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Tag: Documentaries

  • Oscar run is bittersweet for brother and friend who made film after death of journalist Brent Renaud

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    LOS ANGELES — When Craig Renaud’s big brother and collaborator in covering years of wars and humanitarian crises Brent Renaud was killed by Russian forces firing on his vehicle in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, he was thrown into a world of horrible loss and uncertainty.

    One thing was clear, though. He needed to keep filming. His brother would’ve expected nothing else.

    “It was a conversation we had a lot. What would we do if somebody was killed? And it was a promise to each other that we would keep filming and telling the story,” Oscar nominee Craig Renaud said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have been covering this for almost 20 years in wars with other people. Why would it be any different when it happens to one of us?”

    The result, three years later, was “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” and an Academy Award nomination for best documentary short film. It’s brought mixed feelings for Craig Renaud and his producer and collaborator on the film Juan Arredondo, a photographer seriously wounded in the attack who was working with Brent Renaud on a project about refugees for Time Studios.

    “I don’t think this is the documentary that we wanted to be celebrated for,” Arredondo said. “I don’t think I ever dreamed of doing a documentary about my friend dying.”

    Craig Renaud said he has lingering survivor’s guilt for not being at his brother’s side, and Arredondo, who desperately tried to keep Brent Renaud alive after they were shot, has more than enough of his own.

    “It is unbelievably incredible to be able to honor him like this and have him immortalized and his name being in the name of the film and have people be talking about him at this level,” Renaud said. But, he added, “every time we have a screening, we are reliving that trauma.”

    The film unsparingly shows Brent Renaud’s dead body. We see it covered with a jacket in the immediate aftermath attack, and later in a coffin being sealed to ship back to the brothers’ Arkansas home. We see his brother filming him up close, showing the war scars on the lifeless face, and explaining why he needs to.

    And we see the deeply emotional meeting in a Ukraine hospital between Craig Renaud and Arredondo, who would need 13 surgeries and two years of physical therapy to recover.

    “I miss my friend,” Arredondo says through tears. “I miss him too,” Renaud says.

    “The gift of this film,” Arredondo told the AP four years after that moment, “is to heal in some way, to give closure to some of those questions that I had.”

    Despite its inevitable darkness, most of the film’s 37 minutes celebrate the life’s work of its subject, who won a Peabody and several other awards for his reporting with his brother before his death at 50. It opens quietly, with him thoughtfully and sympathetically interviewing a teen migrant from Honduras on his journey to the U.S. Another key scene comes at a hospital crowded with wounded people in Somalia, where a patient summons Brent to him.

    “You are very honest and faithful, the way you hold that camera,” the man says. “It is not just (that) you’re just holding it, you are doing it from your heart.”

    Craig Renaud says he hesitates to tell the story behind that clip because people will think he made it up.

    “Brent came to me in a dream and was like, ‘You missed the right footage,’” he said. “I went back and I kept digging. And I found that moment. And to this day, that is my favorite moment of the film. I mean, when I first discovered it and watched it, I just had chills all over my body.”

    The Russia-Ukraine war has loomed large among Oscar documentaries.

    “20 Days in Mariupol” from The Associated Press won best documentary feature in 2024. Last year, “Porcelain War,” about Ukrainian artists in the war, was a nominee. This year’s feature category includes “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” in which a teacher pushes back against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s control of information in Russia during the war.

    The glitter of awards season has stayed secondary to the work Renaud and Arredondo have returned to. Renaud spoke to the AP from Panama. Arredondo was on assignment in Colombia, where he was raised. He was summoned by the New York Times when he was at the Oscar nominees luncheon, in a ballroom where he was being feted alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet.

    “I strongly believe that what we do matters,” Arredondo said. “I think what happened to us, helped me think that this is my purpose and this is why I survived. I have to continue to do it.”

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  • It’s a quiet box office weekend as ‘GOAT’ edges ‘Wuthering Heights’

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    It was a battle of the holdovers at the North American box office this weekend, with the family friendly film “GOAT” edging out the R-rated “Wuthering Heights.”

    Sony Pictures Animation’s “GOAT” took in $17 million, while Warner Bros.’ “Wuthering Heights” earned $14.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. Both films are in their second weekend.

    Overall, it was a quiet weekend at movie theaters around the country, with new offerings all opening under $10 million. Those results applied to the faith-based sequel “I Can Only Imagine 2,” the Glen Powell black comedy “How to Make a Killing” and the horror film “Psycho Killer,” which currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. One bright spot in theaters was Baz Luhrmann’s immersive documentary “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which earned $3.3 million from only 325 locations in its limited IMAX release. That film expands to nationwide distribution on Feb. 27.

    “GOAT” dropped a slim 38% in its second weekend in theaters, which the studio attributed to positive word-of-mouth. The Stephen Curry-produced movie, about a small goat with big sports dreams (voiced by “Stranger Things’” Caleb McLaughlin) has made over $58.3 million. Globally, its running total is at $102.3 million.

    “Wuthering Heights” meanwhile fell 57% from its opening last weekend, bringing its domestic total to $60 million. Internationally it added another $26.3 million, pushing its global total to $151.7 million against an $80 million production budget. The movie’s top international market continues to be the U.K., where it has made $22.5 million alone.

    Third place for the weekend went to Lionsgate and Kingdom Story’s “I Can Only Imagine 2,” a follow-up to the 2018 Dennis Quaid movie that made $86 million against a $7 million budget. The sequel opened with $8 million, a far cry from the first film’s $17 million launch, though that was in line with expectations. It did score a rare A+ CinemaScore.

    Amazon and MGM’s “Crime 101” fell 59% in its second weekend, bringing in $5.8 million to take fourth place. The Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo heist thriller has now made $24.7 million against a reported $90 million budget. “Send Help” rounded out the top five with $4.5 million.

    “How to Make a Killing” landed in sixth place with $3.6 million. A24 released the StudioCanal movie in 1,600 North American theaters. The film, loosely inspired by “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” stars Powell as a man who, in a quest to acquire a $28 billion inheritance, decides to kill off his family members. Directed by John Patton Ford (“Emily the Criminal”), “How to Make a Killing” was not well-received by critics: it’s sitting at a “rotten” 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.

    “Pyscho Killer,” released by 20th Century Studios, fared much worse and opened outside of the top 10. The horror-thriller written by Andrew Kevin Walker ( “Seven” ) and directed by Gavin Polone (a notable television and film producer in his directorial debut) tanked in its first weekend in theaters with $1.6 million in ticket sales from 1,110 theaters. Audiences were not any happier with it than critics; According to PostTrak, only 31% of ticket buyers would “definitely recommend” it.

    With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

    1. “GOAT,” $17 million.

    2. “Wuthering Heights,” $14.2 million.

    3. “I Can Only Imagine 2,” $8 million.

    4. “Crime 101,” $5.8 million.

    5. “Send Help,” $4.5 million.

    6. “How to Make a Killing,” $3.6 million.

    7. “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” $3.3 million.

    8. “Solo Mio,” $2.6 million.

    9. “Zootopia 2,” $2.3 million.

    10. “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” $1.8 million.

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  • In Oscar-Nominated Documentary ‘The Perfect Neighbor,’ Police Catch—But Never Stop—a Killer

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    When Ajike Owens was alive, she dreamed of becoming a famous entrepreneur. “You laugh at me,” she’d tell her mother, Pam Dias, “but one day the whole world’s going to know my name.” Years later, filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir thought about Owens’s avowal while sifting through the 30-plus hours of police body-camera footage and audio recordings that make up The Perfect Neighbor, her Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary about the two years leading up to Owens’s killing.

    The documentary tells the story of Susan Lorincz, who regularly called police to the otherwise tight-knit Florida community where Owens was raising her four children to complain about neighborhood kids playing near her rented property. On June 2, 2023, Lorincz rang authorities over a dispute involving Owens’s children, roller skates, and a missing iPad. Minutes later, the white 58-year-old Lorincz fatally shot her Black neighbor, 35-year-old Owens, through her closed front door.

    Susan Lorincz tells her side of a neighborhood dispute, as captured in police body-cam footage that fuels much of The Perfect Neighbor.Courtesy of Netflix

    As the case against Lorincz was coming together, attorneys for Owens’s family gained access to hours of police body-camera footage through the Freedom of Information Act. Reviewing it alongside her producing partner and husband, Nikon Kwantu (whose cousin was Owens’s best friend, Kimberly Robinson-Jones), Gandbhir said it “reminded us of films like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. The community had lived a real-life horror film. So we wanted to create something that placed you in the community.” To raise both media awareness around Owens’s killing and money for the family, Gandbhir and her editor, Viridiana Lieberman, made a film in which cops inadvertently serve as cinematographers.

    Image may contain Adult Person Face Head Photography Portrait Senior Citizen and Hair

    Geeta Gandbhir is a double Oscar nominee for The Perfect Neighbor (best documentary feature) and The Devil Is Busy (best documentary short).Bryan Derballa/Getty Images

    Some have argued that watching a film told largely through the very same system that failed Owens could make viewers identify too closely with law enforcement. “We were really not that concerned with the perspective of the police. They were just the vehicle to showcase this community as they were. When the police come into communities of color, surveillance can be used to criminalize,” Gandbhir tells Vanity Fair in response. “We wanted it to humanize.”

    She doubles down on the belief that “our society essentially failed this community. [The police] didn’t see them as worth protecting. Susan was able to weaponize her race and privilege. And by not realizing she was a danger to the community and probably herself, her life is ruined too,” Gandbhir continues. “She’s ostensibly spending the rest of her life in jail. And as an abolitionist at heart, I really wish that on no one.”

