“Starstruck” follows Jessie (Matafeo), a New Zealand transplant in London, attempting to build a life for herself while having a one-night-stand turned maybe-relationship with a famous Hollywood hunk, Tom (Nikesh Patel). An irresistible mix of fantasy (falling into bed with a movie star!) and reality (living with roommates, working a less-than-ideal job), the six-episode first season scratched a romantic-comedy itch for fans hungry for a love story, and on March 24, it’s back for more....

Well, that didn’t take long. After last week’s failed attempt to unite the Roy siblings ended with name-calling and maybe-poisoned-donuts, Episode 3, “The Disruption,” sees Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) pull out their knives. Kendall’s come in the form of strategically placed wireless loudspeakers, set to blast Nirvana’s “Rape Me” as a disruption to Waystar Royco’s company-wide town hall, where his sister is trying to calm employee fears about the company’s cruise line scandal....

The corporate executives at Zephra — a tech conglomerate that owns the Cloud 9 superstore chain — have been stressing the importance of customer appreciation surveys, using those oft-ignored links at the bottom of every receipt to rank the efficiency, popularity, and general value of each store — never mind that, as Dina (Lauren Ash) says, people only use receipts “to spit out gum and for murder alibis.” Still, if that’s what matters to corporate, that’s what matters to the workers....

Earlier: Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead said that while the in-theaters release of their thriller “Synchronic,” starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie, was out of their hands, they don’t advise you see it in an actual theater. In an Instagram post on Friday (below), co-director Moorhead shared a statement, co-signed by co-director Benson and producer David Lawson, supporting the movie’s release in drive-in theaters and on video on demand, but not indoors....

The show begins well after graduation, with Lucy (Grace Van Patten) prepping for a rehearsal dinner where she’ll reunite with a bunch of her friends from during (and presumably after) college years. At the reception, when she locks eyes with ex Stephen (Jackson White), the show hops back in time to look at the tangled web of crushes, hookups, and mistakes that made a shadow this group of friends is still living under 15 years later....

In a recent interview with the YouTube channel “Jake’s Takes,” Farrell revealed that he repeatedly asked Warner Bros. to let his character smoke cigars, but the studio would not relent. “Big studios make big decisions around such things as the presence of cigarettes in films,” he said. “I fought valiantly for a cigar. At one stage I said, ‘I can have it unlit! Just let me have it unlit.’ They were like, ‘No....

Netflix’s official synopsis for “The Crown” Season 4 reads: “As the 1970s are drawing to a close, Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) and her family find themselves preoccupied with safeguarding the line of succession by securing an appropriate bride for Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor), who is still unmarried at 30. While Charles’ romance with a young Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) provides a much-needed fairytale to unite the British people, as the transformation from teenager to Princess of Wales takes place, it is anything but a fairy tale for Diana....

“The Exorcist” opened on December 26, 1973. Director William Friedkin, interviewed by Peter Biskind in 1996, was still angry about it, arguing that the studio’s release strategy hurt his film. But “The Exorcist” was a huge hit — it’s the ninth all-time highest domestic grossing sound film, adjusted for inflation — and second only to “Titanic” among Christmas period releases in the past 50 year. But Friedkin apparently believes it could have been bigger....

This being mainstream television, however, and with the show’s trendy Los Angeles setting, “The L Word” could only showcase so much of the LGBTQ community. In an obvious play for straight audiences, most of the characters on “The L Word” were feminine presenting and cisgender, with little to no discussion of gender identity or presentation. It wasn’t until Season 3 aired in 2006 that viewers met the first recurring trans masculine character on TV, the unassumingly sweet Max Sweeney....

Last year, Pascal exploded. First, he nabbed the title role in Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni’s “Star Wars” spin-off “The Mandalorian,” which launched on November 12, 2019, skyrocketing to become the first megahit lure for thousands of subscribers of Disney+. Season 2 premiered on October 30, 2020 to (presumably) even more eyeballs. Then came “Wonder Woman 1984,” which after several pandemic delays, finally debuted on December 25, day and date in global theaters and on HBO Max....

