- The Day I Met Nine-Year-Old Michael Jackson (May 15, 2026)
One sultry summer night in Chicago around 1967, I was backstage at the Broadway Strand with my dance troupe, The Foscoettes. The Strand, as it was called then, was located on Chicago’s West Side. On this night, it was transformed into a variety show space similar to the more famous Regal Theater. But most nights, it doubled as a skating rink.
As my fellow Foscoettes and I were getting ready to perform our modern dance number, I observed the other groups waiting with us in the green room. One that particularly caught my eye was “The Boys from Gary,” as we called them—nine-year-old Michael Jackson and his older brothers (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon). They were jovial and eager to sneak peeks at us dancers outfitted in our leotards and tights, as we twisted into stretches before taking the stage.
While the rest of us laughed and talked, Michael stood apart from the pack, looking down shyly at the floor. We signaled for him to join us, but he declined. Something about him reminded me of boys in my own family who were afraid to make eye contact. So I pulled on my duster to cover my leotards and walked over to Michael to engage him in conversation. He looked up, his eye catching my own. In that millisecond of exchange, it was clear that we trusted each other. I sat down, and we began to speak in low tones so as not to call attention to ourselves. I could sense from his smile that he felt more comfortable interacting in this way.
As our conversation continued, I invited him to sit on my lap, as I would have with my own cousins or nephews. He complied. He looked at me with his big brown eyes, and we talked about dancing, singing, and whether it was scary to go on stage. I have to admit that I don’t remember the entirety of our conversation, and it never occurred to me that I might be sheltering a kid who would grow up to be the most famous entertainer in the world, not to mention the undisputed “King of Pop.”
All I know is that once we went on stage, some magic beam from above transformed that timid little boy into a whirling dervish of talent. We were all enthralled by his singing and dancing. The rapidity of the changing gleam in Michael’s eyes and the shift of his body to accommodate his otherworldly moves caused all of us to perform better. And I had no doubt that he and his brothers would go far.
The joy of the performances in Antoine Fuqua’s new movie, “Michael”—led by Michael’s own nephew, Jafaar Jackson, in the title role—took me back to the wonder of that evening. Over the years, as I watched Michael Jackson’s evolution, from the transformation of “the Boys from Gary” into the Jackson Five, followed by Michael’s own groundbreaking solo career, we all concluded that he is a rare talent.
Perhaps he lost his way in the years that followed, but as Spike Lee noted in a recent interview, the child sexual abuse allegations against Michael would not have fit into the film’s timeline. Michael’s alleged crimes took place long after 1988, which is where the film ends, while acknowledging that there are many more stories left to tell. While modern-day cancel culture often aims to delegitimize the value of an artist’s work due to their personal actions, the phenomenal box office success of “Michael,” which grossed $423 million globally over its first two weekends, affirms that, in some instances, the cultural impact of one’s work will long outlive the person who created it. “Michael” reminds us of a time before the controversies and allegations, of the young man who overcame abuse administered by his own father to create some of the most enduring and beloved music of all time.
“Michael” also reminded me that, for someone not in the performing arts, I had the unbelievable fortune of being on stage dancing with another superstar, Prince, at the United Center in September of 2012. Days afterward, someone wrote to my daughter, Sonia, rather disapprovingly, “Did you see that lady prancing all around the stage with Prince?” “Yes,” Sonia replied, “That was my mother.” At this point in my life, it seems like a dream or a fairy tale. And I haven’t told my grandchildren about these instances yet. But now, perhaps I can.
Rest in peace, Michael Jackson and Prince, and thank you for demonstrating to me that one is never too old to keep dancing. I will have you both in mind the next time I hit the dance floor.
- Cannes 2026 Video #3: Nagi Notes, Camp Miasma, Werner Herzog (May 15, 2026)
The 2026 Cannes Film Festival starts Tuesday, May 12th, running through May 24th. The Ebert team returns this year with coverage of all of the major films in review and video form. Enjoy this latest segment, with an edited video transcript below.
On today’s segment, direct from Cannes, we’ll review two new films from the festival’s official selection with RogerEbert.com associate editor Robert Daniels.
