Michael Jackson Estate Slams Leaving Neverland in Letter to HBO: It Is a Disgrace

Hours after HBO announced when Leaving Neverland would premiere, the estate of Michael Jackson fired off a 10-page letter to HBOs CEO slamming the film and HBOs decision to air it.

In the letter to HBOs CEO Richard Plepler, the estates counsel deem Leaving Neverland an admittedly one-sided, sensationalist programreferred to as a documentary' and defend Jackson against the accusations brought forth by the films two accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck.

The Estate spent years litigating with Robson and Safechuck, and had four different lawsuits by these two men dismissed with prejudice, the estate said. Today, Robson owes the Estate almost seventy thousand dollars in court costs, and Safechuck owes the Estate several thousand dollars as well.

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The estate also accuses Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed of purposefully not contacting or interviewing anyone who could dispel Robson and Safechucks allegations, including Jacksons family, former legal team, other young children who spent time with Jackson or those who know Safechuck and Robson and dont believe their accusations.

The fact that HBO and its producing partners did not even deign to reach out to any of these people to explore the credibility of the false stories Robson and Safechuck told violates all norms and ethics in documentary filmmaking and journalism, the estate said. It is a disgrace.

Much of the letter questions Robsons credibility, with the estate detailing how Robson once served as a witness in support of Jackson during the singers child molestation trial; following Jacksons 2009 death, Robson released a statement that said Jackson was one of the main reasons I believe in the pure goodness of human kind.

The letter states that, two years later, after the estate turned down Robson, a noted choreographer, for a Michael Jackson-themed Cirque de Soleil show, Robson came forward with his fabricated allegations against Jackson.

Simply put, Robson is an admitted perjurer who proudly called himself (in his draft book) a master of deception,' the letter said. Robson is such a good liar that his own mother testified under oath at her deposition that she could not tell when he was lying; she even volunteered that he should have had an Oscar given how convincing his lies were. It may just be that he deserves an Oscar for HBOs documentary as well.

The letter to HBO continued, As for Safechuck, by his own admission, he did not realize that he had been abused until after he saw Robson on the Today Show in May 2013 being interviewed by Matt Lauer about Robsons newly-concocted story of abuse. All of a sudden, Safechuck realized that he had been abused. He then contacted Robsons lawyers and filed copycat lawsuits against the Estate for millions of dollars. And like Robson, he too had testified under oath that Jackson never did anything inappropriate with him. His two cases against the Estate were also dismissed. Safechucks frivolous lawsuits were dismissed so early in the proceedings that significant discovery was never taken in his case, and he was able to avoid having his deposition taken and producing documents.

In closing, the estate counsels wrote, We would be happy to meet with HBO to discuss a solution. We have plenty of further information and witnesses that would expose these two for who they are. If HBO wants to maintain its industry position as a valid source of news and fact, it owes an obligation to the publicnot to mention the deceased Michael Jackson with whom HBO had previously partnered with during his lifetimeto actually investigate these matters. Barring that, this documentary will say a lot more about HBO than it ever could about Michael Jackson.

Jacksons family previously issued a statement calling the documentary a public lynching.

In response to the 10-page letter, HBO said in a statement to Rolling Stone, Our plans remain unchanged. The two-part documentary,Leaving Neverland will air as scheduled on Sunday, March 3rd and Monday, March 4th. Dan Reed is an award-winning filmmaker who has carefully documented these survivors accounts. People should reserve judgment until they see the film.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again: Watch Cher, Meryl Streep in Final Trailer

Characters return to their past while celebrating the promise of the future in the final new trailer for Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. The film hits theaters on July 20th.

In the new clip, lead character Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is pregnant, which is somewhat of a secret, although her three possible dads (Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth) dont seem to have contained the news. Sophies grandmother (Cher) shows up uninvited once the word is out and a celebration is planned.

I have decided to commit to being a grandmother, Chers character Ruby says. But when shes reminded that she will soon be a great-grandmother, she quips that shes leaving that out of the bio. Meanwhile, Sophies mom, Donna (Meryl Streep), and her two best friends, Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters), reminisce about how Sophies mother and her possible dads romances began, with a flashback to 1979.

As with the original, the sequel features the music of ABBA, plenty of celebratory singing and a bevy of choreographed dance numbers. Songs in the trailer include Fernando, Dancing Queen and, of course, the films namesake. The final trailer comes on the heels of ABBA announcing theyve reunited to record their first new songs together in 35 years.

Michael B. Jordan to Add Inclusion Rider to Future Projects

Michael B. Jordan has announced his company, Outlier Society Productions, will add an inclusion rider for all its future projects, Variety reports.

The announcement comes on the heels of Frances McDormands powerful plea during her Oscars best actress acceptance speech last Sunday. I have two words to leave you with tonight, ladies and gentleman, she said. Inclusion rider. Inclusion riders are a stipulation that actors can add to their contracts, which would require a certain amount of diversity within a films cast and crew. For example, the rider could stipulate that at least 50 percent of cast and crew have to be diverse.

On Wednesday, Jordan announced the news via Instagram. The post featured a photo of him with Alana Mayo, Outliers head of production and development, and Jordans WME agent Phil Sun. In support of the women & men who are leading this fight, I will be adopting the inclusion rider for all projects produced by my company Outlier Society, he wrote. Ive been privileged to work with powerful women & persons of color throughout my career & its Outliers mission to continue to create for talented individuals going forward.

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In support of the women & men who are leading this fight, I will be adopting the Inclusion Rider for all projects produced by my company Outlier Society. Ive been privileged to work with powerful woman & persons of color throughout my career & its Outliers mission to continue to create for talented individuals going forward. If you want to learn more about how to support the cause link in bio. #OutlierSociety #AnnenbergInclusionInitiative

A post shared by Michael B. Jordan (@michaelbjordan) on Mar 7, 2018 at 3:03pm PST

The Black Panther actor formed his production company in 2016. Jordan also stars in HBOs Fahrenheit 451, which premieres in May, and he will be reprising his role as Adonis Johnson in the forthcoming Creed II.

Ready Player One Review: Spielbergs Overwhelming Blockbuster Hearts the 80s

The gamer kid in Steven Spielberg lets his VR freak flag fly in Ready Player One, a mindbending joyride that jacks you into a fantasia bursting with CGI wonders, dazzling cyperscapes mixed with live action, hidden Easter eggs and infinite pop-culture shoutouts to the 1980s. (Better brush up on everything from Alien to Zemeckis if you dont want to be left behind.) The legendary directors aim in this go-for-broke adaptation of Ernest Clines 2011 sci-fi novel, a geek touchstone, is to get you in the game, and its a blockbuster that aches to be interactive, Forget about headsets, however: Spielberg is in control. And why not? Hes the maestro at this kind of stuff.

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But first, some harsh reality: Its 2045. The world has gone to hell. Orphaned Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is stuck in the shithole that time has made of Columbus, Ohio, where people live in trailers piled on top of each other. The populace chase dreams in OASIS, a virtual-reality platform created by mad genius James Halliday (the great Mark Rylance) and his business partner Ogden Morrow (a sly, surprising Simon Pegg). The dying legacy of Hallidays whacked-out Willy Wonka, seen via numerous flashbacks, is one last, kill-or-be-killed game for his followers to play. The winner who finds the three hidden keys, which will lead the lucky champ to the ultimate Easter egg, will inherit the late creators fortune and total control over OASIS.

And were off! When Wade puts on his digital visor, he morphs into Parzival, the perfect cool-kid avatar. His best-friend-forever Aech (Lena Waithe, absolutely terrific every movie should have her) is a tech whiz whose avatar is proud to show up the competition. Both Wade and Aech have their eye on Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), a pink-haired speed diva and a real competitor in the films first challenge a car chase to end all car chases. Obstacles for Wade, traveling in a DeLorean time machine (hello, Back to the Future!), include King Kong, a hungry T. rex and a host of other reference points too sweet to spoil.

Wade passes his first test, along with Aech, Art3mis and the Japanese duo of Daito (Win Morisaki) and Shoto (Philip Zhao) gunters, a.k.a. Easter egg hunters, that he knows only in the OASIS. But theres a villain lurking out there: Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), a corporate white dude whos determined to beat the kids at their own game. He relies on a monster named i-R0k (riotously voiced by T.J. Miller as if he never left Silicon Valley), who is, of course, no match for one boy against the world, a Spielberg staple since the glory days of E.T. In a trivia challenge based on John Hughes movies, Wade will give Nolan the dusting of a lifetime, and working from a script by author Cline and Zak Penn, Spielberg concocts enough battles and showdowns to fill a dozen movies though look out for a sequence on The Shining that is alone worth the price of admission.

Is it overkill? You bet. But Spielbergs visual inventiveness is unflagging. He stumbles only when trying to warm up the tech gadgetry with a personal touch, as when Wade and his friends, known as the High 5, finally connect in a reality that brings fantasy crashing down to earth. Sheridan and Cooke bring genuine romantic longing to their few scenes together. But the live-action segments of the movie are more buzz kill than bracing.

