Director Cate Shortland’s standalone adventure finds Natasha, aka Scarlett Johansson’s eponymous KGB killer-turned-Avenger hero, kicking ass and trading banter with her combustible sort-of sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) alongside gonzo adopted dad Red Guardian (David Harbour) and his wife Melina (Rachel Weisz). Their playful dynamic, based on a premise credited to “Wandavision” creator Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson and written by Eric Pearson, injects “Black Widow” with a spiky attitude that keeps this polished product engrossing throughout, at least until it comes crashing down to the usual busy mashup of mayhem that often mars the Marvel routine....

All of those elements — the confined setting, the real-time plot structure, the mere fact that it’s about a guy holding bank employees captive — inevitably lead to comparisons to classic hostage movies like “Dog Day Afternoon.” But the film’s stars aren’t so quick to embrace the parallels. While speaking to IndieWire about the film, Boyega and Beharie — both cinephiles themselves — were quick to emphasize that this is a very different bank robbery movie than anything we’ve seen before....

After 120 years, give or take, Hollywood finally has a mainstream queer rom-com answer to films like Nora Ephron’s “You’ve Got Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” Hell, it’s taken just as long to make a mainstream LGBTQ movie that isn’t about pain and suffering or trauma or systemic homophobia. Enter screenwriter/star Billy Eichner and director Nicholas Stoller’s “Bros,” a snarky, fitfully raunchy meet-cute for the age of Grindr (or here, a dating app cheekily called Zellweger)....

And there was a whole lot more than that. In this week’s episode of Screen Talk, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson unpack this year’s Cannes experience as they readjust to their respective time zones and look ahead to the future. Which films will make some noise this fall? To answer that question, start here. Listen to the full episode below. Screen Talk is produced by Leonardo Adrian Garcia and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone....

It all starts predictably enough: Anna (Akerman) is struggling with the responsibilities of adult life, evidenced by both her inability to pay her bills (her car is repossessed in the opening credits) and her heartbreak over her dead mom (her morning routine can only start after she says hi to a picture of the pair them in happier times). Akerman is adept at playing believably addled, as the script (from first-time feature writer Joseph Downey) piles on complications that only muddy the waters, from her failing coffee shop to her dad rediscovering his sexuality....

“We put our hearts and souls into it,” he said over coffee in New York this week. “It was really a process of learning for me. Those perspectives opened up a lot of my knowledge around how one innocent piece can be looked at from different ways.” At the same time, he was constantly getting asked what he would do next. “It was quite a challenge,” Dhont said, “going back to a desk and a white page and really finding something we wanted to talk about with the same energy and passion....

It’s unclear what O’Brien’s HBO Max show will be like. WarnerMedia stated last November that the comedian’s “Conan Without Borders” shows, where he travels to other countries (those episodes have taken him to locations such as South Korea, Mexico, and Haiti), would continue alongside his upcoming HBO Max series, which suggests that his new show will be something else entirely. Regardless, O’Brien is the latest in a recent string of comedians who have or plan on hosting a comedy show on a streaming service, a relatively new phenomenon for the medium....