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Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on Wbgr-fm on August 1st, reviewing “Peak Season,” set in Jackson, Wyoming, and involving a couple trying to negotiation “forbidden” feelings. In theaters beginning on August 2nd.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Loren (Derrick Joseph DeBlasis), makes his living in Jackson mostly as a fly fishing instructor and guide, and lives in his car. When an engaged couple … Ben Coleman as Max and Claudia Restrepo as Amy … comes to town from New York for a vacation, Max’s business deals means that Amy takes fishing lessons alone, and develops a connection to the flighty and stoic Loren. When Max goes out of town for his business, Amy and Loren run into each other and spend time with each other in the beautiful and re-orienting town.

”Peak Season” opens in theaters on August 2nd. See local listings. Featuring Derrick Joseph DeBlasis,...

Visit Films has announced a torrent of recent deals on its slate led by a further key territory sale on Cannes Directors’ Fortnight entry Good One.

India Donaldson’s feature debut starring newcomer Lily Collias as a 17-year-old who goes on an awkward backpacking trip with her father and his best friend has gone to Cherry Pickers for Benelux after a previously reported deal with New Story for France.

Multiple territories remain in active negotiation after Cannes, and Metrograph Pictures holds North American rights.

SXSW documentary Mogwai: If The Stars Had A Sound about the cult post-rock band has been...

Entertainment Squad has acquired worldwide rights to Midas and will release the film, the feature debut of writer/director Tj Noel-Sullivan described as “a fresh and socially relevant take on the classic heist genre,” in theaters in the U.S. on June 28.

“The film follows a charismatic college dropout who recruits his best friends to rob the health insurer that denied his mom’s coverage,” said Entertainment Squad, the boutique distribution company founded by industry veteran Shaked Berenson. “After things take a dark turn, the trio must wrestle with the limits of their greed.”

Starring Laquan Copeland (The Dirty South), Preet Kaur (Finding Tony), Federico Parra (series The Equalizer), Lucy Powers (Voyeur), and Bob Gallagher (Bad Senator), the movie was shot in Hartford, Conn., which is nicknamed the “insurance capital of the world.”

The Hartford Film Company, founded by Noel-Sullivan, produced the film alongside Kristina Cuello and Erik Bloomquist.

“Midas...

Exclusive: Entertainment Squad, has acquired SXSW’s premiere film, Peak Season, and set a theatrical release for August 2.

Helmed by Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter, who previously collaborated on the critically acclaimed The End of Us, Peak Season is an exploration of personal discovery and the road less traveled set against the stunning backdrop of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The film stars Claudia Restrepo, Derrick DeBlasis, and Ben Coleman, Fred Melamed and Stephanie Courtney who is famously known as “Flo” in Progressive commercials.

Both a bittersweet romantic comedy and a clever social commentary, Peak Season follows a burnt-out New Yorker who travels to Wyoming with her fiancé, but then falls for a handsome, yet troubled ski-bum, and questions whether to leave her city life behind.

Loevner and Kanter commented in a joint statement: “We set out...

We are less than a year removed from Robert Redford’s provocative declaration, at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival’s opening presser, that “there are too many film festivals.” It was a comment that itself came a year after Redford’s even more contentious comment that, as far as he knew, his Park City annual was the only festival in the world that could claim to be “purely independent.” Most of the world’s film festivals are still in revival mode following more than three years of cancellations, hybridizations, shutterings and overhauls, and the persistent question of whether or not they’re still necessary to cinema culture should arguably begin with the regional film festival—a category that contains more than 95% of the world’s festivals, and also does not include Sundance. Without getting too hung up on the terms “regional” and “independent”—the latter, in particular, is prone to very...

The 2023 SXSW Film Festival kicks into high gear today, and Screen Rant is pleased to present an exclusive clip from one of the films in its Narrative Spotlights section: Peak Season. Written by Henry Loevner and co-directed by him and Steven Kanter, Peak Season follows Amy & Max, two yuppies from New York who make their way to Jackson Hole for a Wyoming-style vacation. But when Max is too busy working to make time for his fiancée, Amy finds herself drawn to the carefree Loren and wonders if she'll even return home with Max.

Peak Season stars Claudia Restrepo as Amy, Derrick Joseph DeBlasis as Loren, and Ben Coleman as Max. All three actors worked on Loevner and Kanter's previous project, The End of Us, so their new film doubles as a family reunion of sorts in the Tetons. Peak Season also stars Fred Melamed (who recently appeared in Hulu's Reboot), Stephanie Courtney,...

Exclusive: Following six seasons as Howard Hamlin on AMC’s megahit Better Call Saul, Patrick Fabian has signed on to lead the indie The Way We Speak from writer-director Ian Ebright (From the Sky).

Billed as an allegory about America’s fractured politics and culture, the film follows Simon (Fabian), an up-and-coming commentator whose world is turned upside down when his best friend and debate opponent suffers a fatal heart attack. Simon refuses to leave the spotlight at an annual thought-leader summit, leading to an obsession with his new opponent and a growing rift with his ailing wife, Claire (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s Diana Coconubo).

