be federal action on this, too, so we’ll continue working with our allies to try to keep production in the U.S., and specifically in Hollywood, in Southern California.”

Mulroney declined to comment on President Trump’s renewed threat to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films.

Another big worry for writers has been artificial intelligence. The WGA has been outspoken about wanting studios to sue AI companies that writers say are taking their scripts for training AI models without their permission. Earlier this year, studios including Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery took legal action against AI companies over copyright infringement.

“We were glad to see some of the studios come off the sidelines and file lawsuits to protect their copyright from these AI companies that are stealing our members’ work to build their models,” she said. “I think we will probably be dealing with AI and wrangling that for the rest of our lives, right?”

Mulroney, 58, ran uncontested, receiving 2,241 votes or 87% of the votes cast, according to the union. CBS series “Tracker” writer and co-executive producer Travis Donnelly became vice president, and TV comedy show “Primo” executive producer Peter Murrieta became secretary-treasurer.

Mulroney grew up in the U.K., the daughter of a factory worker and a janitor. She’s served on the union’s board of directors for four terms and as an officer for six years prior to being elected president.

Mulroney’s background was in theater and theater directing, but she had always dabbled in writing. In her 20s, she worked in development for a British TV and film studio where she read a lot of scripts, which led her to think, “Maybe I could write one of those things.”

Her first writing gig was for a PBS children’s show called “Wishbone,” about a Jack Russell terrier who imagines himself as a character in literary classics. She’s been a screenwriter for 25 years and is based in West Hollywood with her husband and writing partner, Kieran.

Mulroney succeeds Meredith Stiehm, who led the union during the 2023 strike.

Kimmel coming back on air was a parting gift to Stiehm, said Mulroney, adding that the union is still watching the situation.

“We’re still monitoring,” Mulroney said. “I somehow doubt this is the last instance we’re going to see where censorship and free speech are going to be a topic.”

Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s horror film “Bone Lake” announces itself with a startlingly cheeky opener and closes with a bloody gore-fest, the song “Sex and Violence” by U.K. punk outfit the Exploited spelling out the thesis of the film for us. It’s about the intertwining of sex and violence, you see. But what unfolds between these naughty, viscera-drenched bookends is less of a traditional horror film and more of a psychosexual thriller, like “Funny Games” played between two, young attractive couples, with a setup borrowed from “Barbarian.”

In the script by Joshua Friedlander, a double-booking of a secluded rental mansion becomes a double date when Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita) stumble in on the intimate weekend vacay of Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi). The couples decide to make the best of it and stay, promising to rock-paper-scissors for the house if anything gets “weird.”

And get weird it does. While Diego and Sage seemed perfectly happy on arrival, the sexy, uninhibited Will and Cin have a way of nosing out their insecurities, finding the cracks in their connection and weaseling their way in. Suddenly, their lackluster sex life is on trial, and Sage’s resentment about financially supporting Diego while he pursues his dream of writing a novel bubbles to the surface.

Like any weekend-goes-awry horror movie (e.g., “Speak No Evil”), the female half of the couple catches a bad vibe that her male partner dismisses, due to his vested interest in wanting to stay. For Diego, it’s the promise that Cin will share his writing with his favorite author, for whom she claims to work. They overlook the red flags, blow off their opportunities to leave and decide to go all in with this wanton pair, drinking, playing games, breaking into secret rooms and dodging sexual overtures from each of them.

Morgan and her cinematographer Nick Matthews make the location fun to look at, with a saturated color palette and clever camera movements. However, there are scenes where the film is frustratingly dim and underlit, even if it might be justified by the power going out during a storm.

While there’s a certain verve and style to the middle section, where Will and Cin draw in their prey and toy with them, the Grand Guignol climax bears no rhythm or suspense; it’s merely a bludgeoning of the audience with carnage — too much too late.

Other blunt instruments? Roe and Nechita, who don’t play their roles with any subtlety. Roe’s Will comes off as a dangerous himbo; Nechita’s Cin is an over-the-top minx in her seduction of both Diego and Sage. While Hasson’s Sage is a plausibly strident freelance journalist type, you wonder if she has much experience with female friendship, because Cin’s manipulation is so painfully obvious. Pigossi’s self-obsessed novelist, however, is perfectly pitched in his all-around obliviousness.

There’s a kernel of something fascinating at the center of “Bone Lake,” a melding of sex and violence into gestures that are familiar from true crime stories. But there’s not enough motivation baked into the big third-act twist, and the performances just aren’t strong enough to suggest anything deeper.

“Bone Lake” offers up an appealing surface but it’s ultimately too shallow to get you immersed.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

When we first encounter Daniel Day-Lewis in “Anemone,” we only see him from the back, but there’s no mistaking him. Chopping wood outside his character’s rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere, he drives the ax down again and again, ferociously focused on the task at hand. At his best, which was often, Day-Lewis pursued acting with a primal clarity. Fittingly, his return to the big screen after announcing a retirement in 2017 is in a movie that exudes the same stark, elemental quality. He didn’t just co-write this tale of two estranged brothers excavating their complicated history — he imbues it with his essence, its reason for being.

“Anemone” isn’t just a film about family but one made by a father and his son. It’s the feature directorial debut of Ronan Day-Lewis, who collaborated with his Oscar-winning dad on the screenplay. Ronan, better known as a painter in New York’s contemporary art world, chronicles a collection of still lives who jostle themselves out of an emotional stupor.

Set in England some time during the mid-1990s, the movie opens as Jem (Sean Bean) says goodbye to his melancholy partner Nessa (Samantha Morton) and troubled son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) to venture out into the forest to reconnect with his younger brother Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), whom he hasn’t spoken to in 20 years. A deeply religious man — he has “Only God Can Judge Me” sternly tattooed across his back — Jem is on a mission whose purpose will only slowly be revealed. When he arrives at Ray’s cabin, Ray knows it’s him before he even sets eyes on his brother. For several agonizing minutes, they sit together saying nothing, as Black Sabbath’s mystical ballad “Solitude” plays softly on the stereo. The tense silence will be the first of several battles of will between the two men, neither willing to yield.

Day-Lewis, now 68 and whose last film was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” seems carved out of stone as Ray, his close-cropped hair and imposing gray goatee suggesting a man who doesn’t just live off the grid but thrives there. Lean and athletic, with a wildness in his eyes, Ray displays the same antagonism as Day-Lewis’ Bill the Butcher from “Gangs of New York” or Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood.” Ray’s mysterious and fraught history as a member of the British military during the Troubles is a festering boil this film will eventually lance. His brother, who also served in the military, has come to speak to Ray about something more personal, but the hells they experienced in that conflict are the larger issue they must confront.

Shot by cinematographer Ben Fordesman in the Welsh countryside, “Anemone” takes place largely in a sprawling woods, Ronan Day-Lewis lending the flinty drama a mythic grandeur. Bobby Krlic’s mournful score is alternately dreamy and eerie, the instrumental music abruptly cutting out in the middle of a hypnotic passage. Wordless interludes find Jem and Ray dancing to music or sparring as boxers, their simmering feud reduced to its core elements of rugged masculinity and sibling rivalry. The artist-turned-filmmaker even incorporates a striking image from one of his oils — that of a translucent horselike creature — as an enigmatic visual motif that proves more ponderous than poetic.

This is not the first time Daniel Day-Lewis has worked closely with family. Twenty years ago, he starred in his wife Rebecca Miller’s father-daughter fable “The Ballad of Jack and Rose.” Both that film and “Anemone” concern solitary men who opted out of society, only to discover that such a plan is difficult to sustain. But they also both suffer from what might be described as an excess of dramatic seriousness, which is especially true of “Anemone.” Whether it’s Morton’s perpetually scowling expression in the infrequent cutaways to Brian’s life back home or the on-the-nose emphasis on looming gray clouds, there’s no question a storm is coming. Even “Anemone’s” rare moments of levity feel drained of color, the weight of this family’s Dark Past so severe that not an ounce of light (or lightness) can be permitted to escape.

Not surprisingly, the star almost makes the movie’s suffocating gloom resonate. “Anemone” allows Day-Lewis to be volcanic when Ray launches into a disturbing, ultimately revolting monologue about a recent run-in with a pedophiliac priest from childhood. Later, when the film finally explains why Ray abandoned the world, Day-Lewis delivers a teary confession that doesn’t have much fresh to say about the insanity of war but is nonetheless ennobled by how he unburdens his stoic character through cascading waves of anger and shame.

Even when he’s been fiery, nearly frothing at the mouth, Day-Lewis has always been a master of stillness, relying on his tall, taut frame to hint at the formidable power or menace underneath. (When his characters explode, it’s shocking, and yet we somehow knew the blast was imminent.) For Ray, a man full of rage who has no patience for religion, sentimentality or forgiveness, his brother’s arrival is an unwelcome event, and even when a slight thawing occurs between them, Day-Lewis remains coiled, ready to strike, their fragile truce constantly in danger of being upended.

