Luc Besson is back in theaters with his first film since 2019’s “Anna.” And from the looks of its new trailer, “DogMan” is another ultra-stylish, semi-deranged action thriller from the French director. But how will it hold up against Besson’s best films like “The Fifth Element,” “Le Femme Nikita,” and “Taken“? Audiences find out when “DogMan” hits theaters next month.

Continue reading ‘DogMan’ Trailer: Luc Besson’s Latest Starring Caleb Landry Jones Hits Theaters On March 29, Expands On April 5 at The Playlist.

Fresh off its fall festival circuit run, including its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, “The Promised Land” will finally arrive in US theaters next February. That’s plenty of time for audiences to catch up with the historical drama before it might vie for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in March. Time will tell if Denmark’s submission for the award makes the cut. But given the movie’s strong reviews, expect “The Promised Land” at the Academy Awards.

Continue reading ‘The Promised Land’ Trailer: Nikolaj Arcel’s Oscar Hopeful With Mads Mikkelsen Hits Theaters On February 2 at The Playlist.

Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” hits theaters today amid a great deal of buzz, partially thanks to star Cailee Spaeny winning the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for her title role. But not everyone was thrilled Coppolla announced plans to adapt Priscilla Presley‘s 1985 “Elvis And Me” for the big screen last year. That would be the late Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla’s daughter, who passed away this past January.  

READ MORE: ‘Priscilla’ Review: Sofia Coppola’s Understated Biopic Lets Us Draw Our Own Conclusions [Venice]

IndieWire reports (via Variety) that Lisa Marie disapproved of the new film, going as far as to email Coppola twice and chastise her for the film script’s “contemptuous perspective” of her father, Elvis Presley.

Continue reading ‘Priscilla’: Sofia Coppola Had To Reassure Lisa Marie Presley That Her Film Would Take “Great Care” To Honor Her Parents’ Relationship at The Playlist.

Netflix has a bunch of anticipated films left on their 2023 release calendar, but maybe none more so than David Fincher‘s “The Killer.” And the director’s follow-up to 2020’s “Mank” sees him in familiar territory: adapting a hardboiled thriller in a way only he can.

READ MORE: David Fincher On Why He Chose To Use The Smiths In ‘The Killer’: “I Thought It Was Amusing And Funny”

Fincher reunites with “Se7en” scribe Andrew Kevin Walker for his latest feature, about an assassin who gets caught in an international manhunt after a hit goes wrong.  Michael Fassbender stars.

Continue reading ‘The Killer’ Trailer: David Fincher’s Hitman Flick With Michael Fassbender Hits Select Theaters Today, Netflix On November 10 at The Playlist.

Did anyone expect J.A. Bayona to follow up “Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom” with an altogether different kind of survival thriller? Maybe not, but “Society Of The Snow” has garnered a lot of positive word of mouth as it made the festival rounds this Fall. After Bayona’s latest closed the Venice Film Festival in early September, it won Audience Awards at the San Sebastián Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

Continue reading New ‘Society Of The Snow’ Teaser: J.A. Bayona’s Latest Premieres On Netflix On January 4, 2024, Gets Limited Theatrical Release In December at The Playlist.

After winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos‘ “Poor Things” may be the most anticipated movie still to come in 2023. But it’s not just nabbing Venice’s top prize: “Poor Things” received unanimous praise from the Lido, with many critics already proclaiming it the year’s (or even decade’s) best film. Is it all hype or is Lanthimos on his way to collecting another Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards?

Continue reading ‘Poor Things’ Extended Look Trailer: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Latest Film With Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo & More Hits Theaters On December 8 at The Playlist.

The movie world lost one of its greatest living directors when William Friedkin passed away in early August. And Friedkin’s death happened just weeks before his last film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Marshal,” had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. But Showtime swooped in on the Lido to snag the rights to the movie, and now it arrives on the streamer early next month.

Continue reading ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Marshal’ Trailer: William Friedkin’s Final Film Premieres On Showtime On October 6 at The Playlist.

How’s this for a big pick-up in an otherwise quiet sale season on the Fall film festival circuit? Variety reports that Netflix bought the rights to Richard Linklater‘s latest film “Hit Man” after it screened at the Venice Film Festival and TIFF to rave reviews. It’s Netflix’s second significant purchase out of TIFF, the other being Anna Kendrick‘s directorial debut “Woman Of The Hours.”

READ MORE: ‘Hit Man’ New Look: Richard Linklater Says His New Genre-Bending Movie Is “All About Identity”

Based on a true story (but taking liberties with the source material) “Hit Man” stars Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, a part-time teacher who moonlights as a fake hitman for the local Texas police department.

Continue reading ‘Hit Man’: Netflix Snatches Up Richard Linklater’s Crime Comedy With Glen Powell For $20 Million at The Playlist.

It’s interesting how the Venice Film Festival has gone from one of the festivals of the fall festival season to arguably the best film festival in the world now, even overshadowing Cannes in recent years thanks to the fact that Netflix now avoids the Croisette for the most part because of France’s theatrical laws and save their Oscar contenders for the Lido. Venice has had an amazing run, arguably since 2017 when Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water” won the top prize and then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which has happened one more time since with “Nomadland” and several key Oscar contenders since).

