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I'm not at all surprised that my esteemed colleague Michael Phillips of the Tribune selected John Carney's “Once” as the best film of 2007.

I gave it my Special Jury Prize, which is sort of an equal first; no movie was going to budge “ Juno ” off the top of my list. “Once” was shot for next to nothing in 17 days, doesn't even give names to its characters, is mostly music with not a lot of dialog, and is magical from beginning to end. It's one of those films where you hold your breath, hoping it knows how good it is, and doesn't take a wrong turn.

It doesn't. Even the ending is the right ending, the more you think about it.

The film is set in Dublin, where we see a street musician singing for donations. This is the Guy ( Glen Hansard ). He attracts an audience of the Girl ( Marketa Irglova ). She loves his music. She's a pianist herself. He wants to hear her play. She doesn't have a piano. She takes him to a music store where she knows the owner, and they use a display piano. She plays some Mendelssohn. We are in love with this movie. He is falling in love with her. He just sits there and listens. She is falling in love with him. She just sits there and plays. There is an unusual delay before we get the obligatory reaction shot of the store owner, because all the movie wants to do is sit there and listen, too.

This is working partly because of the deeply good natures we sense these two people have. They aren't “picking each other up.” They aren't flirting — or, well, technically they are, but in that way that means, “I'm not interested unless you're too good to be true.”

They love music, and they're not faking it. We sense to a rare degree the real feelings of the two of them; there's no overlay of technique, effect or style.

They are just purely and simply themselves. Hansard is a professional musician, well known in Ireland as leader of a band named the Frames. Irglova is an immigrant from the Czech Republic, only 17 years old, who had not acted before. She has the kind of smile that makes a man want to be a better person, so he can deserve being smiled at.

The film develops their story largely in terms of song. In between, they confide their stories. His heart was broken because his girlfriend left him and moved to London. She takes him home to meet her mother, who speaks hardly any English, and to join three neighbors who file in every night to watch their TV.

And he meets her child, which comes as a surprise. Then he finds out she's married. Another surprise, and we sense that in his mind he had already dumped the girl in London and was making romantic plans. He's wounded, but brave. He takes her home to meet his dad, a vacuum cleaner repairman. She has a Hoover that needs fixing. It's Kismet.

He wants to record a demo record, take it to London, and play it for music promoters. She helps him, and not just by playing piano. When it comes down to it, she turns out to be level-headed, decisive, take-charge. An ideal producer. They recruit other street musicians for a session band, and she negotiates a rock-bottom price for a recording studio. And so on. All with music. And all with their love, and our love for their love, only growing. At one point he asks if she still loves her husband, and she answers in Czech, and the movie doesn't subtitle her answer, because if she'd wanted subtitles, she would have answered in English, which she speaks perfectly well.

“Once” is the kind of film I've been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn't quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Once Upon a One More Time review: Justin Guarini and Briga Heelan charm in Britney Spears musical

A group of fairytale princesses discover there's a lot more to life than marrying a prince in the jubilant new jukebox musical.

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at  Entertainment Weekly  with over five years of experience covering the latest in entertainment. A proud Kingston University alum, Emlyn has written about music, fandom, film, television, and awards for multiple outlets including MTV News,  Teen Vogue , Bustle, BuzzFeed,  Paper Magazine , Dazed, and NME. She joined EW in August 2022.

Oh baby, baby, how were the fairytale princesses of yore supposed to know that something wasn't right about their happily ever afters?

The Grimms Girlies — including Cinderella (Briga Heelan), Snow White (Aisha Jackson), Rapunzel (Gabrielle Beckford), and more — are officially closing the book on their "deeply problematic" storylines once and for all in Once Upon a One More Time , a jubilant jukebox musical opening June 22 at the Marquis Theatre.

The musical, which was authorized by a post-conservatorship Britney Spears and features some of her greatest hits, isn't your run-of-the-mill rendition of the pop princess' life story. Instead, it sets up its wildly whimsical premise straight out of the gate: Each night, a princess is selected to act out her whirlwind romance as a bedtime story for children around the world. However, it's clear that tonight's protagonist, Cinderella, isn't as charmed by glass slippers and glittering gowns as the rest of her companions. After finishing her story, she tentatively asks Prince Charming ( Justin Guarini ) if he ever wants… you know… something more than just pumpkins and proposals?

The idea is nothing short of blasphemy to the Prince's ears — "You're paid to be pretty and I'm paid to be charming ," he tells her, prompting Cinderella to ask, "You're being paid?" — but it's exactly what the Notorious O.F.G (Brooke Dillman), the Original Fairy Godmother, has been longing to hear in the neon-soaked, happy-go-lucky kingdom brought to life by set designer Anna Fleischle.

She bequeaths Cinderella a copy of Betty Friedan's 1963 novel The Feminine Mystique , that opens her eyes to a world beyond never-ending household chores, evil stepmothers, and self-centered princes. After sharing the novel with her Scroll Club pals, Cinderella suddenly finds herself at the forefront of a full-scale royal rebellion against the dastardly Narrator (Adam Godley), who demands that all roles be performed exactly as written, and their frustratingly outdated folk tales.

Book writer Jon Hartmere reimagines the heroines and their stories under a new, Gen Z-inspired lens that is equally as hilarious as it is self-aware. He makes no qualms about pointing out how brutal the fables used to be — with Cinderella's Stepmother (Jennifer Simard) waxing nostalgic about the good ol' days when she would cut off her daughter's toes — and the real-life implications they continue to have on readers, as Cinderella frets that her and her pals have all been peddling a "warped version of the real world" to impressionable children for centuries.

