The 2024 Berlinale kicks off next month on February 15 with “Small Things Like These,” starring Cillian Murphy. But right before then, a winner from last year’s festival hits theaters in NYC. And it’s been a long wait for Bas Devos‘ “Here,” since it won Best Film in the Berlinale’s Encounters section last year, along with a handful of other awards since its world premiere.

Continue reading ‘Here’ Trailer: Berlinale Winner From Director Bas Devos Opens February 9 In NYC at The Playlist.

Since his breakout performance in “1917,” George Mackay has surprised audiences with several challenging roles. Sure, he did “Munich – The Edge Of War,” another historical drama, two years later. But he’s also done stuff like “Wolf” and “I Came By,” two performances that may cause some audience members to bristle.

READ MORE: ‘Femme’ Review: This Erotic Noir Thriller With George Mackay Is Painfully On-The-Nose [Berlin]

Add “Femme” to the list there.

Continue reading ‘Femme’ Trailer: George Mackay & Nathan Stewart Jarrett In Erotic Revenge Thriller at The Playlist.

Of all the buzzy films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, like “Past Lives,” “Eileen,” and the Grand Jury Prize winner “A Thousand And One,” Ira Sachs‘ “Passages” is undoubtedly the sexiest. And by year’s end, it may rank higher than those other three on critics’ top 10 lists for 2023.

Continue reading ‘Passages’ Teaser: Ira Sachs’ Sexy Sundance Drama With Ben Whishaw, Franz Rogowski & Adéle Exarchopoulous Arrives In Theaters This August at The Playlist.

Syndey Sweeney is already an it-actress for HBO, thanks to her turns on “The White Lotus” and Sam Levinson‘s “Euphoria.” Now add “Reality” to that list: Sweeney stars as American whistleblower Reality Winner in Tina Satter‘s “Reality,” fresh off its world premiere at the Berlinale in February.

Continue reading ‘Reality’ Teaser: HBO’s Film About Whistleblower Reality Winner With Sydney Sweeney Premieres On May 29 at The Playlist.

Stateside cinephiles know György Fehér for his collaborations with fellow Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr on his masterpieces “Sátántangó” and “Werckmeister Harmonies.” But the late Fehér was a filmmaker of his own right, although his films prove challenging to see outside his native country.

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American audiences get a chance to see one of Fehér’s two feature films next month in NYC, when Film Society At Lincoln Center screens a 4k restoration of “Twilight,” Fehér’s 1990 serial killer drama.

Continue reading ‘Twilight’ Trailer: György Fehér’s Underseen 1990 Serial Killer Classic Gets The 4K Treatment In NYC On April 21 at The Playlist.

In “Kill Boksoon,” a female hitman finds out that killing is simpler than raising a kid. Fresh off its world premieres at the Berlinale last month, South Korean director Byun Sung-hyun‘s new film stars “Secret Sunshine” actress Jeon Do-yeon as an assassin that sees her family and professional lives collide to antic results.

READ MORE: ‘Kill Boksoon’ Teaser: Korean Assassin Flick Premieres At Berlinale 2023 Before It Hits Netflix On March 31

Here’s an official synopsis for “Kill Boksoon,” courtesy of Netflix:

Hired by the killing agency MK Ent., Gil Boksoon is both a killer with a 100% success rate and a mother of her teenage daughter, Jae-young.

Continue reading ‘Kill Boksoon’ Trailer: A Professional Killer’s Family And Professional Lives Collide In New South Korean Actioner On Netflix March 31 at The Playlist.

At certain times in Emily Atef’s eponymous adaptation of Daniela Krien’s novel “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” all one can hear is the irregular breathing of Maria (Marlene Burow). The molecules of oxygen leave the sprawling fields of rural Germany and hastily make their way through the young girl’s lungs, the surge of adrenaline in her bloodstream directly increasing the frequency of respiration.

Continue reading ‘Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything’ Review: Emily Atef’s Latest is a Sensual Yet Exhausting Misfire [Berlin] at The Playlist.

