killing

THIS is the moment US military forces bombed a drug running boat from the Tren de Aragua gang.

Dramatic footage shows a kinetic strike target and destroy a smuggling vessel in the Southern Caribbean.

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Washington designates Venezuela’s Tren de Agarua gang as a Maduro-backed terror group.

President Donald Trump, 79, confirmed US forces attacked the boat, killing 11.

Speaking from the Oval Office today, Trump said: “Over the last few minutes we just shot out a drug carrying boat, a lot of drugs on that boat.

“You’ll be seeing that, it just happened moments ago, our Great General and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been so incredible, including what took place in Iran knocking out potential nuclear power, I think within a month they would have had it if we didn’t do what we did.

“And there’s more where that came from. There’s a lot of drugs pouring into our country. These came out of Venezuela, a lot of things are coming out of Venezuela. We took it out.”

Meanwhile Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X: ” The US military conducted a lethal strike… against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization.”

A senior defense official confirmed further information on the “precision strike” would “be made available at a later time.”

This comes amid rising tension between Caracas and Washington.

Last week the US leader sent warships to Venezuela as the country’s dictator moved 15,000 troops to the border with Colombia.

Three US destroyers and 4,000 marines are sailing towards the South American coastline as tensions skyrocket.

It comes after after Trump’s administration announced a $50million bounty on the ruthless tyrant’s head.

Trump has accused President Nicolas Maduro of “mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere”.

The White House previously accused the Tren de Aragua of having “unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”

Trump also invoked the Alien Enemies Act against the Tren de Aragua gang as he continues efforts to speed up deportations.

The 1798 Act was last used to justify the internment of Japanese-American civilians during World War 2.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 gives gargantuan levels of authority to the Republican to target and remove undocumented immigrants.

It is designed as a law to be invoked if the US is at war with another country or a nation has invaded the US or threatened to do so.

The proclamation called for all of those subject to the measure to be arrested, detained and removed immediately.

Trump said in a proclamation: “All Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”

But, a judge quickly blocked Trump from invoking the act and ordered any flights carrying the gang members to turn around with the order now set for a battle through the courts.

Tren de Aragua is a transnational criminal organisation and U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization from Venezuela.

Believed to have over 5,000 members, Homeland Security officials labeled the group “high-threat,” according to US media reports.

In comments after the strike today, the US president wrote on X: “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, Military Forces conduced a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.

“TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.

“The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.

“The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this strike.

“Please let this serve as a notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

It comes as Trump has laughed off wild online rumours about his death, dismissing them as “fake news” during a primetime address after days of frenzied speculation over his health.

The president appeared on Tuesday to announce that U.S. Space Command headquarters will move from Colorado to Alabama.

He was then asked if he had seen the viral claims that he was no longer living.

“Really? I didn’t see that. That’s pretty serious!” Trump said, before insisting he had been busy behind the scenes.

“I did numerous interviews and had some pretty poignant posts on my social media site. I was very active over the weekend,” he added, noting that he also visited “some people” at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.

The press conference had been called to announce that U.S. Space Command headquarters will move from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Huntsville, Alabama — a reversal of Joe Biden’s 2023 decision to keep the base in Colorado.

Trump originally reestablished Space Command in 2018, saying its mission was to defend U.S. interests in space.

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A French court issues the warrants in connection with the bombing of a press centre in Homs in 2012 that killed two journalists.

A French court has issued arrest warrants for seven former top Syrian officials, including ex-President Bashar al-Assad, for the bombing of a press centre in Homs, a judicial source and a human rights organisation said.

A rocket hit the “informal press centre” on February 22, 2012, killing renowned US journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik and injuring two other journalists and an interpreter.

Besides al-Assad, who fled to Russia in December 2024 when opposition fighters seized control of Syria, warrants have also been issued against his brother Maher al-Assad, who was the de facto head of the 4th Syrian armoured division at the time, intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, and then-army chief of staff Ali Ayoub, among others.

France allows the filing of crimes against humanity cases in its courts.

The Syrian Centre for Media and Free Expression said that the French judicial investigation had found that the attack had deliberately targeted foreign journalists.

“The judicial investigation clearly established that the attack on the informal press centre in Bab Amr was part of the Syrian regime’s explicit intention to target foreign journalists in order to limit media coverage of its crimes and force them to leave the city and the country,” said Mazen Darwish, a lawyer and the general director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, in a statement.

Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also noted that the journalists had clandestinely entered the besieged city to “document the crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime” and were victims of a “targeted bombing”.

Clemence Bectarte, lawyer FIDH and Ochlik’s parents, welcomed Tuesday’s warrants and called it “a decisive step that paves the way for a trial in France for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.”

British photographer Paul Conroy, French reporter Edith Bouvier and Syrian translator Wael Omar were also wounded in the attack on the informal press centre where they had been working.

Colvin was known for her fearless reporting and signature black eye patch, which she wore after losing sight in one eye in an explosion during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her career was celebrated in a Golden Globe-nominated film, A Private War.

Homs, in western Syria, was a major rebel stronghold during the Syrian war and was besieged by al-Assad government forces from 2011 to 2014. The siege ended with rebel forces withdrawing from the city.

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

The Venice Film Festival is already underway and next week I will be part of The Times’ team heading to Toronto. The Telluride Film Festival starts today and our own Joshua Rothkopf, Josh Rottenberg and Glenn Whipp are there covering the action.

Many of the season’s most anticipated films will be playing over the next few days. Among world premieres at Telluride are Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” starring Jeremy Allen White as the acclaimed singer-songwriter; Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s popular novel; and Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player,” with Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck international gambler.

Laura Dern, George Clooney and Adam Sandler in the movie “Jay Kelly.”

(Peter Mountain / Netflix)

Among the titles making their North American premieres after premiering at European festivals will be Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Richard Linklater’s two films “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.” Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

This week, Rottenberg spoke to Telluride’s festival director, Julie Huntsinger, who said, “The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there’s hope. They’re not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, ‘I would not miss this for the world’ makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we’ve all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic.”

Even with so much happening elsewhere, there are still plenty of great events happening closer to home right here in L.A. On Wednesday, the Armenian Film Festival begins in Glendale, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Armenian Film Society with the Los Angeles premiere of Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade’s “Monsieur Aznavour,” starring Tahar Rahim as legendary French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.

The highlight of the festival will likely come on Sept. 7 with a conversation between “Sinners” producer Sev Ohanian and writer-director Ryan Coogler about their ongoing creative collaboration. That night will also see an awards gala honoring Ohanian along with actors Madeline Sharafian (“Elio”) and Karren Karagulian, best known for his work in Sean Baker’s films, including “Anora.”

James Brolin on ‘Night of the Juggler’

James Brolin, left, and Mandy Patinkin in the movie “Night of the Juggler.”

(Kino Lorber)

“Night of the Juggler,” directed by Robert Butler and adapted from a novel by William P. McGivern, has been little seen for years, only released on VHS and rarely seen in theaters or on TV. Shot on the streets of late-1970s New York City and released in 1980, the movie captures the grime and sweat of the city, making for a vividly authentic action thriller.

That should all change shortly, as a new 4K restoration distributed by Kino Lorber is playing at the Aero on Sept. 4 with star James Brolin in person for a Q&A. Then the film will get a limited run at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 18, 20 and 22.

In the film, Brolin plays Sean Boyd, a former NYC cop now working as truck driver. His adolescent daughter, Cathy, is abducted by the psychotic Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman), who mistakes her for the daughter of a wealthy real-estate developer. This sets Boyd of on a frantic chase across the city to save Cathy before it is too late.

One dazzling early sequence begins as a chase on foot, finds both Soltic and Boyd stealing vehicles to make it a car chase and ends up with them hopping between cars on a moving subway train. There is a relentlessness to Brolin’s performance that is countered by the creepy, disturbing undertones of Gorman.

Brolin, 85, was on a Zoom call recently from the home in Point Dume he shares with his wife, Barbra Streisand. Turning his computer around to share a distinctly spectacular view of the ocean, Brolin said with a laugh, “I’m a lucky boy.”

Brolin began his career as a contract player at Fox and then Universal, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the first season of the hit TV show “Marcus Welby, M.D.” Among his film credits was 1976’s “Gable and Lombard,” which saw him playing Clark Gable opposite Jill Clayburgh as Carole Lombard for director Sidney J. Furie.

Furie was the original director on “Juggler.” A few weeks into shooting, Brolin broke his foot doing one of the chase scenes. In the time it took to heal, Furie left the project to be replaced by Butler.

James Brolin in the movie “Night of the Juggler.”

(Kino Lorber)

Besides his flowing hair, healthy beard and generously unbuttoned shirt, Brolin acknowledged “Juggler” was a different kind of role and a different kind of movie for him — a grittier project removed from the stalwart fare he was often known for.

“I felt released,” he said. “I felt this is what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Remembering a scene in which he bitterly argues with his ex-wife in the film (played by Linda Miller), Brolin added, “I’ve been married 30 years now, but it’s my third one. The first two were maybe kind of like that. So I was able to unleash on film some of my old nasty feelings.”

Besides Gorman, a Tony winner for his performance in “Lenny,” the cast also featured a young Dan Hedaya as a crooked cop holding a grudge against Brolin’s Boyd and a then little-known Mandy Patinkin as a Puerto Rican cab driver who has no reservations about racing through traffic and provides a running commentary along the way.

“He was like a puppy in those days: ‘Where are you guys going to eat? Can I go with you?’” recalls Brolin of Patinkin. “But for him to get in that car — so fun. He made whatever might have been repetitious about that sequence just full of fire. And right up until the cab crash, which was full-on.”

In his original May 1980 review of the film, Times critic Charles Champlin wrote, “Of its kind, the police-action thriller ‘Night of the Juggler’ is a superior piece of work. The action is non-stop, the dialogue is tough and authentic, the characters major and minor are vivid and credible as the form allows. The people and the New York world in which they movie and work are as real as muggings and racial tension.”

Brolin is happy to see the movie revived. “I’m so proud,” he told me. “It was such a wonderful experience.”

And in case anyone was wondering, yes, Barbra Streisand has seen “Night of the Juggler.”

“She saw it two weeks ago and she said ‘I’m in love all over again,’” said Brolin. “Which made me feel quite good. She thinks it’s a wonderful movie and she loved what I did in it. Because I’m a bore at home.”

Owen Kline on ‘Who Killed Teddy Bear’

Sal Mineo in the movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”

(Cinématographe)

Owen Kline was 7 years old when his grandfather, Joseph Cates, died. Though he knew of his grandfather’s career in show business, working on Broadway and in television, it was not until Kline became a teenage film fan, scouring movie guides and video stores in his native New York City that he discovered Cates had also directed a notorious cult film, “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”

“I’ve collected the receipts on this movie and tried to piece its history together since I was 14,” said Kline, whose parents are the actors Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, during a recent phone call from New York. “Because there’s not much out there.”

A newly struck 35mm print of the film — in a director’s cut including some five minutes of footage removed from the film’s initial 1965 release — is playing at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 2, 6 and 7. The film was restored and scanned by the boutique video label Cinématographe, who have released a 4K disc set loaded with extras.

“Teddy Bear’s” cult reputation has grown over the years as a startlingly lurid artifact taking place in some of the seedier corners of New York City. Sal Mineo plays a young man of ambiguous sexuality who becomes increasingly obsessed with a female bartender (played by Juliet Prowse) at the nightclub where he is a busboy. Elaine Stritch plays the club’s boss.

Elaine Stritch, center, in the movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”

(Cinématographe)

“Every video store in New York, in the cult section, would have a bootleg copy of this movie because for years, until recently, the copyright was just murky,” said Kline. “So that did a great service to its unseemly reputation, as if it was one of the dirty paperbacks you’d smuggle out of one of these adult bookstores in the film.”

As those video stores around New York City began closing, Kline, now 33, would buy up their copies, taking note of the different covers and cuts of the film that were circulating.

Kline noted that within the additional footage in the director’s cut is a moment where Mineo thumbs through a paperback called “Beach Stud” in an adult bookstore, adding to the ambiguity of his character’s sexuality. (And also perhaps a nod to Mineo’s own bisexuality, rumored at the time but not yet public.) There’s also a moment in the new scenes in which a killer kisses the cheek of his dead victim.

“On a film with a laundry list of taboos, suggested necrophilia is a new one,” says Kline. “It does really feel like a throwback film to the pre-Code era. It’s almost like they compiled a gigantic list of these taboos. There’s some really shocking stuff.”

