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“What would’ve happened if Andrei Tarkovsky had made The Wizard of Oz,” said David Fincher of Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, a visually dazzling tale that perhaps wasn’t as well-received upon its 2006 release as it should have been. Now, nearly two decades later, the cult classic epic has been restored in 4K and will be rolling out on Mubi starting September 27 following its Locarno Film Festival premiere.

Filmed over four years in 20 difference locations across the globe, here’s the synopsis for the film starring Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru: “Los Angeles circa 1920s, a little immigrant girl in a hospital recovering from a fall, strikes up a friendship with a bedridden man. He captivates her with a whimsical story that removes her far from the hospital doldrums into the exotic landscape of her imagination.”

“It’s my baby,” the director told Little White Lies. “I went...

“Where do things truly start?” wonders the narrator of Emmanuel Mouret’s relentlessly middlebrow romantic comedy Trois Amies, a story of three women and their relationships that never feels like it’s ever going to end. Though it lasts just under two hours, it feels as bright and breezy as a flight from Newark to Singapore, spinning a complicated web of emotional intrigue that, finally, seems to go on and on just for the sake of it.

The French like these kinds of films, and their big-name directors stuff them with their equally famous friends, leading to waffly ensemble pieces that can be as endearingly cheerful as Julie Delpy’s family memoir Skylab (2011) or as insufferable as Guillaume Canet’s Big Chill ripoff Little White Lies (2011). Trois Amies sits somewhere, lumpenly, in the middle, and it’s hard to imagine what the Venice Film Festival programmers were thinking when they...

General Hospital spoilers leak Ava Jerome (Maura West) has committed a few felonies at this point while just trying to keep herself out of trouble with the law. Yikes! She should never have lied about what Kristina Corinthos Davis (Kate Mansi) tripped over in her room. She definitely should not have complied with FBI Special Agent John ‘Jagger’ Cates’ (Adam Harrington) bullying her into compliance.

Was Ava actually scared of Cates, or is he just offering her a path to freedom that she found irresistible? Is she relishing actually being able to strike back at Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) and his family? Regardless of her motives, Ava may have just buried herself by siding with Cates.

General Hospital Spoilers — Little White Lies?

It’s hard to say whether Ava is lying through her teeth sometimes and actually falls for her own tall tales. Maybe she really believes she’s entirely innocent in all of this.

Studio Ghibli’s haunting masterpiece Grave Of The Fireflies will stream on Netflix in September, and here’s a new trailer.

Aside from Threads – a film we wrote about in detail here – Studio Ghibli's Grave Of The Fireflies is one of the most harrowing, dark, depressing films you can choose to sit through. It is also gorgeously animated and a fascinating historical document.

The film was released in 1988, the same year as Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful My Neighbour Totoro. In fact in Japan the two films were played together in what must be the most tonally jarring cinematic double bill in history.

The synopsis reads as follows:

Grave of the Fireflies follows the story of Seita and Setsuko, two young Japanese siblings, living in the declining days of World War II. When an American firebombing separates the two children from their parents, the two siblings must rely completely on one...

Only a few weeks after "Deadpool & Wolverine" supercharged the box office, perhaps it was fate that the first real rival to the Ryan Reynolds-led superhero movie would come in the form of a romantic drama starring Blake Lively, both of whom are married to one another and are undoubtedly, as the kids say, goals. (Lively even scores multiple fourth wall-breaking references in her husband's threequel and her own cameo voice appearance as well.) "It Ends With Us" might not seem like a conventional challenger to potentially knock off one of the most highly-anticipated blockbusters in years from the number one spot, but that would be underselling the sheer expectations the film comes with, based on the bestselling novel by author Colleen Hoover.

The story follows recent college graduate Lily Blossom Bloom (Lively), who has aspirations of opening her own floral shop and meeting the perfect guy. When she...

Historically, the Oscars have maintained a storied reputation for favoring the dramatic flair over the whimsical jests of comedy films. Despite this, in a moment that shook the aisles with humor during the 79th Academy Awards (2007), beloved comedic giants Will Ferrell and Jack Black delivered a delightful sketch spotlighting this very phenomenon.

Will Ferrell as Buddy in Elf | New Line Cinema

With John C. Reilly at their side, they charmed the audience with a musical number that elegantly highlighted the loneliness of comedy stars at the Oscars. Indeed, in one segment, Ferrell and Black jovially (and facetiously) threatened more serious nominees in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories, including the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Ryan Gosling.

Ferrell dared not, however, mess with Mark Wahlberg.

Jack Black & Will Ferrell’s Hilarious Encounter with A-List Celebs

In Hollywood, there are always some who are ready to engage in little fisticuffs.

