The weekend feels awards-y with John Turturro tugging the heartstrings in The Only Living Pickpocket In New York, Oliva Coleman (Wicker) and Helen Mirren (A Talent For Murder) in the house, and Hans Zischler and Sandra Hüller playing Thomas Mann and his daughter on a road trip (Fatherland). The A24 You Can See Everything phenomenon goes wide. Netflix expands TIFF audience award-winner La Bola Negra.
Sony Pictures Classics opens Turturro-starring Pickpocket by Noah Segan in limited release on six screens in NY (AMC Lincoln Square, Angelika Film Center, Bam Rose) and LA (AMC Burbank, AMC Grove, Laemmle Royal). He plays Harry Lehman, an aging pickpocket who plies his trade with ever-diminishing returns in a drastically changed New York. Turturro took the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Eye Award for his performance in the film — Segan’s directorial debut — with Steve Buscemi as Harry’s regular fence, Tatiana Maslany as his estranged daughter and Will Price as the arrogant, heat-packing scion of a Manhattan crime family also starring. A favorite out of where Sundance where it premiered, the film is Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 97%, see Deadline’s review, which calls it mesmerizing.
Mubi is out with Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, also limited, at four theaters in New York (Film Forum, Film at Lincoln Center) and Los Angeles (AMC Burbank, Laemmle Royal). World premiered at Cannes to critical acclaim and the Best Director award for Pawlikowski. At 91% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, see Deadline review. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hans Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) embark on a challenging and emotional road trip across a Germany in ruins, from U.S. dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Mann, who had returned home after sixteen years in exile in the U.S., faced not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family. Pawlikowski picks up here where he left off with his award-winning Ida and Cold War, exploring themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe.
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Mubi also debuts Making Marie Antionette, the late filmmaker Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes documentation of her daughter Sofia Coppola directing 2006 film Marie Antoinette. Premiered at Telluride, Deadline review here. Opens on 20 screens nationally including NY and LA.
Moderate/wide: Bleecker Street, in partnership with longtime collaborator LD Entertainment, releases Anton Corbijn thriller A Talent For Murder on 876 screens with Helen Mirren starring as celebrated crime novelist Patricia Highsmith. World premiered at TIFF, see Deadline review. Based on Joanna Murray-Smith’s acclaimed 2014 play Switzerland, the film follows a young literary agent from New York (Ehrenreich), who travels to Switzerland on a mission to convince the famously reclusive Highsmith to write one final installment in her iconic Ripley series. What begins as a seemingly straightforward assignment soon takes an unexpected turn.
Black Bear launches Wicker, the Sundance breakout from Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, at 1,471 theaters. A lusty comedic fable about sex, marriage and social convention centered around a lonely Fisherwoman, Olivia Colman, who commissions a wicker husband from the local Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage). Her unexpected romance with the creation (Alexander Skarsgård) sparks jealousy and threatens the village’s social order. The Tailor’s Wife/bullying local queen bee (Elizabeth Debicki ) sets out to sabotage the romance. Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 92% with critics. Audience score of 93%. Deadline review here.
Black Bear’s teaser poster/social campaign highlighted an unconventional leading man turned object of desire — aka:” What is MARRIAGE MATERIAL, and why is it a basket?” Off that, self-described “basketheads” spread Wicker fandom across the film’s social channels. It had a stunt screening at Beyond Fest, targeted events with Feeld, Letterboxd and Vanity Fair, and events at the 92nd Street Y and Vidiots culminating in the LA premiere at the DGA. Fans have been sharing sightings of six feet tall Wicker Husband standees in bookstores and theaters. On Oct. 25, it will play in Dolby Cinema at AMC locations nationwide for a daylong event. Black Bear will host a special one-night Wicker 4DX event Oct. 28.
TIFF-premiering documentary Nuns Vs The Vatican by Lorena Luciano debuts at LA’s Laemmle Monica Film Center, with a national rollout to follow. Produced by Filippo Piscopo. Mariska Hargitay, Trish Adlesic, Lauran Bromley, Regina K. Scully and Amanda Stephens are executive producers. In the shadows of the Catholic church, nuns and women have long endured abuse at the hands of priests — insidious and tactful grooming, silenced by confession, and hidden through systemic cover-ups. This investigative documentary uncovers the harrowing details and institutional indifference as nuns start to break decades of silence, exposing a system built to protect power. Self-distributed.