What took so long?

“We’ve been trying,” Alamo CEO Tim League explained in a phone interview. “These things just move at a bit of a glacial pace. I think we’ve been actively looking in Boston for eight years.

“For us at least there’s a little bit of a COVID silver lining because theaters after a couple of years became available and we really fell in love with this location.”

The Drafthouse, with 10 screens, is located at 60 Seaport Blvd. All provide dine-in service brought to seats by Alamo Drafthouse’s wait staff.  All seating is assigned. Reservations may be made in person, online or a mobile app purchase. Those under 18 cannot come in alone; they must be with an adult.

What stands out about Alamo Drafthouse theaters is the full food and drink menus with all courses — appetizer, entree, dessert — and full bar options including cocktails, spirits, award-winning milkshakes and a huge local draft beer selection.

Menus are available at each seat, where guests can order.  Call buttons offer quick access to a server.

Drafthouse asks that all guests arrive 30 minutes prior to a show for a specially crafted pre-show program unique to each film, and to allow for the full service experience.

That translates as its famous and strict “No Talking/No Texting” policy. Young children are not allowed (except for special kids’ events).

With Boston the 40th Drafthouse in an expanding nationwide chain, what decides, ‘This is where our next Alamo Drafthouse goes’?

“A complicated question,” League, 53, allowed. “For this particular one, since it was an existing theater, this is where it was going to be.

“We come here and spend a good bit of time in the area to see what it feels like nights. I really liked the breweries, the restaurants and just the entertainment scene around sports and the liveliness of people that are walking around, day and night.”

The chain scoffs at the notion that people don’t want to go see movies in movie theaters anymore.

“That same argument happened with the advent of streaming and streaming content. It’s available – but that doesn’t matter if you want to get out of the house! Restaurants are doing this right”.

And, League added, with blockbusters like “Barbie” “It’s been an incredible year for people to understand again how amazing it is to sit in a theater and experience great movies.”

Based on a 2012 Wired magazine article inspired by Sergio Juarez’s barrier-breaking approach teaching a classroom of impoverished 12-year-olds, “Radical” continues the positive work of producer and star Eugenio Derbez following his turn as a music teacher in the Oscar-winning Best Picture “CODA.”

The Wired story asked if a young Mexican girl named Paloma in Juarez’s class just might be “The Next Steve Jobs.” She was an undiscovered genius.

Years later the Wired writer Joshua Davis approached Derbez’ production company about a film version.

“Immediately, I connected! These are the stories I want to tell,” Derbez, 62, said in a Zoom interview.  “I find it so powerful. The fact that this girl and this teacher who was behind her, even though they were in the worst conditions, with no resources at all, with a violent environment around them, they succeeded. I don’t want to spoil anything but they did amazing things that year.”

Both Sergio and Paloma, who attended the recent Mexican premiere of the Spanish language/English subtitled picture, were on the set as well.

“We contacted both of them. They were supervising the script and we’re supervising the movie on the set because we wanted to tell the story in an accurate way,” Derbez said. “It’s real. We’re not exaggerating anything. What you see in the movie did happen. And they were there, in a truthful way.”

But Derbez knows how different it is to play someone who is alive and going to be looking and judging.

“It was kind of scary. When the director Christopher Zalla and I were talking about the character, we knew it was a real person and thought that we should not make an impersonation of him.

“The idea was to capture his soul, his essence, his message. More than trying to make me look like him — we’re probably physically different — the idea was to focus on the way he was teaching.”

Sergio arrives at this Mexican border town school with hints to a troubled past. Derbez learned what happened.

“When he was teaching, kids at the end of the year, kids used to come say goodbye and ask for a picture. He noticed less kids were asking for a picture. Then nobody came. He was losing touch and decided to make a huge change.

“He started to research why these kids were quitting school. He knew he had to change that reality.”

“Radical” opens Friday

An offbeat buddy comedy set in 1970 at an all-boys Massachusetts boarding school, the title refers to Giamatti’s single, dedicated but universally hated, long-term teacher Paul Hunham who is to supervise the few students that remain at Barton Academy over Christmas vacation.

Thus a life-changing journey begins for Hunham with his troubled, if brilliant, student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa in his screen debut).

While Payne won his Oscar co-scripting “Sideways,” “Holdovers” lists him only as director.  This project didn’t begin with David Hemingson’s script because, Payne said in a post screening conversation, “There was no script.

“I got the idea for the movie from a fairly obscure 1935 French film called ‘Merlusse’ by the director Marcel Pagnol, who has other masterpieces. That’s maybe one of his more forgotten films. But I saw it at a film festival a dozen years ago and thought, That’s a good premise for a movie. I just held on to it; I didn’t do anything with it.

“I had gone to a private school in Omaha and actually ended up in a boarding school in Massachusetts. Four years ago I got a pilot script, set in a boarding school in Massachusetts, that was very well written. I called the writer and said, ‘I love your script. I don’t want to make it. But would you consider writing a feature set in that very same world?’ And he accepted – that’s how it happened.”

While it wasn’t written specifically for Giamatti, he was the only one considered.  “I’ve been dying to work with that cat again all these years,” Payne said. “This was very much written with him in mind.

“I sent him an early draft, just to check in with him. Because he’s smart, good with material and would have good instincts about it. Like we’re on the right path, both for him specifically and as a movie in general. And he was in.”

As for Angus, Payne’s casting director waded through 800 video submissions – without finding their lead.

“Finally, we activated a plan which was to call the schools where we’re actually going to shoot and say, Whom do you have there?

“And there Dominic was at Deerfield Academy. A senior, a star in the drama department, he’d never been in front of a camera. He wanted to be an actor and was applying to Carnegie Mellon (he got into Carnegie Mellon).

“It was interesting for me to observe that some people have a talent, they’re born to do it.”

“The Holdovers” opens Friday

Coppola, 52, adapted and directs Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir of her courtship, marriage and ultimate emancipation from the King of Rock n Roll.  As Priscilla, Callie Spaeny, a virtual unknown, won the best actress prize at September’s Venice Film Festival and is nominated in the same category for a Gotham Award. Australia’s Jacob Elordi, a teen dream in Netflix’s “Kissing Booth” movies and HBO’s “Euphoria,” is a very tall Elvis. Both are just 26.

Coppola was intrigued once she read Priscilla’s “Elvis and Me” because, she said, “The setting of Priscilla’s story is so unusual as she goes through the things all girls go through. A first kiss, becoming a mother. These are things I can relate to — but it’s in this unusual setting with this legendary couple.

“To me,” she continued, “it’s a human story and shows the ups and downs and her evolution as a girl in this world and leaving to find her own point of view. I looked at ‘Priscilla’ to tell both sides of the romance and the end of the illusion.”

Presley was 26, world famous and in Germany in the Army, when he met 14-year-old Priscilla whose father was also in the service. They divorced when she was 29.

At one point Coppola’s Elvis says, “Actually, love is not enough.” “My main source material was Priscilla’s book and this was a direct quote from the book,” she said. “Personally, I’m not sure the most impressive thing about the story isn’t the endurance of this love. The power of this love that to this day when you talk to Priscilla, you feel the love. It’s true, it’s undying. Love is this tether that ties two people together and I think that’s for eternity.”

Said Spaeny, “It was important to see the story from the beginning.”

Concluded Coppola, “Just being able to speak to Priscilla added so much, the details she would tell me. She described the scene in the movie theater in Germany” – an empty theater except for the two – “and Elvis saying the lines. That wasn’t in the book.  You know he wanted to be a serious actor.

