Month: January 2021

The dilemma that “Pieces of a Woman” posed for composer Howard Shore was how emotional to make the music in a story about the most wrenching and devastating experience in a couple’s life. “We had many discussions about this exact topic,” Shore says, referring to himself and Kornél Mundruczó, who directed the movie, now streaming

Vanessa Kirby, who played Princess Margaret on the first two seasons of Netflix’s “The Crown,” has returned to the streaming service in the ac­quisition “Pieces of a Woman.” In the Kornél Mundruczó film, Kirby plays Martha, whose home birth ends in tragedy, upending her life. The birth scene, early in the movie, is a harrow­­ing

Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) and Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety‘s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. For more, click here. Vanessa Kirby, who played Princess Margaret on the first two seasons of Netflix’s “The Crown,” has returned to the streaming service in the ac­quisition “Pieces of

During a conversation between Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) and Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”) for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, presented by Amazon Studios, Kirby confessed her fandom. “I’ve loved you so much since ‘Mean Girls’ — it’s so iconic,” she said to Seyfried. “Mean Girls,” Seyfried told Kirby, was her first movie. Before then, she’d done soap

Peter Bogdanovich’s first impression of Cloris Leachman was nothing like the lonely housewife she played in “Last Picture Show.” The director recalled his first meeting with Leachman, who died Wednesday at 94, when he was casting “The Last Picture Show.” “One of the producers was Bob Rafaelson. I said, ‘I don’t know any 30 or

Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” reinvents the revenge thriller, giving the cinematic treatment for woman reclaiming their power. On page 20, Cassandra (played exquisitely by Carey Mulligan) is approached by a former college classmate Ryan (played by the charismatically brilliant Bo Burnham). After Ryan delivers a man’s all-too-familiar rude and passive-aggressive questions regarding expectations about

French-Venezuelan biologist and filmmaker Alexis Gambis, whose sophomore drama, “Son of Monarchs,” screens in t Sundance’s NEXT section, has always been fixated on the confluence of art and science. It led him to found the Imagine Science Film Festival, which enters its 14th edition in October, and the five-year old VOD platform Labocine, both of which showcase science

A surge of buying in stocks including AMC Entertainment and GameStop — triggered by activist investors on Reddit and other social platforms — overwhelmed no-fee investment app Robinhood’s ability to cover the frenzied trading. After Robinhood suspended buying of shares in AMC, GameStop, BlackBerry and 10 other volatile stocks Thursday, the company raised an emergency

Lead writer Cilla Jackert’s “Thin Blue Line,” a fresh take on a police procedural, is Sweden’s contender for the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize at 2021’s Göteborg Film Festival. Produced during a tumultuous time for police all around the world, the show quickly establishes itself as an intimate portrayal of the lives – both

Indian actor Manoj Bajpayee will star in investigative thriller film “Despatch,” directed by Kanu Behl and produced by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP. “The film unfolds in the world of crime journalism and Bajpayee plays a character who finds himself sucked into the murky underbelly of business and crime. Bajpayee, one of India’s most respected actors, has won

As the Brazilian audiovisual sector prepares to return to shooting movies and shows after being halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, new health and safety guidelines are being implemented to prevent further spread of the disease and to protect those involved in production. To ease the burden on already hard-hit producers, Show Me The Fund, a

Picture Tree International has acquired international rights to Danish director Lisa Jespersen’s feature debut, the comedy drama “Persona Non Grata” (Hvor Kragerne Vender), and will introduce the film to buyers at the upcoming Nordic Film Market, after its launch in Nordic Competition during the online edition of Goteborg Film Festival this week. Variety has been

The premise of Prano Bailey-Bond’s Sundance Midnight selection opener is so strong that it’s little wonder the film can’t quite live up — or perhaps down — to it: In a Thatcher’s Britain riven by tabloid-fueled “video nasty” hysteria, a young woman working for the national censorship board is assessing a horror flick, when it

In “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” which opened the Sundance Film Festival tonight on a note of heady historical exuberance, we see images from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and they’re like dream visions of a promised land. An ocean of Black faces, stretching back like something out of

The overloaded Thai equivalent of one of those YA weepies where terminally ill teens scramble to fulfill their bucket lists before expiring at a young age, all-the-feels buddy movie “One for the Road” is determined to leave audiences both shaken and stirred. Your mileage may vary as director Baz Poonpiriya (“Bad Genius”) packs this concoction

Apple tapped director Lulu Wang to showcase the cinematic features of the tech company’s latest iPhone. Wang, who wrote and directed 2019 feature film “The Farewell,” directed a new short for Apple in celebration of Chinese New Year, “Nian,” which puts a fresh twist on a well-known Chinese folktale. (Watch above or at this link.)

Amin Nawabi is not the real name of the Afghan refugee introduced in the Sundance movie “Flee,” nor is that his real face, which has been distorted by animation to protect his identity. As “Flee” unfolds, you may also start to question whether the story Amin shares is even real, doubling back and contradicting itself

Watching “CODA,” the tender, lively, funny, and beautifully stirring drama that opened the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, I had the most out-of-body movie-viewing experience I’ve had in the year since movie theaters closed down. I watched the film at home, on a link, late at night, by myself. But I’ve been going to Sundance since