Latest news with #DoubleIndemnity
Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Another Simple Favour, review: Film noir sequel that's riper and slipperier than a brown banana
Film noir is a famously shadowy genre, but one of the great joys of 2018's A Simple Favour is that it less resembled The Big Sleep or Double Indemnity than a Real Housewives docusoap. From its sunny suburban setting to its cartoon-chic costumes, Paul Feig's comic adaptation of Darcey Bell's novel didn't just capture the pleasures of a schlocky page-turning mystery, but also the fun of tearing through one with an eyebrow raised. Every twist was equal parts slinky and ludicrous – and boy, did they look it. This even sillier, less memorable sequel, which is bypassing cinemas for Amazon Prime, stretches the approach to snapping point. Riper and slipperier than a brown banana, it packs Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick's eternal school-run frenemies off to Capri for the former's wedding: never mind that the last time we saw Lively's Emily, she'd just landed in prison for a 20-year stretch. This most fatale of femmes' early release has been secured by a rich and influential Italian fiancé (Michele Morrone) – an old flame who flickered back into view in the intervening years. True to psychotic drama-queen form, Emily asks Kendrick's Stephanie to be her maid of honour – and Stephanie, whose new career as a true-crime author could do with a publicity boost, warily accepts. Of course, she might end up murdered. But this online mumfleuncer knows there's power in #numbers – and the additional clicks the trip will bring to her livestream are too potentially lucrative to pass up. Since the release of the first film, Lively has weathered something of a domestic noir nightmare herself – an orchestrated cancellation campaign following a high-profile feud with Justin Baldoni, the director of her 2024 drama It Ends With Us. (Baldoni's lawyer described accusations from Lively in a legal complaint, as 'serious and categorically false'.) But that makes it doubly satisfying to see the actress on such raucously unhinged form here: there's something of Barbara Stanwyck in her weaponisation of glamour and bad-girl sexual ambiguity – and her outrageous wardrobe, again created by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus, is itself a plentiful source of shocks and punchlines. (While drifting through Capri incognita, she sports a sun hat the size of a radar dish.) As before, Kendrick is a winningly perky foil for Lively's mad machinations, and there's much fun to be had as both actresses snipe at one another from behind an increasingly tattered pretence of mutual bestie-ship. The mystery at hand is messier still: in an opening livestream, Stephanie announces she has been framed for the murder of Emily's new husband, who was somehow dispatched during the wedding banquet itself. But the plotting often mistakes wackiness for a lack of discipline. Promising supporting characters (not least a long-lost aunt played by Allison Janney) are feebly sketched, while the twists are sometimes arbitrary, sometimes obvious replicas of the original's various scandalous gambits. Yet Feig and his collaborators' poison-tipped instincts still hit the mark often enough: I had to stifle a guilty chuckle when one of Kendrick's prior true-crime scalps, a pervert who inveigled his way into a children's swimming club, is soberly referred to as 'the Speedo Paedo'. And the Kendrick-Lively double-act at its core remains a toxic treat. Pack these two off to St Tropez, Mustique, the Maldives, Skegness, wherever – I'll watch.
Chicago Tribune
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: You know who's suddenly flocking to old movies in Chicago? Young audiences
Two years ago, there I was, at 11:29 a.m. on a Saturday morning in January, at the Music Box Theatre. Cold outside. Warm inside, though, thanks to the size of the crowd: nearly 500 people, many in their 20s, and many three times older than that, and a lot of folks in between, all seated and chatting and working on their popcorn, while rearranging their overcoats. Greasy outcome with that particular combination of activities, for the record. Organist Dennis Scott finished his 1944-era pre-show song list, took a bow and turned the show over to the 35mm screening of a black-hearted evergreen of '40s film noir, 'Double Indemnity.' This was one of many titles featured in the Music Box's retrospective devoted to writer-director Billy Wilder. The series did so well, the Music Box presented a second Wilder retrospective eight months later. What's up with this crowd? I thought. So big. And so youngish! Cut to late 2024. I'm on the phone with Chicago International Film Festival artistic director Mimi Plauché, talking about the festival's 60th edition, just completed. 'You know, something interesting's going on with our audience demographics, she says. 