‘Hypnotic’ Review: Robert Rodriguez’s Work-In-Progress Film Needs More Work To Progress Into Something Less Convoluted – SXSW

EXCLUSIVE: Smokehouse Pictures partner George Clooney and Grant Heslov have signed an overall film deal with the Warner Bros. Pictures Group and its Co-Chairs and CEOs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy. It amounts to a homecoming for the filmmakers, who named their company for the Smoke House steak joint right off the Warner Bros lot, where they used to eat all the time. Clooney’s history with the studio goes back to his breakthrough starring role in the Warner Bros Television drama ER. They made their first deal at Warner Bros when they formed Smokehouse in 2006.

John Mayer is continuing his successful acoustic tour!

In 1982, the same year Sir Ben Kingsley won his Best Actor Oscar for Gandhi, the year’s other big movie was Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. Now, 40 years later, Kingsley has found his own E.T., a sort of combination of that classic with a bit of Cocoon, and perhaps The Father. But Jules, the new dramedy having its World Premiere as opening night of the Sonoma Film Festival, marches to its own sweet beat, and represents yet another game attempt to bring that older adult audience back to theaters. A smart distributor should take a close look.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The drama of addiction and recovery, as it takes place in the movies, tends to come at us like a series of rituals. There’s the rule-by-rule, day-by-day protocol of 12-step programs (the meetings, the showing up, the sharing, the calls to sponsors); a lot of us may feel we know it well from movies, even if we’ve never personally undergone the experience. There are the deeply engraved patterns of addiction itself: the highs, the lows, the cravings, the exploitation of friends and family members, the descent to the bottom, the grasping for the drink or the pill or the fix (or the one that isn’t there) and, in some cases, the criminal behavior. The reaching out to save oneself is also a kind of ritual — one that some addicts would say God built into us.

Lise Pedersen Paris-based CAT&Docs has come onboard as sales agent for Italian-Swedish director Erik Gandini’s “After Work,” which had its world premiere in the main competition at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival. Variety speaks to the director at the festival. In this stunningly cinematic doc, lensed by Ruben Östlund’s long-time DOP Fredrik Wenzel and shot in the U.S., Italy, South Korea and Kuwait, Gandini explores the notion of work in the 21st century, as automation and technology free up time, and asks what the future could be like in a work-free society. One of the inspirations for the film, Gandini says, was Swedish sociologist Roland Paulsen’s writings on the ideology of work, which is rooted in the notion of a work ethic developed some 350 years ago.

Selena Gomez is a stunning bride.  The actress, 30, was recently seen on the set of Hulu's "Only Murders in the Building," filming in a gorgeous, sleeveless, lace wedding dress paired with a white veil and matching gloves. Gomez — who portrays Mabel Mora in the hit series — appeared to be moving frantically through the streets of New York City with her co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short. Martin took to Twitter on Tuesday to share a picture where he was posed with Gomez like he was about to walk her down the aisle.

Greater Manchester Police is to lose more than fifty percent of its PCSOs to finance the recruitment of more neighbourhood police officers. PCSO roles will be lost by vacancies not being filled.

Ed Meza @edmezavar The Barcelona-set feature “La nit no fa vigília” and Argentine film “Hidden City” (“Ciudad Oculta”) won the Malaga Festival Work in Progress awards for Spanish and Latin American projects on Friday. “La nit no fa vigília” (which roughly translates to “The Night Does Not Keep Watch”) centers on a young man who lives with and cares for his aging, frail grandmother, but still finds time for a nocturnal social life. It was among the frontrunners to win at the awards ceremony. A joint project from a student collective comprising Laura Corominas Espelt, Laura Serra Solé, Clara Serrano Llorens, Gerard Simó Gimeno, Ariadna Ulldemolins Abad and Pau Vall Capdet, “La nit no fa vigília” also won the industry magazine Cine y Tele prize.

Gizelle Bryant is getting us so excited for the upcoming third season of Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip!

“Air,” the first film from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Artist Equity banner, closes SXSW in Austin this year to much anticipation.

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off a surprise “work in progress” screening at SXSW, Robert Rodriguez’s action-thriller Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck, has been set for a May 12 U.S. release.