"In most films, the title screen is the first character you see. Those letters are literally the first characters you see." Almost everyone can identify a movie by its font. From Back to the Future to The Terminator to Gone with the Wind to The Godfather, these fonts and logos are an important part of the movie's identity. This entrancing video essay titled Why Movie Fonts Matter is a fascinating dive into the world of fonts, design, and branding. Does the font really matter? Yes it does. Absolutely. It may seem irrelevant, but it's an important choice that filmmakers make. This video essay is edited by Leigh Singer, featuring designer Marie Boulanger narrating her thoughts about movie fonts – created for the Little White Lies movie magazine. We all know the hilarious SNL sketch with Ryan Gosling choosing the Papyrus font for Avatar (watch here + the sequel), but this goes beyond...

Find all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.This year at Cannes, we invited a number of attendees to share their impressions from the festival across various categories. We had a few ideas for what those categories might be, but they had many more, and the results are somewhere between a critics’ grid and a yearbook superlatives page. We're glad we asked.Mark AschGiovanni Marchini CamiaJordan CronkJon DieringerFlavia DimaLeonardo GoiEric HynesDaniel KasmanJessica KiangElena LazicManuela LazicSavina PetkovaAndréa PicardAdam PironCaitlin QuinlanVadim RizovRafa Sales RossDavid Schwartz (independent programmer)Pedro Segura (independent programmer and critic)Öykü SofuoğluHannah StrongFind all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.Back to top.

In Luca Guadagnino’s tennis thriller Challengers, stars Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor litigate their love triangle as much on the court as in the bedroom. As such, the sport has to stay interesting.

Guadagnino previously told Little White Lies he doesn’t like watching real tennis because it’s boring. “The way in which [the sport] is shown is rather undynamic,” he said. Challengers — punctuated by the camera’s near-constant frenetic motion — seems to be in part about rectifying this failing.

“Luca’s vision for this movie was making the tennis action generally very kinetic,” Challengers VFX director Brian Drewes tells The Hollywood Reporter. The camera sweeps above and below the court, jumping toward the subjects’ beautifully sweaty faces and buzzing with an immersive energy that took the internet and critics by storm upon the movie’s release. This kineticism reaches its peak at the end of the film, when the camera becomes the ball,...

Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.As part of our Cannes 2024 coverage, we invited critics and programmers to share their thoughts on one moment from a film they've seen at the festival so far.Sign up for the Weekly Edit to receive exclusive reports from the Croisette straight to your inbox.Miriam BaleElizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes by Nanette Burstein (co-director of The Kid Stays in the Picture) is in some ways a straightforward chronological documentary of the movie star's fascinating, tabloid-centric life. What makes the film formally interesting, though, is the separation of voice and image. Burstein’s reliance on audio recordings of Taylor made in 1964 and 1985 foregrounds her remarkable voice over her blinding beauty, seen in stills and film clips. Taylor's voice, even at ages 32 and 53, can range from girlish and flirtatious to bawdy and shrill, sometimes within the same statement. When she describes how the AIDS crisis led...

The Cannes Film Festival keeps on chugging, with more acquisitions, more premieres and an honorary Palme d’Or awarded to a studio for the first time.

The Glorious Return of Jacques Audiard

French filmmaker Jacques Audiard is a consistent staple at Cannes. His film “A Prophet” won the Grand Prix in 2010, 2012’s “Rust and Bone” competed for the Palme d’Or and 2015’s “Deephan” won the Palme d’Or. The last time Audiard was at Cannes in 2021, his smaller “Paris, 13th District” competed for the Palme d’Or.

Now he’s back with “Emilia Pérez,” a musical crime comedy about an escaped Mexican cartel leader undergoing gender-affirming surgery that stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and Édgar Ramírez. And judging by the response to the film, it sounds like he has a good shot at Cannes’ top prize once again.

The film “landed the loudest, most enthusiastic standing ovation,...

The latest Yorgos Lanthimos / Emma Stone team-up, a film called Kinds of Kindness (previously known as And), is set to reach theatres on June 21st – but first, it’s having its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which is now underway. The first reviews of Kinds of Kindness are now arriving online, and they’re describing this 165 minute “triptych fable” as dark, bizarre, insidious, intriguing, brilliant, bonkers, disturbing, puzzling, funny, surreal, creepy, mind-bending, twisted, and innovative. We have rounded up some of them below led by one from our own Eric Walkuski!

Our man @ericwalkuski just caught #KindsofKindness: Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness defies easy description; it's a trilogy of morbid tales that will beguile some, repel others. Uneven as a whole, the film still has enough shock value and absurd dark humor to keep you on your…

— JoBlo.com (@joblocom) May 17, 2024

Vulture‘s Bilge Ebiri says, Lanthimos can “reclaim his...

Mallory Wanecque, the breakout actor of “The Worst Ones” who headlines Cannes competition title “Beating Hearts,” is starring alongside Sami Bouajila (“Through the Fire”) in “Vultures,” a thriller directed by Peter Dourountzis (“Rascal”).

