James Bond almost got the Amy Winehouse treatment.

The iconic 007 franchise, known for its sultry Oscar-winning theme songs, was meant to have a ballad written and sung by the late Grammy winner for 2008’s “Quantum of Solace” starring Daniel Craig as the famed MI6 agent. Bond producer Barbara Broccoli revealed that meeting with the “Back to Black” singer was “distressing” due to Winehouse being “not at her best” in 2008, three years before her fatal 2011 overdose.

“Well, that was a very very distressing meeting, she was not at her best and my heart really went out to her,” Broccoli told Entertainment Weekly while promoting Amazon’s Prime Video documentary “Sound of 007,” streaming October 5...

“White Noise” holds a mirror up to American culture, especially cinema history. It’s the purely controlled, heightened chaos onscreen that reminds us why “family is the cradle of misinformation,” much like how the blur of media, art, and celebrity similarly splinter into everyday existential crises.

Based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name, “White Noise” was meticulously written and directed by Noah Baumbach and stars Adam Driver as Professor Jack Gladney, tasked with protecting his family, played by Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, and May Nivola, after an airborne toxic event forces them to evacuate a picturesque college town. “White Noise” premieres in theaters November 25 and streams on Netflix December 30.

Ultimately, “White Noise” is a dissecti...

A slumber party riff on “Jennifer’s Body” that chews on some of the same material without any of that cult classic’s bite, high school horror-comedy “My Best Friend’s Exorcism” isn’t funny enough to get away with so few genuine scares, and it isn’t scary enough to save most of its biggest laughs for the final act (where they’re laundered through one of the only male characters in this story about the effects of misogynistic self-loathing on female friendships).

But that alone isn’t reason enough to write off the year’s first taste of Halloween candy, which often benefits from the low expectations of direct-to-streaming content, and sometimes — in amusingly shocking ways — manages to exceed them...

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This week at the box office: in short, quite a bit. A number of festival hits are arriving on screens big and small, from Walter Hill’s “Dead for a Dollar” to Peter Farrelly’s “The Greatest Beer Run Ever,” plus other picks like Argentina’s official Oscar entry “Argentina, 1985,” the rocking “Sirens,” and the chilly Irish drama “God’s Creatures.” That’s just the start, too.

After raucous festival debuts at TIFF and Fantastic Fest, respectively, the week’s biggest releases — that would be the rom-com “Bros” and the horror offering “Smile” — hit the big screen to alternately delight and terrify audiences.

And, on the p...

AFI Fest has found its next guest artistic director. The prestigious role, which has previously been filled by the likes of David Lynch and Pedro Almodóvar, will go to “Selma” director Ava DuVernay for the 2022 iteration of the festival.

The festival announced that DuVernay had selected three independent films from female directors to showcase: Kat Candler’s “Hellion” from 2014, Aurora Guerrero’s “Mosquita y Mari” from 2012, and Victoria Mahoney’s “Yelling to the Sky” from 2011. All three women went on to direct episodes of DuVernay’s OWN series “Queen Sugar.” DuVernay will also moderate a panel featuring all three directors at the festival.

AFI Fest 2022 is set to take place in Los Angeles from November 2 through November 6...