For more than four decades, “Star Wars” has created a dazzling universe filled with iconic characters and stunning imagery — yet each story starts with a simple scroll. The onscreen exposition stretches out into the stars, and for a moment, it feels endless, as though you’ll simply keep reading for two hours rather than embarking on an interstellar adventure. That’s how it felt last December, when Disney spokespeople made announcement after announcement during a four-hour presentation to investors, many of which focused on the further expansion of George Lucas’ blockbuster film franchise via Disney+....

With any non-fiction film like this, getting access and keeping it is key to success. And yet the question when it comes to this sort of celebrity profile is always: How honest and authentic is the story? What has been left out? And, in the case of a film like “Val,” if the filmmakers work for the subject, can they craft a truly independent portrait? The answer, it seems, is no....

The series, based on Colson Whitehead’s 2016 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, reimagines the Underground Railroad as an actual railroad with engineers, conductors, train tracks, and underground tunnels. Cora’s journey to freedom isn’t without complications. She’s being followed by Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton), a bounty hunter obsessed with forcing her back to the Georgia plantation she escaped from. Ridgeway is fixated with capturing Cora in part because her mother was the only person he never caught....

The Muppets are getting ghostly in “Muppets Haunted Mansion,” their first-ever Halloween special, which debuted on Disney+ on Friday. The family-friendly film features a star-studded cast of Muppets and celebrity cameos, plus all-new music, and spooky fun. In “Muppets Haunted Mansion,” The Great Gonzo is challenged to spend one very daring Halloween night in the Haunted Mansion. The daredevil artiste has done it all, seen it all, and survived it all — but will he make it through a night in the eerie mansion?...

Looking for a new movie to stream this weekend? Angelina Jolie stars in the blazing action thriller “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” which debuted in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday. The Taylor Sheridan-directed film, adapted from a Michael Koryta novel of the same name, is about a boy who witnesses his father’s murder and subsequently goes on the run to escape assassins. Finn Little plays Connor Casserly, a young boy found bruised and bloodied while stumbling through a wooded area after his father Owen (Jake Weber) gets murdered by the assassins now trailing him....

The 2022 Beijing Games, much like last year’s Tokyo festivities, have been instructive microscopes through which to examine how that ultra reliance on a single brand is a double-edged sword. For two straight iterations, American rights holder NBC has navigated the choppy waters between Too Big to Fail and Too Big to Care. Yet, even with the massive amount of effort put into making these Games available to a potential viewing public, its linear and streaming efforts are still using a formula for a “normal” Olympics, one that may not be completely outdated but may not work for much longer....

From the moment that nine actresses from “Women Talking” crowded the stage before the movie’s premiere, it was clear that the movie offered up a wide array of performances. Polley’s absorbing, stripped-down adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel almost exclusively unfolds in the confines of a barn, where the women in question gather to discuss their options. Having discovered that men in their community have been drugging and raping them in their sleep, they’ve already managed to get a few of them arrested — while the rest of the men have left town to arrange for their compatriots’ release....