‘The Good Half’ Review: Nick Jonas Is The Only Surprise In A Formulaic Indie – Tribeca Film Festival

The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” have generated massive business, the kind that would have been impressive in pre-COVID times. And movies like “Cocaine Bear,” “Scream VI” and “Evil Dead Rise” have been solid mid-budget hits, selling tickets in the spring and winter months when cinemas are hustling to keep seats filled. Overall, the domestic box office stands at $4.35 billion, a 20.7% improvement over where ticket sales clocked in at the same point in the pandemic-blighted 2022, according to Comscore. So things are getting better, and there are several promising films on the horizon such as “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” and “Barbie” that could prove to be big summer hits.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Mother of all Lies, a docu-drama film that probes the secrets of Morocco’s 1981 Bread Riots, was Sunday named the best picture at the Sydney Film Festival. The jury, headed by Anurag Kashyap, called the Asmae El Moudir-directed film “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous.” It presented the A$60,000 ($41,100) cash prize film ahead at the State Theatre ahead of the Australian premiere screening of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” The film, which uses doll-like figurines, recently premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, where it earned the section’s best director prize. “Juxtaposing evidence from barely existent public materials with private family memory, this film reconstructs the history of the state, the family and the individual, in three distinct levels,” said the jury of Kashyap, actor Mia Wasikowska (Australia), film curator and journalist Dorothee Wenner (Germany), writer and director Larissa Behrendt (Australia) and filmmaker Visakesa Chandrasekaram (Australia – Sri Lanka).

Angelique Jackson “Cinnamon” and “A Song From the Dark” were two of the big winners at the “Best of the ABFF Awards” presented Saturday during the American Black Film Festival. Following its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, “Cinnamon” continued its festival run at ABFF in Miami Beach, Fl., where it was awarded the prize for best narrative feature and best director for writer-director Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr. The Tubi original film stars Hailey Kilgore, Damon Wayans, Pam Grier, David Iacono and Jeremie Harris. Kilgore plays Jodi, a struggling small-town gas station attendant with “killer pipes and big dreams,” who falls hopelessly in love with a hustler (Iacono) and falls foul of a local crime lord (Grier) and her murderous family. The noir thriller serves as the inaugural project filmed under Village Roadshow Pictures’ Black Noir Cinema banner, co-founded by NBA all-star Kevin Garnett. Veteran producer Oz Scott oversees the content slate, which also includes “Murder City,” a film starring Mike Colter, Antonio Fargas and Stephanie Sigman that made its world premiere at ABFF.

U.S. NARRATIVE COMPETITIONBest Performance in a U.S. Narrative Feature: Ji-Young Yoo for “Smoking Tigers,” (United States) – World Premiere.

On paper, there’s a lot to like about “Bad Things.” The premise is intriguing and creepy. The cast is full of quality actors.

Kids – er, teens – say the darnedest things. During a weekend excursion back to visit his family, the newly separated Nicky (Luke Evans) gets a bit of tough love from his nephew.

There was no mention of artificial intelligence Thursday at Tribeca Festival’s Paul McCartney talk with Conan O’Brien.

Gabrielle Union steps out in a studded mini dress from Prada for the premiere of her new movie, The Perfect Find!

It’s been a busy week for Ariana DeBose!

Some names, once viewed on a marquee or YouTube ad, tend to draw a specific audience ranging from real fans to, “Oh yes, that guy.“ I could put the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, into both of these categories, with a lengthy filmography largely encompassing projects their company Duplass Brothers Productions has spearheaded, such as 2010’s “Cyrus” and “Jeff, Who Lives at Home”; Mark, in particular, has emerged as the higher profile of the two, consistently delivering as an actor in diverse roles ranging from horror (“Creep”) to TV comedy (“The League”) offbeat humor (“Greenberg,” “Safety Not Guaranteed,” “Tully”) and more. “The Long Long Night,” another Mark Duplass vehicle, would likely fall into the latter category; originating from show creator/co-star Barret O’Brien, the six-episode series depicts the falling out between two former best friends, Pete (Duplass) and Carroll (O’Brien) and the night that kicked it off, told through black and white footage of said night in question as well as video messages the two send each other months later as they attempt to repair the damage done. Continue reading ‘The Long Long Night’: Simplicity & Complexity Somehow Propel The Unique Duplass Bros.

