Movies

“The Talent,” a glitzy party-set psychological thriller toplining Ester Expósito, one of the biggest breakouts of “Elite” stars, will be brought onto the market at Berlin by Spain’s Film Factory Entertainment.  Handling many of Spain’s biggest non-global streamer movies, Film Factory has acquired worldwide rights to “The Talent”outside Spain. It will present at next month’s

The South Korean box office for the weekend of Jan. 24-26 was led by horror film “Dark Nuns,” which debuted with a commanding performance, while action sequel “Hitman 2” also had an impressive start. “Dark Nuns,” a horror film where two nuns are driven to perform an exorcism, opened at the top of the chart,

Ikusmira Berriak, the San Sebastian-based development program behind Cannes Directors’ Fortnight hits “The Water” and “Creatura” and Sundance standout “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” has announced six projects for its 2025 residency program, as the initiative soars in popularity, applications sky-rocketing 34% to 487 for this current year. Reasons for that cut several ways.

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” will be partly filmed in Sicily which, according to scholars, was a location for Odysseus’ wanderings in the epic composed by Homer around 8th century BCE. Shooting of the Sicilian portion of Nolan’s “Odyssey” is expected to start in roughly two months on the island of Favignana, known as

The weight of responsibility is very much on director Tadashi Nakamura’s mind throughout the process of making “Third Act.” He’s making a film about his father, Robert A. Nakamura, a giant of American independent cinema while trying to make his own mark on the medium outside of his father’s shadow. He’s dealing with sensitive topics

“Octopus with Broken Arms” led the Chinese box office for a fifth consecutive weekend, earning RMB 51.2million ($7.1 million) over the Jan. 24–26 weekend, according to Artisan Gateway. The crime thriller has brought its cumulative gross to $126 million, solidifying its position as 2025’s first box office hit. “Honey Money Phony” held onto second place

At next month’s European Film Market in Berlin, the first footage will be shown to buyers from medieval fantasy epic “The Stolen Child.” Variety spoke to the writer-director Sebastian McKinnon about the film, whose international rights are being represented by Picture Tree Intl. The film’s trailer debuts below. [embedded content] The synopsis for “The Stolen

“Together,” a gory love story starring real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie, shook up audiences at its Sunday night premiere in Park City. The Sundance Midnight selection kept the packed audience hooting, hollering and yelling “Oh shit!” at many of the gory, surprising set pieces. The film follows a couple, played by

Jennifer Lopez, outfitted in sparkling, webbed-up gown and sky-high black heels, fought back tears as “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was embraced at Sundance Film Festival with a standing ovation. She told the audience at Park City’s Eccles Theatre that starring in the musical adaptation fulfilled a lifelong dream. “I’ve been waiting for this moment

Watching a friend be berated by his mother or witnessing a couple’s heated public argument comes with the uncomfortable feeling that one is intruding in a private matter. Those outbursts of emotion, often reserved for the eyes and ears of those involved, are magnified via a potent cinematic voice in writer-director Joel Alfonso Vargas’ impressively

Boundaries are constantly blurring in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” the revolutionary mid-’80s film that became a Kander and Ebb musical, and that cunningly (and stunningly) morphs back to the big screen, courtesy of “Dreamgirls” director Bill Condon. Confined mostly to an Argentine detention facility in 1983, at the height of the country’s Dirty War,

These days, gay men can arrange sex by a smartphone app as easily as ordering a pizza. But back in the ’90s, when “Plainclothes” takes place, such trysts not only had to be coordinated in person, but could be punished by arrest. Audiences of a certain age and demographic almost certainly remember the risk and

“Rebuilding” belongs to a genre that’s now past its sell-by date: the slow-moving Sundance red-state movie. By red state, I don’t mean that the politics are right wing in any overt way. I mean that the drama is mired in the fetishistic trappings of the American West — the horses and farm houses, the sunbaked

Based on her 2020 short “Shako Mako,” Hailey Gates writes and directs “Atropia,” a unique war satire about western views of the Middle East. While both its lampooning of U.S. militarism and its central character drama lack follow-through, the film contains bright comedic sparks in its keen observations about American media. It’s a self-reflexive work

The Ochi exist. Furry monkey-like creatures of an orange-hued pelt with pronounced ears and huge dark eyes, the Ochi could feel just at home in the “Star Wars” universe, James Cameron’s “Avatar” realm Pandora or in Amblin classics like the “Gremlins” series. They are not real in an organic sense, but the beings in “The

In 2008, Ira Sachs got fired by his manager. The most indie spirited of independent filmmakers had refused to play the game for too long, and the bill had finally come due. “I understood it in a way,” Sachs, more than a decade and a half-dozen features removed from that experience, says. “Because I was

There is no shortage of gonzo moments in Gala del Sol’s “Rains Over Babel.” A playful riff on Dante’s “Inferno,” the film is set in a fantastical retrofuturist vision of Cali, Colombia. The tropical city, here reimagined as Purgatory through the lens of queer joy, magical realism and a dash of ’90s punk, plays backdrop

Jennifer Lopez brought major star power to the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance ahead of the world premiere of her new musical, “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” She was joined in the interview by the film’s director, Bill Condon, best known for writing the Oscar-winning “Chicago” and for directing “Dreamgirls,” and co-star Tonatiuh. Lopez was

With a handsome actor like Joel Edgerton, audiences typically find themselves looking at his face, or those ice-blue movie-star eyes. But in “Train Dreams,” I found myself looking at his hands, great big mitts, with thick fingers and knuckles like gnarled roots that don’t get that way on their own. Over the years, I’ve seen

Comedy wasn’t always Noam Shuster Eliassi’s purpose in life. But as true callings sometimes do, stand-up found this immensely charismatic and funny intellectual eventually. After all, the magnetic subject of Amber Fares’s urgent, eye-opening and enormously compassionate documentary “Coexistence, My Ass” has always been opinionated, sporting a great sense of humor since childhood. But growing

Bill Murray concedes he hasn’t been proactive about finding work as an actor. The “Groundhog Day” and “Lost in Translation” star has appeared in just a few independent films, such as 2024’s ensemble crime comedy “Riff Raff” and Naomi Watts-led drama “The Friend,” in recent years. “I’ve been lazy,” Murray said at Sundance Film Festival

Two documentaries premiering at Sundance this weekend are set thousands of miles apart — in Nairobi, Kenya and Texas, respectively – but at the heart of their stories is the same thesis: the importance of libraries to any healthy democracy. And, in each of the film’s most compelling scenes, also a plea: to save them.

Dave Franco and Alison Brie are set to rock the Sundance Film Festival with their horror movie “Together,” and the duo joined the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance to discuss their latest onscreen collaboration. Franco and Brie have been married since 2017. “We love it and we want to keep going,” Franco said

U.S. filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, now based in Denmark, worries his “home country is perhaps becoming a dictatorship.”   “It remains to be seen. The question we all face, each and every one of us, is this: ‘Is it too late for us?’ I encourage you to look up and see that above you, there’s still a

Like many Americans in the early aughts, documentary filmmaker David Osit watched “To Catch a Predator,” a hidden camera reality TV show that followed journalist Chris Hansen working in coordination with law enforcement while conducting sting operations that exposed adult men who were hoping to have sex with minors. “I found it fascinating and weird

The snow-covered Park City feels a world away from Tunis, where Amel Guellaty shot her feature debut “Where the Wind Comes From,” playing Sundance as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition strand. This real-life journey somewhat echoes that of the film’s main characters, Alyssa (Eya Bellagha) and Mehdi (Slim Baccar), who embark on an

If “To Catch a Predator” taught us anything, it was about the hollow authority asserted by a man in a well-cut suit. Between 2004 and 2007, NBC’s pedophile-baiting “Dateline” spinoff captured the imagination of the American public, announcing itself as not just reality-based entertainment but a protective public service — largely on the strength of

“Flight Risk,” an action thriller directed by Mel Gibson and starring Mark Wahlberg as a balding, unhinged pilot, landed in first place with $12 million from 3,161 North American theaters in its opening weekend. It’s the second consecutive Lionsgate release, following “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” to debut at No. 1 as the studio takes

Benedict Cumberbatch was the toast of the town at Sundance during the Variety Cover Party presented by United Airlines. The actor, who graced the cover of Variety‘s 2025 Sundance issue, was honored at the event for his dramatic turn as a grieving father in “The Thing With the Feathers.” The party was held shortly before

The story around Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut, “The Legend of Ochi,” took a drastic turn, as so many Hollywood stories did, with this month’s Los Angeles fires. Saxon lost his home in the blaze, and the film’s theatrical release was pushed back. However, having spent years developing and working on the fantasy feature, Saxon is