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      ‘Test Pattern’ Review: Refocusing the Lens on Race and Gender

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Test Pattern’ Review: Refocusing the Lens on Race and GenderShatara Michelle Ford’s lean, smart debut feature confronts us with our presumptions about what rape and victimhood look like — onscreen and in life.From left, Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill in “Test Pattern.”Credit…Kino LorberFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETTest PatternDirected by Shatara Michelle FordDrama, Thriller1h 22mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Test Pattern” opens with a bait-and-switch: An ominous glimpse of a man kissing a drunk woman in a dark bedroom cuts to a casual scene at a bar. The woman, Renesha (Brittany S. Hall), a corporate professional, now dances with a different man — Evan (Will Brill), her boyfriend-to-be. The first half of Shatara Michelle Ford’s debut feature, set in Austin, Texas, traces their relationship in an endearingly low-key, mumblecore fashion.But the unease of the opening scene lingers. Did that moment come before or after Evan and Renesha’s meet-cute? Was it an adulterous hookup or something more insidious? By the time the answers arrive, “Test Pattern” has forced us to question our presumptions about what rape and victimhood look like — onscreen and in life.In Renesha’s case it’s a series of subtle gestures. At a girls’ night out, two persistent men ply her and her friend Amber (Gail Bean) with drinks and weed, and one of them quietly takes a woozy Renesha home.[embedded content]That Renesha is Black and both her boyfriend and attacker are white adds unspoken subtext. Supportive but indignant, Evan drags a disoriented Renesha from hospital to hospital — it turns out to be surprisingly hard to find an E.R. with a nurse qualified to administer a rape kit. Evan’s faith in the bureaucracies of health care and law enforcement clash with Renesha’s (ultimately well-founded) resignation, and his actions unwittingly deepen the theft of agency that has left her reeling.“Test Pattern” achieves a lot with very little: The film’s nonlinear editing and cannily scored silences invite our interpretations, locating in them the entanglements of race and gender. Ford pushes us, if not to definitive answers, then to the right questions.Test PatternNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters and on Kino Marquee. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Blithe Spirit’ Review: Dead, but Not Loving It

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Blithe Spirit’ Review: Dead, but Not Loving ItDan Stevens stars as a writer taunted by the ghost of his dead wife in this grating adaptation of the 1941 play.Dan Stevens and Leslie Mann in “Blithe Spirit.”Credit…Rob Youngson/IFC Films Feb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETBlithe SpiritDirected by Edward HallComedy, Fantasy, RomancePG-131h 35mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A comedy that’s more screw-loose than screwball, Edward Hall’s “Blithe Spirit,” a ludicrous adaptation of Noël Coward’s 1941 stage play, reimagines its source material as little more than a slip-and-fall farce.Dan Stevens stars as Charles, a near-parody of a blocked writer who’s introduced literally eating the words he has just typed. Commissioned to write a screenplay of one of his best-selling novels, Charles is desperate: Bedeviled by bedroom dysfunction (“Big Ben’s stopped chiming,” he whines to a friend), he hopes to find inspiration by inviting a disgraced psychic (Judi Dench) to host a séance in his imposing Art Deco mansion.[embedded content]What gets released, though, is not what Charles expects as the ghost of his first wife, Elvira (Leslie Mann), killed in a riding accident years earlier, moves in and takes umbrage at her replacement (Isla Fisher). Elvira, visible only to Charles and the audience, and blessed with a well-stocked ghostly wardrobe, is anything but blithe: Wrecking the garden and throwing knives at the help, she proves as hard to get rid of — and about as entertaining — as black mold.Propelled by tiresome characters and tortured setups, “Blithe Spirit” (originally filmed by David Lean in 1945) is a dated curiosity. Merging upper-crust twittery with hocus-pocus nonsense not even Dench can sell, the dialogue encourages Elvira to nag and everyone to over-emote. Surplus buffoonery and a new ending add nothing to the original, leaving us with a movie that obsesses over death while showing all too few signs of life.Blithe SpiritRated PG-13 for spiked drinks and saucy dialogue. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play and Vudu. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘I Care a Lot’ Review: The Art of the Steal

