News

Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's decades-long passion project, was one of 2024's most divisive movies. It was either the greatest embodiment of the acclaimed director's artistic vision and refusal to compromise, or his searing, self-made indictment of those same things and his unchecked ego. Moviegoers either loved or hated it; there was no middle ground. That said, what most didn't realize was that Megalopolis isn't exactly new and that it's been done better by a movie that starred Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson roughly two decades ago.

19 years ago, Southland Tales hit cinemas and baffled everyone who saw it. Directed by Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame and much like Megalopolis, Southland Tales was a surreal satire of American culture, politics and life during its release. However, Southland Tales succeeded where Megalopolis failed by being even stranger than Coppola's latest work. It says a lot that casting The Rock as a...

For the first 10 years of his movie acting career, Dwayne Johnson was hungry to earn his bonafides as a serious performer. Oh sure, he was more than willing to play to the cheap seats by starring in stuff like "The Scorpion King" and "Doom." But this was also the era in which the wrestling legend worked with "Donnie Darko" director Richard Kelly on his gonzo cult curiosity "Southland Tales" and gleefully preened in front of a mirror as an out-and-proud gay bodyguard in F. Gary Gray's "Get Shorty" sequel "Be Cool." Having yet to establish a clean-cut brand for himself, the 2000s saw The Rock taking the kind of risks he would shirk for a decade after finally making it big in the movies.

That extended to Johnson's action films as well. When The Rock showed up as Luke Hobbs in 2011's "Fast Five" (only one of the...

When filmmaker Richard Kelly made his feature directorial debut "Donnie Darko" in 2001, it caused a stir in the arthouse world. "Donnie Darko" quickly accumulated a passionate cult who fell in love with its unbalanced hero (Jake Gyllenhaal) and its twisted time-travel plot. It was a combination psychological horror film and bizarro indie coming-of-age-in-the-1980s tale. Unsurprisingly, it only took a few additional years for "Donnie Darko" to become a regular staple on the midnight movie circuit, with fans dressing up as the film's enigmatic Frank the Bunny on Halloween.

The cult success of "Donnie Darko," however, seemingly went to Kelly's head as he appeared to become very, very convinced of his own importance as a new artistic voice in the indie film world. It took five years, but he eventually returned to theaters with the utterly gonzo "Southland Tales," an epic and ambitious film about the horrors of the George W. Bush administration.

Dwayne Johnson, despite being a super famous brand nowadays, has tried his hand at different kinds of roles in the past, even as he was being pegged as the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. While there are no shortage of “safe bets” where he got to play a role he was at home with, his resume will still included films like Southland Tales, Be Cool and Snitch, where his size was a factor, but he wasn’t an all-out badass. Johnson would even dabble in family movies. He will next be featured in Red One, which comes from his Jumanji director Jake Kasdan and puts an action twist on the holiday.

Recently, GQ profiled Johnson and spoke with him, Benny Safdie and Emily Blunt on his upcoming dramatic turn in The Smashing Machine. The story of Mark Kerr deals with an athlete who faced depression, and Safdie mentions that he knew Johnson...

Although Red One does look like it will be a box office disaster, this will not stop Dwayne Johnson from having an incredible career revival in the next few years. For a while, it seemed as if Dwayne Johnson could do no wrong at the box office. The Jumanji movies earned $962.5 million and $801 million in 2017 and 2019, resurrecting a nostalgic 90s franchise and turning it into a blockbuster series. A few years earlier, The Rocks role in the Fast and Furious franchise saw its box office jump by hundreds of millions of dollars with each new movie,

Related Chris Evans' Upcoming Action Movie Will Thankfully Put An End To A Disappointing Career Trend

Chris Evans stars in 2024's Red One, through which he's finally ending a weird and disappointing career trend that started five years ago.

However, things took a turn around 2021. Jungle Cruises failure could be chalked up to the...

Despite achieving mainstream success in the first installment in the franchise, Dwayne Johnson did not return for The Scorpion King 2. Johnson made his movie debut as Mathayus of Akkad, also known as "The Scorpion King," the lead villain in 2001's The Mummy Returns; the movie's box office success led to Universal releasing The Scorpion King in 2002, with Johnson receiving his first lead role as the legendary warrior.

With Johnson at the head of The Scorpion King cast, the film explores Mathayus' origins as a desert warrior seeking revenge for the murder of his father and the destruction of his home. While the movie received a mixed reception from critics, it was financially successful and saw the release of four sequels in The Scorpion King franchise. The Scorpion King helped establish Dwayne Johnson as a leading actor, but he ultimately decided not to reprise his role for the sequel movies.

