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Tom Cruise might never have landed his role in Rain Man, but his sister ended up helping boost his career. Cruise was still a rising star by the time he started working on Rain Man, and the Best Picture winner cemented his credentials as an actor worth paying close attention to. Dustin Hoffman stars as an autistic savant with exceptional memory and intellectual skills, but trouble with social situations. Cruise plays his career-driven brother, who conspires to use his familial connection to get access to his father's inheritance. The comedy-drama was met with positive reviews, and it scored four Oscars from eight nominations.

In a long-ranging talk about his career at London's BFI, Cruise detailed the strange circumstances that led to him playing Charlie Babbitt in Rain Man. (via Variety) Cruise was in a New York City restaurant with his sister in 1984 when they spotted Dustin Hoffman from across the room.

Whether or not you have strong Italian roots, Netflix's Nonnas is for you. Most people can identify with comfort food when it's needed. With Nonnas, which was released on your favorite streamer on May 9, the comfort comes from taste and preparation.

The story was written by Liz Maccie and directed by her husband, Stephen Chbosky. The movie is a drama, but ultimately a heartwarming one. It's about family and friends and finding those people all over again.

As far as the cast, you will recognize most of the actors. In fact, you probably have seen much of their work. These are the people you need to know.

Cast of Nonnas is as delicious as the foodLorraine Bracco as Roberta

Bracco actually lives in Sicily part of the year, so she was perfectly cast for the role of Roberta, an outspoken nonna who has issues dealing with her Bolognese counterparts.

Exclusive: Hawking a tariff- and tax incentives-heavy plan to “Make Hollywood Great Again,” Jon Voight believes Donald Trump is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. The Oscar winner has said Trump loves the entertainment business so much much that he wants to save it from itself. But with the the Midnight Cowboy star and his inner circle making a number of films themselves overseas and in Canada, their hypocrisy seems glaring and perhaps self-serving.

To that, Voight was unavailable Thursday, but we did talk with the Trump-anointed Special Ambassador to Hollywood‘s special adviser Steven Paul and Sp Media Group/Atlas Comics President Scott Karol to talk their overseas productions, tariffs, incentives and more.

Fresh off a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Voight this weekend, the duo have been the architects behind the Mhga proposal to Trump to bring production back to America, and Southern California specifically. Panned in recent days,...

Exclusive: Stop the presses! We have Jon Voight’s proposal to “make Hollywood great again,” and you can read it in full.

Until now, specifics have been scant on the plan the Oscar-winner and Special Ambassador to Hollywood presented to Donald Trump this weekend “to see Hollywood thrive and make films bigger and greater than ever before, as he says, and see productions come back to America and Hollywood,” as Voight said Monday.

Now we know exactly what Voight put in front of Trump and some studios and streamers over the past week – and yes, it includes TV too.

Off the top, the Midnight Cowboy star seeks a 10%-20% federal tax credit that would be “stackable” on what states like California (which takes a drubbing in Voight’s document), Georgia and New York already provide. On the flip side, there’s a hammer that will come down. If a U.

Actor Jon Voight met with President Donald Trump over the weekend in Mar-a-Lago to formally pitch his plans on how to bring production back stateside, and tariffs are only a small part of that plan.

Voight along with his manager and producer Steven Paul and Sp Media Group and Atlas Comics President Scott Karol submitted a comprehensive plan to President Trump after several months of meeting with several dozen film and TV organizations and leaders across Hollywood about how to increase domestic film production.

Per a release, the proposal includes “federal tax incentives, significant changes to several tax codes, the establishment of co-production treaties with foreign countries, and infrastructure subsidies for theater owners, film and television production companies, and post-production companies.” But in addition to saying Voight’s proposal has a focus on job training, it also only suggests “tariffs in certain limited circumstances.”

That would seem to go against...

When film historians speak of the first screenings of Louis Lumière’s “The Arrival of a Train,” they describe the Paris audience flinching in their seats to avoid being struck by the image of a locomotive rushing toward them on screen. The story is almost certainly apocryphal, but it makes me wonder how those who attended the 1971 premiere of James Bidgood’s iconic queer classic “Pink Narcissus” must have reacted to its, er, climactic moment.

A gauzy, softcore reimagining of Disney’s “Fantasia,” with well-endowed (live-action) hustlers in place of dancing cartoon hippos, “Pink Narcissus” unspools like some kind of erotic visual concerto. Ogling his rough-trade star Bobby Kendall, as the muscular young man admires his own ephemeral beauty reflected in countless mirrors, Bidgood stacks one super-saturated sexual fantasy upon another until such point that the film can’t contain itself any longer, erupting directly into the camera — and by extension,...

