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Jason Statham reteams with director David Ayer and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone for action thriller A Working Man. Here’s the trailer.

Before he became one of the world’s biggest action stars, Sylvester Stallone started his career as a screenwriter. He wrote the script for Rocky – he became the third person in history to be Oscar nominated for both Best Screenplay and Best Actor, after Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles – and since then has had an active role in the scripting of his films. Examples? The Rambo franchise, Cobra, arm wrestling drama Over The Top and the first Expendables to lesser known efforts like Rhinestone and Driven.

His script is the basis for action thriller A Working Man, formerly known as Levon’s Trade. We talked about the name change here.

The synopsis reads as follows:

“Human Traffickers Beware.” Levon Cade (Jason Statham), an ex-black ops agent, leads a peaceful...

Who said the French and British couldn’t get along? When they’re not lighting up the screen together in films like Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient, the 1992 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” and recently in “The Return,” based on the last chapters of Homer’s “Odyssey,” pals and collaborators Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes enjoy just getting to spend a little time with one another. And thankfully, Criterion gave them the chance to do just that.

Stepping into the Criterion Closet, Binoche and Fiennes pretended not to know one another, but soon became quite intimate, a not-so-unforeseen side effect of the tight quarters they found themselves in. Binoche led most of the selection efforts, with the “Conclave” star serving as the curious pupil, having heard of many films she pulled down, but not actually having seen them. After coming across Jim Jarmusch’s moody prison comedy “Down by Law,...

In today’s hyper-sensitive comedy culture, everybody’s a critic — and everybody’s a club owner, too, so long as everybody can tape trash bags over their bedroom windows.

Look, the comedy industry is absolutely brutal toward its bottom rung, and despite the democratization of contemporary comedy platforms due to social media, getting any sort of comedy career off of the ground in 2025, either as a performer or a producer, requires a shameless ability to hustle and self-promote. Getting big in comedy requires one to make moves that are well-past what online haters who have never risked anything to achieve their dreams would consider cringe, and, as such, when an artist or aspiring comedy mogul over-markets themselves on the internet, it’s easy to mock them, criticize their business strategy and leave a one-star review on Google calling the weird bedroom open mic you paid $50 to watch a “complete scam.

When most actors win an Academy Award, it's because they've crafted a fully-realized, nuanced portrayal of a character. They've created a person out of whole cloth, bringing them to life on screen in a way that no one else could've done in quite the same way. Understandably, a lot of Oscar-winning performances take the whole movie to do that. However, things get trickier when we move into the Best Supporting categories. Actors at this level are often working with a limited amount of scenes, trying to get a portrayal across in very small chunks that may not add up to anything close to the amount of time that audiences see their co-stars.

In "Conclave," for example, Isabella Rossellini plays Sister Agnes. She's one of the most senior nuns in Vatican City, and as such, she's given a position of power that winds up influencing the course of the Church's history.

Every single episode of the 1959 speculative anthology series "The Twilight Zone" was introduced by series creator and head writer Rod Serling. Throughout the show's first season, Serling merely provided a voice narration, but beginning with the second, he appeared on-screen as well, always sporting a nice suit and often smoking a cigarette.

Serling, as it turns out, never wanted to be the narrator for "The Twilight Zone." As previously reported by /Film, Orson Welles was to be hired to provide the show's narration. Welles, of course, had a prolific career on radio in the 1930s, about a decade before he made the jump to films, so his crisp, sonorous voice was well-rehearsed. CBS wanted Welles not just for his fame, but because his presence would invite comparisons to CBS's successful 1955 anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." That show featured on-screen introductions from Hitchcock himself, so it stood to reason that another...

The Twilight Zone season 1, episode 3: “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”.The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by the benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.—J. G. Ballard, Kingdom ComeRod Serling cuts a striking figure in American iconography. A handsome, shadowy silhouette in a stark suit and tie with a cigarette perched between two fingers, Serling would rhapsodize dark legends from the depths of the nation’s fractured postwar psyche every week on The Twilight Zone (1959–64). Born in Syracuse, New York, Serling maintained his quintessentially East Coast everyman aesthetic even after moving to Los Angeles, following the major players in the television industry. Dark brows furrowed, mouth set in a stern, straight line—Serling wasn’t a vain man, but he was conscious that his image projected this persona and always ensured that he...

