Author: NY TIMES

‘Godzilla Minus One’Stream it on Netflix.Despite a surprisingly successful box-office run at the end of 2023, this evocative, often poignant take on one of the most famous screen creatures of all time was abruptly pulled from theaters. Then the film remained AWOL from streaming for months, until it popped up last week with no advance fanfare — a bit like Godzilla himself emerging from out of nowhere, actually. Takashi Yamazaki’s movie is set a couple of years after World War II, as a traumatized Japan slowly rebuilds and tries to overcome the physical and mental devastation caused by the atomic…

Set to a peppy electronic soundtrack, a recent video clip showed what the Hezbollah militia said was a missile-firing drone, a new weapon in its arsenal as it ratchets up its strikes on Israel.Flaunting a new weapon is the type of muscle flexing that Hassan Nasrallah, the organization’s elusive leader, crows about. “What protects you is your strength, your courage, your fists, your weapons, your missiles and your presence in the field,” he said in an address earlier this year.Hezbollah’s attacks, which started last October in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza war, have gradually intensified as the group uses…

In front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the street has been blanketed in artificial turf, and a set of gigantic goal posts has been erected. On the waterfront in Hamburg, two dozen shipping containers have been painted in the colors of the competing nations. Part of Leipzig’s zoo has been handed over for a program of cultural events, though presumably not the bit with the tigers.Across Germany, the flags are being draped, the marketing plans are being finalized and anything bearing the logo of something other than one of UEFA’s official sponsors is being unceremoniously hidden from view. After…

Long before Katie Ledecky was collecting gold medals and setting world records, she seemed nonchalant about making it across the pool.In her first race, a 25-meter freestyle, she stopped along the lane line about 10 times, sometimes to clear her goggles, sometimes to clear her nose and sometimes just to look around. But when she saw her competitors cruising past, something sparked within her. She let go. With windmill-like arms, she plowed ahead, ultimately finishing second.When her father, camcorder in hand, asked his daughter, just 6 at the time, how the race had gone, she said, “Great!” He asked her…

After months of fighting over a pay package promised to Elon Musk six years ago — one that included stock grants now worth about $56 billion — matters are finally coming to a head.At Tesla’s annual meeting on Thursday, shareholders are set to vote on whether to reapprove the compensation deal after a Delaware judge voided it in January. The outcome could shift Musk’s relationship with the company, and Tesla officials aren’t taking any chances.“If Tesla is to retain Elon’s attention and motivate him to continue to devote his time, energy, ambition and vision to deliver comparable results in the…

Jeannette Charles, who transformed a portrait rejected by a royal art show into a career as a Queen Elizabeth II look-alike in movies and on television, died on Tuesday in Great Baddow, England. She was 96 — the same age as the monarch when she died two years ago.“Mum was a real character and a force of nature,” her daughter, Carol Christophi, said in announcing Mrs. Charles’s death, in a hospice. “She had an amazing life.”Mrs. Charles first acted in small repertory roles in regional theater. But her uncanny resemblance to the queen distracted audiences, who giggled and guffawed when…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will address a joint meeting of Congress on July 24, the top two congressional Republicans announced on Thursday night.Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said in a statement that the speech would offer Mr. Netanyahu the opportunity to “share the Israeli government’s vision for defending their democracy, combating terror, and establishing just and lasting peace in the region.”But in a separate statement that hinted at the deep political divides over Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s war in Gaza, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York…

Blame it on the better weather and its privileging of being out over staying in, but I’ve been having a hard time getting into any streaming entertainment these days. I’ve started dozens of shows and abandoned them after an episode or two, never to return. Are recent shows just poor matches for my taste? Has TV become boringly mid, as my colleague James Poniewozik described? Or perhaps it’s more serious: Have I finally and irretrievably reached the outer limits of my own attention span?It’s no great tragedy, not having something to watch — go for a hike! watch a sunset,…

It’s the talk of every group text — at least every group text composed of women over 40.Miranda July’s latest novel, “All Fours,” is about a 45-year-old woman who upends her seemingly settled domestic life by checking into a motel a half-hour from her house for a few weeks, taking up with a younger married man and then experimenting with an open marriage.On her journey to self-discovery — and sexual awakening — she asks women she knows to share with her their true desires: Are they happy in their marriages? And if they’re not, are they going to do anything…

After their father died in 2021, Susan Camp and her brother cleaned out his home — and inadvertently threw out $5,000 in cash he had wrapped in aluminum foil and stashed in the freezer. (Luckily, they later retrieved it.)And she was surprised, but not shocked, to also discover $6,000 in a box that once held a bottle of cologne. “Dad traveled, and he always wanted cash on him,” she said.Adrienne Volpe’s grandmother kept her extra cash in her library.“My grandmother had pressed thousands of dollars in single bills inside books,” Ms. Volpe said. “We thought we were going to find…