With today’s never-ending sea of content production, we all inevitably miss out on seeing at least a few films on our radar. Catching up the movies somehow passed us by is often how many cinema lovers spend the early months of the new calendar year. Unless you’ve been a-hankering for all the groundbreaking achievements that studios love to drop in January (buy your opening night tickets for “Dr. Dolittle” yet?), most trips to the multiplex will find your average film buff checking out the awards players and festival darlings which friends have been buzzing about for months that passed them by.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2019 You Didn’t See at The Playlist.

Happy Holidays to you and yours. This season brings forth time-honored traditions of attempting to take it easy at work to spend time with loved ones, and compiling the year-end “Best Of” list and debate online whether or not it’s been a good year for movies.

READ MORE: The 100 Best Films Of The Decade

I’m speaking generally, of course. There are two firmly-held beliefs I have when it comes to making a “Best Of” list that you could tattoo on my forehead, carve on my tombstone, etc.

Continue reading Ryan Oliver’s Top 25 Films of 2019 [Video] at The Playlist.

Summer 2019 is coming to a close, and with that comes reflection.

On the latest episode of The Discourse – the show where we discuss film reviews, news, and anything else in the pop culture zeitgeist that we feel the need to weigh-in on – I’m joined by Jenny Nulf (No Excuses) to close the book on summer 2019. We discuss the high’s and low’s of the summer, and worry about what theatrical moviegoing will look like next summer and beyond (Tl;DR — Disney was the undisputed champion at the box office with four billion-dollar grossers, and their 2020 summer slate on paper is – for lack of a better term – non-threatening.

Continue reading Looking Back On Summer 2019 With The Films We Missed [The Discourse Podcast] at The Playlist.

OK, so we’re in June and basically, we’re at the midway point of 2019. What’s the year like been so far for the cinema? Well, if you’re paying attention to Film Twitter, at this very moment, you will find a lot of writers justifiably griping about 2019’s summer movie season after bombs and flubs like “Dark Phoenix,” “Men In Black: International,” “Godzilla: King Of The Monsters” and the like, but one, barely-even-started season of blockbuster, a year does not make.

Continue reading The Best Films Of 2019… So Far at The Playlist.

Filmmaker Olivier Assayas is one of the best in the world, without a doubt. The French writer-director has a filmography filled with quality projects, including recent entries like “Personal Shopper,” “Carlos,” “Clouds of Sils Maria,” and “Something in the Air.” But for decades, Assayas has been delighting film fans with his incredible works. And his most recent, “Non-Fiction,” is finally hitting theaters in the US after a successful run during last year’s fall film festival circuit.

Continue reading ‘Non-Fiction’ Exclusive Clip: Juliette Binoche & Others Debate The Merits Of Adult Coloring Books In Filmmaker Olivier Assayas’ Latest at The Playlist.

What do ghost stories, 3D pornography, and insecure actresses all have in common? Well, if you’re well-versed in the work of French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, you should already know the answer.

It is difficult to find a singular aspect of Assayas’ films that sets him above his contemporaries — apart from his status as a critically acclaimed festival favorite — though the director’s talent for storytelling as well as his ability to capture fantastic performances from his actors are two factors that certainly lend themselves to supporting this argument.

Continue reading ‘Non-Fiction’ Trailer: Juliette Binoche, Authors, & Celebrity Affairs Collide In Olivier Assayas’ Latest at The Playlist.

It may not have been a stellar year, but it was more than satisfactory. Wait, did that disappoint you? Was that not bombastic enough? Well, fair warning, you may not want to read the rest of this rundown then.  Not every year is a “great” year for movies as some critics would like you to believe.  But 2018 was more than fine, and that’s a start.

Granted, there were some stunning performances that will be hard to forget over the past 12 months.

Continue reading Gregory Ellwood’s Top 10 Films Of 2018: ‘Cold War,’ ‘Climax,’ ‘The Favourite’ at The Playlist.

TELLURIDE – Over his 30-year career, Olivier Assayas has consistently demonstrated that he’s a filmmaker full of surprises. He’s written and directed thrillers, supernatural dramas, romances, and gut-punching serious dramas, but despite all his genre-hopping, he’s never really made a straight-out comedy. Obviously, nothing the French filmmaker touches is ever singularly one genre and that’s one reason why his latest effort, “Non-Fiction,” turns out to be a comedy with some sophisticated thoughts on media, relationships and the current state of the world.

Continue reading Juliette Binoche Can’t Contain Her Glee In Olivier Assayas’ ‘Non-Fiction’ [Telluride Review] at The Playlist.

