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      ‘Sing 2’ Review: Taking the Show on the Road

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      The amateur ensemble is back, this time in animal Las Vegas.There was a karaoke charm to the first “Sing,” a cartoon about a parade of amateurs — Ash the porcupine (Scarlett Johansson), Rosita the sow (Reese Witherspoon), Meena the elephant (Tori Kelly) and Johnny the gorilla (Taron Egerton) — who put on a show to save their small town’s bankrupt theater. No more.“Sing 2,” a grasping sequel by the returning director, Garth Jennings, opens with the troupe attempting to impress a talent scout with the kind of ramshackle ditty that won over fans in the original. But when the scout (Chelsea Peretti) sniffs that a fluffle of bunnies wailing “Let’s Go Crazy” on electric guitars is merely a “cute little show,” an offended Buster (the theater owner, played by Matthew McConaughey) and company set out to conquer Redshore City, the animal world’s Las Vegas. (One senses that Illumination, the studio behind the franchise, is itself increasingly dissatisfied that the only little gold men on its shelves are the billion-dollar Minions.)The sequel is all glitz and no heart. With cash from a media mogul, Jimmy Crystal (Bobby Cannavale), and with a Suge Knight-esque wolf who threatens his underlings with defenestration, Buster stages a mega-musical spectacular that crossbreeds Cirque du Soleil with the old Pigs in Space sketch on “The Muppet Show.”There’s also a scattered plot that involves zip lines, snooty choreographers, disgruntled construction workers and an egomaniacal yak. At least the cover songs still have pep. A gorilla belts Coldplay, a slug raps Drake, and, in what passes for the emotional climax, Bono croons one of his own classics in character as a reclusive rock star lion who, in this parallel universe, wrote one of U2’s greatest hits.Sing 2Rated PG, for those afraid of the big bad wolf. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The King’s Man’ Review: Suiting Up and Shooting Down

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      This prequel to the “Kingsman” series presents the confusing origin story of the elite British spy agency, founded by Ralph Fiennes (naturally).Any movie that lists “Rasputin dance choreographer” in the credits deserves at least a look. And, to be fair, “The King’s Man” — a prequel to Matthew Vaughn’s jacked-up series about elite British spies headquartered in Savile Row — has more than a gyrating monk up its impeccably tailored sleeve.Mainly, it has Ralph Fiennes to ensure that the center holds. As Orlando, Duke of Oxford and the spy agency’s founder, Fiennes might read more cuddly than studly, but he lends a surprising gravitas to this flibbertigibbet feature. Try doing that when you’re being head-butted by an angry goat.Set during World War I, as Orlando and his allies race to prevent a nefarious cabal from erasing Europe’s ruling class, “The King’s Man” leads us through a dense thicket of violence to present the origin story of an agency whose raison d’être, we are told, is world peace. (A mission apparently concealed from the characters in the two previous films.) International skulduggery fills the frame, the hopelessly convoluted screenplay (by Vaughn and Karl Gajdusek) swerving from loony (a mountain lair guarded by the aforementioned livestock) to reverent (an impressive battlefield rescue, realized without digital assistance).Buffering the gobsmacking action sequences, Ben Davis’s stately, wide-screen images allow our eyes to refocus. Gusto performances, including Gemma Arterton as a nanny running a secret network of servant-spies, help atone for the plot’s nuttiness. The franchise’s always-simmering homoeroticism, though, boils over whenever Rasputin (an ecstatically demonic Rhys Ifans) is around.“Take your trousers off and sit down,” he commands Orlando, before licking a battle wound on the aristocrat’s thigh. On the evidence of Fiennes’s face, the Duke’s only desire at that moment is for a strong cup of tea.The King’s ManR for leg licking, opium drinking and dirty dancing. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Beyoncé Edges Closer to Her First Oscar Nomination as Shortlists Are Revealed

