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      Stream These 10 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in May

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      Magic Mike’s finale, M. Night Shyamalan’s patient with 23 personalities, Baz Luhrmann’s “Gatsby” and a copstravaganza with a serious coda after the belly laughs.Two markedly different Adam Sandler vehicles are among the noteworthy titles departing Netflix in May, along with an unsung family treat, a pair of crisp psychological thrillers and the other dark sitcom from the co-star of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ (May 1)Stream it here.As anyone who’s seen “Ocean’s Twelve” can tell you, Steven Soderbergh is not a director willing to repeat himself — even when making a sequel to one of his hits. After serving only as cinematographer and editor on the first “Magic Mike” follow-up, 2015’s “Magic Mike XXL,” Soderbergh returned to the director’s chair for the third and final story of “Magic Mike” Lane, a charismatic and likable exotic dancer played by Channing Tatum (and a character loosely inspired by his own early years). This time around, he takes up with “Max” Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault), a wealthy socialite who hires him to choreograph a dance extravaganza at her husband’s theater in London. The camaraderie of the first two films is missing (Mike’s fellow dancers are consigned to cameos), but Soderbergh and Tatum clearly relish the opportunity to turn the climactic production into a full-scale movie musical, which is executed with wit, grace and genuine eroticism.‘Uncut Gems’ (May 8)Stream it here.Adam Sandler turns in his finest film performance to date as Howard Ratner, an inveterate gambler, serial adulterer and perpetual hustler who owns a jewelry store in the Diamond District of Manhattan. We meet him in mid-crisis, already way over his head in gambling debts and familial trouble, and watch him sink to rock bottom — but it’s a pleasurable experience, thanks to the relentless energy and controlled chaos of the directors Josh and Benny Safdie (“Good Time”). Their films are visceral, less concerned with intricate plotting than the sheer experiences of their protagonists; the result is a movie that is somehow both wildly entertaining and a cinematic anxiety attack.‘The Boxtrolls’ (May 22)Stream it here.Disney and Pixar may get all the attention and Illumination may make all the money, but Laika is one of the most reliable purveyors of family entertainment, quietly turning out gorgeous, heartfelt and engaging stop-motion animated features from its headquarters in Oregon. This 2014 fantasy comedy is one of their best, telling the charming story of a kid named Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright), who was raised by the title characters, a group of cheerfully grotesque, trash-collecting trolls. The directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi have a blast creating this strange, intricately detailed world (it’s set in the late 19th century, in the fictional land of Norvenia), and the impressive cast of voice talents — including Richard Ayoade, Toni Collette, Elle Fanning, Nick Frost, Jared Harris, Ben Kingsley, Tracy Morgan and Simon Pegg — clearly came to play.‘Boyz N The Hood’ (May 31)Stream it here.John Singleton became the first African American to be nominated for the best director Oscar (and the youngest, beating even Orson Welles by two years) for this, his debut feature. He made it fresh out of USC film school, based on his experiences, and those of his friends, growing up in Los Angeles surrounded by poverty, crime and police brutality. “Boyz” wasn’t just Singleton’s introduction; it was also the breakthrough film for Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube and Morris Chestnut, who starred as the three young friends on very different paths after high school, as well as Angela Bassett, Regina King and Nia Long in supporting roles. But the 1991 film’s most powerful presence is Laurence Fishburne as Furious Styles, the single father desperate to keep his son on the right course.‘The Great Gatsby’ (May 31)Stream it here.The director Baz Luhrmann proved he could modernize and, in doing so, reinvigorate a classic text (assisted by Leonardo DiCaprio) with his 1996 interpretation “Romeo and Juliet”; he took another, even bigger swing with this 2013 interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beloved novel. Not all of his notions land — home viewing thankfully removes the original release’s headache-inducing 3-D, though the dubious hip-hop needle drops remain. Yet none are off-putting enough to upset the sturdiness of the faithful screenplay and the marvelous performances, particularly Carey Mulligan’s fragile Daisy, Joel Edgerton’s blowhard Tom and, especially, DiCaprio’s complex work in the title role.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 is Shout! TV? A streaming alternative to Netflix, Hulu and More.

