‘Gran Turismo’ Review: A Race-Car Drama Dazzling Enough to Put the Audience in the Driver’s Seat

Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, and Usher hanging out together in a European escapade. This assembly of notable figures embarked on a captivating retreat that unfolded against the picturesque backdrop of Dubrovnik, Croatia.These personalities took to the city with elegance and exclusivity, strolling along Dubrovnik’s bustling main street.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic It’s a clockwork ritual of awards season. A movie in contention, one based on a true story, will be dinged for presenting a version of reality that isn’t real enough.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Is comic-book movie culture reaching a tipping point…into peak exhaustion? This summer, we’ve seen signs of that in the ho-hum box-office returns for “The Flash” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” To be fair, the mega-success of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has testified to the genre’s continuing appeal. Still, there are onscreen indicators that the superhero-movie audience, while it remains vast, might be entering the thrill-is-gone zone.

Black American culture as one of the most influential businessmen in entertainment. The Greensboro, North Carolina, native became a pillar in entertainment after moving to Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic On July 19, the MPA ratings board handed an NC-17 rating to “Passages,” Ira Sachs’s acclaimed drama about a very unusual love triangle (a man, a woman, and a megalomaniacal romantic sociopath). The film was set to be released just two weeks later; Sachs and his distributor, MUBI, were understandably upset. The scene that triggered the NC-17 rating, as is often the case in situations like this one, was an extended sex scene (the MPA does not like things that are long).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic We all know what a MacGuffin is (and in case you don’t, here’s what it is): an object or event that the plot of a thriller hinges on, and which everyone onscreen keeps talking about, yet it has no intrinsic interest apart from how it serves the structure of the movie. The term was mythologized by Hitchcock, and as shorthand for the way a certain kind of movie works it has never gone out of style. But what do you call a MacGuffin that’s so boring the audience can’t pretend to care about it? Let’s call it a MacMuffin.

. They paid 15 million for the place.Carl Westcott, the guy who sold them the house (and started businesses including 1-800-Flowers!), was 80 years old at the time (he's still alive! Eighty-three now) and had just had back surgery.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” has a terrible title, but in theory the film sounds intriguing. It wants to be an old-fashioned monster movie, the kind they used to produce back when horror films were actual movies, made with the stodgy well-carpentered rhythm that any movie was made with. “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” is set in 1897, and for most of it we’re aboard a large wooden ship with multiple sails — the Demeter, a handsome relic, since this is already the era when metal ships were coming in — that’s sailing from Bulgaria to London.

The main driver and heroic gamer of Sony’s “Gran Turismo” is Jann Mardenborough, who did indeed level up “From Gamer to Racer,” as the movie’s poster tagline teases. But in this overly polished retelling of this true story, the biggest hero is actually a Nissan executive here named Danny Moore (played by Orlando Bloom), who wanted to prove that “Gran Turismo” is such a great product that it’s like the real thing.

Working in an oft-traversed realm, Gran Turismo director Neill Blomkamp and writers Jason Hall and Zach Baylin have delivered a racing car drama that’s rather different from the others. With plenty of potent auto action, some well-defined characters and welcome fresh components, this is an engaging look at people who overcome their own doubts and perceived shortcomings to help pull off something genuinely unusual. It’s a lively, spunky piece of work with no pretenses and all the more welcome for that. Originally dated for August 11, Sony pivoted amid the actors strike, and is sneak previewing the next two weekends, with the official wide opening on August 25.

