‘Good Luck To You, Leo Grande’ Review: Emma Thompson Is Terrific In Sophie Hyde’s Perceptive Look At Female Pleasure [Sundance]

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

If two people who lack a common language want to communicate, they’ll find a way to communicate. The characters in “blood,” the first new film from Bradley Rust Gray in a decade, don’t exactly lack a common language, but coltish English and crummy Japanese necessitate auxiliary tools for communication, such as food, dance, music, flowers, and art.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures has closed a deal around $7.5 million for U.S. rights to Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. the Sophie Hyde-directed film that stars Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack (The Wheel of Time & Peaky Blinders). Deadline reported yesterday  that Searchlight was poised to win the film that was bid on by several distributors, and the plan is to wage an awards season campaign for Thompson in a standout turn. Searchlight will release through Hulu, in a deal similar to the preemptive one it made for another Sundance film, Fresh. Hyde directed 52 Tuesdays and Animals. The film is scripted by Katy Brand, whose credits include Nanny McPhee Returns, which starred Thompson, and Walking On Sunshine.

“Have you ever felt vertigo looking into the sky?” Nadeem Shahzad asks over voiceover roughly fifteen minutes into “All That Breathes.” The accompanying shot looks straight up into a sunny yet smog-streaked sky as a swirl of black kites swoops and careens overhead. The birds are numerous, too many to count, but their movements are mesmerizing.

Hiding underwater to escape her vicious aggressors, a rush of terror washes over Sara (Laura Galán), a large-bodied teenager target of incessant insults, and worse, about her weight. The callousness of the bullying perpetrated against her one summery afternoon won’t go unpunished but will place the victim in a conundrum fluctuating between guilt and a warranted desire for retribution.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures has emerged as the favorite to acquire Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, the Sophie Hyde-directed drama that stars Emma Thompson as a widow who decides to seek out something that has eluded her over a 31-year marriage: a proper, mind-blowing, toe-curling orgasm. Negotiations are underway and will hopefully climax into the first narrative film deal at 2022 Sundance, after a weekend of foreplay but no consummation beyond the docu Fire of Love.

Emma Thompson finds the fad around cosmetic surgery in Hollywood very odd.

In May 1948, after the controversial approval of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, war broke out between Arab and Jewish factions in the region. The conflict began due to claims over the same land.

Things have not been going well for Emily. Some of it is just terrible luck.

Emma Thompson is baring it all in her new film, . Thompson spoke about going nude for her role in the film at the movie's Sundance Film Festival premiere on Saturday.«It's very challenging to be nude at 62,» Thompson said during a Cinema Café discussion, before revealing that her character completely disrobes in one scene.

“There is no timeline to figuring this out,” Jane tells her best friend Lucy in Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s directorial debut feature film “AM I OK?” This is a film for late bloomers of any kind but will resonate particularly with anyone who came into their sexual identity later in life. Screenwriter Lauren Pomerantz (“Me, Myself and I”) took inspiration from her own late in life, coming out and close relationship with her best friend, producer Jessica Elbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” “Hustlers”).

Bookended by a near-identical juxtaposition of sound and fury, directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom” starts and ends like a messy, wannabe Jules Dassin cityscape film seen through a grunge filter. “Manhattan crowds with their turbulent musical chorus, Manhattan faces, and eyes, forever for me,” our narrator reads as we see riotous anger take to the streets.

“I’d rather have one person dance in my car than have 100 people with the song on in the background” late-night radio DJ, Naz (Naz Kawakami), tells his friend. The young man hosts a show called “Night Drive,” on 90.1 FM Honolulu, “the show that makes you feel cool when you’re driving at night, the show where you actually are as you speed down the freeway going about your misdeeds.” Beginning production in November 2020 as a sort of documentary/fiction hybrid, native Hawaiian filmmaker Alika Tengan’s “Every Day In Kaimukī,” is an admirable and well-intended debut, though it’s far more successful in its vibe than it is in establishing an artistic voice with command over narrative.