Continue reading Venice Film Festival 2023: ‘Poor Things’ Wins The Golden Lion Top Prize [Full Winners List] at The Playlist.

It’s hard to encapsulate the cinema of a particular filmmaker in just one word, but if one were to try their hand at it with Mexican maverick Michel Franco, a word that’d come to mind is violence. The filmmaker’s work is built upon the looming expectation of violent transgression, society standing flimsy atop the fragile idea of cordiality. Such benevolence, sustained by the centuries-old notion of polite society, is easier to break within the intimate confines of the family home, a sentiment Franco explores to the very limits of shock and emotional obliteration within his body of work. 

Continue reading ‘Memory’ Review: Jessica Chastain & Peter Saarsgard Star In Michel Franco’s Stunted Observation On Trauma [Venice] at The Playlist.

Todd Haynes’ biopic “I’m Not There” famously featured several actors in the role of Bob Dylan, each embodying the artist in one era of his varied musical career. The idea, of course, was to acknowledge Dylan’s shapeshifting nature as well as the fact that his work can mean different things to different people — some may find one actor’s interpretation more convincing and accurate than that of another.

Continue reading ‘Daaaaaali!’ Review: Quentin Dupieux’s Eye For The Beautiful & Absurd Finds Its Perfect Subject In The Spanish Artist [Venice] at The Playlist.

When Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) first conceived of the multifaceted premise that would eventually become the lauded non-fiction book “Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents,” her editors were concerned about whether she would manage to cohesively merge her personal experiences with all the moving parts of her research across cultures and continents to prove that it all interconnects.  

Venice Film Festival 2023: The 17 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch

That’s in turn the same task that writer-director Ava DuVernay faced to convey the big-picture ideas and Wilkerson’s revelatory odyssey to put them on the page in an enticingly cinematic manner.

Continue reading ‘Origin’ Review: Ava DuVernay Adapts Isabel Wilkerson’ ‘Caste’ With Dazzling Inventiveness [Venice] at The Playlist.

It surprised no one earlier this year when Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross officially came on board to score David Fincher‘s “The Killer.” After all, the pair have scored all of Fincher’s films since 2010’s “The Social Network.” But it surprised audiences at the movie’s world premiere in Venice last weekend when Reznor & Ross’ work didn’t feature prominently in “The Killer” at all.

Continue reading David Fincher On Why He Chose To Use The Smiths In ‘The Killer’: “I Thought It Was Amusing And Funny” at The Playlist.

Can Finbar Murphy escape his past? “In The Land of Saints and Sinners” presents a mysterious man with a dark past who faces a crisis between doing what’s right and facing his own mistakes. Liam Neeson stars as Murphy, a man searching for solace and redemption; it’s yet another film that sees the actor carefully balance his dramatic roots with his recent success in high-profile action hits.

READ MORE: Fall 2023 TV Preview: Over 35+ Most Anticipated Shows To Watch

The project is Neeson’s second collaboration with director Robert Lorenz — the actor and director who previously teamed up on 2019’s “The Marksman.” Neeson is joined by Kerry Condon, who portrays terrorist leader Doireann.

Continue reading ‘In The Land Of Saints & Sinners’ Trailer: Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon & More Star In A New Irish Crime Drama Debuting In Venice at The Playlist.

The Huston dynasty has produced so many raw, undeniable talents that its younger members are undoubtedly among the very few “nepo babies” who can still come out of that exhausting discourse unscathed. We may even feel pity for them, sometimes, living as they do in the shadows of so many brilliant relatives. But Jack Huston is only the latest in a series of descendants to show that this legacy seems a blessing rather than a curse, at least in terms of creativity.

Continue reading ‘Day Of The Fight’ Review: Jack Huston Harnesses The Poetic Power Of Boxing Movies In A Stylish Feature Debut [Venice] at The Playlist.

That Glen Powell is a gem of an actor is nothing new, but twenty years into his career, and after stealing the show in a bunch of films and series, we can all finally stop praying for him to get a leading role worthy of his talents. In “Hit Man,” Powell reunites with his “Everybody Wants Some!!” director Richard Linklater for a part that allows him to be by turns nerdy, sexy, and funny, but at all times almost unbearably charming.

Continue reading ‘Hit Man’ Review: Glen Powell Stars In Richard Linklater’s Sexy, Delightful Comedy Tailored To His Talents [Venice] at The Playlist.

With 12 reviews so far, Roman Polanski’s latest film, “The Palace,” currently sits at a horrendous 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Polanski hasn’t really had a hit film in a very long time and has also been at the center of controversy for decades, but a 0% is still really rough, with some reviews calling it the worst movie of the year. But somehow, “The Palace” had a massive debut at the Venice Film Festival, where the festival director Alberto Barbera defended the film’s inclusion despite the filmmaker’s aforementioned controversy.

Continue reading Venice Director Admits Roman Polanski’s ‘The Palace’ Is A “Weak” Film But Says Negative Reviews Were Too “Mean” at The Playlist.

