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Part of the excitement generated by James Gunn’s appointment as co-CEO of DC Studios stemmed from his reputation as an auteur who can elevate comic book movies into something slightly more artistic. While he has played in both the Marvel and DC sandboxes, he brings signature touches like his sense of humor and killer needle drops to every project he touches. The early plans that Gunn and his partner Peter Safran have unveiled for their new cinematic universe suggest something more creatively ambitious than Warner Bros. Discovery’s most recent superhero efforts. And while we won’t truly know what their vision entails until the Gunn-directed “Superman: Legacy” kicks things off in 2025, Gunn certainly appears to be taking the job...

Michelle Yeoh’s Academy Award win for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” was one of the most historic moments on the Oscars stage in recent memory. The award validated her decades-spanning career as one of Hollywood’s most underrated action stars and gave her the noteworthy honor of being the first Asian woman to win Best Leading Actress. Yeoh never downplayed the significance of her nomination during her Oscar campaign — and now she’s ready to talk about the benefits that she’s enjoying. Speaking to Variety at a Cannes event, Yeoh spoke about the positive ripple effects that her Oscar win have had for the Asian American community in Hollywood. “The most important thing it has done is it has generated such pride with our people,”...

A heartbreakingly sincere piece of high camp that teases real human drama from the stuff of tabloid sensationalism, Todd Haynes’ delicious “May December” continues the director’s tradition of making films that rely upon the self-awareness that seems to elude their characters — especially the ones played by Julianne Moore. Here, the actress reteams with her “Safe” director to play Gracie Atherton-Yoo, a lispy former school teacher who became a household name back in 1992 when she left her ex-husband for one of her 13-year-old students. Now it’s 2015, the situation has normalized somewhat, and Gracie and Joe (a dad bod Charles Melton) have been together long enough that their youngest children are about to graduate high school. The...

Martin Scorsese may like to think of “Killers of the Flower Moon” as the Western that he always wanted to make, but this frequently spectacular American epic about the genocidal conspiracy that was visited upon the Osage Nation during the 1920s is more potent and self-possessed when it sticks a finger in one of the other genres that bubble up to the surface over the course of its three-and-a-half-hour runtime. The first and most obvious of those is a gangster drama in the grand tradition of the director’s previous work. Just when it seemed like “The Irishman” might’ve been Scorsese’s final word on his signature genre, they’ve pulled him back in for another movie full of brutal killings, bitter voiceovers, and biting conclusions about...

Paul Schrader’s new film “Master Gardener” wraps up his loose trilogy that began with “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter” via a fittingly controversial bang, as the film stars Joel Edgerton as a former white supremacist who hides from his past by working as a gardener on a large estate. Critics have pointed out that the unapologetic film is not for everyone — and Schrader has gleefully used his press tour to remind everyone that he doesn’t really care what they think. The film premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, where Schrader received a Golden Lion for his lifetime achievements in the film industry. But in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Schrader revealed that the film missed out on the opportunity to bow...

The hot ticket at Cannes — Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half hour opus “Killers of the Flower Moon,” adapted by the director and Eric Roth from David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction bestseller — screened ahead of its Saturday festival premiere in New York and Los Angeles to give critics a head start on writing their reviews. It’s clear why Apple chose not to play the film in Competition: it’s earning a range of reactions. Sumptuously produced, the $200-million western crime saga transports the viewer to ’20s Oklahoma, where vast oil fields have brought immense wealth to the Osage Nation. While Grann’s book focuses on the procedural aspects of solving the so-called Reign of Terror that led to dozens of mysterious Osage deaths, Scorsese and...

It’s a sad day for “Bounty Law” fans. Rick Dalton, the actor who rose to prominence for playing Jake Cahill on the popular Western series, died at the age of 90 today. If you believe Quentin Tarantino, that is. The official Twitter account for Tarantino and Roger Avary’s Video Archives Podcast announced the news that the fictional actor, who was played by Leonardo DiCaprio in “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” is no longer alive in the universe of Tarantino films. “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” covered a transitional period in Dalton’s career, when he was no longer a viable movie star in America and had been reduced to doing regular TV guest spots as a “heavy” that the heroic main characters could defeat. He spent most of his time...

