Movies

However! you are limited to watching The Animatrix on the Japanese UMD release under the same restrictions.

If you consider UMD "basically DVD" (a format 👎 Resurrections 👎 was released on) the highest resolution you can view it on a format on which the " fourth " film (which we don't acknowledge) was never released is specifically the PAL version of the film on VHS.

If you want to watch The Animatrix digitally and "UMD doesn't count" the Thai or Turkish dub of The Animatrix on VCD is the highest resolution you can own it on (adhering to our silly self-imposed limitations).

UMD is 720×480
PAL VHS is 625x240
I think Thailand & Turkey are both PAL countries, so their VCD is 352×288

I welcome addendums and corrections. I for example have no idea which if any of these films were and were not released on CBHD

A Malayalam-language film that depicts the plight of impoverished Indians seeking jobs in the Middle East has been drawing throngs to cinemas.

Aadujeevitham (Goat Life), adapted from the bestselling 2008 Malayalam book, stars Prithviraj Sukumaran as Najeeb, an Indian immigrant in Saudi Arabia who is kidnapped and forced into slave-like labour as a goat herder in the desert. The story is inspired by the real-life ordeal of a man with the same name, who was abducted in the country in the 1990s and managed to escape after two years.

Written as a gripping thriller, the book has become a cultural cornerstone in the southern Kerala state, with its 250th edition released this year. Its widespread acclaim had sparked a conversation on the harsh realities of migrant life in the Gulf.

The three-hour film has also done exceedingly well, grossing over 870 million rupees (£8.23m, $10.4m) worldwide in the first week of its release. Critics have called it a "stunning survival drama" and a much awaited "cinematic portrayal of brutal struggle".

Aadujeevitham shows Najeeb isolated from the world, alone with his master and his animals, facing extreme heat in a harsh desert, miles away from the nearest road, with no access to a phone, paper or pen to write with, and no one to call a friend. He drinks water from the same trough as his animals.

Via @tardigrada

Not long after the 1994 film became a smash hit, the titular bus disappeared. Where did it go? Who had it? And could it be recovered before it was too late?

Thirty years ago, a humble silver bus was transformed into a cinematic icon when the low-budget Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert became a heart-warming, Oscar-winning smash hit.

But for years, no one has known where the bus used in Stephan Elliott’s film went. Not long after the 38-day shoot finished in 1993, it seemingly vanished without a trace. This did not stop countless Australians from claiming they either owned it or knew who owned it, or that they had spotted it somewhere up and down the country.

The story of where she ended up, and how she was found, is worthy of a film in itself.

‘We were a bit suspicious at first’
In the 1994 film, Priscilla is home to drag queens Mitzi Del Bra (Hugo Weaving), Felicia Jollygoodfellow (Guy Pearce) and transgender woman Bernadette Bassenger (Terence Stamp) as they drive from Sydney to Alice Springs.

In reality, Priscilla is a 1976 Japanese model Hino RC320. It was owned by Sydney company Boronia Tours before it was sold to a couple who leased the bus to Latent Images, the film’s production company, for the duration of the shoot in September and October 1993. Afterwards, the couple hired it out occasionally, including to the Australian band the Whitlams, who used it as a tour bus for six months in 1994.

But after that, Priscilla vanished without a trace.

For years, the bus was the white whale for curatorial staff at the History Trust of South Australia, who hoped to acquire it for the National Motor Museum in Birdwood, SA – home to several famous cars from cinema, including the Mad Max Bigfoot buggy.

So when a man called Michael Mahon got in touch with the History Trust in 2019 claiming Priscilla was sitting on his property in Ewingar, New South Wales (population: 67), no one really believed him.

“Michael sent a message saying he had the bus and wanted to sell it. I felt like I was in The Castle – I said, ‘tell him he’s dreaming’,” says Paul Rees, head of museums at the History Trust and former director of the National Motor Museum. “We were a bit suspicious at first, to be honest. But we put our Sherlock Holmes hats on and soon realised it wasn’t a joke, so we started our investigation.”

