Month: March 2021

“Did you think you were making a French independent film?” rails literary agent Vincent (Mikaël Chirinian) in French independent film “The World After Us.” He’s angry with his callow young client, Labidi (Aurélien Gabrielli), because Labidi has abruptly changed tack on a novel that’s already been optioned, and has also changed its title to, inevitably,

Oliver Twist meets “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” in Ferit Karahan’s sophomore feature, “Brother’s Keeper.” Set in a snowbound boarding school on the eastern edges of Turkey, the film tells the story of a boy desperate to get help for his sick friend yet stymied at every turn by bullying teachers and corrupt administrators. While

Around the same time that Emmy-nominated writer-director Sally Aitken’s latest film was debuting in the World Documentary section at Sundance, the New York Times ran a piece on the alarming decline in the worldwide shark population, citing a 70% reduction since the 1970s. It’s a statistic — possibly conservative given the underreporting from some parts

“The things of my mother’s that I kept don’t suit the place now,” says Glenda (Nia Roberts) absently as she preps dinner in her modernist sculpture of a house, set on a remote hillock. “They feel … primitive.” Lee Haven Jones’ sharp, striking Welsh-language SXSW midnight movie “The Feast” is designed as a critique of

A North American rights deal for mainland Chinese fantasy action film ‘God of War II, was one of several film sales deals struck by Hong Kong’s Media Asia at the recent European Film Market and the ongoing FilMart. Directed by Cai Cong, and starring Charles Lin, Liu Yuxi and David Wu, the film was completed

Seasonal beach towns feel haunted once balmy temperatures start to tumble. Remove the cheery masses, ice cream vendors and sizzling sands overtaken by crowds, and you’ll be left with eerily quiet streets, alongside waves echoing with distant memories of summer days. Set on one such mostly vacant (and likely fictional) island getting ready to shutter

U.S. entertainment financier Library Pictures International has struck a three-year deal to co-finance a slate of Korean-language movies from Next Entertainment World (N.E.W.). Library’s investment will include finished films, films currently in pre-production, as well as projects developed over the course of the next three years. The company was started in 2008 as a local distributor

Striking a middle ground between teen fantasy “The Craft” and deadly serious political allegory “The Handmaid’s Tale” is “Witch Hunt,” writer-director Elle Callahan’s second feature. Her first, the 2019 “Head Count,” was a strikingly assured supernatural mind-bender, albeit one a little too understated for some genre fans. By contrast, this sophomore effort is comparatively conventional

Low-budget necessity is often the mother of low-budget invention, but sadly not so much in Travis Stevens’ “Jakob’s Wife,” a thin, half-hearted reworking of the vampire mythos that can’t quite decide if it’s spoofy or serious, and doesn’t have the smarts to be both. While it’s theoretically promising to attempt a hybrid tone in which

Zamunda might be King Akeem’s kingdom, but the “Coming to America” wouldn’t be complete without its Queens. While Shari Headley’s Lisa McDowell captured fans’ attention and Akeem’s (Eddie Murphy) heart with her confidence and headstrong attitude in the 1988 original, “Coming 2 America” boasts a new crop of ladies who are ready to speak their

Where previous generations preferred neatly resolved stories, embracing films that reassured them that everything was under control, Gen Z movies aren’t afraid to leave things messy, as if to say it’s OK to feel overwhelmed. The same goes for television offerings such as “Euphoria” and “I May Destroy You,” which recognize that the world is

Netflix is to lease two sound stages at Toho Studios in order to help the streaming platform expand its production of original Japanese content. The move was announced Thursday (local time) in a blog post by Ozawa Teiji, Netflix’s manager for production management and live action in Japan. The streamer will have access to both

Sony Pictures has again delayed the theatrical release of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” The superhero sequel — starring Tom Hardy — will now debut on the big screen on Sept. 17. The “Venom” sequel has been postponed several times during the pandemic and was most recently set for June 25. Despite the reopening of

A sense of rising U.S. governmental secrecy and punishment of whistleblowers is the primary political takeaway from “United States vs. Reality Winner.” Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary chronicles the incarceration and trial of the titular young intelligence specialist who leaked an NSA document revealing Russian attempts at interfering in the 2016 U.S. elections — intel the Trump

When “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” premieres on HBO Max this Thursday, it will mark the culmination of years’ worth of grassroots campaigning by Snyder’s fans, typified by the ubiquitous hashtag #ReleasetheSnyderCut. In November 2019, several “Justice League” stars — including Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot — joined Snyder to tweet out the hashtag, a critical