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The Man I Love review – Rami Malek needs a lighter touch in Ira Sachs’ 80s Aids drama

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Cannes film festival: Sachs’ film about an HIV-positive actor in the homophobic Reagan-era 80s is well-intended, but Malek’s mannered performance is hard to love This film from writer-director Ira Sachs gives us premium-strength, undiluted Rami Malek – but I have to say that his overripe performance and self-conscious mannerisms here are perhaps even more oppressively insistent for being conveyed relatively quietly in spoken dialogue. And not quietly at all in the singing scenes. Malek is a performer whose style is as distinctive as those of John Malkovich or Jeff Goldblum. But it works best with a light touch in the direction and material. Things never really come together here. The Man I Love is a film about gay culture in 1980s New York, at the height of the reactionary homophobia of Reagan’s America, with HIV-positive men coming to terms with their condition and with the callous bigotry of the political zeitgeist. In one hospital scene, we see the authorities’ icily unsympathetic ...
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Eek-cute: the rebirth of the frothy romcom sociopath

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The online era is pushing screen romantics to alarming extremes. Whether posing as a stranger’s fiancee or framing someone as an obsessive stalker, happy endings look harder than ever to find It’s a long-running romcom trope that the couples we’re supposed to root for are often hiding lies that threaten the chances of any happy relationship blossoming. From classics such as The Shop Around the Corner to modern blockbusters such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the genre thrives whenever it presents the audience with the most alarming red flags it conceals from its characters, raising the stakes by seeing if sparks can still fly when an ulterior motive behind each meet-cute is hidden in plain sight. In the romantic comedies we’ve seen so far this year, this trope has not only been revived but pushed far beyond its breaking point, cementing a new romcom archetype: the unlucky-in-love sociopath. This week’s new release Finding Emily is the starkest example to date, introducing psychology...
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Rhea Chakraborty announces social media break, says “I’ve been missing myself a little”

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Rhea Chakraborty has announced that she is taking a temporary break from social media, saying the constant digital noise had started affecting her mental well-being. The actor shared an emotional note on Instagram, explaining that she wanted to step away from the pressure of online life and reconnect with herself through real-world experiences. In the note shared with her 3.6 million followers, Rhea wrote, “Lately, I’ve been missing myself a little. The constant noise, the scrolling, the keeping up — it’s all started to feel heavier than I expected... So, I’m taking a step back for a while — to slow down, breathe a little deeper, and reconnect with what feels real. Choosing lived moments over posted ones, for now.” The actress has been slowly rebuilding both her personal and professional life after facing intense media scrutiny in 2020 following the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Over the years, Rhea has largely stayed away from the spotlight while gradually returning to public ...
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Nicolas Winding Refn breaks down at Cannes recalling near-death due to ‘leaking heart’

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The director of Drive, unveiling new thriller My Private Hell, told journalists he ‘died for 25 minutes’ in 2023 The Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn , best known for films such as the Pusher trilogy and Drive, has emotionally spoken about his near-death experience and heart surgery three years ago. The director, whose first film in 10 years, Her Private Hell , premiered on Monday evening, told gathered journalists that he had “died for 25 minutes” in 2023. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/HPzYCEo via IFTTT
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Bitter Christmas review – grief, loss and artistic betrayal in Almodóvar’s film within a film

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Cannes film festival: Spaniard’s latest life-v-art auto-metafiction feels slightly muddled as he directs a director directing a director With its rich, warm, summery colours, nothing could surely be less bitter or less Christmassy than this film. It’s the latest from Cannes competition regular Pedro Almodóvar, partly set during Christmas; the female lead actually complains about the yuletide traffic at one stage. But there’s no tinsel or sleigh bells or shopping for presents. Like Die Hard, it eludes classification. It is another – which is to say, yet another – double-layered creation by Almodóvar, a kind of movie auto-metafiction of the sort that he has virtually invented, a life-v-art dialectical process that he is evidently unable to do without. Like the recent Pain and Glory , Bitter Christmas is a candidly personal movie, circling around ideas like grief, loss, the vampirism of art and the betrayal involved in basing fictional characters on real people. Perhaps by emphasising thi...
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Alia Bhatt and Sharvari shoot with Samay Raina for India’s Got Latent Season 2 in viral photo