'They're shifting to younger audiences. Our largest demographic group is now the 25- to 35-year-olds. Over half the festival audiences is now under 45. That's a huge change from when I first started — back when it was lopsided toward people over 50.' It's a very good sign, amid some very bad stressors for modern moviegoing and those whose business relies on getting people in and seated and ready to watch something new. Or old. The challenges vary for Chicago's film programmers and presenters specializing in repertory (classic and lesser-known work from cinema's past), international and specialty fare. Business remains up and down but mostly sideways at best for Hollywood-dependent multiplexes. They're relying now, more than ever, on bigger, better and just plain more films premiering in theaters, at a time when distributors opt instead for skipping a theatrical run in favor of Apple TV+, Disney+, Whatever+. But in crucial pockets across the country, niche film programming with a substantial focus on repertory titles are doing well. Really well. And the right rep programming has drawn increasingly younger audiences to older movies from vanished eras. Those eras come and go. But the movies worth re-seeing don't have to. And in Chicago, they haven't had to. 'There's a whole generation interested in film now seeing 'His Girl Friday' or 'Bringing Up Baby' on the big screen,' says Kyle Westphal, co-founder and programmer at the nonprofit Chicago Film Society as well as Music Box programming associate. 'But it's always been cyclical. Generational replacement has long been a factor in exhibition. In the 1960s college kids discovered Mae West, the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields, finding something strange and wild in their parents' generation of entertainment.' What we're seeing now, he says, 'is the latest iteration of the film audience renewing itself.' And what we're seeing next from the Chicago Film Society will introduce many younger and older film enthusiasts alike to 'The Unknown' (1927). It's a stunningly perverse visitor from the late silent era, starring Lon Chaney as Alonzo the Armless, a fugitive outlaw who fakes his armlessness to join a traveling circus troupe. 'If we do our jobs right,' Westphal says of Chicago's independent specialty cinema houses, 'we're making a sustainable ecosystem and keeping the doors open. And without showing the same things over and and over.' Such ecosystems generally have their roots in a college campus somewhere, and that somewhere can be anywhere. At the University of Chicago, Doc Films maintains a remarkable array of narrative, documentary and experimental work. Now 93 (!), it started as the Documentary Film Group in 1932 — the inaugural year of the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, aka the Venice International Film Festival. Likewise affiliated with a big-name educational institution, the Gene Siskel Film Center continues its creatively far-flung programming of first-run international premieres, retrospectives and repertory titles. The downtown Film Center, across State Street and slightly south from the Chicago Theatre, operates as a nonprofit public program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Business has recovered from the pandemic limbo, says executive director Emily Long. Early 2025 attendance is up 19% from early 2023, she says. And 'anecdotal evidence suggests the audiences are getting younger. People, I think, are finding that post-pandemic they're more interested than ever in coming to a theater, and being part of a community.' Also, Long says, the audience interest in different film formats remains a selling point as well as an aesthetic bonus. 'To say you saw something on 35 or 70mm — that's bragging rights. Celluloid is like listening to something on vinyl. I'd seen 'The Shining' several times already. Then it played here on 35mm, as part of our 'Let It Snow!' series in 2021. And I'm telling you, I saw and heard things I'd never seen or heard in it before.' Continuing through Feb. 26, the Film Center's latest curated series, 'Persistence of Memory,' consists of 10 explorations of remembrance, unreliable recollection and romantic hypnosis. Typical of the Film Center's creative populism, the retrospective works like a mixer. It takes some venerated classics, turning up less often these days on undergraduate or graduate level syllabi (Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo,' Akira Kurosawa's 'Rashômon'), and introduces them to the context of more recent dreamscapes ('Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,' the latter from SAIC alum Apichatpong Weerasethakul). Both the Film Center's Long and Chicago Film Society/Music Box programmer Westphal point to the rise of the popular online film forum Letterboxd as a growth factor for repertory titles. 'As it continues to grow,' Long says, 'Letterboxd is going to become more and more a part of the moviegoing culture and experience.' The Film Center will soon launch an expanded Letterboxd account, thanks to the forum making it available for free to cinema organizations attached to educational institutions. For Westphal, it's all about COVID and what the pandemic has done to shape the present state of things. 'Since COVID there's been a change in the overall audience composition for filmgoing in general and repertory filmgoing in particular,' he says. 'And the CFS grew out the old Bank of America Cinema series (located in a little-used building on Irving Park Road in Portage Park), which was active in a period when repertory cinema was synonymous with nostalgia.' But 'nostalgia only works for so long.' The films that truly endure, Westphal believes, deserved all kinds of audiences, including audiences graced with first-hand memories of seeing movies made in the '40s or '50s the first time. Younger audiences coming out of the pandemic, he says, 'might've been casual movie fans prior to COVID. But their chosen way of coping in lockdown was to go to Letterboxd and seek out recommendations for what to watch. And then log their reactions. And then, that same Letterboxd audience started going to movie theaters like the Music Box and others around town.' Westphal offered a closing axiom. 'A ticket is a ticket, whether it's sold to someone who's 18 or 28 or 78. The best way to fill a theater is with a broad cross-section, and to engage that audience in different ways.' And if the Music Box can program Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut' in 35mm three years running as an alternative holiday offering — and sell it out every time — then the cinema of the past, thanks to younger audiences of the present, has a reasonable shot at an in-person moviegoing future. Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hollywood Power Agent's Home Smeared With ‘Bloody' Handprints in Student Protests
The home of one of Hollywood's most powerful men was targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters who left red handprints on his garage door among other wreckage Wednesday. Jay Sures, the UTA super-agent who represents Ryan Seacrest, Kara Swisher and ABC News anchor David Muir, appeared to have been targeted for being pro-Israel and being a member of the University of California Board of Regents. He told the Daily Beast the 6.15a.m. protests 'scared the living s---' out of his wife. The Brentwood home is a slice of Hollywood history, having been built by actor Fred MacMurray, the star of My Three Sons and Double Indemnity who died in 1991. Students protested outside UC Regent Jay Sures' home this morning, chanting "intifada revolution" and stamping red handprints on his garage door. One sign said 'Jonathan Sures you will pay, until you see your final day." Reporting from the @dailybruin — Gabe Stutman (@jnewsgabe) February 6, 2025 A Los Angeles Police Department report cited by Deadline indicates that officers were called to Sures' Brentwood home at 6:15 a.m. PT in response to a 'large group blocking the street and driveway.' A law enforcement official additionally told Deadline that there were around 50 masked protesters 'banging on drums, making loud noises, and causing disturbance.' Alongside 'bloody' red handprints on his garage door—an apparent reference to the saying, 'blood on your hands'—protesters also placed caution tape throughout Sures' front yard and a sign that read 'divest now or you will pay.' Sures told the Daily Beast Wednesday night that the 'whole situation is unfortunate' and that 'threatening my family is so disappointing.' He added that the protesters' behavior was 'inexcusable.' The protest was organized by the Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine group at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), according to the university's student newspaper The Daily Bruin. WAKE UP CALL for UC Regent Jonathon Sures. This morning - UCLA students are outside UC Regent 'Jay' Sures house! Sures sits on the board of the LAPD Foundation and his company represents the ADL. Students refuse to stay silent & will continue to expose these violent Zionists. — People's City Council - Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) February 5, 2025 In an Instagram post Wednesday, the group alleged that Sures 'has attempted to intimidate students and faculty who spoke out against the genocide in Gaza' and they refused to 'stay silent.' Six months ago, University of California (UC) regents voted to ban political statements from university homepages which, per Deadline, Sures largely supported and drove forward. The move sparked criticism, however, for allegedly stifling pro-Palestinian expression and views. Sures, who was appointed by Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom to serve on the UC Board of Regents from 2019, is an outspoken supporter of Israel. In 2023, he described a letter from the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council reprimanding a UC statement on the Oct. 7 Hamas attack as 'appalling and repugnant' and 'rife with falsehoods.' UTA also represents the Anti-Defamation League, an antisemitism organization that is a staunch advocate of Israel. Sures earlier told Deadline he believes they are the reasons why he was targeted Wednesday. 'I'm Jewish. There are 18 Regents, and I've been outspoken; you can Google me about what I've written, what I've done in the world of the University of California. I've been pretty outspoken about the cause, about protecting our Jewish students, and they don't like it,' Sures said. Once again, a public servant is targeted for harassment and intimidation, and once again, it is a Jewish regent being targeted. Protestors calling for the elimination of the state of Israel in front of the home of UC Regent Jay Sures is enforcement should fully… — Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) February 5, 2025 'It's one thing to peacefully protest, but to go to an administrator or a Regent's house to violate the hundred foot rule, which is what it is in Los Angeles, to disturb the entire neighborhood by pounding on drums, to surround my wife's car and prevent her from free movement, and to put up signs, threatening my family and my life and vandalize the house, that is a big escalation,' he continued. An LAPD source told Deadline that no arrests were made Wednesday, however if police are able to identify masked protesters, Sures told the outlet he will press changes. A few weeks ago, the 15 months of conflict between Palestine and Israel that killed at least 46,000 Palestinians and displaced over a million, and which also killed over 1,000 Israelis, according to the Associated Press, ended with a ceasefire deal.
