Month: January 2024

Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, but “Origin” star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor sounds like she’s already moving on from awards season. Instead, she’s focusing on how the film is impacting audiences. When asked what it would mean to hear her name called for her second Academy Award nod, Ellis-Taylor paused to thoughtfully consider her words.

Chrissy Teigen, restaurateur David Chang and comedian Joel Kim Booster have the dream assignment of getting to dish with celebrities over gourmet meals on their new series “Chrissy and Dave Dine Out.” The trio took a break from the fine dining scene in Los Angeles and traveled to Park City for the Sundance Film Festival

Although it isn’t structured any differently from dozens of other cradle-to-grave documentaries about artistic luminaries, “Luther: Never Too Much” sheds light on much more than just the life and career of R&B singer Luther Vandross. Drawn largely from interview and performance footage of Vandross over his almost 40 years in entertainment, and bolstered and contextualized

Sebastian Stan is back at Sundance this year for the world premiere of A24’s “A Different Man,” co-starring Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve. The three actors joined director Aaron Schimberg at the Variety Studio presented by Audible to discuss the film, which centers on an aspiring actor with a facial disability who undergoes a radical

Benedict Fitzgerald, co-screenwriter of “The Passion of the Christ,” died Jan. 17 in Marsala, Sicily, after a long illness, his cousin Nancy Ritter told Variety. He was 74. Fitzgerald co-wrote 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ” with director and producer Mel Gibson. The biblical epic remains the highest-grossing independent film of all time. Fitzgerald first

More actors than ever are now stepping behind the camera to take a shot at directing. To me, they always end up falling into one of three categories. There are the ones who simply aren’t very good at it. There are the ones who wind up making a movie that’s A-okay (not better, not worse),

Dan Ojari and Mikey Please, the co-writers and co-directors of Aardman Animations’ musical film “Robin Robin,” which premiered on Netflix in November 2021, and was nominated for an Oscar the following year, say that a spinoff is in the cards. “We are currently working on more stories in the world of ‘Robin, Robin,’” Please tells

As teenagers go — and let us allow for some hormonal leeway here — 17-year-old Sam is what most would call a good one: smart, thoughtful, grounded, self-sufficient but not averse to advice, the kind of kid that parents can’t help bragging about, as their friends wish their own nightmare offspring were a little more

Pauly Shore is responding to Richard Simmons after the fitness icon disavowed the upcoming biopic in which Shore is set to play him. Shore stopped by the Variety Studio presented by Audible while at the Sundance Film Festival and said his Simmons movie is “all about love,” with or without the real Simmons’ blessing. “My

A pro-Palestine march down Main Street in Park City drew roughly 100 protesters to the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday. The march, organized by “Let Gaza Live,” bussed protesters in from nearby Kimball Junction and took up space in front of local restaurant Riverhorse on Main. The event was not affiliated with Sundance. The protest

John Hamlin, who worked as an executive or consultant on 45 Oscar telecasts at NBC and then ABC, died on Jan. 15 in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 92. Hamlin was on a steady decline following his hospitalization for severe dehydration from stomach flu, his family announced. Hamlin worked with many esteemed individuals like Bob

Lena Waithe, who is a juror at Sundance, believes the festival “really sets the tone for the year,” citing “Past Lives” as an example from last year. “Obviously, ‘Past Lives’ has done really well, surprisingly so to the business. It’s a quiet movie about home, friends, what would’ve happened if you would’ve stayed in one

Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” one of the buzziest movies to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has sold to Searchlight in a huge $10 million deal. Given the warm reception in Park City, the film sparked a bidding war among several distributions to land global rights. Searchlight Pictures plans to release “A Real Pain”

In “Union,” documentary filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing follow the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a group of current and former Amazon workers as they attempt to unionize Amazon employees working at a facility in Staten Island, N.Y. The directing duo chronicles just how excruciatingly hard it is to form a workers’ union in America

Devo is headed to Sundance, not just for the festival premiere of the Chris Smith-directed documentary film that share’s the band’s name, but a Jan. 21 performance by the group at the just-opened Marquis on Main Street. And maybe that’s not all from the rock avant-gardists turned “Whip It” hitmakers. “Powder’s gonna fly,” promises original

The “Mean Girls” movie musical topped a sleepy box office as “I.S.S.,” a sci-fi thriller that takes place aboard the International Space Station, misfired in its opening weekend. “Mean Girls” added $11.7 million in its second weekend of release, bringing its domestic tally to $50 million. Ticket sales dropped a steep 59% from its debut. However,

Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s zombie movie “Handling the Undead,” premiering at Sundance and to be released in the U.S. by Neon, sees the reunion of Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, the stars of Oscar-nominated “The Worst Person in the World,” in a poetic, visually-charged chronicling of a hot summer’s day in Oslo when the

Adding to cinema’s long list of hellish bachelor parties to which nobody in their right mind should accept an invitation, “It’s What’s Inside” gathers a large crowd of mostly estranged friends in a remote mansion where either no one can hear you scream, or no one much cares if they do. It’s an age-old setup

Few directors have had greater success exposing the harsh realities of American life than Debra Granik. But after a drug abuse-themed first feature, “Down to the Bone,” the Jennifer Lawrence-led poverty saga “Winter’s Bone” and a documentary (“Stray Dog”) and drama (“Leave No Trace”) about haunted military vets, her new multipart doc, “Conbody VS Everybody”

In 2013, Angela Patton gave a TEDWomen talk that described a father-daughter dance for incarcerated dads and their daughters. That talk was viewed over a million times and inspired the documentary “Daughters,” which has its world premiere Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. In the film, Patton, who in the past decade has helped arrange

There was a time, in the ’90s, when indie film noir thought it was being hip by imitating the trappings of ’40s thrillers ­— the dark shadows, Venetian blinds and “slinky” femme fatales. But a true noir never really looks back; it’s always pushing forward, toward fresh new varieties of desire and dread. “Love Lies

Jazmin Renée Jones’ “Seeking Mavis Beacon” isn’t your typical kind of quest movie. Premiering in the NEXT section at Sundance, the format-defying film follows the nonbinary Black filmmaker on an elaborate search to find — but also to better understand — someone who shaped what they thought of the world and themselves. Someone who didn’t

Kristen Stewart falls for a bodybuilder in “Love Lies Bleeding,” an electric (and violent) romance thriller that premiered Saturday night at Sundance Film Festival. Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”) directed the movie, which co-stars Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone and Anna Baryshnikov. O’Brian is no stranger to the world of bodybuilding, having done

Taiwan’s transformation from an authoritarian state to a flourishing democracy determined to decide its own future is charted in the engrossing and highly informative documentary “Invisible Nation.” Centered on President Tsai Ing-wen as she promotes her country’s case for ongoing autonomy in the face of mounting political isolation, as well as China’s claim that Taiwan

It takes some time to fall in love with 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) in “My Old Ass.” She’s young and self-involved, so focused on heading off to college in the big city that she’s kind of a jerk to everyone around her (especially her small-town cranberry-farming family). Maybe young adult audiences won’t think so. Canadian

The title alone was enough to convince Aubrey Plaza to appear in “My Old Ass,” an offbeat coming-of-age story that was warmly received during its premiere Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival. “It all just made sense to me,” Plaza told the sold-out crowd at the Eccles Theater in Park City, Utah. “‘My Old