Opus director Mark Anthony Green explores our obsession with fame
The new horror film from A24 looks at celebrity culture from the perspective of a journalist
In Mark Anthony Green's debut feature, Opu s, a young journalist (Ayo Edebiri) is invited to the home of a reclusive pop icon (John Malkovich) who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. The first-time director drew on his own experience as a former GQ editor who covered celebrity and style for 13 years. Green joins Tom Power to talk about the film and how it explores the illusion of celebrity culture from the perspective of a journalist.
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Toronto Sun
2 days ago
- Toronto Sun
REVIEW: ‘Materialists' gives the rom-com a new look, through a gimlet-eyed lens
Published Jun 13, 2025 • 4 minute read Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans in "Materialists." Photo by Atsushi Nishijima / A24 Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. When you have such attractive players as Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans looking for love against the gleaming backdrop of modern-day New York – well, you've entered rom-com heaven, right? This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Not exactly. 'Materialists,' Celine Song's sophomore effort after her quietly breathtaking 2023 debut, 'Past Lives,' winds up turning romance on its head to explore some of its unseemliest unspoken truths. Maybe 'Materialists' marks the emergence of a new genre: the rom-con, not in the sense that it's against the vicarious pleasures of flirting, seduction and finally finding true love, but that it's painfully aware of the coldhearted calculation that so often lies beneath. Johnson plays Lucy, a Manhattan matchmaker who works for a bespoke dating service called Adore – a concierge service for people who realize that to meet The One, they'll have to get off their apps and into the real world. Lucy has nine marriages to her credit, making her the office GOAT; but true to this story's Austen-meets-the-algorithm milieu, she has reconciled herself to eternal singledom. At the wedding of her most recent satisfied client, Lucy meets a handsome financier named Harry (Pascal), a guy who is so tall, good-looking and rich, rich, rich that he's a matchmaker's unicorn. He checks all the boxes. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. While Lucy is busy flipping through her mental Rolodex to find Harry a suitable mate, he makes it known that he only has eyes for her; meanwhile, a cater-waiter at the reception turns out to be an old flame of Lucy's: John (Evans), a wannabe actor who is tall, good-looking and poor, poor, poor. Can this marriage be saved? And which marriage, exactly, are we rooting for? Song clearly has a lot on her mind in 'Materialists,' which often plays as a meta-critique of such consumerist fantasies as 'Sex and the City.' At the aforementioned wedding, Lucy's client suffers a case of pre-altar jitters, which Lucy assuages by reminding her why she's marrying her future husband. Yes, he's wealthy and promises a lifetime of material security, but the psychic currency in the transaction is profound and even defensible: 'He makes you feel valued,' Lucy tells her simply. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. That's an astute point, and exemplifies the kind of nuance Song seeks to bring to 'Materialists,' which beneath the glittering surface wrestles with the grubby realities of money, social status, looks-ism and outright cruelty. (One of Lucy's male clients blithely insists that 30 is a 'dealbreaker' when it comes to age, 20 when it comes to body-mass index.) Grazing in a field similar to the ones plowed by Ruben Ostlund's scorching 2022 satire 'Triangle of Sadness,' as well as the razor-sharp relationship dramas of Nicole Holofcener, Song isn't interested in demonizing the most superficial checklists people bring to their dating lives as much as understanding the primal needs and aspirations those lists represent. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'Materialists' sets out to confront taboos like commodification, class and self-deception. But in dismantling the classic wish-fulfillment fantasy, it indulges in some of it, too: There's something deliciously meta about Johnson – whose breakout role was in the swoony, S-and-M-adjacent 'Fifty Shades of Grey' – waking up in yet another bed of an impossibly prosperous, handsome man. By now, though, the onetime ingenue has become a producer in her own right, including of a perceptive documentary about the sex researcher Shere Hite, and Johnson brings all of that intelligence to a canny and sensitive performance. (Pascal and Evans are similarly appealing, bringing the right amount of self-doubt and spiky anger to their respective characters.) This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Perhaps it's inevitable that, like the flawed people at its centre, 'Materialists' doesn't check every box: Too often, Song's protagonists sound like they're stand-ins for the director rather than voicing fully realized characters. 'Past Lives' wasn't afraid of negative space – between people, and the words they say – but what felt delicately naturalistic in that film too often feels forced and rhythmically awkward when the narrative goes from low-key to no-key. 'Materialists' is being marketed as a pretty, escapist romp when it's anything but: A jarring tonal shift midway through the movie introduces an even grimmer note by reminding viewers of the serious perils of dating culture. That zag leads to some reckonings – moral, ethical, romantic, narrative – that can't help but feel predictable and contrived. Still, at its most commendable, 'Materialists' lends them the tarnished glow of humanity at its most imperfectly ragged. 'Only connect,' E.M. Forster told us. The struggle continues. And through Song's distinctive lens, it looks ruthless, a little bit funny and all too real. – – – Three stars. Rated R. At theatres. Contains profanity and brief sexual material. 109 minutes. Rating guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. World World Canada Celebrity Toronto & GTA
