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Calling all Christmas movie fans! If you're looking to add even more titles to your annual lineup that includes the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime, Netflix is rolling out the red and green carpet for some major stars!

This holiday season, Netflix has six brand-new Christmas movies featuring some of the biggest names around, including the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Taron Egerton, Chad Michael Murray, Christina Milian, Sofia Carson, and the Hallmark Christmas movie queen herself Lacey Chabert. On what other channel can you get two Plastics and Lucas Scott this Christmas?!

In addition to six all-new movies ranging from romantic comedies, thrillers, and animated family films, Netflix will also ring in the holiday with Sabrina Carpenter's A Nonsense Christmas special on Dec. 6. The chart-topping singer will perform cuts from her Christmas EP and welcome surprise guests and more fun treats to celebrate her amazingly successful year.

Between Lacey Chabert...

Sex and death. Eros and Thanatos. A corpse with an erection being consumed on a beach. The latest queer comedy from Sebastián Silva (director of the criminally underrated Magic Magic) gets this lovely hand painted poster from Barcelona-based illustrator Ignasi Monreal and UK Design House Spin.  With its hungry carrion bird side-eyeing the camera and the boner pointing to the title of the film, there is nothing if not a morbid sense of humour going on in this poster. The bright yellow, and très-fat, font is almost bleeding into the sand; as if an ocean wave just passed over it. It feels a bit punk and a bit naughty.  And yet...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

"Why don't you stay your lane?" Mubi has revealed the first official trailer for the indie comedy Rotting in the Sun, the latest film from Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva. This premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where Silva has been a regular in the past - in 2013 he premiered two new films at the festival: Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and Magic Magic. The very meta film follows social media celebrity Jordan Firstman as he starts a search for the filmmaker Sebastian Silva who has gone missing in Mexico City. He strangely suspects that the cleaning lady in Sebastian's building may be involved in his disappearance. The festival adds: "Silva returns to Sundance playing a derisive version of himself in his latest black comedy, skewering not only the business of filmmaking, but also our modern solipsistic culture. Darkly funny, refreshingly audacious in its depiction of sex,...

Though details about the film are still cloaked in a black, interplanetary goo, there’s word from the Sony camp that Juno Temple will star opposite Tom Hardy in the third installment of the slightly deranged McU-adjacent “Spider-Man”-related trilogy. Michelle Williams was the romantic lead, Anne Weying, in the first two, which concluded with Hardy’s Eddie Brock/Venom and going their separate ways. It is unclear who the 33-year-old London-born Temple will be playing in the new installment, but Deadline reported her involvement.

Also, the new chapter in the “Venom” story will be Kelly Marcel’s feature directing debut. Marcel co-wrote the first “Venom” with Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinker for director Ruben Fleischer in 2018, and the slightly unhinged superhero pic went on to gross over $850 million worldwide. Marcel was the lone credited screenwriter on the sequel, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” directed by Andy Serkis, which went...

Flix FlashbackThe director of the film, Jijo Punnose, made two landmark films – ‘Padayottam’ and ‘My Dear Kuttichathan’ – and then whoosh, disappeared for long years.CrisImage courtesy - all images from Jijo Punnoose's blogThis is going to be a strange story on what’s been dubbed over and over again as an epic Indian film of all times. There is no specific occasion to write about My Dear Kuttichathan now, 36 years after its release, except that you don’t really need one. The film’s achieved so much. It’s the first stereoscopic three dimensional film in India. It has stunned everyone, young and old, who saw it. It has worked for generation after generation. What more reason do you need to write about it on a random Tuesday? Not that we woke up thinking of writing about Kuttichathan 36 years and one month after its release. An article was floating...

CinemaOther invitees from Indian include Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Ritesh Batra and Anupam Kher.Tnm StaffV Srinivas Mohan, visual effects director who worked for movies such as the Baahubali series, Enthiran and Sivaji, has featured among the 842 new members invited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to join the organisation which gives out the Oscars every year. The 2019 invite put out by the Academy also includes other prominent Indian artistes such as directors Anurag Kashyap and Zoya Akhtar, Ritesh Batra in the writers’ category, actor Anupam Kher and visual artist Sherry Bharda. On Tuesday, Srinivas Mohan tweeted the list of the Academy invitees, announcing his membership. Happy to share the news, I am now a member of the @TheAcademy https://t.co/rsIgcSAcPn — srinivas mohan Vfx (@srinivas_mohan) July 2, 2019 Srinivas Mohan has worked for many big budget movies in both Tamil and Telugu including Rajamouli’s period fantasy Baahubali,...

