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In “Down Below,” we meet Salem, a man whose life has descended into despair due to a false charge of horrible crimes. The narrative begins on the 20th anniversary of a horrifying Christmas Eve massacre at St. Agnes Church, a trauma that haunts the town and its citizens like a specter. Mr. Monday, the evil preacher, reappears, embodying the past’s unresolved trauma—a figure born of societal negligence and individual malice.

The film’s scenario is compelling: Salem, struggling with the vestiges of his shattered identity, becomes entwined with Karisma, a call girl whose nightmares mirror the darkness of their shared history. Their link, which is fraught with tension, serves as a lifeline, but it also reflects their shared quest for redemption—an investigation of how trauma simultaneously unites and isolates.

Salem’s dilemma is emblematic of a larger societal issue: the fallibility of public opinion and the ease...

Spiritbox have announced their sophomore album, Tsunami Sea, out March 7th via Pale Chord/Rise Records. In advance of its release, the Canadian metal band has unveiled the single “Perfect Soul.”

The song sees Spiritbox expanding their progressive metal sound with electronic textures and driving industrial-style percussion. The dense layers of guitar and Courtney Laplante’s ethereal vocals have a shoegaze tinge — think Slowdive playing metal — obscuring some of the mathy dynamics that are still at work under the hood. A Dylan Hryciuk-directed music video for the track goes live at 3 p.m. Et on Monday (November 18th).

It’s the second single from Tsunami Sea following “Soft Spine,” a more aggressive metal number. The album was produced by Dan Braunstein and Mike Stringer, mixed by Zakk Cervini, and mastered by Ted Jensen.

The end of 2024 has been a peak season for Spiritbox, who were recently nominated for Best...

Director Ridley Scott steps back into the arena with Gladiator II, the long-awaited follow-up to his record-breaking historical drama Gladiator. Mirroring real life, the story of Gladiator II picks up over 20 years after the events of the first movie and follows Lucius Verus, who was only a child in the original. Academy Award nominee (Aftersun) Paul Mescal plays Lucius in Gladiator II, and is supported by a cast which includes Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington, and Fred Hechinger.

Not many actors from the first Gladiator returned for the follow-up film, but the Gladiator II cast arguably does include the one who matters most. Connie Nielsen reprised her role as Lucilla, the mother of Lucius Verus, and is a key player in the events of the sequel. In between her turns as Lucilla, Nielsen also featured in Wonder Woman, Basic, and One Hour Photo.

Related Why Gladiator 2 Won't Get An Extended...

The Palm Springs International ShortFest winners were announced on Sunday, with Japan and the U.S.’s “The Old Young Crow” taking the prize for best of the festival. Lithuania’s “Way Better” won best animated short and China’s “Will You Look At Me” landed best documentary short. Additionally, the award for best live-action short over 15 minutes went to France’s “Sèt Lam” and Spain’s “Mystic Tiger” took home the award for the best live-action short 15 minutes and under.

The festival handed out cash prizes worth $25,000, as well as five awards to help winners qualify for the Academy Awards. The competition included some 299 short films within the official selection. The annual festival began on June 20 and will conclude Monday, June 26.

See the full list of winners below.

Best of the Festival

The Old Young Crow (U.S.)

Animated Short

Way Better (Lithuania)

Documentary Short

Will You Look at...

The Old Young Crow took home the top prize at the 2023 Palm Springs International Shortfest on Sunday. The Japanese-United States short film follows an elderly Persian man recalling the lessons he learned from an elderly Japanese woman.

The best animated short award went to Lithuania’s Way Better, which centers on a man who’s expecting the worst but hoping for the best from his upcoming medical test results. He spends his time over the course of a week waiting in a limbo of his own creation, dreading things that haven’t happened yet.

Other top awards of the festival went to China’s Will You Look At Me for documentary short, France’s Sét Lam for live-action short over 15 minutes and Spain’s Mystic Tiger for live-action short 15 minutes and under. The top five films are now eligible to submit their shorts to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscar consideration.

AMC Networks Central Europe (Amcni Cne) and Oble Studios are set to co-produce a new revenge period drama set in Hungary titled “Fata Morgana.”

Set in Hungary in the early twentieth century, “Fata Morgana” is based on a legend – believed to be a true story – about an anti-heroine who disguises herself as a man in order to go on a killing spree avenging oppressed women.

