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    ‘Another Simple Favor’ Review: Big Hats and Big Intrigue

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    The sequel to the deranged 2018 comedy finds Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick feuding in the Italian sun.When “A Simple Favor” came out in 2018, I fell headlong in love. It was just so unhinged, and so self-aware — not the sort of comedy you’d expect from two Hollywood actresses as bankable as Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, or a filmmaker as mainstream as Paul Feig, who directed the genre-upending “Bridesmaids” in 2011. “A Simple Favor” felt like a melodramatic French psychosexual confection that had suddenly become sentient and started making fun of itself.You’ll have to go back and remind yourself of the plot before you see the sequel, “Another Simple Favor,” for which Lively, Kendrick and Feig have all returned. It won’t make any sense if you don’t, though it barely makes sense even if you do. Here’s the basic cheat sheet, spoilers obviously included: In the first film, Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick), a widow and a mommy vlogger, becomes embroiled in the life of her young son’s friend’s mother, the glamorous Emily Nelson (Lively). Emily is married to an English professor named Sean (Henry Golding). In the course of the film, sordid secrets are revealed and murders happen, and Stephanie and Sean hook up when they think Emily is dead, and it’s all very bonkers, though the most bonkers part is probably Emily’s amazing pantsuits. (If you know, you know.)The most pertinent detail to recall going into this new film (besides that other kinda-sorta incestuous liaison from Stephanie’s past) is that Emily is the assumed identity of a woman named Hope. Furthermore, Hope is a triplet; her sisters were named Faith (who’s dead now) and Charity (who died shortly after they were born). Don’t forget that. OK. Deep breath.“Another Simple Favor” escapes the pedestrian upscale suburban setting of its predecessor, flying (via private plane, naturally) to Capri, Italy, though not until after we learn that Stephanie has pivoted to true crime vlogging and writing, and Emily has figured out how to get out of her prison sentence, and is marrying a glamorous and rich Italian. Naturally she wants Stephanie, her bosom frenemy, to be her maid of honor. So off to the island they go, where things go extremely sideways.No one is more regretful than me to announce that “Another Simple Favor” is not as bananas as the first film. It was inevitable. The element of surprise is gone, for one thing: “A Simple Favor” was just so plain weird, so far afield of the vibe most people were expecting — what is this psychotic and vaguely erotic movie, and does it know how demented it is? — that the whole thing wound up feeling fresh. You had to lock into its vibe to appreciate it, but in the right frame of mind, it was a pleasure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Asian American Actors Are Finally Getting Romantic Lead Roles

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      It was not long ago that the actor and writer Joel Kim Booster first began going to auditions only to quickly realize that the roles available to him as an Asian American man were severely limited.“It does not get better from here, no matter how many Chinese-food delivery boys you play,” he recalled being told by other Asian American actors.But Booster kept at it. And eventually, in 2022, he got to portray a gay Asian American man in “Fire Island,” a groundbreaking rom-com that he also wrote. “So much of that movie,” Booster said, “is just a literal transcript from my life.”As it turned out, things did get a little better for Asian American men in Hollywood during the decade that Booster spent toiling. And he senses that the momentum has continued in the two years since “Fire Island” debuted.Many of the newest Asian and Asian American stories seem unconcerned with “the white gaze,” he said. And so “the conversation has sort of moved on for a lot of people,” he said, adding that his movie “almost feels a little retrograde now.”Indeed, since the 2018 blockbuster “Crazy Rich Asians” became a box office hit, Asian and Asian American stories and characters have proliferated in American pop culture. And after decades of degrading, often emasculating portrayals, Asian and Asian American men like Booster have been at the center of the new work, often playing the sort of hunky hero parts that Hollywood long kept out of reach.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More