Amy Adams

We kid you not, Christian Bale and Amy Adams are legit unrecognizable as Dick and Lynne Cheney in these new set photos.

Adam McKay’s establishing a reputation as Hollywood’s foremost chronicler of the biggest hot-button issues... of ten years ago. He made blackly satirical mince meat of the subprime lending crisis with The Big Short, stepping back into our recent past to expose the avarice still at play in the world of macroeconomics today. And for his next project, he’s going to take aim at a West Wing political player loathed and feared by liberals as a power-mad despot intent on destroying America. No, not him, we’re referring to a different wannabe fascist with the public graces of Darth Vader. To be specific, Dick Cheney.

High-profile miniseries are a continually booming business for HBO, and you don’t get much bigger than Amy Adams starring in an adaptation of Gillan Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Well, you do now, as Patricia Clarkson becomes the second cast in the HBO adaptation, playing a crucial role opposite Adams.

A handful of Super Bowl ads have already landed online ahead of this Sunday’s big game — it’s the usual mix of TV spots for upcoming movies like Ghost in the Shell and Transformers: The Last Knight, along with a few ads featuring familiar faces like Gal Gadot and John Malkovich promoting businesses and collecting paychecks. And then there’s Honda. Like others, their ad for this year’s Super Bowl also features several beloved celebs, but there’s something kind of unnerving about the execution.

Like a group of silent, monolithic, clamshell-shaped intergalactic vessels, Arrival will make an unexpected appearance later this week. Denis Villeneuve’s high-concept sci-fi picture has had a cracking week already, scoring a whopping eight Oscar nominations during yesterday’s announcement, including key nods for Best Picture and Best Director. A little Oscar love can be a huge windfall for a film, drawing new viewers to cineplexes and upping box-office totals, but the trouble is that in most markets, Arrival has already left the rotation. So in an effort to capitalize on the recent bump in the film’s public profile, Paramount will send the film back from whence it came, returning to nationwide theaters for a limited run on Friday, January 27.

Near the end of every year, Forbes releases their rankings of the top actors in Hollywood based on their box-office value and earnings (along with a list of the most overpaid actors, which is always interesting). This year, Scarlett Johansson tops the list of the highest-grossing actors in Hollywood, followed closely by Marvel co-stars Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., who tied for second place. What makes Johansson’s ranking even more notable, however, is her earnings — while RDJr. placed ninth on this year’s list of the highest-paid actors with $33 million, Johansson ranked third on the actress list with $25 million.

The 50th anniversary of Star Trek this week really put in perspective just how long we’ve been living with the concept of extraterrestrial. In 2016, there’s something downright familiar about aliens, maybe because in most situations our conception of them remains rooted in our conception of ourselves: They look like us with pointy ears or a ribbed nose, or they don’t look like us, but they behave like us, with motivations and actions that are easily recognizable and understandable. One of Arrival’s greatest achievements is the way it makes alien seem alien again: Strange and inhuman and beyond the limits of our comprehension. It readjusts our thinking about what life on other worlds might be like. And in doing so, it also readjusts our thinking about what life on our world can be like.

When you hear that Tom Ford is directing a movie, you know for sure that it’s going to be stylish. Nocturnal Animals is his first feature since 2009’s A Single Man, and, for one, thing it’s actually gorgeous to look at. But what lies beneath the surface is a sexy, nasty tale of two former lovers in a battle for supremacy and revenge. While Nocturnal Animals has the elements of a thriller a la Gone Girl, like classic noirs that came before it, it’s much more a love story with thrilling aspects.

After premiering at the Venice Film Festival and receiving its second prize, and screening at this year’s TIFF, Nocturnal Animals is finally heading to theaters. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams as two dangerously stylish divorcees who reconnect after he publishes a violent and upsetting book that is, for some reason, dedicated to her.

With all the recent hubbub surrounding Birth of a Nation, the mounting Oscar chances for late-year prestige pictures, and a handful of possible blockbusters left on the schedule, 2016's film conversation has shifted away from a project that ought to be far higher up on everyone's watchlist.