The “American Gigolo” director submitted a top 10 list of his favorite features of 2021 to Screen Slate, a site devoted to film and repertory cinema that included the likes of Pedro Almodovar’s “Parallel Mothers,” Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” and Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story.” But in the number one position was Schrader’s own directorial offering, “The Card Counter.” Yes, a director considered his own feature the best of the year....

Theaters in the U.S./Canada (the latter still mostly shut down) took in around $69 million this weekend, a sum that represents 42 percent of the gross for the first June weekend of 2019. Similarly, Memorial Day weekend 2021 represented 45 percent the same period in 2019. Theaters have every reason to expect further improvement, and no one expects short-term parity, but viability will require hockey-stick growth. This “Conjuring” is the eighth film in an eight-year-old franchise that includes three “Annabelle” titles, “The Nun,” and “The Curse of La Llorona....

Ever since their very different publishing houses merged, Lucy and Josh have been at each other’s throats. As the respective assistants to the co-CEOs of newly formed B&G Publishing, Lucy and Josh both share ambition and drive, but their methods couldn’t be further apart. Consider their desks, set up to face each other (oh, the pain of having to be mere feet from your greatest enemy for hours every day): Lucy’s is messy, kitschy, cluttered, and cute, while Josh seems to go more for the cold corporate look....

The film received rave reviews out of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, with critics singling out performances from Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley as potential awards contenders. Here’s the official synopsis, per Netflix: “Alone on a seaside vacation, Leda (Olivia Colman) becomes consumed with a young mother and daughter as she watches them on the beach. Unnerved by their compelling relationship, (and their raucous and menacing extended family), Leda is overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood....

The protagonist for “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” rules the latest trailer for the upcoming Prime Video series, streaming September 2. Galadriel is dead set on “hunting the enemy,” no matter the cost of saving Middle-Earth from a rising evil. “Fates collide and disparate characters are tested in the face of impending evil in this glimpse into the long-awaited new series,” an official description reads. “‘The Rings of Power’ will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and one of the greatest villains that ever flowed from J....

Series creator Matt Groening told USA Today in an interview published Monday, in celebration of the show’s 700th episode, that his team has “something kind of ambitious” in the works for the character following Hank Azaria stepping down as the voice of Apu. “The Simpsons” and Apu, an Indian immigrant character in the show who runs a Kwik-E-Mart business, had courted controversy for several years due to Apu’s characterization, which has been criticized as a racial stereotype....

After the true-crime show — although the words “true crime” don’t easily apply to the murky death at the center of the HBO Max series — concluded on June 9, the real-life players are speaking out on its accuracy. “The Staircase” centers on North Carolina-based novelist and would-be politician Michael Peterson, played by Colin Firth, who is accused, convicted, and then cleared of killing his wife Kathleen (Toni Collette), who died bloodily and presumably alone at the foot of their staircase....