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      ‘Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy’ Review: Boy Meets Alien

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      This children’s adventure movie from Vietnam is like “E.T.”—but sloppier and more eccentric.“Maika: The Girl from Another Galaxy,” by the Vietnamese director Ham Tran, is a children’s adventure movie about a lonely boy, Hung (Phu Truong Lai), who meets a chirpy alien (Diep Anh Chu) and promptly gets into trouble. It’s essentially “E.T.” with a sloppier, zanier touch, and it’s set in urban Vietnam as opposed to a sleepy California neighborhood.It hasn’t really got much for the adults to chew on, either. “Maika” is an aggressively kids-only affair — the farting and scream-acting make sure of this.The story goes as you’d expect: there’s a weepy prologue involving a tragically deceased parent; a best friend whisked away to another town by her parents; a fateful extraterrestrial encounter that quickly develops into a touching friendship; twitchy cronies on a mission to abduct the creature, Maika — who is no bug-eyed puppet, but (thanks to a bit of space magic) a regular-looking little girl.With its fluorescent purple computer-generated flourishes, the movie looks dated even if a number of scenes involve pointedly modern phenomenon, like a zippy drone chase and a group of kids playing with VR headsets.The coastal Vietnamese setting provides a welcome variation on the boy-meets-alien formula, as does the cultural milieu, with wealthy types living in glossy high-rises and humbler families right below them struggling to keep up with society’s technological developments. (Hung’s father owns a repair shop, but he hasn’t yet pivoted to the more lucrative business of repairing tablets and phones.)But mostly, “Maika” stands out for its moments of weird eccentricity. Bad guys get slapped by gobs of kimchi and Hung and Maika float around in a bubble, zooming past airplanes. Sure, it’s all very loud and cartoonish, but at least we’re not stuck in the suburbs.Maika: The Girl From Another GalaxyNot rated. In Vietnamese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Eiffel’ Review: Paris is for Lovers

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      Gustave Eiffel, the man behind France’s most well-known landmark, is a passionate lover first, and an engineer second in this tedious 19th century romance.“Eiffel” is as much of a history lesson as “Titanic” is — in other words, it’s basically not one. It’s more like historical fiction, with the real-life 19th century figure Gustave Eiffel, the man responsible for masterminding France’s most iconic landmark, portrayed as a passionate lover first, and an engineer second.Played by Romain Duris, Gustave contends with naysayers, striking workers and financial setbacks as he commandeers the grand effort to construct the Eiffel Tower. The director Martin Bourboulon intermittently takes us to the construction site, where men toil away, the metal monolith gets progressively taller and Gustave pores over architectural blueprints with a furrowed brow.But the main intrigue involves his romance with Adrienne (Emma Mackey), a married woman with whom he shares an emotional past. Flashbacks from both Gustave and Adrienne’s perspectives show the star-crossed lovers 20 years back, indulging their carnal desires against fireplace backdrops and Parisian sunsets before Adrienne’s disapproving parents step in. Her unexpected return as Gustave deals with various obstacles to the tower’s completion fuels his creativity and commitment.The film’s shrugging disregard for historical context would be negligible were the romance not so tedious and clichéd. The tower was originally perceived as a foolhardy venture, which provoked national debates and class tensions. But these forces are only vaguely touched upon — too bad considering that tale’s dramatic potential relative to the humdrum love story whipped up here instead. And one can’t help but wonder if “Eiffel” is merely a lame fantasy or a particularly spineless form of mythmaking, whittling down as it does one nation’s politically loaded event to the equivalent of an Eiffel Tower key chain with an inscription reading “city of love.”EiffelRated R for sex scenes, brief nudity and a suicide attempt. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Johnny Depp Jury Finds That Amber Heard Defamed Him in Op-Ed

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      The jury in Virginia found that Ms. Heard had damaged her ex-husband’s reputation with an op-ed in which she identified herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”For six weeks, the defamation case that the actor Johnny Depp filed against his ex-wife Amber Heard transfixed the nation, offering a rare instance of high-profile #MeToo charges and countercharges, including lurid accusations of physical abuse, being hashed out in the public spotlight of a courtroom.On Wednesday, the seven-person jury in Fairfax, Va., found that Mr. Depp had been defamed by Ms. Heard when she described herself in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Mr. Depp was awarded more than $10 million in damages.During the trial Mr. Depp had fiercely denied Ms. Heard’s accusations that he had subjected her to repeated physical abuse that included punching and head-butting and several instances of sexual assault. In a statement after the verdict Mr. Depp thanked the jury, saying that it “gave me my life back.”Ms. Heard, who was in the courtroom as the verdict was read, said in a statement afterward that she was disappointed “beyond words” by their finding.