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Saint Rose is a Lebanese short film that tells the story of the titular character who is preparing for her daughter’s engagement ceremony. But with each passing moment, it becomes clear that her abusive husband isn’t content with the arrangements for reasons only known to him. Unable to deal with this situation, she seeks shelter in her bathroom where she smokes away her sorrows. The only person in the palatial house is the Kenyan housekeeper, Becky, who shares her bottle of vodka with her so that they can numb themselves to the pain they’ve to endure. I sat down for a virtual chat with director Zayn Alexandre about Saint Rose, what compelled him to tell this story, and why patriarchal norms are on the rise again.

What’s the story behind the title of the film, Saint Rose?

Anyone who quietly endures for the sake of their...

Good One is a movie that should be seen in a theater. Not because of its grand scale; it’s actually very modest in that way. The reason writer/director India Donaldson’s debut feature needs to be absorbed in the most immersive environment possible is that it hinges on...

Top 7 Psychological Thrillers you can watch on different OTTs (Photo Credit –YouTube)

Psychological thrillers masterfully intertwine suspense and emotional depth to create an intense masterpiece. Whether you’re delving into the mind of a Mindhunter or uncovering dark secrets in Sharp Objects, psychological thrillers deliver captivating storylines to hook you in your seats.

With numerous streaming platforms including Netflix, Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Apple TV+, and more, viewers get a wide range of psychological thrillers, with themes of horror, and unpredictable twists. If you’re a fan of this genre, here we lay out the best psychological thrillers available to stream right now.

Fair Play

Directed by Chloe Domont, Fair Play centers on financial analysts Emily Meyers (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke Edmunds (Alden Ehrenreich), who are entangled in a covert romance within the intense environment of a Manhattan hedge fund. Their relationship is significantly tested when Emily lands a promotion that Luke desperately wants.

“Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme” centers on an immensely interesting subject — financial fraudster and D-List actor Zach Horwitz, a.k.a. Zach Avery — but ends up telling his tale in uninteresting ways. The film draws its various techniques from far better and more accomplished documentaries, resulting in a multifaceted, mixed-bag approach that never clicks, thanks in large part to how the movie chooses to reveal information.

Director Joslyn Jensen appears on-screen early into the runtime and becomes a primary character in the film. She’s as much a subject as Avery and his various victims — people he befriended over the years and scammed out of millions of dollars. But Jensen is also a deeply uninteresting focal point who takes up far too much of the screentime. By centering her to the degree that it does, “Bad Actor” becomes a film about process on multiple fronts.

On one hand, the...

Three-time Emmy winner Julia Garner is boarding New Line’s Weapons opposite Josh Brolin. The pic comes from writer-director Zach Cregger. who made the 2022 New Regency horror film Barbarian.

Barbarian, released via 20th Century Studios, opened at No. 1 after pulling in a 93% Rotten Tomatoes critics score. The pic grossed 10 times its production budget of $4.5 million totaling more than $45M worldwide.

Garner won three Supporting Actress Drama Emmys for her turn as Ruth Langmore in the Netflix series Ozark. She is currently in production opposite Christopher Abbott on Blumhouse/Universal’s Wolf Man from filmmaker Leigh Whannell. Garner also stars in Paramount’s upcoming psychological thriller Apartment 7A.

Deadline recently scooped that she was joining the cast of Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four as the iconic comic book character Silver Surfer opposite Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

Her other feature credits count Bleecker Street’s The Assistant, Neon...

“Rumours” is on the way. In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Bleecker Street, the indie film studio, has released a new highlight sizzle reel emphasizing their greatest hits film accomplishments and a tease of what’s to come with never-before-seen footage. Some of Bleecker Street’s most notable titles include Steven Soderbergh’s “Logan Lucky,” “Eye in the Sky,” “Kitty Green’s “The Assistant,” Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace” and “Captain Fantastic” (which earned Viggo Mortensen a Best Actor Oscar nomination), and many more, but it’s the upcoming titles that are the most compelling.

Continue reading Bleecker Street Gives First Look At Guy Maddin’s ‘Rumours’ With Cate Blanchett & Alicia Vikander & More Upcoming Titles at The Playlist.

