Jellicle cats unite! The long-awaited, and much maligned, feature film adaptation of the blockbuster musical “Cats” finally arrives in theaters beginning tomorrow night. And despite Universal’s attempt to keep the project as under wraps as it could, the studio had to screen it for critics at some point.

Following a world premiere in New York on Monday evening and multiple Tuesday press screenings, the reviews are now out. And they’re … not good.

Despite an all-star cast led by Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, James Corden, Rebel Wilson, Taylor Swift and celebrated dancer Francesca Hayward, the movie — directed by “The King’s Speech” Oscar winner Tom Hooper — is living down to the low expectations set by its disastrous trailer.

Times critic Justin Chang says: “Given how often the movies tend to stereotype felines as smug, pampered homebodies, there are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies. I say this with zero hyperbole and the smallest kernel of admiration. For the most part, ‘Cats’ is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws — ahem, pause — to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot.”

Here are 16 more of the cattiest critical reactions from across the Internet:

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY:
“Actors dressing up in cat costumes has been fine for a musical-theater phenomenon going on nearly 40 years, which honestly would have been fine for the big-screen version, too… But the wider shots where the kitties move in quick, random action are often distracting, and certain cat personas just never look quite right. Elba’s Macavity is fine with clothes on yet eerily bizarre as a naked cat, though the actual nightmare fuel occurs when human faces are put on tiny mice and Rockette-esque cockroaches.”

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
“Jennifer Hudson tirelessly over-emotes in the role; she limps around hemorrhaging snot and looking either miserable or terrified, like she’s been watching the dailies.”

Manohla Dargis, New York Times:
“It is tough to pinpoint when the kitschapalooza called ‘Cats’ reaches its zenith or its nadir, which are one and the same. The choices are legion: Judi Dench gliding in as Old Deuteronomy, a Yoda-esque fluff ball with a huge ruff who brings to mind the Cowardly Lion en route to a drag ball as Queen Elizabeth I; the tap dancing Skimbleshanks (Steven McRae), dressed, unlike most of the furries — in red pants and suspenders, no less — leading a Pied Piper parade; or Taylor Swift, as Bombalurina, executing a joyless burlesque shimmy after descending on the scene astride a crescent moon that ejaculates iridescent catnip.”

Robert Abele, The Wrap:
“Tom Hooper’s jarring fever dream of a spectacle is like something that escaped from Dr. Moreau’s creature laboratory instead of a poet’s and a composer’s feline (uni)verse, an un-catty valley hybrid of physical and digital that unsettles and crashes way more often than it enchants.”

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly:
“What is ‘Cats’? Music, madness, a hairball in the cosmos … Even after 110 tumbling, tail-swishing, deeply psychedelic minutes, it’s hard to know if you ever really knew anything — except that C is for ‘Cats,’ C is for Crazy, and C is probably the grade this cinematic lunacy deserves, in the sense of making any sense at all.”

Ty Burr, Boston Globe
“In fact, there are moments in ‘Cats’ I would gladly pay to unsee, including the baby mice with faces of young girls and the tiny chorus line of cockroach Rockettes — again, with human faces — that Jennyanydots gleefully swallows with a crunch. Anyone who takes small children to this movie is setting them up for winged-monkey levels of night terrors.”

John Nugent, Empire:
“Neither human nor cat, they all look like laboratory mutants put through a Snapchat filter. Your brain will never comprehend it. It’s jarring from the first minute and remains jarring until the last.”

Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press:
“There’s apparently enough groundbreaking technology used in ‘Cats’ for NASA to send a rocket to unexplored parts of the universe — perhaps to a far-off planet where cats sing, dance on two legs, and recite T.S. Eliot poetry in half-Cockney accents.”

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair:
“The real villain here is Hooper, who has conceptualized a movie that claims to honor its performers while smothering them in digital makeup. Why even bother hiring the elastic, fluid dancers if their bodies were going to be rendered so inhuman? Or, rather, so unnatural—they’re not supposed to be humans, after all. In doing so much to make the world of ‘Cats’ something approaching credible, Hooper completely fails imagination, ignoring the disbelief happily suspended for decades by the millions of fans of the stage musical. Nothing is accomplished by turning ‘Cats’ into a garish CGI experiment, and just about everything is lost.”

Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post:
“Having just watched ‘Cats,’ the movie version of the hit musical about something called ‘Jellicle cats,’ it is clear that ‘Jellicle’ must be cat-speak for ‘wackadoodle.’”

Peter Debruge, Variety:
“From the first shot — of just such a blue moon, distressingly fake, flanked by poufy cat-shaped clouds — to the last, ‘Cats’ hurts the eyes and, yes, the ears, as nearly all the musical numbers, including ‘Memory,’ have been twisted into campy, awards-grubbing cameos for big-name stars in bad-CG cat drag.”

Alison Willmore, Vulture:
“To assess ‘Cats’ as good or bad feels like the entirely wrong axis on which to see it … Mostly, though, it’s like an acting exercise allowed to grow to an incomprehensible scale, and then given lyrics drawn from a selection of light poems by T.S. Eliot.”

Will Gompertz, BBC:
“The harsh truth is the film feels plastic, it has no heart or soul. That might well be a problem with the source material and its suitability for a transfer from stage to screen. Notwithstanding notable successes, the fact is not everything that is a hit in one medium works in another.”

