‘The Personal History of David Copperfield’ Film Review: Armando Iannucci Meets Charles Dickens

Ava Max was destined to be a pop star. Growing up, the Wisconsin native listened to the likes of Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Britney Spears and Beyoncé, studying their craft in hopes of one day becoming their peer.

Veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, one of Venice’s two Career Golden Lion recipients this year alongside Tilda Swinton, brings prewar Hong Kong to exquisite if restrained life in her latest historical drama, Love After Love (Di Yu Lu Xiang).

Facing his mother's worsening leukemia, a boy turns his curious mind from detective stories to supernatural lore in David Oyelowo's The Water Man, a family adventure set against a lush Pacific Northwest backdrop. Doing double-duty behind and in front of the camera (playing the boy's father) Oyelowo is sure-footed in his feature directing debut, delivering a smart and wholesome picture with about as little sentimentality as such a tale can have.

Despite the countless technological innovations in the 36 years since the release of Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, that iconoclastic time capsule of a 1983 Talking Heads show is still considered by many to be the greatest rock concert film ever made.

just really has no part in any discussion of the work of Byrne or of director Spike Lee, who turned the former Talking Heads front man’s Broadway show into a film that premiered at the slimmed-down TIFF on Thursday, and will come to HBO in October.

UPDATE (9/8/2020, 11 p.m. ET): On Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020, the US Justice Department asked to take over as President Donald Trump’s defense team in a lawsuit brought on by E. Jean Carroll, who accused the former Celebrity Apprentice host of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s — this, according to CNN.

Also Read: Regina King's Feature Film Directorial Debut 'One Night in Miami' Acquired by AmazonThe men in question are Cassius Clay (Eli Goree, “Riverdale”), in Miami to battle Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship; his friend and spiritual adviser Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir, “Noelle”), who’s helping Clay embrace Islam even as Malcolm is parting ways with his own mentor, Elijah Muhammad; NFL legend Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge, “The Invisible Man”), who’s just starting to dip his toes into a

Inspired by personal experience with a loved one, husband-and-wife screenwriting partners Inon and Natalie Shampanier take a straightforward and empathetic approach to their story of one woman's persecutory delusional disorder, or what's sometimes referred to in lay terms as paranoia.

nasty piece of work, as a pejorative. Hell, maybe I didn’t even mean it to be pejorative.Also Read: Maisie Williams Says 'Game of Thrones' Fame Led Her to Be Consumed by Social Media ScrutinyBased on the French comic book “Une nuit de pleine lune” and directed by Julius Berg, “The Owners” is tense, uneasy and brutal, escalating from the creepy to the ludicrous over the course of 92 deliberately unpleasant minutes.

In the year of coronavirus, the Venice Film Festival opened on a low-key note with a local Italian drama that, though finely crafted by director Daniele Luchetti, pushed no envelope and made no splash. It also included a new credit at the end, which we’re likely to see for some time to come: “cast medical exams,” followed by a doctor’s name.

Yorgos Lanthimos' dark absurdist comedy Dogtooth in 2009 ushered in the so-called Greek Weird Wave, which blossomed at least partly out of national chaos triggered by the country's financial crisis that same year. Christos Nikou, whose background includes working as an assistant director on that film, establishes himself as an exciting new voice in the movement with his assured feature debut, Apples.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic“Women Make Film.” The title of Irish film savant Mark Cousins’ sprawling 14-hour follow-up to “The Story of Film” serves both as a statement of fact and, if punctuated slightly differently, a call to action: “Women, Make Film!”Where the earlier documentary was a monumental survey of the medium, attempting to cram its entire history into a single project, Cousins allows this latest labor of love to be more discursive and idiosyncratic — “a new road movie through

The news of Robin Williams' 2014 death at his own hands was emotionally devastating. Not just because it was the tragic loss of a great talent, but also because it seemed unfathomable that such a brilliant entertainer, one who had brought so much joy to millions, could have felt such despair.

When the Japanese Imperial Army laid siege to an innocuous warehouse in 1937’s Battle of Shanghai, the skirmish ultimately became a flashpoint that galvanized a nation. China lost that battle but won the war, and the resistance of the Eight Hundred Heroes earned the legendary status it retains to this day.

Three years after the runaway success of Get Out, directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz have followed in Jordan Peele’s footsteps with another allegorical social thriller about the state of race relations in America. Much like the earlier film, Antebellum is a feature directorial debut that takes a big swing.

Also Read: Janelle Monae Horror Film 'Antebellum' Moves to On-Demand ReleaseFor the film’s lengthy opening stretch, Janelle Monáe plays a young slave named Eden in Louisiana during the Civil War (a time period that technically means the movie is post-antebellum, if you want to be picky).

Before the world got hit by the devastating and ongoing pandemic, this year was going to see several actors make the jump to the director’s chair. From Halle Berry‘s directorial debut “Bruised,” to Regina King making her own debut with “One Night in Miami,” and David Oyelowo‘s “The Water Man” all premiering at film festivals this year.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorWhen Armando Iannucci helmed “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” (opening on 1,000 screens around the country Aug.

any film is worth the risk inherent in venturing to a movie theater. I won’t presume to answer that question on anyone else’s behalf, but suffice to say that “New Mutants” isn’t exactly a groundbreaking cinematic experience.

Dino-Ray Ramos Associate Editor/ReporterAfter making its world premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield is ready to hit theaters. Searchlight Pictures is debuting the reimagining of the Charles Dickens’ classic starring Dev Patel in physical theaters (remember those?).