A24
Janelle Monaé to Play Josephine Baker in A24 Series De La Resistance
Janelle Monaé is set to portray cabaret singer-turned secret agent and civil rights activist Josephine Baker in A24’s forthcoming television series De La Resistance, Deadline reports. Created and run by Jennifer Yale (Legion, Outlander), De La Resistance follows Baker’s career as a barrier-breaking entertainer and a World War II secret agent for the French Resistance. Born in America but loyal to France, Baker performed at the Folies Bergère in Paris and was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics. In 1939, she was recruited into France’s military intelligence agency, where she socialized with Germans at embassies, ministries, and night clubs to gain information for the war effort. She was later award...
Moonlight Soundtrack Gets Deluxe Vinyl Reissue for 5th Anniversary of Oscar Win
A24 has announced a deluxe vinyl box set of the Moonlight soundtrack in honor of the film’s historic Oscar win five years ago. The reissue will feature the full original soundtrack by Nicholas Britell as well as eleven previously unreleased tracks like “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” “I’ve Seen Good and You Ain’t It,” and “Why’d You Call Me?” In addition, the box set includes a dual bound sewn book; Britell’s original, handwritten score to “Little’s Theme”; and a commemorative essay by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Pre-orders are now ongoing. “It’s been so exciting to revisit Moonlight with Barry and to now present this five year anniversary edition deluxe vinyl,” said Britell in a statement. “Working on Moonlight was a truly unforgettable journey for all of us, and we are thrille...
Megan Thee Stallion, Nathan Lane, Bowen Yang, and Megan Mullally Join A24’s Fucking Identical Twins
In a collaboration we certainly couldn’t have predicted, musical theater icon Nathan Lane and recent college graduate Megan Thee Stallion will be joining Megan Mullally and SNL’s Bowen Yang in Fucking Identical Twins, a forthcoming musical comedy from A24. Described as a “subversive spin” on The Parent Trap, Fucking Identical Twins stars and is written by comedians Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp. It’s based on the duo’s two-man stage show, which they premiered at New York’s iconic Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 2014. Larry Charles (Borat) will direct the film, which is currently in production. Similar to the 1961 film (and the 1998 masterpiece of a remake), Fucking Identical Twins follows two rival businessmen who realize they’re, well, fucking identical tw...
Michelle Yeoh Must Save the Multiverse, Do Her Taxes in Everything Everywhere All at Once Trailer: Watch
Michelle Yeoh is an exhausted Chinese American woman tasked with not only saving the whole multiverse but also doing her taxes in the bonkers trailer for Everything Everywhere All at Once. The new film from A24 is directed by the duo behind Swiss Army Man, Daniels (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) and comes to theaters on March 25th. The trailer for Everything Everywhere All at Once opens with Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) zoning out before a distant voice snaps her back to reality. “Mrs. Wang, are you with us?” a wigged Jamie Lee Curtis asks over a mountain of paper receipts. “Now you may only see a pile of receipts, but I see a story,” she says. “I can see where this story is going, and it does not look good.” At these stressful words, unseen hands suddenly pull Evelyn throug...
A24 Shares Trailer for Sean Baker’s New Film Red Rocket: Watch
Sean Baker, the award-winning director behind The Florida Project and Tangerine, is getting ready to unveil his latest feature film, Red Rocket. A24 has just released the first trailer for the dark comedy, which you can watch below. Red Rocket tells the story of washed-up porn star Mikey Saber, played by Simon Rex, as he decides to return to his small hometown of Texas City, Texas, a Gulf Coast city in Galveston County. While it’s clear that nobody wants him to come back, Saber makes the most of his journey by trying to reconnect with old friends, make amends with his foes, and even pursue a new relationship. In the trailer, we see Saber putting on his best smile and flexing his porn star muscles while roaming about the dusty Texas town. After trying to land a job and convince his wif...
NYFF Review: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Avuncular for the Warm, Low-Key C’mon C’mon
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Every five years or so, Mike Mills — not the one from R.E.M., though, confusingly, he is a music video director and graphic designer for some of their contemporaries — releases a sensitive, heartfelt drama about delicate but deceptively strong family ties. C’mon C’mon is the 2021 model, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a documentarian who must unexpectedly spend several weeks taking care of his nine-year-old nephew. I’ll Figure It Out: “Nobody knows what they’re doing. You just have to keep doing it.” That’s advice given late in C’mon C’mon by Viv (Gaby Hoffman) to her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) as he struggles to figure out how to substitute-parent her nine-year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman). Viv has been c...
