movie

One chimpanzee with a typewriter could pound out the script for “Primate” in an hour. Some pretty young things throw a pool party at an Oahu home and — yikes! — the family’s rabid pet chimp bashes in their skulls. That’s it, that’s the plot. Any tease that the movie could possibly be about anything more — a love triangle, a recently deceased mother, a vet’s puzzlement that Hawaii doesn’t even have rabies — is nothing but a banana peel tripping the audience into expecting a narrative.

I’m not foaming at the mouth over the death of cinema or what have you. Honestly, “Primate’s” kills are great. The problem is the dead space between them when we realize we’re bored sick.

The set-up is thus: Our heroine, Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), who goes to school somewhere to study something, has flown home for an indefinite amount of time with her best friend, Kate (Victoria Wyant), and a classmate she loathes, vivacious sexpot Hannah (Jess Alexander), who doesn’t inform her host that she’s tagging along until they’re on the plane. Already, you’re wondering if this is a monkey’s take on mammalian behavior, but it’s just the actual screenwriters, Johannes Roberts and Ernest Riera (the former of whom also directs), clueing us in that bringing a brain to this humid adventure is as futile as packing a snowsuit. (They previously teamed up for the 2017 Mandy Moore shark movie “47 Meters Down.”)

Lucy’s father, Adam (Troy Kotsur of “CODA”), and her younger sister, Erin (Gia Hunter), have been rattling around their cliffside estate grieving for her mother, a primatologist who passed away from cancer the year before. They’re both lonely, but at least mom left behind her research chimpanzee, Ben (performed by Miguel Torres Umba), who uses a talking touch pad to communicate.

“Lucy back, Ben miss,” the chimp says, pressing a few keys. This is more or less how all the dialogue goes even when the humans are speaking — which, when it comes to a pair of frat guys that the girls picked up on the plane, is part of the joke. Brad and Drew (Charlie Mann and Tienne Simon) enter the house like two gorillas, belching and high-fiving, expecting to seduce the girls with verbal skills that stopped around preschool. “Me no hurt, OK?” Mann’s hilarious Brad says to Ben, grinning nervously and clapping his hands in an attempt to make friends. For a tender moment, you think these apes might be soulmates.

“Primate” is gleefully unevolved. The fatalities are gruesomely entertaining, the opening murder splattering the audience with such brutality that my theater howled in delight. In just two minutes, the movie had delivered everything it promised: a snorting monkey, a sucker in a flowered shirt, a shot of an ominous tire swing and a closeup of a peeled cheekbone.

If the pace had stayed that breakneck, my fellow schlock-lovers and I would have merrily pounded our chests. But at a hair’s breadth under an hour and a half, “Primate” is mostly draggy scenes of victims hiding in closets and trying not to scream as Ben roams the property acting like a hungover, steroidal toddler. Anything screechy sends him into a violent fit.

Umba, the movement specialist underneath the simian special effects, is convincing. But the movie treats his character like a generic slasher baddie checking off the standard tropes: the jump-scare surprise, the out-of-focus loom, the beat when the villain appears bested yet somehow staggers to his prehensile feet. Roberts doesn’t offer much empathy for the poor, diseased critter other than a pause when Ben momentarily ponders his reflection in a pool as Adrian Johnston’s eerie synth-piano score tinkles.

Let me give the film some credit: the performances are pretty good. Recent Oscar winner Kotsur has a casual nonchalance that makes you buy into his character right up until the moment he starts punching a monkey in the face. While Mann’s doomed meathead is only in the movie to raise the body count, the young actor brings a goofy, kinetic charisma to his too-few scenes — and, as a reward, Roberts grants him the longest and best death. Set in a romantic bedroom, it plays like a morbid joke about consent. (We’re meant to assume that at some time in this horny jock’s past, he’s done something to deserve it.)

Likewise, Alexander’s Hannah is the naughty girl who deserves to be punished for rudely moving in on Lucy’s crush, Nick (Benjamin Cheng). But she’s so magnetic that we root for her survival anyway. Just as Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey somehow managed to have careers after starring in the fourth “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Alexander is a performer with promise: a screen presence with that extra twinkle.

The script has an anthropologist’s curiosity about the mating habits of Homo sapiens collegiate. Alas, humanity appears to be a species in decline. Faced with an angry monkey, these kids can’t think of much else to do other than run around hunting for their smartphones. An overreliance on tools weakens our civilization (and saps the film’s dramatic thrills). When Ben smashes a television set, perhaps Roberts is even making some sort of societal point.

Chimpanzees and humans share 98.4% of the same DNA and if you want to double-check that stat, so much blood gets smeared around this house that you can easily test a sample. Presumably, the character of Lucy was given her name as a nod to our earliest known ancestor, a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis who stood about the same height as Ben. Our closest relative, the bonobo, shares 98.7% of our genes and has been known to dispatch each other by bursting a male’s testicles, a nature fact that Roberts must be saving for the sequel.

Mystifyingly, “Primate” blames Ben’s terrible temper on rabies, not the more interesting causes of chimpanzee aggression like depression, psychological confusion and over-medication. Neither does it dig deep into the emotional horror of an owner realizing their best buddy is capable of ripping off a human face — let alone the guilt and agony of failing to stop an attack. When a Connecticut woman was forced to stab her beloved pet after he maimed a female friend, she lamented that sticking the blade in him “was like putting one in myself.” (She later adopted a replacement chimp.)

But it’s silly to expect actual social science from a movie that expands rabies’ ancient name — hydrophobia, or a fear of water — into the nonsensical idea that the only safe hideout from Ben is the swimming pool. That said, in case anyone from the Department of Health and Human Services watches “Primate” on an airplane, I feel compelled to mention that the rabies vaccine is 100% effective. The last thing we need is a government decree that every American should surround their house with a moat.

In the last episode of The Envelope video podcast before the 2026 Oscar nominations, Joel Edgerton describes the transformative experience of making “Train Dreams.” Plus, our hosts share the names they’d like to hear called on nominations morning.

Kelvin Washington: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Envelope. Kelvin Washington, Yvonne Villarreal, Mark Olsen, and it’s great to have you both here as usual and especially when this is our last episode before Oscar nominations. So I’ll start with you, Yvonne. It could be a movie, a director, or some rising star or just anything that you hope once they read those nominations that morning, you’re gonna hear.

Yvonne Villarreal: I’m not going to say the usual suspects because that’s covered. I really want to see Chase Infiniti get nominated for her role in “One Battle After Another.” I just think she’s been such a revelation for me as somebody who watched “Presumed Innocent.” Seeing her in this role — and I don’t want to spoil anything, but she really finds herself in a hairy situation in this film and the way she sort of rises to the occasion and really has a moment of triumph for herself, I think it was just striking to watch. And she’ll be in “The Handmaid’s Tale” spin-off “The Testaments.” I’m really looking forward to see what she does there. But also I’ll say, as somebody who got thrown into the bandwagon of “KPop Demon Hunters” because of my 6-year-old niece, I wanna see that get some love in the animated category.

Mark Olsen: And in the music categories. Best song.

Washington: It better! Do you know how much I have to hear that song in my house with three daughters, 9, 7 and 4 [years old]? Like, I’m going to be “Golden.”

Villarreal: Are they memorized?

Washington: That’s an understatement. It’s to the point I got concerned. Is it like some robotic AI that’s taking over my daughter’s brain? Instantly. That and 6-7. I have to deal with that every day.

All right. Mark, swing it to you. What do you have?

Olsen: Well, you know, the actress Rose Byrne for the movie “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” She won a lot of critics’ prizes leading up to the nominations. And I think it’d be so exciting if the filmmaker on that, Mary Bronstein, also got recognized either for the screenplay or as director. You know, Mary’s someone that she made her first film, “Yeast,” more than 15 years ago and had not gotten a second project going and had sort of been living a life and doing other things. And to see her sort of reemerge with this project in particular, which is so powerful and so specific, it would be really exciting — as great as it is to see Rose being rightfully recognized — to see Mary get some attention as well.

Washington: So I’m gonna jump in with a couple. One, because she’s been on the radar for years as just a multitude of things, she’s multifaceted: Teyana Taylor can dance, she can sing, she’s just all of that and now acting alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Very impressive for her. And not a debut, but maybe for those who aren’t familiar. So I’d be interested to see, I have a feeling we’re gonna hear her name. And then I’m going super popcorn, Raisinets, Junior Mints, going to the theater. “F1,” for me, I know it was kind of —

Villarreal: Whoa, that’s a throwback.

Washington: I know, but hear me out. It was fun. It was just fun. And it’s kind of one of those movies like, you know, you forget that you go to the movies, it’s gonna be a little fun, maybe a little cheesy, but dang it, I’m here. I’ve got my popcorn. All of that. That for me was another one that was like, “Oh man, that’s kind of the moviegoing experience sometimes we’ve forgotten.”

Olsen: And it’s always good to see the Oscars recognize a film like that as well. I mean, it helps just for attracting audience to the telecast. But I think it is important that the Oscars recognize a breadth of filmmaking styles and one of the things that’s so exciting about the movies is that it can be so many different things, from like a really small personal story to some big high-tech film like “F1: The Movie.” And so I think, yeah, to see that recognized in some of the major categories would be really exciting.

Washington: You know why I like Mark? Because he tried to legitimize my choice. And I’m OK with that.

Olsen: There’s no try. You don’t need the help.

Washington: Look at how I look in the camera. You know, why? Because I know someone’s going to be highbrowin’ me right now. And I get it. And I am with you. However, as we know, we can get all the types of mergers and some things will happen. Are people going to be going into movies anymore? And I was sitting in it going, “Oh, yeah, this is kind of what that feels like.” So ha! Take that.

Villarreal: My reaction was more, it had been a while since I heard the title.

Washington: It felt the same.

Villarreal: Sorry!

Washington: I like what I like, OK? I enjoyed it. That’s all I have to say about that.

All right, Mark, coming to you now. We’re talking about Oscar buzz, and just buzz and a lot of traction that someone can get from a role. Talk about Joel Edgerton playing a logger in Netflix’s “Train Dreams.” What was that conversation like?

Olsen: It was a really terrific conversation. This is a movie that premiered at Sundance last year and was picked up by Netflix there. And even though it has that machinery behind it, there is still something that feels very organic about the success of this movie. It genuinely feels like it’s word of mouth that people have been discovering the film. And it has just a really quiet power too. And a lot of that comes from Joel’s performance. You know, he originally pursued the rights to this book himself and wasn’t able to get it, the rights were already taken. And so he sort of like thought, “Oh, well, that’s that.” And then years go by and the project comes back around and he’s offered this role that he’d been so interested in playing. And he feels like it’s hit him at a very specific time in his life.

The [story] is set in the early part of the 20th century. He plays a logger in the Pacific Northwest. And it really is just a portrait of a life. And the story deals with grief and family, and Joel, in the subsequent years, has become a father himself. And he said how, if he’d have played this a few years ago, he thinks it’d be totally different than the way that [he’s] playing it now. Also he is a guy who’s been in the business for a few years now. He has, I think, some really sharp opinions, views on like what this business is, what the industry is like right now and where it’s going. So it was a really terrific conversation to have with him.

Washington: It sounds like it. Let’s get straight to it. Here is Mark and Joel right now.

Joel Edgerton in “Train Dreams.”

(Netflix)

Mark Olsen: As we’re talking, the movie has been building this sense of momentum around it with reviews and awards. And while there is an awards campaign around the movie, there is something about it that feels very organic. This movie seems to be catching on through word of mouth, just people seeing it and responding to it. How do you feel about the response to the movie?

Joel Edgerton: It feels very good. Coming from an independent film background, I love it when small movies make a lot of noise. And I can’t really analyze or diagnose why, but I get this feeling with “Train Dreams” that it means different things for different people and it holds up a bit of a mirror to their own experience, being that the film is really this celebration of an ordinary life and shows the majesty in that. What my character goes through, they’re universal experiences and so people find something of their own experience in it and I think that’s part of the reason why. It’s a small movie but it’s also a very big movie.

Olsen: The other side of that, in a way, you were recently on a red carpet and you were asked about some comments that James Cameron had made regarding movies on streaming services and the awards race. And I don’t know if you want to say anything more about that, but also do you feel like people do somehow hold it against “Train Dreams” that it’s on Netflix?

Edgerton: Look, the world we live in now is so in the hands of the audiences because of social media. I feel like in the old days, well before I was born, we were told who our movie stars were. The studios would make those decisions for us, and things were very narrow. And now people have the power to choose what they want to watch, who they want to watch, they choose the movie stars. They speak about the movies, and Letterboxd, for example, is such a big thing. And in that same vein, it’s really interesting to hear what people, regular people, moviegoers think of how movies should be exhibited, how they feel, regardless of whether they know about the business side of things or not, or why things are the way they are. They have feelings, sometimes very passionate points of view on where and how we should watch movies. And of course, for all of the business side, if we put it aside, I do believe people want to go to the cinema and watch movies.

My comments come from understanding now where I am in my life. I’m all about creativity and all about story, but I do understand business, and I feel like I emerged out of my bubble in Sydney and felt like the whole world of cinema had suddenly changed. My views on streaming had started to evolve just after we showed a movie at Cannes called “The Stranger.” Another very small movie we made down in Adelaide and Netflix picked up the movie and I remember thinking, “Should we go with them?” So many people saw that movie because it was on a streamer. And so my feelings are very mixed and they’re very much tailored to what the movie is — and therefore according to what the movie is and how big or small it is, where it should live. I’m all for pushing to fight for keeping cinema alive and I believe a younger generation feels the same thing. But I also feel like there are chances that some people have that are narrow as they get their start in the business, which means sometimes the first things you can do, you’re not necessarily going to get a 2,000-screen release on your very first movie. So I have many, many opinions about it. But I feel like we all need to fight for cinema. We also sort of hopefully don’t allow streaming, as great as it can be, to take over everything. That’s my feeling.

Olsen: You’re also a producer as well. This feels like we’re in the middle of a transformative moment for the industry. What is it like for you as a person in the middle of that tide, just trying to navigate that for yourself?

