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Sony Pictures’ Whitney Houston biopic, starring Naomi Ackie, had been test-screened in Las Vegas back in April. Ackie plays the late iconic R&B singer, whose hit song inspired the title. Here’s a reprint of the reaction I got from that Vegas screening: As mentioned, this is directed by Kasi Lemmons (“Harriet”) from a screenplay written by Anthony McCarten, the writer behind biopics such as Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody. So, don’t expect high art here....

The film is an adaptation of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Broadway hit from 2008 and comparisons to “West Side Story” will be made, albeit without the gang wars nor the poetic grit Robert Wise brought to that 1961 classic. There is no serious conflict here. If anything, “gentrification” can be seen as the subtle antagonist. Washington Heights, a district of Manhattan, and spirited home of Latin American communities, sets the stage for two romances; the first one between Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), he runs a corner store, and the smart, beautiful Vanessa (Melissa Barerra), she works at a nail salon, but dreams of fashion designing....

This only enhances the narrative that the film is indeed the one to beat when it comes to the Best Picture Oscar and NOT Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” which has won three audience awards including the coveted TIFF People’s Choice Award. “King Richard” was oddly enough not at TIFF, that had people speculating to the nth degree about why it was absent. If it were there, I have no doubt in my mind it would have won Toronto as well....

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I have not been shy about my lack of faith in Kennedy, her resume has shown a trend of clashing with directors. So far, during her 4 year tenure as overseer of all things SW, Kennedy has clashed with filmmakers on three separate films (Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired during production of ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story,’ Colin Trevorrow was let go as director of ‘Episode IX,’ and Gareth Edwards, although he completed ‘Rogue One’ was rumored to have been replaced during reshoots by Tony Gilroy....

Slate has decided to stretch her short into a 90-minute feature, titled “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” She’s aided by director Dean Fleischer Camp, who also stars in the film as a documentary filmmaker tackling Marcel’s online success. How meta. Slate’s sweetly endearing vocal performance as the titular character, a tiny shell with one googly eye and a pair of shoes, is a highlight. Marcel becomes the subject for a documentary that Camp (playing himself) is shooting....

Based on the director’s own upbringing in the 1980s as a seven-year-old Korean American boy, the film has on-screen father Jacob (Steven Cheung) disapprovingly moving his son, David, and daughter from the West Coast to rural Arkansas with frustrated wife, Monica — she’s irked by the relocation to a mobile home in the middle of nowhere. Troublemaker David and his sister are bored by the vast plains, but have their lives quickly disrupted when their grandmother arrives from Korea to live with them and set the family dynamic straight again, but life gets in the way, and things don’t go as planned....

El Español ran an interview with Waititi this morning and had him confirm the 2023 date. This means that “Next Goal Wins” will be released almost four years since production wrapped. Principal photography on “Next Goal Wins” began in November of 2019 and wrapped up in January 2020. It has been in a state of limbo ever since. The Playlist’s Gregory Ellwood has been insisting for a few weeks now that “Next Goal Wins” is being released next year....

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It seems as though people are hungry for a new Spider-Man movie, but hungry enough to head to a theatre in the dead of a, very likely, COVID-infected winter? This is the eighth installment of Spider-Man from Sony, but the major hype for this one seems to be stemming behind this being the start of the Disney/MCU’s next multiverse plan — which started with the Disney+ series “WandaVision” and “Loki”....

I will be catching the film next Tuesday, but reviews keep pouring in from European-based critics as the film continues to be screened daily for as much press as possible. Meanwhile, “Tenet” has a Metacritic score of 70, this based on 20 reviews and over at Rotten Tomatoes the film continues to hold strong with an 80% fresh rating, this based on 46 reviews. Not outstanding numbers, but word-of-mouth still seems to be strong for Nolan’s film as the ubiquitous writer-director has never really won over every film critic during his 20-year-career....

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Spielberg’s autobiographical film will be available to stream on VOD in just a matter of weeks, I’m hearing December 13th is the date being eyed. The film just made $2,2 million this past weekend, I don’t believe it’ll get better than that in terms of numbers. How do you expect these kind of prestige films to sustain a healthy box-office run when your audience suspects that it will be available to stream at home in just a matter of weeks?...

As it stands, Farrelly’s movie has a pitiful 25 on Metacritic. This basically sets it up for Razzies, which it doesn’t deserve. No doubt some critics are still bitter about Farrelly’s “Green Book” winning Best Picture, but come on! The film has its moments, Efron isn’t bad in the lead role, but it falls flat in so many scenes. The comedic timing of “Green Book” has completely evaporated here. There’s also no Mahershala or Viggo, which makes a huge difference....

This David Spade-starring romantic-comedy seems to be following the same schema as Adam Sandler’s Netflix goof-fests; there’s a lot of silliness, a lot of crude humor and plenty of slapstick. Beware of a comedy where the main character falls off a cliff, not to mention hitting rocks and trees on the way down, and still, somehow, miraculously, survives. Turn your brain off for this one. Spade was once a comedy stay in the ‘90s, playing sidekick to Chris Farley in the classic raunch-fests “Black Sheep” and “Tommy Boy....

I thought they changed the name Foreign Language Movie to Best International Movie to stop shit like this I thought wrong. It still includes the rule that the film must have a predominately non-English dialogue track. It’s unfortunate. It does seem as though the best foreign film Oscar has and always will be the award for “best non-english film” Of course, after the news was announced, none other than Ava DuVernay led a Twitter protest against the ruling: “Are you banning this country from ever competing for an Oscar in its official language?...

Director Joe Wright’s “Woman in the Window,” a thriller starring Amy Adams and an adaptation of Dan Mallory’s bestselling novel of the same name, had its fall release delayed until 2020 by Disney (who now own the movie after their Fox purchase) and then set for May 2021 by Netflix. According to THR, the reason for the delay was that the movie was going back into production for reshoots due to, get this, the third act needing more clarification....

It turns out Sokurov originally hoped to screen “Fairytale”, at Cannes, but the film just wasn’t selected. Was it because it hailed from Russia? Or was it just not good enough for the Cannes committee’s tastes? Sokurov (“Russian Ark”) had blamed Cannes for discrimination back in April. Earlier that month, Sokurov claimed, to Russian media, that he declined Cannes’ “personal” invitation to screen “Fairytale” at the prestigious festival. The filmmaker vaguely explained that the film was “too serious to participate at Cannes”....

The Will Smith starring slavery epic just had its first screening in DC this afternoon. Attendees m seem to have been mainly composed of African-American groups, celebs and political personalities. This was a “private screening”, held during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation 51st Annual Legislative Conference in DC. Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua were in attendance to present the movie, and then they conducted a post-screening Q&A. Are people ready to forgive Smith?...

I do know for a fact that “Wendy” has test-screened in the West Coast. Does this mean the film has been submitted to the fall festival circuit. Well, sort of. The gist of the matter is, according to a source at Fox Searchlight, Zeitlin’s picture was screened for and accepted by Toronto but decided to skip the fest after its writer-director decided to go back to the editing room. According to this same FSL source, the screening for TIFF was more a courtesy for the friendship the studio had with TIFF than an actual “wanting-it to-be-screened” kinda thing....