The original Dec. 1965 review in The Times by Margaret Harford called the film “a grim commentary,” while also noting, “No doubt about it, there are a lot of sick people walking around.” The review concludes with the line, “The trend now is never knowing when to stop.”

In a 1996 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Cates downplayed the film’s more shocking elements, while admitting, “Ours was a slightly sleazy film.”

“We didn’t set out about and say to ourselves, ‘Gee, let’s connive to do these things that are tasteless in the movie,’” said Cates. “There was a story and we had to figure out a way to do it.”

Kline’s own feature film, 2022’s “Funny Pages,” will be playing on a double bill with Andrew DeYoung’s recent “Friendship” at the New Beverly on Sept. 16 and 17.

Points of interest

‘52 Pick-Up’ in 35mm

Roy Scheider, left, and John Glover in the movie “52 Pick-Up.”

(American Cinematheque)

As if to prove that NYC does not corner the market on scuzzy depictions of an urban underbelly, Cinematic Void will be screening John Frankenheimer’s L.A.-set “52 Pick-Up” in 35mm on Monday.

A 1986 portrait of the sleazy glory of our city and an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film follows a successful businessman (Roy Scheider) who is caught up in a blackmail scheme when he is videotaped with his mistress. Desperate to keep things quiet so as not to damage the local political aspirations of his wife (Ann-Margret), he finds things escalate quickly and he sets out for revenge. The cast also includes a terrifying Clarence Williams III, Vanity, Kelly Preston and actual members of the adult film demimonde.

Actor John Glover, who plays the deranged lead blackmailer in the film, will be at Monday’s screening for a Q&A. In his original review of the film, Patrick Goldstein noted, “‘52 Pick-Up’ features a couple of stylish performances, especially by John Glover, who brings a flaky intensity to his role as extortionist leader.”

‘Barry Lyndon’ in 4K

Ryan O’Neal, right, and James Magee in the movie “Barry Lyndon.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

On Saturday, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre will host the Los Angeles premiere of a new 4K restoration of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 “Barry Lyndon.” The film will also be shown in 35mm at the New Beverly on Sept. 5, 6 and 7.

An adaptation of the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, the film brings the world of the late 1700s to astonishingly vivid life in telling the story of the wayward adventures of Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), who eventually marries Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson).

The film won four Academy Awards and has over time seen its esteem only rise; now many consider it to be Kubrick’s greatest achievement. Yet, upon release, it confounded viewers, who found its pacing and picturesque imagery to be impenetrable.

Reviewing the film in Dec. 1975, The Times’ Charles Champlin said, “It is ravishingly beautiful and incredibly tedious in about equal doses.” He added, “Kubrick is at once the most zealous and monastic of present film-makers, living in reclusive independence from the larger world of movies, setting himself each time a quite different kind of challenge and then meticulously solving it.”

A January 1974 Times story by Thomas Wood as the film was in production was filled with thwarted attempts to get around the protective veil of secrecy Kubrick designed around it. One frustrated member of the Warner Bros. press team was exasperated by the lack of details about the movie that the studio had, noting, “What can you do with a man who is both a critic’s darling and a box-office winner? You let him pick his own game and make up his own rules.”

‘Sign O’ the Times’ in Imax

Prince performs his “Sign O’ the Times” concert in Paris in 1987.

(FG / Bauer-Griffin / Getty Images)

Starting Friday, Prince’s 1987 concert film “Sign O’ the Times” is getting a one-week run in Imax theaters. Directed by Prince himself, the film is a document of the stage show he created to tour the album of the same name, combining concerts filmed in Europe with footage created on his own Paisley Park soundstages in Minnesota. Seeing Prince’s mastery of performance at Imax scale may actually be too much for a brain to handle.

In Michael Wilmington’s original review he wrote, “‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’ shows him seemingly as much influenced by Martin Scorsese and ‘The Last Waltz’ — with its smokey, absolute lyricism — as was by Fellini and Dick Lester in ‘Under the Cherry Moon.’ And since the movie is predominately concert footage of his stage show, he’s in greater control here; singer-composer Prince is at the peak of his form. … So as a concert film, judge from the music, ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times is near the top. As a movie – carrying inside it the embryo of other movies – it’s not fully satisfying. But you sense it could be; however he stumbles, Prince gives you the impression he’ll always, catlike, leap back.”

Melbourne, Australia – Lee Little recalls the phone call with her daughter in December 2017; it was just minutes before Alicia was killed.

“I spoke to her 15 minutes before she died,” Little told Al Jazeera.

“I asked her, was she OK? Did you want us to come up to pick you up? And she said, ‘No, I’ve got my car. I’m right, Mum, everything’s packed.’”

Alicia Little was on the verge of finally leaving an abusive four-and-a-half-year relationship.

Not only had Alicia rung her mother, but she had also called the police emergency hotline for assistance, as her fiance Charles Evans fell into a drunken rage.

Alicia knew what to expect from her partner: extreme violence.

Evans had a history of abuse towards Alicia, with her mother recounting to Al Jazeera the first time it occurred.

“The first time he actually bashed her, she was on the phone to me. And the next minute, I heard him come across and try to grab her phone,” Little said.

“I heard her say, ‘Get your hands off my throat. I can’t breathe.’ And the next minute, you hear him say, ‘You’re better off dead.’”

Little told how she had taken photos of her daughter’s terrible injuries.

“She had broken ribs. She had a broken cheekbone, broken jaw, black eyes, and where he’d had her around the throat, you could see his finger marks. It was a bruise, and where he’d give her a kick, and right down the side, you could see his foot marks.”

Like many abusive relationships, a pattern would emerge, whereby Alicia would leave temporarily, only to return after Evans promised to change his behaviour.

“This went on and off for the four and a half years,” Little said.

“He’d bash her, she’d come home, and then she’d say to me, ‘Mum, he’s told me that he’s gone and got help.’”

Yet the violence only escalated.

On the night Alicia decided to leave for good, Evans drove his four-wheel-drive at her, pinning her between the front of the vehicle and a water tank.

Alicia Little, aged 41 and a mother of two boys, died within minutes before the police she had called could arrive.

As she lay drawing her final breaths, security camera footage would later show her killer drinking beer at the local pub, where he drove to after running Alicia down.

Evans was arrested, and after initially being charged with murder, had his charges downgraded to dangerous driving causing death and failing to render assistance after a motor vehicle accident.

He would walk free from jail after only two years and eight months.

The statistics

Alicia Little is just one of the many women in Australia killed every year, in what activists such as The Red Heart Campaign’s Sherele Moody are saying is so prevalent that it amounts to a “femicide”: the targeted killing of women by men.

According to government data, one woman was killed in Australia every eight days on average between 2023-2024.

Moody, who documents the killings, contests those statistics, telling Al Jazeera they do not represent the true scale of deadly attacks on women in the country.

Government data records “domestic homicide”; women killed resulting in a conviction of murder or manslaughter.

As in the case of Alicia Little, the lesser charges her killer was convicted on related to motoring offences and do not amount to a domestic homicide under government reporting and are not reflected in the statistics.

“One of the key weapons that perpetrators use against women in Australia is vehicles,” Moody told Al Jazeera.

“They almost always get charged with dangerous driving, causing death. That is not a homicide charge. It doesn’t get counted despite it being a domestic violence act, an act of domestic violence perpetrated by a partner,” Moody said.

“The government underrepresents the epidemic of violence. And in the end, the numbers that they’re using influence their policy. It influences their funding decisions. It influences how they speak to us as a community about violence against women,” she said.

Moody said that between January 2024 and June this year, she had documented 136 killings of women; many – like Alicia Little – by their partners. “Ninety-six percent of the deaths I record are perpetrated by men.”

“Around 60 percent of the deaths are the result of domestic and family violence,” she said.

While much focus is on women’s safety in public spaces – for example, walking home alone at night – Moody said the least safe place for a woman is actually in her own home.

“The reality is that if you’re going to be killed, whether you’re a man or woman or a child, you’re going to be killed by someone you know,” she said.

Data shows that only about 10 percent of female victims are killed by strangers, deaths often sensationally covered by the media and prompting public debate about women’s safety.

“Yes, stranger killings do happen, and when they do, they get a lot of focus and a lot of attention, and it lulls people into a false sense of security about who is perpetrating the violence,” Moody said.

Male violence in Australia

Patty Kinnersly, CEO of Our Watch, a national task force to prevent violence against women, said attacks on women are the “most extreme outcome of broader patterns of gendered violence and inequality”.

“When we refer to the gendered drivers of violence, we are talking about the social conditions and power imbalances that create the environment where this violence occurs,” Kinnersly said.

“These include condoning or excusing violence against women, men’s control of decision-making, rigid gender stereotypes and dominant forms of masculinity, and male peer relations that promote aggression and disrespect towards women,” she said.

“Addressing the gendered drivers is vital because violence against women is not random; it reflects deeply entrenched inequalities and norms in society. If we do not address these root causes, we cannot achieve long-term prevention,” she added.

Patterns of male violence are deeply rooted in Australia’s colonial history, in which men are told they need to be physically and mentally tough, normalising male aggression, write authors Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson.

“For much of the 19th century, men far outnumbered women within the European population of the Australian colonies. This produced a culture that prized hyper-masculinity as a national ideal,” they write.

Colonial male aggression also resulted in extreme violence perpetrated on Indigenous women during the frontier times, through rape and massacres.

Misogyny and racism were also promoted in Australia’s parliament during the 20th century, as legislators crafted assimilationist laws aimed at controlling the lives of Indigenous women and removing their children as part of what has become known as the “Stolen Generations”.

Up to a third of Indigenous children were removed from their families as part of a suite of government policies between 1910 and 1970, resulting in widespread cultural genocide and intergenerational social, economic and health disparities.

This legacy of colonial racism and discrimination continues to play out in vast socioeconomic inequalities experienced by Indigenous people in the present day, including violence against women, activists say.

Recent government data shows that Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised due to violence than non-Indigenous women in Australia and six times more likely to die as a result of family violence.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are among the most at-risk groups for family violence and intimate partner homicide in Australia,” First Nations Advocates Against Family Violence (FNAAFV) Chief Executive Officer Kerry Staines told Al Jazeera.

“These disproportionately high rates are the result of historical injustice and ongoing systemic failure,” Staines said, including forced displacement of Indigenous communities, child removals and the breakdown of family structures.

“Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been affected by multigenerational trauma caused by institutional abuse, incarceration and marginalisation. When trauma is left unaddressed, and support services are inadequate or culturally unsafe, the risk of violence, including within relationships, increases,” she said.

Indigenous women are also the fastest-growing prison cohort in Australia.

On any given night, four out of 10 women in prison are Indigenous women, despite making up only 2.5 per cent of the adult female population.

Staines said there is a nexus between domestic violence and incarceration.

“There is a clear and well-documented relationship between the hyper-incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the high rates of family violence experienced in our communities,” she said.

“The removal of parents and caregivers from families due to imprisonment increases the likelihood of child protection involvement, housing instability and intergenerational trauma, all of which are risk factors for both perpetration and victimisation of family violence.”

‘Toxic culture’

While Australia was one of the first Western countries to grant women voting rights, deeply rooted inequalities persisted through much of the 20th century, with women being excluded from much of public and civic life, including employment in the government sector and the ability to sit on juries, until the 1970s.

This exclusion from positions of authority – including the judicial system – allowed a culture of “victim blaming” to develop, particularly in instances of domestic abuse and sexual assault, activists say.

Rather than holding male perpetrators to account and addressing violence, focus remained on the actions of female victims: what they may have been wearing, where they had been, and prior sexual histories as a basis for apportioning blame to those who had suffered the consequences of gender-based violence.

Such was the case with Isla Bell, a 19-year-old woman from Melbourne, who police allege was beaten to death in October 2024.

Media reporting on Isla’s death focused largely on her personal life and provided graphic details about her death, while little attention was given to the two men who were charged with Isla’s alleged murder.

Isla’s mother, Justine Spokes, said the reporting “felt really abusive”.

“The way in which my daughter’s murder was reported on just highlights the pervasive toxic culture that is systemic in Australia,” said Spokes, describing a “victim-blaming narrative” around the killing of her daughter.

“It was written in a really biased way that felt really disrespectful, devaluing and dehumanising,” she said, adding that society had become desensitised to male violence against women in Australia.

“It’s just become so normalised, which I think is actually a sign of trauma, that we’re numb to it. It’s been pervasive for that long. If that’s the mainstream psyche in Australia, it’s just so dangerous,” she said.

“I really think that this pervasive, toxic, misogynistic culture, it’s definitely written into our law. It’s very colonial,” she added.

The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has committed to the ambitious task of tackling violence against women within a generation.

