A remake of 1980s divorce comedy The War of the Roses is to go ahead with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead roles.
In an announcement reported by Deadline, studio Searchlight Pictures said that Colman and Cumberbatch would appear in a new version of the story directed by Austin Powers’ Jay Roach and written by Poor Things’ Tony McNamara. Searchlight president Matthew Greenfield said: “The Roses is a wildly funny, bigger than life, and yet deeply human story … With Jay at the helm, and Benedict and Olivia and Tony, we have a dream team bringing it to life.”
The original film version of The Wars of the Roses was released in 1989, and starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as an apparently well-matched couple whose marriage breakdown turns into an epic battle of wills over the divorce settlement. It was directed by Danny DeVito, who also appeared in the film as a lawyer.
Stars … Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman Composite: AP/the Guardian
The current project, which has been in development since 2017, is reportedly a “reimagining” of the source novel by the late Warren Adler, published in 1981. Production companies associated with both lead actors are involved: Cumberbatch’s SunnyMarch, which is also credited on The End We Start From, The Courier, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, and Colman’s South of the River (Wicked Little Lies). Adler’s sons Jonathan and Michael are also credited, as part of a deal between Searchlight and Adler’s estate.
This article contains spoilers for “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”
By the end of “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” the latest in the so-called Monsterverse franchise from Warner Bros., multiple cities around the world have been rendered essentially uninhabitable and treasured monuments have been turned to dust. Godzilla, Kong and their adversaries flatten sections of Rio, ripping buildings in half during their climactic brawl, as a monster that can shoot ice from its mouth coats the coastal setting, presumably freezing a bunch of citizens as well.
Earlier, the two big guys punch their way through the pyramids in Cairo as tourists and locals scramble away from falling rocks. On top of that, at one point, Godzilla also takes up temporary residence in the Colosseum in Rome after he stomps through that locale. It’s frankly pretty cute the way he curls up to nap in the ancient amphitheater like a puppy, but the fact that he probably killed thousands of people getting to his makeshift bed isn’t really addressed.
Directed by Adam Wingard, the film cares more about the beasties than it does anything else. Given the cartoonish tone Wingard is working in — Godzilla turns pink in this one while he and Kong fight a giant evil ape named the Skar King with a bone whip — it makes sense that there isn’t much dwelling on the human toll. Still, the sheer level of destruction is so outsize it’s almost amusing. Sure, you go into a Godzilla flick expecting for some structures to crumble, but this just feels extreme, especially in how casually it shrugs off the fact that monsters have just toppled thousands of years worth of history and countless lives.
Over the years, films starring Godzilla and his pals have varied wildly in how they deal with the creatures’ victims — they have been serious and outright silly. While sometimes Godzilla can be a way to explore very human fears, at other times he’s just an outlet to watch things go boom. “Godzilla x Kong” puts him firmly in this noisy camp, which makes the treatment of death just seem careless.
Perhaps one of the reasons “Godzilla x Kong” is so striking in how little it seems to think about damage is that the last “Godzilla” movie to hit theaters was entirely concerned with Godzilla as a representation of trauma.
That last one, Takashi Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus One,” a Japanese production that came to North American theaters in December and eventually went on to win the Oscar for visual effects, takes place in the aftermath of World War II. Godzilla serves as a reminder for the protagonist, Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), of his own wartime guilt. It’s an emotionally potent film, explicitly about the value of human life, where Godzilla is ancillary to the tales of survival that Yamazaki wants to highlight.
And yet, it’s not as if every film from Godzilla’s home country has imbued the monster with gravity while all American productions go for spectacle over feeling. In fact, the current Warner Bros. Monsterverse started from a far more somber place, where the stakes felt much higher. Gareth Edwards’s 2014 “Godzilla” starts with the shocking death of a character played by Juliette Binoche that establishes the risks at play when you’ve got radioactive giants on the planet.
But as the Monsterverse has gone on, the material has gotten goofier, landing us where we are with “Godzilla x Kong.” It’s a pattern that also occurs in the original run of Japanese Godzilla films. Yes, Ishiro Honda’s 1954 original is a reflection of nuclear anxiety made in the shadow of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But by 1968, Honda made the bonkers “Destroy All Monsters,” in which Godzilla and his kaiju buddies on an island known as Monsterland are released by an alien species known as Kilaaks and attack global hubs like Moscow and Paris. Sure, you see the Arc de Triomphe get stomped, but the charmingly retro effects mean you are never really forced to think about who might be standing underneath it.
“Godzilla x Kong” has the problem of trying to split the difference between an absolutely ludicrous plot — there’s an ancient Indigenous telepathic population living in Hollow Earth that worships Mothra — and realistic special effects. Still, you can’t help but feel a tiny pang of sadness when one of the Wonders of the World is crushed.
Hollywood blockbusters underwent a reckoning for their unnecessary death counts when Superman and General Zod blasted through Metropolis in “Man of Steel” (2013) and the Avengers laid waste to the fictional Sokovia in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015). Their sequels tried to deal with the recklessness; “Godzilla x Kong” marks a return to wanton turmoil.
“Godzilla x Kong” also has something else in common with the superhero genre: In this movie, Godzilla and Kong are supposed to be the good guys stopping monsters that are more evil than they are. If so, why does no one care that they kill so many people in the process? The audience might, but no one onscreen gives a damn.
Eddie Marsan, 55, is an actor it is impossible not to like – although he has taken care in his versatile career (he has been in more than 70 films and counting) not always to be typecast as the twinkling, approachable East Ender you meet in person. He is one of our top character actors, with roles including the irresistibly bonkers driving instructor in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky and a seven-year stint as Terry in Ray Donovan. Next month he stars as John Adams, opposite Michael Douglas, in the new Apple TV+ series Franklin, about Benjamin Franklin’s mission in France to secure American independence, and Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s dad, in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new film Back to Black.