For those looking for Ready Player One to condemn the digi-verse as a destructive force against human connection, find another movie. The script is too shallow for that anyway, and dont look to the filmmaker a child of divorce who found escape (and an eventual career) by getting happily lost in television, movies and early vid-games for a lecture. The head-spinning spectacle wont quit even when the sensory overload gets too much; if he has a chance to show the Iron Giant battling Mechagodzilla, hell take it. At 71, this iconic director barely pays lip service to constructing a cautionary tale against anything that might help an alienated kid build an oasis of his or her own imagining. As ever, Spileberg is ready to play. Are you? Game on.

Watch Young Songwriter Reinvent the Beatles in Charming Yesterday Trailer

A young songwriter reintroduces the world to the Beatles in the new trailer for Danny Boyles upcoming film, Yesterday, out June 28th.

The film stars Himesh Patel as Jack, an aspiring, but flailing, musician whos involved in a car accident at the same moment a mysterious blackout grips the world. Not long after Jack wakes up, he discovers that the Beatles have essentially been erased from history, though he still remembers all of their songs.

In the new trailer for Yesterday, Jack rides one of the worlds greatest catalogues of music to global superstardom, pretending to pen Something on the spot during a late-night TV appearance and fielding questionable songwriting advice from Ed Sheeran, who suggests making Hey Jude, Hey Dude. With his newfound fame, however, Jack risks losing his childhood friend, Ellie (Lily James), the one person who has always believed in him.

Yesterday marks Boyles first feature film since 2017s Trainspotting sequel, T2: Trainspotting. The film was written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Richard Curtis, whose credits also include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill.

Christopher Nolan Locks in 2020 Release Date for Next Film

Christopher Nolan has locked in a release date for the Dunkirk directors next film. However, no other details about the much-anticipated blockbuster have been revealed.

Warner Bros. announced Friday that Nolans next film would open in IMAX on July 17th, 2020, Variety reported. The film was also described as an event film, although any other specifics including title, plot and cast werent shared.

Given the summer release date, its likely the next Nolan film will be on the scale of previous blockbusters like The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk, which went into pre-production in January 2016 ahead of its July 2017 release date, a timeline the next Nolan film will follow. Dunkirk ranked Number One on Rolling Stones list of the 10 Best Movies of 2017, and earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Variety added that a pair of feature-length animated films based on 30-minute cartoon series, SpongeBob Movieand Bobs Burgers, are also scheduled to arrive on July 17th, 2020.

The Commuter Review: All Aboard Liam Neesons Gleefully Absurd Taken on a Train

No matter how senseless the plots of his movies, Jaume Collet-Serra can direct the hell out of them andThe Commuter is no exception. The Spanish filmmaker, who wickedly used Blake Lively as shark bait in The Shallows, keeps the tension on such a high burner that you wont realize the whole thing doesnt add up until after you leave the theater. It teams Collet-Serra with star Liam Neeson for the fourth time, following Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night.Given the title, you might think The Commuter is merely Taken on a train. Think again.

Neeson plays Michael MacCauley, an insurance salesman who worries hard about how he and his wife (Elizabeth McGovern, wasted) can swing college tuition for their son. The old mans brow furrows mightily as he takes the commuter train from his home in upstate New York to his job in Manhattan. This particular summer day gets worse for good soldier Michael when his prick boss fires him and tells him that with soldiers there are always casualties. Afraid to tell his wife, Michael stops for a drink (or three) with his old buddy, Murphy (Patrick Wilson). The two worked together in the past as wait for it cops. Which helps to explain how Michael handles himself so well when the fighting starts. OK, maybe Taken on a train isnt so far off the mark.

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From the moment Michael hits Grand Central Station and boards the train home, the suspense is relentless. First, a Hitchcock blonde name Joanna, played with seductive shadiness by Vera Farmiga, approaches him with an offer. How would newly unemployed Michael like to pick up a quick 100 grand for doing one little thing? That one little thing being, naturally, to use his police profiling skills to ID a mystery passenger known as Prynne and sneak a tracking device on said person. Simple, huh?

Not in this morality tale, in which a moment of weakness leads to betrayal, violence, conspiracy and murder. Think Hitchcocks Strangers on a Train, which screenwriters Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi, and Ryan Engle crib from shamelessly but without a scintilla of that classics style and substance. Michael is denied much ethical complexity: If he doesnt do as hes told, his family will die. Still, in a world ruled by greed, its hard to resist Neesons big line for the Trump era: If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gives it to.

No spoilers about the details, except to say that Neeson still an action hero to cheer for carries the day through ax battles, train-car chases and one fight scene in a confined space that just kills. Theres nice work as well from Jonathan Banks (Better Call Saul) and Florence Pugh (Lady Macbeth) as fellow passengers. But The Commuter isnt about acting, its about the whooshing excitement of nonstop suspense. Collet-Serra is a B-movie magician, even when the plot strains or rather, shatters to pieces as someone stomps on the fragments. But in the doldrums of January, the movie pulls out every trick in the suspense-thriller book to keep us grinning at each new absurdity. Silly? You bet. Irresistible? Totally.

See Ali Wong in Hilarious Trailer for Netflix Rom-Com Always Be My Maybe

Ali Wong and Randall Park play friends with romantic baggage in the new trailer for Always Be My Maybe, a romantic comedy film that debuts May 31st on Netflix.

Wong and Park portray childhood friends Sasha and Marcus, who reconnect in San Francisco after Sasha makes a name for herself as a celebrity chef. Sasha, in the city to open a new restaurant, awkwardly bumps into Marcus leading to a montage of their history, including a teenage sexual encounter in the backseat of his car.

With Sashas marriage on the rocks and Marcus living as a musician at home, they find that their teenage romantic spark might be rekindling.

The film also stars Michelle Buteau, Vivian Bang, Karan Soni, Charlyne Yi, Daniel Dae Kim and James Saito, along with a hilarious cameo appearance from Keanu Reeves. Nahnatchka Khan (Fresh Off the Boat,Dont Trust the B____ in Apt. 23) directed the film from a script penned by Wong, Park and Michael Golamco.

Love, Gilda Review: Gilda Radner Doc Is a Clips Montage With Benefits

Its the Gilda Radner grin that really gets you always radiant, sometimes childishly goofy, occasionally maniacal. You see it a lot in Love, Gilda, the documentary on the late Saturday Night Live star. There it is, in snapshots of her as chubby kid in Detroit and as a teenager at the all-girls school where she discovered theater. It shows up in her early days at Toronto she followed a sculptor who she was in love with there when she fell in with the Second City crowd, and her first move to New York, where she joined the National Lampoon troupe. In old footage, its lighting up Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller and the theater on Broadway where she staged her one-woman show. Watch it beam out of pictures of Radner cuddled next to her second husband Gene Wilder. And shes deploying that same come-on-get-happy look in post-chemotherapy shots, looking wan but still showing her pearly whites for the camera, as she dealt with cancer in the last few years of her life.

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The chance to spend more time with Gilda and that infectious ear-to-ear smile is the main reason to check out Lisa DApolitos portrait of the woman who was the first lady of SNL; its best to think of this frustratingly superficial, often stock doc as a clips montage with benefits. Yes, you get audio of Radner narrating her career highs and personal lows via recordings of her autobiography Its Always Something. Famous fans like Amy Poehler, Bill Hader and Melissa McCarthy read portions of her diary aloud, while old collaborators like Martin Short, Paul Shaffer and Alan Zweibel attest to her kindness, her brilliance, her insecurities. Comedy nerds will swoon over snippets of the legendary 1972 production of Godspell that incubated a whos who of future funny-business greats and the behind-the-scenes Lampoon radio hour recordings. If you ever needed a reminder of how groundbreaking and gut-busting her tenure was on Saturday Night Live, there are enough reprises of her famous characters and sketches to jostle your memory. Here was someone who thrived in the hothouse, lets-put-on-a-show environment that nurtured the original Not Ready for Primetime Players, a stage where she could match John Belushis kamikaze comedy beat for gonzo beat or quietly break your heart.

In terms of both professional best-of moments and personal artifacts (home movies, old pics, those journals and cassette recordings), the filmmaker has a treasure trove at her fingertips; she just doesnt seem to know how to shape much of it, or how to mine it for more than checkpoints and pop-psychological carping about comedy and pain. The tears-of-a-clown analysis is laid on in thick gloops, and while you cant deny Radner used humor as a salve and a defense mechanism funny is saying the truth before the other guy does, the star declares via voiceover; she also talks of slipping into character when shes lonely the approach simply reduces a complex artist to a case study. (The movies score, which runs the gamut from maudlin to generic whimsical, adds nothing but subtracts a lot of good will.) Even with what feels like an all-access pass, Love, Gilda feels as if its barely caressed the surface, much less scratched it. Youll laugh, youll cry. Youll leave still loving Gilda. The movie, not so much.

The Oath Review: Whats Worse, Hellish Dystopias or Family Holiday Dinners?

Its called the Patriots Oath, a loyalty pledge that requires U.S. citizens to declare allegiance to their country, their government, their President. People do not have to sign it, says a press secretary, but their are perks if they do. Like, for example, they wont be audited on their taxes, or deemed traitors, or mysteriously disappear after being visited the C.P.U. (Citizens Protection Unit), an NSA-sponsored militia in khakis. All the protests and violent clashes reported by TV anchors have turned Chris (writer-director Ike Barinholtz) into an ultra-vigilant anxious wreck. Hes the type of guy who can rattle off stats quicker than you can say Rachel Maddow and balances a steady diet of N.P.R. and breaking-news alerts the king of his personal suburban bubble. All his fretting and frothing over the latest missives from the anti-Oath frontlines is tolerated by his wife Kai (Tiffany Haddish) and their young preteen daughter. Besides, theres a more immediate, closer-to-home problem he has to deal with. The couple is hosting Thanksgiving. And nothing says culture wars combat zone than a holiday dinner with your family one day before a federally mandated do-or-die deadline.

