Of course, as an agnostic Jew who wouldn’t go within 10 feet of Gibson unless I was wearing one of those padded bomb suits from “The Hurt Locker,” I’m not exactly the target audience for a movie that aspires to feel like a “Passion of the Christ” remake directed by David O. Russell (Wahlberg’s initial creative partner on the project, and a guy whose fingerprints are smudged all over the final product)....
Over eight episodes, “Five Days at Memorial” does its utmost to faithfully recreate the conditions of a hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, effectively cordoned off from a rescue effort struggling to help any neighbors, too. Yet, in those moments of merely recreating the look and the feel of new Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center over those days in September 2005, the show strives for a kind of operatic pitch that bridges the gap between the recognizable and the unthinkable....
In Paolo Sorrentino’s compassionate coming-of-age drama “The Hand of God,” the director delivers a tender ode to his traumatic teen years, when the sudden death of his parents forced him to sort out his place in a cruel universe. The movie reads as a biographical justification for the movies he’s made throughout his career and provides an excuse to revisit them in a new light. Sorrentino’s sudden orphanhood influenced his decision to become a filmmaker, yet even the swooning collection of colorful Italian creatives in his Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty” seemed to dance around his own connection to his stories....
“Hold on, Donald Trump is contesting the result,” he said. “He’s claiming that a lot of dead people voted, which is a very rude thing to say about the HFPA.” The HFPA took a real beating this year as presenters took the opportunity to rip into the organization for its lack of diversity. In his first speech, Baron Cohen spread out the jibes between the HFPA and Rudy Giuliani, who appears in the film in a highly compromised position....
It’s always a good time to update your bookshelf, and today IndieWire staffers have selected some of their favorite film books, from screenwriting manuals to fascinating histories and even musings on the art of criticism itself. The selections are wide-ranging, so if you’re looking for a book specifically about film criticism then you can check out this list, and if you’re looking for a juicy memoir, check out this one. But otherwise, read on for a broad spectrum of books about cinema, including behind-the-scenes accounts of major blockbusters, essays on film theory, and more....
“Invasion” has a few of those, one of the first clues that this newest Apple TV+ series, created by Simon Kinberg and David Weil, isn’t doing much more than rearranging a box full of previously-used ideas. Sheriff John Bell Tyson (Sam Neill) is serving his final day as a sheriff in an Oklahoma town. Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani) is in the midst of a crisis that could crumble her family’s suburban Long Island happiness....
“It’s truly in Michaela’s head and it’s not for me to second guess that too much at this point,” Wenger said. “It’s at relatively early stages, but I wanted to let the fans of ‘I May Destroy You’ know that there is a new show coming along…What relationship that show will have with the original series, [is for Michaela to decide].” Wenger added. “There’s a relationship between ‘Chewing Gum’ and ‘I May Destroy You....
