movie

In the mindbending documentary “You Can See Everything,” comedian Nathan Fielder and professed inventor Elizabeth Holmes sit in her beach house staring at each other like gunslingers. Fielder is the creator of the TV series “The Rehearsal” and “Nathan for You” who constructs discombobulating sham realities that include bogus businesses such as Dumb Starbucks. Holmes is the former billionaire CEO of Theranos who pretended she’d built a revolutionary blood testing machine to squeeze investors for a few dollars more.

Each is an expert in the con. But Fielder is deadpan and cold where Holmes is earnest and warm — and he’s been nominated for Emmys while, in May of 2023 when the film begins, she’s about to serve an 11-year sentence in federal prison. As the camera cuts between close-ups of his narrowed eyes and her big, blue ones, Fielder tries to suss whether he can trust the famous fibber to be honest with him. The showdown is riveting.

“You’re being real right now?” Fielder asks, dubious.

Holmes beams. “I’m always being real,” she swears with a smile.

Her charm hits Fielder in the gut. His face stays neutral yet you can see his own confidence bleed out across the screen.

Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime”), “You Can See Everything” is the closest Fielder has come to making a traditional documentary. A thrillingly cringe-tastic interviewer, he blurts out blunt questions like a bungee jumper leaping off a bridge, including asking Holmes’ romantic and business partner Billy Evans, the heir to a San Diego boutique hotel chain, whether it’s possible a woman convicted of fraud might be with him for his money.

At nearly three hours long, “You Can See Everything” won’t bore you for a minute. The hook is right there in the title, Fielder’s challenge to the audience: Here’s how Holmes held up to his scrutiny — do we think she’s telling the truth? But be alert. Fielder remains a trickster. One shot in particular proves you can see everything while being blind to what you’re actually watching.

In the first half of the movie, Holmes and Evans, the father of her two young children, give the small crew complete access to their lives during her last weeks of freedom, including inviting Fielder to sleep in their guest bedroom. It’s an act of “radical transparency,” Evans says. As evidence, there’s a fully nude shot of Evans in the shower, testifying to the intimacy the subjects claim they’re granting the team and the confidence they have that the documentary will make them look great. (Evans also boasts that he’s “excellent” in the sack.)

Holmes maintains both her innocence and her eerie smile, a rictus of empathy. She constantly nods, subliminally snake-charming the listener into a sense of agreement. That assessment might be fair or it might be her reputation making you over-analyze her tics. Doubling down, she even insists she’s never told a lie in her life — a claim that momentarily leaves Fielder at a loss for words.

Yet at times, Holmes really does appear to be sincere. Once she surrenders herself to the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas (where, in an unmentioned coincidence, Epstein collaborator Ghislane Maxwell is also incarcerated), the tone shifts into film noir as Fielder struggles to reconcile Elizabeth Holmes’ dual identities. Is she the sweet-natured scientist, the only version of her he’s ever met, or a femme fatale who may still be running a scam?

“It’s personal,” Fielder says of his fixation. How frustrating that he of all people — the dark prince of pranks — may be Holmes’ latest patsy. Composer Ari Balouzian borrows bits of Bernard Herrmann’s violin score from “Vertigo” while cinematographer David Bolen makes the audience hold its breath by framing an image of Fielder and Holmes like they might kiss.

When the movie’s style gets weird, that’s when Fielder is most in his wheelhouse. Stop reading now if you want to preserve the surprise. Micro-analyzing his encounters with Holmes, he reenacts them with an actor, Amanda Seyfried, whose emotional intensity blows into the film like a gust of fresh air. Seyfried, of course, won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing Holmes in the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout.” The twists to come, however, feel as much like last year’s naughty hit “The Housemaid,” the domestic thriller in which Seyfried played a shady wife with a marriage made of lies.

Evans initially seems to think they’re participating in a project closer to Netflix’s glossy portrait of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. The couple doesn’t know much about humor, pop culture or Fielder himself. Fumbling to figure out what makes him tick, Evans attempts to neg the provocateur as someone who lacks the passion to think differently. (Evans may also be the person who used Holmes’ social media account to write a flattering post calling JD Vance “Lisan al-Gaib,” revealing he’s entirely missed the point of “Dune.”)

But thinking differently is Fielder’s awkward superpower. Sooner or later, all of his projects circle around to his concern that he’s simply wired to be unpleasant. His interactions with Holmes are pure cringe comedy, like when she starts to cry perhaps a bit on cue and he stiffly sputters, “Do you want, like, a tissue?” For the record, he brings her one.

As a viewer, the biggest strike against Holmes is this documentary’s very existence. Whether or not you think she’s guilty of fraud, she is about to be separated from her infant and toddler until they’re in grade school. Who on Earth would genuinely want Fielder, the human equivalent of a skunk, to crash their last moments with their loved ones as he does his darnedest to stink up the place?

Fielder is most comfortable as the film’s villain, shooting himself lurking in the couple’s house like “Halloween’s” Michael Myers. At times, his presence does feel monstrous. In one scene, he needles Evans about whether he thinks his soulmate has ever lied to him while Holmes is on the phone in the next room, tearing up as she asks how often she’ll be able to bathe in prison.

The film doesn’t drill into the technical details of Theranos beyond one dizzying scene where Fielder tries to pin Holmes down on exactly what she meant when she said her machine can run hundreds of different tests. She means it just as I would if I bragged I can benchpress a beer keg — that is, once I strength-train beyond my piddly 5 lb dumbbells.

Instead, it tilts into becoming a caper flick as Seyfried’s commitment to understanding her character’s motivation inspires the actor to invite herself along. The drama they uncover is psychological, as befits an era where Silicon Valley CEOs are closer to cult leaders than engineers, making their cash from being televangelists for their IPOs. And both are attuned to the moments when Evans lets his aggravation slip. One scene is a doozy.

Ultimately, suspicion reigns. “You Can See Everything” is an absorbing study of public presentation and private doubts, a documentary that asks more questions than it answers. I hope Fielder will smile and nod approvingly at me if I say I left the film distrusting him, too, especially Seyfried’s re-staging of a long monologue Holmes delivered in prison where recording devices aren’t allowed. Can we believe that Holmes really did say, “I’m tired of having other people speak for me,” or was that laugh line written by the master manipulator himself? I’m now as paranoid as he is — and what a pleasure.

For over five decades, there have existed two types of movie lover: those who have been at least a little corrupted by Ken Russell’s 1971 iconoclasterpiece “The Devils” and those who haven’t seen it. With the release of a newly restored director’s cut, which premiered in Cannes this year to a reception that begs to be described as orgiastic, ejaculatory, lubricious or orgasmic — take your pick — the unjustly deprived inhabitants of the latter category get to be inducted into the former.

Some are going to hate it. Some may affect a “can’t see what all the fuss is about” attitude — that is their right, as it is mine to simply not believe them. But some, witnessing what critic Judith Crist once referred to as a “grand fiesta for sadists and perverts” will find that abandoning themselves to its wantonly grotesque, profane imagery will feel like the giddiest liberation. From what, exactly? The tyranny of tastefulness? The despotism of decency? Whatever it is, blasphemy loves company, so welcome, sickos!

Several honey-roastings beyond hammy and a hundred rows of tents beyond camp, “The Devils” tells the story of a real event: the 1634 heresy trial and execution of Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a libertine Catholic priest, who fell afoul of the religious and political establishments when defending the independence of the Protestant-friendly fortified city of Loudon in western France. The torrid tale involves an order of Ursuline nuns led by hunchbacked Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) who accuse Grandier of witchcraft, which provides wily Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) and peevish Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) with the pretext for suppressing dissent.

Aldous Huxley’s 1952 nonfiction account “The Devils of Loudon,” and John Whiting’s 1960 play “The Devils” both formed the source material for Russell’s screenplay, in the sense that he clearly read them, then flung them, along with the Latin bible, the Kama Sutra, a bit of Looney Tunes, a dose of swinging ’60s psychedelia and some of the more stomach-turning passages from the Marquis de Sade onto the pyre of his own unholy, lapsed-Catholic imagination.

The resulting film became infamous almost as soon as it was released and has never been readily available in the U.S, at least not in its full form. The 2026 cut (technically the first release from Clockwork, a distribution arm of the newly merged megacorp Skydance, which is hilarious) reinstates several minutes, including the full “Rape of Christ” sequence, in which a bevy of uninhibited and un-habited nuns writhe atop a statue of the crucified Christ, as well as the scene where Redgrave’s deranged, scoliotic Sister Jeanne apparently begins to masturbate on Grandier’s charred femur bone.

Both of these sequences have long been the Holy Grail for aficionados, but they are not the most impressive thing about this new version: That would be the immaculate re-conception of its visual splendor, which makes the movie dazzlingly sharp and new. The edges of Derek Jarman’s severe, anachronistically abstract sets are crisp and white again, the blood so very bloody and Oliver Reed’s eyes, which in the older, muddier versions look gray-brown, are suddenly so vivid they remind you that the hottest flames — hotter than the screaming orange conflagration that eventually consumes him — actually burn blue.

Hotness defines Reed’s Grandier beyond just his eyes and the smoky baritone in which he delivers his proclamations, prohibitions and occasional jokes. “Do you love the church?” asks Baron de Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton) as mad-eyed hipster Witchfinder Father Barre (Michael Gothard) drives another wedge between his mangled legs. “Not today,” grunts Grandier.

It’s hard to imagine any other actor being convincingly witty under torture and at other times quite silly (as when he fends off an attack using a stuffed crocodile that he happens to have just thrown out of a nearby window) while still radiating such charismatic cocksmanship that the local womenfolk invent sins just to confess to him. The mere mention of his name can send an entire hysteria of nuns into roiling spasms of sexual frenzy.

Vanessa Redgrave, center, in the restored “Ken Russell’s The Devils.”

(Warner Bros. Clockwork)

But to glimpse Reed here, at his most beautiful, is to think: yup, plausible. And yet his towering performance is characterized by restraint, even more so as the ghastly climax arrives, and we realize that all of Reed’s brutish sensuality, all of Russell’s sensationalism and all of “The Devils’” chicanery, buffoonery and primping, preening vanity have been in service of a furious message that is as deadly serious as its presentation is garish.

That message — a howl of righteous anger at state corruption and the perversion of religion to serve the nefarious agendas of cruel, power-mad men — is what makes “The Devils” sacrilegious yet not apostate. It does not scorn God or faith, but the misuse of both by petty manipulators. Sure, Russell has a little dirty fun in doing so — OK, a lot of dirty fun. However, charges of “The Devils” therefore being an inherently sexist piece of work also don’t really stand up, and not only because of Redgrave’s fearlessly creepy, giggly performance of outré erotic obsession.

In fact, there’s a whole feminine tragedy written in one single monologue: “Most of the nuns here are noblewomen who have embraced monastic life because there was not enough money at home to provide them with dowries,” crows Jeanne crookedly, “Or they were unmarriageable because ugly and a burden to the family.” Remembering that the naked nuns are not cloistered because of some vocational dedication to Christ but because of their troublesome uselessness to the patriarchal order, they become that much more sympathetic. These women are just doing what they must to survive another day as the most expendable members of a grossly unequal society; who among us should begrudge them an orgasm or two while they’re at it?

The debauchery is the point. Just as Grandier’s ultimate sacrifice is only made meaningful by his history of repeated, lascivious indulgence in the fleshier sins, so can “The Devils” be an unapologetically maximalist exhibition of carnal depravity that is also quite profoundly moral. And that its morality involves speaking truth to power and resisting authoritarian control makes it shockingly relevant right now. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1971, critic Charles Champlin ended his elegant pan with the observation that “you weep not for the evils and the ignorance of the past, but the cleverness and the sickness of the day.” To that, as to many of the negative responses, especially in our peculiarly sickly times, it is possible simply to respond, “Yes, isn’t that great?”

Imagining the movie lying dormant all these years just waiting for the right moment to be reborn, it becomes irresistible to conflate that small section of the public who have been avidly anticipating its return with Sister Jeanne, clamoring for the elusive object of her lust through a barred window. And to once more conflate Grandier — the repentant sinner immolated on the pyre of mass delusion, political machination and religious intolerance only to be rehabilitated as a charismatic martyr for liberty — with “The Devils” itself, as it finally rises from the bone-ash of its contemporary reception to shock, titillate, corrupt and invigorate anew. What you choose to do with its charred femur is between you and your God.

As Puerto Rico continues to grapple with the long aftermath of Hurricane Maria — from an unreliable electrical grid to ongoing water shortages — the need for stories that see the island as more than a backdrop feels especially urgent.

That’s part of what makes “Hurricane Seasons,” an intimate new independent film about a Puerto Rican family returning home, feel so timely. The film, which screens Sunday at the Newport Beach Film Festival, stars comedian Aida Rodriguez as Glori, a Brooklyn-based artist and community-center worker. She returns to Puerto Rico to help her sister (Justina Machado) care for their terminally ill mother (Priscilla Lopez).

When their matriarch convinces the family to embark on a bucket-list road trip around the island, old family secrets surface as the 2019 protests following Hurricane Maria unfold around them. Directed by Nicole Gomez Fisher and written by Xavier Ortiz — with Rodriguez also serving as a producer — the film is both a story of a multigenerational family and a love letter to Puerto Rico.

