‘Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World’ Review: It’s Conventional but Delivers

Naman Ramachandran U.K.-based sales and distribution outfit Blue Finch Films has boarded international sales, excluding North America, for William Shatner documentary “You Can Call Me Bill” from Legion M and Exhibit A Pictures. Written and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, who has previously helmed documentaries such as “78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene,” “Memory: The Origins of Alien,” and “Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist,” the film had its world premiere at SXSW 2023 as part of the Documentary Spotlight section. The film is an intimate portrait of William Shatner’s personal journey across nine decades, stripping away all the masks he has worn during his storied career – most famously the Star Trek franchise – to reveal the man behind it all. The first and only feature-length documentary dedicated to Shatner’s life, career and philosophy, it delves into his most fervent passions, hopes and concerns, through a thematic distillation of his most recent autobiographical songs and a deep dive into the farthest reaches of his filmography.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Does chronic Lyme disease exist? That’s the question that haunts “The Quiet Epidemic,” Lindsay Keys and Winslow Crane-Murdoch’s worthy and provocative documentary about the highly controversial syndrome. (The movie premieres on VOD on May 16.) The filmmakers argue, with unflinching advocacy and some very good reporting, that chronic Lyme disease most definitely exists. Among other things, “The Quiet Epidemic” is a portrait of individuals whose lives have been ravaged by it. Yet the movie, in its doggedly opinionated way, does acknowledge the profundity of the debate. The medical establishment, led by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, has long held the position — one it maintains to this day — that Lyme disease is a real thing, eminently curable with a two-to-four week regimen of antibiotics, but that chronic Lyme disease, with sometimes devastating symptoms stretching on for months, years, even decades, is not backed up by the science.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic It’s beyond obvious that women deserve a movie that portrays and celebrates them in their sixties and seventies reveling in the joys of romantic adventure and uninhibited sex. It’s not so obvious that they deserved “Book Club,” the 2018 comedy about four hale, hearty, and prosperous senior friends who read “Fifty Shades of Grey” in their monthly literary white-wine klatsch, only to discover that E.L. James’s S&M princess fantasy jump-starts their hibernating libidos and/or their desire to commit to the men who are courting them. You could use a whole Thesaurus paragraph of withering descriptives to evoke the sort of movie “Book Club” was. It was prefab, it was cookie-cutter, it was paint-by-numbers, it was broad enough to play to the peanut gallery, it was four glorified sitcoms jammed into one overly synthetic package.

Whether you regularly enjoy a night out in Manchester's clubs, or even if they're a long distant memory, everyone has one place that feels like a second home.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Watching a police-procedural homicide drama, whether it’s the grungiest of VOD potboilers or the most visionary film of the genre, Michael Mann’s silvery, dread-drenched “Manhunter,” we more or less know one thing: At the end of two hours, the grisly mystery we’ve been dunked in will have its catharsis and its resolution. We will know who the killer is, and in knowing that a kind of order will have been restored. David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” with its tantalizing ambiguities, might stand as an exception to the form — a singular winding creep-out, without the closure we’re thirsting for — yet even there you feel, by the end, that you’ve glimpsed the face of evil. But “The Night of the 12th,” the French thriller that was nominated for 10 César Awards and won six of them, including best picture (it opens here on May 19), throws the audience a slow-motion curveball that’s intended to tinker with our dreams. And to a degree, it does. Based on a true-crime book by Pauline Guéna, the movie turns into one of the most casually authentic of investigative murder mysteries. Each time we think we’re seeing a classic suspense arc, it unravels into a dead end, and we think to ourselves: Of course. Crime in real life doesn’t necessarily happen so neatly. “The Night of the 12th” is a mostly compelling sit, though what lends the film its singular texture is that it keeps tricking us into thinking it’s a more conventional thriller than it is.

New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and producer/DJ Mella Dee have spoken to NME about their recent collaboration ‘Riptide’ – as well as opening up about the state of the world and the music industry, and what the future holds for both artists. Watch our video interview above.Last month, Doncaster-born DJ and producer Mella Dee – real name Ryan Aichison – shared the Italo-disco infused ‘Riptide‘, featuring lyrics and vocals from Sumner.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic I have a little ritual when it comes to animated films. I try to go into them not knowing who the cast members are. That’s not always possible, of course. For the most part, though, I do my best to ignore the publicity and let the voices I hear surprise me — because if you don’t know who the actors are, you respond, I think, in a less biased and more spontaneous way. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” made my crusade easy, since the film has no opening credits. From the earliest moments, I had no idea who was voicing any of the characters. But I did know this: When the villain, a gigantic fire-breathing horned turtle named Bowser, showed up in his studded-leather arm bands, lowered his fire-red eyebrows into a gleaming, gap-toothed grin of the most insidious megalomania and began to push and order people around, all I could think was, “I like this dude.” 

