Movies

Taken together, boundless courage, physical stamina and emotional resilience form the magnetic core of co-directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s nonfiction oeuvre. The duo behind Oscar-winning nail-biter “Free Solo” naturally gravitate toward real-life you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it tales, extracting from them a great deal more than beautifully photographed and entertaining accounts of perseverance and survival. Far greater

Louis Wain painted cats, hundreds if not thousands of cats. He painted the critters with big googly eyes, gathered round the dinner table, serving tea or slurping at straws. He painted them standing on their hind legs, holding golf clubs and swinging Ping-Pong paddles, and he painted them seated, driving cars and smoking cigars. Premiering

Harry Wootliff, one of Britain’s rising women filmmakers, is in Venice for the world premiere of her second feature, “True Things,” starring Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke. The film, which screens in Venice’s Horizons, also plays at the Toronto Festival. The film, based on Deborah Kay Davies’ novel “True Things About Me,” was initially developed

Ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, “Lost Illusions,” Xavier Giannoli’s $17.5 million period film, has already lured major buyers in key territories for Gaumont. Produced by Olivier Delbosc (“Renoir,” “The Midwife”), “Lost Illusions” is a modern adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s masterpiece starring Benjamin Voisin (“Summer of 85”), Cecile

Fremantle, which is at Venice with two films in competition –– Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” and “America Latina” by Damiano and Fabio  D’Innocenzo –– is ramping up its film side. The RTL Group-owned company “that everyone used to associate with [TV franchise] ‘Got Talent’ is becoming one of the biggest independent film production

The filmmakers responsible for “Fauci” may appear to be unusually speedy bandwagon jumpers, but there’s more to the timeliness of their feature-length look at Dr. Anthony Fauci than first meets the log line. Directors John Hoffman and Janet Tobias started work on it before COVID was known to exist, having had the idea that he

You may need a PhD in Ingmar Bergman to understand every nuance of French writer and director Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island.” Still, the writer’s branch of the Academy may have enough of the qualifications to embrace its charming story. Even with delectable performances from its cast ensemble, most notably Mia Wasikowska in her finest acting

Fran Drescher has been elected president of SAG-AFTRA, in a narrow victory for the faction that has led the union for a dozen years. Drescher defeated Matthew Modine, who ran on the rival Membership First slate, by a tally of 52.5% to 47.5%. Meanwhile, Joely Fisher — who was Modine’s running mate on the Membership

If filmmaker Miranda July hadn’t gotten there first, “The Future” would have made a fine title for fellow director (and husband) Mike Mills’ latest feature, “C’mon C’mon,” a small, soft-spoken yet casually profound family drama in which a subdued, post-“Joker” Joaquin Phoenix plays a middle-aged radio journalist who travels the country interviewing kids, asking what

It’s icky, it’s uncomfortable, but “Red Rocket” is also daring and funny, resulting in co-writer and director Sean Baker’s best outing as a filmmaker yet. If audiences and award voters can get past the more risqué elements, the A24 feature could have a fighting chance in a still wide-open awards season. The film’s success begins

Telluride is off and running, and it’s not business as usual. The first day began with the annual patron brunch, where press, talent and other festival-goers mingle in the celebration of the Colorado getaway, now in its 48th year. In attendance were “Belfast” writer and director Kenneth Branagh with one of his stars Jamie Dornan,

Thailand’s arthouse films, frequently employing stellar craft in service of slow cinema, often struggle to achieve meaningful theatrical releases in a home market that is driven by the young multiplex crowd. But Thai cultural films are earning growing attention on the festival and international specialty circuits. After Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s big-screen return to Cannes this year

Fender Guitars and Mattel are marking the release of the Netflix movie “Barbie: Big City, Big Dreams” with a new signature Barbie Collection of song lessons on its online learning app. Created to inspire future musicians, the lessons show young guitarists how to play songs from the movie while building guitar skills and playing techniques.

