Month: March 2019

March 10, 2019 12:32PM PT Julianne Moore’s “Gloria Bell” has launched impressively with a $154,775 on five screens in New York and Los Angeles for a per screen average of $30,955 for A24. It was the third highest per screen figure of the 2019 domestic box office, topped only by the $35,499 for Disney’s “Captain

Seth Rogen is a big fan of “Roma,” the multi-hyphenate star admitted on a muggy Sunday morning at SXSW, but he doesn’t know how to make movies or do comedy for any other format than a packed movie theater. The theatrical versus streaming debate was top of mind for Rogen, his “Long Shot” leading lady

South by Southwest has a storied tradition of launching studio comedies into the box-office stratosphere—from “Knocked Up” to “Bridesmaids,” “Trainwreck” and “Spy.” On Saturday night, SXSW 2019 most likely found the next underdog hit to add to this esteemed class. “Long Shot” is the story of a secretary of state, Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), who

“We love cinema.” That’s how Netflix began a statement it issued on Twitter in response to Steven Spielberg’s announcement that he will push for new guidelines regarding the eligibility of movies to compete in the Academy Awards. (Though the connection was obvious, the Netflix statement never mentioned Spielberg by name.) Spielberg, a member of the

UniFrance, the French film promotion org, joined forces with the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to host events on March 7-8 in Paris which aimed at shining a spotlight on French female directors, producers, talent, artists and technicians. The events, which were attended by many French students and young filmmakers at the

If we’re being honest, I thought “Captain Marvel” was fine, often good. It’s a bummer in some sense, because if I liked it less, it’d help make my point a little bit easier. There are people, however, who do not like “Captain Marvel” for reasons valid and not. I say this because: I am dying

Brie Larson’s “Captain Marvel” is showing plenty of international power with a $302 million international launch — the fifth highest of all-time. With an impressive $153 million debut in North America, Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe title totaled a global opening weekend of $455 million, or the sixth highest global debut and the biggest opening of

March 10, 2019 9:33AM PT “Birds of Passage,” Cristina Gallego’s and Ciro Guerra’s sprawling epic film tracing the origins of the Colombian drug trade, took home the $40,000 Knight Marimbas Award (the top grand jury prize) Saturday night at Miami Dade College’s 36th annual Miami Film Festival. The south Florida gathering celebrated cinema with an

Brie Larson’s “Captain Marvel” is soaring to a heroic opening weekend of $153 million in North America at 4,310 sites, reviving what had been a slumbering 2019 box office. “Captain Marvel” took in $302 million internationally, giving it an estimated global opening weekend of $455 million — the sixth highest global debut of all time.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — In the world, it would be hard to choose a more exciting figure to introduce a masterclass than Guillermo del Toro, and even more so when that talk is given in the filmmaker’s hometown of Guadalajara Mexico at a festival he has been involved with for its entire 33-year existence. If the

GUADALAJARA — Chilean production company Equeco is at this year’s Guadalajara Intl. Film Festival to pitch a new project, “Pepperoni.” The immigration-themed dark comedy will be the second feature of festival favorite, D.J.-turned-director Tomás Alzamora, better known in Chile as DJ Four-D, who shared exclusive first details with Variety in the lead-up to the Mexican

What if the woman who had been your babysitter when you were 13-years-old went on to become Secretary of State, and was now positioned to be the first female president of the United States? If you were Fred Flarsky (picture a Seth Rogen character more or less identical to every other Seth Rogen character, only

Shia LaBeouf made some frank and emotional statements about his personal struggles on the set of “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” his Mark Twain-inspired indie film that premiered at the SXSW film festival on Saturday in Austin, Texas. Zac Gottsagen, an actor with Downs and the film’s lead, also revealed to the Q&A audience how his

Just when you think you’ve got Shia LaBeouf figured out, he goes and makes a film like “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” a sincere, Southern-fried buddy movie in the tradition of “Forrest Gump,” from two of the producers responsible for “Little Miss Sunshine.” This was the film LaBeouf was shooting when he was arrested for public

March 9, 2019 7:37PM PT Home invasion proves dangerous to the trespassers’ health in this entertaining black-comedy thriller. It’s the home invaders who find themselves imperiled in “Villains,” the third feature collaboration for directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. This black comedy thriller has a good cast to spark a scenario that’s intriguing enough to

How can you tell when a movie star is committed to being taken seriously? It’s hard to ignore when someone like Matthew McConaughey drops a ton of weight, the way he did to play an emaciated HIV patient in “Dallas Buyers Club.” It’s also impressive when such an actor swings hard in the opposite direction,

March 9, 2019 5:00PM PT Small-town cinema staff unleash a demonic spirit from an old film can in this uneven comedy-horror. One of the more amusing promotions in the history of exploitation cinema was for Jess Franco’s sexy-arty 1967 “Necronomicon.” In the U.S., it was released as “Succubus,” but the distributor claimed that title was

As Jordan Peele’s latest horror pic “Us” debuted at South by Southwest, the director and producer held three other screenings nationwide for mostly black audiences, using the hashtag #UsFirst. The Los Angeles screening reportedly played host to several celebs, including John Legend, Janelle Monae, Ryan Coogler, Tracee Ellis Ross, Lakeith Stanfield, Robin Theade, and La