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      The Best Genre Movies of 2022

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      We look at the best in horror, science fiction, action and international films, all available to stream.Ready to go some gooey or gory places? Or see an expert performer navigate action films in an original way? Or perhaps you’d like to explore two knockout docs from around the world? Our genre movie streaming columnists have made their picks for the best of the year. Some movies you will have heard of. Others will be new to your view. Either way, prepare to head out on adventure with these across-the-spectrum offerings.Science FictionFor David Cronenberg, the call is always coming from inside the house: It is the body that attacks, betrays, seduces, takes over. Impervious to the subjects agitating current science-fiction movies (alternative universes, artificial intelligence, a dying Earth), the Canadian director went back to familiar turf with his latest, in which people mutate in unpredictable ways. Cronenberg has always known that the true frontier is not space but the evolution of flesh, consciousness and machine.In “Crimes of the Future,” Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) keeps growing new tumors that his acolyte, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), excises in public, via a repurposed autopsy device. The visual effects are not much more sophisticated than those in the director’s similarly themed “Videodrome” (1983) and “Existenz” (1999), but the squishy organic feel is exactly what makes the new film stand out from run-of-the-mill C.G.I. fests. That and, of course, its tone, coldly detached and darkly comic, as exemplified by Kristen Stewart’s deliciously arch turn as a fan of Tenser’s body artistry.“Everyone wants to be a performance artist these days,” we are told, and the movie zeros in on our narcissism, need for attention and terminal cynicism. Beyond the gross-out close-ups of puckering organs, what is most striking here is a rare cinematic quality nowadays: perversity. — ELISABETH VINCENTELLIStream “Crimes of the Future” on Hulu.HorrorRegina Lei in “The Sadness.”Fredrick Liu/Machi Xcelsior Studios/Shudder/AMCMy favorite horror movies this year laid off the flashy effects and instead gave me the unshakable willies the unshowy way: with creeping dread and uncertain stillness. That’s how “Watcher,” “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and “The Innocents” did it.But oh man, “The Sadness.” Rob Jabbaz’s transgressive zombie film was bombastically directed and exhaustingly gory — in other words, the year’s most gloriously brutal horror-watching experience.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.Rian Johnson:  The “Glass Onion” director explains the streaming plan for his “Knives Out” franchise.It’s set in Taipei, where two young lovers (Berant Zhu and Regina Lei) fight to reunite after a contagion turns people into sexually voracious flesh destroyers. The carnage almost never lets up, and it’s jaw-dropping to watch — like when the hungry infected turn a crowded subway car into a preposterously blood-slick Slip ‘N Slide. This scene, like the film overall, is demented and repulsive but also — and here’s the curveball — uncompromisingly feminist. It’s not easy to get a message across when the mayhem surrounding it is this maximalist, but Jabbaz figured it out.Listen to me carefully: If you’re at all iffy about being grossed out, stay away from this film. But if your constitution is solid, I dare you to jump into its exquisitely gruesome, grimly satirical maelstrom. — ERIK PIEPENBURGStream “The Sadness” on Shudder.ActionZoë Kravitz in “KIMI.”Warner Bros.Between Matt Reeves’ gripping neo-noir “The Batman” and Steven Soderbergh’s unnerving surveillance thriller “KIMI,” this year the actress Zoë Kravitz ruled the action genre. Her reign is uniquely impressive when one considers the disparate requirements of each role.As Selina Kyle/Catwoman in “The Batman,” the agile, shadowy equal to the caped crusader, she moves with a slender yet muscular physicality. As seen in her knowing runway stride, sultry possibilities become real and hand-to-hand confrontations are rendered acrobatic as Kravitz gracefully leaps and dives against thugs.Playing Angela, a blue-haired tech employee confined to her home office in “KIMI,” the actress turns in her former fluidity for an antisocial rigidity as she becomes the target of a predatory company intent on covering up the crime she discovered. In contrast to the skintight leather suit she wears as Catwoman, Kravitz packs a different but no less formidable punch in her long loose coat as she evades her pursuers during a series of arresting chase scenes.And yet, what binds these seemingly conflicting performances is how Kravitz’s expressive eyes translate the assuredness of Catwoman and the savviness of Angela. They’re a confirmation of her range as today’s premiere Black woman action hero. — ROBERT DANIELSStream both “The Batman” and “KIMI” on HBO Max.InternationalYoung residents of Paris’s suburbs in