The film-maker’s latest is a three and-a-half-hour epic about the building of a modernist masterpiece, and the toll its creation takes on its architect. The film’s making was almost as gruelling. ‘People told me I’d never make another movie’, Corbet says

The Brutalist is a big, muscular American epic that pits the individual against the machine; the artist against the cogs and wheels of commerce. It spins the tale of László Tóth, a Hungarian-born architect who’s beset on all sides, by capricious patrons, unreliable partners, mutinous contractors and an outraged general public. László is determined to make his masterpiece. His wife, though, is spooked by the psychological cost. “Promise you won’t let it drive you mad,” she says.

Architecture isn’t so different from independent film-making, says the film’s writer-director, Brady Corbet. It follows the same basic principles, throws up the same problems and...

When Steve McQueen was casting “Blitz,” his World War II drama about the bombings over London, actress Saoirse Ronan expressed interest.

But there was a hitch. The role of a mother in search of her young son who has gone missing required some singing. So he hopped on a Zoom with Ronan, and they had a deep conversation about their mothers. “It was beautiful,” McQueen tells Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast.

But then it came time for that make-or-break question about whether she could carry a tune. Ronan said she could, and even started working with a singing coach.

“I never forget the phone call I got back from the singing coach after a few sessions,” McQueen says, remembering how he braced for that report. The coach returned with good news: “‘Not only can she sing like a bird, it will only get better,'” McQueen recalls hearing back. He immediately offered Ronan the role.

If you've delved into any American film history over the years, you've no doubt come across the sentiment that the 1970s was the best period for American cinema, bar none. Of course, any claim of opinion is up for debate, but the reasons for historians and critics coming to this conclusion are harder to deny, as pound for pound, the various conditions needed for filmmaking were particularly favorable during that decade. To wit: the collapse of the Hays Code and the institution of the Motion Picture Association of America allowed for a heretofore unprecedented level of uncensored content in American movies. The "studio system" and a reliance on stars to open movies were quickly becoming things of the past, and while corporate conglomerates were now in charge of the major studios (something which has led to our current state of multiplex stagnation in 2024), at this early stage, the suits had...

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has announced that it will present Ang Lee with the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Feb. 8, 2025. The Academy Award-winning filmmaker is only the 37th director to receive the distinguished honor, awarded at the discretion of current and past DGA presidents, in the Guild’s 88-year history.

“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker,” DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. “For over 30 years, he has directed a dynamic body of work that boldly cuts across genres — from period drama to comedy, adventure to western, superhero to martial arts — always fearlessly taking on new challenges, never repeating himself and consistently achieving cinematic excellence.

“Through his films, Ang invites his audiences to explore complex characters that linger in your heart and mind long after the screen has gone dark,” Glatter continued. “From his earliest features like The Wedding Banquet...

Ang Lee will receive the Directors Guild of America’s highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, it announced Tuesday. He will receive the award, which recognizes extraordinary achievements in the art of cinema and motion picture direction, at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025.

The visionary director has more than 20 credits to his name and is known for making films with emotional depth across a variety of genres. Lee’s most well-known works include 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” and 2013’s “Life of Pi,” both of which earned him directing Oscars, as well as 1995’s “Sense and Sensibility”; 2000’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which won the Oscar for best foreign language film; 2003’s “Hulk”; 2007’s “Lust, Caution”; and 2016’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” Lee, 70, made his feature directorial debut with the 1991 indie, “Pushing Hands,” and his most recent film was 2019’s sci-fi thriller, “Gemini Man.”

“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker.

Over the past 50-plus years, film historian Joseph McBride has been one of the great chroniclers and analyzers of American directors. His 1972 volume on Orson Welles was one of the first essential works on that great filmmaker, and in the years since, he has published the definitive biographies of John Ford, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, and Steven Spielberg — along with a couple more terrific books on Welles and one of the best tomes on screenwriting (“Writing in Pictures”) ever written.

McBride has always been expert at finding the intersection between biography and personal expression, as rigorous in his research as he is insightful in his visual and literary analysis. Now, he has turned his keen eye toward director George Cukor, and the result, “George Cukor’s People: Acting for a Master Director,” is one of McBride’s most innovative works to date and indispensable for anyone interested not...

