review

William Shakespeare wouldn’t be wowed by this domestic drama about his home life back in Stratford-upon-Avon. Where’s the action? The wit? The wordplay?

The great playwright’s skill is hard to match. Instead, “Hamnet,” directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), uses our curiosity about the Bard to spin a soggy story about love and grief with enough tears to flood the river Thames. Co-written by Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell, this tonally faithful adaptation of O’Farrell’s florid 2020 novel of the same name stars Paul Mescal as Will — the name he goes by here — and Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes, pronounced Ahn-yes, although the real person was more commonly called Anne Hathaway. The 16th century’s fondness for treating Agnes/Anne and Hamnet/Hamlet as interchangeable versions of the same name is part of the plot and must be endured.

The tale is set during the years that Will launched his career in London, missed being at the deathbed of one of his children and funneled his guilt and sorrow into theater’s most prestigious ghost story. Mostly, however, we’re stuck at home with Agnes, who spends half the film weeping.

“There are many different ways to cry,” wrote O’Farrell, whose book goes on to list several variations. (The novel is overripe with descriptors, rarely using one word when a paragraph will do.) Buckley’s wet and wild performance shows us each of them — “the sudden outpouring of tears, the deep racking sobs, the soundless and endless leaking of water from the eyes’’ — plus a few others I’ll call the disgorged caterwaul, the furious scrunch and the chuckle swallowed into a choke. “Hamnet” is my least favorite of Buckley’s showcase roles (I loved “The Lost Daughter”), but the dampness of it has pundits wagering she’ll finally get her Academy Award.

Christopher Marlowe truthers aside, William Shakespeare was an actual person who, historical records concur, married a pregnant woman eight years his senior and had three kids: Susanna, the eldest, and twins Judith and Hamnet. (They’re played, respectively, by Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes and Jacobi Jupe.) Nearly everything else ever written about the family is conjecture spun from the scraps of information that exist, such as Shakespeare’s will leaving nothing to his wife other than “his second-best bed.”

Previous fictions have deemed Agnes a cradle robber or a shrew or the Bard’s secret co-writer. Zhao’s script goes one further: This Agnes is a witch. Not merely in the slanderous meaning, as in a difficult woman (although she’s also that). Buckley’s Agnes is actually magic. She can predict someone’s destiny by squeezing their hand, the party trick Christopher Walken did in “The Dead Zone.” Sometimes she’s wrong, sometimes she fights fate with everything she’s got, yet her faith in her foresight is rarely shaken. Her husband, who would later write witches and sorcerers and soothsayers into “Macbeth,” “The Tempest” and “Julius Caesar,” is taxed by her psychic gifts. He grumbles that it’s hard to open up to someone who can already “divine your secrets at a glance.”

Her ability to see through time and space has somehow made Agnes transparent too. Joy, confusion, fascination and despair take over her entire face instantaneously, turning Buckley’s performance into an acting exercise of being raw and present. (The crooked smile that signifies her unvarnished realness gets wearying.) The plotting doesn’t have any subterranean levels either, trusting solely in its primal display of sweat, hormones and heartbreak. This period piece almost seems to believe Agnes is inventing each emotion.

Will, a tutor, is trapped inside teaching Latin the first time he spots his future bride romping around in the grass with a hawk on her arm. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal frames the scene in a pane of window glass so that Agnes’ reflection ripples across Will’s yearning face, contrasting the earthy enchantress with the indoor bookworm. These oddballs have little in common besides their defiance of village norms and their families’ mutual disapproval. “I’d rather you went to sea than marry this wench,” Will’s mother, Mary (Emily Watson), hisses. (Her gradual thaw is genuinely affecting.)

Meanwhile, Agnes’ most supportive sibling, a farmer named Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn), can’t fathom what Will has to offer. “Why marry a pasty-faced scholar?” he asks. “What use is he?”

Their flirtation — especially Mescal’s dumb, happy, horny grin — makes Shakespeare feel freshly relatable. Perhaps his Ye Olde Tinder profile read: “Aspiring playwright seeks older woman, pagan preferred.” At times in “Hamnet,” 1582, the year of their marriage, could pass for a millennium earlier, a rustic era where neither has anything more pressing to do than canoodle under the trees. Later on, their partnership feels more contemporary, a frustrated writer hitting the bottle while his missus supports but doesn’t understand his work.

That the greatest dramatist of the last 500 years is married to someone wholly incurious about his art is, in itself, a tragedy. There’s a scene in which you wonder not only if has Agnes never seen one of his plays, but if she even knows what a play is. Our credulity would snap if Mescal’s Shakespeare was the slick talker that his early biographer John Aubrey described as “very good company, of a very redie and pleasant smoothe Witt.” But this stammering, rather dull chap doesn’t come across as a genius. He must save it all for his quill.

This isn’t Mescal’s fault. The book’s version of him is pretty much the same, perhaps because O’Farrell doesn’t reveal that this fictional grieving character is Shakespeare until the last page. (Although the title is a gimmicky clue.) At least Zhao adds scenes that show him workshopping his material. The kids prance around the yard quoting “Macbeth” a decade before he’ll stage it and Mescal gets to recite a “Hamlet” soliloquy as a little treat. I enjoyed the unremarked-upon tension of Will returning home from London with a hip haircut and an earring.

The texture of the film is impressive. Żal’s camera swivels around their home, soaking it in like a documentary. Whenever the film goes outside, he and Zhao make you feel the mystical power of the dirt and leaves. The forest rumbles with so much energy that it sounds like living next to a freeway. To keep things feeling authentic, co-editors Affonso Gonçalves and Zhao keep in flukes that other filmmakers might consider flubs, like an insect dive-bombing one of the actor’s eyelashes. The spell of “Hamnet’s” naturalism rarely breaks, save for a couple nice flourishes, like a shadow puppet depiction of the plague and a shot of the underworld as seen through a black lace curtain, a literalization of going beyond the veil.

Meanwhile, the score by the talented Max Richter is made of soft, pleasant little piano plinks and one major if beautiful mistake: a climactic needle-drop of his 2004 masterpiece “On the Nature of Daylight.” That soul-stirring number is one of the loveliest compositions of the modern era, so good at making an audience sigh that it’s been used two dozen times already, including in “Arrival,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Shutter Island” and “The Last of Us.” As soon those violins kick up here, you’re shoved out of the 16th century and feel less moved than shamelessly manipulated.

“Hamnet’s” sweetest note is 12-year-old Jacobi Jupe playing the actual Hamnet. The script hangs on our immediate devotion to the boy and he stands up to the challenge. Unlike most child actors — and unlike his on-screen parents — he never overplays his big scenes. His stoicism is wrenching. Also terrific is his real-life older brother, Noah Jupe, as the play-within-a-film’s onstage Hamlet. In a rehearsal, this young actor seems dreadful. Zhao has him whiff it so that Mescal can say the lines again, louder. But on the play’s opening night, he’s a sensation.