Netflix is serving up a new trailer for their culinary comedy Nonnas. Vince Vaughn stars as an aspiring restauranteur who recruits the neighborhood nonnas (grandmothers) to staff his kitchen. The film, which is based on the real-life story of Joe Scaravella, will premiere on the streamer on May 9, 2025.

In the trailer, Vaughn plays Scaravella, an Mta employee grieving the loss of his mother. While looking through her recipes, he comes up with the idea of honoring her memory by opening his own Italian restaurant, and hiring elderly women with decades of home-cooking experience to staff it. Bruno (Joe Manganiello) thinks he's crazy, but is he? To the strains of Billy Joel's "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," we see him struggling with kitchen fires, staff disputes, and some internecine conflict from the titular nonnas, including Susan Sarandon(Bull Durham), Lorraine Bracco(Goodfellas), Talia Shire (Rocky), and Brenda Vaccaro (Midnight Cowboy...

Was Dustin Hoffman underpaid for the Graduate? ( Photo Credit – Wikimedia )

While The Graduate shot Dustin Hoffman into stardom, it didn’t exactly fill his bank account. After the film made over $35 million in six months, Hoffman walked away with just $4,000, and a trip to the unemployment line.

Back in 1967, The Graduate changed the landscape of modern filmmaking. Mike Nichols, already a respected director, wanted a lead who looked and felt real. He passed on Hollywood heartthrobs like Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson. They were too confident, too clean-cut. Instead, Nichols rolled the dice on a little-known stage actor with a big nose and nervous energy. That actor? Hoffman.

He wasn’t convinced he belonged on a film set. “I couldn’t sleep, I was so nervous,” Hoffman told Vanity Fair in 2008. “This is not the part for me. I’m not supposed to be in movies.”

Trending When...

The ex-member of Brother Beyond now writes chart-toppers for stars. Why has he decided to make a musical of seedy, gutter-life classic Midnight Cowboy, a film he can’t bear?

Troop into Eg White’s living room, past the bright, spacious kitchen and the yapping terriers (“Meet the unwelcoming committee!”), then descend into the snug basement studio with its underfloor heating and you will have reached the place where pop bangers are born: hits for Adele (Chasing Pavements), Will Young (Leave Right Now), Duffy (Warwick Avenue) and countless others. The Ivor Novello award-winning songwriter, born Francis White, sits in front of a desk cluttered with screens and consoles and thingamajigs. In T-shirt, jeans and trainers, he looks as lean as the neck of a Stratocaster. When he is in quizzical mode, as he very often is, four deep grooves appear on his forehead like the strings on a bass guitar.

You’ve probably seen his cute face and big noggin on billboards, TV, or while scrolling your social media feed — a black-and-white-speckled Great Dane named Bing, with a disarmingly droopy face and a pair of heartbreakingly handsome eyes of different colors, accompanying Naomi Watts in the streets of New York City. Obviously a very good boy, Bing is the canine star of David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s big-hearted urban drama “The Friend,” a tender tearjerker on grief, love, and friendship (between both two and four-legged beings), and one of the most classically New York movies in recent memory.

It makes all the sense in the world that a movie called “The Friend” would be the work of two lifelong friends and creative partners like Siegel and McGehee, co-writers and co-directors of intimate human dramas like “The Deep End” and “Montana Story,” who poured their organic synergy and shared life...

Anna Wintour announced today that the fourth annual Vogue World will take place in Hollywood on October 26 at the Paramount Pictures Studio Lot. Celebrating the “conversation between film and fashion,” 100% of the ticket proceeds will go to the Entertainment Community fund, with a focus on supporting costuming professionals impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires.

“Vogue World: Hollywood will be a one-night-only show with a huge cast of models and actors, dancers, musicians and surprises, and it will set great film costumes next to brilliant fashion collections,” said Wintour. “By mixing fashion with the arts and culture in the center of a city, and by raising funds for a cause, Vogue World has become a runway show-as-rallying cry, a way to fix the attention of a huge global audience, to bring awareness, and sound an unmistakable note of positivity, creativity, and hope.”

This year’s event will feature contributions from costume...

In the summer of 1969, a sensitive, X-rated studio movie called “Midnight Cowboy” proved a box office surprise, upending norms when it won best picture at the Oscars. Flash-forward to this year, and the screwball Stripperella comedy “Anora” unexpectedly repeated that coup, demonstrating once again that the industry is capable of looking beyond stereotypes where sex workers are concerned.

Now comes “Summer of 69,” a risqué coming-of-age movie that manages to be both retrograde and refreshing in its portrayal of an awkward Catholic school student (Sam Morelos) who hires an inspirational pole dancer (Chloe Fineman) to help boost her confidence in the “bedroom department.” It’s a throwback to decades of raunchy-sweet sex comedies, from “No Hard Feelings” to “The Girl Next Door,” while also being somewhat progressive in that this time, it’s a girl who’s taking charge.