"So long as this stream flows strong and clear, our people will be filled with life and hope... But if these waters cease to flow or lose their clarity, our lands will decay and die." Indeed - the story of America and where we are today. This fascinating animated short film called Freedom River is originally from 1971. A full 53 years later (!!) and everything it talks about is happening right now - the river of freedom is murky & poisonous, and most Americans don't seem to get it... Freedom River is a "parable told by Orson Welles." The maestro lent his voice to this project after the producers convinced him by sending a script & recorder in the mail to him in Paris. It's a parable about America – obviously this "river of freedom" is referring to the USA – and how xenophobia, racism, and greed will cause that river to become tainted and toxic.

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On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out its first two Academy Awards for Best Director to Frank Borzage ("7th Heaven") and Lewis Milestone ("Two Arabian Knights"). This was the only year the organization distinguished between drama and comedy, but it would not be the last time either of these men took home the top prize in their field. Milestone would win again in 1930 for his heartbreaking adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," while Borzage, a visual storytelling master whose every film you should absolutely watch, triumphed anew in 1932 with the pre-code classic "Bad Girl."

Throughout the Academy Awards' history, 21 directors have earned more than one Best Director Oscar. 18 have won it twice (Alfonso Cuarón was the most recent filmmaker to join the two-time ranks with "Roma"), while Frank Capra and William Wyler are the only three-time winners.

On December 4, 1993, Charlton Heston hosted Saturday Night Live. While the show was solid overall, the start of the episode — including the cold open, opening montage and monologue — was something truly unique among SNL’s 900-plus episodes. Rather than try to describe it myself, however, I’ll leave it to the man who wrote and conceived of it: veteran TV writer David Mandel.

Mandel later worked on Seinfeld and Veep, but before that, he was a writer on Saturday Night Live where the opening of the Heston episode was his crowning achievement.

The Night ‘SNL’ Went to the Apes

I love format-breaking. I did the documentary episode of Veep, and I did the backwards episode of Seinfeld. Over the years, Saturday Night Live had done some very cool format-breaking that a lot of people had forgotten about. In the Charles Grodin episode, the concept is that Charles Grodin did all this...

It’s Musicals Week at IndieWire. With “Wicked” about to sparkle over theaters, we’re celebrating the best of the movie-musical genre.

Bob Fosse only directed five features — “Sweet Charity,” “Cabaret,” “Lenny,” “All That Jazz,” and “Star 80” — but among filmmakers and cinephiles, his legend looms large in proportion to the abundance of his output. David Fincher, for example, frequently references Fosse as an influence alongside and equal to far more prolific directors like Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin, and John Carpenter. In “A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies,” Fosse is one of only a few post-classical studio era auteurs (alongside Stanley Kubrick and Clint Eastwood) that Scorsese deems worthy of inclusion alongside old masters like Orson Welles and Sam Fuller.

By only making a handful of movies in between stints revolutionizing American musical theater on Broadway, Fosse maintained a consistency any director would envy — he’s five...

Director Jason Reitman and cinematographer Eric Steelberg have made nine features together since partnering on “Juno” in 2007, but their roots go back even further. They met as teenagers and collaborated on several short films and commercials, establishing a vocabulary that they continue to build and rely on. “To talk about how Eric and I start a conversation about a movie, you have to start with us at 15 years old,” Reitman told IndieWire. “It starts with us taking our baby steps and making all of our mistakes together as kids.”

Reitman and Steelberg’s latest film, “Saturday Night” (now available to download or rent), provided the filmmakers with an opportunity to recapture their youthful energy while applying all that they had learned in the intervening years. The movie tells the story of the cast and crew of “Saturday Night Live” overcoming one obstacle after another on opening night in 1975 to make television history,...

We’ve talked before about Criterion, the home video company that celebrates the medium of film with prestige releases of great works of cinema, which they then use as bait to trap celebrities in their closet. Does someone want to check on Jude Law real quick and make sure that he got out okay?

Criterion also has its very own streaming app, the Criterion Channel, which allows subscribers to pay $10.99 a month in order to feel extra guilty for binging the entirety of Riverdale while the complete films of Ingmar Bergman remain untouched.

But the Criterion Channel doesn’t just contain foreign and arthouse classics, they’ve also expanded to include some less-obvious choices. Like how they included Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered in their Razzie-themed program earlier this year.

Play

Well, next month they’ll be streaming a whole new collection, one that showcases movies that were all...

