Tickets for film about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes said to be selling out after $15m opening weekend in the US
It is the film everyone seems to be talking about, spawning memes and fuelling feverish online debate about its subject, the disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Now, a month before Nathan Fielder’s documentary You Can See Everything reaches UK cinemas, tickets for screenings are already selling out after its remarkable $15m (£11.3m) opening weekend in the US.
Pumpkin spice latte fragrance in the air, jumpers and hoodies taking the place of T-shirts in the wardrobe and colder weather takes over from the scorching summer days. In short, the spooky season is upon us! Leaving the standards to one side, what about more recent content, even some that isn’t out yet?
Sinners – HBO Max
Michael B Jordan is one of the best actors of his generation, and that is a hill I’m more than willing to die on. The guy just oozes charisma and dominates each film he is in. So, it is only natural that when a film casts him in two roles, the awesomeness is through the roof.
Ryan Coogler’s gory masterpiece Sinners tells the tale of twin brothers in the American South in the 1930s. Smoke and Stack left their hometown years ago to fight in WWI and then work as enforcers for the Chicago mob. Hardened and weary, they return home to open a music club, but overhead costs are the least of their problems. Discrimination, racism and deep-seated hatred also stand in their way. So does a pack of bloodthirsty vampires.
Exploring societal norms, religion and legacy through the lens of a vampire thriller isn’t conventional, but then again, neither is the director. Sinners is bloody, engaging and, above all, scary.
Frankenstein – Netflix
When The Odyssey came out, the biggest piece of criticism it received in the Greek-speaking world was that “it wasn’t faithful to the source material”. This is a criticism usually levelled at directors when they try to adapt any piece of literature.
But, creativity doesn’t work like that. Creative people need to give it their own spin, their own interpretation of the material. That’s the hard part, and the reason why not everyone can be a director.
Frankenstein
Such is the case with the beloved Guillermo del Toro when he set out to adapt Mary Shelley’s iconic tale of Frankenstein, looking to breathe new life into it.
And breathe he did. Frankenstein is a visually stunning piece of cinema, full of extraordinary sets, breathtaking imagery and a heartbreaking tale of rejection. Who is really the monster here? The arrogant, obsessed scientist or the abomination he created?
Carrie – Prime Video
One thing I’d love to see within my lifetime? Mike Flanagan adapting The Dark Tower series with enough budget to make it a classic. Flanagan is the man when it comes to Stephen King books, but until I get my heart’s desire, we will have to settle for the newest adaptation of the King classic, Carrie.
The book that launched King’s career, it tells the story of a shy, bullied girl who has just about had enough of ridicule and decides to spread mayhem and destruction using her telekinetic powers.
True to form, Flanagan deviates from the source material while at the same time staying faithful to its spirit. He gives the story a contemporary look, bringing it into the digital era, with cyberbullying and online religious activism taking centre stage.
I was blown away. Flanagan is a true master of slow-burning horror, and the Amazon budget really shows in the action scenes.
Below – Netflix
What’s a Halloween list without some good ol’ creature horror? The always-welcome Josh Hartnett stars as a struggling fisherman living in a remote community in Newfoundland. The town is completely dependent on fishing to survive and is struggling, like so many remote places today.
Things take a turn for the supernatural when the town is threatened by a mysterious sea creature, prompting our hero into action to save himself, his family and the soul of the town. The Arctic environment is the perfect setting for a creature horror series: there’s no escape, nowhere to go and even the landscape is hostile. Add to the mix the fact that some residents have their own agendas, and you have the human drama element as well.
Dead-End Job – Netflix (October 30)
If it comes from South Korea and is bonkers, I’m in. Hyeok-jun is a young man with financial issues who discovers an agency offering jobs that pay 50 times the minimum wage. What could go wrong? He soon discovers that there is a reason this job pays so well, but also learns the upside: the longer you persist, the more money you get.
And the crazier things get.
Blood and gore are abundant in this upcoming series, along with the usual wackiness we’ve come to expect from Korean filmmaking. I don’t know if this will hit Squid Game levels of success, but I’m definitely giving it a try.
