In “Hope Gap,” Annette Bening plays a fiercely intelligent but not nearly independent enough English housewife who has been toiling away on a project for years. A lover of literature, and poetry in particular, Bening’s character Grace is compiling a book of verses for the full range of human experience. She intends to call it
Movies
Love is patient; love is kind. That much you’ve heard before. But death … Death is a nasty son a gun. Death is ugly; it stinks; it takes no prisoners and permanently scars all who witness it. Matthew Teague’s “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word” tells the story of both those abstract
Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx could be headed to the Oscars. In what is already shaping up to be a fierce competition in the lead and supporting male acting categories, Jordan and Foxx just entered the race with the world premiere of their new real-life drama “Just Mercy” at the Toronto Film Festival. The
On Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, two high-profile Gala premieres were interrupted by medical emergencies involving audience members. A man fainted at the world premiere of “Sound of Metal” at the Winter Garden Theatre. And the screening of “Blackbird” at Roy Thomson Hall was paused for approximately five minutes toward the end
September 6, 2019 6:20PM PT A Canadian tribal reservation is beset by zombies in a horror opus that’s gory yet more stylish than scary. “Blood Quantum” is a term applied to the long-standing, controversial practice of measuring a person’s percentage of indigenous heredity—and by extension, their supposed value, or lack thereof. As the title of
September 6, 2019 6:06PM PT Several upstate New York lives are entangled by a hit-and-run accident in this well-cast but middling remake of the 2013 Italian film. “Human Capital” has returned home in a sense, in that American novelist Stephen Amidon’s 2004 book was made into a very well-received Italian film by Paolo Virzi in
Giving the sagging box office a jolt, “It: Chapter Two” is heading for as much as $100 million in its opening weekend in North America, early estimates showed Friday. Warner Bros. is adhering to its $90 million forecast for the horror sequel but rival studios projected a nine-figure launch frame. The figure is $23 million
“Film festivals are 80 years old — but we should not act like we’re 80 years old.” These words from TIFF artistic director and co-head Cameron Bailey set the tone for Friday’s industry conference panel exploring how new creative leaders at four top festivals are evolving creative mandates while balancing relationships with filmmakers and the
September 6, 2019 2:40PM PT Tech giant Apple has acquired worldwide distribution to the Bryce Dallas Howard documentary “Dads,” ahead of its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, multiple insiders tell Variety. Naturally, the film is a family affair produced by her father Ron Howard and his partner Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment. The film
The mid-June announcement that Jason Bentley was leaving KCRW as music director and the host of “Morning Become Eclectic” has been the subject of much speculation. Among the unanswered questions: Where is Bentley going and who will be his replacement? Three months later, we’re not much closer to an answer. While Bentley has lined up
Bryce Dallas Howard got some expert advice before directing an episode of “The Mandalorian,” straight from “Star Wars” creator George Lucas and her father, director Ron Howard, who helmed “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” Howard, who was in the Variety Studio at the Toronto International Film Festival for her upcoming documentary “Dads,” took a minute
September 6, 2019 11:34AM PT California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill to ensure film and TV workers operating out of state for their jobs will have full access to the state’s unemployment insurance, disability insurance and paid family leave. He signed the measure, SB 271, late Thursday and it will become law in
Woody Allen is maintaining that he is a self-proclaimed “poster boy” for the #MeToo movement and says he doesn’t care that parts of Hollywood and the film industry have shunned him. “I’ve worked with hundreds of actresses; not one of them has ever complained about me, not a single complaint. I’ve worked with, employed women
September 6, 2019 10:48AM PT “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” has topped $700 million at the worldwide box office, thanks largely to an impressive international performance. Universal Pictures announced the milestone Friday, noting that the spinoff action-thriller has topped the global box office for four weeks and the international box office for three
Ten years after starring as Princess Tiana in Disney’s Oscar-nominated animated feature “The Princess and the Frog,” Anika Noni Rose reflected on her trailblazing role and the film’s lasting legacy. “Being the first black Disney princess, that was such a first and it really has changed the way young brown children are looked at in