“But I tried to stay in Priscilla’s view, put you in her shoes. Seeing her, I can go back to being that age and having a crush on an older guy. And that’s what I love about films, experiencing someone else’s perspective than your own.”

“Priscilla” opens Friday

The continuing conflict in the Middle East inevitably forms a backdrop to this annual Boston celebration of Jewish culture and its people.

“One thing I can say is,” said Artistic Director Lisa Gossels, “thanks to the power of Zoom, we have 36 guests in-person or on Zoom to bring the community together in conversation.”

The opening night entry is a classic, an unexpected, slightly twisted father-son story: The 20th anniversary 4K restoration of Nathaniel Kahn’s landmark documentary “My Architect” about his coming to terms as the illegitimate son of his deceased father, the celebrated Louis Kahn.

The opening night documentary is “Remembering Gene Wilder” at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. “It’s a remarkable film about his life. He was a writer, director and painter as well as actor,” Gossels said. “A lot of his co-stars are here, alongside his wife Karen Wilder whom he married after Gilda Radner’s death.  He wrote a memoir and recorded an audio book, so we hear from Gene in the film, along with Richard Pryor’s daughter and Mel Brooks.

“It goes much deeper than you expect. It’s a film that makes you smile — and that’s something you want to do in a film.  Leonard Nimoy’s daughter Julie is co-producer with her husband David Knight and Glenn Kirschbaum, the writer and co-director, is from Sharon.  We have three or four from that production with us.”

Among the festival fiction films, “No Name Restaurant” is the centerpiece. “This was 20 years in the making,” Gossels said. “It’s about this orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who goes to meet a matchmaker. He ends up traveling to Alexandria, Egypt and is rescued by a Bedouin Arab.

“An unlikely buddy movie, since they need to overcome their differences to reach their destination, it’s comedic and edge of your seat dramatic. And in Act 3 they are in a Christian monastery. So, it has three religions represented. We have both filmmakers, Stefan Sarazin and Peter Keller.”

For more information, go to https://www.bostonjfilm.org

With its large ensemble led by Carrie Coon, Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski, “Gilded” accurately (if fictionally) chronicles the booming 1880s period in New York City that gives the show its name.

“For Season 2 we wanted to open it up a little, give more of the context, that kind of thing,” Fellowes, 74, said during a virtual Zoom press conference. “After the first series I knew I didn’t have to be nervous writing anything.”

One of the surprises in Season 1 was that alongside the wealthy elite of white robber barons and industrial giants, there was a Black upper class.

This season, Fellowes and his co-writer Sonja Warfield have taken Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), the young, ambitious Black secretary to Baranski’s dowager Agnes van Rhijn, down South to the newly opened Black Tuskegee University in Alabama.

“We are in 1884 and Sonia and I were advised that the Tuskegee University was open at this most unpropitious time with this extraordinary chapter in the middle of the South, which was very different from the North,” Fellowes said.

“Also, it was getting worse with the un-picking of the freedom — of the voting and rights. The unpicking went on for years, right into the middle of the 20th century.

“But in the middle of this was this college to open young Black men’s horizons. It seems extraordinary – and to do it there. We felt that was historical material worth mining.

“In the first series,” Fellowes noted, “we surprised people with the Black elite — and that is true! They did exist and that was a surprise for a lot of people.

“Now we felt to show the world in context, a whole chunk of racism and horror was going on simultaneously — and that’s what the Tuskegee story gave us to illustrate with Peggy.”

“Peggy,” Warfield pointed out, “has only known the North and her mother really has to give her a harsh warning” about the daily danger of going into this hostile landscape for any Black person.

“In conceiving that scene, my dad was the same age of Emmett Till” – who was 14 when he was tortured and murdered on a visit to the South in 1955 – “and although my dad was born in the North, his father was from the South.

“And that warning her mother gives Peggy was what my father heard.  So I was drawing from my family’s story.”

“The Gilded Age,” Season 2 begins Sunday on HBO MAX.

“Fellow Travelers,” beginning on Paramount+ Friday and Showtime Sunday, is adapted from Thomas Mallon’s book by the Oscar-nominated “Philadelphia” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner. He held the rights for a decade before making this eight-part series.

“I fell in love with the two lovers at the center of Mallon’s novel,” Nyswaner, 67, said in a Zoom press conference of Hawkins Fuller (played by Matt Bomer), a slick if closeted D.C. insider, and the very Catholic, closeted Tim Laughlin (England’s Jonathan Bailey).

“It was the kind of relationship I find compelling: A relationship of opposites. They’re not meant to be together but are powerfully drawn to each other. I was immediately taken with that — and then this is a drama with high stakes. I know about that! I did three seasons of ‘Homeland.’

“In the ‘50s everything — your life, your career, your future — could be destroyed if people discovered you were queer.”

Casting was a no-brainer.  Bomer, Nyswaner revealed, “was onboard for three years before we got to make the thing. Matt is so good at what he’s thinking and feeling — without saying what he is thinking and feeling.”

As for Bailey, who like Bomer is an out gay actor, “As soon as we had our greenlight Jonathan was at the top of our list. The only problem was he was busy shooting ‘Bridgerton’ in London” and they needed to coordinate filming schedules.

“Fellow Travelers” highlights the now-infamous Red Scare, led by Senator Joe McCarthy of Minnesota and his assistant, the now notorious Roy Cohn, to ferret out Communists in government.  It soon transmuted into the Lavender Scare, a witch hunt for “perverts,” gays and lesbians, in the State Department.

The series is an expansion of the book, including the creation of two major Black characters.  Explained Nyswaner, “There are two major changes. We go through several decades, from the ‘50s to the ‘70s and ‘80s — and the book is entirely in the ‘50s.

“To air a show in 2023,” he continued, “with no Black characters didn’t feel right to me. So we went to research. There were a lot of ‘Black newspapers’ and lot of representations of those in Washington. A couple of people came from Black journalism who went to white newspapers and we modeled the character of Marcus (Jelani Alladin) on that. He had to protect his Black identity and therefore has to hide his homosexuality at the same time. We’re proud we made our Black characters as complex as our white characters.”

“Fellow Travelers” streams on Paramount+ Friday and on Showtime Sunday

As WWI raged Chaplin’s Tramp made him famous in every country of the world and wildly wealthy. Yet as post-WWII America went through political convulsions with anti-Communist conspiracies and purges born out of moral indignation, Chaplin in the late 1940s became a target of the FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with his sexual life and his liberal politics.

But Eyman, the best-selling biographer of John Wayne and Cary Grant, doesn’t confine himself to just that chapter of Chaplin’s extraordinary life.

“My intent was to narrow it to 12 years,” Eyman. 72, said in a phone interview. “Then I thought, I can’t assume 21st century readers know anything about Charlie Chaplin, about his childhood and all that. And if you don’t understand about his childhood, you don’t understand about his career. If you don’t understand about his career, you don’t understand about what happened in the ‘40s. So I had to introduce the Tramp to get into the story.”

Born into poverty in 1889 London, Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977. Eyman’s Chaplin is forever stunted by the horrors of his youth.

“That was the source of the Tramp’s attitude towards the world. And to a great extent it was also the source of Chaplin’s attitude towards women,” Eyman said. “Because of his childhood he had an inbred distrust of society. He simply didn’t believe that society had any interest in the individual. Not out of cruelty but basic indifference.

“He thought it was just a question of inbred selfishness really. So the Tramp has to always depend upon himself.

“And Chaplin, in his own mind, had the same quality.  He trusted (the silent movie star) Douglas Fairbanks, who was his best friend, but Fairbanks died young. He trusted his brother Sydney and he trusted his wife Oona. And that’s about it.”

