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      ‘The Takedown’ Review: Mismatched Detectives on the Case

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      This film from Louis Leterrier tries to pay tribute to classic 1980s buddy-cop movies, but not even Omar Sy can’t salvage it.Ousmane Diakité and François Monge may be French, but they will be instantly familiar to American audiences: mismatched detectives thrown together by a case, they bicker all the time, only to eventually grudgingly broker a truce. They complement each other, you see.As you might have guessed, “The Takedown” is a Gallic spin on buddy-cop movies, especially those from the 1980s and ’90s. Unfortunately much of the humor, which includes several moldy gay-panic jokes, belongs to that era, too. Imagine, our two heroes must share a bed after a hotel runs out of rooms — the horror!A sequel to the marginally superior “On the Other Side of the Tracks,” from 2012, “The Takedown” finds the shrewd, hotheaded Ousmane (the “Lupin” star Omar Sy) and the idiotic, arrogant François (Laurent Lafitte, “Elle”) investigating a small mountain town crawling with white-supremacist thugs hopped up on potent meth — and the local authorities, which belong to a far-right party not unlike Marine Le Pen’s, more than tolerate them. At least a local policewoman (Izïa Higelin) appears keen to help our odd couple.The project must have felt like a gimme for both Sy, whose easygoing charm helped turn “Lupin” into a global hit, and Louis Leterrier, who made his mark directing the excellent first two “Transporter” movies as well as the best “Lupin” episodes. But even the sight of the two frenemies wiping out racist goons is not enough to make up for the desperately frantic action scenes (hope you like interminable car chases), joyless jokes and hackneyed clichés.The TakedownNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Along for the Ride’ Review: Becoming a Kid Again

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      A Netflix adaptation turns a best-selling novel by Sarah Dessen about a perfectionist teenage girl into a slick and breezy, Instagram-friendly story.Teenage girls have been gobbling up Sarah Dessen’s books for years, so fans are no doubt breathlessly awaiting a Netflix adaptation of “Along for the Ride,” her best-selling 2009 novel. Unfortunately for them, the movie is lacking much of Dessen’s trademark depth.The story follows Auden West (Emma Pasarow), a studious introvert whose divorced, academic parents (played by Dermot Mulroney and Andie MacDowell) raised her like a small adult, scorning childhood frivolity.As she spends the summer before college with her father, stepmother (Kate Bosworth) and newborn half sister, some unexpected new friends teach Auden the value of fun. Chief among them is Eli (Belmont Cameli), a boy who works at the local bike shop and, like Auden, has a troubled past and a penchant for staying up all night.This film, written and directed by the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” screenwriter Sofia Alvarez, has the same basic plot as Dessen’s book, plus some injections of teenage indie appeal like Luca Del Puppo’s warmly lit cinematography, several Vans product placements and music by Beach House. But such a breezy, Instagram-friendly adaptation feels like a betrayal to Dessen’s original, neurotic protagonist, who has a more difficult journey from self-induced solitude to romance. Where book-Auden avoided friendship, femininity and emotion with frustrating frequency because of her restrictive upbringing, movie-Auden is basically a chill girl with a smidgen of baggage.The other characters — especially Auden’s parents — are similarly underwritten, so the film is left grasping for conflict or clear stakes. Dessen’s novel offered a main character paralyzed by perfectionism. This film makes her ironically, boringly, perfect.Along for the RideNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Amber Heard Accuses ‘Belligerent’ Johnny Depp of Sexual Assault

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      With graphic depictions of what she described as physical attacks, she sought to counter the actor’s testimony that she had been the aggressor.Amber Heard described in graphic detail on Thursday how, she said, her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, beat and sexually assaulted her during a trip to Australia, during which she experienced the worst fear of her life.Ms. Heard, testifying in the defamation case filed against her by Mr. Depp, said the couple took the trip in 2015, shortly after they were married, because the actor was needed for the filming of the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. But, while there, Mr. Depp took MDMA, became “belligerent” and attacked her, hitting her in the face, throwing her across the room, ripping off her nightgown and grabbing her by the neck, she said.