Produced by Mediawan-owned 24-25 Films (“Black Box”), “Vultures” is represented internationally by Ginger & Fed, the new international film sales arm of Federation Studios headed by former TF1 Studio boss Sabine Chemaly. The cast is completed by Sami Bouajila (“Through the Fire”), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (“All Your Faces”), Pierre Lottin (“The Night of the 12th”) and Valerie Donzelli (“Declaration of War”).

“Vultures” will be delivered during the second quarter of 2025. Bouajila stars as Samuel, a journalist who partners with his intern daughter Ava to cover the brutal murder of a young girl that lead them to a male supremacist group headed by the enigmatic Nemesis. The movie marks Dourountzis’ follow-up to “Rascal,” an edgy film starring Pierre Deladonchamps as an outsider-turned-killer.

After months of speculation, the critical book has finally been opened on Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. The early word? Predominantly positive, with some very high highs and inevitably a few low lows.

Below, we run through some of the first reactions.

Deadline’s Damon Wise praised the movie, calling it a “mad modern masterwork that reinvents the possibilities of cinema”. He said the film is “something of a mess; unruly, exaggerated and drawn to pretension like a moth to a flame. It is also, however, a pretty stunning achievement, the work of a master artist who has taken to Imax like Caravaggio to canvas. It is a true modern masterwork of the kind that outrages with its sheer audacity.”

He continued: “Halfway through, there’s a very audacious gimmick that tears down the fourth wall in ways younger filmmakers can only dream of. Coppola breaks many of the cardinal...

Despite being one of the longest-running live-action sitcoms of all time, you don't hear much about "My Three Sons" anymore. The series ran for an impressive 12 seasons beginning in 1960, producing 380 episodes of wholesome sitcom scenarios during a decade of tremendous upheaval. "The real world was quite tumultuous and revolution was in the air," star Barry Livingston told CBS News in a 2009 retrospective, "and we were still eating Uncle Charley's cookies and having milk."

"My Three Sons" doesn't have the enduring legacy of more thought-provoking shows of the '60s and '70s, like "M*A*S*H" and "The Twilight Zone," nor is it typically mentioned in the same breath as all-time-great comedies like "I Love Lucy" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Despite the show's absence from most abridged versions of TV history, though, it still connected with audiences in its time: the series about a widower raising three sons as a...

"I am a film director, and I work with a visual language, with a visual medium. And I try to make virtue of the use of this visual medium. And I try to make sure what I do speaks the language of cinema." –Luca Guadagnino. His latest film Challengers (final trailer here) is finally landing in theaters for everyone to enjoy this week. In celebration of this release, the UK movie magazine Little White Lies and video editor Luís Azevedo have created a supercut highlighting "The Colors Of Luca Guadagnino." It's a quick video at just 2-1/2 minutes featuring shots from almost all of his films, showing how he works his way through hot and cold colors depending on the mood. No matter what, his film always have vivid colors. Guadagnino's exceptional filmography includes: The Protagonists (1999), Melissa P. (2005), I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Suspiria...

French actor Guillaume Canet is starring, writing and producing the new Netflix thriller Ad Vitam.

Rodolphe Lauga (It’s Complicated) is directing the action film, which has begun shooting in Paris. Netflix will release the movie worldwide next year.

Canet plays Franck Lazareff who, after surviving an attempt on his life, finds his wife has been kidnapped by a mysterious group of armed men. Trying to rescue her, Frank finds his past catching up with him. Stéphane Caillard, Nassim Lyes, Zita Hanrot and Alexis Manenti co-star.

Canet and Lauga co-wrote the script to Ad Vitam in association with David Corona and Canet is producing, together with Jean Cottin for the Cabanes shingle.

Canet recently directed himself as Gallic comic book hero Asterix in the live-action feature Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom and appeared in the French thriller Breaking Point. from director Yvan Attal. The multi-hyphenate has directed several films, including...

“Beating Hearts” (“L’amour ouf”), an epic crime romance directed by Gilles Lellouche and slated to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, has lured major distributors in key markets ahead of its world premiere.

The sprawling movie, which is budgeted in the $30 million range, is financed, co-produced represented in international markets by Studiocanal. One of the most anticipated and ambitious French movies set for a theatrical release in 2024, “Beating Hearts” was produced by Hugo Selignac at Chi-Fou-Mi, a Mediawan company, and Alain Attal’s Les Films du Tresor.

Studiocanal will distribute the film in Germany and Australia, as well as France, with a release set for Oct. 16. The company has sold it to Cineart in Benelux, Filmcoopi in Switzerland, Feelgood in Greece, Lucky Red in Italy, Lusomundo in Portugal, Kinoswiat in Poland, Greenlight Films in Ukraine, Capella in Russia and Pinema in Turkey. Studiocanal will be closing more deals at the Cannes Film Festival.