Edgerton: Again, it’s all about what is the story and where should it live. My feeling always is that if I ever get behind making something, I want as many people as possible to see it. I also want to have an exchange at the cinema. One of the great things about “Train Dreams” is I’ve done about 50 Q&As so far — I haven’t counted them up, but around that, and we’ll do a bunch more. We’ve been to a number of festivals and we have an exchange with the audience. We get to watch and see people’s reaction to the film in like an analog way. Sometimes the feeling with letting a movie go on streamer without any fanfare is that it feels like it disappears with a whisper, and you don’t get to have that exchange. And I think that’s very important.

My dream would be to make a film exhibited at the cinema, knowing that at some point it will end up on TV screens and in people’s lounge rooms all over the world. And finding the right way to get a balance of both. There’s nothing better than sitting in the cinema and watching a movie with a bunch of other people. The sad thing at the moment [is] it seems — and again, I don’t know the full diagnostics of it — you get a cinema release and you’re there for like two weeks and then you’re replaced by something else. I’m old enough to remember the days where a movie would sit in the cinema for six, seven, eight weeks if it was good.

Olsen: I don’t want to belabor the point, but I’m so curious about this. I’m assuming when you went to the Gotham Awards you were not thinking “I’m going to give James Cameron a piece of my mind tonight.” Do you find in the time that you’ve been doing this, now you may show up to something and you have no idea what someone’s going to ask you, you have to be ready to talk about just about anything?

Edgerton: You’re right, and I never expect a red carpet is a mine field. I do go home sometimes and think, “What did I say?” I knew what I said. And I also stand by what I said. What I don’t love is the process of reduction of someone’s comments. Someone had sent me this thing that said that I “lashed out” or used a word that was quite a violent one, like I was lashing back at James Cameron. I was like, “No, I wasn’t doing that at all.” I actually had a fair and balanced opinion about the fact that James is, excuse the semi-pun, a titan. He is a pioneer and an inventor and we’ve seen that he’s created technology that has made movies better. He can exhibit movies in this broad scale because he’s dared to dream big. And I feel like there’s a world where there are people who are never going to get their first film on 2,000 screens because it’s a small story, movies like “Sorry, Baby.” They’re not 2,000-screen release movies. There’s a world where they live somewhere, whether it’s in small art house cinemas or whatever. So I was like, “All right, don’t make it feel like I’m putting the gloves on and have a fight with James Cameron, because he’s probably going to win if that’s the case.” And that’s certainly not what I was doing at all. Just saying my point of view is slightly different. And I also understand his point of view. But [comedic wrestler voice] “I’ll meet you on the top oval, James. Let’s do it.” I’m not trying to start a fight. I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Olsen: To start talking about “Train Dreams,” you’ve talked a lot about how you read the book around 2018 or so and the rights weren’t available so you set that idea aside —

Edgerton: Sulked a bit.

Olsen: What do you feel like you were responding to then in that book?

Edgerton: I’ve heard the term neo-western, which I understand now, but it didn’t really make sense to me at the time. When I first read the book, we come into the story with this violent act towards the Chinese worker, for anyone who’s seen the film. And I didn’t know Denis Johnson’s work at all at the time. The book had been gifted to me as a wrap gift on “Boy Erased.” I thought, “If someone gives you a book, it means they think there’s some meaning in it for you, that it will resonate with you,” and it did. But I thought, “Oh, this is a western.” And then within a handful of pages, I realized it was a different kind of western. It would look and feel like a western, but it was a rumination on a life itself. Not that it was going to answer the big elusive question of the meaning of life, but swirling questions of what is the purpose of a life and what is in the extraordinary details of a life we may never care to remember because the person is not the great inventor, the great general, the great president or superhero. I love the ordinariness, I love the idea that it resonated with something that my parents had always instilled in me, which is that every single human being has a great story to tell and that we all shouldn’t be considered insignificant. And I just was so moved by the sort of glimpses of one man’s entire life. Wanted to get my hands on it, couldn’t, and I’m happy to say that it’s good that I didn’t get my big fat lumberjack hands on it then. Mostly because I think [director and co-writer] Clint [Bentley] is a remarkably sensitive, excellent filmmaker [and] has done a much better job than I ever would if I was in control of things. And because in the four years since he reached out to me to be in the film, I’d become a dad. And that was like everything to me. And if you’ve seen the film and you know what’s inside of the film, I really believe that my performance, I don’t know what my performance would have been like pre-Joel the Dad, but now that I am a dad, it’s like there’s stuff inside of me that makes this performance possible.

Olsen: But when it came back to you, do you feel like you responded to it differently? Did you recognize that difference right away?

Edgerton: One hundred percent. And I know it, there was a significant moment. Clint came to meet me in Chicago, I was shooting “Dark Matter” and I was very excited that this had somehow come around to me, knowing that I loved the book and the character so much. Then I watched “Jockey” and knew that he was a really solid filmmaker. His adaptation was extraordinary. And then when I met him, I realized as a filmmaker he was like a director version of the central character of the film — kind, honest, generous, a really great observer. And I went home and I spoke to my wife, and she obviously, her two big questions every time I want to do a project [are] when and where. Because it means moving us around, uprooting our family. I told her and Spokane didn’t exactly make her click her heels, because her life is about being plugged into big cities. She said, what’s the story about? And I started trying to tell her the story, and when I got to the stuff that happens to Robert in the middle of the film, and my 1 1/2-year-old twins are in the other room, I couldn’t even finish telling her the story. And I realized then how much the story now kind of terrified me. But also was so much more connected for me. And she watched me, my chin was quivering and and she was like, “All right, I guess we’re going to Spokane.”

Olsen: Have you done a project that felt this personal before? And did that have its own kind of anxiety attached? Did you have any reluctance to do this for the reason that you were connecting to it so strongly?

Edgerton: I feel like I learn something about myself on every job and every time I approach a new job, I always describe it in rudimentary terms, like a toolkit. What aspects of myself do I bring to this? Which parts do I leave behind? And how would I approach this? For example, “Gatsby” for me felt like, “This is about me turning myself up to 11 out of 10, bringing something bigger.” And with “Train Dreams” what I’ve really learned was how much in the past I’ve tried to hide from myself. And I feel like it’s a trap a lot of actors fall into, is thinking they’re not enough and you have to adorn a performance to be really seen or heard or impress. And I realized how much I’ve avoided playing characters that are very much like me. And though Robert’s a lumberjack, I’m putting all the trappings of it aside on an emotional level. How much is a character like you? And I’m constantly trying to play dress ups and really interested in being people that I’m not and I think that my favorite actors have often been transformative character actors. So I felt like my task in my mind was always to do something different and run away from the idea of just showing my own self really. And I realized that as a husband, as a father and as a guy who’s constantly guilty and struggling with the idea of being away from my family for work, these are all things that Robert is [dealing with], just doing a different job. A contract worker, which I am too except I’m not chopping down trees. And I have my greatest fears around my kids and the safety of my kids. So it felt to me like this was a chance to be very open about my own feelings and bring that to the work without feeling like I had to put too much garnish on things. And that’s a bit scary for me. But it now makes me realize it’s probably a better path in the future to do a bit more of that, just be a bit more open rather than hiding who I am, if that makes any sense.

Olsen: Completely. Because a lot of reviews of the movie, I sort of said this myself, have noted how it feels almost as if your career has been building to this performance, leading to it somehow. Does it feel like that to you?

Edgerton: I know that in decades to come I’ll look back and say always that “Train Dreams” is one of the great experiences I’ve ever had. The process and the result. I think the movie’s fantastic, but what I got out of it personally, it was extraordinary. Look, I hope that I’m building towards something else extraordinary in the future, and it’s like a new mission with each film and each story and each character. But this one definitely feels special for me, and it feels like I use the word “suitable,” which feels so boring. But I played characters that are not suitable for me in the past, and I’ve really challenged myself to bend into shapes that are different from who I am, rhythms that are different from what I’m like, successfully or relatively unsuccessfully. I can’t really judge it for myself. But this felt really suitable. It felt like it belonged to me.

Olsen: You’re also a director, writer, producer. What is it like for you when you show up to a project and you’re just an actor? Does it allow you to focus more on your performance? Or are you always like, “I was thinking you could put the camera over there.”

Edgerton: It’s such a relief. I think directing is the best job in the world, but I wouldn’t want to be doing it every time I went to work, because there’s a lot of stress, a lot of responsibility. Many times I’ve described the difference between acting and directing. An actor is like a child. Literally you could turn up to work in your pajamas, somebody will put makeup on you, dress you, you have one — well, I don’t want to be reductive about it — but you have one job, to play your character and fit into the story, serve the story. As a director you’re running the household. You’ve got to do everything. You’ve got to stock the fridge, you’ve got to make all the decisions about everything in the household, and there’s so much responsibility to that.

I was curious after I directed my first film, how I would be walking onto another director’s set. And it would just be a sin to walk onto someone else’s set and start to look over their shoulder and check their homework and sort of impose yourself on that process. I realized the two things that fascinated me the most were what lens was being put on the camera according to what the shot was. So I just became like really quietly observant. Actors who direct get this sort of great luxury of visiting so many sets and watching other directors and learning from them, good and bad things. And behavioral stuff. It’s not just about how their craft works or how they apply themselves as filmmakers, but how they conduct themselves as people, how they treat their crew, how they elicit the best out of their heads of department and give them freedom or not. Like Clint, for example, on “Train Dreams” is amazing at deputizing his heads of department, giving them freedom, and I think that’s the greatest show of power as a director, the confidence of relinquishing control because you hired the great people and you’re trusting them to collaborate with you. So as an actor I love the freedom of just being there to serve the story. And then watching and putting little things in my ideas bag for next time if I’m lucky enough to be the director again.

Olsen: You were recently on [“Late Night With Seth Meyers”] and he said that he thought it was a very wonderful performance and he noted how you don’t have very much dialogue in the movie and you said you think it’s wonderful because there isn’t much dialogue. And you were kidding, but I wonder if you could unravel that a little bit. How do you think the lack of dialogue in the movie impacted your performance?

Edgerton: Words are there to confuse us in the world. There’s the things we say, what they actually mean, there’s so many layers to any conversation you have with any person. There’s something really interesting about people who don’t speak very much. There’s a mystery often to them. I think there’s a lot of mystery to men that I grew up with in my life. I find myself drawn to people that don’t speak very much because I’m wondering what they think, what do they think of me, what’s going on in their mind. As an actor, I guess I really cut my teeth on “Loving” with Jeff Nichols. He’s a character, again, a very good man who had a lot of feelings and a lot to say, but for whatever reason or for different reasons, with Richard Loving and with Robert, chooses not to say things or doesn’t know if he has the right to say certain things. As an actor I think what becomes the focus is knowing that the camera sees, is looking into your soul. The thought is the imperative, to put the thoughts in the right place, to just be present, knowing that the camera will read those things. And of course the story’s job is to help guide us along and we have a narration. But I was always hoping that the camera will see what’s on my mind and for me to then fill that with words would actually kind of be counter to what the character is, which is one of these very stoic nonverbal men that I think we can all identify with or that we’ve met in our lives. So it’s just putting the right thoughts in my head.

Olsen: It is remarkable how often in the movie it’s as if we’re just watching you feel, you’re sort of taking in your surroundings, you’re not really saying much, but it does feel like we’re in your head, that we can understand what the character is thinking and what you’re conveying as a performer.

Edgerton: Thank you. I was smiling because I was remembering the square root of eight. Do you know what I’m talking about? There’s an episode of “Friends” — is it Joey who’s the actor? — he’s like, “When you’ve got to act and you’ve got to look like you’re really trying to work something out, you’ve just got to think of the square root of eight.” It actually works. But I wasn’t using it in “Train Dreams.”

Olsen: The story does build to this scene with Kerry Condon where your character actually does explain himself. What was it like to flip the switch and have to be verbal and emotional in a more conventional way?

Edgerton: Talking about emotion was one of the tricky things with “Train Dreams.” Clint and I had many conversations, very cerebral conversations, theoretical conversations about story — and emotion was one of them. So Robert’s a character, one of these men who is not really willing to show his emotions. And when he does he’s very quick to put them down, or in the case of the film he apologizes for showing his grief. But it’s all building to this moment, and this is one of the things I love about the film, is that it illuminates the importance of human connection. Robert meets this character Claire that the audience feels like maybe there’s a romance about to happen, which I love that it doesn’t steer in that direction. These chance encounters with strangers that we maybe don’t know that we need to have met on our journey, that are a chance for us to express ourselves. And he has a chance to, whether he knows it or not, he’s going to tell her about his feelings of strange complicity in something he had no responsibility for. And we knew that we were building towards this and yet at the same time we’re still trying to keep a lid on the emotions, but finally Robert gets to speak and it makes so much more sense of his silence up until that point if he we finally hear him string more than a sentence together to try and talk about what’s inside of him and those scenes we shot them in a short one-and-a-half hour window of magic hour with Kerry, who’s just extraordinary. And it felt like time was standing still, even though you would think that there would be a sense that we were rushing. It felt like we had hours.

Olsen: As you’re making the movie, are you talking with Clint or William H. Macy or Felicity Jones, having these kind of big picture, thematic conversations? Because the movie invites these questions of, what makes a life? How do you define being a man? Are you having those conversations while you’re making the movie?

Edgerton: There’s something fascinating about “Train Dreams.” Something I say is so special about Clint is, I know this because I read so many screenplays and I think about story all the time, is this draw to tell an audience what to feel all the time. Whether it’s through words, the story itself, music. “Train Dreams” does this thing that as much as I can speak about it objectively, and it’s the same in the novella, these moments that aren’t telling you what to feel, they’re just layering on top of each other, and I feel like there’s some compression of all these things. It pulls something out of people in their own way. They find their own experience out of it, which can be quite emotional and quite cathartic in a good way. Particularly anyone who’s been through moments where they’re being knocked down in life. I think there’s some sort of hopefulness in watching Robert’s story. It’s hard to define, but there’s a confidence in the way Clint’s rendered it. It’s not telling you each time what to feel. Robert’s not telling you, it’s not screaming to the heavens. There’s nothing sort of overly melodramatic or cathartic about it. And yet these layers build and compress. I had a very similar experience watching “Into the Wild,” Sean Penn’s film. It’s another character isolating himself in in nature. The credits roll and something in me just was like it was like, “I needed to feel something.” I call them a happy cry movie. You know, you’re crying but also happy at the same time.