I remember reading years ago that whenever the time comes for Woody Allen to make a new film, he opens a drawer in his desk and picks at random from the piles of scripts he has written over the years. If this is true, it would explain much of the impersonal and artificial quality of his later output, which, though hitting all the beats expected of his personal brand of cinema, is so clunky and clumsily put together as to feel like a joke at the expense of the people who still bother to watch his work. 

Continue reading ‘Coup De Chance’ Review: Woody Allen’s Clumsy But Passable Dramedy Is More Mediocrity From His Waning Late-Stage Period [Venice] at The Playlist.

The most powerful aspect of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” premiering in Competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is in the title: to focus on Priscilla Presley, née Wagner, formerly Beaulieu, is to show a side of a marriage and of the King himself less familiar than and in some ways different from the romantic popular legend. But Coppola’s film does much more than simply show us the facts of how a fourteen-year-old girl gets to become the girlfriend and then wife of one of the biggest artists of all time.

Continue reading ‘Priscilla’ Review: Sofia Coppola’s Understated Biopic Lets Us Draw Our Own Conclusions [Venice] at The Playlist.

You don’t need to know much about the criminal justice system to understand its broken, biased, and grim nightmare— unfair, unjust, unforgiving, a bureaucratic Kafka-esque hellscape you never want to be trapped within. Turkish filmmaker Selman Nacar (“Between Two Dawns”) understands this all too well—he was a law student for several years before switching to filmmaking and saw all the flaws in the legal justice system firsthand. His suspenseful new moral, legal drama, and character study, “Hesitation Wounds,” is proficiently crafted with a fittingly claustrophobic and inhospitable quality.

Continue reading ‘Hesitation Wounds’ Review: Tülin Özen‘s Striking Performance Drives Selman Nacar’s Gripping 24-Hour Moral/Legal Drama [Venice] at The Playlist.

A quote by William Friedkin himself opens “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” describing the film, as well as all the filmmaker’s other works, as being about “the thin line between good and evil.” This line is all the thinner here, in the American director’s final feature, for it is entirely a matter of opinion. We are not given to see the facts of this story as they unfolded; we cannot watch and make up our own minds as to whether the people involved were right or wrong to act the way they did.

Continue reading ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ Review: William Friedkin’s Deceptively Simple Swansong Is Another Morbid Excavation Of Human Weakness & Cruelty [Venice] at The Playlist.

The question of whether or not technology has killed the classic crime thriller has popped in and out of the discourse as the years saw pocket watches morph into sci-fi-looking gadgets capable of getting one both dinner and a first-class ticket to Dubai in the space of a couple of minutes. Directors who have solidified their careers through portrayals of mafiosos, gangsters, and assassins held tightly to the period film as a chance to continue working with the story beats that work so well within the genre, recreating CCTV-free alleyways and public phone booths to allow their scoundrels and scumbags to wreak havoc in overpopulated mazes around the world. 

Continue reading ‘The Killer’ Review: David Fincher’s Homage To The Classic Crime Thriller With Michael Fassbender Is Entertaining But Orthodox [Venice] at The Playlist.

You didn’t expect French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello to make a conventional sci-fi, did you? Good, because “The Beast” is far from it. It all starts in 2044 with beautiful actress Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) in desperate need of a job. To get it, she’ll have to conform to the new normal in this quasi-dystopian society where the frigid efficiency of AI has deemed human emotions unproductive and downright dangerous. 

The solution to this nagging little human problem is simple: to eliminate the futile intensity of emotions altogether.

Continue reading ‘The Beast’ Review: Léa Seydoux Leads Bertrand Bonello’s Epic, Time-Spanning Sci-Fi Warning About A.I.  [Venice] at The Playlist.

Ten years after “Spring Breakers,” the neon pinks and greens of Harmony Korine’s mainstream breakthrough return in an Internet-inflected and even more abstract ode to the thug life, with seriously mixed results. To call “Aggro Dr1ft” stupid or silly isn’t wrong, but it is missing the point. The dialogue is incredibly banal and hilariously repetitive, the story a thin assemblage of clichés. But the images!

Continue reading ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ Review: Harmony Korine Goes Sicko Mode In A Visually Stunning Journey Through Miami Thug Life  [Venice] at The Playlist.

A scene early in Ibrahim Nash’at’s chilling new documentary “Hollywoodgate” makes clear the stakes of Nash’at’s undertaking. Invited by the Taliban to film a top leader, the new air force commander Malawi Mansour, and a lower-ranking Taliban Mukhtar, after the departure of American Troops from Afghanistan in 2021, Mansour makes clear his feelings about the documentary and Nash’at. Speaking with an underling, he notes, “if his intentions are bad, he will die soon.” It’s a scene that, like the rest of the film, is viewed at a distance, a prerequisite for Nash’at’s undertaking.

Continue reading ‘Hollywoodgate’ Review: Ibrahim Nash’at’s Terrifying Film Documents The Taliban’s Takeover Of Afghanistan [Venice] at The Playlist.