For the subject of his documentary, director Andres Veiel turns his camera on the complicated figure of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl who rose to prominence during the rise of Germany’s Third Reich. Regarded as an innovator in the art of filmmaking, Riefenstahl’s friendships with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, along with her work in help create and style Nazi propaganda films, creates a controversial legacy to parse.
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The 2025 film adapts the 1890s play setting it in the 1950s by casting Tessa Thompson in the starring role of Hedda Gabler, a once vibrant woman now stuck in a marriage and a house she has no love for and the key cog in a party full of mostly insufferable socialites being awful to each other for most of the 107-minute runtime.
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85 years after its release director Howard Hawks‘ classic screwball comedy is still something to behold. It’s rapid dialogue and wit were in part achieved by the director pushing his actors to be spontaneous on the fly leading to rampant improvisation and the film to go over time and over budget. That, along with sound mixing to further speed up the dialogue, resulted in stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell spitting barbs at each other non-stop for near the entire length of the film.
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Making use of George Orwell‘s personal journals, narrated by Damian Lewis, alongside news footage and clips from various films (including those adapted from Orwell’s work), director Raoul Peck examines the thoughts and feelings of Orwell on the subject of totalitarianism and authoritarianism during the period on which he wrote his final novel 1984. The documentary takes time to examine the author’s life, including his time as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma which helped form his opinions and social criticism in its non-linear structure of examining the author’s legacy and his foresight into the modern world.
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The Smashing Machine showcases the life and career of former MMA fighter Mark Kerr (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) who was one of the biggest names in the sport during the late 1990s. More notable for The Rock’s performance than any details of Kerr’s life, in or out of the ring, the film showcases the fighter overcoming substance abuse, the precipitous fall following his first loss, and the contentious relationship with his girlfriend (Emily Blunt).
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