The...

Prime Video is the place to be in August with an incredible month of new releases. The month kicks off with the premiere of the animated series Batman: Caped Crusader on Aug. 1. The series was produced by J.J. Abrams and The Batman‘s Matt Reeves. We also return to Middle Earth this month with the premiere of The Rings of Power season 2 on Aug. 29.

As far as movies go, the Amazon original Jackpot! arrives on Aug. 15 starring Awkwafina and John Cena. This comedy is set in a world where Lottery winners have to survive until sundown in order to claim their multi-billion dollar jackpot – anyone who kills them before that gets to claim their prize.

The Hobbit trilogy also joins the Prime Video library this month, as do 21 and 22 Jump Street, Superman I-iv, Superman Returns, Night Swim, Drive Away Dolls, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Here’s everything coming...

Sarah Michelle Gellar's character Tanya Martin in Dexter: Original Sin is confirmed to have a connection to the original show. Tanya is Dexter's boss at the Miami Metro Police Department in the 1990s sequel, not appearing in the main show. Speculations suggest Gellar's character could be a one-season villain or be one of Dexter's early victims in the prequel.

Dexter: Original Sin special guest star Sarah Michelle Gellar confirms her character's connection to the original show during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Gellar was recently confirmed to be joining the Dexter prequel at Paramount+, credited as a special guest in the role of Tanya Martin, and appearing alongside the likes of Patrick Gibson, Christian Slater, Molly Brown, Patrick Dempsey, and Michael C. Hall returning as Dexter's inner voice.

Moderating a Dexter: Original Sin panel at this year's Sdcc, where Screen Rant was in attendance,...

Dwayne Johnson's new movie The Smashing Machine fixes the criticism of his repetitive roles. Johnson's transformation into Mma legend Mark Kerr is a departure from his recent action-packed blockbusters. The gritty biopic promises to showcase Johnson's acting talent and humanize a troubled character.

While Dwayne Johnson looks unrecognizable in his new A24 movie The Smashing Machine, this proves that the star is finally addressing the oldest criticism about his choice of movie roles. Since his movie career began, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has been pulled in two divergent directions. While the star has appeared in many major blockbusters like Fast Five, the Jumanji movies, and Black Adam, he also balanced these out with smaller projects like Southland Tales, Pain & Gain, and Fighting With My Family. Ranking Dwayne Johnsons movies proves that these personal movies dont always fare better with critics than his blockbuster hits.

However, they address a...

When it was released in January of 2001, Richard Kelly's bleak time-travel psychological drama "Donnie Darko" caused a notable stir. The title character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is a teen struggling with schizophrenia in 1988, a time when Reagan's great Conservative revolution was drawing to a close and adults clung to suburban conformity as it crumbled under them. Donnie is obsessed with time-travel and regularly hallucinates a vicious, strange anthropomorphic rabbit monster named Frank (all while attempting to socialize at school and foster a romance with a classmate played by Jena Malone). Patrick Swayze appears as a cheesy self-self guru, Drew Barrymore plays one of Donnie's teachers, and Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Donnie's sister.

By turns psychedelic and weirdly moving (in a Goth sort of way), "Donnie Darko" quickly became a cult hit and rotated directly into the local midnight movie circuit, attracting a wide swath of misfits and night people.

How often do you think about ancient Rome? If you're director Francis Ford Coppola, the answer is apparently "quite a lot." HIs latest film is "Megalopolis," a passion project that he had to finance himself in order to have full creative freedom, and it takes place in a crumbling city called New Rome, following an architect named Cesar (Adam Driver) as he seeks to build a more sustainable future. It's some wacky stuff, and Coppola has bought in completely.

The very first batch of reviews and reactions to "Megalopolis" are coming out of Cannes Film Festival in France, where the film made its world premiere. Given the movie's troubled production and absolutely wild teaser trailer, it should come as no surprise that the reviews are as intense as they are mixed, though most praise the unique sci-fi epic for its audacity and willingness to fully commit to its ideas and world.

Pluto TV, Paramount’s free streaming service, has revealed its May highlights. The Pluto TV May 2024 schedule includes Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month programming, more anime content, new channels, and new film additions.

Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service, delivering hundreds of live linear channels and thousands of titles on-demand to a global audience.

The Emmy Award-winning service curates a diverse lineup of channels in partnership with hundreds of international media companies. It offers a wide array of genres, languages, and categories featuring movies, television series, sports, news, lifestyle, kids, and much more.

Pluto TV can be easily accessed and streamed across mobile, web, and connected TV devices. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Pluto TV’s growing international footprint extends across three continents and over 35 markets.

