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FX Networks revealed earlier in December that Waititi will executive produce “Reservation Dogs,” a half-hour comedy series that, per the network, will follow four Native American teenagers in rural Oklahoma who spend their days committing crime… and fighting it. The company’s announcement might not have mentioned Quentin Tarantino or “Reservoir Dogs” but the similarities between Waititi’s upcoming series and Tarantino’s first film are readily apparent. The series’ promotional image is a clear throwback to the slickly-dressed criminals in Tarantino’s 1992 feature which also centered on a motley crew of criminals....

In the original short, a serial killer forces the group to sacrifice whoever is Blackest in order to save themselves. Directed by Tim Story (“Shaft”), the film expands the concept to lampoon every other horror trope and cliché. We start with a remote house in the woods — not a cabin, it’s a gorgeous home — with, of course, a creepy basement. There’s a horribly racist board game, The Blackening, which has a big blackface figure as a mascot....

“The Prom” is the film version of Chad Beguelin, Bob Martin and Matthew Sklar’s award-winning, Tony-nominated Broadway musical. “The reason that [the musical] spoke to me is I wished when I was young I had a film like this to see,” Murphy said in a Q& after the film. “I wished that when I was growing up, I did not feel so alone in my life. Like Jo Ellen’s character, I am also from Indiana....

New York and Los Angeles will remain the only locations until December 21. Some shows received the boost of talent appearances. There was a Saturday drop, but that stemmed from early-week revenue rolling into the Friday total. Not everything A24 touches turns to gold: “Aftersun” and the wider “The Inspection” are still playing with grosses no longer reported. However, A24’s performance this year has been excellent even as it maintains long theater-exclusive windows for its top films....

Set at a fictional luxury hotel in Hawaii, “The White Lotus” is a biting satire of modern day privilege told through the eyes of an eclectic ensemble of hotel customers and workers. There’s the perennially bewildered alcoholic who arrives with her mother’s ashes in tow; the spoiled brat frat boy and his naive trophy wife on an ill-fated honeymoon; and a high-powered Sheryl Sandberg stand-in, her emasculated husband, and their obnoxious and technology-addicted teenagers....

“Under the Open Sky” has nothing whatsoever to do with baseball (and for such a lyrical character study, it’s also surprisingly light on overextended metaphors), but this winsome, shaggy portrait of an ex-Yakuza’s struggle to adjust to life after prison finds a number of other ways to exhaust itself. Yakusho stars as the stubborn Mikami, a former mob enforcer who’s reached the end of a 13-year murder sentence without changing his ways....

“Valley of Tears,” a 10-part series currently airing on Israeli TV station Kan 11 and now streaming on HBO Max, examines the experiences of a number of soldiers in the midst of that unexpected battle. Though the series in the early going focuses on the perspective of the Israeli side of the conflict, this is not a homogenous exercise in heroic mythmaking. With a stark approach to the physical and emotional violence wrought by both victories and defeats, “Valley of Tears” builds its story by alternating between moments of resiliency and helplessness....