Sony had a pretty great Christmas in 2019 with the release of the film, “Little Women,” by filmmaker Greta Gerwig. Not only did the film strike a chord with critics and awards bodies, garnering acclaim and trophies along the way, but the film also was a box office hit for the studio, earning more than $203 million worldwide. For 2020, the studio is hoping to repeat its holiday luck with “The Nightingale.”

READ MORE: ‘Galveston’: Ben Foster & Elle Fanning Are At The Top Of Their Game In Mélanie Laurent’s Unique Thriller [Review]

According to Deadline, Sony has given the WWII drama “The Nightingale” a Christmas 2020 release date.

Continue reading ‘The Nightingale’: Mélanie Laurent To Direct Elle & Dakota Fanning In Sony’s WWII Drama at The Playlist.

Many who’ve seen Jennifer Kent’s new revenge epic “The Nightingale” have sensed a traumatic link to her prior outing, “The Babadook” (2014). In both films, a stranded woman is confronted with malice beyond her imagination. Whether inflicted by a black-cloaked demon or the British Empire, the ensuing scars come to redefine her humanity.

But trauma is just the subject matter of “The Nightingale” and “The Babadook.” If there’s a commonality in authorship between the two films it’s that Kent is implicitly and explicitly challenging audiences with her portrayals of pain.

Continue reading ‘The Nightingale’: Aisling Franciosi Discusses Her Harrowing Star Turn & The Rigorous Sensitivity Of Director Jennifer Kent [Interview] at The Playlist.

August is one of the more interesting movie months in the calendar year. At once, it’s a dumping ground for major studios to unpack their unwanted, potentially bad, films before kids go back to school. Simultaneously, it’s an opportunity for the smaller distributors to get a jump on awards season to release provocative efforts that would likely be edged out during the fall competition.

On this week’s episode of The Discourse – the show in which we discuss film and television reviews, occasional news, and any other pertinent pop culture items that we feel the need to weigh-in on – we choose to discuss the latter, ignoring the five(!) wide releases that came out this weekend because, well, none of them sounded all that interesting.

Continue reading Sifting Through Provocative Subject Matter In ‘The Nightingale’ & ‘Luce’ [The Discourse Podcast] at The Playlist.

When Jennifer Kent delivered the breakout 2014 horror film “The Babadook,” she gave us a bone-chilling exercise in fear. And not only did she take audiences aback with her family horror, but Kent also announced herself as an exciting new voice in the horror genre and one that all eyes are still on.

READ MORE: the 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2019

Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait too long to make her follow-up feature.

Continue reading ‘The Nightingale’ Trailer: ‘Babadoook’ Director Jennifer Kent Returns To Deliver A Fearsome Revenge Thriller at The Playlist.

Thanks to Marvel and the ‘Avengers’ films, summer blockbuster season starts in April now, so technically, our summer movie preview is late. That’s ok. This summer is stacked, as usual, and that does not even account for the upcoming Cannes Film Festival which will have plenty of arthouse blockbusters premieres and mainstream movies like the new Quentin Tarantino film. Yes, summer 2019 is jam-packed. There are all kinds of blockbusters, indies, arthouse films, horror movies—many of which we’ve already covered here— and more.

Continue reading Summer Movie Preview: 35 Films You Shouldn’t Miss at The Playlist.

We may still have five months until Halloween, but who says that you can’t celebrate a little earlier? Summer has proven to be a great time to release a horror film. Or, in this case, 15 of them. The kids are out of school, with the late middle schoolers and high schoolers think they are “too cool” to take their younger sibling to see “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” and want to break away with their friends to see something that warrants engagement.

Continue reading Summer Horror Movie Preview: 15 Films To Watch at The Playlist.

2018 may have revitalized the “Year of the Woman” in politics, but it was also an outstanding year for female filmmakers. Auteurs like Karyn Kusama (“Destroyer”), Debra Granik (“Leave No Trace”), and Lynne Ramsay (“You Were Never Really Here”) produced jaw-dropping independent dramas while smaller names like Jennifer Fox (“The Tale”), Chloe Zhao (“The Rider”), and Josephine Decker (“Madeline’s Madeline”) pushed the boundaries of filmmaking to create challenging works of art.

Continue reading The Most Anticipated Films By Female Filmmakers In 2019 at The Playlist.

We are robots. We cover film and our best of year-end lists cover every single possible angle of film and TV. And yes, we’re oh so tired and we hope this doesn’t feel too perfunctory. Look, we’ve covered, as suggested, every stripe of 2018 movie and TV coverage performances, new directors, breakout actors and actresses, documentaries, all kinds of new exciting talents and each year we say to ourselves, “eh, let’s dial this back, it’s too much, no one cares that much do they?” And each year we find ourselves going, “Oooh, ooh, oooh!

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2019 We’ve Already Seen at The Playlist.

Jennifer Kent burst onto the filmmaking scene in 2014 with her hit horror film “The Babadook.” Since then, people have been anxiously awaiting what the Australian filmmaker would do next. Just recently, courtesy of the Venice Film Festival, audiences saw what was next — “The Nightingale.” And since the film’s premiere, people have been commenting on extreme violence that takes place in “The Nightingale” and again, what is next for the filmmaker.