The problem — and hardly an insignificant one — is that however funny...

Last Updated on March 17, 2025

Martin Scorsese is the quintessential New York filmmaker. Sure, some of his greatest films are set in New York, but that asthma kept him inside of a Little Italy apartment to do nothing but study cinema says a lot about how embedded the city is in his blood and his own movies. Now, Scorsese has listed more than 30 of the most essential New York films – and yes, he was modest enough to not list Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and Goodfellas and…

Check out Martin Scorsese’s list of 30+ greatest New York movies below:

Daybreak Express

The Naked City and Kiss of Death

Fourteen Hours

Cry of the City

A Double Life and The Marrying Kind

It Should Happen to You

On the Waterfront

The Wrong Man

Sweet Smell of Success

Shadows

Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man

The French Connection

Bye Bye Braverman

Prince of the City...

New York icon Martin Scorsese is revealing his go-to films set in the Big Apple.

The auteur curated the screening series “Living, Breathing New York” for the Roxy Cinema, which features screenings of four of his favorite NYC movies out of a full list of Scorsese’s 32 favorite New York movies he’s created and which IndieWire is proud to share below.

“Living, Breathing New York” is curated by Scorsese in celebration of the new release of Olmo Schnabel’s NYC-set thriller, “Pet Shop Days,” which Scorsese executive produced. The film premieres March 15 at the Roxy Cinema in New York, and stars Dario Yazbek Bernal and Jack Irv as two lovers whose whirlwind romance sends them down a rabbit hole of drugs and depravity in Manhattan’s underworld. Willem Dafoe (who starred in Olmo Schnabel‘s father Julian Schnabel’s Vincent Van Gogh biopic “At Eternity’s Gate”), Emmanuelle Seigner, Peter Sarsgaard,...

At the 97th Academy Awards this past Sunday, Mikey Madison won Best Actress in a Leading Role for her eponymous role in Sean Baker's Anora. Anoratook home five other Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It follows the titular character as she embarks on a whirlwind romance and eventual "fraud marriage" with the son of a Russian Oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). In her victory speech, the 25-year-old Madison(who also made history by becoming the first Gen Z actor to win an Oscar) proudly thanked and honored the sex worker community.

While Anora and Mikey Madison's win is one of the most overt examples of the Oscars recognizing sex work in recent memory, it has happened more times than many people may realize. 14 different women have taken home Academy Awards for portraying sex workers. In fact, Emma Stone also won in 2024 for portraying Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lantimos' Poor Things.

Did Mikey Madison win an Oscar for portraying a prostitute in Anora? (Photo Credit – AnoraFilm Instagram)

The 2025 Academy Awards came and went in a whirlwind, forging legacies for a slew of talents, though it’s the newcomers who galvanize the most intrigue with their ties to the golden statuette. Amid the night’s fervor, one victory stood out — a triumph that spotlights both a fresh face and a storied trope.

Mikey Madison, the 25-year-old dynamo from Anora, seized her first Oscar for Best Actress, outpacing The Substance’s Demi Moore in a twist few had prognosticated. The win, flanked by Anora’s haul of Best Picture, Director, and more, incentivized a floodlight on her nascent Hollywood path.

Maddison’s raw and unapologetic portrayal of the titular sex worker elucidated a character far from cliché, cementing her ascent with a cataclysmic bang. That win didn’t transpire without etching new stats...

Oscar winners Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn came up in Hollywood at a time when the next generation of stars were looking to carry over the hard-hitting method acting work of ‘70s cinema. Both actors were highly engaged in three-dimensional characters with plenty of depth and relatability that felt authentic on the screen. In 1985, John Schlesinger would put their talents to the test in the controversial spy drama The Falcon and the Snowman.

From no network wanting to run it, to now being one of the most highly acclaimed shows out there, The Sopranos truly revolutionised television. Its popularity knew no bounds, and James Gandolfini’s portrayal of Tony Soprano became a household name. He was a huge part of the show that perfectly brought forth psychological elements with a mix of crime drama.

Michael Imperioli and James Gandolfini as Christopher Moltisanti and Tony Soprano in The Sopranos | Credits: HBO

While the show deeply captivated audiences with its storytelling, Michael Imperioli’s comments about it might change something for the fans. For him, The Sopranos was much more than just a crime drama.

Michael Imperioli had some strong words for The Sopranos

The Sopranos had an interesting beginning. From being rejected by every major network to becoming one of the greatest shows of all time, it has surely come a long way. While...

The papal drama “Conclave” has been named the best film of 2024 at the Ee BAFTA Film Awards, which took place on Sunday in London.