the documentary “We (Nous).”MubiEvery month, as I compile international films for my column, I am confronted with the arbitrariness of the boundaries that determine what we consider familiar and foreign, the home and the world. My two favorite films this year, both documentaries by women, challenge these delineations. In “A Night of Knowing Nothing” by Payal Kapadia, a fictional voice-over narration, chronicling the dissolve of the speaker’s inter-caste relationship, coalesces a series of twilit scenes of college life in India that range from nocturnal revels to protests against an increasingly repressive government. Culminating with CCTV footage of baton-wielding police descending upon a library full of students, the film shatters the fictions of democracy: The will of the people means little to the weapons of the state.In Alice Diop’s “We,” a train route that connects Paris’s suburbs to the city center forms the spine for the film’s intimate, itinerant glimpses of the working-class immigrants who live on the outskirts of France’s capital. Diop’s cinematic map bursts the contours of French identity and recenters them around those relegated to its margins.Each film, a whole fashioned from disparate pieces, offers an allegory for the nation itself, as a collective forged out of solidarity rather than superficial similarities. — DEVIKA GIRISHStream “A Night of Knowing Nothing” on the Criterion Channel. Stream “We” on Mubi. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ and Mariah Carey

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      Martin McDonagh’s latest dark comedy airs on HBO. And Mariah Carey performs in a Christmas special on CBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 19-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (2022) 7 p.m. on HBO. Heated language and cold fingers fly in this dark comedy from Martin McDonagh, about two old buddies, Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), whose friendship meets a sudden end. Set on a fictional Irish island in 1923, the movie kicks into action when Colm announces, seemingly out of foggy air, that he’s had enough of Padraic. What follows is surreal and downbeat, with ambitious performances from Farrell, Gleeson and a supporting cast that includes Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. “It’s not necessary to believe what you see — it may, indeed, not be possible,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times, “but you can nonetheless find yourself beguiled by the wayward sincerity of the characters and touched by the sparks of humanity their struggles cast off.” The movie is positioned to be part of the awards conversation in the lead-up to the Oscars in March.DEAD FOR A DOLLAR (2022) 8:10 p.m. on Showtime 2. This throwback, low-budget western from Walter Hill (“The Warriors,” “48 Hours”) centers on a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) searching for a businessman’s wife (Rachel Brosnahan), whose reasons for having gone missing are not what they seem. It is “solidly and proudly a B picture,” Scott wrote in his review for The Times. But, he added, “in an age of blockbuster bloat and streaming cynicism, a solid B movie — efficiently shot (by Lloyd Ahern II) and effectively acted (by everyone) is something of a miracle.” The cast also includes Willem Dafoe, Hamish Linklater and Benjamin Bratt.THE WHEEL 10 p.m. on NBC. The British comic Michael McIntyre has hosted a few seasons of this quiz show overseas for the BBC; it makes its stateside debut on Monday night. The show — whose set looks something like a gigantic roulette wheel — pairs contestants with celebrity guests who are sometimes experts on the trivia subjects, and sometimes very much not. Guests on Monday’s episode include the actress Christina Ricci, the comic Amber Ruffin and the television journalist Steve Kornacki.TuesdayMariah Carey, center, in “Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas To All!”James Devaney/CBSMARIAH CAREY: MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! 8 p.m. on CBS. For the fourth consecutive year, Mariah Carey’s 1994 single “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has recently topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, despite its age. That feat should add extra flair to Carey’s performance of the song during this two-hour special, which was filmed in Manhattan at a bedazzled Madison Square Garden.WednesdayHOMEWARD BOUND: A GRAMMY SALUTE TO THE SONGS OF PAUL SIMON 9 p.m. on CBS. The first Grammy Award that the singer-songwriter Paul Simon ever won was for “Mrs. Robinson,” the 1968 Simon & Garfunkel hit he wrote for the Hollywood classic “The Graduate.” So perhaps it makes sense that this Grammy-hosted tribute to Simon took place in Los Angeles, despite Simon’s associations with New York. Filmed in April at the Hollywood Pantages Theater, the concert includes performances of Simon’s songs by a multigenerational (and multigenre) group of artists, among them Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, Angélique Kidjo, Dave Matthews and Irma Thomas.ThursdayTHE LION IN