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The Oscar winner doesn’t shy away from doing the extreme onscreen, with Del Toro seeming to weigh in on the recent method acting debate. During an interview with Variety, the “French Dispatch” star revealed there is nothing he wouldn’t do for a role, albeit with one exception: “I will not kill you,” Del Toro joked. “I promise.” The actor previously burned himself with cigarettes and put on weight for 1998’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” opposite Johnny Depp....

From unlikely romances like Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire” to genre-pushing nonfiction portraits like David France’s “Welcome to Chechnya” and Rachel Mason’s “Circus of Books,” there were plenty of enjoyable and inspiring LGBTQ movies to engage with in an otherwise dour and painful year. In “Monsoon,” Henry Golding burst out of the matinee idol image he established in “Crazy Rich Asians.” Mart Crowley’s scandalous 1960s play “The Boys in the Band” lived again on Netflix....

Fortunately, there are plenty of documentary achievements to go around. Two of this year’s Emmy nominees in the Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series Category clarify the value of multi-part non-fiction undertakings that are better suited for the episodic domain. These deep-dive investigations into pop culture icons aim to refine, challenge, and contextualize our collective understanding of their significance with far-reaching implications unique to the long form. Beginning with its title, “We Need to Talk About Cosby” confronts a difficult subject head-on, even as it spends several episodes building up to its troubling raison d’être....

A bathtub sex scene between Cooper and Toni Collette has emerged as a memorable moment in the film, and Cooper stands by the decision. In an interview with Kim Masters on her KCRW show “The Business,” Cooper recalled the awkward experience but expressed no regrets about the finished product (from The Hollywood Reporter). “I remember reading in the script and thinking, he’s a pickled punk in that bathtub and it’s to story....

Audiences who are expecting a shocking, lurid expose about Spears’ trauma won’t find one here. At 93 minutes, “Britney vs Spears” takes its time in getting to where we are today, and instead seeks to show us why Spears was such a success in the first place. Gone is the discussion of pre-teen sexuality and in its place is the story of a girl who loved to sing and, unfortunately, was good enough at it to become one of the biggest pop stars of our generation....

The film is directed by Emmy nominee Cynthia Hill, best known for her 2014 documentary about domestic abuse, “Private Violence,” which premiered the same year in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Hill said in a statement, “I agreed to do this film because I think it’s a shame that Brittany’s promising life and career has been eclipsed by the circumstances of her death. I think it’s important to celebrate Brittany’s talent as we struggle to explain the tragic circumstances of her and Simon’s deaths....

“Especially last year, I was thinking a lot about the duality of the Black experience in America,” DaCosta said. “At once, it’s a place of this great hope, which I think is what Juneteenth represents in one way. It’s a celebration of us, of life, of freedom, of possibility. On the other side, it’s incredibly difficult and there’s a lot of pain and they kind of walk hand in hand. That’s something about this film, as well....