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      'Black Panther' Director Ryan Coogler Rejected Offer to Become Oscars Voter

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      WENN

      The ‘Creed’ helmer reveals he turned down the chance to become a voter for the Academy Awards following backlash over the lack of diversity at the Oscars.

      Apr 2, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Ryan Coogler turned down the chance to become an Academy Awards voter following the #OscarsSoWhite controversy because he didn’t want to have to pick favourites.

      The “Black Panther” director has revealed he declined an opportunity to join the Academy in 2016 and now insists he has no intention of ever joining the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

      “I don’t buy into this versus that, or ‘this movie wasn’t good enough to make this list,’ ” the filmmaker tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I love movies…”

      “For me, that’s good enough. If I’m going to be a part of organisations, they’re going to be labour unions, where we’re figuring out how to take care of each other’s families and health insurance.”

      Meanwhile, Coogler has landed an Oscars nod this year (21) as a producer of “Judas and the Black Messiah”.

      Also in the same interview, the director talked about his upcoming Marvel superhero sequel.

      He’s keen to continue the story to honour Chadwick Boseman.

      The 34-year-old filmmaker is developing a sequel to his 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie without lead star Chadwick, who died aged 43 in August, 2020 after a private battle with cancer, and wants to press on with the flick as it is what Boseman – who played T’Challa/Black Panther – would have wanted.

        See also…

      Ryan said, “You’ve got to keep going when you lose loved ones. I know Chad wouldn’t have wanted us to stop.”

      “He was somebody who was so about the collective. Black Panther, that was his movie. He was hired to play that role before anybody else was even thought of, before I was hired, before any of the actresses were hired.”

      Ryan also recalled Chadwick’s selflessness on set and how he would try and help other cast members with their performances.

      In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said, “On that set, he was all about everybody else. Even though he was going through what he was going through, he was checking in on them, making sure they were good.”

      “If we cut his coverage, he would stick around and read lines off-camera (to help other actors). So it would be harder for me to stop. Truthfully, I’d feel him yelling at me, like, ‘What are you doing?’ So you keep going.”

      Coogler adds that he misses the star as “a friend and collaborator” and is saddened that he won’t be able to see Chadwick on the big screen any more.

      He said, “I miss him in every way that you could miss somebody, as a friend, as a collaborator. And it sucks because I love watching movies, and I don’t get to watch the next thing he would have made.”

      “So it’s grief on a lot of levels, but then, it’s a deep sense of gratitude because I can close my eyes and hear his voice.”

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      ‘Roe v. Wade’ Review: A Physician’s Change of Heart

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      This hammy period drama tells the story of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a pioneering abortion provider who later became an anti-abortion campaigner.Directed by Nick Loeb and Cathy Allyn, “Roe v. Wade” tells the story of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a pioneering abortion provider from the 1960s who later became an anti-abortion campaigner. Loeb has said that the movie doesn’t take sides and tries simply to “lay out the facts” surrounding the titular 1973 Supreme Court ruling.But it doesn’t take long for the film’s agenda to become clear. A confused, sepia-tinted cross between a mafia thriller, a courtroom drama and a saga of prophetic redemption, “Roe v. Wade” paints Nathanson and the abortion rights activist Lawrence Lader (Jamie Kennedy) as the masterminds of a mercenary anti-Catholic conspiracy. They were in cahoots, we’re told, with Hollywood, the news media, Protestant clergy and rabbis, with the latter singled out in a caricaturish scene.Featuring turns by Stacey Dash, Jon Voight, Tomi Lahren, Milo Yiannopoulos and other prominent conservatives, the film lobs a series of “gotcha” moments at the abortion rights movement. These range from references to the documented eugenicist beliefs of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, to flimsier claims that Supreme Court justices were unfairly pressured by female relatives to vote in favor of Roe v. Wade.But the film’s coup de grâce — Nathanson’s tearful change of heart upon seeing his first sonogram — dispenses with political arguments for crude sentimentality. Those who disagree that abortion is akin to murder are unlikely to be persuaded, and even those on the fence might struggle to sit through the hammy acting and poor production values.Roe v. WadeRated PG-13 for gory descriptions and images of surgical procedures. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Amazon, HBO Max, Hulu and More in April

