Month: January 2019

Dan Reed’s harrowing Michael Jackson sexual abuse documentary has been the talk of Sundance. But to the surprise of many festival-goers, his songs are still being blasted at official parties and other events in Park City, Utah. Despite the graphic descriptions of accused sexual abuse against boys as young as age 7 in “Leaving Neverland,”

Liam Hemsworth and Miley Cyrus may have kept their December wedding out of the public eye as much as possible, but that didn’t stop their not-so-secret newlywed status from being the running joke of the G’Day USA awards gala on Saturday night. While presenting the “Hunger Games” star with the excellence in film award, Vince Vaughn

M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass” easily maintained its reign in North America, adding $19 million during its second weekend of release for a domestic tally of $73.5 million. Despite a steep 53% decline, the weekend haul of “Glass” was enough to top box office charts as newcomers “The Kid Who Would Be King” and “Serenity” fell

Discovery and World Wildlife Fund US (WWF-US) will partner on a matching donation campaign to help preserve Bikin National Park in Russia, the partners said at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday. The announcement comes as Discovery is in Park City, Utah for the premiere of the company’s new documentary “Tigerland,” a look at the

“Sometimes what happens and what must never happen are the same thing,” says Anne, a successful lawyer given to flouting expected codes of conduct, midway through “Queen of Hearts.” As excuses for an offense go, it’s on the slender side — a slightly more formal version of “the heart wants what it wants” — but

January 27, 2019 2:21AM PT Swedish filmmaker Johannes Nyholm’s “Koko-Di Koko-Da,” which is competing at the Sundance Film Festival, has been acquired by U.K. distribution company Picturehouse. Represented in international markets by Paris-based banner Stray Dogs, “Koko-Di Koko-Da” had its U.S. premiere at Sundance on Saturday in the World Dramatic Competition selection and played to

Last week’s third-annual Women’s March was largely overshadowed by the sideshow of a standoff between dudes — specifically, Covington Catholic High students, Native American activists, and Black Israelities. This proved once again that it’s difficult for media and public alike to focus on women’s (or any other) issues amid the controversy blitzkrieg of the Trump

January 27, 2019 12:06AM PT An inspirational true story fails to lift off in actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s earnest but plodding directorial debut. Though he’s played antic roles such as Lola in “Kinky Boots,” master actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s most conspicuous characteristic is his air of soulful gravitas. That’s a quality that aims to dominate his feature

January 26, 2019 11:55PM PT Rural Oklahoma life circa 1960 is tough for two teenage misfits in a B&W drama that’s not always retro in the right ways. 2018 was an unexpectedly fine year for B&W features, “Roma,” “Cold War” and the underseen “1985” being obvious examples. But hopes that the trend might continue into

In “The Sunlit Night,” Rebecca Dinerstein shows that she can write funny breakups, awkward Jewish family gatherings, and sweet-and-sour wedding speeches. One doubts she had to go all the way to the Norwegian Arctic to develop that skill, but at least her pilgrimage paid off in the form of the kind of personal writing sample

“Halston,” a look at the famous American fashion designer, has sold theatrical distribution and home entertainment rights to the studio formerly known as The Orchard Film Group. The deal comes following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday. It’s the first major purchase for the indie label since it announced this week that

January 26, 2019 8:51PM PT Wendi McLendon-Covey plays an OCD mom whose life melts down when she gets involved with a family that appears far less orderly than her own. Plenty of films great and small have gone spelunking in the quiet desperation of middle-class suburban motherhood, but few have plumbed the milieu with more

Let’s talk, for a moment, about the political thrillers of the 1970s — not just the reality and urgency that coursed through them, but the history-written-with-lightning feeling they gave you. In a galvanizing work of art like “All the President’s Men,” or even a topically charged entertainment like “Three Days of the Condor,” it was

Trying to tell an epic quest about gentrification is a lot like making an action movie about global warming. While inherently dramatic, both processes happen so slowly, audiences are liable to lose interest while waiting for the ice caps to melt. And so it goes with “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” a gorgeous

“Crazy Rich Asians” was snubbed at the Oscars, receiving no nominations from the Academy. But star Awkwafina doesn’t have any hard feelings. “I don’t really know the exact reasoning behind it, but yeah, of course it would have been cool,” Awkwafina said about the historical rom-com not being nominated. “But we did have an amazing

Minhal Baig’s camera gives high school senior Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) plenty of respectful space as the American Muslim teen skateboards to class, writes in her journal, and touches herself in bed at night. Hala’s parents, however, don’t. If there are boys at the skate park, mom Eram (Purbi Joshi) is going to hear about it

January 26, 2019 4:24PM PT Modern female friendship — and feminism — is top of mind in Sophie Hyde’s Sundance player “Animals.” Variety has an exclusive first look at the film, which sees Alia Shawkat and Holliday Grainger as roommates who have torn up the streets of Dublin for a decade with drunken shenanigans and

HBO Films is buying “Share,” a cautionary tale about internet culture that debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The movie came into the festival with theatrical distribution, but it will instead debut on the cable channel at some point in 2019. It’s the second time this week that A24, the indie studio that backed

Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to the inspirational drama “We Are Boats,” starring “Westworld” alums Angela Sarafyan and Luke Hemsworth. Breaking Glass Pictures acquired rights to the film during the Sundance Film Festival in a deal negotiated between Breaking Glass CEO Rich Wolff and writer/director James Bird. The film will receive a

Dr. Ruth Westheimer stopped by the Variety Studio at Sundance presented by AT&T to discuss “Ask Dr. Ruth,” the upcoming documentary about her life and work, and revealed that she’s writing a new edition of her 1995 handbook “Sex for Dummies.” Westheimer explained that the new edition, her fourth, will be focused on millennials. “I

Looking back over the past decade, I can think of just two films that have done justice to the idea of play — the special way that creativity and imagination combine in the human brain to entertain us. The first was a lighthearted art film called “Faces Places” from forever-young director Agnès Varda in which

When Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie zipped into Hollywood, she was a talent the industry had never seen before, or since — a three-time Olympic ladies’ singles champion (a record she continues to hold) whose chipper, if chilly romantic comedy hits kept Twentieth Century-Fox solvent in the build-up to World War II, in part because

January 26, 2019 1:00PM PT Jacqueline Olive’s documentary asks a disturbing question: Does lynching still exist in the U.S.? “Always in Season” asks a startling question: Could it be that lynching, one thing we think can be safely relegated to the pre-Civil Rights Movement era, is actually still practiced as a form of racial terrorism

January 26, 2019 12:32PM PT Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of Sundance’s most anticipated attendees, has canceled her trip to Park City, Utah. The freshman Congresswoman announced the decision in a tweet. “For almost two years, a mom followed several women as we ran for Congress. I was one of them,” she wrote. “Due to complications from