WINTER (1968) 5:30 p.m. on TCM. Ahh, Christmas 1183 at King Henry II’s chateau, where holiday cheer is overtaken by familial scheming. (If this sounds like your own end-of-year gathering, consider that this one includes actual jousting.) At issue is who will take over the throne of the aging king (Peter O’Toole). Will it be Prince John (Nigel Terry)? Prince Richard (Anthony Hopkins)? In the end, the real winner is surely Katharine Hepburn, who won an Oscar for her performance as Eleanor of Aquitaine, the king’s wife.FridayTHE 24TH ANNUAL A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS AT THE GROVE 8 p.m. on CBS. Gloria Estefan is the host of this benefit program, which tells positive stories of adoption from foster care. It also brings out musical performances, with this year’s lineup including Andy Grammer, Mickey Guyton, David Foster and Kat McPhee, and Little Big Town.SaturdayJohn Cho, left, and Kal Penn in “A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.”Darren Michaels/Warner Brothers PicturesCHRISTMAS EVE PROGRAMMING on various networks. Even among those who celebrate, Christmas of course means different things to different people. And nowhere is this more apparent than on TV this Saturday, when you can catch the stoner comedy A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS (2011), at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on IFC; then flip over to see Pope Francis lead CHRISTMAS EVE MASS from the Vatican, which begins at 11:29 p.m. on NBC.Also on offer are several adaptations of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” including FX’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, a dark 2019 rethink with Guy Pearce that will air at 9:40 p.m. on FXM, and A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938), a classic black-and-white adaptation that stars Reginald Owen and will air at 10 p.m. on TCM. See also: A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983) at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on TNT; LOVE ACTUALLY (2003) at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. on BBC America; and THE GRINCH (2018) at 8 p.m. on FX.SundayZiwe Fumudoh in “Ziwe.”Gwen Capistran/ShowtimeZIWE 11 p.m. on Showtime. Ziwe Fumudoh will wrap up the second season of her sharp variety show on Sunday by bringing on Wayne Brady, with whom she discusses the commercialization of Juneteenth, and several other guests, including the actress Laura Benanti and the comic Larry Owens. More

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      Adrienne Mancia, Influential Film Curator, Dies at 95

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      Her choices for exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music gave foreign directors and newcomers valuable exposure in New York.Adrienne Mancia, who scoured the world for significant films and brought them to New York as a longtime curator at the Museum of Modern Art and later at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, died on Sunday in Teaneck, N.J. She was 95.Her niece Francine Pozner Ehrenberg confirmed the death, in a care center.Ms. Mancia was instrumental in giving audiences some of their earliest looks at work by Wim Wenders of Germany, Manoel de Oliveira of Portugal and other notable directors, and helped rediscover archival gems and introduce subgenres like European animation and Cinema Novo from Brazil.She joined MoMA in 1964 as the secretary to Richard Griffith, the curator of the museum’s film department. Soon she was given the title of curatorial assistant and began organizing exhibitions; she rose to associate curator and then, in 1977, curator. She held that title until 1998, when she left for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which was opening the BAM Rose Cinemas and moving into film programming.Her choices were crucial in expanding the horizons of American cinephiles, particularly in her early decades at MoMA.“As this was before the age of videotape, internet and niche movie channels,” Jon Gartenberg, a curator of MoMA’s film archive for part of her tenure and a longtime friend, said by email, “the recognition for the films that she curated at MoMA garnered an outsized importance in terms of the New York film culture and beyond.”Other museums would take their cues from the programming at MoMA and in the New Directors/New Films series sponsored by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Film festivals throughout North America would pick up on Ms. Mancia’s finds, and her vast influence led to awards from foreign governments.“Adrienne Mancia has probably contributed more than any other person to the introduction of Italian cinema in America,” Renato Pachetti, the president of the RAI Corporation, which has financed numerous Italian films, said in 1988 when Ms. Mancia received the Order of the Republic of Italy. Four years earlier, France had given her similar recognition, naming her a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.Ms. Mancia traveled extensively in her search for worthy films, both new and old. The film critic J. Hoberman, who knew her for decades and worked with her as a curator on a 1991 exhibition, “Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds,” said Ms. Mancia had not been content with simply accepting the film packages that other countries would send.