Movies

Our guide to film series and special screenings happening this weekend and in the week ahead. All our movie reviews are at nytimes.com/reviews/movies.Note: Because of the coronavirus outbreak and the state’s ban on gatherings of more than 500 people, many events have been canceled. As of press time, these were still scheduled to take place. Before heading out, visit the website of the performance space or organization for the latest updates.FAMILY PORTRAITS: THE FILMS OF HIROKAZU KORE-EDA at IFC Center (through March 19). Kore-eda, who won the top prize at Cannes in 2018 for “Shoplifters” (screening in this series on Friday), returns on March 20 with a film made outside of Japan, “The Truth,” starring Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. (A sneak preview will be shown on Saturday.) IFC Center’s retrospective offers a near-comprehensive look at his past work, from acclaimed domestic dramas such as “Like Father, Like Son” (on Friday and March 19) and “Still Walking” (on Saturday and Tuesday) to the oddity “Air Doll” (on Sunday and Wednesday), in which Kore-eda, ever the humanist, lends unexpected sincerity to a story in which a sex doll comes to life (played by the South Korean actress Bae Doo-na).212-924-7771, ifccenter.com[embedded content]FIRST LOOK 2020 at the Museum of the Moving Image (through March 15). This annual series always examines the cutting edge of international cinema, but the latest edition is also something of a throwback. In “Bird Talk” (on Friday), Xawery Zulawski directs a screenplay written by his father, the gonzo Polish auteur Andrzej Zulawski, who died in 2016; “On the Silver Globe,” a science fiction allegory that the elder Zulawski completed in the 1980s after the Ministry of Culture halted production a decade earlier, screens the next day. In “Maggie’s Farm” (on Sunday), the experimental filmmaker James Benning, known for structuring his films around landscapes and duration, turns his gaze on the CalArts building where he works.718-784-0077, movingimage.us[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]ULRIKE OTTINGER at the Metrograph (March 14-21). Reviewing an exhibition of this German writer, photographer and filmmaker 20 years ago, Roberta Smith wrote that Ottinger’s sensibility “ranges effortlessly and extravagantly between ethnographic documentary and Surrealist feminist fantasy, sometimes within the same film.” Ottinger will appear at several screenings in this retrospective of her cinematic work, which includes “Freak Orlando” (on Saturday), very loosely inspired by Virginia Woolf, and “Joan of Arc of Mongolia” (on Sunday), an epic shot in Mongolia.212-660-0312, metrograph.com More

LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company said on Thursday that it would close the Disneyland resort in Anaheim for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, and just the third time in its 65-year history, because of the coronavirus pandemic.Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure — two adjoining, but separately ticketed theme parks — will close on Saturday morning through the end of the month. Disney’s hotels in Anaheim will remain open until Monday.Disney noted that there had been no reported cases of the virus at the resort.The company said it would continue to pay its employees while the resort is closed. Refunds will be given for hotel bookings during the closure period.Disneyland looms large in the popular imagination as the “happiest place on Earth,” where visitors trade an imperfect world for a perfect one. There is no trash blowing down Main Street U.S.A. Dream big, and the utopian technology of Tomorrowland just might come true. The animatronic figures inside It’s a Small World never stop smiling and singing. The park receives almost 19 million visitors from around the world each year.In recent days, as sporting events, concerts and other mass gatherings have been canceled in response to the pandemic, Disneyland and its bigger sibling in Florida, Walt Disney World, remained crowded. On Wednesday night at 9 so many people were trying to get on Space Mountain at Disneyland that the line stretched more than an hour. Disneyland’s Indiana Jones ride had a 45-minute line. More

Next February, the superhero Shang-Chi will become part of the extended Marvel Studios film universe when “Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings” arrives in theaters. Before that, though, the character, a martial arts expert, will have a five-issue comic book series beginning in June from Marvel Entertainment.The series will be written by Gene Luen Yang, a comic book writer and cartoonist making his Marvel debut. It will be drawn by Dike Ruan, for the present-day scenes, with Philip Tan drawing for the flashbacks. Yang is a prolific cartoonist whose most well-known work is perhaps “American Born Chinese,” which explores issues of identity. He was also named the national ambassador for young people’s literature in 2016 and won a MacArthur fellowship the same year.Yang could not be more excited. “I mean, it’s Shang-Chi,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “He’s probably the most prominent Asian — I guess he’s Asian-American now since he’s moved over here — Asian-American superhero.”When the slate of upcoming Marvel Studio films was announced last summer, the diversity was noted: an Asian lead, an openly L.G.B.T.Q. superhero and a hero with a disability were all part of the mix.Shang-Chi was introduced by Marvel Comics in 1973, at a time when martial arts became popular in America, and had a run that lasted nearly 10 years. But Yang, 46, avoided the character until college. “It’s that same embarrassment I had in third grade,” he said. “There was a second grader who moved here from Taiwan and the teachers really wanted me to be his friend. I felt embarrassed about it and I didn’t know why.”He continued, “It was almost like picking up a Shang-Chi comic would have been highlighting what made me different from the other nerds at the comic book store.”But the world since Shang-Chi’s introduction has changed, Yang said: “I just don’t think that kids growing up today, for the most part, have that same sort of embarrassment. I think for a lot of them, it sort of flipped. You definitely saw that with ‘Black Panther.’ I think that conversation is changing too for Asian-Americans.”Shang-Chi has had a supporting role in many recent Marvel stories, but the new series will put him in the spotlight. The story will shed more light on the character’s past and that of his father, Zheng Zhu, who is a supervillain. “The basic idea that his father is a supervillain is still there; we don’t want to overturn that, but we do want to add some nuance,” Yang said. “Zheng Zhu has been around a very long time. He has other kids besides Shang-Chi, so we’re going to explore some of those sibling relationships.” More