‘Desert Road’ Review: Horror Meets Sci-Fi In A Ghost Story With Soul – SXSW

Rebel Wilson has provided an update on her memoir after she named Sacha Baron Cohen as the Hollywood “a**hole” that she wrote a chapter about.

Brent Lang Executive Editor With his victory on Monday at the Critics’ Circle Theatre awards, Andrew Scott has made history. The British performer, recognized as best actor for his one-man West End show, “Vanya,” previously was named best actor at the 2024 Critics’ Circle Film Awards for his performance in “All of Us Strangers.” He’s the first person to win lead actor Critics’ Circle prizes in both film and television in the same year. “It’s a thrilling delight,” Scott says.

When is a collection of dreamy, romantic, forlorn, and crestfallen moods just that and not actually much of a movie other than a series of sequences that sum up those big melancholy feelings with achingly dreamy music? Oooh, ooh! “The Greatest Hits,” filmmaker Ned Benson’s latest feature-length effort, would like to field this one. Built one too many many groan-worthy romantic clichés like the relationship breakup phrase, “it’s time to move on,” taken to an implausibly silly genre and literal level, Benson uses a flimsy neurological time travel conceit to tentatively move forward and heal his hopelessly heartbroken protagonist’s heart.

the setting of “Road House” from Missouri to the Florida Keys should go down as one of the best decisions made by a movie remake ever.The scenery is tropical, the personalities are oversize and the area inspired a song that goes, “Wasted away again.”Plus, as any skimmer of crime headlines knows, macho bar brawls are not uncommon in the boisterous Sunshine State. Really, this action-packed update of the truly ridiculous 1989 film that starred Patrick Swayze as the world’s best bouncer could almost be a documentary.

Siddhant Adlakha While the experimental premise of “Azrael” is commendable on paper — a wordless, gore-filled revenge indie about a woman escaping a religious cult, as well as zombies of some sort — the film finds itself unable to visually convey many basic tenets of its story. In struggling to reconcile image and meaning, it ends up yielding an uncanny experience that invites too many dueling interpretations, and not nearly enough emotional certainty.

Music, by and large, can be seen as autobiographical; it’s far from uncommon for songwriters not to draw from any number of personal experiences encompassing, say, the lows of heartbreak and loss to life’s triumphs, all of which and more could easily reside within the average person as distant memories but attain a sort of immortality once this narrative is set to music.

About a rough-and-tumble bar cooler with a heart of gold hired to clean up the baddest honkytonk in a small Missouri town, 1989’s “Road House” with Patrick Swayze wasn’t exactly high art, nor did it have the most sophisticated story. Still, it did the trick in the 1980s, when punch-‘em-up fisticuffs were enough as a harmless B-movie diversion (to remember fondly, not actually rewatch and enjoy, though).

For anyone in the midst of, or having previously endured, the pains associated with the salad days of youth, that time-honored tradition of finding one’s unique voice while attempting to entrench oneself within the local population of similarly-aged peers as new feelings and emotions emerge on a seemingly daily basis is, at best, an uphill battle. At worst, it can serve to cripple a developing soul in ways adults may struggle to comprehend fully; it is for these reasons that any successes along the way need not be ignored but celebrated; friendships with like-minded individuals and membership in groups catered to one’s passions are more than a hallmark of these undeniably short years and could be seen as wholly necessary to a developing personality.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spinning audiences back to the mid-1970s, UFA Fiction‘s latest period series “Disko 76” is set in a pivotal time in the industrial heartland of West Germany as a new American pop music craze takes over the airwaves and dance floors. The six-part series, which premiered at the recent Berlinale Series Market, continues its international rollout at Series Mania in Lille before bowing on the RTL+ streaming platform on March 28 and on RTL Group channel Nitro on April 1. UFA Fiction quickly won over RTL+ with the idea from former UFA Fiction producer Benjamin Benedict of a family story set in the disco era, says fellow producer Sinah Swyter.

