By JOE REEDY

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A jury in U.S. District Court ordered the NFL to pay nearly $4.8 billion in damages Thursday after ruling that the league violated antitrust laws in distributing out-of-market Sunday afternoon games on a premium subscription service.

The jury awarded $4.7 billion in damages to the residential class and $96 million in damages to the commercial class.

The lawsuit covered 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses who paid for the package of out-of-market games from the 2011 through 2022 seasons on DirecTV. The lawsuit claimed the league broke antitrust laws by selling its package of Sunday games at an inflated price. The subscribers also say the league restricted competition by offering “Sunday Ticket” only on a satellite provider.

The NFL said it would appeal the verdict. That appeal would go to the 9th Circuit and then possibly the Supreme Court.

“We are disappointed with the jury’s verdict today in the NFL Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” the league said in a statement. “We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and national distribution of our most popular games, supplemented by many additional choices including RedZone, Sunday Ticket and NFL+, is by far the most fan friendly distribution model in all of sports and entertainment.

“We will certainly contest this decision as we believe that the class action claims in this case are baseless and without merit.”

The jury of five men and three women deliberated for nearly five hours before reaching its decision.

“This case transcends football. This case matters,” plaintiffs attorney Bill Carmody said during Wednesday’s closing arguments. “It’s about justice. It’s about telling the 32 team owners who collectively own all the big TV rights, the most popular content in the history of TV — that’s what they have. It’s about telling them that even you cannot ignore the antitrust laws. Even you cannot collude to overcharge consumers. Even you can’t hide the truth and think you’re going to get away with it.”

The league maintained it has the right to sell “Sunday Ticket” under its antitrust exemption for broadcasting. The plaintiffs say that only covers over-the-air broadcasts and not pay TV.

DirecTV had “Sunday Ticket” from its inception in 1994 through 2022. The league signed a seven-year deal with Google’s YouTube TV that began with the 2023 season.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015 by the Mucky Duck sports bar in San Francisco but was dismissed in 2017. Two years later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over California and eight other states, reinstated the case. Gutierrez ruled last year the case could proceed as a class action.

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

The problem with most screenplays, line-to-line and character-to-character, is a problem of differentiation. As in, everybody sounds like the same type of person. Human or human-adjacent qualities, optional. Separate from this problem is the rarified, repeat-Oscar winner realm of screenwriting, where Quentin Tarantino holds court and the writing becomes so self-consciously embroidered that scenes have a way of slowing to a crawl while the writer dog-paddles around for a while. And then somebody shoots somebody.

But there are exceptions to these ridiculous and untenable generalizations. Some of them are even playwrights, breaking into what is, for them, a new medium.

Take Annie Baker, a terrific playwright whose Pulitzer Prize-winner, “The Flick” (2014), served up a luxuriantly naturalistic slice of life, set in a struggling art-house movie theater. Baker has now made her feature film debut as writer-director with “Janet Planet,” and there’s so much right with it, beginning and ending with how Baker listens to, and frames, what her characters say, and how. And what they don’t.

It’s set in early 1990s western Massachusetts, where Baker grew up, in the seldom-filmed Pioneer Valley region. This is a verdant patch of mostly comforting isolation, as Baker remembers it by way of the soundtrack, full of birdsong and insect buzz and the wind blowing through the back seat of an un-air-conditioned car.

At the start, Lacy, 11 years old, sneaks a late-night call home from summer camp. She wants out. Her acupuncturist mother, Janet, retrieves her from camp and gets a partial refund. “Janet Planet” chronicles the rest of their summer at home, as Janet navigates her current boyfriend, Wayne; her old and somewhat bossy actor friend, Regina, whom Janet and Lacy reconnect with at a performance of Regina’s cultlike theater troupe; and Avi, the theater director, who takes a stealthy interest in Janet because, as daughter Lacy says forthrightly, everyone’s always falling in love with her.

How does this play out? In bracingly lifelike exchanges of precise, concise small talk, polite evasions, and occasional, surprising connections, mostly between mother and daughter. They’re close, and there’s a world of love there, no doubt. But Baker isn’t interested in warming hearts the easy way, or in the usual catharsis business. “Janet Planet” is told largely from the perspective of Lacy, a loner, a dreamer, and a very, very close observer of everything to do with her mother.

“Tell me what to do,” Janet says to her, after broaching the subject of problematic boyfriend Wayne. Pause. “I think you should break up with him,” Lacy says. Clearly it’s the right call. It is also the latest of many exchanges between them that underlines a codependency Lacy appreciates, and that Janet knows isn’t necessarily for the best. If it’s about any one thing, Baker’s film is about how Lacy comes to a different place regarding her mother’s dreamy roundelay, distilled in a single image at the very end.

Often “Janet Planet” is a movie of relatively few words. Baker and her cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff allow the environments, indoor and outdoor, do much of the the communicating. A lot of the emotional information reveals itself in ultra-tight closeups of faces, an earring, a forearm, in soft, pastel light. Lacy is trying to learn what it means to be an adult, or at least what it means to be her mother. Baker teases out the everyday, ordinary sound of relationships under duress, as Janet’s house accommodates one outsider, then another, and another.