For Rodriguez, who is best known as a stand-up comedian, “Hurricane Seasons” also marked a return to a part of her artistic identity that existed long before comedy — her love of acting. But she admits that stepping back into acting, especially as the film’s protagonist, wasn’t an easy transition.

Aida Rodriguez, left, and Priscilla Lopez in a scene from “Hurricane Seasons,” directed by Nicole Gomez-Fisher.

(Laura T Magruder)

“It was terrifying. It was very scary because as a stand-up comedian, I work very hard at trying to obtain my most authentic self so that I can share it with everybody — to be my truest self, my truest Aida,” she says. “And when you loan yourself to a character and the art form of acting, you’re loaning yourself to that character and bringing yourself to that character, of course, because that is why they choose you. But you are telling a story from the perspective of another person.”

Rodriguez had pursued acting before going into stand-up comedy. Upon moving to Los Angeles, she quickly booked acting work, signed with an agency and began taking classes.

But comedy eventually taught her to do almost the opposite of what acting required.

“When I started doing standup, the direction and the notes were always like: ‘Release any character you have in mind and just access yourself,’” she says. “So it was a battle for me. Coming back to becoming an actor and giving the character Glori what Glori deserved — and allowing Glori to live, and Aida to sit in the back — became something important for me to do.”

She adds that it took a lot of work with coaches and classes for her to relax into acting again, allowing Aida the comedian to rest while focusing on what this role required of her.

The film’s protagonist, Glori, is a Brooklyn-born-and-raised Puerto Rican woman whose connection to the island runs deep, despite her living stateside. This is something Rodriguez, who is half Puerto Rican and half Dominican, born and raised in the States, also personally relates to.

That tension — between where you live, where your family comes from, and who gets to decide whether you are “Puerto Rican enough” — is one of the film’s central themes and one reason the script resonated with Rodriguez.

“My testimony through my art has always been finding unity, solidarity, power and connection with other people,” she says. “I think that the story of growing up in the States and connecting to the island is a universal story that most people, regardless of where they come from, experience. [There’s this] idea that you’re never American enough nor whatever you are — in this case Puerto Rican enough — because there’s always a judge and jury on both sides.”

Rodriguez sees those tensions as a consequence of a much larger and complex history. She believes so much of the judgment on both sides is a lingering effect of colonization.

“For me, that was one of the most attractive things about the script — [it] was being able to engage in a conversation about what being Puerto Rican really is,” she says. “Is it based on colonial standards? Or is it based on maintaining our cultural richness and our legacy, that is handed down to us regardless of where we are?”

That question takes on even more weight today as Puerto Rico sits in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which Rodriguez believes shifted the relationship between Puerto Ricans on the island and those living stateside.

“There was a shift, because there are wounds from both places,” she says. “There are wounds from the people on the island that stayed and stuck it out. [They want to ask] the ones who left, ‘why do you get to claim this, if you’re not here sticking it out with us?’ Then the people who leave feel like, ‘we had to do this, so that we can not only survive, but send money back to the island.”

Rodriguez explains that, in many ways, the aftermath of the hurricane sparked arguments on both sides that were necessary to begin healing the tension. She believes it highlighted issues that Puerto Ricans, as part of a diaspora, could no longer ignore; it also highlighted an island and a community that Americans outside of the Latine community paid little to no attention to.

“It took a hurricane for people to know what Puerto Ricans were,” she says. “I think there was a cultural shift and there was a conversation that needed to be had, about what happens on the island. And what that means to those of us who are not there.”

That conversation serves as the meat and bones of “Hurricane Seasons,” in which Puerto Rico isn’t simply a location. It’s an integral presence in the story. Rodriguez, Ortiz and Gomez Fisher all agreed that filming most of the movie on the island was essential, not only creatively but also economically and culturally.

“The other thing that was very important about taking the movie back to Puerto Rico was to invest in Puerto Rico and to stimulate some sort of revenues for the island and that the crew was a Puerto Rican crew,” she says. “The DP [director of photography] was a Puerto Rican DP — all people that live on the island.”

It was important to them that if they were going to tell a story about Puerto Rico that was also shot in Puerto Rico, that Puerto Ricans on the island actually benefited from the production.

“It’s not cool to go to Puerto Rico and shoot a movie and bring in your own people from the States, and the people in Puerto Rico have to be inconvenienced with their roads being blocked and things shut down and an influx of Americans that come there to be disrespectful and them not making anything out of it,” Rodriguez says.

This commitment shows in the protest scenes. Rather than using background actors, the film features real Puerto Rican residents, including a local activist and singer.

“It didn’t feel rehearsed. It didn’t feel fake,” she says. “I just think that the feelings and the passion and the rage and the sense of urgency is still there.”

Ortiz’s commitment to specificity extended to the family casting, intentionally matching the actors to the real-life relatives they are based on.

“It wasn’t performative. It was actually real because that’s what all of our families look like,” she says. “Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, we just have that diversity because of all the stuff that’s happened in the past.”

Glori’s character also represents a refreshing departure from the way Latina women are often portrayed onscreen. She is a mother, a daughter, a community center worker, an artist — and a woman with a complicated romantic and family history. She is beautiful and desirable, but her sexuality isn’t the defining characteristic of her existence — something we don’t see enough when it comes to Latina roles.

“For me, I didn’t have to step outside of myself for the role, which was really refreshing because every audition that I ever get, I do have to step out of myself because when people write Latinas in Hollywood, they tend to write them one way,” says Rodriguez. “They look a certain way, they talk a certain way, and that’s not the reality of what being Latino, especially in America, is like.”

Rodriguez could freely inhabit a Latina character without feeling as though she had to perform her Puerto Rican-ness for the audience.

“I didn’t feel like I had to perform my Latinidad. I could just exist in it,” she says.

Rodriguez adds she’s ready for a Hollywood that wants Latina actors to have the same range of characterization that white actors have long been afforded. She’s open to seeing Latinas being everything in TV and film, where can they exist in a world in which they can just be people who just happen to be Latinas.

“I really do look for a day when we can just be people and not just be the funny, spicy friend,” she adds. “Some Latinas are not spicy. Some Latinas are nerds, and some Latinas are quirky, and some of them are goofy and some of them are clumsy. And just like everybody gets to see the spectrum of whiteness with all the different kinds of characters, I would love to see that for our people. For all people of color, actually. I think it’s important to see us all as full human beings, and that means that we can be anything.”

The film’s multigenerational story touches on the cultural inheritance passed between mothers, daughters and grandmothers — whether through old traditions or ordinary rituals. It’s something audiences, regardless of background, can likely relate to.

“The most important message that I’ve kept from my [foremothers] was never to lose my sense of Puerto Rico; that, even if I don’t live in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico lives in me,” she says. So much of that inheritance lives in the little things she remembers about her Puerto Rican grandmother, she says, from the té de tilo she’d make for an upset stomach; the recao that grew on her grandmother’s balcony because she didn’t have a backyard; or the azabache she still wears to this day for spiritual protection. They are the same small traditions she has passed on to her kids.

“My daughter makes better arroz con gandules than all of us,” Rodriguez says. “And her recipe is true to what my grandmother’s recipe was. That will continue to live on, until we are able to go back to our island and live in peace.”

That freedom is one reason Rodriguez believes independent film is so important for stories like “Hurricane Seasons.” Without a studio machine making decisions based primarily on commercial expectations, filmmakers have more room to tell a story on their own terms.

“Once the studio gets involved, they start thinking about dollars, which they got to make money, but they prioritize the dollars,” Rodriguez says. “And I think that’s why a lot of these big projects that they spend a lot of money on have failed because they don’t honor the storytelling. They don’t honor the authenticity of the world, the authenticity of the stories.”

Her hope is that “Hurricane Seasons” encourages more people to tell their own stories — especially Puerto Ricans.

“Puerto Ricans are not a joke; we’re not a punchline. You don’t get to tell us we don’t speak correct Spanish and make fun of our songs. Then, years later, appropriate our culture and become big time doing what we do, using our terms and our colloquialisms because it brings you capital,” she says. “We are people. We’ve been doing this for a very long time, and our grandmothers and our tias and tios matter, and they’re not [a] costume that you can just put on [to] make money off of it.”

Before we wrapped up the call, Rodriguez paused for a moment when I asked her what Puerto Rico means to her. Then her eyes lit up, and her voice softened as she described why the island means so much to her — and why so many people, even outside of the diaspora, find themselves drawn to it.

“Puerto Rico is a very special place, which is why so many people want to kick us out, so they can move [in],” she says. “But they’ll never have the magic, because the magic is us.”

Heidi Burge Horton, a former WNBA player who started her basketball career alongside her twin sister at Palos Verdes High School and inspired a Disney Channel Original Movie, has died. She was 54.

Horton died Oct. 5 after a battle with gliobastoma, a type of brain cancer, according to an online obituary. The former University of Virginia standout was reportedly diagnosed with the Grade 4 cancer last year and briefly went into remission, but the tumors returned in July, according to Houston news site Chron.

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Heidi Burge Horton,” the Virginia women’s basketball team said in a statement posted last week on X. “Heidi was a cherished member of the Virginia Women’s Basketball family, her legacy will forever be a part of Virginia Athletics.”

Horton and her identical twin, Heather Burge, played four seasons at Virginia, where they helped the team win three Atlantic Coast Conference titles and make three NCAA Final Fours under future Hall of Fame coach Debbie Ryan. Among their teammates at college was Dawn Staley, the Hall of Famer and Olympian who coaches the University of South Carolina.

“We are all heartbroken!” Staley wrote on X following Horton’s death. “We love you Heidi. May your soul rest in peace and your body pain free.”

The University of Virginia’s Heidi Burge, right, with sister and teammate Heather Burge during the 1991 NCAA women’s championship game against Tennessee.

(Jim Gund / Getty Images)

After graduating from college, Horton and her sister headed overseas to play professionally in Europe. When the WNBA was formed in 1996, she joined the Sparks to play in the inaugural season alongside a familiar face, Lisa Leslie.

“I played with the twins since we were 14 years old,” Leslie wrote, along with a broken heart emoji, in the comments of the WNBA’s Instagram post announcing Horton’s death. “I’m so sad to hear this! I pray for the whole family.”

Heidi Ann Burge was born six minutes after her twin sister, Heather Marie, on Nov. 12, 1971, in Harbor City. She grew up in Redondo Beach before her family moved to Palos Verdes so the sisters could attend the high school there, according to a notice by Eickenhorst Funeral Services.

The twins didn’t grow up playing basketball but were recruited by Palos Verdes High‘s coach, who noticed their towering height. Both sisters were 6 feet 1 by ninth grade and would grow to be 6-5.

Horton was more resistant to trying out than her sister, and both were novices when they joined the team. The sisters would become star players over the course of their high school careers, but they were praised more for their character and work ethic than their impact on the court.

“I don’t think they’ve had a weekend off in three years,” their coach, Wendell Yoshida, told The Times in 1989. “They’ve practiced when they didn’t want to practice. They’ve worked through the tears, the sweat, the hurt, the pain. That’s what made them special. They didn’t make it just because they’re tall.”

Horton was known as the more outgoing and gregarious of the pair, but both sisters were described as being inquisitive, opinionated, fiercely loyal and competitive.

The adjustment to the college game was a bit rough for them at first, and the sisters did not get much playing time together until their junior year. They developed a reputation for being prone to mistakes and turnovers and were considered a bit soft. But once again, the sisters put in the work to improve and became key pieces for their team.

“When we did cry it was mostly out of frustration,” Horton told The Times in 1992. “Just not being able to do the things the other players could do. … Our defense wasn’t effective enough for us to deserve to be out there together. Now, we’ve proved offensively and defensively that we are an unstoppable pair when we get to play together.”

Heidi Burge, right, rises up to block Houston Comets guard Kim Perrot during a game on July 16, 1997.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

After graduating with degrees in Spanish and rhetoric and communications studies, Horton played basketball professionally in Europe. After the establishment of the WNBA, she played for the Sparks in 1997 and the Washington Mystics in 1998 before retiring after two seasons.

Horton and her sister inspired the 2002 Disney Channel Original Movie, “Double Teamed.” The movie told a fictionalized account of the twins’ time at Palos Verdes High School. Horton was portrayed by Annie McElwain.

After retiring from playing, Horton moved to Houston, where she briefly served as a commentator for the Comets. She later became involved with Hoops-School, a youth basketball camp where she served as a coach and mentor.

“When you had the kind of coaching I did, you have to work really hard,” Horton told the Buzz Magazines in 2024. “But I also want to give a lot of credit to my coaches. Now I get to give the golden nuggets of wisdom to the kids I coach.

“Second graders, fifth graders, they listen,” she added. “That’s the biggest reward in your whole life. I had so many people pour into me, and I get to just pour it right out. That’s the torch.”

Horton is survived by her husband, Patrick; their children, Jonathan and Holly; her twin sister, Heather Quella, and other loved ones.

It was a crowning moment. Netflix appeared to have prevailed in an audacious $82.7-billion deal to scoop one of the industry’s most prestigious studios: Warner Bros. The move seemed to cement Netflix’s status as the ultimate Hollywood gate-crasher and its dominance as the leading new player in media.

Now, nearly a year later, the plotline for Netflix has dramatically changed. The streaming giant lost out to Paramount Skydance in its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery and is facing headwinds on multiple fronts.