It’s almost impossible to quantify how much technology has taken over our lives. And we’re not even talking the physical devices that never leave our side, but also just how information is shared, processed, and investigated. The digitization of the world has taken many by surprise. And it’s that topic that is at the heart of French filmmaker Olivier Assayas’ highly-anticipated new film, “Non-Fiction.”

And because the film is poised to have its world premiere this week at the Venice Film Festival, we have our hands on the first couple clips from the film, featuring acclaimed actress Juliette Binoche.

Continue reading ‘Non-Fiction’: Juliette Binoche Plays A Minor TV Celebrity For Olivier Assayas [Watch First 2 Clips] at The Playlist.

The Telluride Film Festival announced it’s official line up for 2018 and, if you’ve been paying attention or doing your due diligence there were few surprises.

The big narrative premieres are Joel Edgerton’s “Boy Erased,” Jason Reitman’s “The Front Runner,” David Lowery’s “The Old Man & The Gun,” Karyn Kusama’s “Destroyer,” Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and Yann Demange’s “White Boy Rick.”  Ralph Fiennes also returns to the director’s chair with “The White Crow” while Ed Zwick’s “Trial By Fire” will make its only festival appearance in Colorado.

Continue reading ‘Front Runner,’ ‘The Favourite’ & ‘First Man’ Among Official 2018 Telluride Selections at The Playlist.

It’s that time of year again: the madness that is the fall film festival season is upon us and the first festival up to bat, as usual, is the Venice Film Festival.

The Lido, as its affectionately known, kicks off on Wednesday, August 29 and the festival is turning 75 years old. It’s an excellent milestone and many are looking back. In fact, the Hollywood Reporter just wrote a piece about the fact how “how the once-struggling event has transformed itself into an essential appointment on the awards-season calendar.”

It’s true, big time players and many Oscar Best Picture winners have debuted there including Alfonso Cuaron‘s “Gravity,” “Spotlight,” Alejandro G.

Continue reading Venice Film Festival Preview: 20 Most Anticipated Movies at The Playlist.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the main selections for the 2018 New York Film Festival, and it won’t disappoint the city’s cinephile community.  It also confirms that barring a last minute addition or secret screening there are no world premieres at this year’s NYFF.  Then again, the fest is programming a significant number of Foreign Language Film contenders even if the homegrown selections are slight.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” Alfonso Cuarón‘s “Roma“ and Julian Schabel‘s “At Eternity’s Gate“ were previously announced as the opening, centerpiece and closing night films for this year’s fest.

Continue reading ‘If Beale Street,’ ‘Cold War’ & ‘Ballad Of Buster Scruggs’ Among Main NYFF 2018 Selections at The Playlist.

After Cannes surprised many with a selection of newer or less familiar names over the A-list auteurs that often make up the line-up, it’s been keenly anticipated by festival watchers that Venice was due for a big one. The early-fall festival, which has traditionally been a kick-off to awards season, has gained serious cred in recent years by premiering awards heavyweights like “Gravity,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “La La Land” and “The Shape Of Water,” but even aside from that it’s long been one of our highlights of the calendar, with a line-up that often proves more interesting and satisfying than that of the Croisette.

Continue reading Coens, Cuaron, Lanthimos, Orson Welles Lead Insane 2018 Venice Film Festival Line-Up at The Playlist.

With this year’s Cannes Film Festival focusing on more foreign-language films, film fans have been expecting September’s Toronto International Film Festival to be chock-full of the highly-anticipated projects that didn’t make it to France. And with the official announcement revealed today, we can confirm that this year’s TIFF is going to be something special.

Films like “Beautiful Boy,” “First Man,” “A Star is Born,” and Steve McQueen’s “Widows” (a world premiere) are sure to be crowd-pleasers.

Continue reading TIFF 2018 Announces Claire Denis’ ‘High Life’ & New Films By Olivier Assayas, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins & More at The Playlist.

If you were to point out a piece of technology that best summarizes that changing shape of the world, I wouldn’t necessarily start with an e-book. However, Olivier Assayas feels it’s the perfect vehicle to explore that very theme in his next movie.

The director reteams with his “Summer Hours” and “Clouds Of Sils Maria” star Juliette Binoche for “E-book,” which will also feature Guillaume Canet, Vincent Macaigne, Christa Theret and Pascal Gregory.

Continue reading Olivier Assayas Boots Up ‘E-Book’ With Juliette Binoche at The Playlist.