“I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” she said.Ms. Heard did not seem buoyed by the fact that the jury also awarded her $2 million in damages, agreeing that she had been defamed in one instance by a lawyer for Mr. Depp. A spokeswoman for Ms. Heard, Alafair Hall, said she planned to appeal.A jury found that Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard were both defamed.Craig Hudson/Associated PressSuch cases are often settled out of court, in part to avoid public scrutiny. The bitter charges and embarrassing details in this case were aired not only in open court, but also before cameras that beamed every accusation onto televisions and livestreams, where they were turned into memes and debated on social media.The 2018 op-ed that Ms. Heard wrote never mentioned Mr. Depp by name, but he argued that it clearly referred to their marriage, which began in 2015 and fell apart just over a year later, and that it was false. (Early drafts of it were prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union, where Ms. Heard was an ambassador with a focus on women’s rights and gender-based violence.)The jury agreed, and found that it contained several statements that were false, and were made with actual malice.Ms. Heard countersued, claiming that she had been defamed in 2020 when one of Mr. Depp’s lawyers at the time had dismissed her accusations as a “hoax” in statements to a British tabloid. The jury found that Mr. Depp had defamed Ms. Heard in one instance, when the lawyer accused her of damaging the couple’s penthouse and blaming it on Mr. Depp.The verdict came as a surprise to several legal observers, who noted that a judge in Britain had ruled two years ago that there was evidence that Mr. Depp had repeatedly assaulted Ms. Heard. That ruling came in a libel suit that Mr. Depp had filed after The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper, called him a “wife beater” in a headline. The judge in that case had ruled that the defendants had shown that what they published was “substantially true.”Ms. Heard, 36, maintained throughout the trial that everything written in the op-ed was true.Amber Heard leaves the courthouse in Virginia after the jury’s verdict in the libel case brought by her ex-husband.Tom Brenner/ReutersThe combination of star power, sensational details and cameras in the courtroom turned the trial into an internet obsession. Memes and posts attacking Ms. Heard, some created by superfans of Mr. Depp, proliferated online. Ms. Heard testified that she had received thousands of death threats since the start of the trial and called the online mockery “agonizing.”Sometimes breaking into sobs on the stand, Ms. Heard testified about more than a dozen times that, she said, Mr. Depp was violent toward her. In a key incident in Australia in 2015, Ms. Heard said, Mr. Depp became “belligerent” after taking the drug MDMA and attacked her, grabbing her by the neck and, at one point, sexually assaulting her with an object that Ms. Heard later determined to be a bottle.“I’m looking in his eyes and I don’t see him anymore,” Ms. Heard testified. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”Mackenna White, a lawyer who counsels people as to the risks of publishing potentially contested accusations of sexual misconduct, said she worried that the online mockery of Ms. Heard would make some less likely to come forward.“The absolute destruction of Amber Heard is going to have an impact,” Ms. White said. “If you’re someone who’s worried about what could happen if you speak out, this could have the same chilling effect that we’ve been trying to reverse all these years.”Others saw the online reaction as a harbinger of what the jury would decide.“You have now millions of Americans weighing in as evidence unfolds in court — you can take that as an indication of how the case is going,” said Imran Ansari, a lawyer representing Alan Dershowitz in defamation suits involving Virginia Giuffre, who said she was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation and accused Mr. Dershowitz of being part of it, which he denies.Spectators outside the Virginia courthouse, many of them fans of Mr. Depp, reacted after the verdict was announced.Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Depp, 58, gave a vastly different account of their relationship — and of the trip to Australia — in which Ms. Heard was the aggressor. Ms. Heard, he testified, had once been a girlfriend who seemed “too good to be true,” but turned into a partner who would taunt him, call him demeaning names, punch him and throw objects at him.In Australia, he testified, she threw a handle of vodka that exploded on his hand and severed his finger. (She denies throwing the bottle at him and said she only ever hit him in self-defense or in defense of her sister.)Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 7In the courtroom. More

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      ‘My Dead Dad’ Review: Learning the Ropes, Thanks to an Inheritance

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      A young man heads to Los Angeles and sees his estranged father’s life through the eyes of his tenants.“My Dead Dad” is something of a calling-card picture for its male lead, Pedro Correa, who also co-wrote and co-produced the movie. While the actor has a lengthy filmography, it’s mostly in shorts, including a parody trailer of a nonexistent sequel to “Drive,” directed by Fabio Frey, who also handles that job here.The premise for this feature is not so antic. Correa plays Lucas, a skateboarding burnout who’s been living in Reno, Nev., since his mom took him out of Los Angeles — and far from his dad — before his teenage years. Now in something like his early twenties, he learns from his mom that Augusto, said dad, has died. Taking a long drag from a cigarette, Lucas asks how his old man died. Mom answers, “Lung cancer”; Lucas mulls this over a second and says, “Nice.”That’s as close to an honest laugh as the movie earns, but it’s not about laughs, it’s about learning, sort of. Lucas has inherited the Los Angeles apartment building that Augusto owned, and he drives out to size it up and maybe sell it off. There he meets an overenthusiastic uncle (Steven Bauer), a sage building superintendent (Raymond Cruz), a beguiling and artistically inclined young woman (Courtney Dietz) and other underdeveloped characters, none of whom serve much of a function beyond placing themselves before Correa and spouting banalities while he makes doleful eyes at them.The gear-grinding tedium of the movie’s taking-responsibility scenario is occasionally broken up by not-quite-lyrical sequences of Los Angeles sunsets seen from car windows. “Being an adult sucks,” the building superintendent observes at one point. “My Dead Dad” doesn’t present any compelling counterarguments to that.My Dead DadNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

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      The verdict in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial is in. Here’s what to know.