A spokesperson from the Department of Social Services told Al Jazeera the government has invested 4 billion Australian dollars ($2.59bn) to deliver on the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032.

“The Australian Government acknowledges the significant levels of violence against women and children including intimate partner homicides,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Ending gender-based violence remains a national priority for the Australian Government. Our efforts to end gender based violence in one generation are not set-and-forget – we are rigorously tracking, measuring and assessing our efforts, and making change where we must,” the spokesperson added.

Yet for Lee Little, mother of Alicia Little who was killed in 2017, not enough is being done, and she does not feel justice was served in the case of her daughter, describing the killer’s light sentence as “gut-wrenching”.

Little is now petitioning for a national domestic violence database in a bid to hold perpetrators accountable and allow women to gain access to information regarding prior convictions.

“Our family would love a national database, because perpetrators, at this moment, anywhere in Australia, can do a crime in one state and move to another, and they’re not recognised” as offenders in their new location, she said.

Little said public transparency around prior convictions would protect women from entering into potentially abusive relationships in the first place.

Yet the Australian federal government has yet to implement such a database, in part due to the complexities of state jurisdictions.

The federal attorney-general’s office told Al Jazeera that “primary responsibility for family violence and criminal matters rests with the states and territories, with each managing their own law enforcement and justice systems”.

“Creation of a publicly accessible national register of perpetrators of family violence could only be implemented with the support of state and territory governments, who manage the requisite data and legislation.”

Despite the apparent intransigence in law, Little remains committed to calling out violence against women wherever she sees it.

“I’ve been to supermarkets where there’s been abuse in front of me, and I’ve stepped in,” she said.

“I will be a voice for Alicia and for a national database till my last breath,” she added.

THIS is the terrifying moment a petrol station is engulfed in flames after a devastating fireball blast.

Four people died after a gas cylinder is believed to have caught on fire with footage showing a horror inferno as locals ran for their lives.

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Footage from Dagestan, Russia, shows the gas station up in flames with black clouds of smoke billowing through the air.

As the initial fireball raged on, a second, far more devastating blast erupted as the remaining gas cylinders and pumps all exploded.

Video filmed by a terrified local shows much of the village of Sulevkent in the Khasavyurt district attacked by a bright orange flash as the second blast hits.

The deafening sound of the inferno was met with the sight of debris flying through the air.

Residents who had left their homes to watch the initial explosion were quickly sent running for their lives as the second blast rang out.

The apocalyptic scenes were said to have been visible from several kilometers away, locals said.

Emergency services rushed to the scene to extinguish multiple fires which continued to burn for some time.

Four people were found and rushed to a nearby hospital with severe burns.

They all tragically died from their injuries.

Officials determined the initial explosion was caused by the depressurisation of a gas cylinder during refuelling operations, according to preliminary reports.

The gas station was left decimated alongside the adjacent service station and food vendors.

The Dagestan prosecutor’s office is now conducting an investigation into the incident.

It comes less than a year after another petrol station explosion killed 13 people and injured 23 just outside the Dagistani capital of Makhachkala.

Two children were among the casualties, authorities confirmed.

Horrifying video showed the enormous explosion – which then hurled a fuel tank 1,000ft towards a high rise block.

Locals claimed the blast was so strong that the ground shook like in an earthquake.

In August 2023, a third massive blast at a gas station in Dagestan killed 35 people and injured 115 more.

The fire started at a car repair shop before engulfing the nearby Nafta 24 filling station – sending it up in flames before triggering a giant explosion.

It took firefighters more than three and a half hours to put out the blaze as it spread to an area of 600 square metres, TASS reports.

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A GUNMAN who allegedly killed two police officers could be hiding in a cave as his family handed themselves in.

A major manhunt is still underway for Dezi Bird Freeman, 56, who allegedly gunned down “execution style” three officers who were conducting a search warrant at a property in Porepunkah, Australia, on Tuesday morning.

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Police sources told the Herald Sun it was a “straight-out execution” when Freeman allegedly opened fire with a shotgun as officers entered a bus where he and his family live.

A 59-year-old detective, just days from retirement, and a 35-year-old senior constable were killed in the horror attack.

A third officer, meanwhile, was shot in the thigh and is undergoing surgery in a Melbourne hospital.

The remaining seven members of the 10-officer team were unharmed.

On Wednesday, the search for the alleged killer continued as his family, who were feared to have been kidnapped by Freeman handed themselves in to authorities late on Tuesday.

Freeman’s whereabouts, meanwhile, remain unknown with cops believing he may have fled into the nearby dense bush.

The 45-year-old is well known to police, having been in and out of court for driving and traffic offences, defying police orders, and verbally abusing a judge in a roadside drug-test case last year.

In 2021, he was arrested at an anti-government protest. He has also previously compared police to Nazis.

Australian outlets are reporting that Freeman is a self-declared “sovereign citizen” – part of a fringe movement that rejects the authorities of Australian laws and government.

Often called “SovCits”, adherents have been Australia for decades, with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) previously describing them as mostly harmless.

But the movement has gained traction in recent years, fuelled by pandemic-era mistrust, and a 2023 AFP briefing note warned it has “an underlying capacity to inspire violence”.

Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush confirmed that ten officers went to the Porepunkah property around 10.30am on Tuesday to execute a search warrant when shots were fired.

He said: “They were fired upon. The two deceased officers are still at the scene. A third officer was seriously injured and is currently in surgery in hospital.”

Bush said the other officers on scene were uninjured, but stressed the incident was “still active and ongoing”.

“We have deployed all specialist resources into the area to arrest the person responsible… [they] are currently there looking for this person.”

That includes homicide detectives, the Armed Crime Squad, the Fugitive Squad and specialist police units.

Ambulance Victoria confirmed one person with serious lower-body injuries was flown to hospital in a stable condition.

The attack unfolded in Porepunkah, a small Alpine town of about 1,000 residents, located 186 miles north-east of Melbourne.

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The local primary school was placed into lockdown and the Alpine shire council closed all public facilities “effective immediately”.

Alpine shire mayor Sarah Nicholas said it had been an “unsettling” and “emotional” afternoon for the small community.

“Today has been a day of deep sorrow and shock for our community… We are grieving together,” she said in a statement, paying tribute to the officers killed and offering “thoughts, love and unwavering” support to their families.

“We hold our police in the highest regard. They serve with courage, compassion, and dedication, and their loss is felt profoundly across our region,” she added.

Nicholas also thanked teachers at the nearby school for keeping children calm during the lockdown, and locals for heeding police instructions. She closed with a plea: “Please stay safe.”

Prime minister Anthony Albanese said: “Our thoughts are with the police for the work they do, each and every day.

“The men and women who wear the uniform of the police force, take risks each and every day.”

Premier Jacinta Allan told parliament: “Victoria police officers and all of our first responders show extraordinary bravery and courage every single day. They are the best of us.”

A large police operation remains underway in Porepunkah, with about 50 officers and a police dog reported at the scene.

The local airfield has been shut to the public to allow emergency access.

Meanwhile, locals are being warned to stay indoors, with PCC Bush saying: “I want to further assure the rural community around Bright that we will do everything to bring this person into custody so that your community is safe.

“Can I please ask you just to stay at home, not go out and about at the moment, until this operation is concluded?

“I’m leaving now to head to the area to support our officers and support the operation.”

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A COMMON phone mistake that you think is saving battery life is actually doing the opposite.

Millions of us do it every single day – but even Apple has warned users not to bother.

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Loads of iPhone owners spend time every day quitting their apps.

They’ll swipe them closed, quitting them in order to save a bit of battery life.

But Apple says it doesn’t actually save battery life at all.

“You should only close an app if it’s unresponsive,” Apple said.

The iPhone maker continued: “Typically, there’s no reason to quit an app.

“Quitting it doesn’t save battery power, for example.”

In fact, it could even be making things worse.

After you move to a different app, the old one will be “suspended”.

“After you’ve switched to a different app, some apps will run for a short period of time before they’re set to a suspended state,” Apple explained.

“Apps that are in a suspended state aren’t actively in use, open or taking up system resources.”

They’re kept in a suspended state so that it’s quicker and more power-efficient to relaunch them.

But if you fully force-quit an app, it will need to reboot from scratch, which is slower and takes up more power.

So it’s better to just leave them in a suspended state unless there’s an actual issue with the app – like it keeps freezing or crashing.

HOW TO CHECK WHAT’S REALLY DRAINING YOUR BATTERY

So what are you supposed to do if your iPhone’s battery life isn’t as good as you’d like?

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Well you can very easily check to see which apps and features are draining the most battery.

Just go into Settings > Battery and you can look at a long list of apps order by how much charge they’re using.

If there are any high-drain apps you don’t really care about, consider deleting them.

Or try turning off Background App Refresh for that app if you don’t want it to periodically check for new info (like email notifications). Just note that this might make the app work less well.

BATTERY SWAP

Another option is to check up on the health of your iPhone’s battery.

Over time – as you charge and discharge them – phone batteries get worse. This is just the nature of lithium ion batteries.

That means the more you use your iPhone, the less charge it will hold over time.

So your iPhone will run out of battery more quickly.

IPHONE BATTERY SWAP – HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

Here’s how much you’ll pay for iPhone battery replacements in the UK and the US..

iPhone 5 Series

iPhone SE Series

• iPhone SE (1st gen) – £N/A / $69
• iPhone SE (2nd gen) – £65 / $69
• iPhone SE (3rd gen) – £65 / $69

iPhone 6 Series

• iPhone 6 – £N/A / $69
• iPhone 6s – £N/A / $69
• iPhone 6s Plus – £N/A / $69

iPhone 7 Series

• iPhone 7 – £65 / $69
• iPhone 7 Plus – £65 / $69

iPhone 8 Series

• iPhone 8 – £65 / $69
• iPhone 8 Plus – £65 / $69

iPhone X Series

iPhone XR/XS Series

• iPhone XR – £85 / $89
• iPhone XS – £85 / $89
• iPhone XS Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 11 Series

• iPhone 11 – £85 / $89
• iPhone 11 Pro – £85 / $89
• iPhone 11 Pro Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 12 Series

• iPhone 12 mini – £85 / $89
• iPhone 12 – £85 / $89
• iPhone 12 Pro – £85 / $89
• iPhone 12 Pro Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 13 Series

• iPhone 13 mini – £85 / $89
• iPhone 13 – £85 / $89
• iPhone 13 Pro – £85 / $89
• iPhone 13 Pro Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 14 Series

• iPhone 14 – £95 / $99
• iPhone 14 Plus – £95 / $99
• iPhone 14 Pro – £95 / $99
• iPhone 14 Pro Max – £95 / $99

iPhone 15 Series

• iPhone 15 – £95 / $99
• iPhone 15 Plus – £95 / $99
• iPhone 15 Pro – £95 / $99
• iPhone 15 Pro Max – £95 / $99

iPhone 16 Series

• iPhone 16 – £95 / $99
• iPhone 16 Plus – £95 / $99
• iPhone 16 Pro – £109 / $119
• iPhone 16 Pro Max – £109 / $119

Picture Credit: Apple

You can get to see how degraded your iPhone’s battery has become by going into Settings > Battery > Battery Health.

Normally you’d expect to be at around 80% capacity versus new after two years – or roughly 500 “charge cycles”, which are full charges and discharges.

That means your phone only holds 80% of the charge it held when it was new.

There’s no way to fix that beyond getting a new battery.

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Apple will replace your iPhone’s battery at the Apple Store. It usually costs somewhere between £60 and £100 / $60 and $100 depending on the model, but it could be more or less than that.

This will give you like-new battery life, and costs far less than buying a new iPhone.

You might even find that your iPhone’s performance improves, as sometimes processor speed can be limited as a protection feature if your battery is severely degraded.

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

The LAT published its fall movies preview this week, taking a look at what is coming up through Thanksgiving. There is a list of the 21 movies we’re most excited about, which includes a broad selection of styles, genres and tones.

Among the movies to look out for are Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” Luca Guadagino’s “After the Hunt,” Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite,” Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” Lynne Ramsay’s “Die My Love,” Dan Trachtenberg’s “Predator: Badlands,” Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” and Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man.”

Some of these titles have already been seen at festivals, but many have not. And if even a fraction of them pan out, it should make for quite a season.

Zoey Deutch, photographed in Hollywood in July.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

I spoke to actor Zoey Deutch and director Richard Linklater about their collaboration on “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking 1960 debut feature “Breathless.” Deutch plays American-born actor Jean Seberg, who was living in Paris at the time and agreed to be in the movie. After Godard’s film made her an international star, Seberg had an unpredictable career until her death in 1979 at only age 40.

