‘The Brutalist’, ‘The Room Next Door’ & ‘The Count Of Monte Cristo’ Jump Into Pre-Christmas Indie Frame – Specialty Preview
Fewer new openings but important ones for the indie world as the year soon to close welcomes the trio of Brady Corbet’s much-nominated The Brutalist with Adrien Brody, Pedro Almodovar’s first English outing The Room Next Door starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and a new rendition of revenge thriller The Count Of Monte Cristo. All three are starting in limited release.
Aardman Animations’ latest, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, is a lighter note in a handful of theaters ahead of its Netflix debut.
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The Brutalist opens in four theaters in New York (Lincoln Square, Angelika) and LA (The Vista, Century City) with 70mm and Imax special engagements including Q&A’s with Corbet, co-writer Monda Fastvold and cinematographer Lol Crawley, notable for using large format VistaVision cameras in the film, which expands in January.
Corbet’s third feature centers on László Toth (Brody) a Brutalist architect who flees the Holocaust in Europe and attempts to rebuild his life in postwar America. Initially forced to toil in poverty, Toth soon wins a contract that will change the course of the next 30 years of his life. With Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones and Alessandro Nivola.
It’s seeing interest by a younger cinephile audience that started on social media and Letterboxd. Some 22 shows for the weekend are sold out, including Imax.
A shower of Golden Globe nominations include Best Motion Picture – Drama, Director, Screenplay and more, and The Brutalist was named Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), among other accolades. With Anora, it topped the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards nominations Thursday (each had seven noms).
It world premiered to critical acclaim at the Venice International Film Festival, winning Corbet the Silver Lion for Best Director, and going on to play the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival. The sweeping indie epic, with a budget of about $10 million, sits at 96% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. See Deadline review.
Samuel Goldwyn Films presents The Count Of Monte Cristo, a new adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic adventure novel that debuted at Cannes as the closing night film to a 12-minute ovation and sits at 97% with RT critics. Pete Hammond’s Deadline review called it “one of the best I saw” at the festival.
Written and directed by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte (The Three Musketeers Part I & Part II), it starts on four screens in New York (Quad Cinema, AMC Empire) and Los Angeles (Laemmle Royal and AMC Americana) ahead of a Jan. 3 expansion at AMC theaters nationwide.
The story is well know with multiple film and TV adaptations over the years. Pierre Niney stars as Edmond Dantes, a courageous ship’s first mate who becomes the target of a sinister plot and is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After 14 years in the island prison of Chateau d’If, Dantes manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte Cristo and exacts his revenge on the three men who betrayed him.
The most expensive French film of 2024 has made over $100 million worldwide. It also stars Ana?s Demoustier, Laurent Lafitte, Pierfrancesco Favino, Anamaria Vartolomei, Bastien Bouillon and Patrick Mille.
Sony Pictures Classics is out with Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door, winner of Golden Lion top prize at Venice, in six theaters in New York (Angelika, Walter Read, Cinema 123) and LA (Laemmle Royal, AMC Grove, AMC Burbank). Adds a few more markets Jan. 10, expands nationwide on Jan. 17.
Stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as Ingrid and Martha, two women who were close friends in their youth when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid became a novelist, Martha a war correspondent and they fell out of touch for years, but come together in a fraught reunion.
Swinton has a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
Based on Ingrid Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through, it’s the iconic director’s first English-language feature in a near 50-year career
Netflix debuts Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the latest of Aardmann Animations dynamic duo, a film that sites at a rarefied 100% with RT critics, in limited release.
Aardman’s four-time Academy Award-winning director Nick Park and Emmy Award-nominated Merlin Crossingham return with their next epic installment, written by Park and and Mark Burton.
Top dog Gromit springs into action to save his master and battles sinister forces after Wallace’s high-tech invention, a “smart” garden gnome, goes rogue and he’s framed for a series of suspicious crimes.
The first feature, Wallace & Gromit: Curse Of The Were-Rabbit 19 years agoan early Oscar winner for feature animation. Since then, the franchise, which started with the 1990 short A Grand Day Out has been living strong with short films and half-hour specials. Wallace is voiced by Ben Whitehead.
Premiered at AFI, see Deadline review. Netflix doesn’t report grosses.
Los Frikis from Wayward/Range releasing with Falling Forward Films opens at two NY/LA locations the AMC Empire and AMC Burbank. Adding two Miami runs as well as San Franciso, Chicago, Boston and Atlanta on 12/25. Directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz (Peanut Butter Falcon), the dramatic coming-of-age- story set in early 1990s Cuba, is inspired by real events. It centers around 18-year-old Gustavo, who idolizes his older brother Paco and his punk “Frikis” bandmates who self-inject themselves with HIV to live at a government-run treatment home where they can live and play music freely.
Homestead from Angel Studios is opening wide on 1,886 screens. When the world erupts in post-apocalyptic chaos, a community must unite to survive, or turn against each other and fall. Directed by Ben Smallbone. Starring Neal McDonough, Dawn Olivieri, Currie Graham. The film’s sister TV series based on Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross’ bestselling book series Black Autumn revolves around a family’s attempts to survive after a world-ending tragedy. It’s available to stream on Angel.com and the Angel app.
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