“She loved to work in archives,” he said in a phone interview. “She didn’t want them to tell her which films to show. She wanted to pick them out herself.”Her interests were not limited to foreign films, or to the highbrow end of the cinematic spectrum.“She was a cinephile,” Mr. Hoberman said, “but she was not a snob.”In 1979 she organized a seemingly un-MoMA-like retrospective of films from American International Pictures, which in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s specialized in low-budget, quickly made movies for the drive-in crowd like “Girls in Prison” (1956) and “Beach Party” (1963). It wasn’t just an exercise in kitsch.“It’s extraordinary to see how many filmmakers, writers and actors — now often referred to as ‘the new Hollywood’ — took their first creative steps at American International,” she said at the time.“Low budgets can force you to find fresh resources,” she continued, adding that there was an “energy to these feisty films that capture a certain very American quality.”In 1985 she presented an exhibition of films featuring Bugs Bunny and other Warner Bros. cartoon characters. Again, nostalgia wasn’t the point; the artistry represented by predigital film animation was.“This exhibition makes me very happy and very sad,” she told The New York Times. “It makes me happy because I love it and sad because it might very well be the end of a great era, the end of complete animation, done frame by frame with great care, approaching art.”Adrienne Phyllis Johnson was born on June 5, 1927, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her father, Harry Johnson, owned a furniture store, and her mother, Fae (Weintraub) Johnson, was a homemaker.She grew up in Paterson, N.J., and graduated from Eastside High School in 1944 after skipping a few grades. She received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin at 20, and later earned a master’s degree at Columbia University.Her niece said that she married Umberto Mancia in Italy, where she spent much of the 1950s. The marriage ended in divorce.At MoMA, she helped establish Cineprobe, a program that from 1968 to 2002 presented works by independent and experimental filmmakers and hosted discussions with them. Though many of Ms. Mancia’s exhibitions were more mainstream, she especially enjoyed spotlighting new and little-known works and directors.“To discover people who have new ways of saying things with film is thrilling,” she told The Daily News of New York in 1987. “It keeps the idea alive that there are still surprises out there.”Ms. Mancia, who lived in Manhattan, is survived by a sister, Merle Johnson Pozner.Those who worked with her said that filmmakers weren’t the only ones who benefited from Ms. Mancia; she also influenced many younger curators.“For me, Adrienne was a major bridge between creation and curation,” Mr. Gartenberg said. “Early in my career, working at such an august institution as MoMA, Adrienne pulled me aside and reminded me that without filmmakers, none of us would have any jobs. She instilled in me a sense of humbleness that my mission was to support their creativity in my curatorial work.”Upon her death, Ron Magliozzi, a longtime MoMA staff member who is now a curator in the film department, sent an email to colleagues.“If only a little of Adrienne’s unmatched passion for cinema rubbed off on you,” it said, “it was enough to fuel your career.” More

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      Quinta Brunson, Jack Harlow and More Breakout Stars of 2022

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      Here are the actors, pop stars, dancers and artists who broke away from the pack this year, delighting us and making us think.For many of us, 2022 was the year we emerged more fully from our pandemic cocoons, venturing out to movie theaters, museums, concerts — exploring our entertainment with eager, if weary, hearts and eyes before returning home to our TVs. Along the way, artists and performers across the world of the arts had, for the first time in years, the chance to connect more closely and fully with audiences, and deliver big. Here are seven stars who captured our attention in this moment and gave us a fresh perspective.TelevisionQuinta BrunsonIn 2014, Quinta Brunson had a viral Instagram hit on her hands: a series of videos called “The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date.” At BuzzFeed, where she was first paid for taste-testing Doritos, she made popular comedic videos for the site and then sold the streaming series “Broke” to YouTube Red. In 2019, she starred in and wrote for the debut season of HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”That trajectory set her up to deliver a rare feat: a warmhearted but not saccharine network sitcom with a pitch-perfect ensemble cast that has managed to delight critics and audiences — all while illuminating the problems of underfunded public schools. The mockumentary-style comedy, “Abbott Elementary,” which she created and stars in, debuted on ABC in December 2021 and was nominated for seven Emmy Awards this year, of which it won three.