“Is the rest of her life incredibly fascinating and intense and tragic? Yes,” said Deutch. “But Rick was really adamant on telling a story at a very specific moment in time. We’re not telling anything that happens after. Godard is not a legend yet. You don’t know who this guy is, what he’s doing. He’s not who he was later. Don’t read the last page of the book when we’re still on Page 1.”

Carlos Aguilar spoke to newcomer Tonatiuh, who has a breakout performance opposite Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez in Bill Condon’s adaptation of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

“When I first met Jennifer, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s Jennifer Lopez, what the hell?’” Tonatiuh recalled. “I must have turned left on the wrong street because now I’m standing in front of her. How did this happen? What life am I living?”

And Tim Grierson spoke to Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest for an in-character interview as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel from the rock group Spinal Tap for their long-awaited sequel, “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.” (Director Rob Reiner also is interviewed in character as documentary filmmaker Marty DiBergi.)

“Can I ask a question?” Tufnel interjects at one point. “This has begun? The interview?”

Pocasters choice at ‘Friend of the Fest’

Shelley Duvall, left, Wesley Ivan Hurt and Robin Williams in Robert Altman’s “Popeye.”

(American Cinematheque)

Already underway, this year marks the third edition of the American Cinematheque’s “Friend of the Fest” series, in which podcasters pick their favorite movies to show. Most of the screenings will have the podcast hosts doing live intros, while some will even be recording live shows on site.

“It’s mostly trying to find that middle ground,” said Cindy Flores, film programmer at the American Cinematheque, in an interview this week. “You don’t have to be a connoisseur or a film geek or a cinephile. Everybody loves film. And that’s the great thing about the podcast festival is that you get to see a wide variety of titles and choices and things that people are interested in.”

The popular Ringer podcast network will have four shows represented, with “The Big Picture” selecting “Michael Clayton,” “The Watch” showing “24 Hour Party People,” “House of R” choosing “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Midnight Boys” presenting “Blade.”

Other podcasts in the series include “The Dana Gould Hour” showing “Carnival of Souls,” “Office Hours Live” with the “Weird Al” Yankovic-starring “UHF” (in a rare 35mm print with possible surprise guests), “Upstairs Neighbors” showing “Bottoms,” “Lifted” showing “Misssissippi Masala,” “Cinematic Void” screening “River’s Edge,” “Flightless Bird” choosing “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” and “Ticklish Business” presenting “Design for Living.”

A scene from the 1985 movie “Clue.”

(American Cinematheque)

The LAT’s own Amy Nicholson, along with her “Unspooled” co-host Paul Scheer, have selected the Kevin Costner sci-fi film “Waterworld.”

The “Linoleum Knife” podcast will screen “Clue” from a newly-made DCP that will feature only one of the film’s multiple endings, selected by hosts Alonso Duralde and Dave White.

The podcast “Perf Damage” is hosted by the husband-and-wife team of Charlotte Barker and Adam Barker, who actually worked on restoring their selection: the L.A. premiere of the new 4K update of Robert Altman’s “Popeye.”

Marc Maron, who will be shutting down his “WTF” podcast later this year, will screen Altman’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller.”

Points of interest

Elizabeth Taylor triple bill

Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the 1968 film “Boom!”

(Express Newspapers / Getty Images)

As part of its “Summer of Camp” series, the Academy Museum will feature on Sunday a triple bill of Elizabeth Taylor movies, all screening in 35mm, with “Secret Ceremony” and “Boom!” — both from 1968 and directed by Joseph Losey — and then Brian G. Hutton’s 1972 “X Y & Zee.” These are all visually rapturous movies with some amazing costumes and will make for an incredible daylong experience.

In the horror-tinged psychodrama “Secret Ceremony,” Taylor co-stars with Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum. Adapted by Tennessee Williams from his own play “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,” “Boom!” pairs Taylor with her real-life paramour Richard Burton in some astonishing Mediterranean locations. “X Y & Zee” co-stars Michael Caine.

In May 1968, Times film critic Charles Champlin wrote, “Filmland’s reigning vaudeville act, the Flying Burtons, are together again in a sleek, aberrational and posturing piece of nonsense called ‘Boom!’ … ‘Boom!’ is gorgeous to look at. Losey’s sense of place is I think unsurpassed by any director now working, and Mrs. Goforth’s house, with its sun-baked walls and cool, dark, artful interiors, its talking bird and chained monkey, the waves crashing on the rocks below the terrace, is perfectly realized.”

Elizabeth Taylor, with producer Elliott Kastner on the set of “X, Y and Zee” in London in 1971.

(Frank Barratt / Getty Images)

In June 1968, Kevin Thomas published an interview with playwright Williams. Of “Boom!” he said, “It’s a beautiful picture, the best ever made of one of my plays. I think Elizabeth has never been that good before. I don’t know whether the public is going to buy it, for Lord’s sake. I hope they do for Elizabeth’s sake as well as my own. … I can always make out, but inwardly she’s a very fragile being.”

In his Nov. 1968 review of “Secret Ceremony,” Champlin continued the thought on Losey, writing, “His most notable gift is the care and skill with which he conveys the atmosphere generated by a particular house or place.”

In a 1970 item as Taylor was about to begin shooting “X Y & Zee,” she was asked if she would consider retiring. “I’m so lazy, I think I should retire,” she responded. “The unfortunate thing is I enjoy acting.”

‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ 10-year anniversary

Kristen Wiig, left, Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård in the movie “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.”

(Sony Pictures Classics)

Also on Sunday, the Gardena Cinema will host a 10th anniversary screening of “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” with a Q&A with producer Miranda Bailey. Adapted from the hybrid novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, it was the debut feature from Marielle Heller, who would go on to make “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” as well as “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and “Nightbitch.”

Starring Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgård, the story is about the sexual awakening of a 15-year-old girl in 1976 San Francisco.

Reviewing the film, Rebecca Keegan wrote, “Big summer action movies can be thrilling, but if you really want to feel your heart pounding out of your chest, try being a 15-year-old girl for 101 minutes. That’s the running time of ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl,’ a rare gem of a movie that takes its audience inside the ecstatic, confused and unapologetically horny brain of a girl named Minnie Goetze. ‘Diary’ is a vivid and often shocking story of growing up female in 1976 San Francisco, told with tenderness and humor by first-time director Marielle Heller and starring a blue-eyed lightning bolt of an actress named Bel Powley as Minnie.”

In an interview with the director at the time, Heller said, “Teenage girls are represented really poorly; I think we as a society are afraid of teenage girls. We’re definitely afraid of their sexuality, and so teenage girls are either shown in this really virginal state or this really slutty state, but it’s never what it actually felt like to be a teenage girl as a full human.

“You’re just as complete of a person as a teenage boy,” she added. “Holden Caulfield is a really complex character, so where’s our female Holden Caulfield? It just felt really important, the chance to represent teenage girls in a way that actually felt real.”

‘Cooley High’

On Wednesday the Academy Museum will present 1975’s “Cooley High” in 35mm with director Michael Schultz and actors Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs and Glynn Turman present for a conversation with academy governor and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.

Written by Eric Monte and based on his own experiences growing up in Chicago, the film is set in 1964 and follows two high school friends through a series of endearingly freewheeling misadventures.

In a 2019 article on the occasion of a screening and tribute at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater — now included on the Criterion Collection disc of the film — Susan King spoke to many involved in the making of “Cooley High.” Robert Townsend, who would go on to make “Hollywood Shuffle” and most recently be seen on “The Bear,” had a one-line role as a teenager. “The movie changed my life,” he would say.

“It’s a movie, but it’s making me laugh, it’s making me think, and to me that’s what real movies do — speak to people that look like me and speak to everybody,” said Townsend. “That was my first lesson from Michael Schultz.”

‘The Lovers on the Bridge’ in 4K

Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche in the movie “The Lovers on the Bridge.”

(Janus Films)

A new 4K restoration of Leos Carax’s “The Lovers on the Bridge” is playing at Laemmle’s Royal, Glendale and Town Center locations and any chance to see this delirious romance on-screen is worth taking.

First shown at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, the movie would not get a release in America until 1999. The story of a street performer (Denis Lavant) and an artist losing her eyesight (Juliette Binoche), the film is told with dazzling flair and overwhelming style. Unable to shoot on the actual Pont Neuf bridge in Paris where the plot is set, Carax built a full-scale replica, said to be at the time the largest set ever built in France.

Writing about the film in 1999, Kevin Thomas said, “Leos Carax’s ‘The Lovers on the Bridge’ has the raw, gritty look of a documentary on the homeless, but it is in the grand tradition of heady screen romances. It’s a throwback to the golden era of both Hollywood and of the fatalistic French cinema that teamed such international icons as Jean Gabin and Michelle Morgan … a go-for-broke dazzler that takes constant chances, dares to go over the top, indulges in one anticlimactic scene after another, only to make such risks pay off all the more at the finish.”

SACRAMENTO — A day after his younger brother was denied release, Lyle Menendez also saw California parole officials reject his bid for freedom, ruling he will remain behind bars for now for the 1989 shotgun murders of his parents.

The parole board grilled Menendez, 57, over his efforts to get witnesses to lie during his trials, the lavish shopping sprees he and his brother Erik, 54, took after their parents’ killings, and whether he felt relief after the murders.

“I felt this shameful period of those six months of having to lie to relatives who were grieving,” Menendez told the board. “I felt the need to suffer. That it was no relief.”

As the elder brother, Menendez said he at times felt like the protector of Erik, but that he soon realized the murders were not the right way out of sexual abuse they were allegedly suffering at the hands of their parents.

“I sort of started to feel like I had not rescued my brother,” he said. “I destroyed his life. I’d rescued nobody.”

The closely watched hearing for Lyle Menendez, one of the most well-known inmates currently in the state’s prison system, was thrown into disarray Friday afternoon after audio of his brother’s parole hearing on Thursday was publicly released.

The audio, published by ABC 7, sparked anger and frustration from the brothers’ relatives and their attorney, who accused the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of leaking the audio and tainting Lyle’s hearing.

A CDCR spokesperson confirmed the audio was “erroneously” issued in response to a records request, but did not elaborate or immediately respond to additional questions from The Times.

“I have protected myself, I have stayed out of this, I have not had a relationship with two human beings because I was afraid, and I came here today and I came here yesterday and I trusted that this would only be released in a transcript,” said Tiffani Lucero-Pastor, a relative of the brothers. “You’ve misled the family.”

Heidi Rummel, Lyle Menendez’s parole attorney, also criticized CDCR, accusing the agency of turning the hearing into a “spectacle.”

“I don’t think you can possibly understand the emotion of what this family is experiencing,” she said. “They have spent so much time trying to protect their privacy and dignity.”

After the audio was published, Rummel said family members who planned to testify decided not to speak after all, and said she would be looking to seal the transcripts of Friday’s hearing.

Parole Commissioner Julie Garland said regulations allowed for audio to be released under the California Public Records Act. Transcripts of parole hearings typically become public within 30 days of a grant or denial, under state law.

During his first-ever appeal to the state parole board, Lyle Menendez was questioned over his credibility.

Garland referred to Menendez’s appeal to get witnesses to lie, plans to escape, and lies to relatives about the killings as a “sophistication of the web of lies and manipulation you demonstrated.”

Menendez said he had no plan at the time, there was just “a lot of flailing in what was happening.”

“Even though you fooled your entire family about you being a murderer, and you recruited all these people to help you … you don’t think that’s being a good liar?” Garland asked.

Menendez said the remorse he felt after the crimes perhaps helped create a “strong belief” he didn’t have anything to do with the killings.

Dmitry Gorin, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor, said the board’s decision denying parole was consistent with past decisions involving violent crimes.

“Although this is a high-profile case, the parole board rejecting the release demonstrates that it seeks to keep violent offenders locked up because they still pose a risk to society,” Gorin said. “Historically, the parole board does not release people convicted of murder, and this case is no different.

He called the decision a win for Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who has opposed the brothers’ release.

The brothers were initially sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the killings of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez, but after qualifying for resentencing they gained a chance at freedom.

Many family members have supported their cause, but the gruesome crime and the brothers’ conduct behind bars led to pushback against their release.

The killings occurred after the brothers purchased shotguns in San Diego with a false identification and shot their parents in the family living room.

The bloody crime scene was compared by investigators to a gangland execution, where Jose Menendez was shot five times, including once in the back of the head. Evidence showed their mother had crawled, wounded, on the floor before the brothers reloaded and fired a final, fatal blast.

The brothers reported the killings to 911, according to court records. Soon afterward, prosecutors during the trial noted, the two siblings began to spend large sums of money, including buying a Porsche and a restaurant, which was purchased by Lyle. Erik bought a Jeep and hired a private tennis instructor.

