Two harrowing sexual assaults occur in the first 15 minutes of “Love Hotel,” a 1985 erotic drama from the cult director Shinji Somai. First, Tetsuro (Minori Terada), a flailing Tokyo businessman in debt to the yakuza, is forced to stand by while his wife, Ryoko (Kiriko Shimizu), is raped by a mob loan shark. Later, … Read more
In the self-absorbed action movie “The Martial Artist,” the director Shaz Khan stars as rising Pakistani American mixed martial arts fighter Ibby “The Prince” Bakran, an unconventional pugilist whose bouts are live streamed from remote locales like Death Valley in eastern California. Impressed by Ibby, the head of a mixed martial arts league (Gregory Sporleder) … Read more
Jay (Jonathan Groff) and Naveen (Karan Soni) experience their first meet-cute while worshiping at the same Hindu temple, united by their shared culture: Naveen is Indian, and Jay is white with adoptive Indian parents. Early on, the film “A Nice Indian Boy” hints at this swift romantic pace when Naveen’s mother, Megha (Zarna Garg, a … Read more
7 a.m. Walk — or ride — off those carbs Most of your breakfast needs can be solved at Rise + Roam Bakery in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where chef Jessica Haney makes seasonal quiche, cinnamon rolls and classic biscuits (prices start at $4). Afterward, pick up your favorite style of caffeine at the Mad Dogs & Englishmen … Read more
The dragon lady, the courtesan, the submissive beauty — these enduring stereotypes of Asian and Southeast Asian femininity circulated in Europe and America centuries before the vast majority of Westerners had ever laid eyes on a real flesh-and-blood woman from those parts of the world. A major, and maybe surprising, source of these tropes? The … Read more
Rehearsals were strenuous, not least because Snook had recently given birth to her daughter and she wasn’t sleeping much. She described shooting the recorded sequences, including that first one, as one of the hardest experiences of her career. In addition to delivering her lines with conviction, in costume and wig, with differentiated gesture and voice, … Read more
“Right, ‘Liberation Day. That sounds like the fake holiday your friends make up after you get dumped: ‘No, man. Who needs that beautiful, smart, independently wealthy woman in your life, when you can die alone? This is your liberation day, bro!’” — MICHAEL KOSTA “OK, so Liberation Day is just the day that Trump announced … Read more
When Steven Woloshin, an American doctor, first saw the 600-year-old fresco of a Crucifixion by the Renaissance master Fra Angelico inside a cloistered convent in January last year, he was blown away. “I immediately thought this is the most amazing thing I’ve seen,” he said recently. The image’s simplicity and power overwhelmed him, he said. … Read more
Every time it feels as if we’re nearing a state of Chekhoverdose, a great production rolls around to remind us of the Russian writer’s uncanny power to pull us into his fold. Andrew Scott’s solo performance of “Vanya” at the Lucille Lortel Theater, which the New York Times’s critic Jesse Green called “a reset,” seems … Read more
Joe DePugh, the Little League teammate of Bruce Springsteen who inspired that rocker’s hit song “Glory Days,” a rousing, bittersweet anthem to their hardscrabble childhoods in Freehold, N.J., where time passed by “in the wink of a young girl’s eye,” died on Friday in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 75. The cause of death, … Read more