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    ‘The Jinx Part Two’ Review: Filmmaking a Murderer

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    A new installment of HBO’s landmark true-crime documentary continues the strange, sad story of Robert Durst, in which the show is a major player.Nine years after we first heard Robert Durst mutter “Killed them all, of course,” “The Jinx” is back, with a new, six-episode Part Two that premiered Sunday on HBO. And why not?Maybe it feels unseemly, or like old news, with Durst having died in prison in 2022 after the original series helped convict him of murder. But a lot happened in the meantime. You can imagine that the filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, who directed both parts, felt a responsibility to a story he has now lived with for 20 years. And since “The Jinx” has effectively erased the line between itself and the case it chronicles, you could hope that he felt a responsibility to examine his own role in the prosecution and conviction of Durst, the wealthy and eccentric New York real estate heir.That examination does not come in the four episodes HBO provided for review, but Jarecki acknowledges the show’s continuing influence in a wry, “Can you believe that happened?” fashion.It is noted, once again, that in 2013 “Jinx” producers shared with prosecutors evidence regarding the disappearance and two deaths in which Durst was implicated, kick-starting the investigation that led to his conviction and life sentence in 2021 for the murder of his friend Susan Berman. The impact of the original broadcast on the popular imagination is conveyed when a young law clerk recalls exclaiming “Killed them all of course!” at the mention of Durst’s name, quoting his accidentally recorded words from the original series’s chilling final moments.This theme reaches an early peak in a scene filmed at a screening of that final episode in March 2015 in Jarecki’s apartment, on the same day the fleeing Durst — who had been watching the show along with the rest of us — was found and arrested in New Orleans. Relatives of Durst’s first wife, Kathleen McCormack, who had disappeared 33 years earlier, listen to his apparent confession with remarkable composure, probably acutely aware of the cameras a few feet away waiting to catch their reactions.From left, Jim, Sharon and Liz McCormack, relatives of Durst’s first wife, Kathleen McCormack, who disappeared in 1982.HBOWe 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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      What to Watch This Weekend: ‘The Jinx’ Is Back

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      HBO’s “The Jinx — Part Two” offers six more episodes detailing the stranger-than-fiction saga of Robert Durst.Robert Durst, as seen in prison footage in “The Jinx — Part Two.”HBOWhen “The Jinx” premiered in 2015, it was one of the pillars of the new true-crime wave — high-end but sufficiently lurid, with soap-opera twists but also documentary legitimacy. In the absence of criminal justice, maybe entertainment justice could suffice.Now the director Andrew Jarecki is back with “The Jinx — Part Two,” six more episodes detailing the stranger-than-fiction saga of the real estate scion and convicted murderer Robert Durst. (Only the first four episodes were made available for review. Hmm!) This “Jinx” isn’t just about Durst, though; it’s a “Jinx” about “The Jinx,” folding the story back in on itself yet again, additional layers of narratives and truths and maybe-truths, all getting rolled out together as delicious, buttery true-crime dough.The first episode, which airs Sunday at 10 p.m. on HBO, includes footage of dozens of people connected to the case all gathering to watch the original finale together. That was indeed a shocking episode of television, with Durst’s hot-mic bathroom confession as its astounding yet fitting conclusion. (The filmmakers later faced criticism for significantly editing Durst’s remarks, but maintained that the edits were representative of what he said.) The reaction scene plays out not with churning pathos but instead like TikToks of people watching Ned Stark meet his surprising fate or videos of fans in a sports bar groaning in unison. Even subjects of “The Jinx” experience it as a show, as fandom of one’s own life.Over and over, this “Jinx” includes people discussing original “Jinx.” Some describe it directly to Jarecki in interviews, or they mention it in recorded phone calls Durst made from prison, or they say on the witness stand that they watched the show, that they learned details of the case from TV. Actual courthouse footage blends together with hazy re-creation images, and we hear real audio but over fake visuals. And as the show turns its attention to Durst’s long-delayed trial, “The Jinx” takes on a behind-the-scenes quality as much as a true-crime one.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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      This ‘Sympathizer’ Star Wasn’t Sure He Was Right for the Job

