Movies

The Continental Hotel, a safe haven for elite international assassins, is a linchpin to the distinct mythology behind “John Wick.” That operation is held together by hotel manager Charon, played by Lance Reddick. “I never get to play characters like this,” Reddick tells Variety. The actor talks about his against-typecast character, what makes the “John
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“Charlatan”Director: Agnieszka HollandProducers: Marlene Film Production, Film & Music Entertainment, MadantsLogline: Inspired by the real-life figure of Jan Mikolášek, Holland’s latest follows an herbalist who devotes his life to care for the sick, despite the challenges.Sales: Films Boutique “The Coldest Game”Director: Lukasz KosmickiProducer: Watchout Studio, K5 Intl.Logline: Bill Pullman stars in this spy thriller, set
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A few years ago, when she was still an up-and-coming producer in Warsaw, Klaudia Smieja met skeptics who thought she’d bit off more than she could chew with “Mr. Jones”: an ambitious, 1930s-set drama directed by Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland, with a €10 million ($11.3 million) budget that dwarfed the typical ask for a
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The capricious ocean is a recurrent, mesmerizing image in Mati Diop’s feature debut “Atlantics,” but given its perfidious connotations for the people of Senegal, who’ve lost so many souls to its depths, the director ensures the rolling waves remain hypnotic rather than beautiful. It’s the right decision for this romantic and melancholy film, more apt
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Jazz artist and film composer Terence Blanchard was presented with the BMI Icon award at Wednesday night’s Film, TV and Visual Media Awards of performing-rights society Broadcast Music Inc. in Beverly Hills. Blanchard, composer for many of Spike Lee’s films (including “Malcolm X,” “Inside Man” and the recently Oscar-nominated “BlacKkKlansman”), was honored for his “unique
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May 16, 2019 9:02AM PT Two female directors co-sign this involving adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s elegant literary fiction about life under Taliban control in the Afghan capital. The long-awaited, graphically rich, 2D watercolor-style animation “The Swallows Of Kabul” from French helmers Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec provides an involving adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s elegant literary
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May 16, 2019 5:32AM PT There are few fireworks in Franco Lolli’s lived-in study of a single mother in personal and professional turmoil, but it delivers slower-burning rewards. Colombian writer-director Franco Lolli wrongfoots us a little with the title of his sophomore feature “Litigante”: Unsuspecting audiences may go in expecting a courtroom drama, not least
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Movie technology company Motion is launching Thursday in Cannes that seeks to connect movie producers and sales agents directly with their audience through a cutting-edge digital distribution model. Motion, which brings together executives from Cinemarket, White Rabbit and LeapDAO, is in Cannes to demonstrate to industry players how it can combine an Ethereum blockchain-enabled method
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Kantemir Balagov comes from Kabardino-Balkaria, a region in the Russian Caucasus that is very poor and has a high level of youth unemployment. Balagov studied under Russian director Alexander Sokurov for three years, and made his debut feature with “Closeness,” which was in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2017, and won the Fipresci prize. “Beanpole,”
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Famke Janssen has joined Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the cast of crime thriller “The Postcard Killings.” Variety has been given the first-look image from the movie. Morgan plays Jacob Kanon, the New York detective intent on capturing his daughter’s murderer. Janssen (“X-Men,” “Taken”) plays Valerie Kanon, the mother of their now deceased daughter. Across Europe,
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CANNES  — Produced by Cottonwood Media and Studiocanal, written by “Ice Age 2’s” Gerry Swallow, and directed by Academy Award nominated Samuel Tourneux (“Only Pidgeons Go To Heaven”), $25 million animated feature “Around the World” had sparked offers from “from all over the world” by Wednesday evening at Cannes, said Anne Cherel, Studiocanal head of
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CANNES  —  “The Swallows of Kabul” marks a new step forward for co-directors Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec. A leading figure of French film and theatre, Breitman had never worked in animation before, so she teamed with up-and-coming talent Gobbé-Mévellec to bring this bittersweet tale of Taliban oppression and artistic resistance to life. Following its
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May 15, 2019 6:01PM PT Quebecois actor Monia Chokri makes an overlong but buoyant debut about a directionless woman’s unhealthy emotional reliance on her brother. Despite all her evident idiosyncrasies, there’s something familiar about Sophia (Anne Élisabeth Bossé), the focus of Quebecois debutante Monia Chokri’s comedy “A Brother’s Love,” which gets the Un Certain Regard
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In today’s film news roundup, Kristen Stewart’s “Happiest Season” gets backed, Sarah Hyland’s “The Wedding Season” is sold, “Apollo 11 – The Immersive Live Show” has a new cast and “Sleeping in Plastic” goes up for sale. ROM-COM BACKING Entertainment One will co-finance TriStar’s holiday-themed romantic comedy “Happiest Season,” starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis.
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