Decades after its initial release, Kurosawa Akira’s Seven Samurai is still one of the great pieces of popular art, a work of transcendent cinema as well as an intensely pleasurable movie in every sense of the word. Running like greased lightning despite its three-and-a-half-hour running time, Kurosawa’s film is the Rosetta stone of modern American action, influencing Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and countless others. A fable from the past that reverberates just as viscerally in the present, Seven Samurai is so assured that it feels timeless.

Kurosawa’s 1954 epic, produced in the middle of one of the more extraordinary run of films that any filmmaker has ever enjoyed, is a fluid balance of vast scale and intimate human emotions. Seven Samurai is much lighter on its feet than you might expect from a canonical landmark, a tall tale with a lot of room for the sort of comedy...

Courtesy of StudioCanal

by James Cameron-wilson

I think it’s fair to say that if you poll any film critic or historian and asked them what were the five most notable films to have come out of this country last century, they would count Brief Encounter, A Matter of Life and Death, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man. As such then, it is always a welcome opportunity to return to any one of the gilded quintet, particularly if they have been painstakingly restored to their former glory, as well as top-loaded with reams of informative and educational bonus material, of which the extras here are an embarrassment of riches. In short, released to celebrate the film’s 75th anniversary as part of StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics Collection, this 4K Uhd package is a gift to film buffs: the picture quality is so sharp you can...

Most people think of retirement as one of life's rites of passage, something akin to graduating from school or getting a promotion at a job. While some people have careers that treat retirement in this manner, there are many others for whom retirement is more of a state of mind than anything else. This is certainly true of an artist; some never seem to want to stop or slow down (may I remind you that The Rolling Stones just finished their latest tour this past July), while others feel that they don't wish to wear out their welcome. Then there are other factors, such as changing cultural norms as well as the waxing and waning of opportunities as they dwindle with age. Of course, age itself can be a factor; bodies do inexorably decline, after all.

For Jack Nicholson, one of the greatest actors of his generation, his reasons for...

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.

Orson Welles was nearly as famous for the movies he never finished as the masterpieces he made. For decades,...

Purists will argue that film noir was born in 1941 with the release of John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon and died in 1958 with Marlene Dietrich traipsing down a long, dark, lonely road at the end of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. And while this period contains the quintessence of what Italian-born French film critic Nino Frank originally characterized as film noir, the genre has always been in a constant state of flux, adapting to the different times and cultures out of which these films emerged.

Noir came into its own alongside the ravages of World War II, with the gangster and detective films of the era drastically transforming into something altogether new as the aesthetics of German Expressionism took hold in America, and in large part due to the influx of German expatriates like Fritz Lang. These already dark, hardboiled films suddenly gained a newfound viciousness and sense of ambiguity,...

James Earl Jones Was Paid $7,500 For Original Star Wars Trilogy ( Photo Credit – Wikimedia )

In a galaxy far, far away, James Earl Jones, who gave voice to one of cinema’s most fearsome villains, Darth Vader, was paid a surprisingly small fee: $7,000. Yes, for just a single day of voice work on Star Wars, the actor received what seemed decent at the time—though only a fraction of what his co-stars earned.

The backstory? George Lucas had a vision. He needed a voice as iconic as the character—Vader, towering, masked, and carrying a voice that could shiver anyone to their core. British actor David Prowse brought the physicality, but Lucas wanted that deep, authoritative tone. Lucas even considered Orson Welles for the part, but he was just too recognizable. Then, Jones’s agent got a call. The rest is history.

The Mississippi-born actor, who moved to Michigan after his father...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Across the River and Into the Trees (Paula Ortiz)

Hemingway’s work across novels and short stories has been adapted for film countless times over, yet Across the River and Into the Trees has never properly been rendered onscreen. Until now. Written by Peter Flannery and directed by Paula Ortiz, here is a handsome film that is decidedly modest in its endeavor. The best thing going for it is Liev Schreiber as Colonel Richard Cantwell, the lead of the picture. Schreiber is one of those actors who has somehow always been underrated, despite being capable of playing nearly any kind of part. A kind boyfriend thrust into an impossible familial situation (The Daytrippers)? Check. Tough-but-fractured fixer living on the edge (Ray Donovan)? Check.

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

In October 2024, we’re doing the Midnight Movie Monster Mash with films that challenge our understanding of evil characters and creatures just in time for Halloween.

First, read the spoiler-free Bait: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film. Then, come back for the Bite: a breakdown of all the spoiler-y bits you’d want to unpack when exiting a theater.

