“Dune” marks a return to form for an ultra-prolific legend who reliably does his best work on movies capable of matching the bombast he always brings to them. “Don’t Look Up” offers another chance to celebrate a rising star in this field, his latest score bringing a sense of elegance and cohesion to a satire that falls a bit short on both. “Parallel Mothers” finds a virtuoso at the top of his game, “Encanto” makes it clear that we need to talk about Franco (as in Germaine, not “Rock Me Amadeus”), and “The Power of the Dog” confirms that a generational talent is becoming one of the greatest to ever do it....

“For us, it was about learning the story, learning who these women are, their characters and diving into that world,” McGhee said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “We [focused on] bodies and what works well on them [for movement] and on how it’s really an empowering story of strength and resilience and love and non-judgment.” The one-hour drama created by the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall, follows the lives and careers of a group of strip club dancers in Mississippi’s Dirty Delta....

In a new interview with The Film Stage, Park explained that “Decision to Leave” should not be read as an homage to film noir. In fact, he was far more influenced by mystery novels than he was by any cinema genre. “This might sound surprising, but I’m not the biggest fan of the noir genre,” he said. “I’m not really a film buff either. I don’t rewatch the same movie multiple times....

But just as Season 1 proved to the world what “Pen15” isn’t — it’s sincere, not satiric, hilarious but not a sketch, and nostalgic only when you aren’t quaking with horror from all that excruciating teenage angst — its debut also proved to its creators what these characters could do. Thanks to convincing performances, beautifully evoked empathy, and top-notch detail in its production and writing, Anna (played by Anna Konkle) and Maya (played by Maya Erskine) connected with viewers as real people — they weren’t caricatures, sketches of characters, or self-mocking recreations of the co-creators’ past selves....

“When David O. Russell talked about doing ‘The Fighter,’ he was over himself and over being the auteur,” Tarantino said. “He just wanted to make a good movie that people are going to enjoy. There was something really refreshing about him saying that, and that perspective. If I just wanted to make a good movie, that I knew would be good, I would take David Morrell’s novel for ‘First Blood’ and do the novel....

The three-octave singer from Chula Vista, California, famously renders Roy Orbison’s wallowing breakup ballad “Crying” as a glorious a capella epic in Spanish, “Llorando,” during a pivotal “Mulholland Drive” scene that serves as the bridge from fantasy to reality nightmare. At the downtown Los Angeles “Club Silencio” (in reality, the still-standing historic Tower Theatre), Del Rio croons “Llorando” onstage before collapsing unconscious, her vocals continuing. But for a scene about the performative nature of singing and lip-syncing, Del Rio, as she explained during a recent IndieWire interview, actually sung the song in camera....

Is this a journey to explore new worlds and gain knowledge of other civilizations? Technically, yes. Rick’s discovery of a series of extinction events on a trio of distant planets give them enough cover to engage with the locals in whatever level of debauchery they choose, as long as they give themselves enough time to blast off before the explosions happen. The promise of consequence-free cavorting is naturally a draw for both Summer and Rick — after swapping some vivid plans and demonstrations for what will happen once they land, they quickly go to work making good on those promises....