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our twice-weekly Watching newsletter here.)Ann Skelly in “The Nevers.”Keith Bernstein/HBONew to HBO Max‘Exterminate All the Brutes’Starts streaming: Apr. 7The filmmaker Raoul Peck, perhaps best-known for his Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” tackles his most ambitious project yet with the four-part cinematic essay “Exterminate All the Brutes,” based in part on Sven Lindqvist’s book of the same name about Europe’s domination of Africa and in part on the scholarly work of the historian and Indigenous rights activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Relying on a mix of clips from old movies and new dramatizations of historical incidents — all overlaid with the director’s discursive narration — Peck considers how pop culture and the literary canon have shaped the narratives around Indigenous people and their colonial invaders. Equal parts informative and provocative, this project is aimed at changing the way viewers think about who history’s heroes and villains are.‘The Nevers’Starts streaming: Apr. 11There’s a bit of steampunk and a lot of X-Men-like energy in “The Nevers,” a semi-comic action-adventure series created by Joss Whedon, the man behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly.” Whedon’s contributions have been downplayed by HBO’s promotional departments, in part because he left the production in the middle of its first season — and perhaps because of recent accusations of mental abuse from his past employees. Nevertheless, “The Nevers,” set in Victorian Britain, very much feels like one of his shows, with its alternately angsty and witty characters. Laura Donnelly plays Amalia True, a superhero who leads a team of strange and powerful women referred to by London aristocrats as “the touched.” As the ladies tackle supernatural phenomena, they also clash with an establishment that wants to keep them marginalized, because of what they can do and because of who they are.‘Mare of Easttown’Starts streaming: Apr. 18Kate Winslet plays a dogged small-town Pennsylvania police detective with a messy home life in “Mare of Easttown,” a crime drama created by Brad Ingelsby, a screenwriter of the films “Out of the Furnace” and “The Way Back.” As with Ingelsby’s movies, this mini-series uses a pulpy premise — a murder mystery — as an entry point to a complex and absorbing study of a place at once familiar and unique. The director Craig Zobel and a top-shelf cast (including Jean Smart as the heroine’s opinionated mother and Julianne Nicholson as her former high school basketball teammate) capture the limitations and comforts of a community where everyone knows each other’s painful secrets. The gray tones and the procedural plot resemble those of a grim European cop show, but the performances and dialogue exhibit a lot of vitality.Also arriving:Apr. 1“Made for Love”Apr. 13“Our Towns”Apr. 15“Infinity Train” Season 4Apr. 16“Mortal Kombat”Supposed Sasquatch footprints, as seen in “Sasquatch.”HuluNew to Hulu‘WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn’Starts streaming: Apr. 2Like many stories about cutting-edge business ideas, the saga of the real-estate-sharing company WeWork ultimately comes down to the disconnect between its bosses’ public ideals and the ugly practical realities of making money. Directed by Jed Rothstein, “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn” features a wealth of insider interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, all describing a start-up that began by touting a clever solution to the modern urban problem of overpriced office space but then tried to evolve into an entire unwieldy lifestyle brand. Rothstein’s film focuses mainly on the charismatic co-founder Adam Neumann, and how Neumann and his fellow execs were spending like billionaires while misrepresenting — even to their faithful employees — what was really happening.‘Sasquatch’Starts streaming: Apr. 20The journalist David Holthouse has spent much of his career investigating odd American subcultures, spending time with people whose lives have revolved around drugs, violence or the arcane. In the three-part docu-series “Sasquatch,” Holthouse heads into Northern California’s so-called Emerald Triangle — one of the most storied cannabis-growing regions of the world — to look into a legend he heard decades ago, about a trio of farmers who were dismembered by the infamous cryptid known as Bigfoot. The director Joshua Rofé follows Holthouse into the wild as he interviews locals who are enthusiastic about both marijuana and the paranormal. The stories they unearth are partly about eerie phenomena and partly about the very real dangers of a community teeming with crime.Also arriving:Apr. 3“Hysterical”Apr. 8“Glaad Media Awards”Apr. 9“The Standard”Apr. 12“Spontaneous”Apr. 15“Younger” Season 7Apr. 16“Fly Like a Girl”“Songbird”Apr. 21“Cruel Summer”Apr. 22“Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World”Apr. 25“Wild Mountain Thyme”Apr. 28“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 4From left, Deborah Ayorinde, Melody Hurd, Shahadi Wright and Ashley Thomas in “Them.”Amazon StudiosNew to Amazon‘Them’Starts streaming: Apr. 9The first season of the new horror anthology series “Them” has the subtitle “Covenant,” referring to the rules for residents of a middle-class suburban subdivision in the early 1950s. Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas play a married couple with two young daughters, who move from North Carolina to an all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles looking for their piece of the American dream. They meet open hostility from their new neighbors (including the local housewives’ cruel ringleader, played by Alison Pill), while also being haunted by strange supernatural forces. Created by Little Marvin and produced by Lena Waithe, “Them” uses the discomfiting facts of racial discrimination to unsettle the audience, even before the nonhuman monsters arrive.Also arriving:Apr. 2“Moment of Truth”Apr. 16“Frank of Ireland”Apr. 30“Without Remorse”Justin Theroux and Melissa George in “The Mosquito Coast.”Apple TV+.New to Apple TV+‘The Mosquito Coast’Starts streaming: Apr. 30Justin Theroux is both a producer and the star of the mini-series “The Mosquito Coast,” an adaptation of an acclaimed 1981 novel by his uncle Paul Theroux. The show’s co-writers Neil Cross and Tom Bissell, with the director Rupert Wyatt, have updated the story to the 21st century, but its still about the idealistic and eccentric inventor Allie Fox, who hates modern technology as much as he detests American materialism. Chasing his dreams — and dodging the federal authorities — Allie packs his family onto a rickety boat and floats them down to Latin America, where he plans to live off the land. The TV version deviates sometimes significantly from the book, but its heart is the same: a rich portrait of a brilliant madman, and of the people he’s dragged into his delusions.Also arriving:Apr. 2“Doug Unplugs” More