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      The jury deciding the outcome of the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has reached a verdict, but when the court convened Wednesday afternoon, the judge returned the verdict forms to the jury to fill in the amount of damages they thought were warranted.Judge Penney S. Azcarate’s instruction seemed to indicate that the jury had found that someone had been defamed, but it was not clear whether it was Mr. Depp or Ms. Heard. The jury returned to the deliberation room.“It has to be at least a dollar for compensatory damages and up to whatever you feel the damages should be,” Judge Azcarate said.The six-week trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court turned into a contentious battle between the two Hollywood stars over the truth of what happened in their relationship and marriage, which fell apart in 2016. Both Ms. Heard and Mr. Depp accused each other of repeated physical abuse throughout their relationship.Mr. Depp, 58, sued Ms. Heard, 36, for her 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” After more than a year of legal sparring, Ms. Heard then filed a countersuit against Mr. Depp in 2020, alleging that he defamed her when a lawyer representing him released statements calling her allegations of abuse a hoax.Mr. Depp claimed that Ms. Heard’s op-ed “devastated” his career and reputation. Ms. Heard claimed that the statements by the lawyer harmed her ability to work and caused her emotional distress and humiliation.The seven-person jury, which started deliberating on Friday but took a break over the long holiday weekend, has been tasked with determining whether Ms. Heard defamed Mr. Depp and whether he defamed her. To deliver a victory to either of them, the jury must find that a greater weight of the evidence shows they were defamed, and that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that it was done with “actual malice.” More

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      Stream These 11 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This Month

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      A lot of great movies and TV shows are expiring for subscribers in the United States in June. Here are the ones worth finding time for.Big, beloved Oscar winners from the 1960s through the 2010s populate the slate of titles leaving Netflix in the United States at the end of the month, as well as a family favorite, a sci-fi smash and two coming-of-age classics (one for boys, one for girls). But the must-see for movie buffs is a hysterically funny puncturing of documentary conventions, so we’ll start there. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘Documentary Now!’: Seasons 1-3 (June 2)When the “Saturday Night Live” writer-stars Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers created this series with their frequent “S.N.L.” director Rhys Thomas, it seemed safe to bet they would attempt to extend that show’s brand of wild satire. In fact, they created something far more niche (and funnier, perhaps because of it): a charmingly niche spoof of documentary styles and specific nonfiction movies, in the kind of hyper-specific detail that only film nerds can fully appreciate. It’s funny and surprisingly heartfelt as its creators both skewer and shine up their subjects. Standout episode: “Original Cast Album: Co-Op,” from Season 3, a parody of D.A. Pennebaker’s “Original Cast Album: Company” that was so on target it was included in the bonus features of the original film’s recent Criterion Collection release.Stream it here.‘Lady Bird’ (June 2)The actor-turned-filmmaker Greta Gerwig made her solo feature directorial debut with this poignant and funny 2017 coming-of-age movie, which was nominated for five Academy Awards. Two of those were for its stars: Saoirse Ronan is the title character, a Sacramento teenager desperate to find a way out of her suburban surroundings. Laurie Metcalf co-stars as her perpetually put-upon mother, trying her very best to ease her daughter’s bumpy transition into adulthood. Gerwig’s perceptive screenplay digs into the stickiness of this complex dynamic, and her energetic direction honors the characters’ emotional woes without getting bogged down in them.Stream it here.‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (June 17)Jennifer Lawrence won the Academy Award for best actress for this tricky exploration of love, loss and ballroom dancing from the writer-director David O. Russell. Adapting the novel by Matthew Quick, Russell tells the story of Pat (Bradley Cooper), recently released from a mental institution and trying to recalibrate his life after divorce from a tricky vantage point: his old room in the attic of his childhood home. His parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) prove not quite the steadying influences one might hope; for that, he finds himself drawn to Tiffany (Lawrence), a young widow who implores him to join her in a dance competition. Their rehearsals form the heart of the movie, and in those scenes, the careful blend of pathos, tough talk and self-delusion casts a delicate spell.Stream it here.