Their self-discovery journey is perfectly soundtracked by Spears' sparkling discography, which transforms the musical into a high-octane concert that will leave theatergoers breathless. While Spears' songs are no stranger to the Broadway stage — several of her hits are incorporated in other shows currently playing across the Great White Way — they take on new life in Once Upon a One More Time with a few lyrical twists that succeed in not only reframing their meanings, but also preventing theatergoers from unconsciously singing along too ("Toxic" will never not be catchy, okay?).

In turn, Hartmere's story beats are all precisely timed to each beat drop, like when Belinda (Amy Hillner Larsen) and Betany (Tess Soltau) command Cinderella to clean the mansion as they sing a hilarious rendition of "Work Bitch," or Charming's side-splitting, absolutely outrageous performance of "3" as he frantically learns how to read so he can impress Scroll Club.

The performances are bolstered by inspiring choreography from Keone and Mari Madrid, who are also working double duty as the musical's directors. The couple — who have choreographed for BTS , Justin Bieber , and So You Think You Can Dance — have crafted a collection of high-energy routines that not only drew audible reactions from the crowd, but whipped them into a frenzy that led to several pauses for applause throughout the evening. As directors, the pair keep its story moving at an equally speedy gait, never pausing for longer than necessary before diving headfirst into the next musical number.

Being able to perform the demanding routines alone and sing Spears' iconic songs is a hefty challenge, but it's one that Once Upon a One More Time 's talented cast more than rises to meet. Guarini is phenomenal as the delightfully smarmy Charming, a role which highlights both his comedic chops and dominating stage presence as he powers through sensational renditions of " Circus " and "Oops! … I Did it Again," the latter of which incorporates Spears' original choreography.

Heelan, in her Broadway debut, maintains Cinderella's starry-eyed innocence and warmth without ever making her feel out of touch, and her celebratory "Brightest Morning Star" duet with Jackson's stellar Snow White is one of the most stunning performances of the evening. Hooray for female friendships getting the love and respect they rightfully deserve!

While its main conflict may resolve itself a bit too easily in the end — not unlike its source material — Once Upon a One More Time is a youthful, exuberant take on beloved tales that's more dazzling and polished than Cinderella's glass slipper. Expect to keep on dancin' long after the musical ends. Grade: B+

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• November 25, 2023 / 11:12 PM IST

• Vijay Thalapathy (Hero)
• Simran (Heroine)
• S. A. Chandrasekhar (Director)
• Deva (Music Director)
• C. V. Rajendran (producer)

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“Once More” is a 1997 Tamil romantic comedy directed by S. A. Chandrasekhar, featuring a stellar cast including Sivaji Ganesan, Vijay, Simran, and Saroja Devi, along with supporting actors like Manivannan, Charle, S. S. Chandran, and Anju Aravind. The film, known for its incorporation of flashback scenes from the 1963 film “Iruvar Ullam” featuring Ganesan and Saroja Devi, released on July 4, 1997, and enjoyed significant commercial success.

The story revolves around elements of romance and comedy, encapsulating the essence of relationships and the quirks of love. Vijay and Simran play pivotal roles, weaving a narrative enriched with humor and emotional depth. The inclusion of iconic veteran actors like Sivaji Ganesan and Saroja Devi in flashback sequences adds a nostalgic touch, enhancing the film’s appeal to a wider audience.

The success of “Once More” in Tamil cinema prompted its remake in Telugu titled “Daddy Daddy” in 1998, further extending its impact across regional cinema. The film’s popularity stemmed not only from its engaging storyline but also from the performances of the ensemble cast, the captivating chemistry between the lead actors, and the deft direction of S. A. Chandrasekhar.

Overall, “Once More” stands as a significant milestone in Tamil cinema, blending elements of romance, comedy, and nostalgia, leaving an enduring impact on audiences and cementing its place as a memorable and commercially successful film in Indian cinema history.

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• What is the release date of 'Once More'? Release date of Vijay and Shivaji Ganesan starrer 'Once More' is 1997-06-04.
• Who are the actors in 'Once More'? 'Once More' star cast includes Vijay and Shivaji Ganesan.
• Who is the director of 'Once More'? 'Once More' is directed by S.A. Chandrashekhar.
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The Movie Review: 'Once'

Cillian Murphy is a rising young actor who has delivered several fine performances of late (in Batman Begins , Red Eye , and Breakfast on Pluto , among others) and possesses arguably the most piercing blue eyes since Paul Newman. So it is a considerable surprise that, to date, his greatest contribution to cinema may be a movie he wasn't in.

Murphy, who before taking up acting was a nearly-signed rock singer, had been slated to star in and produce Once , an indie-rock musical directed by fellow Irishman John Carney. But when Murphy discovered that Carney had cast a nonprofessional actress as his co-lead and heard some of the vocally complex songs he was expected to sing, he--and with him, all the financing--pulled out of the project.

So Carney turned to the man who had written the songs and recommended the female lead in the first place: Glen Hansard of the Irish band The Frames. (Carney had been the group's bassist in the early 1990s.) Hansard, who'd appeared in exactly one film--a supporting role in Alan Parker's The Commitments 15 years earlier--was persuaded to play the missing lead, and Carney put the film together in three weeks for a meager $150,000, all of it supplied by the Irish Film Board.

The result should shame filmmakers with budgets a thousand times larger. Once is a small miracle, an unprepossessing gem that is at once true to life and utterly magical. It is also one of the best romantic comedies in a generation, provided one is willing to define that category broadly enough to accept a film that delivers few jokes and contains just a single kiss--on the cheek. The word "winsome" was invented for experiences such as this.

