Owen Gleiberman: Last News

Naman Ramachandran Vertigo Releasing has acquired Canadian auteur David Cronenberg’s body-horror film “Crimes of the Future” for U.K. and Ireland distribution. The film stars Oscar nominees Viggo Mortensen (“Green Book”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) and Palme d’Or winner Léa Seydoux (“No Time To Die”).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Thor: Love and Thunder” has a pleasing, let’s-try-it-on-and-shoot-the-works effervescence. Like most Marvel movies, the fourth entry in the Thor saga would seem to have weighty matters on its mind, starting with Thor’s hammer, the smashed fragments of which have been reassembled — and, more to the point, claimed — by Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor’s old flame. By possessing the mystique of that hammer, she has become the Mighty Thor.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Mr. Malcolm’s List” has a scrumptious light charm. It’s a Regency romance set in London in 1818, where someone in the film is being fooled at every moment.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Fourth of July” is a movie directed by Louis C.K., and in its light-spirited and unimportant way it comes at the audience as a kind of moral curveball. Starting less than a year after Nov. 2017, when five women came forward to describe inappropriate conduct by Louis C.K., including instances in which he masturbated in front of them (accusations he did not deny), the comedian, actor, screenwriter, and director has been working to revive his career, kicking off his attempted rehabilitation with an appearance at the Comedy Cellar in New York on Aug.

Christopher Vourlias Bogdan George Apetri’s “Miracle” took home the top prize in the Romanian Days competition at the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival, which saw nine first-time directors among the 12 filmmakers competing in the annual showcase of domestic cinema.It’s the first time such a formidable number of debuts have featured in the competition, offering a snapshot of what the fest’s artistic director Mihai Chirilov describes as a “balanced landscape” of new and established voices in Romania’s celebrated film industry.It’s been nearly two decades since Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr.

William Earl Variety won seven first-place awards Saturday night at the Los Angeles Press Club’s 64th SoCal Journalism Awards, including the honors for entertainment journalist and music criticism.The Variety work recognized runs the gamut from a social media post to commentary urging the industry to act on timely issues, such as the hardships that exhibitors faced last fall, or the need for the Emmys to create new lanes for different forms of drama series.Owen Gleiberman, Variety‘s Chief Film Critic, prevailed against tough competition for entertainment journalist of the year.Gleiberman also garnered two other wins, while TV Editor Michael Schneider also nabbed two wins.Gleiberman was recognized for obituary/appreciation for his column on pioneering director Lina Wertmüller, who died in December at the age of 93. He also won in the music criticism category for his candid assessment of the Sparks in connection with Edgar Wright’s 2021 documentary “The Sparks Brothers.” Schneider won for commentary/analysis of TV or film for his column that put forth the proposal that it’s time to create a new Emmy category for traditional network dramas.

J. Kim Murphy It’s a 20th century showdown at the domestic box office this weekend, with the baby boomer epic “Elvis” contending against Gen X revamp “Top Gun: Maverick” for the top spot on domestic charts.Director Baz Luhrmann’s biopic about the King of Rock and Roll is projected to draw $30 million from 3,906 theaters in its opening.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe” is only the second Beavis and Butt-Head movie — after “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America,” which came out (are you ready to feel old?) in 1996. That’s a long time to put a franchise about the world’s dumbest, horniest, and most meta teenage metal-heads on hold.

Zack Sharf The official runtime for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” is 159 minutes, but that’s nothing compared to the 240-minute cut that the filmmaker had to trim down into a releasable theatrical cut. Speaking to Radio Times, Luhrmann confirmed that a four-hour “Elvis” cut exists with scenes that include the music icon’s infamous meeting with Richard Nixon.“I mean, I have a four-hour version, actually,” Luhrmann said.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Lightyear,” the 26th Pixar film, has a premise that’s explained by the film’s opening title. It seems that in 1995, Andy, the young hero of “Toy Story,” was given a Buzz Lightyear action figure as a present. That was because he’d seen a Buzz Lightyear movie and loved it.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Funny Pages,” a scruffy, grungy, likably tossed-together sketchbook of a low-budget indie comedy, typifies a paradox that now runs through a great deal of independent cinema. The movie, set in a humdrum New Jersey suburbia, unfolds on the moldy bottom rung of the comic-book ladder. It centers on two friends who are obsessed with drawing their own comics, and it’s about the insular world of geeks and creeps and pervs and weirdos that this brings them into contact with.Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), at 17, has left the posh home of his parents in Princeton and set up residence in downscale Trenton, where he hangs out at the local comic-book store along with his friend, the sweetly passive, long-haired, acne-ridden Miles (Miles Emanuel), who has a secret crush on him.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“Rodeo” might have had a clearer (and catchier) title if it had been called “Wheelie.” It’s a drama set among French motocross riders, who are a bit like the outlaw bikers of the ’60s except that they wear cropped hair and athletic logo T-shirts instead of hippie manes and satanic leather jackets. And in this movie, at least, they don’t rove. They’re rooted in a desolate suburb of Paris, where they gather to zoom along the road and pop up on one wheel, which the movie describes to us as a feeling of intense liberation.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticRay Liotta, who died Thursday at 67, was a great actor who was second to none when it came to playing hoodlums, scoundrels, rotters, psychopaths, and cool jerks. To put it that way sounds reductive, of course, since that was far from the only thing he could do. Just think of his beloved performance in “Field of Dreams,” where he played Shoeless Joe Jackson as the impish ghost of baseball past.

