Golden Globe Awards

The Beirut-set satire Halal Love consists of three interconnected tales in which devout Muslims try to manage their love lives and desires without breaking any of their religion’s rules. While the comedy is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, it does provide humorous inside into how people deal with challenges of faith and desire in an Islamic environment.

Viola Davis, Fences. Reprising the role she played on Broadway opposite Denzel Washington, Viola Davis is a quiet storm of determination, anger and devotion as Rose, the wife of the hard-headed, short-tempered Troy (played again by Denzel Washington, who directed the film from a script by playwright August Wilson).

Who really is Ray Marcus, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s character in director Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals? Beyond the fact that he pops up in the pages of a book that Susan/Amy Adams avidly reads during most of the film, the less we say about it the better. Taylor-Johnson, however, is very precise in his description: “It was a character that I didn't instantly relate to, you know?”, he told us.

As the grown-up Saroo, the Indian boy adopted by an Australian family in director  Garth Davis’ Lion, Dev Patel found himself on a journey very similar to his own. “This is probably the project that I had the biggest personal connection t”, Dev Patel told us.

What kind of preparation is needed to play a vocal coach to a tone-deaf would-be opera singer? Simon Helberg, who must face this very challenge as Meryl Streep’s long-suffering teacher in Florence Foster Jenkins, had a very specific kind of training, shared with the movie’s illustrious lead actress: “We both came together in New York, and had both been practicing, basically, shitting all over the great pieces of music in the canon of classical and opera”, Helberg shared with us. “She was in New York and I was in LA, and we had been working on this crazy thing, and we came together to see if it made sense in a studio in New York.

Hot on the trail of a series of peculiar bank robberies in dusty, half-dead towns in West Texas, Jeff Bridges’ sheriff Marcus Hamilton cuts a powerful profile – he’s at the same time a lawman from the halcyon days of the frontier and a dim shadow of those legendary times, fading with a land that seems abandoned by all. “The basic thing about a great script, this was one that really rung true.

When Juan, a feared drug dealer ruling over a mean corner in a tough Miami neighborhood, comes across a scared, trembling kid in the opening scenes from director Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, the audience does not expect the layers of care and tenderness that frame the encounter. The surprise is a credit to Mahershala Ali’s nuanced performance of a character based on the life experiences of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose stage play inspired the movie.

It is a beautiful summer day on the West coast of Denmark. Apart from the roar of the sea and the gulls’ screech there is an unnatural silence.

En las últimas semanas le hemos visto interpretar a un soldado objetor de conciencia en Hasta el último hombre, de Mel Gibson, y a un jesuita misionario en Silencio, de Martin Scorsese. Dos papeles duros de pelar que sin duda le han hecho cuestionar su propia fe y que podrían colocarle en la cima de Hollywood en esta temporada de premios.

The cinema industry (if one can use this word) of Saudi Arabia is minuscule. It only produces a couple of feature motion pictures and a few documentaries each year.