Robert Daniels:
The first film I’d like to talk about is “Nagi Notes” by Koji Fukada. It is playing in competition, and it’s a pretty mesmerizing, ruminative film that’s set in a small town in Japan. It begins with an architect by the name of Yuriko, who arrives to see her, her former sister-in-law Yuri, who’s a sculptor, and Yuriko and Yuri have been friends for quite some time and remain friends, mostly because they both have failed relationships.
And those failed relationships are really what bind them together.
I mostly liked the film, mostly for its ruminative rhythms and beats. However, in terms of whether it’s going to compete in competition, it might contend for the protagonist, the lead actress, who is absolutely, really fantastic in it. She gives the film a kind of empathetic rhythm, a pathos that brings us into the world of a woman who is pretty locked away from her surroundings and is trying to find meaning and connection in those around her.
Takako Matsu:
When it came to acting, this person, who is a sculptor and got a lot of help from a real sculptor, I went to the actor “Yey”, and she came to Nagi. She helped me throughout the shooting of the film. And it’s thanks to her that I was able to portray this character.
Robert:
And this is one of the things I very much love about it, the photography. The photography brings us into this verdant landscape of rolling hills in a very rural area that includes cows and all the accouterments of living in the middle of nowhere, basically, but living in peace in the middle of nowhere.
The next film I’d like to talk about is” Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which was the opening film in the Un Certain Regard section, directed by Jane Schoenbrun. This film is part of her media trilogy, which began with their debut, “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” which tackled internet culture. Their second film, “I Saw the TV Glow,” was about their love of television series like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and this one is very much their love of horror movies, particularly slashers.
In this film, Hannah Einbinder, who plays Kris, a director, ventures out to the middle-of-nowhere Camp Miasma, which was the setting of a film she very much loved, called Camp Miasma. There lives Gillian Anderson, who is Billy, who was the final girl in that first film. Kris has been hired by a studio to revitalize this moribund franchise into a moneymaking entity.
But she wants more than that. She wants to actually create art. She wants to relive the thing that made these movies special to her, and the things that made a thing that made it special for her is that it was an erotic awakening for her at a very young age.
I thought the performances were stellar, particularly Gillian Anderson, who takes on this kind of southern drawl that reminds one of Dolly Parton, and she’s very much the propulsive engine of this film, granting it its eroticism, its playfulness, and its many eccentricities.
Hannah Einbinder is also fantastic in this film. It’s her meatiest film role to date.
She began her career on television on Hacks. This is similarly a comedic performance, but I think it has a lot of heart and a lot of psychological injury. Yet this is very much a psychodrama, psycho horror. Depending on how you want to look at it. But it’s a psychological drama and horror with great comedic beats, and she doesn’t oversell them.
She plays them mostly straight. She plays them with much sincerity, and with that sincerity, there are real moments of heartache, especially when she’s being open about her inability to connect to others sexually.
This is a film that very much doesn’t just dabble in the slasher genre; it fully embraces it. And because of that, it is incredibly bloody. So that means it’s not for all audiences. But if you’re a fan of slashers, if you’re a fan of gore, if you’re a fan of practical effects and fountains of blood, then this film is excellent.
It’s one of the really great homages to horror films without feeling like a pastiche; it still feels original and plays as original.
The film I’m still most looking forward to at Cannes as part of Directors’ Fortnight is “Diary of a Chambermaid” from the Romanian auteur Radu Jude. Radu Jude is known for his film “Dracula,” which was an A.I. spoof.
He’s also known for “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” which was Romania’s submission to the Academy Awards. He has the propensity to be an artist who is surprising, playful, and quite, quite crude. But his crudeness is often used to critique Romanian society and politics, and capitalism, too. So, no matter if you read the synopsis, or even if someone spoils the film for you, it’s bound to be something that is going to surprise.
So, it’s a film that I’m very much looking forward to from one of the great contemporary auteurs that we have.
Voice over: On today’s Cannes flashback, we’ll take a look at Chaz Ebert’s 2019 interview with the director of “Family Romance, LLC.” The legendary Werner Herzog.