The winner of the audience award at Sundance, Once opened a few weeks ago in a tiny number of theatres scattered across the country. And while that number has increased each week (to 120 screens nationwide, at last counting), it won't be around for long, so if you can find it, see it. Quickly. (Yes, this is a late recommendation, but one, I think, firmly in the better-than-never camp.)

Hansard plays a Dublin busker (i.e., street musician) who performs covers for the crowds by day and his own compositions to the empty sidewalk by night. Until one night, that is, when the sidewalk turns out not to be empty. A young Czech immigrant (Markéta Irglová) stops to listen and then questions him with invasive but charming directness: Who did you write that song for? Where is she? Is she dead? Hansard is at first put off by his inquisitor, but gradually warms. When she asks what his day job is, a concrete link is formed: He fixes vacuum cleaners in his dad's shop; she has a vacuum cleaner in need of fixing. Might she bring it by for him to take a look at?

Thus begins one of the most endearing associations in recent cinema. She brings her Hoover by the next day, dragging it by the hose like a leashed puppy. Hansard is again annoyed by the imposition, but ultimately agrees to take a look at the machine. ("What's wrong with it?" he asks. "It's fucked," she replies matter-of-factly, draining the word of any hint of obscenity.) Soon enough, their relationship moves beyond vacuum cleaners. Irglová, too, is a musician, a classically trained piano player. And while she is too poor to afford her own piano, the proprietor of a music shop allows her to play one in the back of his store during lunchtime. Irglová invites Hansard to join her with his guitar and they share a duet, tentatively at first and then with increasing confidence. (One of the few coynesses of the film--though one easy to ignore--is that neither of the lead characters is given a name.) From this first, informal collaboration arise others: She writes lyrics for one of his songs, and later joins the thrown-together "band" with whom he records demos of his music.

With the exception of one clumsy proposition, angrily declined, it is never stated but always evident that the two are also falling in love. But there are complicating factors: the girlfriend who left Hansard for London and for whom he still pines; the mother and young daughter who live with Irglová, and the estranged husband she left behind in the Czech Republic. And though these might appear to be surmountable obstacles, neither character makes any great effort to surmount them. It's as if both recognize that what they have between them, their romantic non-romance, is too delicate to burden with heavier demands.

The result is a love-affair-by-other-means, and the means are primarily musical. Opinions will vary of the songs themselves, which have been widely compared, both in flattery and disdain, to Coldplay. (For my part, I found them frequently affecting, though the tendency of almost every one to begin as a quiet lament before building to a wailing chorus becomes a little tiresome.) On some level, though, it hardly matters: Hansard and Irglová are not performing for us, exactly, but for themselves and for one another, their songs like a runoff channel for the overflow of feelings they cannot share directly. The result is musical numbers that are simultaneously undersold and brimming with meaning. One in particular, in which Irglová walks the nighttime streets in pajamas and bunny slippers, composing lyrics as she listens to her Discman, is the most evocative, unforgettable sequence I've seen in a movie this year.

Hansard is very good as a likable layabout whose stabs at cynicism do nothing to obscure a generous heart. But Irglová is a true find. Just 19 years old, the Czech singer-songwriter (with whom Hansard had collaborated on an earlier album) conjures a character with thicker armor than her costar and, belying her age, greater maturity. She, like the film, knows that the easiest, most obvious thing to do (kiss him, for goodness sake!) is not necessarily what will serve her best in the end. Rather than presenting her child and husband as complications to be solved, the movie recognizes that they are her reality; Hansard is the complication. In an era when Hollywood has largely lost the ability to distinguish between romance and sex, Once is the rare film that recognizes that love is no less love for being held in check, it is merely a different kind of love. Sixty years after David Lean's most intimate masterpiece, Brief Encounter , this is still a controversial cinematic assertion.

The film Once resembles still more closely, though, is Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise , another minor-key marvel of romantic portraiture. As in that film, the two leads do not face any particular challenges together beyond the simple, and yet immensely complicated, task of deciding what they think of one another and what they want to do about it. Indeed, apart from their underlying conflicts, the lives of Hansard and Irglová seem almost charmed: Whereas a typical film would include a few unhappy swerves on the road to the successful demo session, Once motors pleasantly along from small victory to small victory. The potential heavies encountered--Hansard's dad, the man in charge of a bank loan, the skeptical recording engineer--are all quickly won over; the eventual fruition of his music career seems secure. All that remains is the question of love. I won't say how the film answers it, except to note that it is exactly right, an ending equal parts happy and sad, and somehow deeply affirming--a remarkable achievement at any price.

This post originally appeared at TNR.com.

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Directed by S. A. Chandrasekhar

Vijay, a guy with a careless attitude, gets Selvam, a senior home inmate, to act as his dad for an important business deal. Gradually, both help each other through their own experiences and problems.

Vijay Sivaji Ganesan B. Saroja Devi Simran Manivannan

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S. A. Chandrasekhar

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Shree Ganesh Vision

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Releases by date, 04 jul 1997, releases by country.

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Review by Michael James ★★½

A romantic comedy with decent songs, emotions, solid humor and strong performances from Sivaji Ganesan-Vijay. More than the leads story thread, Sivaji-Saroja Devi episodes turn out much sweeter n satisfying. Manivannan and SS Chandran add to the fun. Once more terla, but is a harmless one time watch.