The show – which has undertones of “Killing Eve” – centers around Victoria, who is frustrated with the physical abuse she witnesses perpetually inflicted on women by men. Vowing to get revenge, she takes on the identity of vigilante “Piperman” – blurring the lines between a feminist superhero and contemptable murderer.

Gabor Harmi has been confirmed as the showrunner on the series, which will see each episode utilize a distinct artistic approach to the story, while Zsofi Ruttkay, Gyorgy Palfi, and Gabor Papp are co-writers. Creative producers are...

TÁR (Todd Field).VENICEAwardsTop 10: Leonardo Goi1. Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)2. No Bears (Jafar Panahi)3. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)4. Saint Omer (Alice Diop)5. The Kiev Trial (Sergei Loznitsa)6. Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)7. Blonde (Andrew Dominik)8. A Couple (Frederick Wiseman)9. Athena (Romain Gavras)10. TÁR (Todd Field)Coverageby Leonardo GoiDispatch 1: White Noise (Noah Baumbach), Bardo (or a False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) (Alejandro González Iñárritu), TÁR (Todd Field)Dispatch 2: A Couple (Frederick Wiseman), Athena (Romain Gavras), Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre)Dispatch 3: Master Gardener (Paul Schrader), The Whale (Darren Aronofsky), The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)Dispatch 4: The Kiev Trial (Sergei Loznitsa), Saint Omer (Alice Diop), Blonde (Andrew Dominik)Dispatch 5: No Bears (Jafar Panahi), Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)TORONTOTop 10: Daniel Kasman (Unranked)All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)Eventide (Sharon Lockhart)The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now (Fox Maxy)How...

The WhaleWAVELENGTHS - FEATURESConcrete Valley (Antoine Bourges)De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)Dry Ground BurningHorse Opera (Moyra Davey)Pacifiction (Albert Serra)Queens of the Qing Dynasty (Ashley McKenzie)Unrest (Cyril Schäublin)Will-o’-the-Wisp (João Pedro Rodrigues)Wavelenghths - SHORTSAfter Work (Céline Condorelli, Ben Rivers)Bigger on the Inside (Angelo Madsen Minax)Eventide (Sharon Lockhart)F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now (Fox Maxy)Fata Morgana (Tacita Dean)Hors-titre (Wiame Haddad)I Thought the World of You (Kurt Walker)Moonrise (Vincent Grenier)The Newest Olds (Pablo Mazzolo)Puerta a Puerta (Jessica Sarah Rinland, Luis Arnías )The Time That Separates Us (Parastoo Anoushahpour)What Rules the Invisible (Tiffany Sia)Gala PRESENTATIONSAlice, Darling (Mary Nighy)Black Ice (Hubert Davis)The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Peter Farrelly)Butcher’s Crossing (Gabe Polsky)The Hummingbird (Francesca Archibugi)Hunt (Jung-jae Lee)A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry)Kacchey Limbu (Shubham Yogi)Moving On (Paul Weitz)Paris Memories...

“Weird: The Weird Al Yankovic Story” will make its world premiere at TIFF, leading the Midnight Madness program’s 10-film lineup.

Starring Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic, the film chronicles the career of the music and comedy icon. Directed by Eric Appel, who co-wrote with Yankovic himself, the cast of the Roku biopic also includes Evan Rachel Wood, Quinta Brunson and Rainn Wilson.

As Midnight Madness’ opening night film, “Weird: The Weird Al Yankovic Story” will premiere on Sept. 8 at 11:59 Est.

Also Read:

Daniel Radcliffe Was Cast as Weird Al Thanks to a Graham Norton Appearance (Video)

“For TIFF audiences in the know, the Discovery, Midnight Madness and Wavelengths programmes are where you’re rewarded for taking risks and being adventurous,” offered Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “Whether it’s the discovery of an audacious new auteur, a brilliant visionary work that reimagines storytelling or the most...

Above: Poster by Frank Stella for the 9th New York Film Festival.Compared to the 32 films in the main slate of this year’s New York Film Festival, not to mention the seemingly hundreds of others playing in sidebars, the 1971 edition of the NYFF, half a century ago, was a lean affair. With only 18 films, down from 78 just four years earlier, the ninth edition of the NYFF was, according to its director Richard Roud, a “belt-tightening festival, a year of consolidation.” In fact, the financially strapped festival almost didn’t take place that year. A New York Times article published midway through the event mentions that “outside the 984-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater, there is only one poster announcing the festival [one assumes it was the beautiful Frank Stella poster above] that is quietly and modestly taking place inside.” A far cry from the glorious phalanx of digital billboards currently beaming outside Alice Tully Hall and the Elinor Bunin Center.The...

