Liam Neeson opens up about filming ‘strange' sex scene with Pamela Anderson in ‘The Naked Gun'
Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, who are allegedly dating, filmed a sex scene in 'The Naked Gun' that involved Neeson's first time working with an intimacy coordinator.
'There's a threesome,' Neeson, 73, said on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' on Wednesday.
10 Liam Neeson on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.'
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert/Instagram
10 Pamela Anderson, Liam Neeson in 'The Naked Gun.'
AP
'And one of the participants is very cold,' the 'Taken' actor added.
Neeson also described the experience with the intimacy coordinator as 'a little bit strange.'
'Telling you how to do it?' Colbert, 61, asked.
'Pamela and I knew…,' Neeson replied, as the audience laughed.
10 Pamela Anderson, Liam Neeson at SiriusXM Studios in New York City on July 30.
Getty Images for SiriusXM
When Colbert asked if the actors knew 'how to bring in a third,' Neeson told the host, 'No. That was a first.'
'That had to be specifically choreographed,' Neeson added.
Later in the interview, Neeson gushed over his rumored girlfriend.
'She's great. She's terrific,' he said about Anderson, 58.
10 Liam Neeson in 'The Naked Gun.'
AP
10 Pamela Anderson in 'The Naked Gun.'
AP
News broke Tuesday that Neeson and Anderson are dating after striking up chemistry while filming 'The Naked Gun.'
A source told People that the pair's 'budding romance [is] in the early stages' and that they're 'enjoying each other's company.'
'It's sincere,' the insider added, 'and it's clear they're smitten with each other.'
10 Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson at 'The Naked Gun' premiere in New York.
Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
Neeson and Anderson have been packing on the PDA throughout their press tour.
They pretended to make out during their Tuesday appearance on 'Today' and Anderson kissed Neeson on the cheek at the film's London premiere last week.
'I had never met Pamela before. We met on set,' Neeson said on 'Today.' 'And we discovered we had a lovely budding chemistry as two actors.'
10 Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson on 'Today.'
TODAY
10 Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson at 'The Naked Gun' premiere in London.
News Licensing / MEGA
'It was like 'Ooo, this is nice, let's not mold this. Let's just let it breathe,'' he added. 'And that's what we did.'
The 'Star Wars' actor also told People in October that he was 'madly in love' with Anderson.
10 Liam Neeson spotted out in New York City on July 30.
Jason Howard/BauerGriffin/INSTARimages
'I can't compliment her enough, I'll be honest with you,' he continued. 'No huge ego. She just comes in to do the work. She's funny and so easy to work with.'
Anderson, for her part, recently told Entertainment Weekly: 'I think I have a friend forever in Liam, and we definitely have a connection that is very sincere, very loving, and he's a good guy.'
10 Pamela Anderson arrives at her hotel in New York City on July 30.
T.JACKSON / BACKGRID
In 'The Naked Gun,' Anderson and Neeson play love interests. He stars as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin from the original films, while Anderson plays femme fatale Beth.
The movie hits theaters on Friday, Aug. 1.
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Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Disney+ Curse: How the Streaming Service Hurt Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar Brands
Marvel and Star Wars shows have seen declining streams while MCU and Pixar movies are feeling the box office hurt It was meant to be a cozy, celebratory get-together, with journalists gathering at Marvel Studios' office in the Frank G. Wells building at Disney's Burbank headquarters. At the event, held in early July, Kevin Feige, producer and president of Marvel Studios, was supposed to prime the pump for Marvel's next big bet: 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps.' But Feige wound up talking about something that his superheroes avoid at all costs: failure. More from TheWrap The Disney+ Curse: How the Streaming Service Hurt Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar Brands 'Big Brother' Season 27 Reaches Nearly 26 Million Viewers Across CBS, Paramount+ For Akiva Schaffer and His New 'Naked Gun,' Resurrecting the Theatrical Comedy Is No Joke 'Alien: Earth' and 'Wednesday' Top Most-Anticipated TV Shows of August 2025 | Charts The producer explained that the period after 2019's 'Avengers: Endgame,' which capped off a period of the movies known as the Infinity Saga and wound up being one of the most successful movies of all time, was about experimentation. But the demands of Disney+, Disney's direct-to-consumer streaming platform that launched in November 2019, was also about expansion. Feige specifically pointed to 'The Marvels,' the sequel to 2019's $1 billion-grossing 'Captain Marvel,' which brought in $206 million globally, as the movie that was 'hit hardest' by the new emphasis on Disney+ and the inclusion of characters from Marvel shows. 