Chaz:
I want to ask about the setting, because when I think of a Werner Herzog movie, not just one thing, because you make all kinds of films, but I think of films like Man Against Nature or Man Against Himself. Some challenge. Here, it’s about a connection set amidst cherry blossoms. Such a beautiful, beautiful setting in Japan. How did you choose Tokyo as a place for your movie?
Werner Herzog:
It was everything because the company is in Tokyo, and I knew the cherry blossom time was coming, so I wanted to take advantage of it. It’s a very, very much made film in a way, because I’m trying to look very deep into the heart of people. And I’m trying to find out what our human condition is, and this curiosity about who we are and what our condition is has never left me.
And that has been the first and foremost connection with Roger, Roger, and speaking of Roger Ebert, yes, I he he he, and he was looking for us. Who are we? What is our present human condition? Where are we moving? What is science fiction, and what is futuristic and still? And when we speak about Family Romance, it is not science fiction, but it’s somehow still a little bit in the future and coming at all of us.
Chaz:
Well, I want to thank you, Werner, for making this film and for doing this interview with us, and I wish you very much success with it.
Werner:
Thank you very much. Yes. And, the film was not just for the world out there. It was also, in a way, done for Roger, because he’s always with me. And I know I must not disappoint him.
Chaz:
Thank you so much.
Voice Over:
That’s all for now, but keep checking back each day at Rogerebert.com/festivals for more reviews, reports, and reactions. See you next time.
- Cannes 2026: Fatherland, Parallel Tales (May 15, 2026)
This year’s Competition program at the Cannes Film Festival is filled with familiar names, including Pedro Almodovar, James Gray, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Two international auteurs were slated early in the festival, promising an intellectually invigorating start to the year’s battle for the Palme d’Or. Only one fulfilled that promise, and even that’s with a few reservations.
Pawel Pawlikowski brings his formally rigid yet strikingly beautiful sense of composition to the story of Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) in Frankfurt in 1949, where he’s been asked to attend an event in a post-WWII Germany still seeking its identity. In the film’s fantastic one-shot opening scene, Mann’s son, Klaus (August Diehl), lays out many of the themes that follow in a phone call with his sister, Erica (Sandra Huller). Thomas and Erica now live in the States, but what does their return to Germany (after fleeing in 1933) mean to their family, reputation, and the country? Is Thomas Mann a “Good German,” and what space is there for culture or intellectualism in a place that’s literally still in rubble? With the West run by the Americans, as Klaus asks, do they choose Hitler or Mickey Mouse?
After the prologue, “Fatherland” is almost precisely divided into two as Erica, who serves as her father’s assistant, travels with Thomas to the two halves of Germany, starting in Frankfurt in the West and moving to Weimar in the East. The U.S. largely controls the former, and a press conference on Mann’s arrival highlights some of the thorny issues surrounding his visit. Is he a returning hero to a people who might argue that he betrayed them by fleeing in the first place? In a place that has seen all of its systems destroyed to the point that it is being controlled by its former adversary on one side and remnants of the Nazi party on the other, what role does a man who preaches the importance of Art have? Does culture matter to the defeated?
Working again with “Ida” and “Cold War” cinematographer Lukasz Zal, “Fatherland” has a painterly visual language, once again finding compositions that could hang in galleries, but this drama feels icier than the others, a vision of a place without warmth. To inject some humanity into it, Pawlikowski plays a little loose with history and crafts a family drama around the reveal that Klaus won’t be attending the event with his twin and father because he’s taken his own life after that prologue. Huller then becomes the gateway into the drama: a vision of a woman processing the cost of what a war they weren’t even directly involved in has exacted on her family. The Oscar nominee for “Anatomy of a Fall” is predictably stellar, making the most of every subdued emotional beat. She’s the reason alone to see it.
“Fatherland” is surprisingly short, clocking in at around 80 minutes with credits, and that gives it almost the sense of a short film idea that never found a way to expand into a feature. I loved how the Manns are almost interrogated in Frankfort but serenaded by literal choirs praising their existence in the part of the country less ready to ask the tough questions, yet it feels like “Fatherland” ends just as the film is starting to simmer these themes. Maybe it’s intentional to keep the audience in a sort of intellectual purgatory, reflecting two people grappling with the complexity of not just their own individual and family legacies but the entire country’s.