“I think a lot of people are enjoying having something that is light and nuanced,” Brunson, 32, told The New York Times Magazine earlier this year. “‘Abbott’ came at the right time.”MoviesStephanie HsuIn “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Stephanie Hsu plays a despairing daughter named Joy and the chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.A24When Stephanie Hsu was a child, she told her mother that she wanted to be an actor. Her mother “pointed at a TV screen and said, ‘There’s nobody that looks like you — that seems impossible,’” Hsu, 32, told Variety this year. Turns out, her presence onscreen was both possible and unforgettable, particularly her jaw-dropping performance in this year’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a mind-twisting acid trip through the multiverse (and the human condition) that was a box-office hit and had critics raving.In “Everything,” her first feature film, Hsu nailed the complex role of both a depressed, despairing daughter (opposite Michelle Yeoh as her mother) and the maniacally evil, chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.“I think it’s so rare that you get to experience the scope of range within one character in one movie,” Hsu told The Times.Next up for the actress is a role in the Disney+ action-comedy series “American Born Chinese”; in Rian Johnson’s Peacock series, “Poker Face,” alongside Natasha Lyonne; and in “The Fall Guy,” an action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.Pop MusicJack HarlowThe rapper Jack Harlow, who released the album “Come Home the Kids Miss You” in May, earned three Grammy nominations in November.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThose on TikTok probably first caught wind of the rapper Jack Harlow in 2020 with his viral track “Whats Poppin.” But it wasn’t until his verse on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” last year — the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 — that his star really began its ascent.The Highlights of 2022, According to Our CriticsCard 1 of 3Salamishah Tillet. More

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      ‘Bardo’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      How ‘Bardo’ Turns Collapsing Into Choreography

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      Alejandro G. Iñárritu narrates a sequence from his Netflix film “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” where multiple people drop to the ground in Mexico City.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.In one of the many ambitious scenes from “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” (streaming on Netflix), the lead character, Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), comes across a woman who has collapsed on a Mexico City sidewalk. Most passers-by don’t seem to notice her. When someone asks if she is dead, she replies, “I’m not dead. I’m missing.” Soon after, other individuals, one by one, begin collapsing on the sidewalk and in the streets. By the end of this fever dream of a sequence, hundreds of people are on the ground.Narrating the moment, the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu said he wanted to call attention to the thousands of Mexicans who have gone missing over the last decade. He said the scene required 300 extras along with 20 dancers who, guided by the choreography of Priscila Hernández, fell in a precise way that seemed like a dangerous collapse.Read the review of “Bardo.”Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      The Breakout Stars of 2022

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      Here are the actors, pop stars, dancers and artists who broke away from the pack this year, delighting us and making us think.For many of us, 2022 was the year we emerged more fully from our pandemic cocoons, venturing out to movie theaters, museums, concerts — exploring our entertainment with eager, if weary, hearts and eyes before returning home to our TVs. Along the way, artists and performers across the world of the arts had, for the first time in years, the chance to connect more closely and fully with audiences, and deliver big. Here are seven stars who captured our attention in this moment and gave us a fresh perspective.TelevisionQuinta BrunsonIn 2014, Quinta Brunson had a viral Instagram hit on her hands: a series of videos called “The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date.” At Buzzfeed, where she was first paid for taste-testing Doritos, she made popular comedic videos for the site and then sold the streaming series “Broke” to YouTube Red. In 2019, she starred in and wrote for the debut season of HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”That trajectory set her up to deliver a rare feat: a warmhearted but not saccharine network sitcom with a pitch-perfect ensemble cast that has managed to delight critics and audiences — all while illuminating the problems of underfunded public schools. The mockumentary-style comedy, “Abbott Elementary,” which she created and stars in, debuted on ABC in December 2021 and was nominated for seven Emmy Awards this year, of which it won three.