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘I Care a Lot’ Review: The Art of the StealNasty people do terrible things in this wildly entertaining Netflix caper about guardianship fraud.Rosamund Pike in “I Care a Lot.”Credit…Seacia Pavao/NetfilxFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETI Care a LotNYT Critic’s PickDirected by J BlakesonComedy, Crime, ThrillerR1h 58mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Bookended by towering stilettos and a guillotine-blade bob, Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) strides through “I Care a Lot” with the icy confidence of the inveterate fraud. Her racket is guardianship: identifying powerless retirees, having them falsely declared mentally incompetent and herself appointed their legal conservator.A network of enablers — including an unscrupulous doctor and an oblivious judge — grease the grift as Marla and her personal and business partner (Eiza González) happen upon Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). With a healthy nest egg and no apparent relatives, Jennifer is a “cherry”; and one chilling, all-too-believable sequence later, she has been secured in an assisted-living facility and her considerable assets liquidated. Marla, however, is about to discover she has messed with the wrong old lady.[embedded content]An unexpectedly gripping thriller that seesaws between comedy and horror, “I Care a Lot” is cleverly written (by the director, J Blakeson) and wonderfully cast. Marla is an almost cartoonish sociopath, and Pike leans into her villainy with unwavering bravado. And Wiest is sly perfection: Watch as Jennifer, drugged and smirking, spits an unprintable curse at her tormentor before putting her in a headlock. But it’s the introduction of an inscrutable Russian gangster (Peter Dinklage, all cool intelligence and wounded-puppy eyes) that gives Marla a worthy foil and the plot a reason to climax.With its ice-pick dialogue and gleefully ironic title, “I Care a Lot” is a slick, savage caper with roots in a real-world scam (as an episode of the Netflix series “Dirty Money” recounts). An overlong, somewhat mushy middle section made me fear Blakeson was losing his nerve. I was wrong.I Care a LotRated R for killing, cursing and elder abuse. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Mafia Inc’ Review: The Business They Have Chosen

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Mafia Inc’ Review: The Business They Have ChosenThis Montreal crime saga is never dull despite a sense of déjà vu.Sergio Castellitto in “Mafia Inc.”Credit…Film MovementFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETMafia IncDirected by Daniel GrouCrime, Drama2h 23mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Mafia Inc” was officially inspired by a nonfiction book on the Canadian mob. The movie and its characters are fiction, though, and their unofficial inspiration appears to be other mob films. It takes brass to poach on turf decisively owned by “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas,” and the director, Daniel Grou, who goes by Podz, deserves credit for delivering a saga that’s never dull despite hitting overfamiliar beats.Sergio Castellitto plays Frank Paternò, a Montreal crime boss whose latest venture — a share in a bridge that will connect Calabria to Sicily — could make him legit. Frank has two sons: Giaco (Donny Falsetti), who has shades of Sonny Corleone (he disagrees with his father in front of associates), and Patrizio (Michael Ricci), who is engaged to Sofie (Mylène Mackay), the daughter of the family’s wary longtime tailor (Gilbert Sicotte).[embedded content]There is also Vince (Marc-André Grondin), who, we eventually learn, is almost like a son to Frank, although the way he is introduced — arranging for a bus carrying a youth soccer team to be driven off a cliff in Venezuela — makes the revelation of his ties even more horrifying. Who would welcome such a psychopath? Was he always that way?Apart from the multilingualism (the strong cast moves fluidly among French, English and Italian), the cruelty and ingenuity of the violence are what most distinguish “Mafia Inc,” which can be tough to watch even for this genre. For better or worse, Grau has a knack for staging brutality, and for having his movie rock out to a Joy Division track or two.Mafia IncNot rated. In French, English and Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 23 minutes. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Shook’ Review: Unliked and Followed