Danny Trejo’s son has claimed his 82-year-old father had no idea who conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was before he agreed to star in The Daily Wire’s upcoming Minneapolis movie. The same may or may not be true for fellow Hollywood stars including James Franco, Rob Lowe and Jonathan Majors, writes Kevin E G Perry
Shot by Sofia’s mother Eleanor this documentary shows something of the strain of shooting a period piece, but is a far cry from the tumultuous portrait of her husband in Hearts of Darkness
It is 20 years since the release of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst; it is a supportively unjudging, unironised study of the queen’s early years before the 1789 revolution, lavishly and accurately costumed, shot on location at Versailles and based on the Antonia Fraser biography – but also subversively and amusingly using pop tracks from the 70s and 80s on the soundtrack. It got a storm of booing from French critics, reportedly annoyed at the way their history had been reduced to a music video and fashion shoot with no French actors involved. Or hardly any.
In fact, for all the lack of political grit, the film was interesting and accomplished, and deservedly has a fanbase – and it is to that constituency that this making-of documentary from the director’s mother Eleanor Coppola is really addressed. It is basically a sweet family home movie on digital video which shows something of the strain and the longueurs of shooting a demanding period picture, but tactfully not seeing anything really explosive or bad-tempered. It is very far from Eleanor Coppola’s sensational behind-the-scenes film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse about the tumultuous creation of Apocalypse Now, directed by her husband Francis Ford Coppola.
The hit Elizabeth Holmes documentary led to increased interest in the award-winning narrative series on Hulu as well as Bad Blood, a 2018 book on the scandal
Interest in Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos fraud scandal has surged amid buzz for You Can See Everything, the record-breaking documentary on the disgraced former CEO.
Viewership for The Dropout, the 2022 Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, surged by 186% in September compared with the month prior, according to Variety, after the announcement on 6 September of the previously secret film’s first teaser.
Olivia Colman goes vulpine, Rupert Grint’s newborn is a monster and Joko Anwar makes a warmhearted violent ghost story set in an Indonesian prison
If I’d ever wanted children, the films showing at the 59th edition of the International Fantastic film festival of Catalonia in the coastal town of Sitges, south of Barcelona, would have soon set me straight. This year’s recurring themes were explosive parturition, chewed-up nipples and the fruit of the womb turning out to be at best sociopathic, at worst inhuman.
The theme was celebrated in an evil-kiddy exhibition at the Miramar Cultural Centre, marking the 50th anniversary of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s “fantaterror” classic Who Can Kill a Child?, some of which was filmed in Sitges itself. The expo traced the subgenre from 1956’s The Bad Seed, via Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, to this year’s Nightborn, in which poor Rupert Grint, as the hapless husband, is no match for the developing folk-horror bond between his depressed wife, their newborn “child”, and the spooky forest surrounding their house. Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, in her introduction, confessed it was inspired by her experiences of motherhood. Only up to a point, one hopes.
After becoming a prominent advocate for multiple sclerosis awareness and chronicling her struggles in an emotional memoir published in March, the Emmy-winning actor Christina Applegate has revealed she does not have the debilitating autoimmune disease after all.
Applegate, 54, made the stunning announcement in an episode of her podcast MeSsy, recorded with fellow actor Jamie-Lynn Sigler, posted to YouTube on Tuesday.
Film critic Ann Hornaday has died. As chief film critic for The Washington Post, she was a respected and passionate voice in the world of cinema. She was also a longtime regular on the News Hour, sharing her love of film with our viewers. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has our remembrance.
Dan Lin, with Ava DuVernay, is Netflix's latest exec cut.
Kate Green/Getty Images for Netflix
Netflix's film chief Dan Lin is out after two years.
He's the latest top exec to exit following a 6% cut at the streamer, its biggest since 2022.
New content chief Peter Rice will oversee film until a successor to Lin is announced.
Film head Dan Lin is out at Netflix, the latest exec to be ousted in the wake of the streamer's biggest layoff since 2022.