But because Jem, like so many of these characters, is underwritten, Bean has to fall back on generalized manly intensity, which turns their showdowns into actorly exercises. The interactions are bracing but also a bit studied — the performers’ technique is more impressive than the story, which too often is merely a delivery device for misery disguised as searing truth.

There’s reason to celebrate that Daniel Day-Lewis has chosen, at least temporarily, to cancel his retirement, but “Anemone” as a whole strains for a greatness that its star effortlessly conveys. Amid the film’s self-conscious depiction of a brewing tempest, he remains a true force of nature.

THE SMASHING MACHINE

(15) 123 min

★★★☆☆

3

WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.

Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.

In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.

Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.

He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.

A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.

Acting muscles

And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.

But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.

American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.

But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.

Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.

Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.

The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.

As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.

While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.

Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.

But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?

They just might.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE

(15) 112mins

★★★★★

3

KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.

The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.

The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.

Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.

The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.

Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.

It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.

LINDA MARRIC

HIM

(18) 96mins

★☆☆☆☆

3

HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.

In short, this is a mess.

The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.

When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.

But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.

Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.

Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.

Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.

Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.

LINDA MARRIC

Longtime FilmLA executive Denise Gutches has been named the nonprofit’s new chief executive.

Gutches, who has served as FilmLA’s chief financial and operating officer since 2011, will assume her new role on Jan. 1. FilmLA President Paul Audley will retire at the end of December after a 17-year tenure with the organization, which announced the change Wednesday morning.

“We have a lot to do in this creative economy,” Gutches said in an interview. “I am definitely up for this challenge.”

The leadership transition comes as Hollywood tries to lure back film and television production that has relocated to other states and countries in search of lower costs and more generous tax incentives. Earlier this year, California increased the annual amount allocated to its own film and TV tax credit program and expanded the eligibility criteria in hopes of jump-starting production in the Golden State.

In the most recent application period, 22 TV series were awarded tax credits amid heightened interest in the program. Eighteen of those series will film largely in the Los Angeles area.

Gutches said she is hopeful the sweetened incentives will provide a boost to the Greater L.A. area, which has seen a sharp decline in production since the pandemic, dual writers’ and actors strikes and a pullback in spending from the studios.

FilmLA — which handles film permits for the city of Los Angeles and unincorporated areas of the county — is also working with government partners to smooth the process of filming in L.A., she said.

“We think that that’s highly critical to ensure that we can make the Los Angeles region more attractive with the new film and television tax credit,” she said. “Our mission is to keep filming here and streamlining it, and that’s really what we’re going to focus on.”

The transition to Gutches’ leadership began months ago when Audley asked the nonprofit’s board not to renew his contract.

His decision came after the group’s staff was cut to 74 employees from 117, reflecting industry changes and a slowdown in local production activity.

“It’s really about right-sizing the executive level staff of an organization of this size,” Audley said. “It just makes good business sense.”

Celebrated for decades as Hollywood royalty, Jane Fonda could easily be living a comfortable life of extravagance and leisure.

Instead, the 87-year-old actor and Vietnam War-era provocateur is as likely to be seen knocking on voters’ doors in Phoenix on a balmy summer afternoon as sashaying down a red carpet at a glitzy movie premiere.

Politically active for more than a half-century, Fonda is now focusing her energy, celebrity, connections and resources on fighting climate change and combating the “existential crises” created by President Trump.

Calling fossil fuels a threat to humanity, Fonda created JanePAC, a political action committee that has spent millions on candidates at the forefront of that fight.

“Nature has always been in my bones, in my cells,” Fonda said in a recent interview, describing herself as an environmentalist since her tomboy youth. “And then, about 10 years ago … I started reading more, and I realized what we’re doing to the climate, which means what we’re doing to us, what we’re doing to the future, to our grandchildren and our children.

“Our existence is being challenged all because an industry, the fossil-fuel industry, wants to make more money,” she said. “I mean, I try to understand what, what must they think when they go to sleep at night? These men, they’re destroying everything.”

Rather than hosting fancy political fundraisers or headlining presidential campaign rallies, Fonda devotes her efforts to electing like-minded state legislators, city council members, utility board officials and candidates in other less flashy but critical races.

Fonda said her organization took its cue from successful GOP tactics.

“I hate to say this, but you know, in terms of playing the long game, the Republicans have been better than the Democrats,” she said. “They started to work down ballot, and they took over state legislatures. They took over governorships and mayors and city councils, boards of supervisors, and before we knew what had happened, they had power on the grassroots level.”

Fonda said her PAC selects candidates to back based on their climate-change record and viability. The beneficiaries include candidates running for state legislature and city council. Some of the races are often obscure, such as the Silver River Project board (an Arizona utility), the Port of Bellingham commission in Washington and the Lane Community College board in Oregon.

“Down ballot, if you come in, especially for primaries, you can really make a difference. You know, not all Democrats are the same,” she said. “We want candidates who have shown public courage in standing up to fossil fuels. We want candidates who can win. We’re not a protest PAC. We’re in it to win it.”

On Wednesday, Fonda announced that she is relaunching the Committee for the First Amendment, which was initially formed after the blacklisting of Hollywood actors, directors, screenwriters and others who were labeled communists or sympathizers by the House Un-American Activities Committee after World War II.

Her father, the late actor Henry Fonda, was among the members of the committee.

“The McCarthy Era ended when Americans from across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression,” Fonda said. “Those forces have returned. And it is our turn to stand together in defense of our constitutional rights.”

The Trump administration has pressured media companies, law firms and universities to concede to its demands or face repercussions. The suspension of ABC’s late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel, which has been rescinded, is among the most prominent examples.

“The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry,” Fonda said.

Since her birth, Fonda’s life has been infused by political activism.

Her father witnessed the lynching of a Black man during the 1919 Omaha race riots when he was 14, casting him into becoming a lifelong liberal.

Though such matters were not discussed at the dinner table, Fonda’s father raised money for Democratic candidates and starred in politically imbued films such as “The Grapes of Wrath,” about the exploitation of migrant workers during the Dust Bowl, and “12 Angry Men,” which focused on prejudice, groupthink and the importance of due process during the McCarthy era.

But his daughter Jane did not become politically active until her early 30s.

“Before then, I kind of led a life of ignorance, somewhat hedonistic,” she said. “Maybe deep down, I knew that once I know something, I can’t turn away.”

In “Prime Time,” Fonda’s 2011 memoir, she describes the final chapter of her life as a time of “coming to fruition rather than simply a period of marking time, or the absence of youth.”

“Unlike during childhood, Act III is a quiet ripening. It takes time and experience, and yes, perhaps the inevitable slowing down,” she wrote. “You have to learn to sort out what’s fundamentally important to you from what’s irrelevant.”

In 1972, Fonda appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Tout Va Bien,” about workers’ rights in the aftermath of widespread street protests in France four years earlier. It was her first role in a political movie and coincided with her off-screen move into activism.

Fonda’s most noteworthy and reviled political moment occurred the same year, when she was photographed by the North Vietnamese sitting atop an antiaircraft gun.

Actor and political activist Jane Fonda at a news conference in New York City on July 28, 1972. Fonda spoke about her trip to North Vietnam and interviews with American prisoners in Hanoi, Vietnam.

(Marty Lederhandler / Associated Press)

The images led to Fonda being tarred as “Hanoi Jane” and a traitor to the United States, which had deployed millions of American soldiers to Southeast Asia, many of whom never returned. Fonda says it is something she “will regret to my dying day.”

“It is possible that it was a setup, that the Vietnamese had it all planned,” Fonda wrote in 2011. “I will never know. But if they did, I can’t blame them. The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake.”

Fonda married liberal activist Tom Hayden in 1973. He served in the California Legislature for 18 years and was a force in Democratic politics until his death in 2016.

Fonda’s political beliefs have been a through line in her Hollywood career.

In 1979, she played a reporter in “The China Syndrome,” a film about a fictional meltdown at a nuclear power plant near Los Angeles. The movie’s theatrical release occurred less than two weeks before the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

The 1980 movie “9 to 5,” starring Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton, was a biting comedy that highlighted the treatment of women in the workplace and income inequality long before such issues were routinely discussed in workplaces.

Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are harassed office workers in the 1980 movie “9 to 5.”

(20th Century Fox)

Two years later, as home VCRs grew popular, Fonda created exercise videos that shattered sales records.

She urged women to “feel the burn,” and revenue from the videos funded the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a political action committee founded by Fonda and Hayden.

This year, Fonda offered signed copies to donors to JanePAC, which she created in 2022.

“I’m still in shock that those leg warmers and leotards caught on the way they did,” Fonda wrote to supporters in April. “If you’ve ever done one of my leg lifts, or even thought about doing one, now’s your chance to own a piece of that history.”

UCLA lecturer Jim Newton, a veteran Los Angeles Times political journalist and historian of the state’s politics, described Fonda as confrontational, controversial and unapologetic.

