“C’mon C’mon” Writer/Director Mike Mills on Creating a Space For Intimacy

When it comes to family, we all have our own story. In C’mon C’mon, from writer/director Mike Mills, we connect with a tale not often told, one that drops us in the living room of a sister and brother who have been living their own adult lives on separate coasts and slowly drifting apart from each other. When her husband has an abrupt mental health issue, she asks her brother to step in to watch their child while she attempts to piece back their marriage.

“The Power of the Dog” Cinematographer Ari Wegner on Finding the Light in Jane Campion’s Mythic Western

Auteur writer/director Jane Campion is known for being one of the few female filmmakers to garner a Best Director Oscar nomination, for 1993’s The Piano, which won her an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Fans have been anxiously awaiting her first feature film release since 2009’s Bright Star, and she’ll do them proud with The Power of the Dog, an intense period drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch as bullying 1920s rancher Phil Burbank.

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” Breakout Star Meng’er Zhang on her Knockout Debut

From the second she enters the frame, Xialing radiates a younger sibling’s mixture of hurt and defiance at the brother who abandoned her. Yet Xialing is no longer a little girl, and as the daughter of the crime boss and formidable, superpowered martial arts master Wenwu, she’s become everything her older brother—Shang-Chi—was meant to be. Only unlike her brother, she wasn’t handpicked as Wenwu’s successor, and her training to become an unparalleled martial arts expert and assassin was done on the sly.

“Passing” Writer/Director Rebecca Hall On Navigating the Complicated History of Racial Identity

The complexity of bringing a thematically laced film like Passing to the screen isn’t a simple one. For Rebecca Hall, who makes her directorial debut, it was also a personal journey, “an extended catharsis” that allowed her “to get to the bottom of a lot of mysteries” in her family.

The story, which is adapted by Hall from the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, follows two Black women, Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga),

How Vietnamese Filmmaker Bui Kim Quy Faced Death, Real & Imagined, in Her Film “Memoryland”

When her second film Memoryland held its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents competition last month, Vietnamese director Bui Kim Quy had to give it a miss due to her health conditions.

“I was diagnosed with lung cancer after the shoot wrapped in late 2018. Since then I have been undergoing treatment (which also explains why we had a drawn-out post-production). This pre-existing medical condition prevented me from getting the vaccines.

How “The Harder They Fall” Hair Department Head Araxi Lindsey Put History to Work

There are plenty of recognizable names in The Harder They Fall. For his Western epic, director-writer Jeymes Samuel references historical figures like mail carrier Mary Fields, cowboy Nat Love, outlaw Rufus Buck, sharpshooter Bill Pickett, and lawman Bass Reeves. In Samuel’s modern update, however, the film’s characters align with their historical reference points’ careers (with the exception of Mary, now a saloon owner), but otherwise, the story is all new.

Upon learning that Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) is being transported from prison,

“Encanto” Writer/Director Charise Castro Smith On Breaking Boundaries

With the release of Disney’s Encanto, Charise Castro Smith (The Haunting of Hill House, Devious Maids) has broken through not one but two ceilings: as the first Latina to receive a directing credit on a Disney animated feature, and only the second woman ever to do so.

“I am glad this milestone has been reached. I wish it had been reached earlier and I wish this weren’t such a small club,” said Castro Smith,

“Hawkeye” Director & Executive Producer Rhys Thomas Hits His Mark

Let’s say you’re a director, and you’ve been called in for a “general meeting” at Marvel Studios. A general meeting is a chance for studio executives to get to know a particular filmmaker, see what they’re like and what they’re interested in, but they’re not pegged to a specific project. Not yet. Obviously, a general meeting with Marvel is a big deal, and the number of Marvel projects percolating at any given moment is massive,

Cinematographer Alice Brooks Makes “tick, tick…BOOM!” Sing With Personal Memories

tick, tick…Boom! may not have the name recognition of Jonathan Larson’s most famous production, Rent, but it is a theater kid’s dream for Broadway royalty to bring this story to the screen. The film interpretation of his unfinished work captures the heart and hustle of 1990s New York through Larson’s eyes. Although Larson passed away in 1996, the project was lovingly researched and reconstructed by director Lin-Manuel Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson.

“House of Gucci” Screenwriter Roberto Bentivegna on Centering Lady Gaga’s Obsessive Patrizia Reggiani

Sometimes you just have to say, “F*** it all, I’ll give it a shot.”

That’s what Roberto Bentivegna did when he got his shot to write the screenplay for the new MGM Studios feature House of Gucci, opening November 24.

At the time, Bentivegna had only a handful of short-film credits and award wins from way back in film school at Columbia. But he also had something else: a great idea.