Over the past nine years, writer/director Sebastián Silva has completed his checklist, by premiering a film in all five categories of the Sundance narrative feature program. The winsome The Maid. The surehanded Crystal Fairy and The Magical Cactus (read review). The disturbing Magic Magic (read review). The polarizing Nasty Baby. Each was more unpredictable than the last. On top of all that, this year’s Tyrel is among his most mature and unique films to date. Ever the provocateur, Silva toys with our expectations, all while crafting an elegantly authentic portrait of toxic masculinity.

Tensions build and dissipate like tides while his camera glides through a mesmerizing weekend of debauchery.…...

"Never trust the white man." Magnolia Pictures has debuted the first official trailer for an indie drama titled Tyrel, the latest feature from Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva. This premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and it also played at the Seattle and Sydney Film Festivals. The film stars Jason Mitchell as a guy named Tyler, who joins one of his friends for a party at a cabin in the woods. After arriving, he discovers he's the only black guy there and things start to get nerve-wracking. Also starring Christopher Abbott, Nicolas Arze, Roddy Bottum, Michael Cera, Philip Ettinger, Caleb Landry Jones, Michael Zegen, and Ann Dowd. I saw this film at Sundance and didn't really like it. Though it seems like Get Out, it's more like the anti-Get Out. Have fun. Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Sebastián Silva's Tyrel, direct from Magnolia's YouTube:...

An entrancing, unconventional mermaid story from the director of “The Maid,” Sebastián Silva’s “Fistful of Dirt” has the distinction of being the first feature produced in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria hit the island in September 2017. The devastation is evident from the opening shot, which follows 12-year-old Yei Yei (Julio Gaston) across the storm-ravaged beachfront, and informs the rest of the film, whose impoverished characters are barely scraping by without electricity and basic resources, although the story — a dark Brothers Grimm-like fairy tale anchored by a terrific child-actor performance, but not for kids per se — is one Silva had developed years before.

It’s a credit to Silva and co-writer Pedro Peirano that they were able to revive a pre-existing idea and adapt it to such an emotionally charged milieu, giving audiences an invaluable look at Maria’s apocalyptic impact (although one could argue that there’s something perverse...

Exclusive: The Mountain Between Us director Hany Abu-Assad, whose hard-hitting dramas Omar and Paradise Now were both Oscar-nominated, has joined Iraq war feature A Brotherhood as an executive producer.

Joining the drama as producers are Jordan Foley and Jonathan Rosenthal of Mill House Motion Pictures, producers of SXSW Audience Award-winner All Square, starring Michael Kelly.

Abu-Assad, whose 2017 survival story The Mountain Between Us starred Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, told us he was attracted by the project’s “emotional and thrilling script, which we hope can be a modern-day answer to The Deer Hunter.”

As we previously revealed, actor-turned-producer David Moscow (Big) will also produce the movie, the sophomore film from writer-director Bandar Albuliwi, whose 2013 debut Peace After Marriage starred Hiam Abbas (Insyriated).

Currently in advanced development, A Brotherhood tells the story of William, a struggling U.S. veteran of the Iraq War, who is forced to return to the...

Exclusive: Actor-turned-producer David Moscow (Big), an executive producer on David Robert Mitchell’s Cannes Competition entry Under The Silver Lake, will produce Iraq war drama A Brotherhood, which is currently scouting locations in the Middle East.

Moscow will produce under his UnLtd Productions banner, which has previously produced movies including To Dust, Thirst Street and Hellbenders. Fellow Under The Silver Lake execs Jason Dreyer (To Dust) and Todd Remis (Magic Magic) will serve as executive producers on the project, which is the second feature from writer-director Bandar Albuliwi, whose 2013 debut Peace After Marriage starred Hiam Abbas (Insyriated).

A Brotherhood tells the story of William, a struggling U.S. veteran of the Iraq War, who is forced to return to the Middle East after Isis kidnaps his estranged brother. Albuliwi was inspired to write the film after coming across a 2015 article about a 28-year old former American soldier who travelled from...

How does “Tyrel” differ from Sebastián Silva’s earlier films? “It was an actual screenplay,” he explained during an interview at the IndieWire Studio at the Sundance Film Festival this January. It was far from the Chilean filmmaker’s first time in Park City — “The Maid,” “Crystal Fairy,” “Magic Magic,” and “Nasty Baby’ all premiered there as well — but its editing process required an evolution in his style.

