Quentin Tarantino revealed during Jimmy Kimmel Live! that he wished he directed the 2001 Japanese action film “Battle Royale,” which the Oscar winner said directly inspired Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” series and subsequent films. “Battle Royale,” directed by Kinji Fukasaku and based on the novel by Kōshun Takami, follows a group of junior high students who are forced to fight to the death in a dystopian world. “I’m a big fan of the Japanese movie ‘Battle Royale,’ which is what ‘Hunger Games’ was based on,” Tarantino explained....

The film begins far away from the snowy hamlet where most of it takes place, as the bull-headed Matthias (Marin Grigore) unceremoniously quits his job at a German slaughterhouse by head-butting his boss for calling him a “lazy Gypsy.” And so, with few other options and the cops on his tail, Matthias returns to the financially dispossessed hometown where he left his young wife Ana (Macrina Bârlădeanu) and their young son Rudi (Mark Blenyesi), who’s refused to speak ever since he saw something in the woods outside their house....

As the film goes on, that title also feels more appropriate in another way. Over two hours, “Safety” looks to present the McElrathbeys’ experience in the least demanding way possible, carefully treading around its central subject matter. Nick Santora’s script begins with Ray already at school, settling into his opening week away from his home in Atlanta. When Ray and Fahmarr’s mother enters a substance abuse counseling program, Ray becomes the only family member left who can provide a stable living situation....

Animation and children’s programming long have been at the forefront of disability representation. They’ve never solely been focused on introducing disability in children’s lives early — more often than not, they are creating fully-fleshed out characters to help children who might be disabled themselves. I talked in the first part of this series about watching “The Wild Thornberries” as a kid and seeing the character of Bethany, who used a wheelchair....

The official “Stardust” synopsis from IFC Films reads: “Meet David before Bowie. One of the greatest icons in music history. But who was the young man behind the many faces? In 1971, a 24-year-old David Bowie (Flynn) embarks on his first road trip to America with Mercury Records publicist Ron Oberman (Marc Maron), only to be met with a world not yet ready for him. ‘Stardust’ offers a glimpse behind the curtain of the moments that inspired the creation of Bowie’s first and most memorable alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, capturing the turning point that cemented his career as one of the world’s greatest cultural icons....

The festival takes place January 19 through 29, 2023, in-person, with an on-demand, curated selection to launch on Tuesday, January 24 with select films available to view online for those not in Park City or Salt Lake City, Utah. The digital offering showcases an on-demand, curated selection of feature films from the 2023 Festival, including all competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT), as well as exciting work across other sections of the feature film program, alongside episodic work and short films....

“It’s all practical. It really is practical,” Nolan’s longtime production designer Nathan Crowley recently told Collider about the film’s use of time inversion. “It was complicated for all departments, specifically for the stunt department. Inversion, forward and backward, it changes the whole way the set has to work.” Just how the “Tenet” production team pulled off the look of time inversion through practical effects is remaining under wraps for now. Crowley is under strict orders not to spoil anything about the making of “Tenet” or the movie’s plot, although he did say he had to read the script five times just to get his head around the intricacies of the story....