    Lorincz attempted to utilize Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as a defense, arguing that she was legally allowed to use deadly force because she feared for her life when Owens banged on her door demanding to speak after her son said Lorincz threw a pair of skates at him. This was also the successful legal tactic of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in 2013. In 2024, Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 25 years in prison. She has appealed her conviction.

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    Savannah Walsh

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  • Why Frederick Wiseman Was the Greatest Documentary Filmmaker Ever

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    His work depended on access. He filmed in hospital rooms where patients and families faced incommensurable agonies with the aid of the medical staff (“Near Death”); he filmed in administrative offices (“At Berkeley,” “Ex Libris”), in businesses (“The Store,” “Model”), in government buildings (“City Hall”). Yet people tended to speak uninhibitedly in his presence. He told me that they simply forgot he was filming there. It helps that Wiseman was slight of stature and calm of manner. It’s hard to imagine him passing unnoticed if he’d had the height and the bearing of Charlton Heston.

    It’s also hard to imagine Wiseman having started a similar career a decade sooner, because his films depended, to a significant extent, on a new technology that had begun to reveal its power—a system that allowed a lightweight tape recorder and a relatively lightweight movie camera to synch up, with no cable connecting them. Such equipment proved its artistic importance in 1960, with Robert Drew’s “Primary” and, in France, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s “Chronicle of a Summer”—the early generation of films in the format called cinéma vérité, or direct cinema. Wiseman said he was inspired by Drew’s 1961 documentary “Mooney vs. Fowle,” a chronicle of a high-school-football championship game. When Wiseman got started, it was in a new field that, although burgeoning, seemed both wide open and unformed. He took hold of a still-young format and, guided from the start by an unyielding sense of principle, made a body of work so original, idea rich, and unified that it seems foreordained—a historic fusion of investigation and the inner life.

    Wiseman brought intellectual form to nonfiction through the single word “institutions,” a concept that carried the philosophical heft of the contemporaneous work of Michel Foucault; Wiseman similarly probed the intersections of systems of knowledge and power, and drew attention to the physical authority that ultimately backs up the abstract determinations of administrative rules. Where Foucault exhumed a hidden historical archive, Wiseman created a new one, in real time. He also created an institution of his own, Zipporah Films, to distribute his work. (Founded in 1971, it was named for his wife, Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman, who was also a law professor; she died in 2021.)

    He was a true independent whose method was as rigorous and as singular as his intellectual focus. On location, he worked with a spare crew comprising a cinematographer (from 1980 to 2020, John Davey) and a camera assistant; Wiseman himself carried the tape recorder and wielded the microphone until, for his last documentary, “Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros,” from 2023, he could no longer do so.

    As the literal bearer and the first hearer of his films’ sound, Wiseman was also the immediate receiver of the subjects’ discourse in its most concentrated form, on headphones, and his material relationship to these voices is embodied in the work. Much of the action is in the form of talking, which the incisively analytical images parse with the emotional precision of dramatic stagings, lending the talk a sort of emphatic onscreen incarnation. Filming with his ears and listening visually, Wiseman constructed mighty grids of connections and implications, long-term dramas on vast architectural frameworks as if they were cinematic operas. “Welfare” feels both colossal and brisk at two and three-quarter hours; “Central Park” is nearly three; “La Comédie-Française” approaches four; “Menus-Plaisirs” hits four; “Belfast, Maine,” “At Berkeley,” and “City Hall” exceed four. “Near Death” (which I consider a supreme masterwork, alongside “Welfare” and “In Jackson Heights” and the early, more journalistic “Hospital” and “Law and Order”) runs two minutes short of six hours.

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    Richard Brody

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  • ‘Melania’ falls, ‘Send Help’ holds steady at No. 1 on quiet weekend in theaters

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    NEW YORK — Hollywood largely ceded attention to football over a slow box-office weekend, with the survival thriller “Send Help” repeating as No. 1 in ticket sales and the Melania Trump documentary “Melania” falling sharply in its second weekend.

    Super Bowl weekend is typically one of the lowest attended moviegoing times of the year. It was the second slowest weekend last year and in 2024 it ranked dead last for moviegoing.

    Studios instead put their focus on advertising movies for the massive television audience. Among the trailers expected to hit the NFL broadcast Sunday were The Walt Disney Co.’s “Mandalorian and Grogu,” Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael” and Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”

    In North American theaters, the Disney.-20th Century Studios release “Send Help,” directed by Sam Raimi, lead all films with $10 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. With $53.7 million globally thus far, the R-rated survival thriller has proved a solid midbudget success. Disney meanwhile watched its remarkably long-lasting “Zootopia 2″ cross $1.8 billion worldwide in its 11th week of release.

    “Melania,” from Amazon MGM, added 300 theaters in its second weekend but dropped steeply with to $2.4 million in ticket sales, down 67% from its much-discussed debut. The rapid downturn means the Brett Ratner-directed documentary is likely heading toward flop territory given its high price tag. Amazon MGM paid $40 million for film rights, plus some $35 million to market it.

    The North American total for “Melania” stands at $13.4 million. Amazon MGM has not released international figures, though they’re expected to be paltry.

    Kevin Wilson, head of domestic distribution for the studio, said the movie’s box-office performance “is a critical first moment that validates our wholistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.”

    The film’s ticket sales — which would be very good for a less expensive documentary — were a talking point throughout the week. Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel hammered the movie’s sales. Kimmel called them a “rigged outcome.” Elsewhere in theaters, the Italy-set Kevin James romantic comedy “Solo Mio” debuted with a robust $7.2 million, a major win for Angel Studios, best known for its faith-based releases. “Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience,” a K-pop concert film released by Bleecker Street, launched with $5.6 million, and an additional $13.2 million overseas. The Luc Besson-directed Bram Stoker adaptation “Dracula” opened with $4.5 million, a studio-best debut for the indie distributor Vertical.

    One of the most unusual releases in theaters, however, remains the low-budget indie “Iron Lung.” The YouTube filmmaker Markiplier, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, self-financed and self-distributed the R-rated video game adaptation, along with writing, directing and starring in it. In its second weekend, “Iron Lung” collected $6.2 million, bringing its two-week total to $31.2 million. It cost $3 million to make.

    With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

    1. “Send Help,” $10 million.

    2. “Solo Mio,” $7.2 million.

    3. “Iron Lung,” $6 million.

    4. “Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience,” $5.6 million.

    5. “Dracula,” $4.5 million.

    6. “Zootopia 2,” $4 million.

    7. “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” $3.5 million.

    8. “The Strangers: Chapter 3,” $3.5 million.

    9. “Shelter,” $2.4 million.

    10. “Melania,” $2.4 million.

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  • Best Documentaries on Tubi (February 2026)

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    Documentaries can be many things. They can be diaries, profiles, calls to action, exposés, investigations, and everything in between. While many of us fall in love with film — either as viewers or filmmakers — through fictional stories, sometimes the most powerful ones, the ones that stretch beyond imagination, are real. If you’re looking for some of the best documentaries, Tubi is the place to find them. No, really, they have everything. Here are just a few of the best documentaries on Tubi.

    What are the best documentaries on Tubi?

    If you’re looking for a streaming platform stacked with some of the most award-winning, critically acclaimed documentaries, you’ll find them there. Just a note: some of these documentaries address highly sensitive material. If you’d like to learn more about the themes, you may want to review their ratings and content disclosures before viewing.

    Cartel Land (2015)

    From documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman (City of Ghosts, American Symphony, The First Wave) comes Cartel Land, an urgent look at militias fighting cartels in the ongoing war on drugs. The film follows two resistance groups taking a stand against cartel control and violence: one led by an Arizona rancher patrolling the U.S.–Mexico border, and the other by Mexican vigilantes confronting the cartels from within their own communities. Cartel Land was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.

    Gaza (2019)

    Directed by Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell, Gaza is a documentary that deliberately eschews political commentary, instead placing its subjects at the center and allowing them to speak for themselves. The result is a deeply human portrait of a place most often defined by conflict, shaped through the everyday lives of its people.

    Seen through today’s lens, the film carries an added weight. Much of what is shown — the streets, homes, and routines captured on screen — no longer exists. By following children, students, fishermen, artists, and families as they navigate daily life with astounding resilience, Gaza isn’t just a snapshot in time but a record of lives and spaces that have since been permanently altered.

    Deliver Us From Evil (2006)

    Winner of Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Deliver Us From Evil is a harrowing investigation into decades of sexual abuse committed by Catholic priest Oliver O’Grady from the late 1970s through the 1990s, and the institutional efforts to conceal his crimes. Amy Berg takes viewers into the investigation through interviews with survivors, lawyers, theologians, and O’Grady himself. Beyond a retelling of the painful details, Berg’s film also exposes the power structures that allowed the abuse to continue. Deliver Us From Evil also earned major critics’ awards from the Boston and New York film critics’ circles.

    Blackfish (2013)

    You probably remember this documentary making waves (no pun intended) when it was released in 2013. The film by Gabriela Cowperthwaite shattered public perception of SeaWorld. Blackfish puts a critical lens on the controversy surrounding the practice of capturing sealife for human entertainment. Specifically, Blackfish looks at Tilikum, an orca captured off the coast of Norway and kept in captivity at SeaWorld. In 2010, Tilikum pulled whale trainer Dawn Brancheau into the water during a show. She later died due to drowning and blunt force trauma.

    Blackfish argues that the captivity of whales leads to extreme stress, which in turn contributes to unpredictable and violent behavior. Upon its release, the documentary fundamentally shifted public perception of SeaWorld and the ethics of confining animals for entertainment. Blackfish won Best Documentary at the 2013 Golden Satellite Awards and received a Sundance Grand Jury Prize Documentary nomination.

    West of Memphis (2012)​

    The second documentary on our list from Amy Berg is West of Memphis, produced by Peter Jackson. The feature examines the case of the West Memphis Three — three teenagers convicted of the brutal murders of three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas in 1993. Revisiting the case years later, the film follows new investigative leads and legal efforts that resulted in the exoneration of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley.

