Entertainment
Review: In the generous 'Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story,' a support network takes a bow
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One of the casualties of an era centered on ring lights over stage lights is the marginalizing of the all-around “performer,” that blood-sweat-and-tears breed who could light up rooms and arenas alike with undeniable talent, passion and sparkling artifice. Anyone can call themselves an artist. But only the well-earned love of audiences makes someone a true performer — of the you-got-it-kid variety — and, at 78, EGOT superstar Liza Minnelli may be one of the last of her kind.
You’d need a serious aversion to showbiz to screw up a documentary about Minnelli’s mission to razzle-dazzle theater crowds, moviegoers and TV viewers with what God (and Judy) gave her. Thankfully, filmmaker Bruce David Klein finds the sweet spot between admirer and honest broker with the warm, engaging tribute biodoc “Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story.”
Minnelli herself is on camera throughout: laughing, reminiscing, breaking into song and (nice to see) looking energized. But these freshly shot segments aren’t the anchor of Klein’s narrative. Rather than assemble a soup-to-nuts tale hamstrung by chronology, he shrewdly offers up her story as an all-star revue about her ascent. He positions Minnelli’s hard-fought stardom emerging from under her mother’s rainbow-shaped shadow as a collaboration with many caring mentors — adoring champions and friends who saw gifts too real to be denied.
And what mentors! Kay Thompson played mother and confidante, Charles Aznavour taught her song-acting, Bob Fosse streamlined her movement, lyricist Fred Ebb drew inspiration from her, and she was a fashion muse for Halston. They may not be around anymore, but their archival presence here, along with historical context from longtime pal Michael Feinstein (the movie’s dominant interviewee), paints a picture of love, toil and glamour from the ’60s onward that is privileged in its peek at backstage emotional support in an unforgiving business. Minnelli was the perfect talent for a vulnerable new age, projecting strength and fragility equally with those gams, eyelashes and belted feelings.
Sure, being Judy Garland’s daughter gets you a courtesy look — and, from Mama, inklings of jealousy — but a decade that takes somebody from a teenage Tony (“Flora the Red Menace”) to a 20-something Oscar (“Cabaret”) and Emmy (for the incredible special “Liza With a Z”) to cover-model status, only happens when you’re working harder than anyone else. (The movie’s chapter headings, on the other hand, quotes taken from key learning curves in Minnelli’s life, veer a little too close to the kinds of cheesy titles you see on quickie memoirs: “Don’t Go Around With People You Don’t Like” and “Not Everything Has to Be a National Anthem.”)
The handling of childhood, marriages, lovers and addictions are where you can sense a velvet rope being gently pulled in front — we get glimpses but nothing too deep, save the reminder that being public about her struggles also made her an honesty icon as well as a red-sequined one. Those famous sequins, by the way, were Halston’s genius move to hide her perspiration, just as Thompson’s larger-than-life friendship helped hide her grief after her mom’s death, and Fosse’s choreography thrillingly deflected a self-consciousness about her scoliosis. It’s no wonder, in that world of savvy deflection, she knew how to make denial a powerful tool on the bullet train to triumph.
And yet inside the insanity of a famous It girl’s breathless ups and downs, beyond the fascinating history that “Liza” delightfully unravels, there’s a comforting takeaway: the warmth and respect with which friends and loved ones old and new — Feinstein, Ben Vereen, Mia Farrow, John Kander, Darren Criss — talk about her on camera. What “Liza” touchingly suggests is those people are life’s real EGOT.
‘Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story’
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, Jan. 31, Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles; Laemmle Town Center, Encino
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Movie Reviews
Christopher Landon’s ‘HEART EYES’ (2025) – Movie Review – PopHorror
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Slashers are among the favorite subgenres of most horror fans. When you add in the murder mystery elements of a whodunit, it becomes even more of an immersive and nostalgic watch. Such is the case with Heart Eyes, the newest Valentine’s Day related entry in the horror world. Let’s take a look at why this may make the perfect date night movie selection.
