Meghan Twohey (Carey Mulligan, L) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) communicate with Rose McGowan by cellphone. Photograph courtesy of Common Studios
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 (UPI) —She Stated, in theaters Friday, is an intensive depiction of the journalistic course of akin to The Submit and Highlight. It struggles a bit to reconcile its material in a Hollywood film about Hollywood misdeeds, but it surely stays a worthwhile doc of the Harvey Weinstein investigation.
New York Instances reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) examine whether or not Weinstein is the producer to whom actors like Rose McGowan and Gwyneth Paltrow have alluded in tales of sexual misconduct. The movie depicts their information gathering and makes an attempt to persuade survivors to go on the document.
She Stated exhibits the way to conduct accountable journalism. Kantor and Twohey interview sources off the document simply to study who else they need to speak to and what they need to ask about.
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They shield their sources, and perceive the method it takes for somebody to decide to taking the chance of going public. Twohey already noticed, along with her story on former President Donald Trump’s accusers, that the ladies endure threats and harassment even when they’re vindicated.
It seems Twohey needed to transfer her household as a result of threats, a delicate element that’s not overtly commented on within the movie. A scene during which Twohey swears at guys making undesirable advances in public appears a tad extra on the nostril.
It’s a related instance to how males can harass girls by not taking no for a solution on a much less legal scale. It appears misplaced when the remainder of the film appears so well-documented concerning the timeline of a historic investigation.
In appearing out Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s script, based mostly on Twohey and Kantor’s article and e-book, Mulligan and Kazan present how reporters acquire belief from susceptible sources. As reporters, they need to steadiness compassion for asking somebody about an assault with having to press for particulars and follow-up.
She Stated additionally offers an instance of girls supporting girls. Twohey advises Kantor on methods to conduct conversations in a compassionate method based mostly on her experiences.
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It takes the entire film for 2 girls to conform to go on document. That may be a microcosm of the method.
Twohey and Kantor additionally spar with Weinstein’s attorneys, who attempt to discredit or stonewall them. It is good to see Instances editor Dean Baquet on the time stand by his reporters and push again towards Weinstein’s staff.
They nonetheless have to attend for an official response, even when they know it will be a denial. They’ll set an inexpensive deadline, but it surely’s the method investigative reporting takes.
The Weinstein tales sounds acquainted from the articles and the documentary Untouchable, they usually’re simply as harrowing right here.
One distinctive facet of She Stated is that most of the survivors are working actors. Ashley Judd performs herself and McGowan offers her voice.
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The choice to play oneself and contribute to telling one’s personal story is unquestionably difficult for every actor. As a result of Weinstein allegedly sabotaged so many careers, it reinforces a bittersweet irony that one function actors may nonetheless play is within the story of how the injustice was uncovered.
It additionally blurs traces once you’re watching Judd and listening to McGowan, whereas different sources are performed by different well-known actors. It is neither good nor unhealthy, but it surely’s a phenomenon that is distinctive to coping with a Hollywood scandal.
Some survivors might have struggled with reliving the occasions. Some might have discovered it empowering. It was probably completely different for every particular person who got here to the choice to take part.
For the viewers, it might be distracting to see the true Judd seem when Mulligan and Kazan play the reporters. Or, it might be validating the story by together with main sources.
It is totally uncharted cinematic territory as a result of the true politicians Woodward and Bernstein investigated didn’t play themselves in All of the President’s Males. Weinstein is performed by Mike Houston, and different well-known voices are uncredited.
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She Stated provides Kantor and Twohey some enjoyable moments during which they focus on which ones is extra intimidating. It exhibits how they needed to keep a humorousness overlaying such an intense story, usually getting doorways slammed of their faces.
The story is latest sufficient and public sufficient that almost all viewers can verify most of what they’re watching truly occurred. Some personal moments with the reporters is usually a bit a lot.
A Zoom name between Kantor and her daughter displaying how the story impacts kids lays it on slightly thick, just like the scene during which Twohey snaps at a man in a bar. However, if that truly occurred too, who’s to say?
She Stated captures the complexity of overlaying a narrative like Weinstein. The movie takes a singular strategy, together with precise topics as themselves, and feels respectful to the info and other people behind the case.