Olsen: There’s a a moment in the film that I find so haunting and I’ve been trying to unravel it for myself. It’s late in the film, it’s the 1960s, you’re portraying the character as an old man. And in the voice-over the narrator Will Patton says something like, “He never spoke on a telephone.” And there’s something about that I just find deeply moving and really haunting. And I’m struggling to even define for myself what it is about that idea that really gets me.

Edgerton: Because there’s these great things in the movie that I call little sidecars or whatever, this idea that the world is sort of moving so quickly it’s going to leave us behind. It reminded me of my grandmother, who when I pointed a video camera at her for the first time, she didn’t move because she was thinking I was taking a photo of her. And I was saying “It’s OK, this is a camera that’s gonna capture you moving.” She was like Robert. She never saw some of these things. She never experienced a lot of things. I think she went on an airplane, like a jumbo jet, once in her life. And there’s a great thing in the book actually, about Robert and his point of view on the world and as he’s aging, and it talks about his body and his spine and the way his shoulders moved. For example, that scene where Robert goes up to the window and realizes he’s staring at a man walking on the moon and he’s looking up at the sky, wondering, “How is that even possible?” There’s this sense of his physical dilapidation as he moves. It’s this guy that every time he turns his head has to move his entire body from all the hard work. But all this is sort of just a general sense of wonderment that I remember in my grandmother’s eyes when she would look at new things. But this sort of awe and childlike wonder at the world, which I found very special.

Olsen: Part of the story also deals with just how to know when your time has past. And you and I are about the same age and it’s something I grapple with a lot, wanting to be sure that I still have something meaningful to contribute. Do you worry about that for yourself? In a way it comes back to where we started this conversation, that there are people who would tell you that movies are on the way out.

Edgerton: Relevance is a weird thing. I always saw myself as the youngest person in the room. I started very young. I was young at drama school. I was always young, and now I’m not. The beauty of being an actor if we’re allowed to keep doing what we’re doing, if AI doesn’t mess everything up, as long as my brain keeps working, I can keep learning about the new versions of myself as I get older. You know, “Train Dreams” is a good chance for me to see myself in the middle of my life. But I wonder about relevance. I wonder about my character staring at a chainsaw in the movie and wondering how it’s going to affect his world. I wonder at that for myself, as I’ve never downloaded ChatGPT. I’m sort of terrified, but I also feel like I need to not turn a blind eye to it. I have young kids. I’ve got to accept this thing. But I do worry about what it’s going to do to movies. What I feel optimistic about [is] — I always evoke Jonathan Glazer’s film, “Zone of Interest.” Because I think the genius of that film is the beautiful human thought behind the point of view of setting a Holocaust film in the general’s house over the wall in an opulent setting. And I keep thinking, “I don’t think AI is going to come up with an idea like that, think outside the box.” I think it pushes us into more of a challenge of the unique thought, the unique piece of art, doing things that are bespoke. I don’t think we’ll ever want to stop watching human beings or listening to human stories told by humans, starring humans, music made by humans, paintings painted by humans. I hope. Yes, we can enjoy the wildness of what computers create for us. But I don’t think zeros and ones are going to entirely ruin our lives. But then I can be pessimistic too. I won’t rant on that.

Not to offend Larry David by saying it as late as Jan. 7, but: Happy New Year!

The turning of the calendar also signals that Phase I of awards season is coming to a close. With the Golden Globes and a big weekend of parties on the horizon, I’m proud to share our last issue — and my last letter from the editor — until after the Oscar nominations.

I’ll be back in February to unveil our three issues in Phase II. And be sure to keep an eye out Friday for Glenn Whipp’s newsletter, which will have more on our Jan. 8 cover subject, George Clooney.

Digital cover story: ‘Bugonia’

(JSquared Photography / For The Times)

Fans of Yorgos Lanthimos’ misanthropic comedies will forgive the Michael Haneke pun in my coverline for Michael Ordoña’s story on “Bugonia,” starring Emma Stone as a healthcare CEO and Jesse Plemons as the conspiracy theorist who believes she’s an alien invader. And not simply because Haneke’s own brand of bleak absurdism seems to have rubbed off on Lanthimos. Funny games — well, ‘silly games’ — are at the core of Lanthimos’ distinct creative process.

“It makes it light,” the filmmaker explained. “You don’t take yourself too seriously. You don’t take the material seriously. You’re gargling and doing lines, whatever. It’s a way of the actors getting the dialogue in them in an unconscious way, not fixed with a kind of intellectual baggage, so it’s freer and it has more possibilities. And they feel comfortable with each other.”

Small roles, big performances

(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; photos by Dania Maxwell / For The Times; Warner Bros. Pictures; Tatum Mangus)

Envelope copy chief Blake Hennon sent up a cheer when Lisa Rosen’s recurring spotlight on the brilliant-but-unheralded turns that we love in movies came across his desk, and rightly so. In a flash, a film can make an indelible impression, and it’s often thanks to those who fall outside the usual pundit predictions.

This year’s participants include real-life siblings Jacobi and Noah Jupe (“Hamnet”), Paul Thomas Anderson stalwart April Grace (“One Battle After Another”) and one-scene wonder Hadley Robinson (“The History of Sound”).

The shot of the season

Thanks to contributor Daron James, the back page of every Envelope features an unforgettable frame from a film or TV series, accompanied by an explanation from the artists behind it. And while all are striking, I’m glad to say we’re ending Phase I on my favorite.

Perhaps it’s that “Breathless” was one of the first movies that made me fall in love with movies. Perhaps it’s Richard Linklater’s courageous decision to have his protagonist wear dark sunglasses throughout the movie. Perhaps it’s the charm of actors Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch. It’s probably all of the above. But whatever the reason, the final shot of “Nouvelle Vague” is, for my money, the best single shot I saw in 2025.

More stories from our Jan. 8 issue

SCARY Movie star and bodybuilder Jayne Trcka has died at 62.

The athlete, who portrayed Miss Mann in the original Scary Movie film, passed away on December 12 in San Diego, California.

“There was trauma to the body, but we wouldn’t be able to indicate cause of death at this time,” a San Diego Medical Examiner spokesperson exclusively revealed to The U.S. Sun about the star’s sudden passing.

TMZ was first to report the news and noted that Jayne’s son wasn’t privy to any medical conditions or illnesses the actress had that could’ve caused her death.

Scary Movie, which premiered in 2000, was Jayne’s first acting role.

She was notable in the bodybuilding world after competing in many shows in the 1980s.

ICON GONE

General Hospital star Leslie Charleson’s cause of death revealed

‘DELIGHTFUL LADY’

Tributes to ‘icon of style & comedy’ as Diane Keaton dies age 79

Jayne later starred on The Drew Carey Show and Whose Line is it Anyway?

She also appeared in a string of fitness magazines, such as Flex, MuscleMag International, and Women’s Physique World.

The TV star most recently worked as a realtor, according to a San Diego real estate agency’s website.

Scary Movie was the first parody film in the franchise, starring Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Regina Hall, and Carmen Electra.

Four sequel films were released in 2001, 2003, 2026, and 2013.

The franchise’s sixth installment is scheduled for release in June, with many of its original cast members reprising their roles.

Damon Wayans Jr., Kim Wayans, and Saturday Night Live alum Heidi Gardner have also signed on for the film, which Paramount Pictures will release in theaters worldwide, Deadline revealed in November.

It was the film that helped to launch the career of a Hollywood legend and was a star-studded fantasy movie loved by fans and critics – and is now being shown on ITV tonight.

Kevin Costner took the lead role of Iowa farmer, Ray, in the smash hit Field of Dreams. Joining him as some of the legends on the ghostly baseball film are Ray Liotta and Shoeless Joe Jackson, James Earl Jones as Terence Mann, Burt Lancaster in his final role as Doc Archibald Graham and Amy Madigan as Annie.

Released in 1989 and directed by Phil Aiden Robinson, Field of Dreams was based on the novel, Shoeless Joe by WP Kinsella. As well as being commercially successful, Field of Dreams was also loved by critics. At the time one wrote: “A work so smartly written, so beautifully filmed, so perfectly acted, that it does the almost impossible trick of turning sentimentality into true emotion.”

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score. Today, Field of Dreams holds an impressive 88 percent approval rating on movie review aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes. One review says: “This is a story about passion, not just for baseball, but also a passion to do something with our one precious life even if people think it’s crazy.”

Another wrote: “It’s hard to imagine a cynicism so hardened that it won’t crumble at the sight of a lush green baseball field nestled into an Iowa cornfield and at this movie’s final inspiring scene of youth and innocence recaptured.” While a third added: “Too idiosyncratic and witty merely to wallow in sentimentality, Field Of Dreams will surely stand as a classic update of what made Old Hollywood so magical. It’s still a wonderful life.”

The film also holds a special place in the heart of fans. One wrote: “This film is pure magic! I have seen this movie probably a hundred times in my life.. I’ve just finished watching it again tonight and I still get the same feeling I got the first time I saw it.” Another said: “One of the greatest films ever made. Men, get ready to cry. My favorite movies are ones that elicit an emotional response. “If you build it, he will come.”

Meanwhile a third added: “This is still probably my favorite movie of all time after seeing it over 30 years ago. A lesson in the value of having faith and valuing family along with paying a homage to baseball when it truly was Americas pastime, it is sentimental nonsense in the best way, as Ray says to Terrence Mann when returning back to Iowa to after picking up Moonlight Graham, “It’s Perfect!””

Field of Dreams is airing on ITV4 at 6.50pm on Sunday, January 4.

For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new Everything Gossip website

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

One of the bummer parts of any awards season is how it leads to a narrowing down of what movies are getting talked about and subsequently remembered from any given year. There are always way more than five or 10 titles from any given year that deserve the spotlight.

Which is why it was so exciting this week when Envelope editor Matt Brennan chose Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” and Angus MacLachlan’s “A Little Prayer” as his favorite movies of the year. “A Little Prayer” first premiered at Sundance in 2023, but didn’t get a theatrical release until this past summer. The delicate jewel of a film features warm, tender performances by David Strathairn and Jane Levy as a man and his daughter-in-law both reconciling themselves to the fallout of problems in her marriage. The movie is available now on digital platforms and is well worth seeking out.

David Straithairn and Jane Levy in the movie “A Little Prayer.”

(Music Box Films)

And we talked about “Ann Lee” here last week and will likely have more to say about it as awards season moves on. Matt’s list also included films such as “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Sentimental Value” and “Sirāt” along with “Sorry, Baby,” “Nouvelle Vague,” “Hedda,” and “The Alabama Solution.”

Meanwhile, with 2026 so fresh and new, it’s almost sacrilegious to start thinking about a future best-of-year list. But we’ve got one anyway: Here are the 14 movies we’re most excited to see in 2026. Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Steven Spielberg doing aliens again — at least on paper, there’s a lot of promise here.

4K premiere of Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’

An image from William Friedkin’s 1977 movie “Sorcerer.”

(Criterion Collection)

On Friday night, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre will host the West Coast premiere of a new 4K restoration of William Friedkin’s 1977 thriller “Sorcerer” scanned from the original camera negative.

The film was a notorious flop when first released, in part because it had the misfortune of opening a week after the first “Star Wars.” An adaptation of the same novel that spawned Henri-George Clouzot’s 1953 adventure “Wages of Fear,” “Sorcerer” follows four desperate men tasked with transporting a truckload of volatile nitroglycerine through a South American jungle.

Friedkin, who died in 2023, spoke to The Times’ Kenneth Turan in 2013 before receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Venice Film Festival. The only movie shown as part of the tribute was “Sorcerer.” As Friedkin said at the time, “Every one of the films that I made, even the ones that haven’t worked, are films that I had to envision, that I had to see in my mind’s eye. And ‘Sorcerer’ is the film that came closest to my vision of what I wanted to make.”

In a January 1977 interview conducted when he had just completed filming, star Roy Scheider said that working with Friedkin “was not always to my liking as an actor. He is organized and meticulous but difficult, opiniated and tough. He can even be cruel at times. When Friedkin works on a film, nothing gets in his way, including the actors.”

Roy Scheider in the movie “Sorcerer.”

(Criterion Collection)

The film’s initial reception is perhaps well summarized by Charles Champlin’s originalLos Angeles Times review, in which he writes, “William Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’ is one of those movies that must make executives, no less than critics, shake their heads in stunned glum wonder. What the hell went wrong?

“A first-rate and proven piece of material. Executed with loving and meticulous care on a damn-the-cost basis by a prize-winning director with two large commercial successes behind him. But it all ends up a swollen, leaden and almost totally uninvolving disappointment that seems fairly unlikely to be saved commercially by its detonations, special effects and strenuous physical sequences.”

Champlin did seem to enjoy one element: the synthesizer score by Tangerine Dream (later of “Thief” and “Risky Business”), music that he calls “a new flavor, Latin Anxious, that works well.”

‘The Godfather Part II’

Al Pacino in the 1974 sequel “The Godfather Part II.”

(Paramount Pictures)

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, an original I.B. Technicolor 35mm print of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” will screen at the New Beverly. It’s a rare and unusual way to see a great movie that can sometimes be flattened by overfamiliarity but remains as fresh and revealing as ever. The movie would go on to win six Oscars including best picture (the first sequel to ever do so).

The story cross-cuts between Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in the 1950s and Robert De Niro playing his father Vito Corleone in the early 1900s. The film shows the growth of the Corleone family empire and what it takes to keep it running.

In a January 1975 interview, Coppola talked about his motivations in approaching the sequel, saying, “The finished film makes what I consider a tough statement for a $13 million mass-audience picture. It says that this country is in danger of losing its soul, like Michael did. That power without humanity is destructive. … I didn’t want Michael to be destroyed by another gang or by a Senate investigation of organized crime. I wanted him to destroy himself. And to juxtapose his fall with flashbacks of his father’s rise a half-century earlier.”