'People are like, 'OK, I recognize her from a billion-dollar movie. But who are those other two? I guess they were in some TV show. I'll skip it,'' Feige said of the story that paired Brie Larson with Marvel TV stars Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani. Later, Feige got more blunt: 'The expansion is what devalued [the Marvel brand]. It was just too much. It was a big company push. And it doesn't take too much to push us to go. There was a mandate that we were put in the middle of.' Feige's admission that Disney+ — with its countless streaming series, animated shows and 'special presentations' — had actively damaged the Marvel Studios brand is startling but also unsurprising. Nearly every one of Disney's core brands – in addition to Marvel Studios, Pixar and Lucasfilm – have been diminished by the company's direct-to-consumer streaming platform and that platform's insatiable thirst for fresh content. Over the last five years, Marvel and Star Wars Disney+ shows — with some exceptions — have seen declining streaming minutes as each subsequent series debuts, with Star Wars peaking with the second season of 'The Mandalorian' in 2021 through 'Skeleton Crew' in 2024, which failed to even make the weekly top 10 for Nielsen. There were ripple effects at the box office, with Marvel's 'Captain America: Brave New World,' which brought in $415 million globally, and 'Thunderbolts,' which did $382 million, both disappointments compared to previous franchises and when factoring in their respective budgets (both cost around $200 million to produce). And just this past weekend, 'The Fantastic Four' dropped a huge 66% from its $118 million opening weekend, dashing hopes that this film would get Marvel back on track at the box office. On the Pixar front, 'Elio' has been a catastrophe, bringing in $138.6 so far at the global box office, making it the worst performing Pixar film in history, ranking below even 'Onward,' a movie that opened right before the pandemic lockdown began. It's impossible to compare what those box office results might have been in the absence of Disney+, or how other factors like audiences getting accustomed to staying home during the pandemic may have impacted the desire to go to theaters to see these movies. But overall, TheWrap spoke to half a dozen executives and experts who agreed that the imperative to drive content to Disney's streaming service hurt the company's most cherished brands. 'Given the quality of the Marvel Disney+ output has been incredibly mediocre, it's dragged the entire brand down and diluted its creative,' said a producer with franchise experience. 'People don't care now.' That these once-beloved properties are landing with a meh for audiences now suggests that there is a potential long-term cost to the strategy of driving a fire-hose of content to retain Disney+ subscribers. It's one of the key lessons that the media companies have learned from the decision to follow Netflix into streaming, with these brands particularly noteworthy casualties. As Disney+'s shows have landed with subsequently less and less buzz, subscribers are starting to see the service as less of a must have. In the first quarter, Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers, the first time it saw a decline, although it was partly attributed to price hikes (Disney reports its second-quarter results this week, so we'll see if that's a one-off or start of a trend). Disney's brand has also taken a hit. According to Brand Finance, which tracks the brand value of top global companies, the value of the Disney name fell 5.6% to $46.72 billion from a year earlier. A Disney spokesman declined to comment for the story. Iger's legacy In 2019, when CEO Bob Iger was both on the precipice of launching Disney+ and planning to retire, he positioned the new streaming platform as a key part his legacy — the thing that would carry the company through its next era and reposition the company not only as an entertainment juggernaut but also a tech giant. 'The decision to disrupt businesses that are fundamentally working but whose future is in question – intentionally taking on short-term losses in the hopes of generating long-term growth – requires no small amount of courage,' Iger wrote in his book, 'The Ride of a Lifetime.' The service launched on November 12, 2019, with a ton of Disney catalogue titles and a handful of new ones. The new shows and movies all had ties to legacy Disney hits, including 'Lady and the Tramp' and 'Toy Story.' But the headliner was 'The Mandalorian,' the first-ever live-action 'Star Wars' series. Every lever was pulled to help support the launch of this new initiative. There were activations in the Disney Parks, an elaborate press junket where journalists bopped from room to room interviewing talent from shows debuting with the service and countless articles written about the platform. At the time of launch, The New York Times said that Disney+ 'is the industry's equivalent of Thor's slamming down his magic hammer: a quake that changes everything.' And while the service started strong, it really took off during lockdown when the COVID-19 pandemic turned the entire industry upside down. Disney+ served as a lifeline for the entire company, which had its theme parks closed and cruise ships grounded. A year after the launch, Disney announced that it had over 94.9 million subscribers. It beat its four-year goal in just 14 months. As an economic engine, Disney+ did what it was supposed to do. But creatively, it would sap the company's brands of their singular oomph. A galaxy far, far away 'The Mandalorian' kicked off Disney+ and it was an undeniable hit. People went crazy for Jon Favreau's lone gunslinger and, in particular, his diminutive sidekick, who people quickly referred to as Baby Yoda. It arrived a month before the ninth film in the 'Star Wars' film saga, 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,' hit theaters. In its first week, it racked up 791 million minutes watched, according to Nielsen. That early success opened the floodgates for multiple 'Star Wars'-centered projects a year. 'When you went to a Star Wars movie, it used to be special,' said a marketing exec from a rival studio. 'But there's a difference between let's have a movie every four years versus let's have three shows on the air all the time and have a movie every year.' A year after the premiere of 'The Mandalorian,' during the Investors Day event, the company unveiled a host of 'Star Wars'-related content coming to Disney+ — much of which, 10 years later, has yet to materialize. But at that point, Disney was in a groove. 'The Mandalorian' had just returned two months before the event, and the first week of Season 2 saw 1 billion minutes watched. The show averaged more than a billion minutes watched every week through the rest of the year and peaked in the week of its season finale at 1.34 billion minutes. Then came the first red flag. 