What sort of a man is Mitch? He came out pretty badly from the documentary Amy (2015). He is a father and that’s how I played him. A friend of mine worked with Amy in the music industry and knew him. I said to him: what do you think about Mitch? He said: I liked the man. He saw him as a loving father who had a daughter who was an addict and who was at the same time the most famous woman in the world. He was just a cab driver trying to do his best, trying to deal with it. I’d never have done this film if it sanitised – or demonised – Mitch. It’s not even the way I approach life. Life is more complex than that.
You’ve said that talent involves being able to ask the right questions. What did you want to know about Mitch when you met him? I wanted to know what steps the family took to deal with an impossible situation. The truth is they had nine interventions – and that isn’t documented. Nine times they tried to get her sectioned or put into rehab, and I was fascinated by that. They were just a normal north London family, so how did they deal with Amy’s fame? How do you navigate that – who wouldn’t be a little bit seduced?
Marsan with Marisa Abela in Back to Black. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy
As a father yourself, how difficult do you find it to strike a balance between being protective and encouraging independence? I have four teenage children and every time they go out the door, I worry: are they going to be all right? You feel pride, love, fear, frustration… Parents who improvise are probably the best. Whenever you get anybody who tells you they have all the answers, it’s just not true.
Sometimes the most consoling thing is when people admit there isn’t a solution… That’s right. Sometimes there isn’t. That’s why the narrative about Mitch being the cause of Amy’s demise has taken hold. When someone as young as Amy dies, the trauma is so bad we want to find someone to blame. But the world is chaotic and addiction is as much genetic as it is about nurture. My interpretation of Mitch is that he loves her, is proud of her and is heartbroken.
What was your father like and do you resemble him? I don’t resemble him at all – and that’s all I am going to say about it.
What did he do? He was a lorry driver.
What were you like as a teenager? I wasn’t in a very good place. I left school at 15. I worked as an apprentice printer and in a menswear store, for a bookmaker called Mr Bennett. I used to dance and was asked, with my mate Emmanuel, to be an extra in a film. Emmanuel is like my older brother. I saw Jamie Foreman do a scene and thought: that’s what I want to be. Mr Bennett said if I got into drama school, he’d pay for me. And Emmanuel became a model. He was better looking than me: 6ft 4in and gorgeous – a mixture between Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.
You’re often cast in Jewish roles, though you’re not Jewish. Should anyone be allowed to act anyone? A Jewish actor should be able to play non-Jewish roles and a non-Jewish actor should be able to play Jewish roles. A gay actor should be able to play straight roles and a straight actor should be able to play gay roles… You need to categorise people to measure and address inequality. But the problem is if you then confine people in categories, you take away acting opportunity.
You live in Chiswick nowadays. What was Bethnal Green like growing up? Mitch told me that Amy used to ask him to take her in the black cab back to the East End. He comes from Stepney – I was born there too. She wanted to hear all his stories about growing up there. On a personal level, the reason I love going back to the East End is because of the people I see there – they all loved me before I became famous and that means so much to me. I’m patron of the charity Streets of Growth, in Tower Hamlets, which helps kids to avoid bullying, drug gangs, knife gangs… I was at Pellicci’s only a couple of days ago – my mate’s caff on Bethnal Green Road – and we had a great time.
Alongside Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky, 2008. Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy
You bring to your role as John Adams in Franklin a wonderfully undeceived quality. What was it like playing opposite Michael Douglas? John Adams is a Bostonian lawyer – I enjoyed his articulacy. He embodies the puritanical part of the American psyche, Franklin embodies the libertarian – they’re an odd couple. Once I am in character, I try to stay in character, but each time I did a scene with Michael I’d go to myself: “F-me, it’s Michael Douglas” – I couldn’t help it.
What did you learn working with Mike Leigh? When you work with Mike, you know you can only be authentic – you don’t show off.
To what extent has your distinctive face been your fortune? My face represents the other. If you had a video game, you wouldn’t choose my face as your avatar!
What part would you like that is least likely to come your way? When I was growing up in the East End, there was a wonderful acceptance of different sexualities and some very tough gay men. To play someone like that would fascinate me – to play masculinity with a gay edge.
You’ve often said daily meditation is important to you. Why? You realise thoughts are just thoughts, not reality. One of the great things about Buddhism – and I’m not a Buddhist – is the idea that there is no self. I hate the idea of anyone defining me. The truth is we’re not fixed, we’re all just pure potential.
That must be a liberating thing for an actor to believe. You are so in demand – how do you cope with all the multitasking? I’m a bit like Elvis towards the end of his life, in that my agent and wife know what I’m doing – I just turn up. But I do the research and the work. I don’t think I could stop – I enjoy it too much.
In the 1960s, he also performed as a folk singer in Greenwich Village coffee houses. He and Richie Havens co-wrote the antiwar song “Handsome Johnny,” which Mr. Havens recorded in 1966 and later sang at Woodstock.
His dozens of feature films included “The Landlord” (1970), in which he played a man on the brink of insanity; “Travels With My Aunt” (1972); and “The Deep” (1977), as a Bahamian drug dealer. His later films included “Diggstown” (1992), in which he played a boxer, and the movie version of Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class” (1994), in which he played a bar owner.
Mr. Gossett made more than 100 television appearances, ranging from lighthearted comedies like “The Partridge Family” to dramas like “Madam Secretary.” He played the title role, a Columbia anthropology professor who investigates crimes, on the short-lived 1989 series “Gideon Oliver.”