Fred Topel, who attended movie faculty at Ithaca Faculty, is a UPI leisure author based mostly in Los Angeles. He has been an expert movie critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001 and a member of the Tv Critics Affiliation since 2012. Learn extra of his work in Leisure.
For almost 40 years, fans of science fiction/action movies have gravitated towards the Predator franchise. Beginning in 1987, when the Jim and John Thomas (Behind Enemy Lines) penned film about an extra-terrestrial, humanoid hunter who stalked humans in the jungle first appeared in theaters, the masses have been drawn to it. The success of the original movie spawned comic books, novels, video games, and four additional films, with two more on the way this year. While the latter movie, entitled Predator: Badlands, will hit theaters in November, the first of the two films is an adult, animated, stand-alone piece coming to Hulu in the United States and internationally on Disney+ beginning on .
Predator: Killer of Killers is broken into three separate vignettes set in different locations and during different time frames. The first story deals with a female, Nordic Viking, and her army set out to find the man who murdered her father so she can get revenge. However, unbeknownst to them, a creature lurks in the shadows, watching and waiting. Once he pounces, her whole team, including her son, are dead, and she is enslaved.
Story number two involves two brothers somewhere in an ancient Asian country. As their father pits brother against brother, one lays down his sword while the other attacks, winning his father’s praise. The loser of the battle runs away from the kingdom, only to return 20 years later to confront his sibling. Little did they know they would need to team up to defeat the unknown entity trying to kill them.
Finally, the last vignette includes a young American man being drafted during World War II. His dream is to be a pilot, but he is relegated to mechanic. When he is handed a weapon from the alien being, he tries to figure out what it is, and when he does, he takes to the sky in an old fighter plane to warn the other pilots that what they are fighting against is not human. Ultimately, the three “survivors” end up on a different planet and are forced to fight each other, but when they team up, they end up fighting the predators instead.
Writer/director Dan Trachtenberg, who brought us 2022’s Prey, once again helms this feature film, and he does so beautifully. His take on the alien creatures gives audiences a unique story brought to life in a different way than any of the other Predator movies. He includes plenty of blood splatter and gore, but also presents the Predators as intelligent and scheming.
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I will admit I’m not a huge fan of the “watercolor”-like technique used in the animation, as it blurs the lines, making the picture perhaps not as sharp and clean as it could be. While this tends to add a bit of softness to an otherwise cold and hard movie, it seems somewhat out of place with the harshness of the plot. It isn’t an anime style of animation, but it seems to be in the same family.
Predator: Killer of Killers remains solidly within the realm of the other Predator films, which makes it familiar without getting mundane. It skirts the edge of the forest while venturing down a less-traveled path, making it recognizable and different all at the same time. As an audience, we become invested in these characters, which makes the film enjoyable.
In the world of Predator, this movie stays true to the source material but gives us something we didn’t know we needed. It is a nice intermezzo between Prey and Predator: Badlands and whets our appetites for more.
Thug Life Movie Review and Release Live Updates: Kamal Haasan-STR starrer nears release as buzz builds around high-octane first half – The Times of India
‘Thug Life’ is the highly awaited Tamil gangster action drama film directed by the legendary Mani Ratnam, co-written with the iconic Kamal Haasan. Marking the reunion of Haasan and Ratnam after 36 years since their cult classic ‘Nayakan’, this film is set to release worldwide on June 5, 2025, in multiple formats including IMAX and EPIQ.The story is set in the ruthless underworld of mafia conflicts, centring on Rangaraaya Sakthivel Naicker, portrayed by Kamal Haasan, a formidable gang leader. Sakthivel rescues and adopts a young boy named Amaran during a violent gang war, raising him as his own which begins the plot of the film. However, when Sakthivel survives an assassination attempt, he begins to suspect that Amaran, his foster son played by Silambarasan (STR), might be behind the betrayal.The film boasts a stellar ensemble cast including Trisha Krishnan, Abhirami, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Joju George, Nassar, Ali Fazal, Rohit Saraf, Mahesh Manjrekar, and a special appearance by Sanya Malhotra. The music is composed by Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman, adding a powerful auditory dimension to the film’s intense atmosphere. With a runtime of nearly 2 hours and 46 minutes, ‘Thug Life’ has received a UA 16+ rating, indicating mature themes and intense action sequences.
