Month: September 2023

If the prospect of being stuck in a New York City taxi with two characters for roughly 90 minutes doesn’t sound like your kind of movie, then you’re seriously underestimating “Daddio” writer-director Christy Hall’s ability to keep you riveted for the entire ride. There’s a challenge you could give any first-time filmmaker: Using a yellow

It’s not easy to upstage Martin Luther King Jr., but that’s exactly what leading man Colman Domingo does in “Rustin,” a movie named for the civil rights pioneer who gave King the platform to speak his most famous four words: “I have a dream.” That day, Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln

Damien Chazelle paid tribute to late great director William Friedkin on Sunday in a moving speech at the Venice Film Festival where Friedkin’s last film “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” premiered out-of-competition to warm applause. Friedkin, who died on Aug. 7 in Los Angeles at age 87, completed the film – which stars Kiefer Sutherland as Lt.

A scrappy urban tale of misspent young adulthood, Olmo Schnabel’s “Pet Shop Days” evokes the blown-out, stolen-shot 16mm character studies of 1990s independent cinema, as well as the bohemian oeuvre of painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, his father. This isn’t attributable merely to the fact that the younger Schnabel includes a scene in which his

David Fincher spooked Venice with the world premiere of his latest movie “The Killer,” which stars Michael Fassbender as an assassin. The Netflix thriller earned a respectable 5-minute standing ovation at its screening on the Lido on Sunday night. Fassbender and co-star Tilda Swinton couldn’t attend the premiere because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Fincher walked the carpet

In the bravura opening sequence of David Fincher’s “The Killer,” we watch the title character, a cold-as-dry-ice professional hitman who is never named, as he prepares to assassinate his latest victim. The hit is taking place in Paris, and the target is some sort of powerful corporate tycoon who we, like the killer, know nothing

Christopher Nolan’s dark historical epic “Oppenheimer” has crossed another remarkable box office milestone with $850 million in global ticket sales. The movie, starring Cillian Murphy as the so-called “father of the atomic bomb,” has generated $311 million in North America and $542.7 million internationally to date. The film continues to crush expectations, especially for a

Billed as the first feature film to be co-directed by an Iranian and an Israeli filmmaker, “Tatami” goes all in with a lean and tense narrative that is part sport movie, part political thriller — with both parts equally neatly realized. Directed by Guy Nattiv and “Holy Spider” lead actor Zar Amir Ebrahimi (who also

Elsa Zylberstein, the French César-winning actor and producer whose popular movie “Simone: Woman of the Century” recently opened in the U.S., is preparing a biopic movie of fashion icon Christian Dior. The film is being penned by Julien Teisseire (“The Hookup Plan”) and is being developed by Zylberstein’s banner Sonia Films and Odile McDonald (“Ransom”). Zylberstein,

Few were expecting the bomb and the bombshell to save the summer box office. But thanks to the sky-high ticket sales for Greta Gerwig’s very pink “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s supremely dark “Oppenheimer,” domestic revenue hit $4 billion between May and August for the first time in the pandemic era. “As a seemingly out of

Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi drama “The Beast,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, follows a star-crossed duo, trying — and failing — to make love work across three timelines. Moving between 1910, 2014 and 2044, the film mixes period drama, speculative sci-fi and bouts of genuinely chilling horror — particularly in a middle

The Creatives – the Fremantle-backed alliance of 10 leading production companies – have shared the results of the first edition of “The Creative Connection” at the Venice Film Festival. The companies – which include Lemming Film (Locarno premiere “Sweet Dreams”), Versus Production (Venice’s “Through the Night”), Maipo Film (“Elling”), Razor Film (“Quo Vadis, Aida?”), Komplizen

It does rather feel as if the universe — or at least the French film industry — is trying to tell us something when 2023 has turned up not one but two loose Gallic adaptations of Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle.” That 1903 novella was about a man, John Marcher, who fails to

To find her voice as a filmmaker, Paris-based documentarian Lina Soualem had to first look to the past. The daughter of French actor Zinedine Soualem and Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass — seen recently as the Machiavellian Marcia Roy in HBO’s “Succession” — Soualem used her directorial debut, “Their Algeria,” to tell the story of her

Denzel Washington’s bloody assassin-thriller “The Equalizer 3” debuted at the top of box office charts with $34.5 million over the weekend and an estimated $41 million through Monday’s Labor Day holiday. It’s the second-biggest Labor Day opening weekend in modern times, though the holiday isn’t known for bringing people to the movies. After the record-holder

British Hollywood director Simon West (“Con Air,” “Lara Croft:Tomb Raider”) is set to direct Saudi Arabia-set epic “Antara” that will be shot in Neom, the sprawling production hub in Saudi Arabia’s northwestern corner. The English-language blockbuster based on Arab history is the tale of Antara ibn Shaddad, a slave warrior who was propelled to mythical status

“Sex is back,” said Julie Hintsinger, executive director of the Telluride Film Festival, to a packed house of festival-goers as they took in the newest effort from Yorgos Lanthimos at this year’s 50th anniversary. One of the festivals tributes this year, a pre-screening convo was moderated by director Karyn Kusama, as the two discussed his

Whoopi Goldberg and Jeremy Irvine are set to star in Italian comedy “Leopardi & Co.,” directed by Federica Biondi and produced by Franco-Tunisian film and TV entrepreneur Tarak Ben Ammar’s Eagle Pictures. Shooting on the film is currently underway in the town of Recanati, which is known to many Italians as the birthplace of one

British actor Faraz Ayub is in virtually every frame of Moin Hussain’s “Sky Peals,” world premiering at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week. Ayub plays Adam, who works night shifts at a motorway service station and lives a lonely life. Upon hearing that his estranged father has died, he finds himself in search of answers.

Vicky Krieps, best performance prize winner in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard for “Corsage,” will star as Sophie Toscan du Plantier in six time-Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan and David Merriman’s “Re-creation,” which is being presented in the Venice Gap-Financing Market. The docu-drama, which centers on the brutal murder in 1996 in Ireland of French film and