Movies

On the surface, it looks like any other teenage love story: Abel, an absent-minded high-school student in Budapest, hopelessly pines for his best friend, Erika, dreamily staring out the classroom window when the teacher calls his name. On the day of his final exam, he draws a blank: Rather than bury his head in his

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, whose laid-back, good-humored, often tropically-themed brand of country-laced pop spawned a lucrative one-man business empire, died Friday. He was 76. A cause of death was not immediately released.  Buffett’s death was confirmed through a statement on his official website: “Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his

Hong Kong-based, Mainland China-born auteur Yonfan has scandalized and enthralled Chinese-speaking parts of Asia in a career that has spanned fine-art photography, filmmaking and journalism. Further afield, he has become a regular on the Lido. His 1995 feature “Bugis Street,” which has been restored and is screening in the Venice Classics section, achieved notoriety at

In the debut feature of Mexican filmmaker-siblings Mariana and Santiago Arriaga, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. Competing at the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, the coming-of-age road movie “A Cielo Abierto” turns on two teen brothers who are bent on avenging the death of their father in a road accident. They are

Aya Films has snatched all U.K. and Ireland rights to the Dominican Republic’s “Ramona” from Paris-based film company Alief SAS ahead of its BFI London Film Fest premiere. The docu-fiction hybrid, which had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlinale’s Generation 14Plus sidebar, will have its U.S. West Coast premiere at the AFI Latin America

“City of Wind” depicts a version of Mongolian everyday life that is both traditional and modern. Ulaanbaatar is shown as messy and sprawlingly urban in a fashion that will be familiar to millions of city dwellers in Asia — even if there are yurts in the front garden. Presented in Venice’s Horizons section, and then

In 2021, Hamaguchi Ryusuke won truckloads of awards and nearly universal critical acclaim for his three-hour drama “Drive My Car,” including three prizes at Cannes and a best picture Academy Award nomination, the first ever for a Japanese film. (That Oscar went elsewhere, but “Drive My Car” was named best international feature film.) Instead of

Flannery O’Connor saw folks in a way few writers did. She saw through them, past their petty prejudices and hollow pieties, to the less civilized selves they so desperately tried to keep under wraps. But it wasn’t just O’Connor’s X-ray vision that made the Georgia-born author such an uncanny reporter on the human condition. She

In “Nyad,” the titular character is entitled, mean, self-centered and treats people around her terribly… and she’s our hero? Supporting actors Jodie Foster and Rhys Ifans manage to keep the film moving along, but the main subject, played passionately by Annette Bening, is one who is difficult to connect with and root for in this

It’s almost cosmic, the way kids start out as nothing more than a twinkle in their mother’s eye. Then they’re born into heavenly little bodies, orbiting the adults who made them like tiny moons, until such time that they overcome their parents’ gravitational pull. So it is with “Janet Planet,” one of those intensely personal

There’s an unintentionally surreal moment in “Food Inc. 2.” Eric Schlosser, the journalist who wrote “Fast Food Nation,” is talking about how the rise of our corporatized, centralized, industrialized food system stifles the very kind of competition that could pose a challenge to it. He reaches back, with a level-headed liberal boomer nostalgia comparable to

How much longer will the Oscars wait? That is, wait to embrace the quality and sheer brilliance of documentary filmmaking in a significant way, meaning nominating one in the best picture category? Matthew Heineman’s deeply moving “American Symphony,” which follows Oscar and Grammy-winning composer Jon Batiste as he prepares for his performance at Carnegie Hall,

Loretta Swit remembers well the night she won her first Emmy Award.  On Sept. 7, 1980, the “MASH” star sat in her agent’s living room in Beverly Hills, watching the ceremony on TV when she heard her name called out and saw her picture flash on the screen. Swit was not in the audience at

Meg Ryan joined Interview Magazine for a discussion with comedy legend Carol Burnett, and she admitted that her kids are often embarrassed by one of her most iconic movie scenes: the fake orgasm at Katz’s Deli in “When Harry Met Sally.” In the 1989 romantic comedy, Ryan’s Sally proves to Billy Crystal’s Harry that women

The fall movie season officially begins with the Labor Day holiday weekend, but it’s one of summer’s biggest blockbusters that’s set to dominate streaming this September. That would be Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” starring Halle Bailey as Ariel. The film earned a mighty $297 million at the domestic box office over the summer, while

