Movies

A prosecutor said on Friday that the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was “an abusive rapist” and “a predator” who used his power to manipulate and assault several women in the movie business, then stayed in touch with them to ensure their silence and compliance.“He had a surefire insurance policy: That the witnesses were standing in line to get into his universe,” Joan Illuzzi, an assistant district attorney, told the jury during her closing arguments at Mr. Weinstein’s rape trial.“The universe is run by me,” she added, adopting Mr. Weinstein’s point of view, “therefore they don’t get to complain when they’re stepped on, spit on, demoralized and yes, raped and abused by the defendant.”Ms. Illuzzi’s summation of Mr. Weinstein’s tactic — “trick and surprise,” she called it — was a dramatic finale to the trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, which has emerged as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement.In her presentation, Ms. Illuzzi returned repeatedly to the difference in power between Mr. Weinstein — “a giant” in the film industry — and his accusers, who worked as cocktail waitresses or models and were trying to break into the film industry.“It is a complete dichotomy,” she said. “Here is the defendant with everything using and abusing people who he knows has nothing.”Mr. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges in the case — including rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault — which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.Six women testified at trial that he had sexually assaulted them, though he faces charges in connection with only two of them. The others were allowed to testify to establish a pattern of behavior.On Thursday, his lawyers made their own closing pitch to the jury, claiming that he himself had been the victim of an “overzealous prosecution” and that the six women who took the stand to accuse him of assault and other crimes were not passive victims, but active participants in ongoing and often transactional relationships.Standing before the jury on Friday, Ms. Illuzzi sought to counter that narrative, arguing that Mr. Weinstein purposefully maintained ties with his victims to keep them under his control.“He made sure he had contact with the people he was worried about,” Ms. Illuzzi said, adding, “That’s the mark of a predator.”The indictment rests on the accusations of two women: Miriam Haley, a former reality television show production assistant who testified that Mr. Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at his TriBeCa apartment in 2006; and Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress from a small town in Washington State, who claimed he raped her in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room in 2013.Both women acknowledged during cross-examination that they not only had friendly interactions with Mr. Weinstein after their alleged attacks, but later had consensual sex with him.Four other women also testified that Mr. Weinstein attacked them in various ways — among them, the actress Annabella Sciorra, best known for her role in “The Sopranos.” She testified last month that Mr. Weinstein pushed his way into her Gramercy Park apartment in the winter months of 1993 or 1994 then violently raped her even as she kicked and punched him.Prosecutors are using her testimony to support the top charge of predatory sexual assault, which carries a possible life sentence.The accusations of Ms. Sciorra and three other accusers were barred by the statute of limitations from being charged as separate crimes. Still, the presiding judge, Justice James M. Burke allowed them to take the stand to bolster the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Weinstein engaged in a pattern of abusive behavior over decades.Ms. Illuzzi stood directly in front of the jury delivering closing remarks in a conversational style and the occasional lighthearted quips. She began her closing remarks with the prosecution’s strongest witness: Ms. Sciorra.The prosecutor acknowledged Ms. Sciorra never reported the alleged rape to the police, but she did tell her friend and fellow actress, Rosie Perez, though in veiled terms.Not reporting the assault left Ms. Sciorra, who soon began self-harming, a damaged woman and made her vulnerable to further abuse by Mr. Weinstein, the prosecutor said. “The defendant knew her now as a weak link, a weak mark he could get again,” Ms. Illuzzi said.Mr. Weinstein sought to control Ms. Sciorra again in August 2017, Ms. Illuzzi said, as rumors began to swirl that journalists were going to expose his sexual misconduct. That month, Mr. Weinstein hired an Israeli intelligence firm, Black Cube, to investigate certain “red flags” like Ms. Sciorra, whom Mr. Weinstein believed were speaking to reporters.Ms. Illuzzi focused the jury’s attention on an email dated Oct. 26, 2017. In it, Mr. Weinstein instructed a subordinate to handle questions from Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker about his relationship with Ms. Sciorra by saying, “We are going to say it was consensual or deny it.”