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      Hoa Xuande had only one Hollywood credit when he was chosen to lead this starry HBO adaptation of a prize-winning novel. He needed all the encouragement he could get.Some three months into shooting “The Sympathizer,” Robert Downey Jr. sat Hoa Xuande down. He had something to show him.“I remember Rob walking in — he had this cheeky grin,” Xuande recalled on a recent afternoon in Los Angeles. A teaser trailer for the HBO series, an adaptation of Viet Than Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, had just been cut. Downey, who is the show’s executive producer and plays multiple roles in it, saw definitive proof of a star-making turn in “The Sympathizer.” He wanted Xuande, the star in question, to see it too.“There’s only one time that I’ve had this experience before, and it’s when I saw the teaser that we brought to Comic-Con for ‘Iron Man,’” Downey said. Seeing himself onscreen in the Iron Man suit was what finally convinced Downey that he had done justice to a daunting role.“And because I’d had that experience,” he said, “I knew that he needed it.”In many ways, Xuande (pronounced Shawn-day) did. A 36-year old Vietnamese Australian actor who had one Hollywood credit to his name, he still wasn’t sure he was the right choice to lead a series with such an impressive pedigree: an HBO adaptation of an acclaimed novel, produced by the Oscar-winning art-house studio A24, directed by the revered Korean auteur Park Chan-wook and co-starring a screen legend in Downey. He needed all the encouragement he could get.“I made him watch it six times,” Downey said.Based on the novel of the same name, “The Sympathizer” stars Xuande as a double agent and Robert Downey Jr., right, in multiple roles.Hopper Stone/HBOSeeing himself in the trailer had finally quieted his doubts, Xuande said, over lunch at a Venice restaurant. He had flown in from his home base in Sydney hours earlier and had barely settled into Downey’s spare live-work space, where Xuande sometimes stays.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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      “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Was Larry David’s Book of Manners

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      Suppose you’re out at brunch and find yourself in a buffet line that a fellow diner does not appear to have noticed. He casually approaches with his plate and tries to serve himself. Do you A. join the hangry mob cursing him or B. rise to this man’s defense, because you can see that he’s holding a plate, which means he already waited in line and is now returning for another helping? If you’re Larry David, not only is the answer B. but the misunderstanding warrants, in your scratchy Brooklyn accent, a triumphant clarification: “That’s not how we do things here in America! We don’t wait for seconds! Never!”Listen to this article, read by Ron ButlerOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Larry knows from buffet breaches. He once caught someone pulling what he termed a chat-’n’-cut, gaining proximity to food by talking to someone with a choicer position in line. He doesn’t like it but is impressed anyway. (“I respect your skills.”) Another time, when a restaurant employee accuses him of violating its buffet policy by sharing his plate with his manager and main man, Jeff, a lawyer magically appears to clarify for the employee that after a diner purchases a meal what he does with it is his business. Justice — and brunch — have been served.But now let’s suppose that you’re a serious, middle-aged woman named Marilyn, and you’ve decided to host dinner for your new beau’s closest friends, and the guests include this Larry David, whom you’ve already had to shoo from the arm of one of your comfy chairs. The group raises a glass and toasts your hospitality — well, everybody except you know who. Susie, who is married to Jeff and clearly finds Larry as much of an irritant as you’ve begun to, asks, “You can’t clink, Larry?” Why should he? “Because it’s a custom that people do, which is friendly and nice.” Larry takes a sip of water and asks the most peculiar question: “What is this, tap?” It is. His response? “Surprised you don’t have a filter.” Do you A. serve him your coldest glance and witheringly reply, “You have no filter,” or B. ask him to leave your home? If you’re Marilyn, you do both.Susie Essman, who has been the show’s true superego, and Larry David in Episode 5 of Season 12.Warner Brothers DiscoveryThese stories hail from “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which is scheduled to deliver its final episode on April 7, after 12 seasons and 24 years on HBO. In each incident, bald, bespectacled, wiry, wealthy Larry has stepped out of line, once physically, to defend or offend. I went back and watched the whole series and would like to report that television has never had anything like this show, nothing as uncouth and contradictory and unhinged and yet somehow under a tremendous amount of thematic control, nothing whose calamity doubles as a design for living. It presents the American id at war with its puritanical superego. Sometimes Larry is the one. Sometimes he’s the other. The best episodes dare him to inhabit the two at once, heretic and Talmudist.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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      Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show Review: Out and Open

