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‘The Flash’ Review: Ezra Miller Is on a Bender of High Anxiety in a Movie That Starts Strong and Grows Overwrought - variety.com - Indiana - county Barry - city Gotham - Beyond
variety.com
06.06.2023 / 20:55

‘The Flash’ Review: Ezra Miller Is on a Bender of High Anxiety in a Movie That Starts Strong and Grows Overwrought

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In comic-book movies, when it comes to a hero’s superpowers — flying, lifting objects, repelling bullets, the indomitability of a shield or hammer — the audience is almost always on the outside looking in. But in “The Flash,” when the title character throttles forward at the speed of the hot-singe lightning streaks at his back, or floats through the air in slowed-down motion so beyond bullet-time that a mere second appears to last forever, the movie makes us part of the experience. We know just what he’s going through, which is why the scene gives you a jolt.     Early on, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), a forensic chemist in the Central City Police Department, receives a call from Alfred (Jeremy Irons) — yes, that Alfred — letting him know that there’s an attack underway, and that none of the other Justice League members, notably Batman, is around to help. So Barry, in his form-fitting red thermal crystal helmet and suit, zoom-runs all the way to Gotham City, where he confronts a high-rise hospital whose east wing is collapsing, leaving a nursery full of newborns falling through the air. The extended sequence in which he saves them, grabbing energy bites of candy and burrito in between, has the feel of an underwater comedy ballet. It’s life-or-death but cheeky as hell. Just like our cracked hero.

‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ Review: A Less Bombastic, More Relatable Sequel Shows That There’s Still Life in the Machine - variety.com
variety.com
06.06.2023 / 19:45

‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ Review: A Less Bombastic, More Relatable Sequel Shows That There’s Still Life in the Machine

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The early “Transformers” films — in fact, just about all the “Transformers” films — were two things at once. They were industrial showroom expos of chop-shop magicianship, with cars and trucks and motorcycles turning themselves inside out, their guts flipping as if a trash compactor had exploded into bits and pieces, only to reassemble themselves into towering robots. The spectacle of those gigantic shape-shifting droids is something that I, more than a lot of critics, always found to be fun. But, of course, the “Transformers” movies were also unrestrained pileups of sheer Michael Bay-ness — kiddie diversion on processed steroids. The plots sprawled all over the place yet somehow never mattered; the films went on way too long; the endless clashing titans made you yearn for the human nuance of a “Godzilla” movie.

‘The Book of Solutions’ Review: When Did the Talented Michel Gondry Become the World’s Most Annoying Filmmaker? - variety.com - France
variety.com
06.06.2023 / 16:35

‘The Book of Solutions’ Review: When Did the Talented Michel Gondry Become the World’s Most Annoying Filmmaker?

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you’ve ever wondered when it was that Michel Gondry, the gifted French director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” became the world’s most annoying filmmaker, you might say the answer is, “He always was.” Yet no one, including me, quite thinks of him that way. That’s because the few works of his that have come to prominence possess a special combination of facility and charm. I adore “Eternal Sunshine,” a virtuoso movie that bends your brain and breaks your heart at the same time. You might simply choose to characterize it as the masterpiece of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but the truth is that Gondry directed it ­— the leaps in time, the emotionally convulsive performances of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet — with a masterful sense of play and gravitational control.

Box Office: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ Webs $17.35 Million in Previews - variety.com - Jordan - India - Beyond
variety.com
02.06.2023 / 15:37

Box Office: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ Webs $17.35 Million in Previews

Jordan Moreau What’s up, danger? After nearly five years, it’s time to swing back into the Spider-Verse, as Sony’s sequel, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” has webbed up $17.35 million in Thursday previews at the box office. The animated sequel is expected to open at $80 million this weekend, with some projections going as high as $90 million or more. It’s a big swing ahead of the original movie, 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which opened with $35.4 million and had $3.5 million in Thursday previews. The Thursday total also gives “Across the Spider-Verse” the second-highest preview gross for an animated movie, behind “The Incredibles 2” with $18.5 million, and the second-highest previews for any “Spider-Man” film, behind “Spider-Man: No Way Home” with $50 million.

‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ Review: A Bedazzling Sequel, and the Rare Comic-Book Movie That Earns Its Convolutions - variety.com
variety.com
31.05.2023 / 13:11

‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ Review: A Bedazzling Sequel, and the Rare Comic-Book Movie That Earns Its Convolutions

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Nearly every mainstream animated feature (and just about every comic-book movie too) sets a tone and visual design that the audience plugs into; the movie, bold and shiny and clever as it may be, won’t deviate much from that. But the images in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” have an intoxicating unpredictability. The film makes you feel like you’re dropping through the floors of a modern art museum on acid, yet there’s a thrilling moment-to-moment logic to it all. The madly eclectic images express something — an eyeball-tickling explosion of quantum physics, or a subliminal nod to some comic-book style from decades ago that’s so retro it’s new, not to mention bedazzling. This feels like it could have been the first movie designed to earn a thumbs up from Andy Warhol and Stephen Hawking.

Remembering Kenneth Anger, the Greatest Underground Filmmaker Who Ever Lived - variety.com - Hollywood - city Tinseltown - city Babylon
variety.com
27.05.2023 / 16:41

Remembering Kenneth Anger, the Greatest Underground Filmmaker Who Ever Lived

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Most artists, if they’re lucky, invent one thing. But Kenneth Anger, who was a filmmaker, an author, a debauched aristocratic scenester and, to the day of his death at 96 (he reportedly died May 11, though it wasn’t made public until May 24), a figure of puckish mystery, invented several things, each of them epic. In “Fireworks,” his transcendent 14-minute avant-garde film of 1947, Anger invented the very consciousness and imagery of gay liberation — not the desire to be liberated (which was buried in the hearts of gay people everywhere), but the rapturous visual reverie of what that liberation might look like, what it would feel like, why it seemed so forbidden, and why it needed to be. In “Scorpio Rising,” his homoerotic demon-biker/Top-40-orgy blast from the underground, Anger invented MTV, invented what Martin Scorsese did in “Mean Streets” and David Lynch did in “Blue Velvet,” invented a way to express how music and reality talk to each other.

‘The Zone of Interest,’ ‘The Settlers’ Score Fipresci Awards at Cannes - variety.com - France - city Sandra - Poland
variety.com
27.05.2023 / 14:13

‘The Zone of Interest,’ ‘The Settlers’ Score Fipresci Awards at Cannes

Marta Balaga Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” has scored a Fipresci award in Cannes.  The jury of the International Federation of Film Critics praised the film “for its formal radicality, the complexity of the sound and score, and its contrast between the invisible atrocities behind the wall and a supposed paradise,” Fipresci stated on Saturday.  “By presenting the horror as something usual, and using everyday-like dialogues, it’s a reflection on ignorance as a disease that connects the past with the present.” Glazer’s take on a Nazi family living next door to Auschwitz and enjoying it – loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis, who tragically passed away on May 19, just before the premiere – has been getting rave reviews at the French festival, becoming one of the frontrunners for this year’s Palme d’Or.

‘The Wrath of Becky’ Review: Teenage Rage Finds a Far-Right Target in a Serviceable Sequel - variety.com - county Harvey
variety.com
26.05.2023 / 16:29

‘The Wrath of Becky’ Review: Teenage Rage Finds a Far-Right Target in a Serviceable Sequel

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Released to theaters in the theatrical dog days of mid-2020, Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s “Becky” became a home-formats hit, its gleefully tasteless home-invasion thrills a guilty-pleasure tonic for COVID captives going a bit stir-crazy. Now Lulu Wilson is back as that title character, more or less the sole survivor of her prior screen outing. You can be sure in “The Wrath of Becky” that age hasn’t dulled her pissed-off homicidal verve, and that fate will surely provide another crop of ne’er-do-wells to tempt its exercise.  However, a different writing-directing duo is in charge this time, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote. Their efforts generate rewards that are somewhat diminished, if still diverting. Quiver is releases this SXSW-premiered sequel to U.S. theaters, with home-formats dates as yet unannounced. 

Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Scores Global Sales After Buzzy Cannes Premiere - variety.com - Britain - Spain - France - Italy - Austria - Germany - county Martin - Japan - Switzerland - Greece - Poland
variety.com
26.05.2023 / 13:23

Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Scores Global Sales After Buzzy Cannes Premiere

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Jonathan Glazer’s Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” has sold into major international territories following its buzzy Cannes world premiere. The film centers on the family of a high-ranking SS official that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. The pic has sold into: Austria and Germany (Leonine), Benelux (Cineart), France (BAC), Greece (Spentzos), Italy (I Wonder), Japan (Happinet Phantom Studios), Scandinavia (SF Studios), Spain (Elastica) and Switzerland (Filmcoopi). In Poland — a significant sales market for the film given it is set there — Gutek has come on board as distributor. (A24 was selling worldwide rights for the film, but did not handle the Polish sale.)

Which Country Will ‘The Zone of Interest’ Represent for Oscars International Feature Race? - variety.com - Britain - Sweden - Russia - Germany - Denmark - city Sandra - Poland - county Davis - county Clayton
variety.com
24.05.2023 / 17:47

Which Country Will ‘The Zone of Interest’ Represent for Oscars International Feature Race?

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor A24’s “The Zone of Interest” is spoken in German, but was filmed in Poland and is written and directed by a British auteur. So what does that mean for its prospects for best international feature at the Oscars? Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest” premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival where it emerged as an early favorite for the coveted Palme d’Or after receiving widespread acclaim. The film tells the story of a commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp that was one of the sites where six million Jews were murdered.

‘Fallen Leaves’ Review: Aki Kaurismäki Stages a Tiny Sliver of a Romance in a Quirky Finnish Kaurismäki Land That Hasn’t Changed in 30 Years - variety.com - California - Berlin - Finland - city Helsinki, Finland
variety.com
23.05.2023 / 23:03

‘Fallen Leaves’ Review: Aki Kaurismäki Stages a Tiny Sliver of a Romance in a Quirky Finnish Kaurismäki Land That Hasn’t Changed in 30 Years

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Aki Kaurismäki, the deadpan cockeyed minimalist of Finland, has become the ultimate illustration of the principle that if you make movies in the same mood and style, with the same monosyllabic bombed-out hipster vibe, for a period of 30 years, your movies may not have changed — but the world around them has, so the films will have a totally different effect. In “Fallen Leaves,” the Kaurismäki bauble that’s showing at Cannes this year, there’s actually a scene in which a character uses a computer. The film’s heroine, Ansa (Alma Pöysti), loses her job as a supermarket worker, and to find another gig she rents an HP laptop at a makeshift Internet café that charges 10 Euro for half an hour. Apart from that, the movie unfolds in that scruffy and sparsely decorated so-familiar-it’s-cozy pre-tech Kaurismäki zone, where people still use electric adding machines or listen to a bulky kitchen radio that looks like it’s from the early ’60s. “Fallen Leaves” is set in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, but to our eyes it’s a weirdly underpopulated place where shopping, as a pastime, doesn’t exist, and neither, in any meaningful way, does conversation.

‘Asteroid City’ Review: Wes Anderson’s New Film Is a Piece of 1950s Desert Americana That’s Visually Dazzling and Dramatically Inert - variety.com - Russia - city Budapest - city Asteroid
variety.com
23.05.2023 / 17:35

‘Asteroid City’ Review: Wes Anderson’s New Film Is a Piece of 1950s Desert Americana That’s Visually Dazzling and Dramatically Inert

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic As much as any filmmaker alive, Wes Anderson has a canon of movies that look and feel all of a piece. The diorama design, which extends from his life-size-dollhouse sets to his graphic lettering; the acting so stylized it’s like postmodern jokey-music-video kabuki; the fable-within-a-fable structure that can seem the cinematic equivalent of nested Russian dolls; the heavy frosting of ironic whimsicality. Most of his movies share these elements, yet the truth is that not all Wes Anderson film are alike. A few, like “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” spin finely wrought tales beneath the filigree. One, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” is an exhilarating caper — as well as (to me) his finest work, ironically because it isn’t pretending to be about anything.

