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Forgive the inscrutable title: Reed Morano’s “The Rhythm Section” will explain away its awkward name in due time, though it will likely only inspire viewers to wish for something even weirder to try to sum up the filmmaker’s third feature film. A gritty, anti-James Bond thriller about the futility of revenge and the limits of violence, “The Rhythm Section” might as well be called “This Hurts a Lot,” because the Blake Lively-starring adaptation of Mark Burnell’s novel leaves a mark on both its star and audience. “I’m not looking to get healed,” Lively’s Stephanie huffs at someone halfway through the dark drama, about as close to an ethos as her nihilistic anti-heroine has to offer. That’s not to say she’s not compelling, or that she...

Do you love to hate the familial chemistry in “Knives Out” or the equally toxic marital misery in “Marriage Story?” Are you awed by the pack of relative unknowns breaking your heart from week to week on “Pose?” Then make sure to thank your friendly, neighborhood casting director, responsible for staffing up all your favorite stories. Indeed, it was time for the casting directors to shine on Thursday night, with not one, not two, but three ceremonies celebrating the best of the business for their work in casting projects including animation, film, television, and the stage. With a Los Angeles ceremony hosted by Ron Funches, a New York event hosted by Michelle Buteau, and a London soiree overseen by Jason Isaacs, the Casting Society of...

Writer/director Paul Schrader’s first movie since “First Reformed” is shaping up with an enviable cast, which now includes Tiffany Haddish, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker confirmed in a recent interview with The Metrograph. As previously announced, Oscar Isaac is set to lead the film currently titled “The Card Counter” as a gambler and ex-serviceman who tries to reform a young man looking to exact revenge on a mutual enemy. According to the interview with Schrader, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe are also on board and the film is financed. (It’s repped by HanWay Films.) Regarding Haddish, the fast-rising star who’s become a favorite of many an auteur, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Schrader said, “I love Tiffany. I’ve never met her, but...

Disney’s “The Lion King” was the big VFX winner Wednesday at the 18th annual VES Awards at the Beverly Hilton, grabbing three prizes (photoreal feature, virtual cinematography, and The Pridelands environment). Meanwhile. Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” (boasting Industrial Light & Magic’s innovative de-aging of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci) won for supporting VFX and feature compositing. This now gives the edge to “The Lion King” (supervised by three-time Oscar winner Rob Legato) in the VFX Oscar race. Jon Favreau’s breakthrough virtual production and faux live-action aesthetic was due to MPC Film’s accomplished photoreal animation. Of course, “The Irishman” has been given a boost, too. And we shouldn’t count out...

Things that are important to Su: her collection of internet browser tabs, her trusty cell phone, her lackluster job. Things that are important to Jack: his sourdough starter, his trusty cell phone, a brand-new crystal to clutch when things are hard. The definitely millennial, decidedly Brooklyn, and vaguely hipster couple are as “very online” and plugged in as anyone, but just how connected are they? Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s amiable “Save Yourselves!” knowingly digs deep into the long-time couple’s obvious ennui — cradling their iPhones like babies, they’re prone to announcing they want to be “better people,” which maybe involves, like, I dunno, going vegetarian again? — and pulls out a winking contemporary comedy with...

The Berlin International Film Festival on Wednesday morning revealed the main competition lineup and gala selections for festival’s 70th edition. The festival, which begins February 20, will screen 18 films in competition, including movies from Sally Potter, Kelly Reichardt, and Eliza Hittman. Six are from female directors. Among the gala presentations is Pixar’s” Onward.” The Dan Scanlon-helmed urban fantasy includes the voices of Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Mel Rodriguez, Kyle Bornheimer, Lena Waithe, and Ali Wong. Here is the complete list: Competition “Berlin Alexanderplatz” (Germany/Netherlands) Director: Burhan Qurbani Cast: Welket Bungué, Jella Haase, Albrecht Schuch, Joachim Król...

