Month: February 2021

“Downton Abbey” star Hugh Bonneville has teased a sequel to the hit 2019 film adaptation. Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s “The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show” on Friday, Bonneville said: “Here’s the deal, if everybody who is offered a vaccine takes a vaccine, we can make a movie, we will make a movie.” The actor, who

Paris-based Totem Films announced Friday that it is handling sales on Iranian Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam’s Berlin Film Festival competition entry, “Ballad of a White Cow.” Totem Films will bring the drama onto the market at early March’s European Film Market (EFM). The pick-up is sure to draw attention. Launched in 2019 by Agathe

“All Eyes Off Me,” Hadas Ben Aroya’s drama which will world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, has been acquired by Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever for international sales. Set to bow in the Panorama section, “All Eyes Off Me” takes place in contemporary Tel Aviv and weaves three stories portraying Tel Aviv’s youth. The

Rites of passage, teenage girls in small towns, strict and uncomprehending parents: We know the drill, yet few films riffing on the subject get the mood and ambiguities as right as “Looking for Venera.” Debuting feature director Norika Sefa exhibits exceptional talent in bringing subtlety and depth to characters as well as the overall atmosphere

Dimitri Rassam is joining forces with Pathé on a €60 million ($73 million) two-part adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic French masterpiece “The Three Musketeers.” The star-studded cast includes François Civil, Eva Green and Vincent Cassel as D’Artagnan, Milady and Athos. The two sprawling feature films, titled “The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan” and “The Three Musketeers

Parallel worlds commingle with initially intriguing but progressively less invigorating results in “A Writer’s Odyssey,” a handsomely produced action-fantasy directed by Chinese hitmaker Lu Yang (“Brotherhood of Blades,” “The Sacrifice”). Centered on a desperate father whose search for his missing daughter draws him into a plot to assassinate the author of an online fantasy novel,

Few types of films are more awkward to sit through than listless and unremarkable biographical documentaries that fall short of their inspiring subjects. Touring the film festival circuit since 2019 and finally available to the general public via virtual cinemas, Freida Lee Mock’s “Ruth – Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words” unfortunately yields one such

On “Saturday Night Live,” sketch characters arrive, connect with the audience (or not), and hit occasional sustained peaks of popularity, becoming laugh-riot fixtures and old friends. For a while, starting in the ’90s, the highest honor you could bestow upon an “SNL” character was for him or her to be given their own spin-off movie.

With “To All the Boys: Always and Forever,” Netflix wraps its epistolary teen-angst trilogy in such a way that those who’ve been following along since the beginning should appreciate: with a letter. What began as a high-concept high-school romcom has gently matured over two and a half years into a surprisingly low-drama look at the

Robert B. “Bob” Steuer, a longtime film sales executive with AIP, Film Ventures, 20th Century Fox and Premiere Entertainment Services, died Feb. 5 in Tarzana, Calif. after a long battle with dementia. He was 86. Born in New Orleans, Steuer graduated Tulane University and joined the U.S. Army where he held the rank of second lieutenant.

“Well, this may seem like déjà vu…” wrote filmmaker Tamara Saviano on her Facebook page this week, alerting friends that her documentary about musician Guy Clark, “Without Getting Killed or Caught” was being announced Thursday as premiering at this year’s South By Southwest Film Festival… just as  it was announced for last year. The good

Kevin Hart’s personal shopper has been indicted by the Queens County Grand Jury on grand larceny, among other charges, for allegedly using the comedian’s credit card to defraud him out of more than $1 million. Dylan Jason Syer could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. “No one is immune to being targeted

Hungarian cinematographer Marcell Rév is a long-time collaborator of “Malcolm & Marie” writer-director Sam Levinson. The pair first worked together on Levinson’s feature debut “Assassination Nation” and continued into the hit HBO series “Euphoria.” For their latest, most intimate feat, a two-hander starring Zendaya and John David Washington as a couple confronting their turbulent relationships

David Fincher’s films are known for displaying an actor’s full capabilities during an emotional scene, but that doesn’t always mean the director captures the right moment in the first take. Appearing in Variety‘s “Directors on Directors” conversation series, Ben Affleck (“Argo”) proposes a theory to Fincher (“Mank”) about his two competing instincts as a filmmaker. “One

Disney CEO Bob Chapek debunked speculation that “Black Widow,” the upcoming Marvel superhero adventure starring Scarlett Johansson, may debut on the Disney Plus streaming service. “Black Widow” is currently scheduled to open theatrically on May 7, which would make it the first blockbuster of 2021. “We are still intending it to be a theatrical release,”