Argentina great Carlos Tevez has called time on a superb playing career that saw him represent both Manchester clubs and controversially switch from Manchester United to Manchester City in 2009.
15.05.2022 - 22:13 / variety.com
Dennis Harvey Film CriticThough few members of the public were still denying a link between smoking and cancer at the time, it was still nonetheless rather startling when the extent of the tobacco industry’s deliberate disinformation campaign on that subject got exposed about a quarter-century ago. The déjà vu runs thick watching Jennifer Baichwal’s new documentary, “Into the Weeds,” which provides another illustration of coldblooded corporate denialism in the face of widespread harm.Here the culprit is agrochemical giant Monsanto, and their product Roundup, purportedly for some time the world’s most popular herbicide.
Borrowing from “Big Tobacco’s” playbook of yore, it appears the company set out to bury ample evidence of its carcinogenicity as long as it could, buying malleable scientists and discrediting more principled ones, refusing to apply warning labels, denying a causal relationship even as tens of thousands of cancer patients sued. Those lawsuits (some still ongoing) are the focus here, in a film that’s more straight reportage than many of its director’s prior nonfiction features such as “Manufactured Landscapes,” “Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia” or “Anthropocene.” Though not as emotionally wrenching as some of its whistleblowing ilk (such as 2018’s similarly angled “The Devil We Know”), this Hot Docs opening-night premiere is still first-rate nonfiction storytelling that should attract interest particularly from broadcasters.Baichwal frames a complex issue — one she doesn’t muddy further by referencing the many other frontiers where Monsanto has drawn bitter controversy — by giving us a sole primary protagonist in the form of Dewayne “Lee” Johnson.
Argentina great Carlos Tevez has called time on a superb playing career that saw him represent both Manchester clubs and controversially switch from Manchester United to Manchester City in 2009.
Dennis Harvey Film CriticOne of the most enjoyable South Korean action movies in recent years, 2017’s “The Outlaws” was a deft mix of brutal gang-warfare thrills and Keystone Cops comedics. It provided an ideal vehicle for Ma Dong-seok aka Don Lee (“Train to Busan” and “Eternals”) as the police investigator whose hit-first-ask-permission-later methods regularly got the job done while infuriating his superiors.That burly protagonist and his sidekicks are back in “The Roundup,” which despite a different directorial (newbie Lee Sang-yong replacing the prior edition’s Kang Yoon-seong) and writing crew, maintains the original’s strengths.
Dennis Harvey Film CriticThe mild initial curiosity stirred by Zoom-shot movies died quickly, because so few of them were watchable, and because filmmakers quickly found workarounds to create more fluid entertainments while still observing COVID precautionary measures. Thus “Zero Contact” arrives as a novelty that’s already more than worn out its welcome, aiming for dubious additional distinction as “the world’s first star-powered feature film NFT.” (It was released in that form last September — whether anyone actually purchased it as such is unknown.)We’ll just gingerly step around that factoid, as the aptly named “Zero Contact” has plenty of more tangible ways in which it is a steaming pile of nada.
fringe benefits, having experimented with bangs multiple times. Whether cut into her real hair, or when employing faux fringe trickery courtesy of clip-ins, the model has styled bangs in various ways at public events and for photoshoots. Her latest way to wear them was at the Cannes Film Festival, debuting a full fringe on the red carpet ahead of the Crimes of the Future screening.
Naman Ramachandran A restored version of Indian master Satyajit Ray’s “The Adversary” is playing at Cannes Classics this year and films inspired by his works are being planned.Kolkata-based Indian producer-director Aritra Sen’s Roadshow Films and Los Angeles-based British writer-director Alex Harvey’s Big Bazaar Films are producing two films this year, which take their inspiration from Ray’s life and work. First up is feature documentary “Forest of Humans,” which looks at Ray’s creative relationship with Kolkata, the city where he lived and worked all his life.
EXCLUSIVE: Emmy-nominated filmmakers Alex Fumero and Kareem Tabsch are partnering to form the production company Trojan Horse. The company will be based in Los Angeles and Miami.
Dennis Harvey Film CriticSpare parts of high school comedies from “Peggy Sue Got Married” to “Mean Girls” and beyond have been torn asunder, then sewn back together to create “Senior Year.” In other words, this vehicle for producer-star Rebel Wilson isn’t organic even as a genre homage; its Frankensteinian assemblage always feels more imitative than inspired. Nonetheless, if Alex Hardcastle’s effortfully high-spirited Netflix feature isn’t exactly good, it’s still good enough to provide reasonable throwaway fun, thanks much less to the material than to a cast that elevates it when they can.Introduced as “just some average boring invisible girl who had no friends” in 1999, Australian émigré Stephanie Conway (Angourie Rice) determines on her 14th birthday to start doing better.
[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
You know the story of Tupac Shakur, the now-legendary hip hop icon: uber-prolific, courting fame, controversy, and a rock n’ roll lifestyle of superstardom, Shakur’s hip hop reign was all too brief and he was gunned down by rivals when his career was still ascending. What’s lesser-known to many is the story of Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, an American political activist and former member of the Black Panther Party, their love, their sometimes strained relationship, but also the way her political defiance influenced the music of her son.