Latest news with #SeanBaker
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How to Watch the 2025 Cannes Awards Ceremony Live Stream
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival came at precarious moment in the history of cinema, yet still managed to revel in the splendors this art form can provide. While the annual international event may be coming to a close, it leaves behind a bevy of gems that will continue to be discussed throughout the year and may even land on the Oscars stage in 2026, as was the case with Sean Baker's 2024 Palme d'Or winner, 'Anora.' But before all that, there still remains the important act of closing out the festivities with the ever-important awards ceremony. Predicting the Palme d'Or recipient has become a cherished pastime for fans and critics alike, but as is the case every year, the final decision rests in the hands of the Main Competition jury. This year it's led by French actress and current European Film Academy president Juliette Binoche, and also includes Halle Berry, Dieudo Hamadi, Hong Sang-soo, Payal Kapadia, Carlos Reygadas, Alba Rohrwacher, Leïla Slimani, and Jeremy Strong. Films featured in the Un Certain Regard section, such as Scarlett Johansson's 'Eleanor the Great' and Harry Lighton's 'Pillion,' will be judged by jury president Molly Manning Walker, as well as Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Louise Courvoisier, Vanja Kaluđerčić, and Roberto Minervini. More from IndieWire 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' Wins Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes 2025 All 8 'Mission: Impossible' Movies, Ranked Worst to Best Many films are in contention for the Palme this year, but distributor Neon seems to be hedging its bets for what could be its sixth win in a row. During the festival, it acquired three features in addition to the four it bought before this year's fest: Kleber Mendonça Filho's historical thriller 'The Secret Agent,' Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi's nail-biter 'It Was Just an Accident,' and Oliver Laxe's rave tragedy 'Sirât.' Neon acquired the North American distribution rights to Julia Ducarneau's body horror 'Alpha' and Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value' at last year's festival before either went into production. After the successful rollout of 'The Substance' last year and during this year's awards race, Mubi is also jumping into the Palme d'Or fray, with acquisitions of Mascha Schilinski's generational epic 'Sound of Falling' and Lynne Ramsay's maternal drama 'Die My Love.' Coming into the festival, the distributor had already purchased Kelly Reichardt's historical heist film 'The Mastermind' and Oliver Hermanus' 20th Century romance 'A History of Sound,' both of which premiered in competition. The award ceremony will begin Saturday, May 24, at 6:45pm Central European Summer Time (CEST), which translates to 12:45pm ET or 9:45am PT in the United States. You can follow along (in French) via Brut's YouTube channel. Or in English on its Facebook page. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Left-Handed Girl' Review: Producer/Co-Writer Sean Baker's First Post-Oscar Film Follows Taiwanese Family's Secrets & Lies
What do you do after a record-setting haul of four individual Oscars including Best Picture for Anora? For Sean Baker, it is returning to his filmmaking roots and the Cannes Film Festival, where he also took the 2024 Palme d'Or for Anora. In this case he isn't directing, instead leaving that to longtime collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou, who worked as a producer with him on earlier films including Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. The pair also co-directed a film called Take Out 21 years ago, and it has taken that long for Shih-Ching to take the reins of a second film, co-writing the script for Left-Handed Girl with Baker, who also serves as a producer and sole film editor. It premiered today in Cannes as part of Critics' Week. Set in a bustling Taiwanese night market that also seems like a Melrose Place-style food court, the film is focused almost entirely on its female characters: mother Sho-Fen (Janel Tsai), older teen daughter I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma), and the youngest child I-Jing (an adorable Nina Ye). Yes there are men here, most notably co-worker Johnny (Brando Hiang), who figure into the action, as well as a grandfather who warns left-handed I-Jing to never use what he terms as 'the devil's hand.' This was the most frightening part for me as I am completely left-handed and had to type this review with my right out of fear. More from Deadline Cannes Film Festival 2025 in Photos: Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, 'Sound Of Falling' & 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' Premieres 'Left-Handed Girl' Clip: Sean Baker Produced & Edited Drama By Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou Debuts In Cannes 'The Little Sister' Review: Nadia Melliti Makes A Striking Debut In Hafsia Herzi's Seductive Coming-Out Story - Cannes Film Festival RELATED: Full List Of Cannes Palme d'Or Winners Through The Years: Photo Gallery All that aside, the real center of it all is this family of three generations of females, their quest to make it in the city of Taipei after living in the countryside and the well-hidden secrets and lies permeating this clan where everyone seems to be hiding something — except maybe young I-Jing, who is most content to traverse the expansive night market or play with her newfound pet meerkat (animal lovers, beware the fate of this particular cast member). Returning to her own home of Taiwan, filmmaker Shih-Ching is content to create a universally recognizable family unit here with Sho-Fen trying to make it on her own while bringing up the ever-independent I-Ann, who is full of wanderlust and an eye for the boys, while spending much of her time saddled with the responsibility of looking after little sister I-Jing. The film darts back and forth between the stories and struggles of this family who live in a society clearly stressing morals and keeping up proper appearances. The pace is leisurely and atmospheric, and we get to know just who they are. Or so we think, until the film takes a real left-handed turn itself at the 60th birthday celebration of the family matriarch. To put it kindly, all hell breaks loose as those closely-kept secrets start exploding into the open. RELATED: Cannes Film Festival 2025 In Photos: Awards Ceremony, Movie Premieres, Parties & More It is at this point that the character-driven tale moves heavily into melodrama territory — a Taiwanese soap opera, as it were — and it is also here that Shih-Ching shows strong command of storytelling and shifting tones with high dramatics that could careen out of control but never do, instead keeping us on the edge of our seats. Baker's tight editing really comes into play here and proves worthy of Douglas Sirk at his height. Ultimately what holds it all together are the strong performances all around. These fine actresses make it entirely watchable. Producers are Shih-Ching, Baker, Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie and Alice Labadie. Title: Left-Handed GirlFestival: Cannes (Critics' Week)Sales agent: Le PacteDirector: Shih-Ching TsouScreenwriters: Shih-Ching-Tsou and Sean BakerCast: Janel Tsai, Shih-Yuan Ma, Nina Ye, Brando HuangRunning time: 1 hr 49 min RELATED: Oscars: Every Best Picture Winner Back To The Beginning In 1929 Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far
National Observer
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Observer
MOVIES: The Weeknd parks his stage name and turns to film acting. Plus two other debuts and a classic
The Cannes Film Festival is on and we'll be getting reviews and more reviews about films that won't be here for quite a while. But we'll get a good indication of what will come. Like Left-Handed Girl for instance made by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. They first collaborated 20 years ago but this time he's not the director, she is. Baker won big at the Oscars this year, so I'm looking forward to this film. Tom Cruise's latest Mission Impossible is there too. We'll get it here next week. And there's some progress at Cannes. Seven women directors have films in the main competition this year. That number ties one year and beats all the rest in the festival's 78 year history. And for us this week, these are new ... Hurry Up Tomorrow: 3 stars Final Destination Bloodlines: 3 ½ The Unrestricted War: 2 Killer of Sheep: 4 ½ HURRY UP TOMORROW: The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, is one of the world's top music stars ($75 million in record sales, Grammy awards, etc.) and now a movie star. For his ardent fans, for sure. For people not familiar with his music or his life story, maybe not so much. This film draws on both. There are songs from a new album and a story of a singer losing his voice, an experience he says he has had. Since he co-wrote the story you have to ask how much else is true. As the character he plays (or is) in the film, he is forced to transform, admit past mistakes in how he treated people, especially a woman who we only hear on the telephone saying he ruined her life. She says he never connected. He does connect with a young fan (Jenna Ortega) after making eye contact in a huge concert performance and meeting her when she sneaks backstage. She may be a symbolic figure only, a figment of his need to reform, but she does lecture him and even ties him to a bed until he changes. She may represent the hold he feels the fans have over him, which his manager (Barry Keoghan) discounts. 'They need you,' he says. 