Julia Garner, the three-time Emmy-winning co-star of “Ozark,” looks to be joining Marvel’s next big bet, the relaunch of the First Family of Comics, “Fantastic Four.” As per Deadline, she’ll be appearing as the grooviest of villains, the Silver Surfer. But before you can reach for your podcast mic and shout about how producers are ruining movies by making them all woke, please note that a female version of the Silver Surfer, known as Shalla-Bal, does exist in various splinters of the comics’ multiverse. So there.

Whether or not director Matt Shakman, whose television credits include zany shows like “You’re The Worst” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” as well as “WandaVision,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” will have the sand to include a moment in which Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm serenades Shalla-Bal with a rendition of the Beach Boys’s “Surfer Girl” remains to be seen.

Emmy and Golden Globe winner Julia Garner is joining Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four” as Shalla-Bal, a version of Silver Surfer from the Marvel comics.

She will star alongside Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm (aka the Thing).

Matt Shakman will direct “Fantastic Four,” from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer and Eric Pearson. Production on the film is set to begin this summer, with a planned release on July 25, 2025.

The Silver Surfer was previously portrayed by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne in 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer”

Garner starred as Ruth Langmore on “Ozark” alongside Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, earning three Emmys and a Golden Globe for her work on the series. Other television credits include “The Americans,...

“Shayda,” a breakout indie movie from Noora Niasari, and Kitty Green’s high-temperature drama “The Royal Hotel” were named best film winners at the annual Spa Awards, presented by the Screen Producers Australia association.

The ceremony took place Thursday at Queensland’s Gold Coast, during the annual Screen Forever conference. The event was hosted by actor and comedian Matt Okine.

Production company Werner Film, which this week announced its acquisition by the BBC, took three awards including the coveted Media Super Production Business of the year prize.

“It’s clear that our production community continues to thrive in the face of a rapidly changing landscape. Each winner exemplifies the creativity, innovation, and dedication that define our industry and showcase the vital role producers and production businesses play in sharing our unique stories and culture with audiences worldwide,” said Spa CEO Matthew Deaner.

The awards ceremony also saw Amy Parry named...

Explorations of evil and entrapment took top honours at Thursday's Awgie Awards, with Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes' 'Late Night with the Devil' and Kitty Green's 'The Royal Hotel' winning the original and adapted feature prizes, respectively.

The post ‘The Royal Hotel’, ‘Late Night with the Devil’ win AWGIEs, Shane Brennan honoured appeared first on If Magazine.

The title of Molly Manning Walker’s feature-length directorial debut seems to promise a self-help guide to navigating the knotty ins and outs of physical desire. And given how it starts, with ready-to-party besties Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis) touching down in the coastal town of Malia in Crete, Greece, for their first holiday abroad, one might also anticipate that a redux of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is afoot.

Writer-director Manning Walker, though, has cooked up something far less ironic and fragmentary with How to Have Sex, though like Korine’s film, it’s interested in how the prospect of hardcore partying doesn’t transform from fantasy into nightmare in a flash. Rather, it oscillates from one to the other simultaneously, creating a gradual, narcotizing effect that makes sorting out one’s emotions, especially when they’re being newly felt, next to impossible.

Above all,...

Julia Garner is slaying the red carpet.

The 29-year-old Ozark actress posed for photos while arriving at the 2024 Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday (January 7) in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Photos: Check out the latest pics of Julia Garner

For the awards show, Julia sparkled in a silver disco ball-inspired dress.

Joining Julia on the red carpet was close friend and frequent collaborator director/producer Kitty Green.

The Golden Globes will air on CBS this year, marking a change in network after many years on NBC. The show is being hosted by comedian Jo Koy. Make sure to check out the full list of nominations!

Fyi: Julia is wearing a Gucci dress, Santoni shoes, and Monica Vinader jewelry while carrying a Gucci bag.

Click through the gallery inside for more photos of Julia Garner arriving at the awards show…...

Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress Julia Garner has been signed on to star in Leigh Whannell’s ‘Wolf Man’.

The movie reunites Julia — playing a mother whose family is being terrorised by a lethal predator — with Christopher Abbott, with whom she starred in 2011’s ‘Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene’, her first professional acting role, reports Variety.

Since then, Julia has gone on to become a major player in both film and television, winning three Emmy awards for her standout performance as Ruth Langmore in ‘Ozark’, and garnering multiple nominations for her portrayal of real-life con artist Anna Delvey in Shonda Rhimes’ limited series ‘Inventing Anna’.