A24’s Lamb is Slow-Burn Folk Horror Like Ewe Have Never Seen: Review
The Pitch: Out in the foggy hills of Iceland, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Gudnason), a couple spending a dignified, quiet existence on their sheep farm, reside far from the rest of civilization. It’s relatively unspoken, but one intuits early that they’re reeling from the recent loss of a child. It still stings, but the two press on in their virtually silent existence, going about their chores and assisting their ewes’ new births. One day, a member of the flock gives birth to a curious creature — an uncanny hybrid of man and lamb — that the pair immediately adopt as their own child. Her name? Ada. But as the three of them build a strangely comforting existence together, their fog-shrouded idyll is disrupted by forces outside their control. The arrival of Ingvar’s dead...
NYFF Review: Simon Rex Gets a Surprising A24 Showcase in Sean Baker’s Red Rocket
The Pitch: Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) rolls back into his hometown on a bus, bruised and nearly penniless. His career as an adult film performer has seemingly dried up some time ago, so he shows up at the doorstep of his not-quite-ex-wife Lexi (Bree Elrod), another porn-industry castoff. With few job prospects and no car — he tools around on a one-speed bike — Mikey attempts to rebuild his life. This might sound like a kitchen-sink recovery drama, but Mikey’s interest in self-improvement is questionable and filmmaker Sean Baker’s interest in misery-wallowing is, as ever, minimal. Instead, Red Rocket is a queasily hilarious chronicle of misdirected American hustle. Sunshine States: After exploring the streets of Los Angeles in Tangerine and the outskirts of Orlando in The Florida Project, Bake...
NYFF Review: Joel Coen Goes Solo in Style with The Tragedy of Macbeth
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The Coen Brothers plus Shakespeare — whaddaya need, a roadmap? Actually, you might; or at least a program note to explain why The Tragedy of Macbeth has only one Coen on hand. It’s not a retro affectation that Joel Coen is taking sole director credit, as he used to on the joint Coen projects (until 2004’s The Ladykillers, Joel took “director” and Ethan handled “producer,” even though they were always really doing both). Ethan is taking a break from making movies, while Joel has mounted a black-and-white version of Shakespeare’s famous (and fleetest?) tragedy, with Denzel Washington as Lord Macbeth, who becomes convinced he must take bloody action to fulfill his destiny and become king of Scotland, and France...
Zola Turns a Twitter Thread Into a Thrilling Dark Comedy: Review
This review originally ran as part of our Sundance 2020 coverage and has been updated as of June 2021. The Pitch: “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out????????” began Aziah “Zola” Wells’ epic 2015 Twitter thread, a near-mythic tale of strippers, murder, and kidnappings that went immediately viral. Five years later, here we are, with the first film ever derived from a series of tweets, recounting the story of how Zola (Taylour Paige) falls in with a fellow stripper named Stefani (Riley Keough), who ends up roping her into a road trip to Tampa with her boyfriend Derrek (Succession‘s Cousin Greg himself, Nicholas Braun) and her “roommate” X (Colman Domingo). But it doesn’t take long before Zola figures out the real score: Stefani turns out to be a sex work...
A24 Releases Trailer for Zola, Stripper Film Based on Viral Twitter Thread: Watch
A24 has released the official trailer for their new movie Zola, which premiered at Sundance in early 2020. The film is based on a viral Twitter thread that tells the true story of two strippers who embark on a treacherous road trip across Florida. Directed by Janicza Bravo and starring Riley Keough as Stefani and Taylour Paige as Zola, who fall in love with one another and trek across the state to see how much money they can make as dancers. The two are joined by Stefani’s erratically violent boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun) and her “roommate” X (Colman Domingo), but shortly into the trip, Zola realizes that Stefani is a sex worker and Derrek is her pimp. The real Zola recounted the wild tale in a famous 2015 Twitter thread that was then adapted into a slightly dramatized R...
Saint Maud Is Wholly Terrifying: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Beyond Film Festival. The Pitch: Maud (Morfydd Clark) does palliative care for a private healthcare facility and becomes the maid for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former avant garde dancer and choreographer. Maud has found God following a traumatic event at work, hinted at through flashbacks and haunting visions, and has now taken a pious approach to work that borders on fanaticism. Faced with antagonism from Amanda, Maud slowly spirals more and more into religious fueled actions and experiences — talked to and touched by God — that will lead to a string of actions that have an irreversible impact and her and those around her. This Cast and Crew Are Doing the Lord’s Work: British writer and director Rose Glass boldly shows off her ch...
