Memories of cinema past and present come rushing at you like 2001’s Star Gate sequence in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, his first return to cinema since 2016’s Neon Demon and his first project since dying for 20 minutes from a serious heart condition three years ago. Somehow, it was excluded from the Cannes Film Festival’s official competition in favor of films that look very much like 20^th-century television, but so far Refn’s film is the only suggestion at this year’s event that one of its key directors is even remotely curious as to what the real future of film might look like — as opposed to a  mess of known IP and AI recreations of people who’ve been dead for 50 years. It seems the French, who once disdained le cinema du papa, have a little bit of catching-up to do.

The film it most closely corresponds to is last year’s Resurrection by China’s Bi Gan, another awake-dream that aims to haunt rather than entertain (although the two things are by no means mutually exclusive). In terms of art, it brings to mind ballet, since so much of what’s important in that medium is hardly what you’d call storytelling in the Hollywood narrative sense. To expand on that further, it would be impossible to discuss the power of this film without mentioning Pino Donaggio’s phenomenal score. Bringing much-needed context to Refn’s style-overload, Donaggio’s achingly emotional soundtrack guides the film in a way music hasn’t since the early silents, or the heyday of Powell & Pressburger, and even, at a push, the experimental films of Kenneth Anger.

What’s it about? Whatever you like. The setting is a surreal futuristic Japanese city of the most unrealistic high-rise kind, and at the story’s core is Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who is about to make a film with a younger influencer type named Hunter (Kristine Froseth). Hunter is obsessed with fame and obsessed with Elle, and the whole film draws quite heavily, in a similarly symbiotic way (whether knowingly or not), on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 psychodrama Persona, which no genre director ever has ever not found endlessly fascinating. As they prepare for the shoot, Hunter meets Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), Elle’s former lover and now her father’s new wife. It’s a complication that obviously hurts, but Hunter is either slow on the uptake or, more likely, couldn’t really care less.

If we’re going to apply film-school formalism to a film that intends to live rent-free in your imagination whether you want it there or not, the “inciting incident” that the girls see a murder in a nearby tower block, and a young woman is defenestrated. It corresponds to the myth of The Leather Man, a tormented, Orpheus-like demon with piercing red eyes and razor-sharp diamond-studded gloves who stalks and kills young women in a bid to replace the daughter he lost to the underworld. We then jump-cut to a scene from a breathlessly exciting space movie, with Elle starring as the leader of an female sci-fi movie that looks like a fantastic space-opera version of Tarantino’s Fox Force Five and which serves as a reminder of Refn’s past interest in remaking Barbarella.

Things get more puzzling and more interesting — depending, of course, on your tolerance for ambiguity — with the arrival of Private K (Charles Melton), an American GI on the trail of The Leather Man, avenging mistreated women wherever he sees them, and drawn like a moth to the dress shop where he used to shop for his now-missing daughter. Private K isn’t at all connected to the main story, but as in Refn’s Thailand-set horror-thriller Only God Forgives, there is a sense that, somehow, justice can be willed into life in the east, and there is a sense that — perhaps — Elle has somehow summoned Private K into being, as the father she will never have.

How does it all fit together? Well, it does and it doesn’t, and Refn leaves you alone to figure out the true significance of The Leather Man and his two fabulously gnomic assistants (Ms. S and Ms. T). The genius of Her Private Hell is that, like a kind of visual ASMR, it offers nothing really concrete, just a lot of satisfying triggers and sensory associations. The actors feel that energy too, and the performances almost dare you to follow them, experimenting wildly with their characters in ways that make only the most subliminal kind of sense.

Is it pretentious? You bet! But it’s the kind of pretension that’s been missing for far too long in cinema; where once critics used to applaud Luis Bunuel for casting two actresses as the same character in 1977’s That Obscure Object of Desire, now they castigate Christopher Nolan for putting Elliott Page in The Odyssey.

Her Private Hell is either for you or it isn’t and you’re either for it or you aren’t. Either way, this is a film that demands you pick a side.

Title: Her Private Hell
Festival: Cannes (Out of Competition)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenwriter: Nicolas Winding Refn, Esti Giordani
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Charles Melton
Distributor: Neon
Running time: 1 hrs 49 mins

The phrases “low hanging fruit,” “hit or miss” and “luck of the draw” come to mind as one not very funny moment after another counts down to the end of the 90-minute Celebrity Autobiography, the much-staged oddity finally making its Broadway debut tonight.

The premise, which I assume is more suited to the many small, intimate venues where the ever-transmuting show has been staged over the years, is simple enough: Gather a bunch of celebrities to read, word for word, the autobiographies of other celebrities, thus pricking the self-regard, narcissism and overall cluelessness of those stars who imagine themselves to be of such import as to offer up their views on every mundane detail of their lives.

Neil Sedaka’s digestive issues? They’re here. Cher’s opinion on M&Ms? Ryan Seacrest’s preference for pulp or no pulp in his orange juice? David Hasselhoff’s complaints about the rigors of stage performing? All here (at least on the night of the reviewed performance – the reading material, like the cast, changes frequently.)

This kind of thing has been done before, of course. The downtown icon Julie Halston has long included the very serious readings of New York Times wedding announcements in her stage shows, to great comic effect.