Zendaya Led Challengers Receive Positive Reviews Ahead Of Its Theatrical Release. (Photo Credit – IMDb)

Zendaya-led Challengers has received positive reviews from critics, and it will have an amazing impact on its theatrical release, which is still a few days away. The actress recently received much praise for her performance in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two and now in this Luca Guadagnino directorial. Scroll below to find out what the critics are saying about it.

Cast of Challengers-

Emmy winners Zendaya and Josh O’Connor are featured in the sports drama as Tashi and Patrick. The Spider-Man: Homecoming actress is one of the rising stars in Hollywood, and West Side Story fame Mike Faist will also support her.

About Challengers-

It is a sports romance drama featuring Zendaya as the lead, and the story revolves around her character, Tashi. She is a former tennis player who took her husband Art,...

Another gorgeous new supercut video created & edited by the talented Luís Azevedo. The Colours Of Alex Garland (it's spelled "colours" because Little White Lies is a UK film magazine) is a supercut looking at the many colors and images in Alex Garland movies – a sci-fi visionary. They created this for the upcoming release of Alex Garland's latest movie Civil War, opening in theaters worldwide this April. Civil War is the fourth movie he has directed, following Ex Machina (2014), Annihilation (2018), and Men (2022); he also directed the series "Devs" (2022) for FX / Hulu. Before getting into directing, Garland also wrote the scripts for 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), Never Let Me Go (2010), and Dredd (2012) - though none of these are included in this supercut. The video also uses the "ambient" color mode feature where a solid color appears around the video in the middle of the frame. Just makes me want to watch all of these movies again.

Exclusive: Having successfully adapted The Summer I Turned Pretty books into the popular Prime Video YA series, Wiip is aiming to do the same with another YA title. The independent studio has acquired Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ novel Little White Lies, to develop for television.

Like the breakout first season of Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, Little White Lies takes place over a debutante season.

It is a mystery series about a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks who agrees to move in with her estranged maternal grandmother and do a debutante year, but only because she’s determined to figure out which scion of Southern high society is her biological father.

Wiip’s Paul Lee, Mark Roybal, and Nate Winslow will executive produce alongside Barnes and A Star Is Born executive producer Heather Parry, who brought the project to the studio.

“Heather and I grew...

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is the most contentious of the first three "Indiana Jones" movies. Director Steven Spielberg's filmmaking instincts are sharp as ever, as is Harrison Ford's charisma, and even before the mine tunnel sequence, the film moves like a roller coaster in the best way possible.

But in aping early 20th-century pulp, the film inherits their exoticized distortions of non-American cultures. "Temple of Doom" is mostly set in British-occupied India, but the villains are not these colonizers. No, Indy and co. face off against an indigenous threat: the vicious Thuggee cult that enslaves children and makes human sacrifices to the Hindu god Kali. I'm admittedly not an expert on Indian culture (nor were the writers of the movie), so I'll defer to one who is; Indian-Canadian writer Saffron Maeve has taken the film to task over at Little White Lies. Otherwise, I'll let...

Already one of France’s most beloved and bankable actors (“The Stronghold”), Gilles Lellouche is about to graduate as a big-shot filmmaker five years after delivering his sophomore outing, “Sink or Swim,” a B.O. hit which lured more than four million moviegoers (over $35 million) in theaters.

His next movie, “Beating Hearts” (“L’amour Ouf”), budgeted in the €30 million range, is epic in many ways. And not just because of its breadth and running time exceeding three hours. A crime romance loosely based on Neville Thompson’s 1997 novel “Jackie Loves Johnser Ok,” the movie is an emotional rollercoaster spanning over 15 years in the lives of star-crossed lovers. It took Lellouche over a decade to write (alongside Audrey Diwan and Ahmed Hamidi) and four months to shoot with a cast mixing rising and famous actors, a pulsating soundtrack of cult 1980s and 1990s songs, topnotch key crew and dream-like musical interludes created by (La) Horde.

‘Cuts deep… reminiscent of Cronenberg’s freaky ’80s masterpiece The Fly… delightfully provocative…’

★★★★

NME

‘Akin to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return… Thoughtful, poignant, confusing, funny, sexy, gross – it’s a lot… long live the new flesh’

Little White Lies

From the auteur of body horror himself – visionary director David Cronenberg – comes the critically acclaimed Crimes Of The Future in a brand-new Limited Edition Dual 4K/Blu-ray Box Set.

The 2022 sci-fi epic has been lauded as ‘provocatively feverish stuff from the dearly missed vintage annals of Cronenberg’ (Rogerbert.com), and bears the Canadian maestro’s hallmarks, delving into the depths of dystopia to bring audiences fresh iterations of horror and now Crimes of The Future is available now from the masters in the field Second Sight Films.

The box set comes as a dual format edition, including both Uhd and Blu-ray versions, with the main feature and bonus features...