'You make them travel at a different level.' The film mulls over the concerns of an artist with a huge following and may be a personal statement by Testfaye. That makes it more than a vanity project, of which it does bear some signs. With its symbolism and dreamy sequences, the film, directed by Trey Edward Shults, has an art-film look and mood. At times also, a slow pace. Not your usual movie about a popular entertainer. Testfaye, now living in Los Angeles as much as Toronto, is pretty convincing as an actor, but then he's playing himself. Ortega is the life of this film. (In theaters) 3 out of 5 FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES: This is predicted to be the biggest movie this weekend and another hit for Warner Brothers, adding to their other current hits Sinners and The Minecraft Movie. Remarkable that, considering that this is the 6 th entry in this series and that the last one came out 14 years ago. But sudden-death movies are back, this one with a more realistic concept than the common slasher movie. There's not one killer. It's death itself. It arrives suddenly when you're least expecting it. A massive memorial collection of flowers at a street corner in Vancouver attests to that by reminding of one recent tragedy there. Ironically the film was also made in Vancouver and directed by two Americans who now live there: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. Bloodlines has a double meaning here: not only the grisly visions of the deaths that happen, like that crushed head late in the film, but also the family connections in the story. They help make this film resonate more than usual; you get to care about some of these people. They include a girl having nightmares and needing to find answers from her grandmother. That's Iris (played by Gabrielle Rose, when old, and Brec Bassinger, when as a young woman she was taken to the grand opening of a restaurant high up a space-needle like tower. She had a premonition about a catastrophe and that helped save lives. Death was cheated and years later was intent on getting her, her relatives and everybody else who survived that night. Cue the fatalities that happen one by one, imaginatively staged, often part of a progression of little events, some, as in the original restaurant catastrophe, triggered by a single penny. They're engaging to watch develop, absurd at times and usually played for laughs. That's a large part of the attraction of these films—for some people. Take that as a content advisory. (In many theaters) 3 ½ out of 5. THE UNRESTRICTED WAR: There are bits of actual history woven into this thriller which says it is fiction inspired by actual events. Remember the Chinese executive arrested by Canada on orders of the US? Or the rumors of Chinese interference in a Winnipeg laboratory? And allegations that China created the COVID-19 virus? They're all, for real or by allusion, in this lengthy thriller directed by Yan Ma in Markham and Hamilton Ontario and partially funded by The Epoch Times the China-hating, Falung Gong praising, newspaper. The film has a loathsome view of the Chinese Communist Party and its agents. Deserved maybe, but we haven't seen it this strong in years. As one character says: 'There is no privacy in China when the government is involved, which is pretty well all the time.' Agents in Beijing burst into the lab of a Canadian virologist (Dylan Bruce) and arrest him and his wife. Leaflets and conversations caught on monitors point to these horrors: Chinese labs had messed up creating a new virus and instead of cremating the animals they tested them on, sold them as food. That's an extreme allegation and was covered up to prevent 'unnecessary panic.' Three officials (played by Uni Park, Russell Yuen and Terry Chen) offer the Canadian a way out of his detention. He's to go to his old lab in Winnipeg and bring back a sample of a new virus created there. 'Why waste a good pandemic, right General?' is a line we hear later. You can speculate on what the film is alleging but its logic escapes me. (In theaters) 2 out of 5 KILLER OF SHEEP: This milestone of American filmmaking is back, finally. It was made in 1975 but has hardly been seen outside of film festivals and the Library of Congress which called it a national treasure and "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A critics' group put it on its 100 Essential Films list. Now it's been restored to modern 4K standards; the sound too, the music rights paid for several recordings heard on the soundtrack and is in theaters interested in motion picture history. Like the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, the ByTowne in Ottawa and The Cinematheque in Vancouver. Charles Burnett made it in 16-millimeter as a thesis for a film course. Now it's considered a masterpiece. That's largely because it depicts real life in a poor Black neighborhood in Los Angeles with empathy, understanding and compassion. The 'killer' is Stan who works in an abattoir slaughtering sheep. He hates the work, has done it all his life but has nothing. Two buddies try to recruit him for some unspecified crime and when his wife intercedes one justifies like this: 'That's the way Nature is. An animal has its teeth. Man has his fist.' People around him are presented respectfully. A man says he 'ain't poor'. He donates to the Salvation Army. Boys play in the street, occasionally fight. A couple dance to a record. A man holds a teacup to his cheek because it feels like a woman making love. Details add up to a vibrant portrait of a society that back then wasn't given much attention in the movies. It's still an engaging watch, and with a song list from Paul Robeson to Dinah Washington and Elmore James, to hear. 4 ½ out of 5
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brazil's Trailblazing Film-TV Org Spcine Turns 10