Big George Foreman, the new movie about the former boxer-turned-businessman, has officially been released in theaters.

A former snooker hall where the where The Beatles performed in their heyday is to be demolished.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney+ subscribers will be able to jump into the Quantum Realm next month when “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” hits the streaming service. The film, starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Jonathan Majors, will come to Disney+ worldwide on May 17. That’s 89 days after “Quantuamania” opened wide in the U.S. on Feb. 17. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” has been one of the worst-reviewed Marvel movies to date. It hauled in $213 million at the domestic box office during its theatrical run and grossed $261.6 million worldwide; the movie had an estimated production budget of $200 million.

So often thought of primarily as the big lug who was so dramatically dispatched by Muhammad Ali in the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire in 1974, George Foreman is the main event in Big George Foreman. While there is plenty of boxing here to satisfy sports fans, the film is mild-mannered and genial to a fault as it charts the life of a dirt-poor Texas kid with a devastating punch whose public image transformed over the years from hulking bogeyman to that of a good-natured businessman and man of God.

Former EastEnders actress Maisie Smith and her boyfriend Max George delighted fans on Sunday's The Chase Celebrity Special as they staged the 'adorable' moment the 21-year-old would have said 'I do' as she became excited at the idea.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In movies, the word “bomb” has always meant two things, generally at the same time. The first and most important definition of bomb is that a movie has lost a disastrous amount of money. Movies, in general, can’t afford to do that — they’re too expensive to produce. Bombs happen, but as a business model they’re not sustainable. A movie that bombs commercially has never been something to write off as a trivial matter. The second definition of bomb, which is linked to the first (though not automatically), is that a film is spectacularly bad. It is, of course, not axiomatic that a movie that bombs commercially has failed as a work of art. There are movies we think of as classics that crashed and burned at the box office — like “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Blade Runner” or “Intolerance” or “The Long Goodbye.” It’s become almost trendy to rescue certain films from the scandal of their box-office infamy. The mother of all those rescue jobs is “Heaven’s Gate,” the grandly picturesque 219-minute Marxist art Western that effectively put a stake through the heart of the New Hollywood, helping to take United Artists down along with it — though it’s a film that numerous observers have re-evaluated as a misunderstood masterpiece. I can’t agree on that one; to me, “Heaven’s Gate” remains a visually stately but indulgent wallow. Nevertheless, it’s always worth standing up for the principle that a box-office fiasco isn’t necessarily a bad film.

George Foreman for the legendary boxer's biopic. Davis transformed his body to the point where he saw stars, thanks to an exhaustive dietary plan that called for him to go from eating 5,000 calories a day to a whopping 7,000, and gaining 57 pounds in a matter of weeks.The budding actor spoke to ET's Kevin Frazier from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel gym in Los Angeles ahead of Foreman's biopic,, hitting theaters April 28, and he recalled the intense chow-down sessions he put himself through to reach peak Foreman level.Initially, Davis lost weight and grew his hair to replicate Foreman's lean build and Afro hairdo in his younger boxing days, but production stopped to give Davis the time he needed to bulk up and become a spitting image of Foreman in his latter years.«We took the six weeks off so we could gain the weight,» Davis said. «I was 225 and then I gained 50 pounds in five weeks, so I went from 225 to 276 in five weeks and I got to 282 total.»No, a free pass to gain all that weight didn't prove to be the happiest days of his life.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The romantic action comedy has always had a breathlessly eager-to-please, overstuffed quality. You might say it’s a what’s-not-to-like genre. We laugh! With pulses racing! And swoon at the moonstruck chemistry! In a superior rom-act-com, like “Romancing the Stone” or “Out of Sight” or “True Lies” or the new “Murder Mystery” sequel, the action is the romance — it’s how the characters connect. (One way the form extends vintage Hollywood screwball is that it tends to be about couples who so dislike each other that only by joining in death-defying scrapes can they melt the ice.) But then there are movies like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” where the love gets sandwiched between vehicular mayhem so aggressive it’s played for “laughs,” and the too-muchness of the whole thing becomes like one of those fast-food fusion experiments. Sorry, but the movie escapism equivalent of a burger topped with a quesadilla served with cheese fries is not my idea of a good time.  