There are no easy answers in “Fatherland,” which makes it a bit less satisfying narratively, but I think also means it will have the freedom to bounce around in the minds of viewers more than a film concerned with tighter conclusions.
Bouncing around is a good phrase to use to describe Asghar Farhadi’s deeply disappointing “Parallel Tales,” the first true heartbreaker of Cannes 2026. An incredible ensemble of living French legends that includes Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Cassel, Virginie Efira, and Catherine Deneuve can’t salvage a borderline incoherent script from Farhadi, who uses Krzysztof Kieslowski’s sixth chapter of “Dekalog” (“A Short Film About Love”) as the basis for a convoluted tale of intersecting characters who live across from each other on a Parisian street.
As the people at the center of “Parallel Tales” start to feel increasingly inconsistent, the mind wanders to the fact that this film about two brothers who make movies has a narrative foundation that pivots on an act of plagiarism, of which the filmmaker was acquitted in 2022. Perhaps the most interesting reading of the first word in the title is how this story could be read as parallel to the recent drama surrounding the man who made it. Sadly, it’s a more interesting way to unpack the film than to do so directly.
Huppert plays a writer named Sylvie, whose niece Celine (India Hair) brings home a young man named Adam (Adam Bessa) to help her pack up her old apartment before they sell it. Adam meets Celine after he stops a pickpocket on a train, which leads her to believe he can be trusted. Sylvie is a writer, and she’s been spying on the beautiful people across the street, turning her impressions of their lives into fiction.
In Sylvie’s version, there’s infidelity, double crosses, and even murder, but the truth is that these neighbors are significantly more mundane than that. When Adam takes credit for Sylvie’s novel, and it ends up in the hands of the people who inspired it, lines start to blur, and the emotional undercurrents of the fiction start to surface in reality.
Across from Sylvie is an apartment used as a sound studio by a filmmaker named Nicolas (Cassel, easily the film’s MVP), who works with his brother Theo (Pierre Niney) and a foley artist named Nita (Efira), Nicolas’ partner. They spend their days crafting fake sounds for what looks like nature footage, which feels like a commentary on how nothing is real, not even the sound of the bird wings flapping in a film, but, like so much of the script, it never really connects to anything.
Farhadi can never seem to find the right temperature in “Parallel Tales,” alternating between half-baked ideas that are never as resonant as their intent and overcooked character beats. Bluntly, these people feel as real as Nita’s Foley work, reducing them all to devices in an overwrought piece of storytelling.
He will bounce back; let’s hope Cannes does soon, too.
- Cannes 2026: Nagi Notes, Ashes (May 15, 2026)
The Japanese director Koji Fukada had a bit of a breakout at Cannes a decade ago with “Harmonium,” which won a prize in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, but “Nagi Notes” is his first film in competition. It’s also the best of his movies that I’ve seen: a bit schematic, perhaps, but full of subtleties, with a fine appreciation of time and place.
Set over eight consecutive days, the film unfolds in the remote village of Nagi, Japan, where Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), an architect, has traveled to see Yoriko (Takako Matsu), a sculptor for whom she plans to pose. When Yuri arrives, Keita (Kiyora Fujiwara), a teenage boy, recognizes her from a drawing by his friend Haruki (Waku Kawaguchi), an aspiring artist who has met her before. Yuri and Yoriko are ex-sisters-in-law: Yuri had been married to Yoriko’s brother, Masato (seen only indirectly, in sculpture form), with whom she lived in Taiwan.
This faintly Rohmer-esque setup, which pivots around these four characters and, to a lesser extent, the boys’ parents, sounds simple, but nearly every scene involves one person misperceiving another’s intentions. Yuri and Yoriko are alternately mistaken for mere friends—as opposed to almost-family—and for a romantic couple. The boys’ kinship also has unforeseen complexities. Haruki is curious about Tokyo, a city he knows little about. He also thinks that his father, Yoshihiro (Ken’ichi Matsuyama), would be a good romantic match for Yoriko, whom he seems not to realize is attracted to women (something Yoriko keeps close to the vest in Nagi). And it’s possible that Yoshihiro is actually in love with Yuri—a crush he developed simply by seeing a picture that Haruki had made of her.
