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“The Curse of La Llorona,” which is yet another horror spin-off from the ‘Conjuring’ series, err, conjured-up an excellent $26.5 million this weekend; The film just cost $9 million to make. The six films in the series have grossed $1.569 billion worldwide, the cost of all six movies combined is just over $100 million (Thanks Rodrigo over at The Playlist for this nifty stat). The Curse of La Llorona — $26,505,000 2....

“Moonlight” is a technically better and more artfully impressive movie that “Green Book”. However, I just think the final 20, or so, minutes of it are incredibly pretentious. The first two stories were perfect in every way, shape and form – there was none of the preachy and didactic nature of the last third. Brett Easton Ellis on “Green Book”": “What’s a movie I really liked that critics missed? It’s gonna be controversial but Green Book is one of those movies....

Cannes is, after all, the marquee cinematic event of the year (no offense, Oscars and Venice). Spitballing the lineup is an absolute blast for us. I get intel thrown at me and then try to piece together the final competition lineup. Of course, we are still 7 full months away from Cannes even occuring, but we already have assembled an impressive amount of possible titles. Most of these 23 films are either in production, post-production or completed....

Annette (Leos Carax)Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)Three Floors (Nanni Moretti)Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Love)Flag Day (Sean Penn)A Hero (Asghar Farhadi)Stillwater (Tom McCarthy)Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)Baglilik Hasan (Semih Kaplanoglu)Petrov’s Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov)Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid)The Restless (Joachim Lafosse)The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)Nobody’s Hero (Alain Guiraudie)In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)De Son Vivant (Emmanuelle Bercot)The Worst Person In The World (Joachim Trier)For Better Or For Worse (Stephane Brize) Notice, the absence of Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth....

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He doesn’t necessarily say July is a set date. He mentions that they had three dates set for a possible Cannes (May, July or Fall), May is clearly not happening and now we’re onto July which he is confident could happen due to vaccinations and cases getting better. He says Cannes will be the first major world event to go back to some kind of normal. It will be a festive event with people dining and having fun....

This year is turning out to be as unpredictable as the last, but if the Sep/Oct intel is true, such a move would disrupt the status quo. A number of producers and sales agents have already said they prefer the festival not be delayed any later than July, a Cannes Film Festival taking place in September or October would mean a potential battle against Venice and TIFF (both taking place in September)....

The always-reliable Anne Thompson has a nice tidbit of insider info in her 05.11.20 IndieWire piece titled “Waiting for ‘Tenet’: As July 17 Looms, Hollywood Prays That Summer Can Be Saved” and it does look as though that July date for “Tenet” will not stick and be pushed back a full month. “Nolan (who wrote a defense of movie theaters March 20) and Warners are heroes to the beleaguered exhibition community, but speculation is rampant that the studio will push back the opening to August 14....

The film has no awards prospects lined up for it, especially after the cool reception it garnered at Cannes. Know what? It’s not the total trainwreck many would have you believe. The first half is quite solid, but it completely falls apart in the choppy second hour. Denis waited close to 34 years to get back into Cannes competition and it was for this film. I’ve seen every Denis since 1988’s “Chocolat,” and her Cannes comp entry is not worthy of her talents....

The legendary actor recently filmed “The Mule” in several parts of Atlanta and will be going back to that same city when production on “The Ballad Of Richard Jewell” commences in a few months. Kathy Bates, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm, and Sam Rockwell are all expected to star in the movie. Of course, the news comes as Georgia enacted a controversial heartbeat law which has had Hollywood up in arms and threatening to boycott Georgia’s booming film and television industry....

The last two Oscar telecasts were hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. However, the consistent downfall in viewership, with a record-low 26.5 million viewers tuning in for last March’s broadcast, meant something had to change. The fact of the matter is this: Awards shows have become a prehistoric thing of the past, and millennials don’t care for it, which is why the coveted 18-49 demographic has been atrocious for them these past few years....

Russell’s production have become too big. He needs to maybe return to the smaller-scaled filmmaking that made him who he is today. Regardless, we already knew critics had their knives out for the guy, so who knows. Early social media reactions last night for “Amsterdam”were not good either. I liked his last film, 2015’s “Joy,” despite the critical lashing, but these takes are worse than I ever imagined: David Ehrlich (IndieWire): “AMSTERDAM is a hot mess and a half but Taylor Swift’s big scene (you’ll know it when you see it!...

In his interview with Time magazine, Iger called Scorsese’s comments “nasty” and “not fair to the people who are making the movies.” Time reporter Belinda Luscombe notes that Iger mostly “brushes [the comments] off.” Misguidingly, Iger, yet again, decides to give as an example “Black Panther,” the Ryan Coogler-directed Marvel film nominated for Best Picture, being cinema. Luscombe writes for Time, “Whenever [Bob Iger is] accused of taking no risks, Iger points to ‘Black Panther,’ which he considers one of his top five career achievements....

Yes, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the epic showdown between these two movie monsters will be released both in theaters and on HBO Max in just a month’s time. It’s the kind of monster mash-up nobody needed, another installment in the MonsterVerse series that started with Gareth Edwards‘ “Godzilla,” the franchise’s first film, which came out back in 2014. And then, in “Kong: Skull Island,” (a perfectly decent movie) , released in 2017, the same Monarch scientists from “Godzilla” traveled to an uncharted island in the Pacific during the Vietnam War and bumped into Kong and his buddies, which then led to the misbegotten 2019 “Godzilla: King of the Monsters....

“Why can’t a white person tell the story of a black person?” he asks. “I made a film about Jean-Michel Basquiat. Was I exploiting him by making that movie about him? I think I did him a solid by making that film. My daughter Lola says: ‘Everyone is pink inside.’ “Robert Mapplethorpe had a show at the Whitney Museum and there were guys with their dicks out or whatever,” he continues....

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Michael is set to play his dad’s legendary role in The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos which will be directed by Alan Taylor. You might be asking yourself, does the kid even act? Why, of course. James recently had a breakout turn on HBO’s “The Deuce.” I can vouch for his acting abilities, as he was, quite frankly, impressive on that show. Also, his resemblance to his late father is uncanny....

Almost a decade ago, Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp and Will Smith had signed on to star in this movie, which was going to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow. That plan fell apart. Then another cast was set to shoot it in 2017 and four weeks away from the start of production something happened, rumors pointed to the stars having had major problems with the script, and actors Channing Tatum, Tom Hardy, Mahershala Ali, and Casey Affleck left the trouble pre-production....

No, I’m thinking, in particular, to these seminal works: Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter” Jean Vigo’s “L’Atlante” Marlon Brando’s “One-Eyed Jacks” Barbara Loden’s “Wanda” Herk Harvey’s “Carnival of Souls” Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun” James William Guerico’s “Electrica Glide in Blue” Reigning supreme from this list, along with Jean Vigo, is Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter”. The film was such a bomb with critics and audiences that he would never direct another film again....