He also appeared in numerous television movies, among them “The Lazarus Syndrome” (1978), about a cardiologist; “A Gathering of Old Men” (1987), about a Black man who kills in self-defense; “Strange Justice” (1999), about the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation process (he played the presidential adviser Vernon Jordan); and “Lackawanna Blues” (2005), based on Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s play. His other TV-movie roles included the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat and the baseball star Satchel Paige.
He continued to act until last year, when he was seen in the film version of the Broadway musical “The Color Purple.”
Mr. Gossett’s marriage to Hattie Glascoe in 1964 lasted only five months. He and Christina Mangosing married in 1973, had one child and divorced after two years. His 1987 marriage to Cyndi James Reese ended in divorce in 1992.
Mr. Gossett is survived by his sons, Satie and Sharron Gossett, and several grandchildren.
In the Television Academy interview, Mr. Gossett urged fellow actors to help effect political and social change in a disturbing world. “The arts can achieve it overnight,” he said. “Millions of people are watching.” He added, “We can get to them quicker than anybody else.”
It is easy to feel protective of Shirley Henderson on this gloomy winter afternoon. Is she warm enough? Does she want to put the heating on? “Aye, I’m OK,” she says from her home in Fife, a few strands of chestnut hair falling over her glasses as she huddles close to the laptop. “It’s a wee bit blowy out. But I’m at the age where you can get too warm, so I’m all right.” Her giggle is helium-high: the sort of sound you want to trap, like in one of those toy moo boxes, so that you can play it when you’re down in the dumps. Hearing Henderson laugh, or say “Sorry darlin’?” when she hasn’t quite heard your question makes you feel as if you’ve been cuddled.
Her allusion to the menopause, though, takes a moment to sink in. Though 58, she looks barely old enough to be online without parental controls. (No suspension of disbelief was required when she played a mother who dresses as her own adolescent daughter to sit an exam in May Contain Nuts.) Henderson came to prominence in the 1990s as one of the UK’s most probing, unpredictable character actors. After being spattered with excrement in Trainspotting, she won pivotal roles in two masterpieces: she was a soprano pining for her son in Mike Leigh’s Gilbert-and-Sullivan extravaganza Topsy-Turvy, and a feisty hairdresser smacking her lips at London life in the rhapsodic Wonderland. That was the first and best of her six collaborations with the director Michael Winterbottom, as well as the one which got her hooked on improvising.
Henderson’s new film, The Trouble With Jessica, brings her back to the capital, though this is a precisely drilled comedy, as macabre as its Hitchcockian title might suggest, with no room for ad-libs. She plays Sarah, who is about to sell her swanky London home, rescuing herself and her husband (Alan Tudyk) from financial disaster. Their closest friends (Rufus Sewell and Olivia Williams) drop in for a celebratory dinner, bringing with them the irritating Jessica (Indira Varma), who then has the temerity to kill herself in the garden, thus imperilling the sale. If only she had died elsewhere …
‘Yes, she’s bad but she is also sad and trapped’ … Henderson in The Trouble With Jessica
The corpse-shifting scheme turns out to be the making of Sarah. “She finds a kind of freedom in being the leader,” Henderson agrees. “She has this brutal, selfish idea. But what I was trying to do was get you to like her and feel a wee bit sorry for her. It’s OK to hate her for a moment. Yes, she’s bad but she is also sad and trapped. And she’s a smart lady to come up with all this!”
Henderson is the movie’s engine, her arms going like pistons as she scurries around placating police officers, nosy neighbours and the house’s prospective buyer. The sound of her heels clicking on the floor becomes a kind of metronome against which the action is paced and played. “I started to hear that clickiness myself,” she says. “I thought: ‘That’s the sound of her stress.’ She is this modern woman, trying to be everything, bring up her daughter, love her husband, take on this house they can’t afford, but bits are breaking off.”
When preparing for a role, Henderson comes to her little room to experiment with accent, movement, gesture: the pencil marks that will add up to the final portrait. “I start off thinking: ‘How will I ever be able to do this? What’s the first thing I’m going to do in the wee place where I practice?’ Then gradually, you realise it’s happening. You’re not thinking too much, you’re not forcing it. It’s there.” She refers to that “wee place” with such reverence that I’m picturing a glowing grotto or candle-lit shrine. “It’s just a tiny wee room,” she says chirpily. “That’s where I am now. If I’m up here, I feel I’m away from the world.” All I can see of it is the comfy coat hanging on the door behind her.
No suspension of disbelief required … Henderson in May Contain Nuts. Photograph: ITV/Tiger Aspect
To think, it was here – or somewhere like it in a previous home – that Henderson first worked out how Hogwarts’ bathroom-dwelling ghost Moaning Myrtle would sound as she bleated her way through lines such as: “I was just sitting in the U-bend thinking about death.” It was here, too, that she practised warning Bridget Jones about disloyal boyfriends (“Even if he isn’t shagging her already, Bridge, he’s thinking about it”) and decided on the sad-but-sinister coochy-coo whisper of Frances, the lonely misfit manipulated by a psychopath in the second series of Happy Valley. And this must have been where she crafted her cameo as Agatha Christie in the madcap whodunit See How They Run, as well as her voice work as Quackety Duck Duck in the children’s series Lovely Little Farm and as the mewling Babu Frik in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
It was in this room, too, that Henderson would have worked out how to play the frantic Sarah in The Trouble With Jessica – if she’d been given more time, that is, rather than being offered the role three days before she was due on set. Possibly someone dropped out at short notice, she concedes. But this is also the way independent movies work, with the money often falling into place at the 11th hour. That’s how it was in 2017 with Never Steady, Never Still, where Henderson had just three weeks to adopt a Canadian accent and perfect the tremors of a woman suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
This shrewdness and versatility have made her a mascot of the international indie and arthouse scenes. She has worked with Kelly Reichardt (on the frontier western Meek’s Cutoff) and Todd Solondz (on the Happiness sequel Life During Wartime). She played Tilda Swinton’s PA in Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, and a tormented crone mutilating herself in pursuit of youth in Matteo Garrone’s Grimm-like Tale of Tales.