As to where you go after being immersed for years in this titan of world cinema, “I’m not 100% sure, but it’s going to be a woman,” Eyman promised.

“I need to write about someone who is slightly more emotionally accessible. And I haven’t written about a woman in 30 years. So I’m way, way, way overdue.”

For those who remember Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on their highly rated and influential weekly show that was all about film reviews, “Opposable Thumbs” hits at the heart of the duo’s trademark Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down verdict on each film.

“Their influence is still felt today,” said Singer, 42, a film critic and film writer for decades.  “I watched the show growing up and it absolutely was the thing that really got me first interested in movies.”

But did these two Chicago film critics – Siskel reviewed for the Chicago Tribune and Ebert, the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1975, was at the Chicago Sun-Times — really “change movies forever”?

“You know, they had this very contentious relationship. They fought all the time. They were legitimate rivals and competitors that didn’t necessarily like each other, especially at the start,” Singer said.  “So, a lot of the show’s mythology is about those stories. Pranking each other, fighting. Yelling at each other! And absolutely, if I was going to do this book, that has to be part of it.

“But I also wanted to talk about film and film criticism — and that’s what that subtitle suggests: The impact these guys had on the world of film, film criticism on television and popular culture at large. They had an enormous impact on all of those things in terms of introducing this style of film criticism, this back and forth, which is still so prevalent in podcasts and YouTube. All these different places.

“They certainly were influential in championing filmmakers and movies that they loved, fighting for causes that they believed in, like film preservation or fighting against the colorization of black and white movies. All sorts of things.”

“Opposable Thumbs” offers a bonus surprise – an appendix of 24 obscure films both critics championed and loved.

“How that happened was in my research, I went back and rewatched as many episodes of the show as I could. Of course, there are the movies that are the classics. What surprised me was how many movies that not only had I not seen but in some cases never heard of.  Movies that kind of vanished into thin air.

“As I was watching these episodes, it made me want to go watch those films.”

So, the Appendix salutes “these important film critics that were so important to me personally,” Singer said, while also injecting film criticism into a book bursting with backstage stories.

 “Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever” releases Oct. 24 

Like the great 1959 “Anatomy of a Murder,” whose aura this “Anatomy” invokes, what co-writer and director Justine Triet aims to emphasize with her “Anatomy” is ambiguity.  In Otto Preminger’s masterpiece the question is not if a jealous husband killed the man accused of raping his wife, it’s “was it really non-consensual?”

“That movie is very important for me.  I saw that movie 10 years ago,” Triet, 45, said in a post-screening Q&A at the New York Film Festival. “It’s so modern the way they are playing in the courtroom.”

In “Anatomy of a Fall” the question is whether Sandra (Germany’s Sandra Hüller), a writer, pushed her husband, also a writer, out the window of their Grenoble chalet. Or did he jump?

His dead body is discovered in the snow by his partially blind 9-year-old son who had been out walking their dog.

This “Anatomy,” which is in French and English, begins with Sandra asking a journalist, “What do you want to know?”

But what the actress needed to know — whether Sandra was guilty or not — was something Triet refused to reveal.

“I’m a big fan of working with what is in the script,” Hüller, 45, said. “I know you don’t need more information. But that first sentence is the headline of the film and I didn’t realize that while shooting it.

“But everything I needed to know was there — it was a perfect script. All the complexity of the character was there. All the questions I had that would never be answered. These were questions Justine couldn’t and wouldn’t answer.

“I was dealing with a character who kept her secrets and I made one decision: I would always tell the truth.  The sentences I would say would be true. That was the main thing.”

“There are lots of movies like this,” Triet allowed. “So we had to find a way to make our movie.”

Unlike most courtroom dramas where it is in court that truth is discovered, in this court fictions emerge.

That’s true, Triet acknowledged.  “At the beginning it was OK that we create something. We were telling a story with doubt and I wanted to remain on the side of ambiguity and ambivalence. I like to watch things that don’t offer a resolution. And the more we know about her, the more opaque she is.

“The trial is like two fictions — and truth is in the middle. But it’s not a faithful truth. So we can’t decide.”

“Anatomy of a Fall” opens Friday

“Killers” charts the murderous rampage in 1920s Oklahoma that decimated the Osage Nation tribal members who, because of oil on their reservation, were among the richest people in America.  But the indigenous natives could not sell their stake, it could only be inherited.

That saw white men, including DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart,  marry and murder Osage women to acquire their fortune. The killer conspiracy is led by the benevolent-seeming Oklahoma entrepreneur William King Hale (De Niro). What makes Burkhart so conflicted is that he genuinely loves his Osage heiress Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone).

In a virtual global press conference earlier this week Scorsese, 80, noted, “It was very important for me as soon as I saw the book,” that he answer the question: “How truthful can we be and have truth and dignity as best we can? One way we can deal with that is by getting in touch with the culture of the Osage.

“For me I wanted to play with that (Native American) world in contrast to the white European world. We went out and talked with the Osage. They were naturally cautious.  We weren’t going to fall into the trap of the cliche of victims or the ‘drunken Indian,’ yet tell the story as straight as possible.”

That story centers on a truly twisted core, Scorsese explained. “Molly loved Ernest, it’s a love story. So the script shifted that way and Leo decided to play Ernest instead of King.

“What I wanted to capture was the nature of the cancer that creates this easy-going genocide.  That’s why we went with the story of Molly and Ernest. For me instead of coming from the outside to find who done it, it’s a story of sin by omission. Silent complicity. That afforded us the possibility to open the picture from inside out.”

It was 50 years ago that with De Niro, as star Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” announced an original, new filmmaker.  The duo would go on to score with, among many, “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas” and “Cape Fear.”

It was De Niro who suggested Scorsese take a look at his teenage costar – DiCaprio! — in “This Boy’s Life.”  “It was casual,” the filmmaker recalled. “Although he rarely gives recommendations.”

That eventually led to Scorsese-DiCaprio collaborations, from “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator” – “That’s where we really clicked,” Scorsese said — “The Departed” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Harry Bosch is currently on view in two different guises: The Freevee series “Bosch: Legacy S2” began with Bosch, now a private investigator, trying to save his kidnapped daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz).

A very different, older Bosch — a 73-year-old cancer patient undergoing an experimental nuclear medicine trial – costars in Connelly’s new Lincoln Lawyer novel “Resurrection Walk” alongside his half-brother Mickey Haller. Bosch is driving the Lincoln for his sibling in order to qualify for the medical trial.

Bosch inhabits these two different spheres because they have always been thus. The Bosch books now number 24 and began in 1992.  “Bosch,” the hit Amazon series, ran seven seasons (2014-2021) followed in 2022 by the “Bosch: Legacy” spin-off.

These different arenas work because, Connelly, 67, said in a Zoom interview, “of the characters. People are loyal to the characters.

“So, we always started with the idea that just really captured the essence of Harry Bosch: Take anything you need from the books, big plot, small plots, little moments. It’s all there for the taking.

“But the key is: Maintain loyalty to the character! That has worked for us. Some seasons we took from three different books, sometimes just one. Then we got a big pivot with ‘Bosch: Legacy.’ Harry Bosch is still the center of the wheel, but we really want to amp up, enlarge, the storytelling around ‘Money’ Chandler (Mimi Rogers) a lawyer who employs Bosch and his daughter Maddie Bosch. That is where we really go off into unexplored territory. And that makes it fun.

“In fact, in my books, Maddie wasn’t a cop —  until she was a cop on the TV show.”