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Nicholas Hoult confirmed in a recent interview with The Guardian that he lost out on roles in “The Batman,” “Mission: Impossible 7” and “Top Gun: Maverick” all in a row. In a new interview with GQ España, the actor stressed that he is “happy” with his career despite these “disappointments.” Hoult also went into a bit more detail about the experience of losing the title role in “The Batman” to Robert Pattinson. “Of course,” Hoult said when asked if he would’ve liked to play Bruce Wayne/Batman. “I’m sure if you ask most people, they’ll tell you they’d want to portray that role. I think Matt Reeves’ ideas were fantastic and he made a brilliant movie. And I also think that Rob [Robert Pattinson] did an amazing job with the character and I loved seeing him in it. So I don’t think I would have done as good a job as him ultimately. I don’t think I could have fit as well into the world that Matt created as Rob did.”

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Let no one deny it: Rupert Murdoch is clever like a fox. He’s slyer than his adversaries in mainstream media. They still think in real-world terms. But Murdoch thinks in terms of the world that he’s created — the world of fake news, of lies that play because they carry the ring of vengeful mythology (life as a Charles Bronson film that never ends). The world that Fox News pretends is reality. You could make a case that in recent weeks, Murdoch’s circus of happy-talk dystopian propaganda (otherwise known as any random half hour of Fox News) took a major hit. The release of documents subpoenaed during the Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News revealed something that was, or should be, profoundly embarrassing to the network: that there are moments when its star huckster, Tucker Carlson, actually tells the truth (at least in private). The revelation that Carlson, along with a number of Fox News executives, peddled Donald Trump’s crackpot assertion that he won the 2020 election not because they believed it, but because they thought they had to go along with what their viewers wanted to hear, made the Fox team look like craven cowards. The lawsuit never made it to trial, but because those documents were leaked you could say the damage was done. And to keep the trial from happening, Murdoch had to cough up the mother of all defamation settlements: $787.5 million. 

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Last month, to my great surprise, I raved about a Guy Ritchie movie, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre,” as an exhilarating exception to the rule of Ritchie’s style-over-substance, more-frosting-than-cake school of crime-thriller grandiloquence. The film bombed, and more critics than not disagreed with me. But I stand by my assessment of “Operation Fortune” as a diabolically entertaining screwball action-espionage caper. If you want to talk about exceptions to the rule, though, that movie has nothing on the new Guy Ritchie film, which is called (wait for it) “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.” Ritchie’s name was reportedly added to the title because there is already a film in existence called “The Covenant.” But that sounds like an awfully thin reason to suddenly convert Ritchie into a marquee legend, and, in fact, there’s a better reason. Against all odds, he has become one of the best directors working. “The Covenant” isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper. It’s an Afghanistan war drama, and if you’re wondering whether he has made a combat film in some version of the Ritchie style (jazzy violence, fast-break comic-strip dialogue, needle drops), the answer is no. He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. “The Covenant” unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Benita (Julia Mayorga), the young woman at the center of “Rare Objects,” the third feature directed by Katie Holmes, has been through a transformative trauma. In the film’s opening moments, she’s discharged from a mental ward, where she’s been dealing with PTSD; a series of charged flashbacks show us what happened to her. In Manhattan, where she was a university student majoring in economics, she was approached at a bar by a seemingly nice guy, who had a drink with her, and when she went to the restroom he attacked her, shoving her inside and sexually assaulting her. She emerges from this crime a shell of her former self, and Holmes shoots the rape so that we experience how the shock and horror of it could undermine someone’s identity. Benita, out of the hospital, shows up at the home of her doting but quietly stern mother (Saundra Santiago) in Astoria, telling her that she’s taking a break from school; she says nothing at all about what happened to her. She’ll continue to say nothing — to anyone. As she steps back out into the world, hunting for a job, Julia Mayorga acts with a tentative fretful wariness that speaks to the trauma Benita won’t say out loud, and we assume that the movie is going to be about how she confronts that crisis.

The Big Door Prize showrunner David West Read and stars Chris O’Dowd, Gabrielle Dennis, and Josh Segarra joined Deadline’s Contenders TV event Sunday to discuss the minutiae of their characters, inspiration for the series, the balance between comedy and drama and a glimpse of season two.