Lin was hired as film chair in 2024 with a mandate to bring greater cost discipline and variety to Netflix's films, which had focused on big-budget output under his predecessor, Scott Stuber. Lin cut big upfront paychecks to actors, reduced staff, and reorganized his department. He oversaw a slate that included Oscar-winning "KPop Demon Hunters," "Happy Gilmore 2," and "Frankenstein."
Lin's exit is the latest big shocker at Netflix. Also out in recent days was chief content officer Bela Bajaria, who was replaced by Hollywood veteran Peter Rice, a former exec at Disney and Fox.
Rice will oversee film until a new head is announced, Netflix said in a statement confirming Lin's departure.
Last week, Netflix laid off 1,000 employees, or about 6% of global head count. That was the streamer's largest cull since 2022, when the company lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade.
The streaming giant has been hampered by slowing engagement growth and a stock price that has declined more than 40% over the past year. The streamer is contending with the rise of free, ad-supported streaming led by YouTube and the popularity of social video. In recent months, Netflix has turned to podcasters and creators to bulk up its library.
Netflix is set to report third-quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday.
Actor experienced a ‘medical emergency’ on flight during which she allegedly injured crew members, statement says
Actor Selma Blair did not mean to hurt anyone during the recent flight which led to her arrest on allegations that she assaulted a pair of cabin crew members, a police officer and a nurse, her representatives said on Friday in a statement that characterized the episode as a medical emergency.
The lengthy statement also dismissed prior media coverage of Blair’s arrest after a Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to New York as unsympathetic and inaccurate, singling out reporting from several outlets alleging that she tried to open the door of the airplane that she and her fellow passengers were on.
Film interviewing military insiders about mass killing of civilians in Gaza wins widespread praise around the world
Critics around the world have hailed the award-winning documentary NAZA as a “brilliant and harrowing” film that is “impossible to ignore”.
NAZA, which is produced by the Guardian and details Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, was released in UK cinemas this week and will be shown in more than 50 countries. As well as its global cinema releases, NAZA will be available free on the Guardian’s website from late November.
As violent spirits are unleashed in Sky’s Possession, observers see confident creatives reclaiming the island’s narratives in a form of ‘cultural reparation’
A woman opens a 300‑year‑old box, unleashing a violent spirit – it is the spirit of colonialism and oppression roaring back to life. It is a pivotal scene in Sky’s supernatural series Possession and symbolises a wider shift in Jamaica’s film industry, where directors are increasingly using the landscape to tell Jamaican stories – including those that confront enslavement, trauma and historical memory.
The series is about a biracial British lawyer who travels to Jamaica to investigate a multimillion-pound inheritance dispute, only to uncover a dark, vengeful spirit tied to the plantation’s brutal colonial past.
Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes winner echoes the news story of a Romanian couple whose children were taken by the Norwegian government. As it heads to London film festival, two writers explain how the film exposes real hypocrisies
When Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord was shown in Romania as a one-day preview this June, the reception was extraordinary. Across 53 towns and 96 cinemas, the film reportedly pulled in over 40,000 viewers in a single night, a number arthouse cinema rarely sees in Romania. But the response here had little to do with cinema. It felt instead like a reopening of a familiar fault line about the clash of values within the EU itself.
The 1926 film of Goethe’s tragic tale of a man who sells his soul to the devil remains a spectacular feat of German expressionism
The centenary of FW Murnau’s silent fantasy-melodrama from 1926 is the occasion to ponder this mysterious film, taken from Goethe’s 19th-century depiction of the alchemist and natural philosopher who sells his soul to the devil but, in a very high-minded climax of German romanticism, is redeemed by love. (Not love of God precisely, but love of a good woman; the word “Liebe” finally appears at the centre of Murnau’s radiating vision of concentric circles conjured by the heavens, which annul his debt to the Evil One.) It is therefore very different from Christopher Marlowe’s scarier and more unforgiving account of Doctor Faustus.
