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Although highly regarded as a theater star -- he earned a Tony nomination in 2006 for "Awake and Sing!" and just returned years later to Broadway in "The Price" -- Mark Ruffalo is for most people a bona fide movie star. For his film performances, he has been nominated for three Oscars, two Golden Globes and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning one as part of the ensemble cast of "Spotlight" in 2015.

These days, however, Ruffalo's greatest fame is largely thanks to his being part of the Marvel universe, having taken over the roles of Dr. Bruce Banner and The Hulk in 2012's "Marvel's The Avengers." After a cameo performance in 2013's "Iron Man 3," Ruffalo's Hulk also appeared in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" in 2015, "Thor: Ragnarok" in 2017 and the final "The Avengers" movies.

Ruffalo has fashioned a remarkable career appearing in Arthur Miller plays, Kenneth Lonergan films and Marvel superhero...

Exclusive: Following its successful inaugural edition last year, Poor Things and The Favourite producer Element Pictures is gearing up for the second year of Storyhouse, its Dublin-based screenwriting festival that celebrates storytellers and storytelling.

This year’s event, which will be held at the Irish capital’s Light House Cinema on April 3rd and 4th, will see Oscar and BAFTA winners Peter Straughan and Kenneth Lonergan among the festival’s illustrious guests. Straughan won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay on Sunday for Conclave while Lonergan won Best Original Screenplay in 2017 for Manchester By The Sea. Straughan’s further credits include Wolf Hall and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy while Lonergan’s credits also include You Can Count On Me and Gangs of New York.

Laurie Nunn and Nia DaCosta will also both speak at the event next month. Nunn is best known as the creator of Netflix’s hit...

While his “Succession” character Roman Roy may not have ended up on top by the end of the HBO series, Kieran Culkin has proven a winner tonight after receiving the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor at the 97th Academy Awards.

Culkin’s first nomination and win come for his performance in Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain,” which features the two actors as cousins retracing their roots and rediscovering personal grievances while on a group trip to Poland. The actor takes home the prize over fellow nominee and former “Succession” co-star Jeremy Strong (“The Apprentice”), as well as Yura Borisov (“Anora”), Edward Norton (“A Complete Unknown”), and Guy Pearce (“The Brutalist”).

In his speech, on receiving the highest accolade of his industry Culkin said, “I’ve just been acting my whole life. It’s just been a part of what I do, so this is…I felt like this was never my trajectory.

Janet Planet.The image is tough to see until our eyes adjust: a girl, not yet a teenager, perched on the edge of a bed, alone, ensconced in darkness, her head bisected by the edge of the frame. She’s looking. Is it at something, or for something? She gets up, walks outside, the deafening susurrus of cicadas all around her. She makes a call on a payphone, announces herself as Lacy. “I’m gonna kill myself,” she deadpans into the receiver. A pause. “I said I’m gonna kill myself if you don’t come get me.” She hangs up.This is the first sequence of Janet Planet (2024), the first film by Annie Baker—and it immediately exhibits the qualities of her formidable work as a playwright: the curious quiet, the felt time, the mordant sense of humor. Like Kenneth Lonergan before her, Baker is a celebrated stage dramatist...

Movies to Watch if You Liked A Real Pain: “A Real Pain” marks Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore directorial feature. As an actor, he has worked on several projects, many of which show him as a majorly anxious individual. His latest project puts him in a similar lane, where he appears just as physically reserved. However, the narrative unpeels so many layers of his personality that it is hard to put him in a single box. The same is true with his co-star, Kieran Culkin, who appears lively and impulsive but has a darker emotional core.

As Eisenberg’s character describes, Culkin plays someone who ‘lights up a room and then shits on everything inside of it’. The film is a buddy tragicomedy about their oddball pair. Eisenberg plays a buttoned-up family man who is facing life’s challenges, presumably, in stride. Culkin plays a free-spirited 30-something man who is stuck in a limbo state.

Before making their feature directorial debut with Sundance entry Sorry, Baby — in which they also star and wrote the script — the longest film Eva Victor had ever directed came in with a running time of approximately 60 seconds.

Victor, who uses they/she pronouns, found success in the late 2010s via viral videos on Twitter, often lampooning trending news stories like the creation of a Straight Pride parade in Boston. They regularly racked up millions of views while simultaneously writing stories on the female-focused satire website The Reductress with headlines like, “‘I Want Children Someday,’ Says Man Who Will at Best Stand There Saying, ‘Push Babe.'” At the time, the Bay Area native was living in Brooklyn and looking to break into comedy, ideally with a staffed writing job “at a late night show to one of those guys,” as Victor puts it.

But when the pandemic lockdown happened, Victor didn’t mainline comedies,...

