After making its world premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield is ready to hit theaters. Searchlight Pictures is debuting the reimagining of the Charles Dickens’ classic starring Dev Patel in physical theaters (remember those?). To be more specific, the film will open in over 1,350 theaters across the U.S. and Canada with an expansion on September 4. David Copperfield is the first film Searchlight Pictures has released in theaters since Wendy in late February, a month before the pandemic caused box offices to shutter.
Emmy winners and Oscar nominees Iannucci (In The Loop, The Death of Stalin, Veep, Avenue 5) and Simon Blackwell (In The Loop, Succession) adapted the screenplay from The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery and told the story of the titular character as we see his glow up from orphan to successful writer in Victorian England. Patel leads a diverse cast that includes Rosalind Eleazar, Benedict Wong, Aneurin Barnard, Peter Capaldi, Morfydd Clark, Daisy May Cooper, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Paul Whitehouse, Gwendoline Christie and Anthony Welsh.
With a talented cast and Iannucci and Blackwell’s signature savvy and off-center humor for storytelling, David Copperfield currently sits at a strong 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review of the film, Hammond said, “This is solid witty and wonderful entertainment, even if you can’t fathom Charles Dickens.”
At TIFF, Iannucci told Deadline, “I’ve never seen a Dickens adaptation that has celebrated the language, the dialogue, and the comedy. Really, everything is too reverential.” He continued, “The book has such contemporary resonance. It’s all about status anxiety: ‘Will I succeed? Do people like me? Are my friends the right friends to have?’ and things like that. It’s such a personal, humane film, really, and it just spoke to me. Dickens writes so cinematically anyway, and as I was reading it, I thought, ‘This is the film I want to make.’”
Watch the trailer below.
Picturehouse’s Fatima directed by Marco Pontecorvo is rooted in the 1952 film The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, which is based on the true story of three children who claimed to have spoken to an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal.
Written by Pontecorvo & Valerio D’Annunzio and Barbara Nicolosi, the film is set in 1917 and follows the three young children that had visions of the Virgin Mary. They claim that the visions tell them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I. The government and church leaders aren’t too happy about their story and they try to make them to rescind their stories as people start to flock to Fatima to witness the miracle. As a result, their quiet lives are transformed as the world looks for peace.
The film opens in select theaters and drops on VOD today. It stars Joaquim de Almeida (Queen of the South), Goran Višnjić (Beginners), Stephanie Gil (Terminator: Dark Fate), Lúcia Moniz (Love, Actually), Sônia Braga (Aquarius) and Harvey Keitel (The Irishman). Watch the trailer below.
The Ninian Doff-directed Get Duked! is set to drop on Amazon Prime Video today and give audiences a mix of laughs — and scares. Marking Doff’s directorial debut, the horror-comedy follows a group of teenage pals in Glasgow who go on a character-building camping trip — which is based on a real-life program called the Duke of Edinburgh Award. The group is more interested in smoking weed in the Scottish Highlands than participating in activities that will better themselves. After the trio finds themselves paired with straight-laced Ian they end up in a remote farmland where they are hunted down by a shadowy force hell-bent on extinguishing their futures.
The movie debuted at SXSW under the name Boyz in the Wood and won an Audience Award. Amazon acquired the film after its festival run. The film stars Eddie Izzard, Kate Dickey, Georgie Glen, James Cosmo and a breakout young cast featuring Samuel Bottomley, Viraj Juneja, Rian Gordon, and Lewis Gribben.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) brings his documentary Epicentro to virtual cinemas starting today. The docu, which won the Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, paints an immersive portrait of post-colonial Cuba.
As Spanish dominance ended, a new era of the American Empire was ushered in. At the same time, cinema as propaganda entered the picture. From this Sauper explores a century of interventionism and myth-making together with the extraordinary people of Havana — who he calls “young prophets” — to interrogate time, imperialism and cinema itself. Fatima opens today in New York with Museum of the Moving Image as well as
Los Angeles with Laemmle Theatres & Lumiere Cinema. The film also makes its virual debut in Kansas City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington DC, among others.
In the Flavio Alves-directed drama The Garden Left Behind, we are introduced to a young Mexican trans woman named Tina (Carlie Guevara) and grandmother Eliana (Miriam Cruz). Tina is struggling with her transition and both are facing challenges building a life in New York City as undocumented immigrants.
Tina finds some solace and hope in her trans transgender advocacy group, but it isn’t long before she is faced with threats, insurmountable medical costs, questions about her legal immigration status and increasing skepticism from the man she loves. As things start to unravel, she doesn’t realize that she is the only hope for a shy young man.
The Garden Left Behind made its world premiere at SXSW where it was honored with an Audience Award in the Visions category. The film adheres to authentic storytelling featuring transgender actors in trans roles and Latinx performers in Latinx roles. The film also stars Anthony Abdo, Tamara Williams, Ivana Black, Kristen Lovell, Danny Flaherty, Alex Kruz, Michael Madsen and Ed Asner. The Garden Left Behind opens in virtual cinemas starting today and will be available on VOD September 8.
Made In Bangladesh made its world premiere in 2019 at the Toronto International Film Festival before having a successful theatrical run in France. Now the drama is ready to make its stateside debut in virtual cinemas today.
Directed by Rubaiyat Hossain, the socially-minded drama stars Rikita Nandini Shimu as Shumu, a 23-year-old who works in a clothing factory in Bangladesh. When conditions start to get more difficult, she starts a union with her co-workers despite threats from management and disapproval of her husband to fight for change.
Minos Nikolakakis’s Entwined, which also debuted at TIFF, opens virtually today in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and other major cities before hitting VOD on September 8. The horror-drama follows a Panos (Prometheus Aleifer), a doctor who movies his practice to a small village. While there, he develops feelings for Danae (Anastasia Rafaella Konidi), who lives in isolation with a mysterious skin condition. While trying to find a cure he uncovers a dark secret that changes everything.
Also opening this weekend is M.J. Bassett’s action-thriller Rogue from Lionsgate which stars Megan Fox as a mercenary who leads a dangerous mission to rescue hostages in a remote Africa. Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole hits a little too close to reality as it follows to residents of a crumbling building who refuse to leave their homes in spite of a virus that has forced the evacuation of the area. This leads to a very unlikely relationship between the pair. In the Sundance documentary The Mole Agent, director Maite Alberdi follows a mole hired by a private investigator in Chile to infiltrate a retirement home where a client of his suspects the caretakers of elder abuse.