Silva credits much of that to editor Sofia Subercaseaux, who was with him in the IndieWire Studio. “What was very heroic from Sofia is that these movies are shot in a very unorthodox way. We rarely turn the camera off, you know, when we do takes…It’s a movie that didn’t take that long to shoot, but it takes a long time to edit.”

“I know what the movies are about before you’re shooting them. I feel like we...

There's a time and place for films where nothing really happens, but this is not one of those times. Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva is a regular at Sundance, having brought his films Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and Magic Magic in years past. He's back again to premiere his latest film, Tyrel, and unfortunately this film is a huge let down. I'm just going to state it right up front: nothing happens in this film. It has all this underlying tension, but none of it leads to anywhere, and none of it means anything. I'm starting to think I just do not like the films Silva makes, mostly because nothing happens. They're boring exercises in telling dull, dry stories that play well at festivals, but have no place in the bigger cinematic universe. Which is unfortunate, because I was really hoping his film Tyrel might have something to say,...

The heart of Paris beats for film industry in June. Industry Week is the professional part of the Champs-Elysées Film Festival.

The submissions for Us in Progress are now open till August 15th here.

This label includes the Us in Progress (USiP) and Les Arc Film Fesstival’s team presenting the Paris Coproduction Village and La Residence de la Cinefondation which welcomes a dozen young directors who come to Paris to work on their first or second fiction feature project for 4 and 1/2 months. All together, they offer 24 film projects at different stages, from development to post production. More than 200 professionals from the industry, producers, international sellers, distributors, etc. are welcomed.

This year Us in Progress broke out. It has become a top event for discovering American independent cinema not only for the Europeans invited to attend, but for Americans who find themselves in Paris for the event or who even...

Screen luminaries from around the world are invited once a year to New Zealand for its annual industry gathering, the Big Screen Symposium. Last year, guest speaker Sebastiàn Silva (Nasty Baby, The Maid) shared his horror stories of working with Christopher Doyle, who (Silva claimed) exposed himself to everyone on the set of Magic Magic, refused to shoot close ups (“That’s HBO bullshit”) and generally caused chaos. When Doyle himself was announced as a guest speaker for this year’s event, it was clear the Symposium intended to take the announced theme of “Playing With Risk” quite literally. And so from […]...

Taking him further down the subvert-a-comedic-performer’s-persona trail blazed with Crystal Fairy and Nasty Baby, writer-director Sebastian Silva is hoping to have Will Ferrell lead Captain Dad, a “family thriller” that’s nabbed Catherine Keener and his Crystal Fairy / Magic Magic star Michael Cera. [Variety]

On paper, its set-up doesn’t sound worlds apart from Ferrell’s best-known work: Rich Peelman (there’s your first sign) celebrates his wife’s (Keener) birthday by taking her, their six children, and the children’s partners “on a trip through the Caribbean on a sail boat.” But things go awry when his “subpar sailing abilities [there’s the second] and clashes of attitude with the rest of the family are brought into question” — supposedly to ends more overtly dramatic than comedic.

With good forces (including Archer Gray and Christine Vachon‘s Killer Films) supporting it, we should hear more about Captain Dad in the coming months. Based on established facts,...

After breaking out with “The Maid” in 2009, director Sebastián Silva has been inching his way toward working with bigger stars without losing his personal storytelling voice. He teamed with Michael Cera for back-to-back movies “Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus” and “Magic Magic,” and then worked with Kristen Wiig on “Nasty Baby.” Now he’s once […]

The post Will Ferrell, Catherine Keener & Michael Cera Are All Aboard For Sebastian Silva’s ‘Captain Dad’ appeared first on The Playlist.

Catherine Keener and Michael Cera also star in the family holiday comedy.

Will Ferrell will star in Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva’s Captain Dad alongside two-time Oscar-nominee Catherine Keener and Michael Cera.

The dark comedy sees Ferrell playing the patriarch of a wealthy American family who books a lavish Caribbean vacation for his wife’s (Keeners) birthday.

While there, infighting amongst the family (with Cera playing the daughter’s boyfriend) tests their relationships to the limit.

Cera previously starred in director Silva’s features Magic Magic, which played in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2013 and The Crystal Fairy, which won the directing award at Sundance in 2013.

Anne Carey and Archer Gray (Mr Holmes) will produce the film. Christine Vachon and Killer Films will exec.

Protagonist Pictures is introducing Captain Dad to international buyers at Cannes. UTA Independent Film Group is packaging and will handle distribution in North America.

The production will shoot in September.