“I’m looking in his eyes and I don’t see him anymore,” Ms. Heard, who sometimes broke into sobs during her testimony, said. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”Ms. Heard described the encounter during her second day of testimony in Fairfax County Circuit Court, where she and Mr. Depp are locked in a tense legal battle over just who defamed whom. In his own testimony, Mr. Depp denied hitting Ms. Heard and denied sexually assaulting her, accusing her of being the aggressor in the relationship.The incident in Australia has emerged as a key point of contention in a trial that has focused on competing, and contradictory, accusations of spousal abuse. At some point during the confrontation Ms. Heard described, part of the middle finger on Mr. Depp’s right hand had been severed, but the couple has presented differing accounts of how it actually happened and who was to blame.Ms. Heard, 36, said Mr. Depp, 58, was angry about several issues, including his suspicion that she had been having an affair with another actor and his contention that she had been unkind to his sister. She said his attack escalated from vulgar name-calling to threats and violence. In an argument over his drinking, she said, she had thrown a liquor bottle on the ground.“That really set him off,” she said.Ms. Heard testified that during the fight, Mr. Depp threw bottles at her, missing, and that later he sexually assaulted her with a bottle. She said that, though she could not see the bottle at the time, she was later able to deduce what the object had been.According to Ms. Heard’s account, Mr. Depp severed his finger when he picked up a phone from the wall and smashed it into pieces. She said that after the attack she returned to that area of the house and found messages written on the walls and objects in the room, in blood and paint.During his testimony earlier in the trial, Mr. Depp said his finger had been severed when Ms. Heard threw a handle of vodka at him that had shattered on his hand. He said she had been upset about a meeting she had with a lawyer over a potential postnuptial agreement, and described her following him around the house, screaming obscenities and “hammering me with brutal words.” He testified that when she discovered him drinking, she hurled a bottle of vodka at him, which missed, and then another, which made contact.As his hand bled “like Vesuvius,” Mr. Depp testified, he experienced a “nervous breakdown” and used his bloody finger to write on the walls messages that “represented lies that she told me.”Mr. Depp’s lawsuit seeks $50 million in damages and cites what it describes as damage done to his reputation and career by an op-ed piece written by Ms. Heard.Pool photo by Jim Lo ScalzoDuring her first day of testimony on Wednesday, Ms. Heard testified that Mr. Depp physically abused her throughout their relationship, recalling that his anger was triggered by suspicions she was being unfaithful, which would not abate despite her repeated denials.In his testimony, Mr. Depp had denied ever hitting Ms. Heard and accused her of being the person who resorted to violence by punching him, throwing objects at him and, once, kicking a bathroom door into his head. In court papers, Ms. Heard denied hitting Mr. Depp except in self-defense or in defense of her sister.Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 6In the courtroom. More

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      ‘Fatal Attraction’ and the Disappearance of Erotic Thrillers

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      Elyssa Dudley and Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon Music“Fatal Attraction” came out when Wesley Morris was 11, and it’s made a permanent impression on the way he thinks about certain aspects of lust and suspense. “There’s a lot wrong with this movie, and yet — and yet! — it’s such a good movie,” he said. Wesley invited Parul Sehgal, a staff writer at The New Yorker, to discuss the movie, starring Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.Both Wesley and Parul watched “Fatal Attraction” over and over as preteens, and they’ve rewatched it multiple times since. “Every time I see this movie, I identify with a different character,” Parul said. “I have a different sense of what this movie is about.”As Wesley and Parul break down the most powerful scenes, they are reminded of the loss of high-stakes sex onscreen today. They discuss why the erotic thriller genre has disappeared — and what they could gain from seeing more genuine, grown-up sex in movies.Michael Douglas and Glenn Close star in “Fatal Attraction,” directed by Adrian Lyne.Ullstein Bild via Getty ImagesHosted by: Wesley Morris and Jenna WorthamProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Hans BuetowEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy Dorr More

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      New York’s Movie Theaters, From Art-House to Dine-In

