Movies

Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s “Wolfwalkers” is set in a very specific time period – 1650 in Kilkenny, Ireland. It was a very important town for Oliver Cromwell’s English troops to take over, and the film opens with an English soldier and his daughter, Robyn, settling into their house in town. It’s clear that the

The directors and producers behind the film “Synchronic,” which is set to release on Oct. 23, have spoken out to encourage people not to see the thriller in indoor movie theaters due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Aaron Moorhead, the movie’s co-director, posted a statement to his Instagram on Friday that was also signed by

More teases for the Snyder Cut of “Justice League” were doled out at the DC FanDome virtual event. This time, a sneak peek at the upcoming score was teased by composer Tom Holkenborg, known as Junkie XL. During the second weekend of DC Fandome on Saturday, Holkenborg appeared during a panel to tease a portion

Netflix has swept up a worldwide distribution deal for the resonant festival drama “Pieces of a Woman,” lauded for its leading performances from Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf. The harrowing drama about a couple struggling after a failed home birth is the English-language debut of Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó. Directed from a script by Kata

The existential road movie gets an offbeat, elliptical yet peculiarly compelling Transcaucasian makeover in director Hilal Baydarov’s second fiction feature, “In Between Dying.” Set against the striking, often purgatorially stark backdrop of Azerbaijan’s rural landscapes, with their striated mountains, autumn forests, fog-shrouded fields and silvery pebbled lakesides, it’s a film indebted to its influences. Baydarov

One day after premiering and receiving the most rapturous reviews of any film in competition, U.S.-based Chinese director Chloé Zhao has won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for her film “Nomadland,” a documentary-influenced road movie starring Frances McDormand as an itinerant widow traveling across America. The lineup had seemed unpredictably competitive

When it comes to the mysterious and disturbing subject of what goes on in the minds of serial killers, popular culture has consistently been ahead of the curve. The idea of the split personality goes way back — to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and to a character like Norman Bates, who carried the identity

The 77th Venice Film Festival drew to close on Saturday animated by the same spirit of low-key camaraderie that marked this entirely uncommon edition. In order to host the first major physical event since the pandemic struck Europe, the festival reduced its selection, limited accreditations, and kept the screenings half-full, as well as a host

“The King of the Whole World” (“El Rey de Todo el Mundo”), a musical drama directed by “Carmen’s” Carlos Saura and lit by “Apocalypse Now” cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, has been snapped up for world sales by Latido Films. The deal was sealed as the Toronto Festival hit its full stride on Friday. Spanish distribution rights

Even the coronavirus pandemic couldn’t stop Saul Williams. Williams is riding a film career surge: directing his first feature “Neptune Frost” and debuting his dream project “Akilla’s Escape” at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival. The upcoming thriller, helmed by Charles Officer, stars the multi-hyphenate Williams as the titular Akilla, a Toronto-based drug dealer retiring from

Naomi Watts and director Phillip Noyce are joining forces for the thriller “Lakewood,” set to begin filming Sept. 16 in Ontario under strict COVID-19 protocols. The film, written by Chris Sparling (“Buried,” “Greenland”) and produced by Boies/Schiller’s Zack Schiller and David Boies, Limelight’s Dylan Sellers and Chris Parker, Untapped’s Andrew Corkin, star Watts for Jam

If the action-fueled, hit genre films “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1967 and “Easy Rider” in 1969 were the shotgun blasts whose breakout success opened the filmmaking doors for what became known as “The New Hollywood,” 1970’s “Five Easy Pieces” actually better represented the kind of film that the era’s aspiring young directors, producers, writers and

Tracey Deer’s Toronto Film Festival entry “Beans” tells the story of a 12-year-old Mohawk girl and her family thrust by incidents of racial injustice into the forefront of 1990’s Oka Crisis, in which the Quebec government clashed in a political standoff with two Mohawk communities, the Kanehsatà:ke and Kahnawá:ke. Beans is a happy, middle-class girl

Presiding over Venice Film Festival’s Horizons jury, French filmmaker Claire Denis stopped by the festival and Mastercard’s “Life Through a Different Lens: Contactless Connections” talk on Thursday. The “Beau Travail” helmer addressed the female directors issue head on. “I am not a pioneer. There weren’t many women when I started, I knew there wasn’t going

Spartan and wind-whipped and 25 miles from the already far-flung mainland of northern Scotland, the Uist Islands would be a disorienting place for most outsiders to find themselves stranded for an indefinite amount of time — and that’s without the additional, time-stretching uncertainty of a pending application for political asylum. For the Syrian protagonist of