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      Among the free streaming services, few are as enjoyable and reliable as this one.For this month’s spotlight on lesser-known but worthwhile streaming services, we’re showcasing our first advertising-based video-on-demand platform, or A.V.O.D., the model in which services make their money not via subscriptions, but through good old-fashioned advertisements. It’s a trade-off, to be sure; commercials were one of the reasons everyone got rid of cable. But now that Disney+, Netflix and their ilk have shoved ads back into their (paid!) programming, it’s not so hard to tolerate them from a free service.Among those free services, few are as enjoyable and reliable as Shout! TV, the latest incarnation of one of the most beloved labels in all of physical media. Shout! Factory was started in 2002 by three of the minds behind the great music label Rhino Records, and both imprints carved out a niche for catering to those whose tastes are slightly off the beaten path. As a DVD, Blu-ray and now 4K label, Shout! has been dependable and admirable in both curation and presentation, restoring and releasing crackerjack titles from the realms of cult, horror, sci-fi, action, animation, foreign films and throwback TV.Those genres also make up the backbone of the menu on Shout! TV. Their on-demand film selection includes a wide variety of movies, like Godzilla and Jackie Chan, Gene Autry and Elvira, with a frequently rotating library of entertaining titles from the silent era to the present. But their most impressive selections are in the label’s original specialties. The cult section is a delightful menagerie of Mario Bava films, biker movies, skin flicks, grimy indies, Roger Corman cheapies, contemporary cult items like “Donnie Darko” and oddities you’ll click only because of the inexplicable titles (“Dirty Duck”??). And Shout has enough horror movies to run a successful sublabel, Scream Factory, so the channel’s horror section is stacked with variety that includes “Night of the Living Dead,” “Alligator” and “Chopping Mall.”On the TV side — where the ad spots are particularly unobtrusive (credit where due: Shout bothers to insert them in designated commercial spots, rather than at random intervals as some other A.V.O.D. services do) — viewers can find scores of classic television shows and comedy shorts. They also have variety shows, cartoons and adventures, but the crown jewels of their TV offerings are their expansive collections of old episodes of “The Carol Burnett Show” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”; those are not only available as à la carte episodes, based on your preferred guest stars or eras, but also among their 24/7 streaming channels, where you can just tune in and view whatever they’re running. You know, just like watching TV!All of this makes Shout! TV one of the very best streaming values since it doesn’t cost you a single cent — just the time you’ll spend watching ads. Here are a few recommendations:Mystery Science Theater 3000: “The Skydivers”: Shout has been in business for quite some time with the various iterations of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the uproariously funny cult TV show where an average Joe, marooned in space, watches bad movies with his robot companions while cracking wise. In addition to the original episodes, Shout also streams their “riffed” short films and episodes from “MST” alumni shows “Cinematic Titanic,” “The Film Crew” and “Rifftrax.” But if you’re looking for an entry point, I’d recommend this sixth season episode, in which our boys first watch the educational short “Why Study Industrial Arts?” (the titular question is not satisfactorily answered, frankly) and the technically incompetent and narratively incoherent 1963 film “The Skydivers,” from the writer-director Coleman Francis, a filmmaker so inept, he makes Ed Wood look like Martin Scorsese.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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      Blue Ivy Carter to Join Beyoncé in ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’

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      Beyoncé’s 12-year-old daughter will make her feature film debut as Kiara, Nala and Simba’s daughter, in a prequel to the 2019 hit.Blue Ivy Carter will be joining her mother, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, in the movie musical “Mufasa: The Lion King,” which is expected in theaters in December.The movie — a prequel to “The Lion King,” the 2019 hyperrealistic remake of the Disney classic starring Beyoncé as the voice of Nala — will be directed by Barry Jenkins, who won a best adapted screenplay Oscar for “Moonlight.”Blue Ivy, 12, will make her feature film debut by voicing Kiara, the daughter of Nala and Simba, who will again be voiced by Donald Glover. (Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, Mads Mikkelsen and Thandiwe Newton will also lend their talents.)“A buddy of mine, Matthew Cherry, made the short film called ‘Hair Love’ that Blue Ivy did the audiobook of,” Jenkins told Entertainment Weekly in an article published on Monday. “Starting this project and just having that in the ether, I was like, ‘Is it worth a shot? Would Blue Ivy want to do it? Would Beyoncé want to act opposite her daughter? Is it too close to home?’” he said. “But once we put the question to them, they both responded with enthusiasm.”Representatives for Beyoncé did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Last year, Blue Ivy joined Beyoncé onstage during the Renaissance tour, which wrapped up in October; she already has a Grammy, for best music video for “Brown Skin Girl,” a single by her mother. Beyoncé holds the record for most Grammys in history, with 32 wins.“The Lion King,” which was directed by Jon Favreau, was a box-office smash, earning $192 million at theaters in the United States and Canada in its first weekend. It ultimately made more than $1.5 billion in ticket sales globally. More

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      How They Served the Tennis Scenes in ‘Challengers’

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      Painstaking effort went into building the energetic competition moments in Luca Guadagnino’s love-triangle tennis drama. Here’s a closer look at the process.“Let’s not make a tennis film.”That was the director Luca Guadagnino’s unconventional approach to “Challengers,” the hit movie starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor as rival tennis aces, locked in a high-stakes love triangle.Guadagnino, the Italian director known for his deft eroticism (“Call Me By Your Name”), didn’t want it to look like tennis usually does, with a static camera positioned behind the player who is serving, or a wide shot of the court. “That kind of televisual stillness — there’s objectivity,” he said, “which is exactly the opposite of what I was going after.”Instead, he wanted the action to mirror the characters’ complicated and sweaty dynamic — for viewers to feel like they were inside the competition, which is as much metaphor as sport. “We were asking ourselves all the time, are we really giving a kinetic experience, an intimate experience, for an audience? And are we translating that into something that can emotionally resonate?” he said in a recent video interview.But when production started, Guadagnino was a neophyte: “I was completely ignorant about tennis,” he said. Perhaps that’s why he was able to envision unique shots, like one that is below the net, or another where the camera is the ball, giving a spinning view as it hurtles across the court.Revved by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s techno score, the visuals are naturalism on overdrive. But even with an assist from special effects, the tennis proved hard to shoot; the 10-minute finale game took eight months to produce. It was, Guadagnino said, “a very, very, very laborious movie.”In separate video interviews, Guadagnino, the Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and Brad Gilbert, the American tennis pro turned coach and commentator, who served as a consultant on the film, explained how they created the vigorous love-set-match moments.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’s on TV This Week: ‘Catfish’ and ‘Welcome to Wrexham’

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      The show, hosted by Nev Schulman and Kamie Crawford, begins its ninth season on MTV. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s soccer series on FX is back for Season 3.For those like me who still haven’t cut the cord, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, April 29-May 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) 8 p.m. on Pop. Anyone growing up with dreams of saving the world can probably find inspiration in Julia Roberts’s performance as Erin Brockovich. She is a single mom down to her last few dollars, but she’s smart and resourceful and possesses highly developed investigative Spidey senses. Based on a true story, this fictionalized movie follows Brockovich as she gets a low-level job at a law firm and finds a cover-up of toxic exposure that is threatening lives. A.O. Scott, in his review for The New York Times noted that after a robust, creative opening, Roberts and the director, Steven Soderbergh, rely heavily on clichés, and Scott ruefully submits to the same technique, writing that the movie “will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you stand up and cheer. ‘Erin Brockovich’ is the feel-good movie of the year.”From left: Cher and Nicolas Cage in “Moonstruck.”MGMMOONSTRUCK (1987) 8 p.m. on TCM. If you’re in the mood for desire on Monday night instead of the fighting spirit of Erin Brockovich, see Cher and Nicolas Cage in this slightly chaotic but ultimately dreamy romantic comedy. Cher plays Loretta, a widow who finds herself falling in love with her new boyfriend’s younger brother, Ronny (Cage). This movie offers “further proof that Cher has evolved into the kind of larger-than-life movie star who’s worth watching whatever she does,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The Times.TuesdayCATFISH 8 p.m. on MTV. In an ideal world, anytime someone ghosts you on a dating app, Nev Schulman and Kamie Crawford (and let’s throw Max Joseph into this fantasy for old times’s sake) would materialize next to you and put that person in their place. And for the people who write in to the show — that is basically what happens. “Each episode unfolds like a detective show, with the, host Nev Schulman, summoned to untangle truth from lies, to take relationships that exist only on computers and phones and drag them into our three-dimensional reality,” Maya Salam wrote in a recent feature in The Times about the show, which is back for its ninth season.WednesdayPRISONER IN RUSSIA: THE BRITTNEY GRINER INTERVIEW 10 p.m. on ABC. In March of 2022, Brittney Griner, a WNBA center, was detained in Russia on drug charges. She ended up pleading guilty in a Russian court and being sentenced to nine years in prison. In December of that year, nearly 10 months later, she was released via a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer. For the first time, she is sitting down for an interview — with Robin Roberts — to discuss her time in prison.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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      With ‘Challengers’ and ‘Saltburn,’ Hollywood Movies Embrace Sex Again

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      Studios obsessively focused on PG-13 franchises and animation in recent years, but movies like “Challengers” and “Saltburn” show eroticism has returned.Zendaya, clad in a skintight dress, gyrates on a dance floor in “Challengers,” a $56 million sports drama that arrived in multiplexes on Friday. “It’s getting hot in here,” the hip-hop soundtrack intones, as she closes her eyes and runs her hands through her hair, lost in fantasy. “So take off all your clothes.”The story continues at a motel, where Zendaya, playing a tennis prodigy, begins a ménage à trois with two guys; it fizzles after they become more interested in each other. The plot moves on — to sultry interplay on the hood of a car, in a dorm room, in the back seat of a car, on the wooden slats of a sauna. There is erotic churro eating.“Sex is back!” shouted an apparently elated man at the conclusion of a prerelease “Challengers” screening in West Hollywood, Calif., this month.Trend spotting in cinema is a hazardous pursuit. Think about how many times the rom-com has been declared dead — and alive — and dead. (No, wait, alive.) But this much can be said with surety: Hollywood is hornier than it has been in years.“It absolutely feels like the pendulum has swung back toward filmmakers exploring adult relationships and sexuality in their projects,” said Amy Pascal, the former chairwoman of Sony Pictures and producing force behind “Challengers.”“I welcome that,” she added.Eroticism was common in studio hits like “Basic Instinct,” starring Sharon Stone, in the 1980s and ’90s.Rialto PicturesWe 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 Interview’ Podcast: Anne Hathaway

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      This is the debut of The Interview, The New York Times’s new weekly series, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people. Each week, David Marchese or Lulu Garcia-Navarro will speak with notable figures in the worlds of culture, politics, business, sports, wellness and beyond. Like the Magazine’s former Talk column, the conversations will appear online and in print, but now you can also listen to them in our new weekly podcast, “The Interview,” which is available wherever you get your podcasts. Below, you’ll find David’s first interview with the actress Anne Hathaway; Lulu’s first interview, with the Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, is here.Listen to the conversation with Anne HathawayOn the debut of ’The Interview,’ the actress talks to David Marchese about learning to let go of other people’s opinions.On one level, Anne Hathaway’s new movie, “The Idea of You,” which arrives on Prime Video on May 2 and is directed by Michael Showalter, couldn’t be more straightforward. It’s an adaptation of Robinne Lee’s hit romance novel about Solène, a divorced 40-year-old mom played by Hathaway, who winds up in a relationship with a much younger man — a singer in a boy band, played by Nicholas Galitzine. Warmhearted and with unabashed mainstream appeal, the film is a return for the New Jersey-raised actress, who has fruitfully spent much of her time lately playing thornier characters in indie films, to the kinds of charming fish-out-of-water tales that first helped bring her to stardom, like “The Princess Diaries” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” This time, though, instead of being the plucky ingénue thrust into a glamorous, high-pressure situation, Hathaway is playing a character who’s coming into a new world a little less starry-eyed, and with a firmer sense of self.But “The Idea of You” also works on another, more complicated, even self-referential level. It’s a movie about a woman pushing against societal expectations and getting a lot of grief for it, which is something Hathaway, 41, knows about. More than a decade ago, around the time she won an Academy Award for her work in “Les Misérables,” the online commentariat turned on Hathaway for … who knows, exactly? Some strange groupthink kicked in that caused people to pile on her for seeming like an inauthentic striver — or something. Other than as a case study in the inexplicable and random cruelty of the internet, the whole phenomenon, described at the time as Hathahate, makes even less sense now than it did then.Since that time, Hathaway told me when we talked twice last month, she has been learning to let go of other people’s opinions and expectations of her as an actress, a celebrity and a human being. This has made her work even more compelling to watch and made her more guarded as a public figure. “I really like expressing myself through my work,” says Hathaway, who after so many years and so many great performances is still figuring out the best way to play the puzzling real-life part of a famous actress.There are a bunch of things that are intriguing to me about the new movie. One of them is that there are a few of what I took to be Anne Hathaway psychological Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the film. I’ll get to those, but first: You haven’t done a romance in a while. Can you talk to me about why you wanted to do “The Idea of You”? It’s such a softball question, and I can feel my brain complicating it. More

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      Watch Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor Spar Over Churros in ‘Challengers’

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      The director Luca Guadagnino narrates a tense scene between the two characters.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.Churros have never tasted more bitter than in this scene from “Challengers.”In this sequence, which takes place at Stanford, the character Art (Mike Faist), who is attending the university, reconnects with his dear friend Patrick (Josh O’Connor), who has left education to become a tennis pro. Not present in the scene, yet hanging over it, is Tashi (Zendaya), the woman at the center of their complicated triangle.At this moment, Tashi is dating Patrick, but in this scene, Art is trying to throw a wrench into the relationship. The sequence takes place at the university canteen where the two are chatting over churros. Narrating the sequence, the director Luca Guadagnino said that what is playing out is “a game of rivalry sparkling between these two young boys over Tashi, but at the same time, a jealousy that ignites the relationship also because, probably, these two guys are also jealous of one another.”That tension is played out in the way that Guadagnino shoots the sequence, holding on a long two-shot as the friends discuss Tashi, then cutting when Patrick realizes the game of manipulation that Art is playing.“The main guideline in thinking of this movie and the mise en scène was the classic old Hollywood screwball comedy kind of grammar,” Guadagnino said. “Those great movies were all using, in a beautiful way, the stillness of framing to let the performance breathe in all its ambiguities, in all its unspoken conflicts.”Read the “Challengers” review.Read an interview with the stars of the film.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More