    How to Die in Oregon (2011)

    Directed by Peter Richardson, How to Die in Oregon takes us into an intimate and deeply personal look at terminally ill patients deciding to avail themselves of physician-assisted death with Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. Through interviews with patients, doctors, and families, How to Die in Oregon examines the emotional, ethical, and legal realities surrounding this complicated choice. The film is respectful in its handling of this sensitive material and doesn’t argue for or against it. Rather, it centers the lived experiences of those facing death. How to Die in Oregon won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.

    Inside Job (2010)

    Inside Job won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2011. Directed by Charles Ferguson, the film offers a comprehensive investigation into the policies, deregulation, and conflicts of interest that led to the 2008 global financial collapse. Structured in five parts, Inside Job traces the history of the American financial industry from early deregulation to the housing bubble, the ensuing crisis, and the aftermath in its immediate wake.

    The Act of Killing (2012)

    This experimental documentary is as controversial as it is unsettling. The film focuses on those directly involved in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966, when alleged communists and others opposed to General Suharto’s autocratic regime were tortured and executed.

    The Act of Killing centers on Anwar Congo, a grandfather, national hero, and former executioner in the genocide of one million people. Joshua Oppenheimer invites Anwar and his associates to reenact their killings in the style of their favorite American film genres, from gangster movies to musicals. The result is deeply strange, often surreal, and ultimately gut-wrenching.

    Citizenfour (2014)

    Citizenfour is a real-time political thriller that documents one of the most consequential whistleblower revelations of the 21st century. Directed by Laura Poitras, the film follows her secret meetings with Edward Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room as he reveals classified information about the U.S. government’s global surveillance programs. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

    Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine (2013)

    When Matthew Shepard was brutally tortured and murdered in Wyoming in 1998, his death became a defining symbol for the LGBTQ+ movement. The murder drew national attention to acts of violence perpetrated against the community. In the years since, Shepard has often been remembered as a symbol, though who he was as a person sometimes falls into the background. This documentary is a moving eulogy that offers an intimate portrait of Matt Shepard as a friend, brother, and son. Centering love, community, and the healing process after unimaginable loss, the film resists sensationalism and reframes Shepard’s legacy beyond headlines.

    How we picked the best documentaries on Tubi

    We were pleasantly surprised by the sheer volume of documentaries available on Tubi. Not that we didn’t expect it, per se, but we just weren’t ready for the HBO-level number of options. Not to mention just the number of documentaries, but also the award-winning films. There are plenty to choose from, so we narrowed down our picks to films that have had a measurable impact, as well as those that are the most critically acclaimed or especially resonant in the current moment.

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    Erin Boswell

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  • The truth about Neverland as Michael Jackson is shown there with Gavin Arvizo in C4 documentary

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    Michael Jackson: The Trial has landed on Channel 4 and, once again, the spotlight is firmly on the King of Pop and his most famous home.

    And viewers are already asking what really became of Neverland.

    The opening episode of the four-part series returned repeatedly to Michael’s sprawling ranch, using previously unheard audio recordings to paint a deeply unsettling picture.

    Fans heard Michael speak about Neverland as a place where children could ‘remain young forever’, echoing his long held obsession with Peter Pan.

    The programme also revisited his friendship with 10-year-old cancer patient, Gavin Arvizo.

    Neverland Ranch features heavily in Michael Jackson: The Trial (Credit: Splashnews.com)

    Michael regularly invited Gavin and other children to stay at Neverland, presenting it as a magical refuge inspired by fantasy.

    As the documentary makes clear, that dreamlike vision later became inseparable from the serious child abuse allegations made against him.

    Michael Jackson: The Trial continues tonight, with scenes showing police raiding Neverland after Michael admitted to sharing his bed with children.

    As the story unfolds, many viewers are asking the same question. What actually happened to Neverland?

    Michael Jackson: What happened to Neverland?

    Neverland Ranch has remained a source of fascination long after Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009.

    The vast estate in Santa Barbara County, California, served as both his private home and a personal amusement park from 1988 until 2005.

    The ranch has been thrust back into public view by Michael Jackson: The Trial. In its opening moments, sombre music underscored its isolation across 3,000 acres.

    In previously unheard recordings, Michael described the privacy the land gave him and his desire to recreate the childhood he felt he had missed.

    “Peter Pan knew what the real golden magic of childhood was all about,” he said, describing children staying young forever at Neverland.

    Tonight’s episode will show the police raid that marked a turning point for the property.

    Neverland also featured heavily in the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck alleged they were groomed and abused there as children.

    Old footage from Neverland Ranch features in Michael Jackson: The Trial (Credit: Channel 4)

    Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch and its changing name

    Michael Jackson bought Neverland Ranch in 1988, but it had already gone through several identities.

    When it was built in 1980, it was known as Zaca Laderas Ranch.

    Developer William Bone purchased it in 1981 and renamed it Sycamore Valley Ranch. That changed again when Michael bought the property in 1988 for around $17 million, according to The New York Times.

    Michael renamed it Neverland after the fictional island in Peter Pan. He first visited the ranch in 1983 while meeting Sir Paul McCartney, who was staying there during the filming of Say Say Say.

    When did Michael Jackson leave?

    Michael left Neverland in 2005 following allegations of sexual abuse involving children.

    Four years later, the fairground rides and most of the animals were removed, leaving only the llamas behind.

    He never returned to live there but continued to own the estate until his death in 2009, aged 50.

    In 2015, Forbes reported that the ranch was put on the market for $100 million. Interest was limited and the name was changed back to Sycamore Valley Ranch to attract buyers.

    In 2020, businessman and family friend Ronald Burkle bought the property for $22 million (£16million), according to The Wall Street Journal.

    The price was $88 million below the original asking figure.

    Ronald is believed to have restored much of the fairground, installed new rides and refilled drained swimming pools. The small zoo is also thought to have been reinstated.

    In 2024, the ranch was evacuated as the Lake Fire burned 38,664 acres in Santa Barbara County and spread close to the estate.

    Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch
    Michael’s ranch sold for £16million in 2020 (Credit: Splashnews.com)

    Is Neverland in the Michael Jackson biopic?

    The upcoming film, Michael, is set to be released worldwide this April and will chart the singer’s life from the Jackson 5 to the weeks before his death.

    Michael will be played by Jaafar Jeremiah Jackson, the son of his brother Jermaine. Actor Miles Teller takes on the role of lawyer John Branca, co-executor of the Michael Jackson estate.

    Miles has confirmed that scenes were filmed at Neverland for Antoine Fuqua’s biopic.

    Speaking on Watch What Happens Live, he said: “I play John Branca, his entertainment lawyer. We filmed at Neverland. It was wild.”

    He added that while the property had changed ownership after 2005, it was transformed again for filming.

    Read more: Brooklyn Beckham brazenly shows off arm tattoo after removing the word ‘dad’ amid rift with David and Victoria

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    Natasha Rigler

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  • Melania Movie Review: All the Money In the World Can’t Make Good Propaganda

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    Melania, Brett Ratner’s Melania Trump movie, is a purportedly serious film that plays like a mockumentary. If you were making a movie that parodied the current first lady of the United States, I’m not sure what you’d do differently.

    This interminable, nearly two-hour long film features a running voiceover by Melania, leading us through crucial moments in the twenty days leading up to her husband’s second inauguration: choosing fabric for her coat, making sure her dress is the right length, approving a design plan for the dinner, and perusing furniture for Barron’s future bedroom. (Sadly, we never get to see which chest of drawers she picks.) “My creative vision is always clear,” she intones, returning to that notion throughout.

    This is a work of propaganda, but director Brett Ratner is no Leni Riefenstahl. Missing are the German filmmaker’s awe-inspiring visuals and hypnotic edits; instead, Ratner substitutes endless shots of the gaudy, excessive Trump aesthetic as Melania floats through Trump Tower, private jets, motorcades, and gala dinners until she lands at the White House. The doc’s opening shot is a panorama of Mar-a-Lago in all its gilded glory, accompanied by the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away,” Jagger’s voice promises.

    Before he was exiled from Hollywood by sexual assault accusations (he has denied the claims), Ratner was best known for directing the Rush Hour movies—so I at least expected propulsive pacing and drama. No such luck: We might as well be watching gold paint dry.

    It’s hard to tell whether Melania herself finds it all as dull as I did: she remains inscrutable through most of the film, her face frozen into an elegant mask. The only times she genuinely lights up are when Ratner coaxes her to sing along with her favorite song, Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” and later while dancing to the Village People’s “YMCA” at an inaugural event. At several points Melania refers to the death of her mother with sadness, and even has the cameras trail her to St Patrick’s Cathedral, where she lights candles. But throughout, there is no perceptible change in her demeanor.

    That departure could’ve been a great segue into a segment about Melania’s past—her childhood in Slovenia, her modeling career, background information that might give context to her transformation into Trump’s consort. But instead, the doc sticks with the minutiae of the march toward Trump’s second term. Unmentioned is the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol; instead, the camera just pans over images of the Capitol preparing for the inauguration—now a symbol of Trump’s triumphal power.

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    Joy Press

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  • Bringing Zohran Mamdani to the Big Screen

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    In August of 2023, Zohran Mamdani launched his reëlection campaign for State Assembly at Sac’s Place, a pizza place in Astoria. Beneath bistro lights strung above the restaurant’s back patio, he gave a speech to a crowd so small that his address almost became a conversation.

    “So,” Mamdani began, “I wanted to start us off by asking the question, What does a working person deserve?”

    “Everything!” one listener piped up.

