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‘Romería’ Review: Carla Simón Dives Deep Into Painful Family History in an Act of Reclamation That’s Equal Parts Shimmering and Meandering
Three years after taking top honors in Berlin with her elegiac tribute to the generations of peach farmers in her family, Alcarràs, Carla Simón returns to territory more directly connected to her own past, a companion piece to her debut, Summer 1993. That 2018 film explored a transitional period in the life of a six-year-old girl — a fictionalized version of the director — sent to live with an uncle’s family in the Catalonia countryside after losing both her parents to AIDS. Simón’s third feature, Romería, centers on another semi-autobiographical stand-in, this time a budding filmmaker fresh out of high school, who travels to meet the family of her late father.
Her journey, while essentially planned to complete bureaucratic requirements on a film school scholarship, becomes an exhumation of the parents she was too young to know, their histories...
‘Lilo & Stitch’ Blows Up Memorial Day Box Office With $183M Bow, ‘Mission: Impossible’ Nabs Series-Best $77.5M
The Memorial Day box office is on fire.
Disney’s live-action redo of Lilo & Stitch and Tom Cruise‘s final Mission: Impossible movie from Paramount and Skydance fueled the biggest start-of-summer holiday weekend of all time, based on Monday estimates. Lilo & Stitch blew away all expectations with a record-smashing, four-day domestic debut of $183 million, and a jaw-dropping $341.7 million globally, while Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opened to a series-best $77.5 million domestically and $191 million worldwide. The domestic numbers include a three-day weekend tally of $145.5 million for Lilo and $64 million for Final Reckoning.
The female-fueled Lilo was always expected to beat the latest M:I title, but no one imagined it would hit these heights and, in an ironic twist, see Lilo & Stitch supplant Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick ($160 million) to rank as the biggest Memorial Day opener of all time, not adjusted for inflation. That’s not the only irony: Cruise-starrer Minority Report barely beat the original...
‘The Wave’ Review: Sebastián Lelio’s Rousing but Elementary Feminist Musical
In 2019, a year after swells of protests swept through universities in Chile, a group of women, many of them blindfolded, took over the streets of Valparaiso, a coastal city in the country, to dance and sing a song that would go on to become an anthem. The performance was organized by LASTESIS, an interdisciplinary and trans-inclusive feminist collective, and it was their way of joining the global reach of the #MeToo movement. The lyrics to the song translated roughly to “A Rapist in Your Path” and even if you can’t understand the words, the demonstration is powerful.
There are similarly affecting scenes in Sebastián Lelio’s The Wave, a spirited musical film about the 2018 university protests. The feature, which premiered at Cannes outside the main competition, chronicles the fictional experiences of a student named Julia (Daniela López), who wrestles with...
13 of Tom Cruise’s Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts
Tom Cruise has never steered away from challenging himself in his roles for projects. Especially since 1986’s Top Gun, he has continued to push the limits of his body and acting, taking on his own stunts in most of his top films, including Mission: Impossible, The Last Samurai and Jack Reacher.
Most recently, Cruise took on several death-defying stunts in 2025’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, including dangling from an upside-down plane as well as driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to safety.
The actor has previously said during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show that he has been “doing different stunts” since he was a child and that once he got into acting, he wanted to keep doing it to help with the “storytelling.”
“I feel that acting you’re bringing everything, you know,...
All 8 ‘Mission: Impossible’ Movies Ranked From Worst to Best
It’s not clear when it happened — sometime in the past 30 years — but the Mission: Impossible movies gradually evolved into Hollywood’s most dependable modern action franchise. Figuring out how this happened is far easier: Star Tom Cruise‘s legendary willingness to do anything and everything to make each film a blockbuster while — as the franchise’s most powerful producer — savvily finding creative partners that bring out his best. In fact, Cruise is much like his IMF agent Ethan Hunt: When the man’s on a mission, he’s an unstoppable force who’ll never stop running until he saves the day — or, the summer box office. Below, The Hollywood Reporter ranks every Mission: Impossible film, including the newly released The Final Reckoning, from the very worst to the definite best.
08
‘Mission: Impossible II’ (2000)
'MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II'
Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Ranked worst and to the surprise of no one. John...