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In other words, we have a Trump-era paranoia powder keg with an extra-flammable fuse here, one that combines the personal with the political and comes off like The Purge with an extra side of stuffing. Because its an ensemble piece being led by Barinholtz, i.e. the Guy From Blockers, and Haddish, i.e. the Lady From All Those Hilarious Tiffany Haddish Public Appearances of the Last Two Years, audiences might expect an uproarious comedy. What they get, at least for the films first half, is something funny-ish but a bit of a feint; the use of ominous music over countdown-to-T-day title cards (MONDAY) initially seems like a parody of horror-movie clichs, until you slowly realize that this satire has more in common with social thrillers than it does gross-out laughfests. There are jokes about the slings and arrows of your dad not knowing how to work a TV remote, but theres also a palpable sense of a panic attack happening just under the storylines surface. Barinholtz is trying to balance broad humor with pitch-black humor, as well as a very real feeling that the center cant hold, that rational people are being steamrolled under an avalanche of fake news, worst-case-scenario handwringing and toxic discourse.

And once Chriss parents (Chris Ellis and SNL vet Nora Dunn), moderate/centrist sister (Carrie Brownstein), d-bag brother (Jon Barinholtz, Ikes actual sibling) and his alt-right propaganda-repeating girlfriend (Meredith Hagner) descend on the household, the whole affair turns into an ideological free-for-all. Like its characters, The Oath is less interested in a real dialogue than in throwing a lot of Opinion Industrial Complex dogma into the mix and seeing who can scream the loudest. Everyone yells. No one listens. Hey, just like your Thanksgiving and/or Tweetdecks, am I right?

Still, this Reddit-thread-gone-off-the-rails coasts by for a while, largely thanks to our own PTSD from living through this fraught moment in American history; the pleasure of watching Haddish switch type and play the most grounded role of the bunch (though rest assured, the Girls Trip star does get to drop the phrase trash pussy and does it with gusto); and Barinholtz being unafraid to self-own. The movie definitely skews left, happy to use non-liberal family members are easy targets and dimwit punching bags. But guess who the single most insufferable, aggressively unlikable character is? Guess whos the white Nelson Mandela who cant let shit go even when he knows hes being a self-righteous prick and only making things worse?

Then two C.P.U. agents show up the day after one Chernobyl of a turkey dinner they just want to talk to Chris about a complaint they received, no big whoop and suddenly, the movie goes all in on the domestic nightmare scenario. And despite the addition of John Cho and Billy Magnussen, the latter playing unhinged-psycho with characteristic zealotry, you can feel the whole thing fizzling away whatever momentum its built up. For a while, the movies dystopia-meets-family-dinner mix feels like its building to something bigger than the sum of its rants, and then it simply doesnt. Instead, the third act pokes a few sub-Straw Dogs notions about beta males on the brink before dropping a get-outta-jail-free ending that pushes the disbelief meter into the blood red. In trying to show what a heartless heap our partisan world has become and could be heading towards The Oath suddenly just turns into a mess of its own. This is not what we signed up for.

Casey Affleck Talks #MeToo, Harassment Allegations in New Interview

Casey Affleck talked about the #MeToo movement in the actors first interview since resurfaced sexual harassment allegations forced him to avoid participating in this years Oscars.

Speaking to the Associated Press, Affleck discussed his decision to break tradition and skip this years Academy Awards, where as winner of Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea the previous year he was scheduled to present Best Actress; past winners Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence instead presented the award.

I think it was the right thing to do just given everything that was going on in our culture at the moment, Affleck said. And having two incredible women go present the best actress award felt like the right thing.

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The allegations against Affleck stem from a pair of sexual harassment civil lawsuits he faced while director of the 2010 Joaquin Phoenix quasi-documentary Im Still Here. Although Affleck denied any wrongdoing, he ultimately settled both lawsuits.

The allegations of the harassment resurfaced during Afflecks Best Actor campaign for Manchester by the Sea; following his Oscars win, actress Brie Larson and others refused to clap for Affleck.

First of all, that I was ever involved in a conflict that resulted in a lawsuit is something that I really regret. I wish I had found a way to resolve things in a different way. I hate that. I had never had any complaints like that made about me before in my life and it was really embarrassing and I didnt know how to handle it and I didnt agree with everything, the way I was being described, and the things that were said about me, but I wanted to try to make it right, so we made it right in the way that was asked at the time. And we all agreed to just try to put it behind us and move on with our lives, which I think we deserve to do, and I want to respect them as theyve respected me and my privacy. And thats that, Affleck told the AP.

Over the past couple of years, Ive been listening a lot to this conversation, this public conversation, and learned a lot. I kind of moved from a place of being defensive to one of a more mature point of view, trying to find my own culpability. And once I did that I discovered there was a lot to learn. I was a boss. I was one of the producers on the set. This movie was [shot in 2008, 2009] and I was one of the producers. And it was a crazy mockumentary, [a] very unconventional movie. The cast was the crew and the crew was kind of the cast and it was an unprofessional environment and, you know, the buck had to stop with me being one of the producers and I have to accept responsibility for that and that was a mistake.

With Affleck back as director on his upcoming film Light of My Life, he also talked about how the #MeToo and Times Up campaigns have impacted Hollywood.

I think bigger picture, in this business women have been underrepresented and underpaid and objectified and diminished and humiliated and belittled in a bazillion ways and just generally had a mountain of grief thrown at them forever. And no one was really making too much of a fuss about it, myself included, until a few women with the kind of courage and wisdom to stand up and say, You know what? Enough is enough,' Affleck said.

Those are the people who are kind of leading this conversation and should be leading the conversation. And I know just enough to know that in general I need to keep my mouth shut and listen and try to figure out whats going on and be a supporter and a follower in the little, teeny tiny ways that I can.

Affleck next appears in The Old Man & The Gun, which also marks Robert Redfords final acting role.

Loveless Review: Bad Parenting as Putin-Era Metaphor in Devastating Russian Drama

When is a bad marriage something more than a bad marriage? The answer: When Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena) writes and directs a movie about it and turns the result into a mesmerizing meditation on the state of Russia today. Loveless is not an overtly political film, but it resonates with unease about the failure of government to serve the neediest (a fault not limited to Russia) and citizens too selfish to see past their own selfies (also not limited to Russia).

The time is 2012, and Putin is determined to annex Crimea. Somewhere in Moscow, a husband and wife are living out the last stages of their relationship. Beauty-shop owner Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Alexey Rozin), defined by the shabby business suit he wears, just want their divorce already. That means selling their apartment so she can move on with the older, wealthy Anton (Andris Keishs) and he can move in with his pregnant girlfriend Masha (Marina Vasilyeva). Favoring Putinesque orthodoxy, Boriss employers frown on divorce and demand at least the appearance of a familial happiness.

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And then theres Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), the couples 12-year-old son and a kid that both of his parents wish didnt exist. (The father has not even told his mistress that he has a son.) The boy spends a lot of time crying quietly to himself. Until suddenly, his parents cant hear or see him anymore: His school reports that the loveless child is missing. The cops cant help, what with budget constraints and all. A volunteer service organizes a search around abandoned buildings and forest wastelands and a Russia that has abandoned its heart. Through false leads and misdirection, a portrait emerges of a country rotting away at its very core.

Aside from Alyosha, theres no one to root for here, and Zvyagintsev paints the bleakest of picture. But his filmmaking has a driving force that hurtles you along, and like his 2014 masterpiece Leviathan, this micro-focused drama allows the director to turn the story of one family into an X-ray of a nations bruised soul. Loveless is nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign-Language Film. It means to shake you. And it does.

Toy Story 4: Your Favorite Animated Toy Franchise Does It Again

How does Toy Story do it? The money spent on and made by these animated films could put a dent in the national debt. And yet Toy Story 4 is stolen by a cheap piece of plastic named Forky. Whos that? Forky is a whatzit that Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw), a wildly enthusiastic but attention-challenged kindergartener, made out of a plastic spork by adding googly eyes, a Play-Doh mouth, red pipe cleaners for arms, and popsicle sticks for feet. Im trash, says Forky as voiced by the hilarious and heartfelt Tony Hale (Veep, Arrested Development) in a performance thats part silly, part existential angst and totally sublime. All hail Hale for giving voice and dimension to this unforgettable new character. There should be a Forky in every home. Just be glad hes in Bonnies home and in this movie.

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Forky doesnt know what the hell is going on. So he makes a perfect guide to the events in Toy Story 4. To sum up, cowboy Woody (the irreplaceable Tom Hanks) is feeling like a useless, old white dude ever since his owner, Andy, grew too mature for him in Toy Story 3 and passed him on to Bonnie. It really hurts when Bonnie takes off Woodys sheriff star and pins it on cowgirl Jessie (glorious Joan Cusack). It seems like times up for Woody, though arguably toy astronaut Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) has it worse since the movie treats him like an afterthought.