    “Now you’re gonna ruin the whole speech,” Mamdani replied, genially chagrined. “That’s where I’m headed!” He was rumpled in the summer heat and wearing a collarless white shirt. Watching nearby were a state senator, Jabari Brisport, in a red Democratic Socialists of America T-shirt, and Diana Moreno, the D.S.A. activist whom Mamdani would eventually endorse to succeed him in his Queens Assembly seat. The event was one of the minor but revealing moments that might have been forgotten, if not for the presence, at Mamdani’s shoulder, of Julia Bacha, a documentarian who had just begun following him.

    There was no press on hand that day—“not a single other camera,” Bacha recalled recently, while showing me the rough footage in Adobe Premiere. That was often the case, in the two and a half years Bacha spent with Mamdani. She has just begun editing some two hundred hours of material, a process she expects to last for the next four or five months. The result will be her next film: the story of a little-known state assemblyman’s path to becoming New York City’s mayor.

    This was not what she had imagined when she first approached Mamdani. Bacha is a New York-based filmmaker whose work, which includes the films “Budrus” and “Naila and the Uprising,” has earned a Peabody and a Guggenheim; she is the creative director of Just Vision, a nonprofit dedicated to storytelling about Israel-Palestine. (“We highlight the efforts of Palestinian and Israeli civilians who are working to end the occupation and secure a free, equal and safe future for all through unarmed means,” the group explains on its website, adding that it does not advocate a specific policy solution to the conflict.) After growing up in Brazil, Bacha went to college at Columbia; she was a student in New York on September 11th, and became interested in Middle Eastern history and politics in its wake. “There was a lot of sympathy for the United States in the immediate aftermath,” she told me. “That was so quickly squandered by the politicians of this country by going into a march of revenge and war.”

    Bacha’s last film, “Boycott,” from 2021, tracked three Americans who brought suits to challenge state laws restricting the right to protest Israel. “It was a film about defending the right to speak,” she said—an important subject, but also somewhat abstract. “I wanted the next film to be more of a proactive story.” What did it look like when a person with some power—an elected official, for example—used their right to speak on behalf of Palestinians? What would the public response be? Bacha had seen attitudes shift in the two decades that she’d been making documentaries about the Middle East; in early 2023, for the first time, more Democrats told Gallup that they sympathized with Palestinians than with Israelis. It seemed to her that there was a gap between the way politicians acted and what many constituents wanted. What would happen if someone recognized it?

    Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji canvassing for the reëlection of State Assembly member Sarahana Shreshta in the Hudson Valley, June, 2024.

    Photograph by Talal Jabari

    As Bacha contemplated her next project, she started hearing about a group of New York organizers who wanted to stop charities from using tax-deductible donations to fund Israeli settlements. “I learned that they had found, in Zohran Mamdani, someone who was willing to actually introduce legislation,” she told me. The proposed Not on Our Dime! act was greeted with an immediate letter of condemnation from twenty-five of Mamdani’s fellow Assembly members, who called the bill “a ploy to demonize Jewish charities with connections to Israel.” In her documentary, Bacha wanted to ask whether Mamdani and his co-sponsors could hold on to their seats in the next election. When she approached him that summer, he was “very open and interested,” she recalled, and he seemed to respect the demands of her process, including her need for independence. “He’s the son of a filmmaker,” she said. “He’s also a very disciplined person, so I think he felt pretty confident that he could have a camera around.”

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    Molly Fischer

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  • The Best Documentaries of 2025

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    The documentary often gets a bad rap. Maybe you watched a few boring (or prescriptive) ones in school, in which talking heads drone on about what you ought to think or feel. However, despite its reputation as constrained retelling—emphasis on the “telling”—the medium also offers storytellers practically limitless formal flexibility, and the power to show us reality in dazzling new hues. 

    This was a year of numerous stunning nonfiction releases, as well as many festival premieres of works yet to be distributed. When viewing them in unison, it’s clear that the medium’s stylistic and thematic ingenuity could not be in better hands. These 25 films from 2025, hailing from all across the globe, represent the very best of what documentary cinema has to offer. 

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    Siddhant Adlakha

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  • Watching Taylor Swift’s ‘End of an Era’ Docuseries With Taylor Swift

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    “It feels like the Eras Tour was a lifetime within my life,” Taylor Swift said earlier this week at an intimate New York City screening of the first two episodes of The End of an Era, the six-part docuseries pulling back the curtain on her record-breaking Eras Tour. Those episodes, as well as Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour: The Final Show, a concert film capturing the entirety of her final bow of the 149-show tour, hit Disney+ on Friday, a day before Swift’s 36th birthday.

    The tour was long—about a year and a half, all told—and its goodbye, ongoing even now, a year later, is long too. It’s fitting, though, as there’s a lot to process: While on the road, she released two Taylor’s Version re-recording projects (Red and 1989), launched a super-sized studio album (The Tortured Poets Department), began dating Travis Kelce (now her fiancé), attended two Super Bowls, and wrote and recorded another studio album (The Life of a Showgirl). And those are just the highlights.

    Taking the microphone, Swift spoke after the rambunctious cheering of the crowd—made up of her entire backing band and vocalists, the Eras Tour dancers, tour production staff, her dad Scott Swift, mom Andrea Swift, and brother Austin Swift, not to mention various Disney personnel and a few members of the media—faded, thanking all who were involved in the tour and production of the series.

    “It was a year ago yesterday that we played the last show of the Eras Tour. It feels insane. I know it does for me,” she said, before describing a career-long fixation with not just entertaining people, but providing an escape for audiences, where everything is not perfect, but all feelings are allowed. There’s room for the joy and community that fans have gushed over finding at her concerts, right alongside space to express grief with songs like “Marjorie,” rage (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”), exasperation (“We Are Never Getting Back Together”), resilience (“I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”), giddy youthfulness (“22”), and more points along the emotional spectrum that colors everyday life.

    “Everything that went into this was all the lessons we’ve learned all of our lives,” she said, crediting her dancers, band, technical staff, and all involved with pouring their own life experiences into making the tour an immersive experience, before acknowledging the docuseries’ directors, Don Argott and Sheena Joyce, also in attendance, for their work preserving the period to share with the world.

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    Kase Wickman

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  • Melania Trump Announces New Production Company

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    Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

    Michelle Obama had a kitchen garden, Nancy Reagan had “Just Say No.” Melania Trump has a vanity shingle. The FLOTUS announced her new production company, Muse Films, on social media Black Friday. She’s just the latest political figure to go Hollywood. Biden signed with CAA after leaving office, and the Obamas had their Netflix overall deal in 2021. But Melania isn’t waiting until her husband’s out of office to get this ball rolling. The company takes its name from Melania Trump’s secret service code name during the first Trump admin. Presumably she has a new one now.

    The first film released by Muse will be the documentary Melania. The film depicts the 20 days before Trump’s second inauguration. Directed by Brett Ratner of all people, Melania comes to theaters and Amazon Prime Video in 2026. Amazon paid $40 million for the privilege of streaming the film on their platform.

    It’s possible Muse will be involved in the newly announced (presidentially-mandated?) Rush Hour 4. Paramount has agreed to distribute RH4 after Donald Trump personally requested a revival of the franchise, per Semafor. Melania is Ratner’s first feature film since 2014’s Hercules. In 2017, he was accused of sexual misconduct by six women, including Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge. Variety reports that many distributors didn’t want to touch Rush Hour 4 due to Ratner’s involvement.

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    Bethy Squires

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  • ‘Zodiac Killer Project’ Reveals True Crime’s Dirty Secrets

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    Because Lafferty died in 2016, Shackleton worked with the late officer’s family to secure the rights to his fairly obscure book. The filmmaker was in the Bay Area, deep in preproduction, when he learned that the family had reversed course and decided against making a deal.

    “I was gutted, but I completely assumed, give it two weeks, three weeks, I’ll get over it, I’ll move on,” Shackleton tells Vanity Fair. Instead, “I found myself traipsing around London, hanging out with friends and seemingly every night, just reeling off scenes or entire narrative arcs from this film that would now never come to be.”

    Instead of a typical true crime feature or series, Shackleton decided to make the Zodiac Killer Project—a movie, opening November 28 in San Francisco, in which he’d explain exactly how he would have made a doc based on the now-verboten Silenced Badge. The approach is not quite having your cake and eating it too, but it’s close.

    Shackleton returned to the Bay Area in the summer of 2023 to capture footage of Vallejo highways, small NorCal towns, and that fateful rest stop. That—as well as short moments of reenactment Shackleton laughingly refers to as “evocative B-roll”—is mostly what we see as the director explains, beat by beat, how his theoretical film would have played out.

    Shackleton lays bare how rote “prestige” true-crime documentaries and docuseries have become. While announcing when the initial credits would roll, he juxtaposes clips of similar title sequences from such high-profile projects as The Jinx and Making a Murderer. “All these things are built to the same model now,” he says. He’s right. It seems every show begins with similar grayscale, layered, out-of-focus images of landscapes, birds, newspaper clippings, and the ubiquitous male figure, suspiciously slinking away.

    That’s just the first in a series of sharp jabs Shackleton takes at true crime. Name a standard moment from a buzzy docuseries, from someone saying that a small town has a dark side to the use of red in a reenactment to make a suspect appear more sinister, and Shackleton will admit—with a mix of sarcasm and wistfullness—that he would have used that same tool. The boilerplate array of victim photos is grounds for perhaps his sharpest critique: “That’s when you know these shows really care,” Shackleton says. “When they end with a black-and-white photo grid of all the victims.” He would have closed his film with one had Lafferty’s family been willing to play ball.

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    Eve Batey

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  • What to Stream: ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘Mickey 17,’ Kevin Hart and ‘A Grand Ole Opry Christmas’

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    Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17,” a new batch of “Stranger Things’” final season and Kevin Hart debuting a new comedy special on Netflix are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: “Everybody Loves Raymond” gets a 30th anniversary special on CBS, the Hallmark’s special “A Grand Ole Opry Christmas” with Brad Paisley and Mickey Guyton, and a new Beatles documentary series hits Disney+.

