‘She Came to Me’ Review: Peter Dinklage Leads a Sly Ensemble Comedy that Returns Director Rebecca Miller to Her Full Personal Velocity

Guy Lodge Film Critic It’s striking how often the word “removal” comes up in various governments’ official policies regarding refugees and asylum seekers — a pointedly chosen term that conjures images of inanimate refuse or clutter awaiting collection, rather than human lives in desperate limbo. Fail to make your case to officials and you’ll be “removed,” a near-literally humanizing threat that hangs over Milad Alami’s tense, bristling social thriller “Opponent” like a pounding migraine. Following an Iranian wrestler and father whose urgent reasons for fleeing his homeland emerge aren’t entirely what he claims them to be, this is a tightly wound affair that unravels an obscured past and an uncertain future neatly in tandem. Alami maintains suspense at both ends of his narrative without making a blank cypher of his protagonist, played with seething specificity by an electrifying Payman Maadi.

Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon are launching a new country music reality competition on Apple TV+ this month.My Kind Of Country will debut on the streaming platform on March 24 with the aim of increasing diversity within the genre.In a new trailer released this week, Witherspoon said: “When we got together a long time ago we were talking about how country music should stop limiting people and start opening doors… it’s music brought over from all over the world.”Musgraves added: “The bluegrass, the folk, the gospel. There’s so many threads woven through country music.”Among the trio of judges for the show is gay country singer Orville Peck alongside Black stars Jimmie Allen and Mickey Guyton, putting an emphasis on balancing out the overly white, male and heterosexual current country scene.After the judges recruit contestants from around the world, they will all then head to Nashville to compete for the chance to win “a life-changing experience from Apple, including global exposure across the Apple TV+ and Apple Music platforms.”Watch the trailer for My Kind Of Country below.Last year, Musgraves hit headlines when she called out Ted Cruz during a show in Austin, Texas.During her set at Austin City Limits while performing her hit song ‘High Horse’, Musgraves took aim at the Senator, singing: “‘Cause everyone knows someone who kills the buzz/ Every time they open up their mouth,” before pausing to say, “Ted Cruz… I said what I said.”During the same gig, Musgraves also took a stab at the U.S.

Stevie Nicks and Billy Joel‘s co-headlining US tour began in Inglewood, California last night (March 10) – watch them duet two tracks below.Nicks’ joint tour with Joel – dubbed ‘Two Icons, One Night’ – will encompass seven shows between March and September, with the Fleetwood Mac member recently announcing headline dates to fill in the gaps between those shows, kicking off next week (March 15) at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena.At the Inglewood show, during Nicks’ set she was joined by Joel for a rendition of ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’, before she then hopped up on stage with Joel during his set to lend vocals to a rendition of ‘And So It Goes’.Elsewhere during the gig, Nicks paid an emotional tribute to her late Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie.Before performing ‘Landslide’, Nicks told the crowd of McVie: “I have to imagine she’s still here. It’s all I can do” while tearing up.See the duets, emotional tribute and more from the opening night of the ‘Two Icons, One Night’ tour below.Earlier this year, Nicks was announced alongside Brandi Carlile, Paul McCartney, and Steven Tyler as a featured artist on Dolly Parton’s upcoming album ‘Rock Star’.

We in the Dark Angel Family are deeply saddened and crushed today with the news of our brother and founder Jimmy Durkin…Posted by Dark Angel Official on Friday, March 10, 2023Durkin was a founding member of Dark Angel (under the name Shellshock) in 1981, going on to be known by their current name from 1983.Alongside the likes of Metallica and Slayer, they became a staple of California thrash metal through the 1980s and ‘90s.Durkin played with Dark Angel through until his death, with the band breaking up in 1992 before reuniting between 2002 and 2005, and then once again from 2013 until the present.The band’s most popular album came in 1986 with ‘Darkness Descends’. Drummer Gene Hoglan said last year that the band were lining up a new LP for a 2023 release.

A “life-changing event.” Hailey Bieber (née Baldwin) marked the one-year anniversary of suffering a blood clot in her brain.

Kimberley Sustad and Brooks Darnell put love on the line in their newest Hallmark Channel movie, Game of Love.

The popular, innovative and genre-bending film from A24 has won the top prizes at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Producers Guild Awards, Directors Guild Awards and Writers Guild Awards. Whew.

Oscars red carpet — has been experiencing a series of losses and recoveries in power. Ovation Hollywood, a shopping area previously known as Hollywood & Highland, has seen several key areas go completely dark, including credential and safety offices. The Dolby Theater, which will host the Oscars ceremony on Sunday, is part of the Ovation site.