Shrewdness and versatility … with Michelle Williams, left, in Meek’s Cutoff. Photograph: Soda Pictures/Allstar
Film-making is always a circus. Three days to prepare for The Trouble With Jessica, though, sounds more like a farce. “It was manic,” she admits. “I had a ton of questions but there was no time.” Did she at least have her own dinner party memories to draw on? “You mean grownup dinner parties with couples?” she asks. “I don’t live that kind of life, do you? I’d rather go out to a restaurant because then you can get away quick if the chat gets too heavy.” What about hosting one? “No, no,” she says, covering her face with her hands. “I’d take everybody out before I did that.” Kill them, you mean? “Yeah, I’d get rid of them all. Haha! No, I’d take them out for supper, or for ice-cream. Let’s go out for pudding. Let’s go to the cinema.”
Or to the theatre. Henderson had one of the proudest moments of her career in 2018 when she won an Olivier award for playing a woman suffering from dementia in Conor McPherson’s stage musical Girl from the North Country, which was brimming with radical new arrangements of Bob Dylan numbers; Henderson’s rendition of Like a Rolling Stone, evolving from tentative to rollicking, was especially sublime. During her acceptance speech, she referred to her teenage diary, written when she arrived in London from Kincardine at 17 to study at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she was part of the same intake as her future Happy Valley co-star Sarah Lancashire. Henderson had given herself five years to sing on the London stage. It took a bit longer than that. Then again, she’s been busy.
Sublime … in Girl from the North Country. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
How would she describe herself back then? “I was a wee girl with a wee Dannimac raincoat,” she says. “I knew nothing. I didn’t know I knew nothing. But that was fine. I wanted to learn. As a person, I was very quiet. Not chatty like I am today!”
She said in her speech that when Girl from the North Country arrived, it was everything she had been looking for. What is she looking for now in a script? “It’s a feeling,” she says. “A nervous feeling. But good nervous. Not a feeling like I know I can do it – I never feel that – but that I want to jump in and find out.” I think back to something she said earlier, when she was describing her character in The Trouble With Jessica. “My own natural energy, I suppose, is to always keep going. She has that too. She’s not done yet.” Neither is Henderson. Not by a long chalk.
“This is more true than you’d think,” handwritten text informs us at the start of “Wicked Little Letters.” I looked it up, and they weren’t kidding. The movie involves tweaks and elisions to history, of course. But at least in its major outlines, the true story matches the film, in which a dour spinster named Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) and her raucous next-door neighbor Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) tangle over a series of mysteriously obscene letters that started arriving at the homes of people in the English coast village of Littlehampton in 1920. As you may intuit, this movie belongs to a very particular subgenre summed up in one declaration: boy, small English towns are full of weirdos.
Directed by Thea Sharrock (who has an impressive two movies out this week — the other is “The Beautiful Game”) from a screenplay by the comedy writer Jonny Sweet, “Wicked Little Letters” is a darkly funny take on the tale, leaning a lot more toward the farce than the darkness. Edith, the oldest daughter in a large and very pious family, still lives with her parents (Timothy Spall and Gemma Jones). They sleep in three twin beds in the same room. They rarely go anywhere and are constantly scandalized.
Edith has been under her father’s thumb so long that any will she possessed has been wholly squashed out, which makes her exactly the ideal of feminine virtue for 1920s England. The men have returned from war — those who survived, anyhow — and retaken the jobs and roles women filled, relegating them back to the kitchen and domestic life. Edith, homely but docile, is everything a good Christian Englishwoman should be.
And of course, anyone who deviates from Edith’s type is suspicious. Rose, for instance, has committed a quadruple feat of sin: living with her Black boyfriend (Malachi Kirby), having a daughter (Alisha Weir) who dares the unladylike act of picking up a guitar, enjoying a night at the pub and, most of all, being Irish.
When she arrived in Littlehampton, she was a figure of affable curiosity to her neighbors, especially Edith. But by the time we meet them, Edith has accused Rose of sending elegantly written obscene letters to her and to the neighbors — letters containing marvelously inventive strings of epithets so vile that I cannot reproduce them in this newspaper. Edith endures the letters with a visage so saintly that you can practically see her halo: “We worship a Messiah who suffered, so by my suffering, do I not move closer to heaven?” she intones to her parents, eyes modestly cast down.
We soon learn why Edith says Rose is motivated to write the letters. This is where the movie loses some steam, because early on, it’s obvious that all is not as it seems, something the put-upon local cop Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) is sure of from the jump. Gladys’s father was a police officer, which is why she became one, though the men she works with lord their maleness over her, putting her down at every opportunity. (She introduces herself to everyone as “Woman Police Officer Moss,” because they’re going to comment on it, anyhow.) Gladys is determined to hunt down the facts, with the help of a few local women who’ve managed to maintain minds of their own.
“Wicked Little Letters” plays like a caper, its mystery worn lightly in what is less of a mystery and more of a lavish consideration of how annoying and stupid the men of Littlehampton (and perhaps, by extension, men in general) were around 1920. Each one is an idiot (save for Rose’s partner, who has dealt with plenty of sleights of his own), made foolish and useless by the kind of misogyny that insists they must be better than women because, well, I mean, women, you know.
The magistrates and clergy and officers of the law all refuse to see what’s right in front of them precisely because they’re blinded by prejudice. They are boorish and boring and bad, and the more weak minded or browbeaten of the women follow right along.