The films of Jennifer Reeder have an unmistakable vibe. Her acclaimed short films, including “All Small Bodies” and “Crystal Lake,” have been shown on The Criterion Channel, and her feature film “Knives and Skin” has been shown at Berlin and Tribeca. 

READ MORE: ‘Inside’ Review: Vasilis Katsoupis’ Heist Thriller With Willem Dafoe Is Formulaic Yet Never Dull [Berlin]

Reeder’s films, which have been described as the meeting point between David Lynch and John Hughes, share little in terms of plot, but all bear an unmistakable eeriness, an otherworldliness that could only be Reeder.

Continue reading ‘Perpetrator’ Review: Jennifer Reeder’s Missing Girls Horror Is A Trip Dripping In Blood & Atmosphere [Berlin] at The Playlist.

In 1991, “Street Fighter” made history by introducing the world’s first playable female character in a fighting game, Chun Li. An expert martial artist and Interpol officer, Chun Li has a notorious sense of justice, with much of her arc dedicated to a tireless search for revenge for the wrongful killing of her father. It is unsurprising, then, that Chun Li is Jules’ (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) avatar of choice, the two united by an insatiable thirst for payback.

Continue reading ‘Femme’ Review: This Erotic Noir Thriller With George MacKay Is Painfully On-The-Nose [Berlin] at The Playlist.

War is perhaps cinema’s most enduring — and prolific — muse. From Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” to Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” war movies are some of the greatest classics within cinema history, from the sense-numbing bloodbaths of battlefields to the adrenaline that lingers within operation rooms as history-making calls are about to be made. 

Continue reading ‘Golda’ Review: Not Even Helen Mirren Can Save Disjointed Golda Meir Biopic [Berlin] at The Playlist.

With her feature debut, “The Chambermaid,” Mexican writer-director Lila Avilés materialized a graceful character study of a hardworking mother. Though enriched via the meaningful interjections of its supporting players, the narrative had a singular focus. For her follow-up, “Tótem,” Avilés has now confected an intimate ensemble piece from a family’s acts of tenderness as experienced through the sorrowful gaze of a young girl. A luminous and soul-nourishing microcosm built on profound love in the face of impending grief, the film reveals itself in the charged interactions between its multiple characters.

Continue reading ‘Tótem’ Review: Mexican Director Lila Avilés Stuns With A Soul-Nourishing Microcosm Built On Profound Love In The Face Of Grief [Berlin] at The Playlist.

There’s a pretty traditional formula that most music documentaries follow. They’ll often center around a standard birth to mainstream success overview, populated with talking heads and contemporaries to contextualize the music, politics, and social scenes. Add in some extended concert footage and, maybe, discussions with whomever the title subject is, and you have about 95% of the structure and content of a music doc. What makes the new Joan Baez documentary “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” stand out — both among documentaries, more generally, but also work about Baez — is its willingness to burrow into Baez’s psyche. 

Continue reading ‘Joan Baez I Am a Noise’ Review: The Famous Folk Singer Bids Farewell [Berlin] at The Playlist.

Director Vasilis Katsoupis tells the audience exactly what “Inside” is about to do from its very first scene. The disembodied voice of Willem Dafoe narrates a childhood fable fished from the depths of memory. The story, a seemingly simple school ruse about the things a young kid would save from a burning house, highlights how art has always been the utmost priority in this man’s life — coming above it all, including the well-being of his family.

Continue reading ‘Inside’ Review: Vasilis Katsoupis’ Heist Thriller With Willem Dafoe Is Formulaic Yet Never Dull [Berlin] at The Playlist.

From “Rosa Luxemburg” in 1986 to 2012’s “Hannah Arendt,” the films of Margarethe Von Trotta, an icon of the New German cinema, have put strong female protagonists center-stage in renditions of German history. For her latest, Von Trotta paints a portrait of German poet Ingeborg Bachmann, author of essays, radio dramas, and opera libretti. Working across media and a doctor of philosophy, Bachmann was also an important figure in the women’s rights and liberation movement in post-war Germany. 