Naman Ramachandran Taiwan-France film “Salli” marks the feature debut of Taipei-based filmmaker Lien Chien-Hung after several acclaimed shorts and a TV movie. “Salli,” which won the grand prize at the Chinese-language film project matching and co-production platform Golden Horse Film Project Promotion in 2019, is a work-in-progress selection at the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF). The Mandarin-, Taiwanese-, English- and French-language film follows a lonely middle-aged chicken farmer Hui-Chun, who doesn’t speak English and develops a romantic relationship through an app with a French man who calls himself Martin. In the online world, Hui-Chun is Salli. Despite everyone calling it a romance scam, she wants to prove that love indeed exists.

film which is fitting, considering it promises results that sound like CGI skin. I don’t opt for theatrics in my beauty routine, but the prospect of building collagen and reducing fine lines simply by wearing a mask proved all too appealing for someone on the cusp of their . To combat the increasingly varied (and deep) lines around my eyes, I tried everything an eczema-plagued face would allow at home before turning to . To be clear, it’s not a lot: Popular ingredients like , tretinoin, and  are way too harsh on my skin.

Paris Hilton is sharing some very vulnerable parts of her past.

Robert Rodriguez didn’t want to screen his new movie for the first time on the same night as the Oscars. It just worked out that way. It all started when, in mid-February, the 54-year-old filmmaker realized he was rapidly approaching the 30th anniversary of the theatrical release of his first feature film, the neo-Western “El Mariachi.” “It fucking snuck up on me,” Rodriguez tells Variety on Sunday afternoon, sitting on a hotel rooftop bar overlooking the ever-changing Austin skyline. Rodriguez famously shot “El Mariachi” on a $7,000 budget, and its success helped to catalyze the independent film revolution of the 1990s and reinforce Rodriguez’s conviction to continue his DIY, homegrown approach to filmmaking. Almost all of Rodriguez’s films have been made at least in part out of his Austin-based Troublemaker Studios, from his R-rated action films like 1998’s “The Faculty,” 2005’s “Sin City” and 2010’s “Machete” to his family movies franchises “Spy Kids” and “Sharkboy and Lavagirl.” Even 2019’s “Alita: Battle Angel,” the James Cameron-produced action epic with visual effects work by Weta Digital, was shot at Troublemaker.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Work-in-progress film project “The Remnant” is both a spotlight on those who feel powerless and also a very Hong Kong example of elements of the city pulling themselves up. “The Remnant” is one of the projects in the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) unspooling March 13-15 alongside Hong Kong’s Filmart market. It tells the story of a former gangster who, upon his release from prison, sets up a laundry in an anonymous district and lives a quiet life. After property developers try to grab a rundown building, young gangsters try to throw people out of the building, drug addicts cause trouble and the old-timer heeds his neighbors’ calls and fights back.

Though it boasts a few clever ideas and exciting set pieces, Rodriguez's latest falters for the same reason his films usually do: a flimsy script.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Don’t trust anything you see or hear in “Hypnotic,” a noggin-jogging thriller with more twists than Minnie’s tightly braided ponytail. Who’s Minnie? She’s the girl who goes missing in the movie’s opening scene, while police detective dad Daniel Rourke (Ben Affleck) looks away for a second. Or does she? Depending how your mind works, there’s a chance Minnie doesn’t even exist. The perp was caught, but Minnie’s body was never found — which is a clue that this wasn’t a typical disappearance. Your typical popcorn-munching multiplex patron would never suspect how deep this Russian-doll mystery goes. Better to strap in and go along for the ride in the latest example of creativity-within-constraints from resourceful writer-director Robert Rodriguez. Taking a page from “The Matrix,” “Limitless” and “Memento” — along with whole chapters from sci-fi trickster Philip K. Dick — this slick mix of special effects and practical ingenuity puts Affleck in a fun position, and the slightly grizzled star’s still got the clench-jawed charisma to pull it off.

The Oscars didn’t rain on Robert Rodriguez’s parade tonight as the filmmaker debuted his long-in-the-works Hypnotic at SXSW’s Paramount Theatre, with crowds being turned away.

Naman Ramachandran Saurav Rai’s 2019 film ”Invitation” featured a child protagonist and once again the filmmaker centers a film on a young person. Rai’s “Guras,” a Nepali and Hindi-language film, is a work-in-progress selection at the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF). It follows 9-year-old Guras, who lives in a mountain village in India’s Darjeeling district. Her pet dog goes missing and she embarks on a journey that soon turns mystical as she meets otherworldly beings along the way. “I always had this fascination with my grandma’s real-life incident during her childhood when she stole someone’s vegetables from their garden. She ended up having chest pain after that and when her mother figured it out, she took her to the owner of the farmland. The owner immediately knew what had happened, so she smiled and prayed to her ancestors and relieved my grandma of the pain,” Rai says.