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The big news, however, is Bloody Disgusting’s ultra-independently financed TERRIFIER 2 seeing a 100% increase in its box office intake from last weekend. Horror keeps winning. It’s been the go-to genre for a vast amount of the moviegoing public this year. “Terrifier 2,” which I’m finally watching tonight, made $2.1 million on its third weekend of release. It now has a total domestic gross of $5.4 million on a limp budget of $250,000....

Regardless, there is a ton of new content for your sole viewing pleasure on Apple TV +, and, hell, even an upcoming Oscar contender. Or at least that’s what Apple wants you to think of “The Banker” as. One look at the just-released trailer and it already reeks of gobsmacked familiarity. From the direction to the writing. This one just feels like a non-starter. Especially with its late-year release date and the fact that not many people have been talking about this movie....

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Nate Jones tweeted: “Watched French Dispatch a second time to see if Telluride vibed with it more than Cannes did. Verdict: they liked it slightly better — weirdly it makes more sense here — but still fairly tepid after the first segment.” David Canfield tweeted: “FRENCH DISPATCH: Wes Anderson’s short-story bundle features the usual stuff to like—it’s weird, playful, and gorgeous to look at—but is w/out the soul and hard to find your way into....

If you release “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” and nobody notices, does it even make a sound? The film opened yesterday in New York City, Los Angeles, and Dallas. I doubt anybody noticed. There was no all-media screening backing its release (a true rarity). Instead, Apple is screening it for press this coming Thursday — just one day before it begins streaming on Apple TV. I caught the world premiere of Farrelly’s “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” two weeks ago at TIFF and was somewhat disappointed by it....

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The lead in the small-town Oklahoma of “To The Stars” is a mousy, bookish misfit by the name of Iris Deerborne (Kara Hayward of “Moonrise Kingdom”), whose alcoholic, overprotective and unhappily married mother (Jordana Spiro of Netflix’s “Ozark”) is a selfish mess, and even tries to hook up with a local high school student to boost her self-image and cling to the ideas of her youth. No wonder dad (Shea Whigham) would rather spend his time at the family ranch than at home....

Yes, Tom Cruise is back as wild man “Maverick,” a man who knows no limitarions in his aerial pursuits. After defying command, he’s just been dismissed from duty and sent back to “Top Gun” flight school. There he’s assigned to recruit a new crop of fighter pilots, including his deceased friend’s son “Rooster” (Miles Teller). The recruits are cocky and have no knowledge of Maverick’s reckless ways of flying. What follows are a lot of gung-ho aerial training sequences, meant to be nail-biting for the mainstream crowd....

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I’m not even counting blockbusters that have the goods, on-paper at least, to be great; those include “Mission: Impossible 7,” “Avatar 2,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “John Wick: Chapter 4,” and “Knives Out 2.” As we begin to (hopefully) emerge from the pandemic, things are beginning to look up. The movies have been, like many other industries, adversely affected by these last 20 months, but things seem to be on the upswing with close to a thousand productions having already been greenlit this year alone....

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Full list of Indie Spirit Award winners “Jenkins, who vastly impressed us with “Moonlight,” builds up a slow-moving narrative that doesn’t always hit the mark. We all know he is infatuated with Wong Kar-Wai’s cinema, so much so that I overheard someone name-check him as ‘Wong Kar-Jenkins. From the amber-lit, shadowy frames, to the use of slo-mo, Jenkins uses the same stylistic techniques he used in his Oscar-winning film, but to a lesser effect here because, well, the source material he has at his disposal, although incredibly moving on page, feels almost unfilmable on screen....

Now we’re hearing that production on “Mickey 7” is set to commence in the UK, with the months of August to December booked for shooting. That’s five months for Bong to get his movie ready for Cannes ‘23. The novel’s official synopsis: “The story follows Mickey7, an Expendable, a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey....

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As for the new releases, “Crawl” opened with a $12 million domestic intake, which means, if you also count the $5M the film made overseas, it has made back its entire $13.5 million budget. The Kumail Nanjiani-Dave Bautista buddy-cop comedy “Stuber” was not as successful, having earned only $8 million the past three days. Also, it does not look like “Midsommar” will be any kind of breakout hit for A24, as, despite good reviews, the Ari Aster-directed horror movie added only $3....

The film takes horrific serial-killing to whole new levels, it is so excessive in its violence towards women, and even children, that I can see most of Twitter losing their marbles over this 150 minute film. And yet, what I found in this film were some parallels to von Trier’s beautiful 2011 apocalyptic depression-drama “Melancholia.” There are meditative sections that really make you ponder not just von Trier, but humanity itself....

Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island”Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria”Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta”Leos Carax’s “Annette”Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”Nanni Moretti “Tre Piani”Nadav Lapid “Ahed’s Knee”Francois Ozon’s “Summer of 85”Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho”Ari Folman “Where is Anne Frank?”Maiwenn’s “ADN"Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Wife of a Spy”Naomi Kawase’s “Come Morning”Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman“Michel Franco’s “Lo que algunos soñaron”Laurent Cantet’s “Arthur Rambo”Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Petrov’s Flu” Thomas Vinterberg’s “Druk”Ulrich Seidl “Böse Spiele"Ana Lily Amirpour’s “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon” Contribute Hire me...

Gilligan’s “Breaking Bad” has been named the best TV series of the 2010s, at least according to a group of TV critics, journalists, bloggers, entertainment reporters, and actors/directors. Gilligan’s meticulous gangster saga, which was included in almost half the ballots submitted (41), barely squeezed by its closest competitors, Weiner’s’“Mad Men” (34) and Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” (25). “Breaking Bad” was such a profoundly important benchmark in not just television but popular culture, that Gilligan’s spin-off “Better Call Saul” ended up almost cracking the top 10 at #11....

Of course, it takes David Lynch to slap me sideways and increase the guilt of perpetrating such abhorrent journalistic action. Speaking at his Festival of Disruption in New York City, Lynch lashed out at immediate 280 character film tweet: “You finish a film these days and right away you have this pressure to write about it in words,” Lynch said (IndieWire). “Unless you’re a poet, words will fail you.” Of course, I always refer back to this video of people coming out of “Eraserhead” back when the film was released in 1977....

His time did finally come when earlier this year , a series of tweets appeared from a man named Justin Smith, who alleged that Singer sexually assaulted him in the early aughts. The tweets have since been deleted, according to The Daily Wire. Amidst all the chaos of Weinstein, Spacey, Toback and co. it had appeared that Singer’s own day of reckoning was here. His dirty reputation in the industry well known by many, people were preparing for the worst and that includes the USC School of Cinematic Arts whose students created a petition at Change....