Founded in 2015, film-TV body Spcine began as São Paulo's film commission but has grown into a driving force in Brazil's film and television industry. Beyond supporting productions, it has launched a citywide theater circuit, a public streaming platform, and, in 2021, Brazil's first local production incentive. It also supports training programs focused on diversity and inclusion and gathers data via its Audiovisual Observatory. During the pandemic and amid deep federal cuts to film funding under former president Jair Bolsonaro, Spcine became a pillar of industry resilience—and a powerful symbol of Brazil's commitment to cultural diversity. More from Variety 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou's Solo Debut Pulses Like Taipei After Dark Young Italian Filmmakers Come to the Fore at Cannes' Un Certain Regard Canadian Cinema Pushes Its Evolution With Arthouse Pics, Auteurs, Indigenous Filmmakers and Animated Offerings at Cannes 'Spcine's journey can be understood in phases, each marked by important milestones,' says Spcine CEO Lyara Oliveira. 'The initial stage was focused on establishing foundational structures that remain central to our mission today — such as the creation of the São Paulo Film Commission, the Spcine Circuit and our first public funding initiatives. 'The following phase saw consolidation and growth. We expanded our public policies significantly, launching training programs and implementing dedicated initiatives for the gaming sector,' she said, adding: 'We also faced a challenging period, marked by institutional tensions and the COVID-19 pandemic, which required us to adapt and scale back. Nevertheless, we maintained operations and continued delivering on our public policy commitments to the sector.' Surviving the Bolsonaro years exacted even more demands from the organization. Fortunately, as a public company with its own administration, it had more resource control and is insulated from political instability, unlike traditional agencies, said Oliveira. 'Since Spcine is a municipal entity, federal-level changes often have a milder impact. Additionally, São Paulo's environment favors business continuity and development. The city historically values entrepreneurship, legal and administrative stability and fosters conditions for businesses to thrive — regardless of political shifts,' she stressed. Totó Parente, secretary of culture of the City of São Paulo, notes that thecity is already 'the largest audiovisual production hub in the SouthernHemisphere.' 'The sector is strategic not only for its creative and cultural relevance but also for its economic power. It generates over 57,000 jobs and accounts for 22.3% of Brazil's audiovisual GDP, with an estimated direct impact of $1.2 billion and total transactions surpassing $1.6 billion. Film and TV are key drivers of innovation, employment and international projection for the city,' Parente says. The São Paulo City Hall's investment in the audiovisual sector has grown significantly, particularly through Spcine, he added, pointing to its various initiatives that include Brazil's first cash rebate program for local and foreign productions, which reimburses up to 30% of local expenses. 'Across two editions, the city invested around $8.65 million, generating a return of over $15 million in production expenditures — a clear sign of the sector's economic potential,' he points out. Now in its second decade, Spcine seeks to expand global partnerships, promote sustainable production, boost Latin American collaboration and grow its innovation and training initiatives, says Parente. 'A key goal is to consolidate São Paulo's position not just as the largest audiovisual hub in the Southern Hemisphere, but as a global model for inclusive and forward-looking public policy in the creative economy,' he adds. Political and sector coordination remains the key challenge of Spcine, says Oliveira. 'Our aim is to sustain and expand these networks, secure funding to keep supporting our incentive programs, and implement new initiatives aligned with the sector's current realities,' she says. 'We recognize that audiovisual is a constantly evolving field, with new business models and technologies emerging regularly. That's why we stay alert to these developments, striving to create responsive, forward-thinking public policies.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Logging Trucks, Swimming Pools, and Bathtubs, Oh My! We Fact-Checked Our Favorite ‘Final Destination' Deaths