As per Variety, in the film, Julia earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her impressive lead turn in Kitty Green’s ‘The Assistant’. Last year, the pair teamed up again for another critically acclaimed feature, ‘The Royal Hotel’, which Julia also produced through her Alma Margo production banner.

Julia Garner is set to headline Blumhouse and Universal’s Wolf Man from Invisible Man filmmaker Leigh Whannell.

Wolf Man will reunite Garner with Christopher Abbott, who was previously announced as starring in the movie, with whom she starred alongside in Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene; Garner’s first professional acting role.

The movie is set to be released via Universal on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Wolf Man, scripted by Whannell & Corbett Tuck and Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo (Dumb Money), stars Garner as a mother whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.

Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.

Garner is a 3x Primetime Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe Winner for her turn as “Ruth Langmore” in the award-winning series Ozark. She’s also a multiple nominee for...

Emmy and Golden Globe winner Julia Garner has set her next role, signing on to star in Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man.”

The movie reunites Garner — playing a mother whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator — with Christopher Abbott, with whom she starred in 2011’s “Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene,” her first professional acting role.

Since then, Garner has gone on to become a major player in both film and television, winning three Emmy awards for her standout performance as Ruth Langmore in “Ozark,” and garnering multiple nominations for her portrayal of real-life con artist Anna Delvey in Shonda Rhimes’ limited series “Inventing Anna.”

In film, Garner earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her impressive lead turn in Kitty Green’s “The Assistant.” Last year, the pair teamed up again for another critically acclaimed feature, “The Royal Hotel,” which Garner also produced through her Alma Margo production banner.

The Australian drama premiered at Cannes and stars Cate Blanchett.

Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy leads the nominations for the 2024 Aacta (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards with 12 nods, closely followed by horror Talk To Me with 11 nominations.

The New Boy is up for best film, actress for Cate Blanchett and actor for newcomer Aswan Reid while Australian Indigenous filmmaker Thornton is nominated for best director, screenplay and cinematography.

The film is set in 1940s Australia and stars Blanchett (who also serves as a producer) as a nun who takes in a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy. It...

Exclusive: Kristine Froseth (The Buccaneers) has been set to star alongside Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi in Oh, Canada, the newest feature written and directed by Academy Award nominee Paul Schrader (First Reformed).

Based on the 2021 novel Foregone by the late Russell Banks, the film tells the story of Leonard Fife (Gere), a famed documentary filmmaker who takes stock of his life, with not long to go after being stricken with cancer at 80 years old. The most unreliable of narrators — and of men — Fife offers the viewer a look at his home life, as a draft dodging artist who abandoned one family for another, consistently evading any sense of responsibility for actions as he starts a new life in Canada.

As previously announced, Elordi plays a young Fife, seen from his late teens through his mid-twenties. Froseth shares 1968-set scenes with the Saltburn star as his second wife, the conservative Virginian Alicia,...

Blimey, it's another cracking line-up on this week's Empire Podcast, as first Sophie Butcher chats with :a[Bottoms]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/bottoms/' } director Emma Seligman about female fight clubs and improv; Chris Hewitt talks to :a[The Royal Hotel]{href='https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/the-royal-hotel/' } director, Kitty Green, about her excellent drama set in the Australian Outback; and finally there's an excerpt from Chris' interview with the legendary Sir Patrick Stewart, who talks about writing his memoir, Making It So.

Then, using Star Trek-esque technology, Chris beams into the podbooth this week and is joined by Helen O'Hara, James Dyer, and the aforementioned Sophie Butcher as they pay a fond tribute to the great Matthew Perry, get given a chance to wave a magic wand in the direction of Marvel Studios, discuss the week's movie news, and review The Royal Hotel, :a...

(Welcome to Under the Radar, a column where we spotlight specific movies, shows, trends, performances, or scenes that caught our eye and deserved more attention ... but otherwise flew under the radar. In this edition: director Kitty Green and star Julia Garner keep the bad times rolling in "The Royal Hotel," the late, great William Friedkin says goodbye with one last banger in "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial," and Maggie Betts' "The Burial" delivers a very different kind of courtroom drama.)

Oftentimes, there can be a certain kind of temptation with columns like these. In our enthusiasm to shine a light on the under-seen gems that not enough viewers may be aware of, writers like yours truly can go a little too far in singing the praises of movies that were never meant to be held up as "perfect" or "award-worthy" in the first place -- whatever your definition of those highly subjective terms may be.