That was underscored this week when the streaming giant Netflix began shedding 6% of its workforce, or about 1,000 jobs — believed to be the largest layoff in the company’s history and exceeding the last round of job cuts in 2022, when it reported subscriber declines.

On Wednesday morning, Ted Sarandos and Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters sent a note to employees confirming the job losses, adding that the bulk of the cuts would affect the tech, product, legal and human resources teams.

“Our mission — to entertain the world — is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources,” wrote Sarandos and Peters in the memo obtained by The Times.

The cuts mark the latest reductions across the film and TV industry. Other entertainment and media companies have slashed their payrolls, including Walt Disney Co., Paramount and Sony Pictures Entertainment during a period of economic uncertainty in Hollywood.

But the scale of such downsizing is unusual for Netflix. Industry analysts and insiders chalk up the reversal of fortune to several factors. Although it still dominates the television business, the Los Gatos company hasn’t been able to produce enough new hit franchises to replace culture-defining shows from years past such as “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game.”

At the same time, Netflix faces rising competition from rivals such as HBO Max, Apple TV, Hulu and others that have upped their game. Free, ad-supported streaming platforms such as YouTube are increasingly taking a larger slice of consumer streaming hours. And Netflix’s efforts to diversify its business into new areas such as games have yielded mixed results.

A Netflix building on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 2025.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The upshot: Netflix continues to be the dominant video subscription streaming player with more than 325 million subscribers, but the time that consumers spend on the platform is growing at a slower pace than what investors want. In the first half of this year, consumer watch time on Netflix increased only 2% compared with a year earlier, even as content spending increased 11% to $20 billion this year. Netflix also narrowed its annual revenue forecast last summer, disappointing some investors.

“Netflix’s layoffs show that even the top streaming companies are not immune to stagnation and financial difficulties,” said Ross Benes, senior analyst at research firm Emarketer.

Amid the sobering signs, investors have grown restless. Netflix shares, which closed at $70.57 on Wednesday, have plummeted 42% in the last year. Part of that decline was fueled by anxiety among investors over Netflix’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, but the share price hasn’t rebounded even after that deal fell apart.

“They need to better prepare their balance sheet and economics since engagement has plateaued,” said Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at Greenlight Analytics.

Katz said that Netflix’s five most-watched English-language scripted summer movie releases in their first eight weeks posted the lowest average hours watched compared with the streamer’s top five summer releases in 2025, 2024 and 2023, citing Nielsen data.

Sarandos acknowledged concerns about engagement at a Bloomberg Screentime event Sept. 30.

“Overall we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said.

Netflix declined to comment on the layoffs.

“We’ll continue to invest aggressively in high-impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation,” Sarandos and Peters said in their memo to employees.

In some ways, Netflix has been victim of its own success. It has produced a string of shows and movies that have hit the cultural zeitgeist such as “KPop Demon Hunters” and “Squid Game.” But finding enough new popular shows that continue to drive subscriptions has been a challenge.

“A lot of these major hits are coming to an end at similar times, and they don’t yet really have heir apparents to replace them,” Katz said.

Sci-fi hit “Stranger Things” released its finale last year, followed by the young-adult drama “Outer Banks” and “Emily in Paris,” which ends this year. Netflix also announced that “The Witcher” and “The Lincoln Lawyer” will wrap after their next seasons.

What’s more, the second seasons of some shows with big followings have seen large view drop-offs compared with their first seasons. For example, the fantasy series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” season 1 debuted with 21.2 million views, but views for its second season dropped 59% to 8.7 million, according to Netflix data.

New series from Netflix also haven’t captured as much consumer demand as other competing shows from rival streamers, according to Parrot Analytics.

Last year, Netflix had just one show — the Japanese anime and manga series “Sakamoto Days” — that made it in Parrot’s top 10 list of first season original series on streaming platforms. Parrot’s ranking measures consumer demand in the U.S. and is based on digital interactions such as social media chatter and Google searches. By comparison, Netflix had three titles in 2022 alone: the true crime show “Monster,” the documentary series “Harry & Meghan” and the sci-fi mystery show “1899,” Parrot said.

Sarandos told investors in July that such declines are typical and that second season falloff is slightly improved this year. But popular shows on rival streaming services such as the medical drama “The Pitt” on HBO Max have not seen such declines. “The Pitt” drew even more viewers in its second season than the first.

To diversify its business, Netflix has expanded its programming offerings beyond TV shows and movies to include live sports, such as football and baseball games.

Although live programs have helped to spur significant subscription sign-ups, they still represent just 1% of watch time on Netflix while costing 5% of the company’s content budget, Sarandos has said.

Netflix also has added video podcasts that have helped to boost daytime viewing on the platform, and has made deals with YouTube creators to bring their content to the streaming service.

But some of the new content hasn’t clicked, particularly in games, analysts said. In August, Netflix shut down Hollywood-based Night School, the maker of supernatural adventure game “Oxenfree,” and said it was closing a Helsinki-based games studio.

“They are spending on a lot of things that haven’t necessarily proven to be effective yet,” said Rob Rosenberg, a partner at law firm Moses & Singer and former Showtime Networks general counsel. “It feels a lot like they’re trying to send a message to Wall Street that ‘we’re re-examining how we do business.’”

Meanwhile, Netflix continues to face more competition from rivals such as YouTube, which offers a free, ad-supported version of its video library.

Unlike Netflix, YouTube does not pay for the creation of many of the videos on its platform. Instead, creators or companies upload and produce the programs themselves and YouTube shares ad and subscription revenue.

YouTube’s share of streaming watch time in the U.S. on TVs has steadily increased. In July, YouTube represented 14.2%, compared with Netflix’s 7.8%, according to Nielsen.

The pressure to boost engagement on Netflix has caused tension within the company, particularly between the teams of people responsible for how programs are promoted on the platform and the employees responsible for bringing shows and movies on Netflix, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Some blame the content for not being enticing enough, while others contend that the programs could be promoted better on Netflix.

“It’s a bit of a quagmire,” said one of the sources familiar with the matter. “There is a tension when things aren’t working. People tend to point fingers.”

In their staff memo, Sarandos and Peters said Netflix is on track to deliver its full-year forecast and will continue to invest in areas that improve its service and drive growth and innovation.

“Doing that means making focused choices across the business so we can keep delivering for our members, partners, employees, and investors,” they wrote.

Despite the downsizing, Netflix remains highly profitable. In the second quarter, the company generated $3.4 billion in net income, up 9% from a year earlier. Revenue rose 13% to $12.6 billion last quarter, including double-digit revenue growth in all of its regions. Next week, the company will share its third-quarter results.

The streamer is expected to get a boost from new seasons of popular shows — including season 4 of the political drama “The Diplomat” and spy series “Lupin: Part 4,” as well as Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Day NFL games.

Having new seasons of popular shows such as “Lupin” and “The Diplomat” will help boost Netflix’s engagement, said Alejandro Rojas, vice president of applied analytics at Parrot Analytics.

“The new season is like a catalyst for people to watch the previous seasons,” Rojas said.

On the theatrical side, Netflix also has high hopes for upcoming movies including La Bola Negra, starring Penelope Cruz; and “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” featuring Brad Pitt. Next year, Netflix will release the Greta Gerwig-directed film, “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” on Imax screens.

Netflix has not signaled any changes to its strategy for releasing movies or TV shows. But some analysts said it could benefit from having more theatrical releases and by dropping episodes of shows once a week, instead of all at once, to generate more buzz for programs. They also expect that Netflix will be more disciplined in its content spending.

“While the company will expand its sports roles, it’s cutting back at a time when revenue matters much more than subscriber additions,” said Benes of Emarketer. “With pressure mounting, Netflix will look to turn the tide by getting a boost from low-cost content. The battle for top creators will become more pitched.”

Times staff writer Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

Skydance-owned Paramount Pictures has taken over the lease for the Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades and intends to reopen the cinema, which has been closed since the January 2025 Palisades fire last year.

Paramount plans to upgrade the theater with state-of-the-art projection systems and in-seat food and drink service, Rick Caruso, whose company owns the Palisades Village shopping center where the Bay Theater is located, said in an interview. Caruso is founder and executive chairman of the real estate firm Caruso.

Paramount plans to show first-run theatrical movies from all studios. The theater will be operated by The Lot, a La Jolla-based luxury dine-in theater chain with four locations in California. The theater is expected to reopen later this year, Caruso said.

“The comeback of this movie theater is a great signal for all of L.A.,” he said. “Los Angeles is resilient, and we’re going to show the country that Los Angeles can bounce back from a terrible, terrible disaster, and the comeback is going to be much greater than the setback.”

Palisades Village reopened in August after more than $100 million in renovations, including major infrastructure work. The upscale outdoor mall survived the Palisades fire, but needed refurbishment to eliminate any potential contaminants from the blaze.

Caruso declined to share terms of Paramount’s lease agreement, saying only that it was long-term. Paramount declined to comment on the size of its investment in the theater.

Caruso said he brought up the Bay Theater over lunch last year with David Ellison, chief executive of Skydance, who was then working to acquire Paramount. The two were discussing that deal and Ellison’s belief in the importance of the movie theater business to the industry.

“Together with Caruso, we are proud to help bring the Bay back to life as a place for the Pacific Palisades community to gather around the shared experience of cinema,” Ellison said in a statement. “This theater has always meant more than movies alone — it’s woven into the fabric of this neighborhood, and helping restore it is a privilege.”

The Bay Theater was previously leased by Netflix, which took it over in 2021. The company used the theater to host special events, screen classic films and showcase its own original theatrical movies.

Caruso described Netflix and company Chief Executive Ted Sarandos as “incredible stewards” of the theater, adding that Sarandos was “very much a gentleman” in having the discussion about Paramount stepping in at the theater.

The Bay Theater announcement comes just about a week after Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The newly combined company, which took the name Skydance after the deal closed, must release at least 30 films a year as part of a settlement agreement with 12 state attorneys general over antitrust claims.

Ellison has long extolled his love of movies and appeared at the CinemaCon movie theater owners convention earlier this year to reiterate his commitment to theatrical releases.

Studios were barred from owning theaters for decades under the Paramount consent decrees, which a federal judge terminated in 2020. Netflix has since operated the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Paris Theater in New York.

“Through our curated offering and dedicated hospitality, we look forward to welcoming the Pacific Palisades community back to the movies, the way they were intended to be shared,” Adolfo Fastlicht, founder and chief executive of The Lot, said in a statement.

Danny Trejo made his stance on Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics clear.

The actor spoke out Friday after it was revealed last week he was cast in the film “Pawn Shop,” which is reportedly inspired by the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

The feature is co-produced by the Daily Wire — the right-wing media company launched in 2015 by conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro — and Bonfire Legend, a production company formed by prolific producer Dallas Sonnier in 2021.

Frequently featured in movies targeting Latino audiences, Trejo built a devoted following within the demographic over the years as one of the more prominent Mexican American actors in Hollywood.

He was criticized online for his involvement in “Pawn Shop” due to its positive portrayal of ICE agents, who have been antagonizing the Latino community at an accelerated clip over the last two years. Trejo was called a “sellout” and a “traitor” across social media in recent days.

“I want to address some social media comments about me. Make no mistake. I am a proud Mexican who has always been and will always be a supporter of my community,” Trejo wrote in an Instagram post. “I am also obviously pro-immigrant. I am not pro ICE. I know where I come from and I know our struggles. I am an actor. My job is to tell a story.”

Trejo’s casting was first announced by the Montana newspaper Bozeman Daily Chronicle after speaking with one of Trejo’s cast members on the film’s set in Livingston, Mont., as well as Livingston locals who had seen and photographed the actor in the city’s downtown area.

Deadline confirmed that Trejo, along with “Reservoir Dogs” actor Harvey Keitel and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” star Henry Thomas, was scheduled to appear in the film after reviewing the call sheet.

The 82-year-old Trejo has previously voiced support for immigrant communities. During the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, he was part of a coalition of Latino actors who pushed forward the #AyudaEnEspanol campaign, which advocated for providing COVID-19 resources kits in Spanish for Latino migrant farmworkers across the U.S.

In an interview with TMZ in fall 2025, the actor, who has appeared in over 400 films and television programs, was asked to give a message to the families that had been affected by ICE raids.

“To the families, keep up hope,” Trejo said. “Help your neighbor and do whatever you can for people in need.”

His recent statement came after “Pawn Shop” made headlines for hitting snags in its production in Livingston following local protests. Residents claimed the movie’s production interrupted local businesses’ operations — and that the crew did not properly communicate with businesses about its schedule.

Production on the film was temporarily paused on Oct. 3 from an order by the Livingston city commission. Filming resumed on Oct. 6 after Livingston officials reinstated permits for the movie.

Venice, Telluride and Toronto have wrapped, and the New York Film Festival is winding down. Ovations have been meticulously timed. Existential crises have been parsed, not including the trauma induced by Tom Cruise’s “Digger,” which prudently skipped the festivals to delay, if only for a couple of weeks, the poisonous word of mouth from seeping out. (It’s still well worth seeing.)

And there have been, of course, prizes, including a Netflix movie, the Spanish maximalist melodrama “La Bola Negra,” winning Toronto’s People’s Choice Award. That’s a first for the streamer, which means we will again be asking the question: Can a Netflix film finally win the best picture Oscar?