Eric Kohn, Indiewire:
“But there’s the rub: The argument against ‘Cats’ also makes the case for its existence, because everything ludicrous about the show has been cranked up to 11, with a restless artificial camera and actors so keen on upstaging one another with excessive song-and-dance numbers they may as well be competing for a Heaviside Layer of their own.”

Brian Lowry, CNN:
“Ultimately, ‘Cats’ feels like a conspicuous waste, in what the studio is describing as an ‘epic musical.’ If the goal was to provide a holiday musical event that’s fun for the whole family, it’s a good idea in theory, packaged in the wrong litter box.”

Alissa Wilkinson, Vox:
“It’s literally incredible. I hope I never see it again.”

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There is a strange scene — OK, there are many strange scenes — near the end of “Cats,” the flailing feline phantasmagoria coming soon to a movie theater and/or shroom party near you. A bright new morning has dawned in London, and Old Deuteronomy, the wisest of the city’s scruffy tribe of jellicle cats, leans back to consider the surreal activities of the night before. Played by Judi Dench under what looks like a computer-animated shout-out to Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion mane, she sings a few lines of T.S. Eliot to the audience: “You’ve heard of several kinds of cat / And my opinion now is that / You should need no interpreter / to understand our character / You’ve learned enough to take the view / that cats are very much like you.”

It’s heartening to think that someone, somewhere, might learn something from “Cats.” The Oscar-winning English director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech,” “Les Misérables”) and his cast and crew probably will emerge with the most valuable lessons of all, though I doubt many will be inclined to share them publicly. Still, if you see this movie — and I offer that up as a hypothetical, not a recommendation — and arrive at the theater not excessively inebriated, you will indeed learn about several different kinds of cat, with stripe and spot formations as impressively varied as their personality types and domestication levels.

There is a lazy, bumbling “gumbie cat” named Jennyanydots, who here takes the form of an orange-coated Rebel Wilson. A “bravo cat,” Growltiger, lives on a barge on the Thames and is played by that sexy beast Ray Winstone. There’s a top-hatted magician cat named Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson) and a nefarious “mystery cat” named Macavity (Idris Elba). In the opening scene, a shy, graceful white kitten named Victoria (Francesca Hayward) is rudely deposited in the London junkyard where all these jellicle cats prance and prowl. She plays the standard outsider role in this decidedly non-standard movie, serving as our cat eyes and ears on a wild night of singing, dancing, preening, licking, kidnapping, punning and other hallucinatory Razzie-courting mayhem.

If you are among the millions who have seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” — an improbable smash hit that ushered in the era of the Broadway blockbuster and remains one of the longest-running shows in history — then you are probably familiar with these characters already. If not, you will emerge from the theater fully in the know, with songs like “The Rum Tum Tugger” (that’s Jason Derulo) and “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer” (Danny Collins and Naoimh Morgan, respectively) skittering around in your head like tiny human-faced cockroaches, to borrow one of this movie’s more disquieting visuals.

The plot is basically “Les Meowsérables.” While some jellicle cats enjoy the comforts of domesticity, as we see in a few scenes of cake-munching, pillow-shredding decadence, most of them are alley dwellers, forced to raid the garbage for scraps or break into the local milk bar at night. As in the stage show, most of the cats introduce themselves with a sung monologue that doubles as an audition, offered up in hopes that Old Deuteronomy will make them “the jellicle choice” — the cat destined to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and receive the gift of a new life.

And there is, to be sure, some representational value to be gleaned from these cats and their singing suicidal Olympics. Given how often the movies tend to stereotype felines as smug, pampered homebodies, there are certainly worse characters one could spend time with, though I am hard-pressed at the moment to think of many worse movies. I say this with zero hyperbole and the smallest kernel of admiration. For the most part, “Cats” is both a horror and an endurance test, a dispatch from some neon-drenched netherworld where the ghastly is inextricable from the tedious. Every so often it does paws — ahem, pause — to rise to the level of a self-aware hoot.

You may have seen the best of it already. The movie has been the long-tailed butt of online jokes for months, following the July release of a trailer whose deeply discomfiting imagery — showcasing bold new advances in what is being called “digital fur technology” — seemed to unite the internet in a collective outpouring of derision and delight. There was reason to suspect, if not hope, that the mockery might have been overblown, that the movie itself would not achieve or sustain the same degree of awfulness. Surely the human eye would gradually adjust over two hours (good God, two hours) to what it could scarcely process in two minutes.

Not quite, as it turns out. To return to Old Deuteronomy’s words: Are these cats really very much like us? “Cats” insists that they are, and therein lies its problem — well, one of them. These felines are disturbingly humanoid creations, their celebrity faces adorned with cat ears and grafted onto matted, long-tailed bodies. They sing, dance, walk upright and sometimes wear jewelry and coats made of fur that is probably not their own. Curiously enough, for all this talk of digital fur technology, there appears to be no fur on the cats’ actual digits, their unnervingly human fingers and toes. And just to round out this nightmarish anatomy lesson, Hooper often directs his actors to splay their legs and bare their flat, undifferentiated crotches for the camera, none more frequently than Dench’s Old Neuteronomy herself.

But surely this is all (more or less) true to Lloyd Webber’s theatrical conception, you may wonder, perhaps recalling your own memories of stage performers in elaborate furry unitards, punctuating their songs and dances with purrs, hisses and other semaphoric feline gestures. But that was the right aesthetic for that live performance medium; it was an example of how inventive stylization and stagecraft could bring a fantasy world to vivid life.

