“Spencer is a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life.” — Kristen Stewart
Written by Steven Knight and directed by Pablo Larrain, Spencer follows Princess Diana, played by Kristen Stewart, on that fateful weekend at the royal family’s traditional Christmas celebration at Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. This year, things will be a lot different.
The marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, played by Jack Farthing, has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate.
Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in SPENCER. Photo by Pablo Larrain
“We all grew up understanding what a fairytale is, but Diana Spencer changed the paradigm and the idealized icons that pop culture creates forever. This is the story of a Princess who decided not to become a Queen but chose to build her identity by herself. It’s an upside-down fairytale,” explains Larrain. “I’ve always been very surprised by her decision and thought it must have been very hard. That is the heart of the movie. I wanted to explore Diana’s process as she oscillates between doubt and determination, finally making a bid for freedom, not just for herself but for her children too. It was a decision that would define her legacy: one of honesty and humanity that remains unparalleled.”
Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in SPENCER. Courtesy of NEON
Larrain needed a strong cast because it’s a character-driven story. He feels Stewart can be many things. She can be very mysterious, fragile, and ultimately decisive. “The way she responded to the script and how she approached the character is very beautiful to see. As a filmmaker, when you have someone who can hold such a dramatic and narrative weight just with her eyes, then you have the strong lead who can deliver. She is a force of nature.”
The rest of the talented cast includes Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall and Sean Harris.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley exposes the truth about carnie and psychiatrists, the charlatans that they are with a kaleidoscope of a tale.
“I was very interested in a story about destiny and humanity. Stanton Carlisle is a man who is given all the elements to change his life. He has people who believe in him, who love him and trust him. Yet his drive and his own hubris are so strong that they turn him away from that.” —Guillermo del Toro
Charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena, played by Toni Collette and her has-been mentalist husband Pete, played by David Strathairn. Stanton joins a traveling carnival, where he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly gained knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York Society.
With the virtuous Molly, played by Rooney Mara, loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con a dangerous tycoon, played by Richard Jenkins, with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist, played by Cate Blanchett, who might be his most formidable opponent yet.
Based on the 1947 novel with the same title by William Lindsay Gresham, the monsters in this movie are people who trick others into horrific circumstances. Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Willem Dafoe star in this noir.
The story follows Cooper’s character Stanton Carlisle, a nobody, working in a small-time carnival that is not as innocent as America thinks with touches of del Toro.
“In a way, Molly is the conscience of Nightmare Alley. She tries very hard to keep Stan on the right track,” says Dale. “Guillermo has always been a believer in what an actor can convey with their eyes, and Rooney has that ability. She brings to Molly an innocence but also an increasing strength as she grows. She comes to stand in moral contrast to Stanton as loyal, spiritual, and humane.”
Though she has the thick skin and resilience of a young woman raised in the carnival world, Molly wins Stanton’s attention early on with her warmth and hopefulness. She believes he has greatness in him, enough to take a chance on him and leave behind the community she loves.
“Rooney has the most amazing tracking instinct for her character. She knew exactly where the character was, so she’s always real,” commented del Toro.
“We also went after every detail — wanted Molly to be symbolized by a deer, so she wears a little deer pendant throughout,” added del Toro. “We then have a deer in the room of the hotel, on the headboard of the bed. We referenced everything back to her.”
Stanton partners with psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter, played by Blanchett, after Ritter discovers his underhanded schemes to target millionaires.
Blanchett notes that the fascination between Dr. Ritter and Stanton is not only sexual, but the chemical attraction is palpable. There is also a sense of recognition. “She’s a lone wolf, and that’s where she and Stan connect. They are both running from the past, and they can see a similarity between them.”
She continues, “Lilith is also someone who’s interested in both the practical and mystical sides of psychoanalysis, so that’s part of why Stanton intrigues her. She’s trying to work out what makes him tick, as she’s a bit of a shaman herself. Their entire relationship takes place in her office, so we thought about that set as being not just a physical space but a psychological space.”
Passion and vengeance are among the unpredictable emotions that arise in that space. “In a way, Lilith’s office is where Stan is finally vulnerable. There are a lot of destructive urges in Stan that have a parallel in Lilith. It’s a manipulative, deceitful dance between them… and these things rarely end well.”