Studiocanal has Samuel Beckett biopic ‘Dance First’.

Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex, Emma Seligman’s Bottoms and Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel are all opening in UK-Ireland cinemas, on a weekend with several well-reviewed films by and about women.

Starting in 150 cinemas through Mubi, How To Have Sex is the debut feature of Screen 2021 Star of Tomorrow Walker. The film follows three British teenage girls on a clubbing holiday in Malia, where one of the group has her first experiences with sex. The cast includes fellow Screen Stars Mia McKenna-Bruce and Samuel Bottomley, with casting director...

Production expenditure on scripted screen production in Australia in 2022/23 was the second highest on record at $1.49Bn (A$2.34Bn) across 213 titles, according to Screen Australia’s annual drama report, but spend on Australian theatrical features declined by 54% from last year.

Spend on scripted screen production was down 4% on last year’s record expenditure but was still significantly above the five-year average, the report found. Australian titles made up $718M (A$1.13Bn) of that expenditure with decreases in spending by Australian subscription TV and SVOD services.

However Free-to-Air (Fta) TV and Broadcaster Video-On-Demand (Bvod) providers helped offset those declines with spend on titles such as Total Control Series 3, Rfds Series 2 and While The Men Are Away.

Meanwhile, Australian theatrical features saw total expenditure of $231M (A$363M) in 2022/23, down 54% compared to the previous year and 17% below the five-year average. Australian features produced during this period include Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy,...

Kitty Green’s film stars Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick as backpackers forced to take a dodgy-sounding job dealing with the boozy miners in the dusty middle of nowhere

A weak and anticlimactic ending sadly deflates this movie from Australian director Kitty Green, who gave us the gripping #MeToo drama The Assistant from 2019. It’s a shame, as The Royal Hotel had been developing as a very tense and well acted psychological thriller and outback noir, but the ultimate scares somehow go missing along with any satisfying plot resolutions.

As co-writer with Oscar Redding, Green takes her inspiration from Hotel Coolgardie, a tough and disturbing documentary about a chaotically rough pub in remote Western Australia which periodically hires female backpackers to work behind the bar. But the young women who do the job soon realise that this isn’t a wacky place like the one in Crocodile Dundee, but the...

What’s the top film on VOD this week? Actually, there are three different #1s on iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu. And what makes it weirder is those films don’t rank as high as #2 anywhere they don’t top.

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning: Part One” (Paramount), “The Equalizer 3” (Sony), and “The Exorcist: Believer” (Universal), all $19.99 are #1 at iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu respectively. To confuse things even more, three other different films rank #2 — “Barbie” (Warner Bros.), “Saw X” (Lionsgate), and “Talk to Me” (A24). That’s six different titles total ranking in the top two of the three lists. That’s unprecedented.

It’s the third week out for “Mission,” and though it clearly is getting revenue, it is not nearly the dominant force it might have been had it been released 60, not 90, days after hitting theaters. As always, without actual numbers but only rankings to analyze,...

The director has followed up Weinstein drama The Assistant with The Royal Hotel, about two backpackers forced to work in a toxically male Australian bar. Warning: contains spoilers

In October 2017, when the New York Times first published allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Australian director Kitty Green was on campus at Stanford University interviewing students for a film about sexual assault. “I had friends at the Weinstein Company so I immediately started texting them.” Within months she was shooting The Assistant, a drama about working for a movie mogul. It followed a day in the life of Jane, played by Julia Garner, whose boss is a sexual predator with a volcanic temper. He was never seen, only ever referred to as “him”, but was without a doubt modelled on Weinstein.

The Assistant became the definitive film of the #MeToo era: a horribly realistic portrait and a forensic examination of how a culture...

We probably won’t see this week’s streaming debuts on the Oscars’ nomination roster come January, but they offer a variety of genres that will satisfy whatever mood you find yourself in this weekend.

The contender to watch this week: “Pain Hustlers“

The opioid epidemic has fueled a wave of movie and TV shows in the last few years, from “Dopesick” and “Ben Is Back” to the gorgeous Oscar-nominated documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.” Hollywood’s latest Big Pharma indictment is a star-studded dramedy directed by “Harry Potter” alum David Yates. Based on a book by journalist Evan Hughes, “Pain Hustlers” features Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O’Hara, and Andy Garcia in a crime saga revolving around a pharmaceutical start-up whose founder served two years in prison. Reviews have been tepid, but “Hustlers” is now streaming on Netflix following a limited theatrical release.

