Indie News

Bleecker Street opened Hotel Mumbai in four theaters Friday and appears to have caught some attention from audiences not heading to Us. Overall, the specialties were mostly light. Hotel Mumbai, starring Oscar-nominee Dev Patel and Armie Hammer, grossed $86,492 in four theaters, averaging $21,623, by far the best showing among limited release titles this weekend.

Sony Pictures Classics bowed period drama Sunset by László Nemes in 3 New York and L.A. locations Friday. Its three-day estimate is $15K. Nemes’ previous feature, Son Of Saul, took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 2016 and cumed over $1.77M at the box office. In its debut, Son Of Saul grossed nearly $38K in three theaters in its opening three-day, averaging $12,643.

IFC’s Toronto ’18 drama-mystery Out Of Blue went to 35 theaters. The title floundered with a $17,682 gross, averaging $505.

Focus Features’ The Mustang had the weekend’s best PTA among the specialty openers last weekend.

Larry Cohen, best known for his work as a B-movie producer and director in the ’70s and his later work in screenwriting, has died. He was 77.

Cohen’s friend, actor and publicist Shade Rupe, confirmed the news, which was announced in a post to Cohen’s official Facebook page. Rupe said Cohen died in Los Angeles Saturday night surrounded by loved ones.

“The entire #KingCohen team mourns the loss of its star, hero and King, #LarryCohen,” reads the post. “His unparalleled talents were surpassed only by his giant heart. The impact he made on television and cinema will be felt forever, and our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and fans.”

Cohen began his career in the 1960s in television, writing scripts for episodes of well-known TV series including “The Defenders,” “Espionage,” and “The Invaders.”

In the ’70s, Cohen began to focus on filmmaking, penning and directing the

For all the excited discourse bubbling around “Killing Eve” Season 1, one element of BBC America’s compelling new drama was often overlooked: At its core, it’s a procedural. Sure, the action is serialized, but the narrative nevertheless circles around one cop’s quest to catch a criminal, and episodes find new ways for the two to butt heads, cross paths, and obsessively circle one another like hungry cats not sure what to do with the mouse they’re stalking.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that Season 2 wastes little time reestablishing the dynamic it pretended to blow up during last year’s finale. Yes, MI6 agent Eve (Sandra Oh) finally came face to face with Villanelle (Jodie Comer), the assassin she hunted (and fell for?) over an intense investigation, but she only appeared to make a decision. She stabbed her. She hurt her. But she also let her go.

“Star Trek” intends to do right by Jean-Luc Picard, but the “Next Generation” spinoff featuring the Starfleet captain played by Patrick Stewart will feel much different from what’s come before. At a Paleyfest panel for “Star Trek: Discovery” on Sunday, series co-creator Alex Kurtzman ended the event with a highly anticipated update.

“I had an amazing experience yesterday. I sat at Patrick’s kitchen table and I heard him read the first episode, and I almost cried,” he said. “It was quite something. He’s at an amazing place in his life. He’s so excited.”

Stewart, 78, helmed the USS Enterprise as Picard for seven seasons of “The Next Generation” and four movies. Despite assimilation by the Borg and other unsavory and challenging encounters with aliens and humans alike, Picard had been a steadfast and moral figure, driven by duty but often alone as he is the last of the Picards.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for “The Walking Dead” Season 9 Episode 15, “The Calm Before.”]

This Week On “The Walking Dead”

“The Calm Before” is complicated. On the one hand, it’s an effective piece of horror, skillfully playing out the dread of what, exactly, Alpha is going to do as reprisal for her stolen daughter, culminating in a truly memorable and ghastly image. The performances are strong, many characters are reunited, and it’s a vastly superior hour (plus) than the last big shocker episode, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” But as another chapter in the ongoing narrative, it just makes me want to throw up my hands. Here, again, is another pile of agonizing misery for our heroes. Here, again, the audience is strung through the emotional wringer so a new Big Bad can prove how super dangerous they are. It’s an exhausting and exasperating hour of television. Between this episode and “Scars” last week,

South MountainIn my last dispatch from Austin I pinpointed the Visions section as a shortcut to South by Southwest’s generally more adventurous programming, if only to facilitate sifting through a number of arcane plot summaries. High-profile acts are bound to the festival thanks to tradition, release date timing, and in some cases city loyalty (think Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and Terrence Malick’s Song to Song; both were shot in Austin and both ultimately premiered at SXSW). It would seem that some worthy but inconspicuous titles could easily fall between the cracks, though pioneers like Barry Jenkins prove otherwise. This year’s Global section I found particularly fertile, with titles ranging from X&Y, artist Anna Oddell’s experimental film inquisition of public personas and gender roles, to Marlén Vi?ayo’s Cachada: The Opportunity, a documentary about a group of working-class Salvadoran women that stage a performative re-enactment of their traumatic life stories.

