‘The Cottage’ Review: Sex Farce Directed by Jason Alexander Delivers Limp, Familiar Comedy

plopped a boxing ring in the middle of the orchestra nearly 10 years ago.But Huey Lewis did not sing “Power of Car,” he sang “Power of Love.” And heart is completely absent from director John Rando’s shiny and serviceable staging of the beloved 1985 science-fiction movie.Coursing emotion, teen angst and can-do scrappiness are what set director Robert Zemeckis’ original film apart from other entries in the time-travel genre. “Back To The Future” wasn’t HG Wells or “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.” And it’s hardly remembered as a flashy spectacle, either.

Back To The Future: The Musical made me very nostalgic for that great time-traveling ’80s movie, but Peggy Sue Got Married isn’t available on any of my streaming services.

Meg 2: The Trench is taking a bite out of the box office this weekend!

Jason Alexander’s mountain of legal issues just got a bit taller.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Next time someone wistfully insists, “They don’t make ’em like they used to,” why not point that nostalgic cinephile to the work of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon? The Belgium-based creative couple are almost single-handedly keeping the classic burlesque tradition alive on screen — if the word “single-handedly” can fairly be used to describe a near-silent comic duo with four hands between them, plus a growing company of collaborators (including dancer Kaori Ito) and a prosthetic arm with a mind of its own. In “The Falling Star,” Abel and Gordon bring their old-school comedic sensibility to what could loosely be described as a detective story, told in a film noir style punctuated with flashes of color: a red dress, a tiny green car, a bright yellow scooter.

Ellise Shafer “Lost in Paris” directing duo Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon have shared a first look at their new film “The Falling Star,” which premieres at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Abel and Gordon also star in the film, which follows Boris (Abel), a former activist who works at a bartender at the Falling Star. According to the film’s official synopsis, Boris’ “guilty past resurfaces when a victim finds him and wants revenge.

Co-creators Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” was a delight for basketball fans in Season 1, a rare look at a specific sports era that’s not part of a “30 for 30” ESPN documentary nor in a two-hour movie. And because the series was about as precious with historical details as it was keeping a consistent visual style—that is, not so much—we got to have fun imaging how legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) and Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) would have butt heads in the locker room.

Travis Scott’s debut full-length “Rodeo” polished the sound of his early mixtapes, “Utopia” rejuvenates Travis Scott’s discography. Years in the making, the album expands his sound without drastically changing it — he’s still using his MPC and his vocals are just as distorted as they were ten years ago — but now the stakes are exponentially higher.

Guy Lodge Film Critic There is no unknown country in “The Unknown Country,” a gently meandering road trip through an America that even those of us directly unacquainted have traveled via the movies: Morrisa Maltz’s lovely second feature trades in the familiar imagery of unfettered highways ribboned through the great, grassy middle of nowhere, roadside inns outlined in humming hot-pink neon, gas stations slumped against the sparse landscape like oily oases. It’s the people building their lives along this route, however, that this sociable, inquisitive docufiction seeks to discover, as Maltz profiles the faces flashing by the driver only passing through.

While it’s not exactly “The Beanie Bubble’s” fault that it’s being released at the tail-end of a film cycle that has seen every inch of corporatized IP mined for stories about the wonders (or horrors) of capitalism — “Air,” “Blackberry,” “Tetris,” and even “Flamin’ Hot” come to mind, all with varying degrees of success — it’s also fitting that such a historical footnote would be last out of the gate. Continue reading ‘The Beanie Bubble’ Review: A Great Zach Galifianakis Performance Cannot Save This Messy I.P.

Broadway actress Lilli Cooper just celebrated the opening night of her new play The Cottage and she was asked about her former co-star Ethan Slater while on the red carpet.

Gordon Cox Theater Editor Jason Alexander’s latest theater project, the new comedy “The Cottage,” opened on Broadway last night — and it’s just the first of a string of theater projects that stand poised to keep the former “Seinfeld” star busy in the theater for the next year or more. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: Alexander revealed what he’s got coming up on the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety‘s theater podcast.

