In sheer numbers, it’s the equivalent of McDonald’s closing 153 outlets, or Apple closing maybe three of its stores — items that would generate notice and, depending on the day, a lead business story in the New York Times. It certainly wouldn’t inspire director Edgar Wright to say, “My first thought was, what can be done to help?” or, as Barry Jenkins put it more succinctly, “FUCK.” Of course, these theaters meant much more than their receipts....

This isn’t “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” posturing as a 1970s conspiracy thriller or “Logan” half-committing to its Western heart, nor is it a simple throwback to Christopher Nolan’s Bush-era take on the Dark Knight, which grounded Bruce Wayne in a tactile Gotham while still broadly adhering to the storylines and spectacles expected of its genre. No, the better part of this Batman belongs to another genre altogether, as Reeves stubbornly eschews the usual razzmatazz in favor of a hard-boiled murder-mystery in which The World’s Greatest Detective just happens to be a (very) tortured billionaire with an unexplained hard-on for bats....

The CNN+ sign-up page boasts “live news coverage and exclusive reporting,” “on-demand original series and films,” and “up to 12 live daily and weekly shows each day,” but what CNN+ does not have is a live feed of the CNN cable channel. You can only digitally consume CNN proper the same way you always did: with a traditional cable television subscription that includes the linear channel. A common compromise for media companies with both a linear and streaming presence is to re-air its top programming on delay; CNN+ does not....

Karen is lying flat in the front hallway from a shotgun blast to the chest, while her son Billy is dead in his room around the corner (Karen’s baby girl was mercifully spared). Luke Hadler’s corpse is found a ways down the road, and everyone assumes that he killed his wife and kids before offing himself. A lot of folks in Kiewarra still think Luke was responsible for the Deacon girl’s drowning 20 years ago, and that it was only a matter of time before he got violent again....

Samuel’s world is populated by characters named after real-life Black figures who lived (and sometimes caused chaos) in the Old West. For Samuel and his star Jonathan Majors, who plays the revenge-minded Nat Love, it was about unearthing the true history of the American West and getting into the hearts and minds of lives lived and lost without the narrative of slavery or oppression. Just as essential: finding a way of turning that history, one rarely explored on the big screen, into a brand-new cinematic adventure....

Produced by Nexus Studios and currently vying to be the first animated film ever nominated for Outstanding Television Movie at the Primetime Emmy Awards, “The House” brings together some of the finest artists working in stop-motion today. The separately realized but spiritually related segments by Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels (“This Magnificent Cake”), Niki Lindroth von Bahr (“The Burden”), and Paloma Baeza (“Poles Apart”) amount to a grand work that’s as thematically intriguing as it is aesthetically imposing in its handcraft....

“Black Widow” made nearly $40 million on its opening day. However, that was a month ago — back when the Delta variant was still introducing itself to North America. Today, as areas of the U.S. see infection and hospitalization rates that rival the worst days of the pandemic, that’s a likely factor in the disinterest of the theatrical audience. There’s reason to believe the “Squad” audience might disregard rising Covid rates: Younger and more dedicated to the scope and experience of theatrical presentation, they’re less likely to take advantage of HBO Max availability....

But what’s kept the events of March 18, 1990 in the public fascination is everything about it that still makes no sense. “This is a Robbery” outlines the circumstances surrounding the pilfering of 13 items from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on that legendary day-after-St.-Patrick’s grab. Collectively, it was a nine-figure haul of irreplaceable works from legendary artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Degas. Despite the built-in chaos of the event itself — most notably: a combination of clear operation planning and a seemingly random sacking of paintings and relatively worthless objects — director Colin Barnicle’s four-part series is a fairly solid summary of the details that journalists, investigators, and witnesses have been able to cobble together in the time since....

So with the final format of the 46th edition of the Toronto festival still up in the air, Joana Vicente and Cameron Bailey, Co-Heads of TIFF, announced that they will present the TIFF Ebert Director Award to French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, whose long-delayed space epic “Dune” will debut at Venice before screening at TIFF. “The TIFF Ebert Director Award recognizes filmmakers who have exemplified greatness in their career,” said Bailey, Artistic Director and Co-Head, TIFF in an official statement....