Pluto TV May 2024 Programming

Asian American, Native Hawaiian, And Pacific Islander Heritage Month

To pay tribute, Pluto TV...

Jumanji movies are The Rock's most successful outside Fast & Furious, offering fun, engaging characters and high box office earnings. Jumanji 4 delays could impact its box office potential due to production challenges and The Rock's jam-packed schedule. The Rock's perfect role seems to be in Jumanji, balancing humor and action, but Fast & Furious 11 may delay Jumanji sequels.

While Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson seems to have already worked out a perfect replacement for the Fast & Furious franchise, the progress of this series has still been frustratingly slow. The Rock’s movie career has been incredibly impressive, but his star power isn’t always enough to fuel an entire franchise. From Jungle Cruise to Black Adam to Southland Tales, The Rock has appeared in plenty of movies that were not financially successful enough to warrant an immediate string of sequels and spinoffs. His role in the Fast & Furious franchise...

Chicago – During Oscar week, all eyes turn to Unit Photographer Dale Robinette, who got the assignment on the Oscar nominated “Barbie.” The following on-set pictures were snapped during the production’s time in Los Angeles, which including the iconic cowpoke wardrobe of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

“Uncle Dale” Robinette first contacted me via email in 2013, to give information about some photos he took on the film “Lovelace.” Ever since then he has been a reliable email pal, sending me image after image from the movie sets that he is “blessed” (his word) to work on. He has plied his skills in Hollywood as a Unit Still Photographer since 1988, after a career as a stage and television actor in New York and Los Angeles. Starting with a TV short called “The Big Five” (1988), he has worked his way up the ladder, and has built an impressive photo resume through familiar films like “Donnie Darko,...

The NBC sitcom "Night Court" was a satirical take on the zany and chaotic underworld of the midnight shift at the courthouse. With an unconventional, free-loving judge at the helm of this circus, there's no telling what might happen. The series was such a massive hit that it ran for nine whole seasons, featuring a cast of relatively unknown actors that, when assembled, formed one of the most acclaimed ensembles of all time. The show won eight Primetime Emmys and was nominated no less than 32 times. "Night Court" won in a variety of categories, but the actor that ended up taking home the most gold was John Larroquette, who played egotistical D.A. Dan Fielding.

A "Night Court" reboot landed on NBC in 2023. Sadly, few members of the original cast are still around to reprise their old roles, and the show is comprised almost entirely of new characters. Harry Anderson,...

Dwayne Johnson has transformed himself from a wrestler to a corporate mastermind, merging his brand with various endorsements and collaborations. Johnson's ability to sell himself as a larger-than-life personality is key to his marketing success, although it sometimes undermines his credibility. Johnson's aspirations extend beyond entertainment, with significant roles in the wrestling world and lofty ambitions, fueling speculation of a future in politics.

It's undeniable that Dwayne Johnson is taking a very different track than the average actor. For once, it has nothing to do with aging out of roles or growing out of them. Being one of the highest-paid and most recognizable faces on the planet evidently wasn't enough for the wrestler-turned-actor-turned-aspiring mogul bent on carving out a chunk of the business world. Marketing execs take notice; he doesn't need to lay a finger on you to put the smackdown; he can buy your entire business. Whatever your taste in beverages,...

Who’s ready to feel stressed out all over again? Because if weekly drops of :a[The Curse]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/tv/news/the-curse-trailer-emma-stone-and-nathan-fielder-are-plagued-by-misfortune-in-a24-series/' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'} aren’t leaving you sweaty-palmed enough, there’s a brand new Safdie joint on the way. Note, singular Safdie, not Safdie Brothers – because while the duo behind :a[Uncut Gems]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/uncut-gems/' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'} and :a[Good Time]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/good-time-2-review' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'} make for an incredible team, they’re pursuing their next directorial films separately. Josh Safdie is said to be working on a :a[new film with Adam Sandler]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/adam-sandler-reuniting-with-uncut-gems-duo-the-safdie-brothers/' target='blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'}, while Benny Safdie – fresh from starring in :a[Obi-Wan Kenobi]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews...

Hollywood has a mixed track record when it comes to their movies and how certain ideas would have worked better in a different genre. One of the most common mismatches is between serious films that had concepts better suited to comedy, while others took themselves so seriously they became a meme. In either case, these movies would have worked much better had they been played up for jokes.

For some movies, they do so poorly or come out so generic and mediocre that adding some laughs could have taken them from obscurity to notoriety. Comedy itself has a wide range, and could take the form of anything from a dark satirical comedy to a laugh out loud romp. Sometimes, all a movie needs is to feel like it doesn't take itself too seriously and let audiences actually enjoy the story.

