Author: NY TIMES

“Players” is an old-fashioned romantic comedy, which means you know the end from the start. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature, a well-deployed one in this case. Practically since Shakespeare, the point of rom-coms is their predictability, and that’s what I love about them. Enemies become lovers, friends become lovers, or we all learn a valuable lesson. Those are the options.The distinctions lie in the specifics, and rom-coms succeed on how memorable those specifics are: enduring a weird Welsh roommate, faking a climax in Katz’s, skewering terrible Christmas sweaters, falling in love over the radio, leading your colleagues in…

President Volodymyr Zelensky is redoubling his diplomatic outreach to Europe in the hopes of starting to fill the void left by months of American indecision, as the debate over providing renewed military assistance for Ukraine continues to play out in Washington.The Ukrainian leader was quick to praise the bipartisan group of U.S. senators who approved $60 billion in assistance for his nation at a moment when Ukrainian soldiers are struggling with a shortage of weapons and ammunition, saying “continued U.S. assistance helps to save human lives from Russian terror.”Reaction across the Ukrainian political spectrum was similar — seeking to express…

It’s not unusual to hear tales of people keeping family members or friends in the dark about aspects of their finances — debt from credit cards or gambling losses, for example — and how those issues caused problems in a relationship or within a family.Sometimes, though, there are good money secrets, some of which had positive outcomes — like a grandmother who silently stashed extra money in a retirement account that helped pay expenses in her later years. Or unmentioned savings that enabled someone to leave an inheritance that helped family members. We would like to hear those stories.We read…

Good artists copy; great artists steal. I coined that — OK, Picasso supposedly did. But the maxim may as well be stamped across the forehead of Ana Santos (Camila Mendes), a broke, harried auction house assistant who, after scoring a major work trip to London, falls into posing as an art world V.I.P.In “Upgraded,” a sly charmer on Amazon Prime Video, not only is Ana dealt the lucky break to London, but she also obtains a flight upgrade to first class, where her seat happens to be next to Will (Archie Renaux), the unassuming heir to a fine art fortune.…

More than 100 million people are voting on Wednesday in one of the biggest elections in the world. The contest for the top prize — the presidency of Indonesia — is a three-way race.But looming large is someone not on the ballot.That person is Joko Widodo, the incumbent president, who is not allowed to seek a third five-year term and will step down in October. A decade after Mr. Joko presented himself as a down-to-earth reformer and won office, he remains incredibly popular.Many of his supporters say that he has largely delivered on his promise of putting Indonesia on the…

Inflation cooled less than expected in January and showed worrying staying power after volatile food and fuel costs were stripped out — a reminder that bringing price increases under control remains a fraught, bumpy process.The overall Consumer Price Index was up 3.1 percent from a year earlier, which was down from 3.4 percent in December but more than the 2.9 percent that economists had forecast. That figure is down from the latest peak of 9.1 percent in the summer of 2022.But after stripping out food and fuel, which bounce around in price from month to month, “core” prices held roughly…

An Alaska man died last month of Alaskapox, a rare virus that occurs mostly in small mammals and can cause skin lesions, according to state health officials.Alaskapox was first identified in 2015 in a woman who lived near Fairbanks, Alaska, and there have been a total of seven cases of the virus reported to the Alaska Section of Epidemiology. Until last month, no one had been hospitalized or died of Alaskapox, which can also cause swollen lymph nodes and muscle or joint pain, Alaska epidemiology officials said on Friday.Of the seven people who have had Alaskapox, six lived in the…

Despite his insistence on “Jeffrey or nothing” for “American Fiction,” Jefferson said he wasn’t quite prepared for the experience. “To be honest, I was a little terrified of directing him,” he said. “It felt like telling LeBron James how to dunk a basketball.”But “he’s great not because he says, ‘I’m Jeffrey Wright — leave me alone to do my work,’” Jefferson said, “but because he says, ‘What do you think about this line, what about my emotions here?’” Wright “did two things in this role that were spectacular and that needed very little guidance,” Jefferson continued: He allowed audiences to…

Egyptian officials have been quoted as saying that any action that sends Gazans spilling into Egyptian territory could jeopardize the decades-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, an anchor of stability in the Middle East. But on Monday, Egypt offered assurances that the treaty would stand.Many Palestinians say that Israel wants to expel them, and they fear that if they ever left, Israel would not allow them back in — just as Arabs who fled or were expelled from Israel at its formation have not been permitted to return.Mr. Netanyahu, vowing to crush Hamas, has described Rafah as its last…

A buzz saw of Republican opposition in the House is threatening to kill the $95 billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate overwhelmingly passed early Tuesday, leaving proponents of the emergency aid legislation scrounging for unorthodox ways to push the bill over the finish line.Hours before the Senate approved the bill in a lopsided 70-to-29 vote, Speaker Mike Johnson suggested he would not allow the aid package to receive a vote on the House floor. The measure would provide an additional $60.1 billion for Kyiv — which would bring the total U.S. investment in the war effort…