There’s never a shortage of hidden gems in the Sundance Film Festival’s short film program. (Last year’s lineup even featured former First Daughter Malia Obama’s directorial debut.) A scan of the selections for 2025 revealed one notable project that marks a new big-screen collaboration for a Hollywood couple: Oscar-winning filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan and Emmy-nominated Succession star J. Smith-Cameron.

Writer-director Alex Heller’s Debaters is a 10-minute short that will screen this week in Park City, Utah, when Sundance rolls out Jan. 23-Feb. 2. It premieres on day one, Jan. 23, as part of the Short Film Program 1 at Library Center Theatre. The film is set in a debate chamber where affluent high school students argue a bill on minimum wage in an effort to impress two working-class adult judges, played by Lonergan and Smith-Cameron. The judges sit in the back of a class observing the competition before eventually weighing...

Taylor Sheridan may be best known for Yellowstone but he cracked screenwriting on the big screen with films like Sicario and Hell or High Water. Featuring themes and genres that would later on define his style, the latter was a neo-Western starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, which gave Sheridan his first Oscar nomination.

While the film was also nominated in several other categories including Best Picture, the year had tough competition with the likes of Damien Chazelle, Mike Mills, and more being strong contenders. Sheridan lost the Best Original Screenplay Award to Manchester by the Sea, and to be honest, that was deserved.

Taylor Sheridan lost the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay to Casey Affleck’s incredible movie about grief Taylor Sheridan in Yellowstone | Credits: Paramount

Taylor Sheridan began his career as an actor but then pivoted to screenwriting when he was tired of not getting the right roles.

Howards End is a sharp, funny series that fans of Joe Wright's 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice need to see. Pride & Prejudice made audiences swoon for Matthew Macfadyen long before Succession showed just how slimy and off-putting he can be. Howards End is like the missing link between Pride & Prejudice and Succession. The BBC One/Starz series was adapted from E.M. Forster's classic novel by Oscar-winning screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) and directed by Hettie Macdonald, who helmed several Doctor Who episodes, including the acclaimed "Blink." Hayley Atwell (known for Captain America: The First Avenger) gives a strong performance as the lead, but the best part of the series is Matthew Macfadyen in a role that's absolutely perfect for him. If your favorite parts of Pride & Prejudice were Mr. Darcy's more awkward stumbles, you need to watch this series.

Sundance on Monday debuted the list of short films to be presented at this year’s festival.

57 were selected, in total, with shorts to screen as part of eight curated programs that will include fiction, nonfiction, and animated titles from the U.S. and globally. Chosen from 11,153 submissions, this year’s shorts collectively represent 28 countries and territories.

Stated the Sundance Film Festival’s Director of Programming, Kim Yutani, “Our program would never be complete without a curation of outstanding short films, and we’re excited to share the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Program today. These projects are varied in style and substance, but across all categories they represent the power of short-form storytelling beautifully.”

Added Mike Plante, Senior Programmer, Short Film, “Our Short Film Program celebrates fresh styles and unique stories. The short run time encourages innovation. Audiences will find much of the next generation of film talent here,...

Sundance added 57 short films to its impressive 2025 lineup on Monday, including new films starring Dagmara Domińcyzk, J. Smith Cameron, Kenneth Lonergan, and Martin Starr.

“Our program would never be complete without a curation of outstanding short films, and we’re excited to share the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Program today,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “These projects are varied in style and substance, but across all categories, they represent the power of short-form storytelling beautifully.”

“Our Short Film Program celebrates fresh styles and unique stories. The short run time encourages innovation,” said Mike Plante, Senior Programmer, Short Film. “Audiences will find much of the next generation of film talent here, with raw, exciting and inspired filmmaking from around the world in each of our eight programs.”

According to the Sundance press release, “The 57 short films selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival were chosen from 11,153 submissions.

With the features lineup out of the way last week, the 2025 Sundance Film Festival has revealed the short films headed to Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, for the event’s 41st edition. Beginning January 23 through February 2, festival attendees can catch 57 short films from 28 countries and territories — including live action, animated, and nonfiction documentary titles. Shorts will also be available online during the festival’s second half along with select feature sections.

The 57 short films selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival were chosen from 11,153 submissions. Out of these submissions, 4,909 came from the U.S. and 6,244 were international. The selected films will be eligible for juried awards at the end of the festivals.

The Sundance Film Festival has long been celebrated as a platform for innovative short-form projects spanning genres from international filmmakers. Alums of the short film program include Andrea Arnold, Lake Bell, Damien Chazelle, Destin Daniel Cretton, Jay Duplass,...

Hold On To Me Darling, the Kenneth Lonergan comedy-drama starring Adam Driver, has recouped its initial Off Broadway investment, producers announced today. The $1.8 million production opened October 16 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and concludes its run on Sunday, December 22.