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Shook’ Review: Unliked and FollowedA killer with a mysterious agenda hunts down social-media influencers in this horror movie.Daisye Tutor in “Shook.”Credit…ShudderFeb. 18, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETShookDirected by Jennifer HarringtonHorrorNot Rated1h 28mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Most of the characters in “Shook” are low-level social-media influencers, bottom-feeders in a world of self-involved make-believe. Since their lives are built on the intersection of voyeurism and exhibitionism, these 20 somethings are perfect fodder for the kind of horror movie where an omniscient psychopath uses intrusive surveillance.Unfortunately, “Shook,” which is streaming on Shudder, does not fully exploit this intriguing premise and devolves into far-fetched inanity.[embedded content]Mia (Daisye Tutor) is a rising social-media princess who, rattled by a murder, forgoes a very important livestream of something head-scratchingly mundane to dogsit for her sister, Nicole (Emily Goss). Alas, a mysterious, unseen caller has Mia’s number and can track all her moves within Nicole’s house — the movie almost entirely takes place in that single location — subjecting Mia to an increasingly unhinged barrage of threats and demands.For half the film, the director Jennifer Harrington builds up suspense by encasing Mia in a densely woven network of voice and video messages, calls and texts. Mia’s entire life is filtered through technology, which is now used against her, and her cavalier attitude toward privacy backfires as well. Tutor acts up a storm considering that most of her emoting happens while staring at a phone. Still, Mia remains a cardboard character in search of blood-soaked redemption.At its best, when it looks as if Harrington wants to pursue a larger point and satirize Instagrammed lives, “Shook” feels like a garish hybrid of a “Black Mirror” episode and a 1980s slasher movie — an electronic soundtrack largely pulled from the Italians Do It Better record label is a callback to the synthetic John Carpenter scores of yore.But “Shook” is done in by its final reveal, which manages to be simultaneously improbable and conventional. For engagement, we’ll have to look somewhere else.ShookNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Shudder.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Martin Scorsese Complains About Systematic Devaluation of Cinema by Streaming Movies

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      Though acknowledging that he has benefited from streaming platforms, ‘The Irishman’ director criticizes the movie industry for being more focused on ‘business.’

      Feb 18, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Martin Scorsese has blasted the movie industry for being more focused on “business” as a result of the rise in “content” being produced for streaming companies.
      The legendary director, whose last movie “The Irishman” was released on Netflix, suggests that streaming movies have had a negative impact on cinema, which he claims is being “systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content.’ ”
      In an essay for Harper’s Magazine, Martin explained, “As recently as 15 years ago, the term ‘content’ was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted and measured against ‘form.’ ”
      “Then, gradually, it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think they should.”
      Martin acknowledges he has benefited from streaming platforms but suggests the film industry is too focused on “business.”

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      The 78-year-old filmmaker said, “We can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema. In the movie business, which is now the mass visual entertainment business, the emphasis is always on the word ‘business’, and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property.”
      Martin, whose movie credits include award-winning movies, “Goodfellas”, “Raging Bull”, “The Departed” and “Taxi Driver”, called on those in the film industry to protect the “greatest treasures of our culture.”
      He said, “Those of us who know the cinema and its history have to share our love and our knowledge with as many people as possible.”

      “And we have to make it crystal clear to the current legal owners of these films that they amount to much, much more than mere property to be exploited and then locked away. They are among the greatest treasures of our culture, and they must be treated accordingly.”

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      First Trailer for Emma Stone's 'Cruella' Gives Off Serious Harley Quinn Vibes

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      [embedded content]

      Stone’s title character Cruella de Vil is set to unleash her madness as she appears ready to challenge Emma Thompson’s Baroness Von Hellman, the head of a prestigious fashion house.