Coppola, candid as ever, continued, “And, to be completely honest, there was the possibility of my making so much money I could bankroll some of my other projects.”

In his original Dec. 1974 review of the film, our Charles Champlin wrote, “In its way, ‘Godfather II’ is more daring than the original … The risks were worth taking, and the reward is that a single monumental segment of the American experience is neither glorified nor patronized, but made comprehensible and real, transmuted into drama of both scope and depth.”

Points of interest

‘The Birds’ in 35mm

Tippi Hedren and children are attacked by crows in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

(Screen Archives / Getty Images)

On Monday the Academy Museum will show Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 “The Birds” in 35mm. The film is showing as part of a series about nature’s revenge on humans — a fun group of titles that also includes “Jaws” and “Orca” (both playing in 35mm), “Creature from the Black Lagoon” in 3D, “Alligator” with director Lewis Teague in person and “The Revenant” in 4K.

Transporting Daphne du Maurier’s original story to the setting of Bodega Bay in Northern California, “The Birds” presents a classic, apocalyptic what-if scenario when humans are suddenly attacked from above.

Star Tippi Hedren, who turns 96 later this month, made her movie debut in the film and over the years she has been open about how difficult the process of shooting was for her. In an April 1963 interview with Hedda Hopper, she said, “The Humane Society was there to protect the birds but there was no one to protect me.”

In a March 1963 review, The Times’ Philip K. Scheuer wrote, “Are actors people? No matter. Alfed Hitchcock, who filmed ‘The Birds’ at Universal, was once widely quoted as saying he hated actors. After his 1960 ‘Psycho’ and now ‘The Birds,’ it must be fairly obvious that he has extended his abhorrence to the whole human race.”

Oliver Lax’s ‘Fire Will Come’

Amador Arias, left, and Benedicta Sánchez in ‘Fire Will Come’

(KimStim)

Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s “Sirāt” has become one of the most celebrated films of the year, popping up on critics list and making a strong showing on the recent Oscars shortlists. On Tuesday, Acropolis Cinema will present the Los Angeles premiere of Laxe’s 2019 film “Fire Will Come” at 2220 Arts + Archives (its original release was curtailed by the pandemic). Laxe is scheduled to attend in person.

In the film, Amador (Amador Arias) has just been released from prison for arson, after having started a wildfire that ravaged the local mountains. Living with his mother, he has to overcome the suspicions and distrust of everyone in the community.

Reviewing the film in 2020 for a digital release, Carlos Aguilar called the film “quietly phenomenal,” adding, “Its discourse on forgiveness simmers in one’s mind inextinguishably.”

Joachim Trier tribute

Director Joachim Trier, photographed at the Los Angeles Times Studios at RGB House during the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The American Cinematheque is launching a tribute to Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier this week. He will be appearing person with co-writer Eskil Vogt following screenings of “The Worst Person in the World” and his current movie “Sentimental Value.”

These are also rare opportunities to see two of Trier’s earlier films — his 2006 debut “Reprise” and 2011’s devastating “Oslo, August 31st” — in a theater.

“Sentimental Value” directly engages with the legacy of Scandinavian cinema, with Stellan Skarsgård playing an arthouse filmmaker trying to get a new project off the ground with his daughter (“Worst Person” star Renate Reinsve).

Going all the way back to “Reprise.” Trier has been making a case for a new kind of Scandinavian cinema: “I would hope young people would see this not as the old, dreary, dandruff-on-the-shoulders, slow European film,” he said in 2008. “I wanted to make something more sexy and relevant to people.”

Fried chicken and a $45 bottle of sparkling wine?

What were you doing on New Year’s Eve?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope newsletter and the guy wondering how many New Year’s resolutions you’ve broken so far this year.

Let’s take a look back — and a look forward — because that’s what we’re contractually obligated to do this time of year.

Three films I’m looking forward to in 2026

Every year, some editor at The Times buzzes my inbox with a request to gather my hopes and dreams into a purely speculative list of movies I’m looking forward to seeing in the coming 12 months. That email serves as a marker that the Earth has orbited the sun once again and it’s time to buy a new planner — because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Google Calendar know what I’m doing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

I was asked to contribute two movies to the list last year, and I chose “One Battle After Another” and “Materialists.” So … one masterpiece that should go on to win the Oscar for best picture and the movie that seems to be the most hated film of 2025. Seriously, people will approach me at parties and say, unprompted, “You know what movie I despised? ‘Materialists.’” And then, after unloading on how much they loathed the characters in Celine Song’s romantic drama, they’ll shift gears and go on a diatribe about late-stage capitalism.

(My New Year’s resolution: find better parties.)

You could say, then, that I got one right and one wrong, though I was partly looking forward to “Materialists” because Song had regaled me with tales of her Manhattan matchmaking days over a couple glasses of wine one night and I wanted to see how she’d weave these stories into a movie. And it turned out that was the best part of the film. So there. No more emails about “Materialists,” please.

At least Song’s film saw the light of day. Looking back on our 2025 list, there are still movies that haven’t made it to theaters. The “Untitled Trey Parker/Matt Stone Film,” once scheduled for July 4, now has a title, “Whitney Springs,” but no new release date. Neither does Terrence Malick’s biblical drama, “The Way of the Wind,” which Malick has reportedly been editing for a good six years now. That movie didn’t make our 2026 list, but, fingers crossed, it might resurface sometime in the next decade when we throw together another of these.

So what movies am I looking forward to seeing when it stops raining (talk about biblical drama) and we start turning the calendar’s pages? I raised my hand for three, and I’m confident this trio will satisfy, mostly because of their directors’ track record. To see everyone else’s picks — including a few I would have chosen myself — read the full list here.

“Disclosure Day”: I liked it better when this was simply known as “Untitled Steven Spielberg UFO movie.” What more do you need to know beyond that description and a prime summer release date? That’s enough to sell a few hundred million dollars in tickets and make me giddy with anticipation. We don’t know much at the moment, other than that Spielberg is working again with “Jurassic Park” and “War of the Worlds” screenwriter David Koepp. There’s an eye-catching billboard with an image that looks alien and kind of birdlike … unless you study it while standing on your head and then it looks … human? Who knows? ALL WILL BE DISCLOSED, the tagline promises, hence the title. So we’ll just have to wait. But from all appearances, we’re not in “E.T.” territory with this one.

“The Adventures of Cliff Booth”: Do we need a stand-alone Cliff Booth movie? Quentin Tarantino thinks so, though not enough to direct the sequel he wrote to his hit 2019 film “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood.” That’s OK, as Brad Pitt, who won an Oscar for playing Booth, the ass-kicking stuntman, enlisted David Fincher to sub in. It’ll be their fourth collaboration, following “Se7en,” “Fight Club” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a track record that offers some optimism that a film elevating Booth from Rick Dalton’s loyal sidekick to a leading character is an idea worth pursuing. (Leonardo DiCaprio apparently turned down an offer to reprise Dalton in a cameo.) If nothing else, the movie’s 1977 setting, eight years after the events in “Once Upon a Time,” will give us the chance to revel in another glorious L.A. time capsule.

“Werwulf”: Robert Eggers calls his upcoming medieval werewolf movie the “darkest thing I have ever written, by far.” Let that sink in for a moment. Eggers’ filmography includes the suffocating madness found in “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” and the chilling terror of a malevolent, shape-shifting, lustful vampire in “Nosferatu.” These are not light movies. So what are we in store for here? Apparently a member of Eggers’ sound team said he needed a hug after reading the “Werwulf” script. I couldn’t verify this, but I want this to be true. There will be blood — and fog. One other thing we know is the setting, 13th century England, which means that the film’s dialogue will be in Middle English. How fareth thoue with that? I’m sure the cast, which includes Eggers regulars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson, had fun, verraily.

There you have it: Spielberg, Fincher, Eggers. A sci-fi thriller, a sequel I still can’t believe exists and a monster movie. All three of these might miss the mark. And, honestly, any list missing the guaranteed pleasures of “Practical Magic 2” is immediately suspect.

But that’s the folly of blindly looking ahead. You never know.

Happy New Year! And, as always, thanks for reading.

Are you wondering, like Alixandra Kupcik, where did all the feel-good movies go?

She must have written that story before “Song Sung Blue” came out. Because Hugh Jackman passionately describing the greatness of Neil Diamond’s “Soolaimon” and then demonstrating that song’s grandeur by performing it in the new film “Song Sung Blue” is the definition of corny, feel-good comfort.

Which leads me to my question to you this day: Have you seen “Marty Supreme”? And what feelings — good, bad, uneasy, elated — did that movie arouse in you?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Time to wipe down the ping-pong table?

Inside the reactions to ‘Marty Supreme’

He summited the Sphere, exhorting us to “dream big.” He shot a rap music video to debunk the conspiracy theory that he is a popular British rapper. He has popped up at screenings flanked by bodyguards sporting giant orange ping-pong balls for heads.

Leading up to the Christmas Day premiere of his new movie, “Marty Supreme,” Timothée Chalamet was front and center in a promotional tour that was unhinged, delightful and, judging from the weekend’s box office, quite successful.

“Marty Supreme,” the wildly entertaining, over-caffeinated portrait of a single-minded ping-pong player, took in $27 million over the four-day Christmas weekend, the best opening in distributor A24’s history. The numbers surpassed the opening of “A Complete Unknown,” last year’s Chalamet Christmas release that featured the actor playing Bob Dylan in his formative years.

Not everyone was on board with “Marty.” Moviegoers gave the movie a B+ rating with market research company CinemaScore. That’s good, but not great. (“A Complete Unknown,” by comparison, earned an A.)

Podcaster Claira Curtis’ experience seeing the movie at the Grove feels like an accurate representation of the “Marty Supreme” adventure: “Packed ‘Marty Supreme theater had the full range of reactions. There were people walking out halfway through. There were people clapping. There was someone coming out of it saying, ‘Eh, it was fine’ & then their friend went, ‘Are you insane? It was peak!’”

The disparate responses reflect a couple of things.

One, not everyone embraces the Safdie brand of anxiety-inducing cinema. Josh Safdie directed “Marty.” His brother, Benny, made “The Smashing Machine,” released earlier this year. Together, they made “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time,” movies that, take your pick, were exhilarating or excruciating. Or both! (Exclamation point intended. These are exclamation-point films.)

And two, the title character in “Marty Supreme” is a lot — an undeniably talented, relentless self-promoter careening toward his goals of fame and fortune with little regard to the damage he is inflicting on others. He’s despicable, but also, as played by Chalamet, winningly charming. Unless you find Chalamet annoying. Then you’re probably best-served listening to Hugh Jackman sing Neil Diamond songs.

Chalamet has channeled Marty’s earnest energy in his promotional appearances for the film.

“This is a movie about sacrifice in pursuit of a dream,” he told Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” “And it’s something I can relate to deeply. And we live in a bleak time, especially for young people, so this film is an attempted antidote to that.”

Chalamet then pivoted to the camera, the better to look into viewers’ eyes.

“And to continue to believe in yourself and to continue to dream big and to follow your dreams and not take no for an answer. That’s the spirit of ‘Marty Supreme,’ out on Christmas Day.”

Judging from the box office, Chalamet has pushed across the message. Will it work on awards voters, giving Chalamet the first Oscar of his career? As we head into the new year, the next phase of the “Marty” tour promises to be the season’s most interesting storyline. Gas up the blimp!

More coverage of ‘Marty Supreme’

Last year, women made up just 13% of directors working on the top 250 films.

That level represents a 3-percentage-point decline from 2024, when women led 16% of the top-grossing movies, according to a San Diego State University study released Thursday.

The troubling tabulation comes as Hollywood seeks to turn the page from a gut-punching year that included the Los Angeles wildfires, ongoing declines of local film and television production and the deaths of beloved filmmakers.

“Hamnet,” directed by Chloé Zhao; “Freakier Friday,” helmed by Nisha Ganatra; and “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” led by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, were among the few notable exceptions.

The university’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film and its founder Martha M. Lauzen have tracked employment of women in behind-the-scenes decision-making jobs for nearly three decades. Roles included in the study are: directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors and cinematographers. Data from more than 3,500 credits on top-grossing films were used to compile the report.

Lauzen launched her effort in 1998, assuming that pointing out the imbalance would cause doors to swing open for women in Hollywood. But despite countless calls for action, and a high-profile but short-lived federal investigation, the picture has stayed largely the same.

“The numbers are remarkably stable,” Lauzen said in an interview. “They’ve been remarkably stable for more than a quarter of a century.”

Overall, women made up 23% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and directors of photography on the 250 top-grossing films in 2025, according to Lauzen’s report: “The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films.” In 2024 and 2020, the percentage was the same.

Her study found that, in 2025, women constituted 28% of film producers and 23% of the executive producers.

Among the ranks of screenwriters, only 20% were women.

Women also made up 20% of editors, matching the level in 1998, when Lauzen began her study.

“There’s been absolutely no change,” she said.

Among cinematographers, women occupied just 7% of those influential roles on the 250 top-grossing films.

The cinematographer serves as the director of photography, greatly shaping the look and the feel of a film. Last year marked a stark decline from 2024, when women constituted 12% of cinematographers.

There has been movement in the number of female directors since 1998. That year, only 7% of the top-grossing films were directed by women. Last year’s total represented a 6 percentage-point improvement.

Lauzen’s most recent report comes a decade after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began looking at alleged gender discrimination in Hollywood. But the 2015 review, which was sparked by a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, failed to get traction. A little more than a year later, President Obama left office and President Trump ushered in a sea change in attitudes.

Hollywood employment also has become more unstable in recent years because of a pullback in production by the major studios during the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes.

Despite years of industry leaders vocalizing a need for greater diversity in executive suites and decision-making roles, and the chronic inequity remaining a punchline for award show jokes, the climate has changed.

Trump returned to office less than a year ago and immediately called for the end of diversity and inclusion programs.

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, abolished diversity programs within his agency and launched investigations into Walt Disney Co.’s and Comcast’s internal hiring programs. Carr wants to end programs he sees as disadvantaging white people.

