Movies

Todd Haynes brought delicious psychodrama to the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, with the world premiere of his “May December” starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Captivating the Cannes crowd the film earned a 6-minute standing ovation at the festival’s Grand Palais. “May December” stars Natalie Portman as Elizabeth, an actor who heads to Savannah

In the experimental montage that opens “Persona,” a bare-chested teenage boy caresses a screen upon which the faces of two women slowly morph back and forth. It’s easy to imagine Todd Haynes being tempted to start his deep-as-you-want-to-go rabbit-hole drama “May December” the same way, seeing as how this endlessly fascinating movie focuses on the

In “Black Flies,” a movie that keeps working to get high on its own intensity, Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan play paramedics who spend their nights driving through hell (I mean, Brooklyn). There are countless shots of the two in their EMS van, riding along under the tracks of an overhead subway train — the

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “Fast X” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”, which are now playing in theaters. Louis Leterrier’s “Fast X” drives into movie theaters this weekend, delivering plenty of action and a few surprise cameos. As previously revealed, the film’s credit scenes mark the return of Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs and

Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” premiered to the biggest and most thunderous standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival so far on Saturday night. The 3 hour and 26 minute epic look at greed, racism and a dark and largely unexplored chapter of American history, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. It kept

Taking a cue from the movie’s soon-to-be-infamous spanking scene between Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, someone ought to paddle whoever let Martin Scorsese take three and a half hours to retell “Killers of the Flower Moon.” You could read David Grann’s page-turner — about an audacious 1920s conspiracy to steal resources from the Osage

British writer Martin Amis, the author of the book “The Zone of Interest,” has died at 73. News of his death comes just one day after the big-screen adaptation of his 2014 novel premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. The New York Times reports that Amis died of esophageal cancer, as confirmed

Purpose and character. These are now solidly enshrined as the buzzwords of copyright law on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling earlier this week in the case involving the estate of Andy Warhol and photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The decision at first blush seemed to be a clear-cut win for copyright owners and artists

Julio Hernández Cordón’s vampire tale “The Day is Long and Dark” (“El Día es Largo y Oscuro”) is unveiling first images and trailer, which world premieres at Cannes’ Fantastic Pavilion. Alina Rojas, Diana Bustamante and Hernández Cordón produce, for La Mitad del Continente (Mexico) and Burning (Colombia).  The film, currently in post-production, dives into a

Spurred by modest state funds, growing TV support and co-production pacts, filmmaking in Peru is on the rise and with it, a rousing presence on the international stage. Peruvian pics snagged six awards at March’s Malaga Film Festival and industry component MAFIZ, an unprecedented haul for the event’s country guest of honor. Plaudits went to

Big changes are afoot in Peru, thanks to Paramount’s mega-budgeted “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” which shot there in 2021, literally saving hundreds of jobs badly hit by a six-month pan- demic lockdown. With street protests now a distant memory, talks are underway to address concerns that will make Peru a more attractive location shoot,

Stuart Ford may have been named Variety’s Billion Dollar Producer, but the AGC Studios founder is already looking ahead to his next big milestone. “We’ve raised more than $1.5 billion in production financing and, the way our cinema business is evolving, who knows, in three or four years from now, I might be standing in

Lily Gladstone’s career is about to forever change at the Cannes Film Festival thanks to the world premiere of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in which she stars opposite the director’s longtime muses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. During an interview as part of the Kering Women in Motion talks at Cannes,

The interlinked names of the lovers have an unusual power in Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s haunting, halting  “Banel & Adama.” They play over and over as a whispery lullaby on the soundtrack. They cover the sheets of paper on which Banel (Khady Mane) compulsively writes their names, like a schoolgirl practicing cursive on the name of her

Cate Blanchett debuted her latest acting role in “The New Boy” at the Cannes Film Festival this week, but the Oscar-winner wouldn’t mind staying behind the camera a bit more. “I’m always trying to get out of acting,” Blanchett said. “I’ve been trying to stop acting my entire professional life.” Speaking at her Kering Women

Anyone seeking to describe “How to Have Sex” for potential American viewers is liable to land on the term “spring break” in the process: It is, after all, a story about hard-partying teenagers heading to a sunny coastal resort for several nights of boozy, horny, wholly unsupervised antics. Yet the teens here are British, the

