Movies

To deliver director Antonio Campos’ “The Devil All the Time,” based on Donald Ray Pollock’s acclaimed 2011 novel set against a rural backdrop during the period between World War II and the Vietnam War, cinematographer Lol Crawley aimed to show a town out of step with the times. “We had this idea that the rural

David Oyelowo and director Nate Parker are collaborating again on the drama “Solitary.” The film also stars Olivia Washington, Barry Pepper and Jimmie Fails. Oyelowo will play a wrongfully imprisoned man who’s been released after seven years of solitary confinement. Washington will portray his fiancé. Production starts next week in Vancouver for Bron Studios. Parker

Mort Rifkin, the ostensible novelist at the center of “Rifkin’s Festival,” has longterm writer’s block, and it’s hard to imagine that Woody Allen has ever empathized less with a character. Where Mort believes it’s futile to write if the finished work is not going to be on the level of Dostoevsky, the 84-year-old Allen continues

The hearty applause from European journalists at the end of Woody Allen’s online/on-site press conference for “Rifkin’s Festival,” which world premiered on Friday at the San Sebastian Festival, was probably as much for Allen’s career at large as his latest movie in particular. Opening the festival, and set at the San Sebastian Festival – with

“Last Call” is a movie about a man in need of an intervention. Not David (Daved Wilkins, co-writer of the downbeat film), who misdials the suicide hotline and gets a janitor named Beth (Sara Booth, wife of the director) working late at the local community college instead, but director Gavin Michael Booth, who has fallen

The new Young Adult book “Devastation Class” is not your average book-to-movie adaptation. When the film rights were snapped up in 2018 to adapt the science fiction book series by Glen Zipper and Elaine Mongeon, the project hadn’t yet found a publisher. A few months later, HarperCollins’ Blink YA Books secured the literary rights. The

Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” has been selected at the opener for the ninth edition of the Montclair Film Festival on Oct. 16, with Regina King’s “One Night in Miami” as the Oct. 24 closing title. “Nomadland” premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 11, and won the Golden Lion. The film is set after the

On Nov. 27, 1929, three years after Greta Garbo’s American film debut, Variety described her as “the most mysterious of Hollywood stars.” More than 50 years later, in 1981, a Variety story began “Given that Greta Garbo still remains the most elusive, mysterious and speculated about film personality on the planet…” It’s rare for any

In today’s Global Bulletin, the global film community calls for the release of Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka, Jana Bennett is announced as Congress ’20 closing speaker, PBS Masterpiece heads to Amazon in Canada, Leonine gets Oliver Vogel for W&B Television role, the Production Guild of Great Britain opens nominations for 2020 Innovation Awards and The

Spanish producer-distributor and sales agent Filmax will handle international rights on Lara Izagirre’s “Nora,” the film opener at this year’s San Sebastian Zinemira Basque cinema showcase. Selected for San Sebastian’s Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum in 2018, “Nora” is Izagirre’s second feature, following on ”An Autumn Without Berlin,” a Basque homecoming drama which scored a best

In its first announcement following cancellation of its inaugural edition due to coronavirus, Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival has recruited a high-profile jury that will award two production grants for Arab cinema projects each worth $500,000. The jurors who will pick winners among 12 projects taking part in the inaugural Red Sea Lodge

Navarre has never had such a prominent presence at the San Sebastian Festival as in this year’s lineup. Five linked-to-Navarre productions – three films, a TV series and a documentary – will screen at the Festival, highlighting its status as a standout hub for the Spanish audiovisual industry. Navarre’s higher-profile at San Sebastian, the biggest

Every four years, a few months before the presidential election, a batch of strategically timed movies materialize in hopes of engaging voters and influencing the outcome. Some are merely opportunistic, others downright propagandistic, but few have a shelf life past that first Tuesday in November. A warm, softball profile of Pete Souza, who had the

Braving COVID-19, Spain’s 68th San Sebastián Film Festival bowed on-site on Sept. 18, launching a somewhat slimmed edition that maintains, however, all its main sections. Following, seven more takes on the highest-profile film event in the Spanish-speaking world as it finally kicks off: Depp, Dillon, Gershon Confirm Attendance Stars are rallying round this year’s San