Paramount, led by tech scion David Ellison, agreed to dismantle all diversity and inclusion programs at the company, which includes CBS and Comedy Central, as a condition for winning FCC approval for the Ellison family’s takeover of Paramount. That merger was finalized in August.

Lauzen said she’s unsure what her future studies may find.

Corporate consolidation has added to the uncertainty.

Warner Bros., a signature Hollywood studio for more than a century, is on the auction block.

Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery’s board agreed to sell the film and television studios, HBO and HBO Max to Netflix in an $82.7-billion deal. However, the Ellisons’ Paramount is contesting Warner’s choice and has launched a hostile takeover bid, asking investors to tender their Warner shares to Paramount.

“Consolidation now hangs over the film industry like a guillotine, with job losses likely and the future of the theatrical movie-going experience in question,” Lauzen wrote in her report.

“Add the current political war on diversity, and women in the film industry now find themselves in uncharted territory,” Lauzen wrote. “Hollywood has never needed permission to exclude or diminish women, but the industry now has it.”

It was abundantly clear to actor-director Bradley Cooper that if “Is This Thing On?,” his comedy-drama set in New York’s stand-up scene, lacked authenticity, the film would fail. With the iconic Comedy Cellar at its heart, he found the key to unlocking that — by casting several of the real-life comedians who regularly take the stage there. Among them were two women at the top of their game right now with sold-out shows and substantial social media followings: Chloe Radcliffe and Jordan Jensen.

“Bradley fell in love with the Comedy Cellar and the relationships that go on there,” Jensen recalls.

“Is This Thing On?” is based on an anecdote from the life of British comedian John Bishop, whose career started when he stumbled into an open-mic night in Manchester, England, while temporarily separated from his wife. In the film, Will Arnett plays a fictionalized version of Bishop, Alex Novak, a finance guy, and the narrative shifts to New York.

“The idea was, ‘If we use people who aren’t comics to play comics, there’s not going to be a juxtaposition between Arnett and this super-tight group of people,’” Jensen says. “His character is this stuffy, bored guy, and he enters into this world of people who have day jobs just like him, but they step into this room, and it’s all dirty humor and busting each other’s balls.”

Radcliffe realized early on that Cooper, who also produced and co-wrote the film, understood the level of commitment required to portray the stand-up world realistically. She saw the first signs of him getting it when he screened 10 minutes of test footage for the comedians at his home, just a few blocks from the Greenwich Village club.

Comedian Chloe Radcliffe on stage as her character, Nina, in “Is This Thing On?”

(Jason McDonald / Searchlight Pictures)

“The second the test footage started, I immediately felt so confident that we are in the right hands,” she recalls. “Any lingering doubt or trepidation was totally washed away immediately, because Bradley just has such clarity of vision and taste. It was clear that he and Will had both embedded themselves deeply in the world of stand-up. Bradley wanted to capture what is real, and he was like, ‘If that means going off script, do it. If that means going to a weird place, do it.’”

Jensen adds, “I don’t think I said one actual line from the script. I would improvise something, and along the way, as I got the point across, it was OK. He might occasionally tell us to say a line, but it was in between 100% moments of improvisation, and he would be rolling camera.

“When I saw the movie, it was really moving. The way he showed it reintroduced me to it and made me be like, ‘Oh yeah, this place is f— magical.’”

Cooper wanted to capture what goes on offstage as well as on, and a significant part of that happened around a particular table at the Olive Tree Cafe, which sits above the underground comedy club. It’s where the acts gather before, after and in between their sets.

“We shot a scene around the comics’ table on the very first day,” Radcliffe says. “About a week or 10 days later, Bradley wanted to reshoot it because he looked at the footage and realized that it looked like a movie. He wanted to make something that looked like the real environment. I admire that so much. Not only is he willing to ask us for our input, but he’s also willing to go back and make new decisions based on new information.”

According to Jensen, in another scene in the cafe, the filmmaker asked whether the comedian’s coats, which PAs had removed from the shot, would be there, and when he was told they would, ordered them to be put back. The level of detail even extended to whether the comics would share fries from a single plate or have their own. It all mattered.

Comedian Jordan Jensen was used to riffing through her scenes on camera while playing her character, Jill, in “Is This Thing On?”

(Jason McDonald / Searchlight Pictures)

Radcliffe describes Cooper’s reverence for the Comedy Cellar and the comics as an appreciated display of “humility and willing” that extended to both the filmmaker and Arnett, asking for their input on techniques that would improve Novak’s set.

“We wound up chatting about things like where the funny idea is in a punch line, so you might rearrange the sentence so that the most surprising part of it comes at the end. That’s an unnatural way of delivering that sentence,” she reveals. “I would see Will running the set at the Cellar before the shoot, and he is so naturally funny that even if he went off script and started riffing, he instinctively hits punch lines. He has this natural sense of rhythm.”

However, neither the actor nor the director, who also plays Novak’s best friend, Balls, rested on their laurels. To gauge real audiences’ reactions to the material, they ran it multiple times in rooms for months before filming started. It’s something Jensen calls “the ballsiest thing I’ve ever seen a person do.”

“I would be on a show months before the movie was happening,” she says. “They’d be like, ‘Here’s Alex Novak,’ and I was like, ‘Who is that?’ I would see that it was Will Arnett and then I’d be like, ‘F—, he’s bombing. Oh, this is the movie.’”

However, the bombing was intentional, and things would change as the set progressed. She continues, “What I realized is they had written it so that the first chunk in the movie, he doesn’t do so great, the second chunk he does a little better, and the last chunk he does the best, which is how comedy works. I can’t imagine in a million years doing that and not breaking at some point, and being like, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m actually doing this for a movie.’”

While Arnett was on stage, Cooper would stand in the back of the room, taking notes, making changes and doing research. However, Jensen says watching Arnett tank, even on purpose, was “brutal.”

Will Arnett with director Bradley Cooper on the set of “Is This Thing On?”

(Jason McDonald / Searchlight Pictures)

“These were not open mic nights; they were real shows. It was Will Arnett’s reputation, and he was bombing on purpose, but it totally worked out in the long run. He was operating like a real comic up there.”

There were also little things that Arnett did, sometimes by accident, that made his delivery next-level. One example is when he breathes into the microphone.

“It was totally an improvised thing,” Jensen enthuses. “It was this moment of awkwardness that is so authentic that it makes you immediately empathize with him. You’re like, ‘Oh, man, I know that feeling of the air leaving your mouth, hitting the mic, and now everybody has heard that you’ve let out a sigh of grief.’”

Radcliffe, who plays Nina, and Jensen, who plays Jill, are close friends in real life and read for each other’s roles. Aside from being able to take Cooper and Arnett behind the curtain of the comedy scene, their relationship added an extra level of authenticity to the film and to each other’s performances.

“We’ve been really close since pre-pandemic, and she and I have a lot of similar energies,” Radcliffe muses. “We can both be trashy little gremlins. She has a level of aggression that I don’t quite step into, and I think I have a level of exasperation that she doesn’t quite step into. We play off each other really well. She’s so subversive and transgressive, and she’s got such a magnetism in where she is willing to go on stage that I think is unmatched in a lot of other comics working right now.”

Jensen, who is a big fan of Cooper’s work, recalls being starstruck when he first opened the door to his home when the cast came over to read the script for the film. “He opened the door and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bradley.’ I just looked at Chloe over his shoulder, beelined right to her, and snuggled up next to her on the couch, because I was so intimidated,” she said. “It would have still been great if she weren’t there, but having her there was the best. It’s one of those things where when I’m really old, I’ll tell people, and they won’t believe me.”

As “Avatar: Fire and Ash” headed to the big screen this month, theater owners held their breath.

In an uneven year that saw two billion-dollar hits and a viral “chicken jockey” craze, but also a disastrous first quarter and a nearly 30-year-low at the October box office, the end of December was the last chance for theaters to make up ground.

But even James Cameron and the Na’vi — the latest “Avatar” film has already grossed more than $472 million globally — couldn’t save 2025 from a disappointing conclusion.

Box-office revenue in the U.S. and Canada is expected to total $8.87 billion for the year, up just 1.5% from last year’s disappointing $8.74 billion tally, according to movie data firm Comscore. More troubling is that 2025’s domestic box-office haul is projected to be down more than 20% compared with 2019, before the pandemic changed audiences’ movie-going habits and turbocharged streaming in ways that the exhibition industry is still grappling with.

The problem: Fewer people are buying movie tickets. Theatrical attendance is running below last year’s levels, with an estimated 760 million tickets sold as of Dec. 25, according to media and entertainment data firm EntTelligence. Last year, total ticket sales for 2024 exceeded 800 million.

Part of the explanation for the falloff in cinema revenue and admissions lies in the movies themselves.

Industry experts and theater owners say the quality and frequency of releases led to dips in the calendar that put extra pressure on the other movies to perform. Once-reliable genres such as comedies and dramas are facing a much tougher time in theaters, and female moviegoers — who came out in droves in 2023 for “Barbie” — were underserved in a year that largely skewed toward male-leaning blockbusters.

“It’s fair to say that 2025 didn’t quite reach the levels many of us expected at the start of the year,” Eduardo Acuna, chief executive of Regal Cineworld, said in a statement. “A big part of that comes down to a lack of depth in the release schedule, and the struggle of many smaller titles to break through.”

Even big-name stars such as Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Dwayne Johnson and Sydney Sweeney couldn’t prop up attendance for films such as Sony Pictures’ “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” A24’s “The Smashing Machine” and Black Bear Pictures’ “Christy,” all of which flopped.

And despite the critical acclaim and stacked cast list for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” the film has stalled domestically at $71 million, with a global total of $205 million.

“One Battle After Another” had a budget of about $130 million, while “The Smashing Machine” reportedly cost $50 million and has grossed just $21 million worldwide.

“The challenge facing Hollywood is how to reconcile the budgets of these films with how much they can earn in theaters and down the road, eventually, in streaming,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.

Universal Pictures’ “Wicked: For Good” hauled in more than $324 million, but it was one of few big blockbusters targeted to women. (Taylor Swift’s “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” which brought in $50 million globally, was another.)

Though the summer was marked by a number of big films, including Warner Bros.-owned DC Studios’ “Superman,” Universal’s “Jurassic World Rebirth” and Apple’s “F1 The Movie,” most were geared toward male audiences.

Female-focused films are “are few and far between,” said Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, an entertainment data and research firm. “There should be something for everyone playing most of the time, and that isn’t the case.”

To be sure, there were some bright spots for the industry, including success from young audiences.

Warner Bros. Pictures’ “A Minecraft Movie” was the highest-grossing domestic film this year, with $423.9 million. Close behind was Walt Disney Co.’s live-action adaptation “Lilo & Stitch,” which collected $423.8 million in the U.S. and Canada and a total of $1 billion worldwide.

Counting those two, five of the year’s top 10 domestic-grossing films had PG ratings, including “Wicked: For Good,” Disney’s animated “Zootopia 2” and Universal’s live-action “How to Train Your Dragon.”

“In general, the good news about the year is that most of the big hits involved young audiences,” said Tom Rothman, chair and CEO chief executive of Sony Pictures’ motion picture group. “There is a bit of a youth-quake.”

Disney capitalized on the big year for family-friendly fare.

The Burbank entertainment giant recently crossed $6 billion at the global box office for the year, powered by billion-dollar hits such as “Lilo & Stitch” and “Zootopia 2,” and marking the company’s biggest year since 2019. (Though it wasn’t all sunny for Disney this year, as Pixar’s original animated film “Elio” misfired, as did the live-action film, “Snow White,” which was mired in controversy.)

Another notable youth driver was “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” from Sony Pictures in partnership with its anime banner, Crunchyroll. The film had a massive opening weekend haul of $70 million in July on its way to a domestic gross of $134 million and a global total of $715 million, highlighting the increasing popularity of anime.

“The mainstreaming of anime at the theatrical box office is a really significant part of what happened this year and a really good sign,” Rothman said. “You’re bringing in young audiences.”

Not surprisingly, established intellectual property — whether video games, known franchises, novels or comic books — still topped the charts this year, with nine of the top 10 domestic films tied to an existing title.

That familiarity at the box office counts when moviegoers, particularly families, are looking for movies to watch. Viewers can be choosy about how they spend their cash and time, and may not always want to gamble on a movie they’ve never heard of.

“Meaningful IP still has an advantage in getting people to come to the theater, though it’s not the only way to do it,” said Adam Fogelson, chair of Lionsgate’s motion picture group, which saw success this year with an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “The Long Walk,” as well as franchise film “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.”

Horror flicks also scared up plenty of business in 2025. Warner Bros., in particular, had a string of wins in fearful films, including Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” and “Final Destination Bloodlines.”

In one notable exception, Blumhouse had a rare miss with “M3GAN 2.0,” the follow-up to the 2022 cult favorite. In an interview on “The Town” podcast, Blumhouse Productions Chief Executive Jason Blum blamed the sequel’s shortcomings on a change in genre from the original.

As 2025 draws to a close, industry insiders and theater owners are more optimistic about next year’s box office prospects.

Several big films are set to release in 2026, including Christopher Nolan’s much anticipated “The Odyssey,” Disney and Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Doomsday,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three,” as well as Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” and “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” from Universal, Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment.

That anticipation is also clouded by the uncertainty of the impending Warner Bros. deal and what that will mean for movie releases.

Many cinema owners fear that a takeover by Netflix will limit or eliminate the theatrical exclusivity of Warner Bros. films, though Netflix executives have said they will honor the company’s current and future commitments to the big screen. And if Paramount were to buy the company, theatrical exhibitors fear that the number of films would decrease, leaving them with less content to show. (Paramount CEO David Ellison has said the company did not plan to release fewer movies.)

Any deal is expected to take at least a year to complete.

In the meantime, Hollywood will wait to see how strong the 2026 slate truly is.

“There are a lot of great titles out there, and that’s why people have been calling 2026 a return to form,” said Bock of Exhibitor Relations. “Even though 2026 is very promising, can Hollywood keep delivering year-in and year-out?”

The passenger said she was flung out of her seat when the plane suddenly dropped – Ryanair has stated the plane was forced to make a U-turn due to air turbulence

A passenger aboard the Ryanair flight forced to return to the United Kingdom after a mid-flight emergency has said the experience ‘felt like something out of a horror movie’.

The Boeing 737 MAX, which departed from Birmingham Airport at about 2.50pm on Sunday, December 28, issued a 7700 squawk over Brittany, France, after reaching an altitude of 35,000ft. This code signifies a general emergency.

The Boeing was bound for Tenerife but was forced to return to the UK mid-flight.

“It felt like something you see on a horror movie,” said a 33-year-old passenger from Lichfield, who did not wish to be named.

“We were smooth cruising then out of nowhere all of a sudden the plane jerked to the left extremely quickly and then to the right, it felt like a loss of control, and then we plummeted down and we were flung out of our seats,” the passenger said.

Passengers informed The Aviation Herald that flight FR1121 experienced turbulence, resulting in injuries to several individuals while cabin service was underway. The flight then made a U-turn and descended to FL100 (flying at 10,000ft).

The aircraft safely touched down back at Birmingham around one hour and 32 minutes after take-off. According to AirLive, it was parked on a remote stand at the airport for paramedics to attend to passengers. The severity of the passengers’ injuries is yet to be determined.

“I came out physically unharmed but the mental toll this has taken it awful… this has really traumatised me,” the woman said.

“The cabin crew said within their 10 years as cabin crew they’ve never experienced anything like it.”

She said other passengers claimed to see a fighter jet pass the Boeing before the incident, but this has not been confirmed.

Ryanair said in a statement: “”FR1121 from Birmingham to Tenerife on 28th December returned to Birmingham Airport shortly after take-off due to air turbulence.

“The aircraft landed normally before passengers disembarked and returned to the terminal, where a small number of passengers were provided with medical assistance. This flight continued to Tenerife at 21:06 local.”

The Mirror has reached out to the airline for further comment.

The academy has recognized “One Battle After Another” filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s prodigious talents with plenty of nominations over the years. But Oscar voters seem to have been waiting for frogs to rain from the sky to give him an award. The most successful film of his career could change that.

11

Anderson’s nominations total so far includes five for writing, three for directing and three for best picture, all without winning.

2-for-8

Anderson’s rough contemporary and fellow Angeleno, Quentin Tarantino, has received fewer nominations but won twice, both for writing.

28

Years between Anderson’s first nomination, for writing “Boogie Nights,” and finally winning an Oscar, if he does, in March.

26

Years between Martin Scorsese’s first nomination, for directing “Raging Bull,” and finally winning an Oscar, for directing “The Departed.”

3

Anderson’s directing, writing and best picture nominations for 2021’s “Licorice Pizza” suggest the academy understands he is overdue.

3/15/26

Anderson winning for “One Battle After Another” would not be a “makeup” victory but that rare instance of justice arriving via a career-highlight film.

9

Only nine performances from Anderson’s movies have been nominated to date, a total that fails to reflect his gifts as a director of actors (or love of ensemble casts).

1

Of those nine, only Daniel Day-Lewis won, for his lead performance in “There Will Be Blood.”

3

Cinematographer Robert Elswit’s statuette for “There Will Be Blood” and costume designer Mark Bridges’ prize for “Phantom Thread” bring the Oscar total for Anderson’s movies to three.

6

Leonardo DiCaprio (lead actor), Sean Penn (supporting actor) and Teyana Taylor (supporting actress), at least, look like locks for acting nominations for “One Battle After Another,” with Chase Infiniti (lead actress), Benicio Del Toro (supporting actor) and Regina Hall (supporting actress) also contenders.

A ping-pong ball at top speed travels over 70 miles an hour — so fast it could zip across Manhattan in less than two minutes. Director Josh Safdie’s hyperactive, head-spinning “Marty Supreme” keeps pace. Set in 1952 New York, this deranged caper races after a money-grubbing table tennis hustler (he prefers “professional athlete”) named Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) who argues like he plays, swatting away protests and annoying his adversaries to exhaustion.

Hounding his shoe-store co-worker to give him $700 from the safe, Marty hammers the poor sap with every trick he’s got — emotional pressure, physical violence, bribery, humiliation, revenge — until he hits one that wins. The high-strung kid is pure nerve and he looks like one, too; he’s the embodiment of a twitch. But with a paddle in his hands, Marty turns into Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain.” He could win a match swinging an umbrella.

The character’s inspiration is Marty Reisman, one of the so-called “bad boys of ping-pong,” according to a U.S. Table Tennis Assn. official in 1972, explaining why the rascal wasn’t invited to the USA versus China exhibition games referred to as “ping-pong diplomacy.” You may remember those matches from “Forrest Gump,” but Tom Hanks’ guileless sweetheart would never use the sport to smuggle gold bars out of Hong Kong, as the real Reisman once did.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Reisman’s exploits, immortalized in his 1974 memoir “The Money Player,” are too outrageous to squeeze into one film, even for a chaos-feeding filmmaker such as Safdie, going solo after co-directing “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems” with his brother Benny. (A trilogy, maybe.) Reisman’s biography opened with him fleeing French-occupied Hanoi, Vietnam, the day before it fell to the Viet Minh and detoured to a meeting with the Pope in Rome before drunkenly landing a plane in Brazil. The book was optioned shortly after publication. He felt it should star Robert De Niro.

That movie never happened and Reisman died in 2012 at the age of 82, still insisting he deserved to bask in the spotlight. He’d be happy to see Safdie’s “Marty Supreme,” which time-travels audiences back seven decades to when American table tennis players were certain bright days were ahead.

As an athlete, Chalamet seems to have lost muscle for the role. Yet as funny as it is to see a guy this scrawny carry himself like Hercules, he leaps and strikes with conviction. His Marty yearns for prestige. Safdie even concocts a subplot in which he invents his signature orange ball solely so he can wear all-white like the posh jocks of Wimbledon. He starts the film desperate to fly to a tournament in London, in part to escape the walk-up apartment where he’s always squabbling with his mother (Fran Drescher) and uncle (Larry “Ratso” Sloman) and a nosy neighbor (Sandra Bernhard). Perilously, Marty’s secret lover (a simmering Odessa A’zion) lives with her jealous husband (Emory Cohen) in an apartment one floor below.

Marty and A’zion’s Rachel belong together, if only to quarantine their equally manipulative genes from the general population. Before the opening credits, the couple improvises a lie to get some privacy to mate. Cinematographer Darius Khondji sends the camera inside her body to see Marty’s most aggressive sperm wriggle to the finish line. Rachel’s egg becomes the moon; the moon becomes a ping-pong ball. Game on.

From this scene forward, Marty will dash around the city and the globe, chasing his dreams and out-running his parental responsibilities. Along the way, he trips over a gun-toting gangster named Ezra (Abel Ferrara), a faded movie star, Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow, sullen and aloof), and her callous husband Milton (“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary), the chief executive of a pen corporation who thinks Marty can make him a mint in ping-pong-crazed Asia. O’Leary, a first-time actor, easily embodies the face of capitalism.

Flaunting that he can turn anyone into an actor, Safdie crowds his New York with bit parts played by big personalities: magician Penn Jillette, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, basketball player George “The Iceman” Gervin, highwire artist Philippe Petit, playwright David Mamet, journalist Naomi Fry and grocery tycoon John Catsimatidis. The musician Tyler Okonma, better known as the Tyler, the Creator, is great in his feature film acting debut as Willy, Marty’s gambling wingman. He was previously seen onscreen getting electrocuted by a piano in “Jackass Forever.” Okonma brings that same energy here and it’s perfect.

Marty’s main foe — and personality opposite — is a Japanese player named Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) who lost his hearing in the Tokyo airstrikes that happened seven years before and uses a deadly quiet foam-backed paddle. Marty’s friendliest rival, Béla (Géza Röhrig), survived Auschwitz, and in a jaw-dropper of a scene, shares a story of endurance that actually happened to the Polish player Alex Ehrlich. Imprisoned in the camps shortly after winning silver at the World Championships in 1939, Ehrlich was renowned for a record-breaking competitive volley that lasted over two hours, a back-and-forth so relentless that the referee quit with a sore neck. The rhythm of it could be a metronome for this movie’s plot — it whips us around to the point of delighted collapse.

The soundtrack is an unexpected backbeat of synth hits by Tears for Fears and New Order that bleeds into a Tangerine Dream-esque score by Daniel Lopatin — a startling choice for an era where people act like World War II happened yesterday. But to our modern ears, the music has its own vintage: It’s the sound of the greed-is-good 1980s, when movies rooted for ruthless strivers such as “Risky Business’” Tom Cruise, who opened a brothel in his parents’ bedroom.

Safdie’s script, co-written by Ronald Bronstein, is even structured like an ’80s movie that builds up to the big showdown, be it a ski race, a car-washing competition or a frat house decathlon à la “Revenge of the Nerds.” The catch is that Marty — not Endo — may be the bully who deserves to lose. How loudly are we willing to cheer for a callow guy who thinks of WWII as an opportunity for trash talk, boasting he’ll “drop a third bomb” on Endo’s fans? (In fairness, Tokyo promotes their rematch with a poster of Marty that looks uncomfortably close to antisemitic Nazi propaganda, a pointed choice by Safdie and the production designer Jack Fisk.)

Marty is convinced he’s a self-made success who doesn’t need anyone’s help; the people we see him squeeze and squash would disagree. He’s similar to Adam Sandler’s rapacious jeweler in “Uncut Gems,” except that scoundrel contained his damage to the Diamond District and people as shady as him. Safdie sends Marty out to bedevil the world, shipping him to Paris where he gets snippy with a maître d’ who doesn’t speak English and then to Cairo where he steals a chunk of the Great Pyramids.

Listening to a Japanese newsreel describe him as a villain referred to only as “the American,” you realize that “Marty Supreme” is more than a caricature of Reisman. It’s a biography of our national ego, with Marty brashly lecturing the British head of the International Table Tennis Assn. that a champion from the United States would boost the sport’s global reputation. After the commissioner makes this conceited Yank grovel, Marty simply replies: “It’s every man for himself where I come from.”

Like Marty, Chalamet was raised in New York City, and since he arrived on the scene, there’s never been a doubt he’ll win an Oscar. The only question is, when? To Chalamet’s credit, he’s doing it the hard way, avoiding sentimental pictures for pricklier roles about his own naked ambitions. For “A Complete Unknown,” he taught himself to play guitar like Bob Dylan while revealing that the bard was a rat, and in the even-better “Dune: Part Two,” played a naif radicalized into a galaxy-destroying messiah.

Here, Chalamet again fuses his personal drive into his performance, claiming that he spent seven years training to play ping-pong like Reisman, and unlike Tom Hanks in “Gump,” he’s doing his own stunts. Voters seem content to let the young talent dangle, trusting that he’ll continue flogging himself to make more great pictures like this.

The movie’s moxie makes it impossible not to get caught up in Marty’s crusade. We’re giddy even when he’s miserable. Performing with the Harlem Globetrotters in some of the most war-scarred, joy-desperate corners of the planet, his own shame prevents him from appreciating how much he’s entertaining the crowd. When you weigh his selfish desires against any other character’s needs, Marty is as hollow as a ping-pong ball. It really is all about his balls. Their embossing reads: “Marty Supreme — Made in America.”

Following a $1-billion-grossing, Oscar-winning smash could have left writer and director Jared Bush and director Byron Howard feeling like rabbits in the headlights, but they seem to have outfoxed the challenge. “Zootopia 2” has already stampeded past $1 billion to surpass its predecessor, and the awards nominations have just begun slithering in. But how did the sequel survive such high expectations, stay as socially relevant as the original and navigate the peril of too many cooks in the kitchen?

“Animation’s a team sport,” says Howard, referring to the sheer number of people who worked on the film over five years. “It’s 700 in the crew, but in this building, it’s about 1,000 and another 300 in Vancouver. So it’s everyone’s collective ideas, saying, ‘Here’s where we can do better.’ So everyone has skin in the game and they all want these movies to be great. It’s an emotional investment.”

The creative team screened “Zootopia 2” for all of Disney Animation multiple times in various stages of development. A feedback system enabled every employee to respond.

Bush says Disney regularly seeks internal reactions after screenings, “but we asked way more direct questions for this one, like at an audience preview. Then we shared that feedback, unfiltered, with the entire building. That allowed people to see that their feedback mattered because you could actually see ideas that came in [manifest] from screening to screening.”

Bush and Howard acknowledge that having that many collaborators keeps the inspiration flowing but also allows fragments of the colossal group brain to sneak into the film unnoticed. Even they aren’t sure where all the in-jokes are planted.

A “story jam” — reminiscent of a TV writers room — was just one of many avenues for collaboration in the making of “Zootopia 2.”

(Disney)

Like its predecessor, the sequel is packed with movie references and animal puns — “A Moose Bouche”; “Gnu Jersey” — and the directors are quick to spread the credit (or blame). “ ‘A Moose Bouche’ — we’ve gotten emails about that one,” says Howard. “Cory Loftis, our production designer, came up with it.”

There’s a “Star Wars” cantina bit, a soupçon of James Bond in the score at a fancy gala and dashes of Steven Spielberg in the camerawork. It’s easy to spot “Ratatouille” when an animal chef is revealed to have a rat under its hat, but Bush asserts there’s a second reference in that moment — the animal declaring “I knew it!” isn’t just any raccoon, but “Raccacoonie” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” That character is itself a “Ratatouille” reference (and, Bush points out, “EEAAO’s” Oscar-winning supporting actor Ke Huy Quan voices “Zootopia 2’s” lead snake, Gary). So it’s a reference coupled with another reference to another film’s reference to the first reference. Whew.

Those Easter eggs, including an extended callback to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” — the realization of which they credit to animator Louaye Moulayess, a “Shining” superfan — speak to a willingness to cater to audiences beyond kids. Presumably, most children attending “Zootopia 2” haven’t watched Kubrick’s film. That’s a shoutout to the grown-ups for bringing the kids and, hopefully, discussing the historical practice of redlining with them after the show.

