Whether it’s mainly due to the rise of streaming platforms, the rush for international imports brought on by a pandemic production shortage, or an audience finally taking advantage of a wealth of options, series in languages other than English are in the middle of a boom. While some shows have certainly helped spur that influx of new fans (including ones that can be found below), the nature of the modern TV world is that there are precious few shows anymore that become can’t-miss phenomena....

Sundance is the most powerful film festival in America, a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for an unreliable industry. Of all the directors that Marvel and Sony might have tapped for the “Spider-Man” reboot, they went with the guy whose small action movie “Cop Car” premiered in the Sundance 2015 Midnight section — and went on to gross about $145,000. Six years later, Jon Watts directed the highest-grossing film in Sony’s history....

From Netflix and Apple to IFC Films and Sony Pictures Classics, each of the 19 acquisitions out of the festival revealed much about how distributors will chart their paths in an industry that’s never felt more upside down. Here’s a look at how some of the biggest deals out of Sundance illuminate the murky path in the future of entertainment. Apple looks for love with “Cha Cha Real Smooth” Apple has long fancied itself as the socially responsible, creative face of consumerism....

“The first thing we shot [was] my entrance, [Lundgren’s] entrance, and the introductions and then I got really injured during the fight and I had to be flown into intensive care to California from Canada,” Stallone said. “[Lundgren] pulverized me. And I didn’t feel it in the moment but later that night my heart started to swell. My blood pressure went up to 260 and I was going to be talking to angels....

“You talked about inevitable,” Cruz tells co-host Michael Knowles. “I have to say it brought to mind ‘Avengers: Endgame’… what is interesting, and ‘Endgame’ is curious. Have you noticed in many movies how often rabid environmentalists are the bad guys? Whether it’s Thanos, or go to ‘Watchmen’…the view of the left is people are a disease. They buy into the Malthusian line that there are too many people in the world, people are bad and everything would be better if we had fewer people....

But rather than use that premise to blow up the status quo, Touzani meticulously works backwards, illustrating that there was so much more to these relationships than we could have possibly guessed. Working with an intricacy that rivals that of the craftsman at the center of her film, the auteur crafts a surprisingly warm story that subverts expectations at almost every turn. While “The Blue Caftan” is a film about a gay man exploring his sexuality, the love story at its core is really one between him and his wife....

The fifth entry in the grimly provocative franchise created by James DeMonaco for horror mainstay Blumhouse Productions, “The Forever Purge” continues the saga with an uprising of renegade purgers who take a government sanctioned 12-hour crime spree to its extreme conclusion, breaking the rules to wreak havoc on the entire country in the name of purity. There can be no doubt about the racism motivating the forever purgers. “Help us purify this nation once and for all,” says one hooded goon, before getting his face blown off....