Plus: A nightmarish assignment!

Plus: A cult classic assigned!

As more consumers cut the cord and more players get into the streaming game, the entertainment world has divided into ever-smaller niches. But conglomerates don’t want niches; they want mega-properties with hundreds of millions of subscribers. They should be careful about rebundling, though. We live in an age when identity is intimately tied to cultural consumption.

Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman on 'They Shouldn't Have Killed His Dog.'

Are you sick of comic book movies and other franchises? This month, you actually have a chance to do something about it. A trio of big, original new releases comes to theaters this month. Go see one - or all of them.

"The Tragedy of Joss Whedon" could well have been written by one of his favorite authors, William Shakespeare. It's a timely reminder, though, that the artist behind the artistry matters only as much as you want it to. In Whedon's journey we see a minor noble raise a great kingdom, conquering first television and then the larger realm of film.

The Opinions staff asked our columnists to share one book, TV show, movie, album, video game or other piece of culture, broadly defined, that had a big impact on them this year. Here’s what they recommended, and why.

Wes Anderson is sometimes dismissed as all surface, no substance, an aesthetics-obsessed filmmaker without a political bone in his dandified body.

While I was watching "Malignant"--the new horror film from James Wan, one of the genre's most popular directors at the moment--on HBO Max, a pair of thoughts leapt into my head unbidden.

The power and peril of stardom in a post-theatrical age.

Earlier this month, "Sorry to Bother You" director Boots Riley tweeted, "Art for arts [sic] sake is never for arts [sic] sake-it's for the sake of the status quo. This is why the CIA funded Jackson Pollack [sic]." Set aside the vaguely totalitarian suggestion that art must, by its nature, exist either in support of or opposition to the political establishment.

Warner Bros. recently announced that every movie it released in 2021 would simultaneously debut in theaters and on the company's streaming platform, HBO Max. The decision seemed like a declaration of war on the theatrical release calendar in favor of the stockholder-favored streaming business.

If films are worth writing about, they’re worth writing about seriously, as art separate from logistical concerns -- and seeing properly, as they were meant to be seen.

Netflix might be making crap, but at least it’s making lots of it and letting you watch at 2x speed.

“The Old Guard” and “Palm Springs" debuted recently on Netflix and Hulu, respectively.

Unless you physically own it, you don't really own it.

“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is his most graceful lesson on this front yet.

Despite the superiority of physical media, streaming and digital certainly have a place in the film-watching, and filmmaking, ecosystem.

The Daily Beast's Asawin Suebsaeng recently noted that "neoconservative Twitter" loves the Galactic Empire, the putative villains of the "Star Wars" universe, prompting much harrumphing from people who think this is nothing but petty trolling. As I always say, it's not trolling if it's true.

We bow to no man, woman or child.

The Academy Awards were never purely about the best or most popular thing in entertainment, and the Academy should stop pretending.

‘Based on a True Story’ is Dostoyevsky by way of 30 Rockefeller Center.