‘Once Within a Time’ Review: An Inventive, Kid-Friendly Short From the Mind Behind ‘Koyaanisqatsi’

John Stamos is remembering Matthew Perry.

, Friends. Over the years, , , , , , and have shown that their bond as the fictional one between Rachel Green, Monica Geller, Chandler Bing, Joey Tribbiani, and Ross Geller.On October 28, Perry at 54 years old, according to . “We are devastated to learn of Matthew Perry's passing,” a statement posted to the official Friends reads.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes it’s a loaded symbol in an imagined conversation between world-famous “sex doc” Sigmund Freud (played by Anthony Hopkins, in irritable curmudgeon mode) and converted atheist C.S.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Like “Testament” — the 1983 made-for-TV movie that imagined the fallout, both nuclear and psychological, after an atomic bomb is dropped on American soil — “Leave the World Behind” depicts a plausible doomsday scenario from the perspective of a handful of ordinary characters. Not military experts, not scientists, but two families obliged to shelter under the same roof out in the East Hamptons while something scary unfolds a few hours away, off-screen, in New York.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic With “Leo,” Indian director Lokesh Kanagaraj adds another “badass” to the growing network of formidable action heroes he calls the “Lokesh Cinematic Universe.” How do we know this guy’s a badass? Because the Tamil film’s techno soundtrack tells us so, chanting “Leo Das is a badass!” before even establishing who Leo Das is. By this time, the character in question has already wrestled a wild hyena into submission with his bare hands.

Conor McPherson, the five-time Tony nominee behind the plays Girl From the North Country and The Seafarer, has been set to adapt into a straight play the first novel and film of Suzanne Collins‘ trilogy The Hunger Games. It will mark the franchise’s first-ever live stage adaptation, and a fall 2024 debut in London is planned.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic When DreamWorks’ original “Trolls” movie was released, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the studio was launching a musical franchise. The rainbow-bright computer-animated feature boasted a sparkly soundtrack and the voice of Justin Timberlake as grumpy, gray-skinned Branch, but it wasn’t until the sequel — “Trolls World Tour,” released straight to streaming during the pandemic — that the series explicitly embraced its top-40 ’tude.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In America, doing what Andy Lau does in Hong Kong film industry satire “The Movie Emperor” would likely net him an Oscar nomination. Or at least an MTV Movie Award.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic One fan drove all the way from Louisiana to Little Rock to see the new Austin Butler movie, “The Bikeriders,” hoping the “Elvis” star might show up. Unfortunately, the ongoing actors strike prevented Butler from attending Filmland, a local industry fundraiser that hosted the Arkansas premiere of the film earlier this week — a rowdy portrait of a 1960s motorcycle gang freely inspired by a book of photos New Journalism pioneer Danny Lyon took while embedded with the Outlaws.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In 2016, John le Carré published a memoir called “The Pigeon Tunnel,” which the late spy novelist — who died in late 2020 — claims had been the working title of nearly all his books at some point. For le Carré, the term describes the passage through which naive birds of sport were forced from their nests, only to emerge as targets for marksmen waiting with rifles poised at a hotel in Monte Carlo.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Bikeriders,” a drama starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Tom Hardy and directed by Jeff Nichols, has been delayed amid the ongoing actors’ strike. Disney and 20th Century were scheduled to open the film on Dec. 1 but it’s been taken off the calendar for now.

Between the Rains and The Echo are among the big winners at the prestigious Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas.

American Fiction” from writer, director and producer Cord Jefferson, and the recent winner of the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award. Based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett, the film stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison,” a frustrated novelist who is fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired narratives and themes. After he writes an outlandish book making fun of the offensive tropes, his success propels him into the center of hypocrisy.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Nearly a quarter-century has passed since Aardman hatched its first feature, and the generation that flipped for “Chicken Run” — tickled by the novelty of watching a pseudo-serious genre movie rendered silly by an ensemble of stop-motion poultry — has grown up to be parents. Distributed by DreamWorks, the 2000 toon reimagined “The Great Escape” with chickens, as a doomed flock schemed to fly the coop of a WWII-style concentration camp run by the intimidating Mrs.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The world will never know what was going through 26-year-old Christian missionary John Allen Chau’s head when he was shot and killed by arrows off the coast of North Sentinel Island. There are jokes, of course, and educated guesses, but the best most of us can do is search inside ourselves for the answer.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic What would a monk want with a gun? Bringing wisdom and a streak of wry humor to his Bhutan-set sophomore feature, “The Monk and the Gun” director Pawo Choyning Dorji teases any number of possible answers to that question over the course of a droll, shrewdly satirical fable, in which Western values crash against a seemingly intransigent (but potentially more enlightened) South Asian culture. A gifted storyteller who keeps audiences guessing about his characters’ motives until the surprising moment everything comes together, Dorji was born in Bhutan, but attended university in Wisconsin.

EXCLUSIVE: Talpa Studios entertainment format The Floor is in production in Ukraine, as a response to the devastating war that continues to cripple the Eastern European country.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains spoilers about the reason for all the killing. Years ago, Indian director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat fell asleep on a cross-country train ride, only to discover upon reaching his destination that the cars on either side of his had been robbed by armed bandits, known as “dacoits.” The heist couldn’t have been too intense, or it would have awakened him, but it got the helmer’s gears turning about what a truly terrifying train raid might look like. The answer: “Kill,” in which a crew of 40-odd thieves board a train, intending to steal passengers’ watches and phones, then turn bloodthirsty after running into a pair of hardheaded commandos.

One of 2024’s most anticipated TV shows now has a premiere date.  Apple TV+ announced that “Masters Of The Air,” their upcoming mini-series from Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman, the same team who produced “Band Of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” will premiere on the streamer on January 26, 2024. Two episodes premiere on that date, with one new episode every Friday through March 15.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Shia LaBeouf doesn’t appear until more than 20 minutes into “Henry Johnson,” a new David Mamet play making its world premiere at the Electric Lodge in Venice, Calif. The play amounts to just four scenes, barely more than an hour in all (plus an unnecessary 15-minute intermission). LaBeouf is on stage for just two of them, but the instant the film star materializes, something electric happens.