'The Book of Boba Fett' debuted a year after that. At first glance, the show's premise of fleshing out a fan-favorite character seemed like a sure-fire hit. But its uneven story and mixed pacing turned off viewers, and despite the re-emergence of the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda towards the end, it wrangled 885 million minutes watched in its final week — a good number, but nowhere near the heights of 'The Mandalorian.' Subsequent series like 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' would start off strong (1.02 billion minutes in the first week) before tapering off (860 million in the final week). 'Obi-Wan' would kick off a trend that the two other Star Wars shows would follow: views that would fall week to week, suggesting flagging interest. 'Ahsoka' started with 829 million views in its first week, with views falling by 31 percent by the finale. Likewise, 'The Acolyte' similarly lost nearly a third of its viewership over the span of its 10-week run. Despite setting itself up for another season, it was quickly canceled. 'Ahsoka' will be back for a second season, at least. 'Skeleton Crew,' a 'Goonies'-like take on Star Wars featuring a young cast getting into hijinks with space pirates that debuted at the end of 2024, never even made the top 10, so there isn't data available from Nielsen. Finally, there's 'Andor,' the rare critical hit that proved to be the exception to the Disney+ curse. It ended the first season with 674 million minutes streamed in the final week having steadily built up its audience. By the end of its second season, the number leaped to 931 million minutes streamed as critics and audiences alike heaped praise upon its mature themes. What's important to keep in mind, is that throughout this whole period when Lucasfilm emphasized 'Star Wars' series on Disney+, not a single 'Star Wars' movie was released theatrically. At its height, following the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney and the successful relaunch of the franchise with 2015's 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens,' Disney was releasing a new 'Star Wars' movie every year. 'The biggest problem with Disney+ is not the quality of the material,' said Dan Zehr, the host of the Coffee with Kenobi podcast and an author who has written books for Lucasfilm. 'It's that less is more. The less Star Wars we have, the more it builds the anticipation.' Next year, we'll finally get a new 'Star Wars' movie and instead of an original story or a continuation of the saga installments, it will be an expansion of 'The Mandalorian' – a big-screen movie directed by creator Jon Favreau called 'The Mandalorian and Grogu.' In 2027, 'Star Wars: Starfighter,' directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, will arrive in theaters. But besides a second season of 'Ahsoka,' there are currently no new live-action 'Star Wars' series that have been announced. After years of being bombarded with 'Star Wars' series on Disney+, to diminishing returns, the franchise is returning to the big screen. Will 'Star Wars' be special again? Or, as Zehr put it, 'To me, Star Wars is a dining experience, it's not fast food. When you make it like fast food, it suffers.' Trouble in the MCU The first year that Marvel Studios started producing series for Disney+ there were four big budget live-action series ('WandaVision,' 'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,' 'Loki' and 'Hawkeye'). In 2022, there were three ('Moon Knight,' 'Ms. Marvel' and 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law') with two in 2023 (the second season of 'Loki' and 'Secret Invasion'). There were two shows in 2024 ('Echo' and 'Agatha All Along') and there have been two so far this year ('Daredevil: Born Again' and 'Ironheart'), with a third on the way later this year ('Wonder Man'). 'I do think that it has eroded the branding,' said Dave Gonzales, the co-author of the indispensable history of Marvel Studios, 'MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios.' 'All of the sub-brands have been eroded.' For Marvel, he said, it's particularly interesting because it followed a period of being at the top of the industry. 'They were finally getting to do what they wanted to do – put everything in development.' Feige acknowledged this at the press event, saying that they suddenly had access to big stars who wanted to do more esoteric projects with the studio, citing Oscar Isaac wanting to do 'Moon Knight' as a reason to greenlight it. Other projects, like 'Hawkeye,' started off as features before being reconfigured, just as 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' had been, into a limited streaming series. There were also specials (dubbed 'Special Presentations') like 'Werewolf by Night' and 'The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.' Before the Disney+ era began, Feige promised that the entire thing would be connected – series would lead into movies and then back to series, in a giant, interconnected loop. But they ran into problems almost immediately, with the global pandemic impacting productions and even the rollout of series (for instance, 'WandaVision' was originally meant to come out after 'Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness' and then had to be reconfigured to tee up that sequel, which also starred Elisabeth Olsen). 'Marvel remade how they made franchise movies but they thought they could do the same thing with television – you can't,' said Gonzales. 'They think they're more nimble than they actually are.' With 'WandaVision,' Gonzales said, they moved the movie pipeline to a television pipeline and ended up with shows that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. 'We'll never have TV shows that cost that much again,' he added. And while there have been a handful of hit Marvel Studios series on Disney+, most notably 'WandaVision,' which on its most watched week pulled down an impressive 924 million minutes streamed, per Nielsen, its spinoff 'Agatha All Along,' which racked up 744 million minutes in its final week, plus 'Loki,' with two episodes from its first season topping 1 billion minutes streamed, the majority of them failed to make waves. 