Published, April 28 at 6:00 p.m. ET: Mickey Rourke has slammed Marvel for perpetuating “crap” acting, but the Oscar nominee allegedly was unaware of the MCU prior to signing on to “Iron Man 2.” Rourke pocketed a Golden Globe Best Actor win for “The Wrestler” before joining the film, and a source close to the actor claims the former 80s heartthrob had a list of demands truly worthy of a comic book villain to play MCU baddie Ivan Vanko....
Among those, only “Beavis and Butt-Head” has continued to make a comeback, first with new episodes produced in 2011, and now with a busy summer that includes both the new feature-length “Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe” and “Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head,” both of which are out now on Paramount+. In the movie, the two morons travel from the ’90s to the present day; they remain there for the new episodes, as their signature couch commentary now applies to online videos and social media....
“Moffie” is Afrikaans slang for “faggot,” and the film, which is based on André Carl van der Merwe’s autobiographical novel of the same name, attempts a bold gesture in reclaiming epithet as an emblem of power. It’s 1981, South Africa, which means it’s not okay to be a “moffie”; effeminacy is a sign of weakness, and being gay is also illegal. It’s also a moment of compulsory military conscription that all (white) boys over the age of 16 must endure, and so that means, as the film begins, Nicholas Van de Swart (Kai Luke Brummer) is readying to ship off to defend colonized land....
Zed’s physical battle coincides with his first trip home in years, and the gap in generational POV is readily apparent. On its surface, it reads like a paint-by-numbers immigrant/first gen culture clash, but the film gets to the root of this familial disconnect in a unique way, revealing a phantasmagorical journey into Zed’s fractured psyche, as a man caught in a simmering culture war with himself. Related ‘A Man Called Otto’ Review: Tom Hanks Is a Grumpy Old Man in This Limp Remake New Movies: Release Calendar for December 23, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films Related Oscars 2023: Best Documentary Feature Predictions Oscars 2023: Best Visual Effects Predictions In a strange masterstroke, the debuting Tariq accomplishes this by applying a lens of realism to formalist designs, as if he were documenting waking dreams....
When Eva Husson’s lush, aching period drama opens, World War I has been over for more than five years. Textbook history suggests that its end kickstarted all the fun and frisk of the Roaring Twenties, but “Mothering Sunday” handily dispels that myth. It’s 1924 and, as the world moves on, a trio of bereaved families in the UK’s Berkshire County do their damnedest to pretend that they are, too. Hyper-observant orphan maid Jane Fairchild (a luminous Odessa Young) is about to embark on the rare day off, the “Mothering Sunday” of the film’s title — March 30, 1924, to be precise....
Founded in 2006, The Match Factory is known for bringing specialty films to audiences, including the Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” Oscar-nominated arthouse favorites such as “Waltz with Bashir” and “Toni Erdmann,” award-winning recent films like “Drive My Car,” and also the early films of Jim Jarmusch and the complete library of Aki Kaurismäki. Match Factory Productions was founded in 2013 by Michael Weber and Viola Fügen....
In an interview with Variety, Netflix Original Films head Scott Stuber said there’s no plan to slow down on the studio acquisitions while theaters remain closed in 2021. As the executive said, “I think there’s going to be more opportunities [to buy studio films] and conversations based on the films we’ve already acquired from other studios, not just the festival circuit.” “When those opportunities arise, like they did with ‘The Woman in the Window’ and talent like Joe Wright and Amy Adams who we want to be in business with, we definitely want to look as they come,” Stuber added....
For any individual title, being number one on Netflix is an impressive feat. The Netflix library has 17,000 pieces of content, more than half of which are originals or exclusives. However, quality and quantity — for both subs and for programming — are getting harder to come by. The streamer began sharing its weekly Top 10 in late June/early July 2021. Of the 62 weeks Netflix has measured thus far, by our count 42 had a number-one show with more than twice the viewership of “Echoes” last week....
“Being the Ricardos” takes place over the course of one production week on the iconic sitcom “I Love Lucy,” which ran on CBS for six seasons from 1951 to 1957. Beginning with a Monday table read all the way through filming on Friday with an audience, Lucy and Desi face a marital crisis that could upend their careers and their relationship. Sorkin enjoys cracking pressure cookers in a limited timeframe, like his screenplay for “Steve Jobs,” which unfolded across three days (over a course of several years) in the Apple co-founder’s life....
