Movies

By Gina Marinelli As far as transformative style moments in teen-movie history go, few compare to the image of Sandy emerging from a crowd of Rydell High students in the final scene of Grease. Even before delivering her iconic line — “Tell me about it, stud” — it’s obvious she’s broken from her otherwise squeaky-clean reputation. It’s the big hair, the lit cigarette, and where Sandy’s demure cardigan sweater once sat, it’s the black leather moto jacket. The garment acts as a symbol of rebellion, just as it has on countless other film and TV characters for decades, even as definitions of and motives for resistance have changed. Take, for example, the timely flick, Moxie. Netflix’s new original movie stars Hadley Robinson as Vivian Carter, a quiet high school student who anonymously starts a...

For three hours on Sunday night (February 28), the entertainment world took part in one of its time-honored awards-season traditions: enjoying the self-aware celeb fest that is the Golden Globes. This year, though, via a hybrid East Coast-West Coast broadcast that featured a live audience as well as a fleet of Hollywood big-timers calling in via Zoom, the show was less about ego-puncturing jokes and instead more concerned with pointing out the systemic failures of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has had no Black members in nearly 20 years. This elephant in the gilded room was brought up multiple times, including by winner Sacha Baron Cohen and co-host Tina Fey during her monologue with fellow show anchor Amy Poehler. It was even acknowledged by HFPA members themselves at a k...

By Dani Blum Billie Eilish loves The Office so much she sampled dialogue from the show on her debut album, bookending a song about desire with one of the sitcom’s in-jokes. When she first met with filmmaker R.J. Cutler, known for making profiling documentaries like the Anna Wintour-chronicling The September Issue and The World According to Dick Cheney, Eilish said she wanted any movie made about her to seem like the NBC mockumentary sitcom — with a constant, panning camera and the subtle awareness of an audience. Subsequently, Cutler followed Eilish for a year, across two global tours and the writing and release of her eventually Grammy-sweeping debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, which she created with her brother, Finneas. The resulting film, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Lit...

By Sara Radin “I don’t think I ever fully wanted to die,” Saniya, a student at Drexel University, shares while looking directly into a camera. “I think I wanted to escape.” Saniya is one of many young people at the center of  Each and Every Day, a new film from MTV Documentary Films by acclaimed filmmaker Alexandra Shiva that explores the different experiences of students in high school and college navigating “the darker stuff” of life — the bad moments when taking one’s own life felt like the only way forward — and how they kept living. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide is the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 and 34, and in 2019, there were 47,511 deaths by suicide. Mental-illness stigma prevents many individuals from ...

In the last weeks of filming the surreal romantic comedy The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, the crew, including rising actor Kyle Allen, condensed multiple days on set into just a few. With the coronavirus spreading and a lockdown impending, whole segments were cut, scenes removed to meet the deadline — and then it stopped entirely. On the final day of shooting, production came to a screeching halt, with the project’s outstanding moments left in a seemingly endless pause, until the remaining frames could be captured seven months later. The bleak humor isn’t lost on Allen that this film, which like Groundhog Day and Palm Springs before it uses a temporal loop as the basis for its plot, was left in its own kind of infinite replay. In the film, out Friday (February 12) on Am...

As ever, the Golden Globes are a trip. After a delay brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and its ongoing impact on both the film and television industries, the 2021 show — the awards’ 78th ceremony — will return on February 28 with hosts Amy Poehler and Tiny Fey. The comedy duo will emcee from opposite coasts, with Fey in the Rainbow Room at 30 Rock in New York, and Poehler at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. As the 2021 nominees, revealed this morning (February 3) reveal, it’ll be a party as always. But more than that, this year’s crop comes with some notable achievements — including a posthumous nod for Chadwick Boseman, Regina King‘s first nom as a director (in a category led by women, no less), and four nods for Promising Young Woman. Check out all the nominee...

By Erica Russell For nearly four decades, Studio Ghibli has captured the hearts and imaginations of global moviegoers. Co-founded by celebrated Japanese auteur Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, the Tokyo-based studio has produced dozens of iconic films, including 1988’s beloved My Neighbor Totoro and 2001’s Academy Award-winning Spirited Away. Its pictures deliver whimsical adventures at once sweeping and small-scale, unforgettable characters, breathtaking animation and music, and complexly layered narratives that refuse to talk down to even its youngest audience members. Ghibli’s latest offering, Earwig and the Witch, is no different — except in one major way. Based on the 2011 children’s book of the same name by Dianna Wynne Jones — author of Howl’s Moving Castle, adapted to film by Ghibli in 2004...