The Bait: A Meta Slasher That Should Be a Genre Standard

There comes a time in every internet writer’s life when they must make the dreaded Public Apology. For me, this is that day, and to my beloved After Dark loyalists, I am sorry. You’ll have to excuse me for not crying on camera, but the tragedy of the truth is too much to bear: “Popcorn” is unavailable to stream.

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To this day, Rod Serling's sci-fi anthology series "The Twilight Zone" regularly tops lists of the best TV shows of all time. Serling, and a team of some of the best sci-fi authors of the 1950s and 1960s, conceived of 156 miniature morality stories, usually with a supernatural bent, and in so doing changed the very face of television. Sci-fi and horror were considered more commercially viable, inspiring a new slew of imitators and a shift in the public's attention. Serling also introduced a unique form of storytelling efficiency with "The Twilight Zone," proving that an entire, closed morality fable could be wrapped up in a mere 25 minutes (or 51 minutes in the show's fourth season). Serling was also careful to explicitly state a moral in every episode, making "The Twilight Zone" a fantastic social commentary. 

"The Twilight Zone" ran from...

Dick Pope, the esteemed British cinematographer who received Academy Award nominations for his exquisite work on “The Illusionist” and Mike Leigh‘s “Mr. Turner,” has died at the age of 77. His death was confirmed by a publicist on his final film, Leigh’s “Hard Truths.”

“Hard Truths” producer Georgina Lowe shared the following statement: “On behalf of Mike, the team at Thin Man Films, and the cast and crew who worked regularly with Dick on our films for over 30 years, I wanted to say what a privilege it has been to have collaborated with him. His work, both with us, and on the eclectic collection of films he shot over his impressive career, was extraordinary. We have lost a friend and will miss him so much.”

Born in Bromley, Kent, in 1947, Pope became obsessed with still photography as a child and published some of his pictures in local papers as a teenager.

To celebrate the 75th Anniversary of much-loved British Classic The Third Man which arrives on 4K Uhd for the first time on 4 November, we are giving away a 4K Uhd to a lucky winner!

Written by Graham Greene (Brighton Rock, The Fallen Idol), directed by Carol Reed and featuring iconic performances from Joseph Cotten (Gaslight), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Alida Valli (Eyes Without a Face) and Trevor Howard (Brief Encounters, Sons and Lovers), The Third Man is celebrated for its endlessly quotable lines, superb Oscar-winning cinematography, iconic musical score and for so many wonderfully entertaining, quintessentially cinematic moments.

Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp Westerns, arrives in a bombed-out, post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him recently dead. His suspicions are raised after learning of a ‘third man’ present at the time of Harry’s death, and...

New York-based Rialto Pictures is gearing up for the release of Studiocanal’s 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 musical comedy “A Woman Is a Woman.”

The film, Rialto’s first release of 2025, stars Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film will hit selected U.S. theaters on Feb. 7.

The new restoration, which premiered this year in Locarno, was made from the negative 35mm original copy, digitized by Paris-based post production company Hiventy and realized by Studiocanal with the collaboration of France’s National Center of Cinema (Cnc).

Rialto’s biggest success this year was the 75th anniversary of “The Third Man,” Rialto Co-President Adrienne Halpern told Variety at the Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France.

‘The Third Man’

The 4K restoration of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, was carried out by Deluxe Restoration on behalf of Studiocanal.

A string of auteur directors – from Orson Welles to Steven Soderbergh to Lorenza Mazzetti – have fallen for Kafka’s visionary brilliance, with always-intriguing results

There are director’s cuts, special editions, redux versions – and then there’s Mr Kneff. Normally, a recut film is the prerogative of a film-maker who feels abused by the studio they worked for, or for whom a streaming platform has given the opportunity to enlarge on their “vision”; but this isn’t quite the case for Steven Soderbergh. In 1991 Soderbergh released Kafka, a tricksy fiction-slash-biopic, which – notoriously – managed to extract nearly all the heat from a film-making career that had got off to a stellar start with the Palme d’Or-winning Sex, Lies and Videotape. Soderbergh, though, is nothing if not a trier, and after years of tinkering, has completed Mr Kneff, a whole new version of Kafka, under a whole new title.

Mr Kneff...