‘Desperado’ (June 30)The director Robert Rodriguez is best known these days for family entertainment like the “Spy Kids” franchise and sci-fi efforts like “Alita: Battle Angel.” But he broke through as a master of hyperkinetic action, first on the self-financed indie “El Mariachi,” and then with this follow-up, which injected that film’s Spaghetti Western style and filmmaking bravado with studio resources and the stars Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. Banderas is an enigmatic musician, strolling from one border town to the next with a guitar case full of guns, looking for the man who killed the woman he loved; Hayek is a bookstore owner who bandages his wounds and steals his heart. Their chemistry is off the charts, the action beats are rip-roaring and the cameos are delightful.Stream it here.‘The Exorcist’ (June 30)Very few films can be said to have “changed everything,” but William Friedkin’s 1973 adaptation of the novel by William Peter Blatty is certainly one of them — a box office smash, a critical success and a certified cultural phenomenon. A haunted Ellen Burstyn stars as a Georgetown actress whose daughter (a powerful Linda Blair) seems controlled by evil forces. Once a sensitive priest (Jason Miller) determines she has been possessed by the devil, a specialist (Max von Sydow) is brought in to rescue her soul. So many of the film’s big moments — the green vomit, the devil voice, the incantations of the exorcism — have been recycled and satirized that you’d think the film would lose its bite, but “The Exorcist” has lost none of its ability to scare and shock.Stream it here.‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ (June 30)The actor turned screenwriter Jason Segel and his “Muppets” and “Five Year Engagement” collaborator Nicholas Stoller first teamed up for this 2008 romantic comedy from the producer Judd Apatow. Segal is Peter, a sad-sack composer in a perpetual funk after his breakup with the title character (Kristen Bell), a famous TV actress. In an attempt to escape his depression, he takes a Hawaiian vacation — only to find Sarah at the same resort with her new beau (Russell Brand), a pretentious British pop star. Mila Kunis co-stars as the resort receptionist who presents a new opportunity for love; Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, and Jack McBrayer turn up in small but uproarious supporting roles.Stream it here.‘Her’ (June 30)The idea of falling in love with a virtual assistant might have seemed like pure science fiction when this comedy-drama from the writer and director Spike Jonze hit theaters in 2013; today, the growing ubiquity and sophistication of Siri and Alexa are perhaps making it inevitable. The assistant here is named Samantha and voiced by Scarlett Johansson; her “user” is Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), who is particularly wounded because of a pending divorce. Jonze’s touching script bypasses the easy, cheap jokes for a penetrating exploration of loneliness and companionship, and Phoenix’s performance is an astonishing symphony of vulnerability and pain.Stream it here.‘How to Train Your Dragon’ (June 30)This 2010 adaptation of the book by Cressida Cowell was one of the family franchise success stories of the decade, spawning two sequels, a TV series, video games and even a live “arena spectacular.” But it is, at its heart, a simple story — something like the “boy and his dog” stories of old, in which the meek young Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), intimidated by his dragon-slaying dad (Gerald Butler) teaches himself how to tame the beasts instead. Kids will appreciate the gorgeous animation and the “be yourself” messaging; grown-ups will enjoy the comic supporting cast, which includes Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Kristen Wiig.Stream it here.‘Looper’ (June 30)When the family of Bruce Willis announced his retirement from acting in March, fans took to social media to share their favorite Willis performances: the gun-toting snark of “Die Hard” was oft-invoked, as was the sensitivity of “The Sixth Sense.” But this 2012 hit from Rian Johnson was one of the few films to successfully meld those personas, allowing Willis to emote and kick butt in equal measures. As Joe, a one-time hit man who (through a complicated combination of double-crosses and time travel) must face his 20-years-younger self (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), in a world where there’s only room for one of them. The sci-fi and action are tiptop, but “Looper” excels most in its quiet moments, which allow Willis to do some of his most finely-tuned acting since his ’90s heyday.Stream it here.‘My Fair Lady’ (June 30)George Cukor’s 1964 adaptation of the Broadway hit by Alan Jay Lerner (itself a reconfiguration of George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”) remains one of the most widely beloved movies of its era, though it’s not an obvious slam-dunk — after all, it’s a nearly-three-hour musical starring two people who can’t sing. (Audrey Hepburn’s vocals were dubbed; Rex Harrison does a kind of rhythmic lyric-reading.) But the story is timeless, the songs are memorable, and the production is handsomely mounted. It won an astonishing eight Oscars (including best picture, best actor and best director), and that sounds just about right.Stream it here.