Sally Hawkins plays a grieving mom with sinister plans for her foster children in a truly grim horror flick.
They say there’s no force in the world like a mother’s love — for better or worse. English thespian Sally Hawkins, whose many roles have included Paddington Bear’s adopted mom in the Paddington movies, puts her zany energy to a different and more unsettling use in this psychological horror drama from directors Danny and Michael Philippou, who brought us the fan favorite Talk to Me.
The deal
Seventeen-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) would do anything to protect his spirited younger stepsister, Piper (Sora Wong), who is blind. He shields her from bullies and tells her about the things and people she can’t see, often fudging the less pleasant details. But he can’t mute the shock of the day the siblings discover their dad dead in the shower.
Andy insists on accompanying his sister to her foster placement, planning to become her guardian once he turns 18. Their new foster mom, Laura (Hawkins), is a colorful eccentric who lives in a state of creative disorder. She welcomes Piper with open arms, and the siblings soon learn she’s grieving her own blind daughter, who drowned in the backyard pool.
Laura is so effusive and loosey-goosey that even Andy lets down his guard. But then he notices something is seriously wrong with her other foster child, the seemingly mute Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). And Laura doesn’t seem particularly perturbed.
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What Andy doesn’t see, and we do, is that Laura obsessively rewatches a grainy VHS tape depicting a murderous ritual. Its purpose? To raise the dead.
Will you like it?
To people who don’t like the genre, all horror movies may seem equally nihilistic. But if you do like it, you probably recognize a vital distinction between horror that provokes screams of glee more than terror (Final Destination: Bloodlines, say) and horror that evokes existential despair.
The talented Philippou brothers, who got their start on YouTube, are purveyors of the latter. Talk to Me, a clever modern twist on “The Monkey’s Paw” with a protagonist who spirals into supernatural addiction, was unrelentingly grim even for me.
Bring Her Back shares that film’s central motifs of protective guardianship, unresolved grief and mounting delusion. But this time, the Philippous have made the savvy choice to divide those traits between two central characters, one of whom is easy to root for.
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Once Andy discovers that their foster mom doesn’t plan to let Piper go, his conflict with Laura propels the story. As Laura’s tactics escalate — drugging, gaslighting, playing the siblings against each other — Andy’s touching and believable bond with Piper keeps us on his side, even when his grip on sanity falters.
We watch in horror, but it’s mixed with pity, because the film’s drifting point of view brings us into Laura’s secret world, too. The bizarre title character of last summer’s Longlegs was more meme than man, not real enough to be scary. By contrast, we’ve all known women like Laura, whose too-muchness teeters on the brink between endearing and appalling. And Hawkins’ unhinged performance connects us directly to her outsize emotions.
If watching this movie feels like bathing in a tub stained with decades’ worth of untraceable filth, that’s not because of anything supernatural. We never learn the details of the ritual depicted in the videotape; no paranormal “experts” pop up to offer exposition. This vagueness allows viewers to fill in the story’s gaps with their own conspiratorial theories — and many have. But the real dread sets in with the realization that it doesn’t actually matter whether the ritual works, only that Laura thinks it will.
She’s a cult of one, ruling over an airless house of madness, and the Philippous use all sorts of disorienting techniques to trap us there with the siblings. Ominous circular motifs repeat throughout the film, penning the kids inside Laura’s domain. Some shots are in extreme shallow focus, putting us in Piper’s place as she navigates a world seen only as light and shadow. Sound often deceives us, too, as voices issue from the wrong mouth.
To call Bring Her Back a downer would be an understatement. Be forewarned: The movie depicts harm to children and animals — more graphic in the former case than in the latter. Phillips, as the mysteriously afflicted Oliver, gives a harrowing performance in scenes that provoke the most primal of cringes.
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But the siblings are likable, and Hawkins’ larger-than-life presence contributes continual jolts of energy, much like Toni Collette’s turn in Hereditary. Imagine visiting the quirky home of a creative type — a taxidermied dog! a chicken coop! — and gradually realizing their interests run deeper and darker than you ever imagined. The ritual may be demonic, but the horror here is all human.