Prosecutors argued it was access to their multimillion-dollar inheritance that prompted the killing after Jose Menendez shared that he planned to disinherit the brothers.

But during the trials, the Menendez brothers and relatives testified that the two siblings had undergone years of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of their father.

In contrast to their frenzy around their trial, Thursday and Friday’s parole hearings were quiet — yet occasionally contentious — affairs.

A Times journalist was the only member of the public allowed to view the hearing on a projector screen in a room inside the agency’s headquarters outside of Sacramento.

During the Friday hearing, the parole board quickly dived into the allegations that the brothers were sexually assaulted by their father, which Lyle Menendez said confused and “caused a lot of shame in me.”

“That pretty much characterized my relationship with my father,” he said, adding that the fear of being abused left him in a state of “hyper vigilance,” even after the abuse stopped and his father began to abuse Erik.

“It took me a while to realize that it stopped,” Menendez said. “I think I was still worried about it for a long time.”

Growing up, he said, taking care of his younger brother gave him purpose, and helped to protect him from “drowning in the spiral of my own life.”

Menendez alleged his mother also sexually abused him, but said he did not share it during his comprehensive risk assessment because he “didn’t see it as abuse really.”

“Today, I see it as sexual abuse,” he said. “When I was 13, I felt like I was consenting and my mother was dealing with a lot and I just felt like maybe it wasn’t.”

Board members also questioned Lyle Menendez on why he didn’t mention the possibility they were removed from their parents’ will in their submissions to the board, but Menendez contended their inheritance was not a motive in the killings.

Instead, he said, it became “a problem afterward” as they worried they would have no money after their parents’ deaths.

“I believe there was a will that disinherited us somewhere,” he said.

The result of Thursday’s hearing means Erik can’t seek parole again for three years, a decision that left some relatives and supporters of the younger brother stunned.

“How is my dad a threat to society,” Talia Menendez, his stepdaughter, wrote on Instagram shortly after the decision was made. “This has been torture to our family. How much longer???”

In a statement issued Thursday, relatives said they were disappointed by the decision and noted that going through Lyle’s hearing Friday would be “undoubtedly difficult,” although they remained “cautiously optimistic and hopeful.”

Friends, relatives and former cellmates have touted the brothers’ lives behind bars, pointing to programs they’ve spearheaded for inmates, including classes for anger management, meditation, and helping inmates in hospice care.

But members of the board questioned both siblings about their violation of rules, zeroing in at times about repeated use of contraband cellphones.

During the hearing Friday, Lyle said he sometimes used cellphones to keep in touch with family outside the prison. But Deputy Parole Commissioner Patrick Reardon questioned this explanation, and asked why Menendez needed a cellphone if he could make legitimate calls from a prison-issued tablet.

The rule violation, board members pointed out, had resulted in Menendez being barred from family visits for three years.

Reardon pointed out that Menendez pleaded guilty to two cellphone violations in November 2024 and in March 2025. Menendez was also linked to three other violations, although another cellmate of his took responsibility for those violations.

Menendez said the violations occurred when he lived in a dorm with five other inmates, and admitted the use of cellphones was a “gang-like activity.” The group, he said, probably went through at least five cellphones.

Heidi Rummel, Menendez’s parole attorney, argued in her closing that despite the cellphone issues, Menendez had no violent incidents on his prison record.

“This board is going to say you’re dangerous because you used your cellphones,” she said. “But there is zero evidence that he used it for criminality, that he used it for violence. He didn’t even lie about it.”

But members of the board repeatedly focused on what seemed to be issues of credibility. Reardon said at times it felt like Menendez was “two different incarcerated people.”

“You seem to be different things at different times,” Reardon said during the hearing. “I don’t think what I see is that you used a cellphone from time to time. There seems to be a mechanism in place that you always had a cellphone.”

Garland asked Menendez about whether he used his position on the Men’s Advisory Council — a group meant to be a liaison on issues between inmates and prison administrators — to manipulate others and gain unfair benefits.

Menendez said the position gave him access to wall phones, and used the position to help him barter or gain favors.

Garland also pointed to an assessment that found Menendez exhibited antisocial traits, entitlement, deception, manipulation and a resistance to accept consequences.

Menendez said he had discussed those issues, but that he didn’t agree he showed narcissistic traits.

“They’re not the type of people like me self-referring to mental health,” he said, adding that he felt his father displayed narcissistic tendencies and lack of self-reflection. “I just felt like that wasn’t me.”

Menendez pointed to his work to help inmates in prison who are bullied or mocked.

“I would never call myself a model incarcerated person,” he said. “I would say that I’m a good person, that I spent my time helping people. That I’m very open and accepting.”

The parole board applauded Menendez’s work and educational history while in prison, noting he was working on a master’s degree.

Despite the violations, Menendez argued he felt he had done good work in prison.

“My life has been defined by extreme violence,” he said, tears visible on his face. “I wanted to be defined by something else.”

SACRAMENTO — Erik Menendez will not be released, the California Parole board decided in a highly-anticipated and lengthy hearing Thursday, curtailing for now the contentious push by he and his older sibling to be freed after the 1989 killing of their parents in their Beverly Hills home.

The hearing came after years of legal efforts by Menendez and his brother to be set free despite being convicted of life without the possibility of parole in 1995. Their jury trial, and accounts of an abusive upbringing in the upscale Beverly Hills home, inspired several documentaries and television series that drew renewed attention to their case and allegations of sexual abuse against their father.

The hearing — the first time Erik Menendez, 54, has faced the California Parole Board — offered a never-before seen glimpse into his life behind bars over more than three decades. A separate hearing for Lyle, 57, is set for Friday.

The hearing, Erik Menendez noted, was 36 years and a day after his family realized his parents were dead. The killing occurred on Aug. 20, 1989.

“Today is the day all of my victims learned my parents were dead,” he said. “So today is the anniversary of their trauma journey.”

After a nearly 10-hour hearing, the board decided to deny parole to Menendez for three years. He could petition for an earlier hearing.

“This is a tragic case,” said Robert Barton, parole commissioner, after issuing the decision. “I agree that not only two, but four people, were lost in this family.”

Relatives, friends, and advocates have described the Menendez brothers as “model inmates,” but during the hearing Thursday members of the Parole Board raised concerns about drug and alcohol use, fights with other inmates, instances in which Erik Menendez was found with a contraband cell phone, and allegations that he helped a prison gang in a tax fraud scam in 2013.

More than a dozen relatives testified in favor of release for Menendez, with many of them saying they had forgiven him and his brother for the killing. Although amazed by the famiy’s support, Barton said Menendez should not be released on parole.

“Two things can be true,” Barton said. “they can love and forgive you and you can still be found unsuitable for parole.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for relatives of the two siblings said they were disappointed.

“Our belief in Erik remains unwavering and we know he will take the Board’s recommendation in stride,” the family said in a statement. “His remorse, growth, and the positive impact he’s had on others speak for themselves. We will continue to stand by him and hold to the hope he is able to return home soon.”

They said they remained “cautiously optimistic” for Lyle Menendez, whose hearing was set for Friday.

Menendez testified he obtained cell phones despite risking discipline because he didn’t believe there was a chance of him ever being released. He took the gamble, he said, because the “connection with the outside world was far greater than the consequences of me getting caught with the phone.”

He also associated with a gang, he said, for protection.

That all changed in 2024, he said, when he realized there was a chance be paroled at some point.

“In November of 2024, now the consequences mattered,” he told the board. “Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life.”

The crime that put Menendez and his brother in prison began when the siblings drove to San Diego, bought shotguns with cash using someone else’s identification, then returned home and opened fire in the family living room while their parents were watching television.

Investigators have said the gruesome crime scene looked like the site of a gangland execution. Jose Menendez was shot five times, including once in the back of the head, and evidence showed Kitty Menendez crawled on the floor, wounded, before the brothers reloaded and fired a final, fatal blast.

The brothers called 911, with Lyle screaming that “someone killed my parents,” according to court records. But while they appeared as grieving orphans, Erik and Lyle also began spending large sums of money in the months following the killings. Lyle bought a Porsche and a restaurant while Erik purchased a Jeep and retained a private tennis instructor with the intentions of turning pro. The two were infamously seen sitting courtside at an NBA game between the murders and their capture.

Prosecutors argued the brothers killed their parents out of greed to get access to their multi-million dollar inheritance. Jose was planning to disinherit the brothers since he considered them failures, according to court filings. The brutality of the crimes and the juxtaposition of such violence against the family’s Beverly Hills image turned the case into an international media circus, only rivaled at the time by the O.J. Simpson trial.

While mobs of reporters also circled the brothers resentencing hearings in Van Nuys earlier this year, Thursday’s parole hearing was a much more solemn and quiet affair. With the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tightly controlling media access, a Times journalist was the only member of the public allowed to view the hearing on a projector screen in a room inside the agency’s headquarters just outside Sacramento.

The parole hearing is not meant to re-litigate details of the case or the brothers’ roles in the killings, but members of the board questioned Menendez Thursday on details of the grisly murders, which the brothers and supporters in their family were committed because they had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father.

“In my mind, leaving meant death,” Menendez told the board Thursday when asked why he didn’t leave the house, or go to police. “My absolute belief that I could not get away. Maybe it sounds completely irrational and unreasonable today.”

Menendez said he and his brother purchased the shotguns because they believed their parents might try to kill them, or that his father would go to his room to rape him.

“That was going to happen,” he said. “One way or another. If he was alive, that was going to happen.”

Asked why the two killed their mother as well, Erik Menendez said the decision was made after learning she was aware of the abuse, and the siblings saw no daylight between the two.

“Step by step, my mom had shown she was united with my dad,” he said at the hearing. “On that night I saw them as one person. Had she not been in the room, maybe it would have been different.”

He said the moment he found out his mother was aware of the alleged abuse was “devastating.”

“When mom told me…that she had known all of those years. It was the most devastating moment in my entire life,” he said. “It changed everything for me. I had been protecting her by not telling her.”

Asked if he believed his mother was also a victim to his father’s abuse, Erik Menendez said, “definitely.”

“He was beating her because I failed,” he said.

After denying parole, Barton pointed to their decision to kill their mother, calling it a decision “devoid of human compassion.”

“The killing of your mother especially showed a lack of empathy and reason,” Barton said. “I can’t put myself in your place. I don’t know that I’ve ever had rage to that level, ever. But that is still concerning, especially since it seems she was also a victim herself of domestic violence.”

Menendez was visibly overcome with emotion when discussing details of the murder, although he did not appear to cry.

After the murders, Menendez said the spending sprees between he and his brother, including buying a Rolex, were an “incredibly callous act.”

“I was torn between hatred of myself over what I did and wishing that I could undo it and trying to live out my life, making teenager decisions,” he said.

Erik eventually confessed to the killings in discussions with a therapist, and L.A. County sheriff’s deputies found a letter in Lyle’s jail cell admitting to the murders. After jurors hung in their first trial, Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996.

L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian opposed parole for Menendez during the hearing, arguing he lied to the parole board and had minimized his role in the killings during the hearing.

“When one continues to diminish their responsibility for a crime and continues to make the same false excuses that they’ve made for 30-plus years, one is still that same dangerous person that they were when they shotgunned their parents,” Balian said Thursday. “Is he truly reformed, or is he just saying what wants to be heard?”

Menendez, Balian argued to the board, was still a risk to society and should not be released.

Interest in the brothers case was revived in recent years following a popular Netflix series, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” The popular show aired after a Peacock docuseries, “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” uncovered additional evidence of Jose Menendez’s alleged sexual abuse of his children and others, including Roy Rosselló, a member of the boy band Menudo.

The new evidence was part of the brothers’ most recent legal appeal in the case. More than 20 of the brothers’ relatives formed a coalition pushing for their freedom, arguing they had spent enough time imprisoned for a pair of killings that were motivated by years of horrific abuse.

Last year, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón petitioned a judge to re-sentence Erik and Lyle to 50-years-to-life in prison, making them eligible for parole. After he defeated Gascón in the November 2024 election, new Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman quickly moved to oppose the re-sentencing petition, going as far as to transfer the prosecutors who authored it and asking a judge to disregard Gascón’s filing.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic denied that request. After finding prosecutors failed to prove the brothers were a danger to the public, Jesic granted the resentencing petition in May, clearing the path for Thursday’s parole hearing.

Fellow inmates and rehabilitation officials have described the two as “mentors,” spearheading programs and projects for inmates.