'Ironheart,' the latest MCU show featuring a tech-savvy armored heroine based in Chicago, garnered just 563 million minutes streamed in its final week in July. The chilling effect of these shows have extended to the films, with 'Captain America: Brave New World' ($415 million) and 'Thunderbolts' ($380 million) both underperforming at the box office. Notably, 'Deadpool & Wolverine' ($1.3 billion) and 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' ($118 million opening weekend) have performed well because they're so detached from the rest of the MCU and Disney+ shows, but even 'Fantastic Four' is showing cracks with its drastic dropoff at the box office in its second weekend. Feige said that the studio felt the residual effects of people thinking, 'I had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is.' But when looking at what happened to Pixar, the Avengers should consider themselves lucky. Pixar's problems Back in 2019, Disney corporate leaned on Pixar to supply new material for the streaming service, which is difficult when the pipelines for Pixar's features and shorts are so rigidly solidified. At first, the contributions were minor, such as the micro-length Toy Story spin-off 'Forky Asks a Question,' with total running time coming in at around 30 minutes per series. Disney+'s demands for content got more ambitious. The company, under CEO Bob Chapek (who was subsequently replaced by a returning Iger), sent three Pixar original films (2020's 'Soul,' 2021's 'Luca' and 2022's 'Turning Red') directly to Disney+. There was the sensation that families were concerned about going to movie theaters, so Disney delivered new Pixar movies directly into their homes. But when 'Lightyear,' an expansion of the 'Toy Story' franchise but ostensibly a new IP, was released in the summer of 2022, it underperformed, making just $226.4 million globally. 'Elemental,' another Pixar original released the following summer, underperformed initially before making nearly $500 million worldwide through strong word of mouth. And while last year's 'Inside Out 2' was a phenomenon, making $1.69 billion worldwide, this summer's 'Elio' has struggled, making just $139 million worldwide and becoming the first Pixar movie not to break $100 million domestically. ('Onward,' released a few days before the pandemic in 2020, didn't meet that mark but if it had stayed in theaters, it would have.) In 2023, the New York Times proclaimed that 'Pixar is damaged as a big-screen brand.' Elsewhere in the same article, the report noted that 'as some box office analysts speculated, Disney had weakened the Pixar brand by using its films to build the Disney+ streaming service.' 'When you had an original Pixar movie, it was like, It's going to be huge,' said the marketing exec at a rival studio. 'The brand is so devalued because they put those movies on Disney+, not every Pixar movie is a theatrical event.' Like Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm, Disney has pumped the brakes on Disney+-specific Pixar material. Last year saw the release of 'Dream Productions,' a three-episode spinoff of 'Inside Out 2' focused on the studio that produces Riley's dreams. It was followed by 'Win or Lose,' which streamed on Disney+ earlier this year. It's one of the best things that the studio has ever made — eight half-hour episodes about a softball team, with each installment told from a different player's point-of-view (or their coach or their parent…) The show fared OK — Nielsen said that it earned 6.2 million viewers in the U.S. over the first 35 days – but making a direct-to-streaming show disrupted Pixar's pipeline, pulling resources away from features and costing as much as one of those bigger projects. A long-form streaming series that was meant to follow 'Win or Lose' was quietly canceled and may get reworked into a feature at Pixar. And there hasn't been anything announced, long or short, on the Pixar side of things. The damage has been done. The survivors Not every Disney brand has taken a huge hit. Disney's live-action slate has been largely unaffected, thanks to a combination of approaches. The service used to have a robust line-up of original movies, from a live-action Lady and the Tramp' to 'Hocus Pocus 2.' Some even drifted off the 21st Century Fox assets like 'Home Sweet Home Alone.' But none of these films encroached on any of its brands. If there had been a new live-action adaptation of a beloved Disney animated movie appearing regularly on Disney+, it might have bitten into that business. But they knew, from the beginning, that less was more. And after a while, Disney decided to simply remove most of the movies from Disney+ entirely – you can't find 'The One and Only Ivan,' co-starring and produced by Angelina Jolie or sci-fi adventure 'Crater' or the charming 'Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made' on the platform. These were big-deal titles that Disney touted as being key to their service. They also decided to move some of these projects to theatrical. A 'Moana' series was reconfigured as 'Moana 2,' which was released theatrically last year and made over $1 billion. This summer's live-action 'Lilo & Stitch' was originally planned as a Disney+ original but debuted in theaters and has become the only western movie to make more than $1 billion this year. Walt Disney Animation Studios actually benefited from Disney+. After 'Encanto,' the first post-pandemic Disney animated movie to get a full theatrical release, saw a successful run after debuting on Thanksgiving 2021, Disney decided to throw the movie on Disney+ for Christmas. That's where it became the most-watched film of 2022 with 27.4 billion minutes viewed. Soon after, Disney started referring to it as the company's 'newest franchise.' It inspired a live show at the Hollywood Bowl, entertainment offerings at the Disney Parks and a full-on attraction that is being built at Disney's Animal Kingdom. What's next Walt Disney Studios used to think of projects as 'brand deposits' or 'brand withdrawals.' 