Holt and Gooding have phenomenal timing and chemistry together, and their relationship really brews nicely as the body count starts to build. Heart Eyes really feels like the coming out party for Gooding, though the characters in general are given such fun dialogue that provides genuine laughs. Part love story and part meta commentary, this movie feels like Scream meets Cherry Falls.
Horror is experiencing a return to the 80s in the reemergence of the casual holiday-themed slashers, and Heart Eyes has the makings of a yearly watch-party flick. It’s not all witty banter though, as the jump scares and exquisite gore leave enough meat on the bone for darker genre fans. It’s simple and doesn’t try to be ‘elevated’. The diversity in this movie will help it to amass an audience of many different types of movie-goers.
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The balance of Heart Eyes skews a bit more toward comedy than horror, even to a point of being over the top at times in some of its background characters. But the mystery and relationships do resolve in a very satisfying, fast paced way. It’s quite easy to see why a movie like this could end up in the hearts of viewers as one of the most fun murder mysteries of 2025.
Entertainment
Beloved owner of one of Hollywood's last costume shops dies at 90
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Ursula Boschet, the iconic Hollywood costume designer, whose shop draped celebrities and civilians for more than half a century, has died. She was 90.
Boschet died Monday afternoon of pancreatic cancer surrounded by family at her home in Chatsworth, a spokesperson for the family confirmed.
In a career that defied the frequent churn and vagaries associated with the entertainment industry, Ursula’s Costumes became a local institution. Over five decades she estimated that she made more than 100,000 costumes for television, films, plays and private customers.
Boschet garnered a reputation for her well-crafted, creative threads — and for not making a fuss over celebrities.
“She was special. She was a really big part of my family’s life. She had a passion for creativity and she will be missed,” said Jamie Lee Curtis, who began coming to Ursula’s Costumes over 30 years ago, in an interview with The Times.
Kathleen Uris, a costumer who worked with Boschet for more than 20 years, described the experience as a “master class with a genius costumer.”
In addition to her entertainment work such as for the nearly seven-season duration of the 1980s television show “Cagney & Lacey,” Boschet was the go-to designer for a number of costume parties in Los Angeles, including the annual Labyrinth Masquerade Ball, held at the Biltmore Hotel.
For decades, people lined up around the block during the month of October, when the shop was open seven days a week to keep up with Halloween customers.
Many of her clients became like extended family members. The walls of her store are covered in framed autographed photos of scores of actors including Bruce Willis and Curtis, all addressed to her.
She made costumes for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s children. When Michael Keaton came to the shop with his little dog after starring in “Batman,” Boschet said she made a miniature Caped Crusader costume for the pooch.
Steve Martin, whom she met while working on his 1984 film “All of Me,” asked her to create hidden suit pockets from which he could pull things out for one of his magic acts. In the early 1990s, he appeared as the Great Flydini, who retrieved items such as scarves, eggs and a telephone from the fly in his pants.
Curtis recalled visiting the shop each year as early as April to begin consulting with Boschet about her family’s Halloween costumes.
“We had long discussions about what this year’s costumes were going to be and the accouterments,” Curtis said. “She had such a breadth of knowledge and how to build something out of nothing.”
Later, when Curtis’ youngest daughter became involved in gaming and cosplay, Boschet became an invaluable ally.
“When I think of teachers and those who appreciated and saw my children’s gifts and made a difference, Ursula is one of them,” Curtis said. “She is someone who made an impact on our family life through her work with our daughter. She was special.”
Despite a series of health troubles, up until recently, the diminutive nonagenarian continued to come to the store and workshop that bears her name in Santa Monica five days a week, working eight to 10 hours a day.
However, last summer Boschet announced that she planned to finally shut down following a storm of industry woes that included the pandemic and the labor strikes. She also cited her age and health, and the fact that she had no one to take over the business (her children were uninterested).
“There was no money coming in,” she told The Times. “I couldn’t pay the rent anymore. And I have bills to pay.”
The news left her legions of customers bereft. “I’m heartbroken,” Kate Beckinsale said last July, adding, “Ursula is one of my longest relationships in L.A., including my marriage.”