An abrupt shift of register undermines Sebastián Silva’s tale of a gay couple who help a friend get pregnant

The Chilean director Sebastián Silva made a striking debut with his black comedy The Maid, then went manically astray with the tourists-in-trouble diptych Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and Magic Magic. Nasty Baby finds him on firmer ground, up to a point. Silva himself and Tunde Adebimpe (from the band TV on the Radio) play a gay couple who agree to help a friend (Kristen Wiig) get pregnant by artificial insemination. The film, which is set in New York, starts as an amiably loose-limbed improv comedy of bohemian pretensions: Silva’s character is an artist whose latest project has adults playing babies. At the end, however, Nasty Baby veers into an incongruously brutal register and the shift feels utterly jarring – as was no doubt intended. But this is one of...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Christmas, Again (Charles Poekel)

Christmas time is a lonely time for many; a “time of giving” that reminds more than a few of us what we’ve lost. This is the feeling Christmas, Again wades in, as produced, written and directed by Charles Poekel. We follow Noel (Kentucker Audley), who’s selling Christmas trees on a Manhattan curb for the fifth winter in a row. He...

Sebastián Silva’s bizarre movie borders on incoherence but holds interest in its acting and direction

Whoa! This week’s Wtf moment comes from the Chilean director Sebastián Silva, responsible for the Losey-esque class satire The Maid and the disturbing thriller Magic Magic. This is a strange, unclassifiable piece of work, bordering on craziness and incoherence but acted and directed with such quiet vehemence that it has some interest. (Interestingly, the co-producer is Pablo Larraín, whose eerie satire The Club is in UK cinemas.) Nasty Baby attempts to cross social satire with extreme confrontation (a la Straw Dogs) and finally noir farce. Silva plays Freddy, a conceptual artist in Brooklyn working on a video piece featuring him playing a baby, in which he also casts his partner, Mo (Tunde Adebimpe). He is donating sperm to their friend Polly, played by Kristen Wiig, who is longing for an actual baby. Wiig...

Bob Dylan will appear in animated form at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in “Bob Dylan Hates Me,” which will debut in the same shorts program as “The Chickening,” the bizarre animated short film that had Midnight audiences clucking at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall. Both films were included in the Sundance Institute’s announcement of 72 short films that will screen at the festival, which takes place Jan. 21-31 in Utah. Sebastian Silva, one of the festival’s favorite sons who has premiered “The Maid,” “Magic Magic” and “Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus” at Sundance, returns once again with.

Currently titled after Portuguese’s second largest city and favorite gross domestic product, this fictional feature debut comes from a name who has appeared in such publications as Sight & Sound, Film Comment, and Cinema Scope. Gabe Klinger saw his non-fiction feature debut played out on the Lido (Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater) and earlier this year he packed Lucie Lucas and Anton Yelchin (the narrator is the dearly departed Chantal Akerman) for a Portugal/Paris shoot on the failed love theme. Porto is another Champs-Elysées Film Festival (2015) Us in Progress selected project to be featured on our predictions list, this was filmed in multiple film formats and carries a distinct Euro feel and appeal.

Gist: Co-written by Klinger and Larry Gross, this is the story of the doomed romance between a man (Yelchin) and a woman (Lucas) set in Porto, Portugal.

Production Co./Producers: Rodrigo Areias (Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater...

Chicago – “Nasty Baby” is a family film, with a family that consists of a gay/mixed race couple, and their best girlfriend who wants to have a baby with them. This unconventionality is made less remarkable simply because the characters are all motivated by their own fragile egos – which sometimes is good, and sometimes not so much.

The director is Sebastián Silva, who also wrote the screenplay and plays a lead role as Freddy, part of the gay couple. His partner is Mo (Turide Adebimpe), and the couple’s baby maker is Polly, portrayed exquisitely by Kristin Wiig. Their determination, fueled by Polly’s biological clock, creates a tense atmosphere that leads to a troubling situation. It is, however, an authentic slice of life, and wickedly realized by the acting and production team.

Kristen Wiig and Sebastián Silva in ‘Nasty Baby’

Photo credit: The Orchard

Sebastián Silva was born in Chilé,...

This is a reprint of our review from the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Sebastian Silva is one of the most interesting and likable filmmakers working at the moment, creating movies that are loose and relaxed, but also risky, tapping into dark secrets and deep wells of the human experience. He’s also got a knack for working with comedic performers and allowing them to play in a new realm, against type. His films “Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus” and “Magic Magic” debuted at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, both starring Michael Cera, and Silva returns to the festival this year with “Nasty Baby,” starring himself, Kristen Wiig, and Tunde Adebimpe. Again, he creates a world of amicable and fun characters that you enjoy being around, but the film takes a hard left in the last act that leaves one feeling a bit confounded about the overall story. But first: Silva plays Freddy,...

