Film

Film

"When I met up with Michael B. Jordan at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank before a late-night event on the lot, he seemed exhausted and understandably so. The always-in-demand actor, one of Hollywood's hottest talents, was just back from Europe, where he spent a year directing, acting and producing a new version of the heist thriller The Thomas Crown Affair."

As I devoted more time and energy to the Filmmaker newsletter throughout the last decade-plus, I'd often find myself in some form of dialogue with producer, strategist and consultant Brian Newman. His invaluable Sub-genre newsletter arrives on Thursdays (now, biweekly), mine on Fridays, and, like me, he'll often comment on the production and distribution challenges facing independent filmmakers in an increasingly commercialized, politically cautious and algorithmically-driven media landscape.

Where does such a charge leave Magellan, despoiler of every Eden he encounters? The film, to its credit, does not skimp on paradisiacal visions. Every shot of the tropics is a painterly study in lush foliage and golden-pink sunlight; the beauty of the natural world seems, if anything, magnified by Magellan's encroaching, annihilating threat. Such visual wonders will hardly surprise admirers of Diaz, whose work has encouraged contemplation, and at marathon lengths.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

In the last few weeks we've had three almost completely pointless short trailers online, with another reportedly playing in cinemas ahead of Avatar: Fire and Ash. First there was Captain America cradling his baby, then Thor praying to his dear old dead omnipotent dad. This week we got our first proper look at the classic X-Men lineup in the new film, and there are suggestions that an encounter between the Fantastic Four's The Thing and half of Wakanda is imminent. Something weird is clearly happening.

If in our earliest issues we valorized filmmakers recklessly putting their production budgets on their credit cards, Robinson in a 2009 series on filmmakers and their second jobs preached the necessity of a good side hustle, convincing filmmakers such as Barry Jenkins, Tze Chun, Joe Swanberg and Liza Johnson to reveal the wage labor they undertook before their entertainment industry careers took off.

By the middle of the 1990s, two Westerns had won Best Picture in three years. That was a big deal, because the genre had been more or less dormant since Heaven's Gate cratered at the box office in 1980. The successes of Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven came a few years after Costner starred in Silverado and Eastwood tested the waters by directing and starring in Pale Rider, two 1985 films that set the stage for the leading men to dazzle audiences and Academy voters with much grander follow-ups.

For someone best known as an actor, Bradley Cooper's core interest as a filmmaker is perhaps unsurprising. Thus far, he has been entirely consumed by examinations of performance-first digging into a pop musician's stratospheric career climb in A Star Is Born, then wrestling with Leonard Bernstein's desire to reimagine classical music in . Both movies were hefty pieces of entertainment, filled with love, death, and grand human experiences. His newest, the fetching

Wearing a bright turquoise suit, Cumming was joined by his husband Grant Shaffer, as well as other friends and family. However, some fans were surprised to see Cumming is close with activist Lewinsky, who was a key figure in the infamous Bill Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that led to Clinton's impeachment. The US host was awarded the 2,832th star, located at 6320 Hollywood Boulevard. Cumming is renowned for his performances on the stage and screen.

Adapted from Rosenkrantz' book of the same name, published in 2022, the film hinges on a single conversation in December 1974, as Hujar recounts, almost pedantically, everything he did the previous day. Drawn from a long-lost tape, the monologue turns errands, meals and irritations into a portrait of an artist's inner life. It trades plot for precision, offering instead a study of friendship, attention and the conditions of making work in 1970s New York.

As well as playing the titular Count Dracula, Erivo will play all of the other 22 characters in Bram Stoker's iconic tale. Among the characters, Erivo will play naïve solicitor Jonathan Harker and his fiancée Mina Murray, as well as confidante Lucy Westenra, her suitors, and also the formidable vampire hunter Van Helsing.

A retired Navy admiral who oversaw the construction of Disneyland and helped Walt Disney build what many regarded as a fool's folly emerges as the unsung hero of a new documentary film about the birth of the Anaheim theme park. The new Disneyland Handcrafted documentary by filmmaker Leslie Iwerks on the one-year blitz to create the first Disney theme park will debut Jan. 22 on YouTube and the Disney+ streaming service.

Predator: Badlands is finally available to preorder in physical formats at major retailers, including Amazon and Walmart. Blu-ray preorders for most big-budget movies open alongside the theatrical premiere these days, but it took two months for physical versions of Badlands to surface. Fans of the iconic sci-fi series won't have to wait much longer to complete their collection. The new standalone Predator movie releases February 17 on 4K Blu-ray, 1080p Blu-ray, and DVD.

The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis' apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm. That's owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like It, The Crow and Nosferatu, here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very '70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels Dead Man's Wire.

One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy joined the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats, the latest Demon Slayer film earned $780 million at the worldwide box office in 2025, and the animated musical KPop Demon Hunters (though not technically anime) became the most-watched original Netflix movie of all time. As someone who had no one to talk to growing up during the days of Naruto and Dragon Ball Z, it's tough to even process that the genre has reached mainstream status around the globe.

Your imagination is really the limit when it comes to film. I think that's what's so cool is that it's taking your dreams and it's making them a sort of reality," said Greenberg.

After somewhat of a dry spell, Gus Van Sant comes out swinging with one of his most consistently entertaining features in decades, a rousing truth-based crime dramedy that relates the relatively simple tale of a twitchy, outraged Indianapolis man taking a banker hostage. Everything about it works, in particular Bill Skarsgard's fastball performance as Tony Kiritsis, a guy fed up with the bank's hard line (read: greedy) approach to his late mortgage payments that he claims were due to a botched investment by the bank.

Gerard Butler has made his fair share of sequels, but few have held as much potential as Greenland 2: Migration. The original Greenland wasn't even a traditional hit; it was released in theaters and on VOD at the end of 2020, when plenty of movie theaters remained closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it garnered some attention for being an unusually sober and thoughtful apocalypse movie, especially given that Butler previously starred in the likes of Geostorm.

Whether you want to catch a cool concert or the Golden Globes, or just settle down to a decadent lasagna dinner, we are here for you. So let's get to it, shall we? (As always, be sure to double check event and venue websites for any last-minute changes in health guidelines or other details.) Meanwhile, if you'd like to have this Weekender lineup delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning for free, just sign up at www.mercurynews.com/newsletters or w.eastbaytimes.com/newsletters.

The upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter has already attracted its share of big names thanks to director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Gosling. But apparently, they're only the start of the famous figures involved in the work. According to a new report, one of the biggest movie stars alive helped out with a major scene, which is both a testament to the appeal of Star Wars and a sneaky glimpse of what's to come.