Movies

National

Opinion: Remembering the marvel, Maggie Smith

8:00am September 28, 2024

Jean Brodie, Minerva McGonagall, Violet Crawley: Maggie Smith embodied these memorable roles on stage and screen. NPR's Scott Simon has a remembrance of the actor, who died yesterday at the age of 89.

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Critics often slam movies. Sometimes the movies slam back.

6:17pm September 13, 2024

by Bob Mondello

Ian McKellen plays a brutal theater critic in a new film. That sent our own film critic back into the archives, musing about portrayals of critics on screen.

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A promotional poster for Aperture Cinema's Kino im Nord Karolina film festival. Courtesy of Aperture Cinema.

Arts, Music & Culture

Aperture Cinema set to premiere trailer for German-language film festival

6:00am August 22, 2024

by Santiago Ochoa

Aperture Cinema will premier the trailer for its Kino im Nord Karolina film festival, an event designed to highlight contemporary German-language films.

Shut the front door, we're revisiting an episode about profanity.

Arts

$#@*! we're talking profanity in pop culture

3:00am August 14, 2024

We've got dirty words on the brain, and we're chatting about the use and functions of profanity in entertainment. In this encore episode from 2013, we cover everything from Anchorman to South Park to Shakespeare.

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Hunter Schafer's 'Cuckoo' serves up Alpine horror

3:00am August 12, 2024

In the new, stylishly odd horror film Cuckoo, Hunter Schafer plays an American teenager who reluctantly moves with her family to a mysterious resort in the German Alps. Her rebellious spirit clashes with the resort's creepy proprietor, played by Dan Stevens. When weird stuff starts happening, long-buried family secrets come to light and the resort's true nature stands revealed.

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‘Sebastian’ re-writes the sex work movie

7:58am August 11, 2024

by Ayesha Rascoe

Director and writer Mikko Mäkelä says he wasn’t interested in creating yet another sex worker drama focused on trauma. Instead, Sebastian is a knowing but conflicted young man learning about himself.

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The trailer for Disney’s live-action ‘Snow White’ remake has some people very Grumpy

8:16pm August 10, 2024

by Rebecca Rosman

The film, set to be released in March 2025, has been mired by a string of controversies on everything from its new “woke” messaging to its depiction of dwarfism.

Arts

Joan Chen on her role in coming-of-age film 'Dìdi'

7:32am August 10, 2024

by Scott Simon

NPR's Scott Simon talks to Joan Chen. The actor is getting Oscar buzz for the new film, "Dìdi," in which Chen plays the mother of a Taiwanese-American skater kid in the Bay Area.

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Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are 'The Instigators' in a classic heist film throwback

12:40pm August 09, 2024

by John Powers

After a heist goes bad, two inept Boston crooks (played by Damon and Affleck) become uneasy partners. The Instigators is a reasonably enjoyable film that reflects an earlier cinematic era.

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Books
Arts

'It Ends With Us' is a melodrama with serious undertones

3:00am August 09, 2024

The 2016 Colleen Hoover novel It Ends With Us was a massive bestseller. And now that book is a movie. Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a woman who falls for a hot neurosurgeon played by Justin Baldoni — who also directs the film. But their relationship is complicated by the return of her old flame (Brandon Sklenar). She also has to reckon with her feelings about her abusive father and the mother who stayed with him.

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