Once upon a time, asking audiences to watch a documentary was like asking them to do their homework or eat their broccoli — sure, it’d be good for ’em, but they probably wouldn’t have a ton of fun doing it. Early docs were often weighed down by heavy topics (a lot of war content) and

After Paramount pushed its Tom Cruise tentpole “Top Gun: Maverick” into 2022, movie theater owners are growing anxious, concerned the move could inspire a stampede of film delays. With the theatrical business stuck in a variant-induced limbo, Hollywood is reexamining the distribution strategies for upcoming films like MGM’s Bond sequel “No Time to Die,” Marvel’s

Tribeca Enterprises, the organization behind the annual Tribeca Film Festival, is expanding its programming with its newly launched Fall Preview, a season-long festival featuring movie premieres and musical performances. The inaugural event will kick off on Sept. 22 at the Beacon Theater with the premiere of “The Many Saints of Newark,” a Warner Bros. movie

I’m a sucker for card-sharp movies, and I’m not alone. The allure of films like “The Cincinnati Kid” or “California Split” or “Rounders” is that the poker games have the quality of athletic showdowns: the kind of hand-to-hand, eyeball-to-eyeball aggression we associate with a contest taking place in a gladiatorial arena. But in a card

Is Hollywood about to mess with Texas? As the state enforces a law that will make parties to almost all abortions vulnerable to civil prosecution — a measure that was upheld by the Supreme Court on Wednesday – show business liberals and corporate giants are feeling pressure to act, multiple industry insiders told Variety. While

Former Netflix executive Brian Wright has joined Riot Games Entertainment as the new Chief Content Officer, developing the company’s global film, TV and animation strategies. The news comes as Riot Games, the developer and publisher known for global hit PC games including “League of Legends” and “VALORANT,” plus the upcoming animated series “Arcane,” continues to

Beginning with a shot of a chalk-drawn Black Lives Matter sign being washed away by its eponymous busybody and somehow getting less subtle from there, “Karen” lives up — or down, rather — to the expectations set by its infamous trailer, which went viral for all the wrong reasons earlier this summer. From the title

Fabietto (Filippo Scotti), the autobiographical hero of Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” is a teenager growing up in the 1980s in the bustling port metropolis of Naples, and he keeps a watchful gaze on just about everything. He’s like the eye at the center of a storm of avidly impassioned but overstated filmmaking. Filippo

David Lowery’s “The Green Knight” is finally coming to the U.K., with a day-and-date release planned for Sept. 24 in movie theaters and on Amazon Prime Video, Variety can reveal. This will be good news for Dev Patel fans in the U.K. hoping to see the British actor on the big screen in Lowery’s dark

Across cinema’s long lineage of stories about young women attempting to shake parental control and seize their own destinies, few protagonists have needed to escape quite as viscerally as Ada, the unbearably put-upon heroine of Russian director Kira Kovalenko’s imposing sophomore feature “Unclenching the Fists.” In poor health and kept under literal lock and key

In recent years, the Venice Film Festival has become a launching pad for the Oscars, particularly as the Academy has added more international members to its voting body. On Thursday afternoon in Italy, Netflix scored a four-minute standing ovation for what could be one of its stronger awards contenders this year, Jane Campion’s period drama

Director Steven Soderbergh is making a special, surprise appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), by debuting a brand new, never-before-seen movie. TIFF co-heads Joana Vicente and Cameron Bailey announced the world premiere screening on Thursday, explaining that the event was programmed in “top secret collaboration with Soderbergh,” with details of the mystery screening,

Billy Bob Thornton, Robin Wright and Hopper Penn are set to star in “Where All Light Tends to Go.” Bankside Films has boarded sales on the film, which will be directed by Ben Young (“Hounds of Love,” “Extinction”). The screenplay was written by Robert Knott (“Appaloosa”), based on the novel written by David Joy. Production

Netflix is officially in the building. With both Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” and Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” playing at the festival, the streaming giant made its splashy debut on the Lido on Thursday, holding an exclusive reception in the afternoon for their top executives and partners at the chic Hotel

Macro founder and CEO Charles D. King announced promotions for film production and development executives Poppy Hanks and Greta Talia Fuentes. Both longtime Macro employees, Hanks has been elevated to executive vice president of film production and development, while Fuentes has been upped to VP at the multi-platform media company. “Poppy and Greta were members

At the outset of “Promises,” protagonist Clémence Collombet is not an obvious fit for the talents of its leading lady. A former doctor turned mayor of an impoverished town on the outskirts of Paris, now reaching the end of her political career, she’s a decent, conscientious woman who has done a respectable job in office,

Jane Campion, only the second woman to ever been nominated for an Oscar for directing, has been encouraged by the efforts she’s seen to get more women in the director’s chair. “All I can say is since the #MeToo movement happened, I feel a change in the weather that’s substantial,” Campion said on Thursday morning