Movies

Jacqueline Lentzou’s arresting and long-awaited feature debut, “Moon, 66 Questions,” has its national premiere this week at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, after bowing earlier this year in the Berlinale’s new Encounters competition section. The film tells the story of a young woman, Artemis (Sofia Kokkali), who decides to return to Athens after a long absence

Musicals are divisive by nature, but they can hit a sweet spot with awards voters with the right cast and crew. Andrew Garfield leads the charge on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut, “Tick, Tick … Boom!” With tender vocals and a heartfelt vulnerability, Garfield could emerge as a definitive challenger to the best actor prize that

Netflix aims to increase its appeal to Japanese filmmakers as the streaming giant engineers a pivot towards local production and feature movies, in particular. Theatrical releases of Netflix’ Japanese films are among the options. The company’s initiative was this week highlighted by the signing of iconic “Shoplifters” director Kore-eda Hirokazu to direct a big budget

MGM is ramping up speed on its remake of “Road House,” with Jake Gyllenhaal in talks to star and director Doug Liman circling the project. While a production start date has not been set, MGM higher-ups reportedly see the project as a priority for the studio. No deals have been signed with Gyllenhaal or Liman

Even when COVID-19 finally, happily and at long last becomes a thing of the past, the distribution shifts it helped usher in across the movie business may be here to stay, Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Chapek said on Wednesday. “We know that we’re in a time of flux,” Chapek told analysts on a conference

Paramount has announced its upcoming “Transformers” and “Star Trek” films have been delayed. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” a prequel in the sci-fi action franchise, has moved back a year. It was originally scheduled for June 24, 2022 and will now open on the big screen on June 9, 2023.  The still-untitled “Star Trek” movie

The attorney for “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed said on Wednesday that she is being “framed” in the on-set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The attorney, Jason Bowles, raised eyebrows in an appearance on “Today” last week when he alleged the presence of live rounds on the set was “sabotage.” In a statement on

Disney CEO Bob Chapek told investors Wednesday that the company is increasing its multibillion-dollar spending on content for Disney Plus as it adds more local and regional content for worldwide audiences. Last December, Disney projected it would spend between $8 billion-$9 billion on content for its premiere streaming service in its fiscal year 2024, and

The gaffer on “Rust” felt a whoosh of air and heard the loudest shot he had ever heard on set, and then watched helplessly as his friend Halyna Hutchins faded away in his arms, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. Serge Svetnoy provided a detailed, first-hand account of the Oct. 21 shooting in a

Disney Plus slammed on the brakes in the most recent quarter, gaining 2.1 million customers — the streamer’s slowest growth since launching two years ago. As of Oct. 2, Disney Plus had 118.1 million paid subscribers worldwide, inching up from 116 million at the end of the prior quarter, the company said in reporting its

The Cinema Eye Honors has announced the nominations for its 15th annual awards. “Flee” leads the field with seven nominations, while “Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” followed with six. Written and directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, the animated documentary “Flee” landed nominations in outstanding nonfiction feature, direction, production, original

“The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” is set to be framed in a new documentary on Peacock, from award-winning directors Yoruba Richen and Johanna Hamilton and produced by Emmy Award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien’s SO’B Productions. Currently in production, the project marks the first ever full-length documentary about the civil right icon, which expands Parks’

Chinese distributor CMC Pictures said Wednesday that it will release jingoistic Chinese war film “The Battle at Lake Changjin” in North America next week. The film is currently the highest grossing title in the world and in China so far in 2021, having already earned RMB5.60 billion ($877 million) in its home market alone. It

Charley Gilleran has had a 30-year career as a rigging key grip, moving between superhero blockbusters like “Iron Man” and Oscar winners such as “No Country for Old Men.” This weekend, he plans to vote to ratify the new contract negotiated by his union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The deal, announced on

For all of us big Paul Newman fans, it came as thrilling news last week that Knopf will be publishing the Hollywood icon’s unfinished memoir next fall, largely based on his own oral history along with interviews with his friends and family, actors like Tom Cruise and directors including George Roy Hill of “Butch Cassidy

Araceli Lemos’ mystical drama “Holy Emy,” which received a special mention for first feature after its Locarno world premiere, arrives at the Thessaloniki Film Festival this week, where it plays in the main competition just days ahead of its North American premiere at the AFI Fest. The Athens-set drama, which screened in Locarno’s Cineasti del