Variety is expanding its international coverage with the appointment of well-respected trade correspondent Alex Ritman as its London Bureau Chief.

Ritman, who is based in London, was U.K. correspondent at The Hollywood Reporter for nine years. During that time, he was nominated for several National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards, co-winning in 2017 for a feature about Leonardo DiCaprio and a major international corruption scandal. He was most recently nominated for a profile of Daniel Radcliffe. Prior to joining THR, Ritman wrote for publications including The Guardian, Time Out, The Sunday Times, Esquire, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times and Little White Lies. He spent several years in the Middle East as the main film writer for The National newspaper.

At Variety, Ritman will contribute to magazine features and web stories with an emphasis on U.K. film and media, production and financial news, as well as industry analysis,...

Carey Mulligan got all but inked for her “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” audition.

The Oscar-nominated actress recalled trying out for the 2011 David Fincher thriller during Variety’s Actors on Actors alongside “Shame” co-star Michael Fassbender. Mulligan was so determined to land the role that she almost changed her entire appearance to what Fassbender called a “punk sort of look.”

“I think I even, like, almost dyed my hair black or something,” Mulligan said. “I definitely wore a nose ring. And I got my friend who’s a makeup artist…” The “Maestro” star added, “I went all in. I did a Bradley [Cooper], I went all in.” She said she thinks she even “chain-smoked” before the audition.”

“It was very nice, but I obviously didn’t get the job,” said Mulligan, who is, this year, up for awards for her similarly transformative performance in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.”

Instead of Mulligan,...

All interpersonal relationships are complicated. But there’s just something classically (even banally) fraught in the complex negotiation of emotion between Male and Female, a knotty 50-foot Route 66 twine ball full of interwoven power dynamics, sexual dysfunction and societal expectation. The heat fractals thrown off by this ceaseless Xx/Xy friction have propelled 10,000 of human civilization and countless works of art and storytelling—from Bible stories to sexy Netflix originals like Fair Play and May December. Or, for that matter, the three projects in this month’s Fiscal Spotlight.

Each of these three short narrative films center female protagonists, unmoored in the midst of an existential crisis brought on by a male counterpart. In two of the films, the male in question is a romantic foil—or at least perceived to be. The third explores the dynamic between student and educator, placing its dynamic in the context of artistic potential...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSCapital.The Palestinian Film Institute and several prominent filmmakers—including Sky Hopinka, Miko Revereza, Maryam Tafakory, Charlie Shackleton, and Basma al-Sharif—have withdrawn from the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam in response to the festival’s messaging about the war in Gaza. On the festival’s opening night, a group of activists took to the stage holding a banner that read “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; on November 10, IDFA published a statement apologizing to patrons who may have been offended by this “hurtful slogan.” On November 11, the Pfi and the advocacy group Workers for Palestine Netherlands announced their withdrawal from IDFA: “As the world’s largest documentary film festival, IDFA holds the responsibility to respond to the plight of journalists and documentarians on the ground in Gaza,...

Martin Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker have seen more movies than you. Both of them have long been champions of independent and international cinema, and they have each done their part to amplify titles and filmmakers that might be lost in the sea of the commercial American film market. When they're not making movies, they're likely overseeing the restorations of lost classics or recommending great movies you've never heard of on Turner Classic Movies. But they're also constantly incorporating nods and tips of the cap to those films in their own work.

Schoonmaker was in a relationship with celebrated British filmmaker Michael Powell, the co-director (with Emeric Pressburger) of such classics as "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," "I Know Where I'm Going!," "Black Narcissus," and "The Red Shoes." Their romance spanned a decade, starting in 1980 and sadly ending in 1990 when Powell died. In a recent interview with Little White Lies,...

The actor and writer on hotel breakfasts that trigger his Adhd, and why cooking helps him cope with his troubled past and successful present

Nick Frost’s new book starts with a recipe for beef stroganoff in his mum’s handwriting that he discovered long after she died. That recollection competes with a memory of his dad’s Sunday lunch, his special way with gravy (involving a can of McEwan’s Export). Also in there is his Welsh auntie’s take on cawl soup, which he now makes for his own three kids; and his trademark “pies in a bowl”, which was a staple of the time he shared a flat with his eternal friend and collaborator Simon Pegg. Though cooking has always been something like therapy for Frost, it was only when a publisher asked him to write a cookbook that he realised that the story of his life...

Believe the hype – It Follows – leads the way as a genuinely scary, modern horror classic and now this nightmare inducing freakout fest, from award-winning director David Robert Mitchell, is about to creep up and shock you with an immense new Limited Edition 4K Uhd / Blu-ray dual release from Second Sight Films.

Lauded by critics and audiences alike, It Follows has been described by The Independent as ‘Ingenious…… gets under the skin’ and by Little White Lies as ‘Petrifying and refreshingly original… unremittingly pursues the two greatest themes in both art and life’ and now Second Sight Films has relentlessly chased down the best special features, contributors and design for a stellar must-have release of this seminal film.

