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Searchlight’s official synopsis for “The French Dispatch” reads: “The film is a love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th Century French city and brings to life a collection of stories published in ‘The French Dispatch’ magazine.” The ensemble cast includes Bill Murray, Timothee Chalamet, Frances McDormand, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Elisabeth Moss, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Owen Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Tony Revolori, and more....

The show has a lot of fun building environments and the characters’ corresponding looks out of the sheer space and variety found in the continental United States – its leads find themselves everywhere from sultry dive bars to the inside of a dumpster – but one of the true joys of “Hacks” is seeing the ways in which Deborah and Ava feed off each other’s impressive comedy chops, even while they can drive each other crazy....

Of course, the true center of it all is the hilarious mentorship between Deborah and her millennial protégé Ava (Hannah Einbinder). This time around, they’re on a road trip across the country to workshop Deborah’s new routine, as she’s hoping to evolve her act. And meanwhile, Ava is still reeling from the death of her father, whose funeral concluded the first season. Smart won an Emmy, SAG, and Critics Choice Award for her performance as Deborah, while co-stars Einbinder, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, and Jane Adams were all nominated for Emmys last year for their respective roles....

At worst, other critics said that Vance’s story was rife with racist and sexist ideology, a reliance on easily dispelled fallacies, and a resistance to blaming any of it on government and culture. As Sarah Jones put it in a searing “New Republic” piece, the book is “little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class.” It was also a bestseller, and one that many hoped might shine a light on segments of an increasingly divided America....

Ringarde, much? Just when Emily (Lily Collins) began worming her way into viewers’ guarded, cynical hearts — her anti-feminist naiveté could be considered charming in a screwball, ironically patriarchal kind of way — the second season of Netflix’s “Emily in Paris” all but assassinated its titular character. Season 2 feels like being flung into an alternate Darren Star-helmed universe where Emily is no longer merely an inexperienced expat; she’s an idiot abroad....

After the first Marvel-less year at the box office since 2009, 2021 has plenty of superhero content in store — including the debut of the first Marvel Cinematic Universe series for Disney+, the genre-bending “WandaVision.” Premiering on Friday, Jan. 15, the show stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff and Paul Bettany as the android Vision living a sitcom-perfect life — until they realize that things aren’t necessarily as they seem....

The official synopsis for “I Was a Simple Man” reads: “A lyrical ghost story set in the lush Hawaiian countryside, the film follows Masao (Steve Iwamoto) whose life is slowly fading away because of a terminal illness. As his estranged family members struggle to care for him, Masao is visited by his deceased wife Grace (Constance Wu), and is forced to confront the decisions of his past.” IndieWire Chief Film Critic David Ehrlich named “I Was a Simple Man” an official Critic’s Pick out of the Sundance Film Festival, writing, “Layering the spectral hush of ‘Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives’ over the elegiac domesticity of a late Ozu film like ‘An Autumn Afternoon,’ the Honolulu-born filmmaker’s singularly Hawaiian and masterful second feature is haunted and haunting in equal measure — a reckoning pitched at the volume of a whisper....