Other contenders:

“My Sailor, My Love...

Iranian drama film “Empty Nets” was Monday named winner of the Aff Feature Fiction Award at the Adelaide Film Festival. Directed by Behrooz Karamizade, it collected an A$10,000 cash prize.

The festival’s competition section is one of the oldest in Australia and seeks to reward bold filmmaking. This year’s competition mostly comprised films by directors making their feature debuts. They included “Blaga’s Lessons,” from Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev; “Embryo Larva Butterfly,” by Greek-Cypriot writer-director Kyros Papavassiliou; “On The Go,” from directors Julia de Castro and Maria Gisele Royo; “Sahela,” directed by Australia’s Raghuvir Joshi; and “You’ll Never Find Me,” from Adelaide-based duo Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell.

“’Empty Nets’ is a searing portrait of the bleak socioeconomic reality for young people without family money in contemporary Iran, distinguished by atmospheric visuals, an evocative sense of place, stirring lead performances and a powerful grasp of the sea as...

The jury included ‘The Royal Hotel’ director Kitty Green.

Behrooz Karamizade’s Empty Nets and Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary Hollywoodgate have scooped the top prizes at Adelaide Film Festival (Aff)

Empty Nets received the Aff Feature Fiction Award, with Iranian-born German filmmaker Karamizade winning a cash prize of $6,300.

The Germany-Iran co-production centres on a young couple fighting for the survival of their relationship in the forbidding world of contemporary Iran. The film previously won the special jury prize at Karlovy Vary and premiered at Filmfest München.

The five-strong jury, which included filmmakers Kitty Green and Goran Stolevski, described the film...

‘Adapt to survive’ is a fitting mantra for the latest tense drama from The Assistant writer-director Kitty Green. This time, she places the star of her #MeToo-styled 2019 film, actor Julia Garner, in the heart of the Australian Outback to serve drinks to booze-addled patrons of a dysfunctional pub.

Inspired by fascinating 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie, The Royal Hotel takes a compelling look at ingrained toxic masculinity and the dominance of alcohol culture, as well as sobering isolation through the eyes of two backpacking female foreigners. An uneasy, maddening decline into the inevitable, Green’s film explores the effects of the unhealthy environment on two independent young women and the choices they must make for their well-being.

‘Gen Z’ Americans Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick of Glass Onion fame) reluctantly take live-in bartending jobs fund the rest of their Australian trip after finances run out. Dropped off at the rundown Royal...

Updated: With the fall festivals behind us — we’re talking the triple whammy of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, plus the just-wrapped New York Film Festival and BFI London — we’re taking stock of the best films of the circuit. While it’s always easy to use the fall festivals as a window into this year’s awards contenders, of which many debuted over the past few weeks, the festivals have also provided us with some of the best films of 2023, full stop.

These standouts include new films from perennial favorites like Hayao Miyazaki, Errol Morris, Bertrand Bonello, Yorgos Lanthimos, Kitty Green, Andrew Haigh, Bill and Turner Ross, and Alexander Payne. Rising stars aren’t in short supply either, including first and second narrative features from TIFF winner Cord Jefferson, Annie Baker, and Kristoffer Borgli. Amongst this selection, words like “gem,” “masterpiece,” and “crowd-pleaser” are thrown around with regularity, but not without real consideration.

Universal Pictures has launched a new trailer for ‘The Royal Hotel.’

Americans Hanna and Liv are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called ’The Royal Hotel’ in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture. However, Hanna and Liv soon find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that snowballs out of their control.

Directed by Kitty Green, Julia Garner, Jessica Henwick, and Hugo Weaving star.

Also in trailers – “I will not give up on myself…” New trailer lands for ‘Pain Hustlers’

The movie hits cinemas in the UK & Ireland on November 3rd.

The post “We have booze in a box…” Trailer lands for ‘The Royal Hotel’ appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Director Kitty Green is interested in stories of microaggressions, mostly because she doesn’t have the budget for anything bigger. And on her latest feature, “The Royal Hotel,” Green dealt with all manner of issues working on a film far bigger and more ambitious than her debut feature, 2019’s “The Assistant.”