‘Club Zero’ Review: Mia Wasikowska Stars in Jessica Hausner’s Audaciously Disturbing Drama About Institutionalized Eating Disorders - variety.com - Britain
variety.com
22.05.2023 / 17:59

‘Club Zero’ Review: Mia Wasikowska Stars in Jessica Hausner’s Audaciously Disturbing Drama About Institutionalized Eating Disorders

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Jessica Hausner, the director of the supremely audacious and disturbing eating-disorder thriller “Club Zero” (yes, I used the words “eating disorder” and “thriller” in the same sentence — that’s the kind of boundary-smashing movie this is), has the potential to be an important filmmaker. Her last movie, “Little Joe” (2019), a sci-fi creep-out about a sinister strain of houseplant, was really a dark-as-midnight parable of the psychotropic-drug era. “Club Zero” won’t be for everyone, but Hausner, channeling some combination of Hitchcock and Cronenberg and “Village of the Damned” and the Todd Haynes of “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” has now made an even more gripping and provocative mind-fuck.

‘Godard par Godard’ Review: A Documentary Rich with Behind-the-Scenes Footage Captures How the Godard Persona Was as Fascinating as His Films - variety.com
variety.com
22.05.2023 / 00:59

‘Godard par Godard’ Review: A Documentary Rich with Behind-the-Scenes Footage Captures How the Godard Persona Was as Fascinating as His Films

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic One of the grand paradoxes of Jean-Luc Godard is that he was a radical, an outlier, a filmmaker who guarded his purity and always looked askance at “the system,” yet because the nature of filmmaking is that it requires a lot of money, and is connected to fame, and produces images that can spread with iconic power, Godard was an outsider who was also an insider; a poet of cinema who made himself a celebrity; an artist who bridged the larger-than-life, old-school ethos of movies with the forbidding imperatives of the avant-garde. All of that contradiction is on full display, with a luscious kind of resonance, in “Godard par Godard,” an hour-long documentary, written by Frédéric Bonnaud and directed by Florence Platarets, that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival today as a tribute to Godard, eight months after his death on September 13, 2022. The documentary was shown along with Godard’s final film, the 20-minute-long “Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars’.” All of which sounds like one of those Cannes–only special events, but au contraire: This is a program that was meant to be seen by the world at large, and with any luck it will be distributed that way. It’s an homage that invites us to look back, with fond fascination, on all the cinema Godard gave us, and on who he really was.

‘Black Flies’ Review: Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan Are Paramedics Cruising Through the Inferno in a Drama That Thinks It’s More Real Than It Is - variety.com - France - New York - county Sheridan
variety.com
20.05.2023 / 22:23

‘Black Flies’ Review: Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan Are Paramedics Cruising Through the Inferno in a Drama That Thinks It’s More Real Than It Is

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Black Flies,” a movie that keeps working to get high on its own intensity, Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan play paramedics who spend their nights driving through hell (I mean, Brooklyn). There are countless shots of the two in their EMS van, riding along under the tracks of an overhead subway train — the exact kind of grungy Brooklyn boulevard that Popeye Doyle went smashing through in the famous “French Connection” car/subway chase. As Rut (Penn) and Cross (Sheridan) patrol the borough neighborhood of Brownsville, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden sections of New York City, those overheard tracks become part of the film’s meticulously oppressive visual design. The two have so little breathing room they can barely see the sky. After a while, though, you start to think: Don’t these guys everdrive down a side street? Like everything else in “Black Flies,” those subway tracks are stylish signifiers of doom that are a little too in-your-face.

‘Zone of Interest’ Author Martin Amis Dies at 73 - variety.com - Britain - New York - county Martin
variety.com
20.05.2023 / 19:07

‘Zone of Interest’ Author Martin Amis Dies at 73

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International British writer Martin Amis, the author of the book “The Zone of Interest,” has died at 73. News of his death comes just one day after the big-screen adaptation of his 2014 novel premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. The New York Times reports that Amis died of esophageal cancer, as confirmed by his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca. Amis published 15 novels over the course of his career, a number of which were adapted. Jonathan Glazer’s treatment of Amis’ chilling Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” is one of the buzziest premieres to come out of Cannes so far. The film follows the family of a high-ranking SS officer that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. In a review that labelled “Zone of Interest” as “chilling and profound,” Variety critic Owen Gleiberman said the film “holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope.”

