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Last Sunday, “Dune” had an ultra hush-hush press screening at the legendary WB parking lot. The embargo for the film is set to be lifted during the first week of September or after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, but Jeffrey Wells managed to get three anonymous critics to share their brief reactions on the film: First Person: “I tend to like epically scaled movies, even flawed ones or those that are hard to follow [as Dune] has a number of distinct characters weaving in and out....

The newly-released trailer looks like typical Netflix comic comfort food, but if the best jokes were used here then the movie is in a lot of trouble. Sure, it’ll nab millions of views on the streaming giant’s platform, but will it actually be funny? Ferrell hasn’t made a “funny” movie since 2010’s “The Other Guys,” he’s also coming off the disastrous “Holmes & Watson,” which may have possibly relegated him to pulling a Sandler and signing a deal with Netflix....

Best Picture: “First Cow” Oh, boy. As much as I find the middle section of Kelly Reichardt’s film to be incredibly strong, something tells me we won’t really be talking much about it in the years to come. It’s very well directed, acted, edited, and shot, but I can name a handful of better movies this year that far surpass “First Cow” (you’ll get the full list when I publish my top 10 of 2020 next week)....

You can watch the new “Halloween Kills” teaser below: Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

This was a film originally headed to Cannes 2020 before the event’s inevitable cancelation last year. Set in a post-modern looking house in the Massachusetts woodlands, inhabited by a privileged family of four, whose silent family dinners indicate a coldly detached form of bonding, Sisto’s film immediately presents itself as a controlled, almost too controlled, exercise in futility. John’s father, Brad (a playfully, darkly comic Michael C. Hall), mother Anna (Jennifer Ehle), and older sister Laurie (Taissa Farmiga) are all spiked by the 13-year-old with Anna’s sleeping pills....

Apparently, the Italian release date for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” has already been set for January 26, 2023 via theatrical release and NOT straight to Apple TV. This aligns well with the intel that I received a week ago that Scorsese’s film will have a US release of December 2022. There was heavy talk that the film could possibly get pushed to next year, but I was assured that it is very much being released this year....

The film has been inundated with legal issues that seemingly makes no buyer interested in it. There’s also the astronomical costs for the music rights, that weren’t organized before it premiered at Cannes, and we have t even mentioned the sexual harassment lawsuits against Kechiche. I wrote extensively about the controversy in a 10.06.21 piece. I guess you had to see “Mektoub: Intermezzo” at Cannes because it’s definitely not going to be released anytime soon, maybe ever....

Opening with the diagnosis of cancer, the film has 90 minutes to tell its two-character piece, a low-budget two-hander that generates laughs, despite the tonal restraints that come with such a story. Lehmann wrote the screenplay with Mark Duplass (who also stars as the cancer-stricken character), and this collaboration thoroughly surprised me in how absorbed I was by their friendship once the film arrived at its final stretch. As mentioned, Duplass’ Michael is terminally ill, but decides that he wants to end his life on his own terms, before the inevitable suffering begins....

‘Fabelmans’ will go wide in a few weeks, it’s currently tracking at an opening of around $6-7 million dollars. Not earth-shattering, but also not terrible for this kind of movie. I do wonder how mainstream audiences, some of whom might not be fervent movie history buffs, will greet this film. Many questions still remain in the race. I’ve narrowed them down to the bare bones essential: Will “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” become just the fourth animated film to get a Best Picture nomination?...

Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain play a wealthy couple on the verge of divorce. They remain together for this one lavish weekend party at a Moroccan villa, but accidentally run over and kill a young Moroccan man. They put his body in their car and arrive at the weekend party. A cover-up ensues. So does a lot of dancing, drugs, and debauchery. McDonagh is trying to show how these white elites and their privilege don’t really care about the dead Moroccan boy, until they have no choice but to deal with the tragedy....

