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# Pence rails against Trump's 'siren song of populism' as he tries to energize his 2024 campaign By JILL COLVIN and ROBERT F. BUKATY September 6th, 2023. 6:43 PM GMT-4 --- MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) - Former Vice President Mike Pence cast the 2024 election as a fight for the future of conservatism and his party as he called on fellow Republicans to reject the "siren song of populism" championed by former President Donald Trump and his followers. "Should the new populism of the right seize and guide our party, the Republican Party we've long known will cease to exist and the fate of American freedom would be in doubt," Pence said Wednesday afternoon in what his campaign plugged as a major speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. Pence's plea comes at a critical time for his campaign, which has been struggling to build momentum since its launch. Four months ahead of Iowa's kickoff caucuses, Trump remains the race's undisputed front-runner, while Pence still polls in single digits. Pence, who served four years as Trump's loyal second-in-command, has tried to paint himself as the most conservative candidate in a crowded Republican field. But he is championing policies that have fallen out of favor with many Republican voters who have embraced Trump's anti-establishment rhetoric, protectionist trade policies and isolationist worldview. "If we are to defeat Joe Biden and turn America around, the Republican Party must be the party of limited government, free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and traditional moral values," Pence argued in his speech. He compared the right's ascendant populism - generally defined as a focus on ordinary people's complaints about big government and so-called elites - to the left's progressivism, calling them "fellow travelers on the same road to ruin." Pence, who broke with Trump before the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, continued the more aggressive posture he has taken in recent weeks. He went after the former president repeatedly by name. He quipped that the Republican Party "did not begin on a golden escalator in 2015," a reference to Trump's campaign launch in New York, and argued that the former president has abandoned the conservative principles he ran on when Pence was his running mate in 2016. "When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. And together we did. But it's important for Republicans to know that he and his imitators on this Republican primary make no such promise today," Pence said. "The truth is Donald Trump, along with his imitators, often sound like an echo of the progressives they seek to replace." "The growing faction would substitute our faith in limited government and traditional values with an agenda stitched together by little else than personal grievances and performative outrage," he added. Trump, responding on his Truth Social site, accused Pence of going to the "Dark Side" after only speaking well of him for years. "His advisers have led him down a very bad path!" Trump said. "The conservative movement and the Republican Party have changed for the better, and nobody wants it to go back to the way it was before," added Trump's adviser, Jason Miller. The ideological shift is, in part, a reflection of changing demographics as the GOP has increasingly become a party of the working class, while Democrats have attracted college-educated voters. Right-wing populism has also been on the rise across Europe and around the globe in response to factors including globalization and mass migration. Pence, in his speech, called for a course correction, accusing Trump and his followers of abandoning U.S. allies abroad with isolationist policies and ignoring the national debt. Beyond Trump, he criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is polling in second, for using "the power of the state to punish a corporation for taking a political stand that he disagreed with" in his ongoing feud with Disney, one of the largest employers in the state. And he attacked tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has become a favored punching bag as he has risen in the polls, for his past statements on raising inheritance taxes. Pence also accused Trump and his "imitators" of trying to "blatantly erode our constitutional norms," referencing Trump's call last year for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" over his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. "You know there's already a party that embraces appeasement abroad. There's already a party that would ignore our national debt," Pence said, adding that this is "not conservatism. It's Republicanism that prioritizes power over principles." Instead, Pence repeatedly hailed the example of President Ronald Reagan, arguing the party must return to his model of limited government, strong national defense and traditional social values, including staunch opposition to abortion rights. Republicans face a "time for choosing," he said, referencing a famous Reagan speech. "The future of this movement, of this great party, belongs to one or the other - not both. That's because the fundamental divide between these two factions is unbridgeable." The speech comes ahead of the second GOP presidential debate, which will be held in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Pence has hinged much of his campaign on doing well in Iowa, which will hold the Republicans' first nominating contest next January. But he has also spent significant time campaigning across New Hampshire and South Carolina, which also vote early. Saint Anselm College has long been a popular venue for candidates to deliver major speeches.
# South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem expected to endorse Trump By STEPHEN GROVES and JILL COLVIN September 7th, 2023. 6:37 PM GMT-4 --- WASHINGTON (AP) - South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is expected to endorse Donald Trump's presidential campaign when he travels to her state for a Republican fundraiser on Friday. Trump will appear in Rapid City for an event hosted by the state's GOP, and Noem is expected to introduce and endorse Trump, according to a senior Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans. Noem's spokesman Ian Fury said only that the event should be watched for such a development. The Republican governor has been coy about her endorsement plans, telling Fox News only that "you'll hear something from me, too. CNN first reported news of the endorsement. When Trump was asked Thursday whether Noem will endorse him, he said, "I don't know exactly." "But I am going," he said. "I like her a lot. I think she's great. Kristi's done a great job." He praised her for taking a hands-off approach to pandemic restrictions and at times encouraging people to resume mass gatherings. In July 2020, Noem hosted Trump for a fireworks celebration at Mount Rushmore. Noem was long considered a potential candidate in her own right and had told The New York Times in November 2022 that she didn't believe Trump offered "the best chance" for the party in 2024. But she removed herself from presidential consideration this summer, saying there was no point in joining the crowded field running for the nomination, given Trump's dominant position. Noem, however, has looked for ways to stay in the national conversation. During the first GOP presidential debate, she ran an ad to encourage people to move to South Dakota. In the TV spot, she appeared wearing plumber's overalls and touted the state as "the freest state in America." The state's senators, John Thune and Mike Rounds, have endorsed one of Trump's rivals, their colleague South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
# Victims of Michigan dam collapse win key ruling in lawsuits against state By ED WHITE September 8th, 2023. 3:22 PM GMT-4 --- DETROIT (AP) - Property owners seeking to hold the state of Michigan responsible for the disastrous failure of a dam in 2020 have won a critical ruling from an appeals court. In a 3-0 opinion, the court refused to dismiss a series of lawsuits that link the Edenville Dam's collapse to decisions by state regulators. The court said claims of "inverse condemnation" - state-imposed property damage - can proceed. Property owners say some blame belongs with the state, after regulators told the private owner of the hydroelectric dam on the Tittabawassee River to raise water levels in Wixom Lake, a reservoir behind the dam. After three days of rain, the dam collapsed in May 2020, releasing a torrent that overtopped the downstream Sanford Dam and flooded the city of Midland. Thousands of people were temporarily evacuated and 150 homes were destroyed. At this early stage of the litigation, the appeals court said it must give more weight to allegations by property owners, although the state disputes them. The court noted a 2020 Michigan Supreme Court decision about state liability in the Flint water crisis. The state's highest court said Flint residents could sue over decisions that ultimately caused lead contamination in the city. "Plaintiffs allege that, after conducting a cursory inspection of the Edenville Dam in 2018, EGLE reported that the dam was structurally sound when it was not," the appeals court said Thursday, referring to the state's environment agency. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked experts to study what happened at the Edenville and Sanford dams. The 2022 report said failure was "foreseeable and preventable" but could not be "attributed to any one individual, group or organization."
# Prominent activist's son convicted of storming Capitol and invading Senate floor in Jan. 6 riot By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN September 9th, 2023. 12:02 PM GMT-4 --- The son of a prominent conservative activist has been convicted of charges that he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, bashed in a window, chased a police officer, invaded the Senate floor and helped a mob disrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden's presidential election victory. Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty Friday of 10 charges, including five felony offenses, after a trial decided by a federal judge, according to the Justice Department. Bozell's father is Brent Bozell III, who founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations. U.S. District Judge John Bates heard testimony without a jury before convicting Bozell of charges including obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress convened to certify the Electoral College vote that Biden won over then-President Donald Trump, a Republican. Bozell was "a major contributor to the chaos, the destruction, and the obstruction at the Capitol on January 6, 2021," prosecutors said in a pretrial court filing. The judge is scheduled to sentence Bozell on Jan. 9. Bozell's lawyer, William Shipley Jr., did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Saturday. Prosecutors said that before the riot, Bozell helped plan and coordinate events in Washington in support of Trump's "Stop the Steal" movement. They said that after Trump's rally near the White House on Jan. 6, Bozell marched to the Capitol and joined a mob in breaking through a police line. He smashed a window next to the Senate Wing Door, creating an entry point for hundreds of rioters, according to prosecutors. After climbing through the smashed window, Bozell joined other rioters in chasing a Capitol Police officer, Eugene Goodman, up a staircase to an area where other officers confronted the group. Later, Bozell was captured on video entering office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. He appeared to have something in his hand when he left, prosecutors said. Entering the Senate gallery, Bozell moved a C-SPAN camera to face the ground so it could not record rioters ransacking the chamber on a live video feed. He also spent several minutes on the Senate floor. Bozell roamed thorough the Capitol for nearly an hour, reaching more than a dozen different parts of the building and passing through at least seven police lines before police escorted him out, prosecutors said. In a pretrial court filing, Bozell's lawyer denied that Bozell helped overwhelm a police line or engaged in any violence against police. "In fact, video evidence will show that Mr. Bozell assisted in some small way law enforcement officers that he thought could be helped by his assistance," Shipley wrote. Shipley also argued that Bozell "was - for the most part - simply lost and wandering from place-to-place observing events as they transpired." Bozell was arrested in February 2021. An FBI tipster who identified Bozell recognized him in part from the "Hershey Christian Academy" sweatshirt that he wore on Jan. 6. More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 650 of them have pleaded guilty. Approximately 140 others have been convicted by judges or juries after trials in Washington.
# Texas begins flying migrants from southern border to Chicago. The 1st plane carried over 120 people By PAUL J. WEBER December 20, 2023. 10:03 PM EST --- AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas sent a plane with more than 120 migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border to Chicago in an escalation of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's busing operation that has given more than 80,000 migrants free rides to Democratic-led cities across the country since last year. The first flight, which left from El Paso and arrived Tuesday, was arranged a week after Chicago's city council took new action over the busloads of migrants that have drawn sharp criticism from Mayor Brandon Johnson. The city has said bus operators began trying to drop off people in neighboring cities to avoid penalties that include fines, towing or impoundment. Bus operators could now face tougher penalties in Chicago for not unloading new arrivals at a designated location or failing to fill out city paperwork. Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said Wednesday that the flights were the result of Johnson "targeting migrant buses" from Texas. The flight took off a day after Abbott signed a new law this week that would allow police in Texas to arrest migrants who illegally cross the border, ratcheting up a series of aggressive measures the state has taken in protest of President Joe Biden's immigration policies. "Until President Biden steps up and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue taking historic action to help our local partners respond to this Biden-made crisis," Mahaleris said. The White House criticized the flight and accused Abbott of using migrants for politics. "Yet again, Governor Abbott is showing how little regard or respect he has for human beings," White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said in a statement. "This latest political stunt just adds to his tally of extreme policies which seek to demonize and dehumanize people." More than 23,000 migrants have been sent to Chicago on buses as part of Abbott's border mission known as Operation Lone Star, according to the governor's office. The multibillion-dollar operation has also included stringing razor wire along the frontier, installing buoy barriers in the Rio Grande and deploying more officers. On Tuesday a federal appeals court ordered the Biden administration to temporarily halt cutting the concertina wire on the border while a legal challenge plays out. Johnson's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the flights to his city. Concerns have arisen about the living conditions and medical care provided for asylum-seekers arriving in Chicago, spotlighted by the death last weekend of a 5-year-old boy living at a temporary shelter for migrants.
# What we know about Texas' new law that lets police arrest migrants who enter the US illegally By VALERIE GONZALEZ December 20, 2023. 12:05 AM EST --- McALLEN, Texas (AP) - How far can a state go to keep migrants out of the U.S.? The answer may soon come out of Texas, where a new law signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott this week will allow police to arrest migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally and give local judges the authority to order them to leave the country. Acting quickly, civil rights groups and a Texas border county filed a lawsuit Tuesday that seeks to stop the measure from taking effect in March, calling it unconstitutional. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also blasted the Texas law but wouldn't say whether the Justice Department would challenge it. Here are some things to know: ## WHO CAN BE ARRESTED? The measure allows any Texas law enforcement officer to arrest people who are suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, migrants could either agree to a Texas judge's order to leave the U.S. or be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges of illegal entry. Migrants who don't leave could face arrest again under more serious felony charges. Arresting officers must have probable cause, which could include witnessing the illegal entry themselves or seeing it on video. The law cannot be enforced against people lawfully present in the U.S., including those who were granted asylum or who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. "The goal of these laws is to make sure that when they see somebody crossing over the border, as the National Guard see, as the Texas Department of Public Safety see, they know they're not profiling. They are seeing with their own eyes people who are violating the law," Abbott said Monday. However, critics, including Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, worry the law could lead to racial profiling and family separation. American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Texas and some neighboring states issued a travel advisory this week warning people of a possible threat their civil and constitutional rights violations when passing through Texas. During a news briefing Tuesday, López Obrador said Abbott was looking to score political points with people's lives. "The Texas governor acts that way because he wants to be the Republican vice-presidential candidate and wants to win popularity with these measures," López Obrador said. "He's not going to win anything. On the contrary, he is going to lose support because there are a lot of Mexicans in Texas, a lot of migrants." ## WHERE WILL THE LAW BE ENFORCED? It can be enforced anywhere in Texas. Republican state Rep. David Spiller, who carried the bill in the Texas House, says he expects the vast majority of arrests will occur within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the U.S.-Mexico border. Some places are off-limits. Arrests can't be made in public and private schools; churches, synagogues or other established places of worship; hospitals and other health care facilities, including those where sexual assault forensic examinations are conducted. Under the Texas law, migrants ordered to leave would be sent to ports of entry along the border with Mexico, even if they are not Mexican citizens. ## IS THE LAW CONSTITUTIONAL? Legal experts and immigrant rights group have said the measure is a clear conflict with the U.S. government's authority to regulate immigration. A key claim in Tuesday's lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other groups is that it violates the U.S. Constitution's supremacy clause. The suit accuses Texas of trying "to create a new state system to regulate immigration that completely bypasses and conflicts with the federal system." Opponents have called the measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law - denounced by critics as the "Show Me Your Papers" bill - that was largely struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court's 2012 decision on the Arizona law stated the federal government has exclusive power over immigration. Abbott and other Republicans have said President Joe Biden is not doing enough to control the 1,950-mile (3,149-kilometer) southern border. "In his absence, Texas has the constitutional authority to secure our border through historic laws like SB 4," Abbott said in a statement. The U.S. government has not said whether it will challenge the Texas law, as it did with Arizona's measure. Mexico's president has indicated his country will intervene. ## WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE BORDER? Abbott signed the law Monday amid an increase in border crossings that has stretched U.S. Customs and Border Protection resources. Troy Miller, the agency's acting commissioner, has called the number of daily arrivals "unprecedented," with illegal crossings topping 10,000 some days across the border in December. Thousands of asylum-seekers who have crossed are sleeping outside along the border overnight as they wait for federal agents to process them. Most are released with notices to appear in immigration courts, which are backlogged with more than 3 million cases. Many are crossing at the Texas cities of Eagle Pass and El Paso, where federal officials suspended cross-border rail traffic in response to migrants riding freight trains through Mexico, hopping off just before entering the U.S. The U.S. government also recently shut down the nearby international crossing between Lukeville, Arizona, and Sonoyta, Mexico, to free Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to the port of entry to help with transportation and other support. The agency also has partially closed a few other border ports of entry in recent months, including a pedestrian crossing in San Diego.
# Death of 5-year-old boy prompts criticism of Chicago shelters for migrants By CLAIRE SAVAGE December 18, 2023. 4:11 PM EST --- A 5-year-old boy living at a temporary shelter for migrants in Chicago died over the weekend after being transported to a hospital after suffering a medical emergency, the city's mayor said Monday. The boy's death on Sunday revived community organizers' complaints about conditions at shelters and questions about how Chicago is responding to an influx of people unaccustomed to the city's cold winters and with few local contacts. Chicago and other northern U.S. cities have struggled to find housing for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers, many of whom have been bused from Texas throughout the last year. Earlier this month, hundreds of asylum-seekers still awaited placement at airports and police stations in Chicago, some of them still camped on sidewalks outside precinct buildings. Although the city reports that police stations have been mostly cleared, massive shelters are not necessarily a safe alternative, said Annie Gomberg, a volunteer with the city's Police Station Response Team who has been working with Chicago's new arrivals since April. Gomberg said about 2,300 people have been staying at the shelter where the boy was living. "The shelters are completely locked down to outside access. They're doing this allegedly in order to protect the residents inside," Gomberg said. But she said she suspects part of the reason for tight security is so the public cannot see how the shelters are being run. "The people who live inside are coming to us and saying, 'please give us blankets, give us clothing for our children, we need bottles, we need diapers,'" she said. Jean Carlos Martinez, 5, was a resident at a shelter in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood when he suffered a medical emergency, then died shortly after arriving at Comer Children's Hospital on Sunday afternoon, said an emailed statement from Mayor Brandon Johnson. "City officials are providing support to the family and are still gathering information on this tragedy," Johnson said. "My heart and my prayers go out to the Martinez family." City officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the conditions at the shelter played a role in the child's death. Nearly 26,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in Chicago since August 2022. The city has resettled or reunited over 10,000 migrants and is providing shelter for nearly 14,000 others in 27 temporary shelters, according to a statement from the mayor's office Monday afternoon. Chicago's spending on resources for new arrivals totals $137 million, according to a city dashboard. The city says it has been ticketing and impounding buses trying to drop off migrants outside of designated zones. "As temperatures continue to fall, the City is enacting stricter penalties to discourage bus companies from flouting these protocols. The inhumane treatment further endangers the safety and security of asylum seekers, and adds additional strain to City departments, volunteers and mutual aid partners tasked with easing what is already a harsh transition," the statement said. Martinez was "not feeling well" when EMS transported him to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, Chicago police said, adding that detectives are investigating the incident. Gomberg sent The Associated Press videos taken by shelter residents showing coughing and crying children in the crowded Pilsen shelter where Martinez was staying. One video showed water leaking from the ceiling onto the cots below. Gomberg said people staying there told her mold is visible in the shelter, and lack of insulation makes the repurposed warehouse very cold. One of the photos shows a toddler wearing a snow suit and winter hat indoors. "If you know Chicago at all, this is really when the rubber meets the road," she said. "We could very easily have paralyzing snowstorms. We could very easily have below zero temperatures."
# Israel uncovers major Hamas command center in Gaza City as cease-fire talks gain momentum By WAFAA SHURAFA, SAMY MAGDY, and JOSEF FEDERMAN December 20, 2023. 7:34 PM EST --- JERUSALEM (AP) - The Israeli military on Wednesday said it had uncovered a major Hamas command center in the heart of Gaza City, inflicting what it described as a serious blow to the Islamic militant group as pressure grows on Israel to scale back its devastating military offensive in the coastal enclave. The army said it had exposed the center of a vast underground network used by Hamas to move weapons, militants and supplies throughout the Gaza Strip. Israel has said destroying the tunnels is a major objective of the offensive. The announcement came as Hamas' top leader arrived in Egypt for talks aimed at brokering a temporary cease-fire and a new deal for Hamas to swap Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Israeli leaders have vowed to press ahead with the two-month-old offensive, launched in response to a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas in October that killed some 1,200 people and saw 240 others taken hostage. The offensive has devastated much of northern Gaza, killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, and driven some 1.9 million people - nearly 85% of the population - from their homes. The widespread destruction and heavy civilian death toll has drawn increasing international calls for a cease-fire. Hamas militants have put up stiff resistance lately against Israeli ground troops, and its forces appear to remain largely intact in southern Gaza. It also continues to fire rockets into Israel every day. The United States, Israel's closest ally, has continued to support Israel's right to defend itself while also urging greater effort to protect Gaza's civilians. But in some of the toughest American language yet, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called on Israel to scale back its operation. "It's clear that the conflict will move and needs to move to a lower intensity phase," Blinken said. He said the U.S. wants to see "more targeted operations" with smaller levels of forces focused on specific targets, such as Hamas' leaders and the group's tunnel network. "As that happens, I think you'll see as well, the harm done to civilians also decrease significantly," he said. His comments were more pointed than statements by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who in a visit to Israel this week said the U.S. would not dictate any timeframes to its ally. ## TUNNEL NETWORK The Israeli military escorted Israeli reporters into Palestine Square in the heart of Gaza City to show off what it described as the center of Hamas' tunnel network. Military commanders boasted that they had uncovered offices, tunnels and elevators used by Hamas' top leaders. The military released videos of underground offices and claimed to have found a wheelchair belonging to Hamas' shadowy military commander, Mohammed Deif, who has not been seen in public in years. The army's chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the army had located a vast underground complex. "They all used this infrastructure routinely, during emergencies and also at the beginning of the war on Oct. 7," he said. He said the tunnels stretched across Gaza and into major hospitals. The claims could not be independently verified. Hagari also indicated that Israel was winding down its operations in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where it has been battling Hamas militants for weeks. He said the army had moved into a final remaining Hamas stronghold, the Gaza City neighborhood of Tufah. But the army also acknowledged a significant misstep. An investigation into its soldiers' mistaken shooting of three Israelis held hostage in Gaza found that, five days before the shooting, a military search dog with a body camera had captured audio of them shouting for help in Hebrew. Hagari said the recording was not reviewed until after the hostages were killed while trying to make themselves known to Israeli forces. The incident has sparked an uproar in Israel and put pressure on the government to reach a new deal with Hamas. The military chief has said the shooting was against its rules of engagement. The Israeli military campaign now is largely focused on southern Gaza, where it says Hamas' leaders are hiding. "We will continue the war until the end. It will continue until Hamas is destroyed, until victory," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement. "Whoever thinks we will stop is detached from reality." ## CEASE-FIRE TALKS GAIN MOMENTUM As Netanyahu vowed to continue the war, there were new signs of progress in cease-fire talks. Hamas' top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, traveled to Cairo for talks on the war, part of a flurry of diplomacy. In recent days, top Israeli, American and Qatari officials have also held cease-fire talks. "These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope that they lead somewhere," the White House's national security spokesman, John Kirby, said aboard Air Force One while traveling with President Joe Biden to Wisconsin. Biden, however, indicated a deal was still a ways off. "There's no expectation at this point, but we are pushing," he said. Asked about the rising death toll in Gaza, Biden said: It's tragic." Hamas says no more hostages will be released until the war ends. It is insisting on the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including high-level militants convicted in deadly attacks, for remaining captives. Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said the efforts right now are focused on how to "stop this aggression, especially that our enemy now knows that it cannot achieve any of its goals." Israel has rejected Hamas' demands for a mass prisoner release so far. But it has a history of lopsided exchanges for captive Israelis, and the government is under heavy public pressure to bring the hostages home safely. Egypt, along with Qatar and the U.S., helped mediate a weeklong cease-fire in November in which Hamas freed over 100 hostages in exchange for Israel's release of 240 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas and other militants are still holding an estimated 129 captives, though roughly 20 are believed to have died in captivity. U.N. Security Council members are negotiating an Arab-sponsored resolution to halt the fighting in some way to allow for an increase in desperately needed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza. A vote on the resolution, first scheduled for Monday, was pushed back again on Wednesday in the hopes of getting the U.S. to support it or allow it to pass after it vetoed an earlier cease-fire call. ## HUMANITARIAN CRISIS Mobile phone and internet service was down across Gaza again on Wednesday. The outage could complicate efforts to communicate with Hamas leaders inside the territory who went into hiding after Oct. 7. The war has led to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people are crammed into shelters and tent camps amid shortages of food, medicine and other basic supplies. Israel's foreign minister traveled to Cyprus to discuss the possibility of establishing a maritime corridor that would allow the delivery of large amounts of humanitarian aid to Gaza. At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded early Wednesday after Israel bombarded the urban Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, according to Munir al-Bursh, a senior Health Ministry official. At least five people were killed and dozens injured in another strike that hit three residential homes and a mosque in Gaza's southern city of Rafah Wednesday, health officials said. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday the death toll since the start of the war had risen to more than 19,600. It does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel's military says 134 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. Israel says it has killed some 7,000 militants, without providing evidence. It blames civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying it uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.
# Jury convicts boy and girl in England of murdering transgender teenager in frenzied knife attack By PAN PYLAS December 20, 2023. 1:30 PM EST --- LONDON (AP) - A boy and a girl were found guilty Wednesday of murdering a transgender teenager in northwest England earlier this year, in a frenzied knife attack that was described as "horrific" by police. Brianna Ghey, 16, was stabbed with a hunting knife 28 times in her head, neck, chest and back in broad daylight after being lured to a park in the town of Warrington on Feb. 11. The convicted pair, who are identified only as girl X and boy Y, are 16 now but were 15 at the time. They denied killing Ghey, and each blamed the other for the fatal stabbing. It is not known which one or if both wielded the knife. Neither had been in trouble with police before. A jury of seven men and five women convicted the two following a four-week trial at Manchester Crown Court. The jurors deliberated for just four hours and 40 minutes of deliberations. "You probably didn't anticipate sitting on a case as emotionally difficult as this one," Justice Amanda Yip told them. The trial heard that the young defendants were intelligent and had a fascination with violence, torture and serial killers. They had planned the attack for weeks, detailed in a handwritten plan and phone messages found by detectives. They had also discussed killing others, which prompted police early in the investigation to rule out transphobia as a motivation behind Brianna's murder. Police believe Brianna was killed because she was vulnerable and accessible, with her death not a hate crime but done for "enjoyment" and a "thirst for killing." "This was a senseless murder committed by two teenagers who have an obsession with murder," said Nigel Parr, senior investigating officer from Cheshire Police. "Brianna trusted the female defendant, she was betrayed by someone she called her friend." Yip said she won't be sentencing the pair this week. She said a life sentence was mandatory but that she would await psychologists' reports before deciding the minimum prison time the pair will be required to serve before being eligible for parole. "Frankly I don't expect them to make a huge difference to the outcome in sentencing but given their ages and the unusual circumstances of the case, I think it is right I have all the information available," the judge said. Neither defendant displayed a visible reaction to the verdicts. Girl X spoke to her social worker and glanced at her parents when leaving the courtroom, while Boy Y, who avoids all eye contact, did not look over at his mother as he was led from the dock carrying his Sudoku puzzles book. Boy Y has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and is non-verbal and girl X has traits of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Outside the court, Brianna's mother said her daughter's killers had not shown "an ounce of remorse" but she called for the families of the convicted pair to be shown some empathy and compassion. "We miss Brianna so much and our house feels empty without her laughter," Esther Ghey said. "To know how scared my usually fearless child must have been when she was alone in that park with someone that she called her friend will haunt me forever."
# Congressman told to hand over hundreds of texts and emails to FBI in 2020 election probe By MARC LEVY December 20, 2023. 4:59 PM EST --- HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A federal judge is ordering Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania to turn over more than 1,600 texts and emails to FBI agents investigating efforts to keep President Donald Trump in office after his 2020 election loss and illegally block the transfer of power to Democrat Joe Biden. The ruling, late Monday, came more than a year after Perry's personal cellphone was seized by federal authorities who have explored his role in helping install an acting attorney general who would be receptive to Trump's false claims of election fraud. The decision, by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, is largely in line with an earlier finding by a federal judge that Perry appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. Boasberg, in a 12-page decision, said that, after viewing each record, he decided that Perry, a top Trump ally, can withhold 396 of the messages under the constitution's speech and debate clause that protects the work of members of Congress. However, the other 1,659 records do not involve legislative acts and must be disclosed, Boasberg ruled. That includes efforts to influence members of the executive branch, discussions about Vice President Mike Pence's role in certifying the election and providing information about alleged election fraud. In a statement Wednesday, Perry's lawyer, John Rowley, said he is reviewing how the judge ruled and will decide whether to appeal. He maintained that Perry's work was on behalf of his constituents, as well as the nation, to "investigate the seemingly credible information he received about discrepancies in the 2020 election." He also defended Perry's legal challenge as necessary to contend "with overly aggressive prosecutors." In the past, Rowley has said that government officials have never described Perry to him as a target of their investigation. Perry is chairman of the Freedom Caucus, a hardline faction of conservatives. Perry has not been charged with a crime and is the only sitting member of Congress whose cellphone was seized by the FBI in the 2020 election investigation. Perry's efforts to protect the contents of his cell phone have proceeded largely in secret, except in recent weeks when snippets and short summaries of his texts and emails were inadvertently unsealed - and then resealed - by the federal court. Those messages revealed more about where Perry may fit in the web of Trump loyalists who were central to his bid to remain in power. Making Perry a figure of interest to federal prosecutors were his efforts to elevate Jeffrey Clark to Trump's acting attorney general in late 2020. Perry, in the past, has said he merely "obliged" Trump's request that he be introduced to Clark. At the time, Trump was searching for a like-minded successor to use the Department of Justice to help stall the certification of Biden's election victory. But the messages suggest that Perry was a key ally for Clark, who positioned himself as someone who would reverse the Department of Justice's stance that it had found no evidence of widespread voting fraud. To that end, Clark had drafted a letter that he suggested sending to Georgia saying the Department of Justice had "identified signiﬁcant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia," according to the August indictment in that state accusing Trump, Clark and 17 others of trying illegally to keep him in power. At the time, Clark was the assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division and served as the acting head of the Civil Division. The showdown over Clark brought the Justice Department to the brink of crisis, prosecutors have said, and Trump ultimately backed down after he was told that it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department and his own White House counsel's office. Clark is now described in the federal indictment of Trump as one of six unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators in an effort to illegally subvert the 2020 election.
# Newly released video shows how police moved through UNLV campus in response to reports of shooting By RIO YAMAT and GABE STERN December 20, 2023. 8:24 PM EST --- LAS VEGAS (AP) - Officers shouted over blaring alarms and knocked down reports of additional gunfire while responding to what became a deadly shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, body camera footage released Wednesday showed. In one video, police officers moved hastily through the university's business school on Dec. 6 amid a loud, piercing sound and called out for the alarm to be cut off. Commands were difficult to hear and, one officer noted, there was "blood everywhere" near a doorway on the fifth floor, the footage showed. The suspect, Anthony Polito, was killed in a shootout with police outside the building after fatally shooting three professors, police later said. Reports of gunfire after Polito's death turned out to be the sounds of police trying to break down locked doors to clear classrooms, evacuate students and assess any remaining threats. The more than five hours of video made public Wednesday was the first of several releases by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department that is leading the investigation. Police have not disclosed a motive for the shooting. The three professors were inside the business school when they were killed. They are: Naoko Takemaru, 69, an author and associate professor of Japanese studies; Cha Jan "Jerry" Chang, 64, an associate professor in the business school's Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology department; and Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, an accounting professor focusing on research in cybersecurity disclosures and data analytics. While police searched door to door in the business school, fears about multiple assailants continued for more than 40 minutes, according to the videos. At one point, a dispatcher is heard on a police sergeant's radio relaying a report that someone was "shooting through the wall." Another officer knocks down the report, saying: "That's us. We're breaching doors. There are no shots fired." Outside the building, students were eating and playing games about a week before final exams that were canceled in the wake of the shooting. UNLV graduation ceremonies were held this week amid tight security and remembrances of the victims, including a 38-year-old visiting professor who was critically injured. Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill later said Polito had a 9mm handgun and nine ammunition magazines holding more than 150 bullets with him when he died. The shocking scenes at the 30,000-student campus occurred just miles from the Las Vegas Strip where 58 people died in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The deaths of at least two other people have since been attributed to that Oct. 1, 2017 attack. Students, faculty members and campus employees barricaded themselves in rooms until officers from nearly every law enforcement agency in southern Nevada converged on campus and escorted them off. Many boarded buses to await interviews with investigators. Police said Polito, 67, had been turned down for teaching positions at UNLV and other schools and taught courses at the Roseman University of Health Sciences, a private college in suburban Las Vegas between 2018 and 2022. He left a tenured post in 2017 at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, after teaching business there for more than 15 years. McMahill characterized Polito as "struggling financially," pointing to an eviction notice taped on Polito's apartment door in Henderson. The sheriff said Polito had a "target list" of faculty members from UNLV and East Carolina University, but none of the shooting victims' names were on it. University President Keith Whitfield characterized the shooting as "nothing short of life-changing" and vowed that students, faculty and alumni "not ever forget that day."
# Federal judge blocks California law that would have banned carrying firearms in most public places December 20, 2023. 9:05 PM EST --- SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a California law that would have banned carrying firearms in most public places, ruling that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and deprives people of their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones. The law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September was set to take effect Jan. 1. It would have prohibited people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos. The ban would apply whether the person has a permit to carry a concealed weapon or not. One exception would be for privately owned businesses that put up signs saying people are allowed to bring guns on their premises. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law, which he wrote was "sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court." The decision is a victory for the California Rifle and Pistol Association, which sued to block the law. The measure overhauled the state's rules for concealed carry permits in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. That decision said the constitutionality of gun laws must be assessed by whether they are "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." "California progressive politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court's mandate from the Bruen case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it," the California association's president, Chuck Michel, said in a statement. "The Court saw through the State's gambit." Michel said under the law, gun permit holders "wouldn't be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law." He said the judge's decision makes Californians safer because criminals are deterred when law-abiding citizens can defend themselves. The law was supported by Newsom, who has positioned himself as a national leader on gun control while he is being increasingly eyed as a potential presidential candidate. He has called for and signed a variety of bills, including measures targeting untraceable "ghost guns," the marketing of firearms to children and allowing people to bring lawsuits over gun violence. That legislation was patterned on a Texas anti-abortion law. Carney is a former Orange County Superior Court judge who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2003.
# Bus crash kills player, assistant coach in Algerian soccer's top league, matches postponed December 20, 2023. 9:10 PM EST --- ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - The Algerian Football Federation said late Wednesday that a bus crash has killed two members of its Ligue 1 side Mouloudia El Bayadh and that it would postpone all games scheduled for this week. The federation said the accident killed El Bayadh reserve goalkeeper Zakaria Bouziani, 27, and assistant coach Khalid Muftah. Bouziani made two league appearances this season. "It is with immense sadness that the president of the Algerian Football Federation, Walid Sadia... learned of the tragic road accident which left the club in mourning. MC El-Bayadh, playing in professional Ligue 1 Mobilis, and which led to the death of two members of this club," the federation said in a statement translated from French. Local media said the bus carrying the team overturned in the town of Sougueur in northwestern Algeria on the way to Tizi Ouzou to play JSK Kabylie in a league game on Friday. The club said on social media that other injured team members were in stable condition. "In the wake of the painful tragedy that befell Algerian football... the Algerian Football Federation decided to suspend all football activities scheduled for the end of this week across the entire country," it said in a later statement.
# NYC Council approves bill banning solitary confinement in city jails By PHILIP MARCELO December 20, 2023. 6:29 PM EST --- NEW YORK (AP) - Over the objections of Mayor Eric Adams, New York City lawmakers passed legislation Wednesday meant to ban solitary confinement in the city's jails. Adams, a Democrat, had urged the City Council to reject the bill, arguing it will make jails more dangerous for both inmates and staff. But the measure was overwhelmingly approved and has enough supporters on the council to overrule a potential veto from the mayor. The bill places a four-hour limit on isolating inmates who pose an immediate risk of violence to others or themselves in "de-escalation" units. Only those involved in violent incidents could be placed in longer-term restrictive housing, and they would need to be allowed out of their cells for 14 hours each day and get access to the same programming available to other inmates. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who introduced the legislation, said ahead of the vote that solitary confinement amounts to torture for those subjected to lengthy hours in isolation in small jail cells. He and other supporters, including prominent members of New York's congressional delegation, have pointed to research showing solitary confinement, even only for a few days, increases the likelihood an inmate will die by suicide, violence or overdose. It also leads to acute anxiety, depression, psychosis and other impairments that may reduce an inmate's ability to reintegrate into society when they are released, they said. "This is about safety at Rikers," Williams said, referring to New York's infamous island jail complex. "If we want something different, we need to try something different." A report released by the Columbia University Center for Justice on Wednesday said that while the city Board of Correction, which oversees city-run jails, recently limited de-escalation confinement to six hours, some inmates have been locked up for far longer, even for days. Inmates in restrictive housing can be locked up for 23 to 24 hours a day, according to the report, which urged City Council members and the mayor to support the bill. Adams, a former NYPD captain, in a televised interview ahead of the vote, took specific aim at a provision of the bill that requires an inmate be granted a hearing before being placed in solitary confinement. But he stopped short of saying he would veto it. "What City Council is saying is while they're in jail if they commit an assault on someone, an inmate or a correction officer, before we place them into punitive segregation, we need to allow them to have a trial of due process," he told WNYW. "That is saying, if someone assaults me on the street, before I could place them in jail, they must have a trial to determine if I'm going to arrest them and place them in the jail. That makes no sense." The Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, the union representing staff in the city's jails, has also railed against the bill, as has the conservative Common Sense Caucus of the council. Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli, who co-chairs the caucus, said the proposal would "essentially take away a vital tool our correction officers have to keep everyone safe." California's legislature last year passed legislation to restrict segregated confinement in prisons and jails, but it was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsome.
# A passenger hid bullets in a baby diaper at New York's LaGuardia Airport. TSA officers caught him December 20, 2023. 8:35 PM EST --- NEW YORK (AP) - It was a loaded diaper, but not like you would think. Security officers found 17 bullets concealed inside a disposable baby diaper Wednesday at New York's LaGuardia Airport, the Transportation Security Administration said. Officers pulled the otherwise clean diaper from a passenger's carry-on bag after it triggered an alarm in an X-ray machine at an airport security checkpoint, the TSA said. According to the agency, the passenger initially claimed he didn't know how the bullet-filled diaper ended up in his bag. Later he suggested his girlfriend put it there, the agency said. The TSA identified the passenger as a man from Arkansas who was ticketed for a flight to Chicago's Midway Airport, but did not disclose his name. Port Authority police cited him for unlawful possession of the 9mm ammunition. Messages seeking details were left with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport, and the Queens district attorney's office. The diaper disguiser is just the latest LaGuardia passenger to be flagged for packing bullets - and sometimes heat. It's a problem that has cropped up at airports across the U.S. Last month, TSA officers found a .45-caliber pistol and a magazine loaded with six bullets concealed in a pair of Nike sneakers in a checked bag at LaGuardia. Firearms are allowed to be transported as checked luggage, but only in a locked, hard-sided container - not shoes. In January 2021, officers at a security checkpoint intercepted 13 bullets hidden in a Mentos chewing gum container inside a carry-on bag. The bullets were mixed in with pieces of gum, the TSA said. The passenger, who was charged with unlawful possession of ammunition, claimed the bag belonged to his son, the agency said. In April, officers pulled a loaded .22-caliber pistol and two boxes of ammunition - more than 100 bullets total - from a carry-on bag. That passenger claimed he had been at a shooting range and forgot to remove the gun and bullets before heading to the airport, the TSA said. He was still arrested.
# After 12 years, two children and 'Barbie,' Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach quietly marry By The Associated Press December 20, 2023. 12:15 PM EST --- Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are officially married, their representative told The Associated Press Wednesday. The two filmmakers have been together for 12 years, have two children and collaborated on many films, including "Barbie," which they co-wrote and Gerwig directed. They met on Baumbach's "Greenberg" and went on to work together on films like "Mistress America" and "Frances Ha," which they co-wrote, Baumbach directed and Gerwig acted in. Baumbach was previously married to and shares a child with Jennifer Jason Leigh. Gerwig and Baumbach wrote "Barbie" during the pandemic, not knowing if it would ever actually get made. In a "60 Minutes" interview from earlier this year Baumbach said that Gerwig signed them up to write it without telling him and he even tried to get out of it. His attempts, he laughed, were unsuccessful because "Greta was persistent and Greta saw something," he said. The film became a cultural phenomenon and the highest grosser of the year, with over $1.4 billion in ticket sales, as well as a presumed Oscar contender.
# On Christmas Eve, Bethlehem resembles a ghost town. Celebrations are halted due to Israel-Hamas war By MELANIE LIDMAN December 24, 2023. 10:12 AM EST --- BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) - The normally bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town on Sunday, as Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war. The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists and jubilant youth marching bands that gather in the West Bank town each year to mark the holiday. Dozens of Palestinian security forces patrolled the empty square. "This year, without the Christmas tree and without lights, there's just darkness," said Brother John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam who has lived in Jerusalem for six years. He said he always comes to Bethlehem to mark Christmas, but this year was especially sobering, as he gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the thousands of children killed in the fighting in Gaza. Barbed wire surrounded the scene, the grey rubble reflecting none of the joyous lights and bursts of color that normally fill the square during the Christmas season. The cancellation of Christmas festivities is a severe blow to the town's economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem's income - almost all of that during the Christmas season. With many major airlines canceling flights to Israel, few foreigners are visiting. Local officials say over 70 hotels in Bethlehem have been forced to close, leaving thousands of people unemployed. Gift shops were slow to open on Christmas Eve, although a few did once the rain had stopped pouring down. There were few visitors, however. "We can't justify putting out a tree and celebrating as normal, when some people (in Gaza) don't even have houses to go to," said Ala'a Salameh, one of the owners of Afteem Restaurant, a family-owned falafel restaurant just steps from the square. Salameh said Christmas Eve is usually the busiest day of the year. "Normally, you can't find a single chair to sit, we're full from morning till midnight," said Salameh. This year, just one table was taken, by journalists taking a break from the rain. Under a banner that read "Bethlehem's Christmas bells ring for a cease-fire in Gaza," a few teenagers offered small inflatable Santas, but no one was buying. Instead of their traditional musical march through the streets of Bethlehem, young scouts stood silently with flags. A group of local students unfurled a massive Palestinian flag as they stood in silence. "Our message every year on Christmas is one of peace and love, but this year it's a message of sadness, grief and anger in front of the international community with what is happening and going on in the Gaza Strip," Bethlehem's mayor, Hana Haniyeh, said in an address to the crowd. Dr. Joseph Mugasa, a pediatrician, was one of the few international visitors. He said his tour group of 15 people from Tanzania was "determined" to come to the region despite the situation. "I've been here several times, and it's quite a unique Christmas, as usually there's a lot of people and a lot of celebrations," he said. "But you can't celebrate while people are suffering, so we are sad for them and praying for peace." More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50,000 wounded during Israel's air and ground offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, according to health officials there, while some 85% of the territory's 2.3 million residents have been displaced. The war was triggered by Hamas' deadly assault Oct. 7 on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages. The Gaza war has been accompanied by a surge in violence, with some 300 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire. The fighting has affected life across the West Bank. Since Oct. 7, access to Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the Israeli-occupied territory has been difficult, with long lines of motorists waiting to pass military checkpoints. The restrictions have also prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from exiting the territory to work in Israel. Amir Michael Giacaman opened his store, "Il Bambino," which sells olive wood carvings and other souvenirs, for the first time since Oct. 7. There have been no tourists, and few local residents have money to spare because those who worked in Israel have been stuck at home. "When people have extra money, they go buy food," said his wife, Safa Giacaman. "This year, we're telling the Christmas story. We're celebrating Jesus, not the tree, not Santa Claus, she said, as their daughter Makaella ran around the deserted store. The fighting in Gaza was on the minds of the small Christian community in Syria, which is coping with a civil war now in its 13th year. Christians said they were trying to find joy, despite the ongoing strife in their homeland and in Gaza. "Where is the love? What have we done with love?" said the Rev. Elias Zahlawi, a priest in Yabroud, a city about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Damascus. "We've thrown God outside the realm of humanity and unfortunately, the church has remained silent in the face of this painful reality." Some tried to find inspiration in the spirit of Christmas. Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, arriving from Jerusalem for the traditional procession to the Church of the Nativity, told the sparse crowd that Christmas was a "reason to hope" despite the war and violence. The pared-down Christmas was in keeping with the original message of the holiday and illustrated the many ways the community is coming together, said Stephanie Saldana, who is originally from San Antonio, Texas, and has lived in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for the past 15 years with her husband, a parish priest at the St Joseph Syriac Catholic Church. "We feel Christmas as more real than ever, because we're waiting for the prince of peace to come. We are waiting for a miracle to stop this war," Saldana said.
