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“Is football a game or a religion?” the sports broadcaster Howard Cosell once asked with exasperation. The horror film “Him,” a striking but vacuous gridiron Grand Guignol by Justin Tipping (“Kicks”) takes it as faith that the answer is both. Any fan with a sacred good luck ritual and any player who’s thanked the man upstairs for a touchdown knows the two overlap as tightly as a freshly laced pigskin.

In the home of young elementary schooler Cameron Cade (Austin Pulliam), the fictional San Antonio Saviors quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is the messiah. Next to the TV, there’s even a shrine with devotional portraits of their icon. When White wins a game while suffering a nasty injury, Cameron’s father seizes the moment to deliver a sermon: “That’s what real men do,” he insists. “They make sacrifices.” The candles on the altar flicker ominously.

Tipping, working from a Blacklist script by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers with Jordan Peele as his producer, considers the sports-as-religion idea so obvious that the film doesn’t bother analyzing why it exists. Instead, “Him” wonders what kind of spiritual practice it is: hero worship or a sinister cult?

Fourteen years later, Cameron (now played by Tyriq Withers) has grown up to become a star college quarterback in line to be the NFL’s top draft pick and take over Isaiah’s position on the Saviors. A violent concussion knocks him off course, but Isaiah, a living legend still leading the team, offers to vouch for the kid if he passes a private training camp at his intimidating desert estate. It couldn’t be more obvious that Isaiah doesn’t have Cameron’s best interests at heart if he blared a warning on the Jumbotron.

The film’s title comes from a bit of braggadocio — “I’m him” — that started sprouting up in sports leagues during the last five years. (It’s why you’ll sometimes see Lakers shooting guard Austin Reaves called “AustHIM” Reaves.) Anointing someone the GOAT, as in “Greatest of All Time,” has been around longer, but the silly thing about both compliments is they’re getting handed out like Halloween candy. Whether Cameron can become the next GOAT is the movie’s main obsession. Yet it resonates, albeit vague and unexplored, with biblical references to goat offerings and images of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb and the movie’s visual allusions to the goat-headed occult idol Baphomet. Plus, it offers us in the audience the thrill of wondering if someone will get spit-roasted.

Cameron enters Isaiah’s home to discover his host surrounded by what looks like taxidermy sheep skins. Nearly all of the film takes place in his compound, a circular warren that looks like a combination of an ancient temple and the Superdome. We’re continually happy to discover all the menacing delights that production designer Jordan Ferrer has concocted. Inside, there’s unnerving minimalist furniture, dramatic saunas and ice baths and an indoor football field with a throwing machine powerful enough to knock out a tooth. Even more terrifying, there’s Isaiah’s lifestyle-influencer wife, Elsie (Julia Fox), who stomps around with a pointy shard of jade that Cameron is supposed to stick up his rear. (You know, for peak performance.) Meanwhile, outside the gates, Isaiah’s cult followers — like visibly brain-fried Marjorie (Naomi Grossman) — are furious that their champion may retire.

Like “Kicks,” Tipping’s excellent 2016 feature debut about a kid who risks his neck for a pair of Nikes, “Him” is about the bloody quest for respect. It wants to be “The Substance” with jockstraps: a Satanic-tinged, steroidal “Rosemary’s Baby.” The film is so stylishly done that I could accept it on those plain terms. Every shot is a stunner, from stark images of eerily spinning footballs to goalposts that loom like devil’s horns. Editor Taylor Joy Mason and cinematographer Kira Kelly have put together queasy-brilliant montages with some kind of an eye-popping camera technique — a mix of thermal imaging, X-ray footage and visual effects — that seems to see right inside the actors’ bodies to their gristle and goo. Bobby Krlic (a.k.a. the Haxan Cloak), who also composed the music for “Midsommar,” wows us with a tragic, thundering score.

But the movie’s thoughts about pain and devotion and locker-room manipulation are still gestating. After I made it to the end of the story and ran it back, little of the plot hung together. I couldn’t with any conviction answer rudimentary questions such as how much does Cameron even want to play football? Or what in Hades will happen to the surviving characters?

Part of the issue is that Tipping and Withers have created a rising football player who might be too authentic. Withers moves with physical confidence and perfect posture and drilled obedience. Participating in a mock media training day, you buy that he was born to sell sneakers.

He speaks with an athlete’s guardedness, too, that post-game interview cadence where each wooden sentence tries to bore the camera into leaving them alone. Cameron describes his football career clinically and neutrally like he’s a product; he refers to himself “performing,” not “playing,” as the latter would imply he’s on the field to have fun.

Surrounded by trainers and doctors and his childhood hero, he acquiesces to pretty much everything, from receiving random injections to a brutal bludgeoning. (At least he doesn’t do you-know-what with that jade crystal.) I’m willing to blame some of that passivity on his head injury, but it’s hard to care about a character who only has a personality for three minutes.

At least Wayans gets to cut loose. His bullying Isaiah sprints from pep talks to threats in the same breath and runs around in nifty outfits covered in weighted beads. He’s in such peak physical condition that you believe Isaiah’s conviction that it’s possible to outrace Father Time. Realizing afterward that Wayans is 53 — almost a decade older than Tom Brady when he retired after announcers even more bold than Cosell treated him like Methuselah — you just might be tempted to bow down to Baphomet yourself.

ACTOR Tom Holland was rushed to hospital after a stunt on the set of the latest Spider-Man blockbuster went wrong.

It is believed he cracked his head in a fall and was treated for concussion.

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A woman, thought to be a stunt double, was also taken to hospital in an ambulance.

Filming of £150million Spider-Man: Brand New Day was suspended at Leavesden Studios in Watford, Herts, on Friday and could be on hold for weeks.

British star Tom’s comedian dad Dominic, attending a charity dinner in Mayfair, confirmed his son would be away from filming “for a while”.

Tom, 29, was there too and even posed for pictures with co-star and fiancée Zendaya, 28.

However, he left early after feeling ill.

The fall could lead to an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive.

The film — Tom’s fourth standalone Spider-Man movie — is due out next July.

Leavesden Studios and Sony Pictures were contacted for comment.

An East of England Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called at 10.30am on Friday to attend to a patient who had sustained an injury at Leavesden Studios in Watford.

“An ambulance was sent to the scene, and the patient was transported to hospital for further care.”

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

Robert Redford died this week at age 89 at his home outside Provo, Utah. The actor, producer and director had been a star for more than 60 years, going back to the 1963 comedy “Barefoot in the Park” and covering an enormously long list of performances in films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Hot Rock,” “Downhill Racer,” “The Way We Were,” “The Candidate,” “The Sting,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “All the President’s Men,” “The Electric Horseman,” “The Natural” and many more.

Redford was also an accomplished director, winning an Oscar for his debut “Ordinary People” and going on to make films such as “A River Runs Through It,” “Quiz Show,” “The Horse Whisperer,” “The Conspirator” and others.

In a survey of his career, Amy Nicholson wrote, “To appreciate Redford fully, we have to applaud not only the work he did but the simple, feel-good roles he rejected. He could have become a celebrity without breaking a sweat as the war hero, the jock, the husband, the cowboy, the American ideal made incarnate. Yet, he had the rare ability to sidestep what audiences thought we wanted from him to instead give us something we didn’t know we needed: selfish victors (‘Downhill Racer’), self-destructive veterans (‘The Great Waldo Pepper’) and tragic men who did everything right and still failed (2013’s ‘All Is Lost’).”

Robert Redford at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York in 2015.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

Nicholson added, “Lately, the Redford roles I’ve been thinking about are the ones where his all-American appeal makes us examine all of America, good and bad. The two that instantly jump to mind are his pair of political thrillers: ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ in which he plays a CIA agent on the run from his own co-workers, and ‘All the President’s Men,’ in which he doggedly uncovers the Watergate scandal. Both films believe in the power of getting the truth out to the press; neither is so naive as to think the truth alone will save the day.”

And then there is a whole other side to Redford: his extensive work as an activist on behalf of environmental causes and his founding of the Sundance Institute, which lead to the creation of the Sundance Film Festival.

I took a look at Redford’s work with Sundance and how he did nothing less than transform Hollywood, carving out a space for independent artists and opening doors for those who had been previously shut out by the industry.

“Mr. Redford was a shining example of how to leverage success into community building, discovery and empowerment,” filmmaker Ryan Coogler said in a statement. Coogler’s own career was launched via Sundance.

“In these trying times it hurts to lose an elder like Mr. Redford, someone who through their words, their actions and their commitment left their industry in a better place than they found it.”

Robert Redford and Lauren Hutton in 1970’s “Little Fauss and Big Halsy.”

(Steve Schapiro / Fahey / Klein Gallery)

I personally met Redford only once, when I moderated a Q&A in 2013 for “The Company You Keep,” in which he starred as a former ’60s radical. It would be the last feature film he directed. I was introduced to him shortly before we were to go in front of an audience together and he wanted to sit and talk for a moment. He immediately asked me about myself, where I was from and how long I had been a journalist.

It was thoroughly disarming to have someone so famous engage with me in a way that felt so genuine. Suddenly he was not a movie star, though he did indeed possess an otherworldly grace, charm and rugged beauty, but rather something even larger, someone who engaged with the world from a place of true curiosity. He leaves a lasting legacy, having touched countless lives.

There will surely be many more tributes and events to come, but Vidiots has already announced a screening of Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 “All the President’s Men,” starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman, on 35mm for Friday, Oct. 3.

‘Mysterious Skin’ in 4K

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, left, and Brady Corbet in the movie “Mysterious Skin.”