      Feb 18, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Emma Stone morphs into Cruella de Vil in the first official trailer for Disney’s “Cruella”. Set to tell the origin story of “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” villain from the point of view of the title character, the trailer sees a young fashion designer, Estella de Vil, who transforms into the baddie.
      “From the very beginning, I realized I saw the world very differently than everyone else,” Stone’s character narrates the video. “That didn’t sit well with some people, but I wasn’t for everyone. I guess they were always scared that I would be … a psycho,” she says, followed by the sound of her maniacal laugh.
      Estella is then seen turning heads at a party, where she comes face-to-face with Emma Thompson’s Baroness Von Hellman, the head of a prestigious fashion house who hires Estella. Seemingly ready to challenge the woman with power in the room, she continues saying in voiceover, “But a new day brings new opportunities. And I was ready to make a statement. How does the saying go? I am woman, hear me roar.”

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      The trailer gives off strong Harley Quinn vibes as Estella a.k.a. Cruella is set to unleash her “mad” side. “I was born brilliant, born bad, and a little bit mad,” she declares, while the scenes show her driving off in a possibly stolen car and other crimes likely pulled off by her.
      Described as “an all-new live-action feature film about the rebellious early days of one of cinemas most notorious – and notoriously fashionable – villains, the legendary Cruella de Vil,” “Cruella” is set “in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, follows a young grifter named Estella, a clever and creative girl determined to make a name for herself with her designs. She befriends a pair of young thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief, and together they are able to build a life for themselves on the London streets.”
      The official synopsis continues, “One day, Estella’s flair for fashion catches the eye of the Baroness von Hellman, a fashion legend who is devastatingly chic and terrifyingly haute, played by two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson (‘Howards End’, ‘Sense & Sensibility’). But their relationship sets in motion a course of events and revelations that will cause Estella to embrace her wicked side and become the raucous, fashionable and revenge-bent Cruella.”
      The movie is directed by Craig Gillespie (“I Tonya”) from a screenplay by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, and story by Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel as well as Steve Zissis. It is set for a theatrical release in the U.S. on May 28.

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      Santa Barbara Film Festival 2021 to Screen Movies for Free in Beachside Drive-In Theaters

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      The 36th annual event, which runs from March 31 to April 10, will screen over 80 movies and salute the likes of Bill Murray, Sacha Baron Cohen, Delroy Lindo and Amanda Seyfried.

      Feb 18, 2021
      AceShowbiz – Santa Barbara International Film Festival bosses are planning to beat the COVID blues by planning a series of free virtual and drive-in events to mark this year’s (2021) spectacular.
      Festival planners will build two beachside drive-in theatres, where they will screen over 80 movies as part of the 36th annual event, which runs from March 31 to April 10.
      Bill Murray, Sacha Baron Cohen, Delroy Lindo and Amanda Seyfried will be among the stars saluted at this year’s event, while Riz Ahmed, Maria Bakalova, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Andra Day, Vanessa Kirby and Zendaya Coleman will be among those feted during the festival’s Virtuosos evening.
      SBIFF programmers have received a record number of film submissions this year, and the festival will feature 100 movies, some of them world premieres. In addition to the drive-ins, SBIFF is offering a ticketed virtual component, featuring online film screenings, Q&As with the filmmakers, industry panels and celebrity tributes.

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      The film line-up and schedule will be announced in early March.
      “We have poured all of our creativity into this plan and are very proud of the shape it is taking,” SBIFF’s executive director Roger Durling tells Deadline. “It’s imperative we bring a sense of hopefulness to 2021, but in the safest way possible. A virtual component was a given but experiencing movies in socially distanced cars and being by the ocean felt oh so perfectly Santa Barbara, California.”

      Lupita Nyong’o, Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Renee Zellweger were among honorees at last year’s event.

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      Demi Lovato Still Finds It Hard to Feel Worthy of So Much Love After Release of Docuseries Trailer

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