Movies

April 26, 2019 4:55PM PT Paramount has hired family film specialist David Bowers as the director of its upcoming live-action/CG “Rugrats” movie. Bowers directed the second, third and fourth “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movies (“Rodrick Rules,” “Dog Days” and “The Long Haul”). He also directed the animated movies “Astro Boy” and “Flushed Away.” Producers
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Robert Downey Jr., star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, almost didn’t reprise his role as Iron Man in “Captain America: Civil War.” “Avengers: Endgame” co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo sat down with Variety’s Marc Malkin for the second episode of Variety and iHeartMedia’s new film podcast, “The Big Ticket.” “We had to convince Robert Downey, who
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You expect one thing from a film that opens with a quote from Bruce Springsteen’s career-making 1975 anthem “Born to Run”: a road movie, one with escape and exploration on its mind, eventually bounding forward from the glum, gray town of its establishing shots. “Run,” the third feature from mood-mongering Scottish filmmaker Scott Graham, both
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Disney-Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” is heading for a record-shattering opening weekend of about $300 million in North America, early estimates showed on Friday. The fourth and final “Avengers” opened astronomically in North America with a record $60 million from Thursday night previews. It’s expected to take in another $80 million on Friday. One estimate placed “Avengers:
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Two days after Disney/Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” premiered overseas, the superhero tentpole has been widely pirated — with copies popping up like weeds on multiple torrent and illegal streaming sites. While Disney can’t be happy about that, the piracy activity so far hasn’t derailed “Endgame’s” trajectory of having the biggest movie opening ever. And it’s also
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April 26, 2019 11:40AM PT This coming-of-age drama about a Rastafarian running for his family and future finds its footing in its complex characters. Writer-director Storm Saulter’s “Sprinter” jogs along a predictable path, but makes a mad dash straight for the audience’s gut right before the finish line. While the narrative about a Rastafarian runner’s
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Michael B. Jordan and WWE star Ronda Rousey were just two of the powerhouses that gathered in Hollywood Thursday night for the Los Angeles Family Housing’s annual fundraising celebration. The live-auction event, which brought together hundreds of top industry executives, philanthropists, and government partners, aimed to raise $2 million for LAFH, which builds permanent housing
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Sinemia, a would-be rival to MoviePass, is closing down its U.S. operations — telling customers it could not find “a path to sustainability” amid legal headaches, competitive pressures and the challenging economics of the business model. The company announced the shutdown in a notice on its website Thursday. “While we are proud to have created
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The Thursday evening conversation between game-making auteur Hideo Kojima and “Walking Dead” actor Norman Reedus about highly-anticipated PlayStation 4 game “Death Stranding” was filled with interesting anecdotes, but little in the way of hard fact. Instead, Kojima made a promise of sorts to the audience and seemingly fans everywhere waiting for more news on the
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MADRID — Peru’s La Vida Misma and Paris-based sales agent Luxbox have dropped the first trailer and poster of Melina Leon’s “Canción sin nombre” (“Song Without a Name”), selected this week for the Cannes Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. Written by Leon and Michael J. White, “Song Without a Name” sums up some of ambitions and focus
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Though it never really went away on much of the globe, a sort of creeping feudalism is making such a striking comeback — with the ever-more-fabulously-rich squeezing the poor of every dime and resource — that Lisa F. Jackson and Sarah Teale’s documentary “Patrimonio” feels like a frightening portent. Will such crude appropriations of land
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April 26, 2019 12:24AM PT There’s either a poor hostage or something much worse locked in the basement in this intriguing if somewhat underwritten horror opus. “I Trapped the Devil” sounds like the title of a sermon or gospel song, but it’s a very literal-minded statement coming from the mouth of a leading character in
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When the last truck rolled off the assembly line of the General Motors factory outside Dayton, Ohio, filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert were there to film it, documenting the end of a certain American dream, along with the unemployment of more than 2,000 people — down from 6,000 in more prosperous times. That was
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Straight Up Films created the anthology “Power/On” of five shorts focused on encouraging girls in STEAM (science, technology, engineering and math with the arts thrown in) directed by actresses Rosario Dawson, Julie Bowen, Ana Brenda Contreras, Lisa Edelstein, and Nikki Reed. With support from YouTube, the shorts premiered Wednesday at the Google campus in Playa
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If one is an anomaly, two are a coincidence and three are a trend, then Ron Howard might strictly become a music documentarian after “Pavarotti” hits theaters. The documentary about the world-famous Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti comes on the heels of Howard’s “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” and “Made in America,” a look at
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