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      ‘Malmkrog’ Review: Now You’re Talking

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      Welcome to a three-hour, multilingual 19th-century house party, organized by the Romanian filmmaker Cristi Puiu.It’s winter, sometime in the late 19th century, somewhere in Russia or Eastern Europe. A small group has gathered at a country estate to discourse — over Champagne, tea, brandy, lunch and dinner, supplied by a squadron of silent maids and waiters — about matters of the utmost seriousness. How can we distinguish good from evil? Is killing ever justified? What is the future of Europe?Imagine a Chekhov play without drama, an Oscar Wilde farce without humor, a Visconti film without desire, or a very long party at the home of a distant acquaintance, and you will have some idea of “Malmkrog,” Cristi Puiu’s latest film.Drawing on works by the 19th-century Russian mystical poet and thinker Vladimir Solovyov — once a friend of Dostoyevsky and reportedly a favorite of President Vladimir V. Putin — Puiu makes no concessions to modern sensibilities. This movie is an extravagant, elegant gesture of intellectual and artistic nonconformity, a gauntlet flung at the viewer’s feet. It’s also a bit of a puzzle. You might be transfixed by the long and passionate arguments depicted onscreen, and intrigued by the larger argument the film itself is making, without having much sense of what all the fuss is about.The hosts are a young, aristocratic couple (unless they are siblings): Nikolai (Frédéric Schulz-Richard) and Olga (Marina Palii). They speak French to their guests and German to their servants, who speak Hungarian to one another. “Malmkrog” may refer to the movie’s setting, but this too is ambiguous. With short breaks to tend to an older relative in a back room, to listen to Christmas carols or to step outside to look at the snow, Olga and Nikolai convene a daylong seminar with Ingrida (Diana Sakalauskaité), Edouard (Ugo Broussot) and Madeleine (Agathe Bosch), slightly older friends of varied backgrounds, all possessing strong and complicated opinions.To summarize their respective views on metaphysics, ethics and world history would be a spoiler, and would require more space than this newspaper could possibly provide. And while some of them — Edouard, in particular — can drone on a bit, the charisma and skill of the actors and the exquisiteness of Puiu’s eye prevent the proceedings from collapsing into absolute tedium.The rooms and costumes are beautiful, the people are interesting to look at, and the camera observes everything with a discreetly sensual gaze. At times it stands at a distance, pivoting slightly from side to side like a watchful butler. Occasionally it moves closer, studying faces and hands like an attentive guest.The images and the words, in whatever language, possess an alluring clarity. The filmmaker’s intentions are more opaque. Puiu — whose second feature, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005), is a touchstone of contemporary Romanian cinema — has moved from that film’s rigorous naturalism into more esoteric realms. Not that the concerns of “Malmkrog” are obscure, exactly. It seems like a faithful representation of what people like Olga and Nikolai, and their friends, might have thought in the 1890s, and it doesn’t condescend to them or flaunt the easy ironies of hindsight. Nor, however, does it make an especially compelling case for why we should listen now.MalmkrogNot rated. In French, Russian, German, Hungarian, English and Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 3 hours 21 minutes. Watch on Mubi. More

