Shekhar Kapur’s first film since 2007’s “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” itself a sequel to his Best Picture nominated “Elizabeth” from 1998, curiously sees the filmmaker shifting from prestige period drama to lighter romantic comedy fare with “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”. Written by Jemima Khan (producer of “Impeachment: American Crime Story”), the film stars Lily James (“Pam & Tommy”) as Zoe, a documentarian making a film about the “assisted” marriage of Kaz (Shazad Latif, “Star Trek: Discovery”), the proverbial boy next door.

Continue reading ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ Review: Patronizing Romantic Comedy Takes Aim At Arranged Marriages [TIFF] at The Playlist.

Lily James has had a career. She’s faced the pressure of bringing “Cinderella” to life in a massive Disney spectacle. She’s battled zombies as none other than literary figure Elizabeth Bennett. She’s starred alongside Gary Oldman‘s imposing Winston Churchill. And she’s even played a young, singing Meryl Streep. That being said, she admits that none of those roles prepared her for portraying pop culture icon Pamela Anderson in the Emmy-nominated limited series, “Pam & Tommy.”

READ MORE: Sebastian Stan transformed himself like never before for “Pam & Tommy” [Interview]

The Hulu program chronicled the true story of how a stolen sex tape featuring Anderson and her husband Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan), not only broke down the walls of amateur porn in the early days of the internet but publicly derailed the “Baywatch” stars’ promising career.

Continue reading Lily James Says ‘Pam & Tommy’ Was “Hardest Thing She’s Ever Done” [Interview] at The Playlist.

The latest from T.J.Martin and Daniel Lindsay, directors of “Undefeated” and “LA 92,” “TINA” looks like another documentary that came off of a factory line, complete with the usual panning shots of contact sheets, dramatic zooms into rolling tapes, cross-cutting between audio interviews and their published print versions, melodramatic score cues doing their best to emulate Philip Glass.

Continue reading Despite Clichéd Aesthetics, ‘Tina’ Is An Emotionally Potent Documentary [Berlin Review] at The Playlist.

Director Shekhar Kapur has been relatively quiet, in terms of feature films, for more than a decade now. The director of the Oscar-nominated features “Elizabeth” and “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” has yet to make another feature since the 2007 release of the latter film. But that’s about to change, as he has signed on to helm a new rom-com, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Continue reading Lily James & Emma Thompson To Star In ‘Elizabeth’ Director’s First Feature In More Than A Decade at The Playlist.

While many eyes are on the brawl between Batman and Superman soon to hit theaters, this weekend will see another cinematic clash on movie screens: Hank Williams v Chet Baker: Dawn Of Justice. In a quirk of the release calendar, the two singers —one from the country world, the other from jazz— are both the subjects of movie biopics released this Friday, with Tom Hiddleston playing Williams in “I Saw The Light,” and Ethan Hawke as Baker in “Born To Be Blue.”

Yet it’s hard to get too enthusiastic, since few genres are as lashed to formula as the biopic, and the music biopic in particular.

Continue reading The 10 Best Music Biopics Ever Made at The Playlist.