Shakespeare didn’t invent “Hamlet” from whole cloth. He adapted it from a Norse yarn that had been around for centuries, and Lord knows if he was more inspired by his own child or by another successful version of “Hamlet” that played London a decade before. In our century, it’s been reworked for the screen more than 50 times, and mouthed by everyone from Ethan Hawke and Danny Devito to Shelley Long.

Yet I would have been happy watching the older Jupe do the whole thing again for this lively Globe Theatre crowd, the first to discover how Shakespeare’s version will end. As this Hamlet collapses, the audience reaches their arms toward the fallen prince. The actor draws strength from the groundlings and they, in turn, find solace in his pain. That stunning image alone single-handedly captures everything this movie has struggled to say (or sob) about the catharsis of art.

Green card applications from ‘countries of concern’ will be reviewed after Afghan national named as suspect in shooting of National Guard members.

United States President Donald Trump said he plans to suspend immigration from “all Third World countries”, the day after an Afghan national was named as a suspect in the shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington, DC.

Trump’s announcement marks the latest in a series of escalating restrictions on immigration to the US, after he earlier ordered the US government to re-examine all green card applications from 19 “countries of concern”, in the wake of the Washington, DC, shooting.

“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.

While he did not define the term “Third World,” the phrase usually refers to developing countries in the Global South.

Trump also said that he will “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country”.

He added that all federal benefits and subsidies to “noncitizens” will end, and he will “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquillity, and deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western civilization”.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow said earlier on Thursday that, “at the direction” of President Trump, he had ordered “a full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern”.

“The protection of this country and of the American people remains paramount, and the American people will not bear the cost of the prior administration’s reckless resettlement policies,” Edlow said.

Edlow did not elaborate on which countries’ applicants would be reviewed, but his office directed The Associated Press (AP) news agency to a June 4 presidential proclamation restricting citizens of 19 countries from entering the US. The list includes Afghanistan, Haiti, Iran, Myanmar, Venezuela and Yemen.

Citizenship and Immigration Services had earlier announced that it would indefinitely suspend all Afghan immigration requests “pending further review of security and vetting protocols”.

The restrictions on immigrants in the US come as Jeanine Pirro, US attorney for the District of Columbia in Washington, DC, identified the suspect in the shooting of the National Guard members as Rahmanaullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who previously worked with US forces in Afghanistan.

Lakanwal came to the US under a programme known as “Operation Allies Welcome” following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, according to Pirro. She said federal authorities, including the FBI, would be reviewing his immigration history and the vetting process.

The Trump administration has already taken aggressive measures to restrict immigration to the US. In October, it announced it would accept only 7,500 refugees in 2026 – the lowest number since 1980.

The US government is also in the midst of a major review of recent US refugee arrivals, according to a memo signed by Edlow and obtained by the AP on Monday.

The memo orders the review of the approximately 200,000 refugees admitted to the US under the administration of President Joe Biden, according to the AP.

It also suspends green card applications from refugees who came to the US during that period.

The first, or maybe the second thing to be said about “The Artist,” a six-part comedy written and directed by Aram Rappaport, is that it streams from the Network, a free ad-supported streaming service Rappaport created to release his previous series, “The Green Veil.” The first three episodes premiere Thursday; the concluding three are due at Christmastime.

The second, or maybe the first thing to say about it is that it comes pulling a tramload of heavy talent — including Mandy Patinkin, Janet McTeer, Danny Huston, Hank Azaria, Patty Lupone, Zachary Quinto — which begs for it to be taken seriously, though that might not be the best way to take it.

Set in 1906, peopled with ahistorical versions of historical figures, the series is set largely in and around the Rhode Island “country home” of Norman Henry (Patinkin), identified by a title card as “an eccentric robber baron,” and seemingly what we’d call a venture capitalist today. (And one seemingly in need of capital.) Norman begins the series dead, carried out rolled in a carpet and set on fire like a Viking, before we skip back in time, meeting his wife, Marian (McTeer), who narrates from her journal and advises “the reader” that it is only on the final page that “you might be well enough equipped to tell fact from fiction, hero from villain.” I’ve seen only the first three episodes, so I have no idea, apart from where the story misrepresents its real-life characters. But that’s just poetic license and, of course, perfectly acceptable.

The staff, for no evident reason, apart perhaps from the house lacking “a working kitchen,” lives in tents on the front lawn. They’re called inside by bells, attached to cords running out the windows, labeled the Maid, the Ballerina, the Boxer, the Doctor. The ballerina, Lilith (Ana Mulvoy Ten), is a sort of protege to Henry; she believes he’ll arrange for her to dance “Coppelia” back home in Paris, the fool. (Their scenes together are creepy.) Sometimes we see her naked (though tastefully arranged) in a metal tub. Her dance instructor, Marius (David Pittu), is waspish, bitter and insulting. The boxer is a sparring partner for Marian, who works out her aggression in the ring. She’s told us that she loathes her husband, and he her (though he professes his love in a backhanded way).

Danny Huston plays Edgar Degas, the artist in the series’ title.

(The Network)

And then there’s the eponymous artist (Huston), eventually identified as Edgar Degas, real-life French Impressionist, who was not, in fact, literally stumbling around Rhode Island in 1906, and certainly not accepting a commission to paint French poodles. (So much French!) You are free to make the connection between the show’s ballerina and those he famously painted, and her nude in the tub with his masterpiece pastels of bathing women. But apart from bad eyesight, a hint of antisemitism and Huston muttering in French, there’s no substantial resemblance to the genuine article. Here, he seems half out of his mind, or half sober. He is quite concerned with getting paid, and I don’t blame him.

The news of the day is that another person from history, Thomas Edison (Azaria) is coming to the house, looking for an investor for his new invention, a Kinetophone, a peep show with sound, like a turn-of-the-century take on a virtual reality headset. (There was such a thing; it was not a success.) This sets up a long flashback in which we learn that Marian and Edison knew each other in college, and that he betrayed her. Next up are Evelyn Nesbit (Ever Anderson) and her mother (Jill Hennessy), who have booked it out of New York after Evelyn’s unstable husband, Harry K. Thaw (Clark Gregg), shot architect Stanford White in the rooftop restaurant of White’s Madison Square Garden. That happened.