Curators spent months determining if the bus was truly Priscilla. “A few things really made us confident: it had the right number plates, the distinctive animal print curtains and dashboard cover, and the original name roller,” says Adam Paterson, manager curatorial at the History Trust.

Complicating matters were the many pretenders to the throne: there are many copies of Priscilla, including the bus that was driven around the 2000 Olympics closing ceremony in Sydney; another was made for the talent show I Will Survive; and the one used in the Priscilla stage show, now displayed in Broken Hill.

In the film, the bus is famously painted bright pink partway through – but because the film-makers could only afford one bus, they painted just half of it pink and left the other side silver so they could shoot out of sequence. Crucially, some old pink paint hadn’t been removed from a hinge.

“What convinced everyone in the end was the pink paint scrapings,” says Rees. “Curators are fantastically conservative - they will not jump until they’re absolutely sure. But I was jumping all over the place.”

Some facts and dates remain a little murky, but what everyone agrees on is this: the couple who owned Priscilla eventually broke up and one of them got the bus in the separation. That person drove it to their new partner’s place in Ewingar sometime around 2006, where it was eventually abandoned when that relationship ended. When the owner of that house in Ewingar died, it was sold – complete with Priscilla – to Mahon in 2016.

“I’d been here in Ewingar for about six months when I went down to the community hall to say hello to everybody, and they said, ‘G’day! What are you going to do with the bus?’” says Mahon. “I said to the bloke behind the bar, ‘Why is everyone asking me about the bus?’ and he went, ‘That’s Priscilla!’ ‘Strewth,’ I said.”

Mahon did some research online and rewatched the film, then looked over the bus with fresh eyes. Everything matched, down to the number plates. He went on Facebook for advice on bus restoration, but “everyone thought I was an idiot and a liar because they thought she had been stolen or destroyed”.

Eventually he made friends with a few enthusiasts, who told him the rusting vehicle outside his house was known by two names in the bus-loving community. “One was ‘The Hunt for Red October’ because they’d been looking for it for years,” says Mahon. “The other was ‘the Holy Grail’.”

By that time, the bus had been languishing outdoors for a decade. In the years following, it survived multiple bushfires and floods. In October 2019, when huge flames came within centimetres of the bus, a water bomb struck it and saved it.

“The fire went right alongside Priscilla and took out a van, a boat and two cars right next to it,” Mahon says. “You wouldn’t believe it. It was 2,000-degree temperatures. The fire went straight over the roof of the house, the fireball was 50 feet above the treetop. But Priscilla survived.”

Right after the 2019 fires came floods, which made finding a new home for Priscilla even more urgent. “With all the rain, it started to really rust because it copped a lot of heat,” says Mahon. “Thankfully, the museum was in the same frame of mind as me – it is a true blue, ridgy-didge Australian icon. It’s got to be saved.”

“I’ve heard it so many times – ‘I’ve got the bus!’ – that it gets boring,” says Stephan Elliott, the director and writer of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. When the History Trust got in touch to see if he could help verify the bus’s authenticity, he was sceptical.

“But I was astonished when they showed me the photos,” he says. “I said, ‘There’s two things I need to see: the carpet and if there is a side-railing on the roof.’ They sent more photos and I immediately said, ‘That’s it. You got her.’ My jaw was just on the ground.”

The side-railing was installed on the bus’s interior so a camera could be hung from it “like a little cable car”, to allow for moving shots inside the bus while it was on the road. “It’s so odd, no one else would think to put it there,” says Elliott.

The director, who fondly calls Priscilla “the old bus and chain”, wrote the film at the same time as his 1993 comedy Frauds, which ended up being made first. The experience was “terrible, the whole Hollywood nightmare … I was completely ruined by the end, I was literally a dribbling wreck.”