Care-free high school student Jay Height (Maika Monroe – Independence Day: Resurgence) has just started dating a ‘nice’ guy – Hugh (Jake Weary – Zombeavers), but they have sex, everything changes and life will never be the same again…...

In the years leading up to its release in 2013, all signs pointed to "World War Z" becoming an epic disaster. First, there was the furor over its script, which went through multiple drafts written by Matthew Michael Carnahan and J. Michael Straczynski (who wound up sharing story credit), along the way transforming Max Brooks' inventive source material -- a fictional oral history of a zombie apocalypse comprised of accounts from multiple survivors -- into what read on paper as a milquetoast "A-lister saves the world" tentpole. Then came the news that the film would be reshooting more or less its entire third act, causing its budget to further balloon and delaying its release date by six months.

Unsurprisingly, the final movie result is a Frankenstein's creation that plays as a bombastic zombie action flick for its first two-thirds before abruptly changing into a much more low-key survival horror thriller...

Has Sofia Coppola done it again? The acclaimed writer/director is currently putting together what kids these days would call a "heater," riding high on streak of well-received movies between 2017's remake of "The Beguiled," "On the Rocks" in 2020, and now "Priscilla." The biopic of Priscilla Presley, Elvis' wife and a thoroughly compelling firebrand in her own right, stars Cailee Spaeny as the title character opposite Jacob Elordi as the famous singer. Marking a stark departure from director Baz Luhrmann's approach in last year's "Elvis," Coppola set out to tell the story from the perspective of someone who hasn't really received much of a spotlight in history, rather than confining a figure as important as Priscilla to a bit role or a supporting player on the margins.

Based on Priscilla Presley's memoir "Elvis and Me," the film just held its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and has...

Sofia Coppola’s new film about Priscilla Presley is earning rave reviews.

The biopic, based on 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, by the ex-wife of Elvis Presley, had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Monday.

Read More: Emotional Priscilla Presley Gets A Hug From Sofia Coppola After Biopic Screening At Venice Film Festival

Starring Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis, the film tells the story of how the iconic couple first met and fell in love, as well as their tumultuous marriage.

Writing for IndieWire, critic David Ehrlich praised Coppola for taking a “soft and muted” approach to the material, in contrast to the “orgiastic blockbuster” the was Baz Lurhmann’s 2022 biopic “Elvis”.

Little White Lies critic Hannah Strong, who also wrote the 2022 book Sofia Coppola: Forever Young, described “Priscilla” as “a melancholy fairy tale about first love and enduring mythology,” adding that Spaeny possesses “a...

Yellow Veil Pictures and Vinegar Syndrome announced have co-acquired North American rights for “Riddle of Fire,” the feature debut of writer and director Weston Razooli. The movie follows three mischievous children as they embark on an odyssey when their mother asks them to run an errand.

The film was also an official selection at this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and will screen on the closing night of the Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness section. It stars Lio Tipton, Charles Halford, Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters, Phoebe Ferro, and Lorelei Olivia Mote. The film is produced by David Atrakchi, Sohrab Mirmont, Razooli and Tipton. Executive producers are Marlow Griffin Lyddon, Brendon Griffin Lyddon, David Wiener, Kate Wiener, Jay Van Hoy, Sophie Meister, and Donna Gruneich. Mister Smith Entertainment is handling worldwide sales.

This is the first time that the two distributors have partnered. Yellow Veil and Vinegar Syndrome are planning...

Emmy contender “Reality” (minimally) dramatizes Reality Winner’s arrest and interrogation by the FBI. The Nsa-linguist-turned-whistleblower received a record-long sentence, five years and three months, for stealing and disseminating classified documents related to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Tina Satter’s verbatim stage adaptation of the FBI transcript, the curiously (un)punctuated “Is This A Room,” sought to restore some of the agency that was taken from Winner when statements she had made prior to being formally arrested were levied against her in court. Jessica Kiang (Variety) argues just as much, writing that the framework “proves that sometimes what you say can be used for you too.” The play’s filmed rendition, also directed by Satter, got positive write-ups and unanimous praise for lead Sydney Sweeney after premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, where HBO purchased it for an undisclosed price. What had been hyped as a big-screen...

Saturday marks the final day of the Cannes Film Festival, with the usual closing ceremonies and awards presentations along with the out-of-competition premiere of Pixar’s “Elemental.” Let us all hope that Disney release earns better festival notices than Lucafilm’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”

“Perfect Days” makes a perfect debut.

Perfect Days. Did Wim Wenders just make his best film since Until The End Of The World? Holy crap.

— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) May 26, 2023

Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” was the hero of the day, earning strong notices and the now-standard standing ovation. TheWrap’s Nicholas Barber called it “an endearing, admiring portrait of a decent man.” The near-consensus was that Wenders had made his best narrative film in a very long time. The film has already been acquired by Neon, which has been on a shopping spree with “this film”Perfect Days, “Robot Dreams” and “Anatomy of a Fall.

Marvel studios tried to recruit Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix for their cinematic universe a couple of times. Even though the two parties have yet to come to an agreement, Phoenix asserted he had nothing but respect for Marvel films.

Joaquin Phoenix compared doing comic book movies to doing a play Joaquin Phoenix | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Phoenix has recently entered the genre of superheroes by playing the Joker in Todd Phillips’ titular film about the iconic villain. But before that, his name was in possible consideration for several comic book properties.

Although Phoenix had yet to commit to a superhero feature until Phillips’ Joker, he shared he had a fascination with the sub-genre. He likened one aspect of comic book movies to theater work.

“There are different interpretations. It’s so interesting; I was just thinking about it today, it seems so unique in some ways to comic books. I think there’s probably room for that.

"I don't want you to tell us what you do, I want you to tell us who you are..." The great Jack Nicholson just turned 86 this year. In celebration of most recent birthday, Little White Lies debuted this terrific video retrospective looking back at his illustrious career in cinema. A five-minute-long journey through his many iconic characters. The Transformation of Jack Nicholson is the latest video made by Portuguese editor Luís Azevedo (who we've featured many times before). It contains footage from many of Jack Nicholson's best roles throughout his five decades in movies. In 1970, he starred in Five Easy Pieces in what became his persona-defining role. Aside from The Shining, clips in this are from his best films including The Departed, A Few Good Men, Hoffa, Chinatown, Anger Management, Mars Attacks, The Two Jakes, About Schmidt, Easy Rider, and of course One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As always,...

Ari Aster’s first two films, 2018’s “Hereditary” and 2019’s “Midsommar,” cultivated the young director enough cachet for A24 to hand him a blank check for “Beau is Afraid,” his “Jewish ‘Lord of the Rings’” about the psychological horror of visiting your mother. The three-hour horror-comedy epic is the indie studio’s most expensive movie to date. Starring Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix as the stunted and anxiety-ridden Beau of the title, the movie defies easy categorization and is, expectedly, inspiring awe and disgust in nearly equal measure – often within individual viewers.

Beau lives in an urban hellscape that approximates what “New York City looked like in the mind of Travis Bickle and Bernhard Goetz” and is in a persistent state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it finally does, it’s a chandelier on top of his mother’s head (it wouldn’t be an Aster film...

On the surface, World War Z looked like a big financial success back in 2013 when it scored a whopping $540 million at the global box office. But according to Deadline, the film barely broke even for Paramount at the time. A variety of factors, including extensive reshoots, ballooned the budget up to $270 million per the outlet, plus another estimated $160 million for marketing. The Marc Forster-directed zombie blockbuster starring Brad Pitt didn’t make much of a dent for the studio. The tepid critical reception, on top of all the rumors of a troubled production behind the scenes, seemed like the final nail in the coffin for this fledgling franchise.

But according to the LA Times, Paramount and Forster had always viewed the big screen adaptation of the incredibly popular Max Brooks novel as just the first chapter of a film trilogy. And initially, Paramount did intend to move forward with a sequel.

Spring is on the horizon (yay!) but we’re still deep into winter (grr). And that means time for reading. Our latest roundup of noteworthy new books connected to the world of cinema features a typically diverse lineup: Bong Joon Ho, the art of James Cameron’s latest, screwball comedies, Alfred Hitchcock, and––’tis the season––Oscar history.

Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema by Karen Han (Abrams)

In recent years Little White Lies and Abrams have released wonderfully comprehensive, immaculately designed books about Joel and Ethan Coen, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, and most recently Sofia Coppola. The latest subject, Bong Joon Ho, could not be more deserving of this treatment. Dissident Cinema is written by the ever-astute Karen Han, who shares Bong’s life story while diving into each entry of his filmography. Yes, there is much to be said about Parasite, The Host, Mother, Snowpiercer, Okja, and Memories of Murder.

Woody Allen might still be persona non grata for many in the U.S., but international distributors will likely be clamoring to see his new film, Coup de Chance, which will be presented to buyers at the upcoming European Film Market.

WestEnd Films, in collaboration with Gravier Productions, will kick off sales for the film in Berlin next week.

Allen’s 50th feature marks the director’s French-language debut and features an ensemble cast of local stars, including Lou De Laâge (The Innocents), Valérie Lemercier (Aline), Melvil Poupaud (Summer of 85) and Niels Schneider (Heartbeats).

In a statement, Allen called the the movie a “story of romance, passion and violence set in contemporary Paris. Shot all over the city and a little bit in the countryside, it evolves around a romance between two young people who are old friends and devolves into marital infidelity and ultimately crime.”

The movie reunites Allen...