The film, which follows two young women who take a job at a shady bar in the Australian outback, had a production schedule of only 25 days. This left Green having to be incredibly precise during pre-production, and with a film that boasted 14 different speaking parts, it was a far more unwieldy project than her first film.

Add to that the film generally takes place in one location, the Australian pub known as “The Royal,” and some of the film’s big bar sequences were a Master Class in filmmaking.

“I ended up being more like this conductor of technical things,...

Writer/director Kitty Green made a big splash with her searing and smart drama The Assistant, which starred Julia Garner as a young woman toiling away in the office of a powerful executive who grows increasingly aware of the insidious abuse that threatens every aspect of her position. Green and Garner are back with a new movie that looks at power dynamics between men and women, this time set against the dusty backdrop of a small Australian Outback mining town. With the new film – The Royal Hotel – making its UK debut at the BFI London Film Festival, we now have the full UK trailer. Take a look…

The Royal Hotel, for which Green drew inspiration from documentary Hotel Coolgardie, sees Garner and Jessica Henwick as Hanna and Liv, best friends backpacking in Australia.

After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, persuades Hanna to take a temporary...

Kitty Green returns to her native Australia for her latest film. Like her last, The Assistant, it was inspired by a true story - then Harvey Weinstein, this time, a documentary about a pair of Scandinavian backpackers, Hotel Coolgardie - and again she zeroes in on toxic masculinity, although not to quite such efficient effect.

Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are on tour when we meet them, but on finding themselves low on cash decide to head to the Outback to make some money doing live-in bar work. Pretending to be Canadian because “everyone loves Canadians” seems like a laugh until they get there but soon they’re subject to micro-aggressions that feel as though they could kick-off into full blown violence at any time.

The bar is run by the rough-and-ready, and thanks to alcohol, none-too-steady Billy (Hugo Weaving) and his no-nonsense other half Carol (Ursula...

The MGM film has grossed a strong $11.9m on release in the US this summer.

Warner Bros has secured UK-Ireland distribution rights to Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, setting a theatrical release date of November 3.

The studio has picked up the UK-Ireland rights from producers MGM.

Bottoms had its world premiere at SXSW in March, before a short festival tour in North America. The high-school comedy follows two outsider best friends who start a self-defence club for women in an attempt to lose their virginities to the cheerleaders they have crushes on.

It is produced by Elizabeth Banks, Max Handelman and Alison Small,...

Despite the amount of horror movies released in September, October seemed like a better time for the genre to get a bump with the latest attempt to revive a horror classic. That wasn’t really the case. Read on for the weekend box office report.

There were indeed some hopes that the David Gordon Green-directed “The Exorcist: Believer” would be the good start for a new trilogy based on the William Friedkin-directed 1973 adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel, a major theatrical blockbuster at the time that became a horror classic. Green even brought back Ellen Burstyn from the original movie, joining Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd and Jennifer Nettles, as a continuation of Friedkin’s film.

Despite anticipation for another solid “requel” ala Green’s 2018 “Halloween,” “Believer” was universally panned by critics with an awful 23% on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its release into 3,663 theaters by Universal. It...

It wasn’t her intention, but Taylor Swift saved this weekend as well as ones still to come.

“The Era Tour” concert film opens Friday with over $100 million in estimated presales, but it already forced “The Exorcist: Believer” (Universal), originally set for October 13, to move up a week and get out of the way.

As a result, the sequel to William Friedkin’s smash hit dominated this weekend with $27.2 million. That’s more than double the #2 title, “Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie” (Paramount), with $11.8 million.

All told, this weekend grossed around $75 million. Without “Exorcist,” and assuming other titles would pick up some of the slack, that number would have been closer to $55 million — and close to the worst of 2023. Instead, it improved $16 million (27 percent) over last year, which also included Indigenous Peoples’/Columbus Day on Monday. Year to date remains up about 26 percent.

Another way to find a positive spin...

Exclusive: Ozark and Inventing Anna star Julia Garner has signed with Lbi Entertainment for management.

Garner won three Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Emmy Awards for her role as Ruth Langmore in the popular Netflix drama series Ozark. Her third Emmy came in 2022 when she was also nominated in the Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category for playing the title role in another Netflix hit, the limited series Inventing Anna.

Garner’s latest movie, The Royal Hotel, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last month. It re-teams the actress with director Kitty Green, who helmed The Assistant, the 2019 film which earned Garner an Independent Spirit Award nomination.

