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“Another Round” wastes no time confronting the danger and allure of alcohol as a singular contradiction: It begins with the joyful beer-swigging exploits of energetic teens, followed by an abrupt cut to black, and a jarring silence pierced by the lonely slosh of a single beverage. From there, Thomas Vinterberg’s absorbing dark comedy turns into a lively and fascinating referendum on booze, with Mads Mikkelsen’s fierce and unsettling performance vibrating at its center....

The outcome marked the second time in a row that the winner of our critics survey synced up with the Palme d’Or result, following “Parasite” in 2019. (The festival’s 2020 edition was canceled due to the pandemic.) Both movies were historic wins: “Parasite” was the first Korean film to win the Palme — though not this survey — and “Titane” is only the second movie directed by a woman to land the prize after Jane Campion became the first for “The Piano....

Didion not only chronicled the literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s but astutely dissected her home state of California. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she landed a job at Vogue in New York, where she penned movie reviews — until her pan of “The Sound of Music.” After marrying Time staffer John Gregory Dunne in 1964, the couple moved to Los Angeles and wound up becoming the ultimate Hollywood insiders....

“Emily’s [stunt] is so real, I think I put my marriage on the line when I put her in the car,” director John Krasinski recently told the “ReelBlend” podcast about crafting the moment. “That’s true. When I was explaining to her onset all of the things that were going to happen, and I said, ‘You’re going to hit this stuntman. That car’s going to come three feet from you. And then this bus is actually going to clock at 40 miles an hour,’ her face fell and she went, ‘But not really....

“I’ve spent 35 years running media businesses at the intersection of news, sports and entertainment, creating new brands and resurrecting old ones,” Zucker said in a Tuesday press release. “That experience has given me unparalleled perspective for this unique time in media, and the combination of the RedBird and IMI capital and strategic discipline, combined with my operational experience, will give this joint venture a unique advantage in the current media landscape....

Unfortunately, this tiny tweak isn’t enough to make a lasting impression on the genre, especially with a lackluster script that offers little in the way of surprise or delight. What’s more, including a sub-plot about a rich white man running for mayor of a Pennsylvania enclave with no mention of actual politics feels — to put it mildly — painfully out of touch. Not just because 2020 saw Black Lives Matter protests erupt around the country, challenging white people to seriously examine our privilege, but it’s oddly disconcerting that a proudly LGBTQ movie could be so emphatically apolitical....

As reported by WSJ: “Ice Cube wants Warner Bros., owned by AT&T Inc., to surrender its rights to the ‘Friday’ property and to two other movies he made there — ‘All About the Benjamins’ and ‘The Players Club.’ Warner Bros. replied, calling the demand ‘extortionate’ and saying it won’t release rights to the valuable franchise or any other Ice Cube movies.” Much of the tension between Ice Cube and Warner Bros....