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“Because of the social and global issues flooding my actual and virtual timelines, and their countless intersections, as well as the many discussions of those issues, it was important that I fused and fueled all of my creative interests into one story,” Williams said of his directorial debut. “I wanted to find a way to talk about everything at once, without necessarily preaching.” There’s a synopsis that summarizes the film, but doesn’t fully capture its ambition: a love story between an intersex runaway (Neptune, played by both Elvis Ngabo and Cheryl Isheja) and a coltan miner (Matalusa, played by Kaya Free), “who find each other through cosmic forces, sparking glitches within the greater divine circuitry when they connect, giving birth to a virtual marvel....

But that’s a big if in this wide open race that also includes Christopher Nolan’s time-inverted “Tenet” (which is finally available on the Academy’s online voting portal) and dark horse “Love and Monsters,” with its terrific array of Ray Harryhausen-like creatures. In the last four years, the VES has only aligned with the Academy once (for “The Jungle Book”). Then again, the VES nod could be enough to put “The Midnight Sky” over the top in this unorthodox awards season....

“This is one of those where I have to go all the way back to the movies that I loved the most when I was a kid,” Williams told IndieWire. “The ’70s version of ‘King Kong,’ the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion, action-adventure movies about leaving the known world and venturing off into the unknown. They really touched a nerve in me, and I’ve always wanted to make one of those movies.”...

Focus Features and New Regency are behind “The Northman” but have not revealed much about the film’s plot other than referring to the film as “a Viking revenge saga set in Iceland at the turn of the 10th century.” Alexander Skarsgård stars in the lead role, with Hawke and Kidman providing support. Additional cast includes Eggers’ “The Witch” breakout Anya Taylor-Joy, Claes Bang, “The Lighthouse” star Willem Dafoe, and Björk. Eggers co-wrote the script with Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón....

The series, according to the official synopsis, “takes place at a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation as nine stressed city dwellers try to get on a path to a better way of living. Watching over them during this 10-day retreat is the resort’s director, Masha (Kidman), a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies. However, these nine ‘perfect’ strangers have no idea what is about to hit them....

“I always look forward to sharing my lists of favorite books, movies, and music with all of you,” Obama tweeted, before beginning his rollout of his picks from the culture he consumed. For his films, he tweeted December 23, “I saw some great movies this year — here are some of my favorites.” His list put Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” at the top, followed by Park Chan-wook’s murder-mystery “Decision to Leave” and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King....

Twenty-three years later, under cover of darkness, the Opening Ceremony in Tokyo took on a decidedly different tenor. It began with a pre-recorded video countdown from when the host city for the now-underway Summer Games was announced in 2013, continued with an energetic training montage though the intervening years, and ground to a halt as the on-screen calendar hit 2020. To reignite the darkened screens, a group of athletes picked up a giant cord and plugged the world back in....