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      Critics Choice Awards 2025’s Unforgettable Looks: Ariana Grande, Demi Moore, and More

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      The question of what celebrities will wear to an awards show always looms large before any ceremony. But it took on new significance ahead of the 30th Critics Choice Awards in Santa Monica, Calif., on Friday: After postponing the event twice because of the Los Angeles wildfires, organizers announced that a red-carpet preshow would not be part of the televised broadcast.How might that decision influence the fashion choices of the television and movie stars in attendance? Would they be riskier? More relaxed?As people started arriving, it soon became clear that absence of TV cameras on the carpet hadn’t stopped most from taking big style swings. For myriad reasons — most of them good — these 14 looks were among the most memorable from the Critics Choice Awards.Nicole Kidman: Most Humphrey Bogart!Daniel Cole/ReutersInstead of a gown, the “Lioness” and “Babygirl” actress went with a broad-shouldered Saint Laurent suit jacket, high-waist pants and a polka-dot tie, an ensemble that evoked the men’s wear of Old Hollywood.Ariana Grande: Most Jellyfish!Allison Dinner/EPA, via ShutterstockWe 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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      How a Family’s Life Is Upended in ‘I’m Still Here’

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      The film’s director, Walter Salles, narrates a sequence from his film, which is nominated for best picture. Its star, Fernanda Torres is nominated for best actress.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A relaxing time at home turns menacing in this scene from the Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here.”The sequence begins with Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman, playing a game with his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres). But they are interrupted by the military police, who have arrived to take Rubens in for what they say is a deposition, one from which Rubens won’t return.What was lighthearted becomes dark, both emotionally and visually, as the police begin closing curtains in the house. The joy is drained from the room, and uncertainty and fear permeate the moment, all while the adults try to make it appear, for the couple’s children, that everything is normal.The film, primarily set in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, is based on a 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son of Rubens. Narrating this sequence, the director Walter Salles discussed switching the camera from a static position to hand-held at the moment the officers enter the scene. He said, “the camera relays the instability of the situation, pulsing with the characters.”During the tense sequence, one of the couple’s daughters, Nalu (Barbara Luz), enters the house and goes upstairs to talk to her father as he is getting dressed to leave the home for what Nalu doesn’t know will be the last time. Salles called it “a vital scene,” and said that it was “staged as the real Nalu told me it happened.”Toward the end of the sequence, we see Eunice in close-up as she stands in the doorway to see Rubens off. Salles said that it is “the first of the only two close-ups in the entire film. We saved it for the last glance between Rubens and Eunice.”Read the “I’m Still Here” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Paint Me a Road Out of Here’: Faith Ringgold’s Gift to Prisoners

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      In this documentary, the artist depicts what a more just and beautiful world might look like.In 1971, the artist Faith Ringgold received a grant to make a painting for a public institution in New York City. She decided to ask the prisoners in the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island what they wanted to see in a painting. “I want to see a road leading out of here,” one incarcerated woman told her.Ringgold took that idea and ran with it. She didn’t paint a literal road. Instead, her canvas — entitled “For the Women’s House” and installed at the prison in January 1972 — is divided into eight sections. In each, women are depicted performing jobs traditionally held by men at the time: bus driver, construction worker, basketball player, president. The road is implied: Seeing women in positions and roles they don’t always occupy can open up the viewer’s world. She might be in a prison for now, but there’s a place for her worth aspiring to beyond these walls.This was Ringgold’s imagination at work, always depicting what a more just and beautiful world might look like, particularly for the people whom the powerful prefer to ignore. Ringgold and “For the Women’s House” both appear in the documentary “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” (in theaters), directed by Catherine Gund, and hearing and seeing her talk is reason enough to see the film. Ringgold died in 2024 at 93, and is widely considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, a native New Yorker who was unflagging in her activism and commitments to dismantle racism wherever it surfaced. As a Black woman and an artist, she insisted on coupling political meaning with her work, which is suffused with curiosity and joy.“Paint Me a Road Out Of Here” is not a biographical film about Ringgold, even though you’ll learn a lot about her biography from it. The film has bigger aspirations, connecting art, prisons, activism and an expansive life. One major subject in the film is the artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, an executive producer of the film whose prison reform work often draws on her own experiences while incarcerated. Shortly after her own arrest, for example, Baxter went into labor — 43 hours while shackled to a bed.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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      Ralph Macchio on Getting In His Final Kicks in ‘Cobra Kai’