Agatha Christie famously killed off her beloved detective Hercule Poirot.  Could Connelly ever kill Harry Bosch? Is that possible? Or unimaginable?

“Somewhere in the middle,” he answered. “I mean, it’s definitely possible. I’ve been given this amazing opportunity that I can write about this character evolving over decades against the city and a society that’s evolving over decades. It almost feels like a duty that I should end it at some point.

“You know, just have him like disappear when I disappear from the planet. I don’t know if it means he dies or not, but I want it to be tied up. I don’t think it should be a thing like, whenever I’m gone somebody else takes up the Harry Bosch story.”

“Resurrection Walk” will be released in print, eBook, and audiobook on Nov. 7, 2023. The audiobook will be read by Peter Giles (Mickey Haller) and Titus Welliver (Harry Bosch). “Bosch: Legacy S2” is now streaming on Freevee.  

“I’m the showrunner, which means that’s the equivalent of the director of a movie. In the sense that I approve all the scripts, all the cuts, all the visual effects. You know, I hire everybody. So I’m very involved in the show.”

A hit from the start – “It’s the number one, most viewed half-hour on Prime Video,” Daniels, 60, noted in a Zoom interview – “Upload” slots as a one of a kind original. Clever, satirical, romantic, mysterious, it’s set in 2033 where when humans die they can “upload” themselves into a virtual digital afterlife.

Computer programmer Nathan (Robbie Amell), just 27 and too young to die, finds himself uploaded to the ritzy Lakeview afterlife. His handler Nora (Andy Allo) finds herself falling in love with him.

“It’s a very fruitful concept — and it’s really fun because of the two worlds,” Daniels said. “Between the digital world of someone who has died and the real life world of people wearing the VR goggles to interact with them, a really strong romance can develop. I love writing romance stories and trying to find weird obstacles for them. There’s opportunity to do satire — because it’s the future —  and I’ve always wanted to do a murder mystery. So I added that.

“But at the base is this romance and the poignancy of it.”

As the series progresses, complications – and complicated characters – ensue.

“We’re in Season Three now and I love Season Threes in general for TV shows,” he said, speaking from experience with “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office.”

“It’s just like everything’s hitting on all cylinders and some of the other characters are coming to the fore with their own storylines like, of course, Ingrid.”

That’s Ingrid Kannerman, Nathan’s girlfriend, who many might see as the “Upload” villain, rich and demanding, she’s played with both vulnerability and imperiousness by Allegra Edwards.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of negative qualities,” Daniels allowed.  “She has this desire to end up with this guy — that’s her dream. And it pulls her into doing things that she probably shouldn’t be doing.

“But when you think about what’s motivating her — it is this intense love for Nathan, who’s a likable guy. And now that he’s a digital version of himself of course, he falls in love with Nora. And a triangle is born!

“So I don’t necessarily approve of everything she’s up to, but I understand her.”

“Upload Season 3” streams on Prime Video Friday

It’s the Roaring Twenties and Sir Simon (voiced by Wilde aficionado Stephen Fry) has long been haunting the grand Canterville estate — until he meets his match in the brash Americans.

“One of the themes of ‘The Canterville Ghost’ is modernity versus the older, classical values and that’s a sort of sliding collision that’s always happening,” Chandler, who also co-directs, said in a Zoom interview from London.

“In our film you’ve got the Bostonian American family coming in to buy this big, old, dusty English country house and colliding head on with Simon and his 17th century culture.

“The Bostonians are bringing electricity, a motor car and modern ways of thinking. That theme of modernity and the value it has, is always a good thing.

“There’s the eldest daughter Virginia (Emily Carey of “House of the Dragon”), a very modern woman who challenges the age-old assumptions of Sir Simon and the English people she meets. She’s a woman in trousers who rides a horse the way men ride horses. A woman who keeps up with the boys when she pulls out her sword!

“Yes, it’s set in that period but the themes are pretty universal.”

Wilde’s 1887 short story has been adapted often, if always in live action. Partly because it’s an ideal vehicle for older actors — Oscar-winner Charles Laughton starred in a classic 1944 Hollywood version, “Star Trek” and X-Men veteran Patrick Stewart led a TV version.

“It’s a universal character, who has a certain set of values that are challenged. Therefore, he becomes a character you can explore in different ways,” Chandler said. “The way the film looks and feels is quite important. Our animated version lets us do something quite spectacular at the end, in the garden when Simon (Freddie Highmore) and Virginia confront the Grim Reaper (Hugh Laurie).”

Now that his dream project is here, was it worth the immense struggle to get it done?

“Yes! it’s completely worth it. I’m very happy. Making any film brings its hardships and heartache; compromises have to be made.

“And then you see things that you hadn’t expected — and they’re just wonderful. The way an artist interprets something, the way a voice brings a character to life.

“And when you see what people are responding to, the reward is worth it. I believe in cinema as a vital force of good in the world.”

“The Canterville Ghost” opens Friday

The first season ended with the discovery that a sadistic serial rapist on the loose was targeting Bosch’s daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), a rookie cop. Season 2 begins as she’s kidnapped and buried in a box with limited air. A desperate if determined Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) will move heaven and earth trying to rescue her.

That unrelenting pace is why these first two episodes will be released in 180 markets as a movie.

“I know some audience members were frustrated, I hope in a really good, delicious way, with our cliffhanger at the end of Season 1. So we wanted to immediately get into that,” explained Tom Bernardo, the series’ showrunner.

“And do it in a way that we haven’t done before, which was treat our first two episodes structurally and dramatically as if they were a compressed story. A movie right unto itself. We wanted it to feel nightmarish, intense, impossible.

While “Legacy” continues the series inspired by Michael Connelly’s bestselling Bosch books it’s become its own thing.

“The heartbeat of this series is this relationship between a father and his daughter, and how it evolves because their life changes,” Bernardo said.  “This is the most intense, horrifying thing that has ever happened to Bosch in the life of our series.

“So, what are the consequences as his daughter survives? People who survive something like that are different afterwards, and they carry something with them. What does that mean? And mean now with their relationship?

“What does it mean as a father who has to wake up and whose worst nightmare almost happened? And now he has to see his daughter go out there, back onto the streets of LA in law enforcement where he knows the dangers.

“Those questions were really interesting for us to talk about dramatically.”

The series third star, Mimi Rogers’ lawyer Honey “Give me the Money” Chandler. A key element in “Legacy,” Chandler was featured in just one of the 24 Bosch books – and killed off.

“At this point, the great thing — and the challenge — is these characters have naturally become something different in our story world,” Bernardo acknowledged.  “So it’s fun to figure out what’s going to happen. Which books can we do — if any?

“And to be clear, these first two hours’ situation that includes Bosch going to the morgue secretly to see what’s going on, that’s all been invented for the series.  That is not Michael Connelly. We invented all of it.”

“Bosch: Legacy S2” streams on Freevee Friday

Like the many acclaimed biographies he’s made over the past 30-plus years, “American Buffalo,” he said in a phone interview, “By focusing on an animal gave us an opportunity to really touch on all quarters of American history in the 19th century and engage in a new and, we think, different way.

“You have Native American people who, as it is pointed out in the film, have a 600-year generational relationship with the buffalo. And the people who took over their land had decimated the buffalo almost to the brink of extinction.

“That is a huge tragedy but also suggests down the line reasons for hope and inspiration. I mean, it’s no accident that the buffalo was recently named as the national mammal. It has captured people’s imagination from the first time they’ve seen one. I think it was a way to tell a complex story.”

Here is also a parallel biography of another magnificent animal that defined the West: The horse.

