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Feb182025 by cineverseNo Comments

Girls on Wire’ Review: Two Cousins Reunited on a Chinese Film Set Are Trapped in a Melodrama of Their Own Making

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By Peter Debruge According To The variety Flying high in one of the world’s most male-dominated film industries, Chinese writer-director Vivian Qu follows up her acclaimed 2017 drama “Angels Wear White” with the almost-good “Girls on Wires.” Focused on the uneasy reunion between two estranged cousins who team up to beat the cycle of drug abuse and debt that’s been dragging their family down for decades, this is ambitious, moral-minded cinema for a mainstream Chinese audience, and as such, it seems only fair to forgive the kind of hammy acting and manipulative melodrama Americans accept from Clint Eastwood and Tyler Perry movies. There’s something charmingly old-fashioned in the way Qu tries to move viewers, using flashbacks to memories between cutie-pie kiddos Fang Di and T...

Feb182025 by cineverseNo Comments

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Weighs Cannes Film Festival Debut

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By Elsa Keslassy, Nick Vivarelli According To The variety Ethan Hunt could be hitting the Croisette. Though no decision has been made, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” is weighing a Cannes Film Festival bow, which could see Tom Cruise injecting some serious star power into the event. Paramount, which declined to comment for this article, will be releasing the movie in theaters on May 21, which falls during the second week of the festival. The film is intended to be Cruise’s last outing as the IMF spy. Paramount has a rich history with the festival, and so does Cruise, whose last trip to Cannes — for “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022 — was a triumph. The movie went on to gross $1.45 billion at the worldwide box office and even garnered six Oscar nominations...

Feb182025 by cineverseNo Comments

Sony Pictures Classics Buys Jodie Foster Murder Mystery Movie ‘Vie Privée’ for North America and Latin America (EXCLUSIVE)

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By Elsa Keslassy According To The variety In one of the first major deals unveiled at the European Film Market, Sony Pictures Classics (“I’m Still Here”) has bought “Vie Privée,” a highly anticipated, humor-laced murder mystery movie starring Jodie Foster and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (“Other People’s Children”), for North America and Latin America territories. The Oscar winner stars in the film as renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner who mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered. Foster last starred in a French-language film 20 years ago in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Oscar-nominated “A Very Long Engagement.” Foster, who recently won an Emmy and a Golden Globe her turn in HBO’s “Tr...

Feb172025 by cineverseNo Comments

Ukraine’s Kateryna Gornostai Finds Hope in Berlinale Doc ‘Timestamp’: ‘This Generation Needs to Live’

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By Marta Balaga According To The variety Ukrainian filmmaker Kateryna Gornostai makes a case for optimism with the Berlinale doc “Timestamp.” “It’s a sad film, but there’s a lot of hope in these kids and in our education system that still works. It was crucial to make a film about war, but war is not in the frame,” she told Variety. Bowing in Berlinale’s main competition, “Timestamp” follows Ukrainian students and teachers, trying to maintain normalcy despite constant danger and the world’s waning interest in their plight. “We were afraid of [Donald] Trump winning the [U.S.] presidential seat again. But you know, the worst has already happened: we lost our people and our families. At this point, we’re a bit fatalistic. So now … We just observe,” she said. Sometimes, whe...

Feb172025 by cineverseNo Comments

Radu Jude Returns to Wry Social Commentary, Absurd ‘Human Comedy’ in Berlin Golden Bear Contender ‘Kontinental ‘25

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By Christopher Vourlias According To The variety Four years after winning the Golden Bear for his irreverent satire “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” Romanian auteur Radu Jude returns to the Berlinale with his latest feature, “Kontinental ’25,” which premieres Feb. 19 in the festival’s main competition. The film follows a bailiff, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), who’s plunged into a moral crisis after a homeless man she’s trying to evict commits suicide. Struggling with a profound sense of guilt, she looks for ways to ease her troubled conscience, even as she grows increasingly desperate for external reassurance and validation. Easier said than done. As you might expect from one of world cinema’s leading provocateurs, Orsolya’s round-about search for red...

Feb172025 by cineverseNo Comments

Roschdy Zem Set for Psychodrama ‘Elisa — I Wanted to Kill Her’ Directed by Leonardo Di Costanzo (EXCLUSIVE)

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By Nick Vivarelli According To The variety French-Moroccan multi-hyphenate Roschdy Zem (“Days of Glory,” “The Innocent”) and Italy’s Barbara Ronchi (“Kidnapped”) are set to star in psychological drama “Elisa — Io la volevo uccidere” by Italian director Leonardo Di Costanzo (“The Inner Cage,” “The Intruder”). Zem, who is one of France’s most bankable actors, will play a compassionate criminologist named Alaoui, whose life intersects with a young woman named Elisa, played by Ronchi. Elisa comes from a middle class family and has been in prison for 10 years for brutally killing her sister. Rounding off the cast is Diego Ribon (“Doc”), who plays Elisa’s father. Shooting is set to start March 1 on “Elisa — Io la volevo uccidere,” which is the film’s Italian worki...

Feb162025 by cineverseNo Comments

Pablo Trapero’s ‘Malinche’ Set for Morena, Talipot

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By John Hopewell According To The variety Mexico’s Talipot Studio, a co-producer on Ruben Östlund’s triple Oscar nominee “Triangle of Sadness,” has boarded “Malinche,” a historical epic produced by Spain’s Morena Films and directed by Pablo Trapero (“The Clan,” “ZeroZeroZero”). Prestigious Mexican historian Enrique Krauze also produces. Shaping up as one of the biggest movies from the Spanish-speaking world this year, “Malinche” is written by Trapero and Daniel Krauze, a writer on “Luis Miguel: The Series It could be described as a conquistador epic, set in 1519 as Hernán Cortes’ troops are supposedly welcomed by Aztec lord Moctezuma in Tenochtitlan. It centers, however, on the figure of Malinche, Cortés’ interpreter and consort who bore him a son.&nbs...