Air-conditioned Broadway held its own as New York City plunged ever deeper into a hot summer last week, with total box office receipts keeping steady at $31,520,593, a tiny increase of 2% over the previous week.

Blumhouse scored huge box office numbers when David Gordon Green took on a new sequel to the “Halloween” franchise back in 2018. That resulted in three hit films (though critics haven’t been too kind to at least two of those movies).

my ear. The gist, without revealing specifics, is that everybody is cheating on everybody else. In a 1923 English countryside abode, erudite Beau (Eric McCormack) and Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy) are not-so-classily getting it on, when gradually they’re intruded upon by Marjorie (Lilli Cooper), Clarke (Alex Moffat), Dierdre (Dana Steingold) and Richard (the role normally played by Neham Joshi was understudy Tony Roach on the night I saw it). The group is made up of husbands, wives, exes, secret lovers and, shall we say, secret professionals, all of whom have repressed desires and grievances to air.What unravels is not so much a jolly farce of slamming doors and shocking surprises (there are a few), but a two-act parlor scene of admitted sexual indiscretions screamed so the bartenders at Sardi’s next door can follow along. You miss the old farces. There isn’t much of the hiding-in-closets fun that has long been the meat of similar comedies such as “Boeing-Boeing” and Coward’s “Present Laughter.” That’s why the amped-up energy is so jarring — for the most part, these characters simply stand together and yell. That tried-and-true farce structure — low-key witty first act, madcap second, wrapup third — is abandoned by Rustin in favor of high-energy antics from start to finish, much like Broadway’s 2021 play “POTUS” that similarly ran out of gas halfway through.Steingold, as the loopy Dierdre, runs away with “The Cottage.” Her persona, with a voice somewhere between a ghost and a drunken bridesmaid, is hilarious.

and, and movies like no less).If you (like us) have been pining for an opportunity to tap into the feminine trend this season — but less keen to splurge on one of those famous Hill House nap dresses — then you're in major luck! Amazon's own cottagecore nap dress is practically identical to the internet's favorite Hill House Home style (aka the Ellie Nap Dress) and is available now for $70, ahead of Amazon Prime Day.Amazon's dress has all the same fairy-centric flair of its Hill House counterpart — with ruffled sleeves, a tiered midi skirt silhouette and no shortage of dainty floral designs. But perhaps best of all: it's priced at half the cost of other TikTok-loved nap dresses ($70 at Amazon vs.

It is probably no accident that Apple has chosen this week to launch its own legendary toy biopic, The Beanie Bubble, in the shadow of Warner Bros. about-to-be blockbuster Barbie. It can only benefit from the obvious connections and themes of female empowerment bubbling under the surface of both.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Dig deep enough through the eBay auction site, and you can still find Beanie Babies listed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nobody’s buying them at that price, but it’s a reminder that there was a moment in the not-so-distant past when the cheaply made stuffed animals fetched outrageous sums. The phenomenon, while it lasted, was fueled largely by the illusion of scarcity, as collectors chased what they believed to be limited numbers of the highly coveted critters. Were they really so rare? “The Beanie Bubble” doesn’t have any particularly interesting insights into the craze, focusing instead on their inventor, disgraced self-made toy mogul Ty Warner, portrayed by Zach Galifianakis in one of the discomfort comedian’s most skin-crawling performances to date. Tonally, the movie walks a tricky line between easy-target satire and female-empowering corporate case study, falling into the overcrowded junk-culture nostalgia-porn category so recently represented by “Tetris,” “Air,” “BlackBerry” and “Flamin’ Hot.”

Britney Spears has been keeping busy since her 13-year conservatorship ended in November 2021.

**Spoiler alert: There’s no way to really discuss this documentary without spoilers, at least for me, so be forewarned, and if you don’t want to be spoiled, please watch “The Deepest Breath” doc first.** Thanks in part to filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin— the directors behind the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo” and daring extreme adventuring and peril docs like “Meru,” “The Rescue,” “Wild Life”— plus the recent thriving docu-drama engagement boon on streaming, athletes pushing themselves to the limits and beyond have seemingly entered a new golden age.