Of all the movie protagonists you might have seen this year, none is quite like Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths.”

Pansy, a middle-aged woman in contemporary London, is foul-tempered from beginning to end. She spends her days in evident pain that she unleashes upon all those around her, including her husband Curtley (David Webber), her 20-something son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) and most anyone else she encounters. Her venom might fall on a supermarket cashier or a furniture-shopping couple who dare to put their feet up on an ottoman. Heaven help the man who wants her parking spot.

For everyone, Pansy is a test. She tests the patience and empathy of her family, just as she does the viewer. She’s not an antihero, she’s anti-everything.

“The world is full of Pansys. People live with other people’s conditions,” Jean-Baptiste says. “Often I’ve met people who have just been enraged, because you didn’t see them in the car park pulling into the space. You go: It can’t just be about me. How did you get that angry about something so stupid? You don’t know what they’re going through or how they got there.”

“Hard Truths,” which will open nationwide in theaters Jan. 10, never supplies any answers. Instead, it unfolds as a cantankerous character study, led by Jean-Baptiste’s compellingly prickly Pansy.

The performance has earned Jean-Baptiste her best reviews since her last film with Leigh: “Secrets & Lies,” nearly 30 years ago. For that film, Jean-Baptiste became the first Black British actress nominated for an Academy Award. Her performance in “Hard Truths” has been just as celebrated, earning best actress from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Three decades later, Jean-Baptiste could be heading back to the Oscars.

“You sit down with Marianne a hundred years later from ‘Secrets and Lies,’ in which she played a very intelligent young woman, and Marianne has now moved on in life,” Leigh says. “We love each other because she’s very, very funny. So sitting down with her ability to be real and profound but also grotesque, that, alone, points me in the direction of possibility.”

In the holiday season battle of big-budget family movies, Paramount Pictures’ “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” sped past the Walt Disney Co.’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” to take the top spot at the box office ahead of the lucrative Christmas corridor in theaters.

“Sonic the Hedgehog 3” debuted with $62 million in ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates. With strong reviews (86% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and a high score from audiences (an “A” on CinemaScore), “Sonic 3” is well positioned to be the top choice in cinemas during the busiest moviegoing period of the year.

It was telling of some wider trends that “Sonic 3” — made for $122 million — bested one of Disney’s top properties. Videogame adaptations, once among the most derided movie genres, have emerged as one of the most dependable box office forces in recent years. The two previous “Sonic” movies together grossed more $700 million worldwide and the third installment appears likely to do better than both of them. A fourth “Sonic” movie is already in development.

Though “Mufasa’s” reviews were poor (56% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), audiences gave it an “A-” CinemaScore.

“Sonic 3” nearly doubled the haul for “Mufasa,” which cost more than $200 million to make. Disney could look to $87.2 million in international sales to help make up the difference.

The third “Sonic” will rollout in most overseas markets in the coming weeks.
In director Jeff Fowler’s “Sonic 3,” Ben Schwartz returns as the voice of the hedgehog, alongside Tails the Fox (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba) and Jim Carrey in scene-stealing dual roles as Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather.

Blake Lively has accused her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment on the set of the movie and a subsequent effort to “destroy” her reputation in a legal complaint.

The complaint obtained by The Associated Press, which The New York Times reported was filed Friday with the California Civil Rights Department, precedes a lawsuit. It names Baldoni, the studio behind the romantic drama “It Ends With Us” and Baldoni’s publicists among the defendants.

In the complaint, Lively accuses Baldoni and the studio of embarking on a “multi-tiered plan” to damage her reputation following a meeting in which she and her husband Ryan Reynolds addressed “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Baldoni and a producer on the movie.

The plan, the complaint said, included a proposal to plant theories on online message boards, engineer a social media campaign and place news stories critical of Lively.

Baldoni enlisted publicists and crisis managers in a “sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” meant to “bury” and “destroy” Lively if she went public with her on-set concerns, the complaint alleges.

“To safeguard against the risk of Ms. Lively ever revealing the truth about Mr. Baldoni, the BaldoniWayfarer team created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms. Lively’s credibility,” the complaint states. “They engaged in the same techniques to bolster Mr. Baldoni’s credibility and suppress any negative content about him.”

The complaint also says Baldoni “abruptly pivoted away from” the movie’s marketing plan and “used domestic violence ‘survivor content’ to protect his public image.”

Bryan Freedman, an attorney representing Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives, called the claims “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”