“Truth be damned,” Ms. Illuzzi said, referring to his email. Then she told the jury, “I submit to you, that’s a confession.”In the defense’s closing arguments on Thursday, Donna Rotunno, Mr. Weinstein’s lead lawyer, said several times that the accusers in the case had chosen to engage in consensual sex with him to advance their careers, and their decisions to visit Mr. Weinstein in hotels and at his apartment supported that argument.On Friday, however, Ms. Illuzzi took direct issue with that position. “When an adult goes to another adult’s home, should they expect that they’re going to have to engage in sex?” she asked the jury.Ms. Illuzzi was talking about Ms. Haley, who testified that when she visited Mr. Weinstein at his Manhattan loft, he pulled her into a bedroom, pushed her onto a bed, held her down and forcibly performed oral sex on her.“This is a crime and a wanton disregard for other people,” Ms. Illuzzi said.She later suggested that Mr. Weinstein could have hired sex workers, but had instead targeted women who badly wanted to break into the business: “Maybe his kink,” she said, “is the fear in their eyes.”Toward the end of her statement, Ms. Illuzzi turned her attention toward Ms. Mann, the aspiring actress who earlier this month gave a complicated and emotional account of how Mr. Weinstein raped her during a long relationship that included some consensual sex.Ms. Mann’s testimony was emblematic of the difficult questions that the jury will ultimately have to wrestle with when they begin their deliberations as early as Tuesday. Did the fact that some of the women benefited professionally from their association with Mr. Weinstein suggest their relationships with him were consensual and transactional? And does the fact some of his accusers also had consensual sex with him undermine their claim that he on other occasions sexually assaulted them?Ms. Illuzzi addressed those questions head-on.“The question is not whether or not Jessica made a bad decision,” Ms. Illuzzi told the jury. “The question for you is whether or not Jessica Mann is lying about it. She’s telling you the truth. She’s the victim of rape.”“She could have been writing him love notes every single day,” Ms. Illuzzi added. “She could have been married to him. It still wouldn’t make a difference. He still would not be allowed to rape her.” More

On “Fantasy Island,” the weird-wonderful ABC series that aired from 1977 to 1984, fantasies were to die for. In the new horror film “Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island,” fantasies are to die in.First, a look back. On the series, guests traveled to the bucolic Pacific Ocean location to find a lost love, be a playboy or live out some elaborately produced dreamscape that ended in an uplifting life lesson. They were welcomed by the island’s mysterious overseer, Mr. Roarke (played by the dashing actor Ricardo Montalbán), who had godlike powers to predict outcomes and turn back time. His sidekick, Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize), provided aggressively sexist comic relief.“Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island,” directed by Jeff Wadlow and now in theaters, reimagines the lush title isle as a playground of terrors. The place is again overseen by Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña), but this time he has more nefarious plans for his guests, including fantasies of torture and revenge from the grave.Unlike the recent horror movie reboot of “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour,” a children’s TV show, it’s easy to imagine “Fantasy Island” as a horror property. The fantasies depicted were encyclopedic in their macabre scope, including murder, séances, ghost hunts, telekinesis, black magic, Nazis, lycanthropy and a visit by Jack the Ripper.For horror fans, “Fantasy Island” remains an oasis of scares told in the style of old-school, family-friendly Hollywood horror. Here are five creepy story lines from the fifth and sixth seasons of the original series, now streaming on Crackle. Spoilers ahead!SEASON FIVE (1981-82)‘The Lady and the Monster’Horror Genres: MonstersDr. Carla Frankenstein (Lynda Day George), a genetic researcher, visits a reconstruction of Baron von Frankenstein’s castle and learns that he was real when she meets Frankenstein’s monster (William Smith), who has lived there for 150 years. She and the monster become friends, and thwart a plan by bumbling spies from a competing genetic laboratory to kidnap and turn the creature into a sideshow attraction. Carla leaves the island knowing that in Mr. Roarke’s hands the monster will care for his chickens in peace.