It’s good to be Joseph Kosinski. To be clear, it’s good to be anyone associated with massive smash hit “Top Gun: Maverick,” but it’s especially sweet to be director Kosinski, whose last feature was Sony’s 2017 hotshot firefighter drama “Only the Brave.” Today, he’s the shepherd of Tom Cruise’s unlikely sequel, which has inspired not only huge box office returns but also incredible critical and fan response. What could top that?...

We don’t know how much the current films will fall and even less about the performance of opening titles “Elvis” (Warner Bros.) and “The Black Phone” (Universal), two non-franchise studio features. “Maverick” was the #3 film last weekend ($44.7 million, off only 14 percent) and became even more impressive Monday when it rose to #2 over “Lightyear.” The long-running “Maverick” grossed 25 percent less than the #1 film, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” which dropped 60 percent last weekend....

The bulk of the episode was dedicated to a long segment featuring the current correspondents — Michael Kosta, Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, Roy Wood Jr, and Dulcé Sloan — saying goodbye to Noah. Kosta presented a stock market chart of his friendship with Noah, Lydic performed a fake exit interview asking what her best trait is, Sloan questioned Noah about his plans once he leaves the show, Chieng tried to secure the position as host, and Wood tried to make Noah “come clean” about not being from South Africa....

The largely Asian American student body of Lowell High School also means that the kids are woke without it being obnoxious, and don’t view race as a barrier to success. “Try Harder!” charts the course of a senior year in high school, as a handful of overachieving students endure the grind of college applications and AP tests. Most have their eyes on Stanford or top-tier UC schools, and by the end of the film, not everyone gets in....

One of the most exciting facets of TV’s “offseason” awards is the fact that it’s a completely different game. While Emmy season is a single-minded marathon focused entirely on that big night in September, the past few months have seen dozens of organizations (and associated acronyms) announce nominations. It’s the latter part of that equation that makes it so difficult to track which shows are seeing more success than others and which are flying under the radar....

Variety reported that Tom Ascheim, the Warner Bros. president of global kids, young adult, and classics, will begin heading HBO Max’s younger-leaning content. Ascheim, whose resume includes Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang, Turner Classic Movies, and Disney’s Freeform, will take over responsibilities from HBO and HBO Max content chief Casey Bloys. Ascheim joined Warner Bros. in June. Per Variety, Ascheim is expected to lead a new preschool-centric content division that will center on some of the company’s most famous characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweeety Bird, Tom & Jerry, and other Warner Bros....

It didn’t go super well? I mean, Harry and Meghan seem fine. Baby No. 2 is on the way! They got one of those gonzo nine-figure Netflix deals! They launched a charitable foundation named after extremely cute baby No. 1! They have a sweet house in Montecito, California, down the street from the smart and effervescent Oprah Winfrey, who was a guest at their wedding! Apparently, the British Royal Family hates this particularly sunny, particularly Californian style of do-gooding, and so Harry and Meghan want to talk it out with their neighbor Oprah for the benefit of us all....

“I knew early on that I didn’t want it to be, ‘Episode 1: Game 1. Let’s see, if they win or lose.’ I think that this is more a look at a football organization and the people involved in it, and how they interact with each other, the essence of who they are as people,” series director Rudy Valdez said. “I don’t want to always find that kid or that character or that person who is the super-duper unique story that’s a one in a million....

The good news is that most everybody who gives this thing a shot will probably sit through the feather-light first two acts and stick around for the payoff at the end, as the “we” of Rosenberg’s film are played by two actors with a rare and proven talent for mining literary depth from characters that exist between Nissan commercials. That shared gift sparks a chemistry that makes us want Lori (“You’re the Worst” star Aya Cash) and Doug (“The Good Place” breakout William Jackson Harper) to get married from the very first shot, but the low-key movie that falls around these languishing thirtysomethings is at its best when pushing back against that Pavlovian response — when challenging our natural assumptions about what happily ever after has to look like....

First of all, Oscar nominations voting is closed, so whatever (minimal) impact this has on the race, it’s on the final phase of Oscar campaigning, which begins after Oscar nominations are announced February 8. The BAFTA awards will be held March 13 in London; Oscar voting closes March 22. Most Academy voters don’t watch the BAFTAs on the BBC and BBC America, but they see who wins and winning momentum always matters....