It’s a loud show, with much shouting and some brief violence, which, in its suddenness, verges on slapstick, and some less brief violence which is not funny at all. There is a superfluity of gratuitous profanity; F words and the less usual C word fly about like bats at twilight, clutter up sentences, along with many rude sexual and anatomical imprecations. Most everyone is pent up, ready to pop. At the beginning of the series, setting the table for what’s to come, Marian declares, “This is not a story in the conventional sense”; it’s “a cautionary tale,” but “not a tale of murder. This is a story of rebirth,” presumably hers. There’s a feminist current to the narrative: The men are patronizing and possessive, the women — taken advantage of in more than one sense — find ways to accommodate, manipulate or fight them, while holding on to themselves.

One can see why Rappaport might have had trouble landing this series elsewhere, or preferred to avoid notes from above. Aesthetically and textually, it’s the sort of absurdist comedy that used to turn up in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, something like the works of Robert Downey Sr. or William Klein, or maybe an ambitious film student’s senior thesis, given a big budget and access to talent; in its very lack, or perhaps avoidance, of subtlety it feels very old-fashioned. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it bad, or for that matter good, but it seems to me the perfect realization of the creator’s idea, and there is something in that. And there are those three concluding episodes, which will bring in Lupone and Quinto, their characters yet unknown, and may move the needle one way or the other. In any case, it’s not something you see every day.

US President Donald Trump has called for a review of all Afghans who entered the US under the Biden administration, after two National Guard members were shot and critically wounded in Washington DC. US immigration authorities have also halted all Afghan-related applications.

Seasons change. Kids grow up. Monsters evolve. Beloved TV series end.

“Stranger Things’” fifth and final season kicks off Wednesday after a nearly three-and-a-half-year absence. It’s a welcome but bittersweet reunion for fans of the show who’ve spent the last decade watching a gaggle of misfit kids (now teens) weaponize their nerd skills against supernatural and mortal enemies in the fictional town of Hawkins, Ind.

Will (Noah Schnapp), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Max (Sadie Sink) and their superpowered friend Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) are now poised for a final battle against their mind-bending nemesis, Vecna, when the season’s Volume 1 arrives with four new episodes; Volume 2 (three episodes) drops Christmas Day, and the finale arrives Dec 31.

I might complain about the staggering of episodes — all timed for a holiday, of course — but the strategy gives sentimental viewers (my hand is raised) a bit more time to emotionally uncouple with the show.

The end of Netflix’s oddball-to-blockbuster series marks the end of an era, and surely the last generational touchstone to come out of series television. Gen Z, which grew up in the dawn of YouTube and, later, the emergence of TikTok, has generally favored short-form content over lengthier productions; however, “Stranger Things” became the exception. Young fans stretched their attention spans, watching entire seasons of a show where episodes might range anywhere from an hour to two hours plus. The Upside Down, a dark, gooey parallel universe of Hawkins, and its predatory demogorgons became part of their middle school vernacular, in the same way that pre-streaming generations used “isms” from their favorite shows: (“Just MacGuyver it, dude”).

“Stranger Things” takes place in the Reagan era, so from its very beginnings parents of Gen Zers could watch the series with their kids while revisiting their own fond and/or torturous memories of growing up in 1980s. My son was in the sixth grade when the show premiered, meaning I was there to confirm that, yes, tragic hairdos, pleated jeans and unchecked bullying were a thing in the ‘80s. But unlike Eleven, we did not have the power to make said bullies pee their pants in public. If only …

The Day-Glo decade still plays a pivotal role when “Stranger Things” returns this week. Look forward to a Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now” moment, nods to great bands like the Fall, and a well-timed mention of a flux capacitor. But Hawkins is no MTV dance party. The sleepy town is under a militarized quarantine. It’s for their own protection, and because the government is up to no good, again. Nothing comes in or out of the place without the knowledge of authorities, unless it’s smuggled in by the perpetually scheming Murray (Brett Gelman).

Hopper (David Harbour) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) make their way to the Upside Down. (Netflix)

Max (Sadie Sink) remains comatose as Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) attempts to reach her. (Netflix)

Last we knew, antagonist Vecna (who takes on many forms) had finally opened the gates to the dandruffy Upside Down, merging it with the real world. It was a violent event, but most of the town folk believed all that shaking and noise was because of an earthquake. Poor souls.

Hawkins’ beloved band of nerds know better. They’ve been doing covert “crawls” with the goal of locating and destroying Vecna before he turns the town, then the world, into an oozy wasteland. Joining the fight are Mike’s older sis Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Will’s big brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), friends Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke), Will and Jonathan’s mom Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and Elle’s adopted father, Jim Hopper (David Harbour). Max is comatose in the hospital. Her consciousness is trapped in Vecna’s mindscape, no matter how much Lucas plays Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” to wake her.

Following multiple attacks on their modest home by demodogs and U.S. agents, the Byers have been living in the basement of Mike’s home with his family, the Wheelers. The unfulfilled Mrs. Wheeler (Cara Buono) has been hitting the sauce and the usually flaccid Mr. Wheeler (Joe Chrest) is finally bothered by something — they’re eating his morning bacon! The youngest Wheeler, Holly (Nell Fisher), is now approaching the age that the core cast of kids were when the series premiered in 2016. And Erica (Priah Ferguson), Lucas’s don’t-mess-with-me little sister who still delivers all the show’s best zingers, is now in Mr. Clarke’s middle school science class.

Elevating the storylines of younger characters helps bridge the age gap created when the core cast of kid actors had the audacity to grow up over the show’s run. Brown was 12 when the show premiered. She’s now 21. Critics have complained that they should not be playing high schoolers. But accepting 22-year-old Wolfhard as a teenage Mike is not a stretch — especially given everything else “Stranger Things” fans have been willing to believe in (“talking” Christmas lights, psychokinetic battles, a nefarious Soviet lab under the mall food court).

There are spoiler embargoes aplenty so there’s a limit to what can be said about the first four new episodes out for review. Suffice to say there’s a mega battle on the horizon. Eleven has been training hard, honing her powers. Now she can fling armored vehicles, leap atop large buildings and bend the toughest of minds with a minimal nosebleed. Dustin is fighting angry, hardened by the death of his Hellfire Club buddy, Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn). Steve and Jonathan are still competing for Nancy’s attention while her focus is on perfecting her sharpshooting skills. Hopper has a distractingly long beard. And Mrs. Wheeler proves to be a formidable warrior when armed with a jagged, broken wine bottle.

Their original kids’ circumstances haven’t changed all that much, but their outlooks have, making for unpredictable twists in their powers, strengths and alliances.

In the final season of their little show that did, creators the Duffer Brothers (twin siblings Matt and Ross), lean heavily on the interpersonal feuds and friendships between all the aforementioned characters, pairing high-budget action with advancing storylines about folks that fans have come to love. It is, after all, the kids at the center of the story that kept us coming back for more. And it appears they’ll continue to do so, right up to the end.