This makes for gently witty comedy, everyone falling into their types easily and pleasantly. (At one point, “DIE SLUT” is splashed in paint across Rose’s door. “It’s German,” she remarks to her daughter, pulling her inside.) The movie is full of goofy side characters and one-liners, yet elevated occasionally to genuine complexity by Colman and Buckley, who are consistently the best thing about any movie they’re in. And, it’s fun to see them together, given Buckley recently played a younger version of Colman in “The Lost Daughter.”
“Wicked Little Letters” would almost be a pretty family-friendly comedy (or at least well suited for more delicate palates) save for one thing: A great deal of its humor comes from the spectacle of watching various upright, uptight, prudish figures spew uninterrupted streams of profanity in inappropriate places: courtrooms, living rooms, the middle of the street. It is pretty funny the first and second and third time. It starts to feel like a crutch after a while.
If that doesn’t bug you, then “Wicked Little Letters” is enjoyable enough, buoyed by its cast, the kind of movie that provokes a few chuckles but won’t stick to your ribs. But I was left pondering a particular characteristic of this kind of period movie. It has a point to make about the plight of women in a patriarchal world, whether they’re seen as angels or trollops; that’s not merely set dressing for the movie, but the text itself. Yet I can’t escape the feeling that we’re meant to laugh at the dull-witted prejudiced people of a hundred years ago, the way they suppress themselves and oppress one another. Aren’t we lucky we’re not like them anymore?
That’s one way to look at it. The truth is more complicated. But perhaps the movie knows it: This is, as we were warned, more true than you’d think.
Wicked Little Letters Rated R for many, many, many naughty words and one brief bare bum. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.
Nearly seven years ago, the film-makers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine went to Texas to see government in action, albeit one run by teenagers. The country was well into the Trump administration – Muslim bans and kids in cages dominated the headlines – when the two began filming an annual American Legion convention known as Boys State, a weeklong mock government simulation for 1,000 high school boys, in the summer of 2018. The duo tried to film a similar state program for girls, but were rebuffed; they ended up with Boys State, an incisive Apple TV+ documentary that captured the chaos, promise and peril of young masculinity in the US and went on to win the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.
But what if the girls were present? How well can a government simulation work without women? “There was unfinished business at Boys State,” McBaine told the Guardian, “which is that every time a cluster of boys or the legislature or even candidates at Boys State brought up the topic of abortion, it got very awkward very quickly. Because to their credit, many of the boys felt like it was not okay to talk about that issue without girls in the room.” The two wanted a Girls State, where such issues would be top of mind. “What we didn’t know, timing-wise, was how top of mind it was going to be,” said McBaine.
Girls State, the duo’s follow-up for Apple TV+, was filmed in Missouri in June 2022, mere days before the supreme court officially overturned Roe v Wade. The film buzzes with energy, from abortion supporters to opponents (and there are both), that critical decisions are about to be made for them. “We knew that we were there talking about girls’ political issues. And then in a couple of weeks, men would decide it for us,” said Nisha Murali, a judicial branch participant who brought with her an annotated copy of the leaked Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health decision. “The knowledge that in real life, it wasn’t actually in our control and the fact that we were going to see a very concrete example of it not being in our control, influenced the way we interacted with politics at Girl State.”
Like its predecessor, Girls State embeds with several participants for a verité-style weeklong tour of hopes and heartbreak, dorm room hangs and rallies, speeches and mock proceedings. As in Texas, the Missouri girls program skews white; one participant, Tochi, ruefully notes that she’s probably the first Black person some participants from small, rural towns have met. Though still strictly separated by gender, Missouri Girls State was held concurrently to the boys for the first time in 2022, at the same campus. The program would necessarily be different from the boys in some ways – less testosterone, of course. A different navigation of social pressures and expectations. Fewer actual lawmakers available to bless the proceedings. Significantly less precedent in state and federal government, as the glass ceiling remains merely cracked.
But the differences, as observed by the film-makers and noted by the participants, felt more stark and corrosive. There were lectures on dress code (not so for the boys) and rules on never walking alone, because they’re sharing the campus with boys. Formal proceedings were undercut by a current of boosterism, an emphasis on “hey, girl!” positivity and sparkles rather than the gristle of government. “It just had an immediate kind of, like, child’s birthday party vibe,” said McBaine. “And that was in contrast to these girls that we just met and spent a lot of time with, who were debate champions, student body presidents, accomplished kids.”
“It was a lot more feminist empowering, and all that,” said Emily Worthmore, a Tracy Flick-type striver who immediately began a campaign for the program’s highest office of governor. “I did feel like it took precedent over the importance of politics as part of the program. And I didn’t think that that was necessarily fair to girls.” Part of the film’s enjoyment is watching the girls’ dawning awareness of the program’s patronizing limitations; Worthmore, a self-professed conservative, turns her intensity from electoral politics to chronicling the differences between the two. Her critiques find common ground with two liberal gubernatorial candidates, Cecilia Bartin, a fiery public orator, and Faith Glasgow, more blunt and intense.
Whereas Boys State dove headfirst into the politicking, from earnest canvassing to dirty tricks, Girls State takes its time. The participants declare their political identities, go to pep rallies, banter about having friends from the other side of the aisle over cafeteria trays, sing Pitbull lyrics while gathering early in the morning. “The way we edited the film is a direct representation of how we felt and what we witnessed that week, which is that the girls program is very slow to get started and get into its politics,” said McBaine. Boys State immediately divides the participants into two groups, leading to intense tribalism, but also “that they build their parties from scratch and therefore get into the meat and potatoes conversations more quickly, have more time to debate them. So it feels more substantive and more adult.”
Photograph: Whitney Curtis/Courtesy of Apple
The difference in pace was frustrating; as one participant puts it in the film, “I’m a little sick of the fluff.” Still, the girls eventually get down to business, debating a supreme court case on abortion rights and electing a governor, on both platform and personality. Throughout, there’s a tension between digging into one’s beliefs and fear of engaging too deeply; in a country this polarized, with this many girls from so many towns across the state, the third rail is always within reach.