Merawi Gerima grew up in northeast Washington D.C., an area that plays prominently in his first feature “Residue,” about a film student named Jay who returns home after a stint at USC film school to find his neighborhood gentrified and his family and friends contending with racist hostility from new white neighbors. Just like Jay,

We all know that knee-jerk racism and willful ignorance are the handmaidens of evil: Without these all-too-common traits, heinous acts are difficult to perpetrate on a large scale. Documentary maker Luke Holland’s “Final Account” is the first product of an ambitious undertaking to interview the now elderly helpers and handmaidens whose tacit acceptance of the

One of the pleasures of anticipating an Ali Suliman performance is knowing he’ll bring depth and complexity to every role. His character in “200 Meters,” a father of three taking huge risks to get to his son in the hospital, doesn’t expand his repertoire, but it gives the movie its heart. The film may not

By its very composition, the amalgam word hacktivism houses a peculiar dichotomy. On one hand, it alludes to promoting justice through necessary online disobedience. On the other, the ethics of whatever those rule-breaking actions or their consequences might be remain open to debate. Such ambiguity lies at the core of “Enemies of the State,” Sonia

Indian studio Yash Raj Films’ “Bunty Aur Babli 2,” starring Saif Ali Khan (“Sacred Games”) and Rani Mukerji (“Hichki”) has wrapped production with the shooting of a song and dance routine. The shoot, at Mumbai’s Yash Raj Films studios, adhered to the Indian government’s recently announced safety protocols that allow movies to restart production in

No matter the culture, no matter the century, one of the great obstacles facing LGBT people through time has been the virtual invisibility of those who have come before. If you don’t see anyone like you in a seemingly heterogeneous — and heteronormative — society, it’s hard to feel anything other than deviant, out of

Indie distributor Neon has shown the power of storytelling in three short, but very successful years. Starting in 2017 with “I, Tonya,” which earned an Oscar for Allison Janney in the supporting actress category, it continued its hot streak in 2019, when Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” made history by winning best picture. The movie took

Forget a one-horse town: “Concrete Cowboy” premiered in front of a more than 50-car audience at a special screening in Downtown Los Angeles on Thursday night in the Hotel Figueroa parking lot. Ahead of the screening, the film’s producer Lee Daniels and writer-director Ricky Staub took the stage to celebrate launching the movie in this

Producer Mike Jackson is ready and waiting for Hollywood to get the greenlight so Get Lifted Film Co. can get out there and resume production. The company, co-founded in 2012 with John Legend and Ty Stiklorius, focuses its storytelling on multi-cultural content. Its credits include: “Jesus Christ Superstar Live!,” WGN’s “Underground” and “La La Land.”

Audiences will have to wait until 2021 to summon “Candyman.” The supernatural slasher film, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld and DaCosta, has pushed back its theatrical release and will now debut on the big screen sometime next year. “Candyman” was supposed to hit theaters on Oct. 16. Universal and

Directors Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer joined Variety’s virtual studio presented by Canada Goose to discuss their documentary film “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds” premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The co-directors shared how they divided their responsibilities for the project. With casting, Herzog said they trusted each other’s expertise and experience in choosing

Hopkins told Variety during a panel discussion about his new movie, “The Father,” that his message to his followers is simple. “Let’s not take ourselves too damn seriously,” he said. “So I’ll wake up have a bit of fun, because everyone is so grim.” “The Father,” Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his acclaimed play of the

Rosalind Chao can tell a lot about people based on which of her roles they want to talk about. “If it’s ‘Star Trek,’ I know it will be an intelligent conversation. If they bring up ‘Joy Luck Club,’ I say something like, ‘You must love your mom!’ I get a lot of ‘What Dreams May

In Natalie Krinsky’s directorial debut, “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” Geraldine Viswanathan plays Lucy, a 26-year-old hipster who lives in Brooklyn with two roommates, Amanda and Nadine (played by “Booksmart’s” Molly Gordon and “Hamilton’s” Phillipa Soo, respectively). Lucy is an aspiring art gallerist whose career takes a hit after she’s fired for delivering an angry drunken

Joining the press conference of “Nomadland” via Zoom on Friday, presented in Venice in the main competition before its Toronto bow, director Chloé Zhao and Frances McDormand – “It’s McDormand, not McDonald. M-C-D-O-R-M-A-N-D. It’s difficult, but you will get used to it,” she said, correcting a journalist as she started from the very beginning. “A friend