‘Stand by Me’ (June 30)Rob Reiner’s early directorial career is a mind-boggling display of adept genre-surfing, moving with ease from broad comedy (“This Is Spinal Tap”) to road movie (“The Sure Thing”) to fantasy (“The Princess Bride”) to rom-com (“When Harry Met Sally”) to suspense (“Misery”) to courtroom drama (“A Few Good Men”). In the middle of that astonishing run, he took a shot at coming-of-age dramas and proved he could do that too. This modest but memorable adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body” digs into its time and place (a small town in Oregon, circa 1959), shows a remarkable ear for the way boys communicate and boasts top-notch leading performances by Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix.Stream it here.ALSO LEAVING: “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce”: Seasons 1-5 (June 13), “Criminal Minds”: Seasons 1-12 (June 29), “Corpse Bride,” “Eagle Eye,”“Happy Gilmore,” “Into the Wild” and “Midnight in Paris” (all June 30). More

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      Willie Mays Aikens Has His Story Told in ‘The Royal’

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      A film tells the true story of Willie Aikens, a World Series star for the Kansas City Royals whose life was derailed by drugs — and prison — before he pieced it back together.COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The greatest player in the history of the Kansas City Royals slammed his palm onto a conference table at the Baseball Hall of Fame last Friday. George Brett was pretending to be an F.B.I. agent showing off his badge.Just like that, you were not in Cooperstown. N.Y., anymore. You were somewhere with the Royals in the early 1980s, and you might be in serious trouble.“He brings my name up, he brings Jamie Quirk’s name up — and he brings your name up,” Brett said, pointing to his old teammate, Willie Mays Aikens, across the table.“And he brings Vida Blue’s name up, and Jerry Martin’s name up and Willie Wilson’s name up. And he says, ‘You know, we had a meeting earlier about calling up bookies and betting games. Let’s just say George and Jamie are calling some guy we got a wiretap on …’”Brett was shaken and quickly understood: He stopped betting on football games. But the F.B.I. did not care much about him and Quirk. Investigators were trying to signal the others that they were onto their cocaine use.“If we had stopped right then and there, we’d have never had a drug case,” Aikens said. “They tried to warn us, man.”“And you kept doing it,” Brett said.“And we kept doing it,” Aikens replied.Aikens kept doing it for a decade. Like Blue, Martin and Wilson, he served a short prison term after the 1983 season, but that was hardly the worst of it. That is not why Samuel Goldwyn Films has turned Aikens’s life story into a movie, “The Royal,” scheduled for release on July 15. It will be available for streaming and in limited theaters, and it had a premiere last Friday at the Hall of Fame.For Aikens, 67, it was his first trip to Cooperstown, where Brett is enshrined for a career that ended with 3,154 hits in 1993. By then Aikens was deep into his cocaine addiction, which came to consume him during a six-year career in Mexico after eight seasons in the majors as a slugging first baseman with the California Angels, the Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays through 1985.In 1994 he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for selling 2.2 ounces of crack cocaine, on four occasions, to an undercover female officer. Aikens has said he was interested in the woman and complied when she asked him to cook the cocaine into crack.The 2022 M.L.B. Season“Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls, it’s more democratic.”Look Good, Feel Good, Play Good. Smell Good?: For numerous players, a heavy dose of cologne or women’s perfume is the unlikeliest of performance enhancers.The Third Baseman’s Gambit: Manny Machado is the hottest hitter in baseball, and he is coming for your Queen.The Loneliest Team in Baseball: The Oakland Athletics gutted their roster and flirted with Las Vegas. Now their fans appear to be in full revolt.King of Throws: Tom House has spent his life helping superstars get even better. With a new app he wants to fix young pitchers before they develop bad habits.That decision made Aikens — the first player with two multihomer games in the same World Series, in 1980, when the Royals lost to Philadelphia — a public face of the gross disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenders. A 1986 federal law punished people far more severely for crack; it took until 2010 for Congress to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.Aikens was incarcerated for 14 years, and has now been out of prison as long as he was in. “The Royal” mostly chronicles his transition back to society — reconciling with his wife and family, becoming a father again, working on a road crew digging manholes and, with Brett’s help, securing a job as a minor league coach for the Royals.