‘Beastie Boys Story’ on Apple TV Plus: Film Review

A documentary built around previously unheard audiotaped interviews with Stanley Kubrick captures a director who didn't like to talk about his films...talking about his films.

A kitschy cover version of the early-’80s teen movie romance gets bogged down in nostalgia, losing the edge — of new music and Nicolas Cage’s performance — that made it a generational favorite.

In her atmospheric debut, Lara Jean Gallagher sends her jilted protagonist into the woods to unnerving effect.

You really can't trust movie posters these days. The one for the new adventure drama The Legion features Mickey Rourke and Bai Ling prominently above the title, but, as is all too typical of internationally geared productions these days, their presence is designed to fool global audiences.

Through a trippy circumstance, a young woman learns to cherish the yearly gifts from her deceased mom in this Italian sobfest.

A memoir of molestation whose convoluted structure mirrors the shocking web of abuse its protagonists suffered, Sasha Joseph Neulinger's Rewind allows viewers to watch as a bright, loving child is utterly transformed by a family member's sexual assault.

Befitting a documentary executive produced by Errol Morris, Enemies of the State is polished, assured and chilling. But as director Sonia Kennebeck traces a tale of hacker culture, government surveillance and extreme family loyalty, the smooth surface buckles.

Director Alex Lee Moyers addresses the incel phenomenon as a question of loneliness, giving five incendiary attention seekers exactly what they want in this challenging but essential doc.

Streams and sales of Beastie Boys’ catalog rise following the April 24 release of new documentary Beastie Boys Story on Apple TV+, allowing multiple songs and albums to reach the Billboard charts dated May 9. In the streaming and sales tracking week running April 24-30, on-demand U.S. streams of the rap/rock trio

[Note: In the wake ofthe Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] In the hard-hitting and heartbreaking documentary Jacinta, a young mother suffers the effects of heroin addiction that plagued her own mother as well, prolonging a cycle of abuse and incarceration that repeats itself across a generation. Stories of drugs, jail and recidivism are, alas, nothing new in America.

“It was kind of a weird, bittersweet thing,” says Beastie Boys’ Michael “Mike D” Diamond of seeing billboards promoting his new documentary Beastie Boys Story in the midst of the COVID-19 shutdown and social distancing.“A friend had texted both Adam (“Ad-Rock” Horovitz) and I pictures of these huge billboards that are right across from the Staples Center here in downtown L.A.

Although it presumably didn't involve much financial risk, it was a gutsy move for Paramount Pictures to pick up the low-budget British teen gang drama Blue Story for domestic theatrical distribution in the current era in which studios concentrate on would-be franchises.

Twice in Clark Duke's Southern crime pic Arkansas, an oddball character played by the director informs strangers that, however off-putting he may be, sooner or later everybody wants to be his friend. The same must be true in real life, since the actor (familiar from The Office and Hot Tub Time Machine) has enlisted a surprising array of talent (not only from Hollywood, but the music world)to assist as he makes his feature directing debut.

Where other docs go deep, Netflix’s Michelle Obama portrait stays shallow, but the former FLOTUS’s inspirational personality comes through loud and clear.

[In the wake of the Tribeca festival's postponement this year,The Hollywood Reporteris reviewing select fest entries that elected to premiere digitally for critics.] There's plenty of wild and intimate beauty and not a little blood in Kokoloko, the first feature from Gerardo Naranjo since his 2011 international breakout, Miss Bala.

In 2004, when she was 16 years old, Cyntoia Brown shot and killed a man she alleges had picked her up hours earlier in a Nashville parking lot intending to pay for sex. Despite claiming self-defense, Brown Long, who has since changed her surname to reflect her marriage, was tried as an adult and convicted of murder in the first degree, and eventually sentenced to 51 years in prison.

Ariana Grande and the Beastie Boys are leading the live stream highlights for Monday (April 27, 2020).

By Dominic Patten

Chronicling the multi-decade career of one of the world’s biggest rap groups, Beastie Boys Story reunites the band with the director of some of their most famous videos in a fascinating, massively entertaining and heartfelt ‘live documentary’ that’ll touch even the most hardened viewer.

A teenage murder case recently relitigated on social media is sympathetically traced in Daniel H. Birnam's urgently felt Netflix doc.