Athens-based Endorphin Film Sales has acquired the rights to “Kick and Scream,” the directorial debut of Croatian actress Nina Violić (“Our Everyday Life,” “The Son”), the company announced this week at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. The film follows the final half-hour of a marriage that is falling apart, shown from the perspectives of the wife,

Previously filmed 45 years ago under its original title, leading Soviet-era Kyrgyz literary figure Chingiz Aitmatov’s 1970 novella “The White Ship” gets a handsome new screen treatment in Artykpai Sunyundukov’s “Shambala.” This tale of a boy’s troubled childhood in a remote Tengri Mountains region is the Kyrgyz Republic’s Oscar submission. Its scenic beauty and production

Ava DuVernay and Will Smith are among the final slate of honorees for the Critics Choice Association’s fourth annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television. DuVernay will be honored with the first-ever Melvin Van Peebles Trailblazer Award in celebration of her achievements as an award-winning writer, director producer and film distributor. “We are truly honored

Directors can be considered a longshots until they begin showing up on multiple nomination lineups at various award shows. Ridley Scott, a four-time Academy Award nominee, is one of the greatest living filmmakers to never win an Oscar, despite one of his films taking home the best picture prize. However, with two distinct features this

Adam Kane (“Prodigal Son”, “American Gods”) will direct action thriller “Rain Who Kills Alone” from a screenplay by William Josef Schneider (“Corto Maltese”). The film will tell the story of Rain, a woman raised from childhood to be an assassin with a gold-star rating and never leaves a job unfinished. But when she becomes romantically

Winners of the 93rd Academy Awards were unveiled April 25, a day that included another notable announcement: The creation of 1in4, an advocacy group to help disabled workers starting out in entertainment. The coalition was formed when 10 vets began exchanging tales of navigating the industry. “We are the only organization in Hollywood made up

“Call My Agent” star Nicolas Maury hadn’t quite grasped the international success of the Paris-set show until he traveled to Los Angeles last week to present his feature directorial debut “Garcon Chiffon” (“My Best Part”) at Colcoa, the French film and series festival. In L.A., everyone from industry festival guests and locals to waiters came

As part of its 70th anniversary, the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg (IFFMH) is presenting its new Grand IFFMH Award for the first time, honoring two filmmakers at the top of their game, Andrea Arnold and Guillaume Nicloux. IFFMH will also pay tribute to producer Bettina Brokemper and director Claude Lelouch with Homages. All four will

A handsome if occasionally harebrained addition to the “great man” genre — with the added implication that such heroic feats might not have occurred were it not for an equally impressive lady working behind the scenes — “Eiffel” offers the half-invented story of Gustave Eiffel, the civil engineer who built the most recognizable monument in

Kore-eda Hirokazu, the celebrated Japanese director of Palme d’Or winning film ‘Shoplifters,’ is developing multiple projects for Netflix. He is currently at work developing a big-budget film that he will direct and a series, where he will be the showrunner and direct some episodes. The moves expand Netflix’s current program to ramp up its live

The only thing frostier than the snowbound forest landscape of Tibetan director Jigme Trinley’s impressively lean yet woozy thriller debut is the air of mutual hostility and suspicion that exists between its four duplicitous, taciturn characters. “One and Four” may be produced by leading Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden, and may provide yet another great showcase

It’s not wholly clear how much Filipino filmmaker Mikhail Red wants his latest thriller, “Arisaka,” to be more than a faithful retread of the kind of lean B-movie that used to star Sylvester Stallone and, more latterly, reinvigorated Liam Neeson’s career. And it’s also not clear why he would nurse such aspirations: It’s the very

Five filmmakers from Cambodia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have been selected to participate in the inaugural Seed Lab, operated by the non-profit Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab. The new program helps promising shorts filmmakers explore their directorial voices prior to the development of their first features. It is being operated in partnership with

Dean Stockwell, who died Sunday at 85, made every movie and television show he was in better. As an actor, he had a scurrilous twinkle that could light up a scene. He started off as a child star in films like “Gentleman’s Agreement” and “The Boy with Green Hair” — the latter of which I