If you’ve seen “The Odyssey,” you probably know the answer to that question. But with more than five months (!) until the 99th Academy Awards, it’s a bit early for ironclad guarantees, even if it feels like it would take the winds of Poseidon to blow “The Odyssey’s” best picture campaign off course.

But it’s not too soon to roll out a first set of Oscar power rankings for best picture. With apologies to “Obsession,” “Fjord,” “Possible Love,” “You Can See Everything,” “Elsinore,” and whatever other movies you love (or look forward to loving), let’s start counting.

10. ‘Tender Loving Care’

(Joseph Lynn / Thin Man Films / Bleecker Street)

Because of ongoing health issues, Mike Leigh has said that this warm and wrenching drama will be his last movie. If so, it’d be quite the capper to a career that has netted him seven Oscar nominations, five for his screenplays and two for direction. Yes, only one of his movies, “Secrets & Lies,” has been nominated for best picture. But “Tender Loving Care,” centered on two social service workers navigating the fraying social safety net and, in one case, anxiety about aging parents, possesses a bracing humanity full of compassion and urgency. It’s also quite funny. And it boasts a great cast, including newly minted Emmy winner Kate O’Flynn, as charming here as she is on “Widow’s Bay.” Leigh has more than earned a final curtain call with this one.

9. ‘Club Kid’

Jordan Firstman’s sincere, funny and genuinely moving debut feature has him playing a queer New York underground party promoter blindsided by the arrival of the 10-year-old son previously unknown to him. You could take issue with the uncomplicated perfection of the child, who has exquisite taste in music (Cocteau Twins, really?) and barely a trace of trauma despite the harrowing event that landed him in New York. But “Club Kid” is so assured and heartwarming that you can’t muster the energy to object. There’s probably going to be one feel-good movie nominated, and if it’s between this and “I Play Rocky,” I’ll cast my lot with the one that doesn’t rely so heavily on re-creating the familiar.

8. ‘All of a Sudden’

This 196-minute movie unfolds at, let’s just say, a leisurely pace, and includes a near-20-minute scene in which a character lays out the flaws of late-stage capitalism using a whiteboard. And it’s riveting. Or at least engaging. It’s certainly audacious, this drama about a hardworking director of a Parisian nursing home and the way a chance friendship changes her life. The Oscars’ best picture field now routinely includes two international movies, and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s dreamlike meditation on mortality and human connection feels like a sure bet to make the cut. Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared the best actress prize at Cannes and merit attention from Oscar voters as well.

7. ‘The Debut’

Spoiler alert: One awards-season shoo-in is Julianne Moore winning every lead actress prize for her bravura work in this delightful Jesse Eisenberg comedy. Moore plays Mona, a meek, thoroughly unseen wife and mother who impulsively decides to audition for a community theater musical despite having no experience. The movie earned a huge response at its Telluride premiere, though there were some quibbles about the surprising, surreal turns the story takes. C’mon. Isn’t that precisely what we want from a film? With Moore, co-star Paul Giamatti, Eisenberg’s screenplay and original song (Eisenberg wrote several numbers for the film’s fictional musical) assured spots, a best picture nod feels undeniable.

6. ‘The Invite’

(Atsushi Nishijima / A24)

Olivia Wilde’s dinner-party dramedy boasts a killer quartet — Wilde and Seth Rogen as longtime marrieds nursing resentments, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton playing their upstairs neighbors — and expert direction from Wilde, who navigates the movie’s tonal shifts with authority. It’s wickedly funny and unsentimental and pulls off a bittersweet ending that’s ambiguous enough to keep you talking long after the film ends. One of the year’s most satisfying pleasures.

5. ‘Project Hail Mary’

(Jonathan Olley / Amazon MGM Studios)

Speaking of endings, how many did “Project Hail Mary” have? Two? Three? I lost count. And it doesn’t matter. This was the upbeat end-of-the-world movie that audiences needed at a time when the possibility of human extinction feels uncomfortably real. In a year full of Spielberg knockoffs (and an uneven movie from the man himself), this will be the one left standing.

4. ‘Wild Horse Nine’

(Diego Araya Corvalan / Searchlight Pictures)

Martin McDonagh’s melancholy irreverence plays well with Oscar voters. His last two movies, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” earned best picture nominations and a combined 16 nods. “Wild Horse Nine,” a biting buddy dramedy about two mismatched CIA assassins (John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell), should continue the filmmaker’s success and may even catapult Malkovich to a long-overdue Oscar. At the very least, it gave him his best role in decades.

3. ‘La Bola Negra’

The filmmakers, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, are talented and charismatic, former romantic partners who still work together because that’s how Europeans roll. Los Javis (they even have a fun nickname) won the directing prize at Cannes, the first of several festivals that their movie conquered, culminating in that audience award at Toronto. With its three interconnected stories that follow queer men through nearly a century of Spanish history, “La Bola Negra” has an epic feel and emotional payoff that could carry it far. Netflix is all in, opening it in select theaters Oct. 16 and giving it an exclusive 46-day theatrical window, the longest it has afforded any movie. We’ll see if that puts it into the cultural conversation in a way that has eluded other Netflix contenders.

2. ‘Dune: Part Three’

Can Denis Villeneuve’s third and final “Dune” movie, which hasn’t screened widely for press, take the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy path to a best picture victory? If there’s resistance to giving Christopher Nolan back-to-back best picture winners, the greatest threat might come from a movie occupying the same lane, an auteur-driven epic lauded by critics and embraced by audiences. The second (and superior) “Dune” won just two Oscars, compared to the six taken by 2021’s “Dune: Part One.” Perhaps voters were playing the long game.

1. ‘The Odyssey’

(Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures)

Maybe you saw it when it opened in July, contributing to its $1.75-billion box office. Maybe you’re still trying to see it in Imax 70 mm, the way God (i.e., Christopher Nolan) intended. Maybe you agree with translator Emily Wilson, who thinks Nolan’s movie “lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth” and that its writing is “abysmal.” Whichever side you’re on, “The Odyssey” is probably going to sweep through the Oscars, owing to its craft and thrilling showmanship, its stellar acting and that moment when Odysseus’ dog recognizes his long-absent master and wags his tail before heading off to Elysian Fields.

Who doesn’t love a Hollywood ending — or a beginning?

The only guide you need for fall entertainment.

As summer gives way to the inevitable grunts of awards-season jockeying, how wonderful it is to crawl back into the head of our favorite portal John Malkovich, returning with his most complex work in years in “Wild Horse Nine” (hitting theaters Nov. 6). Meanwhile, Jordan Firstman made his name with viciously funny online “Impressions” and a spotlight-stealing turn on HBO’s “I Love LA,” but did you know he was Trojan-horsing in a triple threat? “Club Kid” (out Nov. 6) marks the arrival of a serious screenwriter, director and star making a feature debut of rare wisdom.

Read on for features about those two movies, and if you’d like more options, here are 17 fall titles worth getting excited about in the coming months.

‘Resident Evil’ (Sept. 18)

Austin Abrams in “Resident Evil,” directed by Zach Cregger.

(Sony Pictures Releasing)

Milla Jovovich brought stony-faced supermodel moxie to 2002’s underrated first film and her subsequent franchise was a mixed bag. But there’s a whole global fandom of obsessives who feel that none of these movies truly got the crux of what made Capcom’s original games such an all-night fixation. One of those people turns out to be filmmaker Zach Cregger, who, between “Barbarian” and his Oscar-winning “Weapons,” can now write his own ticket. As unlikely as it seems, this reboot is a project he has spent a considerable amount of his newfound Hollywood capital pursuing and you have to love him for it. Apocalyptic Raccoon City and a viral zombie outbreak are sure to figure, but also, given the Cregger of it all, spooky subterranean passages and confident performances, this time from Austin Abrams and Paul Walter Hauser. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘Digger’ (Oct. 2)

Tom Cruise in the movie “Digger.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Tom Cruise has been busy these last 15 years, starring in five “Mission Impossible” movies, reboots of “The Mummy” and “Top Gun” and a handful of other would-be blockbusters best forgotten. In nearly all of them, he plays a version of the unstoppable Cruise persona. And that’s a performance for sure. But we haven’t seen him play a real character in a long time, which makes his new movie my most-anticipated of the fall, even if the trailer makes it look like it could be a tonal train wreck. Billed as a “comedy of catastrophic proportions,” “Digger” has Cruise playing a Texas oil man charged with saving the world from an environmental disaster that he appears to have caused. The writer-director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a five-time Oscar winner, but not a filmmaker known for his humor. That makes the trailer’s absurdist tone and visual style intriguing (and also concerning). Iñárritu clearly loves “Dr. Strangelove,” as do we all. Fingers crossed. — Glenn Whipp

‘Fjord’ (Oct. 9)

Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve in the movie “Fjord.”

(Neon)

Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — the second for writer-director Cristian Mungiu and an astonishing seventh in a row for distributor Neon — this is a gripping morality tale specifically designed to make viewers question their instinctive reactions no matter where they sit on the political spectrum. A conservative religious couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, both giving quietly riveting performances) relocate from Romania to a small village in Norway and soon find that the outwardly progressive locals are less than welcoming. The Gheorghius’ five children are taken into protective custody amid allegations of abuse and soon enough, it seems that their beliefs and values are being put on trial. Fans of “Anatomy of a Fall” (another Neon title) will appreciate the detailed glimpse inside another international legal system, as the courtroom scenes are full of tension, emotion and surprise. — Mark Olsen

‘The Social Reckoning’ (Oct. 9)

Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg in the movie “The Social Reckoning.”

(Leah Gallo / Columbia Pictures)

It’s been 16 years — an eon in internet time — since David Fincher made gripping drama out of coding, depositions and bruised male egos in “The Social Network.” Facebook’s story has since then taken a far darker turn: Russian troll farms, growing concerns about worsening teenage mental health and election misinformation. Aaron Sorkin, who scripted the first film, both writes and directs the follow-up, drawing on internal Facebook documents that whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) leaked to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) for the paper’s “Facebook Files” investigation. In a particularly inspired bit of casting, Jeremy Strong succeeds Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg. After playing Kendall Roy, a would-be mogul desperate to seize power in HBO’s “Succession,” and Roy Cohn, a fixer who wielded it ruthlessly in the Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” Strong may have been preparing for Zuck all along. That alone might be reason enough to log back onto Facebook. — Josh Rottenberg

‘Sense and Sensibility’ (Oct. 16)

Daisy Edgar-Jones, left, and Esmé Creed-Miles in the movie “Sense and Sensibility.”

(Focus Features)

You come to “Sense and Sensibility” for sisterly love, for Edward and Elinor, for wit and cleverness, for nosy neighbors, for passionate longing, brooding, Byronic suitors and happily-ever-afters. The 1995 film adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, directed by Ang Lee with Emma Thompson starring and writing the screenplay, was damn near perfect, setting a high bar for any and all comers. So it’s with pleasure (and relief) that I can report that the latest version, directed by talented British filmmaker Georgia Oakley, will delight Janeites and anyone else who appreciates a smart, charming costume drama. The film faithfully adheres to the text, foregrounding the relationship between the Dashwood sisters, the passionate Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) and the pragmatic Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones). It’s fresh without needing to lunge for all the compulsively shocking aesthetics that undid Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” earlier this year. Oakley crisply delivers everything you want, everything you need. — G.W.

‘Whalefall’ (Oct. 16)

Austin Abrams in the movie “Whalefall.”

(20th Century Studios)

If you’re a sucker for that “Pinocchio” sequence in which Geppetto gets swallowed by a whale, you’ll dig Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Daniel Kraus’ “Whalefall,” a drama about a Californian scuba diver stuck in the stomach of a 60-ton behemoth. That’s bad enough. Worse, the kid’s oxygen tank is running low. One part survival quest, one part ghost story, the narrative centers on the young man hallucinating his abusive dead father, who advises him on how to escape. I devoured the book in one weekend, but couldn’t imagine how this claustrophobic nightmare could possibly translate to film. Director Brian Duffield (“Spontaneous,” “No One Will Save You”) has braved the challenge. Austin Abrams plays the trapped swimmer; Josh Brolin is his seafaring dad. It’s a reunion for two of the leads in last year’s “Weapons.” Steel yourself for slimy bile, sticky emotions and wet tears. — Amy Nicholson

‘Clayface’ (Oct. 23)

Tom Rhys Harries in the movie “Clayface.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Even comic-book obsessives will mention a dozen other DC villains before digging out Clayface, the nom de gloop of a disfigured actor transformed into human Play-Doh. But after the animated series “Harley Quinn” stretched the character into a squishy, vulnerable showboat, I’m curious to see what he looks like in the hands of James Watkins, director of the mischievous 2024 thriller “Speak No Evil.” Watkins has a vicious sense of humor and the casting of Welsh theater actor Tom Rhys Harries in the title role is a signal that the film might be a performance showcase in the vein of Tom Hardy’s roiling split-personality turn in “Venom.” Early glimpses of footage at CinemaCon hint that the script by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini is most hyped to mix the superhero genre with icky body horror. Apparently, there are images in which Clayface doesn’t even have a face. — A.N.

‘Fatherland’ (Oct. 23)

Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler in the movie “Fatherland.”