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      Have you heard the one about the comedian who tried to live truthfully?Midway through “Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,” the comedian tries to convince Jamar Neighbors, his longtime friend and fellow standup, to deepen his act by using his unhappy past as material. Neighbors, who prefers an energetic, joke-focused performance (his act includes doing back flips onstage), is skeptical about what he calls “therapy comedy.” Why should he dwell on his foster mother, he asks, when “Jeff Bezos is going to space”?“Yeah, but also Jeff Bezos is going to space because it’s some [expletive] he can’t talk to his mama about,” Carmichael says. “It always comes back to that. You’re not just going to space.”In “Reality Show,” a captivating, introspective, sometimes uneasy docuseries beginning Friday on HBO, Carmichael does not go to space. But he does go boldly, bringing family, friends and lovers on an exploration of what it means to live honestly and how it feels to deal with the repercussions.In “Rothaniel,” his 2022 comedy special, Carmichael came out publicly as gay. But that intimate and revelatory show was about more than sexual identity. It was about secrets, not just Carmichael’s being gay (and its effect on his relationship with his conservative Christian mother, Cynthia), but also his family history of deceptions, including his father, Joe, having had a second family when Carmichael was young.“Rothaniel” (the title comes from Carmichael’s actual first name, which he also revealed) was in part about how even open secrets can be corrosive, about what living in a state of knowing-but-not-saying does to you.“Reality Show” is an effort to undo that, in front of an omnipresent camera crew. The Carmichael that we see here is making up for lost time. “I came out late in life,” he says. “I was like basically 30. So I’m like, in gay years, I’m 17.”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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      Andrea Riseborough Has a Hidden Agenda

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      Currently in two series, “The Regime” and “Alice & Jack,” this versatile actress has played dozens of characters. What connects them? Not even she knows.“I really do wish sometimes that I could do all of this a different way,” Andrea Riseborough said. “But I suppose I just do it the way that I do it. And there are consequences.”She paused then, pressing her lips into a thin smile. “That all sounds a bit dramatic,” she added.This was on an afternoon in early March, and Riseborough, 42, a metamorphic actress with a worrying sense of commitment, was seated at a West Village cafe, a basket of vinegar-doused French fries in front of her. She is often unrecognizable from one project to the next, a combination of makeup, hairstyle (what Meryl Streep is to accents, Riseborough is to coiffure) and marrow-deep transformation. Here, offscreen, she wore a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt under a busy leather jacket. Her hair, still growing out from the dismal pixie cut she got for the HBO series “The Regime,” was pulled back with an elastic.In person, she is a particular mix of gravity and nonchalance. She knows that she has a reputation for seriousness, which she rejects. “It would be pretty strange to apologize for being serious when you’re giggling so much,” she said. But I rarely heard her laugh. She considered each question carefully and her responses were often philosophical rather than personal. “People,” she might say in place of “I.” Or “most people.” Or “everyone.” Her face, at rest and free of makeup, isn’t especially restful. There is a watchfulness to her, a sense of thoughts tumbling behind those eyes.In her two decades in the business, goaded by a tireless work ethic that sometimes saw her completing as many as five projects per year, she has amassed credits across stage, film and television. It can be hard to find a through-line among those enterprises, mainstream and independent, comedy and tragedy and horror.In ”The Regime,” Riseborough, left, plays palace master for a despot, played by Kate Winslet.Miya Mizuno/HBOIn 2022, for example, she starred in the sex-addled queer musical “Please Baby Please,” produced by her production company; the cockeyed interwar drama “Amsterdam”; the boisterous children’s film “Matilda: the Musical”; the bleak Scandinavian thriller “What Remains”; and the wrenching Texas-set indie, “To Leslie,” for which Riseborough received her first Academy Award nomination. (That nomination was complicated by perceived campaigning irregularities, though the Academy ultimately concluded that no guidelines had been violated.) Try to connect those dots.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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      Jonathan Majors Had History of Abuse in Relationships, Women Say

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      The actor denied physical abuse. Separately, he said he wasn’t told of accusations of misbehavior on the set of “Lovecraft Country.”Since the actor Jonathan Majors was found guilty in December of assaulting and harassing a girlfriend, he has maintained his innocence and his hope of reviving a once-skyrocketing career that disintegrated in the wake of his conviction. In a televised interview last month, he said that he had “never struck a woman.”But in pretrial statements to the prosecution in that assault case and, separately, in interviews with The New York Times, another former girlfriend, Emma Duncan, accused him of emotionally and physically abusing her — choking her, throwing her around and bruising her. A third, Maura Hooper, also said that he had emotionally abused her.Speaking publicly for the first time, Ms. Duncan and Ms. Hooper, actresses who dated Mr. Majors before he shot to fame as the supervillain Kang in Marvel projects, described him as a controlling, threatening figure who isolated them from friends and career pursuits. “You lose your sense of worth,” Ms. Duncan said.And in interviews with former colleagues, The Times found that Mr. Majors had a history of volatility on the set of the HBO series “Lovecraft Country” that included confrontations with female co-workers that led them to complain to the network.On Thursday afternoon, a lawyer for Mr. Majors, Priya Chaudhry, said that Mr. Majors had not physically abused Ms. Duncan. She described the relationships with both women as “toxic” and said that Mr. Majors was taking responsibility for his role in them. She added that “countless” women in the entertainment industry “can attest to his professionalism.”This article is based on interviews with 20 people, including some who requested anonymity for fear of career repercussions, and on statements submitted to the prosecution in the December case, in which Mr. Majors was found guilty of harassment and misdemeanor assault of Grace Jabbari, a former girlfriend. He is scheduled to be sentenced in April, though his lawyers asked on Tuesday that the judge throw out the jury’s guilty verdict.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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      ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Made Something Out of Nothing