The two have created programs to deal with anger management, meditation, assisting inmates in hospice care and to improve conditions inside prison.

Lyle spearheaded a Rehabilitation Through Beautification project at Richard J. Donovan prison, to work on upgrades and create green space in the prison, along with painting a 1,000-foot mural. Erik has worked with other inmates to do the artwork for the project.

But members of the board questioned Menendez on various incidents, including a fight in 1997.

Menendez said another inmate hit him first, but admitted that he “acted aggressively” as well. In another fight, Menendez said he “fought back” in self-defense.

Members of the board also questioned Menendez on multiple incidents that he was found with contraband, including art supplies, candles, spray cans, and cell phones that Menendez said he would pay about $1,000 to obtain.

Some of the art supplies he used to decorate his cell, he said.

Menendez said he also gave other inmates access to the phone, because “if it was someone that I trusted or someone that I knew had a phone I didn’t want to tell him no.”

He said he used the phones to speak wiht his wife, watch YouTube videos and pornography.

“I really became addicted to the phones,” he said.

During the hearing, Barton said he was concerned about the number of support letters that refer to Menendez as a model inmate, saying it could minimize the impact of cell phones in the prison.

Menendez said it wasn’t until later that he realized the larger impact that cell phones could have, despite how prevalent they could be in prison.

“I knew of 50, 60 people that had phones,” he said. “I just justified it by saying if I don’t buy it someone else is going to buy it. The phones were going to be sold, and I longed for that connection.”

But in January, he said, he had an in-depth with a lieutenant and took a criminal thinking class that made him reassess.

“The damage of using a phone is as corrosive to a prison environment as drugs are,” he said. “In the sense that someone must bring them in, they must be paid for, it corrupts staff…phones can be used to elicit more criminal activity.”

Members of the board spent a significant amount of time questioning Menendez on the use of contraband phones, and also pointed to them as part of their reasoning in denying parole.

“Your institutional misconduct showed a lack of self awareness,” Barton said. “You’ve got a great support network. But you didn’t go to them before you committed these murders. And you didn’t go to them, before you used the cell phone.”

Dmitry Gorin, a former prosecutor, said Menendez decision to break the rules while in prison affected his chances at winning release, even though he was young when he was convicted.

“If you’re not going to comply with the rules in prison, you’re not going to comply out in society — that’s what they’re saying here,” Gorin said. “The big picture here is without serious medical issues or being elderly, I don’t know anyone who killed two people who has been paroled.”

Nancy Tetreault, an attorney for former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, said despite public support for parole, Erik was considered moderate risk in the comprehensive risk assessment. To have a better chance at release, he would have to be considered low risk, she said.

“That’s very hard to overcome,” she said.

The two brothers were also involved in classes, but also would need to be more involved in rehabilitative programs for a favorable decision, Tereault said.

“Yes, they have a lot of classes and things like that that I was reading the classes they’ve put together, like meditation, for insight, that they’re leaving it, but they need to, they need to start programming,” she said.

Menendez admitted to drinking alcohol and briefly using heroin at one point in prison, which he said he tried because he was “miserable” and feeling hopeless.

“If I could numb my sadness with alcohol, I was going to do it,” he said. “I was looking to ease that sadness within me.”

Members of the board also asked Menendez about his connection to a prison gang and a tax fraud scam in 2013, but did not discuss details of the scheme.

Menendez said part of the reason he associated with members of the gang, known as 25s or Dos Cinco, was fear of his safety.

“When the 25ers came and asked for help, I thought this was a great opportunity to align myself with them and to survive,” Erik Menendez said, adding that he thought he needed to keep himself safe since he had no hopes of being paroled at the time. “I was in tremendous fear.”

The gang was in charge of the prison yard, he said, and a member approached him about the scheme, although Menendez said he did not personally control the checks. The gang also supplied him with marijuana, he siad.

Much changed after 2013, Erik Menendez said, and he curbed his use of drugs and alcohol. At one point, members of the gang also believed he had become an informant.

“I did not like who I was in 2013,” Erik Menendez said. “From 2013 on I was living for a different purpose. My purpose in life was to be a good person.”

In Oct. 14, 2023, his mother’s birthday, he said he committed to stop using drugs, he told the board.

Deputy Parole Commissioner Rachel Stern asked Menendez about his work with hospice inmates, including a World War II veteran convicted of an unspecified sexual violence crime that Menendez helped with getting his meals and bedding.

Menendez said he saw his work with the inmate as a way to make amends for his father.

Menendez apologized to his family during the hearing, noting their support.

“I just want my family to understand that I am so unimaginably sorry for what I have put them through,” he said. “I know they have been here for me and they’re here for me today, but I want them to know that this should be about them. It’s about them and if I ever get the chance at freedom I want the healing to be about them.

Mayor Clara Brugada says ‘government will not rest’ until justice is served for the killing of two municipal officials.

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada has announced that authorities arrested 13 people for their alleged roles in the May attack that killed two high-ranking officials in the Mexican capital.

Brugada did not identify the suspects on Wednesday, but she said three were involved directly in the shooting.

“In this operation, 13 people were arrested, including three people who directly participated in the murder, and others related to the logistical preparation of the event,” she told reporters.

The daytime shooting of two of Brugada’s top aides by gunmen on motorbikes shocked the city, seen as a relative pocket of safety compared to the rest of the country.

The victims were Brugada’s personal secretary Ximena Guzman and adviser Jose Munoz.

“In memory of our colleagues and out of respect for their families and friends, this government will not rest until the truth is known and justice is served,” the mayor said in a social media post on Wednesday.

After the shooting, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, a Brugada ally who previously served as the capital’s mayor, vowed that her government would ensure that “justice is served”.

“We express our solidarity and support for the families of these two individuals who have worked in our movement for a long time,” Sheinbaum said in May.

“We know them, we stand with their families, and we will give her [Brugada] all the support the city needs from the Mexican government.”

For decades, Mexico has been struggling with high crime rates and murders, including violence against political and security officials as well as journalists.

In 2020, Mexico City’s security chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, survived an ambush by gunmen that killed two of his bodyguards and a bystander.

Shortly after taking office last year, Sheinbaum’s administration announced a security strategy that focused on boosting intelligence gathering, strengthening the National Guard police and addressing root causes, including poverty.

Earlier this month, the United States – which has been struggling with its own crime rates – issued a travel advisory for Mexico, warning of security risks.

“Many violent crimes take place in Mexico. They include homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery,” the US State Department said. “There is a risk of terrorist violence, including terrorist attacks and other activity in Mexico.”

At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli attacks and forced starvation since dawn as the Israeli military said it had begun the first stages of its planned assault to seize the enclave’s largest urban centre, Gaza City, where close to a million people remain in perilous conditions.

Three other Palestinians starved to death in the besieged enclave on Wednesday, bringing the total count of hunger-related deaths to 269, including 112 children.

Israeli attacks included a strike on a tent housing displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza that killed three people.

Mohammed Shaalan, a prominent former Palestinian national basketball player, was the latest victim of shootings at GHF aid distribution points, as Israeli forces shot him dead in southern Gaza. At least 30 aid seekers were killed on Wednesday.

Gaza has been stalked by famine as Israel’s punishing blockade and ongoing assault have choked off food, fuel, and medical supplies.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned that malnutrition is rising across Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing aid blockade. “This isn’t just hunger. This is starvation,” WFP said.

“Malnutrition is a silent killer,” the agency said, noting that it causes “lifelong developmental damage” and weakens immune systems, “making common illnesses deadly”.

This isn’t just hunger. This is starvation.

Malnutrition in #Gaza is rising fast – with more children and mothers showing severe signs.

Malnutrition is a silent killer:
🔴 Weakens immune systems, making common illnesses deadly
🔴 Causes stunting & lifelong developmental damage… pic.twitter.com/nEmqSsJX7M

— World Food Programme (@WFP) August 20, 2025

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says nearly one in every three Palestinian children in Gaza City is now malnourished.

Israeli rights group Gisha has debunked a series of Israeli government talking points that seek to minimise and evade responsibility for the starvation crisis unfolding across all of Gaza.

Despite Israel’s claim that the United Nations is to blame for a lack of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, Gisha says that “Israel has used its control over aid entry as a weapon of war since day one” of its military offensive.

“Israel has created and continues to create conditions that make the transfer of aid into Gaza almost impossible,” it said.

Meanwhile, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire and described the conditions its staff are working under in Gaza as dire.

“We are working under catastrophic conditions,” said Dr Hind, a UNRWA physician in Gaza.

Another health worker said staff often walked distances “under the scorching sun” just to reach their posts before working to deliver care “to our people in dire need of help”.

Gaza’s civil defence has, meanwhile, sounded the alarm over the severity of the fuel crisis in the enclave, saying the lack of fuel is compromising its ability to respond to emergency and rescue situations.

“Many times, our vehicles have stopped on the way to missions, some due to fuel shortages and others due to a lack of spare parts for maintenance,” a statement by the civil defence said. “We face major humanitarian challenges amid the ongoing threats of an escalation in the Israeli war of extermination.”

Another wave of ‘mass displacement’

The strikes come as Israel’s military said that it will call up 60,000 reservists in the coming weeks as it pushes forward with a plan to seize Gaza City, which has come under relentless attacks over the last several weeks. A military spokesperson said the first stages of its assault on the city have begun.

Close to one million Palestinians are reportedly trapped in the area, where Israeli tanks have been pushing closer to the city’s centre this week. Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres, expressed concern over the army’s operations in Gaza City, which he said would “create another mass displacement of people who’ve been displaced repeatedly” since the war began.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Israeli forces have been intensifying attacks in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, as well as Jabalia in the north.

“That includes ongoing explosions from systematic demolitions of homes. This is a very effective strategy by the Israeli military, which funnels down into one main goal: emptying the Gaza Strip of its population by depriving people from having something as basic as a home,” Mahmoud said.

“People are leaving behind their belongings, their food supplies that they managed to get in the past few weeks,” he added.

Relatives of Israeli captives held in Gaza have condemned the Israeli Defence Ministry’s approval of the plan to seize Gaza City and accused the government of ignoring a ceasefire proposal approved by Hamas, saying it was “a stab in the heart of the families and the public in Israel”.

Hamas says the Israeli military’s push into Gaza City is a clear sign that Israel plans to continue “its brutal war against innocent civilians” and aims to destroy the Palestinian city and displace its residents.

“Netanyahu’s disregard for the mediators’ proposal and his failure to respond to it proves that he is the true obstructionist of any agreement, that he does not care about the lives of [Israeli captives], and that he is not serious about their return,” the Palestinian group said.

The Gaza City offensive, which was announced earlier this month, comes amid heightened international condemnation of Israel’s ban on food and medicine reaching Gaza and fears of another forced exodus of Palestinians.

“What we’re seeing in Gaza is nothing short of apocalyptic reality for children, for their families, and for this generation,” Ahmed Alhendawi, regional director of Save the Children, said in an interview. “The plight and the struggle of this generation of Gaza is beyond being described in words.”

Mediators, meanwhile, continue to pursue efforts to secure a ceasefire in the 22-month war.

Qatar and Egypt have said they have been waiting for Israel’s response to the proposal, which Hamas had agreed to earlier this week.

The latest framework calls for a 60-day truce, a staggered exchange of captives and Palestinian prisoners, and expanded aid access.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly commented on the proposal, which is backed by the United States. Last week, he insisted any deal must ensure “all the hostages are released at once and according to our conditions for ending the war”. There have been further reports that the far-right government is holding to that line.

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Arab states must pressure the US into getting Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

“Clearly, the Israelis are of two minds: One mind is recalling the reservists, issuing the plans, approving the plans for directly re-occupying the Gaza Strip [and] transferring its people from the north to the south in preparation for ethnically cleansing Gaza.”

“On the other hand, there is of course the domestic pressure … [and] the idea that Israel can secure the release of a few hostages alive and get involved in some sort of a longer[-term] deal,” Bishara said.

“Without Arab pressure on Washington, I think the Israelis will probably go with the first scenario.”

Israel’s genocidal war has killed more than 62,122 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

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

This week, The Times published a series of articles looking at possible different futures for Los Angeles. Greg Braxton wrote two pieces, including one about Hollywood’s long-standing fascination with depicting the destruction of the city, including “Escape From L.A.” to “Blade Runner,” “This Is the End” and many more.

Anthony Edwards in the movie “Miracle Mile.”

(Hemdale Film Corp.)

Braxton noted, “In ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself,’ [Thom Andersen’s] 2003 documentary chronicling the portrayal of the city through cinema history, Andersen aims his own wrecking ball. The film’s narrator quotes the late Mike Davis, a noted historian and urbanist, when he says that Hollywood ‘takes a special pleasure in destroying Los Angeles — a guilty pleasure shared by most of its audience.’”

