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      Best Movies and Shows Streaming in November: ‘Bad Sisters,’ ‘Cruel Intentions’ and More

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      “Cruel Intentions,” “Music by John Williams” and “Dune: The Prophecy” arrive, along with “Bad Sisters” Season 2.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Cruel Intentions’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 21The 1999 movie melodrama “Cruel Intentions” became a box office hit and inspired multiple sequels, thanks to its twisty plot and sexual frankness, all borrowed from the novel, play and film “Dangerous Liaisons.” The new TV version carries on the tone of the films, following the bed-hopping and betrayals among a group of rich young men and women. Set at a prestigious college, the “Cruel Intentions” series is mainly about two stepsiblings, Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien (Zac Burgess), who are adept at seducing and manipulating their classmates. The pair never seems to care how many enemies they make, so long as everyone fears them.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Libre”Nov. 7“Citadel: Honey Bunny”“Look Back”“My Old Ass”Nov. 8“Every Minute Counts”Nov. 14“Cross” Season 2Nov. 19“Abigail”“Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special”Nov. 20“Wish List Games”Nov. 21“Dinner Club”Nov. 26“It’s in the Game”Nov. 28“Oshi No Ko”Nov. 29“The World According to Kaleb: On Tour”A scene from “The Creep Tapes,” new to AMC+.ShudderNew to AMC+‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 15The “Creep” franchise of found footage horror films features Mark Duplass (who also co-wrote the series with the director, Patrick Brice) as a serial killer who hires aspiring filmmakers to help him make movies, which inevitably end in actual murders. “The Creep Tapes” offers bite-size versions of this premise, with episodes running under a half an hour and featuring a variety of scenarios. Duplass is back as the villain, who changes his name from victim to victim. His vibe rarely changes, though. He is overly friendly and pushy, to the point of being unpleasant; and yet he also seems pretty harmless, right up to when his shtick turns deadly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      4 Surprising Things We Learned From the John Williams Documentary

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      A new Disney+ film about the prolific film composer chronicles his life and career, with a focus on his famous music for movies including “Jaws” and “Star Wars.”The composer John Williams is responsible for some of the most recognizable music in film history: the epic fanfares in “Star Wars,” the two-note dread of “Jaws” and too many other examples to name without sounding like an IMDb tour of popular American cinema.A new documentary, “Music by John Williams” (streaming on Disney+), introduces audiences to the man behind all of that music, featuring extensive interviews with Williams and glowing interviews with filmmakers he has worked with, including Steven Spielberg (also a producer of the movie), George Lucas and J.J. Abrams.Laurent Bouzereau, the documentary’s director, first met Williams while directing making-of features for the home video releases of Spielberg movies, including “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”In a phone interview, he said the project started as part of Williams’s 90th birthday celebration, but it became clear it would be a waste to not do a full documentary combining his interviews with Spielberg’s archival footage of Williams, now 92, scoring his films. “I wanted people to understand his dedication to an art form,” Bouzereau said. “John is an eternal student.”Here are some takeaways from the film.When he first heard the ‘Jaws’ theme, Spielberg thought Williams was joking.Early in the documentary, Williams recounts the first time he played the opening music to “Jaws” for Spielberg.The director thought he was joking. “I was expecting something just tremendously complex, and it’s almost like ‘Chopsticks,’” he says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tom Hanks and Robin Wright on ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Here’ and De-aging

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      It’s not exactly a “Forrest Gump” sequel, but the new movie “Here” does reunite the stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and the filmmakers — the director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri — of that 1994 Oscar-winning favorite. Like the earlier film, the new one also travels across decades, with an unheard-of perspective.In this case, though, the viewpoint is the camera’s: “Here” is filmed almost entirely from one locked-off shot, with a camera positioned in what becomes the living room of a century-old New England home. There are no cutaways or traditional close-ups; no montages or wide-angle transitions. It’s an experiment in cinematic formalism, inspired by Richard McGuire’s ambitious, genre-expanding 2014 graphic novel of the same name.Though the story starts with the dinosaurs and travels all the way through the present day with different characters, it focuses mostly on Hanks and Wright’s boomer couple, Richard and Margaret, whose lives are, by turns, mundane and historicized in that single setting. The furniture and styles change, and with the help of A.I., the stars were also digitally de-aged.“It really is about, why do we remember the moments that we remember?” Wright said.In a video interview this week from New York, she and Hanks spoke about what attracted them to the film (the answer was largely Zemeckis), the enduring appeal of “Forrest Gump,” and what drives their choices now. The technical challenges of “Here” also energized them: There was no crafting — or saving — a performance in the edit; no way to cut around a missed mark except to redo a whole scene. “Tom and I, we’re so spoiled, we don’t ever want to shoot conventional format again,” Wright said of typical cinematography.Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics balking at the visual conceit, and the de-aging. Wright, 58, was having none of it. “It is so simple and beautiful and real and human,” she said. “We all have experienced something in this movie.”Hanks, 68, pondered why cynicism has become, as he said, “the default.”“I remain driven by this never-ending curiosity I have, about how it is true that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people,” he said. The response could be cynicism, he said, but only if you’re seeking “the lowest common denominator.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?