The comic effect of Celebrity Autobiography, at least at the reviewed performance the night before the show officially opened, was threadbare despite the best efforts of a cast that included Scott Adsit, Mario Cantone (teaming, at one point, with his frequent TCM cohost Ben Mankiewicz for what was an evening highlight), Jeff Hiller (doing a good Cher), Jackie Hoffman (an ok Oprah), Christopher Jackson, Andrea Martin (going for broke as usual), Nia Vardalos and Rita Wilson (a producer of the show, doing the second funniest Celine Dion currently on Broadway).

Co-creators Eugene Pack and Dayle Reyfel also took part, pretty much sinking the celebrity conceit with every one of their too frequent appearances on stage.

The autobiographies chosen for readings at the reviewed performance either fell into the easy-target category (Kris Jenner, Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest, Miley Cyrus, Hasselhoff and the atrocious poetry of Matthew McConaughey and Suzanne Somers), the stale (Liza Minnelli, Carol Channing, Ethel Merman) and the still? really? (Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fischer).

In fairness, this staging apparently was thrown together at the last minute, announcing itself as the first Broadway production of the 2026-2027 season just weeks ago. (Indeed, the arrival was so last minute that production photos to accompany this review were not yet available.)

Still, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to throw together. Celebrity Autobiography is bare-bones: Aside from six stand-up mics and a table of books, the set is bare, with only the performers and their good intentions on stage. Of course, the whiff of celebrity self-importance hangs in the air, most, but let’s be honest, not all of it from the stars who put pen to paper.

The evening had its moments, from Dolly Parton’s diet advice (“What’s more disgusting, spitting out your food or being a lard-ass?”), Hoffman nailing Oprah’s whisper to a shout delivery, Hiller’s Cher waving off compassion with “I have my own set of problems.” But mostly the show just feels too small – in scope, ambition and laughs – to fill a Broadway venue. Ticket prices are running from a modest $49 to a rather baffling $329.

Upcoming cast members will include Brooke Adams, Pamela Adlon, Jason Alexander, Anthony Anderson, Lewis Black, Christie Brinkley, Matthew Broderick, Danny Burstein, Bob Costas, Katie Couric, Tate Donovan, Chloe Fineman, Will Forte, Gina Gershon, Kathy Griffin, Ken Jeong, Gayle King, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Stewart Lane, Susan Lucci, Ralph Macchio, Donna McKechnie, Eric McCormack, Bobby Moynihan, Laraine Newman, Oscar Nunez, Cheri Oteri, Tiler Peck, Billy Porter, Phil Rosenthal, Tony Shalhoub, Sherri Shepherd, Molly Shannon, Jennifer Tilly, Kenan Thompson, Bruce Vilanch and Alan Zweibel.

Here’s hoping they choose their celebrities wisely. Audiences might well do the same.

Title: Celebrity Autobiography
Venue: Broadway’s Shubert Theater
Created By: Eugene Pack, co-developed with Dayle Reyfel
Co-Directed By: Pack and Reyfel
Cast at Reviewed Performance: Scott Adsit, Mario Cantone, Jeff Hiller, Jackie Hoffman, Christopher Jackson, Ben Mankiewicz, Andrea Martin, Nia Vardalos, Rita Wilson, Eugene Pack, Dayle Reyfel.
Running Time: 1 hr 30 min (no intermission)

David Harbour‘s Chief Jim Hopper is a key figure in Stranger Things‘ fictitious town of Hawkins, Indiana, eventually coming to serve as surrogate father to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and helping to unravel the central sci-fi mystery of the Upside Down. However, the twice Emmy-nominated actor was not the original choice to play the role, creators Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer revealed.

The Duffer Brothers opened up about the tidbit in a new interview from Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused. The podcast host presented the writer-producers with a question from Harbour, who was curious to know the casting process.

“I’m pretty sure I was second choice, and I don’t know who I was second choice to,” the actor said in a video question. “Maybe I was third choice? But would you please answer the question of how I came to be cast as Chief Hopper, and who had to say no to allow me to do that wonderful, incredible role.”

After shooting down Horowitz’s guess that it was Josh Brolin — based on the fact that the original actor is one of Harbour’s friends — Matt Duffer said, “No, it was Billy Crudup, which is a very different — like, everything happens for a reason, right? So it’s like, once it kind of clicks into place … But yeah, Billy Crudup passed. I don’t think he was doing much TV at the time.”

(As mentioned in the interview, Crudup is now a series regular on Apple TV’s The Morning Show, for which he earned two Emmy wins. A year after Stranger Things first premiered, he also featured alongside Naomi Watts in Netflix‘s short-lived psychological thriller series Gypsy.)

“And then David just — honestly — he just came in and one of our casting directors thought he could be great for the role,” Ross Duffer added. “But he came and read and he just did one take. We weren’t even there, we just saw the tape, and it was just so clear, instantly: This is Hopper. And we just cast him right then and there.”

Stranger Things debuted to instantaneous success on Netflix in 2016, concluding its five-season run in 2025. It has won a dozen Emmys and will once again be eligible as a contender this year. The series has additionally spawned an animated spinoff, Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, recently renewed for a Season 2, as well as a Broadway prequel show that was taped for future feature release.