Voters from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts spread the wealth, giving “Conclave” and “The Brutalist” four awards each and giving two to “Dune: Part Two,” “Wicked,” “Emilia Perez,” “A Real Pain,” “Anora” and “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.”

The win for “Conclave” is the most significant for the film in a season in which “Anora” has been winning most of the major awards. It also gave director Edward Berger two BAFTA Best Film wins in the last three years, following his first for “All Quiet on the Western Front” two years ago.

The only other directors to have two films win the top BAFTA award in a span of three years are Mike Nichols (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Graduate...

To say that Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, stars of The Apprentice, have been riding a rollercoaster together would be something of an understatement. From sleepless nights contemplating embodying a young Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, to a Cannes Film Festival premiere filled with high hopes, a cease and desist from Trump himself, deafening silence from U.S. distributors, a reprieve from Briarcliff Entertainment, a highly combustible release on the eve of the U.S. Presidential election, and now an Oscar nomination each, they might well be suffering from whiplash.

Here, they met with Deadline to discuss how they’ve navigated the ride of the past few months, where they feel the film lives in the public consciousness, and what it means to them to receive Oscar nominations in the current political climate, for playing the President and his early collaborator Cohn.

Related: Oscar Nominations: ‘Emilia Pérez’ Leads...

Quick LinksThe Original True Grit Earned John Wayne His First Academy Award2010’s True Grit Contained Elements Truer to the Book Than the 1969 OriginalJohn Wayne Starred in a Sequel to True Grit Alongside Katharine Hepburn

1969's Western True Grit was an iconic role for long-time on-screen gunslinger John Wayne. He played a character largely against type and received wide praise for his performance as Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn. The film is based on a book by Charles Portis that follows a young girl seeking to avenge her father's death with the assistance of hired guns. The reputation of the original film and its legendary status kept it from being touched by a remake for decades. But in 2010, Joel and Ethan Coen tried their hand at re-imagining the classic with great success.

Part of what made the reboot so successful was its attempt not to recreate the original but to...

Marianne Faithfull, the iconic English singer and songwriter who first appeared in the mid-1960s, then returned after years of personal problems, including heroin addiction and homelessness, with her masterful 1979 album “Broken English,” died surrounded by her family at her London home on January 30. Though known mainly for her music, in the late 1960s she embarked on a career as a film actress (best known for “The Girl on a Motorcycle”) that was cut short by turmoil in her life. She was 78.

Best known initially for “As Tears Go By” in 1964 when she was only 17 (the song was co-written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards) her father was a career military man and intelligence officer and Italian literature professor, her mother from Austrian-Hungarian nobility. She was initially discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones’ manager.

She quickly fell in with the Stones (eventually becoming Jagger’s lover and sometime...

Photos (l-r) Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger by Dustin Pittman in New York After Dark (Rizzoli) at Eerdmans Photo: Anne Katrin Titze, featuring work by Dustin Pittman

In the second instalment of our conversation with renowned photographer Dustin Pittman and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with the New York music scene at Cbgb and Hurrah, then go on to Andy Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Taylor Mead, Jackie Curtis, Sylvia Miles (in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy), Lana Jokel, and Bob Colacello. Dustin also had a distinguished career working with directors such as Alan J Pakula on The Sterile Cuckoo (starring Liza Minnelli), Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, Miloš Forman’s Ragtime, and is seen at a party with Bernadette Peters in James Ivory’s adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s The Slaves Of New York.

Dustin Pittman (in Edie Sedgwick...

Exclusive: Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman, André Holland, Alison Brie and Tom Sturridge are leading Alex Vlack’s feature directorial debut, the drama The Revisionist.

The production, written by Vlack, is currently shooting in Louisville, Ky.

In The Revisionist, Elise, a successful novelist, does what so many writers do: she manipulates and transforms the people in her life into the characters she needs for her story. As she blurs the line between fiction and reality, her world descends into secrets, lies, and outright betrayal. The project is an exploration of the psychological lengths to which a writer will go to achieve their art.

Pic is also produced by Vlack along with Arielle Elwes, Veronica Radaelli, Zachary Spicer, Fiona Robert and Sophia Robert. Vlack’s previous work includes directing and executive producing the documentary Still Bill about soul legend Bill Withers.

Cassian Elwes serves as EP along with Paul Robarts, Andy Steinman,...

Angelina Jolie is one of the most celebrated actors of her generation, and one of Hollywood's most notable humanitarians. She's done vitally important work on behalf of refugees for the United Nations, and has also taken up for women's rights in the third world. She's an extraordinary person, but it all started with acting -- and overcoming the potential stigma of being what the kids nowadays call a "nepo-baby."