Amber Heard’s next movie is on the way.

Each other’s biggest fans. Ben Stiller supported his wife, Christine Taylor, alongside their daughter, Ella, 21, at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.

Hollywood’s biggest names never miss an opportunity to dazzle Us with their fierce fashion sense. Tracee Ellis Ross, Claire Danes, Brittany Snow and more stars turned heads on the red carpet at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. 

It was a Stiller family affair.

In the proliferation of subgenres, the media noir is perhaps the rarest. From the ’50s alone, Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps, and Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success spring to mind. Just lately, with the exception of Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler (2014), there hasn’t been too much evidence of a renaissance, but Roxine Hellberg’s satisfying feature debut taps back into the same dark wells of oral ambivalence corruption and power, casting the excellent Bel Powley as a journalism student who will do whatever it takes to make it in the cut-throat world of TV news broadcasting.

Though it doesn’t exactly have the same warm, melancholic charm, Alice Troughton’s elegant literary thriller The Lesson could give star Richard E. Grant the kind of late-career bump that last year’s Living afforded Bill Nighy. An Oscar nom might be a little fanciful at this stage, but a Bafta shot is a no-brainer, with Grant on top form as a mercurial, narcissistic British author. Co-star Julie Delpy might also find new offers coming in, showing a stiletto-sharp new side to herself as his enigmatic wife.

There have been plenty of movies detailing life in a fraternity – Animal House being the crown jewel of all, no matter how outrageously funny. The newest entry in the genre, The Line which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend, is not trying to amuse on any level , a deadly serious take on college frat houses that looks like it was ripped straight from the many headlines about hazing deaths and horrific goings-on at these places.

For his sophomore feature, the follow-up to 2004’s little-seen indie House of D, David Duchovny serves up a similarly niche confection, a sometimes-zany black comedy based on his 2016 novel of the same name. The elevator pitch is a tough one; though it’s funny in places, the tone is all over the place, one minute aspiring for the arch, stoner laughs of PTA’s Inherent Vice, the next veering into straightforward sentiment with a rambling final section that hits a similar highway to the 2006 Sundance hit Little Miss Sunshine. There’s also the f-word: the looming curse of American baseball movies that don’t have the word Field in the title, which could hamper its commercial prospects in the wider world.

Premiering Saturday night in the Tribeca Film Festival’s Spotlight Narrative category, Eric Larue is an intense and devastating account of the after effects of a school shooting, but the focus is almost entirely on the parents of that boy who shot and killed three male classmates and is now in prison. Adapted by Brett Neveu from his own 2002 stage play, it has taken on new weight in the two decades since it was first presented at Chicago’s Red Orchid Theatre in light of the seemingly endless numbers of school shootings and the fact that the number one cause for deaths of young people is now by gun. But for his feature film directorial debut actor Michael Shannon was most interested in looking at the effects of this traumatic life-changing incident from the point of view of the parents, those of the kids killed, and particularly the pair of the young teen who murdered them.

“How do people do this?” asks well-to-do New York book publisher Nicky (Luke Evans) in a state of exasperation. Nicky is in the thick of a bitter custody battle for his eight-year-old son Owen (Christopher Woodley), after Gabriel (Billy Porter), his partner of 13 years, has decided to call time on their relationship. It’s a well-worn premise in mainstream cinema — essayed most recently by Noah Baumbach’s acerbic Marriage Story, and still portrayed most famously in Robert Benton’s 1979 weepie Kramer vs. Kramer — but gay cinema has been slow to tackle the issue. With his second movie, the follow-up to the 2018 sci-fi Jonathan, Bill Oliver corrects that oversight with a beautifully judged human drama that dissects a dying marriage with humor and intelligence, drawing out an especially open and moving performance from Porter.