Film
NYFF Review: Noah Baumbach Delightfully Skewers Our Fear of Death in White Noise
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Dom LeLillo’s White Noise is one of those “great American novels” long thought to be unfilmable, a scattered, acerbic takedown of late American capitalism and its incessant need to distract from the inevitability of death with movies, culture, conversation, stuff. And honestly, it’s oddly fitting that the filmmaker who’d finally tackle it would be Indie Darling Noah Baumbach himself: Like DeLillo, he too is concerned with the fits and foibles of academia, the crumbling nature of the family unit, the ways we cling to ephemera just to keep ourselves from falling apart. And so it is with this three-part tale of the Gladney clan, a nuclear family about to go metaphorically (and in some ways litera...
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Trailer Reveals New Suits and Villains: Watch
We’re finally one step closer to returning to Wakanda: Marvel has unveiled the first full-length trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The preview arrives just under a month away from the sequel’s November 11th release, which comes four years after the smash original Black Panther. A first teaser for the film debuted at San Diego Comic-Con back in summer, but this new trailer gives us deeper looks at the cast. Amongst the returning characters are Shuri (Letitia Wright), Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and Ayo (Florence Kasumba). All of them are in mourning over the loss of T’Challa (the late, great Chadwick Boseman), but the death of their king and Black Panther protector has apparently opened them up to outside aggressors — particula...
Sacheen Littlefeather, Who Stood in for Marlon Brando at 1973 Oscars, Dead at 75
Sacheen Littlefeather, who endured racist mockery and threats of arrest and violence when she appeared on Marlon Brando’s behalf at the 1973 Oscars and declined his award for Best Actor, has died at the age of 75. According to Variety, Littlefeather passed away Sunday, October 2nd, following a battle with breast cancer. As president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, Littlefeather stood in for Brando to protest the mistreatment of American Indians in the film industry. Moments before she took the stage, ceremony producer Howard Koch told her that she would be arrested if she talked for longer than 60 seconds. During her speech, she was mocked with tomahawk chops and ululation, and John Wayne reportedly had to be restrained from charging the podium and attack...
Will Smith’s Apple Thriller ‘Emancipation’ Gets First Screening
Apple held the first screening for Will Smith and Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming film, Emancipation, on Saturday (Oct. 1) in Washington D.C. Though the fate of the project seemingly hung in the balance following Smith’s now-infamous Oscars slap, the screening indicates Apple is looking to release it soon. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news At the 2022 Oscars, Smith walked onstage during the ceremony and surprised the world when he slapped presenter Chris Rock, who had made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Since then, Smith has resigned from the Academy, some of his projects have been put on hold, and he has apologized to Rock, Rock’s family, his fellow Oscar winners and more. Apple and NAACP hosted the Eman...
Till Digs Into a Deeply Shameful, Deeply American Tragedy: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The horrific, deeply shameful, and deeply American story of Emmett Till galvanized the civil rights movement with its tragedy: A 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered for having the temerity to interact with a white woman, and Emmett’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley (then known as Mamie Till-Bradley) made the momentous decision to have an open-coffin funeral for her son, displaying his body, mutilated by his killers and bloated from being dumped into a river. These images, heavily circulated in Black publications, brought attention to the evils and injustice of U.S. racism — though they were not enough for Till’s killers (who admitted to the cr...
Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener Treads Very Familiar Soil: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: So there’s this stoic-looking man, sitting at a desk in a dark, spartan room, writing in his journal as we hear his thoughts in voiceover. That’s the set-up for Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener, as it was for his previous two films, The Card Counter and First Reformed. This was also the spirit, at least, of many other movies he has written and/or directed over the years, but his most recent unofficial trilogy takes on a ritualistic quality, as if Schrader is performing his version of stations of the cross, on progressively skimpier budgets. The newest iteration stars Joel Edgerton as Narvel Roth, head horticulturist at Gracewood Gardens, and though his routines appear regimented, he also seems closer to peace...