Yes, Angelina Jolie is the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. Her father was a pivotal actor in the New Hollywood movement of the 1960s and '70s, starring in such trailblazing films as "Midnight Cowboy," "Deliverance," and "Coming Home" (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor). Jolie got her first film role alongside her father in Hal Ashby's ill-fated comedy "Lookin' to Get Out" in 1982, but didn't return to movies until 1993 as the lead...

There was no one more surprised by Jeremy Strong‘s Golden Globe nomination for “The Apprentice” than Jeremy Strong.

“I am just indescribably moved by today’s news and surprised by it as well,” he tells Gold Derby after Monday’s nomination announcement. “I, to be honest with you, had been kind of just bracing myself to not be included in these things because of the way the film has sort of been received or not received, I should say. Not embraced.”

Strong is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his turn as Roy Cohn, who mentors a young about a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) in the Ali Abbasi drama. “The Apprentice” has been a lightning rod since it was first announced a year ago and struggled to find distribution after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Trump and his legal team also attempted to block...

Legendary film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were known for their passionate discussions about movies, whether they were raving about arthouse offerings like My Dinner with Andre or fiercely debating the artistic merits of Home Alone 3.

But what about TV?

Well, apart from that time that they reviewed an episode of Saturday Night Live during the episode, the famous duo didn’t really discuss TV shows. But that all changed thanks to one very special animated series: The Critic. Al Jean and Mike Reiss’ underrated primetime cartoon chronicled the life of a portly New York film critic and TV host Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz) who routinely trashed Hollywood blockbusters such as Scent of a Wolfman and Dennis the Menace II Society.

So, naturally, Siskel and Ebert took note of The Critic. They then took the highly unusual step of reviewing it on a 1994 episode of their show,...

The Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece “The Godfather” (1972) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Picture winner ever. The results are from a recent Gold Derby ballot cast by 29 of our film experts and editors, who ranked all 96 movie champs.

Ranking in second place is the Michael Curtiz classic “Casablanca” (1943). Following in third place is the powerful Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” (1993). Rounding out the top five are Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974) in fourth place and Billy Wilder‘s “The Apartment” (196o) in fifth place.

At the bottom of the list of the Best Picture winners is “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952) from Cecil B. DeMille. Just above that film in the rankings are “Cimarron” (1931) from Wesley Ruggles, “The Broadway Melody” (1929) from Harry Beaumont, “Crash” (2005) from Paul Haggis, and “Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956) from Michael Anderson.

Our photo gallery above features the full top 10. See the complete rankings of all 96 films below.

The Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece “The Godfather” (1972) has been voted the greatest Oscar Best Picture winner ever. The results are from a recent Gold Derby ballot cast by 29 of our film experts and editors, who ranked all 96 movie champs.

Ranking in second place is the Michael Curtiz classic “Casablanca” (1943). Following in third place is the powerful Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List” (1993). Rounding out the top five are Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (1974) in fourth place and Billy Wilder‘s “The Apartment” (196o) in fifth place.

The worst among 96 Best Picture winners is “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1952) from Cecil B. DeMille. Just above that film on the bottom of the rankings are “Cimarron” (1931) from Wesley Ruggles, “The Broadway Melody” (1929) from Harry Beaumont, “Crash” (2005) from Paul Haggis, and “Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956) from Michael Anderson.

Our photo gallery below features the full top 10. See the complete rankings of all 96 films below.

What if Francis Ford Coppola made a new movie and no one showed up? It happened once before in 1982 with the backlot musical "One from the Heart," and, lamentably, it happened again this year with the maestro's "Megalopolis," which will become available on digital starting November 12, 2024.

A self-funded, $100 million-plus epic vision of an alternate American reality, "Megalopolis" has grossed just under $14 million globally in theaters at the time of writing. True, its reviews were as dismal as those for "One from the Heart," but knowing that the latter went on to be reassessed as a misunderstood triumph should've at least encouraged critics to stay thy blades for fear of looking like a pack of Bosley Crowthers 20 or so years from now.

As a full-throated admirer of "One from the Heart," I've tried not to come down too hard on "Megalopolis," even though I feel fairly certain the film, short of a narrative-clarifying director's cut,...

Luca Guadagnino and Lionsgate announced that the “Call Me by Your Name” and “Queer” director is in final discussions to film a new version of Bret Eason Ellis’ dark horror novel “American Psycho,” nearly 25 years after the same company released Mary Harron’s satirical adaptation. In a key role that elevated his career, the 2000 film starred Christian Bale as yuppie investment banker-turned-serial killer Patrick Bateman.

It’s the kind of announcement destined to raise eyebrows. Guadagnino is in a career sweet spot after “Challengers” and “Queer” this year (and “After the Hunt” in post); he already has many projects in the works, including “Separate Rooms” with Josh O’Connor and a Thomas Mann adaptation in early development. So why is he choosing a remake — and for a film that doesn’t seem that long ago?