‘Zone of Interest’ Director Jonathan Glazer on Portraying Nazis as People: ‘Human Beings Did This to Other Human Beings’ - variety.com
variety.com
20.05.2023 / 12:39

‘Zone of Interest’ Director Jonathan Glazer on Portraying Nazis as People: ‘Human Beings Did This to Other Human Beings’

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Zone of Interest,” writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s searing Nazi drama about the banality of evil, became the talk of Cannes Film Festival after its debut on Friday night. But the director admits he didn’t know the story he wanted to tell before the cameras were rolling. “You never really know why you tackle and subject. It’s an ever-evolving journey,” he said at Saturday’s press conference for the movie. “It wasn’t one particular moment that I knew I was going to make this film. When I started the process, I didn’t know what perspective we were coming from.” In the end result, “The Zone of Interest,” which is loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, tells the story of Rudolf Höss, a Nazi commandant who designed and built Auschwitz. It also looks at his relationship with his wife Hedwig, as they create their dream life directly next door to the concentration camp. In crafting a portrait of the Holocaust, Glazer says he conducted an “enormous amount of research” to capture the divide between the Höss family’s mundane domestic dramas and Auschwitz, which lies on the other side of the garden walls.

A24’s Nazi Drama ‘Zone of Interest’ Is a Cannes Sensation With 6-Minute Standing Ovation - variety.com
variety.com
19.05.2023 / 19:51

A24’s Nazi Drama ‘Zone of Interest’ Is a Cannes Sensation With 6-Minute Standing Ovation

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jonathan Glazer just delivered the first instant sensation of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. “The Zone of Interest,” only the director’s fourth feature film after “Sexy Beast,” “Birth” and “Under the Skin,” earned a six-minute standing ovation following its world premiere. Glazer’s film is austere and challenging as it tells the story of the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife, who have created their dream home directly next to the concentration camp. The constant screams of prisoners, gun shots and smoke from the gas chambers haunt their paradise, but their indifference to such horrors creates a terrifying and sinister juxtaposition.

‘The Zone of Interest’ Review: Jonathan Glazer’s Often Brilliant Examination Of Human Complicity [Cannes] - theplaylist.net
theplaylist.net
19.05.2023 / 19:23

‘The Zone of Interest’ Review: Jonathan Glazer’s Often Brilliant Examination Of Human Complicity [Cannes]

CANNES – If anyone tells you the world doesn’t need any more films about the holocaust or the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in 2023, we’d suggest you politely correct them. Despite over eighty years of cinema on the subject, there continue to be new stories waiting to be told (and some re-told).

‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Harrison Ford Plays the Aging Indy in a Sequel That Serves Up Nostalgic Hokum Minus the Thrill - variety.com - Indiana - county Harrison - county Ford - county Lucas
variety.com
19.05.2023 / 01:41

‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Review: Harrison Ford Plays the Aging Indy in a Sequel That Serves Up Nostalgic Hokum Minus the Thrill

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is a dutifully eager but ultimately rather joyless piece of nostalgic hokum. It’s the fifth installment in the “Indiana Jones” franchise, and though it has its quota of “relentless” action, it rarely tries to match (let alone top) the ingeniously staged kinetic bravura of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” How could it? “Raiders,” whatever one thinks of it as a movie (I always found it a trace impersonal in its ’40s-action-serial-on-steroids excitement), is arguably the most influential blockbuster of the last 45 years, even more so than “Star Wars.” Back in 1977, George Lucas took us through the looking glass of what would become our all-fantasy-all-the-time movie culture. But it was Steven Spielberg, teaming up with Lucas in “Raiders,” who introduced the structural DNA of the one-thing-after-another, action-movie-as-endless-set-piece escapist machine. This means that “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” isn’t just coming after four previous “Indiana Jones” films. It’s coming after four decades of high-priced Hollywood action decadence, from the “Fast and Furious” series to the “Mission: Impossible” and “Terminator” and “Lara Croft” and “Transformers” and latter-day “Bond” films (not to mention the Marvel space operas), all of which owe a boundless debt to the aggro zap of the “Raiders” aesthetic.

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