The Nostalgia of Hocus Pocus 2 Only Serves Itself
Hocus Pocus 2, the long-awaited-by-some sequel to the 1993 fantasy comedy horror film rocking the same name, is best summed up with a stray fart joke. A newly resurrected Mary Sanderson (Kathy Najimy), one of the three nefarious Sanderson sisters (Salem witches whose 1600s reign of terror over the town ended by the noose) stumbles into a Walgreens. She and her siblings, Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Winifred (Bette Midler), are in search of provisions, and lured into entering the pharmacy by the film’s teen heroes. One by one they walk in. Mary, awed by the automatic doors, steps through and immediately, casually, unwarrantedly trumpets her flatulence. End scene. Farts are funny when they have a point. Hocus Pocus 2’s fart has no point. Mary farts because the filmmakers, producers, and ...
American Pie Reboot to Traumatize New Generation of Pastries
Preheat your ovens and clean your flutes, a reboot of American Pie is in the works at Universal. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, this “fresh take” on the horny high school romp comes from filmmaker Sujata Day, who played Sarah on Insecure and who made her directorial debut with the 2020 spelling bee dramedy, Definition Please. All things considered, a fresh take is probably a good idea, considering that the male entitlement of the original hasn’t aged well. But on the bright side, it did wonders for the cast. Jennifer Coolidge recently said her role as Stifler’s mom allowed her to sleep with “200 people” that she wouldn’t have otherwise. 1997’s American Pie was directed by Paul Weitz from a script by Adam Herz. It starred Jason Biggs, Alys...
The Greatest Beer Run Ever Is a Pretty Likeable Movie, and That’s a Huge Problem: Review
The Pitch: Peter Farrelly is back with his first film since Green Book, a biopic about an average white guy from New York in the 1960s who learned a lot about the world by stepping outside of his comfort zone in the American South, whilst simultaneously charming the more worldly people around him. His new one, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, is a little different: it’s a biopic about an average white guy from New York in the 1960s who learns a lot about the world by stepping outside of his comfort zone in the Vietnam War, whilst simultaneously charming the more worldly people around him. This time, Zac Efron stars as Chickie Donahue, a shiftless merchant mariner who has a lot of friends serving in Vietnam. Chickie resents the cynical attitude the American media and youth culture have towards t...
Chan-wook Park’s Decision to Leave Is a Sizzling Romantic Thriller: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: A mountain climber is found dead at the bottom of one of Busan’s most intimidating peaks. An accident? Probably. But ace Busan detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) still finds himself drawn to the man’s Chinese widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), with whom he shares a beguiling, unspoken connection. She’s elusive, enigmatic; he grows more obsessed with her the longer he watches her on long stakeouts. And the closer the two get, the harder it is for him to see the woman she truly is — and the harder for her to hide it. The Mist: If there’s one thing you can count on from a Chan-wook Park film, it’s that it will be chock full of surprises. That’s certainly true of Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden, thre...
Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp to Star in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu
In one of the most perfect casting decisions since, uh, the last time he was picked to play a heavy-lidded horror character, Bill Skarsgård will star as the titular vampire in Robert Eggers’ upcoming Nosferatu retelling. Joining him in Transylvania is Lily-Rose Depp, playing a haunted young woman who becomes Nosferatu’s latest obsession, Deadline reports. There’s not much else we know about Eggers’ follow-up to The Northman, but we do know he’s been wanting to do this for a while. The director almost got his Nosferatu off the ground back in 2019, with Harry Styles and Anya Taylor-Joy attached to the project. Budgeting and schedule conflicts eventually brought the film to a halt, but Eggers made sure to nab Skarsgård — whose portrayal of Pennywis...
Danny Boyle to Direct a Dance Stage Show Based on The Matrix
Did someone ask for a hip-hop stage adaptation of The Matrix? Of course not, but Danny Boyle is giving us one anyway. As Variety reports, Boyle will turn the 1999 sci-fi smash into a “large-scale immersive performance” titled Free Your Mind. Its logline reads as follows: “Combining the hip-hop choreography of hundreds of dancers with the latest immersive design, Free Your Mind will take audiences on a thrilling journey through The Matrix and into a new realm of possibilities.” Licensed by Warner Bros. Theater Ventures, Free Your Mind is also scheduled to be the inaugural performance at Factory International, a new arts venue in Manchester, UK, in October 2023: “This eye-opening production will stretch across the building’s ultra-flexible spaces, responding to them and h...