Review by Term1nator ★★★★

Sivaji and Vijay together in a film what more do you want

Review by SaruJan𓃵 ★★★★

I've never watched this movie and if I have to rewatch it I would gladly watch it again! It has a good story with so many comedy scenes which made me laugh in the combo of Thalapathy and Nadigar Thilagam.. I haven't watched many Sivaji Sir movies but I liked his acting in this movie a lot!! Then there are also Saroja, Simran who acted well together with Thalapathy who as always acted really good! I wasn't bored and it was great to watch, well this is one of those movies to watch when you're down in the dumps.

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By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Summer brings out the Bigfoot in Hollywood with blockbusters at the ready to stomp out any movie that values simplicity and sincere emotion. Well, don’t let summer squash Once , the Irish musical from writer-director John Carney that struck a lyrical chord at Sundance earlier this year. Cut through the Spidey-Shrek hype and seek it out. You won’t be sorry. It’s a magical, beguiling wonder. When I say Irish musical, think U2, not Riverdance, and get set for a gift of a movie that is absolutely worth seeing more than once. The Frames frontman Glen Hansard as a Dublin songwriter who takes his guitar to the streets and sings himself hoarse to deaf ears. That is, until he meets a pretty Czech pianist (Marketa Irglova) who gives him the guts to quit his dad’s repair shop and t finding the bucks to make a recording. That’s it, a bittersweet love story with ravishing Hansard music (“Falling Slowly” is a killer) and the ache of romance in its soul. Nothing about this mood piece should work — the budget is shoestring and the actors are inexperienced. But Once brims with small pleasures that pay major dividends. Carney, who played bass for the Frames till 1993, is a filmmaker to watch. Blending the hip and the heartfelt, the tough and the tender, he creates a movie you want to hold close.

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Y ou'd have to be a churl to take against John Carney's bracing, low-budget account of the personal and professional relationship that blooms between an Irish busker (Glen Hansard) and a Czech migrant (Marketa Irglova). It's a soulful valentine to music, friendship and the joys of honest hard graft, played out in the bedsits and recording studios of a deglamourised Dublin, and running to the kind of warm, easy rhythms that typified Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. The film's unabashed romanticism might start to grate were it not for Carney's sharp feel for the impoverished circumstances of his main characters; the sense that, for all their flirty banter and boisterous singalongs, these people are pretty much clinging on by their fingertips. It's the grit that makes the pearl.

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It was here at Cannes, 45 years ago, that Francis Ford Coppola finally emerged from his wilderness of making “Apocalypse Now” with a work in progress, the finish line in sight. That press conference is immortalized in “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” the massively entertaining 1991 documentary by Coppola’s wife, Eleanor , in which the “Godfather” director is seen to declare, “My film is not a movie about Vietnam — it is Vietnam.”

It’s an almost mythological moment for cinema, one that encompasses vindication (“Apocalypse Now” would go on to win the Palme d’Or) but also the end of Coppola’s grand run during the 1970s and the cementing of a reputation that would hound him, one of grandiloquence, artistic risk, overruns and indulgence.

That’s close to where he finds himself right now with “Megalopolis,” the wildly ambitious, overstuffed city epic funded with $120 million of his own money, that had its world premiere tonight at a festival that’s been good to the filmmaker.

The first film for the 85-year-old Coppola since his 2011 horror bauble “Twixt,” “Megalopolis,” a personal obsession of the director’s since at least the 1980s, invites words like “summation” and “capstone.” But those do it a disservice (as did some leaked reactions from an early distributor’s screening), especially if you’re expecting something burnished and high-toned. It may be more productive — at least through these eyes — to see it as fluky and impressionistic, closer to Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” a funhouse image of a clashing New York City riven by money, power and race.

But don’t call it New York (nobody does in the film). It’s more a New Rome, one with its own Chrysler Building, Grand Central Terminal and Art Deco flourishes but recast through an ancient lens — and the stentorian narrative tones of Laurence Fishburne — as a variation on a city in decline.

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It will be a point of contention how much insight is actually to be gleaned from Coppola’s faux-Roman refocusing. Decadence in his city still looks similar to what you’d expect elsewhere, not to mention a touch retrograde: young women squirming and doing drugs in dance clubs (the movie does a bit of ogling), smirking journalists who still wear hats with press cards stuffed in the rim.

And if the central showdown is technically Roman history rethought as sci-fi urban drama — I’ll spare you the wormhole of exploring the Catilinarian coup d’état that seems to have fixated the director for years — we’re basically looking at a power triangle between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver, fuzzy in yet another cryptic visionary role that doesn’t suit him), an imperious inventor in the master-builder mold of Robert Moses; Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the city’s besieged David Dinkins-like mayor; and Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), whose allegiances toggle between the two.

“Megalopolis” doesn’t work like “Succession” or a municipal showdown like James Gray’s expertly rendered “The Yards” did; its details are too divorced from reality for any of its machinations to take hold in a suspenseful way. Coppola’s original screenplay, the product of years of revision and still subjected to much improvisation, swings manically between clunky dialogue and classic quotations. At one point I was watching Driver deliver the entire “to be or not to be” soliloquy from “Hamlet,” a reference never acknowledged by any of the other characters. As they say, it’s a choice.

And while sumptuously costumed in a muted style by Coppola’s longtime genius collaborator Milena Canonero (“The Cotton Club,” “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” ), the movie lacks the confidence of a cinematographer who could organize its ideas into a larger, classier whole, as the director had in Gordon Willis on all three “Godfather” films. (Here the photography is by Mihai Mălaimare Jr., a veteran of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” who hangs on for dear life.)

