‘Bathing in Moonlight’ Review: Moonstruck

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic What would a monk want with a gun? Bringing wisdom and a streak of wry humor to his Bhutan-set sophomore feature, “The Monk and the Gun” director Pawo Choyning Dorji teases any number of possible answers to that question over the course of a droll, shrewdly satirical fable, in which Western values crash against a seemingly intransigent (but potentially more enlightened) South Asian culture. A gifted storyteller who keeps audiences guessing about his characters’ motives until the surprising moment everything comes together, Dorji was born in Bhutan, but attended university in Wisconsin.

Thania Garcia A gloomy Los Angeles weekend ushered in the first day of October on the same evening the Arctic Monkeys put a cap on three sold-out nights at the Kia Forum in Inglewood. The band was appropriately dressed for the occasion, conjointly sporting black and white suits while frontman Alex Turner masqueraded behind a pair of oversized, brown aviators through the first half of the sold-out arena show.

Evita (★★★☆☆), Shereen Pimentel, in the title role, declaims not from a balcony of the Presidential Palace, but surrounded by risers of flowers stacked to the rafters.A luminous rose among a field of lesser blooms, Eva “Evita” Péron, addresses her nation to the triumphant strains of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” Indeed it’s a triumphant moment for the Shakespeare Theatre’s production, directed by Sammi Cannold, building on her staged concert presentation of Evita for New York City Center Encores! in 2019, and a subsequent American Repertory Theatre production in Cambridge, Massachusetts this past summer.Finessing the First Lady’s appeal to her people, Pimentel’s voice is at its loveliest on “Don’t Cry,” while Jason Sherwood’s scenic design provides a gorgeous visual representation of Evita’s lofty status amongst the Argentinian masses.The stirring number reinforces the tune’s status as the crown jewel of one of Webber’s best-known scores, with a polished, patient rendition that belies the effort to deliver all an audience might hope for or want from a hit. Other gems in the score don’t gleam with the same care and intention, although the performers, backed by music director Mona Seyed-Bolorforosh’s 16-piece orchestra, have their moments.The warm baritone of Caesar Samayoa, as Presidente Juan Péron, booms confidently through the droll game of musical chairs depicting the military colonel’s rise to power.

Guy Lodge Film Critic As directorial head-to-heads go, Jack Huston versus Stanley Kubrick isn’t anyone’s idea of a fair fight. But that’s exactly the clash the actor and Hollywood scion sets up for himself in his directorial debut “Day of the Fight” — named for Kubrick’s famous 1951 documentary short of the same title, and likewise following an Irish-American boxer through his daily New York routine, in the hours leading up to a climactic evening match.

Warning: The following contains spoilers from tonight’s American Horror Story season 12 episode one “Multiply Thy Pain” directed by Jessica Yu and written by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Halley Feiffer.

Travel blog by Travels of Adam (Hipster Blog) – Travels of Adam (Hipster Blog) - Travel & Lifestyle Hipster Blog Like a fair few of you, I’m a bit of a book nerd. And as the luck of my age would have it, I grew up with the Harry Potter book series. I won’t even lie to you: Harry Potter has been a big part of my life.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic There’s a rather simplistic, retro “don’t forget where you came from” message lurking within “It Lives Inside,” suggesting that people who leave their native culture behind might well attract — or even deserve — torment from its ancient mythological spirits. But that faintly reactionary finger-wagging is subsumed by the moment-to-moment effectiveness of writer-director Bishal Dutta’s debut feature. Repping one of the better PG-13 horrors of late, it ekes sufficient menace from the familiar story gist of a consuming demonic presence passed from one beleaguered victim to another.

TORONTO – “American Fiction,” the directorial debut from Cord Jefferson, is genuinely a very, very funny movie. And that’s hyperbole on our part.

streaming, is based on a novel by B.E. Jones and follows British couple Liv (Jenna Coleman) and Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who embark on a road trip through the American West including Las Vegas and the deserts and canyons of Arizona.The opening scene is a close-up of a black widow spider, just before it’s crushed by Liv and Will, driving a powder-blue convertible.

Hollywood, by and large, portrays bars as the most fun and chummy places on earth. At “Cheers” and “Coyote Ugly,” everybody knows your name and you can grow into a better person by sexy dancing.Even Moe’s Tavern from “The Simpsons,” with all its seasoned boozehounds, has a base level of respectability and camaraderie.

