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Captain America: Civil War – reviews roundup
5 hours ago
The first reviews are in for the Marvel blockbuster featuring a healthy crop of superheroes, and they’re overwhelmingly positive
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice may have earned critical derision, but the next new superhero movie of the season, Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, has impressed reviewers from the movie trade press. The film is released on 6 May.
It gets five stars from Total Film’s Jordan Farley, who called it a “damn-near-perfect popcorn crowd-pleaser”. He writes:
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- Guardian staff
'Aggressive' tax avoidance scheme based on Disney film rights to appeal to supreme court
9 hours ago
The Eclipse Film Partners 35 scheme helped members including Sir Alex Ferguson and Sven Goran Eriksson access £117m in tax relief
A film partnership accused by Hm Revenue & Customs of using industry exemptions to help its members avoid paying their fair share of tax will this week take its case to the supreme court.
The Eclipse Film Partners 35 scheme, whose 289 members included Sir Alex Ferguson and Sven Goran Eriksson, denies using distribution rights to Disney films Enchanted and Underdog to generate tax relief. It was today due to challenge Hmrc’s 2012 ruling at a tax tribunal that it constituted an aggressive avoidance scheme.
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- Ben Child
Robert De Niro: 'I'm not anti-vaccine, I want safe vaccines'
10 hours ago
The actor defended Vaxxed documentary, which he pulled from the Tribeca film festival, and reiterated desire to ‘know the truth’ about vaccination side effects
Robert De Niro has appeared on Us TV to defend documentary Vaxxed, which was pulled from this year’s Tribeca film festival after causing controversy.
Related: Vaxxed: an expert view on controversial film about vaccines and autism
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- Benjamin Lee
St Vincent to write and direct horror film about female anxiety
11 hours ago
The musician will create part of horror anthology Xx, alongside directors including Karyn Kusama and Jennifer Lynch
St Vincent is set to make her big screen debut directing a new horror film.
The singer, whose real name is Annie Clark, will write and direct one of the sections that will make up a horror anthology titled, Xx, billed as “Four Deadly Tales by Four Killer Women”. Her debut will sit alongside films from directors Jennifer Lynch, Karyn Kusama and Jovanka Vuckovic.
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- Benjamin Lee
Mark Rylance and Steven Spielberg announce fourth collaboration in three years
12 hours ago
Over the past two days, the actor and director have announced two new collaborations: sci-fi Ready Player One and the 19th-century story of Pope Pius IX and a Jewish boy raised under his protection
In 1987, Steven Spielberg offered Mark Rylance a part in his new movie, Empire of the Sun. The actor refused. Spielberg offered him a larger part. Rylance, after consulting the I Ching, again turned him down, opting for a season at the RSC.
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- Catherine Shoard
Marvel's Doctor Strange: Does Benedict Cumberbatch have you under his spell?
13 hours ago
Scott Derrickson’s film looks like it might be able to harness enough weird-power to magic up a whole new superhero dimension
The Marvel cinematic universe has come a long way since Robert Downey Jr first strapped on the suit in 2008’s Iron Man and set about offing cartoonish Afghan bad guys. The remarkable thing is how little audiences have blinked as the Disney-owned studio has introduced Norse gods, patriotic super-soldiers, multi-coloured extraterrestrials and even insect-sized crime fighters to the mix. And yet Doctor Strange, the first trailer for which has just hit the web, looks likely to take the comic-book film into its weirdest territory yet. If superhero movies were pop music, it’s like we’re back in the mid-60s and the Beatles have just discovered LSD.
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- Ben Child
A Scooby-dooby universe and Julian Borger on Eye in the Sky – the Dailies film podcast
16 hours ago
The Guardian film team’s round-up of Wednesday’s movie news
Your daily update of the latest news and reviews from the Guardian film team. Now showing: Cripes! Warner Brothers are planning a “cinematic universe” of Hanna-Barbara cartoons.
And the Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, joins us to talk about the real-world issues behind new drone thriller Eye in the Sky.
