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Complications, misadventures, and wild assumptions have long been the bread and butter of the romantic comedy. What’s romance without a sexy secret? What’s comedy without a big blunder? So while the plot that drives Clea DuVall’s holiday-themed sophomore feature “Happiest Season” falls neatly into the genre expectations of the rom-com, it also comes with a big twist: it’s about a same-sex couple. How’s that for a complication? As “Happiest Season” opens, long-term couple Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) are preparing to, somewhat unexpectedly, spend the holiday with Harper’s uptight, affluent family in suburban Pennsylvania....

“We knew that the film worked because we did a couple of previews,” Columbus said. “Particularly a Chicago preview where our first cut was a three-hour cut. Parents afterwards said it was too long, the kids said it was too short. I thought, well, the kids presumably have a shorter attention span so this is a good thing.” Nearly half an hour of footage was removed for the “Sorcerer’s Stone” theatrical cut, including an appearance by the character Peeves....

“Dune” was the big screen event of the season, ushering in the reopening of theaters after the pandemic with its heady mix of politics and religion wrapped around a hero’s journey in the desert. It only came up short in costume design and makeup and hairstyling, where it got overshadowed by three-time Oscar winner Jenny Beaven’s ’70’s punk look for Emma Stone in “Cruella” (Disney), and the transformation of Best Actress winner Jessica Chastain into the infamous televangelist for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (Searchlight Pictures)....

Asking things of films is a losing proposition. How do you ask, require, or demand something of art? And yet that’s what we’re left with after watching Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s “In Her Hands,” a documentary that seems entirely designed to push its audience to ask, require, even demand that it provide the most basic pieces of information about its subject. They aren’t. Viewers will either do their own research (even a Wikipedia page provides more context) or be so turned off they’ll never seek out more information about a fascinating subject....

Freed from its New York mandate, TFI flourished over two decades to become a prominent funder and mentor of independent filmmakers across the globe. More visibly, Tribeca Enterprises grew, too, building out the Tribeca Film Festival and branded-content agency Tribeca Studios — both of which were powered by deep-pocketed companies seeking something different with their ad budgets. While remaining legally separate, the two disparate entities were shepherded by some of the same people and together created the Tribeca brand....

Nichols discussed his “Alien Nation” plans during a recent interview on the Team Deakins podcast, where he stated he was working on adapting the 1991 sci-fi film into a 10-episode television show. Nichols noted that he was approached by Fox to remake the film but said Disney killed the project in 2019 after the company acquired the competing studio. “I then had this idea of how I could take that title, but a situation that has nothing to do with the original movie, necessarily, and I got really excited about it…I spent three years building out an entire alien civilization, and this situation, and this setup, and all these characters and it’s really what I’ve been doing for a long time,” Nichols said, per SlashFilm....

The “Star Wars” alum revealed in a Men’s Health cover story that any rumors of him having filmed a secret MCU film are totally inaccurate. Instead, the “Woman King” actor is taking on more “nuanced” roles and isn’t looking to be part of the Marvel family. “That’s not in the vision for me now,” Boyega said. “I want to do nuanced things. I want to donate my services to original indie films that come with new, fresh ideas, because I know it’s real hard to top Iron Man in that universe....