Month: January 2022

The fear of seemingly harmless strangers that’s heightened during our era of online “relationships” (not to mention COVID) is cannily exploited in actor-turned-writer-director Christian Tafdrup’s “Speak No Evil.” Building on the thorny couple dynamics of his prior features “Parents” and “A Horrible Woman,” this excruciatingly slow-burn thriller has a young Danish family befriended on holiday

Album covers used to be mythically important — they could etch the image of a musician forever in your mind’s eye. In “Nothing Compares,” Kathryn Ferguson’s incisive and poignant documentary about the life and career of Sinéad O’Connor, we see the image that was chosen in 1987 for the cover of O’Connor’s first album, “The

If the camera lingered just a little more lasciviously on the opening sex scene, or if we got to ogle the bondage-clad ladies writhing in their glass booths in the underground strip club sequence longer, Chloe Okuno’s smart little feature debut might be said to herald the longed-for return of the lost, lamented erotic thriller.

“Free Chol Soo Lee” charts the complicated history of a wrongful-conviction victim who became a figurehead for both Asian-American and prisoners’-rights activists in the 1970s and beyond. Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s film benefits from ample archival material, as well as latter-day input from surviving interviewees. Even so, it’s a tale ultimately more sad than

From its opening minutes, Martika Ramirez Escobar’s meta-prank “Leonor Will Never Die” aims to scramble the viewers. Leonor Reyes (Sheila Francisco), an elderly retired action film director in Manila who, the title assures us, must have some claim to immortality, pads into view from the knees-down and steps onto a trunk – the universal film

There are a whole lot of cigarettes in “Call Jane,” a detail — along with flip bob hairstyles and polyester pantsuits — that demonstrates director Phyllis Nagy’s commitment to the late-’60s period, even as it shows that the movie isn’t trying to tell women what to do with their bodies. Inspired by true events, this

There is something inherently unsettling about an elite university’s aura of vanity. Few other contemporary locations summon such a sense of reverence, exclusivity and historical angst — especially if the college is somewhere in brisk New England and adorned with the Ivy League distinction. Through an unnerving blend of supernatural horror and psychological drama, fiercely

The public considers the Academy Awards as a Hollywood event. True, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is headquartered in Southern California, and most of the best pic contenders are American and/or in the English language. But Oscar history proves they have been an international event from the beginning. In the first year

For “Tick, Tick… Boom!” choreographer Ryan Heffington, coming up with the steps for “No More” — the musical’s duet between Jonathan (Andrew Garfield) and Michael (Robin de Jesús) — was a collaborative process. “It was about what felt good on their bodies,” Heffington tells Variety of Garfield and de Jesús, adding that the two are “great

You might assume the title is ironic, given that Anna Eszter Nemes and László Csuja’s film is set in the strange, cloistered world of grit, muscle and sinew that is elite women’s bodybuilding. But “Gentle” proves as good as its word, though this quiet, sympathetic portrait of Hungarian competitor Edina (real-life bodybuilder Eszter Csonka) does

Two fans filed a federal class action lawsuit on Friday alleging they were duped into renting the 2019 film “Yesterday” because Ana de Armas appeared in the trailer. Conor Woulfe, 38, of Maryland, and Peter Michael Rosza, 44, of San Diego County, Calif., say they each paid $3.99 to rent the movie on Amazon Prime,

For Jesse Eisenberg’s feature directorial debut, “When You Finish Saving the World,” he crafted a quirky family dramedy about a woman Evelyn (Julianne Moore) and her “oblivious” son Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard) as they struggle to connect. The movie debuted Thursday as an opening day selection for Sundance 2022 nearly one year to the day after

Isabel Castro’s feature documentary debut, “Mija,” turns the standard music documentary on its head by instead focusing on the people behind the scenes, in this case 23-year-old music manager Doris Muñoz. When her otherwise successful career hits a road bump, she meets promising Chicana singer Jacks Haupts, with whom she bonds. Both are the first

Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium streaming service for horror, thriller and the supernatural, has acquired rights to psychological horror “Speak No Evil” ahead of its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Playing in the Sundance Midnight section, “Speak No Evil” is written and directed by Christian Tafdrup (“A Horrible Woman”) and is set for release

“Actors on Actors” is back with another star-studded season. Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Andrew Garfield, Kristen Stewart, Jamie Dornan and Ariana DeBose are among the awards-season heavyweights featured on the 15th season of “Actors on Actors,” premiering Feb. 18 on PBS SoCal. Gaga will be paired with a mystery actor, who will be revealed when