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On the surface, “The Suicide Squad” is not a movie with geopolitics on its mind. Writer/director James Gunn’s hard-R supervillain romp is a loud, bloody, men-on-a-mission riff that owes more to Sam Peckinpah and Gunn’s own zany “Guardians of the Galaxy” than anything with complex historical connotations. Nevertheless, they’re hiding in plain sight, whether or not Gunn intended them to be there. Shot in Panama with signifiers that speak directly to its history with military dictatorships, “The Suicide Squad” has more layers than its absurd concept would suggest, even if it reduces them to B-movie conceits along with everything else on the screen....

“I know that Hollywood is a place where it used to be that people would be inspired by something that they would see or an old film or a show or something and think, ‘Oh, here’s my response to that. Here’s a version of that that,’” Abrams said. “It’s become a place where, more often than not, you see something and people get inspired by it and go, ‘Let’s redo that exact thing....

“I do not think J.K. Rowling is antisemitic. I did not accuse her of being antisemitic,” Stewart said. “I do not think the ‘Harry Potter’ movies are antisemitic. I really love the ‘Harry Potter’ movies, probably too much for a gentleman of my considerable age.” “I cannot stress this enough. I am not accusing J.K. Rowling of being antisemitic,” Stewart added. “She need not answer to any of it. I don’t want the ‘Harry Potter’ movies censored in any way....

Sadly, the same can’t be said for David Hyde Pierce’s Niles Crane: the well-loved (if intensely persnickety) younger brother of the snooty psychiatrist, who stole scene after scene during the original run and will not return. “For a while we were going to try to bring back the whole cast, the whole legacy cast,” Grammer said in a recent interview with People. “David basically decided he wasn’t really interested in repeating the performance of Niles....

The “Captain America” star couldn’t help but harness the iconic Buzz Lightyear voice originated by Tim Allen in the animated franchise spanning back to 1995 when portraying the “real” astronaut Buzz in “Lightyear,” out June 17. “It’s tough,” Evans admitted to Variety on the red carpet for the film’s premiere. “The first time you have to do that iconic line, ‘To infinity and beyond,’ you just kind of do a shameless Tim Allen impression, because it’s intimidating....

“Sometimes the greatest gifts are the most unexpected and something you never realized you wanted until it was given. #ThankYouJonAndDave,” Hamill tweeted on Sunday. It’s fitting that it was Hamill’s appearance that energized fans in such a big way just before the start of the holidays. Five years ago, he did much the same with his mythic, resonant appearance as a self-exiled Luke Skywalker at the end of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which capped Disney’s franchise relaunch (the highest-grossing film, unadjusted for inflation, in U....

Neatly split into two sections — “Mi Iubita” (Romanian for “my beloved”), and “Mon Amour” (same sentiment, in French) — Merlant’s film seems to promise one love story told from two perspectives, but one of those characters (portrayed by Merlant herself) is frustratingly impenetrable. Still, the film is a two-hander from top to bottom: Merlant wrote it alongside her co-star and on-screen love interest Gimi-Nicole Covaci, and the film follows the pair (Merlant as reserved French tourist Jeanne, Covaci as the gentle Romani teenager unexpectedly thrown into her path) as they navigate an unlikely (and very uncomfortable) romance during a few misbegotten, sweaty summer days....