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- Presented by Henry Barnes with Benjamin Lee and Julian Borger and produced by Rowan Slaney
Florence Foster Jenkins review – Streep is note perfect as a deluded diva
20 hours ago
Stephen Frears’s enjoyable, sentimental biopic gives Streep a role to relish, while Hugh Grant provides a touching foil in a genuine paean to mediocrity
Perhaps she was a tragic figure, or a clinical case worthy of Oliver Sacks, or the incarnation of a dishonest middlebrow culture. But in the end, Stephen Frears’s enjoyable, sentimental movie turns this bizarre real-life figure into a version of Eddie the Eagle, swooping and crashing through New York’s music-loving high society in the 1940s. And as with Eddie, the question is … do we laugh with or laugh at? Which is the more honest response?
Related: Silver-screen underdogs: why cinema loves a loser
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- Peter Bradshaw
London Has Fallen: can city siege movies survive the age of terror?
21 hours ago
Watching landmarks being blown up used to be thrilling. But can we enjoy films like Bastille Day, Made in France and London Has Fallen in the same way after the Paris and Brussels attacks?
In London Has Fallen, the Italian prime minister is on the roof of one of Westminster Abbey’s towers, canoodling with a woman 30 years his junior. This Berlucsconian cliche is ostensibly in town, along with other world leaders, for the funeral of his British counterpart.
Related: London Has Fallen review – Team America without the jokes
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- Stuart Jeffries
Barbershop: The Next Cut review – return of Ice Cube, hair-styling hero
12 April 2016 5:00 PM, PDT
In the third part of this engaging trilogy, Ice Cube dispenses paternal wisdom while uniting a tough Chicago neighbourhood – helped by sassy Nicki Minaj
When Ice Cube released AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted few would have predicted that, two and a half decades later, he’d be the closest thing to Jimmy Stewart in 21st-century cinema. As Calvin Palmer, co-owner of Chicago’s top-notch locale for stylish ’dos and sagacious bon mots, Ice Cube is a caring father, crafty businessman and, he’ll come to realise, community linchpin. But his neighbourhood is quite different from the Bedford Falls where Stewart’s George Bailey lived in It’s a Wonderful Life. “The south side is no place to flex,” Palmer sighs to his wife Jennifer (Jazsmin Lewis), referring to their 14-year-old son Jalen (Michael Rainey Jr). All parents have their woes when the kids hit puberty. Parents in black America have struggles »
- Jordan Hoffman
China helps boost global movie earnings to record $38bn
12 April 2016 4:33 PM, PDT
Box-office takings rose 51% in the world’s most populous nation, helped by locally made films and Hollywood blockbusters
Cinemas reaped record earnings around the world last year – $38.3bn – fuelled by rocketing attendance in China and young people’s continued enthusiasm for a night at the movies, industry data has showed.
Related: Why, in 2016, are women still (mostly) silent film stars?
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- Agence France-Presse
Why, in 2016, are women still (mostly) silent film stars?
12 April 2016 3:07 PM, PDT
Study lays bare the fact that women are given far less dialogue than male actors – because it’s men who still get to tell the stories that form our cultural narratives
It’s rare to have proof that the less sexually desirable a woman is perceived to be, the less anyone cares what she has to say. And yet, Polygraph’s study of who is granted on-screen dialogue in more than 1,000 movies does exactly that: the percentage of dialogue allotted female characters waned after actors hit 31, dropped precipitously after they hit 42 and all but disappeared when they hit 65.
But when in 2014 80% of films had no women credited as writers, perhaps it’s to be expected that women overall had fewer lines and that the on-screen women the mostly male writers and directors thought audiences would like to hear are the youngest.
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- Megan Carpentier
Gary Oldman is wrong to say Spotlight didn't deserve an Oscar
12 April 2016 1:27 PM, PDT
The actor recently admitted to being befuddled by Spotlight’s triumph at the Oscars – but his critique is old-fashioned with a whiff of sour grapes
Gary Oldman is a cinema-goer’s dream and a publicist’s nightmare.
The revered actor, whose performances as the titular demon in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and as Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy stand out because of their singular strangeness, is still among the most exciting actors working today. His strength lies in his ability to make brazen choices and commit to them fully.
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- Nigel M Smith
Zootropolis attracts all creatures great and small at UK box office
12 April 2016 9:15 AM, PDT
The Huntsman: Winter’s War shoots to the top, but Disney’s animation – a hit with couples and families – is the real winner
The Huntsman: Winter’s War may claim bragging rights as the official No 1 movie in the comScore chart, but that’s only down to four days of previews boosting the fairytale adventure’s box office into what is in fact a seven-day opening “weekend”. That leaves Zootropolis as winner over the Friday-to-Sunday period, with £2.37m.
