Philippe Lacôte’s Killer Heat is a suspense thriller set on the tranquil island of Crete, Greece. The island’s stunning landscape, with rugged mountains and pristine beaches, creates the perfect setting for this atmospheric mystery. Initially, the film may feel too laid-back for its own good, but as the plot unfolds, it finds its groove, delivering a cohesive, engaging story. Much like its setting, Killer Heat is refreshingly straightforward, avoiding a forced sense of suspense. The mystery unravels at a measured pace, allowing the viewer to savour the journey.

The plot itself may not break new ground, with relatively low stakes, but what makes it work is the absence of unnecessary storytelling shortcuts. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Nick Bali, a private investigator hired to look into the mysterious death of Leo (Richard Madden), the heir of the wealthy Verdakis family.

The film opens with Leo climbing a cliff while Bali narrates the Greek myth of Icarus, the man who flew too close to the sun. Leo soon falls to his death, and the family—except for Leo’s sister-in-law, Penelope (Shailene Woodley)—considers it a tragic accident.

Penelope, however, is convinced otherwise, refusing to trust the local police, claiming her “family owns them”, and that “in Crete, no one goes against the gods”. The film’s integration of Greek metaphors adds a touch of mysticism.

What’s refreshing about Killer Heat is that it doesn’t trick the audience. From the first scene, it’s clear that the culprit isn’t an outsider, but that doesn’t take away from the suspense.

Kim Kardashian wants Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers convicted in the grisly 1989 murders of their parents, to be freed.

The reality star, daughter of late O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian, has fashioned herself as an advocate for criminal justice reform. And, in a personal essay for NBC News, she wrote Thursday that she hopes that the brothers, who have already served 35 years in prison, could have their life sentences “reconsidered.”

“We are all products of our experiences. They shape who we were, who we are, and who we will be. Physiologically and psychologically, time changes us, and I doubt anyone would claim to be the same person they were at 18. I know I’m not!,” the Skims co-founder wrote.

Kardashian rehashed widely known facts in the case — that the brothers, then ages 21 and 18, shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills home — as well as their high-profile 1996 trials. But, she said, “this story is much more complex than it appears on the surface.”

“Both brothers said they had been sexually, physically and emotionally abused for years by their parents. According to Lyle, the abuse started when he was just 6 years old, and Erik said he was raped by his father for more than a decade. Following years of abuse and a real fear for their lives, Erik and Lyle chose what they thought at the time was their only way out — an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare,” she said.

Listing issues with the trials and other legal missteps, Kardashian argued that “the media turned the brothers into monsters and sensationalized eye candy” and that they “had no chance of a fair trial against this backdrop.”

The beauty mogul has visited the brothers in prison and vouched for their “exemplary disciplinary records,” adding that a warden there told her that “he would feel comfortable having them as neighbors.” She asserted that life in prison is not the right punishment for them and argued that the exclusion of abuse evidence from their second trial denied them a fair go.

“The killings are not excusable. I want to make that clear. Nor is their behavior before, during or after the crime. But we should not deny who they are today in their 50s,” she wrote. “The trial and punishment these brothers received were more befitting a serial killer than two individuals who endured years of sexual abuse by the very people they loved and trusted.”

On Thursday, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said his office would review what he described as new evidence that the brothers were molested — a move that could lead to revised sentences.

While there was no question the brothers committed the murders, Gascón said, the issue is whether the jury heard evidence that their father molested them. Evidence detailing sexual abuse was presented during the brothers’ first trial, which ended in hung juries, but was largely withheld during their second trial, where they were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Lyle Menendez, left, and Erik during a court appearance in Beverly Hills on April 2, 1991.

(Kevork Djansenzian / Associated Press)

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Meanwhile, a series of creative projects over the past year have contributed to renewed interest in the brothers’ case and their highly scrutinized trials. Ryan Murphy’s splashy “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” for example, raised questions, much like his past anthology series revived the discourse around the O.J. Simpson trial and the impeachment of former President Clinton. The Menendez brothers were also the focus of the Fox Nation documentary series “Menendez Brothers: Victims or Villains,” which premiered in March, as well as the Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” which presented new evidence and included an accusation of rape against patriarch Jose Menendez.

Citing evidence related to molestation claims, attorneys for the brothers filed petitions last year to reopen the case, and family members have rallied to get the men released. Others, like Kardashian, have argued that times have changed, and that the brothers’ allegations of abuse might have been received differently at trial today.

Times staff writers Salvador Hernandez, Hannah Fry and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

When Amazon workers on Staten Island successfully voted to unionize in the spring of 2022, becoming the corporate retailer’s first American workplace to do so, it was hailed as one of the most important labor victories in the United States in nearly 100 years. 