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      “Be Alive,” which the superstar wrote with Dixson for “King Richard,” made the academy’s cut in preliminary voting. So did Lin-Manuel Miranda, Billie Eilish and Van Morrison.Will Beyoncé and Lin-Manuel Miranda compete against each other at the Oscars? That matchup became a possibility on Tuesday when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlists for best song and nine other categories.Beyoncé and the songwriter Dixson made the cut for “Be Alive,” from “King Richard,” a biopic about the father of Venus and Serena Williams. If the song makes it through the next round, it would be Beyoncé’s first Oscar nomination. Miranda was included for “Dos Oruguitas,” which he wrote for “Encanto,” the animated tale about a gifted family in Colombia. Other contenders in the category include Billie Eilish and Finneas (for the Bond song “No Time to Die”) and Van Morrison (for “Down to Joy,” from “Belfast”), who has made news recently for songs protesting Covid-19 lockdown measures. (Eilish was also the subject of a documentary that made the shortlist.)For best score, Jonny Greenwood and Hans Zimmer might be competing against each other and themselves. Both are included twice: Greenwood for “The Power of the Dog” and “Spencer”; Zimmer for “Dune” and “No Time to Die.”Another notable twofer: “Flee,” the animated documentary about an Afghan refugee in Copenhagen, made the documentary and international feature lists. The documentary finalists included several films that made critics’ year-end best lists, including “Summer of Soul” and “The Velvet Underground.” The same goes for the international feature category, with “Drive My Car” (Japan’s submission) and “The Hand of God” (from Italy) making the cut.Members will begin voting on Jan. 27, and the final nominees will be announced on Feb. 8. The winners will be revealed in a ceremony scheduled for March 27.Here are the shortlists:Original Song“So May We Start?” (“Annette”)“Down to Joy” (“Belfast”)“Right Where I Belong” (“Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road”)“Automatic Woman” (“Bruised”)“Dream Girl” (“Cinderella”)“Beyond the Shore” (“CODA”)“The Anonymous Ones” (“Dear Evan Hansen”)“Just Look Up” (“Don’t Look Up”)“Dos Oruguitas” (“Encanto”)“Somehow You Do” (“Four Good Days”)“Guns Go Bang” (“The Harder They Fall”)“Be Alive” (“King Richard”)“No Time to Die” (“No Time to Die”)“Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” (“Respect”)“Your Song Saved My Life” (“Sing 2”)Original Score“Being the Ricardos”“Candyman”“Don’t Look Up”“Dune”“Encanto”“The French Dispatch”“The Green Knight”“The Harder They Fall”“King Richard”“The Last Duel”“No Time to Die”“Parallel Mothers”“The Power of the Dog”“Spencer”“The Tragedy of Macbeth”Documentary Feature“Ascension”“Attica”“Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”“Faya Dayi”“The First Wave”“Flee”“In the Same Breath”“Julia”“President”“Procession”“The Rescue”“Simple as Water”“Summer of Soul”“The Velvet Underground”“Writing With Fire”International FeatureAustria, “Great Freedom”Belgium, “Playground”Bhutan, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom”Denmark, “Flee”Finland, “Compartment No. 6”Germany, “I’m Your Man”Iceland, “Lamb”Iran, “A Hero”Italy, “The Hand of God”Japan, “Drive My Car”Kosovo, “Hive”Mexico, “Prayers for the Stolen”Norway, “The Worst Person in the World”Panama, “Plaza Catedral”Spain, “The Good Boss”Sound“Belfast”“Dune”“Last Night in Soho”“The Matrix Resurrections”“No Time to Die”“The Power of the Dog”“A Quiet Place Part II”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Naples, a City of Contradictions, Is Once Again a Home for Cinema

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      For “The Hand of God,” the director Paolo Sorrentino has returned to his hometown, whose cultural profile has been lifted in recent years by the Elena Ferrante novels and films like “Gomorrah.”NAPLES, Italy — Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film “The Hand of God” begins with a bird’s-eye view of Naples, his hometown, at dawn, with a lone vintage car traveling along a seafront road while the rest of the city uncharacteristically sleeps.As a backdrop to this autobiographical coming-of-age story, Naples is at turns fantastical and decadent, sunny and unpredictable, comfortably familiar and ultimately confining.Off camera, it is even more.In the 20 years since Sorrentino last made a film here — his directorial debut “One Man Up” — the city has also matured as a center of movie making in Italy. These days, film and television crews are a common sight on Neapolitan streets, both downtown but also in its rougher hinterlands. These productions have nurtured the formation of a local industry, including actors, specialized technicians and cinematographers.A mural of Peppino and Totò, the Italian comedy duo, in the Sanità district of Naples.