Disney’s Oscar frontrunner, “Encanto,” the animated musical set in Colombia, followed with three awards for character animation, music (score by Oscar nominee Germaine Franco, song by Lin-Manuel Miranda), and storyboarding. It went into the awards ceremony with nine noms. Disney’s other Oscar contender, “Raya and the Last Dragon,” however, was shut out after leading the pack with 10 noms, as was Pixar’s “Luca,” which had eight noms. Meanwhile, the Oscar-nominated animated doc, “Flee,” the Afghan refugee drama from Danish director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, earned best indie feature honors....

“Robert provides me with an incredible amount of information and takes great care in answering my questions and filling me in not just on the backstory of the characters but then how that backstory relates to the sagas, relates to the culture,” Muir told IndieWire. “Then I did my master’s chart so I can look at it all in one go as a game plan. Then, when I understand where those changes should be seated, I go to Robert and suggest what I’m thinking....

“I asked one of the rowers that I based one of the characters on,” Hadaway said during a recent video interview. “I was like, ‘What did everyone think of me back then?’ And she’s like, ‘Everyone thought you were fucking psychotic.’ She said it with love, of course. But I was like, ‘Okay, yeah. Maybe I was a little over overzealous.’” From her nearly 50 sound credits as well the obvious technical precision of “The Novice,” it’s clear Hadaway pursues filmmaking with the same laser-focused fervor Alex brings to rowing....

After the true-crime show — although the words “true crime” don’t easily apply to the murky death at the center of the HBO Max series — concluded on June 9, the real-life players are speaking out on its accuracy. “The Staircase” centers on North Carolina-based novelist and would-be politician Michael Peterson, played by Colin Firth, who is accused, convicted, and then cleared of killing his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette), who died bloodily and presumably alone at the foot of their staircase....

North Carolina novelist turned politician Peterson stood trial for allegedly murdering Kathleen in 2001 and was convicted in 2003. Peterson later pleaded guilty to manslaughter in an Alford plea in 2017 and was released from prison. The Peterson family story was at the center of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s 2004 documentary “The Staircase” before inspiring the HBO Max series of the same name, helmed by Antonio Campos. “Oh God, no,” Peterson told Variety about watching the series....

After six weeks filled with denials, fresh accusations, and alternate theories, “The Undoing” finally answered its central question: Who killed Elena Alves? Well, it turns out the answer was hiding in plain sight, behind the endearing veil of an extremely charming Hugh Grant. Dr. Jonathan Fraser, the prime suspect all along, was officially confirmed as the killer in Episode 6, ending a lengthy guessing game that spurred intense reactions on social media — in addition to high ratings for HBO....

It’s a solid enough premise on paper, but unfortunately, “Brave,” the “World Beyond” pilot, introduces a troupe of typical stock characters and sets them off to traipse through the abandoned towns and zombie-filled forests that viewers have seen many, many times before in this franchise. Our main characters are sisters Iris (Aliyah Royale) and Hope (Alexa Mansour), residents of the Nebraska Campus Colony, a thriving community that has an alliance with the Civic Republic Military, a shadowy organization that has conscripted the girls’ brilliant father to assist them at their secret headquarters....

Beneath the New York City subway system lies a shadowy labyrinth teeming with people living on the margins of society. It’s a natural cinematic backdrop, and the 2000 documentary “Dark Days” probed it so well it has served as the last word on the subject for the past 20 years. (Before that, Jennifer Toth’s 1997 book “The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City” laid out the ecosystem....

The Daniel Radcliffe-led film about the legendary parody artist takes a deliberately loose approach to the facts, combining truth and fiction in its quest to make a mockery of the music biopic genre. Yet despite the cartoonish elements, the film is still largely set in the music industry and conveys the beats of Yankovic’s career (even if it exaggerates quite a few of them). But as it turns out, the film came close to taking things in a very different, Marvel-inspired direction....

Following Bette Midler and Macy Gray’s recent comments about the rights of trans women, with both receiving support from long-standing vocal TERFer JK Rowling, Carter took to social media to refocus the mission of women’s rights amid the Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade. “I cannot think of anything that helps women’s rights less than pinning the blame on trans women,” Carter tweeted. “They face so much violence and scrutiny as is....