Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)
Following her breakout with Jackie Chan in Police Story and before her iconic roles in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Olivier Assayas, Maggie Cheung delivered one of the best performances of her career in Stanley Kwan’s lush, definitive, and boldly conceived biopic Center Stage, also known as Actress. Now gorgeously restored in 4K from the original negative, and approved by Kwan himself, the film follows Cheung as iconic silent film star Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide at the age of 24 in 1935 after a tumultuous private life that was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids—and began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame. With Cheung receiving the Best Actress award at Berlinale, the film...
Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)
Following her breakout with Jackie Chan in Police Story and before her iconic roles in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Olivier Assayas, Maggie Cheung delivered one of the best performances of her career in Stanley Kwan’s lush, definitive, and boldly conceived biopic Center Stage, also known as Actress. Now gorgeously restored in 4K from the original negative, and approved by Kwan himself, the film follows Cheung as iconic silent film star Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide at the age of 24 in 1935 after a tumultuous private life that was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids—and began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame. With Cheung receiving the Best Actress award at Berlinale, the film...
- 10/14/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Today Focus Features opens Tár, the strikingly original return of Todd Field, in four locations in NY and LA. The film premiered at Venice winning star Cate Blanchett Best Actress as musician and conductor Lydia Tár. Early this week, it seemed to mesmerize a sold-out Alice Tully Hall at the New York Film Festival.
A 97 with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Deadline’s review here called Field’s first film since Little Children 16 years ago, a “daring and quite comprehensive immersion in a rarified world [that] features a lead performance the likes of which doesn’t come along very often.” Field wrote the part for Blanchett but at an NYFF Q&a he said he waited to send her the script until it was done and Focus chairman Peter Kujawski “asked me, ‘Who do you have in mind?’ I said I was still thinking about it. Because I was superstitious. That she would say no.
A 97 with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Deadline’s review here called Field’s first film since Little Children 16 years ago, a “daring and quite comprehensive immersion in a rarified world [that] features a lead performance the likes of which doesn’t come along very often.” Field wrote the part for Blanchett but at an NYFF Q&a he said he waited to send her the script until it was done and Focus chairman Peter Kujawski “asked me, ‘Who do you have in mind?’ I said I was still thinking about it. Because I was superstitious. That she would say no.
- 10/7/2022
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
There’s a reason Carlota Pereda films Sara (Laura Galán) urinating through her clothes as an old friend (Irene Ferreiro’s Claudia), who’s drifted away towards the clique that bullies her, puts a bloody hand on the back window of a serial killer’s van while screaming for help. We need to understand her fear. Just because Sara is a teenager who’s been brutally victimized by an entire town of peers doesn’t mean she’s measuring the situation and deciding to let Claudia, Maca (Claudia Salas), and Roci (Camille Aguilar) die. She’s afraid for her own life. What if she tries to save them and the killer (Richard Holmes) watching from the driver’s seat simply throws her in the back? So she freezes. And, to her surprise, he helps her instead.
Therein lies the complexity of Piggy, a feature expansion of Pereda’s short film of the same name.
Therein lies the complexity of Piggy, a feature expansion of Pereda’s short film of the same name.
- 10/4/2022
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
A premiere at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Carlota Pereda’s Piggy takes a Carrie-esque look at fighting back at bullies with a horror twist. Set in rural Spain, the film follows Sara, a teenager who is subject to ruthlessly bullying. Her day finally comes when she witnesses her tormentors being kidnapped and the story gets darker from there, to say the least. Ahead of an October release, the first trailer has now arrived.
During the sweltering summertime of rural Spain, Sara carries an extra load of teenage agony due to the perpetual bullying from her peers. She’s also an outsider at home—her parents and little brother just don’t understand her—so, feelings internalized, she’s often found buried in her headphones, drowning out her surroundings. One day, Sara’s usual solo dip at the local pool is disrupted by the presence of a mysterious stranger...
During the sweltering summertime of rural Spain, Sara carries an extra load of teenage agony due to the perpetual bullying from her peers. She’s also an outsider at home—her parents and little brother just don’t understand her—so, feelings internalized, she’s often found buried in her headphones, drowning out her surroundings. One day, Sara’s usual solo dip at the local pool is disrupted by the presence of a mysterious stranger...
- 9/23/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
After catching a lot of positive attention from its screening at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, the Spanish-language horror film Piggy will be screening at Fantastic Fest this weekend… and on October 7th, the movie will be receiving a nationwide release at Alamo Drafthouse theatres! It will then be getting a VOD release as well. In anticipation of the Alamo Drafthouse release, a trailer for Piggy has arrived online and can be seen in the embed above.
Directed by Carlota Pereda, Piggy has the following synopsis:
With the summer sun beating down on her rural Spanish town, Sara hides away in her parent’s butcher shop. A teenager whose excess weight makes her the target of incessant bullying, she flees a clique of capricious girls who torment her at the town pool, only to stumble upon them being brutally kidnapped by a stranger, who drives off with them in his van.
Directed by Carlota Pereda, Piggy has the following synopsis:
With the summer sun beating down on her rural Spanish town, Sara hides away in her parent’s butcher shop. A teenager whose excess weight makes her the target of incessant bullying, she flees a clique of capricious girls who torment her at the town pool, only to stumble upon them being brutally kidnapped by a stranger, who drives off with them in his van.
- 9/22/2022
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Piggy Review — Piggy (2022) Film Review from the 44th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Carlota Martinez-Pereda, starring Laura Galán, Carmen Machi, Fernando Delgado-Hierro, Julián Valcárcel, José Pastor, Claudia Salas, Pilar Castro, Camille Aguilar, and Richard Holmes. If vacationing teenaged girls were the only bullies targeting overweight Sara (Laura Galán), the daughter [...]
Continue reading: Film Review: Piggy: Town Scapegoat Lifts Herself Up to Grindhouse Hero [Sundance 2022]...
Continue reading: Film Review: Piggy: Town Scapegoat Lifts Herself Up to Grindhouse Hero [Sundance 2022]...
- 1/31/2022
- by David McDonald
- Film-Book
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