“She’s remarkable, utterly admirable, a principled person who has devoted her life to fighting for what she believes in,” said Newton, who quotes Fonda in his new book, “Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening.”

Newton added that Fonda’s outspoken nature certainly harmed her career.

“I’m sure that there are directors, producers, whatnot, especially in the ‘70s and ‘80s, who passed on chances to work with her because of her politics,” he said. “And I’m sure she knew that, right? She did it. It’s not been without sacrifice. She’s true to herself, like very few people.”

A year after Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1990, she married CNN founder and philanthropist Ted Turner, who she once described as “my favorite ex-husband.” Though Fonda largely paused her acting career during their decade-long marriage, she remained politically active.

In 1995, Fonda founded a Georgia effort dedicated to reducing teenage pregnancy. Five years later, she launched the Jane Fonda Center for Reproductive Health at Emory University.

After Fonda and Turner divorced, she worked with Tomlin on raising the minimum wage in Michigan and then launched Fire Drill Fridays — acts of civil disobedience — with Greenpeace in 2019.

Jane Fonda speaks during a rally before a march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House as part of her “Fire Drill Fridays” rally protesting against climate change on Nov. 8, 2019.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

Fonda said she decided to create her political action committee after facing headwinds persuading Gov. Gavin Newsom to create setbacks for oil wells in 2020.

“He wasn’t moving on it, and somebody very high up in his campaign said to us, ‘You can have millions of people in your organization all over California, but you don’t have a big enough carrot or stick to move the governor. … You don’t have an electoral strategy,’” Fonda recalled. “Since we’ve started the PAC, it’s interesting how politicians deal with us differently. They know that we’ve got money. They know that we have tens of thousands of volunteers all over the country.”

Initially concentrated on climate change, JanePAC has expanded its focus since Trump was reelected in November.

“We’re facing two existential crises, climate and democracy, and it’s now or never for both,” Fonda said. “We can’t have a stable democracy with an unstable climate, and we can’t have a stable climate unless we have a democracy, And so we have to fight both together.”

Fonda’s PAC has raised more than $9 million since its creation through June 30, according to the Federal Election Commission.

In 2024, JanePAC supported 154 campaigns and won 96 of those races. The committee gave nearly $700,000 directly to campaigns and helped raise more than $1.1 million for their endorsed candidates and ballot measures. In 2025, they have endorsed 63 campaigns and plan to soon launch get-out-the-vote efforts in support of Proposition 50, Newsom’s ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional districts that will appear on the November ballot.

Arizona state Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, the minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives, recalled Fonda’s support during the 2024 election, not only for his reelection bid but also a broader effort to try to win Democratic control of the state Legislature.

In addition to raising $500,000 at a Phoenix event for candidates, De Los Santos recalled the actor spending days knocking on Arizona voters’ doors.

“It is a moral validator to have Jane Fonda support your campaigns, especially at a time when corporate interests have more money and more power than ever, having somebody in your corner who’s been on the right side of history for decades,” said De Los Santos, who represents a south Phoenix district deeply affected by environmental justice issues.

Voters are often stunned when Fonda shows up on their doorstep.

“I’ve had people walking out of their laundry room and dropping all the laundry,” Fonda said with a laugh.

But others don’t know who she is and Fonda doesn’t tell them.

Jane Fonda

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s amazing. You wouldn’t think that in just a few minutes on someone’s doorstep, you can really find out a lot,” Fonda said, recalling discovering her love of canvassing when she was married to Hayden.”I loved talking to people and finding out what they care about and what they’re scared of and what they’re angry about.”

Fonda does not walk in lockstep with the Democratic party. In 2023, she joined other climate-change activists protesting a big-money Joe Biden fundraiser. They argued that the then-president had strayed from the environmental promises he made when he ran for election, such as by approving a massive oil drilling project on the North Slope of Alaska.

Fonda said she supported Biden’s 2024 reelection despite disagreeing with some of his policies because of the threat she believed Trump poses.

“When you see what the choice was, of course you’re going to vote,” she said. “I get so mad at people who say, you know, ‘I don’t like him, so I’m not going to vote.’ [A] young person said to me, we already have fascism. They don’t know history. You know, we don’t teach civics anymore, so they don’t understand that what’s happening now is leading to fascism. I mean, this is real tyranny.”

But she also faulted Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris after she became the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, as well as 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for failing to speak to the economic pain being experienced by Americans who backed Trump.

“They’re not all MAGA,” she said.

Many were just angry and hurting, she said, because they couldn’t afford groceries or pay medical bills. Fonda believes many now have buyer’s remorse.

Fonda reflected on the parallels between the turmoil in the 1960s and today. In the interview, which took place before the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, she argued that today’s political climate is more perilous.

“I’m not sure that what we have right now in the U.S. is a democracy,” she said. “It’s far graver. Far, far graver now than it was.”

Fonda said she remains driven, not by blind optimism, but by immersing herself in work that she believes makes a difference.

“This is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life,” she said.

The lead of the horror-tinged heart-tugger “Good Boy” is a copper-colored retriever named Indy who pads around an eerie house deep in the New Jersey woods investigating its mysterious creaks, shadows and smells. Like the Method-style actors of “The Blair Witch Project,” he goes by his real name onscreen. An ordinary dog without a whiff of Hollywood hokum, Indy doesn’t do implausible stunts like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin or comprehend anything that his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), says besides simple phrases: sit, stay and, gratefully, the title itself. But we’re invested in the mindset of this mundane hero. His nose twitches are as dramatic as an ingenue’s gasp.

First-time feature director Ben Leonberg raised Indy as a pet first, movie star second. Along with his wife, Kari Fischer, who produced the film, Leonberg shot “Good Boy” in his weekend house, staging scenarios for Indy to explore until he had enough material for a (barely) full-length spook show. Even at 72 minutes, “Good Boy” is belabored in the middle stretch. It would make a fabulous one-hour TV special.

Using his personal footage, Leonberg (who also edited the film and did its gorgeous, inky-wet cinematography) opens with a montage of Indy growing up from a tiny puppy to a loyal best friend. We love the dog more in five minutes than we do some slasher final girls who’ve survived several sequels. Indy is the most empathetic scream queen of the year so far — and I mean that literally as his breed, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling retriever, is known for its high-pitched wail. American Kennel Club lists the Toller as the U.S.’s 87th most popular dog. I expect this movie will lead to an uptick. (Steve Martin already has one.)

What’s wrong in Indy’s new home? A pair of tragedies wind together like vines, although from the dog’s point of view, the distinction between them isn’t always obvious. This battered two-story home with ominous scratches on the basement door has been in Todd’s family for six generations, as the cemetery out back proves. Bequeathed to the youngish urban hipster by his grandfather (indie cult icon Larry Fessenden), a misanthrope who willed his taxidermy collection to a vegan, it’s a good place to disappear.

Todd, who’s in bad physical and emotional shape, has isolated himself in this scraggly, foggy forest to get some privacy from his sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman). There’s also a past death that the dog is able to perceive. A sniff of a rotting old chair frightens Indy so much, he wets the rug.

“Scaredy pants,” Todd teases Indy. The dog can’t explain what only he knows.

Several unnerving things are happening at once, including the presence of a silhouetted stalker, old bones that give the dog nightmares and Todd’s unpredictable mood swings. There’s also a ghost in the movie, I think — at least, there’s a heavy hinge that shouldn’t be able to open without a spectral nudge. Indy stands about two feet tall, so the camera often stays at that height too, gliding close to the floor where the view from under the bed looks as big as an airplane hangar.

A realistic dog’s-eye view of a creepy cabin is a good hook, although people hoping to see an otherwise satisfying genre thriller will feel a bit underwhelmed that Leonberg and his co-screenwriter Alex Cannon are conflicted about pushing the scary elements of the film too far into the supernatural. With a complicated backstory off the table (Indy looks restless whenever adults are having a conversation), the movie taps into our burgeoning belief that animals do have a special sixth sense, like how hospice workers know to pay special attention to whoever gets night visits from the resident pet.

Still, “Good Boy” doesn’t stray too far from the film’s core strength: a normal dog doing normal dog things. In a twitch, a head tilt or a whine, Indy communicates his emotions: curious, lonely, contented, confused, fretful, desperate or petrified. There’s no CG in the dog’s performance, no corny reaction shots and no use of animal doubles either. Todd’s own legs, however, are often doubled by Leonberg, an onscreen switcheroo that’s possible because the lens doesn’t tend to look up.

I liked the plot better on a second watch when I knew not to expect Jamie Lee Curtis on all fours. The ending is great and the build up to it, though draggy, gives you space to think about the interdependence between our species. Dogs are wired to be our protectors and yet, through generations of nurturing, they’ve come to trust that we’ll also protect them. The inarticulate betrayal in the film is that Todd isn’t making good decisions for anyone. His bond with Indy is pure and strong, yet one-sided in that Todd is too distracted to ease the dog’s fears. Indy is bereft to be left alone for long stretches of time in a strange house. But he can’t do a thing about that, nor the sputtering electricity, the fox traps in the brush and the neighbor (Stuart Rudin) who skulks around in hunting camouflage.