At once both an unsettlingly accurate simulation of what it’s like to love someone with dementia, and also a strikingly believable conception of what it’s like to live as someone with dementia, Florian Zeller’s “The Father” envisions senility as a house of mirrors in which everyone loses sight of themselves. Adapted from Zeller’s award-winning play of the same name, and directed with a firm hand by the playwright himself, this M.C. Escher drawing of a movie chips away at the austerity of the Euro-dramas that inform its style until every shot betrays the promise of its objectivity, and reality itself becomes destabilized. “The Father” is a slippery film in which even the most basic information can be vaporized in the span of a single...

Nothing ever good was hidden up in an attic, and kudos to first-time director Romola Garai for cheekily making mention of the woman who lives on “the top floor” (no attics here!) before unspooling the terror of her “Amulet.” At once a haunted-house thriller and an examination of the cost of trauma, the actress-turned-filmmaker approaches her debut with both a clear understanding of genre tropes and an ability to use them for satisfying dramatic ends. It’s an impressive first feature, and while fans of zippy midnight movies might balk at its slow-burn opening act, the film eventually builds to some nutso body horror and a strong sense of mythology that announces Garai’s arrival as a filmmaker to watch, no matter the genre. Crafted...

Lance Armstrong was an exulted hero to millions, before he was an asshole cheater to millions more. In her new two-part documentary “Lance,” director Marina Zenovich separates the good from the bad, the hero from the villain, before crashing them together in one unifying portrait of one man. It’s harder than it sounds. The seven-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor used his improbable medical recovery to boost his athletic profile, and then used his Wheaties box-approved athletic status to boost awareness for teens with cancer. Everything fell under the “Lance Armstrong” brand, so everything came crashing down when his career-long doping habit was exposed in 2012. The scandal tarnished the good he did for the sport, the good...

“Will you just look at this room?” Long before IndieWire Editor-in-Chief Dana Harris-Bridson managed to wrangle a packed assortment of some of Sundance’s many female filmmakers from a bustling cocktail hour to a three-course meal one floor above, the guests were something to behold. “Miss Americana” filmmaker Lana Wilson easily chatted with “Shirley” director Josephine Decker, who soon sought out “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell to congratulate her on her Saturday night premiere. Across the room, Zeina Durra (“Luxor”) and Kitty Green (“The Assistant”) formed a talkative circle with Garrett Bradley (“Time”) and Eliza Hittman (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”). At IndieWire’s annual Female Filmmakers Dinner on Sunday...

Filmmaker Julie Taymor has never operated within conventional parameters, but then again, neither has her latest cinematic subject, feminist icon and political firebrand Gloria Steinem. Taymor, who has only dipped into biopics once before, with the similarly creative “Frida,” knows that life doesn’t move in a straight line, which could have scared her off from adapting Steinem’s road-trip autobiography. But the road to becoming “Gloria Steinem” was winding, and the best parts of the wonderfully inventive “The Glorias” are when Taymor takes her various eponymous Glorias on some artful detours. Steinem, fortunately, has many of them to offer. Based on Steinem’s bestselling 2015 book “My Life on the Road,” and adapted by Taymor and...

Stories about con artist families speak to desperate times, and we’re apparently living through them, because each of the last three years have brought new cinematic entries to the genre. First came Hirokazu Kore-eda’s delicate “Shoplifters,” followed by Bong Joon Ho’s zany “Parasite,” both of which centered on offspring wondering if their family values might be off-kilter. Now comes Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire,” a minor-key sketch of a movie with soulful undercurrents that sneak into a cynical plot as its principle character wises up. Elevated by an extraordinary Evan Rachel Wood performance that finds her character literally discovering her free will, “Kajillionaire” splits the difference between “Shoplifters” and “Parasite”: It’s...

The apparent influences on Tara Miele’s “Wander Darkly” are easy to spot, beyond the slightly esoteric nod to American author Charles J. Finger in its very title. The film’s obvious and immediate forbearers range from Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “The Science of Sleep,” to shlockier fare like “Stay” and “Ghost.” While Miele’s latest feature offers an ambitious amalgam of other projects, all tucked inside a vaguely secretive package, the unwieldy trauma drama isn’t able to live up to its biggest ideas and even bigger swings. Star Sienna Miller — in the midst of a low-key renaissance after her quietly revelatory performance in last year’s under-seen “American Woman” — soars, but even her grounded turn isn’t...