“We do think about it as an epic film, and it is very much a person’s life journey,” Anthony Russo told the magazine. “But it does have a little bit of a split personality between being this character study and an epic life cycle.” “Cherry” stars Holland as a U.S. Army medic who returns home to the suburbs of Ohio and develops an opioid addiction while struggling with PTSD. Bravo stars as Holland’s character’s wife, who also becomes an addict....
“Chucky” looks to be both a spin-off as well as a continuation of the film franchise, with young Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur) finding Chucky (once again voiced by Brad Dourif) at a yard sale. From there, the doll sets out to wreck havoc and terrorize Hackensack, New Jersey once again. We also look to be going back in time to see how Charles Lee Ray became the serial killer he was prior to having his soul transferred into a very ugly piece of plastic....
It’s no secret that “CODA” is an adaptation (its three Oscar nominations include Best Adapted Screenplay, after all), but you’ve likely never seen “La Famille Bélier,” the 2014 French film on which “CODA” is based. A massive hit in France, it grossed $55 million — the per-capita equivalent to over $300 million domestic. Worldwide, it grossed $86 million. And yet there is little evidence that the film ever had any public showings in the United States....
That brings us to “CODA,” which Apple acquired for a record-breaking $25 million and won the Grand Jury, Audience Award, Best Director, and Ensemble Acting prizes at the virtual 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Sian Heder’s moving drama about a deaf family stars British singer-actress Emilia Jones and Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God”). It opens August 13, both in theaters and on Apple’s streaming service, AppleTV+. That’s good news and bad....
Written and directed by “Orange is the New Black” writer and “Tallulah” helmer Sian Heder, “CODA” offers a fresh perspective on a coming-of-age family drama: Emilia Jones stars as the teenage child of deaf parents (Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) caught between her love of singing and the expectations she faces as the only hearing person in her family, who run a fishing business. The online response was rapturous, quickly painting a picture of a crowd pleasing movie with a lot of heart, exactly the kind of film that streamers can’t resist spending a huge amount of money on in this era....
The film’s official synopsis reads: “Set in the lush and royal country of Zamunda, newly-crowned King Akeem (Murphy) and his trusted confidante Semmi (Arsenio Hall) embark on an all-new hilarious adventure that has them traversing the globe from their great African nation to the borough of Queens, New York — where it all began.” The sequel, directed by Craig Brewer and co-written by Kenya Barris, will find the prince grappling with a previous relationship with Mary Junson (former “Saturday Night Live” star Leslie Jones), which led to the birth of a son, Lavelle Junson, played by actor/comedian Jermaine Fowler....
“Death on the Nile” will see Branagh returning in the role of beloved fictional detective Hercule Poirot. The rest of the stacked cast includes Gal Gadot, Letitia Wright, Armie Hammer, Annette Bening, Ali Fazal, Sophie Okonedo, Tom Bateman, Emma Mackey, Dawn French, Rose Leslie, Jennifer Saunders, and Russell Brand. The plot follows Poirot, a world-renowned detective, who becomes involved in a love triangle gone murderously bad while on a vacation in Egypt....
The show’s cast and creators emphasized that though “New Blood” is a sequel to the original series, they intended to have the upcoming show stand on its own and did not rely on the same visual style or spend excessive time exploring what Dexter had been doing in the years since the events of the original show. “We don’t spend a great deal of time in a flashback or anything like that in regard to where Dexter has been,” Hall said....
Baryshnikov took Lavinia, who started Season 1 as a cat-loving young woman desperate for normalcy, and transitioned her into a fun and sexily awkward character. When the series debuted, the actress explained she was more focused on the source material and translating “Vinnie” from page to screen. Season 2 was different. “I found a groove of working off of the character we created in Season 1 and getting to dip back into the historical facts when I felt I was getting lost or needed inspiration,” she said....
Marks (and Isaac and Cho) will revisit Wally’s declaration and it will prove to be true: “Don’t Make Me Go” is a sweet, charming, and eventually daring dramedy with tons of heart. Also true: Where this road trip movie ends its journey will likely engender some very strong reactions, but Vera Herbert’s smart script (a Black List entry), Marks’ assured direction, and the delight of Cho and Isaac’s well-matched performances sell it....