“Nagi Notes” turns these misunderstandings into a kind of running commentary on the subjective nature of art and the parallels between interpreting art and intuiting people’s emotions. Early in the film, it shows Yuri a block of camphorwood that she is planning to sculpt: “This is going to be you, Yuri,” she says—but of course, it’s going to be Yoriko’s version of Yuri. Yoriko likes sculpture because she sees it as a fundamentally public art form: open to all, inviting readings. She contrasts this with buildings like the kind that Yuri designs, which require decisions about who can enter and who cannot. Buildings, she says, embody the ideas of authority and selectivity.
It is clear that Fukada has drawn substantially on the location for inspiration. We learn that the area used to thrive on dairy farming until it had to accept a military base, which changed the local economy. (It also ensured that the village became the site of a contemporary art museum, the setting of one scene.) Another motif—in the press notes, Fukada explains that it came partly from a play called “Tokyo Notes”—is the camera obscura, and in particular the device’s capacity to transform three-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional, inverted image. That’s exactly the sort of delicate perspective-shifting that “Nagi Notes” is interested in.
The theme of failing to understand another person’s perspective also figures prominently in “Ashes,” directed by the actor Diego Luna and showing in the festival’s special screenings section. It’s based on the novel “Ceniza en la Boca” (ash in the mouth) by Brenda Navarro, and while I can’t say whether it’s a faithful adaptation, its expository style might have been better-suited to the page.
The movie begins and ends with departures. As it opens, Isabel (Adriana Paz), a mother, is walking out on her two children in Mexico. The details aren’t made fully clear until much later in the film, but it eventually emerges that Isabel’s destination was Spain, where she hoped to bring her son and daughter legally, to give them a more stable life and perhaps to find fulfillment for herself.
But the bulk of the film—which has a chapter-like structure, with major revelations punctuated by cuts to white—is set years later and focuses on Lucila (Anna Díaz), Isabel’s daughter, and her life after she and her younger brother, Diego (Sergio Bautista), joined Isabel in Spain. Lucila shouldered much of the burden of raising Diego, who is now a teenager and misbehaving at school.
In Madrid and later in Barcelona, Lucila takes a series of jobs as a nanny, a food-delivery person, and an elder-care aide to make ends meet while partying and chasing guys at night. The children have nostalgia for Mexico; their mother, who, it’s implied, came out in Spain, less so.
All of this information is conveyed far more obliquely than strictly necessary; the script, by Luna, Abia Castillo, and Diego Rabasa, treats even the basic components of the plot as if they were twists. And while giving viewers the space to get their bearings isn’t necessarily a bad approach, Luna isn’t enough of a visually oriented director to pull it off.
A wildly under-motivated tragic incident triggers a third section back in Mexico, where Lucila gets a sense of the life and violence she escaped, and viewers begin to grasp just how much the story’s scope has been shortchanged.
- “Dutton Ranch” Keeps the Barn Doors Open for the “Yellowstone” Franchise (May 14, 2026)
The last we saw of Kelly Reilly’s Beth and Cole Hauser’s Rip in the series finale of “Yellowstone,” they had just settled into their new home, a ranch in the quiet outpost of Dillon, Montana. For one perfect, sun-dappled moment, it appeared as if Beth and Rip and their teenage ward Carter (Finn Little) might be able to shake off the ghosts and the pain of the past, and find something approaching tranquility.
Fat. Chance.
Cut to the premiere of the spinoff/sequel series “Dutton Ranch.” Before we even get to the obligatory title card sequence with beautifully atmospheric, neo-Western imagery set against the typically rousing theme from Taylor Sheridan Universe stalwarts Brian Tyler and Breton Vivian, Beth and Rip’s dreams of an idyllic life are shattered. I’ll not reveal the circumstances, other than to say that Beth sizes up the situation and says, “We start again,” and the next stop is Rio Paloma, in South Texas, with a new home for Beth, Rip, and Carter. They purchase a legacy property from a family and rename it Dutton Ranch.