“We were having an early production meeting for Priscilla and I said, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to ever make a film again.’ Everyone was shocked. But Owen [Paterson, the production designer] said, ‘Well, there’s something that I’ve found and it’s about to pull up. Come and have a look.’

“So we’re sitting there in Paddington and around the corner she came. It was a very weird moment where I got inside the bus and I put my hand on the wall. I turned to everyone and said, ‘I think I can do this.’”

Elliott estimates he has seen 50 different copies of the bus over the years, “at premieres, Mardi Gras and daggy things”. “So to hear that the original was still alive, it was very special,” he adds. “I don’t understand how it is. It is just extraordinary.”

Given the complex nature of who actually owned Priscilla, having been abandoned on a deceased estate, the History Trust applied to the NSW courts to buy the vehicle as abandoned property in 2021, 18 months after Mahon first contacted them. This process required them to wait another whole year for someone to come forward to claim it as their own. But no one did.

Mahon was finally deemed the legal owner of the bus and sold it to the History Trust in May 2023. In September, “a whole army of very experienced mechanics and engineers” turned up to Ewingar to move her for the first time in at least 16 years.

“I was actually on leave but I drove myself all the way to NSW to watch it be moved – this is what a project like this does to you,” says Rees.

The bus’s flat tyres were carefully filled with air; if they couldn’t be filled or burst, it would become a much more complex operation. Everyone held their breath as the bus was wriggled “inch by inch” out of a tight spot on a slope, then down the hill on to a truck. Just as it went on, one tyre popped.

Ten or so Ewingar locals gathered to watch her go. (“Word started to spread and as the bus drove out, they all sort of waved goodbye,” says Paterson. “That was pretty cool.”)

Was Mahon sad to see Priscilla go? “Yes and no,” he says. “I believe museums are important, so it was going to the right place.” But long after she was taken, he felt a pang when he looked over the spot, “like something was missing”.

“Part of me was gone,” Mahon says. “But if it stayed where it was for another 12 months, it probably would have been unrepairable.”

Priscilla is now at a restoration business in Queensland, ready to be glammed up – but not too much.

“We are restoring it to the state it was in during the making of Priscilla because the film is why it is significant,” says Rees. “So if the crew say it was a bit manky then, then it’s going to be that way when we’re done with it.”

But Priscilla was almost 20 years old when she featured in the film and will turn 50 in two years’ time, so she needs a lot of work. The History Trust is hoping people around the world will help raise A$2.2m (US$1.4m/£1.1m) – a total that includes A$750,000 for an extensive restoration, including possibly making the bus roadworthy again. The rest will go to building an ambitious “immersive” exhibit, fit for a queen, in the National Motor Museum in South Australia. (The SA government has already committed $100,000.)

“She’s not in good shape, she’s not been loved and cared for. But she’s very, very salvageable – if you’ve got money to throw at it,” says Rees. “We want the exhibition to be fabulous. If we’re taking her on the road to Mardi Gras, we want that to be a fabulous experience. All those things cost a lot of money, as do the decades of care we will provide her with.

“It’s survived flood, fires, 16 years out in the open,” he adds. “But the film is all about survival – and somehow, the bus survived.”

**Opponents say SOPA-like proposal would block plenty of legitimate websites.**Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin yesterday said his group plans a major push to impose a site-blocking law in the US. The MPA will "work with members of Congress" to require Internet service providers to block piracy websites, he said during a "state of the industry" address at CinemaCon 2024 in Las Vegas, a convention for movie theater owners.

"This danger [of piracy] continues to evolve, and so must our strategy to defeat it," Rivkin said. "So today, here with you at CinemaCon, I'm announcing the next major phase of this effort: the MPA is going to work with members of Congress to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States."

A site-blocking law would let copyright owners "request, in court, that Internet service providers block access to websites dedicated to sharing illegal, stolen content," he said. Rivkin claimed that in the US, piracy "steals hundreds of thousands of jobs from workers and tens of billions of dollars from our economy, including more than one billion in theatrical ticket sales."...

