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      M. Emmet Walsh, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Knives Out’ Actor, Dies at 88

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      His roles in films like “Knives Out” and “Blade Runner” were sometimes big, sometimes small. But he invariably made a strong impression.M. Emmet Walsh, a paunchy and prolific character actor who was called “the poet of sleaze” by the critic Roger Ebert for his naturalistic portrayals of repellent lowlifes and miscreants, died on Tuesday in St. Albans, a small city in northern Vermont. He was 88. His death, in a hospital, was announced by his manager, Sandy Joseph.The most enduring praise Mr. Walsh received also came from Mr. Ebert: He coined the Stanton-Walsh Rule, which asserted that “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”In “Straight Time,” a 1978 film featuring both Mr. Stanton and Mr. Walsh, Mr. Walsh played a patronizing parole officer to Dustin Hoffman’s teetering ex-con. Mr. Walsh’s performance caught the eye of two brothers who aspired to be auteurs and were writing their first feature-film script.The unknown Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the pivotal character of a detective in “Blood Simple” for Mr. Walsh. To their surprise, and despite offering little more in compensation than a per diem stipend, he accepted the role.A performance by Mr. Walsh in “Straight Time” led to a role in “Blood Simple” (1984), the first feature film by Joel and Ethan Coen.River Road Productions/Circle — Sunset Boulevard, via Corbis, via Getty ImagesReviewing “Blood Simple” for The New York Times in 1984, Janet Maslin said that Mr. Walsh had captured “a mischievousness that is perfect for the role.” Writing in Salon on the occasion of the release of Janus Films’ digital restoration in 2016, Andrew O’Hehir praised Mr. Walsh’s portrayal of a “sleazy, giggly and profoundly disturbing private detective.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Breaking,’ ‘Thanksgiving’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Crime thrillers, a crackling slasher and a documentary exploration of a rare Beatles failure are among our recommendations for your streaming subscription services this month.‘Breaking’ (2022)Stream it on Paramount+.John Boyega is electrifying — sympathetic, credible, and scary — in Abi Damaris Corbin’s sensitive “Dog Day Afternoon”-style crime drama. Corbin dramatizes the story of Brian Brown-Easley, a desperate ex-Marine on the verge of homelessness who took over a Marietta, Ga., bank and held hostages, demanding the return of disability checks unfairly garnished by the VA. The tropes of such a story are firmly established, and there are few narrative surprises of note. But “Breaking” is firmly anchored by the terrific performances, with Boyega’s harrowing star turn nicely supplemented by Nicole Beharie’s cool-as-a-cucumber bank manager and the great Michael K. Williams as the sensible police hostage negotiator.‘Thanksgiving’ (2023)Stream it on Netflix.Eli Roth’s holiday slasher began as a fake trailer, sandwiched between Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s segments of the 2007 exploitation movie valentine “Grindhouse.” Roth opens this feature-length expansion with an impeccably staged, blood-spurting melee at a Black Friday sale — a sequence that’s gloriously meanspirited and occasionally stomach-turning, and easily the single best set piece of his career to date. The rest of the picture almost lives up to it; Roth knows how to build suspense, and he constructs a fine mixture of gory kills, snarky laughs and outrageous Massachusetts accents. (Its only major flaw is its slavishness to that trailer, which means that, as with trailers made after the movies they’re advertising, some of the best moments have already been given away.) It’s a thoroughly entertaining horror effort, designed and executed in gleefully bad taste.‘The Trust’ (2016)Stream it on Max.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jonathan Majors Accused of Assault and Defamation in Lawsuit by Ex-Girlfriend

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      Grace Jabbari alleges several instances of violence by Majors, the former Marvel movie star. Majors’s lawyer said he was preparing a countersuit.The actor Jonathan Majors on Tuesday was accused of assault and defamation in a lawsuit filed by a former girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. The court documents include more details of Mr. Majors’s alleged conduct in the relationship at the heart of the criminal trial that ended in his conviction in December.The civil suit, filed in the Southern District of New York by Ms. Jabbari, a dancer and movement coach who dated Mr. Majors for two years beginning in 2021, accused Mr. Majors of having been violent toward her in New York, Los Angeles and London, including in one instance that left her with a head injury. The filing also accused Mr. Majors of repeatedly making threats to kill her and said he had “consistently engaged in an escalating pattern of abusive behavior towards women since as early as 2013.”On the accusation of defamation, the court documents said that Mr. Majors, 34, a former Marvel movie star, “implemented an extensive media campaign smearing” Ms. Jabbari. He called her “a liar at every turn,” the suit said, “and very specifically claimed that he has never put his hands on a woman, with the goal of convincing the world that Grace is not a victim of domestic abuse.”A lawyer for Mr. Majors, Priya Chaudhry, said she was not surprised by the suit, and that “Mr. Majors is preparing counterclaims against Ms. Jabbari.” News of the lawsuit was first reported by Rolling Stone.Brittany Henderson, a lawyer for Ms. Jabbari, said in a statement that “it takes true bravery to hold someone with this level of power and acclaim accountable.”Ms Henderson added: “We strongly believe that through this action, truth and transparency will bring Grace the justice that she deserves.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jewish Film Professionals Denounce Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Speech

