The episodes will include short and feature documentary pieces on topics such as the Tulsa Massacre and the abortion debate in the Black community, as well as more conversational “kitchen table” discussions surrounding current events and hot button issues. Each episode will conclude with a musical performance, including ones from John Legend, Common, Cynthia Erivo, and more to be announced. Here’s the official synopsis from the network: “‘Soul of a Nation’ will present viewers with a unique window into authentic realities of Black life and dive deeper into this critical moment of racial reckoning....

While it may strike some cinephiles odd that titles available for streaming are heading to Criterion, this is not an unprecedented move on Criterion’s part. Not only is “Cold War” in the collection, but Criterion has teamed with Netflix in the past to release titles such as Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story,” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” on DVD and Blu-ray. After picking up Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, “Sound of Metal” and “One Night in Miami” are expected to land multiple Oscar nominations when nominees are announced Monday, March 15....

The series, produced in South Korea, centers around Seong Gi-hun (Lee), an indebted former chauffeur so down on his luck, he’d be better off having no luck at all. Living with his elderly mother, growing estranged from his young daughter, he takes advantage of an opportunity offered by a mysterious stranger. All he has to do is play a few children’s games against hundreds of other desperate, debt-ridden individuals for an opportunity to win 45....

One year later and, like every other festival, Sundance is virtual. Also like other festivals: It’s subject to the vagaries of COVID. It’s shorter — seven days instead of 11 — and the tighter selection reflects that. There are 71 features, a nearly 40 percent drop from 118 last year. It also lacks big names, with few distributors choosing to use the festival as a launchpad. “We are not programming to quotas,” said new festival director Tabitha Jackson....

The festival gets started in Park City with eleven opening night movies, including Jesse Eisenberg’s directing debut, relationship comedy “When You Finish Saving the World,” Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Martins’ “Marte Um” (“Mars One”), and “The Princess,” a documentary profile of Diana Spencer. Notably, documentaries suffuse all the sections, beyond the usual U.S. Documentary and World Cinema competition lineups. Like last year, the Premiere section is packed with non-fiction, including a movie from Ramin Bahrani, “2nd Chance,” about the inventor of the bulletproof vest; even the Midnight selection has one, “Meet Me in the Bathroom,” about the early 2000s music scene....

This isn’t the first film to broach the subject (“Men in Black III” and Martin Lawrence’s “Black Knight” are just two of the more famous examples), and yet few of them have been as pointed or philosophical about the relationship between race and nostalgia. “Synchronic” may be a hot mess of a movie — one that mixes “Bringing Out the Dead,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and literal bath salts into a muddy swirl of mismatched ideas that don’t have much interest in blending together — but its best stretches have some hazy, ultra-literal fun illustrating why some people in this country might put more stock in the hope for tomorrow than the halcyon glow of yesterday....

In the latest episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, Field talks about how he turned his unusual script about a famous conductor in personal and professional free fall into a riveting character study, with help from star Cate Blanchett. During the lonely days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Field wrote the part of Lydia Tár with Blanchett in mind, and when the time came to cast the film there was no second choice. “I had no backup plan,” he said....