Jack Keating has revealed he is co-parenting his newborn daughter with his ex as he spoke about becoming a father for the first time on Friday.  The son of Irish singer Ronan Keating shocked fans earlier this week when he shared a photo of himself cradling to tot to his Instagram, announcing the birth.  Having entered Love Island's famous Casa Amor in July, viewers of the show gathered Jack, 23, had conceived his daughter before finding fame in the villa.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Adonis Creed, like Rocky Balboa before him, is a fighter who faces down his demons and finds his triumph-of-the-human-spirit mojo, all leading up to his inevitable delivery of that knockout punch (well, okay, Rocky actually lost the fight in “Rocky”). The first two “Creed” films, like the six “Rocky” films, were rah-rah crowd-pleasers, with the hero taking on an adversary who represents the forces of darkness. The boxing foes in these movies are a little like comic-book supervillains: Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, Drago’s vengeful son, and so on. They’ve been catchy and, at times, memorable characters, but it’s part of their appeal that they’re two-dimensional raging-bull enemies you would hardly rank as layered human beings.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The last time a movie was marketed with a this-sounds-so-wretchedly-over-the-top-not-to-mention-insane-it-could-almost-be-fun low/high concept, the results, to put it kindly, were mixed. “Snakes on a Plane,” which sounded like a title that Don Simpson scrawled in white powder on a table at 4:00 a.m., was a movie that wore its brain-deadness on both lapels. But 17 years ago, that title inspired mountains of online chatter, to the point that the filmmakers incorporated bits and pieces of the obsessive fan gabble into the movie, most famously the Samuel L. Jackson line, “I have had it with these mothefuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin‘ plane!” The result was that “Snakes on a Plane” felt like the first piece of brazen Hollywood schlock that was crowdsourced. The audience went in thinking: It may be trash, but it’s our trash.   

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Golda,” Helen Mirren, acting with deft skill and control beneath one of those startling transformative prosthetic makeup jobs, portrays Golda Meir during the three-week cataclysm of the Yom Kippur War, which shook Israel to its bones in the fall of 1973. As the actor stands (or, more often, stoops) before us, we can believe our eyes that this is the Iron Lady of Israel. For here is that frown, those beetle brows, that coarse wavy hair tied into a bun like challah bread, that pugnacious nose, that stare of implacability designed to bore a hole in its beholder. Here, as well, is the woman who lit a thousand cigarettes, chain-smoking her way through the war-room anxiety and through the secret medical treatments she was undergoing at the time for lymphoma.

Anne Hathaway showed off her impeccable sense of style while attending the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival to promote her upcoming movie She Came to Me.

The last time actor Peter Dinklage and musician Bryce Dessner were involved in the same project, we got “Cyrano,” Joe Wright’s beautifully moving (if underappreciated) adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic play “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Less than two years later, Dinklage and Dessner reunite once more in Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me,” the opening film of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart delivered a dose of major glamour on the red carpet on Thursday as the Berlin Film Festival returned to full-scale, in-person operation for the first time since 2020. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky revived Berlin’s role as a political platform.   The Hollywood stars were greeted by packed crowds outside the Berlinale Palast and by festival co-heads Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian.

You would need a heart of stone to leave Rebecca Miller’s She Came to Me without wanting to pick up sticks and live on a tugboat, preferably one steered by Marisa Tomei. Tomei’s tugboat captain Katrina, with her softly weathered face, earthy humor and somewhat sociopathic “love” addiction, is a simply fabulous romcom heroine, if She Came to Me can be described as a romcom. And in Peter Dinklage, at his most darkly glowering as the perpetually panic-stricken, creatively blocked composer Katrina targets with her romantic zeal, she has her perfect foil. Props to Berlin Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian for nailing She Comes to Me: light but pungent, it is a perfect opener.  

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International If you ask Rebecca Miller, it’s getting harder and harder to make movies about people in a room talking. That particular brand of intimate, personal storytelling, the kind the director of “Maggie’s Plan” and “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is known for, is a challenging prospect for financiers weighing up a Darwinian landscape for cinemagoing. It’s why Miller’s latest, “She Came to Me,” which opens the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday, feels like a triumph for the American director, who marks her return to narrative features after an eight-year hiatus. “Making a movie like this is actually meaningful for independent cinema — it’s meaningful that we got it made,” said Miller. “Every time that happens, it’s a real victory, because it is very difficult … it’s hard to get personal films made.”

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Ant-Man,” released eight years ago, was a comic-book movie that almost inadvertently used its hyper-miniaturized cowboy-on-ant-back superhero as a metaphor for what a tiny place the film itself occupied in the MCU. “Ant-Man and the Wasp” (2018) was a bit less small. The director, Peyton Reed, who had a background in human comedy (“Down with Love,” “Bring It On”), expanded the sequel into a puckish fantasy of scale, with characters and objects popping back and forth in size, though the result was still more amusing than momentous. Paul Rudd’s nice-guy divorced dad turned badass metallic bug Scott Lang may have been an official Avenger, but that still didn’t give him more than a flyweight significance.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Bruce Springsteen has penned an original song for Rebecca Miller’s new film “She Came to Me,” which will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival this week. The song, “Addicted to Romance,” was written and performed by Springsteen, and will be heard by audiences for the first time during the movie’s Feb. 16 screening, when it plays over the end credits. Romantic comedy “She Came to Me” stars Peter Dinklage as a moody classical composer struggling with writer’s block. When he meets a quirky tugboat captain (Marisa Tomei), he finds the muse for his next opus and is encouraged by his therapist wife (Anne Hathaway) to make his big comeback. But just as his career looks to take off, his personal life implodes.