Great documentaries are sometimes lucky accidents, the product of being at the right place at the right time and then having the wherewithal to produce something extraordinary out of those unlikely circumstances. When director Julia Loktev traveled to Russia in October 2021, all she wanted was to chronicle a handful of smart, dogged journalists trying to tell the truth who, for their trouble, had been branded foreign agents by Vladimir Putin’s vindictive government. She didn’t know she would be arriving mere months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But thanks to a quirk of coincidence, she ended up having a front-row seat to history.

She made the most of it: Running five-and-a-half hours without a minute wasted, “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow” takes us inside TV Rain, one of Russia’s last independent television channels. Divided into five chapters, the documentary begins as Loktev, who was born in the former Soviet Union before leaving when she was 9, returns to her homeland armed with an iPhone to shadow veteran TV Rain reporter and host Anna Nemzer. Over the next four months, a period that ended shortly after the invasion began, Loktev embedded herself not just with Nemzer (who is credited as the film’s co-director) but several other journalists as they fear being arrested for their reporting.

Loktev hasn’t completed a film since 2011’s “The Loneliest Planet,” which starred Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg as soon-to-be-wed lovers backpacking through the Georgian countryside, their seemingly close bond shattered after a harrowing encounter. In that movie and her previous feature, 2006’s “Day Night Day Night,” a spare procedural about a nameless suicide bomber in New York, Loktev explored the mysteries of human behavior under pressure. But with “My Undesirable Friends,” she takes that fascination to a new level, introducing viewers to a group of compelling subjects, many of them women in their 20s, who open up in front of her camera while hanging out at TV Rain, their apartments or in cafes, candidly processing their country’s terrifying descent into authoritarianism in real time.

These intrepid journalists couldn’t foresee the invasion that was coming, nor the brutal local crackdown on free speech in its wake, but Loktev makes those dire certainties clear from the start, solemnly intoning in voice-over, “The world you’re about to see no longer exists.” Since its premiere at last year’s New York Film Festival, “My Undesirable Friends” has been compared to a horror movie and a political thriller but perhaps more accurately, it’s a disaster film — one in which you know the characters so intimately that, when the awful event finally occurs, you care deeply about the outcome. (“My Undesirable Friends” bears the subtitle “Part I” because Loktev has nearly finished a second installment, which catches up with the women after they fled Russia.)

In its avoidance of interviews with experts or historians, the documentary offers a kind of personal scrapbook of Loktev’s subjects, showing what everyday life is like in an oppressive society: strikingly banal with a constant background hum of paranoia. Each woman comes into empathetic focus. Nemzer, who is a little older than her colleagues, balances her demanding job with marriage and motherhood. Meanwhile, her younger co-worker Ksenia Mironova keeps diligently filing stories despite her fiancé, journalist Ivan Safronov, being imprisoned for more than a year. (He would subsequently be sentenced to 22 years.) Investigative reporter Alesya Marokhovskaya has a girlfriend, whose face we never see, and eventually details grim memories of a violent childhood. And then there’s Marokhovskaya’s best friend and partner Irina Dolinina, who combats anxiety while her politically unconscious mother harangues her about not being able to find a man now that she’s been labeled a foreign agent.

The stress and uncertainty of these conversations is palpable but, remarkably, so is a spiky sense of humor. When a co-worker is temporarily locked up, Mironova cracks jokes outside his prison while awaiting his release. The journalists wear their foreign-agent designation as a badge of honor, mocking the comically lengthy disclaimer text they’re forced to run with their broadcasts, a pitch-black coping mechanism to make sense of their tense, surreal moment.

“My Undesirable Friends” captures dark times with some of the funniest people you’d ever hope to have as sisters-in-arms. Defiant, emotional and life-affirming, the film presents us with endearing patriots who love their country but hate its leaders, sucking us into a riveting tale with a powerful undertow.

The audience anticipates the frightening future that awaits these journalists, which makes their relentless advocacy all the more moving. If our 20s are a period of unbridled optimism — a hopefulness that slowly gets beaten out of us as we grow older — “My Undesirable Friends” stands as a touching display of the resilience of youth. There is nothing naive about these women who came of age during Putin’s cruel regime, but they nonetheless believe they can change things. While Loktev rarely inserts herself into this epic, we feel her admiration from behind the camera. The film inspires while it challenges: What were any of us doing at that age that was comparably heroic or meaningful? What are we doing now?

Those questions should stick in the craw of Americans who watch this masterwork. Loktev has made a movie about Russia but its themes spread far beyond that country’s borders. During a year in which the worst-case scenarios of a second Trump presidency have come to fruition, “My Undesirable Friends” contains plenty of echoes with our national news. The canceling of comedy shows, the baseless imprisonment of innocent people, the rampant transphobia: The Putin playbook is now this country’s day-to-day. Some may wish to avoid Loktev’s film because of those despairing parallels. But that’s only more reason to embrace “My Undesirable Friends.” Loktev didn’t set out to be a witness to history, but what she’s emerged with is an indispensable record and a rallying cry.

Disney’s latest animated film, “Zootopia 2,” a sequel to its 2016 box-office juggernaut, isn’t exactly an adult political drama, though the stakes certainly feel grimmer. Members of Zootopia’s elite plan to expand their territory by displacing certain indigenous animals from an area they want to claim for themselves. And they will do so without pushback by convincing the rest of the population that their uprooted neighbors are dangerous. Any attempt by the victims of this injustice to reclaim their homeland and their dignity will be deemed a violent attack. In turn, anyone who sides with their cause will be labeled a criminal enabler, a disloyal pariah.

Meanwhile, tensions flare in law enforcement as pawtners Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps (voiced by Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin) — who in the previous film saved Zootopia from a power-hungry wolf in sheep’s clothing — have to prove their compatibility after their recklessness lands them in hot water with Chief Bogo (Idris Elba). Could their personalities be too disparate for them to make a dream team? Judy values justice above all things, while Nick prioritizes survival and comfort. In truth, the tie-wearing fox only became a cop because of his fondness for Judy, not out of a sense of dutiful conviction.

That push-and-pull tests the strength of their bond as they visit previously unseen areas of Zootopia, including a visit to the Marsh Market, where exiles live. These adventures occur as they search for Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), a fanny-pack-strapped viper, and Pawbert Lynxley (Andy Samberg), the socially conscious son of a wealthy family. They’re on a quest to find evidence that would clear the reputations of reptiles in Zootopia, all of whom have been forced to exist on the outskirts for decades.