Related: Least Obvious Links In The MCU

One Good Cop...

Director Richard Kelly, best known for Donnie Darko, talked about the film and his wish to redo the film with a bigger budget.

Renowned filmmaker Richard Kelly discussed his iconic film Donnie Darko and his struggles in the film industry during an interview with The Film Stage. Kelly also mentioned that he had been revisiting the world of Donnie Darko substantially, implying potential new content or expansions.

Related: Donnie Darko Takes Inspiration from a Virginian Urban Legend

"Well, yes, but I think there’s kind of, maybe, a lot I’m not allowed to say yet because I’ve been… revisiting that world substantially," Kelly said. He added, "So I’ll probably be talking about it for the rest of my life unless someone just finally tells me to stop. But yeah: I think that there’s so much going on in these movies that, in a way, I start to discover new things.

Andrew Dominik created one of the most controversial films in recent memory with the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, which was based on the divisive novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. While Blonde is intended to be a fictionalized version of real events, many viewers did not take kindly to the graphic depiction of sexual assault and the Nc-17 rating. While Ana de Armas’ performance was highly acclaimed and even honored with an Academy Award nomination, the film itself has been ridiculed. It recently took home the Razzie awards for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay at the 2023 ceremony.

It should be noted that Blonde was not completely met with negative reactions, as Colin Farrell recently praised it, and initial reviews out of the Venice International Film Festival were much kinder than those that ran once the film was available on Netflix. However, Dominik’s later comments about not...

While many movie directors improve throughout their careers, some filmmakers peak with a killer debut. It is not easy for a director to follow a popular debut movie. Some filmmakers, like Quentin Tarantino, can follow their breakout hit with another, even more critically acclaimed follow-up. However, for many directors, their second movie is a humbling experience that proves not every project they touch will turn into gold. This isn’t a bad thing, but it can cause problems down the line.

For filmmakers like Richard Kelly, whose debut Donnie Darko was a major cult hit, a sophomore slump can prove to be a real issue. Kelly’s second movie Southland Tales was a great sci-fi that didn’t deserve to flop but ended up losing millions nonetheless. The director never recaptured the hype that surrounded his name at the time of Donnie Darko’s release. As a result, none of...

There’s a scene at the start of Beau is Afraid in which the titular character (Joaquin Phoenix) is given new medication by his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Beau takes the pills “incorrectly”, triggering a panic attack which sets in motion a series of events depicting his deteriorating/fluctuating mental state. It’s a fleeting scene but one that seems to suggests everything forth could be taken with a pinch of dimethyltryptamine. For what unravels is a cerebral cortex swirling sense assault within a world locked in a perpetual Purge film parody, and writer/director Ari Aster utilising post-pandemic paranoia to heighten his action and comedy.

The story starts with the bereft, jittery Beau, a middle aged loner wallowing in paranoia prior to catching a flight to visit his mother, but when his front door key and luggage get stolen Beau is forced to abandon the trip. A brutal street...

Welcome to Emmy Experts Typing, a weekly column in which Gold Derby editors and Experts Joyce Eng and Christopher Rosen discuss the Emmy race — via Slack, of course. This week, with the release of “Mrs. Davis” and “The Diplomat,” we tackle drama.

Christopher Rosen: Hello, Joyce! If it’s a day of the week that ends with the letter Y, you can be sure I have a new favorite Emmy contender. This week, that’s the Peacock series “Mrs. Davis,” an ostensible drama for awards purposes but a show that blends together so many different tones and genres that it almost defies classification. When I was telling a real-life friend about “Mrs. Davis” last night, I compared it to “The Stand,” “Fight Club,” “The Truman Show,” “The Big Lebowski,” Amazon’s “Good Omens” and then also none of those but maybe “Southland Tales” too? Regardless, having mainlined the entire season...

Ari Aster’s first two films, 2018’s “Hereditary” and 2019’s “Midsommar,” cultivated the young director enough cachet for A24 to hand him a blank check for “Beau is Afraid,” his “Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings’” about the psychological horror of visiting your mother. The three-hour horror-comedy epic is the indie studio’s most expensive movie to date. Starring Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix as the stunted and anxiety-ridden Beau of the title, the movie defies easy categorization and is, expectedly, inspiring awe and disgust in nearly equal measure – often within individual viewers.

Beau lives in an urban hellscape that approximates what “New York City looked like in the mind of Travis Bickle and Bernhard Goetz” and is in a persistent state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it finally does, it’s a chandelier on top of his mother’s head (it wouldn’t be an Aster film...