    New movies to stream from Nov. 24-30

    —Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou, known for collaborating with and producing several Sean Baker films including “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project,” makes her solo directorial debut with “Left-Handed Girl,” about a single mother and her two daughters who return to Taipei to open a stand at a night market. Netflix acquired the film after it was warmly received during the Cannes Film Festival and Taiwan has already selected the film as its Oscar submission. It begins streaming on Netflix on Nov. 28.

    —Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” arrives on Prime Video on Thursday, Nov. 26, for some dystopian holiday viewing. In her review for The Associated Press, Jocelyn Noveck praised Robert Pattinson’s performance (or, rather, performances) as an expendable who is constantly being reprinted anew. She writes, “It’s his movie, and he saves it from Bong’s tendencies to overstuff the proceedings. In an extremely physical, committed, even exhausting performance, Pattinson takes what could have been an unwieldy mess and makes it much less, well, expendable.”

    Recording artist Brad Paisley perform the national anthem prior to Game 3 of baseball's World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

    —OK, “The Last Duel,” streaming on Hulu on Sunday, Nov. 30 might be four years old but it’s a far better option than, say, “Flight Risk” (on HBO Max on Wednesday). Ridley Scott’s medieval tale, written by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener, is a brilliant spin on the historical epic told from three different perspectives, Damon’s Jean de Carrouges, Adam Driver’s Jacques Le Gris and Jodie Comer’s Marguerite. In his review for the AP, film writer Jake Coyle wrote that it “is more like a medieval tale deconstructed, piece by piece, until its heavily armored male characters and the genre’s mythologized nobility are unmasked.”

    — AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

    New music to stream on Nov. 24-30

    — In 2021, over Thanksgiving, Disney+ released Peter Jackson’s six-hour “The Beatles: Get Back” to its streaming platform. The gargantuan project provided fans with a deep-dive into the band’s “Let It Be” sessions – including footage of their entire rooftop concert, shared in full for the first time. It was an ideal release date, to say the least. After all that delicious food, who doesn’t want to settle in for a lengthy journey into one of the greatest musical acts of all time? Well, in 2025, there’s yet another reason to be grateful: Starting Wednesday, “The Beatles Anthology” documentary series hits Disney+. That’s nine episodes tracing their journey. Lock in.

    — ’Tis the season for Hallmark holiday films. And for the country music fanatic, that means “A Grand Ole Opry Christmas.” The film follows a woman forced to confront her musical past and heritage in the esteemed venue – and there may or may not be some time travel and Christmas magic involved. Stay tuned for the all-star cameos: Brad Paisley, Megan Moroney, Mickey Guyton, Rhett Akins, Tigirlily Gold and more make an appearance. It starts streaming on Hallmark+ Sunday.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    New series to stream from Nov. 24-30

    — It’s hard to believe that “Everybody Loves Raymond” has been off the air for two decades. The multicamera sitcom starred Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton as Ray and Debra Barone, a young married couple whose daily lives are interrupted regularly by Ray’s meddling parents, played by Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, who live across the street. CBS recently taped a 30th anniversary special to air Monday which will also stream on Paramount+. Hosted by Romano and creator, Phil Rosenthal, it recreates the set of the Barone living room and features interviews with cast members including Romano, Heaton, Brad Garrett and Monica Horan. There will also be a tribute to Boyle and Roberts who died in 2006 and 2016, respectively. It’s fitting for the special to come out around the holidays because its Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes were top-notch. All nine seasons stream on both Paramount+ and Peacock.

    — ” Stranger Things” is finally back with its fifth and final season. Netflix is releasing the sci-fi series in three parts and the first four episodes drop Wednesday. Millie Bobby Brown says fans will “lose their damn minds” with how it ends.

    — Also Monday, Kevin Hart debuts a new comedy special on Netflix. It’s called “Kevin Hart: Acting My Age.” The jokes center around, you guessed it, aging.

    — A new “Family Guy” special on Hulu pokes fun at those holiday movies we all know, love and watch. It’s called “Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie” and pokes fun at the commonly-used trope of a big city gal who ends up in a small town at Christmas and falls in love. It drops Friday, Nov. 28 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    New video games to play from Nov. 24-30

    — Artificial intelligence: friend to all humanity or existential threat to the planet? In A.I.L.A, Brazilian studio Pulsatrix leans toward the latter. You play as a game tester who’s asked to try out an AI-created horror story. But while you’re busy fighting off ghosts, zombies and ax murderers, the AI may be up to something more nefarious in the background — which could be bad news if you own a smart refrigerator. It all has the potential to be very meta, whether or not you welcome our new robot overlords. It arrives Tuesday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • What to Stream: ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘Mickey 17,’ Kevin Hart and ‘A Grand Ole Opry Christmas’

    [ad_1]

    Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17,” a new batch of “Stranger Things’” final season and Kevin Hart debuting a new comedy special on Netflix are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: “Everybody Loves Raymond” gets a 30th anniversary special on CBS, the Hallmark’s special “A Grand Ole Opry Christmas” with Brad Paisley and Mickey Guyton, and a new Beatles documentary series hits Disney+.

    —Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou, known for collaborating with and producing several Sean Baker films including “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project,” makes her solo directorial debut with “Left-Handed Girl,” about a single mother and her two daughters who return to Taipei to open a stand at a night market. Netflix acquired the film after it was warmly received during the Cannes Film Festival and Taiwan has already selected the film as its Oscar submission. It begins streaming on Netflix on Nov. 28.

    —Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” arrives on Prime Video on Thursday, Nov. 26, for some dystopian holiday viewing. In her review for The Associated Press, Jocelyn Noveck praised Robert Pattinson’s performance (or, rather, performances) as an expendable who is constantly being reprinted anew. She writes, “It’s his movie, and he saves it from Bong’s tendencies to overstuff the proceedings. In an extremely physical, committed, even exhausting performance, Pattinson takes what could have been an unwieldy mess and makes it much less, well, expendable.”

    —OK, “The Last Duel,” streaming on Hulu on Sunday, Nov. 30 might be four years old but it’s a far better option than, say, “Flight Risk” (on HBO Max on Wednesday). Ridley Scott’s medieval tale, written by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener, is a brilliant spin on the historical epic told from three different perspectives, Damon’s Jean de Carrouges, Adam Driver’s Jacques Le Gris and Jodie Comer’s Marguerite. In his review for the AP, film writer Jake Coyle wrote that it “is more like a medieval tale deconstructed, piece by piece, until its heavily armored male characters and the genre’s mythologized nobility are unmasked.”

    — AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

    — In 2021, over Thanksgiving, Disney+ released Peter Jackson’s six-hour “The Beatles: Get Back” to its streaming platform. The gargantuan project provided fans with a deep-dive into the band’s “Let It Be” sessions – including footage of their entire rooftop concert, shared in full for the first time. It was an ideal release date, to say the least. After all that delicious food, who doesn’t want to settle in for a lengthy journey into one of the greatest musical acts of all time? Well, in 2025, there’s yet another reason to be grateful: Starting Wednesday, “The Beatles Anthology” documentary series hits Disney+. That’s nine episodes tracing their journey. Lock in.

    — ’Tis the season for Hallmark holiday films. And for the country music fanatic, that means “A Grand Ole Opry Christmas.” The film follows a woman forced to confront her musical past and heritage in the esteemed venue – and there may or may not be some time travel and Christmas magic involved. Stay tuned for the all-star cameos: Brad Paisley, Megan Moroney, Mickey Guyton, Rhett Akins, Tigirlily Gold and more make an appearance. It starts streaming on Hallmark+ Sunday.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — It’s hard to believe that “Everybody Loves Raymond” has been off the air for two decades. The multicamera sitcom starred Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton as Ray and Debra Barone, a young married couple whose daily lives are interrupted regularly by Ray’s meddling parents, played by Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts, who live across the street. CBS recently taped a 30th anniversary special to air Monday which will also stream on Paramount+. Hosted by Romano and creator, Phil Rosenthal, it recreates the set of the Barone living room and features interviews with cast members including Romano, Heaton, Brad Garrett and Monica Horan. There will also be a tribute to Boyle and Roberts who died in 2006 and 2016, respectively. It’s fitting for the special to come out around the holidays because its Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes were top-notch. All nine seasons stream on both Paramount+ and Peacock.

    — ” Stranger Things” is finally back with its fifth and final season. Netflix is releasing the sci-fi series in three parts and the first four episodes drop Wednesday. Millie Bobby Brown says fans will “lose their damn minds” with how it ends.

    — Also Monday, Kevin Hart debuts a new comedy special on Netflix. It’s called “Kevin Hart: Acting My Age.” The jokes center around, you guessed it, aging.

    — A new “Family Guy” special on Hulu pokes fun at those holiday movies we all know, love and watch. It’s called “Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie” and pokes fun at the commonly-used trope of a big city gal who ends up in a small town at Christmas and falls in love. It drops Friday, Nov. 28 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — Artificial intelligence: friend to all humanity or existential threat to the planet? In A.I.L.A, Brazilian studio Pulsatrix leans toward the latter. You play as a game tester who’s asked to try out an AI-created horror story. But while you’re busy fighting off ghosts, zombies and ax murderers, the AI may be up to something more nefarious in the background — which could be bad news if you own a smart refrigerator. It all has the potential to be very meta, whether or not you welcome our new robot overlords. It arrives Tuesday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • Oscars: Academy Reveals Full Lists of Qualifying Documentary, International and Animated Features

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    A total of 201 documentary features, 86 international features and 35 animated features are eligible for Oscar recognition this season in the best documentary feature, best international feature and best animated feature categories, respectively, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Friday.