“I think that this is a pretty unknown thing,” Burns, 70, said.  “At least I’ve found since we finished the film and I’ve been sharing clips of it with audiences around the country, that people are super surprised to learn that there had been an earlier primitive version of the horse that had gone extinct.

“And that it was — how should we put it? – the ‘accidental’ release of horses from Spanish conquerors in a battle they had with the Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe in the late 1600s that they lost. As a result, lots of horses were released and within a few generations had converted many of the nomadic but also agricultural tribes to become, as we say in the film, among the greatest equestrians in the world. It changed the dynamics with subsistence.

“That is to say, if you only have dogs pulling you over these long, vast distances in the Great Plains, your focus for your tribe or your group is to just feed yourself. Everybody’s energies are devoted for that almost full time.

“But when you’ve got a horse, a couple of men can go and get enough food for a month almost instantly. That changes the dynamics. It actually converts some agricultural tribes to becoming stationary villages or towns.  It’s a pretty amazing story.”

Burns breaks another boundary with his next project: “We’re finishing a film on our first non-American topic, Leonardo da Vinci, which will be next November. And then in 2025 a big mammoth series on the American Revolution — six episodes and 12-plus hours which is the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord. The beginning of the Revolution.”

“The American Buffalo” airs on PBS Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. and simultaneously is available to stream on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and PBS Passport.

As Season 2 begins Sunday night on PBS, Dench’s Lucian Ainsworth is struggling in a doomed marriage, completely alienated from his father and extremely close to his mother, the beautiful Bella (the series’ top-billed star Natascha McElhone) who runs the luxury Italian Riviera resort hotel of the title.

“It is absolutely a troubled marriage. It’s tragic,” Dench, 30, began in a Zoom interview from his London flat. “because there’s not really any wrongdoing in either party.

“They’re just two people who shouldn’t be married, who clearly aren’t in love with each other. The first time we see them in Series 2, they’re trying their best to rub along in some small way.

“But they are two characters who suffered from different mental health ailments, so it’s nigh on impossible and just breaks my little heart to imagine people in that circumstance.”

Lucian, Dench knows, “still suffers from PTSD from World War One. He has night terrors, all kinds of things that have exhibited themselves. I’ve always interpreted it as some quite serious depression. But there’s all sorts of allusions to him finally getting himself out of a hole at the time we start the series.

“I can only imagine countless people who fought in World War One and would have experienced the stories you can read of people in their survivor’s guilt. Especially people in Lucian’s position, people who are in charge of other men, other boys. Countless boys you suppose who lost their lives.

“It sounds like a terrible situation to me — and my own struggles with mental health are quite close to my interest. That’s something that I’ve always thought was quite a big part of Lucian’s character. Fleeing from that is where we first see him at the beginning of Season 2.”

Dench’s own mental health issues? Do they afford a comradeship with Lucian? A particular insight?

“I’ve never fought in World War One fortunately, because I don’t know if I would have survived. I don’t have PTSD. But I’ve had my bouts with less than perfect mental health.

“Maybe that’s why it’s something that I identify with so strongly. It’s never very easy.”

What was easy for Dench was following in his great-aunt Dame Judi Dench’s footsteps.  “My granddad” – Dench’s older brother – “was an actor and I think my parents were more open to my acting because they knew people like my granddad who worked in this world.

“I was just lucky,” he added, “to find that this is what I wanted to do.”

“Hotel Portofino” airs on PBS Sundays at 8pm and simultaneously is available to stream on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and PBS Passport.  

“This year we’re showing a pre-national release event,” explained BAAFF Director Susan Chinsen. “Because it’s actually 15 years for BAAFF, we’ve selected Jeff Yang’s book ‘The Golden Screen,’ an anthology on Asian American cinema, in conversation with the Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña.

“The book doesn’t come out until Oct. 24 but we have the publisher’s permission to have it available on Oct. 12.”

Chelsea Vuong, Miss Massachusetts, emcees this special night.

“This book spotlights Asian American cinema from the ’50s-60s and on,” Chinsen noted.  “Jeff has got these amazing conversations between filmmakers and people like John Cho and Michelle Yeoh who have been making a big impact.”

This BAAFF presents six feature film presentations, every one with a live filmmaker Q&A from October 13 – 15, and six virtual on demand Shorts programs, including the popular Queer & Here series, from October 13 – 23. Also, the Laugh with BAAFF! Shorts Program screens in person Oct. 14 at 8:30 PM at the Emerson Paramount Center.

Opening night is at the Coolidge Corner Theater; all features screen at the Emerson Paramount Center.

There are two centerpiece films. Emmy award-winning FilipinX filmmaker Michele Rae Josue’s documentary “Nurse Unseen” reveals the little-known history of Filipino nurses who became the unsung backbone of U.S. and global healthcare systems.

The second centerpiece is Sing J. Lee’s “Accidental Getaway Driver” where an elderly Vietnamese cab driver’s routine pick-up becomes a gunpoint hostage siege by three recently escaped Orange County convicts. “It’s got comedy, action and suspense, kind of all of it. You’re amazed,” Chinsen raved, “that the guy you’re following is the guy’s father. It’s part recreation-documentary and part narrative and really interesting to untie what you’re seeing.”

Sunday, Oct. 22, is a special event with “The Farewell” filmmaker Lulu Wang: A preview of her upcoming Amazon series “Expats” at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Wang does a Talkback at 4PM.

“The 6-episode series is based on book called ‘The Expatriates’ which is set in 2014 Hong Kong. We’re showing Episode 5 with all the main characters in Hong Kong,” Chinsen revealed. “It’s a look at overseas Filipino workers who actually lived there and the political experiences that happened in Hong Kong in the last decade. Nicole Kidman, who is one of the three main characters, was the instigator of this project and picked Lulu to direct.”

Closing night on the 15th is Law Chen’s “Starring Jerry as Himself.” A family documents how their immigrant father Jerry, recently retired in Florida, was recruited by the Chinese police to be an undercover agent, only to discover a darker truth.

For information: BAAFF.org

The Boston Asian American Film Festival begins Oct. 12-23.

While the Scholastic series was aimed at middle schoolers, the new, elaborately mounted Disney+ (and Hulu and Freeform) series that debuts, naturally, on Friday the 13th, aims for a broader audience as five high schoolers go on a very scary quest.

The are investigating a 30-years-earlier tragedy — the terrible passing of teenager Harold Biddle. It’s a search that will reveal their parents’ dark secrets.

“Our approach was we wanted the show to appeal to everyone. We wanted to have adults as well as young teens,” said director and co-writer Rob Letterman in a joint Zoom interview.  “We wanted to appeal to deep ‘Goosebumps’ fans from the ’90s as well as people uninitiated with ‘Goosebumps.’

“Ultimately, the show is about teenagers going through very relatable, very universal, teenage things.

“And without giving anything away,” he noted, “their parents are also going through some things.”

But how “universal” is demonic danger for teenagers?

“Well, the truth is,” Letterman said, “supernatural demonic stuff is scary. And there’s nothing scarier than being a teenager in high school though. Just in general. That’s why the show works on multiple levels.

“Yes, it’s couched in supernatural stuff. But really, at its heart, it’s just a grounded show about these high schoolers going through all the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.

“And not everything is perfect. Family dynamics aren’t always easy. It’s hard to deal with those things. That’s why we’re really proud of how relatable the show is.”

Co-writer and executive producer Nicholas Stoller sees this “Goosebumps” similar to classic John Hughes movies.

Is “Goosebumps” perhaps “Stranger Things” — before there was a “Stranger Things”?

