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      Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Verdict: The Actual Malice of the Trial

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      In this post-#MeToo moment, misogyny and celebrity go hand in hand.The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial was, from gavel to gavel, a singularly baffling, unedifying and sad spectacle. Now that it has ended with the jury finding in favor of Depp on all questions and in favor of Heard on only one, it’s clear that the confusion was the point.Why did Depp, who had already lost a similar case in Britain, insist on going back to court? A public trial, during which allegations of physical, sexual, emotional and substance abuse against him were sure to be repeated, couldn’t be counted on to restore his reputation. Heard, his ex-wife, was counting on the opposite: that the world would hear, in detail, about the physical torments that led her to describe herself, in the Washington Post op-ed that led to the suit, as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”Even before the verdict came in, Depp had already won. What had looked to many like a clear-cut case of domestic violence had devolved into a “both sides” melodrama. The fact that Heard’s partial victory, which involved not Depp’s words but those spoken in 2020 by Adam Waldman, his lawyer at the time, can be spun in that direction shows how such ambiguity served Depp all along. As one commenter on The New York Times site put it, “Every relationship has its troubles.” Life is complicated. Maybe they were both abusive. Who really knows what happened? The convention of courtroom journalism is to make a scruple of indeterminacy. And so we found ourselves in the familiar land of he said/she said.The Depp-Heard trial was a singularly baffling, unedifying and sad spectacle, both inside the courtroom and out. Craig Hudson/Associated PressWe should know by now that the symmetry implied by that phrase is an ideological fiction, that women who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have a much harder time being listened to than their assailants. I don’t mean that women always tell the truth, that men are always guilty as charged, or that due process isn’t the bedrock of justice. But Depp-Heard wasn’t a criminal trial; it was a civil action intended to measure the reputational harm each one claimed the other had done. Which means that it rested less on facts than on sympathies.In that regard, Depp possessed distinct advantages. He isn’t a better actor than Heard, but her conduct on the stand was more harshly criticized in no small part because he’s a more familiar performer, a bigger star who has dwelled for much longer in the glow of public approbation. He brought with him into the courtroom the well-known characters he has played, a virtual entourage of lovable rogues, misunderstood artists and gonzo rebels. He’s Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow, Hunter S. Thompson, Gilbert Grape.We’ve seen him mischievous and mercurial, but never truly menacing. He’s someone we’ve watched grow up, from juvenile heartthrob on “21 Jump Street” to crusty old salt in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. His offscreen peccadilloes (the drinking, the drugs, the “Winona Forever” tattoo) have been part of the pop-cultural background noise for much of that time, classified along with the scandals and shenanigans that have been a Hollywood sideshow since the silent era.Depp is someone audiences have watched grow up onscreen, in movies like (clockwise from top left) “Edward Scissorhands,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”Clockwise from top left: 20th Century Studios; Paramount Pictures, via RGR Collection/Alamy; Universal Pictures, via TCD and Prod.DB/Alamy; Disney, via Moviestore Collection Ltd/AlamyIn his testimony, Depp copped to some bad stuff, but this too was a play for sympathy, of a piece with the charm and courtliness he was at pains to display. That he came off as a guy unable to control his temper or his appetites was seen, by many of the most vocal social media users, to enhance his credibility, while Heard’s every tear or gesture was taken to undermine hers. The audience was primed to accept him as flawed, vulnerable, human, and to view her as monstrous.Because he’s a man. Celebrity and masculinity confer mutually reinforcing advantages. Famous men — athletes, actors, musicians, politicians — get to be that way partly because they represent what other men aspire to be. Defending their prerogatives is a way of protecting, and asserting, our own. We want them to be bad boys, to break the rules and get away with it. Their seigneurial right to sexual gratification is something the rest of us might resent, envy or disapprove of, but we rarely challenge it. These guys are cool. They do what they want, including to women. Anyone who objects is guilty of wokeness, or gender treason, or actual malice.Of course there are exceptions. In the #MeToo era there are men who have gone to jail, lost their jobs or suffered disgrace because of the way they’ve treated women. The fall of certain prominent men — Harvey Weinstein, Leslie Moonves, Matt Lauer — was often welcomed as a sign that a status quo that sheltered, enabled and celebrated predators, rapists and harassers was at last changing.A few years later, it seems more likely that they were sacrificed not to end that system of entitlement but rather to preserve it. Almost as soon as the supposed reckoning began there were complaints that it had gone too far, that nuances were being neglected and too-harsh punishments meted out.This backlash has been folded into a larger discourse about “cancel culture,” which is often less about actions than words. “Cancellation” is now synonymous with any criticism that invokes racial insensitivity, sexual misbehavior or controversial opinions. Creeps are treated as martyrs, and every loudmouth is a free-speech warrior. Famous men with lucrative sinecures on cable news, streaming platforms and legacy print publications can proclaim themselves victims.Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 7In the courtroom. More