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      New York is the nation’s moviegoing capital, especially for cinephiles who treasure archival prints, experimental cinema and concession stands that go far beyond the standard offerings. Below is a guide to the city’s art houses.Alamo DrafthouseFinancial District, 28 Liberty Street, Suite SC301, Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn, 445 Albee Square West, Brooklyn. drafthouse.com.This dine-in chain, based in Austin, Texas, has a hip aesthetic and is noted for its brews, queso and screenings of cult classics, in addition to regular showings of new releases. A revived version of Kim’s Video has set up shop within the Manhattan location. A Staten Island theater is scheduled to open this summer.Angelika Film CenterAngelika Film Center, 18 West Houston Street, Manhattan. Cinema 123 by Angelika, 1001 Third Avenue, Manhattan. Village East by Angelika, 181-189 Second Avenue, Manhattan. angelikafilmcenter.com.The original Angelika Film Center is the downtown six-screen theater where you can catch art-house releases, like “Petite Maman” or “Anaïs in Love,” while the subway rattles underneath. The brand name has also been appended to the Village East, whose main auditorium is a gorgeous old Yiddish stage theater. In addition to showing new releases, it hosts “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and periodic revival screenings, and like its uptown sibling, the Cinema 123, it is equipped to show 70-millimeter film.Anthology Film Archives32 Second Avenue, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org.New York’s polestar of avant-garde film (and the preservation of it) for more than 50 years, Anthology was started by some of experimental cinema’s most important promoters (Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney) and practitioners (Stan Brakhage, Peter Kubelka). In addition to retrospectives, the theater hosts a rotating series, Essential Cinema, that is free with membership; programming includes seminal narrative works by Alexander Dovzhenko and F.W. Murnau and medium-expanding nonnarrative films from Ken Jacobs and Michael Snow.Brooklyn Academy of Music30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn; bam.org.At any given time in the main BAM building in Fort Greene, three out of four screens show new releases, while one holds retrospectives, such as ones on films shot in New York City in the 1990s or others that place David Lynch’s work alongside movies he influenced. Occasional screenings take place at the BAM Harvey Theater a few blocks away.Film at Lincoln CenterElinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, and Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan; filmlinc.org.Lincoln Center’s film arm, the hosting organization of the New York Film Festival, runs a year-round theater with one of the largest screens in town: the Walter Reade. There you can catch adventurous revivals, such as programs on the Hungarian director Marta Meszaros or the Japanese actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka, and contemporary series, like the annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema. Across the street is the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, which houses two screens and a food-and-wine bar, Indie.Film Forum: Come for the popcorn; stay for the cinematic edification.Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesFilm Forum209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org.A New York institution for more than 50 years — it has been at its present location since 1990 and added a fourth screen in 2018 — Film Forum hosts some of the most extensive retrospectives in town, often showing dozens of films from a director or from stars like Toshiro Mifune and Sidney Poitier. Regular attendance constitutes a cinematic education in itself, and the popcorn, to which moviegoers apply sea salt themselves, is a delicacy.French Institute/Alliance FrançaiseFlorence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan; fiaf.org.This classy venue with excellent sightlines hosts screenings on Tuesdays. The programming consists of new and vintage films from France, with English subtitles, bien sûr. Series typically have a theme — it might be Wes Anderson selecting favorites by Ophüls and Truffaut or a program of recent French comedies.IFC Center323 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; ifccenter.com.This Greenwich Village five-screen theater boasts four first-rate auditoriums (and one cubbyhole) and typically shows many more than five movies in a given week, usually with a short beforehand. Shows can start as early as 10 or 11 a.m. and, on the weekends, as late as midnight. The concession stand sells T-shirts that substitute directors’ names for those of heavy metal bands.Japan Society333 East 47th Street, Manhattan; japansociety.org.This theater’s annual Japan Cuts series is probably the largest single showcase of recent Japanese cinema on the