Obscure Objects of Desire: The Films of Luis Bu?uel is showing March 12 – May 23, 2019 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.“Luis was a jealous macho. His wife had to be a kind-of child woman who had not matured,” said Jeanne Rucar, Luis Bu?uel’s wife, summing up their marriage. Rucar’s personal note has surprising bearing on the director’s oeuvre. Vicious, dreamlike, sly, witty, deviant—Bu?uel the artist was all those things. Besides colorful tales of his petit bourgeois upbringing and his ascetic adult life, what truly fascinates is his surrealism. Bu?uel left Spain for Paris five years before Un chien andalou (1929), and the French Surrealists embraced his work (even thought he claimed not to know about them while conceiving his debut). L'age d'or (1930), his second collaboration with Salvador Dalí, followed, to critical acclaim.What does this have to do with women? In her book on abstract expressionist art in New York,

“What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. There’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there.” This is what Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) tells Neo (Keanu Reeves) in Lana and Lily Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999) when proposing the red pill, that will begin him on his hero’s journey as “The One,” or the blue pill scenario, returning him to his former, average life. In recent years, “red pilled” went from an Internet meme to crossing over into a popular political identity and discourse revolving around MRAs (men’s rights activists) and the alt-right. Pieces written on the 20th anniversary celebration of The Matrix will likely include its unintentional associations with that repulsive political current that co-opted the idea of taking “the blue pill or red pill?” But this same scene has another,

Jordan Peele’s “Us” more than fulfilled the advance excitement for the Oscar-winning “Get Out” director. Few filmmakers go from a breakout success and return with another original film that advances on his first. It’s impressive on multiple levels, and a very encouraging sign in a discouraging year.

Its $70 million total contributed to the third straight weekend that grossed ahead of the same one in 2018. That continues a turnaround; now the year-over-year slump is a bit over 17 percent, down from 25 percent a few weeks ago. Still, it leaves the raw number of ticket revenue down $450 million from last year, with this weekend cutting $10 million from the shortfall. That shows the challenge of getting anywhere close to parity. “Dumbo” next week and initial strong response to “Shazam!” two weeks after that suggest that number will be pared further ahead. However, we likely enter summer a quarter billion or more behind.

In “Action,” the new documentary series from Showtime, multiple participants in the show compare the allure and pull of sports gambling to an addictive substance. Some casual bettors go so far as to describe the need to erase a day of unsuccessful wagers as akin to chasing a fix. Professional behavioral psychologists explain how the elation that can come with seeing a giant parlay pay off originates in the same centers in the brain that light up with any other form of pleasurable activity.

What “Action” also manages to capture is the idea that putting all sports gamblers into the same simplistic category is as misguided and counterproductive as claiming that heroin addicts and recreational vapers should be filed in the same overall camp too. Though not as immediate as something like “The Trade” and not quite as formally showy as other overviews of massive money schemes, “Action” still gives

“Gloria Bell” shows some traction and enough heft to reach the Top Ten in its third weekend, and “Apollo 11” continues to grow, but overall the top adult-audience specialized titles see mixed results. This weekend’s releases also includes “Hotel Mumbai” which, like last week’s “The Mustang” and “The Aftermath,” will see wide national releases with hopes of some crossover success. The reality is limited openings with openings similar to “Hotel Mumbai” and others usually don’t break out beyond a modest level.

Opening

Hotel Mumbai (Bleecker Street) – Metacritic: 61; Festivals include: Toronto 2018

$86,492 in 4 theaters; PTA (per theater average): $21,623

This recreation of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai’s most famous hotel got the highest theater placement in New York and Los Angeles. Starring Dev Patel, it received mildly favorable reviews. It is expanding quickly, with a limited initial run in contrast to Bleecker Street’s kidnapping thriller “Beirut” last year,

Ryan Murphy is an industry veteran, and his experience shone as he moderated the “Pose” PaleyFest panel Saturday night. Alternating between personal insights and newsy revelations, the co-creator and executive producer of FX’s groundbreaking drama got the most out of his time in Dolby Theater.

On the news front, Murphy revealed the setting of Season 2 as well as some new cast members. “Season 2 is very exciting,” Murphy said. “It starts in 1990 — the day Madonna releases ‘Vogue,’ and along with our wonderful [returning] cast, we have wonderful additions. Sandra Bernhard is a series regular.”

“Pose” Season 1 took place in 1987 and 1988. Dominique Jackson summed up the cast’s position — who were surprised by every announcement of the night — when she said, “I have no idea what’s going on, but for Season 2 I honestly trust in the writing and realize that sometimes we have to let go.”

Murphy surprised actress Mj Rodriguez

Paramount has unveiled the trailer for “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” which discerning Dora diehards will recognize as the live-action adaptation of “Dora the Explorer.” Giving off an “Indiana Jones” vibe, it unfortunately doesn’t feature a flesh-and-blood rendering of the “Why not both?” meme we all know and love. Despite that, you may still watch the trailer below if you’re so inclined.