“How many people in this world go through their life on earth and get a movie?” said Aikens, who now serves as a special assistant to the Royals as part of their leadership development team. “Not many people. I’m hoping that the movie will help save some lives.”Aikens is being portrayed in “The Royal” by Amin Joseph, an actor known for his work on the FX series “Snowfall.”The actor Amin Joseph, who plays a crack dealer in the FX series “Snowfall,” portrays Aikens. Joseph, 42, grew up in Harlem and said he remembers crack vials strewn on playgrounds. He was drawn to playing a different kind of figure impacted by drugs.“There are real people in our communities that are dealing with this and still healing, and like Willie often says, not all of them were major league baseball players with the luxury of having friends in powerful places to give them a second chance,” Joseph said. “A lot of these people are lost, forgotten, the underbelly of what we consider society, the people that we judge.”Aikens’s background gave him a pathway to return to baseball, but it was not always smooth. He first had to confront his past and show that he could share his experiences.Aikens was something of an unlikely public speaker, having dealt with a stutter for much of his life. Brett had first encouraged him to tell his story for the athletes at Brett’s son’s high school, a scene loosely depicted in the film. It became a revelation.“When I picked him up at the halfway house and I heard him talk, I had tears in my eyes. I really did,” Brett said. “I was so proud of him.”Phylicia Rashad and Willie Mays Aikens discussed “The Royal” at a screening in Washington, D.C. last week. Brian Stukes/Getty ImagesAikens — who testified before Congress in 2009, urging sentencing reform for drug offenders — has told his story many times since, to Royals prospects and to students at the team’s Urban Youth Academy. The message has stayed all too relevant in baseball; while cocaine was a scourge of the 1980s, the death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, in 2019, revealed the toll of the opioid epidemic on the sport.Four Angels teammates revealed in court this year that they, like Skaggs, had received oxycodone pills from Eric Kay, a former Angels communications director who was found guilty on two charges for his role in the death of Skaggs. Prosecutors argued that Skaggs had died from a pill or pills he received from Kay that were disguised to look like oxycodone but were actually fentanyl, a far stronger opioid.“This drug that they have right now, it’s mixed in with Oxycodone and drugs like that, and it’s a blind killer,” Aikens said, referring to fentanyl. “When I was using drugs, you could sit there for hours or days and just snort or smoke cocaine. But with this drug now, fentanyl, you can take this one pill and it can just knock it out. It doesn’t even give you a chance.”Almost in spite of himself, Aikens survived to get another chance. Now he has taken his story to a theater in Cooperstown — and, soon, far beyond. More

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      Strike First, Strike Hard: How ‘The Karate Kid’ Became a Musical

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      The new production, an adaptation of the classic 1984 martial arts film, is onstage now just outside St. Louis and aiming for a Broadway run.CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — Robert Mark Kamen was through with “The Karate Kid,” his semi-autobiographical 1984 martial arts film that spawned a string of movies, an animated program and the hit Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” until he saw “Hadestown” in 2019. That’s when he realized: He loved musicals.“When you watch a movie, the camera is limited to one dimension,” Kamen, 74, said in early May during a break from rehearsals for “The Karate Kid — The Musical,” which is debuting at the new $25 million Kirkwood Performing Arts Center just outside St. Louis. “With this thing, you can have three dimensions, people doing something [pointing] here, here, here, going up and down, around and around, all at the same time. … It opened up so many possibilities.”Sy, center, rehearsing a number with, clockwise from left: Isidro Rafael, Cardoza and Zachary Downer. The musical puts a greater emphasis on the character of Chojun Miyagi, played by Sy.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesAn inspired Kamen went back to his hotel — and wrote what would become the opening of a new musical, complete with taiko drums and dancing ancestors. He also called the person who’d sent him to New York as a homework assignment, the producer Kumiko Yoshii, who had been campaigning since 2016 for the rights to “The Karate Kid” franchise, which Kamen owned with Sony Pictures.