Lawful content would be blocked, group warns

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge urged Congress to reject the MPA push, saying that a site-blocking law would threaten the open Internet. "With today's announcement, the MPA has made its intentions crystal clear: It wants to give itself and its members the power to force any Internet infrastructure provider, up to and including the broadband providers that service your home, to cut off access to websites on their say-so alone," said Meredith Rose, the group's senior policy counsel.

The MPA's latest push for a site-blocking law comes about two weeks before a Federal Communications Commission vote to restore net neutrality rules that prohibit ISPs from blocking and throttling websites. The proposed net neutrality rules apply only to lawful content, but opponents of site-blocking legislation fear a blocking law would undermine the goals of net neutrality by compelling ISPs to block both lawful and unlawful content.

Rose said the MPA's requested law would be similar to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that was shelved after major protests over a decade ago.

Via @glass0048

Joewackle J Kusi was finishing his film Nyame Mma when an anti-LGBTQ+ bill was passed, bringing the threat of prosecution for those ‘promoting’ queer stories

Arare Ghanian film featuring a queer main character could not have been released at a worse time for its director and cast. Joewackle J Kusi was making finishing touches to his short film, Nyame Mma (Children of God), and arranging screenings in the capital, Accra, when a piece of legislation passed through Ghana’s parliament, targeting LGBTQ+ content.

According to the bill approved in late February, those involved in the “wilful promotion, sponsorship or support of LGBTQ+ activities” will face jail sentences of up to five years. The legislation, awaiting presidential endorsement before it becomes law, also stipulates a prison sentence of between six months and three years for those found guilty of identifying as LGBTQ+.

Kusi says the bill’s passing forced him to cut the schedule short, to just one private screening for prominent art and film figures. It was shown on 6 March, Ghana’s independence day, at a venue in Accra, but Kusi has no idea if it will ever reach a wider audience.

“I was nervous, I was anxious because of the bill,” Kusi says. “The safety of my cast and crew kept me up at night.

“We considered that it was safer to just have one night. We didn’t go big because it didn’t feel safe to screen a film with a queer character in Ghana around the time this bill was passed.”

Nyame Mma tells the story of Kwamena (played by Kobina Amissah-Sam), who moves away from home to live in Bolgatanga, a town in northern Ghana, because of family friction over his sexuality. After the sudden death of his father, the 30-year-old queer man returns home to Sekondi, in the country’s south-west.

There, he meets his estranged lover, Maroof (played by Papa Osei A Adjei), who, under intense societal pressures, is about to marry a woman. Kwamena is left grieving not just for his father, but also the loss of Maroof.

In a touch of magical realism, Kwamena, in a dream sequence, meets his father in the afterlife. The film also alludes to Sekondi’s annual masquerade – the Ankos festival – with spirits featuring in surreal episodes.

“Some of the stories we are going to tell are going to be heavily impacted by the bill. It’s stifling to creativity,” Kusi says.

“When this film goes out there at the right time I could spend four to five years in prison because I made a film that acknowledges and highlights marginalised and queer stories.”

The bill, he says, is in contrast with Ghana positioning itself as a tourist destination, particularly after its 2019 Year of Return initiative, designed to encourage the diaspora to come back to the country.

Based in Accra, Kusi, 31, studied broadcast journalism and mass communications at the Ghana Institute of Journalism. He worked as a writer and producer at a local television network before losing his job during the pandemic which led him to focus on film-making.

One of his first major productions was a well-received audio drama called Goodbye, Gold Coast, telling the love story of a Ghanian schoolteacher and her European lover on the eve of Ghana’s independence in 1957..

Finding actors willing to play queer characters was a major challenge during Nyame Mma’s production. Kusi choose straight actors because “if I had to cast queer actors then they would have to go in hiding”.

“People read the script and said beautiful things about it but said they can’t act the role,” he says.

“Growing up, every single time I have seen a queer representation in a Ghanian film it’s been in negative light. You’ll see them at the end of the film giving their life to Christ, or they’re probably on the bed dying from some STDs. I felt that shouldn’t be the only real representation, so I tried to create positive characters.”