(Tartan Films)

Seeing the ongoing revival of Gregg Araki’s filmography in restored versions as fans wait for his upcoming film, “I Want Your Sex,” has been very gratifying. Tonight, the Academy Museum will present Araki’s 2004 “Mysterious Skin” in a new 4K restoration followed by a conversation with Araki, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and novelist Scott Heim, moderated by “Anora” filmmaker Sean Baker.

“Mysterious Skin” is a delicately told, crushingly disturbing tale of two young men (played by Gordon-Levitt and future “The Brutalist” director Brady Corbet) who each process an incident of sexual abuse from their childhood in different ways. The cast also includes Elisabeth Shue, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Michelle Trachtenberg, who died earlier this year.

Reviewing the film at the time, Kevin Thomas wrote, “The most mature work by the idiosyncratic and gifted Araki, ‘Mysterious Skin,’ based on the book by Scott Heim, highlights the director’s talent for inspiring the most demanding of portrayals from actors and for richly evoking the world his characters inhabit. The film has a mesmerizing floating quality, heightened by Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie’s deceptively serene score, and it has considerable offbeat, deadpan humor to offset its dark undertow. … it’s hard to imagine a more serious or persuasive indictment of the horrors inflicted on children by sexual abuse than ‘Mysterious Skin.’”

I spoke to Araki at the time about the perception that the film was a step toward a new-found maturity following the bratty punk charm of his earlier work.

“I like that it was a real departure for me and that people didn’t expect it,” said Araki. “I really appreciate that aspect of it, that I’ve never done a serious drama before. I do think that the film totally makes sense with all my other movies. There is a thematic similarity and the sensibilities of Scott [Heim] and myself are really attuned to each other. It’s not as if I’ve directed ‘Chicago.’”

J. Hoberman’s avant-garde NYC

An image from Ken Jacobs’ 1961 “The Whirled (aka Four Shorts of Jack Smith).”

(The Film-makers’ Coop)

On Thursday at 2220 Arts + Archives, Acropolis will present an evening in celebration of J. Hoberman’s inspiring and vivid recent book, “Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde — Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop.”

Hoberman, formerly the longtime film critic for the Village Voice and an insightful cultural chronicler, will be present for a signing and Q&A along with a program of short films from the era surveyed by the book, when New York was a bubbling cauldron of creativity and restless energy. Titles screening will include Ken Jacobs’ 1961 “The Whirled (aka Four Shorts of Jack Smith),” Ron Rice’s 1962 “Senseless,” Michael Snow’s 1964 “New York Eye and Ear Control” and Jud Yalkut’s 1966 “D.M.T.”

In the introduction to his book, Hoberman explains his thesis of creating a snapshot of a time and place — he pays incredible attention to actual addresses, mapping out what was happening where — by saying, “Cultural innovation comes from the margins and is essentially collective. … New York City in the 1960s was one such cradle of artistic innovation. Boundaries were transgressed, new forms created. A collective drama played out in coffeehouses and bars, at openings and readings, in lofts and storefront theaters and ultimately in the streets.”

Points of interest

Joe Dante’s ‘Pirahna’

A scene from the 1978 movie “Piranha.”

(New World Pictures)

It is always heartening to see longtime local hero Joe Dante celebrated. He will be appearing at Vidiots on Friday, this time with his 1978 film, “Piranha.” Made for producer Roger Corman, the movie was obviously one in a series of films intended to capture the excitement and scares generated by “Jaws,” and it certainly accomplishes that, but it is also so much more.

From a screenplay written by John Sayles, who would go on to an illustrious career as a director himself, and with sharp, smart direction by Dante, “Piranha” is about a mutant strain of killer fish engineered by the military and accidentally released into a small community’s waterways.

Writing about the film in 1978, Charles Champlin said, “‘Piranha’ is what it is: a swift, efficient program picture which squeezes the most out of its dollars to squeeze delicious chills from the audience. But it also plays to the attitudes as well as the emotional needs of its young customers. The bad guys are scientists, the military, the police, the politicians (what were we doing in Vietnam?), authority in almost any uniform.”

Writing about the film in 2012, Dennis Lim added, “This was Dante’s first solo directorial outing after several years at Corman’s New World Pictures, where he got his start editing trailers, and it establishes a distinctive tone that he has sustained throughout his career, right on the line between homage and parody. The actors — several, including [Dick] Miller and [Kevin] McCarthy, who would go on to become frequent Dante collaborators — give performances that are once committed and tongue-in-cheek and the effects, in contrast to the sophisticated animatronics of ‘Jaws,’ are charmingly rough and ready.”

Aaliyah x2

Jet Li and Aaliyah star in “Romeo Must Die.”

(Kharen Hill / Warner Bros. Pictures)

As part of an ongoing Y2K Fridays series, the Gardena Cinema is showing a double-bill of movies starring the late singer and actor Aaliyah, with Andrzej Bartkowiak’s 2000 “Romeo Must Die” and Michael Rymer’s 2002 “Queen of the Damned.”

Riffing on “Romeo and Juliet,” the story of “Romeo Must Die” revolves around Jet Li and Aaliyah as members of warring crime families in Oakland who fall for each other.

Kevin Thomas wrote, “Body counts run high in this genre, but ‘Romeo Must Die,’ which marks Li’s first English-language starring role, tries for some depth and sophistication. … The film is a new step for both Li, who hopes to break out with it, and for recording star Aaliyah, in an accomplished film debut.”

Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah in “Queen of the Damned.”

(Jim Sheldon / Warner Bros. Pictures)

Based on one of the novels from Anne Rice’s popular “Vampire Chronicles,” “Queen of the Damned” stars Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat, here taking on the guise of a rock star, and Aaliyah as Akasha, the first vampire.

In his review at the time, Kenneth Turan wrote, “As directed by Michael Rymer and with the late rock star Aaliyah in the title role, ‘Queen of the Damned’ turns out to be a muddled limp biscuit of a movie, a vampire soap opera that doesn’t make much sense even on its own terms. Though the previous film based on Anne Rice’s popular novels, the Tom Cruise-starring ‘Interview With the Vampire,’ was far from a success, this brain-dead venture makes it look like a masterwork by comparison.”

Insolent schoolkids and educators with the stamina and sensitivity to reach them is a sentimental formula so familiar, it could stand a pantsing in the hallway between classes.

Which makes it a good thing that “Steve,” starring Cillian Murphy as a dedicated, troubled head teacher at a struggling reform school for chaos-inclined teenage boys, brings a raucously corrective attitude to bear.

Teachers are sorely undervalued in this world, and a more thorny, realistic view of the profession’s challenges has made its way into the culture of late, between the Oscar-nominated German film “The Teachers’ Lounge,” Hirokazu Kore-ada’s “Monster” and Netflix’s Emmys-gobbling hit “Adolescence.” And while “Steve,” which takes place over a day, is ultimately too messy itself to measure up to those more tightly coiled efforts, its energy makes a statement, as if the legacy of the late, system-smashing British director Alan Clarke were close at hand.

“Steve” marks the second feature collaboration between Murphy and Belgian director Tim Mielants, following their excellent 2024 adaptation of Claire Keegan’s story “Small Things Like These.” This one, too, derives from a book — “Shy” by Max Porter. In adapting his own work, Porter shifts focus from his novella’s title adolescent, a disturbed soul in mid-tumble, who in the film is still a central figure (vividly rendered by Jay Lycurgo), to the teacher character for whom the movie is named, which the Oscar-winning Murphy turns into another immersive portrayal of dark-hued, guilt-flecked intensity.

Steve’s compassion is the beating heart of Stanton Wood, a privately bankrolled school in an old manor in the English countryside, whose core staff — including Steve’s plain-talking deputy, Amanda (Tracey Ullman), and unflappable therapist Jenny (Emily Watson) — are committed to its last-chance ethos of pulling unhappy delinquents from the brink. But this is Britain in 1996 and these hot-headed young men (played by a lively mix of first-timers and experienced actors) prefer the numbing tempo of drum and bass or a well-timed punch or thrown object.

Stopping fights is a full-time a job, and Steve’s chummy de-escalation style attests to how much he cares. But on top of the day’s regular behavior management, there’s also a prying documentary crew, a visit from a local MP (a perfectly pompous Roger Allam) that goes south and what turns out to be a bad-news report from the school’s wealthy backers. When Steve explodes on them, one senses his volatile students have been teaching him something too.

And yet “Steve,” sincere in its hardcore concern, believably acted, is too scattered and schematically plotted to fully pull us into the emotional toll and scruffy joys of this work. Its social realist roots are kept from growing the more it relies on visual/sonic turbulence (hallucinatory images, a flashy drone shot) and narrative shorthands (the overdone documentary framing).

But when “Steve” zeroes in on its characters — Shy on a disturbing call with his fed-up mum, Steve fighting his own demons or in the zone — the movie captures the electric hum of unpredictability and vulnerability. At its best, we understand why these people want to keep the lights on in a dark, unforgiving world.

Disasters are real — also, these days, frighteningly common, be they epic confluences of nature and negligence or the murderous and preventable kind. And when it comes to disaster movies, it’s hard to know what the acceptable level of exploitation is.

Of course, director Paul Greengrass could never be confused with the unseriousness of producer Irwin Allen (“The Towering Inferno”) or filmmaker Roland Emmerich (“The Day After Tomorrow”), ringmasters who preferred heaping helpings of A-listers on slick, expensive calamities. Rather, when Greengrass, coming from documentaries, tackles dark days of mass casualty, they tend to be true stories like “United 93” and “Bloody Sunday.” His stripped-down, jagged style, absent marquee names and focused on such issues as terrorism and community, brings intelligent urgency to the unfathomable.

With his new film “The Lost Bus,” however, starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, about the real-life effort to save a busload of schoolchildren from the 2018 Camp fire, a wildfire that would destroy most of Paradise, Calif., Greengrass is trying to merge the two sensibilities. This time he mixes star heroism with you-are-there spectacle and the results can be galvanizing if awkwardly framed.

“The Lost Bus” is not as potent as Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips,” in which Tom Hanks anchored a re-created reality no less pulse-pounding than any action blockbuster. Instead the director seems to be in a programmatic mode. There are scenes of nerve-jangling terror that weld you to your seat, but they’re sandwiched in between a lot that feels very much sculpted for three-act character arc effect by Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby.

McConaughey plays Paradise bus driver Kevin McKay, whose life is almost comically scripted to come off as especially challenged before one lick of flame gets near it: strapped for cash, dying dog, recently dead father (no love lost), sullen teenage son (love lost), ex-wife (also unhappy) and a memory-ailing mother. But on the afternoon of Nov. 18 as the fires reach eastern Paradise, Kevin’s is the only bus that can meet a request from his dispatcher (Ashlie Atkinson): Pick up stranded elementary schoolkids and evacuate them to safety.

A failed dad feeling the weight of sudden responsibility, Kevin corrals as co-chaperone a schoolteacher (America Ferrera). Though Mary is a mother eager to get to her own child, she’s willing to help. The occasional cut to Yul Vazquez as the fire chief spearheading rescue efforts, however, is this movie’s barometer of increasingly bad news. As smoke quickly darkens the day and the unstoppable, town-hopping fire hems in the bus, cutting off routes, the journey takes a dystopian turn, raising the stakes and alarm levels to unimaginable heights. (Eaton and Palisades survivors, fair warning — you were never going to watch this anyway.)

McConaughey is solid casting, his unshowy working-class fortitude slightly tinged with fear. In his and Ferrera’s sturdy presence and in the serrated frenzy of Greengrass’ editing style, a shorter, tighter “The Lost Bus” would still hold plenty of dread and dramatic resilience. The fire sequences alone, captured in the hellish fuzz of Pål Ulvik Rokseth’s cinematography, are pinnacles of this practical-meets-digital-effects discipline. But Kevin’s dippy redemption arc, doled out midperil in tortured glances and forced dialogue, drags us out of the intensity.

It’s also odd that the activist-minded Greengrass didn’t do more with so corporate a villain: legally responsible utility PG&E, represented in the movie by an ineffectual suit who is briefly yelled at. Forget that redemption story — Greengrass could have leaned even more into those action tropes and, as a final touch, had McConaughey punch PG&E in the jaw.

When Elaine Del Valle was in the sixth grade, she starred in the lead role of Sandy in her school’s production of “Grease.”

Decades later, she would return to that same school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to shoot scenes for her autobiographical film “Brownsville Bred” — which will debut in select theaters nationwide on Friday.

Tethered to the people and places that shaped her into the person she’s become, Del Valle, 54, has been working on this intensely personal project for over 16 years. Now a filmmaker, she began her entertainment career as an actor and later as a casting director.

Before reaching its final cinematic form, “Brownsville Bred” first had other iterations: a one-woman stage show, a novel, and a TV pilot doubling as a short film.

“I knew all along that I wanted to make ‘Brownsville Bred’ into something that people could see visually on screen, and that it could be shared more widely. But I never really had the resources,” she says from her home in New York during a recent video call.

The feature film fictionalizes Del Valle’s childhood and adolescence during the 1980s in the titular underprivileged Brooklyn neighborhood, where crime and drug use were just as quotidian as the sounds of salsa music and memorable family moments.

Central to this heartfelt coming-of-age story is Del Valle’s complicated relationship with her vivacious but troubled Puerto Rican father, a musician struggling with addiction who, after a stint in prison, returned to the island while she was still young.

For the scenes depicting Elaine (played as a teen by Nathalia Lares) visiting her father Manny (Javier Muñoz) in Puerto Rico, the writer-director chose to shoot on location in the town of Cataño where her father, the real-life Manny, was from. Bringing the film there reinforced Del Valle’s sense of belonging in her Boricua identity.

“People say to me, ‘Elaine, you’re so happy all the time. You’re so energetic, you’re so willing, what is that?’ And I would say, ‘I don’t know, that’s just me. And after filming in Puerto Rico, I feel strongly that it is part of the culture there, because I felt that in every single person that was on set with me.”

Still from Elaine Del Valle’s Brownsville Bred, opening Sept. 19, 2025.

(Benjamin Medina)

Growing up in a low-income community, Del Valle couldn’t fathom a path into the performing arts. She married at 18 years old and had a daughter not long after. Around that time, she attended an event put on by the Hispanic Organization of Latino Actors. There, she learned she needed headshots to start reaching out to agents and going out for roles.

“I knew that I wanted more out of life, and I would take my daughter with me in her baby carriage to auditions,” she recalls. A determined Del Valle quickly found success as a bilingual actor for commercials. Eventually, Del Valle also landed the voice role of Val the Octopus, a motherly figure in the now-beloved animated series “Dora the Explorer.”

In the late 2000s, as she studied acting at Carnegie Hall, she started writing down her most significant childhood memories encouraged by her instructor Wynn Handman. She wrote about 10,000 words before deciding to adapt the text into prose that she could speak out loud in front of an audience. Recounting her foundational experiences became a cathartic, healing process. That’s when “Brownsville Bred” took the form of a one-woman stage play.

In 2009, Del Valle started performing the inspirational account numerous times at schools and corporate events; by 2011, it was off-Broadway.

“The audience reception made me understand how important this story was, not just to me and my artistry and my ability to heal as a human, but also to other people who needed those things as well, and to see themselves reflected on screen,” she recalls.

It was thanks to one of those performances that Del Valle got offered a job as a casting director. Her credentials: “I had been to every casting office in New York as an actor.”

To support her intention of one day turning this personal narrative into a film, Del Valle decided to turn it into a book so that she could own it as an intellectual property. These days, that’s become common practice in Hollywood: turn the story into a book, so that the screenplay is no longer an original creation, but an adaptation of an intellectual property.

The audiobook version of the tome, published in 2020, was narrated by Del Valle herself.

Del Valle first stepped behind the camera when she couldn’t find a director to helm her 2013 web series “Reasons Y I’m Single.” She had written the project, cast the actors, scouted locations and was ready to serve as producer — but in the end, “by default,” as she says, she had to direct it.

“That is where I really found my passion to work with actors and to get them to where I thought that they could get to,” she explains. “I do like directing more than acting, because I still get to act,” she says. “I am a scene partner as a director.”

Director Elaine Del Valle poses with her brother, Benjamin Medina, who also worked on set.

The road to finally bring “Brownsville Bred” to the screen was in motion when Del Valle received funding from WarnerMedia OneFifty, an artist development initiative, to produce a pilot that could serve as proof of concept for an episodic series. With that grant, the filmmaker would shoot the first 15 minutes of narrative, which played at multiple festivals as a short piece.

Del Valle’s experience as a casting director proved an advantage when she needed to cast the young woman who would play her in most of the film. Her search came down to two finalists, and ultimately Lares reminded her more closely of who she was at that age.

“The other girl is who I wanted to be when I was growing up, because she was so cool and tough,” Del Valle says. “And Nathalia was actually who I was growing up, which was very vulnerable.”

Muñoz, in turn, convinced Del Valle he could play Manny because of his musicality and talent for singing, qualities her father had. It was an Instagram video of Muñoz singing inside an empty New York subway car that solidified her belief in the actor. That Muñoz is an HIV activist also made him an ideal candidate, since Del Valle’s father lost his life to AIDS.

For the most part, reliving some of the most painful experiences of her early years while shooting didn’t affect Del Valle. Yet, she still needed to tap into her lived experience to guide the actors as they navigated this fiction constructed from her former reality.

“Leaning into the emotion a lot of the times was for them, always healing, but definitely for them, so that they can feel secure in the choices they were making to honor my story,” she says. “Sometimes they needed that more than I did. But every time I shared with them I was able to grow from that experience as well, to give them what they needed, but also feel it.”

Film still from the movie ‘Brownsville Bred,’ directed by Elaine Del Valle.

To produce the rest of the film, Del Valle invested her own savings, and utilized any cost-effective opportunity. At a party, she met the owner of a disheveled building in Queens, and asked if she could film there before they renovated it. On the corner near that building she found a Latino-owned pizzeria, and after explaining the significance of the story, the owner let her shoot there. She was cleverly frugal to bring it to fruition.

Through all the transformations from one medium to the next, the unchangeable essence of “Brownsville Bred” is “showing the contradictions in who we are, because so many times Latinos are seen as one dimensional,” Del Valle thinks. “This very much shows the layers of who made me who I am. I am urban, I am American, I am Latina, I’m Puerto Rican, I’m a daughter and a mother,” she adds.

“Brownsville Bred” ends with a quote by Del Valle for her father: “I made it mean something, Papa.” For the multihyphenate, the film is the culmination of a lifelong dream to honor him in all his complexity, both the joy and pain that they share in their time together.

“This film made his life mean something,” she says, barely holding back tears. “It made his experience mean something. It made his death mean something. I got to give him a legacy.”

Simultaneously, “Brownsville Bred” bears witness to what she overcame to accomplish this feat. “We all have our struggles and I’ve always believed that it is up to us to turn those struggles into triumph,” she explains. “We don’t have to wallow in the misery that people expect us to be wallowing in. We can use those obstacles and stand on them. And I did.”

This article contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”

Isabel “Belly” Conklin and Conrad Fisher had a très romantique reunion in Paris in the highly anticipated series finale of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” this week — but that’s not the end of their love story.

Hours after Prime Video dropped the series finale of the hit show on Wednesday, the streamer announced a feature film continuation to be written and directed by author, creator and co-showrunner Jenny Han.

