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When John Singleton died on April 28, 2019, at the age of 51 following a stroke, one of the numerous tributes to him was by Barack Obama who tweeted, “His seminal work, Boyz n the Hood, remains one of the most searing, loving portrayals of the challenges facing inner-city youth. He opened doors for filmmakers of color to tell powerful stories that have been too often ignored.

In the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, we see how a con man, who goes by the name Simon Leviev, uses the dating app Tinder to trick women into believing that he is the son of the ultra-wealthy diamond tycoon Lev Leviev. It is believed that Simon Leviev has stolen an estimated 10 million dollars over the years from numerous women all over the world.

Valentine’s Day weekend in the Russian box office has shown the best results since the start of 2022 while Uncharted is the highest-grossing release of the weekend. Released in Russia a week earlier than its US release date in 1,522 cinema theaters, Uncharted tops the Russian box office with 330 mln Russian Ruble ($4.

“When I went to work in a studio, I took my pride and made a nice little ball of it and threw it right out the window,” said director Dorothy Arzner in a 1933 article in Silver Screen magazine entitled “Get Me Dorothy Arzner”. Whatever tribulations she went through to build a career in Hollywood that started in silent films, in an industry dominated by men, Arzner, almost forgotten now, has more major studio directorial credits than any other woman to this day.

Larry Peerce directed One Potato, Two Potato (1964), a pioneering indie drama about interracial marriage and its devastating effects on all concerned, especially the young white daughter caught up in a messy situation. The film preceded by three years the more famous Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Stanley Kramer’s Golden Globe nominee (and Oscar winner) starred Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton.

The silent film era, which lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s, was run by white men. Any Black performers seen in the films were portrayed through the white perspective and confirmed stereotypes that abounded at the time.

After two weeks with the same movies at the top of the Italian box office, the week from 07/02 to 13/02 saw a clear change in the ranking. Last week we wrote about the great expectations for the release of two movies: Death on the Nile by Kenneth Branagh and the first movie by the singer-songwriter Fabrizio Moro, Ice.

It was another “magically beautiful” week at the German box office: Wunderschön, the homegrown dramedy about four women of all ages by Karoline Herfurth topped the charts once again, just ahead of newest release Death on the Nile which beat two other debuts, Moonfall and Marry Me by, respectively, one and four spots. It has to be said that German-speaking people come in a close second to the Brits in their love for all things Agatha Christie.

Ivan Reitman was a master of comedy, a director who excelled at marrying the bawdy with the sophisticated, and a man who practically invented the careers of some of our most beloved comedic actors.   It was the college fraternity romp National Lampoon’s Animal House that got Reitman started in Hollywood in 1978, and that introduced a then-little-known John Belushi to American audiences.

Despite the studios’ counterprogramming with new films by Jennifer Lopez and Gal Gadot, the Super Bowl weekend – traditionally a slow period for filmgoing – stayed true to form. Death on the Nile, which marks the return of Kenneth Branagh as Agatha Christie’s beloved detective, Hercule Poirot since 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, emerged on top even with only $12.