Movies

FESTIVAL “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” director Mike Newell and actor Jason Wong (“The Gentlemen,” “Dungeons & Dragons”) are launching the Kingston International Film Festival (KIFF) to support independent film makers in a post-pandemic world. Taking place June 24-26, the festival is a 50:50 partnership between Blue

In 1993, six years after Johnny Depp and company were deemed too old to keep up the charade on “21 Jump Street,” Brandon Lee went back to Bearsden Academy. At least he said his name was Brandon Lee. Some people thought that was weird, since another Brandon Lee (son of Bruce, star of “The Crow”)

Top Australian actor Damon Herriman and U.K.-Italian star Greta Scacchi join “Succession” star Sarah Snook in horror-thriller “Run Rabbit Run” from “The Handmaid’s Tale” director Daina Reid. The film starts production in Victoria and South Australia this week. Snook replaced Elizabeth Moss who was previously attached, but who dropped out late last year due to

The trailer for Francesco Costabile’s Mafia family drama “Una Femmina,” which premieres in Berlinale’s Panorama section, has debuted. Intramovies will handle sales at the virtual European Film Market. [embedded content] The film centers on Rosa, a restless young woman who lives with her mother’s relatives in a remote village in Calabria, Southern Italy. Her mother’s

“Emily the Criminal,” by John Patton Ford, is a world-weary social problem fable about a young girl who enters the woods — make that, modern day Los Angeles — and confronts three big bad job interviews. One job asks her to be a crook, one job treats her like a crook, and one job pays so

Every now and again, a documentary filmmaker finds a bona fide star to pin the meaning of her film on, a figure so compelling she leaves a comet trail of thoughts and feelings after the movie’s end. Isabel Castro’s “Mija” boasts two: music manager Doris Muñoz and singer Jacks Haupt. Make that three, including the

Alec Baldwin’s attorneys argued in a filing on Monday that a lawsuit stemming from the “Rust” shooting in October should be thrown out because the shooting was a workplace accident. The filing marks the first time that Baldwin’s lawyers have laid out a legal argument for why he is not responsible in the Oct. 21

“What would you do if you had six months left to live?” asks the doctor who diagnoses a do-nothing bureaucrat with terminal cancer in “Ikiru,” a 1952 masterpiece I suspect precious few of those who see its English-language remake, “Living,” will recall. Quite unlike anything else in Akira Kurosawa’s career, “Ikiru” ranks among the Japanese

What happens when a cutting-edge artist no longer considers himself cutting edge? That’s one question raised by “Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People,” but it’s far from the only one. In addition to being a stop-motion animated documentary about Brazilian cartoonist Angeli, it’s also a psychedelic road movie in which a roving pack of

If the Jane Collective has gone under-credited in American women’s rights history over the last half-century, independent cinema is doing its best to make up for lost time. Right on the heels of Phyllis Nagy’s colorful fictionalized drama “Call Jane,” “The Janes” is the second film at this year’s Sundance festival dedicated to the female-staffed,

Netflix’s “Robin Robin” uses stop-motion animation and felt figures to tell its charming, musical story of a bird who doesn’t quite belong in a family of stealthy mice and discovers her real place in the world. It’s a Christmas tale that’s also made the Oscar shortlist for animated shorts. Directors-writers Dan Ojari and Mikey Please

As movie theaters struggle during the pandemic, theatrical windows shrink, stars turn to limited series and more viewers get arthouse fare from streamers, where does this leave the role of films in film festivals? Most festivals launched with a mission to support specialty theatrical films. Yet New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival quietly rebranded as

An assembly line follows a simple formula. Use the most efficient way to mass-produce something and repeat. Some filmmakers can get away with that approach for a time. The ones who challenge themselves to work outside their comfort zones add skills to their tool kits, and, not coincidentally, often find themselves in the mix when

Barbara Gordon has officially found her roommate. Ivory Aquino (“Tales of the City,” “When We Rise”) has been cast in the HBO Max feature film “Batgirl” as Alysia Yeoh, the best friend of the titular superhero, a.k.a. Barbara Gordon (Leslie Grace). Both Aquino and Yeoh are transgender, marking the first time a live-action feature film

This year at the Sundance Film Festival, three feature documentaries — Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” and Isabel Castro’s “Mija” — share in common a $10,000 grant provided by the Points North Institute and CNN Films’ American Stories Documentary Fund. Launched in 2020, the fund underwritten