History repeats itself in this ingenious but surprisingly heartfelt sci-fi, which takes the premise of Groundhog Day and fashions from it a poignant statement about life and mortality. Refreshingly for the genre, it focuses on a middle-aged woman — a scientist-slash-physicist, even — whose 55th birthday and final breath will occur within the same week. But though there is an element of resistance to the latter, Omni Loop is unusual in that it isn’t simply about breaking the cycle; Bernardo Britto’s film is about facing the inevitable, gently phasing out the genre elements to reach an understated but emotional climax.

In Michael Showalter’s The Idea of You, based on the novel by Robinne Lee, Amazon/MGM brings to the screen a narrative that tantalizes with the prospect of exploring the complexities of love, age disparity, and the pursuit of happiness in the digital age. Anchored by Anne Hathaway’s Solene, a single mother and art gallery owner, and Nicholas Galitzine’s Hayes Campbell, a young pop star from the fictional band August Moon, the film sets its sights on charting the course of an unconventional romance, but the script muddles it all up to produce a somewhat funny, somewhat entertaining, albeit overly long romantic comedy.

Look, let’s be honest. From the opening seconds of its debut trailer, we all knew that Alex Garland’s “Civil War” would not be a pill that went down easily.

Disney’s latest salvo in a proxy fight with activist investor Trian Fund Management highlights the firm’s “silent partner” Ike Perlmutter and his “difficult history with Bob Iger.”

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Fresh off her recent stint hosting “Saturday Night Live,” Sydney Sweeney made her way to Austin and SXSW for the world premiere of her new religious horror film “Immaculate” — and on Tuesday night, she had the crowd screaming (and laughing at their own reactions) at the Paramount Theatre. The jump scares, in particular, had the entire theater jumping — and then giggling at their own fear. “Immaculate” leans into horror but also has plenty of moments of dark humor.

It’s unlikely that two shows exist that are as wildly different as these. As the trio behind Duplass Brothers Productions continue to spread their combined wealth of talents over film, television, and streaming, the experience of taking in the pilots to their two latest series, “Ryley Walker & Friends” and, “The Broadcast, “offers a glimpse at projects loaded with as much promise as they are dissimilar.

Naman Ramachandran Shreyom Ghosh’s “The Vampire of Sheung Shui” is unique in that it is a Hong Kong-set horror-comedy with a protagonist of Indian origin. It has been selected for the 22nd Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart. Written by D.F.W.

From the basement of dingy jam sessions in Akron, Ohio, to arena rock success, a multiplatinum career, and multiple Grammy wins, “This is a Film About The Black Keys” tracks the unlikely rise of one of rock’s biggest duos. Directed by Jeff Dupre (“Soundtracks: Songs That Defined History,” “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present”), the largely conventional rock doc doesn’t break the mold but engages, nonetheless, telling a captivating story of brotherhood, slow-grinding perseverance, weathering many personal storms, and the heavy tolls that success enacts.

Confusion and how information is communicated, relayed, and delayed in a thriller can be a fantastic artistic weapon in the filmmaker’s toolkit. With his mathematic precision, filmmakers like Christopher Nolan can understand the Swiss watch nature of perfectly timed breadcrumbs of info that can preserve the mystery and keep an audience enraptured and on the edge of their seats.

My Dead Friend Zoe, directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes and co-written with AJ Bermudez, weaves a complex tapestry of trauma, memory, and the enduring strength of human connection. Starring Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales in the lead roles, with support from Utkarsh Ambudkar, Ed Harris, Gloria Reuben, and Morgan Freeman, this film delves deep into the psychological aftermath of warfare, presenting a narrative that is both intimate and expansive.

Do you remember where you were on New Years 2000? Were you home wondering if all the electronics in your home were going to short circuit? Kyle Mooney, explores an alternative to what could have happened on that day in his directorial debut Y2K. His unique comedic voice and offbeat humor have prepared him for this ambitious project that emerges as a striking commentary on the intersection of technology, generational angst, and the human spirit. Mooney, alongside co-writer Evan Winter, crafts a narrative that is at once a love letter to the turn of the millennium and a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked technological advancement.