Writer Jared Bush, who also co-directs with Byron Howard (both return from the first “Zootopia”), leans into Quan’s personal history as an immigrant whose family had to escape Vietnam to render Gary a resilient survivor with a noble soul. Leave it to Disney to make a giant snake look disarmingly adorable and to Quan to match that energy with his warm vocal performance. On top of the new characters, Judy and Nick’s emotional arc is adorned with cameos from fan-favorite minor players from the original (Flash, the sloth; Mr. Big, the shrew). The loaded narrative robs the picture of more time with Gary and Pawbert, even if Bush finds plot-effective ways to feature the supporting mammals.

Like its predecessor, “Zootopia 2” impresses visually, especially given the breadth of characters and environments it immerses the audience in. In the faces of new characters like the anxious Pawbert and friendly Gary, one can best appreciate the level of nuanced expressiveness that Disney’s animators, working at the highest level of 3-D CG technique, can achieve.

After several haphazard attempts with the “Frozen” and “Moana” franchises, “Zootopia 2” can take the title as Disney’s most effective animated sequel yet. In most regards, the formula that propelled the first one to hit status remains unchanged: an encyclopedia of animal puns, an upbeat tune by Shakira and a twist villain (in this case, an Elon Musk type desperate for approval that all the money in the world can’t buy). And yet, “Zootopia 2” arrives as an expansion with a punchier, more focused approach to its mature ideas. This is a movie where the antagonists are willing to kill for their nefarious goals, and where the heroes are willing to die in order to uphold what’s right.

The more one reads into the movie’s timeliness, though, the more obvious it becomes that there’s a dissonance between the artists making an animated feature such as this one and the company’s leadership, which continues to push artificial intelligence and capitulate to those who bemoan “wokeness.” Those people might certainly find “Zootopia 2” rather woke indeed. (Who knows, maybe in the next installment Judy and Nick will question their role in perpetuating the police state.) In our bizarro world, the “Zootopia” franchise serves as a vehicle for thought-provoking subjects disseminated by way of colorful anthropomorphic animals.

“Suffs,” Shaina Taub’s musical about how women finally secured the right to vote in America, won Tony Awards for its book and score. It lost the best musical race to “The Outsiders,” but the respect it earned when it opened last spring on Broadway made it an unequivocal winner.

The show is having its Los Angeles premiere at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in a touring production that is smooth and smart. Taub’s work deserves nothing less than an A. The cast is excellent, the staging is graceful and the political message could not be more timely.

The show might not have the crackling vitality of “Hamilton” or the bluesy poignancy of “The Scottsboro Boys.” It’s a good deal more earnest than either of these history-laden musicals. There’s an educational imperative at the heart of “Suffs,” which deals with a subject that has been marginalized in schools and in the collective consciousness.

The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920, a little more than a century ago. The history isn’t so distant yet I’m sure I wasn’t the only one at Wednesday’s opening who was learning about the forceful tactics that helped Alice Paul and her fellow suffragists push their movement over the finish line.

“Suffs,” a musical for the public square, is as informative as it is uplifting. It is above all a moving testament to the power of sisterhood. The struggle for equality continues to face crushing setbacks today, but Taub wants us to remember what can happen when people stand united for a just cause.

Alice (a winning Maya Keleher) doesn’t seem like a rabble-rouser. A bright, well-educated woman with a polite demeanor, she looks like a future teacher of the year more than a radical organizer. But she has an activist’s most essential quality: She won’t take no for an answer. (Keleher lends alluring warmth to the role Taub made her Broadway debut in.)

Marya Grandy and the company of the national tour of “Suffs.”

(Joan Marcus)

She’s rebuffed by Carrie Chapman Catt (Marya Grandy), the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Assn., whose motto (“Let your all-American mother vote”) is the basis for the show’s opening number, “Let Mother Vote” — a distillation of the old-guard approach that has yet to yield women the vote.

Alice wants to organize a march in Washington, D.C., to force the president’s reluctant hand, but Carrie prefers a more genteel strategy. “Miss Paul, if my late great mentor Susan B. Anthony taught me anything, it’s that men are only willing to consider our cause if we present it in a lady-like fashion.

“State by state, slow and steady, until the country’s ready” is, after all, NAWSA’s fundamental creed. But Alice points out that if they continue at this glacial pace they’ll be dead before they can ever cast a vote.

Swinging into action, Alice teams up with her friend Lucy Burns (Gwynne Wood), who worries that they haven’t the experience to take on such a momentous mission. “We’ve never planned a national action before,” she objects at the start of their duet “Find a Way.” But undaunted Alice has the bold idea of recruiting Inez Milholland (played at the opening night performance by Amanda K. Lopez), and a way forward miraculously materializes.

Inez has just the right glamorous public image that Alice thinks will give their march the publicity boost it needs. Studying for the bar exam, Inez is initially reluctant but agrees if she can lead the march on horseback.

This image of Inez on a steed becomes central both to the movement and to director Leigh Silverman’s production, which finds simple yet striking ways of bringing revolutionary change to life. A chorus line of activists wearing suffragist white (kudos to the luminous tact of costume designer Paul Tazewell) eloquently communicates what solidarity can pull off.

Brandi Porter, left, and Jenny Ashman as President Woodrow Wilson in “Suffs.”

(Joan Marcus)

An all-female and nonbinary cast dramatizes this inspiring American story. Taub takes some fictional license with the characters but largely sticks to the record.

Notable allies in Alice’s organization include Ruza Wenclawska (Joyce Meimei Zheng) a Polish-born trade union organizer with a no-nonsense grassroots style, and Doris Stevens (Livvy Marcus), a shy yet undeterred student from Nebraska who becomes the group’s secret weapon secretary.

Ida B. Wells (Danyel Fulton), an early leader in the civil rights movement, takes part in the march but resists being used as a prop in what she calls NAWSA’s “white women convention.” Mary Church Terrell (Trisha Jeffrey), a fellow Black activist, by contrast believes that it’s only through participation that representation can move forward.

President Woodrow Wilson (Jenny Ashman), who makes promises to the suffragists he is hesitant to keep, is a crucial target of Alice’s pressure campaign. Her group’s access to him is aided by Dudley Malone (Brandi Porter), Wilson’s right-hand man, who becomes smitten with Doris.

The score marches ahead in a manner that makes progress seem, if not inevitable, relentless in its pursuit of justice. The songs combine the patriotic exuberance of John Philip Sousa and the American breadth of Broadway composer Stephen Flaherty (“Ragtime”). The note of pop accessibility in Taub’s music and the satiric humor of her lyrics add to the buoyancy. You won’t leave humming a tune, but the overall effect (while ephemeral) is pleasing in the theater.

With the history already determined, the book can’t help resembling at times a civics exhibition. Dramatic tension is hard to come by. Alice and her cohorts suffer grave disappointments and indignities (including a harrowing stint in prison), but the eventual outcome of their struggles is known.