“It’s not a naive optimism that they embody. They’re very aware of the barriers that they face in their lives and the existential threats they face politically and globally,” said Moss. “And yet they aren’t cynical and they do throw themselves into this process of politics and beyond Girl State.”
As in politics, life goes on, even as gridlock remains or confidence falters. The film ends with a haunting post-script on the end of Roe v Wade, as well as several trajectories projecting out of the conference crucible into college. Worthmore and Murali have returned to volunteer at a somewhat reformed Girls State; Glasgow is studying political science at the University of Missouri. “None of us know what we’re doing. We’re all insecure. We’re all anxious. We’re all terrified,” said Bartin, now a freshman at Brown University. “But how you present yourself doesn’t have to be all consuming. Being a woman, I think we’re told so often that you have to present yourself a certain way. That’s not something that men are told,” she added. “Present yourself how you want to and let the world accept you.”
Despite the stakes outside the mock government halls, the girls maintained a remarkable, hopeful sense of curiosity, a desire to hear each other out. “I think we get really caught up in our own echo chambers and own social circles, and we forget that we’re all people,” said Glasgow. “And that if we’re able to talk about where our opinions come from, we can gain a deeper understanding for the other side, maybe compromise on some issues or, if nothing else, continue to love each other more.”
Have you ever stood in an art gallery, contemplating a vacuum, wondering if it’s art or if the maintenance staff just forgot to put it away? I love this feeling. To me, art is supposed to leave us re-evaluating everything we think we know about the world. But it does underline how knotty and capricious judging art can be — a matter also taken up by “Art Talent Show.”
Directed by Tomas Bojar and Adela Komrzy, “Art Talent Show” (opening this week in theaters) follows hopeful applicants to Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest art college in the Czech Republic. When the film was on the festival circuit, it garnered comparisons to the movies of Frederick Wiseman: patient, witty observational portraits of institutions that coax audiences to draw conclusions about their ultimate theses. In this case, the subjects are the young artists in the process of grueling entrance exams. That includes being grilled by faculty who sometimes seem bent on messing with them just a little, whether it’s prodding a student into saying smoking might be good for the environment because it kills humans, or challenging their views of the art market.
The teachers are hardly rigid traditionalists, but they are of a different generation from the students. That means conversations about gender and sexuality, as well as commodification and what truly counts as provocative, are all part of the film. But the movie smartly situates the whole process inside the larger institution, with the receptionist in the lobby providing a riotous counterbalance to all the artiness therein.
“Art Talent Show” is itself provocative but also hilarious, both a sendup and a tribute to the complexity of contemporary art. It reminded me of another favorite documentary: Claire Simon’s “The Competition” (2016, streaming on Metrograph at Home), which follows would-be filmmakers hoping to be admitted to the prestigious Parisian school La Fémis. They also face panels of faculty grilling them about their views and aspirations, and the results are equally revealing.
Admittedly, both of these films made me very happy to have finished school long ago. But what I loved most was how they spotlight complex attitudes about the relationship between identity, craft and art, even in highly progressive contexts — and how fun they are to watch while they do it.
During one fateful week in June 2000, terror gripped the town of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as fighting between the armies of Rwanda and Uganda left thousands dead, injured, or disabled. Years on, the harrowing bloodshed, named the “six-day war” by local people, remains a taboo topic. Shedding light on the plight and resilience of the survivors, prolific documentarian Dieudo Hamadi follows their tireless mission for reparations, as they set sail to the capital Kinshasa where they will present their demands to the government.
Shot in intimate closeup, the difficult journey constitutes the film’s emotional centre. Avoiding maudlin sentimentality or voyeuristic ethnography, these boat sequences offer an unvarnished, clear-eyed look at the interpersonal dynamics of a marginalised community in which both solidarity and discord coexist. Conflicts are inevitable; the survivors are crammed on to a rudimentary wooden barge with plastic tarps as their only shield from torrential rain and other harsh weather conditions. At one point, one man loudly laments the quality of the food provided by the women, to their dismay. Against these moments of tension, a shared resolution in seeking compensation from a negligent system emerges as a uniting force, one that cuts across private differences.
The brutal reality endured by the disabled victims – which includes inadequate prosthetics, financial precariousness, familial maltreatment, and more – is punctuated with scenes from a play written and performed by the survivors themselves. This radical, formally inventive interplay between documentary and fiction embodies the full sweep of political resistance: against the obstacles of political indifference, the film sees the path towards revolution and justice as one that brings together direct action and creative expression.
The 1989 blockbuster “Road House” was something of a pastiche. It delivered disreputable B-picture thrills with big-picture production value. The lead actor Patrick Swayze, playing a philosophizing roughneck, smirked with unshakable confidence while breaking arms and jaws, as cars and buildings blew up real good around him. The action was served up with glossy studio polish.
Hence, a remake of the film, some might argue, is destined to be a pastiche of a pastiche. But as we move further into the 21st century, we find the notion of authenticity ever more devalued. And who needs it when you’ve got Doug Liman directing the whole thing? He is, after all, the J. Robert Oppenheimer of lunatic action set pieces (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “Edge of Tomorrow” to name a few).
Taking on Swayze’s role, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the pro fighter turned bouncer Elwood Dalton, here protecting a juke joint that sits on a valuable piece of real estate in the Florida Keys. At his most winning despite his character’s lethal nature, Gyllenhaal keeps up the one-liners and drollery. In lieu of Swayze’s Zenlike musings, he gives us dry inquiries about whether his challengers have medical insurance before pummeling and delivering them to a hospital.