New versions of older films are not unusual. Even the word “remake” is tricky here — does that apply with adaptations?...

It’s the world’s oldest profession, but it’s also the world’s most stigmatized profession. Sex work, be it prostitution or erotic dancing or pornographic acting, is a reality of the world, an umbrella of occupations that have never gone away or been snuffed out no matter what laws or restrictions society has tried to impose against it. Far from it: as the world has lurched forward into the online era, sex work has fully gone online, with subscription platforms and websites allowing for new ways for those in the field to make their bucks.

While people who do sex work come in all shapes and sizes, on film, sex workers tend to be painted with a reductive, dehumanizing lens. Often, they’re not really characters at all, but window-dressing in crime movies or — most appallingly — dead bodies in films about killers that don’t particularly provide them with much backstory.

“The Apprentice,” director Ali Abbasi‘s story of Donald Trump’s rise in the New York real estate world under the tutelage of Machiavellian attorney Roy Cohn, has a visual style that recalls New Hollywood classics like “Midnight Cowboy” and “Taxi Driver.” But as the film becomes more and more about moral disintegration, “The Apprentice” also brings to mind junky broadcast video of the 1980s. Yet for Abbasi, the key reference point was a film with surfaces quite different from those of the gritty, punk rock “Apprentice”: Stanley Kubrick’s stately, elegant 18th-century period piece “Barry Lyndon.”

While the thuggish, urban Trump and Cohn may seem far removed from the genteel European aristocrats of Kubrick’s film, Abbasi said he and screenwriter Gabriel Sherman found many similarities between Trump and the social climber played by Ryan O’Neal.

“There were some really interesting parallels,” Abbasi told IndieWire. “There’s something...

I’m 80 years old and this is my 60th year in the entertainment business. It’s hard to believe even as I write it. Most of my career was in public relations, working with the biggest stars of the day. There were too many secrets in Hollywood back then, but I sometimes miss the mystery of icons like Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Ali MacGraw, Diahann Carroll, Charlton Heston and so many others. They spoke to the audience mainly through their work and carefully controlled press to promote their latest film. That mystery allowed me to pull off one of my most unusual achievements for a client when I accompanied actress and photojournalist Gina Lollobrigida to Cuba in 1974 for an exclusive photo essay and interview with Fidel Castro. As I watched Castro playing 5 on 5 basketball in an empty arena, I asked myself how a girl from a small town in Virginia ended up here.

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week, Stevie Nicks delivers a powerful women’s rights anthem, Lady Gaga drops a surprise jazz album, and Rauw Alejandro rolls through with some heart-tugging slickness. Plus, Mickey Guyton, Billy Strings, Sunflower Bean, and the return of the Cure.

Stevie Nicks, “The Lighthouse” (YouTube)

Sunflower Bean, “Serial Killer” (YouTube)

Mickey Guyton, “House On Fire” (YouTube)

The Cure, “Alone” (YouTube)

Lady Gaga, ‘Happy Mistake” (YouTube)

Saweetie, “Is It the Way” (YouTube)

Weeknd feat.

Rotten Tomatoes is the most widely trusted review-aggregate in popular media, but it shouldn't necessarily be treated as a supreme authority. Although it pulls a ton of reviews from the internet to calculate its scores, the way each one gets evaluated is inherently misleading. Each review is basically counted as a positive or negative, thumbs up or thumbs down, destroying any nuance that these critiques might have about what parts of the movie work and which don't. Any negative review is counted as if the reviewer said it should have zero stars, and the positive reviews count as if the reviewer gave the movie four stars. Since most movies are neither pitiful nor masterworks, this proves a difficult system to trust. Does a 100% mean that most critics think the movie is merely decent, or that they think it's incredible? One cannot be sure. Likewise, while some of the greatest movies...

Jade is moving her solo project forward with another banger!

The 31-year-old Little Mix member and “Angel of My Dreams” solo superstar followed up her debut single with a new track called “Midnight Cowboy,” out on Wednesday (September 25).

The track also features a spoken word cameo from superstar actor Ncuti Gatwa.

Keep reading to find out more…

“I promised the fans wouldn’t have to wait too long for more music…so I think it’s ‘bout time for the ‘Midnight Cowboy,’” she said.

“Written in 2022 by Raye and I, produced by Jonah Christian and featuring a guest moment from the one and only Ncuti Gatwa – ‘Midnight Cowboy’ is a sultry, understated bass heavy bop about owning your sexuality and your talents that come with it.”

Jade‘s solo debut “Angel of My Dreams” launched at No.7 on the UK Singles Chart, the third highest new entry for a British artist this year.