Plot: A middle-aged man with severe mommy issues tries to return home.

Review: Beau is Afraid is the kind of movie that only gets made when a studio gives a director carte-blanche. These highly distinctive, one might even say pretentious, epics seem like something every horror auteur needs to get out of their system, with it cut from the same cloth as Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales and David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake. Running a punishing three hours, it’s the kind of movie many will hate but some will love, and indeed, for this critic, it was a very mixed bag. Director Ari Aster is a genius, and the filmmaking is often stunning, but it’s almost too much to take in on a single viewing. I would say it’s the perfect midnight movie, but given the length, even this might be a bit of a tall order.

This three-plus-hour tale of Oedipal misery sees Phoenix on uncharacteristically boring form and ultimately collapses into silliness

Having given us two classic scary movies with Hereditary and Midsommar, film-maker Ari Aster now unfortunately beckons us down the rabbit hole for a giant and epically pointless odyssey of hipster non-horror. Running at over three hours, Beau Is Afraid is a colossal recovered memory of mock Oedipal agony which is scary, boring and sad in approximate proportions of 1 to 4 to 2. It’s a movie in which Aster has surrendered some of his own originality and distinction for an indulgent, derivative flourish that seems to pastiche Charlie Kaufman or Darren Aronofsky’s crazy Mother! or maybe even Richard Kelly’s much controverted Southland Tales.

Joaquin Phoenix is on really uninteresting form, playing to his weaknesses as an actor as he gives a narcissistic performance of pain, sporting a permanently zonked expression of anxiety...

One movie very nearly killed Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's action career - until Fast Five saved it. The charisma of The Rock during his early WWE days was undeniable, but despite being tipped as a potential movie star, the history of wrestlers turning to act wasn't pretty during this era. The filmographies of Hulk Hogan or Roddy Piper - They Live aside - were littered with duds, but The Rock scored two back-to-back hits with his film debut in The Mummy Returns and its spinoff series The Scorpion King. At this point, it appeared becoming an A-lister was inevitable.

To underline this point, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Johnson a symbolic passing of the action star torch in 2003 buddy comedy The Rundown; Arnie passes Johnson's character at a club and tells him to "Have fun." Unfortunately, The Rundown was a box-office disappointment for The Rock, while his remake of '70s thriller...

This article contains no Wolf Pack spoilers.

In every generation, there is a Chosen One. But for many, there’s a particular Chosen One who has transcended all that with a legacy that endures from one generation to the next.

Kendra and Faith both hold a special place in our hearts, but it’s Buffy Summers who will forever remain the blueprint, even now. Sunnydale would have been a very different place without its signature Slayer, and it’s safe to say that TV as a whole would have been very different without Sarah Michelle Gellar too.

In the 20 years that have passed since Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended, Gellar has slayed all manner of projects, from underrated roles in Ringer and Southland Tales to an instantly iconic comeback in Do Revenge.

And now she’s back on our screens, working both in-front-of and behind the camera for a new TV show called Wolf Pack.

Black Adam was sold on the star power of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but its underperformance is a sign his movie star formula is starting to falter. Johnson's leap from WWE to movies seemed like a natural move, but he famously struggled to find his feet. He may have appeared to be a successor to Schwarzenegger or Stallone, but many of his action movies like The Rundown flopped. It was only after he played Hobbs in Fast Five that both he - and viewers - got a sense of Johnson's screen persona. In the Fast sequels and movies like Rampage, he honed his screen image to perfection.

Johnson tends to play hulking, highly skilled characters who also have a sense of humor. Instead of playing more psychologically complex or tormented characters, his focus has been on making himself accessible to audiences instead and providing them with the equivalent of cinematic comfort food.

With Black Adam having just been released, it has gotten one of the lowest scores on Rotten Tomatoes for a DC Extended Universe movie, but it also has one of the highest audience scores. Despite it being critically slammed, fans will clearly defend the new Dwayne Johnson-starring superhero movie. But it isn't the first time viewers will defend what is largely considered a bad film.

Redditors have been quick to debate which bad movies they would defend to the grave, and a ton of bottom-of-the-barrel video game movies and CGI fests are thrown around like they're beloved classics. Between a David Lynch-directed movie even he wants to forget and a film where Johnson plays the US president, only hardcore fans could defend these.

Speed Racer (2008)

Even though The Matrix Revolutions wasn't the perfect conclusion to the Matrix trilogy that fans had hoped for, the Wachowski sisters were still visionary directors,...