“There is another big milestone left in Belly’s journey, and I thought only a movie could give it its proper due,” Han said in a press release. The surprise announcement was made during the red carpet finale premiere in the City of Love, with Han and the stars of the series, including Lola Tung, Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno, in attendance.

Story and production details for the untitled “Summer I Turned Pretty” movie are under wraps, as is the release date. But fans of Han’s bestselling book series of the same name have already guessed which major milestone a “Summer” movie is likely to reveal: Belly’s wedding to Conrad.

The wedding, an ultimate happy ending for the couple after their tumultuous three-season journey of first love and heartbreak, was originally revealed in the epilogue of Han’s third “Summer” novel, “We’ll Always Have Summer.” Curiously for the series, in which Han has shown meticulous creative control with well-curated book moments, music and visual details, Belly and Conrad’s onscreen love story comes to an open-ended conclusion when they return together to the Cousins summer house, with Belly narrating an ambiguous forward jump in time.

Additionally, a credits montage titled “Christmas in Paris” shows snapshots of them spending the holiday together and an onscreen letter from Han thanking fans that appears to open the door to more of Belly and Conrad’s story: “Maybe we’ll meet again one summer in Cousins.”

Belly and Conrad’s onscreen love story comes to an open-ended conclusion when they return together to the Cousins summer house in the series finale.

(Eddy Chen / Prime)

The final three episodes of the global hit series expand on the book’s epilogue, switching the setting from Spain to Paris, where Belly (Tung) finishes college abroad after a love confession from Conrad (Briney) upends her would-be nuptials to his brother, Jeremiah (Casalegno). The penultimate episode included the handwritten letters from the book that Conrad begins sending Belly during their time apart, leading to their eventual romantic reconnection.

In the 79-minute series finale, written by Han and co-showrunner Sarah Kucserka and directed by Jesse Peretz, Conrad arrives in Paris a year later to surprise Belly on her birthday. They clear the air and rekindle their spark during a “Before Sunrise”-esque day together. A passionate night is followed by a tearful goodbye, an emotional revelation, a dramatic dash to the train station, and the return of the infinity necklace that has symbolized their love since Season 1.

The episode also checks in on the folks back home in Cousins, including Steven (Sean Kaufman) and Taylor (Rain Spencer), who are navigating the next steps of their own relationship, and Jeremiah, now an up-and-coming chef, who has moved on from his breakup with Belly and is forging a romantic connection with former co-worker Denise (Isabella Briggs).

After watching the finale, some fans on social media felt that Belly and Conrad’s love story was incomplete, wanting to see more of the couple together, and that it missed book moments like their wedding, closure for other characters, and a reunion of the whole Cousins crew.

Avid fans had already begun poring over the episode for hints of more “Summer” to come. Eagle-eyed viewers like TikTok creator @bookbeedani noted that the numbers “12” and “14” appearing throughout the episodes and holiday hints, including a red and green dress worn by Han in a promo revealing the finale title, support speculation that a Dec. 14 Christmas special might be in the works.

Those details could hint at what’s to come in a “Summer” feature film, including what we didn’t see in the series finale, like the letter Susannah wrote to Belly before her death, a “Bonrad” wedding — and first dance to “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs — and a final scene with the pair on the beach that has been witness to several of their important moments together.

“I’m definitely open to doing more stories in the universe,” Han told The Times in an interview ahead of the finale. The film, which will mark Han’s feature directorial debut after making her first foray into directing with a Season 3 episode told from Conrad’s perspective, could also tie up loose ends or tee up spin-off potential for other beloved characters, including Steven and Taylor in California; Laurel, John and Adam on that singles cruise; or Jeremiah and Denise in … love?

Empire of the Sun was released in 1987 and is based on J.G Ballard’s novel of the same name. It stars Christian Bale and is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video

The war epic that catapulted Steven Spielberg into the ranks of Hollywood’s top directors is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Empire of the Sun, which hit cinemas in 1987, features a glittering cast including Christian Bale.

Adapted from J. G Ballard’s novel bearing the same title, this 2hrs 32 min spectacle chronicles the life of Jamie ‘Jim’ Graham – portrayed by the erstwhile Batman actor – a well-heeled British lad residing in Shanghai during the early stages of World War II.

Separated from his parents amidst the Japanese invasion, he is ultimately captured and dispatched to an internment camp where he encounters the intriguing American wheeler-dealer, Basie, enacted by Of Mice and Men (1992) actor John Malkovich.

Striving to endure the severe conditions, Jim aspires to preserve his youthful innocence amid the turmoil and loss, reports the Express.

The cast also includes Southport-born Miranda Richardson, Nigel Havers known for Coronation Street (2009-2019) and Chariots of Fire (1981), and The Matrix (1999) star Joe Pantoliano.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has awarded Empire of the Sun a critic score of 77%, while the audience score stands at a commendable 90%.

The film was highly acclaimed upon its release and is often hailed as the hidden jewel in Spielberg’s trove of blockbusters, with some asserting it surpasses the likes of Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Schindler’s List (1993) as his finest work.

Don’t just take our word for it, with one critic saying: “One of Steven Spielberg’s most ambitious efforts of the 1980s, Empire of the Sun remains an underrated gem in the director’s distinguished filmography.

“Stephen Spielberg’s graduation to grown-up film-making,” added a second, while another added: “Empire of the Sun is a great, overwrought movie that leaves one wordless and worn out.”

Matt, a superfan of the movie, posted on Rotten Tomatoes: “This is one of my favorite films of all time. I’ve been watching it since it came out and it’s just as good each time I see it.

“Absolute stellar cast and should have won a lot of awards. This is actually my favorite Speilberg WWII movie.”

Empire of the Sun is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

It all started with a purchase of land in the 1960s. Then, from that small slice of Utah and the founding of the Sundance Institute in 1981 and, later, its expansion into the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford developed a vision that would reshape on-screen storytelling as we know it. Sundance opened doors for multiple generations of filmmakers who might not otherwise have gained entry to the movie business.

Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, was already a hugely successful actor, producer and director, having just won an Oscar for his directorial debut “Ordinary People,” when he founded the Sundance Institute as a support system for independent filmmakers. His Utah property, named after his role in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” would become a haven for creativity in an idyllic setting.

Evincing a rugged, hands-on attitude marked by curiosity and enthusiasm about the work, Redford embodied a philosophy for Sundance that was clear from its earliest days.

“When I started the Institute, the major studios dominated the game, which I was a part of,” Redford said to The Times via email in 2021. “I wanted to focus on the word ‘independence’ and those sidelined by the majors — supporting those sidelined by the dominant voices. To give them a voice. The intent was not to cancel or go against the studios. It wasn’t about going against the mainstream. It was about providing another avenue and more opportunity.”

The first of the Sundance Lab programs, which continue today, also launched in 1981, bringing emerging filmmakers together in the mountains to develop projects with the support of more established advisers.

The Institute would take over a small film festival in Utah, the U.S. Film Festival, for its 1985 edition and eventually rename it the Sundance Film Festival, a showcase that would go on to introduce directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Nia DaCosta, Taika Waititi, Gregg Araki, Damien Chazelle and countless others while refashioning independent filmmaking into a viable career path.

Before directing “Black Panther” and “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler went through the Sundance Lab at the beginning of his career and saw his debut feature “Fruitvale Station” premiere at Sundance in 2013 where it won both the grand jury and audience awards.

“Mr. Redford was a shining example of how to leverage success into community building, discovery, and empowerment,” Coogler said in a statement to The Times on Tuesday. “I’ll be forever grateful for what he did when he empowered and supported Michelle Satter in developing the Sundance Labs. In these trying times it hurts to lose an elder like Mr. Redford — someone who through their words, their actions and their commitment left their industry in a better place than they found it.”

Chloé Zhao’s debut feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” premiered at the festival in 2015 after she took the project through the labs. With her later effort “Nomadland,” Zhao would go on to become the second woman — and still the only woman of color — to win the Academy Award for directing.

“Sundance changed my life,” Zhao said in a statement on Tuesday. “I didn’t know anyone in the industry or how to get my first film made. Being accepted into the Sundance Labs was like entering a lush and nurturing garden holding my tiny fragile seedling and watching it take root and grow. It was there I found my voice, became a part of a community I still treasure deeply today.”

Satter, Sundance Institute‘s founding senior director of artist programs, was involved since the organization’s earliest days. Even from relatively humble origins, Satter could already feel there was something powerful and unique happening under Redford’s guidance.

“He made us all feel like we were part of the conversation, part of building Sundance, right from the beginning,” Satter said of Redford in a 2021 interview. “He was really interested in others’ point of view, all perspectives. At the same time, he had a real clarity of vision and what he wanted this to be.”

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For many years Redford was indeed the face of the film festival, making frequent appearances and regularly speaking at the opening press conference. Starting in 2019 he reduced his public role at the festival, in tandem with the moment he stepped back from acting.

The festival has gone through many different eras over the years, with festival directors handing off leadership from Geoffrey Gilmore to John Cooper to Tabitha Jackson and current fest director Eugene Hernandez.

The festival has also weathered changes in the industry, as streaming platforms have upended distribution models. Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 drama “sex, lies and videotape” is often cited as a key title in the industry’s discovery of the Utah event as a must-attend spot on their calendars, a place where buyers could acquire movies for distribution and scout new talent.

“Before Sundance, there wasn’t really a marketplace for new voices and independent film in the way that we know it today,” said Kent Sanderson, chief executive of Bleecker Street, which has premiered multiple films at the festival over the years. “The way Sundance supports filmmakers by giving their early works a real platform is key to the health of our business.”

Over time, Sundance became a place not only to acquire films but also to launch them, with distributors bringing films to put in front of the high number of media and industry attendees. Investors come to scope out films and filmmakers look to raise money.

