Entertainment

It has been a little while since the heyday of the Italian island melodrama, since Anna Magnani shaded her eyes from the glare over a darkly sparkling sea, or Ingrid Bergman staggered her stony way up Stromboli. But even back then it would have been rare to come across such …

BERLIN, Feb 18, (RTRS): Russia always seems to be on the brink of war and conditions there now are much like they were in the 1970s, when people worried that an international conflict would break out and largely sided with the government, the director of a new movie set in …

With Austria currently the only West European nation since World War II governed by the far right, it’s time (heck, it’s long past time) that someone of Ruth Beckermann’s intelligence made a film investigating the country’s odious collective whitewashing of its Nazi-era past. In her incisive documentary “The Waldheim Waltz,” …

In pumped-up espionage potboilers like “Salt” or “Atomic Blonde,” Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron have gone through the motions of imitating male action stars at their most kick-ass grandiose. They’re slickly “empowered” women, yet it’s hard to distinguish that power from the thriller-video decadence of 21st-century action filmmaking. In the …

BERLIN, Feb 17, (AFP): Hollywood stars Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska said the current reckoning with power abuses in the entertainment industry has opened a door to new movies that subvert traditional gender roles, as they presented the feminist Western “Damsel” Friday at the Berlin film festival. Pattinson, the “Twilight” …

ANN ARBOR, Mich, Feb 17, (AP): A restored edition of a pioneering, enduring American opera emerges at a time its racial and social themes are as relevant as the era in which it premiered. The long-in-the-works “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” gets a test-drive Saturday in Michigan en route to …

LOS ANGELES, Feb 14, (Agencies): “Black Panther” is expected to be a major box office smash, but it has also taken on the mantle of cultural talisman, a touchstone on which moviegoers of color worldwide are pinning their hopes. The 18th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, opening Friday in …

One of the first images in the film “Nostalgia” is of an heirloom necklace dangling on the neck of a diner waitress. One of the last images is of a massive puffy cloud, ever shifting in the wide sky. Between these symbols of permanence and flux is a deeply meditative …

The low-budget, indie drama “Black Kite” charts five decades of political turmoil in Afghanistan through the eyes of a hapless kite maker, the middle generation of a sadly doomed dynasty. More well-intentioned than accomplished, this second feature from Kabul-born, Canadian helmer Tarique Qayumi suffers in comparison to “The Kite Runner,” …

CHIBA, Japan, Feb 11, (AP): A crowd cheers, banging on balloons, in front of glitzy stages, each with a giant screen. The rising stars at the sprawling Makuhari Messe hall are the quietly seated men in hoodies and T-shirts, with names like Noppi and Refresh, jiggling on buttons and grimacing …