“Cats” the movie is predicated on no such rationale. As a filmmaker, Hooper has a tendency to pick one grandiose formal conceit and stick to it, with a bludgeoning lack of imagination or modulation. His insistence on live on-camera singing and in-your-face closeups turned “Les Misérables” into one of the more vocally and visually monotonous movie musicals of the past decade. With its grotesque design choices and busy, metronomic editing, “Cats” is as uneasy on the eyes as a Hollywood spectacle can be, tumbling into an uncanny valley between mangy realism and dystopian artifice.

But then again, maybe this look was the appropriate choice for a movie in which making sense was the very last priority. At some point during “Cats” — I think I was trying to distract myself from the richly metaphorical image of James Corden sifting through garbage — it occurred to me that only one letter separates its title from Pixar’s “Cars,” to name another hermetically sealed, digitally polished, heavily anthropomorphized family-friendly entertainment set in a world from which actual human beings are creepily, apocalyptically absent. The burden of emoting, of bringing warmth and life to this CG-deadened nightscape, falls to the actors, some of whom perform and wear their feline physiognomies more gracefully than others.

Faring well enough is Ian McKellen’s Gus the Theater Cat, whose song about his glory days on the stage hits genuinely lovely notes of regret. Robbie Fairchild gives one of the movie’s more intuitive performances as Munkustrap, a jellicle guide who helps welcome Victoria onto the scene. For sheer musical proficiency, Taylor Swift is unsurprisingly best in show as Macavity’s henchwoman Bombalurina; she and Lloyd Webber also wrote an original song for the movie, “Beautiful Ghosts,” which the engaging Hayward shapes into an affecting rejoinder to the show’s signature tune, “Memory.” That song, sung by an aging jellicle outcast named Grizabella, falls regrettably flat here; that it’s being sung by an artist as talented as Jennifer Hudson makes it all the more bewildering, though her performance is admittedly of a bombastic piece with the movie she’s in.

“I remember / the time I knew what happiness was,” Grizabella sings. You will remember it, too, and you will know it again once you have ascended to your own Heaviside Layer, located just beyond the light of the exit sign.

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For the better part of a year, the historic Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax has been slowly transforming into its new identity as the Fairfax Cinema.

On Wednesday morning, a story in the Hollywood Reporter announced the new theater would open on Dec. 25 with the exclusive 35-mm engagement for “Uncut Gems,” starring Adam Sandler, along with a series programmed by the film’s directors, Josh and Benny Safdie.

By Wednesday afternoon, the film’s distributor, A24, confirmed the movie would not be playing at the theater and that the Safdie brothers would not be programming a series there. A spokesperson for A24 declined to comment further.

Theater owners Daniel and Samuel Harkham said in an interview Wednesday that they still plan to open on Dec. 25, but had not yet finalized the programming.

The Harkhams also owned the building throughout its tenure as the Cinefamily, which ended its 10-year run in 2017 amid accusations of harassment, shaky finances and a toxic work environment. The Harkhams were also on the Cinefamily board, and Dan Harkham was listed as treasurer of the nonprofit organization.

On Tuesday afternoon the Twitter account for the Safdie brothers had posted that “Uncut Gems” would be playing at the “soon to open” Fairfax Cinema. (That tweet has since been deleted.) This set off a series of responses online, which were further spurred on by the Hollywood Reporter story.

For their part, the Harkhams said they were not involved in the day-to-day operations of Cinefamily and that they are well aware of the animosity toward them within the Los Angeles film-going community.

“I understand how people could look at us and think that the buck stops with us or that we had control over the whole thing, but it really wasn’t the way,” said Samuel Harkham. “I totally understand people’s frustration and vehemence at the closing of Cinefamily, and we just hope people will give us the opportunity to show that we are going to keep to a much higher standard than how Cinefamily was ran.”

Samuel Harkham mentioned a zero tolerance policy toward harassment and that they will be working with an on-site HR company. Daniel Harkham said he has worked to resolve any of Cinefamily’s outstanding financial obligations.

“Part of what’s taken us so long to get to this point with the movie theater is not only the construction, but just the internal things, trying to resolve the past,” said Daniel Harkham.

Added Samuel Harkham, “All we can hope is that people will give us the opportunity to show them that this is a different thing, and we are not Cinefamily, we are not that.”

SERIES

Whale Wars: Watson’s Last Stand Capt. Paul Watson is forced to step down, leaving four rookie captains to continue his mission in the first of two new episodes of this documentary series. 8 and 10 p.m. Animal Planet

The Great American Baking Show: Holiday Edition The bakers create sweet and savory creations using spices, then take on one of Paul Hollywood’s toughest challenges. 9 p.m. ABC

Santa’s Baking Blizzard In the season finale host Casey Webb challenges the three remaining teams of bakers and ice sculptors to create a “Night Before Christmas” cake display that prominently features Santa. Jocelyn Delk Adams, Amanda Freitag and Zac Young decide which team wins. 9 p.m. Food Network

Project Runway The designers are challenged to show their holiday spirit with the perfect party dress. 9:30 p.m. Bravo

Ghost Adventures This new episode visits the Riverside’s March Field Air Museum. 10 p.m. Travel

