by Cláudio Alves Happy birthday, Dev Patel! The erstwhile Skins actor turned hottest living Oscar nominee is 34 years old today and, as if to commemorate the occasion, Monkey Man just became available on PVOD. The India-set action movie is Patel's feature directorial debut, though he's more than just the guy calling the shots from the director's chair. The multi-hyphenated artist also produced and wrote the revenge flick. Oh, and he stars in it, too, doing most of his stunts, which resulted in a broken hand on the first days of shooting. Overall, it was a challenging project to bring to fruit ..read more

by Cláudio Alves There's no stopping A24, its ascension as distributor and studio one of the last decade's biggest success stories. Just this month, Civil War marked their most successful opening weekend, even expanding to IMAX. Speaking of those giant screens, A24 has been re-releasing some of their greatest hits in the format, starting with Ex Machina back on March 27th. Uncut Gems is coming May 22nd, while April's selection hits theaters tomorrow, beckoning audiences to relieve a movie nightmare like none other. It's Hereditary, Ari Aster's promising debut and one of the few theatrical exp ..read more

by Cláudio Alves Michel Hazanavicius joins the Official Competition with an animated film. As expected, a few more titles have been added to this year's Cannes Film Festival lineup. In the Premiere section, Jessica Palud's Maria Schneider biopic joins a star-studded selection. One of this year's two Count of Monte-Cristo adaptations will screen Out of Competition, while a pair of buzzy documentaries will bow in the Special Screenings program. They are Oliver Stone's Lula and Lou Ye's An Unfinished Film. Other new titles in that section include Arnaud Desplechin's latest Paul Dedalus film and T ..read more

by Christopher James The TCM Film Festival always brings out the stars, and this year was no exception as David Fincher (left) took to the stage for a Q&A before Se7en. The theme of this year’s TCM Film Festival was “Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film.” You know what that means? Lots of cop and detective stories - be they young or old, eager or disillusioned, good or dirty.  The three films from this programming block I was lucky enough to attend span nearly sixty years, showing how much the crime genre has been pushed. From screwball comedy in the 30s, noir in the 50s and violen ..read more

by Nick Taylor If you had approached me on the street and asked if I was a Jessica Lange fan, I would have answered with an emphatic “duh!” But since you clicked on this link, I'm coming to you through your screen to tell you this informatioin. Having originally met Lange in high school via the actress-heavy ordeal that is American Horror Story, watching her communicate an actual character amidst so much lurid, proudly threadbare plotting was revelatory to witness. Lange served Ryan Murphy’s baroque and sentimental grotesqueries with leonine force. Even as subsequent seasons leaned too heavil ..read more

by Eric Blume One of our great screen icons, Jessica Lange, celebrates a big birthday this weekend:  75 years, and thankfully still going strong.  Lange is one of only 24 actors to win the Triple Crown of Acting (she has 2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, and 1 Tony). Lange is a personal favorite actor of mine, and I’ve written about her on the site numerous times, so I thought for her three-quarter-century mark, I’d hold a moment for one of her less-heralded, lesser-known performances, a bit of a departure from her usual delivery:  her soft, lightly comic, and sweetly sad performance in Paul ..read more

by Nathaniel R The Dietzes are back in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and so is costume design goddess Collen Atwood. Photo © Parisa Taghizadeh for Warner Bros Our April Foolish tradition continues with the visual and sound categories. For this installment we're just picking highlights from our crystal ball. Read on ..read more

by Cláudio Alves Like Mark said in his Veronica Cartwright tribute, this 4/20 is an essential date for actressexuals... among others. After all, we celebrate the horror queen's 75th birthday and that of Jessica Lange as well. Initially, I thought about writing about the star's upcoming adaptation of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, but that film seems trapped in some nebulous distribution limbo. By all accounts, production wrapped in late 2022 after a brief halt due to financing issues. Since then, there's been hardly any news, and Lange herself speculated it might not yet be finished ..read more

by Mark Brinkerhoff Veronica Cartwright in a 2020 documentary "LIfe After The Navigator" exploring one of her 80s films Happy 4/20, which happens to be the birthday—same day/month/year—of both Jessica Lange and one Veronica Cartwright, the British-born former child star and current character actor extraordinaire. When did you first clock the extraordinary Veronica Cartwright on screen? Though she mainly does TV guest spots (and the occasional direct-to-VOD titles) nowadays, I can say that she made an immediate impression for me in the mid-‘80s, starting with The Right Stuff (198 ..read more

by Nathaniel R Will the new emotions in "Inside Out 2" impress voters? Last season, we finally saw another hand drawn film take the Best Animated Feature Oscar with The Boy and the Heron emerging triumphant. Will we have another rarity this year or will Oscar voters return to their Pixar and/or American CG habits? Each year we root for the underdogs in this category since great studios like Laika and Cartoon Saloon have yet to take home an Oscar. Sadly, neither of those companies will have a film ready this year. Still, we'll dream that it will prove a truly competitive year no matter what eme ..read more