According to producers Seaview, Sue Wagner and John Johnson, the play, directed by Neil Pepe, has sold out every performance since beginning previews September 24.

In addition to Driver, the cast includes Heather Burns, Adelaide Clemens, Keith Nobbs, Cj Wilson and Frank Wood.

Driver stars as Strings McCrane, a self-obsessed country music star thrown into an existential midlife crisis after the death of his overbearing mother.

Awards season never really ends. Even though the Oscars typically mark the conclusion of one season, the next has already begun by the time the Academy hands out those little gold men. Predicting awards has become a cottage industry in its own right, a way to gamify the race to the Oscars by determining who has the best odds of clinching the win on Hollywood's biggest night.

To predict these things accurately, pundits look at major film festivals, box office performance, and, eventually, precursor awards to see which films are gathering the right amount of momentum to carry them to awards glory. To gain this momentum, studios launch For Your Consideration (FYC) campaigns based on their strongest contenders that can push a film over the finish line. Below, we dive into the year-round cycle of awards season, pointing out key events that can influence the race to the Oscars.

The...

The Center at West Park held its second annual Fall Benefit on Thursday, November 14 in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The evening raises funds for the nonprofit community arts center, and Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo were on the host committee. Guests were treated to a special performance of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Lobby Hero,” starring Casey Affleck, Jamie Hector, Aubrey Plaza, and Josh Radnor.

Blumhouse partnered with Facebook-owner Meta last month to get three filmmakers to test out the tech giant’s new AI tool Meta Movie Gen, including Casey Affleck, and IndieWire used this opportunity at Cwp’s Fall Benefit to ask him about it. “I think they’re cool,” Affleck said.

“It’s an opportunity for people who wouldn’t ordinarily get their hands on the resources to do certain things that you can do with movies to create worlds that are far away or super imaginative,...

Exclusive: Remember when geeky tween Jenna Rink was magically transformed into glamorous Jennifer Garner in the classic rom-com 13 Going on 30? That was two decades ago. Now that role’s being played by West End star Lucie Jones in a stage musical adapted from the beloved 2004 movie.

The show is headed for an out-of-town-tryout at the Manchester Opera House, where it will run for a limited season from September 21, 2025.

Just this past April, Garner joined fellow stars from the film — Mark Ruffalo, who played Matt Flamhaff, the boy next door who Jenna doesn’t realize holds a candle for her, and Judy Greer as Lucy Wyman, once her childhood nemesis and now an editing colleague at the fictional Poise magazine — for a 20th anniversary reunion on Zoom that spread far and wide on social media.

Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, who wrote the film’s screenplay, have penned the musical’s book,...

In 2002, it was finally all coming together for Joaquin Phoenix. He was at long last being considered a leading man after two decades of ensemble parts, and was a year removed from earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination for "Gladiator." The U.S. Army satire "Buffalo Soldiers" could have been the film to fully transform him into a full-blown, top-of-the-poster star, but it wound up getting buried for the offense of poking fun at the military in the immediate wake of 9/11 (it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival the very week of the attacks). So, it couldn't help but feel like he was more actor than M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" needed for the role of Mel Gibson's brother.

Don't get me wrong! I'm thrilled Phoenix got the part if only for his terrified reaction to the alien video, a jump scare we get to share with him as...

Jesse Eisenberg hadn’t seen “Succession” before casting Kieran Culkin to play his cousin in his Holocaust-memorial road movie “A Real Pain.” So the writer/director told IndieWire back in January 2024 when “A Real Pain” world-premiered at Sundance. As Eisenberg revealed to IndieWire during an October interview promoting the film ahead of its November release, he still hasn’t watched the HBO show that won Kieran Culkin a Best Actor Emmy for portraying zeitgeist-addled nepo baby Roman Roy. “‘Succession’ is a cultural phenomenon that I’ll definitely watch in my life, especially if I get some kind of flu where I am in bed, whatever,” Eisenberg told IndieWire.

“When you have a fever, that’s a good time to watch the show,” Culkin replied.

But the one Culkin project, film or TV, Eisenberg has seen is Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 cult classic “Margaret,” released with a theatrical cut after five years...

Adam Driver had the support of some famous friends at his opening night in a new Off-Broadway show!

The Oscar-nominated actor celebrated the opening of the Kenneth Lonergan play Hold on to Me Darling on Wednesday night (October 16) at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City.

Also pictured inside are Adam‘s co-stars Heather Burns and Adelaide Clemons.