# A weekend of combat in Gaza kills 14 Israeli soldiers as public support for the war is tested By TIA GOLDENBERG, WAFAA SHURAFA, and SAMY MAGDY December 24, 2023. 11:04 AM EST --- TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - Fourteen Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza over the weekend, the Israeli military said Sunday, in some of the bloodiest days of battle since the ground offensive began and a sign that Hamas is still putting up a fight despite weeks of brutal war. The mounting death toll among Israeli troops - 153 since the ground offensive began - is likely an important factor in Israeli support for the war, which was sparked when Hamas-led militants stormed communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostage. The war has devastated parts of Gaza , killed roughly 20,400 Palestinians and displaced almost all of the besieged territory's 2.3 million people. The Health Ministry in Gaza said 166 people were killed in the coastal enclave over the past day. Israelis still stand behind the country's stated goals of crushing Hamas' governing and military capabilities and releasing the remaining 129 captives. That support has stayed mostly steady despite rising international pressure against Israel's offensive and the soaring death toll and unprecedented suffering among Palestinians. As Christmas Eve fell, smoke still rose over Gaza from the fighting while Bethlehem in the West Bank was hushed, its holiday celebrations called off. ## HAMAS EXACTS A PRICE The 14 Israeli soldiers killed on Friday and Saturday died in central and southern Gaza, a sign of how Hamas still puts up tough resistance even as Israel claims to have dealt the militant group a serious blow. "The war exacts a very heavy price from us but we have no choice but to continue fighting," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting. There has been widespread anger against Netanyahu's government, which many criticize for failing to protect civilians on Oct. 7 and promoting policies that allowed Hamas to gain strength over the years. Netanyahu has avoided accepting responsibility for the military and policy failures. Efforts toward another exchange of hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel continued. On Sunday, the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group also involved in the Oct. 7 attack, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, arrived in Cairo for talks. The militant group said it was prepared to consider releasing hostages only after an end to fighting. Hamas' top leader Ismail Haniyeh traveled to Cairo for talks days earlier. Egypt and Qatar have been key mediators in the conflict. ## INSIDE GAZA Israel's offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than two-thirds of the 20,000 Palestinians killed have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The Palestinian Red Crescent said a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Israeli drone attack while inside al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, a part of Gaza where Israel's military believes Hamas leaders are hiding. An Israeli strike overnight hit a house in a refugee camp west of the city of Rafah, on Gaza's border with Egypt. At least two men were killed, according to Associated Press journalists in the hospital where the bodies were taken. At least two people were killed and six others wounded when a missile stuck a building in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. And Palestinians reported heavy Israeli bombardment and gunfire in Jabaliya, an area north of Gaza City that Israel had claimed to control. Hamas' military arm said its fighters shelled Israeli troops in Jabaliya and Jabaliya refugee camp. "Sounds of explosions and gunfire never stopped," said Jabaliya resident Assad Radwan. Israel has come under international criticism for the civilian death toll but it blames Hamas, citing the militants' use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel has launched thousands of airstrikes since Oct. 7, and has largely refrained from commenting on specific attacks. Israel also faces allegations of mistreating Palestinian men and teenage boys detained in homes, shelters, hospitals and elsewhere during the offensive. It has denied abuse allegations and said those without links to militants are quickly released. Speaking to the AP from a hospital bed in Rafah after his release, Khamis al-Burdainy of Gaza City said Israeli forces detained him after tanks and bulldozers partly destroyed his home. He said men were handcuffed and blindfolded. "We didn't sleep. We didn't get food and water," he said, crying and covering his face. Another released detainee, Mohammed Salem, from the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah, said Israeli troops beat them. "We were humiliated," he said. "A female soldier would come and beat an old man, aged 72 years old." Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, without presenting evidence, and says it is dismantling Hamas' vast tunnel network and killing off top commanders - an operation that leaders have said could take months. ## INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE The United Nations Security Council has passed a watered-down resolution calling for the speedy delivery of humanitarian aid for hungry and desperate Palestinians and the release of all the hostages, but not for a cease-fire. But it was not immediately clear how and when deliveries of food, medical supplies and other aid, far below the daily average of 500 before the war, would accelerate. Trucks enter through two crossings - Rafah, and Kerem Shalom on the border with Israel. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 93 aid trucks entered Gaza through Rafah on Saturday. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterated U.N. calls for a humanitarian cease-fire, adding on social media that "the decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy." Israel's allies in Europe have stepped up calls for a stop to the fighting. But the U.S., Israel's top ally, appeared to remain firmly behind Israel despite intensifying its calls for greater protection for civilians. U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Saturday, a day after Washington shielded Israel from a harsher U.N. resolution. Biden said he did not ask for a cease-fire, while Netanyahu's office said the prime minister "made clear that Israel would continue the war until achieving all its goals."
# Reindeer are famous for pulling Santa's sleigh, but there's a characteristic that sets them apart By HOLLY RAMER December 23, 2023. 12:01 AM EST --- CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer may have millions of carrots set out for him on Christmas Eve, but what about the rest of the year? Finding food in a cold, barren landscape is challenging, but researchers from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland report that reindeer eyes may have evolved to allow them to easily spot their preferred meal. It's further evidence that while reindeer are famous for pulling Santa's sleigh, it's their vision that really sets them apart, says Nathaniel Dominy, a Dartmouth anthropology professor and co-author of a recent study published in the journal i-Perception. "They've been sort of obscure and unheralded in the annals of visual neuroscience, but they're having their moment because they have a really fascinating visual system," he said in an interview. Scientists have known for years that mirror-like tissue in reindeer eyes changes color from a greenish gold in the summer to vivid blue in the winter, a process that is thought to amplify the low light of polar winter. But they weren't sure what to make of another curious fact: Unlike other mammals, reindeer can see light in the ultraviolet spectrum. "Most animals that are active under daylight conditions want to avoid UV light. UV light is damaging," Dominy said. "Snow reflects UV light, which is a problem, which is why humans get snow blindness." Some scientists believe reindeer vision evolved to protect the animals from predators, allowing them to spot white wolves against a snowy landscape, for example. The new study points to another possibility: food. Reindeer subsist largely on light-colored reindeer moss, which isn't actually a moss but rather a type of lichen that grows in crunchy, carpet-like patches across northern latitudes. Researchers traveled to the Cairngorms mountains in the Scottish Highlands, which hosts more than 1,500 species of lichen as well as Britain's only reindeer herd. They found reindeer moss absorbs UV light, meaning the white lichen that humans have trouble seeing against the snow stands out as dark patches to the animals. "If you're a reindeer, you can see it and you have an advantage because then you're not wandering around the landscape. You can walk in a straight line and get to that food, and you conserve energy in the process," Dominy said. "These animals are desperate for food, and if they can find lichen sufficiently, then they have an advantage." Juan Jose Negro specializes in evolutionary ecology and conservation biology at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research. While his focus is mainly on birds of prey, he found the new reindeer research intriguing. "I love every piece of work dealing with colors and vision," he said. "Every time I read other people's works, there is something that sparks new ideas. ... And in the case of the reindeer, this is leading me to want to pay more attention to this part of the spectrum." While he saw no immediate biomedical benefit to the research, such work is useful in furthering the understanding of how animals deal with difficult environments, he said. Dominy echoed that point, but said it also has human implications. There has been a lot of pharmacological research on lichens because they have antioxidant properties. Reindeer eyes allowing in UV light suggests there might be some mechanism in place to protect them from damage, he said. "Reindeer eyes are full of ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, and vitamin C is just terrific for repairing damaged cells," he said. With that in mind, Dominy is updating the advice he offered after writing a 2015 paper exploring why a reindeer's red nose would be ideal for guiding Santa's sleigh. Back then, he recommended children leave Rudolph cookies and other high-calorie food to make up for the body heat he loses through his nose. Now, he says, focus on his eyes and save the milk and cookies for Santa. "The best thing to give them to protect the health of their eyes would be something rich in vitamin C," he said. "Orange juice, carrots, these would be perfect treats for reindeer on Christmas Eve."
# Second suspect arrested in theft of Banksy stop sign artwork featuring military drones December 24, 2023. 10:44 AM EST --- LONDON (AP) - A second suspect was arrested in the alleged theft of a work by the elusive street artist Banksy of a stop sign adorned with three military drones, London police said Sunday. A man in his 40s was in custody on suspicion of theft and criminal damage, the Metropolitan police said. A suspect in his 20s who was arrested Saturday was released on bail. Witnesses who arrived at a street corner Friday in the south London section of Peckham less than an hour after Banksy posted a photo of the work on Instagram said they were stunned to watch a man with bolt cutters remove the sign as another man steadied a bike he stood on. The incident was captured in photos and video. Much of Banksy's political and satirical art is critical of war, and many of his followers interpreted the work as calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
# Decaying Pillsbury mill in Illinois that once churned flour into opportunity is now getting new life By JOHN O'CONNOR December 24, 2023. 12:17 AM EST --- SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - It was the dog, stuck atop skyscraping grain silos on Springfield's northeast side in 2019, that forced Chris Richmond's hand. The stray had found its way to the top of the behemoth Pillsbury Mills, for decades a flour-churning engine of the central Illinois city's economy but now vacant more than 20 years. Rescue was too risky amid such decay, officials said. The brief but precarious appearance by the dog, found dead at ground level days later after ingesting rat poison, represented the hopelessness posed by the vacant campus, Richmond recalled. "That's when I said, 'This is just unacceptable in our community,'" said the 54-year-old retired city fire marshal, whose father's Pillsbury paycheck made him and his brother first-generation college graduates. A year later, Richmond and allies emerged with a nonprofit called Moving Pillsbury Forward and a five-year, $10 million plan to raze the century-old plant and renew the 18-acre (7.3-hectare) site. Richmond, the group's president and treasurer, vice president Polly Poskin and secretary Tony DelGiorno have $6 million in commitments and targets for collecting the balance. Having already razed two structures, the group expects the wrecking ball to swing even more feverishly next year. Next door to a railyard with nationwide connections, they envision a light industrial future. Meanwhile, Moving Pillsbury Forward has managed to turn the decrepit site in Illinois' capital city into a leisure destination verging on cultural phenomenon. Tours have been highly popular and repeated. Oral histories have emerged. Spray-paint vandals, boosted instead of busted, have become artists in residence for nighttime graffiti exhibitions, which more than 1,000 people attended. Retired University of Illinois archeologist Robert Mazrim has mined artifacts and assembled an "Echoes of Pillsbury" museum beneath a leaking loading dock roof. This month, the plant's towering headhouse is ablaze with holiday lights. Perhaps the exuberance with which Moving Pillsbury Forward approaches its task sets it apart. But in terms of activist groups pursuing such formidable reclamation aspirations, it's not unusual, said David Holmes, a Wisconsin-based environmental scientist and brownfields redevelopment consultant. Government funding has expanded to accommodate them. "You find some high-caliber organizations that are really focused on the areas with the biggest problems, these most-in-need neighborhoods," Holmes said. "A lot of times, cities (local governments) are focused on their downtowns or whatever gets the mayor the ribbon cutting." Minneapolis-based Pillsbury built the Springfield campus in 1929 and expanded it several times through the 1950s. A bakery mix division after World War II turned out the world's first boxed cake mixes. There is circumstantial evidence that the Pillsbury doughboy, the brand's seminal mascot, was first drawn by a Springfield plant manager who eschewed credit, not, as the company maintains, in a Chicago ad agency. Pillsbury sold the plant in 1991 to Cargill, which departed a decade later. A scrap dealer ran afoul of the law with improper asbestos disposal in 2015, prompting a $3 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleanup. After the dog's cameo, Moving Pillsbury Forward persuaded the EPA to drop a lien for its cleanup costs and purchased the property for $1. Now, all that's left is to sweep up a the remaining asbestos and lead paint chips before pulling down more than 500,000 square feet (46,450 square meters) of factory, including a 242-foot (73.8-meter) headhouse that's the city's third-tallest structure and 160 silos, four abreast and standing 100 feet (30.5 meters). "It's daunting. Everything about this place is daunting," Richmond concedes. "But a journey of 1,000 miles starts with the first step, right?" The timing is right. There is more money than ever available to mop up America's left-behinds, according to Holmes. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $1.2 billion for brownfields cleanup, four times the typical annual allotment The Pillsbury group wants $2.6 million of the total added to what the group already has been promised by the federal, state and Springfield governments. The application plays up the intangible benefits: economic and environmental justice availing the 12,000 people who live within 1 mile (1.61 kilometers) of the plant, only 25% of whom have a high school diploma and whose median household income is $25,000. "It's a tough sell but at some point, there are enough people who have a vision for what it could be that that's a powerful incentive," Poskin said. "It isn't going to be anything until what's there is gone. No developer is going to take on a $10 million cleanup job." The group also set out to preserve memories of the place they are working to tear down. Ex-workers and neighbors have clamored for spots in ongoing tours and posed for group photos. In a historical seniority list on display, next to "Jackson, Ernest, 1937," is the message, "Hi Grandpa. We are visiting your workplace of 42 yrs." Richmond and Mazrim have collected more than a dozen oral histories from past employees. Photographers are documenting what remains for historical context. And it's become an unlikely canvas. Minneapolis-based graffiti artists who tag their work "Shock" and "Static" were surreptitiously decorating the place in September when Richmond and Mazrim confronted them. Instead of pressing a trespassing charge, Richmond invited them to stage an exhibition. The nighttime November showing proved so popular that Richmond added a second date. Artist Eric Rieger, known to fans as HOTTEA, also took part, creating in a "cathedral-like" setting a huge, rectangular grid of black-light-lit neon strings of yarn suspended from the ceiling. His goal was "a sense of really positive energy" reminiscent of the fond memories employees experienced. "They were so enthusiastic and that's rare to find nowadays," Rieger said the night of the first exhibit Nov. 9. "I really respect what they did for this community because they're the backbone of America - they were feeding America."
# Iowa won't participate in US food assistance program for kids this summer December 23, 2023. 7:26 PM EST --- DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Iowa will not participate this summer in a federal program that gives $40 per month to each child in a low-income family to help with food costs while school is out, state officials have announced. The state has notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture that it will not participate in the 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children - or Summer EBT - program, the state's Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Education said in a Friday news release. "Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don't provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic," Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in the news release. She added, "If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state's needs." States that participate in the federal program are required to cover half of the administrative costs, which would cost an estimated $2.2 million in Iowa, the news release says. Some state lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. Izaah Knox of Des Moines, quickly voiced their opposition to the decision. "It's extremely disappointing that the Reynolds administration is planning to reject federal money that could put food on the table for hungry Iowa kids," Knox said in a statement. "This cruel and short-sighted decision will have real impacts on children and families in my district and communities all across Iowa." Officials in nearby Nebraska also announced this week that the state will not participate in Summer EBT, which would cost Nebraska about $300,000 annually in administrative costs, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. "In the end, I fundamentally believe that we solve the problem, and I don't believe in welfare," Nebraska Republican Gov. Jim Pillen told the Journal Star on Friday. But Nebraska will continue participating in a different federal program, called the Summer Food Service Program, which combines programming - like reading, physical activity and nutrition education - with food assistance, according to the Journal Star. "We just want to make sure that they're out. They're at church camps. They're at schools. They're at 4-H. And we'll take care of them at all of the places that they're at, so that they're out amongst (other people) and not feeding a welfare system with food at home," Pillen said. A bipartisan group of Nebraska lawmakers have urged the state to reconsider, saying Summer EBT would address the needs of vulnerable children and benefit the state economically, the Journal Star reported. At least 18 states and territories and two tribal nations - Cherokee Nation and Chickasaw Nation - have announced they intend to participate in Summer EBT in 2024, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The list includes Arizona, California, Kansas, Minnesota, West Virginia, American Samoa and Guam, among others. States, territories and eligible tribal nations have until Jan. 1 to notify the Department of Agriculture of their intent to participate in the program this summer.
# New York governor vetoes bill that would make it easier for people to challenge their convictions By MAYSOON KHAN December 23, 2023. 4:45 PM EST --- ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill days before Christmas that would have made it easier for people who have pleaded guilty to crimes to challenge their convictions, a measure that was favored by criminal justice reformers but fiercely opposed by prosecutors. The Democrat said the bill's "sweeping expansion of eligibility for post-conviction relief" would "up-end the judicial system and create an unjustifiable risk of flooding the courts with frivolous claims," in a veto letter released Saturday. Under existing state law, criminal defendants who plead guilty are usually barred from trying to get their cases reopened based on a new claim of innocence, except in certain circumstances involving new DNA evidence. The bill passed by the Legislature in June would have expanded the types of evidence that could be considered proof of innocence, including video footage or evidence of someone else confessing to a crime. Arguments that a person was coerced into a false guilty plea would have also been considered. Prosecutors and advocates for crime victims warned the bill would have opened the floodgates to endless, frivolous legal appeals by the guilty. Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, the president of the District Attorney's Association of the State of New York, wrote in a letter to Hochul in July that the bill would create "an impossible burden on an already overburdened criminal justice system." The legislation would have benefitted people like Reginald Cameron, who was exonerated in 2023, years after he pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery in exchange for a lesser sentence. He served more than eight years in prison after he was arrested alongside another person in 1994 in the fatal shooting of Kei Sunada, a 22-year-old Japanese immigrant. Cameron, then 19, had confessed after being questioned for several hours without attorneys. His conviction was thrown out after prosecutors reinvestigated the case, finding inconsistencies between the facts of the crime and the confessions that were the basis for the conviction. The investigation also found the detective that had obtained Cameron's confessions was also connected to other high-profile cases that resulted in exonerations, including the Central Park Five case. Various states including Texas have implemented several measures over the years intended to stop wrongful convictions. Texas amended a statute in 2015 that allows a convicted person to apply for post-conviction DNA testing. In 2017, another amended rule requires law enforcement agencies to electronically record interrogations of suspects in serious felony cases in their entirety. "We're pretty out of step when it comes to our post-conviction statute," Amanda Wallwin, a state policy advocate at the Innocence Project, said of New York. "We claim to be a state that cares about racial justice, that cares about justice period. To allow Texas to outmaneuver us is and should be embarrassing," she said. In 2018, New York's highest court affirmed that people who plead guilty cannot challenge their convictions unless they have DNA evidence to support their innocence. That requirement makes it very difficult for defendants to get their cases heard before a judge, even if they have powerful evidence that is not DNA-based. Over the past three decades, the proportion of criminal cases that make it to trial in New York has steadily declined, according to a report by the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. About 99% of misdemeanor charges and 94% of felony charges in the state are resolved by guilty pleas. "In my work, I know there there are a lot of circumstances where people plead guilty to crimes because they are advised or misadvised by their attorneys at the time," said Donna Aldea, a lawyer at law firm Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco. "Sometimes they're afraid that if they go to trial, they'll face much worse consequences, even if they didn't commit the crime." She said the state's criminal justice system right now is framed in a way that makes it impossible for people to challenge their guilty pleas years later when new evidence emerges, or when they're in a better financial position to challenge their convictions. Under the bill, those challenging their convictions would be provided court-appointed pro bono representation if they can't afford an attorney. They'd also be able to request retesting of physical evidence, as well as access to both the defense and prosecutor's discovery files related to their case. State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a New York City Democrat who sponsored the bill, said he is considering reintroducing the bill in the next legislative session to give innocent people a "fair chance to reverse a terrible wrong." Nick Encalada-Malinowski, the civil rights campaign director for VOCAL-NY, a grassroots organization, said the bill would have removed various barriers for folks who got their wrongful conviction cases dismissed on procedural or technical grounds. The bill, he said, would have given them a chance to get their cases heard on the merits. "The problem of wrongful convictions in New York requires a statewide solution," said Nick Encalada-Malinowski, the civil rights campaign director for VOCAL-NY, a grassroots organization. "We're trying to have a system where people have an ability no matter where they are, if they're wrongfully convicted, to get back in courts and argue their cases."
# Judges to decide if 300 possible victims of trafficking from India should remain grounded in France By ANGELA CHARLTON and ELISE MORTON December 24, 2023. 9:18 AM EST --- PARIS (AP) - Judges in France were expected to decide Sunday whether about 300 Indian citizens who are suspected of being victims of human trafficking should continue to be sequestered in a small airport in Champagne country. En route to Central America, the passengers have been held at Paris-Vatry Airport since Thursday after a dramatic police operation prompted by a tip about a possible human trafficking scheme, authorities said. The passengers appeared throughout the day before judges who will decide whether to extend their detention in the airport, according to the administration for the Marne region. If they can't be held any longer, they will be free to leave the country. "I don't know if this has ever been done before in France," Francois Procureur, the head of the Châlons-en-Champagne Bar Association, told BFM TV on Saturday. The situation is urgent because "we cannot keep foreigners in a waiting area for more than 96 hours. Beyond that, it is the liberty and custody judge who must rule on their fate," he said. The four-day period can be extended to eight days if a judge approves, then another eight days in exceptional circumstances. With this urgency in mind, Procureur said four hearings would take place simultaneously, with four judges, four clerks and at least four lawyers taking part in the proceedings along with the Indian citizens and interpreters. "We are all mobilized," he said. According to a statement from the Marne prefecture, the seizure order for the airliner was lifted Sunday morning, a decision which "makes it possible to contemplate the passengers in the waiting area being rerouted." The French Civil Aviation Authority then set about trying to get the necessary permissions for the plane to take off once again, which should be in place "no later than Monday morning," according to the prefecture. Passengers were still undergoing questioning when the statement was issued. The passengers included children and families. The youngest is a toddler of 21 months, and among the children are several unaccompanied minors, according to the local civil protection agency. Two of the passengers were detained as part of a special investigation into suspected human trafficking by an organized criminal group, according to the Paris prosecutor's office. Prosecutors wouldn't comment on what kind of trafficking was alleged, or whether the ultimate destination was the U.S., which has seen a surge in Indians crossing the Mexico-U.S. border this year. The 15 crew members of the Legend Airlines charter flight - an unmarked A340 plane en route from Fujairah airport in the United Arab Emirates to Managua, Nicaragua - were questioned and released, according to a lawyer for the Romania-based airline. According to an official with the Marne administration, the passengers initially remained in the plane, surrounded by police on the tarmac, but were then transferred into the main hall of the airport to sleep. Legend Airlines lawyer Liliana Bakayoko said the company was cooperating with French authorities and has denied any role in possible human trafficking. She said the airline "has not committed any infraction." A "partner" company that chartered the plane was responsible for verifying identification documents of each passenger, and communicated their passport information to the airline 48 hours before the flight, Bakayoko told The Associated Press. The customer had chartered multiple flights on Legend Airlines from Dubai to Nicaragua, and a few other flights had already made the journey without incident, she said. She would not identify the customer, saying only that it is not a European company. The U.S. government has designated Nicaragua as one of several countries deemed as failing to meet minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking. Nicaragua has also been used as a migratory springboard for people fleeing poverty or conflict in the Caribbean as well as far-flung countries in Africa or Asia, because of relaxed or visa-free entry requirements for some countries. Sometimes charter flights are used for the journey. From there, the migrants travel north by bus with the help of smugglers. The influx of Indian migrants through Mexico has increased from fewer than 3,000 in 2022 to more than 11,000 from January to November this year, according to the Mexican Immigration Agency. Indian citizens were arrested 41,770 times entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico in the U.S. government's budget year that ended Sept. 30, more than double from 18,308 the previous year.
# A man is killed and a woman injured in a 'targeted' afternoon shooting at a Florida shopping mall December 24, 2023. 6:50 AM EST OCALA, Fla. (AP) - A man died in a shooting at a shopping mall in central Florida two days before Christmas in which the victim was "targeted" for the attack, police said. Ocala Police Chief Mike Balken told reporters Saturday evening that the man was killed after he was shot multiple times in a common area at Paddock Mall in Ocala, located about 79 miles (127 kilometers) northwest of Orlando. A woman also was shot in the leg. She was treated at a local hospital and expected to recover, Balken said. The suspect fled the scene and left behind the firearm, Balken said. Police arrived at the mall around 3:40 p.m. after a call of multiple shots being fired at the mall. "Officers immediately made entry into the mall (and) ultimately discovered that this was not what we would consider an active shooter," Balken told reporters. The attack was likely a "targeted act of violence" against the man, Balken said. Several other mall patrons suffered injuries during the shooting, with one person having chest pain and another reporting a broken arm, police said. The Ocala police posted photos overnight of a person of interest that appear to be taken from a mall security camera. The three images show a male with a red cap and dark clothing. Balken previously said the suspect wore a hooded sweatshirt and a mask partially covering his face. The police also asked the public for assistance by submitting mobile phone video of the shooting scene. The mall's corporate owner, WPG, did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional information. The mall has dozens of stores, including J.C. Penney and Foot Locker. Calvin and Diana Amos, who were shopping in the J.C. Penney store, told the Ocala Star-Banner that they evacuated the store quickly once they figured out what was going on. They described themselves as scared and apprehensive.
# New migrants face fear and loneliness. A town on the Great Plains has a storied support network By JESSE BEDAYN December 24, 2023. 12:04 AM EST --- FORT MORGAN, Colo. (AP) - Magdalena Simon's only consolation after immigration officers handcuffed and led her husband away was the contents of his wallet, a few bills. The hopes that had pushed her to trudge thousands of miles from Guatemala in 2019, her son's small frame clutched to her chest, ceded to despair and loneliness in Fort Morgan, a ranching outpost on Colorado's eastern plains, where some locals stared at her too long and the wind howls so fiercely it once blew the doors half off a hotel. The pregnant Simon tried to mask the despair every morning when her toddlers asked, "Where's papa?" To millions of migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border in the past few years, stepping off greyhound buses in places across America, such feelings can be constant companions. What Simon would find in this unassuming city of a little more than 11,400, however, was a community that pulled her in, connecting her with legal council, charities, schools and soon friends, a unique support network built by generations of immigrants. In this small town, migrants are building quiet lives, far from big cities like New York, Chicago and Denver that have struggled to house asylum-seekers and from the halls of Congress where their futures are bandied about in negotiations. The Fort Morgan migrant community has become a boon for newcomers, nearly all of whom arrive from perilous journeys to new challenges: pursuing asylum cases; finding a paycheck big enough for food, an attorney and a roof; placing their kids in school; and navigating a language barrier, all while facing the threat of deportation. The United Nations used the community, 80 miles (129 kilometers) west of Denver, as a case study for rural refugee integration after a thousand Somalis arrived to work in meatpacking plants in the late 2000s. In 2022, grassroots groups sent migrants living in mobile homes to Congress to tell their stories. In the last year, hundreds more migrants have arrived in Morgan County. More than 30 languages are spoken in Fort Morgan's only high school, which has translators for the most common languages and a phone service for others. On Sundays, Spanish is heard from the pulpits of six churches. The demographic shift in recent decades has forced the community to adapt: Local organizations hold monthly support groups, train students and adults about their rights, teach others how to drive, ensure kids are in school and direct people to immigration attorneys. Simon herself now tells her story to those stepping off buses. The community can't wave away the burdens, but they can make them lighter. "It's not like home where you have your parents and all of your family around you," Simon tells those she meets in grocery stores and school pickup lines. "If you run into a problem, you need to find your own family." The work has grown amid negotiations in Washington, D.C., on a deal that could toughen asylum protocols and bolster border enforcement. On a recent Sunday, advocacy groups organized a posada, a Mexican celebration of the biblical Joseph and Mary seeking shelter for Mary to give birth and being turned away until they were given the stable. Before marching down the street singing a song adaption in which migrants are seeking shelter instead of Joseph and Mary, participants signed letters urging Colorado's two Democratic senators and Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck to reject stiffer asylum rules. A century ago, it was sugar beet production that brought German and Russian migration to the area. Now, many migrants work inside dairy plants. When area businesses were raided several times in the 2000s, friends disappeared overnight, seats sat empty in schools and gaps opened on factory lines. "That really changed the the understanding of how deeply embedded migrants are in community," said Jennifer Piper of American Friends Service Committee, which organized the posada celebration. Guadalupe "Lupe" Lopez Chavez, who arrived in the U.S. alone in 1998 from Guatemala at age 16, spends long hours working with migrants, including helping connect Simon to a lawyer after her husband was detained. One recent Saturday, Lopez Chavez sat in the low-ceilinged office of One Morgan County, a nearly 20-year-old migration nonprofit. In a folding chair, Maria Ramirez sifted through manila folders dated November 2023, when she'd arrived in the U.S. Ramirez fled central Mexico, where cartel violence claimed her younger brother's life, and asked Lopez Chavez how she could get health care. Ramirez's 4-year-old daughter - who pranced behind her mother, blowing bubbles and popping the ones that landed in her brown curls - has a lung condition. Ramirez said she would work anywhere to move from the living room they sleep in, with just a blanket on the floor as cushioning. In the offices resembling a hostel's well-loved communal space, Lopez Chavez cautioned Ramirez to consult a lawyer before applying for health care. Sitting aside Ramirez were two settled migrants offering support and advice. "A lot of stuff that you heard in Mexico (about the U.S.) was you couldn't walk on the streets, you had to live in the shadows, you'd be targeted," said Ramirez. "It's beautiful to come into a community that's united." Lopez Chavez works with new migrants because she remembers shackles snapping around her ankles after she was stopped for a traffic violation in 2012 and turned over to the U.S. immigration authorities. "I just wanted to leave there because I'd never been in a cage before," Lopez Chavez said in an interview, her eyes filling with tears. At her first court hearing, Lopez Chavez and her husband stood alone. At her second hearing, after Lopez Chavez was connected to the community, she was flanked by new friends. That wall of support allowed her to keep her chin up as she fought her immigration case before being granted residency last year. Lopez Chavez now works to cultivate that strength across the community. "I don't want any more families to go through what we went through," said Lopez Chavez, who also encourages others to tell their stories. "Those examples give people the idea: If they can manage their case and win, maybe I can too." In Fort Morgan, train tracks divide a mobile home park, where many migrants live, and the city's older homes. Some older migrants see new arrivals as getting better treatment by the U.S. and feel that is unfair. The community can't solve every challenge, and hasn't laid the last brick on cultural bridges between the diverse communities. But at the posada event, crowded in the One Morgan County offices, the assurances of community itself showed through the eyes of partygoers as children in cultural regalia danced traditional Mexican dances. Among those bouncing around the long room was 7-year-old Francisco Mateo Simon. He doesn't remember the journey to the U.S., but his mother, Magdalena, does. She remembers how ill he became as she carried him the last miles to the border. Now he spits out armadillo facts between the nubs of incoming front teeth in their mobile home, then points to his favorite ornament on their white, plastic Christmas tree. "That's our brand new tree," said his mother, as her eldest daughter practiced English with a kids' book. "It's new," she repeated, "It's our first new tree because in the past we've only had trees from the thrift store."
# As conflicts rage abroad, a fractured Congress tries to rally support for historic global challenges By STEPHEN GROVES and SEUNG MIN KIM December 24, 2023. 10:40 AM EST --- WASHINGTON (AP) - As the Senate wrapped up its work for the year, Sen. Michael Bennet took to the floor of the nearly empty chamber and made a late-night plea for Congress to redouble support for Ukraine: "Understand the stakes at this moment." It was the third time in recent months the Colorado Democrat has kept the Senate working late by holding up unrelated legislation in a bid to cajole lawmakers to approve tens of billions of dollars in weaponry and economic aid for Ukraine. During a nearly hour-long, emotional speech, he called on senators to see the nearly 2-year-old conflict as a defining clash of authoritarianism against democracy and implored them to consider what it means "to be fighting on that freezing front line and not know whether we're going to come through with the ammunition." Yet Congress broke for the holidays and is not expected to return for two weeks while continued aid for Ukraine has nearly been exhausted. The Biden administration is planning to send one more aid package before the new year, but says it will be the last unless Congress approves more money. With support slipping in Congress even as conflicts and unrest rattle global security, the United States is once again struggling to assert its role in the world. Under the influence of Donald Trump, the former president who is now the Republican Party front-runner, GOP lawmakers have increasingly taken a skeptical stance toward U.S. involvement abroad, particularly when it comes to aid to Ukraine. Leaders of traditional allies Britain and France have implored Western nations to continue their robust support, but Russia's President Vladimir Putin is emboldened and building up resources for a fresh effort as the war heads towards its third year. Ukraine's lifelines to the West are also imperiled in the European Union, which sent 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) each month to ensure macroeconomic stability, pay wages and pensions, keep hospitals and schools running, provide shelter for displaced people and rebuild infrastructure destroyed in the war. That package has now expired and the EU's executive branch failed to produce another one for the new year when Hungary vetoed a 50 billion euro ($55 billion) package this month. Bolstering Ukraine's defense used to be celebrated in the U.S. Capitol as one of a few remaining bipartisan causes. But now the fate of roughly $61 billion in funding is tied to delicate policy negotiations on Capitol Hill over border and immigration changes. And in the last year, lawmakers have had to mount painstaking, round-the-clock efforts to pass even legislation that maintains basic functions of the U.S. government. Bills with ambitious changes have been almost completely out of reach for the closely divided Congress. Still, congressional leaders are trying to rally members to address global challenges they say are among the most difficult in decades: the largest land invasion of a European nation since World War II, a war between Israel and Hamas, unrest and economic calamity driving historic levels of migration and China asserting itself as a superpower. In the Senate, both Democratic and Republican leaders have cast the $110 billion aid package, which is attempting to address all those issues, as a potential turning point for democracy around the world. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters last week that "history will look back if we don't support our ally in Ukraine." "We're living in a time when there are all kinds of forces that are tearing at democracy, at here and abroad," Bennet said. In a year-end speech, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said: "From South Texas to Southeast Asia and from the Black Sea to the Red Sea, it is an historically challenging and consequential time to protect America's interests, our allies and our own people." The Republican leader, a key supporter of Ukraine aid, has tried for months to build support in his party for Ukraine. But after a $6 billion military and civilian aid package for Ukraine collapsed in October, McConnell began telling top White House officials that any funding would need to be paired with border policy changes. The White House deliberately stayed out of the negotiations until senior officials felt the time was right to do so. But senior Republicans involved in the border talks believe the administration stepped in too late, ultimately delaying the prospects of additional Ukraine aid getting approved until the new year. Senate negotiators have had to navigate both the explosive politics of border policy as well as one of the most complex areas of American law. "This is a tightrope, but we are still on it," said Sen. Chris Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator. At one point during the negotiations, McConnell felt compelled to stress the urgency to administration officials and impose a deadline to reach a border deal in time for the agreement to be drafted into legislative provisions before the end of the year. With the negotiations still plodding along, McConnell called White House chief of staff Jeff Zients on Dec. 7 and said a deal must be reached within five days - a message that the Kentucky Republican emphasized to President Joe Biden himself when the two men spoke later that day, according to a person familiar with the discussions. It wouldn't be until five days later, on Dec. 12, that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and senior White House aides came to the Capitol to participate directly in the negotiations. A White House official said the administration got involved when it did because it felt the talks had moved beyond the realm of unacceptable or unattainable measures - and to a more productive phase. A second White House official stressed that previous legislative negotiations, such as the bipartisan infrastructure law that is now more than two years old, started similarly, with Republican and Democratic senators talking on their own and the administration stepping in once it felt the talks were ready for White House involvement. Still, "it would be nice to have had them earlier," Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the chief GOP negotiator, said last week. "We would have a lot more progress, and we would have had potential to be able to get this done by this week if they would have gotten earlier," Lankford said. The two White House officials and the person familiar with McConnell's phone call to Biden all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private and ongoing negotiations. The White House's strategy of including Republican priorities such as Israel aid and border security in the package has also raised several thorny issues for Democrats. Progressive lawmakers, critical of Israel's campaign into Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians, have called for humanitarian conditions to be placed on the money for Israel. And Latino Democrats in both the Senate and House have also been critical of restrictions on asylum claims. Any package also faces deep uncertainty in the House, where Republican Speaker Mike Johnson holds tenuous control of the closely divided chamber. Before becoming speaker in October, Johnson had repeatedly voted against aid for Ukraine, but he has surprised many by offering support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and saying he wants to find a way to approve the aid. But Trump's allies in the House have repeatedly tried to stop the U.S. from sending more aid to Ukraine. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a close ally to the former president, said it was a mistake for Republicans even to insist on border policy changes because it could "give the Biden administration some kind of policy wins out on the campaign trail." As the border and immigration talks drag forward in the Senate, Johnson has weighed in from afar to push for sweeping measures. On social media, he has called for "transformational change to secure the border," and pointed to a hardline bill that passed the House on a party-line vote. As senators left Washington, they still sought to assure Ukrainians that American help was on its way. White House staff and Senate negotiations planned to work on drafting border legislation for the next two weeks in hopes that it would be ready for action when Congress returns. Schumer told The Associated Press he was "hopeful," but "I wouldn't go so far as to say confident yet." He sought to put the pressure on Republicans, saying they needed to be ready to compromise. Yet Sen. Roger Wicker, an Alabama Republican who is a Ukraine supporter, expressed confidence that Congress would act. He alluded to the words of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, another European leader who eventually elicited robust support from the U.S. to repel an invasion. "Americans will always do the right thing," Wicker said. "After they've exhausted every other alternative."
# With the Supreme Court on sideline for now, Trump's lawyers press immunity claims before lower court By ERIC TUCKER December 24, 2023. 7:37 AM EST --- WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Trump was acting within his role as president when he pressed claims about "alleged fraud and irregularity" in the 2020 election, his lawyers told a federal appeals court in arguing that he is immune from prosecution. The attorneys also asserted in a filing late Saturday night that the "historical fallout is tremendous" from the four-count indictment charging Trump with plotting to overturn the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. No other former president has ever been indicted; Trump has been indicted four times, in both state and federal court, as he campaigns to reclaim the White House. "The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our Nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic - the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system," the attorneys wrote in a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. At issue before the court, which has set arguments for Jan. 9, is whether Trump is immune from prosecution for what defense lawyers say are official acts that fell within the outer perimeter of a president's duties and responsibilities. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this month rejected that argument, siding with prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith's team and declaring that the office of the presidency "does not confer a lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass." The appeals court's role in the dispute is center stage after the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from Smith to fast-track a decision on the immunity question. After Trump appealed Chutkan's order, Smith urged swift intervention from the high court in an effort to get a speedy decision that could keep the case on track for a trial scheduled to start on March 4. But with that request denied, the two sides are advancing their arguments before the appeals court, where a three-judge panel will decide as early as next month whether to affirm or overrule Chutkan's decision. In their latest filing, Trump's lawyers say that all of the acts Trump is accused of - including urging the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud and telling state election officials that he believed the contests had been tainted by irregularities - are "quintessential" presidential acts that protect him from prosecution. "They all reflect President Trump's efforts and duties, squarely as Chief Executive of the United States, to advocate for and defend the integrity of the federal election, in accord with his view that it was tainted by fraud and irregularity," they said. They also contend that, under the Constitution, he cannot be criminally prosecuted for conduct for which he was already impeached, but then acquitted, by Congress. Federal prosecutors, by contrast, say Trump broke the law after the election by scheming to disrupt the Jan. 6, 2021, counting of electoral votes, including by pressing then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the results and by participating in a plot to organize slates of fake electors in battleground states won by Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had actually won those states. Though Trump's lawyers have suggested that he had a good faith basis to be concerned that fraud had affected the election, courts around the country and Trump's own attorney general and other government officials have found no evidence that that was the case.
# Iran's navy adds sophisticated cruise missiles to its armory December 24, 2023. 6:00 AM EST --- DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Iran's navy on Sunday added domestically produced sophisticated cruise missiles to its arsenal, state TV reported. The TV said both Talaeieh and Nasir cruise missiles have arrived at a naval base near the Indian Ocean in the southern Iranian port of Konarak, some 1,400 kilometers (850 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran. Navy chief Adm. Shahram Irani said the Talaeieh has a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and called it "fully smart." Irani said the cruise missile is capable of changing targets during travel. He said the Nasi has a range of 100 kilometers (62 miles) and can be installed on warships. Last month, a container ship owned by an Israeli billionaire came under attack from a suspected Iranian drone in the Indian Ocean, as Israel wages war on Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip. From time to time Iran announces the test firing, production and commissioning of new military equipment that cannot be independently verified. The country says it has a stock of various kinds of missiles with ranges up to 2,000 kilometers (1250 miles), capable of reaching its archenemy Israel and U.S. bases in the region.
# Zac Efron and Lily James on the simple gesture that frames the tragedy of the Von Erich wrestlers By LINDSEY BAHR December 20, 2023. 1:30 PM EST --- Zac Efron didn't realize how much he needed a hug. He'd transformed himself into a mass of muscle and repressed emotion to play professional wrestler Kevin Von Erich in the new film "The Iron Claw." It was a taxing role and unlike anything he'd done before, both physically and psychologically. He often found himself with real bruises from recreating fights in the ring. Downtime between shots, too, was usually spent lifting. But he didn't appreciate how much it was affecting him until he and Lily James sat down to film the first date between his character and the woman who would marry him. Pam tells Kevin that he has oldest brother syndrome. Kevin tells her that he's not actually the oldest: That brother died in an accident when he was 6 and Kevin was 5. He says he's fine, but Pam gets out of her seat, walks around the table and drapes her arms around Kevin, who seems to melt in the warmth of a love that's not conditional. "It felt very needed, that hug," Efron told The Associated Press in a joint interview with James. "It was the first time I'd embraced anyone in months without it being a fake punch, or someone trying to submit me or get me to tap out." Efron is half-laughing but also not. If you know anything about the Von Erichs, sometimes referred to as the Kennedys of wrestling, you know that the tragic death of the oldest brother is not the last that they would endure. In fact, the completely true account of what would transpire was too much for even the film to bear: By the time Kevin was 35 he'd have lost his four remaining brothers, three to suicide. For "The Iron Claw," in theaters Friday, writer-director Sean Durkin made the decision to take the youngest, Chris, out entirely. "The Iron Claw" is still primarily about the relationship between the brothers David (Harris Dickinson), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) and Mike (Stanley Simons) and their father Fritz (Holt McCallany), a wrestler who dreamt of greatness for himself and his family at any cost. Kevin told Durkin that he just wanted audiences to know how much the brothers loved one another. As a lifetime wrestling fan who grew up following the Von Erichs, who presided over the Texas wrestling scene in the 1970s and '80s, Durkin was fascinated by ideas of American masculinity, trauma and grief, as well as Kevin's relationship with Pam that somehow survived through it all. Though Kevin had spoken a lot about his life after the deaths, there wasn't much Pam "out there," Durkin found. But instead of a hinderance, it provided an opportunity to be creative and make it personal. He'd already decided that he wanted to write and figure out the story before getting in touch with his real-life subjects. James joined the project a bit later than everyone else. Efron recalled a "collective jump for joy" upon finding out that she'd said yes. Though they didn't know one another beforehand, they quickly established a natural rhythm that would prove to be magic on camera and off. "It's so nice when you meet someone at work and it just instantly kind of clicks," James said. "Zac made me feel so welcome and at home in our scenes, which are so special and effortless." Part of that they attribute to Durkin's preference for filming long, uninterrupted takes that helped them get out of their own heads. After five minutes, Efron said, you simply forget that the camera is there. But Durkin thinks something even more special happened when it was just them. "The second we started filming, it was like everything fell away and they were just totally present with each other and just fully responding," Durkin said. "It was really fun to watch." It's not just that you're watching two people fall in love. Pam shows Kevin a different way of living and a different kind of love than he had known, which becomes even more essential as everything he thought he knew about life crumbles around him. "She's a slight horse whisperer. I was really intrigued by this woman that has such emotional intelligence and directness. She's not afraid to be fragile." James said. "When Pam just goes around and hugs him, you get the feeling that he never experiences that kind of physical, gentle intimacy. It felt really moving to do that moment because she kind of knew what he needed." The hug is a cathartic moment for Kevin, who has been taught to hold back his emotions in real life. "It was the first time that it really wasn't about winning or losing and, for Kevin, about being himself and finding meaning outside of the gym and the ring and the world of his family," Efron said. But Efron didn't expect to feel it too. "It was overwhelming in the best possible way," he said. "I almost didn't know how to deal with it. It felt very close to the character." Efron's committed performance has earned him some of the highest praise in his career. And the fact that he hadn't done anything like it before is part of the reason Durkin wanted him. "He had the athletic background, the dance background and the physicality and those are great building blocks to being a wrestler. And he has a clear hunger for doing tough work," Durkin said. "But the ultimate thing was meeting him and seeing how kind and sweet he is as a person. It's quite a silent role in a lot of ways and having that core was crucial." While filming, he said, "A lot of my direction to Zac was 'don't cry yet.' Even in moments where it's impossible, just hold it in and keep holding it in." For Efron, the exploration of repressed emotions resonated. Spending time with Kevin has only helped reinforce its importance. "I think a lot of men deal with this," Efron said. "Repressed emotion never leads to good things. It's something that I've definitely had to work on over the course of my career and life. That this movie was about that was intriguing to me. It felt personal." But it wasn't all tears and bruises. They had some genuinely fun scenes to look forward to as well, including line dancing at Kevin and Pam's wedding. "It's just the coolest thing I've ever done on camera," James said. "You rocked that scene," Efron responded. "By the way, I didn't know you had rehearsed. I thought you just knew that dance. I was blown away, I was like, what is going on? How do you know this? Aren't you British?" For both, the film was a "real ride" and flush with creative energy and freedom. "It definitely rekindled something inside me," Efron said. "I'm in love with this process more than ever. I really needed it. I really did."