“I can see something like that,” Stoller allowed. “There’s certainly a lot of the DNA. I mean, all kinds of stories refer to older stories.”

“The ‘Goosebumps’ books themselves,” Letterman enthused, “were similar to Stephen King books of the ‘80s. In a way that would be more accessible for a younger reader.”

This “Goosebumps” introduces each teen in their own episode.

“The first five episodes are really origin stories for each of the five characters. You see the characters crisscross in each episode,” Letterman explained.

“So the first is the origin of Isaiah’s character (Zack Morris). Episode 2 becomes Isabella’s story (Ana Yi Puig) and then Episode 3 becomes James’s (Miles McKenna) episode.

“By the end of the fifth episode these characters have intersected so much they come together. Then they start in the back five figuring out what’s behind everything that’s happened.”

The first 5 episodes of “Goosebumps” debut Friday as part of Disney+’s “Hallowstream” and Hulu’s “Huluween” celebrations. And first 2 episodes are on Freeform Friday as part of its “31 Nights of Halloween” programming.

“Usually when Jason Blum sent a script to me, there’s a synopsis page,” Khan, 50, began in a Zoom interview.  “There was nothing like that so I just started reading. Because it was Blumhouse I knew some slasher horror element was coming but I had no idea what the story was and immediately I was hooked.

“Because it’s a real challenge — and that what I was looking for.”

Challenge doesn’t quite suggest the balancing act necessary for this comedic time traveling slasher movie murder mystery to fly.

It begins in the present day, with rebellious Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) and her over-protective mother (Julie Bowen) who remains traumatized 35 years later by the Sweet 16 Killer who stabbed each of her three 16-year-old friends 16 times.

When on Halloween, the masked killer strikes again, what else can Jamie do but jump into her best friend’s secret time machine and go back to 1987 and try to change history?

“There’s so many balls in the air here!” Khan marveled. “A lot of elements in play and the idea of, ‘OK! I’m going to bring us into the world and then take a left turn and hopefully everybody’s just holding onto the ride.

“You don’t know what’s coming, because it could be comedy. It could be a scares. Those kill sequences,” she allowed, “we’re really leaning into that with rather graphic killing. Because a killer is on the loose.

“When Jamie, this Gen Z, character, goes back to the ‘80s, we’re having the fun of being able to see that through her 2023 lens and all the comedy that comes from that. But never forgetting why she’s there — a real, emotional, traumatic thing that has happened to her.”

Once Jamie in 1987 meets her mom, there’s another unexpected shock – her sweet as apple pie protective mother was a Mean Girl, minus any feminine solidarity.

“That’s right,” Khan agreed, “and that’s so amazing. Women supporting women? Back then it was like, there was the Alpha girl (Olivia Holt) – who’s her mother! – and the popular girls, the cheerleaders. And then there was everybody else.

“It wasn’t that long ago, like 35 years, but there was no such thing as questioning the behavior of literally being physically thrown out of a party.  And it was fun to have somebody from Gen Z comment on things that we take for granted. Like, ‘OK, I guess we’re all getting bullied and dismissed but you know what? That’s the way it is.’

“Totally Killer” is streaming on Prime Video

Especially if, writer-director Chloe Domont asks in her film “Fair Play,” she does better in the workplace than he?

Her couple, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), are super stressed at their Wall Street hedge fund.  When his expected promotion goes to Emily, Luke finds he’s fine – until he’s not. Then he begins spinning out of control – and he rapidly becomes a threat to her.

“The real kernel of inspiration for this film was when my career started to take off. It was this feeling as I was having a certain period where my success didn’t feel like a total win,” Domont, 36, said in a Zoom press conference from London.

“It felt like a loss on some level — because of the kinds of relationships I was in. These were relationships with men who adored me for my ambition, adored me for my talent, adored me for my strengths.

“But at the same time, there was still this feeling — an unspoken feeling — that me being big on some level made them feel small. So, I started to undermine my excitement for these opportunities I was getting and normalize that.

“And that made me realize how much hold these ingrained power dynamics still have over us. The biggest thing is that we’re all afraid to talk about it. Because no one really wants to admit or acknowledge that that’s what’s going on.

“Even I didn’t want to admit that that’s what was really going on ’cause I felt like it was a poor reflection of me and my choice of partner.”

She added, “These are progressive men who I was with, who didn’t want to admit that these were feelings they were having because what would it say about them?

“It was a dynamic I needed to put onscreen.  At that time I was having these experiences over and over again. It was burning inside of me and I wanted to write a story about it and just go crazy with it.”

Domont is proud that this gender-inflicted warfare has shading.  “I’m not interested in creating characters where there’s a clear villain or a clear hero. Emily’s not a hero. She’s a human. She’s messy and ugly at times.

“Also, what’s important for Luke is he represents a generation of men caught in the middle — between wanting to adhere to a modern feminist society but still having been raised on traditional ideas of masculinity. That doesn’t make him a bad guy.”

“Fair Play” streams on Netflix Friday.

When 49 immigrants were flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in September last year, courtesy of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, it grabbed international headlines.

The directing duo of David Heilbroner and Kate Davis, themselves Martha’s Vineyard residents, took a closer look at the incident in their MSNBC documentary “Martha’s Vineyard v. DeSantis,” airing on MSNBC Sunday and Peacock Monday.

Fox News and DeSantis wanted to paint Martha’s Vineyard as this “white, liberal, ultra wealthy island, which it certainly is for two months in summer,” Davis said in a joint Zoom interview. “We spend the winters here as well and have a feeling for the diversity of the island. This is not the little white place that Tucker Carlson portrayed.”

The film notes the island’s diversity: A quarter of the population’s language is Brazilian Portuguese, who’ve long lived alongside a Black and Native American population.

“We felt that we could go deeper with this story in the headlines. We’d met the four immigrants (spotlighted) because they were moving into a friend’s house and we thought that their personal story would cast a different light on the entire political picture.

“Because after all, each one of these 49 migrants, along with thousands across the country, each one of them is a human being and it’s easy to reduce them in one’s mind as part of a mass of people who can be devalued for political purposes by people who want a disruption here.

“I hope it drives home for audiences that what might look like an entertaining prank from the outside is actually an extremely calculated, complicated operation, using taxpayer money questionably on the part of government officials.”

Heilbroner pointed to, “The emotional toll that this took on them. They were really duped. After crossing through six countries in life-threatening conditions to arrive in United States a government-funded operation sent them a bill of goods to come along on this trip to Martha’s Vineyard.

“To get them on these private planes they were told they were coming to Washington state or Oregon to get jobs and housing. Then they were completely left to their own devices.”

A sign of the meticulous planning that went into this was that all 49 were legal.  As Heilbroner noted, “At that time because the United States had an open border policy with a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, they were legal.

“And it is illegal to move so-called undocumented aliens because of federal trafficking laws. DeSantis declined or didn’t respond to requests for interviews or comments.”

Yet the Hitchcock Laurence Leamer presents in his fascinating and comprehensive biography “Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession” (Putnam, publishes Oct. 10) is that of an emotionally stunted, sexually impotent Brit with life-long awkward social abilities.

Leamer, at 81 a veteran best-selling author (“The Kennedy Women,” “Mar-A-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace”), sees “Hitchcock’s Blondes” as a study of the director’s lifelong fascination with – and need to dominate – his famously blonde leading ladies. They include Britain’s Madeleine Carroll (“The 39 Steps”), Sweden’s Ingrid Bergman (“Spellbound,” “Notorious”), Philadelphia’s Grace Kelly (“Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window,” “The Catch a Thief”) and Kim Novak (“Vertigo”), Janet Leigh (“Psycho”) and, most controversially, Tippi Hedren (“The Birds”).