Whats Woody to do? For starters, he attaches himself to Forky since Bonnie is obsessed with him (arent we all?). When Forky goes missing, its Woody to the rescue on a family road trip that takes dark turns into an antiques store for discarded toys and a creepy carnival where hard truths are dispensed by tough-talking plushies voiced by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key.

Thats pretty much the movie, which director Josh Cooley fashions into a slice of animated heaven deepened with unexpected provocation. Working from a script by Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom, Cooley keeps action and character in thoughtful balance. There are new characters, including Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), a talking doll with a broken voice box and a wicked agenda and Canadian daredevil Duke Caboom (a stellar Keanu Reeves), whos also been replaced by his fickle, young owner. The threat of obsolescence and, by extension, death are everywhere in Toy Story 4. Its a resonant theme, not likely to sink in with non-adults. Only grownups are liable to be traumatized.

Include Woody in that bunch. While Forky has a near-suicidal goal to jump back into the trash heap from whence he came cue Randy Newmans I Cant Let You Throw Yourself Away Woody only wants to be a toy again, one thats cherished. For that, Woody enlists the help of his old love, Bo Peep (a wonderful Annie Potts), a porcelain lamp whose wisdom holds the key to Woodys future. You may have thought that Toy Story 3 already made a ideal climax to the franchise. But Toy Story 4 proves there is much left to said. No fair giving away what happens, but be prepared for the finish of Toy Story 4 to finish you emotionally. If Toy Story 4 truly is the swan song for a blockbuster of a Randy Newman ditty, I Cant Let You Throw Yourself Away, wherein Woody repeatedly intercepts Forkys tireless suicide attempts.

For a series that began nearly 25 years ago, this classic in the making couldnt go out on a more fitting note of tender, tear-drenched resolution.

The Cloverfield Paradox, Netflix and the Future of Suckering Moviegoers

It looked like any old Super Bowl movie trailer, just another 30-second spot dropping during one of the single most watched sports events of the year. The logo for J.J. Abrams Bad Robot production company pops up, old footage of Matt Reeves 2008 hit Cloverfield begins playing and then we see a man staring out of a window. 10 years ago, some thing arrives, sayeth a disclaimer. Now that same unknown gent is peering into the mist, as a loud, dull roar echoing nearby. Find out why. A quick montage of cosmic debris and chaos ensues. Whatever youre doing, a woman says, looking directly into the camera, stop. Hey, thats Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the English actress from the Black Mirror episode San Junipero. And holy shit, is that, like, a severed arm crawling along a floor? And some sort of international space crew dotted with a few familiar famous faces is staring at it?

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Then comes the big one-two punch: You have just watched a brief teaser for The Cloverfield Paradox, the long-rumored, multi-titled, much release-delayed, somewhat reputation-sullied third film of the Cloververse, or whatever Film Twitter has decided it would like to call the series shared world this week. And rather than having to wait weeks or even months to see it in a theater, you can watch it on Netflix tonight. Hold up, tonight? Like tonight tonight?

For folks sitting at home Sunday night, the idea that Paramount and Netflix may have given the film industry its first genuine youve-just-been-Beyonc-ed victory felt, in its own weird way, like witnessing history in the making. A major studio just partnered with a major TV streaming service to drop a $40 million tentpole blockbuster (thats the alleged budget, at least) into our laps without so much as a coming soon viral teaser. And for those of us who spent either the wee small hours of Monday morning or some quality time Monday afternoon actually watching the thing, the end result was surprisingly familiar: Oh, this is not very good. At all. The stealth marketing campaign was a brilliant move. The movie is beyond awful. This is what being bamboozled feels like.

Should you be wondering: The year is 2028, our planets natural resources are running perilously low and a space station is trying to get a particle accelerator going in the name of unlimited energy. Back home, some folks are skeptical: What exactly are these saviors of our species doing up there? Will this device keep us afloat, or will it risk opening the membrane of space-time smashing together multiple dimensions [and] shattering reality! The answer is Option No. 2, at which point our big blue marble disappears we didnt destroy the earth, we just lost it; bless you, Chris ODowd, your line readings almost salvage this wreck and a crew member from an alternate timeline (Elizabeth Debicki) shows up tangled in the ships wiring. Well cut to the chase: a severed arm writes an expository note, worms explodeAlien-style from a human body, someone both drowns and freezes at the same time, there are some 3D-printed guns and some fights, the requisite getting-sucked-into-deep space moment and a literal chase is abruptly cut to numerous times.

Meanwhile, back on Missing Earth, the man who was staring out the window in the trailer (Roger Davies), and is also the husband of Mbatha-Raws worried astronaut, is roaming around a wrecked city in his car. Hes a doctor, but he keeps getting texts not to go to the hospital. There are explosions. A large shadow appears and then theres that mystifying roar. A child is found, and saved, and only kinda sorta mentioned again. Then, at the very end of all this, right before the credits, a giant monster appears, some sort of variation on the original Cloverfield kaiju. See? It really is all connected. Cinema!

Ballyhoo has been embedded in this series since day one, right after producer J.J. Abrams dropped an odd trailer in July of 2007 that looked like home-movie footage of a surprise party and ended with the Statue of Libertys decapitated head skidding to a stop in New Yorks East Village. The catch: No title or release date is ever mentioned. We know this is a film, because info about the executive producers and screenwriter and director show up. But otherwise, its all one huge, tantalizing mystery box, teasing you that some J.J.-has-a-secret-project was on the horizon. When Cloverfield hit theaters the following January, you might mistake it for a feature-length elevator pitch Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project albeit one that, importantly, delivered. It may or may not have become the hit that it was with a regular roll-out, but itd be disingenuous to think that the lack of info didnt double as lo-fi, buzzworthy fanfare. A sequel was inevitable.

Fast forward to 2014, when its announced that Mary Elisabeth Winstead and John Goodman are starring in a movie being made under the Bad Robot banner, titled The Cellar. A spec script that attracted some industry heat, it concerned a young woman held captive in a bunker, supposedly to keep her safe from the terrors that await outside. It was filmed under the (code) name Valencia; by the time a trailer dropped, all board games and sandwich-making and the occasional escape attempt, it went by the handle10 Cloverfield Lane.Voila! A typical sci-fiinflected thriller becomes a last-minute addition into whats suddenly become a franchise. (Even the cast did not know this was a smaller part of a shared-world experience until several hours before that first trailer dropped.) Whether or not the movie warranted being retconned into a series was beside the point. Welcome to the Cloverfield family, where your brand identity just went from zero to fans, start your hype engines.

People whod been following the progress of a third movie, sometimes referred to as God Particle or simply Untitled Cloverfield Project, might have sensed something was up when Paramount kept playing release-date musical chairs with it, moving it from February 2017 to October 2017, then February 2nd, 2018 then April 20th, 2018. And even these eagle-eyed watchers might have breezed past The Hollywood Reporter story in mid-January that hinted at Netflix being in talks to acquire the property, rumored to be in even rougher shape than previously imagined. At which point, the service thought: We can get this for a song. How do you save an unintentional suckfest? You turn it into a surprise event. That unveiling during the Super Bowl, part callback and part cryptic little sneak peek, is the sort of marketing coup that deserves an eternal slow-clap.

Thats one way of looking at it, of course. Another way is that theyve simply found a cutting-edge way to pull the oldest trick in the promotional book. When Ms. Knowles pioneered the surprise-album drop, she relied on old-school codes of omerta and a new technological infrastructure that suddenly allowed you to go from studio to iTunes in a click. If its not the new norm, it was certainly a bold new business model, one applicable to the right combination of name recognition and supply/demand economics. Thanks to Netflix, which pays lip service to the theatrical-release model even as it seems hellbent on cutting it off at the knees, the film industry may now have its equivalentinfrastructure for such moves as well. As an experiment in attracting attention, cost-benefit economics and dodging a flop-film bullet, this is a huge win.

For people who care about the quality of movies, including big blockbuster ones, and who will never get that 102 minutes back, however, this is not being Beyonc-ed. Its the art of being P.T. Barnum-ed. At which point we can only look straight into the camera, fix the service with our best frettingGugu Mbatha-Raw look, and solemnly intone:

Whatever youre doing, Netflix: Stop.

Watch Netflixs Cloverfield Paradox 30-second spot from Sundays Super Bowl.

Ricky Jay, Master Magician and Boogie Nights Actor, Dead at 72

Ricky Jay, the renowned magician, sleight-of-hand artist, card thrower and actor who appeared in Boogie Nights and Deadwood, died Saturday at the age of 72.

His manager Winston Simone confirmed Jays death to Variety, adding that the magician died of natural causes. He was one of a kind. We will never see the likes of him again, Simone said. Michael Weber, Jays co-partner in his company Deceptive Practices, added, I am sorry to share that my remarkable friend, teacher, collaborator and co-conspirator is gone.

As an actor, Jay appeared in a handful of David Mamets films including House of Games, Homicide, The Spanish Prisoner, Heist and State and Main as well as Paul Thomas Andersons Boogie Nights and Magnolia, with Jay also providing narration in the latter film. Jay also played a card sharp on Deadwood, a cyber terrorist the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, a murdered magician on The X-Files and voiced himself in an episode of The Simpsons.