But once you let go of the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece, there is much to enjoy in “Megalopolis,” especially its cast members, leaning into their moments with an abandon that was probably a job requirement. Aubrey Plaza not only plays a character named Wow Platinum, a salacious interviewer looking to marry into wealth, but somehow frees herself of any embarrassment while doing so. Peppery notes from Talia Shire and Jon Voight intermingle with athletic overacting by Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman.

In a larger sense, Coppola has moved from the cynicism of his greatest films like “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now” — so much power doing so much corrupting — and into something that could fairly be called utopian. I’m not sure if that’s what I want from him as an artist, but I thrill to his unbowed aspiration. He’s going out not with something tame and manicured but with an overstuffed, vigorous, seething story about the roots of fascism that only an uncharitable viewer would call a catastrophe. Rather, it feels like a city. It may be the most radical film he’s ever done. He dedicates it to his late wife, who would have smiled at the evidence of her husband still doing his thing 45 years later.

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Joshua Rothkopf is film editor of the Los Angeles Times. He most recently served as senior movies editor at Entertainment Weekly. Before then, Rothkopf spent 16 years at Time Out New York, where he was film editor and senior film critic. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Sight and Sound, Empire, Rolling Stone and In These Times, where he was chief film critic from 1999 to 2003.

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‘Back to Black’ review: Amy Winehouse biopic captures joy and tragedy

Movie review.

There’s a moment from the 2008 Grammy Awards that gives me chills every time I see it. “Rehab” by English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse had just been announced as record of the year. Winehouse, with her signature beehive and thick winged eyeliner, stares like a deer in headlights for about five seconds processing what she just heard in a moment of disbelief, before celebrating with her band and family. It’s genuine and joyful.

That moment is just one snapshot of her career depicted in the biographical drama “Back to Black,” directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and starring Marisa Abela. 

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As its name suggests, “Back to Black” is dark. With Winehouse’s great talent also came struggles with addiction, mental illness and bulimia. The movie doesn’t shy away from depicting the artist at her lowest lows: throwing up in the toilet; physically fighting with her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell); stumbling drunk through rainy London. This isn’t a bright tale of Winehouse’s rise to stardom. It’s a tragic story of a once-in-a-generation talent gone too soon.

As a big fan of Winehouse, my reaction to Abela’s performance was complicated. She did a good job of bringing Winehouse’s spunk, vulnerability and big-as-her-hair personality to the screen; a scene of her getting emotional in the studio while recording the song “Back to Black” was particularly moving. But my favorite thing about Winehouse was her voice, so I found Abela’s own singing voice to be a bit distracting. She matched Winehouse’s signature jazzy tone, but doesn’t have the low register rasp that made Winehouse’s voice unique.

Some of the movie’s best scenes focus on the relationship Winehouse had with her beloved nan, Cynthia Winehouse (Lesley Manville), who deeply influenced Winehouse. Her grandmother’s death is something Winehouse’s family believes was a factor in the singer’s spiral into addiction.

In the film, when the two are looking at old photos together or when Cynthia styles Winehouse’s hair into that unmistakable beehive, Abela and Manville make you forget you’re watching a movie. The love and care the characters have for each other feel visceral through the screen, like you’re watching yourself interact with any older woman in your life that you would do anything for. Through these humanizing moments, the film shows another side of the usually frank, tough Winehouse, as someone who loved passionately.

In an odd way, the movie acts as a semblance of Winehouse to cling on to, even if her family wasn’t involved in the making of it. (Her estate  did approve  of making a film about her.) She only left us with two studio albums and had a public career of less than 10 years. Abela is not Winehouse, but she brought a silhouette of her into 2024.

At the end of the film, we’re reminded that Winehouse was only 27 when she died, a fact that brought up winged eyeliner-smudging tears. I was happy to be snapped back with the last scene, one of Abela replicating one of Winehouse’s performances. It felt like a nod to how we should remember Winehouse: as an artist who loved music and wanted people to hear her voice and “forget their troubles for five minutes.”

With Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh. 123 minutes. Rated R for language throughout, drug use, nudity and sexual content. Opens May 16 at multiple theaters.

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The “Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity” of Cannes Darling Anora

By David Canfield

In Sean Baker ’s film Anora, Mikey Madison lets out a scream so loud, so funny, and yet so terrifyingly guttural that it evokes the 25-year-old’s many already iconic screen shrieks—most poignantly as Pamela Adlon ’s yearning teenage daughter in the lauded FX series Better Things. Most climatically in the finale of Quentin Tarantino ’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (when her Manson killer is torched by Leonardo DiCaprio ’s flamethrower in a pool). And most fittingly in Scream, delivering on her big death scene. Her range across these projects may have a common pitch, but otherwise, the characters—and portrayals—couldn’t be more different.

Baker ( Red Rocket, The Florida Project ) has handed Madison her first adult lead role in Anora, and the performance is revelatory—fearless in its jagged humanity and piercing in its emotional layers. The film’s wrenching last scene adds profound context to everything that came before. “She just showed a wide range—that she could get crazy, but also really funny, with lots of attitude,” Baker says of what drew him to Madison. He wrote Anora specifically for her. The character, a sex worker in Brooklyn who impulsively marries a Russian billionaire’s 21-year-old son, Ivan ( Mark Eydelshteyn ), marks a natural extension of Baker’s cinematic subjects—those operating on the rougher edges of American life, scraping by for a marginally better tomorrow. Anora—or Ani, as she prefers to go by—fits into this lineage. Madison’s unsentimental, sharply comic approach to the role seems like a match made in Baker heaven.