    The only time more documentaries were deemed eligible — 238 — was the year in which the pandemic led to an extension of the period of eligibility from 12 to 14 months (Jan. 1, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2021) and docs that did not play in theaters were considered.

    This year’s list of eligible documentary features includes titles that have dominated at the doc community’s precursor awards, including Netflix’s The Perfect Neighbor and Apocalypse in the Tropics, Apple’s Come See Me in the Good Light and Neon’s Orwell: 2+2=5. It also includes two acclaimed films made by celebrities about their famous parents, HBO’s My Mom Jayne and Apple’s Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, which were directed by Mariska Hargitay and Ben Stiller, respectively. And there are several titles related to recent turmoil in the Middle East, including Hemdale/Metallux’s Torn: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on New York City Streets and the self-distributed Coexistence, My Ass!, Holding Liat and Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.

    The most glaring omission from the list: The Eyes of Ghana, a documentary directed by the two-time Oscar-winning documentarian Ben Proudfoot, which is still seeking distribution. The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that a late decision was made to hold the film for next awards season. Other high-profile docs that were expected to be on the list but are not, either because they were not submitted or because they failed to meet the eligibility requirements, include A24’s Marc by Sofia, Oscar winner Sofia Coppola’s portrait of Marc Jacobs, and Oscar winner Questlove’s Hulu film Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius).

    The list of eligible international features includes five widely lauded films that are being distributed in the U.S. by Parasite backer Neon and could conceivably all earn nominations: Norway’s Sentimental Value, Brazil’s The Secret Agent, South Korea’s No Other Choice, Spain’s Sirāt and France’s It Was Just an Accident. It Was Just an Accident, which won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, was directed by Jafar Panahi, a filmmaker from Iran but does not reflect well on the country; as a result, Iran submitted the much lower-profile Cause of Death: Unknown, while France submitted It Was Just an Accident, on the basis that much of the film’s financing was French.

    Other countries that made interesting submissions include Japan (GKIDS’ Kokuho, a film about Kabuki performers, which is now the highest-grossing non-animated film in that country’s history); Iraq (Sony Classics’ The President’s Cake won two prizes at Cannes); Belgium (Music Box’s Young Mothers could bring the brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne the first Oscar noms of their distinguished careers); and Taiwan (Netflix’s Left-Handed Girl, which was co-written by Anora Oscar winner Sean Baker).

    Meanwhile, at least three countries submitted acclaimed documentaries for best international feature consideration: Ukraine (PBS’ 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a doc about a Ukrainian platoon’s fight to retake a city from Russian invaders, which was directed by Mstyslav Chernov, who won the best doc feature Oscar two years ago); North Macdeonia (Nat Geo’s The Tale of Silyan, from Tamara Kotevska, whose 2019 film Honeyland was nominated for best international feature and doc feature Oscars); and Denmark (Mr. Nobody Against, a film about Vladimir Putin’s propaganda efforts, which is still seeking U.S. distribution).

    And the list of animated features includes giant blockbusters like Crunchyroll’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, which is now the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time and the highest-grossing international film in the U.S. of all time, as well as the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2025; streaming hits like Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, which is now that streamer’s most watched film ever; acclaimed indies like Neon’s Arco, a French-language critics’ darling that counts Natalie Portman among its producers; and highly-anticipated forthcoming titles like Disney’s Zootopia 2.

    Among the animated films that were expected to contend but are not on the list of eligible titles, either because they were not submitted or because they failed to meet the eligibility requirements, are A24’s Ne Zha 2, Sony’s Paddington in Peru and Paramount’s Smurfs.

    The documentary feature and international feature categories are winnowed down to shortlists before nominations, while the animated feature category goes straight to nominations. Shortlist voting will span Dec. 8-12, 2025, and the announcement of the shortlists will come on Dec. 16. Nominations voting in all categories will span Jan. 12-16, 2026, and the announcement of the nominations will come on Jan. 22, 2026.

    A full list of eligible animated, documentary and international features follows.

    Eligible animated features

    Thirty-five features are eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 98th Academy Awards. Some of the films have not yet had their required qualifying release and must fulfill that requirement and comply with all the category’s other qualifying rules to advance in the voting process.

    To determine the five nominees, members of the Animation Branch are automatically eligible to vote in the category. Academy members outside of the Animation Branch are invited to opt in to participate and must meet a minimum viewing requirement to be eligible to vote in the category. Films submitted in the Animated Feature Film category may also qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture. Animated features that have been submitted in the International Feature Film category as their country’s official selection are also eligible in the category.

    “All Operators Are Currently Unavailable”

    “Arco”

    “The Bad Guys 2”

    “Black Butterflies”

    “Boys Go to Jupiter”

    “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc”

    “ChaO”

    “Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing”

    “David”

    “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle”

    “Dog Man”

    “Dog of God”

    “Dragon Heart – Adventures Beyond This World”

    “Elio”

    “Endless Cookie”

    “Fixed”

    “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie”

    “In Your Dreams”

    “KPop Demon Hunters”

    “The Legend of Hei 2”

    “Light of the World”

    “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”

    “Lost in Starlight”

    “A Magnificent Life”

    “Mahavatar Narsimha”

    “Night of the Zoopocalypse”

    “Olivia & las Nubes”

    “100 Meters”

    “Out of the Nest”

    “Scarlet””Slide”

    “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants”

    “Stitch Head”

    “The Twits”

    “Zootopia 2”

    Eligible documentary features

    Two hundred one features are eligible for consideration in the documentary feature film category for the 98th Academy Awards. Some of the films have not yet had their required qualifying release and must fulfill that requirement and comply with all the category’s other qualifying rules to advance in the voting process.

    Documentary features that have won a qualifying film festival award or have been submitted in the international feature film category as their country’s official selection are also eligible in the category. Films submitted in the documentary feature film category may also qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including best picture. Members of the documentary branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees. The shortlist of 15 films will be announced on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025.

    “Abby’s List, A Dogumentary”

    “Ada – My Mother the Architect”

    “Afternoons of Solitude”

    “The Age of Disclosure”

    “Ai Weiwei’s Turandot”

    “The Alabama Solution”

    “All God’s Children”

    “The Altar Boy, the Priest and the Gardener”

    “Always”

    “Amakki”

    “American Sons”

    “Among Neighbors”

    “animal.”

    “Antidote”

    “Apocalypse in the Tropics”

    “Architecton”

    “Are We Good?”

    “Art for Everybody”

    “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse”

    “The Art Whisperer”

    “Artfully United”

    “Assembly”

    “BTS ARMY: Forever We Are Young”

    “Becoming Led Zeppelin”

    “Being Eddie”

    “Below the Clouds”

    “Benita”

    “Between the Mountain and the Sky”

    “Beyond the Gaze: Jule Campbell’s Swimsuit Issue”

    “Billy Idol Should Be Dead””BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions”

    “Blum: Masters of Their Own Destiny”

    “Bodyguard of Lies”

    “Brothers after War”

    “Can’t Look Away: The Case against Social Media”

    “Caterpillar”

    “Champions of the Golden Valley”

    “Checkpoint Zoo”

    “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie”

    “Child of Dust”

    “Chronicles of Disney”

    “Coexistence, My Ass!”

    “Come See Me in the Good Light”

    “Complicated”

    “Cover-Up”

    “Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution”

    “Cutting through Rocks”

    “Dalit Subbaiah”

    “The Dating Game”

    “Deaf President Now!”

    “Democracy Noir”

    “Diane Warren: Relentless”

    “Dog Warriors”

    “Drop Dead City”

    “The Duel We Missed”

    “El Canto de las Manos”

    “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire”

    “The Encampments”

    “Endless Cookie”

    “Europe’s New Faces”

    “Facing War”

    “Fatherless No More”

    “Fiume o Morte!”

    “Folktales”

    “Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea”

    “For the Living”

    “14 Short Films about Opera”

    “From Island to Island”

    “Ghost Boy”

    “Girl Climber”

    “Go to the People”

    “Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus””Grand Theft Hamlet”

    “Heaven. Poste Restente”

    “Heightened Scrutiny”

    “Holding Liat”

    “I Know Catherine, the Log Lady”

    “I, Poppy”

    “I Was Born This Way”

    “If You Tell Anyone”

    “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be”

    “I’m Only Blind”

    “Imago”

    “In Limbo”

    “In Waves and War”

    “In Whose Name?”

    “Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958 -1989”

    “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley”

    “Janis Ian: Breaking Silence”

    “The King of Color”

    “The Last Class”

    “The Last Holocaust Secret”

    “The Last Philadelphia”

    “The Last Twins”

    “Li Cham (I Died)”

    “The Librarians”

    “Life After”

    “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery – The Untold Story”

    “Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story”

    “Love+War”

    “Mahamantra – The Great Chant”

    “The Man Who Saves the World?”

    “A Man with Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole”

    “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore”

    “Meanwhile”

    “Men of War”

    “Mighty Indeed”

    “Mr. Nobody against Putin”

    “Mistress Dispeller”

    “Monk in Pieces”

    “My Armenian Phantoms”

    “My Mom Jayne: A Film by Mariska Hargitay”

    “My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow”

    “Natchez””The New Yorker at 100”

    “Night in West Texas”

    “1985: Heroes among Ruins – The Triumph of the People”

    “Norita”

    “Of Mud and Blood”

    “One to One: John and Yoko”

    “Orwell 2+2=5”

    “Our Time Will Come”

    “Out of Plain Sight”

    “Paint Me a Road Out of Here”

    “Paparazzi”

    “The Parish of Bishop John”

    “Pavements”

    “The Perfect Neighbor”

    “The Pool”

    “Predators”

    “Prime Minister”

    “The Prince of Nanawa”

    “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk”

    “Rebel with a Clause”

    “Remaining Native”

    “Riefenstahl”

    “Rise Up! 14 Short Films about Alliance for Positive Change”

    “River of Grass”

    “The Road between Us: The Ultimate Rescue”

    “The Rose: Come Back to Me”

    “Row of Life”

    “Sanatorium”

    “A Savage Art”

    “Schindler Space Architect”

    “Secret Mall Apartment”

    “Seeds”

    “Selena y Los Dinos”

    “Sensory Overload”

    “76 Days Adrift”

    “Shari & Lamb Chop”

    “The Shepherd and the Bear”

    “Shoot the People”

    “Shuffle”

    “The Six Billion Dollar Man”

    “67 Bombs to Enid”

    “Slumlord Millionaire””Songs from the Hole”

    “Soul of a Nation”

    “Speak.”