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However, Jay is most well-known for his contributions to the field of magic: One of the first magicians to open for rock acts in the Sixties and the Guinness Book of World Records-holder for farthest card thrower, Jays acts frequently featured Jay throwing a playing card with such velocity that it pierced the rind of a watermelon. Jay was also renowned for his ability to manipulate a deck of cards as showcased in his trick The Four Queens.

In 1996, Mamet filmed Jays one-man Broadway performance for the HBO special Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. A documentary about Jays mysterious life, Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, arrived in 2012.

Jay was also the subject of a noteworthy 1993 New Yorker profile that delved into the magicians abilities, his self-exile from the magic community and his fevered attempts to preserve the history of his craft.

Steve Martin, who appeared in Leap of Faith with Jay, said of the magician, I sort of think of Ricky as the intellectual lite of magicians. Ive had experience with magicians my whole life Hes expertly able to perform and yet he knows the theory, history, literature of the field. Rickys a master of his craft. You know how there are those teachers of creative writing who cant necessarily write but can teach? Well, Ricky can actually do everything.

Later in his career, Jay co-founded his Deceptive Practices, which assisted and consulted with Hollywood productions regarding scenes that required sleight-of-hand, deception or other of Jays specialties. The company worked on films like Oceans 13, The Prestige, Forrest Gump and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, whose director Christopher McQuarrie tweeted of Jay Saturday, An off-handed comment he made inspired the climax of the opera sequence. Its safe to say it would not be the same scene without him. He was the greatest of a vanishing breed.

I know some people find this strange and weird, Jay said in the conclusion of the 1993 profile. Actually, after this life Ive lived, I have no idea what is strange and weird and what isnt. I dont know who else waxes poetic about the virtues of skeleton men, fasting impostors, and cannonball catchers. And, to be honest, I dont really care. I just think theyre wonderful. I really do.

BlacKkKlansman: Spike Lees New Film About KKK Infiltration Gets First Trailer

Spike Lee highlights the fascinating true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American detective who resolves to take down the Ku Klux Klan, in the magnetic first trailer for his upcoming film BlacKkKlansman.

The clip opens with Stallworth (John David Washington) applying for and receiving a job at the Colorado Springs Police Department, where he becomes the first-ever black officer. Theres never been a black cop in this city, his superior informs him. We think you might be the man to open things up around here.

After settling into the new gig, Stallworth hatches a plan to infiltrate the KKK using his veteran colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) as his in-person proxy at their meetings. Posing as a white man on the phone, he calls up Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) and manages to set up an introduction. I hate blacks. I hate Jews, Mexicans and Irish, Italians and Chinese, he says. But my mouth to Gods ears, I really hate those black rats and anyone else really that doesnt have pure white Aryan blood running through their veins.

Zimmerman meets with the KKK members and learns of their plans for a big year filled with cross burnings and marches. Meanwhile, as the Black Power movement builds momentum, we learn from the KKK that a wars a comin.

Jordan Peele (Key & Peele, Get Out) co-produced BlacKkKlansman, which hits theaters on August 10th.

Dare to Be Different: See New Doc on Radio Station That Broke U2, Cure in U.S.

The new documentary about the influential Long Island radio station WLIR is coming to Showtime on March 30th.New Wave: Dare to Be Differentfocuses on how the station helped break some of the biggest British bands of the Eighties like U2, the Cure, the Smiths, New Order, Duran Duran and Depeche Modein the United States.

Directed by Ellen Goldfarb,Dare to Be Different teases the importance and influence of WLIR, specifically the role it played in laying the groundwork for MTV. Billy Idol notes in the clip, when WLIR emerged in the late-Seventies and early-Eighties, Mainstream American music wasnt breaking new bounds, it wasnt saying anything dangerous WLIR fueled something loud, smelly and different.

Dare to Be Different features interviews with WLIR program director Denis McNamara, other members of the station crew and an array of artists including Joan Jett, Debbie Harry, Depeche Mode and Erasures Vince Clarke and the B-52s Fred Schneider.

The Rise and Fall of Wax Trax!

Julia Nash felt as though shed stepped into a Wax Trax! Records museum when she started looking through Dannie Fleshers belongings. Flesher had cofounded the pioneering industrial label in 1980 with his life partner, Julias father Jim; they were responsible for putting out important releases by Ministry, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, among others. When Jim died of AIDS in 1995, his partner tried to keep the label and the couples Chicago record store going. Flesher eventually retired to Arkansas, where he, too, succumbed to a bout of pneumonia in 2010. What Julia didnt know is that her dads significant other had also held on to nearly everything Wax Trax!-related and stashed it away for safe keeping.

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So she had gone to Arkansas with the hopes of recovering her fathers ashes, only to find herself embroiled in a legal battle for custody of his items. Because the state wouldnt recognize Jim and Dannie as a legal couple, she had to jump through hoops so everything wouldnt end up in a burn pile, she says. I dont think Dannies family understood the relevance and the history that was there, Julias husband, Mark Skillicorn, adds. When they finally started sifting through the belongings, they uncovered the original Wax Trax! record store sign, contracts from the labels later years and rare recordings by Coil, Ministry and Thrill Kill Kult. I dont even think I still have the words to describe how it felt looking at all of that, she says. Her daughter, who was a junior in high school at the time, filmed them excavating the storage space and that footage kicked off what would become a documentary about her father and Fleshers legacy.

Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records traces the labels history from Jim Nash and Dannie Fleshers affair (ending Nashs marriage to Julias mom) to the opening of the first Wax Trax! record store in Denver. Once they moved to Chicago in the late Seventies, they launched their label with releases by local artists like Strike Under and Ministry (as well as the drag queen Divine) and found their footing with industrial music. In the doc, Steve Albini talks about how the record store was important to Chicago; Ministrys Al Jourgensen describes the community surrounding the label; and Trent Reznor explains how it proved to him that interesting music could come from the Midwest, where hed grown up. Other talking heads include KMFDMs Sascha Konietzko, former Ministry member Paul Barker, Jello Biafra, Dave Grohl, Ian MacKaye and Chris Connelly. Just to boil it down for a 95-minute narrative is crazy, says Julia, who directed it. There are probably seven other 95-minute stories in there.

She started giving the film screenings last spring and recently heralded its soundtrack release with a series of events that paired a showing of the movie with a performance by Ministry, which played an old-school set. Although the Brooklyn event attracted a line around the block of people dressed ghoulishly in black, Julia has been happy to see the doc reach wider audiences too. There have been a ton of people at these screenings that really have had no idea what Wax Trax! was about, she says. Its been amazing seeing people recognize that this is a love story overall about two guys who, against many odds at the time, really made things happen and didnt give a shit.

I guess we didnt realize that it was more than just a label with some great bands on it, says Skillicorn, the films screenwriter, who is on the same call as Julia. It was much more of a cultural touch point. This was a pioneering label for a community that defied some of the stereotypes of what was happening. It was for a lot of people that had no experience with anybody who was gay. Its like the other side of the coin.

Gay people can like something else besides Cher? Julia rejoins sarcastically. That is crazy.

The record store and the label offices were a second home for Julia when she was growing up. Although she was more interested in other music growing up,she grew up looking at musicians like Jourgensen and Thrill Kill Kults Frank Nardiello like big brothers. Frank and I would go to lunch almost every day at this local diner, she says. He taught me how to rockerciseexercise to rock music. And Al is a sweet, sweet guy. He gave me my first car, this lemon-yellow 1972 convertible [Volkswagen] Karmann-Ghia. My dad drove it to Kansas City, where I was living [with my mom] and proceeded to paint it black with a paintbrush. But prior to that, my dad spray-painted it two giant boobs on the hood. After he painted over it, the spray paint still kind of came through, and it was really nice driving to high school in that. She laughs.

After the label declared bankruptcy in 1992, Jim and Flesher sold it to TVT Records and the couple also slowly divested themselves personally of the label and eventually the store. Julia says she never heard her father express regret over how it all fell apart. In hindsight, he said, I wish I wouldve had people sign contracts, but other than that, I dont think he would have changed anything, she says. Around the time he became sick, Julia had just had her daughter and what he cared about changed. She found it hard to keep the store going with Circuit City and Best Buy selling CDs for cheaper than cost and eventually it closed.

In 2011, after Flesher died, she put together a three-night celebration of the label she dubbed the Wax Trax! Retrospectacle in Chicago. The concerts featured performances by Front 242, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and former members of KMFDM and Ministry. The positive turnout changed the way shed seen her fathers lifes work. I had no idea that the connection that that store, the label, the music, my dad and Dannie had with people, how it kind of altered the course of their lives in a way, she says. So the really touching stories from the fans are really what made us think about doing the film.

Even though the doc is now available on Blu-ray and DVD, Julia is still sorting through the treasures she found in Fleshers storage space. The Wax Trax! label recently issued a soundtrack album for the movie, which features 15 previously unreleased recordings and mixes of songs by Thrill Kill, Revolting Cocks, Ministry, KMFDM and others. She and her husband hope to compile a coffee-table book history of the label at some point in the future.

Its been years, and were still trying to get through everything because its just a staff of us, Skillicorn says. So when we get that properly catalogued, we can start to work with one of our designers and come up with something thats good. Quality is a big deal to us.