“It all started with Redford having this vision of wanting to create an environment where alternative approaches to filmmaking could be supported and thrive,” said Joe Pichirallo, an arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and one of the original executives at Searchlight Pictures. “And he succeeded and it’s continuing. Even though the business is going through various changes, Sundance’s significance as a mecca for independent film is still pretty high.”

At the 2006 festival, “Little Miss Sunshine,” directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, sold to Searchlight for what was then a record-setting $10.5 million. In 2021, Apple TV+ purchased Siân Heder’s “CODA” for a record-breaking $25 million. The film would go on to be the first to have premiered at Sundance to win the Oscar for best picture.

Yet the festival, the labs and the institute have remained a constant through it all, continuing to incubate fresh talent to launch to the industry.

“Redford put together basically a factory of how to do independent films,” said Tom Bernard, co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. Over the years the company has distributed many titles that premiered at Sundance, including “Call Me by Your Name” and “Whiplash.”

“He adapted as the landscape changed,” Bernard added of the longevity of Sundance’s influence. “And as you watched the evolution to where it is today, it’s an amazing journey and an amazing feat that he did for the world of independent film. It wouldn’t be the same without him.”

Through it all, Redford balanced his roles between his own career making and starring in movies and leading Sundance. Filmmaker Allison Anders, whose 1992 film “Gas Food Lodging” was among the earliest breakout titles from the Sundance Film Festival, remembered Redford on Instagram.

“You could easily have just been the best looking guy to walk into any room and stopped there and lived off of that your whole life,” Anders wrote. “You wanted to help writers and filmmakers like me who were shut out to create characters not seen before, and you did. You could have just been handsome. But you nurtured us.”

The upcoming 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January will be the last one in its longtime home of Park City, Utah. The festival had previously announced that a tribute to Redford and his vision of the festival would be a part of that final bow, which will now carry an added emotional resonance.

Starting in 2027, the Sundance Film Festival will unspool in in Boulder, Colo. Regardless of where the event takes place, the legacy of what Robert Redford first conceived will remain.

As Redford himself said in 2021 about the founding of the Institute, “I believed in the concept and because it was just that, a concept, I expected and hoped that it would evolve over time. And happily, it has.”

Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

Robert Redford looked like he walked out of the sea to become a Hollywood god. He was physically flawless. Pacific blue eyes, salt-bleached hair, a friendly surfer-boy squint. Born in Santa Monica to a milkman and a housewife, his first memory was of sliding off his mother’s lap at the Aero Theatre as a toddler and running toward the light, causing such a ruckus that the projectionist had to stop the film.

He definitely grew up to grab the movies’ attention. He wasn’t just telegenic but talented, although that wasn’t a requirement for stardom when he emerged in the late ’50s when the industry was scooping up hunks like him by the bucket for television and B-movies. All a male ingenue needed to do was smile and kiss the girl. It would have been so easy to do that a couple times and wind up doing it forever. You can understand why so many forgotten actors made that deal, without realizing that forever can lead to a fast retirement.

But if Redford had sensed at 2 years old that he was meant to be onscreen, by his 20s, he insisted he’d only do it on his own terms. At 27, with nearly zero name recognition, he horrified his then-agent by turning down a $10,000-a-week TV gig as a strait-laced psychiatrist to do a Mike Nichols theater production for just $110. His rejection of the easy money was an unusual choice, particularly for a cash-strapped father of two.

To appreciate Redford fully, we have to applaud not only the work he did but the simple, feel-good roles he rejected. He could have become a celebrity without breaking a sweat as the war hero, the jock, the husband, the cowboy, the American ideal made incarnate. Yet, he had the rare ability to sidestep what audiences thought we wanted from him to instead give us something we didn’t know we needed: selfish victors (“Downhill Racer”), self-destructive veterans (“The Great Waldo Pepper”) and tragic men who did everything right and still failed (2013’s “All Is Lost”).

In spirit, Redford never strayed far from the teen rebel he’d been — a truant who’d skipped school, stole booze and crashed race cars — and the radical artist he hurled himself into becoming by quitting everything traditional (the football team, his fraternity, college altogether) to move to Paris where he took up oil painting and marched against the Soviets. He might have excelled at the sleazy roles that made Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino famous. On the outside, he knew they didn’t fit, either.

Sometimes Redford said no even when I wish he’d have said yes. Imagine if he’d agreed to face off against Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Instead, he told Nichols he’d rather tangle with Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate,” only to be rejected as too handsome for the role. “Can you honestly imagine a guy like you having difficulty seducing a woman?” Nichols told him.

Instead, Redford used his all-American good looks to make us question our flattering image of ourselves. In the 1974 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” he was the first person you’d think of to play the title role because he fully understood the point of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book — how it felt to represent our country’s whole image of success while knowing it’s a phony put-on. I imagine him making a devil’s bargain with his face, vowing that he won’t hide behind goofy accents and stunt wigs the way other too-handsome oddballs do, if he’s allowed to use his appeal like a Trojan horse.

If there’s one thing that unites his roles, from 1966’s “The Chase” to “Lions for Lambs,” it’s his willingness to give the screen his full charisma — to let audiences stare at him for the whole running time of a movie — as long as we’ll agree to ask what’s lurking in his underbelly. Most often, we’ll find frustrated idealism just at the moment it starts to sour.

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The films of the 1960s and ’70s that made Redford an icon mostly cleave into two categories: scamps and truth-seekers. (The latter can overlap with suckers and stooges.) His antihero crooks in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting” captured something in our national id, our not-so-secret belief that it’s OK to break a few rules to get ahead — that we can forgive a sin if we like the sinner. I like how those movies give you a guilty little tingle about rooting for Redford even when it means scratching off a couple of the Ten Commandments. (Thou shalt not steal unless you’re Robert Redford, who got away with it all the way through 2018’s “The Old Man and the Gun.”)

Lately, the Redford roles I’ve been thinking about are the ones where his all-American appeal makes us examine all of America, good and bad. The two that instantly jump to mind are his pair of political thrillers: “Three Days of the Condor,” in which he plays a CIA agent on the run from his own co-workers, and “All the President’s Men,” in which he doggedly uncovers the Watergate scandal. Both films believe in the power of getting the truth out to the press; neither is so naive as to think the truth alone will save the day.

But let’s not overlook “The Candidate,” a movie that has Redford as underqualified political scion Bill McKay, pressed to run for governor of California. “He’s not going to get his ass kicked — he’s cute,” his father (Melvyn Douglas) says. Meanwhile, his own campaign team cares more about the length of his sideburns than ideas in his head. Released in 1972, five years into former actor Ronald Reagan’s own governorship, the movie hammers home that superficiality might be democracy’s downfall — and the stakes are bigger than who is Hollywood‘s latest heartthrob.

Vice President Dan Quayle once said “The Candidate” inspired him, triggering its screenwriter Jeremy Larner to dash this off in an op-ed: “Mr. Quayle, this was not a how-to movie, it was a watch-out movie. And you are what we should be watching out for!”

In his later years, Redford became a filmmaker himself and I can picture him pulling Brad Pitt aside on the set of “A River Runs Through It” to whisper: You don’t have to stay in that pretty–boy box. Feel free to get weird. As an actor and director, Redford continued to create characters who uncovered our our hidden rot, whether in our purported national pastime, baseball (“The Natural”), or in our actual one, watching television (“Quiz Show”). His turn in “Indecent Proposal” as the wealthy man who offers to rent his employee’s wife lives on as shorthand for tycoons who assume they can buy whatever, and whoever, they want. When he eventually signed on for a superhero film, it was, fittingly, alongside Captain America, that upright paragon of virtue — and Redford played the villain.

What Quayle missed about “The Candidate” is that when it comes to a Robert Redford movie, truth is never as plain as what your eyes can see. There’s always a deeper level and there’s no guarantee that justice would win. In fact, I’d argue in Redford’s films, it rarely does.

Robert Redford, right, and Dustin Hoffman in the movie “All The President’s Men.”

(Sunset Boulevard / Corbis / Getty Images)

Alan J. Pakula’s Watergate drama is remembered as one of the great political thrillers, but for Redford it was a gamble of conviction and clout. He optioned the Woodward-Bernstein book himself, pushing through doubts that a film built on phone calls, door knocks and note-taking could grip audiences. As Bob Woodward he strips away glamour, playing a reporter who is awkward, halting and dogged, yet unshakable once the trail begins to unfold. Opposite Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein — fast-talking, improvisational, always pushing — Redford is methodical and contained, and together they embody the tension and rhythm of investigative reporting, turning the grind into suspense. With this role, Redford showed that persistence, not bravado, could carry a movie, and that a star could trade charm for credibility without losing magnetism. It cemented his reputation not just as a leading man but as a cultural force who could will serious stories onto the screen. — Josh Rottenberg

Ahead of a 50th anniversary screening of “Jaws” this month at the AMC Theatres in Century City, even the trailers were nostalgic.

Moviegoers saw previews of Marty McFly taking flight in a DeLorean in 1985’s “Back to the Future,” the Von Trapp family sharing a musical picnic in the Austrian hills in 1965’s “The Sound of Music” and Tom Hanks launching into space in 1995’s “Apollo 13.”

And those are just a few of the movies that are returning to theaters this year to celebrate landmark anniversaries.

The box office shows there’s a demand to be met, as many classic titles outearn various new releases during opening weekends.

Over Labor Day weekend, “Jaws” came in as the second-highest-grossing movie with a domestic opening of $8.2 million, behind Zach Cregger’s horror hit “Weapons.” Steven Spielberg’s breakout blockbuster was shown in 3,200 theaters and made around $15 million worldwide. Earlier this year, the 20th anniversary screening of “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” also ranked second with $25 million for its opening weekend, under Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.” It raked in about $55 million worldwide, bringing the title’s total gross box office to more than $900 million.