This movie delivers a lot of the same kicks as the first, but with contemporary tuneups like a villain played by Conor McGregor, the Ultimate Fighting Championship star who’s first seen stark naked, except for shoes and socks (so he can carry his phone). Though two hours long, the movie moves as swiftly as a greased ferret through a Habitrail and delivers hallucinatory action highs for its extended climax.
All this and a pretty funny “The Third Man” reference too.
Road House Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch on Prime Video.
Born in London, Imogen Poots, 34, was cast in the film V for Vendetta when she was in her teens. In 2013, she played the daughter of porn baron Paul Raymond in The Look of Love and won best supporting actress at the British independent film awards. Her other films include 28 Weeks Later, Vivarium, Green Room, The Father and The Teacher. She stars as Rose Dugdale in Baltimore, which has just opened in cinemas. She lives between London and New York.
What is your greatest fear? Cockroaches.
What was your most embarrassing moment? I once asked a young woman if she had ever heard of the musician Laura Marling, insinuating I knew Laura Marling, to which she replied: “I am Laura Marling.”
Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought? Therapy.
Describe yourself in three words Two sturdy teeth.
What would your superpower be? Curing insomnia with the flick of a wrist.
What makes you unhappy? Lukewarm coffee.
What do you most dislike about your appearance? I’ve learned to roll with it.
If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose? Video rental.
Who would play you in the film of your life? Barry Keoghan in a big blond wig.
What scares you about getting older? I’m actually looking forward to getting older.
Who is your celebrity crush? One of my favourite authors, Renata Adler. There is a black and white photograph of her with this long braid and it’s so hot.
Which book are you ashamed not to have read? I’ve been lugging around Doris Lessing’s books, which I have yet to read.
What did you want to be when you were growing up? A visual artist.
What is the worst thing anyone’s ever said to you? People give me a hard time about my hats. Over Christmas, this drunk woman shouted something about me having a shit hat because I had a red beanie on. Last week at a party, someone gave me a hard time for wearing a cap. I just think about melting ice caps when this happens.
What is your guiltiest pleasure? Saying thank you very much with a curtsy when somebody tells me how wonderful I was in a play or a film because they’ve mistaken me for another actor.
What does love feel like? Completely nuts.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? I do this thing where I say, “Have I told you this before?” before I’ve said what the thing is. I did this to my friend last weekend and she said, “Imogen, I don’t know what you are about to say.”
If you could edit your past, what would you change? I would have been OK with feeling shy. In my teenage years, I thought being an actor meant that you had to be a little more performative.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something significant? I always thought I would be a terrible driver because I’m sort of a wafty person, but it turns out I am very good at staying in between the lines. I passed my test last year.
Securing a work visa in the United States can be a bureaucratic nightmare, with long wait times and expensive legal fees. Comedian and writer Julio Torres is all too familiar with this process. To make ends meets amid his own work visa limbo, Torres, who is originally from El Salvador, often took odd Craigslist jobs while he was living in New York City.
“I was an assistant very briefly ... and not a particularly good one,” Torres told HuffPost. “This one person I worked for, for like one day. She just handed me her cards and she said that she needed a washer and dryer.”
Torres had never purchased either appliance, and didn’t know where to begin when it came to shopping for them.
“I felt like if I was like, ‘I need more information,’ then she would not like me and fire me,” he said. “And then I wouldn’t be able to make rent.”
That precarious period of his life is the inspiration for the new semi-autobiographical film “Problemista,” which he wrote, directed and starred in. The A24 film is out Friday nationwide.
Drawing on work from his actual life was “a little bizarre sometimes,” Torres acknowledged. “It was mostly fine, and then I had little moments that truly gave me PTSD.” Torres plays Alejandro, an aspiring toy-maker who is also from El Salvador and living in New York City. Alejandro sees his life turned upside down when he loses his job and has a month to find a new employer to sponsor him, or else get deported.
The countdown to deportation is depicted as grains of sand running out in an hourglass and an endless maze of trapdoors, vents and locked doors that Alejandro must go through. The stakes are existential: When other visa applicants run out of time in an immigration lawyer’s office, they vanish before our eyes.
Watching the movie, you feel the stress of knowing that every day Alejandro does not find a sponsor is one day closer to him disappearing. “There’s still this idea that admitting someone into the country, or that making it easier for people who have less, that that is charitable,” Torres said.
“If you download an app and the app is clunky to use and it’s hard to use, then in the next upgrade, the app improves,” Torres continued. “And that’s because the corporation wants to retain you as a customer. But the visa system is not interested in improving, because it doesn’t think it’s to its benefit to make it easier. It’s really frustrating that it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re so lucky there’s even a path at all.’”
Job and visa application systems have absurd rules, and one of the film’s strengths is in pointing them out. Alejandro wants to work at the toy company Hasbro, but as he notes to a hiring manager, the online job application doesn’t feature an “other” option for people who are living outside of the U.S. If Alejandro loses his work visa, he will lose his chance at his dream job for an arbitrary reason.
The corporations and invisible systems that can decide if you’re going to make rent or stay in this country are alsonot just paperwork in “Problemista” ― they’re living, breathing characters.
Take, for example, the process of securing a steady paying gig, which can be its own nightmare. In the film, Alejandro needs money after losing his job, and that stress is represented by Craigslist (Larry Owens), a hallucinated spirit who whispers in Alejandro’s ear about Ikea bookcases and shady gigs. Bank overdraft fees are another example. After his card gets declined, Alejandro’s tense phone call with a Bank of America representative (River L. Ramirez) is not just an argument ― it’s a surreal gun standoff.
“At the end of the day, we’re talking about emails, phone calls, notifications,” Torres said about depicting the stakes of his and Alejandro’s journeys. “Cinematically, they’re small actions.”