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      ‘The Unholy’ Review: ‘There’s Something About Mary’

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      Miraculous acts or evil deeds? This tame, trite horror movie has a familiar answer.Satan is at it again in “The Unholy,” the first feature from Evan Spiliotopoulos and what feels like the millionth recurrence of a plot that turns an innocent young woman into the plaything of a soul-sucking demon.After a brief spasm of 1845 witchery, the movie jumps to present-day New England where the roguish reporter Gerry Fenn (who better than Jeffrey Dean Morgan?) is sniffing out supernatural mischief. Once famous and now disgraced for fabricating stories, Fenn enjoys the odd tipple: It helps alleviate the professional embarrassment of covering livestock mutilations. But when he encounters Alice (Cricket Brown) — a hearing-impaired woman who’s mysteriously cured after conversing with a petrified tree trunk — Fenn smells the kind of story that could resurrect his career.Unfortunately, that’s not what’s revived as Alice, believing she sees the Virgin Mary, begins to heal the sick and attract a horde of supplicants. Her uncle (William Sadler) is skeptical until she cures his emphysema, and the nearest bishop (an unrecognizable Cary Elwes) is flummoxed by Alice’s apparent miracles. Fenn, meantime, works on an exclusive (as a dissolute nonbeliever, he’s presumed objective) and gets friendly with a nice doctor (Katie Aselton). Even Fenn needs a break from the stress of the supernatural.Adapted from a 1983 novel by James Herbert, “The Unholy” (no relation to Camilo Vila’s 1988 dud) gives us the usual weeping statues and a soundtrack heaving with crackles and whispers. Playing the evil entity with convulsive movements and a killer manicure, the contortionist Marina Mazepa turns in the movie’s most entertaining performance. That’s if you don’t count Morgan looking genuinely baffled as to what he’s doing here at all.The UnholyRated PG-13 for a hanged man and half-baked scares. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Every Breath You Take’ Review: The Therapist as Trauma Victim

