Movies

When it comes to rom-com movie weddings, beware Julia Roberts — she’s already run away as a bride and sown chaos at her best friend’s nuptials, and now, in “Ticket to Paradise,” her character has set her matrimony-disrupting sights on her own daughter’s union. Written and directed by Ol Parker, “Ticket to Paradise” reunites Roberts with the rom-com, and with her “Ocean’s Eleven” co-star George Clooney, too, but what should be a slam dunk is instead a missed free throw.

Does the world need a hero, or someone less afraid to get their hands dirty? That's the (moderately intriguing) question that infuses the otherwise formulaic comic-book movie "Black Adam" with a measure of ... something. Gravitas? Grit? Grandiloquence? Whatever you call it, it does not lie at the heart of the film. What does is the same molten core of rock-'em, sock-'em hokum we've come to expect from almost every other film of this ilk. Rather, it hangs over the CGI-heavy proceedings like a brooding shadow, cooling and darkening the overheated action just enough to make things interesting.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, going back to his pro wrestling days, has always given off that “superhero” vibe so it’s entirely apropos he’s starring in “Black Adam,” a big-budget DC Comics origin story out in theaters this weekend.

When 'Medea' sings, husbands better behave

Friday's openings: Revenge and old-school rom-com

'God's Country': some serious mettle without a cause

'The Ride-Along': The problems of modern policing

What’s new for home viewing on Video on Demand and Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services.

“Halloween Ends” has the feeling of dour obligation, and it’s clear that no one’s heart is really in this any more, the limits of narrative possibility in Haddonfield stretched beyond their max. 

Behold Lydia Tár: lithe and silkily glamorous as a Saluki, an intricately coiled helix of genius, nervous tics, elegant taste and steely nerve. Watching Cate Blanchett inhabit the most indelible character to materialize on-screen this year is to witness a fascinating feat of artistic doubling, wherein Blanchett brings her angular physicality and a quick, slashing intelligence to bear on a woman who's creating herself in real time. "Tár," the film that wraps around its mesmerizing antiheroine like a fawn-colored cashmere wrap, is less a movie than a seductive deep dive into an unraveling psyche of a woman who's simultaneously defined by and apart from the world she has so confidently by the tail.

The image, in his casket, of the murdered Emmett Till, the Black 14-year-old lynched in 1955 Mississippi after reportedly wolf-whistling at a White woman, Carolyn Bryant, is said to have added urgency to the civil rights movement.

Is there finally truth to the title? 'Halloween Ends'

'Dead for a Dollar': Not much of a throwback oater

Get set to 'Scream' in a meta, post-modern manner

Top streams for the week

Winter weather warning: 'Buried' plays the Lantern

As you may have heard, "Bros," the first gay rom-com from a major studio to feature an out queer cast, bombed on its opening weekend. At just $4.8 million in sales, it came in fourth. This despite the robust marketing campaign and the Judd Apatow seal of approval. Given the fanfare going into opening weekend, there's no other way to describe it other than a flop.