Hold on to Me Darling is playing a limited run through December 22. Here’s a synopsis: “On learning of his mother’s death, country music icon Strings McCrane (Driver) finds himself in an existential tailspin. The only way out, he decides, is to abandon superstardom in favor of the simple life, so he moves back to his hometown in Tennessee. The simple life turns out to be anything but simple in this brilliantly observed tragicomedy, as the consequences of Strings’s success and mind-bending effects of his fame prove all but impossible to outrun.

Not far into Kenneth Lonergan’s fame-is-hell-but-what-isn’t fable Hold On To Me Darling, Adam Driver, playing a country music crossover megastar about to begin filming his latest blockbuster, pledges in an accent so thick it could dent Johnny Cash’s belt buckle that he’s going to turn his famous life around “just as soon as I get done with this goddamn space movie.”

The line, coming from Kylo Ren himself, gets a laugh, a slow build sort of thing that picks up steam as the audience makes the connection between the Driver on stage and the Driver of real life. The actor doesn’t wink, and in fact tosses off the line without much ado, but with a play as unwieldy as this one, best to accept a laugh where you can.

It’s not that Hold On To Me Darling – opening tonight Off Broadway at the Lucille...

Before Mark Ruffalo stepped into the ripped shorts of The Hulk, he began his career as a full-time character actor, with critics even drawing comparisons to Marlon Brando (see The New York Times). He plied his trade at the Stella Adler Conservatory and became known for thoughtful indies such as Joan Micklin Silver's "A Fish in the Bathtub" and supporting roles in prestige-directed titles like Ang Lee's "Ride with the Devil." However, it was his performance in Kenneth Lonergan's off-Broadway play "This Is Our Youth" that led to his breakout role in "You Can Count on Me" as Laura Linney's wayfaring brother. He thrived in very humanistic, emotionally-complex, and character-driven material. 

The positive attention Ruffalo received for "You Can Count on Me" allowed him to branch out into more mainstream projects such as "13 Going on 30," which has since become a romantic comedy classic. But...

Edward Norton still has the honor of starring in the only solo Hulk movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he is also one of the few actors to have their role replaced in the series that spans over 30 movies and 10 canonical shows. Ruffalo began his MCU journey a dozen years ago in the first Avengers blockbuster; where he “incredibly” captured the duality of Banner/Hulk better than any prior performer. Ruffalo managed to pull off the feat in a team-up event, whereas Norton, and a pre-mcu Eric Bana, had an entire feature dedicated to the hero.

Ruffalo immediately connected with audiences more than any of his predecessors, which raised the bar for how compelling this hero could be in live-action, while also rounding out the Avengers ensemble wonderfully. He gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe a big green hand to help lift the franchise to stratospheric heights. Without individual projects to focus on,...

Telluride Film Festival has announced the line-up before the festival starts on Friday, with world premieres for Edward Berger’s Conclave, RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, and Robbie Williams musical biopic Better Man.

Also making the cut in the main programme are documentaries Leonardo Da Vinci from Ken Burns, Kevin Macdonald’s One To One: John & Yoko, and R. J. Cutler’s Martha Stewart film.

Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 and Joshua Openheimer’s The End are in the main programme, alongside Cannes favourites Anora, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, All We Imagine As Light, and Emilia Pérez.

The 51st...

Unless you’re a major studio or willing to pay for a rent-spiked ski lodge––and even then––few festivals ring more exclusive than Telluride, which has the distinction / misfortune of firing the starting gun for fall festivals and that ever-deleterious phenomenon we call “Oscar buzz.” Their 2024 lineup nevertheless features some films of note: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s Rumours; Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia; Payal Kapadia’s All That We Imagine as Light; Sean Baker’s Anora; and Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple series Disclaimer.

On a repertory end, Kenneth Lonergan’s been anointed this year’s Guest Director and has programmed the following: Arch of Triumph, Barry Lyndon, Doctor Zhivago, Grand Hotel, and My Darling Clementine. And Telluride’s 2024 Special Medallion goes to Les Films du Losange, who will represent Misericordia and have their history celebrated with the following screenings: Beauty and the Beast; Charles, Dead or...

The world premieres of “The Piano Lesson,” “Conclave” and “Saturday Night” will take place at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival, which begins on Friday in the Colorado mountain town.

“The Piano Lesson” is an August Wilson adaptation directed by Malcolm Washington and starring Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington; it will be released by Netflix. “Conclave” is a Focus Features drama set admidst the election of a new pope, and the first film for German director Edward Berger since his Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front.” And Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” a Sony release, tells the story of the first episode of the long-running comedy series “Saturday Night Live.”

Other films in this year’s Telluride lineup include “The End,” a dystopian sci-fi musical starring Tilda Swinton and marking the narrative debut of “The Act of Killing” director Joshua Oppenheimer; “Nickel Boys,” a Colson Whitehead adaptation from RaMell Ross; and “The Friend,...

