Movies

Last week’s third-annual Women’s March was largely overshadowed by the sideshow of a standoff between dudes — specifically, Covington Catholic High students, Native American activists, and Black Israelities. This proved once again that it’s difficult for media and public alike to focus on women’s (or any other) issues amid the controversy blitzkrieg of the Trump

January 27, 2019 12:06AM PT An inspirational true story fails to lift off in actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s earnest but plodding directorial debut. Though he’s played antic roles such as Lola in “Kinky Boots,” master actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s most conspicuous characteristic is his air of soulful gravitas. That’s a quality that aims to dominate his feature

January 26, 2019 11:55PM PT Rural Oklahoma life circa 1960 is tough for two teenage misfits in a B&W drama that’s not always retro in the right ways. 2018 was an unexpectedly fine year for B&W features, “Roma,” “Cold War” and the underseen “1985” being obvious examples. But hopes that the trend might continue into

In “The Sunlit Night,” Rebecca Dinerstein shows that she can write funny breakups, awkward Jewish family gatherings, and sweet-and-sour wedding speeches. One doubts she had to go all the way to the Norwegian Arctic to develop that skill, but at least her pilgrimage paid off in the form of the kind of personal writing sample

“Halston,” a look at the famous American fashion designer, has sold theatrical distribution and home entertainment rights to the studio formerly known as The Orchard Film Group. The deal comes following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday. It’s the first major purchase for the indie label since it announced this week that

January 26, 2019 8:51PM PT Wendi McLendon-Covey plays an OCD mom whose life melts down when she gets involved with a family that appears far less orderly than her own. Plenty of films great and small have gone spelunking in the quiet desperation of middle-class suburban motherhood, but few have plumbed the milieu with more

Let’s talk, for a moment, about the political thrillers of the 1970s — not just the reality and urgency that coursed through them, but the history-written-with-lightning feeling they gave you. In a galvanizing work of art like “All the President’s Men,” or even a topically charged entertainment like “Three Days of the Condor,” it was

Trying to tell an epic quest about gentrification is a lot like making an action movie about global warming. While inherently dramatic, both processes happen so slowly, audiences are liable to lose interest while waiting for the ice caps to melt. And so it goes with “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” a gorgeous

“Crazy Rich Asians” was snubbed at the Oscars, receiving no nominations from the Academy. But star Awkwafina doesn’t have any hard feelings. “I don’t really know the exact reasoning behind it, but yeah, of course it would have been cool,” Awkwafina said about the historical rom-com not being nominated. “But we did have an amazing

Minhal Baig’s camera gives high school senior Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) plenty of respectful space as the American Muslim teen skateboards to class, writes in her journal, and touches herself in bed at night. Hala’s parents, however, don’t. If there are boys at the skate park, mom Eram (Purbi Joshi) is going to hear about it

January 26, 2019 4:24PM PT Modern female friendship — and feminism — is top of mind in Sophie Hyde’s Sundance player “Animals.” Variety has an exclusive first look at the film, which sees Alia Shawkat and Holliday Grainger as roommates who have torn up the streets of Dublin for a decade with drunken shenanigans and

HBO Films is buying “Share,” a cautionary tale about internet culture that debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The movie came into the festival with theatrical distribution, but it will instead debut on the cable channel at some point in 2019. It’s the second time this week that A24, the indie studio that backed

Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to the inspirational drama “We Are Boats,” starring “Westworld” alums Angela Sarafyan and Luke Hemsworth. Breaking Glass Pictures acquired rights to the film during the Sundance Film Festival in a deal negotiated between Breaking Glass CEO Rich Wolff and writer/director James Bird. The film will receive a

Dr. Ruth Westheimer stopped by the Variety Studio at Sundance presented by AT&T to discuss “Ask Dr. Ruth,” the upcoming documentary about her life and work, and revealed that she’s writing a new edition of her 1995 handbook “Sex for Dummies.” Westheimer explained that the new edition, her fourth, will be focused on millennials. “I

Looking back over the past decade, I can think of just two films that have done justice to the idea of play — the special way that creativity and imagination combine in the human brain to entertain us. The first was a lighthearted art film called “Faces Places” from forever-young director Agnès Varda in which

When Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie zipped into Hollywood, she was a talent the industry had never seen before, or since — a three-time Olympic ladies’ singles champion (a record she continues to hold) whose chipper, if chilly romantic comedy hits kept Twentieth Century-Fox solvent in the build-up to World War II, in part because

January 26, 2019 1:00PM PT Jacqueline Olive’s documentary asks a disturbing question: Does lynching still exist in the U.S.? “Always in Season” asks a startling question: Could it be that lynching, one thing we think can be safely relegated to the pre-Civil Rights Movement era, is actually still practiced as a form of racial terrorism

January 26, 2019 12:32PM PT Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of Sundance’s most anticipated attendees, has canceled her trip to Park City, Utah. The freshman Congresswoman announced the decision in a tweet. “For almost two years, a mom followed several women as we ran for Congress. I was one of them,” she wrote. “Due to complications from

January 26, 2019 10:00AM PT An Iranian-American filmmaker from Los Angeles and a screenwriter from Oakland are the winners of the first grants from the Macro Episodic Lab Powered by the Black List designed to nurture the careers of storytellers of color. Sahar Jahani and K.C. Scott will each receive development support and a budget

January 26, 2019 9:52AM PT After a mass extinction, a robot raises a little girl in a handsome, if derivative sci-fi thriller that salutes its own parentage “I Am Mother” director Grant Sputore’s parentage is obvious: James Cameron crossbred with Ridley Scott. There are worse families to come from if you’re a young talent entering

Gugu Mbatha-Raw will star in the humanitarian drama “Seacole,” based on the life of pioneering Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole, Variety has learned exclusively. Charlie Stratton will direct from a screenplay he’s written with Oscar-nominated Dianne Houston (“Tuesday Morning Ride”) and Marnie Dickens. The project is to be co-produced and financed by Epic Match Media and

In a weekend dominated by holdovers, M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass” will likely top the box office again in its second frame with an estimated $16 million. The third part in a trilogy that includes “Unbreakable” and “Split” has earned $59 million domestically and nearly $54 million internationally since its debut despite generally unfavorable reviews. If

Try as we might to dissuade vulnerable young parents in the movies from relocating their families to rambling, deserted homes in the countryside, preferably on the edge of a dark, looming forest, sometimes they simply have to learn for themselves. Happily, Lee Cronin’s “The Hole in the Ground” is largely in on the joke, putting

Amazon has closed a $13 million deal for “Late Night,” a buzzy comedy about diversity in a late night talk show writers room that is written by, produced, and stars Mindy Kaling. It is the first major sale out of the Sundance Film Festival. “Late Night” co-stars Emma Thompson as a prickly comic who grudgingly

Released by Netflix on Friday, action-thriller “Polar,” a Netflix Original Movie starring Mads Mikkelsen (“Hannibal”), stands about half-way between OTT comic noir and big multiplex action-thriller. It opens with an aerial shot creeping over woods towards a mansion somewhere in Chile as a motley squad of assassins moves in for the kill. The target, Michael

January 26, 2019 2:33AM PT After a terminal cancer diagnosis, a man and his best friend embark on an unusual road trip in Alex Lehmann’s amusingly low-key dramedy. A movie about cancer has no right to be as consistently amusing as “Paddleton” — a triumph for which credit should be spread around, even if it

January 26, 2019 2:10AM PT Beneath the witty, sexy allure of Gabriel Mascaro’s fluorescent sci-fi lies a hot protest against President Bolsonaro’s vision for Brazil. “It was 2027. Brazil had changed.” These are the first words spoken in “Divine Love,” delivered in remote voiceover by a strangely impassive-sounding child — and even as the film’s

After things go really wrong in Alex Gibney’s documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” one of his interview subjects jokes about developing a truth serum. Now there’s a million-dollar idea — maybe even a nine-billion-dollar idea. That was the astronomical valuation staked on a company called Theranos, founded by Silicon Valley darling

January 26, 2019 1:27AM PT After the seeming sexual assault of a drunk teenage girl is murkily caught on film, the victim searches for answers in a movie that doesn’t believe in them. The cellphone video at the center of Pippa Bianco’s “Share” is hard to discern, which is just how the unsettling writer-director wants

Michel Legrand, three-time Oscar winner and composer of such classic film songs as “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “I Will Wait for You,” “You Must Believe in Spring” and “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”, along with the groundbreaking musical score for “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” has died. He was 86. Legrand