Sophia Scorziello editor Netflix has released the first trailer for the erotic thriller “Fair Play,” which the streamer acquired for $20 million in one of the biggest deals out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. “Bridgerton” star Phoebe Dynevor and “Oppenheimer” actor Alden Ehrenreich star in the film, which unravels the complex relationship of a power-hungry couple contending for power at a cutthroat financial firm.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The saga of American movies in the 1970s is now a mythology. In the first half of the decade, the movies that emerged from the New Hollywood were unprecedented in their realism, their immersion in the gritty side pockets of everyday life, their perception of the darkness hidden in the American Dream. Then, of course, came Lucas and Spielberg, who kicked off the blockbuster revolution — the transformation of movies from reality into fantasy.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic When did the “Mission: Impossible” films become action movies? I’m not sure when that happened, but I do know this much: For a series like the one in question, it’s live by the action, die by the action. For a few days there, people were chattering about all the great action in “Dead Reckoning Part One,” talking up the Fiat car chase or that train-dangling-from-a-cliff climax as if we’d never seen a sequence like that one before.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Ben Kingsley, who likes to go to extremes, has played his share of frowningly overcivilized repressed geeks and also his share of seething walking-id maniacs. But for all of Kingsley’s dexterous light-and-dark range, it’s still rare to see him take on a character as painfully mild as Milton, the small-town codger he plays in “Jules.” Milton, who is 78, lives by himself in a handsome dark-shingled house in Boonton, Penn.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Wes Anderson’s dazzling desert Americana “Asteroid City” will be available to stream on Peacock starting Aug. 11.

Back To The Future: The Musical made me very nostalgic for that great time-traveling ’80s movie, but Peggy Sue Got Married isn’t available on any of my streaming services.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The movie-mad phenomenon of “Barbenheimer” has been a thrilling reminder that audiences can still embrace the movie-theater experience, turning up in awesome droves when they’re offered something new and adventurous. It’s also been powerful evidence that films that aren’t formulaic sequels can succeed in a way that too many recent cookie-cutter franchise films have not. But will all that go down as a lesson for the future? Or a giant anomaly? We probably shouldn‘t kid ourselves.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac set social media on fire in 2021 due to their electric chemistry on the Venice Film Festival red carpet for HBO’s “Scenes From a Marriage.” The devastating limited series, based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 miniseries of the same name, cast the two actors as a married couple going through a grueling divorce. Chastain told Vanity Fair her and Isaac’s longtime friendship hasn’t been the same since. “‘Scenes From a Marriage’ was very tough,” Chastain said.

Lizzo has shared footage of her performing The Lord Of The Rings theme in Hobbiton in New Zealand.The singer took to Instagram to post a series of photos of her dressed as the character Legolas along with a short video clip of her playing the theme for ‘Concerning Hobbits’. You can view footage below.“Lizzolas in her natural habitat,” Lizzo wrote alongside the video on Instagram.The clip even prompted a response from Katy Perry, who tagged her husband Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas in the Peter Jackson movies, and wrote that Lizzo is “comin fer yer jerb.”A post shared by Lizzo (@lizzobeeating)The Hobbiton set she was visiting is based in the town of Matamata, which was created for Jackson’s franchise and has been accessible to tourists to visit as part of a walking tour since 2002.Lizzo is in New Zealand as part of her current tour promoting her recent album ‘Special’, which hit Auckland’s Spark Arena earlier this week.Meanwhile, earlier this year, it was confirmed The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power season two would go ahead amid the ongoing writers’ strike.Despite executive producers J.D.

Oscar De La Hoya is laying it all out on the line and opening up about his story, the glories and failures. Directed by Fernando Villena and produced by Mark Wahlberg,  aims to tell the meteoric rise of an East Los Angeles hero who got thrust into the spotlight after bringing home the gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.De La Hoya would go on to struggle with fame and fortune, all of which is magically captured in this two-part documentary.  «peels back the layers of this celebrated yet complicated figure, exploring his triumphs and turmoil to reveal a man struggling to come to terms with lifelong demons and the impossible burden of a nickname he couldn't live up to.»The doc features interviews with De La Hoya's family members, including father Joel De La Hoya Sr., sister Cecilia De La Hoya, brother Joel De La Hoya Jr., and children Atiana, Jacob and Devon. Former fiancee Shanna Moakler, childhood friend/business partner Eric Gomez, ex-trainer Jesus Rivero, boxing promoter Bob Arum, boxing legend Bernard Hopkins and former mistress Milana Dravnel also participate.Here are the 10 biggest bombshells revealed in the tell-all documentary.Oscar said for years and years that it was his mother, Cecilia Gonzalez De La Hoya's, dying wish that he go and win the 1992 Olympic gold medal in Barcelona.