The national political conventions may be over, but Hollywood’s version of “the race” is just getting started as the fall festival season begins, and this year’s Telluride has plenty to offer for politicos and cinephiles alike.

The 51st annual festival gets underway Friday in Colorado with a slate of world premieres including a Hillary Clinton- and Jennifer-Lawrence-produced abortion film that is up for acquisition, Zurawski v Texas, a Jason Reitman-directed comedy about Saturday Night Live — Sony’s Saturday Night — and an adaptation of an August Wilson play on intergenerational trauma helmed by first-time director Malcolm Washington, son of Denzel (Netflix’s The Piano Lesson).

A year after the Screen Actors Guild strike robbed festivals of much of their star-power, Telluride is expected to be thick with A-listers once again, including Angelina Jolie, attending for the North American premiere of Pablo Larrain’s Maria, hot off its...

It's an election year, which means everyone and everything is focused on politics—even the season's major festivals. Colorado's Telluride Film Festival just unveiled its 2024 lineup, and it has as much of an eye toward the White House as anything else this time of year.

According to The Hollywood Reporter,...

Coffee may be for closers, and now acclaimed actors Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr are getting their own highly caffeinated taste of Broadway legend.

The trio will lead the revival of David Mamet’s iconic play “Glengarry Glen Ross” in Spring 2025. The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama was famously adapted into the 1992 film starring Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Al Pacino.

“Glengarry Glen Ross” is set in a cutthroat Chicago real estate office where four salespeople compete to sell mostly worthless properties to unwitting customers. Whoever sells the most wins a car; whoever sells the least is out of a job – a ruthless environment where each character will do anything to come out on top, per the official synopsis.

Emmy, SAG, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice Award winner Culkin returns to Broadway after his turn in “Succession” and the upcoming “A Real Pain.

Put those lightsabers down and pick up a Playbill because Adam Driver is returning to the stage. The Tony and Academy-Award nominated actor will be starring in a new Off-Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s “Hold on to Me Darling” at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Manhattan’s West Village this Fall for a limited 13-week engagement starting on September 24 and running until December 22.

The official synopsis for “Hold on to Me Darling” reads, “On learning of his mother’s death, country music icon Strings McCrane (Driver) finds himself in an existential tailspin. The only way out, he decides, is to abandon superstardom in favor of the simple life, so he moves back to his hometown in Tennessee. The simple life turns out to be anything but simple in this brilliantly observed tragicomedy, as the consequences of Strings’ success and mind-bending effects of his fame prove all but impossible to outrun.

If Jack Harlow once lit a fire under his career by flirting with Saweetie on a red carpet, the rumors of his suave are true. At a movie premiere — still fresh ground for the Grammy-nominated artist — Harlow is smooth. Taller than you’d expect with a baby face punctuated by diamond earrings, he is several degrees cooler than your average movie star. He doesn’t so much walk a red carpet as he strides his way around it.

Standing on a carpet Wednesday evening in New York City — at the premiere for “The Instigators,” a buddy crime comedy starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, which features Harlow as a petty thief — the rapper told Variety that he’s ready for a fresh try at acting.

“Shit got killed,” he admitted, admirably, about his first role in the 2023 reboot of “White Men Can’t Jump.”

For a first-time actor, that had to sting.

Adam Driver will star in a new Off Broadway production of Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold on to Me Darling this fall, producers announced today.

Neil Pepe will direct the limited 13-week engagement. Previews begin at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Tuesday, September 24, ahead of an official opening night on Wednesday, October 16.

Additional casting will be announced at a later date. The creative team will include Walt Spangler (scenic design), Suttirat Larlarb (costume design), Tyler Micoleau (lighting design), and David Van Tiegham (sound design).

Producing are Seaview, Sue Wagner, and John Johnson.

The official synopsis: On learning of his mother’s death, country music icon Strings McCrane (Driver) finds himself in an existential tailspin. The only way out, he decides, is to abandon superstardom in favor of the simple life, so he moves back to his hometown in Tennessee. The simple life turns out to be anything but simple in this brilliantly observed tragicomedy,...

Adam Driver will star as a fictional country music icon in Kenneth Lonergan’s play Hold On to Me Darling this fall.

The play, directed by Neil Pepe, is slated to begin performances at Off-Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre on Sept. 24, ahead of an Oct. 16 opening night. The production is currently slated for a limited 13-week engagement.

The play follows Strings McCrane, played by Driver, who faces an existential crisis after learning about his mother’s death and decides to abandon his music career to move home to Tennessee. Upon moving there, however, he finds that it is still hard to escape the trappings of fame.

Hold On to Me Darling premiered Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2016, with Timothy Olyphant in the lead role and directed by Pepe, the theater company’s artistic director.