# Movie Review: If this is goodbye, 'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' keeps its trident high By MARK KENNEDY December 21, 2023. 10:57 AM EST --- It's perhaps appropriate that the latest Aquaman movie is about a lost kingdom. In many ways, this mini-franchise is just that, a Jason Momoa kingdom that could just quietly sink below the cinematic waves. At least Momoa is going out swinging in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," an overstuffed tale that goes from desert to ice, steals from other movies like a coked-up magpie and says goodbye at the near-operatic level of a mid-franchise Marvel flick. Much of it doesn't happen underwater at all. "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" is likely the final installment of the King of Atlantis' storyline for a time. The new heads of DC Studios plan nearly a dozen film and TV comic book projects in the next decade and none have Aquaman front and center. Holding it all together is Momoa, and it's hard to overstate his charisma, humor and presence. DC Studios may regret deep-sixing this franchise if it doesn't find a home for an actor who actually looks like a real-life superhero. But, then again, they bungled it with Dwayne Johnson, too. "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" is equivalent to "Thor: Love and Thunder" or "Fast X" - an attempt to raise the level of the last decent entry by keeping the same overall plot but just throwing money at it - more locations, more fights, more armies led by commanders in medieval-looking suits of armor riding underwater beasts. In 2018 - the last time Aquaman owned the movie theaters - he battled his half-brother in the Ring of Fire, trekked to the Sahara to locate a clue about the Sacred Trident, wrecked most of Sicily, found the Hidden Sea, reunited with his mom and united Atlantis, along the way slaughtering more sea creatures than the entire Red Lobster empire. This time, Aquaman - again under director James Wan - must reconcile with his brother (Patrick Wilson, the Ken doll of the deep) and hunt down the villain from the first film, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Black Manta, who is using ancient technology to destroy the globe, super mad at the murder of his dad. The screenplay by returning writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick throws everything at the sinking kitchen sink, including a cute sidekick (a genetically altered octopus) and a rare metallic ore named Orichalcum, described as "the greatest power in human history." It's basically a Kinko's copy of Eternium or Vibranium. Amber Heard is back as Aquaman's wife but this new movie is a brother-brother movie and so she's somewhat sidelined. Johnson-McGoldrick unfortunately likes referencing other, better movies in the dialogue, like "Cast Away" and "Harry Potter," and layering in terrible puns like, "Put a hook in it." The sparks come from Momoa and Wilson needling each other like siblings do. Aquaman, at his heart, is a goofy, beer-drinking, motorcycle-loving bouncer while his brother is so uptight he'd bring his own coaster to the bar. The less gloopy visuals and plot liberally steal from "The Matrix," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Star Wars" - Martin Short voices a Jabba the Hutt monster fish - "Jumanji," "Spider-Man" and "Fast & Furious." But credit goes to layering in some messaging about global warming - toxic algae, greenhouse gasses and rising acidity levels. There's an overused song this time - "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf - but it's not clear if that's for Aquaman, the man who wants to kill him or the Earth. With rival Marvel at a bit of a crossroads - especially in the wake of its dropping of actor Jonathan Majors - DC, which has suffered its own woes with "The Flash," "Blue Beetle" and "Shazam: Fury of the Gods" in 2023 - gets a chance to end the year on a high. "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" might not be all that but it keeps its trident high even as the sea reclaims its hero. "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom," a Warner Bros. Pictures release that opens in theaters this weekend, is rated PG-13 for "sequences of sci-fi violence, action and some language." Running time: 143 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Behind the 'Maestro' drama is a raft of theater stars supporting the story of Leonard Bernstein By MARK KENNEDY December 18, 2023. 12:56 PM EST --- NEW YORK (AP) - Leonard Bernstein was a towering figure on Broadway. So it seems only fitting that the new film darma of him leans on the Great White Way to get the story right. Bradley Cooper's movie "Maestro" is studded with theater stars - 29 of the 38 principal cast members have a background in the theater, including Gideon Glick, Michael Urie, Greg Hildreth, Nick Blaemire, Ryan Steele, Zachary Booth and Gaby Diaz. Look closely and you'll find actor-turned-director Scott Ellis playing Bernstein's manager, Harry Kraut, and rising stage star Jordan Dobson - whose credits include "Bad Cinderella," "Hadestown" and, significantly, "West Side Story" - playing a young conductor. Casting director Shayna Markowitz said she didn't necessarily set out to land theater pros but it came naturally when she was trying to populate Bernstein's world authentically. "There's kind of this amazing synergy between casting theater actors to portray people of the theater world and of Lenny's world," Markowitz said. "I just feel like we got really lucky with just these wonderful New York actors that are here and that wanted to be a part of this." Markowitz worked with Cooper on telling the story of a conductor, composer, pianist who helped create such musical theater classic as "West Side Story," "Candide," "On the Town" and "Wonderful Town." Cooper stars alongside Carey Mulligan as Bernstein's wife. Some selections seem inspired, like the casting of dancer Ricky Ubeda by choreographer Justin Peck. In 2015, "So You Think You Can Dance" winner Ubeda made his Broadway debut when joining the ensemble of a revival of "On the Town" and in "Maestro" he can be seen in a dream sequence of, yes, "On the Town." But perhaps the best Easter egg is a scene in the movie when the cast is rehearsing "Candide" with Cooper conducting. Actor June Gable approaches Mulligan's character to ask a question. Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize that's the same Gable who was nominated for a Tony Award in the mid-1970s for "Candide." "She knew Lenny Bernstein and so was having a full-on, out-of-body experience being in that scene with Bradley," said Markowitz. "She was like, 'It was crazy. I was crying. It was as if he was there.' So that was a cool moment." Casting directors like Markowitz use a service that alerts talent agents and managers about upcoming roles and she will makes up her own lists of actors she thinks would be perfect, which she did for "Maestro." "Every director works a little differently. Every project is obviously different and the needs are different. I adapt to how the filmmaker likes to work," said Markowitz. "I think you want to find the very best actors who are most suited for the roles. That never changes." Glick, who has appeared on Broadway in "Spring Awakening," "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" and was Tony-nominated for "To Kill a Mockingbird," auditioned on tape for the role of Tommy Cothran, music director at a radio station in San Francisco and a lover of Bernstein. "Bradley created a very loose and immersive environment that was very, very playful and it sort of reminded me of that stage in the rehearsal process when you're doing a play or a musical where you're not being result oriented and you're just exploring and taking chances," said Glick. "I think you can feel that in the film." Some parts in "Maestro" are very small roles - just a few seconds of film needing a day's work - but have deep significance for the theater community, like the legendary songwriting team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green - played in "Maestro" by Mallory Portnoy and Nick Blaemire. "Actors sign on to do projects or audition for projects because they want to be a part of it. And so they understood the significance of both of those parts," Markowitz said. "Some actors just want to be a part of it no matter what and no matter how." Ellis, a multiple Tony Award-nominated director, was coaxed back to acting by Cooper, a friend and colleague who had worked together onstage, most notably on "The Elephant Man" on Broadway. Cooper thought his warm and loving relationship with Ellis could infuse the onscreen relationship he wanted to show between Bernstein and his manager. "It was so relaxed and an incredible experience and something way out of my comfort zone," said Ellis, who estimated he last acted 30 years ago. "I'm sitting there in a dressing room surrounded by these incredible actors who, as a director, I would go, 'God, I'd love to work with you on a piece.' But, all of a sudden, I realize, 'No, I'm just one of them.'" In many ways, "Maestro" is the latest artistic watering hole for Broadway veterans, joining "Law & Order," "Glee," "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "The Good Fight," "The Gilded Age," "Fosse/Verdon," "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist," "Only Murders in the Building" and "Smash." Markowitz, who works across film and TV and who has cast "Dash & Lily," "Ocean's Eight," winning the inaugural BAFTA Award for best casting in 2020 for "Joker," said "Maestro" is special. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime milestone film for sure," she said. "I feel so lucky to have had this experience, and I'm so happy with how people are receiving it as this really special thing, because it's it's very special to me."
# Movie Review: 'The Color Purple' is a stirring big-screen musical powered by its spectacular cast By JAKE COYLE December 21, 2023. 2:40 PM EST --- Exuberant performances from a cast led by Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson and Danielle Brooks breathe life into Blitz Bazawule's stirring "The Color Purple," adapted from the Tony-winning Broadway production. Alice Walker 's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel, which Steven Spielberg turned into the 1985 film, may be an unlikely book for such bright adaptations. Walker's novel, told through Celie's letters penned to God, is harrowingly bleak in its tale of trauma, poverty, abuse and rape. Much of Walker's "The Color Purple" doesn't scream song and dance. But the emotional triumphs of Walker's novel and its soul-stirring tribute to the power of Black women lend themselves to the kind of maximalist spectacle of Bazawule's razzle-dazzle adaptation. The tragedy found in "The Color Purple" makes its final release all the more rousing. It can still be an awkward mix, and, like Spielberg's movie, not all of the tonal changes work in this version of "The Color Purple." But the payoff is immense, as are the thrilling performances at the movie's center. Barrino, who in 2007 took over the role on Broadway, plays Celie with a raw soulfulness. In the film's opening scenes, she's picked by Mister ( Colman Domingo ) to be his wife, though her role at his messy, ramshackle home is much closer to servant. Life with Mister, who regularly beats her, is a nightmare. That Domingo is able play such a loathsome, cruel character and yet still find subtle notes of woundedness and ultimately redemption in Mister is a testament to his dynamism as an actor. The roots of Mister's barbarism are traced to his own brutal father (Louis Gossett Jr.), one of the numerous ways in which "The Color Purple" contemplates cycles of abuse and inherited pain. Celie, separated from her beloved sister Nettie (Halle Bailey), has little to look forward to. But after years go by, signs of possibility begin entering the orbit of her savage rural corner of early 20th century Georgia. First there's Sofia ( Brooks ), the wife of Mister's more sensitive son Harpo (Corey Hawkins), who builds a juke joint on a pier above a swamp. Brooks, reprising the role she played in the 2015 stage revival, is a revelation as the strong-willed, admirably reckless Sofia. Her forceful and funny entry (and her thundering song "Hell No!") announce a female empowerment Celie hasn't ever dared to imagine. Bazawule's film, penned by playwright Marcus Gardley, wavers most in the balance of its first half. The musical scenes, with kinetic choreography from Fatima Robinson, perhaps come too fast and furious, distracting from our connection with the meek Celie. The numbers are richly conceived - the juke joint (part of the excellent production design of Paul Denham Austerberry) is pierced with light shining through wooden planks. But some flights of fancy, like one number in which Celie is transported onto a giant turntable, make for a herky-jerky flow. The jumbled book-to-movie-to-musical-to-movie-musical path of "The Color Purple" sometimes shows. But the film takes off when Shug ( Henson ) makes her show-stopping entrance. Shug, a glamorous singer who breezes in and out of their country lives, is whom Mister most pines for - and whom Celie has great affection for, as well. Henson, outfitted sumptuously by costumer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck, gives "The Color Purple" a vivid, movie-star splash. Celie and Shug's romance has often been downplayed - it was almost totally absent Spielberg's film. This version, while still falling short, does a little better thanks to their tender duet "What About Love?" In this lengthy and star-packed musical (Ciara, Jon Batiste, H.E.R. and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor are just some of the cameos), there are more dramatic ups and downs to go. But the movie builds irresistibly toward the hard-earned emancipation of Celie, and Barrino's climactic, impassioned performance of "I'm Here." Bazawule, the Ghana-born filmmaker, has made one previous feature ("The Burial of Kojo"). But he also performs as the hip-hop artist Blitz the Ambassador and directed Beyoncé's "Black Is King" visual album. And his adroitness in capturing musical performance is easy to see in "The Color Purple," produced by a trio of heavyweights from the first film: Oprah Winfrey, Spielberg and Quincy Jones. But it's the movie's own power trio of Barrino, Brooks and Henson that makes "The Color Purple" one of the most moving big-screen musicals in recent years. Each in their own way transforms suffering into exhilarating portraits of survival and strength. "The Color Purple," a Warner Bros. release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for mature thematic content, sexual content, violence and language. Running time: 140 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Descendants fight to maintain historic Black communities. Keeping their legacy alive is complicated By SHARON JOHNSON December 21, 2023. 3:25 PM EST --- DAUFUSKIE ISLAND, S.C. (AP) - Sallie Ann Robinson proudly stands in the front yard of her grandmother's South Carolina home. The sixth-generation native of Daufuskie Island, a once-thriving Gullah community, remembers relatives hosting meals and imparting life lessons on the next generation. "I was born in this very house, as many generations of family have been as well," said Robinson, a chef and tour guide. "I was raised here. These woods was our playgrounds." Long dirt roads were once occupied by a bustling community that had its own bartering system and a lucrative oyster industry. "There were at one point over a thousand people living on this island," Robinson said. Now, she and several cousins are the only ones of Gullah descent who remain. Historic Black communities like Daufuskie Island are dying, and descendants like Robinson are attempting to salvage what's left of a quickly fading history. "The towns are the authentic source or sources of much of our culture, our history, our physical expression of place," said Everett Fly, a landscape architect who uncovered more than 1,800 Black historic settlements through his research. Scholars define a historic Black community or town as a settlement founded by formerly enslaved people, usually between the late 19th- and early 20th-century. The enclaves often had their own churches, schools, stores and economic systems. Fly and other researchers estimate there are fewer than 30 incorporated historic Black towns left in the United States, a fraction of more than 1,200 at the peak between the 1880s and 1915. "The ones that do remain are extremely rare. They're extremely important," Fly said. The eradication of these neighborhoods can be traced back to their creation when white supremacists terrorized Black people, destroying whole blocks of homes and businesses or driving them out of town, as seen with the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 and the Rosewood, Florida, massacre in 1923. But in more recent times, the dwindling of Black strongholds is due in part to the culmination of amended ordinances, uneven tax rates, home devaluations, and political challenges that leave communities vulnerable to developers and rampant gentrification. "Something as simple as, they change or they rezone areas," said Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, the director of the public history program at Howard University. "People with political power can make determinations that will ring the death bell for these towns." "We've seen gated areas, golf courses and planned unit developments directly linked to increasing the taxes and displacement of native Gullah-Geechees throughout the coast," said Marquetta Goodwine, known as Queen Quet, the leader of the Gullah-Geechee nation. On St. Helena Island in South Carolina, massive banners dot driveways and sidewalks reading "Protect the culture, protect the history, protect the land." The governing Beaufort County council blocked a golf course on Gullah-Geechee land after the developer, Elvio Tropeano, requested to remove the 503-acre (204-hectare) plot from a zoning district on the island. The zoning district bans gated communities and resorts in locations considered culturally significant. Tropeano has since filed two legal actions against the county to appeal the decision, and is now considering building homes on the property. A local group, Community Coalition Action Network, supports the plan to build a golf course on the unoccupied land. Co-founder Tade' Oyeilumi said she was originally against it; then she went to a listening session. "When I heard Mr. Tropeano speak about the development and what he wanted to do with the development, the purpose of the development and how that was going to contribute to the community that we live in, I was blown away," Oyeilumi said. She fears the housing plan that the developer is now considering will instead have jarring results. "It's going to change the infrastructure to our community. It's going to bring in that gentrification factor that people are saying they don't want, faster. The golf course, on the other hand, minimizes that," Oyeilumi said. Residents of Hogg Hummock, a tiny Gullah-Geechee community on Sapelo Island in Georgia, filed a lawsuit in October to halt a zoning law they say will raise taxes, forcing them to sell their homes. McIntosh County commissioners voted in September to double the size of houses allowed in the community, also known as Hog Hammock - a move locals believe will draw in wealthy outsiders who want to build vacation getaways. Only a few dozen Black residents still live in the enclave of modest homes along dirt roads. "My ancestors were forced to work on that land, and then they fought for the right to have that land," said 23-year-old Keara Skates, a descendant who spent her last birthday speaking against the zoning law alongside state legislators in Atlanta, the state capital. "Sapelo Island has historically never seen the level of growth that's being proposed. Where does that leave the descendants?" McIntosh County Commission Chairman David Stevens said the community's landscape is changing because some native owners have sold their property. "I don't need anybody to lecture me on the culture of Sapelo Island," Stevens said, adding: "If you don't want these outsiders, if you don't want these new homes being built ... don't sell your land." Research by Brookings Institution fellow Andre Perry finds that homes in majority Black neighborhoods are appraised at significantly lower values than homes in neighborhoods where Black people are the minority. Perry says that developers can buy these homes at lower costs and sell them for a much higher price. "A lot of people will call that a major tool of gentrification," said Perry. "The people who live in those areas may be priced out ultimately, and then the companies or individuals who purchase those properties get profit as a result." Attorney Rukaiyah Adams runs a nonprofit called "Rebuild Albina" based in Portland, Oregon. The organization aims to educate, invest and restore homeownership to Black people in an area that used to be a thriving Black neighborhood. "We cannot continue to extract and exploit to the breaking point," said Adams. "We're trying to create a new model for what that might look like, how we might live together." In Florida, one of the first incorporated self-governing Black municipalities in the U.S. was Eatonville, established in 1887. Located just 24 miles (39 kilometers) north of Disney World, the key challenge for present-day residents is the Orange County Public School Board, which owns 100 acres (40 hectares) of property in the middle of town. The land was once home to Robert Hungerford Normal and Industrial School, established in 1897 as a school for Black children. In 1951, it was sold to Orange County Public Schools. In March, a private developer interested in building commercial, office and residential units on the land terminated a sales contract with the district after protest from residents. The school system said in a statement in March that it wouldn't consider any further bids for the land. The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community has sued the school district to safeguard the land for educational purposes. "There are four things that have kept Eatonville: its faith, its family, its education and its civic pride," said NY Nathiri, a third-generation Eatonville resident and founder of the association. Nathiri smiles as she reminisces about her idyllic childhood and her family's history in the town - from her grandfather moving there at the beginning of the Great Depression, to her aunts' close relationship with author Zora Neale Hurston. Descendants of the community work to boost its economy and preserve the local heritage and culture, put on display at the town's annual ZORA! Festival. "As long as you know your story, you know how to tell your story, and you are welcoming to people, they are going to spend money with you," said Nathiri. Back on Daufuskie Island, Robinson is working to restore 10 empty homes that used to be filled with her extended family. Her biggest challenge is finding people to help her write grants to help fund the restoration of her community. "I'm not asking people to go out of pocket. I'll just say help me understand the other methods of getting funds that are out there for you," said Robinson. Down the street from her grandmother's house, Robinson walks through Mary Field Cemetery where many of her relatives are buried and remembers what's possible. "There goes my baby sister, my cousin Marvin. This is my great-grandfather," Robinson said while pointing at headstones nestled between tall grass. "If something looked impossible, it wasn't. They didn't live like that. If it could be done, they made a way."
# These kids want to go to school. The main obstacle? Paperwork By BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS December 19, 2023. 1:16 AM EST --- ATLANTA (AP) - It's unclear to Tameka how - or even when - her children became unenrolled from Atlanta Public Schools. But it was traumatic when, in fall 2021, they figured out it had happened. After more than a year of some form of pandemic online learning, students were all required to come back to school in person. Tameka was deeply afraid of COVID-19 and skeptical the schools could keep her kids safe from what she called "the corona." One morning, in a test run, she sent two kids to school. Her oldest daughter, then in seventh grade, and her second youngest, a boy entering first grade, boarded their respective buses. She had yet to register the youngest girl, who was entering kindergarten. And her older son, a boy with Down syndrome, stayed home because she wasn't sure he could consistently wear masks. After a few hours, the elementary school called: Come pick up your son, they told her. He was no longer enrolled, they said. Around lunchtime, the middle school called: Come get your daughter, they told her. She doesn't have a class schedule. Tameka's children - all four of them - have been home ever since. ## PARENTS MUST PROVE RESIDENCY, REPEATEDLY Thousands of students went missing from American classrooms during the pandemic. For some who have tried to return, a serious problem has presented itself. A corrosive combination of onerous re-enrollment requirements, arcane paperwork and the everyday obstacles of poverty - a nonworking phone, a missing backpack, the loss of a car - is in many cases preventing those children from going back. "One of the biggest problems that we have is kids that are missing and chronic absenteeism," says Pamela Herd, a Georgetown University public policy professor. She studies how burdensome paperwork and processes often prevent poor people from accessing health benefits. "I'm really taken aback that a district would set forth a series of policies that make it actually quite difficult to enroll your child." In Atlanta, where Tameka lives, parents must present at least eight documents to enroll their children - twice as many as parents in New York City or Los Angeles. One of the documents - a complicated certificate evaluating a child's dental health, vision, hearing and nutrition - is required by the state. Most of the others are Atlanta's doing, including students' Social Security cards and an affidavit declaring residency that has to be notarized. The district asks for proof of residency for existing students every year at some schools, and also before beginning sixth and ninth grades, to prevent students from attending schools outside of their neighborhoods or communities. The policy also allows the district to request proof the student still lives in the attendance zone after an extended absence or many tardy arrivals. Without that proof, families say their children have been disenrolled. "They make it so damned hard," says Kimberly Dukes, an Atlanta parent who co-founded an organization to help families advocate for their children. During the pandemic, she and her children became homeless and moved in with her brother. She struggled to convince her children's school they really lived with him. Soon, she heard from other caregivers having similar problems. Last year, she estimates she helped 20 to 30 families re-enroll their children in Atlanta Public Schools. The school district pushed back against this characterization of the enrollment process. "When parents inform APS that they are unable to provide updated proof of residence, protocols are in place to support families," Atlanta communications director Seth Coleman wrote by email. Homeless families are not required to provide documentation, he said. Tameka's kids have essentially been out of school since COVID hit in March 2020. She and her kids have had a consistent place to live, but nearly everything else in their lives collapsed during the pandemic. (Tameka is her middle name. The Associated Press is withholding her full name because Tameka, 33, runs the risk of jail time or losing custody of her children since they are not in school.) ## ECHOES OF A PARTNER'S DEATH Tameka's longtime partner, who was father to her children, died of a heart attack in May 2020 as COVID gripped the country. His death left her overwhelmed and penniless. Tameka never graduated from high school and has worked occasionally as a security guard or a housecleaner for hotels. She has never gotten a driver's license. But her partner worked construction and had a car. "When he was around, we never went without," she says. Suddenly, she had four young children to care for by herself, with only government cash assistance to live on. Schools had closed to prevent the spread of the virus, and the kids were home with her all the time. Remote learning didn't hold their attention. Their home internet didn't support the three children being online simultaneously, and there wasn't enough space in their two-bedroom apartment for the kids to have a quiet place to learn. Because she had to watch them, she couldn't work. The job losses put her family even further below the median income for a Black family in Atlanta - $28,105. (The median annual income for a white family in the city limits is $83,722.) When Tameka's children didn't return to school, she also worried about the wrong kind of attention from the state's child welfare department. According to Tameka, staff visited her in spring 2021 after receiving calls from the school complaining her children were not attending online classes. The social workers interviewed the children, inspected their home and looked for signs of neglect and abuse. They said they'd be back to set her up with resources to help her with parenting. For more than two years, she says, "they never came back." When the kids missed 10 straight days of school that fall, the district removed them from its rolls, citing a state regulation. Tameka now had to re-enroll them. Suddenly, another tragedy of her partner's death became painfully obvious. He was carrying all the family's important documents in his backpack when he suffered his heart attack. The hospital that received him said it passed along the backpack and other possessions to another family member, Tameka says. But it was never found. The backpack contained the children's birth certificates and her own, plus Medicaid cards and Social Security cards. Slowly, she has tried to replace the missing documents. First, she got new birth certificates for the children, which required traveling downtown. After asking for new Medicaid cards for over a year, she finally received them for two of her children. She says she needs them to take her children to the doctor for the health verifications and immunizations required to enroll. It's possible her family's cards have been held up by a backlog in Georgia's Medicaid office since the state agency incorrectly disenrolled thousands of residents. When she called for a doctor's appointment in October, the office said the soonest they could see her children was December. "That's too late," she said. "Half the school year will be over by then." She also needs to show the school her own identification, Social Security cards, and a new lease, plus the notarized residency affidavit. She shakes her head. "It's a lot." ## CALLS FROM THE SCHOOL - TO A DISCONNECTED PHONE Some of the enrollment requirements have exceptions buried deep in school board documents. But Tameka says no one from the district has offered her guidance. Contact logs provided by the district show social workers from three schools have sent four emails and called the family 19 times since the pandemic closed classrooms in 2020. Most of those calls went to voicemail or didn't go through because the phone was disconnected. Records show Tameka rarely called back. The only face-to-face meeting was in October 2021, when Tameka sent her kids on the bus, only to learn they weren't enrolled. A school social worker summarized the encounter: "Discussed students' attendance history, the impact it has on the student and barriers. Per mom student lost father in May 2020 and only other barrier is uniforms." The social worker said the school would take care of the uniforms. "Mom given enrollment paperwork," the entry ends. The school's logs don't record any further attempts to contact Tameka. "Our Student Services Team went above and beyond to help this family and these children," wrote Coleman, the district spokesperson. Inconsistent cell phone access isn't uncommon among low-income Americans. Many have phones, as Tameka's family does, but when they break or run out of prepaid minutes, communication with the phones becomes impossible. So in some cities, even at the height of the pandemic, social workers, teachers and administrators checked on families in person when they were unresponsive or children had gone missing from online learning. In Atlanta, Coleman said, the district avoided in-person contact because of the coronavirus. Tameka says she's unaware of any outreach from Atlanta schools. She currently lacks a working phone with a cell plan, and she's spent long stretches over the last three years without one. An Associated Press reporter has had to visit the family in person to communicate. The logs provided by Atlanta Public Schools show only one attempt to visit the family in person, in spring 2021. A staff member went to the family's home to discuss poor attendance in online classes by the son with Down syndrome. No one was home, and the logs don't mention further attempts. The details of what the district has done to track down and re-enroll Tameka's children, especially her son with Down syndrome, matter. Federal laws require the state and district to identify, locate and evaluate all children with disabilities until they turn 21. One government agency has been able to reach Tameka. A new social worker from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, the same agency that came years earlier, made another visit to her home in October. The department offered to organize a ride for her and her children to visit the doctor. But without an appointment, Tameka didn't see the point. The social worker also shared a helpful tip: Tameka can enroll her children with most of the paperwork, and then she would have 30 days to get the immunizations. But she should act fast, the social worker urged, or the department might have to take action against her for "educational neglect." ## RESIDENCY CRACKDOWN WORKS AGAINST PARENTS To many observers, Tameka's troubles stem from Atlanta's rapid gentrification. The city, known for its Black professional class, also boasts the country's largest wealth disparity between Black and white families. "It looks good from the curb, but when you get inside you see that Black and brown people are worse off economically than in West Virginia - and no one wants to talk about it," says Frank Brown, who heads Communities in Schools of Atlanta, an organization that runs dropout-prevention programs in Atlanta Public Schools. Atlanta's school board passed many of its enrollment policies and procedures back in 2008, after years of gentrification and a building boom consolidated upper-income and mostly white residents in the northern half of the city. The schools in those neighborhoods complained of "overcrowding," while the schools in the majority Black southern half of the city couldn't fill all of their seats. The board cracked down on "residency fraud" to prevent parents living in other parts of town from sending their children to schools located in those neighborhoods. "This was about balancing the number of students in schools," says Tiffany Fick, director of school quality and advocacy for Equity in Education, a policy organization in Atlanta. "But it was also about race and class." Communities such as St. Louis, the Massachusetts town of Everett and Tupelo, Mississippi, have adopted similar policies, including tip lines to report neighbors who might be sending their children to schools outside of their enrollment zones. But the Atlanta metro area seems to be a hotbed, despite the policies' disruption of children's educations. In January, neighboring Fulton County disenrolled nearly 400 students from one of its high schools after auditing residency documents after Christmas vacation. The policies were designed to prevent children from attending schools outside of their neighborhood. But according to Dukes and other advocates, the increased bureaucracy has also made it difficult for the poor to attend their assigned schools - especially after the pandemic hit families with even more economic stress. ## OTHER ATLANTA PARENTS, SIMILAR BATTLES The Associated Press spoke to five additional Atlanta public school mothers who struggled with the re-enrollment process. Their children were withdrawn from school because their leases had expired or were month to month, or their child lacked vaccinations. Candace, the mother of a seventh grader with autism, couldn't get her son a vaccination appointment when schools first allowed students to return in person in spring 2021. There were too many other families seeking shots at that time, and she didn't have reliable transportation to go further afield. The boy, then in fourth grade, missed a cumulative five months. "He wasn't in school, and no one cared," said Candace, who asked AP not to use her last name because she worries about losing custody of her child since he missed so much school. She eventually re-enrolled him with the help of Dukes, the parent advocate. Many parents who have struggled with the enrollment policies have had difficulty persuading schools to accept their proof of residency. Adding an extra burden to those who don't own their homes, Atlanta's policy allows principals to ask for additional evidence from renters. Shawndrea Gay was told by her children's school, which is located in an upper-income neighborhood, that her month-to-month lease was insufficient. Twice, investigators came to her studio apartment to verify that the family lived there. "They looked in the fridge to make sure there was food," she says. "It was no joke." Then, in summer 2022, the school unenrolled her children because their lease had expired. With Dukes' help, Gay was able to get them back in school before classes started. Tameka hasn't reached out for help returning her kids to school. She doesn't feel comfortable asking and doesn't trust the school system, especially after they called the child welfare department. "I don't like people knowing my business," she says. "I'm a private person." On a typical school day, Tameka's four children - now 14, 12, 9 and 8 - sleep late and stay inside watching television or playing video games. Only the youngest - the girl who's never been to school - has much interest in the outside world, Tameka says. The girl often plays kickball or runs outside with other kids in their low-income subdivision. But during the week, she has to wait for them to come home from school at around 3 p.m. The little girl should be in second grade, learning to master chapter books, spell, and add and subtract numbers up to 100. She has had to settle for "playing school" with her three older siblings. She practices her letters and writes her name. She runs through pre-kindergarten counting exercises on a phone. But even at 8, she understands it's not the real thing. "I want to go to school," she says, "and see what it's like."
# In Mexico, piñatas are not just child's play. They're a 400-year-old tradition By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ December 23, 2023. 12:04 AM EST --- ACOLMAN, Mexico (AP) - María de Lourdes Ortiz Zacarías swiftly cuts hundreds of strips of newsprint and colored crepe paper needed to make a piñata, soothed by Norteño music on the radio while measuring pieces by feel. "The measurement is already in my fingers," Ortiz Zacarías says with a laugh. She has been doing this since she was a child, in the family-run business alongside her late mother, who learned the craft from her father. Piñatas haven't been displaced by more modern customs, and her family has been making a living off them into its fourth generation. Ortiz Zacarías calls it "my legacy, handed down by my parents and grandparents." Business is steady all year, mainly with birthday parties, but it really picks up around Christmas. That's because piñatas are interwoven with Christian traditions in Mexico. There are countless designs these days, based on everything from Disney characters to political figures. But the most traditional style of piñata is a sphere with seven spiky cones, which has a religious origin. Each cone represents one of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Hitting the paper-mache globe with a stick is a symbolic blow against sin, with the added advantage of releasing the candy within. Piñatas weren't originally filled with candy, nor made mainly of paper. Grandparents in Mexico can remember a time a few decades ago when piñatas were clay pots covered with paper and filled with hunks of sugar cane, fruits and peanuts. The treats were received quite gladly, though falling pieces of the clay pot posed a bit of a hazard. Traditional Christmas "piñatas" that will be filled with fruit and candy are displayed at a small family-run business in Acolman just north of Mexico City, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. This style of piñata has a religious origin, with each cone representing one of the seven deadly sins, and hitting the globe with a stick is a symbolic blow against sin. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano) But the tradition goes back even further. Some say piñatas can be traced back to China, where paper-making originated. In Mexico, they were apparently brought by the Spanish conquerors, but may also replicate pre-Hispanic traditions. Spanish chronicler Juan de Grijalva wrote that piñatas were used by Augustine monks in the early 1500s at a convent in the town of Acolman, just north of Mexico City. The monks received written permission from Pope Sixtus V for holding a year-end Mass as part of the celebration of the birth of Christ. But the Indigenous population already celebrated a holiday around the same time to honor the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. And they used something similar to piñatas in those rites. The pre-Hispanic rite involved filling clay jars with precious cocoa seeds - the stuff from which chocolate is made - and then ceremonially breaking the jars. "This was the meeting of two worlds," said Walther Boelsterly, director of Mexico City's Museum of Popular Art. "The piñata and the celebration were used as a mechanism to convert the native populations to Catholicism." Piñatas are also used in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, mainly at children's parties. The piñata hasn't stood still. Popular figures this year range from Barbie to Spider-Man. Ortiz Zacarías' family makes some new designs most of the year, but around Christmas they return to the seven-pointed style, because of its longstanding association with the holiday. The family started their business in Acolman, where Ortiz Zacarías' mother, Romana Zacarías Camacho, was known as "the queen of the piñatas" before her death. Ortiz Zacarías' 18-year-old son, Jairo Alberto Hernández Ortiz, is the fourth generation to take up the centuriesold craft. "This is a family tradition that has a lot of sentimental value for me," he said.
# Illegal crossings surge in remote areas as Congress and the White House weigh major asylum limits By ELLIOT SPAGAT December 19, 2023. 5:10 PM EST --- LUKEVILLE, Ariz. (AP) - Hundreds of dates are written on concrete-filled steel columns erected along the U.S. border with Mexico to memorialize when the Border Patrol has repaired illicit openings in the would-be barriers. Yet no sooner are fixes made than another column is sawed, torched and chiseled for large groups of migrants to enter, usually with no agents in sight. The breaches stretch about 30 miles (48 kilometers) on a washboard gravel road west of Lukeville, an Arizona desert town that consists of an official border crossing, restaurant and duty-free shop. The repair dates are mostly since spring, when the flat desert region dotted with saguaro cactus became the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. A Border Patrol tour in Arizona for news organizations, including The Associated Press, showed improvements in custody conditions and processing times, but flows are overwhelming. The huge spike in migrants and resulting chaos at various border locations have increased frustration with the Biden administration's immigration policies and put pressure on Congress to reach a deal on asylum. The numbers have nudged the White House and some congressional Democrats to consider major limits to asylum as part of a deal for Ukraine aid. As Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas left closed-door talks with congressional leaders Friday, dozens of migrants from Senegal, Guinea and Mexico walked along the Arizona border wall built during Donald Trump's presidency, looking to surrender to agents. A Mexican woman walked briskly with her two daughters and five grandchildren, ages 2 to 7, after being dropped off by a bus in Mexico and instructed by guides. "They told us where to go; to go straight," said Alicia Santay, of Guatemala, who waited in a Border Patrol tent in Lukeville for initial processing. Santay, 22, and her 16-year-old sister hoped to join their father in New York. The dates when wall breaches were fixed are often bunched together, written in white letters against rust-colored steel. One cluster showed five dates from April 12 to Oct. 3. On Friday, agents drove looking for openings and found one on a column that was repaired twice - on Oct. 31 and again Dec. 5. Smuggling organizations remove a few inches from the bottom of 30-foot (9.1-meter) steel poles, which agents say can take as little as a half-hour. Columns sway back and forth, like a cantilever swing, creating ample space for large groups to walk through. Welders often attach metal bars horizontally across several columns to prevent swinging, but there are plenty of other places to saw. Agents say it takes up to an hour to drive from Lukeville along the gravel road to discover breaches - a large chunk of time when tending to so many migrants in custody. "Our officers and agents are responding to large groups of migrants, which means that some of our agents aren't on the line, not really monitoring for some of those cuts," said Troy Miller, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's acting commissioner. "If we don't have anybody to respond, then you're going to see what you're seeing." The number of daily arrivals is "unprecedented," Miller said, with illegal crossings topping 10,000 some days across the border in December. On Monday, CBP suspended cross-border rail traffic in the Texas cities of Eagle Pass and El Paso in response to migrants riding freight trains through Mexico, hopping off just before entering the U.S. The Lukeville border crossing is closed, as is a pedestrian entry in San Diego, so that more officials can be assigned to the migrant influx. Arrests for illegal crossings topped 2 million for the first time each of the U.S. government's last two budget years, reflecting technological changes that have increased global mobility and a host of ills prompting people to leave their homes, including wealth inequality, natural disasters, political repression and organized crime. Miller said solutions go well beyond CBP, which includes the Border Patrol, to other agencies whose responsibilities include long-term detention and asylum screenings. On cuts in the wall, Miller said Mexican authorities "need to step up." Arrests in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which includes Lukeville, topped all nine sectors on the Mexican border from May to October, except June, according to the latest public figures. It is a throwback to the early 2000s before traffic shifted to Texas, but the demographics are much different. Arrests of people in families neared 72,000 in the Tucson sector from Oct. 1 through Dec. 9, more than nine times the same period last year. That's a big change from when almost all migrants were adult men. Arrests of non-Mexicans topped 75,000, nearly quadruple the number from a year ago and more than half of all sector arrests. Senegalese people accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, while arrests of people from Guinea and India each topped 4,000. Agents have encountered migrants from about four dozen Eastern hemisphere countries. Agents who pick up migrants near the wall drive them to Lukeville to have photos taken on a mobile phone that starts their processing. They drive about 45 minutes to a station in Ajo that was built to detain 100 people but housed 325 on Friday. Some are bused to other Border Patrol sectors but most are sent to Tucson, about two hours away. At a sprawl of white tents near Tucson International Airport that was built for about 1,000 people, some migrants are flown to the Texas border for processing. Others are released within two days, as mandated by a court order in the Tucson sector. CBP policy limits detention to 72 hours. Most are released with notices to appear in immigration courts, which are backlogged with more than 3 million cases. Some are detained longer by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The tents are a far cry from 2021 in Donna, Texas, where more than 4,000 migrants, largely unaccompanied children, were held in a space designed for 250 under COVID-19 restrictions. Some stayed for weeks, relying on sleeping pads and foil blankets. In 2019, investigators found 900 people crammed in a cell for 125 in El Paso, with detainees standing on toilets for room to breathe. They wore soiled clothing for days or weeks. Discussions in Congress may produce the most significant immigration legislation since 1996. Potential changes include more mandatory detention and broader use of a rule to raise thresholds for initial asylum screenings. While the higher screening standard has been applied to tens of thousands of migrants since May after entering the country illegally, they are not used in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector due to extraordinarily high flows.