‘The Ghost’s Story’Horror Genre: Spirits, cursesAmanda (Tanya Roberts), a Baltimore secretary, has a fantasy to win the $100,000 offered to the person who can stay two hours in a haunted manor. Undeterred by screaming skulls that accost her inside the mansion, Amanda meets Timothy (Dack Rambo), a handsome 18th-century ghost who has haunted the home since his admiral father cursed him for fleeing a duel. Winning the prize money, Amanda gives Timothy a handsome makeover. Mr. Roarke summons Timothy’s dead father and they reconcile, lifting the curse. Timothy is made human and, forgetting he was once a spirit, leaves the island with Amanda.‘Night of the Tormented Soul’Horror Genres: Haunted houses, creepy kidsShipwrecked as children, Jason and Beth (Stephen Shortridge and Dianne Kay) were raised by their uncle, Richard Martinique (Richard Anderson). Their fantasy is to learn what happened the night their uncle and his housekeeper, Blanche (Elinor Donahue), were murdered. At their uncle’s creepy mansion, the ghosts of Richard and Blanche re-enact the fateful night when Blanche accidentally shoots and kills Richard after he laughs when she tells him she loves him. In her haste to protect the children from seeing the body, she falls to her death. Mr. Roarke appears and tells Blanche that Richard actually loved her back, and the two ghosts make peace and disappear arm in arm. Then, Mr. Roarke reveals that Jason and Beth are not siblings after all, and they express their own love for each other.SEASON SIX (1982-83)‘The Devil Stick’Horror genres: Plagues, witchcraftCarl’s fantasy is to find Ally (Crystal Bernard), a young woman who disappeared soon after they met. When he (Dean Butler) finds her in a small town on Fantasy Island, she urges him to leave. It turns out that a witch who was burned at the stake put a spell on Ally’s family and the only way to break it is to put an arrow through Carl’s heart. When Mr. Roarke diverts an arrow that someone shoots at Carl, it plunges into a monument that spews plague-healing water. (It’s a long story.) The curse lifted, Carl and Ally become lovers.‘Island of Horrors’Horror Genres: Zombies, mind controlErica (Gayle Hunnicutt) travels to a small island in search of her fiancé, Richard (Christopher Connelly), who she suspects is in the nefarious hands of his scientist partner, Lewis (Randolph Mantooth). On the island, she escapes from a barefoot warlock who summons zombies with a flash of light from his forehead. Mr. Roarke reveals that Lewis controls Richard’s mind and practices “a black art that turns its victims into the walking dead.” Erica breaks Lewis’s spell by applying a rare salt, found only on Fantasy Island, to Richard’s lips. Erica and Richard leave the island again a couple. More

Ben Schwartz, the actor and comedian, dunked the ball without looking at the joystick. “This is just like muscle memory,” he said.On a frosty Monday afternoon, Mr. Schwartz had sneaked away from publicity rounds for an hour of arcade games at Barcade in the East Village of Manhattan. A few day drinkers slouched on bar stools, but Mr. Schwartz, 38, had the run of the machines.“Playing video games by myself makes me happy,” he said.Raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he spent much of his childhood hunched over a controller. On weekends, he and friends would go to the local Nathan’s, spending the day playing arcade games and scarfing hot dogs. Did it impress girls? “Are you crazy?” Mr. Schwartz said. “Almost nothing I did impressed anyone.”Then his parents bought a Super Nintendo and he could play video games at home. “I was, like, addicted,” he said. “I loved it so much.” He still loves it.