'Brand deposits' added to the value of the company's brand, either monetarily or through prestige. These were the projects that embodied Disney – either in their wholesomeness, their entertainment value or their desire to push things forward, technologically or storytelling-wise. 'Brand withdrawals' were projects that actively took away from the Disney brand, either because they didn't fit tonally or didn't deliver on the Disney promise. The brand withdrawal of Disney+ is huge. The company seems to be taking the right steps to course correct – chiefly, to not put out as much product on the streaming service and to re-emphasize the importance of theatrical exhibition. There are far fewer new things on the service. So far this year, there has been a single Disney+ original film and far fewer Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios projects. These numbers will get even smaller, as the streaming service puts its weight behind a handful of projects that hopefully more will enjoy. And just as 'Encanto' found new life on Disney+, the company, if it is smart, will emphasize the platform as a library of all things Disney. This is partially how the product was sold back in 2019. In a way, this might be the easiest way of rehabilitating the company's brands – by reminding people of how good things used to be. Umberto Gonzalez contributed to this story. The post The Disney+ Curse: How the Streaming Service Hurt Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar Brands appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The 25 Best Movies of 2025 (So Far)
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." It's the middle of summer, and New York is following brutal, smelly heat wave with brutal, smelly heat wave. And the news—well, you know the news. But on the bright side… laughter! Yes, laughter. At the movies! I know, I know. It's the middle of summer, movies aren't funny in the middle of summer. Well this year… they kind of are?!? I've been out here in the dark, chortling, chuckling, giggling, guffawing, and, yes, even doing a bit of tittering and tee-hee-ing. And I've got to tell you, whether it's the simple belly laughs at the wonderfully ridiculous puns in The Naked Gun or the harder-edged cackles brought on by Eddington's too-real satire, it feels great. And this month, the laughs will keep coming thanks to what may be my favorite movie of the year, the utterly bananas Splittsville, as well as the slyly funny Lurker. There have also been some great recent flicks that are not so comical. Reid Davenport's excellent new documentary, Life After, is a good reminder of what a cruel society we live in—as is Eva Victor's Sorry, Baby (which, granted, does have a bit of humor). And 28 Years Later might've made a zombie movie fan out of me. Anyway, here are all my other favorite films of 2025 so far. I'll admit it: I did not expect the best studio comedy in years to star Liam Neeson in a reboot of the Naked Gun franchise. But here we are! And what a joy! Co-writer and director Akiva Schaffer brings the playful absurdity of Lonely Island sketches to a rather relentless send-up of policing, rich tech guys, and Hollywood clichés. The film hits all the right targets, and does so with perfect timing, but it's its silliness that made me cackle—whether it was a bit involving chili dogs or an evil Aster's latest has been a massive commercial flop and it has deeply polarized critics. It's easy to understand why: Who wants to relive the relentless, crazed din of 2020? Eddington is a tough film to sit down for, but I found it to be a surprisingly fun watch—a genre exercise that cycles through comedy, conspiracy thriller, and action. Aster captures the toxic energy of the pandemic, poking fun at the excesses and hysteria of both Left and Right. But this isn't an exercise in both-sidesism. Aster has a bigger target in mind, and that is the internet. Aster likes to say that Eddington is a movie about a data center getting built, and he's not just being flip. This is a film about how the internet broke—and continues to break—all of our brains. I've found myself thinking about it a lot since seeing it, and I imagine it will only become more powerful with time and greater distance.I'm typically not big on zombies, but it's hard to deny the power, thrill, and bite of 28 Years Later. In reteaming 23 years after 28 Days Later, Alex Garland, who wrote the script, and Danny Boyle, who directed, are each operating at peak form. From its thorough world-building, to its visceral performances, to its tense and gruesome action sequences, 28 Years is a dynamic genre film. Remarkably, it's also an incisive Brexit can probably guess the horrible thing that happened to Agnes, who is played with easy humor, awkward charm, and flashes of raw pain by the film's writer-director, Eva Victor. The film has a hard time naming the thing, but it's always there in the back of your mind — anticipating it before it happens and casting a large shadow afterwards. In this way, Sorry, Baby gets at how difficult it is to ever fully escape the cloud of trauma. But Victor's film—which is easily one of the best directorial debuts of the year—is gentle and compassionate, too, and a testament to the beauty and power of you'd asked me if disabled people—or any person—should have the right to die before I watched Life After, I would've said yes. Reid Davenport's powerful new documentary, though, forcefully challenges that belief. Davenport focuses much of the documentary's attention on the person who kickstarted the debate, Elizabeth Bouvia. In 1983, at 26 years old, Bouvia, who had cerebral palsy, sought 'the right to die.' But Davenport probes much deeper than the legal and media circus did at the time, questioning whether Bouvia actually wanted to die or wanted to die as an alternative to the inhumane care she was facing. Now, 