# Movie Review: Clooney's 'Boys in the Boat' is an underdog saga that's both stirring and a tad stodgy By JOCELYN NOVECK December 21, 2023. 5:57 PM EST --- Director George Clooney both begins and ends "The Boys in the Boat" on a sun-dappled lake. It's a seductive sight, calm and soothing, and aptly reflects the ethos of a film that often feels like one has walked into an oil painting: well-crafted, lovely to look at, and rather old-fashioned. Telling the true-life story of the University of Washington rowing team, a scrappy group that - incredibly - reached the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Clooney has gone for stirring and a bit stodgy, pleasing and a bit predictable. Given the craft involved, this is hardly a fatal flaw. And yet, when Joel Edgerton's coach character surveys his team at one point and remarks, "We need an edge, Tom," we think: Ah, yes. A little edge here would be nice. In place of edge, we do get moments of beauty, especially when the boys get into those boats. Rowing is, though, the last thing on the mind of Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), a homeless college student, when we first meet him. We're in 1936 Seattle, deep into the Great Depression. Rantz is trying to learn engineering, but can barely afford to stay afloat, and we're not talking, for now, about a body of water. Abandoned by his father at 14, he can't even afford to eat lunch at the university cafeteria, slipping out to a soup kitchen. At the bursar's office, they give him two weeks to pay his bill. A fellow student says the crew team is holding tryouts. The prospect holds little interest for Joe until he learns it comes with a paycheck and a cheap room. The only problem: only eight of the hundreds who try out will make the team. But like every substantial obstacle in this film, this one is quickly overcome: Joe and his friend are accepted. This delights the one other person in Joe's life: Joyce (a sweet and heartfelt Hadley Robinson), who sits behind him in class, nudges him when he's about to fall asleep, and starts to fall in love with him. This is not too hard - the blond and athletic Joe is, as his friend says of Joyce earlier, "a looker" - though not much of a talker. But there's hardly time for chitchat anyway. Days are filled with practice, practice, practice. Their rowing coach, Al Ulbrickson, is also a man of few words, let alone praise, and even fewer smiles, but Edgerton imbues him with a gruffness that doesn't mask the heart underneath (yes, a common convention in sports dramas). Too often, though, the screenplay by Mark L. Smith (based on the nonfiction book by Daniel James Brown) leaves him with little to do but raise his binoculars momentously, or utter lines like: "We're going to go in there and do it until we get it right!" The junior varsity Huskies are the quintessential underdogs in every way. And so nobody expects much when they get to their first big test, against Cal Berkeley. "Let's show them what's in this boat!" says the energetic coxswain, Bobby (Luke Slattery), whose job is to steer the boat, coordinate the rowers and, at key moments, urge them to greatness. We're guided along by radio commentary: "Washington is struggling to keep pace. Washington is surging! Washington is going to do it!" We know the team will defy expectations and pass each big test, because if they didn't, their story would end, but Clooney and team make it pretty exciting just the same. The crowd scenes, with fans in period garb in hues of brown, are lovely. Next up is a much more difficult test, along the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York, where the winner will claim the right to compete in the Olympics. Ulbrickson makes the debated call to send these boys - the university's junior boat - to the event. Before they leave, however, Joe's focus is disrupted by a disturbing meetup with a figure from his past. But not much is made of this meeting, and though Joe gets briefly exiled from the team - he dared to tell his coach, "I don't care" - he is soon standing tall again, after a heart-to-heart with an older, wiser figure (Peter Guinness) who gives just the pep talk he needs. Right in time for an epic showdown presented as something of a class struggle - "old money versus no money at all," announces the colorful radio announcer. There is one more setback before this team of underdogs can make it to Berlin, and its resolution is one of the more moving moments in the script. And then, finally, they arrive in Nazi Germany, to the swastikas and the banners and patriotic crowds urging on the German team, with Adolf Hitler in the stands. We'll avoid the spoiler, but suffice it to say that the finale does pretty much what it needs to. No, there is not much "edge" here, but Clooney and team prove that sometimes, slow and steady - or should we say, pretty and pleasing - can still win some races. "The Boys in the Boat," a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association "for language and smoking." Running time: 124 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: A transformed Zac Efron gives his all in tragic, true-life wrestling tale 'Iron Claw' By JOCELYN NOVECK December 20, 2023. 6:14 PM EST --- It doesn't take long to understand the level of commitment Zac Efron brings to "The Iron Claw" as Texas wrestling brother Kevin Von Erich. Just one look at the taut mass of muscle and sinew he's become for the role will do the trick. It's also clear from the get-go how invested writer-director Sean Durkin was in telling the true-life tale of the Von Erich family wrestling dynasty, which - shockingly, to those of us unfamiliar with the story - suffered a set of tragic losses almost too staggering to imagine. It's hardly a spoiler alert to say that Kevin, by 35, was the only surviving brother of an original six. (He is now 66). Indeed, so devastating is the story that Durkin felt the need to excise brother Chris, one of three lost to suicide, from this retelling entirely. Durkin has said he was a committed wrestling fan from his childhood in England, where he scoured magazines to learn more about the exploits of the Von Erichs, who made their name in the colorful, high-flying, entertainment-heavy wrestling world of the '70s and early '80s. And from that affection stems perhaps both the strength and weakness of "The Iron Claw." It's a film that tells its stunning tale with heart and conviction, yet seems somehow reticent about pointing a truly critical finger at either the brutality of a sport that broke this family, or the man who seemed to give his sons no choice in the matter: family patriarch Fritz Von Erich. It is with Fritz that we begin. In a 1950s-era prologue rendered in black-and-white, the eventual patriarch and promoter (an excellent Holt McCallany) is in the ring himself, displaying his famed "Iron Claw" maneuver: a punishing two-handed grip on a doomed opponent's skull, crushing it like a vice. Waiting in the parking lot is Fritz's wife, Doris (Maura Tierney) and their young kids. Doris is shocked that Fritz has acquired a spiffy new car to attach to their trailer, something they can't afford, but he tells her it's all part of the persona he's building: You need to be the toughest and the strongest, and then nothing will be able to hurt you. Flash forward to 1979, and Fritz has passed the dream of becoming heavyweight champion onto his remaining sons. (One of them has died at a young age in a terrible accident.) Kevin is doing his best to be the son who gets there first. Among his exploits in the ring, Kevin climbs up on top of the ropes to attack from the air, leaping onto an opponent. These fight scenes are vivid and exciting, although if you're like me, eventually you'll be shouting at the screen, begging for it all to stop, lest one more son get hurt. But at the kitchen table, there's never talk of stopping. Fritz tells Kevin, David and Mike that they all need to work harder to win that coveted championship belt. Mike, the youngest, is interested in music, but Fritz doesn't care. Privately, Kevin seeks out his mother and asks her to intervene on Mike's behalf. But Doris relies only on her faith; this wrestling business is between the men, she says. (It is horrifying to watch her, powerless, as the sadness multiplies.) Who will achieve Dad's dream first? Will it be David, who's a great talker and taunter in the ring? Or Kevin, who possesses great physical strength but is awkward and unable to master the art of self-promotion? Suddenly, brother Kerry, a discus thrower with Olympic hopes, enters the scene. When President Jimmy Carter declares the United States won't be sending a team to Moscow in 1980, Fritz decrees that Kerry (Jeremy Allen White) will join his brothers in the ring. There are a few lovely scenes of the brothers bonding, playing football, doing what brothers do. But the pace of the film, with its wrestling sequences and successive tragedies, doesn't allow for much relationship development. An exception is Kevin's relationship with Pam (a lovely and soulful Lily James), who woos the shy Kevin and eventually marries him, their wedding a brief joyful moment (with an infectious family line-dancing scene). But tragedy is not far off. For those unfamiliar with the Von Erich tale, we won't reveal more plot here, other than to say that loss does not soften Fritz. At one funeral, he orders his grieving sons to remove their sunglasses, then forbids them to cry. Efron, with his rock-hard physique and '70s mullet, turns in some of the most affecting work of his career. White, too, is excellent if more inscrutable as Kerry, initially the golden boy until his own brush with disaster sends him into a downward spiral. Harris Dickinson as David and a heartbreaking Stanley Simons as Mike round out the strong ensemble. But the film does not spend a lot of time on the emotional tissue that connects the brothers, who seem more bound by loyalty and mutual hardship than anything else. The film's emotional ending brings well-earned tears, thanks to Efron's delicate portrayal. But when we're informed by means of an epilogue that the Von Erich family in 2009 was admitted to the WWE Hall of Fame, it's hard not to consider a question that the film doesn't seem to be attacking head-on: Was any of this worth it? "The Iron Claw," an A24 release, has been Rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for language, suicide, some sexuality and drug use. Running time: 130 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Ghosts and longing and love in 'All of Us Strangers' By LINDSEY BAHR December 20, 2023. 5:27 PM EST --- Andrew Scott plays a writer trying to write something about his dead parents in Andrew Haigh's transcendent drama "All of Us Strangers." His parents' death is not recent - they died when he was 12. Not that one ever really gets over that kind of loss. But we meet Adam at a moment where he is not just thinking about them but visiting them in his childhood home, where they are preparing for Christmas. Just in case it wasn't sad enough already. "All of Us Strangers" will probably make you cry. Maybe even weep. And while there are some twists along the way, it never feels emotionally manipulative or unearned. In fact, it's a rather authentic and cathartic experience - a deeply felt journey of acceptance, love and forgiveness. The most calculated flex of the movie is actually just in casting Scott, also known as "the hot priest" from "Fleabag," opposite Paul Mescal, "the hot guy from 'Normal People'" (and the sad, but still hot, dad from "Aftersun"). It's the kind of pairing that seems designed to make the internet explode. Thankfully, they have the kind of talent and chemistry that makes you immediately forget the memes and just submit to their delicate romance, which grows and runs parallel to Adam's increasingly vulnerable visits home. Adam and Harry seem to be the only residents of a luxury high-rise in London, the kind that was built before units were sold and now it feels a little desolate and even haunted, not unlike them. Adam has to practically force himself out of his apartment one night when the fire alarm rings. Their first meeting is not a cute one. Harry shows up at Adam's door, bottle of booze in hand. He's very drunk and trying, poorly, to hide his sadness as he essentially offers himself up. Adam declines, but they soon get another, more sober chance to connect and start that beautiful, awkward dance of getting to know one another. Haigh films their growing intimacy tenderly and you root for them to save one another, so to speak. This relationship is compelling in and of itself, but it also gives Adam a chance to talk about what he couldn't talk about with his parents (Dad is Jamie Bell and Mum is Claire Foy) when they were alive. It was, as the styling and musical cues makes unambiguous, the 1980s in the suburbs. Loving as they were, they were also products of their time and more fearful of social stigmas and AIDS than the consequences of not fully accepting their son for who he is. In one particularly devastating conversation, Dad apologizes to Adam for not coming into his room when he was crying. One could see this making a good double feature with "The Iron Claw," in films that make the undeniable case for fathers being more affectionate with their sons in very different ways. It's quite the Christmas tearjerker but also provides moments of levity and joy and fun, with both Mum and Dad and Harry. The most authentically sad stories aren't exclusively sad, after all. Haigh dares audiences to meet "All of Us Strangers" on its own astral plane as we whiplash between past and present in a dreamy 35mm haze of nightclubs and '80s sweaters. Things aren't wrapped up in a sitcom bow, either. These wounds are still very much open, but perhaps now more likely to turn to scars than to fester. "All of Us Strangers," a Searchlight Pictures release in select theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "language, some drug use and sexual content." Running time: 105 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: A helicopter father flies his duck family south in 'Migration' By JAKE COYLE December 20, 2023. 12:02 PM EST --- Illumination, maker of "Despicable Me," "Sing" and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," has built its animation empire by mostly staying close to a child-like outlook. Illumination's in-house mascots, the Minions, are basically themselves careening toddlers. But the studio's latest, "Migration," carries a faintly more parental perspective. Its central character is a father duck, Mack Mallard (Kumail Nanjiani), whose fears and paranoia have kept his feathered family rooted to a small New England pond. But after much cajoling from his wife (Elizabeth Banks) and two ducklings (Caspar Jennings, Tresi Gazal), Mack and company take flight for their first winter migration south to Jamaica. "Migration" is vividly animated with warm cartoon tones that would do Daffy proud. But it never quite spreads its wings. Stories of overly cautious moms or dads turned adventurers are not exactly fresh material, even if it is atypical that a helicopter parent like Mack can actually fly. Written by "White Lotus" creator Mike White, "Migration" - a family road trip movie sans the road - mostly comes off as a gentle suggestion to take that Caribbean vacation you've been putting off. White, having mocked lavish trips to Hawaii and Italy on his HBO series, has less satire for the Mallards' excursion to Jamaica - though the journey to get there is certainly perilous. Once the family sets off, with Uncle Dan (Danny DeVito) in tow, their stops include a fearful night with a bug-eyed heron (Carol Kane) who makes them a bed in a frying pan; a New York encounter with a flock of pigeons and their tough-talking leader (Awkwafina); a parrot (Keegan-Michael Key) caged by a chef who specializes in duck à l'orange; and a cult-like farm where ducks are being ominously well treated. These are not, you may be thinking, the most salient dangers that await most winged creatures making their way south. Loss of sanctuary or fluctuating climate are no issues here, though the duck à l'orange chef, who has his own helicopter, proves to be a surprisingly regular threat. It's around then that "Migration" begins to feel more like a wild goose chase. That's not the worst thing for a holiday family movie, though it happens to make "Migration" very comfortably the second-best heron-featuring movie in theaters right now. Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" is far richer in both its imagination and its menagerie of avian life. Possibly sensing "Migration" needed a little boost, a "Despicable Me" short is playing along with it: "Mooned," in which the Minions get a taste of zero gravity. "Migration" is directed by the French filmmaker Benjamin Renner, who crafted the enchanting 2012 film "Ernest and Celestine" with the delicacy of a cherished children's book. That touch is harder to discern in "Migration." (For a truly magical French-made movie on the subject, seek out the 2001 documentary "Winged Migration.") But considering migration today is a word so often accompanied by crisis, there's pleasant enough diversion in Renner's film. Like Illumination's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," the movie's most abundant resource is its lush sense of color. Though that's not enough to turn the tide on the long-running duck season, wabbit season debate, the superb plumage of "Migration" makes for fine bird watching. "Migration," a Universal release in theaters Dec. 22, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action/peril and mild rude humor. Running time: 92 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Auto pioneer Enzo Ferrari gets a solid biopic but it doesn't make the heart race By MARK KENNEDY December 18, 2023. 1:55 PM EST --- Napoleon Bonaparte. Leonard Bernstein. Willy Wonka. Aquaman - there are a ton of Guy Movie Heroes out there as 2023 ends. And yet up zooms another - in "Ferrari." Director Michael Mann has put his stylish spotlight on yet one more stoic, brilliant and broken uber-masculine dudes, Enzo Ferrari. The movie is set during a turbulent few months in 1957 when the Italian automaker's private and professional lives threatened to careen out of control. It's a solid vehicle but it will leave you, well, unmoved. "Ferrari" has excellent work by Adam Driver as Ferrari, aged up two decades with grey at his temple, sunglasses clamped to his head at all times and a frosty demeanor. When we meet him, Ferrari is at a crossroads. He needs to ramp up production and sell hundreds of cars a year or risk bankrupting the company that he and his wife, Laura, have built from the ashes of world war. Enzo and Laura are still recovering from losing a son to muscular dystrophy but she doesn't know that Mr. Ferrari has another family - a girlfriend (Shailene Woodley, great but wrong here) who has given birth to a secret son. Laura is played by Penélope Cruz, whose grief is profound, her eyes heavy and her gait plodding, possibly overacting. Laura knows her husband is a cad but the rule is he must be home before the maid arrives with the morning coffee. It's a signal that the surfaces of things matter. The private and public lives of Ferrari will ultimately come to a head with the results of the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia. If Ferrari has a good showing - and embarrasses competitor Maserati - he can fill orders and everything is buono. If not, disastro. Most of Mann's toolkit is here - slick and moody camerawork, a poetic surrounding and heightened use of music, even the car porn of "Miami Vice." But "Ferrari" - despite Mann's leaning on Italian opera - fails to ignite. One scene split between high Mass while simultaneously drivers zip through a track doesn't work no matter how high the volume is pushed. Part of the problem is Troy Kennedy Martin's script, which tries to have it both ways, a domestic drama and also some kinetic, superb race scenes, with thick metal gears scraping, engines roaring and brave goggle-wearing drivers risking their necks at 130 mph. Ferrari himself is on the sidelines, barking orders, and so he's lost in the second half, while we're never really invested in the five drivers he has sent out to represent the brand. Distance is a strange part of the movie and viewers will fight to find a heart in the cool elegance. Driver does the best an actor can to reveal the warmth inside Ferrari, who seems most vulnerable alone in the crypt of his son. Outside, he screams things like "I must have total control" and demands his drivers have "deadly passion." The movie tends to lose itself - maybe fetishize - Italian artistry: tailored shirts, fountain pens, curving exhaust manifolds, cappuccino cups and the gloriousness of Italy's cobble-street cities. Over it all hangs loss - sons, brothers and drivers die - so that fresh deaths are almost run-of-the-mill. Ferrari doesn't miss a beat when he loses a key employee; he hires another even before the body is cold. "We all know that death is nearby," he says. But the viewer is not so callous and a horrific event during the big race unmoors the movie. The end drifts off unresolved and tragically rerouted, it's engine broken. Failure has been snatched from the jaws of victory. The fact that we know the future of Ferrari - it will produce graceful, expensive roadsters lusted after and insulted in equal turns - takes away some of the jeopardy. It's also hard to root for a rich CEO with a mistress. If anything, this is a movie that will make you hit the gas a little harder coming home. "Ferrari," a Neon release that drives into theaters on Christmas Day, is rated R for "for some violent content/graphic images, sexual content and language." Running time: 130 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In harrowing 'Zone of Interest,' the Holocaust's evils are cloaked in mundanities By JOCELYN NOVECK December 14, 2023. 9:14 AM EST --- It's just a woman trying on a fur coat alone in her room, and sampling a lipstick. It's just a few friends discussing toothpaste orders over coffee in the kitchen. It's just a housewife showing off her new garden and children's pool, or a dad taking his kids fishing in a river. The crucial context is that these scenes are occurring only a stone wall away from the gas chambers and crematoriums of Auschwitz. And it's their very mundanity that makes them evil - the "banality of evil," to use Hannah Arendt's well-known phrase. In his meticulous and harrowing film "The Zone of Interest," writer-director Jonathan Glazer has found a way to convey evil without ever depicting the horror itself. But though it escapes our eyes, the horror assaults our senses in other, deeper ways. How does one even begin to depict the Holocaust? The question has challenged filmmakers for eight decades. Attempts to humanize the horror often lose sight of the scale of the genocide. And efforts to do justice to the unimaginable scale can lose sight of the human suffering. Glazer has chosen a different route. Shooting, incredibly, on location, his entry point is an ordinary German couple trying to build a prosperous life for their family. It just happens to be at Auschwitz. And it just happens to be Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the notorious real-life former commandant of the camp, and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, brilliant in a terribly difficult role). Höss spends his days overseeing the "processing" of trainloads of people, most sent directly to the gas chambers. Then he comes home, where he and Hedwig eat dinner, celebrate birthdays, read their kids bedtime stories, make plans for a spa holiday. Or they go on picnics, which is where we begin, on an idyllic afternoon, the Höss family picking berries and sunning themselves. As darkness falls, they head back to their pristine two-story villa on the camp's outskirts (in what the Nazis called the "zone of interest"). It takes a while before we see the telltale signs: the camp watchtower, and later the flames blackening the sky. But we do hear sounds. Awful sounds. Dogs barking. Gunshots. Cries of fear, yelling. And the ugly roar - is it the belching chimney, or the arriving trains, or both? It all melds together, and you can't get it out of your head. (Mica Levi wrote the chilling score.) Hedwig surely hears all this. And so, we wonder what she's thinking as she takes a nice fur coat into the bedroom and models it in the mirror, finding it to her liking, and ordering her maid to repair the lining. The subtext, not spelled out: The coat, and lipstick in the pocket, is from a Jewish prisoner, no longer alive. Soon we hear chatter over coffee in the kitchen, about toothpaste. Hedwig has found a diamond hidden in a tube - those prisoners are crafty, she says - and so she is "ordering" more toothpaste, again turning the mundane into the truly hideous. Nearby, between Rudolf and some visiting businessmen, the chatter is perhaps more consequential, yet just as incongruous. They are discussing a more efficient model of oven - the best mass cremation system money can buy, you might say. The words "burning," "cooling" and "reloading" are heard; the word "murder" is not. Life continues: An outing with the kids on a tranquil nearby river in a new kayak, Dad's birthday gift, leads to an unexpected unpleasantness. Standing in the river fishing, Höss realizes that human remains are floating by. Yet Hedwig Höss loves her home. She proudly shows off her growing garden, with its small swimming pool and wooden slide, to her visiting mother, who murmurs supportively: "You've really landed on your feet, my child." Hedwig is proud. Her husband calls her "the Queen of Auschwitz," she notes. Adapting loosely from the Martin Amis novel of the same name, but choosing a real-life protagonist, Glazer spent years combing through records to piece together the Höss family history, and built his set for their home some 200 yards from where the real one stood. The meticulousness with which Glazer and production designer Chris Oddy render this home - with its baby blue-colored beds in the kids' room, only feet from putrid camp barracks - is an achievement. Glazer also has set up multiple surveillance-style cameras, tracking different pieces of action, and the effect is that of a documentary, with dialogue that often feels unscripted. As for what happens over the wall, we see Höss there only once, in tight closeup. Hedwig certainly never crosses over. "They'll have to drag me out of here," she says, when her husband tells her they're being transferred out. And she demands successfully to stay at Auschwitz, with the children. "We're living how we dreamed we would," she says. (Glazer found evidence from a former gardener that such a conversation happened.) The film ends just as Höss learns - in what amounts to a promotion - that he'll return to Auschwitz to step up the Final Solution with the annihilation of Hungary's Jews, arriving at the rate of 12,000 a day. And the real-life Höss did return, to implement more mass murder (he was later executed for war crimes), and to his wife, who'd found a way to grow beautiful flowers regardless of what was happening on the very same soil. Surely few of us can imagine modeling a fur coat ripped from a doomed prisoner. But what Glazer is trying to tell us with such scenes - and also in his jolting final minutes - is that history is full of examples of ordinary, unremarkable people finding ways to block out the suffering of others. And that if we always assume we are so vastly different, we may be losing the chance to learn from the past. "The Zone of Interest," an A24 release, has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association "for thematic material, some suggestive material and smoking." Running time: 105 minutes. Four stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Jeffrey Wright is brilliant in the smart and funny satire 'American Fiction' By LINDSEY BAHR December 13, 2023. 3:45 PM EST --- Jeffrey Wright's Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is at the end of his rope at the beginning of "American Fiction," a crowd-pleaser that's both funny and smart in its satire of race, media, artists, identity politics and even Hollywood. It opens in theaters this week. A classic frustrated artist, Monk is a professor and an author who writes literary stories that he wants to see in the world. He's not interested in race, or at least the kind of "Black misery porn" stories that seem to be omnipresent, whether it's in the Black history month advertisement on television with images of addicts and slaves, or at a book convention. The latest hit that has him fuming is a book called "We's Lives In Da Ghetto," written by a comfortably upper middle class Black woman (Issa Rae) who gives interviews about how dismayed she was in her post-college job at a literary agency that she didn't see stories about "her people." But exploitative and demeaning as they are, those are also the ones that get the book deals, that sell, that draw the big crowds at book events, that get the movie deals. Monk's books, smart as they are, don't - until one drunken night he writes a parody of the kind of Black novel he hates, under a pseudonym, and suddenly becomes a sensation. Cord Jefferson, in his directorial debut, establishes the movie's tone well right off the bat in scene in which a white girl is offended that Monk has written a certain word, all seven letters of it, on the blackboard. "With all due respect, Britney, I got over it. I'm pretty sure you can too," he says. When she pushes back, Jefferson cuts to a closeup of Wright growling before a quick cut to Britney's exit. We overhear Monk in the background angrily asking the remaining students if they actually want to talk about the reading. Monk does not suffer fools and seems incapable of not saying exactly what he feels at any given moment, but he's also rubbed a few too many people the wrong way. A few minutes in, he finds himself on an unwanted mandatory break, in Boston, with his family: Mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams), sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown). This family is complex and struggling - who isn't - but not in the ways that the novels Monk hates always seem to want Black families to be. Lisa's a family planning doctor trying to recover financially from a divorce and take care of her quickly deteriorating mother. Cliff is also a doctor, a plastic surgeon, discovering after a marriage to a woman that he likes men. They all have lingering trauma from their dead father, worries about money and how they'll afford a care facility for their mom. Jefferson adapted the story from Percival Everett's "Erasure," which remains relevant 20 years later. It is particularly withering in its send up of white people clamoring for their idea of authentic Black stories, like the literary agent Paula Bateman (Miriam Shor) and the film producer Wiley (a very funny Adam Brody whose character might be a spiritual continuation of his "Thank You For Smoking" assistant). Wiley is currently working on a film called "Plantation Annihilation" in which the ghosts of slaves go on a murderous rampage. While it's not exactly subtle, it's also not entirely simplistic either - I'm not sure the film ever really reconciles Rae's character in particular, much to the frustration of Monk (and us). Still, it's hardly a surprise that "American Fiction" won the people's choice prize at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this year. The film is immensely watchable, staged without flash or pretention, that relies on its sharp script and talented and charismatic actors to carry the audience through. Wright is particularly delightful at the center of it all as he navigates a new relationship as well as the consequences of his lie and how far he's willing to go with it. "American Fiction," an MGM release in theaters Friday and expanding on Dec. 22, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "language throughout, some drug use, sexual references and brief violence." Running time: 117 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Review: Timothée Chalamet waltzes through the whimsical 'Wonka' but Roald Dahl's daring is missing By JAKE COYLE December 13, 2023. 11:52 AM EST --- The original 1971 "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" may have been a delicious dream, lined with trees of gumballs and fields of lollipops. But never has there been a more cautionary tale about the danger of too much of a good thing. Magical as that Roald Dahl-scripted film was, it remains lodged in our imaginations less for its sugary goodness than the way darkness, satire and even mania ebb around its edges - flowing down that nightmarish watery tunnel and pooling somewhere in the back of Gene Wilder's eyes. Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe may bubble with laughter all the way up the ceiling, but there's a spinning metal blade up there. "Wonka," the latest attempt to revisit Dahl's masterwork, bears no such danger. It's going more for the taste of an Everlasting Gobstopper - an ingenious confection that piles flavor on top of flavor. Tasty though that can be, you miss the daring of Dahl in the more wanly whimsical "Wonka." The original 1971 "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" may have been a delicious dream, lined with trees of gumballs and fields of lollipops. But never has there been a more cautionary tale about the danger of too much of a good thing. Magical as that Roald Dahl-scripted film was, it remains lodged in our imaginations less for its sugary goodness than the way darkness, satire and even mania ebb around its edges - flowing down that nightmarish watery tunnel and pooling somewhere in the back of Gene Wilder's eyes. Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe may bubble with laughter all the way up the ceiling, but there's a spinning metal blade up there. "Wonka," the latest attempt to revisit Dahl's masterwork, bears no such danger. It's going more for the taste of an Everlasting Gobstopper - an ingenious confection that piles flavor on top of flavor. Tasty though that can be, you miss the daring of Dahl in the more wanly whimsical "Wonka." And you might fairly wonder: What's so wrong that? Who doesn't want a cynicism-free, candy-colored charm overload? "Wonka" may be too much of a good thing, but for many (particularly kids) it will surely, well, delight. Even for a movie predicated on retooling IP, "Wonka" comes across as remarkably sincere in its feel-good aspirations. In the film's opening scenes, Willy (Chalamet) breezes into a frigid, unnamed European-styled city, singing "I've got nothing to offer but my chocolate and a hatful of dreams." He arrives like a too-confident traveling salesman, eager to sell his chocolate to the world. Immediately fleeced of his few coins, Willy sets down on a bench for the night and pulls a candle out of his hat that he lights with a gentle blow. He's offered a bed for the night at inn. There, the innkeeper Mrs. Scrubit (Olivia Colman) and her henchman Bleacher (Tom Davis) trap needy drifters into years of indentured labor with elaborate contracts. This Wonka can't read, a twist that I doubt Dahl would have endorsed, given how much, for him, reading and imagination were intertwined. Before Willy has even gotten started, he finds himself imprisoned with a handful of other similarly misfortunate souls, including the young Noodle (a very natural Calah Lane). But inspired by his late mother (Sally Hawkins, seen in tender childhood flashbacks), Willy isn't much daunted in his dream to open a shop alongside other candy makers in the Galeries Gourmet. He manages to escape repeatedly to dazzle customers with chocolates of exotic ingredients before slipping through manhole covers to make a getaway, like Harry Lime in "The Third Man." Sensing the potential power of Wonka's enchanting chocolates (some cause levitation), the monopolizing local chocolatiers - Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), Prodnose (Matt Lucas) and Fickelgruber (Mathew Baynton) - band together to squash Willy with the aid of a chocolate-addicted police chief (Keegan-Michael Key), whose waistline expands throughout the film. That bit, like most others in the film, doesn't quite land despite the good cheer it's delivered with. "Wonka" assembles a wide array of top-notch comic actors - not only Key and Colman but Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa; Simon Farnaby (who co-wrote the script with King) as a security guard, mirroring his "Paddington 2" cameo; and Rowan Atkinson as a corrupt priest. But most of the jokes in "Wonka" are as memorable as its songs. The gag of Grant, the "Paddington 2" MVP, smothered in orange makeup and green hair as a proudly debonair Oompa Loompa, is never quite as clever as the movie thinks it is. (On the press trail for the film, Grant has been 10 times funnier. ) Neil Hannon's songs are generic, but Chalamet sings them well. When a few notes from Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's "Pure Imagination" float by, they only serve as a reminder to how much better the tunes were in the original. I may be being too hard on "Wonka." This is an eminently pleasant movie, propped up by its indefatigable good cheer and King's immaculately tidy craftsmanship. The costumes (Lindy Hemming), cinematography (Chung-hoon Chung) and, in particular, the ingenious production design (Nathan Crowley) craft a wonder-filled backdrop. A film doesn't need scenery this good for Chalamet to carry it. His Wonka is simpler and brighter than Wilder's, more a figure of pure optimism, like Paddington. But we've also had some exemplary Dahl adaptations lately that didn't forget that worlds of imagination come alive when the cruelties of life and of childhood aren't just paid lip service. (Veruca Salt or Mike Teavee, for instance, wouldn't fit anywhere in "Wonka.") I'm thinking of Wes Anderson's inventive Dahl-adapted shorts, released this fall on Netflix, and Matthew Warchus' terrific "Matilda the Musical," from last year. "Wonka" is a more mixed addition: More tailored for kids yet less about childhood. "Wonka," a Warner Bros. release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for "some violence, mild language and thematic elements." Running time: 116 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In 'Poor Things,' Emma Stone takes an unusual path to enlightenment By LINDSEY BAHR December 6, 2023. 4:46 PM EST --- It is sickly hilarious to make a movie in which so much consensual sex is had, often so gleefully, that is not the least bit sexy. Though Bella Baxter's insatiable libido might be her guiding light at first in "Poor Things," sexual liberation (or "furious jumping," as she calls it) is only part of this fantastical, anarchic journey to consciousness. Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and his star, Emma Stone, have a good and strange thing going whether she's playing a striving scullery maid who works her way into the favor of Queen Anne, or a re-animated Victorian woman finding independence. Stone helps make his black humor more accessible, and he creates unorthodox opportunities for her to play and stretch. We, the audience, are the benefactors. "Poor Things" was not a whole cloth invention. It is an adaptation of Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel, done by "The Favourite" screenwriter Tony McNamara whose edges and wit haven't dulled and in fact flourishes outside the cruelty of the previous film. Don't worry, the humor is plenty dark here, but self-actualization looks good on them. In this depraved and not so subtle fairy tale, men see Bella as a thing to possess and control. Her creator, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a mad scientist with violent scars all over his face from a childhood as test subject for his own father, wants to hide her away from the corrupting influences of the world. His horrified student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), enlisted to study Bella, wants her to be his wife. And the dandy attorney Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) sees a sex doll, someone with the potential to be as wild and adventuresome as him and eschew the conventional stuffiness of their time. Everyone assumes that Bella will not be too much of a problem. And everyone is wrong. It wouldn't be a Lanthimos movie without some immense, irreconcilable discomfort, like using a highly sexualized woman with the mind of a toddler for comedic purposes. But this is hardly the first fairy tale to exploit its heroine for her innocence or naivete. Does it make it better if that's the point? Is it making light of second-degree rape? Is it the film's responsibility to answer to? Or is this the prickly post-film debate that everyone is supposed to be having? That is something only the individual can answer. Stone moves like a doll who hasn't quite figured out she has joints yet and talks in incomplete, childish sentences. She is not actually mimicking a toddler, it's something weirder and more fantastical than that. In "La La Land" she moved as though walking on air. In "Poor Things," there is a marionette quality. And Bella evolves quickly. She learns to walk and speak and think and masturbate and dance and read and philosophize about inequalities. It does not ever occur to her to not do, or say, exactly what she pleases in this opera of appetites. And her evolution is appropriately messy, taking her to Portugal, Alexandria and Paris, as she figures out her likes and dislikes. You almost want to see her go up against the mean teens in Barbie. Social mores really are the dullest things. This story exists in a Victorian dream/nightmare, a vision so stuffed with fantasy it reminded me of "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." But it is undoubtedly among the year's most sumptuous visual delights with production design by James Price and Shona Heath, and costumes by Holly Waddington. Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan again employ the fisheye lens that they used in "The Favourite." It's extra, but at least it makes more sense in this purposely disorienting world. While it is Stone's movie, all the supporting men are exemplary and unexpected, especially Ruffalo who is so deliriously fun and funny that it's almost criminal that he hasn't been unleashed like this before. "Poor Things," a Searchlight Pictures release in select theaters Friday and everywhere on Dec. 22, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "gore, disturbing material, graphic nudity, language and strong sexual content." Running time: 141 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Review: Swan song or not, Hayao Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is a master surveying his empire By JAKE COYLE December 5, 2023. 6:39 PM EST --- When Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said in his introductory remarks: "We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies." You might be tempted to call that hyperbole, but - this being Miyazaki, the legendary anime filmmaker of "Spirited Away," "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" - it's closer to fact. The occurrence of a new film from Miyazaki deserves to be treated like the coming of a seldom-seen comet or something rarer still, like a winning New York Jets season. Ten years ago, Miyazaki released the profoundly personal "The Wind Rises." It was then expected to be his swan song. But the 82-year-old filmmaker - known for his propensity for retiring again and again - soon announced that he would make one more. A decade of anticipation followed. Then, just as "The Boy and the Heron" finally debuted, word came that Miyazaki is pondering yet another movie. As long as he keeps extending, so does our chance to keep returning to some of the most magical realms of animation. Watching "The Boy and the Heron," which opens nationwide Friday, is like returning to a faintly familiar dreamland. Only, since the only location here is really Miyazaki's boundless imagination, it's less the feeling of stepping back into a recognizable place than it is revisiting a well-remembered sense of discombobulation and wonder. "The Boy and the Heron," loosely adapted from Genzaburō Yoshino's 1937 novel "How Do You Live?," first feels like a familiar setup for Miyazaki. A young protagonist is harboring an inexpressible grief while traveling to a new home. In the film's indelible, nightmarish opening scenes, a boy's mother dies in a Tokyo hospital fire amid bombing late in World War II. Flames fill the frame. A year later, the boy, Mahito (voiced by Soma Santoki in the subtitled version I saw) is sent to live in a country estate by his father, who has already found a new wife, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura). She's also the younger sister of Mahito's deceased mother. The basic framework of the story has personal echoes for Miyazaki. As a three-year-old, he was evacuated with his family to the countryside during the war. Mahito is miserable in his new home. He doesn't like his stepmother-to-be and the kids at school are unkind. To escape going to school, he gives himself a head wound. Not unlike the 10-year-old Chihiro of "Spirited Away," who's transported into a fantastical world from an abandoned amusement park en route to her family's new home, Mahito finds a portal to a surreal dimension while ambling around the estate's grounds. He's prodded toward an old tower, built by Mahito's great-uncle, by an ornery gray heron (Masaki Suda) who won't leave him alone. Think of herons and you might picture elegant, long-legged creatures, but this one is more of an annoying pest. It's also a kind of disguise, because a big-nosed man peels back the bird's head like a child momentarily taking off a Hollywood costume. He becomes something of a mischievous guide to Mahito. In Miyazaki films, guardian angels seldom look the part. (The English dub versions includes a voice cast of Christian Bale, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.) Once Mahito makes his way into the tower, he lands in a fantasy world that, for its pure vividness, rivals anything Lewis Carroll ever dreamed up. There are armies of giant parakeets who protect a Parakeet King and little balls of sprites called the Waruwaru that float serenely to the sky. Almost like a Miyazaki greatest hits, "The Boy and the Heron" is filled with little fluffy orbs and fantastical oversized creatures, with drips of blood and drops of tears. It is, though, more avian than any previous Miyazaki movie, which tended to lead into wooded forests or watery seas. "The Boy and the Heron" will be, certainly, a hit among psychedelic-loving bird watchers. But just as in the world above, there is violence and cruelty here, too. (Gird yourself now for the fate of the Waruwaru.) This is less a fantasy to escape to than a parallel world, populated with childlike versions of some of the people in Mahito's life, including his mother. It's a dizzying place that seems just as directly pulled from Miyazaki's subconscious as any other realm he's conjured before. You'll leave "The Boy and the Heron" in disbelief that this, supposedly, is a filmmaker in autumn. It's just as uncompromising a vision, and just as attuned to the experience of childhood. "The Boy and the Heron" eventually drifts toward an aged, long-haired wizard (voiced by Shōhei Hino) who's spent his years holding this strange world together. As it teeters on the brink of collapse, he offers to bequeath his creation and all its responsibilities to Mahito, who instead decides to return to his own world. It's a parting sentiment from Miyazaki, a great sorcerer himself. Here, Miyazaki makes his peace with seeing his own tower crumble, while imploring his legion of followers: Go and create your own worlds, dream your own dreams. Whether it's a final goodbye or not, it's among the most poignant partings of recent cinema. It's a grand culmination of both Miyazaki's extraordinary body of work and of a film that gathers, like a flock, or a symphony, so many of his trademark obsessions. "The Boy and the Heron," a Studio Ghibli release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some violent content/bloody images and smoking. Running time: 124 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'Leave the World Behind' is a terrific blend of thriller, disaster and satire By MARK KENNEDY December 5, 2023. 12:57 PM EST --- Imagine that it's close to midnight and there's a knock at the door of your luxurious weekend rental home. A man is standing there, calmly apologizing. He says it's his home and that he and his daughter need your help. He's also dressed immaculately in a tux. What would you do? Did the tux make a difference? Would the man's race? That early scene is when Netflix's "Leave the World Behind" really kicks into gear and never slackens as this terrific, apocalyptic, psychological thriller races to its conclusion, exploring race, affluence and responsibility along the way. The luxurious home becomes a castle of sorts as the outside world crumbles. The man who says he's the owner tries to explain why he's turned up. "Under the circumstances, we thought you'd understand," he says. But understanding is in short supply here. Adapted from Rumaan Alam's acclaimed novel, the movie is set against an end-of-days disaster in which technology - Wi-Fi, TV, phones, internet - has gone silent due to a cyberattack and there's been a massive blackout. Well-to-do Amanda (a tart Julia Roberts) and her Atlantic magazine-quoting husband Clay (a hangdog Ethan Hawke) must work with the even-more-well-off G.H. (a calmly sophisticated Mahershala Ali) and his savvy daughter Ruth, (a superb Myha'la). The racial divide easily swamps their joint class affiliation. Also along for the disaster are Amanda and Clay's children, a "Friends"-obsessed daughter (a soulful Farrah Mackenzie, who even wears her hair in a "Rachel" 'do) and her older, slightly bratty 16-year-old brother (a brooding Charlie Evans). It's a story brilliantly adapted and directed by Sam Esmail, showrunner of "Mr. Robot," who has made "Leave the World Behind" into a homage of Alfred Hitchcock, complete with the image of a man trying to outrun a crashing plane and using the master's discordant loud music. Esmail, who manages to make a group of deer appear sinister, even makes a Hitchcockian cameo as a corpse on a beach. The director paces the deepening dread flawlessly and there are visual delights throughout, like when the family starts off on their adventure with their car exiting at "Point Comfort." The camera often swirls and soars through glass cracks or holes in roofs like an uneasy bird, or parks itself at strange angles. The mysterious catastrophe - ships beach themselves, driverless cars crash like lemmings - sloughs away any pretense at civility, leaving the adults and children to turn on each other. Amanda, in particular, reveals a dark side and her husband - before the disaster, a can't-we-all-get-along bro - abandons a hysterical survivor by the side of the road. Community is shattered, guns come out and protect-at-all-costs is the motto of the day. The acting is first rate and it needs to be - this is a drama of manners and secrets, and each sigh or glance reveals so much. We haven't seen a nasty Roberts character in a while and Ali balances sophistication and slyness artfully. Together, they have some of the film's best scenes. But a warning of sorts: It's best to click play on your remote knowing that the movie is more a satire than a true action-survival movie - the open-ended ending may divide viewers. Click anyway because the journey never drags. And don't be surprised if there's a jump in sales of survival tools this holiday season. "Leave the World Behind," a Netflix release that starts streaming Friday, is rated R for "some sexual content, brief bloody images, language and drug use." Running time: 141 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Review: In concert film 'Renaissance,' Beyoncé offers glimpse into personal life during world tour By JONATHAN LANDRUM JR. December 1, 2023. 10:07 AM EST --- LOS ANGELES (AP) - In Beyoncé's concert film, she describes her recent Renaissance World Tour as being run like a machine: From lighting to set design, the superstar had a hand in everything production-related to ensure her stadium tour exceeded expectations after four years of preparation. As a perfectionist, Beyoncé was tirelessly determined - working almost 50 days straight - to create an epic concert experience. This becomes clear in her movie "Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé," which chronicles the massive tour in support of her seventh studio album. Written, directed and produced by Beyoncé, "Renaissance" perfectly captures her dazzling performances for the big screen and includes some intimate behind-the-scenes footage from the normally private singer, who has rarely done interviews in the past decade. Beyoncé released her nearly three-hour "Renaissance" movie through AMC Theaters in similar fashion as the "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" film, which opened with a record-breaking $97 million domestically for a concert film last month. But unlike Swift, whose project primarily focused on her onstage performances, Beyoncé offers more insight into her personal life. "I'm really excited for everyone to see the process," she says in the film. With "Renaissance," Beyoncé displays more of her human side like in her 2019 Netflix film "Homecoming," which delved into the singer headlining the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This time, she goes a step further into her story as arguably music's hardest-working performer, who attempts to juggle being a mother of three while she maintains her mental and physical fortitude during her tour. Beyoncé expressed frustration with challenges to her lofty aspirations for her tour and felt she wasn't being heard because she's a Black woman. The tour ultimately grossed around $500 million, according to Billboard. She opens up about having surgery on her knee, which forced her into rehabilitation a month before her first opening show in Stockholm. Unlike her tour, Beyoncé confesses, she's "not a machine." But through her aches and pains, Beyoncé - who is the most decorated Grammy artist in history - showed up and performed at a very high level. It's what she demanded of herself and others who mirrored her mentality to make each show come into fruition. The film showcases a few big-name performers who accompanied Beyoncé onstage, including Megan Thee Stallion in Houston. During her Los Angeles stint, Kendrick Lamar was a special guest along with Diana Ross, who sang to Beyoncé for her 42nd birthday. But out of all the celebrity appearances, the one who stole the show was Beyoncé's 11-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, who made her presence felt as a background dancer. Initially, the singer was opposed to pushing Blue into the limelight of performing in front of tens of thousands. "She told me she was ready to perform, and I told her no," Beyoncé says in the film. She eventually agreed to give her daughter one chance to show her stuff. Her first performance, however, was subjected to heavy criticism on social media. But Blue Ivy used that to train harder. She gained confidence as the tour progressed and gained more standing ovations each time she hit the stage. Blue Ivy's growth brought joy to Beyoncé and to Mathew Knowles, the proud grandfather who is shown saying, "Now, that's a Knowles!" During a stop in Houston, Beyoncé along with her mother, Tina Knowles, drove around her old Third Ward neighborhood before they stopped by her childhood home. The return to her hometown marked another reunion between Beyoncé and all the members of the girl group Destiny's Child - which included Kelly Rowland, Michelle Williams, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson, who was once ousted from the group. Now, it appears there's peace among them. There were no words exchanged on camera except for a collective hug, which Beyoncé called during her narration a "new birth for us. A lot of healing." Beyoncé along with her mother shared heartfelt moments of the singer's late uncle Johnny - a Black gay man who introduced her to house music as a child and made her a prom dress. She dedicated the "Renaissance" album to him. The film squeezes in Beyoncé's appreciation for her devoted Beyhive fanbase who are often shown in the audience in various cities. During her shows, she expresses her gratitude for them, calling them "beautiful faces." Despite the presence of jams like "Alien Superstar," "Church Girl" and "Cuff It," not every song performed on tour made the cut for the film. And that's just fine. "Renaissance" is more about getting a glimpse into Beyoncé's life - even for just a little bit. "Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé," an AMC release, is not rated. Running time: 168 minutes. Four stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'Eileen,' a wonderful novel about an 'invisible' young lady becomes an oddball film By MARK KENNEDY November 28, 2023. 1:53 PM EST --- Something strange has happened to Eileen Dunlop, and we don't just mean the plot of "Eileen." The adaptation of novelist Ottessa Moshfegh's delicious coming-of-age heroine has had a weird birth onto film. The plot and setting haven't changed: It's late 1964 in a frigid coastal town in Massachusetts. "Everybody's kind of angry here - it's Massachusetts," Eileen explains in one her best lines. She works as a clerk at a juvenile corrections facility, goes home to an alcoholic dad and repeats. Her whole world is a prison. In print, she is dark and self-obsessed and deliciously willing to poke into every squeamish horror, even her own "folds and caverns." On celluloid, she is just a plain, anti-social Jane. In print in one scene, she scratches her nether regions and pointedly uses the unwashed fingers to shake hands with a boss. In the film, she just walks away. Eileen has been neutered. It's not clear what has happened since Moshfegh - along with Luke Goebel - is a screenwriter as well as a producer. Moshfegh's original creation is a "fabulous shoplifter" who keeps a dead field mouse in the glove box of her smoky Dodge Coronet and loves National Geographic issues that feature unusual, painful tribal rituals. None of that made it to the film. That leaves her too inert, too passive - wide-eyed without the naughty. "Eileen" was always going to be a hard book to adapt, especially since it's so internal. It's really a character study for most of the way, then events get jolted by an unexpected outsider - a real deus ex machina - and then it evolves into a low-stakes noir thriller, right down to the film's too heavy Hitchcockian end credits. Thomasin McKenzie playing the titular character has a lot to do and she does it admirably, appearing mouse-ish from the outside, pulling pubic hair out of a bar of soap with delightful glee and taking the occasional flight of fancy by dreaming of executing her dad or having a hot and heavy tryst with a guard. "Get a life, Eileen. Get a clue," says her unamusing dad. The deus ex machina here is Anne Hathaway as the glamorous Harvard-trained psychiatrist Rebecca Saint John, who drinks cocktails, smokes furiously - "It's a nasty habit. That's why I like it" - dances alone in bars and doesn't buy any '50s conventions. "I don't get what's popular," she says. Hathaway could have pulled back the throttle a little, often overawing McKenzie's mouse. Hathaway's sophisticated character is the key to unlocking Eileen, and the young woman begins mimicking the older, often wearing her dead mother's clothes as she smokes or drinks martinis. They have a sort of flirtation - game recognizing game. "You really think you're a normal person?" the psychiatrist asks Eileen. While director William Oldroyd often gets lost in the heavy darkness of noir, the screenwriters have some fabulous lines, like when Saint John tells Eileen: "You remind me of a girl in a Dutch painting. You have a strange face. It's plain but fascinating - with a beautiful turbulence." Or when gin-soaked dad - a great Shea Whigham - calmly destroys his daughter: "Some people, they're the real people. Like in a movie. They're the ones you watch, they're the ones making moves. And other people, they're just there, filling the space," he says. "That's you, Eileen. You're one of them." And that's the fate of "Eileen," too, unfortunately. By sanding off all the dark human quirks from their deeply human heroine, the filmmakers have left us a film that's just filling the space. "Eileen," a Neon release in theaters Dec. 1, is rated R for "violent content, sexual content and language." Running time: 97 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Review: Bradley Cooper's 'Maestro' leaves many notes of Bernstein unplayed By JAKE COYLE November 21, 2023. 