“Mom, can I have quarters?” he asked, turning to his publicist.Mr. Schwartz, who won an Emmy for co-writing Hugh Jackman’s opening number at the 2009 Oscars, wore a polka-dotted shirt buttoned to the neck and basketball-print socks under spotless white Nikes.An urban Peter Pan, he specializes in portraying young men who can’t or won’t grow up. He played the incorrigible rich kid Jean-Ralphio in the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” and a pushy spin doctor in the management consultant drama “House of Lies.” A popular voice actor, he also plays characters in “Duck Tales” and “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”He has also voiced a video game character, Skidmark, a blue snail in the game Turbo: Super Stunt Squad, as well as the title character in the movie “Sonic the Hedgehog,” adapted from the Sega game. “Nobody cares about my face,” he said.Grinning and pale, like a friendly ghost with good hair, he arrived a few minutes after noon and toured Barcade in search of the Sonic game. When the first trailer for “Sonic” was released last year, fans reacted to the character’s design with horror, singling out the teeth (so many!) and the legs (so disproportionately long!). Sonic 2.0 looks more cartoonish, like the original arcade game. “The newer design fits better,” Mr. Schwartz said. “It looks way more like me.”The bar didn’t have Sonic so he began with a 1980s arcade game called Tapper, in which the player is a bartender serving beer to thirsty patrons. “This I have history with,” he said.Eyes glittering with reflected pixels, he began slinging frosty mugs, first in a saloon and then in a stadium, nailing the bonus round. “I can’t tell if it’s embarrassing for me to be very good at this,” he said. As the game progressed, the pixelated customers grew more demanding. “It is probably not teaching kids good values,” he said. Having whiffed the second bonus round, he walked away with several lives remaining.“As a kid I never would have left a quarter in the machine,” he said. “Sacrilege. Truly sacrilege.”Onscreen, Mr. Schwartz often plays characters who project a boundless and mostly undeserved confidence. But when it comes to arcade games, the prowess is real. Growing up, he devoted himself to a game until he mastered it, which Mr. Schwartz, a former psychology and anthropology double major, blames on mild strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder. “When I start something, I really want to finish, which has helped me in writing and stuff,” he said.After graduating from Union College (he wore a Super Nintendo controller over his gown), he worked as a page on the “Late Show With David Letterman” and as an intern at the Upright Citizens Brigade so he could afford to take improv classes. He spent his free time writing jokes, 10 per day, which were mostly rejected.These days, he still writes, acts and improvises. In 2018, he joined comedic forces with Thomas Middleditch, the geeky star of “Silicon Valley,” and created a two-man improvisational show. “We played Carnegie Hall,” he said. “Crazy.”Bounding to the back of the bar, he sped through a round of the driving game Championship Sprint, battled Street Fighter: The Movie, and ventured inside the pinball game Alice Cooper’s Nightmare Castle. “You’re a regular ghostbuster, aren’t you?” the game said, as Mr. Schwartz scored a multiball.He bypassed Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (“Can’t separate the art from the artist,” he said) and instead applied himself to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. He played as Leonardo, the character he voices, defeating foot soldiers as he marauded through a dystopian New York. “Before Giuliani,” Mr. Schwartz said.His assistant brought a cup of green tea and he left Leonardo to his travails. “We have unlimited coins,” he said, a little wistfully. “We could go forever.”With his hour nearly up, he attempted a few levels of The Simpsons, playing as Homer, mashing the buttons with impossible speed. “Imagine being able to play your favorite character from your favorite show,” he said, as Homer stole a hot dog from a small child. “Like imagine you could play Elizabeth Moss from ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’”For his final game, he put a quarter into NBA Jam, playing as Anthony Mason alongside Patrick Ewing. “He’s on my socks,” Mr. Schwartz said proudly, as he maneuvered his players up and down the court effortlessly, swooshing three-pointers. “I still got it. After all these years, maybe this is what I’m born to do, and the other stuff had just been wasting time.” More