John Wayne is an American institution, and that's kind of a pity. The films he made from the 1930s through the 1970s all presented what many consider the most persistent cinematic archetypes of old-world machismo. Wayne was a symbol of stalwart, unbending manliness, a testament to the power of being gruff and insoluble. It is, however, hard to accept him as a positive role model when one recalls how bigoted he was in life. Every few years, his 1971 interview with Playboy Magazine resurfaces and a new crowd discovers Wayne vaunting the values of white supremacy and flippantly excoriating minorities.

He also, in that interview, talked about the moral righteousness of his old Westerns, saying that Europeans were in the right for stealing American land from the First Nation people. He was pretty despicable.

But he was also one of the biggest movie stars of all time, and cinema lovers have...

She was the first American actress to marry a prince, the first actress to dance with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, one of the first pin-up girls of the 1940s and the first celebrity to bring awareness to Alzheimer’s Disease. She was the “Love Goddess,” Rita Hayworth.

Hayworth was born on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn as Margarita Carmen Cansino, into a family of Spanish dancers. Although she later claimed she didn’t care for it, Hayworth started dancing at a young age to please her father. They performed together as the Dancing Cansinos from the time she was 12-years-old. She began landing small film roles in her teens under the name Rita Cansino, eventually earning a contract with Columbia Pictures. There she was “Americanized” by changing her last name to her Irish mother’s maiden name of Hayworth, dying her dark hair red and having electrolysis to raise her hairline.

Bette Gordon in her home office. Photograph by the author.The problem that I have dealt with in my whole career is that I essentially am not an American filmmaker. That I am anything but.The first person to place a camera in Bette Gordon’s hands was her father, Kenneth. A photographer himself, he met Gordon’s mother at a mutual acquaintance’s wedding, where he discreetly swapped place cards in order to sit next to her. They would later welcome Bette into the world he had been vigilantly chronicling, and by the time she was twelve, he began to teach her how to look. He advised her to hold her breath when snapping a photograph, how to frame images, where to find beauty. Since these teachings, Gordon has built a career upon images of eroticism and crime, arranging them into stories of a repressed woman working the box office at a porn theater,...

Between Chuck and Tangled, it felt like only a matter of time before Zachary Levi would break into Hollywood's A-List with a major movie role.

That came in 2019 with Shazam!, one of the best-reviewed Dceu movies ever. The actor received praise for his portrayal of a teenager in a superhero's body. However, perhaps thanks to the pandemic or what some deemed a one-note performance, it never really happened for Levi.

The actor has shown up in Spy Kids: Armageddon and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Harold and the Purple Crayon seemingly served as the end of Levi's attempt to become a mainstream movie star.

Not helping matters were his social media rants after the Shazam! sequel proved to be a critical and commercial flop. Levi has also become something of a controversial figure online for sharing anti-vaxxer content and following transphobic X accounts.

An icon of British film beloved by all who worked with her, Dame Maggie Smith sadly passed away last month. For generations, she was a force to be reckoned with playing an incredible array of roles over her long career on stage and screen. With two Academy Awards, five BAFTAs, four Emmys, three Golden Globes, a Tony, and countless nominations, she was loved by both audiences and critics around the world. Enter Our Heroine, Stage Right Maggie Smith was born in Essex to Margaret Hutton and Nathaniel Smith. As many do, Smith started on stage in 1952. At just 17, she made her debut with the Oxford University Dramatic Society playing Viola in a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Oxford Playhouse. She played in many productions with Oxford University, including ‘Cinderella’ (1952), ‘Rookery Nook’ (1953), ‘Cakes and Ale’ (1953) and ‘The Government Inspector’ (1954). In 1956, she made her first appearance on Broadway at...

Prime Video’s “Killer Heat” is a new mystery thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Nick Bali, a private investigator. It shows Nick traveling to Greece to investigate the shocking death of a wealthy man named Leo Vardakis. Nick is hired by Penelope, Leo’s identical twin brother’s wife. The film takes place entirely on a scenic island and relies on the moodiness of the setting as it unravels new bits of information. It seems heavily inspired by the Hollywood noir classics that redefined the genre conventions decades ago. Fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and movies like “Killer Heat,” featuring slow-burn mysteries, can check out this thriller on Prime Video.

This 2024 film is based on Jo Nesbø’s short story – “The Jealousy Man.” The film is directed by Philippe Lacôte, known for directing “Night of the Kings,” a critically acclaimed fantasy drama. Besides Gordon-Levit, the film also stars Shailene Woodley and...

With Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited “Megalopolis” now playing in theaters, many cinephiles have been dazzled and baffled in equal measures by the sprawling passion project. But even if the film itself is polarizing, there’s no denying that it reflects Coppola’s unending passion for cinema and a lifetime spent studying history and art.

Those interested in learning more about Coppola’s unique tastes will be thrilled to find that the “Apocalypse Now” director is this month’s guest picker for Turner Classic Movies. IndieWire can exclusively reveal that the auteur has given his stamp of approval to four iconic films airing on the cable channel in October: James Whale’s “The Bride of Frankenstein,” Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and Marcel Camus’ “Black Orpheus.”

Following in the footsteps of Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro, Coppola elaborated...

When it comes to getting into noir films, it's always worth asking, "Where should I start?" After all, the genre is so time-specific -- it existed in its purest form only in the 1940s and early '50s -- and so full of familiar signifiers -- dame with a secret, jaded investigator, corrupt systems -- that it can sometimes be tough to tell noir titles apart. Start digging into the best the genre has to offer, though, and you'll discover that film noir encompasses much more than the striking style choices and cynicism that have become its cultural shorthand over the years.

Take the two highest-rated noir films on Rotten Tomatoes, for example. According to the aggregate site, only two film noirs have a 100% score on the website, meaning that every single critic included in the site's tally reviewed the movie positively. The first, "Shadow of a Doubt," is an early,...

It’s understandable that most movie and TV fans remember Maggie Smith for her dynamic work in the “Harry Potter” films and “Downton Abbey.” More recent and far more widely seen in their time, they are worthy examples of her outstanding work.

But unknown to even some of the most knowledgeable cinephiles is most of her screen work before the 1980s beyond her two Oscar wins (Best Actress for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and Supporting Actress for “California Suite”). Her passing at 89 represents a chance to look back at not only roles that conveyed her later brilliance but also, in some cases, present a broader range than what became the standard — though always with nuance and distinctiveness — Maggie Smith role of later years.

When reviewing her film career until at least 2008, it’s critical to remember that she was first and foremost a stage actor. She joined Laurence Olivier...

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

For producer Barry Navidi, Johnny Depp’s directorial comeback “Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness” marks a full-circle moment in an unconventional career.

Navidi’s first time working with Depp nearly 30 years ago on the 1995 project “Divine Rapture” ended in disappointment when the production was shelved. But on Tuesday, the two will celebrate a high with the world premiere of “Modi” at San Sebastian Film Festival.

Set in war-torn Paris in 1916, “Modi” follows 72 turbulent hours in the life of bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani (Riccardo Scamarcio). Fleeing the police and contemplating leaving the city, Modi is convinced to stay by his fellow artists. After a night of hallucinations, he encounters American collector Maurice Gangnat (Pacino), who could change his life forever.

Born in pre-revolution Iran, Navidi grew up watching Hollywood and Indian films. One that made an impression was “The Godfather,” starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. “Call it fate,...

"I don't care about prizes..." A legend visits the legendary store in Paris! The latest Video Club video from Konbini in Paris is with the one-and-only filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola - there to promote the release of Megalopolis. They've been on a roll (a cinephile's dream job), getting Brad Pitt and Christopher Nolan, but now it's Coppola's turn. And boy does he deliver. It's their banger 100th episode of the Video Club. "The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Dracula... Francis Ford Coppola is probably the most talked-about director in the history of our Video Club. To celebrate our 100th episode, we couldn't have asked for a more legendary guest." He takes his time strolling around the Parisian video store, chatting about films and filmmakers he admires (and a few he doesn't like), telling stories from his past and his experiences in cinema. He mentions other greats like Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir,...

Form up, Transformers fans! The first animated film in the franchise in almost 40 years, Transformers One, is rolling out in theaters, and we want to know what you think about Paramount and Hasbro Entertainment’s latest adventure featuring the Robots in Disguise!

Doesn’t it feel good to see the Transformers on the silver screen in an animated format? I still recall when The Transformers: The Movie screened in theaters in 1986. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker owned as the voices of Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively, with the great Leonard Nimoy as Galvitron, Susan Blu as Arcee, and Orson Wells as Unicron. The 1986 animation even included profanity! If you know, you know. After so much time has passed, we’re ready to hit the road with a new Transformers film that delves into Optimus and Megatron’s origins and sees how two inseparable friends became sworn enemies.

The official synopsis...