Exclusive: Justina Machado (One Day at a Time) and Will Sasso (Loudermilk) have signed on to star in The Throwback, an indie comedy marking the feature directorial debut of Mario Garcia, which is heading into production in Tampa next month.

The film follows a married couple (Machado and Sasso) in full-blown midlife crisis who are thrown into further turmoil when the wife (Machado), an underappreciated and stressed ‘supermom,’ suffers a post-traumatic breakdown during the holiday season, causing her to regress to her 19-year-old college party-girl self.

Garcia wrote the script and will produce via his company Garcia Interactive, alongside Michael A. Alfieri of Miantri Films and Doug Fox. Machado and Sasso’s longtime manager, Danielle Del, will exec produce alongside Machado and Sterling Macer Jr.

Machado recently starred as Penelope on Sony Picture Television’s revival of One Day at a Time, and will next be seen in the Blumhouse-produced Amazon series,...

Hello, dear readers! As time marches on, that means we have another bunch of horror and sci-fi home media releases making their debut on Tuesday, and there are some genuinely fun movies, both new and old, featured in this week’s offerings. For all you lycanthropes out there, you’ll definitely want to pick up Arrow Video’s brand-new Limited Edition 4K release of An American Werewolf in London, or if you’re more in the mood for a classic chiller, then you should check out Scream Factory’s Blu-ray for Nightmare. In terms of more recent horror titles, both The Boy Behind the Door and John and the Hole are headed home on multiple formats, and for those of you looking for something a bit more sci-fi, Project Gemini from Well Go USA should do the trick.

Other releases for March 15th include Southland Tales: Standard Special Edition,...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Metrograph

“Lost Histories” offers the rarely screened On the Silver Globe and Southland Tales, among others, while films by Tarkovsky, Wenders, and more play in “The Russians Love Their Children Too,” ; a Lynne Sachs retro is underway.

Museum of the Moving Image

“See It Big: Extravaganzas!” offers films by Wes Anderson, Guy Maddin, and Francis Ford Coppola; a kung-fu retro is are underway.

Japan Society

A fantastic 4K restoration of Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo, by one of Japanese cinema’s great figures, Sadao Yamanaka, plays on Saturday, while films by Naomi Kawase,...

Articulating why it’s easy to agree with writer-director Adam McKay’s politics while disliking his films isn’t so hard. Though a smart man who can hold his own riffing with Felix Biederman on a Chapo Trap House guest appearance—and also responsible for some of the funniest movies of the past 20 years—there still seems some limitation to The Big Short and Vice as both satire and political tracts. If it bears the fault of preaching to the choir’s anger more than offering real structural critique, one has to begrudgingly admire some qualities of his newest film, even as being annoyed for a good portion of the runtime is still expected.

The first of his new era neither based on nor inspired by a true story, Don’t Look Up takes place in an unspecified year within the current socio-political hellscape where, one night within Michigan State’s astronomy department,...

[This story contains spoilers for Malignant.]

Every once and a while, a genre film comes along that’s so off-the-wall, so against the grain of the current pop-culture zeitgeist, and so wholly the work of a filmmaker’s id and formative instincts that it’s difficult to believe any major studio would give it the green light. I’m talking about films like Southland Tales (2006), Grindhouse (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009), Jupiter Ascending (2015), A Cure for Wellness (2016) and mother! (2017). It’s not that any of these films share commonalities besides their rather dismal box office receipts and polarizing audience response. It’s ...

[This story contains spoilers for Malignant.]

Every once and a while, a genre film comes along that’s so off-the-wall, so against the grain of the current pop-culture zeitgeist, and so wholly the work of a filmmaker’s id and formative instincts that it’s difficult to believe any major studio would give it the green light. I’m talking about films like Southland Tales (2006), Grindhouse (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009), Jupiter Ascending (2015), A Cure for Wellness (2016) and mother! (2017). It’s not that any of these films share commonalities besides their rather dismal box office receipts and polarizing audience response. It’s ...

It might seem impossible when we literally and figuratively have a star the size of Dwayne Johnson, that you could miss a movie of his or see it and forget about it. The man is a force, he's an icon, and he has a popular NBC show about his early life titled Young Rock and he's only 49! What is this show about? Oh nothing, it just centers on his 2032 Presidential Run. The man is a bonafide superstar! He's a titan in the film industry and The Rock is clearly one of biggest actors in the United States who's legitimately approaching National Treasure status.

At the same time the man has done a lot of movies. He may not do as many as he once did, as The Rock has become somewhat more choosy in the projects he does. In fact, he's gone from being called The Rock, to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson,...

