In a New ‘Simon Boccanegra,’ Family Ties Are Tightened

It all started with a chicken named Nugget. For about a decade, American audiences had largely overlooked the Yakuza role-playing games that follow the exploits of Kazuma Kiryu, a gangster with a heart of gold, and a sprawling cast of characters through facsimiles of Japanese cities. When the first Yakuza came to the United States…

‘All-Time High’ Stream it on Netflix. Youssef (Nassim Lyes) is a habitual liar, a down-on-his-luck gambler and a hustler of fake luxury handbags. He is working these cons to impress his wealthy girlfriend — she thinks he has a regular office job. When Youssef reveals the truth, including his bald head underneath his wig, she…

The vitality and bonhomie that characterize many scenes in “The Kitchen,” a dystopian drama set in a near-future London, might seem at odds with the film’s focus on deprivation and persecution. Yet there’s nothing despairing about the close-knit, mostly nonwhite community that swarms and surges inside the titular public housing project, one of the last…

In early 2016, James Farrell, then the head of content at Amazon Studios for Japan, was looking for original programming that could help the streamer gain a foothold in the region. After months of searching, Farrell recalled recently, he was open to any concept, no matter how strange or unconventional. Then, over a late night…

To watch the singer-rapper Lil Nas X in the documentary “Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero” is to witness a Black queer man embody a power that still feels very new. Directed by Carlos López Estrada (“Raya and the Last Dragon”) and Zac Manuel, this film, streaming on Max, is historically important given its subject’s…

Joe Locke was so moved when he saw “Next to Normal” at the Donmar Warehouse in London last fall that he called his agent with a request. “I was like, ‘I want to do a musical so bad,’” said Locke, 20, who for two seasons has played the sensitive teenager Charlie Spring in Netflix’s L.G.B.T.Q….