Movies

Michael Mann’s “three decades of research” provided the key to putting audiences in the driver’s seat of vintage Ferraris racing down a thousand miles of Italian roads that are well known for taking human lives. That’s what “Ferrari” cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt discovered when he teamed with the director of crime classics such as “Heat” and

Local crime drama film “Last Suspect” returned to the top spot at the mainland China box office over the latest weekend, as “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” opened quietly in third place. Narrowly beaten last week by “The Marvels,” “Last Suspect” climbed one place while “The Marvels” fell out of the

A nine-film retrospective of Indian cinema acting legend Amitabh Bachchan is set for the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes, France. The retrospective, titled “Amitabh Bachchan, Big B Forever,” will showcase different aspects of the actor’s oeuvre including his persona as the ‘angry young man,’ created by writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, action, drama,

Mystery-horror film “Five Nights at Freddy’s” landed on top of the South Korean cinema box office. But fellow new release title “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songs and Snakes” managed only a fourth placed start. “Five Nights” earned $1.78 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by

Joss Ackland, the veteran British stage and screen actor who was known for starring in “White Mischief” and “Lethal Weapon 2,” died on Sunday. He was 95. “Joss was a long term client and great friend who remained lucid, erudite and mischievous to the very end, he died peacefully with his family this morning,” said

“The Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is nearing the $100 million mark worldwide after three days of release. Those ticket sales, including $44 million in North America and $54.5 million internationally, were enough to top the box office. But they didn’t come close to recapturing the glory of the original “Hunger

Victor Erice’s “Close Your Eyes” won best film at the 17th edition of Leffest Lisboa Film Festival, which announced awards Saturday night. Marking Erice’s first feature film since his 1992 docudrama “The Quince Tree Sun” and garnering almost universal positive reviews – Variety called it “an aching ode to film, time and memory” – following its world

Zack Snyder announced earlier this year that “Rebel Moon,” his two-part science-fiction epic for Netflix, would have director’s cuts for each movie. The director revealed more details on what these director’s cuts would entail in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. While both “Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire” and “Rebel Moon Part

In “Dashing Through the Snow,” Lil Rel Howery has the off-the-cuff funk energy of a hustler who’s so quick that you believe his spiel before you’ve had the chance to outthink it. The whole issue of believing is key to the movie, since Howery plays Santa Claus — or, perhaps, a petty criminal who’s pretending

Suzanne Shepherd, an actor known for her roles in “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas,” died Friday morning in her home in New York City, her agent confirmed to Variety. She was 89. Shepherd portrayed Mary DeAngelis, the mother of Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco), in HBO’s crime drama series “The Sopranos,” as well as the mother of

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains descriptions of key scenes and storylines in “Saltburn.” Oscar-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s new twisted thriller, “Saltburn,” includes several graphic scenes that have left moviegoers debating whether to be titillated or disturbed. “It gets under your skin,” Fennell told me Tuesday at the film’s Los Angeles premiere. “We just want to

Cinematographer Linus Sandgren says he and director Emerald Fennell relied on their emotions and instincts to conjure the “gothic” look of “Saltburn,” the hybrid psychological horror and dark comedy just screened at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Torun, Poland. The film’s tight Academy aspect ratio, for one thing, was an idea that arose only after

Fast-emerging Mexican auteur, delivering knowing and cross.grained takes on life in Mixtec communities, actress-turned-director Angeles Cruz’s “Valentina or the Serenity” walked off Saturday night with the top best picture award and best actress (Myriam Bravo) in a high-caliber main competition at this year’s Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival. Best actor went to “Money Heist’s” Rodolfo de

Robbie Ryan says “becoming a diplomat and a bit of a politician” was one of the key skills he learned while filming “Poor Things,” the surrealist Frankenstein-esque adventure by Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe. The film screened at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Torun, Poland, where director of photography Ryan and Dafoe

Indie and art film producer Jon Kilik, unlike many, remains hopeful for the personal, mid-budget movie for grown-ups. “Those are the films directors love to make and audiences still love,” says Kilik, being feted this week at Poland’s Camerimage cinematography festival for work of special visual sensitivity. Having flown in from a shoot in Rome,