6:37 PM EST --- Bradley Cooper's "Maestro," a high-wire act of a biopic, leaps constantly between on stage and off, flying through Leonard Bernstein's very public life as a conductor while diving into his more private marriage to Felicia Montealegre. How each side of Bernstein's existence interacts with the other is the tension and harmony of "Maestro." Which is authentic? Which a performance? Resolving those dichotomies is, thankfully, not the aim of Cooper's admirably ambitious if performative drama about the musical conscience of 20th century America. Bernstein's polymorphous life was spread between his family life and a string of male lovers, just as it was between conducting and the solitary toil of composing. "Maestro" resists neat conclusions about any facet of an expansively contradictory life. "If you carry around both personalities, I suppose that means you become a schizophrenic and that's the end of it," Bernstein (Cooper) says with a laugh in a TV interview alongside Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). "Maestro," which debuts Wednesday in theaters before streaming next month on Netflix, isn't a cradle-to-the-grave biopic, though it doesn't avoid some of the genre's standard pitfalls, either. It's largely set around the beginning and end of his relationship with Montealegre, an actor he first meets at a party. "Hello, I'm Lenny," he says, grinning from the piano bench. It's a framework with some benefits -- no matter what the title says, this is Mulligan's movie - that also omits much of Bernstein's most lasting accomplishments. There is little here of music making, generally, and virtually none of "West Side Story," "Candide," "On the Waterfront" or all those influential TV broadcasts. Fans such as Lydia Tár may not approve. But "Maestro" begins, thrillingly, in a black-and-white blur. Characters exit scenes like they're falling through trap doors, a surreal swirl propelled by the verve of Bernstein's music. In the first scene, a 25-year-old Bernstein is woken with a call notifying him to substitute for Bruno Walter in conducting the New York Philharmonic that night. Enthralled, he pulls open the blinds, slaps, in rhythm, the bare bottom of the man sharing his bed and runs down stairs that magically lead right into Carnegie Hall. It won't be the last time that "Maestro" draws a straight line between lovemaking and music. "If nothing sings in you, then you can't make music," Montealegre will later tell him. Music, no doubt, swells most in the Bernstein of "Maestro" when he's liberated to be himself. On the night of their first date, Bernstein and Montealegre end up, fittingly, on a stage running lines, with one floor lamp casting them in shadow. "Even though you're the king, you're quite taken with me," she says, explaining his characterization. The fiction is quickly borne out, albeit with a foreboding sense of marital trouble. Another headlong sprint between scenes ends with the two rushing onto the stage of "Fancy Free," the Jerome Robbins ballet that will lead to "On the Town." Bernstein, himself, joins the hip-swinging sailors. "Maestro" is, for this roughly first black-and-white hour, wonderfully brisk and free of normal biopic constraints. It's like a dream of 1950s New York modernism. Dialogue moves at an urbane clip. The photography, by Matthew Libatique, dips confidently between intimate exchanges and wide-shot vistas of the Berkshires of Tanglewood or of Central Park. (This is, most definitely, a great Central Park movie, full of romance and encounters along its pathways.) When "Maestro" shifts forward and into color, it loses its brio. The film, which Cooper wrote with Josh Singer, skips over the central decades of Bernstein's accomplishments, taking up residence instead in the early 1970s. By then, Bernstein and Montealegre are married with three children (the oldest, Jamie, is played by Maya Hawke) and a house in Connecticut. But even though Montealegre entered into the marriage without wool over her eyes ("I know exactly who you are," she tells him, early on), all is now discord. Bernstein's dalliances, she tells him, have gotten sloppy. In a Thanksgiving Day argument in their Manhattan apartment overlooking the park, she seethes: "If you're not careful, you're going to die a lonely queen." Right about then, an inflated Snoopy floats past the window, like an eclipse. In scene after scene like this, "Maestro" is staged exquisitely. But even as the film moves from its nervy first hour to its melodramatic set pieces, artifice steadily grips "Maestro." Cooper's Bernstein has come under criticism for the prosthetic nose, but it's other affectations in his performance that smother. It's a sincere performance, thoughtful and dedicated, but it's also mannered and showy, drowning in turtlenecks, cigarettes and accents. But Cooper, a sensitive director, was also wise enough to follow Mulligan's increasingly moving performance. (She gets top billing, too.) The film's slide into family dynamics comes at the expense of Bernstein's larger story, but it yields a beautiful platform for Mulligan to capture a woman too infatuated by her husband to abandon him, but too clear-eyed not to be devasted. "It's my own arrogance to think I could survive on what he could give," she says. It's a powerfully piercing moment, followed by an extended, passionate recreation of Bernstein in 1976 conducting Mahler's Second Symphony. There, gyrating at the podium before an orchestra, the film tells us, may be where Bernstein truly gives all of himself. Some of America's top filmmakers have long been tempted to tackle a film on Bernstein, among them Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg (both credited producers here). But Cooper's film never finds its balance. If Bernstein's sexuality must be the prism through which we view him, why do his male lovers (Matt Bomer makes a brief impression) pass by so fleetingly? "Maestro" is a fine portrait of a complicated marriage. But for a man who contained symphonies, that leaves a lot of notes unplayed. "Maestro," a Netflix release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for some language and drug use. Running time: 129 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Emerald Fennell chronicles a promising young man in audacious, shock-filled 'Saltburn' By JOCELYN NOVECK November 21, 2023. 9:55 AM EST --- Two years ago Emerald Fennell stood on the Oscars stage hoisting her writing trophy for "Promising Young Woman," a scathing look at rape culture and a balancing act of wit, style, shock value, audacity, great acting and pitch-black humor - plus a timely #MeToo message. That's a lot for a debut film, and we didn't even mention the best director nomination. Not surprisingly, anticipation has been hot for the writer-director's next effort (as an actor, she's already graced a little film this year called "Barbie," in the suitably dark role of pregnant, discontinued Midge). Now "Saltburn" is here, and the results are enticing but decidedly mixed - perhaps because Fennell seems to be trying to one-up herself by leaning on the shock value, at the eventual expense of other storytelling elements. Make no mistake, the clever writing is here, as is the style, the sleek technique, and some terrific performances (Rosamund Pike is especially delicious in a supporting role). What's missing, or muddled, is the message - and perhaps even more, the heart. After two hours of cringing and gasping in both awe and discomfort, we're left admiring the "how" of what she's doing but still figuring out the "why." One thing that's not lacking: beauty. Unsurprisingly, Fennell excels at lush production values, especially in presenting the imposing, seductive and somewhat debauched Saltburn - no, not a person, but a country manor! This is England, and a story of class dynamics, so it's surely fitting that the star be a piece of real estate. (And let's just say, the phrase "real estate porn" takes on an added dimension here.) We start, though, at Oxford. Here we meet our main character, Oliver Quick (and if that doesn't take you straight back to Dickens, nothing will). It's 2006, and Oliver (Barry Keoghan, ever-watchable and unpredictable) is a freshman on scholarship, feeling out of his league. At his first tutorial, he announces he read all 50 books on the summer reading list. His bemused teacher tells him nobody does that. Oliver soon learns that life at Oxford isn't about what you've read, but who you know. In the Hogwarts-style dining hall, he can barely find someone to sit with - only a needy mathematics major. He has no earthly connection to the rest of the privileged, entitled (and in some cases, titled) student body, but aches to fit in. And then aristocratic golden boy Felix appears, like a Greek god. Played by Jacob Elordi, currently appearing as Elvis in "Priscilla," Felix is gorgeous and effortlessly rakish; he seems to have never encountered hardship. Unless you count a flat tire on his bike, which is how Oliver meets him, lending his own bike so Felix can get to class. The two become friends. It's obvious what's in it for Oliver, but what's in it for Felix? That's less clear, but Oliver's home life has been hard. So, when Oliver tells Felix a tragedy has occurred involving his drug-addicted parents, Felix invites him to spend the summer at his family palace, er, home. The family includes Felix's beautiful but unstable sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver), his comically out-of-touch father, Sir James (Richard E. Grant, very funny), and the terrifically droll Pike as Elspeth, Felix's glamorous, clueless mother. Also spending the summer is cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe, excellent) a Saltburn outsider himself - American-born, a person of color - but compared to Oliver an insider, which is crucial. The great Carey Mulligan, Oscar-nominated for "Promising Young Woman," has a welcome cameo as an unwelcome guest. The early Saltburn days are intoxicating. Felix points out the various Rubens portraits, the original Shakespeare folios, that sort of thing. Days are spent lounging languidly on the lawn by the mossy pond. Dinner is black tie, so Oliver needs a loaner jacket and cufflinks. These people even play tennis in tuxes. Then the really crazy stuff starts happening. And we mean Fennell-level crazy. In "Promising Young Woman" there was a slow burn to the shocking, graphic ending. Here, the shocks come early. A few involve bodily fluids. Fennell knows how to startle the most jaded of film audiences - guests at the screening I attended either gasped or giggled in embarrassment. Fennell is also comfortable with the world she seeks to paint. Even if you didn't know beforehand, it's pretty clear from the vividly rendered Oxford scenes that the director attended Oxford herself, and her scenes of student life at that storied institution, seen through outsider Oliver, form the most authentic-feeling part of the film. But how long will Oliver remain an outsider? Will this uncertain and complicated young man, who arrives at the Saltburn gates too early and too naive to have waited for the footmen to collect him at the station, ever fit in, something he covets above all else? That's the question the rest of the movie answers, taking increasingly sinister twists and turns. As if in a garden maze, perhaps? Like any self-respecting, spectacular period mansion, Saltburn has one of those, too, where some key action takes place. More broadly, though, the maze seems to symbolize the effect of this film: pretty, seductive, challenging, forbidding and ultimately confounding. "Saltburn," an Amazon/MGM Studios release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout, some disturbing violent content, and drug use." Running time: 127 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Disney's musical fairy tale 'Wish' is beautiful, but lacking magic By LINDSEY BAHR November 20, 2023. 9:58 AM EST --- Walt Disney Animation's "Wish" is stunning to look at with textured and rich watercolor-inspired animation and easter egg treasures for audiences nostalgic for the classics. But it is also more concept than story: A strained and forgettable attempt to pay homage to the studio's 100 years. The origin of the wishing star is as fine a motivation as any for a jumping off point, but "Wish," directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, seems to have been drawn not from someone's earnest imagination and dreams, but a corporate board trying to reverse-engineer magic and charm. Case in point: In one of the awfully generic songs, "I Am a Star," a cute, talking rabbit chirpily sings to our heroine Asha that "when it comes to the universe, we're all shareholders." Ugh. I'm probably not alone in having learned several vocabulary words from Disney songs as a child, but there is something so dispiriting about hearing the word "shareholders" in what is supposed to be a rallying, inspirational anthem in a fairy tale world where talking goats and magic exist. There is no sign of corporations or public offerings in the Kingdom of Rosas, though that could have been an interesting path to take. Instead, this is a place founded by a guy, Magnifico (Chris Pine), who has the ability to grant wishes (and other magic things, too). Now, you may think you know what a wish is, but this movie needs it to be a little more complicated than that and thus has to explain it over and over again to justify itself. Wishes aren't just small wants, they're everything - your soul, your reason for living - and Magnifico has convinced all his subjects to give him theirs upon their 18th birthday for protection. He stores these wishes in floating orbs in an observatory in his castle, that he'll then grant back to some at a later date. Asha, the lead voiced by Ariana DeBose ("West Side Story" Oscar-winner and the reason "Angela Bassett did the thing" lives rent-free in my head) is a spirted subject of Rosas who is about to turn 18 and give her wish to Magnifico. She is fan No.1 of Rosas and Magnifico, but when she discovers (about 15 minutes into the film) that he doesn't have any intention of granting her 100-year-old grandfather's wish, she turns on him and Rosas and begins an accidental revolution. This is after Asha and Magnifico sing a duet "At All Costs" that is fully a love song about two people but has been shoehorned in here to be about Rosas and the wishes. It's strangely awkward. The original songs, by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice, are slick and poppy and ultimately inoffensive. Their appeal might depend on how you felt about Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's songs for "The Greatest Showman." If you loved those, the "Wish" soundtrack is probably for you. If not, sorry, though "Knowing What I Know Now" is pretty catchy. "Wish" also doesn't seem to have a solid handle on how the lack of these wishes affect the population of Rosas. A few walk around like sleepy shells, but most everyone else seems happy and content even after having volunteered this essential part of their being. Maybe that's the point? But this is a movie that has some surprising parallels (in themes and unresolved storylines) with "Don't Worry Darling" that don't stop at Chris Pine relishing his handsome villain era. The animation really is quite lovely overall and striking after so many years of computer generated smoothness and perfection. But this is also a strange mixture of both styles and the storybook like textures makes some of the characters faces and the star look almost too fake for the world they're in. The star, a speechless innocent, is also lacking a certain spark that might make it as iconic as the filmmakers want it to be. Or perhaps it just has the misfortune of looking too similar to the nihilist star from "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" from earlier this year. "Wish" is harmless holiday programming for the family, but it's strange to watch a movie about celebrating the individual "star" in everyone that feels like it was made by mandate, not a dream. And I would bet that every person who worked on this film probably grew up loving Disney and that each has dozens of ideas more inspired than this to commemorate 100 years and take this company into the future. Maybe next time. "Wish," a Walt Disney Co. release in theaters Tuesday, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for "thematic elements and mild action." Running time: 92 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'Fallen Leaves' is deadpan nirvana By JAKE COYLE November 16, 2023. 5:06 PM EST --- In a movie year rife with grand, three-hour opuses from auteur filmmakers comes a slender 81-minute gem that outclasses them all. Aki Kaurismäki's "Fallen Leaves," short, sweet and utterly delightful, is the kind of movie that's so charming, you want to run it back the moment it's over. Kaurismäki, the writer-director Finnish master of the deadpan, has for nearly four decades been making minimalist, clear-eyed fables about mostly working-class characters in harsh economic realities. Bleak as his films are, they're also funny, compassionate and profound. They put up a tough, droll front that never quite hides the heart underneath. The same could be said for one of the main characters in the plaintive and tender "Fallen Leaves." When Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a construction worker, is invited by his friend Houtari (Kaurismäki veteran Janne Hyytiäinen) to karaoke, he replies: "Tough guys don't sing." "You're not a tough guy," Houtari responds. "Fallen Leaves," Kaurismäki's first since 2017's "The Other Side of Hope," is about Holappa and a woman named Ansa (Alma Pöysti), both solitary people scraping by in Helsinki. They first encounter each other at that karaoke bar where Houtari proudly sings (for the rest of the movie, whenever he appears he'll be seeking compliments for his performance), but Ansa and Holappa watch quietly apart. Kaurismäki draws them together, but slowly. "Fallen Leaves" is the best big-screen romance of the year even though its prospective lovers exchange only a handful of words and, for most of the film, don't know each other's names. It's more about the circumstances they're both in. In the beginning of the film, Ansa is working at a supermarket while a security guard glares at her. She's fired for keeping an expired item instead of throwing it away. At home, she looks at her bills and then shuts the power off. Her next job, at a restaurant, fizzles on pay day when the owner is arrested for selling drugs. Holappa loses his job, too. After an accident at a construction site due to shoddy equipment, he's fired for having alcohol in his blood. He's a scapegoat, but the drinking problem is real. He keeps vodka in his locker and hidden on the job site. "I'm depressed because I drink and I drink because I'm depressed," he tells Houtari. The cinematography of longtime Kaurismäki collaborator Timo Salminen is so spare, with occasional pops of color and irony, that "Fallen Leaves" has a timeless feeling. It casts the cruelty of the world as an eternal state, a sense only enhanced and expanded upon in the most precise contemporary reference of the film. Whenever Ansa turns the radio on, news from the war in Ukraine is being read. In Kaurismäki's film, the world is full of bullying authorities. (His radiant 2011 film "Le Havre," about an old French shoe shiner helping a migrant boy, hinged on a police officer who in the climactic moment choses to look the other way.) In "Fallen Leaves," the only thing to do is curse the jerks who make life miserable, have a drink and head to the movies. That's where Ansa and Holappa go, once they finally meet, for a date. They see Jim Jarmusch's "The Dead Don't Die," a funny choice not just because it's a zombie comedy but because Jarmusch, a friend of Kaurismäki's, is so similar in deadpan style to him. Outside, the couple stands in front of telling posters: "Le Cercle Rouge," "Fat City," "Pierrot le Fou" - each a touchstone to the director. It's little odes to cinema like these that make "Fallen Leaves" - winner of the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Finland's Oscar submission - one of the most personal and self-reflective films for Kaurismäki. He probably wouldn't stand for all the analysis or the praise. But as Ansa and Holappa come together without a word of flowery romance, they carve out a small, private refugee from the world around them - just like the movies do. There isn't a bit of fat on "Fallen Leaves," just some lean truths about life and a dog named Chaplin. "Fallen Leaves," a Mubi release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 81 minutes. In Finnish with English subtitles. Four stars out of four.
# Review: In Ridley Scott's 'Napoleon,' the emperor has no clothes but plenty of ego By JAKE COYLE November 22, 2023. 12:44 AM EST --- For such a famed historical figure, Napoleon has made only fleeting appearances in movies since Abel Gance's 1927 silent film. Stanley Kubrick had grand designs for a Napoleon epic that went unmade. (Steven Spielberg is attempting to revive those plans as a series ). Napoleon and his bicorne hat - more icon of history than a real character - mostly only pops up in time-traveling odysseys like "Time Bandits" or "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." The party, though, is finally on in Ridley Scott's "Napoleon," starring Joaquin Phoenix. Scott doesn't do anything small, not even famously diminutive French emperors. And his two-hour-38-minute big-screen biopic serves up a heaping historical spectacle complete with bloody European battles and massive military maneuvers. But don't mistake "Napoleon" for your average historical epic. Our first sense that this may not be a grand glorification of a Great Man of history comes early in the film, when a 24-year-old Bonaparte leads the siege on the British troops controlling the port city of Toulon. When Napoleon, then a major, charges forward in the fight, he's visibly terrified, even panting. He looks more like Phoenix's anxious protagonist in "Beau Is Afraid" than the man who would become France's Caesar. Napoleon doesn't storm the gates so much as lurch desperately at them. And for the rest of Scott's film and Phoenix's riveting performance, Napoleon's actions are never much more complicated than that. He assumes power cavalierly. His coup d'état against the French Directory in 1799 is a ramshackle farce. He flings his armies around the continent without the slightest concern. He's prone to petulant rages, screaming at the British: "You think you're so great because you have boats!" "Napoleon" subscribes more to the Not-So-Great Man theory of history. This Napoleon isn't extraordinary nor is he much of a man. He's a boyishly impulsive, thin-skinned brute, careening his way through Europe and leaving battlefields of dead soldiers in his wake. When he, while on a campaign in Egypt, is informed over lunch that his wife, Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby), is having an affair back in Paris, he responds curtly to the messenger: "No dessert for you." For more than 200 years, characterizations of Napoleon have ranged from genius reformer born out of the French Revolution to marauding tyrant whose wars left three million dead. Napoleon, himself, helped shape his legacy while exiled on St. Helena with a self-serving memoir. Some of the titans of 19th century literature reckoned with him. Victor Hugo wrote Napoleon lost at Waterloo because he had grown "troublesome to God." Tolstoy, in "War and Peace," was less impressed, calling him, "that most insignificant instrument of history." In "Napoleon," which begins with Marie Antoinette at the guillotine and ends with Napoleon on St. Helena where he died at age 51 in 1821, it's startling how much disregard the movie has for its protagonist. Hollywood historical epics have traditionally leaned toward aggrandizement, not the undressing of fragile, deluded male egos who exclaim over dinner: "Destiny has brought me here! Destiny has brought me this lamb chop!" Here is a sweeping historical tapestry - no one does it better today than Scott - with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix - Scott's spectacle and Phoenix's the-emperor-has-no-clothes performance - makes "Napoleon" a rivetingly off-kilter experience. It's not always a smooth mix. Phoenix's characterization may at times have more in common with some of his past depictions of melancholy loners ("The Master," "The Joker") than any factual record of Napoleon. A quality like ambition, you'd think, would be prominent in depicting Napoleon. He was a notorious workaholic, meticulously organized and an energetic intellectual - little of which is present here, making Napoleon's rise to power sometimes hard to fathom. But that's also part of the point of "Napoleon," which surely has some contemporary echoes. There are plenty of enablers along the way (a highlight of the supporting cast is Paul Rhys as the scheming diplomat Talleyrand) as the film marches through major events like the fall of Robespierre, the 1799 coup, Napoleon making himself Emperor in 1804 and the triumphant Battle of Austerlitz. The last is Scott's finest set piece in the film, ending in a rout of the Russian forces as they flee over a frozen pond while the bombardment of cannons plunges them into an icy grave. But in David Scarpa's screenplay, the real through line in "Napoleon" isn't the string of battles leading up to the downfall we all know is coming at Waterloo. (There, Rupert Everett's sneering Duke of Wellington enlivens the military tactics.) It's Napoleon's relationship with Joséphine that makes the main thread. When he first sees her across a crowded party, he stands transfixed. Anyone would be. The slinky Kirby, sporting a pixie cut, rivals Phoenix for most potent presence in "Napoleon." She has a complete hold on Napoleon, who turns out to be no more suave in the bedroom than he is among society. When he returns from Egypt furious from the well-publicized rumors of her infidelity, they have a prolonged fight that ends with her turning the tables. "You are nothing without me," she tells him, as he cowers, happily. "Say it." There's a version of the film that could be wholly focused on their dynamic. Joséphine is omnipresent for a long stretch - he writes her constantly from the battlefront in letters narrated to us - but "Napoleon" never quite finds its balance in cutting between their life together and the military exploits. Scott is expected to release a four-hour director's cut on Apple TV+ after the film's theatrical run, which may offer a more calibrated version. But the 85-year-old Scott - himself a symbol of ceaseless ambition - has made a film that, like his previous "The Last Duel," is a provocative takedown of male power. Scott has made plenty of brawny, swaggering epics in his time - including "Gladiator," with an Oscar-nominated Phoenix as the Roman emperor Commodus. But even though not everything in "Napoleon" coheres, it's appealing destabilizing. In one of the film's final images, Napoleon and his hat are in silhouette as he slumps to his death like a keeling ship, going down. "Napoleon," an Apple Studios release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence, some grisly images, sexual content and brief language. Running time: 158 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Emotional complexity, melodramatic wit and masterful acting in 'May December' By LINDSEY BAHR November 15, 2023. 4:06 PM EST --- There is hardly a false note in "May December," an audaciously self-aware, mischievously funny and emotionally complex drama that defies simple categorization. Filmmaker Todd Haynes, working from a script by newcomer Samy Burch, deftly mixes cheesy movie of the week tropes with the psychological depths of Bergman to make this wholly singular piece that never quite lets the viewer relax on solid ground. The set up involves an actor, Elizabeth Barry, played by Natalie Portman, who is spending some time with the real person she's decided to play in a film. That subject is Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who, when she was 36, was arrested and imprisoned for starting a physical relationship with a 12-year-old boy. Two decades later Gracie and that boy, Joe (Charles Melton), are married with three kids, one in college and twins about to go. There have been cheap, seemingly exploitative movies made about them before, which we get brief glimpses of. Gracie tells Elizabeth, on their first meeting, that she just wants her to tell the story right. Elizabeth responds that she wants her to "feel seen and known." Both Moore and Portman are smiling sweetly, on perfectly polite stranger behavior, but it is also deeply uncomfortable. Is one lying? Are both? Who can we trust? Who do we like? Does it matter? We already knew that Haynes was a master of melodrama, with films like "Carol" and "Far From Heaven," but in "May December" he gestures to the aesthetics of ripped-from-the-tabloids Lifetime fare. He layers that with a boldly dramatic score, borrowed from the past (the late French composer Michel Legrand's theme from "The Go-Between") and brilliantly deployed in both comedic and serious ways. Early in the film, Gracie is preparing for Elizabeth's arrival and opens her refrigerator when the score dips. We brace for something serious and dramatic as the camera zooms in on Moore: "I don't think we have enough hot dogs," she says. Elizabeth isn't just there to watch them eat dinner and ask some questions. She is wildly driven to get to some sort of truth about Gracie, running around town like an investigative journalist interviewing everyone she can. Portman plays Elizabeth as impishly manipulative, utilizing the full power of her character's celebrity and its effect on people to get intimate confessions. It is a deliriously fun and unnerving send-up of both stardom and an actor's process. Late in the film, she calls it a story. Joe reminds her that it's their actual life. You can almost imagine Elizabeth Barry's deeply untruthful press tour for the film. Gracie is harder to grasp, but she will keep the audience, and Elizabeth, on their toes for the duration. Just when you think you have a handle on something, she subverts it. We are, however, treated to some of her private moments that only Joe sees - her fragility, her delusions, her naivete. And Moore and Portman are electric in their scenes together, masterful performers whose characters are similarly performing for one another. It's wonderfully fun to watch what they do, how they can make even the most basic of interactions slyly subversive and catty and how both try to maintain control over every conversation. But that they are great is not the big surprise of the film: Melton is. He will break your heart and not because of any huge Oscar-reel moment, but all the small ones leading up to the very earned tears. He's the sobering remind that behind all the intrigue and scandal and fun of the quest for truth, if we accept the reality of "May December" as some sort of reality, then we have to accept the tragedy of Joe. Melton plays this 36-year-old father of three college age kids quietly. His first scenes with Gracie show a relationship that reads more mother-son than wife-husband, and not even just because of the age difference. At times he seems like a shadow of a person, playing the role of beer-drinking, hot dog grilling contented dad with an almost empty nest. He is, in this movie, still becoming, and maybe just now starting to grapple with the truth, as he raises his monarch butterflies and attempts to flirt over text with another person. In fact, Joe, and Melton, might be the biggest masterstroke of "May December." Scandalous fun and camp are, you imagine, relatively easy with performers like this. But to give it a soul, too? It makes it monumental. "May December," a Netflix release in theaters Nov. 17 and streaming Dec. 1, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "some sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language." Running time: 117 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Taika Waititi's 'Next Goal Wins' is a sweet, frothy diversion but no knee slide By MARK KENNEDY November 15, 2023. 10:47 AM EST --- In "Next Goal Wins," a soccer coach comes from far away to lead a hapless group of athletes. He's a fish-out-of-water type, ill-suited for the job, but rises to the occasion and everyone feels good at the end. Wait, you're thinking, that's the plot of "Ted Lasso." Well, only kind of. Writer-director Taika Waititi - the manic, slightly unhinged mind behind "Thor: Love and Thunder" and "Jojo Rabbit" - offers a sports movie that's not, of course, a sports movie and the opposite of whatever Jason Sudeikis was doing on his TV series. "Next Goal Wins" - "inspired by true events" - stars Michael Fassbender as a bitter Dutch-American soccer coach assigned to help the struggling American Samoa national team qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The team is an international laughing stock and still stinging from having been on the wrong side of the worst loss in international soccer history - a 31-0 thrashing by Australia in 2001. Waititi and co-writer Iain Morris based their movie on a 2014 British documentary of the same name and you can instantly tell why Waititi gravitated toward the story. It has a clash of civilizations, explores overcoming loss and it has a beautiful lesson about embracing those who are different. In Waititi's hands, it becomes a sloppy, quirky, pop culture-studded frothy comedy that gently apes other underdog sports movies but doesn't offer much but a mildly funny respite from reality. It makes "Bend it like Beckham" seem really deep. Waititi himself - he couldn't resist stepping into his own film - frames the movie in the first minutes by playing a priest on American Samoa who promises this will not be a tale of woe but "a tale of woah!" (Shakespeare isn't laughing). Fassbender here is the opposite of Lasso - he's broken inside, angry outside, egotistical and unyielding, a coach fired from his last three teams and given a career lifeline no one else wants. He has no home-spun wisdom to offer, just routine high school bullying. "Something's not right about that guy," says one islander. "Well," comes the response. "He is white." The coach will eventually be redeemed by American Samoa itself, by the nobility of its people and the goodness of their souls, with the movie getting dangerously close to worn out movie cliche territory. The script had an opportunity to really examine the demand of winning at all costs versus the rewards of merely having fun and having a passion for sports but abandons any lessons in a flurry of team-building montages. This being a Waititi movie, there's a scattershot of pop culture references - "Karate Kid," "Taken," "The Matrix," "Any Given Sunday" and even Frank Sinatra ("You're riding high in April, shot down in May"). At times, these seem more like the director's idiosyncrasies than plot advancers. The script also takes a weird sort of glee mocking the islanders, who are portrayed sometimes as playing dress-up. One sits at a desk with a keyboard and a monitor but no computer and another makes siren noises with his mouth in a police car because of faulty equipment. "Next Goal Wins" is most winning in the way it handles the team's star player, Jaiyah Saelua, who became the first nonbinary player to compete in a men's FIFA qualifier. Played with real tenderness and joy by nonbinary actor Kaimana, the way the team and coach relate to Saelua is genuine and touching. There are other really nice turns by Oscar Kightley, Will Arnett and Elisabeth Moss, but it's Fassbender who must do the bulk of the lifting here. His accent is spotty and he may initially not have been on the top of everyone's list for the part but he sticks the landing, to mix sports metaphors. "Next Goal Wins" isn't a tale of "woe" or "woah!" but "meh." "Next Goal Wins," a Searchlight Pictures release that's in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for "some strong language and crude material." Running time: 103 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Review: The Hunger Games return in 'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,' with the odds in its favor By JAKE COYLE November 13, 2023. 12:17 AM EST --- Two hours and 37 minutes is pretty long for a "ballad," but you can't call it "The Hunger Games: The Three-Cycle Opera of Songbirds and Snakes" now, can you? Concision was never much in favor in the four "Hunger Games" films, which reached a seeming finale with 2015's "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2." The intervening years have done nothing to shrink the ambitions of this unapologetically gaudy dystopic series where the brutal deaths of kids are watched over by outrageously styled Capitol denizens with names like Effie Trinket. That clash of YA allegory and color palette is just as pronounced, if not more so, in "The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," a prequel set 64 years before the original books, adapted from Suzanne Collins' 2020 book of the same name. "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," which opens in theaters Nov. 16, is an origin story of the Hunger Games, themselves, as well as numerous characters - primarily the devious President Coriolanus Snow, played by Donald Sutherland in the first four films. Here, Snow is an impoverished but opportunistic 18-year-old student played by Tom Blyth. Just as in the "Hunger Games" films led by Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen, the new one proves how much you can sacrifice in story when you've got a thrilling young performer commanding the screen. Francis Lawrence's prequel often wobbles, especially in the early going. And yet, in the end, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," propelled by Blyth's performance, manages to be the deepest expression yet of the series' melodrama of adolescence. In Panem, the only thing more tragic than the suffering inflicted by adults on the young may be a bright kid warping wickedly into one of those elders, too. That generational divide was always at the heart of the appeal of "The Hungers Games," a fantasy where no adult or institution can be trusted, and the normal pressures of teendom are amplified in a modern, televised Roman Coliseum - an "American Idol" with murder - concocted by elders. It's madness shrugged off as, "That's just the way it is." In "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes," we see how it got to be that way. The 10th annual Hunger Games are approaching but it feels more like pre-Super Bowl times when the NFL and the AFL played in separate leagues. The broadcast is low rent, the ratings are poor and the games themselves are staged in a dilapidated stadium. With little food in the fridge, Coriolanus is living with his cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer) and grandmother (Fionnula Flanagan). Their family has fallen on hard times, in part because of a family rivalry with Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), the dean of the academy who harbors hatred for the Snows. (Dinklage, whose wry presence adds a kick to the film, has managed to appear once again in an outlandish fantasy with a man named Snow.) As the students gather amid Third Reich architectures (the production design by Uli Hanisch is stellar) and the games' founder Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis, majestic in blue, with a turquoise eye) gazes on, Coriolanus is assigned his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, a bold young woman from District 12 (also the home of Katniss) who wears a rainbow skirt and sports a dubious Southern accent. During the reaping ceremony, she makes an immediate impression, putting a snake down the back of a rival and bursting into song for the cameras. See, now there's concision, I thought. You get your songbird and snake, straight off. Lawrence's Katniss was a thrilling female warrior whose seizing of center stage had reverberations off screen, paving the way for blockbuster female protagonists. Rachel Zegler's Lucy Gray is inevitably a disappointment by comparison. Lawrence's film, scripted by Michael Arndt and Michael Lesslie, for a while has the stale feeling of an unneeded retread. The tonal fluctuations, always a tricky balance in Panem, can be ridiculous. The stadium is abruptly bombed by unseen rebels. Once the games begin, one tribute concocts rabies. The main thing holding our attention at this point is Jason Schwartzman's Lucretius Flickerman, a TV host with a Salvador Dali mustache who wants the games wrapped up just so he can make his dinner reservations. (It's been a very good year for Schwartzman, who transformed himself in Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" and transmogrified in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse." ) But "Songbirds and Snakes" sneakily begins making a case for itself. The relationship between Coriolanus and Lucy Gray is compellingly complex. He works desperately to help her survive the games because he believes in her, and maybe loves her, but also because her success benefits him, too. Whether Lucy Gray is as purehearted as her songs, too, is up for debate. Both, we sense, are cunningly playing the hands they've been delt, seeking an advantage where they can. When Coriolanus begins making suggestions for the games to Volumnia, he proves himself a natural-born marketer. That there's tension in Coriolanus' character, considering we know how he ultimately ends up, is a tribute to just how good Blyth is. We've by now seen plenty of prequels that show us how some famous villain broke bad, but there's nothing in Blyth's performance that telegraphs his future. He's a sincere striver - we root for him because of his poverty and his puck - who's operating in the society he's found himself. He's a villain born entirely of circumstance. "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" extends the saga for a third act that takes places in District 12, an addition that another franchise might have saved for the next installment. But it's also where that tragedy of "The Hunger Games," and Coriolanus' fate, earns some of the Shakespearean touches that have liberally been sprinkled throughout. (Shakespeare's "Coriolanus," is likewise about an ambiguous warrior set amid times of famine and class struggle.) "The Hunger Games" kicked off a YA craze in film that had its ups and downs but petered out several years ago. Whether "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" is enough to relight those embers remains to be seen, but it is a reminder how good a platform they offered young actors. It's a ritual worth returning to. "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes," a Lionsgate release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong violent content and disturbing material. Running time: 157 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Nicolas Cage finds fame to be highly overrated in chillingly funny 'Dream Scenario' By JOCELYN NOVECK November 8, 2023. 5:51 PM EST --- Quick: What's a good adjective for Nicolas Cage's screen presence? Mercurial, perhaps? Volcanic? Volatile? How about mundane, schlubby, average? Not the page we'd think to turn to in our Roget's Thesaurus. Yet here Cage is, channeling his inner drabness to chillingly comic effect in Kristoffer Borgli's "Dream Scenario." As Paul Matthews (heck, even the name is drab), a college professor at nowhere famous, he performs his job with perfect mediocrity, and seems a fairly mediocre husband and dad, too. With his graying beard, wire-rimmed specs and shiny bald spot, Cage's Paul is the guy in the room you ignore. Until, suddenly, you can't. Because something weird starts happening. Paul starts appearing in people's dreams. Everyone's dreams. The premise is delicious - and precarious. It recalled for me the setup in a very different movie, "Yesterday," where only one guy on Earth remembers the Beatles. It makes for a fantastic beginning, but you immediately worry how they'll manage to keep it going. But Borgli, the Norwegian writer-director making his English-language debut here (Ari Aster co-produces), is aiming for a broader statement about the nature of fame. And while the topic, which he's broached before, may not be original, it's ripe for exploration in the right hands - especially with an actor as inventive and unpredictable as Cage. Fame can be intoxicating, this film is saying, but it can and probably will turn on you in an instant, unless you're Taylor Swift (OK, we added that last part). We begin on an autumn day by a suburban swimming pool, where Paul is raking leaves near his teen daughter. Scary things start dropping from the heavens, and suddenly the girl is grabbed by an unknown force and lifted, screaming, into the sky. Dad? He does nothing to help. It's only the girl's dream. But then there are more. Paul and his patient wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson, reliably excellent) run into someone at the theater, and she too has dreamed about Paul. At a dinner party, several guests discover to their shock that they've been dreaming about the same person. Yep, Paul. What's happening? On campus, Paul's students, who mostly chat among themselves during his unremarkable lectures on evolutionary biology, start listening - they're dreaming about him, too. In many of these dreams, Paul stands by, inexplicably, as others experience peril - slithering alligators, for example. But in real life, for once, Paul has the floor - a man who until now seethed with frustration over his unrealized ambitions as others succeeded. Now, everyone is interested in him. Borgli never stops to analyze the science of this bizarre development, and frankly, Paul doesn't either. He takes a meeting with a snarky group of branding experts (led by Michael Cera, perfectly cast) who want to market him up the wazoo. They can get him a Sprite commercial! Well, Paul doesn't want that - he just wants a book deal for his biology research. But his ears perk up at the idea of an endorsement from Barack Obama. ("I know Malia," one of these young professionals says.) One young woman even lets on to Paul that in her dreams, the two have great sex. This is too stunning for the schlubby Paul to ignore, especially when she invites him home to recreate the dream. Needless to say, it doesn't go as well in real life. In fact, the dénoument is utterly, agonizingly humiliating. And then, everyone's dreams change. Suddenly Paul is the one causing harm. His students, terrified, don't want to see him anymore. He gets sent home from a dinner with friends. He can't even sit in a coffee shop and read a book without a fellow diner spitting on his food. As for the branding consultants, well, they inform Paul that Obama is off the table - but hey, they could get him time with Joe Rogan or maybe Tucker Carlson. We won't spoil the ending, but let's just make the obvious point that Borgli is not making a rom-com - is there a word for "horror-com"? We walk away from this funny, sad, scary film acutely reminded that if fame has two sides, one of them is pretty darned horrible. And perhaps, as you walk home from the multiplex this time, you might even revel in the fact that nobody's paying attention. Obscurity can be underrated. "Dream Scenario," an A24 release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for language, violence and some sexual content." Running time: 102 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Iman Vellani is a scene-stealer in low-stakes 'The Marvels' By LINDSEY BAHR November 9, 2023. 12:28 PM EST --- The stakes feel immensely low in "The Marvels," and it's not because this is a movie that spends a fair amount of time following cats or has an out-of-nowhere musical number. It's possibly because somewhere along the way, Marvel movies just stopped feeling like events. And this galactic trifle from director Nia DaCosta does not seem to be the one to make them again feel like a must for anyone who has not kept up with all their Disney+ series and who has forgotten what phase the MCU is in and why it matters. Yes, Iman Vellani (as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan) gets her big moment on the big screen and nails it, as does Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau). Yes, there is a new villain, and it's a woman (Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn) with a powerful new toy. Yes, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) will have to face her past to move forward. And, yes, there is plenty of action, butt-kicking, wormhole jumping, glowing eyes and smashing of concrete walls. But this is also a movie that teases danger, like a bad guy who appears to be knocked down reaching for another weapon, only to cut away. Granted, this happens in the middle of a hectic sequence involving the three leads fighting three fights in three different locations and switching with one another. Not that it really mattered what that guy was reaching for anyway - it never felt like anyone was in peril. It's also not quite funny either, but does introduce the crutch that Monica, Carol and Kamala can switch places in a flash. They'll try to explain why this is happening to you several times, each getting more confusing. This is sort of a movie about a new team forming, sort of about fandom, sort of about accepting responsibility. But there is little doubt that these three will figure out a way to work together. There's some unresolved hurt between Monica and Carol but they're also both professionals, for goodness' sake. And Kamala just has to stop fangirling over Captain Marvel. These three are not given enough downtime to really enjoy whatever chemistry is there, perhaps because the movie seems more interested in the Khan family FaceTiming with their daughter and the goings-on in Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) oddly chaotic ship. DaCosta, working with Marvel for the first time, keeps the energy up and the story moving at a quick clip, though. Those fretting about all the three-hour films in cinemas at the moment should be happy to hear that this is kept to a tight 105 minutes. And it is a colorful, vibrant affair, too, a very welcome change from "Ant-Man 3," helped no doubt by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, mostly known for working with Steve McQueen. And Vellani is the real standout star, a refreshingly human presence in stark contrast to Larson's cool and unflappable Captain Marvel. As Kamala/Ms. Marvel, you see in her someone who is excited and overwhelmed, in over her head and learning on the go. I wish they'd gone further with a conflict between her and her idol that is too quickly resolved. There is a warm sitcom tidiness to most of the conflicts here, right down to the Khan family shaking their heads at their daughter after a near-death incident as though she'd just borrowed the car without permission. It's supposed to be a big deal that this movie has all women fighting a villain who's a woman, but as is often the case with Marvel's girl power attempts, it feels a little pandering in all the wrong places and doesn't really engage with any specific or unique female point of view. When our three heroes suit up, they do so off screen and come out with fresh hairdos and makeup. They look like their best selves and will continue looking like their best selves throughout a harrowing battle, which leaves some of their uniforms torn but not an eyelash out of place. I thought we'd reached a pro-hair tie place with our female superheroes, but these women, including Dar-Benn, are defiantly against the convenience; instead, they're constantly flipping their locks out of their eyes during fights, despite seeming more practical than that. Also poor Ashton, who is such a splendid actor, has been saddled with one of the more forgettable and generic villain arcs. She gets to snarl a few one-liners and stomp around with tyrannical purpose in fantastically detailed costumes, but it seems to be a missed opportunity to not develop her more. Bringing "Endgame"-like event hysteria back to Marvel was never going to be in the cards for "The Marvels," or "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." At least this movie seems to be enjoying itself (sometimes a little too much) with moments of whimsy and weirdness and at least one deranged and amusing gift for cat lovers everywhere. Maybe it's just those pesky stakes again. This seems designed to be a minor Marvel - a fun enough, inoffensive, largely forgettable steppingstone - a get-to-know-them brick on a path only Kevin Feige has the blueprints for. And maybe it'll be something great, eventually. "The Marvels," a Walt Disney Co. release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for "action/violence and brief language." Running time: 105 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In David Fincher's 'The Killer,' an assassin hides in plain sight By JAKE COYLE November 7, 2023. 9:55 AM EST --- It's a noir staple to open with a bit of narration, but once the nameless hit-man protagonist of David Fincher's "The Killer" starts gabbing, he doesn't stop. As Fincher's assassin (Michael Fassbender) awaits his target from a high, unfinished floor in a Paris building that looks out on the home of his mark, his inner monologue runs with a smooth, affectless monotone. His musings are a mix of professional tips ("Anticipate, don't improvise"), nihilistic existential observations ("Most people refuse to believe that the great beyond is anything more than a cold, infinite void") and sincere self-reflections ("I'm not exceptional, I'm just apart"). That last line is the most telling one. "The Killer" is a terse, minimalist thriller in the cool, cold-hearted tradition of Jean Pierre Melville's "Le Samouraï." But while its methodical and solitary assassin acts and moves like cunning killers we've seen before, he blends into a modern background. He doesn't wear a trench coat or fedora; he dresses like a German tourist, with a dopey bucket hat. He shops for tools on Amazon. He picks up supplies at Home Depot. His position in Paris is an unused WeWork space. In "The Killer," an agent of death is hiding in plain sight. He's an assassin for our homogeneous, corporate world operating in the same spaces we all do. He eats McDonalds. He drives a white Avis rental van that's the exact same as a dozen others in the rental car parking lot. Sameness is his superpower. That also means that his nihilism is ours, too. "The Killer," which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, is a thriller where pointlessness isn't just lurking in the shadows. It's everywhere, even in a movie plot that grows increasingly resistant to offering the usual genre satisfactions. Fassbender's hitman, a background actor supreme, is a lethal manifestation of our soulless environment. In that opening scene, he boasts of having a batting average (1.000, he brags) 'better than Ted Williams.' Yet the job goes badly. In the ensuing turmoil, he races to erase his footsteps but not before a dissatisfied client has his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) nearly beaten to death at their clandestine Dominican Republic home. He embarks on a location-hopping mission to eliminate those responsible, an odd twist for an assassin who, at length, preaches disaffection. Much doesn't quite fit in "The Killer." That he even has a live-in girlfriend - we barely see her and his thoughts never again turn back to her - seems unlikely. A revenge plot also doesn't quite suit such a dispassionate protagonist. "Forbid empathy," he says. And the movie, too, can be withholding of anything like emotion. The most distinct thing about Fassbender's killer is that, like Patrick Bateman bopped to Huey Lewis and the News, he listens exclusively to the Smiths. There's much pleasure to be found in the unnamed hit man's proficiency, just as there is in Fincher's cool finesse. Here, the director - long known for his own meticulous rigor - is working with some regular collaborators, among them screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker ("Se7en"), composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ( "The Social Network" ) and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt ("Mank" ). And there's a kinetic thrill to seeing Fincher back in B-movie territory. (The script is based on a French graphic novel by Alexis "Matz" Nolent.) Especially good is a nighttime sequence set in Florida that begins and ends with a bloodthirsty dog and in between features violent hand-to-hand combat that careens through glass and walls. The scene, like several others in "The Killer," is a filmmaking feat of control. Fassbender, a natural at playing a loner (see "Shame"), is captivating throughout because he so possesses the movie's chief traits of guile and a deadpan sense of humor. Everything here is tantalizingly close to calculated perfection that it comes almost as a surprise how "The Killer" ends up missing its mark. You could call it a feature of the film's existentialism, but "The Killer" increasingly is working, albeit proficiently, in a vacuum. Our hitman travels from place to place - always with fake passports with the names of TV characters like Felix Unger, Lou Grant or Sam Malone - but we don't get anywhere deeper with him or anything else. Meaningless may be the point in "The Killer," but at a certain point in this stylishly composed but empty vessel, you feel like pleading as another Fincher protagonist once did: What's in the box? "The Killer," a Netflix release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence, language and brief sexuality. Running time: 118 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In 'Radical,' an unorthodox teacher in a violent Mexican border town By JAKE COYLE November 1, 2023. 4:00 PM EST --- On their first day sixth grade, the students of Jose Urbina Lopez Elementary School in the Mexican border city of Matamoros find their new teacher rolling on the floor surrounded by overturned desks. They're not desks, he exclaims. They're lifeboats. So begins Christopher Zalla's "Radical," an inspirational based-on-a-true-story drama about an unconventional teacher named Sergio Juarez Correa (Eugenio Derbez). His day-one lesson is ultimately about buoyancy. But the metaphor isn't hard to grasp. In Lopez's classroom, education is a life raft. "Radical," which opens in theaters Friday, is a conventional but stirring entry in the crowded canon of uplifting educator tales like "Stand and Deliver," "Lean on Me" and "The Class." "Radical," though, isn't set at an inner-city school in Los Angeles, New Jersey or Paris, like those films are. Matamoros, along the Rio Grande and across from Brownsville, Texas, is considered a lawless place, known for extreme violence and migrant encampments. "Radical" is also set in 2011, among the bloodiest years of Mexico's drug war. That makes for an especially unlikely backdrop for classroom revival. The school, itself, is known as "The School of Punishment." For safety, its gates are locked during the school hours. Sergio's self-empowering method is to allow kids to follow their curiosity and find answers for themselves. They're skeptical at first but soon are engaged and excited by their freedom to lead their own learning. More than once, Sergio says the students don't even really need him. There are plenty of familiar beats as the school year moves along. Sergio's ways draw the ire of other teachers. Parents are distrustful, wondering if he's giving kids facing a harsh future false hope. But while "Radical," an audience winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is formulaic in its approach, it gets enough out of it likable cast to earn at least a passing grade. Derbez, the Mexican actor and comedian, already made an impression in the classroom as the encouraging music teacher of the best picture-winning "CODA." Here, he takes center stage, playing Sergio with a winning sincerity and full-bodied resistance to the rules. Three of the students are brought into focus: Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), a math whiz with astronaut dreams who lives beside the landfill her father works at; Lupe (Mia Fernanda Solis), a budding philosopher whose pregnant mother expects her to help with childcare; and Nico (Danilo Guardiola), a plucky kid who's being trained by a local dealer as a drug courier. Their stories are never quite at the center of "Radical," which sticks closest to its star teacher. But each young actor is natural, particularly Trejo. Her real-life character, Paloma Noyola Bueno, was the central figure in a Wired article that "Radical" is partially derived from. But the best relationship captured in "Radical" is the one between Sergio and the school's cautious, less energetic principal Chucho (a wonderful Daniel Haddad). He at first seems like an impediment to Sergio, warning him not to "kick the hornet's nest." But before long, he's a co-conspirator, willing to - in a further experiment on buoyancy - cannonball into a cold tub. Together, Derbez and Haddad help make "Radical" float, too. "Radical," a TelevisaUnivision release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for some strong violent content, thematic material and strong language. In Spanish with subtitles. Running time: 127 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: A serene debut from Raven Jackson in 'All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt' By LINDSEY BAHR November 1, 2023. 