‘The Blue Angels’ Review: Dazzling Imax Documentary Showcases Top Guns, but No Mavericks

Tires had a promising debut weekend on Netflix.

Blue Sun Palace was one of the prize winners at the recently concluded Cannes Film Festival where it took the French Touch award of the Cannes Critics week selections (Simon Of The Mountains took the Grand Prize, the other major award from the section). French “Touch” is an ironic name for an award to a film where “touch” is key in several scenes depicted in the massage parlor setting where much of the movie takes place.

Jessica Kiang It’s not only because of its similar time frame that Boris Lojkine‘s hurtling, headlong social-issues drama “The Story of Souleymane” recalls “Two Days, One Night” by the Dardenne brothers. Lojkine’s film, which was awarded the jury prize and a well-deserved best actor award in the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes, is similarly invested in its electrifying lead — non-professional Abou Sangare, making an unforgettably persuasive and poignant debut — and similarly effective in maintaining a level of urgency and high-stakes personal peril that few genre thrillers can muster.

Bethpage Air Show at Jones Beach is celebrating its 20th anniversary with none other than the Navy’s elite flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels. It’s been a big week for the Blues — not only are they returning to New York’s airspace, but they’re making headlines in a big way thanks to a new Prime Video documentary that followed the squad during the 2022 season.“The Blue Angels,” which hit Amazon’s streaming service on May 23 after a weeklong run in IMAX theaters, is a passion project of actor Glen Powell, who produced the doc alongside J.J.

Todd Gilchrist editor Gaylen Ross has only a handful of acting credits to her name, but the first of them remains significant enough even today for her to be permanently canonized in horror film history: “Dawn of the Dead.” Playing television producer Fran Parker for writer-director George A. Romero, Ross joins what’s otherwise a boys’ club cast to combat zombies (and post-apocalyptic boredom) in an abandoned shopping mall, in the process adding to the genre’s then-nascent collection of heroines who are forced to summon strength and resourcefulness in the face of unimaginable — and deadly — circumstances.

Alissa Simon Film Critic The intimate and naturalistic Mandarin-language drama “Blue Sun Palace” has nabbed the French Touch prize from the Cannes Critics’ Week jury, putting Chinese-American writer-director Constance Tsang on the map as a talent to watch after her feature debut. Certain to see future festival action, the drama about three working-class Chinese immigrants in Flushing, NY, the film succeeds with touching performances from Ke-Xi Wu (“Nina Wu”), Lee Kang Sheng (Tsai Ming Liang’s iconic actor) and Haixpeng Xu (“Where Echoes Never End”) that could tempt distributors in the coming months.

Todd Gilchrist editor Arriving on the heels of “The Greatest Love Story Never Told” — a true milestone of superstar transparency where Jennifer Lopez expressed a clear-eyed view of her current career status — “Atlas” feels like an underwhelming return to the kind of projects that have maintained Lopez’ place in the Hollywood firmament, but not the ones that catapulted her there in the first place. One of her few science fiction-themed films, its novelty alone should make it stand out, especially with Brad Peyton, a reliable purveyor of large-scale spectacle (“San Andreas,” “Rampage”) in the director’s chair.

Married At First Sight Australia star Eden Harper has opened up on her split with Jayden Eynaud as she said it came "out of the blue". It seemed like the pair's romance was set in the stars on the latest episode of the show, as they made it to the final vows where they chose to stay together. However, last month, they revealed that the had made the decision to part ways, with Eden recently admitting that the breakup came as a surprise to her.

With the weather now on the turn, many of us are jetting off on holiday, or spending more time in the park and our gardens. But with the outdoors, comes the dreaded risk of being bitten to an inch of your life by insects like midges and mosquitoes.

Paolo Sorrentino has done a wide range of films but until his most personal, The Hand Of God two years ago (a prize winner in Venice) he had not returned to Naples, the land of his youth except for the very first feature he made, 2001’s One Man Up. Since then though he has been to Cannes with his films 6 times, and his impressive list of movies have included The Consequences Of Love, Il Divo, Loro, and his Oscar winning The Great Beauty. There have been more mixed reactions for his starry English language films as well like Youth and This Must Be The Place, but Italy seems to drive his creative mojo and may be closest to his heart is the current phase of his filmmaking career when he has found new inspiration by going back to his youth, first in The Hand Of God which closely reflected his own coming of age in Naples, and now his latest, Parthenope which reflects the youth he wished he had experienced. Instead he moved away to a whole new career in film (that was indicated at the end of Hand Of God). It had its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival Tuesday night.