SPECIALS

Democratic Presidential Debate Former Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tom Steyer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Andrew Yang are the seven candidates participating in this round, from Loyola Marymount University. Judy Woodruff, Amna Nawaz, Yamiche Alcindor and Tim Alberta moderate. 5 p.m. KCET, KOCE, KPBS and CNN; 9 p.m. KCET; 10 p.m. CNN

A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce) experiences a dark night of the soul in an original take on Charles Dickens’ iconic holiday ghost story in this new special. Andy Serkis also stars. 7:30 p.m. FX

Miss America 2020 Continuing a long tradition, 51 hopefuls from across the United States compete in a series of categories for potentially life-changing scholarships in a pageant held at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn. Miss America 2019, Nia Franklin of New York, will crown her successor. 8 p.m. NBC

iHeartRadio Jingle Ball 2019 Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Jonas Brothers, Camila Cabello, Khalid, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish and 5 Seconds of Summer are among the musical artists in this year’s edition of the annual holiday special that salutes the season with highlights from concerts across the United States. 8 p.m. CW

Disney Prep & Landing An elite unit of elves ensures that homes around the world are properly prepared to be visited by Santa Claus each Christmas Eve, 8 p.m. ABC. The sequel “Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice” follows at 8:30 p.m. ABC

Gwen Stefani’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas Guests Blake Shelton, Seth MacFarlane, Chelsea Handler, Ne-Yo and Ken Jeong and others celebrate the holidays with a dazzling night of song, dance and satire. 10 p.m. NBC

TALK SHOWS

CBS This Morning (N) 7 a.m. KCBS

Today Greta Gerwig; author Ina Garten. (N) 7 a.m. KNBC

KTLA Morning News (N) 7 a.m. KTLA

Good Morning America Oscar Isaac; Kimberly Kennedy (“Wrap Battle”); Lori Bergamotto, Good Housekeeping. (N) 7 a.m. KABC

Good Day L.A. Jenna Dewan (“Flirty Dancing”); Aldis Hodge: (“Clemency”); breast implant illness: Terry Dubrow; interior designer J. Pickens; Issa Rae, Hilltop Coffee and Kitchen. (N) 7 a.m. KTTV

Live With Kelly and Ryan Anna Kendrick; Kathleen Turner; Lewis Capaldi performs. (N) 9 a.m. KABC

The View Greta Gerwig; Boris Kodjoe and journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. (N) 10 a.m. KABC

Rachael Ray Dr. Jill Biden; David Muir (“World News Tonight”). (N) 10 a.m. KTTV

The Wendy Williams Show Morris Day (“On Time”). (N) 11 a.m. KTTV

The Talk Ana Gasteyer; Brigitte Nielsen guest co-hosts. (N) 1 p.m. KCBS

Tamron Hall LaChanze (“A Christmas Carol”) and daughter Celia Rose Gooding (“Jagged Little Pill”) perform. (N) 1 p.m. KABC

The Dr. Oz Show The latest updates on Harvey Weinstein; more than 20 women accuse Cuba Gooding Jr. of groping them. (N) 1 p.m. KTTV

The Kelly Clarkson Show Kelly performs “Christmas Eve” song with a children’s choir; Jennifer Hudson; Joel Kim Booster. (N) 2 p.m. KNBC

Dr. Phil A 70-year-old woman says that as a result of her daughter’s actions, she is homeless and living in her car. (N) 3 p.m. KCBS

The Ellen DeGeneres Show Henry Winkler (“Alien Superstar”); comic Rhea Butcher performs; Shin Lim. (N) 3 p.m. KNBC

The Real Stacey Abrams (Fair Fight 2020). (N) 3 p.m. KTTV

The Doctors Hope for cystic fibrosis; retail therapy; 3-year-old downs 18 yogurt cups; digital vision boards. (N) 3 p.m. KCOP

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah (N) 11 p.m. Comedy Central

Conan Adam Sandler. (N) 11 p.m. TBS

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Kate McKinnon; Dua Lipa performs. (N) 11:34 p.m. KNBC

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Jennifer Hudson; Jonathan Pryce; Sharon Van Etten performs. (N) 11:35 p.m. KCBS

Jimmy Kimmel Live! Margot Robbie; John Kasich; White Reaper performs. (N) 11:35 p.m. KABC

Amanpour and Company (N) midnight KVCR; 1 a.m. KLCS

The Late Late Show With James Corden Taylor Swift; Jennifer Hudson; Rebel Wilson; Jason Derulo; Francesca Hayward; Andrew Lloyd Webber. (N) 12:37 a.m. KCBS

Late Night With Seth Meyers John Lithgow; Ana Gasteyer performs. (N) 12:37 a.m. KNBC

Nightline (N) 12:37 a.m. KABC

A Little Late With Lilly Singh Charlize Theron. (N) 1:38 a.m. KNBC

SPORTS

College Basketball Wofford visits Duke, 4 p.m. ESPN2; Maryland visits Seton Hall, 4 p.m. FS1; NC State visits Auburn, 6 p.m. ESPN2

NHL Hockey The Kings visit the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4 p.m. Fox Sports Net; the New York Islanders visit the Boston Bruins, 4 p.m. NBCSP

NBA Basketball The Lakers visit the Milwaukee Bucks, 5 p.m. SportsNet and TNT; the Houston Rockets visit the Clippers, 7:30 p.m. TNT

For more sports on TV, see the Sports section.

After a screening of “The Two Popes” in New York recently, screenwriter Anthony McCarten recalls being approached by an audience member with a surprising take on the film.