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘You cannot game it': Celine Song unpacks algorithm-era love with ‘The Materialists'
For Celine Song, some things in life can't be strategized; they must play out on their own terms. The Korean-Canadian filmmaker says 'The Materialists,' the star-studded follow-up to her Oscar-nominated debut 'Past Lives,' wasn't the product of a calculated career move. She'd already begun writing it before her first film even hit theatres. 'I wish I could game it like, 'Oh man, I made 'Past Lives,' what's my next move?'' Song says on a virtual call from her New York home. But the writer-director says the new A24 rom-com was born out of restless energy while waiting for 'Past Lives' to premiere at Sundance in 2023. 'There was a funny six-month period where I was going a little bit crazy. I thought, 'I actually need to use this time to do something productive with my life' because I was just waiting for my movie to come out. So I wrote this thinking about the time that I was a matchmaker.' In her early 20s, while trying to make it as a playwright in New York, Song worked at a matchmaking agency to pay the bills. What started as a side gig became an unexpected window into the spreadsheet logic of modern love. 'When you're talking about dating and who you're looking for as your partner, the list is about height, weight, income, job — all the things you can imagine that are in the specs,' says Song. 'And then you realize none of those things actually have anything to do with what it's like to be in love. I wish it did so that you could game it like you game everything else, but the truth is you cannot game it. Love is just going to be something that happens to you. It's as ancient and holy as it always has been.' In 'The Materialists,' out Friday, Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a matchmaker catering to wealthy New Yorkers with hyper-specific criteria. When she meets Pedro Pascal's Harry, a rich, charming private equity manager, she sees a dream match — for someone else. But Harry sets his sights on Lucy, wining and dining her with extravagant ease. Things get complicated further when her ex, Chris Evans' John, a struggling actor who still understands her deeply, reenters the picture. Song says the film is partly a commentary on today's swipe-driven approach to dating. 'It's scary!' she exclaims about dating apps. 'It's getting more gamified by the day.' Song sees herself as an old-school romantic. She explains 'The Materialists' explores the tension between checkbox compatibility and that deeper, inexplicable feeling that says, 'I think this is a person that I want to grow old with.' 'Love is the one great mystery of human life that we cannot solve, and we cannot turn it into an algorithm no matter how hard we try.' Song was born in South Korea and moved to Markham, Ont., with her family when she was 12. She relocated to New York in 2011 to pursue an MFA in playwriting, and says she was struck by the city's straight-shooting dating scene. 'The culture of New York City dating is just different than Canada's. And I loved it. It is very blunt and it's not very polite,' she says. Turns out that no-filter attitude was right up her alley. 'I was not polite and it got me into a lot of trouble when I was in Canada,' she laughs, noting she had a propensity for swearing. 'Everybody was like, 'You should watch your language.'' In New York, she not only found the freedom to curse — she also found her husband, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, whom she met at 24. She recalls feeling like an outlier among her career-focused circle of friends in the city. 'I was the youngest person in my friend group to get married. And it was years before the second wedding. Most of my friends were having their first child approaching 40,' says Song, now 36. 'In New York, because of how hard it is to pay rent here, I think it is just not tenable to have a casual relationship with your work. It has to be that your work is your life.… Lucy is so obsessed with her work, too, which I think is relatable for so many working people.' Beyond depicting a hustle-happy bachelorette in her mid-30s, Song says 'The Materialists' reflects real life by placing financial considerations at the heart of modern dating. Lucy speaks directly about being money-conscious. 'I feel like so much media is so polite about money, so it was really important to me that in the movie we know what everybody makes, and what kind of place they own,' she says. 'Those numbers are there so that we can talk in the way that modern people actually talk.' Still, despite the film's title, Song views the materialistic approach to love as ultimately 'flawed.' 'There's no amount of money you can throw at it. It's an impossible situation in a way. The only thing that works is the same thing that works in religion, which is it's got to be a leap of faith,' she says. 'You have to jump every day. And it is just a completely beautiful and very brave thing that a person can do.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2025.