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      ‘Almost Famous,’ Now a Musical, Will Open on Broadway This Fall

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      The stage adaptation, with book and lyrics by Cameron Crowe and music and lyrics by Tom Kitt, will begin previews Sept. 13.“Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe’s rock ’n’ roll coming-of-age story, will make its pandemic-delayed trip to Broadway this fall.A musical adaptation of the beloved 2000 film, the show had an initial run in San Diego in 2019, and its creative team then continued to work on the project while theaters were shut down by the coronavirus pandemic and as Broadway began to rebound.The musical is now scheduled to begin previews on Sept. 13 and to open Oct. 11 at an unspecified Shubert theater. It is the 11th show to announce performance dates for the new Broadway season, and at least two dozen more are circling.“Almost Famous” is Crowe’s semi-autobiographical story, set in 1973, about a teenage music journalist and his relationships with members of the band he is chronicling as well as the young women who follow it. Crowe wrote and directed the film, and won an Oscar for the screenplay; he has written the book and is a co-author of the lyrics for the musical.In an interview, Crowe described himself as “exuberant” about the Broadway transfer, saying, “I’m ready to share it with people.”“Every time I see the play I go back to being 15 years old,” he added.Crowe said he grew up seeing Shakespeare plays at the Old Globe in San Diego, where the musical began its life, and that he has found working in theater more “personal and soulful” than working in the film industry. And, he said, “something about telling a story about loving music draws music-loving people.”The Old Globe production garnered strong reviews, particularly from the critic Charles McNulty of The Los Angeles Times, who called it “an unqualified winner.”The score is mostly original, with music by Tom Kitt (“Next to Normal”) who collaborated on the lyrics with Crowe; the musical also features a number of pop songs, including Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and Joni Mitchell’s “River.”The show is being directed by Jeremy Herrin (“Wolf Hall”) and choreographed by Sarah O’Gleby.The lead producers are Lia Vollack, a former Sony executive who is also the lead producer of “MJ,” the Michael Jackson musical, and the Michael Cassel Group, an Australian production company that has become increasingly active on Broadway. The show is being capitalized for up to $18 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The role of the young journalist, named William Miller, will be played by Casey Likes, who also played the role at the Old Globe in San Diego; this will be his Broadway debut. (“He still looks young,” Crowe promised.)Chris Wood, best known for CW television shows including “Supergirl” and “The Vampire Diaries,” will make his Broadway debut as the band’s lead guitarist, Russell Hammond (played by Billy Crudup in the film). Anika Larsen (“Beautiful”) will take on the role of the protagonist’s mother, Elaine (played by Frances McDormand in the movie), and Solea Pfeiffer (“Hamilton”) will portray Penny Lane, Kate Hudson’s character in the film. The cast will also include Drew Gehling (“Waitress”) as the band’s lead singer, Jeff Bebe. More

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      ‘Neptune Frost’ Review: Unanimous Gold Mine