We were joking the other day that it was going to have to be the size of those old Manipulator magazines from the Eighties that were, like, three-by-five feet, Julia says. Those were huge. Its just going to be a bitch for people to ship. Its going to be awful.

From the way she talks about it, though, its clear that Julia is happy with her role as the Indiana Jones of industrial music, unearthing relics from Fleshers collection to present to the world. But then again, she says, an embarrassment of riches can be taxing in other ways. When were like, Oh, my God, we still have these boxes to go through, were not so glad, Julia says. But its all discovery nonstop, and from that discovery theres new ideas of projects or things to do to honor these guys.

Jane Fonda in Five Acts Gives Its Subject a Gift: Herself

Hollywood royalty, Hanks kid, the Girl Next Door, sex kitten, shag-haired radical, political activist, Public Enemy No. 1, movie star, Oscar-winner, aerobics queen, trophy wife will the real Jane Fonda please stand up? There are a number of reasons to check out Jane Fonda in Five Acts, the HBO documentary that premieres on the premium-cable channel tonight. But the only one that you genuinely need to concern yourself with, the main attraction behind this two-hour-plus tour of a life thats taken some incredible, mind-boggling detours, is that it provides a resolution to that rhetorical question above. The genuine article stands up, and then some.

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Thanks to clips covering virtually every single aspect of Lady Janes professional ups and personal downs, you can catch a glimpse of her from childhood to grande dame status, beloved icon to hated traitor. The occasional talking heads, kept to a minimum considering the famous subject but ranging from regular costar Robert Redford to her son Troy Garity, offer a few tidbits of context. Its Fonda herself, however, and the way she uses this forum, that sets this apart from your typical hail-celebrity-well-met hagiography. The honesty is third-degree blistering. The candor is unchecked. For the majority of Five Acts long running time, it does not seem like youre watching a portrait of an artist. It feels like youve stumbled into a particularly raw therapy session, or have accidentally eavesdropped on a chest-clearing confessional.

The format or gimmick, depending on your viewpoint is to break up Fondas arc into five distinct chapters. Act One is titled Henry, as in her dad a screen legend who, per Jane, was withholding in the affection department and made her feel as if she grew up in the shadow of a national monument. (You try living with Lincoln, Wyatt Earp and Tom Joad.) Her mother, Frances Ford Brokaw, takes her own life when Jane is 12; Dad takes up with a much younger woman. Boarding school teaches her how to be bulimic, and Lee Strasberg, a neighbor in Malibu Beach, teaches her how to become someone else. When her father surrogate declares that she has real talent after an acting class, Fonda heads to New York, getting model gigs in between Broadway shows and ingenue roles. She gets bored and heads to France, where a breathless announcer will declare that this young woman (half rose petal, half thorn!) is the bridge between Bardot and Moreau. The country gives her refuge. It also gives Jane her first husband in the Euro-louche Roger Vadim, her first taste of real stardom and motherhood, the cosmic-striptease camp romp that is Barbarella and a growing sense that American adventures overseas specifically those involving Indochina may not be all they appear to be.

Her wild et fou times and transformation into the person her estranged spouse calls Jane of Arc are covered in Act Two: Roger as the coming of the Klute haircut, her first sense that shes more than just a pretty face thanks to They Shoot Horses, Dont They? and her evolution as an activist. This is the period when, high on Dexedrine and ideology, her public appearances were a blur of peace signs and raised fists. Act Three: Tom traces her partnership with Tom Hayden, when the two became a peace-movement power couple, as well as the Hanoi Jane tar-and-feathering and the fallout from some ill-fated photo opps. It also chronicles how she began to, in her sons words, use film as a platform for change (cue China Syndrome and 9 to 5 snippets) and, in an effort to fund a pet project to combat economic disparity, she filmed a workout video and inadvertently kick-started an industry. Act Four: Ted follows the Ted Turner years, when Jane tied the knot with the Atlanta-based media mogul (my favorite ex-husband) and was content to stay on the sidelines to keep him happy.

Perhaps you have noticed a pattern in these chapter headings the fact that theyre all named after powerful and/or overpowering men in her life is not a coincidence. Fonda states over and over how she felt defined by fathers, husbands, Svengalis, directors and lovers to the point where, should they say something negative or simply look away, she might fade away. And this is where Jane Fonda in Five Acts proves that it has other things on its mind than just hot air about how great Jane is. Filmmaker Susan Lacy may be a veteran of old-school famous-person profiling shes a go-to director for the PBS series American Masters series, and helmed HBOs strictly textbook Spielberg last year but shes smart enough to know that if your subject is ready to unload, you get out of the way. You form relationships with stars over decades, and even if the bond you feel with those 20-foot-tall faces on screens is one-sided, you still feel like you know these people who lived so long in the public eye. To hear one of them so blatantly lay out insecurities, neuroses, anger, fears, failures, fuck-ups and feelings about what having to live as the object of someone elses desires or needs does to a person can be sobering. More importantly, it can be insightful, which is what makes the filmshigh-wire exorcism act invaluable. Its not, and here was what I was thinking when I was collecting an Oscar and making The Electric Horseman. Its Im a woman, Im going to be damaged when talking about her apprehension about being a mom and continuing a cycle. Its I spent a decade not asking too many questions. Its I just wanted to be OK and I never felt real.

By the time we get to Act Five, which is naturally named Jane, you know its going to be a victory lap of reclaiming herself and late-in-life career resurgences. And if it pales compared to the emotional roller coaster youve dipped and dived on for the previous two hours of personal history lessons, the film itself also makes you feel that this woman has more than earned a sense of peace. It ends on two notes of forgiveness, one spoken and one unspoken. The first is for Janes mother, with unearthed facts and long-lost memories and a visit to a grave. The second is the one the subject grants herself. Thats the gift this movie gives Jane Fonda: the chance to see herself through no other lens than her own. The simplicity of that last title card hits the mark. Shes a legend, sure. But now shes not Henrys daughter, or Roger/Tom/Teds wife, or Bree Daniels. Shes just Jane, the doc suggests, plain old Jane. It only took decades to get there.

The Girl in the Spiders Web Review: Claire Foy Is Ready to Kick Your Ass

For those who wanted more of the artful meditation on societal misogyny that David Fincher brought to his 2011 film version of Stieg Larssons bestselling Swedish crime drama The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, you have my condolences. The Girl in the Spiders Web, directed with gun-to-the-head urgency by Fede Alvarez (Dont Breathe), settles for being a tension-packed, go-go-go thriller that will pump adrenaline into your nervous system for nearly all of its suspenseful if implausible 117 minutes. Oscar nominee Rooney Mara is out as the Lisbeth Salander; we now get Claire Foy, giving her refined image as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown and wife to astronaut Neil Armstrong in First Man a kinky, kick-ass makeover as the tattooed, pierced, bisexual hacker and avenger on abusive, predatory men. Timely much?

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Foy is killer good. Reactions may be mixed on the movie, which is based on the 2015 novel by David Lagercrantz (hired after Larssons death to continue the Millennium cash cow series). Alvarez and co-screenwriters Jay Basu and Steven Knight take big liberties with the backstory, which first saw screen life in 2009 as the start of a Swedish trilogy, directed by Niels Arden Oplevs and starring a stellar Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. Youll be pleased to know that the Uruguay-born Alvarez does not skimp on the juicy pulp. And, yes, the heroine still has her dragon tattoo.

The Girl in the Spiders Web starts with a flashback in which the young Lisbeth escapes from the lair of her pervy father, a Russian crime lord, leaving her sister Camilla to dads deviant ways. Lisbeth really has it in for male creeps. Early on, we see her truss up a dude who has beaten his wife and assaulted two hookers. A Taser comes in handy, as does her skill in transferring the scumbags funds to these female victims.

Its the reappearance of the now-grown Camilla (Blade Runner 2049s Sylvia Hoeks) as a svelte blonde dressed in red and ready to do her own damage that sparks the action. As head of a group of brutal mercenaries called the Spiders, her sister wants to get her hands on software capable of hacking into the worlds nuclear arsenals.Its that same software that Lisbeth is hired to protect by Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant), the inventor of the program. Suspicious of all power-mad governments, Balder holds the passwords in the head of his six-year-old son August (Christopher Convery), an on-the-spectrum kid who brings out Lisbeths protective instincts. No such sentiments bother Camilla, who kidnaps the boy. With Edwin Needham (a scene-stealing Lakeith Stanfield), a NSA security techie also on her tail, Lisbeth is cornered.

Except, of course shes not. Showing athletic grace and a knack for always being a dozen steps ahead of her pursuers, Foy has a ball with the role while also supplying the nuance and grace notes that the too-busy script leaves out. As cinematographer Pedro Luques whooshing camera follows Lisbeth across a Swedish obstacle course of icy roads, motorcycle chases and exploding buildings, the Girl tries to escape the spiders web. Will she? Theres little doubt. The Girl in the Spiders Web knocks itself out by pushing too hard. Its Foy who holds us in thrall by taking us deeper into who Lisbeth is than ever before.

Aquaman: Atlantis Declares War on Surface World in Action-Packed First Trailer

The long-awaited first trailer for Aquaman, the latest installment in DC Cinematic Universe, arrived Saturday at San Diegos Comic-Con.