In Todd’s facelessness, he’s a stand-in for whatever you want: absentee parents, a struggling partner or child or friend. There’s a scene in which he comes home in obvious need of a cuddle, only to push his dog away. Maybe you’ve been both people in that shot: the person overwhelmed by their own pain and the loved one who has no idea how to soothe them. It’s terrifying to love someone this much, to give them the full force of your devotion only to get locked outside.

Consciously or not, Leonberg has made a primal film about helplessness. Watching it, I was knocked sideways by a sense memory of how it felt to be a child. Like Indy, kids get dragged around to places they don’t want to go to for reasons that aren’t explained, and when they whine, they’re commanded to pipe down. Even as we get older — when our own point of view can stand taller than two feet — the things that truly scare us are the ones that make us feel small and confused.

President Trump again suggested that films made outside the U.S. should be subject to a 100% tariff, a move he said would help rejuvenate film production in America but that has been greeted with skepticism by many in Hollywood.

“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote in a post Monday morning on his Truth Social platform. “California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.”

The post did not include details on how such a tariff would work or how it would be levied. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first time Trump has floated a tariff on films made overseas to combat so-called runaway production.

In May, Trump said he was authorizing the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative to begin the process of instituting a 100% tariff on “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

That announcement surprised studio executives, who said at the time that they had no advance notice of the move. Shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reached out to the White House, offering to work together to create a federal film tax incentive, which many in the industry have said they would prefer over a tariff.

Newsom responded to Trump’s dig by sharing on X a screenshot of a news headline detailing the recent increase in applications for California’s revamped film and TV tax credit program next to a headline about Hollywood studios’ stock performance after Trump’s initial call in May for a 100% tariff on films made outside the U.S. “Almost like we know what we’re doing,” Newsom wrote in his post. “Almost like Donald Trump absolutely does not.”

Countries including Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand have developed generous film tax credit programs, which, along with lower costs, have increasingly lured productions out of the U.S. California has been particularly hard hit by the production exodus.

In response, states have also upped their individual tax credit programs, including California, which has now more than doubled the annual amount allocated to its film and TV tax credit program and expanded its eligibility criteria.

The Motion Picture Assn., the lobbying arm of Hollywood’s major studios, was not immediately available for comment.

On Monday, California congressional representatives reiterated their support for a federal film tax incentive program to support the U.S. film business.

Noting that a tariff could have “unintended and damaging consequences,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he was “ready to work with this administration” and colleagues “on both sides of the aisle” to pass a major federal film tax credit.

The California senator is currently working on a proposal for a federal film incentive, a Schiff spokesperson said.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer, also called for movement on a federal tax incentive, saying that a 100% tariff on films made overseas would only increase costs for consumers.

“I’m relieved President Trump recognizes that we are losing a signature American product: the domestic film and TV industry,” she said in a statement. “I hope the President will join us in pioneering a real solution that levels the playing field with international competition.”

It has been used as a location for a number of blockbuster movies and TV shows known for the stunning views and ‘timeless architecture’ with lots to do for everyone to enjoy

A Northumberland castle, known for its appearances in blockbuster films and hit TV shows, has been named one of the top film locations to visit in the UK.

The castle has been praised for its ‘timeless architecture’ and ‘stunning’ surroundings. For years, the cast and crew of the popular drama Vera have descended upon the North East each summer to film new series of the beloved show.

While Gateshead, Newcastle and South Shields have all featured, it’s Northumberland that has been the primary filming location, with numerous spots in the area taking centre stage as Brenda Blethyn retired from her iconic role earlier this year.

READ MORE: Travel expert names best sun-soaked destinations for a ‘shoulder-season’ escapeREAD MORE: Epic walk through popular location ends at ‘heavenly’ cave famous for its beauty

Northumberland also made waves on the big screen in 2025, following the release of Danny Boyle’s zombie sequel 28 Years Later. The film shot straight to the top of the UK film charts after its summer release.

The Oscar-winning director utilised various locations in the region for his story, including Rothbury, Kielder and Holy Island, reports Chronicle Live.

While it didn’t make an appearance in 28 Years Later, Alnwick Castle is no stranger to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, having now been named one of the top film locations in the UK by travel gurus at Holiday Cottages.

The castle, which served as the backdrop for key scenes in the first two films, including the iconic flying lesson in The Philosopher’s Stone, has also played host to the cast and crew of big-budget blockbuster Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the acclaimed period drama Downton Abbey and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In their glowing review of the famous landmark, Holiday Cottages wrote: “Northumberland has long been a favourite location for filmmakers because of its captivating history and landscapes that seem almost otherworldly, and one of its most famous landmarks is Alnwick Castle, which will be instantly recognisable to fans of a certain wizarding franchise as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first two films.

“Visitors can wander through the Outer Bailey, where Harry first learned to fly on a broomstick with Madame Hooch, and children and adults alike can experience the magic themselves by taking part in the castle’s Broomstick Training Lessons, while the courtyards recall the memorable scenes when the flying car came crashing down in the early films.”

The travel site heaps praise on Alnwick, describing it as a ‘joy to explore’ with its enchanting cobbled streets, unique shops and stunning coastline, all contributing to its ‘magical’ staycation appeal.

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For many, Omara Portuondo is best known for her participation in the Buena Vista Social Club; but the nonagenarian has lived many lives before and after the formation of the internationally recognized Cuban group. The new PBS documentary, “Omara: Cuba’s Legendary Diva,” looks to reexamine and capture the beauty and the chaos of these other many lives.

Directed by Hugo Perez, the feature — which premieres Sept. 26 on your local PBS channel — tells Portuondo’s personal history not only through the lens of her Afro-Cuban heritage but also through the prism of a woman confronting the realities of Cuba’s longstanding political strife.

“It immediately occurred to me that I was being given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work with a great artist in the twilight of their career — imagine taking a time machine and going back in time to work with Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday in their later years,” Perez said in a press release.

“When we began, Omara was in her late eighties, and still touring extensively around the world. Yet despite the fact that she was still selling out venues across the globe, she was confronting ageism from promoters and journalists who only wanted to write about her ‘final tour.’ I felt that there was an opportunity not just to create a portrait of an iconic artist but to document how she responded to age bias with verve and panache and not just a little sauciness. Never count a Cuban woman down and out.”

Born into a mixed-race family in Havana on Oct. 29, 1930, at a time when such relationships were considered taboo, Portuondo began gracing the stage at age 17 by joining the dance group of the famed Tropicana Club. As a member of Cuarteto d’Aida in the 1950s, she sang alongside Nat King Cole and toured the U.S. while also recording albums. From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Portuondo found continued success as a solo act and even ventured into the world of film and television.

Ever involved in the political events of the moment, she never shied away from performing songs dedicated to revolutionaries like Che Guevara. In 1974, the singer recorded an album dedicated to the U.S.-ousted Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende.

In the mid-1990s, Portuondo began traveling the world with the renowned Cuban musical ensemble, the Buena Vista Social Club. The band’s fame skyrocketed in 1999 after German filmmaker Wim Wenders made a documentary about the musicians titled “Buena Vista Social Club” that received numerous awards and was nominated for an Academy Award. At the heart of the film were moments when Portuondo’s talents jumped off the screen and worldwide audiences could see the power and history behind her artistry.

The story of the Buena Vista Social Club was turned into an eponymous musical in 2023, with Portuondo featured as one of the main characters. After the musical hit Broadway in 2025, Natalie Venetia Belcon — who portrayed Portuondo as part of the show’s original Broadway cast — won the Tony for featured actress in a musical at this year’s awards.

While, for many, Portuondo’s impact and star power emanates from all things Buena Vista Social Club, the new documentary spotlights how Portuondo has not slowed down her hustle at her advanced age as she continues touring worldwide. Included in the movie are interviews with musicians from across the globe, like Diego el Cigala, Roberto Fonseca and Arturo O’Farrill.

The film also captures some of Portuondo’s more recent performances, which reveal new depths of the singer’s soulfulness and power.

“I also wanted to make a film that would show her in performance today, spotlighting songs that would help carry us through the story of her life,” the movie’s director said. “When she sings about love, Omara plumbs the depths of heartbreak, and I could not imagine telling her story without seeing her singing these great songs.”

The Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman has addressed the backlash the Netflix film adaptation has received.

Last month, the eagerly awaited film version of The Thursday Murder Club dropped on Netflix.

Drawing from the debut novel in Richard Osman’s bestselling series, the movie showcased a stellar ensemble including Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Helen Mirren, under Chris Columbus’s direction.

The plot centres on four pensioners residing at Coopers Chase retirement community nestled in picturesque English countryside. Weekly, they convene to examine cold cases and unsolved crimes.