“He said, ‘You do know this is a Jewish movie, right?’” recalls McCarten. The man went on to say, “‘It’s a foundational aspect of Judaism to debate scripture in such a way that you present an argument hoping to produce a better counterargument.’ That delighted me — because it was not meant to be a movie about Catholicism.”

This awards season, there are a slew of films that directly or indirectly touch on the purpose of religion in characters’ lives — specifically, Catholicism: “Popes,” Poland’s Academy Award entry “Corpus Christi,” Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” and Todd Haynes’ “Dark Waters.” Yet though they may have popes, priests or martyrs as protagonists, these films tend to be less about institutions and doctrine than they are about faith, community and sacrifice.

It’s an interesting left turn, considering how past films such as “Doubt,” “Philomena,” “Spotlight” and “The Magdalene Sisters” have over the last 20 years focused largely on reflecting headlines and revealing the many skeletons in the church’s deep historical closet.

“It’s been in the media for various reasons over the last few years,” notes “Hidden Life” producer Grant Hill, whose film examines an Austrian farmer-turned-WWII war resister martyred for refusing to fight. “It’s a religion that has very much been under scrutiny — for its history and current position.”

But headlines aside — though “Popes” does refer to the scandals that generated them — these films use the nature of faith to illuminate bigger issues. That’s something that will come as a relief to the faithful, says Corby Pons, owner of Wit PR, a specialty publicity and marketing company that emphasizes religion and faith.

“The apprehension for Catholics is that any time the entertainment industry makes films that reflect on Catholicism, it can reflect badly,” says Pons, who consulted with Netflix and Fox Searchlight for “Popes” and “Life.”

“I sat with two nuns who greatly enjoyed the movie, and one key emotion was relief,” says McCarten. “Catholicism had become a horror show every time they opened the newspaper — and that’s not the institution they’d devoted their lives to. They knew humanitarians were trying their best every day to do something good for the world, and they felt frustrated.”

Corby Pons

Exactly why so many films are looking at Catholicism now is unclear, but those approached for this article suggest it’s a reflection of world politics. “We have the rise of autocrats around the globe, and a lot of people are asking, ‘Who should we emulate ourselves after?’” says Pons. “‘Life’ shows a commoner that history would not have remembered otherwise. We can look to people inside our communities. We do not have to be the pope or a president to lead morally.”

Thirst for real moral leadership is so strong in Poland that there’s been a trend of instances where the unordained have declared themselves priests and begun preaching, which is the subject of “Christi.”

“Communities are becoming detached from the Vatican and craving local, spiritual leaders,” says director Jan Komasa. “So whenever there’s someone with enough charisma and passion, he gets to be the new Kanye West. [‘Christi’ protagonist] Daniel wants to connect with other people, and those connections are significant parts of religion. That spiritual feeling is very underestimated — not just by filmmakers, but in art.”

“Dark Waters,” which looks at one lawyer’s real-life two-decade battle against DuPont on behalf of farmers, employees and other residents in West Virginia, uses religions (Catholic and Baptist) primarily as ways to define its characters, but director Haynes says he had another motivation.

“Religion felt so elemental to the cultures we’re describing,” says Haynes. “I wanted to be honest about the worlds we were describing, and religion maintains an aspect of community life that really does bind people together. It’s a through-line that was essential to the story we’re telling.”

Meanwhile, McCarten was hoping with “Popes” to sketch out a way for individuals with opposite worldviews to come to a common understanding, suggesting a blueprint for audience members who also may be at odds.

“These two old men in frocks … are combatants,” he says. “They punch each other to a standstill and say, ‘Let’s sit in silence and listen to each other.’ There’s something about that moment — where people have a real craving for silence, for relief from each other.”

And by examining faith in this way, these filmmakers are hoping to resurrect some of the more important elements of all religions, elements that may have been obscured among all the rhetoric and shouting.

“I feel like we’ve lost some link to the traditions within Catholicism of social justice,” says Haynes. “Not just Catholicism, but other faiths. We shouldn’t forget that what we’re really talking about is reaching out and providing help to the most fragile in our society.”

In the end, each film is full of decisions by an individual who re-examines his own soul to make life-altering changes, even when the consequences of those decisions are dire.

“Someone once said, ‘We can become so heavenly-focused that we are no earthly good,’” Pons notes. “I think what [these films show] us is how to exercise our heavenly faith in a way that allows us to be earthly good in the face of incredible adversity and despite our own flaws.”

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Out of desperation, I ended up on a private jet. Driving from L.A. to San Francisco the day before Thanksgiving is never enticing. This year, the forecast called for heavy rain and snow in the mountains, which meant the 5 Freeway could close anytime at the Grapevine. Also, a fire above Santa Barbara meant potential mudslides.

My husband, Joe, and I started looking for solutions. My first idea — skip the whole thing and spend the long weekend catching up on “The Crown” on Netflix — was vetoed. He decided to check Kayak for last-minute tickets. Flights on American Airlines, for example, started at about $450 a person and would require us to navigate holiday traffic at LAX.

Then, he spotted something: reasonably priced last-minute round-trip flights on something called JSX, formerly JetSuiteX, a public charter jet service that flies out of Hollywood Burbank Airport.