New York cinephile’s calendar. For the rest of the year, new movies share screen space with classics, often shown on 35 millimeter.Light Industry361 Stagg Street, Brooklyn; lightindustry.org.This microcinema, which specializes in experimental film and typically holds screenings on Tuesday nights, hosted its final program at its longtime Greenpoint location in April. It will reopen by June on Stagg Street. Past screenings have varied widely; they’ve included early work by William Castle, a four-hour Mexican serial from 1919, Hollis Frampton and Owen Land films on 16-millimeter and a marathon of “Police Squad!” episodes.Maysles Cinema343 Lenox Avenue, Manhattan; maysles.org.This small (about 60 seats) Harlem venue specializes in documentaries — it was founded by the director Albert Maysles, of “Grey Gardens” fame. The programming often places an emphasis on social issues and local artistry.Metrograph7 Ludlow Street, Manhattan; metrograph.com.An ever-changing (and expensive!) selection of international candies, a nook of a bookstore and a high-class restaurant, the Commissary, are among the features of this Lower East Side two-screen venue, which opened in 2016. (Many don’t notice, but it sits across the street from the neglected Loew’s Canal Theater.) The retrospectives, such as a recurring series of the programmers’ favorites, organized alphabetically, have a correspondingly artisanal feel.Museum of Modern Art11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; moma.org.MoMA has been showing movies since the 1930s, when Iris Barry, the museum’s first film curator, helped advance the idea that films should be collected as art. Today the institution’s two main theaters screen films from its own collection and archives around the world (the annual series To Save and Project highlights recent preservation work). Admission to most screenings is free with membership.Museum of the Moving Image36-01 35th Avenue, Queens; movingimage.us.The high ceilings and blue wall padding give a faintly futuristic feel to the 267-seat Redstone Theater, the main auditorium in this museum in Astoria. That works well when a favorite like “2001: A Space Odyssey” is playing on 70 millimeter. More specialized fare sometimes is shown in the Bartos Screening Room down the hall.Nitehawk CinemaProspect Park, 188 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn. Williamsburg, 136 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn. nitehawkcinema.com.These stylish dine-in theaters have several screens that show new releases and perennial favorites (“Carrie,” “Face/Off”) from brunch time to midnight-snack time. Both venues have bars.The Paris Theater, once a destination for French film, is now leased by Netflix.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesParis Theater4 West 58th Street, Manhattan; paristheaternyc.com.Once a go-to destination for French cinema and films with a literary pedigree, the Paris briefly closed in 2019, but then was leased by Netflix, which uses it for theatrical runs of its streaming titles (like Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”) and older movies intended to complement them. It’s one of the few remaining New York theaters with a balcony.Quad Cinema34 West 13th Street, Manhattan; quadcinema.com.When this Greenwich Village theater opened in 1972, having four screens was unusual. (“A new way to go to the movies,” boasted a New York Times ad on the first day.) It reopened in 2017 after a renovation that gave it bigger, comfier seats for viewing new art-house releases, like “A Hero” or “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.” Plus, there’s an adjoining bar.Roxy Cinema New York2 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan; roxycinematribeca.com.Located in the basement of the Roxy Hotel, this plush red screening room offers a mix of revivals (often on 35-millimeter film) and second-run programming — recent releases that have been in theaters awhile.Spectacle124 South Third Street, Brooklyn; spectacletheater.com.A grungy Williamsburg microcinema started in 2010, Spectacle has a calendar as eclectic as it is inscrutable. There’s horror and martial-arts fare that tends toward the obscure, along with a lot of international titles that never turn up in other New York venues.United Palace4140 Broadway, Manhattan; unitedpalace.org.One of the original Loew’s Wonder Theaters — movie palaces built in the late 1920s, with one in each borough except Staten Island (Jersey City got it instead) — this architectural marvel in Washington Heights is an attraction in itself. It’s now run by an organization that promotes interfaith artistic events, but the theater also hosts concerts and, generally once a month, movie screenings. Lin-Manuel Miranda, a neighborhood resident, chipped in for a new screen and projector. More

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      ‘Happening’ Review: An Abortion Story, an Existential Drama