“I quickly learned that she’s an awesome cinephile with very similar tastes, and so it was really meant to be,” Baker says. “I mean, her favorite film is Possession. I have a huge poster of Possession on my wall.”

We’re sitting on a Croisette terrace in Cannes, the afternoon after Anora ’s sensational Cannes Film Festival 2024 premiere. Madison sits beside Baker, admittedly a little overwhelmed after many hours of adoring attention and photographs and sound bites. As she chimes in, you see that shared sensibility in action. “I have a poster as well,” she assures. Then Baker: “She gave me a Candy poster recently. What is that from, 1970?” Madison doesn’t skip a beat: “No, ’68. ’68, yeah.”

Such creative alignment drove Anora and their collaboration. “It was required for this sort of movie because we’re going to places that wouldn’t be expected by mainstream Hollywood,” Baker says. “She knew my style.”

Mark Eydelshteyn with Mikey Madison in Anora.

Madison had never been offered a role without auditioning until Anora. The minute she left her first meeting with Baker, she couldn’t get Ani out of her head. She worked intensively with a dialect coach, refining a thick Coney Island accent. She read books that Baker loaned her on sex work. She completed extensive dance training, crucial for Ani’s scenes in the club where she performs for men, but also for Madison to key into her overall physicality. “It really affected the way that I moved, the way that I walked, the way that I felt,” she tells me. “I talked to multiple consultants, sex workers, read memoirs, anything that I could do. I went to strip clubs and watched women in Los Angeles.” She stops herself with a slight smile. “That sounds creepy.”

Baker shakes his head. “The preparation was incredible,” he says. She responds, “I wanted to completely know this character; obviously to have room to discover more, but without any question that could be left unanswered by myself as an actor.” And yet she remained an incredibly present acting partner. Eydelshteyn came into Anora nervous: He’d auditioned in English for the first time, and occasionally struggled with the dynamic between Ivan and Ani. “She was always helping me and asking me: ‘Is it comfortable for you? Is it okay for you? How can I help you?’” Eydelshteyn says. “From our first meeting it was like, ‘Okay, we are scared together.’”

For the movie’s first scene, an immersion into a standard night for Ani in the strip club, Baker ran cameras live for 10 minutes and asked Madison to mingle with Ani’s colleagues and clients in the scene without saying any specific dialogue. She improvised expertly, but more importantly, wove in expositional details without missing a beat. “The mechanics of what it’s like to be a lap dancer—she knew it so well that she was able to give me all of that information that was needed without it [being] scripted,” Baker says. This was especially important since the director came into Anora hoping to “remove the stigma” around sex work, with plans to continue covering the subject in future films.

Another bravura scene—the movie’s turning point, really—comes later, as the reality of Ani and Ivan’s marriage abruptly comes into focus. Ivan runs away, realizing he’s in over his head when his father’s Russian-Armenian employees show up to undo the union—leaving Ani under their bumbling supervision. Eydelshteyn plays the scene with a hilarious, sudden skittishness. “It’s a funny role like this because it’s [Mark],” says Yura Borisov, who plays Igor, the nicest of the fixer crew. Borisov had just made another film with Eydelshteyn when he was cast in Anora, and recommended him for the part. “That’s why me and Mark are here now, thanks to Cannes,” he says with a laugh. “And here we are again.”

With Ivan gone, the scene focuses on Ani’s predicament as Igor, his associate Garnick ( Vache Tovmasyan ), and their boss Toros ( Karren Karagulian ) try to restrain her—calmly. That does not go well. Ani fights and smashes, and yes, screams for help. Madison goes gloriously unleashed.

At one point, she kicks Garnick through a glass table. Ivan’s mansion is promptly trashed. “Sean texted me the night before they shot the fight—he said, ‘It’s a different [scene] now, it’s a little bit more violent,’” says Karagulian, a longtime Baker collaborator. “I was very nervous because there were 11 pages of dialogue for me: ‘How am I going to do this?’ Then [Baker] said, ‘I’m changing things.’” You feel that liveness in the scene’s escalating, screwball-coded tension. “He’s redoing everything and it’s happening in the moment,” says Tovmasyan. “It’s like he’s painting it.”

Borisov, Karagulian, and Tovmasyan ratchet up the comedy even as they’re working—improvising, in fact—between Russian, Armenian, and English. “Especially when we say something in Russian or Armenian. I hope [audiences] felt the humor,” Karagulian says. Baker credits much of that energy to what they found on the day. When Garnick gets brutally table-smashed, for instance, Baker and Madison knew the perfect punch line and said it to each other at the same time (no spoilers here!). And while they were using a stunt coordinator, the cast was committed to playing out their own stunts. It took over a week to film.

“It had to be very calculated and choreographed,” Baker says. But it evolved so much on the day, says Madison, because “we just didn’t expect how real it would feel. It’s written on a page, and we’re walking through it, but then Garnick is actually chasing me and dragging me. I’m fighting with all my strength—it’s very intense to do something like that.”

“And quite disturbing to hear that bone-chilling scream echo through the house,” Baker adds.

The Anora team on Cannes opening night.

Neon is set to release Anora later this year, and based on the rapturous reviews, an awards campaign feels likely. The first test will be whether it picks up anything at this weekend’s prize ceremony in Cannes. “Playing in competition, seriously, it’s just like having a dream come true twice,” Baker says, referencing Anora coming on the heels of Red Rocket ’s own competition launch.