Kristen Wiig's upcoming pregnancy drama Nasty Baby is wacky in the best way possible.

The Sundance Film Festival favourite comes from writer-director-star Sebastián Silva, the filmmaker behind indie dramas Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic.

Gay couple Freddy (Silva) and Mo (TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe) are determined to have a baby with best friend Polly (Kristen Wiig).

Fertility issues throw their plans out of whack, but the trio are determined to make their dreams of parenthood come true.

If that sounds like a somewhat conventional pregnancy drama to you, click play on the trailer to see a radical reinvention of the genre.

Nasty Baby has a limited cinema and VOD release in the Us on October 30. A UK release has not been set yet.

The first trailer is out for the new Kristen Wiig-led indie drama "Nasty Baby" which gets a limited theatrical release starting October 23rd followed by a VOD release a week later.

Wiig plays a woman trying to get pregnant with the help of her best friends, gay couple Freddy (Sebastian Silva) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) in Brooklyn.

Sebastian Silva, who also directed "The Maid" and "Magic Magic," helms the surprising looking project which seems to have an unexpected thriller vibe at points.

Premiering at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Nasty Baby gives Kristen Wiig yet another substantial independent dramatic role. Coming from Sebastián Silva (Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, Magic Magic), the film follows a gay couple who try to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly. The trio navigates the idea of creating life while confronted by unexpected harassment from a neighborhood man called The Bishop. As their clashes grow increasingly aggressive, odds are someone is getting hurt. The first U.S. trailer and poster have now arrived ahead of a release next fall.

We said in our review, “The first two acts manage to balance all these plot lines with a clear focus to this improvised picture. The film never runs in circles or gets lost in ad-libbing. Silva creates a loose, authentic and warm vibe with immensely charming performances. Nasty Baby features Wiig’s...

Magic Magic and Ant-Man no contest for Arnie sequel.

Terminator Genisys topped this week’s UK buzz chart, according to data from Way To Blue.

On its first week of release, the action sequel generated more than 11,000 comments across social media, news, forums and blogs from July 2-8.

Of those, 36% expressed intent-to-view, meaning they would look to see the film in the cinema.

Ahead of its UK release, superhero movie Ant-Man ranked second with more than 7,400 comments (16.5% ItV).

In third was male stripper sequel Magic Mike Xxl, which came close to 7,100 comments (31% ItV).

Of the films opening this weekend, comedy sequel Ted 2 generated the most buzz with 3,233 comments (32%).

Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, which opened last weekend, was close behind with 3,226 (34% ItV).

Juno Temple doesn't tend to discriminate when it comes to her movie roles. She's appeared in everything from Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" to William Friedkin's delightfully sleazy "Killer Joe" to this year's underrated period piece "Far From The Madding Crowd." But she also tends to jump into an occasional indie that comes along, which means there are movies like "The Brass Teapot" and "Magic Magic," scattered across her filmography and "Safelight" looks like another to fit that category of forgettable films. Co-staring Evan Peters, Christine Lahti, and Ariel Winter, the movie tells the unlikely story of a high school kid who whisks away a prostitute from her dangerous pimp, and shows her the beauty of photography. Uh...here's the official synopsis:  The paths of three desperate individuals perilously cross in a dusty desert town. Charles (Evan Peters) is a high school senior with physical challenges,...

Network takes UK rights to Sebastián Silva drama, co-starring Kristen Wiig and Tunde Adebimpe.

Network Releasing has acquired UK rights to Chilean-American drama Nasty Baby, written, directed by and starring Sebastián Silva (Magic Magic) alongside Oscar-nominee Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids).

Nasty Baby won the ‘Teddy’ Best Feature Film at Berlin International Film Festival 2015 and is the sixth film from the Chilean writer director.

It follows the lives of gay couple Freddie (played by Sebastián) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), who together with their friend Polly (Wiig) are looking to have a baby.

Tim Beddows, managing director at Network, said: “Sebastián is a fantastic talent and I’m thrilled to announce that Network will be bringing Nasty Baby to audiences in the UK.”

Other cast include Mark Margolis (Breaking Bad) Alia Shawkat, (Arrested Development) and Reg E. Cathey (House Of Cards).

Network is planning to open Nasty Baby in UK cinemas in autumn 2015.