It’s almost as if movie studios, filmgoers and theater owners alike are pining for a time when the movie business, now struggling more than five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, was the center of popular culture in the U.S. Before social media and Netflix dominated people’s attention.

David Berger, who owns the Ojai Playhouse, a 111-year-old theater with one screen and 200 seats, finds that when studios come to him with a digitally restored classic, he’ll probably see strong attendance. On Sept. 10, he played a 40th anniversary screening of “The Breakfast Club” and sold 125 tickets.

“It’s about getting away from streaming and taking a break from your phone and the world — really just letting the magic of movies do its thing,” Berger said. “So, we book a lot of nostalgic repertory anniversary films, and they do really well. Sales overall are really up.”

Studio executives and moviegoers offer competing theories about why older titles are getting traction on the big screen. Some see it as an anniversary year coincidence. Others look at it as a way to cushion theaters’ thin movie slates, which have not recovered from the pandemic. Some think it’s a way to keep movie theaters in business, as these screenings tend to happen in the middle of the week and help maintain steady crowds.

By the end of 2025, there will have been roughly 100 anniversary and re-release showings brought to screens around the country, according to Comscore. In 2019, Comscore shows that there were a little over 60 re-release and anniversary screenings.

Before the pandemic, most such screenings were for one or two days and were hosted by specialized distributors, such as Fathom Entertainment. Re-releases and anniversaries weren’t often screened as traditional releases from major studios. That’s been changing ever since.

Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore, says audiences should expect an uptick of re-releases whenever a year ends with a 0 or a 5.

Titles with loyal fanbases, like 2005’s “Pride & Prejudice” ($6 million), 1990’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” ($4 million) and 1975’s “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” ($1.1 million) have capitalized on this market. These films didn’t have a chance to celebrate in 2020, when theaters were closed because of COVID-19.

The rising interest has boosted the business of Fathom, which for more than 20 years has specialized in bringing oldies back to theaters, as well as various documentaries, performing arts shows and faith-based content. Chief Executive Ray Nutt has also noted an increased interest in the area. Anniversary showings of these “classics” tend to make up between 20% and 40% of Fathom’s annual revenue, equating to $20 million or more.

“I’m proud to say that over the last two years, we’ve increased our revenue by 45% and 48% respectively,” said Nutt. “We’ve had record-breaking years, and classics have been a really important part of that.”

Fathom and Lionsgate are gearing up for the return of the “Twilight” saga to theaters for its 20th anniversary. All five films, along with roundtable footage with author Stephenie Meyer, will be screening around the country from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2. Kevin Grayson, Lionsgate’s head of distribution, said the series is slated to screen in about 1,000 theaters. But with strong presales, he said the footprint will probably expand to 1,500 to 2,000 locations.

“‘Twilight’ has been out for a long time,” Grayson said. “But after seeing the significant ticket sales it has already brought in, you can tell people want that communal experience.”

Executives say these showing are good for business and come with little downside.

Studios can dust off a movie they already own and create hype through marketing. The screenings may appeal to fans who may have never seen the movie on the big screen before. While they’re not as profitable as a massive new blockbuster, the additional revenue makes them worth the effort.

“We make a real business out of [these screenings] every single year,” said Jim Orr, Universal Pictures’ president of domestic theatrical distribution. “Everyone understands that the best way to experience a movie is truly on the big screen.”

Even with re-releases, franchises come out on top.

Disney had a 30th anniversary screening of “Toy Story” over the weekend, ahead of the new “Toy Story 5” hitting theaters next year. The studio is also presenting a re-release of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” a few months before the newest installment, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” arrives in December.

“It’s expensive to market a movie on a global basis,” said Andrew Cripps, Disney’s theatrical distribution head. “When you’ve got an established franchise and you’re building on something that’s had an audience in the past, it’s a lot easier to build your campaign on top of that, rather than starting from scratch.”

Last year, there were indicators that demonstrated the audience’s growing demand to see older movies on the big screen. “Interstellar” earned $15.2 million for its Imax re-entry, and “Coraline” achieved $34 million to commemorate its 15th anniversary.

Many moviegoers attending an evening screening of “Jaws” said they wanted to see the movie “the way it was intended,” embracing the communal experience of fear and laughter in the theater.

“I haven’t seen ‘Jaws’ in years, and seeing it on the big screen felt ceremonial in a way,” said Culver City-based Ella Paseua, a recent subscriber to AMC’s Stubs A-List subcription program. “I could watch it at home. But these anniversary screenings are meant for the community. People were applauding when the shark was caught. You don’t get that at home.”

Mario is headed to outer space for his next cinematic adventure.

Nintendo held a supersized livestream of announcements Friday commemorating the 40th anniversary of “Super Mario Bros.”: The first game in the popular franchise was released in Japan in September 1985. Among the news items shared by the company’s video game maestro Shigeru Miyamoto is that the sequel to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is officially titled “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” The follow-up to the 2023 blockbuster is slated to hit theaters in April.

“What kinds of adventures do you think Mario and his friends will have in space?” Miyamoto, who created Nintendo’s iconic mustachioed hero, said during Nintendo Direct after sharing a brief teaser for the film. “This movie will be the main event of the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ 40th anniversary.”

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is another collaboration between Nintendo and the animation studio Illumination. During the livestreamed announcement, producer and Illumination chief executive Chris Meledandri shared that “while the ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ games are the core inspiration for our story, this next film holds surprises for fans of every Mario era.”

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” directors Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath are once again at the helm for “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Also returning are cast members Chris Pratt (Mario), Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach), Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser), Keegan-Michael Key (Toad) and Kevin Michael Richardson (Kamek), as well as composer Brian Tyler.

The announcement did not mention whether Lumalee — the cheerfully nihilistic star-shaped blue being that Luigi meets during “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” — will return for the sequel, but the teaser did include a glimpse of a yellow Luma. So it’s impossible not to hope that the character will have some sort of role in “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” since the star-shaped creatures appear in both the 2007 video game “Super Mario Galaxy” and its 2010 sequel. While the character in the movie had memorable one-liners about “the sweet relief of death” and how “hope is an illusion,” in the games these blue Lumas are more helpful merchants of life.

New characters likely to debut in the sequel include Rosalina, a sort of guardian of the cosmos and caretaker of the Lumas who first appeared in the “Super Mario Galaxy” game, as well as Yoshi, the dinosaur-like character who can grab faraway objects — and foes — with his tongue. Yoshi was teased in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s” post-credits scene.

The success of films like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide, is among the reasons Hollywood has recently pivoted to more video-game inspired fare. The “Super Mario” movie sequel was first announced in 2024.

Journalist Seymour Hersh in 1975, as seen in the documentary “Cover-Up.”

(The New York Times)

When real-life political anxieties (or worse) infuse the atmosphere of a film festival, it’s hard to pretend that celebrating art is ever enough. “Cover-Up” was, for me, the antidote: a furious, hard-nosed profile of legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the man who broke the My Lai massacre in 1969, then went on to an impressive run of stories that included revelations about Watergate, the CIA and Abu Ghraib. Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”), co-directing with Mark Obenhaus, mainly tries to stay out of the way of Hersh’s ferocious forward momentum, capturing the writer’s method with a minimum of wasted words. “I’ve got every right to be here, buddy,” Hersh bats back to a displeased listener and you thrill to an era when breaking the news wasn’t chilled by caution. — Joshua Rothkopf

The cultural legacy of the 1984 rock-mock-doc “This Is Spinal Tap” is of sufficient amplitude that, to give the band’s guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) his knob-twiddling due, it’s gone way past 11.

Perennially quotable, ad-libbed to Brit-accented perfection by co-creators Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer and finessed into an iconic spoof by director Rob Reiner, “Spinal Tap” was born. The movie both ridiculed (and, slyly, furthered the cause for) the metal world’s idiotic excesses, but also an industry’s love of a satisfying comeback saga.

When your fake movie becomes gospel truth to admiring music legends and a pretend forgotten band goes on to play Wembley in real life, the fine line between clever and stupid (again, so quotable) suddenly looks like a rarefied space for a sequel to exploit.

Yet when the key comic minds behind that singular sendup of past-prime glory-seekers aim to rekindle their magic, “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” leaves one thinking some classics are better left in their original, endlessly re-playable states.

Not that the sight, 40 years on, of the sweetly clueless Tufnel, McKean’s prickly frontman David St. Hubbins and Shearer’s man-of-few-blurts Derek Smalls reuniting for one last concert won’t trigger a low-wattage 83-minute-long smile. But the concept of Tap being revered (by legend cameos Paul McCartney and Elton John, no less) saps the comedy of outsider tension, making for something closer to a feature-length outtake reel than a fresh take on clownish notoriety.

There’s agreeable silliness early on in seeing where the trio has landed in their solo lives, from acknowledged retail dreamer Nigel’s cheese-and-guitar shop to the fringes of the recording world, where California-transplanted David finds himself composing phone-hold music. In these moments, you get a glimpse of the special sauce of personality delusion that Guest, as a director, turned into a mini-genre (“Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind”). But when dead Tap manager Ian Faith’s daughter, Hope (Kerry Godliman), having inherited daddy’s contract, forces the members to gather in New Orleans for an arena show, the whole thing loses an essential oddball energy, trying to coast on a masterpiece’s fumes.

Gag encores are pitfalls. The famous drummer mortality problem is a case in point, wearing out its understandable reviving with star cameos (Questlove, Lars Ulrich) and a lackluster tryout montage. Then, after the hiring of an energetic young replacement (Valerie Franco), a humor opportunity is missed when we wonder why she isn’t pushing back on having to play songs like “Bitch School.” Even the band’s second chance at a Stonehenge showstopper is more like a joke in name only.

The three leads can still, when given room, generate an anything-can-happen vibe, even if the improvisatory pearls are in short supply. But there are quite a few instances when the promise of comedic friction is undercooked or ignored and the new strains of hinted lunacy (as when Guest regulars John Michael Higgins and Don Lake show up) never quite soar.

The funniest addition, because it feels genuinely pointed about the milieu, is Chris Addison as the band’s aggressive promoter Simon, who prides himself on being impervious to enjoying music, and tells our septuagenarian rockers that for posterity’s sake, ideally, two of them should die during the show. Thankfully, nothing in “Spinal Tap II” will kill off the original’s legacy. It’s just a nostalgia lap you wish had more 11.

Clifton Powell is unapologetically dropping the name of the agent who he alleges fired him for taking a role in the 2005 musical “The Gospel.”

“My agent at the time, and I’ll say his name, his name is Jeff Witjas at APA,” the veteran actor told “The Art of Dialogue” last week on YouTube. “He called me and said, ‘You’re doing another one of those little Black movies?’ I said, ‘You’re damn right. I got a family to feed’ and hung up the telephone on his ass and they let me go.”

Witjas did not respond immediately Friday to The Times’ request for comment.

One of Hollywood’s famous “Oh, that guy” character actors is headed toward 300 credits in his prolific career. Powell, 69, has appeared in Oscar-winning films like the 2004 biopic “Ray,” critically acclaimed films like the 1993 crime drama “Menace II Society” and box office juggernauts like the 1998 buddy-cop comedy “Rush Hour.”

Throughout his career, Powell said he doesn’t let his representation dictate the projects he takes. When picking his projects, the actor follows advice given to him by Jamie Foxx years ago.

“He said, ‘Clif Powell, keep one foot in…’ that means keep one foot in with your people and I’m always going to be with the people, because African Americans, and young white kids, young Asians, Latinos and women have made me a household name.”

Powell said his mentality has paid dividends. The director of “The Gospel” later cast him in Peacock’s critically hailed crime drama “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist.”

His hiccup with a top acting agency did not slow down his career. Based on his IMDb page, Powell has remained a working actor and kept his family well fed. But there are certain roles his personal boundaries have ruled out: gay roles.

“It’s not militant. It’s just that I’m — certain things I’m just not comfortable with,” Powell said.

One role that did fall within his zone of comfort was a part in 2Pac’s dystopian music video for “California Love,” where his character is introduced as “Monster” by a high-pitched Chris Tucker.

“A lot of people still don’t know that’s me … everybody thinks that’s George Clinton,” Powell said on “The Art of Dialogue.”

So shout his name next time the video plays, instead of saying “That’s the guy from ‘Rush Hour.’” That guy’s name is Clifton Powell.

“Sound of Freedom” distributor Angel Studios made its stock market debut Thursday as the company looks to expand its streaming service and eventually penetrate international markets.

The Provo, Utah-based firm is trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ANGX. Shares of the company rose 8% to $13.

Angel Studios’ launch on the public market is the latest step in the company’s unconventional journey into the entertainment business.

Founded by brothers Neal, Daniel, Jeffrey and Jordan Harmon, the company began as VidAngel, a service that allowed viewers to sanitize Hollywood movies by erasing sex, violence and swear words. But in 2016, VidAngel was sued for copyright infringement by Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros., who said the company’s business model — which involved purchasing thousands of DVDs and Blu-ray discs and allowing users to stream them online — was essentially piracy.

VidAngel eventually settled the case, and the Harmon brothers sold off the filtering business. The company rebranded as Angel Studios and kept its content production and crowdfunding operation.

Today, the firm operates a streaming service and releases movies theatrically, including 2023’s massively popular “Sound of Freedom,” which grossed $250 million worldwide, and the animated film “The King of Kings,” which came out in May and tells the story of Jesus. The studio focuses on what it calls “values-based storytelling,” and its slate is determined through the vote of its 1.5 million Angel Guild members, who also get free movie tickets and other perks.

“It’s really a combination of the values of a broader audience,” said Jordan Harmon, president. “If you look at movies like ‘The Sound of Music,’ or ‘Casablanca’ or ‘12 Angry Men,’ all those were broad, incredible stories that touched the lives of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. Those are the type of stories that we think fall right into this values-driven, light-amplifying mission.”

Though considered small for Hollywood, Angel Studios moved to become a publicly traded company because its nearly 70,000 investors required it to, said company Chief Executive Neal Harmon. The company merged with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) called Southport Acquisition Corp. to go public. A SPAC is essentially a shell company that exists solely to buy a private company and take it public without the scrutiny of a traditional IPO.

“We’re turning the way that this industry works on its head,” he said. “And because we are not doing the traditional Hollywood gatekeeper thing, we also needed to access capital in an untraditional way.”

The path is far from the potato farm in Idaho where the brothers grew up, and where the nearest neighbor was a quarter-mile away. Working together on the farm — and sharing a bedroom for years — helped foster the communication and bond between the brothers, said Jeff Harmon, chief content officer.

“If you look in Hollywood, the best partnerships have all been brothers,” he said, ticking off several successful movie business sibling partnerships including the Disneys, Warners and Nolans. “When they actually work together really well, it becomes unstoppable.”

TORONTO — In introducing the Saturday night TIFF world premiere of “Good Fortune,” his feature debut as a writer-director, comedian Aziz Ansari told the audience the three words that are scary in Hollywood right now: original theatrical comedy. But the one word that is never scary is Keanu.

Speaking from the stage of the festival’s Roy Thomson Hall, Ansari recalled that his star Keanu Reeves broke his kneecap early in production.

“I found out he broke his kneecap and I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Ansari continued, Reeves himself standing onstage just a few feet away. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, what is Keanu going to say? Is he going to need some time off? Is he going to drop out of the movie?’”

“And you know what Keanu said?” Ansari added. “Nothing. He just kept showing up to work and never complained, not once,” Ansari said. “He worked through what surely must have been excruciating pain and delivered a hilarious, touching performance, and he is the soul of this movie.”

The film opens with Reeves standing atop L.A.’s iconic Griffith Observatory with a small pair of angel wings on his back. Reeves, in a change of pace from his recent action work in the “John Wick” movies, plays Gabriel, a low-level angel given the task of stopping people from texting and driving. That is until he sees Arj (Ansari), who is struggling to make ends meet while working both at a big-box hardware store and as a food delivery driver.

Hoping to show him the grass isn’t always greener, Gabriel switches Arj’s life with that of Jeff (Seth Rogen), an ultrarich tech investor whose days seem to largely consist of going back and forth between his sauna and his cold plunge.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Arj much prefers Jeff’s life to his own and is reluctant to switch back. The situation becomes more complicated for Gabriel as he loses his job as an angel and must learn the tribulations and joys of being human, while still trying to fix the problem with Arj and Jeff.

For all the film’s gentle humor and quietly humanist spirit, “Good Fortune” is also rife with a palpable anger at the income inequality that motivates its story, the reality that robots are replacing the work of humans and that the excesses of the few seem predicated on the deprivation of many.

Aziz Ansari, left, and Keanu Reeves in the movie “Good Fortune.”

(Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)

The day after the film’s premiere, 42-year-old Ansari is upbeat and dapper in a gray plaid coat, black turtleneck and black slacks as he sat down for an interview in Toronto to discuss the movie and all that led up to it. After the end of his Emmy-winning series “Master of None” in 2021, Ansari had begun shooting a feature called “Being Mortal” that was shut down in 2022 a few weeks into production over allegations of misconduct by its star Bill Murray. Then production of “Good Fortune,” Ansari’s pivot away from “Being Mortal,” was delayed by the Hollywood labor strikes of 2023. Seemingly at long last, Ansari’s debut opens Oct. 17.

When “Being Mortal” got shut down, did you feel like, “Am I ever going to get to make a movie?”

I didn’t feel that way. Steven Spielberg has this story of — what’s the movie he did? “1941.” That didn’t do well and he was like, just immediately throw yourself in another thing. And I really thought about that, and that’s what I did. I just immediately went into “Good Fortune.” I mean, I had a couple of days where I was like,“Oh, no” and it was also so shocking. I think your mind doesn’t process it because it’s not really sinking in that this is what’s really happening. It probably still a piece of me [in which] it hasn’t really sunk in. It was definitely disappointing, but part of me is like, this is what needed to happen. This is the movie that should be out first.

“Being Mortal,” it’s funny, but it’s heavy. The Atul Gawande book, it’s about end-of-life issues. So it’s like, “Oh, OK. It’s another heavy drama thing.” People may have just gotten pissed, like, “What’s this guy doing?” So “Good Fortune” is definitely, to me, if you like those first two seasons of “Master of None,” I feel like what you’d hope I’d do is kind of evolve that style into a feature film and raise the level of it by having Seth and Keanu and Keke [Palmer] and Sandra [Oh], and as a feature film rather than a show.

As sweet and funny as the movie is, there also is a real righteous anger behind it. Where does that come from?

I think I got it from when I was interviewing all these people about the subject matter in the film, when I was doing research to write the Arj character. That attitude seeps in there.

“It was definitely disappointing, but part of me is like, this is what needed to happen,” Ansari says of “Being Mortal,” his first attempt at directing a feature, one that ran into production troubles with its star, Bill Murray,

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

During the opening credits of the movie, you say the line “The American Dream is dead.”

But that’s a frustration a lot of people like that guy Arj feel.

But then, you are a very successful entertainer —

Oh, yeah. Me and Seth are Jeff, no question.

How do you reconcile that? Are you concerned some people might dismiss the movie out of hand for that simple reason?