Madison had seen Baker’s Tangerine five times coming into Anora. She’d completed multiple viewings of his other features, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, too. She felt the enormity of the project and ran with it. That much is evident onscreen. On the last day of filming, when all was said and done, “I was very sad,” she says. “It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I don’t know how many more relationships I’ll have with a director like that. I just didn’t want it to end.”

Baker warmly disagrees once more, expressing hope they’ll work together again. But either way, he sees a bright future ahead. “She’s going to have a million opportunities with incredible directors, incredible experiences,” Baker says. “I know that now.”

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‘to a land unknown’ review: sympathetic story of stranded palestinian refugees avoids turning them into heroes – cannes film festival, ‘bird’ review: andrea arnold’s dabble with fantasy offers a sunlit ray of hope in a bleak existence – cannes film festival.

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Andrea Arnold was last in Cannes with Cow in 2021, a documentary about a bovine’s pitiful existence on a farm from birth to death. Her new film, Bird , might switch animal classifications — and return her to narrative features about human beings — but there’s connective tissue between the two. Once more, Arnold is perfecting her meandering journey through marginalized existences.

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Bug is bugged out, in a sense that might shock social services if ever they cared to visit the squat in which he is raising his dysfunctional family; but these are people too peripheral even for any governmental agency to bother with. Bug is getting married to Kayleigh (Frankie Box) and he is far too preoccupied trying to raise money for his upcoming nuptials — by finding the right kind of music to play to a hallucinogenic toad so it will produce slime he can sell — to pay much mind to his wayward daughter. (Hilariously, Keoghan dismisses the possibility that “Murder on the Dance Floor” passes for good music.)

Bird ( Franz Rogowski ) appears to Bailey in a flush of wind in the middle of a field of horses. “It’s beautiful,” he comments about the rising sun in the distance. “What?” replies Bailey brusquely. Beauty has no place here. But there is something about Bird, who prances in front of Bailey’s cellphone camera in a long skirt, and then starts surveying her tenement building perched on neighboring rooftops. He is kind to her; she has no experience of such a thing, so she barely recognizes it. But she can’t help but be drawn to him.

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With Arnold working once more with Robbie Ryan, who shoots the film through vintage 16mm glass, the film’s burnt magic hour visuals paint even this dreary mess of council estates and shuttered waterside cafés in a kind of desperately optimistic glow. It is in Rogowski’s captivating performance as Bird, measured in beatific smiles and quirkiness, but also in occasional nods to a darker side that is ever primed to defend, that the film becomes a redemption tale. Through Bird, Bailey will find her place in a world determined to overlook her.

Keoghan, too, paints Bug as a flawed but ultimately loveable father figure. Bailey bristles at his hasty nuptials — we’re left to wonder how many times she’s heard the same from her dad — but though he neglects her and her brother, he is there for his kids when it counts. “I’d have been better off without ya,” he tells them, and he’s unquestionably right. “But I love youse two.”

Arnold knows just how to get under our skin. If we struggle to settle into all this misery to begin with, by the end we’re as invested as we could be. It was that way with Fish Tank and American Honey too; a jolt of culture shock that makes way for universal human truths. Here, more confident in her storytelling, she embellishes with fantastical elements we won’t spoil. Whether they’re really happening, or part of Bailey’s childlike desperation to believe in anything magical, the film doesn’t make clear. That’s for us to decide, but Arnold certainly wants us to know one thing by the end: Bailey will be OK.

Title: Bird Festival: Cannes (Competition) Director: Andrea Arnold Cast: Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski, Jason Buda, Jasmine Jobson, James Nelson Joyce, Frankie Box, Nykiya Adams Sales agent: Cornerstone Films Running time: 1 hr 59 min

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‘Emilia Pérez’ Review: Leading Lady Karla Sofía Gascón Electrifies in Jacques Audiard’s Mexican Redemption Musical

Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez also star in the Palme d'Or winner's exhilarating Spanish-language (half-sung) portrait of a former cartel boss's life-changing transformation.

By Peter Debruge

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SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains some spoilers.

Like a rose blooming amid a minefield, it’s a miracle that Jacques Audiard ’s “ Emilia Pérez ” exists: a south-of-the-border pop opera about a most unlikely metamorphosis and the personal redemption it awakens in a stone-cold criminal.

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The filmmaker got the idea from Le Monde editor Boris Razon’s novel “Écoute,” wherein the character’s mission is but one of countless questions raised about identity (in the book, Manitas wants to become his first love, who was murdered years before). But primarily-Spanish-language “Emilia Pérez” isn’t an adaptation so much as a totally different interpretation of that out-there idea: What if you took the poster boy for toxic masculinity and made them a woman — not à la Griselda Blanco (“Cocaine Godmother”), but in such a way that eclipsed the aggressive original persona?

Audiard starts by introducing Saldaña’s character, Rita, a defense attorney who helps scumbags go free, justifying her misgivings through song. Overstressed and undervalued, Rita accepts a potential client’s shady proposal, which means being driven out to who-knows-where with a hood over her head. Ultra-careful in order to evade potential assassination, Manitas swears Rita to secrecy before telling her why she’s been summoned: “I want to be a woman,” growls a man who looks like he wouldn’t hesitate to have her killed. And then Manitas opens his shirt and reveals his commitment to Rita (but not the camera).

At this point in the film, my sensitivity sensors were still wary. Early on, all references to Manitas are masculine, which is true even among the gender-reassignment doctors Rita flies around the world to interview. One can easily imagine such an assignment sparking a “Some Like It Hot”-style farce about the Witness Protection Program, and the film still feels like it could go either way (toward triumph or catastrophe) during the gonzo “La Vaginoplastia” number, which suggests “Myra Breckinridge” as Busby Berkeley might have staged it. “Changing the body changes society,” Rita sings to the surgeon in Tel Aviv (played by Mark Ivanir), who finally agrees to conduct the procedure, tipping off where the story is headed.