LONDON — When we first see him, Mr. Knightley is completely naked. Later, Emma Woodhouse warms her exposed backside by a roaring fire. In the couple’s climactic romantic scene, blood gushes from Emma’s nose.In moments like these, the new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” which opens in British theaters on Friday, seems like a bold departure from its restrained source.The list of names involved in the film is a directory of buzzy millennial talent, suggesting a 21st-century take on the 1815 novel. And the trailer echoes recent spiky, comic period dramas like “The Favourite.” But this new version of Austen’s frequently adapted work is, in fact, a rather faithful and straightforward adaptation.With a screenplay by the novelist Eleanor Catton, the youngest winner of the Booker Prize, this is the feature film debut for Autumn de Wilde, who’s previously shot an album cover for The White Stripes and a music video for Florence and the Machine. The soundtrack is by Isobel Waller-Bridge, who also wrote the ecclesiastical choral score for the second season of her sister Phoebe’s show “Fleabag.”Recent period literary adaptations like Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” and Armando Iannucci’s “The Personal History of David Copperfield” have refreshed their source material by playing with structure and casting a knowing, modern eye over the social constraints of their settings. The characters in them move and speak in ways that seem natural today.In contrast, this “Emma” unfolds chronologically, with familiar emotional beats and a neat, happy ending. Much of the dialogue is lifted straight from the book, and the period manners remain.Injecting a modern spirit into this adaptation “wasn’t the first consideration, actually,” Catton said in a telephone interview from her native New Zealand.“When I read ‘Emma’, I find it endlessly relatable,” she said. It was “so lively and so intimate, and it feels so fresh,” she added, that reappraising it through a contemporary lens felt unnecessary: “It doesn’t at all feel like a book that’s 200 years old.”In a recent interview in London, de Wilde, the director, agreed: “A great story’s a great story,” she said. “My goal was never to modernize, but only to humanize.”Adapting a work as well-known as “Emma,” however, has its own challenges. During the wave of Austen adaptations in the mid-90s, dubbed “Austenmania,” there were no fewer than three feature-length takes on the novel: a cinematic release starring Gwyneth Paltrow, a TV film starring Kate Beckinsale, and Amy Heckerling’s high school movie “Clueless.” When a television version aired in Britain in 2009, a critic in The Guardian wondered whether “we need another ‘Emma’ at all.” How do you make a 2020 iteration stand out?Catton insisted that there has so far been no “iconic period adaptation” of the novel. “We hope that this will be a contender,” she added. (She disliked the Paltrow version, she said, “for a number of reasons,” including the “misogynistic” treatment of Toni Collette’s character.) The new movie’s sense of humor and de Wilde’s “heightened style and absurdist aesthetic” set this “Emma” apart from the rest, she added.It’s true that this heavily stylized “Emma” looks different from its predecessors, with sumptuous pastels, bursts of bright color, and center-framed shots, reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” or Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”Emma wears a number of modern-looking accessories, from dangly red earrings to a chunky green necklace. Her home is piled high with fabrics, flowers, china and cakes.“There’s a misconception that everything from that period already looked antique,” de Wilde said. “But color was actually how you showed your wealth. It was very important to me to establish Emma’s place in society by the use of color.”The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who brought a dark streak to the doe-eyed innocents she played in “The Witch” and “Thoroughbreds,” foregrounds Emma’s objectionable qualities — after all, this is the heroine Austen said “no one but myself will much like.”Taylor-Joy’s Emma is poised and quietly scheming: Eyebrows arched, her glassy eyes swivel around the room, scrutinizing her company. She is a vain, manipulative snob. When it suits her, she can be charming, but, to the poor spinster, Mrs. Bates, she is coldly polite at best, and, at worst, openly derisive.It seems fitting that this Emma is allowed to be a little nastier, at a time when unlikable, self-absorbed, privileged women are being celebrated onscreen.“There would be no ‘Fleabag’ without ‘Emma’!” Catton said. “It’s a story about someone realizing how self-centered they are,” which felt as urgent in 2020 “as it was in any age of history,” she added.Then there’s the nudity, and the nosebleed. “I’ve thought a lot about how much the body interfered with some of the most romantic moments of my life,” de Wilde said. “I love the comedy of fighting your body. And a nosebleed is so exposing.”“It was important to me that Emma seems almost inhuman at the beginning, and then becomes human,” de Wilde said. “We were also human in 1814.” More