Following the characters cameo in Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice and his role in the superhero team-up Justice League, the Aquaman preview provides the backstory of the half-man Atlantis prince.

My father was a lighthouse keeper. My mother was a queen. But life has a way of bringing people together, Jason Momoas Arthur Curry says in voiceover. They made me what I am.

After discovering his ability to communicate with marine life at a young age, Curry is recruited by Amber Heards Mera to prevent his half-brother Orms war on the surface world.

In addition to outlining the story, the first trailer also captures the impressive amount of detail and painstaking CGI work that went into creating the underwater world of Atlantis.

The film reveals the origin story of half-human, half-Atlantean Arthur Curry and takes him on the journey of his lifetimeone that will not only force him to face who he really is, but to discover if he is worthy of who he was born to bea king, Aquamans synopsis states. Aquaman opens December 21st.

The DC Cinematic Universe panel also provided Comic-Con-only footage of the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 as well as the first trailer for their Big-meets-Superman movie Shazam:

Scarlett Johansson Exits Trans Film Role After Backlash

Scarlett Johansson has dropped out of the film Rub & Tug following a backlash over the actress controversial casting in the role of a real-life mob boss who was born a woman but identified as a man.

In light of recent ethical questions raised surrounding my casting as Dante Tex Gill, I have decided to respectfully withdraw my participation in the project, Johansson said in a statement to Out Friday.

Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and Ive learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive.

Following Johanssons casting in the biopic about the Pittsburgh mob boss that used massage parlors to front a prostitution ring, the actress initially issued a defiant statement in defense of the role. Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Felicity Huffmans reps for comment, Johansson said; Tambor, Leto and Huffman played transgender roles in Transparent, Dallas Buyers Club and Transamerica, respectively.

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The initial statement only fostered further outrage toward Johansson in the Gill role, which caused the actress to reexamine her involvement.

While I would have loved the opportunity to bring Dantes story and transition to life, I understand why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person, and I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film. I believe that all artists should be considered equally and fairly, Johansson told Out.

I have great admiration and love for the trans community and am grateful that the conversation regarding inclusivity in Hollywood continues. According to GLAAD, LGBTQ+ characters dropped 40% in 2017 from the previous year, with no representation of trans characters in any major studio release.

GLAAD tweeted following Johanssons decision to leave Rub & Tug, Scarlett Johanssons announcement, together with the transgender voices who spoke out about this film, are game changers for the future of transgender images in Hollywood.

According to Variety, the status of Rub & Tug following Johanssons exit is unknown.

The Guilty Review: First-Time Caller, Longtime Cop-vs.-Kidnapper Thriller

In TV, its called a bottle episode: a half-hour or hour of an ongoing series that corrals a cast into a single, usually closed-off location and forces the shows creatives/creators to work within those parameters. The Guilty, Swedish filmmaker Gustav Mllers feature debut, sticks to a somewhat similar limited set-up. A man (Jakob Cedergren) sits in a room, behind a desk, answering a phone. His name is Asger. He didnt always do this; once upon a time, he was a cop who worked a beat, who was out in the field and got his hands dirty. Then something happened. Soon, very soon, he can clear his name and go back to work. Until then, Asger is killing time in a sparsely populated emergency-services-dispatch post, taking 911 calls. Just a guy with an earpiece-and-mic get-up, dealing with speed freaks and manic mugging victims.

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Then, right before his shift is over, his line rings again. The cracking voice on the other end says, Hi, sweetie. Asger thinks the woman is drunk; he soon realizes shes talking in code. They establish a yes-or-no system: Does the person with you know youre calling the police? No. (The driver thinks shes talking to her child.) Does she know the person shes with? Yes. Has she been abducted? Yes. He gets this crying passenger to identify the make of the vehicle shes in a white van and is able to roughly triangulate where the call is coming from via nearby cellphone towers before she abruptly hangs up. Asger manages to get a patrol car in the area to start searching. Then, waiting for a response, he begins to do a little detective work.

One man, one emergency line, two locations (he eventually switches from his cubicle to a slightly more private room five feet away), a variety of voices piped in via his headset and thats it. We never leave the office. We never leave Asgers side. Any information we end up getting and we end up getting a lot we receive the same piecemeal way our man does. Because were talking about a movie and not an installment in a serialized drama, you cant categorize this a bottle episode. It will have to settle for simply being labeled as one of the more ingenious imported thrillers to hit theaters in a long while.

The question is not whether this is a gimmick (of course it is!), but how effectively Mller and company utilize this high-concept premise in the name of keeping audiences tense and uneasy. The answer is: enough to make you feel like youre sitting in that cramped dispatch headquarters with this man, flop-sweating alongside the flawed-hero ringmaster while he desperately orchestrates a search-and-rescue mission. Necessity is the mother of invention, so the director and his cowriter Emil Nygaard Albertson find ways of filling in the puzzle of whats really going on with some choice bits of misdirection and a few sucker-punch revelations, doled out on a need-to-know basis. (The twist there is one is handled expertly; Algers expositionary backstory, less so. The title contains multitudes.) Cinematographer Jasper Spanning favors shots that range from tight close-ups to claustrophobic ones, as well as compositions that seem to be penning in the protagonist via windows, bars, rectangular frames within frames.

And though he carries the bulk of the film on his shoulders, Cedergren knows that his face is responsible for the heavy dramatic lifting, fine-tuning his expressions enough to let you follow him down each turn of the cops white-knight rabbit hole. The look he gives when he realizes he may have drastically misread the situation feels like a bomb has dropped. As for his audio-only costars, kudos to the voice actors especially Jessica Dinnage, who lends a sense of panic and pathos to the woman in the white van. The Guilty is many things, not all of which work 100-percent of the time. But it does succeed as one hell of a radio play with benefits, letting a literal call-and-response crime procedural play out in real time. Its a clever enough variation on a genre, done with a genuine sense of verve the sort of rough gem you dont want to keep on hold.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure Review: Third Times a Yawn for YA Dystopia Series

On no, not more dystopia! The third and final chapter in the Maze Runner trilogy comes at a time when worst-case-scenario YA sci-fi series seems redundant why imagine terrible futures when we have Trump to remind us that the end of the world is coming? Still, completists will make sure that The Death Cure shows some life at the box office. Fans of the franchises talented star Dylan OBrien will want to see the 26-year-old actor return to home base after suffering a serious stunt-related injury while filming the sequel in March of 2016. It took theTeen Wolfstar nearly a year to recover and return to the set of the series that made him a YA hearththrob.

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Still, though youll root for OBrien, The Death Cure plot is the essence of rehash. His character, Thomas, is once again battling WCKD, the Death Star-like organization run by two scientists (Aidan Gillen and Patricia Clarkson), that held him prisoner in the Glade and then sent him running across a desert to escape the Flare, a plague that zombified everyone, except the hottie teens also trapped in the mazes center. The scientists need their blood to cure the Flare, etc.

Got that? Thomas also has to free his best-friend-forever Minho (Ki Hong Lee) from the Last City and deal with the fact that his lady love, Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), seems to have joined the dark side. Director Wes Ball, at the helm for all three movies, keeps the action percolating, starting with a nifty opening train robbery negotiated by Thomas, his Glade allies Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Frypan (Dexter Darden) and resistance fighters, played by Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito and a badly scarred Walton Goggins.

Why? Foolish question to distract us from the formula
plotting and tin-earred dialogue cooked up by screenwriter T.S. Nowlin from the novel by
James Dashner, of course! Did we mention that a wall has been built around the Last City? Mr. President, take heart. Ditto whoevers
left in the audience looking for a dystopian fix. The Death Cure is an assault
of fire and fury guaranteed to leave your senses frayed and your brain numb. If
thats your poison, heres your ticket.

Zac Efrons Ted Bundy Performance Is Good, Not Killer

Theres a daring concept behind this off-kilter Netflix movie about the kinder and gentler side of serial killer Ted Bundy that should have worked: How can a pretty face blind us to the demon lurking inside? Zac Efron perfectly embodies the hotness that drew women to law-student Bundy even after it became painfully obvious that this burglar, kidnapper, rapist, necrophile and mass murderer had strangled, bludgeoned and mutilated at least 30 women (there could be more) across seven states in the mid to late 1970s.

Enter the world of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, a title taken from the words of Florida Judge Edward D. Cowart (a stellar John Malkovich) who sentenced Bundy to the electric chair for being all of those things. Bundy was executed on January 24, 1989. He was 42.

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Director Joe Berlinger, a superb documentarian (the excellent Paradise Lost trilogy), could have gone several ways with this material. The method he chose, along with screenwriter Michael Werwie, was to see Bundy through the eyes of Elizabeth Kloepfer, referred to here as one of her pseudonyms, Elizabeth Kendall (Lily Collins), the single mother he met in 1969 and loved with ardor and tenderness while moonlighting as a savage psychopath. In other words, were seeing Bundy as Elizabeth saw him, at least for a time, and as he preferred to see himself. That was the image Bundy presented at trial, wearing a suit with a jaunty bow tie, bantering with the judge, who called him pardner, and flashing a smile meant to warm hearts. Its bone-chilling.

