“Master of None” is reportedly set to return with a five-episode season that will run under the title “Master of None Presents: Moments in Love.” All five episodes were directed by Ansari and written by Ansari and Lena Waithe. The new episodes are believed to focus exclusively on the first two seasons’ supporting character Denise, played by Waithe. The character and Waithe were the focus of the second season episode “Thanksgiving,” which won Ansari and Waithe the Emmy award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy....

It’s been a widely accepted fact since 1988 that Matilda Wormwood is not a normal girl. She is clever — stupidly clever — and kind, and can also make use of psychokinetic powers whenever she needs to. Her world is a fantasy and a horror at once, trapped by cruel parents and misunderstood by a tyrannical headmistress at her school (Crunchem Hall) and buoyed by her freakishly powerful brain. It is wonderful, but also quite weird....

“It has been a long journey, but it has been a really good journey,” Lee said. “It didn’t go the way we thought it would, but ultimately we landed where we were supposed to land. People are seeing it, they’re feeling it, and they’re responding to it.” “Monster” is based on the 1999 YA novel by Walter Dean Myers, which follows a high school honor student (Harrison) who faces prison time following his alleged peripheral involvement in a deadly robbery....

Comparing a professionally made, award-winning TV series like “Only Murders in the Building” to a quickly devoured party snack is reductive, I admit, but I promise not to stretch the metaphor as far as the series stretches Oliver’s savory infatuation. (Someone make the man a sandwich!) In Season 1, John Hoffman and Steve Martin’s genre mash-up hit on every level (layer?). Its comedy was cute, its mystery intriguing, its true crime commentary on point, its show-within-a-show charming, and its characters as endearing apart as they were crackling in collaboration....

Why should the sex industry be any different? In “Pleasure,” Swedish writer/director Ninja Thyberg dives head-first into the Los Angeles porn industry to tell the story of 19-year-old Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel), who dreams of becoming the next big porn star. When the film premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival, the headline for Variety’s review, written by Owen Gleiberman, called “Pleasure” a “documentary-like drama,” describing it as a “disturbingly authentic … explicit piece of anthropological voyeurism....

Here’s the official synopsis, per Netflix: “Steve Maryweather, AKA Agent Mary, was once the Golden Boy of the American Intelligence Agency (AIA), until he came out as gay. Unable to fire him, the Agency sent him off to West Hollywood to disappear into obscurity. Instead, he assembled a misfit squad of LGBTQ+ geniuses. Joining forces with the expert mechanic Deb, master of drag and disguise Twink, and hacker Stat, together they’re Q-Force....

The film dramatizes the horrific events of the Srebrenica massacre, otherwise known as the Srebrenica genocide, during which Serbian troops sent 8,372 Bosniak men and boys to their deaths in July 1995. Named for its fearless protagonist, “Quo Vadis, Aida?” exposes the events through the eyes of a mother named Aida (Jasna Ðuričić), a schoolteacher who works with the United Nations as a translator. After three and a half years under siege, the town of Srebrenica, close to the northeastern Serbian border, was declared a UN “safety zone” in 1993 and put under the protection of a Dutch battalion working for the UN....

The movie’s cold and clammy opening sequence in a greenly lit hospital immediately conjure visions of another hot Sarah Paulson project at the moment, Netflix’s “Ratched,” in which she stars as a demented nurse. In “Run” as Diane Sherman, Paulson is the patient here, wheeled through the hospital to meet a baby, shriveled and underweight and in critical condition, that apparently belongs to her. Never one to buck a challenge, Diane is overjoyed to welcome her bouncing ball of joy into her world....

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” breakout Qualley stars as a dominatrix sex worker in the TIFF 2022-selected thriller “Sanctuary.” Filming recently wrapped in New York City with first look images available on the heels of the TIFF premiere announcement for this fall. Penned by “Homecoming” co-creator Micah Bloomberg and directed by SXSW “The Heart Machine” helmer Zachary Wigon, “Sanctuary” takes place over the course of one night in a hotel room where Rebecca (Qualley) seduces her elite client Hal (Christopher Abbott) to disastrous ends....

Now, there are no half measures. It’s kill or be killed. The addition of Bautista eventually proves its worth. His introductory scene — which canvasses his hulking frame, his face a long-bearded scowl — makes it very clear that he’s beastly and to be utterly feared. If the season’s key art, featuring a literal tête-à-tête of both bad-tempered Momoa and Bautista, doesn’t make it clear, driving the main plot is a dispute between the two brothers....