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      At the end of his 1999 HBO special, “Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm,” David wraps up a stand-up comedy set by telling his audience he has no more material for them. “This is what happens when you run out of nothing,” he says.The joke refers to the famous description of “Seinfeld,” the sitcom that David created with Jerry Seinfeld, as “a show about nothing.” It is also a bit of a lie.For starters, it was always misleading to say that “Seinfeld” was about nothing. Yes, it was militantly anti-message, building small-bore farces around four single, child-free New Yorkers who had an inordinate amount of time to sit in a diner. But its allergy to making statements was a statement in itself; it made the show emblematic of the sanguine, end-of-history 1990s.Second, David hadn’t really run out of anything. “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the comedy of ill manners that emerged from David’s special, began on HBO in 2000. It has run off and on for nearly a quarter-century, and Season 12, beginning on Sunday, will be its last.On “Curb,” David starred as “Larry David,” simultaneously the world’s most comfortable and uncomfortable man, registering his complaints to a cast of sounding boards: Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), his wife and later ex-wife; Jeff (Jeff Garlin), his manager; Leon (J.B. Smoove), his permanent houseguest, who joined the series in mid-run and filled the chaos-demon role that Kramer (Michael Richards) did on “Seinfeld.”On “Curb,” David has starred as “Larry David,” simultaneously the world’s most comfortable and uncomfortable man.John Johnson/HBOWe 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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      Ukraine Criticizes HBO, Saying New ‘White Lotus’ Actor Supports War

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      On social media, Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted clips of the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic receiving a medal for cultural achievement from Vladimir Putin in 2018.Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized HBO this week after Milos Bikovic was cast in the third season of “The White Lotus,” saying without evidence that the Serbian actor had supported Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.HBO announced on Jan. 12 that Bikovic, 36, would be joining the dark comedy about wealthy tourists at island resorts. On Wednesday, the foreign ministry of Ukraine made the accusations against Bikovic on social media, writing, “HBO, is it all right for you to work with a person who supports genocide & violates international law?”Bikovic was awarded the Pushkin Medal, which honors contributions to Russian arts and culture, by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2018 and received Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2021.In February 2022, the day after the invasion began, Bikovic said on Instagram that he wished the war had not happened. “War and bloodshed on any side reminds us of how far humanity is from global unity and love,” he wrote in Russian and Serbian. “God save the lives of all those who are now in danger!”Ukraine’s foreign ministry and Bikovic did not respond to requests for comment. An HBO spokesman said questions should be directed to Bikovic’s representatives.President Biden has called Russia’s invasion genocide, and The New York Times has collected evidence of brutalities by Russia, including the willful killing of noncombatants.A 79-second video that Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted on social media interspersed scenes from “The White Lotus” with clips of Bikovic accepting the award from Putin and previous comments it said the actor had made about Russia. In a voice-over, it claimed that Bikovic was “the Kremlin’s foreign mouthpiece.”During Bikovic’s acceptance speech for the Pushkin Medal, he emphasized unity between Russia and Serbia. “What a joy for Russians and Serbs in our homeland because we have the same worldview,” he said in Russian.Ukraine barred Bikovic from entering the country in 2019 for what it called national security reasons. At the time, he told a Serbian publication that “from the human and poetic point of view the situation is absurd and interesting.”Before he was cast in “The White Lotus,” Bikovic acted in movies including “South Wind,” which follows a gang member in Belgrade; “Sunstroke,” about military officers remembering the collapse of the Russian Empire; “Ice,” in which he plays a figure skater; and “The Balkan Line,” about a military operation during the Kosovo war.Season 3 of “The White Lotus” is set to begin production in Thailand next month and is scheduled to air in 2025. It will feature Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey and the returning cast member Natasha Rothwell. More