It’s a method the show returns to again and again, but the tension of these drivers lined up at the starting grid waiting for the signature five red lights to disappear and signal the start of the race is as primal an idea as you can get in the sports world. Going from nothing to all-out exertion, even if it’s done with the aid of a finely honed, multi-million-dollar vehicle is something to build a show around....
[Editor’s Note: The interviews above and article below contain spoilers for “Fargo” Season 4, Episode 9, “East/West.”] If you thought Noah Hawley’s shows could be ambiguous, just imagine how his crew felt when the “Fargo” showrunner gave them a simple yet mysterious direction before shooting Season 4: “Follow the yellow brick road.” “We didn’t really know what that meant back in prep,” said J.R. Hawbaker, the series’ costume designer. “We were like, ‘OK, we’ve got the yellow brick road coming, we don’t really know where we’re going, but we’re going to follow Noah — he will get us there....
This is not about my undying love for the serpentine ABC drama from 2004 (though don’t tempt me); Lost was this TV fan’s first exposure to flashback-based storytelling in a TV show, which it didn’t invent but certainly deployed with enviable efficacy. Each Lost episode focused on a specific character, following their narrative in the present and a related chapter of their past via flashback. It’s a format viewers will recognize from “Yellowjackets,” “Orange is the New Black,“ “This is Us,” and more — but the flashback structure takes on a twisted new form in Netflix’s “Firefly Lane,” which returned Friday for a second season....
The official “Flee” synopsis from Neon reads: “‘Flee’ tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan....
Audiences are beyond excited to have the cast reunite. The idea of a reunion started just a few short years after the series concluded in 2004. Back in February of 2020, when the series was celebrating its 25th anniversary, WarnerMedia announced an unscripted reunion special. At the time it was reported that the total spent on talent for the reunion special, Deadline reported, could be $20 million. When the pandemic hit, the question then became how it would affect the recording of the reunion special....
Intimate and beautifully rendered, “Funny Boy” is a visually lush coming-of-age drama set amidst a vicious ethnic conflict that is regionally specific, but tragically universal. It is the latest feature film from revered Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, who first rose to international renown in 1996 with “Fire,” a groundbreaking lesbian romance that was censored in India after screenings led to violent protests and the destruction of movie theaters. Though “Funny Boy” is a far more chaste film, it may find more controversy for its portrayal of the 1983 riots, or Black July, the anti-Tamil pogroms that began the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War....
Rigg came to define the era known as the “Swingin’ Sixties” in London, both in terms of fashion and for the characters she played. Her role as Emma Peel came to be one of the first depictions of feminism for many, though Rigg often courted controversy later in life for her comments decrying the feminist movement and refusing to participate in it. Regardless, her turn as Emma Peel, as well as her later performance as James Bond’s only wife, Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, in the 1969 feature “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” left many seeing a different side to what female characters could do on-screen....
Decades later, while he was digging around in his office during the COVID lockdown, Pellington made an exciting discovery. “I found an old Betacam tape,’” Pellington told IndieWire. “It was three-and-a-half hours long and had everything my editor Leo Trombetta had assembled when we came back from the shoot in Indianapolis.” Pellington and Trombetta looked at the footage and decided to create a new edit to keep themselves occupied during the pandemic....
Having an omniscient, unshakable meddler creating conflict makes for extremely watchable television, and the original “Gossip Girl” was exactly that (for a while). Built from the bones of “The O.C.” by their shared writers-turned-co-creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the 2007 CW soap followed a (very) similar route to success as Fox’s 2003 hit. It offered a glimpse of big-city glamour most kids can only dream about, while keeping the core character arcs rooted in love triangles and teen anxieties....
Director Taormina is a skillful young filmmaker, making his feature debut here. He’s working with mainly non-professional young actors with a simple setup: it’s the end of a high school year and a prom-like dance looms, along with its anticipatory jitters. A sprawling cast of teenage boys and girls is introduced in the opening scenes and the costumes and suburban setting suggest someplace middle-America, but also flung out of time....
