Movies

September 9, 2019 3:54PM PT The 1997 action movie “Face/Off,” which starred John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, is getting a reboot. Paramount has hired “22 Jump Street” screenwriter Oren Uziel to pen the script with Neal Moritz producing. David Permut, who was a producer on the original film, will executive produce. No actors or director

September 9, 2019 3:26PM PT Renée Zellweger’s transformation into Judy Garland for biopic “Judy” has pulled in several other big names eager to celebrate the ruby-slippered icon. Musicians Sam Smith and Rufus Wainwright will be joining Zellweger on the “Judy” soundtrack for separate duets. Wainwright, another self-proclaimed Garland super-fan, will pair with Zellweger on “Have Yourself

September 9, 2019 2:25PM PT Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to the romance-drama “Two of Us,” the feature directorial debut of France-based Italian filmmaker Filippo Meneghetti. Magnolia is planning a theatrical release early next year. The films follows two older women, played by Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier, who live across the hall

September 9, 2019 11:51AM PT “Power” star Omari Hardwick is in final negotiations to lead the upcoming horror-thriller “Spell,” sources tell Variety. Hardwick’s attachment to the Paramount Players project comes just as his hit crime drama is set to finish up with its sixth and final season. “Spell” follows a man (Hardwick) who crashes his

September 9, 2019 11:00AM PT Western Australia gets a stunning showcase in Gregor Jordan’s romance, but the story never finds the right key. Tim Winton’s 2001 novel “Dirt Music” told the story of three haunted loners drawn into a bizarre love triangle in a remote fishing village on the coast of Western Australia. But the

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Stuyvesant High School student Mohammad Haque sat in a classroom at the magnet school’s Chambers Street location in Manhattan, approximately six blocks away, and on the other side of the West Side Highway, from the World Trade Center. He had a perfect view of the towers when American

A new group of music awards is joining the various other ceremonies honoring achievements in visual media: the inaugural SCL Awards, presented by composers and songwriters to their fellow music-makers, will be held on Jan. 7, 2020. The Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) has, since the 1980s, been the primary organization of composers and

Nate Parker, whose new film “American Skin” received a number of negative reviews at the Venice Film Festival, said Monday that he doesn’t care what critics say and that his goal is to make art that connects with audiences. “I made this film for people to see it,” Parker told Variety in an exclusive interview

A disillusioned security guard haunted by dreams of ancestral spirits wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a purple masquerade, a traditional spirit-creature that stalks the streets of Lagos, in Abba Makama’s surrealist romp “The Lost Okoroshi.” The follow-up to Makama’s kinetic, colorful feature debut, “Green White Green,” which marked him as one

“Downton Abbey’s” creators say that more big-screen installments of the hit show could follow if the new movie, which premieres in London on Monday, proves successful. “I don’t see why not,” writer Julian Fellowes told Variety in an interview ahead of the premiere of the Focus Features and Carnival Films movie, adding that the prospect

In a landscape rife with superhero sequels and action tentpoles, you can’t blame a modern movie star for wanting a palate cleanser Jamie Dornan, who shot to fame with the steamy “Fifty Shades of Grey” film trilogy, has two movies playing Toronto that give some insight into the next phase of his career, after putting

Bolivia’s selection committee has opted to submit Rodrigo Bellott’s polemical “Tu Me Manques” to vie for the International Feature Film Academy Award. The gay drama beat 11 other local films in contention. “By supporting my film despite the controversy, Bolivia has proven that it is a progressive country, and that in the end, art and

Three years into the Revolutionary War, a desperate George Washington hired German soldier Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben to drill discipline into his ragtag troops. Von Steuben helped win American independence, and for his service, he was granted U.S. citizenship. Ever since, immigrants have enlisted in the military as a path toward legal status, putting their

Los Angeles-based XYZ Films has signed a deal with Logical Pictures to handle North American sales and executive produce a select number of films produced and financed by Logical. Under the deal, XYZ Films and Logical Pictures will start collaborating on “The Deep House,” directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (“Inside,” “Leatherface”). “The Deep

AMC Theatres isn’t known for arthouse fare, but the world’s largest exhibitor has started to heavily promote indie movies. In June, the company unveiled AMC Artisan Films, a programming and marketing initiative, that has spotlighted quirkier, more adult-oriented fare that arrives without the benefit of a Marvel superhero in the title. Since kicking off the

Mick Jagger was a good get for “Burnt Orange Heresy” producers in more ways than one. They knew the Rolling Stones frontman would raise awareness of the indie project — at the very least, there was sure to be curiosity about his first credited movie role since 2002’s “The Man From Elysian Fields” – but

European Film Promotion, an agency that acts as a champion for European cinema around the world, has joined with Gallic film promotion agency UniFrance and the Miami Film Festival to launch a sales market for European films targeting Latin American buyers, to be called the Miami Film Market — Mercado Del Cine Frances y Europeo.