Adapting Sergio De La Pava’s self-published, Pynchonesque, 700-page debut novel “A Naked Singularity” into an 86-minute crime saga would seem to be an inherently radical act, and yet “Naked Singularity” is . That filmmaker is “It” scribe Chase Palmer — a first-time writer-director born with a veteran producer’s name — and while his New York legal thriller boasts a few brief flights of fancy, it’s frustrating to watch a movie that wants to go full “Southland Tales” but settles for a half-hearted episode of “Law & Order: Wtf” instead (Dick Wolf is unsurprisingly credited among the executive producers).

You get the sense that John Boyega, whose social conscience has added a searching moral urgency to his post-Finn performances, was down to take things a lot further and weirder than the film around him ever does. The “Red, White and Blue” star assumes the role of Casi, a cocky but rumpled young...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSFilmmaker Bertrand Mandico has illustrated the 70th anniversary cover of Cahier du Cinéma, entitled "Gloria, angel of the history of the cinema." The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center have announced the lineup for the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films. Screenings will take place from April 28-May 8 through the MoMA and Flc virtual cinemas, and in-person screenings at Flc through May 13. The lineup of 27 features and 11 shorts includes Theo Anthony's All Light, Everywhere, Andreas Fontana's Azor, Alice Diop's We (Nous), and Jane Schoenbrun's We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Recommended VIEWINGAnother Gaze's free streaming project, Another Screen, has announced two new programmes: Hands Tied, about hands, and Eating the Other, about gendered notions of eating. The first official trailer for Mamoru Hosoda's Belle, which...

Kate: It’s not meant to be.Alex: No. Don’t say that. Something must’ve happened.A decade and a half is not really long enough to commemorate a film’s anniversary—but then again, bogus nostalgia for the immediate past is the main engine of pop culture discourse today. So here’s a wild proposition: what if 2006 was the last great year for adventurous, bigger-budget movies? It’s impossible to answer, of course, but consider these studio releases: Marie-Antoinette, Children of Men, Southland Tales, Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima diptych, Inside Man, Miami Vice, Idlewild, Crank, Idiocracy, The Holiday, The Black Dahlia. Millions were spent on bizarre highbrow and/or vanity projects like Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, Soderbergh’s The Good German, Tommy Lee Jones’ (phenomenal) The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, or Ryan Murphy’s (excruciating) Running With Scissors. World Trade Center and United...

The Criterion Collection adds another indispensable boxed set to its library with this month’s release of World of Wong Kar Wai, a package of seven essential features, all restored and remastered and accompanied by an abundance of interviews, deleted scenes, and alternate endings. Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love have been released by Criterion before, but the remaining five films – As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and 2046 – are new to the label and presented here in vastly superior presentations to prior U.S. home video releases. The early films are […]

The post World of Wong Kar Wai, The Ten Commandments, Southland Tales and More: Jim Hemphill's Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Criterion Collection adds another indispensable boxed set to its library with this month’s release of World of Wong Kar Wai, a package of seven essential features, all restored and remastered and accompanied by an abundance of interviews, deleted scenes, and alternate endings. Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love have been released by Criterion before, but the remaining five films – As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and 2046 – are new to the label and presented here in vastly superior presentations to prior U.S. home video releases. The early films are […]

The post World of Wong Kar Wai, The Ten Commandments, Southland Tales and More: Jim Hemphill's Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Stars: Justin Timberlake, Ryder Allen, Alisha Wainwright, Juno Temple, June Squibb | Written by Cheryl Guerriero | Directed by Fisher Stevens

Why is Justin Timberlake not in more movies? It was about 15 years ago that I got to see Timberlake making his first proper foray into the movie realm with the superb Alpha Dog. A movie with a wealth of unreal talent, like Ben Foster and Emile Hirsch to name a couple, and somehow Timberlake was a standout in the flick. His role in Southland Tales was the next step in cementing himself as a star in my eyes and with The Social Network it was becoming apparent to everyone.

Then you could say things kinda tapered off ,with a string of leading man roles in generic rom-coms failing to hit the mark and taking the odd bit-part and focusing back on the singing career. I have always been a fan of...

Southland Tales debuted almost 15 years ago at the Cannes Film festival. All of these years later, love it or hate it, the Richard Kelly film remains something movie fans keep talking about. The conversation around the ambitious science fiction film continues as Arrow Films has released a limited edition Blu-Ray, including the infamous “Cannes cut,” which runs […]

The post ‘Southland Tales’ Director Richard Kelly Revisits His Infamous Cult Curiosity [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

Ghost Adventures recently becoming available to stream on Discovery+. Check out some fun facts about this show from its investigator Zak Bagans.