Jon Favreau directs ( a good thing), Beyonce is doing the soundtrack (another good thing) and the VFX does look spectacular. But this sounds, based on the tweet reactions, like a literal and faithful remake of the 1994 animated classic. I’ll be seeing “The Lion King” tomorrow morning in Montreal. “The Lion King” opens in theaters nationwide July 19. Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

The Viking tale, directed by Robert Eggers, which is almost 2 and a half hours long and cost close to $90 million, took in just $5 million total for Thursday and Friday combined. Projections are that it will make around $10 million overall this Sunday. Some are predicting that it won’t make more than $30 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run in a month or two. I guess it’s time for Eggers to go back to making smaller-scaled indies rather than these sprawling big studio productions, especially if it means sacrificing your own voice for the bottom line....

Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler said, “We’re dealing with a complex novel. We tested the movie really early for that very reason. We wanted to make it better, and we’ve had Disney’s full support in doing that.” I had heard some test-screening rumblings, through people who had emailed me, that Wright’s movie was just not very good. It wasn’t even a question of the ending being “confusing” as much as the entire movie being a total bomb....

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — 664) Mauvais Sang — 664) Stand By Me — 664) Ordinary People – 664) Cinema Paradiso – 664) Berlin Alexanderplatz – 664) Fitzcarraldo – 664) Room With a View – 664) Withnail And I – 664) Sid and Nancy – 6 Reds — 574) Manhunter — 574) The Killer — 574) Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters — 574) Kagemusha — 574) Night of the Shooting Stars — 574) When Harry Met Sally… — 574) Law of Desire — 574) Near Dark — 574) The Dead 574) The Untouchables 574) Rumble Fish — 574) Local Hero — 574) Stranger Than Paradise — 574) Das Boot —574) Akira 5 Something Wild —490) Fatal Attraction — 490) Jean de Forette — 490) They Live — 490) Moonstruck — 490) Repo Man — 490) Scarface — 490) A Nos Amours — 490) The Thin Blue Line — 4 Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

Given that the other big title that was supposed to premiere at SXSW, Judd Apatow’s “The King of Staten Island,” has now transitioned to a June digital release, my hopes were that Lowery’s film would do the same, alas, that is not going to happen as A24 has decided to cancel a May 29th theatrical release for “The Green Knight.” No new date has currently been set. The trailer set up the 14th century-set world that Lowery had concocted for us....

Andersson’s film career actually began as an actress, when she was just 15-years-old, in commercials directed by, you guessed it, Ingmar Bergman. Eventually Bergman would take her to the famous Malmö City Theater, where he theater director. She will always be known as Alma in “Persona”, and for that very famous single-take monologue about the greatest orgasm Alma ever had. Safe for the two-dozen, or so, movies she made with Bergman during the course of her illustrious career, Andersson also worked with Hollywood filmmakers such as John Huston and Robert Altman....

Snubbed were “Babylon,” “Till,” “The Whale,” and “Glass Onion.” Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin” received a “Special Award” (since it qualified as an “international” film it was deemed ineligible for the actual list). AFI Movies of the Year “Avatar: The Way of Water”“Elvis”“Everything Everywhere All at Once”“The Fabelmans”“Nope”“She Said”“TÁR”“Top Gun: Maverick”“The Woman King”“Women Talking” A very safe list. “Nope,” “She Said,” “The Woman King” and “Elvis” get a nice boost from this....

To describe the plot of “Pacification” is near impossible. It has to do with a top ranking French official (an excellent Benoit Magimel) in the Polynesian Islands, he’s the High Commissioner of the Republic. Very strange things start to happen to him, all seemingly revolving around rumors of the French conducting some nuclear testing near the island. Will the masses love “Pacification”? Of course not. It’s a slow-as-molasses statement from Serra whose not in uncharted territory here....

For those holding out hope for a New York Film Festival premiere, there is a slight chance, but I highly doubt it. Aster’s film seems to be a total beast of ambitions. Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

Pigtails notwithstanding, Momoa adds to the testosterone-heavy allure Villeneuve’s film seems to have in abundance. Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy