“She Said,” Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s account of reporting their New York Times investigation of Harvey Weinstein that helped reignite the #MeToo movement, will be published on Tuesday — but a story about the book in the New York Times on Sunday has already set off a firestorm on the internet. In an interview
Movies
“The Goldfinch” is this year’s entry in what has become, by now, a time-honored genre: the high-toned awards-bait literary adaptation that, for all the skill and care and ambition that’s been lavished on it, doesn’t quite work. Watching this faithful-in-a-literal-way yet somehow skittery cinematic transcription of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2013 art-mystery novel, you can
When Jennifer Lopez read the script for “Hustlers,” she felt an immediate connection to Ramona, the most powerful stripper at a New York club during the 2008 financial crisis. But she also liked that the screenplay for “Hustlers,” written by Lorene Scafaria, touched on much deeper themes. “It’s about the people, but it’s also about
Writer/director Drake Doremus (“Douchebag,” “Like Crazy,” “Breathe In,” “Equals,” “Newness,” “Zoe”) debuts his latest picture, “Endings, Beginnings,” at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival. The film centers on a young woman (Shailene Woodley) navigating love and heartbreak over the course of one year while confronting the pain of a recent traumatic experience, and finding hope in
The Aretha Franklin documentary “Amazing Grace” will be going out on tour this fall and winter, as part of a 22-state road show that will offer free screenings of the film as a centerpiece of multi-day voter registration events being sponsored by the Poor People’s Campaign, a historic civil rights organization that Franklin supported since
John Wesley, the actor best-known for playing Dr. Hoover on “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” has died. He was 72. Wesley died from complications due to a long battle with multiple myeloma, his family confirmed to Variety. Gerry Pass, Wesley’s manager and producer, said in a statement, “John Wesley was a gift to the
As its title character might put it, “Dolemite Is My Name” is a total motherf—kin’ blast. It tells the story — all true, all outrageous — of one of the most successful blaxploitation films of the ’70s, the insanely over-the-top and borderline inept “Dolemite” (1975), and how it came to be. And it turns that
Eighteen-year-old Tunde Johnson (Steven Silver) isn’t consciously able to explain why he wakes up gasping every day. Every day is the same day, May 28, and every night, he’s murdered by the cops and “The Obituary of Tunde Johnson” is read anew: an upper-middle class, gay high schooler destined to be shot by jumpy officers
It wasn’t just Pennywise’s signature red balloons that inflated this weekend. Warner Bros. and New Line’s “It: Chapter Two” jolted ticket sales at the international box office, collecting $94 million in 75 foreign markets. Combined with a $91 million start in North America, the R-rated horror sequel has generated $185 million worldwide, only ranking behind
Last year, two CNN original documentaries, “RBG” and “Three Identical Strangers,” garnered $14 million and $12 million, respectively, at the box office. The abnormally lofty B.O. numbers made the film arm of the cable news channel an unlikely belle of the nonfiction community. Behind both docs was executive producer and CNN Films vice president, Courtney
September 8, 2019 8:41AM PT Chris Evans is going from American superhero to mystery villain in his upcoming film “Knives Out,” and it’s a welcome change. “It’s nice to play somebody a little more vile,” Evans said at Variety‘s Toronto Film Festival studio presented by AT&T. “I don’t always get the opportunity to play someone who’s
September 8, 2019 8:13AM PT When a prophecy from a traveling sheik portends that a young Sudanese boy will die at the age of 20, he and his mother are faced with the difficult task of navigating the space between coming of age and confronting the end. “You Will Die at Twenty” is the feature
Leave it to Pennywise to deliver a much-needed jolt to the domestic box office. Warner Bros. and New Line’s “It: Chapter Two” arrived with $91 million, a promising start to fall after a lackluster summer moviegoing season. While those ticket sales are behind the jaw-dropping $123 million launch of its predecessor, 2017’s “It,” the follow-up
September 8, 2019 6:08AM PT This sensational 3D doc celebrates American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham’s work by reenacting a number of his iconic dances. Good nonfiction storytelling requires artistry beyond talking heads and archives, though creative vision sometimes feels purposely concealed or standardized in documentaries to prioritize substance over style. But here’s a dance
The Walt Disney Co. has struck a long-term deal with historic Pinewood Studios outside London to take nearly all its stages, backlots and other production accommodation. The arrangement is expected to begin in 2020. “It’s wonderful to have Disney here at Pinewood,” Paul Golding, chairman of the Pinewood Group Ltd., said in a statement. “They’ve