Lonergan also penned the plays This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero and The Waverly...

Mark Ruffalo's film debut came in 1994, when he appeared as a seductive and possibly supernatural super-hunk named Christian who periodically appears to Tracy Wells in the horror sequel "Mirror Mirror II: Raven Dance." The producers, likely pleased with his performance also hired Ruffalo to play a brand-new role in "Mirror Mirror III: The Voyeur." In that film, he played a sexy moving truck worker named Joey. Ruffalo did not appear in "Mirror Mirror 4: Reflections."

Despite starring in the "Mirror Mirror" movies, as well as the gore flick "The Dentist," Ruffalo had a pretty varied early career. He appeared in the '60s-set coming-of-age drama "There Goes My Baby" in 1994, the indie comedy "Safe Men" in 1998, and the Oscar Bait biopic "54" that same year. He worked with Ang Lee in 1999's "Ride with the Devil," but exploded into the pop consciousness with his memorable performance in Kenneth Lonergan...

Matt Damon surely has a stellar career trajectory that only a few actors in Hollywood can keep up with. With his critically lauded role as a gifted mathematician in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, the actor acquired popularity in Tinsel Town. This, in turn, helped him earn his first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, co-writing with Ben Affleck.

Matt Damon in The Departed (2006) || Warner Bros. Pictures

While this surely had a golden place in his heart, he could have helmed a directorial masterpiece if the circumstances had aligned differently. But he asked his friend and fellow director, Kenneth Lonergan, to direct it instead. Moreover, Matt Damon was undoubtedly pleased with his choice, given the critical and commercial success the film received.

Matt Damon let Kenneth Lonergan direct Manchester by the Sea

Matt Damon had his fair share of acting roles, ranging from the sci-fi universe of The Martian to action-packed Bourne thrillers.

Matt Damon is no stranger to the world of writing and screenplay. In fact, he won his first Oscar in the Best Screenplay category alongside Ben Affleck for Good Will Hunting. And allegedly, he could have added another Oscar to the list had Damon gone through with a plan of his.

Matt Damon in the Bourne franchise | Universal Pictures

Matt Damon and John Krasinski, best known for his role in The Office, were two people who had the idea for the movie that would later come to be known as Manchester by the Sea. But instead of working on it themselves, they took the idea to a close friend if theirs, which gave them the career boost they desperately needed at the time.

Manchester by the Sea Became The Saving Grace For Its Director

While it was Matt Damon who initially wanted to direct Manchester by the Sea, delays and...

If looks could kill, Casey Affleck would’ve been six feet underground during the 87th Academy Awards.

When Ben Affleck’s younger brother landed his first-ever Oscar, owing to his performance in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, the Batman v Superman star teared up out of pride. But when Denzel Washington lost the prestigious accolade to the 48-year-old actor, his eyes filled with tears of bitter anguish.

Casey Affleck | Photo by Bex Walton, licensed under Cc By 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And as if the loss wasn’t bad enough, Affleck sprinkled salt on the wound by paying a tribute to Washington in his acceptance speech. Yikes.

When Denzel Washington Lost An Oscar to Casey Affleck

On a February evening in 2017, some of the most high-profile names in the industry were called out for the ‘Best Actor’ category at the Academy Awards. But of course, only one could emerge...

As the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Like most working actors at the onset of Covid, Adam Rose saw the jobs come a full stop.

But idle time at home, an old Blue Cardigan sweater, and his penchant for dancing wound up transforming Rose’s career; the actor having worked since his childhood days, beginning with the Woody Allen directed 1997 movie Deconstructing Harry. What started with a dance became a meme that spread like wildfire across the web with even Jessica Alba taking part.

You can listen to our conversation below on today’s Crew Call:

While Rose continues to act, consider it gravy as his profession front and center now is as a digital content creator and social media influencer with a massive audience with over 14M followers via TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. On TikTok alone, Rose pulls 2.5 million views per video, reaching over 300M accounts across platforms,...

Following up Wendell & Wild, animation wizard Henry Selick is planning to return to the world of Neil Gaiman with an adaptation of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. “Instead of a child going to this other world with a monstrous mother, it’s a monstrous mother who comes into our world to wreak havoc on a kid’s life,” Selick told Variety, contrasting the film with his previous Gaiman adaptation Coraline. Gaiman’s 2013 novel follows “an unnamed man who returns to his hometown for a funeral and remembers events that began forty years earlier.” Selick is currently shopping the project around, so hopefully we’ll have distribution news soon.

While Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem was recently adapted by Alexander Woo, David Benioff, and D.B. Weiss for the Netflix series, a feature adaptation is now in the works from Zhang Yimou. As reported at the Shanghai International Film Festival,...