The carnival’s manager, Clem, played by Willem Dafoe, is an old-school carny with an intimidating gruffness but willingness to give anyone their one chance. “I love this world. It’s so theatrical, full of color and drama, and perfect material for a film,” Dafoe says.
Clem is simultaneously hard-nosed and unwaveringly loyal to his own. “He has a bit of a conman in him, too, and he wants to make a dollar. But there’s a sweet side to Clem as well, where he feels responsible for his carnival family,” Dafoe says.
When Clem first meets Stanton, he identifies with him as someone who seems lost yet full of potential. “I think he sees that Stanton is a little off, he’s a little on the make, but Clem also recognizes himself in Stanton,” notes Dafoe. “A guy like Clem has been around. He’s probably done time, he’s had to scrape to get by, and he knows what that’s like, so he’s willing to help Stanton.”
Clem gives Stanton refuge, but he also demonstrates the depths of his own darkness in his harsh treatment of the carnival’s geek. “It’s pretty rough stuff, the way he creates the carnival geek,” says Dafoe.
Directed by Ridley Scott, The Last Duel follows a true story about France’s last sanctioned trial by combat. The story originates from Eric Jager’s book of the same title.
In 1386, Jean de Carrouges, a knight, played by Matt Damon, and Jacques Le Gris, a squire, played by Adam Driver came to blows to the death after Marguerite, the knight’s wife, played by Jodie Comer, accuses Le Gris of raping her, which he denies.
Watch the trailer, and you’ll see Affleck playing Count Pierre d’Alencon, donning blond hair.
If Marguerite’s husband dies, she ends up burning at stake for perjury. The winner of the duel ends up as divine providence.
According to the New York Times article, the movie forms into three chapters based on a video interview with the three writers of the movie version, Damon, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener: Carrouges story, Le Gris story and Marguerite story. The men, according to Damon, took fastidious notes while women did not because they had no public respect nor held any kind of power. Holofcener wrote Marguerite’s perspective, made of whole cloth, the book lacked the wife’s perspective.
Directed by Lana Wachowski, if The Matrix Resurrections is as good as its trailers, we are in for a great franchise rebirth starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Neil Patrick Harris and Jada Pinkett Smith.
It’s so cool that “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane plays throughout the trailer. The storyline is just enough so as not to ruin the outcome.
Written and directed by Justin Chon, who also stars in Blue Bayou, it is a moving and timely story of a uniquely American family fighting for their future. New Orleans tattoo artist Antonio LeBlanc, played by Justin Chon, is a devoted family man looking to build a better life for pregnant wife Kathy, played by Alicia Vikander, and precocious step-daughter Jessie, played by Sydney Kowalske.
(L to R) Actor Alicia Vikander, actor Sydney Kowalske and actor/writer/director Justin Chon on the set of BLUE BAYOU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Focus Features
But for an ex-con with a checkered past, opportunity can be hard to come by, meaning money is always tight, especially with a new baby on the way. Complicating matters is Kathy’s ex Ace, played by Mark O’Brien, a Louisiana cop. He wants to play a more prominent role in Jessie’s life — despite having abandoned the girl and her mother years earlier.
When a family spat unexpectedly leads to a grocery store confrontation with Ace and his racist partner, Denny, played by Emory Cohen, Antonio is arrested and transferred into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Despite being in America since the age of three, the Korean-American adoptee — married to an American citizen — faces deportation from the only country he’s ever known as home. Trapped in a waking nightmare, Antonio and Kathy seek legal assistance to help fight the deportation order, only to discover that they have precious little hope of keeping their family together.
With Antonio facing an uncertain future, he finds an unlikely ally and source of support in a Vietnamese-American woman named Parker, played by Linh-Dan Pham, who also is at a place where she is struggling to come to terms with a difficult truth. Determined to remain near his loved ones, an increasingly desperate Antonio forces himself to confront his past, going to ever more extraordinary lengths to stay on American soil. But the painful secrets that come to light threaten to upend his relationships with Kathy and Jessie — even as Denny resolves to seal Antonio’s fate.
