Keanu Reeves’ master assassin may have been left for almost dead at the end of the fourth John Wick film, but things are still alive and kicking in the franchise, at least retroactively.
02.09.2023 - 20:23 / variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic As any critic will tell you, when you’re watching a comedy with an audience, it doesn’t matter how bad the movie is — even the jokes that are making you groan are going to provoke laughter. (That’s why comedies are always screened in advance; the studios want the audience giggles to rub off on you.) But at the Venice Film Festival, when I saw “The Palace,” Roman Polanski’s garish debacle of an ensemble comedy, I was sitting in the Sala Darsena, which seats 1400 (and was full), and on the rare occasion when a line in the movie got laughs, it was literally coming from about six people.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a giant theater this deadly silent for a movie that’s working this strenuously to amuse you. Polanski, if you look back over his credits, has an astoundingly consistent track record when it comes to comedy and satire.
He’s godawful at it. I first discovered this in college when I saw Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers” (which at the time was called “The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck,” a title that sounds like it was written by Henny Youngman).
That 1967 horror comedy was wooden enough to feel like it lasted three hours. Other laughless riots by Polanski include “Pirates” (1986), an unwatchable farce starring Walter Matthau in a piece of peg-legged acting that would have been chased off “Saturday Night Live,” and “What?,” his X-rated (and execrable) 1972 ingenue-in-a-decadent-villa movie starring Sydne Rome (who shows up in “The Palace” as one of several plastic-surgery victims).
It’s not that Polanski is entirely without a funny bone. A handful of his greatest films, notably “Rosemary’s Baby,” have a mordant touch of suspenseful
.Keanu Reeves’ master assassin may have been left for almost dead at the end of the fourth John Wick film, but things are still alive and kicking in the franchise, at least retroactively.
McKinley Franklin editor Upon closing out their 23-date summer tour, Phish has revealed the dates for their 2023 New Year’s Eve run at Madison Square Garden. Kicking off on Dec. 28, the band will play four consecutive nights through New Year’s Eve on the 31st.
Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny decided to dress the part during their elegant dinner date in New York City. The celebrity couple are going strong in their romantic relationship, and this time they elevated their looks for a special occasion, entering 4 Charles Prime Rib restaurant, and showing off their monochromatic ensembles.BAD BUNNY OPENS UP ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH KENDALL JENNER: ‘I COULDN’T TALK TO HER BEFORE’KENDALL JENNER AND BAD BUNNY SPOTTED AT THEIR GO-TO NYC RESTAURANTThe Puerto Rican singer looked dapper in a black suit paired with leather boots, completing the look with black sunglasses, a blue Yankees baseball cap, and a scarf around his head to go incognito from the paparazzi.
When I was in college cinema courses I made a Super 8 film called Movie Girl. It was a Hollywood-set love letter to movies centered on a Musso & Franks waitress who put herself dreamily into the plots of classic films. It won an award there but was the highlight of the directing career I never had. However I have always been partial to filmmakers who put their own early film going experience and passion into their careers now. You may have heard of them. Kenneth Branagh won an Oscar for doing just that in Belfast. Steven Spielberg got several nominations last year for his very personal The Fabelmans . Woody Allen had his own charming take in The Purple Rose Of Cairo. Peter Bogdanovich made a lasting impression with 1971’s The Last Picture Show, as did Giuseppe Tornatore with his Oscar winner, Cinema Paradiso. It is a combination of the latter two especially that might describe the feel of the latest movie about the love of movies, The Movie Teller (La Contadora de Peliculas) which had its World Premiere tonight at the Toronto Film Festival. And just in sheer numbers of classic film clips incorporated into its near two hour running time, this one sets a record in the little sub-genre. For movie lovers everywhere The Movie Teller is a must see.
The Weeknd is still going strong with girlfriend Simi Khadra after more than a year and a half together!
Sufjan Stevens has shared a new single called ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’ – listen to it below.The song will appear on the Detroit singer-songwriter’s 10th studio album ‘Javelin’, which is due for release on October 6 via Asthmatic Kitty Records (pre-order/pre-save here).“Will anybody ever love me?/ For good reasons/ Without grievance, not for sport/ Will anybody ever love me?/ In every season/ Pledge allegiance to my heart/ Pledge allegiance to my burning heart,” Stevens ponders in the chorus.After additional instrumentation is brought in, the musician pleads for forgiveness and gently sings of the “heartache and misery” he’s caused in the past. “Take my suffering as I take my vow/ Wash me now, anoint me/ With that golden blade,” he adds.Stevens – who self-produced ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’, and played every instrument on the single – is accompanied by guest backing vocalists Adrienne Maree Brown, Hannah Cohen and Megan Lui.“The first time I sang the song I started crying, I was so moved by the honesty of the questions,” Brown said in a statement.Cohen added: “Sufjan is an impossibly brave and gifted writer.
Numerous clips have been shared online regarding how self-importantly Aaron Sorkin and company took themselves while they were making “The Newsroom,” a show that practically announced itself as the last stand for human rights and journalistic decency in the world. Holding that impossible standard high in its third season is Apple TV+’s expensive hit “The Morning Show,” a program that makes it feel like if morning news in America falls, then the apocalypse is just around the corner.
