“It was a contributor to the specialty box office, and I hope it will be again,” says Laemmle CEO Greg Laemmle of MoviePass, the subscription service that unsurprisingly went bankrupt in early 2020 after offering a movie a day for ten bucks a month.
A co-founder Stacy Spikes, who was pushed out amid strategic differences with new owners, including the $9.95 plan, acquired the assets out of bankruptcy in 2021. He relaunched MoviePass yesterday after months of beta testing. The movie-a-day-plan, which left the service subsidizing most tickets, “was never going to work,” Sikes tells Deadline. AMC had actually threatened to sue, saying the plan wasn’t sustainable and set consumers up “for ultimate disappointment down the road.” Its bankruptcy filing listed more than 12,000 subscribers it may have owned money to.
The new MoviePass has four tiers from $10 for 1-3 movies, to a limited availability $40 plan with 30 movies a month. Each plan also...
A co-founder Stacy Spikes, who was pushed out amid strategic differences with new owners, including the $9.95 plan, acquired the assets out of bankruptcy in 2021. He relaunched MoviePass yesterday after months of beta testing. The movie-a-day-plan, which left the service subsidizing most tickets, “was never going to work,” Sikes tells Deadline. AMC had actually threatened to sue, saying the plan wasn’t sustainable and set consumers up “for ultimate disappointment down the road.” Its bankruptcy filing listed more than 12,000 subscribers it may have owned money to.
The new MoviePass has four tiers from $10 for 1-3 movies, to a limited availability $40 plan with 30 movies a month. Each plan also...
- 5/26/2023
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
Fairytales and fire stations merge in the new film from João Pedro Rodrigues.
Few filmmakers can count themselves as an ornithologist — or expert on birds — and a director, but Portuguese filmmaker Rodrigues is both. Now, he’s directed his first narrative feature since 2016’s “The Ornithologist” with the musical fantasy “Will O’ the Wisp.” The homoerotic, full-frontal-filled gay musical — Rodrigues himself, while also being a bird expert and filmmaker, is also openly gay — premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight last May before wending its way around the festival circuit. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, via here or the link below.
In “Will O’ the Wisp,” His Royal Highness Alfredo (Mauro Costa) is a king without a crown and also on a death bed, from which he’s taken back to distant memories from his youth, a time when he dreamed of becoming a fireman. In this chapter of his life,...
Few filmmakers can count themselves as an ornithologist — or expert on birds — and a director, but Portuguese filmmaker Rodrigues is both. Now, he’s directed his first narrative feature since 2016’s “The Ornithologist” with the musical fantasy “Will O’ the Wisp.” The homoerotic, full-frontal-filled gay musical — Rodrigues himself, while also being a bird expert and filmmaker, is also openly gay — premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight last May before wending its way around the festival circuit. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, via here or the link below.
In “Will O’ the Wisp,” His Royal Highness Alfredo (Mauro Costa) is a king without a crown and also on a death bed, from which he’s taken back to distant memories from his youth, a time when he dreamed of becoming a fireman. In this chapter of his life,...
- 5/1/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
"My little rascal, you gave your all!" Strand Releasing has unveiled an official US trailer for a very strange, one-of-a-kind film from Portugal titled Will-o'-the-Wisp, originally known as Fogo-Fátuo in Portuguese. This musical fantasy by João Pedro Rodrigues first premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival last year, stopping by tons of other festivals including Toronto and New York. On his deathbed, his royal highness Alfredo, king without a crown, is taken back to distant youth memories and the time he dreamt of becoming a fireman. The encounter with instructor Afonso from the fire brigade opens a new chapter in the life of the two young men immersed in love and desire, and the will to change the status quo. Starring Mauro Costa, André Cabral, and Joel Branco. This film will primarily appeal to anyone brave enough to wade into experimental cinema, but it looks like...
- 4/28/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Stars: João Arrais, Anabela Moreira, Gustavo Sumpta, Leonor Silveira, Miguel Amorim, Ivo Arroja, André Cabral, João Cachola, Vicente Gil | Written and Directed by Carlos Conceicao
For me, it can only be a good thing when I say that Tommy Guns is like no film I have ever seen before. It covers several genres and with the genre shifts, almost feels like it’s changing the story each time – whether it covers wartime drama, zombie flick or art house, it’s always engaging.