Few contemporary movies have left audiences with images quite as visceral as the one that opens 'Final Destination 2,' one that has been making drivers avoid logging trucks on the freeway since 2003. The franchise, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year ahead of the latest installment, this week's 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' is also responsible for such indelible scenes as 1. becoming a bag of bones during a gymnastics routine ('Final Destination 5'), 2. being liquefied by a swimming pool drain pump ('The Final Destination'), 3. and reinforcing all manner of phobias about planes ('Final Destination'), 4. suspension bridges ('Final Destination 5'), 5. and rollercoasters ('Final Destination 3'). 'Bloodlines' doesn't disappoint in this arena (though several of its most spectacular kills are bafflingly spoiled in its trailers), with a particularly gnarly scene involving an MRI machine. More from IndieWire 'Dossier 137' Review: Léa Drucker Carries an Ambling Police Procedural About Institutional Corruption 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Edits and Co-Writes 'Tangerine' Producer Shih-Ching Tsou's Kaleidoscopic Solo Directing Debut The series banks on the premise that Death is a supernatural force coming for us all and we cannot mess with the order of it. But, said J.J. Makaro, stunt coordinator on the first, third, and fifth films, that doesn't mean that the creators and craftspeople behind the films ever wanted to disobey the hard-and-fast laws of physics. 'I was lucky to do the first one in the franchise, because we came up with what rules to make and the logic we would follow,' he told IndieWire during a recent interview. 'Everything had to happen properly in the physical world. Water couldn't defy gravity, or if a rope was to come loose, it had to do something that would actually happen physically. … We were grounded, physically, [in] how things should move.' That said, they weren't exactly doing physical calculations on set. 'It was all trial and error. We came up with all the different processes for a death to work, then tested them to see what would physically happen in each of these situations,' he said. 'There wasn't a lot of math involved. In retrospect, you can calculate it.' And that's exactly what we did. IndieWire spoke to Thomas Plunkett, PhD candidate in astrophysics at the University of Tasmania, Australia, who confirmed that, unfortunately for those aforementioned phobias, these are all plausible ways to die. We picked our favorite kills from each of the first five entries, along with added commentary from some of the crew who worked behind the scenes to ensure that these graphic deaths didn't actually kill anyone. The scene that has stuck with me after all these years is Tod's (Chad Donella) clothesline strangulation in the bathroom, perhaps because it's one of the franchise's more understated deaths, and one that could easily occur in the slippery location. 'It was all about trying to make it practical and believable. We weren't trying to make something spectacular out of the action. It [spoke] for itself,' Makaro said. 'The physics behind it is that, when you have an object that decelerates really quickly, like when Tod has slipped over and gets caught in the wire, rapidly coming to a stop, there's a big force being applied to his neck and vertebrae,' said Plunkett. 'Depending on how big that drop is and how quickly you come to a stop, you can sever the spinal cord.' One might posit that Tod should be able to stand up to reduce the force of the cord on his neck, however the tub is wet from a previous shower, not to mention the presence of soap and product residue, preventing his bare feet from gaining purchase. 'The way I would explain the wire going around the neck is that you have to conserve momentum,' Plunkett continued. 'Momentum is the mass of an object by its velocity, and there's something called angular momentum, which is a rotational version. When that wire is coming off and he has the end bit wrapping around, that's the wire trying to conserve its energy as it spins around.' There's also the question of the height of the clothesline. Unless you're really tall, most tend to be above head height. In 'Final Destination,' this is where camera angles play a part. Notice how Tod interacting with the clothesline is always shot from below, allowing it to be positioned at a height that would allow the stunt person to 'fall' onto it at neck height, as confirmed to IndieWire by Makaro. You didn't think we were going to do a physics breakdown of 'Final Destination' and not talk about the logging scene, did you? 'Whilst the logs would initially travel forward after falling from the truck as they are at that point moving at the same speed as the truck, they would slow down fairly quickly from friction with the road which I expect to be quite high due to the wood being very brittle on the surface,' said Plunkett. The police car being the first victim is likely because it's traveling at the same speed forward, while the logs have slowed down. 'This is a concept called 'relative motion', which makes it appear like the log is traveling backwards relative to the police car,' he added. Where reality and movie magic diverge, though, is in the nature of the car accidents, specifically the explosions. 'You need vaporized fuel and a bunch of oxygen, but when you're in a crash you probably sever your fuel lines and the fuel is still a liquid. It's more likely to catch on fire,' he said. There's also the matter of how long it takes everyone to stop. Granted, it's a wet road — owing to production designer Michael S. Bolton needing to soak down the tarmac to prevent skid marks, he told IndieWire — but it seems as though everyone's brakes are failing. 