Upcoming for Garner is the Paramount psychological horror film Apartment 7A directed by Natalie Erika James. The actress, who was previously at Anonymous Content, continues to be repped by UTA, Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern and Shelter PR.

A wacky film based on a stage show by comedians Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, Dicks: The Musical – a riff on The Parent Trap with two adult men as the starring twins — opens in seven theaters in NY, LA and San Francisco on a crowded specialty weekend as theatrical releases of fall film festival titles accelerates.

Dicks, from A24, developed by Chernin Entertainment, is, according to press notes, a first “adult musical comedy” for both. (It’s Chernin’s second musical after hit The Greatest Showman.) Directed by Larry Charles, it stars the two creators Jackson and Sharp as self-obsessed businessmen who discover they’re long-lost identical twins and come together to plot the reunion of their eccentric divorced parents. They’re joined by an A-list roster of Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Bowen Yang and Megan Thee Stallion.

A SAG-AFTRA interim agreement allowed the talent to promote the film at TIFF,...

If there’s a theme cutting across Kitty Green’s work, it’s the dangers that lurk in everyday society for young, idealistic women. Whether using the tools of re-enactment in the hybrid documentary Casting JonBenet or a process-focused minimalism in the #MeToo workplace drama The Assistant, she never approaches the shared subject in the same way.

With The Royal Hotel, Green further expands her toolkit by drawing on the conventions of genre filmmaking. She doesn’t overtly tip her hand as to what kind of situation Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) walk into when they gain employment at the titular bar. As two broke Americans in desperate need of cash on a work-tourism trip in Australia, they have little choice but to take a gig bartending at the lone watering hole in a desolate mining town.

The film unnervingly aligns our experience with that of Hanna and Liv.

This post contains spoilers for "The Royal Hotel."

In early 2019, writer/director Kitty Green made "The Assistant," a small movie starring "Ozark" breakout Julia Garner as a junior assistant who works at the office of a Harvey Weinstein-like figure who has cultivated a culture of abuse. Now she's back with "The Royal Hotel," a very different, more ambitious film that nonetheless feels like she's exploring somewhat similar thematic territory. In a recent interview with /Film, Green described both films as "sort of like the gateway or entry point to sexual misconduct. What kind of behavior should we put up with? When should we say no? When should we put a stop to things? When should we speak up for ourselves?"

"The Royal Hotel" reunites Green with Julia Garner, who stars alongside Jessica Henwick as a pair of American women who run out of money while on vacation and take a...

Following a similar vein to Kitty Green’s The Assistant, Fair Play tackles misogyny in a highly competitive, male-dominated hedge fund firm.

The debut feature from Chloe Domont revolves around happily engaged couple Emily and Luke who both work at the same firm, though they keep their relationship a secret from their boss and colleagues. When Emily is promoted over Luke, however, their whole world begins to crumble as jealousy strikes and cracks into their once stable foundation.

Though billed as an erotic thriller, Fair Play is more akin to an upsetting fast-paced drama which, at the height of its powers, is uncomfortable and upsetting. Domont starts her career strong with this exceptionally well-put together film which attempts to untangle the messy world of hedge funds and the centric couple mangled into the core of it.

What works best for Fair Play is its premise – how supposedly good men are...

Kitty Green Takes her ‘Assistant’ To The Outback in Sunburn Sizzler

After exploring the ways in which workplace rape culture enables predators like Harvey Weinstein to operate unabated in The Assistant, director Kitty Green finds new dimensions to the same theme all the way on the other side of the world in The Royal Hotel. Moving from the cloistered anxiety of a cubicle, the filmmaker kicks open the aspect ratio to capture the widescreen beauty of the outback in a spiritual sequel that finds a seething menace behind “Come and say g’day.”

In the midst of backpacking across Australia, the fun comes to an abrupt halt for Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) when after a night of clubbing, the latter finds herself completely out of cash.…...

The festival opened with Emerald Fennell’s ‘Saltburn’.

The 67th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (Lff) launched last night (October 4) with the European premiere of Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn and a welcome from BFI CEO Ben Roberts who promised 12 days of “exceptional quality of filmmaking” and encouraged the industry to engage with the UK government’s Culture, Media and Sport (Cms) Committee.

The committee aims to examine the challenges facing the UK film and TV sectors, including what can be done to maintain the UK’s status as a global hub for international production, how independent producers can...

Universal Pictures Content Group will release the title in UK, France, Germany and Italy.