“It’s a second part of a trilogy of artistic geniuses and the women around them,” he explained. First was “Capote’s Women” which is an all-star “Feud” miniseries next year. The third will be “Warhol’s Muses.’

With “Blondes,” Leamer “wants people to realize the greatness of Hitchcock as a popular entertainer and understand what he accomplished. I want people to appreciate these women as actresses in a whole different way. As individuals, inspiring people in their own right.”

Among many eye-opening revelations is how, despite their public images as pious, proper and reserved, both Bergman and Kelly were uninhibited sexual adventurers.

“Well, OK, if a man has his line of women, he’s a stud. If a woman does it, she’s a whore. And I say, ‘Go girl, go!’ in my book. I didn’t put them down.”

Of all his research what was most surprising?

“To discover from my personal perception of Grace Kelly, the truth about her marriage.”

Kelly left Hollywood in 1956. She was 26, at the peak of her Oscar-winning stardom, when she married the ruler of a French Riviera tax haven, Prince Ranier of Monaco, whom Leamer dismissively describes as “plump and short.”

Of all the passionate affairs Kelly had – including costars Ray Milland, William Holden, Gary Cooper – this was a loveless union, although one blessed and endorsed by her parents.

Leamer, asked if she was having a walking nervous breakdown while desperate to leave Hollywood, said, “I think so. How often these people end up friendless there. There’s nobody she can go to and talk to her. She couldn’t trust your parents. And Hollywood, she basically didn’t care for on some levels.”

The daughter of “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible” playwright Arthur Miller and his third wife, the photographer Inge Morath, she’s married to the revered Oscar-winning and retired actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

As a writer, director, Miller, 61, goes her own way. When “She Came to Me,” which stars Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway and Marisa Tomei, world premiered last winter at the Berlin Film Festival, Day-Lewis was nowhere to be seen: This was strictly a Miller showcase.

Best described as a screwball comedy, “She Came to Me” focuses on Dinklage in a scene-stealing role as an opera composer – who’s been blocked for five years — whose marriage to Hathaway becomes crazily complicated when he encounters and is attracted to Tomei’s tugboat captain.

Tomei found inspiration “watching a lot of Giulietta Masina (Italian director Federico Fellini’s wife and muse). I was thinking a lot about her and her comedy which is Italian-style screwball comedy but with so much depth and passion. She was my totem, my anchor.”

Hathaway’s stoic wife Patricia was Dinklage’s therapist before she married him. Now she’s secretly embracing a religious obsessive compulsive disorder in conversations with God.

Hathaway prepared by watching “every nun movie I could find! Actually, I found a lot of inspiration from (the Mexican classic film) ‘Viridiana.’ ”

Miller recalled the film’s origins. “I’d written a short story called ‘She Came to Me’ with a little bit of these characters but, essentially, the idea of someone creatively blocked was in there. That was the seed and it took several years to finish. I found interweaving three love stories was difficult. Out of the ether came Patricia who has a secret relationship to God and nobody knows it.”

For Dinklage, the humor is many sided. “I don’t think my character understands that he’s in anything funny; he played it like an Ingmar Bergman film. But Preston Sturges’ ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ and ‘Palm Beach Story’ — if we have anything to do with those screwball comedies we’ve done our job right.”

Hathaway, 39, recalled, “I auditioned for Rebecca when I was a teenager and I remember leaving that room feeling a sense of destiny. This script came and touched my heart so deeply. It’s rare to find something so heartfelt, brave and risky all at the same time.  All I can say it’s radical the way I love films to be with its very loving heart.”

Inspired by true events, the Vertical Entertainment movie streaming Friday tells – for the first time since she was kidnapped and raped by Ernesto Miranda in 1963 – the victim’s story.  In 2019 Patricia “Trish” Weir chose to reveal her identity she had always protected.  Abigail Breslin (“Stillwater”) stars as Trish and Sebastian Quinn (“Dynasty”) is Miranda, the serial rapist. The cast includes Donald Sutherland, Ryan Phillipe, Luke Wilson, Andy Garcia and Emily VanCamp.

For Quinn the film’s appeal is more than a true story. “It’s based on a moment in American history that most people don’t know.” And, Quinn discovered, there’s not much known about the criminal at the heart of the case.

“Most of the information you get Googling is the story of the Miranda rights and not so much about the person.

“Our screenwriter George Kolber did extensive research and I was able to see some of the results: Police reports and examinations the real-life Miranda had gone through.

“A lot of people described him as having a mild, meek appearance. He did not look, act or speak the way most hardened criminals did or people that were capable of committing sexual crimes. In conversations I had with the director Michelle Danner and Kolber, (they figured) there maybe was a narcissistic personality disorder. Where you detach from your reality.”

In the film, several Ernesto Mirandas emerge.  Initially he’s the genial reformed criminal trying to win over the police, then the quiet withdrawn observer during his trials and finally, after he’s released from prison, a hardened, aggressive ex-con.

“He shows various personalities with different people,” Quinn said. “The more confident and in control he felt, his true colors were coming out.  Whenever he felt like the victim, he would create this narrative that he’s reformed or had remorse.  We tried to create facets of his personalities.”

Then came the filming of the violent sexual assault in the back of Miranda’s car.

“There were no stunt doubles,” Quinn said. The realism is, “A testament to Abigail Breslin’s talent and character. She was a true leader. She made it comfortable for everybody on set, and especially me.

“We filmed that scene the very last day. So we had about 30 days to get to know each other and be able to trust each other.

“She was, ‘I don’t want you to think about hurting me as a person.’ It’s like she gave me her blessing, ‘Do it like our characters would do it.’

“And that was the only way to have done it.”

“Miranda’s Victim” streams Friday

Green’s “The Exorcist: Believer,” opening nationwide Friday, eliminates every one of the less than stellar “Exorcist” spawns of the last half century to begin with a direct sequel to director William Friedkin’s Oscar-winning original, which was adapted from William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel about a young girl’s terrifying possession by a demon.

“Like so many filmmakers, I was incredibly inspired by the film that Friedkin made in 1973. What it did as a touchstone before was so brilliant and timeless” Green, 48, said last week in a Zoom interview.

“It didn’t fall into the traps and tropes of horror movies. It played — as he referred to it — as ‘a theological thriller.’ And I think that’s the right attitude that you have to take when you’re making something that deals with the sensitive topics that go from spiritual to clinical. I wanted to follow in that DNA.

“There were a couple of ingredients that were really important to me, in addition to some of his technical genius that I could be inspired by. But if I could license (Mike Oldfield’s) ‘Tubular Bells’ and have that iconic music part of this movie, that would be a real thrill.

“If,” he continued, “I could invite Ellen Burstyn and somehow convince her to be a part of this and return to this character, Chris MacNeil, that she created 50 years ago, that would give me the tools I needed in confidence to step from what he made 50 years ago and into a story that was meaningful to me, personal to me, that I could put my signature on.”

Burstyn, a Tony, Oscar and Emmy winner with six Oscar nominations, is now 90.  Before he wrote this role for her, did he check to see if she was able?

“I had to check on me to make sure I can keep up with her,” Green answered. “When I first reached out to her, we spoke about books and spirituality and our shared work in the movie business. I read her autobiography and just fell in love with her.

“When I did have a script and the audacity to present it to her, I think she saw not only were my intentions really ambitious but pure towards her and inviting her to be a collaborator on this journey.

“I looked at her as the Queen Bee of our production and was honored for her to be a part of it.”