40-plus years after Bouvia's case, care for people like Bouvia has barely improved, and Davenport makes a strong case that the right to die is being used to encourage society's most expensive citizens to end Simpson's debut feature is about a small coastal Florida town that's expecting a hurricane. But this isn't your average disaster movie. Like other films that have come out of the Omnes Collective (most recently Eephus and Christmas Eve at Miller's Point), this is a slow, atmospheric ensemble film. Simpson casts a spell in capturing the sounds and images of the calm before the storm—at once tinged with nostalgia and a sense of loneliness. If you were wondering if Tim Robinson's antics could sustain a feature-length movie, the answer is a resounding—if profoundly uncomfortable—yes. Director Andrew Deyoung's feature debut brilliantly subverts the bro-ish buddy comedies of the early aughts (even casting Paul Rudd in the new-friend role), foregrounding the fractures in modern masculinity. Beyond its incisiveness, Friendship is simply one of the funniest comedies in years. Shop NowDavid Cronenberg wrote The Shrouds after his longtime wife died of cancer in 2017, and he has acknowledged that the film was inspired by his own experience of grief. But the film dwells less on the pain of losing a loved one and more on how people channel that pain. Karsh (a Cronenberg-styled Vincent Cassel), a wealthy 'producer of industrial videos,' opens a cemetery that pioneers a technology called GraveTech. It allows loved ones to view the deceased composing in their graves through an app on their phone. Karsh claims it's comforting to watch his wife decompose. But when the cemetery is vandalized, Karsh becomes consumed by conspiracies. If all of this sounds rather macabre, it is—but it's also slyly funny and one of the truest portrayals of how grief tends to mutate. Shop NowThere's a small, slowly growing genre of Loser Men Hiking in the Woods movies. And with all due respect to Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy and India Donaldson's Good One, the men in those films don't hold a candle to Derek (Joel Potrykus) and his best friend Marty (Joshua Burge), the leads of Potrykus's raw, acidic Vulcanizadora. Here, past misdeeds beget horrific new ones. Though the film can be darkly funny, Potrykus largely treats these characters with objectivity and empathy. Shop NowYou've got to admire Ryan Coogler for absolutely going for it. His latest blockbuster follows a pair of gangster twins, Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) as they prepare to host a party for the non-white community in Jim Crow Mississippi. Their young cousin Sammie (a terrific Miles Catton), a gifted singer and son of a preacher, joins to play the blues. But midway through the film—and the party—things take a dramatic turn. Coogler uses genre as racial metaphor, deploying it in a way that's both highly entertaining and smart. Shop NowOften, music documentaries emulate the style of the artist they seek to capture. Alex Ross Perry takes a different tack with his inventive portrait of the '90s indie rock band Pavement: He gives maximal effort to these slacker icons. Perry's take on the band, which he clearly loves dearly, is that it contains multitudes. He captures the various sides of Pavement by channeling a core part of the band's spirit: irony. Within the documentary, Perry stages a real musical, a fake biopic, and a pop-up museum installation. He weaves the various pieces together with a structure he says he borrowed from Dunkirk. It's an attempt to poke fun at the ways beloved artists—from Queen to Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen—cash in on hagiographic IP. But it also provides a funny, thoughtful study of the to The Shrouds, grief opens the door to conspiratorial searching in Courtney Stephens's micro-budget narrative debut. The film was born out of a collaboration with actor and writer Callie Hernandez, who plays Carrie, the daughter of a conspiracy-minded alternative-health advocate. When Carrie's father dies, she inherits a patent for an experimental healing device. In her search for answers about the device—and, really, about her father—she meets with various acquaintances of his (a who's who of indie filmmakers) in his small northeastern town. The film, which includes footage of Hernandez's actual late father, captures the slow, mundane pace of life following the death of a loved one, as well as the way grief begets magical Friedland's first feature, Familiar Touch, has a familiar premise: Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant), a retired cook, has dementia, and she and her family must cope as she adjusts to a new way of life. The film hits many of the beats you'd expect it to—with Ruth forgetting her son, staging minor revolts at her new senior-living facility, and also bonding with some of her caregivers. And yet Friedland's film is so gentle and well observed, with superlative performances from Chalfant and H. Jon Benjamin (playing her son), that it feels new and fresh Anderson is nothing if not consistent. His latest stars Benicio del Toro as a wealthy 1950s industrialist, Zsa-zsa Korda, whose close brush with death leads him to reconnect with his novitiate daughter and enlist her in his latest scheme. The film delivers everything you've come to expect out of Wes: impeccable compositions, clever jokes, a convoluted plot, superlative performances from an all-star cast, and a fractured family coming together. It's also, though, the most violent and religious film in Anderon's extensive oeuvre. Shop NowMany months after catching April, from director Dea Kulumbegashvili, at last year's New York Film Festival, I can still feel its weight. The film centers on Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an obstetrician at a hospital in rural Georgia (the country, not the state) who performs underground abortions in her off-hours. The film, which verges on the surreal at times, captures the emotional toll of such work—dark, lonely, at