The story begins in 1974, just one year before the country’s independence from decades of Portuguese rule. Wealthy colonists are fleeing the country as Angolan revolutionaries gradually claim their land back. A tribal girl discovers love and danger when her path crosses that of a Portuguese soldier. Another group of soldiers, completely cut off from the outside world, blindly follow the brutal orders of their commander in the name of serving their country.
For me, it can only be a good thing when I say that Tommy Guns is like no film I have ever seen before. It covers several genres and with the genre shifts, almost feels like it’s changing the story each time – whether it covers wartime drama, zombie flick or art house, it’s always engaging.
The story begins in 1974, just one year before the country’s independence from decades of Portuguese rule. Wealthy colonists are fleeing the country as Angolan revolutionaries gradually claim their land back. A tribal girl discovers love and danger when her path crosses that of a Portuguese soldier. Another group of soldiers, completely cut off from the outside world, blindly follow the brutal orders of their commander in the name of serving their country.
- 4/18/2023
- by Alain Elliott
- Nerdly
A hopeful and bittersweet plea for a better future, Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ 67-minute oddity Will-o’-the-Wisp covers three periods in the life of Alfredo, a “Prince” of Portugal. If a little conceited and cutesy at times—perhaps “a musical comedy by” wasn’t literally needed to be specified in the opening credits—this a film that manages to remain likable throughout. Seemingly an accomplishment for something with so much on its mind.
Our first glimpse of Alfredo (Joel Branco) is on his deathbed in 2069 (we even see the shadow of a spaceship) and running through memories of his youth in what looks like a smaller room out of that similar scene near the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The memories of this “king without a crown” chart back to 2011 initially, as he falls in love with Portugal’s forests and trees as a young boy (depicted through what...
Our first glimpse of Alfredo (Joel Branco) is on his deathbed in 2069 (we even see the shadow of a spaceship) and running through memories of his youth in what looks like a smaller room out of that similar scene near the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The memories of this “king without a crown” chart back to 2011 initially, as he falls in love with Portugal’s forests and trees as a young boy (depicted through what...
- 9/17/2022
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
Nação Valente Review — Nação Valente (2022) Film Review from the 75th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie written and directed by Carlos Conceição, starring João Arrais, Anabele Moreira, Gustavo Sumpta, Leonor Silveira, Miguel Amorim, and André Cabral. For all the “both sides” and “it’s complicated” discourse that’s flooded the media with regards to world events this year – particularly [...]
Continue reading: Film Review: NAÇÃO Valente: Historical Revisionism As the Real Horrors of War [Locarno 2022]...
Continue reading: Film Review: NAÇÃO Valente: Historical Revisionism As the Real Horrors of War [Locarno 2022]...
- 8/11/2022
- by Jacob Mouradian
- Film-Book
While the police force faces a massive task of image rehabilitation on screen, these are unexpectedly rich times at the movies for anyone with a firefighter fetish. After an unsurprisingly long wait for one film featuring a team of strapping laddermen in sensual dance formations, two have come along at once. Taking the queer emergency service of “Titane” to a lighter, sweeter, more playful and more pornographic place, João Pedro Rodrigues’ delicious one-off “Will-o’-the-Wisp” lives up to the flighty, elusive promise of its title, teasing its viewers in more ways than one: with a titillating parade of bare male bodies in balletic motion, and with hints of thematic import beyond that leading erotic spectacle.
Climate-change anxiety, republican politics and colonialist history are all woven into this shoestring-budgeted lo-fi sci-fi musical romance, despite a scant 67-minute runtime that scarcely has room for half its fizzing, flung-about ideas. Still, Rodrigues...
Climate-change anxiety, republican politics and colonialist history are all woven into this shoestring-budgeted lo-fi sci-fi musical romance, despite a scant 67-minute runtime that scarcely has room for half its fizzing, flung-about ideas. Still, Rodrigues...
- 6/4/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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