Murnau’s Faust is (obviously) concerned with and animated by evil, and there are echoes of his Nosferatu, made four years previously. In this film, Faust, having struck his bargain on a provisional 24-hour basis with Mephisto, finds that he is scared of a crucifix, like a vampire. It is also very much a film of Weimar Germany with its mad energy and streaks of garish satire and black comedy; the book-burning scene in which Faust immolates all his necromancy volumes, along with the Bible, is one which resonated with later events. (Perhaps it indirectly inspired Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto, later to be filmed by István Szabó.)
Manville’s academic psychologist finds herself trapped in a tower block wasteland in 1980s Warsaw. Bizarre and surreal details add to the sinister vibe
Part cold war thriller, part Kafkaesque reverie, this movie takes us back to the sinister drear of Poland in 1981, when General Jaruzelski has just introduced martial law in reaction to the dangerous new mood of freedom occasioned by the Solidarity trade unions. The director is Kasia Adamik, daughter of The Green Border’s Agnieszka Holland; the film is adapted from a story by Olga Tokarczuk, called Professor Andrews Goes to Warsaw.
Lesley Manville plays Professor Andrews, an academic clinical psychologist (like Tokarczuk) from Britain with testy, peremptory mannerisms; her indulgence is a fondness for taking Polaroid photos. She has attained a certain level of celebrity for a book on dreams, despite claiming that she never dreams herself. Andrews has been invited to give a lecture in Warsaw, during which she begins to outline views on mental illness not unlike those of Laing or Foucault; but her speech is chaotically disrupted by students shouting that Poland itself is an oppressive asylum.
Kevin Dupzyk’s profile of Sam Rockwell, a “legendary scene-stealer” now in his fourth decade of work, is a crisp and entertaining one-act, with journalist and actor holed up in a spare Manhattan greenroom. Dupzyk studies Rockwell while Rockwell studies the room, testing the durability of his own idiosyncratic observations—about Red Bull and loss and rain—to see what they might yield in a conversation with a stranger. Dupzyk had wanted to “gin up some action for this story,” but it’s strangely compelling to watch Rockwell’s gaze prowl the room, to see what lodges in the filter of his creative process.
Rockwell is a good tennis player. And like any good athlete, he trains. For as much as he appears to get by on natural charm and charisma, he is an actor’s actor, a true believer, in his words, an “acting nerd.” Research. Running lines. Exerci—
Pat Caldwell is 69 years old and, as Chris Stanton gushes in this uproarious Q&A, “a legend to IMAX nerds.” Caldwell loves Vision3 film stock, hates Joker: Folie à Deux, and has discovered more than one dead body in a movie theater. His decades-long career as a projectionist includes a stint at a Tennessee porn theater with “very good equipment,” and he once spent half a year screening Lawrence of Arabia four times daily. When Stanton reached out to Caldwell on the occasion of The Odyssey, he may have landed the year’s most entertaining interview.
So Sam taught me how to run the projectors, and he got drunk, passed out on the couch. And after the concession stand in the box office closed, I would go up and run the rest of the movies for him. This went very nicely until one night there’s a knock at the door. I opened the door and here’s this old man standing there. And I said, “Well, who are you?” He says, “I could ask the same question. Who are you? I’m the business agent of the local projectionists’ union.” I explained what was going on. He woke up Sam, chewed him out. And the next day they made me an apprentice. I trained for a year with no pay at all the local theaters in Nashville.
What moves the star of Jackass to risk his life for our entertainment? This “very serious investigation” involves interviews with friends and family, a surf trip to Malibu, a gag with a fake raccoon, and a stop at In-N-Out:
He nosed the car into the drive-through line, drawing stares as he nosed—some for the vehicle, some for the driver. Mostly male stares. A teen-age boy stepped up to the passenger window and leaned in to take his order.
“One hamburger with tomato, lettuce, and mustard,” Knoxville said. “Fries, please. And a cup of water.”
“Onion?”
“No, sir.”
The teen-ager squinted. “You look familiar. Are you famous, by any chance?”
“Actually, completely by chance!” Knoxville improvised.
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