times this movie a bit of a mess for its first two and a half hours? Yes. Do the last 30 minutes involve Tom Cruise doing some of the most bananas amazing stunts ever captured on screen? Also yes! Eephus, the debut feature from director Carson Lund, is set on a crisp October afternoon in a small 1990s Massachusetts town. Two rec-league baseball teams are facing off for the final game at Soldier Field. A more conventional film might take one team's side or pit the players against an evil developer. But here the field is giving way to a public school, and these two teams are united against a different, more universal foe: time. As the hours slowly pass, the umpires clock out and the sun goes down. To finish the game, the players have to get resourceful. Though one team does come away victorious, I couldn't tell you which. Eephus is a movie about the little moments that make baseball—and, really, life—beautiful. Shop NowI don't think I've ever seen a character in a movie as unrelentingly angry as Marianne Jean-Baptiste's Pansy in Hard Truths. The actor, who last worked with director Mike Leigh in 1996's Secrets and Lies, snarls, seethes, and sulks throughout this brilliantly funny and affecting familial drama. Though the film alludes to Pansy having had a complicated relationship with her deceased mother, Leigh treads lightly on character backstory. We never fully find out what's going on with Pansy or how she became the person she is. But the film is so well observed that, ironically, despite how dead inside Pansy is, she is one of the most thrillingly alive humans in recent cinema. Shop NowBong Joon-ho's long-awaited follow-up to Parasite has more in common with his previous film Okja. It's an absurdist comedy about stupid, powerful people and their disregard for the natural world—and, really, everything and everyone other than themselves. Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey, a nasally, down-on-his-luck man who flees his earthly problems by becoming an Expendable on a mission to colonize a faraway planet. As an Expendable, his role entails dying and being reprinted. Complications arise, though, when he survives a near-death experience and a new Mickey is still printed. The two Mickeys vie for survival until they become united against a greater enemy. Will Mickey 17 win an Oscar? Probably not, but it's a highly enjoyable, frequently funny romp nonetheless. Shop NowProbably the horniest, most unexpected, and, yes, most French movie that will come out this year. Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia flirts with various genres—murder mystery, film noir, sex comedy, existential drama—but ultimately is too original and weird to easily categorize. It's a film that requires abandoning preconceived notions of how people should act and how movies should operate. And if you can do that? Well, you might just dig the wild ride. Shop NowRungano Nyoni's On Becoming a Guinea Fowl begins with its protagonist, Shula (Susan Chardy), driving down a quiet road in Zambia wearing a flamboyant party costume—when she comes across a dead body splayed out in the road. The body turns out to be her uncle Fred, who we soon learn abused Shula when she was a child. Shula's costume is one of the few showy things in this film. Nyoni unravels new wrinkles in the story gradually and with little satisfaction, showing how cultural norms can stand in the way of catharsis and family secrets enable generational trauma. Shop NowThis often exhilarating new documentary from Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards follows John Lennon and Yoko Ono through their early New York days, culminating in a benefit concert they played at Madison Square Garden in 1972. The concert was in support of the children of Willowbrook State School, which had recently been the subject of a damning television report that exposed the grim conditions to which children with disabilities were subjected. The film is light on new information about Lennon and Ono, but it's full of powerful, magnetic moments, both onstage and off. Macdonald and Rice-Edwards foreground the couple's activism and the ways it intersected with their art. Lennon, in particular, burns bright. His passion and righteousness are captivating and contagious. More than 50 years later, Lennon and Ono's political battles are still being fought—and Lennon's enthusiasm still feels capable of igniting a revolution. Shop NowA dozen years after announcing a short-lived retirement, Stephen Soderbergh has emerged as America's most prolific filmmaker. His first of two films this year is a ghost story predicated on a formal conceit: The camera takes the perspective of the ghost. The specter dwells in a beautiful suburban home that a family of four has just moved into. And though there is some suspense around the ghost's identity and aims, the draw of the movie is the family drama. Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan play the parents of two frequently bickering high-school-aged teenagers, Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). And the family dynamics—the alliances, sources of conflict, and secrets—are vivid and intriguing. Each actor is smartly cast and gives a strong performance. I'm still not sure I liked the dramatic ending and climactic reveal, but the film's clever conceit and rich characters make Presence a worthwhile watch. Shop NowOne of several intertwined plots in director Matthew Rankin's Universal Language involves a Winnipeg tour guide (Pirouz Nemati) who takes a rare group of visitors to some of the city's cultural landmarks. This Winnipeg is an invention of Rankin and his cowriters (Nemati and Ila Firouzabadi), and it is one that is full of brown and beige brutalist buildings, roaming turkeys, and a Persian-speaking populace. It's also one where the city's landmarks are amusingly mundane. My favorite was the UNESCO-designated site where someone left a briefcase at a bus stop and no one touched it. It's 'a monument to absolute inter-human solidarity, even at its most basic