From the moment Helly (Britt Lower) was born to the severed floor — sleeping on an oval office table, a speaker cable serving as her umbilical cord, about to come screaming into a frightening new world — “Severance” has used its acute visual palette to inform the mysterious story within. Created by Dan Erickson, the Apple TV+ series builds each piece of its narrative with extreme care. Everything from the Perpetuity Wing, where employees gaze upon wax statues of Lumon Industries’ CEOs, to the blue erasers, given out as incentives for a job well done, all of it has been considered, designed, and captured by a team of artists led by Erickson, as well as director and executive producer Ben Stiller....

Instead, Erika is told someone is coming to see her — apparently she’s not the only one on the clock, though that unnerving realization is soon compounded by who shows up to help: A senior lab tech? A repair specialist? No, it’s the same R&D manager she just spoke to on the phone, and she’s not there to fix the machine. She simply overrides the error report and forwards the faulty analysis anyway....

The haunting trailer for Apple TV+’s upcoming series “Shining Girls” exhibits the suffocating trauma of surviving an assault — and captures what it takes to track a killer. “He’s everybody. He’s nobody,” Elisabeth Moss says as newspaper archivist Kirby Mazrachi in the time-bending trailer for the show, which premieres April 29. As Kirby realizes a recent murder mirrors her own attack, she sets out to find her assailant with the help of seasoned reporter Dan Velazquez (Wagner Moura)....

The Dave Filoni-created show anticipated many of the things that fans came to like so much about “Andor”: its focus on new characters, its more grounded stakes, the way it brings the fascist oppression of the Empire to life in more real-world, less mystical ways. Did it get the buzz of the live-action shows? No. But those looking to scratch that “Star Wars” itch before “The Mandalorian” returns in March would do well to consider giving “The Bad Batch” a try when it returns for Season 2 on January 4....

In an unprecedented occurrence, the same three titles top the lists for Apple TV, Google Play, and FandangoNow. “The Croods: A New Age” (Universal), “Tenet” (Warner Bros.), and “Greenland” (STX), all available to rent at $19.99, lead whether the charts calculate by number of purchases or total revenue accrued. Meantime, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” became the first of Netflix’s film awards contenders to open at #1 on their film chart (as well as on their broader listings)....

The show’s first three episodes will premiere on Nov. 26, followed by two new episodes on December 3, two episodes on Dec. 10, and the season finale episode on Dec. 17. “The Flight Attendant” marks Cuoco’s first major live-action role since starring in the long-running “The Big Bang Theory.” Cuoco, who stars in DC Universe’s animated “Harley Quinn” (which will soon relocate to HBO Max) as the titular supervillain, optioned the rights to Bohjalian’s novel in October 2017, when she also signed an overall deal with WarnerMedia....

Financed by Topic, the streaming service owned by First Look Media, “The Letter Room” stars Lind’s husband Oscar Isaac and Alia Shawkat. After debuting at Hollyshorts in November 2020, it appeared on the Oscars shortlist in February; several more distribution deals followed. On April 11, a column by film critic Vecdi Sayar of the Turkish newspaper BirGün cited the similarities between “Passed by Censor” and “The Letter Room” as the latest example of a Turkish film that hasn’t gotten its due for influencing other productions....

The film follows all the adventures that stem from that clever idea, many of them rooted in the wildness of not just turning into, again, a giant red panda, but of being a teenager coming of age and all the outsized emotions and obsessions that accompany that. It’s specific, yes, but it’s also so rooted in genuine human experiences that it can’t help but appeal to a very wide audience....

Though stacked with plenty of loaded lines and piercing looks (most courtesy of Kathryn Hahn), there are two bedrock-shaking emotional moments in the “WandaVision” finale. The first is the inevitable ending. MCU fans likely knew from the start, and the rest of us caught up soon enough, that Vision (Paul Bettany) wasn’t going to walk out of Westview. His previous death(s) could not be ignored, and his resurrection couldn’t be made permanent with magic or even by the android’s endearing attempts to understand his true identity....

That’s what made things so exciting on Monday with the announcements of the TV nominees for both the Producers Guild of America Awards and the Directors Guild of America Awards. Sure, the vast majority of the nominees from the producers and directors both largely overlapped with accolades we’ve seen before. Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” continues its strong showing, nabbing two DGA nominations, alongside its nod from the PGA. Meanwhile, freshman series including Netflix’s “Bridgerton” and HBO Max’s “The Flight Attendant” were both recognized by the prestigious guilds....