(Agata Grzybowska / Mubi)

Paweł Pawlikowski has made a specialty of looking at European history from close range: the aftermath of the Holocaust in the Oscar-winning “Ida” and the Iron Curtain era in “Cold War.” Eight years after the latter, Pawlikowski returns with this spare black-and-white drama, for which he left Cannes with a directing honor. Hanns Zischler plays author Thomas Mann, the Nobelist and critic of Hitler, returning to Germany in 1949 after 16 years in exile, with his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) behind the wheel. Their journey takes them through a ruined country eager to reclaim one of its greatest writers without dwelling too much on why he fled. After the moral minefields of “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest,” Hüller seems ideally cast as Erika, a writer and committed anti-Nazi unlikely to let her father, or the country around him, off the hook. — J. Rottenberg

‘Klara and the Sun’ (Oct. 23)

Jenna Ortega in the movie “Klara and the Sun.”

(Sony Pictures)

When novelist Kazuo Ishiguro published “Klara and the Sun” in 2021, a book narrated by an artificial intelligence still felt safely like science fiction. Five years and one AI boom later, the future has arrived early. Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered “artificial friend” purchased as a companion for an ailing teenager (Mia Tharia) whose mother is played by Amy Adams. Klara observes the humans around her with extraordinary attentiveness but only a partial understanding of their behavior, gradually forming her own ideas about love, loneliness and what makes one person irreplaceable to another. Taika Waititi, whose movies have ranged from the antic Nazi satire “Jojo Rabbit” to the candy-colored superhero spectacle of the “Thor” films, is an unexpected match for Ishiguro’s quiet, melancholy story. But with people already turning to chatbots for companionship, the film’s central question no longer feels quite so theoretical: What happens when the machine stops feeling like a machine? — J. Rottenberg

‘Wicker’ (Oct. 23)

Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman in the movie “Wicker.”

(Kristof Galgoczi Nemeth / Black Bear Pictures)

Most of the questions you have following the recent trailer that sent the internet into a tizzy are in fact answered by seeing the movie itself. Set in an indistinct Mitteleuropean village of an uncertain era, the story follows an unmarried fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) who asks her friend, a master basketweaver (Peter Dinklage), to make her a husband. And does he ever, sending over a mass of reeds fashioned into Alexander Skarsgård. Their little community goes berserk, full of curiosity and more than a hint of jealousy at their loving and compatible albeit unconventional union. Adapted from an Ursula Wills-Jones short story by the husband-and-wife writer-director team of Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, the film never overlooks how absurd its premise is, but also finds tender emotional notes within it as well. “Wicker” is a wise, warm allegory examining community and relationships — and why we need the things we do. — M.O.

‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ (Nov. 6)

A scene from the movie “Godzilla Minus Zero.”

(2026 TOHO)

Three years ago, the post-World War II period thriller “Godzilla Minus One” was a monster smash, earning the 72-year-old franchise its first Oscar win and biggest box office haul to date. (What, you thought the radioactive lizard wouldn’t come back?) Takashi Yamazaki’s sequel — the 39th Godzilla movie, if you’re counting — takes place in 1949 Tokyo after disgraced kamikaze pilot Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) has begun to rebuild his life with new wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe). In still-traumatized Japan, simply having hope for tomorrow is brave and foolhardy with an angry kaiju sulking in the Pacific. Yes, Godzilla exploded in the last film. Since when has that mattered? “Godzilla Minus Zero” has giant shoes to fill, but personally, I couldn’t care less if the green guy wins another Academy Award as long as the multiplex enjoys a shivery blast of his atomic breath. — A.N.

‘Paper Tiger’ (Nov. 13)

Adam Driver in the movie “Paper Tiger.”

(Neon)

A favorite of international festival programmers and film critics for decades now, James Gray has never quite had his breakthrough with mainstream audiences. That may finally change with his latest, which finds him again exploring the rich, complicated bonds of family amid the betrayals and uncertainties of New York’s outer-borough criminal underworld in a way that feels totally fresh and new. Miles Teller is a family man drawn into a business scheme by his ex-cop brother (Adam Driver) that puts them both afoul of the Russian mob in a story set in Queens in the 1980s. Scarlett Johansson plays Teller’s wife. All three give what are easily among their career-best performances as Gray steadily ratchets up the tension with a master’s hand, melding the crime thriller with domestic drama in a distinctive way. With a tremendous payoff in its devastating climactic sequence, this feels like the film Gray has been building toward his entire career. — M.O.

‘Elsinore’ (Nov. 20)

Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson in the movie “Elsinore.”

(Anthony Dickenson / Focus Features)

The Scottish actor Ian Charleson would forever be an Olympic runner on the beaches of “Chariots of Fire,” head tipped back in a kind of spiritual ecstasy. The role brought him international acclaim, but there weren’t enough of them, and a secret battle with HIV and AIDS took its toll. But what Charleson didn’t know was that, near the end, he would embark on the run of his life, performing a legendary Hamlet onstage in a race with death. Andrew Scott carries the whole of this exhilarating biopic on his knitted brow, diving deeply into the metaphysical darkness of Shakespeare’s text, into the rituals and camaraderie of actors and, ultimately, into the defiance of an artist who only wants to disappear once more into his art. Inexplicably overlooked for “All of Us Strangers” and “Blue Moon,” Scott is just now arriving at a kind of effortless humility, dazzling yet approachable, that puts him in the company of the all-time greats. — J. Rothkopf

‘Josephine’ (Nov. 20)

Mason Reeves in the movie “Josephine.”

(Sumerian)

If we are to have things like a “Sundance Film Festival” or “independent cinema,” it should be to support and nourish movies like Beth de Araújo’s powerful San Francisco-set thriller, about a violent sex crime witnessed by an 8-year-old, who is altered by the experience but then called upon to be a courtroom voice in the world of adults. Everyone who has come together to make this tricky but meaningful project seems to be operating on a higher plane: For Channing Tatum, playing a dad increasingly out of his depths, it’s an opening door to the kind of complex roles he has earned from being a dependable goof. For Gemma Chan, as a parent dealing with the unthinkable, the film is a promise fulfilled. But for young Mason Reeves, imbuing the title character with an evolving mystery that suggests a prodigy, “Josephine” is a revelation. — J. Rothkopf

‘Minotaur’ (Nov. 20)

A scene from the movie “Minotaur.”

(Mubi)

The whispers were fierce at a recent Academy Museum screening of Adrian Lyne’s windy erotic thriller “Unfaithful” as plugged-in attendees looked for points of similarity with Andrey Zvyagintsev’s sleek domestic drama, one that dominated this year’s Cannes conversation. Both movies are remakes of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 “The Unfaithful Wife,” but Zvyagintsev kicks the concept up to expert level, turning an affair and its brutal repercussions into a referendum on Russia’s new-money detachment: eating, lying and screwing with the Ukraine war out of mind. Was Zvyagintsev able to shoot in Russia itself? Of course not — he needed to film in look-alike Latvia. That’s how dependably infuriating he is to the authorities. But it’s a miracle he’s shooting anywhere at all: A case of long COVID, a coma and a yearlong hospital stay almost snuffed out one of the boldest filmmakers on the planet. His return to action is a grand piece of fortune. — J. Rothkopf

‘The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth’ (in Imax Nov. 25; on Netflix Dec. 23)

Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in a scene from 2019’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”

(Andrew Cooper / Sony Pictures Releasing)

Three years ago, Quentin Tarantino teased that his 10th and final film would be “The Movie Critic,” centered on a film reviewer for a 1970s porno rag, but he scrapped it and pivoted to a sequel featuring Brad Pitt’s stuntman from “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” Tarantino didn’t want to direct it, though, preferring to challenge himself with something more ambitious for his sign-off. So he handed the screenplay — an “unwieldy thing,” he calls it — to David Fincher, tasking him to shrink it down. And that’s how we’ve arrived at a collaboration between two defining American filmmakers who came to prominence in the ’90s and share an interest in dark impulses that often turn violent. How Fincher will meld his clinical precision to Tarantino’s yo-gabba-gabba gonzo spirit is the movie question of the season. — G.W.

‘All of a Sudden’ (Nov. 25)

Tao Okamoto, left, and Virginie Efira in the movie “All of a Sudden.”

(Neon)

It still feels like a magic trick, the way Japan’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi turned “Drive My Car,” a three-hour movie about grief and chauffeuring (among other subjects), into a 2022 Oscar juggernaut. The director is back to remind you of everything you loved about that one, plus he’s got even more in the trunk. Many filmmakers are indulged with long running times; few of them make them as worthy and unnoticeable as Hamaguchi. He’s also in a class with Richard Linklater and virtually no one else when it comes to the lingering, evolving conversation, the kind that drifts into flirtation, debate and something soul-revising. Here it’s between two women (Tao Okamoto and the emotionally reverberant Virginie Efira) who, over the course of a walk along the Seine as dusk turns to night, find themselves bonded by something unexpected. “All of a Sudden” has death on its mind, but also how we live and care for each other en route to that destination. It’s a conversation we all need to have. — J. Rothkopf

Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning,” a sequel to 2010’s David Fincher-directed “The Social Network,” is hitting theaters as part of a surge of tech geek takedowns that includes documentaries on Elon Musk and Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, as well as Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming comedy “Artificial” about OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Still, its timing couldn’t be worse.

Cursory and hollow, it recounts the true story of Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) and Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a disenchanted data engineer on the company’s civic integrity team, who paired up for a 17-part investigative series that provided proof of what people already sensed: Facebook boosted misinformation and rage-bait to juice user engagement at the cost of our country’s mental health.

The script ends shortly after Haugen testified before Congress in October 2021, noting that the carpet in her waiting room had recently been swapped out because of bloodstains from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The film rewinds to that day, too, and attempts to squeeze drama from slow-motion reenactments of the rioters, which Alexandre Desplat scores to an overbearing military dirge as Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) and his good little Facebook soldiers mull over whether to take down the U.S. president’s incendiary posts.

Back in our own reality, Zuckerberg and the president just had lunch last week. At this point, we’re all so psychically drained that the only response we can muster to this vacant period piece is: So what?

Sorkin has my sympathies. The future moves faster than a film in development. And he fundamentally gets the peril we’ve put ourselves in by entrusting Zuckerberg, who is, at minimum, an ethically askew man. After all, Sorkin’s own screenplay for “The Social Network” remains a prescient masterpiece.

But the movie’s problems go beyond arriving simultaneously too slowly and too soon for Zuckerberg’s endgame, where his emptying social media empire has him gambling his fortunes (and ours) on AI. Expanding his scope from Harvard to the planet, Sorkin now aims to show that we’re all trapped in Zuckerberg’s insensitive mind view. Cold computer speak has infected everyone like a virus. When Madison’s Frances goes on a blind date, her online match says he appreciates that the internet makes it simpler for singles to pair up “within their own vector.” The buddy-buddy Winkelvoss twins’ version of the app might actually have been better for the world.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg, who mostly stays on the sidelines of the movie, is now a mighty billionaire and, as Strong plays him, a dour, lifeless dork. Gone are the beer bashes, the thrill of invention and any hint that Zuckerberg lusted for something — women, attention, clout — other than a quarterly earnings report. This Zuckerberg is no longer made of flesh and blood but ones and zeros. Pity Strong couldn’t play the CEO after his bro-y 2024 mutation into MMA-fighting Marky Mark. At least that guy is amusingly ridiculous. Trapped in this stiffer, earlier incarnation, the only acting Strong is able to do is poke his head straight up from his shoulders until he resembles a retractable pen.

Worse, all the other characters in the film talk just like him: charmless, frigid and quick to cut each other off with snippy corrections. I could forgive that if it was just Facebook’s employees: Madison’s quavering, exasperated Frances, the co-worker (Anna Lambe) who insists she and Frances are merely colleagues, not friends, even after their company frittered away the meaning of the word, and a media relations executive (a smooth Billy Magnussen) who gets the scariest line, coolly insisting that “we’re post-government around here.” After all, these are the folks who saw “The Social Network” and still wanted to work for Zuckerberg.

But the opposition is steeped in that same monotone rudeness. Sorkin must have adored that earlier film’s opening scene where Rooney Mara insults a clueless Jesse Eisenberg because he’s written three-dozen takes on it. At Sorkin’s version of the Wall Street Journal, everyone up and down the masthead — editors, writers, even interns — insults each other with such relish that someone should be written up by HR. The fast-and-furious dialogue hits its nadir when Madison’s Frances slips Jeff important documents that he can’t even read because she nonsensically starts chattering about the looming coronavirus.

Here’s where you say that this is just how Sorkin writes characters. And here’s where I counter that a movie about how algorithms destroy humanity has to have some credible humans in it, if only to illustrate its own point.

Instead, Sorkin’s protagonist-bots come with bolted-on personality quirks. White’s journalist is a Luddite who would rather be late to his own job interview than use Google Maps. He comes across as so clueless that the audience can barely credit him for his reporting work winning an eventual Pulitzer — he’s just soulful eyes and a cellphone ringtone that tinkles old show tunes.

Madison, 15 years the junior of the real Frances, is too young to convince us that her character truly believes she can turn Facebook into a digital utopia. An ultra-online 20-something, she was a front row witness to Gamergate, yet somehow she’s shocked to overhear about middle-school girls getting bullied on Instagram. Her character wears legwarmers and knit wristlets to the office as protection against the air conditioning, which also serves to emphasize her company’s interpersonal chill.