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      In this powerful French movie set in the early 1960s, a young woman struggles to obtain an abortion when the procedure was criminalized.Her body, her choice, her life. That’s the unambiguous refrain that runs through “Happening,” a powerful French drama about a woman seeking an abortion. Set in the early 1960s, when the procedure was criminalized in France, it arrives in the United States at a fraught moment, with the Supreme Court seemingly poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. When I first saw the movie, it felt like a warning shot from a still-distant land. Now it feels urgently of the moment.The world seems lush with possibilities for Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei, restrained and deeply empathetic), a 23-year-old student attending school in the southwest. There, she lives in a women’s dorm, hangs out with friends and sometimes goes with them to a bar, where she drinks and flirts and bobs to the rock ’n’ roll. Sometimes, she visits her reserved but loving parents (Sandrine Bonnaire plays her mother), who own a bistro, a welcoming space that she inhabits freely, whether she’s chatting with customers or studying in the back. But Anne’s horizons extend beyond her family’s. She wants to continue her studies. She wants to write.The director Audrey Diwan quickly makes you want the same for Anne by inviting you into a life that has just begun to bloom. With visual intimacy, calm rhythms and a sensitive touch, Diwan traces its textures and rituals, drops in on lectures and catches the intellectual hum. By day, Anne and her friends casually discuss Camus and Sartre. Later, though, when their talk turns to sex, these young, capable women stammer and even panic, and the palpable heat that they’ve stirred up — simply by being young and alive — condenses into an oppressive fog. It might help if they were reading Beauvoir, but she’s not on the curriculum.Based on the short, impressionistic memoir by the same title from the celebrated French writer Anne Ernaux, “Happening” recounts what it was like to be a young woman whose life changed — and world ominously narrowed — in 1963 with an unwanted pregnancy. In her book (published in 2000), Ernaux shifts between the past and the present, often commenting on what she did and felt decades earlier. Her approach underscores the memoir’s tension between its two time periods and its distinctly drawn subjects, but also puts the past at an emotional remove: The young Annie struggles under the coolly intellectual, contemplative gaze of her older self.Diwan’s sympathies are evident from the start (the camera hovers near Anne like a caring, at times anxious friend), and so are her smart choices. She’s ditched the older Ernaux’s comments to focus exclusively on the younger woman’s desperate efforts to secure an abortion, which intensifies the drama and shakes off its dust. The movie has the usual early 1960s trappings that you expect in period stories, with its knee-brushing skirts and twangy guitars. Yet because Diwan doesn’t embalm the story in history (or with fetishistic production and costume designs), she has also closed the distance between the past and the present.The story unfolds piecemeal. Anne is newly pregnant shortly after the film opens, and is soon checking her panties for signs of her period. “Still nothing,” she writes in her calendar, adding an exclamation mark. The days slip by. She talks to an acquaintance who works at a factory (a flash of an alternate reality), practices conjugating Latin verbs (“to act”) and visits a solicitous doctor (Fabrizio Rongione in a brief, vivid turn). When he asks if she’s had sex, Anne lies — “no” — right before he says that she’s pregnant. “Do something,” she demands. “The law is unsparing,” he replies.As five weeks turn into seven and Anne’s belly swells, “Happening” becomes an existential thriller. Her situation becomes worrying, then excruciating. There’s nowhere for Anne to go for help and no one to turn to, or so it seems to her, creating a sense of mounting isolation that Diwan’s intimate filmmaking only underscores. Anne’s friends are terrified of getting pregnant (“it’d be the end of the world”); she can’t talk to her parents; her doctors are afraid or hostile. The confidence in the state — in the soundness of its institutions and systems — that’s an article of faith in many contemporary French movies is notably, harrowingly, absent.One surprise of “Happening” is that the world it portrays, with its moralistic whispers and prohibitions, bears no relationship to the popular image of French sexuality, specifically that of the nubile Frenchwoman, which once set tongues and fingers wagging. In 1957, the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther (in an article headlined “Probing Foreign Films”) huffed that “the startlingly shaped” Brigitte Bardot had “become France’s undisputed champion in the international