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      An open letter condemned remarks critical of Israel that Jonathan Glazer made when he accepted an Oscar for the film, which is about the Holocaust.Hundreds of Jewish actors, producers and others in the film industry have signed a letter condemning remarks critical of Israel that the director Jonathan Glazer made when he accepted an Oscar for his film about the Holocaust, “The Zone of Interest.”Described as a “statement from Jewish Hollywood professionals,” the letter was signed by the actors Debra Messing and Julianna Margulies; the producers Lawrence Bender and Amy Pascal; and the writer and showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino, according to Variety, which first reported on it on Monday evening.The signatories were confirmed Tuesday by Allison Josephs, an activist who has promoted Jewish representation in films and television and who helped with outreach for the letter. She said that by Tuesday morning it had nearly a thousand signatures.The letter criticized a speech Glazer made when he accepted the Oscar for international feature at the Academy Awards earlier this month for “The Zone of Interest,” which follows the Nazi commandant who runs Auschwitz and his family as they lead quiet domestic lives just beyond the walls of the camp.“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present,” Glazer, who is Jewish, said as he accepted the Oscar. “Not to say ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst.”“Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” he said. “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ramy Youssef on His New Special, ‘More Feelings,’ and the Push to Represent

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      In the week after he appeared as a presenter at the Oscars, the comic Ramy Youssef, a creator and director of the Hulu series “Ramy” and Emma Stone’s co-star in “Poor Things,” was taking meetings in Hollywood on what’s known as a water-bottle tour — “except without the water bottle,” he said. He is fasting for Ramadan.Youssef, who will turn 33 this month, has been a rapidly rising star since the 2019 debut of “Ramy,” a semi-autobiographical award-winning show in which he plays the son of Egyptian immigrants in suburban New Jersey — as he is in real life — struggling to define himself amid the sometimes conflicting pull of Muslim faith and young adult, Tinder-era life. When Youssef won a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy in 2020, he accepted the trophy by saying, “Allahu akbar. This is thanks to God — and Hulu.”Now his ascent is even sharper. He is following his surprising turn in the Oscar-winning “Poor Things” — as a thoughtful scientist and cast-aside love — with a standup special, his second for HBO. The program, “More Feelings,” due Saturday, mines personal territory, religious and cultural stereotypes, and his budding friendship with Taylor Swift (a pal of Stone’s), who went to see his set. He will also host “Saturday Night Live” on March 30.Those are only a few of the many projects he has going, he said in a video interview from Los Angeles, before he taped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He and his buddies “always joke that we make TV like immigrants,” he said. “We’re always working. We’re not going to outsource too much. We’re just figuring out how to do what we can, small budgets. So that’s my expectation for my career. I’ll just, you know, figure that out.”Youssef’s HBO special, “More Feelings,” will premiere on Saturday; the following week, he’ll host “Saturday Night Live.”HBOBut he is also mulling the advice he got from Yorgos Lanthimos, the “Poor Things” director, to get out of TV and start making movies. Then again, an invitation to direct an episode of “The Bear” led Youssef to Copenhagen and a daylong stint staging at the fabled restaurant Noma. “It’s such a hard table to get,” he said. “I felt bad for whoever had waited a year to eat there and then I made their plate.” (The episode garnered him a nomination for a Directors Guild of America Award.) A fourth season of “Ramy,” delayed by the Hollywood strikes, will happen, he promised. “The question is, when?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’: Still Hard to Forget