Yet chaos ensues when these amateur sleuths become entangled in an actual investigation following a genuine killing.

While book enthusiasts were thrilled to witness the tale brought to the screen, numerous viewers felt let down by the adaptation, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Speaking about the criticism during a This Morning appearance, writer Richard Osman confessed he harboured doubts about certain film elements that strayed from his original work.

The 54-year-old even raised these concerns with Steven Spielberg, who served as producer via his Amblin Entertainment company.

When Ben enquired whether he now visualises his characters as the film’s cast members, Cat pointed out how differently Ron appears in the book versus Pierce Brosnan’s portrayal.

Richard responded: “He is very different! I wasn’t involved in the film, really, so I claim no credit for it.”

Ben asked Richard about his thoughts on the film adaptation of his book, which had sparked some controversy among fans.

He asked: “It’s not quite the same, significantly different parts from the book. How have you responded to that? How do you feel about that?”

Richard responded: “I’ve written my version of the book and that’s the Thursday Murder Club and it’s available in all good book shops and it’ll be there forever, that’s my version.

“That’s the version that’s come from my heart. I’m not going to be the person to sit down and do an adaptation for a film because I’ve done it already, so you have to give it to brilliant people.”

The author emphasised that the book had to be condensed into a two-hour film, which would’ve been considerably longer if everything he’d written was included.

He added: “They have to make choices that you wouldn’t necessarily make yourself. But that’s the fun of the thing.”

Ben then questioned whether Richard had the opportunity to voice any concerns to the production crew. Richard admitted: “I can reveal, I did say that a couple of times.”

When Cat asked if he had spoken to Stephen Spielberg, Richard confirmed he had, jokingly adding: “Ask me if he listened. But they know what they’re doing!”

This Morning continues weekdays on ITV from 10. The Thursday Murder Club is available to stream on Netflix.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

(15) 162mins

★★★★★

WHAT time is it? It is a question Leonardo DiCaprio’s stressed-out fugitive Bob Ferguson is asked over and over again in this black comedy.

Wearing a dressing gown and bad shades, Bob doesn’t have the answer because he’s too stoned to remember the code he was given by a left-wing terror group called the French 75.

But I can tell you that the time is absolutely right for One Battle After Another.

This is a political satire that skewers both the extreme right and the extreme left at a moment when both sides are to the fore in the real world in the United States.

The time is also well overdue for this piece of cinematic dynamite that will have you on the edge of your seat — from laughter or the high-octane action.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, it is a work of genius that fuses the best elements of his films There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights.

It begins 16 years ago with Bob helping to free refugees at a US border crossing.

During the raid his girlfriend, the wonderfully named Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), orders Sean Penn’s military officer ­Steven J Lockjaw to “get up” his private parts.

The French 75’s increasingly reckless terrorism ends in a thrilling chase and Bob needing to go into hiding with the baby daughter he shares with Perfidia.

Most of the story is set in the current time, with Lockjaw coming after Bob and his daughter Willa.

As things get wilder, the audience is introduced to a bunch of incredible characters, including members of the white supremecist Christmas Adventurers Club, gun-toting nuns and Benecio Del Toro’s always-cool martial arts instructor Sergio.

The serene Del Toro is a perfect comic foil for the frantic DiCaprio who spends a lot of time running around shouting “f, f, f***.”

In one of the standout screwball moments, Sergio keeps repeating “four” as Bob is reluctant to jump out of his moving car like “Tom Cruise”. It is just one of many quotable lines.

But the most memorable scene brings the movie’s various plots to a perfect, heart-racing conclusion.

All of the cast are outstanding, with DiCaprio and newcomer Chase Infiniti as Willa most likely to be nominated for awards.

If there is any justice this film will get one Oscar after another.

GRANT ROLLINGS

3

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 2

(15) 96mins

★★☆☆☆

3

DIRRECTED by Renny Harlin, this second instalment in the Strangers trilogy is a bafflingly incoherent mess.

It picks up right after the events of Chapter 1, but instead of expanding on Bryan Bertino’s original 2008 home-invasion nightmare, it devolves into a clumsy blend of ­borrowed horror tropes held together by a barely coherent backstory.

Chapter 2 follows the survivor, Maya (Madelaine Petsch), as she is relentlessly pursued by masked killers in a sleepy American town.

Despite her injuries, Maya must find the strength to stay alive and tell the tale.

Petsch is committed to the physical demands of the role, fighting a CGI boar in a bafflingly out-of-place sequence.

However, the film’s drawn-out and repetitive cat-and-mouse chases become truly unbearable.

Narratively, the film is all over the place lurching from home-invasion suspense to slasher to survival horror.

The only thing that prevents it becoming a total farce is Harlin’s occasional use of a few inspired jump scares.

As a middle chapter, this feels like a placeholder for the next film.

LINDA MARRIC

DEAD OF WINTER

(15) 98mins

★★★☆☆

3

IF you were casting for a Ramboesque heroine, Emma Thompson would not be the first name to spring to mind.

But in this rescue of a kidnap victim from a remote cabin thriller, it is the Love Actually actress displaying ingenious ways to survive.

Set in northern Minnesota in the US, Thompson’s Barb heads out in a snow storm to a lake that had a sentimental value to her recently deceased husband.

There she comes across a man who has tied up a young woman in his cellar.

Unable to go to get help, Barb vows to save the girl herself.

But the man is not her main concern, because it is a gun-toting woman played by Judy Greer who is the one with the least to lose by fighting to the bitter end.

Thompson is remarkably good when Barb is stitching up a bullet wound in her arm with fishing wire, and the attention to detail in the sets also impresses.

But choosing her isn’t enough to make this last- person-standing drama feel particularly original.

Like the tracks that Barb leaves in the snow, you know where most of the plot turns lead.

GRANT ROLLINGS

Henry Jaglom, the uncompromising indie filmmaker who eschewed big-budget operations in order to preserve his creative vision, died Monday night. He was 87.

Jaglom died at his Santa Monica home surrounded by his family, his daughter Sabrina Jaglom said. The writer-director, whose filmography includes “Last Summer in the Hamptons” and “Eating,” was known for his intimate, naturalistic style and foregrounding of women’s stories in his work.

Sabrina, also a director, said in a statement that her father was “larger-than-life, and made the world a lot more colorful for those of us lucky enough to know him.”

“But, most of all, he was the most loving and supportive Dad. He will be greatly missed, but impossible to forget,” she said Thursday.

From his earliest directing gigs, Jaglom was committed to creating autobiographically inspired and emotionally resonant stories with as little studio intervention as possible. He kept costs low, cast his friends and family in his movies and pursued an improvisational production style that preceded the early-2000s film genre mumblecore.

“My movies talk about the emotional side of life,” Jaglom told The Times in 2009.

“I just try to have people do what we do, which is sit around, talk, deal with the emotions of life,” he said. “It can be touching, sad, happy, but it allows people to go through some of what they go through in life and not feel isolated and lonely.”

Jaglom’s 1985 film, “Always,” in which he co-starred with his ex-wife Patrice Townsend, was inspired by the disintegration of the couple’s own relationship. Jaglom and Townsend divorced two years before the film’s release.

Nearly a decade later, conversations Jaglom had with his second wife, actor Victoria Foyt, about parenthood were distilled into 1994’s “Babyfever,” which the couple wrote, directed and Foyt starred in.

Former Times staff writer Chris Willman called the comedy-drama “remarkable in its comprehensive documentary aspects.”

“Jaglom is, as always, big on verite and improvisation; with such a large cast milling about the airy, oceanside house, he’s managed to cover just about every conceivable baby base, with sentiments ranging from banal self-interest to self-conscious belly laughs, and a lot of very real, undeniably affecting poignancy in-between,” Willman wrote in his review of the film.

“Babyfever” was lauded for sincerely engaging with topics affecting women and for starring a mostly female cast — both of which were trademarks for Jaglom, who went on to form a women’s arm to HHH Rainbow Productions, his production company with producers Howard Zucker and Henry Lange, which for many years was located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.

“Women are the most disenfranchised people in this business,” he told The Times in 1987. “They still have to play mostly by men’s rules. And as I’ve been successfully making million-dollar movies for some time now I thought: ‘Why can’t they do it too?’”

Jaglom was a mentee and close confidant of acclaimed filmmaker and actor Orson Welles, whose farewell performance came in Jaglom’s 1987 comedy “Someone to Love,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

“He plays himself, shedding even the persona he adopted for TV talk shows,” Jaglom told The Times of Welles’ acting style in the film. “People will finally get to see him the way I knew him; it’s almost as if he was sitting there having lunch with you.”

Peter Biskind compiled conversations between the longtime friends for his popular 2013 book, “My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.”

Several people approached Jaglom about publishing the tapes before Biskind came knocking, the director told The Times in 2013. But Biskind was the first one he took seriously.

“I said, ‘You want to put yourself through all this?’” Jaglom said. “And he said, ‘Yeah, on the one condition that you don’t censor me.’”