Jade Thirlwall’s life outside of Little Mix is still taking shape. Earlier this year, the singer and songwriter shared her debut solo single “Angel of My Dreams,” a theatric commentary on pop stardom and the music industry machine. Her latest release, the dizzying club track “Midnight Cowboy,” creates a musical bridge as she continues building on the world she established with her first single.

“I didn’t want you all to have to wait so long for music again,” Jade wrote on social media yesterday, describing the new release...

Ron Howard's acting career was part of a family legacy, as his father, Rance, was already a prolific performer when he was born in 1954. Howard's first professional acting credit is for the 1959 feature "The Journey," with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. That same year, the five-year-old Ron infiltrated TV, appearing as precocious moppets in multiple hot shows.

More notably, beginning in 1960, Ron -- credited as Ronny -- began starring on "The Andy Griffith Show," playing Opie, the son of Griffith's character. Howard would appear in 243 of the show's 249 episodes, over the course of eight seasons. While appearing on "Andy Griffith," Howard would continue to be a TV presence, appearing in dozens of additional hot shows, as well as several notable B-pictures.

Even in his teen years, Howard continued to act, proving that he was no mere child prodigy. He appeared in George Lucas' nostalgia film "American Graffiti," and...

Through the Critics Choice Association I was presented the opportunity to attend a live press conference for DC’s The Penguin, streaming this week on Max. The series follows Oz Cobb, portrayed by Colin Farrell reprising the role he’d played in Matt Reeves’ The Batman.

Matt Reeves was not in attendance for the press conference, but he sent a video message to kick things off. In that message he detailed how the idea of The Penguin series came to be.

“… the idea of not only doing films, but maybe doing an HBO-style show that could not be focused on Batman, but instead be focused on one of those Rogues Gallery

characters and see them coming into being, see their origins, and do it

with an HBO treatment.” – Matt Reeves

The series was pitched as a “Scarface-like” story set in the aftermath of Carmine Falcone’s death and showcasing Oz...

The new HBO series The Penguin is the first live-action adaptation centered on the 83-year-old Batman rogue. First brought to life by Burgess Meredith and reinterpreted by Robin Lord Taylor on television, it can be difficult to find a way to take such a familiar character and make him feel fresh. While actor Colin Farrell didn't turn to any of his fellow members of the "Penguin," club he does happen to have an ongoing text chat with Danny DeVito who played Oswald Cobblepot in Batman Returns.

At a press conference in advance of The Penguin's premiere on HBO, Farrell was asked about the inspirations that motivated him to create Oz Cobb. First introduced in The Batman, the low-level criminal begins his ascent to the top of Gotham City's underworld in the show. While The Penguin is a prestige crime drama in the HBO tradition, Farrell's texts with Danny DeVito...

Looks like cinephiles will need to make a little more space on their shelves. As has become customary, The Criterion Collection announced its four upcoming December releases today, and you may just need to make room for all of them on your holiday shopping lists. First up, set to be available on December 3, the new 4K restoration of Wim Wenders’ Palme d’Or-winning masterpiece “Paris, Texas,” starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, and Nastassja Kinski.

In his 1984 review of the reflective western drama, film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “‘Paris, Texas’ is a movie with the kind of passion and willingness to experiment that was more common fifteen years ago than it is now. It has more links with films like ‘Five Easy Pieces’ and ‘Easy Rider’ and ‘Midnight Cowboy,’ than with the slick arcade games that are the box-office winners of the 1980s. It is true, deep, and brilliant.”

On...

A balancing act that seems to enjoy feeling as if it’s about to lose its balance, “The Friend” is a lot of different things at once. It’s a dog-and-human bonding movie, which means it’s unavoidably sentimental. It’s a Bill Murray movie, which means it’s funny in a snarky way, but it’s also a character drama in which Murray is an unseen presence most of the time. It’s a movie about grief and a movie about creativity.

And mostly, the new film from writer-directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee is all of those things at once, sliding between tones, defaulting to lightness most of the time but always ready to veer in another direction.

The film, which premiered on Friday at the Telluride Film Festival, is full of feints: a little bit of comedy, a hefty helping of loss, a touch of melodrama and a whole lot of dog,...

Before his death, French actor Alain Delon had said that he wished for his dog, Loubo, to be put down when he passed. Delon believed the bond between him and his rescued Belgian Malinois was so strong that the dog would miss him dearly when he died and preferred to spare his pet such pain.

How does one explain death to a dog? That question, and several others deeper than we might expect from a “dog movie,” give intellectual heft to “The Friend,” a gentle coping-with-grief drama that provides its audience with a 180-pound emotional support animal in the form of Apollo, a harlequin Great Dane who’s missing his master and headed for the proverbial glue factory unless a bighearted enough human agrees to adopt him. Naomi Watts plays that human in a by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser with a bit more on its mind than your typical canine-centric tearjerker.