Here’s the synopsis: “Having spent most of her life exploring the jungle with her parents, nothing could prepare Dora (Isabela Moner) for her most dangerous adventure ever — High School. Always the explorer, Dora quickly finds herself leading Boots, Diego (Jeffrey Wahlberg), a mysterious jungle inhabitant (Eugenio Derbez), and a rag tag group of teens on a live-action adventure to save her parents and solve the impossible mystery behind a lost city of gold.” Moner previously appeared in “Transformers: The Last Knight” and “Instant Family.

While home invasion horror films still flood the market – we shall see if “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” ends up tackling a “The Strangers” like, or more Tarantino revisionist approach (which it could be leaning towards) to its historic subject matter – spine chillers set against the backdrop of Mother Nature (like Ari Aster’s upcoming “Midsommar” seem to continually attract audiences.

Continue reading ‘Body At Brighton Rock’ Trailer: Horror Anthology Director Roxanne Benjamin Makes Her Feature-Length Debut at The Playlist.

There are certain filmmakers that carry a name that is so trusted that it almost doesn’t matter what the film is going to be about, the director’s name is good enough to spark ticket sales. Some examples of this include James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and of course, Steven Spielberg. But now, it’s safe to add Jordan Peele to that list. And no, that’s not hyperbolic.

Continue reading Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ Scares Up Incredible $70 Million Opening Weekend As ‘Captain Marvel’ Approaches $1 Billion [Box Office] at The Playlist.

Larry Cohen, a revered figure in the horror genre best known for directing such films as “It’s Alive,” “Gold Told Me To,” and “The Stuff,” has died at 77. The filmmaker began his decades-spanning career by writing for television in the 1960s, penning more than 100 episodes of crime and detective series like “The Fugitive” and “The Defenders” before helming his first feature, “Bone,” in 1972.

He jumped between horror, science fiction, and even blaxploitation over the next 30 years and 20 features before stepping behind the camera for the final time with, fittingly enough, an episode of “Masters of Horror.”

Cohen continued as a screenwriter after helming his last feature, 1996’s “Original Gangstas,” including “Phone Booth,” “Cellular,” and “Captivity.” He also wrote the script for 1988’s cult classic “Maniac Cop” and two of its sequels as well as episodes of “Columbo” and “NYPD Blue,” among many others.

Speaking to IndieWire in 2017, Cohen — who despite his profession,

The days of simply going to a movie theater and paying for a ticket may soon be over, dear reader, if tech executives have their way. Following the many ups and downs of MoviePass, a new venture is being launched by one of that company’s founders to score viewers movie tickets for the low, low price of sitting through 15 to 20 minutes of advertisements. Before you point out that everyone already does that when they watch trailers in the theater, know this: PreShow wants to utilize facial recognition and track how much attention you’re paying to each ad.

“If it weren’t for facial recognition, I don’t think we could still do it,” Stacy Spikes, PreShow’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview with CNET last week. “If not, they could game this all day long.”

Here’s how it works, per CNET: “Forgoing a password,

Following a report this week claiming that the upcoming Elton John biopic “Rocketman” is facing studio pressure to remove a 40-second “nude cuddle” featuring actors Taron Egerton and Richard Madden, director Dexter Fletcher has responded by assuring viewers that the film will be “no holds barred.”

The report, which comes from the Daily Mail, states that the move is being considered in order to secure a PG-13 rating rather than an R. Fletcher also took over directing duties on “Bohemian Rhapsody” after Bryan Singer was fired; in addition to being a similarly high-profile biopic of a gay rock singer, that film received criticism in some circles for playing down its subject’s sexuality.

“Seeing much speculation about Rocketman!! That’s good! It’s still unfinished so it’s nothing but rumors,” Fletcher wrote on Twitter. “It has and always will be the no holds barred, musical fantasy that Paramount and

More than two years ago, prior to “Veep” Season 6, much was made about the effect Donald Trump would have on HBO’s political satire. How could such an enormous, unexpected shift in America go unremarked upon by TV’s most prescient comedy on American government? But the season was already written. The Trump effect was relatively moot in the alternate reality established within the series, even if showrunner David Mandel and his award-winning writing staff still proved their Nostradamus-esque abilities to predict future political foibles more than a few times over.

Now, “Veep” has adjusted. Deliberately or instinctively, its searing viewpoint on the system and its players has widened to include those formerly outside the bubble. Season 7 — the series’ last — takes aim not only the power-hungry politicians, but also at the willfully ignorant American people who stubbornly support them. That includes the viewers at home; those who carelessly laughed at

If you’re over the age of 5 and don’t have any children, odds are you’re probably not very familiar with the cartoon “Dora the Explorer.” However, if you are under 5 or have young children, then you’ve definitely experienced the children’s cartoon that attempts to use an adorable little girl and her friends to help kids learn and speak Spanish. And if that doesn’t sound like the makings of a good movie, then don’t worry, that’s not the film that Paramount is interested in making with “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”

As seen in the first trailer for the ‘Dora’ adaptation, the young adventurer has morphed into a teenager, who is attempting to assimilate in 2019 teen culture after growing up in “the jungle.” Of course, that would also make a fairly boring film, so the plot somehow puts Dora and her new