HBO has acquired the broadcast rights to “Chico Virtual,” a short film starring Jaden Michael (“Colin in Black & White,” “Harlan Coben’s Shelter”). Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Olivia De Camps, “Chico Virtual” will premiere on HBO and stream on Max Sept. 18. The film follows Javier (Michael), a young Dominican American boy who

Mousy and diminutive, to the point that she practically disappears beneath a frizzy bramble of brown hair, Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci) adores movies. In “Finally Dawn,” she stumbles into one, drafted into being a featured extra on a swords-and-sandals epic shooting at Cinecittà. Doing so makes Mimosa a potential target in a meandering true-crime-adjacent period piece

“Poor Things,” the oddest movie to premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival, landed the biggest standing ovation so far. On Friday night, Yorgos Lanthimos’ drama, starring Emma Stone as a woman who finds her identity through a series of tragic (and scientific) events, received an eight-minute standing ovation at its world premiere. “Genius! We

Two-time Oscar winner Alexander Payne returns to the big screen with his entertaining and crowd-pleasing film “The Holdovers” which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival on Thursday night, where he was in-person to introduce. With a 1970s aesthetic, a sharp script by David Hemingson, and a trio of exquisite performers, the film feels like the

Mika Gustafson’s “Paradise Is Burning” – sold by Italy’s Intramovies and previously known as “Sisters” – has debuted a trailer and exclusive first clip ahead of its premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section. Set in Sweden, it sees young sisters Laura, Mira and Steffi trying to get by on their own after their mother

Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” brings style, swag and a whole lot of Barry Keoghan’s manhood to the award race. After having its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Thursday night, festivalgoers were in for a wild bonanza of colors, lights and one of the sexiest films to grace the big screen so far this

“Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — that popular maxim (or some variation thereof) is often brought up in the context of remembering to have some sympathy for jerks. But it could also be applied to people whose lives seem too charmed to be true. In the documentary “American Symphony,”

Elizabeth Olsen told The Times of London in a recently-published interview (conducted pre-strike) that she is aggressively seeking a “variation” of characters after working for four years solely in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Olsen filmed “WandaVision” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” back to back, which was perhaps too much time dedicated to

While at the Venice Film Festival to pay tribute to Ruggero Deodato, “Drive” and “The Neon Demon” filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn participated in a masterclass and bashed streamers for being “overfunded and rotten with money and cocaine.” The director, who previously infuriated some in the film biz by claiming that “cinema is dead,” said he

Denzel Washington is back as professional killer Robert McCall in “The Equalizer 3,” which has made $3.8 million in previews at the box office. The R-rated, action thriller is expected to make between $28 million and $30 million in its opening weekend. With the Labor Day holiday on Monday, it could grow from $33 million

The Venice Gap-Financing Market is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year with record-breaking attendance and impressive new figures on the projects that the core component of Venice’s industry side has helped bring to the big screen. All told, over the span of a decade, “We have had 370 films (including immersive) from 70 countries and

Vertical is shifting the theatrical release of Rebecca Miller’s romantic comedy “She Came to Me” by a week. The film, which stars Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway and Marisa Tomei, will open on Oct. 6 instead of Sept. 29, when it was originally slated to premiere. Vertical opted to change its release strategy after Apple decided to move

“The Promised Land” deserves a sexier title than “The Promised Land”: It’s hard to hear those well-worn words and not expect something as beige and starchy as the spuds grown on its titular terrain. It has one, in fact. The native Danish title for Nikolaj Arcel’s film translates as “The Bastard” — which has the

Wes Anderson beamed with joy as his 40-minute short film “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” received a nearly 4-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere. Prior to the screening, Anderson was given Cartier’s Glory to the Filmmaker Award, which was presented to him by his frequent collaborator Alexandre Desplat. Anderson humbly accepted

Thousands of Harry Potter fans gathered at Kings Cross train station in London, U.K. on Friday to celebrate the biggest ever Back to Hogwarts Day, held annually on Sept. 1. Travelling from across the country and even beyond, Potterheads arrived on the concourse clad in Hogwarts-branded robes, scarves and ties. Despite a nationwide strike that