Currents includes 15 features, plus 36 shorts contained in eight programs, and represent 27 countries. In addition to the Portuguese “The Tsugua Diaries,” several films center around the pandemic. Shengze Zhu’s “A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces,” is a meditation on Wuhan’s urban spaces before and after the outbreak, while Denis Côté’s “Social Hygiene” is an absurdist comedy in which characters exchange frank barbs from a humorous distance. “Currents is the section of the festival that attests to cinema’s continued capacity for reinvention,” said Dennis Lim, NYFF director of programming, in an official statement....
Times change, and Stone’s complex historic and global point of view is far more layered and nuanced than current American partisanship will accept. That’s why the Yale-grad-turned-Vietnam-vet has managed to alienate folks on every side of the political spectrum, including accusations of promulgating violence with “Natural Born Killers,” promoting a whistleblower in “Snowden,” and conducting friendly documentary interviews with dictators, Cuba’s Fidel Castro in “Comandante” (2003) and more recently Russia’s Vladimir Putin (Showtime’s four-part “The Putin Interviews”)....
This identity crisis promised to be more extreme than ever this year, because how could the producers get the tone right when every news report in the country is about the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? As the celebs breezed up the red carpet to the Royal Albert Hall in shiny, skimpy dresses, and complained about how cold it was, the question in the chilly air was whether the event should have gone ahead at all....
Existential challenges aside, the festivals are already finding their favorites and several titles will continue to build their presence with stops in Toronto, New York, London, and more. Here are some of the key narratives that will grow in the coming weeks. Best Picture Is Wide Open A year ago, the one-two punch of Venice and Telluride launched “The Power of the Dog,” “The Lost Daughter,” “Belfast,” and “King Richard....
The actor who famously played Poe Dameron in the most recent “Star Wars” Skywalker trilogy walked back his past comments that he was done with the franchise. “I’m open to anything. You never know,” Isaac said during SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show.” “I have no real feeling one way or another. I’m open to any good story. Time is the one thing that becomes challenging…as you get older and kids and all that....
Timing is everything with this year’s Oscars, since the show will air on ABC and worldwide on April 25 in two large venues, the usual Dolby Theatre and the unusual Union Station. Despite the formidable campaigns by streaming entities — and the usual healthy outcome for Netflix — three movies that have been coming on strong ever since their late February openings, with six nominations apiece, were from theatrical distributors: “Nomadland” (Searchlight/Hulu), starring Frances McDormand; Florian Zeller’s play-to-film “The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics), starring back-to-back Best Actor nominee Anthony Hopkins and Supporting Actress contender Olivia Colman; and Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros....
Check below for links to IndieWire’s Oscars 2022 predictions in all 23 categories. Denis Villeneuve’s visually spectacular $165-million “Dune” (Warner Bros./HBO Max), delivered over time, tallying a robust $398 million worldwide: “Dune” has powerful support from Academy voters, with ten nominations, along with Venice Best Director-winner Jane Campion’s ’20s western “The Power of the Dog” (Netflix), starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a Montana rancher in conflict with his brother (Jesse Plemons) and his new wife (Kirsten Dunst), which led the field with 12 nominations....
None of this means that other contenders, such as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” have zero chance at Best Picture. But Hollywood is embracing big commercial movies in awards season because Hollywood needs big commercial movies, period. In this week’s episode of Screen Talk, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson discuss what this means as Hollywood is at a crossroads and less likely to greenlight vanity projects from name directors going forward as a result....
The festival’s Oscar-qualifying status means that winners in the Best Live Action Short, Best Documentary Short, Best Animated Short, and Best of the Festival categories may be eligible to submit their work to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscar consideration this year. Keep reading for the complete winners list, with synopses courtesy of the festival. Greater Palm Springs CVB Best of the Festival Award Winner: “Sierra” (Estonia), Directed by Sander Joon....
“The media report that you refer to is a rumor coming out of one of our distribution conversations that, quite frankly, if we weren’t having that conversation, you should fire all of us,” Bakish said at Communcacopia 2022. “It’s not like we’ve made a decision that we’re going to do something on such-and-such a date.” “I guarantee you media will continue to evolve,” he continued, “I guarantee you our product line will continue to evolve and get better....
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” reimagines the classic fantasy tale through the most beautifully-made stop-motion animation in years, a powerful and life-affirming father-and-son story about acceptance and love in the face of pain, misery, and fascism, and the filmmaker’s love of monsters in what is easily his best film in a decade. The film is set in 1930s Italy, as fascism is sweeping the nation. We see how dangerous ideologies spread quickly and quietly at first, and what starts with just the town’s blacksmith being a bit too obsessed with uniformity and order gives way to hordes of fanatics screaming for Il Duce, kids being sent to boot camps, and everyone who is different being excluded – or worse....