sexpot race.” Two years later in a very different consideration of Bardot, Beauvoir noted that the star was more popular in the United States than at home: “In France, there is still a great deal of emphasis, officially, on women’s dependence upon men.”Diwan engages history, the world and the brutal cost of paternalism, at times obliquely. There are no explanatory newspaper or radio bulletins to parse, no righteous speeches; there’s scarcely any exposition at all. Instead, there is Anne up against a world of innumerable barriers, a world with pleasure and hope, yes, but also sexual shaming, furtive looks, hushed confidences and desperate actions. In the library, Anne peers at a medical-book illustration of a gestating woman; later, she takes knitting needles from her mother. Throughout, Diwan’s gaze remains clear, direct, fearless. She shows you a part of life that the movies rarely do.By which I mean: She shows you a woman who desires, desires to learn, have sex, bear children on her terms, be sovereign — a woman who, in choosing to live her life, risks becoming a criminal and dares to be free.HappeningRated R for sexuality, self-harm and graphic imagery. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Reflection’ Review: Through a Looking Glass of Horrors

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      The film, set against the backdrop of fighting in the Donbas region in 2014, would be bracing and haunting even if it weren’t so timely.“Reflection” is interested in the impact of casual violence on everyday life, right from its opening tableau: a lengthy shot in which the protagonist, a surgeon, Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi), chats with Andriy (Andrii Rymaruk), the man now living with Serhiy’s ex-wife (Nadiya Levchenko) and helping raise their daughter. The daughter (Nika Myslytska) prepares for a paintball battle in the background. Soon the sounds of that barrage drown out the men’s friendly conversation about artillery and medical supplies.The situation seems all the more charged if you know that “Reflection,” written, directed, photographed and edited by Valentyn Vasyanovych, is a Ukrainian film. It would be a bracing, haunting work even if it weren’t so timely. The movie premiered last year, before Russia attacked Ukraine in February, and it begins in November 2014, against the backdrop of fighting by Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region. (It is a follow-up of sorts to Vasyanovych’s “Atlantis,” set in 2025 in the ostensible aftermath of that conflict. That film now plays like a dispatch from an alternate timeline — grim, but not as grim as 2025 will look after a much wider war.)“Reflection” follows Serhiy on a mission to the front, where his van gets lost and he is captured. The movie principally unfolds in fixed long shots, but when the camera moves, it is startling: What appears to be a single take follows Serhiy as he is interrogated, tortured, led to a basement, hosed down and, as he shivers, commanded to inspect a corpse for signs of life. This, and cremation, will be his job until the second half, when the horrors he has witnessed go provocatively, largely unmentioned. As the cryptic final moments suggest, “Reflection” is a film about how war requires people to comprehend the unspoken and unseen.ReflectionNot rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      Performing a Comedy About Abortion, Watching the Supreme Court

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      Alison Leiby had just performed her show “Oh God, a Show About Abortion” when she learned of the leaked draft opinion showing that the court could be on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade.After finishing a preview performance of her hourlong stand-up show about reproductive rights, “Oh God, a Show About Abortion,” the comedian Alison Leiby was finishing dinner Monday night when she checked her phone.She had dozens of messages, all about the breaking news that a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion showed that the court appeared to be poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.“It was just an absolute confrontation with reality, that this is not theoretical anymore,” Leiby, a self-described abortion rights activist perhaps best known for work co-producing “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” said in an interview.As Leiby began to process what this potential decision would mean for the country, she also realized that she needed to quickly start thinking about how it might reshape her show, a 70-minute stand-up set about her own unwanted pregnancy and how it was resolved with a Saturday afternoon trip to Planned Parenthood. So at Tuesday evening’s preview at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York, she addressed the news at the top of the show.“I’m not going to ignore the literal elephant in the room,” Leiby said on Tuesday, thanking the person behind the lone guffaw in the audience for getting her wordplay.