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      Michel Gondry’s surreal love story stunned audiences in 2004, and some of its sentiments are all the more relevant in the social media age.They say the only cure for heartbreak is time, although a lobotomy might be more effective. It’s a thorny conceit that Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) tested out for our pleasure in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” by erasing memories of her ex-boyfriend, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey). Michel Gondry’s surreal love story stunned audiences in 2004 and remains hard to forget 20 years later.Like all painful breakups, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” has lingered in the consciousness long after the love story’s expiration date. The screenwriter Charlie Kaufman — who was fresh off the critical double-hitters “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” — wrote Clementine and Joel’s love affair as a claustrophobic, unspooling maze that earned the movie an Oscar for best screenplay. Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo were knocking on stardom’s door when they gave delightful supporting performances as haphazard assistants of the memory-erasing company Lacuna Inc. The movie was one of a handful of romantic comedies from its decade (including “Lost in Translation” and “(500) Days of Summer”) that redefined what it meant to be both misunderstood and in love; in this cinematic landscape, love interests didn’t end up happily ever after. What they gave instead was the idea that maybe a love lost isn’t necessarily a net loss.As Clementine, an erratic and compulsive bookstore clerk, Winslet gives a career-redefining performance. Today, her idiosyncratic character lives on TikTok and Tumblr as a patron saint of women who are paradoxically lovable and terrifying. (“I apply my personality as a paste,” she says of her hair dye, aptly titled Blue Ruin.) Her legacy stands in the pantheon of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, a fast-talking screwball woman who protests, “Too many guys see me as a concept.” Most of all, she loves her own despair — if the film had come out today, it would be easy to imagine her posting about Prozac, stomach aches and Ottessa Moshfegh novels.And as Joel, Carrey remains an avatar for frustratingly plain and tightly wound men. After Joel discovers that Clementine has zapped him and their relationship thanks to Lacuna Inc., he decides to do the same. (In a contemporary parallel, I have blocked someone on Instagram to regain a sense of control, only to discover the psychic torture persists.) Together, they tumble through Joel’s tangled and chimeric subconscious in quotidian montages of early bliss and innocent flirtations.Along the way, Joel realizes he’d rather have all of Clementine, heartbreak included, than none of her. He desperately tries to salvage the memories as they’re deleted, trapping himself in a maze of his own psyche. The film spins out of control, traversing realities and timelines, until we are left with a teary-eyed Clementine and Joel, who acknowledge the futility of their relationship. “I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me,” asserts Clementine. “OK,” Joel says with a smirk and then agrees to try again, despite knowing the inevitable disaster of their attraction.A. O. Scott looks back at Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s film about loss, memory and love.Ellen Kuras/Focus FeaturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Seidler, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘The King’s Speech,’ Dies at 86

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      He drew on his own painful experiences with a stutter in depicting King George VI’s struggles to overcome his impediment and rally Britain in World War II.David Seidler, a screenwriter whose Oscar-winning script for “The King’s Speech” — about King George VI conquering a stutter to rally Britain at the outset of World War II — drew on his own painful experience with a childhood stammer, died on Saturday on a fly-fishing trip in New Zealand. He was 86 and lived in Santa Fe, N.M.His manager, Jeff Aghassi, disclosed the death in a statement but did not cite a cause. “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly-fishing,” Mr. Aghassi said. “If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”On winning the Academy Award for best original screenplay for “The King’s Speech” (2010), Mr. Seidler said from the Hollywood stage that he was accepting on behalf of all stutterers. “We have a voice; we have been heard,’’ he said.The movie, a historical drama in the form of a buddy picture about an afflicted future monarch (Colin Firth) and his talented but unlicensed speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), was a commercial and critical success. It also won Oscars for best picture, best director (Tom Hooper) and best actor (Mr. Firth).Colin Firth in the 2010 film “The King’s Speech.” Mr. Seidler’s script centered on George VI’s struggle to overcome his stutter as he prepared to speak to his beleaguered nation during wartime.Laurie Sparham/The Weinstein CompanyMr. Seidler, who was born in England but emigrated with his family to the United States as a child during World War II, spent much of his career writing little-noticed television projects, including soap operas, a biopic of the Partridge Family singers and the TV movie “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World” (1988), written with a longtime co-writer, Jacqueline Feather. That same year, he broke onto the big screen as a co-writer (with Arnold Schulman) of “Tucker: The Man and His Dream,” about the automobile inventor Preston Tucker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ed Mintz, Who Gave Audiences the Chance to Grade Films, Dies at 83

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      With CinemaScore, he broke new ground by building a business based on the opinions of moviegoers rather than critics.Ed Mintz, a mathematician who created an exit polling system for films called CinemaScore, which asks people leaving theaters on opening nights to grade the movies they have just seen — a precursor of the website Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates and scores critics’ opinions — died on Feb. 6 in Las Vegas. He was 83.His son Harold said the cause of death, in a memory care facility, was vascular dementia.Mr. Mintz, a film buff, was a partner in a computerized billing service for dentists in 1978 when he and his wife, Rona, went to see “The Cheap Detective,” a comedy written by Neil Simon and starring Peter Falk, at a theater in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. They both disliked it, and they felt let down by the critics whose praise had encouraged them to see it.Their disappointment was echoed by at least one other departing moviegoer.“And all of a sudden, some guy said, ‘Is anybody here wondering why they can’t get the opinions of actual moviegoers and publish that? We keep getting critics,’” Mr. Mintz recalled in an interview with The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2016. “I looked at him and thought, ‘Wow, that’s a great idea.’”That thought percolated until later that year. While attending Yom Kippur services at a synagogue in Los Angeles, he gazed at a donation pledge card. Rather than write with a pen or pencil, which Jews are prohibited from doing on Yom Kippur and the Sabbath, worshipers designated what to give by bending a perforated tab.“I almost jumped out of the chair,” he said. “I thought: ‘Simple. How simple.’”He quickly conceived the CinemaScore ballot card, which he tested by sending employees of his dental business to a few theaters. When the testing phase ended, polling began in 1979, and Mr. Mintz started reporting the results in a syndicated newspaper column.The card and the polling process have changed little since the beginning and create a crowdsourcing alternative to critics’ opinions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More