Latest Movie Features
“I Wanted to Understand the Brainwash”: ‘THR Presents’ Q&A With ‘Rojek’ Director Zaynê Akyol
Zaynê Akyol’s latest documentary feature, Rojek, was born out of her time working on the 2016 documentary Gulîstan, Land of Roses. In that film, the director followed a group of female soldiers in Iraqi Kurdistan as she searched for her old babysitter (the titular Gulîstan), who had mysteriously vanished one day in Akyol’s childhood to […]
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‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ Directors on Capturing the Evolving Battle for Indigenous Land Rights: We’re “Still Hemorrhaging People”
In Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s nearly two-hour documentary, Lakota Nation vs. United States, the filmmaking duo captures the history, present and future hopes of the indigenous peoples of the Dakotas through a singular issue: land. That issue, according to the film written and narrated by Layli Long Soldier, is at the core of […]
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After a Year of Controversy, ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Star Taryn Manning Is (Mostly) Keeping It Together
Taryn Manning’s audition for the Britney Spears starrer Crossroads was so good it made director Tamra Davis nervous. “She was picking something on her arm, and it looked like it might start bleeding,” recalls Davis of a casting session for the 2002 road trip drama, written by soon-to-be TV mogul Shonda Rhimes. “I thought ‘Oh […]
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From Michael J. Fox to an Iconic Sex Researcher: THR Documentary Roundtable on Trust and Truth Telling
Six directors of standout 2023 documentary features gathered at The Hollywood Reporter’s Los Angeles offices in mid-November for THR’s annual Documentary Roundtable. Among them were two revered veterans with Oscars to their name: Davis Guggenheim (2006’s An Inconvenient Truth), who helmed Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, a film about the life and struggles of the […]
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‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Costume Designer Breaks Down Hidden Messages in Heirloom Patterns and ’20s-Era Suits
For Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, costume designer Jacqueline West immersed herself in researching early-1920s denizens of Osage County, Oklahoma. She visited museums commemorating plundering oil tycoons and watched rare black-and-white home movies commissioned by Osage families, wealthy from retaining mineral rights to their oil-rich reservation. Osage costume consultant Julie O’Keefe ensured the […]
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Hollywood Flashback: When ‘Sideways’ Was the Toast of Awards Season
Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti’s latest film, The Holdovers, is in the awards conversation for its tale of holiday mischief and misfits at a remote New England boarding school. In it, Giamatti plays a cranky history teacher tasked with looking after students who aren’t going home for winter break. Almost 20 years ago, Payne and […]
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How ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ Inspired Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, photographed by DP Robbie Ryan, received an enthusiastic ovation as it opened the 31st EnergaCamerimage cinematography film festival Nov. 11. A familiar face at the annual event and an Oscar nominee for Lanthimos’ The Favourite, Ryan used an inventive range of film stocks and lenses to support the absurdist story (an adaptation […]
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‘Rustin’ Screenwriter on Bayard Rustin’s Legacy: “His Queerness Was Part of His Strategic Gift”
Bayard Rustin is one of the most important figures in modern American history whom many people knew nothing about — until now. Netflix’s Rustin, and its towering central performance from Emmy-winning actor Colman Domingo, serves to add his story back into the history books, particularly Rustin’s mentorship of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. […]
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Sacre Bleu! European Critics Share Wrath for U.S. Actors in ‘Ferrari’ and ‘Napoleon’
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Michael Mann’s Ferrari are facing allegations — surprising for two films focused on straight white male protagonists — of cultural appropriation. French and Italian critics have taken offense at the directors’ decisions to cast American actors to play national icons — Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte, the general who became French […]
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Oprah and ‘The Color Purple’ Stars on the New Musical Remake: “It’s Bright. It’s Vibrant. It’s Us”
Of all the emotions that The Color Purple evokes, joy is typically not among them. After all, the movie based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centers on a Black woman who suffers unspeakable sexual and physical abuse from the men in her life, sees her children taken away from her at birth, lives during […]
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‘Leave the World Behind’ Filmmaker Sam Esmail on Those ‘Mr. Robot’ Connections and Using the ‘Ocean’s Twelve’ Playbook
[This story contains spoilers for Leave the World Behind.] Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind currently ranks atop Netflix’s film chart, and longtime fans of the filmmaker are now decoding its place in his greater universe of storytelling. Ten minutes into the thriller, Mr. Robot buffs likely picked up on a familiar site: a yellow […]
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“I Felt an Atonement”: The Making of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Martin Scorsese had already been working on Killers of the Flower Moon for a few years when he had a startling revelation. He and screenwriter Eric Roth were adapting David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book about a series of murders of Osage people in Oklahoma in the early 1920s with the intention that Leonardo DiCaprio would […]
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Charles Melton Contemplates If ‘May December’ Is A Comedy
Entering May December, Charles Melton was best known as a TV star on the soapy teen drama Riverdale as former football player Reggie Mantle. Next to his castmates Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, he was virtually an unknown talent in the film world. But with Todd Haynes’ latest melodrama, Melton has broken out as an […]
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Da’Vine Joy Randolph Celebrates First Golden Globe Nom for ‘The Holdovers’
Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the beating heart at the center of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, about a group of students and staff stuck on campus at a remote New England boarding school over the holidays. Randolph plays Mary, the school chef, who is grieving the death of someone very close to her, opposite Paul Giamatti’s […]
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Meet Bonelli Entertainment, Italy’s Answer to Marvel
There are no capes and there is no spandex in Dampyr, the fantasy horror film by Italian director Riccardo Chemello. But the English-language feature, which has been a surprise hit on Netflix, is the first entry in what you could call the Bonelli Cinematic Universe. The vampire-hunter tale, starring Wade Briggs, Stuart Martin, Frida Gustavsson, […]
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International Dark Horse Contenders Making Waves Ahead of Oscars Shortlist Announcement
Denmark The Promised Land Mads Mikkelsen stars in this Nordic Western as a low-born military man determined to tame the wild Jutland heath, whatever the costs. Touching on themes of class, racism and labor exploitation, it’s an old-fashioned period romp with stunning set pieces, plenty of romance and a satisfying villain in Simon Bennebjerg’s scene-chewing […]
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