“Suffs” sometimes feels like a history lesson neatly compartmentalized into Important Episodes. There’s a whiff of PBS to the way the musical unfolds. This is cultural programming that’s good for you.

But the teamwork of the performers honors the messy yet undeniably effective cooperation of Alice and her freedom fighters — women who changed the world by not staying silent in their prescribed place.

Looking for the perfect cosy UK countryside getaway this winter? This charming Cotswolds hotel ticks all the boxes, we discovered

Visit Calcot & Spa around this time of year and the first thing you’ll notice upon pulling up is the fragrant smell of log fires. Just outside the honey-coloured town of Tetbury – the Cotswolds’ second largest, and where you’ll find Highgrove House, the private home of King Charles and Queen Camilla – Calcot is the ultimate countryside retreat.

The main house was built in the 17th and 18th century, but records show that one barn dates back to 1311, with dwellings here even as far back as Roman times. Now it’s a luxury spa hotel filled with cosy corners and a keen focus on sustainability; they burn logs made from coffee grounds and old newspapers, a tree is planted every time towels are reused, and they’ve eliminated single-use plastics.

Rooms are comfy and spacious – the tray of complimentary drinks and snacks is a nice touch (including the butteriest homemade shortbread), and I had one of the best night’s sleep in ages in the giant squishy bed.

Dinner can be taken in the elegant Brasserie restaurant (be sure to save room for one of the delicious desserts) or in The Hive, a pub-like space serving more casual bites, and which is better for kids.

In fact, the whole hotel is incredibly family-friendly, while still being a relaxing retreat for those travelling without children (a tricky balance to get right). There are dedicated hours for families in the pool and at The Hive, baby monitors are available to hire, and kids get four hours of free childcare in the nanny-run Playbarn when staying between Sunday and Thursday.

The spa at Calcot

A huge barn-style building a few steps from the main building, Calcot Spa features a light and airy café, indoor pool for lengths, sauna, steam room and snooze-inducing relaxation rooms.

The highlight, however, is undoubtedly the outdoor hydropool by yet another aromatic log fire, which somehow never feels overcrowded. Try to pay it a visit at the end of the day (the spa’s open until 9pm), as it becomes even more magical in the dark.

Top treatment at Calcot & Spa

Six months pregnant at the time, I went for the spa’s New Life New Mum Massage, which started with a back massage lying on each side (I appreciated the long sausage-shaped pregnancy pillow to hug), before turning over onto my back to work on my feet, legs and arms. While the lower back needs to be treated gently when pregnant, I was thrilled to still feel the knots in my neck being expertly loosened. The combination of vanilla-y scent of macadamia nut oil and my therapist’s soothing voice had me nearly nodding off.

What else is there to do at Calcot & Spa?

Calcot is, quite rightly, very proud of its rewilding programme across its 220-acre grounds, which includes wildflower meadows, beehives and a herd of fluffy Belted Galloway cows to graze the fields. Explore it all on the 3km nature trail; comfy Le Chameau wellies are available to borrow by the back door if it’s muddy underfoot.

How much does it cost to stay at Calcot & Spa?

Rooms at Calcot & Spa start from £344 per night.

Directed by Japan’s monomonikered Hikari, “Rental Family” — a beautifully moving and affably humorous story of human connection — kicks off with one funeral and culminates with another, demonstrating the evolution that our protagonist, Philip (Brendan Fraser), goes through during his personal journey between these two events.

The first funeral is a shock. Philip is a struggling actor in Tokyo, with one massively successful commercial as a toothpaste superhero mascot under his belt. His agent has booked him a gig as “Sad American,” a role he can easily play with his looming height, doleful eyes and a heart he wears on his sleeve. Late as usual, he dashes to check in for work and is shocked to stumble into a somber funeral. He’s even more shocked when the formally dressed corpse starts emotionally reacting to the tearful eulogies.

The scene is a marvel of revelation and reaction from Fraser and, in fact, much of the genius of his performance in “Rental Family” comes from his reactions, especially as he discovers the weird and wonderful new job he’s landed.

In the screenplay by Hikari and Stephen Blahut, Philip finds himself working for Tada (Takehiro Hira), who runs a company called Rental Family that’s hired by clients to provide staff to role-play in various real-world scenarios — the fake funeral, for example, or as a mistress apologizing to a spurned wife or just for friendship. Philip’s first role is quite complex: He plays a Canadian man getting married to a young Japanese woman in a show wedding for her conservative parents. She’s queer and needs an out in order to be with her real partner. Philip, who is earnest and honest to a fault, chafes at the lie but soon realizes that he’s helping someone to live their authentic life, so he throws himself into it.

Rental Family’s service is all about maintaining Japanese values of propriety and politeness through performance, and the little (or big) white lies are manipulations to get what the clients want: an apology, companionship, love, admiration, closure. Philip’s most challenging high-wire act proves to be posing as the long-lost American father of a shrewd and emotionally intelligent young girl, Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), in order to secure her school admission. Both Philip and Mia’s mom (Shino Shinozaki), the client, soon realize that it’s much more complicated than just pretending to be a nuclear family for a school interview.

While playing daddy, Philip also juggles a role as a curious journalist profiling an aging, iconic (but largely forgotten) screen actor, Kikuo (Akira Emoto), from whom he learns surprising lessons about life, memory and legacy. He finds himself deeply connecting with these people, young and old, and learning from them, while becoming tangled in their lives.

Empathy pours off Fraser in waves, which is what made his Oscar-winning performance in “The Whale” work. Hikari channels that quality to good use in “Rental Family” but never oversteps. The film is sweet and affecting, never treacly or overly sentimental. She knows how to balance humor and poignancy, to allow Philip to be a grown man with his own needs and peccadilloes and mistakes, though we never question his motivations because of the inherent goodness that radiates off Fraser.

Hikari’s naturalistic style perfectly suits this story. The Tokyo that she showcases is one of quotidian everyday life, not the futuristic neon city that an outsider might capture. Hers is one of small, cramped apartments, karaoke bars, public transit, hotels, temples and schools. It’s a world occupied by normal people who sometimes need a little help, a little push to get the things they want in life. Philip is there to provide that service even though he’s also in need of his own connection to others.

But it’s the mishaps along the way that actually help Philip to grow. By the time we get to the second funeral, we see how much he has bloomed. Fraser has an openness to his expression that’s like a flower unfolding, beaming in the sunlight of recognition and personal fulfillment. As an actor, Fraser’s second act has been a sight to behold. He’s the emotional anchor of this life-affirming and quietly resonant film about the importance of being together — a movie that announces Hikari as a major talent.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

“Forever chemicals” don’t die — they just regroup. Only instead of regrouping in hell, as that old Marines saying goes, it’s in the oceans, where such compounds were dumped for decades.