Late in the film (no spoilers here; it’s not that kind of story) Janet makes a sort of confession to her daughter. “I’ve always had this knowledge deep inside of me that I could make any man fall in love with me, if I really tried,” she tells her. “And I think maybe it’s ruined my life.” It’s a superbly phrased line, saying so much about so much. It sounds like life, not the movies, and in Julianne Nicholson (Emmy winner for “Mare of Easttown”), Baker has the best possible Janet, working with the least possible external effort. She’s a marvelous actor.

As Lacy, Zoe Ziegler matches Nicholson heartbeat for heartbeat, though she’s often filmed alone in her room, playing with her figurines, staging scenes on a miniature stage complete with curtain. The other roles are exquisitely well cast, with Sophie Okonedo (Regina, Janet’s rather needy old friend), Will Patton (Wayne, the problematic boyfriend) and Elias Koteas (as Avi, the puppet-theater guru with an extreme way of pausing before speaking). The film is a mite thin, and occasionally glib. But Baker knows where the bittersweet human comedy lies in this mother, and this daughter. Those in need of conventional uplift in their family stories, or more assertive character arcs, never have to wait very long for what they require. Meantime there’s this, for the rest of us.

“Janet Planet” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for brief strong language, some drug use and thematic elements)

Running time: 1:53

How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 28

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

When he died on Feb. 5, 1992, Danny Sotomayor was only 33 years old, his life stolen by AIDS and his last four years spent in a bold fight against its ravages, the diagnosis of which was then a virtual death sentence.

But he also spent those last years as one of the most powerful and passionate of the early AIDS activists, fighting for research funds, for respect.

His newspaper obituary was only a couple hundred words long so it barely told his story, which makes it important for us to have a fine and forceful “The Outrage of Danny Sotomayor,” part of WTTW’s documentary series “Chicago Stories,” airing at 9 p.m. Friday on WTTW-Ch. 11. (There is also a fine accompanying website, filled with more information and, indeed, enlightenment).

In addition to celebrating one of the great heroes (and, yes, that is the right word) of the AIDS activist movement, it is also a reminder of the fear and uncertainty that shadowed the earliest days of AIDS. It is a valuable history lesson, at once harrowing and heartbreaking.

Sotomayor was born in 1958, the son of a Mexican mother and Puerto Rican father, and grew up in the Humboldt Park neighborhood where his father’s frequent rages made for a violent household. He came out at 14, graduated from Columbia College with a degree in graphic arts, and was starting to make his mark as a political cartoonist and actor.

But all around him, friends were getting sick and dying and in 1988 he was diagnosed with AIDS. As the film shows, he quickly became one of the founders of the Chicago chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which advocated using direct action and civil disobedience to fight AIDS and discrimination, all against the background sound of an “Act up, fight back, fight AIDS!” chant.

In his cartoons, which were soon syndicated in publications across the country, he went after local and national political figures. But the focus of most of his anger was Mayor Richard M. Daley. He would attend the mayor’s press conferences, where he became a familiar foil. When Daley in 1989 announced at a press conference a “new” AIDS public awareness campaign, Sotomayor shouted “garbage.”

Sotomayor was direct. His theatrical and artistic creativity and flair, and inherent good looks and charisma made him a focus for TV news cameras, especially when he had a microphone in his hands. One of the film’s most dramatic segments shows a public protest, during which Sotomayor and a few others unfurled a massive banner that read “WE DEMAND EQUAL HEALTHCARE NOW” from windows in the Chicago Cook County building.

The film is a thoughtful trip back in time that shows how Sotomayor’s life would echo into the future. It makes great use of its interview subjects, such as Sotomayor’s older brother David, longtime activist Rich Garcia and journalist Tracy Baim. Sotomayor is seen and heard in newly unearthed interviews.

There is also Dr. Ross Slotten, who was on the front lines of the AIDS battle, detailed in his 2020 book,  “Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey Through the AIDS Crisis” (University of Chicago Press), which I called “remarkable.”

Slotten also told me, “Over the years death has increasingly obsessed me, and increasingly as I grow older and continue the purposelessness of life. We come, make our brief mark on the world, and vanish — that’s a cliche but a simple truth.”

Sotomayor made his mark and you will understand why and how from this film. I met Sotomayor a few times, mostly at public events but also over dinner, where I also met the love of his life. That was Scott McPherson, the acclaimed playwright, known best for “Marvin’s Room.”

When Sotomayor died, McPherson said, “I have known a lot of people with this disease. I have never seen anyone fight it so hard. He fought it not only for himself, but also for everybody. He was one of the funniest, most motivated, clear-thinking, compassionate people I have ever known.”

I remind you that 1992 was the year Sotomayor died and the year that Slotten had the chilling distinction of signing more death certificates than any other doctor in the state. It was also the year McPherson died. Such was the horror of the times.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos hasn’t made the world wait long for the follow-up to his engrossing and thought-provoking “Poor Things,” a nominee earlier this year for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Going into wide release this week, not quite seven months after “Poor Things” introduced the world to Emma Stone’s unforgettable Bella Baxter, the director’s intriguing, entrancing and, at times, confounding “Kinds of Kindness” is said to have been shot quickly during the lengthy post-production phase of its visually elaborate predecessor.