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times“The Hand of God” shot on location in Naples, with a view of Vesuvius.Gianni FioritoFabietto Schisa (Filippo Scotti) is Sorrentino’s character in the film.Netflix“There’s been enormous growth,” said Maurizio Gemma, the director of the local Film Commission of the Campania Region, which has focused on attracting and facilitating the work of film and television productions since 2005.Back then, Gemma said, there were 10 or 12 projects shooting in the area. Today, “we are shooting nearly 150 projects a year,” he said, including big-budget television shows like HBO’s “My Brilliant Friend,” based on the best-selling Elena Ferrante novels.“Our greatest satisfaction is that inside these important titles there’s the work of many professionals in our region,” Gemma said. But then, he added, “we’ve always had a propensity toward show business, culture; it’s part of our history, it’s in our DNA.”Naples is a city of contradictions, of ornate Baroque palazzos alongside derelict housing, of unrelenting and unruly traffic and an official unemployment rate of 21.5 percent, twice the national average. But it is also a city of culture, both highbrow and popular, and the birthplace of songs like “O sole mio” and “Santa Lucia.”“We’ve always had a propensity toward show business, culture; it’s part of our history, it’s in our DNA,” said Maurizio Gemma, the director of the region’s film commission. Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesIts shabby grandeur, narrow alleys and sweeping views of the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius as a backdrop make the city a natural open air film set.In recent years, production sets have been drawn to the suburbs of Naples, and its less salubrious underbelly. The bleak 2009 film “Gomorrah” by Matteo Garrone, who is Roman, and the popular TV series of the same name brought these derelict areas to a wider international audience.The director Antonio Capuano, who features prominently in “The Hand of God,” said at a recent screening of his 1998 film “Polvere di Napoli” — which he wrote with Sorrentino — that “Gomorrah” had become a “the postcard of Naples, and this is horrible.”Pasquale Iaccio, the author of several books about Neapolitan cinema, said that “Gomorrah” was merely one “aspect of Naples among many other” clichés about the city that still held court.He offered as proof an anecdote from the Neapolitan shoot for the film “Eat Pray Love,” where producers paid the residents of a downtown Naples alley to hang clothes and sheets from their windows, because an alley without them “just wouldn’t be Naples for the American script,” he said.A portrait of the Italian actress Sophia Loren in Naples. Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe 2009 film “Gomorrah” was set in the Neapolitan suburb of Scampia.Mario Spada/IFC FilmsA scene, filmed in Naples, from “Eat Pray Love.”Columbia PicturesThe cinematic attraction of Naples is keeping the city busy. “Let’s just say there’s a lot to do,” said Gea Vaccaro, a Naples city official overseeing the office that helps production companies navigate city bureaucracy and permits. “Naples is a complex city,” she said.One of the ways the city helps visiting productions is to provide them with office space, setting aside rooms in a massive palazzo in the city center — Sorrentino’s team for “The Hand of God” occupied an airy room with ceiling frescoes.Mayor Gaetano Manfredi, who was elected in October, said in an interview that the fertile cinematographic season “reinforced the international brand of Naples,” and permitted the considerable diaspora of Neapolitans living abroad to maintain a connection with their city.“The economic angle should also not be discounted,” Manfredi said.Last year, Italian regions set aside some 50 million euros ($57 million) to attract television and film productions, supplemented by other government funds and tax credits, according to Tina Bianchi, the secretary general of the Italian Film Commissions, the umbrella group for regional cinematic commissions.The staircase at the Palazzo dello Spagnolo, a popular filming location.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThe industry’s rapid growth has been some time in the making, according to Francesco Nardella, the deputy director of the arm of Italy’s national broadcaster that co-produces “Un Posto al Sole,” (“A Place in the Sun”) a wildly popular Italian weeknight drama set in Naples, as well as other series here.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      The 1947 ‘Nightmare Alley’: A Dark View of Class as Destiny

