Month: January 2019

Thirty is a curious age, at once unsettling and perilously close to settled: the first point at which you can see another adult version of yourself in the rearview mirror, and wonder what’s gone right or wrong. Its onset has a different effect on the two hard-partying Dublin girlfriends at the center of “Animals,” as

Kids’ content firm Jetpack Distribution has moved into feature film, snagging rights to a package of family movies from Perplexia, a U.K.-based shingle that counts former Jim Henson Television president Angus Fletcher as its co-founder. The deal covers international rights to four films from Perplexia, which was founded by Fletcher and Ronald Henry, who created

Toni Morrison’s artistic, cultural and historical legacies are by now firmly established, which doesn’t prevent “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” from revealing them anew and setting them out in an appreciative, and appropriate, package. An eloquent nonfiction biopic that travels creatively through the past, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ film is enlivened both by its own storytelling dexterity

Actress-director Trudie Styler and Chilean helmer Sebastian Lelio are among those tapped for jury duty at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival. The Berlinale announced the full lineup of the main competition jury Tuesday for its 69th edition. U.S. film critic Justin Chang, German actress Sandra Hüller and American museum curator Rajendra Roy will join Lelio

A change of pace from the usual action-driven output from WWE studios, “Fighting With My Family” at times more closely brings to mind 2000’s guilty-pleasure comedy “Ready to Rumble,” one of the few filmmaking ventures by the wrestling conglomerate’s then-rival WCW. The current film has some of the same crotch-kick-level humor, and much of the

GOTEBORG, Sweden —  There’s an impending sense of doom in the current zeitgeist, particularly with feelings about climate change, that the Göteborg Film Festival taps into this year with Focus: Apocalypse. Fest artistic director Jonas Holmberg notes, “We are exploring how today’s filmmakers work with the existential, ethical and political aspects of this crisis. Perhaps

GOTEBORG, Sweden —  New Europe Film Sales has boarded “A White, White Day,” by Hlynur Pálmason, and sealed new deals on “The County,” from “Rams’” director Grímur Hákonarson. Both Icelandic titles will be pitched at Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market (Jan 31.-Feb 3) as works in progress. “A White, White Day” marks Pálmason’s second feature after

January 29, 2019 1:16AM PT Cinema box office in Japan dropped by 3% last year to $2.04 billion. But 2018 was still the third-highest year on record. According to data published by the Motion Picture Producers Assn. of Japan (Eiren), Japanese-produced films earned $1.12 billion, down 2.8% from 2017. They still grabbed a majority of

Warden Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) has executed 12 death row inmates, and each one seems to get harder. During the lethal injection that opens writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s “Clemency,” the paramedic can’t find a vein, the widow-to-be is sobbing through her prayers, the anti-capital punishment protestors are chanting outside, and when the stent fails and the

January 28, 2019 11:40PM PT A family attempts to make a meager living operating a private ambulance in Mexico City in Luke Lorentzen’s gripping doc. If you think the health care system is flawed in America, “Midnight Family” provides a stark snapshot of how truly broken things are in Mexico City, where fewer than 45

January 28, 2019 7:14PM PT Ava DuVernay’s content distribution shop Array has acquired the documentary “Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen” out of the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by her youngest son and archivist Hepi Mita, the film is a deeply intimate portrait of the New Zealand filmmaker — who became the first indigenous woman

A few months before the film version of “The Sound of Music” hit the silver screen, a song plugger working the catalog of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein approached label owner Dave Kapp with a plan to turn one of the songs from the score into a hit single, thinking it would boost the box

There’s a long-standing Hollywood tradition of comic characters (the vast majority, but not all, played by stars of “Saturday Night Live”) who are patently disreputable anti-social f—ups. It’s the comedy as rock ‘n’ roll school of bad behavior, and its exemplars are legend: John Belushi turning wreckage into blissed-out anarchy in “National Lampoon’s Animal House,”

Last year, a piece in the Washington Post raised the question, “Is Jules Feiffer Our Greatest Living Cartoonist?” To which Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus” creator Art Spiegelman replied, “He’s certainly near the very pinnacle, wherever that is.” All of which sounds rather complimentary if it weren’t a somewhat inadequate description of the 89-year-old social satirist extraordinaire’s

In today’s film news roundup, “The Wizard of Oz” sets a record among classic films, the “Grudge” reboot moves to 2020, CAA signs horror specialist William McGregor and the DGA unveils its awards show presenters. RECORD Fathom Events’ 80th anniversary of “The Wizard of Oz” took in $1.2 million at 408 North American sites on

There have been some mighty big deals at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but there may be no entry there this year that seems more of a slam-dunk for a major breakout than “Brittany Runs a Marathon.” This terrifically engaging debut feature by playwright Paul Downs Colaizzano is the best kind of “crowdpleaser”: one that

Indie films can still succeed in theaters, but producers and directors must be more creative in selling their films and cooking up stories that will resonate with audiences. That’s the takeaway from a panel on theatrical distribution that was held at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a gathering that brought together producers, agents, and distributors.

January 28, 2019 4:00PM PT Tech monolith Apple made its first purchase at the 2019 Sundance film festival, in the coming-of-age drama “Hala.” The film, from writer-director Minhal Baig and executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith, sold for an undisclosed amount. Baig’s project centers on seventeen-year old Hala, navigating the conflicting worlds of her traditional Muslim