It’s...

The famous "I'm walkin' here" scene in Midnight Cowboy, where Dustin Hoffman nearly gets hit by a cab, has become one of the most quotable lines in movie history. Hoffman claimed that the scene was improvised, but the film's producer and director suggest that it was filmed with an extra in the cab. While the truth about whether the line was improvised or not remains unclear, there are several factors that help explain the discrepancy and what likely occurred.

Movie Legend: Dustin Hoffman improvised the famous "I'm walkin' here" scene in Midnight Cowboy.

The 1969 film Midnight Cowboy was a watershed moment in American cinematic history, being the first (and only) X-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The success of the film, about a nave male prostitute from Texas and a hustler he met in New York City (played by Dustin Hoffman), helped to change the way...

Voight recalls how Hoffman's iconic "I'm walkin' here!" scene in Midnight Cowboy was improvised with real NYC cab interaction. Hoffman's line ranks on AFI's list of top quotes, sparking debate on whether it was scripted or improvised during filming. Regardless of its origin, the scene showcases Hoffman's authentic performance, contributing to the film's iconic status in cinema history.

Jon Voight shares his story of Dustin Hoffman's iconic "I'm walkin' here!" scene in Midnight Cowboy. Released in 1969, the film follows the unlikely friendship between two hustlers in New York City, one a naive male prostitute from Texas named Joe Buck and the other an ailing con man referred to as Ratso. Hoffman and Voight star in the two lead roles alongside Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Salt, and Barnard Hughes.

During a recent interview with Jake's Takes promoting his new movie Reagan, Voight shared his...

John Turturro with his Heart of Sarajevo award Photo: Courtesy of Sarajevo Film Festival John Turturro received a Heart of Sarajevo award at the Sarajevo Film Festival last night for his career.

The actor, known for films including Barton Fink and Quiz Show, took part in a conversation event at the festival yesterday to talk about his work in front of and behind the camera.

He partially credits his love of film to his parents who were big film lovers. He also says that as they didn’t travel around much as a family films were “emotional transportation for me”.

He said his big inspiration was when he saw a clip of Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy when he was about aged 12.

He recalls: “I couldn’t see it because it was rated X at the time.”

He adds: “I was shocked because I was thinking, well, that guy looks like someone in our family.

In the midst of their press tour for Zoë Kravitz’s feature directorial debut, “Blink Twice,” starring romantic partner Channing Tatum, the duo took a not-so-brief pit-stop at the Criterion Closet to score a bevy of cinematic treats. Many of their choices outlined their shared eclectic taste and emphasized a relationship largely based around a love for films of all kind.

“We’re so excited to be here, this is like a dream come true,” Kravitz said as she and Tatum began their shopping spree. “I grew up in video stores, so this is also just a nice feeling cause that’s not really a thing anymore, sadly.”

Though the video was shot prior to the death of Gena Rowlands and posted on the day the news broke, there’s a serendipitous homage to the late actor, as well her husband and collaborator John Cassavetes.

“We love Cassavetes,” Kravitz said...

To a Land Unknown.When Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown (2024) premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight, its rapturous reception was a rare moment of solidarity in a festival environment that otherwise sought apoliticality. The only Palestinian film to be selected across all sections of the Cannes Film Festival, To a Land Unknown offered a vital link to an ongoing, real-world crisis, breaking the bubble of the festival landscape. Palestinian flags soared inside the theater at the film’s debut screening, while down the Croisette at the Théâtre Debussy, several journalists were asked to remove pin badges expressing their political commitments, some to the Palestinian cause and others to the labor activity of the festival workers. What use can a festival have in a time of genocide if it neither acknowledges political struggle nor centers stories by and about oppressed peoples? The story of two refugees, Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and...

Even at the age of 49, Angelina Jolie is easily one of the most stunning and remarkable actresses in all of Hollywood’s entertainment industry. A diva who effortlessly managed to land a majority of star-studded roles throughout her three-decades-plus-old regime as an actor, she has led an incredibly successful and commendable career as well.

Angelina Jolie in Wanted. | Universal Pictures.

And yet, when it goes back to the early beginnings, no one would have thought the beauty would have gone on to become the female James Bond of Hollywood. This stands especially true after looking at a flashback clip of Jolie from 1986, when she walked the red carpet of that year’s Oscars with her family as a 10-year-old beauty.

Angelina Jolie’s Flashback Clip Shows Her Walking the Red Carpet at 10

Angelina Jolie may ostensibly be one of the most famously confident and outspoken actresses in today’s day and age,...