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Ross Douthat: The leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade is not a surprise, but the strategy behind it is something of a mystery.Roxane Gay: Whoever leaked the draft wanted people to understand the fate awaiting America. So people can prepare. So they can rage.Emily Bazelon: By suggesting in the draft that the progress women have made is a reason to throw out Roe, Justice Samuel Alito has turned feminism against itself.Bret Stephens: Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down. But overturning it would do more to replicate its damage than to reverse it.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher talks to an abortion rights advocate about the draft opinion and the future of abortion rights in America..“I’m not changing anything in response to the news, but I understand that your feelings toward it might be different,” Leiby said. “If something is funny, not funny, cathartic — feel that. That is valid. I’m not up here dancing for applause. We’re in this together.”Zoe Verzani, right, spoke to Leiby after the performance at the Cherry Lane Theater.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe news that the court could be on the verge of overturning Roe, which would lead to immediate abortion bans in some states and prompt others to move to issue bans and restrictions, comes as theaters and cinemas around New York City and the nation are presenting works about abortion.In Atlanta, performances of “Roe,” a play by Lisa Loomer focused on the plaintiff in the landmark case and the lawyer who argued it in front of the Supreme Court, begin Friday. The same day, the Metrograph Theater in New York will begin a series devoted to films that touch on or explore abortion, including Josef von Sternberg’s 1931 drama “An American Tragedy” and the 1987 romantic comedy “Dirty Dancing.” And this summer, a small nonprofit theater in Chicago will premiere “Roe v US,” a play billed as giving “voice to the women who made the choice.”The same night Leiby’s show opens in the West Village, a play that looks at abortion through a very different lens is scheduled to be held at a theater in Midtown: “Oh Gosnell,” about Kermit Gosnell, a doctor who was convicted of murder in 2013 following botched late-term abortions. The case became a rallying cry for the anti-abortion movement. Phelim McAleer, an Irish-born filmmaker and producer, said that he had seen Leiby’s show billed as an “abortion comedy” and decided to counter it by producing a play about Gosnell that draws its text from a grand jury report and trial transcripts, saying he wanted to give audiences an “alternative viewpoint.”The show has faced difficulties: The theater it originally planned to use backed out, and two of its seven actors walked out shortly before previews were set to begin.Intent on making sure the play goes ahead at its new venue, McAleer — who has made documentaries questioning the opposition to fracking, and said he was working on a film about Hunter Biden — said that he was still processing the Supreme Court news. “It definitely means the Gosnell story is more relevant than ever and plays about abortion are more relevant than ever,” he said.Leiby and McAleer’s two shows could hardly be more dissimilar. One is a comedy about an uneventful abortion procedure that makes a case for broad abortion access and the other is a graphic play about an infamous abortion provider whose clinic was described by prosecutors as a “house of horrors.” But Leiby and McAleer share one similar goal: to talk about, and to get audiences to listen to, a work about abortion.This week there will be a staged reading of “Oh Gosnell,” a play about Kermit Gosnell, a doctor who was convicted of murder in 2013 following botched late-term abortions.Russ Rowland“Oh God, a Show About Abortion,” — which is being presented by the comedian Ilana Glazer and directed by Lila Neugebauer — is scheduled to run through June 4. After seeing an earlier iteration of Leiby’s show, Jason Zinoman wrote in The New York Times that, “Without a trace of didacticism, she finds humor in the messy, confusing, sometimes banal experience of an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion.”The show tells her story: of a 35-year-old comedy writer who learns she is pregnant in a hotel bathroom in St. Louis. She is so confident in her disinterest in having children that in the act, she compares her eggs to those by Fabergé (“feminine but decorative”). At Leiby’s first mention of Planned Parenthood, a group of young, female public health students who were in the audience burst into cheers.One member of the group, Zoe Verzani, 24, who wore a hot-pink Planned Parenthood T-shirt to the show this week, said that she thought Leiby handled the material just right.Understand the State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More