So why doesnt the movie work, despite Efron giving it his all and then some? Its one thing for Elizabeth to show a blind eye to the real Bundy. Its another to ask audiences to share her delusion. The film describes Bundys violent acts, but never truly depicts them. In one scene, a visit to the pound, a dog shrinks in horror in the presence of Bundy. What took Elizabeth so long? There are psychological depths the film should be plumbing, but they go unexplored. When Elizabeth finally came to her senses, Bundy took up with an old friend, Carole Anne Boone (Kaya Scodelario), who he managed to impregnate in prison and who gave him that same blind devotion Elizabeth once provided.

What motivated these women and for that matter Bundy himself? Extremely Wicked provides no answers. You can find more insights in Kendalls memoir, The Phantom Prince, and in Berlingers Netflix doc, Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. Hearing Bundys actual voice, a blend of self-pity and self love, freezes the blood. Berlinger ends his film with clips of the real Bundy in action, speaking words that we heard Efron speak previously. Reality trumps recreation every time. In his second film as a feature director, following the mess that was Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Berlinger loses his way in a game of lets pretend that ends in a tangle of tonal shifts and missed opportunities.

Ashley Judd Sues Harvey Weinstein for Sexual Harassment, Defamation

Ashley Judd filed a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein Monday, accusing the disgraced producer of sexual harassment and defamation.

Mr. Weinsteins abusive conduct toward others has caused no end of damage to aspiring actors and others in the film and entertainment industry, Judd said in a statement (via Variety). As my experience and the experience of others shows, even a few false statements from Mr. Weinstein could destroy potentially career-changing professional opportunities. Its time that Mr. Weinstein be held accountable for that conduct and for the ways in which hes damaged careers.

The lawsuit claims that Weinstein spread false and malicious statements about Judd to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, who had met with Judd in 1998 regarding two possible roles in the blockbuster trilogy.

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The pathetic reality, however, was that Weinstein was retaliating against Ms. Judd for rejecting his sexual demands approximately one year earlier, when he cornered her in a hotel room under the guise of discussing business, Judds attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. wrote in the lawsuit. A self-described benevolent dictator who has bragged that I can be scary, Weinstein used his power in the entertainment industry to damage Ms. Judds reputation and limit her ability to find work.

In interviews following the Weinstein scandal, Jackson revealed that Weinstein, whose Miramax originally owned the film rights to Lord of the Rings, persuaded him not to cast Judd in the trilogy. Weinstein allegedly told the director that Judd was a nightmare to work with and should be avoided at all costs,' the lawsuit claims, adding that Weinstein similarly discredited Mira Sorvino, another actress up for a Lord of the Rings role, to Jackson.

Acting is a unique job that offers incredible opportunities for creative and personal fulfillment. But it is still a job. And like any professional, an actor like Ms. Judd must rely on her experience and her reputation to find work in the face of fierce competition, the lawsuit states.

What Ms. Judd did not know until December 2017 was that something unseen was holding her back from obtaining the work she wanted, and had been doing so for decades. The headwind limiting her career was Harvey Weinstein.

In addition to sexual harassment and defamation, Judd is also suing Weinstein for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and unfair competition. A lawyer for Weinstein did not respond to the lawsuit,New York Times reports.

Judd added that financial recuperation [from the lawsuit] will be donated to the Times Up Legal Defense Fund, so that women and men in all professions may have legal redress for sexual harassment, economic retaliation and damage to their careers.

Lords of Chaos: See Rory Culkin, Sky Ferreira in Trailer for Norwegian Black Metal Movie

Rory Culkin and Sky Ferreira star in the disturbing, darkly comic new trailer for Lords of Chaos, director Jonas kerlunds upcoming horror-dramedy film about the ill-fated Norwegian black-metal band Mayhem and the series of crimes in the 1990s that define the bands legacy. The movie, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, hits theaters on February 8th.

The clip, soundtracked by Sigur Rs, opens with young guitarist Euronymous (Culkin) narrating his innocent early days. Here I am: an average teenager, may think, he says. But you couldnt be more wrong. I am the founder of Mayhem, the most infamous black metal band in the world. Life was easy back then. It was all about having fun, drinking beer, playing hard and loud music. And then everything changed.

The tone becomes radically darker and more disorienting after a scene in which Euronymous hires Varg (Emory Cohen) as the bands new bassist. The trailer avoids hard spoilers but teases the notorious church burnings, suicide and murder that followed.

Lords of Chaos is based on Michael Moynihan and Didrik Sderlinds 1998 book of the same name. Anthony De La Torre, Jack Kilmer and Valter Skarsgrd also appear in the film; Jonas kerlund and Dennis Magnusson co-wrote the screenplay.

Mindy Kaling Revives Old, White Talk Show in Late Night Trailer

Mindy Kaling plays a bold but inexperienced comedy writer trying to revive a stale, culturally monochrome talk show in the hilarious new trailer for Late Night. The film hits Amazon Studios on June 7th.

The clip opens with Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), the first female late-night talk show host on a major network, fielding questions from reporters about a lack of gender and ethnic diversity on her creative team. Funny is funny, she says but a journalist interjects, as long as youre white, male and from an elite college, like your writing staff.

Desperate to hire a female writer, Newbury impulsively brings on Kalings character, Molly Patel, a chemical plant efficiency expert from the Philadelphia suburbs. As rumors build of the network firing Newbury for a younger male host, she works with Patel to make the show funnier and edgier or, as the new writer puts it, a little less old and white. Meanwhile, Patel fights for her place in the industry: I will not be marginalized because no one here looks like me, she says.

John Lithgow, Max Casella, Hugh Dancy, Denis OHare, Reid Scott and Amy Ryan co-star in the film. Kaling also wrote and produced the project, and Nisha Ganatra (Transparent, Better Things) directed.

See Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges Share Tense Reunion in Ben Is Back Teaser

Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges reunite as concerned mother and troubled son in the first teaser for the upcoming family dramaBen is Back.

The brief yet intriguing clip opens with a close-up of Ben Burns (Hedges) boots crunching in snow as he walks past a tire swing and up to his family home. His mother, Holly (Roberts), and sister, Ivy (Kathryn Newton), drive up to the house and gaze in shock. Oh, my God, Holly mutters, as Ivy urges her to not leave the car. The preview ends with Ben and an emotional Holly embracing.

The film follows Ben, a 19-year-old battling a substance abuse problem, as he returns home on Christmas Eve. Over a trying 24-hour period, Holly is forced to grapple with her sons past.

Hedges father, Peter Hedges (Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, The Odd Life of Timothy Green), wrote and directed the film, which will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival before its theatrical release on December 7th. The younger Hedges has starred in several acclaimed projects, including Lady Bird, Manchester by the Sea and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

First Reformed Review: Paul Schraders Faith-in-Crisis Drama Is Divine Madness

There are powerhouse movies that knock you for a loop and take weeks to recover from and then there is Paul Schraders First Reformed. Not only is this faith-in-crisis drama one of the legendary writer-directors most incendiary films ever, its one of the years very best a cinematic whirlwind that leaves you both exhilarated and spent. Like the screenplays he wrote for Martin Scorsese (notably Taxi Driver) and the tormented works hes made about the wages of sin (Hardcore, American Gigolo, The Comfort of Strangers, Auto Focus), Schrader raised as a strict Calvinist has never lost his obsession with the war between flesh and spirit.

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First Reformed tackles that theme head on. Ethan Hawke, in a performance of raw intensity, stars as the Reverend Ernst Toller, a parish pastor at a Dutch Reform Church whose congregation in upstate New York is dwindling. So, for that matter, is his hold on his vocation: Hes also a secret boozer whose marriage broke up when his soldier son died in Iraq after Dad encouraged him to enlist. His parish once a stop on the Underground Railroad is celebrating its 250thanniversary, though the event is being co-opted by its big-brother megachurch, Abundant Life. That behemoth is run by Pastor Jeffers (Cedric Kyles, a.k.a. Cedric the Entertainer), a fatcat who worships at the altar of money.

The turning point for Toller comes when a pregnant parishioner, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), implores him to counsel her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger), an eco-activist whos considering suicide over the sorry state of the planet. Instead of quelling the young mans desire for a grand, terroristic gesture, Toller catches his passion and existential despair much to the horror of Pastor Jeffers and Balq Industries, the oil company thats financing the restoration of the landmark church. Shocking events ensue some surprising narrative left turns, a tribute to Schraders abiding compassion for humanity as it finds itself stranded between heaven and earth.

No one would call First Reformed a fun time at the movies. But its ambition, fervor and vitality are indisputable. Schrader has a knack for taking an audience out of its comfort zone, as with a surreal scene in which Toller and Mary fly above our endangered planet like all-seeing souls on a magic carpet ride to doom. And the connection between these two, which the sublime Seyfried makes touchingly palpable, finds expression in a climactic scene that will either drive you up the wall or inspire you to revel in its ecstatic beauty.

Schrader is dealing with an essential factor without which faith is not possible: love in all its manifestations, carnal to sacred. Film scholars will reference and catalog the influences, from Robert Bressons Diary of a Country Priest to Ingmar Bergmans Winter Light. But you dont need a degree in cinema to have this existential dramashake you to the core. In this age of numbing Hollywood formula, First Reformed offers a kind of salvation its a movie that matters.