Yet, bizarrely, the script makes Frances dress like a sex worker whenever she sneaks to Jeff’s hotel to slip him some corporate secrets. It’s a disguise, she explains, although the gag is so forced that it’s just as easy to believe the literal-minded girl is taking her Deep Throat identity too seriously. Or perhaps Sorkin just wanted to remind audiences that this awkward creature is the same actor who won the Oscar stripping off in “Anora.”

A few moments do work, like an opening showdown between a drunk blond (a nasty-great Portia Doubleday) and two cops that gets live-streamed to the web, and Zuckerberg’s congressional coaching sessions with his crisis team, played by Wunmi Mosaku and the comedian Bill Burr. From what we learn of Burr’s Charlie Garrigan, an insider who sold his Facebook stock too fast and then wrote a negative New York Times editorial against the company, he seems to be inspired by early co-founder Christopher Hughes, which would made him the only other callback character from “The Social Network.” But Sorkin has changed his name and upped his age, so as fun and ferocious as Burr is, we also spend his scenes feeling a little confused.

Do we learn anything new about Facebook itself? No. Still, I appreciated how dismissive Frances gets when asked to confirm small scandals that she finds too piddly to care about, like Jeff’s suspicion that Zuckerberg is goosing his posts so that positive comments outrank negative ones 32 to 1. That’s just obvious, her posture says. Facebook is over two decades old and he still hasn’t made many friends.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, still among the most prestigious prizes any movie can claim, “Fjord” aims for both a quiet, subtle power and the directness of a sledgehammer. It speaks to the skill of Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu, along with the star power and acting prowess of its leads, Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, that the film achieves those goals, creating a mix of feelings including ambivalence, shock and dismay over what people will do to one another in the name of a common good.

Having recently moved from Bucharest to a remote village in Norway, a conservative, devoutly Christian couple and their five young children have begun to insert themselves into the fabric of their new community. Mihai, the Romanian father (Stan), is a little intense and gloomy; Lisbet (Reinsve), a Norwegian, is shy but kind, and their focus seems clearly on what they see as a warm, loving homelife.

But when their children are suddenly taken into protective custody over allegations of abuse, they find their world turned upside down. Eventually, the father asks a prosecutor with equal parts anger and exasperation, “Am I on trial for my beliefs?”

The official answer to that question, more or less, is both no and yes. The government’s position is that the children cannot be placed back into a home where they will be harmed, whether that means physical violence or indoctrination in ideology counter to that of the state’s, such as no dancing, no internet and that being gay is wrong.

Based on actual events involving a Romanian family in Norway in 2015, “Fjord” is purposefully designed to make a viewer — any viewer — question their assumptions and predispositions regarding the relationship between personal liberty and state power. While this may all sound a bit reactionary or like shooting fish in a barrel, Mungiu wisely complicates matters.

The filmmaker, a previous Palme winner for his 2007 abortion drama “4 Weeks, 3 Months and 2 Days,” presumably knows that the majority of the audience for his international art-house domestic drama will be more aligned with the liberal, progressive politics of the Norwegian state than the religious, conservative couple at the story’s center. So most audiences will automatically be put into the purposefully uncomfortable position of siding with people they would never see themselves inclined to agree with. It is Mungiu’s sharpest and most illuminating maneuver.

Once the story moves to the courtroom, “Fjord” begins to resemble 2023’s “Anatomy of a Fall” — another Cannes-winning champ released in the U.S. by boutique distributor Neon — for the way in which it allows American viewers a glimpse into another country’s legal system. It comes off as more conversational and slightly more chaotic than what we are used to in our own domestic courtroom procedurals. As the government prosecutor, Norwegian actor Christian Rubeck gives a smug and condescending tone to nearly every word out of his mouth, becoming the closest thing the movie has to a villain.

Having previously appeared together in the offbeat comedy “A Different Man,” Stan and Reinsve keep the story from feeling like a dour exercise. As Mihai, Stan puts across a low-simmering rage at being put in the position of defending himself at all, while grappling with how to maintain what he sees as his natural role of patriarchal control. Reinsve, known for more outwardly dynamic roles in “The Worst Person in the World” and “Sentimental Value,” here conveys a subdued nuance as Lisbet struggles with understanding her place between her husband and her children.

The moment when the couple’s infant child is taken from them by the authorities is devastating, each of them capturing a sense of helpless isolation from themselves, their community and each other.

Special mention should also go to the performances by Vanessa Ceban and Jonathan Ciprian Breazu as the couple’s teenage children, also to Henrikke Lund-Olsen as a neighbor girl who becomes close to them. These young performers are the film’s secret weapon, since in practical, lived terms they bear the brunt of the existential hand-wringing on the part of all the adults. And too often they become an afterthought.

The poster and key image from the film is a smiling snapshot of Mihai and Lisbet with their children, a seemingly happy family. Or are they? For a movie so steeped in ambiguity and nuance, it also often states its case quite plainly, such as when the couple’s lawyer says no one can really know what goes on in another family. The film asks one to look closer, not just at others but also at one’s own accepted opinions, assumptions and preconceptions. But it ends up with an outcome that feels as sadly inevitable as it is heartbreaking — an ethical knot that cannot be undone.

AMERICAN actress Jessica Chastain looked sensational on the red carpet for “the scariest of the year” horror movie that gave fans “panic attacks in the cinema.”

The 49-year-old posed for the cameras at the Los Angeles premiere of Other Mommy yesterday.

Jessica looked incredible as she flashed her long legs in a green silk mini dress.

She exuded effortless Hollywood glamour; looking world’s away from her terrifying character.

The film star had her blonde locks styled in a curly bob and accessorised her dress with a pair of strappy silver Louboutin heels.

Jessica was snapped beaming as she waved at her fans.

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In Other Mommy, Jessica stars in a dual role as normal mother Ursula and the sinister supernatural force using her appearance as a disguise.

The villainous entity is targeting Bela, played by Arabella Olivia Clark, Ursula’s young daughter.

Fans were left traumatised by the trailer of the film and took to social media to discuss their reactions.

One fan remarked: “Whoever decided to air this trailer right before The Odyssey started is a f*****g d******d.

“Thought it was an ice cream commercial. Next thing you know I’m having a panic attack in my seat.”

“That scene when she’s under table made my entire theater jump,” wrote another fan.

A third commented: “The theater played a trailer for this movie Other Mommy before the odyssey and there’s a jump scare it in that I’m still thinking about and it should be illegal.”

Other Mommy comes out in cinemas across the UK today.

The Tom Cruise-led movie “Digger” cratered at the box office this weekend, limping to a fifth-place finish with $8 million in the U.S. and Canada in its theatrical debut.

The Warner Bros. film was expected to do poorly after polarizing reviews from critics and a challenging marketing campaign. The film had a production budget of about $125 million. Worldwide, the film brought in just $20 million in its opening weekend, meaning the studio will probably post a significant loss from the release.

A representative of Warner Bros. did not respond to a request for comment.

Amazon MGM Studios’ “Verity,” starring Anne Hathaway, easily lapped “Digger,” coming in first at the domestic box office with a haul of $32.6 million. The film made $62.5 million worldwide.

The underwhelming performance from “Digger” marks a rare misfire from the usually bankable Cruise and adds to a difficult year for Warner Bros.’ film studio, whose lineup of movies has struggled to connect with audiences. That’s in stark contrast to 2025, when the studio ran up a string of hits such as “Sinners” and “Weapons.”

It also comes as Paramount Skydance’s $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is set to close Tuesday. As part of the merger, there have already been several management shake-ups, including the exit of Warner Bros. film chiefs Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca. The duo oversaw the studio for the last four years, providing a mixed bag of hits and misses for the Burbank-based studio.

The deal is expected to dramatically reshape Hollywood by combining two of the major studios, a move that is expected to lead to massive layoffs. Paramount has already told Wall Street that it’s planning $6 billion in cost cuts.

“Digger” is the result of nine years of work, as director Alejandro González Iñárritu started on the project before the pandemic. The film is a satire about an impending climate change apocalypse that’s triggered by the drilling operations of oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, played by Cruise, who looks nearly unrecognizable clad in prosthetics and graying hair.

In a post-screening, onstage discussion last week, Cruise noted the carefully handcrafted props and sets.

“Everything is practical,” he said. “It was so beautiful, and I just have to say … AI can’t do that.”

Sony Pictures’ “Resident Evil” came in second at the box office this weekend with $12.5 million in its third weekend in theaters. Paramount’s “Heart of the Beast” ($11 million) and A24’s “Primetime” ($8 million) ranked third and fourth.

As of last week, Warner Bros.’ domestic box-office haul this year was $437.7 million, representing about 5.6% of the total theatrical revenue in the U.S. and Canada, according to Rentrak data.

Last year, Warner Bros.’ total at this time was $1.8 billion, aided by back-to-back successes starting with “A Minecraft Movie,” which went on to become the highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office during that calendar year.

The studio does not have any film in the top 20 of domestic box-office earners this year, with Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” ranking at 21 with $84 million. Bets on films such as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” cratered, while DC Studios’ “Supergirl” misfired.

A researcher falls down a rabbit hole of academia in “Chronovisor,” a singular indie that sneaks up on you. Filmmakers Jack Auen and Kevin Walker — who operate under the name Cosmic Salon — make movies in the belief that intellectual pursuits can be both exciting and cinematic. “Chronovisor,” a pleasurably hand-crafted curio, firmly asserts that the sensorial possibilities of film can seem infinite.

That said, the movie opens deceptively: Béatrice (Anne-Laure Sellier), a professor of philosophy at Columbia in New York, is clearly boring her two unseen colleagues over drinks with a monologue about her theories of memory and brain function. Alone afterward, however, with the camera following her as if she were a secret agent and the orchestral swell of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” lending Hitchcockian tension, the real story begins to unfold in large, ornate libraries.

What draws Béatrice’s attention is a fantastical claim made by a Benedictine monk in an Italian magazine article from the 1970s. He insists he discovered an instrument with the power to pull images and sound from the whole of human history, presenting them on a television screen. With this time-shaping device called the Chronovisor, Father Pellegrino Ernetti professed to have seen footage of the crucified Christ and even enjoyed a lost play staged by an ancient Roman dramatist. At the end of a slow zoom shot, we see the article’s title in Italian until it’s translated for us in English: “A Machine Has Been Invented That Photographs the Past.”

With that, “Chronovisor” and its obsessed protagonist enter a trancelike, analog-heavy state in which obscure texts in myriad languages tease a concealed parascientific history of potentially great importance. In other words, get ready to read a lot and yet, surprisingly, to enjoy the immersion, as one might the hushed thrill of a surveillance sequence. As Béatrice’s amateur detective work pulls her in deeper, the strands begin to suggest a conspiracy, one marked by mysterious disappearances and the clandestine sway of the Vatican.

The question of what’s real and not isn’t only Béatrice’s to unpack — you may wonder yourself whether Auen and Walker have fabricated their esoteric source materials and invented the strange saga of Ernetti. They haven’t. Not entirely, that is, which is part of the woozy enjoyment. Enhanced by cinematographer Leo Zhang’s atmospheric 16mm grain and a natural onscreen performance from first-time actor Sellier (a real-life French scholar in behavioral science), “Chronovisor” hums with deep appreciation for research and evidence. We get both a tantalizing armchair mystery steeped in occult-ish authenticity, but also a sly commentary on our own relationship to the pursuit of curiosity.

If your own interpretation of Béatrice’s quest leads to the realization that this supposedly long-lost technology may already be with us, so be it. The filmmakers surely won’t disabuse you of that notion. They save their most disorienting trick for last: a reality-bending sequence that could qualify as video art. Whether it proves anything is, of course, up for grabs, but it surely helps “Chronovisor” remain wonderfully unclassifiable.

Strictly fans could see a change in the hosting format this weekend after complaints were made that it “didn’t work” last week.

While fans were happy to see Emma Willis hosting from the dance floor, they were unconvinced that Josh Widdicombe belonged in the role at her side.

“The Strictly producers will be in a bit of a pickle now,” one fan pointed out at the weekend. “The overwhelming view seems to be that Emma is perfect and should host downstairs alone, and Josh should be moved upstairs as he’s way more of a comedic, lighthearted chat sort of host.”

Former pro dancer Vincent Simone told the Mirror this week that he sees the upheaval in the presenting duties is a major “downside”.

“I think the only downside of this year is that there’s been way too many changes all in one go,” he said. “Some people like changes, like me. Some people don’t.

“I can imagine some people saying, ‘Oh, Tess and Claudia are not going to be presenting, I won’t be watching it,’ or, you know, some of the professionals that I used to love, they won’t be performing again, ‘I’m not going to watch it again.’

“So unfortunately, it is what it is. I think there’s been way too many new changes all at once.”

Tom Cruise is one of the bankable stars in Hollywood. But his pull may not be enough to lift his upcoming film “Digger” from a likely hard fall at the box office this weekend.

That would be unwelcome news for Warner Bros., whose movies have largely struggled to connect with audiences this year, in contrast to 2025, when the studio ran up a string of hits such as “Sinners” and “Weapons.”

All of this comes as the studio braces for an uncertain future with Paramount Skydance’s $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery set to close on Tuesday.

“No single film is going to capsize the boat,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University. “However, it’s coming at a precarious time because it follows a series of less-than-successful releases at the very moment when the Warner Bros.- Paramount deal has been greenlit, and everybody — no matter how high up — is terrified for his or her job.”