For years, Times environmental reporter and Pulitzer finalist Rosanna Xia has been covering the legacy of forever chemical DDT, a pesticide once applied to humans as innocuously as hairspray and yardhose water. In 2020 she broke the story that barrels of DDT’s toxic waste, last sent to the ocean floor decades ago by its biggest manufacturer, Montrose, were closer to Southern California’s shores than previously thought. Her ongoing investigative work is now the subject of a documentary, “Out of Plain Sight,” which Xia co-directed with Daniel Straub. (Full disclosure: It was produced by L.A. Times Studios, an affiliate company.)

The film is a fleet, urgent-sounding dispatch, centering on Xia herself as an intrepid factfinder roving the affected coastline, dropping in on scientists, oceanographers, biologists and wildlife experts as she tries to piece together the effects of half a million barrels of forgotten DDT, banned in 1972 but still having an impact on an already fragile ecosystem and the descendants of those exposed to it. Her inspiration, quoted up top and glimpsed in archival footage, is Rachel Carson, whose seminal 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” spurred enough public outcry against chemical pesticides to lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Carson’s galvanizing alarm was, paradoxically, an absence, seen in declining bird populations (hence the “silent” of her title). Xia’s clarion call, meanwhile, starts with robot-captured images of leaking barrels on the ocean floor. That’s the beginning of the sea-to-land food chain that starts with DDT-ridden marine life. Microplastics are the current bete noire and rightly so, but we’re still in the dark about the causal calamity of a past era’s chemical polluting. It’s one thing if a company like Montrose, now defunct, once believed no one would notice their massive DDT-waste-dumping operation. It’s another, the movie argues, if we choose not to wrestle with the environmental ramifications being felt today.

“Out of Plain Sight” strives to be more cinematically alive than the standard talking-head-laden documentary. A brief history of DDT, from the corporate excitement over its invention to protesting, is given a snazzy split-screen archival montage treatment, sourced from educational films, newsreels and interviews but scored to the Zombies’ “I Don’t Want to Know” as a cheeky touch. And all of Xia’s interviews are filmed in the field in a vérité style, a nod to journalism in action, from UC San Diego labs and mammal rescue operations treating cancer-riven sea lions to microbiologist David Valentine’s attempts to collect samples from those time-bomb-like barrels of sludge.

Though we need movies that demystify journalism (and Xia is an appealing on-camera correspondent), that aspect is less interesting than the propulsive portrait of a dedicated, multi-pronged effort to expose, understand and hopefully clean up a still-viable threat. “Out of Plain Sight” doesn’t need to be earthshaking filmmaking to relay a valuable ongoing story about a hidden nightmare for all of us. It brings to mind another famous saying, just as applicable to DDT’s longevity as the one about the Marines, from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead — it’s not even past.”

Life has a way of taking things from us that we think we can’t do without. Often that means the death of a loved one, but sometimes it can be home — and with it, our grounding in the world. When we meet Dusty, the laconic protagonist of “Rebuilding,” he has already lost so much. His marriage is over. His parents have been dead and buried for quite a while. But as this modest drama begins, Dusty is grappling with the most crushing of blows: His cherished 200-acre family ranch in Colorado has burned down in a devastating wildfire. He survived but he might as well be a ghost.

Dusty is played by Josh O’Connor, who lately has cornered the market on sensitive, passive outsiders. With his wiry frame and shy eyes, the British actor has demonstrated in films such as “La Chimera” and “The Mastermind” an appetite for soft-spoken characters who exude a gentle masculinity. We don’t know if Dusty’s voice is noticeably hushed because of his recent tragedy, but as he tries to pick up the pieces, this lonesome cowboy drifts through his days, doing his best to pretend he’s holding up OK.

Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s second feature shares with his first a sympathy for strong, silent types. His flinty 2022 debut “A Love Song” was drenched in melancholy, casting Dale Dickey and Wes Studi as aging childhood friends reunited, a tentative romance faintly sparking. Similarly, “Rebuilding” is a tale of grief and what-ifs populated by everyday folks who speak in terse tones. The movie radiates the spare, rugged poetry of a short story or a John Prine song. (Fittingly, the musician appears on the soundtrack.)

O’Connor keeps Dusty’s inner life a mystery as he reluctantly moves into a beat-up trailer at a temporary FEMA camp, struggling to make it hospitable for his grade-school daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre), who primarily lives with Dusty’s ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and Ruby’s boyfriend, Robbie (Sam Engbring). Dusty is not a bad father or a snide former spouse — everybody in his orbit likes him, including Ruby’s ailing mother Bess (Amy Madigan). But when Callie-Rose informs Dusty that Ruby said he underachieved in school, we believe her. “Rebuilding” doesn’t reveal much about Dusty before the ranch was incinerated, but what eventually becomes clear is that he’s always been something of a disappointment.

It’s a performance that requires O’Connor to hint at an ineffable void. The character operates at a remove from even those closest to him — he has a kindly spirit, but he can’t quite connect. Dusty and Ruby were adolescent sweethearts, but the audience doesn’t need to know the whole backstory to guess why they broke up. He’s the kind of guy weighed down by an internal inertia, asleep while standing up, stuck in a rut. At least he had his ranch. But after the wildfire, Dusty’s omnipresent cowboy hat is all that remains from the only life he’s ever known.

In keeping with Walker-Silverman’s naturalistic approach, “Rebuilding” eschews a conventional plot, instead observing Dusty’s negotiation of an outside world he’s tried to avoid. He gingerly makes friends at the FEMA camp, most memorably with Mila, depicted with gruff authenticity by Kali Reis. This de facto support group has no big inspirational speeches to offer Dusty, just a weary resilience to keep going because, really, what else can they do? Some of the film’s finest moments involve O’Connor ceding the spotlight to his co-stars, each of them so offhandedly genuine one might assume Walker-Silverman gathered actual wildfire survivors.

The movie’s verisimilitude may trigger some Los Angeles viewers who know all too well the pain of recovering from a natural disaster. When “Rebuilding” premiered at Sundance in January, Southern California festivalgoers couldn’t help but feel a queasy déjà vu: The Eaton and Palisades fires were still raging, destroying communities and displacing so many. That horror and sorrow loomed heavy over those initial screenings, and no doubt for many in our city, 10 months will hardly be enough time to enter the proper headspace to appreciate Dusty’s processing of his disorienting new normal.