Jaglom, born in London in 1938, was the child of Jewish parents who immigrated to England to escape Nazi persecution. Later, Jaglom’s family moved to New York, where Jaglom spent his formative years and returned after attending the University of Pennsylvania.

In New York, Jaglom trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, acting in and directing off-Broadway theater and cabaret before moving to Hollywood in the late 1960s. The multihyphenate went on to make his directorial debut in 1971 with “A Safe Place,” which starred Wells and Jack Nicholson.

After finding commercial success with his third film, “Sitting Ducks” (1980), Jaglom told The Times in 1987 that he was pitched by several big-time studio heads who said, “‘When you’re ready to make a serious movie, a big movie, come and see me.’”

“I said: ‘If you love my films why would you want me to come and make one of your big ones?’” Jaglom said, adding that with a large studio at the helm, directors run the risk of ceding the “final cut.”

“As far as I’m concerned all the big stars and fancy limos and fine dressing rooms aren’t worth a thing if you don’t control your film creatively,” he said.

For years, Henry ate at the same cafe on Santa Monica’s Montana Avenue. He was always delighted when fans and aspiring filmmakers stopped to say hello.

In addition to Sabrina, Jaglom is survived by a son, Simon Jaglom, and ex-wives Townsend and Foyt, Sabrina and Simon’s mother.

The old stage at West Hollywood’s Roxy Theatre looks as small as ever to Tim Curry. Back in 1974, the actor spent nearly a year strutting across its boards in fishnets and a snug corset as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the flamboyant, sexually ravenous mad scientist of the musical comedy “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Witnesses to that run of performances still marvel at the spectacle of Curry’s nightly entrance, as he marched from the lobby on a long catwalk, his high heels at eye level with the audience. He would then cast aside his Dracula cape to sing a personal theme song, “Sweet Transvestite.”

“It’s actually really nice to be here because it was another home for me,” says Curry, 79, looking up at the empty stage inside the Sunset Strip nightclub. “It became my stomping ground. I had to appear as though I owned it — and I kind of did.”

At the end of that same year, Curry was back home in England to shoot the feature film version, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a rock ’n’ roll send-up of old sci-fi and horror B-movies that became both a cult classic and a vibrant symbol for sexual freedom. It is the original midnight movie and is now being feted around the world for its 50th anniversary with a second life as the longest continuous theatrical release in cinema history.

Tim Curry, center, as Frank-N-Furter in 1975’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

(John Jay Photo / Disney)

The role changed Curry’s career forever, and he will be part of some of those celebrations, beginning with a screening of a newly restored 4K version of the film, along with a panel Q&A, at the Academy Museum on Friday.

At the time of the film’s original release in 1975, it tapped into a cultural zeitgeist that mixed glamour and androgyny, akin to the era’s glam-rock movement led by David Bowie. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” ultimately found a cult of fans who gathered for weekly midnight screenings in costume as the movie’s outlandish characters, performing as a “shadow cast” in harmony with the film onscreen.

“It was part of the sexual revolution, really,” says Curry. “Experiment was in the air and it was palpable. I gave them permission to be who they discovered they wanted to be. I’m proud of that.”

Since a stroke in 2012, the actor has been in a wheelchair and most of his work has been in voiceover. He did appear on camera in a 2016 remake of “Rocky Horror” for television, this time as the criminologist. But it was as the lascivious, self-confident Frank-N-Furter that Curry made history.

On this afternoon, he is dressed in black, auburn hair slicked back. In the Roxy’s lobby is a portrait of Curry in character as the mad doctor in pearls. It was a role he originated in London, on the tiny stage upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, where it first became an underground sensation.

“Even for the time, there was a lot of courage that went into that performance,” remembers Jim Sharman, who directed Curry in the original stage productions in London and Los Angeles and then onscreen. “Tim himself was actually a kind of quiet intellectual offstage, but onstage he really knew how to let it rip.”

Curry, center, in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

(Disney)

With a story and songs written by actor Richard O’Brien, who also played the skeletal, sarcastic Riff-Raff, “Rocky Horror” begins with a young couple caught in a rainstorm who approach a mysterious castle in search of shelter and a phone.

Played by then-unknowns Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, the couple find Frank-N-Furter is hosting a convention of partying aliens in formalwear from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania.

The mad doctor is also anxious to show off his latest experiment, the creation of a perfectly formed male, a personal plaything of chiseled muscles and blond hair, as he sings “I Can Make You A Man.” The scene leaves an impression.

“He takes no prisoners — it’s his world and you just happen to live in it,” Curry says with a smile of his Frank-N-Furter. “He doesn’t leave much air in the room. And I enjoyed that because it was so not like me, really.”

Notably, the film shares a 50-year anniversary with “Jaws,” and Curry remembers someone at 20th Century Fox placing newspaper ads that year for “Rocky Horror” with the film’s glossy red lips image and words promising, “A different set of jaws.”

“Jaws,” of course, was a record-breaking summer blockbuster, but as the longest-running theatrical release of all time, “Rocky Horror” really has no competition in terms of impact. It helped establish a culture for midnight movies in open-ended rotation, from David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” to Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls.”

At the customary hour of midnight, the restored 4K film will be premiering across the country this weekend, with special screenings and Q&As on Oct. 4 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and Oct. 15 at the Grammy Museum. The film will then be rereleased on Blu-ray on Oct. 7, with a reissue of the official soundtrack album on Oct. 10.

Also landing in time for the celebration is a new documentary, “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror,” directed by Linus O’Brien, son of “Rocky Horror” author and composer Richard O’Brien. The 90-minute film explores the making of the movie, the original stage musical and the decades of fan culture that followed.

“When a work of art survives this long, it’s working on many different levels,” says the younger O’Brien, who was a toddler on the set. “You want to live in that house and have those naughty experiences. [People] will be talking about it long after we’re all dead.”

The “Rocky Horror” journey from underground theater to feature film began after Los Angeles music impresario Lou Adler saw the show during a trip to London. Known as a manager and record producer (Carole King’s “Tapestry”), Adler was shaken from his jet lag, instantly recognizing “Rocky Horror” as a potential attraction for his recently opened L.A. club, the Roxy. Within two days, Adler signed a deal to host its U.S. premiere.

At the Roxy, the show was an immediate sensation, fueled by Curry’s wildly charismatic performance. Opening night brought out a crowd that included Jack Nicholson, John Lennon and Mick Jagger. L.A. Times theater critic Dan Sullivan compared Curry to various Hollywood grande dames (Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, among them).

“It was one of the great parties of all time,” Adler recalls during a video call from his home in Malibu. “The acceptance was unbelievable.”

Talk of turning the stage musical into a movie soon followed and a deal was made with 20th Century Fox, with producers Adler and Michael White guaranteeing delivery on a modest budget of about $1 million.

“I don’t know if 20th Century Fox ever understood the film,” Sharman says with a laugh, in a video call from Australia. “They might’ve been relieved that it was going on a low budget and being made on somebody’s lunch money.”

It was the first feature film for many of them. But Adler and White insisted on keeping the stage musical’s creative team together, including Sharman, costume designer Sue Blane and production designer Brian Thomson. With Curry firmly in the lead role, most of the cast members were drawn from the London production. Joining them were American actors Sarandon, Bostwick and singer Meat Loaf.

“I adored her,” Curry says of Sarandon. “She was a witty girl and so beautiful, and a real actress, I thought. You could tell that she had something.”

He also became friends with Meat Loaf, who appeared in the small but impactful role of Eddie, bursting out of a freezer on a motorcycle long enough to sing the manic “Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul.” In 1981, Curry hosted “Saturday Night Live” and appeared with Meat Loaf in a skit that had the actors selling “Rocky Horror” memorabilia. (Curry is still irritated by that one: “Dreadful.”)

Lou Adler, photographed at the Roxy in West Hollywood in 2023.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“When the movie was a definite thing, there were several big stars who wanted to play the part,” Curry remembers. “Mick Jagger wanted to play it and he would’ve done a great job if you saw ‘Performance.’ But [director Sharman] said he wanted me to do it. I don’t think the studio was happy that he turned down Mick.”

Though Sharman was a very experienced stage director, he had made only one previous film, a 16mm feature called “Shirley Thompson vs. the Aliens.” For “Rocky Horror,” he says he was aiming for “a dark version of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” He was also inspired by old B-movies and German Expressionism along with lessons learned from the stage. Interior scenes were shot at the old Hammer horror films’ Bray Studios just outside London.

“The reason we don’t have great anecdotes from the shoot is we didn’t have time for anecdotes,” adds Sharman. “It was shot in five weeks.”

Bostwick, appearing in one of his first film roles, remembers, “It felt like a very low-budget but colorful, bright and inspiring musical. You knew from the moment you were around the sets and costumes and lighting and makeup and camera people that they were at the top of their game.”

