Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson and KeiLyn Durrel Jones as Bill Bray in Michael. Photo Credit: Glen Wilson/Lionsgate

By Jake Coyle

associated press

“Michael” slides a sequin glove over the pop staar’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great.

Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted.

“Michael” doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts. It moonwalks right past them. The result is a kind of fantasy film, one that relives the extraordinary highs of Michael Jackson while turning a blind eye to the lows.

There’s something understandably hard to resist about that. Who wouldn’t love to forget all the bad that comes with Michael Jackson? “Billie Jean,” alone, is good enough to give you amnesia. We’re talking about one of the greatest song-and-dance entertainers of the 20th century. The connection he forged with millions shouldn’t be taken for granted. And it can feel downright giddy to once again bask in Jackson’s former glory — or, at least, an uncanny approximation of it by Jaafar Jackson, his nephew. But that also makes “Michael” as much a fairy tale as Peter Pan’s Neverland.

“Michael” originally included scenes dealing with the sexual abuse allegations, but those were cut due to stipulations in an earlier settlement. The finished film, scripted by John Logan (“Gladiator,” “Aviator”), is largely structured as a father-son drama. In the film’s early Gary, Indiana-set scenes, Joe Jackson (a typically compelling Colman Domingo) forcefully drills his children into becoming the Jackson 5 and whips young Michael (an excellent Juliano Krue Valdi) with his belt.

While “Michael” spans the Jackson 5 and “Off the Wall” and “Thriller,” its through line is Michael’s struggle for emancipation from his overbearing father and manager. In that way, it’s quite similar to 2022’s “Elvis,” which likewise turned on the dynamic between Presley and the controlling Colonel Tom Parker.

Similarly, the broad-strokes, play-the-hits biopic approach is very much at work in “Michael,” produced by Graham King (“Bohemian Rhapsody”). Fuqua, best known for muscular thrillers like “Training Day” and “The Equalizer,” is maybe an unlikely pick for the task. But he cleverly stages some scenes, like when young Michael first lays down a track in a recording studio. While his father looms outside and producers tell Michael not to shuffle his feet so much, Fuqua moves inside the booth. We hear nothing but Michael’s voice. The noise stops and there’s just his pure, not-yet-corrupted vocal power, singing “Who’s Lovin’ You.”

What happened to Jackson as he became an adult, many would consider both an astonishing success story and an American tragedy. “Michael” doesn’t try for that balance. It mainly follows the emergence of an icon, albeit a peculiar one who takes shelter in a room full of children’s toys and whose need to be “perfect” drives him to cosmetic surgery in his early 20s. These and other developments (like the arrival of Bubbles the chimp) are mostly met with eye rolls by family members: the idiosyncrasies of a man-child genius.

At nearly every turn, you can feel the narrative being twisted, sometimes by those still alive. (Joe Jackson died in 2018, nine years after his son’s death at 50.) Katherine Jackson (Nia Long), Michael’s mother, is downright saintly. John Branca (Miles Teller), co-executor of Jackson’s estate and a producer of the film, is seen as a heroic ally to Michael.

Branca, perhaps, deserves the victory lap. Such a big-screen revival for Jackson was once unthinkable. But “Michael” is the latest in a string of successes for the former King of Pop, including Cirque du Soleil shows and “MJ the Musical” on Broadway — all despite the evidence presented by the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland.” “Michael” isn’t really a rebuttal to that film. It’s pure pop shock-and-awe. And turning up the volume on “Beat It” will win you some arguments.

What’s on screen is constantly running, in our minds, alongside what isn’t. Even the glossiest of biopics allow some negative characteristics to show, but Fuqua’s film sticks almost entirely to Michael, the myth. He visits kids in hospitals, makes Black history on MTV, writes the “Thriller” album in near solitude. (Kendrick Sampson plays a seldom-seen Quincy Jones.)

As played by Jaafar Jackson, Michael is a wide-eyed innocent who bore the scars of abuse and yet nevertheless maintained a childlike belief in music: king and casualty of pop, at once. If there’s one thing that needs no embellishment here, it’s the fervor of audiences for Jackson at his astonishing peak. Fuqua lingers on the fans losing their minds for Michael, but that ardor was real. Jaafar Jackson’s performance is a remarkable, charming facsimile not just for the dance moves and singing voice but, more crucially, for channeling Jackson’s sweetness.

“Michael” concludes on an oddly and — considering where things would ultimately go for Jackson — completely false note of triumph. But when the movie sticks to the music, as it often does in copious concert performances, it’s hard not to be moved. There is an undeniable thrill in being transported back to a more innocent America awakening to the power of pop spectacle, when arenas sang in unison to “Man in the Mirror” and “Human Nature.” The nostalgia of “Michael” is for more than Michael Jackson. But blindly believing only in that celebrity, in that fantasy, is repeating a sad history all over again.

