In “Mickey 17” (in theaters) Robert Pattinson plays a former pastry chef and an amiable dimwit who applies for a lousy, inevitably lethal job on a contaminated ice planet. As an Expendable, Mickey goes into the worst sorts of situations, dies in some horrible way — you know, for the mission — then gets cloned … Read more
Most likely you know the outline of the case: Charles Manson, the failed musician and wild-eyed hippie, ordered his “family” — drug-addled runaways, mostly, who had been living with him at a ranch full of old movie sets — to carry out a series of gruesome murders on the evenings of Aug. 8 and 9, … Read more
Roundabout Theater Company, the largest nonprofit on Broadway, will present three very different classics next season: a Greek tragedy, a drawing-room comedy and a monster musical. The English writer and director Robert Icke’s “Oedipus,” a new version of the seminal Sophocles drama about a king who inadvertently kills his father and marries his mother, will … Read more
Shula, the watchful heroine of the quietly stirring “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” doesn’t seem cut out for bold gestures. She’s reserved, at times to the point of standoffishness and given to introspective silences. There’s admirable grace to her composure but also an air of practiced caution. The only really obvious thing about Shula is … Read more
Did the casting call for “Picture This” state that those without dimples needn’t apply? Most of the actors in this British rom-com — directed by Prarthana Mohan — have them. Especially the men orbiting Pia (Simone Ashley of “Bridgerton”), a talented photographer in London who is the hard-pressed business owner at the film’s center. There’s … Read more
The ultimate honor during awards season is to take home a statue. But the glut of ceremonies and related events between January and March has long offered celebrities another way to distinguish themselves: by their clothing choices. For A-listers, red carpets are as much a venue for self expression as they are an arena for … Read more
Reveling in galactic absurdity, “The Empire,” the latest from the fiercely unconventional French filmmaker Bruno Dumont, plunks us down in a fishing village in Northern France to witness an extraterrestrial war for control of humankind. What that looks like, however, is less a space opera than a banal, metaphysical farce — a “Star Wars” parody … Read more
The dystopian action movie “In the Lost Lands,” based on a short story by George R.R. Martin, is a threadbare film that barely resembles an idea. Dave Bautista plays Boyce, a taciturn body hunter hired by a sorceress named Gray Alys (Milla Jovovich) to pursue a shape-shifter for their kingdom’s young queen (Amara Okereke). Boyce … Read more
The underdog sports drama receives a wholesome twist in “Rule Breakers,” a movie based on the experiences of Afghanistan’s first competitive robotics team. This is a story of heartening firsts: Roya Mahboob, who spearheaded the initiative for schoolgirls, is the first woman to own a tech company in Afghanistan. The director Bill Guttentag and his … Read more