Meredith Woerner Deputy Editor, Variety.comVariety has been nominated for 72 Southern California Journalism Awards, including two for journalist of the year, three for entertainment journalist of the year and six nominations for criticism of TV, music and books.The awards, given out by the Los Angeles Press Club, honor outstanding journalism in the region across print, digital, radio and broadcast platforms.Executive editor Ramin Setoodeh and deputy music editor Jem Aswad are both up for journalist of the year. TV critic Daniel D’Addario along with chief film critic Owen Gleiberman and features editor Chris Willman are all nominated for entertainment journalist of the year.Aswad leads all Variety staffers with 14 total nominations, followed by Willman with nine nominations.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen a documentary gets made, as an off-ramp passion project, by a noted filmmaker who normally directs fiction films, there’s a special curiosity and excitement to seeing the angle — and the kind of craft — he’s going to bring to it. “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” is the first movie directed by Ethan Coen all by himself.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen a documentary gets made, as an off-ramp passion project, by a noted filmmaker who normally directs fiction films, there’s a special curiosity and excitement to seeing the angle — and the kind of craft — he’s going to bring to it. “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” is the first movie directed by Ethan Coen all by himself.

Manori Ravindran International EditorBérénice Bejo was thrilled to be asked how she came to be involved in Michel Hazanavicius’ “Final Cut.”The French-Argentine actor — who plays a mad make-up artist in the zombie romp that opened Cannes on Tuesday — revealed that it wasn’t easy convincing director Hazanavicius, who is also her husband, to let her have a role.“He said, ‘I’m really sorry but this time I don’t think we’ll be working together.’ He said I was ‘too pretty’ and I said, ‘What is that?’ I got a bit upset,” said Bejo.“Final Cut,” Hazanavicius’ eighth feature, is a remake of Japanese zombie comedy “One Cut of the Dead” (2017), which became a cult sensation. The film begins as a French zombie comedy, but soon lifts the lid on how the film was made and becomes more a commentary on — in Variety critic Owen Gleiberman’s words — the “creative innocence of terrible filmmaking.” Bejo seemingly took great pleasure in explaining how it was only when Hazanavicius caught COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and she took care of him morning, noon and night that he finally relented.“After a week of agony, he said, ‘Can you please read my screenplay?’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m too busy and I’m not even going to be in the film,'” said Bejo.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentSwedish director Ninja Thyberg is the winner of this year’s annual Women in Motion Young Talent Award, bestowed by the Kering Group and the Cannes Film Festival to a standout first-time female director.Thyberg is being honored for directing several shorts and a feature all centered around the theme of “sexuality as a prism for viewing passion in society,” the award’s organizers said in a statement.In 2013, Thyberg’s short “Pleasure” was presented in Cannes’ Critics’ Week section. The short was then expanded into her first feature by the same title which was chosen in the Cannes official selection in 2020 and then screened in 2021 at Sundance, and was also awarded the jury prize in 2021 at Deauville.

Wilson Chapman editorOne month after the release of his critically-acclaimed comedy special “Rothanial,” comedian and actor Jerrod Carmichael is looking to continue his hot streak with the release of his feature directorial debut, “On the Count of Three.”Carmichael stars in the dark buddy comedy as Val, a clinically depressed slacker who botches a suicide attempt at the mulch plant he works at. After the event goes wrong, he and his childhood best friend Kevin (Christopher Abbott), who struggles with significant mental health issues of his own, make a suicide pact to kill each other by the end of the day.

Wilson Chapman editorA24 has released the first trailer for “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” a new slasher film starring Amandla Stenberg and “Borat 2” breakout Maria Bakalova.Directed by Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” stars Stenberg as Sophie, a young woman recently out of rehab who hosts a house party and invites her new girlfriend Bee (Bakalova) to meet her extended group of friends. The already tense party takes a turn for the horrifying when the guests play a murder-in-the-dark game that ends with a real-life murder, forcing Sophie, Bee and their friends to investigate who’s responsible.Stenberg and Bakalova lead the ensemble cast of actors who portray the party guests, which includes Myha’la Herrold (“Industry”), Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”), Chase Sui Wonders (“Generation”), Pete Davidson (“Saturday Night Live”) and Lee Pace (“Foundation”).

Zack Sharf Alex Kurtzman has called his 2017 directorial effort “The Mummy” the “biggest failure of my life, both personally and professionally.” The Universal-backed adventure tentpole starred Tom Cruise and was designed to jumpstart the studio’s Dark Universe, a franchise of interconnected films based on classic Universal monster movies. “The Mummy” was universally panned by film critics and grossed $410 million worldwide, effectively killing the studio’s franchise hopes.“I tend to subscribe to the point of view that you learn nothing from your successes, and you learn everything from your failures,” Kurtzman recently said on The Playlist’s “Bingeworthy” podcast.  “And [‘The Mummy’] was probably the biggest failure of my life, both personally and professionally.” While Kurtzman said “there’s about a million things I regret” about “The Mummy,” he also maintained that “it gave me so many gifts that are inexpressibly beautiful.