Cologne-based Augenschein Filmproduktion, producer of “7500,” which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is moving increasingly into English-language production while also branching out as a financing partner for international projects. In a move reflecting those changes, the company has hired industry vet Rusta Mizani, currently head of business affairs at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, as
Director Minhal Baig’s debut feature, coming-of-age story “Hala,” took Sundance by storm and became one of the first films ever acquired by tech giant Apple. On the ground in Toronto, Baig spoke with Variety about showing the film, about the identity struggles of a Muslim teen girl, to diverse audiences around the world. Also serving as
The Russo Brothers are using the clout they earned from directing “Avengers: Endgame” and several other Marvel movies to get some interesting projects off the ground. Take “Mosul,” a jittery, intense thriller about an elite group of Iraqi soldiers facing off against ISIS in a bombed-out city. There’s little about the film, which relies on
“Women Make Film” has scored a clean sweep of deals for North America, with buyers taking theatrical, streaming and TV rights to Mark Cousins’ 14-hour opus about female filmmakers. Turner Classic Movies has snagged linear TV, the Criterion Collection has taken the first streaming window and Cohen Media has taken theatrical and ancillary rights to
Forty-two film critics from 13 Arab countries have joined the jury for the Arab Critics’ Awards for European Films, with the award ceremony to be held at the Cairo Intl. Film Festival in November. The jury will select the best European film from entries submitted by national film bodies from across Europe. The awards have
Caitlin Moran’s career kicked off like a power chord. At 17, the rock critic prodigy who’d grown up broke in a Wolverhampton council flat with four brothers and her parents’ illegal puppy mill was being flown to America for an all-night slumber party with Courtney Love. Two weeks after her article ran, Kurt Cobain killed
September 7, 2019 10:55PM PT An audience-pleasing Icelandic drama that is the yin to “Rams'” yang. After the death of her dairy farmer husband, a middle-aged woman courageously sacrifices her livelihood to speak out against the corruption and injustice at work in her community in the audience-pleasing, humanist drama “The County.” Like writer-director Grímur Hákonarson’s
September 7, 2019 10:15PM PT In Sebastian Borensztein’s crowd-pleasing heist comedy, rural Argentinians conspire to steal back from the elites who robbed them. “We’re not thieves,” insists the ringleader of a heist in “Heroic Losers,” a South American crowd-pleaser about a rural collective seeking justice against big-city banking elites. He may be wrong in the
September 7, 2019 9:59PM PT A “time travel pill” produces an epidemic of very bad trips in this disappointingly weak fantasy drama from the makers of last year’s impressive “The Endless.” Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have been making intriguing, resourceful and idea-based (rather than action-driven) genre films together since “Resolution” in 2012. Last year’s
Now here’s a mystery worth solving: Why doesn’t Hollywood give us more ridiculously complicated, gratuitously eccentric whodunits? You know, the kind of all-star affairs where a colorful assortment of highly suspicious characters gather in a remote manor, or at an old castle, or on the Orient Express, in order to be confronted by a corpse
Sexuality is a weapon in “Hustlers,” empowering the women who wield it in this seductive true-crime saga, which does for a gang of New Yawk bad girls what “Goodfellas” did for the mob — which is to say, it brings Champagne-rush sex appeal and neon-lit style to a wild case in which a crew of
Here’s a confession: Although Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors, and I got caught up in the skewed homespun mystique of Mister Rogers thanks to last year’s sublime documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” when it was announced that Hanks would play the cardigan-sweatered children’s TV legend in a new dramatic feature, I
In a passionately divided democracy, the hate-filled words of politicians, cultural influencers and the right-wing media incite an extreme nationalist to commit murder. Although this plot summary sounds as if could be ripped from recent U.S. headlines, “Incitement” is actually a provocative drama from Israeli helmer Yaron Zilberman (“A Late Quartet”), which looks at what
September 7, 2019 7:31PM PT David Raboy’s debut has style to spare, but holds the viewer at a frustrating distance. First-time feature director-writer-editor David Raboy certainly knows how to conjure up an atmosphere. Expanding his own short of the same title, Raboy’s elliptical psychological thriller “The Giant” gives us the story of a small Southern
September 7, 2019 5:57PM PT DreamWorks attempts to recapture the magic of the ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ franchise with a new mythical beast — this one covered in fur. After descending Mt. Everest in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary received worldwide acclaim as the first westerner to reach the top — and also snickers for