Do they hit Marvel history books?  Binge watch every Loki appearance since his debut in the 2011 “Thor”?

“I would say the only prerequisite to enjoying ‘Loki’ Season 2 is to watch ‘Loki’ Season 1,” laughed Marvel Creative Exec Kevin Wright in a Zoom interview.

The series, he noted, was always planned to be told in two seasons, each with 6-episode stories.

“We’ve told so many stories and they reached a lot of people but I’m sure there were people going, ‘How do I pick up in this?’ We wanted to give a new entry in that first episode of Season 1 where we catch up with Loki — with the past 10 years of movies at that point.

“You can come in, watch ‘Loki’ Season 1 and go straight into Season 2 and you will really enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, you can go even deeper by diving into the past movies. But they certainly are not a prerequisite to enjoying this.”

What’s really remarkable is how Loki has transformed from a villain to his current heroic stature.

“That speaks to the power of this character. Not just in Marvel but in large part to Tom Hiddleston and what he has put into this character in this role over the 12 years he’s been living with this.

“It’s really cool and it’s exciting that audiences have gone along. That there is this character that can live in the gray area and bounce between the poles. So much of our show is about that.

“There was a line in Season 1 that’s been the mantra for the two seasons of the show: ‘No one ever bad is ever truly bad. And no one ever good is ever fully good.’ We all live in the gray area and Loki is the embodiment of that.”

Season 2 begins in the immediate aftermath of the fiery finale that concluded Season 1.

“We took a lot of swings in Season 1. They’re not a lot of giant action scenes. We’re talking about philosophy. We have an alligator version of Loki! There’s some weird stuff in there — and audiences largely really enjoyed it.

“So for us there was a freedom of going and just keep telling our story. We didn’t want to come back and play ‘the hits.’ We wanted to deepen and further this world and these characters in the way that second seasons can dive deeper into these characters and see those through to their natural conclusions.”

“I had seen a lot of movies set in the Outback,” Australian writer-director Kitty Green began in an interview in her distributor’s Manhattan office, “a lot of Australian thrillers and things. But I’ve never seen anything through a female lens showing what it’s like to be a woman in those environments.

“When you see the image of the two of them, you assume that — and audiences share this — they’re going to be raped or killed. I was trying to challenge those expectations. Trying to make a movie just about that bad behavior and about what we can tolerate should tolerate as women. When do we stand up for ourselves when we say, ‘No, that’s enough’?

“I thought it would be an interesting subject for a movie to explore with the tension of those spaces and how uncomfortable a woman can feel when often it’s when you don’t understand something’s a joke. Or is it a threat? That kind of cultural divide but also a gender divide. I was looking at all that.

“And,” she added, “I worked the bar in a college town and that’s exactly what it was like! You make it relatable.”

Green’s previous film “The Assistant” looked at a young woman working for a never-seen boss, a dark scenario that coincided with the Harvey Weinstein scandals.  Both “Assistant” and “Royal Hotel” star Julia Garner (“Ozark”).

“My thing as a filmmaker,” Green acknowledged, “is I often look at what it’s like to be a woman in the world and how horrifying that can be at times.

“That’s become something that I do. I don’t know whether I should keep doing that. But it seems like with ‘The Assistant’ I figured out how to play with tension and how to play with these gendered environments and spaces that made me feel uncomfortable as a woman.

“So it’s just playing around with that — how horrifying that can be. I guess that seems to be resonating and people seem to be getting on board with me.”

Born and raised in Melbourne, Green, 39, started at 11. “That’s when I got a video camera. I was making videos in my backyard. I went to film school in Melbourne.  When I graduated, straight out of film school I made some documentaries in Ukraine.

“So I’ve been all over the place, but this was my first time making a proper film in Australia.”

“Royal Hotel” opens Friday

“It’s taking the oldest form of storytelling in many respects, you know, the fairy tale, the story you tell around the fire, and adapting that to contemporary New York,” answered the AppleTV+ series’ producer and frequent director Jonathan van Tulleken.

“Changeling” is from Victor LaValle’s 2017 novel, adapted by Kelly Marcel. We follow Lakeith Stanfield’s Apollo Kagwa, a used book dealer, as he searches for his wife as we see his mother, father and child. LaValle, who was on set, narrates the story.

“In terms of adapting it to TV,” van Tulleken said in a joint Zoom interview with director Michael Francis Williams, “it’s a really bold bit of television. Kelly really went out there to try and bring this fairytale quality to the screen, to capture all the nuance and get it all down visually.”

“It’s also addressing some really interesting, pertinent themes,” noted Williams.  “Tough things on race, postpartum depression and what it is to be a new father, a new mother. Kelly made sure she stayed faithful to the book and also expanded it, working through her own demons on motherhood and being a woman.”

Williams, who directed the series’ intense seventh episode, describes himself as a queer, Black British artist whose focus is on marginalized characters.

“I would say on the landscape of television there are very few shows with predominantly Black casts of this premium level and singular points of view,” he said. “My episode specifically gets to look at Apollo’s mission. There are very few pieces of premium drama TV that focus on the interiority of a Black woman, an older Black woman in this case, and tell her first-generation immigrant story.

“She is a woman very much marginalized and speaks about finding her place within New York and how she overcame that and what she dealt with, reckoned with, remembered. These are really rare things to put on such a platform.

“As a director who gets to tell their stories,” Williams added, “it’s really important to be able to do that and pour everything into the show.”

How important is it to have a star like Stanfield, the first actor to join the project?

“I think more importantly,” van Telleken said, “how important is it having the right person if I’m honest.  There’s no doubt having a name is important. What’s great about Keith is his name is associated with just him being a phenomenal leading actor.  That’s where it’s really useful.”

“The Changeling” airs on AppleTV+

“I was in college when it was happening, and I just marveled at the insanity it would take for somebody around my age to break into somebody’s home,” Carr, 35, began in a Zoom interview.

“It’s one of those cases that stuck with me and as somebody who is largely in the criminal justice space as a film director” — 2021’s “Britney vs Spears” – “it was like, ‘Oh yeah! I want to get involved and see if I can uncover new things and talk to people who have never spoken.”

Which is exactly what she did with the first-ever testimony of Rachel Lee, the so-called ringleader of seven celebrity-obsessed teenage and young adult Calabasas kids who used social media to track when they could burgle $3 million in jewels, clothes and accessories from Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox and others in 2008-2009.

Carr also has the two prosecutors and the reporter who revealed that a Hollywood precinct cop, instrumental in the case, was being paid as a consultant on Sofia Coppola’s take with her 2013 “The Bling Ring” film. That compromised sentencing of several burglars.

“It was really hard to get Rachel to agree to go on the record,” Carr recalled. “Originally, she wanted to do a semi-anonymized podcast so that she could keep her privacy because it’s been a long time since the Bling Ring. You know, she got out (of maximum security prison after 16 months) in 2013, so there’s been a lot of healing and a lot of life that’s happened that has nothing to do with Bling Ring.”

Getting Lee was never assured – until Carr actually got her.

“There was this one moment where I was about to shoot this huge chunk with her that was going to basically be the basis of the entire documentary. The spine of it. And she almost backed out. All the way it was always really difficult.

“But that big block of interview in the film is somebody who has let their guard down and is talking about their own reality with self-deception. Talking about that she was potentially a sociopath before.

“To me it was about breaking that wall down of being careful and for her to feel like she could truly be herself.

“She knows to say that she is responsible for what she did. But that’s the bare minimum when you’ve committed a crime. I think that she always will feel guilty.”

“The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring” streams on HBO Max Sunday.