‘Poor Things’ review: Emma Stone unforgettable in Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest

A “triptych fable,” “Kinds of Kindness” boasts many of the same actors — among them, not surprisingly, is Stone, who deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actress for “Poor Things” for her spectacular and fearless performance — playing different characters in its three stories.

To say this trio of tales is “loosely connected” is a bit generous, although Yorgos Stefanakos’ R.M.F. is a titular figure — but also only so relevant narratively — in each.

One would expect there to be a greater thematic thread tying together “The Death of R.M.F.,” “R.M.F. Is Flying” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” but, at least on initial viewing, that connective tissue is pretty thin. In each, at least one character is some degree of desperate to please at least one other character who is some degree of controlling — and, more often not, one of the latter figures is portrayed by fellow “Things” alum Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project”). Given the gifts of Lanthimos, there surely is more metaphorical meat on the bone to be chewed upon during and after a repeat viewing.

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Know, however, that “Kinds of Kindness” is co-written by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, the latter a collaborator on the former’s more self-indulgent (if still radically interesting) films, including “The Lobster” (2015) and “The Killing of the Sacred Deer,” in which the pair’s absurdist leanings sometimes got the better of them. (Nowhere to be found in the credits here is writer Tony McNamara, who helped shape “Poor Thing” and Lanthimos’ other unquestionably terrific — and Oscar-nominated — film, 2018’s “The Favourite.”)

It comes as no shock, then, that “Kinds of Kindness” sometimes, perhaps even often, feels like it’s being absurd because … well, just because.

That said, it also is a film that, with every scene, has you hanging on with great interest to see what will come next. As a result, it is a two-and-a-half-hour-plus endeavor that goes by remarkably quickly. Whatever its sins, stagnation isn’t one of them.

Stone, appropriately, receives top billing, but Jesse Plemons gets at least a bit more time within the frame.

That’s mainly because while the two are co-leads in the subsequent acts, Stone is a supporting player in “The Death of R.M.F.” Plemons is front and center as Robert, who doesn’t just work for Dafoe’s Raymond but long has been engaged in a bizarre agreement with him. Raymond dictates areas of Robert’s life from his weight — the former is frustrated by the latter appearing to have lost weight, as he finds thin men to be ridiculous — to his intimacy and more with his wife, Sarah (Hong Chau, “The Menu,” “The Whale”). This power dynamic is upset when Raymond finally asks too much of Robert, with Robert subsequently seeing Stone’s Rita as a means to an end.

 

Next comes “R.M.F. Is Flying,” in which police officer Daniel (Plemons) is distraught because his beloved wife, Liz (Stone), has been lost at sea. When she is found alive and returns to him, Daniel believes something is amiss, Liz enjoying things — chocolate and cigarettes among them — she didn’t previously and, more mysteriously, not fitting comfortably into her shoes. While some around him believe Daniel to be having a psychotic event, he sets about proving his theory.

Lastly, we get “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” which sees Stone’s Emily and Plemons’ Andrew as members of a spiritual cult led by Dafoe’s Omi and Chau’s Aka. Omi and Aka, who bless the group’s all-important “uncontaminated” water with their tears, regularly dispatch Emily and Andrew on missions to search for a figure to fulfill a prophecy of a female twin who can raise the dead.

We’ve kept things vague — believe it or not, it’s all even stranger than it sounds — purposefully because, again, revelations along the way comprise much of the enjoyment “Kinds of Kindness” has to offer.

It also offers fine supporting work from Margaret Qualley (“Poor Things,” “Drive-Away Dolls”), Mamoudou Athie (“Elemental,” “The Burial”) and Joe Alwyn (“The Favourite,” “Catherine Called Birdy”) in each of the three parts.

‘Drive-Away Dolls’ review: Coen brother’s ‘Pulp’-y, sex-forward romp mostly fun

Plemons (“Power of the Dog,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”), who seems almost as if he’s in more films than he isn’t these days, is his usual dependable self and oddly likable even when the person he’s playing isn’t.

Meanwhile, Stone — also an Academy Award winner for 2017’s “La La Land” and a nominee for 2015’s “Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” and “The Favourite” — is sensational again. There may be no Oscar in her future for her work here, but with the energy and personality she brings to each, her character is the most interesting thing on screen in any scene she’s in, which is saying something given some of the happenings in “Kinds of Kindness.”

Stone won’t be enough to keep some viewers from becoming turned off by “Kinds of Kindness.” It’s weird, to be sure, sometimes sexually gratuitous, often dark, occasionally violent and longer than the average movie. As such, it simply won’t fit the tastes of some folks.

Poor things.

‘Kinds of Kindness’

Where: Theaters.

When: June 28.

Rated: R for strong/disturbing violent content, strong sexual content, full nudity and language.

Runtime: 2 hours, 44 minutes.

Stars (of four): 3.