Kitty Green’s thriller The Royal Hotel has been snapped up by Universal Pictures Content Group across several key international territories, including UK, France, Germany and Italy.

The thriller has enjoyed critical acclaim during a buzzy festival run across Telluride, Toronto and San Sebastian, and is playing in competition at BFI London Film Festival, where it premieres on October 6. The film will be released in UK and Ireland cinemas on November 3.

It reunites Australian writer-director Green with US actor Julia Garner, following their collaboration in Green’s 2019 drama,...

It’s the location. When backpackers Hannah and Liv (Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) get off the bus in the middle of nowhere in Kitty Green’s sophomore narrative film “The Royal Hotel,” you see the Outback in all its rugged splendor. And terror.

One look at their destination, a seedy two-story Royal Hotel with a pub for them to bartend each night, and you fear these two women are not going to come to a good end. The girlfriends are taking a brief detour from their Australia vacation to earn some extra cash. Their job: to handle a rowdy pub full of drunk and randy miners. These hardy travelers think they’re up to the task, but Hannah is a tad more wary than Liv. She drinks a little less, keeps an eye out, and when push comes to shove, as it inevitably does, picks up an ax.

Playing...

There’s been a shocking amount of horror movies released in August and September. Now that it’s October, it’s going to seem far more appropriate, with the month starting off with a doozie. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Way back in 1973, William Peter Blatty‘s 1971 novel, “The Exorcist,” was adapted into a movie by the late William Friedkin, becoming a huge theatrical phenomenon that is still thought of as one of the scariest horror movies ever made. It introduced many Americans to the idea of possession and exorcism, making household names of Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn, both who received Oscar nominations. The movie received 10 bids total, winning for Blatty’s screenplay and the sound.

Fifty years later and filmmaker David Gordon Green has followed his mostly successful “Halloween” sequel trilogy with “The Exorcist: Believer,” the first of three movies in the works. The...

Director Kitty Green burst onto the scene with her 2019 feature “The Assistant,” a timely and searing exploration of gender dynamics and misogyny in the Hollywood workplace.

Her follow-up, “The Royal Hotel,” explores similar territory, placing its lead characters (played by Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) in a series of situations at an Australian pub that explodes into violence. But as Green explained to TheWrap, executives wondered when its psychologically calculated, micro-aggressive tensions would escalate to what Hollywood has traditional centered in such explorations: sexual assault and violence.

“We had a lot of finance people read it and say, ‘Nothing happens. Where’s the rape scene? Where’s the violence?” Green said. The director discussed how several critics reviews cited that the film has tension, but never gets intense enough conclusions that she questions.

“We still get in reviews saying, ‘It bubbles away but never reaches boiling point,’ and I’m thinking,...

The Royal Hotel’s Kitty Green and Julia Garner want to keep a good thing going.

Following their 2019 drama The Assistant, the Australian filmmaker and her thrice-Emmy-winning American star are back with another critically acclaimed film in The Royal Hotel, which again examines power dynamics between men and women, as well as microaggressions from the female perspective.

Based on the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie and co-written by Green and Oscar Redding, The Royal Hotel begins with Garner’s Hanna and Jessica Henwick’s Liv enjoying themselves on an Australian vacation. The two American friends then abruptly run out of money and are forced to work at a run-down pub in the remote Australian outback so they can make enough cash to resume their R and R. The pair soon have very different reactions to the alcoholic pub owner (Hugo Weaving) and his regular clientele of local miners, and those aforementioned microaggressions...

“They’re all nice for a minute,” says Kitty Green, director of the sizzling thriller The Royal Hotel. She’s talking about the men that make up most of the film’s ensemble cast — Australian miners in a remote, rugged, Outback town — who can pivot from playful pub banter to grinning malevolence without warning. What might they do after one pint too many?

It’s a question any young woman tending bar has asked herself, and in Green’s frighteningly plausible tale, the heavily outnumbered women serving these men drinks...

With Halloween right around the corner, viewers have plenty of seasonal titles to choose from in October. But there’s more than horror to look forward to in theaters and on your favorite streaming services this month, from Prime Video to Hulu. Loki and Our Flag Means Death both return for new seasons, as does, somehow, Frasier (though most of its cast will be nowhere to be seen).

Beyond that, we’ll be getting big new movies, including one of the year’s most-anticipated films from Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon...