Cinema, Theater & TV news

• Squid Game season two review – TV that will make you uncomfortably bloodthirsty indeed

  26-12-2024 06:00
  When we get into the actual games, the smash-kit K-drama finds its feet. But it spends far too many episodes dragging its heels extremely painfully. Series three must do betterOne of Hollywood’s many bad habits is the bloat caused by splitting a story in half in a bid to double the profits (cough, cough, Dune and Wicked). Squid Game was always a perfect one-series story. Gambling addict Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) became Player 456, a desperate man who attempts to pay off his debts by taki
  
  Read more

• ‘From Ground Zero’ Review: An Inside View of Gaza

  26-12-2024 17:09 via nytimes.com
  This collection of 22 shorts by Palestinian filmmakers presents on-the-ground accounts of life and death that might otherwise be ignored.
  
  Read more

• ‘What a gift!’ The best television you never watched in 2024

  26-12-2024 14:00
  From orgasm-drama Slip to gorgeous comedy We Might Regret This, there’s been so much brilliant TV this year that you may have let some corkers pass you by. Here are the finest shows to catch up on nowThe premise sells itself: a thirtysomething woman is transported to a parallel life each time she orgasms. But, actually, this lends itself surprisingly well to digging deep into millennial frustrations, anxiety and ennui. Zoe Lister-Jones plays Mae Cannon, a New York art curator who feels stu
  
  Read more

• ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’: Frank Capra’s Two-Fisted Santa

  26-12-2024 13:00 via nytimes.com
  This 1936 comedy, starring Gary Cooper and showing for a week at Film Forum, turns the tables on the period’s metropolitan melodramas.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Broadway Shows Closing Soon: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Cult of Love’ and More

  26-12-2024 11:02 via nytimes.com
  Thornton Wilder’s classic, starring Jim Parsons, wraps up, as does Leslye Headland’s angsty family drama. Catch these and other plays while you can.
  
  Read more

• ‘2073’ Review: Back to the Future

  26-12-2024 11:02 via nytimes.com
  Asif Kapadia’s documentary-fiction hybrid film, starring Samantha Morton, visualizes a dystopian San Francisco.
  
  Read more

• The Lessons Pianos Teach in ‘The Piano Lesson’

  26-12-2024 11:01 via nytimes.com
  A look the piano designs for some of the various versions of August Wilson’s play, including the latest film adaptation.
  
  Read more

• ‘Santosh’ Review: When Justice Isn’t Just

  26-12-2024 11:01 via nytimes.com
  An Indian widow becomes a police officer in this crime drama that offers searing social critique.
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• The Road Trip review – this icky romcom by numbers is oddly romance free

  26-12-2024 09:00
  
  The first few episodes of this adaptation of Beth O’Leary’s novel feature zero chemistry between the leads. It’s one for fans of the genre onlyThe easiest way to describe The Road Trip would be to call it the TV equivalent of an airport novel. Perhaps that is because it is. Beth O’Leary has long kept the WH Smith industrial complex alive, with bestselling novels including The Flatshare, which sold more than 1m copies. That book was adapted into a six-part TV series in 202
  
  Read more

• TV tonight: the Outnumbered gang reunite to make us all feel ancient

  26-12-2024 07:00
  
  After eight years, the Brockmans are back and on fine form. Plus: a turkey crown and Christmas cracker battle it out. Here’s what to watch this evening9.40pm, BBC One
  In news guaranteed to make you feel old, Sue and Pete Brockman (Claire Skinner and Hugh Dennis) are now grandparents. Eight years after we last visited the family, the whole gang are back together. However, the course of family Christmas never runs smooth, and this one is no exception, with celebrations menaced by neighbours,
  
  Read more

• ‘I get spotted in the M&S knicker department’: Lorraine Ashbourne on her 2024 TV takeover

  26-12-2024 07:00
  From Bridgerton to Sherwood and Alma’s Not Normal, the actor has lit up our screens all year – and her ‘victory lap’ is only just starting …Lorraine Ashbourne has had a massive year. “I know! People keep saying: oh God, Lorraine, get off the telly, we want somebody else,” she says. “But it has been extraordinary.” She kicked things off in January with ITV’s entertaining disaster thriller After the Flood, playing Sophie Rundle’s t
  
  Read more

• Gavin & Stacey: The Finale review – you will be forcibly moved to tears

  25-12-2024 23:35
  This final farewell to the hugely loved sitcom is profoundly bittersweet. Alongside the laughs, it’s a beautiful, poignant piece of televisionI’m not crying, you’re crying. OK, fine – I’m bawling my eyes out. And not just because it’s time to say a final farewell to Gavin, Stacey and the rest of the Barry and Billericay contingents – but because their swansong is a beautiful, extraordinarily poignant bonanza of nostalgia, love and (eventually) wish-fulfi
  
  Read more

• From Roger Moore With Love review – TV to fall asleep to

  25-12-2024 23:20
  
  This biopic paints a strangely dull picture of the one-time Bond. He seems very nice – just not very interesting, despite a bizarre Steve Coogan voiceover’s attempt to inject energyOn any other day of the year, a documentary about the life of Roger Moore simply would not work. This is because, on the whole, not a lot actually seemed to happen in it. Oh, sure, there was The Saint and The Persuaders and James Bond, not to mention a surprising amount of marriages. But if From Roger Moor
  
  Read more

• The best Christmas companions possible: Wallace & Gromit’s triumphant TV return

  25-12-2024 20:30
  
  Feathers McGraw is back – and more menacing than ever. Our claymation heroes’ delightful attempt to face him is hilariously packed with jokes – they’re just incapable of bad televisionFor many, the highlight of the entire Christmas schedule will have been a treat rare enough to savour: a new Wallace & Gromit. Thirty-five years after their charmingly slapdash debut, A Grand Day Out, the claymation duo are the closest thing this country has to Mickey Mouse – belov
  
  Read more

• Doctor Who: Joy to the World review – a warm, moving Christmas special for the ages

  25-12-2024 19:10
  Nicola Coughlan and Ncuti Gatwa’s comic timing is impeccable, but it’s the touching way this festive episode grapples with yuletide isolation that makes it a classicThere are so many things to love about Christmas: twinkly lights, desserts to set on fire and, of course, Doctor Who specials. But while I am in cheerful mood, wearing a Christmas jumper and having followed breakfast with advent-calendar chocolates, I am aware that for many people this is the loneliest time of year. So it
  
  Read more

• Doctor Who: Joy to the World – 2024 Christmas special recap

  25-12-2024 19:10
  Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan’s bold festive special blends Christmas romcom tropes with a bit of dinosaur poo – and breaks hearts in the processThis time last year we got our first full-length look at Ncuti Gatwa in the role. Fast forward 12 months, and here was a man with a season behind him, beaming his way confidently through a story that was a mishmash of Christmas movie viewing genres, if somewhat light on plot.In this Steven Moffat-penned tale, we got an action sequence on a
  
  Read more

• Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special 2024 – open thread

  25-12-2024 16:30
  
  Seasons greetings, glitterati! Which judge has been on the egg nog – and who will win the silver star? Join us for every minute of the ho-ho-hoofingWhich dances will be delightful? Whose footwork will be frightful? And who will be Strictly’s worst ever Widdicombe? It’s just 11 days since Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell lifted the fabled glitterball trophy in one of the most joyous Strictly moments ever. It’s a mere four days since we were treated to anniversary docume
  
  Read more

• ‘Babygirl’ Review: Nicole Kidman Takes Control

  25-12-2024 16:00 via nytimes.com
  Nicole Kidman bares body and some soul in a story about a married woman who enters a dominant-submissive affair with a younger man.
  
  Read more

• How Nicholas Hoult Navigates a Transylvanian Village in ‘Nosferatu’

  25-12-2024 13:00 via nytimes.com
  The director Robert Eggers narrates a one-shot sequence from his film.
  
  Read more

• ‘Nosferatu’ | Anatomy of a Scene

  25-12-2024 12:55 via nytimes.com
  
  Robert Eggers narrates a sequence from his film featuring Nicholas Hoult.
  
  Read more

• ‘A Complete Unknown’ Review: Timothée Chalamet Goes Electric

  25-12-2024 11:09 via nytimes.com
  The actor stars as a young Bob Dylan, who woos folk followers only to betray them later at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
  
  Read more

• ‘Vermiglio’ Review: Remote Rites of Passage

  25-12-2024 11:01 via nytimes.com
  During World War II, life changes for a family in a Northern Italian mountain village when a Sicilian stranger arrives.
  
  Read more

• “Nosferatu” Review: Robert Eggers Takes on Dracula

  25-12-2024 11:01 via nytimes.com
  The director Robert Eggers dares you to feel seduced in his take on the classic vampire tale, starring Bill Skarsgard and Lily Rose Depp.
  
  Read more

• In ‘Babygirl’ Nicole Kidman Wants Him. But What Does Harris Dickinson Want?

  25-12-2024 11:01 via nytimes.com
  The rising British actor has a sexy star turn opposite in the new film, but he is of two minds when it comes to his career: “Acting is neurotic.”
  
  Read more

• Who’s Who in the Bob Dylan Biopic, ‘A Complete Unkown’

  25-12-2024 11:00 via nytimes.com
  The biopic, with Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, is peppered with figures from the folk world and beyond. These are some of them.
  
  Read more

• The First ‘Peter Pan’ Blockbuster Turns 100 but Hasn’t Grown Up

  25-12-2024 11:00 via nytimes.com
  The silent film debuted in 1924 to much fanfare but was later lost. Eventually rediscovered and restored, it has gone on to charm new generations of fans.
  
  Read more

• ‘Better Man’ Review: The Boy in the Band

  25-12-2024 11:00 via nytimes.com
  The singer Robbie Williams’s caustic, often vulnerable narration is the melody that enriches this musical biopic’s otherwise familiar beats of pop stardom.
  
  Read more

• A Complete Character Guide to ‘A Complete Unknown’

  25-12-2024 11:00 via nytimes.com
  The biopic, with Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, is peppered with figures from the folk world and beyond. These are some of them.
  
  Read more

• Katherine Parkinson on Rivals: ‘I’m just a normal 47-year-old woman who has breastfed two girls’

  25-12-2024 07:00
  
  Her dynamite romance with Danny Dyer in the raunchy Jilly Cooper hit is the living definition of screen chemistry. The actor opens up about booze, being sexual – and why the porn generation have got it all wrongIf Rivals wasn’t your standout show of 2024, so be it. It takes all sorts. But if it was, you’ll be in no doubt which was the truest, purest love story. Lizzie Vereker – the self-effacing erotica author, bullied by her husband – is supposed to be plain in the
  
  Read more

• Christmas Day TV: Wallace and Gromit are back – with a naughty gnome

  25-12-2024 07:00
  
  Merry Christmas! It’s time for another adventure with our cheese-munching inventors. Plus: Gavin & Stacey returns for the big finale. Here’s what to watchtoday6.10pm, BBC One
  Feathers McGraw is back and that spells trouble for Wallace and Gromit in this eagerly awaited return for the claymation legends. But what has the villainous penguin got in store for our heroes? When Wallace invents a “smart gnome” that seems to have a mind of its own, he finds himself in trouble
  
  Read more

Follow @newslock_cinema on Twitter!