Film

Film

It is significant that the new Paramount regime's first move was to prise Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer away from Netflix. And Netflix, of course, have made their billions by upending the traditional pitch-session-to-cinema pipeline that had sustained the film industry for decades. They have signed up legions of the classiest directors, hogged nearly all the audience-friendly documentaries and premiered one water-cooler series after another.

Russell Crowe's hair-raising performance as Hermann Goring in Nuremberg is the latest example of the veteran actor's high-risk, high-reward approach. He has a knack for taking on difficult, baggage-laden roles that could have gone spectacularly badly only to deliver the goods and make you want to stand up and yell bravo! You'll struggle to find many other actors working today with an oeuvre as eclectic, varied and downright impressive as the Wellington-born star's. Here are his 20 greatest performances.

"Can we go again?" asks Jay Kelly (George Clooney), a movie star shooting a scene in which the tough guy he's playing dies of a gunshot wound on the soundstage reproduction of a rain-slicked alleyway. "I think I can do it better." These lines from the opening scene of Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly will become the film's wistful recurring theme.

Anyone who has sat in the dark and watched the beautiful, glowing images of a silent film come to life on the screen has plenty to thank Kevin Brownlow for. Since the 1960s he has been on a quest to collect, preserve and restore these fragile artefacts of early cinema thousands of which were lost, binned, or melted down for their silver content. He even won an honorary Oscar in 2010 for his efforts.

When Quentin Tarantino insulted Paul Dano's acting abilities in There Will Be Blood, he inadvertently assembled the Avengers of Hollywood stars who have Dano's back. On The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino said Dano's acting was "a giant flaw" in the Oscar-nominated movie and that he was the "weakest" actor in SAG. Not every director agrees.

Even shrunk down on a tiny Zoom display, it is difficult not to be slightly in awe of Jafar Panahi. Probably the world's most famous dissident filmmaker, he is also one of Iran's most prolific - this despite a 20-year filmmaking ban, during which he has made six feature films in secret. One of them, 2011's meta-documentary This Is Not a Film, was smuggled out of Iran on a USB concealed inside a birthday cake.

If Timothee Chalamet really wants to win a best actor Oscar at the upcoming 98th Academy Awards, the Marty Supreme star better avoid making the big mistake that he made at the 97th annual ceremony: Walking the red carpet with girlfriend Kylie Jenner and having her seated beside him in the Dolby Theatre. Hollywood industry expert Rob Shuter said that people were pretty shocked that Chalamet didn't win for his performance as Bob Dylan in 2024's A Complete Unknown.

In Hal Hartley's new film Where to Land, a 58-year-old director of romantic comedies applies to become a groundskeeper at a graveyard. The director, played by frequent Hartley collaborator Bill Sage, is putting together his last will and testament, taking stock of his life in both the material and metaphysical sense. Joe, Sage's character, must make a list of his belongings-his kitchen table, the china from his first marriage, the rights to his films-while looking to contribute something more "useful and perennial" to the world.

When actor Andy Garcia arrived in Los Angeles, seeking a career in entertainment, he had no idea that he'd end up becoming a longtime resident. "I moved to Los Angeles in 1978, looking for work as an actor," Garcia says. "I lived in Hollywood in a storefront apartment on Sycamore and Fountain. I lived there a couple of years, moved, and have been in Los Angeles ever since."

Everyone in my life will be seeing this video.

During a recent talk at the Marrakech Film Festival in Morocco (via ), the filmmaker behind such dark works as Pan's Labyrinth, Mimic, and most recently, Frankenstein, said he was looking forward to the end of his life. "Why should you want to live longer? del Toro stated. "I'm a big fan of death... I think death is really good. I'm certainly looking forward to it, because it's the day you go, 'Well, tomorrow I won't have any problems.'"

The Jonas Brothers saved Christmas, and now, they're going to save Camp Rock. In the new teaser trailer for the upcoming , the JoBros return to their old stomping grounds 15 years after the alleged Final Jam. "We're back, exactly where we're supposed to be," Shane Gray (Joe Jonas) of Connect 3 declares as they look onto the lake where he once canoe-ddled with Mitchie (Demi Lovato).