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      An Afrofuturist fantasia about the state of the world and how to resist it.Toward the end of the 20th century, the British novelist and critic John Berger insisted on the importance of what he called “pockets of resistance” — small-scale efforts to oppose global systems of domination and exploitation, or at least to imagine alternatives. The possibility of change, Berger suggested, could be found not in grand revolutionary movements but in local practices, including the making and contemplation of art.I thought of Berger after seeing “Neptune Frost,” a strange and captivating new feature by Saul Williams, an American musician, writer and artist, and Anisia Uzeyman a Rwandan filmmaker. The movie, an Afrofuturist fantasia that is also a musical, a science-fiction parable and a hacker manifesto, depicts a pocket of resistance in the form of a community of African rebels. Surrounded by political violence, economic injustice and cultural alienation, they try to secure a space where imagination and solidarity can flourish. The challenges are formidable, but their commitment is part of what makes “Neptune Frost” moving as well as mind-bending.It is also a pocket of resistance in its own right, insofar as the act of making the film — and for that matter thinking about it — amounts to a critique of the way things are. The main characters are Matalusa (Kaya Free), who works alongside his brother in an open-pit mine in Burundi, digging up coltan, a mineral that helps power the world’s cellphones. After his brother is killed, Matalusa flees. At the same time, Neptune (Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo), described by the filmmakers as “an intersex runaway,” escapes from an attempted sexual assault. Their journeys finally converge in the hacker encampment. (“Frost” is the name of a magical, brightly colored messenger bird.)The plot of “Neptune Frost” is loose and suggestive. This isn’t a tight, tidy allegory of capitalism and colonialism so much as a collage of vivid images, sounds and words that punch the movie’s themes like hashtags. Williams and Uzeyman marry anarchist politics with anarchist aesthetics, making something that feels both handmade and high-tech, digital and analog, poetic and punk rock.The hackers’ all-purpose greeting and slogan is “unanimous gold mine.” I don’t know how the phrase sounds in Kinyarwanda or Kirundi (two of the languages spoken in the film), but in English it invokes both collective ownership of wealth and all-purpose optimism. Somehow, it captures the unsentimental, exuberant energy of the film, which is a treasury of ideas and provocations — a pocket full of possibilities.Neptune FrostNot rated. In Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘After Blue (Dirty Paradise)’ Review: A Fever Dream Adventure

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      A planet of women is the eye-popping setting for this psychedelic movie, in which a mother and her daughter try to find an escaped criminal named Kate Bush.After unwittingly freeing a dangerous outlaw, Roxy (Paula Luna) must take off on a journey to repair her mistake by killing the escapee, aided by her mother, Zora (Elina Löwensohn). Sounds straightforward enough, but context matters: This all takes place on After Blue, the planet where humans decamped after wrecking Earth — only “ovarian-bearers” survived, though, because the atmosphere made the men’s hairs grow inside of them and they all died.The fugitive, Kate Bush (Agata Buzek), is just one of the encounters Roxy (“but the village girls call me Toxic”) and her mom make over the course of Bertrand Mandico’s psychedelic fever dream of a movie. We expect no less from a director who subscribes to a filmmaking manifesto called International Incoherence (sample: “Actors will alternate non acting and overacting”).Mandico works in the overheated, maximally art directed tradition of Kenneth Anger and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and “After Blue (Dirty Paradise)” is most effective if you just go along with whatever craziness pops up on the screen. The film is a picaresque western/science fiction hybrid in which the most surreal events are treated with matter-of-fact calm, as when Roxy burrows her face into the many-tentacled crotch of a male android or when a sexy artist (Vimala Pons, who, like Löwensohn, also was in Mandico’s extravagant debut feature, “The Wild Boys,” from 2018) turns up and seduces Zora. It’s unclear what Mandico is trying to say, if anything, and the film overstays its welcome — even the wildest visuals lose their power to stun after a while — but “After Blue” certainly is sui generis.After Blue (Dirty Paradise)Not rated. In French, English and Polish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko’ Review: Lovely Food, Bad Taste

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      A mother and adolescent daughter cook together, laugh together and face the usual generational struggles in a film with an unkind point of view.The Japanese anime “Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko,” from the director Ayumu Watanabe and the creative producer Sanma Akashiya, is full of expressive, ravishing images, with a sumptuous watercolor style that renders every delicate sunrise and shimmering river a gorgeous and original vision. Of particular note is the food, which, despite being animated, looks utterly delicious: from French toast to fried noodles, from misuji (top blade Wagyu beef) to okonomiyaki (a kind of savory pancake), the meals this movie lingers over had my mouth watering. There is a sweet potato snack consumed in one scene that looks better than any sweet potato I’ve ever had in real life.Food is the focus of “Lady Nikuko,” in part because Nikuko (Shinobu Otake) and her daughter Kikuko (Cocomi) live and work in a bustling grill house in a small Japanese port town. More troublingly, food is the focus because of Nikuko’s weight. Nikuko is a large woman, which the movie constantly emphasizes; almost every time she appears onscreen, she devolves into a ludicrous caricature and is most often depicted as falling over, farting or messily stuffing her face.The movie ostensibly concerns Nikuko and Kikuko’s alternately fraught and loving relationship, strained on the daughter’s end by the usual coming-of-age difficulties and on the mother’s by various domestic responsibilities. Their scenes together are tender, verging on poignant — until, inevitably, Nikuko makes a fool of herself, and the movie reverts to fatphobic punch lines and juvenile body-shaming. Although she is buoyant and cheerful, Nikuko is cast as oafish and uncouth, and she is always ultimately the butt of the joke. It’s a puerile, mean-spirited tendency that altogether spoils the otherwise exquisite imagery.Fortune Favors Lady NikukoNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Interceptor’ Review: Failure to Launch

