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That ultra-accelerated schedule is both a feature and a bug: There’s a raw, B-movie thrill to the experience of watching a (relatively) lavish, Michael Bay-produced thriller that was unambiguously made during and about “these uncertain times,” and the worm-brained shittiness of the story’s dystopian approach to public health has a perverse way of amplifying that grindhouse appeal. There are recognizable actors here, and some of them even share locations, move through locked-off streets, and engage in boringly generic shootouts that are bad for reasons that have nothing to do with social distancing....

The producer, who helmed the “Star Trek” reboot in 2009 with a prequel film, announced during the Paramount Investor Day on February 15 that a fourth “Star Trek” film with the original cast will soon start production. “We are thrilled to say that we are hard at work on a new ‘Star Trek’ film that will be shooting by the end of the year that will be featuring our original cast,” Abrams said....

At the start of Season 3, “Discovery,” which to that point had been a prequel to “The Original Series” jumped 900 years forward in time to the late 32nd Century, a time when the Federation is a shell of its former self. Seasons 3 and 4 were about the Federation coming back together a bit, with Earth (and its president, Stacey Abrams) rejoining the interstellar coalition when last we saw the show....

“It’s really terrific,” Sondheim said of the film. “Everybody go. You’ll really have a good time. And for those of you who know the show, there’s going to be some real surprises.” Sondheim said that’s because of Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner, who has received two screenplay Oscar nominations for adapting the Spielberg films “Munich” and “Lincoln.” Sondheim said Kushner “has done some really imaginative and surprising things with the way the songs are used in the story, and the whole thing has real sparkle to it and real energy, and it feels fresh....

The path to the eventual release of “Tenet” was a winding one for Warner Bros. and Nolan, as the film was initially scheduled to open in July of 2020 but dates kept shifting due to the pandemic, and it ultimately didn’t release in the United States until September 3. Still, the movie starring John David Washington as a special agent bending the laws of time and nature to stop an impending world war, managed to grab more than $363 million at the global box office....

The “Westworld” star slammed Sean Penn via Twitter after Penn voiced his criticisms on modern gender roles. Penn previously said in an interview with The Independent that he is “in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized.” Penn continued, “I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did. But I don’t think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them…I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them....

The last few years have not only brought LGBTQ films and stories further into the mainstream, but queer films have dominated awards seasons and found commercial success in unlikely places. This has been more than a long time coming: The New Queer Cinema was a major influence on the indie film boom of the ’90s, and set the bar high for the many queer films to follow. No longer limited by minuscule budgets, films with gay and lesbian stories have flourished in the first two decades of the 21st century....