All posts tagged: film

Divisive Netflix film The Killer shoots up charts despite being labelled ‘a disappointment’

Divisive Netflix film The Killer shoots up charts despite being labelled ‘a disappointment’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Back in 2024, Peacock released The Killer, a remake of the film of the same name, which was released back in 1989, with both films being written and directed by John Woo. The film attracted plenty of negative reviews during initial release, but the film has found new life again on Netflix, and despite all the poor critiques, the film has nearly topped the streamer’s charts in the UK, only behind recent shark film, Thrash. The film follows a contract killer, Zee, played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who ends up being hunted by her former employers and police officers after a hit goes wrong. The killings ends up leaving a singer Jenn Clark, played by Diana Silvers, blind, and Zee refuses to kill her as a result of the injury. A synopsis for the movie reads: “After being betrayed by her master, a disillusioned assassin takes one final shot with the intention of using the money to help a musician she accidentally blinded regain vision.” WATCH: The trailer for The Killer Despite its poor reviews, the …

How Cheech & Chong lit up the film industry

How Cheech & Chong lit up the film industry

Published by Sam Flores

Creating that sense of community with “Up in Smoke” was Cheech & Chong’s secret weapon to success. It’s a movie that you can watch stoned with your friends, about the wild things that might happen when you get stoned with your friends. The film acted as a blueprint for other entries in the stoner buddy comedy subgenre, one that could be refined and built upon in the years to follow. By the time Cheech & Chong’s next movie, aptly titled “Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie,” rolled around in 1980, it didn’t matter that critics panned the film as an unfunny clone of its predecessor; the stoner buddy comedy was alive and kicking. Most importantly, it was profitable. (Todd Plitt/Getty Images) Kal Penn and John Cho pose for a portrait while promoting their movie “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle” at Pop’s Burger in downtown New York City on July 19, 2004 My introduction to these movies was tense. The fervent anti-drug counseling of my elementary school days was almost too effective on me. The …

A Beguiling Film About the Downsides of Pop Stardom

A Beguiling Film About the Downsides of Pop Stardom

Published by Sam Flores

Mother Mary begins with a straightforward problem: The titular character, a pop star played by Anne Hathaway, is looking for a showstopper of a dress. But the complications quickly stack up. Mary needs it made over the weekend; she needs it to serve as the centerpiece of her career relaunch after a long and mysterious absence from the public eye; most crucially, she needs it designed by her former collaborator Sam Anselm (played by Michaela Coel), from whom she’s been estranged for years. When Mary storms into Sam’s office with her demand, Sam calmly replies that it’s impossible, unless the singer is somehow able to stop time. Mary raises her hand, snaps her fingers in the air, and pronounces it done. If only it were so simple—but Mary, the viewer understands, is someone who has spent most of her adulthood defying the laws of reality. How else to define the life of a superstar, someone who bends everyone else’s needs around her own in order to satisfy the millions of fans awaiting her next move? …

The Film From 1969 That Explains Contemporary America

The Film From 1969 That Explains Contemporary America

Published by Sam Flores

The best thing I watched in the past year was an epically long movie about retired militants, but it wasn’t One Battle After Another, the Oscar winner for Best Picture. It was The Sorrow and the Pity, a four-hour documentary from 1969 about life in Nazi-occupied France. Reviewing the film in The Atlantic in 1972, David Denby called it “one of the greatest documentaries ever made,” and that remains true. What makes the film so effective is not how it looks at the Germans, a spectral presence, but how it chronicles the way that many ordinary citizens simply lived their lives as if nothing had changed. The director Marcel Ophuls, who died last year at 97, explores collaboration and resistance through the lens of a small city, Clermont-Ferrand. It’s about an hour from Vichy, where the Nazis established a puppet government headed by the World War I hero Philippe Pétain. Pétain’s former protégé Charles de Gaulle fled to Britain, coordinated resistance to the Nazis, and returned to lead a free France. The idea that the …

French film star Nadia Farès dies aged 57 after being found unconscious in Paris swimming pool

French film star Nadia Farès dies aged 57 after being found unconscious in Paris swimming pool

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter French actor Nadia Farès has died a week after being found unconscious in the swimming pool of a gym in Paris. She was 57. The Morocco-born star had been in a coma since the incident, which reportedly occurred at a private club in the 9th arrondissement on 11 April. Her daughters shared that Farès died on Friday (17 April). “It is with immense sadness that we announce the passing of Nadia Farès this Friday,” their statement to AFP said. “France has lost a great artist, but for us, it is above all a mother we have just lost.” The sisters requested “respect and discretion” while they mourned their mother. French actor Nadia Fares has died aged 57 (AFP via Getty Images) Farès rose to fame in 2000 with a breakthrough role in Les Rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) by director Mathieu …

