Director Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come (L’Avenir) is one of two dramas starring Isabelle Huppert to come to the New York Film Festival this year (the second is the very different Elle). It is Huppert’s undeniably riveting persona upon which Things to Come rests, as the film teases out her character’s complex strength and vulnerability into a fascinating character portrait of a woman on the edge of a changing life.
Moonlight has been a breakout hit on the festival circuit this year, doing a number on the critics at Telluride, Toronto, and New York. It's hardly a surprise then that writer/director Barry Jenkins should be so in demand now. And he's already lining up his next projects, which include penning the screenplay for a film about real-life boxing sensation Claressa "T-Rex" Shields.
It's always nice to get a bit of interesting casting news on a Friday afternoon. John Legend's Get Lifted Film Co. is producing the upcoming crime drama Monster (not to be confused with the Charlize Theron serial killer movie, or the upcoming The Monster from director Bryan Bertino). This is a film based on the novel of the same name by Walter Dean Myers, about a young man accused of a crime he claims he did not commit. With filming about to begin in New York, the cast has been rounded out to include Jennifer Hudson, and hip-hop artists A$AP Rocky and Nas.
A centerpiece film premiering at the New York Film Festival this year is Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women, featuring performances by Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning as three different generations of women existing in close proximity in a ramshackle bohemian house. It’s a shame, then, that the film gathers such powerful actresses and builds compelling female characters only to relegate them to supporting a standard male coming-of-age narrative.
'Tis the season for horror movies, and we're getting some really good ones. The latest to hit VOD and theaters is The Monster, the new effort from The Strangers director Bryan Bertino and starring Zoe Kazan. And if the trailer is anything to go by, The Monster is a must-see.
As the Marvel Universe continues to expand and encompass even more superheroes and their increasingly inter-related narratives, it was only a matter of time before something aspiring to the mystical was introduced. Unsurprisingly, this comes in the form of Doctor Strange, about which we have seen so much and learned so little. As we meander slowly to the film's premiere on November 4, Marvel gives us another tantalizing glimpse into its concepts with a new featurette.
If Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets sounds like a pulp sci-fi novel from the 1950s...it sort of is. It's actually the title of Luc Besson's latest film, and Besson has been making pulp sci-fi with the best of them for years now. With the first teaser trailer set to show this weekend at New York Comic Con, EuropaCorp has released the first official poster and a few images to whet our appetites.
It's a real fairy-tale match: the sequel to the 2007 hit Enchanted has landed director Adam Shankman. It's being reported that Shankman is now in negotiations to direct Disenchanted, which will have Amy Adams reprising her role as a fairy-tale princess who lands in the real world.
Ever since Walter Huston did his little gold dance in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, tales of gold-prospecting have captured the Hollywood imagination. The latest comes to us from director Stephen Gaghan with the film Gold, starring Matthew McConaughey as Kenny Wells.
The German comedy Toni Erdmann has been one of the breakout hits of the festival circuit this year, garnering critical acclaim out of Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, and New York. In fact, our own Josh Cabrita gave it top marks in his review out of Cannes, calling it "one of the most tragic comedies of the decade." Now, as its December U.S. release date approaches, we have the release of the first U.S. trailer, which tries to sell a very curious father/daughter relationship to American viewers.
