Delivering a potentially serious blow to one of the fastest growing production hubs in the country, Walt Disney Co. is threatening to no longer film in the state of Georgia if an anti-gay bill is signed into law there. The Free Exercise Protection Act is on the desk of Gov. Nathan Deal, who must...
Imagine a Venn diagram of silent film buffs, symphony aficionados and fans of the Police. It's a niche demographic, but that appears to have been the audience drawn to this week's performance of "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ," the 1925 silent epic with a new score by Police drummer Stewart Copeland....
French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin's "My Golden Days" is both a prequel and a sequel to his 1996 film "My Sex Life … Or How I Got Into an Argument." Though there are elements of the two films that don't exactly line up, both concern the romantic follies and foibles of a character named Paul Dédalus....
Lionsgate was propelled into the ranks of the major Hollywood studios by young-adult franchises such as "The Hunger Games" and "The Twilight Saga." But the waning appeal of futuristic stories featuring young, attractive rebels has diminished the Santa Monica entertainment company's fortunes. The...
A movie from the leader of the anti-vaccine movement is set to create controversy when it screens at the Tribeca Film Festival next month.On Monday, the annual springtime confab quietly announced that, amid a list of Hollywood-centric talks, it would screen a documentary titled “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up...
Margot Robbie is looking for gold in all the wrong places. The bombshell Australian beauty, best known for her work as Naomi in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" has been attached to "I, Tonya," an upcoming biopic about infamous American figure skater Tonya Harding, according to Deadline...
At an October 2014 investor meeting in New York, Warner Bros. Entertainment Chief Executive Kevin Tsujihara laid out a bold plan to release at least 10 superhero films based on characters from its prized DC Comics library. "Clearly, the opportunity is enormous," Tsujihara said at the time. "DC...
Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola will be honored by Turner Classic Movies with a hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre during the TCM Film Festival on April 29. The filmmaker's body of work includes "The Godfather" trilogy, "Apocalypse Now" and "The Conversation." Coppola...
Lionsgate's shares took a tumble after the disappointing opening of its movie "Allegiant" raised concerns about the studio's performance. The stock fell 3% to $21.93 in midday trading Monday on Wall Street. So far this year, the shares have declined about 32%. See more of Entertainment’s top stories...
Like so many people with showbiz hopes, Jessie Nelson worked as a waitress when she first came to Hollywood. At the defunct Roy's Chinese restaurant on Sunset, she would hustle for tips and tick off specials, plotting a film career during breaks.Nelson would eventually graduate to more creative...
In her articles, books and screenplays, Nora Ephron wrote with wit and candor about the most intimate of topics — her divorce, her parents' alcoholism, her small breasts. In "Everything Is Copy," a documentary premiering Monday night on HBO, Ephron's son Jacob Bernstein picks up the mantle of disclosure,...
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. My colleague Steve Zeitchik and I were just in Austin, Texas, at the energizing and inspiring South by Southwest Film Festival. It was a jam-packed few days with high-profile premieres from films such...
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Lionsgate, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99 Available on VOD Tuesday The Hunger Games: Complete 4 Film Collection Lionsgate, $54.98; Blu-ray, $64.97 It'd be silly to call a movie that made over $600 million a "letdown," but given how big "The Hunger Games" loomed in popular...
UCLA Film & Television Archive's "Out of the Ether: Radio Mysteries and Thrillers on Screen," a retrospective featuring films based on popular radio shows of the '30s and '40s, continues Sunday evening at the Billy Wilder Theater with two low-budget flicks inspired by "Inner Sanctum Mystery." The...
One of the inspiring joys of attending a film festival like South by Southwest is to encounter new talent in the process of first discovering and expressing their artistic voices. “Jean of the Joneses,” the feature debut for both writer-director Stella Meghie and star Taylour Paige, is exactly...
Uhura's new Starfleet uniform for "Star Trek Beyond" appears to be a shout-out to "Star Trek's" past. Actress Zoe Saldana, who is reprising her role as the Enterprise communications officer for the third installment in the rebooted "Star Trek" movie franchise. Up until now, Uhura's Starfleet uniform...
When Ben Affleck signed on to play Batman in Zack Snyder's superhero mash-up "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," it didn't take long for speculation to start swirling that he was interested in more than just putting on the Dark Knight's cape and cowl. Having established himself as a successful...