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- Charles Gant
The Jungle Book review – spectacular revival of Disney's family favourite
12 April 2016 6:53 AM, PDT
Hyperreal digital animation meets old-fashioned storytelling in this faithful remake, which loses the songs but brings new, ingenious twists on the original
What on earth is the point of remaking Walt Disney’s great and possibly greatest masterpiece, the glorious animated musical from 1967, based on Kipling’s tales, all about the “man cub” Mowgli, brought up by wolves in the Indian jungle – famously the last film to get Disney’s personal touch? A remake which furthermore leaves old-fashioned animation behind, departing for the live-action uncanny valley of hyperreal CGI, which heretically loses most of the songs and which also abandons the original’s final, unforgettably exotic glimpse of a real-life human girl?
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- Peter Bradshaw
The Jungle Book: the trailer – video
12 April 2016 4:20 AM, PDT
The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, brings Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 classic of the same name to life. The film follows man-cub Mowgli (Neel Sethi) as he flees for his life from Shere Khan (Idris Elba). Under the the guidance of Bagheera the panther (Ben Kingsley) and the joyful bear Baloo (Bill Murray), Mowgli begins a journey of self-realisation
The Jungle Book opens in the Us and UK on 15 April
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- Guardian Staff
Clooneys to attend a VIP fundraiser for Clinton – and Sanders fans are outraged
12 April 2016 4:00 AM, PDT
Silicon Valley is an engine for creativity and ‘obviously ridiculous amounts of wealth’, the host said – the kind of wealth that Sanders supporters plan to protest
Related: George Clooney interview: ‘Donald Trump is a xenophobic fascist’
The Silicon Valley investor hosting George and Amal Clooney at his home this week for a Hillary Clinton fundraiser said he’s unfazed by a protest planned by as many as 1,500 Bernie Sanders supporters with pots and pans at his gate.
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- Nellie Bowles in San Francisco
Female characters silenced and the Spielberg/Rylance connection - the Dailies Podcast
12 April 2016 3:52 AM, PDT
The Guardian film team’s roundup of Tuesday’s movie news
Your daily update of the latest news and reviews from the Guardian film team. Now showing: a new study has shown that women in film get less dialogue the older they get; plus why Steven Spielberg and Mark Rylance make a perfect partnership.
Follow us on Twitter (GuardianFilm, Henry, Ben, Catherine, Andrew and producer Rowan) and check out our Facebook page. Comment on the show below.
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- Presented by Catherine Shoard with Benjamin Lee and Produced by Rowan Slaney
What to see at the Tribeca film festival, from Tom Hanks to Taxi Driver
12 April 2016 3:00 AM, PDT
Following the pulling of the anti-vaccination film Vaxxed, the event faces more scrutiny than ever, but the robust lineup should go a long way to dampen the negative buzz
The Tribeca film festival launches its 15th edition on Wednesday in the wake of the biggest controversy the event has ever weathered, following the festival’s decision to program and then pull the anti-vaccination documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Controversy from its program.
Co-founder Robert De Niro, who allegedly initially fought to have it included, is no doubt hoping this year’s slate of films and panels will overshadow the Vaxxed fallout. Given the robust lineup, the chances appear to be in his favor.
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- Nigel M Smith
Daisy Ridley: don't assume Jyn Erso is Rey's mother in Star Wars: Rogue One
12 April 2016 2:47 AM, PDT
Young British actor says fans should take nothing for granted with regard to the parentage or Jedi pedigree of her character Rey from The Force Awakens
Daisy Ridley, star of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has poured scorn on a fan theory that Jyn Erso the female lead character in forthcoming spin-off Rogue One, could be the mother of her own character, Rey.
Rogue One, which hits cinemas worldwide in December, is set three decades prior to the events of The Force Awakens. Erso, played by Felicity Jones, has been revealed in the teaser trailer as a battling, maverick space scoundrel, perhaps in the mould of Han Solo, who is recruited by the Rebel Alliance to help steal the plans for the first Death Star.
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- Ben Child
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