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      A soldier defends a missile base in the Pacific nearly single-handedly in this clunky but enthusiastic nuclear thriller.The pell-mell plotting of “Interceptor” recalls the Onion parody interview with the excitable, 5-year-old screenwriter of “Fast Five.” This nuclear thriller from Matthew Reilly — the Australian author of numerous adventure novels — is clunky and barely coherent anytime there’s not a fight scene. But even the most stilted one-liner (“It’s the gig economy!”) boasts the weirdo zeal of someone having fun throwing action-movie nonsense at the screen.The fun is not always contagious, even for someone like me who grew up reading Tom Clancy’s wonky Cold War fantasias. “Fast and Furious” franchise player Elsa Pataky plays Captain Collins, a soldier on a missile defense rig in the Pacific. Sixteen rogue Russian missiles will hurtle at American cities if Alexander (Luke Bracey), a chatty terrorist, can disable the base’s control room with his cronies. Owing to murder and poor staffing choices, Collins must fend off the intruders nearly single-handedly.It’s a budget-conscious confined thriller with C.G.I. cutaways to missiles, a steady chatter of halfhearted rants and a big “LAUNCH” button. Pataky brings a steely determination to felling goons and shutting down Alexander (who complains about being the son of a talentless billionaire). Chris Hemsworth has a recurring bit as a shaggy Los Angeles store employee following along on TV.But nuke control-room suspense is tougher than it sounds. Where Robert Aldrich’s 1977 classic “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” pulls out all the stops for over two hours, the standoff of “Interceptor” feels prolonged. You might not mind an apocalypse if it meant a change of scenery.InterceptorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Score’ Review: Songs in the Key of Heist

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      The singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn stars alongside Will Poulter and Naomi Ackie in an understated musical about two small-time crooks and a budding romance.The title of this small-scale existentialist musical from the writer-director Malachi Smyth refers to the bag of cash two shabby crooks have driven to a sleepy stretch of England. It is also a nod to the fact that the day’s misadventures will be partly told in song.Mike (Johnny Flynn), the leader of this criminal duo, and Troy (Will Poulter), the slap-happy muscle, are irritated to be stuck in a middle-of-nowhere cafe waiting for a dodgy exchange that could get violent. The squabbling pair aren’t in harmony about anything, though they do share a tendency to express themselves in baleful, restless tunes with hyper-literate lyrics. “I’m an idea of magnitude giving birth to itself ad infinitum,” Poulter warbles to the diner’s prickly waitress, Gloria (Naomi Ackie). She may or may not hear him, even as she adds her own layer of song to vent her frustration at being stuck serving coffee to a string of oddball customers, wishing she was anywhere else.Troy and Gloria must sing about their instant attraction, otherwise their fledgling love story would barely register. But glossy ballads, these aren’t. The songs are penned by Flynn who, when not acting, has released several albums of craggy, cerebral folk. (His latest, “Lost in the Cedar Wood,” a collaboration with the British writer Robert Macfarlane, took inspiration from “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”) The movie’s music has a pleasantly crumpled feel. It is lip-synced casually, as though the characters are bashful about belting their innermost thoughts. The songs can seem to operate on their own plane: When Flynn croons through a window, it’s almost surprising to see his breath mist the glass.The film is besotted by its own cleverness. The overwrought dialogue clashes with the rest of the movie’s naturalism. But Smyth’s very point is that ordinary folk have the right to strive for poetry — and his shaggy sincerity wins out in the end. With this promising ditty as his debut feature, the filmmaker introduces himself as a voice to be heard.The ScoreNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Benediction’ Review: A Poet’s Life, in Love and War

