The first half of Gabriel Mascaro’s latest movie, The Blue Trail, is filled with immense sadness. It imagines a dystopian Brazil in which its fascist government built colonies for elderly people to live in and forces them to relocate, despite the fact that many of them are still able to contribute to society. One of those people is Tereza (Denise Weinberg), who has recently learned that the government has lowered the age threshold from 80 to 75, in an attempt to relocate more elderly citizens to spend the rest of their lives in.

Of course, still able-bodied and wanting to continue her daily routine, Tereza rejects the government’s interventions and leaves her home, determined to fulfill a lifelong dream: to fly in a plane. Throughout her journey, she meets a bevy of colorful individuals, including ship captain Cadu (Rodrigo Santoro), who takes her deep into the Amazon and literally opens her eyes to things she never saw in her plane of existence.

Describing the viewing experience one takes in trusting Mascaro’s vision is a little difficult. The Blue Trail offers a clear-eyed view of how the filmmaker believes society treats elderly individuals, even though they will reach that age at some point. Mandatory diapers on bus rides. Colonies for them to live and never be allowed to contribute to society. The fact that they think little of them and believe they’re disposable, without understanding their impact on the world, says so much about how governments around the world have constantly mistreated them and continue to fail to truly care for their well-being.

Watching Tereza being forced to wear a diaper before boarding a bus, one feels the filmmaker’s frustration in their eyes. In that moment, the protagonist feels helpless. All she wants is to return home and, hopefully, fly. Since she isn’t allowed to go anywhere, her only shot at adventure is a boat ride. These sections see Mascaro’s filmmaking at its most visually audacious, with painterly tableaux that recall the staggering grandeur of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. There’s something so majestic when seeing a camera float in the water, as if it acts as the boat itself, as the captain and Tereza explore the Amazon. The feeling one gets when a firework appears in the air is so textured that the film becomes hard to look away from, even as it begins to sag in its second half.

While the bulk of The Blue Trail seems to follow a conventional path, Mascaro begins to take the esoteric route when he has Cadu trip balls on blue snail drool, which may or may not be a direct visual reference to Frank Herbert’s Dune? Either way, a scene like this arrives on left field and completely repurposes the rest of the movie, which takes a strangely spiritual route that seems poised to fleetingly say something about society’s mistreatment of the elderly and Tereza’s close connection with scripture, but ends up saying nothing at all. As her journey continues, the film’s images become less impressive, and our initial connection with a funny and biting protagonist begins to falter, because Mascaro and cinematographer Guillermo Garza frame her on a much smaller scale than in the first half.

That said, Weinberg remains an effective actor and imbues her performance as Tereza with a pain she’s been carrying for decades. It further exacerbates itself by the way society rejects her altogether, even her own daughter, who prefers she live in a colony so no one has to worry about caring for her needs. But the movie works the strongest when it focuses on the adventure and Tereza’s quest to do something worth her while, for once, rather than scenes where Mascaro attempts to interiorize her.

Still, out of all the films in competition at last year’s Berlinale, The Blue Trail is one of the most engrossing and rewarding titles that graced their screens. It may not work for everyone, but its images are so potent that one leaves the cinema with a sense of renewal, and perhaps some hope that society might improve if we let the elderly decide, on their own, how they would like to spend the rest of their lives, at home or elsewhere. We should give them the privilege of doing so, because that’s what they deserve.

SCORE: ★★★

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We went to see Mortal Kombat II in theaters and wow do we have thoughts about it.

*warning: minor spoilers below for Mortal Kombat II

I’ll freely admit that I was excited to see the sequel to Mortal Kombat (2021). That movie was pure dumb fun from start to finish, and most agreed that as long as a sequel kept that same tone, it would likely be equally fun to watch.

Well…I have good news and bad news.

The good news is: Mortal Kombat II is indeed filled with a lot of dumb fun.

The bad news: the parts that aren’t dumb fun are really, really bad and awkward.

Mortal Kombat II 

Directed by: Simon McQuoid

Starring: Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks

Release Date: May 8, 2026

Mortal Kombat II is set up sometime after the events of the 2021 film, with the evil Shao Kahn set to call for the final Mortal Kombat tournament that will decide the fate of Earthrealm, as one more defeat means Shao Kahn and Outworld will gain total control. Lord Raiden, meanwhile, is in search of the last champion Earthrealm needs to compete in the tournament and has just located him: Johnny Cage, a washed up actor and martial artist who is way past his prime and very cynical about everything.

Let me just start by saying that as much fun as this film is for the most part, Mortal Kombat II could’ve been so much better. The 2021 film proved that it’s possible. Tell a coherent plot, throw in a heavy amount of fighting scenes that pay homage to the video games, and you really can’t go wrong.

Where Mortal Kombat II fails, for the most part, is in trying to tell a coherent plot. Whereas the first film took the time to introduce us to Cole Young and his struggles, this film barely introduces Johnny Cage before we are tossed headlong into the tournament portion of the story. It genuinely felt like about an hour of exposition was missing, exposition that could have better rounded out Johnny’s character and how he feels about being suddenly responsible for the fate of Earthrealm. There are hints of some of these things, but it always feels like something is missing.

Speaking of Cole Young, this sequel, to put it bluntly, did him dirty. Given his suspicious absence from most of the promo materials, it was heavily suspected Cole’s story was not going to end well, but for goodness’ sake it didn’t have to go like that. I genuinely liked Cole by the end of the 2021 film and here he was barely more than a glorified extra. I don’t know what the film writers were thinking, but treating the main protagonist of the previous film in this way is not a good look.