"I just wanted to present an opportunity to see this character where everybody, at this point in the film, have seen Elphaba as the strong, fighting woman who is the Wicked Witch as someone who could actually, when on her own, be the opposite, when comfortable enough to be so," Erivo shared with Deadline at an Airbnb event hosted at a recreation of Elphie's retreat.

If The Colbert Questionert's random assortment of questions, ranging from favorite sandwich to first concert to worst smell was best suited for anyone, it's Jeff Bridges, with his blissful perspective on life and that hearty, stoner laugh to boot. Over the extended 15-minute segment, we learn that The Dude's favorite sandwich is a cheeseburger with raw onions, he adores David Byrne and once met John Lennon, he lost his smell during COVID,

The ghost-possessed family-restaurant animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy's movies lumber around with such heavy-footed gaucherie that it's hard to figure out how they're physically able to move from place to place as quickly as they'd need to for a proper killing spree. In what could be mistaken for a case of form following function, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 moves the exact same way.

Hundreds of scripts are sent to you, you are mobbed everywhere, and you completely lose your privacy. Yes, there are money and many perks, but there's the emptiness inside. That is what Clooney's new movie Jay Kelly explores. Clooney stars as himself, a superstar searching for meaning behind the glitz and glamour. He travels through Europe with his manager, played with puppy dog sadness by Adam Sandler.

Considering Tarantino's penchant for championing Asian cinema and his taste for stylized hyper-violence, the pick certainly didn't come out of nowhere. But for many of those watching him chat about his favorites, the movie was as much of a myth as an actual product. Battle Royale hadn't been officially released on home video in the United States, so if you'd missed its few theatrical showings, you were left scrabbling for a bootleg version

They tried to warn us PTA doesn't miss. One Battle After Anotherearned the National Board of Review's top honor this year, adding a third Best Film award to the shelf (next to all the karate trophies). In addition to Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor, Chase Infiniti won Breakthrough Performance, and Benicio Del Toro won Best Supporting Actor, again, after earning it from the New York Film Critics Circle.

An author needs to meet a subject on its own terms to find the right tone for the story being told. For example, you expect a different sort of cultural and philosophical unpacking of the work of Ingmar Bergman than you do Michael Bay. It's not to say one is more "important" than the other, but that an author becomes a sort of dance partner with his or her subject, not only to match reader expectations but to enhance the tone of what's being discussed.

Queer writer/director Julia Jackson ( Bonus Track) has crafted a stylish and clever queer romance with 100 Nights of Hero. The film, opening in area theatres December 5 and adapted from Isabel Greenberg's graphic novel, The One Hundred Nights of Hero, is set in a fictional medieval land where a woman's place is to marry and have sons, not to read or write.

However, Shams Jorjani, the CEO of Helldivers developer Arrowhead Studios, says there's no reason to worry Writing on Discord, Jorjani said he trusts Lin, saying the filmmaker did a "great job" with Star Trek Beyond. The executive also encouraged people to let the man cook. "Let Justin Lin work his magic," Jorjani said, as reported by GamesRadar. The Hollywood Reporter said it was in fact Lin's lack of experience with games that helped him get the job when pitching to production company Sony.

The 2025 film Frankenstein reframes Mary Shelley's story as a narrative told across two worlds: Victor speaking on a freezing ship after being rescued, and the Creature recounting his long journey of wandering and despair. Healing Through Storytelling The film is structured through storytelling itself-Victor's tale told under duress, and the Creature's own response as a counter-story he had held inside for years. Their exchanges suggest how many relationships fracture when we fail to tell the stories that hold our pain

Mohammed and his daughter face the emotional fallout of his political activism in Gaza and imprisonment in Israel, that left her to grow up without him. A fractured family tries to heal itself across borders and generations. Palestinian Mohammed Dahman, from Gaza, served nearly 20 years in Israeli jails when he was younger. This powerful observational film follows Mohammed and his daughter, Mai, as they confront the emotional scars left by his years of absence, both in jail and as a political activist.

Since it was penned more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare's "Hamlet" has been in production nearly continuously, and has been adapted in many ways.

The worst parts, however, are the most anodyne: clips of Combs on talk shows ( Ellen, Rosie), in commercials, or at awards shows, feigning a kind of amiability that many of those closest to him never experienced beyond their initial meeting. What's harrowing to realize more than a year after his initial arrest is that Combs was everywhere. He was enmeshed in just about every facet of culture in a way