“For more than a decade, Ghost Adventures has been spooking up the airwaves of the Travel Channel, ‘capturing groundbreaking proof of the paranormal’ on camera in different haunted destinations across the globe and using the latest scientific gadgets and technology to obtain physical evidence of spirits.”

Read more at Mental Floss.

This week’s episode of WandaVision is the first time the Marvel Cinematic Universe touched on the horror of The Blip.

“At the end of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War, half of the world was snapped away, or as it’s known in-universe, ‘The Blip.’ During Endgame, the return of all those people was really focused on bringing all these heroes together for the final battle against Thanos—a heroic coming together. What it was like for...

It takes too many words to properly describe Richard Kelly’s followup to Donnie Darko, but the oversized dystopian sci-fi epic just might grab audiences looking for weird extravagance. Cult hosannas aside, Kelly’s ‘crazy’ predictions closely resemble our present domestic chaos. Brilliant ideas rub shoulders with apocalyptic clichés and the acting styles are all over the place, but the show frequently achieves a truly goofy vibe described by its director as a cross between Philip K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon. Just be ready for a storyline that scatters in all directions. This new disc is a video debut for the original, longer Cannes preview cut.

Southland Tales

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

2006 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 145, 158 min. / Street Date January 26, 2021 / Available from Amazon / 39.95

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Nora Dunn, Janeane Garofalo, Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, Jon Lovits, Mandy Moore, Wallace Shawn, Justin Timberlake, Amy Poehler, Zelda Rubenstein,...

Richard Kelly has shared an update on his highly anticipated Rod Serling Biopic. The project was first announced back in August 2019, and The Twilight Zone fans have been waiting for any kind of update since then. However, Kelly has been pretty busy, though he admits that the upcoming biopic is a "very special project." It seems that Kelly and his crew are trying to get everything dialed before they start the production.

In a new interview promoting the Southland Tales Blu-ray edition, Richard Kelly was asked about the Rod Serling Biopic. The Donnie Darko director has not had much to say about the project since it was announced nearly two years ago, but there's a good reason for that. Rod Serling is a legendary figure, and The Twilight Zone is one of the most beloved shows of all time, so the director is taking his time. Kelly had this to say about the upcoming movie.

On January 25th Arrow Video released a Blu Ray double pack of Richard Kelly's 2006 film Southland Tales. Disc 1 includes a new 2K restoration of the Theatrical Cut, along with a new retrospective documentary on the legacy and making of the film, while Disc 2 contains the longer, rarely seen Cannes Cut, which screened at that festival back in '06 to a glacial response. This is simply a review of the Cannes Cut, not of Southland Tales itself, so spoilers ahead if you've never seen the film before.

Cards on the table: Southland Tales has long been one of my favourite films. It is flawed, confusing, often frustrating, but it is a singular vision, and one to which I immediately responded all those years ago when I saw it on DVD. Somehow, I now own both the DVD and Blu...

To argue there’s been a Southland Tales renaissance over the past decade is hardly controversial. Widely derided at its 2006 Cannes premiere—famous out the gate for being the disastrous sophomore effort following one of this century’s most promising debuts—Richard Kelly has spent the last fifteen years watching the world catch up to his vision. And people have been taking note. Once famous as the director of Donnie Darko, godfather of the indie cult hit in 2000s American cinema, time has certainly come to point to Southland Tales as his most accomplished achievement. With its anticipation of TikTok influencers, the complete specticalization of modern politics, and the film’s ability to embody the uncanny feeling of our hypermediated times, it certainly best represents his apocalyptic vision of our times.

2021 marks the fifteenth anniversary of that Cannes debut, and to celebrate the occasion Arrow Video have finally released the...

Countless directors have contended with the curse of the sophomore slump, but the saga of “Southland Tales” exists in a category of its own. Five years after his cult hit “Donnie Darko” established the filmmaker’s unique, surrealistic sci-fi voice, the filmmaker’s large-scale follow-up broke all the rules. Maligned at Cannes in 2006 when it premiered in an unfinished version, “Southland Tales” went back to the editing room, lost 20 minutes, and stumbled into theaters later in the year. Now, a new Blu-ray release from Arrow Video has brought the 160-minute Cannes cut to the public for the first time, and with it, an opportunity to fully assess one of the strangest American movies of this young century.

An audacious near-future pop fever dream under the guise of blockbuster aesthetics, “Southland Tales” starred Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a movie star who keeps forgetting his past, Sarah Michelle Gellar as a...