Movies

South Korean box office held strong over the weekend, with “Fast X” enjoying a second lap at the head of the field, followed by a growing chasing pack. “Fast X” earned $3.12 million between Friday and Sunday in Korea, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That

Wim Wenders, whose immersive 3D portrait of artist Anselm Kiefer, “Anselm,” had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival as a Special Screening, is a passionate advocate of the 3D format, which he believes engages the human brain in ways that 2D fails to do. “You could just as well be brain dead in

“The Little Mermaid” makeup designer Peter Smith King has responded to criticisms of the revamped Ursula look that Melissa McCarthy brings to life in the new live-action remake, specifically contending against a belief that a queer artist should have landed the job. Rob Minkoff, the character animator of the original 1989 film, pulled reference from

Thirty-five years after the animated story of Ariel, a flame-haired siren of the sea who falls for a prince, charmed audiences, a live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” dominated the Memorial Day weekend box office. The Disney release is on track to debut to a massive $118 million over the four-day holiday, with $96 million of

In “The Old Oak,” which played in Competition in Cannes, Ken Loach portrays a village in the North-East of England where the indigenous white community comes into conflict with Syrian refugees – a conflict fuelled by the despair, deprivation and decline of the rust-belt region. Such conditions can be a seed-bed for far right groups,

The Cannes Film Festival managed to avoid pensions reform’s protests and a power cut during its entire duration, but Palme d’Or winning director Justine Triet made up for both with a fiery political speech that took aim at the French government. Her impassioned plea became instantly viral and has been dominating headlines in French media.

There were more than a few misty eyes in the audience at the premiere of Pixar’s animated adventure “Elemental,” which closed out this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The sweet, opposites-attract love story proved charming to attendees, closing out the festival with a five-minute standing ovation. At least one grown man in the orchestra was wiping

I reckon there are more ideas per second of screentime in “Elemental” than any other Pixar movie to date. So why does this imagination-teasing opposites-attract rom-com feel like a misfire? No one can accuse director Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur”) or his team of under-thinking the ultra-creative studio’s latest high-concept feature, which takes the four

Pan Distribution has acquired French rights to Joanna Arnow’s dark comedy “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” following its Cannes Film Festival debut. Loco Films is handling international sales on the title.  The film is a major breakthrough for Arnow, who not only makes her narrative feature directing debut, but also wrote, edited

A year after collecting his second Palme d‘Or for “The Triangle of Sadness,” Ruben Östlund finds himself on the other end of the equation at the Cannes Film Festival, overseeing the official competition jury awarding this year’s prizes. The first of the prizes in official competition went to Japanese actor Kōji Yakusho, who plays a

Early into Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ Bollywood career, the Indian-born actress paid back a film production after she backed out of filming within days, due to the “dehumanizing” director on site. In a recent interview with The Zoe Report, the actress explained how nearly two decades ago, as an actress new to the industry, she took

To bring Disney’s iconic mermaid princess Ariel to life in “The Little Mermaid,” costume designer Colleen Atwood constructed a life-sized tail that went from star Halle Bailey’s chest all the way down past her legs. “We made it to scale and 3D silk-screened the tail and painted onto that so you could get the nuance

Last year, amid the slow fade of the pandemic, the Cannes Film Festival made its official comeback. But this year it felt like Cannes came back in a different way. For this was one of the most dynamic Cannes slates in years. The festival atmosphere was still laced with jitters, since the film industry —

“The Pot Au Feu” from French-Vietnamese director Trần Anh Hùng may be one of the most radical films competing for a Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes. The sensorial movie, set in late-19th century France, opens with a mouthwatering cooking sequence that runs nearly 40 minutes and portrays a slow-cooking romance with a minimalist plot.

Most artists, if they’re lucky, invent one thing. But Kenneth Anger, who was a filmmaker, an author, a debauched aristocratic scenester and, to the day of his death at 96 (he reportedly died May 11, though it wasn’t made public until May 24), a figure of puckish mystery, invented several things, each one of them

Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” is making quite the splash at the domestic box office this weekend, with an opening day total of $38 million. The fantasy, which is opening in 4,320 theaters, is expected to gross between $120 million and $130 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. The musical remake, starring Halle Bailey

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ spoke out about the pending SAG-AFTRA strike authorization during the New York premiere of her new film “You Hurt My Feelings.” When the Emmy winner was asked if she will join the picket lines if the union calls for a stike, she told Variety on the red carpet, “You bet your fucking ass.”

Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” has scored a Fipresci award in Cannes.  The jury of the International Federation of Film Critics praised the film “for its formal radicality, the complexity of the sound and score, and its contrast between the invisible atrocities behind the wall and a supposed paradise,” Fipresci stated on Saturday.  “By

Director Kim Ki-yeol (Song Kang-ho) only needs two more days of reshoots to craft a new ending to his latest film, and it will no longer be the trashy potboiler everyone thought he was making. It will be, he declares frequently, “A masterpiece!” Director Kim Jee-woon does not seem to harbor similar aspirations for his

XYZ Films has closed a raft of deals for Czech filmmaker Robert Hloz’s science-fiction feature “Restore Point,” which is part of the company’s recently launched New Visions slate of genre films. The film has been sold to Germany and Switzerland (Plaion); Scandinavia (NonStop); France (The Jokers); and Australia/New Zealand (Umbrella). Several other territories are in

For the first time, Edward James Olmos is detailing his difficult battle with throat cancer. The 76-year-old “Battlestar Galactica” star and founder of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival shared his recent experience in an interview with Mando Fresko on his podcast “Mando & Friends.” Olmos received his last round of chemotherapy and radiation

Tommy Joe Ballantyne (Dave Turner), the central character in Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak,” is a middle-aged landlord and proprietor of a pub that sits near the bottom of a sloped street of working-class row houses. We’re in an unnamed village in the northeast of England, and the pub, called the Old Oak, has seen

Gary Kent, the actor, director and stunt performer who also served as one of the inspirations for Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” died on May 25 in Austin, Texas, The Austin Chronicle confirmed. He was 89. Kent began his career as a seasoned stunt performer after

What’s in a name? For the Congolese Belgian rapper-turned-filmmaker Baloji, whose directorial debut, “Omen,” bows in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section on May 22, it’s a question that poses itself whenever flustered immigration officials inspect his passport at the airport in Congo. “Always the same question, every time,” Baloji tells Variety. “Do

In collaboration with Mexico’s Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), Cannes’ Critics’ Week has presented four shorts by upcoming Mexican directors on Thursday: Daniela Silva Solórzano’s “The Things I Tell You”; “The Short Film” by José Luis Isoard Arrubarrena; “To Go Away and Come Back” by José Permar: and “A Hand Beneath the Snow” by José

On a recent quiet morning at The Summit, the ultra-exclusive gated community in Los Angeles, a crane was called to deliver olive trees to Sebastian Maniscalco’s house. The Illinois native, known for relatable stand-up about his immigrant parents, and for his onstage physicality and boisterousness, went uncharacteristically silent watching the evergreens drop down on his

One night before the winners in the Cannes Film Festival’s main Competition are announced, the festival’s second-most prestigious awards ceremony has concluded, with British director Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature “How to Have Sex” taking the Un Certain Regard Award. Jury president John C. Reilly made the announcement, with his fellow jurors Paula Beer, Davy

If anyone knows how to get the right shade of red for Black hair, it’s Camille Friend. The Oscar-nominated hair department head, whose credits include “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” experimented with adding color into Lupita Nyong’o’s hair, and now she’s doing it again. This time, it was for Halle Bailey in Disney’s live-action “The Little

Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy, whose absurdist social satire “Feathers” won the Cannes Critics’ Week prize in 2021 and went on to make a major splash, is set to helm “Mammals,” an English-language drama that will be a reflection on Western capitalism and family ties. El Zohairy’s sophomore film, which will feature still unspecified actors

Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” one of the best reviewed films of the Cannes competition, which was bought by Neon, examines the collapse of a marriage and a mother-and-son relationship in a documentary-style courtroom drama. The chamber piece is driven by Sandra Hüller’s (“Toni Erdmann”) nuanced performance as a successful German novelist on trial