But while Walker-Silverman couldn’t have imagined his movie’s jarring real-world parallels, “Rebuilding” is as much a character study as it is a warning about our increasingly fragile planet and the beloved places we call home. The story’s studied minor-key tone can occasionally come across as mannered, yet “Rebuilding” possesses its own delicate grace, especially once Dusty endures other losses — some personal, others more existential. Walker-Silverman introduces a minor twist near the end that comes across as a little too narratively convenient, but one can hardly begrudge him seeking a sliver of hope for those whose sense of place has been obliterated. As Dusty learns, when you’ve lost nearly everything, all you’ve got is whatever’s left behind.

The final film of the late Glenda Jackson and, if he remains true to his word, of Michael Caine, “The Great Escaper” has made its way to America two years after its U.K. release. Premiering Sunday under the umbrella of the PBS series “Masterpiece Theatre,” the film tells the true-life story of Bernie Jordan, who, at 89, set off unaccompanied and unannounced from an English retirement home to attend celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France. (This event also inspired a Pierce Brosnan film, “The Last Rifleman,” which came out about the same time.) Love and time and duty are its themes. Written by William Ivory and directed by Oliver Parker, it’s a simple story, simply told — sweet, but not saccharine, and moving even when you know what’s coming.

Bernie (Caine) lives with his wife, Rene (Jackson), in a care home by the sea in the town of Hove. She needs more medical attention than he, but both have their wits about them. Having missed securing a spot among the groups traveling to Normandy, Bernie, a Royal Navy veteran, with Rene’s encouragement, decides to go it alone. Though he uses a walker and can seem tired or abstracted at times — he has much on his mind, and a specific mission to fulfill — the trip itself is not especially hard on him. It becomes all the easier once he meets, on the ferry across the English Channel, Arthur Howard-Johnson (John Standing, very fine), an RAF veteran who offers him a place with his group and a bed in his hotel room. As the film goes on, he becomes more and more focused, growing alert and lively and taking charge of Arthur, who had earlier taken charge of him. Each, it will transpire, carries a burden of guilt dating from the invasion.

Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson in “The Great Escaper.”

(Rob Youngson / Masterpiece, Pathé, BBC Films)

Back in Hove, the staff, represented by aide Adele (Danielle Vitalis) and manager Judith (Jackie Clune), is not immediately aware of Bernie’s absence — he’s allowed to come and go — and Rene, who has a tendency to fence with them anyway, is keeping quiet in order to give him time to get away. When they learn he’s missing, a search begins; eventually, Rene lets the truth slip, the exploit hits the press and Bernie, unaware of any of this, is given the nickname “The Great Escaper.” He’ll return home an annoyed celebrity.

Flashbacks, with Will Fletcher as young Bernie and Laura Marcus as young Rene, recall the couple’s wartime meeting and Bernie’s interactions with a young soldier on D-Day. Integrated as memories, they enrich the present action without overexplaining it.

Jackson and Caine, you may know or should learn, were icons of British thespian glamour in the 1960s and ’70s, she in “Marat/Sade,” “Women in Love” and “Elizabeth R,” he in “Alfie” and the Harry Palmer films (“The Ipcress File,” et al.); in 1975, they starred together in Joseph Losey’s “The Romantic Englishwoman,” co-written by Tom Stoppard. Always politically active, Jackson took off 23 years from acting, from 1992 to 2015, to serve as a member of Parliament, and returned to play “King Lear” in London and on Broadway and win a Tony for a revival of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women.” Caine, notwithstanding some slow times, made movies all along, all sorts of them, playing Scrooge in “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” Mike Myers’ father in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and Alfred in the Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy and parts in five other Nolan films. Watching “The Great Escaper,” you’re seeing history.

Neither has lost a step. (I find it pleasant to remember that, however frail or confused an older character may be, the person playing them is doing a job that requires strength and thought.) Given both the eminence of the actors and their age — Caine was 90 when “The Great Escaper” premiered, while Jackson, 87, died shortly before — it’s hard not to watch with a double consciousness of the players and the parts. But rather than a distraction, it redoubles the impact. Jackson and Caine wear their years proudly; there’s no vanity in their performance or their appearance. The couple’s eventual reunion is deep and real and, like their whole relationship, gorgeously ordinary.

Ed Sheeran teams up with Adolescence’s Philip Barantini for this hour-long Netflix special – but those hoping for candid personal revelations will be disappointed

A guitar-wielding Ed Sheeran takes fans on a musical journey through both New York and his back-catalogue in Netflix’s One Shot – with the help of Adolescence director Phillip Barantini.

The award-winning director, who is best known for producing singularly-shot projects, follows pop icon Ed across New York as he surprises unsuspecting, over-excited fans ahead of an upcoming gig.

The hour-long special, shot in real-time, sees Ed leave show rehearsals at New York’s Manhattan Centre to “go about the town for a little bit” in the hour before his gig.

The 34-year-old dad doesn’t give his voice a breakout, however, with him breaking out into song at rooftop parties, helping a fan with his proposal, crooning at cab drivers and thrilling subway passengers with his chart-topping singles.

From his 2011 breakout hit The A Team and crowd-pleaser Sing, to newer tracks like Galway Girl and Azizam, Ed dives through his discography with just his guitar, his impressive pipes and occasional help from selfie-seeking New Yorkers.

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He’s even given a lift at one point by regular collaborator Camilla Cabello, who picks him up in a four-by-four and feigns surprise with the unconvincing line: “What are you doing in New York?” They duet Ed’s 2015 tune Photograph with Camilla behind the wheel in a scene reminiscent of Carpool Karaoke (which comes as no surprise considering James Corden producer Ben Winston worked on the film).

While One Shot showcases Barantini’s impressive cinematography skills and Ed’s playful performances, those hoping for insights into the Brit Award winner’s life will be left disappointed.

Rather than a follow-up to his candid 2023 docuseries The Sum of It All, One Shot is essentially a very long music video. Ed briefly chats about his calamitous proposal to now-wife Cherry Seaborn while striding through the city, revealing that he got down on one knee in their kitchen after rain dampened his original plans.

He later invites Camilla round for spag bol, telling her that daughters Lyra, five, and Jupiter, three, “will be so excited” to see her. But otherwise, Ed sticks mainly to serenading and fist-bumping his fans.

For hard-core lovers of Sheeran’s ever-growing collection, One Shot is a must-watch if you fancy a dance down memory lane. Plus, it’s much cheaper than paying today’s tour ticket prices.

Those not too bothered by the British pop prince may find themselves switching over fairly quickly – although it’s worth tuning in to admire Barantini’s hypnotic, film-making skills. Much like Adolescence, One Shot will leave viewers scratching their heads as to how certain shots they pulled off the one-take wonder.

One Shot with Ed Sheeran is available to stream on Netflix.

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