Movies

“I don’t know if I could live without the crunch of a pickle,” Madeline Brewer says. The actress is talking through the food sounds she’d miss if she suddenly lost her sense of hearing, a threat that looms over her character’s companion in the new Hulu film, The Ultimate Playlist of Noise, out Friday (January 15). As Wendy, a singer-songwriter grappling with her chosen career’s diminishing returns, she finds a kindred wanderer in Marcus, a high-school student with a life-saving operation scheduled to remove tumors in his brain. An unfortunate complication, though, is that the surgery will render the music-obsessed, playlist-making Marcus, played by Euphoria’s Keean Johnson, completely deaf. No more doubling up on headphones for both music and ambiance. “What if you want to liste...

By Alex Gonzalez When director Katrine Philp’s sister-in-law became ill, she felt despair and sadness watching her family grapple with the emotional pain. Her sister-in-law was suffering from what Philp describes as “bacteria running berserk in her body” and while she survived, Philp says her recovery was a lengthy, strenuous process. “I watched how she was struggling with her life, while my brother and their three children were by her side, for a very, very, very long time,” Philp tells MTV News. “It was very hard for the entire family. I watched my family, and I could see their powerlessness.” Watching this struggle “planted the seed” for Philp’s Beautiful Something Left Behind, from MTV Documentary Films, that follows a group of children as each of the...

By Ural Garrett Inglewood, California, native Taylour Paige spent years honing her skills as a professional dancer, studying under storied actress and choreographer Debbie Allen in Los Angeles before working a few months as a Laker Girl in 2010. It was a seamless transition when Paige’s television debut came in 2013 on VH1/BET cheerleading sports drama Hit the Floor, cinching the role of the lead character Ahsha Hayes, who delivered high-energy dance performances as the fictional Devil Girls’s newest recruit. But since then, she’s taken on roles that have stretched her acting chops in new directions, including the title role in director Stella Meghie’s Jean of the Joneses and a supporting spot in 2018 drama White Boy Rick as real-life crime figure Cathy Volsan-Curry. However, 2020 has beco...

“I am the innovator. I am the originator. I am the emancipator,” rock-and-roll legend Little Richard once famously self-described. “I am the architect of rock and roll.” That quote from one of music history’s most outsized personalities now lends itself to the telling of his life story in a new documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything. Announced Wednesday (December 16), the film will be produced by Dee Rees (Mudbound, Pariah) and directed by Lisa Cortés (The Apollo). It will be created by Bungalow Entertainment in partnership with Rolling Stone, which will open its archival reportage on the trailblazing icon, as well as interviews with those who knew him. Richard’s friends and family are reportedly consulting o...

By Chris Azzopardi Happiest Season director Clea DuVall had no idea she was going to be a part of what has turned out to be A Very Queer Christmas 2020. Her rom-com about a lesbian couple caught in a Christmastime family deception, which the gay filmmaker also co-wrote, broke Hulu premiere records when it debuted on November 25. It wasn’t making its point alone. With it came an army of nonhetero-led mainstream holiday movies, more than any other year in the history of pop culture: Lifetime’s The Christmas Setup, Hallmark Channel’s The Christmas House and Paramount Network’s Dashing in December. “I thought we were going to be the only one this year,” DuVall tells MTV News. “I didn’t know about these movies until fairly recently, actually.” Now...

By Alex Gonzalez The Prom is ostensibly the story of 17-year-old Emma Nolan, played by newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman, a friendly, outspoken girl who is banned from attending her school’s dance with her girlfriend in the fictional, conservative Edgewater, Indiana. But it also relies on what happens next, when a troupe of struggling Broadway actors — played by marquee icons Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, and Andrew Rannells — see Emma’s story on social media and visit her town in an attempt to resurrect their public images. While the idea of sharing the bill with such an all-star cast for one’s first major on-screen role may seem daunting, the 25-year-old actress felt welcomed by her co-stars on the first day of filming. “Meryl scoots over and pats the seat next to her,” Pellman tell...

Wonder Woman 1984 is set to become one of the major blockbusters of the year, but until recently, the fate of the film was largely unknown to fans and producers alike. The superhero sequel to 2017’s Wonder Woman was originally slated for release on June 5 before being pushed three times due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, first to August 12, then to October 2, and finally to Christmas Day. Now, the film is finally coming to roost, and a new clip dropped on Sunday (December 6) gives fans a deeper look into the action. In it, Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, jumps from a speeding taxi to chase down trucks filled with armed gunmen. She winds through moving cars, rips a steering wheel through a driverside window, and at one poi...