He also specifically examined “Miracle Mile,” Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 apocalyptic romantic adventure drama featuring the stretch of Wilshire Boulevard from La Brea to Fairfax.

Robert Altman’s centennial

Director Robert Altman speaks at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977.

(Levy / Associated Press)

The UCLA Film and Television Archive is in the midst of “Robert Altman’s America: A Centennial Review,” a look at the monumental filmmaker’s wildly unpredictable body of work to mark 100 years since his birth. The designated home of Altman’s personal print collection, the archive will show many of the films in 35mm.

Writing when Altman was to receive an honorary Oscar (an occasion that turned out to be just a few months before his death in 2006), Peter Rainer called him “perhaps the most American of directors. But his Americanness is of a special sort and doesn’t really connect up to any tradition except his own.”

Comparing Altman to such filmmakers as John Ford, John Huston, Frank Capra, Sam Peckinpah, Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges, Rainer added, “Altman, who has ranged as widely as any of these directors across the American panorama, is a more mysterious and allusive artist. He is renowned for the buzzing expansiveness of his stories, the crisscrossed plots and people, but what strikes home most of all in this sprawl is a terrible sense of aloneness. … If being an American means being rooted to the land, to a tradition, a community, then it also means being forever in fear of dispossession. Altman understands this better than any other filmmaker. It’s what gives even his rowdiest comic escapades their bite of woe.”

The series began last week with “Nashville,” a movie that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and which this column has recently discussed. This Saturday there will be a fantastic double-bill of 1977’s “3 Women” starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek with 1982’s “Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,” starring Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Cher.

Shelley Duvall in Robert Altman’s “3 Women.”

(20th Century Fox Film Corp. / Photofest)

Other pairings include “M*A*S*H” and “Brewster McCloud,” “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split,” “Thieves Like Us” and “Kansas City,” plus “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Popeye.” The series concludes with separate screenings of “The Player” and “Short Cuts,” which reestablished Altman’s vitality in the 1990s.

As Times critic Charles Champlin once wrote, “When Altman’s movies are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are infuriating because there is something so arrogantly self-destructive about them.”

In a 2000 interview with Susan King for a retrospective at LACMA that included a 25th anniversary screening of “Nashville,” the often-irascible Altman had this to say about his career.

“There isn’t any filmmaker who ever lived who has had a better shake than I did,” he said. “I have never been out of work and the only thing I haven’t made are these big, popular films. I have never wanted to and I never will. I would fail at it. I would be late for work.”

‘Close Encounters’ in 70mm

Melinda Dillon and Cary Guffey in the 1977 movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

(Columbia Pictures)

The American Cinematheque is premiering a newly-created 70mm print of the director’s cut of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The film will play at the Egyptian on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then at the Aero on Aug. 29 and Aug. 31.

“Close Encounters” was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Spielberg’s first for directing. It won for Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography as well as a special achievement award for its special effects.

The story, of course, revolves around a series of sightings of UFOs around the world that leads to a spacecraft being studied in Wyoming and interactions with extraterrestrial beings. The cast includes Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and François Truffaut.

In his original review of the film, Charles Champlin wrote, “The special effects conceived by Spielberg and executed by Douglas Trumbull and a staff that seems to number in the hundreds are dazzling and wondrous. That’s not surprising: The surprise is that ‘Close Encounters’ is so well leavened with humor. … ‘Close Encounters’ stays light on its legs, mystical and reverential but not solemn. It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle.”

Points of interest

Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina and ‘Vivre sa vie’ in 35mm

Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Vivre sa vie.”

(Janus Films)

Anyone looking to prepare for the upcoming release of Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” and a snapshot of Paris at the moment of the French New Wave, might well want to check out Sunday’s 35mm screening of Godard’s 1962 “Vivre sa vie” at the Los Feliz Theatre.

Starring Anna Karina, then in the midst of a tempestuous marriage to Godard, the film features what may be her greatest performance as Nana, an aspiring actress who finds herself drawn into the world of prostitution. The film stretches from the manic joy of her dancing around a pool table to the quiet devastation of seeing her tear-stained face as she watches a movie. There’s also an utterly heart-wrenching conclusion.

In an appreciation of Karina after her death in 2019 at age 79, Justin Chang wrote, “We often speak admiringly of a performer’s screen presence or charisma. Karina possessed something more: flinty intelligence and deadpan wit, dark feline eyes that could project playfulness and melancholy without her saying a word. She incarnated both a matter-of-fact toughness and an expressive glamour worthy of a silent screen star.”

‘Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues’

Barbara Hershey in 1972’s “Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues.”

(Warner Bros.)

The Aero Theatre will have a rare screening of 1972’s “Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” in 35mm on Sunday afternoon. Director Paul Williams and actors Barbara Hershey and John Lithgow will be on hand for a Q&A moderated by screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, who recently declared it “the best 1970s movie you’ve never heard of.”

Adapted from a novel by brothers Michael Crichton and Douglas Crichton (credited as “Michael Douglas”), the story involves a Harvard student (Robert F. Lyons) who takes a job from his best friend (Lithgow, in his film debut) delivering marijuana across the country. Along the way he meets a woman (Hershey) and after she gets busted by a corrupt cop (Charles Durning), he tries to set things straight.

‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’ and ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’

Lisa Kudrow, left, and Mira Sorvino in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.”

(Mark Fellman / Touchstone Pictures)

On Saturday and Sunday, the New Beverly Cinema will have a double-bill of two comedies from 1997: David Mirkin’s “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” and George Armitage’s “Grosse Pointe Blank.”

With a screenplay by Robin Schiff adapting her own play, “Romy and Michele” is about two friends (Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino) who concoct a plan to impress everyone at their 10-year high school reunion by lying about how successful they are. The film also features clothes by “Clueless” costume designer Mona May.

In his original review, Jack Matthews wrote, “The dead-pan performances of Sorvino and Kudrow, who played Michelle in the original play, are perfect. Romy and Michelle are cartoon characters, but the actresses make them both real and enormously sympathetic. … Beneath the endless silliness of the movie beats a real heart, and its theme of loyal friendship keeps propping it up every time the thin walls of the story seem about to collapse. Though ‘Romy and Michelle’ doing Tucson doesn’t take us much further than Beavis and Butt-head doing America, the ride, and the company, are a lot more fun.”

John Cusack stars as Martin in 1997’s “Grosse Pointe Blank.”

(Melinda Sue Gordon / Hollywood Pictures)

From a screenplay by Tom Jankiewicz, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and star John Cusack, “Grosse Pointe Blank” features Cusack as a succeful hit man attempting to attend his 10-year high school reunion and rewin the heart of an old girlfriend (Minnie Driver). That is, until a cadre of competing assassins and federal agents all show up as well.

In his original review, Kenneth Turan drew comparisons to Armitage’s earlier caper comedy “Miami Blues,” writing, “A wild at heart, anarchic comedy that believes in living dangerously … Clever enough to make jokes about Greco-Roman wrestling and make them funny, ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’s’ greatest success is the way it maintains its comic attitude. Working with a smart script and actors who get the joke, director Armitage pulls off a number of wacky action set pieces. Even if you think you’ve heard actors say, ‘I love you, we can make this relationship work,’ in every conceivable situation, this film has a few surprises in store.”

In other news

U.S. premiere of ‘Onda Nova’ in 4K

An image from 1983’s “Onda Nova,” being released in the U.S. for the first time.

(Spamflix)

Also on Sunday, Mezzanine will have the U.S. premiere of a 4K restoration of the 1983 Brazilian film “Onda Nova,” which translates as “New Wave.” Directed by Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia, the film was withheld by the Brazilian dictatorship and only released there after a lengthy legal battle. It is thought to have never before screened in the U.S.

Women’s soccer was banned in Brazil until 1979, and women were only allowed to start teams in 1983, the year “Onda Nova” was produced. The film brings a defiantly queer and anarchically rebellious attitude to the story of a group of women on a newly formed soccer team and features special appearances by figures involved in Brazil’s struggle for freedom, including musician Caetano Veloso, journalist Osmar Santos and well-known male athletes Casagrande and Wladimir.

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota man accused of killing a top Democratic state lawmaker and wounding another while pretending to be a police officer is now facing new and upgraded state charges under a fresh indictment announced Thursday, just a week after he pleaded not guilty in federal court.

Vance Boelter now faces two charges of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted first-degree murder and charges of impersonating a police officer and animal cruelty for shooting one family’s dog. Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said the charges “reflect the weight of Mr. Boelter’s crimes.”

But the state case continues to take a backseat to the federal case against Boelter, where he faces potentially more serious consequences. He was indicted July 15 on six federal counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty, although prosecutors haven’t decided yet whether to pursue that option. The maximum penalty on the state charges is life in prison because Minnesota doesn’t have the death penalty.

Boelter pleaded not guilty in federal court Aug. 7.

Moriarty had requested the state prosecution proceed first, but federal prosecutors are using their authority to press their case, according to Daniel Borgertpoepping, Hennepin County attorney’s office’s public information officer.

“When Boelter returns to state custody, we will be prepared to prosecute him — to hold him accountable to our community,” Moriarty said. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that he is never able to hurt anyone again.”

Shocking case of political violence

The full extent of the political violence that officials said Boelter, 58, intended to inflict in the early hours of June 14 after months of planning alarmed the community. The Green Isle, Minn., resident was arrested a day later following a massive search involving local, state and federal authorities.

“The damage done to the victims — those with us, those who were taken from us and to our entire community — has opened wounds that will never heal,” Moriarty said in a statement.

The Hennepin County attorney’s office initially issued a warrant charging Boelter with two counts of second-degree murder for allegedly posing as a police officer and fatally shooting former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home.

Boelter, authorities said, wore a uniform and a mask and yelled that he was police and told these lawmakers that he was an officer.

Authorities originally charged Boelter with two counts of attempted second-degree murder, alleging he shot state Sen. John Hoffman, a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette. But officials said when the charges were filed to secure the warrant that they would likely be updated to first-degree murder charges. They also added two additional attempted murder charges Thursday.

Moriarty said the Hoffmans managed to push Boelter out of their home, shutting the door before the gunman fired nine times through the door, striking the senator nine times and his wife eight times. Both survived. Their adult daughter nearby was not hit.

Other lawmakers targeted

Federal prosecutors already revealed details of their investigation showing Boelter had driven to two other legislators’ homes in the roughly hour and a half timeline. Moriarty charged Boelter with trying to kill one of those lawmakers because he went to her door in the same way he approached the Hortmans’ and Hoffmans’ homes and tried to get inside. She said it doesn’t matter that Rep. Kristin Bahner wasn’t home. Moriarty said Boelter rang Bahner’s door for two full minutes while yelling it is the police and trying to open the door himself.

The state case against Boelter shows an application for public defender was filed June 16, but one has yet to be assigned. Public defenders are typically assigned in Minnesota at a defendant’s first appearance, which Boelter did not have before being taken into federal custody, Borgertpoepping said in a text message.

Controversial prosecutor

Moriarty announced last week that she would not seek reelection next year.

Moriarty, a former public defender, was elected in 2022 as the Minneapolis area and the country were still reeling from the murder of George Floyd, a Black man pinned under the knee of a white officer for 9 1/2 minutes. She promised to make police more accountable and change the culture of a prosecutors’ office that she believed had long overemphasized punishment without addressing the root causes of crime.

Moriarty faced controversy during her tenure because she said she wanted to move away from punishment as the purpose of prosecution and focus on issues that lead people to engage in violence. But her critics say she has downplayed the concerns of crime victims and damaged public trust in her office.

Vancleave and Funk write for the Associated Press. Funk reported from Omaha and AP writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report from Des Moines.

Protesters in New York City rallied outside The New York Times over the killing of Al Jazeera journalists including Anas al-Sharif in a targeted Israeli air attack in Gaza, accusing US media of shielding Israel from genocide allegations. Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo was there.

Media network condemns ‘assassination’ of its Gaza correspondents and photographers by Israeli forces.

Below is Al Jazeera Media Network’s statement on the killing of Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea, along with photographers Ibrahim Al Thaher, and Mohamed Nofal, by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom.

In a statement by the Israeli occupation force, admitting to their crimes, the journalists were targeted by a directed assault towards the tent where they were stationed opposite Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza. In which they were martyred. This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities. The order to assassinate Anas Al Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.

