Author: Hollyood rep

For over a decade, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been a lightning rod in the global debate over press freedom, transparency and the reach of U.S. power. From the release of the notorious “Collateral Murder” video to his years-long exile inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange has been hailed as a journalistic freedom fighter and vilified as a national security threat. Now, with The Six Billion Dollar Man, director Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight, The House I Live In) turns his lens on what he calls “the most consequential political prisoner of our time,” delivering a searing exposé that…

Friendship writer-director Andrew DeYoung is flattered to hear that his feature directorial debut evokes comparisons to What About Bob? and The Banshees of Inisherin. The black comedy chronicles working stiff Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) as he befriends his local weatherman neighbor, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd). The unlikely duo become fast friends until Craig takes a casual garage-set boxing match too far, alienating Austin and his other buddies. Craig then refuses to accept the rejection so he resorts to increasingly desperate acts to make amends. DeYoung, who wrote the Craig Waterman character with his friend Robinson in mind, was inspired by…

A Useful Ghost, the debut feature from Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, has won the Grand Prize at the 64th edition of Cannes Critics’ Week. The absurdist fantasy comedy portrays a married couple where the wife dies of a respiratory illness caused by dust pollution, and then returns to the grieving husband as a ghost in the form of a vacuum cleaner. The Thai feature picked up the Grand Prix AMI Paris trophy as awards for the Critics Week section in Cannes were announced on Wednesday. The film stars Davika Hoorne and Witsarut Himmarat. Also, the French Touch Prize of the…

Canadian film producer and distributor Leonardo Fuica says its time for filmmakers from Canada and the U.S. to develop and make movies together as official treaty co-productions. “Americans already come up here (Canada) to shoot, because it’s cheaper and the quality of the technicians is the same,” Fuica told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday from the Cannes Film Festival. “Why U.S. producers could not do that with government infrastructure too? If they could bring some money, why wouldn’t the (Canadian) government help these companies come here and create more jobs?” His comments came against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s surprise proposal…

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington helped make Cannes mo’ better Monday night with the gala premiere of Highest 2 Lowest. Washington, currently playing Othello in a 15-week run on Broadway, flew to France for the evening premiere, his first collaboration with Lee since 2006’s Inside Man. It was a short visit. Washington will be back on stage in New York on Tuesday. He was joined on the Cannes red carpet by Highest 2 Lowest co-stars Ilfenesh Hadera, Wendell Pierce, Jeffrey Wright, Aubrey Joseph and rapper A$AP Rocky. The premiere also brought out A-listers not associated with the film, with Jason…

An inspired streak of absurdism runs through The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto) connected to an urban legend about a “hairy leg” that moves autonomously, causing trouble in the northeastern Brazilian capital of Recife in 1977, when the country remained under military dictatorship. The leg turns up or is mentioned various times — being pulled from the messy guts of a large shark carcass; stolen from the morgue and disposed of by evidence-tampering police; tagged as the culprit in sensational tabloid crime stories; and literally kicking asses in a gay cruising ground, where men are getting it on under trees…

While Ozploitation dates back to 1970, the predecessor Dangerous Animals calls to mind more than anything is 2005’s Wolf Creek. Only this time, the mayhem happens in open water. Both these sadistic Australian B-movies revolve around a psychotic serial killer preying on travelers and both serve up blood, guts and torture porn, which should provide gnarly amusement for genre fans. Director Sean Byrne doesn’t lean hard enough into the trashy pleasures for maximum fun, unlike some of the more preposterous recent shark movies. (Give me The Shallows, Under Paris, The Meg.) But he dishes up plenty of lurid chum and…

Did we all go completely nuts during those unsettlingly strange first months of COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, when cities became ghost towns and people thrust into isolation started gambling with their mental health by living online and buying whatever the social media echo chamber coughed up? That’s the assessment in Ari Aster’s Eddington, which views that collective national trauma through the microcosm of a fictitious New Mexico small town. Essentially a modern Western marbled with a vein of dark comedy, the movie is neither suspenseful nor funny enough to work as either. Mostly, it’s a distancing slog. After the diabolically…

Nate Bargatze has lined up a comedy powerhouse for his feature acting debut. Will Forte, Colin Jost and Kumail Nanjiani have joined the cast of The Breadwinner, a comedy feature that Eric Appel is directing for TriStar Pictures. Zach Cherry, Kate Berlant and Martin Herlihy have also boarded the feature, which begins production next week in Atlanta. The story sees the life of Bargatze’s character turned upside down when his supermom wife lands a deal on Shark Tank. The lifelong breadwinner of the family becomes a stay-at-home dad, and quickly realizes he’s in way over his head. Mandy Moore is already on board…

Was Avengers: Endgame snubbed at the 2020 Oscars? Scarlett Johansson thinks so. In the June cover story for Vanity Fair, published on Wednesday, the Eleanor the Great director reflected on her time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically one of her last stints with the franchise in 2019’s Endgame. The film saw the death of her character, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, and she still believes the Academy snubbed the movie.  “How did this film not get nominated for an Oscar?” the Black Widow star questioned of Endgame not receiving a nom in the best picture category. “It was an…