Latest news with #filmdebut
Associated Press
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Scarlett Johansson debuts as a director in Cannes with a comic tale of grief and empathy
CANNES, France (AP) — Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, 'Eleanor the Great,' stars June Squibb as a 94-year-old woman who, out of grief and loneliness, does a terrible thing. After her best friend (Rita Zohar) dies, Eleanor (Squibb) moves to New York and, after accidentally joining the wrong meeting at the Jewish Community Center, adopts her friend's story of Holocaust survival. The film builds toward a moment where Eleanor could be harshly condemned in a public forum, or not. For Johansson, her movie speaks to the moment. 'There's a lack of empathy in the zeitgeist. It's obviously a reaction to a lot of things,' says Johansson. 'It feels to me like forgiveness feels less possible in the environment we're in.' Johansson brought 'Eleanor the Great' to the Un Certain Regard sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival this week, unveiling a funny and tender, character-driven, New York-set indie that launches her as a filmmaker. For the 40-year-old star, it's the humble culmination of a dream that's always bounced around in her mind. 'It has been for most of my career,' Johansson says, meeting at a hotel on the Croisette after a day of junket interviews. 'Whether it was reading something and thinking, 'I can envision this in my mind,' or even being on a production and thinking, 'I am directing some elements of this out of necessity.'' Johansson came to Cannes just days after hosting the season finale of 'Saturday Night Live,' making for a fairly head-spinning week. 'It's adding to the surrealistic element of the experience,' Johansson says with a smile. In just over a month's time, she'll be back in a big summer movie, 'Jurassic World Rebirth.' But even that gig is a product of her own interests. Johansson had been a fan of the 'Jurassic Park' movies for years, and simply wanted to be a part of it. Following her own instincts, and her willingness to fight for them, has been a regular feature of her career recently. She confronted The Walt Disney Co. over pay during the pandemic release of 'Black Widow,' and won a settlement. When OpenAI launched a voice system called 'Sky' for ChatGPT 4.0 that sounded eerily similar to her own, she got the company to take it down. She's increasingly produced films, including 'Eleanor the Great,' 'Black Widow' and 'Fly Me to the Moon.' After working with an enviable string of directors such as Jonathan Glazer ('Under the Skin'), Spike Jonze ('Her'), the Coen brothers ('Hail, Caesar!') and Noah Baumbach ('Marriage Story'), she's become a part of Wes Anderson's troupe. After a standout performance in 'Asteroid City,' she appears in 'The Phoenician Scheme,' which premiered shortly before 'Eleanor the Great' in Cannes. 'At some point, I worked enough that I stopped worrying about not working, or not being relevant — which is very liberating,' Johansson says. 'I think it's something all actors feel for a long time until they don't. I would not have had the confidence to direct this film 10 years ago.' 'Which isn't to say that I don't often think many times: What the hell am I doing?' she adds. 'I have that feeling, still. Certainly doing 'Jurassic,' I had many moments where I was like: Am I the right person for this? Is this working? But I just recently saw it and the movie works.' So does 'Eleanor the Great,' which Sony Pictures Classics will release at some future date. That's owed significantly to the performance of Squibb, who, at 95, experienced a Cannes standing ovation alongside Johansson. 'Something I'll never forget is holding June in that moment,' says Johansson. 'The pureness of her joy and her presence in that moment was very touching, I think for everyone in theater. Maybe my way of processing it, too, is through June. It makes it less personal because it's hard for me to absorb it all.' Some parts of 'Eleanor the Great' have personal touches, though. After one character says he lives in Staten Island, Squibb's character retorts, 'My condolences.' 'Yeah, I had to apologize to my in-laws for that,' Johansson, who is married to Staten Island native Colin Jost, said laughing. 'I was like: Believe it not, I didn't write that line.' A poster for the 1999 documentary about underground cartoonist R. Crumb, 'Crumb,' also hangs on the wall in one scene, a vague reference, Johansson acknowledges, to her loosely connected 2001 breakthrough film 'Ghost World.' 'I was very young when I made that movie. I think I was 15, and the character is supposed to be 18 or 19. When I was a teenager, I often played characters who were a bit older than myself,' Johansson says. 'Even doing 'Lost in Translation,' I think I was 17 when I made it. I think I was playing someone in their mid-20s.' 'It's a funny thing,' she says. 'I wonder sometimes if it then feels like I've been around so long, that people expect me to be in my 70s now.'
Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Gone One review — a tender twist on the woman-goes-hiking film
This tender and rewarding debut from India Donaldson, the daughter of Roger Donaldson, the director of No Way Out and Cocktail, is instantly one of the great 'women go hiking' movies. You know the drill — woman treks into the wilderness in order to grapple with a personal crisis that will be sublimated into a conflict with the environment and resolved by the closing credits. Think Reese Witherspoon in Wild, Mia Wasikowska in Tracks and Sheila Hancock in Edie. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews This film, however, is all dramatic subtlety and delicate character arcs, eschewing formula at every turn. The main draw is a star-making turn from the 20-year-old newcomer Lily Collias, who plays
The Independent
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Harris Dickinson is one of the most in-demand actors, but he had to direct a film first
Harris Dickinson is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes, trying to find all the movie tattoos on his body. There's a little one for 2001's 'Donnie Darko,' but there's a much larger one on his arm for 'Kes,' Ken Loach 's seminal British social realism drama from 1969. 'I'm sure there's a few more on my legs,' Dickinson says, smiling. 'I can't remember.' But the spirit of Loach runs strong in Dickinson's directorial debut, 'Urchin.' The film, which premiered the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, stars Frank Dillane as a homeless London drug addict. A sensitive and preceptive character study, 'Urchin' has been widely hailed as a standout at Cannes. Just as the 28-year-old Dickson, who starred in last year's 'Babygirl,' is emerging as a major movie star, he's revealed himself to be a filmmaker to watch, too. 'Before we screened, I was debilitated by nerves,' Dickinson said the day after the premiere. 'I felt so vulnerable — which I do normally with acting, but not as much. I suddenly realized what an exposing thing this is. Like you said, it's showing a different side of myself and putting that out there to be obliterated.' But Dickinson, who first emerged in Eliza Hitman's 2017 film 'Beach Rats,' only expanded audience's notions of him with 'Urchin." As he explained in an interview, making it was important enough to him, even if it meant sacrificing parts at the very moment Hollywood won't stop calling. Next, Dickinson will star as John Lennon in Sam Mendes' four-film Beatles project. AP: How did your artistic journey start? Was acting or directing first? DICKINSON: I wanted to direct from a very young age. I wanted to make films. I was making these skateboard videos and I was doing a lot of short films on YouTube. I had a web series where I would release episodes weekly. It was like a sketch show. That was first love, just making things. Acting kind of kicked off a little bit once 'Beach Rats' came out at Sundance. It was weird. I had to earn my stripes, of course, as an actor. But I couldn't go to film school because I was acting. So I just carried on my own interest in it and thought: Hopefully someday I can do it. Then the short film happened and the BBC took a chance on me, commissioning "Urchin." AP: Was it hard to juggle your priorities? DICKINSON: Hard to figure out, yeah. And particularly when we're in a world where people don't always love someone trying to doing multiple things. And rightly so. There are times when you shouldn't be trying to be a basketball player, or whatever. A lot of people do go, 'Oh, I fancy doing that now,' particularly when they get to a more successful position. But this has always been a love of mine and I've just been waiting for the moment to do it. It's strange as well because I'm also at a point in my acting where I had to take a lot of time out to make this film. But I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. AP: That must of required a lot of effort, especially after all the attention of 'Babygirl.' Did it mean saying no a lot? DICKINSON: Yeah, for sure. But it's easy to say no to things. 'Urchin' was all I could think about it. It was pouring out of me. It was all that was on my mind. It's easy to say no when you've got something to take you away from that, you know? Nothing that came in would make me question my own film, which is a sign that I had to make it at this time. I don't know, maybe that sounds self-important. AP: What was it about this character that compelled you? DICKINSON: The discovery of Mike happened over a long time. I really started with the intention to create a very focused character study of someone who was ultimately battling against themselves. I wanted to show a full person in all of their ugliness and all of their humanity and their charm. And that was a hard process to get right. It also happened with Frank, who came on and tapped into those things so beautifully. I kept coming back to the no judgment thing, not allowing us to feel sorry for him too much. Just observe him and go through situations and see how he acts. AP: I admire that he's trying to get his life in order, but he's also sabotaging himself. DICKINSON: He can't transcend his own behavior, which is so common for a lot of people, especially when they've been through a certain degree of trauma. How do you get out of that? How do you change your behavior? When your support network's gone, even the institution is not enough to get someone out of these cycles. As people, what interests me is that we're an incredibly advanced civilization but at the end of the day, we're quite rudimentary in our design. We're quite basic in the way we go back to things. AP: Did the film proceed out of work you've done with a charity for homeless people or were you inspired firstly by social realists like Ken Loach? DICKINSON: I'm always a bit reluctant to talk about this because it's something I've been doing in private and not trying to be like a heroic thing of a cause. I'm just a minor, minor part of a much bigger cause that is ultimately made up hundred of thousands of individuals that are collectively working toward change. But it was always important to have the bones of this film lay in that space. It had to have the uncurrent to it. It had to have that factual reality to it. And, yeah, Loach, Meadows. Ken Loach, he's one of the greats, for good reason. He's made incredibly important films. And I don't know if this film has the through line of a social realism drama or a social political film. I think it has the beginnings of it because we enter the world and then stay there very observationally. But then the language changes. AP: Do you expect to keep making films interspersed between acting? DICKINSON: I hope so. I hope people let me do it again. That's the goal. But it takes a lot of you. I think my partner is probably happy for me to not be a neurotic person for a bit. AP: Well, playing John Lennon is no piece of cake, either. DICKINSON: I'll probably be neurotic, as well. I'll probably be just as neurotic. ___ Jake Coyle has covered the Cannes Film Festival since 2012. He's seeing approximately 40 films at this year's festival and reporting on what stands out. ___