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      With Tyrone Power in the lead, the first adaptation had to find ways to tell a story of soul sickness that wouldn’t offend censors.At the premiere of his new drama “Nightmare Alley” this month, the director Guillermo del Toro told the audience he had read the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham — the film’s official source material — before seeing the classic 1947 adaptation with Tyrone Power. But there’s no question the first movie was a significant influence on del Toro and Kim Morgan, who wrote the screenplay together. Their parting line comes straight from the original script, by Jules Furthman.Like the update, the 1947 version (available to stream on the Criterion Channel), follows a carnival worker, Stan, eager for higher stakes. Stan (Power, in the role now played by Bradley Cooper) picks up some tricks from a washed-up vaudeville couple, Zeena and Pete, whose former ambitions have been reduced to a small-time fairground routine. Eventually Stan runs off with a co-worker, Molly, and they start a mentalist act targeting Chicago high society.The movie has long been a favorite of repertory programmers and noir festivals. But its enduring appeal is not easy to pin down.You can’t chalk it up to auteurism. The director was the British-born Edmund Goulding (“Grand Hotel”), whom Andrew Sarris, in his pioneering survey of Hollywood filmmakers, “The American Cinema,” placed in the “lightly likable” category: “talented but uneven directors with the saving grace of unpretentiousness.” Sarris noted that even Goulding’s best films, “Nightmare Alley” included, were seldom thought of as his, and pointed out that “Grand Hotel” won best picture without a nomination for direction.Sarris also called Goulding’s career “discreet and tasteful,” but “Nightmare Alley” is hardly that. In an extra on the Criterion Channel, Imogen Sara Smith, author of “In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City,” notes that Goulding may have had an unexpected affinity for the material. In private life, she says, he “had quite a scandalous reputation,” adding that “he struggled with drinking and drugs, and he was rumored to host wild bisexual orgies.”“Nightmare Alley,” made under the restrictions of the Production Code, would never have been able to show anything that sordid. But it is a dark and cynical film, and it makes a good test case for film noir, a category that resists clear definition. As has often been written, noir is not quite a genre, a mood or a style. “Nightmare Alley” isn’t a mystery or even much of a thriller. But it induces a soul-sickening feeling that courses through your system like the wood alcohol that poisons one of the characters. The sense of fatalism, a noir staple, is pervasive.The original film also isn’t subtle in its depiction of class as destiny. Early on, it’s made clear that Zeena and Pete (Joan Blondell and Ian Keith) have “already been in the big time” but have reverted to their natural place: an unsatisfying life of traveling carnival work, with Zeena performing a mind-reading act while a perpetually soused Pete provides covert assistance. A main attraction of the carnival — and an act that fascinates Stan — is the geek, who appears to bite the heads off chickens. (“I can’t understand how anybody could get so low,” Stan says at the film’s beginning, in an indication both of his confidence and his poor awareness of his station.) When Stan finally meets his match, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker, in the role Cate Blanchett plays in the 2021 movie), it’s significant that she’s a psychologist — not just someone who understands how Stan ticks, but a person with money and status, which give her a decisive advantage over Stan as a con artist. (Blanchett’s introduction is another element del Toro borrows more from Goulding’s film than from the text.)Rooney Mara and Bradley Cooper in the same roles Gray and Power played in the first adaptation.Kerry Hayes/Searchlight PicturesWhile the new film has Zeena making advances on Stan, the 1947 adaptation had to be more allusive. There’s a real smolder in a simple moment when Power plants kisses on Blondell’s arm and she returns them with a caress. But for Stan, in the 1947 version more than in the book or the new film, sex seems to be an ancillary interest. “I’ll not even look at another fella. Never,” Molly (Coleen Gray) promises him shortly after they are married. But at the moment she makes that promise, Stan isn’t even looking at her. He’s staring offscreen with stars in his eyes, thinking of the money they’ll make together.The positioning of the actors — with Power slyly grinning and looking away from the prospect of a happy home life — is the kind of touch that suggests Goulding knew what he was doing. The cinematography by Lee Garmes isn’t filled with the smoky, jaw-dropping shots that Garmes did for Josef von Sternberg on “Dishonored” or “Shanghai Express,” but the cluttered, tarp-filled carnival scenery affords him ample opportunities to bathe the actors in menacing shadows. (On rarely screened, flammable nitrate film, Garmes’s images pack an especially silvery chill.) Apart from two street shots in a taxi scene, Chicago is conjured almost entirely through set design, dialogue and rear projection.Ultimately, what makes “Nightmare Alley” enduring may be its suggestion that we’re all susceptible to being taken in — and perhaps even want to be. In both movies, the story builds to a moment when Stan, nearing the bottom of a downward spiral, suddenly comprehends that he’s become a sucker.While del Toro’s update adds details from the novel that wouldn’t have passed censors in 1947 and closes with more of a gut-punch, on a bleaker line (while overelaborating much else), the 1947 version is still the definitive one, leaner and meaner. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: Kennedy Center Honors and ‘Insecure’

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      A recording of this month’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony debuts on CBS. And HBO’s “Insecure” airs its final episode.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. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayREOPENING NIGHT (2021) 10 p.m. on HBO. In this documentary, the filmmaker Rudy Valdez (“The Sentence”) follows actors, crew members and other employees of the Public Theater as they work to bring Shakespeare back to the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic — for this past summer’s production of “Merry Wives,” a Shakespeare adaptation. The film isn’t just about the challenges of bringing back live performances after a long period of dormancy; it also sees the artists working through questions around racial equity as they return to the theater for the first time since 2020.TuesdayIN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE: SPIRIT OF THE SEASON 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Jennifer Garner is the host of this hourlong special, which was filmed at the White House this month. Musicians including Billy Porter, Andrea Bocelli, Camila Cabello, Eric Church, the Jonas Brothers and Norah Jones perform among holiday decorations in several White House rooms.WednesdayTHE 44TH ANNUAL KENNEDY CENTER HONORS 9 p.m. on CBS. This month’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony was something of a return to normalcy, with a star-spangled audience and roster of performers gathering in Washington to celebrate this year’s honorees: Bette Midler, Joni Mitchell, Berry Gordy, Justino Díaz and Lorne Michaels. The performers who paid tribute to this group included Chita Rivera, Kelli O’Hara, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Norah Jones, Ellie Goulding, Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder.ThursdayBeanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun in “The Humans.”Wilson Webb/A24THE HUMANS (2021) 5:30 p.m. on Showtime. The playwright Stephen Karam won a Tony Award in 2016 for this one-act comedy-drama about a Thanksgiving dinner where turkey and familial tension are on the menu — and the house is kind of haunted, too. The film adaptation, directed by Karam, casts Beanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun as Brigid and Richard, a young couple who hosts the dinner in a new-to-them (but far from new) Manhattan apartment, where they welcome three generations of Brigid’s family. (The cast also includes Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell, June Squibb and Amy Schumer.) In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote that Karam uses “the freedom of film to open up and underscore his already powerful material.”FridayA CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) 10 p.m. on TCM. How do you take your “Christmas Carol?” Sweet? Bitter? Brooding over ice, with a contemporary twist? Different decades have seen different screen adaptations of the Charles Dickens story, some warm, some dark. This classic 1938 version, directed by Edwin L. Marin and starring Reginald Owen as the killjoy Ebenezer Scrooge, falls on the warmer side of the spectrum. (“Good Dickens, good cinema and good for the soul” is how it was described by the critic and screenwriter Frank S. Nugent in a 1938 review in The Times.) On the other end is FX’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, airing at 4:20 p.m. and 9:40 p.m. on FXM, an icy adaptation from Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”) that stars Guy Pearce. This mini-series, from 2019, explores Scrooge’s psychology; it co-stars Andy Serkis as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Also on FXM, at 7:50 p.m., is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, which has been held up as being particularly faithful to Dickens’s words.CHRISTMAS EVE MASS 11:30 p.m. on NBC. A week after turning 85, Pope Francis will lead Midnight Mass from St. Peter’s Basilica. This broadcast will