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This Star Wars: The Mandalorian article contains spoilers.

Director Bryce Dallas Howard’s two episodes of The Mandalorian — last year’s “Sanctuary” and season 2’s “The Heiress” — show her deep knowledge of what makes Star Wars tick. In particular, she knows how to deftly deploy the influences that make up the saga’s backbone.

Star Wars began as a patchwork of classic sci-fi stories that inspired George Lucas. He originally wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie but couldn’t secure the rights, which is why it’s such a big influence on the original films. Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress is another major and oft-cited inspiration. Star Wars also shares many elements with the Lensman series of science fiction books by E.E. Smith and the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. Lucas wanted to re-create stories that had thrilled him as a young sci-fi fan and, in throwing together all of his interests,...

Hesitant as he may be to deliver The Child unto “a race of enemy sorcerers” (aka Jedi), The Mandalorian will brave all sorts of new worlds to do so, as seen in the Season 2 trailer for Disney+’s hit flagship series.

Released on Tuesday morning (in the wake of myriad fake, fan-made trailers), the nearly two-minute preview above replays the Armorer’s charge to Mando — to reunite The Child with its own kind — as we sample the frozen and watery environs the duo will visit along the way. There are also glimpses of X-Wing fighters, at least two familiar faces...

Javier Bardem started in showbiz as a child actor in Spanish TV series “El pícaro” in 1974, landing his first recurring role at age 17 in 1986 in drama “Segunda enseñanza.” Hollywood success followed; he played Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel’s “Before Night Falls,” earning the first of three Oscar nominations. In buzzy Greenpeace documentary “Sanctuary,” which premiered in the official selection at the Toronto Film Festival, Bardem forgoes his dramatic chops to produce and narrate this nonfiction work about preserving marine life in the increasingly warming Antarctic.

This isn’t the typical film role you get offered. What led you here?

Greenpeace invited me to do this campaign. We’re trying to create the largest sea sanctuary in the world in the Antarctic Ocean. I didn’t blink; I said yes. They explained to me what exactly they’re looking to achieve and why. At that table...

Opening on Sept. 20 with Roger Michell’s “Blackbird,” starring Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon, and set at a stunning Basque resort, the San Sebastián Film Festival marks the highest-profile film event in the Spanish-speaking world. Here are 10 early takes on 2019’s edition.

A Festival of Discoveries

“Every festival has its own personality. Venice is now mainly a platform for big star-driven U.S. movies, Cannes for very high-quality cinema,” says festival director José Luis Rebordinos. “We search for new talent, and if you want to know what’s going on now in Latin America, come to San Sebastián.”

Five of its main competition movies are first or second features, with some very good word-of-mouth: David Zonana’s pointedly elegant Mexican class-gulf drama “Workforce,” and Belen Funes’ “A Thief’s Daughter,” a vision of low-income youth juggling love, broken families and bills. New Directors is now firmly established as the festival’s major sidebar.

Earlier this week, Oscar-award-winning actor Javier Bardem was in Times Square to demand a “Global Ocean Treaty Now” as an electronic billboard displayed images of threatened marine life.

He then addressed delegates at the United Nations to urge governments to agree a strong Global Ocean Treaty that could help to protect at least 30% of the world’s seas by 2030. This is the third out of four meetings at the Un to negotiate a treaty that could set the frame for a legally-binding ‘Paris Agreement of the oceans’.

“Whatever happens during this conference will have a deep impact on the life of our oceans and on the future of humankind. Delegates must know that the world is watching as they negotiate towards a Global Oceans Treaty. We just can’t afford to get it wrong,” said Bardem.

The event at the Un started with a trailer of the documentary ‘Sanctuary’ by...

Much of this season of The 100 has in some way been about how these characters that we’ve watched for 5+ seasons have been doing terrible things for quite some time. That’s always been a theme with this show, but the group stumbling upon Sanctuary, and trying to create a new, better life to honor the memory of Monty,…...

‘Sequin in A Blue Room’.

Sydney Film Festival announced its audience awards today, with best narrative feature awarded to Samuel Van Grinsven’s Sequin in a Blue Room and best documentary to Selina Miles’ Martha: A Picture Story – both Aussie films.

Sequin in a Blue Room, a queer coming-of-age story, is Van Grinsven’s debut feature, completed as part of an Aftrs Masters project and produced by Sophie Hattch. It stars Conor Leach in his film debut, alongside Jeremy Lindsay Taylor and Anthony Brandon Wong.

Martha: A Picture Story, documents the life and work of NYC photo journalist Martha Cooper. It is the first full length documentary film from Miles, and was executive produced by Jennifer Peedom and and produced by Daniel Joyce.

Two other Australian films – Ben Lawrence’s Hearts and Bones and Imogen McCluskey’s microbudget debut Suburban Wildlife – were also voted in the top five narrative films,...