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A viral picture featuring Alia Bhatt, Sharvari and comedian Samay Raina has taken social media by storm, sparking widespread speculation around the return of India’s Got Latent. The photos, reportedly clicked at The Habitat in Mumbai, have led fans to believe that the actresses may be appearing as part of the promotional campaign for their upcoming spy-universe film Alpha. While there has been no official confirmation from the makers or the actors involved, the viral images have already triggered intense discussions online. Many fans appeared excited at the possibility of seeing Alia and Sharvari participate in Samay Raina’s popular digital talent-roast format, especially given the enormous online popularity the show achieved after its launch in 2024. Created by Samay Raina, India’s Got Latent quickly became one of the most talked-about digital shows in the country due to its unfiltered humour, unpredictable format, and viral guest interactions. However, the show also attracted contro...
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True North review – students take stand against racism in highly charged account of protest in 60s Canada

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Interviews and archive material are elegantly stitched together in this look at a huge student uprising in 1969 Quebec If someone mentions race riots and student protests in the 1960s and 70s, chances are that would mean, to most people, civil rights protests in the American south, sit-ins in California or the National Guard opening fire on students at Kent State University in Ohio. But revolution and resistance were ideas that crossed borders and seeded outbreaks all over the world, and supposedly friendly, polite countries such as Canada had no special immunity. This elegantly crafted documentary, directed by Michèle Stephenson, recounts a charged moment in Quebec history in 1969 when black students at Sir George Williams University, now called Concordia University, staged what would become the biggest campus protest in Canadian history; it resulted in scores of arrests and about C$2m in property damage due to fire destroying a computer lab. Interviews with several of the protest’s k...
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Fjord review - Cristian Mungiu at sea with strange child abuse drama starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan

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Cannes film festival: The Palme laureate here makes a misstep with an odd, disquieting film that leaves too many issues unresolved Romanian director and Palme laureate Cristian Mungiu – the winner here in 2007 with his stunning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – comes to Cannes with an anticlimactic, underpowered movie which it seems to me could be part of an odd phenomenon at this year’s festival, detectable also in films here by Kantemir Balagov and Ryusuke Hamaguchi: auteurs making coproduction movies outside their home turf and mother tongue with big foreign stars, perhaps as a result of creative conversations at international film festivals with admirers from all over the world – and losing focus. Fjord is an odd film, bearing Mungiu’s signature, certainly, with enigmatic long shots and avoidance of closeups, and one very distinctive crowding of faces in a dinner-scene tableau. But the ostensible pain and trauma of its story is conveyed without the rewarding complexity that we have...
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‘An orgy of antisemitism is overtaking the west’: Son of Saul’s László Nemes on Hollywood hypocrisy

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His extraordinary Auschwitz film won every award going. Now the Hungarian director is back with new drama Orphan, as well as a Jean Moulin biopic at Cannes. He talks about resurgent global prejudice – and refusing to be lectured by the film industry ‘overclass’ We’ve been talking for less than five minutes when I spot the swastika. It’s just above the head of László Nemes, one of Europe’s most acclaimed directors, as he sits in the suite of a London hotel, talking about Orphan, his intensely personal new film that dwells on – among other things – the impact of the Holocaust on the generations that followed. It’s an ancient, Hindu swastika, part of a decorative wall-hanging – but still. I’m halfway through a question when I notice it. Nemes laughs; of course, he’d seen it immediately. “I wanted to point that out to you,” he says. “It is so funny. Before leaving this room, I will take pictures.” Mind you, he’s had worse. “When I was at the San Sebastián film festival with Son of Saul , t...
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BREAKING: Cocktail 2 trailer to be launched on May 29; media gets EXCLUSIVE glimpse of foot-tapping track ‘Mashooka’ and soulful number ‘Tujhko’

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A fun event was hosted by the Cocktail 2 team at a premium restobar in central Mumbai on Sunday, May 17, and was attended by Shahid Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, Rashmika Mandanna, producers Dinesh Vijan and Luv Ranjan, director Homi Adajania and music director Pritam Chakraborty. The media was invited to the bash with the promise of a surprise. The surprise turned out to be an exclusive preview of two songs from the film – ‘Mashooka’ and ‘Tujhko’. ‘Mashooka’ features Shahid Kapoor romancing Kriti Sanon in Sicily, Italy, and other picturesque locations. The foot-tapping number sees the duo in a playful, goofy mood before ending with a seductive dance sequence. ‘Tujhko’, meanwhile, is sung by Arijit Singh and focuses on Shahid Kapoor and Rashmika Mandanna. The slow romantic number hints that the two characters were college sweethearts before circumstances pulled them apart. After both songs were unveiled, the media was asked to decide which one should release first. Initially, the journalists w...
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