“I think a lot of people are enjoying having something that is light and nuanced,” Brunson, 32, told The New York Times Magazine earlier this year. “‘Abbott’ came at the right time.”MoviesStephanie HsuIn “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Stephanie Hsu plays a despairing daughter named Joy and the chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.A24When Stephanie Hsu was a child, she told her mother that she wanted to be an actor. Her mother “pointed at a TV screen and said, ‘There’s nobody that looks like you — that seems impossible,’” Hsu, 32, told Variety this year. Turns out, her presence onscreen was both possible and unforgettable, particularly her jaw-dropping performance in this year’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a mind-twisting acid trip through the multiverse (and the human condition) that was a box-office hit and had critics raving.In “Everything,” her first feature film, Hsu nailed the complex role of both a depressed, despairing daughter (opposite Michelle Yeoh as her mother) and the maniacally evil, chaos-inducing villain Jobu Tupaki.“I think it’s so rare that you get to experience the scope of range within one character in one movie,” Hsu told The Times.Next up for the actress is a role in the Disney+ action-comedy series “American Born Chinese”; in Rian Johnson’s Peacock series, “Poker Face,” alongside Natasha Lyonne; and in “The Fall Guy,” an action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.Pop MusicJack HarlowThe rapper Jack Harlow, who released the album “Come Home the Kids Miss You” in May, earned three Grammy nominations in November.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThose on TikTok probably first caught wind of the rapper Jack Harlow in 2020 with his viral track “Whats Poppin.” But it wasn’t until his verse on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” last year — the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 — that his star really began its ascent.Now, the laid-back Harlow, 24 and a Kentucky native, had his first solo No. 1 hit, the Fergie-sampling “First Class,” from his second major-label album, “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” which dropped in May. In November, he earned three Grammy nominations, including for best rap album. And in October, he served as both host and musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.”“I’m looking to get away from rapping in a way where people can marvel at it and more something we can all enjoy together,” he told The Times this year.Soon, Harlow will star in a remake of the 1992 film “White Men Can’t Jump.”ArtTiona Nekkia McCloddenThe artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden in her studio; she had three major presentations of her work in New York this year.Hannah Price for The New York TimesOver the last few years, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, 41, “has emerged as one of the most singular artists of our aesthetically rich, free-range time,” Roberta Smith, co-chief art critic of The Times, wrote in her review of McClodden’s exhibition “Mask/Conceal/Carry,” a meditation on guns shown at 52 Walker in TriBeCa this year. Smith called it a “brooding beast of an exhibition, bathed in blue light.”And that was only one of three major presentations of McClodden’s work in New York in 2022. At the Museum of Modern Art, she presented a room-size fetish-themed tribute to Brad Johnson, a Black gay poet who died in 2011. At the Shed, she celebrated the groundbreaking 1983 festival Dance Black America with a program that included custom dance floors and video portraits of dancers.McClodden, who was a star of the 2019 Whitney Biennial (she won the Bucksbaum Award), emerged as a filmmaker before expanding to boundary-pushing art installations.Amid the pandemic and the George Floyd protests and counter protests, she decided to learn how to shoot guns, an activity that bore “Mask/Conceal/Carry.” “The statement is that I’m in the world, I didn’t try to run away from my position in this world, and I wanted to be able to defend myself,” she told The Times this summer.TheaterJulie BenkoA scene from the Broadway musical “Funny Girl” with Jared Grimes, left, as Eddie Ryan and Julie Benko as Fanny Brice.Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade, 2022Few can say they’ve seized an opportunity like Julie Benko, whose monthlong summer run as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” changed a lot for the actress-soprano who stepped into the role full-time between Beanie Feldstein and Lea Michele in the highly talked-about production. But even that degree of pressure didn’t weigh her down.