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Jazz and animation make for strong bedfellows in “They Shot the Piano Player,” a film from Spanish directors Fernando Treuba and Javier Mariscal that represents an intriguing hybrid in all sorts of ways. It’s a love letter to the bossa nova movement that peaked in the 1960s, while at the same time it’s a sobering procedural that looks into the state murder of a musician that occurred as fascistic regimes rose to power in Latin America in the ’70s.
It looks like Zach Wilson might be playing a lot more this season than he originally thought he would following Aaron Rodgers‘ ankle injury in his New York Jets debut.
Jessica Liese If the first “Walking Dead” spinoff following the finale of the flagship series, “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” seemed to mark the beginning of a new era for the franchise, the second certainly feels like a continuation — tonally, if not chronologically. “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” which premieres on AMC on Sept. 10, builds on the tentative good will established by “Dead City,” even arguably improving on some of its strengths.
Dennis Harvey Film Critic Now on its ninth feature entry in just a decade, the “Conjuring” franchise has proved something of a powerhouse in the continued growth of horror as one of the most reliably popular (not to mention cost-effective) mainstream film genres. Their mythologies may be garbled and silly, the scares mostly “jump” ones, yet these movies provide a kind of creepy comfort food — familiarly formulaic jolts unlikely to trouble any non-child viewer’s sleep later on — whose satisfactions are amplified by the good actors and superior atmospherics deployed.
Numerous clips have been shared online regarding how self-importantly Aaron Sorkin and company took themselves while they were making “The Newsroom,” a show that practically announced itself as the last stand for human rights and journalistic decency in the world. Holding that impossible standard high in its third season is Apple TV+’s expensive hit “The Morning Show,” a program that makes it feel like if morning news in America falls, then the apocalypse is just around the corner.
With 12 reviews so far, Roman Polanski’s latest film, “The Palace,” currently sits at a horrendous 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Polanski hasn’t really had a hit film in a very long time and has also been at the center of controversy for decades, but a 0% is still really rough, with some reviews calling it the worst movie of the year.
It was 22 years ago that Skip Hollandsworth wrote a Texas Monthly article about Gary Johnson, a school teacher who moonlights as a hit man who doesn’t kill people. Now if that doesn’t sound like the formula for a hit movie, you may understand why it has taken so long for Gary’s story to make it to the silver screen, so long in fact that its subject passed away before he could hit the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival where the film is having its World Premiere tonight. Nevertheless Glen Powell never forgot the story and has teamed with Richard Linklater to finally tell it, but it is only “loosely” based on the article. Certain details in the screenplay co-written by Linklater and Powell are made up, and those are the details that actually help make this a hilarious winner, as well as perhaps Linklater’s most commercial movie since School Of Rock. Its quirky true crime element also has a bit in common with Linklater’s Bernie which starred Jack Black. The director seems drawn to this kind of offbeat tale, with some level of truth to it.
McKinley Franklin editor More than a decade after its 2007 debut, Will Smith’s post-apocalyptic horror “I Am Legend” is receiving a sequel. After signing a multi-year deal with Warner Bros, “I Am Legend” writer Avika Goldsman confirmed that “I Am Legend 2” is in the works. The original film grossed $585 million worldwide, serving as an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name.
Martin Fowler and Eve Unwin are about to find out the truth about Theo Hawthorne, EastEnders spoilers have revealed. Over recent months, viewers have watched as Theo has been stalking Stacey Slater, but she is completely unaware despite suspicions being raised by Martin. He is Stacey's mysterious online client, but recently, he has stepped up his behaviour by destroying her bedroom after working his way into the Slater household by tutoring pregnant Lily.
EXCLUSIVE: Venice Film Festival chief Alberto Barbera is appreciated by many in the film and media industries not only for having cemented Venice as a must-attend blue-ribbon festival, but also for his candour.
It’s hard to believe that it’s now over 60 years since Roman Polanski teamed up with Jerzy Skolimowski for the landmark 1962 Polish thriller Knife in the Water. But it’s even harder to believe that these two giants of international cinema reunited more recently to pool their braincells and come up with the most terrible, joyless farce since the heyday of the ’70s British sex comedy. Forget for a moment, if you can, the furor surrounding Polanski’s controversial status as a fugitive from justice and concentrate instead on the fact that the Venice Film Festival, in its infinite wisdom, went ahead and booked this entirely dreadful offering anyway, deeming it somehow worthy of a prestigious Out of Competition slot.
Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote of the film, “When I saw ‘The Palace,’ Roman Polanski’s garish debacle of an ensemble comedy, I was sitting in the Sala Darsena, which seats 1400 (and was full), and on the rare occasion when a line in the movie got laughs, it was literally coming from about six people. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a giant theater this deadly silent for a movie that’s working this strenuously to amuse you.” Polanski has a history at Venice, having premiered his film “Carnage,” starring Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster, at the festival in 2011, as well as 2019’s “An Officer and a Spy.” His return to the festival this year has been cause for controversy, as he has faced several sexual assault allegations over the course of his career.
Roman Polanski’s Venice Film Festival feature The Palace received a 3 minute ovation tonight at its world premiere screening.