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      The Los Angeles headquarters of Metaphysic, a Hollywood visual-effects start-up that uses artificial intelligence to create digital renderings of the human face, were much cooler in my imagination, if I’m being honest. I came here to get my mind blown by A.I., and this dim three-room warren overlooking Sunset Boulevard felt more like the slouchy offices of a middling law firm. Ed Ulbrich, Metaphysic’s chief content officer, steered me into a room that looked set to host a deposition, then sat me down in a leather desk chair with a camera pointed at it. I stared at myself on a large flat-screen TV, waiting to be sworn in.But then Ulbrich clickety-clicked on his laptop for a moment, and my face on the screen was transmogrified. “Smile,” he said to me. “Do you recognize that face?” I did, right away, but I can’t disclose its owner, because the actor’s project won’t come out until 2025, and the role is still top secret. Suffice it to say that the face belonged to a major star with fantastic teeth. “Smile again,” Ulbrich said. I complied. “Those aren’t your teeth.” Indeed, the teeth belonged to Famous Actor. The synthesis was seamless and immediate, as if a digital mask had been pulled over my face that matched my expressions, with almost no lag time.Ulbrich is the former chief executive of Digital Domain, James Cameron’s visual-effects company, and over the course of his three-decade career he has led the VFX teams on several movies that are considered milestones in the field of computer-generated imagery, including “Titanic,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” But in Ulbrich’s line of work, in the quest for photorealism, the face is the final frontier. “I’ve spent so much time in Uncanny Valley,” he likes to joke, “that I own real estate there.”In the spring of 2023, Ulbrich had a series of meetings with the founders of Metaphysic. One of them, Chris Ume, was the visual-effects artist behind a series of deepfake Tom Cruise videos that went viral on TikTok in early 2021, a moment many in Hollywood cite as the warning shot that A.I.’s hostile takeover had commenced. But in parts of the VFX industry, those deepfake videos were greeted with far less misgiving. They hinted tantalizingly at what A.I. could soon accomplish at IMAX resolutions, and at a fraction of the production cost. That’s what Metaphysic wanted to do, and its founders wanted Ulbrich’s help. So when they met him, they showed him an early version of the demonstration I was getting.Ulbrich’s own career began during the previous seismic shift in the visual-effects field, from practical effects to C.G.I., and it was plain to him that another disruption was underway. “I saw my career flash before my eyes,” Ulbrich recalled. “I could take my entire team from my former places of employment, I could put them on for eternity using the best C.G.I. tools money can buy, and you can’t deliver what we’re showing you here. And it’s happening in milliseconds.” He knew it was time to leave C.G.I. behind. As he put it: “How could I go back in good conscience and use horses and buggies and rocks and sticks to make images when this exists in the world?”Back on Sunset Boulevard, Ulbrich pecked some more at his laptop. Now I was Tom Hanks — specifically, a young Tom Hanks, he of the bulging green eyes and the look of gathering alarm on his face in “Splash” when he first discovers that Daryl Hannah’s character is a mermaid. I can divulge Hanks’s name because his A.I. debut arrived in theaters nationally on Nov. 1, in a movie called “Here.” Directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Eric Roth — a reunion of the creative team behind “Forrest Gump” — and co-starring Robin Wright, “Here” is based on a 2014 graphic novel that takes place at a single spot in the world, primarily a suburban New Jersey living room, over several centuries. The story skips back and forth through time but focuses on a baby-boomer couple played by Hanks and Wright at various stages of their lives, from age 18 into their 80s, from post-World War II to the present day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Luther Vandross Is Transformational in the Documentary ‘Never Too Much’

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      He was hounded by a fat-phobic press, but as Dawn Porter’s new documentary shows, he was a transformational presence from the start.Beginning in the late 1970s, while making the transition from background singer to phenomenal solo act, Luther Vandross shaped the sound of commercialism as much as he shaped the sound of modern American music. He recorded lucrative jingles for Juicy Fruit, Miller beer and even Gino’s pizza. During the Gino’s session, he was asked to personify a sizzling hot pie coming from the oven, and he improvised by quickly dropping his tenor into the hadal zone of his body and retrieving it, like a free diver collecting pearls.“I could see the control room just jumping up and clapping,” he says in one of the interviews laced throughout “Luther: Never Too Much,” a new documentary by Dawn Porter (in theaters).It was a genius stroke. He developed a signature as recognizable as Whitney Houston’s record-length notes or Mariah Carey’s fluted crystalline range. Vandross’s musical intelligence predated what is obvious in the era of TikTok: A distinct sound is worth the price of gold.Vandross left a full, rich archive, yet there’s still an emptiness at the heart of it that manages to come through in Porter’s engrossing work. She starts her chronology with Vandross’s second birth. In an interview clip early in the film, Oprah asks Vandross when he knew he could sing. He answers that he decided to sing after seeing Dionne Warwick perform in 1963 in Brooklyn. “I wanted to be able to affect people the way she affected me that day,” he explains. Notice how he didn’t specify a date. Notice how he knew the voice was always there. He just chose the way he wanted to use it.Vandross with Dionne Warwick. He saw her sing in 1963 and decided he should sing as well. Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesIn the film, a white interviewer asks Vandross, who grew up in the Alfred E. Smith Houses on the Lower East Side, if he was poor then. His response is earnest if not amused. “My impression of life growing up was great.” He knew something that she did not: Money is only one kind of wealth.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prickly Martha Stewart Makes for a Bracing Netflix Documentary