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      Casey Affleck plays a vaunted psychiatrist whose life and career are derailed after he boasts about a miraculous new technique, which then fails tragically.With chillingly minimal interiors, ominously crescendoing music, and a bluish-gray palette, “Every Breath You Take” announces itself as a thriller in predictable ways. Directed by Vaughn Stein and written by David K. Murray, the movie coasts on so many tropes that you almost expect it to subvert them, but the plot remains equally foreseeable.At a conference, a renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Clark (Casey Affleck), boasts of his ethically ambiguous therapeutic method — which involves sharing his own deep secrets with patients — that has kept one of them, the suicidally inclined Daphne (Emily Alyn Lind), stable and off medications. Later that night, she commits suicide.At the scene, Dr. Clark meets Daphne’s distraught brother, (Sam Claflin). James later earns an invitation to dinner at the Clarks’ and eventually wins over Philip’s wife, Grace (Michelle Monaghan), and daughter, Lucy (India Eisley), with his charming English accent, dimpled smile and wounded puppy demeanor. James becomes a dangerous new presence in their lives. Claflin elevates the formulaic quality by playfully wavering between charismatic and psychotic as he burrows deeper into the Clark women’s lives, and thus Philip’s psyche.At the same time, Philip’s reputation is being razed by anonymous letters, though he claims he has no idea who is behind them. All the characters become shockingly dense pawns, with the women most notably getting caught in the cross hairs. Monaghan’s character, especially, is undermined. The film opens with her own tragedy — the death of her son in a car accident — a development that comes back briefly and insignificantly. With only a few fleeting moments of nail-biting thrills, “Every Breath You Take” remains mostly tepid and frustrating.Rated R for Sam Claflin’s wreaking havoc. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.Every Breath You TakeRated R. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In select theaters and on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘The Human Voice’ Review: Almodóvar Meets Cocteau Meets Swinton

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      The first English-language film from the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar stars Tilda Swinton and adapts Jean Cocteau to sublime results.A woman is brought to the end of her rope by a recalcitrant former lover. In what could be their last exchange, she speaks to the man over the phone. She cajoles, she feigns composure, she sneers, she renounces — things get kind of crazy.Sounds like a Pedro Almodóvar movie. It was, and it is again. It’s a little complicated.This movie, a mere 30 minutes in length but as fully fleshed out as almost any feature by the dazzling Spanish filmmaker, is an adaptation of the venerable 1930 monodrama “La Voix Humaine,” a magnificent actress’s aria by Jean Cocteau. Back in 1988, Almodóvar borrowed its narrative elements for his film “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” which helped the director advance into the mainstream. Previously, he’d been a near-underground cult figure.Almodóvar had been planning to make an English-language film for some time, and now he’s done it, working with the British actress Tilda Swinton. Does this sound like a match made in heaven? Yeah, it pretty much is. Almodóvar’s sense of cinema design — the décor simulates a luxe apartment and lays it bare as a soundstage illusion — is acutely keyed to Swinton’s performance here, which projects mercurial emotion with Swiss watch precision.The credits specify that this is a “free” adaptation of the Cocteau work. One factor of that freedom is that the monologue doesn’t begin until about 10 minutes in — unlike Cocteau’s work. But Almodóvar’s own poetic spirit meshes nicely with that of the old master’s throughout. Hardly surprising.The Human VoiceRated R for language. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 30 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘WeWork’ Review: The Sharing Economy or a Shared Delusion?

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      This documentary on the workspace start-up is a fast-paced, entertaining saga of relentless self-selling and a curious corporate culture.Getting freelancers to split a workspace and convincing them that they’re part of an exclusive club is a neat trick, but it’s only the first flicker of gaslighting visible in “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn,” a documentary that suggests that WeWork — the tech start-up, or is it a real-estate start-up? — owed its growth less to the sharing economy than to shared delusion.On why what now looks like a tenuous, bluster-based business model would appeal to Wall Street, the director, Jed Rothstein, spends less time than he should. Instead, the movie relays a fast-paced, entertaining saga of WeWork’s relentless self-selling and what it portrays as a cultlike corporate atmosphere. (One interviewee, August Urbish, who worked at WeWork and lived in WeLive — a similar venture for short-term, semi-communal apartment rentals — says his “entire life was being propped up by the We community.”)Rothstein’s documentary never captures the appeal of the obnoxious guru at its center, Adam Neumann, a co-founder of WeWork who stepped down as chief executive in 2019. A title card says he declined to participate, but from what’s onscreen, he speaks (and maybe thinks) exclusively in motivational sound bites. Person after person testifies to his charisma, but it’s hard to understand how he persuaded people to join the company, rather than hit him in the head with a designer chair.The film is sharper when its subjects describe the financial maneuvering that enabled WeWork’s rise, which, as explained here, involved redefining measures of profitability into meaninglessness. The movie overextends itself, too, by implying, in its final beat, that, folly or not, WeWork’s vision of human interaction holds promise for a post-lockdown world.WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion UnicornNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More