Even a quarter-century later, box office victory still tastes sweet for Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal.

Reminiscing about their 1999 collaboration, Analyze This, during a Tribeca Festival / De Niro Con screening Friday, the pair swapped memories of sitting at De Niro’s former restaurant, Ago, on the Friday night the film opened..

Analyze This faced younger-skewing competition in Cruel Intentions, the Sarah Michelle Gellar/Reese Witherspoon/Ryan Philippe thriller, but came out decisively ahead. “The box office was coming in, and it was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. We’re crushing them!'” Crystal remembered. “It was one of the great nights of my life, to share this with this man, that we made this movie together and loved working...

“I suppose you just have to make a decision pretty early on that the biography of the character … isn’t ever going to be reliable,” explains Andrew Scott about playing the duplicitous title character in the Netflix limited series “Ripley.” To portray someone whose true nature is hidden beneath layers of deception, the actor worked to “establish a kind of emotional backstory for him and to decide what things that I perhaps think he might be lying about and really try to focus on the things that he really believes.” Watch our exclusive video interview with Scott above.

When we meet Tom Ripley, he’s a petty con artist living in 1960s New York City. He’s approached by Herbert Greenleaf (Kenneth Lonergan), whose son Dickie (Johnny Flynn) is living the high life in Italy. Herbert wants him to return home and hopes that Tom will be able to convince him.

For the past three years, the American Cinematheque has presented “Bleak Week,” an annual festival devoted to the greatest films ever made about the darkest side of humanity. This year, the festival will not only be unspooling in Los Angeles June 1 – 7 — with special guests including Al Pacino, Lynne Ramsay, Charlie Kaufman, and Karyn Kusama — but will travel to New York for the first time with a week of screenings at the historic Paris Theater starting June 9.

“We are honored to co-present ‘Bleak Week: New York’ in partnership with one of the most beautiful movie palaces in the world,” Cinematheque artistic director Grant Moninger told IndieWire. “This year, over 10,000 people will attend ‘Bleak Week: Year 3’ in Los Angeles, proving that audiences are hungry for such powerful and confrontational cinema. Many people thought they were alone in their desire to explore films with uncomfortable truths, but the truth is that they are part of a large community,...

As the Cannes Film Festival celebrates its parties and standing ovations, audiences in Hollywood and New York prepare to wallow in despair. And they’ll enjoy it (almost).

The festival called Bleak Week this week will deliver 43 films to an expected audience of 10,000 at theaters including the restored Egyptian in Hollywood, the Aero in Santa Monica and the Paris in New York.

Created by the American Cinematheque, Bleak Week will feature celebrities and Q&a sessions explaining why their projects deal with existential dread, nihilism and “uncomfortable truths,” as Bleak Week creative director Grant Moninger puts it.

Not surprisingly, there surely also will be post-screening alcoholic consumption for filmgoers seeking to ease the pain.

As the Cinematheque details it, Bleak Week was not prompted by Gaza, student protests, geomagnetic storms or the possible loss of yet another studio (Paramount).

Rather, its announced purpose is to honor an important if long-ignored...

Robert De Niro’s film legacy is being toasted for his 80th birthday in 2024.

During the annual Tribeca Festival, which will take place June 5 through 16, will be an inaugural De Niro Con celebration of the Oscar winner’s filmography. Auteurs Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and David O. Russell will revisit their collaborations with De Niro for panel discussions post-screenings, while De Niro’s former co-stars Christopher Walken, Billy Crystal, and more are set to add to the celebrations.

The three-day tribute will take place at Spring Studios from June 14 through 16. De Niro Con is powered by Webex Events, allowing fans to download an exclusive app to make the most of their Con experience.

Programming includes a screening series with 13 classic De Niro films, including the 50th anniversary of “Mean Streets,” live conversations with long-time collaborators, career-spanning exhibit “De Niro Is an Icon: An Exhibit & Immersive Film” with more than 300 curated...

Netflix’s surprise hit psychological dark comedy series Baby Reindeer is surprising people with its cute name and intensely dark story. Created by Richard Gadd, the Netflix series is based on Gadd’s autobiographical one-man show of the same name and it tells Gadd’s experience of being sexually assaulted in his 20s. Baby Reindeer stars Gadd in the lead role with Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau, Tom Goodman-Hill, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Danny Kirrane, Hugh Coles, and Nina Sosanya starring in supporting roles. So, if you loved the psychologically thrilling look on obsession and the rawness of the dark comedy in Baby Reindeer you should check out these similar shows next.

You (Netflix) Credit – Netflix

You is a psychological crime thriller series created by Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble. Based on a novel series of the same name by Caroline Kepnes, the Netflix series follows the story of Joe Goldberg, a young...

Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway, Bullet Train) is set to join Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry’s untitled musical for Universal Pictures inspired by Williams’ formative years growing up in Virginia Beach in the 1970s.

Henry, an Oscar, Emmy and Tony award nominee, has recent credits like Warner Brothers’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Causeway, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination, and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. He also co-starred in Atlanta as Alfred Miles and appeared in If Beale Street Could Talk as the character Daniel Carty.

His upcoming projects include Amazon/MGM’s The Fire Inside, written by Barry Jenkins, and Paramount’s animated film Transformers One. Henry is also set to star in the Apple TV+ series Sinking Spring from director Ridley Scott.

In live theater, Henry originated the role of The General in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, and in 2018 he returned to...

Brian Tyree Henry has joined the cast of Universal’s untitled Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry musical project.

The Oscar, Emmy and Tony nominee joins Kelvin Harrison Jr., Halle Bailey and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph in the coming-of-age musical, set in the summer of 1977 at Virginia Beach and inspired by Atlantis Apartments, Williams’ childhood neighborhood.

Gondry is set to direct the project based on a script by Martin Hynes and Steven Levenson. Williams and Mimi Valdés will produce through I Am Other and Gil Netter will produce through Gil Netter Productions.

Universal’s senior vice president of production development Ryan Jones and Christine Sun, director of production development, will oversee the project for the studio.

Henry starred on Donald Glover’s acclaimed series “Atlanta” for four seasons as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles, earning an Emmy nomination for his performance. He also scored a supporting actor Oscar nomination for the 2022 film “Causeway” opposite Jennifer Lawrence.

Patricia Highsmith’s charming devil has fascinated film-makers since the 1960s, but his brand of evil seems peculiarly well suited to the Instagram age

He’s back. But he never went away. Patricia Highsmith’s diabolically inspired postwar creation Tom Ripley has returned, to luxuriate in our 21st-century age of Instagram lifestyle envy, tacit class paranoia and online identity fraud. He has triumphantly resurfaced in Steven Zaillian’s sumptuous and instantly addictive new eight-episode adaptation of Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr Ripley for Netflix, starring the incomparable Andrew Scott as the charmer, aesthete and serial killer. It’s a seven-star luxury hotel of a TV show in arthouse black-and-white, which my colleague Lucy Mangan has hailed as quite possibly definitive.

It’s set in the early 60s, but has a queasy resonance for 2024. At an unhurried tempo, Scott’s Ripley is shown surmounting his early unease and likable callow vulnerability,...

Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted into films by directors from different regions, including René Clément from France, Anthony Minghella from the US, and Jeeva Shankar from India. The current rendition, Ripley, streaming on Netflix, is a web series written and directed by Academy Award winner Steven Zaillian. It unfolds in eight leisurely-paced episodes that grab our attention from the beginning and keep us engaged in this amoral tale of fabrication, betrayal, and murder. It is a gritty tale of an individual’s challenging pursuit to assume a deceased person’s identity to achieve financial stability and maintain a respectable public image. The primary story surrounds the titular fraudster at the low of his occupation when all his shrewd manoeuvres are devised to outwit the victims and fizzle out. The dramatic events stem from the chain of events that are set in motion when an...

Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, is a watershed thriller for its critique of class, its queer undertones, and its enduring legacy. The novel inspired multiple sequels, as well as several film adaptations, the most significant of which was Anthony Minghella’s Oscar nominated 1999 film of the same name.

Showtime commissioned a series based on the original book from writer/director Steve Zaillian back in 2021, but the project eventually went to Netflix. Now the eight episode limited series is out in full, and the new iteration is more sumptuous, more faithful to the source material, and more queer (from a contemporary perspective) than any other iteration.

All of Us Strangers’ Andrew Scott stars as Tom Ripley, an unassuming man living in a run-down shared housing project in Manhattan in the late 1950s. He doesn’t have a great deal going for him when he’s tracked down by...

This review may contain mild spoilers.

Who is Tom Ripley? It's a question that hangs over "Ripley," Steven Zaillian's chilly, chilling, uber-stylish adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley." This material has been tackled on screen before — once as the 1960 French film "Purple Noon," and even more prominently in 1999 via Anthony Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Zaillian, who wrote and directed the entire new Netflix series, seems to go to great lengths to distance his adaptation from Minghella's, even if they're essentially the same story. While the 1999 film was awash in bright, sunny colors, Zaillian and cinematographer Robert Elswit employ noir-tinged black-and-white cinematography that often looks straight out of a silent German expressionist film.

Minghella's film also leaned into the homoeroticism at the center of the Ripley character, but the Tom Ripley here, played in a brilliant calculating manner by Andrew Scott, feels almost sexless. One...