Horror fans are no strangers to the curse of deleted scenes and the seemingly arbitrary nature of the MPAA. Genre heavyweights like Brandon Cronenberg must contend with a rating system that can make or break a film, while studios cut R-rated features, endeavoring to garner that more accessible, ever-so-profitable PG-13. Throughout horror history, there are hundreds of excised scenes, some of which, including the now infamous baboon from "The Fly," are readily available, with others, such as many "Friday the 13th" deaths, relegated to the annals of "could have been."

Even more curious, however, are ideas so brutal they were never filmed, to begin with. While brutality at times seems to be the genre's core attraction, there are times when, either at the behest of a studio or filmmaker, planned scenes are scrapped. While the reasons differ from production to production, here we'll be looking at six ideas from famous...

French actor and director Guillaume Canet has revealed he is feeling the pressure ahead of the release next week of his ambitious 70M production Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom.

Canet directs and stars in the film as iconic plucky Gaul Asterix in an all-star ensemble cast also featuring Gilles Lellouche as Obelix, Vincent Cassel as Julius Caesar, Marion Cotillard as Cleopatra and Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimović as Caesar’s bodyguard Antivirus.

The production is Canet’s eighth feature after 2006 breakout Tell No One, 2010 hit Little White Lies, Brooklyn-set, English-language debut Blood Ties and the smaller more personal pandemic-shot film Lui.

Long-time collaborator Alain Attal at Trésor Films produces with Pathé and Yohan Baiada at Les Enfants Terribles.

Pathé will launch Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom on 1,200 screens on February 1. Local media is hailing the release as the biggest film event of early 2023.

Canet has said he...

I don't just like movies, I love them! If you also love movies as much as I do, then you're probably familiar with the "film bro" - a nerdy dude who is so entirely infatuated with cinema that's all he can talk about or think about. (Here's two good articles about them: on No Film School or Little White Lies.) Film bros can be found anywhere and everywhere, usually lurking in various dark corners of the internet, waiting to slide into some woman's DMs the moment she mentions David Fincher or Punch Drunk Love. Remarkably, there's a new film at the Toronto Film Festival this year called I Like Movies, and it's an awkward coming-of-age drama about a "film bro" from Canada. It's not denigrating film bros, or turning them into someone to laugh at in a movie, it's actually a remarkably empathetic and warm-hearted film about the challenges of...

Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment presents the controversial cult classic, I Spit on Your Grave, coming to 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on 26th September, with brand new extras. “Just as visceral and horrifying as it was when it hit theatres” High-Def Digest “A cult classic” Little White Lies “Relentlessly unflinching” Horror News News/Social Media posts appreciated with #ISpitOnYourGrave Reviews: Screener available Triple …

The post Infamous cult classic I Spit On Your Grave coming to 4K Ultra HD from 26th September appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

Alexandra Slater took part in the first Unifrance Critics Lab, devised to strengthen the ties between English-speaking film critics and French industry.

Unifrance Critics Lab participant Alexandra Slater and Screen International’s reviews editor and chief critic Fionnuala Halligan discuss this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which wraps tomorrow (May 28), and the state of French cinema.

Watch the video above.

Slater was one of four up-and-coming UK and US film journalists selected for the inaugural Unifrance Critics Lab, devised to strengthen the ties between English-speaking film critics and French industry, as well as give festival access to up-and-coming freelance film writers.

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we discuss perhaps the greatest living actor: Gene Hackman! Conor and I are joined by one of our good, good friends Mitchell Beaupre! Senior Editor at Letterboxd, co-host of their Weekend Watchlist podcast (as well as the brand new podcast Acting Out with Ryan and Mitchell), and contributor to great sites like The Film Stage (!), Paste Magazine, The Playlist, and Little White Lies. Our B-Sides today are: All Night Long, The Package, Heartbreakers, and Welcome to Mooseport.

We talk Hackman’s beginnings, Mitchell’s superb piece on Hackman’s spectacular 2001, the actor’s own reflections on his accomplished career, his mid-career hiatus, and – finally – his frequent combativeness with his directors. Additional topics include Tommy Lee Jones’ wild ‘90s,...

With the 2022 Cannes Film Festival just a few weeks away, we’re delighted to exclusively announce the “Unifrance Critics Lab,” a new initiative by Unifrance designed to strengthen the ties between English-speaking film critics and French artists and film industry, as well as to give French festival and industry access to outstanding up-and-coming freelance film writers, who were nominated by leading film critics.

This program will provide a valuable opportunity for both established and up-and-coming US and UK film journalists to meet with their French counterparts, discover the new generation of emerging French filmmakers and talents and their exciting works and better connect with key French auteurs and industry players, while broadening their professional opportunities.

“The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most important film festivals in the world, but we recognize the cost to attend is a barrier to entry for many writers who love French cinema,” said Daniela Elstner,...