For the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) to organize employees at the JFK8 warehouse to vote in favor of union representation was a David versus Goliath story for the age of globalization — and a rousing reminder that collective grassroots efforts can still succeed despite massive employer concentration, management intimidation, and other hindrances to building worker power. And that an independent, worker-led coalition led the drive at this 8,000-plus-employee facility, rather than an established union, made its victory all the more impressive, even as the vote to unionize brought organizers into uncharted territory and set up a protracted legal battle with Amazon, which has since refused to recognize the ALU or negotiate a contract. 

Telling the story of how the ALU reached this historic moment, “Union,” a new documentary co-directed by Brett Story (“The Hottest August”) and Stephen Maing (“Crime + Punishment”), takes a detail-driven, ground-level approach, following current and former Amazon employees in Staten Island as they mount a grassroots worker-to-worker campaign, standing their ground against one of the world’s powerful corporations all the while. 

No talking-head documentary but a keenly observational chronicle of the unionization push and its aftermath, “Union” often plays like a thriller by virtue of its sharp, smart editing rhythms. Early on, Story and Maing juxtapose Jeff Bezos blasting off into space on a rocket made by his Blue Origin company and Amazon workers trudging wearily into work; it captures the unimaginable scale of the company’s operations while foregrounding the human scale often concealed by breathless (yet inevitably compromised) reporting of Amazon’s designs on empire. 

Made over the course of three years, Story and Maing’s film explores the human cost of the convenience economy and illuminates oppressive working conditions in Amazon’s factories. From constant surveillance to high injury rates and a lack of breaks, the pressures of working in Amazon warehouses compound to create punishing environments for workers, ones Amazon has steadfastly refused to address or even accurately report. And the threat of retaliation against workers who organize is ever-present; in addition to pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into union-busting campaigns that include mandatory “captive audience” meetings (which have since been banned in the state of New York), Amazon issues warnings of possible termination to workers involved with the unionization drive. 

Bookended by footage of vast cargo ships transporting goods, a reminder of the slow, perpetual motion with which the gears of modern capitalism grind on, Story and Maing’s film is smart in how systematically its narrative lays out obstacles to the union’s success. It also insightfully depicts ground-level dialogue between workers as a powerful tool with which to overcome them. Some of the most remarkable footage, inside Amazon headquarters, covertly films one of those captive audience meetings; here, the company’s anti-union propaganda (One reads: “We’re asking you to do three simple things: get the facts, ask questions and vote no to the union”) is disrupted by ALU organizers, who successfully push back on Amazon managers just long enough to make their case to workers. 

One of the ALU organizers, Chris Smalls, takes center stage in “Union,” though the documentary largely sidesteps the temptation to cast him as a conquering hero. (That’d be an easy trap, given that he became the organization’s public face across the period “Union” depicts.) Smalls, fired from Amazon after protesting inadequate PPE provision during the pandemic (and besmirched by the company’s general counsel as “not smart or articulate” in an internal meeting of executive leaders), is a father of three who was moved to activism by the flagrant injustice of the company’s abusive labor practices. As a leader, he’s at once charismatic and hard-charging, dedicated to his fellow “comrades” but ever driven to push forward even in the face of inter-union dissent.

One of the film’s great strengths is its ability to surface the multiplicity of tensions between organizers working toward a shared cause. Take the world of difference separating the experiences of two subjects: Maddie, a white college graduate using her campus activism experience to help the cause, and Natalie, an older Latina woman living out of her car for years. In one charged exchange, Natalie pushes back on the suggestion, made by white male organizers, that Chris intentionally gets himself arrested by New York police officers to draw attention to the unionization drive. Ultimately, Natalie’s dissatisfaction with the ALU—due to her disagreements with leadership as much as her desire to wait for larger union support—leads her to leave the organization. It’s a testament to the complexity of individual motivations and the absence of easy triumph in this type of effort.

“Union” documents the internal debates and disagreements over governance, organizing, and leadership strategies that divided the ALU before its successful unionization vote and were compounded by its subsequent failed attempt to unionize a second warehouse. Though Smalls’ force of personality, passion, and determination fueled the fight to unionize JFK8, the film carefully depicts this as a collective victory. It rarely gives in to the temptation to single out Smalls for praise at the expense of others, and making it clear that his leadership style also contributed to internal rifts in the ALU that at various points may have weakened its ability to further the union’s mission. 

This becomes particularly important in the film’s latter half, after the unionization vote, at which point the sobering realities of the long work ahead come more fully into view. The heroism of the ALU organizers will never be in question. But with only one battle won in the war for workers’ rights, and Amazon continuing to contest or undercut its results by every means available, “Union” concludes on a note of weary fortitude rather than declarative victory. The film captures both the pain and the power of people at the base of a global infrastructure. By not departing from the frontlines of the fight against Amazon’s labor exploitation, Story and Maing bring the true face of their struggle into focus. 

“Union” will be self-distributed theatrically, starting on Oct. 18. This review was filed from the film’s New York premiere at the New York Film Festival.