2:35 PM EST --- Nature provides much of the soundtrack to "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt," a poised and occasionally transcendent debut from writer-director Raven Jackson. The sounds of crickets and birds, flowing water and the wind in the long summer grass are only sporadically punctured by a song at a party, or a brief moment of a swelling score. These are the kind of details that make you feel immediately rooted in a place. It's not just the nature setting on a sleep app either, or, if it is, sound supervisor Miguel Calvo ensure that it doesn't feel like that. It's thoughtful and precise and also lets you more fully enjoy the moments where those human-made sounds take over. This might be a lot of talk about sound design to start, but it's also a bit of a primer on what to expect from "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt," which counts "Moonlight" filmmaker Barry Jenkins among its producers. Like sitting in a field for hours without a phone or a book or a companion to chat with, just the world around you, Jackson's film requires a level of conscious, almost meditative submission. The dialogue is sparse, the narrative is also. It is probably not an accident that some of the first words uttered, minutes in, are "not too quick ... slow, take your time." It applies to the fishing lesson between father and daughter that we're witnessing, yes, but it works on another level too. "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt" is a collection of moments in the life of Mack (Charleen McClure as an adult, Kaylee Nicole Johnson as a child), sometimes skipping back and forth in time. There are long stretches where the camera lingers on a hug, or the red painted toes of a mother at a party, the back of our heroine's head, a fish on a table, a crying infant getting their first bath in a kitchen sink, or two sisters sitting on a porch, in silence, until one breaks into laughter. And there are many, many hands. It's possible the camera spends more or at least equal time on hands - preparing a fish, digging in the dirt, holding - or not holding - another, swirling muddy water in a pond. Within this tapestry there are glimpses of great loss, of solitude, of new life and of transitions that feel familiar even if they're not your own. For as stubbornly minimalist as it is, the imagery is always vibrant, aided by the rich, primary colors of the costumes, and thoughtfully composed shots, whether of a worm wriggling or a classic silhouette looking outside a darkened door. The emotion, too, is surprisingly palpable considering how little we really know about the people we're watching. Still, at a certain point, you may find yourself yearning for more - more story, more arc, more information, something to hold onto, to sustain interest or engagement. Sometimes it feels like you're wandering through a gallery of moving moments that you understand on an intellectual level are connected but maybe don't add up to a completely satisfying whole - especially at a trim, but standard, feature length. That it works as well as it does is quite a feat, though. And with "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt," Jackson has firmly established herself as a filmmaker to watch. "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt," an A24 release in theaters Friday, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for "thematic content and brief sensuality." Running time: 97 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'Rustin' with an outstanding Colman Domingo is a terrific look at March on Washington By MARK KENNEDY October 31, 2023. 3:50 PM EST --- The 1963 March on Washington drew an estimated 250,000 people from across the country - the largest march at that point in American history - and was the place where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. It likely wouldn't have happened without the work of a master strategist: Bayard Rustin, a gay Black socialist and pacifist-activist from Pennsylvania, whose close friendship with King was the engine in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. The winning, triumphant Netflix movie "Rustin" explores the stressful weeks leading up to the march from the grassroots level, with Colman Domingo starring as the organizer who many people know nothing about. It was he who wrangled 80,000 boxed lunches, 22 first aid stations, six water tanks, 2,200 chartered buses, six chartered flights, 292 latrines, over 1,000 Black police officers and a change to the city's subway schedule, not to mention snagging celebrities like Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Lena Horne and James Baldwin. Domingo is debonair, frisky, droll, passionate and utterly captivating as Rustin - the film representing the electric meeting of winning material with the perfect performer. "You're irrelevant," Rustin is told at an after-work get-together by a more militant activist. "It's Friday night. I've been called worse," Rustin responds, taking a sip of his cocktail. But as wonderful as Domingo is, it's the astonishing amount of talent in front of and behind the camera that will take your breath away. No matter how small, each performance brings fire and makes the most of a few minutes on camera. Is that Jeffrey Wright as a dour Rep. Adam Clayton Powell? Yes, indeed. Wait, isn't that Adrienne Warren? Yup. Kevin Mambo and Audra McDonald, too? Yes and yes. Chris Rock ages up to play a stuffy NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins and Glynn Turman is awesome, as always, as labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays Mahalia Jackson, Michael Potts is "Cleve" Robinson, CCH Pounder as Dr. Anna Hegeman, appropriately, gets her own warm round of applause during the movie. And Aml Ameen plays an understated King, his moments with Rustin playing like two old friends. There's excellence in the music - Branford Marsalis provides the jazzy score, including lonely sax solos and mournful double bass plucks - and Lenny Kravitz contributed an original song, "Road to Freedom." The biopic has a presidential seal or at least a former presidential seal - Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground produced. (Obama awarded Rustin a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.) "Rustin" is more than just the public-facing story of how the March on Washington came about. It's also a portrait of a man who has to hide his sexuality. If it was widely known, his career, the march and maybe even the Civil Rights Movement itself could be at risk. Domingo shows the immense pressures faced by being a religiously-raised, Black gay man in the racist and homophobic 1960s, enough psychic forces to tear a man apart. "On the day that I was born Black, I was also born a homosexual," Rustin tells King before a crucial meeting with Black leadership. "They either believe in freedom and justice for all or they do not." Director George C. Wolfe, a theater legend, keeps this biopic intriguing, making it almost feel like a caper. Will they pull off their audacious effort? Of course, but the twists and turns endured make organizing the march a bit like the rush to get a big musical on its feet. Wolfe adds that energy. The screenplay by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black isn't shy about exposing the divides within the movement and the ugly homophobic feelings of the era. There is a smart flashback to 1942 when the camera goes to black and white. The movie take viewers to places perhaps unfamiliar, like to training sessions where Black police officers were taught about nonviolence and to Manhattan apartments where protesters would talk about their own stories of segregation to convince rich white folks to contribute money for buses. The final section - the actual march itself - mixes new footage with some from that day. There was some fear by the organizers that not enough people would come, but the hero of "Rustin" doesn't waver - and is seen bluffing with reporters right up until the end. "Rustin" is as vibrant as the movement it covers. "Rustin," a Netflix release in select theaters Friday and that hits Netflix on Nov. 17, is rated PG-13 for "Some violence, sexual material, brief drug use, racial slurs, thematic material, language and smoking." Running time: 108 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'Pain Hustlers' tells a sadly familiar story with a kitchen-sink style By JOCELYN NOVECK October 26, 2023. 4:29 PM EST --- The wife of a man who nearly died of an opioid overdose comes bursting into the office of the sleazy doctor who prescribed it, wrongly, in exchange for personal gain. She slugs the doctor, in her agony. The scene comes deep into the new Netflix film "Pain Hustlers," and it feels bracingly real and tragic. If only the rest of the movie, the latest in a string of opioid-themed films, felt the same. Instead, despite a high-powered cast featuring a reliably solid Emily Blunt, an expertly low-life Chris Evans and the gifted Catherine O'Hara, the film tries too hard to be something it isn't, or shouldn't be: slick and breezy and too clever for its own good, filled with mockumentary interviews, wild montages, and other tricks used to more disciplined effect in more accomplished films. Not that Blunt isn't an effective presence here as Liza Drake, a struggling, single Florida mom who works at a strip club but wants to move up in life - to be treated with respect, and to support her ailing teen daughter and her flighty mother. Indeed, Blunt carries the film with her intelligent and likable presence. But that speaks precisely to the other big problem with the film, which is directed by "Harry Potter" vet David Yates and inspired by the article and book by Evan Hughes, telling the real-life tale of an opioid startup that intentionally mis-marketed a fentanyl spray meant for severe cancer pain. Here, the bare bones are the same, but Yates and screenwriter Wells Tower invent their own corrupt company and their own characters. And the filmmakers seem determined to make their protagonist likable. In giving Liza a fairly ironclad excuse for her actions - her sweet, plucky daughter needs costly brain surgery - they take an easy way out. Not to mention that through most of the film, Liza believes (unbelievably, really, given her smarts) that she's merely helping patients get the right drug. Wouldn't it have been more interesting to see Blunt play a character who knew exactly what she was doing? Instead, Liza claims at the start, looking back: "I did it for the right reasons." And here's sales rep Pete, her unscrupulous colleague: "This was 2011. Strictly speaking, we were not part of the opioid crisis." Evans, leaning into the sleaze, is fun to watch throughout, though the filmmakers care oddly little about his backstory. Then there's Jackie, Liza's mom, wacky but also steely, and, in the hands of a wonderful comic actor like O'Hara, vivid in everything she does. Lest you think Mom doesn't approve of Liza's slippery new career, heck, she joins her at the company, and even makes moves on the boss - but we're getting ahead of ourselves. When we first meet Liza, she's living in her sister's garage. At the strip club, she meets Pete, who, mid-flirtation, suggests she come work for him, promising $100k in commissions in one year. Liza's daughter, Phoebe (Chloe Coleman, in a lovely performance) gets in trouble at high school, engaging in what one might call, um, arson. We also learn she suffers from epilepsy. She requires a stable environment, the doctor says. And then Liza and daughter get kicked out of the garage and move into a cheap motel, eating instant noodles. Liza reconsiders that job offer. Outfitted with a fake resume - Pete, with a quick edit, gives her a biochem degree - Liza gets hired by Zanna, the company run by eccentric billionaire doctor Jack Neel (Andy Garcia, efficiently creepy) and proves a quick study. Against all odds, she finds a doctor (Brian D'Arcy James, playing against type as a sleazeball pain doc in need of a hair transplant) to write a prescription for Lonafen, a sublingual fentanyl spray. Soon she's corralled him into a "speakers program" designed to bribe more doctors. Moving quickly from sundresses to color-blocked power ensembles, Liza starts raking in commissions, and she and Pete hire a team of hungry salespeople. Pete likens what they're doing to driving a few miles over the speed limit - technically illegal, but everybody does it. Meanwhile, Liza's suddenly able to afford a condo fit for a king, buy Mom a car, and enroll Phoebe in private school. Zanna, named for Neel's own late wife, goes public, and is the industry's new kid on the block. The company's celebratory slogan, shouted at decadent parties: "We Own Cancer!" But things start getting uncomfortable. Neel, increasingly paranoid, rejects Liza's proposed compliance plan. Then, he decides the best way to improve flat sales is to market Lonafen off-label - for any kind of pain, even headaches. Liza is aghast - Pete, not so much - but her daughter's condition worsens, and Medicaid won't cover the operation. She needs cash. Then, patients start overdosing. The look one man's widow gives a weeping Liza, wordless, is chilling. The pace picks up as the law starts bearing down. But ultimately, "Pain Hustlers" feels like a retreading of the same ground covered in other recent works, bringing nothing especially new to the table and, in splitting the stylistic difference between slick/breezy and poignant/authentic, succeeding fully at neither. "Pain Hustlers," a Netflix release that begins streaming Friday, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for language throughout, some sexual content, nudity and drug use." Running time: 122 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Video game-to-horror flick 'Five Nights at Freddy's' misfires badly By MARK KENNEDY October 26, 2023. 10:05 AM EST --- Just in time for Halloween comes "Five Nights at Freddy's," a video game adaptation with the potential treat of demented Chuck E. Cheese-like animatronic creatures running amok. But the trick turns out to be on us. The movie - built from developer Scott Cawthon's video game about anthropomorphic robots killing people - poorly fits into this vehicle and the problems start with the creatures themselves. Yes, they have unsettling bright eyes and teeth. But, c'mon, one wears a bow tie, like a guest on PBS. They're more threadbare than eerie. Yes, they stomp around like The Terminator but one is a chubby chicken with the slogan "Let's Eat." They look about as scary as overgrown Care Bears with a drinking problem. One is, we're not kidding, a cupcake. Caught between PG and R, as well as lost at the crossroads of inadvertent comedy and horror, the PG-13 "Five Nights at Freddy's" has to go down as one of the poorest films in any genre this year. Like the video game, our hero here is a night watchman who is mysteriously hired to look after the ruins of an abandoned children's pizza-and-games restaurant. We learn that it was shuttered in the '80s due to a raft of missing kids. Josh Hutcherson plays the guard with a mix of hotheadedness and compassion. "Just do your job and you'll be fine," he is advised. "Don't let the place get to you." Why has he taken this silly job? To keep custody of his young sister, Abby (a very good Piper Rubio), proving he's a good guy. Other actors include the great Mary Stuart Masterson, slumming it as his aunt, and Matthew Lillard chewing scenery as if it were a slice of pepperoni. Director Emma Tammi - using a script credited to her, Cawthon and Seth Cuddeback - do their darndest to fill the film up with a backstory and a reason for there to be murderous animatronic characters in the first place. So we have family betrayal, the lifetime pain of an abducted sibling, a possible romantic interest and a plot so tortured it should have a cameo in "Saw." "I made a mistake. I don't want this," our hero screams toward the end and you can feel the movie theater's paying audience agreeing wholeheartedly. There are so many questions that will keep you awake. Why was "Talking in Your Sleep" by the Romantics used so heavily? Why do the scriptwriters not understand human decay? Why does the dialogue often veer from flirty to angry so abruptly in the same scene? Why is it revealed only in the last 10 minutes that the maniacal Care Bears can talk? It's ironic that much of the coolest action happens in a dreamstate. You may need to nudge your seatmates awake to rejoin the show when that happens. Maybe that's why "Talking in Your Sleep" was needed? The filmmakers waste the rare attempt in a horror flick to make a kids' ball pit scary, but the absolute lowest point is when the supposedly murderous animatronics - Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy - host a kiddie dance party. It's as if even they can't overcome their inner nature, having originated from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. This whole thing should have remained a game. "Five Nights at Freddy's," a Universal Pictures release in theaters and streaming on Peacock starting Friday, is rated PG-13 for "strong violent content, bloody images and language." Running time: 110 minutes. Zero stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Teen dreams and adult nightmares in Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla' By JAKE COYLE October 25, 2023. 2:35 PM EST --- Dreamily gazing at the album covers of Elvis Presley was not, statistically speaking, a rare habit among American teen girls in the late 1950s and early '60s. But for Priscilla Beaulieu, teenage fantasy became a strange and surreal reality. Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla," starring Cailee Spaeny, captures all the dreaminess, the absurdity and, finally, the nightmare of falling in love with Elvis. Priscilla was just 14 years-old - a 9th grader - when she first met him. It was 1959. She was living in West Germany, where her Air Force officer stepfather was stationed. The swoony early scenes of Coppola's film find a solitary Priscilla sipping soda in a Navy base diner while a cover of Frankie Avalon's "Venus" ("Venus, make her fair / A lovely girl with sunlight in her hair") plays around her. A man approaches and asks if she likes Elvis. Of course she does. Would she like to meet him? Um, what? After some negotiations with her parents, Priscilla is sitting there on the sofa at a small party when the King of Rock 'n' Roll, himself (Jacob Elordi), strolls down the stairs. Big, big sigh. Coppola, the writer-director of "The Virgin Suicides," "Lost in Translation" and "Somewhere," has always been innately attuned to the forming identities, swelling desires and intimate revelations of young women. In the story of Priscilla Presley (the film is based on her 1985 memoir, "Elvis and Me" ), Coppola has found a tale tailor-made for her delicately perceptive style of filmmaking. As a movie, "Priscilla" is the diametric opposite of Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis." Where Luhrmann's film was lurid and careening, Coppola's is muted and textured. Her film is a kind of fairy tale that turns claustrophobic and cautionary. "Priscilla" is, at least at first, quite funny. After Priscilla initially catches Elvis' eye at that party, she's back at school learning about the food groups. How could anyone possibly stomach that? Or when, after Elvis hasn't called following his stint in the military, Priscilla's mother asks her if there aren't any boys in school she might be interested in, instead. Priscilla doesn't need to say anything; just the image of lining up your average 9th grade boy against Elvis Presley is enough. Yet their courtship continues in somewhat traditional fashion. Elvis, played with relaxed magnetism by Elordi ("The Kissing Booth," "Saltburn"), is drawn to Priscilla because she reminds him of home; it's clear her purity is part of her appeal to him. It's a long time before they have sex, though her youth remains tacitly problematic. "Wow, she's young," says one woman watching Elvis lead Priscilla upstairs. "Like a little girl." Their life together is initially sweet if deranged. Priscilla drifts through a dream world even if Elvis' extremes are glaring to us. His bedroom in Graceland is comically gaudy. "I got this for you," we hear Elvis say kindly, before a handgun is handed over. No Presley songs play in "Priscilla." (While Priscilla Presley is an executive producer, the Elvis estate didn't participate in the film.) But it does share a telling track ( Carl Orff's "Gassenhauer" ) with Terence Malick's "Badlands," another movie about an underage teen girl (Sissy Spacek) who throws her life in with a charismatic drifter with matinee-idol looks (Martin Sheen). And like they do for Holly in "Badlands," things turn increasingly dark for Priscilla. Elvis treats her like a doll he keeps at home while he goes in and out. "It's either me or a career, baby," he tells her. Coppola, who dedicates the movie to her mother, Eleanor Coppola, has long specialized in gilded cages ("Marie Antoinette," "The Bling Ring"). Graceland turns out to be a prison to Priscilla. There aren't many false notes in Coppola's richly layered film, handsomely shot by Philippe Le Sourd, with sumptuous production design from Tamara Deverell and fine, toned-down costumes by Stacey Battat. But "Priscilla" fades where "Elvis" found its footing. When Presley's downturn accelerates in Las Vegas, Luhrmann's movie swelled with tragedy. In the same time period here, Priscilla awakens. Yet it feels underdeveloped, coming too quickly, in a sudden rush - albeit a terrific rush, with Dolly Parton playing. A constant throughout, though, is Spaeny. This is a deft breakthrough performance perfectly poised between youthful fantasy and adult reality. "Priscilla," an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for drug use and some language. Running time: 113 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'Persian Version' finds laughter, tears in Iranian American tale of resilient women By JOCELYN NOVECK October 23, 2023. 5:35 PM EST --- Let nobody say writer-director Maryam Keshavarz doesn't know how to start a movie. The first time we see Leila, her alter ego in the autobiographical, warm-hearted, personal, funny but also somewhat chaotic "The Persian Version," she's walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Headed to a Halloween party, she's carrying a surfboard and wearing what she calls a "burkini" - a sexy bikini, but paired with a niqab, the face-covering garment worn by some Muslim women. It's surely not an accident that Leila is crossing a bridge, because her film (and Halloween costume) is about bridging two identities - her Iranian heritage, and her American life. Leila (an engaging Layla Mohammadi) is a New York born-and-raised aspiring screenwriter (she wants to be an Iranian Martin Scorsese) who, we learn, has never been fully comfortable in either world. American kids would call her names at school; Iranians saw her as too Americanized. There are other bridges to be crossed here, too. The most important is that between Leila and her formidable immigrant mother, Shireen (the wonderful Niousha Noor), who created a successful life in America out of sheer grit, educating herself and becoming an adept businesswoman while running a household full of boys and one girl. It's the girl, Leila, with whom Shireen has the fraught relationship, because - well, if you're a mother or a daughter you probably get it. But there's a deeper backstory behind this troubled dynamic, and to learn all that, we must take a journey - a long journey, in terms of the film's run time - back to a remote village in 1960s rural Iran. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, because first adult Leila, gay and newly divorced from her wife, gets pregnant with the guy in drag who plays Hedwig on Broadway. We told you this was chaotic. About that Halloween party: Leila wins the costume prize - justifiably! - and also hooks up in a back room with Maximillian (Tom Byrne, charming in a less roguish Hugh Grant way), who's starring in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" at the Belasco Theatre (where the show did actually run). And when she gets pregnant - professing she didn't know you could get pregnant from a one-night stand - Max says he's all in. Keshavarz, whose film won the audience prize at Sundance, likes a flashback, and one of them takes us back to Leila's childhood summer trips to Iran, fooling guards at the airport looking for banned American music and videos, and bringing Cyndi Lauper to her Iranian relatives. Who, in turn, dance with abandon to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" - a joyous scene. Back in the States (the film toggles perhaps too frequently between eras, mostly 2000s New Jersey, 1980s Brooklyn and 1960s rural Iran) adult Leila's father needs a heart transplant. And Leila is hurting from her failed marriage. In flashback, we see her bringing her wife to Thanksgiving dinner and her mother, unable to approve of the gay relationship, ultimately kicking the couple out in disgust. What has made her mother's heart so cold, particularly with her daughter? Leila's grandmother hints that a mysterious scandal long ago brought Shireen to America. To understand, we're taken back to that village in Iran, where Shireen was a bride at 14, coping with early motherhood and heartbreak. Luckily, this section of the film stars an extraordinary young actor, Kamand Shafieisabet in her first film, packing an emotional wallop into every scene. As vividly as Keshavarz portrays the country of her heritage, she is unable to return there - her first feature, "Circumstance," about sexual desire between two girls in Iran, won her her first audience award at Sundance but also got her banned from the country. In any case we end "The Persian Version" not in Iran but back in the States, in a place not usually very comical but where most comedies involving a birth, even a dramatic comedy like this, eventually wind up: the maternity ward. The scene here is intentionally crowded and yes, chaotic, just like the entire film. But it ends on a note that brings easy tears. The rebelliousness of each of the strong women here - mother and daughter - somehow coalesces into understanding. Such moments can be sappy, but here, as with her lovely opening shot, Keshavarz does it well. She sticks the landing. "The Persian Version," a Sony Pictures Classics release, in limited release Friday and nationwide on Nov. 3, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for language and some sexual references." Running time: 107 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: A holiday movie with some bite in Alexander Payne's 'The Holdovers' By LINDSEY BAHR October 23, 2023. 4:30 PM EST --- Alexander Payne brings audiences to a New England boarding school in 1970 in "The Holdovers," a textured, nostalgic and often funny piece about three lonely and mismatched souls stuck together over Christmas break. It's a keeper and possibly even destined to become a classic. The holiday movie genre is suspect - even the most well-intentioned entries can be too saccharine, too wistful, too "Lifetime." But Payne, working with a sharp script written by David Hemingston, keeps "The Holdovers" grounded and real. Even absent your own memories of smoking indoors or handsewn outerwear, this is the kind of thoughtful, precisely constructed movie where you can almost taste the cigarette smoke and feel your fingers numbing through drafty wool mittens. With its knowingly retro production titles starting the film, "The Holdovers" lets you settle in and submit to something that could very well have been made in the time it was set, which was one of Payne's goals. Similarly, the recurring Damien Jurado song "Silver Joy," a soothing and melancholy tune that perfectly sets the tone and place, feels like a forgotten Cat Stevens melody - not something from the past decade. It's all part of the transportive magic of the experience. Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly ancient history instructor whose only pleasure seems to be derived from holding his privileged students to account and failing them without regard for political considerations. He's the kind of guy who looks suspiciously at a smiling colleague giving him homemade Christmas cookies and wants to start a new lesson in the last hours before the break. Paul draws the short straw for holdover duty - i.e. babysitting the students staying on campus during the break for various reasons. After a few days of chaos and humor, the group is whittled down to just one: Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa), whose mom abandoned their plans for a beach vacation at the last minute to spend time with her new husband. And no one is happy, least of all Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), the head cook mourning her son's death in Vietnam. The actors get to explore depths beyond the tropes of the cranky teacher, the depressed cook and the privileged jerk as they clumsily try to navigate an unpleasant situation. To make matters even bleaker, food deliveries stop over the break and the heat is turned off everywhere but the infirmary, where they must bunk in sad hospital beds for the duration. It's strange to think that this is the first time that Giamatti has reunited with Payne since screaming about not wanting Merlot in "Sideways," which came out almost 20 years ago. These two together make for a special match. Giamatti doesn't let the characters' quirks (a glass eye) overwhelm his choices - this man's pathos runs deep, as does his militant view of what a Barton man does and does not do. Randolph also adds turbulent emotion to what could have been a tertiary, one-note character consumed in grief. She is in grief, which comes on in both expected and unexpected ways, but she's also witty and wise and a perfect foil to Paul's didactics. But the true discovery is Sessa, making his film debut. They found him in the drama department at one of their shooting locations, Deerfield Academy. Casting modern teens in period pieces can be a tricky art, but Sessa somehow looks straight out of 1969. And he goes head-to-head with his seasoned co-stars, exhibiting a real capacity for both drama and physical comedy. The idea of found family is a little too neat and cliche for "The Holdovers," but perhaps more resonant and believable are the hard, and sometimes comically, learned lessons about how to be a decent person in the world - how to look outside of your own problems to empathize with and maybe even help others. No one comes out of this fixed or healed; It's just a bit of life mixed up in the surreal pressure cooker of the holidays. "The Holdovers," a Focus Features release opening in New York and Los Angeles Friday, in limited release Nov. 3, nationwide on Nov. 10, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "some drug use, language and brief sexual material." Running time: 133 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Netflix's 'Old Dads' is a recycling of PC grievances and a Bill Burr career nadir By MARK KENNEDY October 19, 2023. 9:00 PM EST --- The new Netflix movie "Old Dads" has a title problem. It really should be called "Old Dads Yelling at Clouds" or "Old Dads Raging at QR Codes." It's designed for people who find it hard to navigate the Netflix scroll and so blame millennials for being woke. Bill Burr, who directs from a script by him and Ben Tishler, leads a meandering, unfunny assault on PC culture that would seem perfectly in place in the 1990s alongside "Illiberal Education" by Dinesh D'Souza and the rantings of Pat Buchanan. It's so dated there's even a mention of Halliburton. The whiff of deep, old school morass about modern life comes from the moment the movie begins with the Miramax logo and a rock guitar solo, two clear signals we're going back in time when making fun of Starbucks cup sizes was funny. Burr, who plays a 51-year-old dad with a young son and another child on the way, is immediately ranting about the lack of parking spots, mechanical scooters, pre-school etiquette, Twitter, emotional learning, vaping and paper straws. Cutting edge humor, this is not. Burr, who has also conspired to sully the reputations of onscreen buddies Bobby Cannavale and Bokeem Woodbine by inviting them into this mess, go on to mock trans identity and the notion of "check your privilege." "No offense, you're just coming across a little old, you know? A little out of touch," a younger guy tells Burr, who responds: "Like your generation? Filming yourselves while you're flipping water bottles?" The plot is loosey-goosey, never anything engrossing and more like a series of set pieces for Burr to act badly. The three old dads once owned a high-end throwback jersey company - throwback at least is on brand - and have sold it, returning as employees to a 28-year-old new boss, who fancies himself a disruptor. "I appreciate you," he tells them, which naturally enrages them. Strap in for a lot of purposely baiting slurs and then amazement that there's push-back. "Is it ever over with these people?" whines Burr's dad, whose style of parenting is to rub dirt into a child's wound to make them more macho. While Burr is a boiling cauldron of grievances, Cannivale's dad tries too hard being cool - saying things are "fleek" and that he has "gotta bounce" - and Woodbine's carefully curated life is suddenly under threat. Things go south for all of them when they "exercise free speech" - in other words, spew misogynist hate. Their friendships begin to rend and their wives - portrayed as either cold, needy or intimidating - begin bickering. Mostly because Burr is a Gen-X anti-social warrior, prone to go on an angry rant no matter the consequences. "What, you're mad?" he screams at his pregnant wife. "Cause I'm honest?" No, 'cause your toxic, dude. In one scene, the three old dads try to trap a millennial into using the n-word when he sings along to N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton." Why? That will apparently expose the hypocrisy of the younger generation. But it doesn't. It's also a moment lifted from another earlier Netflix movie, "You People." There's no way this cinematic slop would lead to a strip club, is there? You bet your G-string it does. That's where Burr's old dad comes to a realization, and where the others come to their own realizations. That they should be better men? No, it's too late for that. You can't teach an old dad new tricks. As for you, gentle viewer, you're better off watching water bottles flip in the air for 100 minutes. "Old Dads," a Netflix release streaming starting Friday, is rated R for "pervasive language, sexual material, nudity and brief drug use." Running time: 104 minutes. Zero stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In 'Nyad,' Jodie Foster swims away with a showcase for Annette Bening By JAKE COYLE October 18, 2023. 10:00 PM EST --- In "Nyad," there are two feats of perseverance on display. First, there is the ceaseless determination of Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) to accomplish a marathon swim from Cuba to Florida across 103 miles of open, shark-infested waters. Then there is the mettle of Nyad's support team to tolerate the singularly self-absorbed and stubborn Nyad. Both, in the film, are an endurance sport. "Nyad," which opens in limited theaters Friday and streams Nov. 3 on Netflix, is in many ways a conventional sports drama, defined by long odds and personal triumph. But there is enough here to help the film, directed by the intrepid filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, if not swim against the tide of sports-biopic convention then at least ride a swift current to the finish line. First and foremost there's the fact that this is a sports drama led by two actresses in their 60s: Bening and Jodie Foster, who plays Diana's best friend and personal trainer Bonnie Stoll. When "Nyad" gets underway, the setting isn't the 1970s, when Nyad's record swims made her a headline-grabbing sensation. It's Diana's 60th birthday, which for her only marks her long distance from a real challenge. "Where's the excellence?" she says. Diana soon thereafter gets back in the pool, resolving to complete the Cuba-to-Florida swim, a route some moviegoers may associate more with the Go-Fast boats of Michael Mann's "Miami Vice" than athletic pursuit. For Diana, the 50-hour endeavor is a matter of completing a long-ago abandoned dream and a way to prove to herself (and everyone else) that age is no match for her will. It's the rare role that could be said to be both shark and Oscar bait. Yet Bening's performance has little vanity to it. Her Diana is obsessively single-minded to the point of unlikeable. When Diana hits the ocean, Bening turns into a ferociously forward-moving force who won't let anything - not thunder storms, nor jelly fish stings - stop her in her quest. Just keep swimming? She'd leave Dory in the dust. Diana also comes close to outswimming the people trying hardest to help her. Though the film is principally a showcase for Bening, it's Foster's supporting turn that lifts "Nyad." Foster is a rare screen presence these days, which only makes her warmth and ease all the more powerful here. "Nyad" is balanced between Diana's admirably insane ambition and Bonnie's loyal (up to a point) support for her friend. In any case, it's a reminder, like a pail of cold water, of just how good Foster can be. Other supporting characters are along for the ride, too, most notably Rhys Ifans' crusty sea-dog navigator John Bartlett. He's a cliche but a darn likable one. Nyad has, herself, often been a brash and savvy self-promoter less likely to share the spotlight. It's to the movie's credit that it pushes back against its prickly protagonist at the same time it exalts her. But "Nyad" does accept Nyad's ultimate accomplishment, even if some have disputed it. Her 2013 swim to the Florida Keys was never ratified by the World Open Water Swimming Assn., and fellow marathon swimmers have cast doubts on it. Nyad has forcefully maintained she completed the swim, without assistance. At times, "Nyad" bends over backwards to depict Nyad as conscientious of the rules. Vasarhelyi and Chin, in their narrative debut, mix in documentary footage throughout the film, smoothly transitioning from the non-fiction world they come from. They're the filmmaking team behind documentary standouts like the Oscar-winning "Free Solo" and the Thai cave chronicle "The Rescue." Those films were excellent not just due to Vasarhelyi and Chin's own filmmaking adventurousness but because of their firm grasp of the psychology of those who push themselves to physical extremes. "Nyad" relies on flashbacks to Diana's past - including an encounter with an unnamed swim coach Nyad said sexually assaulted her and others - to dig into what fuels her. And just like Alex Honnold of "Free Solo" and the British cave divers of "The Rescue," "Nyad" convincingly argues that to accomplish something great - to really dream big - you may need a dose of delusion, too. "Nyad," a Netflix release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for thematic material involving sexual abuse, some strong language and brief partial nudity. Running time: 121 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Cornwell/le Carré, through Errol Morris' lens, in riveting 'The Pigeon Tunnel' By LINDSEY BAHR October 18, 2023. 3:39 PM EST --- Errol Morris's conversation with the late David Cornwell in "The Pigeon Tunnel" is fascinating even without the filmmaking flourishes. Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, was the spy-turned-novelist whose tales of espionage and betrayal defined an era, gave literary heft to a genre and inspired numerous adaptations. And here, Morris challenges him to reflect on his unconventional childhood - his con-man father, his mother who left him at 5 never to return - on through his time in the secret services and beyond. You hear how he quite literally began life on the run, how he learned to be a "little spy" from quite a young age, how his father loomed so large in his imagination and how untrustworthy his own memory even turned out to be. It could have been just a transcript; It would have been a must-read. Cornwell died in 2020 at 89, and this film which will be streaming on Apple TV+ Friday, is said to be his final and "most candid" interview. That might simply be marketing-hype but, of course, this is not just an interview. It's an Errol Morris film, right down to the Philip Glass score. And while the Interrotron and the reenactments might not be the revolutionary storytelling devices they once were, they're almost comforting at this point and no less effective at creating a mood and an emotional experience around a sharp conversation. Morris turns "The Pigeon Tunnel" into a le Carré-style thriller itself - a probing examination at the man behind George Smiley, the betrayals of his life, both to him and by him, and up through his fascination with spies and double agents. It scarcely matters if you've never read or even heard of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." At the heart of "The Pigeon Tunnel" are some wonderful, and chilling, observations about life and the nature of man, and a fascinating story about a master storyteller. Like any good spy or novelist for that matter, Cornwell is as equally interested in his interviewer - or interrogator. He cheekily uses these words almost interchangeably. The nature of any interview has as much to do with the subject as it does the questioner. "This is a performance," Cornwell says. "You need to know something about the ambitions of the people you're talking to." And to understand Cornwell, or at least poke at some truths about him, you have to look at this father, Ronnie Cornwell. Ronnie was a con man straight out of a novel - charming, contradictory, always on the brink of success, sometimes on the run, occasionally in jail and never second guessing himself. He taught Cornwall the art of the performance and made childhood for him and his brother "terribly exciting," if fraught and false. Later in life, he asked his now wealthy son to repay him for costs spent on his education. Once, at a hotel in Monte Carlo as a child, Cornwell remembers fixating on the tunnel that pigeons would fly through to provide ample shooting targets for paying men. They were bred on the roof, sent through the tunnel to either die or go back to the roof once again to tempt death all over again. Many of his books, he said, had the working title "The Pigeon Tunnel," which he found to be a metaphor for a lot of things. It took until his memoir in 2016 for it to stick to publication. There might not be anything quite so shocking as Robert McNamara admitting mistakes, but Cornwell has his own crosses, including regrets about painting the secret services as "so bloody brilliant" at the wrong time. He even wonders if he'd have been a traitor in a different life. But, he says, "luckily I found a home for my larceny." Cornwell also seemed at peace with himself and his purpose (looking in the mirror was only hard, he said, when he had a hangover). He'd discovered that writing was his freedom and he was happiest when doing so - a revelation that everyone should be so lucky to have for themselves. That, or, to have Errol Morris oversee their last interview. "The Pigeon Tunnel," an Apple Original Films release streaming Friday on Apple TV+, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for "brief language, some violence, smoking." Running time: 93 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Scorsese's epic 'Killers of the Flower Moon' is sweeping tale of greed, richly told By JOCELYN NOVECK October 18, 2023. 11:23 AM EST --- There tends to be lots of fast talking and fast moving in Martin Scorsese films, often from shifty types trying to get away with something. Or sometimes, simply because the master filmmaker has so much to pack in. But in "Killers of the Flower Moon," everything seems to slow down, and especially when the camera lands on Lily Gladstone. As Mollie, the Osage woman at the heart of this sprawling, real-life tale of greed and treachery on a scale both broad and intimate, Gladstone is the quiet, powerful center - taking her time, letting her eyes do the work, and unafraid of silence. It's a beautifully cadenced performance, all the more impressive because Gladstone's sharing the screen with two of our most celebrated actors. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro both turn in superb work for their legendary director, appearing together for the first time in 30 years. But Gladstone, in the rare Scorsese film that gives center stage to a female character, is the emotional core here, and it's her face that stays etched in our memory. Based on David Grann's gripping whodunit set among the Osage in 1920s Oklahoma, "Killers" is a departure in other ways for the 80-year-old filmmaker. It's his first Western, a genre he's long wanted to explore - albeit a uniquely Scorsese Western, with an upended world of heroes and villains. And in telling this Osage story, he focuses on a people he's never depicted before, deeply mindful of honoring their experience and their rituals, beliefs and customs. It surely won't surprise anyone that Scorsese brings his full wealth of artistic resources to this endeavor, along with his brilliant cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto, and inspired production designer, Jack Fisk. Together, on location in Oklahoma, they've created an oil boomtown astonishing in its precision, detail and spirit. It may also not surprise anyone that Scorsese has taken three and a half hours (albeit three minutes less than "The Irishman" ) to tell his tale. This may be a source of debate, but it's hard to argue that a story this hefty - a chronicle of a dark chapter in American history and a shocking true crime tale, all framed in a fraught love story - doesn't deserve the length, considering the craft in every shot. And with some scenes - a boisterous prairie wedding, or a dance on a boomtown main drag - you feel you could have stayed longer still. We begin with a late 19th-century ceremony, one of many portrayals of Osage spiritual life. Then, in a memorable image, there's a whoosh from underground: Oil, spurting from land that was supposed to be worthless. Thanks to this discovery, we learn in a terrific prologue using silent-movie title cards, the Osage become enormously wealthy. But they're deemed "incompetent" and appointed white "guardians" who control their assets. This is how we meet Mollie, asking for her own money to pay medical bills. Meanwhile, Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) steps off the train, a World War I vet with a taste for women and finer things, but no money, or talent to speak of. Perhaps his uncle can help. William Hale (De Niro) is a cattle rancher but more like a king around these parts - indeed, King's his nickname - a white man who speaks the Osage language and calls himself their best friend. But it's clear from the get-go Hale has sinister motives, and De Niro's just the guy to ooze sinister from every pore as this Godfather-like figure (he commits crimes, and they're organized). Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth depart here from Grann's book, which holds us in suspense as to Hale's motives. He wants Osage money, and tells Ernest that if he woos and marries Mollie - well, even less-than-brilliant Ernest can do the math. So can Mollie. Trusting but hardly naive, she knows Ernest covets her wealth, but there's growing affection between the two, and their marriage, gorgeously rendered, is a happy occasion. But then the Osage start dying, one by one, in suspicious ways - including, eventually, Mollie's sisters and mother. As for Ernest, he's no angel, spending time robbing and gambling. But is he doing more? DiCaprio's mouth settles into a tortured frown as he becomes increasingly torn between marital loyalty and fealty to his venal uncle. Finally, federal agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons, perfectly cast) shows up, working for J. Edgar Hoover in what became the FBI. (It's White who figured most prominently in Grann's book, and indeed DiCaprio was once slated to play him.) This last act finds its way to a crackling courtroom scene perhaps only Scorsese could bring together: jittery DiCaprio and menacing De Niro, joined by a bombastic Brendan Fraser and a sputtering John Lithgow. Indeed, the vast supporting cast includes countless faces you may recognize, as well as cameos of a number of musicians, and dozens of Osage actors in key parts. Scorsese's late friend Robbie Robertson wrote the memorable score. We won't spoil the ingenious epilogue in which Scorsese ties up the loose narrative ends - with another significant cameo. But the fact that this epilogue comes after, oh, 200 minutes of expertly sustained tension is just another sign that in the latter years of his career, Scorsese is upping the ante - in terms of scale, yes, but also ambition. He has called his work an offering to the Osage, and to other Native peoples. It also feels like an offering to those who love cinema, allowing us to watch a master of the craft continue to force himself, unlikely as it seems, to stretch and learn. May he keep stretching - himself, and us. "Killers of the Flower Moon," an AppleTV+ release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for violence, some grisly images, and language." Running time: 206 minutes. Four stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In the elated 'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,' every seat is the best seat in the house By MARIA SHERMAN October 12, 2023. 8:35 PM EST --- It opens with a clock counting down until show time - the dropped stomach, rollercoaster slowly encroaching its apex sensation - and then, a gentle fake out. Taylor Swift is heard before she is seen. "It's been a long time..." her voice carries. Then the drop hits: an abridged performance of "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince" into "Cruel Summer," a track that TikTok breathed new life into four years after its initial release on her 2019 album "Lover." This is the moment it should become clear: "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" film is a near exact replica of her blockbuster concert performance, which recaps all 10 of her studio albums across 17 years of recorded work. There will be no narrative breaks, no behind-the-scenes footage, no additional ornamentation of the monolithic set (with the exception of a few CGI effects and album title cards to introduce each epoch.) The film delivers on the promise of its title: this is the Eras Tour in full - conveniently viewable at an AMC theater near you. For those who've managed to snag tickets to the Eras Tour concert, it is the ability to relive the experience, likely with loved ones who weren't as lucky. For those who didn't attend, it's a chance to test expectations versus reality. But for everyone, it is the opportunity to have every seat in the house transform into the best seat in the house. "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" is all up close and personal footage from every vantage point, courtesy of Sam Wrench, who shot and directed it. Where else but in this film can you be placed inches from Swift's moss-covered "evermore" album -era piano as she introduces "Champagne Problems" - so close as to examine phalanges as they press down on the final notes of the song's coda? And where else does it sound this good, highlighting sonic details that might've been missed in the stadium setting? Like guitars placed high in the mix on "Look What You Made Me Do," differing slightly from the recording, or emphasis placed on moments fans have transformed into opportunities from insider participation, like when everyone shouts, "1, 2, 3, 4, let's go, bitch!" in "Delicate," as inspired by a viral video? Edits to the three-and-a-half-hour concert production are few on screen. Costume changes are cut down. Some songs are snipped, like "The Archer," "Cardigan," "Wildest Dreams," and "no body no crime." The "Speak Now" section is just one song long: "Enchanted," with "Long Live" soundtracking the end credits alongside images of "Eras Tour" bloopers and an endless exchange of friendship bracelets. On stage banter, too, is limited, mostly reserved for humor and exposition. As previously reported, the concert film, compiled from several Swift shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles, is expected to launch with $100 million, or possibly more. Advance ticket sales worldwide have already surpassed $100 million. AMC announced that the concert film broke its record for highest ticket sales revenue in a single day. The theater chain Cinemark reported domestic pre-sale records are more than "10 times higher pre-sales than any other cinema engagement event." It's too early to tell, but all signs point to her usurping 2011's "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never" as the biggest concert film, ever. And for the premiere Wednesday night in Los Angeles, Swift shut down The Grove, a bustling mall just south of Hollywood, and watched her performance in an auditorium alongside a star-studded audience of Adam Sandler, Mariska Hargitay, actor Julia Garner, "Queer Eye" co-host Karamo Brown, country star Maren Morris, singer Hayley Kiyoko and Bachelor Nation's Becca Tilley. It is massive, but nothing could exactly recreate the decibel-bursting exhilaration of a live music performance, particularly one at this scale. But in this format, Swift gets as close as possible - and for her, being an exception to the rule is par for the course. In a fractured, algorithmic music industry, Swift is a final exemplar of monoculture, a figure recognizable by most. And because of that fact, she's able to fully communicate her power in a concert film with little to no dialogue. (That, admittedly, is something available to only her and Beyoncé, a superstar Swift has learned from and mirrored, in some ways. For example: Beyoncé limits traditional press appearances to instead present her own story in her own terms; Swift has begun to do the same. Relatedly, Bey will release a documentary chronicling her Renaissance World Tour, premiering at AMC theaters in North America on Dec. 1 in a similar agreement to Swift.) The success of Swift's concert film, too, has something to do with the setting of a theater. Her revealing 2020 documentary, "Miss Americana," was released to Netflix and meant to be absorbed with a kind of intimacy. The viewer is with her in the backseat of car, listening to her incredible candor about the pressures of being Swift, and in a particularly memorable moment, disordered eating. A very different viewing experience, "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" is meant to be enjoyed communally - a shout-along affair where fans in bespoke cosplay can dance and sing and film the screen on their smartphones, breaking the rules of the traditional movie-going experience. Strangers become friends. And all the while, feeling closer to Swift than ever before. "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour," an AMC release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some strong language and suggestive material. Running time: 168 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In 'Anatomy of a Fall,' a sharp courtroom drama that will end relationships By LINDSEY BAHR October 10, 2023. 2:20 PM EST --- Of all the ways that a relationship can end, a fundamental disagreement about a work of art is in some ways extremely silly. And yet, a film or a book exposing an irreparable rift in a love that perhaps wasn't as compatible, as symbiotic or as caring as one might have thought is also, somehow, as good a reason as any. Maybe it will even, eventually, provide a funny story. Another, more excruciating, way for a relationship to end is with one party falling off the roof of a house to their death, followed by a humiliating public trial to determine the fault or innocence of the other, as happens in Justine Triet's Palme d'Or-winning "Anatomy of a Fall." And just like "The Corrections" before it, it seems that "Anatomy of a Fall" might be the new litmus test for modern relationships. See it with a romantic partner at your own risk. But, from my perch, this is one that's worth the debate(s) it provokes. Sandra Hüller, the German actor known for "Toni Erdmann" and, soon, "The Zone of Interest," is Sandra, a writer living in a chalet in the French Alps with her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), and 11-year-old son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Triet thrusts the audience into a tense and stressful atmosphere, introducing us to Sandra in the midst of an interview with a grad student, a woman, which will become significant later. Sandra is a little prickly and sipping a glass of red wine while deflecting questions back at her interviewer. It is hard to focus on what they're saying, however, as an instrumental version of 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P." blares through the household on a deafening, constant and maddening loop. Samuel's choice, apparently. The student leaves, Sandra waves goodbye from a balcony, 50 Cent still playing, glass of red still in hand and Daniel, who is blind, heads out for a walk with his dog. He returns to find his father on the ground outside, dead and bleeding out. Sandra's lawyer, Vincent (Swann Arlaud, a calming presence), later analyzes the fall trajectory and finds the cause of death "inconclusive." "Stop," Sandra says. "I did not kill him." "That's not the point," Vincent responds. It's one brief exchange that could sum up the 150-minute film, which is a smartly constructed and wholly engaging whodunit, courtroom thriller, marriage drama and, at some points, satire. This is not really a tearjerker, but a visceral dismantling of a life that's either happening in the wake of a tragedy or a murder. Either way, it's uncomfortable to watch Samuel's sharp, merciless advocate (Antoine Reinartz) grill Sandra about their marriage troubles and why, in his mind, that makes her a likely suspect. She's also accused of doing it for material for her books. Hüller makes the audience squirm along with her as she plays the tricky game of knowing when to take the insults and when to push back (without seeming "unlikable," of course), and she's doing this all in two languages that aren't the character's own (French and English). It's exhausting, illuminating and triggering to be reminded of the internalized misogyny that still exists and even thrives in marriages that look evolved and equal on paper. But it's hard to fight back when parties can hide their own culpability behind therapy-speak. For Daniel, the trial and his part in it plays out like a vicious divorce proceeding, in which his parents' characters are dissected and annihilated. He bears witness to their fights, their infidelities, their insecurities and all manner of speculation made by prosecutors, therapists and judges about the private matters of this couple, the complexities of which are far too great for a child burdened with the loss of one parent and the possible imprisonment of another. And, of course, Samuel is unable to speak for himself - not really at least. His therapist has some insights and assumptions, his lawyer has many, and there is one brutal argument that we're all privy too, since he himself recorded it in secret to inspire his own writings. For some audiences, this might be the biggest and most egregious injustice of all, coating everything with an uncertainty that will never be resolved. At a certain point, you might even forget that it's a murder trial you're watching. "Anatomy of a Fall" may not be a film with many concrete answers, ultimately, but the truths it uncovers are irrefutable. "Anatomy of a Fall," a Neon release, in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "sexual references, violent images and some language." Running time: 150 minutes. Four stars out of four.