David Tennant Says He Wanted Pedro Pascal’s Role in ‘The Fantastic Four’`
Pedro Pascal had some competition for his Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, role.
During a recent conversation at MCM Comic Con, David Tennant was asked by a fan about which superhero he would like to play in a film, and he revealed that he had his eyes on the role Pascal ultimately landed in Marvel’s forthcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
“In terms of superheroes, I did slightly have my eye on Reed Richards and unfortunately, it looks like they’ve gone in a different direction,” the Doctor Who star said. “Although if it has to be someone, I’m very happy for it to be Pedro Pascal, frankly.”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which hits theaters July 25, also stars Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer and Ralph Ineson as Galactus. In the...
Cannes Power Outage Marcel Ophuls, ‘Sorrow and the Pity’ Documentarian, Dies at 97City, Festival Continues
Marcel Ophuls, the Oscar-winning, German-born French filmmaker whose powerfully eloquent documentaries confronted difficult political, moral and philosophical issues, has died. He was 97.
Ophuls “died peacefully” at his home in the south of France, his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert told The Hollywood Reporter.
Ophuls earned his Academy Award — as well as prizes from the Cannes and Berlin film festivals— for Hotel Terminus (1988), a 4-hour, 27-minute documentary that examined the life of the notorious Klaus Barbie, convicted in Bolivia of his Nazi war crimes in 1987.
Ophuls’ best known work, however, came almost two decades earlier with The Sorrow and the Pity (1969), which explored the reality of the Nazi occupation in the small industrial French city of Clermont-Ferrand.
Ophuls spent more than two years compiling the more than 60 hours of footage that was eventually boiled down to that 4-hour, 11-minute film, which...
Viennale Sets Retrospective on Dutch Director Digna Sinke, Including New Film ‘Key to Heaven’
"With a cinematic oeuvre characterized by quiet observations, poetic depth, and a special sense of change and landscape, Sinke has been one of the most distinctive voices in Dutch cinema."
The 63rd edition of the Viennale, the Vienna film festival, will this year feature a retrospective on Dutch director Digna Sinke, including her latest film Hemelsleutel (Key to Heaven).
In cooperation with the Dutch distributor Verde Films and curated by Gerwin Tamsma, a former programmer of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Viennale, which has just named German director Christian Petzold its new president, will showcase her filmmaking through 13 movies.
“With a cinematic oeuvre characterized by quiet observations, poetic depth, and a special sense of change and landscape, Sinke has been one of the most distinctive voices in Dutch cinema since the 1970s,” the Viennale said. “Digna Sinke will be present in person at the...
Christopher McQuarrie Says He’s Cracked the Story for ‘Top Gun 3’: “It’s Already in the Bag”
The 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' director said that it's about "finding the right emotional balance" for the 'Top Gun' films.
Christopher McQuarrie gives an update on Top Gun 3.
McQuarrie, who was a writer-producer on 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, was a guest on the most recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, posted on Monday, where he told Josh Horowitz that he already has the ideas set for the third installment.
“Is Top Gun 3 harder to crack in some ways than Top Gun: Maverick?,” Horowitz asked, to which McQuarrie responded, saying, “No, it’s already in the bag.”
Horowitz followed up by asking, “You’ve cracked it?” And the Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning director said, “Yeah, I already know what it is.”
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PCH Finally Reopens Following Fire as Malibu Businesses Still Face a “911 Catastrophic Situation”
Nearly five months after the devastating wildfires that burned much of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu — as across town Altadena faced a similar fate — the famed Pacific Coast Highway is finally reopened to visitors.
It’s a welcome announcement this holiday weekend, following months in which Malibu’s beachside businesses that were lucky enough to remain standing were blocked from the majority of their customers. And many have been struggling for most of the year as a result.
“If you leave Malibu and you’re anywhere else, the world has moved on. There’s no awareness that, oh, the city is still in this 911 catastrophic situation,” says Malibu Farm owner Helene Henderson, acknowledging the Malibu Pier hotspot’s business has been down at least 50 percent — and more on the weekdays — since the January fires.
Because even though Malibu Canyon and Kanan Dume Road have remained open for...