Longtime film distribution executive Melvin “Duffy” Stanley Maron died Jan. 13 in Atlanta. He was 90. Maron brought martial arts and cult movies to theater, drive-in and TV audiences throughout the 1970s including Edie Sedgwick starring “Ciao Manhattan,” “Godzilla’s Revenge,” the double bill of “War of the Gargantuas” and “Monster Zero” and “The Cult,” about

A scrapbook collection of serene, observational moments in search of a story, “Blood” runs deep, but only with obscure meaning, so opaque at times that its essence feels unreachable. Writer-director Bradley Rust Gray’s first feature in a decade offers some modest rewards to patient viewers up for a challenge, but this good-natured study of a

Journalist Sergei Rakhlin, a longtime member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association died Jan. 21. He was 78. Rakhlin reported for print and broadcast, and had several key roles with the HFPA. Rakhlin was a longtime member of the foreign film committee (now knowns as the non-English language film committee) and served six terms as

A good filmmaker doesn’t just stage a scene. He or she creates a space (temporal, emotional, psychological, suspenseful). When that happens, we’re no longer just watching the characters — we’re drawn right into that space, until we’re almost floating in it, in sync with the characters’ identities and interactions, their minds and heartbeats. That’s the

They remain nowhere near as well-represented as their male counterparts in the editing Oscar realm — the best-known is Thelma Schoonmaker with eight Oscar nominations and three wins — but women such as Úna Ní Dhonghaíle (“Belfast”), Pamela Martin (“King Richard”) and Teresa Font (“Parallel Mothers”) are seeking to make their mark in the race.

Irwin “Butch” Wallace Young, the chairman of DuArt Film Laboratories who supported New York filmmakers for decades, died Jan. 20 in Manhattan. He was 94. An important part of New York City’s film scene, DuArt was founded by his father, Al Young, in 1922 and is the oldest continually operating film lab in the country.

Where others might see a crystal ashtray, DIY filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead envision some kind of haunted relic, a portal to another dimension or maybe just the ideal prop on which to base their next screwy sci-fi imagination-tickler. Audiences who’ve experienced a Moorhead&Benson film — eerie vacation-sex nightmare “Spring,” perhaps, or else

ddLouverture Films, the production company founded by actor Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, is moving into television as well as animation, gaming and installation works. With two new principal partners in situ, the expansion has enlisted a host of creatives, including directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Lucrecia Martel. Co-founded by Glover and Barnes in 2005 —

Sundance Film Festival has revealed a mystery movie on its 2022 lineup. “Navalny,” a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has been a late addition to the festival’s agenda. The film will debut on Jan. 25 at 6 p.m. MT. This year’s Sundance Film Festival is currently taking place virtually, a concession due

“We don’t talk about ‘Encanto‘” is a phrase that may be being said in the Gunna and Weeknd households this week, as both of those hit artists had to step aside to let the smash Disney soundtrack reclaim its No. 1 position atop the Billboard 200 album chart. “Encanto” continues to grow, with 104,000 album-equivalent

Elysium Media has dropped the trailer for “My Transparent Life,” a documentary chronicling the gender transitions of TikTok star Jesse Sullivan and celebrity makeup artist Stassi Kihm. Hosted and produced by Serena DC (“Hollywood Disclosure”), the doc is set to hit streaming services on the International Trans Day of Visibility, March 31. “The reason I’ve

The race for best cinematography is among the most competitive races this year at the Oscars. Black-and-white dramas, sci-fi dazzlers and Hollywood blockbusters are among the contenders, and it’s not entirely sure where it all might land. The American Society of Cinematographers, which announces its nominees tomorrow, will set a tone leading up to the

Art is unlike other media in that it requires its creators to share parts of themselves as they’re likewise primed for the supremely subjective criticism that follows. After all, no dentist is asked to soliloquize about how a tooth extraction reflects life choices. The directors of three of this year’s potential best picture contenders account

Emerald Fennell — who won the Academy Award for best original screenplay last year for her directorial debut “Promising Young Woman” — has set up her next project. Though plot details are being kept under wraps, it’s said to be a story of obsession. MRC Film is the studio behind the movie, and LuckyChap Entertainment,

Daniel Craig (“No Time to Die”) and Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. For more, click here. Since starring together as hero and villain of 2012’s “Skyfall,” Daniel Craig and Javier Bardem have continued to test themselves on screen. Last year, Craig finally bid farewell to