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My edited thoughts from Cannes: Lars von Trier‘s “The House That Jack Built” arrived at Cannes with a lot of heavy baggage, but, after watching it, I can safely say that it is a surprisingly scathing indictment of the director himself. The Danish filmmaker is trying to convey a damning feeling of his own art, telling us that he deserves to be guilt-driven into the deepest pits of hell, literally and figuratively....

What “The Last Dance” has, in abundance, is urgency, zeroing in on the communal aspect of sports, which is something many are desperately in need of right now. Centered around Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls’ pursuit of the 1997-98 NBA Championship, the docuseries is an editing feat of the highest-order, juggling multiple story threads together by examining Jordan’s legacy, the conflicts between teammates, specifically focusing on one important interconnected individual with each episode....

Hancock’s film tries to pretend it has more substance than it actually does, that it’s going somewhere we might not expect, and that it does do, to a certain extent. The finale does work, but by then it’s too little too late, the setup, the first 90 minutes or so, feels so familiarly dull and borrowed from far better films (“Seven” and “Zodiac”) that you can’t forgive any of the surprises that might seep in during the final quarter....

Following his last two mediocre efforts, director Joachim Trier tries to go back and complete the trilogy that started with his two strongest films (“Reprise” and “Oslo, August 31st”). Told in 12 Chapters, “The Worst Person in the World” is Trier’s return to millennial angst, but the fresh perspective which may have infused his earlier films has vanished here, time has caught up to such a story, at least in cinema, to the point where Noah Baumbach comparisons will inevitably be made....

Did we really need a sequel to 1986’s “Top Gun”? Of course not. The film captured the zeitgeist of an era that’s long, long gone and the idea of a succeeding film without original director, the late Tony Scott, feels a bit off. Regardless, Tom Cruise’s “Oblivion” director, Joseph Kosinski, was hired to direct “Top Gun: Maverick,” which has been penned by a whopping four screenwriters: Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible — Fallout) Peter Craig (12 Strong), Justin Marks (Counterpoint), and Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle)....

This is the third straight Pixar movie to skip theatres for a streaming debut. No coincidence, it’s happening as the toon company struggles to regain its relevance of past glories. The last very good movie Pixar released was 2017’s “Coco.” Ever since then? Five straight mediocre efforts. Do you really think that if “Turning Red” were a game changer, akin to “WALL-E,” “Up!” “Ratatouille and “Finding Nemo,” Pixar wouldn’t go out of their way to release it in theaters?...

2018’s “Black Panther” made around $700 million at the domestic box-office. A lot has changed since then. A 40% drop is still surprising though. Regardless, those projections seem to have been fairly accurate. ‘Wakanda Forever’ grossed an estimated $17.59M over the weekend (from 3,855 locations), around a 60% drop from last weekend. Its estimated total domestic gross currently stands at around $393M. The sequel, ‘Wakanda Forecer,’ for obvious reasons, did not have Michael B....

The film needs the momentum boost and is banking on a slew of Oscar nominations to kickstart its campaign leading to a possible Best Picture prize. It’s barely made $30 million at the domestic box-office on a budget of $100 million (not counting marketing costs). The 2022 Oscar nominations will be announced on February 8, 2022. Look for “West Side Story” to be available a few days after that. It badly needs to build up buzz amongst audiences, critical acclaim doesn’t seem to be enough to push it to Oscar gold....

These last few weeks, I’ve somehow managed to speak to half a dozen or so people who worked on “White Noise,” mostly due to their contacting me about the behind-the-scenes piece I had published. Best of all, here’s an in-the-know person telling me about a private “White Noise” screening that occurred earlier this month in Los Angeles: “White Noise” is an adaptation of DeLillo’s shocking, aggravating, brilliant, mysterious novel of the same name....

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Coming in just behind the clown prince of crime was Netflix’s “The Irishman” and Sony’s “Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood” as the Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino directed pictures scored 10 nods each, whilst recent Golden Globe winner “1917” rounded out the top four with nine nominations to its name. All the talk this morning, however, is the presence of all-white acting categories. Actors who have felt like ever-presents during this season were left in the cold Tuesday morning, including Cynthia Erivo (considered a lock before today) for “Harriet”, Eddie Murphy (“Dolemite is my Name”), Awkwafina for Lulu Wang’s superb “The Farewell”, Lupita Nyong’o for “Us” and Jennifer Lopez for “Hustlers”....

Of the still-unreleased films, “Bombshell” has Charlize Theron giving a ferocious performance as former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. She joins frontrunners Renee Zellweger (“Judy”) and Scarlett Johannson (“Marriage Story”) as part of the top 3 leading contenders in the Actress category. I hate to say this, but it has been a weak year for female acting. Whilst the Actor category is stacked with note-worthy performance, it’s a little harder to pinpoint the marquee acting feats in the female category....

So with all that in mind, and unless the three aforementioned movies turn out to exceed expectations, it seems like we have two major movies that will contend for the big prize this year: Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born” and Peter Farelly’s “Green Book.” Cooper’s film has become a box-office bonanza in both the movie and music charts. “A Star Is Born” has made close to $178M at the domestic box-office and it will easily surpass the $200M mark in the next few days....

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To begin with, Disney’s latest offering, the sequel to 2014’s “Maleficent,” scored $36M domestically, a figure below what Disney would have expected from the Angelina Jolie starring fantasy flick, especially considering its predecessor’s near $70M opening weekend haul five years ago. Despite meek reviews as well (48/100 on Metacritic) it did take a solid $117M overseas. But its overall $153M opening weekend shows signs the film will do well to get anywhere close to the $241M domestic of $758M worldwide gross of the first film....

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This year has been another missed opportunity with Thierry Fremaux having to pass up the chance to world premiere Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise,” and, most intriguingly of all, Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.” The latter is the Marilyn Monroe biopic that was stamped with an NC-17 rating a few months ago. The film comes with a lot of controversy, most of which involves Dominik fighting for final cut with Netflix. The filmmaker ultimately won the battle, despite Netflix hiring an editor to “tighten” the film....

Filmmakers such as Carax, Desplechin, Audiard, Ducournau, Verehoven, Sciamma and Dumont will be vying for award at the Cesars. This historic year for French cinema was culminated with two French films (“Titane” and “Happening”) winning the top prize at Cannes and Venice. Per Allocine, the French Rotten Tomatoes, are the critical rankings for the films vying to get a Best Picture nomination:Onoda: 4.4/5Gagarine: 4.2/5Happening 4.1/5Aline: 4.1/5Une histoire d’amor et desir: 4....

Even though the Star Wars trilogy made Ridley a household name due to her portrayal of heroine Rey, she claims that she was in a panic because “nothing was coming through.” Adding, “I was like, ‘Aww! No one wants to employ me.’” However, things began to, somewhat, pick up in recent months for the actress, as she landed a voice role in the Xbox and PC game “Twelve Minutes.” Yay?...

In a new interview with the DragCast podcast (via Comicbook.com), Ridley tackles ‘The Rise of Skywalker,’ the final film of the Disney trilogy, which was met with a major shrug by critics and audiences alike. However, although Ridley does believe that most fans appear to like the final film (I digress), she admits not understanding why a vocal contingent ended up acting all nasty towards the film: In my review of “The Rise of Skywalker” I wrote: She continued, “I watched the documentary, the making-of, this week, and it’s so filled with love; and I think it’s that tricky thing of when you’re part of something that is so filled with love and then people…You know, everyone’s entitled to not like something but it feels like it’s changed slightly....