and banal,' the tour guide explains. You could say the same for the film. Throughout Universal Language, Rankin and his collaborators are imaginative, playful, and quite witty, but the overarching goal of their project is to testify to humanity's potential for care and exuberance, even in a bleak, beige world. Shop NowBefore seeing Warfare, I was warned that it is loud. Still, I wasn't prepared for just how loud—body shaking—this thing would be. Fresh off his speculative American war film, Civil War, Alex Garland teamed up with Ray Mendoza (an Iraq-war vet and advisor on Civil War) to re-create a brutal battle that Mendoza's platoon experienced in Ramadi in 2006. The film is drawn exclusively from the memories of Mendoza and his platoon, and it plays out over the course of a day. Ultimately, the film expresses the trauma of war as much as a film is capable of doing—thanks to the sound, yes, but also the subtly pathos-filled performances. It's an incredibly intense watch and one that foregrounds the true horror of war. Shop Now This year, we will have a new president, a new total lunar eclipse, and a new viral phrase that supplants 'brat.' I won't pretend I'm capable of predicting much else—well, except for this: We're about to have an incredible year in cinema. After a spotty year for noteworthy releases, the 2025 slate is jam-packed. There are steamy, star-studded romances; there are franchise finales (goodbye, Mission Impossible!); and there will even be one talking hippo. Most excitingly, there are an inordinate number of movies coming from the world's greatest filmmakers. And not just that: Many of said films sound as though they'll be high points even within storied careers. Guillermo Del Toro, for instance, is finally taking a swing at a story he's been dreaming about for decades; Kelly Reichardt is making a heist movie with Josh O'Connor; Paul Thomas Anderson is making his biggest film yet. I could go on. Instead, though, why not just read through this list of 51 films we're excited for in 2025. You Might Also Like Kid Cudi Is All Right 16 Best Shoe Organizers For Storing and Displaying Your Kicks
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
An Australian artist is creating a massive mural in the middle of a small North Dakota town
MINOT, N.D. (AP) — High atop a massive grain elevator in the middle of Minot, North Dakota, artist Guido van Helten swipes a concrete wall with a brush that looks more appropriate for painting a fence than creating a monumental mural. Back and forth van Helten brushes, focused on his work and not bothered by the sheer enormity of his task as he stands in a boom lift, 75 feet (23 meters) off the ground, and focused on a few square feet of a structure that stretches over most of a city block. 'When you use these old structures to kinda share stories and use them as a vehicle to carry an image of identity, it becomes part of the landscape,' he said. 'I've found that people have really adopted them and become really super proud of them.' The work on the former Union Silos is van Helten's latest effort to paint murals on a gigantic scale, with earlier projects on structures ranging from a dam in Australia to part of a former cooling tower at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine. Although he has created murals throughout the world, grain silos in the U.S. Midwest have been among his most frequent sites. 'I do enjoy the opportunity to uncover stories that are often kinda considered out of the way or flyover communities,' he said. Van Helten has been creating murals for years, working increasingly in the U.S. over the past seven years and around the world. The 38-year-old Brisbane native's interest in regional communities began in earnest after a mural he created years ago on a silo in an Australian town of 100 people. The new idea, he said, drew interest, and he began a series of commissions around Australia and the U.S. He uses a mineral silicate paint formulated to absorb and bond with concrete, and it lasts a long time. He mixes tones specific to the color of the wall and subtly layers the work so it blends in. 'I love the coloring of these buildings, so I don't want to fight with them, I don't want to change it, I don't want it to be bright. I want it to become part of the landscape,' he said. It's not a quick process, as van Helten initially meets with residents to learn about a community and then spends months slowly transforming what is usually the largest structure in a small town. He began painting in Minot in May with plans for a 360-degree mural that combines photography with painting to depict the people and culture of an area. The Minot elevator and silos were built in the 1950s and were an economic center for years before they ceased operations around the early 1990s. Van Helten isn't giving too much away about what his Minot mural will depict, but said he has been inspired by concepts of land and ownership while in North Dakota, from ranching and the oil field to Native American perspectives. Minot is a city of nearly 50,000 people and sits near the Bakken oil field and Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. 'It is really when you boil down to it in many ways about land and how different cultures interpret that and connect with it, and I feel it's really interesting in North Dakota because it is really such a big, open land,' the artist said. Much of the mural is still taking shape, but images of a barn and female figures are visible. Property owner Derek Hackett said the mural is 'a great way to take what is kind of a blighted property and be able to give it a facelift and kind of resurrect its presence in our skyline." Soon the mural will be visible from almost anywhere in town, he said. The mural project is entirely donation-funded, costing about $350,000, about 85% of which is already raised, said Chelsea Gleich, a spokesperson for the project. 'It is uniquely ours, it's uniquely North Dakota and you'll never be able to find a piece just like this anywhere else,' she said.