Shout! Studios has taken all U.S. distribution rights to animated feature film “Swift,” which has a voice cast led by Kate Winslet and Willem Dafoe. The film is directed by Andrea Block and Christian Haas. The voice cast also includes Josh Keaton, David Shaughnessy, Arif Kinchen, Julie Nathanson and Rob Paulsen. The film centers on

MADRID  — London-based Film Republic has swooped on world rights to Bulgaria’s Svetla Tsotsorkova’s second feature, “Sister,” set to world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival in its prestigious New Directors competition for first and second features. Also playing New Directors, Tsotsorkova’s feature debut, 2015’s ”Thirst,” a character-driven coming of age tale with a

September 9, 2019 1:48AM PT American supernatural horror flick, “It: Chapter 2” debuted on top of the South Korean box office after opening in cinemas on Wednesday. The Warner Bros. release earned $3.02 million from 415,000 admissions over its five first days, including $2.28 million between Friday and Sunday. “It,” the first instalment of the

A delegation of 10 Polish producers will travel to the San Sebastian Film Festival to take part in the Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, which this year selected the eastern European nation for its Focus on program. For the sixth edition of Focus on, which invites industry professionals from a specific country or territory to the

September 8, 2019 11:30PM PT Director François Girard returns to the musical mysteries of ‘The Red Violin’ with a historical drama that strikes too many bum notes. In the Jewish faith, the Kaddish is known as the “mourner’s prayer,” intended to memorialize the deceased and affirm their place in their families and within their communities.

Long ago, turning Nazi Germany into a joke was verboten. Or, at least, it seems like it was; it’s actually hard to imagine a time when that was the case. Charlie Chaplin made Hitler into a figure of ridicule in “The Great Dictator,” released in 1940. I grew up watching “Hogan’s Heroes,” which portrayed life

In June 2014, the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to ISIS (also known as Daesh or the Islamic State). A joint-forces campaign to reclaim it began two years later and ended with the re-establishment of Iraqi control of the devastated, decimated city in July 2017. Matthew Michael Carnahan (brother of Joe and screenwriter of “The

Five years ago, one of the most famously troubled productions in movie history was colorfully detailed in the documentary “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Doctor Moreau.” Its major takeaway was the cruel injustice of a director being removed from a project that had been his baby from inception. If you

In Max Winkler’s “Jungleland,” Jack O’Connell and Charlie Hunnam have a very familiar movie-sibling dynamic, playing brothers respectively “good” and ne’er-do-well, tough guys in the brutal business of boxing who’ve been knocked around a bit too much by life in general. This may inevitably recall the fairly recent likes of “The Fighter” and “Warrior,” excellent

Around halfway through “Saint Maud,” writer-director Rose Glass constructs a cinematic wince moment for the ages, involving nails, bare feet and a young woman with a Christ complex far too big for her own snappable body. “Never waste your pain,” she says, and this short, sharp needle-jab of a horror parable from bleakest Britain takes

Going forward, what will Hollywood do when it needs a Kevin Spacey type? The disgraced Oscar winner is precisely the actor a movie like “Bad Education” calls for: Cory Finley’s audacious second feature centers on the true story of Frank Tassone, district superintendent of the Roslyn School District in Long Island, N.Y. — a hero

There’s nothing tidy about Daphne’s love life — and if there were, she probably wouldn’t make a very compelling character. Daphne, who is played by Shailene Woodley in what is simultaneously her most realistic and least accessible performance yet, recently broke up with her boyfriend, moving back into her sister’s pool house. That split had

Hugh Jackman’s embezzlement drama “Bad Education” debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday night with apt timing, as the sharply executed film offers parallels to scandals currently playing out in American colleges. The film arrives only two days after actress Felicity Huffman explained to a California judge why she would attempt to deceptively