“He was so excited and had so many ideas,” Yoshii said. “But at the heart of it all was still the relationship between Daniel and his mentor, Mr. Miyagi.”The result is a musical adaptation of the classic film about a teenage American boy (Ralph Macchio) who learns martial arts from an Okinawan-born janitor and karate master (Pat Morita, whose performance earned an Oscar nomination) to defeat a high school bully. The musical stars John Cardoza (“Jagged Little Pill”) as Daniel LaRusso, the titular karate kid, and the Canadian actor Jovanni Sy as his mentor, Chojun Miyagi.Ralph Macchio, left, and Pat Morita in the 1984 movie “The Karate Kid.”Columbia PicturesThough the plot closely follows that of the original film — the story is still set in the 1980s — the musical’s cast and creative team of more than 40 artists is markedly more diverse.The director, Amon Miyamoto, was the first — and remains the only — Japanese citizen to direct a show on Broadway (a 2004 revival of the Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical “Pacific Overtures”); Keone and Mari Madrid, the married Filipino American choreographers, have worked with Justin Bieber and Billie Eilish and recently directed and choreographed the Britney Spears jukebox musical “Once Upon a One More Time”; and the costume designer Ayako Maeda, has won numerous awards in her native Japan. Kamen wrote the book, and the songwriter Drew Gasparini, known for his work on “Smash,” wrote the music and lyrics.“It’s an American film,” the director, Miyamoto, 64, said in Japanese via an interpreter during a rehearsal break in early May. “But we’ve added Japanese elements.”Those elements include putting a greater emphasis on Mr. Miyagi by framing the story as his recollection of events, which Kamen said was his original vision for the film before the filmmakers decided to focus on Macchio’s Daniel. There is also a score by Gasparini that blends pop, rock and Okinawan music; costumes featuring traditional Japanese attire, including a kimono, by Maeda; and a dance-heavy production that fuses the Madrids’ hip-hop choreography style with karate.“If we’re doing exactly the same thing as the film, there’s no reason we have to create this for the stage,” Robert Mark Kamen said of his approach to writing the book for the new musical.Whitney Curtis for The New York Times“There has to be a reason to adapt it into a musical,” Kamen said. “If we’re doing exactly the same thing as the film, there’s no reason we have to create this for the stage.”INSIDE A FORMER CHURCH in Chesterfield, Mo., on a Saturday morning in early May, ribbons of light shone through stained glass windows as a line of dancers fanned out like peacock feathers on both sides of Sy, who was singing the song “Bonsai,” which extols the power of patience and focus.“Needles start to bend,” he sang as the dancers undulated up and down, raising and lowering their arms in sync. Eventually, they would be backlit to look like a bonsai tree.Kamen, among the creative team at the rehearsal that day, thanked Keone Madrid, calling the scene “beautiful.”“Then you’re going to see ‘Strike First. Strike Hard.’ and want to run through a wall afterward,” a smiling Keone Madrid said, referring to the musical’s next song, a pulsing anthem with pounding drums and frenetic kicks and punches.Kamen, at first, had been less than keen on musicalizing his signature franchise. But after a few months of meeting requests from Yoshii, his agent persuaded him to have dinner with her in Los Angeles in January 2017.Not knowing he was a vineyard owner and wine enthusiast, she let him choose the wine (an expensive bottle of Burgundy) at dinner. “To him, the fact that I let him select the wine was important,” she said. “After that, his response to every idea I had was, ‘OK, let’s give it a shot.’” (Kamen confirmed this, adding he was won over by his fourth glass.)“The character of Mr. Miyagi spoke to me a great deal growing up,” said Yoshii, who was a high school exchange student in Bozeman, Mont., when the film was released in theaters in 1984. “Because of Miyagi, kids talked to me about the Japanese karate element.”The choreographer Mari Madrid demonstrating the crane kick.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesBecause “The Karate Kid” is Kamen’s story, he was the natural choice to write the book, Yoshii said. There was just one problem: He didn’t know anything about musicals. “I called my agent, Jack Tantleff, and I said, ‘Now what the [expletive] do I do?’ I don’t know how to do this,” he said. “He said, ‘You’ll learn.’”Kamen and Gasparini, began meeting up in New York, where they would see four shows a week. Then Gasparini, who is from California, would spend time at Kamen’s guesthouse in Sonoma, with a portable piano, working on the score.Drew Gasparini, who wrote the show’s music and lyrics, is known for his work on the TV series “Smash.”Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesGasparini decided on a blend of pop, rock and Okinawan music, which included traveling to Okinawa, Japan, in October 2019 to study with two musicians. Two songs for Mr. Miyagi feature a sanshin, a three-stringed instrument made of snake skin. (For the war-hardened John Kreese, played by Alan H. Green, the antagonist and leader of the Cobra Kai dojo, he went with Metallica-inspired electric guitars.)Capturing the essence of the characters from the film, who also include Ali Mills (Jetta Juriansz), Daniel’s love interest, and his mother, Lucille LaRusso (Kate Baldwin), is also the approach that Miyamoto said he tried to adopt in his direction. “With Kreese and Mr. Miyagi especially, we delve into what makes them who they are, and how they got that way,” he said.Kreese, for instance, is a Vietnam veteran grappling with the lingering trauma of his experiences, and Yoshii said they wanted the cast to understand what that meant.Sheet music and other items in the rehearsal space.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesSo they had, among others, a Marine veteran and a World War II historian (Mr. Miyagi is a World War II veteran) speak to the cast about the two wars that come into play in the story.“Robert’s script goes a little deeper in the musical than the movie,” Yoshii said. “So it was like if we’re going to do that, we have to talk to these guys, so the actors aren’t just doing what they think or what their imagination conjures up about what experiences are.”But for the added gravity of both men’s wartime experiences, the film’s lighthearted center remains. The secret weapon, Kamen said, is the choreography.“The dance will be the thing that takes people by surprise,” said Cardoza, 28, who was a fan of the film growing up. “You think ‘Karate Kid, combat fighting.’ You don’t think ‘dance.’”Alan H. Green, as John Kreese, with some of the ensemble members playing students of the Cobra Kai dojo.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesDuring rehearsals last month, those two elements blended as 14 dancers playing Cobra Kai students, clad in shorts and kneepads, emerged from behind a semicircle of rolling mirrors. Green, stone-faced in a black tank top and sweats, prowled their ranks.“Fear does not exist in this dojo, does it?” he shouted.“No, sensei!” they answered.“Pain does not exist in this dojo, does it?”“No, sensei!”“What is our motto?”“Strike first! Strike hard! No mercy!”They launched into a rock number, kicking, pumping their fists then turning outward and stutter-stepping forward like synchronized robots, all in a matter of seconds.Mari Madrid said they approached the musical realizing that they were not going to make black belts out of the cast over a monthlong rehearsal period. “It was about giving inspiration to the essence of it,” she said. “Can they punch properly? Can they block properly?”That’s not to say some cast members didn’t come prepared. Sy earned a brown belt in karate, and Cardoza, who does indeed do the crane kick, was a competitive figure skater for 15 years. (Sakura Kokumai, who represented the United States in the women’s kata event at the 2020 Olympics, was also brought in to teach foundational moves.)Keone and Mari Madrid are also responsible for choreographing the movements of five new characters, the spirits of fire, water, earth, tree and metal, who symbolize the tradition of karate. They shadow Mr. Miyagi’s movements, in a nod to the kuroko of Japanese Kabuki theater — actors clad in all black who the audience see but are trained to ignore, who magically make things happen onstage.“Keone and Mari are able to infuse something that is invisible into their visible dance,” Miyamoto said, adding that in Japan “we’re used to seeing reality onstage that way — he’s there, but I’m not seeing him. So it’ll be interesting to see how an American audience reacts to that.”Ensemble members including Justice Moore, top, and Sangeetha Santhebennur, second from top, practicing Keone and Mari Madrid’s choreography.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesIN A BLACK POLO AND TROUSERS during rehearsals, Sy was an unassuming presence — until he began practicing a scene.“DANIEL SAN!!” he thundered.“What?” a resentful Cardoza asked.“Show me ‘Wax on.’”He moved his right hand in a semicircle.“Wax off.”He repeated the motion with his left.“Now you.”Cardoza imitated him.“Wax on.” Sy did a slow-motion chest punch. Cardoza blocked it.“Wax off.”Cardoza’s eyes lit up with understanding.Moments like this one, immediately recognizable to any “Karate Kid” fan, are as much a part of the musical as the fleshed-out story lines and infusion of dance, Kamen said.“No one is coming to see this who doesn’t know ‘The Karate Kid,’” he said. “But they have no idea how far out to the edges we’ve taken the song and dance.”Among the first to witness those changes will be some of the original film’s cast members, who are planning to be at opening night on Wednesday. They include Macchio and William Zabka, who played Johnny Lawrence, Cobra Kai’s top student and Daniel’s rival. Yoshii said there are plans to take it to Broadway next season.“It’s Christmas morning once again for ‘The Karate Kid,’” Macchio said in a phone interview in mid-May. “It’s like unwrapping another version of this gift. I want to be humming Drew Gasparini’s tunes on the way to the parking lot.” More