Entertainment

(Nick Taylor / For The Times) Horror movies took one step beyond elevated this year: Startling personal statements were made in the often-zomboid genre; self-image, culture and religion were given freshly dug-up perspectives; and conventions got turned on their ear or vivified with vibrant artistry. “The year’s best horror movies are exciting because they don’t … Read more

Director Robert Eggers, photographed at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles in November. (Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times) 1 It all started decades ago with a book. Once upon a time, the accomplished filmmaker Robert Eggers was a serious 9-year-old in small-town Lee, N.H., methodically making his way through his school library’s series on … Read more

Sky Ferreira wrote the closing credits song for the new erotic drama “Babygirl” (Morgan Maher) In the forthcoming erotic drama “Babygirl,” Nicole Kidman plays a CEO inexorably drawn to the power-play seductions of her intern, played by Harris Dickinson. The film is plenty steamy, but its core is about control — how we exert it, … Read more

Kieran Culkin tells a story about desperately not wanting to go to Poland to make Jesse Eisenberg’s odd-couple road movie, “A Real Pain,” and, while every word of it’s true and comes from a deep place in his soul, tied to the love he has for his wife and children, it still feels like a … Read more

‘Scandal’s’ Bellamy Young: Domestic abuse can happen at any age. My mom was in her 80s My mom died at the end of 2023, right after her 83rd birthday. Which doesn’t sound all that remarkable — until I mention that she had been a victim of domestic partner abuse up until the year before her … Read more

A clown sculpture at the Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nev. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times) Business is so good at the Clown Motel, you might expect more of its painted faces to be smiling. But as Vijay Mehar has learned in his years as owner of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nev., happy clowns … Read more

He brings his Relax: It’s Not That Serious World Tour to Montreal on Friday, while musing about how nice it would be to move back north of the U.S. border. At 54, comedian Russell Peters maintains an exhaustive itinerary. “I like to look on the bright side: next year I get to do those Freedom … Read more

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s only son, Connor Anthony Kidman Cruise, has shared a rare photo on social media. Getty Images Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s only son, Connor Anthony Kidman Cruise, has shared a rare photo on social media after a day of golfing with a pal. The reclusive 29-year-old, who largely keeps his life out … Read more

Xu Hongci is a legend in a certain Chinese subculture: The estimated 550,000 people who were accused of being “rightists” in Mao Zedong’s purge of the late 1950s and spent 20 years or more as inmates of China’s gulag archipelago. In that large crowd of unjustly, illegally imprisoned people, Xu is the only person known … Read more

Daniel Craig is known for playing British secret agent James Bond in a handful of flicks released across the last two decades. Craig remembered how one film in particular was a “f—ing nightmare” to put together as the industry succumbed to the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike. The 56-year-old action star was riding a wave of … Read more