Ebright’s Broken Telegraph is producing the pic, also to star Kailey Rhodes (Black Pool), Ayanna Berkshire (Twilight) and Lowell Deo (Z Nation). Fabian is repped by The Kohner Agency and Essential Talent Management.

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Exclusive: Cinedigm has acquired North American rights to...

As we recently passed the one-year anniversary of the first coronavirus-dictated lockdown, the internet’s insatiable hunger for short-term nostalgia kicked into overdrive. Memories from March 2020 trended again as fodder for renewed memes and Twitter threads, feeling at once from just yesterday and eons ago. An early entry in the inevitable subgenre of lockdown chamber cinema, Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter’s debut feature “The End of Us” taps into that same throwback impulse, as it plausibly dramatizes the up-and-down tensions between a newly separated couple forced into prolonged cohabitation by the California stay-at-home order.

The film’s evocation of early pandemic panic, in that period where we bumbled cluelessly into practices and precautions that soon became standard, is at once bleak and rosily affectionate — largely relatable even to viewers who don’t identify with the film’s cute but exasperating pair of exes. It remains to be seen how...

Over this past year a lot of relationships have come under pressure as a result of people being confined together under lockdown conditions. This has led to some ugly situations, but even when those involved are lovely people and want the nest for each other, it can be tough. Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner's quirky indie comedy, which screened at South by Southwest, is among the first films to address this subject, and whilst some viewers will feel that it's too soon, others will doubtless jump at the chance to see experiences like their own reflected onscreen.

Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano) have been living together for four years. Leah wants to feel that she's going somewhere in life, however, and Nick is patently not. Like the hero of Lim Jung-eun's Our Midnight, also out this year, he's engaged in the long, slow game of trying to make.

Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner’s “The End of Us” might just be the single most obvious romantic-comedy that some opportunistic Hollywood up-and-comers could — and inevitably did — make about life during Covid-19. Here’s the premise: A couple in their late twenties suffers a rough, long overdue breakup mere hours before Tom Hanks gets sick and California issues a stay-at-home-order, forcing the exes to keep living together with little other human contact for an indefinite period of time. Grievances will be aired, drunken “we probably shouldn’t do that again” sex will be had, “Tiger King” will be watched. Ah, the good old days.

Eschewing the claustrophobic mania of “Locked Down,” the spiraling paranoia of “Songbird,” and the elemental folk horror of Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming “Into the Earth,” “The End of Us” is , and the first of this hopefully short-lived sub-genre to rely upon a certain degree of nostalgia...

Henry Loevner, Steven Kanter directed film about couple going through break-up during pandemic.

Jason Moring’s Ddi has come on board to launch worldwide sales at the EFM on BuzzFeed Studios’ pandemic comedy and upcoming SXSW selection The End Of Us.

Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter directed the film about a couple going through a break-up during a global pandemic.

It is the night of March 10, 2020 – the eve of the California lockdown – as out-of-work actor Nick and his type-a girlfriend Leah are in the throes of splitting up.

When the safer-at-home order ushers in a long period of quarantine, Leah...

Exclusive: BuzzFeed Studios has signed on to executive produce the Schlemiel Pictures pandemic comedy The End of Us which is set to make its world premiere in competition next month at the SXSW Film Festival. Directed by Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter, the film stars Ben Coleman and Ali Vingiano as a couple going through a break up during a — you guessed it — a global pandemic. To get a taste of the romantic dysfunction, BuzzFeed Studios and Schlemiel Pictures released an exclusive clip from the film which you can watch above.

“BuzzFeed is known for content featuring smart, socially relevant themes, and The End of Us speaks to the experiences we endured over the past year through a sharply funny and wryly observant lens,” said Richard Alan Reid, Head of BuzzFeed Studios. “We are excited about our new partnership with the filmmakers, and look forward to our debut at SXSW...

The South by Southwest Film Festival has rolled out its full programming line up, with high-profile new documentaries bolstering previously announced features.

For many in Hollywood, the last-minute cancellation of the Austin-based 2020 SXSW conference was a reality check about the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. Global lockdowns followed, and a year later, the film portion of the cultural event is soldiering on.

“We feel privileged to have been able to pivot to SXSW Online and present a fantastic treasure trove of programming, including a pared down and wonderful selection of films that we know will delight, entertain and move our attendees,” said Janet Pierson, SXSW’s director of film.

Among the selection is “Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free,” featuring a 16mm footage archive of the late singer at work on his 1994 album “Wildflowers,” largely considered his best. The film is directed by Mary Wharton, and leans into SXSW’s reputation for top-tier music programming.

28th edition of Texas festival will run online-only from March 16-20.

SXSW Online 2021 has unveiled its full film line-up of 75 features as well as shorts, episodics and special events, and announced Charli Xcx documentary Alone Together from Bradley Bell and Pablo Jones-Soler as the closing film.

The Headliners selection about quarantined pop star Charli Xcx making an album that unifies a community appears in that section alongside Mary Wharton’s documentary Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free, and previously announced SXSW opener Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil.

The 28th edition of SXSW will run from March 16-20. Seven films...