At the moment, Michael Cera is in London kicking off a UK tour as part of Alden Penner's band, but before he went abroad to exercise his musical chops, the actor stopped by The Criterion Collection, dipped into its archives, and came up with some surprising selections. Read More: Review: 'Magic Magic' Starring Michael Cera, Juno Temple & Emily Browning   The actor showed off his arthouse knowledge, selecting Yasujiro Ozu's "Good Morning," Abbas Kiarostami's "Close-Up," along with the Eclipse set "The Actuality Dramas Of Allan King" (the color design which Cera hilariously notes matches his shirt). But for his final pick, Cera opts for Sydney Pollack's classic "Tootsie." The actor has some pretty nice insights on all the titles, and it's worth spending a quick five minutes to check out the movies you might not expect Cera to champion. Watch below.

Read More: Sebastian Silva on Why Toronto Rejected 'Nasty Baby' and How 'Quirk is Bad'No one can accuse Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva of holding back. During our interview with Silva at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, the filmmaker was extremely candid about his battle with Sony over his little-seen thriller "Magic Magic," and how the Toronto International Film Festival rejected his latest, "Nasty Baby," because of its wacky third act twist. Over the weekend at the 2015 Provincetown International Film Festival in Massachusetts, where "Nasty Baby" screened, Silva took part in the morning panel, "That's Not Funny: Making Uncomfortable Comedy," alongside "Funny Bunny" director Alison Bagnall and producer Laura Heberton, moderated by The Boston Globe's Janice Page. Once again, he didn't let the press in attendance keep him from speaking his mind, this time with regards to his distaste for the comedy...

Exclusive: Rachel Weisz to star in and produce true story; Protagonist launches in Cannes.

Rachel Weisz is to star in and produce $15m kidnapping thriller Snatchback, from Dredd director Pete Travis.

Oscar-winner Weisz (The Constant Gardener) co-developed the project and will produce alongside Frida Torresblanco (Pan’s Labyrinth, Magic Magic) of New York-based Braven Films.

Travis, also known for making Omagh and Vantage Point, has written the script and will direct.

Snatchback is based on the true story of Maureen Dabbagh, a woman from Virginia whose ex-husband stole away their two year-old daughter and took her to the Middle East in 1992. Dabbagh spent more than a decade searching for her daughter, one of 1,000 children illegally abducted from the Us each year, before she finally found her.

In Travis’s script, Weisz’s character becomes a mercenary engaged in dangerous missions across the Middle East to help other families recover kidnapped children – while never giving up on her...

Following his two film punch at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, where he premiered the stoner comedy "Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus" and the dark thriller "Magic Magic," Chilean writer-director Sebastian Silva returned this year with "Nasty Baby," a film that plays like both of those works melded into one unruly whole. Days after its world premiere in Park City in January, where the film was greeted with more than a few walkouts thanks to its shocking dark twist, Silva brought the film to the Berlin International Film Festival. The trip was worth it: "Nasty Baby" won the event's Teddy Award for best queer film. In Silva's largely autobiographical film, which he shot in his own Brooklyn apartment, Silva stars as a performance artist living with his boyfriend and attempting to impregnate his best friend (Kristen Wiig). Indiewire sat down with Silva in Berlin shortly before the film bagged its award.

If you couldn't tell from the reactions on social media, It was a very good year in Park City (well, at least on the narrative side). The 2015 Sundance Film Festival featured a dramatic competition with far fewer bad eggs than usual, a Next slate which once again got people excited, a number of the noncompetitive premieres that surprised (we're looking at you "Brooklyn"), two closing night films that were reportedly pretty good (a rare occurrence for any film festival) and acclaimed movies that landed distribution deals which you'll be talking about all year long.   While we endeavored to post as many individual reviews as possible the intensity of Sundance often makes it quite difficult to review everything.  Especially, when you've seen 23 1/2 movies over 8 days.*  Therefore, this post will include a number of capsule reviews for films HitFix has not individually reviewed, my thoughts on films Drew McWeeny and Dan Fienberg...

The follow-up to Sebastián Silva’s 2013 efforts "Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus" and "Magic Magic," "Nasty Baby" follows a gay couple — Freddy (Silva) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) — as they try to conceive a baby with their friend Polly (Kristen Wiig), deal with a neighborhood menace ambiguously named "The Bishop," and set up Freddy’s experimental art show, all within the constraints of gentrified Brooklyn. Freddy is a conceptual artist, fleshing out a performance art project called "Nasty Baby" for a collective art show at a local gallery. The abstract concept — which we’re preemptively confronted with at the very beginning of the film — finds him stripping his clothes and returning to a primal, infantile state. Essentially, this entails lying naked on the ground, cooing, crying, and writhing around in his best imitation of a newborn. Part of the inspiration for the project stems from Freddy’s preoccupation with conceiving...

