‘The Boogeyman’ Review: Sophie Thatcher Shines in a Bleak Tale of Trauma and Terror

Jean-Hugues Anglade became an arthouse cinema star of the ’80s and ’90s behind the potent one-two punch of international hits Betty Blue and La Femme Nikita. Playing men who loved hard and recklessly, the actor embodied onscreen a raw, alluring passion that he then upended, to powerful effect, portraying mad King Charles IX in writer-director Patrice Chéreau’s 1994 period epic Queen Margot.But a decade earlier, Anglade made his big-screen breakthrough embodying another raw, reckless lover in Chéreau’s gritty, gay, mean streets drama L’homme blessé, or The Wounded Man (★★★☆☆), earning a Most Promising Newcomer César Award nomination for his intense performance as Henri, a young man who comes of age cruising his local train station.The film — which premiered at Cannes in 1983, and had an extremely limited stateside release in 1985 — actually did win the César for its script, by Chéreau and author-activist Hervé Guibert, inspired by the street-savvy works of Jean Genet.Viewing the film now, as it arrives finally on digital home video via a brilliant, new 4K restoration courtesy of Altered Innocence and Studiocanal, other muses also spring to mind, from the slinky sailors of Rainer Fassbinder’s Querelle, released a year prior, to the pugnacious gay hustler of Wallace Potts’ sublimely sexy 1979 French erotica Le Beau Mec.Somewhere between Le Beau Mec and William Friedkin’s Cruising, we might meet Henri, looking like a sweaty, unstable young Al Pacino, as he prowls his economically depressed, French provincial town.

Emily Longeretta Don’t put Sydney Sweeney in a box — and don’t judge her by her cover. The former is a lesson she’s taught casting directors in Hollywood, the latter is what she learned from her latest role as ex-intelligence specialist Reality Winner. In 2017, Winner was arrested by FBI officers who showed up at her home to investigate her part in the mishandling of classified information. Sweeney portrays the whistleblower in HBO’s new film; the movie’s dialogue is taken directly from the transcript of Winner’s tense conversation with the FBI on the day of her arrest. “Once I met with Reality and I got to know her, she really truly speaks her mind,” Sweeney says of playing Winner. “So everything she was saying in the transcript, she was feeling and thinking. I was able to just find all the different layers underneath it. I truly enjoyed it.”

Chinese author Yu Hua is no stranger to Cannes. The famed postmodernist writer’s work first graced the silver screens of the Palais back in 1994 with director Zhang Yimou’s masterclass adaptation of his seminal novel, “To Live.” A searing portrait of a single family’s struggle through China’s mid-century upheaval and the Cultural Revolution, “To Live” would go on to win the festival’s coveted Grand Prix award, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and the Best Actor Award.

Sophie Thatcher “had a lot of different fears” growing up.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Tommy Joe Ballantyne (Dave Turner), the central character in Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak,” is a middle-aged landlord and proprietor of a pub that sits near the bottom of a sloped street of working-class row houses. We’re in an unnamed village in the northeast of England, and the pub, called the Old Oak, has seen better days. So has Tommy, who’s known as TJ. Dave Turner, the very good actor who plays him, resembles a bone-weary cross between John C. Reilly and Michael Moore. There’s a sweet-souled directness to his sad prole stare, and he treats his customers, some of whom he has known since they were in grade school together, with quiet affection and respect. But the pub is falling apart, and the property values in the neighborhood have plunged. TJ is barely scraping by serving pints of bitters.

The second-season finale of “Yellowjackets” has arrived, and star Sophie Thatcher advises fans to buckle up.

What could well be Ken Loach’s final film has as much fire and fury as his debut Poor Cow did in 1967, if we discount his pioneering TV work in the run-up. The visual style hasn’t changed a great deal in the years since, but that’s because the British movie veteran, soon to turn 87, isn’t much fussed about surfaces, it’s the inner lives of his characters that he wants to capture. In that respect, The Old Oak would make a fitting swansong, capping the recent North-East trilogy with a vital film that is clearly the work of the team behind previous Cannes Competition hits I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer HBO’s buzzy new original series “The Idol” has been steadily building momentum on the road to its June 4 debut — including a lavish world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by one of the most talked-about afterparties on the Croisette. The show follows an embattled young pop star named Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), recovering from a psychotic break after the death of her mother and hounded relentlessly by industry vultures that need her back on top. A sketchy Svengali named Tedros (Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye) appears in her life, promising artistic and sexual liberation and fame beyond her wildest dreams. “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson steers the show with co-creators Tesfaye and Reza Fahim.

EXCLUSIVE: Sophie Holland has been among the UK’s busier casting directors in recent years. The London-based professional has worked on shows including The Witcher, Wednesday, You and The Continental, as well as upcoming movies such as Heads Of State with Priyanka Chopra and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice sequel. Set up seven years ago, her company Sophie Holland Casting now has a headcount of five.