The existing colonial-era gay sex law in Ghana, which carries a prison sentence of three years, has recently led to arrests. In 2021, a group of 16 women and five men were arrested in southeastern Ghana after attending a meeting for LGBTQ+ advocates, in a case that attracted global attention – however a few months later they were acquitted.

“The [new] bill is targeting and criminalising all aspects of nonconformity,” Kusi says.

Human rights groups have been urging the president, Nana Akufo-Addo, not to sign the bill into law. One, Outright International, says it would “lead to a surge in violence and human rights violations against LGBTQ persons in Ghana”, including “an increased risk of mob attacks, physical and sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, blackmail, online harassment, forced evictions, homelessness, and employment discrimination”.

But Kusi points out it is election year in Ghana, and the season for populist policies.

“The only thing that unites Ghanians, no matter what political party, or religion, is homophobia,” Kusi says.

“Homophobia makes it really hard for people to think clearly. It obstructs your reasoning.”

...In the upper bowels of the Ambler Theater, Jesse Crooks squats on the ground. Using a combination of muscle memory, meticulous attention to detail and on-the-fly dexterity, he carefully threads a strip of celluloid film through a projector.

“One of the most important things when you’re threading a projector is to make sure it does not touch the ground,” Crooks said.

For over a century, the formula for cinema magic remained the same: a trained projectionist, a 35-millimeter film reel and a projector. But now, thousands of feet of celluloid film strips have been replaced with an electronic file — nearly obliterating the role of a trained projectionist....

Via@jeffw@lemmy.world

The 1974 suspense thriller smartly predicted the increasing importance of technology and lack of privacy in our lives......"Produced between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, The Conversation was the only film that Coppola made in that peerless decade (which he ended with Apocalypse Now) that he scripted alone, without drawing from a literary source. As such, it feels uniquely personal, even for a director who famously invests so much of himself, creatively and financially, in his art. Though the film isn’t officially adapted from Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 classic Blow-Up, Coppola does for sound what Antonioni did for picture, using one incomplete morsel of information to get at a truth that proves persistently elusive. It’s a potent metaphor for the movies themselves, which make an art of constructing reality from disassembled pieces, but it also speaks to a wider sense of unease that was gripping the culture at the time."

A breath of fresh air in terms of cinematic innovation, aesthetics, and content. Yorgos Lanthimos directs and co-writes this film with Tony McNamara, providing numerous moments of entertainment while also provoking thought. The film liberates itself entirely from societal constraints, aiming to rediscover the primal sense of wonder inherent in childhood exploration. “It’s a charming attraction to purity, to something that remains untarnished”, reflects Emma Stone on the film. “It’s a desire to reclaim a part of ourselves reminiscent of our past innocence, urging us to rediscover that purity within.”

Its multiple story threads and attempts to satirise India’s government sit awkwardly with the action, but there’s much to admire in Dev Patel‘s frenzied, ultraviolet genre spectacle....Shot and choreographed with a kineticism that never veers too far into the sleekly balletic, the fight scenes here are often enthralling and genuinely bruising. They retain a necessary sense of life-or-death consequence and of the frenzied amateur using every survival tool at his disposal. When Patel’s character stabs an opponent, he drives the blade in not with his hands but with his teeth. You wince, but at the same time, you want to applaud.

Here’s your first look at Christian Bale’s suited-up as Frankenstein in actress-turned-filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal’s take on the classic monster with The Bride, her forthcoming feature at Warner Bros. 

Gyllenhaal shared the first look of Bale today on her Instagram, alongside an image of Jessie Buckley as “The Bride.” 

Bale and Buckley star in the pic alongside Annette Bening, Penélope Cruz, and Peter Sarsgaard. The film’s logline reads: A lonely Frankenstein travels to 1930s Chicago to seek the aid of Dr. Euphronius in creating a companion for himself. The two reinvigorate a murdered young woman and the Bride is born. She is beyond what either of them intended, igniting a combustible romance, the attention of the police, and a wild and radical social movement.