'For a dry road at a speed of 62 miles per hour, the average stopping distance — distance traveled from the time when noticing and applying breaks to coming to a stop — is 321.5 feet. However, when conditions are icy or wet, this can increase to greater than 393.7 feet,' said Plunkett. We could have focused on some of the more spectacular death scenes in 'Final Destination 3,' such as the roller coaster, the train crash, or even the tanning beds, but Erin's (Alexz Johnson) death by nail gun in the hardware store is 'simple, clean, very effective and very scary,' according to Makaro, who said they loaded up the scene with a lot of 'eye candy' that would swerve the viewer from picking who was really next on Death's list until the very last moment. There's a reason why construction workers wear hardhats and thick gloves and boots around nail guns: 'the typical human bone can withstand roughly 2,000 – 4,000 newtons of force before breaking. For a typical nail gun, we have a pressure of roughly 69,0000 newtons per square meter in the compressor. This can result in nails being projected at velocities of around 100 – 150 miles per second,' said Plunkett. The skull is much thinner than bones in other parts of the body, so it shouldn't take much force for the nail gun to puncture it. But could the nails travel through the back and front of Erin's skull and impale her hand, which she reflexively if futilely raises to protect her face? 'Nail guns [could] easily puncture through the skull and, depending on the exact pressure in the compressor, could travel through the brain and hand,' said Plunkett. There's also a reason why nail guns have two safety mechanisms in place, at the front where the nail comes out and at the trigger, where the user applies pressure. Both have to be engaged at the same time in order for the nail to come out. So how would Erin get shot with the nail gun if there was no pressure on the trigger? Makaro said there's a well-known, if dangerous practice on construction sites of workers securing down the trigger so that they can quickly and easily lay down a large number of nails. 'But that's a piece of exposition that gets in the way,' he said. 'We didn't justify the trigger being pulled on camera, we had justified it ourselves that it could happen.' I'm not going to mince words, unlike Hunt's (Nick Zano) insides, which become mincemeat when they are sucked out through his anus via a swimming pool drain pipe, splattering unsuspecting swimmers with his viscera, amongst other things: this has happened! 'Maybe not completely liquefying, but there have been documented cases of people having their intestines pulled out,' said Plunkett. 'The pump is sucking out the air and other things, so it's creating a region of low pressure, and then you've got the pool itself and the human body, which are two places of high pressure, they're going to flow to that area of low pressure. If there's enough of a pressure difference between the two, you can have intestines and other things sucked out.' Suspension bridges like Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, which was used for this scene, work by utilizing a large number of wires, all connecting to a metal membrane that supports the weight of the bridge by distributing it across those same wires. 'When an engineer makes that kind of bridge, they're going to put redundancies in place, so if there are one or two that snap incidentally, the rest of the weight will be redistributed across the remaining wires and tension,' said Plunkett. The bridge's particular predicament in 'Final Destination 5' is, in many ways, a comedy of errors, with a lot of elements, all failing at once (thanks, Death!). Two elements that Plunkett pointed out as being physically questionable are Isaac (P.J. Byrne) falling fast from the bathroom at the back of the bus to press up against the front windshield while the vehicle was already in freefall (Plunkett deduced that they'd be traveling at roughly the same rate), and Olivia (Jacquline MacInnes Wood) being crushed by the car falling on her in the water (she'd already be dead by the impact of the 200-foot fall, according to Plunkett). Makaro countered that, because the water was in motion, it would cushion her fall, which Plunkett acknowledged, though he stands by his calculation. As we approach the sixth installment in one of modern horror's most enduring franchises, what tends to stays with audiences the most is that we're all just one wrong turn/misstep/unheeded warning away from Death's design coming for us. No, it might not be the goriest or the scariest, but it's that realism that makes 'Final Destination' stick with us. 'The very best thing about 'Final Destination' is having the director come to me and say, 'I want to do this and I want it to be believable,'' Makaro added. A Warner Bros. Pictures release, 'Final Destination Bloodlines' is in theaters Friday, May 16. Best of IndieWire The 19 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in May, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal' Martin Scorsese's Favorite Movies: 86 Films the Director Wants You to See Christopher Nolan's Favorite Movies: 44 Films the Director Wants You to See