Beth, Rip, and Carter quickly learn that while the tragic and blood-spattered events of Yellowstone are in the rearview mirror, they’ve somehow managed to take root in ANOTHER hotbed of conflict. This is a place where disputes are settled with fisticuffs and guns, where racism and class warfare often bubble to the surface, where revenge and subterfuge are the order of the day, and where the bond of family and friendship is strong. And oh yeah, a potential formidable enemy lives just down the road, and will stop at nothing if you get in their way. It’s as if everyone in this (fictional) town has been waiting their whole lives for the Dutton-Wheelers to show up just so they can ratchet up the conflicts.
(In classic “Yellowstone” franchise fashion, characters occasionally pause amidst the chaos to wax poetic, e.g., Beth saying of Texas, “Sky doesn’t stop here. It’s like you can see forever,” and Rip replying, “Well, baby, if you look hard enough, maybe you can.” Now let’s get back to the action!)
L-R: Cole Hauser as Rip Wheeler and Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton in Dutton Ranch, episode 1, season 1, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+.
With Chad Feehan serving as creator and showrunner (yet reportedly exiting before the show’s premiere), “Dutton Ranch” exists within a smaller world than “Yellowstone”; I don’t think anybody in this series is going to run for governor. Still, like its predecessor, this is a satisfying mix of intrigue, action, and modern Western soap opera, set against the backdrop of the breathtaking yet unforgiving South Texas plains. Reilly and Hauser pick up where they left off and continue their run as one of the strongest, sexiest, most badass TV couples of the decade. They’re joined by an outstanding cast of series regulars, led by two treasured veteran stars in Annette Bening and Ed Harris.
The quality of the writing and the acting is such that it takes only one or two scenes to become familiar with a wide range of characters—some world-weary but warmhearted, some with evil intentions oozing from their pores, others a bit more…complicated. Each episode is like a well-marbled ribeye with plenty of meat on the bone; in fact, one memorable sequence actually revolves around a perfectly grilled steak, and Beth uses her wiles to make sure that particular steak gets put in front of the right man.
As the setbacks and conflicts pile up, Rip exclaims, “What the f— is going on around here?” Rip, we hear ya. “Dutton Ranch” plays like a game of high-stakes Whac-A-Mole for Rip and Beth, with a fresh challenge or obstacle popping up with nearly every sunrise.
Bening plays Beulah Jackson, a kind of Texas counterpart to the late John Dutton; Beulah is the matriarch of the largest and most powerful family ranch in the area, and she rules with an iron fist. (It takes a while to buy into Bening playing such a ruthless character, especially because she’s wearing glasses that make it look like her most dangerous activity is needlepointing after two glasses of Chablis. But we’re talking about a world-class actor. She brings it.)
Annette Bening as Beulah Jackson in Dutton Ranch, episode 2, season 1, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: Lauren Smith/Paramount+.
Harris’ Everett McKinney—now there’s an All-American name—is a Vietnam veteran who is literally a veterinarian, and looks like he might become a kind of father figure to Beth. There’s a scene where Beulah and Everett sit on a porch and talk about things that were and things that never will be, and Bening and Harris are simply and quietly masterful together.
Other notables include J. R. Villarreal as Azul, a veteran ranch hand who quickly earns Rip’s trust; Jai Courtney and Juan Pablo Raba as Beulah’s sons, and they’re both big trouble in very different ways; and Natalie Alyn Lind as a local girl with a rebellious streak who casts an immediate spell on Carter, who is in WAY over his head.
“Dutton Ranch” hits the ground running and sets up a half-dozen storylines with long-term potential, while creating a whole new branch of the Yellowstone tree. Mostly, though, it’s the continuing story of Rip and Beth, with Hauser and Reilly shining in career-defining roles.
Premieres on May 15 with a two-episode debut, with new episodes releasing weekly on Fridays. Four episodes of the nine-episode season were made available for critics.