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      When Ralph Macchio was first approached about doing a “Karate Kid” series about the adult lives of Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, he was skeptical.“I was like, ‘I’m a car salesman?’” said Macchio, who starred in the original 1984 film as Daniel, a teenage transplant to Southern California, who learns karate and defeats his bully, Johnny (William Zabka), on the mat.“They didn’t have me at hello,” he said.But at a meeting that lasted over three hours in the courtyard of the Greenwich Hotel, in Lower Manhattan, the creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg won him over with their vision for that series, “Cobra Kai.” It wasn’t only a nostalgia play. It also looked to introduce a whole new generation of karate kids.“As they started talking about the younger characters — Miguel, Samantha, that next generation — and the parenting part,” Macchio said, “I started leaning forward.”Now, six seasons later, “Cobra Kai,” which is set in the San Fernando Valley approximately 30 years after the events of “The Karate Kid,” will release its final five episodes on Netflix on Thursday. The series, which stars Macchio and Zabka, puts a new lens on Johnny, who begins as a deadbeat dad, haunted by his fall from grace in the 1980s, but finds new purpose in reopening the Cobra Kai dojo and reigniting his rivalry with Daniel.Macchio in the sixth and final season of “Cobra Kai.” “It ends in a way that has all those ’80s movie feels and cheers and tears, and yet sees it through a ‘Cobra Kai’ kind of lens,” Macchio said.Curtis Bonds Baker/NetflixWe 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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      ‘Love Hurts’ Review: A Valentine Full of Action

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      Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose play reunited former associates from a criminal outfit. Sparks don’t exactly fly.In “Love Hurts,” Ke Huy Quan plays a cheery, cookie-baking real estate agent who has tried hard to forget his past life as an assassin. Ariana DeBose plays a former associate who emerges from the shadows and reminds him of what he’s left behind, in a movie that does its utmost to repress any memories of both stars’ being recent Academy Award winners.“Love Hurts” is the feature directorial debut of Jonathan Eusebio, who has amassed an eye-popping list of stunt- and fight-coordinating credits (“John Wick,” “The Matrix Resurrections”). In effect, he plays that role here as well, because there is little else worth directing: The plot is a barely-there thread of random incidents designed to string together action scenes in which Quan, banishing any thoughts of his own past playing Data from “The Goonies,” demonstrates an impressive facility for martial arts. The screenwriters, for their part, find ways to weaponize unlikely items: sharpened pencil here, amethyst there. Boba straws sure are sharp.The casting is effective, in part because few would guess that Quan would show such balletic grace in hand-to-hand combat, even though he has a background in stunts from the aughts. DeBose eventually steps up as an action star, too, albeit without quite as much sparring. (She generally seems to have more munitions on hand.) But somebody should have built them more of a movie to play in. At 83 minutes, “Love Hurts” falls somewhere between making a virtue of brevity and wheezing its way to the finish line.No sooner has Quan’s Marvin Gable (his name sounds distractingly like Marvin Gaye throughout) entered his office for the day than the Raven (Mustafa Shakir), a fellow assassin from the old days hiding there, smacks him in the face. It’s Valentine’s Day at the agency, and while everyone else — including Marvin’s dour assistant (Lio Tipton) — is doing their best to be festive, Marvin, behind a closed door, is fending off a killer who has a coat full of knives and a book of original poetry. His verses suggest an emo high schooler imitating Robert Frost.The Raven wants to know the whereabouts of Rose (DeBose), whom Marvin’s kingpin brother, Knuckles (Daniel Wu), had long ago ordered killed. Knuckles thought Rose was dead, but lately she has taken to sending out valentine cards. She is also Marvin’s secret love, and what drama there is turns on whether he will profess his ardor, and on whether, as he is increasingly bloodied, he will manage to keep his new life and status as “regional Realtor of the year.” The chemistry between DeBose and Quan is nonexistent, but it barely matters — the emphasis is on hurt, not love. But this self-amused movie barely leaves a mark.Love HurtsRated R. Love, lies, bleeding. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Smurfs’ Trailer Shows Rihanna as Smurfette and Promises New Music

