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Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s freeze of $10 billion in child-care funds

A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to freeze $10 billion in child-care funds in five Democrat-led states including California.

The ruling Friday afternoon capped a tumultuous stretch that began earlier this week when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told California officials and those in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York that it would freeze federal funding over fraud concerns.

On Thursday the states sued the administration in federal court in Manhattan. The states sought a temporary restraining order, asking the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s demands for large volumes of administrative data.

An attorney for the states argued Friday morning that there was an immediate need for funding — and that withholding it would cause chaos by depriving families of their ability to pay for child care, and would harm child-care providers who would lose income.

In a brief ruling, Judge Arun Subramanian said that “good cause has been shown for the issuance of a temporary restraining order.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The federal government’s effort has been viewed as a broad attack on social services in California, and jolted tens of thousands of working families and the state’s child-care industry. Providers told The Times that the funding freeze could imperil child-care centers, many of which operate on slim margins.

“The underscoring issue is that child care and these other federally funded social services programs are major family supports,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California. “They are essential infrastructure that our communities need and depend on, and should not be political tools. So the fact that this judge went in and blocked this very dramatic freeze, I think is only a good thing.”

In a trio of Jan. 6 letters addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was concerned there had been “potential for extensive and systemic fraud” in child care and other social services programs that rely on federal funding, and had “reason to believe” that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.

The letters did not provide evidence to support the claims. State officials have said the suggestions of fraud are unsubstantiated.

Newsom has said he welcomes any fraud investigations the federal government might conduct, but said cutting off funding hurts families who rely on the aid. According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, about $1.4 billion in federal child-care funding was frozen per the letters from Health and Human Services.

“You want to support families? You believe in families? Then you believe in supporting child care and child-care workers in the workforce,” Newsom told MS NOW.

After Subramanian issued the ruling, Newsom’s press office said on X that “the feds went ghost-hunting for widespread ‘fraud’ (with no evidence) — and ended up trying to rip child care and food from kids.”

“It took a federal judge less than 24 hours to shut down Trump’s politically motivated child care cuts in California,” the account posted.

In instituting the freeze, Health and Human Services had said it would review how the federal money had been used by the state, and was restricting access to additional money amid its inquiries. The federal government asked for various data, including attendance documentation for child care. It also demanded beefed-up fiscal accountability requirements.

“Again and again, President Trump has shown a willingness to throw vulnerable children, seniors, and families under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against Democratic-led states,” Bonta said in a statement following the ruling. “Cutting funding for childcare and other family assistance is cruel, reckless, and most importantly, illegal.”

For Laura Pryor, research director at the California Budget & Policy Center, it is “a sigh of relief.”

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AMC Burbank is the most profitable movie theater in the U.S. and Canada

Maybe it’s the leather seats or the free parking. But out of every movie theater in the U.S. and Canada, AMC Burbank 30 had the most lucrative box office in 2025.

The combined efforts of the three theater locations, less than a mile apart (AMC Burbank 16 and Town Centers 6 and 8), brought in the highest box office numbers, according to Comscore. The AMC in New York’s Lincoln Square came in second place. Overall, the theater chain holds seven of the top 10 highest-grossing box offices in the U.S. and Canada, with four locations in L.A., two in New York and one in Florida.

The L.A. AMC locations at The Grove, Century City and CityWalk ranked at numbers five, six and eight, respectively.

“AMC’s longstanding success in Los Angeles is driven by several factors, including the size of the market, the enthusiasm of the Hollywood community and local audiences for seeing films on the big screen, and AMC’s focus on delivering a high-quality moviegoing experience,” said a spokesperson for the theater chain in a statement to The Times.

“Across the region, AMC locations regularly offer a diverse film slate that spans major studio releases, independent titles, and AMC Artisan Films.”

AMC has had a presence in Southern California since 1969, when it opened its first West Coast location in La Habra. By the mid-1980s, the theater chain grew significantly, opening multiplexes in Burbank and Century City. There are now 36 locations in the greater Los Angeles market.

Daniel Loria, the senior vice president at the Box Office Company, a cinema data analytics firm, said Los Angeles and New York being the most profitable cities isn’t shocking. Many studios and theaters typically use the two largest metros to gauge which markets to expand to and how long a movie will be playing in theaters.

“This industry really relies on the power of those two cities for the entire world to function,” Loria said, referring to the film business.

“These are the capitals of cinema. You see this concentration within that top 10 because of the indexing performance they have, not only on a local level, but on a global level as well.”

The number of movies showing in larger cities also plays a key role in box office gross. Loria said that in some regions of the country, local theaters will only get three or four movies showing at a time. Whereas in bigger markets, there is more diversity in showings and more opportunities to go see a movie, as the theaters are usually bigger and have more screens. Beyond the number of screens, a film‘s visual format is also a major factor in profit and ticket pricing.

When seeing a movie in a premium format, like IMAX or Dolby Cinema 3D, at an AMC, an adult ticket can range between $25 and $30 on a weekend, whereas a standard format would cost around $18. Many movie theaters in Los Angeles have these high-quality screens, which can boost box office gross sales more than other theaters that do not offer a premium viewing experience.

Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends at Comscore, said major theater chains usually have more drawing power when their locations have high-quality screenings available.

“What’s striking is how premium formats are driving impressive box office [sales] even in an age of price sensitivity among consumers,” said Dergarabedian. “Savvy moviegoers understand that the upcharge is worth the investment, particularly with films that are epic in scope and are best viewed in the grandest format on offer at their local cinema.”

In recent years, movie membership passes have helped bring audiences into theaters more consistently . AMC’s A-list membership allows subscribers to see up to four movies a week, for the monthly price of $27.99. There are nearly 1 million A-listers.

“The greater Los Angeles area is also home to a highly engaged AMC Stubs A-List membership base that makes theatrical moviegoing a priority,” wrote an AMC spokesperson. “The connection between AMC, Hollywood, and Los Angeles moviegoers continues to benefit our studio partners, filmmakers, and audiences.”

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The Tony Dokoupil era begins at ‘CBS Evening News’

Tony Dokoupil took his place at the anchor desk of the “CBS Evening News” on Monday as the troubled news division undergoes reinvention under its new editor in chief, Bari Weiss.

Dokoupil was supposed to start his run with a trip to 10 cities across the U.S., to connect with viewers outside of the media centers of New York and Washington. CBS News leased a private 14-seat jet for the tour, but the plan was delayed once the U.S. military action in Venezuela became a major story early Saturday morning.

Instead, Dokoupil took the chair Saturday night and broadcast live from San Francisco before returning to New York for his official premiere on Monday. The tour is still on and will commence Tuesday from Miami.

Dokoupil’s new role will be the first major test for Weiss, who came to the division with no previous experience in television or with running a massive journalism operation. Choosing on-air talent who help drive ratings for the network is considered the most critical task for a TV news executive.

Dokoupil, 45, follows the duo of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, who co-anchored “CBS Evening News” for a year. The program tried to bring more in-depth pieces to the typically fast-paced network evening news format. But it lost viewers and put CBS further behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Tom Llamas.”

Dokoupil’s first official broadcast returned to a style that resembled previous iterations of “CBS Evening News,” with a tight shot of the anchor sitting at a desk in a newsroom.

Over the past year, Dickerson and DuBois were seated at a long desk and often interacted with correspondents shown on a large screen. The program no longer includes an in-studio meteorologist to present national weather.

Dokoupil’s arrival marks the fifth anchor change at the “CBS Evening News” since 2017. NBC has made one change since then, while Muir has been in his role at ABC since 2014.

CBS News promoted Dokoupil’s launch with a whimsical social media video that showed the journalist presenting a piece of paper with his name written on it to commuters at Grand Central Terminal in New York. Asked to pronounce “Dokoupil,” few of the commuters came close even though he had been co-host of “CBS Mornings” for several years.

The promo seemed like an odd choice given how the network evening news anchor has traditionally been a position requiring gravitas and comforting familiarity for its habit-driven audience.

Dokoupil also issued a video message last Thursday suggesting organizations such as CBS News are no longer reliable sources of information for much of the public.

“A lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair,” he said. “But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us like they used to. And it’s not just us. It’s all of legacy media.”

“The point is, on too many stories the press has missed the story,” he added. “Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you.”

The anchor went further on his Instagram account, where he cited Walter Cronkite, who sat at the desk during the division’s glory years of the 1960s and ‘70s. “I can promise we’ll be more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or anyone else of his era,” he said.

Dokoupil’s claim prompted a response from Michael Socolow, a journalism professor at the University of Maine and the son of Sandy Socolow, who produced Cronkite’s broadcast.

Socolow noted how Cronkite believed the public should be skeptical of what it saw on TV news and take in other sources and points of view.

In an interview with The Times, Socolow said Cronkite was never comfortable with his designation as “the most trusted man in America.” CBS News touted that point, which was based on a single public opinion poll.

“Cronkite thought it wouldn’t be in the public interest to be too trustful of any specific media source,” Socolow said. “And he made that clear in public speeches and TV interviews for decades.”

Socolow posted a clip of a 1972 interview with Cronkite as an example.

“I don’t think they ought to believe me, or they ought to believe Brinkley, or they ought to believe anybody who’s on the air, or they ought to get all their news from one television station,” Cronkite said.

The latest change at “CBS Evening News” also follows one of the most tumultuous periods in the long history of CBS News. The organization was shaken by the Dec. 20 decision by Weiss to pull a “60 Minutes” piece on the harsh El Salvador mega-prison the U.S. government is using to hold undocumented migrants.

Weiss believed the story needed more reporting, including an on-camera response from Trump White House officials. The White House, Department of Homeland Security and the State Department had all declined comment to “60 Minutes.”

But the decision to yank the announced segment the day before it was scheduled to air led “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi to claim in an email to colleagues that the decision was political. Alfonsi had worked on the story for months and had it vetted by the division’s standards and practices department.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote in the email. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

Alfonsi’s reporting did show up on Canada’s Global TV service, which had been given a feed of the program before the change was made, an embarrassing operational error by CBS News. The segment was shared widely on social media.

