There's plenty of big-name talent in "Boy Erased," including the Australian triumvirate of Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and director-writer-co-star Joel Edgerton. The film, however -- based on Garrard Conley's memoir about his experience with gay-conversion therapy -- largely belongs to Lucas Hedges, in a movie that doesn't oversell its message in exposing the damage such intolerance can inflict.
Give Laura Ingraham an inadvertent assist on "Shut Up and Dribble," a three-part Showtime documentary whose title directly quotes the Fox News host, before proceeding to recount the history of athletes -- and especially NBA players -- speaking out on issues. It's a lesson one would hope isn't necessary, but with athletes passing on trips to the White House, that's obviously not the current state of play.
Rami Malek leaves it all on the stage in "Bohemian Rhapsody," a generally conventional biopic devoted to Freddie Mercury and Queen that captures the electricity of their music, without lending much new to the "A Star is Born"-esque elements of the drama. That aforementioned fictional film somewhat magnifies this fact-based one's limitations, but Malek's magnetic performance and the songs make for a worthwhile Queen tribute, if not a killer.
Disney has become such a franchise/sequel factory there's hesitation criticizing an attempt to try something even a little bit different with its live-action movies. But like "A Wrinkle in Time," "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" is an expensive but clunky fantasy, mashing together mythical elements but mostly hitting discordant notes.
Having practically run out of living artists to hire, Netflix has reached back in time to reanimate Orson Welles, or at least, one of his unfinished films, "The Other Side of the Wind." Painstakingly stitched together, the movie remains a mildly intriguing mess, and far less worthwhile than the accompanying documentary about it and the latter stages of Welles' career, "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead."
Amid a report that the case against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein may be unraveling, lawyers have added a woman to a class-action lawsuit who alleges the producer sexually assaulted her when she was 16.
Julia Roberts is the marquee name, but "Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail provides the defining presence in "Homecoming," whose creepy vibe and unreliable protagonist greatly echo that other paranoid conspiracy thriller. Slow at first, the 10-episode Amazon series finds its groove in later episodes, which explore the kind of provocative themes that make this feel like a "Black Mirror" installment stretched into miniseries form.