As Blue Bayou took shape, the character at the heart of the emotional tale became ever more apparent to Chon, as did the importance of the film’s Louisiana setting. “One thing that was very important to me as an Asian-American is how we’re portrayed in the media,” Chon says. “A big thing for me was the name, Antonio — seeing an Asian-American with that name was very peculiar. I placed it in the South because I’ve never seen Asians with Southern accents treated as just very naturally a fact of life.”
“I placed it in New Orleans specifically because there’s a huge enclave of Vietnamese people there, and one of my goals with this film was to have two adjacent Asian ethnicities in one film. This Korean adoptee Antonio learns what his culture could be like through this friendship with a Vietnamese woman. It’s his introduction into Asian culture. They’re countries that share a lot of similar war trauma.”
Although Chon had written, directed and starred in his previous films, he initially planned to cast an actor to play the pivotal role of Antonio. When it came time to cast the part, he found that the character was simply too close to his heart to be portrayed by anyone else. “The story was so important to me that I really wanted to be present to focus on the story and the filmmaking,” he says. “But I just got to a point where I’d lived with the story for so long and these people were so real to me that I started to get very nervous. I felt like if anyone was going to mess it up, I’d be the one to mess it up. I didn’t want to be in a position where if somebody didn’t quite give it the energy that I thought was necessary that I would be bummed out, you know?”
Marc-André Leclerc climbs alone, far from the limelight. On remote alpine faces, the free-spirited 23-year-old Canadian makes some of the boldest solo ascents in history. Yet, he draws scant attention. Leclerc’s approach is the essence of solo adventure with no cameras, rope, and margin for error. Nomadic and publicity-shy, he doesn’t own a phone or car and is reluctant to let a film crew in on his pure vision of climbing.
In steps, filmmaker Peter Mortimer sets out to make The Alpinist about Leclerc but struggles to keep up with his elusive subject. Then, Leclerc embarks on a historical adventure in Patagonia that will redefine what is possible in solo climbing.
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, he says, “Belfast is the most personal film I have ever made. About a place and a people I love.”
(L to R) Caitriona Balfe as “Ma”, Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Lewis McAskie as “Will” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Branagh uses a humorous, tender and intense story from the heart of one boy’s childhood during the tumult of the late 1960s in his city’s birth. The movie is straight from his experience as a nine-year-old boy who charts a path towards adulthood through the world that has suddenly turned upside. The stable and loving community and everything he thought he understood about life changes forever, but joy, laughter, music and the formative magic of the movies remain.
Jude Hill (left) stars as “Buddy” and Jamie Dornan (right) stars as “Pa” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Behind the camera, Branagh brings his regular collaborators as we arrive in the summer of 1969. We follow nine-year-old Buddy, played by Jude Hill. Buddy knows who he is and where he belongs. Part of the working class of North Belfast, he’s happy, loved and safe. His world is a fast and funny street life lived mainly in the heart of a community that laughs together and sticks together.
(L to R) Judi Dench as “Granny”, Jude Hill as “Buddy” and Ciarán Hinds as “Pop” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
The extended family lives on the same street, and it’s impossible to get lost because everyone in Belfast knows everyone else, or so it seems, foreboding arrives. Every spare minute, in the darkness of movie theatres and front of the television, American films and American TV transport and intoxicate Buddy’s inner life and his dreams.
Caitriona Balfe (left) stars as “Ma” and Jamie Dornan (right) stars as “Pa” in director Sir Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Yet, August turns Buddy’s childhood dreams into a nightmare. Festering social discontent suddenly explodes in Buddy’s street and escalates fast. First, it’s a masked attack, then evolves into a riot and eventually a city-wide conflict, with religion fanning the flames further asunder. Catholics vs. Protestants, loving neighbors just a heartbeat ago, set on to be deadly foes now.
Buddy must make sense of the chaos and hysteria that prevails. The new physical lockdown of what used to be an endless landscape. People as heroes and villains, once only glimpsed on the cinema screen but now threatening to upturn everything he knows and loves as an epic struggle plays out in his backyard.
Caitriona Balfe stars as “Ma” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
His Ma, played by Caitriona Balfe, struggles to cope while his Pa, played by Jamie Dornan, works away in England, trying to make enough money to support the family. Vigilante law rules, innocent lives are threatened. Buddy knows what to expect from his heroes on the silver screen, but in real life? Can his father be the hero he needs? Can his mother sacrifice her past to protect her family’s future? How can his beloved grandparents, played by Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds, be safe? And how can he love the girl of his dreams?