At $378 total per person to fly round-trip from Burbank to Oakland, it cost less than our L.A.-Chicago tickets for Christmas flights that were booked months in advance. It cost much less than I expected, especially for last-minute flights. And the dog could fly free in the cabin with us, saving $125 each way, compared with most major airlines. Checked bags were free — $25 a person additional savings — as were the cocktails on board. The site also claimed we could arrive just 30 minutes before takeoff with luggage.

The experience

I looked deep within myself to assess what it was worth to me to not spend the next day sitting in the car inching up the 5 Freeway in Thanksgiving traffic and terrible weather. Every woman has her price. Mine is $378.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 6:45 a.m. The hangar for JSX is just off to the side of the Burbank airport, separate from the main drop-off area. We arrived at 6:03 a.m. and walked right up to the desk. The woman checked us in on the computer, then swabbed our carry-on bags to check for traces of explosives. Someone else tagged and grabbed our suitcases, and we walked through the glass doors into the waiting area.

No line to check in, no line to drop off our bags and an easier Transportation Security Administration screening process (JSX follows all federal safety protocols). No full-body scanner. No X-ray machine. No removing liquids. Everyone’s shoes remained on.

We were among the first to arrive for our flight. We could either wait in one of the lounges off to the side with doors, or wait out in the hangar where we could take selfies with the plane. The lounges had free snacks: an assortment of trail mixes, teas and a Starbucks coffee machine. No Wi-Fi, though.

More people trickled in, and quite a few seemed to have done the same canine math as we: A golden retriever, a French bulldog and a Chihuahua had all joined our dachshund mix in the lounge area by the time we boarded.

Boarding took about two minutes and consisted of our walking maybe 100 feet to the small flight of stairs up to the 30-seat plane. There are no overhead bins, so if you’re carrying a piece of luggage, plan to check it.

The plane started taxiing at 6:50 a.m. and launched a slightly bumpy ascent at 6:58. Because it’s a smaller aircraft, you’re closer to the engines, which were loud once we were in the air.

I immediately noticed the ample legroom. I’m 5 feet, 4 inches tall and my husband is 5-foot-10; both of us could stretch out without our knees coming anywhere near the seat in front of us. The person in front of me reclined the seat without interfering with my personal space.

It was a short flight, but the promised free alcohol was provided. I was pleasantly surprised to discover JSX served top shelf. It was barely 7 a.m., but just for the heck of it, I had a Ketel One with orange juice.

Exiting the plane in Oakland took maybe 45 seconds. If you are the last ones off, the staff is patient about letting you take photos on the stairs as though you’re a visiting dignitary.

As in Burbank, we were in a smaller area detached from the main Oakland airport. Our suitcases arrived on a luggage cart about 10 minutes after we did. Our ride could pull right up in front. My holiday travel nightmare had turned into a short, pleasant plane trip that was over by 9 a.m.

The ride home went just as smoothly. The experience felt dignified and luxurious and cost much less than I expected, especially for last-minute flights.

Would I fly JSX again? Yes. In fact, we‘ve already booked flights for January.

The basics

JSX defines itself as a public charter operator that flies out of private terminals and offers “hop-on jet service.” It operates 30-seat Embraer 135s and 145s, smaller planes that are exempt from TSA screening rules that apply to large airports. Snacks and drinks are free, as are two checked bags and seat selection. It flies daily routes from Burbank to Oakland and Concord, Calif., as well as Las Vegas and Phoenix. Flights also link Orange County with Las Vegas and Oakland.

On Thursday, JSX begins seasonal service between Burbank and Orange County, and Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Flights operate Thursdays through Mondays.

Prices flex, as they do on commercial flights, depending on when you buy your ticket. I checked online Monday and found available tickets from Burbank to Oakland at a price of $139 on Christmas Day (Dec. 25) and a return flight Dec. 29, for $169 to $209. (Prices for a return flight Dec. 30 were $139.)

Info: JSX

JSX isn’t the only one in the smaller-airport game. Taos Air, also a public charter operator, will begin seasonal service Jan. 9 between Hawthorne Municipal Airport (a.k.a. Jack Northrop Field) and Taos Regional Airport in Taos, N.M. The service already flies between Taos and Austin, Texas. Of course, this is designed for people who want to hit the slopes at Taos Ski Valley and its newish lodgings, the Blake, but anyone can hop on board.

About six round-trip flights per week will operate on Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays or Monday holidays. Service ends in spring.

An online check found availability for outbound airfares from Hawthorne to Taos of $220 on Jan. 16 and a return flight of $220. The service also operates flights between McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad, Calif., and Taos.

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Info: Taos Air

Quickly, now: When does your passport expire? Your kids’ passports? Maybe you don’t remember, but even if you do, who really wants to deal with the process?

Mobile Passport, which Customs and Border Protection says “does not require preapproval and is free to use,” can help.

You may know this app because it’s helping travelers get through U.S. customs more quickly. Like Global Entry, it aims to expedite re-entry to the U.S. Unlike Global Entry, which costs $100 for five years, the Mobile Passport app is free. (A premium version of the app costs $14.99 a year or $4.99 a month and gives you access to a document scanner and “encrypted storage of passport profiles,” its website says.)

Now that app has teamed up with RushMyPassport. Its helping hand is twofold: It reminds you six months before your document’s expiration date that the end is nigh, and it can help you through the application process, even if you need a passport quickly.

It can secure your document in as little as 12 days, it promises in a news release, and maybe as little as one day, which can save you time and save your skin if you have forgotten all about renewing it.