A familiar face is back on the Croisette. Well, kind of… Tom Cruise may not be attending this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where “Top Gun: Maverick” premiered in 2022 to massive fanfare, but the star’s presence is enduring in the South of France. For festival attendees, it’s impossible to miss the giant LED screen outside

London- and Paris-based production, finance and sales company Film Constellation is launching sales on the remake rights of Spanish thriller “Fatum.” Directed by Juan Gualinanes and produced by Vaca Films, the outfit behind box office successes “Sky High” and “Cell 211,” “Fatum” was released in Spain by Universal Studios on April 28. Film Constellation has

Pape Boye’s Black Mic Mac, a recently launched banner championing African and Middle Eastern talent, is kicking off a strong first roster of projects including “Let the Earth Burn” from Sundance-prizewinning Sofia Alaoui and “The Bridge” creator Måns Mårlind. “Let the Earth Burn” is a six-part series following Kenza, a recent graduate of the police

Variety has been given a sneak peek of the trailer (below) for Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” which world premieres in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us. It follows Hirayama, who seems utterly content with his simple life

“The Zone of Interest,” writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s searing Nazi drama about the banality of evil, became the talk of Cannes Film Festival after its debut on Friday night. But the director admits he didn’t know the story he wanted to tell before the cameras were rolling. “You never really know why you tackle and subject.

Cate Blanchett kicked off her stilettos on Friday night as she took the stage a Cannes Film Festival party hosted by Variety and the Golden Globes. Because this is Cannes, where women are mandated to wear heels on the red carpet, shoes have become a political symbol on the French Riviera. And indeed, in this

It is unlikely that this Cannes will yield many characters as strikingly well-drawn as Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani), the star of Marie Amachoukeli’s small but acutely affecting Critics’ Week opener “Ama Gloria.” Over the course of an efficient 84 minutes, Cléo changes and resists change, she learns and rejects life lessons, she befriends and betrays. She

When you think of Rupert Friend, chances are you remember his five seasons as CIA operative Peter Quinn on “Homeland” or his turn as the Grand Inquisitor on “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” But recently he’s become the latest member of Wes Anderson’s acting troupe, following up his role in 2021’s “The French Dispatch” with the Cannes Palme

A Jewish thirtysomething, Ann (Joanna Arnow) has never been in a conventional relationship. She engages in submissive sexual relationships with “sexfriends” and seems dimly uneasy that the most longstanding of these, with Allen (Scott Cohen), is now clocking in at around a decade, with neither one of them knowing very much about the other. She

If there’s anything to be learned from the massive, industry-shaping disruptions of recent years — from the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic to the lingering fallout from the war in Ukraine — it’s that “the role of the big festivals in the industry ecosystem is crucial,” according to Tiina Lokk, director of the

Wilfredo Manalang, who was one of the producers of last year’s Cannes’ Japanese hit “Plan 75,” has come on board Vietnamese film project “Don’t Cry, Butterfly.” Manalang (aka Will Fredo) and partners in his Philippines-based Fusee consortium will join as an executive producer. Written and to be directed by Duong Dieu Linh, “Don’t Cry, Butterfly”

Debutante director Ramata-Toulaye Sy will join one of world cinema’s most select clubs when she climbs the stairs of the Grand Theatre Lumière on May 20 for the premiere of “Banel & Adama,” which unspools in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It marks just the second time in the French fest’s 76-year

German producer Silvana Santamaria has come on board as a lead producer on “The Witness,” the new Tehran-set project reuniting Jafar Panahi and Nader Saeivar that Arthood entertainment is selling in Cannes. Saeivar will direct “The Witness.” Saeivar wrote “3 Faces,” the Panahi-directed drama that premiered in 2018 in Cannes where it won the award

Former Netflix exec Juan Mayne has hung his own shingle, Madrid-based N&L Films, which is bulwarked by strong talent relationships, a strategic alliance with Exile Content and a sure sense of market opportunities for Spain-based independent producers. Exile Content and N&L Films have struck a first-look development deal. Jeff Glaser, who oversaw Netflix production finance