Kate Beckinsale, right, with Ursula Boschet at Ursula’s Costumes.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Beckinsale came in about once a month to dress up and rent costumes for herself, friends and family.
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1934, the daughter of a butcher and a homemaker, Boschet learned dressmaking and tailoring at 14. In 1952, at 18, she married her husband, a barber.
With postwar Germany still largely in rubble, they found it difficult to earn a living and in 1957 they emigrated to Canada.
For nearly five years in Toronto, Boschet worked at a large sock factory before the couple moved to Los Angeles, where she got a job working on various theater productions. She joined the Theatrical Wardrobe Union, which sent her around to the studios.
In 1973, she landed at Disney, which leased a space in what is now called the Culver Studios, primarily making costumes for Disney on Parade. Three years later, when the parade work ended, she decided to launch her own wardrobe and costume business.
After announcing the closure of Ursula’s Costumes last summer, Boschet began to sell off her inventory, which represented every possible period and type of costume and accessory. Many of her longtime customers made a pilgrimage to the shop to say goodbye and buy a piece of costume history.
The shop will close for good this Saturday.
Boschet is survived by her daughter, Ela Steere, and son, Richard Boschet; three grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: A Veteran adjusts to Civilian Life with “My Dead Friend Zoe”
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Perhaps only an Iraq War combat vet would dare to tackle Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with the sort of sarcasm and gallows humor of “My Dead Friend Zoe.”
Director and co-writer and ex-paratrooper Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ film’s title character is a cynical smart-ass, a female veteran and a ghost. Zoe is, as advertised, “Dead.”
Zoe, given just enough edge by Natalie Morales, has the license to call her service in Afghanistan “the dumbest war of all time,” the sass to suggest she and her fellow GI trooper/ mechanic Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) “watch ‘M*A*S*H’ again,” but this time not “as a drinking game” and the impatience to refer to the group therapy they attend back home as “kumbaya” nonsense.
But Merit is the one physically there at therapy. Dead Zoe is the snide commentator in her head and the ongoing presence in her life, and the most important thing Merit won’t talk about in “group,” no matter how much the doctor and Vietnam vet in charge (Morgan Freeman) demands it.
“My Dead Friend” is a nice showcase for constantly-employed TV actress Morales (“Parks and Rec,” Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Morning Show”). But it’s a star vehicle for “Walking Dead” alumna and “Star Trek: Discovery” lead Martin-Green.
It is Merit who must hide the “dead” friend she still communes with, among other unspoken traumas of her service. She does this while in court-ordered group therapy, something that’s interrupted when she has to care for her testy, “wandering” and increasingly forgetful grandfather and role model, a retired Lt. Col. played by Ed Harris.
That tells us this script is deep enough to attract talent, even as it gives Zoe and Merit Rihanna sing-alongs at work, even as Zoe serves up therapy-is-for-thee-but-not-for-me tough gal sarcasm softballs, even as she’s mocking Merit’s home state.
“Isn’t Oregon known for its serial killers?”
Freeman, who is as empathetic as he’s ever been on screen and the tightly-wound side of Harris lend the picture extra gravitas. But none of this would work if Martin-Green didn’t have the bearing of a soldier, one who has seen and experienced things. Compulsive jogging and visits to a cemetery are Merit’s coping mechanisms.
Introducing a possible love interest (“Pitch Perfect” alumnus Utkarsh Ambudkar) doesn’t add much that feels necessary, when layers of the Merit-Zoe connection and disconnection are left hanging. But even these mysteries benefit the film as we can infer “this” and understand without knowing “that.”
And Freeman’s doctor gives voice to talking therapy’s one essential truth in facing the many shades of PTSD, that one must “think very seriously about whether living in the past is worth it.”
Stay through the credits if you want to see how important this subject is, with or without jokes only those who’ve been through it truly “get.”
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Rating: R, combat stress subject matter, profanity
Cast: Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris, Gloria Ruben, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Morgan Freeman
Credits: Directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, scripted by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes and A.J. Bermudez. A Briarcliffe release.
Running time: 1:38
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