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Liam Neeson crime thriller In the Land of Saints and Sinners opens on 896 screens this weekend, joined by Sean Penn in Asphalt City — the Godzilla vs. Kong of the specialty market?

Neeson reunites with The Marksman director Robert Lorenz as a newly retired assassin in a remote Irish village who finds himself drawn into a lethal game of cat and mouse with a trio of vengeful terrorists. Ciarán Hinds, Kerry Condon, Colm Meaney and Jack Gleeson also star in Land of Saints and Sinners, which premiered at Venice, and was shot in County Donegal, Ireland. Screenplay by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane. Samuel Goldwyn Films’ widest release post-pandemic sits at 80% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Penn stars with Tye Sheridan in Asphalt City, Vertical’s co-release with Roadside Attractions that opens on 297 screens, also with a national footprint. Young paramedic Ollie Cross (Sheridan) is paired with seasoned partner Gene...

Circle Collective is looking to tug at your heartstrings with their new science fiction romance With Love and a Major Organ, and we’re exclusively serving up the trailer to you today.

The film screened at a myriad of festivals, including SXSW, Fantasia, Cucalorus, and it will be released theatrically by Circle Collective in NYC on March 29th and in LA on 4/5.

From director Kim Albright, With Love and a Major Organ stars Anna Maguire as Anabel, a sensitive, empathetic young woman who lives in an alternate universe where self-care is manifested through suppressing emotion entirely. And hearts are readily [physically] removable.

“In a world where everyone’s heart is an object and there’s a strong societal pressure to dampen emotion, lonely Virtual Insurance broker Anabel always follows her heart. At odds with this overly pragmatic society, and after a series of devastating emotional blows, she rips her heart from...

Exclusive: Utopia’s arthouse distribution label Circle Collective has acquired U.S. rights to the dark comedy With Love and a Major Organ, which debuted in the experimental Visions program last year at SXSW.

Directed by Kim Albright and written by Julia Lederer, who adapted the screenplay from her play of the same name, Circle Collective is eyeing a Spring 2024 release for the title.

With Love and a Major Organ stars Anna Maguire as Anabel, a sensitive, empathetic young woman who lives in an alternate universe where self-care is manifested through suppressing emotion entirely. And hearts are readily removable. After a meaningful interaction with a stranger in the park George (Hamza Haq), Anabel takes a leap and literally gives her heart to him but does not expect for him to abscond with it.

The film was produced by Madeleine Davis (Freaks) and executive...

What if when we talked about giving someone our heart, we actually meant it? First time feature filmmaker Kim Albright and writer Julia Lederer explore what happens when our innermost feelings, good and bad, manifest physically in With Love and a Major Organ. It’s a charming, playful, and at times painful look at the ways in which people often depend upon each other for their own self-worth, as well as examining generational trauma, and the ways we often close ourselves off to avoid complex emotions. The film opens with Anabel (Anna Maguire) witnessing a man ripping his heart from his chest and throwing it off a cliff and then walking away as if nothing had happened. Shocked and confused, she wonders what could possibly have...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Set in an alternative world that at times seems like our own, With Love and a Major Organ can also feel as if someone asked ChatGPT to write a quirky postmodern romantic drama about technology in the style of Michel Gondry. The result, written by Julia Lederer (from her play) and directed by Kim Albright, is a film loaded with metaphors and similes where fragile hearts are made of paper and nothing is left to chance. Brains are scanned and uploaded to the cloud for a revolutionary new app LifeZap, emotions are explored in an experience that mimics escape rooms and nothing is left to chance. In short: a dreary hellhole in which human emotions are “disrupted” in favor of suppression.

While, of course, an interesting film could be made from that material, this one operates at a frequency that requires either an open mind, a few edibles––or both...

“Me, My Mom & Sharmila,” the feature directorial debut of queer Muslim writer-director Fawzia Mirza, has set its cast.

The film will feature Amrit Kaur, the breakout star of Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble’s HBO Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls”; Hamza Haq, who won best actor in 2021 and 2022 at the Canadian Screen Awards for CTV medical drama “Transplant”; and Nimra Bucha.

Set in 1999, the film follows Azra (Kaur) over 48 hours as she travels from her home in Canada to her parents’ homeland of Pakistan to bury her father (Haq). Azra struggles to connect with her conservative mother Mariam (Bucha), but her return to Pakistan launches her into memories both real and imagined that reveal their unexpected similarities.

Adapted from Mirza’s stage play of the same name, “Me, My Mom & Sharmila” is produced by Jason Levangie and Marc Tetreault for Shut Up & Colour Pictures (“Night Blooms...