The devil is in the details in “The Dark and the Wicked,” a horror film that teases out the evil presence descending on a grieving family on a Texas farm, with the same ambiguous, psychological heft of Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.” Writer-director Bryan Bertino’s slender script translates into a low-humming, allusvie narrative

“Forgotten We’ll Be,” the latest film from  director Fernando Trueba, an Academy Award winner (“Belle Epoque”) and nominee (“Chico and Rita”), has been sold to Italy, the film’s sales agent Film Factory Entertainment striking a deal for Italian distribution with Lucky Red, a classic arthouse and independent film distributor. Details of the deal come just

Memento International has unveiled the trailer for “Persian Lessons,” the anticipated WWII drama directed by Vadim Perelman (“House of Sand and Fog”), ahead of its theatrical roll-out in Germany later this month. Alamode Films Distribution will release the film in Germany on Sept. 24 in Germany and will present it on the opening night of

After successful streaming premieres in Latin America and the U.S. as an Amazon Prime Video Exclusive, Argentina’s Meikincine, one of Latin America’s leading sales agents for independent, festival fare, has sold Chilean political thriller “Jailbreak Pact” in South Korea and Taiwan, and is in advanced negotiations in several other key territories. Shopping the film at

Venice’s Special Jury Prize-winning “Dear Comrades!,” a Russian historical drama directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, has been sold by Films Boutique to Southern Europe. “Dear Comrades!” was acquired for Italy by Paolo Del Brocco at Rai Cinema and for Spain by the Barcelona-based distributor Vercine. The film, which sheds light on the Novocherkassk massacre, was produced,

The 1982 world of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” came to life Thursday night in a fundraising table read that included Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Jimmy Kimmel, John Legend, Ray Liotta, Julia Roberts, Shia LaBeouf, Morgan Freeman and Henry Golding. The hour-long streaming event took place on the Facebook page for Penn’s nonprofit CORE (Community

Women in Animation revealed the Class of 2020 Best Short Film winners from the organization’s WIA Class of 2020 Showcase during a live Zoom ceremony Thursday, Sept. 17. Because the coronavirus pandemic curtailed most of the festivals where student filmmakers typically unveil their work, the WIA organized the showcase as a way of helping the

Ronnie Wood has always seemed like he’d be nothing if not an enjoyable hang. That proves to be very much the case with “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” a documentary about the Rolling Stones guitarist from British director Mike Figgis (“Leaving Las Vegas”), who has clearly been hitting it off for quite a while with

Under a lowering sky, in front of a makeshift movie screen hastily erected on a Kazakh hillside, a loose-limbed, unkempt young man performs a shambolically graceful version of Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” for an audience of one rapt viewer. This scene is Adhilkan Yerzhanov’s “Yellow Cat” in miniature: a film that apes its

For the team behind “Antebellum,” the film couldn’t be coming at a more important moment in history, addressing America’s original sin of slavery through the lens of the horror-thriller film. “I think this film highlights what it’s like for Black women to carry the burden of deconstructing and dismantling systemic and white supremacy on our

As with most events held in 2020, the March on Washington Film Festival has two major historical moments to contend with — the coronavirus pandemic and the racial reckoning spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement. But while hosting a film festival amid an unprecedented health emergency is definitely challenging, event founder Robert Raben shares

In the most transporting scene of Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” we’re at a London house party that has just hit its smoky seductive dirty-dancing groove. It’s 1980, and most of the revelers have West Indian roots. The men, in their natty duds and rasta hats, stand against the wall smoking joints, looking for women to

As we try to squint our way to see what the next seven months hold, TIFF and Venice unveiled the first crop of awards contenders for the 2020-2021 year. At the top of that list is Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” which took the Golden Lion on Saturday evening. Poised to do wonders for distributor Searchlight Pictures

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long:

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long:

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars from Film Awards Editor Clayton Davis. Following Academy Awards history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar predictions are updated regularly with the current year's contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: