Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      Sharon Stone Defends Working With 'Super Professional' Woody Allen After Dylan Farrow Documentary

      by

      WENN/Twitter

      The ‘Basic Instinct’ actress praises the ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ director for being nothing but ‘spectacular,’ ‘wonderful,’ and ‘super professional’ with her.

      Mar 26, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Sharon Stone has insisted that all her experiences working with Woody Allen were “wonderful” and “highly professional.”

      The actress teamed up with the disgraced filmmaker on three movies – “Stardust Memories”, “Antz”, and “Fading Gigolo”. She touches upon her work with Allen in her new memoir “The Beauty of Living Twice” and, as she was interviewed about the book on Sirius XM’s “The Michelle Collins show” on Wednesday (24Mar21), she further explained that despite the sexual abuse claims made against the director, she’s only ever had a good time working with him.

      “I don’t want to say I never had an untoward experience with Woody Allen,” Sharon said, as she was asked what she thought about the “[m=Allen v. Farrow documentary, which explores Dylan Farrow’s claims that she was molested by Allen when she was seven years old.

        See also…

      “My experiences with Woody Allen were all wonderful, he was highly professional with me. He was extraordinarily encouraging to me and I was a young woman, 19, when I started working with him. I’ve done three films with him. He’s been nothing but spectacular with me. I have no experience of him being anything but terrific.”

      She added, “I am fully aware of the documentary that’s come out recently, but I have zero of those experiences to report. I can say that while the (Allen v. Farrow) documentary may very well be a hundred per cent true, it is not my experience. I had a super professional and a particularly wonderful experience working with him. Which is why I worked with him three times.”

      Allen has always strenuously denied Dylan’s allegations.

      You can share this post!

      Next article

      Take That’s Howard Donald Calls His Boyband’s Music ‘Sh*t’

      Related Posts More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Six Minutes to Midnight’ Review: A Finishing School for the Nazi Elite

      by

      In this suspense thriller set in the 1930s, Judi Dench and Eddie Izzard are stalwart Brits at a sinister girl’s school in England.There have been an awful lot of movies made not just about World War II but about the days leading up to it. So new angles can be hard to find. How about this: a Nazi girl’s school in a seaside town in England in the 1930s?Such a place did exist: the Augusta Victoria College at Bexhill-on-Sea. Its school badge contained both a Union Jack and a swastika. It was here that daughters of the Nazi elite went for finishing. Out of this peculiar fact, Eddie Izzard, whose family hails from Bexhill, determined to forge a film; Izzard not only stars in “Six Minutes to Midnight” but is also one of the writers of the screenplay as well as an executive producer.The scenario grafts a fictional Hitchcock-redolent suspense thriller to the reality of the school’s existence. “Midnight” opens with the disappearance of an instructor at the school, under sinister circumstances. Enter Izzard as Thomas Miller, come to replace him. Like his predecessor, Miller is a British spy really sent to gather intelligence on the school. While the activities of the students, their German instructor Ilse (Carla Juri) and their British headmistress (Judi Dench) seem on the up-and-up, pedagogy-wise, the environment nevertheless looks ripe for espionage. And when Miller witnesses the student body’s enthusiastic response to a speech by Adolf Hitler on the wireless, he figures the suspicions of his superiors are correct.Classified lists, a secret evacuation plan and a murder frame-up all come into play. The double-crosses are depicted by the director Andy Goddard with better-than-average craft, but the more the movie leans into old suspense conventions the more interest it loses, alas.Six Minutes to MidnightRated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play 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

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Miracle Fishing: Kidnapped Abroad’ Review: Harrowing Home Videos