Recreating epic battle scenes was just part of the challenge in filming “Napoleon” with director Ridley Scott, says Polish-born cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who screened the grand-scale biopic at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Poland on Friday. Getting the realism needed to capture the vast brutality of the Battle of Austerlitz or Waterloo, says Wolski, depends

Cinematographer and director Warwick Thornton scored top honors Saturday at the Camerimage cinematography film festival for his magical tale of an aboriginal youth, “The New Boy,” which film jurors called a distinctive “portrait of an extinguished spirituality.” Thornton, in accepting the Golden Frog, said he had been so moved by the cinematography work onscreen at

A fourth “Creed” film is in development with Michael B. Jordan set to direct the upcoming installment, franchise producer Irwin Winkler has revealed. Jordan made his directorial debut with “Creed 3,” in which he also starred as heavyweight champ Adonis Creed from the “Rocky” spinoff film series. The third installment, which premiered in theaters in

Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson, standout performers from Blitz Bazawule’s daring re-imagining of Alice Walker’s beloved novel “The Color Purple,” are vying for recognition in a fiercely competitive supporting actress race. Following three consecutive days of screenings in Los Angeles, the film has garnered enthusiastic applause from voters, critics and industry professionals, sparking burning

At the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, the Baltic Film sidebar has showcased an impressive range of work from the Baltic states – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – including the post-Soviet documentary “The Last Relic” and the 3D fable “Twittering Soul,” the hand-painted animation “The Peasants” and the Estonian oddity of “Spit in

If it’s a marketing scheme, it’s an elaborate one. “The Curse” stars Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder parodied the trailer introduction to the Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell rom-com “Anyone But You” in a newly released promo. In an almost exact parallel to that of Sweeney and Powell’s, the intro features Stone and Fielder standing

Italian writer-director Emma Dante’s “Misericordia” has won the top prize at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. Adapted from her own play, her third feature tells the story of a young man (Simone Zambelli) with learning difficulties, cared for by a group of sex workers on an island, protecting him from the cruelty

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points, including the ending for “Saltburn.” In the final moments of Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 song, “Murder on the Dancefloor” pumps out over the speakers, while Barry Keoghan’s Oliver dances stark naked through a grand estate house in the British countryside. “Everything is diabolical, but it’s exhilarating,”

Some did it out of a sense of obligation. Some did it out of fear of being idle. Some leaned on maternal instinct, and some acted purely out of anger. Whatever the motivation, female writers and showrunners stepped up in record numbers to serve as strike captains during the Writers Guild of America’s five-month contract

Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” is a nesting doll of a film—a television broadcast of a documentary about a play, assembled with the same precision and detail as Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The French Dispatch” among others. Thematically, the connective tissue between its layers of reality, like many of those earlier

“You may know me from other stuff, but I don’t use a lot of colors, except when necessary,” says renowned costume designer Trish Summerville. So, when it came to designing the main outfit worn by Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” Summerville, whose credits include “The Girl

“Being from a small country is not an obstacle but a plus because you have a story no one has heard of,” Lithuanian actor and showrunner Gabija Siurbyte (“Troll Farm”) told the TV Beats panel during this week’s Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, hosted by the Black Nights Film Festival. It was the kind of optimism

“The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” has caught some fire at the domestic box office. Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games” prequel earned about $19.1 million on its opening day from 3,776 locations, a figure that includes $5.75 million in Thursday previews. The new installment in the young adult dystopian action series will still secure the top slot

Co-organized by the Cannes Film Festival and Market and Argentina’s INCAA film-TV agency, late November’s Ventana Sur market looks set to have at least one star: Cannes head Thierry Fremaux himself. Presenting the Cannes Film Week, a extraordinary showcase of 2023 winners led this year by Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a

“Perhaps if people talked less, animals would talk more,” observes one of the human characters in “Charlotte’s Web,” a kiddie classic that serves as both the butt of several jokes and an inspiration for Adam Sandler’s animated “Leo,” an endearing Netflix original that strikes just the right balance between heart and fart jokes. Basing the