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      “Martha,” from R.J. Cutler, argues that she was ahead of her time. But though she sits for a lengthy interview, this isn’t hagiography.The re-evaluation of maligned celebrities — especially women who reached the height of fame in the 1990s — has become its own mini-genre of pop culture. Often the story tells a bigger tale: a culture bent on taking down successful women, or beautiful ones, or just ones who accidentally strayed into the spotlight.So I wasn’t surprised to see a documentary about Martha Stewart on Netflix’s docket. Titled “Martha” — from that one name, you know instantly who it’s about — and directed by R.J. Cutler, it makes a simple enough case: that Martha Stewart was in nearly every way ahead of her time. She was a stockbroker in the late 1960s, then started a catering company that became the impetus for her books about entertaining and homemaking. Eventually she became a media mogul, considered both the first self-made female billionaire and the original influencer. Then, the movie argues, she was also unfairly prosecuted as a result of her fame and the prosecutors’ need to make a name for themselves. But look, “Martha” says: her road back to influence in recent years on TV and on social media has been remarkable.All of this follows the traditional arc: success, fall from grace, eventual salvation. What I didn’t expect, though, was how Cutler would go about filling in the details. Stewart, who is 83, sat down for a lengthy interview — often an indicator of a pure public relations piece, only telling the story the subject wants told. Usually those are surface-level and hagiographical takes, just part of the overall brand-building package.That’s definitely present in “Martha,” which in its final section chronicles the past decade of Stewart’s life in very rosy terms, beginning with her participation in a 2015 Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber, which began both her “cool grandma” era and her unlikely friendship with Snoop Dogg.But for most of the film, there’s more fruitful tension than blind celebration. Stewart makes for a prickly interviewee, especially when she’s talking about something she’s not interested in discussing in depth — her first marriage, for instance, or the subject of feelings in relationships. She argues a bit with Cutler. He occasionally lets a statement hang in the air or keeps the camera running, giving us a glimpse of something that feels not totally intended on her part.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About ‘The Apprentice,’ the Controversial Trump Biopic

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      The film, now available on demand, followed a thorny path to distribution — including the threat of a lawsuit by its subject.If you know one thing about the new Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” it’s likely this: The former president doesn’t want you to see it.The drama, which debuted to mostly positive reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in May, follows a young Trump (Sebastian Stan) as he meets — and falls under the spell of — the lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong); brashly courts, then quickly tires of his first wife, Ivana Trump (Maria Bakalova), and becomes single-mindedly obsessed with winning, at everything, at all costs.Despite praise for Stan and Strong, the film, directed by the Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi and written by the author Gabriel Sherman, struggled to secure distribution, and Trump threatened to file a lawsuit to block its release.But in August, Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor founded by Tom Ortenberg, a producer on “Spotlight” and “W,” acquired the theatrical rights and announced plans to release the film ahead of the presidential election. After debuting in cinemas on Oct. 10 (again drawing largely positive reviews but just $3.5 million at the box office), it is debuting on demand this weekend.Here’s what to know about the offscreen saga and the onscreen story.What period in Trump’s life does the film cover?It chronicles Trump’s younger years as a New York real estate developer, though the title comes from the TV series Trump later hosted for 14 seasons.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Metrograph Theater Starts a Film Magazine

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      A throwback publication courts cinephiles with stories featuring Ari Aster, Maggie Cheung, Daniel Clowes, Clint Eastwood and Ann Hui.At a time when print media is on the way out and streaming technology has slashed into box office returns, a band of downtown cinephiles in New York has started a film magazine.The Metrograph, a biannual publication from the art-house theater of the same name, will make its debut in December. The first issue, priced at $25, includes an in-depth interview with Clint Eastwood, a critical appraisal of the Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, an essay on Filipino action movies and an analysis of a single shot of Maggie Cheung from the 1996 film “Irma Vep.”“This magazine is meant to be an extension of what happens at Metrograph, and everything about Metrograph is intended to enhance moviegoing and the seductiveness of cinema,” Annabel Brady-Brown, the magazine’s editor, said. “We want this magazine to evoke that feeling you get when you go to Metrograph on a Saturday afternoon with a friend or on a date.”The photo on the cover — showing the cinematographer Ed Lachman standing next to the director Jean-Luc Godard in the early 1980s — conveys the idea that this is a publication for devout film fans.The issue features a wide-ranging conversation between Ari Aster, the director of “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” and the graphic novelist Daniel Clowes. Steve Martin also interviews the two men behind Deceptive Practices, a consultancy founded by magicians that has advised a number of film productions, including “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “The Prestige.”The editorial team takes a look at the coming issue soon after it went to print.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More