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      The first preview of the animated feature shows the singer in her “blue era” and assures fans that new songs from her will be featured on the soundtrack.Music superstar, beauty mogul, fashion designer and … Smurfette? Rihanna’s next big role may not be what you were expecting.On Thursday, Paramount released a trailer for “Smurfs,” giving us a first look at the singer as the elflike, blonde-haired, blue-skinned creature. In an animation style that blends smooth 3-D rendering with elements that evoke the classic hand-drawn cartoons, Smurfette leads her cohort into the real, live-action world on a quest to Paris to find Papa Smurf after he mysteriously disappears.The trailer begins with Rihanna, in human form, addressing the audience.“I can’t wait for you all to see it this summer,” she says, with sunglasses largely covering her Smurf-blue eye shadow. She had teased the trailer in an Instagram post on Wednesday, which was a short video captioned “in my blue era.”The animated movie also features an ensemble cast including Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Sedaris, Nick Kroll and Dan Levy, and is directed by Chris Miller, who previously helmed “Shrek the Third” and “Puss in Boots.” It will be a musical-comedy reboot of ‘The Smurfs’ film franchise, which last had an installment with “Smurfs: The Lost Village” in 2017.In addition to playing Smurfette, Rihanna is a producer on the movie. But, in what will most likely be the biggest news for her fans, who have been clamoring for more music since her album “Anti” was released in 2016, the trailer ends with a message advising people to “presave” the movie’s soundtrack, which will feature new music from Rihanna.It also says the movie will include the song “Higher Love,” recorded by Desi Trill and featuring DJ Khaled, Cardi B, Natania and Subhi.“Smurfs” is set to release on July 18. More

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      ‘Parthenope’ Review: Goddess Worship

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      Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, this decadent drama about a beautiful young woman is a one-sided meditation on art, desire and spirituality.“Beauty is like war — it opens doors,” says the middle-aged American writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman) to Parthenope (Celeste Dalla Porta), a statuesque brunette from Naples whom he meets at a resort. It’s southern Italy, 1973, and Cheever (Oldman in a small but memorably melancholic part) strikes up a friendship with her early on in the film.“Parthenope,” a characteristically decadent drama by the director Paolo Sorrentino, is about all the doors opened by Parthenope’s beauty. At first — when she’s seen primarily in a bikini, lounging by crystalline ocean waters — this means capturing the hearts of male suitors, like her namesake siren from Greek mythology.Cheever, who in real life spent years traveling around Italy, is one of the few men in the film who is immune to her charms — maybe it’s the booze, or his repressed yearning for men. Or maybe it’s because a woman like her should be admired from a distance as one does a religious icon or marble statue.If this way of idealizing women sounds painfully retrograde, know that Sorrentino isn’t interested in realism — or political correctness, for that matter. His work (including the Oscar winner “The Great Beauty” and the HBO series “The Young Pope”) is less about people than it is about big ideas: art, desire, religion, and, yes, beauty; the way they shape our lives with an almost mystical power.Now add to this an enduring fixation with Sorrentino’s native Italy, its past and present, and its contradictions. The country is home to some of the world’s great triumphs — think ancient Rome and the Sistine Chapel — but the director also depicts it as a hotbed of spiritual rot personified by its corrupt leaders. At one point in the film, Parthenope enjoys a dalliance with a monstrous bishop (Peppe Lanzetta), representing a union of the sacred and the profane.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