Ram Gopal Varma calls Seedance 2.0 the “asteroid” set to brutally murder film industry’s “arrogance”: “This is actually the liberation of cinema”

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has stirred a fresh debate on the future of cinema, calling AI tool “Seedance 2.0” the “murderer of the film industry” while also describing it as a force of liberation. In a post shared on February 25, 2026, Varma argued that advanced AI filmmaking tools could dismantle the traditional structure of the movie business. Referring to blockbuster filmmaker S. S. Rajamouli, he wrote that directors like Rajamouli command massive budgets due to their proven creative vision and track record. However, he questioned how many equally talented storytellers across India never get access to funding or industry networks. According to Varma, tools like Seedance 2.0 have “kicked the gate down and set it on fire,” enabling creators from small towns to generate large-scale, cinematic visuals using descriptive prompts alone. He described it as “true democracy in motion,” suggesting that AI shifts power away from a select few and into the hands of the masses. Varma went furthe...

The Locksmith review – Ryan Philippe holds the key to straight-ahead noir thriller

Philippe’s newly released con faces heavy pressure not to go straight as his family grows ever more estranged and the film runs low on fresh ideas

The plot manoeuvres in this léger noir are so boilerplate and predictable that viewers are likely to find themselves expecting much bigger twists than are actually delivered. Surely that nice guy will turn out to be a double-crosser, you assume? Or you might imagine one of the vampy women will turn out to be a triple-crossing femme fatale. But no, it’s all pretty much on the level, which makes the snippets of classic Hollywood crime thrillers such as Touch of Evil, just glimpsed on a TV set, feel seriously undermining, gesturing as they do towards much more sophisticated works of cinema than we have here.

Ryan Phillippe stars as Miller, the titular locksmith, who in the opening scene has been forced into doing a heist that goes very wrong and ends up sending him to prison for 10 years. When he gets out, his now-ex-wife Beth (Kate Bosworth) is a rising police officer and his daughter Lindsay (Madeleine Guilbot) barely knows him. At least old friend Frank (Ving Rhames) offers him a job, but it’s only a matter of time before the past comes round again with Miller under pressure to atone for past crimes by committing entirely new ones. Gabriela Quezada is on hand as a battered sex worker, the surviving sister of a man whom Miller got killed years back. There are good cops and dirty cops, and shootouts at motels that puncture the eerie quiet of what looks like a barely populated desert town.

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