It’s not like Manitas can tell anyone what he’s doing, counting on Rita to stage his death and relocate his family to Switzerland. In fact, when the ex-capo reunites with Rita a few years later in London — now radiant, beardless and renamed Emilia — the lawyer tenses, afraid she’s come to erase the last trace of her past. Instead, Emilia asks Rita to bring her wife/widow Jessi (Gomez) and sons back to Mexico. According to press notes, Gascón (who plays Emilia) still lives with her daughter’s mom, and a similar dynamic emerges here, as Emilia presents herself as a long-lost aunt.

The scene that played best at Cannes finds Rita watching this reunion warily, as Emilia welcomes Jessi and the kids back into her life. Will they recognize her? “You smell like Papa,” one of their sons tells Emilia in a lovely reverse lullaby. “Emilia Pérez” would have been a very different movie if Manitas had found the courage to confide in the family. Not doing so sets the stakes for the rest of the film: Can Emilia continue to serve as their guardian? What happens if Jessi, who thinks she’s dead, should run off with new flame Gustavo (Édgar Ramírez)?

Such double standards add fascinating dimensions to the film’s second half, especially after Emilia decides to start La Lucecita, an NGO designed to help grieving family members find their “disappeared” relatives. In the process, Emilia also finds love. Apart from one scene where Rita worries that Emilia’s partner (Adriana Paz) may have figured things out, Audiard doesn’t distract himself with that old trope. Again, it would have been nice to see Emilia confide in others, but the film doesn’t treat fear of discovery as a point of suspense. Instead, Audiard wonders how much people really change when they transition. In Emilia’s case, less than she’d like, but enough to inspire positive change in society.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition), May 18, 2024. Running time: 132 MIN.

• Production: (France) A Why Not Prods., Page 114 production, in co-production with Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, Pathé, France 2 Cinéma, in association with Library Pictures International, Logical Content Ventures, Les Films du Fleuve, The Veterans, Vixens, Casa Kafka Pictures, Pimienta Films, with the support of CNC, la Région Ile-de-France, with the participation of Ciné+, with the support of Canal+, France Télévisions. (World sales: Pathé, Paris.)
• Crew: Director, writer: Jacques Audiard, freely adapted from the novel “Écoute“ by Boris Razon. Screenplay: Camera: Paul Guilhaume. Editor: Juliette Welfling. Original music and songs: Clément Ducol, Camille. Music supervisor: Pierre Marie Dru. Choreographer: Damien Jalet.
• With: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Édgar Ramírez, Mark Ivanir, Karla Sofía Gascón, Eduardo Aladro, Emiliano Edmundo, Hasan Jalil, Gaël Murgia-Fur, Tirso Pietriga, Jarib (Javier Zagoya), Montiel Magali Brito, Sébastien Fruit.

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Yesterday Once More Reviews

Yesterday Once More is a time-travel love story that gets a little too convoluted in order to cover up some possible plot holes. However, the performances in this drama are engaging. The movie also gives a worthwhile look at fate versus freedom of choice.

Full Review | May 16, 2023

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‘Coma’ Review: A Labyrinthine Lockdown Movie

Bertrand Bonello’s latest horror film, dedicated to his teenage daughter, pushes the boundaries of the conventional pandemic movie.

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By Beatrice Loayza

“Coma,” a pandemic-themed horror movie by the director Bertrand Bonello, takes its title from one of its two cloistered characters living in France during the coronavirus lockdown. Patricia Coma (Julia Faure) is a social media influencer whose channel is made up of surreal how-to videos, philosophical monologues and weather reports (though it doesn’t matter, “you can’t go out, anyway,” she explains).

Watching Patricia is an unnamed teenage girl (Louise Labèque), moody and introspective as she spends her days in confinement glued to the screen.

Don’t be misled by the more conventional pandemic scenes, like the teenager’s video chats with friends — “Coma” pushes the boundaries of the so-called lockdown movie with its thrilling, chaotic form.

At first, it seemingly tracks the teenager’s online interactions: Patricia’s uncanny missives and a smutty sitcom played out by stop-motion dolls. We also see the teenager’s recurring nightmare, in which she’s trapped in a purgatorial forest, as well as surveillance footage in which she appears to be out in the streets.

With Bonello’s fluid editing, the gradual spillover between scenes and intrusions by reality itself — then-President Trump’s tweets play a role — seems to flatten time. That’s certainly become a cliché in films like “Locked Down” or Bo Burnham’s “Inside,” but Bonello’s experimental approach brings a new level of desperation to this compressed version of reality.

As a relatively short, minimalistic production, “Coma” plays like an amuse-bouche to Bonello’s recent epic “The Beast,” about the tragedy of characters who lack free will. Patricia is a kind of evangelist for this worldview. She sells an electronic memory game, like Simon, that the teenager plays to kill time, but, as if by some kind of dark magic, cannot seem to lose.

The film begins and ends with a subtitled message written by Bonello to his daughter, to whom he dedicated the film. It acknowledges the unique despair of her generation — of children accustomed to climate change and school shootings; their best years spent online, trapped at home during a global pandemic.

This message is also what makes “Coma” surpass the trappings of a lockdown movie: It may be anchored to that period, but it speaks to an existential crisis that defines many right now.

Coma Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters.

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