Maryam Touzani, whose latest movie “The Blue Caftan” won a flurry of awards and was shortlisted in the Oscar’s international feature race, is set to make her Spanish-language debut with “Calle Malaga.” Jean-Christophe Simon‘s Films Boutique will handle International sales on the project. “Calle Malaga” reteams Touzani and Films Boutique for the third time, having previously collaborated on arthouse hits “Adam” and “The Blue Caftan.” A character-driven film written by Touzani, “Calle Malaga” revolves around Maria Angeles, a 74-year old woman who belongs to the Spanish community of Tangier and enjoys the quietness of her life in the colorful Moroccan costal town.

MGM/Imax’s The Blue Angels lands a hefty $1.3 million on just 255 domestic Imax screens from limited showtimes in the large format exhibitor’s exclusive theatrical engagement. The Paul Crowder film, with Glen Powell and Bad Robot as producers, follows the Navy’s famed demonstration flying squadron. It also “ushers in a new era for IMAX Documentaries, or Docu-busters,” the company said. It’s no. 9 at the domestic box office

There have been countless books written about the immortal star, Elizabeth Taylor, even some credited to her as both memoir or autobiography including 1989’s “Elizabeth On Elizabeth”. But a book released on January 1, 1965 probably comes closest to a pure autobiography, and looking at the cover it simply says “Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor”. It is a by the numbers account of her life through her own words up until that point, but the fact is it was actually written by Richard Meryman, a journalist credited with among other things the last interview with Marilyn Monroe (published two days before her August 4, 1962 death). Meryman got Taylor to sit for some taped recorded sessions in 1964 out which he would be able to write the book as if Taylor did it herself. Now exactly 60 years later those presumed “lost” tape recordings have been found and cleared for release by Taylor’s and Meryman’s estates. They have been in fact in Meryman’s wife’s possession all these years, but now filmmaker Nanette Burstein (Hillary, The Kid Stays In The Picture) has rediscovered a treasure trove of about 40 hours of interview in order to produce the new HBO Documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes“.

The landscape of horror cinema is strewn with sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes—many of which fail to capture the essence of their predecessors. My philosophy is, If a film is to be rebooted, remade, or re-purposed, it must find a way to distinguish itself and justify its existence. Lionsgate‘s The Strangers: Chapter 1, directed by Renny Harlin and written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, does neither. This latest installment is a lackluster attempt to revive a franchise that should have remained in its original, standalone glory. With wooden performances from Madelaine Petsch and Ryan Bown, this film only serves to remind us of what was once innovative in The Strangers (2008), is now rendered commercial, and lifeless.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Glen Powell, Bad Robot and Imax have released a theatrical trailer in support of The Blue Angels Foundation, a non-profit created by former Blue Angels pilots that funds critical services for wounded veterans and their families. The trailer will run nationwide in anticipation of the Imax original documentary “The Blue Angels,” which starts its Imax exclusive run May 17. Opening with an introduction from Powell, the trailer goes inside the Warrior Foundation Freedom Station 1 in San Diego, Calif., a housing and support facility for those receiving care from The Blue Angels Foundation.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent German actors Elisa Schlott (“Das Boot” TV series), Max Riemelt (“Sleeping Dog”) and Alma Hasun (“Corsage”) are set to star in Italian director Silvio Soldini‘s drama “The Tasters,” which reconstructs the untold true story of the women conscripted to be Adolf Hitler’s food tasters. Shooting is set to start on Friday in Italy’s northern Alto Adige region on the Nazi-era drama, which is being pre-sold at the Cannes Marché du Film by Rome-based Vision Distribution, headed by sales agent Catia Rossi.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The first thing to say about “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is that it’s not like any other “Mad Max” film. The movie, which runs 2 hours and 28 minutes, is teemingly, sprawlingly, phantasmagorically ambitious. Where “Mad Max: Fury Road” was set over three days, “Furiosa” takes place over 15 years and tells the origin story of Imperator Furiosa in five chapters (which come with titles like “The Pole of Inaccessibility”).

Cannes is not lacking for glamor this year, even in the documentary lineup.

Michael Showalter’s The Idea of You, starring Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway, is on track to command Amazon MGM Studios‘ biggest ever debut for a rom-com with nearly 50 million viewers globally in its first two weeks on Prime Video.

The Boys has received an early season five renewal at Prime Video, ahead of the show’s season four debut next month!