“Michael,” a Lionsgate release in theaters Thursday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some thematic material, language, and smoking. Running time: 127 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

D4vd allegedly used a chainsaw to dismember the body of a teenager he was sexually abusing, then amputated two of her fingers to destroy a tattoo linking him to the girl, according to a court document made public Wednesday afternoon by L.A. County prosecutors.

David Anthony Burke, 21, is charged with murder, continuous sex abuse of a minor and mutilating a corpse. Prosecutors say he killed 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez because she threatened to expose his abuse and ruin his music career. He pleaded not guilty last week.

In advance of a preliminary hearing that was supposed to begin Friday, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman filed a nine-page brief laying out the evidence she planned to present. In the document, Silverman detailed an abusive relationship between the singer and the young girl, which started when she was just 11, and wrote that Burke had chainsaws, body bags, an inflatable pool and a shovel delivered to his home in order to dispose of Hernandez’s body.

“Knowing he had to silence the victim before she ruined his music career as she had threatened, very soon after her arrival at his home, defendant stabbed the victim to death multiple times and stood by while she bled out,” Silverman wrote.

Burke also had a “burn cage” delivered to his residence, which acts as a portable incinerator, according to the document. The pool was apparently used to contain Hernandez’s body as the singer dismembered her remains. Bits of plastic from the pool were discovered embedded in Hernandez’s corpse, the document said.

The purchases from online retailers like Amazon and Home Depot were made under an alias, Victoria Mendez.

The singer has long been linked to Hernandez’s disappearance and death, after her badly decomposed body was found in the trunk of a Tesla he owned at a Hollywood tow yard last September. Authorities said Hernandez was last seen at Burke’s Hollywood residence on April 23, 2025. The two got into a “lengthy argument” the night before, with Hernandez expressing jealousy over Burke’s relationships with other women, prosecutors said.

“[Hernandez] became extremely upset and threatened to disclose damaging information about her relationship with defendant to end his career and destroy his life,” Silverman wrote.

On the night police believe Hernandez was killed, according to the new court filing from prosecutors, the singer ordered an Uber to bring her from her Lake Elsinore home to Hollywood around 8:40 p.m.

An autopsy report made public last week revealed Hernandez died from a pair of stab wounds. Her body was dismembered when police found it in the trunk and two of her fingers had been amputated, according to the medical examiner’s report. In the document made public Wednesday, Silverman alleged Burke cut off those digits to remove evidence of a tattoo Hernandez had gotten of the singer’s name.

In the document, Silverman said Burke first met Hernandez when she was only 11. The two began a sexual relationship when she turned 13 but “broke up” in late November 2024, according to Silverman. Text messages between the two contained references to “sex, pregnancy, abortion and use of the Plan B emergency contraceptive,” she wrote.

Investigators also found images of Hernandez naked and performing sex acts on Burke’s phone, according to the document. Silverman said in court last week that search warrants turned up “a significant amount of child pornography” on Burke’s devices.

Hernandez was reported missing by her family multiple times in Lake Elsinore in 2024. Riverside County sheriff’s investigators questioned Burke about her whereabouts in February 2024, but Burke claimed he was “unaware she was a minor or that she had been reported missing,” Silverman wrote.

Two days later, she returned home and her parents took away her cellphone. But Burke allegedly drove to Lake Elsinore and paid a junior high school student $1,000 to give her a new phone so they could stay in touch, according to the document filed Wednesday. Over the next year, Hernandez traveled with the singer to Las Vegas, Texas and London where she met “his family,” Silverman wrote.

Burke’s lead defense attorney, Blair Berk, was not immediately available for comment on the filing.

She asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo to seal the filing on Wednesday afternoon, but the judge denied her request.

The singer took steps to cover his tracks in the moments before the killing, as well as the days after. Twenty minutes after she arrived on the night of April 23, Burke allegedly sent a series of text messages to her phone asking where she was. Prosecutors charge that he had just killed Hernandez and was trying to make it seem as though she never arrived.

That night he drove to a lake in Santa Barbara County, where prosecutors say he disposed of many of her personal items. He returned to the same remote area two other times last May, according to the Wednesday court filing. In January 2026, Hernandez’s identification was found off the highway near Lake Cachuma.

Berk previously said she does not believe the prosecution’s case can hold up to scrutiny and pushed for an immediate preliminary hearing. Defendants have a right to a preliminary hearing, in which a judge determines whether prosecutors have enough evidence to bring a case to trial, within 10 business days.

But on Wednesday afternoon, attorney Marilyn Bednarski asked that the hearing be pushed back to May 26, citing the voluminous amount of discovery in the case. Olmedo agreed there was “good cause” to delay the hearing a few weeks. Burke is due back in court on May 1 for a status hearing.