Continue reading ‘Ingeborg Bachman – Journey Into The Desert’ Review: Vicky Krieps’s Sensational Performance Leads Period Piece About Art, Love, And Suspicion [Berlin] at The Playlist.

The audiences at Berlin International Film Festival tend to be respectful and engaged. But at the press screening of “Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes,” which plays as part of the Berlinale Specials strand at this year’s festival edition, several people cried “Just die!” at the screen. 

READ MORE: ‘Disco Boy’ Review: A Great Performance From Franz Rogowski Cannot Save A Derivative Debut [Berlin]

Written and directed by Robert Schwentke, a journeyman director behind thrillers like “Flight Plan,” action fare “RED” and “R.I.P.D.,” two entries into the “Divergent” series and “The Time Traveller’s Wife,” this could be interpreted as a passion project. 

The sparse plot concerns the death of the Roman philosopher Seneca (John Malkovich), first tutor and then advisor to Emperor Nero (Tom Xander), a vile and murderous ruler, shown here as an overgrown bully with a taste for violence and mommy issues (down to a felt-tip pen ‘MUM’ tattoo on his arm).

Continue reading ‘Seneca – On The Creation Of Earthquakes’ Review: John Malkovich Goes Full Goof In An Unwatchable Film [Berlin] at The Playlist.

Young Belarusian Aleksei (Franz Rogowski) is impatient for a better life in Europe. Coming from a country under dictatorship and with very strong Russian ties, the political isolation of which has made it suffocating for the younger generations, he is seduced by the idea of a borderless, communal whole where everybody counts for something. The audience first meets him on the bus to Poland, pretending to be a soccer fan on his way to a game in order to get a temporary visa.

Continue reading ‘Disco Boy’ Review: A Great Performance From Franz Rogowski Cannot Save a Derivative Debut [Berlin] at The Playlist.

Based on the synopsis alone, one would think John Trengove’s “Manodrome” to have two feet in satire: Jesse Eisenberg is Ralphie, a father-to-be lulled into a libertarian masculinity cult led by Adrien Brody. It is odd, then, to see the South African director mindlessly bypass the clever beats of parody in favor of a dreary mishmash of classics such as Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and David Fincher’s “The Fight Club.”

With a kid on the way, losing his job was not on Ralphie’s plans.

Continue reading ‘Manodrome’ Review: Frustrating Incel Satire Sees Jesse Eisenberg’s Best Turn in a Decade at The Playlist.

Like so many young performers, Sydney Sweeney proved that she was a star before she could get the chance to prove that she was a well-rounded actor. Her name-making gigs as a vindictive, canonically gorgeous high schooler on TV’s “Euphoria,” a vindictive, canonically gorgeous college sophomore on “The White Lotus,” and a vindictive, canonically gorgeous recent grad in the “The Voyeurs” all required her to channel an innate charisma toward variations on a broadly consistent type, her abilities yet to be stretched far enough to chart their full potential.

Continue reading ‘Reality’ Review: Sydney Sweeney Delivers A Tour De Force As A Cornered Whistleblower [Berlin] at The Playlist.

With an admirable cohesiveness, Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo (“Prayers for the Stolen”) has curated a body of work that often returns to familiar questions, subjects, and even precise images of evolving girlhood and untarnished nature. The filmmaker’s most fixed preoccupation is the spaces women carve for themselves and each other in communities where their safety, needs, and aspirations often suffer the tacitly violent tactics of patriarchal social norms. 

Back to her documentary roots, Huezo follows her acclaimed fiction debut, “Prayers for the Stolen” (“Noche de Fuego”), with another multigenerational saga of mothers and daughters in a remote locale.

Continue reading ‘The Echo’ Review: Tatiana Huezo Returns to Her Non-Fiction Roots with Another Striking, Multigenerational Story of Women and Nature [Berlin] at The Playlist.

