W

hat films do you watch when you’re facing what might well be the end of the world as we’ve known it?

I was in the audience several years ago when Oscar-winning screenwriter and film academy then-

president Frank Pierson revealed that on the cataclysmic night of Sept. 11, 2001, the decision for he

and his wife was a snap: the tonic, exuberant “Singin’ in the Rain.”

It’s in that spirit of engaging, upbeat popular entertainment in impossible times that I’m offering a

very personal list of more than a dozen movies that fit that particular bill.

Think of them as a kind of “free from fear 14,” a reminder of films — some very familiar, some less so, almost all from

Hollywood — that I can always count on to raise my spirits and keep my mind off potential catastrophe.

On one level I’m doing this because this is what all critics do, recommending what they believe readers will enjoy. But

this piece is a little different. It’s the last one I will write under the Times film critic byline.

Though I hope to continue contributing to film coverage here, after close to 30 years in a job that was

A FOND FAREWELL

HAYAO MIYAZAKI’S“My Neighbor Totoro,” clockwise from top left, Marcel Carné’s 1945 classic “Children of Paradise,” Ang Lee’s
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and the Hollywood musical “Singin’ in the Rain” are all handy films for getting through hard times.

Images from, clockwise from top left, Studio Ghibli; Criterion; Chan Kam ChuenSony Pictures Classics; Warner Bros.

14 FILMS FREE

FROM FEAR

Before I step down, here are some spirited movies to lift you up

[SeeTuran,E2]

BYKENNETHTURAN FILM CRITIC

Sam Hunt, back

in the saddle

The country star,

above, returns to the

scene with his first

new album in over five

years, “Southside.” E6

Getty fund will

aid arts entities

The Getty Trust is

creating a $10-million

COVID-19 relief fund

for arts organizations

in L.A. County. E3

Comics...................E4-5

What’s on TV..........E6

Allen J. SchabenL.A. Times

CALENDAR

F RIDAY, APRIL 3, 2020::L ATIMES.COM/CALENDAR

E

They say you should never

meet your heroes. They’re wrong.

I’m grateful not only to have met

one of mine, but also to have called

him my teacher, colleague and

friend.

There is some consolation in

this, and this is a time for consola-

tion. This week, after nearly 30

years on the job, Kenneth Turan is

stepping down as film critic for the

Los Angeles Times.

He has assured us that we have

not seen the last of his words,

which is comforting if hardly sur-

prising. For someone who spent

years as a sports and features

writer at the Washington Post —

and who has tirelessly juggled

book reviews, covered movies for

radio, taught journalism classes

and cranked out several books, all

while holding down one of the

most distinguished careers in film

criticism — retirement was always

going to be a relative concept. But

he will no longer be writing movie

reviews, the ones he has been

churning out week after week

since 1991, and which have been

among the indispensable treas-

ures of this newspaper.

I began devouring those re-

views long before I ever thought I’d

meet their author. I imagine that

for most people, a love of film

Kenny and me: What I’ve learned

Turan has been my idol,

my teacher, my colleague.

He taught me to trust my

voice, as he has trusted his.

APARTNERSHIPdecades in the making: The Times’ Justin

Chang, left, and Kenneth Turan at 2020’s Sundance festival.

Jay L. ClendeninLos Angeles Times

JUSTIN CHANG

FILM CRITIC

Directors on Turan

Clint Eastwood, Jane Campion

and others offer tributes. E2

[SeeChang, E3]

Not ifbut when.

It’s the rallying cry ut-

tered over and over again by

the doctors, scientists, hu-

manitarian workers and

public health officials pro-

filed in “Pandemic: How to

Prevent an Outbreak.”

Structured like a globe-trot-

ting thriller, the Netflix doc-

umentary series follows

dedicated men and women

on the front lines of the bat-

tle against the next devas-

tating disease to ravage the

human population — an

event they are all certain is

just around the corner.

Turns out they were

right.

In a freakish coincidence

of timing, “Pandemic” pre-

miered on Netflix in late Jan-

uary, just as the novel

coronaviruswas beginning

its rampage. Over six epi-

sodes, the series issues un-

comfortably prescient warn-

ings about the risk of a new

respiratory virusthat could,

within a matter of months,

overwhelm the planet. It

brings epidemiological sci-

ence to life in unexpected

ways — not with dry data but

through compelling charac-

ters located in far-flung,

seemingly unconnected

places, from a crowded ani-

mal market in Vietnam to an

under-resourced hospital in

rural Oklahoma.

“There were already a lot

of scary science docu-

mentaries where you had

people sitting in a room talk-

ing about the potential for a

new virus to spread around

the world,” says executive

producer Sheri Fink, a re-

porter for the New York

Times with experience in in-

fectious disease. (She cov-

ered the H1N1 flu pandemic

in 2009 and the Ebola out-

break in West Africa in 2014.)

“We thought we would try to

go around the world and give

a sense of the lives of these

people who felt passionate

[about] and devoted their

lives to trying to detect pan-

demics.”

These subjects include

Susan Flis, a retired nurse

who volunteers to give out

flu shots at the U.S.-Mexico

border in Arizona; Jacob

Glanville, an entrepreneur

trying to develop a universal

flu vaccine; Michel Yao, a

doctor with the World

Health Organization at-

tempting to contain an

Ebola outbreak in the

Not

just ‘a

show

about

the flu’

Netflix’s docuseries

‘Pandemic: How to

Prevent an Outbreak’

predicted such a crisis.

By Meredith Blake

[See‘Pandemic,’E6]