Plot: A Manhattan gay couple (Sebastian Silva & Tunde Adebimpe) try to have a baby with their best friend (Kristen Wiig) but wind up dealing with a dilemma that shakes all of them to the core and tests their devotion to each other. Review: Sebastian Silva's a director I've been interested in for awhile now. Two years ago, he hit Sundance with not one, but two strikingly different films, Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic. Now he's back with Nasty Baby, a film which on the surface is a...

Sebastián Silva is a director who strives for the unexpected. Both premiering at Sundance a few years ago, Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy are wild movies, often veering into strange and dark territory. Even if the tonal or structural gambles don’t always payoff, it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker take those kind of chances. Silva does that yet again with Nasty […]...

Sebastian Silva is one of the most interesting and likable filmmakers working at the moment, creating movies that are loose and relaxed, but also risky, tapping into dark secrets and deep wells of the human experience. He’s also got a knack for working with comedic performers and allowing them to play in a new realm, against type. His films “Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus” and “Magic Magic” debuted at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, both starring Michael Cera, and Silva returns to the festival this year with “Nasty Baby,” starring himself, Kristen Wiig, and Tunde Adebimpe. Again, he creates a world of amicable and fun characters that you enjoy being around, but the film takes a hard left in the last act that leaves one feeling a bit confounded about the overall story. But first: Silva plays Freddy, an artist living with his boyfriend Mo (Adebimpe) and attempting to impregnate his best girl friend,...

Chicago – This Thursday marks the beginning of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and yours truly will be in attendance to cover the fest for HollywoodChicago.com. Last year, the Park City, Utah event introduced the world to its 2014-defining sensations like “Whiplash” and “Boyhood”.

Those titles followed in the paths of indie landmarks such as “sex, lies and videotape,” “Clerks,” “Hoop Dreams,” “American Movie,” “Memento,” “Frozen River,” “Winter’s Bone,” and “Fruitvale Station,” among many others.

In pursuit of new favorite films for a new year, I’ve composed a relatively solid schedule so that I can devour as much diverse Sundance goodness as possible. Narratives, documentaries, white supremacists, nasty babies, Neil Hamburger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, stolen cop cars, and much, much more are all in play. But with hopes that everything I witness is the next “Boyhood”-like zeitgeist, I’ll be sure to report back here on what’s worth,...

Christmas is over, and New Year's is bearing down upon us like a predatory alien seductress or a savagely ruthless photojournalist (take your pick).

You've already seen our list of the 25 best movies of the year so far, and now it's time to single out the actors and actresses who made the biggest impression on us in 2014.

Below are Digital Spy's 12 favourite big-screen performances of the year.

1. Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler)

Perhaps the most instantly iconic movie character of the year, Nightcrawler's Lou Bloom is the walking embodiment of naked ambition. A drifter determined to carve himself out a career, Lou stalks the streets of La in search of grisly crime scenes to capture on camera, selling the footage on to the highest bidding news outfit.

As the film's title implies, Lou is closer to predatory animal than man, Jake Gyllenhaal's wolfish smile and gaunt physique turning him wraithlike...

The Chilean filmmaker locked two premieres at Sundance back in ’13 with Magic Magic and Crystal Fairy and later that fall, began lensing Nasty Baby with ’14 “it” actress Kristen Wiig (The Skeleton Twins played like gangbusters). Following in his eclectic, tongue-in-cheek, family-based narrative interests, such as in Crystal Fairy, Sebastián Silva moves once again in front of the camera for this Brooklyn-set adoption dramedy. Surprisingly, the U.S-Euro-Latin American co-production wasn’t part of the make-up of the 2014 film fest circuit, suggesting that Park City might be the perfect launching pad.

Gist: Set in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, this centers around a couple, Freddy (Sebastián Silva) and his boyfriend Mo (Tunde Adebimpe), who are trying to have a baby with the help of their best friend, Polly (Wiig). Freddy is an artist, and his latest work is all about babies – it’s clear he’s dying to be a father. Polly is...

Juno Temple stars in Alexandre Aja's new fantasy horror Horns as the angelic girlfriend of Daniel Radcliffe's increasingly devilish Ig, whose death is the driving force behind the film's strange, dark flights of fancy.

Digital Spy caught up with Temple last week to discuss the challenges of playing "a memory" in Horns, her too-little-seen performance in Sebastián Silva's Magic Magic, and her formative experiences with 2014's two buzziest leading men, Benedict Cumberbatch and Matthew McConaughey.

What appealed to you about playing Merrin?