The time feels right for a film adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” inasmuch as the undertaking is possible at all. Nearly 40 years after its publication, the South African writer’s slim but scorching allegory for imperialist denial and defeat feels grimly pertinent to a current political milieu in which the hubris of
Feras Fayyad’s “The Cave” plunges viewers into the midst of Syria’s civil war, reminding audiences of a brutal conflict that doesn’t appear frequently enough on cable news programs or in the headlines of Western newspapers. It viscerally illustrates the human cost of a struggle that is now in its eighth year. But Fayyad’s documentary, which
Warner Bros.’ “It: Chapter Two” has launched solidly in international markets with $16.5 million, finishing in first place in 48 markets. The horror sequel opens in an additional 27 markets on Friday, including the U.K., Mexico and Spain. France opens the following week on Sept. 11 and Japan on Nov. 1. “It: Chapter Two” notched
Isaiah Mustafa was a journeyman pro football wide receiver with a dream of becoming an actor. Then he landed the spot as the suave Old Spice spokesman who burst out of the shower wearing nothing but a bath towel and deodorant. The moment led to appearances in sitcoms like “Anger Management” and “Baby Daddy,” after
Barcelona-based studio Filmax has acquired international sales rights to José Luis Garci’s “The Crack: Inception,” the third part of a film noir trilogy whose first two installments represent for many the Spanish director’s finest achievement. Introducing the new film to buyers at Toronto, Filmax will also distribute it in Spain, opening the crime thriller on
September 6, 2019 9:26AM PT Giant Pictures has acquired worldwide digital rights excluding SVOD and Australia/New Zealand to Serge Ou’s documentary “Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks,” Variety has learned exclusively. The deal was unveiled Friday. The film held its world premiere at the recent Melbourne International Film Festival and will have its US premiere at
September 6, 2019 9:21AM PT Guatamalan director Jayro Bustamante’s genocide revenge drama “The Weeping Woman” (“La Llorona”), set during the 1960s civil war in his country, has won the Venice Days Director Award, the top nod in Venice’s independently run section. This is the second feature by Bustamante, who put Guatemalan cinema the map with his debut,
September 6, 2019 9:00AM PT “All This Victory,” a tense war drama directed by Lebanon’s Ahmad Ghossein and set in 2006 in his country during the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, is the big winner at the Venice Critics’ Week section dedicated to first works. The film is about a young man named Marwan who during
Back in 1970, Tony Richardson’s “Ned Kelly” hit upon a neat idea: What if you got an honest-to-God rock star, Mick Jagger, to play Australia’s most notorious 19th-century folk hero? A neat idea is all it was, though, and the listless, unconfidently acted movie that resulted was duly forgotten. Nearly half a century later, however,
Neon’s distribution topper Elissa Federoff hits Toronto with some high-profile titles: Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or-winner “Parasite,” Alfre Woodard-starrer “Clemency” and Celine Sciamma’s Cannes prize-winner “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Neon has seen success in a subdued specialty pic B.O. climate with docs such as “Three Identical Strangers” and recently with “Luce,” “Honeyland” and “Wild Rose.” The specialty
Melanie Martinez is taking her fans on a fantastical trip. In her directorial debut, the singer presented “K-12” in Los Angeles Tuesday (Sept. 3), ahead of the film’s worldwide one-night-only release on Sept. 5. The colorful feature-length production was financed by Martinez’s label, Atlantic Records, totaling an investment of $5 to $6 million, she estimates.
Jack O’Connell is in advanced negotiations to play Happy Mondays’ frontman Shaun Ryder in AGC Studios’ “Twisting My Melon.” The project, which AGC will fully finance and co-produce, was announced at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to O’Connell, Jason Issacs is in talks to play Derek Ryder, Shaun’s father. Holliday Grainger (“Cinderella”)
Every now and then a documentary doesn’t just open your eyes but tears you apart by exposing a moral rift with resonance far beyond the film’s home country. “Collective,” Alexander Nanau’s explosive observational documentary about unfathomable corruption at the heart of the Romanian medical industry, is such a work. Taken on its own, this chilling
September 6, 2019 1:18AM PT Alejandro Amenábar dramatizes the beginning of the Franco regime in this handsomely mounted but somewhat dramatically muffled Spanish history lesson. Alejandro Amenábar went 15 years without making a feature in Spain, and his first such since the excellent “The Sea Inside” is notable not only for being a 20th-century Spanish
Cairo-based Tunisian actress Hend Sabry, who is at the Venice Film Festival as a member of the jury for debut films, is having a good year. “The Blue Elephant 2,” a thriller with horror elements in which she stars – directed by Marwan Hamed who cast her more than a decade ago in “The Yacoubian