Silverman expressed some annoyance at Bednarski and Berk’s change of heart, noting she’d already warned the defense team that prosecutors had a trove of evidence to turn over.

Silverman said last week that discovery materials would include the results of a wiretap and searches of Burke’s cellphone and iCloud accounts. Law enforcement executed 54 search warrants in the case, according to court records.

The medical examiner’s report detailing how Hernandez died was not available to the defense until last week. Prosecutors also convened three secret grand juries between November 2025 and February 2026 to collect evidence against Burke, according to Silverman. Transcripts from those hearings were under seal as of last week.

Bednarski said Wednesday she needed “additional time to review the discovery we either just got, or are about to get, in order to have a full and free preliminary hearing.”

“We told them that this was what was going to be coming,” Silverman argued in reply. “As I said in my brief, we sent out subpoenas, we’ve been preparing, we’ve been telling witnesses to cancel planned vacations.”

In asking Olmedo to seal the brief, Berk expressed worry it was “one-sided” and might taint the jury pool.

“The prosecution has appeared to file a rather unusual pre-preliminary hearing brief that appears to be a very one-sided view of what is anticipated as the evidence in this case. But no evidence has been presented by the prosecution in a courtroom. Certainly there has been no adjudication of the admissibility of that evidence,” Berk said.

Legal experts said Silverman’s move to show her hand so early in the case was as unorthodox as Berk’s initial decision to race toward a preliminary hearing.

“It is very unusual in pre-prelim for a prosecutor to file such a brief. But the prosecutor wants to be transparent with the public, and it educates the judge,” said Dmitry Gorin, a former sex crimes prosecutor in Los Angeles.

“The defense was seeking to capture the government off balance. But obviously, the DA was more than ready here,” Gorin said. “As a defense attorney, you have to be ready like a good boxer; you need to know how to pivot.”

Twenty years have gone by; the fashion and publishing worlds have changed but Satan’s clothing and accessory choices are pretty much what they were. It’s time for a sprightly and amiable sequel to the adored mid-00s Manhattan romcom that followed the adventures of would-be serious writer and saucer-eyed ingenue Andrea “Andy” Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway. Straight out of college in one of the flyover states, she fluked a job at iconic New York fashion magazine Runway, edited by the terrifying and amusingly surnamed Miranda Priestly, played of course by Meryl Streep. Miranda doesn’t look a day older in the sequel, and nor does Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, still in post as her loyal, worldly, privately melancholy second-in-command.

This follow-up is fun, though let down by Andy’s bafflingly dreary and chemistry-free romance with a dull Australian real estate magnate (a tepid role for Patrick Brammall from TV’s Colin from Accounts). Miranda’s latest submissive prince-consort boyfriend is played by Kenneth Branagh, bizarrely the lead violinist in a string quartet. The film also gives us a lot of star-fan cameos – this is usually a bad sign, but managed well enough here. Not the big cameo though, not the one they were surely chasing, the white whale of cameos: Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor on whom Priestly is modelled.

So Andy has come back, having been laid off by some Jeff Bezos-type meanie from the upmarket broadsheet where she’d been winning awards for super-serious but boring articles. She can’t afford to turn down a mephistophelean offer to be features editor for Runway, where she finds things are very different. The magazine now has nothing like the colossal budgets of old; embarrassingly, it has to distance itself from the sweatshop economy, and is ground down by chasing clicks and eyeballs in a fickle digital world ruled by a teen customer base with no class and no taste. Miranda has to pay pursed lip-service to body positivity and rejecting heteronormativity in the workplace, and gets schooled in correct language by her new assistant Amari (Simone Ashley). She even has to fly coach.

In fact, the hauteur prerogative has passed on to Andy’s old nemesis, the ice queen of aspirational couture and Miranda’s former top assistant Emily, who is now the head of Dior, calling the shots and making the shrewd point that ultra-luxury brands for the 0.1% are recession-proof. She is played once again with style and plenty of nice lines by Emily Blunt.

It is a pleasure to see (most of) the old gang back, including screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and director David Frankel. (I groan at the grumpy and obtuse response I had to the first film, before watching it again on TV and epiphanically realising how great it is.) It’s very funny when Miranda hasn’t the smallest memory of who Andy is. Or has she? Justin Theroux is amusing as Emily’s grinningly daft-yet-sinister plutocrat boyfriend Benji.

The movie takes us through new versions of the beats from the first film: Andy dishing with Nigel in the cafeteria; Nigel picking out something for the ungrateful Andy to wear, this time for a trip to Miranda’s place in the Hamptons; Andy going to a fashion mecca (Milan); Andy frantically engaging in backstairs shenanigans to protect Miranda from some wicked corporate coup. And for the DWP connoisseurs, there’s even an outing for Andy’s awful blue polyblend sweater that Nigel found to be such a windup back in the day. This is good-natured, buoyant entertainment. It’s wearing well.