Ethan Hawke has been in Hollywood for close to 40 years but never has the Oscar nominee landed his dream role…in an animated film. The “Strange Way of Life” actor revealed during an Interview magazine discussion with his former “Good Lord Bird” co-star Daveed Diggs that he is envious of stars who lend their voice to animated features. Diggs voices Sebastian the crab in the live-action “Little Mermaid” film, now in theaters. “My whole life as an actor I’ve dreamed of getting some email saying, ‘You can audition for the voice in one of these,'” Hawke told Diggs. “I’ve never done [an animated movie]. Nobody’s ever come.” Hawke added, “I watch all these movies and I’m like, ‘Oh, I could do that guy’s voice.'” The “First Reformed” star...

At the start of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Swedish director Ruben Ostlund told a roomful of journalists that he would rather win his third Palme d’Or than an Oscar. For this year, at least, the previous Cannes winner for “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square” will have to settle for handing the Palme d’Or to someone else. As the president of this year’s jury for the Official Competition of the 76th festival, Ostlund is leading a team of nine writers, directors, and actors (as well as two writer-director-actors): Fellow Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau (“Titane”), Brie Larson, Zambian filmmaker Rungano Nyoni, Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani, Paul Dano, French actor Denis Ménochet, Afghan director Atiq Rahimi, and Argentinian...

Adam McKay didn’t want to look up after the “Succession” series finale. The “Don’t Look Up” director, who executive produces the Emmy-winning HBO series, revealed that he had to “emotionally recover” from watching the final 90-minute episode, “With Open Eyes,” which airs on Sunday, May 28. Executive producer McKay watched the last episode to give creator Armstrong notes. “I had to, like, emotionally recover after watching it,” McKay told Variety while promoting his upcoming “Death on the Lot” podcast. “Oh, my God. Wow! I knew what was coming. And still! Oh, my God. Wow.” “Succession” centers on the Roy family battle to take over Waystar Royco following the death of patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox). The fourth and final season has...

At the Cannes world premiere for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Disney CEO Bob Iger watched the film for the fifth time. Before the Lumière theater screening, 80-year-old Harrison Ford received an honorary Palme d’Or from the festival and received the loudest applause of the night. However, in his introduction to the tribute before the movie, Cannes artistic director Fremaux singled out Iger for applause of his own. “The CEO, or whatever,” Fremaux said, stopping himself. “The legendary Bob Iger!” Fremaux’s awkward wording may reflect Iger’s unusual path to this moment. One year ago, when the big American studio chief at Cannes was newly minted WarnerMedia Discovery head David Zaslav in attendance for “Elvis,” Iger was a...

The 2023 upfront presentations are in the books — let the negotiations between ad sales and media-buying teams begin! Oh, and let the negotiations between the WGA and AMPTP pick back up. And soon; please? The writers strike isn’t just (temporarily) damming the development pipeline, it deflated the once-a-year upfronts, practically eliminating all star power from the live events and making Netflix’s big debut, well, not live at all. Of course, all of that was the entire point of the daily picket lines. “One of the reasons having a lot of people out on the sidewalk, if you will, is so powerful is because you have to look people in the eye,” Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild of America — East, told IndieWire. “You...

Ethan Hawke thought the sun had set on the “Before” trilogy before it even hit theaters. In a discussion with Daveed Diggs for Interview magazine, Hawke admitted that he “didn’t even know” if audiences would care about his trilogy of “Before” films, which began in 1995 with “Before Sunrise.” “It’s not like I don’t want compliments and prizes and money and fire engines. I want everything, but I know how to listen to the river, how to listen to my own voice,” Hawke said. “I remember when I was doing those movies with Richard Linklater, for example, the ‘Before’ trilogy or ‘Boyhood,’ I didn’t even know if they would come out. One part of my brain thought, ‘Oh, people are going to love this.’ And another part of me thought, ‘Nobody’s...