If you’re writing, you have to be able to write outside your own experience — for someone who’s like Arj, who doesn’t have the platform to tell these stories. When I did “Master of None,” we did an episode called “New York, I Love You.” And there was a segment about taxi drivers, a segment about a doorman and a segment about a woman who’s deaf. And doing that episode taught me a process of interviewing people and figuring out how to get these stories right when they’re not your experience. We did an episode in Season 3 about a woman going through IVF. I’d never done that or anything, and it had never been a part of my life. But I talked to all these people, and from the feedback I got, we got it right. And that’s what I did with this.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but for a movie coming out from a Hollywood studio, Seth gives a speech at the end that is politically radical, about how rich people can’t expect to have so much without others getting angry.

It’s kind of nuts. Some of the stuff that’s in there, I’m like, “Whoa, we really got away with something here.” Some of the stuff that’s in there, and the trailer kind of hides a little bit of that stuff, I think there are people that’d be like, “Oh, s—.”

At the premiere, there was big applause for the line, “F— AI.” Is that your feeling as well?

I’d rather say that I’m pro-human. I’m pro-people.

Keanu Reeves, left, Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari in the movie “Good Fortune.”

(Eddy Chen / Lionsgate)

The movie is very ambitious in combining the character stories and the attention to the notion of income inequality. Was it hard for you in balancing the characters and that theme? Was the work of that more when you were writing it or when you were editing what you’d shot?

It was both. And that’s the difference between a TV show and a movie. You have a different canvas. But it was a tough thing to do. And it was my first time doing it. I remember writing a second one while I was editing, and it was such a great help because you kind of see a few moves ahead. You’re like, “Oh, wait a second, I should get to this faster.” You kind of can see your mistakes a little bit in an earlier stage because you have more experience. This is another reason I really want to get into it again and start working on the next thing because I feel like I learned a lot from it.

That’s the thing that’s so interesting about doing stand-up and doing filmmaking. Stand-up, it’s so easy to “get to the gym,” right? If I really wanted to go to do stand-up tonight, I could do it. I could go find a club in Toronto and jump on a show. But If I wanted to go direct, that’s a big journey to get to the gym. So you have fewer opportunities to kind of get the reps in.

Shooting a movie is in L.A. has become such an economic and political issue for the city. Was that a consideration in making the movie in Los Angeles?

I wanted it to be in L.A., I felt like this movie had to be set in L.A. Jeff’s not going to be living in whatever place that gives you the tax credit. And L.A. really is the perfect backdrop for the story to me. And it was challenging, but you also get the benefit of working with some of the greatest technicians in the world in L.A. And I also just love being a part of the lineage of films that are set in L.A. I watched that documentary, “Los Angeles Plays itself,” and that was so fun to watch that and just see how every movie has its own L.A., whether it’s “Heat” or “Tangerine” or “Chinatown.”

And I feel like “Good Fortune” has its L.A., and it’s exciting to show some of these neighborhoods, to see people responding to seeing Eagle Rock or Los Feliz. Whenever I was writing the movie, I always thought about that taco place in Hollywood — it’s across the street from Jitlada. I always thought about that place. I thought there was something so cinematic, and it was a hard location to clear. And our guy [location manager] Jay Traynor, he made it happen. And finding Jeff’s house was so hard. But it all came together, and I loved showing Koreatown and that Gabriel works at a Korean barbecue restaurant. Just showing all these parts of L.A.

I want to be sure to ask you about working with Keanu. People are really responding to this role. And I’m having a hard time putting my finger on what that is about.

No, I’m feeling this. Even since [the premiere], I’m feeling it. I knew people would like him, but it’s hitting on another level.

Why do you think that is? What is the alchemy of Keanu in that role?

I was thinking about this when I was eating lunch. If you look at the roles he’s done that are comedic, whether it’s in “Bill & Ted” or in “Parenthood,” there’s this innocence, this sweetness and this kindness that’s in there. And then Gabriel, to me, is the progression of that. And it’s also that you have Keanu at 61, where when I first met him, I was like, “Hey, there’s something about you that people are responding to and who you are as a real person that I don’t think I’ve seen onscreen. And I think you can show some of that with Gabriel.”

It also has all of his comedy superpowers just dialed to the max. And we were just having so much fun. It just became playtime. We were coming up with bits all the time: Oh, he’s never used the internet before. Let’s just write a quick scene where he’s using the internet for the first time. What’s he gonna do? He’s gonna look at photos of baby elephants. It became such a fun joke bag. You could just make him do anything. And it was funny, the guy’s never done anything — if he takes a bite of a taco goes, “Wow!” It’s really the funniest character I’ve ever written for.

TORONTO — Welcome to a special daily edition of the Envelope at TIFF, a newsletter collecting the latest developments out of Canada’s annual film showcase. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Christina House, our staff photojournalist, continues to kill it with her portraits out of the Toronto International Film Festival. In the last day alone, she’s seen Angelina Jolie, Jacob Elordi and the cast of “Frankenstein,” Jodie Foster and more.

Or maybe you’d rather watch a video interview with Angelina Jolie and the cast and director of the inspiring fashion film “Couture?” Follow us on Instagram for all of our daily posts.

‘Blood will be shed. Possibly even a tear’: Our critic on Rian Johnson’s new ‘Knives Out’ mystery

Josh O’Connor, left, and Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”

(Netflix)

Amy Nicholson had fun with “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”

She’s also noticing a fair amount of Canadian pride at her screenings. It’s been an unusually loaded moment for foreign relations with our neighbors to the north.

Amy weighs in on the scene from the first four days, her favorite (and less-than-favorite) movies at TIFF and a few surprises.

The day’s buzziest premieres

‘The Smashing Machine’

Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson in the movie “The Smashing Machine.”

(Ken Hirama / A24)

Sunday saw the TIFF schedule loosen up its restrictions regarding films that premiered at other festivals and audiences started to see more major titles from competing fests.

Take for example the Monday night premiere of “The Smashing Machine,” which just won the directing prize at Venice for Benny Safdie.

Making his solo debut apart from brother Josh — their most recent collaboration was “Uncut Gems” — Benny turns in a surprisingly heartfelt sports story based on mixed marital arts fighter Mark Kerr.

Taking the leading role is none other than wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson, in a part seemingly tailor-made to play off his own career arc and give him a prestige boost he has never had before.

Add Emily Blunt to the mix, as Kerr’s supportive partner, along with boutique studio A24 and the film seems like it should land the right combinations. — Mark Olsen

‘Exit 8’

A scene from the movie “Exit 8.”

(TIFF)

Ever fear that you’re racing around but going nowhere — that you’re in such a rush to make your way through the world that you’re barely seeing it?

Japan turned that feeling into a best-selling video game in which commuters are condemned to roam an underground subway station until they learn to pay attention to their surroundings.

Now Genki Kawamura has transformed that game into a movie. In Kawamura’s emboldened adaptation, our main player, the Lost Man (Kazunari Ninomiya of the pop band Arashi) is an aimless young slacker who is stuck both physically and emotionally.

If he ever wises up and escapes, he’s got to make better choices.

I’ve got a few quibbles with the film’s mechanics, but “Exit 8” is a moving metaphor for the art of giving things a close, appreciative watch. On day five of a film festival, we could all use a reminder to look sharp. — Amy Nicholson

It’s the year for horror and “The Conjuring: Last Rites” was no exception. Its opening weekend tipped the genre over $1 billion in earnings for this year’s domestic box office.

The horror sequel raked in $83 million domestically in 3,802 theaters, making it the third-highest domestic opening for a horror movie, behind “It” and “It: Chapter Two.” It’s now the largest horror opening internationally, with $104 million in earnings outside of North American theaters.

The film also broke records for the “Conjuring” universe, securing the biggest opening weekend in the franchise. The movie’s performance is a testament to the franchise’s success in producing classic horror movies since the first film released in 2013, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for the data firm Comscore.

“Audiences know when they go in to see ‘The Conjuring,’ the minute this scary, ominous music comes up with the Warner’s logo, you know you’re in for a wild ride,” Dergarabedian said.

The film has received mixed reviews from critics, carrying a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and a “B” CinemaScore.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return to the big screen in the ninth installment of “The Conjuring” as the paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who attempt to vanquish a demon from a family’s home.

“Last Rites” also handed Warner Bros. Pictures yet another opening weekend box office win, becoming the distributor’s eighth No. 1 debut win this year and the studio’s seventh film in a row to debut with more than $40 million domestically.

The movie’s opening weekend numbers are nearly double that of other successful horror movies this year, including Zach Cregger’s August sleeper hit “Weapons,” “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “Sinners” — all of which are Warner Bros. releases.

“It just shows how arguably more than any other genre, horror has stood the test of time,” Dergarabedian said. “That’s because there’s nothing quite like seeing a horror movie in a darkened room full of strangers.”

The horror genre last crossed the $1-billion mark in 2023. Meeting that threshold this early in the year is unprecedented, Dergarabedian said, “because usually you need a full year of horror movie box office to bank that much cash.”

Upcoming horror films like “Black Phone 2” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” are likely to boost that number, Dergarabedian said.

“Last Rites” blew past other titles at the box office this weekend. Disney’s filmed version of “Hamilton” landed in second place with $10 million domestically. The film was “perfect counterprogramming” to “Last Rights,” Dergarabedian said.

The rest of the top spots were taken by several holdover titles. “Weapons” secured third place during its fifth weekend, bringing in $5.4 million in earnings in North American theaters. The movie’s debut partner, “Freakier Friday,” took fourth place with $3.8 million.

The crime caper “Caught Stealing,” which debuted last weekend, rounded out the top five with $3.2 million in domestic earnings.

Luna writes for the Associated Press.