CTV News
01-06-2025
- CTV News
‘Lilo & Stitch' passes ‘Sinners' to become 2nd highest grossing film of 2025
This image shows the character Stitch in a still from the film "Lilo & Stitch." (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures via AP) 'Lilo & Stich' and 'Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning' dominated the box office charts again after fueling a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend. Theaters in the U.S. and Canada had several new films to offer this weekend as well, including Sony's family friendly 'Karate Kid: Legends' and the A24 horror movie 'Bring Her Back.' According to studio estimates Sunday, it added up to a robust $145 million post-holiday weekend that's up over 115 per cent from the same timeframe last year. Disney's live-action hybrid 'Lilo & Stitch' took first place again with $63 million from 4,410 locations in North America. It was enough to pass 'Sinners' to become the second-highest grossing movie of the year with $280.1 million in domestic ticket sales. Globally, it's running total is $610.8 million. 'Sinners,' meanwhile, is still going strong in its seventh weekend with another $5.2 million, bumping it to $267.1 million domestically and $350.1 million globally. The eighth 'Mission: Impossible' movie also repeated in second place, with $27.3 million from 3,861 locations. As with 'Lilo & Stitch,' that's down 57% from its opening. With $122.6 million in domestic tickets sold, it's performing in line with the two previous installments. But with a reported production budget of $400 million, profitability is a ways off. Internationally, it added $76.1 million (including $25.2 million from China where it just opened), bringing its global total to $353.8 million. Leading the newcomers was Sony's 'Karate Kid: Legends,' with an estimated $21 million from 3,809 locations. The movie brings Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio together to train a new kid, the kung fu prodigy Li Fong ( Ben Wang ). Chan starred in a 2010 reboot of the 1984 original, while Macchio has found a new generation of fans in the series 'Cobra Kai,' which just concluded a six-season run. Reviews might have been mixed, but opening weekend audiences gave the PG-13 rated film a strong A- CinemaScore and 4.5 stars on PostTrak. It also only cost a reported $45 million to produce and has several weeks until a new family-friendly film arrives. Fourth place went 'Final Destination: Bloodlines,' which earned $10.8 million in its third weekend. The movie is the highest-grossing in the franchise, not accounting for inflation, with $229.3 million globally. The weekend's other big newcomer, 'Bring Her Back' rounded out the top five with $7.1 million from 2,449 screens. Starring Sally Hawkins as a foster mother with some disturbing plans, the film is the sophomore feature of twin filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou, who made the 2023 horror breakout 'Talk to Me.' It earned a rare-for-horror B+ CinemaScore and is essentially the only new film in the genre until '28 Years Later' opens on June 20. A new Wes Anderson movie, 'The Phoenician Scheme,' also debuted in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, where it made $270,000. It expands nationwide next weekend. The summer box office forecast remains promising, though there's a long way to go to get to the $4 billion target (a pre-pandemic norm that only the 'Barbenheimer' summer has surpassed). The month of May is expected to close out with $973 million – up 75 per cent from May 2024, according to data from Comscore. Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press