    “Stans”

    “Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere”

    “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost”

    “Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter”

    “Story of My Village”

    “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror”

    “The Stringer”

    “Suburban Fury”

    “Sudan, Remember Us”

    “Supercar Saints”

    “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted”

    “The Tale of Silyan”

    “Thank You Very Much”

    “There Was, There Was Not”

    “Third Act”

    “This Ordinary Thing”

    “Through the Fire (The Eaton Fire: The Aftermath)”

    “Torn: The Israel -Palestine Poster War on New York City Streets”

    “Trade Secret”

    “Trains”

    “Twin Towers: Legacy”

    “2000 Meters to Andriivka”

    “Unbanked”

    “UnBroken”

    “Under the Flags, the Sun”

    “Unseen Innocence”

    “Viktor”

    “Viva Verdi!”

    “WTO/99”

    “Walk with Me”

    “Walls – Akinni Inuk”

    “We Were Here – The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe”

    “Welded Together”

    “The White House Effect”

    “Who in the Hell Is Regina Jones?”

    “Wisdom of Happiness”

    “The Wolves Always Come at Night”

    “Worth the Fight”

    “Writing Hawa”

    Eligible international features

    Eighty-six countries or regions have submitted films that are eligible for consideration in the International Feature Film category for the 98th Academy Awards.

    An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (more than 40 minutes) produced outside the United States with a predominantly (more than 50 percent) non-English dialogue track.

    Academy members from all branches are invited to opt in to participate in the preliminary round of voting and must meet a minimum viewing requirement to be eligible to vote in the category. The shortlist of 15 films will be announced on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025.

    Albania, “Luna Park”

    Argentina, “Belén”

    Armenia, “My Armenian Phantoms”

    Australia, “The Wolves Always Come at Night”

    Austria, “Peacock”

    Azerbaijan, “Taghiyev: Oil”

    Bangladesh, “A House Named Shahana”

    Belgium, “Young Mothers”

    Bhutan, “I, the Song”

    Bolivia, “The Southern House”

    Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Blum: Masters of Their Own Destiny”

    Brazil, “The Secret Agent”

    Bulgaria, “Tarika”

    Canada, “The Things You Kill”

    Chile, “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo”

    China, “Dead to Rights”

    Colombia, “A Poet”

    Costa Rica, “The Altar Boy, the Priest and the Gardener”

    Croatia, “Fiume o Morte!”

    Czech Republic, “I’m Not Everything I Want to Be”

    Denmark, “Mr. Nobody against Putin”

    Dominican Republic, “Pepe”

    Ecuador, “Chuzalongo”

    Egypt, “Happy Birthday”

    Estonia, “Rolling Papers”

    Finland, “100 Liters of Gold”

    France, “It Was Just an Accident”Georgia, “Panopticon”

    Germany, “Sound of Falling”

    Greece, “Arcadia”

    Greenland, “Walls – Akinni Inuk”

    Haiti, “Kidnapping Inc.”

    Hong Kong, “The Last Dance”

    Hungary, “Orphan”

    Iceland, “The Love That Remains”

    India, “Homebound”

    Indonesia, “Sore: A Wife from the Future”

    Iran, “Cause of Death: Unknown”

    Iraq, “The President’s Cake”

    Ireland, “Sanatorium”

    Israel, “The Sea”

    Italy, “Familia”

    Japan, “Kokuho”

    Jordan, “All That’s Left of You”

    Kyrgyzstan, “Black Red Yellow”

    Latvia, “Dog of God”

    Lebanon, “A Sad and Beautiful World”

    Lithuania, “The Southern Chronicles”

    Luxembourg, “Breathing Underwater”

    Madagascar, “Disco Afrika: A Malagasy Story”

    Malaysia, “Pavane for an Infant”

    Mexico, “We Shall Not Be Moved”

    Mongolia, “Silent City Driver”

    Montenegro, “The Tower of Strength”

    Morocco, “Calle Malaga”

    Nepal, “Anjila”

    Netherlands, “Reedland”

    North Macedonia, “The Tale of Silyan”

    Norway, “Sentimental Value”

    Palestine, “Palestine 36”

    Panama, “Beloved Tropic”

    Paraguay, “Under the Flags, the Sun”

    Peru, “Kinra”

    Philippines, “Magellan”

    Poland, “Franz”

    Portugal, “Banzo”

    Romania, “Traffic”

    Saudi Arabia, “Hijra”

    Serbia, “Sun Never Again”Singapore, “Stranger Eyes”

    Slovakia, “Father”

    Slovenia, “Little Trouble Girls”

    South Africa, “The Heart Is a Muscle”

    South Korea, “No Other Choice”

    Spain, “Sirât”

    Sweden, “Eagles of the Republic”

    Switzerland, “Late Shift”

    Taiwan, “Left -Handed Girl”

    Tunisia, “The Voice of Hind Rajab”

    Turkey, “One of Those Days When Hemme Dies”

    Uganda, “Kimote”

    Ukraine, “2000 Meters to Andriivka”

    United Kingdom, “My Father’s Shadow”

    Uruguay, “Don’t You Let Me Go”

    Venezuela, “Alí Primera”

    Vietnam, “Red Rain”

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    Scott Feinberg

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  • If Selena Quintanilla Had Lived Past 23, What Might She Be Doing Now?

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    The new Netflix documentary Selena y Los Dinos tells an inspirational story of a hard-working family band’s ascent from playing tiny restaurant back rooms to selling out the Houston Astrodome. It’s also difficult to watch without wondering what Selena Quintanilla, the preternaturally gifted lead singer of Los Dinos, might be doing now had she not been killed in 1995 at the age of 23. How many more Grammys would she have under her belt? Would she have moved into films, shooting them in between albums? Would she have a clothing line at Fashion Week, or financially fruitful Target collabs? Would she be touring with her own children, or even grandchildren, just as her parents toured with her?

    To tell the story of Selena and her family, Emmy-nominated director Isabel Castro (Mija) sifted through family archives and previously unseen footage from the Quintanillas’ private home videos. Castro also conducted candid interviews with Selena’s parents, Marcella and Abraham; her sister and drummer, Suzette; her bassist-songwriter brother, A.B.; and her guitarist husband, Chris Pérez.

    Suzette is now the steward of Q Productions, the Quintanilla family’s hometown HQ. For this project, she wanted to find a director who could sift through the family’s massive archive to tell a story that would resonate with the generations of fans who still make the pilgrimage to visit the Selena Museum in Corpus Christi, Texas, and wider audiences as well. Castro is a lifelong fan herself who found she had “really great chemistry” with Suzette in their first Zoom conversation. For Suzette, the vibe was mutual. “She reminded me of home, like I’d known her for a long time,” she says of Castro. “Before we hung up on the call, I texted my lawyer, ‘She’s the one.’” The child of Mexican immigrants and raised in Connecticut, Castro could relate to how the Quintanillas had a foot in two cultures: “Selena was so inspiring to me because of her unapologetic confidence in her identity.”

    Over the course of two years, Castro and producer J. Daniel Torres spent about 10 hours a day, five days a week, poring through the material, clocking moments that would best serve the story. The sheer volume was daunting. “Suzette opens the door to this room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases of VHS tapes, CDs, flash drives, original film, albums, and boxes with photos,” she says. “It felt like we entered a sacred space, and I found it overwhelming in this way I’d never experienced in my career—both in terms of process and deciding how to distill this into a film. But the responsibility of access to that archive is what drove me and the whole team to work as hard as we did.”

    Interviews with the Quintanilla family were a delicate process that took six months. Marcella, the family matriarch, was especially reluctant about participating. Says Suzette, “My mother suffers from depression from losing my sister. She gets extremely emotional, and I didn’t think she was going to do it. I had to tiptoe around it and do the whole cute face on her, like, ‘Please, Mom, it’s important for you to be a part of this, because you played a huge role in keeping us grounded and showing us the way we deserve to be as women.’”

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    Vivian Manning-Schaffel

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  • What to Stream: ‘Wicked: For Good’ soundtrack, Ted Danson, ‘The Bad Guys 2’ and Black cowboys

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    Ted Danson’s “A Man on the Inside” returning to Netflix for its second season and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo belting out the “Wicked: For Good” soundtrack are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Aerosmith teaming up with Yungblud on a new EP, “The Bad Guys 2” hitting Peacock and Jordan Peele looking at Black cowboys in a new documentary series.

    New movies to stream from Nov. 17-23

    — “Train Dreams,” (Friday, Nov. 21 on Netflix), Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella, stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a railroad worker and logger in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest. The film, scripted by Bentley and Greg Kwedar (the duo behind last year’s “Sing Sing” ), conjures a frontier past to tell a story about an anonymous laborer and the currents of change around him.

    — The DreamWorks Animation sequel “The Bad Guys 2” (Friday, Nov. 21 on Peacock) returns the reformed criminal gang of animals for a new heist caper. In the film, with a returning voice cast including Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos and Marc Maron, the Bad Guys encounter a new robbery team: the Bad Girls. In his review, AP’s Mark Kennedy lamented an over-amped sequel with a plot that reaches into space: “It’s hard to watch a franchise drift so expensively and pointlessly in Earth’s orbit.”