      by

      The documentary is a unique record of the abduction that inspired the Hollywood thriller “Proof of Life.”The 1994 kidnapping of Thomas R. Hargrove, an American agricultural journalist living in Colombia, already inspired a Hollywood thriller (“Proof of Life,” with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan). But there’s more suspense in watching the real thing.Miles Hargrove, one of Hargrove’s sons, shot video throughout the year he and his family spent trying to secure his father’s safe return. Out of those home movies, he has assembled “Miracle Fishing: Kidnapped Abroad,” a documentary that is able to show the Hargroves and a close group of friends and abduction experts as they live through that ordeal.The footage captures them as they negotiate the ransom, wait out long periods of silence from the kidnappers and even drive bundles of cash around. Poor radio reception interferes with the talks, and decisions have ongoing ramifications. (Was a friend of Miles’s the best spokesman? Is ambiguous evidence that Thomas is still alive good enough?) The kidnappers, subject to broader upheavals in the country, aren’t in a stable position themselves.Like the best home movies, “Miracle Fishing” is also a psychological study. During waits for news, the family guiltily carries on with dinners and music. When the kidnappers indicate that they will go silent for two months, Hargrove cuts to black and holds it, giving viewers an infinitesimal taste of that agony.Retrospective voice-over from the participants helps fill out the picture. Few people in this position would think to pick up a camera, let alone keep filming for so long. That makes “Miracle Fishing” a unique and harrowing record.Miracle Fishing: Kidnapped AbroadNot rated. In English and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Tina’ Review: A Music Icon Looks Back With Grace

      by

      The documentary about Tina Turner, who is now in her 80s, is not just a summing up of her life, but a kind of farewell.In 2009, Tina Turner gave her final public performance. After which she did something that only a few mega-famous musicians actually succeed at: she retired. With her second husband, the former record company executive Erwin Bach, she took up a life far from both the country of her birth and the bustle of the music industry, in Zurich.But Turner continues to inspire. In 2019 a Broadway musical based on her life, made with her cooperation, became a hit. Her songs, both in partnership with Ike Turner and solo, are staples of classic radio stations. For this documentary, directed by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin, she sat down for a stocktaking interview; this film is not just a summing up but a kind of farewell.Turner’s life was a hard and complicated one. In the 1980s and beyond, the telling of that story became a defining part of her subsequent life. She began in music in the late 1950s as a wide-eyed teenager in St. Louis, admiring the R&B bandleader Ike Turner and hoping to sing for him. He dismissed her again and again, but when a bandmate insisted he listen, Ike was stunned. He initially groomed her in a way that both Tina and former colleagues here describe as “brotherly.” But the short shrift Ike had gotten in the music business fed his paranoia, and once he realized the one-time Anna Mae Bullock could be his ticket to the big time, he took control of Tina in terrifyingly abusive ways.The documentary gives Ike his due as a musical force while also providing a cleareyed portrait of a monster. Tina’s recounting of a suicide attempt is juxtaposed with a clip from a 2000 interview with Ike in which Ike speculates that his then-wife was “upset” about his “womanizing.”Tina Turner fought to keep her name after leaving Ike. And after doing whatever gigs she could get to pull herself out of debt, she forged a solo career bigger than she had possibly ever dreamed. She accomplished this over the resistance of racist record execs and journalists who only ever wanted to ask her about the past. And eventually she found love — not again, she says, but really for the first time — with Bach, who’s also an executive producer of the movie.Because of her autobiography, “I, Tina” (written with Kurt Loder, who is interviewed here) and the feature film “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (starring Angela Bassett, who speaks here with fervor on Tina’s talent and strength), you may believe you know Turner’s tale. And you may be right. It is retold well here, but the most moving portions — and they could bring tears to your eyes — come as Turner, almost 80 at the time of this interview (and as beautiful as she has ever been), wearing a tailored black suit, sits and discusses where she’s at now. “In not forgiving, you suffer,” she reflects. “I had an abusive life … that’s what you got. So you have to accept it.” The grace she shows here is almost overpowering.TinaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms beginning March 27. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Francesco’ Review: The Pope, Up Close, but Not That Close

      by

      The new documentary on Pope Francis is a missed opportunity to demystify elements of the papacy.Discovery+ is billing “Francesco,” a portrait of Pope Francis, as “an unprecedented look at the man behind the cloth.” But while the filmmakers were able to talk to Pope Francis in person, a large portion of the documentary comes from a layer out. The director, Evgeny Afineevsky, includes ample footage of the pope’s public appearances, images of his tweets and interviews with multiple people identified as “longtime friend of Pope Francis.”This approach, focusing on the message and not the messenger, seems consistent with Francis’s modesty, and the film plays like a channel for spreading his ideas on the environment, refugees and religious coexistence. All of that is to the good. But judged strictly as a movie, “Francesco” comes across as shapeless and secondhand — a missed opportunity to present a closer look at the daily work of being pope and perhaps to demystify elements of the papacy.We learn, for instance, that when Francis visited Myanmar in 2017, he did not refer by name to the Rohingya, the Muslim ethnic group persecuted within the country, adhering to the policy of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s government not to use the word (although he did allude to the group, and a Rohingya refugee who met him in Bangladesh says the pope later asked for forgiveness). How are such inherently political decisions made? “Francesco” does not explain.The film is not always glowing. Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of abuse by a priest in Chile, discusses how hard it was to see the pope dismiss as “slander” accusations that a bishop had covered up the abuse. But the film uses this to illustrate how Francis grew. He met with Cruz and ultimately defrocked the priest.FrancescoNot rated. In English, Spanish, Italian, Armenian and French with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Shoplifters of the World’ Review: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

      by

      Four friends process the breakup of their musical idols, The Smiths, in this gentle tale of teenage self-discovery.“Shoplifters of the World,” a loving gift to superfans of the English band The Smiths, is, we are told at the beginning, “based on true intentions.” I can’t argue with that: Written and directed by Stephen Kijak (who made the fantastic 2008 documentary “Scott Walker: 30 Century Man”), this sweetly nostalgic look at lost boys and lonely girls feels like it comes straight from the heart.It’s the summer of 1987 and four friends in Denver, Colo., have just learned that their favorite band, The Smiths, has broken up. Like their idols, the teens are romantic and earnest, confused and occasionally pretentious. Cleo (Helena Howard), weary of her supermarket checkout job, dreams of escaping to France; Sheila (Elena Kampouris) desperately wants to consummate her relationship with the adamantly celibate Patrick (James Bloor); and Billy (Nick Krause) might be using his imminent Army training as more escape than destination.As the four embark on a night of mournful partying and mild self-discovery, the nonstop Smiths soundtrack is provided by a local radio D.J. (an amusing Joe Manganiello) whose metal marathon has been hijacked at gunpoint by another grieving fan (Ellar Coltrane).“This music is salvation,” he tells the D.J., who will, of course, be grudgingly converted.Shot in 2018 and inspired by a mischievous urban legend, “Shoplifters” is a Smithstopia of song titles, lyric fragments and scraps of band interviews that infest the movie’s dialogue and production design. But even if you can’t tell Morrissey from Macklemore, don’t be put off: This is a tender story of teen ennui that almost anyone can enjoy. Though probably not metalheads.Shoplifters of the WorldNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu 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

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Senior Moment’ Review: A Romance That Wouldn’t Hurt a Flea

      by

      This Giorgio Serafini movie takes us to a retirement center, a drag race and the DMV, not to mention a dizzying encounter on public transportation.There are many here among us for whom the prospect of spending 90 minutes in the presence of William Shatner would be unalloyed bliss. The world is a funny place. In any event, for them, “Senior Moment,” a romantic comedy, will be, well, unalloyed bliss.Shatner plays, in the consistently bemused fashion that’s become a hallmark of his performances, a character compelled to go where no man he has played has gone before: the DMV.The “Star Trek” legend here incarnates Victor Martin, a former test pilot living his retirement dream in Palm Springs, tooling around in a silver Porsche. In this vehicle he gives his best friend, Sal (Christopher Lloyd), rides to and from a retirement center. He poses for a photo shoot with the car and a young bikini model (Katrina Bowden) whom he imprudently tries to romance. And he scares the devil out of a cafe owner Caroline (Jean Smart) with the car one night, while drag racing against Pablo (Carlos Miranda), a cheerful low rider.That race gets Victor’s license suspended, and his car impounded. While taking the bus, he meets cute with Caroline, and a more age-appropriate affair begins. In reality, Jean Smart is only 20 years younger than Shatner, while Katrina Bowden is well over 50 years younger. Such is Hollywood.Bowden was a regular on the sitcom “30 Rock.” Lloyd created a beloved character on “Taxi.” Smart, among other things, was a fixture on “Designing Women.” So “Senior Moment” presents actors from four significant and still-well-regarded TV shows in a picture that’s significantly less-well-written than any random episode of any of those shows you could name. Giorgio Serafini’s direction is also uninspired. This is the kind of movie that is usually defended with one word: “harmless.”Senior MomentNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and on Apple TV, 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