As Al Jazeera Media Network bids farewell to yet another group of its finest journalists, who boldly and courageously documented the plight of Gaza and its people since the onset of the war, it holds the Israeli occupation forces and government responsible for deliberately targeting and assassinating its journalists. This follows repeated incitement and calls by multiple Israeli officials and spokespersons to target the fearless journalist Anas Al Sharif and his colleagues.

Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people. While international media was barred from entering, Al Jazeera journalists remained within besieged Gaza, experiencing the hunger and suffering they documented through their lenses. Through continuous, courageous live coverage, they have delivered searing eyewitness accounts of the horrors unleashed over 22 months of relentless bombing and destruction.

Despite losing several journalists to deliberate attacks and working under constant threat, Anas Al Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, and their colleagues persisted in the strip to ensure the world sees the harrowing truth experienced by Gaza’s populace.

While vehemently condemning these heinous crimes and the ongoing attempts by Israeli authorities to silence the truth, Al Jazeera Media Network calls on the international community and all relevant organisations to take decisive measures to halt this ongoing genocide and end the deliberate targeting of journalists. Al Jazeera emphasises that immunity for perpetrators and the lack of accountability embolden Israel’s actions and encourage further oppression against witnesses to the truth.

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

Greg Braxton did an interview with the ever-quotable Spike Lee this week. Lee’s newest film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” starring Denzel Washington, is in theaters next week and begins streaming on Apple TV+ on Sept. 5. Lee will make an appearance at the Egyptian Theatre next Thursday for a Q&A after a screening of the film.

The film is adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” in which a wealthy businessman believes his son is kidnapped and must scramble to put together the ransom money. When his son is found, it turns out that actually it is the son of his driver who has been abducted. The criminals still want their ransom, creating a moral dilemma for the businessman.

Lee likens the relationship between “High and Low” and “Highest 2 Lowest” to that between the renditions of the song “My Favorite Things” as done by Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” and performed by saxophone great John Coltrane.

“It’s a reinterpretation,” he says. “There’s a history of jazz musicians doing reinterpretations of standards. We’re jazz musicians in front of and behind the camera.”

Spike Lee, photographed in New York in July.

(Victoria Will / For The Times)

Likewise, audiences will bring their own feelings to how they would respond to the ethical dilemma at the center of the film.

“That is what makes the whole scenario great,” Lee continues. “Everyone would answer that situation differently. [Toshiro] Mifune laid down the foundation. He handed the baton to Denzel and Denzel took it, and did not miss a motherf—ing stride. You know like those brothers in the Olympics? We don’t drop the baton.”

The new film marks the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington, a collaboration that also includes “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Malcolm X,” “He Got Game” and “Inside Man.” Lee hopes it won’t be the last. Even at 68, the director maintains an enthusiasm and focus for his work and the future.

“I’m just getting started,” he says. “As an individual and an artist, when you’re doing what you love, you win. I don’t see the finish line, the tape.”

“Highest 2 Lowest” also features a performance by Latin jazz great Eddie Palmieri, who died this week at age 88.

‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’ turns 40

The late Paul Reubens, in his most famous role as Pee-wee Herman, on the big screen at the TCL Chinese Theatre for a special screening of 1985’s “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” at 2023’s AFI Fest.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

On Saturday the Academy Museum will present a 40th anniversary screening of Tim Burton’s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” which finds Paul Reubens’ signature character on an epic quest to recover his beloved bicycle. As part of the evening’s program, the actual prop bicycle will be presented to the museum on behalf of Reubens’ estate.

The debut feature of director Tim Burton — who has recently found new success with the series “Wednesday” — “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” is an endlessly surprising and delightful film, one in which absolutely anything seems possible.

In his original review of the film, Michael Wilmington drew comparisons to Peter Lorre and Soupy Sales in attempting to describe the particular appeal of Reubens’ petulant, perennially childlike character.

“That’s what makes the character work: this sense of absolute, crazed conviction. And it makes the movie work as well — for its own audience,” Wilmington said. “Be forewarned: This film is not for anyone whose taste in humor runs only to silky Oscar Wildean epigrams or naturalistic comedies of the ‘Tootsie’ school. The wrong crowd will find these antics infantile and offensive. The right one will have a howling good time.”

Paul Reubens in the HBO documentary “Pee-wee as Himself.”

(Dennis Keeley / HBO)

The recent documentary “Pee-wee as Himself,” Matt Wolf’s startlingly intimate documentary on Reubens, includes recordings made just a few days before his 2023 death and is currently nominated for five Emmy awards.

The film explores Reubens’ life and how the explosive popularity of the Pee-wee character came to overwhelm him.

“We’re all entitled to our inner lives,” Wolf said in an interview for the paper with Dave Itzkoff. “Artists, particularly, are many different people inside. Paul was no exception, except the way he went about that was more extreme than perhaps you or I.”

‘Children of Men’ in 35mm

Clive Owen in the movie “Children of Men.”

(Jaap Buitendijk / Universal Pictures)

Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 “Children of Men,” will screen at the Academy Museum in 35mm on Wednesday. (Frankly, the movie does not play out nearly often enough.) As part of the museum’s ongoing Branch Selects program, “Children of Men” was selected by the cinematographers branch in recognition of the work by Emmanuel Lubezki, whose work here is staggering for how often it hides the difficulty of what is being accomplished, creating a sense of naturalism amid complicated technical achievements.

Set in 2027 Britain, the film presents a frightening scenario in which no child has been born on Earth for 18 years. Theo (Clive Owen) is a former activist-turned-disillusioned bureaucrat resigned to a staid hopelessness. An encounter with his former lover Julian (Julianne Moore), who has become even more of a militant, leads him to shepherding a young woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to safety. She is well along in a secret pregnancy that could literally save the world.

In reviewing the film, Kenneth Turan wrote, “The best science fiction talks about the future to talk about the now, and ‘Children of Men’ very much belongs in that class. Made with palpable energy, intensity and excitement, it compellingly creates a world gone mad that is uncomfortably close to the one we live in. It is a ‘Blade Runner’ for the 21st century, a worthy successor to that epic of dystopian decay. … This is a world of rubble, fear and hopelessness whose connections to our own are never forced; Cuarón is such a fluid director with such a powerful imagination, they don’t have to be. This could well be our future, and we know it.”

Kevin Crust wrote a piece spotlighting the use of sound and music in the film, noting, “After a provocative ending that keeps audiences in their seats for the credits, ‘Children of Men’ continues to reward aurally, finishing strongly with two politically pointed songs. Leaving us with Lennon singing the anti-nationalist rant ‘Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)’ and Jarvis Cocker declaiming global society’s ills with an unprintable refrain in ‘Running the World,’ Cuarón emphasizes the timelessness of this future-set film and stamps it with a humanistic double exclamation point.”

Points of interest

‘The Heartbreak Kid’ is back again

An image from 1972’s “The Heartbreak Kid,” starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd.

(LMPC via Getty Images)

We have mentioned Elaine May’s 1972 “The Heartbreak Kid” in these parts before, but any time it screens is worth mentioning. The Eastwood Performing Arts Center will be screening the film Friday and Saturday from the 2K scan of a 16mm print overseen by film historian and programmer Elizabeth Purchell. (I spoke to Purchell about creating the scan last year.) Cybill Shepherd, one of the film’s stars, will be there to introduce the Friday night show.

Long notoriously difficult to see because of rights issues, the film is back in regular rep-house rotation thanks to this new scan — a true treat for local audiences. Seeing the film with a roomful of people laughing along is an experience not to be missed.

Directed by May from a screenplay by Neil Simon, the film stars Charles Grodin as a man who deserts his new bride (Jeannie Berlin) on their honeymoon so he can pursue another woman (Shepherd).

In a review at the time, Charles Champlin wrote, “We are in the presence of a harsh social commentary, revealing again the dark side of Simon’s humor as well as some of Miss May’s own angers (reflected in her first feature ‘A New Leaf’) about the men having it their own way, to everyone’s discomfort.”

‘Bully’ and ‘Another Day in Paradise’

Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Nick Stahl, Rachel Miner and cast in the movie “Bully.”

(Tobin Yelland / Lionsgate)

Though photographer-turned-filmmaker Larry Clark is now largely known for his 1995 debut feature “Kids,” he did go on to make other films. The New Beverly Cinema will spotlight two of his best with 2001’s “Bully” and 1998’s “Another Day in Paradise” as a double bill Monday and Tuesday.

“Bully” is based on the 1993 true story of a group of South Florida teens who murdered someone in their own circle of friends. Graphic, sweaty and sleazy, the film has an emotional and psychological intensity that makes it deeply disturbing. The cast includes Brad Renfro, Nick Stahl, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Minor, Kelli Garner, Michael Pitt, Daniel Franzese and Leo Fitzpatrick.

In a review of the film, Kevin Thomas compares “Bully” to “Over the Edge” and “River’s Edge” for its study of disaffected youth, noting, “Clark presents virtually all the young people in his film as doomed by clueless parents, a boring, arid environment saturated with images of violence and their own limited intelligence. Yet Clark so undeniably cares for these kids, illuminating their out-of-control rage and passions with such clarity, that it’s hard to dismiss him as a mere sexploitation filmmaker.”

Clark’s second feature, “Another Day in Paradise,” is still arguably his most conventional film, something of a post-Tarantino riff on “Drugstore Cowboy” as a young drug-addicted couple (Vincent Kartheiser and Natasha Gregson Wagner) fall under the tutelage of an older drug-addicted couple (James Woods and Melanie Griffith) who introduce them to a life of petty crime.

In a review, Thomas said, “‘Another Day in Paradise’ is as mercurial and reckless in tone as are its junkie characters, and Clark catches all these quicksilver shifts with unstinting perception and even compassion. As contradictory as it is energetic, the film takes as many risks as its people do and as a result strikes a highly contemporary nerve.”

A riveting and shockingly candid feature by Richard Natale chronicled the behind-the-scenes struggles between Clark, actor Woods (also a producer) and co-producer and co-writer Stephen Chin over final cut of the movie. Things reached a head on the evening of the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, leading to this most unusual quote from Chin: “The Larry Clark that punched me out in Venice is not the Larry Clark I know as a friend.”

For his part, Clark, who checked himself into rehab soon after that incident, said the attack came after a day in which he did “about 40 interviews and had about 60 margaritas. I was out of control. I have no defense. My motto is to never plead guilty. But in this case, I plead guilty.”

‘People are being shot like animals.’ Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is calling for Gaza’s GHF aid sites to be shut down after its report found Israeli troops are deliberately killing Palestinians trying to access food, in what it describes as ‘orchestrated killings’.

Medical relief agency has treated more than 1,300 patients for gunshot wounds sustained near notorious GHF aid sites in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders, better known by its French-language acronym MSF, has called for the immediate end to Israel’s militarised food distribution scheme in Gaza, which it described as “institutionalised starvation and dehumanisation”.

In a grim report released on Thursday, titled “This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing”, the medical nonprofit said that it operates clinics in Rafah, southern Gaza, near two GHF aid distribution sites under the control of the Israeli military and private US contractors.

Since those sites opened in May, they have become synonymous with “stampedes, suffocating crowd surges, violent looting and lethal ‘crowd control’ measures”, MSF said in its reports.

“The GHF distribution sites fall dangerously short of any recognised standard for safe and dignified humanitarian distributions,” the report said.

“Nowhere else in the world where MSF operates – including in the most volatile conflict zones – would this level of violence around an ‘aid distribution’ site be tolerated. This must stop now,” the organisation said.

MSF teams were “mentally prepared for responding to conflict – but not to civilians killed and maimed while seeking aid”, it said.

MSF’s primary care clinics have turned into mass casualty units since GHF took control of aid distribution in Gaza, it added.

Over a seven-week period in June and July, MSF received 1,380 injured people and 28 dead bodies at its two primary care clinics in Gaza’s al-Attar and al-Mawasi areas, which are close to two GHF distribution sites.

The patients included 174 suffering from gunshot wounds, among them women and children, the report said, but most patients were young men and teenage boys.

A significant number of patients from GHF sites in Khan Younis arrived with gunshot wounds to their lower limbs bearing a precision that “strongly suggests intentional targeting of people within the distribution sites, rather than accidental or indiscriminate fire”, MSF said.

The report noted that many patients had also sustained injuries from “crowd control” measures, including pepper spray and other kinds of physical assault.

Patients injured at GHF sites typically arrived covered in sand and dust “from time spent lying on the ground while taking cover from bullets”, the report adds.

“People are being shot like animals,” an MSF coordinator said in the report.

“They’re not armed. They’re not soldiers. They’re civilians carrying plastic bags, hoping to bring home some flour or pasta. And my question is: how high is the price they have to pay for one bag of food?”