# Movie Review: In 'Fair Play,' a battle of the sexes on Wall Street By JAKE COYLE October 4, 2023. 5:20 PM EST --- The disquieting root of Chloe Domont's slinky, slick feature debut "Fair Play" lies in the face of Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) as he learns that his fiance Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) has been given the promotion at their Wall Street hedge fund he thought was his. "Congratulations," he says with a grin that looks more like a grimace. "That's amazing." Ehrenreich, a cunning actor here given a part to chew on, conveys the moment with the just right mix of of support for Emily and shattering woundedness. Up to this point, we've seen Emily and Luke as only a swoon-worthy romantic pair deeply in love with one another. In the film's breezy opening moments, they slip away from a party to have sex in a bathroom. After, Luke kneels to propose. But the engagement ring lies ominously on the counter when both dress in the morning for work in their their Chinatown apartment at the same high-powered hedge fund in downtown New York. They've left some inner version of their selves at home; at the office, they must keep their relationship a secret for the sake of company policy and their own career ambitions. Work-life balance gets more than a little wobbly in "Fair Play," which debuts Friday on Netflix, and so do traditional gender roles. Luke initially puts up a good front, but his alpha male persona (and his libido) takes a beating when Emily's meetings with the sexist boss Campbell (Eddie Marsan) go past midnight and banter around the office turns to his fiance. In "Fair Play," the supportive male may just be a facade. Since its hit arrival at the Sundance Film Festival, "Fair Play" has been hailed for reviving the long-dormant-but-often-missed erotic thriller. While there are bits of that in Domont's film, "Fair Play" is neither especially erotic nor much of a thriller. What it is, though, is often gripping battle of the sexes set in a toxic, misogynist corporate world where power and sex are inextricably linked currencies. The movie is brilliant and breezy at first but sputters just as its catching fire. It may, in fact, be wrong to call this a battle of the sexes - Luke turns out to be not really up for a fight. He transforms into an emasculated and increasingly volatile wreck and "Fair Play" lurches toward a lurid and overcooked third act. For Emily - and surely countless women just like her - "Fair Play" is more of a horror movie, and an accurate one at that. But for a while, Domont's film is electric thanks to its lead actors. Dynevor is especially terrific playing a woman whose first thought when she's promoted isn't pride for herself but concern for the hurt feelings of Luke. At its best, "Fair Play" feels like a demented game where everything in high finance comes down to how you project yourself, man or woman. Emily knows when meeting the boss to switch her drink order from a Diet Coke to Macallen 25, neat. It's in sly moments like these that Domont is at her most playful. Double entendres fly. Coming home drunk one night, Emily tries to cajole a tired Luke into sleeping with her. "C'mon," she says, "I'll do all the work." "Fair Play," a Netflix release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for pervasive language, sexual content, some nudity, and sexual violence. Running time: 113 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Jamie Foxx leads a crowd-pleasing courtroom drama in 'The Burial' By LINDSEY BAHR October 4, 2023. 3:54 PM EST --- Jamie Foxx deploys his movie star charm judiciously and skillfully as a litigator with swagger to spare in "The Burial," a very entertaining courtroom drama. Foxx is one of those actors, blessed with an allure and glamour that runs so deep that it's almost tempting to dismiss a performance like this as one that's natural. It's one of those compliments that's rotten at its core - of course he, or Clooney, or whomever, is good at being slick and appealing, right? If it looks effortless, we assume it is, denying them the work that goes into every role. The same could be said for "The Burial," which is glossy, appealing and goes down suspiciously easy. Is there a catch or did director and co-writer Maggie Betts just prove her commercial chops in her sophomore feature? (It's the latter.) Just take a look at the poster used for its marketing campaign -- a little retro, a little cheesy, and a lot self-aware. This movie and everyone involved knows what it is. In a probably skewed memory of the mid-90s, these sort of mid-budget "rousing courtroom dramas" seemed ubiquitous, but have gone the way of the rom-com at least in big theatrical releases. "The Burial" will be in some theaters for a week, before coming to your living room on Oct. 13 on Prime Video. This story is a classic David vs. Goliath one, in which a Biloxi funeral home owner, Tommy Lee Jones as Jeremiah O'Keefe, goes up against a billionaire, Raymond Loewen (Bill Camp). Both were children of funeral parlor owners, but O'Keefe stayed local while Loewen took the so-called "death care" business corporate. He made a fortune acquiring funeral homes in Canada and then the United States in anticipation of a "golden age of death," in which the baby boomers start meeting their ends in mass numbers. "The Burial" is loosely based on a true story, which was chronicled by Jonathan Harr in The New Yorker in 1999. Betts focuses her lens on Foxx's character, Willie E. Gary, a self-made success in personal injury law, who has never lost a case and doesn't plan to. Jeremiah's case is a contract one but a young associate played by the always appealing Mamoudou Athie convinces him that he's going to need a lead counsel who is Black if they're going to have a chance. The trial has been set for a poor, largely Black area, and Jeremiah's longtime lawyer, Mike Allred (Alan Ruck, playing a character who would probably be a Con-Head), is an obvious racist. He's working on it, he says chillingly to a team of Black lawyers. When Willie does finally agree to go out of his comfort zone and take on a different kind of case (his ego stoked by the promise that this could make him as famous as Johnnie Cochran), there is a steep and humbling learning curve and a formidable opponent in Jurnee Smollett's Ivy League-educated lawyer representing the Loewen Group. Betts shares a screenwriting credit with Doug Wright, the Pulitzer and Tony-winning playwright, who has been with the project for years, with Alexander Payne once attached to direct. Betts was coming off a promising, but small, debut - the religious drama "Novitiate," with Margaret Qualley and Melissa Leo. "The Burial" too is assured and straightforward, and faces questions about race and privilege and inequality head on. This story is about two older white men fighting about a contract, sure, but Betts and Wright expand its scope with sensitivity and nuance. Like many good courtroom dramas before it, this case is bigger than just these two guys. Smollett's Mame is the big invention of the movie, which doesn't grate the way it usually does when screenwriters add a fictional, exceptional woman to diversify a too-male story. Mame is not a one note character - she is brilliant and accomplished but also keenly aware that she can't stumble, falter or lose her cool the way her male counterparts can. Sometimes you even forget that you really shouldn't be rooting for her to win, which is a shrewd touch for a movie with a pretty obvious conclusion and an easily hateable villain. But this show belongs to Foxx, and it's a fun feast to see him grandstand and doubt himself and charm all kinds of jurors and make us feel empathetic for a guy who is himself ostentatiously wealthy, no matter if it was easy for the actor or not. "The Burial," an MGM/Amazon Studios release in theaters Friday and streaming Oct. 13, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "language." Running time: 125 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: 'The Exorcist: Believer' doesn't desecrate the original but it won't compel you By JAKE COYLE October 4, 2023. 3:28 PM EST --- There may be no holier ground in horror than "The Exorcist." As endlessly as William Friedkin's 1973 film has been ripped off and resurrected, its power remains unalloyed, its place in movie history consecrated. Why is it that, after we've seen seen so many heads twist around, "The Exorcist" can still turn heads? Much, surely, is owed to its patient, restrained approach, icy atmospheres and and evocative, uncluttered imagery - all conjured in the dawning dread of post-1960s America. But the possession of young Regan MacNeil still haunts, I think, for its absolute belief in good and evil. It's a supernatural movie that treats the supernatural as straightforwardly natural. The devil is as real and present as all those concrete steps. There were flop sequels that followed and plenty of spinoffs that failed to grip. But now, just two months after the death of Friedkin and a few months shy of the original's 50th anniversary, comes a sequel from director David Gordon Green. Hollywood's propensity for reaching back to old classics may be, by now, enough to inspire the kind of projectile vomiting Friedkin made famous. "The Exorcist: Believer" was produced by Blumhouse with the intent of launching a new series of films, but it feels guided largely by affection and respect for Friedkin's original rather than more cynical motivations. The film's main additions are that, this time, there are two possessed girls (double the fun?) and the Catholic Church is no longer the sole or even the primary demon battler. This is a multidenominational "Exorcist," yet also a less profoundly spiritual one. Green, one of today's most protean filmmakers, has been at this before. He rebooted the "Halloween" films in a trilogy that started off promisingly with an update to the slasher suburban nightmare before devolving in subsequent films. It's easier to recycle "Halloween" than it is "The Exorcist." Yet the first thing you notice about "Believer" is its sure-handedness. Green, working from a script he wrote with Peter Sattler from a story by Green, Danny McBride and Scott Teems, moves nimbly in setting the atmosphere, refraining from the kinds of flashy camera movement or schlocky scares often found in horror films. There's craftsmanship in how "Believer" is stitched together - at least at first. Thirteen years after the death of his pregnant wife in an earthquake in Haiti, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) lives with his 13-year-old daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett). They are close and Victor is a little overprotective. When Angela and a friend Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) walk through the woods after school and start performing a seance by candlelight, it's not hard to guess where this might be going. But "The Exorcist: Believer" initially gets its hooks into you thanks to the agility of the filmmaking, the levelheaded presence of Odom Jr. and a fine performance by newcomer Jewett. The girls go missing for several days and, when they return, no longer seem themselves. As things begin to get ugly, the film's attention shifts to the parents - this is more a movie about parenting than it is about faith - including the blurrily characterized parents of Katherine (Norbert Leo Butz and Jennifer Nettles), whose bond with their daughter may be less than Victor's with Angela. If "The Exorcist" seemed to summon demons, the best "The Exorcist: Believer" can do is to conjure tropes. Fingers claw. Heads turn. Bodies levitate. Once the film gets both possessed girls tied down in chairs, back to back, with a cobbled-together team of spiritual defenders around them, "Believer" bogs down in a prolonged torture chamber of horror cliches. Green, who has long had a keen eye for casting, populates the film with some fine actors. Ellen Burstyn, Oscar-nominated for "The Exorcist," returns as Chris MacNeil, though it may be the film's biggest mistake to so quickly and gruesomely dispatch its most potent performer. Ann Dowd, as a nurse who lives next door, also adds to the film's dramatic heft. But "The Exorcist: Believer" never manages anything like the deep terror of the original, and the film's climactic scenes pass by with a lifeless predictability. Been there, exhumed that. It may be that to get near the dark danger of "The Exorcist" you have to climb your own steps and fight your own demons. "The Exorcist: Believer," a Universal Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for or some violent content, disturbing images, language and sexual references. Running time: 111 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Check out 'The Royal Hotel' but don't linger in this subtle horror flick By MARK KENNEDY October 4, 2023. 1:32 PM EST --- "The Royal Hotel" is a horror movie but don't expect any jump-cuts, scary masks or serial killers. It's more like the horror that dawns on a frog when it realizes it is being boiled alive. Filmmaker Kitty Green tells a captivating tale of two young American female backpackers who find themselves tending bar for a few weeks in a very remote part of Australia. The bar is a dump ironically called "The Royal Hotel" and the clientele are rough, hard-drinking miners unfamiliar with the etiquette of Miss Manners or even just respectful interaction. Our two heroines - Julia Garner from "Ozark" and Jessica Henwick from "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" - really should not be in this situation. They are the recipients of dirty jokes, drunken behavior, offensive nicknames and constant propositions. One client pays for his beer by passive-aggressively tossing coins at them. "Wouldn't hurt you to smile a bit?" they are asked. Green, who directs with a screenplay she wrote with Oscar Redding, explores how women respond to a male-centered environment and how it can test their own friendship. The constant threat of violence hangs over this tale very uncomfortably, its wingman always being alcohol. Would-be heroes come and then show their true nature, slinking off. It is a subtle movie, with the growing accretion of indignities building slowly until one of the women blurts out: "I'm scared. I'm scared of this place. I'm scared of everyone and everything in this place." And yet, they stay. The remoteness of the bar - a bus is always several days away - helps explain some of the stasis, but the two women have the very human tendency to settle: They make excuses, they blame themselves, they point to cultural misunderstandings and another day begins. Hugo Weaving plays the bar owner, the arbiter of what is correct (mis)behavior. But the moral center is played by Ursula Yovich, who speaks truth to power and when she leaves, allows chaos to fully enter. "The Royal Hotel" has a pessimistic - OK, accurate - view of gender relations. The two sides simply don't understand each other - "I can't hear you," says one of the women early on to a would-be suitor - and attempts at conversation are so often drowned out by noise. It asks how you can rationalize ending up mopping up puke in a dive bar in rural Down Under. The movie perfectly starts with a dark remix of Men at Work's "Down Under." Remember the lyrics: "Buying bread from a man in Brussels/He was 6-foot-4 and full of muscle/I said, 'Do you speak my language?' He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich." "The Royal Hotel" shares a vibe with Alex Garland's sophisticated horror film "Men" - an arty indictment of toxic masculinity that often felt like a lecture. But Green's film doesn't feel like that. The final scene will make you cheer, even if the ultimate message is murky. "The Royal Hotel," a Neon release, is rated R for "language throughout, sexual content and nudity." Running time: 91 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Her voice is lower, but Joan Baez has songs to sing and secrets to tell in new doc By JOCELYN NOVECK October 3, 2023. 5:08 PM EST --- Bob Dylan called it her "heart-stopping soprano," and it's true that when Joan Baez unleashed that pure, angelic voice on the protest song "We Shall Overcome," you could believe we would, indeed, overcome. The celebrated folk singer and activist was singing about civil rights, of course. But what we learn in the thoughtful, thorough and sometimes harrowingly intimate "Joan Baez: I Am a Noise" is that Baez was also seeking to overcome much on a personal scale: anxiety, depression, loneliness and, late in life, troubling repressed memories about her own father. If that sounds like a lot to cover in 113 minutes, it is - especially because the new documentary, directed by Maeve O'Boyle, Miri Navasky and Karen O'Connor, also recaps a 60-year performing career, with the singer telling her story through interviews and an incredible wealth of archival material. We see Baez entering for the very first time a storage unit filled to the ceiling by her late mother with photos, home films, audio recordings, letters, drawings and even tapes of therapy sessions. And she gave her directors the key. The film was originally intended simply to cover Baez's last, 2018 "Fare Thee Well" tour, but Baez decided to leave a more thorough legacy. The film begins with novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez's quote about how everyone has three lives: public, private and secret. Well, this is certainly apt for Baez, who emerged as a sudden star in 1959, an 18-year-old with a guitar and that bell-like voice, and went on to make some 40 albums, with a 2017 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As we see from her own anguished drawings and letters beginning in youth, her intensely public life masked both a difficult private one and some dark secrets as well. And then there was Dylan, the same age as Baez, that inscrutable genius who stole her heart and then broke it. It was intoxicating being together, recounts Baez, who introduced him lovingly to her audiences, until a painful UK tour when his fame blossomed and "it was horrible." Then, staring into the camera, she says: "Hi, Bob!" It's a welcome and rare opportunity to laugh with her. But back to the beginning, where Baez, on the cusp of 80, is preparing for the tour, rehearsing at home in northern California. Her hair is fully gray; her face has not changed much. "I know I look good for my age, but there is a limit," she quips of upcoming retirement. As for her voice, it's there, but definitely lower and more ragged. Amid concert footage, we toggle to scenes of Baez's youth. We also hear, on and off, a strange (and rather distracting) male voice sounding like a hypnotist. It turns out to be her therapist. The story begins with lovely, black-and-white footage of Joan as a child, dancing in a field with her parents and sisters. Her Mexican-born father was dashing. The scenes look idyllic, but there are signs of trouble ahead when, in an interview from the present, Joan notes mysteriously: "I'm way too conflicted to just have a bunch of happy memories." We see pages from young Joan's journal, its copious sketches brought to life by wonderfully inventive animation, and hear how white kids called her "the dumb Mexican" in school. Panic attacks and anxiety set in. Even when she becomes a star, breaking out at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, her self-image doesn't seem to thrive. Nestled among the many letters to her parents is a drawing of a very small girl: "This is how I felt on the Carnegie Hall stage." And then a charismatic singer-songwriter invades her life. "I was just stoned on that talent," she says of Dylan. One of the best moments of the film has Baez at the mic, during good times, imitating Dylan imitating her. But later, on that tour to Britain, he leaves her in his wake. "Dylan broke my heart," she says. A new phase sees Baez deeply engaged in protests against the Vietnam War - even going to jail. There, young activist David Harris visits her. The two will marry, she'll become pregnant, and then HE will go to jail. When he comes out, the marriage is troubled and doesn't last. "He was too young and I was too crazy," she says. Gabriel, her son, plays drums in his mother's band on the farewell tour. Later scenes have Baez discussing a phase of reliance on Quaaludes, which cause her to make some questionable decisions, including posing for an album cover in huge aviator goggles. The final act deals with accusations against her father of inappropriate sexual behavior with Joan and one of her sisters, Mimi. Her parents, both deceased, denied it, and Joan's own memories lack detail. She has said she could not have told this story while her parents were still alive. There's an excruciating tape of a phone message from her accused dad, and then a tender scene where Baez comforts her aging and dying mother. And then, after footage of a final concert at New York's Beacon Theater, we see the now-retired Baez dancing in a field near her home. A nod perhaps to the childhood scenes - but also maybe a statement that while she hasn't overcome it all, she's overcome a heckuva lot. "Joan Baez: I Am a Noise," a Magnolia Pictures release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 113 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Humans take a back seat in the stunning AI, sci-fi epic 'The Creator' By LINDSEY BAHR September 27, 2023. 4:30 PM EST --- The artificial intelligence in Gareth Edwards' "The Creator," a visually magnificent if by-the-books epic, is not the AI making headlines at the moment. This is AI in the classic sci-fi mold - the Roy Battys of "Blade Runner," the Avas of "Ex Machina," the ones whose sentience we question and debate endlessly. Will the machines kill us? Take our jobs? Or do something that the movies haven't dreamed possible yet? As the retired special forces guy cleaning up nuclear debris, Joshua (John David Washington), flatly tells a fellow worker when she posits that the AIs were indeed after their jobs: "They can have this one." Regardless, for now, artificial intelligence is more allegory for the other than aspiring screenwriters, filmmakers or trash collectors. And, for Edwards and his co-writer Chris Weitz, they might even have more capacity for humanity and goodness than humans, which is not exactly part of the ChatGPT conversation either, though that would be an interesting twist. In the world of "The Creator" they're welcomed by society at first as an unambiguous good - a helpful servant class that have the ability to make our human lives better. But as they so often do in sci-fi dystopias, they turned on us. Actually, more specifically, they turned on the U.S. when they dropped a nuclear weapon on downtown Los Angeles. Naturally, that means war. Washington's Joshua lost his family in the attack and when we meet him, he's undercover in New Asia to try to find the creator of these advanced AIs, a shadowy, elusive figure they call Nimrata. Joshua got busy with other pursuits though. He fell in love with, married and is about to welcome a baby with his on-the-ground source Maya (Gemma Chan), taken from him in an unexpected raid by his peers - one of many truly sublime sequences in which a hovering death star-like aircraft called NOMAD scans the lush landscape with ominous blue lasers. Edwards, who had a complicated journey making "Rogue One," does not deny himself the pleasure of riffing on "Star Wars" iconography. Allison Janney's hardened Colonel later attempts to recruit him for one last shot at finding Nimrata and the ultimate weapon he's suspected of building, but a jaded Joshua demurs that he doesn't care about going extinct: "I've got TV to watch." Of course he eventually says yes and ends up travelling with a Very Special Child, a wide-eyed AI whom he names Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who might be able to help him find what he's looking for. Voyles is a captivating presence and undeniably compelling. Unfortunately, the script denies her the edge and nuance that would make her more believable as a person as well as a machine. Even Grogu is a little sassy sometimes. But this is also a film where the visuals upstage the pretty predictable story and even the actors, including the likes of Washington and Ken Watanabe. The lush landscapes of Southeast Asia are stunningly photographed by Edwards and co-cinematographers Greig Fraser ("Dune") and Oren Soffer, who shot on location in eight countries with an unusually low-cost camera for a Hollywood studio film (the Sony FX3, which goes for under $4,000). Speaking of cost - "The Creator" was made for around $80 million and looks a thousand times better than movies (mainly of the superhero variety) that cost three times as much. This was part of Edwards' design and could be revolutionary for filmmaking. In addition to using a camera any hobbyist could buy at a local store, instead of pre-determining the concept art and visual effects and forcing the actors to look at little silver balls or tracking markers, they added them in after the fact. It makes a huge difference. "The Creator" is an original movie too, and even if it is a somewhat convoluted and silly mishmash of familiar tropes and sci-fi cliches, it still evokes the feeling of something fresh, something novel, something exciting to experience and behold - which is so much more than you can say about the vast majority of big budget movies these days. And it's worth taking a chance on it at the cinemas. "The Creator," a 20th Century Studios release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for "strong language, some bloody images, violence." Running time: 132 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: Documentary 'Carlos' is a loving, respectful portrait of guitar god Santana By MARK KENNEDY September 26, 2023. 2:10 PM EST --- A new documentary on rock icon Carlos Santana begins with the legendary philosopher-guitarist asking a simple question: "Do you believe in magic?" "Magic. Not tricks - the flow of grace," he says. You may be convinced you do a little less than 90 minutes later by director Rudy Valdez's intimate portrait of a man with a magical ability and a story told with few tricks. "Carlos" is a traditional linear tale, tracing Santana's formative years in Tijuana, Mexico, his set at Woodstock, his relentless touring and dive into spirituality, climaxing with his triumphant 1999 "Supernatural" album. It's lovingly told - and intimate. There is the first known recording of a 19-year-old Santana in 1966 - already a guitar master with a familiar, blistering style - and one later in life in which he delights his children behind a couch with sock puppets. But some of the most powerful images are several old homemade clips Santana made himself, alone at home just jamming. It's like hearing the magic flow straight from the source, watching unfiltered genius work while his guitar gently wails. Valdez uses various images almost like a collage to capture his subject - talk show clips, old concerts, and newly conducted interviews with the master, one at sundown with the icon beside a fire. The only forced bit is a roundtable of Santana's wife and sisters. A highlight is watching Santana and his band play in the rain during 1982's Concert for the Americas in the Dominican Republic. Other directors might show a short clip and go but Valdez lets it play long, a treat. We see Santana grow up to a violinist father and a fierce mother, who became mesmerized by the blues-rock of Ray Charles, B.B. King and Little Richard. He was pressing tortillas at a diner in San Francisco in the late 1960s - he calls the city a "vortex of newness" - and go to the Fillmore to listen to the Grateful Dead and Country Joe and the Fish. After being busted trying to sneak into the legendary venue without paying, impresario Bill Graham was so impressed by this skinny guitarist that he invited him to open for the Who, Steve Miller and Howling Wolf. At Woodstock - he and his band wouldn't have their debut album out for months more - Santana hits the stage very high by accident (Thanks, Jerry Garcia) and says a little prayer: "God, I know you're here. Please keep me in time and in tune." Throughout his set, Santana seems to be wrestling the neck of his guitar, which to him resembled a snake. His first royalty check was spent on a home and a refrigerator for mom, fulfilling a promise. "It's better than Grammys and Oscars and Heisman trophies. It feels better than anything," he says in the documentary. Inevitably, the fall comes, with the drugs and overindulgence. Shocked by the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Santana decides he must choose between heroin or spiritual meditation. He picks the latter, dresses in white, eats healthy, turn to jazz and decides to "surf the cosmos of imagination." With enduring hits like "Oye Como Va" and "Black Magic Woman," Santana was voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, the first person of Hispanic heritage to be inducted. But he wasn't done yet. "This Earth time is an illusion," he argues, after all. "Supernatural," which arrived in 1999 during a Latin pop explosion, won a total of nine Grammys with such hits as "Smooth," "Put Your Lights On" and "Maria Maria." He is called a second-act king. Man, he's a hot one. Valdez shows real style illustrating that Santana's bands were far from stable when it came to its lineups - he cleverly shows various different singers belt out the same section of "Black Magic Woman" live - and captures Santana today watching an old concert he did with his late dad. "He's proud of me and I'm proud of him. And I miss him," he tells the camera. Santana deserves to be on the Mount Rushmore of rock and that's why in so many ways "Carlos" is a corrective to the thinking of people like Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone, who overlooked Santana for his new book of transcendent rockers, "The Masters." A master is hiding in plain sight.
# Movie Review: St4llone, St4tham are back in 'Expend4bles,' yet another expend4ble sequel By JOCELYN NOVECK September 21, 2023. 6:00 PM EST --- It's a throwaway line, but maybe a bit too meaningful, under the circumstances. "Gravity is setting in," says Barney, Sylvester Stallone's aging character in "Expend4bles," when someone asks how he's doing. Indeed. Gravity is setting in throughout "Expend4bles," a movie whose most enticing mystery is not the secret identity of its shadowy villain, but how you pronounce the film's title. Are we supposed to enunciate the mid-word numeral, or is it merely visual? Is this what stands for a smart new spin on a tired franchise? Will we soon have "My Big F4t Greek Wedding"? Are these questions supposed to distract us from how stunningly mediocre the film is? Perhaps we digress. This is, obviously, the fourth "Expendables" film, but our considered scientific opinion is that you needn't see the first three to catch up. True, there's no explanatory intro, but if you've seen earlier "Expendables" films, you'll know there's not much to know. These guys are the indestructible mercenaries who swoop in - literally, on Barney's turboprop plane - to do dirty work in miserable places. The body count is head-spinningly high (this film, directed by Scott Waugh, returns to an R rating after a switch to PG-13 for the last installment). The dialogue is head-spinningly mundane. The flow of testosterone is, well, head-spinning. Leading the pack, as ever, is Stallone's Barney Ross and his expert knife-wielding best bud, Lee Christmas - Jason Statham, reveling in his Cockney charm and smiling more than usual. (This is not a bad thing. Statham has a nice smile. This may be the only good thing.) Also back are Dolph Lundgren's Gunner and Randy Couture's Toll Road. And now, perhaps in a nod to the previously unrecognized fact that half the human race is female, we have Megan Fox as mercenary leader Gina. More on her in a bit. Also providing new blood is Andy Garcia as a prickly CIA handler, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as an ex-Marine and new team member, and two martial arts stars: Iko Uwais as ruthless arms dealer Rahmat, and Tony Jaa as quiet warrior Decha. Other additions: Jacob Scipio is the son of Antonio Banderas' character from the last film, and Levy Tran is a new female teammate, adept with a whip chain. Got all that? In a prelude scene in New Orleans, we reconnect with Barney, who now has salt-and-pepper hair, and a bad back - so bad, he enlists Christmas to help him recover his prized skeleton ring at a biker bar, which he's lost in a thumb-wrestling contest. The thugs dispatched and the ring collected, it's time to get back to work. This means a trip to Libya, to "Gadhafi's old chemical plant," where aforementioned arms dealer Rahmat (Uwais) is securing detonators for a nuclear weapon. CIA handler Marsh (Garcia) needs the Expendables to stop him. The other thing you should know is that Barney is determined to unmask a shadowy figure codenamed Ocelot who's maybe pulling all the strings. Not surprisingly, the Expendables run into resistance. The body count mounts, and then something happens that will change the trajectory of the film. We can't give it away, but let's just say it brings Statham's Christmas to the forefront for much of the film. But he makes an early error that sidelines him for a bit. Leading the next stage of the mission will be Gina (Fox), his ex (or maybe current?) girlfriend. Gina is introduced to us the only way a woman in a testosterone-dripping franchise like this can be: Sexy AND crazy, yelling like the dickens in a hot little dress. She also wears an absurd amount of makeup, including on the mission. Apparently, there's a brand of matte lipstick that holds up very well through mortal combat. Which is convenient if your ex-boyfriend may or may not be showing up. All this action takes place on a freighter where the aforementioned nuclear bomb is being stored. It includes countless killings and also a motorcycle chase (on a freighter!) It all gets very tiresome. It doesn't help that the special effects sometimes seem thrown together with about as much care as the script. Some of the most obvious green screens provide inadvertent comedy. As for intended comedy, the only truly funny scene is when Christmas, sidelined, tries out a job as security detail for an obnoxious social media influencer. The likable British action star is having a busy year. In "Expend4bles," as mentioned, they let him smile a lot, and it's a nice touch. Still, if there's an "Expend5bles," they're gonna need more than a Statham smile and another mid-word numeral in the title. "Expend4bles," a Lionsgate release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for strong/bloody violence throughout, language and sexual material." Running time: 103 minutes. One star out of four.
# Movie review: A star-making turn for Eve Hewson in the feel-good 'Flora and Son' By JAKE COYLE September 20, 2023. 5:15 PM EST --- John Carney, the Irish filmmaker of "Once," "Sing Street" and "Begin Again," makes the movie version of "three chords and the truth." His films, unabashedly earnest, feel-good movies for cynical times, are lo-fi musicals that tell simple stories, charmingly. There are love interests, usually. But the abiding romance is for music. His films are the sort that would be easier to dismiss as "sentimental" if his central belief - in the redemptive power of music - didn't happen to be kinda true. The song remains much the same in Carney's latest charmer, "Flora and Son," starring Eve Hewson as a working-class single mother in Dublin who takes up guitar lessons. Flora's initial instinct when she snags a beat-up acoustic guitar out of a dumpster, is to give it to her troubled 14-year-old son, Max (Orén Kinlan) as a day-late birthday present. Max, though, is nonplussed. "You expect me to turn into Ed (expletive) Sheeran?" he says. Their life together in a small apartment is far from harmonious. Their interactions are caustic and cruel. Flora, who we first meet dancing at a nightclub and going home with a man she immediately regrets, isn't shy about her disinterest in parenting. Max, meanwhile, is close to getting kicked out of school. These are problems that, perhaps, take more than a six string to solve. But Carney, who wrote and directed the film, has a way of not hitting the cornball notes too hard and mixing in enough humor to keep the saccharine tones from overpowering. Pondering her sad state of affairs, Flora finds new resolve. "This can't be my story," she says, like a good protagonist. "This can't be my narrative." She flips around on YouTube looking for guitar lessons before settling on Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a laid-back instructor in Southern California who she's immediately attracted to. Their lessons over Zoom are intimate; Carney sometimes enhances the effect by transporting Jeff into Flora's kitchen. They talk James Blunt and Joni Mitchell. Jeff shares one of his own songs, which Flora bluntly critiques and then helps shape into a lovely duet. (Carney and Gary Clark penned the film's songs.) Outside of the frame, their interactions have some irony. Hewson, the daughter of Bono, was probably born with chops. The movie proceeds with the satisfying structure of a song: verse, chorus, bridge. Flora's ex-husband, Ian (Jack Reynor), doubts her commitment. But Flora proves adept at her new hobby, which fosters a newfound connection with her son. Hewson has been a standout in the TV series "The Knick" and "Bad Sisters," but she can be verifiably called a movie star after "Flora and Son." Her character isn't miles off ones we've seen many times, but Hewson's confident, charismatic leading performance has enough grit and spunk to light up the screen. Nepo baby or not, she's a total star. "Flora and Son," like a B-side to Carney's earlier hits, may sound a little like a tune you've heard before. But it's sung with enough heart to have even the coldest cynic humming. "Flora and Son," an Apple TV+ release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language throughout, sexual references and brief drug use. Running time: 97 minutes. Three stars out of four.
# Movie Review: An immigrant teen who wants to fit in enters a nightmare in 'It Lives Inside' By LINDSEY BAHR September 20, 2023. 2:19 PM EST --- A beautiful Indian American teen, Samidha (Megan Suri), just wants to fit in with her suburban classmates in the new horror "It Lives Inside." But there's a demon at large and it's not hormones or puberty - it's a literal monster that will maim and kill you and anyone who tries to help in this grisly, if imperfect, metaphor for the immigrant experience. It's the feature debut of Bishal Dutta, who co-wrote the film with Ashish Mehta, and crafts an effectively menacing PG-13 rated nail-biter centered around the interesting and conflicting dynamics of an Indian American family. The mom, Poorna (Neeru Bajwa) is determined to keep up with the traditions of the country they left behind. Samidha - sorry, Sam -- would rather not, which her dad supports, in theory. She shaves her arms in the morning and posts a Kardashian-level selfie with a carefully chosen filter. She "forgets" the lunch her mother has packed her. She resents the Indian customs and holidays that prevent her from hanging out with the cute guy in her class. And she's cast aside her old best friend, a fellow Indian American named Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), hoping that maybe she can just blend in and not be the "Indian girl" anymore. Essentially, she's a normal teen, through and through. Unfortunately for Sam, Tamira has gotten pretty weird. Her childhood friend skulks around school like a ghost, hidden behind a curtain of unbrushed hair and cradling a cloudy Mason jar like her life depended on it - not exactly the kind of person that an aspiring popular girl wants on her resume. And it just gets worse because, naturally, IT does live inside that Mason jar and that Mason jar is unable to withstand a fall to the floor. Oops. Dutta gets your heartrate going off the bat, with a creepy prologue as screams flood out of a normal suburban house, but Sam's descent into one of the haunted never quite finds a suitable or consistent tone. It's all moody, wide-eyed paranoia with "Stranger Things" vibes that's occasionally interrupted by run-of-the-mill jump-scares and demonic nightmare visions. It'll startle and spook, but it also doesn't feel incredibly original, which is an odd failure for a story that has chosen to focus on a very original threat. Her parents are a bit confounding and frustrating too - as she becomes increasingly paranoid and scared (which seems reasonable after she witnesses the shocking death of a classmate, regardless of whether it was invisible demon or rabid wild animal) they respond like she's just a delinquent who has broken curfew or been caught skipping school. The only one who seems to care and listen is her teacher ("Get Out's" Betty Gabriel), which does not put her in the good graces of the vindictive, flesh-eating Pishacha. The story also doesn't really grapple enough with the intriguing themes of assimilation, alienation and identity once the monster is at large - perhaps it's because we're simply plopped in the middle of a mystery that doesn't give us enough to really care about anyone involved. One kid's already dead. Tamira is already weird. Sam is already cool. "It Lives Inside" is still a welcome respite from the other long-in-the-tooth horror franchises populating theaters this time of year in that it's just something new - new faces, new themes, a promising filmmaker to watch - but I wish it would have embraced more of the things that make it unique as opposed to trying to fit in with its genre brethren. Sort of like Sam. I mean, Samidha. "It Lives Inside," a Neon release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for "teen drug use, brief strong language, bloody images, terror, violent content." Running time: 99 minutes. Two stars out of four.
# Israeli military says Gaza ground offensive has expanded into urban refugee camps By NAJIB JOBAIN, WAFAA SHURAFA, and SAMY MAGDY December 26, 2023. 2:36 PM EST --- RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli forces on Tuesday expanded their ground offensive into urban refugee camps in central Gaza after bombarding the crowded Palestinian communities and ordering residents to evacuate. Gaza's main telecom provider announced another "complete interruption" of services in the besieged territory. The military's announcement of the new battle zone threatens further destruction in a war that Israel says will last for "many months" as it vows to crush the ruling Hamas militant group after its Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces have been engaged in heavy urban fighting in northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, driving Palestinians into ever-smaller areas in search of refuge. The U.S. said Israel's minister for strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, was meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Despite U.S. calls for Israel to curb civilian casualties and international pressure for a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was deepening the fighting. "We say to the Hamas terrorists: We see you and we will get to you," Netanyahu said. Israel's offensive is one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, whose count doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants. The agency said 240 people were killed over the past 24 hours. The U.N. human rights office said the continued bombardment of middle Gaza had claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve. The office noted that Israel had ordered some residents to move there. Israel said it would no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. employees and accused the world body of being "complicit partners" in Hamas' tactics. Government spokesman Eylon Levy said Israel would consider visa requests case by case. That could further limit aid efforts in Gaza. Residents of central Gaza described shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps. The built-up towns hold Palestinians driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war, along with their descendants. "The bombing was very intense," Radwan Abu Sheitta said by phone from Bureij. The Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, urging them to move to nearby Deir al-Balah. The U.N. humanitarian office said the area ordered evacuated was home to nearly 90,000 people before the war and now shelters more than 61,000 displaced people, mostly from the north. The military later said it was operating in Bureij and asserted that it had located a Hamas training camp. The telecom outage announced by Paltel follows similar outages through much of the war. NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages, confirmed that network connectivity in Gaza was disrupted again and "likely to leave most residents offline." Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said several countries had sent proposals to resolve the conflict following news of an Egyptian proposal that would include a transitional Palestinian government in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. He did not offer details of the proposals. ## REGIONAL SPILLOVER Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel faces a "multi-arena war" on seven fronts - Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. "We have responded and acted already on six of these," he told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Iranian-backed militia groups around the region have stepped up attacks in support of Hamas. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq carried out a drone strike on a U.S. base in Irbil on Monday, wounding three American service members, according to U.S. officials. In response, U.S. warplanes hit three locations in Iraq connected to a main militia, Kataib Hezbollah. Almost daily, Hezbollah and Israel exchange missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the Israeli-Lebanese border. On Tuesday, Israel's military said Hezbollah struck a Greek Orthodox church in northern Israel with a missile, wounding two Israeli Christians, and fired again on arriving soldiers, wounding nine. "Hezbollah is risking the stability of the region for the sake of Hamas," said Israel's military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. In the Red Sea, attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen against commercial ships have disrupted trade and prompted a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping routes. The Israeli military said a fighter jet on Tuesday shot down a "hostile aerial target" above the Red Sea that the military asserted was on its way to Israeli territory. ## A MASS GRAVE More than 85% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. U.N. officials say a quarter of the territory's population is starving under Israel's siege, which allows in a trickle of food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies. Last week, the U.N. Security Council called for immediately speeding up aid deliveries, but there has been little sign of change. In an area Israel had declared a safe zone, a strike hit a home in Mawasi, a rural area in the southern province of Khan Younis. One woman was killed and at least eight were wounded, according to a cameraman working for The Associated Press at the nearby hospital. In response, Israel's military said that it wouldn't refrain from operating in safe zones, "if it identifies terrorist organization activity threatening the security of Israel." Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 others hostage. Israel aims to free the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity. Israel blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll in Gaza, citing militants' use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants, without presenting evidence. At the Kerem Shalom border crossing, U.N. and Gazan medical workers unloaded a truck carrying about 80 unidentified bodies that had been held by Israeli forces in northern Gaza. They were buried in a mass grave. Medical workers called the odors unbearable. "We cannot open this container in a neighborhood where people live," Dr. Marwan al-Hams, health emergency committee director in Rafah, told the AP. He said the health and justice ministries would investigate the bodies for possible "war crimes." Hamas has shown resilience. The Israeli military announced the deaths of two more soldiers, bringing the total killed since the ground offensive began to 161.
# Lose a limb or risk death? Growing numbers among Gaza's thousands of war-wounded face hard decisions By WAFAA SHURAFA and JACK JEFFERY December 26, 2023. 12:11 AM EST --- DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - The doctors gave Shaimaa Nabahin an impossible choice: lose your left leg or risk death. The 22-year-old had been hospitalized in Gaza for around a week, after her ankle was partially severed in an Israeli airstrike, when doctors told her she was suffering from blood poisoning. Nabahin chose to maximize her chances of survival, and agreed to have her leg amputated 15 centimeters (6 inches) below the knee. The decision upended life for the ambitious university student, as it has for untold others among the more than 54,500 war-wounded who faced similar gut-wrenching choices. "My whole life has changed," said Nabahin, speaking from her bed at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. "If I want to take a step or go anywhere, I need help." The World Health Organization and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza say amputations have become commonplace during the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 12th week, but could not offer precise figures. At the hospital in Deir al-Balah, dozens of recent amputees are in various stages of treatment and recovery. Experts believe that in some cases, limbs could have been saved with proper treatment. But after weeks of Israel's blistering air and ground offensive, only nine out of Gaza's 36 hospitals are still operational. They are greatly overcrowded, offer limited treatment and lack basic equipment to perform surgeries. Many wounded are unable to reach the remaining hospitals, pinned down by Israeli bombardment and ground combat. Sean Casey, a WHO official who recently visited several hospitals in Gaza, said the acute lack of vascular surgeons - the first responders to trauma injuries and best positioned to save limbs - is increasing the likelihood of amputations. But also in many cases, he said, the severe nature of the injuries means some limbs are not salvageable, and need to be removed as soon as possible. "People may die of the infections that they have because their limbs are infected," Casey told a news conference last week. "We saw patients who were septic." Israel declared war after Hamas militants stormed across the border on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages. Israel has vowed to keep up the fight until Hamas is destroyed and removed from power in Gaza and all the hostages are freed. More than 20,600 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, about 70% of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead. Before the war, Gaza's health system was overwhelmed after years of conflict and a border blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt in response to the 2007 Hamas takeover of the territory. In 2018 and 2019, thousands were wounded by Israeli army fire in weekly Hamas-led anti-blockade protests, and more than 120 of the wounded had limbs amputated. Even then, Gaza amputees had a hard time getting prostheses that would help them return to an active life. Those joining the ranks of amputees now face near-impossible conditions. Some 85% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced, crowding into tents, schools-turned-shelters or homes of relatives. Water, food and other basic supplies are scarce. On Nov. 13, when an Israeli airstrike hit the home of Nabahin's neighbor in Bureij, an urban refugee camp in central Gaza, her ankle and arteries in her leg were partially severed by a clump of cement that blew into her home from the explosion next door. She was the only one of her family who was injured, while a number of her neighbors were killed, she said. She was quickly taken to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where doctors managed to sew up her leg and and stop the bleeding. But after that, Nabahin said she received minimal treatment or attention from doctors, who were dealing with a growing number of critically wounded people amid dwindled medical supplies. Days later, her leg turned a dark color, she said. "They discovered that there was ... shrapnel that was poisoning my blood," she said. The amputation went well, but Nabahin said she remains in acute pain and can't sleep without sedatives. Jourdel Francois, an orthopedic surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, says the risk of post-op infections in war-stricken Gaza is high. Francois, who worked at Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis in November, said hygiene was poor, mainly because of scarce water and the general chaos in a hospital that's overwhelmed with patients while hosting thousands of displaced civilians. He recalled a young girl whose legs had been crushed and urgently needed a double amputation, but she couldn't be booked into surgery that day because of the high number of other critical injuries. She died later that night, Francois said, likely from sepsis, or blood poisoning by bacteria. "There are 50 (injured) people arriving every day, you have to make a choice," he told The Associated Press by phone after leaving Gaza. At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, many of the new amputees struggle to get to grips with how the loss of limb has changed their lives. Nawal Jaber, 54, had both legs amputated after she was injured on Nov. 22, when an Israeli bombardment hit her neighbor's empty house and damaged her house in Bureij. Her grandson was killed, and her husband and son were wounded, she said. "I wish I could meet the needs of my children, (but) I am unable," the mother of eight said, with tears streaming down her face. Before the conflict, Nabahin had started her degree in international relations in Gaza and planned to travel to Germany to continue her studies. She said her goal now is to get out of Gaza, to "save what is left of me, and to install a prosthetic limb and live my life normally."