“When you get the chance to play such an amazing role, there’s no need to take it too seriously,” Benko told the Times. “You just have to enjoy it.” Now, Benko has the title of “alternate” in “Funny Girl,” not “understudy,” performing the lead in most Thursday night shows (with an extra performance on Monday, Dec. 26, and for a full week in late February).Benko, 33, had understudied several roles before “Funny Girl,” including in the national “Spring Awakening” tour in 2008, and later in the “Les Misérables” tour, where she worked her way up to Cosette, the protagonist, from roles like “innkeeper’s wife.”In December, she will be performing at 54 Below in New York alongside her husband, the pianist Jason Yeager.Classical MusicDavóne TinesThe bass-baritone Davóne Tines performs a scene in “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)” by Tyshawn Sorey at the Park Avenue Armory.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“No one could accuse Davóne Tines of lacking ambition,” Oussama Zahr, a classical music critic, wrote recently in The Times when reviewing “Recital No. 1: MASS,” the bass-baritone’s personal and thoughtfully arranged Carnegie Hall debut“I really like structures,” Tines, who is in his mid-30s, told The New Yorker of “MASS” last year. “The ritualistic template of the Mass is a proven structure — centuries of culture have upheld it. Anything that I put into it will assume a certain shape. And what I put into it is my own lived experience.”Accolades for Tines have been mounting, including for, this fall, his performance in a staged version of Tyshawn Sorey’s “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife),” at the Park Avenue Armory; and for “Everything Rises,” his collaboration with the violinist Jennifer Koh, which opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.In the work, Tines and Koh recount their complicated relationships with classical music as people of color. “I was the moth, lured by your flame,” Tines sings. “I hated myself for needing you, dear white people: money, access and fame.”DanceCatherine HurlinThe ballerina Catherine Hurlin, who was recently promoted to principal dancer at American Ballet Theater, in “Of Love and Rage,” by Alexei Ratmansky at the Metropolitan Opera House.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesShe may only be 26, but the ballerina Catherine Hurlin has been ascending for more than half of her life. As a girl, she secured a full scholarship to the American Ballet Theater’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. Not long after, she became an apprentice with the A.B.T., then a member of the corps de ballet and eventually a soloist in 2018.Then this summer, she was one of three dancers promoted to the role of principal.“The simple serenity of Hurlin’s face, framed by cascading curls, is riveting, as is the daring amplitude of her expressive, singular dancing,” Gia Kourlas, the dance critic of The Times, wrote in June of Hurlin’s performance in Alexei Ratmansky’s “Of Love and Rage.”And in July, when Hurlin made her debut in the double role of Odette-Odile in “Swan Lake,” Kourlas called her “the future of Ballet Theater, the kind of dancer who has a fresh take on story ballets.”Her nickname? Hurricane. More

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      ‘The Quiet Girl’ Review: Welcome Home

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      This luminous drama, Ireland’s entry for best international feature, may not be holiday fare, but it does express the season’s benevolent ethos.A body lies still in a field as girls from afar shout, “Cait! Cait!” For a beat, “The Quiet Girl” sounds an uneasy note. It won’t be the last time this luminous Irish drama — directed by Colm Bairead and based on Claire Keegan’s short story “Foster” — teases dark concerns.Cait (Catherine Clinch, in a splendid debut) lives in a crammed, clamorous house with her parents, sisters, baby brother and another sibling on the way. Which is why her exhausted mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) and idle father (Michael Patric) whisper about sending the 9-year-old to stay with her mother’s people.When Cait’s father delivers her to the Cinnsealaches’ farmhouse, the viewer senses — even if Cait doesn’t yet — that she has won the lottery, or at least been granted a well-ordered reprieve. Eibhlin and Sean Cinnsealach (Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennett) shimmer with compassion but also a profound ache. The availability of a child’s clothes and the trains chugging across the wallpaper of the room Cait sleeps in signal a loss that the film takes its time to address.In Cait’s encounters with nature, Bairead and the cinematographer Kate McCullough capture the first-person perspective of Keegan’s story: leaves flutter and flash by; a ladle sets the still surface of a well in gently rippling motion. They also go beyond it. Although “The Quiet Girl” — Ireland’s entry for the best international feature Oscar — is not holiday fare, there may not be a movie more expressive of the season’s benevolent ethos than this hushed work about kith and kindness.The Quiet GirlNot rated. In Irish Gaelic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More