“King Richard” Editor Pamela Martin on Finding The Film’s Rousing Rhythm

What if your life was planned out even before you were born? And if you followed it with hard work and a little perseverance, not only would you be successful, but you’d be considered one of the greatest at what you do. Would you sign up for it?

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green explores that very journey in King Richard (in theaters and on HBO Max now), a story, written by Zach Baylin,

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” Composer Rob Simonsen on Expanding the Supernatural Sonic Palette

The Ghostbusters are back, but they’ve gotten a lot younger. In Jason Reitman’s follow-up, Ghostbusters: Afterlife (in theaters now), to his father Ivan’s generation-defining classic, Egon Spengler’s (the late Harold Ramis) grandkids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace) get into the family trade after moving to the dirt farm, a dilapidated Oklahoma property where we learn that Spengler rode out his final years alone, warding off an unusually problematic ghost based in a nearby abandoned mine.

“King Richard” Casting Director Rich Delia on Finding Venus & Serena

The new film King Richard (Warner Bros.) halted shooting in March 2020 during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Although his work was done, Rich Delia, one of the project’s casting directors, was “sitting at home freaking out” over one thing:

“What if one of the girls goes through a growth spurt?”

The girls are, of course, Venus and Serena Williams. King Richard tells the astonishing story of how Richard Williams struggled and then succeeded in transforming his daughters into two of the greatest tennis players of all time.

“Sort Of” Co-Creator/Writer/Director Fab Filippo on This Groundbreaking New HBO Max Series

When you start watching the groundbreaking new HBO Max series Sort Of (debuting on HBO Max November 18), you might imagine that it’s yet another precocious-Millennial-auteur-driven show, starring its own creator/writer. After all, Sort Of’s real-life creator/writer/star, Bilal Baig, is a stylish, non-binary, Pakistani denizen of queer Toronto – just like Sabi Mehboob, the lead character they play in Sort Of.

As the story unfolds over eight episodes,

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” Stunt Coordinator Andy Cheng on That Epic Bus Fight

Along with the rise of visual effects, old-school practical effects, the actual exploits of human beings creating incredible spectacles in real-time and real space, have also become near to magic. From Bruce Lee to Simu Liu, star of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and every Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Cruise, and Daniel Craig in between, fight sequences, car chases, and action scenes of truly epic proportions have become high art.

How Composer Alexandre Desplat Put a “Dada-istic” Spin on “The French Dispatch”

Wes Anderson’s dollhouse-perfect motion pictures radiate an unmistakable sensibility brought to life by a remarkably consistent team of below-the-line talent. His last four movies featured contributions from the same production designer (Adam Stockhausen), the same cinematographer (Robert Yeoman), the same music supervisor (Randall Poster), the same costume designer (Milena Canonero ), and, crucially, the same composer: Alexandre Desplat. An eleven-time Oscar nominee and winner of two Academy Awards, Desplat teamed with Anderson on Fantastic Mr.

“Red Notice” Writer/Director Rawson Marshall Thurber on Re-Teaming With The Rock

In Red Notice, now streaming on Netflix in tandem with its theatrical run, a top FBI profiler (Dwayne Johnson) and a career criminal (Ryan Reynolds) find themselves unlikely partners to thwart a high-stakes heist and the alluring art thief (Gal Godot) at the center of it all. Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodge Ball, The Millers) wrote and directed the action-comedy, which reunites him with Johnson after the two worked together previously on Central Intelligence and Skyscraper.

“Last Night in Soho” Costume Designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s Sinisterly Swinging Style

At the beginning of Edgar Wright’s thriller Last Night in Soho, budding fashion student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is living with her grandmother (Rita Tushingham) in Cornwall, wearing clothes she made herself and experiencing visions of her dead mother (Aimee Cassettari), a situation she and her grandmother seem to agree is just a part of who she is. But an acceptance to the London College of Fashion pulls her away to city life,

“Belfast” Editor Úna Ní Dhonghaíle on Cutting Kenneth Branagh’s Deeply Personal Film

Úna Ní Dhonghaíle, the Dublin-based editor for Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, which Focus Features released November 12, had just attended the film’s premiere in the Northern Ireland capital the day before speaking with The Credits.

“In London, people laughed more. The Belfast audience laughed too, but it wasn’t as loud,” she says. “After the screening, I spoke with a man who said he enjoyed it but it was very emotional because he was also crying.”

Ní Dhonghaíle understood the feeling.

“Belfast” Writer/Director Kenneth Branagh’s Riveting Return to his Childhood

Writer/director Kenneth Branagh has mined his childhood experiences in Belfast to create a riveting, sumptuous film. Belfast (opening November 12), which is shot in black and white, captures a time in the summer of 1969 directly following the first riots in the northern part of the city often cited as the beginning of the Troubles. Branagh and his family were in the thick of it, and the film is shot from his perspective through the 9-year-old character Buddy,