In 2019, Australian documentary filmmaker Kitty Green made her first narrative movie, a piercing almost cinéma vérité-style movie focused on an office assistant in a Tribeca film company run by a not-so-thinly disguised Harvey Weinstein. The male culture there and the sexual acts of the boss made it almost a modern horror story at the height of the #MeToo movement. For Green’s second narrative film she has changed up the filmmaking style considerably, but with The Royal Hotel which premiered last week at Telluride and now premieres tonight at the Toronto Film Festival, she is taking an even deeper look at the dark side of men as seen through the female gaze in a broken down hotel bar in a desolate part of the Australian Outback.

Fall film festivals are usually where we look for the more serious awards bait pictures, but occasionally as with tonight’s rousing World Premiere of Taikia Waititi’s long-gestating American Somoan soccer comedy, Next Goal Wins, you get a real commercial crowd pleaser.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In Cord Jefferson’s idea-dense “American Fiction,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern reworking of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” (hardly bestseller material to begin with), but all the industry can see is the color of his skin.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Lil Wayne spoke for a lot of people attending Saturday’s “50 Years of Hip-Hop” celebration at the official residence of the vice president of the United States in Washington, D.C.: At the conclusion of his set, he thanked the audience and said, “I cannot believe I am here.” Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke for many of the approximately 400 assembled artists, executives, politicians, journalists and others when she said as part of her opening remarks, “Hip-hop now shapes nearly every aspect of American popular culture, and it reflects the incredible diversity and ingenuity of the American people. I truly believe hip-hop is one of America’s greatest exports.” Although hip-hop has certainly received at least some of the respect it is due in recent years — nowhere near enough, considering it is indisputably the most important and influential cultural movement of the last half century — it was still surreal to be watching artists like Wayne, Common, Jeezy, Fat Joe, Remy Ma, Doug E.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Frank Marshall’s film “Alive” has never exactly been a classic, but for a certain bracket of moviegoers who saw it in 1993, it remains a vivid memory. A heart-in-mouth recreation of the 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash — from which 16 people eventually survived 72 days stranded in a remote, snowy stretch of the Andes in western Argentina, while 29 perished — it visualized the events past the remit of worldwide news reports and magazine stories.

his last flick, “The Wind Rises,” and it’s assumed he won’t churn out another after this.However, should this be the end of the road for him, take heart that the Japanese director’s visual majesty and uncontrollable imagination are as fully present as ever. And so is his unparalleled understanding of what makes children tick. A filmmaker rarely goes out with his head held so high.“Heron” is not as perfect as some of Miyazaki’s past movies.

Aramide Tinubu Fairytales can easily bend and twist into nightmares, which is the core sentiment of Apple TV+’s adaptation of Victor LaValle’s award-winning novel, “The Changeling.” In the series, a young father, Apollo Kagwa (LaKeith Stanfield), embarks on a desperate search for his wife, Emma Valentine (Clark Backo), after she vanishes following a horrific incident shortly after the birth of their first child. Lavalle, who narrates this eight-episode series, set his book in New York City — across decades and realms, infusing Norwegian fairy tales with elements from the Black American experience, Ugandan traditions and magical folklore.

TELLURIDE – The most intriguing aspect of Kitty Green’s new thriller “The Royal Hotel” is what she doesn’t tell you. Set in a town in the middle of the Australian outback, this is a movie that simmers in culture clashes, dangerous misogyny, and sexual tension.

With no film industry to speak of, and limited funds to make a movie in one of the most remote places on earth, young Bhutanese director/writer Pawo Choyning Dorji pulled off a miracle with his first feature, Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom which came out of nowhere to get an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature (formerly Best Foreign Language Film) in 2019. It was a charmer of a movie set in a village in Bhutan with no connection to the outside world and where a young teacher must decide whether he wants to stay and teach the kids or follow his dreams to Australia.

Daddio is a knockout, the sort of breakthrough by a virtual unknown that many might dream about but only rarely takes place. Entirely set in a taxi stuck for a long time at night on a jammed highway heading from New York City’s JFK airport to Manhattan, debuting writer-director Christy Hall has created a marvelous two-hander between a veteran New York cabbie who’s seen it all and a young woman trying to figure things out.