Matching the success of the 2025 film slate was always going to be a tall order, particularly when so many of Warner Bros.’ movies that year overperformed.

So far this year, the studio’s domestic box office haul is $437.7 million, representing about 5.6% of the total theatrical revenue in the U.S. and Canada, according to Rentrak data.

Last year, Warner Bros.’ total at this time was $1.8 billion, aided by back-to-back successes starting with “A Minecraft Movie,” which went on to become the highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office during that calendar year.

The studio currently does not have any film in the top 20 of domestic box office earners this year, which includes some holdovers from 2025, with Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” ranking at 21 with $84 million. Bets on films like Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” cratered, while DC Studios’ “Supergirl” misfired.

“Digger” is unlikely to turn things around.

The satire from director Alejandro González Iñárritu about an impending climate change apocalypse has divided critics, yielding very mixed reviews. Tracking predictions for the film’s debut have steadily trended downward and settled between $15 million and $19 million.

That would be a major miss, given the film’s production budget was about $125 million (not counting marketing costs).

“Digger” faces several hurdles. For one, the film has a major twist, which complicates its marketing and makes it difficult to tell audiences what it’s about.

Then there’s Cruise’s nearly unrecognizable performance as Digger Rockwell, an eccentric oil tycoon whose drilling operations have led to the unfolding climate disaster. Clad in prosthetics with a head full of graying hair, Cruise is far from his usual stunts-heavy, bravado-filled roles, which could make his typical audience less likely to come out to theaters, analysts said.

“It has a lot of question marks,” said David A. Gross, who writes the movie industry newsletter FranchiseRe. “It doesn’t look like it’s heading for financial success.”

The film will have value to Warner Bros. beyond its theatrical reception. “Digger” probably will also make money through ancillary revenue streams such as premium video on demand and streaming, industry experts said. And if Cruise wins his much-coveted Oscar for his role as Digger, that is also a plus, Galloway said.

Beyond the fate of “Digger,” Warner Bros.’ theatrical business will be of prime importance to the combined Paramount-Warner company.

Last year, Warner’s studio business, which includes both film and television production, brought in $12.6 billion in revenue. This year, it’s projected to generate $11.1 billion, according to market expectations. On a positive note, Warner Bros. still has its animated “The Cat in the Hat” film releasing in November and the popular “Dune: Part Three” at the end of the year.

The prospects for Warner Bros. should improve next year, when the film and TV studios are expected to amass $11.7 billion in revenue, driven by strong titles including the sequel to “Minecraft” and a new “Lord of the Rings” movie, according to Bernstein research.

Aside from theatrical revenue, Warner Bros.’ film and TV properties have been key drivers of business to HBO Max and will also provide valuable content to Paramount+, particularly as the linear cable networks continue to decline.

“I would argue the studios are the very reason Paramount Skydance is buying Warner Bros.,” said Laurent Yoon, senior analyst at Bernstein. “Everything starts with the studios.”

The combined company is also legally required to release at least 30 films a year as part of a settlement agreement over antitrust claims with 12 state attorneys general, including California’s Rob Bonta. Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison has previously said the two studios would each release 15 films a year.

But the type of content the studios release could change after the merger is completed. Under film chiefs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, Warner Bros. developed a reputation for auteur-driven, original stories, particularly after the success of the 2025 slate. Ellison’s slate has trended toward blockbuster fare.

The combined company will also face a massive debt load of more than $80 billion after the merger closes, meaning there may be greater pressure for future films to be hits.

“Ellison is primarily in the business of delivering blockbusters,” Galloway said. “That’s going to be even more important as he tries to right the ship of his debt.”

The Targaryens are looking to conquer the summer box office.

“Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest” will hit theaters June 1, 2029, according to Deadline. The movie, written by “House of Cards” showrunner Beau Willimon, will reportedly be directed by Owen Harris. Harris directed three episodes of the “Game of Thrones” spin-off “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”

Additional details, including the movie’s story, have yet to be revealed. The title hints that the film will follow Aegon the Conqueror, who, along with his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, invaded Westeros and conquered most of the Seven Kingdoms with the help of their dragons, Balerion, Vhagar and Meraxes.

Following his victory, King Aegon I became the first monarch to rule Westeros from the Iron Throne and the founder of the Targaryen dynasty. The conquest took place around 300 years before the events of “Game of Thrones” and is detailed in George R.R. Martin’s book “Fire & Blood.”

“Aegon’s Conquest” would mark the first time the original Aegon is depicted on screen, but the “Game of Thrones” franchise has featured multiple Aegon Targaryens over the years.

Aegon’s descendants revere the Conqueror so highly that he has numerous prominent namesakes. The Targaryen war of succession at the center of “Game of Thrones” prequel series “House of the Dragon” was sparked by the coronation of King Aegon II (portrayed by Tom Glynn-Carney), the younger half brother of the actual heir, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy). Rhaenyra also named one of her children Aegon.

Young Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), one of the central characters in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” is eventually revealed to be the missing prince Aegon Targaryen. Even “Game of Thrones’” beloved Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), believed to be a bastard of House Stark, turned out to actually be a Targaryen named Aegon.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu and Pop artist Ed Ruscha have a long history of admiring each other’s work. Twenty-four years ago, a nervous Iñárritu visited Ruscha’s Venice studio to offer him the role of the gynecologist in “21 Grams.” They needed a doctor with noble features and blue, believable eyes. That plan didn’t pan out, schedule-wise, but the filmmaker and the artist finally found a way to collaborate.

The result — a Ruscha-designed poster for Iñárritu’s new film “Digger,” starring Tom Cruise — was unveiled Sunday at an intimate brunch at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, attended by Iñárritu, Ruscha and Cruise, as well as “Digger” actors John Goodman, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg and Ross Hatt.

Iñárritu and Cruise laughed as they made a clumsy attempt at a countdown before whipping aside a black velvet curtain to reveal the poster for the first time: a very Ruscha, text-heavy work on a slate gray background with a beige border. A looming ice shelf in the background is surrounded by phrases including, “A Man. A Plan. A Meltdown,” and “Comedy equals tragedy plus time.”

Filmmaker Alejandro Iñárritu and “Digger” star Tom Cruise unveil Ed Ruscha’s new poster for the film. (They just pulled off the black velvet curtain on the floor below.)

(Kevin Garrison)

“Well, the movie blew my hair back,” Ruscha said at the unveiling brunch inside LACMA’s new (still unopened) restaurant, with LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan by his side. “And not only that, it parted it down the middle. It has since grown back.”

The crowd laughed knowingly. “Digger,” which opens Friday, is a satirical black comedy that follows oil tycoon Digger Rockwell as one of his drilling rigs in Greenland explodes, dislodging an ice shelf that floats away to cause a global disaster. As a dark parable for the dangers of climate change, the film has already proved polarizing, with early reviews coming in mixed.

Ruscha noted that he first saw “Digger” at a screening about six months ago, alongside Govan. “I knew I had seen an epic production, an epic product from an epic producer,” Ruscha said. “So I jumped at the idea of doing the poster. And I thought about it, and I think about this movie, and it reminded me of a kaleidoscope. It’s got so many running-around ideas. It was kaleidoscopic in its message, and its content and its humor.”

Ruscha turned his attention to Iñárritu, “It’s got something to offer to the world, and I thank you for that.”

The filmmaker loved the poster, and the fact that the ice shelf sat front and center.

From left to right — “Digger” actors John Goodman and Jesse Plemons, filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, artist Ed Ruscha, actor Tom Cruise, LACMA director Michael Govan and actors Ross Hatt and Michael Stuhlbarg — pose with Ruscha’s new poster for the film.

(David Jon)

“The billing is nature: We are human beings, we are in a war against nature,” Iñárritu said — describing what he feels the poster relays — in a phone interview from Mexico City a day before the event. “We think that we are different from nature. So nature, in a way, becomes our enemy. We are fighting a fight against nature, and the enemy is an ice shelf going to Europe. And he just put [that] in the center of it, [like] a disaster movie, which is very clever, as he always is.”

“Those decisions that he made with a very prominent element in a simple way, with one or two words, it just says so much with so little,” Iñárritu continued. “And then he [put] some lines around [it], very Ruscha, that in a way convey the spine or the character itself.”

The director had the same feelings two years ago, at LACMA’s Ruscha retrospective. He said so much with so little, Iñárritu thought, and that “less is more” thinking could hold so much power in a film poster.

Iñárritu, too, has been exhibited at LACMA: earlier this year, with the film installation “Sueño Perro,” a resurrection of lost footage from “Amores Perros;” and in 2017-2018, with the virtual reality installation “CARNE y ARENA,” which explored the human condition of immigrants and refugees.

The director’s collaboration with Ruscha is proof of concept for LACMA’s annual Art + Film gala, entering its 15th year, which seeks to highlight and strengthen the connections between film and visual art by bringing the two communities together at a splashy party — often creating lasting connections between the two groups.

Both Ruscha and Iñárritu have been honored at the gala, the former in 2012 (with Stanley Kubrick) and the latter in 2015 (with James Turrell). “This is a beautiful encounter of art and film,” Govan said at the unveiling.

“Digger” has evolved over nine years, Iñárritu said. It’s been a long journey of taking note of current events, including where the world is going, as well as people’s obsessions and fears.

“The film is a love letter for the young generation,” Iñárritu said. “I think it’s kind of a warning, or a wake-up call. But you can have fun about it, because it’s the only way to — humor allows us to have space and recognize ourselves in that absurdity. So I feel that it’s a human, urgent, now film.”

“Heartwarming” is a cliche of theater reviewing that I have studiously tried to avoid, but I’m tempted to use the word in my review of “Begin Again,” the new musical based on the 2013 John Carney romantic comedy about two dreamers trying to rekindle the love of making music that the industry nearly destroyed.

The show, which is having its world premiere at the Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage, is just so damn heartwarming that I can’t help but resort to the language of blurbs. But let the ticket buyer beware: Heartwarming is a feeling, not a complete verdict.

Featuring a book by Jenna Clark Embrey and Molly Beach Murphy and a score by Pat Monahan and his bandmates from Train (Jerry Becker and Matt Musty), “Begin Again” does a pretty good job of distilling and updating the movie. Carney’s film, notable mostly for the vibrantly gritty New York setting, the Oscar-nominated song “Lost Stars” and the lived-in performance of Mark Ruffalo, couldn’t help languishing in the shadow of the filmmaker’s breakout hit “Once,” which later became a Tony-winning musical.

“Begin Again” the musical is likely to suffer a similar fate. It lacks the quirky originality that made “Once” an unexpected Broadway juggernaut. But the new show, directed by Lorin Latarro and choreographed by David Neumann, has heart — there I go with that overused word again!

I succumbed to the show’s charms despite being aware that the comedy isn’t as freshly articulated as it should be and the music, while exuberant, doesn’t seem to emanate from the soul of Gretta, a reworked American version of the singer-songwriter character indifferently played by Keira Knightley in the movie.

Emma Busse as Gretta, center left, and Kevin William Paul as Max with the cast of “Begin Again.”

(Jeff Lorch)

Gretta relates to her songs as though she were the next Joni Mitchell, but the new material she’s composing on the fly with her new friends doesn’t seem particularly intimate or revealing. I liked the indie rock sound, but mostly for the collaborative liftoff. Lyrically, I wasn’t drawn in. But who could resist the ecstatic momentum of her ad hoc band members buying into her grassroots dream?

Gretta, played with folksy innocence by Emma Busse, has traveled to New York from Pennsylvania with her boyfriend Max (Kevin William Paul). A musician with frontman good looks, he’s about to be packaged into a rock star. Gretta’s songwriting has paved the way for this opportunity, but Max is told that he’s being signed as a singer-songwriter and sharing credit is a deal-breaker.

Selfless, naive Gretta gives Max her blessing and her rights, and almost immediately he betrays her with another woman. Perhaps even more disloyally, he allows his producers to run her song “Don’t Let Go” through a pop blender that drains it of all its personal meaning and artistic integrity.

Alone in the big city, she takes refuge at the Queens apartment of college friend Stevie (Casey Whyland), formerly Steve in the movie, the comic sidekick role played by James Corden. Stevie, conveniently, is a sound engineer with an analog heart. She’s not only how Dan (an electric Patrick Heusinger), a washed-up music executive with a broken marriage and a drinking problem, discovers Gretta. But without Stevie’s technical ingeniousness, the prospect of recording an album in outdoor New York locations would never have been possible.

The professional meet-cute between Gretta and Dan happens at an open-mic night at a dive. Stevie calls a heartbroken Gretta to the stage to perform, and she reluctantly complies before giving up in embarrassment. She thinks she’s bombed, but Dan, who has “magic ears,” hears what the song could be.

Patrick Heusinger as Dan, left, and Adrienne Walker as Miriam with the cast of “Begin Again.”

(Jeff Lorch)

Just as Dan glimpses Gretta’s raw potential, she sees his lost purpose, and the two launch a mutual rescue mission. He brings Gretta to meet Saul (Nik Walker), who co-founded Distressed Records with him and just fired him for his erratic behavior. Saul doesn’t have Dan’s ability to spot future talent, but he agrees to give the singer a listen if they cut a demo. And so off Dan and Gretta go, with no budget, to make memorable music together.