air some hours after it’s recorded in Vatican City, to compensate for the time difference.SaturdayA scene from “The Lion King.”DisneyTHE LION KING (2019) 8 p.m. on FX. The African savanna has an uncanny-valley flavor in this hyper-realistic computer-animated adaptation of the Disney and Broadway musical classic “The Lion King.” It is rendered here with photo-realistic fur and lighting, giving its cast of very famous voices — Beyoncé, Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor and James Earl Jones among them — an opulent digital space to retell the story of a lion’s quest to reclaim a stolen throne. “If a movie could be judged solely on technique, ‘The Lion King’ might qualify as a great one,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “And it kind of wants to be judged that way — for its technical skin rather than its dramatic soul.”CALL THE MIDWIFE HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2021 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). You’d be hard pressed to find a warmer place to spend Christmas night than Nonnatus House, the fictional London convent where the nuns of “Call the Midwife” practice their craft. This holiday special finds the sisters with their hands full, caring for an influx of expectant women.SundayIssa Rae and Kendrick Sampson in “Insecure.”Merie Wallace/HBOINSECURE 10 p.m. on HBO. After five seasons, “Insecure” will air its series finale on Sunday night. This season has seen the two best friends at the show’s center, Issa Dee (Issa Rae) and Molly Carter (Yvonne Orji), recommitting to their friendship (there were some struggles earlier) while Issa’s career begins to move to a new level. The show has been transformative for Rae herself — when the series debuted, she was best known for the web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.” It has also had a meaningful impact on how Black people are represented on television. “True representation is the ability to show your vulnerability and be able to say, ‘I don’t have it all together, just like the next white person doesn’t have it all together,’” Rae said in a recent interview with The Times. “I think the show gave Black people permission to also be like, ‘You’re right: We are insecure.’” More

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      ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Breaks Franchise Records and Brings Hope to Box Offices

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      After nearly two years of lackluster box office sales for theatrical releases, Spidey breaks through to do what superheroes are supposed to do.LOS ANGELES — For nearly two years, ever since the pandemic brought moviegoing to a halt, Hollywood has been consumed with a creeping dread. What if the movies never bounce back? What if the naysayers writing big-screen epitaphs are right?So the sense of relief — elation — that washed through the movie capital over the weekend, as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” arrived to sensational ticket sales, was palpable. “Have you seen The Daily Bugle headline?” Thomas E. Rothman, Sony’s movie chairman, said by phone, referring to the tabloid newspaper in the Spider-Man comics. “Spidey Saves the Day!”“No Way Home” collected an estimated $253 million at theaters in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Not only did more than 20 million people leave their homes to see a blockbuster movie, prying themselves away from their streaming services, but they faced down the Omicron variant to do it — a reflection, box office analysts said, of the film’s novel “multiverse” storytelling, a pent-up desire to be part of a big cultural moment, and, perhaps, weariness with the impingement of the pandemic on their lives.It was the highest opening-weekend result in the 19-year history of the eight-film, live-action Spider-Man franchise. And it was the third-highest in the overall Hollywood history books, behind “Avengers: Endgame” ($357 million) and “Avengers: Infinity War” ($258 million).Some theaters in the New York area, where infection rates have been skyrocketing, played “No Way Home” to sold-out crowds. In contrast, Omicron has cast a shadow on numerous other cultural offerings, from the Rockettes’ canceling the remainder of their holiday run to Broadway shows’ missing performances to an abrupt decision by “Saturday Night Live” to forgo a live audience.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and television series continues to expand. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’: The web slinger is back with the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series.‘Hawkeye’: Jeremy Renner returns to the role of Clint Barton, the wisecracking marksman of the Avengers, in the Disney+ mini-series.‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’: The superhero originated in comics filled with racist stereotypes. The movie knocked them down.‘Eternals’: The two-and-a-half-hour epic introduces nearly a dozen new characters, hopping back and forth through time.No movie has managed more than $90 million in domestic opening-weekend sales since “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019, according to Comscore. (Sony-produced “Venom: Let There be Carnage” collected $90 million over its first three days in October. Like “No Way Home,” the “Venom” sequel played exclusively in theaters, with no simultaneous streaming option.)“We can legitimately say that we’re in recovery mode,” Mark Zoradi, chief executive of Cinemark, one of North America’s largest multiplex chains, said by phone. He added, “This is a major shot in the arm. I think it’s going to propel a satisfying Christmas season.” Cinemark, which, like other chains, has implemented wide-ranging safety protocols, said on Friday that “No Way Home” delivered the company’s biggest opening-night gross ever.IMAX’s chief executive, Richard L. Gelfond, called “No Way Home” ticket sales “an emphatic reminder of the unique power of the theatrical experience.” IMAX had its best weekend since 2019.“No Way Home,” directed by Jon Watts and re-teaming Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Zendaya as MJ, collected an additional $334.2 million overseas, according to Sony. The studio said the film’s $587.2 million worldwide total was a record for its primary division, Columbia Pictures, which was founded in 1918.“No Way Home” cost Sony and Disney at least $200 million to make, not including the price of a megawatt marketing campaign.Movie theaters continue to face enormous obstacles, of course, not the least of which is the Omicron coronavirus variant, which has prompted a global surge of infections and tightened safety measures. “The ‘Spider-Man’ numbers are sensational, but until Covid recedes and is considered something like the flu, the business is not out of the woods,” David A. Gross, who runs the film consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research, said in an email.Look no further than “Nightmare Alley,” a lavish noir thriller with an all-star cast that arrived in 2,145 North American theaters on Friday. It collected a disastrous $3 million, a result that Mr. Gross called “a reminder of the parts of the business that are still broken.” Directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, “Nightmare Alley” cost Searchlight Pictures, which is owned by Disney, an estimated $60 million to make.Movies aimed at older moviegoers — “Nightmare Alley,” “West Side Story,” “King Richard,” “The Last Duel” — have been struggling at the box office, held back in part because older women, in particular, remain concerned about the coronavirus, analysts say. In addition, audiences do not seem to be in the mood for dark and dour, and “Nightmare Alley” is pitch black.The long-brewing concern that superhero sequels and other fantasy spectacles are pushing more modest films out of theaters gained another proof point over the weekend. Steve Buck, the chief strategy officer for EntTelligence, a research firm, said that “No Way Home” represented 90 percent of film attendance overall; 62 percent of the seats at North American cinemas were dedicated to the movie, which played in 4,336 domestic locations.Ticket buyers gave “No Way Home” a rare A-plus grade in CinemaScore exit polls, an indication that word of mouth will be strong and the film will continue to generate large sums in the weeks to come. The stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Day is traditionally the busiest moviegoing period of the year.Like the “Avengers” movies, “No Way Home” features characters and story lines pulled together from multiple prior movies, turning the film into a can’t-miss event for fans. “No Way Home” finds Peter Parker enlisting Doctor Strange’s help. But a spell goes terribly wrong, tearing a hole in the universe that releases — spoiler alert — villains and Spideys from earlier films. The cast includes Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe, who returns as the Green Goblin.“This is a radical approach to a superhero movie, one never tried before, and fans are responding to that creative risk,” Rothman said. “To succeed in this marketplace, movies must be great. Not good — great.” More

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      How Dasha Nekrasova Is Calling the Shots