Every move by Weiss has received heightened scrutiny since she was given editorial control over CBS News in October. She joined the network after parent company Paramount acquired the Free Press, a digital news and opinion platform she co-founded. The site made its name by calling out perceived liberal bias by legacy media organizations and so-called woke policies.

Media industry critics have used the “60 Minutes” controversy to suggest Weiss was installed to placate President Trump as Paramount pursues the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would require government regulatory approval. A person close to Weiss who was not authorized to comment publicly said Paramount had no say on the Alfonsi piece.

Paramount already paid $16 million to Trump to settle a defamation suit against “60 Minutes.” Trump claimed the program deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris, calling it election interference. CBS News did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement.

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To ‘run’ Venezuela, Trump presses existing regime to kneel

Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on “running” Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicolás Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the regime that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action.

Their goal appears to be the establishment of a pliant vassal state in Caracas that keeps the current government — led by Maduro for more than a decade — largely in place, but finally defers to the whims of Washington after turning away from the United States for a quarter century.

It leaves little room for the ascendance of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, which won the country’s last national election, according to the State Department, European capitals and international monitoring bodies.

Trump and his top aides said they would try to work with Maduro’s handpicked vice president and current interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, to run the country and its oil sector “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” offering no time frame for proposed elections.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the strategy in a series of interviews Sunday morning.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told the Atlantic, referring to Rodríguez. “Rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.”

Rubio said that a U.S. naval quarantine of Venezuelan oil tankers would continue unless and until Rodríguez begins cooperating with the U.S. administration, referring to the blockade — and the lingering threat of additional military action from the fleet off Venezuela’s coast — as “leverage” over the remnants of Maduro’s regime.

“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio told CBS News. “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes — not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that he had been in touch with the administration since the Saturday night operation that snatched Maduro and his wife from their bedroom, whisking them away to New York to face criminal charges.

Trump’s vow to “run” the country, Cotton said, “means the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.”

“Delcy Rodríguez, and the other ministers in Venezuela, understand now what the U.S. military is capable of,” Cotton said, while adding: “It is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned individuals are in Venezuela. They have control of the military and security forces. We have to deal with that fact. But that does not make them the legitimate leaders.”

“What we want is a future Venezuelan government that will be pro-American, that will contribute to stability, order and prosperity, not only in Venezuela but in our own backyard. That probably needs to include new elections,” Cotton added.

Whether Rodríguez will cooperate with the administration is an open question.

Trump said Saturday that she seemed amenable to making “Venezuela great again” in a conversation with Rubio. But the interim president delivered a speech hours later demanding Maduro’s return, and vowing that Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire.”

The developments have concerned senior figures in Venezuela’s democratic opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.

In his Saturday news conference, Trump dismissed Machado, saying that the revered opposition leader was “a very nice woman,” but “doesn’t have the respect within the country” to lead.

Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela in his first term, said he was skeptical that Rodríguez — an acolyte of Hugo Chávez and avowed supporter of Chavismo throughout the Maduro era — would betray the cause.

“The insult to Machado was bizarre, unfair — and simply ignorant,” Abrams told The Times. “Who told him that there was no respect for her?”

Maduro was booked in New York and flown by night over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he is in federal custody at a notorious facility that has housed other famous inmates, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried.

He is expected to be arraigned on federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices as soon as Monday.

While few in Washington lamented Maduro’s ouster, Democratic lawmakers criticized the operation as another act of regime change by a Republican president that could have violated international law.

“The invasion of Venezuela has nothing to do with American security. Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. “This is about making Trump’s oil industry and Wall Street friends rich. Trump’s foreign policy — the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela — is fundamentally corrupt.”

In their Saturday news conference, and in subsequent interviews, Trump and Rubio said that targeting Venezuela was in part about reestablishing U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reasserting the philosophy of President James Monroe as China and Russia work to enhance their presence in the region. The Trump administration’s national security strategy, published last month, previewed a renewed focus on Latin America after the region faced neglect from Washington over decades.

Trump left unclear whether his military actions in the region would end in Caracas, a longstanding U.S. adversary, or if he is willing to turn the U.S. armed forces on America’s allies.

In his interview with the Atlantic, Trump suggested that “individual countries” would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. On Saturday, he reiterated a threat to the president of Colombia, a major non-NATO ally, to “watch his ass,” over an ongoing dispute about Bogota’s cooperation on drug enforcement.

On Sunday morning, the United Nations Security Council was called for an urgent meeting to discuss the legality of the U.S. operation inside Venezuela.

It was not Russia or China — permanent members of the council and longstanding competitors — who called the session, nor France, whose government has questioned whether the operation violated international law, but Colombia, a non-permanent member who joined the council less than a week ago.

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‘Marty Supreme’ review: Timothée Chalamet serves up big swagger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Marty Supreme’

Rated: R, for language throughout, sexual content, some violent content/bloody images and nudity

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Playing: In wide release Thursday, Dec. 25

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