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” evolved in some subtle but meaningful ways in its transition from the stage. For the live performances, Curry did his own makeup. “In the theater, I made it look a lot more amateur, deliberately, like he wasn’t good at it but was making a brave attempt and didn’t care much,” Curry says with a laugh. “In the play, it was just a lot trashier.”

For the film, French makeup artist Pierre La Roche was recruited to refine Frank-N-Furter’s exterior. La Roche had previously worked with Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust era.

“He was indeed very French,” says Curry, campily. “He was brilliant.”

An early sign of the challenges the movie would face arrived at an early screening of the completed film for Fox executives. Curry was there with Adler. “You could touch the silence at the end,” recalls Curry. “It wasn’t a very alive audience. There was really no reaction at all.”

Fox also hosted a test screening in Santa Barbara. The audience was a local mix of retirees and university students, and many of the older filmgoers began heading for the exit, until the theater was nearly empty.

But as Adler and a young Fox executive named Tim Deegan sat on the curb outside, they also met young people who were excited about the film. Adler credits Deegan for finding the “Rocky Horror” audience in an unexpected place: indie theaters at midnight.

Its second life began at the Waverly Theater in New York, where it began evolving into a happening that was both a movie and a theatrical experience. At the time, Curry happened to live within walking distance of the Waverly.

“It was a sort of guaranteed party,” he says of any potential moviegoer. “And if he didn’t bring a date, he could perhaps find one.”

On a recent weekend at the Nuart Theater in West L.A., barely five miles away from the Roxy, it’s approaching midnight and the lobby is filled with fans and volunteer shadow performers in “Rocky Horror” drag. Appearing as Frank-N-Furter is Kohlton Rippee, 32, already in his heels and makeup.

Like many here, he sees the film as both an outlet and a connection to a found family — a way “to see aspects of themselves represented in ways that they don’t see from traditional media. It’s like, ‘Oh, I can see myself in this and find this weird community to be around.’”

Bostwick first heard of the film’s second life from others and word trickled in that his every appearance onscreen was met with an affectionate callback from the crowd: “Ass—!” He didn’t see the phenomenon himself until later at the Tiffany Theater on Sunset.

“What do they say, that Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth? I’ve always thought that a Friday and Saturday night at a theater at midnight was the happiest place on Earth,” the actor says of the many raucous screenings he’s witnessed. “Everybody was just having a ball.”

After Walt Disney Co.‘s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, it turned the House of Mouse into the unlikely steward of “Rocky Horror.” Back in 1975, nothing could have been further from the Disney brand than a rock ’n’ roll musical about a cross-dressing scientist. That year, Disney released “The Apple Dumpling Gang.”

“I guess Walt is kind of revolving in his grave,” Curry jokes.

Even so, Adler says Disney has been a good partner on “Rocky Horror” and is supporting the multiple official anniversary events. “Walt was a breakthrough guy,” the producer notes. “He broke through and made a mouse a hero. So, in a way, he had his own Frank-N-Furter.”

The Los Angeles Film School is at the center of a whistleblower lawsuit from two former executives who allege the institution unlawfully collected government funds in an elaborate accreditation scheme.

Dave Phillips and Ben Chaib, the school’s former VP of career development and VP of admissions, respectively, allege in a federal lawsuit that the L.A. Film School violated federal employment requirements and accrediting standards. The lawsuit also names LAFS’ Florida counterpart Full Sail University, its main owner James Heavener and two other business partners as defendants.

The lawsuit, originally filed in L.A. federal court in June 2024, was recently unsealed after the Department of Justice opted to not investigate.

Representatives of LAFS could not be immediately reached for comment but have previously denied the claims.

In statement to Variety last week the school’s attorneys said that Phillips and Chaib are attempting “to resuscitate time-barred and erroneous allegations, which were already thoroughly investigated and settled by the Department of Education.”

For a university to be accredited and receive federal funding, the accreditation criteria state that a school must successfully instruct 70% of its students to land and hold jobs for which they are trained. The plaintiffs argue that graduates from the film school are unable to receive entry-level positions, citing an internal report which shows that most graduates earn $5,000 or less in their field of study. Only 20% of students were able to find work, the suit alleges.

LAFS receives over $85 million a year in federal financial assistance, including about $60 million in federal student loans, and more than $19 million in veterans’ financial aid funds. The Winter Park, Fla.-located Full Sail University, which teaches curriculum in entertainment-adjacent fields, also gets over $377 million per year in federal financial assistance, according to the complaint.

“For at least the last ten years, nearly all federal funds bestowed upon and taken in resulted from fraud with the institution using taxpayer funds to finance and facilitate multiple, temporary employment positions for LAFS graduates,” the lawsuit states.

Seeking to continue collecting government funds, the university is alleged to have spent nearly $1 million (between 2010 and 2017) to provide temporary employment from nonprofits and paid-off vendors. These jobs would usually last two days; LAFS would determine who would be hired, their schedule and wage. Students were led to believe these opportunities were “in-house production opportunities” and “post-graduate apprenticeships,” but instead, they were schemes planned and paid for by the school to remain an accredited university, according to the lawsuit.

Federal law prohibits higher education from “provid[ing] any commission, bonus, or other incentive payment based directly or indirectly on success in securing enrollments.” When LAFS was audited in 2017, the plaintiffs further allege that the school misled the Department of Education auditors, denied the existence of the incentive compensation system and failed to disclose their connection to vendors.

Beyond collecting these federal funds, the former executives argue that the school misled students and potential enrollees by overstating the availability of jobs and making untrue or misleading statements related to employment.

LAFS was created in 1999 and is located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It offers a variety of bachelor’s and associate degrees in areas including film, film production and animation, with tuition ranging between $40,000 and $80,000.

Both plaintiffs, Phillips and Chaib, worked at the film school for 12 years and were members of the senior executive team. Phillips’ contract was not renewed in 2022.

The Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges recently renewed the school’s accreditation in 2023 for a five-year period.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — Chinese pre-release viewers of an Australian movie saw a straight couple’s wedding when it should have been two men getting married.

The horror film, Together, starring Dave Franco and Allison Brie, was altered seemingly by using artificial intelligence before it was shown in China.

In a scene with a wedding between two men, one of the men’s faces was altered to be a woman’s, purportedly using AI, Out reported. The scene reveals plot points in the movie, which means the change created confusion for viewers.

Viewers in China only noticed the change when they saw side-by-side screenshots on social media, The Guardian reported. “What’s happening outside the film is even more terrifying than what’s shown in it,” wrote one Weibo user. Weibo is a Chinese social media site.

It’s not unusual for western movies to undergo Chinese censorship before being shown there. Often, the censorship is performed via cut scenes. But the use of AI or other technology to change the scenes is new, The Guardian said.

The film was scheduled to be released in China on Sept. 19, but after the outcry about the change, the film’s Chinese distributor has pulled the film, citing “changes in the film’s distribution plan.”

Homosexuality is no longer a crime in China, but it still faces strong stigma. The government had a longstanding stance to neither support or oppose LGBTQ+ relationships, but that has changed in recent years with a crackdown on gay groups.

In 2016, China’s censors banned “abnormal sexual behavior,” among other things the government disapproves of, in films and TV.

One RedNote user said that the use of AI to gender-swap gay characters was “humiliating minority groups.” Public opinion of homosexuality is on the rise in China.

With great power comes a great risk of injury, it seems.

Tom Holland, 29, who plays Spider-man in the most current iteration of the web-slinger film franchise, suffered a mild on-set concussion that has resulted in a one-week production pause on “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” Variety reported Monday.

Filming is expected to restart Sept. 29, the trade said, and the delay shouldn’t keep the fourth Holland-as-Spidey movie from swinging onto the big screen on its scheduled release date.

Holland is taking it easy “out of an abundance of caution,” a source close to the production told the outlet.

Since production began in early August, the actor has been sharing his experiences on his Instagram, hyping fans before the film is released.

“Someone is cooking … again,” chef and fan Gordon Ramsay commented on one post, adding a winking emoji to capture his excitement.

Holland posted a video last month where he revealed the film‘s release date while wearing the iconic Spidey suit. A few days later, he posted behind-the-scenes footage where he was interacting with fans on set. It was the first time, he wrote, that fans were on set on Day One of filming.

The fourth film in Peter Parker‘s Holland era will reunite him with his on-screen girlfriend and offscreen fiancée, Zendaya, and actor Jacob Batalon, who plays his friend Ned Leeds.

A few newcomers are in the cast — Emmy winner Liza Colón-Zayas from “The Bear,” Sadie Sink from “Stranger Things” and recent Emmy winner Tramell Tillman from “Severance” — and in true Marvel Cinematic Universe style, audiences can expect to see the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) up there with Holland’s hero as well.

A grainy circle flashes on the top-right corner of the screen at the Eagle Theater. The single-screen repertory cinema, run by the nonprofit organization Vidiots, was showing a 35-millimeter print of Paul Thomas Anderson’s psychological drama “The Master.”