Friends are their main resource — and that proves an inexhaustible boon. “Begin Again” really comes alive as Gretta, Dan and their expanding, can-do music network starts pooling its expertise.

You can hear the songs germinating from lonely inspiration to group transformation — and the sound is exhilarating. The process of songwriting, rather than being a solitary slog, is a collective joy, rapturously captured in the number “Write a Way.” And “Twilight Summer Sky,” the number performed on the rooftop of Stevie’s apartment building in Queens, represents perhaps the fruit of all the group’s effort.

“Begin Again” is a musical fantasy, not a work of realism. Gretta and Dan are seemingly brought together by fate to heal one another. As they separately go about their business in New York before they’re introduced, they continually pass like ships in the night in a New York that scenic designer Derek McLane summons in a shifting comic-strip landscape of high-rises that gives the city an industrial quaintness.

The action rewinds from Gretta and Dan’s initial meeting at the bar, and later fast–forwards to speed up some of the more boring bits of the album-writing process. The ensemble moves backward and forward with these narrative jump-cuts.

This literalness can seem overly cute. (I prefer the idiosyncratic yet fully integrated movement direction Steven Hoggett brought to John Tiffany’s Broadway production of “Once.”) But Latarro’s staging and Neumann’s choreography keep the storytelling moving at a pleasantly brisk clip. And Skylar Fox’s illusion design adds an element of visual sorcery.

The cast of “Begin Again.”

(Jeff Lorch)

It’s the actors, however, who elevate the material, supplying a depth of feeling where the writing offers something more general. Heusinger makes it possible to leave Ruffalo’s fine portrayal behind. This is a different and more dynamic Dan, at least in terms of the musical demands placed on the character. Paul’s Max is every bit a rock star, but Dan is convincing as both a burned-out music mogul with a self-sabotaging streak and a gifted artist in his own right who just needs someone to believe in his producing instincts again.

Adrienne Walker, who plays Miriam, Dan’s estranged wife, and Charlotte MacLeod, who plays Violet, Dan’s disaffected daughter, endow their characters with more lineaments than the book provides. Walker’s Saul doesn’t do what Yasiin Bey managed in the movie — make Distressed Records seem like a real New York record company — but his singing compensates for some of the clumsier aspects of his reduced role.

Whyland’s Stevie, serving as emcee when the occasion calls for one, combines genuine camaraderie with comic relief. The gender switch makes sense, and Whyland embodies the spirit of artistic cooperation that makes “Begin Again” such an invigorating experience.

I wish that the musical didn’t amplify Gretta’s artistic insecurities and distress over the breakup with Max. The character seems less self-assured and more wounded than she did in the movie, making her fervently held idealistic beliefs about creative independence seem borrowed from another character. But Busse brings an American innocence to the role, and her ardor about music and community seems genuine.

“Begin Again” transcends its limitations through the kinetic connection of the cast. When all the elements of the music come together, a triumphant feeling — call it uplift — charges the air.

Hallmark films have mastered the art of escalating low-stakes situations into high-stakes emotional emergency plotlines. They have made a lucrative business out of absurdities.

The town’s ice sculpture competition is in danger of being canceled forever. How can the Christmas celebration in Colorado go forward without a nice spruce? The only way to really save the bakery is to have a life-size gingerbread house competition.

It’s a proven formula that leans into the ridiculousness of mundane situations but earns its audience every holiday season. Whether it’s watching the movies for comfort or to turn a viewing party into a drinking game, millions of people tune in to laugh or cry watching them.

The Hallmark situations can be predictable, comfortable and wholesome, which can come off as absurd for a film plotline. Their sincerity and humor come from the cast’s commitment to the mundane, said Ron Oliver, writer and director of many Hallmark films.

A scene from “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

“Funny is only funny if you don’t think it’s funny,” he said. “We know that’s ridiculous. But at the same time, if the actor commits to it, it makes it seem real, then the audience gets it.”

He likes to think they’re laughing along with the idiosyncratic elements of the movies, and as long as it is creating a communal atmosphere, Oliver is all for it.

“If there’s anything we need these days, it’s a sense that people belong somewhere,” he added.

The formula isn’t what makes a movie a Hallmark movie. The structure has existed since God wore shorts, said Oliver. The channel’s achievement has been its ability to turn the structure into a recognizable brand through its stories.

When filmmaker John Wilson was in between jobs after finishing his HBO show “How To With John Wilson” during the writers’ strike, he attended a seminar on how to write and sell a Hallmark film.

After seeing what makes the Hallmark brand recognizable, Wilson decided to adapt the style into his own genre of making a documentary about concrete titled “The History of Concrete,” hoping the structure would help him finance the film.

John Wilson in “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

“But it’s very loose and almost impossible to even identify at points,” he said.

Instead of mocking the genre, Wilson subverts the Hallmark elements into his style of documenting, which finds the filmmaker recording trivial life moments — a person sitting on a pole, for example, or someone ruining a perfectly good jar of peanut butter by dipping their fingers into it — alongside his contextualizing narration.

“I both embrace but betray certain rules,” he said.

The seminar told him to avoid mentioning Christianity in the context of Christmas, so he pivoted to a Buddhist community with an annual tradition of running around a school in New York. The formula prefers to stay away from trauma. Instead, he made the death of one of his subject’s fiancées one of the main plotlines of the film.

“The actual Hallmark of it all fits in a way because that’s the kind of living proof that this rhythmic cyclical way of storytelling is actually soothing and attractive to people over long periods of time, to be able to return to this thing that they can trust and understand,” he added.

A scene from “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

In Wilson’s film, the entrance point is concrete, but what begins to unravel is a romance story involving a boy who has a movie idea, needs money to make a movie and tries everything he can to sell it — a signature love trope for most Hallmark movies.

Throughout the film, Wilson goes from pitch meeting to pitch meeting trying to finance his art. In the process, Wilson meets other eccentric characters that share his passion of filmmaking but have their own interests, like clearing gum from a sidewalk, immortalizing a person’s tattoo after they’re dead, and music.

“I’m just finding different ways to court this industry that doesn’t seem ready for this relationship,” Wilson said. “I’m trying to find some consensual way into it, but I eventually just need to perform the romantic gesture of doing what feels right and what comes naturally to me.”

The love story is the kind of theme that sometimes it’s OK to lean into, even though he’s constantly battling whether he should explore it in his films, Wilson added.

A scene from “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

Oliver believes that battle is a product of the cynicism that exists in society. Pledging love and respecting someone or a relationship can make people feel so uncomfortable that leaning into these tropes of life can feel humorous, and that’s where the laughs from a Hallmark film come from.

“They’re realizing that they’re being emotional about somebody who can’t find the right Christmas sweater,” he said.

The people in “The History of Concrete” aren’t funny because Wilson makes them out to be ridiculous. He doesn’t emphasize their eccentricities or tell the audience what makes them funny. He simply lets them be themselves. He captures their personality through a curiosity lens.

The humor comes from their passions not seeming worthy of the level of seriousness with which they pursue them. These people love something so much that their devotion mirrors the kind of energy normally reserved for higher stakes.

“There’s no definition of normal that sticks,” Wilson said.

A Christmas celebration isn’t objectively a life-or-death situation, and neither is concrete. But when people care deeply about them, those seemingly mundane things can take on an emotional significance the audience understands.

“Even if it’s something absurd … [the casts] are also committed to the idea of making it real,” Oliver said.

Next year, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra — an intimate, 42-player group compared with the more than 100-member Los Angeles Philharmonic — will warm its new home, the highly anticipated, Frank Gehry-designed Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall. And it will do so with the help of a little light music: fanfares commissioned from half a dozen preeminent film composers — John Williams, Ludwig Göransson, Joel McNeely, Thomas Newman, James Newton Howard and John Powell — curated by none other than Seth MacFarlane (best known as the creator and star of “Family Guy”).

The buzzwords are lighting up, but this is far from a game of performing arts Mad Libs; it’s actually quite intentional. “We really thought about … ‘What statement can we make to Los Angeles and to the performing arts world that really shows who we are?’” said LACO Executive Director Ben Cadwallader. “Who is the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, specifically? And it really was this tie to Hollywood, to Los Angeles, to our musicians themselves.”

MacFarlane was a natural fit.

“I loved movies and I loved movie music,” MacFarlane said of his childhood in a recent interview. “I would go to the record store and buy the latest John Williams soundtrack, which was usually out before the movie was released. I remember buying the ‘Jurassic Park’ soundtrack not having seen the movie, and it didn’t matter. It was just great music. It was just great, symphonic music.”

LACO was founded by an assemblage of musicians and civic leaders in 1968, including the cellist James Arkatov. After emigrating from Russia as a child, Arkatov became the principal cellist at the Pittsburgh and San Francisco symphonies before landing in L.A. He arrived as a Hollywood studio musician, played on movie soundtracks and did backing for Ella Fitzgerald.

From the beginning, LACO served as “the artistic outlet of studio players … these incredibly gifted musicians who bring our movies and TV shows to life,” said Cadwallader, a situation that remains true to this day. LACO’s musicians know it’s “a place where they can play … Bach and Mozart, and make music at a really high level in a performance environment, not a studio environment.”

This is why the christening of LACO’s new home is also a homage to its roots: film composers. These giants of their fields will each write a spry, five- to seven-minute-long fanfare as openers for select LACO concerts throughout the season. (The works will also be performed at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, with John Williams’ piece arriving first, in fall 2027.)

MacFarlane knew just what to do, thanks to his long history with music. The actor, animator, filmmaker and comedian has released 10 studio albums, received five Grammy Award nominations and performed as a vocalist at the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall. (He also just released a 14-track album called “Seth MacFarlane Sings the Muppets.”) Plus, his parents raised him steeped in music.

Nothing has changed here — throughout his career, MacFarlane has been relentlessly committed to including live music in his projects. The musical numbers on “Family Guy” simply couldn’t (and wouldn’t) exist without an orchestra.

“It would somehow feel thin and hollow, and people may not know why their attention is drifting, but it would drift,” MacFarlane said. “I really think you need the muscular sound of 60 musicians in a room, and in the case of ‘The Orville,’ sometimes 90. … Hollywood has been doing it since pictures went to sound, and I hope they continue to do it for as long as we make film and television.”

MacFarlane noted that the only time many people actually hear a live orchestra is in film or television.

“I don’t know how many people go to the symphony,” MacFarlane said. “So that’s certainly a component. When I was a kid, even the syndicated afternoon cartoon shows used a live orchestra, and when you go back and you listen to them, oftentimes it’s pretty legit composing. And I think that was important to have heard. I think it’s just good for the brain to hear complex symphonic music.”

Composer, conductor and longtime MacFarlane collaborator Joel McNeely (whose wife, Margaret Batjer, is LACO’s concertmaster) got MacFarlane involved in this commissioning initiative. Then MacFarlane selected the participating composers (and supported the initiative financially). One final Mad Lib to solve: What exactly, you may be wondering, is a fanfare?

“The perfect example … is the beginning of ‘Star Wars,’” Cadwallader said, then hummed the intro. “There’s big, loud brass. You cannot help but pay attention. … It puts a smile on your face. It maybe gets your heart racing a little bit. It’s usually very rhythmic, very bright. It’s like a big warm smile, or like a popping of a Champagne cork, to start a concert. … A bursting, effervescent moment of music to get things started. An amuse-bouche, if you like.”

Sept. 23, 2026 5:09 PM PT

A two-part docuseries about Melania Trump arrives later this year, the first lady revealed Wednesday. The new project follows the January release of director Brett Ratner’s documentary, which made $16.7 million worldwide at the box office and was universally panned by critics.

“It will come out this year, and it will be very different what is in the movie,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” ahead of her appearance to ring the New York Stock Exchange opening bell. “It’s more [like a] conversation one on one with me.”

Trump indicated that the docuseries will cover new ground.

“So when I was traveling and doing all of the filming, the director was asking me questions, and there’s some private questions that I will answer that people never heard before,” she said.

The Times has reached out to Amazon Studios for more information on the project, which does not appear in press materials, though Ratner teased the new “chapters” in an Aug. 11 Instagram post.

“Here we go again….” the director wrote. “The saga continues …. can’t wait to share with everyone around the world the next two chapters of MELANIA, THE DOCU SERIES!”

Ratner’s film followed the first lady in the 20 days leading up to President Trump’s 2025 inauguration, promising “exclusive footage capturing critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments” as Melania “orchestrates inauguration plans, navigates the complexities of the White House transition, and moves her family back to the Nation’s Capital.”

Critics, however, found the cinematic experience lacking.

“I’m hesitant to call ‘Melania’ propaganda because I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and thinking that Melania Trump comes off well,” Times film critic Amy Nicholson wrote in a February review. “If this vapid, airless, mindless time-waster had subversive designs of being a satire about the first lady of the United States, there’s not much it would have changed. Yet somehow, ‘Melania’ is exactly the film that the first lady wanted to make — her company was paid $40 million for the rights to this self-greenlit production — and no one around her warned that it was a very expensive bad idea.”

“Melania” was Ratner’s first film since six women accused him of sexual assault in 2017. In February 2026, The Times reported that the “Rush Hour” filmmaker appeared in the unsealed Epstein files in photos with unidentified women and the financier, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

In addition to the initial $40 million Amazon MGM Studios paid to license the project, the marketing and promotion budget was reportedly another $35 million.