# The rapper Ye, who has a long history of making antisemitic comments, issues an apology in Hebrew By MARIA SHERMAN December 26, 2023. 3:29 PM EST --- The rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has a long history of making antisemitic comments, apologized to the Jewish community in an Instagram post written in Hebrew on Tuesday. "I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions," Ye wrote. "It was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused," continued the rapper, who legally changed his name to Ye in 2021. The statement arrives less than two weeks after Ye went on an antisemitic rant in Las Vegas while promoting his upcoming album "Vultures," due out Jan. 12. In the rant, he made insidious insinuations about Jewish influence and compared himself to Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler. "After causing untold damage by using his vast influence and platform to poison countless minds with vicious antisemitism and hate, an apology in Hebrew may be the first step on a long journey towards making amends to the Jewish community and all those who he has hurt," the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to The Associated Press and other news outlets on Tuesday. "Ultimately, actions will speak louder than words but this initial act of contrition is welcome." The American Jewish Committee, however, criticized Ye's use of Hebrew in the apology. "Beyond being bizarre and possibly a ploy to gain more attention, the Hebrew apology - posted without translation - is inaccessible to most American Jews who do not speak the language," the AJC said in a statement to the AP. "To be sure, using Hebrew to communicate with the Jewish community intentionally denies most American Jews- and, consequently, non-Jews-the ability to directly see Kanye's apology." "While he claims that he is committed to learning and greater understanding, this apology speaks to 'any pain I may have caused,' rather than acknowledging the pain that he has caused," the AJC continued. Ye has a history of offensive and antisemitic comments, including repeated praise of Hitler and the Nazis. He also once suggested slavery was a choice and called the coronavirus vaccine "the mark of the beast." In October 2022, he was criticized for wearing a "White Lives Matter" T-shirt at his Paris Fashion Week show and tweeted that he was going to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE," an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale, DEFCON. Later that month, the Balenciaga fashion house cut ties with Ye and he lost the lucrative partnership with Adidas that helped catapult him to billionaire status over his remarks. "Ye's recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company's values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness," the German sportswear company said at the time. Adidas has sold hundreds of millions of euros in remaining Yeezy shoes, donating part of the profits to groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change. (Recently, though, Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said on a podcast episode that he didn't think Ye "meant what he said and I don't think he's a bad person." Gulden later apologized, the Anti-Defamation League said.) He was also dropped by talent agency CAA, and his documentary with MRC Entertainment was scrapped. He was locked out of his accounts on Instagram and what was then known as Twitter, though he has since returned to both platforms. This isn't the first the rapper has apologized for his antisemitic comments. He expressed some remorse for his "death con 3" tweet on a podcast in October 2022, characterizing the initial tweet as a mistake and apologizing to "the Jewish community." He also went on "Piers Morgan Uncensored." "I will say I'm sorry for the people that I hurt with the confusion that I caused," he said on the show. But less than two months later, he told conspiracy theorist and host Alex Jones that he sees "good things about Hitler." "We've seen this behavior from Kanye before - the antisemitic rant and the follow-up apology," the American Jewish Committee said. Ye's latest apology ends with him saying he's committed to "learning from this experience" and plans on "making amends." A representative for Ye did not immediately respond to the AP's request for further comment.
# How Ukrainian special forces secured a critical Dnipro River crossing in southern Ukraine By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV December 26, 2023. 10:29 AM EST --- KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) - Their first battle plan was outdated the moment the dam crumbled. So the Ukrainian special forces officers spent six months adapting their fight to secure a crossing to the other side of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. But it wasn't enough just to cross the river. They needed backup to hold it. And for that, they needed proof that it could be done. For one of the officers, nicknamed Skif, that meant a flag - and a photo op. Skif, Ukrainian shorthand for the nomadic Scythian people who founded an empire on what is now Crimea, moves like the camouflaged amphibian that he is: Calculating, deliberate, until the time to strike. He is an officer in Center 73, one of Ukraine's most elite units of special forces - frontline scouts, drone operators, underwater saboteurs. Their strike teams are part of the Special Operations Forces that run the partisans in occupied territories, sneak into Russian barracks to plant bombs and prepare the ground for reclaiming territory seized by Russia. Their mission on the more dynamic of the two main fronts in the six-month counteroffensive reflects many of the problems of Ukraine's broader effort. It's been one of the few counteroffensive successes for the Ukrainian army. By late May, the Center 73 men were in place along the river's edge, some of them almost within view of the Kakhovka Dam. They were within range of the Russian forces who had controlled the dam and land across the Dnipro since the first days after the February 2022 full-scale invasion. And both sides knew Ukraine's looming counteroffensive had its sights on control of the river as the key to reclaim the occupied south. In the operation's opening days, on June 6, an explosion destroyed the dam, sending a wall of reservoir water downstream, killing untold numbers of civilians, and washing out the Ukrainian army positions. "We were ready to cross. And then the dam blew up," Skif said. The water rose 20 meters (yards), submerging supply lines, the Russian positions and everything else in its path for hundreds of kilometers. The race was on: Whose forces could seize the islands when the waters receded, and with them full control of the Dnipro? For most Ukrainians who see them on the streets in the nearly deserted frontline villages of the Kherson region, they are the guys in T-shirts and flip-flops - just regular people. The locals who refused to evacuate have all become accustomed to the sounds of war, so even their unnerving calm in the face of air raid alarms, nearby gunfire and artillery doesn't seem unusual. AP joined one of the clandestine units several times over six months along the Dnipro. The frogmen are nocturnal. They transform themselves from nondescript civilians into elite fighters, some in wetsuits and some in boats. In the morning, when their operations end, they're back to anonymity. They rarely take credit for their work and Ukrainians rarely learn about their operations. But Russian military statements gleefully and erroneously announcing the destruction of Center 73 are an indication of their effectiveness. ## JUNE 2023 The men had the most modern equipment, night-vision goggles, waterproof rifles that can be assembled in a matter of seconds, underwater breathing apparatus that produces no surface bubbles, and cloaks that hide their heat signature during nighttime raids. It was a matter of days before the start of the counteroffensive, and Center 73 had already located the Russian positions they would seize on the Dnipro River islands. Skif's men were within earshot of the June 6 explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam, flooded vast stretches of the Kherson region, and upended Skif's attack plan. An AP investigation found Russian forces had the means, motive and opportunity to blow up the dam. Both the Russians and Ukrainians retreated from the river to regroup - Russians to the south and Ukrainians to the north. Abandoned homes, clubs, shops became headquarters, with banks of computer screens filling the rooms and improvised weapons workshops nearby. Always secretive, frequently changing locations, they meticulously plan every operation, they sleep only a few hours during the day with curtains closed. They wake around sunset, load gear into a 4X4 and drive to a different point on the riverbank to scout new routes for a counteroffensive, provoke Russian forces into shooting at them to pinpoint the enemy's location, retrieve soggy caches of supplies with their boat. Periodically, they captured a Russian soldier stuck in a tree or found a clutch of landmines washed up on shore. And they themselves were stuck. Other special forces took part in battles in eastern Ukraine, the other main front in the counteroffensive. Skif's men waited patiently for the water to subside so they could seize positions and lay the groundwork for the arrival of infantry and marines in the Kherson region. Skif, a veteran of the 2022 battle for Mariupol who had survived 266 days as a prisoner of war, wanted to fight. He had been part of Center 73 before Mariupol and rejoined after he was freed in a POW exchange. Ukraine created its special forces in response to Russia's lightning-fast annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas in 2014, a precursor to the wide-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. "We realized that we were much smaller in terms of number than our enemy," said Oleksandr Kindratenko, a press officer for Special Operations Forces. "The emphasis was placed on quality. These were supposed to be small groups performing operational or strategic tasks." He said they were trained and equipped in part by Europeans, including those from NATO countries, but their own recent battle experience means they are now as much teachers as students. Tasks that the unit considers routine - scouting as close to Russians as possible, planting explosives under their noses, underwater operations - most soldiers would consider high-risk. High-risk missions are practically a death wish. Skif knew he first had to plan and persuade the generals that if his men could secure a bridgehead - a strategic crossing point - it would be worthwhile to send troops. And that would mean high-risk river missions. "My phone book is a little graveyard," he said. "A lot of good, decent people are dead. They were killed on the battlefield. One burned to death in an armored truck. One was shot by howitzers. Somebody stepped on a landmine. Everyone died differently, and there are so many of them." ## JULY - AUGUST 2023 The water retreated in July. The Russians and Ukrainians advanced again toward the river from opposite directions, the Russians from the south and Ukrainians from the north. Groups of Center 73 scouted and advanced along the river. The mission for Skif's unit was to reclaim an island near the dam, now a web of cracked mud and dead trees. Their network of spies in the Kherson region, as well as drones and satellite images, told them where Russian forces had re-positioned. They disembarked the boats and moved in, walking through the bare branches of the forest through swarms of mosquitoes so loud their bodycam picked up the sound. One of the men tripped a wire connected to a grenade and flung himself as far as he could away from the Russian explosive. Just as the shrapnel pierced his back, mayhem broke out. The injured Ukrainian crawled toward the unit's waiting boat 3 kilometers (2 miles) away, as the Russian troops who set the boobytrap rained gunfire on them. Skif's men made it to the boat, which sprang a leak, and retreated back to their side of the Dnipro. Russians established their position on the island, and it took weeks more for the Ukrainians to expel them. Then new orders came. Go upstream and breach Russian defenses beneath a destroyed railway bridge. The men had an often-underestimated advantage over their Russian enemy: Many Ukrainians grow up bilingual and understand Russian communications intercepted in real time, while Russian soldiers need a translator for Ukrainian. So when Skif's unit started picking up Russian radio communications by the railway bridge, they immediately grasped how many men they were up against and the kind of munitions they would face. They made the crossing, avoided the Russians, and waited for backup, That's when their advantage evaporated. In a single battle, the Russians sent Iskander missiles and dozens of drones, dropping hundreds of grenades. "In the air, they had absolute dominance compared to us and they held the ground," he said. The backup was nowhere near enough. Ukrainian forces retreated under heavy fire. More men out of commission and another difficult task ahead. ## SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2023 A lucky thing happened soon after that battle. A Russian officer who claimed he'd been opposed to the war since its beginning was sent to the front in Kherson. It was, he later said, every bit as bad as he'd feared. He made contact with Ukrainian intelligence and said he had 11 comrades who felt similarly. The group surrendered to Skif and his men. The Russians told Skif exactly what he needed to know about their unit on the island they were now tasked with taking, just outside the village of Krynky. He was sure he could take the island and more with 20 experienced men. But not without the promise of sufficient backup so Ukrainian regular forces could hold the territory. Fine, his commander said. He'd get the backup - if he returned with footage of his unit in the village hoisting the Ukrainian flag. And that's how, in mid-October, a Ukrainian drone carrying the national blue and yellow flag came to fly above Krynky at just the moment Skif and his men made their way to the occupied village across the river. They got their photo op to prove the road was cleared, sent it to the military headquarters, and established the bridgehead. ## NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2023 Multiple Ukrainian brigades were sent to hold the position and have been there ever since. But nighttime temperatures are dipping well below freezing, and Ukrainian forces are vastly underequipped compared to the Russians nearby. Holding and advancing in winter is much harder on soldiers' bodies and their morale. In recent weeks, Russia has sent waves of glide bombs - essentially enormous munitions retrofitted with gliding apparatus to allow them to be launched from dozens of kilometers (miles) away, as well as swarms of grenade-launching drones and Chinese all-terrain vehicles, according to the Institute for the Study of War and the Hudson Institute, two American think-tanks analyzing open-source footage from the area. In a news conference earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the battle and acknowledged Russian forces had pulled back "several meters." But he insisted Ukrainian forces were battling pointlessly and losing far more than they gained. "I don't even know why they're doing this," Putin said. Despite having never fully controlled the territory during the six-month counteroffensive, Russia claims it as its own. And Ukrainian forces and Center 73 keep fighting into the new year. "This is our work," Skif said. "No one knows about it, no one talks about it, and we do it with little reward except to benefit our country."
# Mexico's army-run airline takes to the skies, with first flight to the resort of Tulum December 26, 2023. 4:11 PM EST --- MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico launched its army-run airline Tuesday, when the first Mexicana airlines flight took off from Mexico City bound for the Caribbean resort of Tulum. It was another sign of the outsized role that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given to Mexico's armed forces. The airline's military-run holding company now also operates about a dozen airports, hotels, trains, the country's customs service and tourist parks. Gen. Luís Cresencio Sandoval, Mexico's defense secretary, said that having all those diverse businesses run by the military was "common in developed countries." In fact, only a few countries like Cuba, Sri Lanka, Argentina and Colombia have military-run airlines. They are mostly small carriers with a handful of prop planes that operate mostly on under-served or remote domestic routes. But the Mexicana airline plans to carry tourists from Mexican cities to resorts like Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, Zihuatanejo, Acapulco and Mazatlan. Flights appear to be scheduled every three or four days, largely on weekends. The carrier hopes to compete mainly on price: the first 425 tickets sold offered prices of about $92 for the flight from Mexico City to Tulum, which the government claimed was about one-third cheaper than commercial airlines. However, Mexicana's first flight didn't go according to plan. The company said Flight MXA 1788 had to be re-routed to the colonial city of Merida because of poor weather conditions in Tulum. After a wait, it finally took off again and arrived in Tulum about five hours after it took off from Mexico City, about double the usual travel time. Mexicana also hopes to fly to 16 small regional airports that currently have no flights or very few. For those worried about being told to "Fasten your seatbelt, and that's an order," the cabin crew on the Mexicana flight appeared to be civilians. In Mexico, the air force is a wing of the army. Sandoval said the airline began operations with three Boeing jets and two smaller leased Embraer planes, and hopes to lease or acquire five more jets in early 2024. López Obrador called the takeoff of the first Boeing 737-800 jet "a historic event" and a "new stage," marking the return of the formerly government-run airline Mexicana, which had been privatized, then went bankrupt and finally closed in 2010. The airline combines Lopez Obrador's reliance on the military - which he claims is the most incorruptible and patriotic arm of the government - and his nostalgia for the state-run companies that dominated Mexico's economy until widespread privatizations were carried out in the 1980s. López Obrador recalled fondly the days when government-run firms operated everything from oil, gas, electricity and mining, to airlines and telephone service. He bashed the privatizations, which were carried out because Mexico's indebted government could no longer afford to operate the inefficient, state-owned companies. "They carried out a big fraud," the president said at his daily morning news briefing. "They deceived a lot of people, saying these state-run companies didn't work." In fact, the state-run companies in Mexico accumulated a well-deserved reputation for inefficiency, poor service, corruption and political control. For example, Mexico's state-run paper distribution company often refused to sell newsprint to opposition newspapers. When the national telephone company was owned by the government, customers routinely had to wait years to get a phone line installed, and were required to buy shares in the company in order to eventually get service, problems that rapidly disappeared after it was privatized in 1990. While unable to restore the government-run companies to their former glory, the administration depicts its efforts to recreate them on a smaller scale as part of a historic battle to return Mexico's economy to a more collectivist past. "This will be the great legacy of your administration, and will echo throughout eternity," the air traffic controller at Mexico City's Felipe Angeles airport intoned as the first Mexicana flight took off. López Obrador has also put the military in charge of many of the country's infrastructure building projects, and given it the lead role in domestic law enforcement. For example, the army built both the Felipe Angeles airport and the one in Tulum. Apart from boosting traffic at the underused Felipe Angeles airport, the army-run Mexicana apparently will provide flights to feed passengers into the president's Maya Train tourism project. The army is also building that train line, which will connect beach resorts and archaeological sites on the Yucatan Peninsula. The army, which has no experience running commercial flights, has created a subsidiary to be in charge of Mexicana.
# Sweden moves a step closer to NATO membership after Turkey's parliamentary committee gives approval By SUZAN FRASER December 26, 2023. 1:55 PM EST --- ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - The Turkish parliament's foreign affairs committee gave its consent to Sweden's bid to join NATO on Tuesday, drawing the previously nonaligned Nordic country closer to membership in the Western military alliance. Sweden's accession protocol will now need to be approved in the Turkish parliament's general assembly for the last stage of the legislative process in Turkey. No date has been set. Turkey, a NATO member, has delayed ratification of Sweden's membership for more than a year, accusing the country of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara regards as threats to its security, including Kurdish militants and members of a network that Ankara blames for a failed coup in 2016. The Turkish parliament's foreign affairs committee had begun discussing Sweden's membership in NATO last month. But the meeting was adjourned after legislators from Erdogan's ruling party submitted a motion for a postponement on grounds that some issues needed more clarification and that negotiations with Sweden hadn't "matured" enough. On Tuesday, the committee resumed its deliberations and a large majority of legislators in the committee voted in favor of Sweden's application to join. Briefing the committee members before the vote, Deputy Foreign Minister Burak Akcapar cited steps Sweden had taken steps to meet Turkish demands, including lifting restrictions on defense industry sales and amending anti-terrorism laws in ways that "no one could have imaged five or six years ago." "It is unrealistic to expect that the Swedish authorities will immediately fulfill all of our demands. This is a process, and this process requires long-term and consistent effort," he said, adding that Turkey would continue to monitor Sweden's progress. Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström welcomed the committee's decision on a message posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "The next step is for parliament to vote on the matter. We look forward to becoming a member of NATO," he tweeted. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also welcomed the development, saying that he counts on Turkey and Hungary "to now complete their ratifications as soon as possible. Sweden's membership will make NATO stronger." Hungary has also stalled Sweden's bid, alleging that Swedish politicians have told "blatant lies" about the condition of Hungary's democracy. Hungary hasn't announced when the country's ratification may occur. Earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had openly linked ratification of Sweden's NATO membership to the U.S. Congress' approval of a Turkish request to purchase 40 new F-16 fighter jets and kits to modernize Turkey's existing fleet. Erdogan also also called on Canada and other NATO allies to life arms embargoes imposed on Turkey. The White House has backed the Turkish F-16 request but there is opposition in Congress to military sales to Turkey. Sweden and Finland abandoned their traditional positions of military nonalignment to seek protection under NATO's security umbrella, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Finland joined the alliance in April, becoming NATO's 31st member, after Turkey's parliament ratified the Nordic country's bid. NATO requires the unanimous approval of all existing members to expand, and Turkey and Hungary are the only countries that have been holding out. The delays have frustrated other NATO allies who were swift to accept Sweden and Finland into the alliance.
# 6-year-old boy traveling to visit grandma for Christmas put on wrong Spirit flight December 26, 2023. 12:12 PM EST --- FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) - A 6-year-old boy who left on a flight for the Christmas holiday to visit his grandmother in southwest Florida instead was put on the wrong plane and ended up 160 miles away in Orlando, Florida. When the grandmother, Maria Ramos, showed up on Thursday at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers to greet her grandson who was flying for the first time from Philadelphia, she was told he wasn't on the Spirit Airlines flight. "I ran inside the plane to the flight attendant and I asked her, 'Where's my grandson? He was handed over to you at Philadelphia?' She said, 'No, I had no kids with me,'" Ramos told WINK News. She then got a call from her grandson from the airport in Orlando, telling her that he had landed. In a statement, Spirit Airlines said the boy was under the care and supervision of an airlines employee the entire time, even though he was incorrectly boarded on a flight to Orlando. Once the mistake was discovered, the airlines let the family know, the statement said. "We take the safety and responsibility of transporting all of our Guests seriously and are conducting an internal investigation," the statement said. "We apologize to the family for this experience."
# Whisky wooing young Chinese away from 'baijiu' as top distillers target a growing market December 25, 2023. 10:56 PM EST --- BEIJING (AP) - A distillery in southwestern China is aiming to tap a growing taste among young Chinese for whisky in place of the traditional "baijiu" liquor used to toast festive occasions. The more than $100 million distillery owned by Pernod Ricard at the UNESCO World Heritage site Mount Emei launched a pure-malt whisky, The Chuan, earlier this month. The French wine and spirits group says it is produced using traditional whisky-making techniques combined with Chinese characteristics including locally grown barley and barrels made with oak from the Changbai mountains in northeastern China. "Chinese terroir means an exceptional and unique environment for aging, including the water source here - top-notch mineral water. The source of water at Mount Emei is very famous," says Yang Tao, master distiller at the distillery. A centuries-old drink, whisky is relatively new to China, but there are already more than 30 whisky distilleries in the mainland, according to the whisky website Billion Bottle. Whisky consumption in China, as measured by volume, rose at a 10% compound annual growth rate from 2017 to 2022, according to IWSR, a beverage market analysis firm. Sales volume is forecast to continue to grow at double digit rates through 2028, according to Harry Han, an analyst with market research provider Euromonitor International. "We see huge potential for whisky here in China. It is a product which is developing very nicely, very strongly," said Alexandre Ricard, chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard. "We do believe that the Chinese have developed a real taste, particularly for malt whisky." Raymond Lee, founder of the Single Malt Club China, a whisky trading and distribution company in Beijing, said whisky has become more popular as the economy has grown. "As the economy develops and personal income increases, many people are pursuing individuality. In the past we all lived the same lives. When your economic conditions reach a certain level, you will start to seek your own individuality. Whisky caters just to the consumption mindset of these people. And its quality is very different from that of other alcoholic drinks," he says. On a recent Friday night at a bar in Beijing, 28-year-old Sylvia Sun, who works in the music industry, was enjoying a whisky on the rocks. "The taste of it lingers in your mouth for a very long time. If I drink it, I will keep thinking about it the rest of tonight," she said. "Now the country is more and more open, and there are increasing opportunities to go abroad, and they have absorbed different kinds of cultures. They also have the courage to try new things. When they try something new - for example whisky - they realize that it's very different from China's baijiu. Whisky may be easier for them to accept," Lee said.
# First Amendment claim struck down in Project Veritas case focused on diary of Biden's daughter By LARRY NEUMEISTER December 25, 2023. 7:22 PM EST --- Criminal prosecutors may soon get to see over 900 documents pertaining to the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden's daughter after a judge rejected the conservative group Project Veritas' First Amendment claim. Attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said on behalf of the nonprofit Monday that attorneys are considering appealing last Thursday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan. In the written decision, the judge said the documents can be given to investigators by Jan. 5. The documents were produced from raids that were authorized in November 2021. Electronic devices were also seized from the residences of three members of Project Veritas, including two mobile phones from the home of James O'Keefe, the group's since-fired founder. Project Veritas, founded in 2010, identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians. In written arguments, lawyers for Project Veritas and O'Keefe said the government's investigation "seems undertaken not to vindicate any real interests of justice, but rather to stifle the press from investigating the President's family." "It is impossible to imagine the government investigating an abandoned diary (or perhaps the other belongings left behind with it), had the diary not been written by someone with the last name 'Biden,'" they added. The judge rejected the First Amendment arguments, saying in the ruling that they were "inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent." She also noted that Project Veritas could not claim it was protecting the identity of a confidential source from public disclosure after two individuals publicly pleaded guilty in the case. She was referencing the August 2022 guilty pleas of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. Both await sentencing. The pleas came two years after Harris and Kurlander - two Florida residents who are not employed by Project Veritas - discovered that Ashley Biden, the president's daughter, had stored items including a diary at a friend's Delray Beach, Florida, house. They said they initially hoped to sell some of the stolen property to then-President Donald Trump's campaign, but a representative turned them down and told them to take the material to the FBI, prosecutors say. Eventually, Project Veritas paid the pair $20,000 apiece to deliver the diary containing "highly personal entries," a digital storage card with private family photos, tax documents, clothes and luggage to New York, prosecutors said. Project Veritas was not charged with any crime. The group has said its activities were newsgathering and were ethical and legal. Two weeks ago, Hannah Giles, chief executive of Project Veritas, quit her job, saying in a social media post she had "stepped into an unsalvageable mess - one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and post financial improprieties." She said she'd reported what she found to "appropriate law enforcement agencies." Lichtman said in an email on behalf of Project Veritas and the people whose residences were raided: "As for the continued investigation, the government isn't seeking any prison time for either defendant who claims to have stolen the Ashley Biden diary, which speaks volumes in our minds."
# The imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny resurfaces with darkly humorous comments December 26, 2023. 6:24 AM EST --- MOSCOW (AP) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tuesday released a sardonic statement about his transfer to a Arctic prison colony nicknamed the "Polar Wolf," his first appearance since associates lost contact with him three weeks ago. Navalny, the most prominent and persistent domestic foe of President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on an extremism conviction. He had been incarcerated in central Russia's Vladimir region, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but supporters said he couldn't be found beginning on Dec. 6. They said Monday that he had been traced to a prison colony infamous for severe conditions in the Yamalo-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. "I am your new Santa Claus," Navalny said in a tweet, referring to his location above the Arctic Circle in the prison in the town of Kharp. The region is notorious for long and severe winters. The town is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the harshest of the Soviet Gulag prison-camp system. Navalny, who is noted for sharply humorous comments, said he was in a good mood after being transported to the new prison, but suggested the northern winter darkness is discouraging: "I don't say 'Ho-ho-ho,' but I do say 'Oh-oh-oh' when I look out of the window, where I can see night, then the evening, and then the night again." Prisoner transfers in Russia often result in contact with inmates being lost for weeks. Navalny's supporters contend the transfer was arranged to keep Navalny out of sight amid Putin's announcement that he will run for another term as president in the March election. Navalny has been behind bars in Russia since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He has since received three prison terms and spent months in isolation in Penal Colony No. 6 for alleged minor infractions. He has rejected all charges against him as politically motivated.
# Court reverses former Nebraska US Rep. Jeff Fortenberry's conviction of lying to federal authorities By STEFANIE DAZIO December 26, 2023. 4:38 PM EST --- LOS ANGELES (AP) - An appellate court on Tuesday reversed a 2022 federal conviction against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, ruling that he should not have been tried in Los Angeles. Fortenberry was convicted in March 2022 on charges that he lied to federal authorities about an illegal $30,000 contribution to his campaign from a foreign billionaire at a 2016 Los Angeles fundraiser. He resigned his seat days later following pressure from congressional leaders and Nebraska's GOP governor. In its Tuesday ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote that the trial venue of Los Angeles was improper because Fortenberry made the false statements during interviews with federal agents at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in his lawyer's office in Washington. "Fortenberry's convictions are reversed so that he may be retried, if at all, in a proper venue," the decision said. A federal jury in Los Angeles found the nine-term Republican guilty of concealing information and two counts of making false statements to authorities. He vowed to appeal from the courthouse steps. Fortenberry and his wife, Celeste Fortenberry, praised the court's decision. "We are gratified by the Ninth Circuit's decision," Jeff Fortenberry said in a statement. "Celeste and I would like to thank everyone who has stood by us and supported us with their kindness and friendship." Thom Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, noted that the appellate court left a path open for future proceedings against Fortenberry. "The ruling does not preclude a retrial on the charges that then-Congressman Fortenberry made multiple false statements to federal agents," Mrozek said in a statement. "We are evaluating potential next steps before deciding how best to move forward." Patricia Hartman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, declined to comment on the ruling's potential impact for federal prosecutors in Washington. "We cannot comment on matters where we don't have charges filed," she said in an email Tuesday. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nebraska did not immediately return a phone message. Fortenberry was charged after denying to the FBI that he was aware he had received illicit funds from Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian billionaire of Lebanese descent. At trial, prosecutors presented recorded phone conversations in which Fortenberry was repeatedly warned that the contributions came from Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian billionaire of Lebanese descent. The donations were funneled through three strawmen at the 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles. The case stemmed from an FBI investigation into $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions to four campaigns from Chagoury, who lived in Paris at the time. Chagoury admitted to the crime in 2019 and agreed to pay a $1.8 million fine. It was the first trial of a sitting congressman since Rep. Jim Traficant, D-Ohio, was convicted of bribery and other felony charges in 2002.
# For a new generation of indie rock acts, country music is king By MARIA SHERMAN December 26, 2023. 11:30 AM EST --- LOS ANGELES (AP) - Singer-songwriter Mitski's "My Love Mine All Mine," plays out like a whispered dirge. The song is gothic lounge music for a listener who only has about two minutes to have their heart broken - a silky soft slow burn stacked with a choir, organ, bass and most critically, pedal steel guitar, the kind favored by country and western purists. In no way does that description scream "mainstream hit," and yet, for 12 weeks, it has been on the Billboard Hot 100, an unusual metric of success for a wholly independent artist. And for 10 weeks, her indie rock-meets-chamber pop-meets-country held the No. 1 position on Billboard's TikTok trending chart. Mitski is not from the American South, though her discography has long considered small town U.S.A. and she relocated to Nashville a few years ago to mine the geography's humanity. ("Valentine, Texas" from last year's "Laurel Hell" album is an example, but there are many.) She is, of course, not the first indie artist to explore weeping Americana sounds. Many of the leading acts in contemporary indie rock pull from the South - like Mitski - or hail from there, like soloists Angel Olsen and Waxahatchee, or groups like Plains, Wednesday and two-thirds of the Grammy-nominated band boygenius. Lucinda Williams ' "too country for rock 'n' roll, too rock 'n' roll for country" style is a clear predecessor; and every few generations, it seems like a great new band pulls from alt-country's narrative specificity. ## A WORLD INTERESTED IN COUNTRY Interestingly, indie rock's current adoption of country comes at a time of increased global interest in country music. According to the Midyear Music Report for data and analytics platform Luminate, country music experienced its biggest streaming week ever this year, a whopping 2.26 billion. The genre has historically been enjoyed by English-speaking Americans, but their reporting shows growth in non-Anglophonic territories such as Philippines, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and Vietnam. In March 2023, Spotify launched a new playlist dedicated to the phenomenon of country-influence in indie rock titled "Indie Twang." It's curated by Carla Turi, Spotify's folk and acoustic music editor, who says the playlist was the result of conversations dating back to summer 2022, when they noticed growing "country influence in indie rock," as she calls it. It's a legacy that extends to the late 2010s when country iconography started cropping up in spaces not-traditionally considered country: everything from Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" to Mitski's 2018 album "Be the Cowboy." "I also think, through the lockdown we experienced in 2020, listeners sort of emerged craving more organic-sounding music as a way to connect with others," she continued. The indie twang playlist was born out of all of that, amplified by successful indie artists like Ethel Cain and Plains. "I'm seeing this space as a kind of movement, rather than a trend," she adds. "The sound will always have its peaks and valleys. I do think that the fanbase, overall, continues to grow. I think that this sort of surge of Americana and singer-songwriter music here in the States has shifted listening habits across the entire country." ## AN ALTERNATIVE STATE OF MIND In 2023, these indie artists offer an alternative to the pop-country acts dominating mainstream charts like Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, and Jason Aldean. The movement is led by female performers, for one, and artists who don't immediately fit into a traditional genre format. They also offer an alternative to traditional images of indie rock: instead of shying away from their geographic identities - like moving to New York and smoothing out to "y'alls" and "ma'ams" from their speech and music - they're embracing them. Banjos and lap steel abound. Songs about God, rural roads, trucks, guns, humidity, and crickets do, too. Like Turi, Jess Williamson of Plains sees the connection to country music from a more traditional indie rock audience as a post-COVID-19 lockdown revelation. "We saw people leaving cities, moving to smaller towns and out to the country. We saw people in cities baking bread, starting herb gardens, craving something simple, nostalgic, and that feels good," she said. "On tour, we covered 'Goodbye Earl' by the Chicks, everyone is singing along, and that's the least cool s--- I can imagine. People are through being cool and are embracing who we are and what we really like. And for a lot of people, that's country music." She says she had to leave the South in order to return to it and fully appreciate her love for both it and country music, the way "Texans leave and then immediately get a tattoo of the state of Texas," she says, laughing. ## KEEPING IT CLOSE TO HOME Karly Hartzman, frontperson of the Ashville band Wednesday, has never left North Carolina. "I think where we live is inseparable from our music at this point. Of course, we are influenced by country music, but country music sounds and feels the way it does because of the environment it's made in. A great country song feels like where it's from," she says. Wednesday's 2023 full-length "Rat Saw God" made AP's best albums of the year list for its alt-country rock sensibility, where pulling the listener into the quiet parts of a Carolinas hometown is as much a part of the sonic fabric as lap steel or guitar fuzz or a poetic line sung out of key. Hartzmann adds that the complications of living in the South are "the stereotypes ... which are founded of course. The politics, the racism, and the inequity," she says. "I'm strongly against leaving this place 'cause I disagree with the politics of those in power, though. It's invigorating cause I feel empowered to fight against that (expletive), especially for those who are unable to do that themselves here." She says the South is her "favorite place on Earth" - beyond its influential music - but the appeal to stick around and create there is economic, too, which may have an impact on indie artists pulling from country sounds. "I think affordability is a big factor for people trying to make it from their hometowns now instead of moving to big cities," she says. "The internet makes that possible, obviously." It also means, for listeners on an Indie Twang playlist, or those at a rock club in a major city or a honky tonk in a small town, new approaches to familiar Southern sounds are more accessible than ever before.
# Baltimore's new approach to police training looks at the effects of trauma, importance of empathy By LEA SKENE December 26, 2023. 9:36 AM EST --- BALTIMORE (AP) - A three-minute viral video shows an irate Baltimore police officer berating a teenager because he ignored orders to stop skateboarding and called the officer "dude." "Obviously your parents don't put a foot in your butt quite enough because you don't understand the meaning of respect," he shouted at the skateboarder, who remained relatively calm. That 2007 interaction cost the officer his job. But as policing evolves, others are learning from his mistakes. The Baltimore Police Department recently started requiring its members to complete a program on emotional regulation that uses video as a learning tool and teaches them the basics of brain science by examining the relationship between thoughts, feelings and actions. It's a far cry from traditional police training. In a city whose embattled police force has long struggled to earn public trust, especially since Freddie Gray's 2015 death from spinal injuries sustained in police custody, department leaders are demonstrating their willingness to think outside the box. The approach could become more common as agencies nationwide dedicate more resources to addressing mental health challenges among officers and preventing negative public interactions. Baltimore's program is overseen by the anti-violence organization Roca, which works primarily with at-risk youth from the city's poorest and most violent neighborhoods - a population that has more in common with police officers than some might think, according to Roca staff. The organization has provided a curriculum for the eight-hour Rewire4 course, which is now required of all Baltimore police officers. Other law enforcement agencies along the East Coast have also adopted the program, including the Boston Police Department. "In the streets, we look at some police officers like they're crazy, and they look at us like we're crazy," said James "JT" Timpson, a Baltimore resident who helps lead the Roca Impact Institute. "But we're both experiencing the same thing, which is trauma." Understanding that common ground helps officers relate to members of the public, said Maj. Derek Loeffler, who oversees training and education for the Baltimore Police Department. Officers in the course were asked to describe some of their most memorable calls for service. One officer recalled a case where three children were found decapitated, comparing the scene to something out of a horror movie. She said the images will haunt her forever. "It takes a toll," instructor Lt. Lakishia Tucker told the class. "This stuff ain't normal that we see, that we deal with, that we handle on a daily basis." Police officers are human underneath the uniform, she said, and experiencing repeated trauma can result in hypervigilant behavior. Instructors played the 2007 viral video as an example of what happens when a person gets triggered and starts operating in survival mode, which they called "bottom brain" because it activates neurological pathways associated with fear and stress responses. The "top brain," however, is where reason prevails, leading to slower, more careful decision-making. The training, which was observed by an Associated Press reporter, presented a series of practices rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of psychotherapy aimed at strengthening healthy neurological pathways in the brain through awareness and repetition. "Flex your thinking" and "Label your feelings" are among the skills presented. Participants can also sign up to receive key lesson reminders via text messages from Roca staff after the training. The Rewire4 curriculum is a modified version of what the organization's outreach workers use in their interactions with at-risk youth. Roca, which was founded in Massachusetts over three decades ago, opened an office in Baltimore in 2018. It has since provided hundreds of young men with life-coaching services, job opportunities and behavioral health tools aimed at preventing the rapidly escalating conflicts that so often turn deadly. Exposing police to similar tools could help reduce police violence, avoid unfavorable headlines and build community trust, organizers said. "Today is an invitation for you to learn something that can help you personally and professionally," Tucker told the class of officers. "Law enforcement is different today. Every single thing is being recorded." The increased prevalence of body cameras and cellphones means officers are facing more pressure to stay calm even when they get triggered. During the class, instructors talked about how to avoid a "bottom brain" reaction, in part by approaching others with empathy. "We have to learn how to separate the person from the behavior," Tucker said. That could mean dismantling stereotypes, such as assuming everyone in a certain neighborhood is a drug dealer, said Sgt. Amy Strand, another instructor. "I like to twist it and say, what about us?" she said, describing how some people assume all police officers are corrupt and aggressive. "We get it dealt to us, so let's not deal it out to everybody else. Give some grace." The Baltimore Police Department recently started administering the training amid a slew of other reform efforts dating back years. In the wake of Gray's death, Justice Department investigators uncovered a pattern of unconstitutional policing practices, especially against Black residents. That led to a 2017 federal consent decree mandating a series of court-ordered changes. Soon thereafter, several officers were indicted on federal racketeering charges as the Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal reverberated through the department, further fracturing public trust. In recent months, the department received criticism after two police shootings in adjacent neighborhoods. Sgt. Maria Velez, the third instructor, said the career brings its challenges, but she still wants to help people. She asked her colleagues to think about their reasons for joining the police force. "This is more than just a job. You have a calling for this, something inside of you that makes you want to get up every single day and push through adversity," she said. "Everyone here is still choosing to show up, regardless of what's happened."
# Beyoncé's childhood home in Houston burns on Christmas morning December 26, 2023. 9:11 AM EST --- HOUSTON, Texas (AP) - Beyoncé's childhood home caught fire early on Christmas morning, though the family living there escaped safely. The fire was reported at about 2 a.m. Monday and the Houston Fire Department arrived on the scene of the two-story brick house within three to five minutes, the Houston Chronicle reported. "We had it contained in about 10 minutes," Houston Fire Department District Chief Justin Barnes told the newspaper. Beyoncé Knowles' family bought the home on the 2400 block of Rosedale in 1982 and Beyoncé lived there until she was 5 years old. She was seen taking photos of the property when she was in her hometown for her Renaissance World Tour. The home in the historic Riverside Terrace neighborhood was built in 1946. A message sent to Beyoncé's publicist was not immediately returned late Monday. The cause of the blaze was under investigation.
# Subscription-based care moves beyond peddling birth control and helping with hair loss By TOM MURPHY December 26, 2023. 9:17 AM EST --- Need help losing weight or handling depression? How about a pill that lowers cholesterol and treats erectile dysfunction? Online subscription services for care have grown far beyond their roots dealing mainly with hair loss, acne or birth control. Companies including Hims & Hers, Ro and Lemonaid Health now provide quick access to specialists and regular prescription deliveries for a growing list of health issues. Hims recently launched a weight-loss program starting at $79 a month without insurance. Lemonaid began treating seasonal affective disorder last winter for $95 a month. Ro still provides birth control, but it also connects patients trying to have children with regular deliveries of ovulation tests or prenatal vitamins. This Netflix-like approach promises help for two common difficulties in the U.S.: access to health care and prescription refills. But it also stirs concern about care quality. "This isn't medicine. This is selling drugs to consumers," said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, who studies pharmaceutical marketing at Georgetown. The online providers say they screen their patients carefully and send customers elsewhere if they can't help them. They also think they've tapped a care approach that patients crave. "The growth we've seen on our platform is a testament to how people are looking to get the care they need," Hims spokeswoman Khobi Brooklyn said. The publicly traded Hims has topped 1.4 million subscribers this year. It expects to pull in at least $1.2 billion in annual sales by 2025. That pales compared to the $300 billion-plus in annual revenue generated by health care giants like CVS Health. But Hims' 2025 projection is more than eight times what the company brought in at the start of the decade. Subscription-based health care has been around for years, particularly in primary care, where patients can pay monthly fees to gain better access to doctors. The e-commerce giant Amazon recently entered that niche with a subscription plan that gives some customers access to virtual and in-person care. Online versions of subscription-based care started growing after the COVID-19 pandemic made Americans more comfortable with telemedicine. That has led to a surge of investor money flowing to companies providing this care, said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a Harvard researcher who studies consumer health care. Many condition-specific plans offer patients regular visits with a health care provider and then recurring prescriptions for a monthly fee. That simplicity can be attractive, Mehrotra noted. "You can just get the care you need and move on with life just as you pay for Netflix or whatever," he said. Hims debuted weight loss earlier this month after starting a heart health program last summer that includes the combination pill treatments. Its rival Ro added weight loss last year to a lineup that also includes treatment plans for eczema, excessive sweating and short eyelashes, among other issues. Lemonaid offers treatment plans for insomnia and high blood pressure. It also touts cholesterol management for $223 a year without insurance. That includes provider visits, lab work and prescriptions for generic medicines. These companies still push sexual health help, especially on social media. But broader growth remains a priority. Hims says in a regulatory filing that it sees significant future opportunities in menopause, post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes. Ro CEO Zach Reitano noted in an interview earlier this year that his company's obesity treatments are "upstream" to other chronic diseases. He said patients who want help losing weight also care about improving their overall health. Reitano told The Associated Press he thought one of the health care system's biggest problems was that "it is not built around what patients want." Subscriptions, whether for medicine or meal kits, offer predictable costs and may seem like good deals at first. But customer enthusiasm can fade, and companies may feel pressure to find new business, said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe. The approach also comes with reputational baggage. RobRoy Chalmers turned to Hims for help with erectile dysfunction. But the Seattle artist decided to cancel his subscription and cut costs after a few months. He kept receiving bills after he thought he stopped the subscription. He said he emailed and called customer service. He didn't get a response until he criticized Hims on social media. "The amount of effort I needed to go through for them to make good was too much," he said. "This is every subscription-based company in my mind." Fugh-Berman worries mainly about care quality. She noted that talk therapy can be as effective as prescriptions for some conditions. "Mental health care should never just be about drugs," she said. She also noted that a diagnosis can change over time. Patients on regular medications must be monitored in case the drug causes problems like higher blood pressure. Lemonaid Health does that, according to Dr. Matthew Walvick, the company's top medical official. He said Lemonaid routinely follows up with patients to monitor for side effects and update their medical history. Brooklyn said Hims' program for mental health care includes psychiatry and talk therapy. Representatives of both companies say they also encourage patients to get in-person help when needed. Mehrotra worries more broadly. He noted that overall patient health may get overlooked when customers come to these companies with a specific condition or medicine in mind. Someone visiting a primary care doctor for birth control may also get screened for depression, he noted. "These companies are very solution-oriented," Mehrotra said. "They're not thinking about that comprehensive care." Walvick said Lemonaid collects an extensive patient medical history that delves into issues like smoking or drug use to offer "the best possible comprehensive care." Brooklyn said Hims & Hers provides access to safe care for many issues but shouldn't replace a primary care doctor. She added that every part of the health care system should be focused on improving access. "The traditional health care system in the U.S. has always been slow to adapt to our changing society's needs," she said.

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