A feature documentary, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville, about the late television star and chef Anthony Bourdain is in the works from Focus Features, CNN Films, and HBO Max. [via THR]
Read more‘Joker’ Has Become The Highest Grossing R-Rated Movie Ever Worldwide With $785.5M
And it only cost 55 million to make. Go figure.
“Joker” earned $2.4 million on Thursday, bringing its 21-day total to $258.6 million. It s set to retake the top spot from ‘Maleficent’ at the week-end box-office. The film had earned $778 million worldwide as of Wednesday, and it has now grossed $788.3 million worldwide. This means it has surpassed “Deadpool” ($782.6 million in 2016) and “Deadpool 2 “($785.05 million in 2018 as the biggest R-rated movie of all time.
Eddie Murphy Steals the Show in ‘Dolemite is My Name’ [Review]
Craig Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name” has an electrifying Eddie Murphy playing 1970s-era blaxploitation icon Rudy Ray Moore in a film about how Moore’s famous movie character Dolemite came to be. I first saw this infectiously likable movie at TIFF in September. It’s not only an incisive love letter to cinema, especially the bad kind, but also the funniest movie I have seen all year. Murphy is aided by a great cast which includes Craig Robinson, Keegan Michael-Key and Wesley Snipes. Netflix will start streaming it this coming Friday. Seek it out.
Read more‘Frankie': Ira Sachs' Rohmer-Inspired Drama Falls Flat [Review]
Sometimes being subtle with your movie can be an overdone trait. Case in point Ira Sach’s latest film “Frankie,” which just premiered in competition at Cannes. This unconventional family gathering takes place by the seaside of Portuguese town of Sintra, which makes this the first time Sachs has managed to shoot a film outside his native New York City. An attempt at evoking Eric Rohmer’s anti-romanticism, “Frankie” falls completely flat
Read moreHarvey Weinstein Walked into a New York Bar and Then All Hell Broke Loose
Thanks to Buzzfeed for reporting about this insane encounter on 25th and 2nd in New York City at Downtime bar in the Lower East Side. Disgraced former Miramax head honcho, and now #MeToo poster boy, Harvey Weinstein, was out on the town, having dinner, but was then shouted at by a female protester.
Read moreStill Much Love for The Safdies' and ‘Uncut Gems'
I wrote this at TIFF about The Safdies’ upcoming “Uncut Gems”
Read more‘Antlers’ Trailer: Director Scott Cooper's Horror Film Starring Keri Russell & Jesse Plemons
Directed by Scott Cooper, “Antlers” is an upcoming horror movie with a just-released trailer. Cooper had previously directed “Hostiles,” “Black Mass,” and “Crazy Heart,” all of which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, but “Antlers” didn’t. This looks very genre-heavy, but with the potential to be a sleeper hit when it is released next Spring.
Read more‘Little Women' Reactions are Mixed: Pugh and Ronan are Fantastic, Too Many Flashbacks, Saved by Last Hour
Greta Gerwig’s much-anticipated “Little Women” just screened in L.A. and NYC. A social media embargo has lifted on Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel and it appears that there are fans, but also many people with reservations, which is quite odd as many film critics tend to not want to express too many negative things in their Twitter reactions so as to appease the studio bigwigs that watch their every move. Suffice to say, this doesn’t look like it’s going to be a “Lady Bird” triumph for Gerwig.
Read more‘Western Stars’: Bruce Springsteen’s Indisputably Great Concert Doc [Review]
[Review Originally Published at the Toronto International Film Festival on 09.13.19]
In 2011, Bruce Springsteen started recording the album Western Stars, only to sideline the project for an E-Street Band tour. Recording sessions eventually continued over the years, the album was completed in 2018 and the belated release this year was met with glowing reviews. But Western Stars wasn’t backed by a tour, the first time the musician skipped the road on an album since his 1982 folk acoustic landmark, Nebraska.
‘Terminator: Dark Fate' Reviews are Mezzo-Mezzo
Michael Mann Returns From Directing Hiatus with HBO Max Series ‘Tokyo Vice’
Michael Mann has been missing in action this decade, a surprising disappearance act from the great director of such muscular achievements as “The Insider,” “Collateral,” and “Heat.” So, what happened? He’s released only one movie in the last ten years, 2015’s misbegotten “Blackhat.”
Read moreNew Cut of ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' Being Released This Friday; 10 Minutes of Additional Footage
According to Deadline, Sony is set to re-release Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” with over 10 minutes of new footage, this coming Friday. The new cut will have its never-before-seen footage spread over the course of four scenes. Sony is so confident this could get them some extra bucks that they have decided to re-release it in over 1000 theaters.
Read moreDirector Jonathan Glazer's Next Film Will Be Holocaust Movie Produced by A24
Director Jonathan Glazer is one of the true visionaries to have emerged in cinema since 2000. After all, his ultra-stylized 2000 gangster film “Sexy Beast” turned heads for its visual palette and a now-legendary Ben Kingsley performance which could only be described as "savage." However, since then, Glazer has only given us two more films, the highly underrated “Birth,” starring Nicole Kidman, which has aged like fine wine over time, and his masterpiece: “Under the Skin,” starring Scarlett Johansson as a roaming alien sent to London to feed off of innocent and pathetic male pedestrians. That film is one of the great achievements of this last decade, even being named just this year in our critics poll as the 12th best movie of the last 10 years.
Read more‘Gemini Man' is a Major Bomb, Has Lost More than $75 Million So Far
Paramount has been completely lost since the implosion of the ‘Transformers’ franchise. When you realize they also distributed the first ‘Iron Man’ movies and that they could've bought Marvel Studios in 2008, a year before Disney, well, it gets depressing to even think about that.
Read moreDisney CEO Bob Iger Thinks ‘Black Panther’ Should be Compared To Scorsese & Coppola's “Cinema"
Bob Iger. The CEO of Disney, spoke out about Martin Scorsese’s Marvel criticisms at a recent event (via FastCompany), Iger was asked about the comments made by Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, the latter of which called Marvel films “despicable,” and offered his own views on what is becoming a Marvel pushback by some of cinema’s greatest directors.
Read moreAdam Driver Keeps Working With Great Directors
‘Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker' Running Time Will Be 155 minutes
“Star Wars: Episode IX” will be the longest movie in the franchise’s 42 year history
Read moreThe Best Japanese Films of the 21st Century
Japan has long been at the forefront of content creation. Heavily involved in the manga, comic book, and cartoon industries, there was one area where, for a long time, it failed to thrive: cinema.
Read moreDisney+ Will Let You Keep Your Downloads Even If Titles Leave the Service
The launch of Disney+ is just a few days away (November 1st) and today we’ve learned that one of the perks of the upcoming streaming service will be that as long as somebody remains a subscriber, any titles they've downloaded for free on the Disney+ app will remain to be watched offline, no matter what happens to their availability to stream directly [via CNET].
Read moreJohn Travolta Headed Out on 'Grease' Sing-Along Tour
John Travolta's career looks like it desperately needs another comeback role ala Vincent Vega in “Pulp Fiction”. We thought it might happen with his excellent turn as O.J. Simpson's lawyer, Robert Shapiro, in 2016’s “The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” but that was just a comeback tease. We ended up getting his infamous turn in “Gotti” just a year later. That was followed this year by his Razzie-worthy performance in Fred Durst’s “The Fanatic.”
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Adam Driver is still not over "The Hunt for Ben Solo," but there's a silver lining: Steven Soderbergh has already moved on to a new script, and Driver calls it one of the best things Soderbergh has ever written.