Portside

Based on Cixin Liu’s megapopular sci-fi novels, 3 Body Problem is an engrossing spectacle about alien invasion. It’s a welcome 21st-century twist on the old War of the Worlds premise.

Showing that rich women in 1969 are “living in a bubble” is like demonstrating that, as ever, water is wet. But even if Palm Royale was meant to deliver messages of great satirical significance, it’s too weak to carry them.

Yet another “return to normal” Oscars — briefly disrupted by a statement from Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza — only demonstrates just how boring even a “good one” can be.

Largely set in occupied France during World War II, the new Apple TV+ series The New Look zeroes in on Christian Dior’s rivalry with Coco Chanel — but it falls flat when it tries to handle Chanel’s infamous Nazi sympathies.

Zone of Interest isn’t just a film about Nazis. This is a film about us.

Loosely based on the 2005 film, the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV reboot uses the action-comedy genre to represent how impossible life is for so many people today, with two misfit unemployables turning to assassin work out of desperation.

In Wonka, Timothée Chalamet dons the eccentric chocolatier’s purple jacket in yet another film adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This one is playful and harmless, but it can’t touch the 1971 original movie.

In Maestro, Bradley Cooper plays famed conductor Leonard Bernstein but leaves out the complicating — and fascinating — real-life details for a more streamlined, tearjerking product. It’ll doubtlessly do well at the Oscars.

Netflix’s resident horror auteur is back with his take on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. You’ll have a good time — even if some of the nods to “sociopolitical relevance” might send your eyes rolling.

The conformity of 1950s film and television was the result of the successful McCarthyist purge of leftists — and their genres — from the entertainment industry. The life of socialist screenwriter Very Caspary shows how it was done and what was lost.