The faint warning is easily missed by most viewers, but it appears every 10 minutes, alerting the projectionist to change the reel.

The auditorium was sold out. Audience members clapped as the film title appeared onscreen. There was a buzz in the air even before the lights faded to black with the standby line filled with hopefuls trying to grab a last-minute ticket. The stakes were high for the person manning the reel exchange.

Guests wait to enter the Vidiots movie theater for a movie night in Los Angeles.

Michael Rousselet, a projectionist at the Eagle Rock theater, often drinks a lot of coffee to stay alert during late-night screenings.

“If we do a good job, no one knows we exist,” Rousselet quipped as he showed off the projection booth. “If we mess up, everyone knows we exist.”

The carefully curated communal experience offered by repertory theaters is enduring the hardships of the box office, even after the pandemic, which led to the demise of some well-known cinemas. The famed Cinerama Dome and adjoining former Arclight theater on Sunset Boulevard have still not reopened, despite popular demand.

A Monday screening of a 35-millimeter copy of the 2007 film “Michael Clayton” by American Cinematheque sold out. Independent cinema has captured a niche population that has helped it prevail in a time when box office revenue is tumbling down.

Guests enter the movie theater at Vidiots in Los Angeles.

The summer box office season, which stretches from early May through Labor Day, grossed $3.67 billion in the U.S. and Canada, down slightly from last year and significantly less than the pre-pandemic norm of $4 billion. Some new films with major stars struggle to get anyone to show up. “Americana,” starring Sydney Sweeney, one of Hollywood’s top young stars, earned $500,000 during its opening weekend last month.

The unique cinematic experiences crafted by the different repertory theaters play a pivotal role in revitalizing the film industry in Los Angeles, according to Maggie Mackay, executive director of Vidiots.

“I don’t think you can [raise the next generation of film lovers] through one platform,” Mackay said, sitting down in her auditorium. “I don’t think you can fall in love with an art form by clicking a few times and observing it by yourself.”

Patrons at the bar of the Vidiots’ cinema in Los Angeles.

A 2024 study by Art House Convergence showed that between 2019 and 2024, audiences became younger and more diverse. The number of wide releases have also made the independent industry healthier, according to Rich Daughtridge, president of Independent Cinema Alliance.

Independent theaters “are still down compared to 2019, but the momentum attraction is going up,” he said.

Netflix bought the Egyptian Theatre from American Cinematheque for an undisclosed amount in 2020. The influx of money helped the organization grow the brand and host more screenings — the total jump from 500 screenings to 1,600 with 350,000 patrons visiting their theaters, according to Grant Moninger, artistic director at American Cinematheque.

Part of the reason audiences are choosing smaller theaters over multiplexes is the care and attention staff members put into each showing. The viewing experience at these revival theaters always starts with a crew member reminding the audience to stay away from their phones — they want everyone to enjoy the tiny scratches, dust specks and vibrant colors of the print they are showing.

Patrons watch a movie at Vidiots movie theater in Los Angeles.

“I think people are desperately in search of community right now and of feeling closer to other people and sharing things and not feeling disconnected by technology,” Sean Fennessey, the host of the podcast “The Big Picture,” said after the “Michael Clayton” screening.

“We’re very lucky in Los Angeles that we have so many great spaces … that are encouraging people to come together and hang out and laugh and cry and feel chills,” he added.

Each location offers Hollywood cinephiles and casual viewers alike options to catch a variety of movies based on their niche. Independent cinema has had the least trouble recruiting an audience post-pandemic, according to Art House Convergence.

The Vista Theater and the New Beverly show personal copies from the private collection of Quentin Tarantino, who saved the theaters from extinction. Its recent run of “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” sold out and warranted the Vista announcing a new run of it.

American Cinematheque hosted a festival of films handpicked by different podcasters, which sold out screenings in the middle of the week.

Guests wait to enter the Vidiots movie theater in Los Angeles.

Vidiots hosted a discussion with American Cinema Editors member Leslie Jones after a screening of 2012’s “The Master,” a filmed she worked on. The showing sold out and most of its audience stayed late for a Q&A discussion with her.

Regardless of the inspiration these repertory theaters provide with, say, retrospectives of Akira Kurosawa, the model is not bulletproof to the punches theaters have taken. Organizations like Vidiots and American Cinematheque still rely on their nonprofit status.

These organizations count on donations and memberships. Access to directors, actors, prints and people in the industry also plays an important role in keeping afloat, according to Moninger.

“Our job is to get everybody in [the theater]. You can’t just say, ‘Hey, we’re a nonprofit,’” he said.

The uncertainty of the model does leave room for growth, according to Roger Durling, the executive director of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Vidiots technical director Boris Ibanez sets up a section of the film in a projector in the projection booth of Vidiots movie theater.

The nonprofit organization recently purchased the Film Center, a five-screen multiplex, in the downtown Santa Barbara area. It is the second five-screen theater they have purchased, and it will also screen films during the festival every winter.

Throughout the year, when the theaters aren’t showing movies for the festival, the organization will maintain its existence through a repertory model.

“The nonprofit aspect allows you to concentrate more on the artistic side as opposed to thinking, ‘I just need to make money,’” Durling said.

But the thought is still on his mind.

“The more you concentrate on the artistic side of it, the money will take care of itself.”

More than 100 members of the Writers Guild of America East and their supporters jammed the sidewalk in front of Walt Disney Co.’s Lower Manhattan headquarters Friday to protest ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The late-night program has been dark since Wednesday, when the Disney-owned network announced in a terse statement that it will be “preempted indefinitely.” The move followed decisions by two major owners of ABC affiliates to drop the show because of Kimmel’s remarks about the suspect in the shooting death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Members of the union, which represents TV and film writers, marched with signs calling the move an attack on free speech and accusing Walt Disney Co. executives of lacking backbone.

Among the messages: “Disney and ABC Capitulation and Censorship,” “Always Be Cowards,” “Absolute Bull— Cowards” and “Disney/ABC Bows to Trump Extortion.” There were chants of “Bring Jimmy back.”

The demonstration reflected anger building in the creative community over Kimmel’s removal, which Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr called for during a podcast interview that aired on Wednesday.

Carr said if action was not taken against Kimmel, there could be consequences for the TV stations that carry his show.

On Monday’s show, Kimmel seemed to suggest during his monologue that Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused in the shooting death of Kirk, might have been a pro-Trump Republican. He said MAGA supporters “are desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

The remarks prompted a widespread conservative backlash on social media, including demands for Kimmel’s firing. Kimmel, who has expressed sympathy for Kirk’s family online, has not yet commented on his removal.

President Trump has also said that late-night hosts who are critical of his administration should be banished from the airwaves. Trump cheered ABC’s decision, as he did the recent cancellation of CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

Kimmel remains off the air and has had discussions with Disney executives about how to bring the show back on the air. But his future with the network remains uncertain.

Greg Iwinski, a late-night TV writer and council member of the WGA East, said the threat of pulling a broadcast license is a dangerous weapon that can be used on any program and ultimately chill free expression.

“You can use that for any broadcast network anywhere,” Iwinski said. “Any late-night show, daytime show, game show or sitcom — any show you don’t like. Everything is under threat that is on network TV.”

Iwinski warned that ABC’s actions will only invite the Trump administration to exert more control over the broadcast airwaves.

“What if a relationship on a drama doesn’t fit the values of Donald Trump?” he said. “What if it’s not racially representative of what he thinks — ‘Well, we’re going to pull your licenses’ — all of that is on the table.”

The WGA East members were joined by local government officials supporting their cause, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.

Statements of protest over ABC’s moves are coming from all corners of the entertainment industry, including from Michael Eisner, the former Disney chief who preceded Bob Iger’s first run in the job.

“Where has all the leadership gone?” Eisner wrote Friday on X. “If not for university presidents, law firm managing partners, and corporate chief executives standing up against bullies, who then will step up for the first amendment?”

Eisner said ABC’s action is “yet another example of out of control intimidation” by the FCC.

“Maybe the Constitution should have said, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, except in one’s political or financial self-interest.’” Eisner added. “By-the-way, for the record, this ex-CEO finds Jimmy Kimmel very talented and funny.”

Disney did not immediately comment on Eisner’s post.

Damon Lindelof, the Emmy-winning co-creator of the hit ABC series “Lost,” said in an Instagram post Wednesday that he would no longer work for Disney or ABC unless Kimmel is reinstated.

A major Republican voice weighed in on Friday as well, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) saying the FCC chair’s threats are “dangerous as hell” and compared them to organized crime tactics.

Carr, who has been in lockstep with Trump on matters concerning the media, has said that stations have the right to pull the show if owners believe the content conflicts with community standards.

“Broadcast TV stations have always been required by their licenses to operate in the public interest — that includes serving the needs of their local communities,” he wrote Thursday on X. “And broadcasters have long retained the right to not air national programs that they believe are inconsistent with the public interest, including their local communities’ values. I am glad to see that many broadcasters are responding to their viewers as intended.”