That’s why Torres, a “Saturday Night Live” alum who wrote dreamy, melancholic sketches like “Wells for Boys,” leaned into showcasing the surreal emotions those actions cause.
The film also pays close attention to the ways that employers can deliver the worst news of your life with sanitized language. In Alejandro’s case, the boss who fires him and imperils his visa does so with a vague “we’re sorry.”
Torres said that he’s long been fascinated with the peculiarities of corporate speak. “Most of the people using this language are putting it on as an armor, as a sheet of glass between you and them that they need, so that they feel detached from what they’re doing,” he said.
The audience sees Alejandro trying to channel this in a video job application for Hasbro ― without success.
“He’s trying so hard, and that’s because I tried,” Torres said. “I really gave it a shot and I feel like I was just so bad at it. ‘Following up,’ ‘kindly bumping’ ― it’s not something that is second nature to me.”
This desire to fit into the corporate mold can require using language that is unnatural and robotic in order to be taken seriously by people in power.
“There’s a moment in the movie that we ended up cutting,” he said. “But it was based on a real thing that happened during a job interview where I was desperately trying to get a job. The interview was not going well. And at one point, I just said, ‘I love corporations.’”
“Problemista” is also a comedic satire about a real hard truth: We often spend more time with absurd bosses and colleagues than we do with our own families ― and these people can teach you some unexpected lessons.
In his urgent quest to find a new employer to sponsor his visa, Alejandro meets Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), an art critic who agrees to potentially sponsor Alejandro if he helps her put on a show. Elizabeth is the kind of difficult, demanding boss too many of us are familiar with — she needs you to drive her across state lines and learn a redundant software ASAP. But the unlikely pair forge a bond.
Though Elizabeth is unforgivably rude, she’s also Alejandro’s first art peer in New York to see his creative potential. He’s not invisible to her. Torres said the bad boss character of Elizabeth is based on a few people he’s worked with in real-life situations where “because of circumstance, I had to stick with it because I didn’t have the luxury of just being like, ‘This is insane and leaving.’”
“That sort of forced partnership really makes you get to know people better,” he said.
In the film, Elizabeth’s rage makes her a monster. When she yells at Alejandro, their arguments become fantastical duels: Alejandro is a medieval knight trapped in a cave, and Elizabeth is the many-headed hydra he must slay. But ultimately, Elizabeth is a monster with good advice for Alejandro on how to subvert a system that was not built for him.
“Who is ‘they’?” Elizabeth asks when Alejandro tells her about how Hasbro’s incubator program keeps ignoring his application. “Get a name and become a problem for them.” Following this advice is what finally gets the company to notice and hire Alejandro.
Torres said one message of the film is that making yourself more visible to faceless, invisible systems can help people like Alejandro get ahead. And in Torres’ view, Alejandro faces the monster, but he won’t become one like Elizabeth.
“We’re allowed to pick and choose what we learn from people. We don’t have to absorb them in their totality,” Torres said.
Jon Pack / FreezeCorp / A24 Film
Torres, pictured here directing "Problemista," said that he did not feel like a boss on set. "I felt a joy in the collaboration, and I felt like it was more of a Socratic seminar-style class as opposed to a lecture," he said.
At the start of the film, Alejandro is rejected by systems, but by the end, he joins them. He has a visa sponsor and now works at Hasbro. Alejandro goes corporate.
But Torres shared that he doesn’t think Alejandro would stay happy at the company for long. “There were earlier versions of the script where he works at Hasbro, and then we cut to like a few months later, and he hates it so much,” Torres said. “And I actually think that’s what happened. I think he branched out and did his own thing.”
“I think that when we are outside of the system, and when we’re drowning, all we’re thinking about is swimming and succeeding in it. And it takes ― at least for me ― a taste of that to be like, ‘Wait, this whole thing’s actually wrong.’”
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Shirley Chisholm was an American heroine who challenged simplistic political narratives of victory and defeat. Though her most famous effort — her bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972 — wasn’t successful, it was one chapter in a life’s worth of grit and innumerable wins, only a few of which can be measured by votes or contests.
She was the working-class daughter of Caribbean immigrants who achieved academic excellence despite financial struggles; an educator who advocated powerfully the rights of children, particularly those from immigrant backgrounds; a self-made politician who, at the local and state levels, fought successfully for better representation for women and minorities; and, in 1968, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress.
It is a pity, then, that “Shirley,” John Ridley’s new biopic starring Regina King, focuses rather narrowly on Chisholm’s failed presidential campaign. The film reaches for the urgency of a political thriller, jumping between campaign meetings, backroom negotiations and rousing speeches. But the staid visuals — bright period colors softened by a nostalgic glow — and a script made up of a string of losses convey a dull sense of a fait accompli.
Complex, meaningful events from Chisholm’s life and career become reductive paving stones in a despairing story of ill-timed ambition. An early scene, set soon after her election to Congress, shows her railing against her appointment to the Agriculture Committee and convincing the speaker of the House to reassign her. No mention is made of the fact that she served for two years on the committee, and found a way to use her position to expand the food stamp program.
The problem is that “Shirley” is interested less in what Chisholm actually did than in what she represented, as a Black woman daring to see herself as the leader of the nation. At home, Chisholm struggles to maintain her relationships with her husband and her sister, who resent the self-absorption her career requires. Her advisers (played suavely by Terrence Howard and Lance Reddick) clash with her over her unwillingness to take partisan stances; younger, more radical supporters dislike her liberalism; and in public, she receives both support and racist, sexist barbs.
King is magnetic onscreen, nailing Chisholm’s accent and her steely persona. But there is little for her to do other than trade quips with the other characters, in a drama that is too content with telling rather than showing.
Shirley Rated PG-13 for discomfiting depictions of misogynoir. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