There is a particular kind of audacity reserved for the wealthy and the well-meaning. Multi-award-winning actor and humanitarian Sean Penn co-directs “Superpower” with Aaron Kaufman, known mostly for his commercial work and his collaboration with writer-director Robert Rodriguez. Presented as a Special Gala at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, the result is an outrageously self-aggrandizing, pathetically lightweight documentary. 

READ MORE: ‘BlackBerry’ Review: Matt Johnson’s Chronicling Of The Rise & Downfall Of The BlackBerry Is A Boisterous Ode To The Underdog [Berlin]

Penn pulls double-duty as a presenter for the documentary, starting off acknowledging his own ignorance about anything to do with Ukrainian history until the Maidan Revolution of 2014 made global headlines.

Continue reading ‘Superpower’ Review: Sean Penn’s Co-Directed Documentary About The Ukraine War Is A Silly & Superficial [Berlin] at The Playlist.

To this day, I am traumatized by the notion I could have killed my little brother. Six years younger, we had an age difference primed to maximize annoyance, his constant nagging the spark for my first foray with untethered fury. The day he carelessly ripped a hole through the plastic pool I waited years to get was the final straw, and I hit him in the head with the biggest — and heaviest — branch I could find.

Continue reading ‘The Adults’ Review: Dustin Guy Defa’s Dramedy With Michael Cera Is Charming Yet Sometimes Overly Gimmicky [Berlin] at The Playlist.

Few objects hold a bigger sway over contemporary life than the smartphone. Now, the rise and fall of the BlackBerry, the world’s first smartphone, gets the big screen treatment. “BlackBerry,” Matt Johnson‘s latest, has its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival today.

READ MORE: Berlin 2023: New Films From Sean Penn, Jesse Eisenberg & More Announced

Johnson and Matthew Miller adapt Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff‘s 2015 bestseller “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” for the new docudrama.

Continue reading ‘BlackBerry’ Poster: Matt Johnson’s Docudrama About The Rise & Fall Of The World’s First Smartphone [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

Michael Cera is at the Berlin International Film Festival for the world premiere this weekend of Dustin Guy Defa‘s “The Adults.” In the film, Cera stars as a man who returns to his hometown as he struggles to reconnect with his two sisters (Hannah Gross and Sophie Lillis) and bridge the gap between his childhood and adult life.

Continue reading Michael Cera Eyes The Charles Portis Novel ‘Masters of Atlantis’ As One Of Two Possible Feature Directorial Debuts at The Playlist.

Miss Whit Stillman and his charming, highly literate cinema? Well, not to worry: the filmmaker has his first project since 2016’s “Love & Friendship” lined up. And it’s Stillman’s first foray into TV, too.

READ MORE: The 70 Most Anticipated TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2023

Stillman will team up with Infinity Hill, Lauranne Bourrachot, and Global Screen for “The Splendid Affinities,” a European-set romantic comedy adventure series.

Continue reading ‘The Splendid Affinities’: Whit Stillman’s Next Project Will Be A Rom-Com Adventure TV Series Set In London, Paris & Madrid at The Playlist.

Kristen Stewart wasted no time making her presence felt as jury president of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. Screendaily reports that Stewart had some cutting things to say about the state of the film industry at the festival’s Competition press conference, particularly its obsession with money over artistic merit.

READ MORE: Berlin 2023: New Films By Sean Penn, Jesse Eisenberg & More Announced

Following up comments by her fellow juror Radu Jude, who evoked Isidore Isou‘s 1951 avant-garde film “Venom And Eternity” and its credo that “cinema is the industry of money and stupidity,” Stewart called the filmmaking world’s current situation “stupid and embarrassing.” “How we [make films,] who consumes it, how much it costs — we’re heading towards oblivion on that level,” said the actress.

Continue reading Berlinale Jury President Kristen Stewart Calls The Film Industry’s Obsession With Finances “Stupid And Embarrassing” at The Playlist.