Released 75 years ago this year, Carol Reed’s towering masterwork of film noir, The Third Man, has entered generation upon generation. Now, in celebration of its landmark anniversary, a new book by John Walsh uncovers more about its making. The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film, arriving on shelves October 1 from Titan Books, explores the making of the Graham Greene-scripted classic starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.

The beautifully illustrated book dives deep into the making of the film, from Reed’s filmmaking approach to the battle for ownership between U.S. producer David O. Selznick and British producer Alexander Korda, which developed into protracted legal proceedings to the film’s resonance today for filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and beyond. Featuring unpublished photos and new interviews on the identity of the real-life Third Man and its connections to James Bond, we’re pleased to unveil a handful of materials today.

The film industry could have avoided a lot of tragedy if they just didn’t use so many horses— or invite the wrath of a vengeful God.

14 ‘Ben-Hur’ (1925)

While filming at the actual ancient Roman chariot racing venue Circus Maximus, the wheel of a chariot broke and the stuntman driving it died.

13 ‘Noah's Ark’ (1928)

While trying to play God and recreate “the great flood,” a ton of extras were injured, one guy lost a leg and three people died.

12 An Unknown 1929 Film

A super-famous German shepherd named Strongheart accidentally touched a hot studio light. His burn became infected, and he died a few weeks later.

11 ‘The Viking’ (1931)

Twenty-seven people died for B-roll. After the film was finished, a producer and the real-life adventurer Varick Frissell decided they needed footage of the abandoned, ice-bound ship The Viking. While filming, some dynamite on board spontaneously exploded.

10 ‘Scarface’ (1932)

Director Gaylord Lloyd was blinded...

In modern IP culture, you occasionally get films that feel like total filler, movies that only exist to remind people that, oh yeah, that franchise is still around. 2024 movie theaters have already hosted plenty of cinematic hot air, from “Madame Web” to “Alien: Romulus,” but it’s hard to think of a project this year more pointless than “Transformers One,” an animated adventure starring Hasbro’s robots in disguise that asks an uninteresting question — how did Optimus Prime become Optimus Prime? — and answers it with a straight down the middle, perfectly calibrated kids film that does almost nothing to delight or excite.

It is admittedly a futile exercise to get offended over the sanctity of the “Transformers” franchise, which from its early days as an ’80s cartoon favorite has always existed in service of selling kids cool toy robots that can transform into firetrucks or fighter jets. Still, the war...

“Remember who you are. Remember.” This is one of the most iconic lines coming from one of the most iconic voices in pop culture. For nearly 70 years, James Earl Jones made a mark on the screen, stage, and television. Many know him as the iconic voice behind Darth Vader of the Star Wars saga and Mufasa of The Lion King franchise.

But there is a lot more storied history from the world-famous gravel voice that brought the entire galaxy to its knees and that led a boy to be king.

Humble Beginnings

Born on the 17th of January 1931 in Mississippi, James Earl Jones found his passion in poetry and acting to overcome his stutter, making him embrace his deep voice. It is truly amazing how overcoming a disability led him to be one of the most recognizable voices in film.

He then ventured into theater, eventually debuting in 1957 on Broadway...

The phrase “voice of a generation” gets thrown around a lot, but if that label were defined by sheer recognizability, it would be hard to find a better fit than James Earl Jones, who died Tuesday. The real question is: which generation?

Depending on whether you were born before or after the year 1990, chances are good that the sound of Jones’ roll-of-thunder baritone instantly conjures one of two characters in your mind: “The Lion King” father Mufasa or “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader. That means, Jones speaks, and you think either of a cosmically wise patriarch, whose ghost returns to offer his self-doubting successor an encouraging “remember who you are,” or the most malevolent dad in all the universe, a destroyer of planets determined to lure his son to the Dark Side.

Those two projects were such pop-culture monsters — Disney’s Hamlet-on-the-savannah riff grossed nearly $1 billion, while George Lucas’ sci-fi...

Hollywood is mourning a legendary actor. On Monday, following the death of James Earl Jones, dozens of celebrities shared tributes to the actor who voiced Mufasa in The Lion King and Darth Vader in Star Wars. Jones died at his home in New York at the age of 93.

In a statement, George Lucas remembered Jones as “an incredible actor, a most unique voice both in art and spirit.” The Star Wars creator and director added, “For nearly half a century he was Darth Vader, but the secret to it all...