It should have been fun — sitting in the Splash Zone at SeaWorld's Shamu stadium with her two sons, watching killer whales perform impressive tricks. Instead, Gabriela Cowperthwaite felt a pit in her stomach. Seeing whales up-close in captivity made her uneasy. So she began looking into the theme...
Paul Reubens still isn't sure why it took so long. For years, the actor had hoped to bring his much-loved creation — the giggly, bow tie-wearing human cartoon known as Pee-wee Herman — back to the screen. With Hollywood dipping into the well of '80s nostalgia to bring back such properties as "The...
Most directors build their genre movie by coming up with a story, or at least a concept. But when the Americana-flavored auteur Jeff Nichols first came up the idea for his new film "Midnight Special," he paid protocol no mind. The movie is a sci-fi government chase piece; it evokes the pop entertainments...
Early in David Osit and Malika Zouhali-Worrall's documentary "Thank You for Playing," indie video game developer Ryan Green describes a stain on his ceiling that he refuses to clean, because it reminds him of his son Joel's feeding tube. His wife, Amy, laughs, saying that he's using sentimentality...
That the neo-noirish mystery "Too Late" was shot on 35mm film and is showing only in that once-ubiquitous format makes it something of a cinematic event in these hyper-digital times. But its unique technical and structural aspects — it unfolds in a series of five 20-minute uncut takes — prove only...
The title and those lively Bill Plympton animations may suggest otherwise, but "The Brainwashing of My Dad" has something more serious on its mind. Witnessing her aging Caucasian father turn from Kennedy Democrat into an "enraged and unreachable" Fox News fanatic, documentary filmmaker Jen Senko...
Echoing every parent's lament about there never being enough quality time in the day to spend with the kids, Suzanne Crocker opted to take drastic action by packing up the whole kit and caboodle and relocating to the Canadian bush for nine Wi-Fi-free months. But the first-time feature filmmaker...
While its flaws are considerable, the Holocaust-themed thriller "Remember" benefits mightily from a quietly commanding Christopher Plummer performance that almost makes you forget the wonky plot logic. The 86-year-old actor ages up several years to play the role of Zev Guttman, an Auschwitz survivor...
In "Burning Bodhi," estranged high school friends reconvene in their hometown of Albuquerque after the death of their friend Bodhi and pay homage to his spirit with a "fun"-eral. Clearly taking inspiration from "The Big Chill," the film, by writer-director Matthew McDuffie, hangs out with young...
A rise and fall doesn't get much more meteoric in either direction than cyclist Lance Armstrong's, who overcame testicular cancer to win the Tour de France seven times, yet was stripped of his titles, money and reputation when he came clean to doping after years of speculation. He's both hero and...
"The Clan," Argentina's official submission for the 2015 foreign-language film Oscar, is an unsettling, highly absorbing crime drama from writer-director Pablo Trapero ("Carancho"). Think "The Sopranos" by way of Martin Scorsese, but set around Buenos Aires in the early 1980s. Oh, and it's a true...
"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" star Thomas Mann stays in high school for "The Preppie Connection," a ripped-from-yesterday's-headlines drug thriller with a coming-of-age twist. Writer-director Joseph Castelo aims for a tone midway between "Goodfellas" and "Less Than Zero," but while the film...
If only human love were as simple as the canine kind, as posited in James Lefkowitz's "The Dog Wedding." While English bulldogs Prince and Queenie connect instantly at a dog park, it's their owners who have a harder time getting on the same page. This film is a color-by-number rom-com, faithfully...
"Ktown Cowboys," which follows the misadventures of five best pals and Asian American archetypes, often comes off as a guided tour of Koreatown rather than an immersive, lived-in residency. With appearances by Ken Jeong and Daniel Dae Kim called in as favors, the film doesn't seem to reciprocate...
Feature films these days rarely come as gentle and equitable as "The Confirmation." It's a sweet, decidedly low-key little picture starring a deftly understated Clive Owen as Walt, a divorced small-town carpenter spending a pivotal few days with his 8-year-old son, Anthony (a wonderful Jaeden Lieberher)....
Even by the enigmatic standards of Hollywood, Bob Nelson has had a strange career. It took the Seattle resident more than a decade for his first script, "Nebraska," to get made. Under the direction of Alexander Payne, that film became a breakout after its release in 2013, eventually earning Nelson...
Watching Tina Fey's correspondent work with her Afghan fixer in the new film "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" reminded me of the inventive, diligent, comical and strange characters who accompanied me over the years through war zones, across deserts, into revolutions and up the moonlit Himalayas. Translators...