Best Horror Movies of 2026 Overlook Film Festival

Best Horror Movies of 2026 Overlook Film Festival

Published by Daniella Wilson

The annual Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans celebrates horror in all its various forms. From features and short films by emerging artists and genre film mainstays, live experiences, panels, and more, the Overlook Film Festival is a horror haven situated in the most haunted city of America. This year’s feature lineup had no shortage of upcoming films from major studios, Shudder, as well as horrors still awaiting distribution. While it proved impossible to make it to every screening (trust me, I tried), here are the highlights, in alphabetical order, of what thrilled and chilled me: AffectionThe directorial debut from BT Meza centers on Ellie Carter, portrayed by horror favorite Jessica Rothe, a woman who wakes to find herself in a house she feels isn’t her own, called by a name she’s certain isn’t hers, a husband, Bruce (Joseph Cross), she doesn’t recognize, and a daughter, Alice (Julianna Layne) she can’t remember. While her husband assures her that her memory issues, and subsequent body tremors and hallucinations are all symptoms of a traumatic brain injury …

Laura Linney on why Clint Eastwood never shouts ‘action’ or ‘cut’ on film sets

Laura Linney on why Clint Eastwood never shouts ‘action’ or ‘cut’ on film sets

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Clint Eastwood is known for his gentle filmmaking style, famously never shouting “action” or “cut” on set – and Laura Linney, who has worked with the director three times, has shared insight into why this is. Ozark star Linney has been in three Eastwood films – Absolute Power (1997), Mystic River (2003) and Sully (2016) – and they’ve been pleasant experiences for the Oscar-nominated actor. She told The Independent in new interview series Life in Pictures that the 95-year-old’s hesitancy to shout on sets stems from his experiences working on westerns, including the 1960s TV show Rawhide, where making too much noise would alarm the horses on set. Laura Linney reflected on working with Clint Eastwod in new interview (Laura Linney reflected on working with Clint Eastwod) “I learnt an invaluable lesson from – how to relax on set. He only …

Fury Erupts as Val Kilmer’s Estate Announces Starring Role in AI Film Made From Beyond the Grave

Fury Erupts as Val Kilmer’s Estate Announces Starring Role in AI Film Made From Beyond the Grave

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Hollywood actors have been ringing the alarm bells over an industry that’s seemingly hellbent on replacing them with AI. And the general public appears to be on their side. Last year, a talent studio drew enormous and near-universal backlash after announcing the creation of an AI-generated “actress.” Even recently deceased Hollywood movie stars are fair game. During an ongoing industry trade show in Las Vegas, filmmakers behind an upcoming indie film featuring an AI-rendered version of iconic actor Val Kilmer, who’s set to take a prominent role in the film — despite having died from cancer at the age of 65 last year. Kilmer was initially cast as a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist before his death, as Variety reports, but was too sick to be part of the movie. His estate stepped in, allowing the filmmakers to use generative AI to wrap up production of the film, which features the extraordinarily on-the-nose title of “As Deep …

‘Humboldt USA’ Doc Film Interview on Nature: Visions du Réel 2026

‘Humboldt USA’ Doc Film Interview on Nature: Visions du Réel 2026

Published by Daniella Wilson

Countless places across the U.S. bear the name of Alexander von Humboldt. In fact, the German naturalist and polymath has been described as the person with more species – from penguins and monkeys to an orchid – and places named after him than any other human. And at the beginning of the 19th century, he proposed a radical idea that has also been popular in the context of climate change: to consider nature as a “network of interconnected lives.” Humboldt USA, the feature film debut from G. Anthony Svatek, follows in his footsteps, traveling across the U.S., from ancient redwood forests to a parkway in New York state and the bright lights of Nevada, to explore our evolving relationship with nature. Weaving together the stories of people in those locations, Humboldt’s own words and thoughts from the filmmaker, the kaleidoscopic result is a playful, but also fraught, love letter to the naturalist. Humboldt USA world premieres in the international feature film competition of the 57th edition of the Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel in Nyon, …

‘Heat’ Climate Change Doc Film Trailer, Interview: Visions du Réel

‘Heat’ Climate Change Doc Film Trailer, Interview: Visions du Réel

Published by Daniella Wilson

The heat is on! Just watch the work of Swiss documentary filmmaker Jacqueline Zünd (Where We Belong, Almost There, Goodnight Nobody). She premiered her fiction feature debut, Don’t Let the Sun, at the Locarno Film Festival last year, bringing us a near-future-set cinematic contemplation of how external factors, namely climate change, affect and shape our inner worlds. Now, Zünd is getting ready to world premiere a film that dives into the same themes in a different, namely documentary, and very provocative form. The new film, aptly called Heat, will debut at the 57th edition of the Visions du Réel (VdR) doc festival in Nyon, Switzerland, on April 20. It will screen in the international feature film competition of the fest, which opens on Friday, April 17, and runs through April 26. Featuring highly stylized imagery and sound to bring the heat to viewers in all its intensity, the doc is set in the Persian Gulf, “one of the hottest regions in the world,” with temperatures crossing the 50 degrees Celsius/120 degrees Fahrenheit mark, and a place where “the …