    — In “The Roses,” Jay Roach (“Meet the Parents’), from a script by Tony McNamara (“Poor Things”), remakes Danny DeVito’s 1989 black comedy, “The War of the Roses.” In this version, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch star as a loving couple who turn bitter enemies. In his review, Kennedy called “The Roses” “an escalating hatefest that, by the time a loaded gun comes out, all the fun has been sucked out.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    New music to stream on Nov. 21

    — Musical theater fans, your time has come… again. “Wicked: For Good” is upon us, and with it comes the release of its official soundtrack. On Friday, after or before you catch the film in theaters, stream its life-affirming compositions to your heart’s content. Might we suggest Ariana Grande’s “The Girl in the Bubble?” Or Cynthia Erivo’s “No Place Like Home?” And for the Jeff Goldblum and Jonathan Bailey lovers, yes, there’s gold to be unearthed, too.

    — Rock this way: Aerosmith is back with new music. Following their 2023 “Greatest Hits” collection and just a few months after the conclusion of their “Peace Out: The Farewell Tour” (the band said it would no longer hit the road due to singer Steven Tyler’s voice becoming permanently damaged by a vocal cord injury ) they’re teaming up with next gen rock ‘n’ roller Yungblud. It’s a collaborative EP called “One More Time,” out Friday. The anthemic opening track, “My Only Angel” sets the tone. What’s another one for the road?

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    New series to stream from Nov. 17-23

    — Raise your hand if you still miss “Succession” Sundays on HBO. An acclaimed Swedish drama called “Vanguard” debuts Tuesday on Viaplay that’s of the same vein. It’s a dramatization about Jan Stenbeck, one of Europe’s most influential media moguls. There’s ambition, betrayal and yes, sibling rivalry.

    — Ted Danson’s “A Man on the Inside” returns to Netflix for its second season on Thursday. Danson plays a widower named Charles who has found a new sense of purpose as an amateur private detective. In Season One, Charles moved into a retirement home to catch his culprit. In Season Two, he goes back to college to solve a case. Danson’s real-life wife, Mary Steenburgen, joins the cast as Charles’ love interest as he explores the idea of a second chance at romance.

    — Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore co-star in “The Assassin” for AMC+. Hawes (“Bodyguard”) plays a retired assassin living in solitude on a Greek island whose peaceful life is turned upside down when her estranged son (Highmoore) comes to visit. When the two find themselves in danger they must work together to stay alive. It premieres Thursday.

    — Jordan Peele has a new documentary series called “High Horse: The Black Cowboy” coming to Peacock on Thursday. The three-part series examines how stories of Black cowboys have been erased from both pop culture and history books.

    New video games to play from Nov. 17-23

    — If you bought Mario Kart World when Nintendo launched the Switch 2 back in June, you may be wondering: Do I really need another racing game? Kirby Air Riders comes from designer Masahiro Sakurai, the mastermind behind Super Smash Bros., so it adds that franchise’s chaotic combat to the mix. Each of the competitors has different weapons and each of the vehicles has different benefits and drawbacks. And everyone can use Kirby’s signature “inhale” technique, which lets you absorb an opponent’s skills by, well, swallowing them. So if you like your racing weird, get your motor running Thursday.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • What to Stream: ‘Wicked: For Good’ soundtrack, Ted Danson, ‘The Bad Guys 2’ and Black cowboys

    [ad_1]

    Ted Danson’s “A Man on the Inside” returning to Netflix for its second season and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo belting out the “Wicked: For Good” soundtrack are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Aerosmith teaming up with Yungblud on a new EP, “The Bad Guys 2” hitting Peacock and Jordan Peele looking at Black cowboys in a new documentary series.

    — “Train Dreams,” (Friday, Nov. 21 on Netflix), Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella, stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a railroad worker and logger in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest. The film, scripted by Bentley and Greg Kwedar (the duo behind last year’s “Sing Sing” ), conjures a frontier past to tell a story about an anonymous laborer and the currents of change around him.

    — The DreamWorks Animation sequel “The Bad Guys 2” (Friday, Nov. 21 on Peacock) returns the reformed criminal gang of animals for a new heist caper. In the film, with a returning voice cast including Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos and Marc Maron, the Bad Guys encounter a new robbery team: the Bad Girls. In his review, AP’s Mark Kennedy lamented an over-amped sequel with a plot that reaches into space: “It’s hard to watch a franchise drift so expensively and pointlessly in Earth’s orbit.”

    — In “The Roses,” Jay Roach (“Meet the Parents’), from a script by Tony McNamara (“Poor Things”), remakes Danny DeVito’s 1989 black comedy, “The War of the Roses.” In this version, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch star as a loving couple who turn bitter enemies. In his review, Kennedy called “The Roses” “an escalating hatefest that, by the time a loaded gun comes out, all the fun has been sucked out.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Musical theater fans, your time has come… again. “Wicked: For Good” is upon us, and with it comes the release of its official soundtrack. On Friday, after or before you catch the film in theaters, stream its life-affirming compositions to your heart’s content. Might we suggest Ariana Grande’s “The Girl in the Bubble?” Or Cynthia Erivo’s “No Place Like Home?” And for the Jeff Goldblum and Jonathan Bailey lovers, yes, there’s gold to be unearthed, too.

    — Rock this way: Aerosmith is back with new music. Following their 2023 “Greatest Hits” collection and just a few months after the conclusion of their “Peace Out: The Farewell Tour” (the band said it would no longer hit the road due to singer Steven Tyler’s voice becoming permanently damaged by a vocal cord injury ) they’re teaming up with next gen rock ‘n’ roller Yungblud. It’s a collaborative EP called “One More Time,” out Friday. The anthemic opening track, “My Only Angel” sets the tone. What’s another one for the road?

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — Raise your hand if you still miss “Succession” Sundays on HBO. An acclaimed Swedish drama called “Vanguard” debuts Tuesday on Viaplay that’s of the same vein. It’s a dramatization about Jan Stenbeck, one of Europe’s most influential media moguls. There’s ambition, betrayal and yes, sibling rivalry.

    — Ted Danson’s “A Man on the Inside” returns to Netflix for its second season on Thursday. Danson plays a widower named Charles who has found a new sense of purpose as an amateur private detective. In Season One, Charles moved into a retirement home to catch his culprit. In Season Two, he goes back to college to solve a case. Danson’s real-life wife, Mary Steenburgen, joins the cast as Charles’ love interest as he explores the idea of a second chance at romance.

    — Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore co-star in “The Assassin” for AMC+. Hawes (“Bodyguard”) plays a retired assassin living in solitude on a Greek island whose peaceful life is turned upside down when her estranged son (Highmoore) comes to visit. When the two find themselves in danger they must work together to stay alive. It premieres Thursday.

    — Jordan Peele has a new documentary series called “High Horse: The Black Cowboy” coming to Peacock on Thursday. The three-part series examines how stories of Black cowboys have been erased from both pop culture and history books.

    — If you bought Mario Kart World when Nintendo launched the Switch 2 back in June, you may be wondering: Do I really need another racing game? Kirby Air Riders comes from designer Masahiro Sakurai, the mastermind behind Super Smash Bros., so it adds that franchise’s chaotic combat to the mix. Each of the competitors has different weapons and each of the vehicles has different benefits and drawbacks. And everyone can use Kirby’s signature “inhale” technique, which lets you absorb an opponent’s skills by, well, swallowing them. So if you like your racing weird, get your motor running Thursday.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • In Taylor Swift’s ‘End of an Era’ Trailer, Mama Swift Says What We’re All Thinking: “That’s Complicated”

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    “So it goes ‘New Year’s Day’ verse and chorus, ‘Manuscript’ bridge into ‘Long Live’ bridge, into the down verse of ‘Long Live,’ into ‘Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you,’ into ‘Long Live’ chorus but slowed down to half time, ‘New Year’s Day’ chords underneath it, into the last verse of ‘The Manuscript,’” Swift rattles off in the trailer’s final clip as her mother watches with a stunned expression that may be one of horror or one of admiration, but is probably both.

    After a beat, Andrea says, “That’s complicated,” not even bothering to remove her balled-up fist from where it’s resting on her chin as she listens to her daughter’s grand plan for the supersized surprise song mash-up that she performed for the final night of the tour in Vancouver on December 8, 2024.

    An incredibly successful artist, Swift occupies a singular position in our cultural consciousness, with her work and very life drawing just as much public criticism as they do fervent fan adoration. She’s incredibly private about her personal life—remember the rumor that she left her apartment building in a gigantic suitcase so as not to be photographed outside? I sure do!—while sharing other experiences and feelings in painstaking detail, whether through her song lyrics and letters or documentaries and interviews. Consider that she spent nearly two hours chatting with then boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason Kelce, on their New Heights podcast in August—sharing not only the title, cover art, and release date for her newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, but also Travis’s dream pet, a “really specific type of otter.” (In short: a wild one he rescues, thus earning its unending devotion.)

    After the recording, later in the day, Travis proposed to her. A few short weeks later, she shared that too.

    All of this is to say that just when it seems like Swift has shown all her cards and there’s nothing left to reveal, the singer produces yet more compelling work. The original Eras Tour concert film had its theatrical run extended, then extended again, and you’d think, perhaps, that the appetite for a three-plus-hour filmed show would be sated, but here comes The Eras Tour | The Final Show, another full-length filmed concert, this one including the Tortured Poets Department set that Swift added to the tour after that album’s release. The new concert film will be released on December 12 on Disney+, as will the first two of episodes of the six-installment docuseries, just in time for Swift’s 36th birthday on December 13.

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    Kase Wickman

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