Attempting to remake a classic film is never an easy assignment. Especially when said classic is as revered as Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 drama “Ikiru.” Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro could have placed the story in contemporary times, making a new version more palatable for some critics, but instead, set it in the exact same era only interchanging London for Tokyo.

Stripping down in her sixties. Emma Thompson got real about embracing nude scenes for her new movie, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. 

Most of us who grew up pouring over the pages of many a yellowed comic book of the mid-20th century will likely recall any number of unusual ads gracing the back cover of “Spider-Man” or “Detective Comics”; such ads touted the promise of pills that guaranteed heightened strength, home hypnosis kits and, perhaps most legendary, inexpensive toys ranging from the likes of the mighty X-Ray Specs to the admittedly ridiculous sea monkey phenomenon that somehow remain a tiny part of the pop culture lexicon to this day.

told Entertainment Weekly.“I don’t think I could’ve done it before the age that I am,” Thompson said of a scene that sees her drop her bath robe in front of a mirror to reveal her full form. “And yet, of course, the age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren’t used to seeing untreated bodies on the screen.”“Nothing has changed in the dreadful demands made upon women in the real world but also in acting,” she added.

Opening on a slide show in an empty classroom, a storm thundering away outside, black and white frontier images flicker. They feature carriages, trains, and indigenous persons communicating with settlers; miners, hunters, and cavalry troops: a romantic portrait of Manifest Destiny.

Celebrated actress Emma Thompson is starring in the film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, which sees a woman hire a male prostitute in the hopes of having an orgasm for the very first time.The film, which also features Peaky Blinders star Daryl McCormack, had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival over the weekend.Emma, 62, revealed that both herself and Daryl rehearsed their nude scene in the buff, while director Sophie Hyde also disrobed in way of support for her actors. “Sophie, Daryl, and I rehearsed entirely nude and talked about our bodies, talked about our relationship with our bodies, drew them, discussed the things that we find difficult about, things we like about them, described one another's bodies,” Emma explained in a Cinema Cafe conversation at Sundance.“It's very challenging to be nude at 62.She stands in front of a mirror alone and she drops her robe,” she said of her character, Nancy Stokes. The film follows widowed school teacher Nancy, who hires male prostitute ‘Leo Grande’ (Daryl) in an attempt to finally achieve her first orgasm. In her interview with Entertainment Weekly, she continued: “Nothing has changed in the dreadful demands made upon women in the real-world world but also in acting.“This thing of having to be thin is still the same as it ever was, and actually in some ways I think it's worse now.The star went on to admit: “The age that I am makes it extremely challenging because we aren't used to seeing untreated bodies on the screen.”Emma also reminisced about the time she spent getting comfortable with her co-star by going on walks around the muddy banks of Hampstead Heath, London.“That was very important that we could hold onto each other and laugh.

Muhammad bin Nayef Counseling and Care Center was founded by its namesake Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, as a pillar of Saudi Arabia’s new method for dealing with terrorism. Once released from Guantanamo Bay, prisoners — not unlike American convicts — tend to relapse back to their old, destructive behaviors.

Fans will be seeing a lot more of Emma Thompson in her new movie Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, with the actress revealing how she prepared for a nude scene.The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend, with the 62-year-old actress opening up about going nude with Entertainment Weekly.The actress revealed that she and co-star Daryl McCormack both rehearsed the scene fully nude, while director Sophie Hyde also disrobed. Nude scene:Fans will be seeing a lot more of Emma Thompson in her new movie Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, with the actress revealing how she prepared for a nude scene'Sophie, Daryl, and I rehearsed entirely nude and talked about our bodies, talked about our relationship with our bodies, drew them, discussed the things that we find difficult about, things we like about them, described one another's bodies,' Thompson said in a Cinema Cafe conversation at Sundance.'It's very challenging to be nude at 62.