Emily Longeretta SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Storytelling,” the Season 2 finale of “Yellowjackets,” now streaming on Showtime. The second season of “Yellowjackets” has come to a dark and twisted end. In the 1996 timeline, teen Lottie (Courtney Eaton) handed over the role of leader of the wilderness to Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), as all the young girls bowed to her, confirming she was, in fact, the Antler Queen. However, the celebration was cut short as a fire sparked in the middle of the night. While everyone escaped, the group was left standing outside in the snow, watching flames encapsulate their home. In the present timeline, the group once again drew cards to see who the wilderness wanted — an idea suggested by Lottie (Simone Kessell). Before they performed this old ritual, Natalie (Juliette Lewis) warned the rest of the residents to leave, including Lisa (Nicole Maines), to whom she had grown close throughout her time at Lottie’s retreat. After Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) drew the Queen and the group began hunting her, Shauna’s daughter Callie (Sarah Desjardins) showed up in the nick of time to save her mom.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Let’s travel back to the summer of 1989. I’m 15 years old and have just put two large movie posters on my wall: One for Tim Burton’s game-changing take on “Batman,” starring Michael Keaton, and the other for “UHF,” the theatrical comedy debut for the one and only “Weird Al” Yankovic. It’s now 2023. Keaton is back as Batman in next month’s “The Flash.” And Weird Al (always Weird Al, not just Al Yankovic!) is the front-runner for this year’s TV movie Emmy, thanks to the Roku Channel parody biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.” “1989 is back again! It’s all cyclical,” Yankovic says in his signature cheery, upbeat tone. Tell my 15-year-old self that one day he’ll be recording a podcast with Weird Al, and first he’d say, “what’s a podcast?” But after explaining that it’s essentially a radio show, my 15-year-old self would lose his mind. And ask about 2023’s flying cars. Sorry kid.

The Boogeyman” is a very common childhood nightmare. He’s the reason we checked under our beds at night and made our parents triple check the closet. In 1973, Stephen King wrote a short story called “The Boogeyman” about a man who visits a therapist and explains that a monster has killed all of his children, one by one.

Jessica Kiang Imagine the gleaming surfaces of Park Chan-wook’s terrific “Decision to Leave” stripped of romance, all scuzzed-up and grimy. Imagine drilling down through Diao Yinan’s Berlin-winning “Black Coal, Thin Ice” and finding unexpected seams of absurdist dark comedy. You are now somewhere in the seamy offbeat world of “Only the River Flows,” director Wei Shujun’s inventive riff on Asian-noir that gives the expanding subgenre something its Chinese contributions often lack: a pitch-black sense of humor.  Wei has been laying claim to the title of laid-back joker in China’s new-gen pack since debuting with affable slacker comedy “Striding into the Wind” in 2020 (a selection in 2020’s canceled Cannes festival) and following it up with autoreflexive filmmaking satire “Ripples of Life.” Now he brings his wry sensibilities to bear on this murdery mindbender, which he adapts, with a healthy disdain for boring stuff like “linear plotting” and “resolution,” alongside Kang Chunlei, from a short story by postmodernist author Yu Hua.

David Dastmalchian and Sophie Thatcher stepped out for the premiere of their new movie, The Boogeyman, held at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on Tuesday night (May 23).

Athletes with an aesthetic! NBA players know how to command attention on and off the court.

Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” — the highly anticipated and revamped musical starring Halle Bailey — is finally here to take us back under the sea. The music by Oscar-winner Alan Menken that made the first one a hit is also back, but these songs have been rewritten for the live version with help from Lin-Manuel Miranda.

At 80, Martin Scorsese has finally made a Western, and it packs a wallop. The much anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon had its world premiere on Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival, an epic set in the Osage Nation of Oklahoma largely in the early 1920s and telling a harrowing and highly complex tale that still resonates today, but seems incredible that it ever could have happened.

Cannes Film Festival on Friday, Glazer’s disquieting essay-film takes place almost entirely in and around the comfortable, middle-class home of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, tackling both the banality and quiet domesticity of evil with eerie formal rigor.Viewed from afar, Rodolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) live an idyllic and unexceptional life. They’re happily married, upwardly mobile strivers, with faith in their government and hope for the future.

It’s a measure of the state we’re in today that Thomas Cailley’s follow-up to his 2014 debut Love at First Fight could be described as a metaphor for just about anything you like. It takes the surreal premise of Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2015 Cannes hit The Lobster and, through a peculiar kind of cinematic alchemy, makes a surprisingly credible family drama out of it. Its overarching themes of love and tolerance go a long way, and it’s by no means a stretch to see a bunch of current hot-button topics — the world refugee crisis, climate change and trans rights to name but three — refracted through Cailley’s lens.

The use of body horror allegories in cinema to address the physical, physiological, and mental changes brought on by puberty could hardly be called original. However, by delightfully and intelligently remixing symbols and metaphors Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu refreshes the concept in her zesty debut feature “Tiger Stripes.”  The term “body horror” could in fact be considered a misnomer in this case, as our fierce lead protagonist Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) doesn’t undergo anything as monstrous as growing a car in her belly or a biogun out of her hand.