Continue reading Jennifer Kent Talks New Projects & Controversial Violence In Venice Winner ‘The Nightingale’ at The Playlist.

Oscar season has begun, this we know. But festival season and the awards speculation it incites just got supercharged as the Venice Film Festival has awarded all its prizes. And it’s a damn good day for Netflix. The streaming giant, which has a slew of Oscar-contenders coming out this fall just won the Best Picture award at the Lido: Alfonso Cuaron’s universally-loved “Roma” (our review), has taken the coveted Golden Lion prize.

Continue reading Venice Film Festival: Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Roma’ Wins The Golden Lion Best Film Prize at The Playlist.

Screenings and premieres are supposed to be the last places on Earth where you’d expect to find unruly and disrespectful filmgoers. In the case of premieres, it appears that not even a highly-anticipated Venice world premiere from the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is immune from disrespectful audiences, as we discovered recently. However, what happened at last night’s “The Nightingale” press screening must take the cake for one of the most disrespectful showings at any press screening or premiere during this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Continue reading Director Jennifer Kent Reacts To Sexist Insult That Disrupted ‘The Nightingale’ Press Screening at The Playlist.

“Welcome to the world, full of misery from the bottom to the top.” In Jennifer Kent‘s undeniably overlong but beautifully imagined revenge fable “The Nightingale,” we are at the very bottom of the world, in early 19th century Tasmania, back when it was still called Van Diemen’s Land. And it does indeed feel like the miseries of the whole world have collected down here, in this sparsely populated purgatory, thickening the forests with gloom and weighing the skies with portent.

Continue reading Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Nightingale’ Is A Thrilling Revenge Story That Falls Short Of Really Singing [Venice Review] at The Playlist.

When the lineup for the Venice Film Festival was announced, one of the biggest sources of controversy wasn’t which films were selected, but rather what was missing. As we reported at the time, Venice festival director Alberto Barbera became the source of controversy when only one film by a female was chosen out of the 21 total films in the official competition program. At the time, Barbera was defiant and blamed the industry, not the festival.

Continue reading Venice Film Festival Signs Pledge To Adopt Policies For Gender Parity In Light Of Recent Backlash 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.

This year’s Venice Film Festival might have the most stacked lineup ever seen at an event like this. With huge filmmaking names like the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuaron, Luca Guadagnino, and even Orson Welles, Venice looks to be the fall festival that will feature some of the biggest awards contenders this year. And now, as we approach the August 29 opening day, we are starting to get some first looks at some of the most high-profile films featured at the event.

Continue reading Natalie Portman’s Musical ‘Vox Lux’ Headlines First Looks At Upcoming Venice Films 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.

We’re just getting started with our look at the best in film and TV of 2017, but before we really got sucked into the retrospective, we wanted to take a minute to look forward to what’s to come in the next twelve months or so. Lord knows we need things to keep us going in the shitshow that has been the second half of the 2010s, and fortunately, cinema has provided.

After a slow start, 2017 turned out to be a pretty great year for movies, and 2018 looks to keep that up in a big way.

Continue reading The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2018 at The Playlist.

It’s a late Friday night so what better time to drop a slews release date on the unsuspecting public. So, get a pen and paper to adjust your calendar and let’s get started and make note: these are all Sony Pictures films.

Perhaps the most significant of the release, tentpole wise is Sony’s “Silver And Black,” a Spider-Man spinoff film focusing on the female characters Black Cat and Silver Sable Marvel adaptation.

Continue reading ‘Sicario’ Sequel & Spider-Man Spin-Off ‘Silver & Black’ Land Release Dates at The Playlist.

There’s no doubt that more than a few doors were kicked open for Jennifer Kent thanks to the rave reviews and breakout sensation status of her 2014 horror “The Babadook,” but the filmmaker has taken her time deciding her next move. While rumors floated she was being considered to helm Marvel‘s “Captain Marvel,” she’s thankfully putting her efforts toward another original movie, one that sounds pretty promising.

Continue reading ‘The Babadook’ Director Jennifer Kent Starts Shooting Her New Film ‘The Nightingale’ This Month at The Playlist.

It’s look like Michelle MacLaren had dusted herself off after that whole DC films thing and signed on to direct “The Nightingale” for TriStar. The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Kristin Hannah, and tells the story of two French sisters and their struggle during the German occupation of France in World War II.

MacLaren is perhaps best known for her work in TV.

Continue reading ‘Breaking Bad’ & ‘Game Of Thrones’ Director Michelle MacLaren To Helm WWII Drama ‘The Nightingale’ at The Playlist.

The horror movie world is overstuffed with cheap scare flicks, and low budget toss-offs, which makes it all the more remarkable when someone can deliver a movie in the genre with genuine thrills, coupled with a distinctive creative voice. And that’s just what Jennifer Kent did with “The Babadook,” her breakout film that marked the filmmaker as one to watch, and a major female talent in an industry that still doesn’t do enough to create opportunities for women.

Continue reading ‘The Babadook’ Director Jennifer Kent Rumored For ‘Captain Marvel,’ Talks Next Film ‘The Nightingale’ at The Playlist.