(L to R) Jamie Dornan as “Pa”, Ciarán Hinds as “Pop”, Jude Hill as “Buddy”, and Judi Dench as “Granny” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
The answers roll out in this interesting story of a funny, poignant and heartbreaking journey through riots, violence, the joy and despair of family relationships and the agony of first love, all accompanied by dancing, music and laughter that only the Irish can muster when the world turns upside down.
Jamie Dornan (left) stars as “Pa” and Caitriona Balfe (right) stars as “Ma” in director Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
“Belfast is a city of stories,” says Branagh, “and in the late 1960s, it went through an incredibly tumultuous period of its history, very dramatic, sometimes violent, that my family and I were caught up in. It’s taken me fifty years to find the right way to write about it, to find the tone I wanted. It can take a very long time to understand just how simple things can be, and finding that perspective years on provides a great focus. The story of my childhood, which inspired the film, has become a story of the point in everyone’s life when the child crosses over into adulthood, where innocence is lost. That point of crossover in Belfast in 1969 was accelerated by the tumult happening around us all. At the beginning of the film, we experience a world in transition from a kind of idyll – neighborliness, sunshine and community – which is turned upside down by the arrival of a mob who pass through like a swarm of bees and lay waste to this peace. When they’ve gone, the street is literally ripped up by worried people who now feel they have to barricade themselves against another attack, and that is exactly how I remember it. I remember life turning on its head in one afternoon, almost in slow-motion, not understanding the sound I was hearing, and then turning around and looking at the mob at the bottom of the street, and life was never, ever, ever the same again. I felt that there was something dramatic and universal in that event because people might recognize a crossover point in their own lives, albeit not always as heightened by external events.”
Director Kenneth Branagh (left) and actor Jude Hill (right) on the set of BELFAST, a Focus Features release. Credit: Rob Youngson / Focus Features
Through the eyes of Buddy, the story unfolds, similar to Hope and Glory and Empire of the Sun. Branagh says, “We found a boy (Hill) whose talent was ready to blossom but who was still enjoying himself as an ordinary kid. Playing football was as important to him as making the film, and that’s what we wanted. At the same time, he was always very serious about the work, very prepared and very open.”
“Caitriona Balfe, who plays Ma, is from Ireland but grew up near the border and has an understanding of the vernacular and of the Irish extended family life,” he says. “Jamie Dornan, who plays Pa, is a real Belfast boy from just outside Belfast. Ciarán Hinds, who plays Buddy’s grandfather, Pop, was brought up about a mile from where I lived in Belfast.
Judi Dench has Irish blood – her mother was from Dublin – and is anyway an acting thoroughbred whose research is meticulous and who can do anything. And this group of actors also had a sense of front-footed energy that I liked, an outgoing quality that meant they became a real family very quickly.”
The film set in Belfast also provided excellent Northern Irish actors like Colin Morgan, Turlough Convery and Conor McNeill.
Directed by the master of planetary disaster, Roland Emmerich brings us Moonfall. The perfect escapism we need today. A mysterious force knocks the Earth’s Moon from its orbit around and sends it hurtling on a collision course with us as we know it.
The main characters in the movie tell us that the world is on the brink of destruction, with mere weeks of impact.
Patrick Wilson portrays astronaut “Brian Harper” surrounded by a mysterious force in the sci-fi epic MOONFALL.
Halle Berry portrays former astronaut and NASA Deputy Director “Jacinda Fowler” conducting an emergency shuttle launch to save the world in the sci-fi epic MOONFALL.
Along comes NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler, played by Halle Berry. She’s convinced that she has the key to saving us all. Still, only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper, played by Patrick Wilson, and a conspiracy theorist, K.C. Houseman, played by John Bradley, believe her.
John Bradley portrays Moon conspiracy theorist “K.C. Houseman” peering out the window of the Endeavour Space Shuttle in the sci-fi epic MOONFALL.
The cast impressed me, including Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, Eme Ikwuakor, Carolina Bartczak and Donald Sutherland.
These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to discover that our Moon is not what we think it is.
Not much out yet about Malignant. As the studio releases information, I will post it here. In the meantime, the trailer shows clips of the director, James Wan, who directed Saw andThe Conjuring.