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      The “Succession” star and co-host of the podcast Red Scare has directed her first feature, “The Scary of Sixty-First,” about a house once owned by Jeffrey Epstein.You know how some people are always talking about wanting to direct a movie and co-host a popular podcast and be on the most popular show on television? Somebody has done all of those things: Dasha Nekrasova.Nekrasova, 30, is a self-styled provocateur and artistic polymath whom fans of the recently completed season of “Succession” will recognize as Comfrey, the crisis public-relations rep put through hell by Kendall Roy. Before that, she was best known for Red Scare, an irreverent cultural-critique podcast she co-hosts with her friend Anna Khachiyan.She first came to public attention via a “woman on the street” interview with InfoWars that went viral, and her interest in conspiracy theories can be unnerving to some fans even as friends defend her. But it’s that interest that underpins “The Scary of Sixty-First,” her feature directing debut, which she also stars in and wrote, with Madeline Quinn.The film (now in theaters and opening Dec. 24 on digital platforms) is a louche, scrappy horror movie about young roommates, played by Betsey Brown and Nekrasova’s collaborator, Quinn, who move into an apartment on the Upper East Side.But not just any apartment: it was once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who killed himself in jail after his arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019.Nekrasova said she decided to make a horror movie centered on Epstein because she was “obsessed” with his death. “It broke my brain, in a way,” she said in a phone interview. Nekrasova believes, as does her character in the film, that Epstein — “based on my research,” she said — didn’t die by suicide but was killed.“My interest in filmmaking and in Jeffrey Epstein dovetailed in genre,” she said. “Besides me already being preoccupied with it, it was a good way to tell the story. It was so scary. It was so monstrous.”In the film, Nekrasova plays a young woman whose obsession with Epstein’s death, and the many conspiracy theories surrounding it, grows while a demonic force turns the characters into mini-cauldrons of paranoia, sexual mania and butchery. Shot on 16 millimeter, the film looks like a low-fi Sundance breakout circa 1991, and brings to mind the gritty thrillers of the renegade filmmaker Abel Ferrara, whom Nekrasova cites as an inspiration.“The Scary of Sixty-First” is getting a mix of critical responses. Its co-star, Brown, said that as dark as the film is, it’s “a romp to watch” with an audience, especially those drawn to horror, because “it says we can take the absurdity of this disgusting man and laugh” out of discomfort.“Dasha is doing something cathartic,” she said.Betsey Brown in “The Scary of Sixty-First.”UtopiaIn conversation, Nekrasova comes across as definitional Gen X even though she’s a Millennial — a disaffected and misleadingly unambitious slacker with a whatever ethos who’s also intensely interested in understanding people she disagrees with.Nekrasova was born in Minsk, Belarus, and moved a few times with her parents, including to Las Vegas, where she attended a performing arts high school. She said she started to love horror after she watched a trailer for “The Exorcist” and saw Linda Blair descend stairs in a backbend.“That really implanted itself in my consciousness,” she said.Nekrasova went viral in 2018 for a video in which an Infowars correspondent corners her at South by Southwest for an interview about socialism. Nekrasova handled the gotcha exchange with poise but also a “girl, please” detachment. In the video, she wears a fitted sailor top, as if she’s on break from a rehearsal for “Anything Goes” leading social media to call her Sailor Socialism.“It happened around the time that I started my podcast, and it contributed to the audience we’ve been able to amass,” she said. “I’m happy people are still enjoying it.”Three years later, the video doesn’t come across as an act of sabotage against Infowars as much as it does a meet-cute: In November, Nekrasova posted a photo on Instagram of her and Khachiyan playfully flanking Alex Jones, the Infowars host who spread bogus stories about the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and was sued for defamation by families of 10 victims, all of which he lost. Nekrasova and Khachiyan also released an interview with Jones and Alex Lee Moyer, the director of a documentary about the far-right broadcaster.On the subsequent episode, Nekrasova called Jones “an incredible entertainer” and wondered if his beliefs about the Sandy Hook shootings may have been a psychotic episode set off by childhood traumas of his own.She stands by her take even as some of her social media followers blanched. (“Ooooof that’s not a good look,” one commenter said.)Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More