The script was such a page-turner, and the people attached to it were so cool - I think Dan is making such interesting and brilliant and brave choices right now, and delivering incredible performances. And when I met Alex Aja, he just had such passion for this universe he was going to create, and for Ig and Merrin and their love story, that I was completely enthralled.

From master-of-horror Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D) comes Horns, a supernatural, offbeat thriller starring beloved British actor Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter, Kill Your Darlings) and Juno Temple (Magic Magic, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For).

Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) is accused for the violent rape and killing of his girlfriend, Merrin Williams (Juno Temple). After a hard night of drinking, Ig awakens, hungover, to find horns growing out of his head; they have the ability to drive people to confess sins and give in to selfish impulses. Ig decides to use this effective tool to discover the circumstances of his girlfriend’s death and to seek revenge by finding the true murderer…

In this interview for Nerdly, film correspondent James Kleinmann asks Daniel Radcliffe (who plays Ig Perrish in the film) what his initial reaction was when he read the screenplay for Horns.

Check out our...

Production wraps Tuesday on the indie movie “The Big Spoon,” an “unromantic comedy” that stars Zach Knighton from “Happy Endings” and “House of Cards” actress Isabelle McNally. Carlyn Hudson is directing from a script she co-wrote with fellow University of Texas grad Mallory Culbert, who also co-stars alongside Chilean import Agustin Silva from “Crystal Fairy” and “Magic Magic.” Also read: Judd Apatow's Romantic Comedy ‘Love’ Lands Two Season Commitment From Netflix “The Big Spoon” explores themes of love, commitment and most importantly, female friendship. Loosely based on Culbert and Hudson's previous relationship endeavors, the film follows two very different women in two very different.

Believe it or not, films and television programmes added to Netflix and Amazon do have a tendency to expire and no longer be there after a while; this isn’t as publicised as when the titles in question are added though. So by the time you read this there are around 50 titles disappearing from Netflix.

If you have ever wanted to watch the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo then you have probably missed your chance by now. What this does mean however is that probably next week Netflix will have added a whole raft of new stuff, I say new but it will probably be a mixture of catalogue and stuff from the last year. I know that the underrated Enders Game and the superior Hunger Games: Catching Fire is due there in September, I just don’t know when.

In other Netflix news, they made industry headlines...

The new UK trailer and quad poster for Alexandre Aja's 'Horns' has arrived. Set to hit UK theatres on 29 October (whilst our American counterparts will get it on Halloween) the movie is based on the novel by Joe Hill and stars our two English leads Daniel Radcliffe ('The Woman in Black') and Juno Temple ('Magic Magic'), both of whom feature on the new quad shown below. The movie also stars Max Minghella ('The Social Network'), Joe Anderson ('The Crazies'), Kelli Garner, Heather Graham and James Remar ('Dexter'). And don't forget that Alexandre Aja will be ending his 2014 horror slate with the Gregory Levasseur helmed horror The Pyramid' on 5 December which Aja helped produce....

Powers Boothe and Ray Liotta ('Goodfellas') can be seen sneering on a couple of the latest character posters taken from the upcoming 'Sin City: A Dame to Kill For'. Arriving in Us theatres next Friday the sequel will be bringing with it more noir comic styled action and plenty of familiar as well as new faces in Basin City. Boothe plays corrupt official Roark whilst Liotta plays the role of Joey Canelli. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller co-direct the follow-up to 2005's hit action crime thriller. The sequel stars Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Josh Brolin ('Oldboy'), Rosario Dawson ('Trance'), Alexa Vega ('Spy Kids'), Jaime King, Juno Temple ('Magic Magic'), Jessica Alba, Eva Green, Jamie Chung, Dennis Haysbert, Joseph Gordon-Levit ('Looper') and Jeremy Piven ('Entourage'). Check out the new posters below....

After raising a few eyebrows in 'Machete Kills' it appears that the now very grown up Alexa Vega is once again flaunting her sexuality on this latest character poster from Rob Rodriguez and Frank Miller's 'Sin City: A Dame to Kill For'. The 25 year old actress is certainly putting her innocent 'Spy Kids' days well and truly behind her and is bringing her cheeky side out once more playing the role of Gilda in the upcoming noir sequel. Vega stars alongside Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Josh Brolin ('Oldboy'), Rosario Dawson ('Trance'), Jaime King, Juno Temple ('Magic Magic'), Jessica Alba, Eva Green, Jamie Chung, Dennis Haysbert, Powers Boothe, Ray Liotta, Joseph Gordon-Levit ('Looper') and Jeremy Piven ('Entourage'). Head below for the poster....