The movie is being produced by Emma Tillinger Koskoff (Academy Award-nominee The Joker, The Irishman, The Wolf of Wall Street), Gyllenhaal, Talia Kleinhendler (The Lost Daughter), and Osnat Handelsman-Keren (The Lost Daughter). EPs are Courtney Kivowitz (The Lost Daughter) and Carla Raij (Maestro, The Fablemans).

The pic will mark Gyllenhaal’s second directorial effort following The Lost Daughter, her screen adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley. The film was nominated for three Oscars: Best Actress (Colman), Best Supporting Actress (Buckley), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Gyllenhaal).

Cannes Directors’ Fortnight is launching a new People’s Choice audience award at its upcoming edition, running alongside the main festival from May 15-26.

If you thought silent film was boring think again. There's something incredibly modern about Louise Brooks in this rollercoaster of sex and drama. The great Austrian director George W Pabst made this in Weimar Germany, recruiting Brooks from the US for her breakout role.

Austin Butler's career is certainly on fire at the moment, between his scene-stealing role in Dune: Part Two and his small screen work on Masters Of The Air. So naturally, he's in demand. The actor has now landed another plum role, starring in Darren Aronofsky's next film, Caught Stealing...

On Oct. 7, when the Israel-Hamas war broke out, Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir was just one week away from starting principal photography in Bethlehem, 45 miles from Gaza, on “All Before You.” The Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s long-gestating project reconstructs the 1936 farmer-led revolt against British colonial rule and the influx of Jewish settlements in Palestine that has been at the root of the conflict. The latest outbreak of violence came after a Hamas-led terror attack that left about 1,200 Israelis dead while 250 were taken hostage, with more than 100 believed to still be held by Hamas.

Now Jacir, who is based in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, is anxiously waiting for a cease-fire that will put an end to the death and destruction and allow her to go back and shoot the drama. “It’s more important than ever to tell this largely forgotten story,” she says....

Oppenheimer finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers' reactions were understandably mixed and highly emotional.

Highlight:

Others suggested the world might be ready for a Japanese response to that story.

Takashi Yamazaki, director of Godzilla Minus One, which won the Oscar for visual effects and is a powerful statement on nuclear catastrophe in its own way, suggested he might be the man for that job.

"I feel there needs to [be] an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer. Someday, I would like to make that movie," he said in an online dialogue with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan.

Nolan heartily agreed.

British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan, fresh from his Oscar victory for historical drama "Oppenheimer", will receive a knighthood from Britain for services to film. His wife and film producer Emma Thomas will receive a damehood, the female equivalent of a knighthood, the British government said on Thursday in a list of honours recommended by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that also included Conservative politicians and tech industry leaders.

"Oppenheimer", a blockbuster biopic about the race to build the first atomic bomb, claimed seven Academy Awards earlier this month, including the best picture trophy and Nolan's first best director Academy Award. His career includes other highly regarded films such as "Interstellar," "Inception", "Dunkirk" and the Batman trilogy.
Nolan wrote the screenplay for "Oppenheimer" and produced the film with Thomas.

Almost ignored when it came out, this underrated, strangely poignant but light hearted crime film has a great cast (Andy Garcia, Christopher Walken, Treat Williams, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd, Fairuza Balk..) and some unforgettable lines.

Posting a short excerpt from the film because the trailer is ass and probably contributed to its bad reputation.

Scott Derrickson has been set to direct an adaptation of Davis Grubb’s classic 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter for Universal Pictures, working from his script written with C. Robert Cargill, his longtime collaborator on The Black Phone, Doctor Strange and other projects.

Peter Gethers will produce through his KramMar Delicious Mystery Productions, alongside Amy Pascal, whose Pascal Pictures has a first-look deal with the studio.