You’ll pay for the service, of course, which doesn’t include government fees or shipping. Eight- to 10-day service begins at $119; same-day processing costs $449. The order process is completed online.

And keep your eyes open for another service: obtaining visas. The company plans to introduce a visa service in 2020.

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As Boeing Co. prepares to shut much of a huge factory near Seattle that builds the grounded 737 Max jet, the economic hit is reverberating in Southern California and across the United States.

When the company announced this week that it will temporarily halt production of the 737 Max — the nation’s largest manufactured export, analysts say — with no timetable for production to resume, it cast a cloud over the hundreds of companies that make the plane’s parts.

The Southland’s aircraft supply chain is taut, full of small companies that have synced their operations to the needs of midsize and large manufacturers, said Ivan Rosenberg, head of the Aerospace and Defense Forum trade association.

“I’ve got clients wondering how fast this is going to work its way down the supply chain to them,” Rosenberg said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, and business hates uncertainty. It would be nice to know how long this is going to last.”

Wesley Turnbow, chief executive of metal-finishing company EME Inc., which provides aircraft parts with a protective coating, said work for Boeing comprises half of his company’s business. He estimates coating parts for 737 Max makes up about 5% or 10%. He hasn’t gone so far as to expect to lay off workers, but the Max halt “could really affect our future,” he said.

If the halt lasts longer than two or three months, the industry could see widespread job cuts, said Paul Weisbrich, an investment banker at D.A. Davidson & Co. Mom-and-pop shops will be hit first, while the midsize companies with more diversification in their revenue will be able to weather the storm longer, he added.

The Max was grounded worldwide in March after two deadly crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed a total of 346 people. Boeing kept buying parts and churning out the plane, amassing about 400 Max jets that it can’t deliver to airlines. To slow down its cash burn, the company is pausing production of the Max starting in January.

There are some winners, Weisbrich said. Companies working on maintenance and repair as well as spare parts will see more business, because the grounding of the Max means airlines will need to fly older planes longer.

An executive at a Southern California components manufacturing firm, who declined to be named because he was not allowed to disclose information, said his company has lost significant business from Boeing since the planemaker dialed down production in recent months. However, he said, his company is seeing a rise in demand for high-quality spare parts.

Getting the 737 Max back in the air depends largely on the Federal Aviation Administration, which is evaluating Boeing’s effort to fix flight-control software that was a major factor in the crashes. Investigators have found that software designed to stop an aerodynamic stall was a huge problem for pilots, and Boeing is updating the code to make it less aggressive.

The FAA will not give a date for when the Max can return to the skies, and last week the agency said Boeing had an unrealistic expectations for putting the plane back into service. New FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson has said the decision will be on the agency’s timetable, not Boeing’s, indicating that it will take longer than Boeing had expected.

Places such as Wichita, Kan., Stamford, Conn., and Cincinnati are also feeling the pinch. Those cities are home to some of the 900 companies worldwide that supply parts for the troubled plane.

Boeing does not currently plan to lay off any of the 12,000 workers at its factory in Renton, Wash. But smaller parts companies like Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems might not have that luxury. They could be forced to cut employees, and some might even get pushed out of business.

With 13,500 workers, Spirit is the largest employer in Kansas’ biggest city. It gets half of its revenue from making fuselages for the 737.

Even though Max production slowed earlier this year, Spirit and other suppliers continued to crank out parts, putting many of them in storage. As of Friday, Spirit had 90 fuselages on a ramp adjacent to nearby McConnell Air Force Base.

CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France’s Safran, which makes the Max engines, also faces uncertainty.

The Cincinnati company said Tuesday that it’s working with customers and other suppliers “to mitigate the impact of the temporary shutdown of the 737 Max production.”

The company, which has more the 80 manufacturing sites worldwide with about 50,000 workers, said it can move people and manufacturing across multiple engine programs. That may hold off any layoffs. CFM produces other engines for commercial and military aircraft.

Stamford-based Hexcel, which makes composite materials used on the 737 Max frame and engines, already was reporting lower sales after Boeing slowed the rate of Max production. On Tuesday the company tried to sound hopeful, saying it’s confident in the airplane’s long-term success and looks forward “to its return to flight and gradual ramp-up in production during 2020.”

The 737 Max is such a big product that by itself, the production hiatus will shrink the U.S. gross domestic product by around 0.5% in the first three months of 2020, predicted JP Morgan Economist Michael Feroli. That could cut the U.S. economy’s growth rate by a roughly a quarter, to 1.5%.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for RSM, a tax advisory and consulting firm, predicted layoffs by suppliers and wrote in a note that some may have trouble staying in business. At an event his firm hosted in Wichita last summer, one executive from a midsize company indicated that if the Max grounding turned into a production halt, “it would be an existential risk” to that firm.

“It cannot be overstated just how important the domestic and global supply chains associated with Boeing are to the small- and medium-sized firms,” Brusuelas wrote.

If parts supply companies stop production, it will be difficult for them to quickly restart their factories, and that could further delay any startup of Boeing’s assembly lines.

Spirit AeroSystems CEO Tom Gentile said in October during the Kansas Economic Outlook Conference that it would take a long time to come back if production were reduced.

Boeing’s situation is so important, it has been discussed at the White House, top presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway said Monday.

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Asked if President Trump might intervene, she said: “Boeing knows the president is watching. He’s met with them…. When you say he intervenes and gets involved, it’s to protect American interests. Safety first when it comes to airlines.”

