News

This review was originally published on August 29, 2024, as a part of our Venice Film Festival coverage.

Maria makes its intentions clear early. In September 1977, legendary opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) is in her final days, and her grasp on reality is tenuous at best. She rearranges the world with herself at the center, though where once entire crowds were subject to her whims, now there remain only her loyal butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and maid (Alba Rohrwacher). They worry over her declining health. By abusing her medication, she hallucinates entire conversations. She detests doctors, who feel compelled to disrupt her with their facts.

Director Pablo LarrainWriters Steven KnightCast Aggelina Papadopoulou, Lydia Korniordou, Christiana Aloneftis, Toma Hrisztov, Kay Madsen, Luca Gréta Felhalmi, Jeremy Wheeler, Philipp Droste, Marcell Lengyel, Botond Bartus, Alessandro Bressanello, Stephen Ashfield, Zora Gerda Fejes, Rebecka Johnston, Vincent Macaigne, Pierfrancesco Favino, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Angelina Jolie, Valeria Golino,...

Angelina Jolie takes center stage in the first trailer for Maria, her first movie in three years. Directed by Pablo Larran, Maria stars Jolie as real-life opera singer Maria Callas, chronicling the figure's final days in Paris in the 1970s. The film, which was written by Steven Knight, recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Maria marks Jolie's first movie since appearing as Thena in Eternals (2021).

Now, Netflix releases the first trailer for Maria, providing a new look at Jolie as the iconic singer. The trailer reveals Larran's old-shool approach to capturing the figure's life, including different film stocks, seemingly for the different periods of Callas' life. Some of the film's supporting cast members are also briefly shown off in the trailer, including Haluk Bilginer, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Alba Rohrwacher. Check out the trailer below:

More to come...

Source: Netflix

Maria 6/10 0

Maria (2024) is a biographical drama about opera singer Maria Callas,...

Vertical Entertainment has acquired North American rights to Nate Parker’s police brutality drama “American Skin,” which world premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and won the Sconfini section’s best film award.

Vertical is planning a theatrical and digital release for January 2021, which would make the movie eligible for the Oscars. Parker directed, wrote and stars in the film as an Iraq War vet who seeks justice after his only son is killed by a white police officer. Omari Hardwick, Theo Rossi and Beau Knapp complete the cast.

The film was independently financed by Mark Burg and Tarak Ben Ammar’s Eagle Pictures, and is being presented by Spike Lee.

“American Skin” earned a warm critical response and standing ovation at Venice, but its inclusion in the festival’s lineup stirred controversy. Parker was accused and acquitted of raping a woman in 2001. The scandal resurfaced four years ago after his feature debut,...