Watch how the Ichi the Killer director was able to use the iPhone 15 Pro to turn a manga into a 19-minute short film. An adaptation of a manga story by the popular Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka, "Midnight" tells a simple story really about a late-night taxi driver (played by Kento Kaku) who offers to help those who need a lift (so to speak) on the nighttime streets of Tokyo. And, on one night in particular, he offers assistance to a woman (Konatsu Kato) who is in a battle with a local gang led by an evil boss (Yukiyoshi Ozawa).

The film itself bounces between black-and-white vignettes and action-packed sequences filmed on the neon-lit streets of Tokyo, offering a nice contrast of the iPhone 15 Pro’s cinematic range. It also features plenty of Miike’s hallmarks including fight sequences, car chases, and plenty of weird characters.

Dieudo Hamadi’s documentary is a clear-eyed look at the brutal aftermath of the DRC’s ‘six-day war’ as disabled victims journey to the capital to present their demands to the government

By Tessa Kauer: What could the plot of a movie about The Sims possibly look like, you ask? I have ideas

In his first male film role, Elliot Page brings palpable personal investment and empathy to Dominic Savage's homecoming drama 'Close to You.' "Close to You” marks a reintroduction for Elliot Page, a screen presence at once warmly familiar and sharply redefined, finally established on his own terms. In his first film role since coming out as a trans man, the actor has evidently brought much of his own identity and experience to this sensitively observed story of a trans man cagily reunited with his family after a five-year period of estrangement. (In addition to producing the project, he shares a story-writing credit with director Dominic Savage.) But Page’s performance isn’t moving merely for whatever parallels it might hold to his life: Rather, it’s a reminder of what a deft and perceptive actor he can be, capable of both naked emotional candor and acidic wit — both assets to a script that sometimes errs on the side of caution.

British director Savage is known for his improvisatory collaborations with actors, which recently drew career-best work from Gemma Arterton in the 2017 feature “The Escape,” and extended to the TV project “I Am…,” a series of intimate standalone character portraits by the likes of Samantha Morton, Letitia Wright and a BAFTA-winning Kate Winslet. Crossing over to Canada to work with Page on his home turf, the director’s technique once again gives his star ample leeway to explore himself on screen, in the process capturing something that feels truthful, however fictionally constructed. That sense of raw integrity has stood the film in good stead on the festival circuit, attracting particular interest from LGBT-oriented programmers and distributors, since its buzzy Toronto premiere last fall, shortly after the publication of Page’s memoir “Pageboy.”

Dramatically, however, improv yields mixed rewards in “Close to You,” which bounces between scenes that are finely detailed in their examination of open prejudice and subtler microaggressions in the family sphere, and others that are more vaguely essayed, building relationships on backstories that don’t yet feel fully formed. From-the-gut acting, not just by Page but a fine ensemble of Canuck character players, carries the film across the line, though even at a modest 98 minutes, it could feel tighter...

Five short films from India, Spain, the Philippines, the UK, and the US showcasing LGBTQIA+ narratives that resonate with resilience and authenticity are being screened in 10 cities across India.

British Council in partnership with British BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival launched the 10th edition of the ‘Five Films for Freedom’ last week.

In India, in partnership with The Queer Muslim Project, 12 screenings for the films will be held. At the launch event in Delhi, the first screening was held, showcasing diverse narratives and fostering dialogue on LGBTQIA+ issues.

By now, the industry’s inherent problems have been widely enumerated. Among them, streaming companies aren’t acquiring the types of films that formerly defined independent film—the “discovery films,” as attorney and sales agent John Sloss of Cinetic Media calls them. Fewer arthouse distributors have “pay-one” output deals, and without these guaranteed ancillary revenues, it’s harder for these distributors to pay significant advances or commit to robust theatrical releases. Acquisition offers become fewer and less lucrative, which consequently makes equity financiers wary of investing in indie films in the first place—a vicious cycle.

Starring Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a fun-filled sequel that authentically captures the