The ripple effects of the Max grounding already have hit airlines, which have been forced to delay putting the Max into their flight schedules. That has cut the number of available seats, pushing prices up. But analysts say it also has stopped airlines from adding routes and expanding.

Southwest Airlines, which was counting on the Max to update its fleet, pushed back any hope of restoring the plane to service by five weeks, to April. American Airlines did the same last week. United, which already pulled the Max from its schedules through March 4, said it will keep monitoring the process to determine when the aircraft can safely fly again.

Hussain is a Times staff writer. Krisher writes for the Associated Press.

A clause that would allow California to take over bankrupt utility giant PG&E Corp. under certain circumstances has emerged as a big sticking point in negotiations between the company and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom wants the parent of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to include a provision in its reorganization proposal that would allow the state to take control of its assets if it fails to meet performance and safety metrics. Negotiating such a clause has become one of the biggest challenges in talks between the company and the governor’s office, people familiar with the situation said, asking not to be identified because the information wasn’t public.

Newsom’s support is crucial to PG&E’s efforts to exit the biggest utility bankruptcy in U.S. history by a state-imposed deadline of June 30. The power giant filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January after its power lines were linked to deadly blazes that erupted across Northern California in 2017 and 2018, leading to an estimated $30 billion in liabilities.

Late Tuesday, PG&E won court approval for multibillion-dollar settlements with two groups at the center of its reorganization: wildfire victims and their insurers. That makes Newsom’s sign-off the biggest obstacle in the company’s efforts to get a restructuring deal done.

“The governor has been clear about the state’s requirements — a new and totally transformed entity that is accountable and prioritizes safety,” Newsom’s office said in a statement. “Critically important to that is ensuring that the new entity has the flexibility to fund this transformation. These points are not negotiable.”

PG&E said it intends to comply with the state’s requirements and will continue to address the demands raised by the governor in his letter.

“PG&E has been engaged in constructive dialogue to address those concerns with the common objectives of having PG&E be safe, sound and financially stable upon emergence from Chapter 11,” the San Francisco company said in its statement. “PG&E expects this dialogue to continue.”

The company’s shares rose 3.7% to $11.31 on Wednesday.

Any reorganization would need approval from the state Public Utilities Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor. And the company will have to prove to Newsom’s office that it has fully resolved its bankruptcy and past wildfire liabilities by June if it wants to participate in a new fire insurance fund to avoid future catastrophic losses.

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Newsom has also ordered PG&E to replace its entire board and come up with a better financing plan that’s cost-neutral for its customers and isn’t so dependent on expensive short-term bridge financing. The company and the governor’s office are working on those demands, people familiar with the talks said.

Meanwhile, a rival restructuring plan being pitched by PG&E bondholders, including Pacific Investment Management Co. and Elliott Management Corp., already includes a clause that would allow for a state takeover. But the option would kick in only if the company is found guilty of willful misconduct related to a future fire — and only if the blaze burns more than 5,000 buildings, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg.

The creditors’ rival plan hasn’t been approved in Bankruptcy Court or by the governor’s office and faces its own challenges.

Deveau and Chediak write for Bloomberg.

Instagram is finally making rules to govern content in influencer advertising.

Influencers, the photo-sharing app’s most-followed users who are paid by brands to post, will no longer be allowed to promote products related to vaping, tobacco and weapons, Instagram said Wednesday in a blog post. The decision came after Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled this week that British American Tobacco can’t use influencer marketing to advertise e-cigarettes. An Instagram representative said the move to ban such posts more broadly was unrelated.

Instagram, owned by Facebook Inc., has long allowed people with thousands or even millions of followers to operate their own sponsored-content operations, outside the Facebook ad-buying system, without the level of oversight applied to the rest of the company’s advertising. For years, the company felt that if an influencer had cultivated an audience willing to hear their messages, Facebook shouldn’t get in the way.

However, there’s been a surge of sponsored content promoted by influencers, so Instagram wants to “establish clear rules to help protect our community,” at least when it comes to vaping, weapons and tobacco, according to a spokeswoman. Facebook already has rules against such products in its official advertising programs.

Instagram reaches a younger demographic than Facebook’s flagship social-media app, and that audience may be more easily swayed by promotions from famous users of the platform. Influencers popular with teens on Instagram have especially helped spread the appeal of e-cigarettes, drawing U.S. Federal Trade Commission scrutiny over their promotional tactics. Beginning next year, Instagram, which recently started requiring new users to disclose their birth dates, will restrict the audience for influencer ads about alcohol and diet supplements.

Having new rules doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be enforced. A few years ago, after pressure from the FTC on advertising disclosures, Instagram started to require influencers to use a specific branded-content tool to disclose the money behind their posts. Influencers regularly flout that rule with little consequence, and sometimes don’t even disclose whether they are paid to post about a product.

As part of the same announcement, Instagram also said it would open up Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager, a tool Facebook creators use to find sponsors for their content and manage their promotional deals, to Instagram influencers. Among its capabilities, the tool allows creators to automatically share data showing the performance of sponsored posts with advertisers; previously, many influencers resorted to sending screenshots of their analytics dashboards to brands.

The change comes as Instagram is experimenting with removing public “like” counts from posts, a development that the company believes will encourage users to post more often, but which decreases advertisers’ visibility into how much engagement sponsored posts receive.