Then there’s the downright uneven tone of the story. The portions with Shao Kahn are, quite rightly, dark and deadly serious. Shao Kahn is set up as an absolute monster and you feel that every second he’s on the screen. But the problem is the film will cut from a moment of brutality to a moment of awkward humor that feels very out of place. Most of these come from Josh Lawson, who is back as Kano in a manner that could’ve been epic but feels like it was thrown together just because the writers could.

I’m not saying a Mortal Kombat film can’t be funny or have moments that are funny, but the humor here just felt…off…or just downright awkward.

It wasn’t all bad. Mortal Kombat II had a number of things that were done right and kept this film from being a complete disaster. The most important of these were, as you might expect, the fighting scenes. As in the prior film, Mortal Kombat II paid homage to the video game with a number of combat scenes that felt like they came right out of the video game, right down to the way the camera panned around to show the two combatants squaring up to each other.

All of the fight scenes were great, but my two favorites had to be the scenes with Kitana and Shao Kahn respectively. Shao Kahn, as mentioned before, is set up as this terrifying being whose evil knows no bounds. He feels like he stepped right out of the video game and I couldn’t have asked for a better interpretation.

I’m equally thrilled with how Kitana’s story is presented. Kitana has been my favorite Mortal Kombat character for years and Adeline Rudolph plays her to perfection. The film made sure to give Kitana her iconic fan weapons and I love how they were used. Forgive the minor spoiler but those fans are responsible for some of the most brutal deaths in the film.

At the end of the day, you’ll likely leave the theater feeling entertained by Mortal Kombat II. The fight scenes alone are worth the price of admission, and Kitana’s story is very well told. Just…don’t think too hard about the rest of it.

The Wende Museum of the Cold War announced on Saturday that it plans to build a $16-million expansion in Hawthorne.

The Culver City museum has purchased a historically significant midcentury modern building in Hawthorne, which it plans to transform into a research institute and interactive storage facility for its collections — a “living archive,” as it’s calling the facility.

The Wende plans to debut the space in spring 2028.

“In the museum world, there’s typically public space and storage space — meaning dead storage,” Wende founder and Executive Director Justin Jampol said in an interview. “And this living archive is a hybrid that combines both. It houses the collections and makes them accessible for discovery.”

The 24,000-square-foot building was erected in 1965 by shopping mall pioneer and developer Ernest Hahn to serve as his corporate headquarters. It was designed by movie theater architect George Nowak, who also designed the Writers Guild Theater.

The Wende plans to renovate the building, adding a 7,000-square-foot extension, with flexibility to further expand in the future. The facility will include state-of-the-art, climate-controlled storage for the museum’s more than 250,000-object collection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, tapestries and Cold War-era ephemera from the Soviet Union, East Bloc, China and other countries.

Interactivity, however, is the goal: so there will be spaces for “respite and inspiration,” Jampol said, such as a “scholar’s garden,” reading rooms and a library with a community learning lab and free coffee for visitors.

“The idea is to make it as engaging and comfortable as possible,” Jampol said. “Most archives are places that are very uncomfortable and uninspiring — think fluorescent lights blinking in a basement. The idea here is to open this up in a way that makes people want to be here. And focus on the content and not the space itself. We’re trying to create an experience that makes visitors want to go on an adventure.”

The Wende’s Collections Department will be headquartered in the new building. The facility will also house a conservation center for endangered objects and paper archives, and will feature a digitization and imaging lab that will make the collections available online, free of charge.

It will also include reading rooms and research offices for up to 100 visiting scholars or artist fellows annually.

“The collections, instead of being hidden in a box, will be on full view,” Jampol said. “When you walk through, you won’t see boxes. You’ll see vases, tapestries, ceramics and more.”

Construction on the building, at 2311 W. El Segundo Blvd., starts May 15. Funds for the project came from the Arcadia Fund, the Kaufman Foundation and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, among other capital supporters.

The Wende Museum in Culver City opened its doors in 2017 inside a former 1949 atomic bomb shelter. It now draws about 25,000 visitors annually, who come to take in four exhibitions and more than 60 public programs. Admission is free.

Rapid expansion has been a hallmark of the Wende of late.

In September, it debuted a $17-million culture and wellness center offering free yoga, meditation, sound baths and therapy. The 7,500-square-foot facility was made possible with funding from the late philanthropist Glorya Kaufman who died a month before the building opened to the public. It’s called the Glorya Kaufman Community Center.

The Wende’s Glorya Kaufman Community Center includes a century old A-frame theater, an old MGM prop house, for free culture and wellness events.

(Stella Kalinina / For The Times)

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In February, the Wende bought a three-bedroom house built in the 1940s adjacent to the museum’s campus that will be used as a live-work space for photographers in residence. It will include a community space for photography workshops and a post-production studio. The Nikita Foundation and the Victor Family Foundation provided funding.

It debuted a tiny home on its campus last fall, nicknamed “The Stevie” after donor Steve Markoff. It’s used for cross-disciplinary artist residencies.

A facility for interactive museum storage and research is not a new concept in Los Angeles.

The Autry Museum of the American West — after merging with the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in 2003 and since stewarding its collection of Indigenous art and artifacts — debuted a $32-million, 100,000-square-foot facility in Burbank in October 2022.

The so-called “Resources Center” was built to house, conserve and care for both museums’ collections in a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled and fire-safe environment. It also serves as a research destination for scholars, artists, tribal representatives and others to study the collections.

Jampol said that the project will enable the Wende to serve a wider swath of visitors, from specialists to the general public, and to venture outside of Culver City to engage other communities.

“It’s about making the collections both safe and accessible,” he said. “We looked to the Autry for inspiration alongside the V&A East in London — they both invite people in from the community, alongside scholars, to explore the collections. It’s the democratization of art — I love the ethos and spirit of that.”