Byron Howard, left, and Jared Bush.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The first “Zootopia” was not notable just for funny talking animals but also the fact that the funny animals were talking about bigotry and stereotyping. Perceptive viewers may have noticed a mammalian bias in the original — there were no reptiles to be found in its near-perfect society. It turns out they were discriminated against as a class and denied their rightful place as residents, as we learn in “Zootopia 2.” Bush said that concept fit right in with “continuing this discussion about how we as human beings have a hard time looking past each other’s differences.”

Howard says the diversity-as-strength theme plays out not just in grand terms but also in the dynamic between the two protagonists, Judy (a rabbit, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick (a fox, voiced by Jason Bateman): “Nick and Judy are such different, contrast[ing] characters that are really stronger [together] because of those differences, and that speaks to something we really value, which is differences between each other as a working pair,” he gestures to Bush and himself. “We continue to thrive in that way.”

Howard agrees with the comparison of him and Bush to conductors of a giant orchestra, listening for notes being played just right. He thinks of composer Michael Giacchino “onstage with those virtuosos at their respective instruments; we work with masters all around us, so we have a lot of trust in them.”

However, he admits with all those voices, “Writers have a tough time here because we scrutinize these movies and redo them over and over and over again. Jared is a great example of someone who thrives in this environment.”

Bush, explaining he came from the culture of TV sitcoms and all their constant revisions in writers rooms, says, “We have this amazing luxury of being able to rewrite and rethink and absorb these better ideas over years. It is an extreme luxury.

“There’s nothing else like this in Hollywood that I’ve seen — that level of deep collaboration and iteration. There’s no place I’m ever going to be that I will love as much as this.”

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

Even as the year winds down, there are still some exciting new releases hitting theaters.

Few films this year are arriving on quite the wave of expectation behind Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme,” in part because of the unhinged, go-for-broke promo push from its star Timothée Chalamet. The film tells the story of Marty Mauser, a shoe salesman in 1950s New York who dreams of becoming a champion table tennis player and will stop at nothing to make it happen.

As Amy Nicholson put it in her review, “Like Marty, Chalamet was raised in New York City, and since he arrived on the scene, there’s never been a doubt he’ll win an Oscar. The only question is, when? To Chalamet’s credit, he’s doing it the hard way, avoiding sentimental pictures for pricklier roles about his own naked ambitions. … The movie’s moxie makes it impossible not to get caught up in Marty’s crusade. We’re giddy even when he’s miserable.”

The surprise winner of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” is a gently enigmatic film revolving around, as the title suggests, parents and siblings. Told in three separate stories — set in New Jersey, Dublin and Paris — the film stars Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Charlotte Rampling, Luka Sabbat and Indya Moore.

Tom Waits in Jim Jarmusch’s movie “Father Mother Sister Brother.”

(Atsushi Nishijima / Mubi)

In his review, Tim Grierson wrote, “The film’s persistent brittleness may make some viewers antsy. That’s partly the point, but hopefully, they’ll soon be swept away by the movie’s melancholy undertow. … Eventually, we learn to look past Jarmusch’s deceptively mundane surfaces to see the fraught, unresolved issues within these guarded families. The characters occasionally expose their true selves, then just as quickly retreat, fearful of touching on real conflict.”

Tim Grieving spoke to composer Daniel Blumberg, who won an Oscar earlier this year for “The Brutalist,” about his work on “The Testament of Ann Lee,” director Mona Fastvold’s portrait of the founder of the Shaker religious movement. Singing and dance were an integral part of the Shakers’ spiritual practice, so the music for the film was of special importance.

“Ann Lee was very radical and extreme,” said Blumberg, “and Mona is as well.”

De Los also recently published a list of the 25 best Latino films of 2025 as picked by Carlos Aguilar. His favorites include Amalia Ulman’s “Magic Farm,” Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson’s “Serious People,” Diego Céspedes’ “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.”

All three of this year’s Envelope roundtables are now available to watch: actors, actresses and directors.

New Year’s Eve at the movies

Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps in the movie “Phantom Thread.”

(Laurie Sparham / Focus Features)

When people talk about holiday films, they typically mean Christmas. But what if the movies that featured a New Year’s Eve scene were sneakily better? To judge by the titles playing around town this week, an argument could be made.

Take for example Kathryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days.” An exciting techno-thriller set during the last two days of then-future 1999, it’s about a hustler (Ralph Feinnes) who finds himself in way over his head. The film builds to a huge millennial New Year’s Eve street party filmed in downtown Los Angeles. Still something of a rarity on streaming, “Strange Days” will be showing in 35mm at the New Beverly on Friday afternoon and then at the Aero on Wednesday 31, early enough in the evening to leave time for more fun after.

Then there is Paul Thomas Anderson’s achingly romantic and bitingly funny “Phantom Thread,” in which the controlling fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) initially refuses to leave the house on New Year’s Eve, but then races to be with his muse and lover Alma Elson (Vicky Krieps) after she goes out without him. The movie will be showing on New Year’s Day in 70mm at the Aero.

Anderson’s 1997 “Boogie Nights,” which will show in 35mm at Vidiots on the afternoon of Dec. 31, features a very different take on New Year’s Eve. In a pivotal sequence, many of the film’s characters converge on a NYE party to ring in the transition form 1979 to 1980. It does not go well.

jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in 1960’s “The Apartment.”

(Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)

Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” will play in 35mm at the New Beverly on Saturday and Sunday and also at the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz Theater on Dec. 30. In the film Jack Lemmon is a lonely office drone who finds his complex relationship with a co-worker (Shirley MacLaine) ultimately coming to a head on a fateful New Year’s Eve.

Rob Reiner’s 1989 “When Harry Met Sally…” will likely be playing several times over the next weeks in tribute to the filmmaker. Starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal as two friends trying to figure out if their relationship can (or should) be something more, the film features not one but two memorable New Year’s Eve scenes. It will be playing at the New Beverly on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Katie Holmes, left, and Sarah Polley in the movie “Go.”

(Tracy Bennett / Columbia Pictures)

Doug Liman’s “Go,” from a screenplay by John August, is not strictly speaking a New Year’s Eve movie, but it does take place in the sort of liminal zone of ongoing partying that occurs during holiday time. With a cast that includes Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Timothy Olyphant and many more, the film revolves around a few grocery store co-workers, some low-stakes drug dealing, questionable choices and a lot of miscommunication. The movie shows at Vidiots on Tuesday.

In a review of the film, Kevin Thomas wrote, “When all is said and done, ‘Go’ is a film about people going too far, which works precisely because its makers know when to hold back. ‘Go’ keeps us guessing … but it never forgets it’s a comedy; if it was too serious it would burst like a bubble. So uniformly skilled and talented is the film’s cast, which has 15 featured players, that it is impossible to single out any one. ‘Go’ is perfectly titled: Exhilarating and sharp, it never stops for a second.”

Points of interest

The Marx Brothers’ eternal comic mayhem

Chico Marx, left, Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx and Margaret Dumont in the movie “Animal Crackers.”

(Universal)

It has become a tradition around town for theaters to show Marx Brothers movies at the holidays, and who are we to argue with that? For pure whimsy and comedy that hits somewhere deep in the unconscious, the Marx Brothers are still pretty much unbeatable.

The New Beverly played some Marx Brothers movies on Christmas Day. For those who still want more, Vidiots will be showing 1935’s “A Night at the Opera,” directed by Sam Wood and including the famous stateroom scene in which more and more people cram into a single room on an ocean liner.

On New Year’s Day, the Aero will show 1933’s “Duck Soup,” directed by Leo McCarey, in which the brothers take over the fictional nation of Freedonia. That will be followed by 1930’s “Animal Crackers,” directed by Victor Heerman, in which Groucho Marx plays African explorer Rufus T. Firefly.

Eric Rohmer’s ‘The Green Ray’

A scene from Eric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray.”

(Janus Films)

Initially released as “Summer” in the U.S., Eric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray” won Venice’s Golden Lion in 1986. The film follows Delphine (Marie Rivière, who co-wrote the script with Rohmer), a single woman in Paris, as she struggles to find someone to go on a holiday trip with her, leading to a series of serio-comic misadventures. The film will show Thursday in 35mm at the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz Theater.

Reviewing the film in 1986, Michael Wilmington asked if watching a Rohmer film is really, to quote Gene Hackman on Rohmer movies in “Night Moves,” like watching paint peel? “Not at all,” Wilmington wrote. “‘Summer’ is one of the masterpieces of 1986. It’s one of the most finely wrought, stimulating films of an erratic year. It’s intellectual in the best sense: engaging you emotionally and mentally. It moves faster, wastes less time, and has more to offer than most movies now on view — and those who are skipping it are missing one of the year’s real treats.”

Has there been a year this decade when we’ve been sad to see it go?

I thought about that while reading our “25 ways to banish this no good, very bad year” list, which contains some terrific ideas, and I’d be very happy to watch you jump into the Pacific on New Year’s Day, if you feel so inclined. But they’re all predicated on the idea that this year has given off a stench that needs to be smothered, the same way you’d cleanse your dog in tomato juice after an encounter with a skunk.

And this is true. Even Game 7 of the World Series can’t erase the heartache that 2025 has inflicted upon us, though props to Kiké Hernández for doing his best to distract from the headlines.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, wishing you and yours a better new year. It’s a low bar. I’m optimistic we can jump it.

Predicting ‘Avatar’s’ Oscar chances

Did anyone really want to see a third “Avatar” movie?

Sure, someone must have. It sold $89 million in tickets last weekend, though that number fell short of analysts’ forecast for James Cameron’s three-hour movie. For comparison, 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” brought in $134 million in its opening weekend. That movie, like the series’ 2009 first film, built its $2-billion-plus box office over time.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” may well do the same.

Still, doesn’t it feel like there should be more excitement to go see a movie that might gross $2 billion worldwide? Maybe you were among the first in line to see it last Friday. No judgment. I’ve seen every Cameron movie in a theater, a streak I suspect will continue as long as he’s making films.

The thing is, Cameron himself is giving the distinct impression that he’s ready to move on from “Avatar,” even though he has already written scripts for the fourth and fifth entries in the franchise. He has other projects in the works, adapting “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” which revolves around the true story of the only survivor of both atomic bombs dropped on Japan. And he has teased a “Terminator” reboot.

Cameron is 71, a kid compared to Ridley Scott (88) and Martin Scorsese (83), but still … the clock is ticking.

Do you want him devote another three years (or more) to the lush, gorgeous world of Pandora?

Maybe if “Avatar: Fire and Ash” had spent less time repeating the same themes — and, sometimes, the same scenes — almost beat for beat from the “The Way of Water,” I’d feel differently. The new movie is, of course, a visual feast, though with just three years between the second and third films, the technological advances don’t feel as awe-inspiring this time around. Cameron remains adept at world-building and creating tense action set pieces. He’s also unrivaled at serving up lumpy dialogue, and the new film has serious pacing issues. “Fire and Ash” feels every bit like a 197-minute movie.

When I did my last set of Oscar best picture power rankings on Nov. 3, I put “Fire and Ash” at No. 10, sight unseen. This was in part because Cameron is Cameron and deserves respect and also because would-be contenders like “A House of Dynamite,” “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” “The Smashing Machine” and “After the Hunt” weren’t connecting with voters.

But the franchise fatigue with “Avatar” feels real. It’ll still probably win the visual effects Oscar and pick up a nomination for sound. But I suspect it’s going to fall just outside the 10 movies nominated for best picture.

If that happens, will anyone cry “snub”? Likely not. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” can still inspire wonder, but for the first time in his career, Cameron is spinning his wheels. It feels like he’s ready to return to Earth.

More coverage of ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’

You won’t see a movie with better music and worse dialogue this holiday season than the bizarrely charming “Song Sung Blue,” a biopic about a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond cover band who were a fleeting sensation in 1990s Milwaukee.

If that plot synopsis isn’t a hook, the soundtrack is packed with them, as stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson belt over a dozen Diamond hits including “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “I Am…I Said,” and “Holly Holy.” Of course the couple they’re playing, Mike and Claire Sardina, a.k.a. Lightning & Thunder, also do “Sweet Caroline,” although they disagree over where it belongs in the set list. Mike prefers last, allowing them to showcase his idol’s range beforehand. Claire insists it come first after an incident when withholding it triggers a biker brawl.

Written and directed by Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow”), the movie is itself a cover of Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary on the Sardinas, also titled “Song Sung Blue.” The original is a quirky little indie that reveals truth to be weirder than fiction. What happens to Mike and Claire is so outlandish that you’d roll your eyes if Brewer also included the facts that their real-life wedding climaxed with a concert for a thousand people at the Wisconsin State Fair and that the groomsmen wore tuxedo T-shirts.

Both films are love stories, even if the new version compresses Mike and Claire’s decade and a half marriage into two years. He’s a divorced auto mechanic and recovering alcoholic with a surly-but-sweet distant daughter named Angela (King Princess) and a bit of local renown. She’s a single mom to son Dayna (Hudson Hensley) and her own daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson), when Mike struts into her life wearing lightning bolts on his jacket and tooth. His manager, Dave (Fisher Stevens), is also his dentist.

This is a script that shows and tells. If Mike jokes that Dave deserves a free oil change for missing out on a $10 commission, then you better believe the movie will cut to him under the car doing the job. Every character blurts out exactly what they want with the gusto of belting out ba-ba-baaaah at a certain Neil Diamond chorus.

“I gotta be Neil but I gotta be me too,” Mike says urgently. A couple scenes later, Hudson’s Claire turns to Rachel and pleads, “I just want to sing and feel happy and be loved!” Likewise, as soon as their kids are thrust together on an awkward playdate, the girls get stoned, trauma-bonding about their unstable parents, a cute and corny moment that ensures the audience knows the risks if Lightning & Thunder are forced to hang up their spangles.