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      Terence Davies’s latest film is a biography of Siegfried Sassoon, whose writing about World War I changed British literature.Since his first feature, “Distant Voices, Still Lives” in 1988, the British writer and director Terence Davies has made a handful of films that can be described — owing to their emotional subtlety and formal precision — as poetic. Recently, he has been making films about poets, which isn’t quite the same thing.“Biopic” is a clumsy word for a prosaic genre, and screen biographies of writers are more apt to be literal than lyrical. I thought “A Quiet Passion,” Davies’s 2017 rendering of the life of Emily Dickinson, was an exception, as attentive to its subject’s inner weather as to the details of her time and place. Some of Dickinson’s admirers felt otherwise, but I still insist that the movie and Cynthia Nixon’s central performance brought the poet’s idiosyncratic, indelible genius to life.“Benediction,” which is about the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, is in some ways a more conventional affair. Sassoon, whose life stretched from the late Victorian era into the 1960s, is primarily remembered as one of the War Poets. Their experience in the trenches of World War I inspired verse that changed the diction and direction of English literature, and Davies powerfully begins the film with archival images of slaughter accompanied by Sassoon’s unsparing words, drawn from poems, prose memoirs and letters.Similar words and images recur at various points in a narrative that occasionally jumps forward in time but that mostly recounts the chronology of Sassoon’s postwar life. He is played in his 30s and 40s by Jack Lowden and as an older, unhappier man by Peter Capaldi, whose resemblance to late photographs of Sassoon is uncanny.Having already acquired some fame as a writer while the war is still going on, Sassoon circulates a scathing antiwar statement in which he refuses further service on the grounds that “the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.” Expecting a court-martial and prepared, at least in principle, to face a firing squad, he is instead called before a medical board, thanks to the intervention of a well-placed older friend named Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale). His pacifism is classified as a psychological disorder, and he is sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, where he discloses his homosexuality to a sympathetic doctor (Julian Sands) and befriends Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), a younger poet who will be killed in action a short time before the Armistice.Sassoon’s subsequent social and romantic activities occupy much of the second half of “Benediction,” which means that his writing fades into the background. The portrait of an anguished artist becomes a somewhat familiar tableau of Britain between the wars, with Bright Young Things coming and going and speaking in beautifully turned, terribly cruel phrases. (“That was perhaps a bit too acerbic,” Sassoon is told by the victim of one of his barbs. “Mordant would be a more accurate word,” Sassoon replies.) Winston Churchill is mentioned as a chap one knows. Edith Sitwell, Lady Ottoline Morrell and T.E. Lawrence all make brief appearances.Davies provides an unhurried tour of the privileged, educated gay circles that helped set the tone of the time. I realize that “gay” is a bit of an anachronism here, but many of Sassoon’s friends and lovers — including Ross, the composer and matinee idol Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and the legendary dilettante Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch) — are conscious of belonging to a tradition that entwines sexuality with cultural attitudes and artistic pursuits. Oscar Wilde is invoked both as an idol and, because of his prosecution in the 1890s, as a cautionary figure.Sassoon and his cohort are committed to discretion, irony and the occasional strategic compromise with heterosexuality. Sassoon’s marriage to Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips, and then Gemma Jones) is affectionate and without illusions, producing a son named George (Richard Goulding), who endures the cranky conservatism of his father’s old age.Sassoon’s complaints about rock ’n’ roll and his conversion to Roman Catholicism feel more like duly noted biographical facts than expressions of character. Even the more intimate passages in “Benediction” — the affairs with Novello and Tennant, and the heartache that follows the end of each one — are more restrained than passionate. In part, this is a reflection of Sassoon’s own temperament, which he tells the doctor at Craiglockhart is marked by circumspection and detachment. But the film never quite conjures a link between the life and the work.Except for an extraordinary pair of scenes involving not Sassoon’s work, but Wilfred Owen’s. Sassoon confesses to looking down on Owen when they first met, for reasons of class as well as age, but comes to regard him as “the greater poet.” History has mostly upheld this judgment, and Davies brings it home with astonishing force.In the hospital, Owen asks Sassoon for his opinion of a poem called “Disabled,” which Sassoon pronounces brilliant after reading it silently. The audience will not hear Owen’s words until the final scene of the film, when the poem’s wrenching account of a young man maimed in battle is impressionistically depicted onscreen. Up until that moment, we’ve thought about the war, heard it rendered in poetry and caught glimpses of its brutality. And then, through the filter of Sassoon’s tormented memory, we feel it.BenedictionRated PG-13. Running time: 2 hour 17 minutes. In theaters. More