In a cozy, seaside cottage in Kent, with the winds of WWII still at a distance, Alice Bloom (Gemma Arterton) bangs out academic theses about folklore on her typewriter and launches verbal attacks on neighbors who dare to interrupt her work. The locals have the swaggering, chainsmoking Alice pegged as a witch who’s probably signaling the Nazis from her perch over the white cliffs. The Brit villagers are not even half right — but oh, does she have anger to spare. Her reveries concern a torrid affair with Vera ((Gugu Mbatha-Raw...

Star Trek‘s Captain Kirk wasn’t One with guests on “The Way to Eden” episode, and didn’t take part in the interstellar jam. Since then William Shatner has had a number of luminary musicians play on his tracks. The actor who debuted as a recording artist with the 1968 aural soundscape The Transformed Man is taking another sonic adventure. The rocktogenarian will drop two new albums this year, and both offer musical experiments. One of the two albums, which will be out by the end of the summer, will be a blues album. The other will be a new kind of record.

“It’s an album that we’ve finished,” Shatner tells Den of Geek while promoting his hosting duties on the History channel series The UnXplained. “I’ve got two albums. I’ve got a blues album which will be released by the end of the summer and...

The UnXplained will premiere on History on July 11, confounding viewers with impossible tales improbably told. But the most inexplicable thing about the paranormal-and-beyond series is its host. William Shatner is not just an actor or a star, he is almost public domain. His breakthrough character, Captain James T. Kirk, was recognized and claimed by popular culture, the counterculture, and the subculture of Star Trek aficionados.

Shatner started his career as a workaholic actor who never said no. He took big and small parts on great TV shows and movies, and awful ones. He’d go on to continue his work in popular TV series with appearances in indie and B-movie films which have become cult classics. Who can forget his creepy crawl up the basement stairs in Kingdom of the Spiders or his pentagram brand and dis-gouged eyes in Devil’s Rain? In their own way, they are as influential...

For those raised on a diet of hot dogs and hamburgers, think back to the first time you ever heard of sushi, and the idea of eating raw fish. Werner Herzog’s “Family Romance, LLC” extends a comparably otherizing attitude to Japan’s niche rent-a-relative phenomenon, exposing for Western eyes a peculiar Tokyo-based company that caters to fulfilling nonsexual but undeniably intimate fantasies for its clientele. Weird? Yes, but so is the way Americans convince their kids to climb into the laps of white-bearded strangers in Santa costumes.

Homo sapiens are a strange species, and few capture that more satisfyingly than Herzog, even if this is clearly one of his minor works. Not quite 90 minutes, the film might actually be more effective at half the length. As is, it feels padded with slow-motion footage, long shots in which characters stare out in wordless contemplation, and an awkward dream sequence involving a gang of swordless samurai.

Despite opening atop Chile’s Las Campanas Observatory, Cielo is not strictly a scientific documentary, or even a film about astronomy. It does not purport to contain answers to our deepest questions about what lies far beyond the stars in the night sky. Instead, it’s a film that looks in wide-eyed awe at the vastness of the universe as seen from the vantage point of northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, a place where the view of the night sky is almost unnaturally beautiful and the landscape looks more like Mars than of our own planet. It’s that painfully earnest sense of awe that keeps the film from breaking beyond the realm where IMAX movies have gone before. Individual images are truly a sight to behold, but the film never comes together to form anything cohesive in the end, beyond an eye-popping look at the Chilean night sky.

Gorgeously...

The 9th annual Lausanne Underground Film Festival may just run for a mere five days in Switzerland on Oct. 20-24, but it hits with the force of a 10p-ton megaton bomb over that time period, packing in so much mind-boggling underground madness it’ll make your head explode.

Every year, the fest feels like 5 or 6 festivals crammed into one. There’s the fest that pays homage to the history of experimental filmmaking, there are the retrospectives of several cult festivals, a feature film competition section, a short film competition section and more.

Three filmmakers are especially getting major retrospective love this year. First, there’s legendary Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow who will be in attendance at screenings of his classic films Wavelength, <–> and La région centrale, plus several of his other short films.

Also being feted are German extreme horror filmmaker Jörg Buttgereit, who will attend screenings of his classic Nekromantik,...