The twosome are backed by a tour booker, Tom (Jim Belushi), who dreams of getting them a residency in Vegas, and a motley crew of fellow mimics including a Buddy Holly (Michael Imperioli) and a James Brown (Mustafa Shakir). Shyaporn Theerakulstit, Chacha Tahng and Faye Tamasa have some nice moments as Thai restaurateurs who welcome the Sardinas’ family into their own. Often though, you find yourself watching Anderson as the anxious Rachel who seems most in tune with reality. Can her mom and stepdad’s fantasies of fame actually pay their rent?

There’s a spoiler in the trailer that I recommend avoiding if you can. The argument for it must have been that no one wants to see a musical about two Midwesterners in rhinestones unless something bad happens to them. Most rock biopics have a similar rise-and-fall-and-rise arc; it’s a cliché that works, like plugging “Sweet Caroline” into a bar’s jukebox. But what gives “Song Sung Blue” a wonky kind of depth is that there’s only so high Mike and Claire can rise. When the real-life couple was fired from a steady booking, the club owner justified his actions by saying, “Especially being in Neil Diamond impersonation, your limits are Neil Diamond.”

Fans will counter that the songwriter’s gifts are so ceaseless that younger generations might not even connect each hit with his name. Bopping along to the movie feels like being at a pub trivia night where the answer is always Neil Diamond: That’s right, he also wrote The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.” Begrudgingly, you half-buy into one of the script’s more ludicrous set-ups, that Lightning & Thunder will play their biggest show on the night Diamond is headlining at another venue in town. The greater metro population of Milwaukee is just shy of one and half million people. Sure, why not.

Grinding plot gears aside, the duo’s actual biggest gig is pretty awesome: In 1995, Eddie Vedder invited Lightning & Thunder to open for Pearl Jam. (“What’s a Pearl Jam?” Mike asks.) The quirky mash-up of sequins and flannel gets reenacted here, but this would be a richer movie if it explored why a Seattle grunge band rocketing toward mega-stardom would whisk this act along for the ride. Appreciation for Diamond’s lyrical craft? Respect for the Sardinas’ genuine talents? Or just kitsch?

That Lightning & Thunder peaked when Gen Xers were ascendant makes you yearn for Brewer to grapple with how much of their fan base was ironic. That question, along with Diamond’s ear worms, won’t stop wriggling in my brain. The closest answer I’ve found is in a “Simpsons” episode from around the same time where Homer takes the stage at a cartoon version of Lollapalooza. (“He’s cool,” a pierced punk says with a snort. A buddy asks if he’s being sarcastic, and the kid collapses like a hot air balloon: “I don’t even know anymore.”)

“Song Sung Blue” couldn’t be less cool. But the Sardinas were completely sincere and Jackman and Hudson honor their innocence by playing them straight. (Brewer, however, can’t resist a pratfall where Mike trips singing “Cracklin’ Rosie” in his skivvies.) Jackman looks and sounds so much like Diamond that the concert scenes feel like top-fleet karaoke, and Hudson more than holds her own, even as her Claire is tasked to stare at her husband with starry eyes that sparkle as much as her silver makeup.

Hudson encourages the audience to use Claire’s stubborn buoyancy and perky accent as a life raft when Lightning & Thunder are deluged by extremely bad luck. But the beat Hudson gets exactly right comes in a scene where you’re certain this klutzy melodrama is going to force her to sob. Instead, she refuses. She smiles, and that’s the detail that breaks your heart.

So I cried for her. Then I groaned some more and while I didn’t need an encore, I left the theater humming.

The holiday season is Hallmark’s Super Bowl.

This year alone, Hallmark has 80 hours of original holiday-themed programming, including two unscripted series, two scripted series, a holiday special and 24 movies with titles such as “The Snow Must Go On” and “Christmas at the Catnip Cafe” that run from mid-October to Christmas.

The company also has branched out into the experiences business with a Hallmark Christmas Cruise and the Hallmark Christmas Experience festival in Kansas City, Mo., where the company is based.

“I think that’s one of the most brilliant business decisions they’ve made, and they’re expanding there because they have to,” Anjali Bal, associate professor of marketing at Babson College, said of Hallmark’s experiences business. “It allows a connection between the consumer and the brand on a direct level in a way a movie can’t provide.”

It may seem like a far cry from Hallmark’s roots as a greeting card purveyor, but company executives say the holiday feelings evoked by its cards, ornaments and gift wrap translate into the type of content they produce.

And that plethora of content has turned Hallmark into a Christmas juggernaut, fueling competitors such as Lifetime and Netflix, which also produce holiday romantic comedies in the vein of Hallmark movies.

But Darren Abbott, Hallmark’s chief brand officer, doesn’t seem overly concerned.

“There’s a reason everyone else is trying to do this, and it’s because consumers are looking for this,” he said.

Hallmark’s legacy is rooted in celebrating holidays and Christmas, he said, “and no other business or brand has that.”

Countdown to Christmas

Founded in 1910 by an 18-year-old entrepreneur hawking postcards, Hallmark built its brand over the years through cards, holiday ornaments and retail stores.

The family-owned business ventured into entertainment in 1951 with the television presentation Hallmark Hall of Fame. Today, Studio City-based Hallmark Media operates three cable networks, including the Hallmark Channel, which debuted in 2001, as well as a subscription streaming service.

Though Hallmark had aired holiday movies practically since the inception of its cable channel, the company doubled down on the season in 2009, rolling out “Countdown to Christmas,” a 24-hour-a-day programming block focused solely on holiday content, a tradition that has lasted for 16 years.

Hallmark produces about 100 movies a year, both holiday and non-holiday films.

As a privately-held company, Hallmark did not disclose its finances, though executives acknowledge the holiday season is a key driver of entertainment revenue.

The expansion into entertainment is a way for Hallmark to stay in the zeitgeist over multiple generations and to diversify its business beyond just cards and retail products, analysts said.

“Their television stations and experiences business allows them to stay culturally relevant while staying true to their origin,” said Bal, the marketing professor.

Holiday programming — and the breezy, romantic fare Hallmark has become known for — has become increasingly popular with audiences.

Holiday features, both old movies and new, typically make up more than a third of total movie viewing time in December, according to U.S. television data from Nielsen. That percentage has remained fairly consistent for the last three years, though it reached 42% in December 2021.

Hallmark’s television viewership also edges up in the months leading into the holidays. In October, Hallmark commanded 1% of total viewership across linear TV and streaming, ticking up to 1.2% in November, according to Nielsen data. During that same time, competitor A&E, which owns Lifetime, remained constant at 0.9%.

Hallmark’s feel-good movies typically resonate with audiences across the country. They invariably conclude with happy endings (and at least one kiss), where romantic misunderstandings, financial difficulties and family drama all get resolved. After years of criticism, the movies’ casts and plot lines are diversifying, though experts say there is still room for improvement.

“These films are designed to be highly appealing to broad audiences,” said Kit Hughes, associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, who watched every single Hallmark film released in 2022 for research on the portrayal of small business owners. “They’re good consensus movies.”

To grow its audience and the types of stories it tells, Hallmark has increasingly turned to brand partnerships, including with the NFL.

Last year, the company released a movie centered around a Kansas City Chiefs romance; this year, it released one about Buffalo Bills fans. Hallmark also has a partnership with Walt Disney Co. to release a holiday movie next year set at Walt Disney World. The film stars Lacey Chabert, who Abbott describes as Hallmark’s “Queen of Christmas.”

Meeting Hallmark stars on cruise ships

Hallmark’s foray into the cruise business might seem odd, but it follows a long tradition of entertainment companies
creating real-world experiences with their fans, whether that’s on a ship, in a theme park or on a stage. As part of its massive tourism business, Disney operates its own line of cruise ships that promote the company’s classic characters.

Hallmark launched its first “Hallmark Christmas Cruise” last year on Norwegian Cruise Lines. The inaugural cruise from Miami to the Bahamas sold out even before a planned TV marketing campaign. After racking up a wait list of 70,000 people, Hallmark had to add a second cruise, Abbott said.

For this year’s cruise, from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico, Hallmark had to book a bigger ship to accommodate demand. During the November cruise, attendees participated in various Christmas festivities, such as ornament-making workshops and cookie-decorating, and mingled with Hallmark stars in various on-stage games.

The cruises even spawned an unscripted Hallmark show focused on the experiences of several attendees and their interactions with Hallmark actors.

Many are not exactly household names, but they’ve starred in dozens of Hallmark holiday movies over the years and have loyal fan bases.

Abbott joined the cruise last year, and while he’s not a “cruise person,” he said he was fascinated to see how guests interacted with the stars.

“We’re a bit of a respite from what’s going on in the world right now,” he said, “and these experiences sort of hit on that at the right time and the right place.”

The 1999 romantic comedy is available to watch on Film 4 this evening

This much-loved romantic comedy is set to return to our televisions on Film 4 on Christmas Day.

Written by Richard Curtis, and starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, the nineties classic Notting Hill spins the tale of an improbable romance between a British bookshop owner and a world-famous American actress. The film features a fantastic supporting cast including Rhys Ifans, Hugh Bonneville, Emma Chambers, Tim McInnerny and Gina McKee, and remains a favourite for its feel-good factor, nostalgia and unforgettable quotes.

Its award-winning soundtrack, brimming with hits from iconic musicians, perfectly complements this heartwarming narrative. The life of travel bookshop proprietor William Thacker (played by Grant) takes a surprising twist when the beautiful and renowned US actress Anna Scott (portrayed by Roberts) walks into his Notting Hill, London shop to buy a book. Their lives couldn’t be more contrasting – Will, a divorcee, cohabits with his messy Welsh flatmate Spike (Ifans), while Anna stays at the Ritz hotel during her promotional tour for her latest film.

After Anna surprises Will with a kiss, a flirtation develops into a romance, leading her to meet his eccentric circle of friends. However, as in any love story, there are heartbreaking hurdles to surmount, and the couple find themselves separated due to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Packed with iconic one-liners, including the unforgettable “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy”, the film became a runaway hit with both critics and cinema-goers when it premiered in 1999.

The rom-com hauled in £31 million at UK box offices alone, cementing its position as Britain’s biggest-grossing film of the time. The movie garnered numerous awards, including a BRIT Award for its outstanding soundtrack featuring numbers such as Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing At All, Elvis Costello’s She, and Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine.

Fans still adore every element of this treasured classic. On Rotten Tomatoes, where it boasts an impressive 84% rating, one critic wrote: “Charming, feel-good romantic comedy that still holds up. Notting Hill has just the right mix of humor, heart, and sincerity. “The chemistry between Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts is natural and warm, and the story – while simple – hits all the right notes. It’s light but not shallow, and there are moments that genuinely stay with you.”

Another admirer suggested it should be considered the definitive romantic comedy template: “Expertly written and brilliantly directed!” they said. “Classic that should be a sort of ‘model’ for love stories. With Roberts and Grant in the lead, what could go wrong hey? Razor sharp wit and spectacular characters, this is a winner.” A third viewer, who admitted they don’t usually gravitate towards romantic films, gave it a glowing five-star rating and remarked: “Not a rom-com type but this really worked for me. The two leads were superb / It’s perfect… one of the best rom coms of all time.”

Notting Hill is on Film 4 at 11.15pm on Christmas Day.

My Christmas shopping is done. My annual rewatch of “The Family Stone” is queued up. And our last issue of 2025 is out in the world. Which means it’s time to sign off and start food prep. (I’m doing beef Wellington this year.)

But before I do, I wanted to share stories from this week’s edition of The Envelope, and my thanks to all of you out there for reading. Have a very happy holiday!

The Envelope Directors Roundtable

(Jason Armond / For The Times)

As Rian Johnson said while taping this year’s Envelope Directors Roundtable, filmmakers don’t get many chances to hang out and talk shop — so when they do, it’s always an engaging and illuminating conversation.

Led by moderator Mark Olsen, participants Johnson (“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”), Jon M. Chu (“Wicked: For Good”), Nia DaCosta (“Hedda”), Guillermo del Toro (“Frankenstein”), Mona Fastvold (“The Testament of Ann Lee”) and Benny Safdie (“The Smashing Machine”) shared their unvarnished views on theatrical moviegoing, budgets and artificial intelligence. It’s absolutely worth your time.

And by the by: I’m not sure what The Times’ standard is on the, uh, pungent phrase Del Toro used to describe A.I. during the conversation, so I’ll just say that you can and should see it in all its glory on our Instagram.

‘Roofman’ Is a Christmas Movie

(The Tyler Twins / For The Times)

If you’re looking for a new Christmas movie to watch before Santa squeezes down the chimney tonight, “Roofman” is just the ticket. Like “The Holdovers” last year, Derek Cianfrance’s charming fable about a fugitive (Channing Tatum) who falls for a single mom (Kirsten Dunst) while hiding out in a Toys R Us channels Old Hollywood in a way that can seem sadly out of fashion.

“As we were selling this movie, trying to get it financed, I was pitching it to everyone as a Capra movie and what I kept hearing is, ‘We don’t make those movies anymore,’” as Cianfrance told Kristen Lopez.

Perhaps they should reconsider. Unfairly written off after its $8 million opening weekend in October, “Roofman” went on to gross $34 million worldwide from a slim $19 million budget. Not exactly “Home Alone,” to be sure, but a respectable showing nonetheless — and that’s before its streaming afterlife. And those of us who dearly miss the mid-budget studio movie will take any data we can to show they can still thrive at the right price.

Imax’s banner year

(Robert Alexander / Getty Images)

Speaking of box office, one big bright spot in 2025 was the performance of Imax and other premium formats, which are attracting cinephiles to see movies theatrically, often multiple times, and at a higher price point than the standard movie ticket.

With an estimated $1.2 billion take this year, and a raft of highly anticipated films like Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” slated for 2026, Imax has forged an alliance between our most committed moviegoers and some of our most exciting filmmakers that bodes well for the future of cinemas, writes Daron James.

“Imax superfan Shane Short, who saw ‘Oppenheimer’ 132 times and once sat next to [cinematographer Autumn Durald] Arkapaw during a screening of ‘Sinners,’ says it’s a good thing. ‘What really pulls me into movies is the emotional aspect when connecting with something. For me, it’s hard to get that in a normal theater. Imax is truly the ultimate immersive experience that draws me in.’”

More stories from this week’s issue